My New Blog and Getting Attention

OK, I Finally Did It!

I have never been one to start the year with resolutions. But I do keep goals in mind and for 2008, one of my goals was to start a Blog. So here I am.

It’s not exactly the way I imagined.

As a graduate student in West Virginia University’s Integrated Marketing Communications Program, the course I am taking this term is New Media. One of the requirements for the class… you guessed it – start a Blog.

I like to joke that I know enough to confuse myself and others, which I think is a fair statement. But working in the technology industry has given me a fair amount of exposure to new technologies (not to mention people who should be walking around with large brains similar to the Star Trek "Return To Tomorrow" episode; you know the one with the three super-intelligent alien survivors who lure the Enterprise to their dead planet). And the new technologies and new media used in IMC is what this Blog is about.

I was recently reviewing the use of banners and whether or not they can still be an effective IMC tool. Banners have come a long way from the static header and skyscraper versions to ones that show movement – and I’m not talking about the annoying dancing silhouettes. But the main point of the banner is to draw attention and get the visitor of one site, to take action and go to your site. And a couple of interesting banner technologies seem to be trying to do just that.

One interesting resource promoting talking banners is called BannerBots. They seem to be taking the e-surance cartoon approach. I suppose this minimizes costs of production from a more traditional actor talking in an ad. It seems interesting and weird at the same time. And for some, I’m sure the approach might be considered annoying. But the more interesting one I found is called Tailgate ™ and is developed by London based Fhlame Limited. This banner technology is billed as the “Worlds First fully transactional web 2.0 banner system.”

Tailgate is designed to enable ecommerce transactions directly from the banner itself and eliminating the need to send the visitor to another page of the banner. While this technology seems somewhat limited in its application, the idea is great and does the thing that all good web designs should do – minimize the number of clicks a visitor must take to complete an intended action.