Brand Rants

Kudos for Methodical Madness and a request for your vote

It's been a good start to the new year for The Duffy Agency's other blog Methodical Madness. Social Media Examiner has short-listed the blog along with 20 others for the distinction of the world's Top 10 Social Media Blogs. Our fellow finalists include a roster of stellar blogs like  Chris Brogan, CopyBlogger, Mashable , and Social Media Explorer . Winners to be decided soon by jury.

Methodical Madness is also short-listed with 12 other finalists on Fuel Line's Ad Agency Blog of the Year. If you haven't read Methodical Madness, give it a look. And if you like what you see please VOTE before Friday, January 22. Below you can see the Fuel Lines poll results live.  

CLICK HERE to VOTE for The Duffy Agency

Congrats to Methodical Madness blog

We have two blogs at The Duffy Agency: Brand Rants and Methodical Madness. The latter has just been voted #1 among 58 ad agency blogs globally according to a poll run by Michael Gass. Many thanks to Michael running the poll and for his blog Fuel Lines which offers very useful advice to ad agencies.

Social media kudos for The Duffy Agency

Twitter and Blog both recognized this week.

It's been a good week at The Duffy Agency. Business is brisk, the weather is wonderful and we received two small items of recognition in social media circles.

First, this blog was voted among the world top 100 marketing blogs. That's the new badge on the right from The Daily Reviewer. Understandably, I'm really happy about that and hope to live up to the accolade in the months and years to come. As I wrote in my first post, this is the third blog I have started. The others folded because I could not find time to keep them going. I have even less time these days, but the blog is a higher priority. If there are ways you think this blog could better serve your needs, drop me a line and let me know. Who knows, together maybe we can get Brand Rants in the top 20.

Second, Burson-Marsteller, Stockholm ranked The Duffy Agency as the 4th most popular Swedish company on Twitter – ahead of much larger Swedish companies like SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) and Ericsson. This is based on the number of followers. To be frank, we have a modest following compared to the Twitter giants. But we do seem to be ahead of the pack with regard to businesses in Sweden, particularly to ad agencies. We were originally ranked #3 when the list included only brick and mortar companies (as opposed to web-only based entities like Stardoll). We received a lot of feedback about that - some congratulations, some stark disbelief. In fact, we learned about the ranking from a follower in Melbourne (thanks Marek). We try to be selective on all our Twitter accounts and not follow people or companies who cannot contribute to the conversation we want to have with the world. Most importantly, we have well-defined Twitter strategy and tactics in place. We'd be happy to share them with anyone who is interested.

A more telling Twitter statistic for us comes from wefollow.com, the worlds biggest Twitter directory. We track how well we do against the keywords that we want to be associated with globally on Twitter. There we are in the top 25 for each of our words. That's significant to us because we are competing with every other ad agency, brand consultancy and social media agency on Earth.

We have a long way to go but are pleased that our Social Media investments are paying off. A big thanks to all our Twitter followers and all our blog readers. I hope with your comments we continue to provide you with a reason to stay tuned.

News you can use

Download your complementary copy of The International Duffy Tribune

We've just published the summer edition of The International Duffy Tribune at the agency. It's a collection of marketing and advertising case studies, new approaches to marketing problems and some updates on life at The Duffy Agency since our last issue.  We try to write the stories so they are not so much about US but provide some insights that YOU can use in your business. I hope we have succeeded. You'll notice a lot of emphasis on social media in the last few issues. This reflects the type of assignments we are receiving from out clients. Take a look. You can download a copy here (zipped). We'd love to hear your feedback.

Brand Rants blog now available on Kindle

Kindle now offers its users the opportunity to subscribe to their favorite blogs via their Kindle. New posts are automatically delivered to the hand-held device for a subscription fee of $0.99 per month. Learn more here.

Nine office party faux pas to avoid this Holiday Season

HOLIDAY GREETINGS TO EVERYONE

I'm off for the Holidays. To everyone who is celebrating this time of year: happy holidays and all the best for 2009.  Below is a mini-poster we included with this year's agency holiday greeting. If you have already had your office Christmas party, you might want to bookmark it for next year. See you in 2009!

Brand Rants Inaugurates New Chinese Blog at ASEAN Expo in Nanning China

NIHAO CHINA!

To further strengthen our ties with the Chinese market, The Duffy Agency has launched a Chinese (Mandarin) version of Brand Rants called 宋 杜 菲 的 博 客. The new blog was recently announced during a meeting with the Swedish Chinese Chamber of Commerce at the opening of the ASEAN Expo in Nanning, China.

Many of The Duffy Agency’s clients in the US and Europe are interested in China. At first it was simply as a source for cheap production and materials. But as the purchase power of China’s citizens continues to develop, more and more of our clients are also interested in China as a market. 

In order to help serve these clients, we have made it a priority over the past five years to develop our Chinese network and our understanding of the Chinese market. During that time we have also noticed an increase in interest from Chinese marketers in developing their brands abroad (see China’s new revolution). The new blog is an extension of our efforts to solidify ties with the Chinese market on behalf of our clients.

The Chinese blog will contain the same posts found on the English version. Check it out at: www.brandrants.com.cn

Wanted: Account director in Sweden

Right now we are looking for an account director with solid ad agency experience to work in our Swedish office. We want someone who can take a leadership role both inside the agency and with our clients. We prefer someone with experience in the Scandinavian market. Check out the Duffy Agency's website for details and on-line application.

See you in August!