Managing the Gray - Marketing for the New Media Professional

Gary Vaynerchuk is one hell of a nice guy, knows his wine and then dropped this little video that you must watch.

AMEN Gary! Amen!

Posted in Video | Comments(2)

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I saw this commercial from Sprint. At the end of it they give you the CEO’s e-mail address. ( dan [at] sprint [dot] com)

Of course, the first thing I did this morning was send “him” an e-mail to see what would happen.

As I guessed, I got an auto responder with some nice thank you text and link to their campaign website where I could learn more about their phones if I wanted to.

I’ll give whoever came up with this campaign credit for grabbing my attention and being smart enough to set up the auto response. But, what I’m hoping I get to do is give them praise if he actually ever answers the e-mail. I put in an invitation for him to come on Managing the Gray for an interview about this new approach to get a conversation started with consumers. Hopefully it goes better then the invitation I put over a year ago to politicians and none took me up on.

Posted in Ads, Video | Comments(3)

Why is it that we have to grow up and lose so much of our creativity. Lose is the wrong word because it is always there, but as we get older and learn the ways of the world we put up barriers that restrict our thinking.

This picture is of my daughter Emily. She grabbed a box of chalk and attacked our driveway. She was drawing everything from scribbles to a map of the house. She drew these crazy shapes that made me think of an armada of blimps on the attack and when I said that she laughed at me because in her mind it was nothing of the kind.

When I talk with the kids they often say “wouldn’t it be cool if….” I’ve caught myself a couple of times explaining why an idea wouldn’t ever work and then I stop and have promised myself that I would never do that again. Why should I put up barriers in their minds already when I know eventually some will come anyways and I’d rather see them continue to think the fantastical. We need more people like this in the world don’t we?

So how do you keep your creative edge? Some believe that creativity can come from anywhere. I do believe that it is in all of us, but many are scared to ever let it out to play for fear of “stupid ideas” or “people laughing at me.” Those have got to be the two worse reasons NOT to be creative. I always wondered how the girl or guy who first through out the idea of a pink bunny rabbit banging on a base drum felt in that meeting. Talk about a silly idea that people would laugh at. Who is laughing now though right?

Ever since I got back from SXSW I’ve been thinking a lot about my personal creativity. About how to stretch it. Take it out to play more often then I have been.

When I was little if you were to ask me what I was going to be when I grew up I always said an artist. I was constantly drawing and creating stuff. In one sense I guess I still do that. But, I haven’t painted or doodled much lately and I need to do that. I love to create with my camera and my audio, but I want to do more.

What do you do to stimulate creativity? Do you do anything?

Personally music and being outside stimulate mine. Combine the two with an iPod and a walk in the woods or around the urban jungle and the juices get flowing for me. I also find it in the most unlikely of places. A book, television show or even the once in a million commercial might get things going. Playing a video game with Dylan a few weeks ago sent me off on a tangent of creativity when he went to bed. I got an annual report in the mail last night that while wasn’t at all what I thought it was going to be it got me thinking.

I also have items I can always go to. Some would include:

• Colma by Buckethead
• Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez
• Any Tarantino movie
• Behind the scenes videos with David Fincher
• Rules of the Red Rubber Ball (thanks again Whit)
• Dr. Seuss books
• My Cathedral of the Pines

Do you have the equivalent of creativity comfort foods that you can go to when you need them? I can’t be the only one.

I feel better getting this blog post out. It has been rattling around in my head since I took this picture of Emily. I thought about making it into a podcast or even just an entry in my paper journal, but wanted to brain dump here to get other people’s thoughts.

Posted in Creative | Comments(37)

I’m just back from my time in Austin, TX attending SXSW and wanted to share my thoughts with you about it. Were you there? If so I’d love to hear your thoughts. Give me a call at 206-309-4729 and leave a comment. I’ll play it on the next show.

I talked a lot about what was so great for me about the conference. It was a mix of the people, the events and the overall vibe of it all. The food was great as well! *grin*

Links to some things I talked about:

• My photos from SXSW
• The Fray Cafe
• Jane McGonigal’s Keynote
• SXSW For Newbies video series (client)

And one thing that I think most of us took for granted was that Twitter stayed up the whole time. Last year is when it really broke out and the servers got crushed. They mentioned upgrading the servers just before the conference started and it seemed to work great. Way to go to the team behind the scenes on that one.

Posted in Podcast | Comments(5)

I had read that these would be coming, but I hadn’t been told about one until today when my buddy Britney Mason sent me an invite to check out My Mini Life.

I only had a couple of minutes to play around with it, but it let me build a little house from a template and populate it with a couple of things that I bought from the store. It looks like you can also create your own, sell items and move things around. With the border around my house I’m not sure if I’ll get neighbors someday or how that happens. It all seems to be tied into a bigger site and functionality. I wonder how it all connects?

I’m sure this is just the first of many invites I’m going to get on MySpace. I’m curious how different it is from developing applications in Facebook and if it is more powerful or limiting. Only time will tell. If you know, let me know would you? Thanks in advance

Posted in New Media | Comments(0)

I never in a million years would have thought that I would want to search ads, but I do!

Yesterday while cruising around Facebook I saw an ad for a cabin rental in the Adirondacks. I clicked onto something else before I realized that the ad was of interest to me and then couldn’t find it again. I clicked on the little “more ads” under the space, but it wasn’t there.

I’ve set up these ads before and know that they allow you to target people based on a variety of demographic and key word data. So I obviously fit someone’s profile for who they wanted to target and they got it right because I wanted to find out more. But, now I can’t!

The only thing I can guess is that this particular ad hit a spending limit and that is why it is not visible any more. But, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to look for ads if you wanted to? Sure, the frequency of this happening would be low, but who is going to turn away someone that WANTS to see their ad?

Ok, my mini rant is done. Guess I’ll have to just use good old Google to look for a cabin to rent.

Posted in New Media | Comments(2)