Archives for October, 2007
A Campaign Well Executed
I need to start with a disclaimer. I own an iPhone. I do not plan on switching phones anytime soon. I don’t care for AT&T and the slow Edge network, but the functionality and pure wonder of the iPhone is too much for me to even consider a new phone anytime soon. [...]
Green Rules of Thumb
Green, Sustainable, Eco-friendly…these words are everywhere from laundry detergents to business titles to marketing plans. As more and more people hop on the Green bandwagon, the LOHAS (lifestyle of health and sustainability) consumer group grows more and more skeptical of marketers…and we didn’t start out with a whole lot of ground to begin with! As [...]
Does your vendor A even know vendor B exists?
One for PR, One for Interactive, One for branding, One for direct mail, One for inside sales, One for…need I go on? If your organization is of a certain size, you have a lot of external agencies and vendors to manage. From sharing knowledge and distributing strategic direction, to ownership and territorial issues, connecting and distributing [...]
User Testing the Book
For many content mediums, it can be difficult to tell to what extent the potential audience influenced a work — how much the invisible reader influenced a story, or how much an observer was in mind when an image took shape on a canvas. In the instance of a web site, though, it’s more often assumed [...]
Facebook Etiquette
One thing I’ve loved about Facebook is finding old high school friends. People I haven’t spoken to in ages, right? So when there’s a “friend request,” Facebook wants to know how we know each other. So I check the box “went to school together.” But then there’s these other boxes, right? “We hooked up.” “We dated.” And, in some [...]
On the Value of Teamwork
“Hey, we’ve got this comp due to the client in 30 minutes. Think you could knock out a headline for us?” (If you found this funny, you’re a total ad nerd.)
Imagination(Interactivity+Technology)
Last Month, Stephen and I attended Flash Forward. I came back charged up and totally inspired. We have reached a point where the potential of the technology we work with (Flash, PHP, .NET, hammer, nails) has exceeded our ideas, and we need to take advantage of it. What a beautiful place to be in! We [...]
Impaling Copy on Your Brand Pyramid
Probably one of the best things clients get from typical brand pyramid exercises is the “who would your brand be?” But how do you use that information for copywriting? One of our interns this summer loved theater, and she simplified it well: Branding means writing in character. I love this copywriting short-hand because our culture’s weird [...]
Leaders Leverage Differentiation
As the experiential world shifts from analog to digital manipulation and self-expression, I’ve seen phenomenal marketing evolutions by countless brands willing to embrace “betterment.” The notion of “betterment” is a symbiotic relationship that allows consumers to experience a brand the way the brand wants to be portrayed. Most importantly, how the consumer wants to experience [...]
Communication the Old Fashioned Way
The world is busy. The agency world is even busier. The client services team spends a lot of time communicating goals, constraints, and timelines of projects across departments. We have lots of great tools in place to help manage the workflow: Project websites, Basecamp, Microsoft project, emails to the team and clients, etc. All of [...]
Social networking myself into adulthood…
I was somewhat of a late-adopter when it came to the social networking craze. I didn’t really “get” it at first. In college, my friends and I made fun of people with Friendster accounts and we definitely didn’t even know what MySpace was. Aren’t sites like that for teenagers? I was 23 before I finally [...]
Revisions
Revisions: How much is too much? Revisions: How much is too many? Revisions: How many is too many? This many! Revisions: They’re not just for cows anymore. Revisions: How to know when to stop. Revisions: How many is too many? Collaborating Collaboratively Here in the marketing world, we creative folk work as part of a team. We interact with account [...]
41 Useful CSS Links
I was clearing out my bookmarks recently, and noticed that I had a pretty large collection of web development and CSS-related bookmarks that I never refer to any more, but might be useful to people who are just getting started with CSS. So with that in mind, here’s a collection of links, and I hope [...]
On Thought Leadership
The term “thought leadership” is de rigeur, so fashionable that one can find it with increasing frequency in mission statements, taglines and core value summaries. Yet, can it be said that this term is being used honestly? The term “thought leader” was first coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of the magazine, Strategy & Business. Initially, [...]
Today’s The Day: Post It By Number
Today is our 10-Year Anniversary party, and the office is buzzing with last-minute preparations. The beer, wine, and martini fixin’s are here. Cocktail tables are being installed, tablecloths unfurled. The new sign is lit (look for another post, forthcoming, or just take a stroll down Broadway in downtown Portland. And, the makings for our special [...]
Efficiency Magnifier
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates
10 Years Ago
Ever since Pop Art’s first year in business (1997-1998), I have held onto a magazine advertising insert published in the March, 1998 version of Wired Magazine. The piece is the “Encyclopedia of the New Economy” written by Browning and Reiss and published by Wired and Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). The “encyclopedia” is loaded with exuberant consultant-speak, [...]
Skinning Community Server 2007
We recently upgraded the Pop Art Blog to Community Server 2007, and I was assigned to upgrade the templates. Dave produced a wonderful comp, and when I read about CS2007’s new Chameleon Theme Engine, I was pretty excited. The actual experience of working with the templates turned into a bit of a nightmare, however. Before I [...]
What Does A Client Services Dept Blog About?
Now that Pop Art has set up this very snazzy company blog (shout out to Scott!) I feel a certain amount of pressure to represent my little corner of the organization. However, as an Account/Project Manager I’m looking at a dearth of topics that would be both professional and interesting enough to post. “Interesting” Let’s [...]
Ideas in Efficiency: Creating Institutional Amnesia
At our last staff meeting, I shared some insights with our team about how we can improve our business. For some background information, we’ve been fortunate to keep the same team together over the past two years. We’ve had a chance to work together — establishing the internal communication pathways and processes that is our [...]
