How is Web 2.0 advertising different from before? So far, advertisers are simply increasing the amount of bandwidth used by their ads, rather than increasing their sophistication . People using advertising intelligently will not believe that Web 2.0 just means more.
I want to get learnit lists out to potential sponsors who can use learnit in the place of their existing web 1.0 style advertising. We need to identify products or services whose target audience matches learnit list users, or who have sympathetic brand values. I was thinking about the HSBC campaign - the world’s local bank, or Mastercard for example. We can then recreate the widget as a banner advert, decked in as much of the sponsoring brand as an advertiser requests, but showing the content of the words an individual user is learning on a specific day, as well as their brand (and ours, of course).
So, who do I talk to? Do I cold call individual marketing departments asking for the person responsible for Web 2.0 advertising? I know the joylessness of cold calling from a couple of media sales jobs (taken to learn how to do it). Perhaps a better approach would be to contact their advertising agencies? Now surely I must know somebody in advertising? I wonder if anyone who took the same Uni course as me, Culture & Communication at Lancaster University, ended up in an ad agency? We have potential contacts with an online advertising agency in the Czech Republic, but I really need to talk to some people in London.
We meet with our business partner for the first time today, I wonder what he’ll be like… if he has any fatal flaws disguised by Internet only communication. Will his spoken English be as good as his written English? Well, we need to use as much Czech as possible to start with.
We’re now exactly two weeks into the project. M has done a remarkable job with the programming; there are some tweaks, but learnit is working better than I would have hoped. Now it’s up to J & I to turn his talent into opportunity.
