A recent article in the Wall Street Journal describes Dubai’s plan to sell corporate-branding rights to its new mass-transit system. The Road and Transport Authority will offer naming rights for two metro lines and 23 of the 47 stops. The sponsoring companies will benefit from name visibility not only at the station, but also on the maps. Imagine, Hart-Boillot Station in Dubai! Maybe not.
This type of branding campaign reinforces the fact that companies need to be increasingly creative when it comes to ad placement. But wherever you place your brand, it is important to check a few things.
Will this reach our key audiences?
Does this ad placement reinforce our key messages and overall look and feel?
How does this ad align with our company goals?
A fun example appeared during my trip to Wrigley Field last week – a building adjacent to the field sold its roof to Budweiser. Target audience? Check. Key message, look, and feel? Check. Company goals? Check.
Hart•Boillot recently designed several course catalogs for Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies. The layouts make use of Northeastern’s color palette and photography of its Boston campus.
Using color to differentiate between the programs, the three catalogs form a cohesive package for prospective students. A consistent brand is very important for Northeastern, one of the more prestigious institutions in New England.
We were very happy to partner with Northeastern to produce strong, consistent work that helped to visually communicate the University’s many offerings to its students – we look forward to working with them again in the near future. Go Huskies!
It seems that almost every day I discover another social media book, blog, or concept that I would love to spend hours, if not days digging into. I follow a few experts on Twitter, including Paul Gillin and Chris Brogan, and could easily spend an entire day exploring their links and comments.
I recently committed to spending time each week exploring and mastering a new tool. A few weeks ago I started adding photos to Flickr, a photo sharing tool (my screen name is perrinmcc if you want to check out some pictures). Yesterday I dug into Delicious, a social bookmarking site you can use to manage and share bookmarks (username also perrinmcc, not too many links yet).
Standing in a sand trap, green at eye level, and cursing with reckless abandon at the need for a second attempt, I caught myself…
Wait a minute. This is supposed to be fun.
Our client, Stow Acres Country Club, does a wonderful job of making the game accessible to golfers of all skill levels. They offer special discounts, family lessons, and unique playing opportunities. They also give me, however infrequently I’m able to go, the chance to escape the day-to-day responsibilities of work to enjoy a round of golf.
As the summer months unfold before us, we hope that you find time to do whatever it is that takes you away… Even if that includes a visit or two to the “beach.” Learn more about Stow Acres Country Club’s unique offerings or take a look at a few advertisements we’ve done for Stow.
David Carr discussed Facebook in his weekly New York Times column this week and hit a few points that I have pondered.
First of all, yes, I am on Facebook. I explored it a few months ago as part of my ongoing research related to Hart-Boillot’s continued expansion of its digital offerings. Already on LinkedIn, I wanted to get a better sense of other social networking sites.
Although my group of Facebook friends is rather limited, it has fostered closer relationships with that group (including my high school-aged cousins, a new friend, and college acquaintances). In his article, Carr questions how blurred the line between your personal and work personas should be. Carr suggests that one should either be strategic in your posts or selective in your friending. Like Carr, I am neither, but must admit that I have not sought out work-related friends and have not received any such friend requests. Would I accept a friend invitation from a client or an editor? Absolutely. I enjoy knowing about their lives and would welcome them to join my online world.
On Facebook? Feel free to friend me. With a name like Perrin McCormick, I am pretty easy to find.
Not too long ago we returned from EMC World 2008 in Las Vegas. We were lucky enough to work with EMC to produce hundreds of projects for this international conference. From invites to signage to booths to programs, we helped EMC to develop a cohesive and sophisticated look across the different EMC World mediums.
The conference kicked-off with an excellent concert from the Goo Goo Dolls. Their performance helped set the tone for a great week – one full of training, development, competition, and plenty of the EMC energy we’ve grown to love.
Fellow HB designer Matt Gustavsen and I recently spent some time on the golf course – and won a small tournament while doing so. Here are some brief clips from our round on the links.
The Body Worlds exhibit has been on display in many cities for quite some time now. I finally had the opportunity to visit this exhibit at the Maryland Science Center over the weekend.
The Body Worlds exhibit is an educational display featuring actual organs and bodies from persons that donated their bodies for this cause. The specimens on view are examples of the technique called Plastination. Invented by a scientist and anatomist Dr. Gunther von Hagens in 1977, Plastination is the method of halting decomposition and preserving anatomical specimens for scientific and medical education.
The exhibit made me realize what an amazing creation our body. I also left the exhibit feeling the desire to respect my body and care for it better.
If you have the chance, I highly recommend this exhibit. It’s not gory and the bodies are treated with care and respect. The Massachusetts exhibit is now closed, but you can check out other cities at http://www.ticketmaster.com/bodies.
Each year we help many clients cut through the clutter and noise at tradeshows to garner attention from prospects, the media, and others. This month both the PR and Creative departments supported Soapstone Networks at NXTcomm08. The creative team designed Soapstone’s booth and the PR team worked to raise Soapstone’s visibility with key editors and industry analysts.
In addition to productive meetings, relationship building, and written coverage, the show resulted in video coverage of Soapstone Networks on Telephony TV. Check out the video yourself to watch Rich Karpinski and Esmeralda Swartz discuss industry trends.
According to comScore, a provider of Internet audience measurement services, in March 2008 11.4 billion video streams were initiated by 138.5 million users (or 74% of all Internet users that month). People are watching video. While many focus their video searches on YouTube and basset hounds, others spend time searching for and watching live product demonstrations and executive interviews. What are you doing to meet this unprecedented demand for video?
I attended my first Twebinar yesterday. “A what?” A Twebinar. Twebinar = webinar + Twitter.
Imagine a Webinar during which attendees can have conversations about the Webinar using Twitter. Referred to as a microblogging tool by the social media crowd, I describe Twitter as a public instant messaging platform. Check out this in Plain English video on YouTube for a great demonstation.
Back to the Twebinar. I consider a typical Webinar to be a live event with a slide deck. Yesterday’s event was mostly pre-recorded video with a few minutes of live video and no slide deck. The slide deck wasn’t missed, but the live video portions played such a small role today that I wondered why it was a scheduled event rather than just a video clip posted on YouTube. Enter Twitter.
Making it a Twebinar was brilliant, as the community of 500 viewers simultaneously watched the video and tweeted about it online. Yes, much of the tweeting focused on technical difficulties experienced by some attendees, but there were also many posts and comments about the Twebinar’s content: interesting examples of companies successfully using social media to spark conversations. Today’s Twebinar certainly got me talking - and thinking that perhaps the new age of Webinars will be Vebinars and Tvebinars.
If you check out Twitter, be sure to find and follow me. I am @perrinmcc.
