A Way With Words - The Ease Of Self Publishing

Those of us who write are seldom lost for words, or care to admit admit that we are. I suspect most people who write blogs fall into this category.

The question remains however, just what to do with these words once they are written (apart from the aforementioned blogging)? Which publishing platforms can help you take your writing project to the next level and produce something of value that you would be proud to share with friends on the coffee table?

A friend of mine who has just returned from an African adventure, getting up close with elephants, mating lions and wildebeest. He showed me a handsome volume he had produced to share with friends and family. What impressed me most was the quality of production; the platform in question being Blurb.

The 'Blurberati', both the company and a community, passionately believe in the joy of books – reading them, creating and sharing them and of course, selling them. With Blurb you have a two-in-one opportunity. You can feed your desire to self publish and also sell what you produce through their marketing platform.

Blurb's authors earned a million dollars in profits last year. They have shipped more than 6 million printed books (excluding custom and offset orders) to 69 countries since their inception in 2006 so they are clearly on to a winner! I should also note that they have had a million authors over the same time period and better still, if you sell a book through Blurb you keep 100% of the profit.

So I decided to 'bench test' the Blurb platform myself so that this review had more substance and I could hold the finished product in my hand to give a fairer assessment to readers.

The thing that impressed me first up was the functionality that gave me several options to set out my book.

Options

You can build it online, or do as I did and download their Blurb Booksmart software. It's a 45 MB download and they recommend 1 GB or more of memory - 512 MB is the minimum.

If you require further guidance or motivation have a look at Blurb's Bookstore section and see the staff picks and best sellers. The preview option of any choice is excellent providing a full screen preview of all pages before purchase.

Preview before purchase

As a practicing digital artist and wearing my 'other hat' I decided to put Blurb to the test myself. My project was to publish a soft-covered forty to fifty page digital art book to test the quality of image reproduction and the finished product overall.

Blurb's user interface is simplicity itself and you can change template options with ease. Whether you want to use text, pictures or a photo layout there are plenty of professional options to suit.

The easy to use templates with their drag and drop functionality

Having added your pages and content you can then preview the book and re-edit as and when needed. There are themes, background and ornaments.

The review panel has full zoom functionality

Flick through page by page and click the edit button if you wish to make changes

Once all is in order click the publish button and you can view a final preview and then order the book. Is it expensive? The answer is that it is surprisingly reasonable for such production values.

A 20 page softcover book using standard paper costs $US19.95 and there are discounts for volume purchases, so giving a copy to the extended family for Christmas becomes a viable option.

A 40-60 page softcover using Blurb's high-end Proline Pearl photo paper bumps up the price to a realistic $US 43.42.

So now I have the finished product in my hand and I am delighted with the result. Judge it for yourself (below) and I am pleased to record that I have already sold a copy through their bookshop.

digerarti by roger smith |

Had the first Duke of Wellington (who uttered the immortal words "Publish and be damned!") been living in today's digital world he would no doubt have re-phrased his utterance to "Publishing is so damned Easy". So it is with Blurb.

Fruity Fun - Integrated Digital Marketing

For the launch of Coca Cola's “More Fanta, Less Serious” campaign in Dubai, Memac Ogilvy chose to use 3D projection mapping on the buildings of Dubai Mall.
Fanta is an older brand in the Coca Cola stable and the aim is to make it fun for the teenage market in the 190 targeted countries.
Fanta has more than $12 billion in retail sales and is the second-largest sparkling beverage brand for the company outside of the U.S. The sell more than 2 billion unit cases worldwide.
According to Dow Jones News Wires, the push behind Fanta also seeks to capitalize on a consumer shift toward flavored sodas in the U.S. while traditional cola flavors lose ground. 
Among the reasons flavored sodas have grown is that consumers tend to perceive them as healthier than colas due to their fruit tastes. Flavored sodas are also popular among some growing demographics, like Hispanics.

Facebook Game

Jonathan Mildenhall, Vice President of Advertising Strategy and Content Excellence said they chose animation over actors as teenagers find them easier to relate to and it "travels well".  His stated that “Fanta is all about a giggle in a bottle”.
A Facebook game and the commercial below are all part and parcel of the campaign.

Related articles

• Fanta Is Totally Serious About Being "Less Serious" (adpulp.com)

McRibbing or McRoasting

Sometimes it just doesn't  pay to pay, for a Twitter Promoted Trend campaign.

McDonalds decided to use this method of promotion to re-launch its McRibs product but were clearly unaware of the inherent risk in so doing.

The majority of the tweets have been negative rather than positive.  Here is a  small sample of them:

• The McRib is back. We get it. What's the big deal? Doesn't it come back every few months, like a Herpes outbreak?
• The rib sandwich is back and guess who aint gettin one...
• McRib is back. Everyone was in line for McRibs.
• The McRib is back...and undoubtedly not palatable.
• Ppl really eat mcribs?........THE MCRIB IS BACK!!!!!!
• Eww they look so nasty!
• I'm very worried about the direction this country is heading politically..." "Who cares! The McRib is back!
• The McRib is back!? I thought the animal they made it from was extinct? - Simpons reference.
• The McRib is a pressed out, flattened MEATBALL!!!! 
• McRib is back? That seems a little anatomically incorrect. Shouldn't it be McRib is torso?
• McRib is back!? When was it ever in?? Gross

The history of the sometimes maligned meat product is an interesting one.

According to Tufts University professor Dr. Parke Wilde, it was a little-known federal agency that thirty years ago were tasked with promoting American pork.  They developed a gimmicky ground pork sandwich containing a patty shaped like a miniature rack of ribs.

They then approached McDonald's, one of the country's largest purchasers of beef, and convinced them to sell it and the company introduced the McRib sandwich in 1981.

Consisting of a patty on a roll with a sweet barbecue sauce, pickles, and onions, the sandwich was developed by the federal government's National Pork Board, set up to aid farmers in marketing pork in the United States.

A month ago, Rick Wion, the  director of social media for McDonald’s Corp., was quoted as saying that social media such as Twitter, allows big corporations the opportunity to make the restaurant experience warmer and more intimate.

“It’s really not about how many people are following you. It’s about the level of engagement, really the strong connections you are making with customers.”

McDonald’s staffs its Twitter account with four or five executives from its communications department and three people from the customer satisfaction department, Wion said.

"They help McDonald’s take the “restaurant experience beyond [the] doors."

“You can really get out there and build these relationships," he said.

"What you need to do is look at [social media followers] as your customers, because they are. You need to give them all that same warm hospitality and all the great care you would if they were inside your restaurants..."

In a later interiew with ClickZ he has attempted to dismiss the negative connotations of the McRibs Twitter campaign.

His contention is that anecdotal evidence isn't adequate to judge the effort as being more negative than positive. He also asserts that sentiment data will, on balance, bear healthy results but if the ongoing tweets are anything to go by, he is being rather optimistic.

Wion also infers that many of the negative tweets are based on ignorance of the product, especially the meat used:

"What I can tell you is that it is a quality sandwich,"

"It is U.S.D.A. grade A pork - pork loin and pork shoulder chopped and made into a patty. The fact that it is shaped like ribs probably throws some people off. Often there are some critics who jump on that."


Ron Callari of ClickZ asks a key question; does Twitter provide enough demographic analysis "or targeted user information for a brand to make an informed decision before spending the ad dollars".

The current results of the McRibs campaign suggest that either it doesn't, or McDonalds failed to pre test its campaign with its own twitter follower base.

Carri Bugbee, president of Big Deal PR, says:

"I don't know if the folks on Twitter are really their target audience.  I don’t know who the target audience is for the McRib. But I am going to guess it's probably younger and less affluent, and that's not really where Twitter is probably going to work [as a marketing channel]."

As for the digital debate on the success or failure of this $80,000 campaign - I'm lovin' it!

Related articles

• Why it doesn't McMatter if you don't like the McRib (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
• McDonald's 'McRib Is Back' Twitter Ad Cooks Up Salty Comments (clickz.com)
• The Cult of McRib: Why Fake Ribs Drive Real Product Buzz (ogilvypr.com)
• McRib Locator Helps You Find Returning Treat (blippitt.com)
• Anatomy of a McRib: 100% Boneless, 100% Nauseating (blisstree.com)

Putting The Boot In - But Which Boot?

Image via Wikipedia

The world is buzzing about the World Football Cup being held in South Africa and mega events such as this present global opportunities for digital marketers.

Neilsen details how the shoe giant Nike has undertaken a very effective piece of ambush marketing, no doubt to the chagrin of the major event sponsors.

By monitoring the social media buzz they had noted that it was their brand that were most associated with the World Cup, even more than the official partners and sponsors.

Nike's "Write The Future" campaign neatly gazumped that of Adidas by capturing 30+% of the Buzz while the official sponsor has thus far only registered a little over 14%.

Carlsberg Beer have done something similar, bettering the official sponsor, Budweiser.

According to Alex Burmaster, vice president of communications for Nielsen. "Social media has made ambush marketing easier, simply because of the virality of it. Some people call it an echo chamber."

FIFA is not taking this lying down and at last count their lawyers have filed 2,519 cases globally against parties it accuses of ambush marketing.

Some social media platforms themselves are suffering as a result of the World Cup.  Twitter appearing to be feeling the strain.  Track activity by topic, players, or team using CNN's Twitter Buzz.  There are reportedly 150,000 tweets per hour per game;  no wonder Twitter is creaking.

Neilsen has also used Brand Association Mapping to identify the differing perspectives of the Cup between countries.  Note the UK example below.  The words "winning" and "championship" reveal high expectations of their team. Click on the chart to enlarge it.

Trendrr provides a good overview of social media activity associated with World Cup 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

• How Nike and Pepsi Hijacked the World Cup (adage.com)
• FIFA Battles 'Ambush Marketers' Targeting World Cup (Update1) (businessweek.com)
• Nike ad beats official World Cup sponsors for online buzz (guardian.co.uk)
• Ambush Marketers Tackle World Cup Organizers, Sponsors (time.com)

Why Asia Leads The Digital World

There is a constant drilling and tapping through our condo walls as I write this.  It is the sound of the Singapore government's high speed broadband initiative as they lay and connect free fibre optic cable.  This will be completed by 2012 and I, as a resident, will have not had to pay a penny to access this service.

These higher fixed connection speeds will mean an even higher adoption of broadband, provide a greater range of services capabilities and according to a new survey by Pyramid Research, boost service revenue to $5.1 billion by 2014.

In China the broadband commitment is as impressive.  According to a government white paper published on June 8th, China has invested heavily in Internet infrastructure construction.

"From 1997 to 2009 a total of 4.3 trillion yuan was invested in this regard, building a nationwide optical communication network with a total length of 8.267 million km."

" By the end of 2009 Chinese basic telecommunications companies had 136 million broadband Internet access ports Internet access to 99.3% of Chinese towns and 91.5% of villages, and broadband to 96.0% of the towns."

By the end of last year:

• the number of Chinese netizens had reached 384 million
• this is 618 times that of 1997 and an annual increase of 31.95 million users
• The Internet had reached 28.9% of the total population, higher than the world average
• There were 3.23 million websites running in China, which was 2,152 times that of 1997
• Of all the netizens, 346 million used broadband and 233 million used mobile phones to access the Internet
• They had moved on from dialing the access numbers to broadband and mobile phones

In New Zealand the government  is attempting to get a national ultra-fast broadband (UFB) network up and running but have thus far been frustrated by the actions of its major Telco.  They intend spending $US1 billion on the UFB.

Meanwhile the UK is still trumpeting a plan to roll out of 2mps to every household.  One of their new ministers, the Right Honourable Jeremy Hunt MP has described this target as "pitifully unambitious." and he is correct.

To put the British strategy into context, Korea aims to have broadband that is 500 times faster.

And then of course there are the costs that Internet Service Providers load on to consumers.

In Singapore all plans provide for 'unlimited' use and are based on speed.  A basic 6mps service costs a mere $Sing 34.95 per month and comes bundled with other goodies such as free TV viewing of the English premier league.

In New Zealand pricing is based on limited data use.  For $NZ39.95 a miserly 3Gb can be used, at speeds that are nowhere near as fast as Singapore's.  The cost of this limited service is obscene!  When you add phone line costs the real cost in NZ for the 3Gb is around $NZ90 per month.

Related articles by Zemanta

• China sidesteps Great Firewall with web roadmap (go.theregister.com)
• Britain to have "best superfast broadband network in Europe" by 2015 (telegraph.co.uk)

Blog Trolls

If you have never heard of trolls (apart from the variety that live under a bridge in "Billy Goats Gruff") then I recommend you read this excellent article by Tom Hespos.

Comment Trolls are a fact of life in the blogosphere. Whatever emotional inadequacies these people have there are ways to counteract them.

Tom fits trolls into six categories:

• The Contrarian
• The Grammar Nazi
• The Drama Llama
• The Rules Lawyer
• The Ad Troll
• The Griefer

Good site moderation will nullify the actions of trolls. 

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• Only You Can Prevent Blog Trolls & Comment Jerks (outspokenmedia.com)
• How To Handle Blog Trolls (bloggingot.com)

Speaking of Vampires

I suspect that Mr Murdoch and I might disagree about sites that point to to another's copy?

It is of course a question of degree.  There is a marked difference between a headline and short 'teaser' paragraph linked back to the original article and copying an article in its entirety on a third party site.

I am all for the former but the latter is simply digital plagiarism.

Related articles by Zemanta

• A preposterous argument for plagiarism (newsosaur.blogspot.com)
• Columbia Journalism Review: The Counter-Plagiarism Handbook (blogs.journalism.co.uk)

Vlingo - another example of convergence

While it may not yet be freely available this speech to text and mapping package has much to commend it.  There is not doubt that the future is mobile and the use of personal devices are the major channel for digital delivery.