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The value of self-sufficiency; or No, I will not take your money
Contemporary web trending dictates that your site, whether you like it or not, will be a colossal bore if it’s not evolving in one way or another. This doesn’t mean that the content of your site has to shuffle in and out like a comedy sketch featuring Benny Hill and Yakety Sax. We don’t need hundreds of twitter feeds or otherwise unnecessary dynamic content cluttering up the space.
What it does mean is that you cannot simply throw a set of content up for a year and hope to retain a viewership. This, much like placing a still frame on television, fails spectacularly at taking advantage of the medium.
But what does this mean for web novices? Despite what us developers would like to think, the majority of people who want or need a website have neither the time nor patience to gain fluency in XHTML or CSS, much less JavaScript or PHP. It used to be that such people would hire freelancers or firms to develop their sites; maintaining a tedious, inefficient economic relationship for any content updates. Had a great new piece of news for your organization? You had to toss it to your web developer. Wanted to brag about how your company was mentioned in the Globe or Times? You had to toss it to your web developer. Wanted to tell the world just how spectacular your new office was? You had to toss it to your web developer. Your web developer was probably not as fast as you’d like, and probably wanted that paycheck at the end of every month to be prompt and on time.
It wasn’t a good way of going about it.
So how is this cycle broken? Fortunately, the modern web is a regular cornucopia of Content Management Systems (or CMS’s). These systems (including Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Concrete5, and many more) allow a developer to set up site architecture while providing the owner of the site with a code-free method of updating the content. No more waiting for a developer when you want to post a new piece of news; and no more expenses for adding a few sentences on to the end of one page or another.
Such systems also often include extensions or plugins that play very nice with sites you’re already familiar with and more than capable of using. Want your YouTube videos on your site? Want your Twitter feed to show up on your homepage? Want your Facebook friends to show up on your blog sidebar? Chances are, a CMS will provide avenues of achieving those goals without requiring a degree in Computer Science.
If you’re code-phobic and want a website, make sure you get one that you can edit. Don’t accept a situation where you have a middle man between you and your content. Developers like me don’t want to inhibit your ability to post exciting, time sensative content.
I don’t want your money every month. I want you to be able to make your website blossom on your own.
Categories: Digital Media
PEZ off
Brand stewards can be a litigious bunch. But when do lawsuits protect the brand, and when do they hurt it?
In the past week, two different lawsuits caught my eye. In one, the University of Utah is suing HBO for using the Utah logo without permission in an episode of “Big Love,” a drama about a polygamous family living undercover in Utah. In the other, the candymaker PEZ is suing the Official Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia over its giant, Guinness World Record-holding snowman PEZ dispenser.
The U. of Utah is objecting to the fact that their logo was used in the “Big Love” season finale to suggest that a lab from the university had authenticated a document legitimizing polygamy in the Mormon church. As you might imagine, the University of Utah was none too pleased by this.
Few higher ed institutions are willing to get near potentially contentious religious issues (even if fictionalized), but certainly not a higher ed institution that—regardless of its official religious associations or lack thereof—needs to maintain friendly relationships with its Salt Lake City community, many of whom belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
So in this case, I get it: television consumers are so used to embedded advertising in the shows we watch that a visual depiction of a logo would be taken as an intended (or at least permitted and approved) placement. It hurts the University of Utah brand for viewers to assume they agreed to have HBO use their name and logo in such a way.
(Interestingly, Brigham Young University seems not to have minded the fact that they were represented as trading favors for donations in the same episode. Though I’m sure they were no less offended, and no less desirous of being represented that way, perhaps the fact that the reference wasn’t visual plays a role.)
But PEZ is another story. Here, PEZ is suing a “museum” created by devoted fans. PEZ is, apparently, concerned that the museum—and particularly its giant snowman PEZ dispenser—will “deceive the public into thinking that the museum is operating under the authority of Pez.”
Really?
I think most people get that “museum curator” and owner Gary Doss really, really likes PEZ (or at least they did before PEZ started to sue them regularly [UPI]). It’s a hobby that turned into a roadside attraction…and it’s the Dosses getting attention, via PEZ and its products, that PEZ didn’t self-develop or permit. And as a champion of brands and brand stewardship, I agree that PEZ needs to avoid setting a precedent for unlicensed production of PEZ-like products.
But here’s a tip: if your brand-protecting lawsuit turns into a Twitter hashtag (#PEZfail), spawns Flickr sites (PEZfail), and blog posts in addition to this one, you may be the one damaging your brand.
So the question is: how should PEZ protect their brand and sustain the positive associations that people have (had)?
And is their case really any different from Utah’s?
photo courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/docpopular/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
Categories: Branding
True Type Crime Beat: Typo? Uh oh.
I once had a colleague who made a hobby of collecting fortunes from fortune cookies that contained misspelled words. All right, maybe he had too much time on his hands but it’s a cute, harmless pastime. What’s not all right is receiving resumes and/or cover letters that are riddled with typos. By “riddled with” I mean more than one. I can forgive one. To err is human, to proofread is divine!
To report any flagrant violations of type please contact us immediately. Together we can slow and possibly even reverse the proliferation of senseless and profane type choices simply by exposing it for what it is – criminal.
Categories: Design, Outside the Square
Don’t call me FiFi
Let’s get this out of the way: I’m a poodle, and damn proud of it.
To be specific, a standard poodle, the size from which all other poodles (miniature, toy, and teacup)… well, uhmmm, shrank. They were the Johnny-come-latelies, but I’m one of the originals.
My Dad and I get a lot of guff (“why’d you get a poodle instead of a real dog?”)—and we’ve learned to let it just roll off our backs like saltwater in the surf. And that brings up a good point: poodles were originally water retrievers (fetching birds instead of the ratty tennis balls I chase today). We worked for a living!
And we’re not French, by the way: we’re originally “pudels” from Germany (those French fries are the ones who started dolling us up). And the goofy looking haircut was designed by hunters way back to help us swim, while the big balls of hair were to protect organs and joints in the cold water. You try chasing after a damn wing-tipped green head duck in freezing water and patches of ice!
Now, Dad didn’t name me Moxie for no good reason (though I am originally from Maine, the land that spawned that crazy/nasty drink of the same name). He took one look at me rough-housing with some other “pudels” and the name just seemed to fit.
My other four-legged buddies here in the office are good guys and gals, and sometimes we think maybe things would be better if we ran the place and our owners stayed behind gates and in kennels.
So, please come visit and say hi. Callie, Dylan, Knightley, Bella, and I will welcome you with open paws (especially if you have something good to eat in your hands).
And, remember, I’m not the foofy one (I’ll keep it a secret who really is until you come give me a pat).
Categories: Quadrupedal Posts
The Three Stages of Social Media Anxiety
I have it. You have it. And if you fail to admit you have it, you probably have it the worst of all: social media-driven anxiety. It’s no longer about reading the paper over your morning coffee—or even browsing the latest headlines on your computer during lunch—social media and the attention it demands has consumed us.
That said, there are many different stages of this aforementioned anxiety that one might experience.
Stage 1: Initial apprehension
Just recently my older sister, an extremely accomplished marketing professional, questioned the necessity of jumping aboard the social media train. It made me pause—if she could be so incredibly successful at leading all inbound and outbound marketing initiatives for a securities company (a company which predominantly functions ONLINE), and hasn’t so much as created a profile on LinkedIn, was I the one doing something wrong?
Our conversation progressed and, instead of succumbing to my pensive state-of-mind, I retaliated with defensive remarks on WHY social media could help even she. Next thing I knew, the conversation took a turn.
Minutes later…I heard it…the nervousness…the uncertainty. Social Media Anxiety.
Think back to the early days of Facebook, even MySpace. The news was constantly delivering negative stories about the effects these new, online communities were having on people—namely younger generations. Getting beyond those reservations was admittedly difficult. I recall my own hesitation to plunge in—yet the pressure and ultimately, the anxiety, got the best of me.
Everyone else was doing it…so I dove right in.
Stage 2: I created a profile—now what do I do???
You wrote your bio, you updated your employment history, you invited connections and friended and followed—NOW what? There are countless individuals who took the initial steps to join a community/ies but whose profiles have remained stagnant for months. They took solace in knowing they joined the rest of the world in the social media movement, but they’re apprehensive and uncertain about how to use these timely tools.
A close friend of mine, a school teacher, explained her own apprehensions around social media communities—and her reasons for being present, yet not active within them.
For her, and for many (I think!), there was a need to show she was willing and able—to show her students she was privy to what they were a part of and how they operated—but she was sensitive to the boundaries.
I think this stands true for many individuals and businesses—being conscious of the business/personal line and when not to cross it. It’s primarily a personal decision, you either accept your co-worker’s friend request or you don’t, but regardless, it’s a decision many grapple with. Jonathan Weber of slate.com, was one of many who wrote on this issue.
No matter what the decision ultimately is, the dilemma is arriving at that decision at all. For as many people that have jumped head first into the pool of social media, there are many still dangling their feet in the shallow end, curious, yet apprehensive. What happens when they fully commit, they wonder. Will their lives be consumed by it? What if they use it “improperly”?
Within the past week alone I had four new Twitter friends/followers who remarked, “Okay, fine, I joined . . . but how the heck do I use this thing???”
Stage 3: I am a social media EXPERT.
You know them. You very well may consider yourself one of them. They eat, sleep, and breathe social media.
I check my Twitter account (or Nambu / Twitterberry) perhaps once every two hours. Within that time, I inevitably see that one person who has tweeted once every ten minutes. Fine, if this is your job, but I can’t help but notice that several of these aforementioned “suspects” work for larger organizations. They’re marketers just like myself.
So when, pray tell, are they ACTUALLY doing their jobs? Surely, social media is now an important (yet not crucial—see “stage 2” quip about my sister) layer of marketing, but isn’t it a balance between old and new?
It makes me think about these folks—these self-taught “experts.” I spoke with one but a week ago—a close friend of my father’s. I listened as he explained how he lays awake at night, often picking up his iPhone to tweet a thought in the wee hours of the morning. They’re thought leaders, knowledge-sharers—and in a day and age where we have resources and communities that allow us to provide and spread news instantly, they feel inclined to constantly be engaged. “Missing an hour’s worth of tweets could be detrimental!” (or so he said). My father’s friend denied that he suffers from anxiety, until I asked him where his fingernails went and why his doctor put him on high blood pressure medication.
I think those that argue social media is simply a new way to market oneself and one’s business, are absolutely correct. Sure, it’s more timely: simply look at what happened around Michael Jackson’s passing—social media is a powerful tool.
BUT, it [social media] is only a tool, after all.
Just as one would never create a brochure and let it sit on a shelf, we typically want to create a profile and DO something with it. It’s a delicate balance between being present and being active.
I believe everyone should jump aboard, but determine the right level of involvement—discover your boundaries—and know your limits.
Otherwise, the pharmaceutical companies, yoga masters, and therapists of the world will see a drastic increase in business.
Categories: Digital Media
Goose bumps
Stop what you’re doing and watch this:
I get goose bumps.
If you don’t know her, that is the incomparable Bettye LaVette, the “Great Lady of Soul,” whom I was lucky enough to see perform last week at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
And she gave me goose bumps.
I can’t even remember the last time I got goose bumps from anything other than cold.
So I’ve been wondering: How did she do it? What made her performance so heart-stoppingly powerful? What made the audience—a typically staid Boston audience watching her in a museum—give her standing ovations during songs?
How did she create wonder?
How can we?
Live what you do. Look at her. She uses her whole body to produce every note, to tell the story (even with the sound off—try it). She looks like she’s been physically shaped by her singing. That’s authenticity that not only can’t be faked, it doesn’t even require words.
Focus on the story—the song will follow. What strikes me about her performance is that though it’s clearly styled—and, in fact, if you watch different performances of the same song you’ll see her delivery is nearly identical every time—what you notice, what you hear, is the story and the music. You don’t notice how she’s singing, you notice what she’s singing. It’s the combination that makes her performance so riveting.
Make ugly beautiful. Because she invests herself so fully in what she’s singing, her singing isn’t always “pretty”—not to listen to, nor to see. But that “ugliness” somehow adds to the power, because it feels real, and raw…just like the stories she tells through song.
Sing your songs. Bettye LaVette finds and sings songs that tell her story—or a story she would or could tell—even if she didn’t write them (if she can get Roger Daltry and Pete Townshend to stand up for her performance of their song, you know she’s found a story that she’s made her own). She’s fully aware of who she is, and sticks to it.
Sing without the mic. At the performance I saw, Ms. LaVette—mid-song—started to sing without the mic. Yes it’s a classic trick of showmanship: it shows the power of her voice and that she can fill a hall without amplification. But it also tears down a wall between her and her audience by removing the filter, and thus any chance of distortion.
Exit, singing. She ends a concert as she starts it: by singing, even when you can’t see her. It leaves you wanting more.
Bettye LaVette gave me goose bumps. How can you?
Categories: Branding, Strategy and Management
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