#B-side
[blog]
05/30/19
Comfort Zone
You ought to think of this blog's Web space as my own Comfort Zone. A personal archive made of more than six hundred HTML pages or PDF documents hosted on directories you have to access and find by yourself.
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A drop in the Internet universe. But here there is much more information about me than you could expect. And generally much more than you could discover by visiting a business or merchant Web site out there. This is an intimate space, personal and unique, a model with no imitation. Total bogosity of the ego? Maybe just a kind of Zen Garden for me—each grain of sand and each textured stone transported from the memory and reassembled as digital text (am I a blogger?). A flashback-driven blog built over the years like a work in progress along with the problems to respect my Web identity without giving up to a "benevolent depersonalization". There's an ongoing evolution from the diary in the pre-Internet sense of the term and this hidden space (B-side). In today's version of it you wouldn't recognize the first set of contents I published as Web marketing material to be learned in the name of a fucked-up economic theory (neoliberal). But there is no juxtaposition between the former project named 'Direct Marketing Linked Resources' and this whimsical blog since I have lost count of how many times I did reorganize this work (www.dmlr.org)—whose acronym presents exactly the initial letters of my four names...
P.S. I have found my way into the so called 3rd sector. Now let me lounge at my computer!
#Healthy
[100%]
05/14/19
Yomo
Working as product manager in the 1980s made me sensitive to the packaging of consumer goods. The most funniest task I had to accomplish was a briefing to the creative agency in charge of developing the product image, in my own experience basically transmitted through the packaging, since the product lines I was responsible of weren't supported by some advertising campaign—as usual for the private labels. Well, in order to revamp the yoghourt line, in a few months I worked out the best product mix ever and hit the target. Just think of the fact I was a consumer of yoghourt from the age of six, when that product appeared in Italy with such a halo of mistery due to Streptococcus thermopilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus. By a strange case I could launch a brand new line of yoghourt with no limitation as for product features, range or packaging. Those days Yomo was market leader so I went after her marketing team to gather big data on the consumer trends. The resulting line reached the prime share inside our supermarkets retail chain. Meanwhile the label on the sale package (grouping two jars of 125g) was the important medium to encourage potential customers to purchase our renewed yoghourt. The agency came out with a fresh image with leverage on the natural taste of the fruits added to the white yoghourt. The product image has evolved not much since then and today, in an overserved market, the leading brands express those same values of natural and pure product. The enjoyment due to a fruit explosion is always the best picture inviting to buy a yoghourt brand.
P.S. Nutritional labelling! 100g of yogurt deliver 105 kcal - fat 3,1g - sugar 14g - protein 4,1g. Further information at www.yomo.it (my favorite choice if you care...).
#MSF
[5x1000]
04/20/19
Non-profit Organizations
The young woman standing before me was describing the Medecins Sans Frontieres activity using words and then pictures displaying a self-inflating tent... She wanted to convince me in order to fill in the form useful to be a permanent donor and was firmly applying the "learn-feel-buy" model. If one can't avoid to acknowledge the strenghts of their argument, it is obvious that acquiring a new donor to non-profit organizations (NPOs) is always difficult and expensive. Being already involved in giving out regularly small sums of money to other NPOs, I did promise to destine to MSF the next 5x1000 contribution at least—that is calculated on the whole annual income tax to pay. Since the 5x1000 destination by the tax contributors falls within May, the NPOs are used to launch their direct marketing efforts and field promotion forces just in February to April. To summarize which NPOs my attention goes onto, I wrote down the Non-Profit list as revised every year more or less.
P.S. "Many believe that hunger is a consequence of some climate conditions as difficult as drought. Really the main causes are rarely bound onto natural circumstances. More frequently the firearm conflicts have been forcing entire populations to run away and sentencing them to famine. On those countries the humanitarian organizations represent the one and only aid to the civil population. And the one testimony of what is really happening" (by a MSF leaflet).
#Ku
[promo]
04/10/19
Alessi
Finally I've redeemed a collection of eight coupons receiving for that two soup bowls by Alessi! The box containing the gift pinpoints "KU"—design Toyo Ito, 2006. (A consumer promotion can't emphasize its own object too much before the redemption has gone sold out). The bowls are made in white porcelain and of course "suitable for foodstuffs". Alessi, whose firm I visited 25 years ago for a job interview, is used to manufacture objects destined to the preparation and consumption of food and drink. Behind any design object there is a meta-project aimimg to create "things with feelings" that means not only with one utility giving them a canonical value, but also objects charged of an emotive experience, or objects as individuals. By the trichotomy of Alessi I will take those cl45 ∅ cm22 soup bowls to the dining room just filled with passatelli in brodo as traditional as Alessi would like them to serve up.
P.S. Visit www.alessi.com
#7 Girls
[live4love]
04/04/19
Diamonds and Pearls
"HI. HOPE DIAMOND & PEARL FIND U IN GOOD SPIRITS. IF NOT..."
(as previously published on Twitter.com/donro59)
I — attractive details / an ass as tight as a grape / rave & save the date!
II — a body like yours / my poetry ambition / would be our saviours?
III — snapshot taking breath / she's captured in that picture / kind of denim health.
IV — jail of cactus stone / her bellydance never ends / little cells built by men.
V — chinese as background / red lipstick around thin mouth / sweetness to be bound.
VI — the eight i wonder / mind if i grab her picture? / don't know the answer.
VII — bookmark on my list / the spring according to shir / purple pick of the week.
P.S. All 7 know the truth...
#Political
[mind]
03/16/19
Radical Party
The Italian Radical Party has been broadly known while he was promoting and addressing many civil rights campaigns in order to get the attention of the media and gain supporters around some critical social issues. The Radical Pary has been criticized too because of the early adoption of marketing-related practices. The critics came up mainly from the traditional parties that later disappeared very soon. Indeed in the 1980s the Radical Party was engaged in marketing-related activities according to the growing internationalism of their political campaigning—maybe you remember such issue as legal abortion, death sentence abolition, divorce, struggle to the world-wide hunger, private arms restriction, women emancipation... My personal image of the Radicals is reflected on two party cards, one blue another yellow, by the logo representing a Mohandas Gandhy graphics made of the words "radical party" in all the languages of the world. Transnational is fine!
P.S. Subscribe at www.partitoradicale.org
#FreeFind
[me]
01/31/19
Twenty-Two Years On Line
"...My cool fingers on the computer surprise me while spending another year on line... I'd told my relatives that I'd gone camping in the desert for an exploring adventure, had been without work and phone reception, and finally gotten sick. For now, more than two decades later, it seemed to be enough that I was all right again, and they didn't press any further..."
PS. 2019 some FreeFind-Robots will help search for my articles if not for me as person!
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#Merry Haiku
[poetry]
12/24/18
Back to... Twitter
Meanwhile the collection of poetry I have been writing since 2012 on Twitter (at Twitter.com/donro59) reached up to 1,400 little haikus—i.e. each made of just seventeen syllables! Truly to say the capsule of that project starts from a Dmlr.org page since the first haikus I created sixteen years ago were uploaded on this Website in the form of a New Year 2003 calendar as one could read on Limited IQ.
P.S. If English help get little haiku more than any other langauge, I like to write some of them in Italian, Spanish, or French. It depends fron the subject or who/what the haiku is dedicated to as well as the revealing hashtag at its end.
#wool
['60s]
11/25/18
Pure Wool
59th birthday cake and candlelights, I don't think so. Instead I would like to remember my very first experience with a brand early in the '60s. Yeah, I can surely say its name but the tape has to be rewound far back to the point when my mother was working at home with me around. While my father helped her after his shift at the factory. That picture gives evidence for a start in the perception of my past of five-year until nine-year old child and refers obviously to my parents life. Inside the old frame you need to watch the knitting machine led by my mother with the move left to right and back. Now the solid memory is ready to unveil a brand recognition or the prime acknowledgement that a name and image could be representing something more than a product category. It concerned a pure new wool brand! Not a consumer good but a semi-manufactured. The wool yarn went into the knitting machine and my mother nimbly worked out a waistcoat, a jersey, a pullover, or a turtleneck. As a little child following his mother I used to attend while she selected and bought the right color and diameter of the wool yarn before it became a final product. That brand preference meant Lana Gatto and it remained in the house, after the knitting work, as strip once binding the wool ball, a label with the image of a cat printed on—that mark strangely exists even today, just visit the web site at www.lanagatto.it!
P.S. I guess somebody will understand this story. To find other brand's stories told on Dmlr.org, please type your request onto the ADVANCED SEARCH BOX!
#Web
[guide]
11/16/18
3-Star Rating (***)
It's silly that a tire-maker brand has promoted a yearly guide listing the best Italian restaurants. This year just 10 joints deserve its 3/3-star rating—one of them is located in Modena where I'm writing this web blog. Thru the DMLR Guide I'm doing something similar to the websites worth visiting. This month's edition has been listing three new entries to point out here as 3-star websites!
Nicolekrauss.com simply affects the professional profile of Nicole Krauss focusing on the handworks of this American writer—by the way I've recently read her last novel finding thereby some details linking to my TLV travel diary...
Wumingfoundation.com is related to writing authors again but it's far different from the previous one. First WuMing ain't a single author, it's a group of writers using one same pseudonym plus a progressive digit actually in this order WuMing1, WuMing2, WuMing4. Since they are activists beyond writers, their web location looks like an open-minded space to host articles and comments that cover all aspects of social and political life. So the wide audience and community involved in this multifaceted website encompass some contributes from other artists experiencing on other fields.
Euroscreen.eu completes this short reviewing note. It belongs to the European cooperation projects as a matter of fact. Multimedial contents come from all over Europe have been collected on this archive where the search functionality allows the user to extract material of historical events or dayliving mpments which are telling us Europeans how we were and where we came from. The resulting immense webcast of audio-video files includes many languages of the 27 countries forming the European Union—of course I had to consider a Brexit.
P.S. The complete list of websiyes is available at DMLR Guide!
#4thnovember
[since 1918]
11/04/18
Quota 100
With 'Quota 100' I don't mean to recall here some brands established from a century—say Citizen or Panasonic among those best known to the modern consumer. And yet a hundred years ago the WWI ceased. After a whole day fiiled up with historical documentaries on this 100-year event, two main pictures have lodged in my mind from that world-wide drama. The first image comes from a video filmed at the Western front where a never-ending sequence of ambulances —from the French 'hôspital ambulant'—had been going from the hospitals forth and back. Red Cross stil operating, those years an American volunteer ambulance group was risen up to bring aid and relief to the victims of the greatest disaster ever caused by the mankind. The archive at today AFS.org (American Field Service, Intercultural Program) gives evidence of that humanitarian function by a non-governmental organization, mother of all NGOs. The second picture takes a symbol in, the little rampant horse sticked on the side of a top fighter airplane, Francesco Baracca its owner. After WWI the emblem was donated by the family of the Italian aviator to a racing car-maker whose name was Enzo Ferrari. The legend of that rampant horse has grown up till now... as a brand's logo.
P.S. Quota 100 is an altitude (not a share)!
#Donro
[2009-18]
10/16/18
I-n-d-e-x
I like to revamp some very old pages or slices of my own website {www.dmlr.org. This time I come up with the archive or index first published in 2002 and newly muted just now. To keep anyone updated or interested in visiting dmlr.org—even though I can't ignore its life cycle—I have set up the index sorting out the original articles I wrote since 2009 and till nowaday. Ten years restored in a scarce space. One more thought on the archive: it consists of a doulble list going into Italian and English text as option for the reader. It's worth reading Donro18 to recover articles, magazines and posts, with or without translation.
#4B0082
[indigo]
10/06/18
D for Denim
Autumn starts on September 23rd but more commonly in October, a month used to discover the abrasive life (again). Before it will be wild out there, we prepare ourselves by wearing blue-jeans (again). Someone has computed over 5,000 possible nuances of blue-jeans! No doubt that denim is the best invention fashion could have ever come up with. A blue wave invade our work places, supermarkets, restaurants and other venues of pleasure. Unconcerned with the American culture, denim has emancipated through an over-national concept as timeless garment of practical seduction: is not denim the first fabric that has recalimed the gender fairness? From the old guard (Levi's /Lee /Wrangler ) to the tailor-made jeans, now there are incredible denim clothes everywhere as shirts, jackets, pants, dungarees, shorts, skirts, jumpsuits, caps... We like indigo—a small flower pistil from which you extract a dye that you soak the denim pieces in—whose hexadecimal code for HTML reads #4B0082. And what about the favorite color on the Western countries? It's truly blue!
#ClickHere!
[banner ad]
09/25/18
Bannerology V
"You're advertising where, on the Internet?" Shortly, the banner ad consists of a space on the web page, usually a rectangle, where a text message or graphics gets attention from a visitor who is thus solicited to click on the banner linked to another page or site. The concept of a banner, I had once summarized on this model here (to left),
inspires the creatives in order to give the users "a good reason" to leave a web page and address themselves to another website; The move just occurrs if the message delivered by that banner results almost irresistable. And since the web user is insatiable during an Internet session, she will navigate forward from site to site in a random mode when she has no a plan at all or follow the easy path to a precise objective when she has a fair plan. Bannerology contains many historical banners viewed during the golden age of the Internet. As web designer I had set up 468x60 pixel banners to add impact to brand new projects published on Dmlr.org—we're living in such a visually oriented society! The most recent works, never collected on one page until now, have been displayed at DMLR banner hits (2009-2017). Click here!
#Guide
[WWW]
09/14/18
Web Marketers
Websites have lost most of their appeal since social networks and apps have been offering a more direct way to reach the prospects and receive feedbacks from the customers. Meanwhile websites survive as official communication channel toward media and investors as well as points of sale (eg. online catalog, e-store). The WWW Guide on Dmlr.org keeps on selecting websites by category and this time I would like to consider remarkable these four new entries.
- Hitachi.com , institutional website of many agglomerated businesses whose slogan "Inspire the Next" would try to explain the complex concept of oraganizational culture beyond every single branch of activity—heavy industries, consumer goods, robotics...
- Elementbrand.com , that is a California-based young business which does international marketing of goods thought first for skateboardist and then for people active into the nature as a whole
- Hbr.org , among the dot-orgs this one is managed by a leading publisher which focuses on the business field (acronym for Harvard Business Review) so a learn-subscribe model basically prevails on such a content site
- Muellergroup.com , where one finds out the history of the building of an European group, year by year all the acquisitions made as a way of expanding the mother company's activities and its brands market presence.
PS. Direct Marketing Linked Resources by Roberto Dondi is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Based on this work at www.dmlr.org.
#FCIM
[football club]
09/04/18
Inter Is Here!
Since 2000 Inter_Power on Dmlr.org is a statistical package made from data managed by a spreadsheet in my own computer. I set up a method where cooperating football players are compared for five attibutes, then applied to my favorite team—Football Club Internazionale Milano, best known as Inter, whose social hashtag this year recites "InterIsHere"... back at the Champions League!
Neither official statistics for experts nor sponsored game for would-be trainers, Inter_Power comparative analysis appears beside the original logo (see left), a direct way to stay alive and kicking along with the football club. That monthly data flow delivers quantitative information condensed in a rank ordered by an outcome of percentages of minutes and matches played, of goals delivered and assists served, and so on. Nothing personal or subjective (I'm not journalist). Take into accont and Inter_Power will tell how the season works out for every single team mate. It doesn't matter if the players are in the starting XI or are starting from the bench, everyone could be the key player of the match at the end. But one heads Inter_Power for real.P.S. Click here to scroll the starting grid of INTER_POWER!
#Catalog
[direct mail]
08/28/18
Ikea75
Exactly every year in August an Ikea catalog gets into my snail mail box. It's a free copy, a direct mail that gives evidence to Ikea's sales effort toward the marketplace on a regular basis. This time the apparently squared catalog shows on its left-bottom corner a small Ikea75 flash inviting to "celebrate the brand anniversary". While the catalog is out of sale, the prices printed on it are available until July 2019, one of them as usual previewed on the front page reads €14,95 for a small tray-table nobody would give attention to even though one would watch the opening picture a day and a night long. But that detail would be representing the brand's communication strategy that works out so fine. The catalog's mission statement gets off from page 3, seven homes for seven life styles! From the Oasis home to the No-limit home by passing trough the not-to-be-ignored 16-square meter home, maybe Ikea most notorious strength. Inside the catalog the illustrated products are always depicted by a name, a function, a price (for example NORRÅKER → chair → €64,95). Noteworthy: the price formats respect the power marketing rule at the most, usually being €109,90 or €69,95 or €279... while it's highly difficult finding out a price ending with a even figure! Inside the picture frames, prices apart, some non-chalant people pop up now and then.. Sooner or later I should be telling you what Ikea represents to me too!
P.S. Often quoted inside Dmlr.org as a global brand, 1998 Ikea appeared for the very first, most recently in DMLR*News GOLD no.18.
#Database
[DB]
08/20/18
Big Data!
There is an ongoing interest in data processing (DP) as we know it since many businesses have been sending some informative prospects on their privacy policies—for instance DPO stands for Data Protection Officer, if you think of a new position! All these companies provide services and products for sure, but they have been also collecting our names, addresses, ages, marital status, religions, professions, or just preferences on almost everything we are asked about online during our daily interactions with a computer. A collection of similar data from thousands or millions of consumers, stored into a computer program and processed—even as sets of records previously collected and stored separately—builds a database available to several users including marketing departments. Database Marekting was already commonly used in direct mail promotion and advertising. When the Internet Protocol (IP) has affirmed as the fastest way to exchange data and provide information, DB marketing has easily evolved into a computer-driven thus automatic system of addressing messages and packages to the most accurate target groups (and as soon as possible)! Dmlr.org has been out there to report on this evolution of marketing over twenty-one years of... collecting big data from everywhere.
P.S. 311 terms of direct marketing to know! Download and read the complete glossary made of PART I + PART II + PART III
#SEO
[box]
08/14/18
Search Engine Optimization
Every year I keep you updated on the new contents added to Dmlr.org. This week the directory has counted 540 pages as a whole indexed by the search engine. I'm using FreeFind web services to provide a user-friendly tool for searching a given subject! A young visitor could search for 'mass marketing' thinking it was an old-fashioned term forgotten yet since today 'micromarketing' rules... Another could pretend to know everything about 'mobile marketing' just because he's receiving offers onto the smart phone display while originally the term would identify some advertising messages mediated by a car, bus, or taxi—thus a different meaning for the same definition of marketing.
P.S. Just type in the keyword terms or phrases to optimize this website!
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#CHECK-OUT
[TLV]
07/14/18
Shalom! (Pt.II)
Akhuzat Bayit (1906-1909) was the fundraising association that gave origin to the foundation of Tel Aviv. As tourist I had to remember it along with a sentence that did predict the birth of a Jewish city from sand dunes by some words sounding like these
"Again will I build thee, and thou shall be built, O virgin of Israel"... #Jeremiah (31,4).
Said that, I started from the Founders Monument installed in 1949 on the site of the offices of the neighbourhood committee—and the first water tower! And I left Tel Aviv 6 days and 5 nights after my arrival in Israel, last hours passed on at the pier where the docks have become an ideal place to relocate many fashion brands flagship stores. I was widely breathing in and out the air coming from the Mediterranean sea while I ate tuna fish sandwich and fresh salad at #Landwer's . So far so pleased—if you are likely to read more about that journey just click on #TLV.
PS. A few personal pictures also available on Twitter.com/donro59.
Shabbat Shalom!
#CHECK-IN
[TLV]
07/01/18
Shalom! (Pt.I)
It was four o'clock in the morning, nearly the dawn, and I went out of the #EL-AL Boeing 737 where I had slept just a little in some aisle seat during that dark, crowded flight from Italy. Young and slim hostesses prepared the late-night dinner in order to distract rather than feed the passengers. It seemed a bit strange to me speaking English after several years, and I had warmed up my tongue at the check-in before the man in charge of the air company security. But later talking to female personnel on the airplane was more relaxing even at 42 thousand feet above the sea... This trip had a special meaning for me—being leftist I can't travel so far without a political, almost historical reason. Truth to say it could concern more a moral pathway traced by the birth of a city so much strangely founded in a recent past, the presence of Bauhaus-styled buildings along with the fact I was going to visit that country this much particular year. All these motives have been converging on and pushing me to Tel Aviv, the white city! Finally I got out of "Ben Gurion" airport asking for a cab to the city center. At 6am the taxi driver welcomed the cash and I could breathe in the air of Dizengoff square that now got my attention.
PS. Shalom! (To be continued...)
#B-SIDE A BLOG BY DMLR.ORG
©2018-2019 Roberto Dondi -- dmlr.org(sm)