When they ask what it is I do I always give them the same little speech, “I’m marketing  and advertising with a few other very talented people here in the CBD, and we are getting ourselves going, working hard every day to get new clients, keep the ones we already have, and make some ads in the process.”

So here’s the deal: I’m working with a few other amazingly talented individuals, and all we really wanna do is make a few ads for people, do a little creative campaign plotting, and help people find success in their business. If I didn’t firmly believe in what we are doing here at 504 Madison, I would not be sacrificing the proverbial “blood, sweat, and tears” to get us started, and to keep us going.

With that in mind, if ANY of you need ANYTHING relating to advertising or marketing services, content production, website development… again, ANY of that, we are the people to get in touch with We’d love to work with you, and I know that we have a great team in place that will produce work that will make an impact on your business.

P.S. Thanks Ryan

And hey- if nothing else- keep spreading the word around town about 504 Madison!

This Financial Times article by April Dembrosky discusses young 20-somethings who have achieved remarkable success with their digital startups in the last 5-years. Each of these has used their innate interest in computers and emerging technology to master the processes in developing new digital services and ‘applications’ far ahead of the Silicon Valley curve, making the youngest our leading entrepreneurs, and our ideapeople.One thing the article touched on was the importance of authenticityin reaching potential users/customers in today’s individual-driven business climate, where target audiences are not mass units of people, but clusters of individuals with diverse tastes and preferences.As a member of this ‘Net Generation’ I know what the marketing textbooks and articles appearing in publications such as the Financial Times are talking about when they point to users who are highly-selective regarding their content and their preferences. In the case of my friends and I, growing up we were the first generation to literally have the entire world at our fingertips. When I was in Junior High and figured out what the hell soccer was and that I was excited about the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea I was able to not only watch the games on TV (very late at night), I was able to research all of the players, their countries, and their teams. In the decade or more since I first started using the Web to stoke my interest in things such as global sports, fantasy and science fiction literature, political theories, Afrobeat music, ancient Persian poetry, The Wire TV series, and anything else that I could possibly be interested in for ten-seconds or more, I have learned how to navigate the Web to find the most useful sources: the ones that blend the hard currency of informationwith ease of navigability, colorful and insightful commentary, and authenticity in their origin.Like many of my peers,  I am used to being presented with nearly endless amounts of information that I have the option to click on, open, download, save for later, commit to memory, repeat, pass along, share, and post about on Facebook. As a result 20-somethings such as I are extremely selective about what information they choose to receive, and usually completely dismissive of information that we don’t choose to receive. Not only are we selective, we are often skeptical, and quick to move on to the next article, the next video, the next link, if we are not immediately sucked into whatever we are viewing. Point being: with so much around us to divert our attention, if you seek to win our interest or approval, our attention must be immediately piqued. And if you want us to, God forbid, share with everybody on our social network (and risk our credibilityas purveyors of culture and taste) you have to get us really excited.
As an aside: there has been a trend on Facebook where brands or services will bribe you with some sort of discount or piece of pertinent information in exchange for a LIKE. I believe this is an excellent strategy for building support for your brand on social media networks so long as you keep it up. If you don’t continue to provide useful information in exchange for that public endorsement, you’ll find that your supporters will drop. Why? Because bribes are annoying, and a discerning user intent on protecting their credibility or public brand is not going to continue to actively endorse or support your brand if they aren’t gaining something by it.

How does this lead back to the original point of departure, authenticity? Well another common feeling amongst those of my generation is that we all crave experiences. Whether it’s your college buddies jetting off to another continent for a semester or two abroad, or it’s the overwhelming rise of the live music/festival industry in the last few years, it’s clear that people in the coveted 18-34 demographic are spending their loose change, accumulated savings, and loan money on things that they can see, hear, feel, taste, and touch. More importantly, we all want to have the ability to share these experiences with our friends and family.

Through this sharing of information with others, most specifically our friends and family, we have come to be able to parse through what seems authentic and what is just a scam. We’ve learned to interpret via the experiences of ourselves and others the information that we find pertinent, relevant, or helpful to us. We seek things that provide meaning, information that clears the fog and leads to understanding, experiences that are real.

If it ain’t real, we ain’t gonna buy into it.

This is the most important lesson for marketers and advertisers in the global and digital age, one in which nearly everyone is a potential customer, but one in which these potential customers are much harder to please. It takes a message that is both sincere and immediately gripping to convince the new generation of consumers to even pay attention to what you are saying.

In today’s world, it’s simply much easier to put those ubiquitous white iPod earbuds back in our collective ears and tune your sales pitch out.

Later we’ll talk more about the hunt for brand authenticity, and the trend in creating ‘personal brands,’ or the use of products based on how it defines who you are. All of these things factor into how brands and marketers need to approach the elusive customer base they seek.

However it remains important for marketers to maintain keen interest in the latest developments on the Facebook front. Seemingly minor changes in things like Google algorithms or Facebook features or functions can have a big impact on whether or not your business continues to reach people, and whether your message ever receives exposure or response. For this reason it is also important for marketers to pay attention to things beyond just minor face-lifts and slight tweaks in the way we interact with each other… things such as the motivations behind Facebook’s adaptations, and the greater picture and strategy of Facebook moving forward as a brand. In the New Yorker, Nicholas Thompson does exactly that, telling us of Facebook’s ultimate goals and aims. His conclusion is an interesting one, and puts a whole new spin on that Facebook-Google battle that’s been brewing for the last few years. Cue the Social Media Arms Race.

I say that things are still evolving because insiders and digital gurus are still figuring out what exactly this whole new digital revolution means. For instance, we know that a brand and a consumer can connect on a much deeper level via a platform like Facebook, but we don’t always know exactly how that translates into consumption and spending. In other words, yeah you get a lot of raw data via your social media metrics, but it still remains difficult to tell what is working and what isn’t.

And after all, just coz ya got a lotta likes don’t mean ya got a lotta business. The important thing is to know how to not only make that impression and get them to LIKE your page, but how to turn that LIKE into a meaningful brand-customer interaction.

So keep that in mind as you ponder ways to figure out how to harness your Twitter followers and your Facebook fans into meaningful business… it’s not the number of followers that counts, but the quality of the interaction between you and your followers that determines action and exchange.

For more on the subject check out AdAge’s special CMO Strategy section, and Bob Knorpp’s article on social media metrics.

As an avid consumer of blogs and random internet fun, I have a couple of important personal criteria for whether a site sucks me in, or if it sends me back to google…

A) The site HAS to be clean and uncluttered… I find that there is nothing worse than coming to a site for the first time and seeing page links everywhere. Too many page links and buttons can be intimidating and confusing.

B) The content HAS to be pertinent, nuanced, and interesting. Boring content and… *yawn*… off to the next site.

Now obviously I am not too demanding of a browser. As long as the site doesn’t look confusing, and is at least somewhat interesting… I will probably spend a little time with it.

If you are interested in learning more about Bounce Rates, how they work, and what you can do about them check out this excellent feature by Ana Hoffman.

Via AdAge:

“The move has been anticipated for some time, but Twitter today began showing the ads and named some advertisers involved, including AMC Theatres, American Express, Best Western, Disney, HP, Lexus, Lionsgate, Movietickets.com, Pepsi, Red Bull, Salesforce.com, Sephora, Xbox and Yahoo.”

Check out the full article here.

This comes as a natural next step for Twitter. There is little doubt that Twitter is huge- seriously, how many people do you know on Twitter these days?- but without ad revenue the size of Twitter is only reflected in ‘potential value.’ As long as ads and promotional tweets are blended relatively seamlessly with the rest of the Twitter ‘timeline’ then the new promo tweets should serve to engage new customers and tweeters without interrupting the flow of the whole Twitter experience. So far YouTube and Facebook have done a good job of seamlessly blending advertising content in with personal content without taking anything away from the experience, and for Twitter to continue to grow and be successful it must do the same while people are still in wide acceptance of the Twitter product.

Elsewhere Entrepreneur has yet another helpful post on the importance of blogging and the ways in which you can use your blog to establish lead generation and a customer following. We wholeheartedly agree with each of these tips, and hey, we follow them too…

However it is important to point out that Groupon and LivingSocial can be a boost to your customer base and your business. It is a great way to introduce new customers to your business, for example. However the appropriate use of such services needs to be carefully calculated if you are going to execute something like offering significant discounts via a social coupon site. ‘

Our opinion is that these services can certainly work for you, but they will work best if they are placed within the context of a larger campaign that uses other social media platforms as well as traditional media to drive business and traffic to you. Social Coupons have their role, but they are not a magic pill that will turn around your business over night, however with the right strategy and tactics you will find that it can provide a positive impact on your business.

For your advertising interest we have an excellent article from the Atlantic on ‘Why Good Advertising Works Even When You Think It Doesn’t.’  Check it out, because good advertising is an underrated aspect of successful business management, and hey, we like to make ads!

Also if you are on the Northshore, go check out my brother playing Quarterback for Saint Paul’s School tonight against the Karr High Cougars in Covington!