ChasNote

Given that human brain chemistry makes us jones for new information, it’s a smart idea that Comcast built their latest online campaign around an information-rich Small Business Efficiency Center for its professional customers, with business tips pulled from the pages of Guy Kawasaki’s, Anita Campbell’s, John Jantsch’s, Chanpory Rith’s and the Behance community’s websites.

Comcast’s ad banners, running on the sites that licensed the content and others, lead with content headlines rather than promotions.

This campaign was put together by Jessica Richards at One to One Interactive, and John Shankman, Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Matt Jessell at FM.

A question I get frequently is, “Sure, big conversational marketing ideas are great for Honda and Dell, but how can a small company like mine participate?”

VisualCV, “a better resume, online,” answers that question. As part of an advertising campaign across a handful of leading business and technology sites such as Guy Kawasaki’s How to Change the World and Henry Blodget’s Silicon Alley Insider, VisualCV asked the authors if they’d make their own “better resumes” using the VisualCV service. It’s important to note, VisualCV didn’t ask authors to review their service or say nice things about it; just to try it.

Then, instead of running conventional ad banners on those authors’ sites, VisualCV bought 125×125-pixel boxes that invite readers to check out Guy’s or Henry’s VisualCV. Advertising that shows rather than tells. Click-through rates on those little 125×125s are averaging better than two percent (2%). That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty times the average CTR for regular banners, and regular banners — at 300×250 pixels or 160×600 pixels — are more than five times the size of VisualCV’s co-branded button.

The brains behind this campaign are Pierce Resler, Caren DeWitt Merrick and Clint Heiden at VisualCV, and John Shankman and James Gross at FM.