Meaningless Search Impressions? In a recent post on the excellent marketingwitheaning* blog, Bob Gilbreath discusses recent search studies from Google and Yahoo.  Both studies seem to indicate that unclicked search impressions have the potential to build CPG businesses.  Bob believes the studies could be flawed.

This is a really interesting debate and kudos to Bob for pushing the search giants to go deeper here.  I agree with Bob…it would have been great to have these studies linked to an impartial organization. However, I don’t think the CPG world can ignore search for much longer; it is simply becoming such an important part of the consumer journey toward final purchase.  And, at least the search leaders have realized that they need to provide more data if they want to move the CPG world deeper into the search world.  Having said that…we are subject to the tyranny of cascading choices when it comes to marketing spend and if the search giants cannot provide a deeply compelling argument (via data) then I expect that the CPG world will continue to lag everyone else in search.  Having said all of this I wonder if creating more search engine clutter is really meaningful?   Can you imagine what will happen to search result pages if/when the CPG guys start really spending in this space?

Oh so many fun marketing choices in today’s fragmented media world!  Lets keep this conversation going…it is a good one.  Tks Bob.

Here is a quick rundown of a few other items that caught my eye as of late:

Bands Without Borders:  Founded by Nathan Marion, this is a non-profit trying to “Incite Bands & Fans to actively help children around the world”.  BWB is trying to connect musicians with humanitarian organizations that focus on helping children in the developing world.  BWB also reaches out to help non-profits reach younger audiences.  Here is an article about the organization.

Pampers/Unicef: Paul Jones writes a nice overview of P&G’s Pampers/Unicef cause marketing campaign.  The campaign is indeed a very good one…go and check-out Paul’s post for all the details.  Tks for the heads up Steve!

People’s Popsicle:  People’s popsicle buys locally-grown fruits and herbs from several New York City Greenmarket’s and then transforms them into ice-cold popsicles and shave-ice…I discovered these guys over on PSFK…Too bad we don’t have these treats in Geneva yet!  Looks like someone local will have to start s-thing up.