Editable Marketing: Burger King Attacks

Pinch me I think I'm dreaming. I know I read about it in Forbes. I wrote about it on Hardcore Direct Marketing but now I just got a confirmation after seeing the ad on Comedy Central. Burger King is now a X Box Video Game.

And it looks GOOD. That's what scares me. It looks like its worth playing. The deal is that you can buy it for just $3.99 when you order a meal in the drive thru. They put a lot of work into the graphics, here... see for yourself.

Burger King has its own game site:
http://www.bkgamer.com/

The quality is over the top. But my BIG QUESTION IS WHY? I mean the level of professionalism is high end. The pre-loader for the Flash demo made me say... dayum. Then there is the issue of the screen savers and desktop art that you can download. Its all high end stuff.

But this crosses the line of advertising. Now we are getting past the 30 second spot and extending that time limit to ... infinity. In the right hands this commercial can last and last. And with the combination of a X Box 360 and a 20 something this is a pretty tight relationship. This will ensure more sales and return customers.

I know they said they were going to do it. But I was kinda hoping they were kidding. But its official and this is for real folks!!
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Article written by Ted Cantu, freelance correspondent for FASCUBE, The Fashion Culture Beauty Network. Cantu handles online marketing, copywriting, graphics, SEO - SEM, Blogging, Podcasting and can be found on his home site of www.911copywriters.com. Cantu is located in Walled Lake, Michigan.

Establish Yourself As An Expert - PRONTO!

Sadly, most of us don't do the basics, "because we don't have the time"......

But listen up to what http://www.smallbiztrends.com/ has to say on the subject:

"28. Get listed on local authority websites. Many cities will have a large, centrally operated online business directory. A link from a local government site (.gov) will boost your visibility and build your search engine rankings. Often that requires no more effort than doing a GoogleSearch for “(your city) business directory” and emailing the webmaster."

Look up this article for more information on this valuable topic:
Tips for Promoting Your Site — 99 of Them

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Ted Cantu Fascube 2006

Have You Geo-Targeted Yourself Yet?

One of my associates was complaining about his monthly full page ad bills, yellow page ads and we made some interesting discoveries:

1. Out of the five locations he was only listed once in
Yahoo Online Yellow Pages, (1 location)
2. The full page ads helped miscatorgorize his business.
Since the periodical that he advertised in talked mostly
about martini culture this actually hurt his presence online.
Some directories had mistakenly posted his business as a
martini bar! When in actuality it was a clothing business.
This was a costly mistake.

Without taking these necessary precautions his business was not getting the kind of recognition that it deserved. Now that is just the basics of getting your business positioned in your local geo target. Here is the really interesting part.

A lot of businesses neglect doing this simple thing. Yet, this is essential for your online success.
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Article written by Ted Cantu, freelance correspondent for FASCUBE, The Fashion Culture Beauty Network. Cantu handles online marketing, copywriting, graphics, SEO - SEM, Blogging, Podcasting and can be found on his home site of www.911copywriters.com. Cantu is located in Walled Lake, Michigan.

TED CANTU SEZ: "I LOVE ADRANTS"

Folks I have a new hero to announce.
Steve Hall of Adrants has the guts to say everything I would like to... if I had the guts !

This blog pokes fun at some of the more outlandish antics that go on in our advertising culture. It is informative and eye opening and worth a look. Even if you are not involved with advertising this can really be a 101 course on how your marketing messages are percieved.

There is a great podcast that goes along with this too and you can find it here....
http://www.hearthis.com/index.php/features/steve_hall_of_adrants/

** If you want my honest opinion you will learn more here in a few hours than you will with many of todays top marketing books. Its insightful, its hilarious and its dead on.
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Ted Cantu - Fascube - 2006

HARD TECH UPDATE: BLOG PLATFORMS

ANYONE RE-THINKING THEIR BLOG?

Check this out. According to the guys at: http://www.businessblogconsulting.com/
The reason to switch over to WordPress was obvious. Here is what they said.

"Because WordPress is such a popular blogging platform, it’s easy to find developers to work on it. It also certainly doesn’t hurt that WordPress is written in PHP — the most popular programming language on the planet!

WordPress is easily extensible through the use of plugins. Many hundreds of plugins exist already. It’s also pretty easy (if you’re a developer) to write your own plugins. That’s a lot more elegant that directly hacking the WordPress code base.

Maintaining inlinks to former URLs can often be accomplished just by making the “post slugs” (filenames) consistent with the old site then adding a rewrite rule to the .htaccess file that maps to the new URL structure. If that’s not possible, you can always create a comprehensive list of 301 (permanent-style) redirects to add to your .htaccess file.

So I made my case for running WordPress on non-blogs, based primarily on the positive impact on SEO that you’ll get out of doing so. This rounds out the reasons for switching to include compelling reasons beyond just search rankings."

Is that something or what?

THE BREAKDOWN
So of you want to get more out of your site and be seen this is the way to go. You will want to make sure that you are using whatever technology the search engine spiders are using. This makes the most sense so you are talking back and forth with them. Now... I do like Blogger and Beta Blogger because it is owned by Google. So its good to have a fair mix of blogs working with you so you can be seen on the web.

The correct combinations of blog software, RSS Aggregators, Podcasting shows and the right distribution networks are going to ensure your success. There is no "right" formula for doing this. But you definately can get some real search engine attention with just the right amount of "pinging". This new material on using WordPress gives you an edge.

Its worth checking out.
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Ted Cantu is the creator of www.911copywriters.com