TOP MARKETING BLOGS 2009

The Top 50 Top Australian Marketing Blogs 2009

01.

Bannerblog

Bannerblog.com.au

These guys are getting rather good at the blogging game. Retaining top-spot from the list B&T published in 2008 are Bannerblog creators Ashley Ringrose of Soap Creative and Ashadi Hopper of RMG Connect. Launched in 2005 to showcase online banner ads, it continues to go from strength to strength.





02.

Acidlabs.org

Acidlabs.org

Canberra-based Stephen Collins is the man behind this blog. His stated intention is "to help individuals, brands and organisations understand their clients, stakeholders and people by working with them on listening, engaging and being human."



03.

Servant of Chaos

Servantofchaos.com

With a background in marketing and publishing, Sydney-based Gavin Heaton slips back one spot from the 2008 list into third. Heaton says he's focused - among other things - on the scripting and crafting of brand stories. Well worth a look for content on branding, digital strategy and social media.



04.

Inspiration Room Daily

Theinspirationroom.com/daily

Part of The Inspiration Room - a site that "through the use of world-leading visual search technology offers members a unique platform to display, search and filter creative work" - the daily'blog is authored by the Gold Coast's Duncan Macleod.



05.

Mumbrella

Mumbrella.com.au

Founded at the turn of the year by former B&T editor Tim Burrowes, Mumbrella came out of the traps fast with a mix of news, opinion and diary sections. The site looks to have a met a pent-up demand for conversation around big topics for those in and around the social media community.



06.

Marketing Magazine

Marketingmag.com.au/blogs

Leaving its bigger rivals from the B2B publishing world in the dust is the blog from Marketing Magazine. The site has leapt a whopping 14 places since the last time B&T published it Top 50 Bloggers list back in October 2008, so hats off to these guys for making up so much ground.



07.

Laurel Papworth

Laurelpapworth.com

Slipping back from 4th spot in our 2008 list, Papworth is among the most active, prolific and outspoken bloggers in the Australian social media community. Her blog, which also made it in to AdAge's recent Power 150 list, is focused on "the business of being social".



08.

Young PR

Youngie.prblogs.org

With the stated intent of discussing issues affecting PR students and new practitioners to the industry, the blog is authored by the eponymous Paul Young. It slides back from the heady heights of third position versus our 2008 list.



09.

Adspace Pioneers

Adspace-pioneers.blogspot.com

Digital strategist at The Population, Julian Cole has been running this blog since his university days. Well written and very collaborative in tone, there's the odd bit of activist-type activity on here too. Earlier this year, Cole hijacked an online Samboy Crisps competition to raise funds for the bushfire appeal.



10.

London Calling

Andrewgrill.com/blog

A new entrant to the top-10, author Andrew Grill is focusing on mobile advertising here. With a mix of stories from overseas and his own views and theories on related events, Grill's blog could continue to go from strength to strength as marketers' attention increasingly turns to mobile.

11. Personalize Media

Personalizemedia.com

12. Get Shouty

Katiechatfield.wordpress.com

13. Brand DNA

Branddna.blogspot.com

14. The Marketer

Themarketer.typepad.com

15. Copywrite

Jonathancrossfield.com/blog

16.Online Marketing Banter

Onlinemarketingbanter.com

17. Amnesia Blog

Amnesiablog.wordpress.com

18. Mark Pollard

Markpollard.net

19. Better Communications Results

Leehopkins.net

20. Gourmet Ads

Gourmetads.com

21. Gold Coast Web Designers

Tailored.com.au

22. Angus Whines

Anguswhines.typepad.com

23. Pigs Don't Fly

Pigsdontfly.com

24. Three Billion

Threebillion.com

25. PR Disasters

Prdisasters.com

26. Creative Is Not A Department

Davidgillespie.wordpress.com

27. A Pespective

Jyesmith.com

28. Business of Marketing and Branding

Mokummarketing.com/blog

29. Marketing Easy

Marketingeasy.net

30. Zakazukhazoo

E-cbd.com/zakazukhazoo

31. Kate@Stickywood

Stickywood.blogspot.com

32. Corporate Engagement

Trevorcook.typepad.com/weblog

33. Shifted Pixels

Shiftedpixels.com.au/blog

34. Sticky Ads

Stickyads.com.au

35. Mark Neely's Blog

Infolution.com.au

36. Talking Digital

Talkingdigital.wordpress.com

37. Media Hunter

Mediahunter.typepad.com

38. Preneur Marketing

Preneurmarketing.com

39. WOM Marketing For Small Business

Wordofmouthmagic.com

40. The Digestif

Thedigestif.blogspot.com

41. PR Warrior

Prwarrior.typepad.com

42. The Flasher

Sydnaked.typepad.com

43. Who Is In Control Of Your Brand

From.simontsmall.com

44. Another Advertising Wanker

Anotheradvertisingwanker.blogspot.com

45. Dominique Hind Collective

Dominiquehind.wordpress.com

46. The Zeitgeists

Thezeitgeists.blogspot.com

47. Ecio Lab

Eicolab.com.au/blog

48. In My Atmosphere

Inmyatmosphere.blogspot.com

49. Frank Thoughts

Frankmedia.com.au/blog

50. Ryan's View

Hillandknowlton.com/blogs/ryanpeal



Methodology

The Population Top 50 Australian Marketing Blogs are scored out of 50 with scores out of 10 given in five categories. A subjective mark is given for how thought provoking the content is, how often the site is updated and how much insight the authors provides into the field of marketing.

Google Page Rank, Alexa Traffic Rank, and a list of the number of unique blogs that link into that website and the number of posts that have cited that website in a post are also calculated with a score given out of 10.

Top 164 Australian Marketing Pioneer Blogs

Top 164 Australian Marketing Pioneers Blogs		Pioneer Ranking	Google Page Rank	Tech Authority Score	Tech Reactions 10	Alexa Rating Score	Total
1	Bannerblog	8	6	7	5	9	35
3	Acidlabs	8	6	7	6	7	34
2	Servant of Chaos	9	5	7	6	7	34
4	Inspiration Room Daily	7	5	7	5	9	33
5	mUmbrella	9	4	6	4	9	32
6	Marketing Magazine	8	5	5	4	8	30
7	Laurel Papworth	8	4	6	3	8	29
8	Young PR	8	5	4	4	8	29
9	Adspace-Pioneers	8	4	5	5	6	28
10	London Calling	8	5	4	4	7	28
11	Personalize Media	8	5	4	4	7	28
12	Amnesia Blog	7	4	5	4	8	28
13	Get Shouty	8	4	4	5	6	27
14	Brand DNA	8	5	4	5	5	27
15	The Marketer	8	4	5	4	6	27
16	Copywrite	7	4	5	3	8	27
17	Online Marketing Banter	8	4	4	3	8	27
18	Media Hunter	8	4	4	4	7	27
19	Better Communication Results	7	3	5	4	7	26
20	Three Billion	8	5	4	3	5	25
21	Gold Coast Web Designers	6	4	3	3	8	24
22	Angus Whines	7	4	4	4	5	24
23	Pigs Don’t Fly	8	4	4	3	5	24
24	PR Disasters	7	4	4	3	5	23
25	Creative Is Not A Department	8	4	4	3	4	23
26	A perspective	8	4	3	2	6	23
27	Gourmet Ads	8	4	0	3	8	23
28	Business of Marketing and Branding	6	4	4	4	4	22
29	Marketing Easy	6	4	4	2	6	22
30	Zakazukhazoo	8	4	2	1	7	22
31	Kate @ Stickywood	8	4	3	2	5	22
32	Mark Pollard	8	3	3	2	6	22
33	Zebra Bites	8	4	3	2	5	22
34	Sticky Ads	7	3	2	4	6	22
35	Corporate Engagement	7	4	2	3	5	21
36	Shifted Pixels	8	3	3	1	6	21
37	Mark Neely's Blog	7	4	2	2	6	21
38	Talking Digital	8	3	3	1	6	21
39	In My Atomosphere	8	4	3	3	3	21
40	Preneur Marketing	7	3	2	2	6	20
41	Word of Mouth Marketing for Small Business	5	3	3	4	5	20
42	The Digestif	8	4	2	2	4	20
43	PR Warrior	8	3	2	2	5	20
44	The Flasher	8	3	3	2	4	20
45	Who is in conrtol of your b****	8	3	3	1	5	20
46	Another Advertising Wanker	8	4	2	1	5	20
47	Dominique Hind Collective	8	3	2	1	5	19
48	Innovation Feeder	6	4	2	2	5	19
49	EcioLab	7	5	2	0	5	19
50	FRANKthoughts	8	3	2	1	5	19
51	Ryan's view	6	2	2	1	8	19
52	The Zeitgeists	7	3	3	1	5	19
53	Digital Buzz Blog	7	3	0	1	8	19
54	Taming the beast	6	4	2	3	4	19
55	Campaign Brief	6	4	0	0	8	18
56	Tim Longhurst	7	4	2	1	4	18
57	Tony from the Population	8	4	2	1	3	18
58	CIIMS	8	3	1	2	4	18
59	Publicity Queen	8	3	2	1	4	18
60	Consumer Psychologist	8	4	0	2	4	18
61	WayCoolJnr	8	4	0	1	5	18
62	B&T	4	5	0	1	8	18
63	Start Up Blog	4	3	3	2	6	18
64	Scott Drummond	7	3	3	1	4	18
65	Lexy Klain	7	4	2	1	4	18
66	Ineedhits	6	5	2	1	4	18
67	The oyster Project	8	3	2	1	4	18
68	Publicis Digital	7	3	1	1	5	17
69	Filter Media	4	4	2	2	5	17
70	Will Scully Power	7	3	1	0	6	17
71	Insight + Ideas	8	3	1	2	3	17
72	Business and the internet	7	4	1	0	5	17
73	Sitemost	5	3	0	1	7	16
74	Matt Jones Blog	8	1	2	1	4	16
75	Diffusion	7	4	1	1	3	16
76	How good you want to be	7	3	1	1	4	16
77	Beyond Digital Media	7	2	2	1	4	16
78	Free Beer	5	3	2	1	5	16
79	Ben Hamin	8	3	1	0	4	16
80	The White Agency ffffff	6	4	0	0	6	16
81	Re: Turn On	8	4	0	2	3	17
81	Fresh Chat	6	3	1	1	4	15
82	Uneven Distribution	7	1	2	1	4	15
83	online marketing sydney	5	4	0	0	6	15
84	doingwords.com	7	2	1	1	4	15
85	BMF Sticky	6	3	1	0	5	15
86	Slide Media	7	2	2	0	4	15
87	Send Up a larger room	7	2	0	1	5	15
88	OMG with Emily	7	3	1	0	4	15
89	I hate ads	7	3	0	1	4	15
90	Australian SEO blog	4	0	1	3	6	14
91	Peter Sheanan	6	3	0	1	4	14
92	Australian Small Business	6	3	0	1	4	14
93	The Wayfarer	8	2	0	1	3	14
94	Adnotes	6	4	0	1	3	14
95	Jax Interactive	7	3	0	1	3	14
96	Semfire Search Enging MarketingBlog	5	3	1	1	4	14
97	The Gloo	4	4	0	0	6	14
98	The Communications Room	6	3	1	0	4	14
99	Strike a Cord	7	3	0	0	4	14
100	Lets refresh	7	1	0	0	6	14
101	Marketing Results	6	4	0	0	4	14
102	SEO Company	5	5	0	0	4	14
103	Dan Pankraz Vs. Youth	8	2	0	0	4	14
104	Digital Oz	8	2	1	0	3	14
105	Digital Tip	8	0	1	0	5	14
106	The F Rant	8	4	0	0	2	14
107	Frontiering Talking	8	0	0	0	5	13
108	David Wesson Digital Entertainment	8	3	1	0	1	13
109	The Jason Recliner	5	4	1	1	2	13
110	Pixel Paddock	7	2	1	0	3	13
111	Mobilista	5	3	0	1	4	13
112	Stellar Blog	8	1	0	0	4	13
113	Idea Garden	8	0	0	0	4	12
114	Josh Anstey	6	3	0	0	3	12
115	Classy Marketing	6	3	1	0	2	12
116	Pity the Cool	8	3	0	0	1	12
117	Who put the devil in you?	8	3	0	0	1	12
118	Simon Reynolds	7	2	0	0	3	12
119	Arrow Internet SEO	5	3	0	0	4	12
120	Joely Righteous	8	0	0	0	4	12
121	Digital Marketing Lab	7	0	0	0	5	12
122	To the WordUp	6	0	0	0	5	11
123	Layman's Term	6	3	0	0	2	11
124	Chalkboard Websites	6	2	0	0	3	11
125	Simons Says	7	3	0	0	1	11
126	Gruen Transfer	6	2	0	0	3	11
127	Quintessentially Digital	6	2	0	0	3	11
128	Portz Interactive	7	2	0	0	2	11
129	Work.netx	5	2	0	0	4	11
130	Community Girl	7	0	0	0	4	11
131	Refined Geek	6	2	0	0	3	11
132	Wunderman Aus	6	2	0	0	3	11
133	Kevin C Ferry	7	2	0	0	2	11
134	Influencing the Influencers	7	0	0	0	4	11
135	Behind Digital PR	7	0	0	0	4	11
136	Feeding Kat	8	0	0	0	3	11
137	Hothouse	4	0	0	0	6	10
138	Marketing is a dirty word	7	2	1	0	0	10
139	Via Media - The Way	7	2	0	0	1	10
140	Know Your Tribe	5	0	0	0	5	10
141	The Lost Agency	7	0	0	0	3	10
142	Kruppy Rants	7	2	0	0	1	10
143	Down with 30kb	7	0	0	0	3	10
144	Digital Strategy - Clear Blue Day	5	0	0	0	4	9
145	The Odd one out	6	0	0	0	3	9
146	Tick Yes	4	0	0	0	5	9
147	Reputational Democrarcy	6	0	0	0	3	9
148	Frank, Hayley and the circus	7	0	0	0	2	9
149	Winged Wicked Things	7	0	0	0	2	9
150	Words, thoughts and other stuff	7	0	0	0	2	9
151	Virtual Ryf	5	2	0	0	1	8
152	Ponderings of The Orange Cow	4	3	0	0	1	8
153	Love number 2	6	0	0	0	2	8
154	Just Another PR	7	0	0	0	1	8
156	Latin Ocean	5	0	0	0	2	7
157	RMD's Marcom	6	0	0	0	1	7
158	Roger Down Under	5	0	0	0	2	7
159	Stop, Collaborate and Listen	4	2	0	0	1	7
160	Geared for Profit	4	0	0	0	3	7
161	Write across media	6	0	0	0	1	7
162	Death by Digital	6	0	0	0	1	7
163	Check Later	4	0	0	0	1	5
164	The Social Pages	4	0	0	0	0	4

Coke-Cola Glaceau Vitaminwater ad campaign

Coke-Cola launches first national ad campaign for Glaceau Vitaminwater

The cheeky outdoor campaign will run at numerous locations including the largest digital screen in Europe at Liverpool Street Station and the largest backlight site in Europe at Clapham Junction. The campaign creative focuses on simple rainbows of colour and humorous copy lines that bring to life the brand personality.

Outdoor ads include the strap line's ‘more muscles than Brussels,' ‘drink at the first crack of yawn,' and ‘do every one under the sun.'

There will also be a digital outdoor push where technology will allow the brand to send targeted messages to individual consumers in locations in real time through Bluetooth. This will take place in 16 key stations across UK during the rush hour periods. Glaceau hopes to connect with around half a million people and believe that the activity will be the largest personalised outdoor digital advertising campaign to date.

Coca-Cola purchased the brand four years ago and launched it in the UK during May 2008.

1Litre Water

1 litre water company and their design team have invented the first bottle in the world to feature an integrated cup.

The clean, crisp taste coupled with the innovative and uber-chic design, make 1 litre™ a natural complement to finest restaurants, luxury hotels, resorts, spas, casinos, meeting rooms etc… around the globe.

Designe by 1Litre | Country: Canada

3M:::Post-it viral

For all those who've grappled with deadlines and felt besieged by Post-it notes, here's a beautiful testament to the experience. Created by Savannah College of Art and Design student Bang-yao Liu, the two-minute clip required three months of planning, four days of shooting and more than 6,000 Post-its. The behind-the-scenes video really makes you appreciate the enormity of this stop-motion project.

---------

This is the original article of how 3M Corporation attempted to generate buzz for its sticky notes product with a user-generated content promotion about creative ways to use Post-it Notes. Displays promoting the contest — prominently displayed in Staples, Office Max, Office Depot and other office supply stores across the country — featured a photo that might look familiar to people who spend time on Digg, YouTube and similar social sites.

Here’s how a $24.5 billion multinational corporation fubars an attempt to do a viral ad campaign by refusing to pay a small licensing fee to my friend, the amateur photographer who inspired it.

~ ~ ~ ~

Four years after the launch of the community site Digg, three years after media giant Yahoo acquired the photo-sharing site Flickr, and the same summer that YouTube reached one billion video views per day — it’s not unusual for corporations to try to reach consumers through social media channels. Savvy execs understand that social media success can equal advertising gold.

There are a couple of ways a corporate marketer can leverage social media’s power to take things viral. One of them is to find something that is already enjoying viral success and ride its coat tails. That’s apparently the route 3M wanted to take with its current promotion.

The perfect idea already existed for the 3M campaign, ready to be exploited: the Post-It Note Jaguar.

~ ~ ~ ~

In December 2006, a bunch of people at an Internet company went down to the parking garage and covered a coworker’s beloved Jaguar with tens of thousands of Post-It Notes. Scott, a photographer and Flickr enthusiast, posted the evidence of the prank in progress to his Flickr account intending to show it to the Jag’s owner.

View the entire Post-It Note Jaguar photo set on Flickr.

Next thing Scott knew, the Post-it Note Jaguar started to spread on the Internet. The photos took on a life of their own, generating tons of comments and faves from the Flickr community. The photos got reposted on blogs around the world (including the very popular blogs Neat-o-Rama and Boing Boing), hit the front page of Digg more than once, were circulated in millions of emails, were featured as a Yahoo pick of the day, and even appeared in a filmed segment on ABC News.

~ ~ ~ ~

More than a year passes before the maker of the Post-it Note thinks to capitalize on the viral success that was this Post-it inspired office prank. After all, large multinational corporations aren’t the most nimble players — they can’t just shoot from the hip; after all, they have to dot their i’s, cross their t’s, and generally make sure everything gets approved by lawyers and stuff, right? RIGHT?

So when in the Spring of 2008, the 3M Corporation finally contacts the photographer to ask about using the photos of the Post-it Note Jaguar photos in a marketing campaign, he’s pretty sure they’ve already thought this through. He asked a friend in the photo business what a typical licensing fee for a national marketing campaign would be, and quoted that amount to 3M.

Their response? They tell him they’d rather not pay when they can just recreate the photograph themselves.

Here’s what floors me: 3M doesn’t even try to maintain plausible deniability. The 3M representative who contacted Scott comes right out and says it would be cheaper to copy the photo than it would be to license the original photos.

Scott responded to the email from the corporation’s eMarketing Supervisor and gave the company another chance to do things properly, by lowering the license fee he originally quoted (to a mere $2,000 for the entire campaign!). He was met with complete radio silence.

That was the last he heard of it until the Flickr pages and YouTube channel started getting a whole new spike in traffic, along with comments like “Hey man, I saw this photo at Staples. Congratulations!”

The point-of-sale displays prominently placed in office supply stores around the country would easily have run 6 figures in production costs alone. And if you know anything about in-store promotions, you know there are plenty more expenses associated just with getting the display space. In other words, this was a big budget production… the extra $1,000 to actual license the original photos would have been insignificant in the greater scheme of 3M’s budget for this project.

~ ~ ~ ~

Putting sticky notes all over a car, admittedly, isn’t a completely original idea, but 3M went to pains to make their photograph look very similar to the original Post-it Note Jaguar photo that garnered all the publicity. They could have done anything, but they did this:

It’s clear they set out to create a replicate of the Post-it Note Jag and they were counting on people “recognizing” the photos. Why else contact Scott about getting copyright permission in the first place? Even the work-in-progress photo montage 3M posted on YouTube looks eerily like Scott’s Flickr set.

Now, I’m not a copyright attorney, so I’d love for someone with an intellectual property law to chime in here, but just for kicks, let’s do my layman’s check for violations of fair use:

1. The copied work is for commercial gain: Check
2. The work copies substantially from the copyrighted one: Check
3. The effect of the copied work undermines the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work: By definition

But let’s pretend the legality of this move wasn’t even a question for now, and focus on this: Social media marketing campaigns rely on the social media community to carry them. As a marketer, you have to respect the community and its members. Ripping off community members and then turning around and asking that same community to generate buzz for your campaign is just ballsy… or stupid.

The irony: The YouTube contest rules say “Remember, creativity and true brilliance will get you noticed.” I’m hoping that 3M’s “creativity” and true chutzpah get noticed as well.

The original Post-It Note Jaguar

~ ~ ~ ~

Lest anyone think I’m slamming all companies and corporate marketers for wanting to take advantage of social media, I’m not. I think there are plenty of creative ways to get your product’s name in front of social communities in ways that don’t disrespect the users.

For example: create an original marketing campaign around a concept specifically designed to be share-worthy. A recent example of this tactic is Extended Stay’s “Very Clean” Video (Disclosure: New Media Strategies, my current employer, helped promote this campaign).

Of course, corporate attempts to become viral can ring hollow, so smart social media marketers know that it helps to let the fans come up with the idea as well as leaving it to them to drive the campaign’s popularity.

Therefore some companies ensure the campaign is going to reach a wide audience by latching on to something that’s already gone viral. There are legit ways to do that. In fact, that’s what Stride Gum didwith its sponsorship of the Dancing Guy (aka Matt Harding).

----