Author: Zaki Usman

Zaki has over 10 years of marketing experience stemming from work in Europe and North America. He is the marketing engine behind Finland’s rising star Severa, and has been the marketing lead in UtechSoft, MySkyWeb and Digiquant. His engineering work with the US Army won him an honorable 22nd ASG award in Vicenza, Italy. Zaki has earned a B.Sc. in engineering from the University of Bahrain and an MBA from Western Michigan University.

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The Super Bowl is tomorrow and I`m looking forward to watching some good football as well as being entertained by great TV commercials. This year the average spend for the 30 second slots ranges about $3 million –  about the same figure as last year’s average. Just to grasp how much money is to be made, NBC earned over 200 million dollars in Super Bowl advertising  in 2009.

I am looking forward to some of the entertaining commercials from Budweiser and CareerBuilder – both of these companies have traditionally done well. Budweiser has even won a number of top spots in the USA Today Super Bowl ad meter survey in the last few years. What I am a bit disappointed by is how Pepsi shied away from the Super Bowl this year – a fact that Coke knows and will benefit from.

But my main interest lies in the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” contest. That’s the viral marketing campaign that the Doritos guys started back a few years ago. The campaign is simple: the public is invited to send in self-made Doritos commercials. The selected finalists get cash prizes and airtime during the Super Bowl. There is a bonus payout of a million dollars if the ad is rated best by the Super Bowl Ad meter.

The simplicity of the idea is the reason for its success. In 2009, the Doritos finalist Free Doritos was one of the best rated by the USA Today survey and created major social-buzz post game. So, I’m very eager to see who will win this year. My favorite finalist is called “Kids these days” (shown below).

The other 5 finalists are listed below.

Over the past year, we at Target Info Labs have been working very hard to use different venues for online advertising, from Google Adwords, Yahoo, Bing, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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How do you make a good logo?

That’s a good question to ask – and it’s the million dollar question for the 2012 London Olympics committee to answer. But unlike them, your logo shouldn’t cost you a million bucks.  Here are few guidelines for you to consider as you design your logo.

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A landing page is a simplified version of your website that showcases a single product or service.  The web visitor comes to a landing page from an external site (i.e. Google.com) and is enticed to try or buy your offer. A good landing page only focuses on a single message with a goal. This goal can be a download, registration, trial or a buy action.

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I was looking at improving my web analytics software when I came across eTracker’s Web Analytics. I have followed this company for a few months now, but I never had a good close look at their application until recently.
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I remember a time when I used to get weather alerts as text messages on my phone. Now, I get them as tweets while sitting at conferences. And this time, I got to read about our first snow in Montreal while listening to a keynotes session at Webcom. Ironically, the session was about the power of Twitter.


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Finnland ist in Sachen Technologie an der absoluten Spitze. Es ist die Heimat vieler weltbekannter Technologiefirmen wie Nokia, Kone und Polar. Deshalb sollte es uns auch nicht wundern, dass Finnland vor einigen Tagen wieder eine technologische Innovation präsentierte: am 14. Oktober wurde Finnland zum ersten Land, das eine Breitband- Internetverbindung zum Grundrecht für die Einwohner machte.
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The types of tweets you publish define your Twitter Channel. Your channel can be for company news, customer support, sales promotions or anything else.  Whatever it is, the channel must be consistent with your overall business objective. Companies with limited manpower tend to choose a single channel whereas larger companies have multiple channels. For example, Salesforce has at least 9 different official channels on Twitter.

Target Info Labs has developed a Twitter Channel Wizard that should help you decide on your Twitter strategy.


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Finland is at the forefront of technology. It’s home to Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile phone maker. Kone also engineers a Finnish domicile, and Polar is a national heart throb.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise that Finland showed innovation in technology once again. Yesterday, Finland become the first country to make broadband a legal right for its people.
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Yesterday, Demandbase announced the new release of Demandbase Professional solution. Essentially, the release has two major upgrades including advanced web analytics and advanced lead scoring. These are explained in detail below:
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