Well, well, well.

Valentine’s Day is full of advertisements for chocolate. I’m not sure why the two seem to go hand in hand. I suppose there’s a huge amount of sexiness to chocolate.

In a very apt promotional moment, a couple of us at AdHack decided to do our own chocolate Valentine’s Day advertising.

This ad from Giant Ant Media had enough of my office mates squirming that James and I decided to do a press release for AdHack.

Here is the ad that James and I created.

See it full size ad here.

And although this ad wasn’t for AdHack assignment #4 (the Valentine’s Day edition), I think this ad is equally sexy and deserves mention. It was part of a previous AdHack assignment on your favourite kitchen tools.

See the ad at full size.

I think it’s appropriate for Valentine’s, it’s even called “Potted Love”.

The creators Turner-Riggs, describe the concept as follows:

Quote: All-Clad’s ads are very serious: they emphasize professional-grade products for hard-core chefs. We are observing that tradition but obviously subverting it, too. It’s shocking (and I am dying laughing as I type this) but the production quality is still high, in typical All-Clad fashion.

So far the press release has been picked up by Adland in Denmark.

Are you an AdHacker? Today is the day to talk about it. Get some chocolate love on for AdHack.

Never heard of AdHack? It’s a do-it-yourself advertising community for people who think that most advertising sucks and that they could do a better job. Here’s the public site. And if you’re interested in making ads, you can be invited behind the curtain to the private site (shhhhh).

UPDATE:
And another article on Valentine’s advertising and AdHack–on Trendhunter.com

Wow, busy weekend and Monday is picking up steam in an unfriendly way.

No time to chat but there are a couple of things on my radar that I want to note for my own reference later.

1. http://www.bookvideos.tv/
Yet another book trailer video site or something worth paying attention to? Not sure, haven’t checked it out. Have you? Let me know if it’s worthwhile.

2. www.theglobeandmail.com
Lorna Goodison wins B.C. non-fiction award for her memoir From Harvey River: A Memory of My Mother and Her People. Congratulations. I’ll have to read more about this book and watch for it in stores. Has anyone read it or heard anything about this title?

3. Blogging for Dummies book
Yay, congratulations to Susannah Gardner and Shane Birley. Their book Blogging for Dummies, 2nd Edition, has hit the stores. If you are interested in blogging and haven’t started yet, or if you have a blog and want to make it better, this is the book for you. I read Susie’s Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies and it was a great resources. This book is the same. Great tips, top 10 lists, blogging ideas, blogging resources, blogging tips–whatever you need it’s here.

4. Northern Voice
Feb 23 at UBC is this year’s personal blogging conference, Northern Voice. I am moderating a panel on writers who blog. I have an awesome panel: Robert J Wiersema, Crawford Kilian, Pete McCormack, Meg Tilly and kc dyer. I’ll tell you more about them later because they are a rockstar group of writers (and not just novel writers, we have film stars, film writers and directors, nonfiction writers, fiction writers, YA writers). Really they totally rock. It’s going to be an amazing discussion about how they use their blogs, what interests them in this form of writing and how they use their blogs to connect with their fans.

Happy Monday.

The following is a bit of spam or advertisement depending on how you look at it. It’s a bit of code for bloggers to post on their site if they are interesting in a course on blogging.

Curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back. So I’m posting the code so I can see the course and let you know whether it’s worthwhile.

Quote: Begin code:

End code

I spent all weekend with my crazy friends and one of the recurring conversations was bad jokes. These are some friends who I hung out with in high school so reunions are often about reverting back to that time–and that sense of humour.

James sent me the following joke, and I’m going to share it only because I’m stuck in my 16-year-old brain this morning.

A man goes to his doctor and tells him, “I’ve had the song ‘What’s New Pussycat’ stuck in my head for weeks, and it’s driving me crazy.”
The doctor says, “Well, I think you may have Tom Jones disease.”
The man says, “I’ve never heard of that. Is it rare?”
The doctor says, “It’s not unusual.”

Come on, it’s old but still funny.

Happy Monday.

While I was away skiing last week, two great studies were made public on the state of the publishing industry.

The first is the Publishing Trends survey on online marketing.

You may recall that in January I wrote about the Publishing Trends survey. Publishing Trends surveyed book publicists and book media on their actions and predictions for online book marketing. Well, the results are in.

Quote:
It’s unanimous. Publicists think online is the way to go for promoting their authors’ books … Nearly all (70.9%) publicists said they devote up to 50% of their resources to online marketing. The remaining said they do even more.

The full article analyzing the data can be found on the Publishing Trends website.

A quick look at the findings shows that publishers are holding back on online marketing budgets for the same stupid reasons that the Canadian industry as a whole is.

– Not having enough time to explore it (67.1%)
– Cost (52.9%)
– Lack of technology know-how (31.4%)
– Luddite bosses (5.7%)

Ridiculous.

The whole article is here.

But let’s talk more about this in relation to the second study that I want to mention.

I was thrilled to read in the Saturday Globe and Mail that The Book Retail Sector in Canada study report was officially released.

What is The Book Retail Sector in Canada study report?

Turner-Riggs, a Vancouver strategy, marketing and communications company (who are also friends of mine and business colleagues), were commissioned to do the study. I am excited to see it in print, primarily because, as The Globe and Mail says, it is an “essential reference work” for the industry and policy makers alike, and secondarily because I contributed to the research and writing for the chapter on online book retail.

The Book Retail Sector in Canada was published last week by the Department of Canadian Heritage and is available online in PDF and HTML editions, and in both official languages.

Here is the Table of Contents for the Department of Heritage Book Retail Sector in Canada.

In the Online Book Retail section you’ll see information on the overall online environment in Canada (and again, I’ll mention that the same perceived restraints are holding back publishers–lack of experience, lack of knowledge, too costly, too technical).

But what these fears really show is a gut decision rather than a logical decision.

We live in a world with many, many books. Perhaps too many. In Canada alone there were 17,000 new titles published in 2004 and the numbers continued to rise. These are new titles!

Where do book buyers and readers turn to discover new titles? They go online. They receive emails from friends with suggestions. They have books “chucked” at them in Facebook.

What is clear from the study is that the current bookselling environment is affected by market factors present in the broader economic landscape. We’re seeing a concentration of market share among large retailers; the emergence of non-traditional and online sales channels; the impact of exchange rates on Canadian prices; and the growth of supply and demand of cheaper or discounted products.

So looking at the Publishing Trends survey of what’s going on in North America (in particular in the US) and looking at the Heritage study on the state of book retail in Canada, Canadian publishers really need to start paying attention to this sales and marketing channel.

Waiting to see what happens is not going to help you in this scenario.

What do I suggest? Well read both studies.

Then, because online spend is a reflection of gut instincts, have a look at the painful positions of Microsoft and Yahoo in relation to Google. Here are two companies who waited to see what was going to happen in the online arena. Now what does your gut tell you?

==============
UPDATE:

Darren makes some sound arguments about the faulty wording of the Publishing Trends survey. In particular, he points out the assumptions being made regarding the data are rather loose.

I have to agree.

On SocialMediaReady.com I posted the following comment:

Quote: Good points Darren. In fact, I was weary of the study and even contacted them about the questions and what they were trying to accomplish. Some of the questions seemed aimed at online media who receive pitches and some of the questions seemed aimed at publicists who do the pitching. It was very weird and I must say I doubt the scientific nature of the study. However, I think there are some interesting comments in the overall article about how online marketing is perceived.

Duane Storey has a great Flickr set of tech folks at the most recent Launch Party event.

Let’s take out the trash.

1. Reveries.com has a post on trash-bin, book scavengers. These are men (and some women) in Manhattan, who eke out a living by sifting through trash bins looking for books that people have discarded.

2. Fast Company has an article in the February magazine, “Is the Tipping Point Toast?”, which is stirring up the internet marketing industry. The article positions Duncan Watts against Malcolm Gladwell.

Watts posits that marketers spending billions of dollars a year targeting influentials are wasting their money. Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, postulates that trends are established when connectors and mavens come into contact with ideas that can be easily disseminated.

It’s a good article, but I don’t understand what the fuss is about.

I agree with Watts that Gladwell’s Tipping Point taps into the ego of advertisers/marketers–the ego that allows them to believe that if only they can get the cool kids to like their product then the rest of the world will follow. But that’s not the full argument Gladwell is making.

The article positions these two as opposing forces, but I think there is logic to both arguments.

If someone (who I trust) tells me about something (that I’m interested in), I am likely to follow their advice, buy the product they are suggesting, think positively about a service, etc. If I have a first hand experience that is positive, then I am likely to promote that service or product.

Both the Gladwell hypothesis and the Watts hypothesis are flawed because they don’t look closely enough at these two key ingredients: trusted source, something of interest to me.

I don’t have fancy computer models like Watts or well-known brand stories like Gladwell, but here’s my small anecdote.

Darren Barefoot was doing some work for Brother Printers. Brother had a new line of printers it was interested in promoting and they wanted some bloggers to test the printers.

I had a good time test driving the HL-4070CDW.

In internet land, my blog post is a very small blip in the Brother Printer landscape. Although SoMisguided is the first result for the search “brother printer wireless”. But down on Earth, everyone who comes into our office comments on our fancy printer and I mention it’s a Brother Printer and that I like it very much. It does an excellent print job. I also comment that I wish it did more. There are multi-function centres that print, scan, fax, do the dishes and photocopy. Ok, no dishes. I have even gone to Future Shop to check out the other models, and I had a conversation with the sales guy, who provided favourable feedback on the Brother line in comparison to other brands. Since then I have recommended Brother Printers to 2 friends who were looking for new printers. Both bought Brothers. (There’s some fun alliteration.)

So was it a waste of money for Brother Printers to hire Darren and to get a bunch of bloggers test driving their printers? I don’t think so.

Again, it comes down to trusted sources and timely feedback on something people were interested in.