Local TV Spot Goodness: Cleopatra's Jewelry

Having a limited marketing budget can be a challenge. This is especially true for small local retailers. Many times they have to work with a local cable provider or an individual with limited experience to create and produce a spot. 

Sometimes magic happens. Yes, inadvertent magic, but magic nonetheless.

That is how this incredible spot for a now closed local jewelry store in Kansas City, Missouri came about. Heck, even the mall has been demolished. 

After you watch this video, I dare you to try and get the song out of your head. Just try. 

Enjoy...   

  

*Video Courtesy of the greatest Media Planner and Buyer the World has ever known. Jennifer Nugent. 

Did the Cool Kids Just Arrive at the Google+ Party?

In an update to my comments last week, it now appears that we are seeing the big blip of growth in subscribers to Google+ now that it is open to the general public. Several sources are estimating that Google+ has hit the 50 million user mark and is growing at 4% a day. (PC Magazine: Google+ usage skyrockets, hits 50 million users) This is well and good, but my thoughts on it reaching the tipping point still stand.

 The next few weeks will be a litmus test for the social network. Will the opening of Google+ to the 'general public' spur it past the "must engage daily" tipping point? Just as important is the announcement of the new API Hangout. Allowing third-party application development could certainly kick the place into high gear. new features are being launched as well that hold a great deal of potential.  

 The rapid growth must continue unabated for months for it to reach the density of Facebook. Then it must work to build out the content and depth of information that makes Facebook so interesting. It is true that Google+ should not strive to replace Facebook, but to be a new and fresh alternative. As we mentioned last week, it is certainly appealing more to the media and is being embraced in some unique and fun ways. The Developers will be the ones who play the key role in this next step. The Applications they launch and the linkages they form with brands and content sites will either propel Google+ toward being the "must visit first" site or an languishing also ran to Facebook.
One application that I am sure some enterprising developers are working on is a "Transfer your Facebook content to Google+." This type of app will be important with many. Leaving the social media world they have built is not a comforting thought.

My initial love of the style and interactivity of Google+ has abated a bit. I had also started to lose a bit of joy for Facebook, that is until Timeline was launched. Now my excitement for Facebook is renewed. I believe we will see a protracted battle for users and daily engagement numbers. The real war will be fought on the ad revenue side. It might be a protracted battle, but I believe we will see a mass decline in usage in one or the other platform should a clear winner in the media emerge.

Cool kids want to be with other cool kids after all. The name brands that associate with Google+ and Facebook will help tip that decision.

Stay tuned. It's going to be an interesting ride...

Rockhill Recommends: Googlization

I took the time last night to attend a lecture at the Linda Hall Library on Google's impact on the Internet and our culture. More on that in a second.

First a brief shout out to the Linda Hall Library. It is one of the leading science, engineering and technology libraries in the World. 

The information they have archived, and the role they are playing in current innovation cannot be underestimated.

I would also recommend that you visit their latest exhibit, This Time It's Personal: Innovation In Your Home. From Aspirin to the light switch to Pez Candy, it covers the research, discovery, development and intellectual property of things we use every day.  

The opening speaker in support of the new exhibit was Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media and law at the University of Virginia. His talk was in support of his current book, The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry). He has a supporting website as well here. This post is not a review of the lecture or a commentary on the book. That will come later after I have had a chance to read the book and do some research. I would however, recommend that everyone take some time and check out a bit more about his thoughts on Google. 

Siva does a nice job of summarizing the incredible role that Google has played in our lives in the 13 years (yes, it has actually been that long) since its founding at Stanford in 1998. Early on the mission was simple, but oh so lofty...

Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

He raises the valid question of why we should trust Google with this and how they have delivered.
Why this task shouldn't be entrusted to the academic institutions and librarians of the World.
Google determines how important search results are via their algorithms and he provides examples of Google modifying results for various reasons in spite of their claim that they do not alter search results. Some are for generally altruistic reasons such as a racist website "gaming" the results to get higher placement. He questions why we, as consumers accept this. Generally, it is because we don't know.

It is comforting to know that Google doesn't remove information. In that respect they really do attempt to archive all of the World's information. However, as a writer and researcher, I do find that you need even sharper personal analytical skills when working online.

He also offers a few other tidbits of insight that are worth considering:

• We are not Google's customers. The advertisers are. Google only views us as customers so far as they need us to keep eyeballs on their site to sell to advertisers. 
• As technology consumers we generally are willing to accept technology as magic and not explore how a product or service works. Companies such as Apple and Google benefit from this. 
• Google fundamentally transformed the Internet for the better by working to filter out pornographic results that were served via spam or due to typographical error. This work to make the Internet safer for business and family use helped to also make the consumer feel safer about using the Internet for their financial needs.
• When you use Google you are seeing the world through their lense. It is filtered. 
• Google may be radically different in five years and may not even exist in ten. That is the type of technology world we live in.

Overall, Mr. Vaidhyanathan offered some great perspectives on the good and bad of Google. The questions that he poses are easily applicable to many other communications channels, social media et cetera. 

What he did not discuss is the rapidly expanding technology channels that Google is moving toward. For instance, I am typing this using Google Chrome browser. Google has mobile technology, hardware with Chrome Book and is developing a one-gigabyte Google Fiber technology in Kansas City. It is currently being installed outside my office window.

(Update) Google now has also opened a retail pop up store in London as reported by The London Evening Standard. This could be the direct assault on Apple that many have anticipated. The fundamental difference is, if Google is successful in hardware and retail sales, they will also possess an incredible wealth of content and the means of distribution.  

I look forward to exploring these more and sharing thoughts with my readers here. 

Possibly the most cogent and interesting comment was when he likened Google to Julius Caesar. A benevolent dictator who does indeed improve life for many but at what cost?    

Angry Birds Stealing My Wallet?

Angry Birds are Everywhere

The Atlantic recently published an article, Estimating the Damage to the U.S. Economy Caused by Angry Birds, that caused quite a stir.

In the article, Alexis Madrigal offers up how much American productivity is lost by employees playing Angry Birds at work. He uses a a variant of a calculation that a consulting firm has used to determine lost productivity from the NCAA Basketball Tournament. I am not here to question his math, just the basis of the assumption of "lost productivity." 

In my professional career thus far, I have been a lowly account coodinator at a huge advertising agency and the director of accounts, with large teams of employees. I have also been the president of a region of a company and an entrepreneur of a tiny startup. Through all of these career moves I can assure you of one thing. People at work don't need a specific smartphone game to lose productivity. They (myself included) are perfectly good at seeking out ways to distract themselves from work. Referencing the hot new game is simply a device that journalists use to get the readers attention. An article titled, "Various Means Employed by People to Lose Productivity" isn't nearly as exciting as picking the hot new game or industry.    

Courtesy of The Atlantic

If we look back through the archives of 'lost productivity" articles I assure you they list causes such as the personal computer, phone, water cooler, windows, air conditioning, co-ed working environment... and so on. Therefore, the lost productivity idea is a fallacy as it relates to specific new technology advances. What the advent of smartphones and social media has done, is make it easier to hide the actual activity from their boss. But banning Angry Birds and social media doesn't solve the problem. It only leads more secretive activity and alternative forms of lost productivity, such as people standing around talking about playing Angry Birds!

I am certain there are plenty of great Human Resources professionals that could chime in and offer a great deal of suggestions on how to increase productivity in the workplace. I am not going to attempt to tackle the complete productivity issue. I do feel that it all stems from proper supervision and pro-active management with a human understanding of how people work and live.

I do want to take a minute and address the Angry Birds and larger social media challenge that employers face. How to best solve it? 

Employers should stop directing their IT staff to block offending games and sites. They should stop issuing corporate policies designed to prevent game play and social media (specifically Facebook and Twitter) usage at work. Instead, they should look at their customers and understand that they are probably using the same channels of social media and games. Enterprising marketing officers should be challenging their company to see how they can turn their most avid game playing employees and heavy Facebook users into defacto developers, idea generators and online brand advocates. By engaging with employees about their online activity, a company can better understand changing trends. If employees as unafraid to talk openly about what they are doing, ideas can be shared. 

- Integrate social gaming into company team building.

- Offer incentives for employees that bring ideas on integrating company products into social gaming or online advertising

- Focus less on restricting activities of employees and more on accountability of delivering results.

- Offer at work education on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. 

- Conduct education on what information employees can share about the company and its products. 

- Let social sharing about your company occur naturally.

- If you have active social media marketing staff already, they should add monitoring and reporting of social media activity to their responsibilities. 

There is a great deal of potential in leveraging the ideas from social gaming and the actual reach of social media. If handled proactively and positively by a company, you will be creating a large innovation team and social media marketing team from your existing employees. 

The Best 5:51 of Your Day: Doodlers, Unite!

This one is short, simple, to the point and best of all PERFECT. Doodling needs to come out of the hidden margins and to the main page. As a doodler myself, I am happy to know that it actually reinforces the messages I hear at conferences and meetings. I use doodles as meeting references and often place pages of doodles in my client files. many people in the advertising and design world think that only graphic designers are visual learners. As a strategist and writer, I can assure you that visual learning is at the core of my daily life.  

Doodle while you listen/watch this brief TED talk by Sunni Brown. Sunni has a deep passion for the study of visual learning and is great at conveying the information. Find out more about her and the work she is doing at her website.

Enough copy, to the video and doodling. Enjoy... 

Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite!

Your Cure For Writer's Block

From time to time we all struggle with the dreaded writer's block. Those who write many column inches for a living struggle with it, and so do us branding and marketing types. For me it is concept creation and short form creative copy. My clients look to me for the next "big idea." They expect something that will stand out, fit their brand and be clever and creative. All of those things are what they should expect of course.

However, being creative and relevant to a brand in an on demand fashion can be taxing. Ideas don't work 9 to 5. That is why there is the handy Moleskine. One travels with me at all times, and one stays on my nightstand. They get filled with ideas. Some of those ideas eventually become workable solutions to a client challenge. Some become dreams for future work and some are simply terrible. The edible bike helmet "dream" for instance seemed great at 3am.

So, what do you do when the ideas are are clogged up somewhere in your head and just not flowing? How do you get those ideas going again? I have already mentioned that watching some TED talks gets me going. A little Spotify music helps. Taking a walk. Finding inspiring  work in unrelated fields, such as architecture and fine art. All help me to break the cycle of a creative block. But there is one other little secret that I would like to share and that is the New Yorker Magazine. Specifically, their cartoons.

You may not know this, but they have a weekly contest to write the headline to a published cartoon. It is a fun weekly challenge and blends a visual idea with short form copy. 

The Caption Contest is certainly a fun secret pleasure of mine. Though I have yet to win and have a caption of mine appear, it is a fun challenge to try and meet. Go give it a try and see if it works for helping to break your writer's block. 

I would love to hear what other ways people have for breaking their creative block.

I will update this post as people send me ideas.   

The Most Important Infographic Ever

After many months of extensive research and study, I have compiled a comprehensive Quadrant Analysis outlining where most industries fall in service and product quality.
Additionally, I have highlighted where there is a "white space" of opportunity.

For ease of use, I have bundled the companies by industry. The ones who fall within the "Opportunity" section I have listed by name.

Now, hopefully industry CEOs and CMOs will read and understand this chart.

The conclusion is that most companies need to adopt a mantra of "Don't Make Shit and Don't Be An Asshole." 

Google+, Party of No One?

Google opened up registration for it's Google+ social network to everyone today. That might be the catalyst that it needs to drive usage and propel Hangouts, and it might not. There is no doubt that the Google name propelled Google+ to near cult status at launch. Social media types bragged about invites and being a first adopter. Volumes were written nearly overnight explaining how this was a game changer. Google+ was the future. Facebook was going the way of Myspace. Twitter was dead... Most entertaining was that the death tomes were written and spread on the very networks that were supposedly dying. 

This Hangout is Awesome!

But a funny thing happened on the way to world domination. It appears that for all the members signing up, few are actually hanging out in the Hangouts. As reported by Dan Reimold for MediaShift, Google+ "is worse than a ghost town." While actual details on traffic and usage are hard to come by, more anecdotal evidence is suggesting that the assumptions of lack of volume is in fact the case. So what does this mean for the ever fracturing social media world?

First, it proves that the raucous social media landscape is the Wild West. While some continue to focus on niche applications, LinkedIn for example, others continue to drop into the general consumer arena. Over the next few years many corporate obituaries will be written, but the winners will be very strong players with some incredible applications. Buckle up, it is going to be a fun ride.    

It also reaffirms that Google is not King Midas. Like every other business, they will need to work hard to build relevance and be very strategic about it. If Google+ was actually a VC funded start-up void of the Google connection, I believe that it would have worked much harder to create category buzz. It would have launched a branding campaign and reinforced the natural occurring brand advocacy. In short, a boot strapped start-up would have fought and engaged earlier. They would have nurtured actively some initial category users. 

The next few weeks will be a litmus test for the social network. Will the opening of Google+ to the 'general public' spur it past the "must engage daily" tipping point? Just as important is the announcement of the new API Hangout. Allowing third-party application development could certainly kick the place into high gear. new features are being launched as well that hold a great deal of potential.  

Without a doubt, there are some exciting things occurring on Google+. It has some exciting features and is being adopted in very exciting ways by journalists the world over. The journalism potential is huge, and very exciting as we look at media convergence. 

The University of Missouri School of Journalism has taken the lead in the Google+ newsy world. KOMU TV, the school-owned NBC affiliate has embraced it 100%. They recently launched a 4p.m. hour-long web newscast. The U_News@4 anchored by Sarah Hill uses Google+ as a core component of the news. This application holds the potential to truly transform local television. While Google+ is a core component of this news program, it remains to be seen if it will become the vehicle or if another outlet will co-op the segment as more news outlets follow Mizzou's lead. I will write more about this specific item soon. TV NewsCheck has done a nice job covering it's launch thus far. 

Worth it in spite of our terrible graphics package

Sample of U_News@4

I look forward to following, engaging and seeing where this all goes. Based on what we have seem thus far, Google+ will have a future, but it may be far different than the Facebook killer it was purported to be. 

Until then. Get to Google+, grab a Hangout and see if it is indeed a party of one. 

 

          

Making Your Escape

Everyone needs to get away sometimes, be it literally or figuratively. 

We escape into a good book, music, sports... But sometimes you need to escape to an actual place. My retreats are usually neighborhood coffee shops and bookstores. There are some great ones here in Kansas City thankfully.

However, the place I envision when I need to really clear my head is 4532 miles from here. It is a place I have visited many times over the years. After each visit I leave inspired and refreshed. It is usually good for at least 10,000 words of creative writing. 

That place is a famous, if small, bookstore at 37 rue de la Bûcherie on the Left Bank in Paris. 

The wonderful Shakespeare and Company. 

Since most people, myself included, can't just drop in on a Friday, here are a few photos for a virtual escape.  

Enjoy... and remember 

"Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers Lest They be Angels in Disguise"  

 

The Best 16:17 of Your Day: The Origins of Pleasure

This one is a bit esoteric, yet incredibly relevant to marketing, branding and communications professionals. In short Mr. Bloom hypothesizes that our knowledge of the origins of an object is critical to our emotional response to it. He uses art and forgery as his primary example, but this is critical in our lives with brands and products.

In short, if we perceive a brand as an original, a brand of quality. One we have had positive experiences with before, we will respond to it with pleasure and enjoy it more.

I will leave it at that, and let Mr. Bloom explain the psychology of it. If you are in the marketing and branding world however, listen to this talk with an eye toward how you reach consumers. Is your brand, your story, reinforcing originality and trust... pleasure?

It is critically important to realize that the experience and perceptions of a consumer will determine your brand's fate with them, even if your product is identical to one they love. Think about that next time you decide to skip brand planning and go for a crowd sourced logo. The next time you consider skipping a review of your retail experience, your staff training.

Once you lose originality and the consumer loses that pleasure in your brand, it is gone.


Paul Bloom: The Origins of Pleasure