Author: Dylan Kissane

The McDonald’s Shamrock Shake, a seasonal treat fast approaching its fiftieth year of bringing a little green pleasure into the lives of millions. A March mainstay, the minty green shake is as familiar to American audiences as the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte or the Outback Blooming Onion. Consumers look forward to enjoying a cold, Shamrock Shake in the lead up to St Patrick’s Day each year and now – in the age of Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat – sharing that experience with the world. But how did the most famous American burger restaurant find itself selling an Irish-themed milkshake? And…

Welcome to the week! It’s Monday – are you smiling? At DOZ we’re looking forward to a big week. We’ve rolled out some new features on our platform, we’ve got a week packed with great themed content queued up and ready to go, and the sun is slowly but surely returning to the northern winter skies. In the marketing world the Spring conferences are not too far away, the business world is getting set for tax time, and the sporting world is getting set for the end of March Madness and the finals of the European Champions League. Wherever you…

Here at DOZ we’ve helped connect some of the world’s best marketing experts with clients who are taking their marketing to the next level. Increasingly, one of the most popular tasks that our community of experts undertakes for clients relates to usability and the user experience, specifically a user experience audit. But why audit your user experience? First, without a good user experience your users are going to go elsewhere. Customers adore simplicity, they reward intuitive design, and they enjoy using products and services that don’t really feel like you are using them all that much to begin with. If…

There are some websites I like to visit every day. If I’m searching for information, I turn to Google or DuckDuckGo. If I’m taking some downtime, I’ll hit up reddit. I visit Inbound.org, I visit Swiped.com, and I read Copyblogger most days, too. But if it’s information, confirmation, or just a fast fact I’m after then there’s one place I’ll head to the same place that tens of millions do every day: Wikipedia. I don’t need to tell you about the world’s most extensive and consulted online encyclopedia. You’re probably aware of the many millions of articles (38 million, actually)…

So many websites spend a lot of time, effort, and money on getting people to visit their website. They’ll place ads, they’ll optimize for keywords, they’ll sponsor posts, and they’ll get social. All of these tactics are effective and we often recommend these to clients here at DOZ. But it’s one thing to get someone to visit your site, and it’s another thing altogether to provide them with the sort of service that sees them returning to your site in the future. An advertisement might be great for bringing a new customer to your site but only a good experience…

Welcome to the week! Thirty years ago today a group of musicians and recording artists under the banner USA for Africa released the song We Are the World. The single is one of only 30 songs in the history of music to have sold 10 million copies worldwide – and this was back in a pre-torrent time when the only way to get your music was to buy it. It would go on to win three Grammy Awards and raise more than $60 million for humanitarian relief in Africa – not a bad piece of marketing to emulate even now,…

All this week on The DOZ Blog we’re looking at the US presidential race. Whether it’s the marketing, the social media, the branding, or the impact of the technology sector, we’re diving deep into the campaign and identifying lessons for politicians and business people alike. In today’s post we take a close look at the impact of Silicon Valley on the 2016 race. No longer just a mecca for startups on the west coast, Silicon Valley today is a significant player and a major voice in the campaign for the White House – and here’s how. 2016 is the election…

Who has the best website out of the presidential candidates left in the race? Before I answer, let me start with a disclosure: I’m not going to be voting in this election, I have no dog in this particular fight, and I’m basing this on an objective assessment from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. In other words, while I might be as partisan as anyone else when it comes to my political beliefs, I can recognize good marketing and excellence in user experience and web design when I see it. And in the race for the White House…

All this week on The DOZ Blog we’re all about the US presidential election. No, we’re not betting on who’s going to win and neither are we sharing our vote. After all, with a team drawn from a dozen different countries and working around the world, a whole lot of people working at DOZ can’t vote in the election. But what we can do is take a good hard look at one of the most exciting and extensive marketing exercises on the planet this year. Forget the Olympic Games – the biggest marketing event of 2016 is well underway as…

It’s Tuesday, but not just an ordinary Tuesday. It’s Super Tuesday. For the uninitiated, Super Tuesday is not the secret identity of regular old Clark Kent Tuesday. Instead, Super Tuesday is the day in the US presidential nomination race where a large number of states and a similarly large number of delegates are up for grabs. As Wikipedia explains, “Since Super Tuesday primaries are typically held in a large number of states from geographically and socially diverse regions of the country, Super Tuesday typically represents a presidential candidate’s first test of national electability. Convincing wins in Super Tuesday primaries have…