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Good grief where has the morning gone? An early coffee at our favorite beachside café ... some keyword research ... a little troubleshooting of an analytics script that wasn't producing any data ... a couple of very short emails ... a chat with two clients and suddenly it's after midday and I'm wondering what has happened to the time.

Well the time might have rushed by in a blur but even though I've been doing work I've also been having some fun and that's one of the great things about working for yourself in an industry that has so many facets that are so absolutely fascinating.

Last night Steve and I sat and watched one of our regular programs on TV. It runs on one of the major networks here in Australia and it looks at advertising and marketing. In the program a panel of advertising gurus pick various marketing and advertising campaigns apart and explain why the ads do or don't work. Last night they looked at a well-known type of ad almost everyone here in Australia and in quite a few other countries will have seen and we picked up a very good tip from it that will probably work well on your websites ... it certainly works well on television.

Here in Australia you will often see advertising on television for something called Brand Power. Basically each ad is a recommendation for a brand ... it can look at a brand of toothpaste ... a brand of washing powder ... a brand of margarine ... even kids' crayons are advertised through Brand Power.

Every ad follows exactly the same format with only the name of the product being changed and every ad features the same person talking about the product. The ads don't try to oversell the product ... in fact they're a little understated if anything ... and Brand Power has been using the same format for years.

Now you might think that the ads ... after years of using the same format ... are more than a little tired and people have got used to them and just switch off when they appear on the television. That couldn't be further from the truth and the fact is that these ads are amongst the most effective ads running on television and various brands are lining up to be featured on Brand Power.

Why are they so effective? Well it seems that viewers think that Brand Power is some sort of official review body ... consumer advocates ... a business that actually measures a product against it's competition.

In a recent survey around 80 percent of people who were asked about Brand Power thought that Brand Power was an official body and so they bought items based on Brand Power's recommendations. They didn't realize that Brand Power was nothing more than an advertising business and did absolutely no testing of the products they advertised.

As one of the marketing people on the panel pointed out; Brand Power had managed to convince people that they were something that they were not and that they were giving the products they were marketing some sort of official seal of approval even though they never displayed one.

Now maybe you have never seen a Brand Power ad but that doesn't mean that there's nothing for you to take away from today's column. Just stop for a moment and think about the impact that an official-looking seal of approval has on you when you see it on a product on the supermarket shelves when you're shopping.

It encourages you to buy the product doesn't it? You may never have heard of the body that has awarded that seal to the product you're looking at but it looks official ... it looks important ... it encourages you to feel ok about buying the product. That seal tells you that the product will work for you and it's hard to buy a similar product that doesn't carry that seal.

So why can't you use that form of marketing for your products? How much effort can it take to produce some sort of official looking seal that tells your surfers that they can trust what it appears on because it's been awarded by a body that has carefully reviewed the product?

Of course if you're really clever ... like Brand Power is ... you don't actually have to tell lies. You just let the imagery fire up your surfers' imagination so that they tell themselves that the seal you designed really does have value and that they can buy with confidence when they see that seal.

And of course if you really do value repeat customers you will only recommend products that deliver real value for the people who buy them.