1222North.com

Author: charlies

Hello, colleauges.

Look at your agency. Now back to me. Now back to the agency. Now back to me.

Okay that’s enough. Unless you somehow avoid both TV and the internet, you’ve seen Old Spice’s spots featuring a guy named Isaiah Mustafa. Just in case, here they are for your reference. (Spot 2 was posted on June 29th.)

Spot 1

Spot 2

On July 12th – just two weeks later – Old Spice rolled out a new Playlist on their YouTube channel called “Responses.” On this playlist are a few dozen videos where Isaiah Mustafa reads comments and questions from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages where people have been talking about his commercials. He addresses them in character, and works in a few product references when possible.

Visit the Responses Channel and check out the Responses on the right of the page.

In addition to responding to individual users, Mustafa (man that’s an awesome name) has put out individual shout-outs to social news sites like Digg and Reddit, where readers are generally very excited for a shout-out because, I don’t know, they love the internet.

Bottom line, I wanted to show you this campaign because we talk a lot around here about campaign integration and how to create something that thrives equally in various spaces. This Old Spice campaign is as relevant on TV as it is on Twitter, and everywhere in between. It’s a good example of an advertiser using the functionality of its tools instead of just using them as an obligation. They could’ve just tossed the spots on YouTube and called it good, but they tapped into the engagement-rich culture of today’s social media sites to create something very unique that – quite literally – speaks directly to the consumer.

I’m on a horse.

Author: Michael

On Friday, May 8th, artists, entrepreneurs and innovators came from across the country and gathered at the first BigOmaha Conference. This is the first in a series of thoughts we’ve assembled from our experience there.

Focus on Things That Don’t Change
“Plans are guesses. People write them because they make people feel comfortable” - Jason Fried, 37Signals

Business today moves too fast for long-range planning. There is too much volatility and variability in the modern marketplace. You can’t go from A-Z. So instead go A-B, then B-C. Create micro-plans that take into account current information and figure out what you are going to accomplish today, then do that again and again.

So how do you move forward? Create a vision of what you want your business to look like, and focus on the elements of that business that won’t change in three, five, or ten years:

Amazon - Products will always need to be delivered to the customers who ordered them.
Hotels - People will always want to sleep on comfortable beds.
Google - Users will always want to find what they are searching for.

Once you stop fretting about things that will change, you can identify and invest in the things that won’t. That consistency will drive your business upward, and allow you to adapt and stay viable. Make sure you are best at the core element of your business - and stick to it.

Author: John

Just wrapped up a workshop on Mental Models with Indi Young. Here’s a excerpt from the program:

“Those in the field of cognitive research have been describing and defining mental models for several decades. Mental models are the most effective way to align design strategy with your users’ behavior, and to approach your design from the understanding of the end user. Mental models are representations of people’s behavior, philosophies, and emotion around how they accomplish something, regardless of which tools they use.”

After going through the workshop, I can’t say I’m a mental models expert, but I can say it made me think differently as far as evaluating users’ behavior. As great as I think Indi was during this workshop, she had to cut out a lot of information due to the time constraints. We had 3 different group exercises, the first being a (more…)

Author: Almir

According to Hitwise, last week’s visits to Twitter.com surpassed visits to Digg.com for the first time. Hitwise measures visits in terms of ?market share,? which isn?t a very helpful metric (both have 0.021 percent market share, but Twitter is ranked No. 84 and Digg is No. 85). This data is as of last week, when visits to Twitter surged following the much-Tweeted emergency landing of a plane on the Hudson. (Note that these numbers do not include usage on mobile devices, desktop apps, or through other Websites via Twitter?s API).

Today, traffic to Twitter was even higher with everybody feeling compelled to let everyone else know that, yes, in fact, the U.S. has a new president and that they saw his inauguration speech. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone blogs that Twitter saw five times as many Tweets per second today compared to last week. So maybe those two lines between Digg and Twitter will keep diverging.

For what it?s worth, Google Trends for Websites also shows Twitter catching up to Digg (but not yet passing). Other measuring services, such as Quantcast and comScore, still show a wide gap.

Author: Almir

Facebook and Twitter may be more popular than ever among users, but what are they worth? Fortune magazine?s Jessie Hempel wrote a great article on the struggle of Web 2.0 companies to come up with viable, profitable business models.