Surviving in a World Without Screens
There was a lot of buzz in the office today—our first morning back after Hurricane Sandy—about how folks fared during the storm. It was surprising to hear how most people were prepared with food and water, but completely unprepared for the effects of a long term power outage. We are, after all, becoming quite dependent on modern technology to communicate. Perhaps that is why I was shocked to hear that one of my coworkers actually used a hand-powered transistor radio to find out if schools would be closed.
Over 80% of the world’s population has a mobile phone. There are 91.4 million smartphones in the U.S. alone. Apple recently reported it has already sold 100 million iPads worldwide. We use these devices every day to play games,...
Red Bull Space Dive: Worthwhile Marketing Stunt?
Red Bull, in what has already been hailed as one of the greatest marketing stunts of all time, sponsored Red Bull Stratos, a record-breaking space dive yesterday. Live coverage of Austrian pilot and skydiver Felix Baumgartner, descending at speeds that reached nearly 834 mph, was watched worldwide on YouTube by a reported eight million viewers and (as reported by Forbes earlier today) yielded tens of millions of dollars' in global exposure for Red Bull.
Even for a brand known for immersing itself in extreme sports and pop culture, getting behind a death-defying mission like skydiving from space is pretty risky, not to mention expensive (though with very little financial investment media-wise). The jump had been postponed twice last week due...
Navigating the SMM Waters
Ok, so you have a great social media strategy in place, now what? Social Media Monitoring (SMM).As important as social media strategy is for your business, once you have built all of your social media profiles and are engaging other people online regularly, it is equally important to MONITOR the effectiveness of social media for your business. You need to keep your finger on the pulse and have as much control as possible over the flow of your business success so that it will be extremely easy to identify what is working and what is not working.Oneforty recently surveyed 150 social media professionals to learn about their thoughts around social media monitoring. The survey labeled "Continue reading »
Experiment: One Week Without Cable
During a panel at our TVnext summit yesterday, we showed a video with highlights from a recent experiment. For this experiment, we had invited several families to give up their cable and instead use a "connected TV" device for one week following last Christmas.Here’s this video, along with some context and an overview of what we’ve learned.PURPOSEBy the nature of our work, we are heavy consumers of all media, including television. Many of us are also owners and enthusiastic users of the "connected TV" devices, including the ones we tested. At the same time, we understand that we are in a minority when it comes to our own media consumption habits.While we are confident that the evolution of the TV is set towards its...
A Site That Went Viral and The Numbers Behind It
It is an unfortunate but understandable reality that while we often marvel at digital projects that spread like wildfire across the web, we rarely get a chance to look at the numbers behind them. Between January and May, we built, launched and monitored Jerzify Yourself (warning: sound on autoplay) to get just such a glimpse into the dynamics of spreadable content.This is going to be a long post, so if you are in a hurry, check the summary published in AdAge or scroll all the way down to the list of the most important things we've learned from this experiment.The SetupJerzify Yourself was created in...
Characters Are More Social Than Brands
This has been the week of the Old Spice Man, and deservedly so. The campaign was brilliant in concept and execution. Kudos to everyone involved.It may be that everything that needs to be said already has been, but I won’t let that stop me from sharing a couple of observations.Integration Can Happen Over TimeThese days almost every marketing program is developed with integration in mind, and the assumption is that all of the integration needs to happen at once. So you’ll see campaign architecture diagrams that look like something this: 
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Pork Belly Manifesto
There’s a food revolution afoot in America. This revolution isn’t led by a celebrity chef or the first lady, and with the frequent presence of pork belly, it’s definitely not focused on slimming down our country. Rather, it’s a revolution focused on flavor, or more accurately flavors, and unifying our nation’s shifting populations into a shared narrative.I had the pleasure of attending the Southern Foodways Alliance Field Trip to Buford Highway, Atlanta’s most prominent international corridor, along with some of the top minds – and hands – in Southern cuisine. The challenge was simple: two days, eleven meals, six cultural backgrounds. As my belly filled and the trip unfolded, I continually...
AdAge Honors Global Issue Finalists; Magazine Cover as Portal
Advertising Age threw a party last night in New York to celebrate its Global Issue cover design contest for creatives under 30. Hill Holliday's Jude Senese was one of the nine finalists whose designs were picked from 220 submissions.Here's how Jude's "Portal" cover works: a reader places the cover in front of the webcam, covers a city tab with index finger,...
Top 5 Social Media Marketing Mistakes
With YouTube now seeing 2 billion video views per day, Twitter producing 2 billion tweets per month, Facebook users spending over 500 billion minutes per month, and Foursquare Continue reading »
iPad and InDesign
An interesting tidbit from yesterday’s release of the WIRED Magazine on iPad: it was entirely laid out in Adobe InDesign CS5. Without going into the endless debate about Apple+Adobe+Flash, Wired’s staff has probably relied on InDesign for years to layout their paper editions while other web production tools were likely used to produce their digital content. It’s unlikely that this is the first time that a print production app was used to create a piece of digital content but Adobe’s blog post makes it clear that “the Digital Magazine Solution from Adobe” is their way of the future.As many...
