advergirl

Good bye stars, hello mood meter

Just saw this fun little execution posted by the good people over at Brandflakes. 

A local NBC news site replaced the typical star ranking with something a little more telling. Readers now click a reaction to each story - things like furious, thrilled, bored or laughing. The results can be pretty funny. But, maybe I just think that because the example I found was 68% of people thrilled with an editorial call for Marion Barry to just go away! Voice of the people, baby. 

I'm a work hacker

I love the intro to this idea subtitled Learn to love the rule breakers by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein: 

The Problem: When a 12-year-old can gather information faster, process it more efficiently, reference more diverse professionals, and get volunteer guidance from better sources than you can at work, how can you pretend to be competitive? When the personal tools in your mobile phone are more empowering than what your company provides or approves for your projects, how can you be saved from devastating market forces?

Their point is that the tools we use in life have leapfrogged over the ones we use at work. And, some of the employees who stand out in your workplace have just learned how to hack together solutions using them.

Work Hackers aren't like the internet bad guys. They aren't stealing anything or breaking down password-protected walls. No, they're just working around the prescribed way of doing things. They're using open source and shareware and social networks to work faster, find new ideas and deliver deeper insight. 

I'm a total work hacker. I knew that for sure when I was packing up during my last few days at Ologie. I was putting together an email about some of best go-to sources for pitches & proposals and I realized that none of them were the least bit usable in the way most people work. There were the Delicious libraries I pulled into a feed reader, the totally brilliant Exel + Wordle hack I went to for everything, the fake-making-an-ad-to-get-all-the-Facebook-demo-info-I-need "solution," the 3000 brilliant Twitter followers who seem to find anything I can't... 

Hacking, it turns out, is not highly transferable. 

But it is valuable. The new gen opportunity for companies is finding ways to translate how people really work into tools the entire company can use. One-size-fits-all Microsoft products aren't going to be enough. Ethnography + creative coding? That might do it.

Total product personalization: make and name your own bar

I think Groupon is the new Daily Candy for me. It's fun and quick to read. Full of all kinds of local, fun businesses I've never heard of offering me deals I cannot pass up. Today's deal: $25 worth of custom energy bars for $10 from a company called Element Bars. 

I'll admit, I've never heard of it. (Of course, I'm not really known for my nutritious eating habits). But the web experience is fantastic:

 

 

You can choose to buy some of their most popular bars (designed by other customers) or you can build your own. There are tons of choices and each includes a little extra tip on what it really tastes like. Your personal nutrition info tracks right with you, updating proteins and calories with each added almond and cherry along the way. 

Now, if I just weren't so chronically addicted to Lara Bars...

People choose to hate their jobs less over a free day at Disney

Does that mean Americans are taking a longer view?

Almost all the Super Bowl advertisers included a call-to-action to look them up online this year. But since the big game is the one televised event few of us tend to watch with our laptops in hand, how well did those CTAs work? 

Hitwise tracked it. Both to see where we took time to click to Sunday night and where we remembered to nav over to the next day. Careerbuilder definitely won out. Disney's very actionable "free night" promotion earned a lot of immediate interest, too. But, mostly I'm happy to report that Denny's big free meal didn't require the further explanation of a web visit.

 
  

See all the ads. 

Why does our competitors' stuff look so flat?

That was the fabulous question I was asked in a recent pitch. One focused on B2B - or, really, business to professional advertising. We gave a smart, opportunity-focused answer. But, the real answer is likely this:

Companies and creatives skimp on B2B advertising. They treat it less like communication and more like the volleying of spreadsheets back and forth. As if the company itself could decide (Two skyscrapers walk into a room...)

So there is a real opportunity to break through. To treat your business customer like a person she is. To not pretend that she turns into a purely logical automaton when she dons her security badge and freshly-dry cleaned shirt. To use the same smart, emotive consumer ethic you'll market to her with when she's sitting on the couch watching American Idol later that same day. To care about connecting with her.

Will social win out over search?

Big, conversation-changing idea from Tac Anderson over at New Comm Biz in a post called 3 Reasons Why Social Media is Killing Search: 

"Bit.ly and Google both have the same purpose: deliver you to a useful website. That’s it. The difference is that one is performed by search queries (and) the other is initiated by a recommendation."

Social networking has fast been gaining ground on search. For a few days in December it actually beat it. Our wandering curiosity may be being replaced by an appreciation of good curating. After all, why would we dig around for the next great idea, beautiful thing, innovative stain fighter, first date, etc., when those things are being fed to us by our trusted network?   

Anderson attributes social’s emerging supremecy to three things: 

1. Faster news.  Think where you went when you last heard office chatter of the latest breaking news (politicians philandering, planes plummenting, people perservering)? I went to Twitter. Most of the news sites are 30 minutes behind. Google just started time-based search. Those gossipy little follows of mine on Twitter always seem to have it first. 


2. Better filter. You find the best stuff people have read on social; you find everything on search 


3. Faster innovation. Social developers just seem more responsive to user needs and behaviors 

Creative brief: Owners wanted for break-through clinical innovation.

What will happen to advertising when business fundamentally changes from rewarding problem solving to rewarding solution finding? When knowledge is too big and problems too discreet for any one business to own the answer or even the process to find the answer?

Just tagged a fascinating article on that those business changes by some of the solution-seekers at InnoCentive, Eli Lilly and Hive Pharma.

Their basic premise boils down to two things: 

1. Getting new drugs to market is increasingly expensive and uncertain (for lots of reasons)


2. Drugs are getting increasingly personal (meaning we needs more types of drugs for increasingly smaller segments of humans)

The combined effect challenges the traditional large, fully integrated pharmaceutical company model. If they can’t guarantee blockbusters (think Viagra and Prozac), how do they continue to thrive?

The authors make a number of short-range recommendations to bridge the gap, but their long-term view is to an entirely new model. The winners, they say, will establish orchestrated drug-development networks. This is beyond individual company strategies to acquire and license pipeline innovations. It’s an industry-wide knowledge base centered around agreed-upon standards for digitally representing drug assets.

That probably got a little confusing, right? Inside any pharma company there’s a mass amount of research going on. Some of it leads to new drugs. Some of it to new questions. Some of it just sits there as an underdeveloped asset. Today, the way those companies store that data is idiosyncratic at best (lots of different systems) so there’s no easy way for them to compare or sell it to one another. Which means there’s a lot of duplication out there and a lot of unused ideas (or hints of ideas) sitting on the shelf.

The emergence of a fluid drug development network (where knowledge could be monetized and shared across players) has broad-ranging impact. Not only could smaller players broadcast their intellectual property, but importantly, “foundations or even patient groups could have drugs developed that targeted markets too small for the big players.” Yeah, the people who needed it could fish it out and pay for its development instead of waiting to become someone else’s priority.

How monumental would that be? Crowdsourcing groups of owners who through pooled funding could change – or even save – their own lives. This is the promise of the next era. Not more tweeting about what we had for dinner but more, higher-value sharing and tailored collaboration. 

How will trends like this change advertising? What if we’d no longer be selling a product, but bringing together the people who will create it? Will agencies with category expertise have significant advantage? Or will a new industry crop up altogether? Exciting times.

Brand experience on Facebook is back

A few updates ago (I'm thinking circa early 2009), Facebook migrated all fan or brand pages to look pretty much like profile pages. All the crafty designing and widget wondery that leader brands had invested in was lost, reduced to the lowest-common-denominator rubble of tabs and walls.

Of course the promise was there - the updates also allowed full-width application tabs and boxes of all kinds. But, no one was rushing in to try to figure out how to own the new landscape. Until a last Fall. A few retail brands, like JCrew and Gap, created Facebook pages that looked much more like the quality of their brands, even personalizing the experience to deliver different content for fans and visitors. They stood out because of it. Racking up thousands of fans and earning real engagement.

    

Now, enter Resource Interactive - the top 50 interactive shop that up until now hadn't leaned on its Facebook page for marketing or reputation building. This week they launched a fabulous new presence that breaks out of the tabs and looks like them (not the social network).

 

 

A friendly neighborhood programmer said, "no one knew how to do that two years ago." The truth is, I don't think anyone knew how to do that two months ago. But, I'm thrilled that experience is coming back to Facebook. I've had enough basic blue. Cheers, RI!

I’m off to Pink Tank & IQ at GSW

What do you do with a person who is madly curious about all the newest things, who loves to try to figure out what really motivates people, who is fearless in the face of even the toughest room, and who kind of wants to change the world?

Maybe you put her to work helping connect women with one another and figuring out how the changes in our culture will really change an industry. In an environment where the next big idea can come from anywhere and with the resources to make it all real.

On February 1, I start my new career with two small, entrepreneurial divisions of one of the world’s biggest healthcare agencies: the women-focused Pink Tank group and the innovation-focused IQ lab.

I’m so excited for this. I’ll continue contribute to brand strategy,  but I’ll also be going deep on a whole new industry – health – and getting to focus on socializing brands in the interactive space.  And, equally importantly, I'll get to work with some amazing people – smart, insightful women (many of whom I’ve known for years) and a savvy bunch of digital junkies who want to figure out what’s coming next.

You want all the details? Here we go-

• The title: Digital Brand Strategist


• The role: Ok, that’s a really long story, but topline: I’ll contribute to brand strategy and insight with a specific focus on socializing brands in the interactive space. I’ll get to develop points of view and methodologies that further Pink Tank’s expertise in women and health. I’ll work with the IQ internal community as a contributor and subject matter expert in social media, helping GSW to crystallize and present its pov and expertise to existing clients and in new business. (That means pitching! AKA: THE adrenaline rush for non-runners.)


• About Pink Tank: Pink Tank is a full-service agency and consultancy for health and wellness brands that want to motivate female influencers, whether they are patients, consumers, caregivers, loved ones, or professionals. The people who work there come from all kinds of different backgrounds – behavioral psychology, patient advocacy, clinical practice, interactive media, gender and cultural studies, and, of course brand strategy, writing, and design.


• About IQ: It’s GSW’s internal lab. Part futurecasting; part commercializing. They drive the “what’s next” thinking about how brands can leverage digital media for new kinds of competitive advantage.

Obviously, this is awesome news for me. But, it’s also good news for you. I’m going to have a lot to figure out really quickly – that means: blog posts!

So, what do you think? Wish me luck?

I’m leaving Ologie.

You’re probably registering total shock right now. I know. Who do you know who loves her job as much as I do?

I’ll tell you all the details, but first let me say this: If you ever get to chance to work with the good people here – as a client or a colleague – do not let it pass by. You will learn more in a few weeks with them than you will in any other creative process you participate in. They have a way of uncovering that answer that you know has been sitting there waiting for you to find it all along.

Ok, back to my story.

My life seems to be being shaped by chance encounters lately. Have you noticed? The story most of you know is about the wonderful boyfriend I met one morning on an airplane. But, there are others – the theater Board I ended up joining after sitting next to the artistic director in an unrelated meeting; the then-soon-to-be best friend brought to town by a random internet search; the house I bought in a weekend because of the people who happened to be in the restaurant on the corner.

This is just another one of those. An opportunity that will unquestionably change my career and my life that all started with a conversation at a wedding. But, enough about that for now.

I want to talk about Ologie.

I’ve never left a job I loved before. It’s an entirely different feeling. You, dear readers, probably remember one I ran gazelle-like from, happy to be free. This isn’t like that at all. It took me weeks to decide and, still, I find myself kind of mourning the place.

I’ve worked with a lot of great people here. Ologie seems to consistently attract more smart people at the top of their game than any other shop in town. But, there are three particular people here who I owe a lot to; people who in a lot of ways inspire the kind of person/citizen/employee/consultant/human I want to be.

1. Bill Faust. AKA “Boss.” I’m not sure which he says more often - “people support what they help create” or “how can we framework that” or “we simplify the complex.” The first is about making sure the people who have to tell a story are part of the process of creating it. The second, about communicating with words and pictures. And, the last is about getting down to the simple ideas (lingo-free, of course) that explain the core of a brand or story.  All are habits that would make anyone’s work better. And ones I got to practice here (and, of course, “iterate” here >> the nice boss word for do-over many times :) I think it’s fair to say he changed the way I communicate.


2. Bev Bethge. The founder of Ologie – and, many other good things. Bev opened this agency right out of college. Her first clients were the nonprofits and service agencies that take care of this city. The clients Ologie attracts now are more likely to be national brands, top colleges or international organizations, but Bev still invests her time in this community. Through her, I’ve had a chance to help shape how Columbus will tell its story in the years to come and impact the work of a number of arts and service organizations. I’m a member of Boards and committees that are changing our community. I actually feel like I live here now. I hope I always stay this connected to Columbus.


3. Kelly Ruoff. The managing creative director and, at once, the energy and glue of this place. Kelly has a fairly magical ability. When things get tense – a particularly aggressive deadline, a last minute rethinking of the work, a tough pileup of conflicting priorities – she actually gets calmer. She speaks slowly, gets everyone aligned toward a goal, and actually inspires awesome work. She somehow seems to know what’s going on in everyone’s lives (something I hear she even did that before Facebook) and makes sure we all feel welcome and appreciated. Just kind of knowing those things are all possible keeps me working to be better.

I’m grateful for the time I’ve spent here. But, as many things as I will miss about the friendly orange confines, there is one thing I am happy to leave behind...

The bathroom lighting. For some reason, the bathrooms here are lit with near-candle-light dimness while every other room is bathed in sunlight. I haven’t been able to accurately check my makeup before a meeting in years.

Was that a good transition from all the mushy stuff? Ok, now to tell you all about what’s next...