Application Development Firms

6 Things: Time's a wastin'

Wednesday, August 18, 2010 by Doug Dimon

“6 Things” is a list of things I've come across that I find interesting, inspiring, adventurous, or just plain cool. I’ll be publishing these fairly regularly, so keep an eye out.

It's been a little while since my last "6 Things" post. It's not that I haven't had lots of cool stuff ooze through the interweb onto my screen, it's just that I wanted to get my CAT/Clio posts out. And besides, absence makes the heart grow fonder... or is that absinthe?

This list features 6 awesome time-sucking activities I've come across recently. They aren't all new, but if you haven't had the pleasure of using these to fill up your copious free time, then you are in for a treat. Actually, the real question is, "are these a waste of time?" If you are engaged and entertained, is that not a worthwhile activity? Who's to say, but if you get caught at work spending your time on these... you don't know me.

Most of these are tied to brands. Do they do anything for them? Much of marketing is building awareness, so in that sense, many of these are successful (but not all). Will they lead to better business? That's hard to say, but they probably aren't hurting it.

1. Who doesn't want a paper head?
Converse has posted an application on their blog that allows you to make a paper mask of yourself. Here's mine.

It took some time, but it wasn't difficult. You can print on 8 1/2 by 11 paper, but only if you are making a mask for your cat (it's very small). 11x17 will yield a nearly life-size mask (that's what I used). If you have access to a large format printer, a giant paper head would be awesome.

Does it do anything for Converse? Well, they are really a lifestyle brand, so I say yes. Their blog is all about be cool, hip, and funky... and this fits right in.

2. Rube Goldberg meets Jeopardy
To promote their Chrome browser, Google created a hybrid video/trivia game.

It uses a cool YouTube feature that lets you play multiple movies in a sequence and interleaves little trivia games between them. The object is to get through the course as quickly as possible.

It's fun, uses Google services (search and YouTube), and it gets the message out that chrome is fast (over and over, in fact). Will it make you download chrome? It might. They provide a handy download link right on the page.

3. Drink a fake beer, win a real prize.

To promote Strongbow beer, they poured a virtual pint and invited everyone to take a sip.

Every time you refresh your browser, a sip is registered. If you are lucky, your sip will reveal a prize. Better hurry, there are only about 400,000 sips and under 50 prizes left.

Does it make you want to try Strongbow? Not really, although if you are one of the lucky ones, you might win some. And it does raise awareness, but there's not a lot of information (or any, really). In fact, given the tiny "drinkaware.co.uk" link in the bottom left corner, I'm not sure it's even available in the states.

4. Do a little dance.

You, too, can be a video DJ, creating a seizure inducing video montage that you can send to all your friends.

Actually, this is pretty fun. You can choose beats and remix clips, and record your masterpiece for viewing and sharing. In the end, you are probably the only one who will be impressed with your mad cutting skills, but that's enough, isn't it?

This is meant to promote fashion photography and it does a good job at that. I felt compelled to click around just to see what the site was all about.

5. Cast you and your friends in a film trailer.

"Lost in Val Sinestra" is a horror film directed and starring you and your friends. Well, at least that's what the trailer says. If you have a Facebook account, create your own.

This is not the first Facebook connected "film" I've seen, but I think the integration in this one is awesome. The production value is great and they did an impressive job using the photos and names throughout.

It's actually a stunt to promote television services for Swisscom. But the only mention of that is a short cryptic message after the credits. There's no link. I only know about the connection because I read some blogs after mucking about looking for who was responsible. There's not even any mention of this on the Swisscom site. Experience: A+. Marketing: F-.

6. Foul mouthed cartoons are fun.

Sure Pixar is great, but have you thought that if Buzz Lightyear would just drop a few more F-bombs it would be high-larious. Well, now is your chance to script a 3D movie your way.

These are not new, but they are still fun to make and watch. Between the too-cute characters and the almost creepy vocalizations, it's hard not to love them. You can create free movies using a limited character set. "Premium" characters cost money (which I suppose is how they stay in business). But even if you only play around and never actually "publish" a movie, it can be hours of fun.

(warning: Most of these movies are rated M for mature... although clearly the people making them are not.)

Does This Picture Remind You of Your Website?

Monday, July 26, 2010 by Michael Kogon

I took this picture earlier this month in a small cafeteria in an office building. Six months into the year and the sign still has a Happy New Year message on it.

While I too am surprised by how fast the first half of 2010 has gone by, I can't help but think how many times the business owner has passed this sign since January. He's probably walked by it every day and night, yet hasn't thought about updating it.

This isn't the first time I've seen this. You'd be surprised how many times I come across websites with 2009 press releases on their home page or a blog post from April. It's easy to to let time get away from you.

Even if you're updating your news room and blog on a regular basis, when was the last time you updated your product pages with fresh images or refreshed the copy on your "About Us" or "Our People" pages? Chances are, there are updates to be made.

Think about content management as part of your marketing responsibility and part of your customer service responsibilities. It does matter.

Oh yeah, in case you didn't know it, U LOOK MARVELOUS.

PowerPoint Doesn’t Suck. You Do.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 by Paul Hernacki

I hear it said at least several times a week. I see it posted on Twitter pretty frequently. It’s the simple statement that’s become cool to utter: PowerPoint Sucks. And often in the same breath I hear people extol the wonders of Keynote or Prezi.

I’ll be the first person to admit that I have seen countless horrible PowerPoint presentations. I probably see at least one PowerPoint presentation per day that is a crime against humanity. I’ve seen more poorly laid out slides, absurd overuse of ridiculous transitions and animations, badly-utilized effects, slides with so much text that Tolstoy would complain, more bullets than Rambo can fire off in full-length movie, and more light-colored fonts on yellow backgrounds than should be legal.

But this is not the point. It’s a poor craftsman that blames his tools. Just because you produce your presentation on a MacBook Pro (and I’m typing this post on one right now) with Keynote it does not somehow imbue you with some sudden, instantaneous and deity-like powers to produce an amazing presentation. And using Prezi mostly just increases the likelihood of inducing motion sickness and nausea in your audience while reducing the reusability of your content and failing to add anything meaningful to your corporate knowledge base.

Here’s a news flash: a good presentation requires having a good story to tell and a good story teller. Period. The tools you might use are irrelevant, but if you do choose to use tools to add to your story you need to have a clue of how to use them and then use them in a manner that supports the telling of a great story. That’s it. A great story teller with a great story to tell doesn’t even need a series of slides popping up behind them. Great visuals, content and media that reinforce key messages and enhance the story can be tremendously helpful and effective when used properly. But they are still not the primary and most important element in a successful presentation that connects with the audience. You are.

Prezi and Keynote do not grant you mystical and magical powers. They do not make you smarter and better looking. They are not powered by Skynet and constructed on top of a positronic copy of the brains of Steve Jobs, Bill Buxton, Martin Luther King, and Zig Ziglar. They do not think for you. They do not know who your audience is, they do not know the purpose of your presentation, they do not know the message you are trying to convey, they do not know the desired outcome, they do not know how to connect with the people in the room. Neither does PowerPoint for that matter.

There are absolutely some minute feature details that can be argued about the different tools. I’ve used them all. Though if you actually take the time to learn them you find that for the most part each has their shortcomings and things they can’t do well, and each has capabilities the other doesn’t. But it still all comes back to you. Saying “PowerPoint Sucks” is quite simply a short-cut to thinking. It doesn’t suck. You do. Instead try focusing on coming up with a good story and learning how to tell it well.

And just to illustrate my point, here's this entire blog post re-done very poorly as a hack-job Prezi. It's a horrible presentation. Just makes you want to cry. Enjoy. http://prezi.com/4_muqjahha-g/powerpoint-doesnt-suck-you-do/

(Image Credit: Niall Kennedy)

Deep Thoughts From CLIO and CAT, Part Two: Artists vs. Geeks

Tuesday, July 6, 2010 by Doug Dimon

This is the second of a series on my insights from two conferences I recently attended: The Clio Awards Conference and Creativity and Technology (CAT). As I mentioned in my first post, there was a lot of crossover between them. One thing in common was Farris Yakob, Chief Innovation Officer at MDC. He was closely tied to another thing they had in common: the discussion of technology and creativity.

I didn't know who Faris was prior to the CLIO conference, but after seeing him present on several different topics through both conferences, I realized that we were nearly identical....

(I know.... it's like a mirror, right?)

...in our thinking when it comes to creative and tech. Okay, maybe not identical, but definitely adjacent. Or perhaps I just think he's really smart and I'm projecting. Whatever.

We've all heard this at some point, "Don't let technology drive your creative". And on some level I agree. You shouldn't use technology simply because you can, or because it's the hot new thing, or because your client says they "need AR right now!" even though they don't really know what AR stands for. Creative ideas need to be appropriate to the brand and their goals.

But, I think in many cases, it's easy to ignore technology in the name of creative. After all, creativity is the essence of free unfettered thinking, skipping gleefully through a field of ideas, plucking them up and making a bouquet of awesomeness. Technology is the evil lord forcing everyone to wear drab gray lab coats and march single file while they endlessly push buttons over and over again.

But innovation is a key component to creative thinking. Faris made a great point that innovation is hard because we tend to let habits take over. Innovative ideas need to be inspired by new thoughts and technology is a great way to break patterns. Hey, I'm inspired by the tech that will let blind people drive and not just because I see additional opportunities for napping. If you can get a car to recognize and interpret its surroundings, think what that means for the growth of real-time environmental recognition and all the marketing possibilities. It moves gesture recognition to a whole new level and do you know what that means? Well, neither do I, but it's got me thinking in a million directions... it's creative crack! And what about the holy grail of interfaces... controlling things with your mind! Okay... that one is seriously far away from really being useful, but I hope you see my point.

There are advances in tech every day, and though I clearly have a nerd streak, it's unlikely that I'll be exposed to all of the smaller, albeit more useful things happening in hardware and software. It's just as likely that technologists who eat and breath this stuff may not be able to look at it from outside to see what creative uses might be born of the technology. And that's what creative people do: interpret information and gain inspiration by bending, molding, and synthesizing the world around them into something new and interesting.

Don't avoid technology because it makes you uncomfortable. You may never really understand the how of a thing, but you can grasp the what and why. I know firsthand the frustration of not really understanding how something works and feeling a bit put off because of it. But just because something is neo maxi zoom dweebie (anybody?), doesn't mean that it can't lead to a fantastic new creative direction. Look past the bits and bytes, the nuts and bolts, and see the possibilities. Or perhaps it's just that we keep hearing, "it doesn't work that way". But it could. Or it might. So, tech guys, give a little. Indulge our whimsical and sometimes ridiculous thoughts. Let tech inspire the "what if?".

If you are part of a creative team, listen to your technologists, even if you only understand every fifth word and keep nodding off while they go on and on about Zeno's Paradox (are we there yet?) and divide by zero issues (why isn't that just zero?). Embrace your inner geek. And technologists, join the fun and give those of us skipping through the idea fields the tools to twist your logic into a fragrant bouquet of awesomeness.

Fan Nation: A Study of Natural Social Networks in Sports

Thursday, June 24, 2010 by Joni Lockridge

Part One: Professional Soccer

I admit. I’m riding shotgun on the World Cup bandwagon. And after several hours in a crowded sports bar here in Atlanta, it is clear I’m not the only one. I was welcomed into a community of individuals who actively sought information about the team, the sport, the players, even the South African culture. We shared stories, we spilled beer on our jerseys… and we Facebooked each other so we could meet up for the next weekend’s games. I’ve officially expanded into new social network.

What is it about sports that make “social networking” so natural, so effortless? More importantly, what can brands in other industries learn from sports as they spend marketing dollars to acquire digital fans? A recent attempt by Syncapse to estimate the value of a fan on Facebook has resulted in an average worth of $138 per fan. The study further states that:

On average, fans spend an additional $71.84 on products for which they are fans compared to those who are not fans
Fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using the brand
Fans are 41% more likely than non-fans to recommend a fanned product to their friends

Given the demonstrated value, I sought out Casey Romany, an Account Executive for Soccer United Marketing (SUM) to uncover their ingredients for success. SUM holds all commercial rights to both Major League Soccer and the United States Soccer Federation, including the men’s and women’s national teams that are playing in the 2010 World Cup. In addition, they hold rights to Mexican National Team games played in the United States, the CONCACAF Gold Cup™, and InterLiga.™

SUM just launched the new MLSnet.com, which has been years in the making. Obviously, they are not ahead of the technology curve, but as Casey describes, perhaps it is because they have never needed to be.

Soccer fans are extremely loyal and craved a centralized location to read about the sport. They flocked to the new website where they can read about international matches, local MLS games, and their favorite players from all over the world.

“We needed to take control of the space. A fan would have to go to so many different leagues, teams, and national sport sites to access information about soccer,” said Casey. SUM then supported their investment by hiring some of the biggest soccer journalists, affectionately called “soccer heads,” to tell the sport’s stories. Genius.

By building one platform for all of soccer and capitalizing on its protagonists, its epic battles, and its gossip, SUM has pulled together a social network so powerful that other brands invest marketing dollars to gain access to the soccer fans that SUM has unified. When a multi-million dollar business model also includes a way to monetize your marketing and PR tactics, it’s clear your fans are worth more than $138 each.

The key takeaway: Soccer, and the rest of the sports industry, is in the business of telling stories. Strong, passionate, exciting, tales of victory, tragedy, and legends in the making. Shakespeare only wishes he had it this easy.

And by comparison, fan pages on Facebook are flat. Most connections are superficial—purely discount driven, and without true loyalty. Where are the stories? The passion? Brands forget that they are selling more than products, and they lose depth in the relationships when they set the expectation that being a fan means getting a price reduction. I’m not arguing that this method isn’t a great way to build numbers, but I am arguing that it is a fragile way to build loyalty.

In my opinion, here are a few brands that have succeeded:

Starbucks: Starbucks offers promotions, but more importantly, the page also connects to those fans that are socially and environmentally aware— a strong attribute of Facebook users within that 18-24 demographic segment. Maybe this is why a Syncapse report revealed that Starbucks fans are likely to spend $238.22, more than triple the $71.84 average. In addition, their photo albums tell vivid, engaging stories about the company, the products, and the leadership (Check out Howard Schultz’ trip to Rwanda).

Southwest Airlines: As over-the-top as the flight attendants can be, it is refreshing to witness personality in the airline industry. The persona is also displayed full force on the Southwest Airlines Facebook page, and fans eat this up (a relatively safe assumption given the number of times fans ask, “How do I work for Southwest?”). Another thing I like about the page is how they speak to checked bags like they are passengers, personifying a service they offer. I value my personal belongings on a trip, and everything on this page reminds me that Southwest Airlines does also.

Nike Football (Soccer): Admittedly chosen due to its soccer content, this site still exemplifies the art of storytelling. The videos instigate a real emotional connection, and the calls to action are extremely powerful. The Nike Red campaign is building the same momentum as the LiveStrong campaign did $47 million dollars ago. This page screams “Join the team, unite as a fan of the sport, rally behind the cause, and be loyal to the Nike brand.”

Soccer United Marketing has united fans in a way brands can emulate. If you are looking to build loyalty, why focus solely on the collection of fickle bargain hunters? Present your product information by telling the details about the hard work and research during development, or build stories around employees and spokespersons similar to fiery sports features on players and teams. Most importantly, let your fans know that you have a heart; you are human; and you are the hero, not the villain. Like.

Deep Thoughts from CLIO and CAT

Thursday, June 17, 2010 by Doug Dimon

I attended two conferences recently: The Clio Awards Conference and Creativity and Technology (CAT). Intermixed with the mediocre food, self-congratulatory speeches, and months old "trends" were some pearls of, if not wisdom, at least things that make you go hmmm.... (I was wondering when I'd be able to work in an Arsenio Hall/C+C Music Factory reference). I'm going to summarize some of the discussion I found interesting or useful. There was significant cross-over between the two conferences (both in presentations and presenters) so I'm going to mash them together and serve them up with my own blend of seasonings. I will try to give credit to the appropriate presenter, but if I drop the ball, feel free to call me out in the comments. I also believe in brevity in blogs, so I will spread this over a few posts.

On Leadership:

The first session at the Clio conference was one that seemed perhaps to be the least relevant, but ended up being the most interesting. What is leadership and what makes a good leader, specifically in a creative company? The presenter was Doug Guthrie from the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.

The examples of great leaders we often site are those people who are charismatic, have taken charge of a situation, have orchestrated a "big moment", or have displayed a specific strength as an individual that allowed a situation to be overcome or a goal to reached for the betterment of a group. While these types of people can be successful leaders, those are not necessarily the characteristics that make a good leader within a company. Here are some key points discussed:

Your position is not important, how you act in your position is.
Everyday activity is more important than a "big moment". You must lead with every action not just once in a while.
Managers think about their departments. Leaders think about the broad organization, independent of individual or departmental needs.
Good leaders lead through empowering others.
True leaders embrace complexity inherent in the structure of an organization and human dynamics. They don't try to oversimplify the situation.
Don't confuse aspiration with vision. Vision shows the path to success and is essential in a leader.
Create harmony among component parts by thinking about complexity, articulating a strategy, and then doing the actual work of creating the structure to let it happen.
Inspire and facilitate other employees to succeed.
Be introspective. Know yourself.
Embrace failure. Innovation involves risk so evaluate on effort and intent and not always on success.
Admit to being wrong.

One of the ideas that came across throughout the entire discussion (at least to my ears) is that a good leader pushes his organization ahead rather than pulling them. He is thinks of the organization over the individual, to the point where a good leader will eventually render themselves obsolete (at least in the context of specific goals to be met).

In this sense, Steve Jobs is not a good leader. He is a great innovator, a creative and business genius, and an tremendous influence on the world... but not a great leader. I don't say this to slam Mr. Jobs, but he was brought up in the session as a good example of someone who would normally be pointed to as a great leader, and yet falls short within the tenets listed here. He inarguably has changed the face of consumer technology and his influence in Apple and beyond will be felt long after he retires, but, by all evidence, is a leader in the traditional "pinnacle" paradigm, rather than the idea of "leader as foundation" ideas discussed here. In truth, many people we would list as strong leaders would have a hard time standing up to this categorization. This is simply because those people that draw our attention are often characterized by actions and personalities that are not specifically important within this framework, and those that fit this description tend to be less noticeable as an individual even while the success of their efforts are obvious within the industry.

And with that... let's go to our studio audience.

(Tune in next time for more from CLIO and CAT... and me of course.)

Why Do We Work?

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 by Laura Long

On my commute home I was listening to NPR, admittedly partially listening while daydreaming rather than getting educated, but a question caught my attention. “Why do we work?” The discussion was largely around motivation and what drives the creativity of a workplace towards new ideas. In my goal to participate in our company blog for the first time, I have been putting the pressure on myself to finalize my subject. What do I have to say? Great advice was given today: Speak to what gives me passion. The question from the radio reminded me.

So, why do we work? I mean, it can be hard! In the agency world it can also be unpredictable. A moving target if you will. We notoriously work hard and play hard. Each of us is driven by different motivators to get us up and at ‘em. Regardless of role we play in the cast of characters, there are times when we ask ourselves why. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t. The reasons vary: money, recognition, people, opportunities, etc. As I pondered this myself, I realized it boiled down to one word.

My Word: Pride

For me, throughout my career I have served clients regardless of the job. Starting in retail, consulting and agencies, each position was in support of understanding my customers and serving their needs. It has only been with distance from that first job that I’ve been able to see the motif of this thread throughout my career.

This may sound lofty or something from some feel good management manual but it is exactly what drives me. “Why do I work?” It is because when I feel proud - I feel intensely motivated.

Recently I was reminded of how powerful this feeling can drive your motivation. Watching the accomplishment of my colleagues as they were recognized for a successful project for a client was, of course, nice. It was more than that. Seeing behind the eyes of my colleagues, to their pride, and – yep, here it comes – the look in our clients’ eyes. When we work so hard to provide smart and creative solutions to our clients, when we achieve their goals, when everyone looks at them and says “Wow, they are the rock stars we want them to be.” I’m proud.

How can we achieve this lofty feeling? Listen. Listen to what our clients need. And it isn’t just their business goals. As with each employee’s motivation, our client’s need different things to achieve success. Our skills in client services begin with any relationship tool. Listen first. Then ask questions. The more we know, the more we can deliver – in the partnership and in the growth of the account relationship.

There is another side to my story and one that is equally important to me. The pride I feel with my team in their accomplishments. It is genuine and I learned it from the leader’s I want to emulate. Working with employees and colleagues to support them to achieve their success brings my sense of motivation to great heights. I feel proud. It is why I work - I want to make things better. I want to feel like I’m contributing in a positive way to the work lives of my team members and my clients. Life can be challenging; Work can be challenging. Having a reason to work through those difficult times is related to how we feel about the possible outcomes. My possible outcome feeds my motivation to work. I’m not perfect…but…

I’m proud.

Best Practices for Facebook Pages

Wednesday, June 2, 2010 by Ashley Reed

Major brands are increasingly turning to Facebook to reach consumers and engage them deeper. In order to get the most out of your Facebook presence, be sure to formulate a strategy. What do you hope to get out of your Facebook Page?

Facebook Pages can be used for:

Building brand awareness
Increasing consumer engagement with your brand
Generating leads
Qualifying fans and converting them to customers
Improving customer service
Establishing your company as a thought leader

Once you’ve defined your goals, keep in mind these Do’s and Don’ts for engagement:

Do:

“Listen” to what your fans are talking about on your page – do they have praise or complaints?Identify what interests them and customize your messages accordingly.
Post compelling content like pictures and videos that keep them coming back for more.
Share exclusive content that they can’t get anywhere else.
Utilize Facebook applications like surveys, quizzes and games that foster an interactive experience.
Use Facebook’s analytics tool to determine what tactics are working, and which one’s aren’t.
Promote your Fan Page everywhere: print, online and TV advertisements, email signatures, business cards and targeted Facebook ads

Don’t:

Automate your content – Facebook is about conversation!
Sound impersonal - use a casual and informal tone.
Sound like a press release.
Spam your fans – maintain a balance of promotional and conversational posts.
Neglect your Fan Page – make sure you are monitoring it on a daily basis to respond to fans and post new content

Have more tips to add? Leave a comment below!

Trendwatch: The Social Graph

Tuesday, May 18, 2010 by Jeremy Porter

What’s the biggest buzzword around social networking right now? If you guessed location-based services, it would be hard to argue with you. If we ask you again in six months, chances are good you’ll answer the social graph.

The social graph questions keep coming up in client and prospect meetings. What is the social graph? What do we need to know about the social graph? How can we use the social graph to deepen relationships with customers? So on and so forth...

While I can’t answer every question you have about the social graph, I can help to start framing the conversation for executives struggling to gain a deeper understanding of the impact social graphs will have on their business.

For starters, the social graph is just a fancy way of describing relationships or connections with people, places and things. It’s a map of your social connections and preferences – a visual data model if you will, with hubs and nodes. For you, your social graph could be the Connections you have on LinkedIn, the places you’ve checked in on FourSquare, or the brands you’ve ‘liked’ on Facebook.

For illustrative purposes, there a few dozen lacrosse fans who are my Friends on Facebook. How many of them are from upstate New York? Syracuse fans? Of those, how many also listened to a lot of grunge in college, now live in Atlanta and work in marketing for an integrated interactive agency?

Granted, there’s probably not another one of me – at least not that specific, but you can see the potential. You’ve never been able to slice and dice data with this level of precision before. It’s this unprecedented level of targeting that gets innovative marketers excited, while privacy advocates reach for their pitchforks and torches.

Of course, my example above only illustrates relationships between connections and doesn’t get into activity, preference or myriad other social graphs that can be linked to one another. For example, who likes the same things or has been the same places as me? Who’s reading this article at the same time you are? These are questions you will be able to answer as social graphs get more sophisticated.

Where Did The Social Graph Come From?

Social graph has been popularized by Facebook, the world’s largest social network and the company most likely to serve as the epicenter for social graphs. While Facebook has plans to be the only social graph, recent announcements like its “Open Graph” suggest the company is happy remaining the epicenter of all social activity online. Plus, it’s unrealistic that Facebook could sustain a monopoly over the social graph – we all want to use other stuff.

With offerings like “Open Graph”, any electronic asset online can be linked to an individual’s social graph. In the months to come, look for this to include every place you go, everything you do, and everything you buy.

While Facebook has a lot of influence, there are no rules to the social graph. Any piece of social data can be woven into your graph to provide a more accurate picture of the interdependencies between your relationships and preferences. Privacy concerns aside (a future post perhaps), this stuff is truly amazing.

In the first wave of the Web, we were excited to discover new websites via links to other sites or search results. Early social networks encouraged us to link to one another, which dramatically accelerated our discovery of mutual relationships and made networking (the human kind) much faster – and in many ways enjoyable. Now everything is getting out there.

What’s All This Mean for Business?

For starters, you’ll start to have a crystal clear view into who your potential and current customers are. In the short-term, this will provide you with tremendous targeting advantages over your competition. For the 1st time ever, you’ll be able to customize incentives for all the 32 year old homemaker motor cross fans that have purchased a tofu burger from you in the past year.

Keep in mind, the more accurate you can target customers, the more accurate customers can target you. It is yet to be determined how consumers will react to the knowledge that they are your best customer. How much longer will it be before Foursquare mayors start demanding more incentives for the role they play in your viral marketing? What happens when Blippy users start demanding special incentives for all the purchases they’ve made?
These are good problems to have. Smarter brands and smarter consumers always forces us to innovate and push the needle farther. And who doesn’t love a good challenge?

Bottom line? The social graph takes a lot of the fun out of the guessing game of life – learning about people and things over time. Only time will tell whether or not instant gratification is a good thing or not. As marketers, it’s hard not to get excited about the potential to target with the greatest accuracy, reliability and ease ever. Bring it on.

At the same time, let’s tread forward lightly. We don’t want to create such huge concerns over privacy that regulation and oversight come in to drain the life out of the creative process.

What do you think? Are social graphs a good thing or a bad thing? Do you want people to know what kind of ice cream you like or what kind of car you drive? How much sharing is too much?

15 Things Less Annoying Than Facebook's Abhorrent Privacy Practices

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 by Paul Hernacki

Almost every week I continue to be shocked at some aspect of how Facebook is treating the privacy of their users. While I think Facebook has done some amazing things to redefine the landscape of connection and community in the digital age, the way they auto-opt-in users to new policies and settings that unwittingly further expose them in a manner that is beyond confusing for almost everyone is driving me crazy.

It seems to be a total disregard for privacy that leverages "confuser interface design" tactics and misleading redesign functionality alterations to extend their dominance at the unknowing expense of most of their users. They actively seek to get you to enter as much personally defining data as possible. They make it incredibly complicated to manage your assorted privacy settings, then they go and make significant changes that auto-opt in users to new options like making all of your posts available to search engines or to share your personal data with applications and sites using FaceBook tools. All of this while presenting typical users with a perception of communicating and sharing with their "Friends." Maybe FaceBook is just working towards a Nobel Peace Prize by wanting everybody on the planet and every corporation to be Friends? Ummmm.... no.

Conversely, while not exempt from scrutiny, Twitter takes a much different approach. They begin by having an established perception that what you post is public, they have one very clear and simple blanket option to make your posts private, and the information they ask you to enter for registration is extremely limited.

I'm also driven crazy by the constant changes to FaceBook API's that make the lives of developers miserable as they struggle to work with this juggernaut of social media and the fact that they employed algorithms that began to selectively decide whose posts among my friends they thought I should see (and even excluded my wife's posts from my stream until I manually added her back in)... but that's a whole other couple of blog posts to write. The following is a short list of things I actually find less annoying than FaceBook's treatment of the concept of privacy:

15. SPAM e-mail

14. People who post their every Foursquare or Gowalla check-in to Twitter

13. The mere existence of Farmville and Mafia Wars

12. The first time I saw Clippy

11. Developers that hardcode and use auto-code generators out of laziness

10. Requirements documents for a web site or app that say: "should work in every browser"

9. Web sites that dramatically over-use Flash for everything they possibly can

8. People that show up for an interview and haven't read and reviewed your company's web site or have any ability to articulate what your company does

7. People that text or use mobile devices to tweet while driving (or drive while talking on their mobile phone without using a Bluetooth or hands-free device)

6. People that call themselves "Social Media Gurus" in their bios or otherwise

5. People in busy airports that obliviously stop walking out of the blue and then wonder why everyone crashes into them

4. Every scene on the Fox TV series 24 that ever involved Kim Bauer

3. Stupid people (as one of my friends is fond of saying as he quotes his old high school football coach, "Ya can't fix stupid.")

2. The continued existence of IE6

1. The constant deluge of Top <insert number here> Lists

I could probably learn to live with all of the above. But I'm on the verge of simply shutting down my FaceBook account instead of constantly fighting to control my own information and exposure. Of course... I don't think FaceBook makes it terribly easy to truly shut down an account, they'd probably just auto-opt me in to be reactivated in a couple of weeks.

(Image Credit: Privacy by alancleaver_2000)

Twitter for Media Relations

Wednesday, May 5, 2010 by Jeremy Porter

By now, Twitter should be an integral part of your media relations strategy. Twitter has become one of the most efficient tools PR professionals use to manage relationships with journalists and other influencers. Why is Twitter such a great channel for media relations? Here are a few reasons:

Fish where the fish are: most mainstream and amateur journalists and bloggers are on Twitter. There are many tools for finding journalists on Twitter, such as MediaOnTwitter, MuckRack or JournalistTweets.

Mix business with pleasure: Twitter provides the ultimate glimpse into a person’s world. You can learn a lot of about journalists and bloggers by following their tweets and getting involved in conversations. This will help you not only identify ways to approach the journalist better, but also to monitor and respond to journalists’ needs – positioning you as a trusted expert.

Get to the point: journalists are overwhelmed with pitches. The short message format of Twitter makes it easier for journalists to scan brief messages. The chances of your tweet being read may be better than with email – just make sure the journalist is cool with being pitched via Twitter before you tweet it.

Pass it on: a tweet (Twitter status update) mention of your company or product by an influential journalist can be just as effective as a mention in a print publication. In many instances, the tweet may drive more traffic to your site in a short period of time. If increasing qualified site visitors is a core objective of your PR plan, you may want to consider Twitter.

Track results: most of your activity can be tracked through Twitter. Whether you want to track the pace at which you’re gaining new followers, the number of times your tweets are re-tweeted (passed along to others), or how many people click on a link that you share (using trackable URL-shorteners like Bit.ly or Su.pr), it’s easy for you to keep tabs on the effectiveness of your social media impact.

Build relationships: Twitter is all about relationships. The longer you use Twitter – actively use Twitter – the more relationships you will form. I can honestly say that I’ve built more relationships with media in the past two years on Twitter than I had in the previous five using conventional methods.

So how can you use Twitter for media relations? I suggest you look at Twitter as a channel like you would any other outlet. Treat journalists and bloggers with the respect they deserve – you know, the way you would like to be treated. Listen and observe at least (if not more) as much as you talk or tweet, you’ll be surprised what you can learn from journalists and bloggers. If you follow the media on Twitter long enough, you’ll notice that most tell you exactly what it takes to score publicity opportunities with them step-by-step.

Here are some general tips for using Twitter as a media relations tool:

Follow journalists and bloggers relevant to your organization and read what they tweet about. If you see a tweet you really like, consider passing the tweet along or sharing your feedback with the person. This is a great way to build relationships, outside of just wanting coverage.

Use the Twitter Search function to search for keywords related to your business. This will make it easier to see which of the users you’re following are talking about relevant topics. You can also set up saved searches for keywords or hashtags (#journchat for example), so you don’t have to read every tweet that comes along.

Monitor Twitter users like @prsarahevans, @skydiver and @profnet to keep tabs on publicity opportunities issued through Twitter. You should follow each of these users if you’re not already.

When it’s time to pitch a story, you should know that the journalist or blogger is open to being pitched through Twitter. If you’ve followed the steps above, you’ll know the answer.

Finally, don’t make the mistake of thinking Twitter is just another social media fad. As someone with firsthand experience using Twitter for media relations, I can tell you that – for today, at least – it’s the easiest and most effective way to get the attention of today’s busy journalists. It’s also a great way to accelerate your learning around PR, with thousands of helpful PR professionals at your disposal for advice at any hour of the day.

(Image Credit: Twitter Badge by 7son75)

Community = (Me + My Friends) x (You + Your Friends) x (Your Friends and Their Friends)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010 by Andy McCann

"We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race." -- Cicero

A friend recently asked me what all the sensation was around Foursquare and Gowalla. These location based services (LBS) now gaining serious traction in the social media space. This same friend had asked me the same question a little over two years ago when I started actively participating and raving about Twitter and Facebook.

The first time I was asked this question, I initially struggled to answer it in a way that would easily explain the excitement and draw of using an online service to tell other people what I was doing, where I was eating, or why I think that (so and so's latest article) was so interesting.

However, this time the answer came to me rather quickly. "It's all about our interaction with our communities. Mine and yours and how they overlap!" When I see a friend write that the Thai place down the street has some kickin' sushi, I give that more credence than the billboard I see driving to the office. When I see one of your friends talk passionately about their son's kung fu instructor, I take that as a more qualified reference than a yellow pages ad.

So what are we really seeking when we post our latest thoughts on Facebook and Twitter? Or when we check out where our friends are checking in on Foursquare or Gowalla? Are we just vain and think that what we are doing is SO important? Or are we just seeking a way to connect in an ever busy, ever moving, ever expanding world?

We have friends and family and colleagues and people we just admire with whom we go days, weeks or even years without actually laying eyes on each other. Or even more rare, actually sitting down and catching up on what has been going on in our lives, our careers, our family, friends, churches, baseball leagues … our communities.

Thanks to these online tools, I get to keep up with a larger number of people than ever possible before. And I learn more about their communities and the people and places in them. This in turn, expands my own known universe. It makes me bigger than I could be on my own. My boundaries are constantly expanded, and in a way that is relevant and meaningful to me and my friends (and your friends and their friends). Growth is good, is it not?

I live and work in Atlanta. I like to enjoy the occasional tasty local brew, listen to great live music and I also just so happen to really get geeky about the latest and greatest innovations in the .NET developer community. Wonder how many different ways those communities intersect and how they are related? Wouldn't be a cool thing if I could go somewhere and see my friends in these different circles talk about these things that are interesting to me and that we have in common. What if I can be the catalyst to help bring these different communities together in new and interesting ways?

One of the most interesting ways that new media tools have affected me and my community are when my online and offline worlds converge. Last November, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to host and moderate a panel for the TAG Consulting Society on "Marketing Your Practice to Build Loyalty and Brand Awareness". I was able to engage 2 panel members through my offline community and reached out to my online community to find the remaining two panel members.

Thanks to my network of friends, I was introduced to two extremely smart and engaging panelists who helped round out a wonderful panel. (Thanks again to @lisa_sherman77 and @johnreed3000). Another example of where my friends reach out to their friends who then become my friends who then can become your friends too.

I would like to extend this opportunity for us to become part of each other's community. Follow me on Twitter @andrewmccann or on Facebook or on LinkedIn. From there you can find me on Foursquare and Gowalla and whatever the next big thing is that allows me to connect with my friends and your friends and my friends with your friends.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
-- Herman Melville

Inspiration or Perspiration?

Wednesday, April 28, 2010 by John Harne

I am in the business of creative communication. Ideas. Images. Shaping together thoughts, images and communications into stuff like Web applications, brands and the visual and sensual experiences that make memories and impressions. I have been at this business for a long time but that doesn't make it any easier to find the right idea. So what have I learned about creative that keeps me at my job and serving a lot of different clients? Namely, that perspiration leads to inspiration...

There have been a handful of occasions when the right concept just came to me. Like the scene in "Lust for Life" where Kirk Douglas (playing Vincent van Gogh) attacks a canvas then reveals a plein air masterpiece. But this is more movie myth than reality. If you ever read Letters to Theo, you get the other side of the story and the real struggle to come up with a style of his own. Then there was the sheer volume of work the artist actually did to get to that point of success. In other words Vincent worked his butt off.

Lucky for me, I knew from the history of visual art that creative breakthroughs are rarely instantaneous. Most artists lead a very workman-like existence like Picasso. He was know to be in his studio every day around 6am and spent the better part of his day at work in the studio. The result was a prolific career spanning over 13 thousand paintings and over 100,000 other handcrafted works.

Aside for putting the time into the work itself, one has to show up prepared to make the effort to do good creative work. You have to come in prepared and focused. I like to come in with both the schedule and my tasks up to date and the deck cleared.

Before I can contribute to good design and creative I have to know the background of the assignment or better yet, be part of the learning process for the objective. In my business this means some good investigative teamwork that will eventually live in a brief or document. It might be a persona study or even a video of real customers.

The point is time must be dedicated to understanding what the creative work is supposed to do in the context of experience. I have found more success when I am actually part of that process of intelligence gathering than when I am handed the discovery work. I think this is because the creative process takes time and my mind is working on the issues in the background while I am typically focused on something else.

Creative concepts take time. I have heard it called incubation time, described as ideation and the failure of it termed "writers' block". I think that making new connections and insights within various sets of data requires time to process and then reform the connections and filter out the obvious and most likely ideas that would not differentiate the creative work. However we describe it, it takes time and effort and filtering to get good work. Good creative is work.

What Do Marketers Really Want?

Monday, April 19, 2010 by Michael Kogon

What do you want? Those of you that are CMOs, Brand Managers, VPs of Advertising or Marketing, what do you really want?

Whenever and wherever this question is asked, the answer is always the same: Results! You want results and you want them now (it’s the same thing you wanted yesterday, and the same thing you’ll want tomorrow).

If you are in the agency business, you should never lose sight of this basic marketing need. If you are in-house and spend your money on advertising and marketing, I hope this helps you think about how to find people who can improve those results faster.

This topic has been on my mind since I got together with a group of marketing professionals earlier this month. We started off talking about how to produce ROI reports for their CFOs and finance counter parts. Ultimately, what everyone really wants to see is results.

How you define results and what value they deliver for your business may vary, but here are some sample measurements based on our discussion:

•   Brand health metrics
•   Units Sold
•   Leads Generated
•   Awareness and Recall levels
•   ROAS
•   E-mail marketing conversion
•   Increased Foot Traffic

How can agencies produce results more consistently when results are so varied by each client? Here are six suggestions for ways I think agencies can be prepared to provide a variety of results for a variety of clients and also for the same customer who has evolving needs over a long period of time.

1.   Understand your client's business. If you are not as much a management consultant as an ad person, then I think you will fail in the future. Today's marketing and advertising challenges, impact customer service, public relations, product develop & procurement as well as IT, finance and channel relations. Now, they always have, but now that the world is digitized and visibility is possible; the demand to work on more than just demand is higher.

2.   Understand customer behavior. One of the things I think Agency can do better than most client-side marketers is getting to know the end customer and the customers along the way. We can and should provide outsider insight into the purchase drivers that lead consumers or businesses to buy from clients. By being involved in the insight business, we can help our customers produce the results they need.

3.   Be more social. So much has been said about this over the last 18 months, so I'll share why I think agencies need to become more social. We are in the business of communications and in connecting companies and customers. The landscape has evolved where the cost of distributing messages is virtually zero and the demand for connection is 100%. When demand is this high and the cost is so low, there is an unlimited amount of success you can have for you and your customers if you tap into this skill set.

4.   Learn math and how to analyze data. I became a Speech Communications major because it had no math requirement. I bet a lot of people who are in our field did the same thing, I know it. Math has never been a problem for me, I just didn't care to do any more formulas or equations. Then I got into advertising, and as I did Nielsen store data, GRPs, category management, research, coupon redemption and media plans, it became clear that math was going to be a big part of my life. When I started our Integrated Interactive Agency in the 90s it become clear that math, engineering and analysis would be at the center of much of what we would do to help clients. A strong analytics capability and good math people, programmers, engineers and analysts are essential if you are serious about producing results and proving those results.

5.   Learn how to produce. Content, code, sounds, event. From branding to social, to broadcast to micro-cast. From visual to technical, and in-home to the 6th screen. A good partner doesn't outsource the doing to sub-contractors, it is no longer acceptable to do the boards, the concept, the design, the plan and then hand it off. In these days and times, buyers expect ongoing interactions and learned messaging overtime. The mediums must be an integrated seamless experience or you will lose sales and revenue for your clients. That is not the result they want.

6.   Ask your clients what they need to thrive. So I end with this, what do you need to thrive in your current marketing and advertising role? We are listening……….

Location Based Services Are Here to Stay

Friday, April 16, 2010 by Gil Wolchock

While the race for ‘ownership’ of the LBS market (Location Based Services) rages on, and naysayers’ debate its viability, I am sold on the concept.

If you are not familiar, LBS are the latest craze in the ever growing social media marketing landscape. The general principle is that an end user uses their smart phone and its GPS abilities to ‘check in’ to their current location.

Like its social media older cousins Facebook and Twitter, there are many out there that think this is just a passing phenomena - a game if you will. Like Facebook and its now 400 million plus users, and Twitter and it’s large following I believe in the LBS strategy. Out of the pack has emerged two ‘major’ players in the field, FourSquare and Gowalla. Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and even Apple are also looking at entering the playing field but I believe they will have to make an acquisition to truly play.

Along with the hype of these types of services there is also a lot of criticism. Since I am a ‘fan’ and a user I might be a bit jaded but I think I can at least address the critics; here are the gripes I have heard, some legit, some just silly:

1. If you tell everyone where you are then you are leaving your house open to be robbed. I originally thought that this was a ‘non-issue’ I have to admit but after a conversation with people smarter than I over drinks I have amended my opinion. This is one that you DO have to pay attention to. Use common sense, if you are ‘checking in’ on vacation, turn off the setting that posts to Facebook and Twitter, so ONLY your friends on that LBS Tool of your choice get it. Second, and this goes whether you use and LBS or not, CHECK YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS IN FACEBOOK! Facebook has gone through a number of changes and many people have forgotten to go into their settings and make sure they have the level of privacy that they want. For me, I only want FRIENDS seeing information; others may have different standards and that’s cool, just make sure you are comfortable with yours. As for Twitter, you can ‘protect your tweets’ as well so only your followers can see them.

2. You can get stalked by a crazy ex and have to deal with all that. True, but is that really a concern? If it was, you wouldn’t be on FB, Twitter or LinkedIn. Can it be a problem? Sure. However, you don’t have to tell EVERYONE where you are. Your standard LBS lets you self select who the information goes to. Side note – crazy ex probably knows all your haunts and when you like to be there anyway…

3. Why would you want to be doing free marketing/advertising for a place or a brand? Are we seriously talking about this one in 2010? Look down at your feet people (go ahead, I’ll wait) --- is that a ‘swoosh’? Did NIKE pay you to wear their shoes or did you drop $100+? How about that laptop I carry around? You know the really sleek, chrome looking thing with the fruit in the middle very well lit? Let’s face it people, WE have become walking billboards! Take the silly Ed Hardy T-shirts (yes, I am just over 40 and don’t get it). You have people clamoring to be seen in an Ed Hardy, and what is besides some crazy print with the biggest part of it being his SIGNATURE!!! I’ll talk more about personal brands in another blog.So there are some of the negatives, which may be legitimate, but aren’t exactly deal breakers.

What are the positives you might ask?

1. It’s fun and it’s social. One of my favorite shows as a kid was CHEERS, the bar where everyone knows your name. Basically, with a tool like FourSquare you can become your own walking CHEERS. Check in at a friendly place and the bartender says, “Welcome, how about a beer Mr. Peterson”, OR how about you get to a place that is running an amazing special, you could take the time and call or your friends, or break your fingers and text them OR check in with an LBS, type in a comment, it automatically gets to everyone through whatever social tools you are using and who knows what can happen when everyone shows up. Simply put, in its most elemental form, it’s a way to extend the party.

2. As I have heard from Social Media Guru, Gary Vaynerchuck, “why would someone check in at a bar?” Give’em a free beer and watch them check in all day! What a cool way to earn stuff and allow a small business truly establish a win-win customer loyalty program. At one of the Whole Foods in Austin, TX you get a very valuable coupon on your 5th visit. What does this do? It drives loyalty, rewards it, makes it fun and even mysterious…what will I get on my 10th check in, etc…Not enough small businesses are using these tools to see a huge uptick here but I believe by this time next year it will be off the charts.

3. That last part of #2 is part of the biggest positive from a business application and it’s the direct corollary to the third criticism. I’m not sure when MARKETING became a four letter word but when it comes to LBS that is seems to be the #1 complaint and it goes something like this, “that stuff is just one big marketing ploy to get you to go somewhere or buy something”. My response is somewhere along the famous Socrates reply of “duh!” Isn’t that the whole reason for newspapers, magazines, TV shows, etc…sure they have their entertainment and news value BUT no one is shocked to know that advertisers are paying to place their content in front of your eyeballs to get you to buy stuff! Not sure why the uproar when it comes to LBS, it seems to me like a natural fit.

4. Last but not least and this is by far where I see the big win for LBS and that is creating partnerships to pull off some really cool stuff. I was discussing the value of FourSquare with an Executive at one of the major record labels. She is responsible for new acts and we were discussing the value of LBS for her and she said; give me one way it works in my world. So I said, do you have an all girl band you want to promote? The answer was yes. How about an in store ‘tour’ across America teamed with an outlet like Express? You have all the traditional ways to support it but now add an LBS layer for very little cost. It is also a completed integrated approach across all the social media tools; from Facebook, to Twitter, blogs, Flickr and a full activation using LBS. Her eyes lit up and she said, write it up and let’s take a look at it. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.So, mock it if you want. Five years ago you never thought you’d be on Facebook.

If you can remember back to 1991, if someone asked if you wanted to be accessible 24/7 via the phone, some new thing called email and a feature called text that in our old lexicon meant a book at school you would have said, “no freaking way”…and how many of you don’t have a cell phone today?

If You Already Know Everything About Digital Marketing, Don't Read This...

Wednesday, April 14, 2010 by Frank Radice

To make your business thrive you need to do more than just think new! Having a Twitter account and a Facebook page is good, but knowing what to do with them is better. Having an iPad and an iPhone app is good, but having ones that really fill a consumer need is better.

Traditional advertising has becoming increasingly inefficient, so how do you effectively reach your customers today without breaking the bank?

The Big Idea: Own Your Edge!
Case Studies in Music & Publishing

Forrester Research shows music industry sales have dropped 50% in the last decade, from 14.6B in 1999 to 6.3B in 2009. The Publishers Bureau reports that for the first quarter of this year, magazine ad pages fell 9.4% to 34,800 pages compared to the same quarter last year.

Clearly both industries are in a state of flux. These stats are stunning, but they pose a great up side for new technology, social media and digital marketing. So what will these two industries look like in five years and what can they learn from each other? Will publishers charge for on-line versions of their magazines? What can the music business do to stem the tide when their sales continue to decline?

Both industries have to contend with a world where people are more and more consuming on-line content for free. The iPad alone won't save magazines, but it's a start. There is no doubt that publishers need to harness the power of this new device immediately.

This is where publishing can learn a thing or two from the music business. The iPod and iTunes saved an industry on life-support. Apple clearly helped change the paradigm. Ever since Napster came into the lexicon the industry was slow to embrace it but Apple made it easier to buy music than to steal it, and that should help do the same for magazines.

Direct sale of content has always been the easiest way to determine the success or failure of any business, but now there's more!

Now is the time to foster B2B strategic relationships and grow your brand community if you want your business to really survive.

"Own your Edge" everywhere you can. Having the best product in the store isn't enough, you have to have the best communities online. Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook... everywhere!

Now, promotion and marketing is as monetizable as the product being marketed, and new technology and social media are the tools to success going forward.

Last week The Financial Times announced it is using Foursquare to target a new younger consumer, and the Warner Music Group has started-up an in-house social media team.

So it's clear some music and publishing businesses are going in the right direction, that is significant, and an understanding of what they are trying to do is sure to open up the door to the companies that have been reluctant to try something new.

Even if entrants into a space aren't paid subscribers, get subscribers wherever you can. Extend the brand, generate awareness through reach and frequency across all platforms, and the money will follow. Plus these new subscribers will be your best brand evangelists.

But everyone wants an immediate ROI and these tactics alone won't provide that.

The secret sauce then is to add a layer of strategic partnering to the mix. Create strategic B2B relationships and enhance the bottom line at the same time you are creating a base of engagement in the social sphere while better utilizing the new technologies.

It's all about creative thinking in the digital space. The Mantra should be "Think Better!"

And that's why flux in the marketplace is a good thing for digital marketers.

If you use the new tools effectively, create strategic partnerships while creating a loyal brand community, you will "Own your Edge."

Anticipating Key Developments in Web Design

Friday, April 9, 2010 by John Harne

It took a little over a week to get over my SXSW experiential (and literal) hangover and to sum up my thoughts on the 2010 Austin event. One word sums up my thoughts coming out of this year's festival..."Anticipation".

Remember the Heinz TV spots of the early 1990's, with Carly Simon singing for ketchup. This year it seemed like everyone was waiting for something, but it just didn't seem to show up. Since this was the venue that Twitter and FourSquare debuted in years past, I think the majority of the attendees were "anticipating" more. Instead there was a lot more marketing of Miller Lite beer, Chevy Volt and Monster energy drink, more parties, more free beer and a whole lot more people. Over 6,200 more folks in fact, all anticipating something, some next big thing at SXSW 2010.

Anticipation was also common Twitter theme and with so many birds of a feather together, the Twitter and FourSquare servers seemed to lag during certain keynotes and party hours. FourSquare had to invent a new badge for the experience called a super swarm. This designated that over 250 users checked in to a specific location, like the Frog Design party at MACC on Sunday evening. Everyone was gathering and waiting on something to happen.

Sometimes it pays to look the other way. While most of the crowd was attending keynotes given by the founders and thought leaders of social media, some big news was breaking in some smaller sessions and workshops.

This year three key developments signaled future implications for web interface design that will change the visual future of the web. CSS 3, HTML5 and Fluid Type are what I am talking about. The ability to leverage thousands of fonts will release web design from restrictions and separate creative talent from web generalists. HTML5 will do away with the use of proprietary plug-ins for basic rich media.

HTML5 adds video and audio capabilities to core markup languange with the intention of reducing the need for browser plug-in-based rich internet applications (RIA). And it is being employed now. Big entities like CBS are displaying their content video while Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash are just beginning to do battle. The take-away is that open source code will have the ability to display media that the bulk of Flash and other RIA's are doing now. This spells the end for many plug-ins and the best part is HTML5 is here now and should reach W3C Recommendation by late this year.

CSS3 is still currently under development but many of the recommendations are working in existing browsers. The list of features continues to grow and the ability of designers to use these features to extend web design is exciting.

Consider what a designer might be able to do with just multiple backgrounds. This feature already works in Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. Don't ask me about IE, but even IE has revealed better CSS controls are on the way.

Jason Cranford Teague might have given the most interesting presentation. I have known Jason personally for over ten years and I can testify that his vision of the future of web development has been uncanny. He was one of the very first to author a book on CSS, and in fact later served as an advisor to the CSS W3C group. Now he is an evangelist for web design and his passion is releasing the artform of typography to the web.

As any designer knows, fontography online is a shadow of what is capable in print, film and other fixed media because of browsers, usage laws and technology. But there are now alternatives to system fonts and type displayed as bitmapped images.

Jason's new book presents three approaches to using a wide variety of fonts in web design and goes into depth in his explanation of just what fontography really is. After being an interactive creative director for more than a decade, I can say with authority that most of the web has become a sea of sameness because of the lack of font variety and the ability to design with fonts.

Fluid web typography will give artists access to over 100 thousand fonts versus the less than 5 that are typically used online. So take a look at embedded open type, license font servers and web-font linking. You just might realize another wave of innovation in web design is already here.

A couple of links worth reading:

Like It Or Not, I’m for Fans on Facebook

Wednesday, April 7, 2010 by Chris Thornton

Facebook has become a critical component to the marketing plans for companies, particularly in business-to-consumer segments. The value companies get from the highly-engaging social network is hard to match through other media.

Facebook recently decided to change a key component of its advertising platform to increase interactions with brands, by eliminating the “Fan” function and moving to the tried and true “Like” function. The rationale behind this move is simple: Facebook users use the “Like” function everywhere in the platform, therefore the expectation is that users will be more likely to “Like” a brand because it is more intuitive and familiar.

The “Like” functionality of ads is powerful because it increases interactions between consumers and brands. The bad news is this behavior sets out to destroy a lot of the value brands can get from social media.

Let me explain. For starters, we all know marketers face enormous pressure to deliver quantifiable results. The number of “Likes” or “Fans” is an easy number to throw on a spreadsheet with a whole bunch of other stats to show your boss you’ve done more that play Farmville all week long.

“We’ve increased the number of people that like our brand by 10.357% this week. Looks like I’m getting that bonus and retiring toTahiti!” I think that’s the wrong mindset to encourage. I do agree that “Becoming a Fan” of a brand seems more committal and that it would be much easier to get numbers up by driving “likes” instead…but do I really want that? Wouldn’t I rather have access to a group of influential people who really believe in my brand, who truly have brand love and want to shout it out from Mount High? I think the answer to that is “Yes.”I want to know who my biggest brand advocates are, not just the casual, “Yeah, I like you…you are cool”-type of people. There are plenty of other ways to find them.

When it comes to my “Fans,” these are people who really love me. I want to turn these people into brand ambassadors, enable them, engage them, and encourage them to share their love with their friends. For the people that simply “Like” me, the opportunity is lower to create that kind of interaction, not to mention I now have completely muddled my group of hardcore fans with casual ones. The result? We’re right back to measuring based on size instead of substance.

So instead of making this change, why can’t Facebook bring back the “dislike” button, so I can “dislike” this change? I want to know who the real fans are, not just the people who like me today. Like what I do, but be a fan of the brand I am. If you like this blog post, please click thumbs up.

Babes and Some Basic Truths About Re-Connecting With Audiences

Friday, April 2, 2010 by Al Leach

Facebook’s Hottest TV babes, Celebrity babes on Twitter, Hot babes on LinkedIn, babes, babes, babes...

Did this get your attention? OK, so let’s progress.

I recently attended a few industry conferences on leveraging “Public Relations in the Social Media Era.” The sessions were eye-opening. With a show of hands, it seems most of the 500 attendees, who were charged with managing their brands’ PR function, didn’t understand much about how to harness the power of Social Media or how to convince their executive management to engage in it.

A prevailing theory shared with me follows: Social Media has enabled a two-way dialogue between brands and consumers. However, many brands over the last 50 years grew accustomed to telling customers via one-way conversations (advertising, promotion, news releases) that their product or service was essential to the customers’ aspirations or success. So, now there’s a disconnect.

Well, I’d like to share some of the new “truths” about re-connecting that I have heard from my recent travels. And I hope they will be of some constructive use.

Truth #1: Social Media has put the “PUBLIC” back into Public Relations.

Years ago, PR consisted of community town hall meetings, public comment forums, press conferences, and other means that enabled public feedback, deeper questioning and public input. Back then, the public had some say and means of expressing their opinions and their voice could be heard. But public dialogue was hard because you couldn’t easily reach the masses in a personalized way. So, the press release took over and gave birth to one-way dialogue and allowed brands to merely issue holding statements on issues instead of getting in front of customers and listening to what they had to say.

This is an exaggeration but you get the point. Then the Internet arrived and Social Media soon exploded. Now everyone has a say in your business affairs and consumers are in charge of your brands’ reputation and companies are in a responsive mode -- catering to the interests of their customers once again. Not a bad thing….

Truth #2: “Every day is ELECTION DAY.”

I heard this statement and it resonated with me since I once worked in politics. If brands want to effectively communicate and engage with their customers, they need to get into a campaign mindset and determine how to get “elected” every day by consumers, shareholders, employees, etc. This mindset requires the willingness to conduct a dialogue with your stakeholders.

Find that common interest or common ground you have with your customers – determine what’s the breadth of your relationships with your customers?—what emotional connection do they have with your brand or CEO? -- and then leverage it. Listen, chat about it and let the conversation grow. If you want to win (the election), you have to play. (Okay, yes, that’s a tagline from the NY State Lottery but it obviously was effective and memorable, and it underscores the point.)

Truth #3: LISTENING is more important than talking.

Who da thunk? This seems to be a revelation to us communicators who are expected to jump-start discussions and then deliver the pitch. But, lest we remember, we’re in a new era where customers have a large share of voice and they are talking back. So, it’s probably better that we listen to what they are saying first and then jump in.

Let’s test this theory (some sarcasm intended here; my dad was British so sometimes I let loose….) Testing the theory here: Imagine going to a party, walking into a roomful of strangers and telling your date: “Get out there and say something?” Not very effective -- unless you’re Jim Carrey. Rather, we’d ease up alongside a group, listen to what they are discussing and choose a tactful means of joining the conversation. PR in the Social Media era is no different. Use the “listening posts” that your Social Media experts (or ours) know all about. Use them to better understand what conversations you should be monitoring and participating in.

Truth #4: In times of CRISIS, your stakeholders consume, process and use information differently – they are more emotionally engaged.

As a result, using IMAGES in times of crisis are more effective than words (that dreaded news release again). So, getting your CEO on video to explain what’s happening, how your addressing the crisis and what to expect is key – post it to YouTube, your website, link it in email blasts, used paid search to drive traffic to your video, and, yes, add hyperlinks to your video in your news releases. Video is visual and allows you to convey trust, express empathy, to show respect for your stakeholders needs and demonstrate that you’re taking action.

So these are some of the basic truths that I have heard about from experts in Social Media, Public Relations and Stakeholder Communications. I think they make sense and seem reasonable. Nothing appears too hard to grasp here in my view. I asked some of the conference presenters why so many peers face challenges in embracing Social Media. To these questions, I was presented another truth. You cannot learn or recommend anything unless you personally first make an effort to try it yourself first and understand it. Seems reasonable.

So, about those hot TV babes on Facebook….

How you like me now?

Wednesday, March 31, 2010 by Matt Timpson

We've all seen the commercial. The Sock-Monkey, the Squeak-Monster, the Robot, the Teddy and some sort of Yarn Creature dream of an adventure centering around the freedom of being big enough to drive whatever that car is the ad is selling, set to the indie rock beat of a band called The Heavy.

I know the name of the band because that information can be easily found by plugging the song into my favorite search engine. They hold the honor of being the first band to ever be asked by Letterman to play an encore of a song, and it was that song.

I remember that this particular commercial first aired during the Superbowl. I suppose we could only guess how many millions of dollars that car company has spent getting that commercial out there and then running it over and over during primetime on television for the last few months. The commercial has been run so much, in fact, it’s dangerously close to making me kind of sick of it…

Yet, I don’t know the name of that car. Do you?

All of that air time bought, all that money spent, and that cute, fun commercial has failed to do the one thing it needed to do most: make me like that car. I don’t even know what kind of car it is…

That really bugged me, so I searched some more, and since they spent all that money I guess it’s only fair to mention it’s a Kia. Let’s examine just how Kia wasted all that money.

Though catching a virus is generally considered an annoyance, a good Viral Advertising Campaign has to be the opposite of that to catch on. A Viral Campaign makes people go looking for your message, not get tired of hearing it. Having spent the money to make a fun commercial and then run it during the Superbowl, the company should have switched gears and set it free on the internet, letting it be distributed, at no cost to the advertiser, through e-mail, Facebook and Twitter using YouTube or Vimeo.

Utilizing the money saved by choosing not to run the commercial into the ground on primetime TV every night for months, the company could have spent considerably less to include Search Engine Optimization and a massive Social Media presence in their campaign, to keep the message upbeat, fun and all that much more reachable for their target audiences.

By now, we could have had more commercials, too. The Robot could take the car off into the woods for a camping trip to show how rugged and outdoorsy the car is, and the Squeak-Monster could have used it to take over a city to show the car’s urban side. By controlling the release of the new commercials through Social Media, people would be watching the car company to catch that new video rather than wishing they’d stop running that same ad over and over.

Viral Campaigns spread because people want to share interesting and fun videos with their friends and family. Sending something cool to someone that hasn’t seen it makes you feel cool, so the probability that something will be shared enough to be considered viral is inversely related to whether you think they’ve already seen it. That’s why Kia should have stopped after the Superbowl. Everyone would have wanted that video in their Inbox within a week if the commercial hadn’t already been in their face on TV a hundred times.

That is the underlying beauty of the viral method. Instead of trying to force your message down the throats of your potential customers, you use more creative methods to have them coming to you. These methods are proven to achieve just that, and that means that Viral Campaigns are the way your customers prefer to be reached.

If you give them what they want, they will give you the business you want.

It’s just too bad Kia only sells cars, because after seeing that commercial a thousand times, I would definitely buy a Sock-Monkey from them.

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