Last night, Definition 6 hosted the PromaxBDA Emerging Media Workshop to talk about trends for 2012. Presenters ConnectTV, Crimson Hexagon and Google+ talked about what the broadcast community needs to know as they plan for 2012, including how social TV will become more integral into programming, how data (especially social media data) will evolve and the importance for communication planning - right message, to the right audience, at the right time. What truly came out of the event (besides great networking and an excuse to eat pizza while drinking beer and wine) was that unified marketing is critical to the success of any brand. Whether it's on-air content, social media or other owned media online properties, by leveraging the data we can now gather, unifiying your marketing message into the proper channels will exponentially amplify your message and increase awareness around your show, promotion, event or any other marketing objectives.
Google+ showed examples of this by using a simple story about a guy who had just visited Boston, and was asked "how was the trip?" By Google's explanation, the answer is dependent on the person asking the question. If it was the guy's mother, his response would probably be drastically different than the answer he gives to his buddies, or even his co-workers. This idea of the right message to the right audience and the right time, is exactly how we look at marketing and branding at Definition 6. Our unified marketing approach is just that - leverages data to communicate brand messages appropriately to its core customers, in the proper environments and at the right time.
Thanks again to PromaxBDA for hosting their event here at our offices!
After building a successful empire that turned the average cup of coffee into a morning ritual for millions of loyal customers, Starbucks is attempting to extend their brand image from a morning stop to an evening hangout. Monday, the coffee giant announced they will begin offering beer and wine at four to six Atlanta-area locations, joining the ranks of a handful of stores in Seattle, Portland and soon-to-be Chicago.
The latest attempt at attracting an evening crowd – coffee sales tend to drop off around 2 p.m. -- will include regional brews and an extended small-plates menu. No specific locations or timeframe have been announced, but by the end of the year, Starbucks said at least 25 locations will add bartenders to their roster of baristas.
Traditionally relying on the skills and personalities of its baristas, Starbucks is poised to engage a whole new, younger set of customers. But at what cost will the rebranding from neighborhood coffee shop to after-work watering hole cost the coffee giant? The often criticized company faces the challenge of evolving the brand experience to attract new customers while still engaging those already loyal to the brand.
With high profit margins from alcohol sales at risk, there is no doubt Starbucks will spare no expense in integrating this new venture seamlessly into their customer experience, but will customers respond? Are you planning on trading in your venti skinny caramel soy machiatto and coffee cake for a glass of wine and a cheese plate?
Definition 6’s Expert-in-Residence Frank Radice and Account Director Michael Sater attended the International Consumer Electronics show (CES) last week, and they are here to tell you about the insights and highlights from the event.
“So, this is Frank Radice down at CES 2012, where I worked on a panel with a bunch of great people from Bravo and Discovery and Yahoo! and Ovation, and we were talking about Social TV, and does Social TV have a legitimate place right now? Can it be intrusive? Is it a good thing?I think the most important thing that came out of all of CES, for me, wasn’t a lesson that I hadn’t already learned, it was just something that I was reminded of, that you can’t make television for the other people that are in these rooms that are here at these conventions, you have to make it for the viewer, or the user, or the person that actually consumes the content.”
Frank: “So Michael, what have you seen here at CES that you liked?”
Michael: “Well, in CES 2012, Frank, what I found really interesting, was the immense number of mobile devices, tablets, phones, and I think it’s going to be very impactful for the social consumer.Whether you are in front of a TV, or you want to grab content off of your television or off of the web, you can now have it traveling with you, which is very powerful.So the consumer can feel more in command of that experience, so if they are watching something in their home, now all of a sudden they can draw up that content on their tablet.In fact, TiVo is having a device where they can push the content from one TV to the next, and also to initial devices like their iPad. Companies such as Samsung are trying to bring that digital experience into everything, where now your washing machine will notify you when you are in another room in the house that your laundry is done.For their primary customer, it’s extremely powerful, that they can now not be a slave to that machine, and they can feel informed at all points in time, with the information that’s relevant to them, when they want it, the way they want it, as they are walking around."
All across the internet today websites are taking a stand against censorship. Resources such as Wikipedia, Google, Reddit.com, and Craigslist are all blacking out content in protest against the SOPA and PIPA acts. Washington, DC has already begun to buckle this week towards the public outcry, but that hasn’t stopped a whole lot of people from making a voice for themselves today.
If these acts are pushed through, millions of pages of content would be blocked across the web including Tumblr, Wikipedia, blogger, and any foreign site that is not acting in ordinance with the US piracy laws will be blocked from Google. Digitally, these changes would be unavoidable and would affect those in the landscape of online marketing, sales, and overall the user experience on the web as we know it today.
In the end, would these SOPA and PIPA acts really help anyone? Who wins?
Since the day I interviewed here at Definition 6, I've heard about the annual Halloween party. It was legendary. By the time January 2011 rolled around there were still decorations on the walls, in people's offices and it was all they were still talking about. So you can imagine the build up leading into this year's event.
With a Vampire theme in mind, our fearless creative team created the "House of Blood," and transformed our NYC Office into a Vampire museum of sorts, equipped with three bars, smoking cauldrons with specialty punch, amazing sponsors like Yahoo!, StumbleUpon, Avid and Bootlegger Vodka, and some pretty awesome costumes!
All the photos are available on our Facebook page. We have multiple albums to view the pictures, including the photo booth shots. Here are some quick links to help you navigate through the albums:
Album one - mostly step and repeat photos Album two - party shots and some great costumes Album three - more party shots...things are starting to get messy Album four - dancing, dancing, Oscar the Grouch, and more dancing Album five - happy party people and lots of smiles Album six - part one of the photo booth pics (there are many!) Album seven - more photo booth pics Album eight - even more photo booth pictures Album nine - the last of the photo booth pictures! Album ten - the Atlanta version!!
The graphics department became the Fang Club Lounge offering an escape from the dance floor in a relaxing room with the Feeding Bar serving Fangtasy Elixir punch.
Yahoo!'s Blood Lab bar offered a Purple Plasma Punch, and Blackout Shooters, with purple light up ice cubes in Yahoo! barware. My favorite giveways were the Yahoo! insta-yodles with five settings on which to play the iconic Yahoo! Yodle.
StumbleUpon's Vampire Slayer bar offered more swag items like sunglasses and koozies, and the photobooth provided fun for all (especially those D6-ers who showed up to work on the day after the party and got to see the photostream on our lobby monitors!).
The weather was challenging to say the least, with terrible rain and wind, and even with a tent and a tarp we had to move the party indoors this year for safety reasons. But that didn't stop our clients, friends and other guests from showing up and dancing the night away.
And to those who have not yet attended, there is always next year!!
There's been a lot of coverage regarding Facebook's recent changes, but what do these updates mean for marketers? Overall, the key features that Facebook announced place a huge emphasis on engagement. The key takeaway is that it will be increasingly important for marketers to create and share compelling content and experiences on a consistent basis in order to stay relevant.
Below is an overview of the main changes and their relevance for marketers.
Timeline: Timeline will replace users’ old profile pages, and allows users to aggregate and organize all actions taken on Facebook that matter most to them. Users can highlight important life milestones and group content and actions (videos/photos/posts) with that milestone. It also allows users to edit their timeline, even back to the time they were born. Facebook applications can also display actions taken with that app in the timeline (if user permission is granted).
What it means for marketers: Actions that are most important to users will appear on the Timeline – think status updates and photos rather than day-to-day actions like ‘Liking’ a brand. These day-to-day actions will be shown in the Ticker (see description below). That means that brands will need to find ways to appear in the timeline, and one way to do that is by creating social applications that engage their audience.
Timeline cover: (increased image space to customize) Source: Facebook.com/about/timeline
Social Apps: Social applications allow users to add storytelling into their timeline. Think verbs instead of nouns. Instead of ‘liking’ a band, users can express they are ‘Listening’ to that band; ‘reading’ a book, ‘running’ 3 miles, etc. Additionally,now brands can create custom social actions like ‘flying’ ‘cooking’ ‘drinking’ or any other verb. These apps all utilize Facebook’s Open Graph, and users can give permission for these apps to post their activity on the Ticker and Timeline.
What it means for marketers:Brands have the opportunity to create social actions through branded applications. The action won’t only say “Ashley ran,” but “Ashley ran 3 miles with Nike+.” All of these actions will appear in the Ticker (see below), but brands can request that the actions appear in the Timeline (increasing exposure). The goal for brands will be to generate frequent actions within users’ timelines.
In addition to creating branded applications, advertisers will be able to deliver sponsored stories against social actions, and even segment for more accuracy. For example, it will be possible to promote to all "listens" from the band Coldplay. The new sponsored stories will only be generated from applications, but advertisers don't need to own the app where the action takes place to target against the behavior.
Example of social apps within a user’s Timeline: Source: Facebook.com/about/timeline
News Feed update & Ticker: Facebook updated the news feed, changing how stories are presented to users. The Facebook homepage is now organized by Top Stories and Recent Stories, with Top Stories being displayed much more prominently than recent stories. The first updates that a user will see when logging in are the most relevant posts since their last visit – whether that was 3 days or 3 months ago.
Facebook’s algorithm will play a role in determining what are “Top Stories,” but users are able to edit their feeds, either by unmarking a Top Story, or marking a Recent Story as a Top Story. (Screenshot below). Facebook will then learn from this behavior and servethe most relevant content as Top Stories.
Ticker – Facebook has also added the “Ticker” to the top right corner of the newsfeed. The Ticker streams live updates – think day-to-day activities like tagging a photo, liking a brand, commenting, and other Open Graph actions. The thought here is that less important updates are displayed in real time, and don’t distract users from the more relevant stories. Users can join the conversation by clicking on one of the stories in the Ticker.
What it means for marketers: Users now have more control over their news feed, so it becomes more important for brands to share compelling content (rich media, like photos and videos, help to naturally boost EdgeRank – Facebooks algorithm). Brands with irrelevant updates will have lower visibly (but will still appear in the Ticker). Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm will play a major role in determining whether brand updates are seen, but branded social applications and sponsored stories can increase the likelihood of a brand message reaching a mass audience.
So, you've been downsized or made redundant. But you're certainly not ready to throw in the towel.
You've been paid lots of money over the years by some big company where you learned and refined the exact skills they needed you to have in order to make their business work.
Now it's your turn to do it for yourself. But where do you start? You've always had the company to give you business cards, cell phones, laptops, desktops, probably an office or a cubicle, and maybe an assistant and an expense account.
Now it's all gone!
But it's really not if you know what to do.
The most important thing to remember is...Your Name is your Brand!
Your skills are still there and your experience has taught you how to hone them.
Here are 5 practical starting points to get your personal brand going.
1. Register yourself as a company or a partnership (first name last name company) This is easy to do, but you may have to wait in line at City Hall for a while. 2. Get your own URL. (You can lock that down at any number of place like name.com. Own your name if you can with your first name & last name.com (joeschmoe.com). Make a basic web page (you can do that a places like use.com). Make it simple and use your new URL as the title (JoeSchmoe.com)
3.Get your own e-Mail address appropriate to your URL. firstname@firstnamelastname.com (you can do this for your business at google Apps) (Joe@joeschmoe.com)
4. Print business cards that are very simple. Your name, your URL, your e-mail address, and your mobile phone number
5. Start a Facebook fan page and a Twitter Page for your company. Show links to them on your website. Make a Linkedin page and get someone to do a Wikipedia page for you.
After you have populated your sites and pages with your expertise, experiences and some examples of your work (make sure you use video), get out there and network.
Hand out your cards, talk up what you can do for a potential client. Get their card....and then...Follow-Up.
A great example of personal branding is the recent campaign by Matt Epstein called "Google Please Hire Me" where he created a website and a video all focused on landing a job at Google. He even worked his personal brand into the URL playing up the double entendre of "ME" to reference his initials.
TalentZoo also released an article last week entitled, "10 Strategies to Reinvent Your Personal Brand" which outlines many of the topics I touched on above. In fact, it even further discusses ways in which you can improve your personal brand by being a catalyst or being a source of great knowledge. In this day and age, you need to market yourself even more to differentiate yourself from the ever-growing talent pool.
Of course you need a strategy and you must understand how to use all of these tactics...but you've got to start somewhere.
Last week Definition 6's Jon Accarrino wrote a blog post titled "Zappos Gets Naked for New Marketing Campaign." Did you see it? If not, click the link to check it out! In short, Zappos has taken on a new campaign featuring naked models, to affirm that fact that Zappos is "More than shoes." Later in the week, Zappos took the campaign a step further, by placing a rich media ad on Yahoo.com and other sites featuring a naked man from the banner ad running around the webpage.
Check out the video below to see what kind of trouble the naked man gets in to... and will he ever get dressed?
What do you think? Are these advertisements effective in shaking the assumption that you can only buy shoes at Zappos? Is this rich media campaign entertaining, or is it annoying? Perhaps even offensive?
It’s interesting to see how many people are almost afraid to say so, stick their neck out, or venture to say this is going to make it. I’m guessing this is mostly because they scrambled to praise Google Wave, and Google Buzz and were later proven wrong. And they were still recovering from Marketer’s PTSD from their ventures into Second Life.
But I’m willing to say I think Google+ will be a hit.
There are so many thinks I disLike and -1 about Facebook: their abhorrent privacy practices, the way they try to decide who my friends are and whose posts I should see, the way they make control over selective posting difficult (the big difference with how Google implemented Circles is usability), the way they make grouping people difficult, their immature handling of API updates, their authoritarian control over brand flexibility on their site, the minimal real estate they offer brands while still applying extensive limitations on use, the fact they insist on it being a destination site instead of an integrated part of your overall web experience, and the fact that I simply don’t trust them. Using Facebook and developing for it feels like a massive step backward in time to the days of AOL and Prodigy.
Google+ definitely has a lot of room for growth and improvement. But there’s so much to like. I love having a do-over on my friends list, there are many people I didn’t Friend because I barely knew them but I would connect with them on Google+ and just put them in the circle I felt comfortable with. I love the ease of control over friend/follower categorization and the ease and obviousness of selective posting. I love the ease of export and that it’s termed Data Liberation and Google Takeout, the ease of Circle views is awesome, the very free form posting ability, the fact they have made it an integrated part of your web experience, and not just a destination site with Like buttons funneling to it. Mashable published a great cheat sheet for Google+ that you can check out, too.
It needs a Wall, an iPhone app, and maybe a few Profile improvements. I really want a hashtag equivalent. Lots of work to do on how brands can use it to engage their audiences. Really the main misses in Google+ are what they haven’t yet done but could easily do, what they have implemented I really like. It lools like a lot of the stuff is already in the works, too as seen on Geek.com article.
I have big and pretty well founded hopes that they will be far better about how they handle API updates and major changes for those of us that want to develop for their platform. I believe they will be far more flexible about how they allow brands to build in and around their platform or just incorporate it into theirs. That alone will keep me hoping this makes it. And I think this could be a major Trojan horse for expansion of Android and Chrome market share.
I think Facebook will be around and competing for a good while and will remain very relevant. They’ve gained too much market share and mindshare and too many users to just go away. But I think they have a very real competitor. By contrast, you don’t hear Twitter users constantly pleading for a new Twitter or a Twitter competitor. But you hear it all the time from users of Facebook. That’s not a good position to be in, especially when someone the size and caliber of Google actually releases something that’s pretty equivalent and compelling.
Earlier this week, I attended the BrightcovePLAY Conference in Boston. If you know anything about Brightcove, you know they have something to do with online video. As such, the conference talked a lot about online video, and I’m about to do a little of the same.
We’re going to do a fairly quick, informal poll. Raise your hand if you watch online video? Ok, keep your hand up if you have a smartphone or tablet device? And hands still up, how many of you watch video content from your smartphone or tablet device? Yep, that’s what I thought.
Current statistics state that online video accounts for 50% of all traffic on the internet (which makes sense, considering YouTube is the number two most-used search engine after Google). Those same statistics say that 25 million Americans watching online video also do so from their smartphone or tablet device. Consider this: In 2010, 31% of people own a smartphone, which is up from 23% in 2009. Currently, 8% of the American population owns some type of tablet device, and that is expected to jump to 27% in the next year as more companies release their versions across different operating systems.
So what does this tell us? It tells us that online video, particularly mobile video, is becoming increasingly important for video content generators. Fairly obvious, given the statistics I threw out, right? (Let’s hope so.)
It is no longer a matter of “I want to watch X when I get home”; it is “I want to watch X on my nearest screen.” It doesn’t matter if your nearest screen is a smartphone, tablet, PC or even TV – either way, people are transitioning from delayed gratification of watching when and where media is being pushed to them, but rather instant gratification of watching when and where they are pulling media to their (mobile) devices.
As a content-generator, that means you must work to limit or (even better) remove any barriers that keeps the user from getting to the desired content -- your content. Your mobile content.
Some things to consider: Does your site only render video in Flash? If so, that means you’re missing the nearly 25% of smartphone users that own an Apple iPhone and 75% of the tablet users on an iPad – I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t exactly scream “edge case” to me.
Is your site optimized to be mobile-friendly? Easy to navigate with touch-screen controls? Adaptive bitrate streaming so you deliver the best quality video no matter if the user is on a 3G network or connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot?
This doesn’t mean that you have to change your desktop website experience that was built with a specific experience in mind. It means you can't just expect users to navigate your site as-is from their mobile device. Nor can you create one mobile version and expect it to work on all devices – different operating systems, different screen sizes, and different purpose.
I know, you’re starting to grab your calculator and your eyes are bugging out about how much that is all going to cost. Customization gets expensive. But what is more expensive? Losing out on your target demographic because your mobile experience is cumbersome or not available at all. (And there are great options available for customizing content for mobile devices – Brightcove just launched their new AppCloud platform this week.)
Bottom line? If your video content is not available when and where your viewers want to consume it, and if you don’t make it easy for them to do so, you lose the opportunity. Which means lost revenue.
Another great Ragan event took place last week in San Jose, CA at the Cisco headquarters, and while we didn’t see the same antics that went on at the last event in Las Vegas, we still managed to have an incredible week. As a resident New Yorker, and not a car owner/driver, I was a bit apprehensive at first about driving in San Jose, by myself, as I'm not the best with directions. My fears were proven true on the first attempt to attend the pre-conference workshops, where I got lost and ended up in a landfill. When I asked for directions, the attendant told me he "only knew how to get from his house to this place" and I found myself surrounded by trucks, and in a bit of a pickle. Eventually, I was saved by my Android phone and Google maps. I missed the pre-conf sessions but oh well, at least the weather was nice.
When I finally made it to the conference the next day, the energy was incredible. We were tweeting so fast that the Twitterfall couldn’t keep up, which resulted in #RaganCisco trending in San Jose, and in various other global locations!
Held at the Cisco headquarters in Silicon Valley, there were presenters you’d expect to see from this area including Cisco, Adobe, SAS, Facebook, Yahoo! and PayPal.
The conference kicked off with Cisco’s SVP, Corporate Marketing, Marilyn Mersereau, sharing an anecdote of a recent Cisco social media “crisis,” where a customer was not satisfied with his wireless router. After becoming frustrated with customer service, he did what we now see as a natural response – create a YouTube video called “Cisco Sucks.”
Luckily, it did not go viral, but it did get about 1,500 views. In this new reality where social media gives power back to the people, brands are held to a higher standard. Customers now have a very public medium to complain about things when they unhappy.
In response to this video, Ms. Mersereau told us that she bought the customer (whom she thought was very cute, and happened to be a fellow Canadian like Ms. Mersereau) a new router from Amazon. Her philosophy here was that the router was a small price to pay to appease this customer, and she had hopes that he may go back to his viewers to tell them the problem was rectified. No word yet if this has happened. Although this seemed to rectify that particular instance, it does raise the question – how sustainable is that model? Thus, we dove into the Ragan Social Media Best Practices for Communicators event.
The conference was jam-packed full of great speakers, with Carlos Dominquez, SVP, Cisco, wishing everyone a happy @Cisco de Mayo (as it was Cinco de Mayo) in his opening keynote, and well, we were already ready for some margaritas! He then went on to define the role of a “Tech-Nowist” – “someone who embraces change, understands what technology is available, experiments with it, learns from the experiments, and leverages it for a competitive advantage.”
Other hot topics included internal adoption of social media tools for higher efficiency at large corporations like Adobe and SAS, social media CRM (a huge leap forward where social media will become scalable with the use of data: recent example of SalesForce acquiring Radian6) as presented by Altimeter Group, Shel Holtz on creating compelling content (content vs. context brought up yet again!), and of course, how to measure the effectiveness of social media, specifically when presenting to senior leaders in your organization to create more internal adoption.
The conference ended with an inspirational talk from Brian Solis at Altimeter Group, empowering us to not to social media CHAMPIONS, but instead, be LEADERS. Entitled “Engage or Die,” his twitter-friendly presentation focused on collaborating internally at companies, before promoting messages in social media channels, stating that the consumers only see one brand – we can’t be comfortable in silos anymore, sounding a lot like our unified marketing approach at Definition 6! We all know the world is changing rapidly.
We need to be comfortable with that change, and lead the way on how to act/react appropriately. One thing I’ll leave you with is something that Brian mentioned which epitomizes the current social media disconnect between some brands and consumers. He did a bit of role-playing where he described the point of view of why brands want to be involved in social media (using Facebook as an example) and what consumers are looking for when they “like” brands. Brand: "My customer will want to 'like' us on Facebook because they are really looking for more information on our products/services. Customers want to get more information. They want to engage with us to create a community." Customer: "I’m going to 'like' this brand on Facebook because I want coupons, specials, discounts or win free stuff. I want the ability to purchase items within my social networks."
By just having people follow your brand on Twitter or Facebook is not enough. If you don’t provide value to the consumer, they will essentially break-up with you on those social networks. How much harder will you need to work to gain them back? In fact, You need to have a strategy that provides value over time. Without that, you may as well not bother. Oh and you will want to plan for an F-commerce model, which sounds like it should be a bad word, when in fact, this is the future. For more recaps, check out Cisco’s blog for day one and day two or search on Twitter for #RaganCisco to read the top tweets.
As always, you can hear more of my thoughts by following me on Twitter @RachelConforti.
I thought for a hot second about writing the "here's my thoughts from SXSW upon returning from SXSW" blog - instead, I'm going for the tried and true list of the things I loved (and hated). It's so much more convenient. Besides, haven't you read enough blogs on the many marketing merits of Social Media, the tenets of context in content, the game layer and the 9 million apps vying for the title of "The Foursquare of 2011"? I know I did. On to the list!
NUMBER 6
LOVE this. http://ogilvynotes.com/ Not only a great concept - they brought it to life via some talented illustrators that would turn a given panel into an illustration, bringing the broad concepts of the panel discussion to life visually. Brilliant. Tumblr wins again. Nice work.
HATED the panels, for the most part. It was actually a common theme in discussions throughout interactive. Whether outside a panel, in a bar, at lunch, in a bar or at one of the many co-branded parties, lounges and kiosks - the feeling was that the panels were more than ever talking at the audience without really engaging them and not delivering much beyond common knowledge. I took very little away from those I attended. It was a bummer. I actually sat in a panel about marketing to influencers (apparently a new concept to the 500 or so in attendance) at which the moderator kicked off by asking, "raise your hand if you work in social media"…the entire room did apparently. I left after the first panelist reminded everyone not to forget about those consumers in between the coasts that buy stuff. Yikes.
NUMBER 5
LOVE the people. Last year, I left Austin feeling inspired, energized and entertained, especially by panels like Web Video Thunderdome (were those guys here in 2011?). This year, I left feeling the same but as I mentioned above, not because of the panels, because of the people. It really is the best thing going at SXSW. I can't think of another venue where so many people from so many divergent backgrounds just want to meet, and talk, and drink Shiner (or pitch an app?!). You can't help but meet people in the elevator, out to lunch, in a cab…it was great. My liver hurts but it was well worth it. The people are the conference.
HATED all the apps. The quest to be the Foursquare of 2011 was in full effect. There were apps everywhere, literally. Group Me, Mogwee, Livetap…can the world possibly need, or hope to sustain, this many apps? I would argue no. But, if you say yes, I have an app I'd like to pitch you! There's no better example than Hashable. At dinner someone showed it off as a must have. I don't get it. Why do I need this hash tag aggregator? However, this turned into a great little poll I conducted all week. Can you pitch me Hashable? No one could. Not one person. TRUE STORY: I shared a cab one day with a fellow on his way to ironically…wait for it, The Hashable Party. Nice guy. We had a great chat that of course ended with my question: can you pitch me Hashable? His response? "Well, yeah (beat) I should be able to because I invested in it. But no. No, I can't". BOOM! Winning. I think I'll passable.
NUMBER 4
LOVE what R/GA did with the many, many platforms being used @ SXSW. They created Social Media Hell. Pretty genius. The seven deadly sins on blast in Austin make a perfect competition for Dante's lovely, lovely inferno. Check it out…who wouldn't want to become the Mayor of Hell?
HATED the new venue format that dispersed the panels all over town, but did so by genre or subject…sort of. It was a little vague and confusing actually and a total bummer that really interesting talks were happening all the way out at the ATT convention center. You really missed the opportunity to see a cross-section of the best of the best within walking distance due to this. I hope SXSW looks into how successful this move to segment was - people seemed pretty put off by it.
NUMBER 3
LOVED the band THE BLACK ANGELS. Caught them at the ETSY party and stayed for the entire show. It's rare to see good music before the music conference gets going - and even then - it's just so rare to stumble upon something like this. Bottom line, I woke up the next morning an bought the LP. Yes, I paid for their music. You should too.
HATED the hours. Man am I old. This is one epic run and it's a marathon, not a sprint. Everyday my disco nap was thwarted by a text or a tweet or that damn Group Me. Hey, Group YOU, buddy!
NUMBER 2
LOVED the Mapquest road trip to Salt Lick. I still feel like I need the non-marketing event Salt Lick BBQ experience, but gosh-dangit…they can cook up some meat! Still perplexed as to why not a single attempt by Mapquest to speak to a captive audience and explain why we should all like their shiny new rebrand and dump Google maps? But, I digress. NUMBER 1
I <3 The Social Media Clubhouse. Of all the great panels not chosen for SXSW 2011, they picked mine! The panel, 99 Questions and Viral Ain't One of Them, was a great opportunity to discuss the work we did on The Coca-Cola Happiness Machine - and we were live on twitter to boot! I thank SMC for the hospitality. Even though it was off the beaten path in Austin, it was worth the trip. It's really a genius idea that I hope they do bigger and better next year. I would do it again in a heartbeat. If you dig it, share it. Thanks SMCH6!
Many application development companies regadless of web development or windows development want or need to implement search functionality. However, it is a commonly underestimated function and it continues to evolve over time. Interestingly users want search to have minimal to no interaction while having a maximum result. With data and collection systems becoming more and more complex this becomes and increasingly difficult challenge. I remember a system I was architecting for a customer where the customer wanted to enter a DNA result that consisted of an 800 to 1600 character string into a web application and have it search a database using an algorithm providing scored search results. The customer was convinced that a basic desktop machine would act as a server and be able to conduct the search against a large database efficiently. The production architecture needed to support the customers’ performance requirements was a High Performance Computing hardware environment. Like many customers they didn’t understand the complexity of certain functions. Thinking through this topic recently had me researching how functions in systems and their architectures evolved.
Architecting a system today has many facets, and search certainly is a prominent one. Searching for information is not a new concept but a heavily evolving one. Once computers evolved beyond just basic mathematics and started capturing, storing and manipulating other data the need for search began. Early systems collected data that was somewhat structured in files and databases. Search functions found data quickly within those structures. With the development of relational databases and more complex data capture search the tools for search had to grow. Also the acceptance and use of computers was growing and more and more. Architecting search within a system has consistently had to recognize simultaneous evolutions. Database tools added the ability to index tables to help search perform better. Search appliances like Wizards emerged for more technically savvy users to pull data from a data source. Multiple levels of searching complexity were emerging. While these searches largely dealt with structured data stored in systems, at the same time this evolution was occurring what cannot be ignored is the emergence of the internet and its impact on search.
Early on companies like Yahoo profited on the simple concept of locating content. While this wasn’t structure data as in databases internet standards of things like meta-tag’s and other items made it possible for users to find content early on. Searching on the internet allowed users to enter terms and content related to those terms would be returned. Later companies like Google would improve the algorithms and set that industries standard for a time. E-commerce companies were also integrating user shopper experiences with search as a means of driving revenue. So while a user shopped for shoes, related items and previous shopping items would appear in the links and advertising throughout the system. While the motives were different the capture of information and providing relevant data back is essentially an implied search. The evolution of the internet and its potential was impacting local systems.
Users’ expectations were changing as the interaction was to enter in a few terms and that brought back content they wanted to see. At the same time computers continued advancing in hardware and use. Pictures, Videos, art, music files evolved to become more common to be stored on systems. In fact digital has become so big that companies like Kodak have stopped producing film based cameras. Users have embraced and ran with the lower cost and portability of digital media. This new media has presented a new challenge and forced search to evolve in multiple ways again.
Architects and systems were faced with growing use for search. Users were searching as an exploratory exercise as more complex data and more types of data were being captured. Allowing for the advancement of tools like Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and reporting tools. Users weren’t looking for specific data as much as looking to see what trends might appear in the data. These tools while technically complex have easy to use interfaces that allow users to review and analyze data. The complexity lies in the architecture and backend. The emergence and development of these tools was a move from appliance parts of a system to search to a full blown system of its own.
Users now expect applications to be able to search both structured and unstructured data. They want to give as little information as possible and quickly find very relevant search results. Algorithms and techniques for searching continue to advance because they must--including incorporating e-commerce like changes in the system and having subtle changes help the customer get to the results they want more quickly. One of the many reasons unstructured data evolved was not only digital media but mobile devices.
This latest evolution has occurred simultaneously with the acceptance of mobile devices. Now users have a high level of portability and connectivity to data. These mobile tools work quickly using touch screen technology and other key changes that impact the user experience for working with data. This has resulted in a need for better performance and system architectures that incorporate different devices, connectivity, and desired results.
Today’s cutting edge searches involve grabbing information from a part of a picture and searching for related information. Searches that work from audio files or live audio and provide related information quickly on portable devices is another technology that has been developed. Users want more with less required of them, resulting in more complex algorithms and models for searching.
Successfully architecting a system means taking a lot of factors into consideration. A successful solution can't overlook what the implementation's search functionality has within an enterprise system. Architecting search as a part of a system today means taking many factors into account. Understanding the user’s expectations and desired results has become critical to the successful use of a system. What devices are targeted for use, what is the complexity of the data, what type of data, and other questions like these are all key to get answered to develop a successful search system. Working with customers to identify the business rules that lead to implicit and explicit searches is important as systems more and more are expected to show relevant data.
The Information Technology field has to have one of the highest rates of evolution of any field. A friendly warning for College Students, if you don’t like learning and discovering choose another field. Over the last 10 years the evolution of the web has been constant. Today we have information flowing to multiple channels, more complex information being captured, and more data being provided to users. With all of the content and information available it is no surprise that finding that content has had to get more complex as well. Optimizing your web site or web application for search engines is getting more and more complex. One aspect to look at is a subtle one. Ensuring that your site map and your keywords are captured, architected, and developed to work together.
A good BA is worth their weight in gold and early on in the requirements and discovery process capturing the keywords can really help the development of your tool. Keywords are a known importance to optimizing your site for organic discovery by Google, Bing and other search engines. There are tools dedicated to keyword mapping to show how your site will be captured by a search engine. What the keywords can’t be, however, are an afterthought to the development process. Keywords are concise definitions of your web site. Like the advertisement on television for a popular clothing retailer right now, the tag line is “Modern. Southern. Style.”. In three short concise words they define themselves. Even the government has taken to this “Safer. Healthier. People”. Keywords have been around for a while and we all know about them but I bring this up to discuss how we focus on them and use them.
A BA can use keywords to focus requirement sessions, the architect on the site map and architecture for the system, designers to ensure the colors layout user experience match the keywords, developers for for the folder structure, and testers to make sure they got it right. Now some would say that keywords should be derived from the requirements and the experience the company wants for its customers. Which is a great point that opens a question, are the creative people that can help write that copy and help getting involved early enough? Once the keywords have been defined so much can be based on them. The point of this column is architecture so lets jump there.
When the site map is being determined and the layout of the site designed/architected keeping the keywords in mind can really help. It is a common best practice to have a site-map on your web site. Many web sites have several versions to ensure they are read by the search engines. Ever added an XML web site document to ensure Google would read it? So using your keywords in various other locations can greatly assist your website.
If your keywords define your site and its content then shouldn’t your page titles include these keywords? With our keywords in the title another step is to ensure that we use the keywords in the URL. For example, instead of www.sitex.com/en/ we could include keywords www.sitex.com/keyword-keyword/. Not only is this more descriptive for the user the search engines will jump up the importance score. Why does this need to be part of the site map? If you are going to include keywords as part of the URL and folder structure the developers need this info to focus on. So that means knowing the site map before the pages are developed so they can use this information to their greatest value.
Considering the search engine will use the links on the site map to crawl the site, using keywords would help raise the score wouldn’t it? Getting into Canonical URL is a little beyond the scope of what we are discussing here but is a topic you might want to look up as well. While it may seem simplistic at this point in time of the internet’s evolution, keywords are still and will remain and important part of content discovery. Understanding how to re-engage on the importance of keywords and their use can help prepare for future evolution of the web.
Ever hear of the concept of ‘the semantic web’? Today a user views pages for information gathering and capture for activities like travel. With the sematic web, pages will interact in a more automated fashion reducing the amount of work a user does. As the web continues to evolve the potential for keywords to grow in importance is still relevant even considering their long history. The tie in to the site map becomes more important as desired functionality evolves. The key to scalability will be planning today for what is coming tomorrow. Preparing for tomorrow begins with looking at the process, collaborating, and working to the future. Don’t pass over the simple things, they just might be the key to the future.
"Imagine waking up and hearing an ad on TV for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, then checking your iPhone on the way to grab some coffee and seeing an e-mail for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal. Then, when you fire up Pandora for your workout, you hear ads for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, while on your Yahoo! mail, you are served a banner ad for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, and then on the subway, signage for a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal, and on the billboard outside your office, and in online video ads, and then, as you check-in into the Shake Shack – Bam! You get a Foursquare Deal Near-By with - you guessed it - a $.99 Chicken Strip Meal."
For years this integrated marketing approach of delivering the same message across multiple platforms was considered a best practice, however in the "always on" device-driven world we live in today, consumers tend to respond better to advertising that is tailored to the platform and recipient - in essence, delivering a unified experience versus a consistent message. To learn more about my thoughts on unified marketing, visit my recent post on MediaBizBloggers.
The National Association of Television Program Executives Annual Event
I've been going to the NATPE TV supermarket for years.
I remember a time when millions of dollars were spent on the booths, and lavish parties were thrown for the execs and the affiliates.
I also saw it lose ground to CES during the financial meltdown, and now I've seen the start of a comeback for NATPE as an event and a marketplace.
I'm told there were a thousand more attendees at NATPE this year over last.
67 countries were represented here and every major content provider globally seemed to be in attendance.
This year, they had online show guides to help navigate the sessions and the floor, ahash tag and TwitterFall, a Facebook presence, and lots of social media interactions...they just needed better access to the NATPE Wi-Fi on site.
The theme this year was "Content First!”
Some things I heard and learned on content distribution, international programming, video strategies, brand integration and connected TVs:
Netflix, HULU, and other new(ish) content rich platforms need to be viewed as alternative distribution methods, not competitors.Beth Roberts of NBCU says broadcasters need to rethink their approach to windowing feature content to avoid being overwhelmed by all the new platforms.
But traditional media still sees platforms like Netflix as foes, where content producers see it as its friend. The truth is it's not going away, so everyone needs to play nice in the sandbox.
The mood overall was upbeat, as the advertising climate heats up again.
The international business was red hot according to my sources, and of course Latin American programming played a significant role here, with a large turnout from Univision, Telemundo and Televisa (not surprising in Miami)!
There was talk about the mainstay of Hispanic programming in the US Latino market- The Telenovela - being the best at serving the female demographic to the detriment of the male viewer. In other words, give the guys something more to watch as well!
Yahoo!, having lost the UGC battle To YouTube, is changing its video strategy to one of original video content.
Brand integration in programming was a big topic for the advertisers here. There was even a company on the floor pitching a software solution that inserts banners into video called SeamBI for seamless branding integration.
The talk about multi-screen TV consumption was still on a roll here, so that's good news for interactive TVs (but I'm still not convinced. Get Glue and Twitter while watching a show already distracts me).
And one last thought. It was an honor to see two old friends, Dick Ebersol and Mary Hart join Regis Philbin and Gerhard Zeiler, all Icons of television, receive the Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award from NAPTE. It truly was an inspiring event.
About 18 months ago we bought a post-production business in Manhattan Creative Bubble (now definition 6) and unified it into our interactive agency because we fundamentally believed that the future of the internet and marketing was brilliant story telling. We wanted a group of story tellers and emotion creators to be a core part of our team and have the capabilities to produce work for Hollywood, TV and Madison avenue at a world class level. We have achieved this and since unification have won a Clio, an Emmy, an IBIXX, OMMA, ADDY, ProMax and even Small Agency campaign of the year from Advertising Age. But what I did not expect was to be so engulfed by the discussion regarding "What is happening with TV, entertainment and the internet?"
Most of the conversation has sounded like "who moved my cheese?" especially to an outsider who never had cheese in the first place (cheese is consolidated broadcast advertising dollars and limited distribution channels such as movie theaters and DVD's). Ultimately, I've come to believe the issue isn't that TV is dead or dying, in fact it is growing and thriving, or that VOD is going to destroy Hollywood. The issue is that ad buys are more complex, dynamic, fragmented and content distributors are having to work harder to maintain margin and that content producers are having to become more sales savvy because they need to have more customers than the limited number of broadcasters and theater distributors from days long ago. Everyone blames the internet, the Millennial’ s, the mobile revolution and cord cutters for fragmented the audience and making it harder and harder to find a digital dollar vs. digital penny. As a response, we are seeing a slew of "Smart TV's" internet enabled televisions with app stores, over the top content, deals with VOD organizations and social integration. Awesome! Fantastic! we will bring the distractions from traditional living room TV into the living room and then we will get all the dollars in one place again and things will just be beautifully profitable for us again. Except…..
Who asked you to make the idiot box Smart? I want to watch TV, not necessarily watch a specific show, just watch TV. According to a #CES panel where either Nielsen or TV guide said "70%+ of the people who sit down to watch TV don't know what they are going to watch until they sit on the couch" - ok, I buy that, and to me that means I still want it to be easy, passive, yes I want to do discover, but not necessarily search and explore like I do with Google, Twitter and Pandora. Stations and networks are good, they have themes, they have repeats, they have marathons in case I've fallen behind or want to get immersed on a weekend afternoon in a new series. So stop touching my TV, I want to sit back, relax and watch the "History of Steel" or "Golf" or "The Guy from the 70's painting and talking in that soothing voice" - I don't want to grab content, make my own playlist, find my favorite actor that cross references with Kevin Bacon to kill 20%-50% of the time I have to WATCH TV. Leave my few times a week I have no plan, and only want to enjoy. Now if you can make it work with my iPad and come with me on my phone when I'm in line at the supermarket, then I'm all yours and I look forward to the new adventures of "TV and Me".
It’s December and the end of another year. We all know what that means. Christmas? Wrapping up the fiscal year? Coming up with New Year’s resolutions we won’t keep? No, my friend. No. Most importantly it’s the time of year for social media and the blogosphere to flood with Top [insert # here] of [insert random subject here] Lists! The Top 6 Most Googled Terms! The Top 10 Most Watched YouTube Videos! The Top 8 Most Popular Hashtags! The Top 12 Most Photographed Sandwiches! Gone are the days when Top 10 lists were the exclusive monopoly of the Ranking Dictator David Letterman! I don’t know about you, but it’s hard to imagine what could be more exciting. So I decided to create my own contribution to this joyous annual ranking extravaganza. And I’ve based this list on highly extensive research that includes thousands of my own opinions, hundreds of my own anecdotal experiences, and dozens of my own biases.
I’m quite certain that if all Twitter and Facebook posts with content that falls in one of the below 10 categories suddenly ceased that the entire world of social media would either collapse upon itself like a black hole or it would would see about as much use as telegram services do today... lots of RT's with cricket sounds.
10. Top X of Y Lists. I’m pretty certain that practically anyone can take about 5 minutes and write a list of X number of Y things on a blog then post it to Twitter and get a large number of click-throughs and RT’s. I mean… you’re reading this one and I’m totally just making it all up as I go along with zero actual or real research to back it up.
9. Posting links to funny videos on YouTube. This is hilarious. This is too funny. Totally LOL! What’s interesting to me is how many of us roll our eyes at our parents for their constant barrage of forwarded e-mail humor, but we think nothing of posting our own barrage of it to social media each and every day.
8. Posting cute pictures of your kids and funny things they said. My kids are adorable, dammit. And everyone must know this. And if you don’t comment or reply with things like “Adorable!” and “So cute!” I will shun you by refusing to comment on how yummy that picture of your arugula salad looks. Take that.
7. Individual content curation: The Human RSS. Who needs trained and experienced content editors that might actually have journalism degrees and do stupid things like verify sources and accuracy of information when you can rely upon that guy whose avatar is a close up of the upper left quarter of his face?
6. Celebrity Obituaries. What?! OMG! Another celebrity died? Quick! Pls RT! And don’t forget to add in your own personal tribute or reference memorable quotes.
5. Letting everyone know what new gadget you got. I mean, what good is having some new tech bling if you can’t show off your technical superiority to people you never talked to in high school or 736 of your Followers that you never met?
4. What you “Like”, where you are traveling to, what you are eating, what you are watching, what you are reading, what the weather is like where you are at, and who you are hanging out with. I unfortunately know more mundane details of the lives of people I never actually met, seldom see or barely ever spoke to then I really ever cared to know. It also scares me to realize that I now hear real-world conversations where people refer to themselves in the 3rd person stating they "Like this".
3. Apple rumors and anticipating Apple releases. If it wasn’t for debating what features might be in the next iPhone or complaining about the lack of Flash support on the iPad, Twitter could probably reduce its server capacity by about 10%. Never before have people spent so much effort complaining about products that they collectively and eagerly spend so much money on.
2. Opinions on the daily breaking news. Because all the talk shows, pundits, broadcast news commentators, and daily water cooler conversations really just didn’t give us enough of other people’s opinions on which to base our own.
1. Discussing social media. Seriously… has any other medium ever been used so reflexively to discuss itself? Imagine if the largest percent of your phone calls were to discuss phones and phone related technology or if most of your e-mails were focused on the subject of e-mail, e-mail clients, and e-mail servers. Pretty insane when you think about it.
Of course, I just realized I forgot to include a big one: complaining about products and services in general. But I only want 10 items in my list. #FAIL
All that said, please don't think this means I see social media as worthless or a waste of time. It is an incredibly powerful medium that really has changed the way people communicate and it has connected people with each other in a way that is truly staggering to consider. It can be an amazing way to gain insights, it has forever changed the nature and control of information flow, and it has empowered individuals and movements across the globe. It can connect consumers and brands in a more personal fashion than almost any preceeding medium. It has placed the pulse of the moment in any given place from any given person's perspective at the potential fingertips of billions. And IMO it's really just the beginning. So has anyone heard what the specs are on the rumored camera that's suppose to be in the next version of the iPad?
I woke up this morning to a pretty interesting e-mail that was sent to me by way of my Google profile from someone named David Anderson:
I am making a blog for an online writing class I'm taking through UF, and for a module on search techniques I needed to find a non-mainstream website about my topic (sports bars). I found your old site, the East Lansing Bar Review, and I loved it so I've written my post for this assignment about it. I've only made five posts so far, but here is a link anyway: http://sportsbarjunkie.blogspot.com/
This is really crazy in so many ways. The site he is referring to is something I created back around 1995. I was attending Michigan State University and worked part-time in the MSU Network Center to make some extra cash. My official title there was Mainframe Consultant and mostly I helped professors and students to use things like Gopher, Banyan VINES, FTP, configure dial-up PPP access, and learn how to use our Unix-based ELM e-mail client. This was a time when most corporations hadn’t even heard of the web, it had fledgling use by Universities, it was being referred to as a fad, and I had just helped to get Michigan State’s own first web sites up.
I wanted to play around more with this new-fangled world wide web so using a vi editor in Unix, working in HTML 1.0 and armed with a copy of the predominant browser of the time NCSA Mosaic, I decided to create a site that offered a personal review of all the local bars and pubs in the East Lansing, Michigan area. I had a lot of fun creating the site. I had even more fun doing the critical research required to provide the reviews. But it really was bare bones ugly, used hand coded tables, some basic formatting tags, and the most advanced thing it included (which was hot at the time) was an image map that used a monstrosity I created with a copy of Photoshop 1.0.
But so it was born: the East Lansing Bar Review. For a couple of years I kept updating it and occasionally I got really interesting feedback or comments. It even got me a few free beers from local bar owners. When I left MSU my younger brother Mike took over the site and moved it (all 4 or 5 HTML files and all 5-6 images) from my student web account to his. He kept it updated for a couple of more years before he graduated. A couple of years later we got tired of being contacted about it from people asking for updates so Mike posted a note on the site explaining this and since then it’s gathered electronic dust but apparently it’s still there.
15 years from when I created the site, I’m now the CTO of Definition 6 where we create massive high-end brand experiences that include transactional sites with extensive back-end systems integration, hundreds of thousands of pages of content in enterprise-class Content Management Systems, on-line video experiences, mobile web sites, mobile applications and more in addition to spending a ton of time doing Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, On-line Display Media, and Analytics.
In an effort for this blog post to have a point and not just be nostalgic rambling or reflection on how far we’ve come in terms of the web and on-line advancements, what really stands out to me is considering how high this site shows up in results for major search engines. If you search for East Lansing Bars it still comes up as one of the top several results on Google. And if you search as David describes he did in his blog post it’s number one. Keep in mind the site was originally written and posted before Google even existed and at a time when Yahoo! had just come onto the scene as a start-up. The very concept of organic search engine optimization didn’t even really exist let alone was it the means of livelihood for the legions of people that practice its art today. I’m sure there are some things to be said for how today’s algorithms treat a site with such a long tenure favorably as well as the tenure of links to that site. And I’m all but certain that the same site published today would not be treated so favorably. But it is probably worth noting that a site hosted at relatively bad URL by today’s SEO standards with no meta-data, no thought to Information Architecture, and bad file naming practices still shows up high for certain not uncommon searches when the content was meaningfully written and relevant to the subject matter of interest. I’ll leave the rest of the analysis to the real SEO experts out there (and my apologies to our Creative Department for even publishing a link to this relic of a site on our blog).
Thanks, David, for the trip down memory lane and for giving me some interesting things to think about this morning.
Following my post yesterday on great quotes from TEDx, I wanted to share some takeways from the event.
I was fortunate to attend the fourth TEDx Atlanta last Tuesday. It was the third TEDx Atlanta that I have been lucky enough to both attend and help organize (as well as the second TEDx Atlanta sponsored by Definition 6). As expected from any product or event associated with TED, the speakers were all great and the content was interesting and insightful.
Having had a few days to let the content percolate, a few patterns have emerged:
The first is the importance, not of dropping out of college to change the world (we’ve all heard enough from geniuses who skipped school to accomplish great things), but of looking in perhaps unexpected places and connecting perhaps unlikely dots to do your best work.
Having the ability to see opportunity when others don’t, while obvious in its own right, was pervasive all day long. A few years back, a book called The Medici Effect showcased how successful people all through history have repeatedly had this skill. Being able to sit in a conference and have what Stanley and Danko might call “the geniuses next door” demonstrate this aptitude was enlightening.
Ranging from Farmer D, who one day while stoned and skipping class in college, asked his Turkey sandwich “where did you come from?” to Mills Snowden, whose thinking about building a more efficient home randomly led him to being a contender for the X Prize.
Perhaps Coca-Cola’s VP of Global Design, David Butler, summed it up best when he said: “We can’t think in silos anymore. We have to think horizontally. We have to think hollistically.”
While the only group to take the stage was the band Modern Skirts, the pattern from the day involves the importance of collaboration and sharing in accomplishing great things.
Presenter Logan Smalley, maker of the award winning movie, “Darius Goes West” was a prime example of this. He started making the film with a Google search asking how to make a documentary film. By collaborating with people online, he eventually got passed his frustrations of not being able to afford the equipment when somebody told him that it doesn’t matter what he shoots the movie with – if he has a story to tell, people will listen. Had he not pursued collaborating with other film makers as strongly as he did, there’s a good chance the movie would have never happened.
Likewise, by working with a close group of friends (all of which knew nothing about movie making) he was able to build the alliance and gain the support he needed to accomplish his goal of making a movie to raise awareness of the disease that his friend was suffering from all while giving his friend the experience of a lifetime. He additionally said, “The modern approach to movie making is one of mankind’s most incredible and perhaps most underutilized tools for collaborative problem solving.” Today, everything is about collaboration.
This leads to what was probably the most prevailant pattern of the day: As David Butler coined it: “Learn by doing.” Logan Smalley’s Google search is an example of this, as is Mills Snowden’s work on creating a car that can achieve 100 miles per gallon (like Logan, Mills had zero category experience prior to his effort). On this subject, Mills said, “The most important part of developing your idea is that you have to start.” Farmer D (Daron Joffe) is a self-taught organic farmer. Even the band’s opening set which utilized various furniture to make noise exemplified this notion.
When asked by an audience member how to move beyond the brainstorming stage, a panel of the first five speakers responded:
You need to enroll people in your idea... You’re very limited if you’re the only one doing it.
Be sure you’re prepared to know what you’re talking about before you get people involved.
Use the language of the people you’re talking to... Don’t get lost in your own language.
What truly came out of the event (besides great networking and an excuse to eat pizza while drinking beer and wine) was that unified marketing is critical to the success of any brand. Whether it's on-air content, social media or other owned media online properties, by leveraging the data we can now gather, unifiying your marketing message into the proper channels will exponentially amplify your message and increase awareness around your show, promotion, event or any other marketing objectives. 
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Brand integration in programming was a big topic for the advertisers here. There was even a company on the floor pitching a software solution that inserts banners into video called SeamBI for seamless branding integration.
you, but it’s hard to imagine what could be more exciting. So I decided to create my own contribution to this joyous annual ranking extravaganza. And I’ve based this list on highly extensive research that includes thousands of my own opinions, hundreds of my own anecdotal experiences, and dozens of my own biases.
and moved it (all 4 or 5 HTML files and all 5-6 images) from my student web account to his. He kept it updated for a couple of more years before he graduated. A couple of years later we got tired of being contacted about it from people asking for updates so Mike posted a note on the site explaining this and since then it’s gathered electronic dust but apparently it’s still there.
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