brands | Hot Tub Crime Machine

When did PR firms become digital marketing firms?

July 27, 2011 2 Comments

The other day I was hanging out with a friend of mine who oversees all video production for a large public relations firm. He was telling me about new project that involved creating dozens of videos and photos and weaving them together into a mosaic on a microsite. It all sounded pretty cool and not unlike ideas I have pitched to my clients before. So I asked him “Who’s building the site for you guys?” and he replied “We are. We build everything in-house for our clients.”

And that’s when it dawned on me. The line between what his PR firm and my digital marketing agency are doing is blurring. In fact it’s getting so blurry you can only see trace remnants of it.

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Filed under advertising, social media, Trends Tagged with Account Planning, advertising, Advertising and Marketing, blogs, brands, facebook, Marketing, Public relations, social media, Strategy, trends, Twitter

Twitter and the Rebirth of Appointment TV.

July 13, 2011 Leave a comment

SPOILER ALERT!! No, I’m not about to reveal the ending of Lost or who may or may not have killed someone on True Blood last week. But if you are online, and using anything social, you are probably familiar with that term. Just the other day I had the ending of an episode of a show I watch ruined because someone on Twitter forgot to put that in front of their tweet. But it’s not really their fault. It’s Twitter’s.

The times they are a-changin’. Again.

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Filed under advertising, apps, brands, Mobile-Social, social media, Technology, Trends, TV, videos Tagged with advertising, apps, brands, Digital video recorder, games, GetGlue, IntoNow, Lost, Mashable, mobile-social, social media, Strategy, Super Bowl, technology, Television, trends, True Blood, TV, Twitter, video

PSFK 2011 Conference Wrap-Up.

May 26, 2011 2 Comments

I finally presented my deck from the PSFK conference to the Planning department at work, so here it is for mass consumption:

I need to give a BIG thanks to Vanessa Carney and Avin Narasimhan for sharing notes with me (I lost my notebook after the conference). Without your notes and subsequent blogs posts I definitely wouldn’t have remembered half this stuff. And of course, a big thank you to all the speakers, presenters, and the staff at PSFK who made this all possible.

PSFK Conference 2011 (hottubcrimemachine.com)
Two of my Favorites from the PSFK Conference. (hottubcrimemachine.com)

Filed under Account Planning, advertising, Conferences, Mobile-Social, Presentations, Technology Tagged with Aaron Dignan, advertising, brands, conferences, creativity, culture, Joe Gebbia, justin gignac, kickstarter, Microsoft Tag, mobile tagging, planning, psfk, qr code, roomba, Strategy, technology, trends

What’s Next?

May 16, 2011 Leave a comment

At every conference, on every blog, in every trade, everyone always wants to talk about “what’s next.” What’s going to be the next disruptive technology, what’s going to be the next big consumer trend, what will people be doing five years from now and how can I prepare for it? How can I be poised to profit from it?

I don’t have a crystal ball or claim to know the future, but since my guess is as good as anyone else’s (maybe a little better), I’m going to take a stab at it.

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Filed under apps, brands, Gadgets, Mobile-Social, social media, Technology, Trends Tagged with apps, arthur c. clarke, augmented reality, blogs, brands, disruptive technology, facebook, Facial recognition system, foursquare, gadgets, games, innovation, IPad, iphone, location-based, mobile-social, psfk, seth godin, sixth sense, social media, Star Trek, technology, TED, terminator, trends, Tricorder, Twitter, video, Yelp

[UPDATED] THREE of my Favorites from the PSFK Conference.

May 5, 2011 1 Comment

I know that I promised you my presentation from the PSFK conference but it hasn’t been shown to my department yet, so you have to wait. But I do want to share the videos of my ~~two~~ THREE favorite sessions of the day.

The first is Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb.com. His story of creativity, ingenuity and determination (to not become homeless) is truly inspiring.

The second is from Aaron Dignan, founding partner at Undercurrent. His presentation, entitled “Why the future of work is play” is a great breakdown of the future of how we learn and improve our skills, as well as a critique of other so-called “games.”

The third was just released the other day, hence the update. Justin Gignac, a recovering art director, entrepreneur, innovator and all around awesome guy talks about his creative process and includes great advice like “Don’t be an asshole.”

I’ll share my takeaways from the conference soon, I promise.

PSFK Conference 2011 (hottubcrimemachine.com)

Filed under Account Planning, advertising, brands, Conferences, Games, Presentations, Trends, videos Tagged with Aaron Dignan, Account Planning, advertising, AirBnB, brands, Game mechanics, games, Joe Gebbia, psfk, social media, Strategy, technology, Undercurrent, video

Are Cameras Going the Way of the Dinosaur?

May 4, 2011 1 Comment

The most popular camera for photographers on Flickr is almost the iPhone 4 (it might be by the time of this writing, this chart is a few weeks old).

I’d be less surprised if you said this was true about Facebook or Twitter, but Flickr? I always thought Flickr was where the pros went. The wanna-be pros, the overly ambitious amateurs and people who refer to themselves as “photogs.” Those lens snobs who look down on the Shutterflys and SnapFishes.

But the times they are a-changin’.

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Filed under Apple, Gadgets, Mobile-Social, Technology, Trends Tagged with brands, camera, Camera phone, canon, digital photography, flickr, hipstamatic, instagr.am, iphone, mobile-social, nikon, photography, point and shoot, Point-and-shoot camera, shutterfly, SLR, snapfish, social media, techcrunch, technology, trends

PSFK Conference 2011

April 6, 2011 2 Comments

This Friday I’ll be at the 2011 PSFK conference in NYC. As you may recall, I love conferences. But this one has especially won me over. Aside from the amazing line-up of speakers and topics, check out the agenda below:

FINAL AGENDA

9am Doors Open, Breakfast Served
9.30 Opening Remarks – With host and PSFK founder Piers Fawkes
9.40 Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter – Funding Creativity with Kickstarter
10.10 What’s Next? A Panel On The Future – Ayesha Khanna, Hybrid Reality Institute; Greg Lindsay, Journalist; Allison Mooney, Google; Katherine Moriwaki; Parsons The New School For Design; Moderated by Scott Lachut, PSFK
10.50 Coffee & More Coffee
11.20 Ben Lerer, Thrillist – Bridging Content + Commerce… In Style
11.50 Joe Gebbia, Airbnb.com – From Moleskine to Marketplace
12.10 Aaron Dignan, Undercurrent – Why The Future Of Work Is Play
12.30 Lunch & Conversation – A Conversation At Lunch Sponsored by Microsoft Tag
1.00 John Puterbaugh, Nellymoser – Adventures In Mobile Tagging
1.15 Future of Mobile Tagging Panel – Patrick Donnelly, QR Arts; Roger Marquis, 2D Barcode Strategy; Carlos Lamadrid, Woman’s Day Magazine; Robin Lanahan, Microsoft Tag. Moderated by Piers Fawkes, PSFK
1.45 Afternoon Talks Begin
1.50 Daniel Cherry III & Theresa Tran, The New York Cosmos – The New York Cosmos: Doing It Our Way
2.10 Eoin Billings & Duncan Jackson, Billings Jackson Design – Industrial Design: ID For The City
2.30 Rachel Sterne, City of New York – City As A Platform
2.50 Coffee & Cookies
3.10. Post-Good? A Panel On Responsible Creativity & Culture – Jill Fehrenbacher, Inhabitat; John Gerzema, Young & Rubicam; Phil Patton, Author; Timo Rissanen, Parsons The New School For Design. Moderated by Scott Lachut, PSFK
3.40 Justin Gignac – Doin’ It and Doin’ It and Doin’ It Well
4.00 John Bielenberg, COMMON – What Happens Next?
4.30 Closing Remarks – By PSFK founder Piers Fawkes
4.45 Screening of ‘Senna’ – Introduced by director Asif Kapadia
6.30 PSFK CONFERENCE NYC Afterparty Sponsored by Land Rover – At the Manhattan Classic Car Club, 250 Hudson Street (just north of Canal)

Do you see what I see? Almost every presentation is only 30 minutes long. Perfect for my ADD and also ensuring that I maximize my information intake. I only wish that Mitch Polatin could be there to experience it with me.

I’ll create a presentation on all the awesomeness of the conference and post it here sometime in the next week.

PSFK’s Future of Mobile Tagging (core77.com)

Filed under Account Planning, advertising, brands, Conferences, Mobile-Social, Presentations, social media, Technology, Trends Tagged with Account Planning, advertising, apps, Asif Kapadia, Ben Lerer, brands, ecommerce, facebook, foursquare, Greg Lindsay, John Puterbaugh, kickstarter, location-based, Microsoft Tag, mobile-social, Parsons The New School For Design, Piers Fawkes, psfk, PSFK conference, Senna, social media, Strategy, technology, Twitter, video

Is The Home Depot Trying To Avoid A Gap-Esque Disaster?

April 1, 2011 Leave a comment

According to AgencySpy The Home Depot has a new logo that drops the “The” from it’s name. Did they release this on April Fool’s Day as a joke? Is it poor timing? Or did they do it today so that if it blows up in their face they can claim it was an April Fool’s joke and if it succeeds claim it was just the right day to launch.

Old and "new" logos for The Home Depot

Only time will tell.

***UPDATE: Apparently it WAS an April Fool’s Joke. And a very well executed one at that. A quick search for “Home Depot logo” will show you just how many people were left scratching their heads, including the entire editorial staff at Hot Tub Crime Machine.

Take a look at the lengths that they went to to make it look real.

Filed under advertising, brands Tagged with advertising, April Fools Day, brands, Home Depot, Pranks, Strategy

How to Become a Planner*.

March 30, 2011 17 Comments

I’ve officially been a planner for a relatively short time, but I’ve been planning and influencing planning for a bit longer. I joined Digitas with the goal of being a planner and had to work my over from account management (or “Marketing” as we call it here). We have a small (but awesome) department, mostly made up of people with a lot more experience than me. We have, or have had, people who worked at big agencies, small agencies, been through planner boot camp at Miami Ad School or come from totally different worlds entirely.

But regardless of where we came from, we always get the question “How can I become a planner?”

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Filed under Account Planning, advertising Tagged with Account Planning, advertising, advertising careers, brands, planner, planning, Strategy

Marc Jacobs Proves My Point.

March 26, 2011 Leave a comment

Well, not Marc himself. But the company provides another instance of a brand’s social media presence being misused by an employee. As I wrote yesterday, you need to be really careful who you let manage your brand’s voice. This is not a job for the intern. This is not the job for the admin. Managing social media requires a full-time employee who you can trust. Someone who is invested in the company and the brand. Someone who is skilled at marketing, communications, brand management and strategy.

They are your voice. Would you let your intern represent the brand on Good Morning America? Would you let the intern host a press conference? Then why do you let them manage your Twitter account?

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Filed under advertising, brands, social media Tagged with brands, facebook, marc jacobs, Online Communities, social media, Strategy, Twitter

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