Best of 2007: Amusing and Creative Marketing Stuff

Sell your soul on eBay. Buy trash at Target. "404 Error" pages that are actually entertaining. A bedtime story about search engines. A rap about link building. What's going on here?

It's the final—and best—installment of WebMarketCentral's Best of 2007 series. Here are some of the most humorous, creative, and just plain odd, yet strangely relevant to interactive marketing, blog posts and articles from 2007. I hope you have as much fun reading these as I had writing about them!

A Bedtime Story (or The Future of Search) by Alt Search Engines

The delightful story of a grandfather and his amazingly-tuned-in-to-search grandson talking about the "future" of search engines, when they will be able to show a virtually unlimited number of results on a single page (NoFoodHere), display search results as two-dimensional maps (KartOO), search within a tag cloud (Quintura), and do other cool things.

Hitchhikers Guide to Linkless SEO by SEOish

How to improve your Google PageRank, create link bait, use social media optimization, and other SEO advice presented as Douglas Adams would have written it, if he were an SEO guy. A must-read for fans of the Hitchhiker's Guide who also need to drive web traffic.

404 Pages - Funny, Geeky, Disturbing by Squareoak

404 error pages don't have to bland. Here are a collection of some of the most creative and imaginative ways to tell site visitors they've mistyped a URL or reached a page that no longer exists on your site. Want even more interesting ideas for your 404 error page? Smashing Magazine provides an extended collection.

The GoogleBalt's Great American Road Trip: Five Street-View Optimization Tips by MediaPost Search Insider

With Google driving the country gathering scenes for its Street View maps, Rob Garner outlines five things you may want to do (e.g., dress for success, keep your blinds closed) and not do (grow pot on your windowsill) lest the Googlebalt's cameras snap you.

Does Sex Sell? by The Origin of Brands Blog

Sure it does, says best-selling author Laura Ries in this entertaining and insightful blog post, for products like " perfume, condoms or erectile dysfunction drugs," but...hamburgers?!

Behind the Scenes of Branding by Marketing Genius from Maple Creative

Skip Lineberg provides a rare glimpse inside the branding discussions at a major advertising agency, as the assembled marketing team works through crucial concepts such as a product's Brandapalooza Index and Brangelina Factor.

The 6 Most Overhyped Technologies by Cracked

Writer Chris Bucholz reviews six technologies that some people decided were so cool they had to be developed and hyped without wasting time on silly things like market research, including eBooks and the Internet on your TV.

Funny Adwords Contest: Round 2 by Google Analytics Blog

Mark Curtis supplies a very funny yet cautionary post on the dangers of using variable keyword insertion in Google and Yahoo SEM ads.

Link Rap w/da Moserious by The Link Spiel

No one is sure why we really needed this, but Moserious does a rap here about link building. So bad it's actually kind of good.

The complete Best of 2007 series:

Best of 2007: SEO Analysis Tools
Best of 2007: SEO Keyword Research Tools
Best of 2007: News Articles on Social Media Marketing
Best of 2007: Blog Posts on Social Media Marketing
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEM
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on Google AdWords
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEO (Part 1)
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEO (Part 2)
Best of 2007: Website Design
Best of 2007: Blogging for Business
Best of 2007: Marketing Research
Best of 2007: Interactive PR
Best of 2007: SEO Copywriting
Best of 2007: Strategy and Branding
Best of 2007: Web Analytics
Best of 2007: Web 2.0 Sites
Best of 2007: Cool Online Tools
Best of 2007: Miscellaneous Marketing Stuff
Best of 2007: Amusing and Creative Marketing Stuff

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

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