This headline is how Scott Monty at Ford Motors describes social media. Brilliant, I think, as we all play a role in it--I know here, at DC, we do. Much of the social media work falls to or is centered around PR, as Scott mentions in this Q & A, but all departments are touched by/contribute to the work. Who would have guessed a year ago that Ford Motors would have a social media strategy, a full-time strategist and a staff and agency backing him? Anyway, if you want a quick education, read the Q&A. And, if you're interested, check out Scott's blog.

Labels: Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeGreat article from Dave Chase (Sun Valley Online, New West Media) pointing out that companies can and do prosper during economic turmoil. Worth the read when thinking about grabbing market share during this downturn. Ok, during this recession...

Here is the story.



-jamie

Labels: Advertising, Marketing

GREAT piece of research here for marketers and technologists.Contains internet, advertising, social media data. From Morgan Stanley (surprising?) presentation @ Web2.0 Summit: http://is.gd/6xAf

You can follow me on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/idaho_jamie


-jamie

Labels: Public Relations, social media research interactive, Web

Image by adultaddcoach via Flickr


Throughout the conference there was a lot of talk about how well Barack Obama used online channels and social media (most specifically Facebook) to get people energized and engaged. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) noted the tremendous success of "Facebook Causes" in particular during the election - growing by "hundreds of thousands of people a day."

"Were it not for the Internet, Obama would not have been elected President," - Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief, Huffington Post

"Clearly a sea-change has washed upon the country. Just as in the 60's a new medium became the dominant medium in this election. Whereas TV was the new one-way broadcast medium when JFK used it so adeptly during his debate with Nixon, in 2008 the Internet brings interactivity, dialog, and conversation to the mix." -Gavin Newsom, Mayor, San Francisco (12,179 supporters on Facebook) Facebook page HERE.

For us marketers, understanding and harnessing web 2.0 and social media...and turning it into effective marketing, not just more marketing, will continue to be important. We should look no further than our recent presidential election for our case studies.

-jamie

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Labels: Web

Image via CrunchBase

The web 2.0 summit just wrapped up it’s fifth conference – with speakers like Lance Armstrong, Arianna Huffington, Al Gore, Shai Agassi among others. Lots of great quotes from the speakers and events. I will share some over the coming days as the things going on in this arena are of interest to marketers around the world.

This one is not from the conference itself but is from the founder of the idea of web 2.0 who has just published a paper on one of the hottest and simplest technologies to emerge in the last year.


“So, if you wonder whether Twitter matters for business, remember, if you will, when people new to cell phones used to call each other to report the most trivial details of where they were and what they were doing; remember how blogs at first were thought of merely as personal diaries of no interest to anyone in business, and how they grew up to become the heart of a new media paradigm. For that matter, remember how the personal computer was dismissed by the titans of the computer industry as nothing but a toy.

The future often comes to us in disguise, with toys that grow up to spark a business revolution. Twitter is like that.”

~Tim O’Reilly (Twitter LATE adopter, foremost expert on web 2.0, author and web marketing expert. Tim now has 13,436 followers on Twitter. Actually 13,437 now.)

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Labels: Public Relations

Two articles to read carefully, both dealing with the economic crisis and its increasing impact on advertising agencies. One's from the Idaho Business Review, and the other is from the New York Times. The articles hum a similar tune from a national and local perspective - not one of panic, but of calculated and often difficult business moves as a response to the tumultuous economy. And both articles include somewhat ominous references to the especially poor fall quarter for retail, foreshadowing an increasingly slow winter and Christmas season. Idaho Business Review article is here and the New York Times' is here.

To quote our quotemaster Jamie, "...just in case, buckle your seat belts as there could be some minor turbulence ahead (which is when I always like to order a drink). "

Labels: Advertising

Drake Cooper was featured in the October issue of Photo District News, noting our use of original photography . The article was titled "West of Madison Avenue" and featured six smaller agencies across the country who were known for using compelling original photography in print campaigns. Using the images from Northstar Cycle Courier shoot to illustrate, the article focuses on the creative team's flexibility, attention to detail and desire to create authentic feelings with photography. Nice.

Labels: Drake Cooper

There's a really great industry blogger out of the UK who keeps a blog called Scamp.

Earlier this week, he posted up the world's most popular ad blogs. Thought it would be helpful to re-post here. They are measured by traffic rankings from Alexa.

Top 25 Ad Blogs(world ranking)

1 Ads Of The World 9,561 ↓
2 AdRants 20,122 ↑
3 Adland 45,268
4 Adverbox 53,169
5 Creativity 55,077
6 AdFreak 61,570
7 Coloribus 61,751 ↓
8 Advertising/Design Goodness 68,983
9 Adverblog 71,732
10 Bannerblog 78,281
11 Logic + Emotion 111,232
12 Copyranter 115,783 ↓
13 AdPulp 123,110
14 Ad Forum 126,470
15 The Inspiration Room Daily 135,391 ↓
16 ViralBlog 169,483
17 Best Ads On TV 181,003
18 Jaffe Juice 274,786 ↓
19 Scamp, 285,912
20 Crackunit 312,842
21 Behind The Buzz 324,282
22 AdScam 328,713 ↓
23 Make The Logo Bigger 330,415
24 Experience Curve 378,548
25 BrandFlakes for Breakfast 384,844

An ↑ means a blog's traffic has gone up by 15% or more in the last quarter, and a ↓ means it's gone down 15%.

-John Drake

Labels: Advertising

We love Mad Men... and Matt Groening

Labels: Advertising

Here is some work our Project Managers are loving right now-

Labels: Advertising, interactive, Web

Thought this campaign was interesting. It is for a new line of bikes called "Dark Custom" and is targeted towards 20 something riders who we called Modern Outlaws. The reason I wanted to share this is because of a piece of marketing that I received a few days ago that I feel is working very hard for the brand. The photo above is of a direct mail piece that contained two stickers of logos that were designed for specific usage with the Dark Custom campaign. The card that accompanied the stickers says that they're limited edition and if I want the other two to complete the set of four, I can go to a Harley dealer and get them. 

Labels: Advertising

Image via Wikipedia


What if we all cared enough to vote?

Starbucks ran this killer ad during this past week's Saturday Night Live. So good, it made me stop the DVR and watch. The spot was cool, but what I found most interesting was their excellent tie-in and use of social media to compliment their overall campaign – which, from what I can tell, looks to be a huge success. Free always seems to work, and driving traffic into Starbucks stores, at a time when they really, really need some love, is huge and will surely generate sales and, maybe more importantly, longer term goodwill.

First their selection of mass media was spot-on. Running the ad in the most politically hip arena, Saturday Night Live, seems to have worked well for their brand and their audience. Then to get real follow on the social media machine went to work.

Here are the social media results as of 11.3.08:

Facebook: Starbucks set up a straightforward Facebook event that looks to be created and administrated by someone inside the company. I am betting this is about an hour investment of their time – max. And...they have garnered 423,792 invitations from people on Facebook just forwarding it around to their friends. Also, 164,883 people have said they will attend with most of the rest still awaiting response. There is also 13,187 wall posts and tons of pictures, etc. That is pretty heavy duty work for a social media campaign - driving a ton of traffic to them on FB – which also has other things for people to do, like see the commercial, participate in the “My Starbucks Idea” section and more. I would love to see their web stats today. If you are on Facebook check it out here.

Twitter: There are 8,022 people following Starbucks on Twitter. That is big given the total audience for this fairly new micro blogging/social media site. There is a lot of conversation back and forth from the company and it looks very engaging. Some interesting posts from the company like this one: “IMPORTANT: To ensure that we are in compliance with election law, we are extending our offer to all customers who request a tall brewed drip.”

Youtube: 187,135 views on Youtube. That makes it the fourth largest watched video of the day. Again, huge numbers. And the number 3 video is of the Tina Fey, John McCain SNL sketch...nice tie in.

Kudos to Starbucks. I think they are creating good will and some new friends. If this campaign doesn’t point out the effectiveness of integrating mediums and how to use social media for marketing I don’t know what does.

jamie

Labels: Public Relations

There is a new book coming out called The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It. The authors both hold senior positions at Young & Rubicam (Y&R), part of the largest ad agency holding company in the world, WPP Group. Their book sounds an alarm based on a gap in value between how consumers and investors perceive brands. The authors have a proprietary research tool that they use to measure value, and they've found that investors reward companies with greater brand awareness, even if consumers don't see much utility. I've yet to read this book but fully intend too. Just though you might enjoy a suggested piece of reading and if you don't you'll probably have fun playing around the Brand Asset Evaluator widget on the books website. Check it out below.

www.thebrandbubble.com

Labels: Advertising, branding

The new Routan is here. (Nice that the agency chose a .org site too. )

www.Routanboom.org

Labels: Advertising

New in Labs: Stop sending mail you later regret

Monday, October 06, 2008 6:25 PM

Posted by Jon Perlow, Gmail engineer

Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?


By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings.


Hopefully Mail Goggles will prevent many of you out there from sending messages you wish you hadn't. Like that late night memo -- I mean mission statement -- to the entire firm.

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Labels: Web