Dodge, Duck, Dip… Loquax – Duck… see it’s all subliminal! Some of you may well have seen the recent O2 advert with giant ducks floating down the river – guess what some of our users think of first when they see that advert? The answer is not Sean Bean and his treats.

Back to Dodgeball!

Were we happy with the sponsorship? For the most part yes – things can always be better – but for a short notice arrangement things went ok. For us it was a new experience (come to think of it spending money was a new experience in itself) plus an opportunity to put the brand name out into a completely different sphere. Sometimes it’s worth a punt doing something that’s left of field to find new ways of getting your brand out there.

You can see video from the event on Bucks TV as well highlights of the final.

Hopefully those that attended, their friends etc. remember Loquax and then go on to tell the people they know. If nothing else when we’re older we can say “we sponsored the National Dodgeball Championships you know”.

In response to the sponsorship we received the following “Thank you again for your generous support, I know I speak for everyone who took part yesterday, either as an organiser, referee, player or spectator, that yesterday would not have been possible without it”.

Would we sponsor the event again? Yes I think we probably would. Hopefully the UKDBA will welcome us back and touch wood we’re in a position to do things again.

Sometimes it’s just nice to do something completely different!

The fact is they’re not clever, in fact most are just plain stupid.

Firstly they always post the same kind of thing, usually along the lines of “I’ve just found this website” or “Has anyone been to this site, is it genuine?”. It’s usually the first post they make too, although sometimes they might introduce themselves before launching their little advert.

The second reason why these people are stupid is because they don’t understand IP addresses – especially when it traceroutes back to their company HQ!

What we need is an example!

Our example arrived today in the form of Lucky Hammer. They’re owned by Data Media and Research Ltd, the people behind Win4Now and they’re based in Sheffield. Here’s our new friend Davros12 earlier just before being exterminated:

Now a bit of IP checking and we discover not only is the address a Sheffield IP address, but in fact other people using this IP have previously registered on Loquax – and they have email addresses that tell us that it’s the people behind Lucky Hammer doing the posting.

What to do with this kind of spam?

Usually it just gets deleted, but sometimes it’s useful to tell your users (or even blog readers) what is happening. In this case we’ve replied to the post, told our users that the company is breaking our forum rules (again) and suggested that as they can’t be upfront and honest why should anyone trust the site that is being advertised.

It’s one way to make sure that this kind of forum spam backfires on the people who continue to do it!

If you are a seedy forum advertiser in future why not contact us first, perhaps even pay us for the privilege to show your advert, but please don’t be sneaky about it – it just annoys everyone and gets you nothing, except maybe a bit of public “outing” on an affiliate blog.

Sometime back I blogged about the Golden Jigsaw and posed the question would it be the next million dollar homepage? Well yesterday the competition came to an end and so the answer is “no”. It was described as “the most powerful viral marketing event of 2007″ but sadly it failed to live up to the hype. So what happened?

The idea was good enough: sell 1000 pieces of a jigsaw, scatter them around the web and then set people off on a treasure hunt to find them. However the competition was beset with numerous problems with the main one simply being unable to attract enough advertisers to maintain momentum and initial interest. Other issues included advertiser sites crashing under the weight of users (especially at the outset), confusion about clues, people sharing answers and changes to the competition structure.

This resulted in entrants becoming frustrated with the competition and losing interest – not good when the idea is to build interest as the competition progressed. Ultimately the promoters realised all was not going well and decided to close the competition early and award £5000 in total prize money to some lucky puzzle searchers.

We invested in one piece, and to be fair, in terms of traffic generation it was a respectable investment. We had the “honour” of being the second site to host a piece of the puzzle – which wouldn’t have been so bad had I not been at a wedding on the weekend the puzzle piece went live. It’s not easy to update a website in a leafy village in Surrey whilst slightly drunk on several jugs of Pimms. All we were told is “hide the piece on the site” (which we did eventually), but as there was no cluesto the location of the piece this meant a vast number of visitors searching literally every nook, cranny and website we own for a jigsaw piece!

The good news is that our server held firm, even with up to four times our usual level of traffic and activity. The bad news is that some people left the site with a less than positive impression. Fortunately we moved fast to try and help visitors via the Loquax Blog – although some people still insisted on searching everywhere and a few resorted to abusive emails.

The Golden Jigsaw continued for some weeks, but it was evident to all involved that the reality of the competition failed to live up to the the theory. After efforts to attract new advertisers, the promoters made changes to the structure of the competition, and eventually optted to close things down at the end of October. Numerous puzzle pieces were distributed amongst the advertisers – and an additional 15 were added to Loquax. This saw further traffic to the site for the last couple of weeks, but nothing on the scale as the initial launch.

To be fair to the promoters, the prize winners were announced today at The Golden Jigsaw and the competition was wound up with plenty of notice and explanation. From an advertisers point of view it was an interesting exercise, sometimes frustrating – like placing 14 pieces on the website only to be told at 9pm they were the wrong ones and needed changing – but also fascinating – people just don’t read, often can’t see things right in front of them, appreciate help above and beyond what normal siteowners offer.

The Golden Jigsaw aim to return in 2008. Their attempt to create a game that attracted a large audience engaged and involved over a long period time plus attractive to advertisers sadly failed this year. It will be interesting to see what develops next time round.