Yelp!

That's what I was telling people last night during the first ever Oak Cliff Art Crawl. I had volunteered to greet people as they came into Art n' Go, the table I sat behind had a bunch of art flyers, biz cards, art crawl maps, in addition to FREE, re-usable bags from Yelp.

I WILL POST A PICTURE OF THE BAG HOPEFULLY LATER TODAY

I thought this was an awesome thing for the brand to do, and it helped me make the case for supporting local businesses in the area. It was a perfect conversation point, and almost everyone who came in picked up a bag. :)

FYI

I would like to blog more often, but in the absence of a new post, please check out my Twitter feed in the right sidebar for interesting articles, news, etc. I update Twitter probably 5-10 times a day, imagine what that would look like in blog posts?! It would be pure awesomeness, I know.

Working on a solution, as always. :)

really?

WOW! I was the 999,999th visitor at GameTab. I WoN! I can't wait to click the button to claim my totally, awesome, prize!

Do ads like this really work on a majority of the population? I mean, come on, I'm at GameTab, I'm a smart, savvy consumer looking for more information, not looking for diversion or some classless ad shaking in my face.

Irritated these ads exist.

Where was the planning? :)

Got an interview?

I received an email the other week from a graduate of a business school who wanted some interviewing tips. I thought I'd share with you what I wrote in response:

Oh the interviewing process...will this be your first one? I suggest doing practice interviews with as many places as you can. Even though you may not want the specific job, find related industries to apply for or ask for informational interviews, just to help make you more comfortable with the process of interviews.

Any interview, no matter what agency you’re at, will be the same. It’s all about personality. Either you fit or you don’t. Sorry to be blunt, but the advertising business is all about creating personalities and experiences out of brands, and therefore in the agency itself it’s all about the personalities and experiences you bring to the table. So if it’s not a good fit, don’t be down on yourself. You wouldn’t have been happy working there anyway, so breathe a sigh of relief, really. :)

With that said, a resume may get you in the door but a book would be better. Try to put something together that shows the experiences you’ve had. They can be school-based, from your travel experiences, or from jobs, etc. Just ways to show how you think and what makes you YOU. You are unique and that’s the great thing about planning is that the discipline values your unique characteristics.

And last but not least, don’t stay up late at night worrying about if you have the right answers to their questions. Instead, if you want to stay up late, spend the time thinking about the questions you have for them! They want you to be passionate, energetic, and enthusiastic about planning and the agency. Make sure you are before you walk in that door.

And if all else fails, just drink lots of coffee and go with it. :P

Hulu is super COOL-u

An evil plot to destroy the world. Enjoy.



I did. Thank you.

pS > blogger peeps! I owe you lots of information, a ton has been going on in the agency lately and I'd love to update you all about it. lots of learning happening on my part. :) It's all good. I thank you Miami Ad School for inspiring me to be diligent, effective and creative.

Stay tuned, but until then

plan on plannaz

Portland, Oregon

Thought I'd share with you my response to "why is Portland the best city in the U.S.?"

It's the perfect size, WITH public transportation AND bike lanes, so you can change up your commuting style if you want. Portland has great music scene (rivals Austin's), great coffee, great food, and the most microbreweries per capita of any city in the U.S. There are hippies in Portland, but most travel south to Eugene (my second favorite city in Oregon), Portland is more filled with industrial hipsters, artists, musicians, and there's a tiny section of town that's similar to an 'Uptown' in any town. Portland has great shopping, lots of boutiques (I can think of one major shopping mall/center in city limits), lots of good second hands good (CDs, clothes, furniture, books) and no sales tax anywhere. The Willamette river runs through the middle of downtown and there are plenty of hiking trails in Forest Park that's just above the city. If you want to see the ocean or go snowboarding, both activities are only 90 minutes to the West or East. The people are smart, conscientious, and conversational. Keep Oregon green is our slogan. It is. :)

Portland rules.

creative briefs

Some things I've learned in my first year:

1. do not always happen
2. should be part of a larger conversation/should never be a hand off
3. help the creatives identify what the strategy means to who
4. sometimes are just "the form to fill out"
5. sometimes they're not brief
6. media peeps will be the most interested in demographics
7. creative guidelines are more of a "must do" than a general direction
8. the client will always want to see their name in the single most persuasive
   
9. using direct quotes from consumers helps get the language right

My insight today was point number 3 - that they help give color to why the strategy works for our target audience. I always though the brief was just a one-sheeter with power-packed, inspirational language that would help focus the creative output, but to hear that creatives are identifying with the strategy from it, make me happy.

Maybe this is a "duh" point to make, but it was validating to hear and helps to support this planning document even more. :)

doing some reading

just a small round-up of "news" from Mediaweek:

Addictinggames.com, which targets males 12-24, is now MTV Networks' largest online property with over 11 million monthly uniques.

Could the next evolution of MTV being a gaming space?

Entertainment brands like movie studios and game publishers seek higher impact ad placements, which casual games can offer better than most content sites.

Is this saying that doing advertising in the form of games is high-impact placement or that placing ads on casual gaming sites is high-impact? not very good writing.

New Character Project by usanetwork.com celebrates interesting, dazzling, and distinctive people from all walks of life, who make this country extraordinary.

Sounds cool, but this sounds like it could be a great TV show - maybe one of the only good TV shows on TV these days (do people seriously watch good TV somewhere? let me know). Anyway, I checked out the website and this also seems like it would be a good project to benefit a nonprofit, but...again, doesn't look like USA is coming through on this. Hmmm. I bet they aren't even on Twitter. OH, I was wrong; check this out! :P

Peter Daboll says: "Smart marketers will use this economic lull as an opportunity to stop, listen and learn how to communicate with consumers instead of spinning their wheels."

You should read this awesome case study about Bank of America and their Twitter account; it's about how brands can be providing exceptionally personal customer-service for FREE using Twitter. Yes, really.

47% of U.S. homes upgraded to HDTVs, up from 34% in 2007 but...why? "TV" isn't getting any better.

>>>>
Ok, done reading now. Thanks for letting me share.

What is Twitter?

I was asked this today by a creative. Instead of acting smugly "in the know," I tried to explain Tweets, Tweeps, and the service in general. Here's what came out:

It's considered a microblogging service, but you don't have to put up a whole post or anything, just a short message with 140 characters or less.

So, it's like a blog?

No, it's more of a feed. You have followers and you follow people, and depending the content of your Tweets and vice versa, it's a news feed more or less of cool stuff you might be into.

So, what do I write about?

Anything you want, it's mostly about what's going to be of most interest to your followers and what you like to read. There are many types of "feeds." Mine is about cool advertising, thinking news because those are the kind of people I follow. But if you wanted to know about mundane time at which someone's getting their coffee in the morning or hitting their afternoon slump, those kinds of Tweets are out there to know about.

I do Facebook, that's about it.

Well, Facebook - and its new "facelift" - is a lot like Twitter, where you see other people's updates in real time...

The conversation changed turns and we were then setting up a context mapping session in which I will reference Twitter and Facebook and review sites. At least he won't be blindsighted when I bring up Tweets, but the issue (and game for planners) will come when we bring to life how social media is changing people's consumption of media in general.

I think it's a matter of asking the right questions so that we include social media in the conversation. This was in fact the very topic of a planner I feel privileged to work with, Planning for conversations by Christopher Owens at the AAAA Planning Conference 2008. Conversations are powerful, conversations can happen anywhere, and brands, products and companies must be conversational. Ok. But how do we make this happen?

The standard questions on a brief don't take into account the interaction that can happen with a brand. Should this piece of paper be changing to include a social space? If we were to answer the question "what's my brand's share factor?" What would we say? If were to "guide" the conversation, where would we take it? What do we want people to talk about? Or rather, what are they talking about and how can we participate?

things to think about.

hats off to Skittles

I am dazzled (If Skittled were an adjective, I'd use it) by the new Skittles site, yesterday and today. Yesterday it was skittles.com - the Twitter page; today it's skittles.com - the Facebook page. The change has been credited to spam/vulgarity (one and the same in my marketing book), and I think this says more about us as humans than it does about the brand.

I think people will take advantage of any chance to publicize themselves; "oh what? Skittles.com is publishing anything related to skittles in real time? Oh shit, I better type something so I get my 5 seconds of fame." - seriously? Oh yeah, it's America, the country of democracy and 15 minutes of fame. What happens when we place control in the hands of media hungry, socially-active consumers? Not decency in this time of good, but foul language and foul play. Gross.

I commend Skittles for going out on a limb, where most clients are scared to not have a TV ad, Skittles said we're doing social media all the way. They took a risk, and we've made them pay. As a young advertiser and social media advocate, I'm not happy with my fellow Twitterers. We abused the medium and teased a brand for having some balls.

Like this post says:

No one knows all the rules apart from the fact that the rules change every time you want to play. Trying to play it safe is the riskiest play of all right now.

So here's to Skittles, my hat's off to you for taking a risk; you've been the bravest, aside from Modernista (but they're an agency so they don't count), in terms of thinking outside the box when it comes to marketing yourself and interacting with your customers. High five!

Not to mention, that Farmers came to our agency the other day and left bags of Skittles on all of the tables, little did they know that just days later, I would be eating them still (they were huge bags) and happy to be part of a very brand-worthy social conversation. pretty cool.

Push vs. Pull

I've heard a lot about these two words in regards to the evolution of marketing and advertising.

In an Ad Age interview with Brad Jakeman, the new marketing manager for Activision (Guitar Hero publisher), he talks about his goals for marketing:

I cam here to make our marketing at least as engaging, innovative and exciting as our games.

That sounds pretty cool when you think about it. A video game is a very interactive experience, just think if advertising was a game you could engage with? And really, he says, that's where the industry should be going:

The step before consumer action, which we all hope to get, is consumer engagement.
We are living in an age of content, and if advertisers and marketers start thinking of themselves as content producers that are tasked with engaging consumers around their brand, that is a much more enlightened view than people who think of themselves as disseminators of the information that the company wants consumers to learn about their brand.
If you're creating amazing content, consumers will find you and they will engage with you.

But then someone has to take that leap, an if we build it, will they come? sort of deal. What Jakeman is talking about is the "pull" of engaging content, content that will draw consumers toward your brand. Tools to use that would pull consumers in; if you make yourself useful, people will naturally engage with you more frequently because you provide a service they need.

...as opposed to crappy content that you push out and impose on broad-scale media.

So, I know we all feel overwhelmed sometimes by the amount of information available - cool websites to check out, applications to download, Facebook groups to join - but the influx of content is not going to stop; it's only going to flow faster, so jump in brands! Here's to learning how to swim.

I.I. with brand management

A couple months ago, I asked a brand manager if I could take them out for coffee and talk to them about brand management; informational interviews have always been a favorite activity of mine to find out about occupations - so even though I'm employed here, I still wanted the I.I. structure.

Specific questions turned into conversation, but here were three answers that stuck out:

Q1. What is your role within the client team?

To represent the client to the agency; handle the majority of communication between the agency and client; determine the appropriate resources; handle billing and time.

Q2. How do you work differently with media, creatives, and planning?

In terms of relative power with the client - creatives, brand planning, media. There's an opportunity for each discipline to have a partnership with each other: Some of the best people in media still bring ideas to the table even though they know the client will ix nay their idea.

Working with senior planners, they're partners in strategy and coming up with marketing communications.

Working with juniors, it's about managing details and helping with the research.

Q3. What are some characteristics I should work on developing to set me up for success?

Be smart but in a humble way; use the Socratic method to lead folks

No whining - "that's not my job" doesn't fly

Be curious, always want to know more, push it further

Verbal brilliance defines a planner - the more interesting you are, the more you will be valued

Make yourself top of mind - stop by to talk to people, remind them you're here

Fight for the resources you need. If you don't have the depth of information you need to write brief, then say so!

Develop your presentation skills, have a style, seek out opportunities to speak and have an audience

We the people of 2050

In a little over 40 years from now, America will be a minority-majority country where non-Hispanic whites are projected to account for 47% of the population. Knowing this now, how can we prepare for the transition to more multicultural marketing? What are we doing now if we know where we need to be in 40 years? Crazy, I know.

I know Hispanic marketing is gaining a lot of traction and agencies are getting recognition for award-winning work for this consumer segment. But what about African-Americans? Shouldn't their lifestyle and culture be recognized with similarly insightful work and attention? Or even Asian-Americans? There is a lot of room to grow with multicultural marketing, interesting that Hispanics are the first ones to receive significant advertising dollars.

Although when you take into account their large families, affinity for socializing, and the fact that they actually like advertising, they're definitely appealing as a target audience. But they're so diverse!

• 63% are from Mexico
• 10% are from Puerto Rico
• 4% from Cuba
• 3% from the Dominican Republic
• 3% from El Salvador
• etc.

Lots of persona profiles to build. Best get to work now.

the generation to redefine what planning is

Amidst all the new ways to communicate, engage, and connect, could we say that "connections planning" is the evolution of account and/or brand planning?

When I was in Miami Ad School, Catrina McAuliffe opened our session with a class on the History of Account Planning. She talked about everyone from Stanley Pollitt (the father) to Jay Chiat (the first U.S. agency to have it). She put it all in context and then gave our generation a daunting task: you will be ones to redefine how planning works.

Ok. Look at this article from Mediaweek in mid-2008:

Communications planning is a more strategic way of determining key media choices. It's about moving away from the science of delivering messages to audiences and toward the art of understanding how consumers receive and respond to communication. The starting point is the consumer, not the media channel or discipline. When practiced at its best, communications planning not only influences where a marketer's creative will run, but also informs the creative, strategic, and activation processes as well.

Could this possibly be the next phase of planning? If we think about plannng now, we can't solely focus on the brand without taking into account all of the places it can intersect with a "target audience." Perhaps before, it was much more of a brand strategy in so much as what we had to say (the message) had to be strategic enough to resonate with an audience. Now perhaps, it's placement (an engagement) instead of the message that makes a brand most salient. We shouldn't expect brand planning to sit in its place, unchanged, when consumers and communications are changing rapidly around us; it needs to evolve to.

Determining how channels are integrated into the marketing communication effort is a core role of ________ planning.

(I added the _____) Is this media planning? Or connections planning? brand planning? account planning?

To me, we're talking about insights and connectivity - the focus of any "planner." Everyone can be insightful, but it's planning (in whatever category) that is held accountable for its representation at every touchpoint.

For those people who have been in planning for 10, 20, 30 years, can you see its evolution? Or should I bite the bullet and concede to the discipline being fragmented into tiny counterparts that have to do with different spheres of experience?

Or rather is connections planning the new media planning? And how do you brand planners feel about its responsibilities solely lying within another department?

"25 things"

I got tagged the other day for the cyclical "25 things" meme, and you know what? It made me happy. It made me feel included. The rules were you had to get tagged to do it. You weren't supposed to just download the app and post it to your profile but rather wait until you were tagged; then pay it forward. So Mark Lewis paid it forward to me. I thought it was so cool! I felt like I was in; finally!

I had read other people's comments on the exercise. I think one person had written that it was hard to come up with 25 things to describe themselves...I thought I was in for a challenge, but really, 25 things isn't hard. Just sit in one place and look at all the stuff you have around you, each object is a story, each thought a potential one. You can do it. :)

I decided to write a post about this because my friend Paul twittered about "25 things," saying it was the first sign of Facebook's demise, down the path of Myspace, which he thinks is littered with these sorts of quizzes/postings/etc. I would agree that Myspace is a bit more adolescent, but come on, "25 things" has a viral quality about it. I wanted to be a part of it.

Maybe I'm just gullible (which is entirely possible) but I think we'll see more things like this; hopefully not as extensive; but more "viral" social networking fads. Or maybe I'm clueless and they've been happening before my active Twittering or Facebooking lately. If so, disregard this post.

Thanks for stopping by.

in today's "knowledge economy"

For a new breed of professional, life is a blend of work and leisure where you're never in the right place. Always on the go, we feel like we are in the right place at the right time only when in transit, moving from point A to B. Constant motion is a balm to an anxious culture where we are haunted by the feeling that we are frauds, expendable in the workplace because so much of our service work is intangible.

Otherwise known as the "Elsewhere Class," never have so many professionals worked in such abstract industries.

I would place account planning/brand strategy in this new breed, and there have been many blog posts by green and mature planners alike that say something like "I need to think for hours and then come back with a fresh mind to tackle a problem." This thinking time is definitely not the same "labor" as being able to quantify the bottles of beer, milk, or juice you filled and packaged, and are now ready to ship by the crate (which you can also count). We can't look at our thinking time and assess its worth.

The ubiquity of information in today's "knowledge economy" makes each occupation's claim to unique expertise flimsier and flimsier.

Trend-watching services have dubbed this on-all-the-time trend with many names, but not until I read this article did I feel validated in my professional struggle to prove my value. As a Millennial in a workplace with Gen X, Boomers, and Matures; and as a planner, a fairly new discipline unto itself; I'm working constantly to bring to life the abstract. As an active member with many social media, I like to think that the tangible part to evaluate is a conversation, but I know people would disagree with me. What can I take away from a conversation? What value is a conversation? I've been asked this before and my answer is often actionable ideas. But is this good enough?

Time and social media will tell.

For more, read the article "Welcome to Elsewhere" in Newsweek

Newsweek and a Saturday afternoon

Just read Newsweek from January 26, 2009 and learned a lot of really applicable information for clients, trends, etc.

The first feature length article that caught my attention was "Who we are now." I was shocked to learn that Bronx county in NYC is the most diverse in America.

If you choose any two residents at random, there's an 89.7% chance that they'll be of different races or ethnicities.

This is called heterogeneity. We the People of 2009 are not the We the People of 1959, etc....

The article concludes with facts about Millennials - the more assimilated we are, the fact that we're more female, more secular, less socially conservative and more willing to describe ourselves as liberals....

And we're 75 million strong. Watch out world. :)

SuperBowl favs

The ones that got my attention:
Doritos' "Power of the crunch" - love this. I think Pepsi-Co Corporate has got itself a good agency: Pepsi's ready to take on Coca-Cola and Doritos succeeds well with branding.
Bridgestone's "Moonmen"
Careerbuilder's "Punching a Koala" > not the actual spot title
NFL.com/superad
Hulu "Taking over the world"
GE's ecoimagination.com spots
Heineken with John Turturro
Pepsi's "Refresh Anthem"

Runner-ups:
cash4gold.com > I have an image in my head of a guy drinking a glass of cold, thought it was from this spot but my colleague recalls it in the Careerbuilder spot. Interesting confusion.

Sobe's "Lizard Lake" > everyone at our party said this was nothing out of the ordinary, but I liked it, thought it was hilarious; except for the lizard face morph at the end. again, wtf?

Pepsi's "Pepsuber" > pretty hilarious

Teleflora's "Talking Flowers"

Conan's Bud-light "Glam" spot

For a full list of official winners & losers check out the article at Ad Age, and I'm sure there are various others around the web.

Happy Monday.

stay forever young

I really like Pepsi's "every generation" spot that played during the SuperBowl. I think it puts them in the same playing field that Coke has dominated for so long but has lost...I'm sorry but their spots did nothing for me. CGI does not = ROI in branding.

For those who missed it, here's just one of Pepsi's smart moves:



I forecast that Pepsi gains big ground in the soft-drink category in 2009. I can't remember the last time that we actually believed there was better advertising then Coco-Cola. Because just like Pepsi says, "every generation refreshes the world."

I think Pepsi's refreshing the category. Go branding.

likemind was in the news

Just reminded of this article that the NYTimes wrote last year. And you might recognize the name in the first line...

For the sake of getting people interested in coming to the next one, likemind made the news in October of 2008: That Business Card Won't Fly Here covers what this once monthly, social (networking) group is all about:

Participants exchange ideas, job tips and useful contacts, while also batting around ideas about technology, art, business and culture.

It's a great way to get a Friday started. Check out the website to find one happening near you.