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Designing for the Next Generation of Devices—Don’t Get Left Behind

Author: Leigh Howells
Published: February 4, 2010
Source: boagworld

I believe we live in a world where the hand-held web device equipped with an accelerometer is going to become more and more prevalent, and quickly.

As far as I have experienced there is little or no current use being made of the accelerometer on web sites when viewed on an iPhone. The accelerometer when triggered in the iPhone’s Safari browser at the moment does little for our general browsing experience beyond giving us a little more horizontal space when in landscape mode. But I believe we live in a world where the hand-held web device equipped with accelerometer is going to become more and more prevalent, and quickly.

Current Acceptance

We accept a limited browsing experience on our mobiles as merely providing a useful, mobile version of the web we see on our main machines. We work within the inherent limitations and reach out for information despite the hardware and software (Flash anyone?) constraints, finding ways to work around things and get to what we want. We certainly don’t expect anything fancy to start happening depending on screen orientation.

But look at how the accelerometer is being used in many iPhone apps to change information and design being presented to us. Tilting between portrait/landscape in apps changes the layout of many interfaces, sometimes shows completely different information, or completely different functionality.

In Awesome Note for example, changing orientation swaps the layout around to fit more comfortably in the new dimensions.

In the AroundMe app the orientation switches from list mode to the rather nice augmented reality mode.

So what will happen when we scale a capacitive touch screen device with an accelerometer up to iPad dimensions? What new and creative uses can be made of a device that presents our designs in 2 different orientations, both landscape and portrait? Surely the iPad (and other tablet devices) won’t just limit us to a wider view in landscape mode?

Sports Illustrated

The video below shows that a lot of serious consideration is being given to the future of tablet displays by some very big players in the media industry, and a lot of creative thought is being given to changes in screen orientation in tablet applications.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntyXvLnxyXk

New Considerations

So, apart from obviously requiring a switch function in the browser and our code to detect orientation, will we be creating horizontal and vertical stylesheets for the iPad ? (and other tablets too I presume). Will we change the content or functionality depending on orientation? I think the answer to both is most likely to be yes. Layout would most certainly be useful to adapt; in landscape mode we may opt for a 3 column layout, whilst in portrait restrict to 2 columns.

In terms of functionality maybe an ecommerce site could add a constantly visible basket column when in landscape mode, or a photo gallery switch between full screen and thumbnail views depending on orientation.

Clear Guidance

One little warning on this however, changing functionality will require clear guidance, to avoid complete confusion. In the AroundMe app shown above it took me quite a while to discover that changing to landscape mode gave the augmented reality feature. It wasn’t indicated anywhere in the application and I simply didn’t try landscape mode as it was mostly list-based and there seemed no advantage to switching.

In summary then the accelerometer poses a new and creative extra dimension for the future of the web. We should start to consider the creative possibilities and consequences today.

Social Network Design Principles

Author: Dan Lewis James
Published: January 14, 2010
Source: Dan Lewis James

Social networks really are like Seth Godin believes, the birth of tribes. The tribe created within the network can vary widely in its ethics, values and overall manner. These factors can be encouraged to some degree by the interactions of community managers, but it's the network features that can stimulate greater community cohesion.

I have been a member of hunch from the very beginning, it is such a shining example of social community building I decided to note some of it’s most useful features to act as a resource for other social site designers.

Basic Social Site Feature Set Rules

Before going into the details of social interaction I have included the basic principles of social network design that I studied whilst working at Kwiqq, and designing social sites every day. These principles are derived from, designing for the social web by Joshua Porter:

These general rules will help to build a useful feature set at a basic level, beyond that the primary objective of the designer is to encourage users to build links and bonds with other users. This is where hunch have really nailed the design feature set.

The Genius of Hunch

THAY questions

Teach Hunch About You questions are answered by users as they begin to use the site, this essentially allows hunch to build a psychological profile on the user, which sounds terrible, the sheer quantity of data you can give them about you beliefs and preferences can be a little daunting. However this allows you to find users with similar tastes and preferences and then find topics created by them which you are more likely to be interested in. It also makes users feel more comfortable connecting, in a similar way to the neighbours feature in Last.fm

Flecks

Flecks make visible little bits of social grooming, such as when users on the site give other users a pro/con or a thumbs up and also when other users think useful topics, results or questions. Flecks encourage users on the site to interact with others in a positive environment. Flecks are now encouraged as part of a profile completeness, personally I find it impossible not to want to complete a profile fully. Once users have added a fleck or two the hope is they enjoy it and use it more often. It seems to work as hunch users are a particularly open and supportive tribe.

Badges

Badges represent all the different ways you’ve contributed to Hunch. Banjos are one type of badge; they represent a numerical summary of your total contributions. Other badges represent the type of content users have contributed, for example the categories where you have been a very active contributor. Personally I find badges quite desirable, even though I have currently made little effort to really try to collect them, it is of course completely illogical but according to games psychologists allowing users to collect items speaks to very deep human compulsions which most people find addictive.

Encouraging Positive Interaction

Throughout hunch many of the basic interactions are set in a positive way. When users choose to agree or disagree with pros/cons that have been added the text says 10 out of 10 helpful which is a good way of phrasing and preventing negative responses from dominating whilst allowing people to reasonably disagree with results.

Site personality is also important, this is something created by the community managers but in the example of Hunch, Caterina Fake, Chris Dixon and their team have done a very good job of encouraging the community to develop. This is possibly easier for hunch than other networks as the objective is to add questions topics and answers to share with the community.

Extensive and well written community guidelines. One of those features that is usually left until the last minute and not really thought about but also very good for providing the overall community atmosphere. If guidelines are clear and well thought out they can add further personality to the site that will be picked up by users and encourage them to behave in the way the community requires.

Conclusion

In the field of social site design Hunch excels and in my opinion is top of the class. There is lot of theory and human psychology behind the site and it is obviously the work of seasoned web professionals.

It seems to boil down to personality and creating community cohesion. Which is much more of a human endeavour rather than a design or development one. Hunch displays a very human centered approach to it’s design, utilising well known human behaviour patterns and deploying them throughout the network as interactive features, combined with a genuine set of beliefs and values it’s the current benchmark for successful networks.

The Changing Typography of the Web

Author: Deborah Netburn
Published: May 4, 2010
Source: Los Angeles Times

Since the World Wide Web’s earliest days, whether you were shopping on Amazon or researching on Google or catching up on news at latimes.com, chances are you were looking at just one of four typefaces—Arial, Verdana, Georgia or Times—each formulated for computer monitors and trusted by web designers to display properly on your screen.

In other words, a seventh-grader writing a book report on Microsoft Word had more font choices than the person designing Esquire Magazine's website or the IKEA online catalog. But now that is about to change.

Beginning Tuesday, Monotype Imaging, a Massachusetts company that owns one of the largest collections of typefaces in the world, is making 2,000 of its fonts available to web designers. The move follows the San Francisco-based FontShop, which put several hundred of its fonts online in February. In just a few weeks, Font Bureau, a Boston designer of fonts, will make some of its typefaces available online as well.

Web designers, understandably, cannot overstate how big of a deal this is.

“It's like the 'Wizard of Oz' moment when they go from black and white to color,” said Tal Leming, a typeface designer. “It's going to be huge. It's going to be absolutely huge.”

But how much change will this online font explosion bring for nondesigners, particularly a public that rarely thinks about fonts at all? According to many designers, the change will be subtle—just how it should be. Good graphic design is generally meant to be invisible, they said, enhancing a reader's experience of the text but not getting in the way of it.

“It's like walking into a room that has bad lighting,” said Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York and author of “Thinking With Type.”

“Most people walk into the room and they know it is unpleasant. They know they don't feel good in the room, but they don't know why. An interior designer walks into the room and says, 'It's the lighting.' Typefaces work the same way.”

Shu Lai, vice president of the Society of Typographic Aficionados and interactive creative director at the Pereira & O'Dell ad agency in San Francisco, put it this way: “We don't necessarily want people to notice the change. We just want them to be happier.”

Traditionally, the fonts you see when you surf the Web are owned or licensed by Apple or Microsoft or whatever company is running the computer's operating system. If a designer wants you to see Caslon (one of the most popular typefaces for books, but unavailable online) when you go to her website, you must have Caslon installed on your computer; otherwise it will default to a font that you do have, such as Times. When it is really important to show certain lettering — for example, the Los Angeles Times' gothic-looking header — then a designer would essentially save the type as a photo or graphic. The correct font would display, but the words would not be selectable, searchable or resizable because according to the computer, they are an image, not text.

Now, if a designer wants you to see Caslon, she can purchase it from the font company that owns it or through services such as Typekit, which has a library of fonts available by subscription. That font will be delivered to the designer's website and to anyone viewing it, even if the font is not installed on the computer.

The designer is satisfied because you are seeing what she intended you to see, and the typeface designers are satisfied because they were paid.

Frank Martinez, a New York lawyer who specializes in intellectual property law and who represents several typeface designers and foundries, said the difference between having a font temporarily downloaded to your computer and having it installed permanently on your computer is like hearing a song on the radio versus getting a band's CD. “Either way you receive the music,” he said. “But if you hear it on the radio, you don't own it, and you can't play it again.”

A few small foundries started rolling out these temporarily downloadable fonts — the industry term is “web fonts,” as opposed to the “system fonts” installed on in your computer — in 2007, but only now have the major font houses followed suit. Typekit, which launched in November, has 2,000 fonts from several designers available. The company has more than 100,000 customers including the New York Times, Twitter, Gizmodo and the Wall Street Journal.

Designers have been calling for more fonts to be available on the web for years but faced some pretty significant obstacles. Popular web browsers such as Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox weren’t capable of delivering fonts to individual computers. Bandwidth wasn’t fast enough. Perhaps the biggest hurdle: People who create and license fonts worried that their work would be pirated or given away for free.

“We've all been around the Internet from Day One and we've seen what happened with the music industry,” Martinez said. “Technology is coming, we can't stop it, but we want to put in place a rational methodology so if a customer wishes to license a font they can. Rather than hold back the sea, we've built a boat.”

While most designers are excited about the opportunities all these new font options will afford, not all of them are convinced that it will lead to beautiful Web design.

“It's great, but it's also horrible,” Lai said. “Now if people want some random handwriting site, they can have one. It's going to go through growing pains, there's no question about that.”

Allan Haley, director of words and letters for Monotype Imaging, equates it to the desktop publishing revolution of the mid-’80s.

“We saw a lot of horribly typographic examples back then, and a lot of 'because I can, I will,' design,” he said. “People were mixing up typefaces and there was this horrible goulash, but it pretty quickly went away. You don't want to sell people short. I think we are seeing much better graphic communication on every level now.”

Stephen Coles, type director of FontShop and editor of the typography blog Typographica, is similarly hopeful.

“I was originally concerned because Web designers are not necessarily trained in typography, but I don't think it is going to be so heinous, “ he said. “I think Web designers are pretty savvy about what things work.”

Making Design Principles Stick

Author: Kate Rutter
Published: December 1, 2009
Source: Adaptive Path

Creating great experiences requires making choices that serve both users and the organization. And this means constantly making trade-offs. With so many possibilities and so many great ideas out there, it’s an ongoing challenge to make the choices and decisions necessary to design a coherent product experience.

So what tools are helpful in guiding decisions that will deliver a great product? One of the tools in the Adaptive Path tool belt is design principles. In this essay, we share what they are and how to keep them working for you as your product evolves.

Design Principles in a Nutshell

Design principles are short, insightful phrases that act as guiding lights and support the development of great product experiences. Design principles enable you to be true to your users and true to your strategy over the long term.

So what makes for good design principles? Effective design principles…

One of the questions we ask when drafting them is “Can all these principles as a group be applied to other products that are out there?” If the answer is “yes”, then we keep pushing on them. A healthy handful of principles means that a fair share of them must be unique to the product you are designing.

What do they look like? Here are some examples from past projects:

To see how a set of these play together, you can check out the design principles from the Charmr project and from Smart.fm.

We’ve found that an effective set of design principles helps teams find the right ideas and make the decisions needed to move forward with confidence.

Read full article here >

inside apple's ipad: adobe flash

Author: Daniel Eran Dilger
Published: February 20, 2010
Source: Apple Insider

Apple's new iPad is being criticized for lacking the capacity to render interactive content built using Adobe's Flash platform, but the company shows no sign of reversing course.

Since the iPhone debuted in 2007 without any support for Flash, Adobe has begun a revitalized campaign to breathe interest in Flash. This includes the announcement of a new series of Flash 10.1 runtimes for Windows Mobile, Nokia S60/Symbian, Palm WebOS, and Android phones (but not RIM's Blackberry). This suggests not having Flash will be a problem for the iPad.

Adobe has also staged a regular conversation amplified by analysts and pundits that essentially claims Apple is unfairly restricting choice in the market by not supporting Flash on its iPhone platform.

Additionally, while Adobe says it is supporting open standards for the web related to HTML5, it still maintains that Flash is "critical to the web" while it also works to cement as much new content as possible into the proprietary mold of its Flash platform and the related Flex and AIR initiatives.

Will Being Flash-free Hurt the iPad?

Adobe's arguments for Flash are difficult to support in the mobile realm. The iPhone has been wildly popular since its debut despite its lack of support for Flash. Apple's smartphone dramatically raised the bar for what customers expected in a mobile web browser. By doing this without Flash, Apple essentially redefined what the web should look like, at least on a mobile device.

While a few mobile devices can render Flash content designed for desktop PCs, Adobe's original strategy for Flash on mobile devices prior to the iPhone was Flash Lite. This subset of the Flash runtime is based upon Adobe's old Flash 7 (MX 2004) and ActionScript 2.0 bytecode, which uses an entirely different ActionScript virtual machine than Adobe's newer Flash 9/10 (which use ActionScript 3.0 bytecode).

On the desktop, Adobe simply included two engines for running both old legacy Flash and more modern content. That's not really possible or desirable in a mobile environment where the Flash runtime is supposed to respect the device's limited processor and memory resources.

Adobe basically delivered Flash Lite as a way to say Flash was playable on mobile devices without actually doing the work of bringing a real Flash runtime to each mobile platform. The company has had a difficult enough time just supporting Flash on Windows PCs and Mac OS X at the same time, let alone Linux, the PlayStation 3's NetFront brewer, the Wii's Opera browser, and the top several mobile platforms.

Adobe hopes to roll out Flash 11 with support for ActionScript 3.0 bytecode across all desktop and mobile platforms (apart from the Blackberry and iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) soon, but the fact that it will be missing on the fastest growing mobile platforms and two of the most popular smartphone platforms will definitely be a problem, as developers creating content simply can't reach the top mobile platforms using Adobe's technology.

The iPhone's lack of support for Flash does not appear to have had any impact on its popularity, but clearly has played a significant role in devaluing the importance of Flash in mobile devices, even if other platforms are enthusiastically embracing Flash. At the same time, if developers on other platforms use Flash to reach those mobile audiences, they'll being doing that instead of creating native software for Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and so on. That will also benefit Apple, because it will keep its iPhone App Store well ahead of rivals.

Read full article here >

5 marketing principles brands should embrace in 2010

Author: Frank Striefler
Published: January 13, 2010
Source: Advertising Age

Most of the marketing rules we lived by just five years ago are practically obsolete

Most of the marketing rules we lived by just five years ago are practically obsolete. The industry has faced more changes in the last five years than in the previous 50. Let's face it, there's no point in improving broken legacy models. Since necessity is the mother of invention, let's not waste this recession and instead use it to rethink how we go about branding in this new decade. Here are five key ways:
 
1. Create better realities: A Bain & Co. survey notes that 80 percent of CEOs believe their product to be differentiated, but only 8 percent of consumers agree. And Y&R's recent Brand Asset Valuator found a 90 percent erosion in brand differentiation over the last 10 years. These are not just sad examples of illusory superiority, but a staggering statement of our industry's failure to add value in the past decade.
 
It's critical that marketers realize that the product itself is the most powerful brand-building tool. We've all heard it before: "innovate or die." But today's hyper-connected society adds a sense of urgency to this broadly accepted mantra because mediocrity is getting extinguished with increasing speed via social networks.
 
Because reality always trumps image, marketing needs to create real value versus just adding a perceived value. Marketers need to shape the offer -- the product, service and experiences consumer buy -- not just communicate it. Marketing becomes the product and the product becomes the marketing.
 
2. Don't be design blind: With design driving innovation, we need to challenge our understanding of design.
 
The Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon noted that "everyone is a designer who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, equally challenged our perspective when he said, "Today's businesspeople don't need to understand designers better, they need to become a designer.'
 
The concept of design thinking has become highly regarded and commonly understood, but it has yet to infiltrate corporate culture. When design thinking is practiced, creative problem solving happens more successfully, leading to truly innovative business solutions versus the incremental improvements left-brain-driven analytical thinking leads to.
 
3. Be "brand led": While brands need to apply the same rigor the human-centric approach design thinking requires and while actionable insights are key, they're only half of the equation. Being solely consumer led does not allow you to be differentiated. Be brand led and consumer informed -- not the other way around.
 
Being brand led allows innovation to be true to, and guided by, the purpose of the brand, making it more credible and in line with what the brand is capable of.
 
4. Think 365 -- not 360: Shift from singular, consistent messages to multiple coherent ideas, from simplistic, one dimensional, reduced executions to complex, multidimensional, rich executions. Stop striving for perfection and go for progress by iteration. Join the movement shifting from campaign thinking to conversation thinking.
 
At the same time, a brand must build long-term platforms to become an indispensable part of people's daily lives by providing continued entertainment and utility. Brands can't afford to go dark any more. Instead, stimulate brand conversations with more initiatives, more often. Just like people, brands are a sum of their experience.
 
5. Be interesting: This you know -- but do you practice it? A brand that generates little or no conversations will be killed by one that does. In a world where it's more important what people say about your brand than what brands say about themselves, give people something to talk about.
 
Let's stop confusing excuses with reasons. Let's use this recession as a reset button. Let's make business more innovative and the world a more interesting place.

the science of color

Published: October 20, 2008
Source: Cymbolsim.com

If you use red to sell your product, you’re probably going to have more success. The same is true with yellow, which is the next best color choice. Advertisers and marketers have known this for many years, but scientists know it, too. The science of color says that reds and yellows make people want to buy things. Their heart rate increases and their pupils dilate just a bit. The colors excite these people. Sometimes an advertiser will use a color simply because it draws attention to a product. Other times color is used because it has a specific association with something the product relates to or something that the advertiser wants the consumer to think of. In the past colors were just chosen almost randomly, but the science of color is something that most companies and advertising firms take very seriously in today’s competitive market.

For companies who are concerned about health, green is a good choice. Because it symbolises nature and makes people think of plants and healthy, growing things and rebirth it only makes sense that these companies would want to use something that would connect with consumers in that way. The science of color isn’t just used for food, though. It can be used for hundreds of different types of products and it all depends on what kind of message the company wants to convey. This science also tells us that we should have no more than three colors per item when it comes to advertising and product packaging, because too many colors are confusing and can send a mixed message that consumers find unappealing. It is important that messages in the advertising industry be clear if products are to sell well.

The science of color can extend to people, too, and the colors that they choose to wear. If a person wears red or purple, he or she exhibits passion and strength and power. Some say that purple (not lavender) is the color of royalty. Yellow indicates a sunny disposition, and people who wear blue or green are usually calmer individuals – and they help make others feel calm, as well. Black and white are often used for elegance, such as men’s formal attire. Not everyone wears a particular color because it makes them feel good, but color is important in many aspects of our lives, and it can make a difference in how we feel and how we relate to our environment and others around us.

just how popular was google's super bowl ad, anyway?

Author: Michael Learmonth
Published: February 9, 2010
Source: Advertising Age

A Disconnect Between What Was Tweeted and What Was Watched

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Occasionally the disconnect between conversation on the web and, well, real conversation, becomes abundantly clear.

Take the Super Bowl. As you've no doubt heard, Google ran an ad in the third quarter, which wouldn't be remarkable except that Google never advertises on TV (except a few cable spots for its web browser Chrome last spring) and it had rarely done any brand advertising to consumers.

The search giant's ad got a flurry of pre-game press after Federated Media chief John Battelle reported on his blog it was coming. During and after the game, the spot was widely discussed, tweeted, blogged-about and re-posted on all manner of digital water coolers from Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn.

Several measures of online buzz ranked Google's "Parisian Love" as one of the top spots during the Super Bowl. Google's spot came in at No. 2 in web buzz to Doritos, according to media-monitoring firm Radian6 and ad agency Mullen due to its high percentage of "positive tweets." Google's ad led Zeta Interactive's measure of online buzz, with positive blog posts running 98%.

And Nielsen's BuzzMetrics, a measure of internet chatter, also listed Google as the second most buzzed-about ad from the Super Bowl behind Doritos. On Hulu, whose audience probably correlates better with TV, sentiment was a little more mixed, with the ad coming in at No. 2 among most-liked but only No. 4 among most-watched.

And yet, when USA Today charted the reactions of 250 people who were actually watching the Super Bowl rather that tweeting on Twitter, updating Facebook statuses or posting on blogs, Google's ad came in at No. 43 of 63. Google's ad didn't make the top 10 most-watched on TiVo.

Now, we all know that whether someone liked or disliked a spot is a bad proxy for effectiveness, but at a time when news organizations such as CNN seriously poll Twitter for sentiment on important issues, it's important to remember that microblogging tools like Twitter are a subset -- and a skewed one --of conversations dominated by those who shout the loudest.

"You are talking about an echo chamber; it's like walking into a casino and everyone wants Google to win," said Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, which does marketing for Microsoft's Bing. But he thinks Google's spot won't fare as well outside of it. "It required a high degree of involvement to watch it through. The most accessible spots were the Doritos spots, and they're slapstick."

Pete Blackshaw, VP of Nielsen's Online Strategic Services, said the ad clearly appealed to a wired crowd, and thus no surprise it scored higher online than elsewhere. But that online popularity can start to wag the dog offline. "Wired voices tend to bleed over into popular or mainstream perceptions, especially given the degree to which 'earned media' fills search results," he said.

What ads did people really want to watch during the Super Bowl? And how did Google's "Parisian Love" really rate among people watching the Super Bowl? For that we'll have to wait until later today when Nielsen puts out minute-by-minute ratings for the commercials, along with an IAG study of what people actually remembered from the ads.

style versus design

Author: Jeffrey Zeldman
Source: Adobe

Why understanding the difference is what it's all about

My father was a Sunday painter, and his art books played a formative role in my childhood. Like many kids, I was fascinated by sheer representation. I lost myself gazing at painstakingly rendered engravings of battling gladiators, picturesque villages, and Roman ruins at sunrise. I understood art to be synonymous with drawing well. The more painstaking the detail, the more lines in the etching or leaves on the tree, the better the artist in my childish, unformed estimation. Later, I discovered comic books. Still later, museums. Maxfield Parrish made me want to take drugs, and also made me realize I could never be a painter. Paul Klee seemed like a bad artist who couldn't draw. Andy Warhol was a cheater because he used assistants.

I do not pretend to understand art today, but I do know that my earliest impressions had little to do with the nature of art, and everything to do with pure visual sensation. Like Disneyland and the circus, art was spectacle. But you can only ride the Matterhorn so many times, and you can only chomp so much cotton candy, before nausea sets in. From sensation, I graduated to style. Steve Ditko's Spider-Man. Pop art. Rock, and then soul, and then punk album covers. I was a Style addict. I could not tell good from bad, but I knew what was cool.

"Many young web designers view their craft the way I used to view pop culture. It's cool or it's crap."

Many young web designers view their craft the way I used to view pop culture. It's cool or it's crap. They mistake Style for Design, when the two things are not the same at all. Design communicates on every level. It tells you where you are, cues you to what you can do, and facilitates the doing. Style is tautological; it communicates stylishness. In visual terms, style is an aspect of design; in commercial terms, style can communicate brand attributes.

It can also convey the designer's contempt for the subject matter. "This is boring, so here are some stripes and here's a drop-down menu, so you'll know I'm better than this stupid assignment." On this level, style is an underground language, from one peer to another, having nothing to do with the site's visitors or purpose. Indeed, this stylistic appliqué can interfere with the site's purpose. Then the usability gurus step in, blaming Design for the failings of stylistic fetishism.

Designers driven by Style can succeed if they are lucky enough to pick and choose projects that benefit from their stylistic obsessions. Most web designers do not have that luxury. But that doesn't stop them from applying the stylistic vocabulary of leading designers to the projects they do have to work on. And so we end up with e-commerce sites that resemble rave flyers, and informational sites embellished with occasionally dazzling but more frequently misguided and inappropriate intros.

The web used to look like a phone book. Now much of it looks like a design portfolio. In fact, it looks like the design portfolio of 20 well-known designers, whose style gets copied again and again by young designers who consider themselves disciples. Distinctions between graphic design and communication design are lost on these designers. As is the distinction between true style, which evolves from the nature of the project, and derivative pastiche, which is grafted onto many projects like a third arm.

When Style is a fetish, sites confuse visitors, hurting users and the companies that paid for the sites. When designers don't start by asking who will use the site, and what they will use it for, we get meaningless eye candy that gives beauty a bad name — at least, in some circles.

Trouble is, we live in a society obsessed with surfaces (and afraid to peer beneath them). In a consumer culture where we buy $200 sneakers because they look cool and Beck's song was used in the commercial, flash and dazzle are the highest-prized commodities of all.

For some clients and too many young designers, multimedia Flash projects have become synonymous with web design. If it doesn't sing and dance, it must not be good — and it certainly isn't cool. Great work is being created in Flash (SWF), and it's receiving overdue recognition in award shows — particularly in traditional, high-profile award shows, where "the digital stuff" precedes the multimillion-dollar TV commercials. Judges expect TV commercials to have a brilliant concept and higher production values than most commercial films. Naturally, they expect web sites to blow them away, too.

Boundary-busting, stylistically baroque experiments built with the latest technology will continue to win awards as long as judges continue to view them in the latest browsers on wide-screen G5s and Pentiums with T1 connections. And, it goes without saying, they will win these awards only if they are prize-worthy in their graphic design and programming. We're not talking about bad design, here. We're talking about design at the highest levels — but design of a certain type only.

Most of my colleagues design sites like this. My jaw drops when I witness their achievements, and I cheer when they take home their well-deserved prizes. But I also worry.

"Not enough designers are working in that vast middle ground between eye candy and usability where most of the web must be built."

I worry because this type of design, which is appropriate in certain settings and inappropriate in many others, is the only type of web design achieving recognition. Thus it is the type of design young designers are emulating, not only in their personal projects (which is great), but also on commercial projects where it may cause harm.

I worry because young designers who confuse style with design are learning to copy their heroes' technical tricks and stylistic flourishes, but not necessarily learning to communicate in this medium. "Bullet Time" is great for "The Matrix," but not for documentaries. And since much of web design is informational — or is supposed to be — the wholesale grafting of other people's stylistic achievements onto informational sites does not advance the medium; it just makes it confusing.

I worry because there are designers who will never evolve their own, individual styles, let alone learn to evolve brand-appropriate styles for particular projects. Because recruiters lack critical vocabularies, and will place people whose portfolios demonstrate a knowledge of "what's cool" in jobs where they will be miserable. ("With your talent, you'll turn that place around.") Because eventually traditional designers who do understand branding and communication design, and who do know the difference between Style and Design, will enter this market and displace some young designers who have never had the chance to understand the craft they practice.

I worry about the medium, because not enough designers are working in that vast middle ground between eye candy and hardcore usability where most of the web must be built. And there are fewer and fewer incentives for web designers to toil in these fields, since this type of work pleases web users but wins absolutely no recognition from the industry, aside from a paycheck. ("My God, it loaded so quickly and worked so well, even in IE3 on my Dad's old Dell machine." You know how awards show judges are always saying things like that? Neither do I.)

Most of all, I worry about web users. Because, after ten-plus years of commercial web development, they still have a tough time finding what they're looking for, and they still wonder why it's so damned unpleasant to read text on the web — which is what most of them do when they're online.

As long as our society values Style over Design, surface over substance, this situation is not going to improve. Of course, I think the same every four years, when I have to vote.

10 small business lessons from zappos

Author: Rohit Bhargava
Published: December 22, 2009
Source: Openforum.com

Stories of Zappos, the online shoe retailer, and how they have pioneered a new way of doing customer service, using social media, and selling products online are now all over the business and trade media. From their policies such as paying new recruits to quit within their first 60 days (arguing it costs less in the long run) to having a manifesto of ten principles that guide their customer service team, Zappos has a model that many are trying right now to replicate.

Whether or not you think that the Zappos model may work for your business, there are definitely some lessons you can take away from their 10 guiding principles. Here they are along with some thoughts on how you might be able to apply them to your small business:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service. This is all about doing more than the expected. Solving a customer's need is the baseline and of course you always want to try and do that through customer service. Delivering a "WOW" is open to interpretation, but certainly means doing more than the basics.

2. Embrace and Drive Change. In many businesses, people are afraid of change. Change means more work. Change means you might do something wrong and potentially lose your job. Embracing change, however, is about adapting to your circumstances and not being afraid. Innovation comes from embracing and driving change.

3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness. Nothing is as empowering for employees as encouraging them to have fun and do things in a different way. Fun and wierd are not two words you typically see in any sort of customer service group — yet for Zappos it is a strong part of why they have such a fiercely loyal workforce.

4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded. Encouraging creativity is something that can often be frowned upon because you are trying to enforce rules — but this flexibility is also a big part of making employees feel empowered to do their job and think outside of what their job tells them to do.

5. Pursue Growth and Learning. The most successful organizations are ones that allow their people to grow their knowledge in order to do their job better. Making education, training and knowledge building a priority in your business sends a message that you care about working smarter and are willing to support your employees who try to find ways to do that.

6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication. Honesty is the key word here, as it is easy to think it is better to keep specifics of your business to yourself and not share them with your employees. Being honest about the state of the business can help you to get more commitment from your employees to do what needs to be done to make it better.

7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit. Most people would agree that a team should be like a family, but in practice they don’t act that way. A family spirit means a level of trust and dedication that should be your goal at your business. Positivity is something that comes with that.

8. Do More With Less. Too often, it is easier for employees to rely on resources being provided by "the company" in order to get their jobs done. Encourage them to think about how they can do more with less, and then reward them for it. Those dollars they end up saving the company can really add up.

9. Be Passionate and Determined. There really is no substitute for passion when it comes to getting things done. Sometimes you can inspire that passion with employees, but the best way to get it is to hire people who are passionate themselves about what they do and about what you do.

10. Be Humble. Humility is attractive for employees and for customers. It means that success doesn’t go to your head and that you can maintain a real perspective on what is truly important. This is also one of those qualities that comes from the top, so to inspire humility in your company means that you need to live up to that lesson yourself.

book of tens: best media/marketing tech innovations of the decade

Published: December 14, 2009
Source: Adage.com

Broadband Penetration

At the end of 1999, less than 1% of U.S. households had broadband internet access, according to the Broadband Forum; in second quarter 2009, more than 75% did. It hasn't just been good economically The Economist has estimated a 10% increase in broadband penetration boosts GDP by about 1.2% in developed countries — it's also good for marketing. Without broadband, there'd be no online branded entertainment, rich-media ads or user-generated video.

Search Marketing

Google debuted in 1999 — and its system of matching advertisers with searchers, known as AdWords, came a year later. Today, search marketing is a $25 billion global market, and search generally has forced marketers and media companies to rethink the way they approach their businesses. Google's auction-based buying system doesn't look just at keyword prices but also the quality and relevance of the ad — a precursor to a world where marketing is an invitation and not an interruption.

Social Networks

While word-of-mouth always existed, the rise of social networks helped marketers, social scientists and behavioral economists create digital maps of that influence. Facebook popularized the term "social graph," referring to the network of a Facebook user's friends and then their friends' friends, and so on, and these networks became the basis for the idea that something could very quickly "go viral." Still to be determined? How much revenue these networks can generate.

DVRS

First, the remote control was going to kill TV, then the VCR. But it was the DVR that truly changed everything, ultimately forcing the networks and Nielsen to concede that just because your audience is watching a show doesn't mean they're watching the ads. Under agency pressure, Nielsen made the biggest change in TV ratings history by reporting viewing of the ads themselves, not the shows. Thirty percent of American TV households are now DVR-equipped, according to Nielsen.

iPhone

Overnight, Apple's iPhone realized many of the long-promised but undelivered potential of the mobile web. Now, nearly three years later, it's finally getting some credible competition from a new generation of smartphones. Meanwhile, marketers are just scratching the surface of what these devices can do. Several generations of apps-as-advertisements have debuted to mixed results, but an even bigger opportunity awaits in location-based marketing, mobile coupons, barcodes and augmented reality.

Ad Networks & Exchanges

Today, advertisers use a myriad of ad networks and exchanges to buy demographics or behaviors across the web. The separation of inventory from media led to two general strata in online advertising: premium ad space, sold largely directly by publishers, and remnant, comprised of inventory publishers cannot sell or effectively monetize on their own. What's next? Demand-side networks and real-time ad optimizers such as Rubicon Project are shouldering their way in.

Twitter

The micro-blogging service is the flavor of the moment, destined to become Facebook, Friendster or something in between. But what Twitter represents is the explosion of free, cloud-based publishing and communications tools that flourished during the decade, putting the power of distribution in the hands of, well, anyone. Like many successful social applications, marketers have fully embraced Twitter; the question is if they will pay for any service — advertising or otherwise — that Twitter has to offer.

GPS

Location data has been around for decades, but it wasn't until the latter part of this one that it was regularly opened up to developers who could create a wide range of utilities and tools with it. Seventy percent of the 30 million U.S. iPhone users use GPS, and already nearly every marketer-built mobile app taps into it. GPS phones combine a person's location, inferred intent and personal affinities to aggregate and deliver relevant information about the real world surrounding them at any given moment.

Flash

Like a lot of transformative technologies of the noughties, Flash was developed in the '90s. Initially it was a tool that allowed easy, web-based animation. But it became the standard that allowed video and interactive ads to flourish on the web. Without Flash, there would be no YouTube, no Hulu, and no Mac vs. PC ads on the masthead of NYTimes.com. Microsoft is challenging Adobe's dominance in video with Silverlight, and spent heavily to make it the video tech of NBC's Olympics in 2008.

Open APIS

Without the API — that's application programming interface — we wouldn't have one of the biggest stories of the past three years: the proliferation of the app, and then, the app economy. Since Apple's iPhone platform API became available to developers, they've created 100,000 apps. While a fair share are mindless, others provide entertainment, utility and stickiness for Facebook and Apple, and a healthy return considering neither company had to tie up precious developer hours to create the apps.

study: consumers value traditional attributes in online brands

Author: Gavin O'Malley
Published: November 19, 2009
Source: Online Media Daily

While Google remains consumers' favorite online brand, Yahoo and Amazon are not far behind, according to a new report from Forrester Research.

"In the minds of their fans, the top online brands exhibit very traditional attributes such as trustworthiness, helpfulness, and relevance, all at the expense of more-predictable tech-friendly characteristics such as innovation and speed," reads the report authored by Forrester analyst David Card.

According to the report, direct-to-consumer brands in categories including media, retail, financial services, and travel — and consumer electronics, given its technology angle — should position themselves against competitors' weaknesses, and deliver their brand messages through site experiences that complement offline marketing.

For the report, Forrester surveyed more than 4,823 U.S. consumers about their favorite online brands or companies; what brand attributes make them popular, and how brands can make themselves more online-friendly.

Online and off, Google recently ranked seventh in an annual brand value study conducted by BusinessWeek and Interbrand. Coca-Cola topped that list for the ninth year running. Online, however, Google has gained ground in the past two years, with 44% of online adults rating Google their favorite in 2009 compared with 36% in 2007.

Two years ago, Yahoo held a strong second place behind Google, with a clear gap between it and third-place Amazon. While Yahoo has lost a little luster — dropping from 32% to 27% — it's nothing like MySpace, which has faded dramatically from 13% to 5%.

Back in 2007, meanwhile, Facebook was just gaining momentum, and Forrester didn't even offer it as a choice. Now it's three times as popular as MySpace.

Google is the favorite brand for each of the age groups Forrester examined. Among young adults ages 18 to 24, Facebook ranked second at 36% to Google.

MySpace triples its share with young adults at 16%, but can't match Yahoo, at 23% — or YouTube, at 18%.

With the exception of Facebook, the other top five brands all do well with older age groups, maintaining or modestly bettering their share. Notably, Microsoft's popularity directly correlates with age, ranging from a low of 5% among young adults to a high of 24% among seniors (65 and older).

Among the wealthy, Google is by far the most popular brand. Indeed, 55% of those making more than $100,000 name Google their favorite. Amazon, at 31%, is next — and more weighted to higher-income households than eBay.

Facebook fared evenly in the space — which Forrester found surprising, given that it's largely considered a "youth brand."

"Trustworthy," "helpful," and "relevant" are the top brand attributes, according to Forrester. Analyzing the phrases consumers assigned to their favorites revealed four tiers of characteristics. The most popular brands did a good job on the first tier: establishing trust, helpfulness, and relevance to their fans.

They also did well with the next tier, which comprised value, fun, and quality. The seemingly online-friendly characteristics fell into a third tier of attributes — and things such as prestige, authenticity, and "cares about the customer" either didn't move the popularity needle or have been neglected by the top online brands.

More than half of the consumers who called Amazon one of their favorites said it was trustworthy; 40% of Microsoft's "fans" used the same description. Google, Yahoo, and eBay also did well in that attribute, which combined to drive "trustworthy" to the top of the charts.

Half of Google's fans believe it to be helpful, compared with 42% of Yahoo's. The two shopping brands — Amazon and eBay — do well on value, while Facebook and MySpace are both social and fun.

understanding users of social media

Author: Sean Silverthorne
Published: September 14, 2009
Source: Working Knowledge

If the ongoing social networking revolution has you scratching your head and asking, “Why do people spend time on this?” and ”How can my company benefit from the social network revolution?” you've got a lot in common with Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski.

Only difference: Piskorski has spent years studying users of online social networks (SN) and has developed surprising findings about the needs that they fulfill, how men and women use these services differently, and how Twitter — the newest kid on the block — is sharply different from forerunners such as Facebook and MySpace. He has also applied many of the insights to help companies develop strategies for leveraging these various online entities for profit.

Addressing network failures
"Online social networks are most useful when they address real failures in the operation of offline networks,” says Piskorski.

They can address some basic search failures: “It's hard to know what my friends are up to, but online I can catch up with them quickly.” But they can also fix bigger search shortcomings, such as those related to establishing new relationships.

“If I am looking for someone who can help me with my start up, I would ask my friends if they know such a person, and if they don't, I would ask them to inquire with their friends. The problem is that those friends of friends don't always have an incentive to help, so they won't work on my behalf. But here is where LinkedIn comes in handy—there I can go and search through the network of my friends of friends and find the person I am looking for.”

Online social networks also can improve people's ability to use offline social networks as “covers.” This is very salient on LinkedIn. There, people display a lot of information about their careers, which makes them available to headhunters and other employers as passive candidates. But they also establish relationships with others to stay in touch with peers and to make new contacts. This network allows them to establish plausible deniability that they are not looking for a job, even if they are.

Empirical evidence
With these general ideas of why people use these sites, Piskorski examined weblogs of social networking sites (not LinkedIn) to see what people did when they were online. “I just wondered why people spend so much time on these sites; what do they do?”

The biggest discovery: pictures. “People just love to look at pictures,” says Piskorski. “That's the killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people's profiles."

Why the popularity of photos? Piskorski hypothesizes that people who post pictures of themselves can show they are having fun and are popular without having to boast.

Another draw of photos (and of SN sites in general) is that they enable a form of voyeurism. In real life there is a strong norm against prying into other people's lives. But online enables “a very delicate way for me to pry into your life without really prying,” the researcher says. “Harvard undergrads do it all the time. They know all about each other before they meet face to face. 'Oh, you're that guy that did that internship in D.C. last summer.' ”

Piskorski has also found deep gender differences in the use of sites. The biggest usage categories are men looking at women they don't know, followed by men looking at women they do know. Women look at other women they know. Overall, women receive two-thirds of all page views.

“This was a very big surprise: A lot of guys in relationships are looking at women they don't know," says Piskorski. “It's an easy way to see if anyone might be a better match.” Again, online networks act as cover.

Then came Twitter
Piskorski says these findings do not hold for one network: Twitter.

Looking at who uses Twitter, which restricts users to 140-character messages, Piskorski and student-researcher Bill Heil (HBS MBA '09) found that 90 percent of Twitter posts were created by only 10 percent of users. This was not surprising, he says, because the technology uses words without photos to communicate.

“Only the people who are willing to put themselves out there publicly in words to people who they may not know will use Twitter. Some people will find this incredibly appealing, others will find this too scary.”

“Women actually say things, guys give references to other things.” But the remarkable finding was the gender dynamics. According to the research, there are more women on Twitter than men, women tweet about the same rate as men, but men's tweets are followed by both sexes much more than expected by chance.

“That was stunning because on all these other social networks you see the opposite,” Piskorski says.

Piskorski and Heil are now doing a follow up study to see whether this is because there are no pictures on Twitter or because men and women say different things. Early results suggest that women create fewer links in their tweets than men. “Women actually say things, guys give references to other things.” But even accounting for these differences, the researchers still saw differences between how men and women are followed, perhaps pointing to a fundamental representation of the role of men and women in society.

“No one uses MySpace”
To continue on the issue of online representation of offline societal trends, Piskorski also looked at usage patterns of MySpace. Today's perception is that Twitter has the buzz and Facebook has the users. MySpace? Dead; no one goes there anymore. Tell a marketer that she ought to have a MySpace strategy and she'll look at you like you have a third eye.

But Piskorski points out that MySpace has 70 million U.S. users who log on every month, only somewhat fewer than Facebook's 90 million and still more than Twitter's 20 million in the U.S. Its user base is not really growing, but 70 million users is nothing to sneeze at.

So why doesn't MySpace get the attention it deserves?

The fascinating answer, acquired by studying a dataset of 100,000 MySpace users, is that they largely populate smaller cities and communities in the south and central parts of the country. Piskorski rattles off some MySpace hotspots: “Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Florida.”

They aren't in Dallas but they are in Fort Worth. Not in Miami but in Tampa. They're in California, but in cities like Fresno. In other words, not anywhere near the media hubs (except Atlanta) and far away from those elite opinion-makers in coastal urban areas.

“You need to shift your mindset from social media to social strategy.”

“MySpace has a PR problem because its users are in places where they don't have much contact with people who create news that gets read by others. Other than that, there is really no difference between users of Facebook and MySpace, except they are poorer on MySpace.” Piskorski recently blogged on his findings.

From social media to social strategy

Corporate marketers by and large struggle with how to use social networking sites to reach potential customers, says Piskorski, who advises companies on this subject. The problem is that execs think of online social networks as social media and treat it as another channel to get people to click through to a site.

It doesn't work that way.

For one thing, findings show that people don't click through on advertising on social networks. “A good analogy is to imagine sitting at a table with friends when a stranger pulls up a chair, sits down, and tries to sell you something while you are talking to your friends. You will not get far with a strategy like this.”

“To be successful, you need to shift your mindset from social media to social strategy," he continues. A good social strategy essentially uses the same principles that made online social networks attractive in the first place—by solving social failures in the offline world. Firms should begin to do the same and help people fulfill their social needs online.

To continue the earlier analogy, “You should come to the table and say, 'Here is a product that I have designed for you that is going to make you all better friends.' To execute on this, firms will need to start making changes to the products themselves to make them more social, and leverage group dynamics, using technologies such as Facebook Connect. But I don't see a lot of that yet. I see (businesses) saying, 'Let's talk to people on Twitter or let's have a Facebook page or let's advertise.' And these are good first steps but they are nowhere close to a social strategy.”

10 branding trends for 2010

Author: Function Ingredients Staff
Published: November 2, 2009
Source: Functional Ingredients

Though US economists are cautiously predicting an uptick in consumer spending next year, the post-recession landscape will present brand marketers with new challenges, new engagement realities and new rules, and will increase pressure to prove how and why branded products deliver value, according to Dr Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys.

Using what Passikoff calls 'predictive loyalty metrics' gleaned from consumer data his firm collects, Brand Keys analyzed the likely consumer values, needs and expectations for the next 12-18 months and offered the following 10 trends:

Value is the new black: Consumer spending, even on sale items, will continue to be replaced by a reason to buy at all. This may spell trouble for brands with no authentic meaning, whether high-end or low.

Brands are increasingly a surrogate for value: What makes goods and services valuable will increasingly be what's wrapped up in the brand and what it stands for.

Brand differentiation is brand value: The unique meaning of a brand will increase in importance as generic features continue to propagate in the brand landscape. Awareness as a meaningful market force has long been obsolete, and differentiation will be critical for sales and profitability.

'Because I said so' is over: Brand values can be established as a brand identity, but they must believably exist in the mind of the consumer. A brand can't just say it stands for something and make it so. The consumer will decide, making it more important than ever for a brand to have measures of authenticity that will aid in brand differentiation and consumer engagement.

Consumer expectations are growing: Brands are barely keeping up with consumer expectations now. Every day consumers adopt and devour the latest technologies and innovations, and hunger for more. Smarter marketers will identify and capitalize on unmet expectations. Those brands that understand where the strongest expectations exist will be the brands that survive and prosper.

Old tricks don't — and won't — work anymore: Consumers are on to brands trying to play their emotions for profit. In the wake of the financial debacle of this past year, people are more aware than ever of the hollowness of bank ads that claim 'we're all in this together' when those same banks have rescinded their credit and turned their retirement plans into case studies. The same is true for insincere celebrity pairings such as Jerry Seinfeld & Microsoft or Tiger Woods & Buick. Celebrity values and brand values instead need to be in concert.

Consumers won't need to know a brand to love it: As the buying space becomes even more online driven and international (and uncontrolled by brands and corporations), front-end awareness will become less important. A brand with the right street credibility can go viral in days, with awareness following — not leading — the conversation.

It's not just buzz: Conversation and community is increasingly important, and if consumers trust the community, they will extend trust to the brand. This means not just word of mouth, but the right word of mouth within the community. This has significant implications for the future of customer service.

Consumers talk with each other before talking with brands: Social networking and exchange of information outside of the brand space will increase. This — at least in theory — will mean more opportunities for brands to get involved in these spaces and meet customers where they are.

Engagement is not a fad; it's the way today's consumers do business: Marketers will come to accept that there are four engagement methods: the platform (TV, online), the context (program, webpage), the message (ad or communication), and the experience (store/event). At the same time, they also will realize that brand engagement will become impossible using outdated attitudinal models.

Passikoff believes that accommodating all of these trends will require some companies to undergo significant paradigm shifts, which likely will be painful but necessary. Either way, change in the brand marketing pace will be inevitable. "Whether a brand does something about it or not, the future is where it's going to spend the rest of its life. How long that life lasts is up to the brand, determined by how it responds to today's reality," he says.

Recent research from Penn State University found that one in five Tweets is brand related, and appears to support the belief that there is an increasing desire for brand engagement and customer service on more community-based media.

Another study, from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, similarly proclaims that "value is the new black," predicting that post-recession shoppers will transform into "value hunters" as they look for true value and meaning from brands, rather than just discounts.

10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips

Author: Ross Kimbarovsky
Published: October 28, 2009
Source: mashable.com

Capacity—especially to plan and execute effective marketing strategies—is a big challenge for every small business. In this post, I’ll offer 10 suggestions for how small businesses can supercharge their marketing efforts by leveraging social media. For each suggestion, I will discuss a basic strategy—for those who simply want to get their toes wet, as well as an advanced strategy—for those who want to spend a bit more time and go a bit deeper in their social media marketing efforts. These tips are based on my experience leveraging social media marketing for my company, crowdSPRING.

I suggest you begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once you’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts.

1. Facebook
Facebook offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for small business. Facebook now has over 300 million users, and while that seems like an outrageous number for small businesses to be targeting, Facebook offers a very powerful platform on which to build a presence. If you’re not already active on Facebook; you should get started right away.

Basic Strategy: If you haven’t signed up for Facebook yet, you absolutely should as soon as possible. Once you’ve signed up, you should also consider securing your company’s username. Be aware, however, that if you reserve your company name for your personal account, you won’t be able to use it for your Business Fan Page (more on those in the Advanced Strategy), so you may want to create a Page before registering your company’s name. Fan Pages have special rules regarding usernames, which you can read here.

You should do one other thing: search for your competitors and evaluate their Facebook presence. What types of Pages have they built? How many fans or "friends" do they have? Spend 15 minutes (per competitor) looking at their posts, photos and/or videos to understand how they’re using Facebook.

Advanced Strategy: You may already have a personal Facebook account, but how do you extend that presence for your business? You have several options. You can register a Business Account—which is designed for a very simple presence on Facebook. There are many limitations on such accounts, however, so you’ll most likely prefer to have a Business Fan Page. A Business Fan Page lets you create a page where customers or fans of your business can register as a "fan"—expanding the presence of your business (because your updates will also flow to their pages). You might also want to consider running hyper-local ads on Facebook.

2. Twitter
Twitter has grown tremendously over the past year. For some small businesses, it offers an incredible marketing platform. BusinessWeek’s recent profile of 20 ways businesses use Twitter might give you some ideas about how you can leverage Twitter for your business.

Basic Strategy: If you haven’t signed up on Twitter yet, you should sign up today and reserve an account in the name of your business. While you might ultimately tweet in your own name, you’ll want to have the option to tweet from a business account. More importantly, you don’t want your competitors to register your business name. Twitter has put together a simple guide to help you understand what Twitter can do for business. You can also check out Mashable’s Twitter Guide.

Next, you should spend 15–30 minutes on Twitter’s homepage, doing basic searches to become familiar with the type of content available on the service. For example, if you are operating a small gift basket business, do some searches for various terms and phrases such as "gift basket," "gifts," "gift basket business," etc. You should also search for the names of your competitors to see whether they’re on Twitter and if they are, how they’re using it. And don’t forget to search for your small business name—your customers may already be talking about you! Once you become comfortable with the content that’s already available and how your competitors are using Twitter, you can begin thinking about a strategy for how you’ll leverage Twitter for your business.

Advanced Strategy: To truly leverage Twitter, you’ll want to learn and use a few more advanced tools. This includes desktop and mobile Twitter clients like TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Tweetie. Desktop clients give you more flexibility and more control over your Twitter strategy than you’ll have on the Twitter website. Among other things, you’ll be able to pre-define searches (so that you can monitor certain keywords, including your business name) and group people you follow so that you can minimize the noise and focus on the real content. You might also consider using a web tool like Twitterfall, which will allow you to define (and color-code) various custom searches that you can review from time to time, and also to follow trending topics. For example, I use Twitterfall to identify helpful graphic design and industrial design resources to share with the crowdSPRING community.

3. Company Blog
Although there’s more attention focused today on social networks than on company blogs, blogs continue to offer great value for small businesses.

Basic Strategy: At a minimum, you should consider reserving a domain name for your blog—if you don’t already have a custom domain for your business. If you’re comfortable enough to set up your own blog, that’s generally the best way to proceed—although this requires a bit more technical knowledge (many hosting providers offer a 1 step easy setup for blogs that will automatically install WordPress for you). You can also setup a blog directly at WordPress.com (it’s easier to do, but you don’t have full control over everything that you would on your own site).

One easy alternative is to set up a simple blog at Posterous—a place to post stories, photos, videos, MP3s, and files. There are pluses and minuses to all of these options—you should take some time to compare them and do what makes sense for your business. I caution you only about spreading yourself too thin.

Advanced Strategy: Now that you’ve decided to start or improve your small business blog, how do you build an audience for it? It all starts with great content. Decide on a focus for your blog, and write awesome content that people will enjoy. For example, some months ago at my company, we decided that we wanted to write more about small business issues, so we’ve been writing original posts focusing on issues affecting small businesses. Think about your expertise and more importantly, think about the things that you’re interested in writing about. A blog requires a long term investment of time (and resources), and you don’t want to be stuck writing about things that bore you.

You’ll also want to consider how you can make it easier for your readers to help promote your content. For example, install helpful plug-ins, such as a TweetMeme button, which makes it easy for people to retweet your posts on Twitter. Don’t be afraid to experiment with plugins to add to the functionality of your blog, but keep it simple. You want to keep the blog focused, and easy for your readers to use.

4. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business oriented social network for professionals, and it’s huge, with nearly 50 million users from over 200 countries.

Basic Strategy: Once again, you’ll want to at least reserve your business name (or your personal name) so that others can’t use it. Similar to the way you might start exploring Facebook and Twitter, you should look around on LinkedIn to see how your competitors are using the service. You might also look up your customers and connect with them.

Advanced Strategy: LinkedIn has some powerful features that most people don’t use. For example, you can encourage your customers, clients or vendors to give you a "recommendation" on your profile. Recommendations are useful because they’ll make you and your business more credible with new customers. If you’re a roofer, for example, ask your customers to recommend you after a successful job. You’ll find such recommendations useful – particularly since your LinkedIn profile will come up high in search engine results. I recommend that you read Chris Brogan’s post from last year discussing the elements of a good LinkedIn recommendation.

Another strategy involves the many subject matter groups on LinkedIn. Find some groups that have a connection to your small business and become involved in the conversations. Answer questions when you can, and help to establish yourself as knowledgeable about specific topics related to your business. There are many small business and general marketing groups that will be very useful resources for you, and if there isn’t a group that interests you, consider starting one.

5. Participate On Other Blogs
It might seem counter-intuitive for you to spend your valuable time by participating in discussions on other people’s blogs, but the payoff can be very valuable. Remember that it takes time to build a reputation and establish your credibility, and you can’t always expect everyone to come to you. Sometimes, you have to go out and build your own credibility and reputation.

Basic Strategy: Identify 2-3 blogs in your industry, or those that focus on small business, and get into the habit of regularly reading the content and participating in the discussions. Whenever you can, try to add value by sharing a personal story about what has/has not worked for you. Get to know the writers—they’ll be valuable contacts for you. One strategy for identifying good blogs is to use Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, which is a directory of popular blogs across many different subject areas. For example, for blogs focused on crafts, you might follow this page on Alltop. If you want to participate in blogs focusing on small business issues, you might start at Technorati’s list of the Top 100 Small Business blogs.

Advanced Strategy: Once you’ve spent some time on other blogs and have participated in discussions, you’ll find that you’ve built a level of credibility and trust, based on your participation. You should consider reaching out to the blog owners and asking whether they’d allow you to guest post an article on their blog (kind of like this post). This is a nice way for you to get in front of a bigger audience, and many blog owners will invite guests to post from time to time. Agree on a topic in advance and provide a draft of your post sufficiently in advance of the publication date to give them an opportunity to review.

Alternatively, ask if they would consider guest posting on your blog. Since you’re looking to attract more readers (and more potential customers), either option works well for that purpose. Don’t worry so much about going after the A-list blogs right away. There are many excellent blogs and it might take a bit of time to build your reputation to such a level that you’ll have opportunities to post in the top blogs. That doesn’t mean you should wait, though—make opportunities for yourself and offer to guest write whenever you can find a new audience. I recommend you read How To Guest Post To Promote Your Blog from blogging expert Darren Rowse.

6. Mobile Social Networks and other Local Strategies
Yelp publishes millions of reviews about local businesses. Foursquare is a combination city-guide, friend finder and competitive game. It allows users to "check in" by cell phone at a local venue and announce this via other social networks such as Twitter.

Basic Strategy: Yelp, Foursquare, and other mobile social networks can be powerful marketing channels for small businesses. You should at the very least register accounts on the popular services and get to know them. If you have a restaurant or a retail store, for example, you’ll want to get to know Yelp pretty well. You can set up a business account on Yelp (no cost), which will let you answer questions about your business, track how many Yelp users view your business page, add information about your business, and announce special promotions. Similarly, you’ll want to sign up with Foursquare to take advantage of local advertising opportunities. Using Foursquare, you’ll be able to push promotions to potential customers who’re in the vicinity of your business.

You should also consider other local strategies. For example, you can add your business to Google Maps, or update your listing to include additional details. You can do the same on Bing.

Advanced Strategy: If you believe that your business can truly benefit from a presence on Yelp, Foursquare, or similar networks, you’ll want to do more than just register accounts with those services. For example, Yelp allows you to include a website URL for your business. Nearly all sites will let you upload photos to your profile, and photos will make your profile more trustworthy.

You can also proactively use Yelp and other similar services to promote your business. Ask your customers, friends and family who have used your services for a review on Yelp. You can encourage reviews by running promotions or discounts—offering free appetizers, for example, to a customer who will write a review about their meal at your restaurant (or to one who already wrote a review), or a small discount to a customer who hires you for carpentry work and mentions that they found you through Yelp.

Similarly, you can find ways to promote your business using Foursquare and similar networks. If you have a TV display in your store connected to a computer, you can display the people who are checking in. You can offer specials or discounts to the person who visits your location the most (this is similar to frequent buyer cards that many businesses have used for years).

Don’t forget to also consider how you can improve your use of other basic local strategies. For example, many small business websites are optimized for specific keywords or subject areas, but are rarely optimized for local searches. If you have a gift basket business, you’ll want to be sure that users searching for gift baskets in your geographic area will find you.

7. Comments and Conversations About Your Company
Whether or not you are a party to the conversations, people will talk about your company. How do you monitor and, when appropriate, join those discussions?

Basic Strategy: There are five simple steps you can take today to begin paying attention to conversations about your business.

First, set up Google Alerts. Google Alerts are free email updates from Google search results about any topic you’re interested in tracking. For example, I track, among other alerts, the names of our competitors, the name of our company, and certain other terms I believe are important to my business. Anytime Google adds something to its index that mentions my company or the other terms I’m tracking, I receive an immediate email notification with a link to that item. Alerts can be set up for web, blog, news, video, or groups searches.

Second, review the results in your web analytics data. At my company, we use Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that provides detailed and very useful information about your website traffic and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. When we run social media campaigns, we’ll often attach tracking tags to those campaigns so that we can properly monitor them in Google Analytics. This is important because without such data it will be nearly impossible for you to evaluate the success of your social media marketing efforts. But analytics are important for another reason: they’ll tell you which sites are sending traffic to your site.

Third, search Facebook. In August, Facebook rolled out a real-time search engine (the search box is on the top right of any Facebook page). One effective way to take advantage of Facebook search is to search for your company’s name to see who is talking about your company and what they’re saying. In several months, you’ll be able to search Facebook updates directly from Bing, which will be integrating Facebook public updates into Bing’s search results.

Fourth, search Twitter. You currently can search Twitter for real-time results (if you’re not logged in, just go to Twitter’s homepage). One easy way to monitor conversations about your company is to search for your company’s name. You can also currently do this on Bing, which is indexing Twitter updates. Very soon, you’ll also be able to search Twitter updates (and other social media content) via Google’s Social Search (Social Search was rolled out to Google Labs recently, as an experimental product). You can also use Twitter clients like TweetDeck or Seesmic to save searches and monitor in real-time whenever someone uses a specific word or phrase in a tweet.

Finally, take advantage of services that will, similar to Google Alerts, push data to you. I use and like BackType, which is a real-time search engine that indexes online conversations in thousands of blogs and social networks. I use BackType primarily to keep up with conversations in blogs. Every day, I receive emails from BackType with links to comments that include the keywords I’m monitoring. Without these alerts, I would be unable to monitor so many blogs, and my ability to respond to posts about my company would be very limited.

Advanced Strategy: If you’re having trouble keeping track of your various search strategies, you should consolidate your efforts and leverage one of the many applications that will help you monitor the social web. I have not personally used these services, but they appear to be held in high esteem by knowledgeable people who have. For example, truVOICE provides keyword monitoring of the social web with an emphasis on blogs and forums, while Radian6 pulls in a lot of information from the social web, analyzes it, and provides consumer sentiment ratings for your brand. A good resource to learn about paid social media monitoring tools is Mashable’s post Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For.

In addition to monitoring, you’ll need to decide how, when, and where you’ll engage in conversations. It’ll be very difficult for you to engage in conversations everywhere, so you should spend some time learning the various networks and deciding where you should focus your efforts. Looking at your website analytics data—if you own an online business—will help a great deal because it’ll help you to better understand where your traffic is coming from. If much of your traffic originates from Twitter and Facebook, for example, you’ll want to spend more time on those services.

8. Multimedia
Multimedia (video, photos, audio) is a bit more complicated for many small businesses to execute, but can provide excellent social media marketing opportunities.

Basic Strategy: YouTube has been constantly evolving and adding features that make it an attractive social site for small businesses. Although you don’t have to produce videos to participate on YouTube, you should consider whether simple videos can help your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re already posting videos to your blog, you can upload them to YouTube to reach a broader audience, and embed the video content in your blog posts. YouTube has also been adding more comprehensive activity updates for its users and has made pretty powerful analytics tools available so that you can evaluate the effectiveness of your video content.

Similarly, you could start a Flickr account for your business and post photos of your customers or your products (or both). Flickr offers a place where people can share photos with others, but also has discussion groups, many focused on local markets, that offer additional opportunities for you to market your business. You can also consider setting up your own Internet radio talk show using BlogTalkRadio, which is another way to use multimedia to speak directly to your customers. Get creative with it—own a restaurant? Start a call-in show for people to ask cooking questions. Are you a piano teacher? Perhaps you could start a show to talk about classical music.

Advanced Strategy: Advanced strategies using multimedia are complicated and typically benefit from using experienced consultants. One effective way to leverage video, for example, is to create content that has the potential to become viral. While I don’t believe you can set out to make a viral video (an incredible amount of luck is typically involved), there are a number of things you can typically do to build awareness about your small business using viral video (these strategies are beyond the scope of this post). Once you’ve created good content, you’ll want to distribute it using as many social networks as you can.

When you consider how you can leverage social networks, think about whether each network provides an audience or a technology solution (or both). For example, YouTube provides both a huge audience and a solution for uploading video files. Flickr can also provide both an audience and a technology solution, but not for every business. While your customers might not be on Flickr, you can still use Flickr as a place to store and tag your photos, and then distribute those photos to other social networks where you prefer to invest more time and effort.

9. Maintain Brand Consistency
We’ve discussed only a small handful of social networks. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of others, and new ones spring up every day. That means that your customers will have many different ways to find you. But they won’t find you if your brand is scattered across social networks using different usernames and profiles. Let’s review some strategies for making sure that your brand is consistent across social networks.

Basic Strategy: Usernames and user profiles are already showing up in search results. Do a search for your company’s name on Google right now—if you also have a Twitter account with the same name, odds are pretty good that the Twitter account will appear very high in the search results. This means that having a consistent username across the various social networks is very important. At a minimum, if you haven’t registered your company name on the major networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), you should do that today. For many small businesses, their user accounts on social networks will be the highest ranked pages in search results.

You should also evaluate your email and web presence strategies. For example, are you using a Gmail email address when you can very easily be using a custom email address with your company name as your domain? Compare: restaurantname@gmail.com with john@restaurantname.com—which looks more professional? Similarly, are you hosting your blog at WordPress.com instead of on your own custom domain? Little details can make a difference.

Advanced Strategy: Things get a bit more complicated when you consider that there are many different social networks, and it’s tough to predict which of them will become popular and which will fail. Use a service such as namechk or KnowEm to see whether your username is available on dozens of popular social networks and if it’s not, to see which username could be registered across all social networks.

Maintaining name consistency is important, but isn’t enough by itself. You’ll also want to make sure that your brand speaks with a common “voice” across the social networks. This may be easier said than done. Social networks differ in significant ways from one another and present unique challenges for interacting with customers and potential customers on those networks.

Speaking with a common "voice" doesn’t mean that only one person should execute your company’s social media marketing strategy, but it does mean that everyone who speaks on behalf of your company in social media reflects your brand in a consistent way. I recommend you read Shel Israel’s recently published book “Twitterville,” for excellent tips and stories focusing on how large and small businesses can develop a consistent voice in social media.

10. Leverage Combinations of Social Media Tools
One of the best ways for small businesses to leverage social media marketing is to use various social networks in combination with each other.

Basic Strategy: At a minimum, you should do several things today to cross-market across the various social networks you’re most likely already using. Here are three suggestions:

First, connect your Twitter account to Facebook so that your tweets will appear in your public updates on Facebook. This will let you leverage your time on Twitter to also update your Facebook fans.

Second, connect your LinkedIn profile to your WordPress blog. LinkedIn allows you to publish, in your profile, synopses of the most recent blog posts on your blog. This application will automatically update your LinkedIn profile with your most recent blog posts.

Third, integrate Twitter tools into your blog. I like and use the TweetMeme retweet button on my blogs to make it easier for users to tweet about the blog posts. I also use the ShareThis tool to enable readers to quickly share content on multiple social networks.

Advanced Strategy: Advanced strategies require careful planning/execution and appropriate tools. In nearly all cases, your goal is to maximize the value of your content. For example, if you’re posting videos on YouTube or Vimeo, you can blog about those videos on your company’s blog. Then, you can tweet about the blog posts on Twitter (which I assume is integrated with your Facebook account). This way, you’ve taken one piece of content and found a way to leverage it across multiple social networks.

You’ll also want to consider ways that you can optimize the distribution to multiple social networks at the same time. Leverage tools to help you do this. For example, Ping.fm lets you update multiple social networks all in one go. Keep in mind that not all social networks will make sense for every business. Learn which networks are best for your business and find ways to leverage combinations of those networks to make your marketing more effective.

Conclusion
Social media marketing can be a phenomenal marketing channel for small businesses. I hope that the strategies I’ve outlined above provide a starting point for you to explore how you can leverage social media marketing for your small business.

And if you have additional resources to share or other helpful advice that’s worked for your small business (or thoughts about things to avoid), please take a minute and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.

Recovering Before the Recovery

Author: Angela Hribar
Published: October 16, 2009
Source: marketingpower.com

The important question during a downturn isn’t whether or not the economy will recover—it will; it always does. What’s important to ask is whether your company will be in a position to surge as the economy begins to grow. To a large degree, the level of your success will depend on your marketing efforts and capabilities - what you have done during the downturn and what you put in place now to win business during the recovery. You will need to make strategic decisions about choosing new media, entering new markets, and positioning products.

Success will also depend on the timing of your efforts. Now is the time to establish marketing plans for the recovery—formulate strategies, design campaigns, make media choices, justify expenditures—so you are ready to go with an approved marketing plan as your company’s budgets open up and you have marketing funds to invest.

Recover from Marketing Cutbacks
If you were forced to reduce your marketing exposure during the downturn, it’s essential that you regain momentum early and quickly. Your visible presence in the market through sustained and frequent marketing will give your company a jump start before the market becomes overcrowded with messaging from competitors. Then, as demand begins to increase, you will have an advantage because potential customers will have been continually exposed to your messaging and have an affinity to work with you.

If you did cut back, you likely need to do more now to catch up. You will need to remind customers and prospects that you are here, a strong and viable company ready to serve their needs. Even if you did maintain marketing during the downturn, you must continue to increase your marketing efforts because the competition for customers is only going to increase as the economy continues to recover and companies hungry for new business compete aggressively.

Plan Now to Ensure Success
A typical marketing cycle looks something like this: establish marketing strategy, identify marketing objectives, define target audience, research media options, conceive campaigns, calculate costs, craft messaging, gain executive endorsement and marketing funds, execute campaigns, measure effectiveness, refine tactics.

As every marketer knows, that’s a lot of work. If you save it all until budgets open up and your company is ready to invest more in marketing, you’ll end up scrambling to put together marketing plans and seeking budget approval. By the time you actually get out there in the market, you’ll be well behind competitors who got an early start.

To emerge from the downturn first, consider this six-point checklist for success:

Build marketing plans and justify expenditures now. Don’t wait to hear that funds are available for marketing. Proactively plan your marketing efforts as the recovery is underway and gather evidence to justify your expected marketing expenditures.

Prioritize marketing investments. You won’t be able to start everything at once, which is why it’s more important than ever to prioritize your marketing investments where they will deliver the most return. Seek integrated marketing programs that use multiple tactics to maximize your exposure and opportunities for sales leads.

Explore new markets. Your products and services may be a good fit for one of the faster-recovering sectors. Manufacturers that can display their products and services simultaneously across multiple markets will have the best opportunity to gain new customers. Online industrial ad networks, e-newsletter advertising and vertical search engines are effective ways to target specific customers in new markets.

Update marketing materials and fine-tune messaging. Make sure your marketing collateral and Web site are up-to-date with current messaging and the latest product versions. If you choose to enter new markets, you may need to revise some messaging and re-purpose existing case studies, white papers and other materials. Do it now to avoid long lead times.

Emphasize measurement and ROI. To get any marketing plan approved going forward, you will need to demonstrate accountability. Today, the most effective marketing programs are online programs whose performance can be measured and analyzed. Online programs are built around impressions, clicks and conversions. You can easily see what is working and focus marketing dollars on the most successful programs, which will help reduce waste while increasing results.

Work with new media partners. Preparing targeted, online marketing programs for the economic recovery may be new to you, and you shouldn’t have to do it alone. This is a good time to consult with an experienced online media partner that understands and has the attention of the audience you need to reach. Discuss your marketing objectives and have them show you an integrated marketing program that will help you achieve your objectives and provide measurement and accountability.

It Won’t Be “Marketing as Usual”
As an enlightened marketer, you know that you must be prepared to think differently about your approaches to connecting with customers, prospects and markets. Even before economic problems hit, your customers, prospects and markets had moved away from traditional media sources such as printed trade journals and in-person tradeshows, and toward online media such as online search, e-newsletters, virtual events and banner advertising. Your audience has already migrated online, and will continue to stay online as the economy recovery continues.

Choose an appropriate mix of targeted online programs that offer measurability and ROI, and provide evidence to support marketing decisions. Only in this fashion will you be able to emerge from the downturn in a strong position to drive growth.

When you hear something enough times, it may be a fad. But when you start to see email spam about it, you know it’s a trend. That’s the case with marketing trends such as email marketing and social media. The problem with trends is that it’s usually a lagging indicator which means to seize the opportunity you may need to be an early adopters to reap the rewards.

3 Brand Marketing Trends That Will Continue in 2010

Author: Eric Tsai
Published: October 15, 2009
Source: designdamage.com

When you hear something enough times, it may be a fad. But when you start to see email spam about it, you know it’s a trend. That’s the case with marketing trends such as email marketing and social media. The problem with trends is that it’s usually a lagging indicator which means to seize the opportunity you may need to be an early adopters to reap the rewards.

If adopting new strategy and implementing fresh tactics sounds too risky, just take a look at the troubled newspaper and magazine companies and you’ll realize what I mean. Similar to technology innovation, brand strategy is taking on an increasingly strategic role focusing not just on the bottom line but the ability to produce desirable financial outcomes. It’s no surprise that the most innovative brands also fail more frequently, it’s the nature of the tried-and-true culture.

However, it takes discipline, research, analysis and creativity to find the right fit that works for your organization. Whether you’re promoting your personal brand or your corporate brand, here are the 3 brand marketing trends to look for in 2010:

1. Brands Must Become More Social Online
It’s no secret that B2B or B2C customers have been talking about your industry and your brand. Now with social media it’s simply going to be “on the record” somewhere over the internet, searchable and conversable. If you can deal with customers in person, why couldn’t you deal with them online? Engagement with your audience creates brand awareness, increase brand loyalty and the opportunity to get feedback that can help to improve your product and services. Social engagement encourages crowdsourcing, use it wisely it can energize both you and your audience.

Provide transparency in what you do and demonstrate authenticity in what you say are the keys to building your online “street cred.” Organizations must look at the bigger picture and realize the emerging trend of social business branding and how it will impact all aspect of the company from internal collaboration to external engagement. Becoming more social for brands means establishing a collaborative infrastructure within the organization to support the core brand strategy. There is no doubt that consumer wants to engage through social media so if brands don’t get into it, consumers will leave.

Ideas for action: Learn the tools of the trade in social media and (please!) put someone that cares about your brand to the task. Research and identify where you customers are at talking about you, listen and monitor before you jump in. Analyze the conversation around any product, topics, or category and identify any detractors and advocates to take actions. More importantly learn to communicate well online, respond on time, be clear and to the point. Provide value when interacting with your audience, focus on helping not selling and always deliver relevant and effective communications. In addition, make sure you have a policy in place so you have a focused, consistent and cohesive approach in reacting to the situation regardless of which platform you’re using. The bottom line is that social media engagement without governance is a recipe for disaster.

It’s possible that your customers may not be on an open social network but on several discussion boards (forums/BBS), a private professional community, or even a popular blog where comments serve as dialogues. speak to your customers directly to identify where they get their information, use a survey and provide rewards if needed.

Myths to consider: We can’t quantify the ROI (return on investment), so let’s just not measure them. First of all, there are ways to measure all the marketing activities whether they’re meaningful to your organization is another story (yes you want the meaningful ones!). The important thing is to cultivate accountability in your actions so you get results that can give you the insight to make real informed decisions. My recommendation is to rank your marketing priorities that are most likely to pay off or generate the impact your want first. If your strategy is to aim for awareness and exposure, then put reach and volume first instead of experience and frequency. Keep in mind that you need to be able to quantity to a certain degree so you don’t drain your marketing resource and budget.

2. Shift in Value Perception Creates Opportunities for Brands
Generic brands are nothing new especially in the grocery store where the house brands are marketed and sold side by side with the leading brands. The economy has shifted the perception of value fundamentally into a do-more-with-less and value-for-money mode. According to the latest IRI Times & Trends Report: Game-Changing Economy Taking Private Label to New Heights, “private label unit share has grown 1.2 points to 22.8% and dollar share has grown 0.7 points to 17.6% across all outlets in the past 12 months.” Simply put, private label brands are gaining momentum across all tiers of product categories from premium tier to value tier because they have the advantage to compete on quality as well as price. This represents a significant opportunity for less known brands (startups, SMBs, personal brands) to compete for new businesses while leading brands still has their eyes on cutting costs (overheads, infrastructure) and reorganizing operations. In addition with the explosion of social media, unknown brand can go viral instantly followed by awareness because brands no longer control the buying space or the conversation, it only needs credibility to explode.

Ideas for action: This is the time to take your brand to another level especially with more cost effective tools and technologies, why not take a hard look at your current setup for operations, sales and marketing? Reallocate your investments and prioritize your marketing, branding or product development strategies. Many out-of-your-budget marketing avenues have dropped in price dramatically, check your local advertising channels you may be in for a surprise on how cheap it is now to run radio, print and even TV ads. It’s a good time to build your email marketing campaign, run promotion events or even redo your old website so it’s more social media friendly. You can even try partnering with someone locally to share the cost or co-brand some offerings together. Another idea is to create a new brand allowing you to expand into other categories or verticals utilizing the resources you already have. Brand extension can help secure new revenues and reinforce brand strength without compromising your current brand equities.

This is the time to drive appeal and awareness to build recognition. Use today’s digital communication platforms to collect meaningful customer data, conduct surveys and optimize your digital presence via social networks. Reevaluate your brand strategy, be innovative with your products and services, create a culture that reward your people and update your performance metrics.

Myths to consider: We don’t have the time, money or resources for marketing and nobody is buying! If you don’t have a plan to convert data to actionable insight, a process to collectively review the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, how do you know what you’re doing works? If you don’t invest in marketing or advertising, how are you going to differentiate the unique meaning of your brand? Without differentiation you will loose pricing power and competitiveness. If your brand isn’t even in the run for consideration, how will your customers know that you exist? And people are spending, just selectively in a timely matter. According to the American Express Spending & Saving Tracker, “amid their (consumers) cautiousness we are seeing some areas where people are willing to increase spending.” There is a shift in how businesses and consumers are expressing their priorities, but that doesn’t mean you should be reactive, in fact I would argue that being proactive now will benefit your ROI in the long haul.

3. Community Building is Now a Priority
Moving forward, brands will have to focus on fostering their own community to own the communication distribution network. Building a community is about connecting and sharing experiences, I’ve outlined this previously specifically in social networks, which still applies to other platform as well. The fact is that the adoption of new communication platform (ie. email, radio) has led to a new wave of user experience in which the context (ie. direct mail, website) and the message (ie. ads, PR) must stay relevant. If the community is trusted by the members, they will extend the trust through word-of-mouth that could mean more opportunities for brands to increase buying frequency using content or conversation marketing tactics.

Keep in mind that you should get involved in the right channel and passively direct customers to your community. Effective engagement can also lead to permission-based marketing. According to a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by ExactTarget, “One-half of consumers said unsolicited messages were unacceptable even from companies they did business with regularly. That was up from about one-quarter in 2008.” When your audience allows you to contact them, you essentially have a direct line to access a targeted customer base.

Ideas for action: For low barrier to entry options, look into building a community using one of these: Facebook fan page, Twitter account, Google group, LinkedIn group, Yahoo groups; or create your own social network (with blog, discussion forums etc.), Ning, KickApps, ThePort, SharePoint, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Posterous, Moveable Type, SocialText, SixApart, and Pringo just to name a few. If you’re tech or internet savvy, you can use a combination of them but I suggest to focus on becoming versed in 1-2 first then expand to others. Personally, I’m using a combination of a WordPress blog (you’re reading it now) and Twitter (@designdamage). You can also use video sharing sites like Youtube and Vimeo to help funnel traffic to your community. Another import tip is to leverage RSS feeds to push your message from one-to-many networks.

It’s easy for someone to discover if there’s any participation in your community or not so if you’re going to have a community, you need to be there for your audience. Dedicate a set amount of time to regularly check the activities in your community, answer questions, drive conversations and connect with members. People have short attention span especially on the internet, so make sure you work on your message (goes to number 1 above) and keep your audience interested. The goal is to mobilize brand advocates to drive word-of-mouth for greater engagement.

Myths to consider: We’ll just hire an expert and let them do the work like how we outsource web design and SEO. Although we’re at the age of outsource-anything today and get it done tomorrow, it’s hardly a sustainable long-term strategy especially when it’s about your brand’s core value and mission. Too often we forget that people are at the center of any holistic effort to improve business performance and accountability. Outsource to gurus may get things done, but you need to take the time and effort to work with them not to mention they’re hard to find, afford and keep. I’ve clean up some mess for clients before where the outsourced expert created more problems than what they were hired to solve. This is why so many brands fail to update their websites regularly or refresh their SEO campaigns. Take the time to educate yourself some of the trends will benefit you in the long run, or get your team involve and split the workload across multiple heads.

The takeaway: The evolving marketing and media ecosystem is putting pressure on brands to innovate and evolve, or risk becoming extinct. These trends will be here to stay and is essential for brands to be successful moving forward.

what mobile payments will mean for the marketing world

Author: Rita Chang
Published: October 05, 2009
Source: adage.com

Unlike Credit Cards, Cellphones Allow Real-Time Contact With Consumers

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- What happens to marketing if mobile phones replace credit cards as a form of payment? It's something marketers need to start figuring out now. Even as more and more tests roll out across the world, marketing strategy is lagging behind new technology.

In Japan, mobile payments have been in use for about four years, and about 20% of consumers are using it. But merchants have only recently tied loyalty programs to mobile payment. McDonald's, for example, introduced a loyalty and payment program last year in Japan that lets customers choose their meals, redeem coupons and pay for purchases with their mobile phones.

Starbucks, the first national merchant to introduce mobile payments on an iPhone app, is piloting the feature in 16 stores in Seattle and Silicon Valley. Customers can use their iPhones as they'd use a standard Starbucks-issued gift card -- the app lets them pay for their lattes, using a 2-D bar code, refill their account and check their balance remotely.

It's an early, and somewhat clunky, example of mobile payment in the U.S., but it's pointing toward a future in which marketers condition consumers to view the phone as a wallet and a way to talk to customers one-on-one.

"If you've got a real-time device in the users' hands at point of sale, this gives you the opportunity to provide promotions and incentives at the time it matters and influence buyers' behavior," said Drew Sievers, CEO and cofounder of mFoundry, which supplied the technology that powers Starbucks' mobile payment feature. (Starbucks currently has no plans to offer mobile coupons to those app users.)

Big investments
So far, mobile-payment programs -- and complementary loyalty programs -- aren't widespread because companies are wary to invest the time and money to integrate their programs on the handset, according to Michael Keferl, a Tokyo-based managing director at CScout, which studies consumer trends. The programs can be expensive and complicated to launch; McDonald's program, for example, took nearly a year to go live.

The global standard for contactless technology -- likely to be Near Field Communications -- involves equipping a phone with a chip that contains the consumers' credit credentials and can talk to the POS device. While contactless mobile payment is most prevalent in Japan, it's also in use in South Korea and NFC payments will be tested all over the world in the coming years. Citibank, Vodafone and Mastercard, for example, are now testing in India.

With contactless payment, Japanese consumers can pay for their purchases by tapping their phones against a point-of-sale device, and merchants and brands can use in-store displays or posters to invite users to download coupons and offers. A point-of-sale reader, tied to a server, can sync the contents of the checkout basket to the coupons collected on the mobile wallet.

In earlier NFC payment trials of up to 600 consumers in Singapore, Taiwan and Canada, coupon redemption rates have ranged between 20% to 50%, compared to the 2% to 5% paper coupon redemption rate, according to Khan Mohammad, president and founder of ViVOtech, an NFC software provider working with Citibank on the pilot program in India. And when Japanese consumers transferred their prepaid convenience-store cards to their mobile phones, card usage rose an average of 40%, said Mr. Mohammad, citing data from Sony, which backs contactless payment technology in Japan.

"People will use a technology if it's easy and accessible; putting coupons on the phone is a lot easier than cutting out coupons and then pulling them out of a wallet, he said.

On the horizon
The infrastructure is also taking shape in the U.S.; about 130,000 merchant locations have NFC devices set up to read the 100 million contactless credit cards that have been issued, but NFC's mobile adoption has been stalled in the U.S. because the players can't agree on the business model, said Mr. Mohammad, who is working with North American carriers.

Operators are starting to see opportunity, however, in serving merchants that want to send their mobile-marketing messages and programs over their network and slowly but surely NFC-enabled phones are hitting the market. Juniper Research predicts that 123 million NFC-enabled handsets, equivalent to 46% of today's U.S. wireless subscribers, will come online in North America by 2013. And global mobile payment transactions are expected to reach $110.1 billion in 2013, at a 105% compound annual growth rate, according to Dublin-based Research and Markets.

Most consumers, 84%, are interested in mobile payments, per a Yankee Group survey. Next year, North American carriers will gear up for a limited commercial rollout involving up to 100,000 NFC-enabled phones, Mr. Mohammad said.

The real promise in migrating loyalty and payment to mobile is that it lets retailers track customer behavior and make relevant offers.

"When you have dumb plastic, there's no communications vehicle with the consumer," said Kevin Grieve, CEO of Denver-based Mocapay, a technology provider that enables merchants' loyalty and gift card programs for mobile. "Once you mobile-enable these programs, you open a communication channel between the consumer and the brand."

how brands can build a successful app strategy

Author: Kunur Patel
Published: September 23, 2009
Source: adage.com

12 Lessons From Benjamin Moore, Bank of America, Kraft and Others

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- More than a year into the age of the iPhone app, brands are starting to get on board -- and best practices are emerging. At Wednesday's Apps for Brands event in New York, marketers taught other marketers what's worked for them. Here are 12 lessons culled from the day, during which MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman and marketers from Kraft, Bank of America, Benjamin Moore and AKQA convened to talk about what they've learned from their early, successful forays into the space.

Apps must be real-time
People's expectations of apps, especially paid ones, are high. When it comes to streaming video or stats, don't provide content on mobile that's inferior to what the web or TV offers. It must update in real time. "The notion of the one-minute delay is unacceptable," said Bob Bowman, president-CEO, MLB.com. "If you don't have real-time content, you're dead."

Make it easy for consumers to pay
Take advantage of properties such as iTunes and mobile providers such as Verizon that have the infrastructure and back-end know-how to take payments from app users. When it comes to MLB.com's paid app, the vast majority of purchases come through tried-and-true mobile-commerce providers instead of directly through MLB.com. "Partner with people who know how to collect money," said Mr. Bowman. And when it comes to figuring out how much to charge, it's easier to drop the price than to increase it, or move from free to paid. "If it doesn't work, take it down, rework it, try it again," he said.

Integrate feedback quickly
People will point out flaws in your app on the web. That feedback is an asset. Adjust your app as quickly as possible and send through an update. "All feedback is important, but on our app it's especially valuable," said Mr. Bowman. "When we went from offering two free [live-streamed] games to one, we heard about it immediately. We went back to two games the next day."

'This is not the wired web'
Mr. Bowman urges that marketers and publishers to not make the same mistakes in mobile that have been made on the internet—and that means forcing ads into every spot they can. On mobile, click-through isn't the only metric that matters. Are people recommending your app? Or trashing it on Twitter? "We measure click-throughs, but we don't measure pissed off," said Mr. Bowman, referring to when MLB put an intrusive ad into its At Bat app.

People will pay for value…
Zagat's iPhone app is the 77th top-grossing app in the Apps Store, out of 58,000. MLB charges $9.99 to download the At Bat app, 99 cents to watch streaming video of games; it has 400,000 users. And Kraft charged 99 cents for its iFood app, promoting the notion that what it's offering was something of value. Additionally, pointed out Ed Kaczmarek, Kraft's director of innovation and new services, making an app paid allows you to offer future in-app commerce and subscription opportunities that just aren't available in a free app.

…But free works to drives sales for your endemic product
Benjamin Moore's Ben Color Capture app was built to build brand awareness for its subbrand Ben, as well as to drive traffic to stores. "We haven't accomplished anything until we sell paint," said Carl Minchew, director of product development, Benjamin Moore. The app lets users snap a photo of something in the world and than matches colors in the photo to paint shades in the brand's library. If that inspires a paint purchase, the app uses GPS to direct users to the nearest retailer.

Apps need to be part of an integrated message
AKQA, a digital agency that has created apps for clients such as Gap, Nike and Smirnoff, sells apps as part of marketing ideas and integrated campaigns, instead of as one-off projects, said Rei Inamoto, the agency's chief creative officer. The app then becomes integrated with the agency's thinking or larger programs, instead of something a freelancer or developer could do cheaper.

Utility, frequency and viral distinguish long-term success
They are the qualities that get an app noticed in the new app economy, said Aileen Lee, of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Partner, who works with the firm's $100 million iFund. For apps to become a sustainable business, they need to provide instant utility, have a high frequency of use and encourage word of mouth and network pass-along. How rare these qualities? IFund has funded only seven mobile ideas out of more than 3,300 proposals. Kraft's Mr. Kaczmarek is also valuing frequency: "Engagement is better than downloads," he said. "I'd rather have 100 engaged consumers than 1,000 downloads."

People find apps through other people
"Word of mouth is powerful in the app world," said Matt Galligan, CEO and co-founder of SimpleGeo, formerly CrashCorp. "If you talk to someone with similar interests, you can find the right app for you." Similarly, Mr. Kaczmarek said that word of mouth, social media and PR made up the most successful marketing for the brand's iFood app. Kraft also used e-mail, traditional print and online banners to drive app downloads. "Your point of differentiation is so important to cut through the clutter," he said. "No matter how small that point may be, it's important to highlight it."

Use existing assets to market your app
Reach out to your existing customers to trial your app using proprietary media, as both Kraft and Bank of America did. The latter promotes its iPhone app on BankofAmerica.com and via its phone-based customer service force, which advises callers to use the app to access 24/7 information on their accounts.

App marketing needs to be targeted
"We're not doing big blowout campaigns for our app" said Jen McDonald, digitial marketing exec, Bank of America. "We're being very targeted on mobile." And that kind of advertising—such as targeting mobile ads to particular types of handset users—has resulted in at least 50,000 downloads of Bank of Amercia's mobile app, she said. As the number of apps in the App store has grown, that strategy won't change. And rather than spread the ad dollars allocated to promoting an app out over a longer period of time, do shorter marketing blitzes, advised Tony Nethercutt, VP-sales at AdMob. That will create surges in downloads. "Getting ranked in the app store is critical—it's the No. 1 way people discover new apps, but that ranking is based on downloads," he said.

Don't discount the iPod Touch
"It's a sleeping giant," said Kraft's Mr. Kaczmarek. According to AdMob metrics, for example, iPod Touch users download 16.4 free apps and two paid apps per month; the average iPhone user downloads 7.6 free and 2.6 paid apps.

what is design?

Author: Joao Da Silva
Published: September 28, 2009
Source: keycss.com

Many, many, many, people blogged about this topic before but this is my view on the subject WHAT IS DESIGN?

Starting with keycss.com as an example, some visitors might consider this design, boring, dull, without enough features etc… However, in the other hand some people might consider this design minimalist, straight to the point, usable with the essential features required for a blog.

Well design is what each and every mind decide on what is presented to us humans, and while studying design i had a teacher which use to say that our main objective as designer is to create an emotion around our design work and make it simply attractive.

Design is everywhere, and everyday we capture tons of information that surround us, but just a few elements became memorable, and for that reason their is a very popular quote in the design community : ” LESS IS MORE “.

Why less is more?

Simple, everything comes down to the a single word MESSAGE. Yes focus on the message that you want to transmit and make your designs, photography or any graphic element express itself, because if you add to much clutter onto your designs you have the risk of not getting the message across and then it will be just another element in populated landscape.

Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things is a book which i recommend to any designer in general as it explains human reaction to design in a very detailed way.

10 social media strategies from top brands

Author: Lois Kelly
Published: September 21, 2009
Source: imediaconnection.com

What have the big companies learned about succeeding in social media? At Beeline Labs, we recently interviewed marketing and public relations executives at major companies like Cisco, Best Buy, GE, and Intuit to find out how large corporations are creating social media monitoring and engagement strategies. We also wanted to learn about common mistakes, surprises, emerging best practices, and any advice they might have for other companies. Here are the top 10 pieces of advice.

1. Start with an objective that's tied to a priority. For example, initiate monitoring to gain insights for planning a new product launch, or focus engagement on solving a customer service issue. The scope will be manageable, you'll be able to measure the impact in ways valued by others in the company, and it will be easier to gain cross-functional collaboration for expanded initiatives.

2. Involve your agencies, but don't outsource to them. This was one of the hottest topics across all interviews. Several of the interviewees said, "Don't leave this to an external agency. Get your own social media experts. You need to own it; it's your lifeblood." The role of the agency is more to answer specific questions—use it to find the conversation (on an issue or product category), the conversations that are taking place, and the most influential bloggers on a particular topic. The people engaging in social media conversations should be people in the company, according to those interviewed for the study.

3. Employee social media guidelines/policies should reflect corporate values. Every company interviewed emphasized that the starting points for developing social media guidelines are the company's existing values, culture, and codes of conduct. Social media guidelines should be an extension of these, they advised. We also found that the greater the corporate culture of trust and collaboration, the more companies encourage employees to freely engage in social media conversations on behalf of the company.

4. Don't just jump in. Begin by spending time listening. This will provide context and help you understand how to engage.

5. Education beats "legislation." At many companies, the team responsible for social media monitoring and engagement spends significant time educating and coaching others in the organization. This is done both formally, through quarterly events, published guidelines and "how to" materials, and informally, as issues and opportunities arise. These teams also use social media tools like internal wikis and forums to share case studies, emerging best practices, tips, and techniques.

6. The human element is essential. Technology providers and companies both agree that tools alone won't work. You need human analysis by the people closest to the company to extract business meaning from the social media conversations. Technology cannot analyze emotional relationships between a brand and a consumer. While everyone seems to agree that there's a vital role for human analysis, exactly who does it—and how—is an evolving question.

7. Share the data. The goal (and challenge) of using social media is to coordinate incoming information and insights and get it into the right hands quickly. Most companies are now looking at technology platforms with workflow capabilities that ensure the right people across different functions see relevant posts as they happen. These companies also see the need for new types of reports that provide meaningful insights to different corporate functions, as opposed to simply providing overall data. Social networking analytics will become invaluable in understanding behavior, interests, influence, and customer and employee engagement.

8. Invest as if it matters. "People need to get over the idea that '[social media] is free!'—that it's dirt-cheap and you don't need any resources," said one marketing executive. Effective monitoring and engagement that deliver business value require tools and talent, especially as companies look to scale their early experiments into ongoing business processes.

9. Don't worry about "bad experiences." Almost all companies interviewed said they were surprised at how few, if any, negative experiences had occurred from engaging in social media. While legal and management often resist social media strategies because of concerns that someone may say something negative about the company, this has rarely been an issue.

10. Involve legal from the beginning. Show the legal team the business value of participating in the online conversation and the risk of being silent, said those interviewed. Use specific examples and enlist them in creating ways to protect the business while gaining the advantages of social media engagement by doing things such as establishing social media guidelines for all employees. For thorny issues, consult with legal as you would consult with them on other potentially controversial or material issues.

interview with rob janoff, designer of the apple logo

Author: Ivan Raszl
Published: August 3, 2009
Source: creativebits.org

The Apple logo is one of the most famous logos in the world. Apple fans not only put this logo on their vehicles to show their loyalty, they go to the extreme of tattooing themselves with it, a level of dedication very few brands achieved. The logo is admired for it's simplicity and many meanings that people attach to it. It's timeless. For 30 years it has been unchanged and I expect at least another 30 before anything drastic will be done to it.

When Jean Louis Gassée (executive at Apple Computer from 1981 to 1990) was asked about his thoughts to the Apple logo he answered: One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn't dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope, and anarchy.

There are many theories about this logo and many of them are just that. Find out the truth, read the interview with Rob Janoff, the designer of the original Apple logo, who will tell you all about his design.

CB: When did you design the original Apple logo with the colorful stripes?
RJ: Early 1977. The agency got the account (Apple) sometime January. The logo was introduced with the new product Apple II in April of that year.

CB: Were you working for an agency at the time?
RJ: Yes, I was working for an advertising and public relations agency called Regis McKenna and I was an art director.

CB: Have you met Steve Jobs?
RJ: Sure. The first time must have been that first year. It was before he was getting his company started. So it was just Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula. His was the elder guy who corralled these young entrepreneurs. And I think it's because Mike Markkula is how the account wound up at our agency. He was friends with my boss Regis McKenna.

CB: Did you get a brief from them?
RJ: Really there was no brief. But the really funny thing was the only direction we got from Steve Jobs is: "don't make it cute". There were briefs on subsequent jobs. First there was the logo, then there was an introductory ad and a sales brochure for the upcoming introduction. But it was pretty lose at that time. There was a previous logo to my logo. It was a logo done by Ron Wayne who was a very brief partner of the two Steves early on. He later took a buy-out, because he was a little concerned about the financial obligations he might have. He had a young family and the other guys didn't. Ron did a pen and ink drawing of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an Apple tree with a poem all around the border. And, I think when Steve Jobs started to get serious about the Apple II and getting a prototype for the design of the shell he realized that logo would not do. So he needed a new logo.

CB: How many versions did you do for the presentation?
RJ: We presented two versions of the logo. One with and one without the bite. Just in case he thought the bite was too cute. Fortunately he went with the one that gave it the most personality with the bite. Frankly it was a no brainer and you would miss the mark if you don't show some kind of an apple. When I presented I showed him several variations. Striped version, solid color version, metallic version. All those with the same shape.

CB: So even then you knew you needed a solid color version and a metallic version?
RJ: Yes, you kind of had to. When you're doing printing of either one or two color you need to have some way to go and I realized that the stripes would not always get it. The stripes really didn't work as a greyscale halftone.

Original Apple logo

CB: Do the colors represent the hippy culture, which was in fashion at the time?
RJ: Partially it was a really big influence. Both Steve and I came from that place, but the real solid reason for the stripes was that the Apple II was the first home or personal computer that could reproduce images on the monitor in color. So it represents color bars on the screen. Also, it was an attempt to make the logo very accessible to everyone, especially to young people so that Steve could get them into schools.

CB: At the time most logos were single color or 2 color logos. Anybody fought against the color stripes?
RJ: Steve liked the idea, because he liked things that were outside the box. And, it's not so revolutionary now, but it was a little different then. However I did get a lot of opposition from one of the higher account executives at agency. He was sort of working against me on the meeting where I presented the work to Steve. He made a comment that if this new company went ahead and produced stationary in all these colors they will go bankrupt before they start the business. That was kind of the attitude that I was facing from the agency. But Steve liked it right off. He's a pretty perceptive guy as we later learned and he liked the uniqueness of it as well. Also, I should add that the idea of a computer going into people's homes was a little bit threatening because up to then computers were for big businesses, who were highly technical and sensitive and all that stuff. Most of the personal computer products that were coming out at the time had very techno names. TRS-80 and things like that, so that's why the name Apple was so golden because it was basic and not technical and to go with that the colors were very important.

CB: What does the bite in the apple represents? Is it a reference to a computing term byte? Is it a reference to the biblical event when Eve bit into the forbidden fruit? Is the fruit itself referencing the discovery of gravity by Newton when an apple fell on his head while sitting under the tree?
RJ: They are really interesting, but I'm afraid it didn't have a thing to do with it. From a designer's point of view and you probably experienced this, one of the big phenomena is having the experience of designing a logo for whatever reasons you design it, and years later you find out supposedly why you did certain things. And, they are all BS. It's a wonderful urban legend. Somebody starts it and then people go "oh yeah, that must be it".

CB: Is it possible you were influenced subconsciously by these stories?
RJ:: Well, I'm probably the least religious person, so Adam and Eve didn't have anything to do with it. The bite of knowledge sounds fabulous, but that's not it. And, there is a whole lot of other lure about it. Turing the famous supposed father of computer science who committed suicide in the early 50's was british and was accused of being homosexual, which he was. He was facing a jail sentence so he committed suicide to avoid all that. So, I heard one of the legends being that the colored logo was an homage to him. People think I did the colored stripes because of the gay flag. And, that was something really thought for a long time. The other really cool part was that apparently he killed himself with a cyanide laced apple. And, then I found out Alan Turing's favorite childhood story was Snow White where she falls asleep forever for eating a poisoned apple to be woken up by the handsome prince. Anyway, when I explain the real reason why I did the bite it's kind of a let down. But I'll tell you. I designed it with a bite for scale, so people get that it was an apple not a cherry. Also it was kind of iconic about taking a bite out of an apple. Something that everyone can experience. It goes across cultures. If anybody ever had an apple he probably bitten into it and that's what you get. It was after I designed it, that my creative director told me: "Well you know, there is a computer term called byte". And I was like: "You're kidding!" So, it was like perfect, but it was coincidental that it was also a computer term. At the time I had to be told everything about basic computer terms.

CB: You obviously didn't design the logo on computer?
RJ: Actually, and it's a revelation to a lot of young designers. I get emails about the logo all the time asking me questions about the logo from all over the world and it's really kinda very satisfying because it's not something every designer gets a chance to talk to everybody because of some work you did. And, people ask me: did you design it on a computer? And of course at the time computers couldn't really do that for me. It was only years later till the Mac was designed, developed and refined that I even start working on a computer. At the time it was all pencil and paper, glue and cut paper, pens and all that stuff.

CB: How does it feel to see your logo everywhere?
RJ: It's a real unique experience that still makes my day whenever I see it unexpectedly. You're watching a movie or tv and usually when they have a cool character they'll have a laptop with an Apple logo on it, like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. I've done a lot of traveling and early on when the logo still had multicolored stripes on it I was in China and there it was on a billboard somewhere. It was Chinese script that I couldn't read, but something that came out of my head was up there for all to see and to interpret. It's kind of a personal thing. It's kinda like having a kid. You're very proud of it.

CB: Do you like the changes Apple made to your original design over the years?
RJ: I do like them. The stripes served their purpose and they are definitely dated. I think it's very important that a product like Apple keep very up-to-date and Steve Jobs is obviously very conscious of that and he has fabulous designers working for him in industrial design and graphic design. I feel great that it's still the same basic silhouette even though it went through lots and lots of changes. The apple shape changed slightly from my original design in the early 80's. The design firm Landor & Associates made the changes. They brightened the colors, they made the shapes much more symmetrical, much more geometric. When I designed it I pretty much did it freehand. I often think to myself why didn't I do that. It's because it wasn't where I was coming from at the time. I think they did a great job and it will be fascinating to see the next iteration and how it works out.

It's kind of a problem when you do something that so well known, so early on in your career. It's all downhill from then.

Evolution of Apple logo

CB: What other projects are you proud of?
RJ: People assume that I continued in a pure design mode and did lot more logos. I did some logos, but my career path is more about advertising, which meant print and TV advertising. As far as image or logo type of thing there is really nothing that tops or comes close to the Apple logo. It's kind of a problem when you do something that so well known, so early on in your career. It's all downhill from then. I was proud of all the things I was involved in. How to do a television commercial, which really does take a while to understand. Those were the things that kept my interest. In advertising you work with words and images together, you work with more people. There is more a chance to come up with imagery that has double meanings, has to do with colloquialisms and all that. That's a long way of saying, there is nothing else that I'm as proud of and things were very different from then on.

CB: Do you use Macs today? Do you still work?
RJ: I'd really like to retire, but in this economy I really can't. I do work on a Mac, it's all I ever worked on. I would not know what to do with a left click and a right click. Been brand loyal all the way, even though the products cost a little bit more. I wouldn't think of using anything else. Plus, for graphics and design Apple has it all over Microsoft.

CB: Can you tell me a favorite logo of yours that is not designed by you?
RJ: There is a lot. I really do like other classic designs. Volkswagen because it's very clear what it is and it's been around for so long. I'm trying to think of other logos that incorporated the multicolor and I thought of NBC logo. I like logos with a relationship with positive and negative spaces, where something is revealed.

CB: Like the FedEx logo?
RJ: Yes, that's another one that I enjoy so much. It's very simple and if you study it you get the dynamic element of it with that arrow. Those are the kinds of logos I respond to.

CB: Can you give me the most important things to watch out for when designing a logo?
RJ: The main thing is to make it simple, because designers especially young designers tend to over-design or clients want too many things in there. I think people who tried to work a logo too hard, having too much meaning, wind up with something that's too complex. Logos usually have to be interpreted from very-very small to very-very large and that's not always easy. So, I think simplicity and readability is key. You're designing for an audience who really doesn't care as much as you do and unless it catches their interest right away they are going to pass right over it. So having it very readable is also important. Capturing the audiences imagination by having something revealed to them as they look at the logo is also important. Also, it's an opportunity to give whatever you're trying to portray a personality—this is something I try to do.

CB: Huge percentage of designers never receive formal education. Still some of them are doing great work. Do you think formal education is necessary?
RJ: Well, I don't think it's necessary, because I think I've learned most of the knowledge about graphics after I started working, not in school. I do think though that someone who is a successful designer has innate ability to see in a certain way. I know that I do. I tend to be a very visual person as opposed to verbal and I think that's a real important quality. Unfortunately now everyone has all of the tools at their disposal regardless whether they have any talent for designing. Everyone thinks he's a designer by pulling down a filter in Photoshop. So, I think no, you don't need all that much formal education and things can be learned obviously when working at it.

CB: Final question, what is your suggestion to our younger readers, what should they focus on to become great designers?
RJ: This is something I tell my kids: I could do this even if I'm not getting paid for it, because I like it so much, because now more than ever before there are so many people trying to become designers and work for agencies just because the tools that are available. So, it's harder and harder to get work. And, the way some people have to get work is by apprenticing and working for nothing for somebody until they get that job, because there is so much competition.

CB: Thank you so much for the interview!

the top ten worst green brand names

Author: Alissa Walker
Published: August 11, 2009
Source: Fast Company

We've finally moved beyond the eco____, green____, nature's ____, and over a decade later, we've finally stopped giggling like third graders every time we say "Prius" (which is a Latin word meaning "to precede" but sounds like, um, well, never mind). But with the coming of the Nissan Leaf, announced last week, we were befuddled. Really? Leaves are supposed to be what your sleek new fuel-efficient vehicle kicks up as you zip more responsibly through the streets. Right?

But it turns out Nissan's electric vehicle is not the only offender when it comes to misguided green names. We dug up the ten worst and tapped two of our expert design bloggers, Valerie Casey and Stuart Karten, as well as design editor Alissa Walker to assess the damage.

BabyGanics
AW: Created by two dads who couldn't stand filth, but obviously couldn't stand the English language either.
SK: This name could be worse. "OrganBaby" was their second choice.
VC: Sounds like a mild case of gangrene.

Wheego Whip
SK: My First Electric Car from Fisher Price comes with Tiny Tyke Tire Wrench and Snuggly Soft Safety Belt.
AW: It's an electric car! It's a dessert topping!

TruGreen
VC: Tru? Is this like the way "phat" actually means attractive?
AW: Actually it's better than the old name of the lawncare company--TruGreen ChemLawn. That was really a mouthful.
SK: Two green thumbs down.

CitraSolv
AW: I'm pretty sure this line of natural cleansers will be revealed as one of the Cylons on Battlestar Galactica.
VC: Can I buy a vowel?

Motorola Renew
AW: Made in part from recycled plastic, 70% of the entire phone can be recycled. But the name just makes me think of how much it will be to renew my cell phone contract.
SK: My only question for Motorola: Can we recycle it into an iPhone?

Sheep Poo Paper
AW: Paper made from "super-fresh sheep poo" collected in Wales. Hey, at least it's not false advertising.
VC: But I'm a vegetarian...
SK: Sounds like a baaad idea.

Samsung Reclaim
AW: A biodegradable handset comes with a 40% corn-based plastic cover. But can you eat it if you get hungry during a long call?
VC: Iron John meets consumer electronics.

Miessence
AW: Why name these natural beauty products "my essence"? If I wanted to smell like my essence I wouldn't use theirs.
SK: Is this a new perfume from the estate of Mies van der Rohe?

Barbie BCause
SK: "Recycling is hard!"
AW: They diced up the fabric of reclaimed Barbie clothes and pieced it together into freaky patchwork patterns fit for hobos. Why? Just BCause.
VC: No need to stick your finger down your throat to get Barbie's figure, now you just need to look at the eco-outfit!

Pepsi Natural
VC: An excellent laxative to pass your McMeal.
SK: As natural as the storylines on The Hills.

how 16 electronics companies got their names

Author: Desta Bishu
Published: July 26, 2009
Source: Ethiopian Review

Most of us spend a lot of time staring at a computer or TV screen, playing video games, or gabbing into our cell phones. The brand names for these products are all familiar, but where did they come from in the first place? Just what is a Nokia? Here’s a look at the origins of some of your favorite tech and gadget companies’ names.

1. Kodak:
Founder George Eastman named the camera and film corporation in 1888. Eastman wanted a short name that was easy to pronounce and could only refer to his products. He later said that he favored the letter “k” because it “seems a strong, incisive sort of letter.” Once Eastman decided he wanted the name to start and end with “k,” he played around with combinations of letters until he found one that he liked in “Kodak.”

2. Nintendo:
Nintendo’s name translates into English as “leave luck to heaven.” The name made more sense before Nintendo got into the video game business; it opened in 1889 to make hanafuda cards, a type of Japanese playing cards decorated with floral designs.

3. Sony:
When Sony got its start in 1946, it had a decidedly less catchy name – Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo. Within a few years, the company’s founders wanted a new name, so they combined sonus, Latin for “sound,” with “Sonny,” the term of endearment for a young boy. The newly coined word captured both the superior sound quality and small size the company was shooting for with its products.

4. Sega:
Sega got its start in Hawaii in 1940 as Standard Games, a business that provided military bases with pinball machines to help amuse soldiers. In 1951, the company moved to Tokyo and renamed itself “Service Games” to reflect its business of importing coin-op machines for American military bases. In 1965, Service Games merged with another coin-op company, Rosen Enterprises, and shortened its name to Sega.

5. Nokia:
The modern telecom giant hasn’t always been involved in such tech-heavy fields. The company got its start in Tampere, Finland, in 1865 as a pulp mill and paper manufacturer. When owner Fredrik Idestam opened a second plant in Nokia, Finland, in 1868, he decided the town’s name would suit his company, too.

The town takes its name from the Nokianvirta River that flows through it, which in turn takes its name from an archaic Finnish word referring to the small furry animals, mostly sables, which lived on the river’s banks.

6. Cisco Systems:
The recent addition to the Dow Jones Industrial Average takes its name from San Francisco, where it was founded in 1984.

7. Atari:
The video-game pioneer takes its name the board game Go. In Go, atari is a term that indicates that a player’s stone (or group of a player’s stones) are in immediate danger of being captured by the player’s opponent.

8. Toshiba:
Toshiba formed following the 1939 merger of consumer products company Tokyo Denki with machinery firm Shibaura Seisakusho. By taking the “To” from the former and the “Shiba” from the latter, a new company name was born.>

9. Sanyo:
Sanyo’s name means “three oceans” in Japanese; the company’s founder wanted to sell his wares across the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific oceans to reach the entire world.

10. Seiko:
The watchmaker takes its name from a Japanese word meaning “exquisite” or “success.”

11. Canon:
When Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory started developing Japan’s first-ever 35mm camera equipped with a focal plane shutter, the engineers dubbed the creation “Kwanon” after the Buddhist goddess of mercy. At this point the company’s logo even included the thousand-armed goddess.

When the camera was ready to roll out worldwide in 1935, the company decided to tweak the name to “Canon” so it would be easier for international markets to accept.

12. Sharp:
The electronics manufacturer got its start in 1912 as metalsmith Tokuji Hayakawa’s personal outlet for his inventions, including a specialized snap buckle. In 1915 Hayakawa invented an improved mechanical pencil he dubbed Ever-Sharp, and to honor the fine point of his creation, Hayakawa started calling his company “Sharp.”

13. Magnavox:
The stalwart electronics company began in 1915 when Edwin Pridham and Peter Jensen created a moving-coil loudspeaker, which they named “Magnavox,” Latin for “great voice.”

14. Coleco:
The video game kingpins of the 1970s and 80s (and the people who brought you Cabbage Patch Dolls!), Coleco was originally a company that sold shoe leather. The name Coleco is a shortening of “Connecticut Leather Company.”

15. Motorola:
Founder Paul Galvin named his company in a twist on the old naming convention of putting “-ola” at the end of phonograph and radio names like the Victrola. Since Galvin and his company were making car radios, he merged “motor” with “-ola” to get the name.

16. Samsung:
Samsung got its start in 1938 when Lee Byung-Chull started the “Samsung Store” in Korea. The store initially focused on exporting dried fish and fruit, but it jumped into electronics in the 1960s. The name Samsung is Korean for “three stars,” a nod to the lucky properties of the number three.

efficient website redesigns: 6 tactics to guide your process

Published: July 21, 2009
Source: Marketing Sherpa

SUMMARY: A website redesign is a heavy load for a marketing team, especially if you don’t have much wiggle room in your budget and launch schedule. The solution is to make the process as efficient and effective as possible.

See how a marketer in charge of redesigning the websites of dozens of his company’s brands streamlined the process. He shares six tactics for:

When Bert DuMars, VP E-Business, Newell Rubbermaid, joined the global consumer and commercial products manufacturer in July 2007, he was tasked with building an online platform for all the company’s brand websites. Since then, his team has helped Newell Rubbermaid’s approximately 35 brands — including Sharpie, Paper Mate and Lenox — redesign their websites and migrate to the new platform.

The process of creating a corporate Web platform and revamping the company’s websites has made DuMars a redesign expert. He’s developed a well-tested system to avoid wasting time and money, while identifying the most important potential improvements.

We asked DuMars to share the tactics he uses to expedite assessing, planning and redesigning Newell Rubbermaid’s websites. He also shared common snags his team encountered, and how they avoided them.

Tactic #1: Get user feedback from online surveys
The team uses an online exit survey to gather customer data for up to year before starting a redesign.

The survey software randomly selects which visitors receive a survey request, and which page triggers the request. Users can agree to take the survey or decline, and they are not asked to take it again for another 90 days.

The survey asks customers to grade the site’s key features:

The team also asks brand-specific questions to gauge whether the site is portraying the correct image to customers.

For example, a survey for Sharpie, a brand of permanent markers, asked visitors if they found the site fun, innovative or interesting. Those are key attributes that DuMars’ team needed to have associated with the brand.

They also gather data on why customers are coming to the site, what they’re expecting to see there, and if they’ve enjoyed their experience.

Additional survey tips:

"It is one of the truest forms of customer satisfaction," DuMars says. "If you’re willing to recommend the site to a friend or family member, then you’re probably feeling pretty strongly about the website and you probably had a good experience."

"We had one survey at Sharpie.com that had over 40 questions. And that’s a lot," DuMars says. "Typically, you want to keep it down to 15, 20, max, and make it as simple as possible for the customer to respond."

Tactic #2: Analyze click-stream data
Customers’ opinions are not always completely aligned with their actions. As a result, you want to make sure you use a web analytics package that lets you track:

But the two sources of data go hand-in-hand: Using only customer survey data or only click stream data to redesign a site is likely to provide less than optimal results. Click stream data is unable to gauge customers’ opinions, and surveys are less able to definitively identify a website’s architectural problems.

Save resources by gathering as much data as possible, which will help you get a redesign right the first time.

Tactic #3: Work from a well-defined brand strategy
Make sure the brand’s strategy is fully updated and agreed upon before starting a website redesign. Online surveys and click-stream data can reveal information about your customers that was not previously available, and might be tempting to incorporate into your brand’s strategic research.

However, resist the urge to simultaneously update your brand’s strategy and your website. That approach is a recipe for wasted time, DuMars says. A site feature may be added or adjusted, only require a readjustment after further brand tinkering.

Tactic #4: Assign at least one in-house person to oversee the project
A website overhaul is a lot of work, and you need an internal team member — not just a project manager from an outside agency — completely devoted to the task.

Having a point-person to serve as the intermediary between the marketing team, IT staff, and other participants makes the redesign go "so much smoother and faster," DuMars says.

This can be tough for marketing departments under additional strain this year, but it is the most efficient way to get the job done right.

Tactic #5: Focus redesign on improving common problems
Once you have data on your customers’ actions and opinions, you want to analyze the results to uncover specific areas that the redesign must address.

Two areas in which DuMars often sees room for improvement:

"[Search] is one that will usually knock you out in terms of customer satisfaction," he says. "If your search doesn’t work well, the customer will have a bad experience."

One way to uncover the effectiveness of your site’s search tool is to monitor how often visitors click on the first search result. If they’re not clicking on the first link of a search results page, or if they’re doing several searches in a row for similar terms, then the tool is likely not doing its job well enough.

The team added more tools to their brands’ websites to help customers more quickly find the information they needed, and to decrease the volume of calls and emails to customer service. This, in turn, helps increase customer satisfaction.

In the past, the company’s customer support pages usually had a contact form, an email address, and an 800-number to reach customer service. Now, the team is adding what DuMars calls an "intelligent FAQ," which allows customers to type in questions and refine their results to get the answers they need.

"Typically, it helps a consumer find an answer faster than waiting on a phone line or sending an email and waiting for a response," he says.

Tactic #6: Aim to satisfy the majority of visitors
If you keep trying to please everyone, you’ll never finish. There will always be a group of people who do not like your new website.

The key is to please the large majority of your audience, even if there is a vocal minority that is somewhat dissatisfied.

Pages that fail to load, broken images, broken links, and misspelled words are problems that your team should fix — especially if customers are complaining about them.

However, there is a difference between technical problems and issues of taste.

"If there is something [visitors] don’t like — they don’t like the new colors, the new navigation, the new style — there is often not a lot we can do at that point," DuMars says. "They have an opinion and we made a change and we’ve done the best to we can to make them happy, and if we can’t, we can’t."

Customers become used to old website designs, and some can be miffed that they have to follow a new process to access the same information.

"They probably had about five steps that they went through that navigated right to where they wanted to be," says DuMars. "Now you’ve changed that and there isn’t a lot you can do to change that other than to make the search as easy as possible to use."

CaT Video: The Wizard of Data Art

Published: August 6, 2009
Source: Creativity Online

Google Creative Labs' Aaron Koblin runs through his stunning projects.
See the Oya Group's article on Information Design Using Digital Tools.



30 handy cheat sheets and reference guides for web professionals

Published: July 22, 2009
Source: Webdesignerdepot.com

Cheat sheets and reference guides are useful for both beginners and advanced web professionals. They can be used to help you remember syntax or as a tool to aid in memorization. In this post, we aim to cover the reference guides for all of the most commonly used platforms, software and coding languages. Below you’ll find a compilation of the 30 most useful and well-organized cheat sheets, checklists and reference guides.

1. 25-Point Website Usability Checklist
Usability is a central concern for any web developer. The 25-Point Website Usability Checklist is a simple step-by-step list that can help your website achieve maximum usability. Four major components are covered in this checklist: accessibility, identity, navigation and content. The list is a printable PDF and contains a rating system and space for comments.
Download the 25-Point Website Usability Checklist

2. Browser Compatibility Table
This is a great reference guide to ensure browser compatibility. Below is an extract from a table that contains a list of various CSS rules and their compatibility with common browsers and operating systems. With a quickglance, the designer or developer can note which CSS properties should be used or avoided. The table also offers an interactive feature that highlights the row your cursor is on. This makes pinpointing the compatibility of a specific CSS propert much easier.
Go to the Browser Compatibility Table

3. Web Standards Checklist
A website that is compliant with W3C’s standards will be more usable and search-engine friendly than one that is not. There are a number of ways to ensure that a website is standards-compliant; one way is to use a checklist. This checklist contains a chronological list of factors to consider while building a website.
Download The Web Standards Checklist

4. Search Engine Optimization Cheat Sheet
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important if a website is to be successful. This cheat sheet may seem to be for beginners, but it holds valuable information for reference and education. The ten categories are SEO rules at the coding level.

The ten essential categories for good optimization are: important HTML tags, search engine indexing limits, title tag syntax, common canonical issues, 301 redirects on Apache, search engine robot user agents, common robot traps to avoid, robot meta tags syntax, robots.txt syntax and site map syntax. Included in each category is further explanation and an example. The cheat sheet can be downloaded as a two-page printer-friendly PDF.
Download the Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet

5. Tweet Sheet 2
Because Twitter is fast becoming a mainstream news feed, using it to your website’s advantage is important. Tweet Sheet is a fairly simple cheat sheet about Twitter use and syntax, created by Jason Theodor. Tweet Sheet includes Twitter’s mobile URL and text numbers, personal commands, mobile commands, user name commands, tracking commands and information on Twitter applications and tools. Version 2 is offered in PDF form, a change from the simple image in Version 1. The second version is a grid of smaller cheat sheets, with a cut-out line so that it can easily be shared with friends or posted in other locations.
Download Tweet Sheet 2

6. XHTML Cheat Sheet v1.03
This XHTML cheat sheet is excellent for XHTML coders. Along with many basic attributes, this two-page grid includes references that even experienced web professionals would find useful.

Three types of elements are defined in this cheat sheet: block, inline and table elements. The miscellaneous section includes 22 additional elements. Each row contains the name, description and attributes of each of the elements available for use.

More references are on the side, including %attrs, %focus, input types, link types, deprecated elements, HTML ASCII entities and more. Being so detailed, this is a great tool for anyone who uses XHTML frequently.
Download the XHTML Cheat Sheet v1.03

7. CSS Cheat Sheet
The CSS Cheat Sheet is a two-page PDF and is the most detailed CSS reference guide available. It contains a lot of information and is great as a printed reference.Sections you may find useful are the ones on the CSS box model, selectors, pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes, colors, text properties and layout properties.
Download the CSS Cheat Sheet

8. Blueprint Framework and Blueprint CSS Cheat Sheet
The Blueprint CSS framework is a great shortcut for designers. The developers of this tool explain:

“Blueprint is a CSS framework that aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plug-ins and even a style sheet for printing.”

To download the blueprint framework, go to BlueprintCSS.org

Paired with the framework is the Blueprint CSS cheat sheet to help shorten development time. The cheat sheet is well laid out, nicely color-coded and detailed. It works in sync with the framework and was made with designers in mind, featuring a visual representation of a 950 pixel-wide grid system, a detailed list of Blueprint features and call and syntax examples.
Download the Blueprint CSS Cheat Sheet.

9. Mixing Typefaces
This PDF is an excellent reference for designers who don’t want to spend a lot of time figuring out whether two or more fonts will work well together. This tool enables designers to choose the perfect typography combination. Although the cheat sheet was created in 1992, most of the widely used web fonts are present. As the image above shows, a list of fonts is repeated along the top and left side. A number from 1 to 3 appears where each pair intersects. 1 means that the two fonts are compatible, 2 means that with proper implementation the two fonts could work well together, and 3 means that they will clash.
Download the Mixing Typefaces PDF

10. Common Fonts for all Versions of Windows, and Mac Equivalents
While this guide isn’t exhaustive, it’s a perfect quick reference tool for choosing the typography for a new website. All 18 font groups listed are web safe and cross-browser compatible. All of the fonts are grouped together with syntax: Windows version, Mac version, font family. The bottom of the page has very specific information on using fonts on different operating systems and browsers and even has a screenshot of each scenario. Although this web page is already well known in the web designer community, we felt it was important to include on this list.
Download Common Fonts for all Versions of Windows, and Mac Equivalents

11. Official Adobe Photoshop CS4 Reference
The official Adobe Reference guide is available online and in PDF form. While not exactly a “quick” reference guide, it is essential for anyone who uses Photoshop professionally.
Download Adobe Photoshop CS4 Help Guide Online
Download the Adobe Photoshop CS4 Help Guide PDF

12. Adobe Photoshop CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts
This is the keyboard shortcuts cheat sheet for the newest version of Photoshop. This four-page guide can help designers cut their production time by as much as half. For easy navigation, the PDF is arranged according to the main menu in Photoshop, and then under each menu item it lists the shortcuts in alphabetical order. Because PC and Mac have different shortcuts, there are two different reference guides.
Download the PC version | Download the Mac version

13. Adobe Flash CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts
This is a keyboard shortcuts guide for Adobe Flash CS4. This PDF is also arranged to reflect the Flash CS4 menu, but the list of shortcuts, rather than being in alphabetical order, is arranged according to the application’s menu listing, too. This cheat sheet even has a friendly graphic at the top with the menu order presented in Flash. As with most Adobe keyboard shortcut cheat sheets, both PC and Mac versions are available.
Download the PC version | Download the Mac version

14. ActionScript 2.0 to 3.0 Migration Cheat Sheet
This cheat sheet covers both ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0 and is organized to help those who need to switch to 3.0. Below is a short extract from the six-page PDF. The functions and classes of ActionScript 2.0 are to the left of each section, followed by their equivalents in ActionScript 3.0. This cheat sheet is great for anyone transitioning to 3.0 or learning ActionScript.
Download the ActionScript 2.0 to 3.0 Migration Cheat Sheet

15. Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts
This is another guide in the family of cheat sheets for Adobe, this one for Dreamweaver CS4 keyboard shortcuts. It was made by the creator of the Flash CS4 sheet and so has many of the same features. The cheat sheet also follows the exact menu structure of Dreamweaver CS4 and has the same graphic at the top showing the menu order. Unfortunately, a Mac version of this cheat sheet is still in the works; only the PC version is available at this time. Either way, it is a great cheat sheet and could be easily adapted into a Mac version. For most shortcuts, you would just have to replace Control with the Command key. Keep checking the cheat sheet’s page for the release of the Mac version.
Download the Dreamweaver CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

16. WordPress Help Sheet
The WordPress Help Sheet is the most useful cheat sheet if you are a WordPress theme developer. It is a quick reference guide for the most commonly used WordPress snippets. Only four categories are covered in this guide, but the simplicity of this sheet makes it so appealing. Only the most needed and commonly used snippets are included, making them all easy to find. The four sections include: file names of a basic WordPress theme, header snippets, all other template snippets and commonly used extras.
Download the WordPress Help Sheet

17. Advanced WordPress Help Sheet
For those who create WordPress themes regularly, WPCandy has created an advanced help sheet. It contains commonly used snippets for themes that require added functionality. The three-page PDF covers a wide range of snippets, such as for content going only on the front page, styling for certain categories, unique images for each category, dynamic page titles, query posts and more. Any designer who creates professional WordPress themes should have this help sheet at hand. Most of the snippets are required in professional themes.
Download the Advanced WordPress Help Sheet

18. WordPress Theme Development Checklist
The WordPress Theme Development Checklist is an extensive checklist in nine parts. The checklist covers general topics (like theme information and screenshots), blog components (like RSS feeds), timestamps, as well as category and page navigation. Below is an example of the first half. This checklist can be used while creating a WordPress theme or to help finalize one. As extensive as it is, it’s only one page and can be easily printed when it comes time to develop a new theme.
Download the WordPress Theme Development Checklist

19. JavaScript Cheat Sheet
Several of the cheat sheets featured here are from AddedBytes.com, because of the detailed and exceptionally high quality of the resources there. The first one on the AddedBytes list is the JavaScript cheat sheet. This cheat sheet is logically organized into DOM methods, functions, regular expressions, etc. It’s easy to use and a great reference for all common JavaScript uses. The guide is not only excellent for JavaScript beginners (covering items as basic as the syntax for putting JavaScript into HTML) but is also suited to programmers at an advanced level (referring to more advanced JavaScript functionality).
Download the JavaScript Cheat Sheet

20. Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet (v2)
Although some references to Regular Expressions are in the above JavaScript cheat sheet, this one is more detailed. Now in version 2, this cheat sheet has additional material, including information for those who may not be familiar with Regular Expressions. Although we’ve positioned this entry just below the JavaScript cheat sheet, this PDF is not a guide to any specific language, and so would be great for developers who do not code in any specific language (or who code in more than one language).
Download the Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet

21. jQuery Visual Map
Although the jQuery Visual Map is not a printable reference like most of the other cheat sheets on this list, it is still a great tool for referencing, learning jQuery and grabbing snippets. The tool’s interactive nature makes finding exactly what you need easy, and code is included in all of the examples for easy copying and pasting. This guide is ultimately an interactive jQuery manual.
Download jQuery Visual Map

22. MooTools Cheat Sheet
Those who prefer the MooTools JavaScript framework to jQuery may find this cheat sheet useful. This colorful and detailed reference guide includes every commonly used feature of MooTools 1.2. The references are compact, yet the “pseudo-code” serves perfectly as illustration. Within the one-page PDF are 22 sections of reference material. In addition to the older version, the updated cheat sheet now contains documentation for Core, Native, Class, Element, Utilities and Request.
Download the MooTools 1.2 Cheat Sheet

23. Prototype 1.6.0.2 Cheat Sheet
This one-page informative PDF is a great resource for those using Prototype.js and includes a visual reference for offsets and dimensions. The modules are in a logical order, with the most commonly used ones in the top left and less common ones in the bottom right. The page is printable and easy to use as a desk-side reference guide.
Download the Prototype 1.6.0.2 Cheat Sheet

24. Python
This one-page cheat sheet is a wonderful reference tool if you code mainly in Python. The 11 sections that make up the cheat sheet are system variables, string methods, datetime methods, time methods, date formatting, sys.argv, OS variables, list methods, file methods, class special methods, indexes and slices. This is a convenient all-in-one general reference for anyone who codes in Python or is trying to learn Python. There are also some side notes and general pseudo-code.
Download the Python Cheat Sheet

25. mod_rewrite Cheat Sheet (v2)
URL rewriting can improve your website’s usability, search functionality and navigation cleanliness. The mod_rewrite cheat sheet has everything from basic regular expression syntax to listing flags for the RewriteRule and RewriteCond directives. It also provides examples and general syntax so that you don’t have to be a mod_rewrite expert to use the PDF.
Download the mod_rewrite cheat sheet

26. PHP Cheat Sheet (V2)
This one-page cheat sheet is a full reference for the PHP programming language. It is better suited to those who already know how to code in PHP and serves as a reminder of certain syntax and names of functions and variables. Now in its second edition, this cheat sheet is better organized and has new components, giving it a total of nine sections: array functions, regular expression functions, date formatting, regular expression syntax, string functions, file system functions, PCRE modifiers, date and time functions and fopen() modes.
Download the PHP Cheat Sheet

27. SQL Server Cheat Sheet
This handy, one-page cheat sheet provides quick reference for the SQL server. Included in the 14 sections are: functions, syntax for creating a function, date parts, syntax for creating a trigger and syntax for creating a stored procedure. It is available for download as a PDF or PNG file
Download the SQL Server Cheat Sheet

28. MySQL Cheat Sheet
This cheat sheet is a great reference for anyone who frequently uses MySQL or PHP with MySQL. It contains the most commonly used MySQL functions in PHP, data types and ranges and sample select queries. Along the side of the main cheat sheet are various keywords and functions used in MySQL: mathematical keywords, date and time keywords, group words, control flow, string, comparison, cast and more. No need to memorize the exact names of MySQL functions or full range of each data type; just download the PDF or PNG version of the MySQL cheat sheet to have on hand.
Download the MySQL cheat sheet

29. Ruby on Rails Cheat Sheet
This Ruby on Rails one-page printable reference is a useful go-to guide for anyone who uses Ruby on Rails extensively. Included in the cheat sheet are five main sections and a few side sections containing methods. The main section features a directory structure, predefined variables in Ruby, reserved keywords, regular expression syntax and a side note reminder of methods. In addition to the center blocks is a list of methods along the side, arranged in the following categories: strings, regex, time, arrays, validation and enumerable mixin.
Download the Ruby on Rails cheat sheet

30. ASP/VBScript Cheat Sheet
The last resource on our list is the ASP/VBScript cheat sheet, for anyone who is an ASP developer. Similar in layout to many of the other cheat sheets on AddedBytes, this one is well organized and contains crucial, often-forgotten information for the ASP developer. The cheat sheet includes regular expressions, date function arguments, redirect with 301 header, file inclusion, function argument orders, file modes, common LCID modes, constants, methods, properties, functions and collections.
Download the ASP/VBScript cheat sheet

how bob lutz plans to recapture america's attention

Author: Jamie Lareau
Published: August 3, 2009
Source: AdAge.com

DETROIT (AdAge.com) — If six months from now, "GM ads look the same as they did six months ago," said Bob Lutz, "then somebody really needs to ask, 'Why is Lutz here?'".

The 77-year-old vice chairman and chief marketer of General Motors wants to "recapture the attention of the American public" and to achieve that, he told Automotive News, he's looking toward more product-driven advertising in which designers will have a greater hand, and he will rely more on PR and viral marketing. He also plans to take an early and active role in shaping creative work, and said that while he doesn't plan any agency shakeups, shops that don't come through will be put up for review.

To decide budgets and spark marketing ideas, Mr. Lutz will also conduct high-level weekly meetings. The meetings will include Ed Welburn, global design chief; Chris Preuss, head of PR; Betsy Lazar, executive director of advertising and media operations; brand leaders; and a top finance executive.

Also sitting in on the weekly advertising and communications strategy meetings, according to Automotive News, will be Bryan Nesbitt, who was GM's chief of North American design before being tapped last month to run Cadillac.

"Design guys know good illustrations, and they know good composition," Mr. Lutz said, noting he is often frustrated by print ads in which vehicles have been photographed at unattractive angles and with the wrong lighting. "That is so unprofessional," he said. "I say: 'Who the hell did the visual on this ad?' I'm told: 'Well, it had to be fast, and we had to use stuff off the shelf.'"

Mr. Lutz added: "Ed Welburn's guys can do computer-graphic photographs where every vehicle is at the same angle, on the same plane, at the right scale. That's not rocket science."

Big changes ahead
In GM's product-development culture, Lutz empowered design. Now he is pushing the vehicle stylists to new frontiers. Designers are "going to have their fingers in everything," he said. "Ed has been one of the sharpest critics on how our vehicles are presented in ads."

The weekly strategy meetings will aim at getting concurrence on GM's message and deciding the best way to get it out. "Getting that message out would take $350 million if we try to do it through paid advertising," Mr. Lutz said. "But if we give Chris Preuss $25 million, he can do such and such a thing. In the past, that's never been possible."

Another big change: Mr. Lutz plans to take a hands-on role with ad agencies. In the past, he said, most top-level GM executives never saw an advertising campaign before it ran. He promises to give agencies clear direction for all campaigns, and, if after months, an agency still fails to deliver memorable advertising, he said he will put the account up for review.

The agencies are not talking. "That is not something we'll be willing to comment on because of our relationship with GM," said Mark Benner, spokesman for Campbell-Ewald, which handles Chevrolet advertising.

Mr. Lutz also has big ideas for viral advertising. "We will be doing a whole lot more with the social media and with webpage stuff," he said, "including clever YouTube stuff that's good enough to where it gets passed on." He cited a GM video that features the Corvette ZR1 at Germany's famous Nurburgring race track. A camera is mounted in the car's cockpit as the ZR1 zips around the track at well over 100 miles per hour. Mr. Lutz said that video was extensively downloaded and forwarded.

To that end, Mr. Lutz has challenged GM's advertising agencies to come up with viral ideas to recharge marketing. Whatever those end up to be, he said, GM won't play it safe. "Safe stuff just doesn't break through," he said. "It can't be business as usual in terms of our marketing, because business as usual has not worked."

fulgoni: the bottom line is online ads work for branding and sales

Author: Laurie Sullivan
Published: July 31, 2009
Source: MediaPost

Get rid of the click as the de facto standard to measure the success of an online campaign. It's outdated and doesn't represent real success. So says Gian Fulgoni, chairman and co-founder of comScore, at the MediaPost OMMA Metrics & Measurement conference in San Francisco, Calif., Friday. In the keynote, Fulgoni told attendees the Internet is far more successful in increasing sales. And it may be the most measurable medium, but not everything measurable matters.

So, what now? Fulgoni says advertisers and marketers need to forget the click, focus on the sales impact on campaigns and conduct post-buy analysis. They also need to realize that display ads help search advertising succeed and vice versa. Don't forget the power of creative display ads. Online branding campaigns can be effective. Internet advertising has had an impact on retail that is on par with television.

Advertisers and marketers just want some type of metrics that show the online campaign reaches the demographics and promised target segments. Fulgoni says that in any new medium, it's easy to make promises that exceed the ability of the technology. And to some degree, Internet advertising has done that. "One problem is, it's too easy to exaggerate the promises and claims that can be delivered," he says.

Fulgoni believes the industry has failed to eliminate the click as a metric because it once worked well, and search has had great success as a measurement tool. While the click rate for display ads has dropped to 0.1%, this does not mean that online ads don't work. It just means the metrics that the industry uses are wrong.

Still, far too many CMOs think the click matters. "If we want to move those dollars from traditional advertising to the Internet, we can sit here and complain about the percentage of time spent online and not getting our fair share until we're blue in the face, but I don't think that will influence the CMOs of big companies," Fulgoni says. "The CMOs need to know before they change the way they spend money that they will not have degradation in their ROI. Because God forbid it happens — all hell will break loose."

There are major problems with using the click to measure the success of online ads. A comScore study of Yahoo and DoubleClick cookies that was conducted several years ago revealed that 30% of Internet users delete cookies in a month. A recent study suggests that rates are up 10%. The original metrics did not take into account that people use multiple computers. Nor do they take into consideration that people now delete five different cookies for the same site in a month on one computer.

Cookie deletion creates major problems — such as 2.5 times overstatement of unique visitors in a server log, depending on frequency of site visitation, as well as up to 2.5 times overstatement of reach and a similar understatement in frequency in ad server logs.

Traditional brand marketers still want metrics on creative, reach and frequency. The cost-effectiveness of online advertising will speak for itself if the industry can determine and better understand the impact that campaigns have and use the correct metrics.

So, comScore combined traditional metrics with a type of ad-serving technology from Microsoft Atlas to create metrics that looks at ad placement. It combines Microsoft's ad-serving data with demographic information from comScore's panel. The Reach and Frequency Planner, or RF Planner, aims to help advertisers determine and predict how consumers will respond to their digital ads.

Richard Huff, senior analyst at Atlas Institute, who leads the project for Microsoft, told attendees in a later panel discussion that it's critical to have an accurate audience measurement tool, and it's important that the industry finally realizes it's time to make a change.

Several comScore studies have confirmed that online campaigns drive offline sales, according to Fulgoni. In the first study, comScore took four categories, 53 brands and 200 of the most trafficked sites. The company looked at people exposed to display advertising and what they did in the month following. Findings reveal that 18% searched on the brand advertised and 29% went to the advertisers' sites. Consumers who were exposed to the display advertising spent 55% more time than the average visitors to these sites the next month. The rise in time spent is matched by a similar increase in page views — about 51%.

Rather than use the click as a metric, comScore looked separately at the impact of how search and display advertising might change consumer behavior, as well as search and display working together. During the four-week test, the research firm analyzed the increase traffic display ads give to brand sites. The patterns were consistent across automotive, finance, CPG, retail and apparel, media and entertainment, electronics and software, and travel.

Then, comScore analyzed the impact that online campaigns have on retail sales by matching the name and the address of consumers to retail loyalty card databases. The supermarket Kroger, for example, has issued about 60 million loyalty cards, which provide a massive data set to understand the degree that online search and display campaigns drive retail sales. The findings suggest a lift that is five times stronger when people are exposed to search ads alone, compared with display. Search alone produces an 82% lift, compared with display at 16%, and 119% when search and display are combined. About 82% of online ad campaigns measured by comScore have generated an average lift of 22% in CPG brand sales in retail stores.

six rules for brand revitalization

Author: Larry Light
Published: June 29, 2009
Source: Advertising Age

McDonald's Did It, and You Can Too

Brands do not die natural deaths. However, brands can be murdered through mismanagement. Some brands are beyond hope -- but others can be revitalized.

Of course, it's not easy. But it is well worth the effort. We at Arcature developed the following principles and practices over the years while working with a variety of clients in a variety of businesses. They're also practices we applied during my tenure as global CMO of McDonald's from 2002 to 2005.

For a brand to be successfully revitalized, everyone needs to be on the same page. Then they must follow the six rules of brand revitalization listed here. This "Plan to Win," as we call it, is built around the eight P's: purpose, promise, people, product, place, price, promotion and performance.

Rule 1: Refocus the organization
Refocusing the organization begins with redefining the brand and business purpose and goals. The brand purpose should be aspirational. At McDonald's, where I held the post of global CMO, we defined the long-term ambition "to be our customer's favorite place and way to eat and drink." For the first three years, the primary focus was on becoming the "favorite place and way to eat." As Jim Cantalupo, McDonald's CEO, liked to say, we would "be bigger by being better." How would we accomplish that?

Rule 2: Restore brand relevance
The brand promise is an articulation of the relevant and differentiating experience that the brand will deliver to every customer, every time. Brand revitalization means defining where you want the brand to be and then deciding how to get there.

Over the years, the essence of the McDonald's brand was the perception that it was an affordable, convenient brand for families with kids. There were those who said that equity could not and should not be changed. But McDonald's set out to change people's perceptions and go from appealing to the child in your heart to appealing to those with a young-adult spirit at heart.

Rule 3: Reinvent the brand experience
To revitalize a brand, we need to bring the redefined brand promise to life. This is what the five action P's are all about. The five action P's are people, product, place, price and promotion.

People come first. Building employee commitment to the new direction, employee confidence, and organizational and employee capabilities are critical factors that influence future success.

And it's imperative to inspire those in the organization to believe that the new brand future will happen and that they can help. At McDonald's a new on-boarding communication was created called "Learnin' it. Livin' it. Lovin' it."

Product is the next P. Products and services are the tangible evidence of the truth of the promise. When we redefine the promise, product and service renovation and innovation are imperative.

A disciplined approach to brand extension can revitalize and strengthen a brand. McDonald's extended its product range to include products such as salads, yogurt parfaits and coffee. The Crest revitalizations included extensions beyond cavity prevention to include tartar control, whitening, breath freshening, dental floss, mouthwash, tooth whiteners and toothbrushes.

The place is the face of the brand. Whether a store, a website, a retail display, a kiosk or wherever the "place" may be, the experience must be consistent with the intended brand direction. For example, McDonald's embarked on a very ambitious retail reimaging program. It also updated the brand website.

Price comes next. The launch of the McDonald's Dollar Menu created an everyday-low-price list of items and enabled the brand to significantly reduce marketing emphasis on on-and-off discounting. Overemphasis on deals and discounts builds deal loyalty rather real loyalty.

Promotion comes next. In September 2003, a new global campaign was launched in 119 countries. The common signature theme was "I'm lovin' it," supported by a distinctive set of five musical notes. The character of the communications was designed to reflect the new young-adult spirit of the brand. The following year, McDonald's adopted its first global packaging approach. It's the longest-running theme in the history of the brand.

Whether advertising, special events, public relations, online, cause marketing, sponsorships, Olympics, World Cup or other forms of communication, the goal was to be consistent with the new McDonald's brand promise. Disconnected, monthly promotional messages and tactics destroy brands.

Rule 4: Reinforce a results culture
Measuring and managing performance is the eighth P. The McDonald's Plan to Win included three-year, measurable milestones.

Creating a results culture means it is important to produce the right results the right way. A balanced brand-business scorecard should include measurable elements such as brand familiarity, brand reputation, employee pride, customer-perceived value, brand loyalty, sales, share and profit.

Rule 5: Rebuild brand trust
In this skeptical, demanding, uncertain world, trust is a must. As part of revitalizing a brand, rebuilding trust is critical. Investment in rebuilding trust is an important, challenging marketing imperative. There is demand for more openness, more social responsibility and more integrity. Over the years McDonald's invested in building trust -- Ronald McDonald House, environmental responsibility, commitment to employee diversity, local community activities. As the concern with healthful living has grown, so has McDonald's commitment to providing appropriate choices -- for example, salads, apple slices, yogurt parfait, water, juices and milk.

Rule 6: Realize global alignment
The power of alignment is awesome. During brand revitalization, we often talk about the need to get everyone on the same page. But we rarely, if ever, define the page we want everyone to be on. That's the purpose of the one-page Plan to Win, the one-page document that summarizes the eight P's and the desired outcomes.

Brand revitalization needs the courage and perspective of strong leaders. Jim Cantalupo was a decisive, committed leader providing clear direction and priorities. Charlie Bell, chief operating officer, was not only a great communicator, his positive attitude was infectious. They were the leaders who led the creation and launch of the far-reaching McDonald's Plan to Win. The vision and positive momentum initiated by Cantalupo and Bell continues to produce results even in a difficult economic environment.

pro twitterers share their secrets

Author: Mark Walsh
Published: June 23, 2009
Source: MediaPost

Corporate Twitter experts Tuesday offered insights into how the social media service of-the-moment can be used for everything from celebrating funnel cake to selling coffee and breakfast wraps to calming irate cable TV customers.

Panelists from companies including Six Flags, Dunkin' Donuts, and Comcast who were gathered at the OMMA Social conference highlighted Twitter's versatility as a marketing and customer service tool as well as its value in letting big brands connect informally with consumers.

"We learned very quickly it's about individuals. It's really about that personal interaction" said Frank Eliason, director of digital care at Comcast, of Twitter. He drew hearty laughter when he described the cable giant as being known for its customer service. "I can't wait until people stop laughing at that joke," added Eliason, who oversees a team of 10 that tracks Twitter and thousands of other social sites and blogs on behalf of the cable giant.

David Puner, communications manager for Dunkin' Brands Inc. -- better known by his Twitter handle, Dunkin' Dave -- has become the human face, or voice, of Dunkin' Donuts. Puner explained that the company, which now has 26,000 followers on Twitter, began experimenting with the service because people were already talking about the brand online. "We've seen it grow considerably since, and that's been nice," he said.

His frequent tweets give people a connection to an "authentic voice" inside the company. But that direct interaction with consumers requires Dunkin' Donuts and other large companies to loosen up their usual standards for corporate communications. "With Twitter and social media in general, there really aren't any rules yet. It's still defining itself," he said. "You need to trust the one who tweets," he said.

Billy Custer, social media agent for Six Flags, went even farther. "A certain amount of immaturity is even encouraged," he offered, acknowledging that he wasn't that far removed in age from the teens who flock to Six Flags' amusement parks and are active Twitterers. He went on to describe how the company has had success using Twitter for promotions like Funnel Cake Fridays, Twitter-directed treasure hunts, and ticket giveaways.

A big part of Twitter's appeal for brands is getting instant feedback on things like product launches or external developments they need to know about quickly. "You can kill the focus group," declared Custer, alluding to Twitter's ability to constantly take the pulse of consumer sentiment.

Puner agreed, saying that Dunkin' Donuts could use Twitter to ask whether followers like its new breakfast wrap and "get 30 people instantly telling you yes or no."

In that regard, Eliason stressed the importance of Twitter search to track the social conversation for any relevant news affecting Comcast. That paid off recently in helping the company learn quickly of a local power outage that cut off Fox Sports Net's broadcast of a first-round playoff game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers.

Eliason said that within three minutes, Comcast knew the outage was caused by a lightning strike and not the result of an engineering problem, saving the cable provider time and resources. "Twitter search is your friend and can add huge benefits to a company," he said.

Asked about the difference between Facebook and Twitter, panelists seemed to agree that Twitter is more open and faster for gauging consumer feedback. Dunkin' Donuts' Puner noted that the company had pulled back on the frequency of posting status updates on Facebook because members weren't especially receptive. "People on Twitter expect to hear from you. People on Facebook don't necessarily want to hear from you," he said.

Eliason also pointed out that unlike Twitter, Facebook doesn't offer the ability to search status updates. However, Facebook last week said it had begun testing a real-time search engine for users' news feeds that could ultimately serve as a rival to Twitter search. The step is a tacit acknowledgement that Twitter has become the default place for searching real-time information online.

On a separate panel, Don Steele, vice president for digital marketing at the MTV Networks Entertainment Group, expressed concern about whether brands and agencies have become too infatuated with Twitter as the "shiny new toy" of social media. "We're making sure we're not ignoring audiences and communities we've already built" on Facebook and other social properties, he said.

ndp to test multi-screen signage at train station

Author: Mami Akasaka
Published: June 29, 2009
Source: Tech-On!

Dai Nippon Printing Co Ltd (DNP) will release the "Tall Vision," digital signage equipment that uses 12 42-inch LCD panels to show advertisements and other information, in August 2009.

DNP will set up the equipment at JR Sendai Station in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, and conduct a verification test from July 17, 2009.

The Tall Vision consists of six units of displays, each of which is composed of two 42-inch LCD panels. Its total width is 360cm, and its height is 198cm including the tip-resistant pedestal (6cm).

The 12 panels can be used as either one large display, two vertically-arranged displays or six horizontally-arranged displays. According to DNP, the Tall Vision is less expensive than a single-screen display of the same size.

If the signage equipment is purchased, the initial cost is about ¥8 million (approx US$84,000) excluding contents to display. Also, DNP is considering leasing the equipment. The company expects sales of ¥1 billion from the Tall Vision and related products in fiscal 2010.

The manufacturer and specifications of the LCD panel used for the Tall Vision can be selected by customers. This time, DNP adopted Victor Company of Japan's "GM-F420S," which has a pixel count of 1,920 x 1,080, a maximum brightness of 720cd/m2, a contrast ratio of 1,000:1, a bezel width of 15mm and vertical and horizontal view angles of 178°.

DNP is currently developing an LSI chip for automatically adjusting colors on the digital signage and another LSI chip for controlling the luminance and contrast ratio in accord with installation site. Those chips will be employed for the Tall Vision from January 2010.

The company will also set up the "Station Information Board," an information terminal equipped with a 46-inch touch-sensitive LCD panel. It displays railway timetables and a map of the surrounding area. Kotsushimbunsha Co Ltd developed its search system and contents, and DNP made the terminal.

The LCD panel used for the Station Information Board is Sharp Corp's "PN-465," which has a pixel count of 1,920 x 1,080, a maximum luminance of 450cd/m2, a contrast ratio of 1,700:1, and vertical and horizontal view angles of 176°. The panel is vertically mounted on the information terminal. Kotsushimbunsha plans to lease or sell the terminal in the second half of 2009.

In the verification test, the Tall Vision will display product information and popular railcars of East Japan Railway Company. And the Station Information Board will provide their details, in addition to the timetables and the map.

Near the digital signage, there will be brochures related to the advertisements displayed on the signage. They will be placed on a rack equipped with a weight sensor that automatically detects a decrease in the number of the brochures to measure the effects of the advertisements. Furthermore, the gender and age bracket of viewers will be determined by NEC Corp's facial recognition system for marketing purposes.

the content strategies summit in review

Author: Paul Flanigan
Published: May 21, 2009
Source: DigitalSignageToday.com

This post covers Day 1 of the Digital Signage Content Strategies Summit. You can find Day 2 here.

Day Two of the Content Strategies Summit seemed to be two things overall: First, a practical application of some of the best practices (Target’s Mark Bennett showed a dozen clips that emphasize his best practices) and a much deeper dive into theory and research.

It’s not point of sale, it’s point of experience.

n 45 minutes, Al Witteman, managing director of Retail Strategy at TracyLocke, showed me that the next step in understanding the impact of digital signage and DOOH is to leverage the incredible research behind shopper marketing. It is widely known that approximately 70 percent of all purchase decisions are made in the store. Mr. Wittemen’s argument is that the emtire environment is the sales pitch, not just a sign on a shelf. Instead of creating “Digital Signage,” he would like the industry to use the term “Digital Experience.” (This may be a late entry into Dave Haynes’s post about what to call ourselves.) The environment has morphed into a holistic engagement device designed to ensure that your decisions are certain, perfect, and will have a positive impact on your loyalty in the future. It’s not “point-of-sale” any longer. It’s “Point-of-Experience.”

What I learned: This is the next phase of digital signage/experience. The industry has spent the past several months grinding away at the basic foundation of what it takes to put the content in the environment, but has yet to really work on impact – what makes the customer tick, and how we can create interactive and engaging experiences. Al asked which one of us would go into work, apply shopper marketing insights, put a stake in the ground, and drive the industry to the next level.

I will. I hope others will too.

Target is spot on. (Pun intended.)

ark Bennett, group manager of Media Production for Target, presented Target’s best practices for Channel Red, Target’s in-store multi-channel network. His points confirmed much of how we should conduct our process for digital signage (I echo several of his points in managing my own programs). But what struck me about Mark’s presence at the conference was not so much the presentation, but the fact that another major retailer is coming forward to learn and educate on industry best practices.

You can find a detailed account of his presentation on Bill Gerba’s site here, written by Christie Liu. The article opens with, “In a rare appearance…” I think Target’s presence will be much more frequent. Like Peter Müller-Brühl’s discussion on Mercedes-Benz during Day 1, major brands will help shape the future of this industry and lay a foundation that all retailers (even the small ones) can model after. I hope that Mark and Chris Borek will continue to drive the industry forward.

What’s more valuable? CPM or REM?

Paul Ryan, President of Retail Engagement Architects, in collaboration with Retail Media Consulting, presented a solid argument for understanding the value of a message. By creating a grounded process by which measurement is achieved (not just imagined), we can move from measuring reach (CPM) to Relevance, Engagement, and Measurability (REM), or Impact.

What I learned: Building the understanding of impact starts in the process, not at the store. By creating a process aimed at a measurable result, you not only get your desired results, but you will also set the standard by which other content impacts the viewer. Plan for measurement now, not after it hits the store. An important lesson, indeed.

The five items you need in a supermarket

Remember that I asked you to list those five things you need tonight at the market? I’ll take a stab at what you wrote: bananas, milk, juice, eggs, cereal. Those were my five. Here’s the question: How many of those are listed as brand name items (instead of “juice,” you wrote “Tropicana”)? Chances are you wrote very few, if any, brand names on your list.

Hearing Mr. Witteman speak about shopper marketing research opened the door for me to see where I think the industry needs to look to build impact and value with content. Christopher Gray, Psy.D., vice president, Shopper Psychology with Saatch & Saatchi X, signed, sealed, and delivered that message.

Dr. Gray explained how we have the potential with Digital Signage (Experience?) to fill in that brand name blank. With the shopping exercise, he was, “demonstrating that brand preferences are not guarantees once a shopper is confronted with all of their choices at shelf. The fact that we tend to write down categories of items rather than specific brand names is significant and suggests that on some level, consciously or subconsciously, we are not fully committed. As a result, there is room for influence. How to do that successfully is where the real work begins.” When we walk in a store, we not only have a frame of mind about what we want, we spend a considerable amount of time “deselecting” extraneous brands and products. That deselection state is a death knell for brands.

How can Digital Signage help brands avoid the deselection phase? Dr. Gray presented a compelling series of arguments on how digital signage can keep a brand at the forefront of the customer’s mind when shopping.

Echoing Mr. Wittemen’s statistic that 70 percent of all purchase decisions are made in the store, and with a time span of approximately three seconds for the shopper to move into that area of impact and make that decision, how can we utilize digital messaging to cut through the clutter? Thought provoking, to say the least.

Quite frankly, Dr. Gray’s entire presentation is a series of blog posts on its own. His insights on shopping behavior and how Digital Signage relates to those behaviors was nothing short of fantastic. I hope we hear much more from Dr. Gray, Saatchi and Saatchi X, and TracyLocke.

What I learned from this: With the need to understand evolving customer desires in an ever-changing environment, we must embrace the experience and expertise of marketing insights. We can then truly begin with the end in mind.

Oh, and I need to get Tropicana 100% Pure and Natural Orange Juice with Some Pulp at the market tonight. In case you’re wondering, that’s one out of 64 Tropicana Juice and Drink varieties I can choose from. My head hurts. A little.

Context comes first

Rob Winston, senior account manager for Arbitron Out-of-Home, explained that if content is king, context is emperor. Without context, you lose the efficacy of content.

Mr. Winston noted that our culture has moved from content consumers (watching ads on a program pre-TiVo) to content customers (actively deselecting those pieces of information we choose not to see/hear). It warrants a discussion on what we consider engagement. Mr. Winston believes that engagement is where the audience makes a commitment, not just a response.

All of this wraps into context, something that seems obvious, but in reality is very difficult to achieve. How many of us have hung a TV somewhere in a public space because we knew viewers wanted to see something cool on it, and how many times did we actually consider the space around it? I’m guessing all of us have been down that road before.

Mr. Winston provided a set of simple questions that we should be able to ask and answer in any given situation where we plan to provide the customer with a digital experience:

    1. Who is your customer?
    2. What are they doing?
    3. What do you want them to do?

If you apply these questions not only to the screen but the environment around it, it’s easy to see Mr. Winston’s compelling argument that research lives inside context, and even the best creative won’t work without it.

What I learned: The paint on the wall is much more serious than just a color. It could very well be a deciding factor in whether or not you sell anything with your screen.

The summit - Final thoughts

This was the first slide of Mr. Wittemen’s presentation, and I understood it as soon as it popped up on the screen.

The industry has seen its fair share of “how to” white papers. I have read dozens of them myself. But I believe this summit called attention to the “why behind the buy,” and the need for the industry to leverage that information. Regardless of the presentation or source, every single person the stage brought more than just a pretty piece of video to look at. We heard insight on why content was created, why the customer needed to know something, and why something worked or failed.

What was refreshing was not hearing suspicions about the agency’s role in the process of content. Historically, agencies have been trying to find their place in the industry, and they (and we) are still working out the kinks. But having them at the same table as technology experts, retail experts and industry insiders makes me believe their role in the future of this industry is extremely valuable and growing.

There was a strong contingent of retailers and agencies in attendance, and a few production houses as well. What I saw was a common thread to understand that content can only be king when we have the following: Absolute mastery of the audience based on meticulous research and shopper insights; completely streamlined technology that allows us to create unique experiences and distribute to specific channels of interactivity; and common measurement metrics that work for both large and small environments alike. And finally, that none of this can happen without everyone at the table.

Easier said than done, I know. But doable.

digital channels blur the line

Author: Steve McClellan
Published: June 22, 2009
Source: Brand Week

If you think online media is simply for driving consumer response, think again. A new study from market research firm TNS and digital marketing firm Eyeblaster concludes that the digital era is blurring the line between channels designed for branding and those that trigger consumer action.

The study, based on a worldwide survey of 400 marketing executives involved in branding, advertising and media buying and selling, was conducted in March.

"The common misconception among marketers is that brands are built offline and response is driven online," the study contends. However, data from the survey suggests that "all media channels share a dual role: brand and response."

In effect, said Dean Donaldson, digital experience strategist at Eyeblaster, with digital "creeping across the media landscape the line between online and offline is becoming very blurred. It's no longer either/or with respect to branding versus response. All channels will do both."

That said, some channels may do a little more of one than the other. For example, respondents to the survey indicated they believed display ads across traditional and digital media are predisposed towards branding over response. Online display in particular is considered five times more effective as a branding channel than a response channel.

Per the survey results, perhaps the best pure branding channel is gaming, cited by 65 percent of respondents as being so. That compares to 38 percent who cited outdoor and 26 percent who cited TV as a pure branding vehicle.

"Marketers see a benefit of using display to support brand building on online as well as on mobile channels, especially through use of the rich media [interactive display]," said Don Ryan, vp, technology and media at TNS. "It speaks to this notion of media neutrality."

Others also agreed that most channels increasingly would be used in a dual branding/response role. "That makes sense absolutely," said Sue Moseley, worldwide director of research and futures at Interpublic Group's Initiative. "Our research doesn't disagree with that notion at all."

Marketers even use mobile channels (WAP and other Web-enabled services) in dual brand/response roles, according to the TNS-Eyeblaster survey. Fifty percent of respondents use such channels for that purpose.

While measurement is the top reason marketers use digital media, respondents cited ROI, engagement and interaction rate as more important forms of digital marketing metrics compared to click-through. "Therefore it is no longer true that one media channel can be seen as a purely branding vehicle or response vehicle," the study concludes.

Separately, the survey found that marketers anticipate sizable growth in digital marketing expenditures over the next two years. Overall growth in each of the next two years is expected to be 30 percent, with a third of the market experiencing growth of more than 50 percent in each of the next years.

video highlights from the ana branding conference

Producer: Hoang Levins
Published: May 18, 2009
Source: Advertising Age

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The May 13 Association of National Advertisers conference opened to a crowd of marketers struggling with recession and searching for a glimmer of hope along the horizon. They were offered tips and insights related to both throughout the day. The gathering was organized around the theme "Brand Building in Tough Times and Beyond." Below are video highlights from seven of the day's presentations by top marketing executives.

top 250 technology brands ranked in landor global imagePower® survey

Producer: Hoang Levins
Published: May 18, 2009
Source: Advertising Age

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The May 13 Association of National Advertisers conference opened to a crowd of marketers struggling with recession and searching for a glimmer of hope along the horizon. They were offered tips and insights related to both throughout the day. The gathering was organized around the theme "Brand Building in Tough Times and Beyond." Below are video highlights from seven of the day's presentations by top marketing executives.

the 100 most mentioned brands on twitter

Author: Staff
Published: May 8, 2009
Source: Revolutionmagazine.com

LONDON - Revolution teamed up with i-level's social media agency Jam to reveal the 100 most mentioned brands on Twitter and how they are aiming to capitalise on the buzz

  Brand Mentions Followers Twitter
1 Starbucks 3.37m 120,868 @Starbucks
2 Google 1.01m 307,342 @Google
3 BBC 703,000 15.777 @bbcnews
4 Apple 512,110 None
5 AIG 455,000 None
6 Amazon 245,760 1007 @amazon
7 Microsoft 221,000 None
8 Guardian 211,000 14,913 @guardiannews
9 Dell 185,000 287,575
10 Coca-Cola 135,600 None
11 Ford 130,000 2,256 @ford
12 Sony PlayStation 117,550 20,651 @SonyPlayStation
13 eBay 107,000 1329 @ebayUK
14 Sony 107,000 None
15 Disney 106,000 7,354 @wdwnews
16 Yahoo! 94,500 9,541 @yahoo
17 Sky 74,370 10,248 @SkyNews
18 IKEA 72,300 None
19 IBM 70,400 1,180 @ibmevents
20 Nokia 68,100 None
21 Ford Scott Monty 62,600 16,562 @scottmonty
22 Guinness 59,700 None
23 HP 56,720 1,682 @hpnews
24 ComCast 50,400 14,688 @comcastcares
25 Skittles 48,600 None
26 Canon 48,200 605 @canon
27 McDonald's 45,340 234 @MONOPOLYatMcD
28 Channel 4 39,300 6,932 @channel4news
29 Lego 39,100 None
30 Pepsi 37,400 757 @pepsi
31 Samsung 35,800 582 @samsungmobileus
32 Intel 35,700 464 @intel
33 Tesco 35,500 None
34 Nike 32,800 1,167 @nikeplus
35 Honda 31,400 2,693 @Alicia_at_Honda
36 BMW 30,600 1,265 @BMWSauberF1Team
37 T-Mobile 29,900 1,443 @TMobile_USA
38 BT 27,540 None
39 FedEx 27,100 1,108 @mattceni
40 O2 25,900 2,371 @O2UKOfficial
41 Vodafone 25,400 802 @Vodafone_News
42 Bosch 25,300 None
43 RyanAir 25,200 None
44 Toyota 22,600 2,321 @toyotanewsroom
45 VW 22,190 None
46 Mercedes 21,600 1,506 @TheFifthDriver
47 Subway 21,200 None
48 Cadbury 19,900 None
49 Audi 18,600 None
50 Burger King 18,500 2,496 @thebklounge
51 Marmite 15,600 lovehatemarmite
52 Chanel 14,700 None
53 Citi 12,600 None
54 EasyJet 11,800 @easyjetservice
55 H&M 11,500 2,701 @handm
56 Porsche 10,600 None
57 Zara 10,000 None
58 Gucci 9,990 436 @gucciofficial
59 Nissan 9,740 @NissanSports
60 UPS 8,960 5,381 @trackthis
61 Motorola 8,320 346 @motodev
62 Avon 8,132 None
63 Marks & Spencer 7,900 None
64 Heinz 7,500 None
65 Royal Bank of Scotland 6,945 None
66 Asda 6,650 147 @asda
67 Accenture 5,970 2,126 @Accenture
68 HSBC 5,760 None
69 Lexus 5,690 None
70 British Airways 5,670 1,202 @British_Airways
71 Siemens 5,640 None
72 Gillette 5,250 None
73 Barclays 4,840 None
74 Sainsbury's 4,300 None
75 Budweiser 3,980 None
76 Louis Vuitton 3,950 None
77 Lovefilm 3,720 1,503 @lovefilm_uk
78 Smirnoff 3,380 514 @Smirnoff_EXP
79 Banco Santander 3,330 None
80 UBS 3,330 None
81 Shell 3,100 @shelldotcom
82 Colgate 2,870 None
83 L'Oreal 2,813 None
84 Citroen 2,810 None
85 Rolex 2,630 None
86 Cartier 2,100 None
87 Knorr 2,030 None
88 PG Tips 1,400 None
89 Oxo 829 None
90 Birdseye 748 None
91 Levi's 700 None
92 Specsavers 665 None
93 Duracell 621 None
94 BP 600 None
95 Schweppes 570 None
96 Habitat 500 None
97 Direct Line 500 None
98 Andrex 474 @Andrexpuppy
99 Vauxhal 470 @vauxhallnewsuk
100 Dulux 208 None

 

how to redesign your site's images to attract relevant prospects

Author: Staff
Published: May 7, 2009
Source: Marketing Sherpa

SUMMARY: If your site’s images are not optimized, numerous opportunities to attract visitors are wasted. To be a source of targeted traffic, images first have to be seen by search engines. And, if your images are not designed correctly, you are missing prospects who would arrive from: searches that include image results, image-specific search engines, and third-party image-hosting sites.

Find out the key factors to getting the most out of your site’s images, and ultimately, enticing as many visitors as possible to your site. Includes proof of optimization impact; advice on what prospects want to see. A picture can be worth a thousand clicks. It can stand out, attract attention, and communicate faster than words. Your site’s images -- like the rest of its content -- are a valuable resource that you can leverage for capturing targeted traffic.

Once your Web pages are optimized, and you’re starting see positive results, optimizing your images can push your efforts further. The traffic can come from:

Don’t underestimate the popularity of image-specific searches. Google Image Search was the 12th most popular website in the US in for the week ending on April 11, 2009, according to Hitwise. Also, “the big thing that most people don’t realize is, even though image search traffic volume is much less than Web search traffic volume, the competition for that volume is less,” says Eric Enge, President, Stone Temple Consulting.

However, you do not want to focus on optimizing images until the rest of your site is in good order. For example, a site’s text and link structure should be well-designed before its images are optimized.

Below, we outline the key factors in optimizing your site’s images. We also look at the potential impact of optimizing images through a mini Case Study, and outline a few other strategies that marketers are using. Take a look if you want to pull more natural traffic from resources you’re already hosting.

What the Engines See

Search engines cannot accurately discern an image’s content by looking at the image itself. Instead, they rely on data about the image to help them decide if an image is relevant to a search query. Below are the most important factors and data that search engines consider.

Impact: Case Study Example

To illustrate the impact that optimizing images can have on a website, we talked to Rory Burrill, Director of Consumer Health, Logical Images. Logical Images offers several software tools that make use of its archive of over 50,000 health-related images.

VisualDxHealth, Logical Images consumer website, houses more than 2,000 images of mostly skin-related diseases. The site’s revenue model is advertising-based, and also promotes Logical Image’s paid professional products.

Burrill and his team initially launched the site in 2007 without optimizing most of the images. The images were displayed in a “pretty complex Java application” and had “cryptic” labeling, he says. The team set out in Fall 2007 to change that. Below are the changes they made and the results they saw.

  • High-quality shots

    • The team was lucky to have a large database of images to pull from. They picked the cream of the crop for VisualDxHealth. This was sure to please site visitors, and the high-quality images have the added benefit of attracting eyes, Burrill says.

    In an image search “consumers are going to look at the whole spread of images and not necessarily just click on the first one,” Burrill says. “They’re going to find the best image on that page.”

  • Make images accessible

    • The team stopped using the Java application to display images, and started using basic HTML to make the images more easily seen by search engines.

  • Naming and alt text

    • Due to the number and importance of VisualDxHealth’s images, the team has dedicated image archivists on staff. These specialists worked with Web engineers and medical editors to correctly name images, and add relevant alt text.

    An example of the alt text: “This image displays small, slightly elevated lesions and scars in an adult with chronic acne.”

  • Be patient

    • The changes took about three months to make, but it took twice that long for the search engines to catch on, Burrill says.

    “The indexing of images is a slow process, and I think it’s even slower than standard text indexing. It took the better part of about six months for Google specifically to get through our images and index them.”

  • Results

    • VisualDxHealth experienced about 500% growth in site traffic from Q3 2007 to Q4 2008. Most of that was due to image-search traffic, Burrill says.

    “During November 2007 to March 2008, we saw a 2,229% increase in referral-based traffic directly linked to Google Images. Of the overall total site traffic growth during this period, nearly 70% can be attributed to growth from image search.” Google and its image search tool account for about 90% to 95% of all of VisualDxHealth’s image traffic, Burrill says.

    The pace of that growth has slowed as the majority of VisualDxHealth’s images have been indexed. Now, about 24% of total site traffic is associated with image search, Burrill says.

    Getting More Impact

    The marketers we spoke with mentioned several strategies that could improve the performance of your image SEO. Here are two we’ve highlighted:

    Strategy #1: Host images at sharing sites

    There are both free and paid services that will host your images online. They services offer a wide range in options, such as social media components and search-friendliness. These third-party sites give your images another chance at ranking in search engines. They can also reach people who use the sites directly.

    These sites include:

    Note: Using Flickr for commercial purposes is against its terms of service (see links below). However, we have found accounts that appear to be managed by businesses and, while they do not sell directly from Flickr, they do link to a product category page.

    Flickr is considered one of the most popular, and Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategies, KeyRelevance, says that it is well-designed for SEO. “Flickr has been engineered to be very search friendly,” he says.

    When uploading images to these sites, fill out all the available fields of information. That includes page titles, photo descriptions, photo tags -- everything. The more relevant information you can include on the page that’s hosting your image, the better (without stuffing keywords or being spammy). Be sure to include a link to the portion of your website that is most relevant to the image. Note: the links are often tagged “no-follow” and, therefore, do not pass on “link juice.”

    Strategy #2: Add more images

    This strategy falls in to the “obvious” category, but it should be noted that marketers who do not operate image-intensive businesses, or do not have a large product line, can benefit from adding optimized images to their websites.

    “So if you’re a boring factory making a mechanical doodad, even that can be interesting. Even though you only create one doodad, perhaps there’re a number of steps in the fabrication process. So you could document the process, and there would be interest to your clients as to how you created such a thing,” Smith says.

    Other images can include pictures of your executive team, clip art and stock photography. If you sell a service, you can take pictures of your employees providing the service.

    Strategy #3: Create individual images for pages

    On some websites, when an image is clicked, the user is taken to a webpage that contains nothing but the image. This is not optimal, Smith says, and some marketers instead create a unique HTML page for each image on their sites.

    These pages are optimized for keywords related to the image. For example, a webpage with an image of a black dress would have “black dress” in its H1 tags, page title, text description, etc. The page would not have any other content.

    These pages should be linked to from your website so that search engines can easily spider them. They should also link back to a relevant portion of your website, so if users find them through a search engine, they can click to your main website.

    designer neologisms

    Author: Ignazio Moresco
    Published: Novemeber 12, 2008
    Source: Design Mind

    Can you define simplexity? Super Normal? Poptimism? A look at the language of design thinking (scroll over image to view video controls).


    Designer Neologisms by design mind

    what are some good ideas for sending e-mail campaigns?

    Author: Janine Popick
    Published: April 16, 2009
    Source: B to B Online

    Sometimes we all sit down in front of the computer to create an e-mail marketing campaign and get stuck. We don’t know where to begin but know we need to because every interesting e-mail reminds our customers why they liked us in the first place. Need just one more article for your newsletter, or a launch point for your first e-mail campaign? Here are five things you can write about today:

    the importance of presentation branding with powerpoint templates

    Author: M.J. Plebon
    Published: April 6, 2009
    Source: PresentingYourPoint.com

    PowerPoint is often used when making a presentation. I have sat through hundreds of presentations at symposiums, meetings, forums and conferences and I see the same template themes come up. I asked myself why people choose to use the standard templates offered by Microsoft and why wouldn’t they try to be a little more creative? Is it due to lack of time, training or courage?

    Designing your own template does take some extra time from your busy day however the benefits of your own design far outweigh the cost of time and sweat equity.

    Using the standard PPT templates offered by Microsoft sends a clear message to your audience that you really do not care enough to put a little effort into your presentation for them. More and more audience participants are becoming insulted with the use of standard templates by the presenter. So I suggest that you bite the bullet and learn to do your own templates.

    My friend Vivek Singh from India recently wrote a blog on how to create your own templates. There is some good information there for people who are newbies to template creation.

    One other benefit of creating your own template is that it gives you the opportunity to develop your own brand. I am not suggesting your plaster your logo in the corner of each slide. I do suggest that you use your corporate colours to your advantage. If you have a good image on your website, you can incorporate that somewhere into the intro slide or final slide. Create your own brand by creating your own templates. Microsoft has enough branding so stay away from their stock templates. If you need to present at a technical forum where commercialized presentations are frowned upon and not allowed, use your corporate colours in the template design. Sometimes you can use parts of your logo in a way that reminds people of the company but is not an “in-your-face” form of advertising.

    To get a good match on the corporate colours from a website to the PPT template, I use a software program called Colourificator. It is free to download and you can quickly match the colours from a logo from your website and transfer it to your PPT slide templates. Colour can go a long way to help in branding your presentations.

    Do you make your own PPT templates? If you don’t, then why?

    Hang in there, this is going to be a journey.

    top three mistakes made when raising venture capital

    Author: M.J. Plebon
    Published: April 23, 2009
    Source: www.PresentingYourPoint.com

    What are the top three mistakes made when someone tries to raise venture capital? I had a chance to sit in on a blog radio show hosted by Daisy Wright who is a career coach. She had as her guest, Business Consultant and Venture Capital Expert Prerna Chandak of Lemonade Capital.

    I asked Prerna what were the top three mistakes she has seen over her career when an entrepreneur is pitching for venture capital. Prerna said the number one error is the entrepreneur has overestimated the value of their business. The third was poor preparation of the business plan and the financials. Guess what was number 2? Poor presentations, lack of preparation and attention to detail.

    I really don’t think there is a problem with presentations. I say the problem is with the attitude towards presentations and the low degree of importance placed on them.

    For general business presentations, the corporate world is over worked and often the time allotted for the preparation of a presentation is under estimated. However for something as important as raising capital for your business, it boggles my mind how entrepreneurs can blow an opportunity like this simply because they have not put enough emphasis on the most vital aspect of raising money - the show.

    Entrepreneurs are a passionate lot and often you can not get them to shut up once they start talking about their company, product or service. This passion forms part of the problem. They tend to wander with their explanations, get too technical, long winded and often very emotional when they present. Passionate is great but it often needs to be controlled.

    This is why the preparation of the presentation is so crucial. The VC’s are assessing the entrepreneur as much as the product, idea or service. Is the person a leader? Can they be coached? Can the mange their business?

    My suggestions to any entrepreneur is to prepare your presentation early and rehearse until it is a part of you. I suggest 20 minutes in length. As far as content, you can visit Guy Kawasaki’s blog, website or view several videos of his presentations on raising capital. He has seen enough presentations to know what works.

    Another good one is David S. Rose’s TED Talk - “10 things to know before you pitch a VC for money. Some great advice in an entertaining presentation

    One tip on getting familiar with your presentation ahead of time is to record your voice as you rehearse the story script. Put that on your MP3 or iPod and listen to it over and over. You will pick out words that you do not say clearly, you will start to visualize yourself in the presentation and you will become very familiar with the flow.

    Just one thing to remember as an entrepreneur. Just because you can talk, doesn’t mean you can raise money. Treat your presentation with the highest respect and chances are, if your idea and financial are sound, you may get the money you had been hoping for.

    Hang in there, this is going to be a journey.

    must the show go on?

    Author: Anna-Louise Jackson
    Published: April 15, 2009
    Source: American Marketing Association: Marketing Power

    The recession is hurting trade show attendence, but effective planning can still produce results.

    Are trade shows a thing of the past?

    The economic climate is less than ideal. Companies are slashing marketing budgets, customers are stalling on purchases, attendees are staying home and entire shows are being canceled. At the International Consumer Electronics Show in January, the industry’s largest tech show, attendance was down more than 20%. According to results of a November survey conducted by Dallas-based Meeting Professionals International (MPI), meeting planners anticipate hosting 9% fewer meetings in 2009.

    Is it time to take trade shows out of your marketing plans? Don’t pay your last respects just yet. Trade shows will prevail, experts insist, because they satisfy an important function. They put marketers face-to-face with customers.

    To maximize ROI, capitalize on your face time with potential customers and don’t confine your efforts to the exhibit floor, says trade show consultant Susan Friedmann. Be ready to clock some hours before and after the show. “You must be marketing-savvy in this environment,” Friedmann says. “Be creative. Figure out how you can do more with less.”

    Speak at an event, get published in the media, cross-promote with other exhibitors, offer a free presentation or use your Web site to market to potential customers. Such tactics are more likely to leave a lasting impression. “Education is a wonderful thing to give and it doesn’t have to cost a thing,” Friedmann says.

    PLAN AHEAD
    First, do your planning. Research the best shows to attend that connect with your target audience, and don’t automatically repeat what you’ve done before. Each year, there are approximately 10,000 businessto- business events in the United States, according to Douglas Ducate, president and CEO of the Dallas-based Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR). Managers at Pittsburgh-based PPG Industries recognized that a target audience segment had begun to dwindle at a particular show, for example, so they reduced the company’s presence there, says Robert Struble, PPG’s business communications manager. PPG sets out to obtain thousands of impressions, hundreds of contacts and dozens of high-value interactions at trade shows, Struble says. If the show does not meet its objectives, PPG pulls the plug.

    Establish real and quantifiable goals like PPG’s. Will the show increase brand visibility? Are you unveiling a new product? Is the show an opportunity to serve as a leader or educator? Will the show expand or maintain customer relationships?

    TRADE QUANTITY FOR QUALITY
    To achieve your trade show objectives, do pre-show homework and gather data. Comb the attendance list, research potential customers and reach out to existing customers. Plan your expenses and project your ROI. CEIR offers a free ROI calculator for small- and medium sized companies to estimate a show’s potential audience, number of exhibit staff needed and size of exhibit space. This kind of presentations will help exhibitors squeeze every last penny of value from their investment.

    And spend wisely. PPG attends 30 shows per year, and at an average cost of $40,000 per show, the company can’t afford to send just anyone. “We’ve been trying to bring whoever’s convenient but send the people who are really, really good at doing trade shows,” Struble says.

    Keep a “glass half-full” mentality. Don’t Obsess about the quantity. Lower levels of floor traffic mean more one-on-one time with attendees. Business competitors that opted not to show up means you get to interact with their customers. Instead of amassing stacks of business cards, Friedmann suggests focusing on generating 10 to 50 quality leads and pursuing these leads in a more personalized manner.

    SHOW ME THE MONEY
    Nearly two-thirds of marketers conduct some sort of post-show measurement, primarily to justify expenditures, according to MPI. For some companies, the sale doesn’t happen until one or two years after a show. So instead, they focus on the return on opportunity, or ROO, to move the sales cycle up a few stages.

    PPG, whose lead time on projects can be up to 18 months, developed metrics to measure specific trade show objectives, such as the dollar value of contacts or the number of impressions made at a show. PPG does not attach a dollar return to particular shows, Struble says. “We don’t view these as hard metrics; we really view them as barometers.”

    To profit from your investment of time and energy, don’t let the show end when you leave the exhibit hall. Remember: You came to a show to make contacts; after the show you need to cultivate those contacts. Look online for ways to network between shows and send literature tailored to customer needs, rather than blanketing all contacts with the same material. “What happens after the show is crucial,” Friedmann says, yet more than 80% of leads are never pursued. Don’t leave potential new business on the trade show floor.

    brand challenge: renovate before it's too late

    Author: Fred Geyer
    Published: February 13, 2009
    Source: American Marketing Association: Marketing Power

    Fred Geyer is a Partner with Prophet (www.prophet.com), a leading global consultancy specializing in helping Fortune 500 clients and their senior executives more effectively use brand, marketing, innovation, and design to drive profitable growth.

    Stories of marketing heroes who transform poorly performing brands never fail to enthrall us. Dove’s transformation into an empowering brand. McDonald’s shift to healthier eating. Hewlett Packard’s rebound in the PC market. These are among some recent successes.

    But they beg the question: Why do brand leaders wait until their brands are at the breaking point, and at risk of joining such brands as Radio Shack, 7Up, or the GAP, for which renovation may be too late?

    Unheralded marketing heroes renovate their brands while they are strong and growing. They spot changing market dynamics and address them as opportunities before they have time to develop into threats. Their reward is faster, profitable growth without the negative headlines. Here are some of the best practices in brand renovation that have been identified in working with many businesses across a range of markets.

    grim times prompt more upbeat logos

    Author: Todd Wasserman
    Published: February 21, 2009
    Source: BRANDWEEK

    As the economy gets uglier, logos are getting prettier.

    The stolid, angular look of visual trademarks like IBM’s and Bank of America are being supplanted by ones that sport softer, more approachable fonts; multiple colors and natural, child-like symbols.

    The latest example of the trend is Kraft. While the food giant’s previous visual treatment was a red, white and blue hexagon, the new one, which the company introduced with great fanfare last week, is in lower-case and sports yellow, green, purple, blue and orange as well.

    upbeat logos

    Kraft’s new logo also bears a striking resemblance to supermarket Stop & Shop, which traded its red, green and white “stop sign” logo for a one with similar colors and a bowl of fruit last August. Another convert to the new logo style is Wal-Mart, which swapped its blocky, monochromatic visual treatment for one (Walmart) that at least has two colors and a sun icon.

    Designers have a name for the trend: The Google Effect. Many say that Google’s multicolor design and the company’s willingness to tweak its logo for holidays and such have been widely influential.

    Ruth Kedar, the woman who designed Google’s logo, agrees. “[Logos are] a lot less staid, a bit more playful,” she said. While acknowledging that Google wasn’t the first to tweak its logo—MTV was doing the same thing in 1982—she said the notion was still an anathema to most companies until recently. “The idea that you could modify a brand and play with it was kind of a radical change in branding, going way out of the corporate ID manual.”

    Christopher Nurko, the head of brand strategy for Nitro, the design firm that came up with Kraft’s new logo, cited Google’s influence, but said there are other factors at play. “People have looked for softer, more organic shapes,” he said. “There’s this movement in art and design that’s a lot softer.”

    Indeed, the Google Effect in this case may have a triple meaning—Google’s introduction of an era of more transparent corporate images and the advancement of the Internet as a medium to showcase logos are also influences.

    Years ago, logos were designed to be seen on buildings and trucks, but now the primary forum is the Internet where “color restrictions aren’t as much of an issue,” according to Matthew Carlson, principal of brand experience at Continuum, a Boston design firm.

    In regard to transparency, Mike Mitchell, a Kraft rep, said that the company’s new logo is a manifestation of a bottom-up change at the company. The visual treatment, he said, is designed to convey Kraft’s new mantra: “Make today delicious.” It symbolically represents various Kraft products. The triangle shape “is invocative of pizza,” he said.

    Most consumers won’t catch those references but instead will walk away with a more positive feeling about the company, said Mitchell.

    Cal McAllister, co-founder of Wexly School for Girls, a design firm that has worked with Microsoft, Nike and others, said the new logos are a reflection of a desire to at least appear more approachable and transparent. “Everyone is working off the same brief,” he said. “They say, ‘Give me something natural, like a sun or a flower,’ or ‘Make it soft and make it seem friendly. It’s the opposite of IBM’s logo, which is ‘Trust us.’”

    Since such sentiment is based on consumer research, McAllister speculated that the gloomy times may be prompting consumers to gravitate to such imagery.

    “Because we’re in a tough time and people are getting laid off, I think there’s a subconscious desire to take you back to when you weren’t worried about things like that, which is why we’re seeing these almost hand-drawn logos,” McAllister said. “And when you see a logo that’s boxy and the edges are hard and sharp, and the company just laid off 10,000 people, you get mad at them. But if it’s a watercolory rounded logo, you feel kind of sorry for them.”

    Nevertheless, Steve Lamoureux, chief innovation officer of design testing firm Affinnova, said that companies like Kraft may be falling victim to a fad: “There’s a risk associated with changing your ID to be on-trend because trends come and go.”

    creativity top 5: march 23

    Author: Creativity
    Published: March 23, 2009
    Source: Creativity Online

    In this week's episode of Creativity's Top 5, the Swedish Postal Service teams up with a performance artist for an interactive swop meet, Nike and 72andSunny trail the battle of the sexes in running shoes, TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York performs a transplant for crazy core Skittles, Leagas Delaney adapts the true story of a shipwreck survivor for Timberland, and Warner Brothers releases the first movie poster for Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are.

    twitter works great for business: 16 ‘big’ brands show it out!

    Author: Online Advertising Group
    Published: December 5, 2008
    Source: Online Advertising Group

    The benefits of Twitter are unexplored and perhaps that’s the reason why Twitter is still raw and can be more beneficial to entities that tap its potential at the earliest. Meanwhile, some of the huge brands have put their hands on to Twitter and have showed it up to the world- how effective can Twitter be in businesses? The companies are using it for various purposes, but each one of them is in the process of gaining good advantage from it.

    For the purpose of updating the customers about the company deals and coupon codes.

    As an alternate customer support.

    To connect with the customers.

    To provide an alternative subscription option.

    To publish company news.

    As a promotion tool.

    This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 1:54 am and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    cmo council finds one-third of marketers plan budget increases

    Author: Kate Maddox
    Published: March 17, 2009
    Source: B to B Online

    Palo Alto, Calif.—Despite the recession, nearly one-third of global marketers plan to increase their marketing budgets this year, according to a new report from the Chief Marketing Officer Council.

    The CMO Council’s Marketing Outlook study was based on an online survey of more than 650 global marketing executives. It found that 29% of marketers plan budget increases this year; 50% will cut budgets; and 21% will keep budgets flat.

    “Marketers are not running scared from the economy. Broad concerns about the economic, stock market and credit downturn are not the leading forces shaping this year’s budget planning process”, said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council.

    The top factors driving marketing budget allocation this year are: customer anxiety (49%), slower selling cycles (38%) and reduced consumer spending (33%). (Respondents could select more than one response.)

    The study also found that the top two areas of marketing investment this year are e-mail marketing (45%) and online surveys and research (33%).

    The CMO Council study was conducted from mid-January through early March.

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