Take a moment.

The other day. a friend sent me this Newsday link to a gallery of 50 wretched album covers. The topic is an oldie but a goodie, and a little Googling found this site , which lists 100 terrible covers (with mostly well-known artists plus snarky comments), this site , which has 149 awful covers, and this link to the Chicago Tribune, which is either a gallery in the making or one that’s died: the links don’t work, but the page is designed exactly like Newsday’s. I wonder who was the swiper and who was the swipee.

What struck me upon navigating through the Newsday feature (besides the absurdity of some of the covers of course) is that as you click through from cover to cover, you get popup after popup. It’s a good way for Newsday to increase their ad impressions delivered, of course, but is there anyone who thinks that in the middle of a tour of album cover lunacy someone will stop themselves cold and say, "Oh, yeah, that’s right — I need to sign up for an American Express card."

Takeaway for marketers: Context and relevance matters.

The first paragraph of this article from AdAge the other day pretty much nails it:

"Avinash Kaushik thinks one of the reasons why so many websites ‘suck’ today is because of the hippo — as in the ‘highest paid person’s opinion.’ "

Bingo. You probably don’t have to read the rest of the article if you’ve been involved in any significant Web design or development projects (the familiarity of the hippo will be painful enough), but here’s the link if you want to check it out anyway.

Takeaway for marketers: If you’re a hippo, back off. Trust your staff … isn’t that why you’re paying them?

“When we say ‘war is over if you want it,’ we mean that if everyone demanded peace instead of another TV set, we’d have peace.”
—John Lennon

As we wait for email standards to be established, paying attention to best practices is the next best thing. So if you’re involved in email marketing at all, be sure to read this terrific post from the Campaign Monitor blog.

Takeaway for marketers: There’s a lot more to sending email than just sending email.