Scott Rowe, partner in charge of digital, and Scott Bishop, strategist consultant, will be presenting at the PRSA 2013 Midwest District Conference on Thursday, July 25. Their presentation, titled “The Evolution of Content: Communicating with More than Words” will address the rise of infographics, photo sharing, video and visual storytelling to push PR professionals to rethink how they deploy their client’s messages. In a crowded content market, words often get overlooked and ignored. They will show to stay relevant, you must analyze how your audience consumes content and use the new tools to give them what they want. In this presentation, they will discuss the content trends that are now the norm and the new tools to deliver them. Attendees will learn how two digital marketers were able to use a combination of visual messages to get 70 million views without using paid media. Read More

Selfless Act

Alzheimer’s of the Midlands hosted a cocktail party for Hollywood actors Brett Cullen from 42 and Person of Interest and Erich Hover of Moneyball. Bozell, a long time supporter of the chapter lends support to this film project coming to Omaha in August as it will raise both awareness and funds for the Alzheimer’s Association. Read More

Every year there are predictions as to which companies will succeed or fail. Using predictors such as:

Declining sales and losses

Disclosures by the parent of the brand that it might go out of business

Rising costs that are unlikely to be recouped through higher prices

Companies that are sold

Companies that go into bankruptcy

Companies that have lost the great majority of their customers

Operations with withering market share

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My first book was edited by five people. Not everyone has that luxury. I think it’s a luxury because you get to see your work through different eyes – and you get to make the final call by reviewing the options and choosing the ones that make the most sense for your plot and characters. Read More

Wow! In case you missed it, there was a social media meltdown of epic proportions this week following the airing of the season finale of Kitchen Nightmares featuring Amy’s Baking Company. Read More

Here’s something you don’t see everyday – jumping FROM web TO print.

Today via snail mail I received a preview issue of AllRecipes Magazine.  I did a double take because it surprised me to see a web brand go paper.
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Are your passwords secure enough to protect your personal information? This week Scott and Nathan discuss passwords and give some great suggestions on how to protect yourself.

If you spent much time on Facebook last week you most likely saw a lot of pink and red as people around the country changed their profile photos in support for marriage equality.

It started with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in an effort to encourage supporters relative to the US Supreme Court meeting last week to begin the debate on the future of same-sex marriage in the US.

On Monday March 25th at about 1pm EST, the day before the Supreme Court’s deliberation of California’s same-sex marriage ban, the HRC posted a Facebook status urging followers to change their Facebook profiles to its official “equal sign” logo in pink and red color scheme as a show of support.

The ‘red equal sign’ photo quickly spread across the social networking sites, reaching more than 9 million people and 77,000 shares directly from HRC’s Facebook page. Then, several celebrities and public figures picked up on the trend by switching their profile photos from actor George Takei and singer Lance Bass to Beyonce to Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and at least 13 United States Congress members.

By the morning of March 26th, the Facebook profile trend had been picked up by dozens of media outlets including TIME Magazine, ABC, CNN, Mashable, MSNBC, Forbes and more.

More celebrities and brands/companies jumped on board with derivations of the symbol.

Martha Stewart

Absolut Vodka

Bud Light

Lots and lots of creative versions were posted.

By Friday March 29, it was reported that nearly 3 million people had changed their profile photo on Facebook alone. It was so popular that researchers at Facebook crunched the numbers to figure out exactly how many people changed their profile photos for the event and more about them.

From that analysis you can see the bump in profile updates below. “Using a time series model, we can decompose the trend we’d like to examine from the seasonality in the data. We find that the increase in uploads does indeed start around the time when HRC began urging their Facebook followers to change their profile photos at 1 p.m. EST (dashed line).”

Who changed their profile photos?

Thirty-somethings showed the greatest increase in updating their profile photo (see below). “This suggests that on average, roughly 3.5% of 30-year-old Facebook users updated their profiles in response to the events surrounding the HRC campaign. We also found a small, but significant difference expression between genders. On average, 2.3% more self-reported female users updated their profile photo, compared to 2.1% more self-reported males.”

Where were the heaviest concentration of those that changed their profile photo?

The geographic divides are fairly apparent in this map: same-sex marriage gets more support in the Northeast and West, less in the South. The data also showed that, unsurprisingly, those living in college towns were the most likely to change their profile pictures.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that “58 percent of Americans now believe it should be legal for gay and lesbian couples to get married; 36 percent say it should be illegal. Public attitudes toward gay marriage are a mirror image of what they were a decade ago: in 2003, 37 percent favored gay nuptials, and 55 percent opposed them.” The following chart illustrates results by political party.

This PBS story does a good job of telling the story of how Facebook went pink and red.

Watch Why Facebook Went Red and Pink Over Same-Sex Marriage on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Will all this silent support matter? Maybe, maybe not. Whether it impacts the decision of SCOTUS is yet to be seen (if you haven’t read the SCOTUS blog, it’s worth a look), but I certainly thought this article from Scientific American about the power of “norms” was pretty interesting.

Scott Rowe, partner in charge of digital marketing, will be speaking to Alpha Kappa Psi students at Creighton University on Saturday, April 6, 2013, about the agency business and his experience in digital marketing. Alpha Kappa Psi focuses on providing ethical leadership and professional development. Through educational programs, community service and a hands-on application of formal education, Alpha Kappa Psi students use the business skills they are taught in the classroom to acquire life skills such as the art of compromise, consensus building, project management, interviewing and networking. Read More

We are all online, but there are some difference in what we do. I found this snapshot from eMarketer to be pretty interesting.

Millennials

Not surprising, millennials have the highest social networking penetration of any generation and they make up over one-half of all twitter users.

Gen X

Gen X makes up over 30% of all smartphone users and over 78% of all gen xer’s download or stream video at least once per month.

Boomers

For boomers, use of mobile internet and smartphones are lower ompared to other groups, nonetheless growing.