After a lot of exams the final score is in my favor (Dee:9 - Universities:2), the two losses were settled long before the match, “at the green table”. Bygone! A brand new semester with brand new possibilities and brand new stuff to work on. But FIRST I thought I’d start with a little vacation so my friends and I are going on a long weekend in Straja, Romania. So excited!

(A stranger’s photos of Straja.)

In case you’re also in an adventurous mood, I, or better said, Men’s Health has a little something for the modern Indiana Jones in you: a giftbox originally named Aventura.

It’s actually a contest of Men’s Health Magazine, Ro version , where you might have very good chances of winning a voucher (there, spoiled the giftbox surprise) which may get you to perform a cool sporty activity: rafting, flying, paintball etc.

Now I understand this prize is very manly and healthy, what I’m disappointed of is the contest itself.

All you have to do in order to enter the contest is to give them your personal details from email address to your position in your workplace. That’s all?! Why couldn’t you make me do a little something which may get me the cool prize? why don’t you want to interact with me? don’t you (by You I mean Men’s Health in case you thought I started to lose it ) want me to get to know you if I don’t already?

maybe I’ll like you and then YOU’ll get to know me…

And if I already know you, why do you want to know me so intimately and not reveal anything new and exciting? Show me yours and I’ll show you mine. I believe you have devious intentions my friend and I don’t think I like you anymore. (Read “devious” as FUTURE SPAM => I believe you have future spamming intentions .)

Translation of the above “analysis”: I don’t know who will want to enter Men’s Health contest in it’s current form.

Maybe spamlovers or naive net users… and loyal readers… it may not be intention of spam but that’s what it sounds like since I found out in the first place about the contest from a spam message to one of my Yahoo groups. Best of luck !

Put your heart on the table. Identify your biggest weakness and turn it into an opportunity and eventually a strength.

I read a little story on Madalin Matica’s blog, the Head of DotCommerce, a story that turned out to be a true brand story worth sharing.

I’m cool is one of the first online store in Romania which sells accessories, from shoes to sunglasses. The main problem with the store has always been their delivery service. Basically it takes aaages for the order to arrive, ages usually means 30 days.

Why so long? Well, they ship the merchandise from the US through regular postal services because of the high commissions of other services as DHL or FedEx.

I’m sure you’re now wondering how can they still be online? Their products don’t have the “Apple effect”, that is a fan base or anything like that, no. They simply confronted their major problem and turned into a branding scheme of differentiation. Check out the beautiful pink bowed medal.

They are number one now. No one delivers slower than they do They are different. You know what to expect from them because they are honest up front. This is how you create the “Apple affect”. If that silly little medal wouldn’t be on the front page of the site I wouldn’t be telling this story and their brand wouldn’t have a story to tell.

I have another great example which I’m sure that you outside Romania are not familiar with: Trilulilu.

Trilulilu is Romania’s number one video sharing website, a local equivalent of YouTube. A few months back, in November 2007 it gave all the wolf bloggers hanging around the corner the opportunity to howl at them and try to trow stones.

The reason: there was a massive increase of traffic on their site that period, partly due to a kinky video of two local clowns celebrities Moni & Iri , and they couldn’t handle it. The traffic exceeded their predictions and expectations and they woke up half naked in the middle of the school, that is their resources (servers etc.) were unfit for the new market conditions. The videos wouldn’t play, the site wouldn’t load etc etc.

After a few days of rocks being thrown at them, they put their heart on the table or in their own words, took the condom off. They admitted Trilulilu is in trouble out in the open, admitted they weren’t prepared and yelled to the whole .ro that they have problems and moreover, it’s gonna take a couple of weeks to solve aaand apologized.

What happened next? They were praised and applauded. They were thanked for their honesty. They were now different from the rest of the romanian online, good different.

Conclusion: Your heart is not that fragile in online business

Marketers should think like a blogger in the matter of SEO of their site. Whatever site.

We all know or should know that Google loves blogs. The spider-friendliness of blogs is mostly due to the fact that bloggers link and get linked creating a true valuable web in a powerfully connected community. The content is very fresh, frequently renewed unlike most “traditional” websites, the blogging platforms have great tagging systems and so on and so forth…

Why loose sleep over laborious schemes and strategies, about how to squeeze more banner views from that little budget when you can just do the optimization first and foremost?

The best part is that search engines still have room for EVERYBODY. They don’t really care if you’re “Apple” or “Grandma’s Old Tech Shop” around the corner. On Google or Yahoo you can battle the giants and win like David over Goliath.

The well-known secret is perseverance, thinking ahead and investing from the start in foundations like SEO for your website. Stay fresh and fun and if you get to know the web and the web gets to know you… you just might get Google’s love for Valentine’s

I heard the above quote listening to a mindcomet podcast, but I can’t trace back the exact source. Source of pic1 (also there are here some seo tips), pic2. I also wanted to give you some useful SEO resources but I got overflowed… so much info… never said it was an easy job

UPDATE: When I’m right, I’m right To prove how important the above discussed topic is here is some last minute news

Regional - WPP-owned 24/7 Real Media will be incorporated into GroupM to create what is claimed to be the largest search specialist within a marketing services holding company.

“The consolidation will mean this new search company will have a greater geographic footprint than any competitor. The overall goal is to more closely integrate search with the overall communications planning and implementation service of GroupM’s agencies,” John Steedman, chairman and CEO GroupM APAC, said. More details here.

The importance of Search Engines for WPP is noticed by new media .ro analyst blogger pahomi. That’s who I stole the info from. I’m proud of myself.

… in RO. Marketing related jobs are on every corner around here. I’m not joking. Companies of all sizes are scouting under ground and rock for that consultant, manager, specialist… all related to marketing.

If interested, here are some tips:

jobinmarketing.ro — a very user-friendly platform which provides strictly marketing-related job openings to all interested. it’s free, the offers are nicely structured: sales, advertising, PR, design etc. I also give it a big plus for the RSS feed. It’s good to have

Bogdana just opened a section in her blog’s sidebar with job openings in the industry after many recommendation requests for good people. The current opening is for a Senior Strategist for “amazing branding consultancy “.

Stefan Liute, Strategy Director at Grapefruit states in a recent post that he has been looking to hire Brand Strategist since December. Are the good people so hard to find? Guess so..

Maybe the last two openings are related, but anyway… case and point.

Being good at it is the tricky part.

source of pic.

update: Bogdana is keeping her promise and putting on the table two more apparently exciting job openings in “The Industry”.

Short story to learn from:

My sister’s computer crashed. The obvious solution was formatting, but first you gotta save all the data, right? Since I’m a proud Computer Science student she turned to me for advice. I turned to my boyfriend

Anyway… I was trying to explain to her, on YM , how to take the hard, put it in another computer and thus making it like another big folder from where she could copy-paste her needed info.

‘ So sis? Do you understand?’

‘ Well… I thought of making it a slave on mom’s comp but I’m not sure I have the jumper anymore and it’s not a Seagate’

She’s 16. When I was 16… better not open that closet.

My point is that all the talking, market searches and trend spotting in advertising seems to give the advertisers a glimps on the generation they so desperately want to target. But do they really know who they’re talking to? This (RO) and this (RO) (in this last case I’m only talking about the naming originality of net division) seem to prove the contrary. Creativity is a tough cookie.

To creativly ilustrate the obvious trend, High tech teens on Freshome:

All I wanted to say is I bow before Mrs. Clinton…

Perez Hilton, the inFAMOUS celebrity blogger has officially announced his SUPPORT for the democratic candidate Hillary Clinton… OMG?!?

Well not so OMG since he has been “posting good” about her for quite a while now… yes, yes, I proudly admit to reading him when I want zero intellectual effort… I and another about 3 milion PER MONTH!

The fact is that Perez has been blogging in favour Hillary’s oponent, Barack Obama at the beginning of the campaign only to clearly state today that he has changed his mind. He says “Hillary convinced him” and has rushed to post her very liberal views on the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual) community.

Now the obvious question here : how much is Perez getting for his endorsement?

Or better yet… why did Hillary grab this opportunity and Obama passed it? The ladder has of course campaign megastarts of his ow, like Oprah. But I think “niches” like Perez should be used to the max.

Maybe he doesn’t have members of the LGBT community at all levels of his campaign staff like Hillary.

I haven’t studied hard enough the online campaign going on in the US, all I stumbled upon besides this subject is the YouTube youchoose or Face the Candidates action and different videos of/for the candidates. In my view YouTube and Oprah are highways in campaign actions and perezhilton is a narrow street. Everybody takes the highway so is it the way to go when you’re promoting change and advertising yourself?

On the other hand maybe nobody paid perez. Maybe he’s just trying to make a point and get future deals in the upcoming battles… maybe…

Finally, I would have loooved to be there when one of Hillary’s staff (I’m sure it wasn’t her ideea…:) ) proposed to target perezhilton fans … and when she accepted. Imagine:

- Hey Mrs. H ! You know that annoying chubby paparazzi-wannabe gay blogger ?

the rest is history…