Social media has become an expectation for businesses, non-profits and government entities, rather than a choice. Conversations are taking place online, whether organizations are participating or not. Even though utilities are considered a low-interest category in the social media world, they are embracing this medium at an accelerated pace.

Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) realized the potential to communicate with customers and pundits alike. Social media can become a permanent record of their care and concern for the everyday users who do not regularly think about their source of electricity – until their power goes out. OPPD understands the online presence of utilities is naturally increased by significant power outages related to storms or other acts. OPPD needed to leverage this visibility to further engage interested individuals and organizations.

Bozell’s challenge was to help OPPD provide a controlled, yet transparent and flexible persona in the customer service social media environment, while communicating its commitment to its customers and the community. Two OPPD Twitter accounts were created – @OPPDCares and @OPPDStorm.

@OPPDCares serves as an additional customer service outlet for OPPD’s customers by providing proactive customer support, consistent updates of new products and services, and information on safety and energy efficiency. When other Twitter users post complaints or questions on OPPD service, @OPPDCares responds quickly by either answering his or her question on Twitter or, if the response deals with confidential information, by contacting the customer by phone. @OPPDStorm provides updates on significant storm-related power outages.

As a result of their efforts, hundreds of OPPD’s customers are now following OPPD on Twitter. OPPD’s presence on Twitter successfully launched OPPD into the social media space through consistent and valuable communication with its customers. Engaging with your audience is key, and through OPPD’s controlled, yet transparent and flexible persona, multiple conversations with customers were resolved.

Sorry to disappoint you but we’re not addressing a beautiful start to a day at the beach – we’re here to talk soap suds? And both of these suds producers want you to know that they care about us and Mother Nature. Read More

Most kids looking for summer employment reduce themselves to getting coffee, flipping burgers or shoveling poo, but Bozell offers another option. Bozell has been recognized for an outstanding summer internship program. The application is rigorous: seeking only the most talented students to fulfill roles in various agency departments. Our objective this year was to create a fun and easy-to-use online application site for the intern program. We wanted to draw many quality applicants and a bit of traffic recognition for Bozell.

With a very small budget, Bozell decided to use their interactive talents to build a photo-submission site called WhatACrappyJob.com. Everyday since its launch in late 2009, the site published at least one post featuring a crappy job. Staff helped to spread the link via their personal social media channels. The URL was also included in information packets which were mailed to roughly 200 university contacts. Additional efforts included a small, $400 ad buy which ran on regretsy.com for a total of five weeks prior to the application deadline.

The two most easily recognizable results obtained for this site were the data from the site traffic and the number of applications received. The previous intern outreach effort resulted in our intern site receiving roughly 1,300 unique visits (traffic recorded from Dec.1, 2008 through March 1, 2009) and around 50 intern applications. This year, our intern outreach effort from WhatACrappyJob.com resulted in 8,148 unique visits (traffic recorded from Dec.1, 2009 to March 1, 2010) and more than 100 intern applications. This 527% increase in site traffic and 100% increase in applicants signify a successful interactive effort. This effort also dramatically increased the amount of international interest in our program. Our internship coordinators talked to about 25 interested international students and educators.

Today’s post on Seth Godin’s blog had me agreeing very quickly. Everyone uses email, but a lot of people don’t quite know all the little nuances that can make your email usage appear more professional, if not make you look more email savvy.

Here’s my interpretation of a few items from Seth’s post and some of what I think are top tips for using email well:

• Add your first and last name to your email settings so that your message doesn’t arrive “from” your email address. It should arrive from you, and you have a name.
• Make sure when you reply to a message, the message is included below your reply. This helps people remember what the reply is referencing without having to go find the old message.
• Always have a subject that helps identify the nature of the email
• If you use “reply all” just make sure you really need to include everyone on what you’re saying.
• Use the Vacation Message or Out of Office feature when you are not going to be checking or replying email for more than 12 hours or within a given workday.
• Don’t reply just to add additional banter. Everyone can use one less email in their inbox.
• Only use the “read receipt” feature on an individual message basis if you have to use it at all.
• Don’t send people an email from one address and ask them to reply to another address. Change your “reply-to” settings if you have to manage things that way.
• Don’t ask people to send you emails at two or more addresses. Change your account settings on one primary address to automatically forward a copy to the other address. You’re more in charge and it requires less of every single person who emails you.

Happy Emailing!

I know guys settle down!  I know how you feel about the girls, the twins, the fun bags, jugs and boom-booms but that’s not how ABC & FOX execs feel.  Well at least they seem not to like the rack of lamb Lane Bryant is serving up.

Everyone is buzzing about Lane Bryant’s “too sexy for TV” ad.  Lane Bryant said ABC refused to show the commercial during “Dancing with the Stars” because it bared too much cleavage.  The Fox Network also put up a roadblock and demanded excessive re-edits and rebuffed it three times before relenting to air it during the final 10 minutes of “American Idol”.

So I don’t get it with this Lane Bryant ad.  I’ve seen the ad and nothing sticks out to me (pun intended).  If you ask me there is worse programming and commercials out there than a “full-figured” woman wearing a bra and panties.  ABC (Disney Company) airs Cougar Town – which had a memorable scene that implied Courtney Cox’s character administering oral sex to her date.  And Fox airs Glee (which is usually good clean fun) – which glamorized teenagers losing their virginities to Madonna’s Like a Virgin this week.   

I mean where do you draw the line?  In the 1950s, TV couldn’t show married couples sleeping in the same bed. In the ’60s, exposing the bellybutton of I Dream of Jeannie‘s Barbara Eden was risqué.  Braless jiggles on Charlie’s Angels were considered daring in the ’70s. But by the ’90s, the expanse of adult-themed content on premium channels such as HBO and sex-infused music videos on MTV made baring the derriere of a hefty NYPD Blue cop acceptable to the masses on ABC.

Granted most of these commercials and TV shows nowadays are meant to be extreme to start buzz about their products.  It’s all part of the show.  In today’s economy with budgets shrinking, advertisers often feel forced to come up with buzz-worthy campaigns to survive.  Whether or not the Lane Bryant incident is 100% true I don’t know.  But I would really hate to think that ABC & FOX wouldn’t air this spot because a “full-figured” model was used over a “skinny” model.

First Toyota – sorry to kick you when you’re down. Up to now I’ve always been a fan. In fact I’ve had a Toyota Sienna for a few years. Your recent ad campaign has made me question my selection. Apparently Sienna drivers are either self-deceived young moms who try to pass themselves off as “hot babysitters” and see how many times they’ll get hit on or fussy flaky Dads who take their trikes and run home when someone copies them and gets a Sienna.

OK OK I get that this is all about the humor. And no one loves humor more than I. But very honestly, I want to feel a little brand pride in what I own – especially if it cost a bundle. And honestly, I’m starting to feel as though I’ll have to hide my Sienna so no one knows it’s mine.

When the ads run my first reaction is to laugh at these foolish people but my next thought is “Oh %#&*@@, am I one of them?”

Send your cover letter and resume with clear direction as to which department you are interested in joining. When letters come in saying the writer wants a job “anywhere” in an ad agency it is clear that they don’t know the business well enough to know where they fit in. Read More

Make sure your card says something about you. There are a lot of  boring business cards out there. Why? Probably because someone started a business, and “Get business cards” was one of the items on  their “to-do” list. But don’t just slap it together – put some thought into it. Make it unique, creative, and indicative of the special qualities you bring to your business. When your thinking of printing business cards, remember that these small little cards represent you and if they are not memorable than neither are you.

I recently had an exchange with a promising young copywriter who had no formal training or portfolio, but wanted to start picking up a paycheck for putting words to paper — something he currently does on a regular basis for free. I have this conversation at least twice a month. I would go into my advice on how to become a creative, but that advice could literally fill books. And does. That’s today’s topic.

After I scare the bejesus out of people with what it takes to become a copywriter or art director, I usually give them a recommended reading list. I did this for the hopeful copywriter last week. The process for detailing that list is always the same.

1. I dig through my old emails looking for the last reading list email I wrote.
2. I don’t find it.
3. I curse myself for being over-organized and delete-happy when it comes to email. (Thanks, Inbox Zero.)
4. I write another email.

Not anymore.

Now I’ll just send them this link. This is the actual email I sent (with a few four-letter edits) that covers the basics of what all aspiring agency creatives need to read for the  knowledge these books hold, as well as the interview fodder they provide.

Dear (Young/Career-Changing) (Copywriter/Art Director) & Current (Student/Barista/Truck Driver),

Sorry it took me so long to get this to you. It’s been a heckuva (week/month/decade). This is by no means a complete reading list, but it’s a really good start.

The most comprehensive look at the industry and how to put a portfolio together is Luke Sullivan’s book Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. It’s pretty much the best book out there. I only have the first edition, so I don’t know if his later editions get into digital/interactive media (the first edition doesn’t). But it should be pretty easy to interpret his general philosophies and how they’d play in the brave new world of 1s and 0s. If you buy nothing else, buy this one.

You’ll hear a lot about two pioneers of this industry: David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach. For the most part, [expletive deleted] Ogilvy. (Only my opinion, and it’s pretty much heresy. But whatever.) You should probably read his book just so you can say you read it. Better than Ogilvy by far is Bill Bernbach. There’s a book on his campaigns that will set you back about as much as a Ferrari F50. Luckily, his old agency (DDB) is very proud of him and supplies a free downloadable PDF of his most famous quotes. He was a genius and his work still beats 99% of the stuff that’s out there.

Then there’s Howard Gossage. He’s my advertising hero. Half of the “revolutionary” stuff that’s out there today is a direct result of Gossage, even if the people who created the work have never heard of him. And a lot of people haven’t. For a large part, he’s an underground, cult figure to this day. The Book of Gossage is never cheap. It was out of print for years, and it looks like it might have gone out of print again (if I were to guess by the price). But it’s the Master’s Degree to Luke Sullivan’s Bachelors. If I’m remembered for anything in this industry, it’ll probably be for spreading the word on Howard. Call me Johnny Gossageseed.

Lastly, there’s How to Succeed in Advertising When All You Have is Talent. Honestly, I’ve never read it. I was too busy working and stumbling into success to ever get around to it. But a lot of people I trust and admire say it’s a great book. I’d definitely go for a used copy. Looks like it’s out of print.

Those are the How-Tos. To figure out things on your own once you have a foundation, start shopping around eBay or other places for three books published annually that showcase any particular year’s greatest work. First, there’s The One Show. Then there’s D+AD. Finally, there’s Communication Arts Advertising Annual, which is one issue out of eight that the publisher puts out annually. Good mag in general. The Ad Annual is usually pretty great (as are the Design and Interactive annuals). You should be able to find back copies on eBay, or maybe even on their site.

I hope some of this helps. I know it will help me the next time someone calls who’s “always been creative” and wants to get out of emu farming/taxi driving/hamburger flipping and into what they will unfortunately and inevitably refer to as “The Biz.” (Please don’t do this. There is only one Biz.)

We were all pretty excited with the recent release of Adobe’s CS5 software suite. The prospect of a software upgrade is always kind of fun, and there are some pretty cool new features in the mix. The most interesting aspect of the launch, however has nothing to do with their software. According to ClickZ, Adobe ran an all-digital campaign to announce, promote and launch CS5.

That’s right. No billboards. No print. No TV. No radio. They used their website, their team of product evangelists, Twitter, Facebook, and plenty of other social media outlets. It also surely helps that, well… they’re Adobe. Not quite Apple in the buzz department, but they are up there. Knowing that they have made the decision to go all-digital in their software marketing and promotions is indeed interesting. Perhaps a good indicator of where things are headed? I think so.

Here’s another interesting tidbit: They did this with CS4 as well. So the last two releases of their flagship software suite have been all-digital campaigns. And they have been very successful.

The newsworthiness of this is that Adobe is a big company. They could spend the money on a fully integrated campaign to promote their newest software launch if they wanted to. Instead, they go digital. They’re likely focusing on hitting their core customer in the most direct and efficient manner possible. The designer, publisher, programmer, editor, and general creative user base that buys their product and uses it every day. Heck – I just cropped the above image out of a screenshot using Photoshop. It’s my go-to tool for image editing. So why try to hit up creatives on any other channel?

How soon will other companies fully embrace this strategy? How many have the guts to make the jump to all-digital marketing? More and more businesses are moving budgets to digital methods over traditional methods every day. The ability to target and track your core customers and measure your ROI makes it an increasingly smart move.

Is Adobe risking anything by going all-digital, or are they just showing us what the future is going to be like?