I’ve been interning at the IPG Emerging Media Lab for the past few months. Little did I know that in addition to my killer subject line (Your Tech Savvy Intern), my resume pegged me as a Zen Tech Warrior. (This was before I had read the Lab’s 2009 Digital Trends and learned what a “Zen Tech Warrior” was).
Here are 4 things that this Zen Tech Warrior learned at the Lab:
Continue reading “Reflections of a Zen Tech Warrior”
From 1980 onward, conversations were happening on a broad scale online. First on Usenet, then on IRC, then AIM chat rooms, and then Internet forums. And now Twitter. At each evolutionary step of the meta-conversation, previous incarnations die off in favor of newer, better features. Right now a lot of people are asking if Twitter is a fad. And it probably is. But it has all the makings of the perfect fad.
I call Twitter the “perfect fad” because it brings together three elements that have ideally aligned: Digestibility, Search, and Scale. Continue reading “Is Twitter the perfect fad?”
Twitter has exploded over the past two years. In March, the site doubled its unique users to reach 9.3 million. In terms of Google searches, Twitter has become more popular than Britney Spears, and is just about even with Barack Obama. The micro-blogging site has gone mainstream. Many of us have started our own Twitter accounts, our moms and uncles and co-workers and parent companies are all on it. (Which has some asking if its star has already begun to fade).
It doesn’t matter if Twitter has gone from geeky to hip and back to geeky just because everyone is doing it; what matters is how we use it, how it evolves, and what role it can play in connecting us to each other, our clients, and consumers. Continue reading “Tweeting for the Man: A Twitter Strategy Guide”
Contagious magazine’s Special Report on Goodvertising points to the use of the environment, corporate social responsibility, ethical investment, fairness and community health and well-being as current trends in advertising. The reason that these trends in ad campaigns continue to gain popularity is clear: The results of an online poll by Harris Interactive showed that despite the economy, 73% of consumers said they still buy green.
Agencies and brands get in the green
You don’t have to have a drop of confidence in any reports about melting polar ice caps to move green practices to the top of your company’s must-do list. In fact, government regulation may soon be the next biggest reason to clean up. The U.K.’s Carbon Reduction Commitment will be implemented in 2010. And 63 of the respondents to the AMA/FH study believe that new U.S. presidential administration policies will further accelerate the adoption of corporate sustainability programs. Continue reading “Is going green a strategic imperative?”
“Your tech savvy intern.” These were the words on the email subject line in response to a Craigslist ad we’d posted to fill an intern position. Needless to say, she got the job. As we come to the end of another semester, it seems fitting to reexamine the role of the intern in the new media marketing space. Because interns are not just a cheap way to fill labor needs.
Interns, who typically fall into the 18-30 range, are a key demographic for many of our agencies clients. Moreover, they are comfortable with new media and are exploiting it for their purposes—we’d all be crazy not to tap into this group given how quickly the space is changing and how the behaviors around the technology are being defined in large part by this age group. Having these talented young men and women contributing to the research, ideation, and content we are tapped to do brings us fresh ideas and new thinking. Not to mention a little hungry blood, for which I’m always grateful (as one of our interns is fond of saying, “I’m on it! I’m on it!” or “I would LOVE to do that research, I am REALLY interested in that topic!” Continue reading “Leveraging interns in the new media space”
“We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.” – Tom Peters
Although Tom Peters coined “The Brand Called You” in an article in FastCompany magazine back in 1997, with the explosion of social media, personal branding is more important than ever.
Personal branding, a summation of how individuals are representing themselves online, is a phenomenon where people and their careers are perceived as brands. Your online presence including news, blog posts and comments, profiles on social networks, images, videos and personal web sites – essentially content of any kind that connects to you, makes up your personal brand. For individuals and executives, it’s important to gain control of this image you are presenting to the world. New tools for personal branding can help you create and manage a unique and powerful personal brand online. Continue reading “Using social media to build your personal brand”
Earlier this week, I attended and presented at the Inbound Marketing Summit organized by Chris Brogan. It was truly an engaging and informative conference. The consensus was that social media marketing is still big on tactics and short on strategy. Marketing has changed and every company needs to have a long term plan for participation- or be left behind.
Here are some highlights from the summit:
Continue reading “Inbound marketing is “in””
The TED conference showcases lectures from some of the most interesting voices in technology, arts and media. Most recently, I discovered a short, four minute video on text message reporting of violent crisis in Africa. The concept is a great one, but the larger concept behind this particular incarnation is what is fascinating.
The project initially allowed thousands of updates reporting break outs of violence, and aggregated that content. But eventually they had more content than could be realistically consumed. So after having success with a crowdsourced approach to content generation, they decided to take a similar approach to content filtration. Which is brilliant. Continue reading “A million voices, a million editors”
This is the best story we have seen in weeks. Apparently the ESPN site has an Easter Egg for old school gamers. When visiting the site in Internet Explorer and entering the Konami code, one of the most famous cheat codes in gaming, the site gets an aesthetic makeover suited to an 8-year-old girl.
The makeover seems to come from cornify.com, and while the unicorns and pink text might be deemed by some to be a welcome addition, one thread posting in the article about this trick notes that there is a job opening for web designer for ESPN on Disney’s recruiting site.
See the full page screenshot: Continue reading “ESPN.com gets glittery, unicorn makeover”
A recent comScore report on the Hispanic Internet market found that the online Hispanic population reached a record 20.3 million visitors in February 2009 – representing 11% of the total U.S. online market. Furthermore, among online activities, Hispanics ranked highest on Community (Teens); Gaming; Entertainment (Radio and Multimedia); Discussion/Chat, IM; and Music.
These findings should be of keen interest to US marketers, and (as all research findings), raise a couple of questions.
Why does the Hispanic market spend so much time online?
The answer to that question is two-fold. Hispanics, by nature, are an interdependent-interconnected culture – which is why we see them over-index on connected media (e.g. cell phone usage, social networking, blogging, etc.). Any technology that facilitates connecting is high-value for the Hispanic consumer. Continue reading “Online Hispanics are a lucrative target”
