8.05.09 :: These days social media is bigger than MJ’s funeral coverage, and rightly so. A brand can actually participate in a two way conversation with it’s fans easily. All it has to do is find people that have a reason to talk and nurture that relationship. This is usually done by soliciting feedback, providing a forum or topic to discuss. But what do you do when your audience was born way before the age of the status update? The same thing. Take a look at one of our current direct mail pieces for Walker Place, a 55+ community in Minneapolis.

Working along with the team at Walker Place, we established the idea that their residents were active and their ‘retirement was not tired’. We knew we had to create a piece that would allow resident prospects to embrace retirement and share this thought with others. So, we created a simple 6×9″ sheet of stickers with quippy sayings seniors could use to show their and Walker Place’s vibrancy. (My personal favorite is “I don’t feed pigeons.”) What resulted was a piece that allowed a community to rally around a cause (active retirement) and share this thought with others (with stickers). This mailer outperformed all our expectations drastically (some people even showed up to their tours wearing stickers), so needless to say the team at Walker Place was pleased.

But, what does this mean? Well, it still means an original idea, with the right medium and a great client can make an impact. It also means you don’t have to be online to be a brand people talk about (though it does help). You simply have to have the right message executed well.  Too often this simple truth is neglected when we are constantly bombarded with million dollar marketing buzz words, bloated creative and, dare we say it….sameness. So, before all else, embrace simplicity.

Filed under: Branding, Creative, Design, Internet, Strategy byMonte No Comments »

7.27.09:: It’s no secret, I subscribe to the religion of the Big Idea. One of our main tenets- idea before execution. Which is why I initially screamed heresy when I read “If Execution Is What Matters, Where Does That Leave Ideas?“ The article forwarded the thought that ideas are merely a launchpad for execution and the sweat-equity that goes into developing the ideas is what deserves more credit (and reward). As I continued to read the article, I could not help but notice how the two camps develop their points. Idea people think their brilliance and direction should be compensated while the people who actually did it, claim the idea people would be nowhere without them.

So, without getting into an intellectual property screaming match, I came to a hard truth: ideas and executions are inextricably connected. They need each other.

I know this is not a new point. In fact, agencies and clients alike have been opening up their coveted chambers and minds to tech gurus and interns for years. However, approaching problems with this holistic and respectful mindset makes more possible. Your next big idea might be inspired by the lunch lady on the new JCP widget. Or the best way to execute something might come from an insight on how people eat with their hands. One does not necessarily come before the other, but each dictate how the other will turn out. Just as the chicken determines what the egg will look like and the egg determines what the chicken is. The sooner this is accepted and we hire people that can either play ball with the other side or think both ways, the better off we’ll be.

Filed under: Creative Trends, Internet, Tips byMonte No Comments »

5.26.09 :: To be fair, I don’t expect my dad to jump in a ring with Jack Dorsey, anytime soon. Though we have had multiple Sunday dinner conversations about Twitter’s hype and ROI. In his own words,”People need to start realizing these are just tools, not ideas.” Given his 20+ years in the biz (and the fact that he’s my father) I think this deserves some consideration.

Good or bad, we live in an age where people use technology in order to solve human problems. If you feel out of touch with your college roommate, you can follow their Twitter and pick up the occasional twitpic. You might want to figure out a song you’re hearing in Sbux, so there’s an app for that. And, if you find yourself constantly replacing holey socks, you can sign up to get monthly installments delivered right to your door. However, as much as the technological imperative drives us to say it’s the software solving the problem, it’s the human insight that solves the problem. The technology just helps.

Human solutions should always come before technological ones. Every smart, ambitious web-preneur knows this. If we could somehow keep up with all 150 people in our social circle without the web, we would. Instead, we have Facebook. The key is to creating an experience that is seamlessly human. Enter user experience and design. Baba Shelley, at Hill | Holiday said recently in CommArts,

” Fashions of technology will always have a certain allure…but left unchecked as students of human behavior, technology won’t help us as much as we hope.”

Since technology has helped solved human problems so well, we have seen execution and the idea move closer together. Which has encouraged agencies to solicit tech input early in the creative process. (See “The Big Table” in the May/June CommArts). We’ve been lucky enough to have a small group, a technical director with a background in design and a collaborative creative team, so our process is more harmonious than most.

So, despite headlines that say you should connect with your brand fans through Twitter and Facebook, I would go back to the same old questions and human insights about these people. Chances are they will be able to help you. If not, I’m sure my dad can.

Filed under: Creative Trends, Internet byMonte No Comments »

We have recently seen a dramatic shift in the definition and responsibilities of friendship. According to Time Out Chicago, we are more likely to call people our friends without really defining them as real friends. Some sites like Facebook and Twitter have made friendship equivalent to replying to a status update.  And even Dentyne is telling us to how to treat our friends:

But, in an era where online social networking is the norm, how do we find the set of people who’s opinions we trust the most? And how does this effect what we buy?

Well, there is a fair amount of research on the subject of online word of mouth referrals amongst friends and it all centers around two things: 1.) A referral by a past customer is one of the most trusted pieces of online communication and 2.) The Dunbar Number. According to this concept, a human being can sustain relationships and communicate with about 150 people. Ironically, this is the average number of friends users have on Facebook. These 150 people make up a person’s referral circle, the people we receive information from (commercial or otherwise). Yet only 26% of these 150 will actually be called ‘real friends’ according to the aforementioned article in Time Out.

So, do we only trust these 39 people who we call our ‘real friends’? Well, a local artist/teacher, Maria Scapelli, might be able to shed some light on that with a project  called Peoplescape 365. Essentially, Scapelli set out on a mission to make one new friend a day for a year either online or offline. Her topline conclusions: 1.) she only kept about 10% as ‘real friends’ 2.) almost all of these people she met in person. So, based on these loose numbers, we might be able to say a person is only able to maintain about 30-40 real friendships and that these relationships are mainly forged by face-to-face contact.

Does that mean we don’t trust the remaining 110 people in our social circle when they say a Samsung TV is a great purchase or buy a book recommend by Legend457 online? No, of course not. But when it comes to making a brand something we love to a point of passionate irrationality (see Lovemarks), one might assume we have to talk to these 30-40 people (among other things). If we don’t, we are simply just providing purchasing descisions not life long loves.

Filed under: Branding, Creative, Design, Economy, Internet, Strategy byMonte No Comments »

4.16.09 :: The fate of the daily newspaper has been the talk of the town for some time now. Here in Chicago, The Sun Times has filed for bankruptcy. In Minneapolis, their daily is discussing reducing itself to a once a week publication and the Seattle city newspaper has gone entirely online. The reasons are the same– newspapers do not have the ad revenue to compete with the ad dollars and real time news found on the web.

While reading The Reader (a local Chicago indie paper) on my way to work today, I discovered a simpler reason why the newspaper is failing: you have to turn the pages. On any given day, you will see plenty of people hold a  coffee and bag in one hand and a newspaper in the other. To continue reading a story, a messy ballet of appendages and items ensues that eventually results in someone using their mouth as a third hand.

So, what happened that the newspaper became cumbersome? Well, we’re busy. In fact, Americans still work the most per week out of any country. And we’re mobile. We now change jobs more, travel more and demand information sooner. (Thank you, Al Gore and the Interwebs!)

So, I would argue the mere design of the newspaper is failing. It wasn’t the business model or the ROI, it began with a product that simply did not keep up with our new nomadic lifestyles. Proper design takes into account it’s user and the environment. Reference the iPod, iPhone and the Amazon Kindle who all knew ease of use with one finger is paramount. Even Yoplait figured this out with one handed yogurt, GoGurt. The newspaper failed to recognize its user’s experience. Save the NY Times, which can explain itself.

Filed under: Design, Internet byMonte No Comments »