I was really pleased today when i saw a really nice presentation from Nick Garner explaining all the basic tools for SEO using wordpress. What pluggin’s you should use, type of content, getting links, all the information are there…all you have to do is pick them up and start reading.

Check the presentation for WordPress for SEO

p.s. its been really difficult blogging in the past few months due to work  and even more now that i came back after holidays in Greece…But the rainy London will help my mood i guess a little bit more. J

Well , I have to be honest I learned the term reading the tweets of Professor Simon Chadwick and reading a couple of the examples that we had in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa until now. But what is ambush marketing?

The simplistic term is what you can find in Wikipedia….The easiest place nowadays to learn stuff like that.  “Ambush marketing is a marketing campaign that takes place around an event but does not involve payment of a sponsorship fee to the event. For most events of any significance, one brand will pay to become the exclusive and official sponsor of the event in a particular category or categories, and this exclusivity creates a problem for one or more other brands. Those other brands then find ways to promote themselves in connection with the same event, without paying the sponsorship fee and without breaking any laws.”

In other words, Adidas is the official sports clothes provider for the 2010 world cup. Despite that Nike finds ways to make such advertising that it will manage to connect there brand with the World Cup without paying anything extra. How can they do that? Well the “write the future” ad campaign they made was so successful that it managed to convince customers according to reports that they are the brand more connected with the World Cup.

Its not only that… there are numerous examples in history but its getting more and more obvious that this will increase as years go by. The only thing that suprises me is that i didnt found any obvious report about ambush marketing in Athens Olympics 2004 …but then i maybe wrong.

The result of the 36 girls from netherland being detained by fifa for promoting another kind of beer with there clotheswas another obvious ambush marketing example. Whether it was done on purpose or not by the Bavaria beer is not of any importance. Many people now have learned the name of the beer and they will sure try to have one. The publicity that it got was everything they wanted.

Despite all that the officials should be really concearned about the implication of all those events. Why someone should pay so much money to be the official sponsor of one tournament when he knows that he can get more recognition and more attention by using other marketing techniques?

Ambush marketing is one of those tehniques that we are going to see more and more in the future and its good to keep an eye. Somethings that in tv looks so natural to happen maybe a result of an organised effort.

One of the sponsors that fifa will come to think in the future is a new category… the betting sponsor.

The times are changing and everyone is “fighting” to get connected with big sporting events and the World Cup is one of them. The big betting companies have all made a big effort to connect themselves with the wc with “ambush” marketing techniques like more or less Nike , using most of the times journalists/tipsters in an effort to get the attention of the bettors.

If you said to someone 7 years ago the word “seo” they would look at you unmoved. Now all betting companies created microsites specifically for the world cup targeting to all the customers that are looking for the world cup news through any search engine.

The strategy is simple…target the customers wherever they are.. youtube/social media/search engines. So, who do you choose from them, and more important, why?

Well, basically I believe its time to move on and embrace the future. The betting industry is one of the strongest world wide where growth doesn’t stop. Many people will say that FIFA and UEFA as well as the local football associations wouldn’t want to be connected with betting companies as this will increase the voices from fans for fixed games and changes in the results.

What its time to realise is that already most of the betting companies have MoM (memorandum of understanding) with FIFA and UEFA so they are already co-operating in many fields. Also the fact that many countries do not have opened up there gambling industry is something that is changing also. France, Italy has opened up the industry and Greece will be soon.

The advantages that betting companies can give are huge and its time to start taking advantage of this industry as it is well connected with fans and sports for a long time now. In case that something like that happened who do you think would have most of the chances to take such sponsorship? Well, bwin is as a favourite in all those sponsorships. They have already there brand in the biggest teams like Real Madrid and Milan , also there headquarters are closer to FIFA’s headquarters than any others… On the other hand…how about Betfair? They are new, and ever evolving, and they already have a strong cooperation with FIFA in “checking” games.

We are not far away from the time that we will see a betting company put there name next to the world cup and we shouldn’t take it as an insult or anything. The betting industry is growing and maturing enough to be officially recognised in those sporting events. Its just a matter of time now..

Usually the main focus on those researches is England as everyone knows there love for Football and there agony to claim –finally- the world cup after so many years. Marketing magazine reports that the World Cup campaign of Fabio Capello’s team will have as an effect of 1.3 billion increases in retail spending in UK with focus on food and grocery.

The normal thing is that during world cup some specific industries will have an increase…ofcourse the betting industry but also a 5.8 per cent increase in footwear and clothing, about GBP 380 million, in June and July. Companies like Sports Direct and JJB Sports will get the most out of it and everything will depend as much further in the competition England will go…

So, everything is set for the biggest event of 2010, all the companies have made there marketing campaigns for the World Cup and they are ready for the final push. Even if there have been noted problems in the organisation until now we shouldn’t forget that the important thing is to see what will happen afterwards in South Africa and what the aftermath will be of such a big tournament.

But until then..lets enjoy the Beautiful game!

Well we have taken a look of some of the previous World Cup ads, let’s focus on some of the new ones that appeared and created an impact.

One from Adidas and the German National team

One from Nike and the much famous now “Write the Future” ad

One from Puma straight from Africa

A brilliant one from Carlsberg, You have to admit even if you aren’t English…you like it!

Everyone has done their part and even if you can’t see the difference there is in the targeted market and customers of each company. The ads are there for a specific reason and they want to attract the customers and create the exact tension and expectation that is needed for such kind of tournaments.

Professor Simon Chadwick has a really nice article in his block where he is explaining the exact target market of adidas, nike and puma. He is basically analysing how adidas is targeting the mainstream audience and with what ways, nike the different –revolutionaries and how puma is trying to “steal” a part of the pie.  If you read you will realise any hidden messages behind the ads that you will see in the future.

The world cup is almost there. Enjoy it.

Those conferences are the perfect idea for managing to meet affiliate from all around the world and registering them up to your system before anyone else does. It can be a really stressful situation especially if you don’t have a stand where the affiliates can see you. So , we had to ambush them. Running around starting a conversation out of nowhere and using any possible skill necessary to convince them to sign up was already a difficult task but a necessary one.

That builds the necessary relationship between the affiliates and the company that hopefully will bring the results you need. Its really difficult to justify those trips from a management point of view. Managers just see expenses, and the payback that you will take from such trips is not immediately visible. You can sign up 10 affiliates in one conference and get little registrations and revenue, but sign just one in another trip and get all the revenue in the world.

However, those are necessary for Brand awareness and relationship building as that is what it mainly is. When you are managing affiliates and you are communicating a customer that you want from them to promote you in your website then that’s what you are looking for, the chance to build a relationship in a place where everyone is under the same roof.

Now from an organising point of view I have to say that it could be better. The space was huge but really far away from the centre of Prague. The event was held in the PVA Letnany Exhibition Centre which is an enormous place but still didn’t offer the “warmth” needed so you can easily meet people and start discussions.

All in all it was one great experience and I would highly recommend to any affiliate manager as a must for his career. Also to any gaming companies that wish to invest in Affiliates that’s the first place to start by sending there affiliate managers and starting to build relationships.

In the mean time they are pressing all the time fans to stop going to the stadium for the games but recently they announced they want to press the sponsors of the club. According to MUST  a change of ownership at the club would “create hugely enhanced value” for sponsors because it would bring the “whole Manchester United family back together”.

Ok, all these are really nice to hear and bring back a little bit of romance to the game ..but we need to be honest about the chances we have right now for the sponsors to live United.

In the middle of a world wide recession companies look places to advertise where they will be sure about there payback. They need to invest there money in companies that they are sure they will provide them profits and brand exposure to as big audience as possible. Those companies are hard to find nowadays…and one of those –yes man.utd is a company – is the Football club owned by the Glazer family.

I don’t believe that Nike will ever consider pressing the Glazer’s  even if the whole Manchester revolted. The Red Devils are a universal business and as long as they can manage to start lowering there debts and win titles in the same, no sponsor will care if the fans are coming to Old Trafford with yellow, red or even blue scarf’s….as long as they buy the tickets.

In this time is a big ask to tell fans not to buy tickets to see there team…so Glazers will not worry about that. People in times of recession want to see football and want to see there team and the team of Sir Alex Ferguson has a large variety of fans that would be happy to come the stadium even if 150000 decided to boycott attendance to Old Trafford.

I don’t like either to see such a team to have such debts that would threaten there future. However, to support an organisation that is being headed by a chief economist of Goldman Sachs –the bank that amongst others underwrote a £507m bond issue, earning £15m in fees in the process in order that Glazers can take over Man united in the first place –  in order to  save your Football team from its debts…is ironic….isn’t it?

Well, I love united also from the moment I saw Cantona playing there years ago…but MUST, is not must for the Red Devils right now…and I think the sponsors know it.

The biggest social network decided to open up even more for the publishers and business and bring people and things together. Being social is not bad, I think there are good things to that and you have the opportunity to connect with people and identify but within that comes a lot of dangers. Facebook wouldn’t give you so much access without asking some from you and what they asked is access to your profile. Access for the news and updates and personal information that could pass them on to there suppliers and become the central of web information.

But wasn’t that the space that Google had? Well as many people pointed out Google should be one of the companies that should be worried as it is obvious that the social network site has as a target to take the position of the Search Engine as the place where we find information.

Reading different views on the net everyone conclude to the same idea. Facebook is not as open as it should be in the way its build and in the way that it treats its customers. His bigger advantage –the social interaction- is also its bigger disadvantage as in order to manage and connect people and get all the advantages out of that FB needs to push the customers to socialize even if they don’t want to.

Many people point out that when the companies loose the level of trust with there customers then its when they start to crumble. Google and Facebook are on the verge of doing it and get a lot of people angry with it. When I first registered on the site everything was so simple. You registered find your friends upload pictures start chatting. All were really good…

Now you have a big page where you have to decide what you want to share and what not, and its not only that. Every time you decide to hide something from the public you get a big pop up window where they are warning you about what you will loose if you keep things private….

When you go to My Account>>Privacy Settings>>Application and Website and you try to click off the Instant Personalization you get this message. WHY? Why do I have to click twice for that? I already said what I want. And then if you click on learn more it takes you to a full list of various problems explanations bla bla bla… Things were much simpler I guess when Mark Zuckenberg first created the site…

On the other hand what does that means to Marketers? An incredible world of information is opening in front of us regarding potential customers. Companies have the potential to reach the people and get there brand known. Specific people they want, targeted with info about there identity and there Likes.

The only thing that we need now is to understand those numbers and learn how to use them. That will give us opportunity to access a wider audience and interact with customers in all possible ways. The proper marketing mix, make yourself visible everywhere.

As a marketer I love social media as they give you that opportunity to make yourself well know easily and with low cost. Facebook realized that and tries to help towards that direction.

As a person I feel that my identity is dragged more and more into the open and I am struggling to keep things for my self. Its not funny anymore…its becoming really dangerous to surf the net.

The fight between Google, Facebook, Twitter to conquer the net has left us on the corner without a saying…. Well, but then again we always knew that we would end up like that…didn’t we?

Online Video Marketing

Being on the Marketing Industry means that you have to learn and use every media you can get and never underestimate the power that it has. Social Media, Online and Offline all have to work together in co-operation.

I got some articles on my rss feed regarding viral videos. Those are some of the most famous ones right now with some millions of views. The first one is really smart with 2.5 millions views and has a cat playing around with the new Ipad. Really cool and almost like it helped the interests of Apple as it offered free advertisement.

Sometimes if you make a smart video people will automatically search it and promote it in Youtube…tell to there friends send it by mail…etc etc

Some other times you have to use what you have. If you have for example a sponsorship of Barcelona then the best thing is to have an interview of Lionel Messi on Youtube just before the “El Clasico”. I remember we had some of those videos before I leave Betfair already and they still do it. As we do it now in Smart Live Casino also.

Youtube is exploding and Video Marketing also, the problem is we are not aware of its full potential yet….

The France National Assembly recently has voted in favour of a bill to legalise online gambling, preparing to open up the market to the gaming companies around the world. Ideally I believe that is the best move to make but who will believe me. After all I am working for a gaming company.

However, trying to think the advantages and the disadvantages in this story, the gaming industry is one of the few that keeps making profits in times of recession expanding all over the world and providing business opportunities to millions of people. Why governments don’t try to take advantage of it?

The examples of Gibraltar and Malta are characteristic of how a community can gain from the booming of the gaming industry and provide with work placements to the people.

France has finally opened up and companies like Ladbrokes, William Hill, Betfair are all gearing up to take the best spot in the market. Despite that I think there are bigger markets in the minds of the CEO’s that they are dreaming. Obviously in America everyone is waiting opening up United States but in Europe, Greece , Spain and Turkey will be next in line. Slowly I feel that those markets will be forced to open in order to create more opportunities and cash flow towards the government.

There will be always those people that will shout that gambling will destroy families, society’s and people …they always do…but the truth is legalizing it and putting gaming companies under a law is much better than what exists right now….which is nothing.

I always believed that Gambling is the way to save Greece from economic destruction. Maybe I am wrong but listen to this… Right now my country is on the verge of bankruptcy asking for money. Well, I am not politician and not in to economics but what if…they legalized gambling and let companies to come into Greece and open up Betting shops or work online. In order to get a license they should pass from some tests of course to see that they are respected companies but the most important is that they should have offices in Greece. A small office of 30-100 people,  most probably the marketing department for the country and maybe customer service. Of course they would be taxed for there profits , money that the Greek government would take and until now, is loosing.

I bet that the fact they are earning a lot of money until now from the greek betting company opap but also because of other political reasons that is not possible now but eventually it will happen as to most other countries. Well, again my view on this matter is not credible as I said as I already work in the gaming industry but is it so wrong?  I don’t think so…but then again I am not the Greek Prime minister…thank god J