Risley Ranch

The Mentorship

Our interactive/creative folks served up one of the funniest videos/websites I'm ever seen.  It's also effective -- it speaks to the people we're most trying to reach: Juniors and Seniors in college who want to intern at Barkley.  All the "actors" are Barkley employees.  The big "B. Doug" head is a little creepy.  And the exploding cat is the cherry on top of the whole thing.  Check it out.

Technorati Tags: Mentorship, Barkley, Video

KU RFID Tag hits the market

A professor at the University of Kansas Information and Telecommunication Technology Center has developed a new RFID tag that works near metal or liquid.  According to this story, that's a pretty big deal.  I guess some metals deflect radio waves and liquids absorb them, making most existing RFID tags un-usable in certain industrial/commercial applications.

I liked this story for a couple of reasons.

First, I love that they named it the "KU Tag."  They didn't give it some wacky, meaningless number or name.  Call it what it is.  And it's branded as well.  If you buy this product, you know who invented it.

Second, RFID tags fascinate me because someday I think they'll be the defacto tracking device for every imaginable product -- even animals.  That's not a new thought -- I've read that theory elsewhere.  But it seems the technology is getting so good and so cheap it won't be long before producers of plastic pipe to packaging to pork will be able to embed a tiny RFID tag into the product so it's track-able from cradle to grave (or farm to table).

The implications for bio-security and food safety are huge.  I'm by no means an expert in this area, but I know from following the beef industry that low-frequency RFID tags in cattle have been used for a few years.  This presentation (it's not dated) talks about the need for high-frequency tags for cattle.

Imagine a future trip to the grocery store.  You fill your cart with products -- packaged products, produce and fresh meat.  At the check-out rather than standing in line and scanning your products one-by-one, you push the cart under a reader and it instantly reads every RFID tag on/in every product and calculates your total.  You've already registered your credit card with the grocery store, so it simply deducts the total from your account.  A small printer spits out your receipt. 

On the bottom of the receipt would be a URL you could visit to see the complete history of every product in your cart.  You could see, for example, that the 2 pounds of hamburger you bought came from a steer born in Arkansas on September 2, 2010, on the Joe Smith ranch.  You could see the vaccination and medical records of that calf.  You'd see when it was sold at market and trucked to Jon Risley's ranch in Dighton, Kansas.  You'd see the feed and medical records from the Risley Ranch as Jon grew the steer and then put it in Boot Hill Feeders to finish for market.  You'd see the weight gain, medical records, feed records and even pictures of the steer as it lived at the feedlot.  You'd see when it was sold to the packer, when it was slaughtered and when it passed federal inspection.  You'd know how long the hamburger was in transit from the packer to the distributor to the grocer, and then finally, how long it sat in the meat counter until you bought it and fed it to your family.

And what if the website that told you all of this was actually a social network.  You could comment on the taste and quality of the beef so the ranchers and packers and distributors and grocers could follow your comments and learn from it.  You could build a relationship with all of the people in the chain -- ask them questions or read their personal blogs about their products.

Now this may be way more information than most people want to know about the food they consume or the pills they take or the beverages they drink.  But I for one would love this level of transparency.  To me it reconnects consumers with producers, just like it was in the old days when people bought their food at markets and could talk to the people that grew it.

Now what if you could put those tags in your kids...

Just kidding.

technorati tags: KU, RFID, cattle, food

The Mobile Web

Our interactive team developed a very cool app recently to test whether your Web site (or your clients) is mobile-ready.  Type in the URL, choose your phone style, and BAM...

Mark Logan, our head of interactive, is a mobile evangelist, and he's right to be.  It's a huge area for brand communication.

technorati tags: mobile, mobilemarketing, mobileadvertising, Barkley

eSnips file cabinet

I've been using eSnips for quite awhile now, and overall I like the service.  I use it to store files and links related to social media and to snip graphics from the web, which has been a real time saver for presentations.  Recently eSnips came out with a widget, so now I can direct people to my new Social Media File Cabinet (see under my picture).  Check it out.  Comment on it.  Subscribe to the RSS feed.  And if you have an eSnips public folder on something social-media related, let me know.

Live and in color

The Barkley Online Community was unveiled to our agency yesterday at our all-staff meeting.  I wasn't able to make the meeting (I'm in San Diego on vacation), but I've been checking the site, and it appears people are starting to use it.

Our Motion Graphics Group created a very cool video that was shown at the meeting to help pump people up about it.  Check it out:

One of us at BlogHer

One of my Barkley colleagues, Celeste Lindell, is attending BlogHer this weekend.  From her post on our internal blog:

BlogHer is turning into quite a showcase for female bloggers of all levels, from Dooce, Arianna Huffington and Amanda Congdon to a plethora of B-, C- and D-listers.

The first day’s sessions include hands-on instruction on a variety of topics, most technically-focused (podcasting, video blogging, blog design, widgets, etc.).  The second day’s sessions focus on community, conversation and the culture of blogging. 

On Saturday, I’ll be speaking on the "unpanel" for the Business Blog Case Studies session, mainly to discuss the 90-Foot Babe character blog I worked on for Lee Dungarees in late 2004.  My fellow panelists include Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing, Yvonne DiVita of Lip-Sticking and Susan Getgood of  Marketing Roadmaps.  All are great marketing bloggers who specialize in topics relating to marketing to
women.

Ok, so I'm a pimp

My friend Jenne's husband, Steve, who works here at Barkley, cobbled this photo together.  And not because I'm talking about another Barkley client on this blog.  But the suit seems to fit, and I thought it was a funny picture.

Well I wouldn't be talking about this client unless I thought they were doing something interesting.

If you've never seen the Sonic Drive-In commercials we do, they're great.  I say that without hesitation.  Not because they've won a bunch of awards (they have) or because they set new creative standards (they did).  I like them because they've produced results for the client.

Everyone knows Sonic commercials because of Pete and TJ, the odd dudes who sit in a car in a Sonic stall talking all manner of nonsense.

Since coming up with the Pete and TJ concept, we've not used them in a web application...until this year.

Our team just launched a very funny, very sticky interactive site called "Make TJ Drink."  (TJ is the blonde guy).  Users can select any of 168,000 + drink combinations, and then make TJ drink them.  He and Pete then comment on the choice.

I asked one of our creative team members why we built the site:

"The two guys have been wildly popular on television, but they've never made it online. People either love or hate these guys, but they absolutely love to talk about them either way. Online was the perfect channel to give people more time with them - actually have them interact with the two guys a bit. Beyond that, this is in support of the Ultimate Drink Stop message Sonic is using this summer. They have new capabilities at Sonic - a new drink machine that can make more flavors or combinations than ever before. We combined the two and hilarity ensues."

Our success measure here, according to our creative team, is time spent on the site.  We want people to spend more than 2 minutes per visit.  It seems to be working; current visit times are averaging 6 minutes.

Other than that, our success measures are a little bit squishy, but we don't have any history with something like this for Sonic, so they're bound to be.  What I like about it is that we have a solid-enough relationship with Sonic that they're letting us try something new. 

I do wish there were other things we could do to interact with them, like a "Make-TJ-Chug" button (I see him slamming the drink, spilling it all over himself, then getting a massive brain freeze).  Or it would be cool if we could type in commands, a la Subservient Chicken. 

"Throw the drink on Pete" would be a funny one.  Or "scream out the window at the Carhop" would be cool too.  Of course, we'd open ourselves up to some things I'm sure the client wouldn't want TJ and Pete doing (use your imagination).  But we could just default those types of commands to a certain action (like TJ and Pete finger-wagging a "no, no, no...that's not nice," kind of reponse).

But I wasn't involved in this project at all, so it's easy for me to throw out ideas that someone has already vetted.  Anyway, I'm predicting people, and the client, will like this project in the end.

I'd love to hear what you think.

Building relationships through social media

Today I gave a teleseminar presentation to members of IPREX regarding social media.  I really enjoyed it.  Not just because it was good experience, but because it forced me to compile all my thoughts on the subject.  The deck, which you're free to download, is the culmination of what I know and have experienced about blogging, podcasting, social networks, and all other manner of social media.

I borrowed heavily from those that have paved the way, and hopefully my thoughts will help someone else in the business.

Download iprex_teleseminar_social_media_62606.ppt

Pow! Soc! Blam!

Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson had three knock-out interviews, which they captured while at the Innovative Marketing Conference:

Russ Kelin, CMO of Burger King -- Although he was a stiff interviewee (no doubt from his years of media training), Russ made it clear the King is embracing social media (and some of that credit has to go to their agency, Crispin Porter).  My favorite Russ line from the the interview:  "For those that think moving into the public conversation going on out there...for those that think that's a bleeding edge strategy, it's time for them to realize they are way behind."

Blogger and consultant Johnnie Moore and John Winsor, Founder and CEO of Radar Communications -- Johnnie is one of my favorite bloggers, and although I'd never heard of John Winsor, the two sounded like wise ol' marketing sages in this interview, the focus of which was co-creation.

Finally, this interview with Larry Weber, formerly of Weber Shandwick, and now Chairman of W2 Group -- Larry is an evangelist for new media, and particularly the role PR can play in it.  What I loved about this interview is that he had so many examples of ways his new company is getting other companies to play in this space.  And he had a warning for the PR profession:  get in the game because we don't want to miss another opportunity (like we did in the mid-90s with the Internet) to lead clients in what is a made-for-relationships space.

I owe Shel and Neville a big thanks for these, and the other several interviews they captured at the conference.  They gave this content to me free, and I learned from it.  And that makes me very brand loyal to them.  And that is exactly what social media can do for brands.

Surveying the Digital Future

I attended the IPREX annual meeting last week in Washington, D.C.  IPREX is a worldwide network of independent PR agencies.  It's actually a corporation, and its members are partner-owners.

One of the presenters at the meeting was Dr. Jeffrey Cole, Director for the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg School of Communication.  Dr. Cole presented findings from the sixth year of a longitudinal study tracking the impact of the internet on people worldwide.  I'm embarrassed to say I had never heard of this study, but it's amazing information.

In Dr. Cole's words, they are doing for the internet what the broadcast industry should have done with TV starting in the late 1940s.  The study, which is completely funded by corporations, has representative-sample panels in 28 countries.  I don't know of any other studies like it.  Some of the highlights from his presentation:

• "The long-term impact of the Internet will be far grater than TV."
• Almost everyone that wants to be online IS online in the industrialized countries -- 74% of Americans are online.
• The advantage of "tenure" online has disappeared.  New users of the Internet now do on day 1 what it used to take new users years to do.
• Being online used to be about speed; now it's about being "always on."  The always-on nature of broadband changes our relationship with the internet.  Rather than dialing up for 30-minutes at a time to do specific tasks, like we used to do in 1997, now people pop on and off without specific purposes -- think channel surfing.
• Dr. Cole's group did an informal, non-scientific study to answer one question:  "What do you do when a TV commercial comes on?"  They found only 5% tune in to any part of a commercial.  He acknowledges the margin of error for this study is about 500%, which means at best, it's only 25% that tune in.
• Internet users lives have changed -- more users create content now than ever before.
• The 2004 Presidential campaign changed everything for politics.  40% of people now feel they gain political power from the internet.
• This empowerment is moving beyond politics -- the way people relate to their doctors or buy cars, for example.
• "In five years, it will make no sense to teenagers to say we watched TV on a network's schedule," because content will be on-demand.
• The impact of social networks is huge.  "They are like nightclubs -- when the uncool people find out about them, the cool people go somewhere else," which is why Dr. Cole thinks sites like MySpace will be replaced by something else in the future.
• 41% of internet users are part of a online community of some-sort, and 96% feel it is important that they are.
• The original "mass medium" -- the telegram -- went out of business 4 months ago (Western Union still wires money, but you can't send telegrams).  In 2005, 21,000 telegrams were sent worldwide.
• "There is no good news for offline newspapers.  Today we know teens don't read newspapers, and they never will."
• For Internet users, the Internet is the #1 information source.
• Trust in information on the Internet varies widely depending on familiarity with the source.
• 94% of users believe taking a CD from a record store is wrong in all instances.  36% believe "taking" the same content from the Internet is wrong in all instances.
• "Internet users will reach television levels, but in 2030, not 2010."
• When today's teens move into their senior years, the Internet will be even more important.

Heady stuff.