Archives for 2008
Interactive Shopping: Nordstrom’s 1: Macy’s 0.
At Pop Art, we preach that “Interactive” and “Online” are not synonyms! Companies should invest in making their brands and customer relationships more interactive — this means interacting better with your customers, both online and in-person. Based upon my experiences in the past 24 hours, I think Nordstrom’s gets it, but Macy’s doesn’t. Yesterday, I was [...]
Who’s Afraid of HTML Email?
Anyone who tells you creating HTML email is easy has either never done it, or is lying. Inexperienced designers tend to think, “Oh, no problem, it’s all tables and font tags!” Grizzled veterans, however, know all too well the difficulties of getting anything but the most simple design to render well in a variety of [...]
Lingo Bingo
So there I was sipping my coffee this morning, checking my RSS feeds and WHAM! Inspiration! I should say for the record that I love our project managers, and I love our account managers, and that they have been nothing but good to me and the rest of the creative team, cleaning up the digital messes [...]
Windows + Space = Backslash
My primary machine, a MacBook Pro running Vista, experienced an ailment the other day: the backslash key broke. So, I was stuck with no pipe character and no backslash. If I needed one, I had to find an existing instance of the character, then copy and paste. Not a good time. Developers like to use [...]
Using my iPhone at Starbucks Just Got Easier!
As an AT&T iPhone subscriber, I’m able to access AT&T WiFi hotspots nationwide at places such as Starbucks or Barnes & Noble with my iPhone for free. This is nice, as I can surf the web or check my email while I enjoy a latte at full broadband speeds versus waiting an eternity for pages [...]
Liquid Holiday Cheer, a How-To Manual
After four years of college, and two as the head of my fraternity’s social committee (you try running a party of 300 and not melting), I graduated with an advertising degree and took the next natural step. I became a bartender. Over the next few years, as I built my spec book, I [...]
How to Time Your Holiday Email Marketing
A friend of mine writes and manages the online marketing for a local online retailer, and asked via Facebook about how to time her holiday email marketing to her customers. I’d been tweeting (thomschoenborn on Twitter) about a webinar from Nielsen Online about online holiday shopping, and she shot me a message asking about Black [...]
CMO Leadership: Putting your agencies to work for you!
As an interactive agency, Pop Art works with many other agencies. Sometimes we are agency-of-record for a client, but most often, our clients employ 2, 3 or sometimes dozens of marketing agencies and consultants, and we are just some of the actors on the stage. Having multiple agencies can be very expensive because of the necessary [...]
Gen Y Can Smell a Fake, or Why I’ve Watched Bike Hero 4 Times This Week and It’s Only Monday
By now, everyone’s seen the “Bike Hero” viral video on YouTube. If you haven’t, please, please watch it now, or else none of this will make sense. While you’re at it, watch the “Runaway Jeans” viral video too. Ok, now that we’ve got that out of the way, the big “Watching Comprehension” question: Did you notice [...]
Motrin Messes with Mommy-Bloggers and Loses
This morning, Annie told me about a Motrin ad that a bunch of mom-bloggers were angry about because it was critical of babywearing. She was really upset about it, and convinced that it was an intentional slam on mothers. Since I work in marketing, and Annie majored in Sociology, we tend to have conversations like [...]
Being a Little Bit Transparent is Like Being a Little Bit Pregnant
It seems that I can’t have a conversation about blogging without also talking about fear, legal liability, and transparency. Which I find somewhat ironic: as a business, most of our clients have tens, if not hundreds, of employees who are trained to talk to clients. Customer service reps. Sales people. Technical support. They’re trained in [...]
How Can a Computer Screen Replace Human Interaction?
Coming from the world of live events and into the Interactive space, I have been contemplating this since joining Pop Art. Interactive has been progressively threatening the events business since the 1990’s, because it offers convenience, broad scalability, and lower cost for traditional event clients. As an event Producer, this was exasperating. While the events industry [...]
Political Design.. A Look Back
Well, its finaly here. Election day has come again and its time for you to go out and cast your vote. I thought it would be fun to take a look at how design has influenced the political arena over the years. Some of these are real classics. Bonus points if you can find the Goldwater [...]
How To Engage Your Agency
I’ve worked with several agencies throughout my career helping clients develop and execute marketing campaigns. I’ve noticed that some relationships are more rewarding and beneficial for the client and agency. Here are some suggestions on how to ensure that the dollars spent are utilizing the talents and services of the agency to their fullest potential [...]
Interactive media and the NHL
As a native Detroiter, I am a fan of the NHL. I have been following the Red Wings for most of my life, spending many a cold night watching players like Yzerman, Shanahan, and Lidstrom skate at the Joe (Joe Louis Arena). I am also a big baseball fan, and love MLB.com for their interactive [...]
Wizard of Oz Writer’s Wonderful Window Display
At the end of the 19th Century, the advertising industry was transformed by two things: technology advances including mass market plate glass and electrics lights, and by the imagination of L. Frank Baum. Best known as the author of The Wizard Oz, he was also, I learned recently from a fact-sharp friend, the founder of [...]
Speaking on Dynamic Data
I had the pleasure of presenting at a recent Portland Area .Net User Group meeting earlier this month. My talk to about 50 regional developers at Microsoft’s Portland office centered on one of the new features in the Service Pack 1 release of ASP.Net v3.5 called Dynamic Data. This feature is a fantastic niche technology for [...]
Red Robin, Anyone?
So as I am looking for a venue for the Pop Art holiday dinner, I find myself perusing quite a few menus. Why is it the nicer the restaurant, the more words they use on the menu? And the less pictures there are! I don’t get it. I am an “I want that” type of [...]
Mobile, Mobile Everywhere!
“…iPhone owners were responsible for nearly one out of every 1,000 Web page views last month (Nov. ‘07). This erases any doubt that the future of mobile devices most certainly includes the Web. …Through September (‘07), Apple had sold 1.4 million iPhones. …, according to research company, Gartner, Inc.” — December 11, 2007 WSJ article, “Web [...]
What can we learn from Marine Officers? Here’s one thing.
Know yourself, know your people, know your job. Although I wasn’t in the Marines (Army), I’m familiar with this maxim they teach their officers. But it isn’t just applicable to Marine Core officers. It can make any individual more effective within any people-driven organization. 1. Know Yourself Self-awareness is as valuable as it is rare (in abundance, at least). [...]
the new POPART.COM
Pop Art has not only a new website, but also a new story to tell the world. A story about how businesses can use the internet and social networks to connect with their target audiences in an exciting and measurable way. Lead with Interactive™ is a vision from our CEO, Steve Rosenbaum and it’s a [...]
Who is Pop Art?
In the course of re-launching the website for our interactive agency, we wanted to bring the Pop Art people forward. After all, Pop Art is in the business of interactive advertising and marketing services. Services that are provided by people who like to laugh, explore geeky things, and do great work. The question became, “What [...]
Leatherman Refresh
A few months ago we completed the Leatherman redesign. There were several issues facing the old Leatherman site. The front-end code was showing its age. The original site had been built to accommodate 16 products and now featured close to 50. A redesign would need to allow more flexibility for innovation such as up-selling, cross [...]
Nau Likes Beauty, Performance, Sustainability, Long Walks on the Beach, and Candlelit Dinners
Nau wants you for your heart, not just your wallet. It may sound more like a personal ad than a business strategy, but in this difficult economic market, brands are looking for new (often less expensive) ways to build relationships with customers. In addition to awareness advertising that talks TO people, companies need to start [...]
Earning Mindshare for your Brand
Will you recognize me? Call my name or walk on by? One of your biggest problems is earning mindshare from your customers. As I like to remind salespeople, “Billions of potential customers don’t even know that your company and its products exist!” And those that know about you, aren’t necessarily thinking about you, or thinking [...]
