Have you ever gotten an annoying song stuck in your head? You know, where it just keeps repeating over and over again. No matter what you do to cleanse it from your mind, it relentlessly echoes. I had such an experience recently. It happened innocently one morning before work when I was packing my children’s lunch. I was singing a song from the 70’s (yes, I’m that old) and the only part I could remember was “Saturday, dunt, dunt, dunt, Saturday…” when my oldest son walked in to the kitchen.  He had a stinging remark about my musical talents, to which I replied, “I can’t help it…I got this stupid song stuck in my head.”

He said he could help me out and started singing “Friday, Friday, oh yah it’s Friday…” and then went on to school leaving me in the urban legend that is Rebecca Black. Her original, truly irritating “Friday” song is an ominous lesson for all of us in self-indulgent, do-it-yourself endeavors.

As I understand Rebecca Black’s story, she was gifted $2,000 as a present and she decided she would take the money and produce her infamous song. Now the irony is that she is famous in an Andy Warhol/YouTube way for her accomplishment. As my 17-year old son pointed out, “the song sucks and the video is totally random—everyone just watches and laughs”.

In this weeks episode of “Glee”, they performed a much more polished version of the song. I still think the song is annoying, but it was much better than the original Rebecca Black version. Why? Because they are professionals, they have talent and know what they are doing.

I think the big lesson in this that we can all learn, is that just because you have the means, doesn’t mean you have the talent. My old copywriting partner from years ago used to have a poster in his office that read, “Just because you have an Exacto knife, doesn’t make you’re a surgeon.”

Learn your lesson and get annoyed, watch the video for yourself:

I recently downloaded the free set of symbol signs made available by AIGA. These symbols are termed an “inventory of symbol systems… for use at the crossroads of modern life.” They are standardized icons we see daily with effective iconography for several languages, yet still modern, and don’t forget, adorable. I’m a fan of anything tiny, but more than their size, I appreciate that these symbols were designed with the goal to “communicate the required range of complex messages, addressed people of different ages and cultures and were clearly legible at a distance.” In the design world, the term “segmentation” or “target audience” is thrown around a time or two. While these are very important, at times it seems there must be one very direct, general purpose for a piece or message to reach a wide group of people, or dare I say everyone. Whether it be a specific ad campaign to an age group under 30 with a similar interest of golfing, or a wide, bold message stating a cause or stance to everyone that hears, Willow is available to help you communicate that message clearly. If you’re lucky, we may even design an icon or two for you.

Source:
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/symbol-signs

If only we could count the number of times we’ve heard, “We know what our ___(insert target audience)___ wants from us.” Do you? Ever heard that expression, “When you assume, you make an a** out of u and me.”~ Oscar Wilde

Five years ago I didn’t have a facebook or twitter account, Google was not something I visited multiple times a day, and purchasing a smart phone was out of the question.  I thought a phone’s purpose was simply to allow me to chat anytime, any place and my little Samsung with its 12 keys did the job.  Today my iPhone is practically a limb. I text, tweet, mobile upload photos to facebook and occasionally still talk on my “phone”, although it is really a computer the size of a phone.  My point is, you can teach an old dog new tricks and if one were assuming my communication preferences were the same as they were five years ago, because a database indicated that I like to be called, one would be very wrong.  These are just my qualitative observations, but research shows that times are changing.

According to Nielsen, by 2011, US smartphone users will catch and surpass feature phone users. This means that around 50% of current mobile subscribers will shift to smartphones. What does that mean for marketers? It means access to multiple communication channels (text, e-mail, social media, websites, and the good old fashion phone) from one handheld device. But how do you ensure that you reach your target audience through those channels?

Step one in becoming savvier marketers is recognizing and accepting that your target audience is fickle. Their behaviors are ever changing and to remain relevant you’ll continually need to use qualitative and quantitative research to gain insight about your audience, your competitors and the marketplace that we all live in.

Step two in becoming savvier marketers is recognizing that as marketers continually saturate all these channels, consumers will become weary from their methods. For this very reason you need to continually pay attention to your target audience’s preferences, what your competitors are doing and what innovation is available in the marketplace.

Bottom line – don’t assume anything. Testing and research is key.

Oh the bunny trails. I know, Easter has come and gone. All of those plush, over-priced toy bunnies are now 75% off at your local retail store. But just because store clerks are pulling Peter Cottontail from the shelves, doesn’t mean I’ve stopped hopping along the bunny trail.

When searching for creative and inspiring ideas on the interweb, I find myself hopping from one place to the other. A lot of the time it starts with a Tweet on Twitter or an email from a colleague containing a link and the subject line reading, “You Have to Check This Out.” (And yes, I make sure that when I receive these types of emails that they aren’t dirty X-rated spam). So I click on the link. Amazed by what I see on the site, I click on another link that directs me to more inspiration, only to discover that there are even more inspirational links on that site. By the time I’m done, I’ve spent 45 minutes swimming through the world of the internet and my Bookmarks list has quadrupled in size. For example I found this site. That then led me to this site. That then led me to this site. That then led me to…You get the idea.

So what is it about those “Check This Out Links” that are so magical and what are they actually called? They’re called backlinks and when talking with one of our fabulous Webbies Marizka, she shared with me the importance of these fabulous links. “Backlinks are the most important aspect of SEO. It’s like in real life when other people speak good things about you. When a person recommends you to their friends then your trust level is higher than it would be if you would offer your services directly. That’s why marketing to friends is more effective than trying to convince a total stranger how good you are. It’s better to have 100 links from 10 websites than 10,000 links from one website.”

So next time you’re writing a blog post, posting to Twitter or even writing content for your website, be sure to remember those backlinks that can direct others to you. Not sure where to start with how to incorporate these fabulous tools into your work? Just shoot us an email or leave a comment on this post and we’d love to chat with you about it.

It sure has been a busy week in the news world! A friend of mine summed it up pretty well: “It’s been a week straight out of a Disney movie! The prince married the princess and the bad guy got caught in the end.”

I’m not going to go into politics, but there has been quite a bit of buzz in the social media world around celebrities and their views on Osama Bin Laden’s death and America’s reaction to it. Which lead me to think about the online footprint we leave.

We all post a good amount of opinions and images online; some good, some we tend to regret later, and I think we forget to realize that once it’s out there on the world wide web it is pretty hard to completely remove it again.

With so many businesses utilizing the power of advertising via social media, it is vital that owners sit down with their employees and create a social media policy.

I read a great article about this on Mashable by Maria Ogneva. One of her suggestions was to create a solid process: “Make sure that every part of the organization is looped in. Find a way of sharing information and collaborate around it.”

We have set that in motion here at Willow. Only select people have access to our Twitter account, keeping our brand voice consistent and ensuring that we monitor what we post. We follow the same process for the hand full of client social media campaigns we manage. Tweets and Facebooks posts are planned out, proof read and run by our clients for approval, making sure we are all on the same page regarding how our clients are perceived in the social media world.

How are you using social media at your company and how do you avoid PR blunders?