Writing for life

I’m working on a new book (a follow-up to Understanding Digital Marketing) that will be published by Kogan Page next year showcasing forty of the best digital marketing campaigns in the world.

We’re sourcing case studies from various places, and will feature a mixture of different online campaigns in the book, from award-winners to more obscure but successful campaigns from all sorts of businesses spanning a variety of industries.

We’re a bit short of time to truly crowdsource all the case studies for this edition – but we are looking for your nominations to help us identify truly exceptional examples of online marketing that we may miss through other channels.

You can use this form to submit your favourite campaign for consideration. We’ll let you know if it goes on to be featured in the book.

Thanks a million for your input.

Image by lism. via Flickr

Only four days to go before Understanding Digital: CREATIVE, when Damian Ryan and I will be hosting four leading speakers in the online creative space at the National College of Ireland in Dublin.

The event is on Thursday 05 November at 4pm.

On the agenda we have:

• Dave Birss, former creative head of Poke London, now Head of Digital with OgilvyOne in London.
• Nick Suckley, Managing Partner of Agenda21 Digital.
• Matt Butterworth, former Managing Partner, Founder and Digital Strategist with Folk Creative.
• Robin Grant, Founder of We Are Social.
• … and of course the co-authors of Understanding Digital Marketing: me and Damian!

That’s four award-winning digital creative thought-leaders and a couple of widely acclaimed online marketing authors ready to share the secrets of creative online marketing with YOU!

But that’s not all… there’s also a drinks reception afterwards courtesy of Design Week sponsors Bombay Sapphire!

The cost to tap into this extraordinary pool of digital marketing insight, including drinks and a valuable opportunity to network: just €50!

That has to be a bargain in anybody’s book….

So, what are you waiting for? Head on over to the Understanding Digital: CREATIVE site now to secure your place at what promises to be an amazing digital marketing event! And don’t forget to come over and say “hi” .

05 November 2009, National College of Ireland, Dublin @ 4pm, €50

Speakers at the Understanding Digital: CREATIVE event

Disclosure: Shameless self promotion to follow

As most of you reading this probably know, last year, together with my co-author Damian Ryan, I had a book called “Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation” published.

The book is doing well… and we signed contracts with our publisher, Kogan Page, last month for a follow-up book. This one will highlight the world’s best examples of online marketing. We’re very excited about it… but more about that nearer the time.

Creative online marketing is the key to better ROI

There’s no getting around it, online marketing is the key to maximising the return on investment from your marketing spend, but to do it effectively you have to get creative. Try new things, analyse the results, experiment, and use the unique measurability of online media to inform your decisions.

Do more of what works, stop doing what doesn’t, and never stop innovating.

Get creative with your online marketing… think outside the digital box… and you’ll reap the rewards. But where do you start?

Well, you could join us at the National College of Ireland in Dublin of the evening of the 5th of November for Understanding Digital: CREATIVE. We’re bringing four of the brightest creative minds in online marketing together to share their expertise with you as part of Design Week 2009, in association with ICAD and Results International Group.

Check out the event micro-site for more details and to book your place… see you there!

Image by J_O_I_D via Flickr

When I was a child I was bullied at school. Hard to believe if you know me today… but back then things were very different.

Tall, gangly and with a chronic lack of self-confidence, I guess I made an easy target. Picking on the "big meek kid" seemed to be the order of the day… and it hurt much more than just the physical pain.

The specifics of individual events elude me now, but I still remember vividly how the taunting and physical bullying made me feel: worthless, insignificant and utterly, irrevocably alone.

It didn’t help that I was getting mixed messages at home. Mum was advocating a "turn the other cheek" approach while Dad was a staunch advocate of a "give them a dose of their own medicine" solution. It left me in limbo.

In the end it turned out that Dad was right, but I was in fifth year at secondary school before I’d finally had enough, faced my demons and turned the tables on the bullies. That’s when it stopped!

Bullying in any form is abhorrent on so many levels, but at least in my day the bullying was a tangible thing. I could see the people who were taunting you: real, flesh and blood boys standing in front of me. But today there’s an altogether more sinister aspect to bullying… a new dimension to an age old menace that’s being facilitated by modern communication technology.

So there I was on a remote West Cork headland, chucking a line into the water on the off-chance of picking up a couple of passing mackerel. On the nearby pebbly beach the rest of the family were waiting eagerly for the barbecue to heat up.

View Great spots in West Cork in a larger map

Showing an insensitive, but I have to admit well founded lack of faith in my fishing prowess, our friends had brought along some fresh mackerel, just in case. We’d also packed a supply of emergency sausages, so we wouldn’t go hungry.

The fish weren’t biting, so I decided to switch the mackerel lures for a spinner and try my luck at that. As I turned I saw two people looking out to sea, obviously scouting the location for some reason.

One of them asked if I’d caught anything… which was fair enough. The other asked “Is your name Calvin?”

Image by gin soak via Flickr

Because this week’s column about working from home with children, was career related, I’ve posted it over on the new Career Moves blog, where you’ll find lots of other great career, jobs and recruitment related content from the Evening Echo Career Moves section and also stuff written exclusively for the blog.

Check it out, share it with your friends, and don’t forget to let me know what you think via the comments ….

Toyota Ireland’s latest publicity campaign for their new micro saloon, the IQ is going to include handing out four of the teeny-tiny four-seaters to bloggers / twitter users. The lucky individuals will get to use the car for six months in exchange for blogging / tweeting about their experiences with the vehicle.

The promotion was announced by @toyotaireland on Twitter:

4 Irish bloggers wanted to give happy homes to 4 Toyota iQ’s for 2009 check out http://bit.ly/YV9gT

Predictably they’ve been inundated:

In under 12 hrs of launching our IQ promo we’ve had excess of 100 applicants, 13% incr in daily traf to toyota.ie & 30 new fols. ds twit wk?

If you’ve got a blog and a Twitter account, are over 21 and you live in Ireland you can apply for the 6 month Toyota IQ test drive – but hurry – applications close on Friday! You can check out the full terms and conditions here.

It’s a great idea… one that’s already generating a lot of social media buzz… and provided Toyota handles it properly, and leaves the individuals to write openly and honestly about their experience of the IQ, it could be a real winner for them.

Who knows… if this works out for Toyota it could make a wonderful case study for next year’s follow-up to “Understanding Digital Marketing”.

If you’re on Facebook, check out my new page on Ireland’s Wildlife – and pass it on to all your friends. The page, and the twitter account on @wildireland, are the first steps in building an online community of wildlife enthusiasts in Ireland.

As time (and budget) allows I’m also working on an Ireland’s Wildlife website, sort of an online “hub” for all things wild in Ireland – a jumping off point, if you like, for Irish wildlife information, resources, links and discussion.

Wanted: wildlife content!

Core to the site will be the 200 or so species profiles I’ve written for the back page of Ireland’s Own over the years. I’m also on the look-out for potential regular contributors to the new site – so if you have relevant interests or expertise in any aspect of Irish wildlife and would like to volunteer your services / allow use of your content then please leave a note in the comments below, or drop me a line.

You can stay tuned here for updates by subscribing to the RSS Feed, become a fan of Ireland’s Wildlife on Facebook and/or follow Ireland’s Wildlife on Twitter.

A very talented software developer I used to work with way back when — Walter Higgins (@walter on twitter) over at Cork based Sxoop Technologies — has developed a cool little application that builds a clickable photo-montage of all your twitter followers’ avatars.

People are already putting the resulting Twitter Mosaics on their blog posts, desktop wallpaper, mugs, T-shirts, bags, business cards… you name it. The application has evolved somewhat since I first looked at it — and now lets you selctively delete avatars from the resulting mosaic and even order printed products. It also presents you with the HTML code to embed the mosaic on your own website or blog post.

So if you’re on Twitter, why not check out your own Twitter Mosaic.

Great work by Walter and the crew at Sxoop, and proof, yet again, that when it comes to Twitter application ingenuity Ireland in general, and perhaps Cork in particular, is leading the charge.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sxoop Technologies turn a buck on Twitter (patphelan.net)
• Tuesday Push: Twitter Mosaic from Sxoop Technologies (ewritecork.com)
• Twitter Mosaic: Using the long tail to make money from Twitter (antonmannering.com)
• Tuesday Push was Sxoop (web2ireland.org)

Walter Higgins over at Sxoop has a neat little tool for creating your Twitter Follower Mosaic.

Here are all the lovely Tweeple (Twitter People)who are following me. Click on them to see what they’re talking about on Twitter right now.

You can get your twitter account here and don’t forget to follow me .