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.

Related articles

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

How To Deal With Comment Trolls: Amy Schmittauer

Every now and again we all need new content to stimulate our reading minds on the Internet. With everyone and their mother (true for Mommy bloggers) writing blogs these days, the art of narrowing down your reading suggestions can be a great task in itself. With the bulk of this post being thought up on Friday the 13^th, here’s a lucky Top 7 blogs that are my current personal favorites to go to for news and happenings.

1) Mashable

Mashable has quickly established itself as the go-to website and blog for everything Social Media, Tech, Business, and Entertainment website. Mashable receives content from writers all over the world, at all times of the day, giving them the edge in being the first to report stories. They take pride on their accuracy and user-friendly setup.

2) Cnet

If you’re in the market for any kind of new electronic; whether it be a cell phone, new TV, MP3 player, etc. Cnet is the first place you should go to start your research. It is a critic and user review website, giving insider information on new technology, and incredibly accurate descriptions for the product you want. If it has an on/off switch, you better believe it’ll be reviewed on Cnet.

3) Yahoo Puck Daddy

Anyone who knows me knows that I am an ice hockey fanatic. Since lacing up my first pair of skates at age 6 I fell in love with the sport and everything the environment brings along with it. Puck Daddy brings the casual and fanatical reader all of the information they need. With writers who have played professionally, to harsh critics, you receive a wide spectrum of information. From game analysis, to controversial plays, to segments like “Hockey Hugs” or “Jersey Fouls” it brings an entertainment value to the greatest sport on earth.

4) Ads of the World

Ads of the World is a great place to get inspiration and to just simply see what the title of the blog states. Too often we are stuck in our own bubble of content and information. It’s very refreshing to see what other agencies across the world are producing. The blog gives you updates to site operations, as the main page showcases images of the latest Ads of the World that are submitted.

5) 7 Days Blogs

Being a converted Vermonter, one of the things I’ve learned is everyone in the state loves anything pertaining to local. Farms, products, music, you name it. Vermont has a strong sense of pride in its community. The weekly newspaper 7 Days captures this spirit the best, with regularly maintained blogs on different topics on their website.

6) Transworld Snowboarding

For the younger generation being brought up on computers and snowboards as opposed to skis, Transworld Snowboarding has offered a great, family-friendly place to view and post videos, photos, message boards, and industry information for all to follow. While maintaining a unbiased view towards one area of the sport, and not promoting a “war with skiers” mentality, Transworld updates their website daily during snow season, and around 3-4 times a week during the summer. This is a great place to keep current for the kids on snow, and for parents to see what their children are using as role models in the sport.

7) Official Google Blog

When I was growing up, we knew that there were a few worldwide major corporations that “controlled the world” as we might say as 10-year-olds. Then those were McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft. Well these days I can tell my 10-year-old self that Google is right up there now too. With a blog that is updated daily, covering a vast range of topics, keeping up with what Google is up to is pretty wise to see where your technology, media, and social networking is heading in the future.

These are my current top 7 favorite sites for keeping up in 2012. Did I miss one of your favs?

The start of a new year always brings its share of articles and posts on resolutions or trends to watch for in the coming year or summaries of the year just ended. Don’t worry, this is not one of those.

I came across a post in some PR-related readings that stated “integration” would be a trend to watch for in 2012. The author entitled the post “8 Social Media Trends for 2012,” suggesting that the growth in social media use has made the need for integration important. And that’s true.

But integration is not a new concept that has arisen because of social media. It’s something we should be striving for in all of our marketing activities whether you use social media tools or not.

What is integration?

The concept of integration is exactly what it sounds like. It’s about having all your activities (sales, customer service, marketing, advertising, PR, social media, etc.) aligned and supporting one another. Think of it as breaking down the silos between the many marketing-related functions within your business. What sales tells a customer, what features engineering designs into a product and what marketing touts as product benefits should all reinforce one another.

Sounds simple enough, but integration can be a very real challenge. And it becomes more problematic as a company grows in size.

Integration brings effectiveness

I’m starting my twelfth year at Marketing Partners and one thing I can say with certainty is that “integration” has always been a big thing for us. To us integration really has to do with being strategic and “on position” with client marketing. And helping a client chip away at the silos within their organization is something we have to do from time to time. And it takes time—loads of time. These silos are often functional in nature, but also attitudinal. (Sometimes it’s the attitudes that are the hardest to break through.)

When you consider all the various activities that your company is engaged in, it makes sense that coordinated activities and consistent messaging–integration–will provide your company with a stronger, more powerful, presence in the marketplace.

So please forgive me for asking for a “Kumbaya” moment here, but I must. If you’re in sales, marketing is trying to support you. If you’re in marketing, sales has valuable customer information to offer. You are left and right hands that need to work together. If you’re in engineering, understand that product, size, shape and color really do matter to the customer—and try not to roll your eyes at the marketing person who tries to provide this input. And last but not least, don’t forget about us PR people who are trying to orchestrate the social media activities and all the other external messages—rather than view us a control freaks or busy bodies, please understand that we want to know what everyone’s working on so we can share these stories with our audiences! Remember, it’s all about integration!

Resolution for 2012: Rather than make “integration” a trend to watch for in 2012, how about adding it to your “to do” list?

Resources

An updated version of the book viewed by many as ‘the bible’ of customer-focused integrated marketing and communication

IMC, The Next Generation : Five Steps For Delivering Value and Measuring Financial Returns

A Marketing Strategy Checklist

How to use your marketing data strategically (across functional areas)

I recently attended an workshop to learn how to use software I was unfamiliar with, but which integrates with tools I use daily. The workshop was informative and told me all I needed to know to get started using the program. However I was quite surprised by comments from other participants, many of whom were small business owners. Hardly anyone was familiar with the most popular social media tools!

It’s Not About You

I found myself thinking: ‘Come on people, do you live under a rock?’  I heard a few people say, “I don’t like Facebook.” Well in the words of Erik Qualman, “We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”  There are plenty of aspects that people don’t like about their jobs, but it’s part of the job description and it is obviously beneficial for the business, so we do it. You don’t have to personally like Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms, but you certainly should be using them to your advantage.

Image via Wikipedia

Powerful Examples

This prompted me to share a few of what I think are the best videos that illustrate the power of the Internet and various social media outlets.

King Arthurs Flour

First up is the Google television commercial featuring King Arthurs Flour, “a 220-year-old startup in Vermont.”  For me this video illustrates the power of the Internet.  A small business in Vermont is able to connect with millions of people around the world, and communicate through a variety of vehicles.  The Internet gives them the platform to get their name out there, using Vermont business sense and new technology King Arthur’s Flour has grown enormously and continues to do so.  They are able to communicate cross-culturally, in a variety of languages, through videos, and articles, and much more.  That’s certainly something to say for Vermont small businesses as well as the Internet and tools used to promote it.  Ahhh, the power of the Internet! 

Social Media Revolution 2011

Let’s move on to some videos that show you the value of adding and using social media tools to your brand.  First up is Social Media Revolution 2011, which will give you an idea of the continuous growth of social media throughout the world.  There are some pretty amazing statistics so be sure to take a look.

Every 60 Seconds on The Web

Now take a look at this video, it is fascinating!  Some stats include: 98,000 tweets and 320+ new twitter accounts, 695,000 Facebook status updates, and 600+ new videos uploaded to YouTube, PER MINUTE.  That’s insane.

My point in sharing these videos with you is to demonstrate the power of these tools and how many people are using them. If you personally don’t like or understand social media, look for ways that it can benefit your business, talk with those who do, or get some training. It is becoming a huge part of the job description for all of us, so take advantage of these new tools before you get too far behind; which as we all know, isn’t very hard.

I remember when I first got married and changed my name from Pam Reach to Pam Baker… the name didn’t feel like “me.” I said on more than one occasion that Pam Baker is someone who has a long blonde ponytail, bakes a lot of brownies, and is very “crafty.” At the time of our wedding I had short brown hair, was working 50 hours a week and dedicated to a very low caloric intake, and hadn’t done a “craft project” since I was eight years old.

A Better Match

I’ve have been Pam Baker for more than 21 years now — and after two children I’ve had to scoop my hair up into a ponytail at 5 am, bake a lot of brownies, and attempted to transform three houses into “homes” (this requires lots of craft projects and paint). So I feel like Pam Baker. Now.

A Success

As I watched the National Hockey League’s annual outdoor game yesterday, (broadcast nationally in the US, a true rarity) I was struck by what a great name they came up with for this once-a-year competition: the Winter Classic. Playing a professional game of hockey outdoors, once a year, with weeks of hype, is the NHL’s attempt to win over more fans by going back to the game’s “roots.” So when this marketing and promotional idea reached fruition a few years ago, someone at the NHL had to come up with the name for this game, and someone thought of “the Winter Classic.” The competition was exciting yesterday, the referees’ calls controversial, the rivalry between the teams and thousands of fans intense. And so this game really lived up to its name.

It left me wondering what some of the alternative names for this NHL outdoor game that the marketing and PR folks initially brainstormed; but I will never know. (Freezing Foes? Skating Beneath the Stars? Neither of those seem very good…) Were there any other names that came close to capturing the spirit of rivals skating and playing outdoors in front of larger, stadium-sized crowds? Did the name emerge after one or two years? Was the first outdoor game really a “classic”?

Naming Brainstorms

For the past two years in particular here at Marketing Partners we’ve been charged with brainstorming the names of all kinds of things — from products and organizations to focused promotional campaigns. It is always a thrill. It is never easy. One of our clients reminded us recently that a bad name could really sink a good project before it has a chance to catch fire. That’s true. But a name is what you make of it, isn’t it?

Obviously we like something “catchy”; and the name has to reflect the values, mission, personality and culture of the company or organization. In the case of a product, it can’t be too esoteric — you have to say what the product is, after all. But even that doesn’t hold true all the time, right? Way back when Kleenex was not synonymous with “facial tissue” — but it is today.

A rule of thumb for us marketers is to always provide multiple options. So the “naming” challenge is even greater — not only do we have to think of one decent name, but several. To further complicate things, another organization or product with a similar name can’t exist, not to mention we need the domain name (or some reasonable variation) to be available. As well as social media handles. And we can’t forget to check what an acronym of potential names would be, or if the name has a double meaning.

Given these constraints, it’s amazing we come up with multiple options at all. And it’s always interesting to hear a client’s feedback to the name alternatives we present. There’s something unexpected when a favorite emerges.

But name selection is just one piece of the puzzle. It is very gratifying when a name can “say it all” — it facilitates awareness and makes marketing so much easier. But a name can also be what you make of it. It is just one component after all — adding a unique and complementary logo design can take it so much further, and concise descriptions of the service or product can’t be forgotten either.

Favorites

Some of my favorite names (my old colleagues from McLaren/Hart will laugh when they see one of these) in the marketing scheme of things include:

1) SmartSource — this was the name selected for an internal marketing information database developed at one of my old employers. It said it all plus it uses alliteration.

2) WaWa — a Midatlantic chain of convenience stores, this name was derived from the Native American word for the Canada Goose that was found in the Delaware Valley (the company’s base) and is used in the company’s logo.

3) Twitter — A unique and made-up name, yet somehow “Twitter” and “Tweets” sound just right for this social media channel.

Do you have any favs? Or any names of campaigns or products that tanked? I’d love to hear them…

Good causes suffered from a rash of poorly conceived ads in 2011. The usual culprit was a concept with strong words and images designed to be ‘edgy’, but which instead ended up with shock for shock’s value (or perhaps an agency’s desire for awards) and unintended consequences. Two campaigns stand out as particularly regrettable because they not only ignored current behavioral research on effective change messages, but also brought counter-productive negative attention to the sponsoring organizations and causes.

Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board’s ”Control Tonight” campaign on binge drinking

Eliciting guilt and blaming victims for rape understandably brought an immediate angry response from women’s groups and this ad series was pulled.

The non-rape ad messages in this campaign focused on other effects of binge drinking, but apparently without considering current social marketing and behavioral research.  In 2010, Ad Age reported on a study by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management that indicated students who were exposed to an anti-binging ad that showed a young woman puking in the toilet actually made the audience more likely to binge.

The reason, said Kellogg marketing professor Nidhi Agrawal, is that people who are already feeling guilt or shame resort to something called “defensive processing” when confronted with more of either, and tend to disassociate themselves with whatever they are being shown in order to lessen those emotions.

And it doesn’t have to be drinking that a viewer is feeling ashamed about in order to render the ads ineffective or damaging. “If you’re talking to a student about cheating on an exam, and one of these ads comes up, you can bet they are headed straight to the bar,” said Ms. Agrawal, who conducted the study along with her Indiana University colleague, Adam Duhacheck.

Given that the shaming, consequence-centric approach is commonplace in any number of ads focused on smoking, steroid usage and sexually transmitted diseases, the ramifications of the findings could be significant. “There’s a lot of money spent on these ads that could be put to better use,” she argues.

Ms. Agrawal suggested two fixes for PSA makers. The first involves media: Ads placed in more-positive surroundings — such as in a sitcom or a positive magazine article — have a better chance at resonating than those placed in tense or negative contexts. Second, she said, anti-alcohol groups would be better served focusing their messages around how to avoid situations that lead to binge drinking than on the consequences of the behavior, because attempting to shame people out of binge drinking doesn’t work.

“It’s important that the messages be toned down and as positive as possible,” she said.

Milwaukee’s Health Department Co-Sleeping ads

With these co-sleeping ads, the question is whether parents are likely to have any reaction beyond shock. New parents in particular, are vulnerable to a ‘fear and shame’ appeal, when the Milwaukee Heath Department’s objective is presumably, to help them protect their new baby from sudden infant death (SID). I was also struck by the ‘unsafe behaviors’ modeled in these PSAs — loose, soft bedding and a baby not sleeping on its back — both of which have been identified as risk factors for SID. Understandably, some parents were angry.

The Take-Away

Strong words and images get attention. But social marketing is not just about getting attention. It is about persuading people to adopt more positive behaviors. It is a challenge to move people beyond awareness to action and ultimately, sustained behavior change. Will cause marketers and the advertising industry be able to learn from these examples and rise to that challenge in 2012?

Related articles

Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board’s ”Control Tonight” campaign

PA Liquor Control Board anti drinking ad pulled after feminists say it’s blaming rape on the victims  (Adland.tv)

Why Binge Drinking PSAs May Leave Some Reaching for Another Drink  (Advertising Age)

Babies with knives? Co-sleeping ad angers some parents  (MSNBC Moms Today)

Co-sleeping? May as well tuck baby in with a knife  (Baby Shower for Guys)

Every so often I surf over to MyFonts.com and do an advanced search (they have nice search tools on their site!) for free fonts. (The search string winds up being http://new.myfonts.com/search/lowest_price%3A0/fonts/ if you feel like bookmarking it.) And I found some great ones this time around.

Some font designers are just flat-out generous and give away their hard work for nothing; others are a combination of generous and savvy, and give away one or two fonts in a larger font family, in the hopes that you’ll like it so much that you’ll buy the whole thing some day. In any event, if you’re a designer short on budget, you can still create some beautiful typographic designs without spending a penny.

As an experiment, I downloaded a bunch of free fonts from MyFonts.com and set to work creating a design using nothing but them. (Even the border and background are made from free fonts.)

Here are the fonts I used:

• Orlando
• Type Keys
• Museo
• Museo Sans
• Museo Slab
• Calluna
• Calluna Sans
• Geotica
• Sappy Mugs
• Pupcat
• Strenuous
• Insolent
• Duality
• Pricedown
• Zag
• Arcus
• St Marie
• Olney
• Espinosa Nova
• Penabico
• Sui Generis
• Steelfish
• Banda
• Gothic Extras
• Mexcellent
• Emmy
• Novecento
• Mr Moustache
• Cassia
• Planer
• Melany Lane

Happy designing!

Change, change, change. As we approach the year 2012, one trend that has remained steady (paradoxically) is the fact that our social media outlets are morphing at an incredible rate. These ever-changing networks keep in mind one of my personal favorite song titles “The Only Constant Is Change.”

I created my Facebook page in 2006 and my Twitter account in 2008. If you were to ask me now what they originally looked like, I would have to respond with a simple “I really have no idea.” Each and every social media outlet available to use right now has changed multiple times over the years.

Change Is (Mostly) Good

It is comforting to think that when Twitter or Facebook roll out a new interface, design, or feature that it’s usually for the better. Since they’re both massive global companies and are very influential in the everyday lives of millions of people, we like to think they have a team of the most skilled developers and researchers working on making our experiences better. And indeed there are large teams constantly toiling, trying to improve their product and make it stand out against the competition.

Of course, for better or worse, some of the changes rolled out by social media outlets don’t affect my personal interactions in the least. I haven’t done a video chat via Facebook; I don’t pay attention to the “Who to follow” suggestions on Twitter; I’ve never started a “Hangout” on Google+; and I haven’t checked out top news stories suggested to me by LinkedIn. However that doesn’t mean that many, many others don’t utilize these features or that client needs don’t drive me to learn about them.

The Backlash

Even if you don’t explore one network’s updated interface personally, you still will probably know that it has happened, and often through some other network. Nearly every time an update is implemented there is an absolute uproar by users complaining about the change. Feeds are clogged with statuses looking like “I hate new Twitter” or “Please petition to bring back old Facebook” gathering thousands of fans or Likes on a page. However a few days later, few individuals can really remember what the “old” version of Facebook used to look like.

Once I hear an update is on the way I try to keep an open mind about it. I usually fall into the “I don’t remember what the three-days-ago version looked like” category. The newest version of Twitter was a complete overhaul on the layout and it forced me to say out loud “I’m not so sure about this,” and now I’m completely adapted to the change.

The Rate of Change

It seems as if each and every time these social media networks update their looks, another thought that crops up is “Didn’t they just change everything last week?” Facebook has changed their look dozens of times. A month after they revamped the homepage, the new profile layout of Timeline is available. Right after Twitter updated to include who to follow and more complex “activity”, they completely jumbled everything around on their website and introduced “Connect.” Many people feel that if you blink you’re going to miss an entire stage of each platform’s look and functionality.

If you’re working in social media, or just like to stay ahead of the game with your personal account, you have to be ready to react. Many of these updates are pushed without notifying the user. It’s a reminder that in the Paid-Owned-Earned-Media framework, these are not ‘owned’ media networks. Pages, tabs, links, searches, anything can be removed by Facebook or Twitter overnight, leaving you scrambling the next day if you have important information displayed publicly.

This is the current state of our social media. It’s ever growing, constantly changing, and keeping many of us addicted to sharing and posting on the web. It’s best to keep an open mind, be ready for the worst, and try to adapt as soon as you can in order to stay on top of the game.

Related articles

• Users not happy with new Facebook changes – CNN
• Twitter Launches Major Redesign [VIDEO] – Mashable
• Redefining Public Relations (conversations.marketing-partners.com)

So naturally, I wanted to know exactly how the PRSA defines public relations.

Here’s their definition:

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

Ouch! That’s a cocktail party conversation-stopper. Maybe they do need a new definition.

What is PR?

We’ve all heard PR referred to as “spin” and its practitioners called “spin doctors.” This isn’t how I describe PR nor how I describe what I do. I’ve always described PR as a way to help a client share its many stories with the world (its customers, employees, and stakeholders). PR people do this through developing and sharing information and building relationships with the media and others who are in a position to further share our client stories.

The PR process has changed

I think the point the PRSA is really trying to make is that given the changes in technology and communication (read, the onslaught of social media), the process of PR has changed.

I’ll give them that much. No longer are we PR people working to develop relationships (on behalf of the client) with the media alone. And no longer are the media the only ones capable of publishing news about our clients.

With blogs, FaceBook, Twitter and more out there, everyone is a publisher. And everyone, therefore, is capable of talking about our clients on these platforms.

The PR challenges: Old or new?

One of the biggest perceived PR challenges presented by social media is the loss of control over the client’s message. Communication on social media channels is instantaneous and a small misstep can quickly become a wildfire out of control. We’ve seen many companies suffer from failing to deal with these wildfires effectively.

But did we PR professionals really have total control over the message before social media? Not really. You can do your best to provide clear and accurate information to a reporter. You can school your client ‘til the cows come home on how to do an interview. But once your client talks to the media, what that reporter is going to do with your story is anybody’s guess. You hope it will be the wonderfully favorable story you were after. But reporters make mistakes. Clients can give poor interviews. None of that is totally in your control.

So this notion that social media somehow results in a loss of control over the message isn’t totally accurate. Social media just enables the message to spread further and faster than ever before. The real PR challenge is dealing with a “message-gone-bad” quickly.

Is it really time for a new PR definition?

The PRSA expects to unveil a new definition for public relations by the end of the year. It will be interesting to see the result. While they continue in this quest for a new definition, I’ll stick with my own for now, thank you very much. And I offer that social media hasn’t changed what PR is, it merely has given us new tools (and challenges) when doing our jobs. It’s up to us to embrace these tools and technologies so we can make good use of them on behalf of our clients.

Additional resources:

PRSA, Public Relations defined

How to recover from social media blunders, Mitch Joel

Image by The Next Web via Flickr

News, news, and more news

With the increasing abundance of information via the Internet and the ever-growing variety of social media platforms, I sometimes feel as though I’m drowning in information and opinions. One way to manage the volume is to selectively limit your media channels to those that work best for you. For me, one channel has gradually become part of an information overload solution — but for a while it created a new problem — addiction.

On Twitter for instance, it took me a while to build up trust with the people I follow. Who is funny, who is sincere, who is truly knowledgeable in the topics I am interested in? Now, my Twitter feed is like my very own personal reporter. It tells me news the way I like it to be delivered. I do, however, make sure that I follow a variety of the major national news sources since I don’t always trust just one to give me all points of the story. Plus it helps me to formulate my own opinions; something that television news doesn’t allow me to do as well. It’s more difficult to think independently when we are told stories in a way that encourages us to formulate desired opinions. Why would you question them?

My Inspiration

I read this article in the New York Times entitled Confessions of a Tweeter — How Twitter took over the life of one middle-aged convert. Larry Carlat describes his journey from beginning to end, which he refers to as “Twittercide.” This got me thinking about my social media habits and my own personal journey through the massive “Twitter-verse”. I decided to break it down by stages.

My Journey

Stage 1: Ummm, what’s Twitter?

Stage 2: You want me to tweet about what I am doing practically every second of the day?  Why/who cares about MY day-to-day activities. This seems kind of creepy.

Stage 3: I then realize that having a strong knowledge base about this so-called tool is valuable to the career path I’m headed on. I mean just take a look at this historic infographic. Ugh fine, I’ll create an account.

Stage 4: Now you need me to write some witty bio for my account? Geez, that’s asking for a lot.

Stage 5: Ooooo la la, look at all these fun Twitter accounts. National magazines, favorite restaurants, celebrities, designers, PR professionals. Follow, follow, and follow.

Stage 6: “I just woke up”, “I’m walking to work”, “I’m hungry” “It’s Friday, It’s Friday!” Over share much? GUILTY.

Stage 7: Seriously if you don’t have Twitter, who are you?

Stage 8: Realizing the “power” of Twitter. What a great way to connect with people, read the news, share, and keep myself up-to date. This actually is a rather powerful tool for businesses and more. I can even ask questions and people reply to me!

Stage 9: I am a tweeting machine.

Stage 10: Holy cow, this is overwhelming. Twitter is creating much un-needed stress, I can’t seem to keep up with everyone. I’m drowning in information. Help!

Stage 11: Twitter and I went on a mini break.

Stage 12: So that break didn’t last very long. I couldn’t keep away, but now I have created a more friendly life/tweet balance. Plus I’ve been able to really explore the benefits of Twitter for businesses and brands, which is a whole other realm of social media.

So there you have it, the 12 stages of my Twitter usage. I suspect others have had similar experiences. I invite you to follow me @jennschraven and track my progress as I continue my way through the twitter-verse. Oh, and don’t worry I haven’t regressed to stage 6 in a while, phew!

It’s often stated that “timing” is a unique skill or talent among the best comedians. But timing is no less critical to the success or failure of any marketing, sales, or public relations initiative.

An article about dreams and how they help us strip emotions out of painful experiences and memories got me to thinking about how effective it can be to put a little “time and distance” between a controversial issue or subject and a public hearing or vote. This particular tactic was often used by the municipality where I used to live: there was a very engaged general public and no shortage of controversial topics. The media consistently built up anticipation and interest surrounding public meetings dealing with the significant topic du jour; and the public officials/governing body consistently listened to the controversy and opinions of the public stakeholders; only to “table the vote” or schedule further discussions until many weeks, sometimes months later. Often, the media moves on; and the public’s intense interest ebbs a bit. Only the most affected stick with it to find a resolution and read the “footnotes.”

It’s important to note that delaying a resolution is one approach to letting emotions subside a bit; but a delayed, vague or misleading response to any negative public relations issue is ill advised and will strongly stir the emotional brew. Because no matter how negative a story or issue may appear, if an immediate, forthright response is not provided, the media coverage now expands and gets into dangerous territory — words like “cover up”, “ill prepared”, or “negligent” may appear along side your or your firm’s name. Neglecting to deal with a PR issue immediately and “head on” usually lengthens the story’s life and intensifies attention. There is no good time for a negative story, but things quickly move from bad to worse if your response timing is anything but swift, and your information and attitude anything but forthcoming.

I also read another relevant piece on timing by the Search Engine Journal summed up the importance of timing in the world of online marketing:

“Most poorly performing online marketing campaigns; whether social media, online marketing or PPC advertising; seem to be failing because the manager has either put very little time into planning the campaign, or has spent a lot of time setting up a campaign and getting it started but has then left it to ‘flounder’.”

Such a great point. Marketing success is not determined solely on the basis of the timing of your campaign launch, but also on the time spent adequately preparing to launch.

Which brings me to the next key point about marketing timing. There is a great deal of information and statistics out there about the “best time” to send out your Tweet or post an update on a Facebook wall. Ditto when the best time to send out an e-mail blast in hopes of a high open and response rate. I found some great tidbits on Jim Connolly’s marketing blog in the comments and discussion section. A post noted that the best time to send an email seemed to be Tuesday mornings.  Jim Connolly responded with the following relevant reminder:

“In my experience… it depends on the industry / profession and the country they are in. Some businesses have their Christmas heads on really early and others work through diligently until 24th December…Depending on the culture of the business, many businesses work on Christmas day too.”

In other words, remember your target audience. Are you directing your message to senior citizens who may not have access to a computer and the Internet? Or are you trying to reach a smaller group of workaholics and computer wizards on the other side of the world in another time zone? You always have to ask about the schedule and appropriate timing for your audience.

At the conclusion of a marketing or PR campaign, you may find yourself “wishing you had more time…” — I know I utter that phrase (too) often. However, that’s the challenge, it’s about making the time you’ve got work.  Rarely is this easy, given the depth of preparation needed, or the immediacy and comprehensive nature to a press inquiry, or the complexity of conflicting schedules. Nonetheless, it is a key component for success.

Ah, the holiday season. Lights twinkling, shoppers out en masse, and marketing in full swing. Brands are trying to grab our attention anyway possible. Some try new tactics every year and others stick to traditions they’ve used for decades. Unfortunately, even tried and true tactics for marketing can fail as is evidenced by the latest uproar over Coca-Cola’s holiday can.

For those not familiar with the current debacle, Coca-Cola introduced a snow-white holiday can for its classic Coke line (as opposed to its anticipated and traditional red holiday can). Consumer complaints have ranged from confusion with Diet Coke cans (which are silver) and different taste in the white can to plain outrage that Coca-Cola would dare to use something other than their traditional red can.

Coke began its holiday marketing traditional long ago and claims it even helped solidify the image of Santa Claus in his red suit through its marketing and advertising in the 1930s. Since then, the holiday cans have featured scenes including snowflakes and polar bears, just like this year’s can. This year’s can was actually developed in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund to help bring awareness to the threat climate change poses to polar bear’s Arctic habitat. Coke is contributing up to $3 million to conservation efforts.

Initially, Coke planned to run their holiday campaign through February but because of the backlash they have faced from consumers they have been forced to develop a new holiday red can and scale back distribution of the snow-white can stating that all white cans will be virtually gone before February rolls around; red will be the dominant can by the holidays.

Overall this is an unfortunate outcome for a large company trying to use their strong holiday marketing presence and tradition to bring awareness to a very real issue with the World Wildlife Fund. However, Coke has learned the hard way how fickle and picky consumers can be when it comes to brand and packaging perception. Deviating from the expectations of your consumers can have very real consequences. Fortunately, Coke has the resources to quickly rectify a negative situation before it affects their brand too much. Smaller companies may not be so lucky, which is why it’s so important to carefully consider any change to your packaging, even if for a brief period such as the holiday season.

Happy Holidays!

Related articles

• What Was Coca-Cola Thinking? (msnbc.msn.com)
• The Undying Appeal of Old Coca-Cola Santa (esquire.com)
• Coke Cans Confusing Can (huffingtonpost.com)
• Iconic Coca-Cola Red Cans Turn Arctic White (prweb.com)
• A Frosty Reception for Coca-Cola’s White Christmas Can (www.wsj.com)

If you were still wondering whether or not you needed a mobile website after we last discussed the subject earlier this year, we have some new information for you. Although we have to assume the mobile share of overall web consumption is still quite small until the stats come out early next year, its incredible growth rate and consumer behavior changes mean you need to revisit your mobile website needs regularly.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

New Stats

• One new nugget of information that may help tip the scales comes from Efficient Frontier. They claim that by the end of 2012, 22% of of all search advertising spending will be for mobile devices, including tablets. That’s up from 8% projected at the end of 2011, and roughly 4% at the close of 2010.

Here are a few more stats from Mobi Thinking:

• Many mobile Web users are mobile-only, i.e., they do not use, or very rarely use a desktop, laptop or tablet to access the Web. Even in the U.S., 25 percent of mobile Web users are mobile-only.
• Over half of U.S. mobile ad spending is local.
• Mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year, for many items one in seven searches are now mobile.

Local business?

So now that you have a few more facts to consider, let’s put them into context. Chances are, your business is one that is locally oriented. Whether you have a brick and mortar store front, or you provide services either on-site or on location, you need to target your local audience. You can see from the facts above that your competition is aware of this and they are targeting their search advertising locally. A good mix of SEO and SEM will make sure your customers see you in the mobile SERPs, but if they click on your link and your website comes up as a microscopic version of what they would see on a desktop monitor, they will be checking out your competition before you can say “lost opportunity.”

Consumer products?

Your strategy for targeting mobile users may vary if you’re in the business of selling physical products, as opposed to services. Users are now able to compare products while in the act of shopping, so having your information available in a mobile friendly format and available across different product directory websites is key to getting or staying ahead of your competition. This kind of optimization can be very extensive and needs to be carefully considered to ensure a decent return on the investment of time and money.

Service business?

If you’re in the service business, you should still have a mobile-formatted presence —— one where a user can learn what you do for any given aspect of your offerings without having to zoom in or pan over your site to navigate or read the content. Mobile users want their information quick and clean, more so than somebody who is sitting in front of a laptop and way more than somebody sitting at desktop computer.

When is the right time?

The number and percentage of mobile users keeps going up, and will for quite a few years before it levels off. You might need to jump in to reach your customers before the pool is too crowded and all the good spots are taken.

In the world of sports, one of the many stories being talked about right now is Denver Broncos’ rookie Quarterback Tim Tebow‘s performance in his first year of professional football. Tebow was a force in his college days at the University of Florida, but the NFL is a completely different game. Many are saying he’s nowhere near a fundamentally sound professional quarterback, that he makes poor decisions, and he rarely completes a pass. He actually played a full 60-minute game completing just two (!?!) passes, and yet somehow his team still won the game.

Image via Wikipedia

The question that is confounding sports fans right now is how can such a seemingly underwhelming talent, in a position that should anchor and drive the entire franchise, leads the team to a current and respectable 5-3 record  and wins a remarkable 4 of 5 games he’s started?  His personal performance doesn’t stack up to his win-loss record.

Playing to Your Strengths

The team owners, GM, President, coaching staff, fans, and anyone who catches headlines on TV can see that Tim Tebow does not appear competent enough to survive in the NFL at his position. Yet the coaching staff seems to be able to utilize Tebow’s skill set in such a way that victory is reached at the end of the day.

Another example that comes to mind under the theme of “mediocre striking it big” is the year-old Dominos Pizza Oh Yes We Did campaign. Dominos got together with their advertising agency, realized the perception of their product deemed their pizza was “below average” and decided to tackle it head on. (Watch the extended advertisement here) Dominos willingly shows how badly their product was received by consumers. The pizza company makes it known that they are aware their product was sub-par and that they are actively changing it. The campaign has led to Dominos winning an Advertising Research Foundation David Ogilvy Award for Excellence in Advertising Research, improved same-store sales growth by 9.9% in 2010 compared with 0.5% in 2009, and myself being curious enough to order a pizza to see how different the changes were.

Unique Marketing

Another case that exemplifies limited resources coupled with wild success was the 1999 horror film The Blair Witch Project. The movie was put together with a $20,000 budget, which is remarkably low. Most of it was amateur footage pieced together in order to complete the story. However the concept at hand was a very new and unique perspective, the likes of which had not made it to mainstream media before.

With such a different approach to movie making, as well as bringing it into the limelight via mainstream media, The Blair Witch Project filmers found themselves with a highly successful movie. The popular Internet critic website of Rotten Tomatoes has the movie listed as an 85% favorable rating out of 100. Blair Witch grossed $248,639,099 worldwide, while spending that mere $20,000 for production.

Believing In Your Product

The last example for this post is, (dare I say it?): the Snuggie®. When the infomercials for the Snuggie first came out, it’s all anyone could talk about: the blanket with sleeves. When Snuggies hit the scene many people thought it was a ridiculous idea (and still do). However three years later, the Snuggie can still be found on shelves of stores nationwide, as well as online.

Allstar Marketing Group took this product and made multiple variations in different colors and sizes, and even created versions designed for dogs. After the Snuggie was released in 2008, Allstar Marketing won the DRMA Marketer of the Year Award in 2009 and has launched several spin-off products since.

So, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s possible to make a “silk purse from a sow’s ear.”  If you couple mediocrity with management or marketing genius, in the end, genius can win out. (I do not believe this is a good thing; I’ve just decided it’s a reality.) I’ve also got to believe that somewhere along the line, perseverance and confidence are factors too.  It’s the only way I can explain Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos.

I’ve been on a “simplicity” kick lately. In last month’s post I mentioned a discussion course called “Voluntary Simplicity” that I’ve been participating in. As someone who works in the field, I have been especially interested in the articles from our course readings that touch on marketing.

A History Lesson on Consumption

Image via Wikipedia

One of the course readings featured an excerpt from “The Gospel of Consumption” written by Jeffrey Kaplan. Kaplan begins with a little history lesson. He mentions that in 1919, horse drawn carriages were the common form of transportation and electricity was a luxury that only the wealthy could afford. Yet just 10 years later, cars dominated the streets, electric lights, refrigerators, radios, toasters and other household gadgets were commonplace. Clearly we were becoming a society of true consumers.

Despite this growth in consumer buying, Industrialists were worried that the manufacturing efficiencies gained by the burgeoning Industrial Revolution would quickly outpace consumer demand and that consumers would not change their penny-pinching ways. In short, we were able to make stuff way faster than people wanted to buy it.

Kaplan then goes on to describe an article that Charles Kettering, director of research at General Motors, wrote in 1929 called “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied.” This article was not proposing that companies manufacture low quality goods. Rather, he was suggesting a shift: that our nation’s industries move from that of “fulfilling basic human needs to creating new ones.”

A Turning Point

It was then in the late 1920s, according to Kaplan, that business and political players began to recognize the power of advertising and promotion. That consumers could be convinced no matter how much they had, it would never be enough. Members of President Herbert Hoover’s Commission on Recent Economic Changes were enthusiastic about this discovery and stated in their report: “Economically we have a boundless field before us, that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.”

The birth of marketing as we know it today! Fast forward to the present day and we are faced with the consequences of our headlong rush to consumption. Today we are barraged by hundreds of advertising messages reaching us in media forms that were not even imagined in the 1920s. We are 7 billion and growing, living on a planet with dwindling resources, stressed eco-systems, a damaged environment and an island of plastic floating in our seas. We have, in short, made a mess of our planet in our quest to have more and more.

Those early Industrialists and politicians who once worried about supply outpacing demand certainly could not have imagined this scenario! Clearly the pendulum has swung in the other direction in terms of our consumption. Where is the balance?

Patagonia’s Buy Less Campaign

So after getting this little lesson in history, I found it especially refreshing when I came across a post about an advertising campaign asking consumers to “buy less.” That’s right. Patagonia is on a kick to counter our ever-increasing rates of consumption.

This is a retailer with a brand based on providing high quality clothing (albeit at a higher price) and known for its longer-term thinking. Through its marketing, Patagonia is encouraging its customers to buy less and buy only what they need and when they’re done with it, reuse or recycle it.

Patagonia has partnered with eBay so consumers can resell their used Patagonia clothing through the Common Threads initiative. Patagonia customers can also resell their used Patagonia clothing on the company website.

Patagonia could actually end up with more customers as a result of this campaign!

What a concept! Imagine if every company approached their business with this mindset versus the short-term capitalistic one we so often encounter today.

I envision a consumer utopia that would include high quality, super-efficient products, built to last and perform. You’d only need to buy one refrigerator, knowing it was made well and would last as long as your home was standing. Imagine if our computers, printers, cell phones, etc. lasted forever and upgrades for technology improvements could be plug-and-play. And then when you were done with your gadgets you could easily resell or recycle them. Imagine how much less stuff there would be to dispose of!

Capitalism for the Long Term

Okay, so I’m not an economist and realize this is taking a somewhat anti-capitalistic view of the world. But I prefer calling it capitalism with a longer term view.

I can hear what the economists of the world would say: We can’t have a vibrant growing economy if people didn’t keep buying stuff, if cell phones or computers weren’t obsolete in a year, if you only bought exactly what you needed and no more.

I disagree.

Clearly advertising and marketing can have an influence on consumption and the planet for good and for bad. The question is: which way is your company going to go?

Additional Reading:

The Guardian, Interview with Tensie Whelan: ‘We meet resistance every step of the way’

Curbing Consumption by Creating New Relationships with our Stuff

WorldWatch Institute Europe, Transforming Cultures

The Sustainable Business Blog, Advertising in itself is not evil: it is just communication

The Forbes CSR Blog, American Ingenuity

Holiday season is on its way, though for many stores it has already been here for a couple of months. Sometimes I wonder if retail marketers have a different calendar than the rest of us.  What do you think?

Why the rush

Shopping in mid-September I was already seeing Halloween decorations.  Then when Halloween weekend arrived I began to see Christmas decorations, I wondered “did Thanksgiving happen and I missed it?” Stores move the holidays right along at a speed I can barely keep up with.

Why is there this need to prepare consumers for the Holidays months in advance? I’m pretty sure we can remember them all on our own, maybe a little prompting on the first of the month would be appreciated.

An admirable exception

There is one store I have been impressed with as they have been able to resist decorating their store windows before Black Friday, (the day after Thanksgiving and one of the biggest shopping days of the year).  That store is Nordstrom, which will not have its décor “speaking to the season of getting together” up until the actual holiday season officially arrives.  Unfortunately not too many other stores are following suit.

Rushing more than decorations

Speaking of Black Friday, some stores including Macy’s, Target, and Kohls are going “all out” this year by opening up as early as midnight on Thanksgiving to kick off the holiday shopping season.  “Who cares about friends and family, let’s get to the deals” is basically the mantra.  I am ALL for shopping (trust me) but when did the holidays go from spending time with family to shopping at crazy hours of the night?

A mobile holiday season?

Mobile shopping and mobile payments combine ecommerce and in-store shopping. By all indications, 2011 will be the year for mobile shopping. Google projects that 15 percent of total search on Black Friday will come from mobile devices. Cell phones are the only interactive device you carry with you to the store, and they provide retailers the opportunity to provide discounts, deals, reviews, and special deals at the point of purchase.

Does it work?

I have often wondered if all the marketing pays off in the end.  Looking at numbers from previous years., we see Business Insider reports that Black Friday 2010 lured 212 million shoppers up from 195 million in 2009.  Spending also increased from $343.31 to $365.34.  Online holiday shopping reached record levels in 2010. The answer appears to be a big yes.  The deals, discounts and convenience of Black Friday seem to be paying off for all these big retailers.

What’s ahead?

Personally, I’d rather do my shopping away from the hustle and bustle of cheap deals and on my own calendar. Like many others, I also find that makes it easier for me to resist products I probably don’t even want and definitely don’t need.  Then again, the holiday hype can make it seem as if it’s your patriotic duty to shop madly and help the economy. What about you? What will you be doing on Black Friday this season?

The last few years have been filled with the predictions of the “great newspaper demise” — and fears that the business model used by most magazines is unsustainable in today’s digital world. So I pick up on a theme seen here before in the pages of the Marketing Partners’ blog, specifically that I hope that the digital revolution isn’t robbing us of a few simple pleasures.

In the Beginning There Was MAD

My love of magazines started with MAD Magazine (remember Alfred E. Neuman and SPY vs. SPY?) in the waiting room of my orthodontist. Full disclosure: I had a huge overbite and large gap between my two front teeth, so I spent a lot of time at the orthodontist. About this same time, (you know — those very attractive and carefree days of middle school/junior high?) I was also consuming large amounts of data from the pages of Tiger Beat.  OK — so it wasn’t so much data I was consuming, it was more photographs of my “crush du jour”. These torn out photos most often wound up on the walls of my room, before being quickly replaced by the next “crush du jour.”

As I grew older, about the time I turned 15, my taste matured to Seventeen. (I thought I was really sophisticated to be reading Seventeen at age 15, by the way. Little did I realize 15 is precisely the demographic they were targeting…) On rare occasions I got an elicit peek at “Cosmopolitan” — usually in the really slow grocery store checkout lanes with my mother while she was talking to yet another acquaintance.

Magazines in the Real World

I was not much of a devotee of the magazine while I was in college. (Too busy ordering pizzas — oh, and studying — then…) But once out here in the real world, magazines have continued to mirror my age. One of the first joys of getting engaged was to finally to buy up an entire rack of hugely expensive bridal magazines — followed five years later by purchasing Parents. But shortly after my first child, the Internet plowed into our culture and things have not been quite the same for me and my magazines. My subscriptions to People and Newsweek  have expired.

Now the only time I get to truly savor a magazine is in the hair salon. I am afraid my stylist gets a little hurt that I don’t chat with her more — but there is something about sitting in the salon chair for hours (yes, my hair appointments are hours) that is just perfect for reading magazines. I don’t scan the pages for bridesmaids dresses or tips for avoiding ear infections anymore, but I still love the advertisements for jewelry and fashion. And movie and book reviews. Self improvement. Exercise tips. Makeovers. Oprah. And I get the rare opportunity to turn the pages.

The Internet and iPad and Kindle have turned reading into a digital exercise now (I’d love to know if this has created a boom in the field of optometry), so there are only virtual pages to turn. But the ads and photos don’t offer me the same joy on the screen as they do on the page. Am I alone?

Long Live Magazines

The experts out there have observed that the magazines that are still viable are the ones that have changed with the times — developing content for the web, developing content for the printed page. And using social media to hook us into either medium, as this recent Guardian article by Lisa Mclean observes. Mclean’s piece also supports my theory that some of us  will never be able abandon the printed medium.

Magazines are like a utility service to me: as I age I am drawn to the relevant and timely information that only crafty and savvy editors and advertisers can compile. I don’t mind if they reach me via social media (although they seem to have lots of room for improvement here, according to this story about the 2011 American Magazine Conference). I am counting on them to find me, keep up with me, hook me — their target demographic — until my eyes can no longer enjoy the photographs and my hands can no longer turn the page. Long live magazines for people of all ages.

Planning an event, especially at the last minute, can be a daunting effort. Any missteps can have critical repercussions for your brand down the line so it is important to develop a checklist while in your planning phase before you begin any active preparations.

Get your ducks in a row.

I’ve developed a top 10 list of the most important items to remember when planning an event. These things will help ensure your event runs smoothly and will lessen the chance of you hitting any pitfalls along the way.

1. The purpose of your event

Why are you holding an event? You’d be surprised how many people think an event is a wonderful idea but when pressed on what the purpose of the event is, or its overall goal, they are unable to clearly articulate its objective. You want to make certain there is a clear reason to hold an event — a celebration for a new facility, a fundraising event with a clear financial goal behind it, a new product launch to share with customers — without a defined objective, your event can be a costly effort without the power to attract attendees.

2. Who are you inviting? (or know your target audience)

Depending on the type of event you are holding and your business, you’ll want to carefully consider who should be invited to your event. Is this an event that the general public would enjoy? Is this something that is only appropriate for select members of your target audience such as business customers? Defining your target audience specifically for your event is one of the keys to a good turnout.

3. Getting the word out

These days people are inundated with email and snail mail alike, but the fact remains that most people now report they prefer to receive communications by email. Do you have a reliable email database that you can use for invitations? If you are not a large organization or business, do you have an account set up with online email service company such as Constant Contact or MailChimp that allows you to send bulk email without violating any CAN-SPAM laws?

If your event is more general in nature and does not require invitations, you can select other tried-and-true options to spread that word such as:

• Newspaper event advertisements, both print and online
• Calendar announcements, both print and online
• News advisory, with follow ups with specific reporters, and
• Posters distributed to businesses and displayed on community bulletin boards.

4. Overall logistics (from signage and parking to food)

These may seem like the small things but they can escalate into large issues if not taken care of properly. Traffic flow and parking all contribute to the safety of your attendees and clear signage can help ensure that everyone knows where to go.

Food. Will you serve it? How much? What kind? Hot? Cold? Appetizers or full meal? The answer to this question is often dictated by two things — the number of people you are inviting and your budget. Catered food is can be pricey on a per person basis and the last thing you want is to run out of food at your event. Then again, caterers have the equipment and know-how to handle food safely and satisfy the tastes of a crowd. Always plan for more than enough food but better to go for more snack type foods than entrees to ensure you don’t run out and you can stay within budget.

5. Engaging your attendees at your event

You have your guests, food, signs, event purpose but now what? How do you keep your people engaged at your event? Depending on the objective of your event you have many options. Here are a few:

• Arrange for a high-profile speaker: This could be a well-known personality, politician, or “cheerleader” of your brand or organization
• Offer tours of your facility if it has unique features, often around renewable energy and sustainability
• Games for kids and adults

6. Giveaways

Providing your event attendees with some kind of giveaway is a nice way to thank them for supporting you at your event. Depending on your company or organization, you might be able to give away an existing product you already have without having to spend additional funds on promotional items for one-time use.

7. Be prepared for tough questions and the media

At any event you may receive questions from your attendees and even the media if they show up at your event. It’s best to try to anticipate what some of these questions might be and prepare answers in advance so you’re not caught off guard. Don’t just think of the warm and fuzzy questions people might want to know about, consider the tough questions. These usually include subjects such as budgets and funding, why certain people have or have not been invited to your event and the history of your company or organization (and any bumps or scandals that have affected it along the way). If the media does attend your event always consider what story you would like to see as a result of your event and answer questions accordingly. (This checklist assumes media coverage is not the primary purpose of your event. That would be the subject of another blog post.)

8. Staffing for the event

Any event needs to be properly staffed so it’s imperative that you have your company’s staff on board for the event. Make a schedule that everyone is comfortable with and accommodates your team members’ personal lives (particularly if your event is on a weekend). The worst thing is to have an event staffed by unhappy employees.

9. Document your event

Keeping a history of your events is great for many reasons. Sharing your event via your website is a great way to show community interaction and another side to your company or organization. This requires photos but doesn’t necessarily mean hiring a professional photographer. If your budget allows for it, great. If not, talk to your employees and find out if anyone enjoys photography as a hobby or has a natural inclination for taking great photos. Ask that person if they’d be willing to take some shots of the event. Just remember, if you intend to use photos with identifiable people in it, you’ll need to get photo releases. Also, capturing quotes from attendees is another great way to document the success of an event. These quotes can be used, again with permission, on your website and in future marketing materials, if applicable.

10. Debrief and review

Always debrief and review with your team after the event. Find out what worked and what didn’t so you can improve upon things for your next event!

Related articles

• Event Planning Tips: Lessons Learned from Past Events (thewakemanagency.com)
• The Number One Rule in Event Planning (coneinc.com)
• Top Ten Logistics Steps For Event Coordination (customclearance.wordpress.com)

Using your marketing data strategically seems harder than ever these days. There is more data available than at any time before — about your customers, communications, industry, services and web traffic. Yet in today’s volatile markets, strategically choosing and using marketing data to adjust your marketing efforts has never been more essential to success, and survival.

The data explosion

IBM recently released a study of chief marketing officers worldwide that revealed 71% felt overwhelmed by the explosion of data. Close behind the volume of data, CMOs reported feeling unprepared to handle social media and the growth of channel and device choices. When the CMOs of large corporations report feeling unprepared, chances are SMBs and nonprofit organizations are facing an even greater challenge trying to use their data for fact-based decision-making and strategy refinement.

Turning data into action

Why measure? If you measure it– it will get better, if you’re measuring the right thing. The challenge is using the right data to inform communications, content and programs to drive action. Over the years, I’ve found that planning for data accuracy and consistency are as important as selecting the appropriate KPIs to measure. (Ensuring data accuracy and consistency can be as simple as making notes on exactly which source or data point you used, when and how each formula is calculated.)

Focus

Focus on your most meaningful marketing metrics and key performance indicators. Though these vary significantly by industry as well as by strategic priorities, you want to start at the beginning of the year by identifying key metrics for each marketing objective. Unfortunately, for many small businesses and organizations preparing financial reports substitutes for examining marketing and customer data. Your focus wants to be on clearly defined indicators of marketing success that advance your mission.

Keep it simple

With so much data available, it’s easy to get carried away. Most businesses can summarize their essential marketing data into a one-page dashboard or scorecard of KPIs, albeit with some effort. There are many fancy analytics and reporting services for this purpose, but Microsoft Excel still reigns supreme and can meet the needs of many mission-driven organizations.

Use it

With accurate and consistent data summarized by KPIs, your last challenge is setting aside the time to thoughtfully review what’s happening. On at least a quarterly schedule, if not monthly, you want to schedule some meaningful time to review your marketing data. What is it telling you? Should you be doing more of this or less of that? Is it time to shift course?

Make the commitment now to reflect on the why in your marketing data and what the implications are for the future — and your marketing results will get better.

Related resources

IBM Global CMO Study

Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik – Web Analytics Blog

In the good old days, all software, even $20 games, came with printed manuals. I remember rolling my eyes whenever I opened a new PC game, and saw a small book inside — if you really needed a manual to play a game, you might be a little dense. (In fairness, there were always one or two games a year that were terrifically complicated and justified the glossy manuals that came with them.) But in general, software manuals were a welcome and often necessary part of any software package.

Fast forward to today.

I recently bought some terribly complex and terrifically not inexpensive software — a physical copy, in a real box (another vanishing trend) — and here is the sum total of documentation that it tells you about before and after installation:

• a PDF overview of how to install the software
• a message after installation that if I want any help, I should check out user videos and user forums

I did a little digging around, and it turns out that there’s actually a PDF manual buried deep in the file structure of the DVD on which the software came. I didn’t start reading it yet because, ironically, I spent all of last night putting together a cheap piece of furniture whose assemblage documentation consisted of four pages of images without any words. It worked for me until step 3, whereupon I almost borrowed my neighbor’s chainsaw in order to get two parts to fit together. (Note to the worried: I wound up getting the pieces together via a combination of contortions for which my body was not well suited, along with a flashlight, a rag, and a dense loaf of bread. Don’t ask.) In any event, I don’t hold out a great deal of hope for my new software’s PDF manual being any good, because clearly the manufacturer isn’t all that proud of it. And it makes me think that the trend of manual-less software is drawing close to its insidious all-inclusive adoption.

How Did We Get Here?

Why are manuals a thing of the past? For one thing, there’s the obvious expense of the things. It’s no cheap thing to print a 300-page, full-color, attractively set book. I recall a significant company in the 1990s experimenting with charging extra for their software’s manual, and the consumer backlash was swift and unkind. The company rolled back the extra charge, but, naturally, soon after raised the price of the software. (Surely just a coincidental price change.) Nowadays, software is generally so relatively inexpensive, and margins so tight, that raising prices to include “extra” niceties like printed manuals isn’t a great option for many companies.

Another factor is the fact that at some point in the late ’90s, third-party books became almost universally better than the software makers’ own manuals. And that makes sense, really. Software makers aren’t necessarily great writers, and are not in the book business. So when software users started using official manuals as doorstops and monitor heighteners, software companies started wondering why the hell they were bothering. Of course, the problem for the consumer is that we’re back to buying a manual, albeit from a third party. Also, book publishers caught on to this trend and started releasing a plethora of replacement manuals; naturally, a lot of them kind of sucked. Weeding out the good from the bad is a tall order, though Amazon.com’s user ratings helps out a great deal with this.

The Up Side

Maybe we’re just becoming a paperless society, as promised at the dawn of the computer revolution. The booming sales of Kindles and e-books certainly points to a paperless itch being scratched. There’s certainly an up side here, with a bunch of trees being spared.

There is another good thing perhaps contributing to the death of the manual: maybe in general software is getting better designed and easier to use, to the point where you don’t really need a manual most of the time. There were plenty of MS-DOS programs (yes, I’m that old) back in the day that were quite literally impossible to use without a manual, simply because the interfaces were so primitive. (Shift-Ctrl-W means “copy paragraph”? Really?)

But even with PDF manuals, online help systems, user forums, and tutorial videos, there’s still nothing quite as easy and comfortable as cracking open a big old paper book and tracking down an answer the old-fashioned way. Call me nostalgic.

Why do you need to know about image resolution if you are not a professional graphic designer? If you are ever going to print something, put a graphic on the web, or create a PowerPoint presentation yourself, you want to know about resolution and why it matters for quality.

The jargon

First, there are some important acronyms to learn: DPI, PPI, and LPI are measurements that refer to the composition of an image.

• DPI: Dots per inch. Generally used in printing, this refers to the dots of ink on one line across one inch.
  

  Image via Wikipedia

• PPI: Pixels per inch. This term is mostly used for monitors and video production. A pixel is a dot on a video screen.
• LPI: Lines per inch. This is another print term that is mostly used for half tones and is the measurement of how close together the lines are in the grid.

In print, it takes lots of dots to make an image. In each space, a dot can either be black, or a color. In process printing (also referred to as CMYK), the colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow, and in combination with each other and with black it is possible to create thousands of unique colors. A yellow dot and magenta dot together will produce a tone of red. If you add a cyan dot the red turns to purple.

The quality of a printed image depends on two things: the capabilities of the printer, and the original resolution of the digital artwork. The higher the DPI and LPI, the better the image will look when it’s printed because the dots are smaller and closer together.

Size your images for their use

Don’t confuse image size with file size. The resolution and quality of an image affects file size, and file size can affect effectiveness for a specific use. If you have an image that is high-resolution and large, but reduce it to a small area and put it on your website, it will slow your site load times and possibly discourage visitors. All that extra file size does nothing to help display your image and only slows the loading time for the viewer.

sample image

Likewise, if you use a small image and make it larger in a report, it will distort and become pixelated or fuzzy when you print it. The poor print quality may require throwing away brochures and starting over.

My sample here is 1” square (and may appear a different size depending on your monitor settings), and is 96 pixels x 96 pixels. The file size is a mere 27 kilobytes (27kb) and loads quickly. To print that same image in a magazine or on a brochure, I would increase it to 300 pixels x 300 pixels to keep the size at 1” square and the file size would increase to 263k — almost 100 times larger.

Tools

Adobe Photoshop leads the market in image manipulation and production. However, there are many image editing tools and utilities available, including many shareware or free utilities included with your computer. These utilities generally allow you to crop and size images, and to save them in the most common formats.

One thing that you cannot do with most images is to increase the size and dpi at the same time, while maintaining image quality. There are tools that will “res-up” an image, but they create the missing pixels by sampling the pixels next to the missing area and guessing what the color should be to fill the empty space. (Vector graphics are an exception as they use geometrical shapes to represent images in computer graphics.)

Here is an example of what happens to an image if you try to use it larger than the resolution supports. (The first image does not have sufficient resolution for this size, while the second image is sized appropriately.)

low resolution image increased in size

proper resolution

Practical Tips

Print: for printing most things, images should be 300 dpi or greater at the final size. This allows high-quality printing with little distortion. You have probably seen what happens when a web image is used for print — the image becomes fuzzy. Images for newspapers can usually be at a lower resolution of 200 dpi, as the press does not produce as many dots per inch and the paper is lower quality.

Web: Use 72 dpi with the image at size. Any image with greater dpi will be reduced to display at 96 dpi or less. For presentations, you may want to use 150 dpi so your print outs are clear. The display or projector will still only present the images at 72 dpi.

Related articles

• Quality and Resolution Defined (dpageek.wordpress.com)
• DPI & PPI: Two Important Measurements for Designers (brighthub.com)

As a sports fan, I’m personally not particularly interested in basketball — an opinion not widely shared in the US. I feel your pain though basketball fans! I never want to see any league go into a lockout and deprive its millions of fans their season. My sport of hockey did not resolve contract arguments in 2004-2005, leaving us with nothing to watch as players flew away to Europe; and it was awful. But I’m not here to discuss who is at fault for the current NBA lockout, but whom its standoff is affecting.

Businesses In and Around Arenas

Think of any sports stadium you’ve passed by or visited in your lifetime. Whether it’s a football or baseball stadium, a basketball or hockey arena, tennis courts or golf courses, there are many businesses surrounding the complex.

Sports bars and restaurants are littered with advertisements designed around the games taking place nearby. “Come grab a beer celebrating the Yankees win after the game” or “Can’t find tickets? Come on in and watch the game on our huge HD TVs with food and beverage and cheer the Packers on” are standard messages you see right nearby the stadiums themselves.

Taxicabs make a large amount of revenue in cities such as New York or Los Angeles where it’s difficult to navigate, or you don’t want to pay $40 for event parking. With seating capacity of 19,000+ at Madison Square Garden and 18,000+ at the Staples Center, you better believe a big chunk of arrivals are coming from cabs or subways. All of these businesses are directly affected by 40+ home games a year being wiped away.

Sponsors of the Athletes

It’s silly to say that enormous brands like Nike or Adidas or Under Armour will see a huge cut in revenue as they can easily survive off their other sports and products. However in a time where you still need to sell your basketball product, what do you do when your star clients aren’t able to boast your logo on the highest stage of the sport? Each game is a 2-hour advertisement with athletes running around with the Swoosh or 3 bar symbols emblazoned on their sneakers, high socks, headbands, armbands, protective arm sleeves, etc.

Nike has already started a major campaign in college basketball while the NBA is at a standstill. Nike had enormous banners made for the top NCAA teams in their colors, with the school name followed by “______ BASKETBALL NEVER STOPS” and the famous Swoosh. Depending on how you look at it, the message could be an addition to their “Always On” for training campaign, or a quick jab at the NBA reminding them that the college kids are still playing hard for the love of the game.

The Fans

At the end of the day the biggest driving force behind salaries and revenues for the players and teams are the fans who buy tickets for games and apparel for the street, and supply viewership on TV and engagement on social media (more so marketing, less revenue). While a lockout is in place, there are no games, no tickets being bought, no numbers for TV ratings, no desire to buy a new jersey or tee shirt, or reason to tweet or comment on Facebook about your team, except to most likely complain about its absence.

With nothing actually happening, there’s nothing for organizations to market. The marketing team takes a huge hit in their department. Fans grow impatient, making it harder to generate positive feedback. Most people are left to just wait for negotiations to break, and hear the news that everyone can get back to work.

I hope for the league’s sake, the fans’ sakes, and for sports in general that the NBA is able to wrap this up and salvage even half of the 2011-2012 season as a lot of revenue and positive public relations are on the line to lose. Speaking from experience as a hockey fan during the 2004-2005 NHL lockout, it’s something that just isn’t worth the loss.

For further reading, as well as some numbers, visit:

Forbes: Six Thoughts Regarding The Economic and Marketing Realities of the NBA Lockout

Sports Marketing Tracker: NBA Teams Adapting Facebook Marketing Strategies During Lockout

PBS: NBA Lockout Economic Impact on Cities and Lost Jobs