Category: Uncategorized (Page 25 of 26)

These days, I’m fortunate enough to work with a ton of great creative agencies. Turnstyle Studios, Don’t Blink Media, Angelvision, and PanBuilt are four that immediately come to the top of my mind. 

It’s a world with more start-ups, where more companies (and the VC’s that fund them) are demanding more work for less money from a talented team that isn’t part of the "big agency" experience.  In a world of thousands of agencies, the question is, how does one small agency stand out?

Well, the answer is to create compelling materials that market yourself.  And that doesn’t mean one-sheeters and direct mail pieces anymore. 

Brisbane Creative launched a funny site last week called Useless Account, in which they mock start-ups around the globe.  I found it through TechCrunch, and it’s likely Brisbane sent a link to Michael Arrington.  From a revenue perspective, they gain nothing.  In fact, the server capacity may even be an expense. 

But now you know who they are.  When you are in a meeting, you may say something like, "We need an agency as creative as Brisbane."  This is a long post to say that this we’re all trying to figure out what the "new" forms of marketing will be in the net 5 years.  But the creative agencies really should be the ones driving that.  They’ll come up with genius guerilla tactics, we’ll notice them, hire them, and we’ll want the same type of genius when we start cutting them checks.

Update: Turns out Brisbane Creative is actually a University student in Australia named Jim Whimpey.  His blog details the story of Useless Account, and pretty much makes everything I said, well useless.  He wasn’t trying to create buzz for his agency in the way I imagined, but it certainly worked out that way. 

This story is about a week old now, but the disappearance of computer scientist Jim Gray sparked a remarkable social collaboration led by Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk. TechCrunch details the story here, so I don’t want to rob them of their deserved readers.

But the side commentary concerns the power a globally connected network can have.  It’s unlikely we’ll be able to find Mr. Gray, even with everyone looking at 5-10 satellite photos.  But this kind of application can be taken national for missing chlildren, or down to the neighborhood level for lost dogs. Using this technology, it’s really not hard to forsee us using our 5-10 minutes of goof off time to work on a complex problem with 100,000 other people.

But on this project, we hope someone finds something of note in the photographs, and Mr. Gray can be found. 

Well, it had to happen someday.  Sure HTML and Flash had gotten pretty easy.  But us Marketing folks still didn’t have a way of producing really slick multimedia shows without the help of someone creative.

Part of the design hurdle may have been cleared with Camtasia Studio from Tech Smith. I could try to explain it in a lot of words, but the keyword is "Screencast."  If you need to explain what your Web site does, or how to use anything online, or even just record a visual list of all the gifts you want someone to buy you, this piece of software does the trick. 

Best thing to do is check out an example on Screeniac.com and click on any of her links for "Flash Demo."  She may be doing free Screencasts on products she likes as a way to market herself to companies she wants to do some work for (which would be quite ingenious).  Or she may be getting paid to do the screencasts.  Either way, look for bloggers to start using this kind of visual/audio mix as a way to bring their news to life. 

Word comes from Reuters in Australia about Eric Nerhus, the Abalone Fisherman who survived being caught headfirst in the mouth of Great White shark.

"He stated that he was head-first into the shark," a spokeswoman for Snowy Hydro SouthCare rescue service told Reuters after airlifting the diver to hospital.  When he came to us he was conscious and alert but had a broken nose and lacerations to both sides of his torso and chest — bite marks all the way around," the spokeswoman said.

Nerhus told fellow divers he didn’t see the shark coming as the water was so dirty that visibility was severely limited.

"It was black. He didn’t see it coming, but he felt the bite and then started getting shaken, and that’s when he knew he was in the mouth of the shark," said local diver Michael Mashado.

Nirhus miracuously survived because of a lead vest abalone divers wear to stay underwater, which in this case also took the brunt of the shark’s bite.  He escaped by stabbing the shark repeatedly with some tool he had in his hand.  

No word on whether Nirhus’ boss is giving a few days off, or if he plans to move to the finance and operations side of the business, where chances of being caught in the mouth of a shark decrease by about 100%.

The mobile games space is really taking off.  As I start to fill this blog with content, I think you’ll see more stats like this. 

"Mobile gaming accounted for 14 percent of EA’s revenue in the fiscal year ended March 2006, or $393 million. Research firm IDC said that U.S. mobile game revenue hit $722 million in 2006."  Source: CNN.com

There’s something odd about that stat, in that you can calculate that about 55% of mobile games revenue game from EA, which seems high.

Saw this on Slashdot:

"A hidden device that appears to give an advantage to roulette players may be legal in the UK when the gambling industry is deregulated next year. The device — which consists of a small digital time recorder, a concealed computer, and a hidden earpiece — uses predictive software to determine where the ball is likely to land. It has been tested by a government lab, which found that ‘the advantage can be considerable.’ It will be up to casinos to spot people using such devices."

The Guardian article reports the device costs 1,000 punds (~$1,800 – $1,900) but really, does it matter how much it costs if you are guaranteed to win?

Ha Ha Ha. I caught Fox Sports Northwest and it was featuring the Miss Hooters contest. At least here’s a beauty pageant that is being honest about its goals.

I only saw about 3 minutes, but what I loved was among the 10 finalists, you had Miss Nebraska, Miss Venezuela, Miss Tampa and Miss December.

I can’t make a joke here.

So, heard from my friend Ryan Bostick today, who is living life down in the Sudan. I believe when he left he told his mom something like, "Don’t worry, where I’m going they already had the genocide, so it’ll be safe."

Anyway, here’s a piece from his latest dispatch: You decide whether you feel silly about wondering if the homeless guy on the corner is going to try to carjack you.

Andy: How safe is it there?
Ryan: Depends on the day. I’d say it’s safe 99% of the time but things change quickly. Usually the NGO’s have time to evacuate and even then we aren’t the targets. All they want is our stuff. I walk around at night with a computer and a radio no problem. People smile and say hi. Safe unless the tribes start fighting. You do see alot of guns though. So an arguement can lead the wrong direction quickly.

Here are some pics.

Saw this over at TechCrunch and I can’t believe this is legal:

US House: Schools must block MySpace, many other sites
US House Resolution 5319, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), was passed by a 410 to 15 vote tonight. If the Resolution becomes law social networking sites and chat rooms must be blocked by schools and libraries or those institutions will lose their federal internet subsidies. According to the resolution’s top line summary it will “amend the Communications Act of 1934 to require recipients of universal service support for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.”Adults will be able to ask for the library’s permission to use such sites. The Resolution will now go to the US Senate for a vote before being offered to the President for signature into law.

The rhetoric from advocates was all about MySpace. For example, Texas Republican Ted Poe says, “social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids."

Maybe I’m naive, but this seems like banning the sale of tires to cut down on automobile accidents. Surely there has to be a better way for kids to be protected from online predators than banning the most visited Web site in the world from U.S. kids.

I can’t see how this would ever stand up in the Supreme Court. The good side of Social Networking allows people to make friends all over the world. Plus, since kids are dumb when they are young, it’s been an effective tool for catching kids before they do illegal stuff.

This bill is amazingly ironic since there have been nearly 50 cases in the last year of kids hooking up with their teachers. According to this logic, we need to shut down all schools to save kids from adults.

Anyway, the point is that it’s dangerous and silly for legislators to start deciding what people are allowed to read. It sounds an awful lot ike the country on the other side of the Pacific Ocean that we all love to chastize for its oppressive behavior.

The problem with protecting kids from sexual redators is that the predators themselves need to be dealt with more effectively.