In the midst of awards season, this is an honour you don’t want to win: Small Business Web Coach Craig Dewe has published a list of the “5 Worst Web Designers in the World.”

Dewe’s list includes “professional” sites with nested tables, frames, scrolling marquees, flashing backgrounds, and lots of other outdated graphical tricks that novice designers played with in the 90s – the difference being, of course, that these companies want to take your money for their web design “skills.” Read the rest of this entry »

Never underestimate the power of blogs. A decade ago, few knew they existed; now they number in the millions. If you still think blogs are just online journals, think again.

Companies have been using blogs for SEO-friendly marketing for several years now and have since expanded these efforts into paid posting ventures through companies like PayPerPost. Through third parties, advertisers pay bloggers to write about their companies and services, generating valuable marketing buzz in cyberspace.

PayPerPost, founded in 2006, is one of the leaders of the blog advertising and paid posting revolution. Qualifying bloggers – known as Posties – can sign up to write sponsored content on a wide range of subjects specific to their target audiences. Each post is reviewed for quality, length and requested features (advertisers may request a video, a link, or other tidbits) and Posties receive Paypal payments for completed assignments. Read the rest of this entry »

For all 20 of these well-known airlines, there were no failing grades (F). This isn’t necessarily a compliment towards the branding and livery design so much as an acknowledgement that, however misguided in design, each of these airlines is well-recognised on a national, if not international, scale. They’re lucky – multi-million dollar marketing departments can save a lot of egg faces when it comes to brand recognition. That’s what money buys.

What money doesn’t necessarily buy is style, design or a greater sense of purpose for a brand. The airlines that didn’t do so well in our investigation failed on at least some of these points, sometimes mightily. Whether they were remiss in acknowledging nationalism in their brand or were simply too boring design-wise, some big-budget airlines didn’t make the grade when it came to livery branding. Read the rest of this entry »

There were, at last count, over 9 million Google search results for “blog directory.” This speaks not only to the popularity of blogs themselves, but the mainstream, money-making possibilities associated with blogs. We’re talking “making money by NOT writing a blog” here – directories, listings, paid blogging, blog ads, etc. So what does it take to stand out from this crowd?

Unique selling points have always been the key to success in business, but that’s certainly not the only way; look at the millions of dot com copycats out there hawking the same or similar products (Wikipedia and eBay’s competitors come to mind, although we also freely acknowledge these guys were not necessarily “firsts” in their respective fields). But uniqueness DOES count for something too, as does connecting with an audience, and rssHugger – a blog directory and rss reader – accomplishes both. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past two months we’ve examined commercial airline branding and its impact on airline livery. We’ve seen some horrible, incongruous designs (China Southern Airlines), outdated looks (American Airlines) and liveries that were just plain bland and unimaginative (Air France). We’ve also come down pretty hard on airlines that disregard national identities (Lufthansa) and those that just, for whatever reason, never quite got the branding right, let alone the livery (All Nippon Airways).

Now that those sixteen featured airline liveries are behind us, what does work for distinctive, unique airline livery and airline branding? The four commercial airlines in the last part of our series offer a glimpse at how airline liveries and corporate identities can successfully merge to create a unique and unifying brand identity. Read the rest of this entry »