Space – the final marketing frontier, to boldly go where no brand has gone before.

Companies eager to expand their market share are turning their attention to the sky and beyond. In the age of globalization, space is the final frontier for advertisers.
Space may be the ultimate product placement for advertisers.
Not only are products that were sent in space hot collectors items, but a little exposure in space has a huge impact on earth.

Space marketing has been around for three decades.

Two decades ago, soft drink makers Coca-Cola and Pepsi seizing a golden opportunity, when NASA approved an experiment to test the viability of carbonated drinks in space.
Despite strict rules preventing the rival cola makers from exploiting the experiment (known as the Carbonated Beverage Dispenser Evaluation, or CBDE), the first unofficial taste test in space became a marketing coup for both. Each company claimed that they were the first in space.

The first “space billboard” concept for advertising was designed by Space Marketing Inc.
It was supposed to be visible from Earth with the brightness equivalent to the moon.
Due to lack of funding and potential damage by space debris, it never happened.

What did happen were commercials shot in space – the first one was a milk commercial filmed on aboard of the space station Mir (from the Israeli dairy company Tnuva).

Up till now, NASA has been reluctant to take part – its official rule has always been:
“no product endorsements, generic entities only, and no commercial exploitation of flight on the shuttle.”
But this could change – ads and product promotion could fund scientific research.
According to NASA, they are working with the Bush administration to conduct an agency wide evaluation for a commercialization strategy in space. It needs a change in legislation though, since space marketing and product placement are prohibited under federal law.
Under current law, sponsorship deals are allowed where logos can be place on a rocket or an astronaut’s clothing.
Columbia Pictures used the opportunity and advertised its movie "Last Action Hero" on a Conestoga rocket as part of the Commercial Experiment Transporter (COMET) mission.

The Russians take a more pragmatic view - they have sold advertising space on their Soyuz rockets to hawk merchandise ranging from Sony electronics to Unicharm feminine hygiene products.
In 2001, Pizza Hut flew with the Russian Space Agency.
For about a million dollars, the fast food company gained worldwide publicity and bragging rights as the first to deliver hot pizza in space.
Electronic retailer Radio Shack followed soon after and filmed a commercial aboard the International Space Station featuring a Russian cosmonaut opening a Father's Day present.

But before getting too exicted about space marketing, we should listen to Dr. Philip Kotler, the eminence gris of marketing.
He is points out that old marketing is not so effective anymore, since products are failing and advertising costs don’t have a healthy ROI.
The man that brought us the 4P framework, states that traditional marketing heavily relies on advertising, sales promotions and marketing research.
Although necessary tools, the main means of communicating with and outreaching to the target audience should be the new channels of communication: website, blogs and podcasting.

Could it be that lies in virtual space, and not the one NASA is exploring?
Interesting food for thought indeed!

Black Hat SEO - Crime and Punishment

You have a website. You want to promote it and generate traffic.
You try Search Engine Optimiztion or SEO.
And then you find out that there is black SEO magic and white SEO magic ( "white hat" and "black hat" SEO)!
You understand that no ethical entity should ever go for Black Hat SEO, but what is it?

Black Hat search engine optimization refers to techniques used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner.

The most commonly used ones are:

• Keyword stuffing by packing long lists of keywords and nothing else onto a website.
• Inserting invisible text (white text on a white background) thus attracting more search engine spiders.
• Inserting doorway pages (“fake” pages) that the user will never see, but search engine spiders do.

Using Black Hat SEO is a short-term gain but a long-term loss.
According to Google's webmaster guidelines, using hidden text or hidden links are discouraged to increase search engine ranking of a certain website.
Sites found to violate these guidelines are blocked from the search engine's search index.
Google ruthlessly punishes websites that us any of these tactics, no matter how big and powerful.

The website www.bmw.de was banned from the Google index for using doorway pages.
While BMW almost immediately removed the pages after the news broke (after having them live for almost 2 years), it was too late to avoid the “Google death penalty” - a ban from almost any imaginable top search result, and a degrading of the PageRank to the lowest possible value. After complying with Google's guidelines, the website was put back online.

A local e-commerce website (www.myAyala.com) was briefly banned from Google after it was found violating the hidden text rule.
The company subsequently took down the hidden text and Google took them out of the blacklist.

The most recent “casualty” is the company Jollibee Food Corp.
The company not only used hidden text to increase its ranking in a Google search, but also loaded the website with metatags or comment tags of repeating keywords.
The developers of the Jollibee website also created "doorway pages" to spam the index of a search engine.

To find out more about Black Hat SEO, check out Aaron Wall’s website: www.blackhatseo.com

The Marketing Beauty of the Baby Boomers

Baby-boomers or “boomers” refer to people born between 1946 and 1964.
They are the massive postwar boomer generation that drove every significant cultural and marketing trend for 50 years.
Now that they are heading into their 60s, they are defying marketers' expectations about how they wants to live and shop.
They grew up with mass markets, enjoyed the rise of network TV and the birth of the Internet.
They are opinionated, educated, successful and have money to spend.
No wonder that they have the power to tell companies how they want to be approached.

For decades, beauty and cosmetics companies used models in their 20s with dewy skin to pitch products made for middle-aged women.
Although part of the female (and male) boomers undergo Botox treatments and plastic surgery, the majority is comfortable with their aging bodies - liver spots and crow's feet included.
They want to see people who look like them in ads.

One of the first companies to recognize this was Unilever.
In the static soap market, it is tough to maintain market share let alone strive for growth.
To promote their Dove soap, Unilever conducted a worldwide market research.

In 2004, Dove market researchers found that almost all ads featured slim and young women with perfect skin, body and hair.
But no matter where Dove’s (potential) customers were located, (U.S., South America, Europe, and Asia) they all considered the featured women to have an unrealistic and unattainable beauty.
Dove listened, learned and launched a print ad campaign, using ordinary looking women instead of glamorous models.
As a result, the sales of Dove rose 3.4% in one year. The Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" (designed by Ogilvy & Mather) won the top prize at the 38th annual Effie Awards.

Cosmetic companies took note and followed.
Spring 2006, Sharon Stone, at that time 48, began appearing in a campaign for Christian Dior's Capture Totale, a $125 serum and $115 cream that claim to reverse such signs of aging as wrinkles, dark spots and sagging.
She is well compensated for it - Dior reportedly offered Stone a four-year contract in excess of $8 million.

MAC chose Catherine Deneuve, 62, in January 2006 as the third “beauty icon” for its cosmetics, joining Liza Minnelli, 60, and Diana Ross, 62.
All three inspired cosmetics collections that became hot sellers.
Fall 2006, MAC will debut new national ads for its Viva Glam lipstick that star a 60-year-old woman, according to John Demsey, president of the company.

Summer 2006, L'Oreal Paris launched a skin-care campaign featuring 60-year-old actress Diane Keaton.
She will appear in print and television ads for a new formula of anti-aging creams.

Cover Girl is bringing back Christie Brinkley, a 51-year old former supermodel.
Brinkley, who represented the brand for two decades until 1996, will feature in its Advanced Radiance Age-Defying Makeup ads.

How much things have changed is nicely illustrated by the story of Dayle Haddon.
This 57-year-old one-time top model was told twenty years ago that she was “over the hill” as a model.
Sweet revenge – she now appears in ads for L'Oreal's Age Perfect creams.

Marketing to the boomers is tricky though. These aging consumers want to be targeted as mature without being reminded of their exact age.
Revlon solved this tricky problem cleverly when it launched, its line of problem solving color cosmetics Vital Radiance.
The ads and packaging never explicitly mentions “over-50” or “mature, skin”, but it does feature a trim, gray-streaked model carrying a surfboard.
Revlon chose the phrase "changing skin" to promote its cosmetics line.

The trend is going to continue – in the US alone, the 135-million-strong population of 18- to 49-year-olds will stagnate; the 50+ population is going to grow from 89 million to 111 million — an increase of about 25 percent.

The boomers have boldly gone where no generation has gone before and created a new marketing frontier.
To quote Brinkley in her ads:
"I don't want to be younger. I just want to look it."

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence.
Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.
On the Internet, the term viral marketing is used to refer to word-of-mouth, creating a buzz, leveraging the media and network marketing.

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services.

The strategy is simple: start by giving away free e-mail addresses and services; make sure to attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out ("Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com"). Users will start e-mailing to their own network of friends and associates, who read the message and sign up for their own free e-mail service. They will send the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.
Presto: the first and (up till now) most successful viral marketing campaign ever.

There are five main viral marketing strategies:

1. Incentives or rewards
   A women's athletic clothing multichannel retailer rewarded message recipients with a free T-shirt and a $1 donation to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation when an individual sent the special email message to five friends and three of those friends opted in to the retailer's catalog or email list.
   Result: Email newsletter sign-up rate of over 30%, and a catalog subscription rate of nearly 70%, while the cost per sale decreased by 89%.
   
2. Sweepstakes
   Sony Music in Taiwan created sweepstakes encouraging users to spread the word.
   Every participant in the sweepstakes received a small prize, such as a coupon or discount. They increased their chance of winning by signing up friends for the sweepstakes.
   
3. Blogs
   Jolex Inc. used blogs to promote its Brugo coffee mugs.
   The company stated targeting bloggers at sites like www.morningcoffee.wordpress.com, www.coffeegeek.com, www.dailygadget.com and www.gizmodo.com.
   The bloggers running or contributing to those destinations were mailed complimentary mugs for written product reviews to be posted at the sites.
   As a result, the Brugo mug made the "Best of" lists and got on national television.
   Merchandisers read about Brugo and contacted Jolex about reselling the mugs in their country.
   
4. Freebies
   Free greeting cards enable the sender to personalize and send a free e-card.
   The addressee doesn’t receive the card itself, but must click on a URL to pick up or retrieve their card. The accessed website shows other products and services.
   They will then bookmark the site and send out another free card to others.
   Free ebooks contains links back to the writer’s offer and/or website.
   
5. Entertaining Game or Video
   Fun games or video clips tend to circulate through the Internet very quickly.
   Insurance giant Zurich recently created and launched a little Flash game called “Parking: Battle of the Sexes”. The aim of the game was to answer the age old question “who's better at parking, men or women.”
   Players had to use their keyboard arrows to successfully maneuver their vehicle into the parking spot without hitting the other cars.
   Toyota used a funny video clip to introduce their Vios model.

There is a downside to using viral marketing - the message that a product is trying to get across can look like spam.
The way to avoid this is to ask anyone forwarding to provide their name on a web link or page so that there is a recognizable sender in the subject line of a message. ( “Debra De-Jong thought you would like this”).