Marketing and Strategy Consulting
Brinton charts 14 degrees of visibility all the way from black type on a yellow background (the most legible) to blue type on red (the most offensive). This research is certainly nothing new today, but gets you thinking about how the theories have been exercised. Take, for example, the classic hazard symbols, or street signs—they each use the most visible color combinations per Brinton’s chart.
via This 1939 Chart Explains How Color Affects Legibility | Fast Company
It absolutely baffles me that there is no “Parent Mode” on iPads for adding multiple logins. Amazon does it insanely well with its FreeTime offering (my kids love it) on both Kindle DX tablets as well as “regular” Kindles. Android does it well and allows for parents to easily set up multi-user accounts on one device. Even Chromebooks do it well with managed user accounts (which is what we use for the kids’ laptops in our house).
I’m guessing the “buy an iPad for your kid if you don’t want them messing with your enterprise business files!” mentality of Apple has served them well.
Once Apple does enable multi-user or managed user accounts, people will laud Apple with a technological breakthrough despite the intentional foot dragging to cause more iPad sales.
iOS 9 iPad multi-user feature coming alongside split-screen apps | BGR: “However, the feature won’t launch with iOS 9.0 this fall, but sometime after that. Apparently, multi-user support is still in development, and might not be unveiled at WWDC next week.”
Nope, not yet.
Elisabeth and Merianna talk about when your writing is ready to reveal to someone else. They talk about the danger of releasing it too soon when you haven’t had enough time to mold it and shape it. They also discuss that if you put your writing out there too soon, then it’s going to impact the writing itself.
The post Thinking Out Loud 94: There Are Sharks in This Water appeared first on Thinking.FM.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:21 — 43.3MB) | Embed
https://samharrelson.com/thinking Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
This week, Thomas Whitley and Sam Harrelson examine the
Thinking Religion is 22 minutes long.
Sign up for the Thinking Religion newsletter … delivered weekly and full of interesting tidbits, ideas, links, and thought provoking analysis that complements the show.
The post Thinking Religion 60: The When, Where, and Why of the Nativity appeared first on Thinking.FM.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:50 — 37.1MB) | Embed
https://samharrelson.com/thinking Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
“YouTube isn’t just a place for brands with primetime budgets, it has become a powerful tool for small and medium businesses too. If it works for Homer Simpson, it can work for you. YouTube video ads help your small business succeed on the web, just like Mr. Plow.”
Well played, Google.
But they are right… I’ve been seeing great results with client YouTube ads (it takes a little more know-how and technique than typing with 8 total fingers, but the results are out there).
I’ll take my Religion major any day…
USC considers charging different tuition for some majors | The State: “‘Look at what it costs to deliver an engineering degree than it does to deliver a philosophy degree,’ USC President Harris Pastides told trustees Tuesday. ‘Yet these two students pay the same amount of tuition.’
After the board meeting, Pastides said he could see lowering the price tag on humanities majors, such as history, which have lowers salary potential.”
Our university system is a broken diploma / tuition factory that is breaking the backs of our young people who think they have to have a degree in order to have a “good job.”
Our democracy will suffer.
Interesting to see the first company utilize Facebook Messenger for customer service, but it’s not the first instance of companies using messaging platforms such as WeChat to do so…
Rogers offering customer service via Facebook Messenger | Marketing Magazine: “Rogers claimed to be the first telecom company in the world to offer customer care via Messenger. Representatives from the two companies first met earlier this year, said Deepak Khandelwal, chief customer officer with Rogers.”
As I keep saying, messengers (Messenger, WeChat, iMessage, Hangouts, Line, Snapchat etc) are the future of social interaction on the web, so this is a big first step in North America (already happening in Asia just as texting, emoji etc developed there first).
Twitter needs to get its Direct Messaging app and product out there. Quickly.
//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js
I think we have two different definitions of “authenticity,” especially as it relates to marketing…
Marketing Strategy – Ranking GOP Presidential Candidates According to Digital Strategy : MarketingProfs Article: “Donald Trump takeaways: Use social media to be controversial and troll the media—it’s the most cost-effective way to get mainstream media mentions. Obviously, you want to protect your brand with integrity—a line that Trump has crossed a few times—but don’t be afraid to side with unpopular beliefs or call out someone. People are starving for more authenticity.”
From marketing or digital strategy standpoints, there are certainly anecdotal insights businesses and groups can glean from the current crop of GOP candidates for the 2016 election.
This conclusion about Trump’s campaign raises a much needed question about the nature of social media marketing as it relates to authenticity, however. It’s a question I frequently get from clients, especially in the beginning stages of a campaign.
My take is that “authenticity” as a social media tactic involves more than just one way trolling towards something like the media. It means more than being controversial, glib, or quick-to-the-point (especially as a business). Instead, the authenticity that the author says people are starving for has more to do with communicating an experience that is possible.
That is most frequently accomplished by incorporating visual imagery with precise text. So, if you’re looking for authenticity to drive part of your marketing campaign, look to Instagram.
A few examples of product-oriented companies that do a good job of using authenticity on Instagram as part of their marketing are ThisIsGround and Bexar Goods. You can see the types of “lifestyle products” I enjoy viewing and interacting with on Instagram… but I’ve made quite a few purchases from both companies as a result of their marketing there. Or take Newspring Church here in South Carolina… they do a great job with their design, sites, social media campaigns, and Instagram by telling their story and giving glimpses of what it’s like to participate there.
If you’ve been in the public eye for thirty years, have billions in the bank, and once appeared on a network reality show… troll the media in search of authenticity.
If you’re looking to build a successful business or expand your organization or group, then think long and hard about the concept and how you might be able to use social media to showcase glimpses of the experiences that you offer.
Elisabeth and Merianna are reunited and it feels so good! They discuss finding reason, meaning, and purpose in writing in decisions we make as writers. They also discuss creating purposeful pauses rather than head-scratching confusion. They also ask how can I revise to achieve the effect I want in the reader?
The post Thinking Out Loud 93: Working Out the Wrinkles as Writers appeared first on Thinking.FM.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:37 — 73.9MB) | Embed
https://samharrelson.com/thinking Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
Thomas Whitley and Sam Harrelson discuss domestic terrorists and the Carolinas, the myths of American Progressivism, creation stories, Trump’s views of citizenship, hate licenses, and the soft cultural underbelly of fear.
Thinking Religion is 22 minutes long.
Sign up for the Thinking Religion newsletter … delivered weekly and full of interesting tidbits, ideas, links, and thought provoking analysis that complements the show.
The post Thinking Religion 59: Trump and Symptoms of a Deeper Problem appeared first on Thinking.FM.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:35 — 36.7MB) | Embed
https://samharrelson.com/thinking Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
Fascinating…
Roman Empire GDP Per Capita Map Shows That Romans Were Poorer Than Any Country in 2015 – Brilliant Maps: “What a difference 2,000 years makes. The map above shows the GDP per capita in 14AD of the various provinces of the Roman Empire in 1990 PPP Dollars. On average, the GDP per capita across the whole Empire, was only $570.”
I’m archiving this snippet and article to revisit in 2020… I wonder if we’ll look back on 2015 as a “tipping point” of the internet as we knew it?
The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow in 1996 does seem like a long ago dream.
Perhaps immediacy is not a democratizing state of being for modern humans? Literalism is the enemy of imagination, after all.
The Internet’s Loop of Action and Reaction Is Worsening – The New York Times: “Hear me out. If you’ve logged on to Twitter and Facebook in the waning weeks of 2015, you’ve surely noticed that the Internet now seems to be on constant boil. Your social feed has always been loud, shrill, reflexive and ugly, but this year everything has been turned up to 11. The Islamic State’s use of the Internet is perhaps only the most dangerous manifestation of what, this year, became an inescapable fact of online life: The extremists of all stripes are ascendant, and just about everywhere you look, much of the Internet is terrible.”
Emotion + Experience = Marketing
I do wonder about the scale of virtual reality. With Google investing in Cardboard, and Facebook spearheading Occulus Rift development, there is certainly a case to be made for mainstream adoption.
Of course, there was once such hype around Second Life as well.
Interesting read from Mike Elgan…
How Virtual Reality Is Redefining Marketing: “Advertiser-supported virtual reality and mixed reality content will have experiential marketing content instead of ads. These can not only be convincing and immersive, but potentially social and participatory. Best of all, they can go viral and spread across the world in minutes. And that’s why virtual reality and mixed reality will totally transform marketing. It combines the emotional impact of experiential marketing with the viral scalability of Web campaigns. “
Keep in mind…
Focus Fracas – The Chronicle of Higher Education: “We talk a lot about distraction, but the way we tend to talk about it suffers from historical amnesia. Since the invention of writing, people have warned about its supposedly harmful effects. Socrates thought it would weaken readers’ memories. ‘Be careful,’ Seneca warned, ‘lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady.’ In his Moral Letters to Lucilius, written between AD 63 and 65, Seneca touches on a condition that today might be diagnosed as attention deficit disorder. The ‘reading of many books is a distraction,’ he cautioned, that leaves the reader ‘disoriented and weak.'”
Thomas Whitley and Sam Harrelson discuss the issues involved with marketing and p
Thinking Religion is 50 minutes long this week.
The post Thinking Religion 58: Personal Branding and The Academy appeared first on Thinking.FM.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:52 — 75.6MB) | Embed
https://samharrelson.com/thinking Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
This might make Franklin Graham’s head explode, but I think it’s a good move to associate design with “politics” and assert the relevance of seemingly mundane things such as color choices to cultural conversations:
Pantone Color of the Year 2016 – Rose Quartz and Serenity: “Joined together, Rose Quartz and Serenity demonstrate an inherent balance between a warmer embracing rose tone and the cooler tranquil blue, reflecting connection and wellness as well as a soothing sense of order and peace. The prevalent combination of Rose Quartz and Serenity also challenges traditional perceptions of color association.”
Religion’s smart-people problem: The shaky intellectual foundations of absolute faith – Salon.com: “But we shouldn’t be deceived. Although there are many educated religious believers, including some philosophers and scientists, religious belief declines with educational attainment, particularly with scientific education. Studies also show that religious belief declines among those with higher IQs. Hawking, Dennett and Dawkins are not outliers, and neither is Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.”
Those of you who know me well know that I carry a Field Notes notebook pretty much everywhere inside of their Gentleman’s Memo cover with a Space Pen that has their branding on it. That’s a pic from just now as I was writing this. Note the coffee stain on the notebook cover. Character.
Branding hegemony aside, I do love their stuff. I use notebooks more than any other form of technology (analog or digital) for everything. My notebooks have been my “Inbox” for about 10 years now and I lovingly keep them archived in a special order so I can re-reference things or read back through long ago thoughts as needed. Their notebooks are durable, small, and able to take the daily wear and tear I put on them which can be a considerable amount since they ride in my back pocket when not on a table somewhere.
So in the midst of all the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday emails I’ve been receiving from various companies and groups, I was happy to open and then read this one…
Field Notes Brand: “Today only, buy anything and and get a Field Notes ‘Pitch Black’ 3-Pack free. No coupon codes. No minimums. No bull. Heck, you don’t even need to be aware of the deal. If you buy something today, you’re in. But get moving, as we expect Thursday to roll in sometime later tonight.”
Like computer interfaces, the best marketing is marketing that gets out of the way.
Thinking of how great it would be to add a member to your family?
Looking to have a baby soon?
Pregnant?
Buy one of these…
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite or Voyage.
Trust me.
Your friend… Sam, the newborn dad at 3am on a Wednesday morning.
Scary, true, and worth your attention if you value your privacy…
Mozilla will let go of Thunderbird | Boing Boing: “There are many good reasons to use standalone email clients, but for Americans one of the most compelling is the absurdly outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which treats any file left on a server for more than six months as ‘abandoned’ and accessible to law enforcement without a warrant (no, really!). That includes all your Gmail previous to June 2015. Really. All of the efforts to reform ECPA have died on the vine, because law enforcement loves this creaking piece of legislation.”
Vote out your representative if they don’t “understand technology.” That’s not an excuse anymore.
yep…
Places that send you away | Scripting News: “And before you get all cynical, think — that’s how new things start on the net, by breaking rules that were once considered sacred and delivering value to people with minds.”
We’ve all seen them before and I’m seeing more and more of them now that the Holiday Season is upon us (and today is “Giving Tuesday”).
I know I’ve seen a number of well-intentioned pictures of people holding up signs to support a specific cause on social networks this winter. A large number of those, especially on Facebook, have been churches and religious groups.
I hate to be Donald Downer, but be careful with such postings, especially if they include your face. It’s very (very very) easy to take those and do less-than-well-intentioned things with the images after they’re found via Google Image Search or a Twitter Search or Instagram hashtag search etc.
You’re not Michelle Obama, but that doesn’t mean that your own perception of your network size (or good intention) protects you from the wilds of the internet in 2016 and beyond…
Michelle Obama gave the Internet a sign—here’s what it gave back: “But once Reddit got ahold of the photo, its users—well-known for hosting Photoshop battles such as this—went wild adding anything and everything to the blank page”
So be careful, or you could be espousing something you probably wouldn’t agree with.
Elisabeth is joined by author Stacy N. Sergent this week (Merianna is out for family leave) to talk about great pups, NaNoWriMo, writing as a lonesome experience and also a communal experience, the role of editing, and the psychological flow of being a writer.
The post Thinking Out Loud 92: Let’s Talk About Self-Editing appeared first on Thinking.FM.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:44 — 52.2MB) | Embed
https://samharrelson.com/thinking Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
I agree with the post linked here… Spotify:
Spotify Is the Best Streaming Music Service: “As countless Rdio fans sit back helplessly as their accounts go dark, it’s time to be blunt. Spotify continues to outpace its growing army of competitors, and if you’re going to spend money on a streaming music service, you should sign up for Spotify Premium. Or save a few bucks and get the free version, because it’s pretty damn great, too!”
HOWEVER! I will include the caveat that I love Google Music’s ability to upload my own music and my wife and I (and our newborn and kids) make great use of the uploaded music on Amazon that powers our family’s Echo. Don’t get me started on my 10 year old (heavily) curated Pandora station which makes me pay for Pandora One every year.
It’s a hard-knock-life for us streamers.
But yeah… Spotify at the end of the day.
Earlier this year, my good friend Thomas (a PhD candidate and officiant of my marriage) wrote a very timely post about his decision to blog despite some who advised otherwise…
Why I Blog — Thomas J. Whitley: “Though many academics have resisted the move toward ‘branding,’ it has long been a part of academia. One’s credentials, what they’ve written, and where they’ve taught make up their brand and determine, to a large extent, who reads them, who assigns them, and who thinks of them for panel invitations and professional society nominations. Branding has only become more important with the ubiquity of information readily available on the internet.”
Whether you’re a teacher, preacher, business, nonprofit, politician, or insurance salesperson… you should blog.
“Giving away” your knowledge results in so many worthwhile returns.
Trust me.
Fusion is a popular “millennial” lifestyle news / site and has a team of 12 devoted to Snapchat, Vine, and Instagram (8 alone for Snapchat).
I talked about the how’s / why’s news and lifestyle sites are devoting such resources to these networks recently, and this is further validation:
Fusion’s got a 12-person distributed news team: “The digital news site and cable network for millennials on Monday announced a new team to create stories and videos meant to be read and watched exclusively on social platforms. The social newsroom of 12 people includes eight who are focused on Snapchat alone. Others work on Instagram and Vine. Fusion hired Laura Feinstein, a former editor in chief of Vice’s Intel-backed Creator’s Project, to lead the group.”
“News” as we know it in its commodified post-industrial state is changing its delivery mechanism on an increasing pace from newspaper to newspaper delivery to radio to television to cable to the web to social networks to messaging…
I am often asked by Harrelson Agency clients and potential clients if they should use a WordPress.com site or have us build and host a WordPress site for them. Money is often a main concern, as you can pay $100 – 120 a year for a pretty solid WordPress.com site without much fuss. A hosted WordPress site can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars in building costs, and more for hosting and programming. As with anything, discuss the costs upfront with the agency or company building your site if you go the self-hosted route.
There are advantages to the “set it and forget it” style of a WordPress.com website financially, but there are also a few other variables to consider if you’re looking to have a serous presence on the web and translate that into bigger goals for your company. Remember, WordPress started off as a blogging platform. While you can manipulate a WordPress.com site into a more “professional” looking business or church or group site, it’s not always easy depending on your needs and skill level.
If you do self host, you can use custom / commercial themes, plus all other free themes that exist. You can modify, customize, or do anything that you’d like with your site. With WordPress hosting, you’re limited to a set of free themes that exist in the theme repository. Also, you can’t modify the CSS or other codes within the theme. If you’re looking to customize the site with scripts and customizations (as an author / speaker / consultant / business etc) it’s definitely advantageous to be on your own server. This includes everything from being able to do custom embeds of media to accepting payments to contact forms etc.
Simply put, there are (often mission-critical) things you can’t do with WordPress hosted sites that you can do with a self-hosted site.
Plugins are also a big deal, especially as the web matures. You can upload any free, paid, or custom plugin that you want with a hosted site. This allows you to really maximize WordPress’ potential as a content management system and expand that functionality. With a WordPress.com site, you’re not allowed to upload any free, paid, or custom plugins. Everything from search engine optimization (especially needed in 2015) to handling social media sharing to newsletter delivery to some really cool media handling plugins to how your site displays posts etc are covered. Here are a few popular plugins, but I have a standard 10-15 that I typically install on a new site and highly recommend for flexibility and security and making WordPress more than just a blogging platform.
Of course, spending $99 once a year is a nice idea and provides a sense of regular expense if you’re looking into a WordPress.com site with ads turned off and a custom domain (and a little extra storage). There is a higher initial cost for a WordPress hosted site (typically anywhere from $2,000 to $35,000 for most group, church or business sites depending on many variables). However, the cost of a self-hosted WordPress site over the span of a few years evens out and you get a much “nicer” custom experience that is built around your own brand. This also frees you up from being shackled to whatever changes WordPress.com might or might not make as it evolves as a commercial arm of the larger WordPress ecosystem, as we’ve seen just this week … although the changes are all very positive this time. I’ve never had a client want to go back to something like a hosted service after they realize the options available and how the site “pays for itself” over time.
Maintenance is a very big concern for security and speed reasons these days, or at least it should be an absolute top priority. That does require that you keep your site updated, have backups, keep SPAM controlled and keeping your site optimized. That’s something we do for clients, of course. WordPress.com frees you up from that worry or need for maintenance, so that’s a plus for that side of things. However, like everything else, it’s a tradeoff between convenience and the ability to make something truly “your own” in terms of appearance and functionality.
The biggest point I always make when comparing what we can do with what WordPress.com hosting offers is that I believe you really cannot maximize the potential of your site / blog / online presence / long term branding unless you have access to the additional functionality of plugins and the ability to maintain custom modifications (and get down to the nitty gritty code based level allowing for you to make the site look and act like you’d like for it to). Being able to take payments, offer audio / video / text media downloads etc are all big benefits of what we offer with a self-hosted site, but the biggest benefit is that it’s “your” site and belongs to you, whatever may come down the road.
Dropbox just killed a cottage industry of PDF editing apps for me (and I’ve spent lots of money on iOS apps trying to find the right PDF editor for commenting and signing that connect to Dropbox):
Now you can edit PDFs stored in Dropbox from your iPhone and iPad | Dropbox Blog: “With the latest versions of the Dropbox and Acrobat Reader iOS apps, you’ll be able to annotate and comment on PDFs stored in Dropbox, right from your iPhone or iPad. Just open a PDF from the Dropbox app and tap the ‘Edit’ icon, then edit or electronically sign the PDF in the Acrobat Reader app. All your changes will save back to Dropbox, so you and any collaborators will have the latest version.”
You have to have the Adobe Acrobat app installed on your device as well, but that’s not a big hinderance.
I noticed the desktop integration between Dropbox and Adobe while working on a PDF in Acrobat earlier this week, so it’s nice to see that carry over to the mobile experience.
For all the “Dropbox is doomed!” blog posts a few weeks ago, it’s still a critical part of our agency workflow. This only helps reinforce that.
Good thoughts from Om here about the place of having your own website (whether it’s at WordPress.com or a self hosted WordPress installation for more flexibility) and feeding the beast:
Some Thoughts on the New WordPress.com and Mac App – Om Malik: “Most of those platforms are built to be silos, Facebook and Instagram being the worst offenders. Their approach is a threat to the open web as much as the rise of the app-centric internet. As someone who feeds the monster, I should have the ability to keep a copy of what I create. To stay relevant, WordPress.com has to become not only a publishing tool but also a means for me to route my sharing. Its role is that of an information router. I am looking forward to what talented developers do with the new capabilities of WordPress.com.”
We like to think pictures that we take (of ourselves and other things) digitally are eternal and won’t disappear into the digital abyss.
However, is that true it will our JPGs and PNGs (not to mention associated metadata) slip into the digital dark age canyon we’re construction for our ancestors?
“If only they had used more permanent materials” our archaeologists lament about the past. I imagine that will be a similar lament in the future.