• Be Specific in Your Messaging: Why “Live, Work, Play” and other clichés will harm your marketing efforts.
• Does Your Economic Development Website Speak Effectively to Site Selectors?:  Highlights from a US-based study of site selectors regarding their frustrations and preferences when it comes to ec dev web properties.
• 8 Tips for Getting Started with Social Media and Email: As more economic developers embrace new social tools, it is important to realize that when it comes to these new marketing channels, the old rules simply don’t apply. Here are 8 tips that cover ideas, etiquette and advice for getting started.
• Has Branding Become a Dirty Word? Our most popular EDAC White Paper, where we explore myths and misconceptions about place branding.
• Branding a City: One of our very first blog posts, this one covers off why place branding is different, and more complex, than other types of branding.
• Place Branding Inspiration Gallery: Over the years, we’ve reviewed quite a few logos and re-branding efforts from cities and regions around the world. Here are 7 posts to get you thinking about your own visual identity and branding program.

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First: These clever spots for Pilot Extrafine pens…

Next up, Samsung hits below the belt in this clever ad that plays on the very public reception issues with the iPhone 4:

And finally from Ikea, some excellent ads for their assembly service. Having personally just assembled some IKEA furniture, these ads hit their mark.

Good stuff. Found via I Believe in Advertising and Mashable.

The 173% figure comes from an experiment carried out by Dustin Curtis, who played with the language that directed his website visitors to his Twitter account. He took his existing call to action: “I’m on Twitter” and played with the wording of the link, resulting in some extraordinary insights.

Dustin Curtis experiment

Through trial and error, he discovered that a move from “I’m on Twitter” to “You should follow me on Twitter here” resulted in the whopping increase in clicks. In his words:

As the forcefulness and personal identifiability of the phrase increased, the number of clicks likewise increased. “You” identifies the reader directly, “should” implies an obligation, and “follow me on twitter” is a direct command. Moving the link to a literal callout “here” provides a clear location for clicking. I tried other permutations that dulled the command, used the word “please” in place of “should” and made the whole sentence a link. None of them performed as well as the final sentence.

At the very least, the data show that users seem to have less control over their actions than they might think, and that web designers and developers have huge leeway for using language to nudge users through an experience.

Too often, we add words and images to something without a second thought about whether they are the right words and images. There’s only one way to find out, and that’s through testing. If the experiment above doesn’t convince you that it can be extremely worthwhile, then I don’t know what will.

Ask yourself: What are you trying to accomplish with your website or email campaign? Sign-ups? Click-throughs? Social media followers? Play with the variables around your particular call to action and see how a small change can score big results.

To get started, I’d highly recommend Smashing Magazine’s definitive guide to A/B Testing. It offers an excellent primer and practical advice, as well as top-notch tools, resources and examples, all in one spot. (It’s where I found this experiment.) Check out some of the other great case studies there too, like how 37 Signals increased sign-ups by 30% with a new headline or how Jason Thompson doubled the number of people contacting him by using his photo instead of a telephone icon.

Beautiful.

Found via I Believe in Advertising.

The answer, although so simple, challenges our ideas about rational decision-making. The difference lies in the wording of the forms at the DMV. That’s it. In Germany and Denmark, the form reads: Check here if you want to participate in the organ donor program. In Belgium and Sweden, it says: Check here if you do not want to participate in the organ donor program.

In both cases, very few people bother to check the box, but the results of that indifference cause the drastic difference we see in the statistics. Pretty amazing. This is from Dan Aierly’s TED Talk on Irrationality in Decision-Making. I just bought this book, and highly recommend checking him out.

- Found via Brand Arcade

TIme for the publishing industry to think differently about their audience to save itself. Great spot.

Gotta love the simplicity. Brilliantly gets the message across.

- via I believe in advertising.

Simple and powerful. Found via Dog and Pony Show.