snappy urls ...

nope, never seen you before

 What do you do log in if you're already a member?

And yes, I realise the site might have dropped a cookie on my PC last time I was there ... but what if I'm using a different device?

worth considering?

 

Ad spend well spent?

 Does anyone know what this means? I don't - and it appeared on my X page.

hard to switch when you're already there

This one of those 'intrusive' ads [the ones that block the website it is shown over] you must click on - somewhere - to close it. That is bad enough for me to feature hers, but it's not the reason ... 

... no, the reason is that I was surfing on Google Chrome. Ho hum 😏

oh dear, who could have seen that coming?

 

scary ... or stupid?

 

incredible/incredable

How credible is an organization that can't spell credibility?*

* This was part of a post/ad on X by Kwasi Kwarteng. 

better than @noreply I suppose

This is a strange one to me. Why not monitor replies to this email? if nothing else, if someone replies it tell you they've received and read the thing. And why bother setting up the third level domain for 'emails' and then not using it. 

marketoonist - always funny because they're true

 

e-commerce is not 'direct to consumer'

It's a bug bear of mine, but DtC is when a manufacturer/producer sell direct [ie no one else is involved] to the end user.

I read this in an article about a successful clothes designer ...

' ... her direct-to-consumer fashion brand, designs and produces female apparel and accessories. Referring to the company’s launch, she told me, “I had no idea how to make clothes.”

She does now, impressively, with multiple manufacturers, a thriving community, staff, and eager customers. She shared her story in our recent conversation.'

Note: 'with multiple manufacturers'. If you buy something from a manufacturer [even if you had the items made-to-order exclusively for you] and then sell it to the end user, by whatever means [eg online or physical shop], you are a retailer. Selling purely online does not make you direct to consumer - your website is the link between the manufacturer and the customer. If you want to be pedantic; you are the manufacturer's customer.

Note: I do not mean to decry the success of this business or its founder - my objection is to the term used in the article to describe the nature of her business. Indeed, her business started by her selling items that she had made [manufactured] on Instagram - that was DtC ... but as soon as she bought in stock she became a retailer.

So why do so many companies declare themselves DtC? Well, partly because it sounds sexier than ‘retail’, but mainly because DtC is considered to be a ‘tech’ business (don’t ask) by investors - so you’re more likely to get ridiculous amounts of funding from the 'tech bros' if you identify as DtC. The irony - amongst other things - is that DtC is nigh on impossible to scale up, so creating sufficient profit to pay off investors is pretty much zero.

how long?

I'm going to assume this is accurate [though I would like to see the research methodology], in which case I find the results somewhat alarming ... yep, that's nearly seven hours a day watching video 😱

Footnote: for some attempt at objectivity, I considered my own time watching videos online. Even at my maximum use [eg watching a film, researching something on YouTube, some news, 'funny' video links from X] I couldn't get close to seven hours for one day, let alone every day. Most days I weigh in at under an hour.
 

reviewing the review process ...

 As a rule, I do not give feedback or reviews. So when I got this email I was about to delete it when I thought 'what product s that?' So  I clicked on the link and got this:

Well, that was the end of the road for me. But - and here is the reason I've included it here - I think that would be the end of the road for most folk. 

The lesson? If you want reviews, make it easy for folk to give them - the more barriers, the less chance of success.

effective ad spend?

Platforms such as Spotify and YouTube offer subscription access which includes no ads. So - pretty much by definition - folks who access these sites 'for free' are either mean or they can't really afford the subscriptions. 

And yet the majority of ads I see on such platforms [I don't pay for subscriptions as I do not use them enough] are for luxury brands or expensive products that are way - and I mean way - beyond my budget. 

I raise this issue because I'd like to know how marketers buying these ads are identifying and/or selecting [or even if] their target markets when spending their ad budgets.

the way things were

This design style is what most websites looked like 1996 - 99ish. 

This one was live as of the date of this post. The content was last updated in 2024 [but not the design 😏]