It’s not a new story, but more and more regions are moving away from printing and delivering a telephone book to everyone, every year. In Canada, the list includes
Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa-Gatineau, Montreal, Quebec City, and Winnipeg, all of which will supply a telephone book only upon request. In many cases, one can probably expect that the editions to only be updated biannually, which makes sense when the distribution has suddenly dropped to 0.1% of what it was previously.
Jian Ghomeshi’s Q on CBC is running with guest hosts during the summer, and the August 3rd show was hosted by Terry O’Reilly of Age of Persuasion fame. (listen online) The first 20 minutes are Terry’s exploration of the Old Spice campaign with Isaiah Mustafa that’s getting a lot of press after going viral and running a hugely successful real-time social media dialogue with their spokesperson.. Amid the interviews, Terry talks with the pair responsible for the creative on this project and considers how the campaign is out of character for parent company P&G — the whole segment is worth a listen.
Hiring the right person for a given job can be a bit of a craps shoot for many business owners — and for some HR managers as well. It seems obvious that the most important things you want to answer are whether they can do the job and whether they fit into your team. But those are not paramount.
Guessing again? Integrity, intelligence, suitability to your “fast-paced environment”, expertise, ambition, work ethic… all are plausible guesses about what the most important factor might be in a potential hire. And certainly, most of these are important factors, but none of them are critical for the interview. I’m assuming, of course, that you aren’t going to make people fill out some inane aptitude test or issue some irrelevant quiz about what kind of tree they’d most like to be.
Sometimes an ad can be so bad, it’s good — so over-the-top that it just does the trick in spite of itself. And whatever else it may be, it’s memorable. I thought about that as I watched an ad for Cullman Liquidation Center.
Yes, it’s a real business, with the T-shirts to prove it. You can check out the back-story on the making of the commercial as well. And to covers the basics: “Be there, say something.”
In my locale, everyone knows about and remembers Nick Hill and his campy furniture commercials. (He’s a local advertising legend, who would talk to a station and say things like, “Remember that spot we did in the fall of ’82?”) And if everyone knows, then you could certainly argue that it’s working, couldn’t you?
A few weeks ago, nobody who wasn’t living literally in the shadow of a volcano was giving much thought to the impact that a volcanic eruption could have on their lives. Of course, that was before the volcano-nobody-could-pronounce erupted in Iceland, shutting down air traffic in Europe for several days. Would-be travelers were faced with a choice between sitting tight in London (or wherever) and reading a book or sightseeing, or else hopping a train to race south and attempt to fly out of a different airport. For most travelers, it was a relatively minor inconvenience and perhaps a bit of unplanned expense. For the airlines, it would certainly have had a much bigger impact.
It should be an obvious tactic, but for most people it’s just an afterthought that occurs too late. I’ve recently started asking each of my clients for a letter of reference that I can use in my portfolio. All are willing and most are even eager to provide one, which is for me a sure sign that the client is happy. If ever one weren’t this would be a good way to uncover and address an issue… another reminder that a wrap-up meeting is a good idea at the end of a project. This is the natural time to review what’s been done, do any training necessary, and plan future steps. My favorite email response though, was this one:
The frequency of my tweets has been a bit lower lately, which means I’ve been busy and/or not as close to my PC. Still some good stuff in here though, including a few favorites.
- RT @errolmorris: OK. If I must. The best commercial ever made, http://bit.ly/952Eyc. about 17 hours ago
- Post: Noted over the Past Two Weeks (to April 17, 2010) http://bit.ly/bCIehl
- @JeffreyGroks thanks for the nod!
- RT @JeffreyGroks: http://bit.ly/9agizt $quote: Tactics applied w/o effective strategy are the noise before defeat. – Sun Tzu 9:21 AM Apr 16th
- Outdated Adjective: “digital”, as in “digital camera”. #redundant, like “non-antique camera”. #language 9:15 AM Apr 15th
- Why I love Linux http://bit.ly/auWaly #linux #foss 4:10 PM Apr 14th
I use Google Reader‘s shared items to highlight interesting items that cross my path. You can follow my shared items feed or interact on Google Buzz if you don’t want to wait for the recap here.
- Brands are Bull
Published: April 12, 2010
At 11:30pm on April 22, 1978 Saturday Night Live opened with Paul Schaffer, made up to look like music promoter Don Kirshner (whose show ran in most markets right after SNL). What followed was a lesson in branding that we’re still learning. Here’s how it looks in the show’s transcript (sorry, the original isn’t on YouTube):
Don Kirshner…..Paul Shaffer
Jake Blues…..John Belu...
I’ve just upgraded my test blog to WordPress 3.0 Beta 1, with the new default Twenty Ten Theme. It’s yet another beautiful evolution for my favorite CMS, WordPress. That’s right, I didn’t say “blogging engine”.
I’ve been using WordPress as a CMS for a while already, and no, there’s no reason a WordPress site has to look like a blog, or that it even needs to look particularly “WordPress-y,” though a lot of them tend to. The giveaway is often in the post comments area, which a great many themes do not bother to customize very extensively, though they should. (Mine is customized to a degree, even if not extensively.) I had read someplace that in 3.0 it would be easier to customize this part of a theme, but I haven’t dug that deeply. In any event, a theme developer with a modicum of php-chops should be able to hack out a custom look for it even in the old system.
A strong sign of television’s slow fall from media supremacy came in 2005, when I was honoured to represent Canada on the first-ever Radio Lions jury. There we were told of two interesting trends: that entries in the TV ad category were down and that entries for the “Cyber Lions” category–that’s for online marketing–were up. To put this in perspective, the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival was founded on television and film in 1959, and those two media have been the flagships ever since. Until now.
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