HOT: Don't do it!!!

How do you know when someone is serious about succeeding in this industry? When they go from an awful splash to a powerful thing of beauty like this splash page in the course of weeks. It shows dedication, both from the fact that he's obviously searched for, and found, a mentor; and that he's doing as he's told. The results are stunning, and if it was my place to do so, I'd give him a medal (though the money that will be made in the coming months will probably be more appreciated anyway :)).

Great job - the splash catches the eye, and immediately triggers an instinctive strong emotional response in the brain, which is an innovative idea that I don't really recall ever having seen yet. I'm willing to bet that a lot of people that surf without looking on a normal basis will find themselves scrolling down and reading the page (or at least a few lines of it) before they even realize that they're doing it.

I think that the bottom portion of the splash (not shown here, sorry) can still use some work, but after such a drastic improvement, I look forward to seeing what's next.

Seen first today at TS25

HOT: Caveman discovered the rock... and the laptop!

This is a great eyegrabber. It's cute and funny and that's the top priority a splash page needs to meet.

However, I don't know that I'd actually opt-in (despite the TRUSTe seal, which is a VERY powerful trust enhancer, and the "We haven't discovered spam" which is funny & trust building) for the form for a number of reasons. It's vague - I'm not sure what kind of information is being offered beyond "Make money online". Big friggen, whoop.

It's also a bit overdone. The smile face, the person (this is important for personal branding - but it's just adding to an already over-busy splash), the arrow and the money.

It's a great start and I think with a couple of bullets in the top-right part of the splash it can still be fixed

Seen first today at I Love Hits

HOT: I know you - you're the Ketchup guy!

Here's an example of great audio marketing. Do you all remember Paul, the Rice & Ketchup (above the headline, in reeed) guy? Apparantly I do. I was surfing and came across this site and saw abvsolutely nothing interesting about the page, so I clicked on. But as my hand was going for the button, I heard a familiar voice, and though my eyes were moving on, my ears picked up on that and my brain said "Hey, that's Paul the Ketchup Guy!"

So good work - 3 months of telling the world about rice & ketchup has marketed you (well, your voice) really well!

Seen first today at TS25

Update (1 hour later): So I was looking for a link to the ketchup and rice page (I found it here), and it turns out that it's not even the same Paul! Foolish me. But that doesn't make the audio branding any less effective.