This was just a super great ad idea!

New technology make it easier for advertisers to connect with their target audience, whether through the Internet, mobile phones, or television. Many of the companies that gave presentations this week at Venture Summit East in Boston, MA, are working on technologies aimed at making it easier for advertisers to reach specific audiences and measuring how well they respond.

Ad network Quattro Wireless, for example, has developed software designed to make it easier for companies to create content for mobile phones with integrated targeted advertising. The company’s new product, GetMobile, automates many of the changes needed to allow mobile phones access to websites, and provides an interface that makes it easy to check the work and make adjustments. Advertisers can use GetMobile to choose a target audience. For example, the advertiser can target users in a specific location or using a particular device. The interface also allows the advertiser to track the success of their ads and to get response rates among particular groups of people.

Joe Cuccinelli, general manager of the GetMobile product, says that the self-service software is a scaled-down version of what the company offers to full-service clients. While the self-service client allows advertisers to target broad areas, such as the United States, the company’s full-service arm can, for example, target the residents of Fargo, IN, or the users of a particular model of Nokia phone. Since carriers have historically kept data about subscribers close to their chests, he says, Quattro Wireless uses data gathered by companies that publish mobile content, such as downloadable games, and information provided by users themselves, through mobile social-networking sites, for example. In many cases, he adds, that data is enough to narrow down the user’s location and demographics. “The industry has said we already have a good base to go off of here to do this type of targeting, so let’s go for it,” Cuccinelli says.

But mobile phones aren’t the only device that advertisers can use to collect information about demographics and behavior. Navic Networks, which also presented at Venture Summit East, is bringing that type of measurement to televisions equipped with digital set-top boxes. John Hoctor, vice president of business development, explained that the company can add interactive overlays to advertisements and programs that invite viewers to respond by taking actions such as voting or agreeing to view a longer ad. Hoctor said in the presentation that the company’s recent release, Admira, allows advertisers to target groups of people based on past viewing behavior, collected from the set-top box. He explained that advertisers who want to target people who watch the news every night would no longer have to wait for the news to serve those ads.  I can’t wait till they can send custom ads straight to my brain.

I was thinking back today about some of the first websites I created in 2001. I had some very unique and interesting ideas back then and one of my favourites, which I wish I still had today was RFIDStatus.com. Most people would think that it sold all types of fancy 2.4 GHz, ISO 15693 RFID hardware or something like that but actually it was a humor spoof site.

The idea was that you could track famous folks through special RFID components installed inside them without their knowledge.

My personal favourite was one is of George Bush looking in the mirror with a bible in one hand declaring that he does not believe in gay marriage. Right after I sold the site it actually changed into a more serious RFID site but now it is just a page of giberrish I wish I kept that one intact.

Non-profit organizations, although directly not pitted against one another in a competitive battle, have their own specific online marketing objectives to meet. Increasing awareness and recognition, growing memberships, boosting non-due revenues, donations and advocacy response are just a few.

The concept of the marketing savvy website design and interactive marketing for non-profit organizations is governed by each specific organization’s objectives and obviously starts with settling each organization’s specific goals. In order to determine them and range them in degree of importance, the following questions have to answered:

• From the point of the organization, what are the areas of best and least value in the programs and information provided by the association?
• What strengths and weaknesses are there in the organization’s process that advance or stifle the organization’s goals?
• How have the organization’s tactical and strategic goals changed over the last five years, and what was the reason for the alteration?

The final step before turning the strategy into fruition through the devised set of marketing tactics including search engine optimization, is figuring out what measurable results of non-profit organization’s development, efficiency, and relationships with its members are to be tracked and what methods of obtaining and comparing information are to be used. Apart from direct deliverables like membership or donations increase, these can be indirect like measuring website traffic, popularity of your online community or even profitability of your members’businesses (they often use non-profit memberships for their brand development and public relations campaigns).

Two dentists have won a second legal battle with French fashion giant Lacoste over the right to use a toothy crocodile on the sign outside their surgery, the government trademark body said on Thursday. Dentists Dr Simon Moore and Dr Tim Rumney said they chose a crocodile for their logo because the reptile is famous for having a mouth full of teeth.

But Lacoste argued that the dentists’ sign was too similar to their own emblem, a green crocodile that adorns millions of polo shirts around the world.  After losing the first round of its trademark fight last year, Lacoste appealed to London’s UK Intellectual Property Office, the official body responsible for patents, trademarks and copyright issues.

The office upheld the original decision, saying that consumers were unlikely to confuse the dental practice and the clothing company. The dentists’ logo includes the words “The Dental Practice” and does not share the Lacoste crocodile’s knobbly back and red tongue.

The Lacoste logo comes from the French tennis player Rene Lacoste, who was nicknamed “The Alligator” or “The Crocodile” in the 1920s. He struck a deal with a manufacturer to make clothes with a crocodile logo.  Good to see the little guy beating up on corporate America once-in-a-while.

Here is one that could cause more than a few problems for the store owner!

I thought this logo was very interesting and funny.