The data-mining potential of microformats took a large step towards realisation today as Google announced Google Recipe View. Kraft are the only food brand that I can find in the index, with kraftrecipes.com. I hope they take full advantage of it as it will give them a tremendous SEO boost. It underlines the vital importance of employing coders that are thinking ahead of the client brief and keeping on top of trends.

JP Chenet are running a promotion to win a vineyard break to France. Secondary prizes are 100 picnic rucksacks courtesy of Port Salut cheese. To enter, go to www.jpchenet.com and enter the unique code from the neck collar. The promotion is quite a heavy data gathering exercise, with 7 customer segmentation questions being asked as well as the usual name, postcode and email.

JP Chenet is the best selling brand of French wine in the world, and is owned by Grands Chais de France.

I was asked recently about how I would approach SEO strategy for smaller businesses. Small businesses only differ from large businesses in the amount of investment they can make and risk that they can withstand. Small businesses often need to get the basics right quickly and can’t really afford much in the way of experimentation. However, small businesses can act quickly – with less groupthink – to make the changes needed to align their web properties with their wider marketing strategies. This gives small businesses a tremendous advantage over more slow moving corporations.

I think that it’s impossible to do any kind of effective search engine marketing without an underlying marketing strategy, so this should come first. SEO isn’t a silver bullet; it only works if the business plan is viable and the marketing strategy thought through.
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I noticed a large neck collar hanging off bottles of Absolut Vodka in Sainsburys today. It was for the Drinkspiration iPhone app, but what really struck me was the QR code. QR codes are one of those buzz word technologies that aren’t really understood by many marketing teams. In this case it couldn’t be more pointless. Most iPhone users don’t have a QR code reader installed because they don’t serve any useful purpose on that platform. QR codes make sense on feature phones where typing and accessing the web is time-consuming, but typing and web browsing on the iPhone is ridiculously easy. Anyway, it’s a small gripe when Absolut is clearly embracing Digital to this extent.
Continue reading ‘Absolut Drinkspiration iPhone app’

Macleans have an on-pack promotion to win VIP tickets to the Dancing on Ice final, including travel and accommodation. Secondary prizes include city breaks, pamper days and magazine subscriptions. This is part of Macleans sponsorship of the show, and is part of GlaxoSmithKline’s attempt to ‘premiumise’ the Macleans brand. The sponsorship was handled by MediaCom, with creative by Grey London. Continue reading ‘Win Dancing on Ice Final Tickets with Macleans’