Ottawa's Byward Market: Web Marketing Replacing Word of Mouth?

One of Ottawa's biggest tourist attractions is also one of it's oldest: the Byward Market. A mecca for tourists and locals alike, it's a place that evolved to symbolize the best features of the city itself: a proud and harmonious blend of cultures and commerce.

Over it's 184 year history, the Byward Market has relied heavily upon word of mouth, but in today's ever evolving marketplace, it seems "The Market" is changing with the times. Yes, The Byward Market has gotten into web marketing. Behold the bright, shiny, SEO driven Byward Market website. (No seriously, check it out!) It advertises all the best features of this historic gem including, upcoming events, a directory listing everything from restaurants to nightlife, to health and beauty services, and more. They also provide handy maps and an interactive calendar of sorts where you can click on any particular day to see what's happening. Pretty cool.

So is the website geared for optimal advertising results with a most-excellent dose of SEO? I'm not going to say, but I can recommend an amazing Ottawa web marketing firm that can do all that and more...

Has London Lost Its Marbles? Poll Finds Half of Marketers Hate the New Olympic Mascots

Yesterday morning, Andrew announces that London just revealed their Olympic mascots for the 2012 Games and that they're a bit strange. Ok. Really strange. Wenlock and Mandeville look like an odd combination of the one-eyed alien chick from Fox's show Futurama, and those ultra creepy Teletubbies. Judging by a poll just released today, it appears half of marketers agree, they're creepy. A poll of 817 marketers by marketing recruitment specialist EMR, has found that just over half (51%) had a negative response to the mascots. Research also found that 22% labelled the design 'dreadful' (don't you just love the Brits sense of the dramatic?!!) and 12% said it was very poor while 16% said it was 'very good' and 8% rated it as 'excellent'. Despite the 'dreadful' and 'very poor' ratings, 30% of marketers did admit they preferred the characters to the Olympic logo.

To the London OC's credit, Wenlock and Mandeville were named in honour of Britain's Olympic heritage, and one could accuse them of going for the cute and conventional route. (This might actually be their marketing angle). True, but what's with the one eye thing? Wouldn't that scare the little ones? Then again, perhaps not. Kids don't seem to be at all creeped out by the Teletubbies or clowns. Grownups on the other hand, run screaming. In any case, the short animation film they've put together to introduce the mascots actually makes them look cute. Perhaps there's still hope for London's marketing plan. If I could make a suggestion: keep the mascots to animation only; a stadium of toddlers in tears is never a pretty sight.

Alec Brownstein's "Google Job Experiment"

Alec Brownstein, a senior copywriter at Young & Rubicam, landed his current job in a very clever way. Check out the video below, which explains it all.

His approach certainly did prove to his prospective employers that he can come up with out-of-the-box ideas! To read the Globe and Mail's Dave McGinn's recent interview with Alec about his creative job search technique, click here.

Habs a Marketing Gold Mine for Molson

Hockey's Cinderella story this year is none other than the Ottawa Senator's arch rival; the Montreal Canadiens. Whether you're a Habs fan or not, you can't deny that Molson Inc.'s decision to buy the Habs last year for $550 million, is proving to be a pretty smart move. With enough brand equity to make any marketer drool, the Habs are pulling in an estimated C$2 to C$3 million dollars for each and every playoff home game. And the way games? The 21,273 seat Bell Centre sold out in about four hours after the Habs announced they'd show the game on their HD scoreboard. Tickets sold for $7.50 each and they donated the funds to an organization they run.

The Canadiens gravy train is a long one - they've sold out 246 consecutive regular season and playoff home games. For those keeping score, that's a sellout streak of more than five years. As for the marketing, just consider the sea of bleu, blanc and rouge sweaters. Plus, the ad revenue from the broadcasts and... the bobbleheads. Oh, how we love our Habs bobbleheads! Forgive me Dad, the Penguins always have next year...

The Future of the Internet

Do you have 14 minutes to spare today? I'd recommend checking out this thought-provoking documentary by NYU student Kate Ray entitled Web 3.0.

The main discussion of the doc is in regards to the potential of "the semantic web." Wikipedia defines this concept as follows:

"The Semantic Web is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the meaning (semantics) of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to "understand" and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content. It derives from World Wide Web Consortium director Sir Tim Berners-Lee's vision of a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange."

Still not getting it? According to an unsophisticated yet helpful YouTube video, Intro to the Semantic Web, the problem that the semantic web addresses is, how are we going to make the Internet better? The answer lies in semantics. Computers don't understand the meaning behind the webpages they're showing us. If we can get computers to recognize what's in a webpage, they can learn what we're interested in. If they know that, they can help us find what we want... actively. The semantic web is about things (not documents)... people, places, events, music, movies, organizations, etc. That's the idea.

Welcome to Socialnomics: Social Media Revolution 2 Just Dropped!

For those of you that were fans of the first one, it's baaaaack! Don't worry, they're still breaking it down with the tasty beats of FatBoy Slim's "Right Here, Right Now", but this time, they're coming at us with nothing but mega social media stats. Facebook could be the world's third largest country? Gen Y and Gen Z already consider email passe, and 80% of companies are using social media for recruitment... hmm, this sounds incredibly familiar to all of us at Marketing Breakthroughs - perhaps that's because we eat, sleep and breathe social media here in our Ottawa office. Not that we're tooting our own horn. Ok. Yes, we are - Toot! Toot! Moving on...

In all seriousness, this video is an eye opener for any social media skeptics out there. If you haven't caught on to social media at this point, you've more than missed the boat; "social media isn't a fad, it's a fundamental shift in the way we communicate." Couldn't have said it better myself. Now go check out this wicked video!