Results

Good intentions don’t make a good spot. Case in point: this spot about dog fighting for the Animal Rescue Association. From the sappy guitar music, to the Disney-esque talking dogs, to the over-the-top copywriting — wasn’t sure if the spot was a joke or not. I was waiting for Babe the Pig to step out and ask for donations.

Certainly, you’ve all seen it by now: Fast Company’s article about Alex Bogusky. (insert eye roll here.) Fast Company makes several comparisons between Alex and Jesus; the article also touts profundities from the agency’s top creatives, like this one: ‘”To try to be cool is to not be cool,” Keller pronounces. “To chase cool, you’re chasing something that already exists, which means you’re always going to be on the wrong side of it, you’ll always be following.” (I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.) Overly-cool, overly-hyped, overly-popular: wake me when it’s over.

Creativity reports that agency “Fallon solicited its present staff and alumni to cement their place in history by contributing awards won to be eventually melted into one solid metal mural for a project called ‘You Are Fallon.’” We have always been big fans of sharing, and giving awards away to our folks. Awards are great to get, but they can’t help but divide agency creatives and wage silent, competitive, internal war. Putting them all in one big pot and melting them down is a great way to let everybody in the agency share the love. I also particularly like the fact that the creative who hatched the idea for the project declined to be named. That’s cool.

Tattoo has moved on up to the Board of Advisors with the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce. Charlotte has a nationally-recognized Chamber of Commerce for its successes in the state. Hang around with them for a little while, and it’s easy to see why. These people mean business.

Gregory Wilson has a fun post on Online Video Insider about performance-based compensation. He says, “Imagine being paid based on how good you are versus how large. Obviously, not every agency would be willing to work under these criteria”, and
“It takes an agency with a supreme amount of confidence in their ability to be paid based on their ability.” It’s our business-model, and our style. Tattoo’s article, “I Just Got a Manicure — Can I Put That On My Timesheet”, published by the Marketing Forum, gives a good look at our take on being paid based on ability.

“If I Had a Ray Gun” (www.ifihadaraygun.com) is the first book in a series of children’s picture books from Tattoo Projects. The collection features the art of pop culture, from tattoo artists, graffiti artists, and music video animators, to name a few.
The collection offers an honest take on the stuff of life through kids’ eyes, and was created specifically for rock n’ roll families who like to shoot straight with their kids and crank the Rolling Stones on the way to preschool.
“If I Had a Ray Gun” is about a kid who hasn’t yet learned the arts of tolerance and self-control. When things don’t go his way, he finds that it’s a lot easier to blast them with his maxo-vapo-rize ray gun. The school bus, the spinach, the bath, the babysitter — anything that he can’t deal with gets the ZAP. With every page-turn, something else disappears. Is blasting everything away the smartest thing he could do? The book reveals the answer.

These days, everybody’s blogging about something. In fact, the title “Chief Blogger” has even hit the corporate world. Somebody’s got to be the voice of your company, to tell your story and engage consumers, and press releases are for dinosaurs.  Although we think the title “Chief Blogger” sounds a little too much like “PR Consultant”, we do think it’s cool to have people at your company dedicated to the job. It’s no Second Life, but truly participating in The Conversation on the www can be a full-time job. We think Geoff Livingston, CEO of Livingston Communications and blogger at the Buzz Bin said it best — “The problem is that too many people focus on the actual tool: the blog,” he said. “What they need to focus on is the principles behind social media that make it work, like participating in a larger community works, and not controlling the conversation works.”

Tattoo doesn’t only do creative advertising, we’re also very involved in our community. Tattoo owner, Rudy Banny participates in Odyssey of the Mind, an international educational program that provides creative problem-solving opportunities for students from kindergarten through college. Kids apply their creativity to solve problems that range from building mechanical devices to presenting their own interpretation of literary classics. They then bring their solutions to competition on the local, state, and World level. Thousands of teams from throughout the U.S. and from about 25 other countries participate in the program.

An interactive campaign created by Tattoo and Fergus Peters Group for client John Deere launched today. The campaign focuses on the John Deere 313 skid steer — the smallest in the category. The website, www.skidsteersmackdown.com, premieres the first in a series of web videos for the John Deere 313 Skid Steer.
The Smackdown is a dirt-track event where the smallest of all John Deere skid steers takes on any and all competitors in a series of challenges to prove their muscle.
Equal parts tractor-pull, WWF, and stock-car racing, the Smackdown video series creates an exciting and raw way to compare heavy equipment. The series boasts a tug-o-war, hill climb, flat-track race, pit stop skirmish, and power lifting event, to name a few. The events push the machines to their limits, and some even end up on their backsides. Complete with a “ring girl” in a hard-hat, a victory milk chug, a cheering crowd, and friendly rivalry between the expert skid steer operators, the Smackdown is an entertaining way to learn a lot about skid steer equipment. Viewers will be directed to the website, www.skidsteersmackdown.com, via a poster campaign at John Deere dealerships, e-blasts, and direct mail.

This is an excerpt of a piece about the use of social networking by marketers, written by StrawberryFrog. Pass it on.

Social marketing DON’TS

1) Don’t violate the rules of social media. Often marketers and brands violating basic rules of social media. For Facebook no matter how targeted the message (or fancy or clever), it was still going to cause a revolt because Facebook wasn’t meant as a platform for marketing – it had a 100% social purpose. Brands and advertisers constantly forget this in their desperation to chase “consumers” down every dark alley and try and corner them into submission. With Scion, we ensured that we developed this site in collaboration with the Scion enthusiast audience. In fact, we used some of the leaders of the existing online Scion communities to help us to develop the Scion design language. We also ensured that this brand site was designed for purely social and expressive purposes and did not feel like a corporate or money generating venture.

2) Don’t duplicate established social communities. If your audience is using a strongly established community (i.e. recipe sharing), why re-create a duplicate, marketing based branded version of the same community? Why would your target leave the existing community for a branded version of the same offer? There are hundreds of existing Scion communities and socializing sites online. We knew from the start that we had to create a totally new kind of social tool for Scion owners to be a relevant and frequently used social tool.

3) Don’t hijack consumer’s social networks. One of the failures of Facebook marketing was that it hijacked the existing culture of the community. At the least marketers should be invited into the social culture, but even better marketers should create its own culture that consumers want to join. They should also be mindful of forcing friends to endorse products among their peers. Users should be voluntary brand ambassadors, not an enforced sales force.