On Sunday, I ran my first 42.195 km race ever, the ING New York City marathon, the 40th edition of the most iconic long-distance running event.
I would like to thank New York for the amazing atmosphere along the route, and around the event. The crowd gives support that I honestly did not believe in, before experiencing it for myself. (Note: my use of the term “amazing” is not, in this case, an American exaggeration, I really really mean it.)
I’ve pretty much hated advertising for as long as I can remember but since I’m managing or helping manage ads for work, I figured I would try running some on my own site to gain some first-hand experience.
If you’re reading this via the Feedburner-served RSS feed, you’re supposed to see text ads under each post, and if you’re on the site itself you should have a square box which may be text or banners in the right-hand column (it broke my search box, BTW, despite the fact that both are unmodified Javascript bits from Google).
My own browser is Firefox with the Adblock extension, so I don’t see them myself… I fired up Chrome and IE to check them out, and boy, isn’t it ugly and distracting?
Also, I’m pretty disappointed with the text matching. Seeing my company’s ad served on my own private site is a mild irony in itself. They’re probably served here because we’re currently running a campaign in Holland, and I’m using the brand name several times in my posts. However, I do wonder why we’re purchasing impressions for our most-popular search term and one for which we’re the first organic result. Must have a chat with our media agency about this, I guess I’m missing a part of the picture.
Aside from the ASICS ads, I’m seeing really weird stuff (this is after the “TV’s incredible” post):
In the RSS feed, under my review of the Bazaarvoice summit, an interesting surprise: an English ad inviting me to “Meet Local Gay Black Men Near You.” It follows another English-language ad for a video chat app, a Dutch professional web event (that’s quite relevant, actually) and something for Center Parks promotion vouchers, also in Dutch.
Might the ads deter you from coming back, or from reading my feed? Not that I necessarily have that much traffic in the first place, but I wonder if they might drive people away from the site. Hit the comments!
Oh yeah and thanks @holbuc and Per-Einar for launching Denmark, Norway, Sweden today (you might still see the old sites for a few hours if the DNS hasn’t yet updated). Still a bit of QA to do, but I’m relieved it’s finally done!
Also, @holbuc and the guys at The Plant fixed many problems on the Onitsuka Tiger site today. Did you check out the limited-edition 60 years anniversary book yet?
Bit nervous about flying tomorrow, should go to bed now!…
Two months ago, I had never heard of the brilliant British TV series Yes Minister. First aired on the BBC in 1980, it portrays an incompetent minister in a UK Cabinet newly elected on a reform ticket, battling his top civil servant who will do anything to avoid implementing any changes.
The third episode aired on 17 March 1980. It pitches the minister against his department in a battle to establish (or not) safeguards preventing unauthorized access by officials to a Government database of private information about her majesty’s subjects. I was appalled to find it echo my exchange with bv about the staggering public lies on “security” databases: it’s not even a modern issue. (More on this at Privacy International.)
Second coincidence: yesterday, I downloaded the iPhone application Uitzending Gemist, which allows you to watch the past 8 days of Dutch public TV. I don’t have TV and don’t miss it, but I thought I’d check it out.
The first show I see on the screen when testing it an hour ago? Sorry Minister, a local, contemporary remake.
Oh yes–and the app is awesome, by the way!
A visitor named Kevin dropped me a note asking for more details on site dimensions (or here about Stèles). His email address unfortunately bounces, so I can’t reply to him directly, but here’s what I wanted to say:
My point about “dimensions” is that they’re specific to each body of information.
For me, in a collection of elements, a dimension is a characteristic of the elements that helps the user navigate the collection. For example, in a magazine (a collection of articles), the article’s author is a dimension (I can navigate through all articles by a certain author) but the title isn’t (“all articles with title X” makes no navigational sense).
Hello, my name is Raphaël Mazoyer. I was born in 1978 in France. (The photo above is now over a decade old… There’s more gray in the hair now.)
As a freelance digital strategist, I will enable your business to understand the impact and potential of digital technologies, and the social change they trigger. I can then help you launch an e-commerce operation, cultivate consumer loyalty to your brand, or freeing your teams’ creativity with modern working practices.
For a year, I was head of client services at The Plant, where I worked on the Lacoste Japan e-commerce platform, various transactional sites (ask me about airport parking, that was fun!), and a cool R&D plus business development project for Danish magazine publisher Aller Media.
In early 2008, I joined the European office of ASICS, the Japanese sports equipment brand famous for its running shoes. As regional digital communications manager, I deployed a new content management system and centralized the company’s online efforts, also working on the lifestyle brand Onitsuka Tiger. In 2011, I moved to headquarters in Kobe to reinforce the company’s global marketing efforts. I built up a Digital Marketing team, overseeing online communications, digital services, and e-commerce. In April 2013, the first online shop was launched in the US using a global Hybris platform, and by the time I left the company in May 2014, we’d also launched in Japan, the UK and Australia.
I joined the Montreal-based digital branding agency CloudRaker as a producer and account manager, and I took care of the company’s Amsterdam office.
For two years, I was responsible for the European consumer operations of Japanese weather forecast agency Weathernews at the company’s headquarter in Makuhari (Chiba prefecture), and developed its mobile and web weather information services, working on both commercial and technology aspects.
In early 2004, after 5 years as a one-person web operation, I joined forces with three on-and-off partners and formally launched the digital agency Splandigo, delivering content-managed web sites. I was in charge of technology, often served as project manager, and worked on sales, writing offers for our largest clients. My longest-running project was the web site for the RINO, and my coolest was the SAIL’05 site. I left Splandigo in the Summer of 2005. The company stopped operating in 2006.
A founding member of French co-operative web hosting provider Ouvaton, I was elected in May 2003 to the board of directors for a 3-years mandate, and returned to the “rank and file” of the group in 2006. I worked on upgrading the hosting platform software, which hosts this web site.
I studied Digital Media Design at the HKU in Hilversum, the Netherlands, graduated in 2002, with a European Media Master of Arts (EMMA) from the University of Portsmouth.
I currently live in Tokyo, like to travel, cook, run and talk (especially about politics). You can reach me through this contact form.
[Updated on 19 June 2015]
Bazaarvoice is an American company providing the infrastructure and operational support for online “customer voice” services to brands and retailers, typically in the form of systems to facilitate consumer reviews of products offered on e-commerce sites. They brought together their own product and marketing staff, representatives from key clients, key service partners, external experts and visionaries, and prospective customers such as ASICS, to a day-long look at the social aspects of online commerce.
Forgive the text-heavy post, but I think the content is worth it, so please bear with me while I tell you about Ze Frank and Ian Jindal.
The Onitsuka Tiger web site has been refreshed a couple of weeks ago. Our web agency CloudRaker and our technology partner The Plant implemented a raft of relatively small changes that had sharp impact on the site’s usage patterns: page views up by 135%, bounce rate down from 30% to 12%.
So how did we achieve such results?
After this weekend’s reasonable Dam to Dam race, I’ve decided to actually run the upcoming New York marathon, on November 2. Nice, thoroughly pleasurable runs like this one are very encouraging:
However, I know I still have a long way to go before catching up with my colleague @eirefairy and her boyfriend The Man.
Amazon Kindle for international use (and the secret of the success of iTunes)
I am very excited about this device and its associated services, but the price conditions outside of the US are not advantageous. Here are some observations after using the device a little bit — and my take on the secret behind the success of the iTunes Music Store.
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