Very interesting news that Google will now use page load times as part of their Quality Score. Google is siting the following reasons, “Two reasons: First, users have the best experience when they don’t have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate.”
Flash developers and flashurbators beware…time to optimize your Flash files and approach to web design.
This is so damn cool. According to ECO-SAFE ”The Merit Badge is a symbol of hope & love for the world we all live in. It allows all of us with a website or blog to make a positive impact on the environment by simply placing it on our websites. The Merit Badge offers website guests alternatives to printing pages. The number of web pages printer per day are staggering.”
It’s a cool idea, a great concept, and you get FREE music from iTunes for participating.
Please someone for the love of god explain this campaign to me? It just won the Cyber and Titanium Grand Prix at the Cannes festival and I do not understand why.
I don’t understand how Ticketmaster continues to operate in the way they do. In this country we are anti-monopoly. The government will strike you down if you even think about owning too much market share. Yet, Ticketmaster continues to be ONLY viable option for tickets. How can this be?
Let me give you 3 recent examples of why Ticketmaster sucks:
Ordered Neil Diamond tickets for a gift. Chose the option for Retail Location Pickup; that means I can go to a Ticketmaster location and have them print out my tickets. I go the nearest location, which is inside a Macy’s. The system is down/will not work. After waiting for 30 minutes plus, I finally ask the associate, can I take a look at the “terminal?” She says, “go for it.” It took me all of 5 minutes to fix the problem for her/them, which allowed them to print off my tickets. Here’s the kicker…Ticketmaster charged me a $1.00 convenience charge to pick up the tickets. Shouldn’t they have paid me?
Ordered Peter Frampton tickets for myself. Chose the option for Retail Location Pickup. Between the time I ordered the tickets and went to pick them up, Discover (my credit card of choice and the one I used to buy the tickets) had issued me a new care and new number. I think you know where this is going. I present my receipt, my driver’s license, and my new Discover credit card to the associate. Despite ALL of this documentation they can not print my tickets, because I did not have my old Discover card with the my old number. After dealing with them for over 30 minutes in person and via phone, Ticketmaster agrees to send me my tickets via United States Postal Service.
Ordered Ringo Starr tickets as a Father’s Day gift for my dad. The concert is in NY, I live in MN. I use the Retail Location Pickup locator on Ticketmaster’s site. It shows me that the nearest location is a Macy’s about 5 miles from my house. Taking my lessons learned from the above situations, I come prepared with my license, receipt, and credit card that I used to purchase the tickets. I present all 3 and of course we have a problem. Ticketmaster locations in Minnesota are unable to print tickets for events in New York. The associate’s recommendation was to pick them up in person in New York. Seriously. Think about that. Sir, can you please drive 1,800 miles to pickup your tickets? So I call Ticketmaster who agrees to ship them to me via UPS for a charge of $14.50. Now this gets better. On the day of the show, I receive an alert from Ticketmaster to my iPhone. The alert informs me the concert is canceled and I will receive a refund. I then receive a follow up email that says “Your credit card will automatically be credited the ticket price and convenience charges, and should post to your account within 7 to 10 business days. Please note, the $3.00 per order processing fee and any ticketFast or UPS delivery charges are non-refundable.” So the $14.50 that I shouldn’t have had to pay in the first time is now a sunk cost and Ticketmaster keeps their order processing fee.
If you are like me, then you’re saying to yourself, “Adam, if you think Ticketmaster sucks, and they screwed you over the first two times, why did you go to the well again?” Good question. Because there was NO other alternative.
In total, for all 3 transactions Ticketmaster charged me the following:
Tickets: $392.00
Building Facility Charges: $4.00
Convenience Charges: $55.30
Order Processing Charge: $11.34
UPS Delivery: $14.50
Retail Location Pickup: $1.00
Tax: $2.78
That’s a grand total of $480.92, of which $67.64 (14.06%) are Ticketmaster fees. This is complete insanity. But, I ask you, what can I do? If I want to see Coldplay, Wicked, Elton John, etc. I have to go through Ticketmaster. Again, I ask how is this possible? Given the obvious monopoly play they have here, it’s not a surprise that they don’t really care about providing real customer care.
I’m open to ideas and suggestions on what to do in the future and how to shine more light on Ticketmaster’s short-comings. Thoughts?
Seriously. I love a guy who is willing to tell it like it is, not kiss client/company ass, and able to show you how his point of view is correct.
Recently he spoke at the Association of National Advertisers’ Integrated Marketing Conference and in classic Jaffe form he found several giant companies to roast for their lack of basic marketing comprehension regarding today’s new consumer landscape.
The funny part of all of this is that AdAge’s Brightcove player is so lame that it won’t give you the embed code. Thus, you’ll have no choice but to visit AdAge’s site to view the video. Thank you AdAge for proving that you don’t get the concept of having a conversation.
This was really good freaking work. Good team, great collaboration, and had measurable success. This was one of the coolest projects because Starcom let us impact the type of media they bought as opposed to just buying the media based on CPM.
This is what you have to love about kids. Cora, at 14 months, climbing a tree. Well she had a little bit of help getting up there, but she’s standing up there all by herself.
I’m honestly not sure what to say or think about a site that says: “MyWonderfulLife.com is a free on-line service to help you plan and personalize your own funeral, so it reflects the way you lived. Becoming a member at MyWonderfulLife.com does not take the place of a Will, which is very important, but allows you to eliminate the guesswork for your loved ones during a difficult time.”
It’s a little freaky, but yet I can see why the site makes sense, serves a need, and could take off. Crazy.
