Upon watching the video, I wonder if “It starts with us” will be a campaign slogan moving forward. Along with the video, there are prominent links to President Obama’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. You can sign up for email updates, and there’s already a store to purchase 2012 gear.

The heart of the site looks to be the “Get Involved” page, which features a list of the most current updates involving the campaign, upcoming events, groups, fundraising information, and volunteer information. On the latest updates list, you’ll find the two announcement tweets from President Obama:

From a purely objective standpoint, President Obama’s campaign site is exceptionally well done. It features quick navigation, with a simple layout. As with all sites which rely on donations, the “Donate Now” button is prominently featured without being too in-your-face about it.

Obama’s online presence is believed to be one of the important factors of his victory in 2008. He won the attention of the people through viral campaigns, and becoming a hit on the social networks. If this initial site redesign is any kind of barometer to go by, the same online savvy which benefited the President in 2008 will look to continue during his reelection as well.

If you’re reading this then I’m guessing you know much of the history surrounding Cyber Monday. It was a term coined by Shop.org in 2005, signifying the increase of online shopping during the Monday after Thanksgiving break. Since the term was established, we’ve had CyberMonday.com conveniently placed to let us know of impending deals. The site promotes an honorable pursuit with the Ray M. Greenly Scholarship Fund. A scholarship given to students pursuing an e-commerce career.

So, that’s a small piece of history surrounding Cyber Monday but is it still a factor?

Like so many things in life it depends on who you ask. There is a large congregation of people who call Cyber Monday nothing but a myth. Permuto.com claims it’s a marketing ploy for creating a hype with consumers, and driving them to the online retail arena. Their study shows  the Monday after Thanksgiving isn’t close to being the busiest online shopping day of the year. The greatest holiday sales actually occur between December 5th-15th.

The question now remains, if Cyber Monday isn’t the busiest online shopping day of the year then what’s it’s significance? Turning back to Shop.org, their Executive Director Scott Silverman once said, "It was not the biggest day, but it was an opportunity to create some consumer excitement"

Visiting CyberMonday.com it was surprising to see the amount of deals they have posted which have nothing to do with actual Cyber Monday. They’re just deals in the general ‘holiday sense’. The companies who are offering exclusive Cyber Monday deals seem to be smaller online only stores. Amazon.com still doesn’t acknowledge Cyber Monday on their site. Hybrid companies like Best Buy will be offering their Black Friday ‘Doorbuster Deals’ at brick-and-mortar locations along with purchasing online. Wouldn’t that make it Cyber Friday, along with Black Friday?

Throughout my journey in the world of online holiday shopping, I’ve seen nothing that would make me think Cyber Monday is a bigger deal than any other holiday online shopping day. Like so many traditions during the holiday season the truth behind them is a lot less appealing than the perception. However, when marketing online and attracting consumers perception tends to be more important than reality.

Yahoo! already has a homepage redesign looming, which is scheduled for launch in Fall this year. The redesign was delayed by Carol Bartz back January when she took over the reigns. Perhaps she knew then what we’re starting to see unfold.

Kara Swisher, author of the BoomTown blog on All Things Digital, quizzed Carol about the rebrand plans at the D: All Things Digital conference back in May, and this is what she had to say:

The best way to change the perception is to do a good job and then talk about it…We just have to get our story out there; we have to continue to appeal to the people that come to us, and frankly, at some point people get sick of having us as the underdog and say, ‘Thank God, Yahoo’s back.’

There has been endless pressure on Yahoo! over the past few years with significant market share lost to Google and public perception of the company at an all time low.

To make matters worse, last month saw the big unveil of Bing, Microsoft’s re-emergence into the space. And with a shiny new brand and some new tech under the hood, Microsoft has reclaimed some of its lost lustre.

So will Yahoo! be able to emulate the success of its foe with a relaunch of the Yahoo! brand.

It’s always difficult to predict the real impact of a rebrand, but I’m sceptical it’ll have the long term benefits they’ll be hoping for. With out real substance (innovation, improved performance etc) – the bells and whistles will only impress for so long.

That said, the marketer in me is keen to where they take the brand. Will the infamous yodel remain, or will they start a fresh? Who knows, but my money is on the Yodel being laid to rest!

Well until we see the results of this major rebrand, here’s one of the old Yahoo! adverts. If you want to see more – visit Kara’s Boom Town blog.

Comments

1. The site now concentrates on making affiliate marketing "simple". A lot of people talk about making money through affiliate marketing, but newbies have a hard time understanding how this is possible. With the new AffiliatePrograms.com, they solve this problem by creating an education section that explains how you can make money though affiliate programs.
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3. If you have questions about affiliate marketing, now you can get them answered on the AffiliatePrograms.com forum. Through their new forum the affiliate community as well as experts are there to answer all of your questions.

Overall AffiliatePrograms.com has made some major improvements and is definitely worth checking out. They are doing tons of cool things such as throwing contests where you could win $4,000 by sharing a picture of your computer setup.

Comments

Well, okay. It’s not called that. It’s called the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Same difference, right? The faces along the top of WEF website pretty much say it all: Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Tony Blair, Bono. It’s kind of a big deal.

The list of industry partners is impressive, too, made up of all the companies in the world that have, generally, created our current reality.

As the Masters of the Universe, then, gather this coming January to discuss the world’s pressing issues, Google and YouTube will be presenting them with user-submitted answers to the pressing "Davos Question," which is: "What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?"

YouTube users have until January 1st to submit their video answers.

Now, before you gasp and worry that answers like "We need more cowbell" or "More boobs in more places" will slip through to our world leaders, thus wasting the opportunity, you need to know there is a user-generated, wisdom-of-crowds, populist filtering mechanism in place.

The YouTube community will be ranking the answers, and the highest ranked solutions to the world’s problems will be featured at Davos. So, unlike the debates, the submissions will be filtered via the community instead of a group of CNN suits, who we remember ignored some of the better questions.

Still there’s a chance that the crowd gets unruly, which could be a lot of fun (or embarrassing for the populace), or even that the winning answer is deemed unfit by a Google suit – hopefully that’s not possible.

But here’s where my cynicism really kicks in: Though it’s a wonderful idea that offers unprecedented access to world leaders and an unprecedented voice to the populace, I wonder how many suits watch the presentation and respond, "That was cute; now back to building the empire."

Nay, there’s still hope I hope. And it seems like a good start. 

Mentions of “Whopper Freakout”

There has already been some talk about this campign on the blogosphere. The following are just a few posts on other blogs:

The Whopper Freakout = Genius

Whopper Viral. Iro?

Whopper Freakout really sells.

Whopper freakout

Death of the Whopper

Comments

Barton has a position on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, putting him in a place where he can make political hay of Internet causes. Declan McCullagh obtained Barton’s blistering little screed to Schmidt; for some reason the Congressman’s otherwise up to date website does not have it posted.

The letter requests a reply to its lengthy contents by December 18th. Barton wants the Committee to “better understand the privacy and consumer protection implications” of Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick.

If such a response were to contain detailed answers to its questions, the reply would become the hottest read in the technology industry. Several questions deal with how Google delivers advertisements to users of its services, along with Barton’s questions on privacy and data retention.

We think Google would sooner switch its famed cafeterias to using school lunch menus before feeding this kind of information to Congress.

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A little over a week ago, the U.N.’s World Food Program began a contest on YouTube.  Before that, Cisco, Google, and the U.N. launched a website to track (and hopefully decrease) global poverty.  You might expect Eric Schmidt to stand up at the Bali conference and command all 190 countries to turn off their lights and cars.

That shouldn’t be the case, though.  Google.org’s Michael Terrell simply writes, “[W]e are participating in the Bali conference. . . .  Over the coming days, we’ll share our reflections and the stories of those who are there.  You can also check out the live webcast of the conference.”

Still, it’s impressive – and interesting – to see Google in such a setting.  The corporation’s environmental efforts have gone far beyond what anyone might have expected, so it could have a reasonable amount of influence there.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference is scheduled to run through December 14th.

NORAD’s an old hand at this game; an amusing (and Santa-believer safe) website describes how the tradition dates back to 1955.  Google, by contrast, will be helping out for the first time.  The search giant is handling its duties in a very enthusiastic manner, however, and is using technology including Google Maps, Google Earth, YouTube, and iGoogle.

It has also put a post on the Official Google Blog, and the post happens to have been written by Carrie Farrell.  Farrell is the granddaughter of Colonel Harry Shoup, who first started the Santa-tracking custom at NORAD.  She wrote, “I can remember tracking Santa with my grandfather as a child, and I’m so proud to see my company carry on his vision of doing something this special for kids around the world.”

Farrell then added that there will be a new game or activity on the NORAD site every day until December 24th.

Either bring your kiddies to the computer or get back to baking, then.  Santa may spend less than a thousandth of a second at each house, but you’ll want his stay to be a pleasant one.