Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Kate Spade has launched a minisite off of their ecommerce site called, “Behind the Curtain”. It bills itself as “News and Ideas from the Kate Spade Design Studio.” Not only is the content surprisingly interesting, but the execution of the site itself is clean, beautiful and effortless. I particularly like some of the small design touches, like how text starts to fade at the bottom of the page so you intuitively know to scroll, that there is more to come.

The Things We Love page is exceptional in its layout, the horizontal scrolling motion of the page, and most of all the content itself. It encourages the exploration and discovery of diverse and interesting things. From simple pleasures in life like Red Hots, Helvetica, Audrey Hepburn and Laduree macaroons, to more esoteric multimedia adventures such as a Flickr photo pool of guerilla knitting, The ADC Young Guns site, a You Tube clip of Michel Gondry solving a Rubik’s cube with his feet, and one of our favorites, www.wefeelfine.org. This collection of links displayed as objects communicates the quirky aesthetic of the brand and the personalities behind it. As a final touch, the site prompts users to submit their favorite things too, creating a collaborative dialogue between the user and the brand.

Whitney Browne

Earlier this week, I brought up an example of the web reflecting rather than driving popular culture, in this case,  websites that create artificial exclusivity to mirror scarcity offline.  Well here's  a counter-example: cross-shopping behavior. 

The web has drastically reduced the effort required to cross-shop, particular by price.  And comparison-shopping engines like Froogle and Shopping.com have the task even easier. 

Now Vimo.com is looking to bring private and public data to help you cross-shop for...health care services.  The site lets you compare health plans, doctors, or even individual treatments side-by-side.

It's a classic problem for the Internet to solve - a huge lack of pricing transparency, uneven distribution of information, and a vexing intermediary (your health insurer) that may or may not always act in your best interests. 

My Medical Control, another web-based company, tackles the post-service end of the business- they will take your medical bill and bargain it down for you, the same service a claims adjuster would do for a major insurer- less a 35% commission on any savings. (According to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, health care spending is set to double in the next decade, to more than $4 trillion a year, a fifth of the gross domestic product).

Of course, there are limits  to cross-shopping for healthcare by price - your out-of-pocket costs will vary, quality of care is an intangible benefit, and your specific treatment will likely differ from your neighbor's.  Still, it's fascinating to see the Internet-led "informed consumer" model seeping into the byzantine health care system.  Read more in the New York Times.

Misha Cornes

6 Billion Others is an ambitious project from reknowned French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand.  Although he is typically known for his aerial photography, this project features video diaries of people from all over the world, talking about life, love and happiness.   It's a beautiful utopian idea that world harmony begins with an understanding of what matters to a single individual.  And it features an intuitively designed Flash interface and great video implementation.

Yee Peng Chia

It's not often that we point out display advertising; however I discovered an exceptionally eye-catching ad for Ralph Lauren which I wanted to share.  Besides being appropriately placed in a contextually relevant environment (the fashion section of the New York Times), the creative “elegantly” uses in-banner video to promote Ralph Lauren’s fall fashion show.  The video is fluid and the banner does a great job of maximizing its size. 

According to Jacob Ford, “it looks like they are fully taking advantage of Flash 9 and its stellar video compression trafficked through Unicast.” I also like how they use multiple videos (refresh the page) to showcase different clothing accessories.  There is definitely room to enhance the banner, however I like the simplicity of it as well.  The real pay off is the video of an actual fashion show which resides on their website.

Here's a link to the video at Polo.com.

Chris Portella

This portfolio site uses a 3D navigation system that is very usable and creates a nice dimensional feel.

http://www.screenvader.com

Bob Kuck

I ran across this Australian Honda CRV site, a very nice and elegant piece.  Not overly flashy and a pretty nice way to look at the vehicle.  Check out each environment the vehicle is positioned in.  They're really detailed and have some nice motion and interaction going on.

http://www.crvplay.com.au/

Zander Waldman

This week USAToday.com revealed a new look and a serious upgrade to its features.  Along with Web 2.0 standards like article tagging, tabbed browsing, and more white space, what you'll really notice are the new community components.

In a clear acknowledgement on the shifting balance between newspaper-as-authority and newspaper-as-content-curator, USAT offers:

• In-screen content feeds from other sources
• Reader comments highlighted against every article
• Digg-style voting for popular stories, with a directional stock indicator
• Photo uploads from citizen journalists
• User profile pages
• Recommend stories or comments to other readers

While they have clearly taken some pages from the New York Times playbook, the site goes even further in trying to redefine what a newspaper website can be.  In a letter to readers, the editorial staff lay out their ambitions clearly:

"[The redesign] is a mission recast for an era in which readers are inundated with information, have little allegiance to a single news source, struggle to assess the credibility of what they read and have the capacity to share their own insights with a wide audience."

While USAToday has never been considered a paper of record, it's very significant that America's most-read paper is seeking to democratize news.  When it comes to information consumption, the user is more in control than ever.

Misha Cornes

I'm not the guy to get all starry-eyed about the Next Great Social Music App but I'll usually give them a spin just to see what's up. After all, Audioscrobbler cum Last.fm wasn't much more than a nice idea until it reached critical mass and now I'm paying (PayPal-ing to be exact) to support my addiction. So when my friend Anthony invited me to join iLike, I did so without expecting much more than a download I'd later have to purge to make room on my hard drive (for more MP3s, of course). Along the way I got sidetracked by the iLike Challenge, a timed Name That Tune game similar to the one bundled on iPods that entices you with progressive levels of mastery. I was able to reach Music Explorer while downloading, then I had to go to a meeting. When I next opened iTunes, iLike's fancy little sidebar slid out to the right showing me what Anthony (who lives about 500 miles away in Brooklyn) was currently listening to...nice, I'm into musical voyeurism (or is it eavesdropping if there's play button?). So I, like, like iLike, but I can't help but wonder why someone more XML-savvy than me doesn't just build a similar sidebar based on Last.fm data and save us all the hassle? Holla if you know of one. Or join iLike so my sidebar doesn't look so empty.

Sam Cannon

A usability study by The Nielsen/Norman Group (June 2006) highlights (literally) the importance of “breaking through the clutter,” or in this case, “content.”  The study uncovered a phenomenon called ‘Banner Blindness’ where users focus almost exclusively on the content of a page and ignore the banners.   

As you can see, the diagram shows a F-shaped pattern for reading web content also revealing that users primarily focus on introductions and bulleted content.   There are significant implications for marketers who are not only seeking engagement, but also sheer exposure.   Because of this tendency to focus more on content, we as marketers must continue to develop innovative and creative ways to attract customers.

Chris Portella

Via Asi Sharabi of Poke London, here's an interesting new concept from travel publisher Dorling Kindersley, a downloadable version of their Eye Witness Travel Guides that allows the user to customize their content. 

Personalised guides are free in PDF form until March 12 (then around $5), and there are plans to offer special one-off bespoke books, delivered straight to your door or hotel.

For all you Mac users who want some really great screen savers,  Japanese artist Futurismo Zugakousaku has some great Quartz Composer projects.

Download the file and place them in you screensaver folder and enjoy.

Baron Conway

Sony presented the game Little Big Planet for the PS3 yesterday at the GDC and it has me very excited.

The idea is you can build a level to run, jump, and solve physics based puzzles with up to three other people, connected over the internet and playing on the same screen.  From there, you can upload and share the level over their online service for other people to play, rate, and comment on.

The videos show a very stylized world with felt trees and cardboard cut-out backgrounds. The characters are cute and customizable.  The music  sounds great.  I could see this being a very immersive and fun experience to play with four friends.

Read more and see a demo at I Make Websites.

Adam Sullovey

I had never steered far away from Planters Nuts before.  My Dad favored them and I did what my Dad did, snacked like my Dad snacked.  The I came across a banner ad for www.emeraldnuts.com.  Fans of Monthy Python could certainly get lost here, as did I. And you have to imagine that the designers (our friends at Goodby Silverstein) had a ton of fun conjuring up these transitions, sounds and uncommon navigational elements.

Any site that sues Robert Goulet to goad you into closing a window by saying "That's right. Click it. You know you want to." is OK by me.  So guess what snack I picked up for my Super Bowl party? (Don't tell Dad.)

Wayne Mitchell

http://sixjourneys.mercedes-benz.co.uk/r-class/home.php

Here's a nice site from Mercedes R-Class.  Simple.  Elegant. It's not about 40+ widgets that the car has.  It's not about what color I can get it in or what I get with each trim level.  Of course those widgets, colors, and trim levels are to come.

But first, lets just meet.

Its focus is more about aspiration.  A connection.  A story.

I like it.

P.S. Pull the little orange slider at the bottom left over to the right.

Casey Riggleman

[Need more diversions from Mercedes UK?  Try Mercedes A to S, a fun way to play with the web interface - Ed.]

http://labs.digg.com/bigspy/

I saw a demo of this last fall at the Future of Web Apps conference, and have been checking Digg Labs every week since. I may have missed the official launch, but there it is!

The other real-time Flash visualization tools are impressive, but Big Spy one really knocks it out of the park.

It's what my brain has always wanted to see when it heard "news feed."

Dan Sicko

360° panoramas projected to look like small planets. View complete flickr set here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/gadl/sets/72157594279945875/

Talk about some amazing pictures, just wow.

They are also available at large enough sizes for your computer's wallpaper.

James Ellis

A couple of developments this week have got me thinking about how we measure advertising success.  According to a new study release by Forrester this week, many marketers are dissatisfied with advertising's return on investment.  No surprise there. 

"There's always an undercurrent of discontent with agencies," says Peter Kim of Forrester. "They're dissatisfied, yet on what basis? It's not because the agency didn't help them drive sales or meet some other business outcome. It's a vague disenchantment, or disappointment; it's a feeling that there isn't data to back up."

The interactive channel is held to the higher standards than other marketing communications.  It's easier to measure, and the industry grew up at time when accountability was becoming the watchword for CMOs.  So the preference for accountability is shared by interactive ad planners and buyers.  Two thirds of respondents surveyed by NSON Opinion Research and the Audit Bureau of Circulations would be more likely to advertise on Web sites if the results were independently verified by a third party .  You can read more on these reports at eMarketer.

You can contrast this obsession with measurement with the break-up of the six-year Career Builder/ Cramer-Krasselt relationship this week.  According to some reports, C-K was essentially fired for the dismal performance of their Super Bowl ads on USA Today's Ad Meter.  The opinions of 238 people in two cities cost an agency a $60 million account.  Is a laugh-o-meter the best measurement tool we can muster after more than fifty years of showing commercials? 

AdAge offers a nice critique of USA Today's methodology.  Everyone knows the system is flawed, but it lingers on because (1) it's an easy metric to understand (2) it's published by the nation's best-selling newspaper, itself an arbiter of Middle America's tastes.  By definition, then, the winning commercials follow a strict (and by now predictable) format of cheap laughs and entertainment over content.  The system is gamed for Budweiser.

Have clients gone too far with their insistence on metrics?  Or are we as advertisers still too quick to dismiss measurement as a tool to improve the creative process?

[photo credit: jo.k]

Misha Cornes

I heard www.dontbebob.com advertised on the radio several times and decided to take a minute to check it out.            

I found it interesting that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan took on a marketing initiative specifically targeting uninsured twenty-somethings.  The site and radio promos are clever and fun appealing to those who do not think they need health insurance because they are, in fact, healthy.  But, what about the unexpected encounter with an angry robot or ninja ambush?  Don’t be Bob!

Erin C. Patterson

[This campaign parallels Tonik, another edgy Blue Cross/Blue Shield program aimed at college students in six other states.  -Ed.]

February’s Harvard Business Review features its first article on understanding customer experience, offering an overview on the definition of CE, the main causes of CE failures in organizations, and methods to obtain actionable customer insights.

Defining Customer Experience

Authors Christopher Meyer and Andre Schwager define customer experience as the “internal and subjective response customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company.” Direct contact is consumer initiated, occurring as customers purchase, consume, and service an offering. Indirect contact refers to unplanned encounters with a product, service, or brand, and can take place through word of mouth, product recommendations, and advertising.  The distinction between direct and indirect contact is an important one to consider, as we often get too caught up in designing and monitoring direct customer touch points, rather than planning how to influence indirect interactions.

What’s the secret to creating a good customer experience? “[It] isn’t the multiplicity of features on offer … A successful brand shapes customers’ experiences by embedding the fundamental value proposition in offerings’ every feature.”

Organizational Challenges

Creating engaging customer experiences is still a challenge for most organizations, as recently evidenced by some of the biggest experience-focused brands (Starbucks, Home Depot, and up in the Great White North, Loblaws). So where does the problem lie? The authors have identified three factors:

• Overspending on CRM data that captures what a company already knows about their customers. In contrast, CE data looks at capturing a customer’s immediate response to an interaction.
• Lack of top-management empathy towards customers needs. Executives rising from finance or technology backgrounds still regard customer experience management as the responsibility of sales, marketing, and customer service departments.
• Fear of qualitative customer experience insights. Organizations are still driven by quantitative data. By combining CRM and CE insights, organizations can not only identify new trends taking place (the “what”), but understand how internal forces and subjective factors are driving these changes (the “why” and “how”). 

Audrey Carr

MySpace still rules the web.  The site took the overall page view lead from Yahoo! in November 2006, and hasn't looked back since.  According to a Pew Internet Report on Teens and Social Networks, which came out around the same time, more than half (55%) of all of teens use online social networking sites.  The survey also found that older teens, particularly girls, were even more likely to use these sites.

But massive social networks are so 2006.  This year, it's all about niche social networks.

As usual, teen early adopters lead the way, and where they go, marketers will follow.  Tampax bypassed MySpace and developed a campaign with Takkle, a social network for high school athletes.  Girls submit a video clip of a cheerleading routine, with the community-determined winner taking home $10,000.  It's also a way for Procter & Gamble to build it's database of names on BeingGirl.com, an education and information site sponsored by Tampax and Always brands.  While WalMart's generic teen site was widely derided and ultimately shut down, it makes sense to develop a social platform that's directly aligned with a niche interest, particularly something private and potentially embarrassing.

Anheuser-Busch chose MingleNow, with a mere 300,000 members, as a partner to develop Clink, an unbranded photo-sharing site showcasing the bar scene.  Why MingleNow?  For one thing, there are too many underage members on MySpace and FaceBook.

As social networking goes mainstream, will everyone find a vertically-oriented niche that aligns directly to their interests?  And where will that leave "mass-market" social networks?

[photo credit: m.a.x.]

Misha Cornes

Organic alumnus Shawn Smith sent this interesting homepage page takeover from Pandora, one of the earliest music recommendation and Internet radio services created by the Music Genome Project. Organics love web-enabled music.  And we love smart media buys.

"I like the way Jameson has tailored a call-to-action with the publisher site in mind. Pandora is one of my favorite things on the web, and Jameson's is one of my favorite whiskies, so I admit I'm curious about what "Radio Jameson" has to offer. Unfortunately it changed to a Chase Freedom ad a few minutes later when I went back to look, so I guess I'll never know."

Misha Cornes

Last week, we looked at the very progressive community strategy involved in the redesign of USA Today.  Now that it has been live for a while the feedback from their readers is rolling in, and it is not all good.

It seems that every week we are having conversations about how brands can harness the power of their communities. We are also having conversations about being prepared to receive criticism when you open up your brand to the public.

The strategy is sound and well implemented, but as Charlene Li at Forrester says, they can't afford to ignore the swell of negative feedback on the redesign from their readers.  The real test is what they do next. They are in a perfect position to respond to the very direct feedback from their most active members. A lack of response could damage the integrity of the whole strategy.

Their readers are loyal and have been trying to live with the new design but seem to be giving up fast. When you dissect their comments they are giving very direct feedback. They miss elements from the old design and identify problems with the new design. USA Today has opened a channel for their brand, but need to take advantage of the fact it is two-way.  I know they value their readership so they should respond to the comments in the forum, and defend their design decisions.

Once I got past my own issues with the layout, the new features have a lot of gravity. I find myself now scanning for the most recommended and commented articles.  It is safe to say my time on the site is extended by these features, but I haven't taken the leap to create my own profile. I  think overall it is a very brave strategy in a changing industry. I just hope that now they have given their readers a way to respond, they actually listen. Their site experience is as important to their brand as their content.

Conor Brady

Click Shirt is the most impressive T-shirt customizer I've seen to date.

Flash 8 with an ajax front end.

Jim Bachalo

We are proud to announce the launch of the Jeep Patriot and the Way-Beyond Trail Interactive Film. 

Developed as an upper funnel activity for the launch of the all new 2007 Jeep Patriot, the campaign is supported by on-line, television, and print media which directs viewers to choose their adventure at patriotadventure.com.

And just like any good theatrical experience, you gotta see the trailer first:

Get ready for a really, really interactive film where the viewer makes decisions that help decide the plot.  Become the fourth member of a group of friends on a backwoods camping trip at www.patriotadventure.com. 

The story begins around a campfire with our group of friends, Gary, Srini, and Jodi, and a story of a legendary treasure that starts the adventure.  Next watch a video and then decide your fate by choosing the next path.  A total of 44 scenes including, dead ends (which you can actually get out of) and four user-customizable scenes make this a truly unique interactive experience. So go visit the Way-Beyond Trail for a new kind of fun and be sure to fill out the permit with as much info as possible – the payoff is priceless.

Read more at AdAge ...

Katie Bolen and the extended cast and crew at Organic

Check out the downloadable toolbar from Stumbleupon.com. Stumbleupon embeds into your Firefox browser, enabling you (through the magic of collaborative opinion) to discover and share websites and videos with users who share similar interests. It’s an interesting integration of some of the best features of social networking, and a pretty effective one at that. From my own personal ten-minute test, I stumbled upon a half-dozen sites that I would never have come across via Google alone that warranted immediate bookmarking.

www.stumbleupon.com

Bridget McKinley

Breaking a new brand is a difficult proposition online.  It's hard to drive awareness without a massive media buy, and once you catch someone's attention and drive them to your site, it's not easy to develop quality branded entertainment content. 

There are plenty of competently executed but thoroughly uninteresting sites out there.  McDonald's Morning Impaired is a great example.  It's one element of a massive, multi-channel push to drive more breakfast traffic to stores.  There's plenty of crisp video and nice navigation structure.  But to mix metaphors, "Where's the Beef?".  It's harder than it looks to write a few truly funny pieces of content about a fast food breakfast.

That's why I was so surprised by the success of this email  I received yesterday.  Sure, I bought some curtains at Restoration Hardware about six months ago.  But I think of them as a stodgy Marin County brand.   This lowly direct mail piece got me thinking about the brand in a whole new way.  Turns out they have launched a cutting edge entry into a Gothic/Victorian pastiche style that some think will be the successor to Modernism in the urban living room.

Digging deeper in BrocadeHome's press clippings, I am clearly behind the times.  The LA Times was trumpeting the arrival of a darker Victoriana last Fall.  But all it took was a simple email to establish Restoration Hardware as a fashion authority, which then sent me a half hour journey to discover a new trend, surf through various purveyors, and decide whether it was for me.  (No.)

Misha Cornes

Since 2000, Stanford University has continued to search the grid for more computing power for its distributed computing research project, Folding @ Home.

F@H leverages idle computing power across a wide grid of volunteered computers and works to crunch data that aids in Stanford's cancer research projects. F@H applications are available for many computer platforms and it will soon be available to Playstation 3 owners as F@H looks to leverage the untapped power of the PS3 and its cell processor which outperform s traditional computer processors

The Folding@Home application will appear on PS3 systems by the end of the March in the form of a free system application that will be accessible from the main menu of the system.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Some Folding@Home participants have banded together to turn "folding" into a competitive computing sport with various communities competing against each other to see who can fold more and top the leaderboards. With the PS3 involved , a turbo boost is now available.

Chad Stoller

The Ides of March are always a bit ominous. But this year the 15th day was reserved for the launch of a microsite in support of the new Mitsubishi Lancer. This was ominous indeed for those of us tasked with delivering. Et tu Brute? But last night we  pushed it live and may the Lancery goodness spread across the land. The site has an interface meant to suggest a stylized design-center motif and two tiers of content—top-line video edutainment and deep-dig, informative text. This allows consumers to self-select the depth of content they desire and get a comprehensive understanding of the value-added vehicle features. This site is without doubt the most ambitious and robust experience site that we have produced for Mitsubishi to date. The fact that it went from blank page to built in less than six weeks makes even sweeter.

So without further ado, relax, press play and marinate in the Mitsubishiness of it all,

Daniel Turman

Shiny Shiny has a LG Prada phone in their hands and have put out a demonstration video of the the device along with an overview of the Prada packaging and accessory experience including a leather box, carrying case and a luxury screen cloth.

Is this the snickers for the fashionably hip as everyone awaits the iPhone launch? Ebay sellers are already looking at $900+ bids for phones imported from Europe.

Chad Stoller

A recent, unexpected mid-March snow storm, left me and my fellow Organics stuck in Boston.  Of course, of all the places to be stuck, Boston is not the worst place.  As my luck would have it, I needed to stock up on a few essentials, given the prolonged nature of my stay.  I, for one, prefer to go off the beaten path for my shopping needs.

Through one of my favorite trend-watching sites, I stumbled upon Superfuture , which brandishes the descriptor: "urban cartography for global shopping experts."  Through Superfuture, I was able to look up Boston, read over a few 'brutally honest independent reviews' of selected shops, and narrow down my choices for trendy stores to seek out (which, during horrible, blizzard-like conditions is extremely convenient).

The site, per se, is really not much to look at, however Superfuture offers some excellent insight, trendy 411, not only on where to shop in over 150 cities in the world, but also provides urban cartography for concierge services, reviews of hotels, restaurants and local events (from album listening to t-shirt releases.) Suffice to say, stranded or not, on my next trip I am leaving my Lonely Planet at home. With 4,200 reviewers reporting back to Superfuture, the planet hardly feels lonely.

Virginia M. Alber-Glanstaetten

Saturday marked the one year anniversary and thus final episode of the Ze Frank show.  Let’s see what he comes up with next.

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2007/03/031707.html

Charles Zicari

[Dewar's signed on to sponsor the last week of The Show.  They will also host his archives.  It's an old-time product placement deal, since he mentions the whiskey by name as a sponsor. - Ed.]

The year of the YouTube election is a phrase that has been kicking around Organic since last fall.  Video footage of incumbent Virginia Senator George Allen calling a dark-skinned heckler a "macaca" at a campaign rally was posted by said-macaca to YouTube, helping challenger Jim Webb squeak to victory, which in turn tipped the balance of power in the Senate to Democrats.

Three years ago, MoveOn.org experimented with user-generated advertising during the 2004 presidential campaign.  But since that time, the rise of YouTube has created a much broader and perhaps more democratic platform and for any kind of individual creativity, including political attack ads.  And so I present the first salvo in the second (?) YouTube election: Hillary 1984, a skillful and anonymous mashup of the iconic Apple ad. 

Read more, including reaction from Barack Obama's camp, in  The San Francisco Chronicle.

Misha Cornes

Wallpaper is a mass collaborative project gathering designers from all over the world to produce a singular, unique piece of art.  What started as a simple concept of a few people working on one project and blasting it out to the minds of 100 artists is just an amazing concept to me. 

Considering what ThreeMinds is all about, it literally taking creative collobaration to another level.  As it isn’t fully developed yet and all the designs are not currently in, it will be interesting to see how this takes shape.  To see if 100 artists can produce something that blends and plays off each other’s pieces to form a cohesive statement or piece will be the major payoff.  I’ll definitely be checking back to see how things are going.

Phil Garwood

I just discovered a fascinating “virtual” documentary that was shot entirely in the online World of Second Life.  Here is a snippet from YouTube:  “On one of his visits in SL, Filmmaker Douglas Gayeton came across a series of seven video dispatches by a character named Molotov Alva.  It appears that a man by the same name mysteriously disappeared from his real world California home in January 2007.  Gayeton put Alva's dispatches together into a documentary of seven episodes. Will he find the answers he's looking for?”

Chris Portella

Lonely Planet, easily my favorite travel  guidebook series, has embraced the web from the start.  The Australian company has moderated  a lively community of independent travelers at the ThornTree for many years.   

Now they are taking a bold step into the video era with Lonely Planet TV, which combines professional travel documentaries with user-generated tales from the road.   It's a smart move for LP, which has already developed a base of video content through the Lonely Planet Six Degrees documentary series, originally developed for broadcasters including the Discovery Channel and Current TV.

The site has a professional look that is presumably meant to appeal to advertisers and to compete with long-standing travel journal sites like IGoYouGo, Real Travel, and Virtual Tourist.  Today there were ads running for the Australia Tourism Board.  But it still retains some of the backpacker vibe with channels like "Oh F^^^!, Oh Wow!" - the best and worst of travel.

The site is currently in Beta mode, but ThreeMinds got the tip-off from Tamir Levin, an Organic alumnus who left the US to take his dream job running IT for Lonely Planet in Melbourne.  Best of luck from all of us.

Misha Cornes

In case you missed it last week, the U.S. Post Office announced a promotion  in conjunction with the 30th anniversary of Star Wars where the Post Office will issue a limited edition Star Wars 30th Anniversary stamp.

As part of the promotion, the USPS will wrap over 400 mailboxes in 200 cities with graphics that transform traditional mailboxes into the likeness of everyone's favorite delivery droid, R2-D2.

According to the Wall Street Journal,  R2-D2 "embodies the trust and dependability for which the Postal Service is so renowned." After all, not just any droid can locate the whereabouts of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the vast deserts of Tatooine.

A new alternate reality game (ARG) is coming this Spring.  But this time, it’s not for a marketer (well, doesn’t appear to be!).  From what I can gather, it’ll be the first large-scale ARG dedicated to harnessing crowd-sourced, mass collaboration to solve a major social or economic issue.  The URL more than hints at what crisis the game plans on tackling.  It's sure to be chock full of villains, masterminds and scandalous mystery to keep things moving. The site is up, but not functional…

http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/

The smarty-pants behind it is Jane McGonical, the architect behind Microsoft’s “I Love Bees” ARG.

Should be interesting.

Adam Wilson

A few weeks ago, we followed the well documented fiasco of nine JetBlue planes that sat on the tarmac at JFK for six hours or more.

A colleague and I stared that same prospect down en route to NY last night and I can tell you, a $25 voucher was somehow not going to cut it.

This time however, EVERYTHING was different, and it turned a potential disaster into an Exceptional Experience.

The Captain personally makes the announcement; that although the airplane is fully functional and ready to leave, he's not been clearance to push back by Air Traffic Control because of "negative weather conditions".

There is going to be a 100min delay and he was sorry, because there is nothing he could do.

He gives us 2 options:

When I was surfing at home last night when I came across the 2006 YouTube awards.  I hadn’t heard mention of this previously so I thought I’d put it out there.

http://www.youtube.com/YTAwards

There are some pretty cool vid’s – I especially enjoyed the most creative category.  I’d seen some of these vid’s before but not all. 

Be warned.. . I woke up at 4am this morning, still on my couch, laptop on my chest, this site still in my browser.

Enjoy!

Patrick Dunphy

Here's a really slick Flash site created by Red Interactive Agency.  It is a multi-user experience that you need to see for yourself. The site loads super fast and is a lot of fun! (Use the arrow keys, and don’t forget to fly!)

http://www.ff0000.com/universe/

The nerds among us will appreciate Red’s domain name.

Dave Bobak

At the end of 2006, I wrote a bit looking forward to Apollo – the newest concern from the people at Adobe.

For those who haven’t heard of it, Apollo is a new runtime environment (based on the Flash player and the PDF plugin) that allows for the creation of desktop applications that can be run cross-platform.  So essentially, a developer can make desktop applications that run on both MAC and PC with ease (and soon Linux).

Why do I think this is going to have a major impact on how we do things? To illustrate, imagine you could go back in time and put your branding on iTunes….the “Dodge” iTunes, “dTunes” if you will.

How much of a value would that be to a client?

Teknison, creators of the FineTune application make a similar comparison – what if Kodak had created Flickr?

Brooklyn’s own Sen. Chuck Schumer has embraced personas to help him stay in touch with the needs and concerns of the middle class. A short piece in last week’s New Yorker magazine introduces us to his imaginary family from Long Island:

Schumer says that he is accompanied everywhere he goes by two imaginary middle-class friends, who advise him on all manner of middle-class concerns. Their names, until recently, were Joe and Eileen O’Reilly. “For the book’s sake, we wanted them to be more national,” Schumer said, “so they became the Baileys.” The Baileys live in Massapequa, in Nassau County, …[and] are both forty-five years old: Joe works for an insurance company, Eileen is a part-time employee at a doctor’s office. They worry about terrorism, and about values, and they are patriots—“Joe takes off his cap and sings along with the national anthem before the occasional Islanders game,” Schumer wrote. …It was suggested to Schumer that he is a little bit weird. He acknowledged this to be true. “They’re real for me,” he said. “I love the Baileys.”

Will personas become a trend for ’08 candidates? Will Clinton, Obama, McCain and the rest develop their own personas as they campaign across the country? I can see that they would be a useful tool, particularly effective at enabling politicians to more easily keep “on message” as they tailor their speeches to different demographic groups. And more importantly, personas help us empathize with subjects, whether they be customers, web users or voters. Any tool that helps politicians effectively empathize with the American people can only be a good thing.

Whitney Browne

Millsberry.com was introduced to me by my daughter and her friends.  It’s in essence a site to play games, buy things, create an avatar, and travel around the town.  Sound familiar?  It’s like a mini Second Life in that you can be someone else and enjoy this virtual world, except the whole thing is brought to you by a cereal company.

General Mills has created Millsberry town – replete with a downtown core and suburbs. My kids love it because they can get trophies and score mills bucks, which can be exchanged for clothes, toys, and of course General Mills products.

And I thought she wanted the box of Lucky Charms because they were magically delicious!

Vito Greto

I've been intrigued by London-based agency Mother ever since I learned they only credit their work (which they do a lot with all the awards they rake in) as "Mother, London." I've been fascinated by that philosophy and how it relates to the often political game of idea "ownership." So I decided to visit their website and hopefully pull back the curtain. As if they knew that I (or people like me) would be coming, their website is all about the people at Mother -- to a point of being ridiculously detailed. Their site allows you to tour every square foot of their stylishly Spartan office space. You click on individuals and objects suspended in time to learn more about them…a lot more. For example, you'll learn that Zuza McKen (who sits in the Southwest corner of the office by Tom Chancellor) has a birthmark on the inside of her left arm, was born in Osijek, Croatia, has four fillings in her teeth, and eyes of Pantone 991. You can see what she's got on her desk (photo of husband and a monkey, one red jelly baby, toy black cat, and doll encased in plastic display tube). What you won't learn is what the heck she does at Mother. Talk about brand consistency…

Sam Cannon

Five years in the making, Planet Earth premiered on the Discover Channel Sunday night, and will air new episodes over the next four Sundays in April. Filmed entirely in high definition, this 11 part mini-series event is truly mesmerizing!

Take the Google Earth Tour and travel the globe to see where the best moments were filmed.  There’s a live chat today at noon ET with the producers.

Enjoy!

Nikki Duncan

So what happens when you cross our persona practice with the ubiquitous world of social networks and WOM/viral?  Something we are beginning to call "Spheres of Influence" - an approach which is reminiscent to the game of Go.  While David Armano has done some work on how this might pertain to the blogosphere – we are seeing additional strategic potential in our work at Organic.   

When you get down to the nitty-gritty of creating a living, breathing and believable persona – it’s very important to remember that they certainly do not live in a vacuum.  They have fathers and mothers, may have children or brothers and sisters, may have a spouse/gf/bf, likely went to school (well at least some), and probably have jobs or some source of income (if they are going to buy anything from you) – meaning they must be part of one social network or another.

Now what additional insight does this provide us?   Depending on a constructed persona’s qualities, they might exert an influence over others – or depending on the qualities of those in his/her social network, they might exert influence over our targeted persona.  This adds a great deal of richness that changes how we approach speaking to this person.

Some of our newest Organic hires and some of our old friends were involved with a new Michelin launch today.  It’s pretty nice looking, light, very clean, classy and, well, kinda squishy…not what you’d expect for tires at all.  The explore section, which launched a little previous to the new site, has great environments and animations – very fun to play around with. Have a look!

http://www.michelinman.com/

Erika Propst

If you were looking for a community to share your latest color scheme with, check out Kuler from Adobe.

Kuler is a color scheme sharing community which allows you to tag and publish your color scheme. You can also post comments on other members contributions.

Jason Law

One of the biggest challenges with web 2.0 is creating a relevant ad model. Considering the traffic and time spent on Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, these sites aren’t getting their fair share of online ad dollars.

Finding the right ad model is very tricky. Banners on your Facebook or Myspace page feel very intrusive.  Adsense works but there text links are limited.  Creating branded groups or “friends” works if you have very entertaining content.  That’s OK if you are promoting a movie but a lot harder if you are selling insurance.  Frankly, none of these leverage the real potential of web 2.0 for marketers – word of mouth.

Squidoo may have found the answer with Squidoo Offers.  Here’s how it works.  If you have an offer, you pay for it to be to shown to people on Squidoo in a relevant category. If they like it, they vote it up. The better the offer, the more votes you get, the more you traffic you get.

It’s early days yet but it could be very powerful. It combines the relevance of Adsense with the power of real user referral.

Adam Turinas

Excellent website for Hand Tailored Great Pockets Clothing... or is there more than meets the eye?

See for yourself at GreatPockets.com

This experience took me by surprise...

Lawrence Ardelean

As you know, the blogosphere has created space for anyone with a need to express themselves... to divulge their opinions, intrinsic feelings or unique level of knowledge in a written forum, instantly. Journalists, would-be-journalists and anyone with an editorial opinion can wax-on eloquently (or, not so eloquently) as fast as their fingers can stoke a keyboard.

Increasingly, photographers and photojournalists have taken notice and are using the what we normally think of as a written medium to showcase their portfolios, or work they admire from others in the profession.  It's a great way to gain insight into artistic expression and true journalistic inspiration supported by remarkable photography.

Here are three of my favorite blogs that explore photography:

• Alec Soth
• Todd Deutsch
• Martin Fuchs

Chuck Russo

I just finished listening to the unabridged version of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die: by Chip and Dan Heath.  This is an excellent book and very applicable to what we try to accomplish everyday with our clients.

Here's an excerpt of what makes a sticky idea adhere to our gray matter:

Six Principles of Sticky Ideas

As we pored over hundreds of sticky ideas, we saw, over and over, the same six principles at work.

PRINCIPLE 1: SIMPLICITY

How do we find the essential core of our ideas? A successful defense lawyer says, "If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won't remember any." To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion.  We must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission – sound bites are not the ideal.  Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound.  The Golden Rule is the ultimate model of simplicity: a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it.

PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXPECTEDNESS

How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across?  We need to violate people's expectations.  We need to be counterintuitive.  A bag of popcorn is as unhealthy as a whole day's worth of fatty foods!  We can use surprise – an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus – to grab people's attention.  But surprise doesn't last.  For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity.  How do you keep students engaged during the fortyeighth history class of the year? We can engage people's curiosity over a long period of time by systematically "opening gaps" in their knowledge – and then filling those gaps.

When big brands lose some of their luster, there are a few common culprits.  One is the inherent pressure of growing too fast (think Starbucks).  Another is a kind of institutional inertia that sets in as a company ages.  Smaller, more innovative companies step in and steal away market share (think Gap).   

But can sticking it to the man play a part in brand switching?  According to the Underdog Theory of Marketing, it can:

"When you’re an underdog, a scrappy new company, your core customers can identify with you. When you get big, your earliest customers have trouble identifying with you anymore, and they drift away to find another brand can be meaningful to them again."

As long as the underdog can provide equal functionality, some people will defect.  There are a lot of examples in the world of interactive, most notably Google and MySpace.  In this article I discuss the Underdog Theory in greater detail, and offer some techniques that might help growing companies sustain their relevance and appeal.

Misha Cornes

http://www.gettheglass.com/

This is a fun little game from none other than the "Got Milk?" people.  Nice use of 3D and fun mini games. Some can be a bit overwhelming since you have to jump right into them (pleasing the mother was hard.... you'll understand if you get that mini game), but overall, an Exceptional Experience. I beat it on my first try, can you? :)

James Ellis

New York is amazing for many reasons.  I believe only in NY can you have access to anything at your fingertips.  Hitchsters is a match-making site that allows you to find a fellow passenger to share a cab to or from the airport.  I made a trip to NY years ago before I moved here and foolishly tried to split a cab into the city from JFK.  I asked 7 people in line and everyone was going to different destinations.

I don't take cabs from the aiport anymore but I'd give this a try for the sheer experience of it.  You never know who you will meet. 

Check out the beta for NYC.

Nantini Rauch