Interesting Article on the Power of One Person

Andy, one of our developers pictured in the previous post, sent me this article from CNN's Technology section and I thought it was interesting.

I'll try to paraphrase - but basically, its title is "Jackon dies, almost take Internet with him". The article talks about how, in the matter of 1 hour after the announcement of Michael Jackson's death, the internet traffic skyrocketed. Not a surprise, but it shows the power, and vulnerability, of the tool from a news and social aspect.

Some fast facts due to the huge amount of traffic:

• Google News users had difficulty accessing search results
• TMZ's TechCrunch's online story broke
• CNN reported 5X traffic with about 20 million site views within the first hour
• Wikipedia was "temporarily overloaded"
• Twitter (not surprisingly) had outages
• LA Times suffered outages

And the list goes on and on...It also talks about the power of the tool to start rumors. Not a surprise. Read the full article on CNN.com

Code Blue

Jan (far right) is a prefect example of what happens to a web developer when you put him in front of a computer for 6 hours of straight 1010101010101010101010 coding. That's why we love him. (click on image for a larger view)

Vendor/Client Relationships

This is kind of a funny little video on Vendor/Client relationships using other industries in place of our very own. Enjoy!

Nationwide gets it

I saw a TV commercial last night for Nationwide Insurance. They were promoting their new iPhone application to help make your claims process easier in the event of an accident. What's that? They spent valuable marketing monies to build an application that makes their customer's lives easier? That's right. The understood that people need them most usually when they're driving (Which means what? When people are MOBILE.) So they spent time and money making a product that is truly USEFUL to their customers...one that makes their lives easier. Their iPhone app includes:

• An accident toolkit
• Start a Nationwide auto claim
• Fina an agent
• Find a repair shop
• Accident history
• And brilliantly - a "flashlight" tool.

Nice. And to be even smarter about it, they're using traditional mainstream media (ie: TV, etc) to let people know they're the first and only (so far) insurance company offering such a helpful tool and they're using the message to push their users online to interact with this tool (which, gives them trackable measurability).

You can bet most every other insurance company will be jumping on board with this, but there's always the feather in the hat of being first.

Looking for comments on this agency site

So, I'm interested to know from any "non-agency" or "agency non-creatives" if you all think this "agency" site is as cool n' fun as the "agency creatives" think it is. Other than the unfortunate fate of Billy, I think its pretty good. I also think it's quite interesting that this YouTube site IS actually the agencies full website - a series of interlinked videos. If you go to www.booneoakley.com - you get redirected here. It's certainly putting all your "seo" into one basket, but interesting none the less. Maybe they feel the viralism of it all will be enough to augment their seo efforts.

Check it out - please leave your COMMENTS if you like/dislike this direction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elo7WeIydh8

"I bow to this ad" - Phil Hunt

Here's dialog from the Flint Group's famous and talented copywriter, Phil Hunt:

"So I saw this ad this a.m. It’s very high-end, pretty stuff, but it’s amazing how effective it was in terms of messaging.

By concentrating on a simple, direct message and awesome execution, this abstract spot communicates better than night driving footage ever will. I understood the benefits: safety, visibility, etc. immediately, even though all I saw was a freaky paint show."
http://attitude.adforum.com/top5/2009/06/09/mercedes-benz-black-light-jung-von-matt-hamburg/

The game changes: 6 predictions for 2010

This was a good presentation from iMedia Agency Summit 2009... hits on some good points. Not a lot of surprises, however. Here are some obvious trends...

• Mobile, mobile, mobile
  
• Heightened connectivity to communities (as a cost savings effort)
• Higher level of metrics
• Hyper targeting, minimizing marketing waste
• Brands, agencies, etc... all blur the lines... "My Coke Rewards is now an AdNetwork" etc...
• Traditional dollars shifting online
• Infiltration of video
• Marketing budgets blur... no longer "traditional + digital" = much more of a blur...

The game changers: 6 predictions for 2010 - iMediaConnection.com

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Agency experts discuss the fluid nature of interactive marketing and anticipate how the industry will change next year.

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