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• January 2011 (3)

  Culture | Bloomfield Hills (Area) Dining: Lemon Grass Thai Review

  Posted by Mike Hudson | January 28, 1:20 pm

  I wasn’t expecting much from Lemon Grass Thai. It’s sparsely decorated, and generally looks like one of those places that does the bare minimum to pass for whatever type of food it’s selling.

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  Culture | Winter Whiskers

  Posted by Mike Hudson | January 10, 2:47 pm

  With all the posts we had leading up to the holidays, someone had to break the ice with some holiday gift bragging. So I’d like to introduce you to Pierre — Pierre Noel Chomplins the Christmas cat, to be exact. And being a black cat, he’s good for Halloween too.

  Getting Pierre was a total surprise, [...]

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  Grey Matter | 3 Year Old Minds Pitch

  Posted by Marc Schwartz | January 3, 8:00 am

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• February 2011 (5)

  Strength in Numbers | The Passive Search Conversion Rate and the Value of “Free” Media

  Posted by Steve Kerho | February 28, 3:40 pm

  We all recognize that search is a powerful and critical part of every media plan.  But search media is fundamentally different from other types of media.  One of the key differences is that the majority of search impressions are free and this is radically different from broadcast, print or online display media.  In each of [...]

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  Grey Matter | Please Take This Survey

  Posted by Marc Schwartz | February 28, 8:00 am

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  View Source | Kinect SDK still leaves much to be done

  Posted by Matt | February 23, 4:31 pm

  In keeping up with the state of Kinect development, of course I saw the news that Microsoft has announced they will be releasing an official SDK (Gizmodo coverage). In my view this is a good step, but I don’t see it heralding a revolutionary increase in the sophistication of Kinect applications.
  The good stems more from a support [...]

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  Strength in Numbers | SEO, Paid Links, JC Penney and Google (oh my!)

  Posted by Andrew Lovasz | February 16, 7:35 am

  JC Penney is now the poster boy (or girl) for bad behavior in SEO. They broke one of the cardinal rules of search engine optimization and bought massive amounts of paid links. They were caught by Google thanks to a NY Times article. Their punishment? A huge decrease in natural search traffic thanks to algorithmic and manual penalties by Google (and possibly millions of dollars in lost revenue). So, why did this happen and what does it mean for advertisers? I’ll give you a hint – it means a lot of hard work is in store for advertisers as they look to build architecture, content and links with a “white hat” on

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  Proof and Concept | About Last Night...

  Posted by gscibelli | February 14, 1:45 pm

  Super Bowl commercials –marketing’s ultimate competition. In case you haven’t heard, real people outside our little world neither know nor care about Cannes and usually cannot pronounce it. By contrast, everyone knows about these commercials – the one-night American Idol competition for agencies and marketers. Hundreds of articles and rankings will tell you how Groupon [...]

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• March 2011 (5)

  Beyond the Brief | Great Expectations: Make Sure Your Digital Strategy Doesn't Leave You Feeling Orphaned

  Posted by Stephanie Park | March 30, 4:11 pm

  Every client has good intentions when kicking off their digital strategy initiatives.  Building your business, growing competitive footprint and deepening customer relationships are all lofty ambitions when sending out an RFP. Once projects get rolling you have the very real need of being and being seen as effective and efficient within your organization.
  Yet with client-agency [...]

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  Proof and Concept | Even Vampires Need Reflection

  Posted by Stephanie Park | March 29, 2:34 pm

  The 2011 season of HBO’s True Blood is coming this summer and the vampire lovers in the office are buzzing about the possibilities of the opening episode. In last year’s season opening episode, the mobile phone carrying Vampire Queen ignores the advice of one her underlings to “discuss other options”. She promptly picks him up [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Digital Copywriting Skills? Here are some Alts.

  Posted by Stephanie Park | March 28, 4:02 pm

  Recently, somewhere between putting an extra coat of varnish on a presentation deck and following hashtags about cheese dip, a friend passed me a really interesting article. The author, a freelance copywriter in the UK, outlined “the essential skills you need to know to be an effective digital copywriter.” I started in digital and am [...]

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  Grey Matter | Increase your Viral Potential

  Posted by Marc Schwartz | March 28, 8:00 am

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  Proof and Concept | Design and Emotion

  Posted by Stephanie Park | March 23, 5:25 pm

  I have an original work by my favorite designer hanging in my office. I actually had the pleasure of watching him create it. He is four-years old and lives in my house and as he was drawing it, I asked, “What is it?” He replied, “Just designs, dad, just designs.” Exactly. Just designs. What good are [...]

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• April 2011 (5)

  View Source | The Requirements Superheroes and Villains

  Posted by Stephanie Park | April 29, 1:48 pm

  I have been doing requirements gathering sessions for over fifteen years and I have dealt with people of all shapes and sizes. Some make the process easier than others. The trick is to know who you are dealing with and find a way to work with all of them in order to achieve your goals.
  I have [...]

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  Culture | A Royal 'eDo'

  Posted by Alle Aufderhaar | April 27, 11:38 am

  With the UK’s Royal Wedding just two days away, Buckingham Palace is doing everything it can to drum up excitement, especially amongst youngsters.  In a recent poll by British newspaper the Sunday Mirror, barely half of respondents ages 18 to 24 were excited about the wedding, compared to 68 percent of those over 65. So [...]

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  View Source | Don’t Jump the Shark

  Posted by Stephanie Park | April 27, 5:46 am

  I recently read an article by Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener, which asked the question, “Are your software development practices jumping the shark?” As a technical analyst in a digital advertising agency, I speak with certainty that our practices are continuously changing and improving and that a truer statement would be that we ‘reinvent the shark.’ [...]

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  Culture | The Littlest Sox Fan

  Posted by Alle Aufderhaar | April 26, 4:11 pm

  We are the only members of our family who don’t live in the Greater Boston area.  We moved to the Bay Area almost 15 years ago and many temperate winters later, we find our roots have shifted West, although we still carry our childhood city in our deep hearts’ core.  We feel a certain, misguided [...]

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  Culture | A Beer Bash Friday Slugging in Honor of the Number 162

  Posted by Alle Aufderhaar | April 25, 2:40 pm

  The green of the outfield, the faces of fans
  The crack of the bat and the shake of the stands
  The rounding of bases, the shagging of flies
  The flaming of rivalries from times gone by(s).
  The gulping down hot dogs and swigging of beer
  The wave and The Beard and the roar and the cheer
  The innings-gone-extra, the chase of [...]

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• May 2011 (5)

  Culture | The World Is Yours

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | May 26, 2:20 pm

  The children of Organic Detroit learned Earth Day values and enjoyed cookies on “Bring Your Kids to Work Day” 2011, themed “The World Is Yours.”

  Both Earth Day and Kids Day were hugely successful this year. We started the week off by donating 150 old CRT monitors, to Goodwill to be completely reused and recycled. This [...]

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  Beyond the Brief | Is Personalization Making Me Dumber?

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | May 24, 7:00 am

  I’ve been watching social media become an increasingly larger part of my daily media consumption. A little Twitter here, a little Flipbook there, a dash of Groupon just in case I’m missing out. Sprinkle in my LinkedIn Answers obsession. Don’t forget my FourSquare death battle either. Those are just personal consumption patterns. [...]

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  Culture | Serena Reno: Goddess of Love

  Posted by Alle Aufderhaar | May 20, 12:14 pm

  She is the Aphrodite of Advertising. She is the Cupid’s catch of cross-channel marketing.  She is the ultimate Organic Goddess of Love.  She is. Serena. Reno.
  Serena once recreated the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World in the Organic SF kitchen, using only cheese sticks and bagels.  Her Moleskin carvings are on display at the [...]

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  Strength in Numbers | Winning the Consumer’s Share of Mind – How to Tell if Marketing is Working

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | May 20, 9:09 am

  Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere, online mags, consumer forums, online newswires…the endpoints seem endless where your brand’s image can be enhanced (or damaged). Need to keep track of your brand image?…where do you look? Track tweets?  Monitor your Facebook page for posts? Surf online forums and chat rooms? Even if you are willing and able to [...]

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  Culture | Aviation and advertising: Birds of a feather

  Posted by Alle Aufderhaar | May 19, 1:54 pm

  If you work in advertising, then you’ve probably spent plenty of time crammed into a coach-class seat on a seven-leg, fifteen-hour aerial journey that began in hell and ended in Duluth. (Or possibly the other way around.) During those endless hours, did you ever think to yourself, ‘You know, somebody’s getting paid to drive this [...]

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• June 2011 (5)

  View Source | Retrofitting the iCade & EXOPC Slate

  Posted by Jordan Gray | June 29, 11:04 am

  The iCade is an 99$ barcade kit that’s designed to be used with an iPad. But shortly after putting mine together, I discovered the list of supported iPad games is painfully limited. So I did as any self-respecting retro-gamer would and jailbroke replaced the iPad with a more versatile computer: the EXOPC Slate running Windows [...]

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  Grey Matter | Scampy, The Marketing Squibbit

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | June 20, 8:00 am

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  Beyond the Brief | Building the Agency of Now

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | June 16, 8:00 am

  It strikes as somewhat ironic – or self-centered perhaps – that every time you engage somebody in our industry about “the future” or “keeping up,” their typical response is “the industry is changing too fast to keep up.” I’ve been hearing that for as long as I’ve been in the industry so it does feel [...]

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  View Source | CoDaMe Art & Technology 2011

  Posted by Jordan Gray | June 15, 2:13 pm

  Image Credit: By photonburst
  In May of 2011 I spoke at CoDaMe, an Art & Technology party in San Francisco. It was scheduled as an after party to the Google-IO conference so we had plenty of nerds in attendance with an awakened eye for aesthetics, including a nice turn out from my co-workers at Organic.
  Beat The [...]

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  Culture | Inspiration Workshop: Feeeeel the Paint

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | June 14, 4:37 pm

  On June 9th, I was able to put my Inspiration Workshop shoes on again and teach another course.
  During the last workshop, I was able to make the art of collage accessible to everyone. This time, I thought, why not make painting accessible to everyone? I taught a workshop titled Feeeeel the Paint, where we were [...]

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• July 2011 (5)

  Strength in Numbers | An Analytic Experience

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | July 29, 1:30 pm

  When I began this job under the title of “Marketing Intelligence Intern,” I had no idea what to expect. My digital analytics knowledge was nominal and I was an entry level Excel user. Before I started here, I believed an average work day for a digital analyst consisted mostly of staring at spreadsheets. After working [...]

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  Culture | Ideas...Covered in Cotton Candy

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | July 29, 12:31 pm

  Imagine this:  I walk into my parents’ home to find my little brother sitting on the couch sucking lemonade through a squeeze bottle that Mom uses to put sweet n’ sour sauce in.
  “Jackers–What the heck!”
  “Mom says that we can’t put lemonade in a water bottle and I can’t have cups on the couch.”
  This was the [...]

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  Culture | The Innovation Equation

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | July 29, 12:23 pm

  As the world’s population doubles in the next 40 years, the Malthusian half of me wants to say there is no way on earth (pun intended) our planet can support this exponential growth.
  But there is hope, and it is spelled D-E-S-I-G-N.
  With each passing year, technology improves far beyond our expectations. But technology alone is not [...]

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  Culture | Art + Innovation

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | July 29, 11:43 am

  What does innovation mean to me? For some, it can be mean design with a purpose, or a brand new idea that breaks through the clutter of today’s advertising. However, for me, innovation means a new form of art or way of thinking that extends beyond the initial stage of, “Wow! That’s awesome!” Innovation can [...]

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  Culture | A Cultural Consideration

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | July 22, 10:39 am

  As I grew up behind goofy, blunt bangs and big, round glasses between the ages of 8-14, I was born into a family of dual identities. Being the first child in my dad’s family to be born on American soil, there has been a constant tug-of-war of cultural conflicts between my traditional Chinese parents, and [...]

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• August 2011 (4)

  Beyond the Brief | The Future of CRM

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | August 29, 11:43 am

  CRM as a term has been hijacked to infer that mass contact via mail was about building relationships, rather than just seeking a sub-1% response rate for upsell and cross-sell. For reasons of scale, the strategic focus often slipped from the top 20% of consumers that drive the majority of value and the next [...]

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  Emerging Platforms | Thoughts on Google+

  Posted by Matt | August 17, 12:18 pm

  Google+ has been around for a little over a month now and we’ve all been busy settling in and exploring this new space.  In the process I’ve been forming some opinions on how each of the main features may impact, and be used in, campaigns.
  Although Google+ is mostly thought of as lining up against Facebook, I find [...]

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  Culture | The Farm Interns Present!

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | August 9, 10:41 am

  If you’ve been following the Culture channel, you’ve also been following our Farm interns’ progress throughout their 8 weeks at Organic. They’ve contributed blogs about our key values and learned much about our mission and vision, to transform the nature of marketing. They’ve also gained real world experience of digital marketing practices and were able [...]

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  Strength in Numbers | Does Using Demand-Side Platforms Help Determine How Effective Your Advertising Is?

  Posted by Steve Kerho | August 2, 3:38 pm

  With many predicting the death of the ad network, 2011 was supposed to be a watershed moment in the world of display advertising. Much of what was trumpeted was that greater transparency could be had by using a Demand Side Platform (DSP)–no more black box–driving greater insights into your audience for smarter [...]

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• September 2011 (3)

  Creative Sensibility | 'Let's Move' with Ad Futures

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | September 30, 1:55 pm

  DDB. JWT. Deutch. Y&R. Organic???? Yes, Organic. Seems as though the big boys are making a little room for digital agencies to play in the sandbox. And we couldn’t be giddier.
  As part of over twenty top agencies, Organic was asked to join Advertising Futures, a volunteer program sponsored by Ad Week and Virtual Enterprises International. [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Share Your Worst Day in Advertising!

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | September 27, 11:43 am

  Ever have one of those days?

  Do you have a “Worst Day in Advertising”story that will make some laugh and others shudder?
  You’re invited [...]

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  Strength in Numbers | Organic Partners With the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | September 20, 12:00 pm

  As part of Omnicom’s strategic partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Organic engaged with the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative to dive into the great online debate of how to properly attribute conversion credit to online media.
  Over 18 months, Organic worked with the Wharton team along with researchers around the country to investigate this [...]

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• October 2011 (4)

  Creative Sensibility | 'Let's Move' with Ad Futures - Part II

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | October 17, 10:44 am

  On October 5, our team of five high schoolers presented their print ad at the Advertising Futures Competition as part of Advertising Week 2011. Since the assignment was to address both physical activity and diet as part of the Let’s Move initiative, the team chose to bring electronics and nutrition together as the basis of their idea.  Pushing [...]

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  Culture | To Run or Not to Run.

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | October 14, 9:33 am

  That is the question.
  And for some San Francisco Organics, the answer is an enthusiastic “oh yah – let’s run!” We are hitting the streets, in the purely athletic sense, on Tuesday nights for “Run, Organics, Run.” And I’ll be honest, when I started this group I had visions of us bounding up the Coit Tower [...]

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  Strength in Numbers | Best Practices For Online Direct-Response Marketing

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | October 4, 11:18 am

  Economically, 2011 is shaping up to be a challenging year. Key measures are all trending down, and global equity markets are in retreat. But this doesn’t mean that we stop marketing. Instead, it underscores the need to ensure that our direct-response efforts are as effective as possible.
  In support of greater effectiveness, I have listed five [...]

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  Strength in Numbers | Marketing Strategies for the Gaming Industry

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | October 3, 2:40 pm

  The term “gamer” used to conjure images of guys locked up in basements playing video games all night. But over the past few years gaming has increasingly become part of our everyday life. According to Forrester research, 60% of consumers play video games online in a typical week –  largely driven by casual games amplified [...]

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• November 2011 (5)

  Proof and Concept | Rules Of Engagement For Social-Media Marketers

  Posted by Marita Scarfi | November 30, 11:10 am

  This article is by Marita Scarfi, CEO of Organic, a digital ad agency unit of Omnicom Group with clients that have included Kimberly-Clark, Chrysler, American Express, Sony PlayStation, Sprint, and 20th Century Fox.
  With so much emphasis on attracting friends and followers online, little is worse for a marketer than losing [...]

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  Strength in Numbers | Data Definitions

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | November 21, 10:50 am

  More often than not, when two people or groups are trying to compare metrics, they do not match because the comparisons are not “apples to apples.”  Without consistent definitions for data points across an organization, this struggle will be far too common of an occurrence.
  This can be quite apparent when reviewing performance with your CMO [...]

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  Culture | Mid-month 'Movember' Update

  Posted by Stephanie Park | November 17, 10:24 am

  Well folks, we are halfway through the mustachioed month of Movember (formerly known as November), where guys worldwide grow a ‘lil facial hair under their nose and raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer research and prevention.
  A daring group of Organic gentleman are participating this year. We’ve checked in with a few of them for [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | A Day in the Life of a Community Manager

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | November 15, 12:44 pm

  As the community manager for Kimberly-Clark’s U by Kotex brand, I’ve spent whole days talking about the different colors your period blood might be. In fact, I’m so desensitized to all things period/vagina that I’ve been known to whip out tampons in the middle of a restaurant in response to the question, “So, what do [...]

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  View Source | The Loyal Opposition

  Posted by Todd Drake | November 11, 8:00 am

  You’re at a client workshop, everyone around the table, everyone aligning and card-sorting and so on. Then you’re out in the hallway looking for coffee, and the IT guy pulls you aside and, sotto voce, says, “Well, we’re perfectly aligned except on the part about what they want to do.”
  Or how many software-as-a-service vendors know [...]

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• December 2011 (5)

  Creative Sensibility | Turning The Corner: Industry Reflections On 2011

  Posted by Conor Brady | December 21, 4:14 pm

  Excerpt from a SHOOT Staff Report – December 16, 2011
  To gain insight into where we’ve been in 2011 and what from this past year can help us in the future, SHOOT posed the following pair of survey questions to a cross-section of industry folk:

  What do you regard as being the most important industry lesson or lessons [...]

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  Proof and Concept | More Female Risk Takers Needed

  Posted by Marita Scarfi | December 21, 12:11 pm

  by Carla Rover on Tuesday, December 20, 2011
  Marita Scarfi rose through the ranks at Omnicom Group digital agency Organic to become CEO in 2010. Organic is one of the few digital agencies to boast of a woman at the top, particularly now that Laura Lang has moved on from Digitas to Time Inc. According to Scarfi, the [...]

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  Culture | Happy Holidays from Organic!

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | December 16, 6:00 pm

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  Culture | Inspiration Workshop: Journey through India

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | December 9, 3:52 pm

  Last week, Megan Hui hosted an Inspiration Workshop in the New York office sharing her recent travels through India.  During the workshop, she shared her personal experience volunteering in the slums of Delhi earlier this year.  The pictures, videos and stories about the people she encountered were both heartbreaking yet inspiring (she even climbed Garage [...]

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  View Source | Validating Search Engine Optimization Scenarios

  Posted by Threeminds Admin | December 1, 3:03 pm

  There is a very large spectrum to assuring the quality of a web site/page for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). At Organic we understand SEO is foundational to our business and is KEY for multi-channel marketing; when used properly we can push a single message at the same time to our client’s customers.
  In order to accomplish [...]

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