I blame Jamie Oliver, Mario Batali and the little skinny dude off The Cook and the Chef. These modern day heroes have us discussing the secret to a good celeriac pure and how you simply must use a good shiraz in your red wine jus, because nothing else will do. I’ve been to dinner parties where the host has perfectly slow poached quail eggs for her crispy noodle and asian green salad but couldn’t manage to cook the rice properly.

Potatoes. Read on, I'll explain.

Let’s face it the world would have starved a long time ago if it weren’t for potatoes, rice and pasta. Man cannot live off coconut foam and micro-greens alone.

There is a lesson in this (it’s a stretch I know) for digital marketers currently obsessing with the finer frills of SEO, the engagement rates of their home page take-overs and the eCPM of their performance media buy. We’re forgetting the Internet (and it’s users) need feeding.

Cast your mind back to 2004, the Internet was very hungry. It was fed up with small portions of flash intros, gourmet brochure-ware websites and reductions of one-way communications. We demanded something bigger to chew on.  Comfort food finally came in the form of Blogger, Wikipedia and Co. who, in successfully bringing down the worldwide walled web, encouraged a new breed of chefs cooking up simple meals of content and conversations we could all digest.

It’s been 6 years since this wall came down yet big business is still struggling with getting simple well cooked content (user generated or otherwise) onto the menu. There’s little encouragement from the industry to change our ways. The ‘c’ word rarely gets a mention in agency land, maybe because there’s no award for “Best User Generated Content” or maybe it’s because, like potatoes, it’s hard to charge big dollars for.

All excuses to one side, it is time to put focus back on content. It is content that makes for great SEO, it is content that delivers great user experience and it is content that reduces bounce rates and improves conversion – nothing more complicated than that. So get back to basics, put ‘content strategy’ at the head of your brief and and give it the due time and consideration it needs. Don’t fear you can still add a touch of truffle oil at the end.

OK so this is a tad self promotional but there’s something in it for you so don’t be too quick to judge. I will be presenting at this year’s Sydney ad:tech and if, despite this announcement, you were still thinking of attending (16th and 17th March) then drop me a line (marc@thinqdigital.com.au) as I can send you a code that scores 20% off your ticket(s). Here endeth the promotion.

If you’ve been on Wikipedia in the last few weeks (which you likely have), you might’ve seen the thank you note from founder Jimmy Wales:

Wow. What can I say? Thank you.

We’ve just ended the most successful fundraiser in our history, $7.5 million USD raised in less than 8 weeks.

Incredible. But I’m not surprised.

In 2001, I took a bet on people, and you’ve never let me down.

You have created the largest collection of human knowledge ever assembled: 14 million encyclopedia articles in 270 languages, still growing and getting better every day. You have supported, funded and protected it…

I’m not ashamed to admit that I frequently use Wikipedia to find information on everything from trivial tidbits to abstract theories. What I do find shameful, is the fact that after years of using Wikipedia, this week was the first time I ever made a donation and offered something back.

Wikipedia spawned from Nupedia, a free online encyclopedia created by Wales and philosopher Lawrence Sanger, which failed because of it’s languid pace (in the first six months only 2 articles made it through the process). Currency is precisely the reason that Wikipedia continues to triumph over traditional static encyclopedias; these days even real-time isn’t fast enough.

However, it isn’t its speed but rather its ability to demonstrate the power of community that makes Wikipedia one of the greatest innovations of the 2000s. Communication, collaboration and self-policing has enabled us, the community, to gather and maintain the world’s knowledge (proof that knowledge is, after all, human constructed).

So.. thank you, Jimmy Wales. And the same goes to you that have contributed to any of the site’s 14 million articles in 270 languages, to you that challenge what you read and help keep it accurate, and to you that donate to the cause.

Donate to Wikipedia

*Wikipedia was used 3 times in the writing of this post.

All Australians are free, within the bounds of the law, to say or write what they think about Australian governments or about any other subject or social issue as long as they do not endanger people, make false allegations or obstruct the free speech of others. The same applies to Australian newspapers, radio and television and other forms of media. Australians are free to protest the actions of government and to campaign to change laws.

- an excerpt from Life in Australia

When I migrated to Australia a few months back, Immigration provided me with Life in Australia, a 46 page booklet outlining the core values (including the one listed above) that ensure that Australia maintains its high standard of living as a free, democratic country; I was required to promise to abide by these values. As such, I was all the more shocked by yesterday’s announcement that the Australian government will move ahead with its ill-advised (and highly protested) plan to instill mandatory Internet filtering.

From a post I wrote a few months ago:

Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means in support of the sort of content that the ACMA seeks to repress (I think we’d all be a little better off without ‘Two Girls, One Cup’), but the idea of filtering the filth from the Internet is a perilously slippery slope. For one, you have to question how effective it would actually be, particularly because the content this aims to block is generally traded in underground forums and P2P rather than in public sites. And what about the margin of error? This certainly runs the risk of wrongly blocking sites – which is nothing less than a death sentence for a startup or small business.

But let’s be real here, it’s ascendancy not efficacy that’s the more problematic issue. Reporters Without Borders, an international organization that advocates freedom of the press, classified Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam as ‘Enemies of the Internet’ for having “transformed their Internet into an Intranet in order to prevent their population from accessing ‘undesirable’ online information.” Australia is currently ‘under surveillance’ by the organization and if the mandatory filter is implemented, it will be the first western democratic country to have done so… I guess they could probably use a bill of rights about now.

How sickeningly ironic that Communications Minister Stephen Conroy made this announcement December 15th, which marks the 218th anniversary of the passage of the US Bill of Rights.

David Braue wrote on ZDNET that he believes the drastic change to ISPs scope of work is the biggest damage inflicted by the filter. Now, ISPs are legally obligated to filter Refused Classification content – and to offer, as Conroy put it, “optional filtering … to block additional content as requested by households”. That’s a whole new can of worms: if I want all web pages mentioning Pete Doherty, for example, banned, does that mean my ISP needs to give me my own custom feed? Furthermore, it sets a dangerous precedent for holding ISPs responsible for their users’ content – impeccable timing when you consider the ongoing court case between the recording industry and iiNet.

‘No worries’ doesn’t quite placate this one.

The Internet Consortium created an amazing visualisation of the evolution of the Australian interwebs. Not only is the flash animation a trip, but it also has some amazing utility – including the ability to filter by category, compare across multiple metrics and follow the progress (or in some cases, deterioration) of major websites.

I’m partial to social media, so I particularly enjoyed watching Facebook enter in the eleventh hour and stomp all over MSN and MySpace!

Anyway, it certainly beats the heck out of the stock standard Excel scatter charts.

"We live in a time when celebrities are voraciously tweeting their lives - yet one voice has remained silent. Tracy Morgan has not yet joined Twitter! Together, we can change this. We can rally the Internet around a common cause - to bring Tracy Morgan to Twitter. ”

So began the plea of Hugh Dornbush, when he last week launched Twacy.org – a campaign to bring funnyman Tracy Morgan to Twitter. Hugh, who is a good friend of mine, unveiled his mission last Tuesday at the New York Tech Meetup. The following day he and Attention (the social media marketing agency that I formerly worked for) hit the Internets with a specific call-to-action – if you tweet it, he will come. The twitterverse answered, and the site was peppered with Tracy’s one-liners – all compelling him to join.

Just one day later, @realTracyMorgan joined Twitter (with a verified account!) – and, at time of publishing, is about to surpass 40,000 followers.

Another case of social media FTW! Well done, Hugh – and a big hat tip to Colin Nagy and the rest of the Attention crew!

Yes.

Single serving sites are an interesting phenomenon; most are humorous, few are useful, and all serve just one purpose – or no purpose at all. These sites have the potential to be incredibly viral, but it’s essential that they have a certain quirky or creative element about them – a “je ne sais quoi” of sorts – as they’re only comprised of a dedicated .com URL (usually a bit longer than average) and the single page website (which often has little or no design).

Although the majority of single serving sites serve no real utility, they can be slotted into some general categories:

• Answer a question – IsItChristmas.com, UmbrellaToday.com
• Provide the status of something – IsTwitterDown.com, DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com
• Make a pop culture reference/satire – ItsNeverLup.us, YoureTheManNowDog.com
• Create art/evoke emotion – IWantToFeel.com, StagnationMeansDecline.com
• Give advice or instruction – D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y.com, HowToCutAnAvocado.com
• Solicit Answers – Tired.com, GlobalCrisisKilledMyJob.com
• Other (defying categorization) – SometimesRedSometimesBlue.com, SadTrombone.com

BarackObamaIsYourNewBicycle.com is an interesting example of a single serving site becoming a meme in its own right. Back in February 2008, San Francisco freelance writer and Wired contributing editor Mathew Honan created the now-famous site, which displays random Barack Obama non sequiturs, after his wife turned her attention from cycling to campaigning for the presidential candidate. The site was an instant hit – spawning a number of copycat sites and eventually leading to a book deal (like every good website does).

And you guessed it… single serving sites can be great marketing tools too.

Kraft’s huge embarrassing fail that is iSnack 2.0 will go down in history… PR text books will cite it in their crisis control chapter and conversations around the water cooler will float to where were you when iSnack 2.0 launched? This is Kanye-calibre stuff we’re talking about here.

Me? I stumbled upon the full page ad while flicking through the Sydney Morning Herald in the LAX Qantas lounge. I was in the midst of leaving a comfortingly manic Manhattan life for a more healthy and balanced (translation: slow) life in Perth, Western Australia, so I won’t pretend that I was emotionally stable or anywhere near sober at this moment (hey, it’s a big move!); but, I am not exaggerating when I say that upon learning of this nefarious nomenclature, I burst into tears and nearly called the whole thing off. A bit rash I realise, but to me it symbolised the type of creative ideas and minds that I would encounter as a marketing strategist… and it scared the hell out of me. Luckily, upon deplaning in Perth, I was greeted with the news that the Internet felt the same way – with a number of spin-off blogs, videos and t-shirts quickly emerging to capitalise on the snafu. It came as no surprise when Kraft announced it was pulling the plug on the name and would be conducting a poll to find a suitable replacement.

The thing that I find the most curious of all, is the fact that a number of high authority marketing, news and lifestyle blogs continue to refer to the incident as a crowdsourcing disaster. We’re talking relatively large, smart publications here – PSFK, AdAge, Gizmodo to name a few. Can I just say, iSnack 2.0 is not a crowdsourcing disaster, because it was not crowdsourced. I realise this is a relatively new marketing term, so the definition mightn’t be universally solidified; but in basic terms, to ‘crowdsource’  is to engage a group to provide possible answers to a given problem (in this case, what to name this new product) and then allow the community to vet the options to arrive at the best possible solution. In this case, Kraft asked the public to submit names for its new product and then Kraft (presumably some out-of-touch corporate marketing monkeys) selected the winner. Given the degree of fury that consumers responded with, it’s pretty clear that iSnack 2.0 wasn’t the crowd favourite and should’ve been ousted in favour of the popular vote. This isn’t Florida after all…

I say bring on the Vegemite Vista.

There is a time and a place for the all singing, all dancing rich media ads that literally jump from the page, spin around and attempt to “cut-through”but let’s not also forget the gentle art of contextual web advertising – the art of making advertising “a part of the page”, something to read, not something to block.

This isn’t solely about disguising ads to look like content. It is also about taking a broader view of the publisher’s audience, what’s missing from their user experience and delivering an “ad” at the right time and in the right place in a language and tone consistent with the content they are viewing.

Hate to use the same old examples but probably the best example of this strategy in effect is Google Adwords/Adsense. The ads are visually similar to the page content, they are (often) content matched and form a part of the site’s function (the ads are search results from a search engine).

Now this may not sound like rocket science but it is a fundamental oversight in many of today’s online media schedules to forget the nature of theuser experience. We are often too focused on demographics,impressions, share of voice etcto take the time out to lookat what the ad will “mean” to the end user. Is it contextual, is it timely and let’s face it, is it useful?

Have it in the back of your mind when you get that next brief that sometimes to blend is to stand out.

start by pressing pause

It’s a million miles an hour out there but you won’t succeed by trying to keep up.

Start by pressing pause.

Unsubscribe from the web for a few hours and start thinking about your business again, it’s remarkably productive and therapeutic too. You’ll realise there’s more to successful digital marketing than promotion, promotion, promotion – you’ll start to think about your product/service, how it’s priced, positioned and distributed. You’ll start seeing the gaps, the absolute glaring holes and will start thinking about what needs to be done to fix things before you throw the promotion into full swing again.

Ask yourself this, why do you have your best ideas over breakfast? In the car or the middle of the night, it’s the only time you’ve given your brain permission to think lucidly.

So slow down and start to think things through, you’ll do your best work and the ROI will take care of itself.