This bears repeating

A nifty take on visual explanations, brought to you by Commoncraft.com.
I like the US election one myself.

Behold, I am the creator of words...

OK, not to be too self-indulgent and filled to the brim with hubris, but I think I might have invented a word...

Earlier in the week I was Tweeting about the disputed Iranian election (and the fact that Twitter played no small role in getting the truth out). It looked something like this...
To my surprise, the Twittersphere went all abuzz...Maybe I should apply for copyright protection...maybe not.

Last Day Dream

Just watch it, trust me. In the flash of an eye...

ROAR!

I managed to get myself suckered into a project for my son. LEGO Terminator is now well underway. You have to admire the unbridled imagination that is a 7 year old boy. When you have the insight required to tape LEGO to a dinosaur to make a 'dino cyborg', you know you've mastered lateral thinking.

Aw crap, this is going to put us out of business

Relatively new and a fantastic example of Web 2.0 tools.
You can build a professional-looking website in minutes and mess with it to no end. Pretty cool. Squarespace.
Web Design and Development for Dummies (oh, and the rest of us).

A moral imperative

I'm no Michael Clayton, and I've done my share of soul-breaking work over the years - hell, I worked for big Pharma, but this one is sticking in my craw. I'm doing some strategy work for a client at the moment, and it's taking all of my professional will to do a half decent job. Why? It's for a Christian entertainment company. Yep. As Gord Downie said: "I made degenerate art for the religious right on the day that you were born". I'd like to put it off, but I suppose one has to pay the bills...


From an ethnographic and anthropological perspective, it is intriguing and absorbing. Christ (pun intended), they have their own Social Networking site! It's kind of like Fox News, you just can't not watch it. Fascinating, in a scary kid of way. Pimping for Godlywood.

UPDATE: FTR, I'm not doing work for Veggie Tales - this would actually be fun. And, Fun Fact: Can you name the top grossing Independent Film of 2008? Nope, not Slumdog Millionaire. Fireproof. Whack.

Customer Touchpoint maps and the Social Web 'Diamond'

I've realised that I'm a synergy thinker as opposed to being completely organic. I take bits and pieces of thought from disparate but related sources and mash them together with a dash of personal insight.
Case in point. Thoughts from @evansdave and Kawasaki blended for the TV industry. I think it makes sense, but would be interested in thoughts and (constructive) criticism.
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Similar to a traditional media conversion funnel, TouchPoint analysis and mapping offers a distinct and insightful view of media tactics. The X-axis describes ‘Performance’ – a measure of effort and spend, while the Y-axis describes ‘Talk-Value’ – the relative value of the tactic as it relates to customer conversation and social interactions. Ideally, what should emerge is a cloud of media tactics trending ‘up and to the right’ – spending time and dollars on tactics that yield a proportionately higher number of brand conversation cycles.

Our online competitive analysis of recent mainstream media entertainment reveals some interesting trends. In addition to Television and traditional Public Relations efforts to promote an entertainment product (e.g. movie, TV), some organizations invest significantly in promotional websites as well as on-site Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

With notable exceptions however, Social Web and PR 2.0 is largely ignored. As a consequence, once an entertainment product is launched (theatrical debut or other), the Social Web and its associated User-Generated Content significantly increase the signal to noise ratio. In other words, the promotional website gets lost in the frenzy of Social Web activity – SEO rapidly degrades. Rather than fight against this User-Generated Content tide, adaptive marketers are embracing this trend by creating destinations for Social Web interactions. By using Social Network applications such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as employing off-site SEO (linking) strategies to blogs and other media, marketers have an opportunity to concentrate and monitor online brand building.

In Reality Check, Guy Kawasaki describes why concentrating on the tip of the pyramid of influencers (traditional PR efforts) – in this context film and TV critics – is no longer effective. Although it is still important to use broadcast media and to develop a robust online presence, it is now critical for marketers to facilitate conversations in Social Networks. So, instead of a pyramid, the sphere of influence is more accurately visualized as a diamond.
We advocate an integrated online approach, utilizing ‘official’ websites and on-site SEO as well as a healthy mix of off-site SEO and Social Web applications, including Facebook pages and Facebook Connect.
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