Ellen Tsang

To effectively manage a project with very little mistakes, you must make it a priority to plan. Whether you are developing a website for personal use or a corporate one for e-Marketing or e-Commerce purposes, diving into the development process with not a single clue as to what elements go where or how certain aspects of a websites interface differ from one another is dooming yourself to hard-earned headaches.

So What Is A Wireframe?

Wireframe – a visual representation, guide, and basic element structure of a websites interface design. Wireframes are usually the product of an idea that’s later reproduced on paper (or screen) so that they can preserve and maintain the consistency of visual similarities throughout a websites design.

Tools To Create Website Mock-Ups and Wireframes

Here are some useful tools to help you create website mock-ups and wireframes.

Hot Gloo:

Hot Gloo is an easy to interact with Flash web-based wireframing application.

• Snap to grid
• Drag and drop function
• After sign-up, receive a custom Hot Gloo URL so that you’re able to share your mockups with anyone such as clients and colleagues
• Free account comes with the capability of sustaining one worker and a co-worker, anything over that is $14/month

Mockingbird:

Mockingbird is a popular tool for creating mockups and wireframes. It allows you to easily create, preview, link to one another, and share all of your mockups with whomever you choose.

• Snap to grid
• Drag and drop function
• Unlimited page linking

More Tools Here @ Spyrestudios

Related Links:

Website Mock-up Tools @ Sitepoint Forum

Mockupr: Your website mockup in a browser – Mockupr takes your image file and displays it online, in a browser, to give you and your client a true impression of how the site will look. Your design will get its own unique link, which will not be displayed publicly.

After all the poopy humour below (See Poo-Pourri Posts), let’s talk about something more serious, but equally interesting and relevant to the marketing world.

Group buying, also known as collective buying, is a form of e-business that offers products and services at significantly reduced prices on the condition that a minimum number of buyers would make the purchase. Many online services have arisen out of this concept of group buying. In this post, I will examine the use of group buying as a form of e-marketing.

Advantages of Group Buying:

• Inexpensive Marketing Channel – As group buying has originated from China and I personally am from Hong Kong, I will use Hong Kong’s group buying market as an example. The group buying website plays an important role as a “marketing channel” rather than a “sales channel”. The advertising fees from merchants for a group buying strategy are lower than spending HK$700,000 for a 30 seconds commercial slot on TV or HK$40,000 for a spread on a Hong Kong magazine. It is estimated that the Hong Kong consumer group buying market generates revenues of HK$60 to $70 million each year, with more than 80 players now offering daily deals in the market.
• Attract Many New Customers – Group buying could help merchants to develop a consumer base quickly to integrate off-line resources.

Disadvantages of Group Buying

• Limited Range Of Products Available – Suppliers are reluctant to sell a broad range of products through group-buying companies, so the options are limited. Thus, consumers would not be able to know right away about all the products or services a company has to offer.
• Event May Be Cancelled Causing Consumer Dissatisfaction – When participating in online group buying, payment comes before delivery or service. Hence, if the product or service cannot gather enough buyers, the event will be cancelled and the money will be refunded back to the consumers. Sometimes, it may even cause customer dissatisfaction.

Related Links:

http://www.businessmarketingblog.org/online-marketing-with-group-buying-websites/

http://mashable.com/2010/05/24/stoudemire-facebook-store/

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/online-group-buying-advantages-and-disadvantages

After a man called Richard Neil posted a comment on Bodyform’s Facebook page accusing the feminine-hygiene brand of misleading him about just how fabulous periods are, Bodyform decided to hit back.

It responded with aplomb, uploading a video featuring fictional chief executive Caroline Williams explaining to Neil that the feminine-hygiene industry has indeed been protecting poor, unwitting men from the reality of how it really feels to be a woman. The video admitted that brand’s prolific use of skydiving and mountain bike-riding in its ads was actually metaphorical, an illusion used to represent periods because men ‘can’t handle the truth’, and quickly became a viral hit.

Related Links:

Marketing Moments 2012: Bodyform @ Marketing Magazine

On April 1st, Poo-Pourri launched a 30-day cause marketing campaign via social media, “Hunger Stinks! Poo-Pourri Gives a Crap!”. (Not an April Fool’s joke!) The campaign instigated call-to-action by inviting viewers to check out Poo Pourri’s Facebook Page.  For every new Facebook ‘like’ through April 30th, Poo-Pourri will give $1 to the North Texas Food Bank, a member of Feeding America.  Poo-Pourri received close to 500 Facebook ‘likes’. However, Poo-Pourri founder and CEO Suzy Batiz felt it was imperative to donate more. As a result, Poo-Pourri donated $10,000 to the North Texas Food Bank Thursday May 2nd. In terms of obtaining ‘likes’, the campaign was not amazingly successful, possibly due to the short duration of the campaign and the fact that it was mainly focused on Texas. However, in terms of giving back to the society and increasing positive public relations, their campaign was a success and ultimately raised brand awareness and enhanced consumer perception of the brand.

Hunger Stinks! Poo-Pourri Gives a Crap!

Related links:

Poo~Pourri Fights Hunger in Texas with their Hunger Stinks Campaign

WARNING: The following post contains poo-related humour. You have been warned.

Have you ever had the urge to do your business in public, at work, school, or even at your lover’s place? Not to worry.

Now, you no longer have to fear the possibility of your lasting stench stinking up your reputation or relationships.

Everyone knows that girls don’t poop, especially fancy ones. Or do they? Poo-Pourri certainly does a great job of making everyone keep thinking so. Playing on the fear that “OMG SOMEONE KNOWS I POOPED”, the marketing team at Poo-Pourri have created a winning advertisement to sell their poop deoderant. Poo-Pourri is a spray that paranoid poopers can apply to a toilet bowl pre-poop to hide their nasty odors, and instead, fill the W.C. with a flowery scent. Their advertisement went viral with almost 1 million views on YouTube after two weeks (see video at the end of this post!).

How did they do it? Humour.

Humour is relatable, memorable, and builds trust. It has long been used by businesses as a marketing tactic, and for good reason. Employed correctly, it is a powerful tool for engagement and interaction. Poo-Pourri is a perfect example where candid and witty humour combined with a well-made social media strategy can make your brand stand out amongst all the advertising clutter.

The best jokes are built on shared experiences, and I’m pretty sure pooping is a VERY common experience everyone shares. Also, as humans, we are wired to remember things that make us laugh. This is why childhood jokes live on. Poo-Pourri’s ad certainly reminds me of some extremely silly childhood jokes I shared with my friends back then (like drawing cartoon poops on birthday cards). Making your audience laugh also not only makes your brand more likeable, but humanizes it as well. Since people are more apt to trust a person over a business, this humanizing element is extremely important. Using humour is a great way to appeal to your consumers on an emotional level, which in turn has the power to influence their purchasing decisions. I personally pretty like how Poo-Pourri really portrayed their brand personality through this ad. Giving a brand personality really influences consumer loyalty towards a brand and adding a trigger in after-sales experience could lead to repeat purchases. A likeable brand personality could also expand a brand’s base of active loyalists, making it more likely for consumers to make a loyalty loop (from the McKinsey Consumer Decision Journey, see below).

The key to their humour is contradiction, and in this case, it is a BIG FAT HUGE one. They took a beautiful classy lady with a refined British accent and gave her a complete potty mouth. This had me hooked because it was so unexpected.

The face of Poo-Pourri – Bethany R. Woodruff

Their strategic launch via YouTube also boosted their chances of going viral (for more about how to create viral content, see my other post here). Social media is, as the president of Nordstrom Direct and many other experts have said, like “word of mouth on steroids”. It is so easy nowadays to simply click ‘share’ and post it on your social media channels. They topped 1.5 million YouTube views in three days, is courtesy of the Harmon Brothers, two guys who launched their own product, Orabrush, before moving on to handle Poo-Pourri’s marketing. Virality greatly increases brand awareness and increases a brand’s chance of being in a consumer’s initial consideration set (from the McKinsey Consumer Decision Journey, see image below). Hence, following Poo-Pourri’s viral strategy of humour x social launch (plus some other aspects) may be useful for other brands, but obviously they will need to create their own unique way to hit the market.

And lastly, their “Stink-free” guarantee promises customers a refund if they are unsatisfied. With this seemingly risk-free opportunity, who wouldn’t want to try? (I certainly am tempted to!)

Watch the video below!

Be sure to check out my other post about Poo-Pourri!

Related Links:

http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1212652/viral-review-poo-pourris-toilet-humour-grabs-attention

The Rest @ LogoDesignerBlog

http://blog.triphp.com/design/10-of-the-most-stunning-portfolio-designs.html

“the love of humanity“—love in the sense of caring for, nourishing, developing, or enhancing; humanity in the sense of “what it is to be human,” or “human potential.”

One of my most important morals.

I was just browsing Adweek when I came across this ingenious magazine ad by Peugeot.

Hit the front end of the Peugot on the opening page, and an actual airbag inflates on the spread inside. Ad agency Loducca made 50,000 of these things for a Brazilian magazine.

The only problem I see would be if people didn’t know what it meant by “Hit this spot” when they see the ad in the magazine, since they most probably haven’t seen any ad like this before. There is also the risk of it breaking but good packaging should be able to solve that.

Since it’s interactive and definitely different from other magazine ads, people would certainly remember Peugeot’s brand name after seeing this.

See it here!

Reading Heidi’s blog post has invoked me to start thinking about the increasing number of companies out there promoting unhealthy concepts about body image to the public. The increasing number of young girls with eating disorders induced by the social-media-generated idea that “thinner is better” is bad enough. Now the mass media is sending out overtly sexual messages to children, causing young girls to think about their appearance and sex appeal way too early. According to a recent study, tween consumers spend roughly $200 billion a year. Marketers realized that they could greatly increase customer loyalty, customer lifetime value and profitability by marketing to kids very early. However, what are the consequences of this kind of marketing?

Abercrombie & Fitch have been criticized for selling thongs targeted at children. Their provocative children’s undergarments catalogue has angered consumer advocacy groups and given them bad publicity. Now whilst I love Abercrombie & Fitch, I think they’ve stepped over the line this time with their unethical marketing.

Teenage and child models have been used by companies in provocative advertising. In the case of Calvin Klein, one of their ads involving themes which suggested child pornography resulted in television stations refusing the ads, retailers threatening to drop the Klein label, and protesters to march in front of some of the company’s most important customer stores. The ad is now banned, thankfully.

Calvin Klein

I’ve grown tired of seeing an increasing amount of 10-year-olds walking around with plunging necklines and makeup caked on their face. Even the Bratz dolls are sending out the message that “less is more” with their mature clothing and thick makeup.

If we want our next generation of children to act like children, this unethical marketing has to stop now.

What ever happened to cuteness overload like this?

Zara Kids