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10. Smoking causes premature ageing

Don’t want to look 88 when you’re 50? Stop smoking. This graphic image creates a clever yet subtle hint to the average smoker.

9. Liking isn’t helping

A blow to social media but candid, this one gets a thumbs up from a marketing perspective. Liking an organisation on social media won’t help, however, volunteering will.

8. Neglected children are made to feel invisible

Neglected children feel invisible. Just because you don’t hit does not mean it’s not child abuse.  Children need love and attention; emotional abuse is just as damaging as physical abuse.

7. Think of both sides

Frightening but not impossible. Car accidents are one of the leading causes of death in young adults and children in South Africa. Notice the rear-view mirror as the main subject matter here.

6. Don’t talk while he drives

There’s a reason why phone calls are banned while driving. With roads more jammed than ever, and road rage becoming an everyday norm, being distracted on a call is a recipe for disaster. We know that cellphones make our lives convenient and help us stay in touch with our loved ones when we need to, but if you know they’re driving, don’t put them, and everyone else on the road, at risk. Drivers: use your head before using your phone. Pedestrians are also encouraged not to text and walk.

5. Air Pollution

Air pollution kills 60, 000 people a year. ‘Nuff said. This almost-3D art is used specifically to emphasise the realism of the issue being addressed here.

4. Bullets leave bigger holes than you think

This ad sent chills to our spines, however, the truth hurts. It is a harsh reality we have to come to terms with, and all we can do is try to raise awareness. This kind of advertising makes you stop and wonder what you’re doing to save the world from cruel, cruel people. Are we doing enough?

3. If you don’t feed them, who will??

This ad really resonated with us. We don’t know whether it was seeing those cute baby bottoms covered in dirt or that the pig doesn’t know what’s going on when those eight babies flock to feed. Children deserve to be well nourished and well fed. Concordia Children’s Services has conceptualised the epitome of child abuse not just on a violent level, but on a wellness level, too.

2. Women need to be seen as equal

Well done to Ogilvy & Mather Dubai on this one.  The ad agency used genuine Google searches to expose the prevalence of sexism and discrimination against women. These were all searches dated the 9th of March 2013. It’s shocking that people would actually use those phrases. The phrases have now been removed from the search engine.

1. Guess which one?

Wow, we didn’t know that Kinder Joy was banned in America, did you? Apparently, two children died in the UK two days after eating the eggs, and another three died after choking on toys found inside the edible eggs. Still, children can choke on any small device or toy. If you had to ask us, guns present a worse danger than a plastic egg containing chocolate and a toy, which, we might add, is sealed off for the child’s protection.

A logo is a symbol of a brand; it is the way the brand is known and needs to define the values that your company enforces. Along with hard work, lots of time, and bags of money, employers invest a lot in what they believe in - a vision. When that vision becomes misleading or plain offensive, heads are on the chopping board. Here are some corporate logos that went horribly wrong:

London Olympics 2012 Logo 

You would think that a global organisation knew better, but they didn’t. This £400,000 project was catastrophic! We all knew that the London Olympics in 2012 would cause controversy, but this was far worse than what we anticipated. Some spectators commented that it looked like a humorous act of fornication between family members of The Simpsons (notice Lisa’s head where the Olympic logo is seen), while other critics expressed that the logo bears resemblance to the swastika. Iran threatened to withhold its patronage because they believed it spelled out the word “Zion”, meaning “Jerusalem” (in biblical terms).

The logo seemed to be an epic fail.

Catholic Church's Archdiocesan Youth Commission

Wow - we could not have picked a logo more inappropriate for a Catholic organisation. This does not need any interpretation - audiences, sex offenders or not, Catholic or Muslim, all see the same thing.

The perfect example of a logo gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Arlington Pediatric Center

What, another one? Are these logos approved by Jimmy Savile or something? This is just becoming way too creepy for us to comment on.

Sun Rise Sushi

The concept of this logo was supposed to be a sun, rising behind a Japanese tea house. The outcome was, well, not as tranquil and appealing as they intended.

A-Style

While the logos seen here were company oversights, this was not one of them. This was an intentional logo and was designed even before the clothing was. The A-Style company was fond of guerrilla marketing, which means using unconventional ways of advertising with little budget to spend. The tactics of this form of advertising allow for a memorable and personal brand image.

Sherwin Williams

At the time,  this one seemed like a good idea, but it is a bit psychotic. The paint supplying company had a vision to cover the whole world in red paint. However, this wasn’t the best choice. The logo sort of looks like Sherwin Williams wants to drench us all in blood. 

Locum

Locum is a Swedish property management group. Guess the language barrier is to blame here.

Kids Exchange

We don’t know what is to blame here, the full capital letters or the character spacing?  Either way, still a fail in our books.

Junior Jazz Dance Class

What appears to be two figures dancing also resembles the risqué silhouette of a bare woman. Did no one else see this before it was published?

Mama’s Baking

Something’s cooking in her oven?  

Leap Into It

Dogs literally leap into things – puddles, lakes, their owners’ arms. And they don’t hesitate too much about taking something they want. Now, we’re not saying you should be reckless, but humans often overthink things. If there’s someone you really want to meet, send them an email, or – even better – call them up. People are usually happy to offer mentorship to young, up-and-coming people in their field, as long they’re humble and willing to learn. 

Chase after what you want like it’s a gob-soaked tennis ball and you’re a Labrador Retriever. 

You’ve only got one life – so leap! 

Be Honest

A dog doesn’t wag his tail because he thinks you want him to. 

A dog wags his tail because he’s happy. 

Woodrow Wilson said, "If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience." Dogs are honest about the way they feel about themselves, and they are honest about how they feel about others. People think that networking is about being fake – about trying to convince people that you are something you’re not. But that’s not how we see networking at all. To us, networking is about finding your tribe. And you won’t find it if you’re not honest with yourself and with others. 

So be honest about what you love. 

Be honest about what angers you. 

Then go out and find people who feel the same way. 

Let The Past Go

Dogs live in the present. They don’t lug the days they’ve lived around with them like millstones, and they don’t dwell on bad experiences. 

Holding grudges is bad for business, and it doesn’t affect the person who wronged you – it just poisons your own life. 

If someone has wronged you, distance yourself from them, but don’t hold a grudge. 

Let it go.

Be Happy to See People

If you were as happy to see the people you work with every day as your dog is to see you when you come home, your ability to build positive relationships would be out of this world. 

Showing people appreciation makes them feel valued and more confident about their work. 

And, when it comes to meeting new people, wagging your tail counts for a lot. 

So listen to people as though they are the most interesting people in the world. Remember people’s names. Smile more. 

When you’re networking, it’s far more important to be interested than interesting. 

This is especially true of website design, the success of which is ultimately determined by how many people make regular use of a site.

Recently, there has been a shift in the design world towards empathic design – i.e., design that takes the human element into account.

Don Norman says it plainly in his 2003 TED Talk about design and emotion: pleasant things work better.

But what a particular person finds pleasant will depend on the unique way in which he or she experiences the world.

The question is, how can you tailor your website’s design to make it pleasant for users?

It’s simple, really.

Stop treating them like users.

Treat them, rather, like human beings.

Image Credit: pixabay.com

Designer Paul Bennett was confronted with this challenge when he was asked to assess patient experience at a busy hospital. How did he go about evaluating this?

Well, he didn’t talk to patients.

He didn’t conduct detailed surveys.

And he didn’t record a single piece of data on a spreadsheet.

Instead, he got one of the members of his team to lie in a hospital bed all day, recording the experience.

By putting themselves (almost literally) in the shoes of the patients, the design team were able to come up with empathic solutions to patient problems.

Things like making the ceiling beautiful to look at, changing floor design to indicate the threshold of a patient’s private room, adding rear view mirrors to gurneys to allow for conversation between hospital staff and patients, and placing whiteboards next to patients’ beds so that relatives could scrawl messages on them.

These may seem like small adjustments, but they made an enormous difference to the experience of patients in the hospital.

Empathic design means understanding how your clients feel when they use your product.

It’s also about seeing the world through their eyes.

In his TED Talk, Paul Bennett tells the story of a designer at Ikea who was asked to design a storage system for children. As a form of research, he literally sat underneath tables, crawled around objects, and spent hours lying on the ground.

In other words, he tried to see the world from a child’s perspective.

In the end, he came up with a system very different from the shelves, tall boys, and drawers that adults are inclined to use. It works because it’s a system a child would have imagined.

Image Credit: jaapdesign.wordpress.com

Empathic design is design that imagines how its users will feel interacting with it.

It is design that is tweaked to allow for the emotions of human beings.

By incorporating empathy into website design, sites can be created that feel like home to users, that encourage them to return, and, ultimately, that generate more revenue for business owners.

So ask yourself: is your website empathic?

The answer to that question could spell the difference between failure and success.

You can watch Don Norman's TED Talk, Three Ways Good Design Makes You Happy, here.

Wassily Kandinsky’s 148th Birthday, 16/12/2014

Wassily Kandinsky is widely recognised as the father of the abstract art movement, viewing colour as emotional rather than representational. The Google doodle created in his honour reflects his love for hard, clear lines, his playfulness, and his unique use of colour. We love it not only because it’s beautiful, but because it’s a true glimpse into Kandinsky’s contribution to the world of art.

Birgit Cullberg’s 106th birthday, 03/08/2014

Birgit Cullberg, a pre-eminent Swedish choreagrapher, was known for her fusion of ballet and modern dance and her experimental, emotional style of choreography. The Google doodle that celebrates her birthday beautifully exemplifies her poise and intensity with its clever shading and dark borders. Cullberg herself is captured in motion, perhaps representing the longevity of her ballets, which are still performed today.

Raymond Loewy’s 120th birthday, 05/11/2013

Raymond Loewy is known as the father of industrial design. He was so fascinated by trains that he wrote a book about them called The Locomotive: Its Aesthetics. A man who was always on the move, Loewy penned an autobiography, lectured, and founded several design firms. There is, therefore, no better machine than the train to represent him. We love how the train in the Google doodle is clearly moving at great speed, and that its sketched and shaded aesthetic encapsulates Loewy’s approach to life as a constant work-in-progress.

Diana Wynne Jones’s 80th birthday, 16/08/2014

Diana Wynne Jones wrote more than thirty highly acclaimed books for children. Her stories, magical and entrancing, continue to inspire and entertain children (and wise adults) all over the world. The Google doodle designed to honour her life is as magical as her fiction, offering a little window into the imagination of a great artist.

Johannes Kepler’s 442nd birthday, 27/12/2013

A web marketing company must consider different aspects of identity, namely personal, relational, social, collective, and superficial, and these relate to certain important values within a person’s life, including their dreams and goals, friendships, perceived popularity among peers, and others.

When we consider that the main reason that people seem to share on social media is to entertain others, this can offer a well of shared marketing ideas. Post what is relevant and interesting to people and you’re doing a good job on social platforms. Coming in second on why people share appears to be to educate others. Following this is sharing what is a reflection of who they are; supporting a cause; and giving others some insight into a specific person on their friends list, in that order.

If you’d like to learn more about the relationship between people’s identities and their sharing habits on social media, take a look at the below infographic, where frac.tl conducted a survey on more than 1000 people to learn more about this connection:

Images credit: marketingprofs.com

Looking for a web marketing company that understands your needs as well as those of your customers? You’ve found the right one here – Just Perfect knows what you, and your clients, want, and we deliver with every one of our services.

So why does Facebook advertising and other social marketing work so well? There are numerous reasons, but we thought we’d share this thought-provoking infographic on the darker side of social networks – addiction.

Facebook addiction is a dependence that many of us can relate to. Since its inception ten years ago, Facebook has attracted an extraordinary amount of people to it. While it may not have been the first social media site ever, it is the most popular one around the world, and truly did change the way we use social media.

It is, therefore, no surprise that there are those of us who genuinely have some form of dependence on the site.

Not only is Facebook the most used social media network, but is also one of the most used websites around the globe. 

If you’ve been wondering if you’re a Facebook addict, ask yourself if you do any of the following: 

Here are some ways to get on the wagon and lead a social media-clean lifestyle (or at least a managed lifestyle):

Images credit: Who is Hosting This?

While there are very few enforceable rules on social media (as with everything on the Internet), there is a degree of etiquette, and straying from the social decorum on these sites will annoy people pretty quickly. This spells bad news for social media marketing for businesses, as less followers equals less conversions and revenue. If you’re unsure how to behave on each of the most popular social media channels (it can be confusing to keep up), have a look at the infographics below from Gryffin Media.

All you have ever wanted to know about how to behave appropriately on social media, now in these handy infographics:

Image credits: Gryffin Media

Perhaps one of the best ways that this marketing tool is used, is to gently remind ecommerce users to pick up their abandoned shopping carts. Abandoned carts are the bane of the ecommerce store owner’s life, and any online shop keeper who is not constantly and actively searching for ways to convince customers to come back and check-out is either out of their minds, or has found the miracle cure for abandoned cart disease and is hogging it for themselves. If you’re unsure whether you should be putting money into remarketing for your online business, have a look at the infographic below on just how useful remarketing is for all businesses online, not only ecommerce stores:

For digital marketers, one can further the comparison of Google to a mob kingpin; when a website receives the kiss of death from Google’s search algorithm, you’re as good as dead and almost guaranteed to never get back into its good books.

But despite the terror that digital marketing companies sometimes feel towards Google, we love the big ol’ search engine and thought we’d explore just how far it has come since its inception in 1997.

Like most great enterprises, Google started out with humble beginnings – in a garage. If you think about the massive growth the company has achieved since then, it’s quite astounding. There are currently around 877 billion (that’s billion, with a “b”) searches and 191.5 million unique visitors to Google sites.

Gmail was first introduced in 2004 (only a decade ago) and from this point on, Google set itself apart, notably when it offered clients 1GB of free email storage, which, back then, was pretty much infinite. They have since increased this to 10GB.

Since the arrival of Gmail, Google has provided countless apps and products that benefit both individual users and digital marketers alike, but Google Talk and Google Voice are possible the most important of these. Gtalk was a much-needed instant messaging service and Google Voice allowed users to make Voice-Over IP calls from Gmail accounts. Together, this amounted to people all over the world being able to communicate with one another instantly and for free. Disregarding every other app or product Google has created, this alone would have been enough to set them up as the powerhouse company of our age.

This ability to communicate effectively and freely has, true to Google’s style, been improved greatly over the years, and Google Hangouts currently allows for conference calls world-wide. Users pay only for the data they use.

Internet users are becoming more demanding and search engines like Google are doing their best to keep up with these demands. Content writers, therefore, need to create content that is aimed at two parties –search engines and users. A business’s content needs to be search engine optimised in order for search engines to rank it highly in organic search results, and it needs to be of a high quality for the people that are viewing it. There is no point in having an optimised page that has a high bounce rate due to poor or boring quality. Incidentally, this is one of the many reasons that black hat SEO techniques do not work in the long term.

  Image credit: Minerva Copywriting

The demand for quality online content may soon exceed supply. Content marketers are not hard to come by, but good content marketers are. If you find a digital marketing agency that is able to produce quality work, you should hold onto it like an aging 80s glam rock star holds into his leopard print headband. 

Their audience, no matter the demographic, is showing less and less interest in what they broadcast and more interest in what they see online. This also presents another challenge to advertisers in this sphere. If people are disengaging from television during shows, they’re certainly doing it during adverts. How, then, do advertisers appeal to people using a second screen?

This is where the most creative marketers are being rewarded. There is a need for content that will encourage people to engage online with a company. Unlike with traditional media like TV and radio, there is no wanton subjecting of adverts to people online. True, this does occur, but sites that fling adverts in users’ faces at every free space of a web page get punished by search engines. Therefore, it is vital to give people a reason to put up with your advertising. How do you do this? You make entertaining, informative and engaging content. Below is an infographic that gives some pretty interesting details on the behaviours of consumers and the second screen, and what this means now, and in the future, for marketers in all media:

There are a few tricks that all online marketers use to make content more appealing, because a wide appeal is ultimately what we all want to achieve with our work.

No matter how entertaining your posts are, you still need to create a way to initially pull people in to read them. This can be tricky, however there are tricks to employ that can help with this. The first is, of course, your headline. A headline is as important as the article itself, because your words are like dust in the wind if you cannot entice people, through your headline, to read them. One of the ways is to appeal to people’s emotions. These can be either positive or negative, such as “improve your life with these simple every day tricks” or “things that are bad for your health that you do every day”. Similarly, you can always pair this with the trusty numbered list: “6 types of irritating colleagues at work”.

Another way to look at the importance of emotion is to use it in your posts. If you are not invested in your content, people will know, and it will come across as flat as it is.

Further, another issue your content may have is that it does not provide an entertainment or informative function for your audience. People will share posts that they find insightful, funny, or useful.

Moreover, your content may be all of the above, but you could be targeting the wrong audience. You may want to consider doing research to find out who your target audience is, and what they want to read and hear.

We have always had the option of shopping on weekends, but who wants to spend their precious free time standing in queues?

Because everybody needs sleep and have time away from work, shops that are open 24/7 were no more than a fanciful wish until the advent of ecommerce.

There are so many benefits to having an ecommerce store, it is a wonder that some businesses have not invested in one. Providing an online space to purchase creates tremendous benefits for businesses and clients.

First off, the cost of an ecommerce store is much, much less than a physical store, and the return on investment is well worth it.

Moreover, before people are purchasing, they’re doing research on a product and where they can get it. This isn’t new; it has been a part of the buying cycle practically since trade was conceived. Except now, people are conducting this research online. By providing an online store, the difference between research and actually purchasing is merely a few clicks of the mouse. Otherwise, a client may decide to buy an item, but when the time comes to hop in their car and spend the time and petrol getting to the store, they may have changed their minds.

Furthermore, you can collect valuable information on the preferences of your clients, and then actively target these preferences to convince them to come back to your ecommerce store again. Imagine if you began asking each person who entered your shop to write down each of the items in the store that they like, and which ones they don’t. You’ll be alienating people very quickly. With online stores, this is the norm, and through this, you can create targeted online marketing campaigns, that will result in more conversions.

In addition, with an ecommerce store, you don’t need to worry about finding the perfect premises. You can rank higher through strategic marketing campaigns. The more effort you put into these, the more you’ll get out of them. If you have a great physical store in a dodgy neighbourhood, there is not much you can do about this, short of moving out.

Except after months of waiting, you’re still nowhere in sight after a Google search. 

SEO is quite deceptive. While it seems to be a simple practice, the reality is that it’s incredibly complex, and if you want results, it’s best left to experts to do.

Keyword research is not a matter of merely having a look on Google Analytics to see what’s trending. It involves a great deal of time and investigation by professionals who know what they’re looking for and have a good idea of what will work.

Once the SEO professional has developed a strategy, it’s up to the copywriter or content marketer to write creative and compelling content around those keywords. The end product needs to be flowing and smooth; it’s incredibly unsatisfying to read an article that has been written only for the purpose of including keywords for the sake of Google’s algorithm. It also needs to be inspired and engaging. You want to attract people to your article; you want them to read it thoroughly; and you want them to move onto more of your content.

Below is an infographic detailing why it’s a good idea to hand SEO practices over to an online marketing agency to do.

Image credit: Paul Marco 

It begins with a whole lot of research into keywords that are commonly used when searching. Single words are more common than phrases of several words, however, being able to capitalise and corner the market on these longer strings is what good SEO  strategists and content marketers do, because it’s not an activity that many businesses take advantage of.

Once these keywords have been researched, that does not mean to say that they should be rapidly stuffed into every article like a dog cramming in a cupcake when he’s left alone. 

The content should flow naturally and not exist solely for the purpose of ranking higher in search engines.

Have a look at the infographic below on just some of the more important considerations that an SEO strategist needs to take into account. 

Image credit: JTPratt Media

As you can see, SEO is not just a hit-and-miss occupation, nor is it a marketing strategy that delivers results instantly, but it does deliver them in a relatively brief time. It is well-worth investing money in a good SEO strategist, because the ROI, if it’s done right, is one of the highest in marketing, across all mediums.

In the midst of the information age, it’s incredible that companies do not employ good online marketing strategies, and no good strategy is without SEO. It’s like broadcasting a radio advert that has no sound. 

There are a few key differences between them. Social media marketing is probably the one that is easier to understand; it is advertising on social media platforms. The most common ones include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+.

The genesis of modern social media is hard to pinpoint, with MySpace, Friendster, Facebook and LinkedIn all being born at roughly the same time. Each of these fulfilled a different function, whether it was to connect with business associates or share music, companies were eager to begin marketing at these untapped, but vast, audiences. Businesses jumped on the bandwagon straight away, and many marketed hard and fast. This wore thin quickly though, and companies were forced to tone it down and offer their clients more than just a hard sell. This is where the landscape of social media marketing is at now. Followers on Facebook expect more than companies incessantly imploring them to “buy buy buy”. They expect rich content and a reason for visiting websites, and if you don’t give that to them, you’re not likely to garner much of a following.

This is where content marketing comes in. It is the meat of the online buffet, and if you don’t have any, or if it’s low quality, people either won’t find it, or if they do, they’ll never return. 

Although the mediums have changed, the basic tenets of content marketing are the same as they’ve always been. There are various online forms, from press releases to blogs, to videos, and the best online marketing company will take advantage of all of them. There are a few guidelines to producing good content, and they follow the same simple principle – focus on the consumer. Provide content that informs, educates or entertains your audience. Not only is this a good way to get people to your site and to stay there, but it’s an excellent way to rank higher in searches as well.

Although the two forms of online marketing are discrete, they cannot truly be separated, as they rely one on another to realise the marketing strategy, and attain the leads and clients that all companies are after.