I am often asked about RSS feeds and what they are. Some marketers are obviously having a difficult time determining whether or not they should implement an RSS feed in their marketing website. RSS (really simple syndication) is a well established marketing technology. This solution allows organizations to provide up to date content to customers and supporters with minimal effort. It is also very trackable and allows marketers to continually communicate with engaged customers and prospects by not requiring them to revisit their website to stay informed of news and product offerings.

By their very nature the content within RSS feeds is very portable.  Users and feed aggregators can republish the content. The more times content is republished on websites outside of originating website the more external links there will be linking back. This in turn will help the site’s search engine optimization and organic search rankings. Roughly 50% of modern search engine algorythms use sites of like content linking back to determine the validity of the content and giving the publisher credibility.

If you do not currently have an RSS feed I highly recommend adding one. If you content is already stored in a stand alone database or content management system the investment would be minimal while the profit by way of exposure could be quite large.

The Literacy Center works to raise literacy rates among adults. For more than 35 years, the organization has provided one-on-one instruction using volunteer tutors.

From rethinking the entire brand to redesigning the logo, the 2007 Bozell Intern team dove deep into what it takes to complete a successful campaign for the Literacy Center of the Midlands.

The intern team was given the task of re-branding the organization then executing the new brand across all sorts of mix-media advertising — from radio and billboards, to more non-traditional methods such as bookmarks and isle violators.

The campaign recently received two Silver awards from the Nebraska AIGA.

See more of the Literacy Campaign.

Court Appointed Special Advocates, (CASA), provides advocates to abused and neglected children within the court system. Judges rely on the information CASA volunteers provide to decide whether these children should be adopted, reunited with their families or placed in foster care.

CASA staff met with Bozell staff mentors to outline their greatest needs, which included a higher profile and more volunteers.

The team went to work to analyze the marketing situation, develop a strategic approach and execute on the plan.   The Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for Douglas County Nebraska celebrated its 10th anniversary with a completely new marketing campaign and tagline — “CASA, a powerful voice in a child’s life.”

Consisting of TV public service announcements, print advertisements, newly designed collateral and letterhead, the campaign was finished through production via Bozell’s intern program, with mentoring and support from agency staff members.

The project included the unique opportunity for the interns to work on the development of several public service announcements with WOWT-TV. From script-writing to production, this was a chance for the interns to learn from the experts what exactly goes into creating a TV spot, and also a fortunate opportunity for CASA to have a creative public service announcement aired to launch their campaign.

Beyond basic creative executions, the interns also suggested website upgrades, as well as numerous public relations and media opportunities.

Read more about this project and the Bozell intern program.

Getting married is so great that some of us do it more than once. In the case of my upcoming nuptials, “we” have thankfully planned a very simple ceremony. Last weekend, my soon-to-be wife headed out to buy a dress to get married in. Not a first-timer, fancy, flowing wedding dress – just a nice dress.

After she was MIA for a good nine hours on Saturday, she called to report that she might have found a dress that she liked. This was followed by a six hour Sunday outing with her mother and sister, apparently to review and authorize the purchase.

We each had a busy Sunday night and Monday workday, so it took a cell phone conversation leaving work on Monday evening before we had a chance to reflect on the weekend. At 5:35 p.m. she shared with me her ecstasy in finding the perfect dress in only two days. This stroke of good luck was literally going to save her December schedule. At 5:36 p.m., I not so subtly asked her to remind me what color the dress was and also, could I call her back in a few minutes? At 5:38 p.m. I entered my favorite men’s clothing store (which, being two blocks from Bozell, I happened to be driving by at the time) and stated, “I need a new dark suit and a nice tie with some gold color in it.” At 5:59 p.m. (I will note, an entire minute over my “maximum shopping time” – but we did chat about the Huskers for a few minutes) I called her back from my car and explained that I, too, had completed my wedding clothes shopping.

As an aside, while the point here is to consider shopping habits between genders, after an awkward silence, I quickly realized that my 21 minute attention to this issue was far too short for a decision of this magnitude, so I added, “I mean, I saw a few things that I liked and will keep shopping.” I am learning.

I would venture that more has been written about the electronic age and how technology is changing our lives than any other topic in the past 25 years. And billions of dollars are spent annually trying to understand the behaviors of the highly-coveted younger generation. But sometimes it takes a really simple experience to realize how the world has truly changed.

I coach my daughter’s basketball team. We are not good. This was especially apparent in our most recent game, when we brought down the house by ringing up 3 total points. Yes, you read that correctly.

Which takes us to last night’s practice. The coaching staff (me) determined that the correction to our inability to hit the broad side of a barn with a basketball was to run – a lot. After over an hour of intense workout, which drove a number of girls to near tears and/or near nausea, we took a water break. As the girls sat down on the bleachers, I prepared to deliver a fire and brimstone speech that I am sure would have inspired the girls to score at least 5 points in our next contest.

As I looked up, I was floored to witness four of the ten girls on the team reach into their gym bags, pull out their cell phones and check their text messages (or perhaps text the authorities to come and save them from this horrible coach). The four ultimately engaged the entire team, discussing an exchange that one of the girls was having with a boy from their class.

After pondering that my back-side would still be hurting if my middle school basketball coach had witnessed this scene (let’s just pretend that there were cell phones that long ago), I realized that this was the first time that it really hit me how pervasive digital communication is to Tweeners.

I inquired to my daughter (who was one of the original four culprits) why in a state of near exhaustion, dripping with sweat and with only ½ hour to go in practice had she reached for her cell phone, especially in the face of the lunatic coach? Habit … insecurity … the expectation of a life-or-death message? Her reply: “I needed to know what was going on.”  Duh.

While getting briefed by the developers of a new document management tool, we could tell that the Saas (Software as a service) product was robust, but not necessarily intuitive. This raised a red flag, because our target audience research indicated that people would subscribe only if they thought the tool was very simple to use.  It became clear that the most important thing to do was simplify the user interface to create a stronger initial user experience.

So that’s exactly what we did.

Before

After

The original interface was unapproachable. Its blue shades were cold. Its small fonts were daunting. By using a fresh color palette, larger fonts and numerous easy-to-understand icons, we eliminated the intimidation factor and created a friendly first impression for the intended user – small business owners.

We also improved user experience by helping our client leverage the most recent development techniques. The new DocLanding has the feel of a desktop-based application, while existing as an online service. Unlike some web services that require constant page reloads to present new information based on user interaction, DocLanding keeps the user’s default file structure in the screen at all times. Additional features such as file previews and prompt boxes user a clean overlay technique that brings attention to the functionality while not being obtrusive to the user.

Morris Jacobs, one of our founders, was one of four Omaha businessmen to convince the NCAA to bring its men’s baseball tournament to the city in 1950. We’ve been involved in building the event ever since. And loved every minute of it.

Our job? To get the word out. To make sure those who plan to attend have all the information they need. To continuously promote the event in order to reach new prospects. Through a combination of advertising, public relations and online communications we efficiently and effectively communicate before, during and after each June event.

We constantly seek and develop new low-cost ways to gain more exposure for the event – from coordinating press conferences, requests and media alerts for the hundreds of media attendees to developing, updating and managing the website viewed by millions to sending out mobile text alerts to traveling fans.

From a mere 17,000 attendees in 1950 to a sold out crowd of more than 330,000 in 2008, the NCAA Men’s College World Series has become an iconic event in the world of sports with an atmosphere and spirit like no other.  The Road to Omaha is a dream of college players across the nation and will be for many years to come.

In 2008, two childhood friends decided to start their own distance relay race to raise awareness and money for the trails system of Nebraska. The Market to Market Relay stretched 86 miles from the Old Market in Omaha to the Historic Haymarket in Lincoln. The route started and ended on downtown brick roads, but it twisted through small towns and smaller farmsteads, into state parks, over streams and rivers, and across the plains of Nebraska.

With the route mapped and preparations made, only one thing was missing: runners.

Our challenge was to create and execute a marketing plan with a very limited budget that would promote and encourage sign ups and establish the legitimacy of this first year event to possible sponsors.

Bozell contacted the local media, national running magazines and online running forums and blogs throughout the summer and fall of 2008 with race updates. Ads were created and run in local newspapers, as well as Running Times and Runner’s World. A Facebook group and MySpace page were created to quickly spread information to runners and let participants easily promote the race to their friends.

The Relay exceeded its sponsorship goals and not only filled all team slots months before the race, but filled the waiting list to capacity as well.  On Oct. 11, more than 1,200 runners competed in the Market to Market Relay raising thousands for the trails system and resulting in dozens of media photos, stories and blog posts setting the stage for an even bigger event in years to come.

Market to Market Brochure - Click to view

Click image to view slide show.

Target was one of the first major companies to bring affordable well designed pieces to the masses. I would like to believe that IKEA started that path but Target was smart enough to see where America was lacking and craving without even knowing it. I just found out that H&M released a new home collection in Berlin, Germany. H&M is most known for bringing affordable runway looks to the masses and has stores located all over the world and in major US cities.

The new home collection is based around four sub collections- design, nature, classic and youth- the entire collection will launch online in February 2009 and will be available for sale in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. No word yet on if and when the collection will be available to the US, but I would bet it would happen in the next couple of years. It is apparent that people desire surroundings that are infused with good design aesthetics. Here are some pictures of some of their new products and patterns and stay tuned!

Awards season is here again, not for televisions or the  movies, but for professional organizations. Entry fees are one of the leading fund raisers for many communications, advertising and visual arts organizations. Some marketing communications covet the various awards to validate their work and spend significant funds entering many examples of their work. However, at Bozell, we have a different philosophy. Yes, we enter the awards competitions, but we feel that the greatest acknowledgement of our work is by our clients. Did we meet their business or communication objective, rather than the criteria decided upon by judges? Did they refer Bozell to a colleague or friend as a potential partner? That is our measure of success rather than a boat load of certificates or trophies.

We wanted to nominate Tom Giitter for the Public Relations Professional of the Year. We were quietly collecting examples of his work over the past 24 years. He has been involved in many high profile cases such as the new downtown stadium, a new bovine hormone controversy and worked with ENRON. Using his Pulitzer prize winning writing skills, he has ghost written more articles, white papers and case studies than many have written in a lifetime. Unfortunately, he found out our plans as he was finishing his PRSA Paper Anvil entries and found his nomination form on our server. We quickly received an email requesting that we not nominate him since he would not accept the award if he won. Again, he wants his work to speak on behalf of the client, rather than himself. Even though our plans were thwarted, Tom Giitter is the PRSA Professional of the Year in our eyes.

Have a great day! Sylvia