OPINION1 April 2010
Pity the poor journalist on April Fools Day. Our critical capabilities may be well-honed, but the need to question everything becomes doubly important on 1 April – and doubly strenuous. I’d developed a headache by 10am, accompanied by what can only be termed as ‘parody blindness’. It became hard to tell what was a real news story and what was fake.
That problem now seems to have resolved itself – hopefully – and you should find all today’s real news here while the not-so-genuine articles are presented below for your amusement.
• MCP: Online marketing’s newest and hottest KPI
The R&D team at web analytics firm Omniture claims to have found a way to measure buyer intent based on the pressure an index finger inflicts on a mouse and how it affects visitor engagement and sales. Link
• AOP releases FaceTime iPhone app
The Association of Online Publishers (AOP) says it has released its first mobile app, in the form of a game called FaceTime, which teaches effective networking skills. Players have to negotiate a series of social events, including IAB CEO Guy Phillipson’s birthday party. Hmmm. Link
• Anderson Analytics launches Optimist
Tired of poor survey results due to questionable panel quality? Afraid to conduct market research only to have customers poo-poo management’s perfectly good ideas? Anderson Analytics has the solution for you: a panel of optimists. Said one client: “With Optimist we know what to expect – the same great results every single time!” Link
• Vovici announces the Respondent Auto-Assessment Profiler
A game-changer if ever there was one. Vovici’s ‘new’ solution steps in when a respondent abandons a survey, downloading their Facebook status updates, tweets, Foursquare badges, Hunch.com answers, Amazon & Netflix reviews, blog posts, bookmarks and MMO character stats to develop a 360-degree view of the respondent. “This analysis is then used to estimate how any individual respondent would have answered the remaining survey questions, had they actually bothered to,” explains Jeffrey Henning. Link
In the words of Porky Pig: “Th-th-th-that’s all folks!” But please feel free to add other MR April Fools we missed in the comments thread below.
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1 Comment
Anon
12 years ago
I see your point Jen, my experience is that the pelope who will buy into this sort of marketing are looking for a quick, easy, overnight solution to earning a million without putting any thought or effort into it which unless you happen upon a winning lottery ticket or find a dearly departed long lost billionaire uncle with no offspring, I don't believe exists. If you want to get to the top, yes, there are strategies that are beneficial to employ, yes there are learnings that you can take from the great pelope who have gone before you and reached success, but it doesn't exist in the form of a golden ticket which requires no real work. I know of several pelope who work in this area of the market who have no real interest in creating value for their customers, they really are just looking for another bunch of pelope looking for instant success , who can be sold a story about how their product will provide it to them. Personally I subscribe to the approach of represent your product fairly and then exceed expectations it is far more likely to result in repeat custom
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