Last month, crayon’s Chief Interruptor Joseph Jaffe spoke at the ANA’s Integrated Marketing Conference.  Advertising Age has posted a great nine minute highlight video in which Joe talks about five recent conversational marketing “dont’s.”

You can watch it now at AdAge.com.

A lot of people ask me what it’s like to work at crayon, keying in on the fact that we’re a virtual company. They’re generally curious about how we keep in touch and the technologies we use to collaborate. They want to know what it’s like to operate out of Second Life (we don’t, although we do use it as a meeting place) and if we really do use ooVoo as much as we say we do (yes, and we would even if they weren’t a client.)

But curious or not, very few people actually fly halfway across the globe to get a peek under the covers. Distance didn’t stop the team at ECIFFO, a Japanese magazine that focuses specifically on the contemporary workplace and how business (and the spaces we use to conduct it) are changing, from sending a team of reporters from Tokyo to visit me on Long Island. So they got a firsthand look at how we crayonistas roll.

The new Spring 2008 issue of ECIFFO explores the “next workscape,” looking at some of the ways companies are embracing new technologies to change the way their employees get business done, and it features an interview with me. I talk to ECIFFO about crayon and how we use a variety of new technologies to operate as a virtual company.

Since you probably don’t subscribe, you can download a copy of my interview here.

Download verdino_eciffo_work_styles_of_the_virtual_age.pdf

It is (roughly) translated into English, so you can read it even if you don’t speak Japanese. If you dig the interview, you can order the full issue or subscribe at the ECIFFO site.

If you’re interested in checking out any of the technologies and sites I mention in the article (assuming you’re not already using them), here’s the list:

Second Life
ooVoo
Skype
Basecamp
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn

I’m happy to announce that one of crayon’s newest clients, Linkory, is something that may help alleviate the distraction and may actually help bring people together. Simply put, it’s a single place to share and read memories.

There are a couple of ways of thinking about the site, actually. The first is purely personal, where you can create & share memories with a select group of people - your family, for example. You could get grandparents to share their memories of their early life, of events that they saw unfold, or of important milestones within the family. Then, you can share those memories with other people - anyone you choose - and get additional perspectives on the same memory.

The other way to think about Linkory is to consider it to be a social collective memory. Imagine a world event, like the JFK assassination, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or September 11th - where we can each share our personal perspective of where we were and what we were thinking. We already know about the capture of real-time events through phones, digital cameras, video cameras, and live-blogging; the result is citizen journalism.

When you apply that to memories that are chronologically and geographically linked, you have the makings of citizen history. No longer are the history books left to historians. The possibilities here are exciting. There are implications for sociologists, psychologists, historians, and others as they’ll be able to piece together social reactions to events and information to arrive at a more well-rounded view of history.

The best way to try it out is to see for yourself. Currently, there are only a few memories on the site, as it has just launched; we can help expand what’s available by adding our own. Here’s what you can do to get started:

1. Create a free account on Linkory
2. Once you’ve got a profile, you’ll be able to:
   • Create memories that will be part of your Memory Bank
   • Watch memories of other people, to see what gets added
   • Join a Group to share a memory on a common topic
   • Add friends from your email contact list and follow their activity
3. Create some memories
   • Select whether it will be public, private, or accessible only by your friends & family
   • Pick a theme: General, Events, School, Family, Entertainment, Sports, Celebrities, Politics, Memorial
4. Write about your memory and upload a photo or a video if you have one
   • Examples: you might create a public memory of a world event such as 9/11; an entertainment topic such as a favorite movie or TV show; a memorial to a deceased friend, relative or mentor.
5. Join some groups by browsing through the Groups section or by searching for a topic. Once you’re part of a group, you can:
   • Connect with other people in those groups and add your own memories
   • Invite your friends on Linkory to join groups
   • Embed a group on your blog or page

The more memories you create and share, the more opportunities you’ll have to connect with other like-minded people. We’ve also established a Facebook page for Linkory, where there will be regular updates, including events and links of interest. Please consider becoming a fan.

We hope you’ll find some interesting uses of Linkory and tell us about it here or on the Facebook page.

And let us know if you fit the bill…

You are…

Part account manager.  In fact, you’ll be the account manager on one of our key pieces of business.  You’ll have lots of direct client contact and, along with our Relationship Director & Consiglieri, be responsible for running the relationship on a day-to-day basis.  You’ll participate in meetings and brainstorm sessions with this client, manage our vendors and partners, help develop strategies and program ideas, and manage project deliverables.  You probably have two to three years of experience in a similar role — maybe at an interactive agency or consultancy, in PR, at a social media start-up or on the client side.

Part strategist.  You’ll work with your fellow crayonistas to develop the strategic frameworks that our clients will use to join the conversation and tap into the power of social media.  You’ll help come up with (and bring to life) leading edge programs and smart go-to-market plans that get our clients experimenting with social media and incorporating new marketing thinking into their brand strategies.  You’ll dive into new business pitches and play an active role in helping crayon grow.

Part analyst.  You’re good with data and can help devise social media measurement plans and track performance.  You can use online tools to track buzz, analyze trends, draw key insights and advise our clients on the best courses of action.

Part social media rockstar.  You know your way around the blogosphere and podosphere.  You salivate over new social utilities and jones for beta invites.  You are (or would like to be) well connected with the web’s new influencers and would rather spend a Saturday hanging out and meeting people at a Podcamp or Barcamp than, say, mowing the lawn or vegging in front of the TV.  Most importantly, you understand the role social media (and conversation) plays in the overall marketing mix and are passionate about helping others find their way.  You don’t need to be a blogger or podcaster or twitterer or virtual world resident, but it wouldn’t hurt.  We crayonistas live in the eye of the storm and hope you will too.

Generally pretty awesome.  You’re a self-starter, highly motivated, have strong written and oral communication skills.  You thrive in (organized) chaos, love to forge new ground and groove on the opportunity to collaborate with your co-workers.  You’re comfy with technology.  You have a pretty good sense of what it’s like to work from home (we operate on a remote/virtual model — more below) and can excel in a loosely structured environment.

We are…

Since you’re a 93 Colors reader, you probably already know a fair bit us.  But if you’re new or just happened across this post, we’re a strategic advisory group that helps companies ‘join the conversation’ through the power of community, dialogue and partnership.  Our clients include Coca-Cola, American Airlines, Audi, ooVoo, Linkory, one of the world’s largest CPG companies, a major hotel chain and even a couple of big advertising agencies.

We are a ‘virtual company.’  No, that doesn’t mean we operate entirely in Second Life, although we do have a virtual headquarters there and do use the virtual world for meetings and networking events.  It does mean that all crayonistas operate remotely out of our homes or from wherever we happen to be on any given day.  You’ll be decked out with cool gear and all the online productivity tools you’ll need to make stuff happen.  But you do need to be the type of person who can go it alone and stay motivated even while in you pj’s.

The scoop…

This is a full time position with competitive pay and the usual benefits (health and dental, paid vacation, holidays, etc.)  Although we all work remotely, most of us are in the New York area and so is the main client you’ll be working with — so we’d love it if you’re in the NY area as well. If you’re looking for a more detailed breakout of responsibilities, be sure to check out the listing on Social Media Jobs. 

You can also apply at Social Media Jobs or by emailing us directly at info [at] crayonville [dot] com. 

Send along a CV and anything else you think will help us get a good sense of who you are and how you think.  Have a blog or podcast?  Do you Twitter?  Send us the URLs.  On Facebook?  Friend us.  Let’s color pretty pictures together. 

As a virtual company, we use ooVoo to connect with one another and our clients every day — and we love it (I’d say that even if they weren’t a client.) So we wanted to come up with a way to demonstrate just how cool, fun and useful ooVoo can be.

Enter My ooVoo Day With…

My ooVoo Day is (to my knowledge) a first-of-its-kind event that let’s twenty or so bloggers, podcasters, authors and fixtures of the digital media scene connect with their fans in a series of multi-user video conversations.  Not (as the name might apply) just one day, the 20+ hosts will hold dozens of 6-person sessions over the course of a two week period beginning this Sunday, February 10th.

To be clear, these aren’t meant to be conversations about ooVoo (that would be sooooo 2007) - these are meant to be great, informal conversations covering just about anything the hosts and participants are passionate about, simply made possible by ooVoo and it’s latest generation of video technology.  Whether you’re into business, social media, advertising or technology, are interested in parenting, politics or publishing, or just want to chat with someone cool, there’s sure to be a session for you.   

The hosts are:

But wait, there’s more!  To thank everyone for their time, ooVoo will be donating money in the hosts’ names to the charities of their choice.  ooVoo and most of the hosts have chosen to pool their money to support the Frozen Pea Fund, a fund established to support the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer campaign, in honor of blogger and cancer patient Susan Reynolds (who is one of the My ooVoo Day participants.)

So whatchuwaitingfor?  Surf to MyooVooDay.com to get the details, download the latest ooVoo client for PC or Mac, and sign up to chat with one of our hosts.

We had a great crowd (in both the real world and the virtual one) who were psyched to see what we had in store.  If you missed the event but want to hear the presentation, you can download an MP3 here (right click and save to your hard drive), watch the promo video on YouTube or check out my pictures from the event here.

Now that the Coca-Cola Puzzle Bottles have been unveiled, the program enters a new phase — one powered entirely by the Second Life community.

Puzzle solvers can copy the prizes they receive and gift them to their friends, land owners can place bottles on their property and the interactive experiences can be shared by anyone that happens to be nearby when a resident solves a puzzle.  In other words, rather than taking the standard marketer approach of sinking money into an island and hoping to attract residents to visit the brand, Coke is giving residents the power to distribute the Coca-Cola brand essence throughout Second Life, wherever and however they see fit.  Ah - virtual world marketing the way it was meant to be… 

But enough talk — why not check out the Coca-Cola Puzzle Bottles for yourself.  You can find the first three at the following locations:

Puzzle Bottle Type 1:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Style/171/79/30

Puzzle Bottle Type 2:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/crayonville/197/75/541

Puzzle Bottle Type 3:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Heathrow/61/203/22

As the bottles roll out, Millions of Us will maintain a complete location list here and land owners can request bottles by emailing Lauren Millionsofus.

Well, this Thursday, November 8th, at 1pm Eastern/10am Second Life Time, it’s all going to culminate as Coke, crayon, The Advance Guard and Millions of Us will unveil the winning entry.  And you are cordially invited.

If you’d like to attend the ‘unveiling’ and be among the first to see the winning entry, just send your avatar name to celebrity@millionsofus.com and request access. The event takes place in-world on crayonville Island and you need to be on the guest list to during the unveiling, so reserve your spot right away.

One year ago, crayon was launched in Second Life. It was a day I’ll never forget. We walked our talk and stuck it out. We dueled with Urizenus Sklar and in the process, become crayonistas and made a friend in the process.

We’re proud to have done work with companies like The Coca-Cola Company, American Airlines, Firebrand, ooVoo, LaTeen, Luckie & Company, SpiralFrog, GSD&M and many, many more….with hopefully a few more to be announced very soon.

Along the way, we said hello and good-bye to a bunch of very special people in our family. To them. To you. To frequent participants in coffee with crayon. To the incredible community that believes so strongly in the power of community, dialogue and partnership - the recipe for conversation.

Thank You.

A raised glass and a toast to friendship, loyalty, passion and the pursuit of something better, as we close out the first year and look forward with hope, excitement and anticipation to becoming a toddler.

Cheers.

• crayon, a conversational marketing company specializing in engaging advertising-weary consumers through the power of community, dialogue and partnership, announced today that it has been hired by ooVoo, an innovator in the way people communicate online, to provide conversational marketing strategy and services.
• In a relationship that will support ooVoo’s global growth plans, crayon will be responsible for the development of strategic conversation programs, influencer outreach, blogosphere activation, as well as ongoing social media monitoring, optimization and response.
• To coincide with the launch of his new book, Join the Conversation, Jaffe will be putting ooVoo to the test on Sunday, October 21, when prospective readers will be able to purchase his book on Amazon.com and chat with Joe live throughout the day on ooVoo
• Individuals that would like to chat with Jaffe will need to download ooVoo’s easy–to-install software to a PC that has a broadband connection and webcam; Joe’s ooVoo ID is jointheconversation

MULTIMEDIA ELEMENTS:

Download

Download

QUOTES

Attributable to Joseph Jaffe, President & Chief Interruptor of crayon:

• “ooVoo is a revolutionary new way to communicate online using the full power of both video and community. I am extremely excited to be helping drive awareness for this next evolution in communication and proud to call ooVoo a new client.”
• “With ooVoo’s multi-person chat capabilities, I’ll be able to talk – and see – up to five of my readers at any given time. I’ll also be able to text chat and send them files while talking to them. This is a terrific way to engage my community, using the very core message of my book, as we hopefully watch the book climb up the Amazon charts!”

Attributable to Philippe Schwartz, Chief Executive Officer of ooVoo:

• “ooVoo delivers a more meaningful way to communicate with our face-to-face video conversation capability, so it makes perfect sense for us to leverage the power of conversation to take our marketing programs to the next level. We believe that crayon offers the right combination of strategic thinking and hands-on social media know how to deliver upon our need for growth.”

About crayon

crayon is a conversational marketing company that specializes in engaging advertising-weary consumers through the power of community, dialogue and partnership. With a focus on strategic new marketing solutions, crayon specializes in “interrupting” the status quo, joining the conversation and affecting transformational change through well-structured experimentation using a bold mix of alternatives to traditional advertising. Founded by Joseph Jaffe, author of Life After the 30 Second Spot (Wiley) and the forthcoming Join the Conversation (Wiley), crayon is a different kind of company – a mash-up of the best of the consulting, advisory, agency and thought leadership worlds.

In addition to ooVoo, crayon’s clients include The Coca-Cola Company, Starwood Hotels, Audi of Mexico, Firebrand, as well as blue-chip companies in the travel, automotive and publishing industries.

About ooVoo, LLC

ooVoo provides free real-time video communication technology, delivering a new way for people to connect online. ooVoo’s technology enables people to experience a face-to-face connection and share emotions over the Internet in a way that no other communication medium permits. Delivering the highest quality video and audio, ooVoo provides a face-to-face video conversation experience that is like being in the same room together, whether you’re across the street or across the globe from each other. ooVoo enables any individual with a computer, broadband connection and a Web camera to communicate in real-time with friends, relatives and colleagues anywhere in the world. ooVoo is privately held and headquartered in New York, NY.

RELATED LINKS

Join the Conversation (web site)

Join the conversation, live with Joseph Jaffe on Sunday, October 21

Join the Conversation (book)
Be part of the community that helps Bum Rush the Charts on Amazon.com on Sunday, October 21

crayon

ooVoo
The “ooficial” sponsor of conversation - download and start video chatting for free

http://youtube.com/user/crayonville

Technorati Tags:
join the conversation | conversation | community dialogue partnership | community | dialogue | partnership | jaffe | joseph jaffe | josephjaffe | crayonllc | crayonville.com | jointheconversation.us | bumrush | bumrushthecharts | oovoo | videochat

I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about the features of Firebrand, as they’ve been covered by Joe and Greg, among others. Before I tell you about the event, here’s a thumbnail sketch of Firebrand. Essentially, Firebrand offers Web, TV and mobile viewing of top-notch television commercials, but with a twist that sets it apart from other online video properties: they’re all-commercials, all the time; and the site allows you to actually participate in contests, giveaways and offers from the very brands that you’re watching.

While it may seem counterintuitive that crayon, the company whose founder bemoans the tired old 30-second spot, was involved, there was a method to our madness. You see, in this case, the ads are not interruptions of the feature program: they are the feature program. Commercials as content. And we can support entertainment and engagement.

Now let me tell you a little bit about the event itself.

Firebrand planned a press conference for September 25, during Advertising Week - perfect timing, as lots of industry people would be in town and journalists would be in the mood to talk about marketing & advertising. Held at the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio), it was the perfect spot for debuting a brand that is multimedia in nature.

In addition to a nod to the past and present, Firebrand also looked to the future, by virtue of the invitation list. There were probably about 75 people in attendance in the hall - mostly traditional journalists - and I was impressed with the turnout. But here’s the interesting part: I was one of a handful of bloggers who were there as well (many more were invited, but unable to attend). When you consider that Firebrand’s target audience is Millennials, having the news break on blogs is a natural move.

The bloggers - who were treated the same as the traditional press - were given press kits, including glossies and a traditional press release, as well as links to the social media news release for the event. The SMNR had links to pages on YouTube, Flickr and del.icio.us and even a Facebook group. Based on what I’ve seen from some prominent bloggers, the SMNR was widely used, as video links and quotes continue to pop up everywhere. And the Facebook group has already garnered over 500 members.

All this, and the site doesn’t even go live until October 22! Not bad. Stay tuned for the beta release…

Firebrand is launching October 22nd and should be the next wave of entertainment dedicated to the best in commercial culture. It’s a new entertainment and marketing platform that will give consumers interactive access to their favorite brands, products and promotions.

I know, I know… crayon is talking about commercials??? Well, it’s a different animal when the commercials are removed from their static, sterile, boring box and made available in a new and exciting way.

John Lack, Firebrand’s CEO and Co-Founder says “With Firebrand, our multi-tasking audience can find us on every platform, it’s a unique environment where they can ‘Watch, Win, Shop and Share’”.

In addition to online and mobile, Firebrand can be seen on the ION Television Network, weeknights at 11 pm.

Check out their pics , videos , join Firebrand’s facebook group and sign up to get an alert when they launch so you can experience 30-Second Pop for yourself at www.firebrandtv.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqxoPVWgzw4

I recently wrote about a pitch that I received that was generally very good; the only problem was a gaffe the PR executive made when she called me by the wrong name in closing. All in all, it was a minor error, but it was enough to put me off. But something remarkable happened in the wake of that post and I’d like to share it with you. It’s resulted in what I call a recipe for success from a blogger’s perspective.

First of all, the reason I say a bad pitch is inevitable is simple: blogger outreach is not immediately scalable, so mass emailing is commonplace. But every blogger is different and needs to be personally courted. I’m not talking about a deep and abiding romance, but rather a simple relationship that is forged between PR executive and blogger, through genuine engagement and conversation between the two. It’s a matter of establishing a 1:1 relationship - of showing the blogger you understand his writing or that you care enough to respond to one of her posts.

And this is difficult to do when a PR professional - who, let’s face it, is used to mass mail-merging press releases and pitches - is trying to contact maybe 100 different bloggers. To spend a couple of weeks of lead time following, reading and responding is a major commitment. But I think it’s crucial.

So, here’s what happened in the wake of my post They Almost Had Me and why I think it’s so compelling to share with you.

Before I do that, I’d like to recommend a couple of resources that you might check out. The first is a well thought out Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics from Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence. It’s a great effort that will likely evolve over time, but in my mind is a cornerstone. The other is a thoughtful post from the always thoughtful Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications’ PR Squared blog.

After I wrote my post, I received a comment and an email from Kristen, the PR executive who had originally contacted me. This demonstrated a couple of things to me: that she was monitoring the blogosphere for mentions of her client and that she wanted to make a personal connection regarding the error. It took courage to admit to her mistake, and I admire that kind of selfless conviction.

As part of her email, Kristen mentioned being new to social media and still having a lot to learn. I used that as an opportunity to write back and offered to speak with her specifically about the pitch and more generally about social media. So, we had a phone conversation.

During the call, I learned a little more about the client she was representing (and I’ll review said company in another post) but I also had a chance to take a look at blogger outreach from the other side - something that I think we bloggers are sometimes too quick to dismiss. During the course of our call, I came up with a few interesting ideas that might be worth considering if you’re a PR professional doing blogger or influencer outreach.

Kristen said that she much preferred the 1:1 interactions that build trust and establish engagement. Of course, this just isn’t achievable in a mass outreach program. She mentioned that she’s more of a phone person. Again, kind of difficult when you’re dealing with writers who ply their trade online. And they’re not likely to call a PR person back if given a phone number in an email pitch.

Quite the conundrum. What to do? Taking crayon’s model of community, dialogue and partnership, I’ve developed a simple three-point plan that will allow any PR executive to have a better shot of engaging with the blogosphere.

Establish Your Credibility (Partnership)

One of the mising links in blogger outreach is a personal connection with the PR executive; while there’s an opportunity for the PR person to understand and connect with the blogger after reading so much of his writing, the blogger ends up having to deal with a faceless person connected with a corporate or client interest. One way to avoid this is for the PR executive to set up a page about them. Tell us a bit about who you are, who you work for, how long you’ve been doing what you do.

Take it a step further to outline the goals of the outreach, tell us about your client, post some interesting links or existing press. In short, be transparent with us.

This page can take the form of a landing page, or, more to the point, it can be set up as a blog. It doesn’t have to be extensive with lots of posts. A single entry about you and about your client, along with a sidebar containing additional information and/or links is all that it will take. The result will show the blogger that you’ve got some skin in the game and are willing to immerse yourself in the blogger’s world.

Find Common Ground (Dialogue)

If a phone conversation is a key element to your communication style, then use the tools at your disposal to make it that much easier. I use a service called <a href=”http://www.grandcentral.com”>GrandCentral</a> (now owned by Google) that gives you a single phone number that can ring through to all of your phones. But one of the features on their site is the ability to post a button on your blog or page that will automatically dial your number when someone clicks on it. How much easier could that be? You direct the blogger to your site, they read about you and simply click on a button to talk with you a little more.

“Great,” I hear you say. “But what if I don’t want to rely on bloggers to contact me?” Another way to approach this is for you to reach out to them. A service called Jangl allows you to fill in an email address for your contact, after which Jangl will give you a Jangl phone number to call them and leave a personal message. Jangl will then email your voicemail and provide them a local number to call you back on. Head over to their site to check out the full explanation of how it works. But done right, with Grand Central or Jangl, this can change the way you’re doing your blogger outreach. Creating a dialogue with your

Create a Sense of Community (Community)

In retrospect, this idea seems to obvious that I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it (or heard about it from others) before. Maybe it is going on already. With Facebook being one of the fastest growing social networks for 25 year-olds, it is the place to be. And if a PR professional (who typically has a strong network) isn’t part of Facebook yet, shame of them.

It’s fairly easy to establish a group for your client, linking to their web site, sharing posts that have been written by them or about them, posting videos or photos of their product or their customers, etc. The key is that once you’ve established the group, you need to invite your network to join it. Browbeat everyone at your firm, your client, their contacts and the bloggers you’re reaching out to join your Facebook group. The idea is that if Facebook members see their friends joining a group, they’re more likely to join too. Voila! Instant community. And again, use that personal page to place a button, badge or link to your group.

Another option is to have a Facebook application created for your client. This may not work for everyone - check out the applications (some 4,000+) in Facebook to get an idea of how apps can be viral. Indeed, Facebook is now starting a $10 million fund that will reward and support development of the most innovative applications.

While you can’t create an application for a group, if you come up with something that’s truly inspired (and tied to the brand), the app will spread across the entire Facebook network quickly and benefit your client.

So there you have it. Connecting with bloggers is all about the personal connections through conversation, offering a compelling reason to act, and making them feel like they’re truly valued as part of a larger effort. If you try an end-run around it, your mass mailing mentality will be easily spotted and you stand less of a chance with bloggers. The bottom line is, we’re tired of being marketed to; we just want to have a conversation.

Cross posted on The Social Media Marketing Blog. 

crayon relaunches itself today as a conversational marketing company, specializing in helping its clients engage advertising-weary consumers through the power of community, dialogue and partnership. Think of crayon as a cross between a think tank and a strategic consultancy, with one major difference. Unlike most (if not all) consultancies, crayon won’t flee the scene of the crime once the 600 page report is dumped on the Mahogany desk of the CEO. Instead, crayon will stay the course, and if asked and required, will help bring the strategies and ideas to life.

To achieve this objective, crayon will focus its efforts on transforming prolific thought leadership and vision into cutting-edge, differentiated and prescriptive strategic solutions.

With this renewed and refined focus, several changes have been put into effect. They are – in no particular order:

A honing of the team to reflect a core of strategic and relationship leadership

Our Chief Creative Officer, Steve Coulson, will transition into a freelance role and a “friend of crayon” best-in-class partner. We hope to continue working with Steve as often as is humanly possible

CC Chapman is also heading out on his own to spread his wings. We wish him the best of luck – not that he needs luck, as CC has built a solid platform and strong community over time. We will be cheering him on from the sidelines and hope our paths cross as we move into the future.

Additionally co-founder and CEO, Gary Cohen, has also decided that it is the appropriate time to pursue other opportunities. Both crayon and Gary are moving forward focusing on their core interests and will refer business to each other where appropriate.

This will be coupled with a rapidly expanding periphery of best in class freelancers, consultants, creative partners and mercenaries. This vision – to wrap our strategic core with an extensive network of partners that can help us activate our ideas and realize our vision with in-market programs – has always been part of the crayon plan. With these recent changes, we are putting that plan into overdrive.

We firmly believe this will be the working model of the future.

With all of these changes, where does crayon stand? Frankly, our refined core is solid. Greg Verdino, our Chief Strategy Officer, will oversee many of the aforementioned initiatives and together with Scott Monty, our Relationship Director and Consigliere, and the rest of our small but stellar team will bring these solutions to our clients and to life.

Over the past year, we’ve made some mistakes. We’ve underestimated how hard it is to run a remote and virtual company (although we will persevere) and miscalculated how long a lag there can be between pitching, winning an assignment, and getting the first payment in. On the other hand, we’ve overestimated the enormous leap between intent and commitment when it comes to change. The reality is this – talk is cheap. People want to change, but when it comes to actually changing they may be less aggressive about making things happen. We’ve been fortunate to partner with clients that are serious about change and not afraid to invest against new marketing innovation and experimentation.

In a nutshell, 2007 was a learning year for us. But it was also an incredibly gratifying year during which we found focus and built an incredible foundation on which to build for the future. As we wind down 2007 and head into 2008, we hope to play our part in continuing to build equity, trust, influence and business between our clients, their brands and their customers.

You can read the story or watch it here. (upper right hand corner)

On Sunday, we are presenting (along with Michael Donnelly from The Coca-Cola Company) on Virtual Thirst. We are going to talk about some of the myths that we’ve seen as well as lessons we learned throughout the process. It was a great experiment in our mind and we are still learning from it as I type this.

I’m really looking forward to the event to see some old friends, but also to meet a lot of people that I only know as avatars. As much as I love virtual worlds and new media in general there is NOTHING like meeting someone face-to-face and having and hanging out. It will be a nice mix of business and fun all wrapped into a packed weekend.

The trend with most conferences lately is that those that can’t be there can follow along at home via Twitter and I know this one won’t be any difference. My thumbs are warmed up and ready to be tweeting away throughout everything.

If you are going to be there please come up and say hello.

Tags: slcc, slcc2007, second life, virtual thirst

C.C. Chapman: Top of the morning, everybody! It’s C.C. Chapman here for crayonCast #33 for Friday, August 10, 2007. Sorry I didn’t get this out on Thursday like I usually do. I was actually in the air and delayed at the airport. I honestly made the change to the Mac for editing podcasts. I still do all my podcast production on the PC, so I had to wait until I got home, but here we go. We’ve got voices all over the place. We’ve got them from planes, trains and automobiles pretty much. So, here we go and as always, before I go, go to crayonville.com/blog. Leave your comments. Try out CrowdAbout. Leave comments on that. It’s very cool that you can interact with video, audio, do whatever you want and we’d love to hear from you guys and girls. If you’ve got input, if you’ve got feedback, if you’ve got questions you want answered. I’d love to take a crayonCast next week that’s just answering a question that you might have. If you don’t want to put it on the blog, you just want to send it directly to me, it’s cc@crayonville.com. Looking forward to hearing from you and now, let’s kick it off with — who are we kicking off this week? We are kicking off with Aaron. Here we go.

Aaron Greenberger: Hey everybody. This is Aaron. So, a little bit about training and education. We’ve all heard of summer camp, right? But what about a weeklong camp of learning? That’s exactly what Shire Pharmaceuticals did when it had to shut down some of its plants for maintenance. Now, I’m a big believer in education and training and professional development and I have to say that it’s great to hear something like this. What’s unique about Shire is that they took a large number of feedback from internal groups and what they did is they turned it into a weeklong session, a weeklong session of learning and training. Now, not many companies can say that they dedicate an entire week to people development. When was the last time you were asked what you want to be trained on? Has your training budget been cut recently? Why don’t you try changing the name of the training budget to people budget? I bet it’s a lot harder to cut when you actually refer to the people in your organization rather than some lifeless statistic. My point here is the importance of training and education. Whether you bring in outside people, conduct learning sessions in-house or create an internal center of excellence, it’s always a great thing to cross train and share knowledge with your fellow colleagues. Thanks for listening everybody.

Joseph Jaffe: Hey everybody. It’s Joseph Jaffe, President and Chief Interrupter at Crayon. You know, we talk a lot these days about the words authenticity and transparency and I thought I would give a little bit of a personal reflection on the word authenticity today. One of the things that we found as a company is that if we are not authentic to who we are and to ourselves, we lose. When we are conventional, we lose, and when we are nonconventional, we win. So, the reflection I guess that I wanted to share with you today is the fact that authenticity with respect to how you talk to your consumers or with your consumers or what your external phase is or shows is just the tip of the iceberg. Authenticity is something that has to pervade the entire organization. It has to be absolutely present from the culture to the organizational structures to how the company communicates with its employees, how it does business, etc., etc. I think if that [unintelligible] authenticity is there and present, that’s when the company will win by being nonconventional in a market so desperately searching for something truly differentiated and original.

Scott Monty: Hi, this is Scott, Crayon’s resident consigliere. I’m coming to you this week actually in the middle of a flight from Florida back to Boston. The last three weeks have been pretty intense for me travel wise. I’ve had a different client to visit every week and it seems that every time something could possibly go wrong with travel, it does. I think that’s kind of the way of the world these days, travels becoming more difficult, more stressful and it’s certainly a challenge to keep connected both emotionally as well as technologically with those you love and those with whom you need to work. So, as part of our Crayon toolbox segment, what I’d like to do is offer a tool that I think is really useful for traveling on the road. It’s basically a web 2.0 application that is called Doodle. You could find it at doodle.ch and it allows you to coordinate schedules with people back and forth from great distances via email and it takes the place of that whole email barrage of going back and forth, trying to find a particular date for an event. So, what you do is go into Doodle, you put in a range of dates, a range of times, and it gives you a web address, a URL. All you need to do is take that URL and email it to all of your contacts and ask everyone to respond and then a matrix will be put together and you will see automatically what date and what time is best for everybody. It’s a tool that makes being away from home and away from the office a little easier, makes things a little more manageable and quite frankly, it’s quite useful whether you’re on the road or not. So, from here at 30,000 feet, this is Scott Monty wishing you well and have a great week everybody. Take care.

Seni Thomas: Hey guys. Seni Thomas here, New Marketing Strategist here at Crayon. I’m coming down with a bit of a summer colds. Please pardon me for grunts or coughs or anything of that order, but anyways… Today, I kind of want to touch back on this whole political campaigning 2.0 training, the Obama girl, YouTube debate, [unintelligible] social networks, Twitter, all really cool stuff, but a few days ago, I stumbled upon a site called americanblog.com. It’s kind of an aggregator of political news of both the local and national level, but beyond that, it’s really striving to be a political blogging platform where people can debate the issues and express their opinions. I think there’s a lot of potential on a platform like this and, I don’t know, really, my opinion is there’s this too much concentration kind of in the political blogging arena. I know a couple of people who are really driving the conversation and I think more “average people,” you have a larger voice and you’re really joining the conversation. So, anything that facilitates that, I’m all for it. Also, it’s a really good tool for mining what the issues are, what are becoming more important to the people, also test some kind of temperature what the candidates are. Polls are nice and all, but it don’t give you a whole lot of space to really express someone’s point of view. Anyway, it’s just one of the short — I just want to share this website with you guys. I’m really interested to hear what you guys think about it. What would make the ultimate online political form? Anyway, shoot me an email at seni@crayonville.com. That’s S-E-N-I. Or let’s continue this conversation by inserting a comment directly into the stream. Thank you. Take care.

Gary Cohen: Hi, this is Gary Cohen. So, I was recently playing with my 6- and 8-year-old boys. They were struggling with a game they were playing and of course I’m asked to try to help them and got summarily dismissed, but in carrying on chatting with them and trying to listen to what they were doing, I realized that they’re actually won’t going to get there on their own and I couldn’t help them. I said, “Well, why don’t you guys experiment?” They looked at me like I had three heads. “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, try some new things. Why don’t you try some other ways of doing it?” “Oh dad.” “Yeah. Now, come on guys. Try it.” And they did. They go where they needed to go and they finished the game and they were pretty happy, but of course I didn’t contribute, but I thought about it. People hate to change, but they do like experimenting and while we may not admit we like trying new things, it really comes down in some respect for me to thinking about how you can actually accomplish change without killing spirit and an organization in the process of doing that. Expecting people to change is very different from letting them change. I believe strongly that creating an environment where people can actually experiment, they can create, they can participate and really contribute together is a critical thing. A common goal or a focus and environment that allows experimentation truly can move the needle in a big way. Have a great week. I look forward to speaking with you next week.

C.C. Chapman: Hey everybody. It’s C.C. Chapman, cc@crayonville.com if you’ve got feedback. This week, what I’m really thinking about is the power of influencers and not just influencers. When I say influencers, it’s anybody playing in the new media space. Anybody I’m connected to, I consider them an influence on me because if I connected to them, it means I have a certain level of trust or acquaintanceship with them. What really made me think about this was last week, I’m buying a new home and I was looking for a home insurance. I was looking for something like a Lending Tree for home insurance and there doesn’t seem to be one, which is a huge business opportunity when you really think about it, could be for multiple insurance types, but I went out to Twitter and I asked who people were using, who they would recommend, and I got this whole quick recommendations of stuff. What was interesting was several people were extremely passionate about a home insurance company that I’ve never ever heard of. These were people that I trusted and considered friends. I’ve never seen a 30-second spot from them. I’ve never seen a print ad. I’ve never heard of this company ever. Yet, three people recommended them to me, highly recommended to me and I just signed to get home insurance through them. Anybody who says the power of word of mouth, the power of new media doesn’t work is just missing the point. If you’re doing things like print and radio ads and television, you’ve also got to realize you got to reach to the people who are out there talking. I’m not going out on the web and I’m not going to some magazine to look for a home insurance policy. I’m going to the people that I trust, know and interact with on a daily basis and getting my answers and I’m doing it for every single thing I buy, purchase or think about from now on. It’s just the way it works and it’s going to get more and more prevalent. Be part of it. Get engaged with the people out there. They’re using it. They love to talk about it. Think about that.

Greg Verdino: Hey, this is Greg Verdino. I’m recording this in Vail, Colorado, where earlier today I spoke at a conference about the future of advertising. One of the topics that a lot of people seem to be interested in was the notion of media exchanges and how they might change the way ads get bought and sold in the future. Now, if you’re not familiar with the notion of a media exchange, basically it’s an online marketplace where buyers and sellers can come together to move a ton of inventory across a wide variety of sites at cost effective prices. While I have no doubt that media exchanges are in fact going to have huge impact on media buying and selling, I also wonder if they don’t entirely miss the point. To me, they seem to represent the triumph of tonnage and cookie cutter approaches over relevance and creativity in the way marketers approach consumers and engage them in the marketplace. All of this leaves me wondering when more marketers are going to recognize that they have so much more to gain by engaging even a small group of the right people in deep and meaningful ways rather than simply blanketing the entire market with the same old interruptive ad units. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Email me at greg@crayonville.com.

We are still trying out CrowdAbout and hope you’ll continue providing comments and feedback via that channel. Of course you can also listen to crayonCast #33 directly. That will never change.

We love having new listeners so feel free to share with your friends how easy it is to subscribe at crayonCast.com.

Here is another great example of girls on the Teen Vogue, social network/slide show mashup, site Flip.com using the platform to publish their very own magazines.

The question now is how will Teen Vogue respond? Will they embrace the creativity of teens, or bring down the draconian hammer of ignorance? Word of advice: The web is a big place, if you don’t foster communities they will just as soon pitch a tent elsewhere.

C.C. Chapman: Hey everybody. Welcome to another week of crayonCast. I am C.C. Chapman, Vice-President of New Marketing here at Crayon, the new marketing company. As always, you can join us at crayonville.com and every Thursday morning we’ve got Coffee with Crayon still happening at the offices. What’s great is people come in every week. If you want to get there, all you have to do is go to crayonvillesecondlife.com. That will drop you right in front of the office. New version of Second Life has voice built in. It’s pretty slick and we’re having a lot of fun so every Thursday morning at 9:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, that’s 6:00 A.M. Second Life time. And since it is summer here in the real world, crayonCast is a little later than usual today, a few less people than usual. People are traveling, people are on vocation, people are working really hard, so it’s going to be a nice short crayonCast today. So, that might be good and that might be bad, I don’t know, but anyways we would love to hear your thoughts. Please go to crayonville.com/blog and leave your comments. Also, we would love some reviews on iTunes. If you go on iTunes and search for crayonCast, post a review there. We would love to hear what you have to say and plus, we love seeing the props, especially on an Apple page. It’s always cool to see. So, let’s kick it off this week with Aaron.

Aaron Greenberger: Talk about experimentation and taking some risks. Hey everybody. This is Aaron. So, when I first heard about CBS broadcasting and video game tournament as part of their CBS Sports, I was like, “No way. There is no way they’re gonna do this. So many things can go wrong.” Now, I don’t get watching other people play a video game in person, let alone watching on a TV really isn’t my thing. Now, I watch a ton of sports, probably too much. Watching other guys run around blocking and tackling, dunking and swinging for defenses, that’s entertainment to me, but this one, not so much, but that’s not my point. CBS is taking a risk. They know it’s going to be difficult to translate the experience of playing in a fantasy world to watching it on a big screen. Now, I really have to commend them for taking a leap and trying something relatively new. When I say relatively new, I mean other cable channels have tried it, but this is the first for a major network like CBS. They know gaming is big. They know it’s going to be huge, bigger than it already is, and they know the amount of ad-spent involved. So, why not experiment and be the one to get to the future first?

Joseph Jaffe: Greetings from San Francisco where I’m down here with fellow crayonista and consigliere, Scott Monty, visiting a prospective client. Today, I want to talk to you about a really interesting experiment that I’m conducting right now through my podcast, Across the Sound. For those of you following Jaffe Juice or Across the Sound, you would know that I got an iPhone for an episode in a very kind of innovative new marketing spin on a very traditional marketing barter so to speak, but I got another offer for an iPhone, this time from an up and coming actor by the name of Tim Coyne. Who knew that an actor on the west coast was listening to a marketing podcast? This guy’s great. He’s actually going to use the sponsorship opportunity to incentivize himself and also to appeal to my community to the wisdom of crowds to basically help him get an audition on one of the most popular network television shows. I’m going to play my part by paying it forward and I’m going to be giving my iPhone back to the community to the person that most directly impacts or influences Tim’s ability to get that dream audition that he’s been seeking. So, I guess the gauntlet has thrown. It’s up to you as well. If you would like to find out more, go and visit Jaffe Juice or listen to episode #86 of Across the Sound and let’s see if we can use new marketing to prove new marketing for a really great cause and help an up and coming actor get his big break.

C.C. Chapman: Hey guys. It’s C.C., VP of New Marketing here at Crayon, and I want to talk about how important it is to make a good first impression, especially in today’s world where everyday we’re getting invites to check out new social networks, new tools, new everything and this past I had a pretty bad experience. This new site, Doostang.com, pretty much ticked me off. They’re trying to be a LinkedIn and I had heard good things about them and they’re doing one of those invite only beta type of things right now, but it’s limited invites and whatnot. So, I checked it out. I kind of liked it, saw some friends there, and I figured I would invite some friends, invite a lot of friends as a matter of fact, but what sucked is that all of a sudden, you know, I wrote this nice personal message to a couple hundred contacts and what happened? The system said that the link didn’t work. So, all these people tried to click on the link and went to the website and it said, “Sorry, this link has expired.” So, not only did they make a bad first impression, but on top of that I had to respond to all these people telling them, “Hey guys. Sorry. They thought I was endorsing this or I was behind this tool.” So, I said, “No. I was just trying out and trying to share it.” Instead all these people got a horrible first impression and I’m never going to use the site again. Worse yet? The minute it happened, I sent their support an email, filled out a form. It’s been over a week now and I still haven’t gotten a single response from them. Just goes to show that there’s a lot more than just putting up a website and asking people to come. You’re still going to have customer service. You’re still going to make a good first impression or we’re never going to use your site ever.

If you’re a small business looking for tips on how to market and service your customers better through blogs, podcasts, virtual worlds, social networks and even paid search, you can check out the video interview at BusinessWeek’s video portal here.  Hope you enjoy the video - we’d love to hear your comments.