simonyoungwriters.com

TradeMe has sold for $700m. But what about the future? A NZ Herald article says that the users are speaking up, and showing a bit of their collective muscle. “We are Trademe” says one user. Fairfax, welcome to the internet!

Jack Yan reports (via a few other sites) that Wal-mart is getting bloggers on their side. Good luck to ‘em.

At long last, Marketing Magazine is introducing a regular column on online marketing, sponsored by Facilitate Digital. And I’ll be writing it!

So if you have any news, views or particularly exciting data about the way marketers are using online, or the way consumers are receiving it, let me know. Email me on simon [at] simonyoungwriters.com or just pick up the phone (details to your left).

posted by Simon Young 5:21 PM, 19 March 2006 NZST

I don’t know if I’d get up so early if I didn’t know the Marketing Association always has good catering at their Brainy Breakfasts. Delicious. I didn’t need to eat all the rest of the day.

But what I was ostensibly there for was to hear (D’oh! I’ve forgotten her name!) from Tourism New Zealand, and Che Tamahori (no connection to Lee that I could tell) from web dev company Shift, talk about the award-winning success of their 100% Pure New Zealand campaign, which was a total campaign but centred on the web.

Pertinent points for anyone considering a web strategy – which should be just about anybody:

• authenticity was a key part of what their target audiences (regular FIT – Free Independent Travellers) were looking for. An important part of the New Zealand brand.
• Did you know that Namibia and Vietnam are among the new competitors to NZ for the tourism dollar? Particularly in terms of ‘undiscovered territory’.
• “The internet is an advertising channel. The website is not.” An important distinction, which apparently the Aussies don’t understand – their current “where the bloody hell are you?” site has a copy of their TVC creative and little else.
• Internet use is trending upwards across all decision-making processes
• Shift have been working with Tourism NZ for several years, and the long term relationship leads to an “ever deepening understanding” of the end user for the website. Which is a neat idea, I think.
• Looking forward, Shift and Tourism NZ are planning to harness the big trends shaping the web at the moment, including syndication – they already syndicate content to regional portals like NorthlandNZ.com – and visitor generated content, for instance travel blogs.
• Shift is a very design-focused company, so it’s really exciting to hear them place equal emphasis on usability and community.
• Some numbers: 4 million registered users a year; 100,000 users have registered to use the interactive travel planner since its launch in Sept 05.
• Promotion has been solely through natural search optimisation – there’s been no paid optimisation and no paid keywords on search engines.