The Bowery Mission

This week's best ad ever

2009-06-13T18:35:00.001-04:00

I don't usually do this, because: ew, major corporate advertising, but this is really a very very cute ad, and I love it. It makes me happy.

This Week's Best Website

2009-04-13T21:16:00.002-04:00

Dave Caputo and Positronic Design are pleased to announce the brand-new, completely redesigned, and transformed GlobalGayz.com! Already one of the top-visited gay rights and culture websites in the world, GlobalGayz.com and its creator, Richard Ammon, have set out to leverage its high traffic and giant content base (1,000+ Articles & 22,000+ Photos) to raise funds for gay rights groups worldwide.

Nice work Dave and Positronic Design!

Another must-read from Clay Shirky

2009-04-13T11:45:00.002-04:00

Another must-read from the visionary Clay Shirky, about the decline of newspapers and the need for journalism.

This Week's Best Ad Ever

2009-03-19T13:47:00.001-04:00

Yes, so, this would be exactly and precisely how you make a successful viral ad: with dogs, sheep, old country men, and led lights.

Watch it here. Congratulations to Samsung for a truly... erm, brilliant campaign.

This Week's Best Cartoon Ever

2009-03-16T18:43:00.001-04:00

From the wonderful xkcd:

http://xkcd.com/556/

This Week's Cutest Ad Ever

2009-03-09T16:39:00.000-04:00

This ad is too cute and sweet.

This Week's Best Ad Ever

2009-03-07T11:07:00.001-05:00

Good advertising is about opening doors and inviting people in. Good advertising is essentially hospitality.

This is how you make a good ad.

Wow.

Happy Birthday to Kat

2009-02-28T08:07:00.002-05:00

Happy birthday to our very own force of nature and the world's most story-worthy boss!

Happy birthday, Kat!

A good ad

2009-02-27T13:55:00.000-05:00

Still reeling in shock from seeing good ads from Dems.

This Week's Best Ad Ever

2009-02-20T09:05:00.001-05:00

This ad is so fun and sweet. Actually, I guess this ad should also get Best YouTube Use. Very nice.

Our Facebook page

2009-02-17T11:53:00.000-05:00

Check out our groovy Facebook page. Become a fan!

Our Client Wins a GRAMMY

2009-02-12T17:42:00.006-05:00

Our wonderful, beloved client Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra won a GRAMMY Award! At the 51st GRAMMY Awards in Los Angeles, Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra won for their album Song for Chico, on Zoho Records, in the Best Latin Jazz Album category.

Get your copy today on Amazon or iTunes!

Click here to watch the Grammy Awards online.

Also, Arturo O'Farrill with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra will perform at the Peter Norton Symphony Space (Broadway at 95th Street) on March 5 and 6. The program, “Música Nueva II: Latin Jazz Across the Americas,” is a multicultural exploration of the future of Latin jazz with guest composers Frank London, Gabriel Alegría, Fernando Otero, Pablo Mayor, and David Bixler; works by Arturo O'Farrill and Michael Phillip Mossman; and guest appearances by Heather Bixler, Freddy “Huevito” Lobatón, and others. Compositions will include: “Paroxysm at Symphony Space,” “El Sur,” and world premieres!
Click here for tickets.

Best YouTube Use: The Elephant Sanctuary

2009-02-11T15:24:00.002-05:00

This week's best YouTube use goes to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

This wonderful organization uses YouTube as an educational resource and as free advertisement. They inform people about their work and introduce their rescued elephants to the world for free—saving their money for the important things in life (watermelon treats for happy elephants).

Ads for good

2009-02-06T15:43:00.002-05:00

Amnesty International always has the most beautiful ads, and this one is my favorite. Check out their YouTube Channel.

This Week's Best Ad Ever

2008-12-13T17:01:00.001-05:00

I am so in love with this ad.

From the good people at RePower America.

Yes, We Can

2008-11-07T09:49:00.002-05:00

We must all hang together

2008-07-04T11:09:00.002-04:00

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. -Ben Franklin

Happy Independence Day.

Also, here's a video about fighting for independence from the British from the wonderful movie Lagaan. The evil British Raj guy has challenged the starving barefoot peasants to a cricket match. If they win, they don't have to pay the tax that year. If they lose, they have to pay triple tax. The problem is they don't know how to play cricket.

In this scene, our heroes are training (hint: if you can catch a chicken, you can catch a cricket ball).

For all people fighting for independence from foreign occupation.

The best ad ever?

2008-06-29T13:56:00.002-04:00

Sometimes life's normal difficulty, pain, and cruelty gets to be a bit much. Watch this charming, lovely ad to cheer yourself up. Yes, that is Stephen Hawking.

Gin, TV, elves, and the cognitive surplus

2008-06-10T11:01:00.007-04:00

From Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Making Light, a wonderful and amazing video of Clay Shirky talking about cognitive surplus, free time, and the human condition.

Shirky says:

People like to consume. But they also like to produce, and they like to share.

We all want to use at least some of our free time to be active--to create, to be involved, to learn, and most of all, to share.

What does it all mean? Your customers and prospects want real information. They want community. They want to, in fact, share information in a community.

So, our job as marketers today is to provide spaces in which people participate. Media used to be active, with a passive audience. But today, the internet--and even subscription models like HBO and Netflix--allows people to actively participate in an active media. And people like it--they prefer it.

How do you create this space for your customers and prospects?

Build feedback mechanisms on your website, where customers can comment on products and services.
Offer real, valuable, actual information on your website, your blog, in your comments around the internet. Answer questions on bulletin boards such as Yahoo! Answers. You can do this! You know stuff--share it honestly. Information sharing builds trust and loyalty. And you might learn something useful yourself.
Create an open discussion forum. It could be geeky and technical, or general How-To, or simply industry news and gossip.
Moderate your comment boards to keep the conversation useful.

Think about the time and energy people spend playing games, solving puzzles, doing hobbies, and sharing their opinions. Think about the fact that your customers share your mission to some extent--otherwise, they wouldn't be your customers, right?--and give them space to be involved: to not just consume, but to produce and to share.

Join the conversation

2008-05-23T10:55:00.008-04:00

Noted savant and friend-of-blog Tracy sent this wonderful article, Drop the Excuses and Start Participating from Perkett PR, about social media and networking.

Christine Perkett writes:

...Many constituents are shouting from the rooftops that PR is dead – due to social media. I completely disagree. I think it’s forcing us to evolve - but that’s a good thing. Social media presents amazing opportunities for communications professionals to engage with their publics in ways never before possible...

Yesterday, as we started speaking on this topic, the majority of faces in the room looked at us like we were crazy. Facebook for business? Linkedin Answers? Link love on blogs? Twitter-what??? Although, their eyes did light up when Heather explained Twitter like this: It’s like entering a noisy, crowded stadium and saying, ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’… The entire stadium quiets to silence and everyone sits down except for four people that raise their hand and say ‘I can help!’…It’s that powerful and can provide a whole new lifeline of resources to draw from.

We had expected that the majority of the room would not yet be embracing social media (luckily, we were right or we could have been really boring). We knew we weren’t going to be in a room full of technology PR professionals. However, I’m also surprised at how many communicators haven’t embraced what is arguably the biggest evolution of our industry in decades…and their reasoning has nothing to do with technology.

Read the whole thing.

I think the problem is that many people think of the internet as TV--that is, as an active medium delivered to a passive audience.

That's how we end up with the horror of annoying Flash ads that prevent anyone from actually reading anything on the page (hint: people actively read the internet--they do not passively watch it). We end up with old-fashioned, one-way marketing that prevents audience and customer feedback--feedback that improves your product and creates customer loyalty. We end up with old school, intrusive, spam-like interruptions.

The internet is not TV. The internet is an active medium engaged with an active audience.

It makes PR easier, faster, and more exact. You know exactly what your customer's concerns are, because you allow them to tell you. You no longer invade their space: you invite them into a shared space where you exchange information. Now you can get your message out while constantly improving and updating that message in line with your customer's needs and concerns.

And you're no longer the invasive jerk who suddenly shows up uninvited and starts making demands--now you're a cool person with interesting, useful information and a listening, responsive ear.

So, some beginning suggestions:

Create a page on your website where you embed your press releases. Now, those PRs show up on Google searches--people searching for products, services, and information will get the chance to read your story.
Keep a blog and post PRs there. Open up (moderated) comments. Hear what your customers and prospects have to say.
Join Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. Invite your customers and prospects to join in a shared-interest community.

WalMart is evil

2008-03-28T18:28:00.005-04:00

You just can't buy this kind of publicity. The WSJ reports:

"A collision with a semi-trailer truck seven years ago left 52-year-old Deborah Shank permanently brain-damaged and in a wheelchair. Her husband, Jim, and three sons found a small source of solace: a $700,000 accident settlement from the trucking company involved. After legal fees and other expenses, the remaining $417,000 was put in a special trust. It was to be used for Mrs. Shank's care."

Now WalMart is suing her for that money.

"In August last year, U.S. district judge Lewis Blanton sided with Wal-Mart, ruling that when Mrs. Shank signed on to Wal-Mart's health plan she was obligated to abide by its terms.

The ruling came six days before the Shanks' 18-year-old son, Jeremy, was killed in September last year in Iraq shortly after he arrived in the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division.
...

Mrs. Shank went to Jeremy's funeral. But because of memory problems due to her injuries, she gets confused about what happened. On a recent morning, she cried several times and asked what had happened to her middle son. Mr. Shank says that he obtained a divorce from Mrs. Shank this year, partly because of advice from a health-care administrator that she might be more eligible for public aid as a single woman. Mrs. Shank, who has been declared incompetent by a court, hasn't been informed of the divorce by her family."

I cannot even begin to imagine writing that press release.

Update: Walmart backed off. Ya think?

Via Hilzoy.

Christvertising

2008-03-20T19:57:00.003-04:00

I am sure this is a joke. It just has to be.

Via Copyranter.

Bad PR

2008-03-11T20:15:00.004-04:00

ABC reports that The Weinberg Group is under congressional investigation for helping keep a harmful drug on the market--for ten years after it was proved to be dangerous. ABC says they had lots of case studies up where they "debunked" cancer research on their clients' pharmaceuticals (they seem to have now cleaned up their website). I guess they'll have to use their PR-fu on their own behalf now.

Via Kevin Drum.

Persuasion

2008-03-10T09:24:00.009-04:00

This is the best marketing book ever written: Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion. Dr. Robert Cialdini explains six basic psychological mechanisms that persuade people. And, more importantly, how to resist. Absolutely essential. Read it to make your marketing irresistibly compelling--read it to learn to resist marketing.