As irritating as the lack of good customer service may be, it’s also a reminder that those of us in the client services sector are, in essence, providing customer service as well. That means we need to work to be responsive, accountable, cheerful, and more, and it also means that when we screw up, we need to know how to deliver an authentic message do assure the injured party that we are aware of our mistake and will work to fix it, however that may be.

And to that point, I thought I’d share what I feel the critical steps are in making an elegant, genuine apology. Feel free to apply as needed in both personal and professional interactions. If the steps outlined don’t go far enough, maybe you should consider learning the Japanese art of ceremonial bowing to up the ante.

1) Describe the situation.

2) Acknowledge the damage done and take responsibility for your part in the situation.

3) Express your regret.

4) Reassure the injured that the situation won’t be repeated and (in the best case) indicate what steps you’ve taken to ensure that.

5) Offer some form of restitution whenever possible.

6) Request forgiveness.

Here’s the sad part – Internet Explorer (IE) currently does not support SVG as of version 8.  There are workarounds for IE using it’s Vector Markup Language (VML) support, however these are less than ideal.  The speed of line drawing isn’t as fast and the lower precision of line drawing leads to shuddering animation.  For this reason I disabled the animation of the radio waves in IE, until native SVG support arrives in version 9.

But you can see the animation work in most other modern browsers, like Firefox, Safari, Opera and Google Chrome.  Share and enjoy!

No less provocative is Varanese’s design sensibility: “I’ve learned that there is no greater design element than the anachronism. I’ve learned that the strongest contrast isn’t spatial or tonal but historical. I’ve learned that there’s retro, and then there’s time travel.”

And as I sat at my desk with the rain pounding on the roof, silently sending warm thoughts toward those who would be affected by the deluge, I took comfort in the thought that the awesome new SRAM site we’d been working so hard on had launched three days earlier – safe from the rising waters.

Too soon? Sorry … it’s just that we’re very proud of this new site, and that really is what I was thinking about as the storm blew in. Here’s why …

Not only did sram.com launch the all-new model year ’11 product, along with a design refresh for each of the six brands, it also consolidated all six brand sites into a common platform and Drupal Content Management System (CMS).

Sounds easy, right? Not so much. But our amazing team made it seem easy. They’re that good. Here are a few bullets to illustrate the magnitude of the project and give you a snapshot of some of the inclusions:

• The SRAM site contains over 350 products across six different brands and 45 different branded product families.
• A total of 21 content types for all the different products are included in the site, with each content type containing as many as 38 data points.
• The new site-wide taxonomy system allows for products to be included as a members of multiple brands, series and/or riding types, meaning a single content source can appear in multiple places throughout the site – even across multiple brands.

• SEO-friendly URLs were utilized throughout.
• The CMS revision management maintains an ongoing history of all site changes with user tracking and roll back.

All project goals were met on this project, including the challenging goal of maintaining each brand’s uniqueness while integrating them all on a common platform and user experience. And it was all delivered on schedule!

This was an exceptionally technical project, with a very large amount of data and content to manage. As one of our busiest sites, serving nearly 5 GB of data each hour, that’s is a lot to absorb – kind of like seven inches of rain. Good thing we’re so much better equipped to handle it than the streets of Milwaukee are to handle all that water!

Thanks to everyone on the team for all their hard work – and to SRAM for trusting us with such an exciting and satisfying project.

That sounds like a weird thing to say. Especially if your livelihood depends on the quality of the ideas you come up with. Stashing them away to be strategically deployed at “ah-ha” moments when you can be the hero seems a much more profitable course, yes?

No.

The world needs helpful people more than it needs heroes. Doing your part to create an environment in which people trust and rely on each other will do more for your agency, your clients, and your career than being a glory hog ever will.

This holds true even if you’re the most insanely creative marketing person ever to walk the face of the earth. Which, by definition, only one of us will be. And it’s not me.

So share freely. Take your basket of great ideas and start tossing them out to anyone who looks like they could use one. Better yet, slip one into their hand when nobody’s looking.

The other side of the coin? Borrow wisely. There are only so many truly original ideas in the world. If someone has already placed the cornerstone, build on it. And give credit where credit is due.

Take this blog post. It’s based not on my idea but on one I read a few years ago in a book by Paul Arden called It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be. Here’s what he had to say about keeping good ideas to yourself:

“The problem with hoarding is you end up living off your reserves. Eventually you’ll become stale. If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish. Somehow the more you give away the more comes back to you.”

So enjoy. And pass it on.

And then we found Google Calendar. Life has never been the same, for there has never been anyone like Google Calendar ever in the world. I have used it almost daily for the past four years.

Here’s how to get started with Google Calendar
1. Create a Google account (if you don’t already have one).

2. Sign in and go to http://www.google.com/calendar.

3. Start adding stuff!

4. Dig deeper with cool features:

Hook it up to your iPhone and add items to your calendar remotely.

Subscribe to public calendars like sports schedules for the Brewers, Badgers, or work calendars.

Add reminders via email or text.

Use it with with iCal or Outlook.

Follow the Google Blog to find out about new features that are added, like tasks.

With no interference or waiting for approval from the C-levels at Procter and Gamble, Widen + Kennedy, the agency behind the brand, worked with incredible speed; teaming writers, creatives, techies, and marketers in a closed-door session that made it possible for actor Isaiah Mustafa to speak directly to everyone from average Joes and his own daughter to celebrities and the internet elite via video. Though the dust has yet to settle, you can guess at the result: views in the multi-millions, a ridiculous number of new fans and followers, and an orgy of internet love for The Man who equals The Brand.

The revitalization of this classic brand, previously thought of as somewhat crusty and geriatric, is astonishing. The viral campaign mold has been broken and the new mold is shaped like Mustafa’s stellar abs. What’s next for competing brands – or for brands looking to play on this field in general – is anyone’s guess, but the bar just moved up. A lot. To answer the question I posed in the title of this post, that smell is success. And as it turns out, it smells a lot like Old Spice.

Read more about the process involved in the creation of these videos in a great post by ReadWriteWeb.

Image courtesy of www.useit.com.

No, it’s not a modern reworking of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. Nor is it the lasting image from my 10th grade geometry final. Rather, it’s a symbol of how the Internet has transformed the way we think.

In recent years, usability experts have examined how we process web content. One of their tests involves eyetracking, or the tracing of the movement of the eye across a web page. From these tests, researchers can develop “heatmaps” that illustrate how much users looked at different parts of the page, with the color red indicating the most viewed areas. The heatmaps reveal that generally we read web content in an F-shaped pattern, taking in the first couple of lines of text then scanning down the left side of the page.

Recognizing this trend, content providers need to adjust their writing to accommodate our online reading habits. Keep copy concise. Front-load it with the most useful information. Provide a clear call-to-action. These measures will give your message a better chance of reaching its audience. [At this point, I should probably follow my own advice and rewrite this post ... nah!]

While the Big Red F enables us to create a more effective online experience, it also leads to a larger, nagging question: Is reading this way a good thing? Likewise, has having boundless information and connectivity at our fingertips damaged our ability to concentrate? Does multitasking actually diminish our productivity?

Image courtesy of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

These disturbing dilemmas are confronted by Nicholas Carr in his new book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. As the Net has become our information and communication medium of choice, Carr writes, we’ve also embraced its “uniquely rapid-fire mode of collecting and dispensing information.” For all the manifold benefits of the Net, we’re sacrificing our linear mode of thinking:

Calm, focused, undistracted, the linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind that wants and needs to take in and dole out information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts – the faster, the better.

The real-world implication of this shift is perhaps best summarized by a colleague of Carr’s who laments, “I can’t read War and Peace anymore. I’ve lost the ability to do that.”

For some, this trade-off is worth it; just another example of how technology inexorably changes life. And, of course, thinking differently doesn’t necessarily equate to thinking poorly. But for others, the breadth of knowledge the Internet offers cannot replace the depth of knowledge gained only through intense, sustained contemplation.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I going to try to get through Infinite Jest again … after I check my email … and Facebook wall … and Twitter feed … and ….

(Hat Tip: The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf)

For months, commentators and fans speculated on whether or not James would stay in Cleveland. Vegas had odds on what team he would choose. According to Google, there were over 1,900 articles on the subject posted in the last week alone.

Earlier this week, LeBron (aka “King James”) created an official Twitter account. Within 24 hours, he had almost 200,000 followers. If you search Twitter for posts about LeBron, you’ll get a constant stream of results. His Facebook page teased the announcement and pushed people to sign up on his official website.

LeBron (and ESPN) used every tool available to build up the suspense and attract traffic for this momentous event. Whether you loved or hated the spectacle, and whether you were happy or saddened (or “betrayed” ) by the decision itself, you have to acknowledge it was a well-fueled fireball of hype.

LeBron is a business, a brand. This “decision” and the spectacle around it is just one example of how social media and the internet itself can be used effectively as part of a larger promotional mix. Some may argue that this whole show was just an ego trip, but it got everyone talking. And that’s what brand-building is all about.