I could write a book about Charles Duhigg’s best-selling book called The Power of Habit… but I won’t because I could never do it any justice. Suffice it to say I recommend this best seller and that I found it loaded with insights that are applicable to all professions and to “real life” as well.

But there was one research experiment delineated in the book that I found particularly relevant and helpful, so I will briefly blog about it. The experiment was designed to shed light on how human willpower works. Mark Muraven, a professor at the University of Albany, put two groups of college students in two separate rooms with some freshly baked cookies.

In the first room, the students were treated very nicely and gently asked to “please don’t eat the cookies.” This group was also encouraged to provide any suggestions to the researchers on how to improve the experiment.

The second room of students was not treated nicely. Students were ordered in short, terse tones “not to eat the cookies.” They were not given any indication of encouragement or interest in hearing their feedback.

Both groups successfully avoided eating the cookies for the duration of that portion of the experiment, five minutes.  Both groups and all students were then presented with a 12-minute computer challenge, designed to measure “willpower.”

The group of students that were politely and kindly asked to avoid eating the cookies scored very well on the challenge. The students who were ordered and treated unkindly performed very poorly. Muraven’s conclusions:

“When people are asked to do something that takes self-control, if they think they are doing it for personal reasons – if they feel like it’s a choice or something they enjoy because it helps someone else – it’s much less taxing. If they feel like they have no autonomy, if they are just following orders, their willpower muscles get tired much faster… But when the students were treated like cogs, rather than people, it took a lot more willpower.”

I loved Duhigg’s analysis of the findings as well:

“For companies and organizations, this insight has enormous implications. Simply giving employees a sense of agency – a feeling that they are in control, that they have genuine decision-making authority – can radically increase how much energy and focus they bring to their jobs.”

These findings really struck a cord with me. It explains why I find it so difficult to respond in a motivated fashion when I feel as if I’m being summoned or ordered to do something and my thoughts don’t matter. It explains why my children resist and ignore me when I am “barking orders” to them to pick up their rooms or clean up the kitchen.

It also makes me much more cognizant of why some leaders are so inspiring, and others are not. It made me think about marketing approaches and strategies that truly empower an audience to learn more and decide for themselves which service or product to buy. Those are the strategies and personal treatment that will be the most sustainable over the long term.

Duhigg makes a strong case that human “willpower” is a muscle – one that can be strengthened and weakened as much as the biceps, for example. As marketers, indeed and as human beings, we can do so much better by thinking about what and how much we are asking of our willpower.

The value of social media in the B2C market space, not to mention people’s personal lives, is well documented. However, the use of social platforms by B2B companies is still an emerging and evolving trend. A recent webinar by eMarketer, explored how and why B2B companies are using social networks to promote their services or brands. The number one reason? They’ve realized their customers and prospects are there. I’ve chosen to highlight some key findings from the webinar that illustrate the current state of social media in the B2B marketplace.

Finding #1: Social Media Channels are Firmly in the B2B Online Marketing Mix

A February 2012 study by B2B Magazine of US B2B agencies and marketers found that although email marketing still ranks as the number one online marketing channel, a total of 80% are using social media channels to promote their brand. This is 30% higher than paid search.

Finding #2: B2B Decision Makers Use a Variety of Online Resources to Gather Purchase Information

Decision makers in the B2B market space are using a variety of online sources to gather information about services and products before they make a purchase. These sources include discussion forums linked to their industry, LinkedIn, blogs that are linked to their industry, and podcasts.

Finding #3: LinkedIn is Still the Most Powerful Social Channel for B2B Marketing

LinkedIn, known as the social media channel for professionals, has proven itself to be the most effective for B2B marketing and sales, according to a study completed by MarketingSherpa. It exceeds Facebook by nearly 20%. A close second? A company blog. This should come as no surprise since illustrating a company’s knowledge, expertise and thought leadership is a clear method to increasing inquiries and sales.  Hubspot found that the conversion rate for B2B companies in North America was the highest when using LinkedIn compared to Twitter and Facebook.

Finding #4: Build Relationships to Convert Sales

B2B companies are primarily using social channels to build relationships with existing and potential customers, and create awareness about their services and/or products with a goal of converting to sales down the road. In addition, they are using social media to drive these same people to their website, so customers can find more in-depth information.

Finding #5: Obstacles for B2B Companies in the Social Media Realm

According to a March 2012 report by Chief Marketer, B2B marketers primary obstacle when it comes to lead generation by social media is that social requires more content and resources that traditional lead generation techniques. There is also concern that ROI cannot be measured effectively and that there are too many platforms to understand and evaluate.

Related articles

• LinkedIn: The Best Value in Social Media Channels? (conversations.marketing-partners.com)
• Three simple ways B2B marketers can get value from LinkedIn (freshnetworks.com)
• LinkedIn Vs Facebook: Who’s The Best At B2B [Infographic] (simplyzesty.com)

Pinterest, an online visual “pinboard” that allows users to share and discover images related to their interests, is the latest craze in social media. Attention has been fueled in great part by its rapid rise in just two years to become the number three social network. But every marketer knows that relevant quality trumps quantity, so let’s quickly review 5 questions to help you decide if this is a quality place to invest your marketing time and effort, before turning to examples of brands making the most of Pinterest if you decide to dive in.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself

1. Are your customers there?

Pinterest appeals most strongly to women, who represent 54-70% of it user base. That makes it a natural for a company marketing consumer product goods purchased by women, but if that’s not you maybe not yet.

2. Can you ‘own’ it?

Can the results of your investment get a copyright, trademark, be saved or protected in some way? If this is a new channel, should it be classified as paid, owned, or earned media? If not fully owned, what guidelines govern your relationship?

Pinterest is mostly designed to encourage ‘pinning,’ or sharing, of other people’s images. You can, of course, pin your own images. Make no mistake, however, you will not own or control the content on your Pinterest boards in the same way you own your website.

3. Can it offer synergy with other marketing efforts?

Something new that you can integrate into your strategic marketing plan and use to get more out of what you are already doing is generally a win-win.

Pinterest enables sharing just about any image online, with attribution. To support your other marketing efforts, you will need compelling visuals that link back to your website, blog, or microsites.

4. Is there a market advantage from being in early?

Depending on your industry and your positioning, being on the leading edge as one of the first to adopt a promising new marketing technology can be expected, if not necessary. Then again, if yours is a more conservative world, you don’t want to forget the wisdom in the term ‘bleeding edge.’

Pinterest is already the number 3 social network, so it’s too late to be on the leading edge. There’s still opportunity to be among the first to use the network well though — the number of successful brands on Pinterest is still small, especially in the B2B arena.

5. Do you have the capacity to do it well?

You can only do so much. It’s easy to be distracted and lose sight of the reality that no matter how promising something new is, you must execute it well to derive any benefit. In marketing communications, in particular, a low-quality implementation can be much worse than doing nothing at all.

Today, Pinterest represents just one more thing to learn and do for many small businesses and nonprofits. Pinterest is still a long way from the consumer marketing reach of Facebook’s 750 million users. And we cannot forget that despite all the never-ending buzz about social media, email is still the most popular way for most people to share information.

Your Decision

Every business will answer these questions differently, of course. If you can answer “yes” to 3 out of 5 of these questions, I generally think this new whatever is probably worth exploring further. If you answer yes to 5 out of 5, jump on it! It may still turn out to be a short-term infatuation, but it’s more likely to be a trend and a marketing opportunity you won’t want to miss.

Five Brands using Pinterest Well

The brands doing well on Pinterest are not overly promotional, but they are visually interesting and they offer ample opportunity to click through to their home website. Check out these examples to get inspired.

Whole Foods Market

Peapod grocery delivery service

Chobani yogurt

General Electric

Wall Street Journal

Resources

Connect with me on Pinterest:  http://pinterest.com/pheffernanvt/

Wall Street Journal primer on Pinterest

4 Reasons Pinterest Wins with Women (And Facebook Loses) – Forbes

7 Useful Pinterest Tools You Should Know

Brands on Pinterest: To $ or Not to $? [STUDY]

Crowdfunding for small businesses and nonprofits has been a hot topic in the news lately, especially since the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act was signed into law last month. So why is everyone so excited and exactly how does this new combination of social network and financing work? Let’s follow up on my interview with Michael Nedell from “Team Vermont,” the US National Champion Snow Sculpting Team, on his experience with the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.

Can you explain what your organization is and why you needed funding?

I have been the captain of a snow sculpting team for the past 11 years. It’s a hobby that my friends and I seem to be good at, because we have been entering and winning competitions for those 11 years. Until this year, we won the Vermont state competition 8 times and came in 2nd in the US twice. So it’s an art form, but its also in a competition form, and if you do well, you get to do more and more with the art.

Had you tried other ways of raising money in the past? What ways?

I have been sending emails and letters for a few years now. I figured we might be in line with local Vermont businesses because we are just local guys trying to do well in this circuit. We got an in-kind sponsor a few years ago – Kombi Sports in Essex Junction – so that relationship kept us going for a while. Not having to think about gloves and gear was and is a terrific boon to our hobby. It’s like the base layer. Then for the last three years we have been reaching out to other companies and art patrons with some relative success. Switchback has our back each year now — We tend to drink a lot planning these things so trying to talk to beer companies seemed to makes sense.

What made you think Kickstarter was a good fit for your organization? Did you see examples similar to yours before deciding?

Our team member Alex was part of a successful Kickstarter so we thought it might work for us. It seemed like a very low barrier to entry – I had a video camera and I can do basic video editing – so it made sense since we could actually pull it off.

Were there any unexpected barriers to starting your profile/account at Kickstarter? (For example, did you need an EIN, or proof of non-profit status, credit card, business checking account, etc.)

The only hassle with Kickstarter was waiting for them to verify by bank account – but even that was pretty easy.

Once you started the campaign, how did you promote it? Facebook? Twitter? Other?

We sent emails and promoted on Facebook, the blog we have, Twitter – what was surprising though was the number of random people reaching us just through Kickstarter itself – we got maybe 12 or so people that have no connection to us whatsoever – and that was pretty cool.

You reached your goal. Was it harder than you thought it was going to be?

We thought since our goal was low and tangible ( we showed pics and the price of what we wanted to by, and explained why) we would reach it. It took 3 weeks and the campaign was 4 weeks long, so we were able to get even a little over our goal.

Did you have preconceived notions of how this process was going to be?

No. From snow sculpting and life I have learned to just try it. See it it works. We had a lot of other ideas – party – do a sculpture on Church Street – Coin Drop – Benefit Rock Show. This seemed like the easiest to pull off.

Anything you want to add?

Alex said we needed some kind of hook to get people and we all sort of came up with the start of the video – the monster truck sort of announcer beginning – and I knew I could do a text over lay over things to make it a little more interesting – so yea – mostly it was a matter of knowing – with the limited resources and talent we had – that we could pull off a somewhat reasonable video for the goal we had in mind. I think if you were going for some more money then a 1,000 bucks for some tools – you would have to produce a little better video – but this really fell in line with our scrappy sort of attitude. We are all just friends and not really pro sculptors – but we find ourselves in these competitions with these real pro sculptors – so we figured the tools – which everyone but us has – would help. And it did! The tools ended up helping us immensely and we managed to win the competition!

I also think our cause was sincere. We didn’t have a product to try and produce, or an idea for a movie, but we really sincerely needed some better tools to help us.

More

• Don’t Abandon Crowdfunding — Manage It  (Harvard Business)

• Kickstarter: The King of Crowdfunding [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)

It’s my favorite time of the year, as the weather is getting warmer and the National Hockey League playoffs are well under way. While catching some fresh air in between games, I’ve been glued to the TV for 3-hour stretches as exciting games have been conducted.

Typically the TV timeout format for hockey games runs like this: a break before the 10 minute mark of the period as close to it as possible, followed by another two breaks after that in similar fashion. Each intermission is 15 minutes long, with about 4 breaks for commercials breaking up analysis. This pans out to be 21 commercial breaks over the course of 2.5 – 3 hours. Of these 21 commercial breaks it seems as if the same 4-5 commercials are played every, single, time. Not only is this the case for one game, or one day, but also for the full month and a half the playoffs have and will run.

Who is to blame for this overexposure of the same TV ads: is it the advertisers or the television station?

The Advertiser

Honing in on a specific demographic and getting your message to the select group you want is obviously the end goal in mind for all advertisers. In this specific case, Progressive with “Flo”, Discover with “Peggy”, and Verizon with NHL Gamecenter have been able to achieve this. These advertisements do a good job of ingraining in the viewer’s mind what the product is and why to use it. The repetition of names and services are in each commercial. However, the constant repetition along with seeing the commercial roughly 15-18 times in a 3-hour period starts to have a negative effect on the viewer. Personally, when I see any of these commercials come on now, I hit the mute button for the full break, eliminating any chance of my receiving the message.

The Television Station

It’s understood that a TV station or network’s objective is to fill airtime with advertisers who have the money to spend. Unfortunately, there comes a point where viewers get so fed up by seeing the same ad running repetitively, that they go even further than muting the television by changing the channel. This affects ratings for the station, as the viewer might not flip back in time for the program they want, if even at all. If the advertiser wants its ad to continue to run as often as it does, then the station has no choice but to agree to the contract and run as ordered.

As a viewer, I would greatly appreciate it if there were an effort by advertisers and TV stations to create a more spaced out schedule of ads. It’s a lose-lose for advertisers and stations alike, as more consumers become overexposed to the same messages multiple times in a short time span and develop negative feelings for the products at hand. As an advertiser, I hate to see so much money wasted.

I chuckled to myself and thought, “This is good old-fashioned social media in action.” This parent was demonstrating the power of social media only without using any technology at all—just word of mouth. And you can’t get much more social than that. Kind of refreshing in this day and age of technology overload!

Getting and Keeping a Customer

We use a certain company to have our septic tank pumped. And I probably will never switch—even for a better price. Why? Because the last time I called our company to have our tank pumped, the guy told me it was too soon. He remembered two years earlier when he was at our house. He remembered that we were having our kitchen remodeled and new roof put on at the time. And he remembered the location of the trees on our property. We weren’t due until next year he explained.

Whoa! What happened here? In that quick exchange over the phone, this company not only demonstrated their honesty, and established great trust, he also showed that he knew a lot about us and our property. I wasn’t just some potential customer calling and asking for an appointment. I was a customer he remembered.

This exchange didn’t happen over Facebook or LinkedIn or some other social media platform. But it could have. And that’s the point.

Are You Listening?

Français : Oreille humaine sous forme graphique English: Human ear icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Social media is a great way to share information about your company and its products and services with current and potential customers. But it can also be much more than that. It’s an avenue for having conversations (like the one I had with my septic company on the phone), for listening to and learning from your customers and potential customers and for demonstrating that you know and understand their needs.

So whether your company is in the business of pumping septic tanks or providing a service, social media can be a powerful thing—if you use it correctly. Sure, it’s a great place for sharing news about your company, but don’t limit these channels to just that. Your customers and potential customers don’t necessarily enjoy hearing (or reading) about you and your company all the time.

A good rule of thumb on social media: share your company news about one-third of the time; share industry news and items of interest another third of the time; and strive to engage with your followers and friends the other third.

Yes, social media provides you with wonderful ways to share information about your company, but it’s also a great way to listen to and engage with your customers.

Are you listening?

Related reading:

10 Questions To Ask Customers To Boost Your Sales

Internship Landing Strategies is the title of the article I read in the Champlain Current last month. I am graduating from Champlain College in the next few weeks with a Bachelors degree in Communications. I chose to attend Champlain College mainly because of their unique upside down curriculum, which requires at least one internship at some point during your senior year. Now was the time to reflect on the value of my own internships.

The internship article I read emphasizes the importance of the internship experience. It mentioned how internships not only allow you to make connections with professionals but how participating in an internship allows you to make yourself more desirable to future employers by having experience in your major. In addition, an internship helps you understand what is available in the job market for after graduation.

I was a public relations intern at Marketing Partners in Burlington, Vermont for four months. I had interned at ECHO Lake Aquarium to help with social media the prior year before landing this internship. Due to my varied experiences, I had an idea of tasks I enjoyed and others in which I wanted to expand my knowledge. Going into this internship I had a lot of social media experience, but knew I could improve on my writing skills.

Ask & Receive

Marketing Partners initially asked what I would like to get from the internship overall. I was honest and said more writing experience. I got to do a variety of tasks, but the team made sure that my time was focused on writing as much as possible. Whether it was pitches, press releases, or social media messages, I would always be guided and get feedback on how I could improve.

Marketing Partners provided an environment in which I could attain my goals, and followed through with what I hoped to learn. My experience was that everyone I worked with was helpful and friendly towards me. From the beginning I was tasked with a vast variety of projects that required research, creativity, and hard work. I worked most closely with colleagues Nicole and Jenn. They consistently gave me enough responsibility to make me feel like I was an important addition to their team.

The Work

During my internship, I have been able to be an integral part of many meetings with my colleagues, researched client related issues, written and scheduled social media messages; and learned how to write effective pitches.  The most time consuming task I worked on at Marketing Partners had to do with working with PR software. When I started at Marketing Partners we were in the process of switching from the PR software program Vocus over to BurrellesLuce, so I mainly worked with BurrellesLuce.

Since I had developed some familiarity with this program, my supervisor got me involved in creating media lists, researching media outlets; and gathering media clips using this software. I was surprised to learn about the programs functionality. You can search for media outlets and journalists throughout the world and also pull clips from the Internet about a certain topic or client. Learning about this software, as well as enterprise-level social media management software and best practices, will help me in other public relation firms.

Experience

Working at Marketing Partners as a public relations intern has been a significant learning experience for me. From learning what type of public relations firm I want to pursue in the future, to learning various skills to help me shine at interviews and life after college. I am very happy that I worked with Marketing Partners this semester and the inside scoop is I would recommend this company to anyone seeking an internship in the future.

So the article was right – From this internship I not only gained experience and connections within my field of study, but also learned how important and valuable teamwork is in a small PR and marketing firm.

Guest blogger Sarah Thibodeau is a student at Champlain College who calls Dover, NH her home.

There have been many changes over the past month in social media world. We’ve seen Facebook convert all their pages, individual and corporate, over to the timeline layout, and purchase Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock; Google launched a complete redesign of Google+; and even LinkedIn announced new tools for its users. Facebook, the goliath of all the social media networks, still maintains a huge advantage in both number of total users and time users spend on its site, however, there are rumblings that something isn’t quite the same anymore at the behemoth. Let’s take a quick look at two of the top issues with Facebook that are coming out via the interwebs.

Is Engagement on Facebook Decreasing?

Image via CrunchBase

While Facebook’s numbers are still strong — the average user visits about 21 times per month and spends 20 minutes per session for a total of 6-7 hours per month — there seems to be a definite decrease in engagement and to some degree, at least anecdotally, user participation. It was just reported that Facebook’s ad engagement is down 8% in the US between Q4 2011 and Q1 2012, and while some analysts say this isn’t a big deal, other marketers are not so sure this isn’t the beginning of a larger Facebook issue. From a less scientific perspective, colleagues and friends alike, share stories of Facebook becoming “boring” due to lack of information from friends, businesses and colleagues. It appears that people have less time for Facebook these days and have also tired of the constant changes Facebook makes to both layout and privacy settings. Do you hear this from your friends and colleagues?

Facebook is Now “The Man”

With Facebook’s purchase of Instagram came a major uproar in the social media community. What it boiled down to was big corporate Facebook, once the social media darling, buying out little, independent Instagram and most of the feedback was not positive. Reactions ranged from people closing their Instagram accounts to closing both their Instagram and Facebook accounts. According to a recent article by Bianca Bosker, Senior Tech Editor at the Huffington Post, “In the flurry of blog posts, tweets and status updates about the Instagram deal, Facebook was likened to Dr. Evil, Foxconn, the North Korean army, and the Evil Empire — precisely the same nickname given to Microsoft in its monopoly phase.” OUCH!

The Bottom Line

Despite some major stumblings and grumblings at the moment, Facebook remains the most heavily used social media channel with almost 1 billion users, an upcoming IPO estimated to be worth somewhere in the vicinity of $100 billion, and more user time per month than any other platform. For most marketers with an audience on Facebook, it is far too early to write off the behemoth — though it may be time to keep a more attentive eye on the effectiveness of tactics successful in the past.

For 15 years, I’ve looked forward to this time of year — Phish announces its summer concert tour!  (This is always a multi-media news release simultaneously released across multiple media channels.) Seeing the lineup of venues is always a nice boost into Spring for my husband, many friends and me.  We are always guaranteed a few fabulous East Coast shows in outdoor venues. The fact that we still see about 2 or 3 summer shows hasn’t changed, but there are a few things that have.

The Changes

In our early 20′s, the lawn was the best ticket you could get.  Out there on the grass with 25,000 other dancing phans was a blast.  Now, as we approach 40, we go the additional mile (and pay up!) to secure inside seats.  It’s now a requirement to have an actual seat during intermission to take a breather, avoid the sweaty throngs and almost guaranteed rain shower.  I always enjoy seeing my college-aged nephews’ excitement when they score a lawn seat— but the lawn is for the young—I need to sit down!  A few other changes:

1. Wine in the parking lot prior to the show has replaced beer
2. Instead of hanging around after the show, we now try to park close to the exit to make a clean escape directly after
3. A “peace-of-mind” call to check in on the kids marks a stark contrast to the days when we hadn’t a care in the world (or a cell phone, for that matter).

What’s Stayed the Same

What does an inside seat at a hippie rock concert have to do with marketing?  Simple: though I’ve changed my view and now have a seat up front, I’m still dancing to the same band. As iPads and smartphones take over the world, the mobile media market is booming. The idea of reaching consumers online, at anytime, is thrilling.  There is no denying that online and social media must be part of any marketing plan. But I’m a traditionalist. I still scour my local, community newspaper and am extremely loyal to companies that underwrite Vermont Public Radio.

And I’m not the only one.  According to the Pew Research Center, 47% of adults use the Internet to get information about local businesses with newspapers following close behind (mostly the printed version) and word of mouth:

47% say they rely most on the Internet, including:

• search engines – 36% rely on them
• specialty websites – 16% rely on them
• social media – 1% rely on social network sites or Twitter

30% rely most on newspapers, including:

• printed newspapers – 29% rely most on that
• newspaper websites – 2% rely on them

22% rely on word of mouth from family and friends
8% rely on local TV, either broadcasts or the websites of local stations

The Take-Away

So even though it seems mobile media is taking over the world, traditional media is not dead when it comes to marketing local businesses.  Newspaper and word of mouth make up for over 50% of the sources where consumers get their information.  Even in this ever-changing mobile world, some things remain the same.

As for me, I’m still as excited about each Phish show-the same way I was when I was 18-but now I have a seat fit for a 37-year-old mom inside!

The rising tension between technology, traditional media, and social media in sports has been very evident lately. The first example, if you haven’t heard, is the biggest story in the sports world at this moment about a league that isn’t currently in season. Gregg Williams, formerly defensive coordinator for the New Orleans Saints football program, has sent a shock to the world over something we as fans may have known existed, yet were appalled to actually hear ourselves as the “Bountygate” scandal spread.

Well on April 5^th, audio of a shocking speech by Williams made before the last Saints game of 2011-‘12 was released to the public by documentary filmmaker Sean Pamphilon. Pamphilon had been recording in the locker room as he worked on a story about former player Steve Gleason, who is battling Lou Gherig’s disease. Needless to say, the parties involved were not too happy that a recording that happened in the sacred grounds of the “locker room” was later released.

Technology Where It Should and Shouldn’t Be

Changing sports, another example of media tension can be found in hockey. As a huge fan of the NHL, I think the best thing to come along recently was the installment of HBO’s 24/7 Road to the Winter Classic; where HBO follows behind the scenes of the two teams who are competing in the premier outdoor event on New Years Day. It takes you into the “holy grounds” of the locker room to see how players and coaches prepare for games. You learn the lifestyle these athletes live. As someone who grew up wanting to do these things, it’s great to see everything I dreamed about.

However coaches and staff really dislike it. It gives the world a look into their techniques that give competitive advantages. Some coaches believe there’s no place for technology in the locker room. It’s a place where focus and concentration are needed in order to prepare for the next 60 minutes, 9 innings, or 4 quarters. This belief holds for cameras, cell phones, iPods, et al.

Social Media vs Traditional Media

Meanwhile, social media has become such a huge part of players, fans, and reporters’ lives that the NHL implemented a policy of when players can use it. “Use of social media by Hockey Operations personnel is prohibited on game day (including all preseason, regular reason and playoff games but excluding All-Star events or other exhibitions) beginning at 11 a.m. on the day of the game and ending after post-game media obligations.”

The biggest thing to note here is that social media, even though it’s wildly popular, is taking a backseat to the traditional media outlets allowed to cover the news. This includes reporters interviewing athletes before and after the event. I think this is very important for the media world, as we continue to see the number of newspapers and journals diminish.

Steve Zipay of Newsday in the New York metropolitan area is a great example of someone who is juggling all three outlets. He tweets frequently, runs a blog, and his main job is a column for the Newsday paper, all-revolving around the New York Rangers. He frequently talks about how people read tweets incorrectly and how difficult it is to convey a message in 140 characters on what he’s covering. The clashing of all these media channels is increasing, and soon enough will produce interesting effects.

Personally, when I want to know what’s going on at the moment I breeze through Twitter. When I need to learn more information, I’ll read the blog post about it. When I want to find an established and proven opinion, I’ll read columns in the newspaper (because everything that’s printed has to be good, right?).

When the tension between these media channels comes to a head, which do you think will prevail — traditional media, social media, or cameras in the locker rooms?

What is collaboration?

Pat wrote some time ago about the differences between collaboration and consulting and how people’s perceptions of the two terms can vary.

To some the difference between the two may seem small. To our firm, the difference is immense.

Collaboration is defined as:

“…working together to achieve a goal…a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals…”

Whereas, in my mind, serving in a consultant role is more reactive, based on providing advice from time to time or reacting to something that has already been decided or created. It’s more project-specific or shorter-term in nature. This type of relationship often lacks context or a sense of the bigger picture. How can one provide effective counsel without an understanding of the “big picture”?

Synonyms for collaboration include teaming up, uniting, cooperating, working in concert—terms that suggest a process that results in an outcome far greater than if one were working on their own.

Imagine listening to a musical piece played with only one instrument versus that same piece played by an entire symphony. Which experience is richer, more powerful?

Marketing power and effectiveness comes from both the client and agency working together, pooling their resources, experiences, backgrounds and knowledge to create something better.

Who knows a client’s customers best? The client, without a doubt. And who brings a wealth of marketing insight, research, objective analysis and best practices to the table to help develop a solid marketing strategy? The marketing firm.

Drawing a line in the sand

When we begin working with a new client, they want specifics on what we do, who does what, how much does it cost, etc. While these are certainly important questions, the process piece that describes how we work is equally important. I find that trying to draw a line in the sand between who does what, can be difficult.

Our firm has always prided itself on getting to know our clients, working with them closely to learn everything about their company, their team, their culture, their products or services, what they’re all about and forging a mutually rewarding partnership based on collaboration. It’s a give and take process, but both sides are always working toward that shared vision and making something better, whether that is a marketing plan, a tagline, an ad campaign or new brochure. As an employee, I find this a much more enriching and satisfying process than what I had experienced before.

Of course, not every agency approaches its work in such a collaborative manner. Certainly the first ad agency I worked in was more of a consulting agency. We did projects driven by the client’s request, with creative direction from the agency’s president. Our work was not necessarily based on having a deep understanding of the client’s customers or mission. Interesting to note that the firm isn’t around any longer.

The consulting relationship is more like the one you may have with your hardware store, quickie mart or dry cleaner. You, the customer, tell them what you want, they give it to you and you pay for it—nothing more, nothing less. But in a truly collaborative relationship there is more–much more.

So when I am asked what we do for clients I first touch on process and how we do it, talking about how we follow a collaborative approach to develop a solid marketing strategy for them.

Sure, there are days when we are asked only for our input or to carry out certain tasks, but for the most part these occasions are few in number. Our clients realize that real marketing effectiveness comes from a collaborative process with a trusted business partner that knows you and your business goals inside and out.

The article caught my attention because I am a “foodie” dating a “non-foodie.” Can a Foodie and Mr. Bland Be Happy? I accurately predicted the implications this article brought up. It boggles my mind that some people don’t understand my LOVE for food. I get abnormally excited to try a new restaurant, new foods, wines, etc. Like jumping up and down excited. Don’t worry I’m not one of those people that “mmmm…. Mmmm… MMMMMM’s” at the dining table, however I do think of eating out as an experience. Many people don’t think of it that way. I live for the experience, for new food, new tastes, new smells. In most cultures food is centered on family and celebrations, it brings people together, sharing stories and cultures, and it’s used to “fuel the body.” I prefer this type of relationship with my food.  (I realize many people do not share my view of food, and have a radically different relationship, and as a result: America is getting FAT, but that’s a blog for another day.)

When Did I Become SUCH a Food Snob?

I am a Food Snob, what can I say? I like what I like, and have strong opinions about what I don’t like. I think my love of food has cultivated over the years from my first real look at where our food comes from with Fast Food Nation, to learning the best ways to fuel and nourish my body while being on the running team, and most influential — exposing myself to cultures around the world and observing other relationships with food. My foodie personality has evolved throughout the years. When I first read Fast Food Nation I refused to even touch a French fry, I started considering places like Chili’s fast food (and still do). I then went and blindly thought that if I ate things labeled “organic” and “natural” I was being healthy.  Well, I learned that eating organic cheese, crackers, bread, pasta, etc. does not make you healthy or thin for that matter. Then I read more, and learned more and started experimenting with different ingredients, different recipes, and learning how to cook and create flavorful but healthy dishes. This led me to my foodie self today.  Now I appreciate the time it takes for a chef to plan his meals with what is in season, pairing foods with wines and much more. I appreciate where my food comes from and value the farms and local businesses that support that.

Fast Food Nation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“You Get What You Pay For!”

I like to nourish my body with fresh delicious food that supports the local economy. I truly feel that I eat well and buy and support products that support the same values that I have.  However, my “non-foodie” boyfriend would most definitely disagree with me. He just doesn’t understand… sigh.  So, all this foodie-ness has led to another intense interest:

I now love to explore the different ways that food is being marketed to our communities.

Yes I prefer to shop at a local or natural food store, and yes some things can be more expensive, but I believe you get what you pay for. I recently read an article entitled, How Whole Foods Became The Luxury Brand of The Millennial Generation, which compares Neiman Marcus to Whole Foods and the “larger shift in affluent marketing.” The author mentions a few key points about how Whole Foods leverages provenance, inclusion, egalitarian, informational, and, authenticity. Whole Foods does all of these things and they do it well. I feel like I am purchasing food that’s been paid extra attention to, or “curated” just for me.

Marketing Similarities vs. Differences: Neiman Marcus & Whole Foods

-       Core shoppers are affluent, and like to flaunt it vs. core shoppers are affluent but prefer to hide it

-       Exclusive and intimidating vs. egalitarian and welcoming

-       Anonymous service vs. personally identified service

-       Prefers designer labels vs. prefers unknown producers

-       Indifferent vs. humane

Words I use to describe food and restaurants I enjoy:

Local, sustainable, organic, natural, seasonal, fresh, unique, thoughtful, atmosphere, experience, open, friendly, design, knowledgeable, service, personality.  So apparently, I am pretty aligned with the description of Whole Food shoppers.

The author describes the perceived differences between Gen Y and other markets stating that, “as a baby boomer, luxury is about designer labels and rarefied retail temples like Neiman Marcus. These outlets are full of lithe, headless mannequins, invisible cash registers, and generically attractive retail associates who all adopt the same quiet and impossibly dignified manner.” However for us Millennials, it’s different, there is a shift in what this group of consumers like.

So  what do we like exactly? Apparently it’s a type of understated luxury, exactly what Whole Foods projects to its consumers. “The organic food chain knows that it’s not just about the food, selection or prices, but about the whole experience. If you are going to reach Generation-Y a.k.a. Millennials, you must use both a Sensory Approach and Social Approach in your marketing.”

The Promises of Shopping at Whole Foods

You know when you are in a work out slump, and you think that if you buy a new outfit from Lululemon it will motivate you to get into the groove again? Well that’s how I think many people feel about Whole Foods. It markets itself as healthy, happy, informative, and more. If you shop there, you feel like you’re part of the group, healthy, cool, and that you are MOST definitely going to leave the store with the ingredients to keep yourself on the right health track, whatever that may mean to you. I mean, seriously, if I walk in there in my yoga pants and running shoes, I feel like I have already lost ten pounds. Then I go through the store and end up tossing in all these new “organic” products and what do you know? I have spent $315. (The $15 being the re-usable bags I bought last minute I wanted to do my part for the environment, and I left mine at home AGAIN.) Just to note the idea that you have to spend a lot of money at a health/local store to eat tasty and healthy is a whole other FALSE misconception (but that’s a separate blog post too).

Overall

I think Gen Y’s perception of success and luxury is changing. Eating healthy and from the local spots is viewed as a luxury although at the same time, expected. It’s like clothing, you buy a nice well-made item and it will be a staple in your closet forever. You buy and feed yourself good food and you are setting your body up for a long and healthy life. Not to mention lots of good memories.  My “Whole” journey to becoming a “foodie” has been all about loving delicious, healthy, tasty foods and the experiences I’ve gained along the way. As for my non-foodie boyfriend, let’s just hope he comes around soon!

Related articles

• Generation Y Foodie Graphs – The How Millennials Eat Infographic Tracks Cuisine Choices (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)

One of my favorite parts of my job is the intersection of the written words and artistic design/visuals.  Since strategizing, defining, and writing are my usual “duties” and involve filling the “blank” page with prose, it is always a thrill to see how transformed a document becomes when given time and attention from a graphic designer.

Since so much of our economy and business activities are now conducted online, I thought I would list my top five websites – strictly from a visual perspective. Personally, I have more freedom than I do professionally. I am not a stickler for “best practices” or “user-friendly” navigation and architecture. I just like the looks of things. The colors, the position, “the look and feel” draw on my emotions. And just looking at these sites makes me happy:

Vermont Clothes Exchange

I like this site because it is branded so well, and the print on the dress is just fabulous. So is the color. Love brown and the turquoise-y blue together.

Pinterest

I don’t know how Pinterest does it, really.  All these “pins” showing so many various things from all over the place – and yet, every page looks clean and inviting, from the Home page to my very own board.  I’m drawn in.

Architectural Digest

Truth be told, I’ve never seen any site from architects that isn’t beautiful. I think it’s the photography. There’s never a lousy photo on any site dealing with architecture.

Hullets on Lake George

Love this home page because, well, this is my favorite place on earth. Seriously, Lake George does not take a bad picture. And this website is all about my little slice of heaven, so I had to include it.

SAS Cupcakes

If by chance you ever pass through Newark, Delaware, then do yourself a favor and visit Sweet and Sassy Cupcakes on Main St.  This bake shop looks and feels just like this gorgeous website – and the cupcakes are terrific.

So – for all of you graphic artists out there – I salute you! Are there scientific, layout-y regulations and specific reasons for why I find these sites so visually appealing? Or is it just that I love clothes, lakes, cupcakes, and stunning homes? (What girl doesn’t?) I’d love to hear from you – and visit your fav websites.

In today’s age of instant breaking news one has to begin to begin to question if we’re losing some of the journalistic integrity that the general public typically expects from the news media. The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics states:

“Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility. Members of the Society share a dedication to ethical behavior and adopt this code to declare the Society’s principles and standards of practice.”

In addition, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (founded in 1922) developed their “Canons of Journalism”, their version of a code of ethics. Though not as official as an “oath”, their outline does convey the need for journalistic integrity on the part of editors and journalists alike.

1. Responsibility (of newspaper and journalist)
2. Freedom of the Press (“a vital right of mankind”)
3. Independence (fidelity to the public interest)
4. Sincerity, Truthfulness, Accuracy (good faith with reader)
5. Impartiality (news reports free from opinion or bias)
6. Fair Play, Decency (recognition of private rights, prompt correction of errors)

Testing Journalism

Unfortunately, recent instances have tested journalists and editors and their allegiance to journalist integrity in the race to break news quickly and/or present a comprehensive tell-all story to the public.

I don’t usually talk about sports in my blog posts, but the recent hype over Peyton Manning and his possible retirement vs. departure from the Colts sparked a frenzy over multiple social media channels — yet none quite like Twitter thanks to actor Rob Lowe.

Rob Lowe, a personal friend of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, claimed that Peyton Manning was not going to return to the NFL instantly igniting a firestorm of speculation on Twitter that Manning was incapable of returning to active status after repeated neck surgeries. Multiple news sources jumped on the story except for one of the largest, ESPN. Later, ESPN columnist Chris Jones explained in an ESPN The Magazine column why the decision was made not to run with the story. The bottom line: “we support the highest standards of journalistic integrity and transparency.”

A second example didn’t begin on social media like the Rob Lowe story, however the reverberations were felt throughout the social media universe. Public Radio International’s This American Life television program was forced to issue an unprecedented retraction when it realized it had broadcast a piece on Foxconn, an iPhone and iPad manufacturer, that it had failed to vet properly. By failing to vet the piece, Public Radio International missed the fact that Mike Daisey, the monologist in charge of the report, made significant fabrications in his piece. This American Life host and producer Ira Glass stated,” “We’re horrified to have let something like this onto public radio.”

The unfortunate reality is we’re likely to see more of these problems occur as we move forward instead of less. As people rush to get news onto the air and out to the social media universe, they seem less likely to check their sources and provide their readers with reputable news, opting instead for quick and easy. The question is, how long will it be before the public tires of simply fast and instead wants fast and reliable?

Related articles

• Attacking the press (economist.com)
• Why You Should Stop Trusting Twitter (jasonschreier.com)
• This American Life’s Apple Retraction: The Danger of Truthiness (time.com)

It can be hard to be a good customer. I recently had the misfortune of needing to change my personal email address and in this consumer role, I was reminded once again how important it is to make it easy for your customers to take actions you desire. In this instance, my goal as a customer was simply to change the address on record for various newsletters and online catalogs I valued. It was an instructive experience — and a surprising headache in an age when marketers reportedly invest heavily in seeking ‘engagement’ and maintaining the quality of their lists.

Compliance versus Consideration

Thankfully for all of us, compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is widespread now and among the many advocacy groups, subject newsletters and merchants who had my personal address there were none that did not at least offer an ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of the message in my inbox.

And that was at the same time the problem — I did not want to unsubscribe! I simply wanted to update my address and leave everything else the same. I was surprised by how difficult this simple task was made by some otherwise sophisticated marketers.

Common Difficulties

In terms of convenience, of making it easy for me to continue the relationship, the most common error was to offer only an ‘unsubscribe’ link in the message. This leaves no choice but to go through a multistep process something like this:

1. Go to the website (Amazingly, many messages did not include a direct link to the home page.)
2. Survive the challenges of remembering (or looking up) user name/password/login
3. Search for profile, ‘my account,’ or the equivalent
4. Find where the email address is listed (Profiles sometimes included multiple pages to wade through before email address is listed!)
5. Click edit
6. Type in the new address
7. Click save.

Whew! You recall that I am a customer trying to maintain a relationship. No doubt significant effort was invested to establish this relationship by the organization or company trying to sell me ideas, goods, or to sell my eyeballs to advertisers.

A Few Examples

Peter Cashmore’s Mashable newsletters surprised me by falling into this category. Seven steps? Really. Similarly, the Kevin Kelly’s usually simple-but-functional approach fell down when I wanted to update my subscription to KK Lifestream. No thanks.

Mashable: email message options

KK Lifestream: email message options

Direct merchants of goods often did little better. A quick look at Eileen Fisher (FAIL), Wine Spectator (requires change preferences, change email, update for a total of 3 clicks, which beats seven) and finally Lands End, with its fetish for user friendliness came through with a clearly labeled single click to ‘change email address’.

Eileen Fisher: email message options

Wine Spectator: email message options

Lands End: email message options

Do some marketers think such contortions are a way to weed out their email subscribers, that if a customer is not motivated enough to go to some effort to update their address they do not want them? Today’s consumers simply have too many options for any marketer to afford to be so cavalier. At best, I will go directly to their website in the future (IF they happen to be top-of-mind that day). These marketers lost me — a heavy online shopper with regular needs for gift-giving to a large extended family, and years of donations to various causes, and they will now have to start over again to get into my pristine new email inbox.

Who was the winner in this survey of marketing attentiveness? It’s the free (or optionally premium) AWAD (A Word A Day) news letter from Anu Garg. Labeled clearly in the footer of every email is a link labeled ‘update email address.’ Thank you!

AWAD: email message options

There’s a lesson here for anyone trying to inform and educate to change behavior or market a small business or nonprofit: Start by looking at your own behavior to be sure you are making it as easy as possible for your best customers to do whatever it is you really want them to do.

 Related

 Step up your email value or else!  [What Counts]

Tackling the Top 5 Challenges of Email Marketing [1 to 1 media]

The Ten Most-Ignored Email Best Practices [Lyris]

Well, it has been a couple of years since web fonts started getting hot and trending through the interwebs. There was a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on your point of view) period where everyone was hyping the technology, but few were using web fonts to any perceptible extent. But nowadays, more and more websites are relying on web fonts to present text in beautiful way, breaking out of the confines of the so-called “web-safe” fonts (Georgia, Verdana, et al) to which we are all way too accustomed. So I thought it’d be a good idea to stop and take a look around at what people are doing these days with web fonts.

Some Examples of Web Fonts in Use

Screenshot of 8 Faces, a lovely magazine about fonts and typography, with an equally lovely website using the lovely FF Meta Serif font.

Screenshot of The Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company, the place to go for all your space travel needs. The site makes use of a lot web fonts, including, most effectively, Futura PT.

Screenshot of Lost Worlds Fairs, a site that frankly I have no idea what it’s for. But, man, it’s beautiful. The site makes great use of Hellenic Wide.

Screenshot of Tinkering Monkey, a shop for pretty wooden things. The site uses Rooney for body text.

Screenshot of Michael James Milton, a shop for handkerchiefs, believe it or not. The site uses Kulturista to set itself apart.

If you haven’t yet started using web fonts on your own sites, head on over to Typekit and set up a free account. You’ll get a taste of how easy it is to include web fonts in your sites, and whether or not you’ll need to up your account to one of their paid plans.

Kickstarter touts itself as the “world’s largest funding platform for creative projects.” While it hasn’t turned the world of raising funds on its head yet, its increasing popularity with users and funders might just do the trick before too long.

Kickstarter (Photo credit: Laughing Squid)

The Scotsman

So far, I’ve donated to a couple of projects myself that I never would have heard about if it weren’t for the combination of Kickstarter and social media (namely Facebook and Twitter). Knowing somebody involved with the project or having a tangible connection to somebody involved seemed to make it a little easier for me to part with some of my money. Being of Scottish descent, this is pretty significant.

One Local Project

One project with local importance was for the Vermont State Snow Sculpting Team. State teams travel to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin every year to compete in the National Snow Sculpting Championship. Vermont has sent the same team (with some rotations in the lineup) for almost ten years straight. They had always relied on sponsors to help with the cost of traveling, but with the recent economy many sponsors had cut back or dropped their support all together. That, combined with baggage fees (Their equipment isn’t small or light), made the trip way more expensive than it used to be in the last few years. The situation was getting worse each year.

Interview Questions

With that intro, I begin my interview with Michale Nedell of Team Vermont, the Snow Sculpting National Champions.

Explain what your organization is and why you needed funding (in a paragraph)

Had you tried other ways of raising money in the past? What ways?

What made you think Kickstarter was a good fit for your organization? Did you see examples similar to yours before deciding?

Were there any unexpected barriers to starting your profile/account at Kickstarter? (For example, did you need an EIN, or proof of non-profit status, credit card, business checking account, etc.)

Once you started the campaign, how did you promote it? Facebook? Twitter? Other?

You reached your goal. Was it harder than you thought it was going to be?

Did you have preconceived notions of how this process was going to be?

Are there other questions you think I should ask? Michale awaits my list of questions, and I will share what I learn about this new online community in a future post.

Related articles

• With crowdsourced funding, science wins and so do you (dvice.com)
• The $3.3 Million Kickstarter: Online Campaign Breaks Fundraising Records (mashable.com)

As I’ve said before, the best thing about social media networks is that the user can cater the way they use it to exactly the way they want to. However, along with the power to do what you want, there are good and bad ways to use social media. Here are a few examples of Twitter faux pas and how to avoid doing the same.

#FF Follow Friday Hashtag

Follow Friday is a user-generated hashtag that has existed essentially since Twitter started. It’s an effort to suggest to your followers some new accounts to follow based on your interests. It strengthens the community and allows more potential connections to be made among like-minded people. Scott Stratten of @unmarketing is a great account to follow for best and worst Twitter practices. My absolute favorite suggestion of his is this:

For #FollowFriday suggest fewer people with a reason to follow each. More effective for them, you and us. #FF

— Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) March 9, 2012

When an account blasts out a #FF message looking like this:

#ff @unitedhealthdir @FHI360 @mjmj323 @maternityww @WECF_INT @wellbeingafrica @aedorg @JILFoundation #maternalhealth #globalhealth #uganda

— Imaging the World (@imagingtheworld) March 9, 2012

it’s viewed as a big group of clutter, and really makes your timeline look like a mess. It’s ineffective and usually winds up making followers ignore your tweet, which is the complete opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish here.

An example of a nice #FF post is: “#FF @mashable for the best coverage of social media news.” It’s short, gives a good reason why to follow, and doesn’t have 10 links to click on.

Reply All

The Reply All button is a gift and a curse all in one. For example, if I send out a tweet that one of my followers enjoys and they decide to use the “RT @” function instead of a native retweet, my account handle will appear in their message. If one of their followers likes it and wants to reply to them, if they hit ‘reply all’, all of the handles will appear in the message box. When this happens and these accounts outside of my stream have a conversation, I may be tagged in an entirely unrelated conversation, which is incredibly frustrating.

This instance gets amplified exponentially if you have your settings for text message alerts whenever your twitter account receives an @ reply. Nobody really wants their phone buzzing out of control for conversations that don’t involve them.

Unless you really intended to include each handle in the conversation, please be sure to cater your message to your target, and remove the other handles in your tweets unless you know everyone is interested in the conversation!

Rapid Fire Tweeting

I’ve been guilty of rapid-fire tweeting myself a few times, and in some instances I find it okay from certain (comedian) accounts I follow, but it’s not advised.

The most common case of this happening is when there’s a trending topic or a hashtag your friends are trying to make catch on. It’s usually something silly like #ReplaceAWordInMovieTitleWithDog. Every now and again a user will treat their Twitter feed as a stream of consciousness and tweet out every possible title that comes to name.

“The Dogfather” #ReplaceAWordInMovieTitleWithDog

“Citizen Dog” #ReplaceAWordInMovieTitleWithDog

“The Wizard of Dog” #ReplaceAWordInMovieTitleWithDog

“Cool Dog Luke” #ReplaceAWordInMovieTitleWithDog

“12 Angry Dogs” #ReplaceAWordInMovieTitleWithDog

“The Dog Couple” #ReplaceAWordInMovieTitleWithDog

Sure some of these may be funny, and you’ll chuckle at the creativity of how things dog out when you actually replace a word in a movie title with the word dog, however when your feed is log-jammed by 10 tweets in a row by the same user it’s generally going to leave you feeling annoyed. “Enough is enough” or “Oh please stop already” are common phrases thrown around which unfortunately may lose you some followers when you may have a great and interesting account otherwise.

Hopefully these are constructive and make sense to you. If you notice any other quirks or annoyances on Twitter, post in the comments. Otherwise, happy tweeting!

Lorax Tattoo (Photo credit: jaundicedferret)

Universal Pictures’ “The Lorax” has received plenty of attention in the media, marketing and environmental worlds lately. Not much of it has been all that positive. How is it that a story written by our beloved Dr. Seuss and adapted to the big screen could cause such a stir?

Environmentalists up in arms

Well, for starters, the environmental community is a little up in arms that Universal Pictures “sold out” to Mazda using “The Lorax” to promote an SUV as if it were an environmentally-friendly vehicle. Turns out, the partnership was based upon a business goal of Mazda’s to increase fuel efficiency of its fleet. Well, a goal is good, but promoting an SUV as environmentally-friendly? That’s a bit of a stretch. So I can understand the squeals from the environmentalists.

Lorax overboard: How much is too much?

Then a recent article in Advertising Age raises the question as to whether or not Universal Pictures went a little overboard in “selling out” the Lorax brand. Many restaurants and retailers capitalized and organized special Lorax promotions, including IHOP, Seventh Generation, Target, Pottery Barn, Whole Foods and others all in an attempt to get parents and their young children to shop in their stores or buy their products. Granted, some of these are known “green” brands and some not so much.

“The Lorax,” which cautions about the dangers of super-industrialization or excessive consumerism, has been used by many to encourage what the movie preaches against. Buy! Buy! Buy! The irony is not lost on me, but then again, I can’t think of a recent movie targeting our children that hasn’t done the same thing. I know, I know, it doesn’t make it right. Okay, I can agree that the excessive branding was somewhat counter-productive.

The Lorax is brainwashing our youth?

In the media world, the New York Times review panned the movie calling it both preachy and sexist. Given the target audience (young children), I think the New York Times review is a bit much. If trying to educate viewers about environmental issues in an entertaining sort of way is preachy, so be it. If you want sexist, I suggest seeing most of the Disney princess movies.

Lou Dobbs even said it was an attempt by left-leaning Hollywood to brainwash our youth against business. Perhaps it was a slow news day for him?

Overall, I found the movie’s environmental message a refreshing change from many of the other children’s movies and programming out there today (admittedly, it was somewhat light on the environmental message and heavier on music, chases and other attention-grabbing effects). Both of my children enjoyed the movie and the environmental theme was not lost on them. My youngest came home and made a poster about the importance of trees and recycling (without any prompting from me!). My oldest thought the movie was somewhat “true to life.” And then our six-year-old neighbor said she liked the movie because [spoiler] “the trees grew back.”

When searching on Twitter for comments about “The Lorax,” most of them were super-reflective comments like, “The Lorax was soooo cute!”

Yes, it certainly sounds like brainwashing to me.

The Lorax Lessons

“The Lorax” wasn’t among the Dr. Seuss stories I read as a child—it was published a few years after my Dr. Seuss reading days were over. I did come across the book though in the doctor’s office once and read part of it to my oldest who was probably 5 at the time. The movie goes well beyond the book—as one would expect to have any appeal to our children today—but the environmental theme is the same. And despite the many grumblings, “The Lorax” offers takeaways for everyone:

Lesson for children and adults: Trees are important to all living creatures and we all need to “speak for them.” (But don’t fall prey to slick advertising and believe everything you see and hear!)

Lesson for environmentalists: Take small victories when you can—as all cannot be gained in one giant step—but don’t give up the fight.

Lesson for marketers: Be aware that there is such a thing as too much when it comes to promoting your brand—brand alignment is essential.

And here’s a bonus lesson for business: Whether you provide a service or manufacture a product, there are opportunities to improve efficiencies and reduce waste in your processes. Upon returning from seeing “The Lorax,” I came across an article on industrial ecology which was the perfect tie in to “The Lorax”—and definitely worth a read if you’re not familiar with the concept. Then, I suggest taking your inner child to see “The Lorax” and consider how your company could “speak for the trees.” I swear, I haven’t been brainwashed!

A variety of companies have been at the epicenter of controversy about their advertising campaigns over the years.  I usually understand the reasoning behind why people are blowing up into a tizzy, however sometimes I think to myself “is this really a big deal or are people just looking for an argument?” Personally, sometimes the advertisements that cause a stir are my favorites and actually may qualify as good advertising, while other times I think that people are way too sensitive and there didn’t need to be any conversations surrounding it at all. (And then there are just offensive, tasteless and ineffectual advertisements, which makes for the worst advertising.) Let’s look at some examples.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

 Offensive or Effective Advertising?

1.  The United Colors of Benetton UnHate Campaign. Controversial? Yes. Good Advertising?  I think so. These ads were launched this past November and immediately caused a stir, featuring world leaders kissing one another. The image of Pope Benedict XVI kissing Egypt’s Ahmed el Tayyeb was almost immediately pulled from the line up after the Vatican issued a stern condemnation. I personally loved these advertisements. They definitely make you think about the issues present in the image, right? The “Heart” campaign also caused controversy and a lot of conversation. I think this advertisement in particular was one of the most powerful ones they created.  Make sure to take a look, what do you think?

2.  The Miu Miu Campaign featuring Hailee Steinfeld, the 14 year old girl sitting on the railroad tracks is deemed “irresponsible” and therefore banned by Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).  Although they recognized that the actress was not bound to the tracks, and that she could easily move away, they still thought it irresponsible to feature such a young girl in this particular scenario. The U.S. is widely recognized as having the least restrictive guidelines for advertising aimed at young people, but this is a little strict don’t you think?  There are plenty of other advertisements that send far worse messages then being “irresponsible” for sitting on railroad tracks, especially when there are no trains in sight.

3.  The recent Donna Karan Haiti- Inspired Ads featuring Adriana Lima were deemed “insensitive” by many people. These ads are absolutely stunning at first glance, but if you look deeper are they offensive to the general population of Haiti? Perhaps it was not so wise to place such a luxurious product front and center in one of the most poverty-stricken countries in the world. I think for this one it may come down to the intent of the designer — which in this case is supportive. After all, the inspiration for the entire collection came directly from Donna Karan’s work to help Haiti recover through the organization Hope, Help & Relief Haiti. Just read this article by the Huffington Post and you will see that there is no way that the Donna Karan brand meant any offense to the population of Haiti.

So maybe instead of judging an advertisement at first look, we should be thinking of the intent or the inspiration behind that particular advertisement before jumping to conclusions and thinking that its creator intended to create a less than desirable message. Controversy for controversy’s sake isn’t desirable, but I think we may have become too sensitive to all the attention-getting media out there… do you agree?

Mar·ket·ing
(noun)
[mahr-ki-ting]

1. the act of buying or selling in a market.
2. the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.

So, I looked at a few definitions of “marketing” while pondering this post, and I do have a “quibble” with the one noted above. I believe it should include the word “services” in there too. Another definition I found stated marketing was “the act of grocery shopping.” I can assure you, by THAT definition, I am indeed ALWAYS marketing.

Two Sides To Every Story

But I should start at the beginning. You have heard it before, but lately it has occurred to me to that there really are two sides to every story, and usually people only listen to one side before making up their minds or forming an opinion (a dim view of the world, but still, I’ve witnessed this first hand a lot lately.) I also believe that there are two sides to people – the inside and the outside. Once again, the human race instinctively (and subconsciously) forms opinions based on one side – the outside. (You can read more about this at the NIH website and at SelfGrowth.com).

So, most of us acknowledge this unfortunate “perception/judgement” thing to some degree. When we get up in the morning, shower, and dress to go to work, we dress appropriately for our job and work environment. Whether it’s a uniform or suit you put on, we realize it’s a “persona” that we are “wearing” (no matter how reluctantly we may wear it…) Even when we aren’t working, and dress casually, we are “broadcasting” a persona. I find that one of the real joys of life however is exploring the differences and surprises that lurk on the “inside” of people, in contrast to the “outside.”  A trip to my son’s high school and speaking with any of the teenage students is a great experience and example of the surprises that people hold.

Marketing

So how does this pertain to marketing? I would argue that similar to a previous blog post I wrote about networking, the opportunity to “strengthen the brand of you” is ever-present. People will form impressions and judgements about your outside and your inside millions of times a day. Do you speak to strangers politely? Are you courteous when you meet other professionals? Do you lose patience easily with your co-workers? Do you want to be known as someone who says one thing and does another? Are you a considerate listener who weighs in with an intelligent contribution? We are, it seems, always on.

I learned this lesson harshly when I was working as the “relief” front desk clerk at a resort in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. I worked a different shift every day – six days a week. So that meant that one night a week, my last shift before my day off, I was working “the graveyard shift” all alone. At the same time, the resort management began a “feedback” program. So, as you may have guessed, there was a guest I checked in at 3 a.m. one evening who filled out one of those “tell us what you think” cards. And his point was valid. He wrote that he and his party had “arrived very late after a long flight, and we didn’t get so much as a smile from Pam when she checked us in. It would have been nice to be greeted with some warmth at that hour after a difficult trip.” Ugh. I was that person. The grumpy night clerk.  That’s not what I want to be a part of my brand. But things you say, how you say them, well – they stick to the brand that is you.

That’s not to say that we don’t have bad days or encounter rough times – we absolutely do. But if it’s just an average day – it serves as a reminder that yes, we are always marketing – if nothing else, ourselves. And, if we are on the job or off it- our personal brand reflects on our employer/business organization as well. With that, I add one more definition:

brand
(noun)
[brand]

1. kind, grade, or make, as indicated by a stamp, trademark, or the like: the best brand of coffee.
2. a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership, etc.
3. a mark formerly put upon criminals with a hot iron.
4. any mark of disgrace; stigma.
5. branding iron.
6. to label or mark with or as if with a brand.
7. to mark with disgrace or infamy; stigmatize.
8. to impress indelibly: The plane crash was branded on her mind.
9. to give a brand name to: branded merchandise.
10. to promote as a brand name.

It’s that time of year again, when we look back at some of our favorite fonts to emerge during 2011. This year’s top ten list (in no particular order, by the way), includes some stylized fonts, some hand-drawn and script fonts, and some lovely sans serifs. Click on the pictures to go to any font’s display page on MyFonts.com.

Pluto

Pluto is one of those fonts that had immediate appeal to designers, and spent a lot of time in the top-fonts list over at MyFonts.com. Its friendly curves and solid design make it great for all kinds of applications, from light and humorous to serious and professional. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it popping up in lots of print and web pieces over the next couple of years.

Reverie

A font that could be a cousin to Pluto, Reverie is fun and friendly, and lends itself to a variety of uses, including logos, headlines, and even short runs of text. Some fonts sit on my harddrive for months before I use them; Reverie saw action almost immediately after I bought a license.

Carolyna Black

Carolyna Black is a lovely and unusual script font. It’s a rare script that retains the flavor of being hand-drawn while also being precisely crafted to work flawlessly in professional usage.

Waldemar

Waldemar is a big, bold font with plenty of flair. It works great for headlines and packaging, and has a wonderful friendly touch while being strong.

Transitore

Just when you thought grunge fonts were passé, along comes Transitore. It’s a fun, hand-drawn font, with a great complement of ligatures and contextual alternates, so that it actually looks hand-drawn in use.

Feel Script

Everybody’s favorite script foundry, Sudtipos, came out with some beautiful fonts in 2011, but this is my favorite. Feel Script is a wonderful, upright calligraphic font, complete with a professional set of glyphs including alternates, ligatures, and ending forms.

Filmotype Giant

Who doesn’t love a good tall, condensed font? Filmotype Giant is great for headlines, posters, and ads… Anything that would benefit from a bold font that fits a lot into a little space.

Elemental Sans

I’m usually not wooed by humanist sans serif fonts, but Elemental Sans won me over. It’s a unique sans that will look legible and professional while retaining some character.

Calluna Sans

From Jos Buivenga comes a sibling to his popular Calluna serif font: Calluna Sans. It’s another humanist font that melts my anti-humanist bias. The font works beautifully at all sizes and in many applications. A real workhorse that also happens to be a show-horse.

Gibson

Ah, a more geometric sans to fit my sans serif biases! Gibson is a great piece of work, and is, like Calluna Sans, utilitarian while also retaining its own character.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is simply the page your visitors land on after they type in or click a link. The link can be on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) or from an article or often from an advertisement. The purpose of any landing page on your website is specifically to prompt a certain action or result. Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind.

Let’s assume the traffic comes from an ad campaign. The campaign can drive traffic from online, print, television, or radio ads. Your landing page can have any address using a domain name or URL you own, for instance www.marketing-partners.info/TV if we were running a TV ad. You want your landing page URL to be relevant to your campaign and as short as possible. A landing page address of www.marketing-partners.info/tv/campaign/winter/2012/television_test/index.html?reference=source_blog_Feb18 isn’t very friendly, and certainly not memorable if someone has to type it from a print ad or remember it from radio or television.

Good Landing Pages

Good landing pages have:

• A clear headline
• A short description of the offer or activity with benefits to your customer
• A main image or video related to the ad or ads that drive the traffic
• A clear call to action – usually a form to collect contact information, but it could also be a link to purchase something or make a reservation.

What Landing Pages Should Not Have

• Your website home page should not be your landing page
• Eliminate extraneous navigation and links that do not directly relate to your call to action
• Large overhead or long load times

Make your landing page reflect your ad while providing an easy and direct call-to-action for the user to complete. A few other items to consider are having a link to your home page – usually your logo; privacy policy or statement if you are collecting personal information, and when you will end your campaign. If you have your server set correctly, any invalid page address will either present a custom page offering to contact the web master, or you could have the landing page redirect to your website home page when the campaign is done.

Lastly, test your page. Try asking a few people to review it before your campaign starts. Ideally, you can develop two different landing pages and test them against each other to see which page converts more traffic into action. But that’s a subject for a future post….

I’m going to start off this blog post by officially stating that this will be one of the more ironic and/or hypocritical posts I will write**; but it’s for good cause.

Everyone uses social media in different ways. This is one of the great things about it, in that you can cater your content to follow and associate with others as you please. You can post what you want, say what you want, do what you want, and unless you have a strict job or  a high public status, you can get away with it.

This being said, I’ve noticed that social media outlets lately (specifically Twitter and Facebook) have been used to “vent” or “lash out” complaints to everybody and nobody in particular to see. Many of us have been guilty of an occasional emotional Tweet or angry Facebook post, but what’s happening now is that these outlets have become the main source of stress relief and attention-grabbing messages from unsettled individuals.

Social Media as a Tool

Yes, social media is in fact designed for people to be “social” with one another via the Internet. However if timelines or streams are being filled up with angry messages about car salesmen while car shopping or daily posts on how you “still don’t have a Valentine for Valentine’s day,” and “are going to be so lonely and mad” (really saw this every day over the course of a week) you’re not getting (or giving) much “value” out of your social media.

Elaine Young (@ejyoung67) was a college professor of mine at Champlain College. She is incredibly well versed in the social media and digital marketing worlds and has offered up great tips well before the social media craze hit. The one rule of thumb that has resonated with me for a personal Twitter account is the 80/20 Rule. Keep 80% of your content professional and 20% personal interest. I’m guilty of breaking this and usually hit a 60/40 average, but I try to keep my personal tweeting interesting to the audience that follows me.

The Impact of Negative Posting

What most people may not realize when they post complaints or diatribes to the social media sphere, is that although it may feel good to release some steam, everyone will see what you’re saying and not all will react the way you want them to. Once you hit send, it will be available on the Internet forever, regardless of privacy settings or deletions of posts. This could come back to bite you in a job hunt situation (I don’t want to hire someone who’s constantly mad/could be a disruptive team member) or even as simple as your friends thinking “Ehh, I’ll stay away from you for a little while until all of the venting goes away.” Whether you know it or not, negative posting brings down the morale of your followers.

The Exception to the Rule

If a situation does arise where some sort of complaint is needed, do it in a constructive way. I had a situation where there was a mishap with a FedEx delivery to my house and I was not too pleased with their service. I tweeted directly mentioning @FedEx (so not all my followers could see) and a representative helped me out while resolving the situation. Companies, brands, or friends won’t respond well to someone yelling via social media, but rather to someone who can articulate specifically what they need and why they are upset with you.

Sure, it may be as simple as hitting “unfollow” or “hide posts from news feed” to not be affected by these types of posts, but it takes away from why you connected to this person in the first place; they had some sort of value or insight to you. Don’t let your emotions jam the tap that leads to your great ideas, resources, or wit. Social media should be used as a way to share helpful information. Let’s try to keep our feeds informational, upbeat, humorous, thought-provoking or useful in order to contribute well to our social media worlds.

**Post written due to personal observations over the last month or so. May be considered complaining about complaints, but hopefully this was useful to the reader.

In my last post, I wrote about the power that comes from integrating your external marketing and public relations activities. One often overlooked element of integration, which is essential to the success of your efforts, relies on a very important internal factor: your employees.

Your employees — whether they are on the frontlines talking directly with your customers or behind the scenes processing your payroll — can make or break the success of any new marketing campaign. When, how and what you communicate with them is key.

Change can be difficult

When you embark on a new service offering or develop a new product or program, your employees will be affected one way or another. Sure, you hope your customers will be excited about the new offering, but sometimes such a change can be difficult for employees. This new and exciting big idea just might start some grumbling among the employee ranks: Why are we doing this?! What’s the point?! There’s no way customers are going to pay for this?!

That’s why it’s essential to start talking with your employees well before you roll out any new process, product or program to your customers.

Employees as ambassadors

When we work with clients to provide media training services, we often take the opportunity to discuss public relations in general. This includes covering not only what the PR team can do for your company, but it also includes the very important role that all your company employees play as ambassadors of your brand. Your employees are PR agents or spokespersons for your company whether it’s intentional or not.

Think about it. Your employees have lives outside their jobs. They spend time on Facebook. They go to school functions. They coach the youth baseball or soccer team. They volunteer at the food shelf or hospital. They have hobbies. They are active in local politics. In short, they talk to other people (maybe even to your customers)! And it’s likely that they will talk about their work and your company.

Do you want them grumbling about your new product or service — even before it hits? Of course not!

So what’s a company to do?

Seek employee input to engage

The best way to turn your employees into positive ambassadors for your new product or service is to ask for their input and feedback from the very start — and the key here is to really listen to it. In other words, engage your employees in the development of this new idea. If it’s a new website you’ve designed, ask employees to take it for a test drive. Ask them what they like and don’t like. Ask them what they would change and why.

If it’s a new program or service offering for your customers, provide them with training and education early in the process. If it’s a new product, let them use it for a while and test it. You need their support and buy-in to help make it a successful launch.

When employees become actively involved in the process, they will feel a sense of ownership for the new product or service. They will feel a sense of pride because they were involved in its development. And if all goes well, they will become an advocate for your new product or service.

So seek your employees’ input and listen! Once your employees become engaged, aside from your happy customers, they’re going to be your best brand ambassador and provide a powerful testimonial to help get that new product, program or service off to a great start!

Additional Reading

Why Building Your Brand Is More Than a New Logo

The other day I received a call from a student studying public relations. He wanted to know what my advice was for someone looking to enter the PR field. Honestly, I still feel like I’m in college but alas I am not. So here is a short list of things that I wish I had actually retained/been informed of during school.

Technology

You know all those tricks that you learned when you were a Freshman in college, all those shortcuts, rules, in Microsoft Excel? Try really hard to remember all of those. Actually make sure you keep that notebook FOREVER (I’m not joking). It will save you time and so much frustration.

Also, it’s important to keep up on technology. I know that even I want to crawl under a rock every time some new social media platform is announced or we are switching to a new system at work, but hey you have to do it. If you can be that person that people much like myself whine to and ask 20 questions to on a daily basis about some technology, then well first of all, you’re amazing for putting up with people like me, but you will also be able to do your work much more efficiently and you will be looked at as a pro. Always good.

Internships

I know you hear this over and over again but it’s true. Internships are key to helping you not only gain valuable skills but to also help you determine exactly what it is you want to be doing. If not to determine it can at least confirm that you’re in the right field. Always nice to know you’re on the right track!

According to the Sacramento Business Journal and a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, of “20,000 graduating seniors surveyed, 52.5 percent said they had worked in at least one internship, and more than half of those interns said they were paid”. I’m skeptical of the more than half of those interns were paid part, where were those when I was searching for one? However the study found that more than 62% of those students were offered the job. This study was obviously not taken from the demographic of the wannabe fashionistas for which I completed one of my internships. Ha! However internships are still a must-have accessory for life.

internship (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

A piece of advice

It’s okay to ask clients questions. Obviously you should know your stuff but it’s okay to confirm information that you are unsure of, better to ask a couple questions then to do a project completely wrong. This might sound like stupid advice but it’s definitely something that I’ve become more comfortable with doing and would have normally been apprehensive to do.  Good thing to learn if you ask me.

So there’s my quick answer to one person’s inquiry about the public relations field and life after college. The list is still growing, so check back in about 20/30 ish years when I have it all figured out. #wishfulthinking.

On Monday, February 6, 2012 the blogosphere and TV news programs will be buzzing about the Super Bowl commercials. Which ones hit the mark, which ones didn’t. I think Super Bowl commercials are a great entertainment feature of the big game – especially if your favorite NFL team doesn’t happen to be vying for the national title. (My team is IN this year – so the commercials will actually take a back seat to the game itself.)

This week a few commercials have been “leaked” early — and have appeared on social media. An interesting approach by advertisers. Are they building buzz or shooting themselves in the foot? I’m not sure, and don’t have access to their analytics, so I suppose time will tell. Have you seen these?

The holiday season ads and the early release Super Bowl commercials have led me to think again about what makes a good ad campaign and what doesn’t.

I took note this December of a regional jewelry store that produced a series of ads and scheduled them in a way I thought were very effective.  They were short – maybe 15 seconds – and ran during my morning news programs. Right there the store gets points – I am most definitely their target market (“HONEY! Look! I want that necklace for Christmas…”) and they reached me at just the right time of day. And they reached me repeatedly during the weeks before December 25^th. I noticed that all of the spots had the store’s “branding” and included the same voice over. The one thing that varied was the “special” – “Buy one charm, get the bracelet for free…” or “Buy our signature ring and save $20 off your next purchase…”

So the advertisers hit just who they wanted, when they wanted. And I remembered the message because I was reminded of it over the course of the “holiday purchasing season.” Plus, the store’s sales specials also doubled as a call to action. If I were to buy the ring, I would save money. These were not complicated or costly productions. But the advertisers hit a home run. (No home run for my husband however; he did NOT visit the jewelry store this December… but don’t worry, I have a birthday coming up.)

But advertising during the Super Bowl is a whole different story – often we see domination by international brands (because they are the only companies who can afford to advertise during the sports spectacular…) or up-and-coming brands who take a huge risk to hit a huge audience. And usually these commercials have to resonate with the target market by using a different approach than my local jewelry store – they don’t have the luxury of using repetition or geo-targeting.

These large brands have to capture our attention through an emotional connection, humor, or unexpected entertainment.  Three non-Super Bowl commercials that certainly accomplish this in my household are the following commercials for AT&T, Nissan, and Honda:

These three commercials resonated and captured me because I have two teenagers in the house – and I (and they) thought they were pretty funny and a little true to life. But this is a harder and more costly approach, obviously. I also think that using humor or trying to establish a strong emotional connection is a bit risky – after all, I tend to remember the sentiment or premise of commercials such as these, but rarely do I remember the brand. (I do have great hopes however for one of my favorite charities, however – Ronald McDonald House Charities will air a spot between 6:00 and 6:20 pm on Super Bowl Sunday, so I hope it’s a strong one!)

I am looking forward to the Giants winning this Super Bowl. I’d be interested to hear any feedback on the commercials as well. Happy viewing all!

We’re almost a full month into 2012 and most businesses, small and large, either have their marketing and public relations plans in place for 2012 or are still trying to figure out what 2012 will look like for them. For many smaller businesses, this decision can be daunting because you know there is limited time for existing team members to commit to these critical activities. This leads to many businesses deciding to work with outside marketing and PR agencies or wondering if they should and asking ‘what do agencies do and how can an agency help me?” Here’s a brief run down of what we say to small businesses or nonprofits who have never worked with an agency before when asked about the benefits of working with a marketing and PR firm.

• We bring fresh eyes and new ideas to help you achieve your goals, and then we collaborate with you to help make them happen.
• You get to call on a team of creative, specially trained and experienced people to assist you when you need them — at a cost far less than hiring that talent for your company or business.
• Our advice and strategic planning is evidence-based and focused on what’s best for you, not swayed by a cookie-cutter consulting process or the latest, greatest marketing trend.
• Projects are completed, on time and on budget, based on your customized work plan.
• You have access to expensive proprietary resources for research, social media management, advertising media databases, website analytics, media mining and monitoring for public relations, competitor information profiles, and the very latest in best practice studies and emerging opportunities across industries and sectors.
• We negotiate the best price possible on production materials and collateral pieces to meet your requirements for each project. We provide you with an estimate of these costs. We then hold our subcontractors and vendors to their estimates, avoiding overcharges and budget overruns. We will not approve an invoice for more than the estimate amount, plus ordered changes.
• As an agency, we receive discounts on media purchases, printing, promotional items, and production expenses (films, photography, etc.). We pass these discounts on to our clients. NOTE: This is not true of all agencies.

• We work on our relationships with our suppliers. We give them information in a timely manner and in the format they prefer (electronic, color proofs, etc.). We supply background briefs that describe the goals and tone of a project and a timeline for production, eliminating surprises. We make it as easy as possible for them to work with us efficiently to provide the best possible materials, on time and on budget.
• We evaluate media for advertising and public relations based on your needs. We are creative in our approach to buying paid space and time. We look for frequency discounts, matched opportunities with editorial, and sufficient size or length to break through with your message. We also look for alternative media outlets and often use small, local publications and opportunities that other agencies overlook.
• Even the best plans sometimes end in unexpected results. If there is a problem, we work on solutions, not blame. We evaluate, analyze, and develop options for our joint team.
• Most importantly, you save time to do what you do best because you have less day-to-day marketing communications work to worry about.

However, all this information comes with on important caveat. Working with an agency does not absolve you, the business, of putting in any time and effort into marketing and PR. As Graeme Cleland noted in a recent article, hiring an agency is very similar to taking out a gym membership. Essentially, you get out of it what you put in. “If you take out a gym membership, it doesn’t automatically make you fit. You have to invest the time and effort to actually make use of the facility to achieve results.” The same can be said of working with an agency. As Cleland states, “If you simply sit back and hope that by paying a monthly fee you’ll suddenly get amazing PR (or marketing) results without putting in any effort yourself, it’s likely you will end up feeling much the same about the exercise (or lack of it) as your wasted gym membership—out of pocket and still no closer to your goal.”

The key is to find a marketing and PR agency that matches your values, listens to your goals and what you have to say and wants to collaborate with you creatively rather than do what they always do. A client-agency partnership relationship is one of the keys to successful marketing and PR.

Round about 2000, I stumbled across a software project that restored my will to live. The MAME project was developing software that made it possible to run old arcade and console games on any platform — in simple terms, I could download their free software and run old arcade games on my PC. I grew up on these games, and had been very saddened by their disappearance over the previous years.

Of course, as with most things, the situation wasn’t as simple as downloading and installing some software — for one thing, MAME provided the emulation software to make all this possible, but not the games themselves. Finding games (and games with proper licensing) proved to be a challenge. But by far the bigger challenge was with the physical interface between software and user.

Arcade games came equipped with a dizzying array of joysticks, buttons, and flywheels, and in many ways the games were designed with particular physical interfaces in mind. Try playing Tempest without a heavily weighted flywheel, and you’ll be sorely disappointed in the results.

Try playing Robotron with a keyboard instead of two joysticks, and you’ll be cursing at the computer screen in no time.

I speak from experience.

The solution — one I never undertook myself — is to build a control panel for your MAME emulator. If the computer keyboard and mouse don’t provide you with a good enough interface, build your own! Lots of people have done it. Check out this homemade rig:

The Right Interface

The lesson I take from this is simply that sometimes the right interface can, regardless of all of the wonderful features of a piece of software, hardware, or website, be the difference between a great user experience and a terrible user experience. While simple, I do believe that it is an oft-overlooked bit of wisdom.

Your website might hold the secrets to eternal life and happiness, but if users have to click more than two or three times to get to that information, your site will quickly be dead to them. If you’re building a new website, don’t rely on yourself to see if the paths to your information are good ones. Get people who aren’t familiar with the site to browse through it and see how they manage.

Your software might be the most useful programs in the world, but if it’s not also one of the most useable, you’ll have a difficult time selling copies of it. Again, good interface design and testing are paramount here.

Your hardware might do incredible things, but if no one can figure out how to use it, no one is going to buy it. Design and test!

Brilliant Interfaces I Have Known

iOS: Obviously, one of the great revolutionary interface schemes of the past decade or eight has been the operating system for the iPhone — iOS and its touch/swipe/tap interface. Scrolling by swiping, opening by tapping, selecting by touching, all has made the iPhone one of the great utilitarian and fun computer devices of all time.

Scrivener: Have you ever tried to use a word processing program to write a book? I have, and it’s not fun. Programs like Word and OpenOffice are good at handling one or two documents of a few pages each, but anything more and it’s an organizational nightmare. Luckily, I found Scrivener — an amazing piece of software that is built with the author and researcher in mind. It allows you to organize all of your research, drag and drop images from other sources, and provides you with a virtual corkboard that makes visualizing your project a breeze. When you’re done, you can export to Microsoft Word so that the poor suckers who don’t have Scrivener can see what you’ve done.

The Hand Blender: Tired of hauling out your huge, unwieldy blender, filling it with food, running it, and pouring it into a bowl? Break out your handy (literally) Cuisinart Hand Blender, and just bring the blender right to the bowl. Brilliant!

When my friend Launie first started writing her blog Teeny Tiny Kitchen two years ago, she picked a subject she cares about and a skill that she rocks; cooking food. She had been reading blogs for years on various subjects, but food was always in the mix. As the blogosphere started taking shape and the cream rose to the top, she began to see what separated a decent blog from a great one. She noticed that some of the more popular food blogs, and some of the more obscure ones she liked had great photography.

Writing great text is hard enough, but doing it consistently and on a regular basis is even more difficult (as evidence, I submit my string of posts on this site). Being a writer, Launie had this part nailed as well. She had been in and around photography for years, but it had always been a passive hobby. She had a natural eye for photography, but an occasonial experiment or a carefully framed shot was pretty much the extent to which she flexed her shutterbug muscles. When she started writing the blog she totally threw herself into food photography by studying the professionals and experimenting with lighting, misting and other techniques while using her high end digital SLR camera.

Food Blogging on the Cheap - Teeny Tiny Kitchen

The blog has been rolling along and steadily picking up steam since she began. Her articles have been published on Conde Naste, CNN and she’s part of the BlogHer Network among others. I guess she knew the day was coming when she would be popular enough to attract Comment Trolls, but was she prepared with a plan to deal with them?

Wikipedia defines a Troll as: In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.

I asked Launie a few questions about her new problem.

Me: So what kind of Comment Troll posting was it?
Launie: Well, for my first time it was pretty gentle. He/she was the “questioning” type of troll. “Why would you make something from scratch when you can buy that in the store or on Amazon?” With the implied “Wow are you dumb,” tone.

Me: Were you able to find anything out about the Troll?
Launie: He/she is a restaurant reviewer in California.

Me: Did you leave the comment up?
Launie: It was benign, so I let it slide.
Me: Did anybody else comment on the post, or on the Troll?
Launie: It was the first time I’ve ever had readers use the “down fonze” on a comment. (“Down Fonz” =thumbs down.) And I had a couple of sweet comments. The strange thing is, you would think that food would be the most gentle of things to write about – and it’s not. In fact, last week I had a really bizarre experience. I do food writing for a cool community on line, and over the holidays I put up a recipe for a roasted fruit salad. Most people really liked it, but one person called me a “bitch” (jokingly at the time) because I had posted a “healthy” recipe. But for some reason, this person wouldn’t let it go, and then they suggested that they should write my next column because I hadn’t written an appropriate holiday post. Readers and the editors explained that I had been writing the column for close to a year and that – no, someone couldn’t just take over my food column. I apologized to the person, if only to keep the drama at bay because it was escalating quickly. And then the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan. The person who had taken umbrage with my holiday post quit the website with a dramatic (and profanity filled) exit. Other commenters kept the fight going for two days. I stayed out of the fray except for the initial apology and just watched this whole bizarre thing unfold. Two people stopped speaking to each other, and others came close to that. All because of a fruit salad.

It could have been worse though, I’ve read about food writers having their children threatened. And one woman food writer posted about  the frightening hate mail she receives. (Scroll halfway down the page.)
So, the first “troll” on our blog was harmless in comparison. And I know that it’s the Internet – and more importantly – I know everyone isn’t going to like what I write, but it’s amazing how worked up people can get over a recipe.

So the moral of the story is, if you write a blog and you let your readers submit comments, prepare to deal with the trolls when your blog starts getting to be popular. I included two good resources to help you below.

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How to Deal With Comment Trolls Both On and Away From Your Blog: Danny Brown

How To Deal With Comment Trolls: Amy Schmittauer