Archives for 2009
I hate Fred Meyer’s Holiday Ad
Ahh, the holidays. The time of year when retailers turn the dials up to 11 to clear storerooms and shelves. The holiday ad has always been of particular annoyance to me, particularly those with catchy new lyrics set to old songs, tending to the punny. This year, however, a new low has been set. Northwest grocer [...]
40% Targeting, 40% Offer, 20% Creative
Having spent most of this fall with a cold or flu of some kind (blame the toddler for that one), I was especially intrigued by an ad I saw on Pandora the other night. This ad is genius, and caught my attention for a few reasons. As the old advertising axiom says, an ad’s success [...]
If I Could Tell All Young Writers One Thing…
Passing into the waning end of my twenties during a recession (which makes you age in your career faster) means I can now get away with two things: I can say “back in my day” when referring to anything before 2006. I get to dole out useful information to students and other people trying to get into [...]
I say potato, you think Vichyssoise. Let’s talk.
In my 10+ years of managing projects, teams and client expectations, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most common threat to the success of relationships and projects is simple lack of communication. Why simple? Because usually the simplest misunderstanding at the outset of an engagement is where it all starts to skid downhill. For example, [...]
On Design Portfolios
I was talking about design portfolios with our supremely talented intern Shawna a few months ago, and the subject of format came up. Her graduation was coming up in June 2009, and she was already thinking about the job hunt, yet another sign of how sharp she is. For those of you reading who aren’t [...]
Contrasting iPhone Development Tools
When Apple released the iPhone in 2007, I was very disappointed when Steve Jobs announced that developers would only be able to write web applications that run inside of Safari. Thankfully, Apple shifted course a year later and released the iPhone SDK and things became much more interesting. Developing applications that are targeted for the iPhone [...]
So, You Asked for a CMS
In my position, I get to respond to a bunch of RFP’s. If there’s a marketing/brochure web site involved, you can make a reasonable bet that the RFP includes a content management system (CMS). These solutions are super easy to build and deploy, but organizations are often unaware of the entire bargain. The promise of a [...]
We Want a Traffic Jam
Everyone wants more site traffic. More traffic means happy client, and happy client means happy agency. Marketers invest huge amounts of money to pay for methods of generating traffic to their microsites and applications like SEO, social media and the all-encompassing category: viral. Even though all these methods exist, several sites fall by the wayside never to be [...]
Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty…
In my many years of software development, I have come across project managers/producers with a smorgasbord of backgrounds. Artists, dancers, photographers, political activists, furniture makers and some ex-developers like myself. There is never one background that makes the best “type” of project manager. No, not even the ex-developers are guaranteed to be the best for [...]
The Jargon Problem @ Interactive Agencies
This blog post was originally published as the feature story in the Portland Advertising Federation VOX Newsletter on 11/3/2009. Given the current economy, we took it very seriously when a prospective client accused us last week of using too much marketing jargon in our sales pitch. Given a tough problem, we immediately did what any great agency [...]
Thanks USAA!
My bank, USAA, is better than your bank. No, they don’t have any branches, except for that one in Texas, but they do have: Awesome online banking Free ATM withdraws (no matter which one you decide to use that day) An iPhone app Check deposit at home (on your scanner or iPhone) Customer service that can’t be beat. This is [...]
What’s Your User Story, Morning Glory?
What is a user story? Stemming from agile software development, user stories are used by the customer to concisely convey what they need in their site or software. In only a sentence or two in the language of the everyday user, a user story describes a solution requirement. While they can be a by product of [...]
Google Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer
Long story short, Google released a plugin for IE 6, 7 and 8 that will run Google Chrome (which uses webkit) inside a frame in the IE browser. Now IE6 can be standards-compliant, and all versions of IE get blazing fast javascript and HTML 5 support. Sounds great, but there are some problems, as lifehacker [...]
Eliminating Development Traffic from Your Google Analytics Stats
Recently we were asked by a client if traffic from their test site was being posted to a Google Analytics (GA) account. It turns out it is. Not only that, so is any version of the site hosted on their development and test servers, and any developer’s local site. We tested this by placing several pages [...]
It is what it is. Or is it?
A marketing mantra for the ages: it is what it is. And then came the web, it changed everything. Integrated marketing was once the Holy Grail. But in today’s rough and tumble economy, integrated marketing across traditional channels, even with a great web site, just isn’t enough anymore. “Getting there first” happens in masse. The internet [...]
Trust, but Verify
Greg Hughes, one of the rock stars I had the pleasure of working with on a gig has a nice phrase that he likes to whip out from time to time: trust, but verify. Greg didn’t coin the term. Wikipedia says Ronald Regan used it and others before him. The term indicates you should trust what [...]
IE8 Compatibility Mode and IE7 are Not the Same Thing
Just so we’re clear, testing your website in an actual copy of IE7, and testing in IE8’s Compatibility Mode are not the same thing. Compatibility Mode does an acceptable job of imitating IE7, and for the average user who’s just trying to fix a site that looks broken under IE8, it’s good enough. However, there [...]
How to Avoid Paragraph Gaps when Using Superscript and Subscript
Frequently, when I see a webpage with superscript or subscript text, I see associated gaps in the paragraph. This is caused because the default way browsers render super and subscript text is to add enough vertical space in the paragraph to show them. The result is ugly, but as you can see in the following [...]
Status Update: My Self-Esteem Just Plummeted Thanks to Your Poorly Targeted Ads
Anyone with a Facebook account has probably noticed the influx of ads on their status page in recent months. Often bizarre, amateurish or unintentionally humorous, these odd ads are the butt of many jokes from my friends and I. It goes without saying that ads that aren’t properly targeted waste the advertiser’s money, and my [...]
Content Marketing is not what it used to be
For the last 15 years, I have made my living as a content developer. I started off as a photographer documenting and telling stories through static images. At first, this was a pursuit in art and process related to photography but these explorations opened the door to many other mediums. Along this journey I bridged [...]
Sticky Wall 2.0
This year, Pop Art participated in Colaboratory for the first time, Portland Ad Fed’s revolutionary new internship program. We had three different interns over six weeks, from both the design and writing disciplines. Each intern was here for just eight working days (Monday – Thursday), which was some of my initial hesitation in participating in the [...]
How to Do Something You’ve Never Done Before
As a technologist, I’m often asked to do something that I’ve never done before and have no specific competency in performing; tasks which I’m completely unqualified to execute. The more palatable way of saying the same thing is: As a consultant, technical lead, solutions engineer or a business analyst, I’m given challenges that require me to identify [...]
Intelligent Defaults Save Time
Have you ever been a regular at a coffee shop? The barista knows you by name, and every morning when you come by, she’s already got your Triple Non-Fat Sugar-Free Vanilla Latte waiting for you. That’s an intelligent default. She doesn’t know for sure that’s what you want, or even that you’ll come in today, [...]
Making Amazon More Actionable
I’m an Amazon junkie. I’ve bought everything from books to power tools on Amazon. I’m a prime member, meaning I pay $70/year for the ability to get items shipped to me in 2 days or less, every time, rather than paying for express shipping every purchase. Suffice to say, I use the site a lot. [...]
