The other day, I had a discussion with Nicole (my partner in crime) regarding her “Twitter as a news source” post. As our chat wore on, we eventually made our way to a comment she made about her exec friend’s desire to get PR within the printed pages of Canada’s most reputable national paper, The Globe and Mail.
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I was reading today, as per my regular caffeine-fueled morning ritual, and I happened to come across a rather interesting article in The Globe and Mail (to which this article owes its name).
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With the growing trend of iCrime—where iPods have become such a “must have” item that kids/teens are willing to beat the crap out of each other for them—a philosophical question has been raised. Do companies that have done TOO good a job of making their product the “latest and greatest” (Apple in this case) share some responsibility for any resulting “negative brand evangelism”?
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Recently, I read an article on Scobleizer about the virtues of “ugly” sites. Comments such as “more sticky” and “generally more fun to participate in” were mentioned to justify the revenue driving power of “anti-marketing design”. That, and the notion there’s more street-cred (so to speak) in sites that look like my 5 year-old put them together. Why? Because they don’t look like blatant marketing ploys (just thinly disguised ones, in my opinion).
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I am going to post the link to the article where I found this quote. I think it’s one of the most helpful and insightful articles I have read in quite a while. The title is “Multiscreen Madman” and it’s from the New York Times (yes, one of my favorite sources of information). This article features an interview with Robert Rasmussen, executive creative director of the Nike account at R/GA, AKQA chief creative officer Lars Bastholm and Barbarian Group CEO Benjamin Palmer.
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It has been a great week. But as it draws to a close, I’m definitely ready to welcome the weekend! Yes—for me the excitement lies in the fact that I am renovating, which has forced me to go through the fun-filled exercise of temporarily packing my worldly goods into bland cardboard boxes. And as I do this, I keep reminding myself that I will survive the Chaos! I will maintain a positive outlook, damn it—despite the fast approaching tsunami of plaster, dust and paint!
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As I continue to educate myself by trying to figure out all the ways that I can use social media in one day, I find that it’s become a bit of a full time job. Amazingly, there are all sorts of tools available that can assist you. I am sure many of you are already familiar with the various tools that allow you to post on several of your social media networks at one time.
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If you’ve been following my posts, you may have begun to recognize a familiar pattern. One that involves me wading daily through all sorts of trend reports, ezines, e-mails and blogs from every industry you can imagine. In my world, meetings never begin before noon (that’s if I have anything to say about it) and my morning kicks off with a potent cup of joe and a mountain of mail overflowing in my inbox.
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You know, even when I was a young girl I felt different. I wasn’t into the same things as a lot of the other little girls—skipping about in their little dresses and pigtails. I was a loner. I enjoyed reading and writing my own little stories; I could spend hours drawing and not even care whether I saw another human face (other than the one I’d just sketched). I always thought I was a bit of an odd-ball—not that there’s anything wrong with that! So from my somewhat unique vantage point, it’s interesting to me to see how this whole ‘Motrin’ debacle has been playing out.
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Social media now has the attention of many companies these days. Everyone is trying to figure out how to leverage and court the customers they want while providing them with the fuel and fire to become brand evangelists. Most companies forget that understanding the innovators, influencers, critics, spectators and those who choose not to participate at all should become a part of the concepts and format they need to develop in order to engage their target audience.
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