Like many people my age (37 years old) with a couple of young children (Alex, age 5 and Brett, age 2) I have begun to do grown up things like create a will, buy life insurance, and invest for my family’s future (college, vacations, investments/nest egg, etc.). Accordingly, I have begun looking more closely at our monthly and annual expenses as part of the process. This has truly been an eye opening experience and one of the family expenses that jumped out at me was the amount of our cable bill.

Much like the first time I bought a legitimate mattress, it is somewhat shocking to see what Cable services run these days. Removing broadband/internet/wireless service from the equation, I am still paying over $150/month for cable television services! But here is the real kicker…I can hardly remember the last time I watched something significant on TV:

• Superbowl – at a local bar/restaurant
• Masters Golf – ESPN3.com
• Olympics/World Cup Soccer – various online sites
• NHL Stanley Cup – bar, NHL GameCenter Live, in-person (Go Flyers!!)
• Cable Shows (non-network) – HULU, NetFlix
• Various other Video Content- Wii, Droid, NetFlix, YouTube

I am sure there are people out there that watch a lot of TV and have the time and schedules to allow them to watch it in real time when the latest episodes air. I am not one of these people. I am often not awake late enough to watch the shows I would like to, and my schedule never allows me to be in front of a TV when I want to be… Accordingly, I am usually a season or two or three behind with the top shows. Additionally, my kids watch mostly DVD’s and instant content from NetFlix (over the Wii or BluRay player). In fact my five (5) year old pesters me to watch Scooby Doo and Batman episodes on my Droid or family computer over YouTube incessantly. So basically it is my wife who utilizes our cable services the most. This is not a negative statement, just a fact when I consider my family. Having said that, even she only watches a few, albeit bad, television shows…The Bachelor/Bachelorrette, Keeping up with the Kardashians, and the like.

With all the press around ipTV and content becoming more and more available over the internet and through multiple hardware platforms, I am seriously considering downsizing my cable bill to the bare minimum. Everyday there is news of Netflix and YouTube gaining additional rights and ability to share content. More and more content providers are creating consumer direct content solutions… they can make more selling direct to consumers online than the small stipend from cable companies that re-sell the content. Maybe my television is not actually a television anymore, but in fact a large computer screen.

Stay tuned…

As I was reading my daily dose of Ad Week, I came across an article titled “Kellogg, ‘Lucky’ Try On-Box Video Codes.” The headline immediately caught my attention, mostly because Lucky is my all-time favorite fashion magazine. Lucky teamed up with Kellogg’s to put a QR code on Special K cereal boxes. Consumers can take a photo of the code with their smartphone and then launch a video that shows Lucky editors revealing tips on how to find the most figure-flattering jeans.

In my opinion, the partnership with Lucky and Special K is a seamless fit (no pun intended). Based on statistics from 2009 Doublebase Media Research Intelligence, the Special K consumer is more likely than other women her age to consider herself fashion-forward and rely on magazines to keep her up-to-date on trends and styles. Special K consumers are likely to be interested in Lucky Magazine, especially if they are not already aware of the publication. This partnership should increase awareness of Lucky Magazine among the magazine’s target consumer as well as drive magazine subscriptions.

It seems like a no-brainer, but when two brands partner, there should be a common thread: the target consumer. This isn’t always the case though, and it is those instances where partnerships fail. Brands should choose partners that can help leverage their key brand equities and strengths. Only time will tell whether this Lucky/Special K partnership will increase magazine subscriptions, but Lucky is definitely on the right track.

Three goals that will be discussed at every annual board meeting and will consistently be objectives for marketing departments everywhere: 1) increase sales, 2) acquire new customers, and 3) establish brand loyalty.

One method that aims at meeting those three goals, is something I like to call, “social buying.” To explain, sites such as Groupon and BuyWithMe, which continue to grow in popularity, are exactly what I’m talking about. If you are unfamiliar with how they work, it goes like this:

• Each day they put a ridiculously discounted offer on their website
• Each offer comes with a minimum number of people that need to “purchase” the deal
• If that number is reached, the “Deal is on”
• If that number is not reached, there is no deal (nobody gets charged for anything)

Typically the offers are less often for a specific product, and more for a credit toward a local service or business in multiple markets across the country. As an avid user of both of these sites, I can attest that the deals are well worth it. A $25 gift certificate to the local bar/restaurant around the corner for $10, a paintball outing for half-price, a one-hour massage for more than half-off of what it would normally cost – these are a few examples of the offers that I have purchased from these sites.

It’s that simple. The overall idea is, the offer will be enticing enough to get a bunch of consumers to purchase the deal and get them through the door (acquire new customers). Once there, the hope is two-fold. Hopefully, the consumer will spend more than the amount they have a credit for (increase sales). Lastly, the consumer will hopefully have such a positive experience, that they will tell everyone they know and continue to come back in the future (establish brand loyalty).

Recently, Groupon took its daily offer to a whole new level. Instead of a local business, Groupon had an offer from a national store you may have heard of before – Gap. Users who purchased this deal received a $50 in-store credit for only $25. The deal was purchased by 441,000 users, which if you do the math, comes out to over $11 million in sales. For Gap, this means that close to a half-million consumers are going to be heading into their stores, looking to spend at least $50. While not every Gap Groupon will be redeemed, it is anticipated that those customers who do use it, will spend more like to $75 to $100. And since Groupon states redemption rates are on average upward of 80%, that’s a lot of cash money.

Expect the concept of “social buying” to continue to grow in popularity, especially as more and more national brands start to get involved. In the past five months alone, Groupon’s subscriber database has grown from 3 million to more than 15 million. But what’s next for in this world of social buying? I think these sites should tie in a social media component that allows users to connect with other users to share in each other’s fun. But, only time will tell…

Earlier this summer, my esteemed colleague Matt Rainone shared his thoughts on ways that content can go viral online. The content he specifically referred to was related to memes – organic user-generated content that happens to catch on and gets rapidly spread across users online. On the other end of the viral video spectrum is manufactured content, created by brands with the specific goal of “going viral”. One such example of this is something that we all grew up with – the music video.

As the music industry has been turned on its head over the past decade and a half, the music video has become even more of a critical element to an artist’s promotional repertoire. While music videos have moved largely from TV rotation to online, the dynamic for how we watch music videos has changed as well. We no longer have to endure brutal cable countdown shows (remember TRL? guuhh) for the hottest videos; instead, we can watch virtually anything on-demand. Therefore, the need to create unique, buzz-worthy music videos is as important as ever. Many brands today share a similar goal with their own unique content (and often, what sounds appealing to a brand manager does not nearly sound as appealing to a consumer). What can we learn from music videos that will allow marketers to create better content?

Now of course Lady Gaga is going to get a ton of traffic for any video that she releases, regardless of what the actual video contains. I’m fully expecting the next video to be her dressed as an overgrown baby, covered in cows’ blood and dancing in a midnight graveyard surrounded by eunuchs. Seriously, I swear some of her videos are filmed inside my night terrors. But other videos have been hugely successful that haven’t been driven by that same caliber of star power. Here are three examples of great videos that have become big hits on the tubes:

1.) Cee-Lo – F*** You

Oh! Profanity!

Is it the catchy retro hook? The easy-to-follow typography? The use of the f-bomb? Probably all three. This video is a great mix of an amazingly simple but effective creative direction paired with an incredibly catchy song and a chorus that is decidedly radio unfriendly. The video was posted August 19^th and within one week had nearly 3 million views.

Key Takeaway: Simpler can be better. Shock-content does have talk value.

2.) Bed Intruder Song – Antione Dodson and The Gregory Brothers

Clearly, sexual assault is a not a laughing matter and luckily nobody was hurt during this incident.

When Antoine Dodson was interviewed by WAFF in Huntsville, AL after an assault on his sister, he was naturally upset and provided a very animated response to the reporter. That first video, in and of itself, was hugely popular and made its way around the Internet. But when Autotune the News got a hold of it, they turned it into Internet gold.

The result has been a single that is currently ranked #44 on iTunes. Mr. Dodson has also enjoyed microcelebrity status and is currently selling merchandise and fundraising to move his family to a better neighborhood. Preferably one where kids, wives and husbands don’t need to be hidden.

Some may recognize that the Bed Intruder video was similar to DJ Steve Porter’s Press Hop videos (Press Hop 1, Press Hop 2 that took classic moments from sports press conferences, chopped and remixed them together in a similar fashion.

Key Takeaway: Quality ingredients make a quality product. Both instances of remixes reused content that was already very popular with audiences (copyright infringements notwithstanding).

3.) OK Go – This Too Shall Pass

This may have taken the better part of a long afternoon to build…

The thought of building a four-minute-long Rube Goldberg is enough to give me a slight migraine (luckily we have an in-house production team!). Now imagine filming it in a single take. Sheesh. Obviously, the appeal here is the astonishment of the scope of planning and execution that is involved. I’m willing to bet that 16,261,591 viewers probably agree.

This isn’t OK Go’s first trip to the rodeo either, you may remember they had another killer video with Here It Goes Again, another great single-take video from 2006 which has net over 52.3 million views.

Key Takeaway: Creating compelling content is not an easy task. Sometimes it’s the most difficult road (both in time and cost) that will yield the best results.

Here at AMP, we’re always trying to get into the minds of our consumers – much like DiCaprio’s character in Inception but with far less gunplay. If you’ve seen the movie or any of the trailers, you are probably familiar with Zack Hemsey’s Mind Heist. The signature score from Inception is dramatic, tense, and will get completely stuck in your head if you hear any more than the first six seconds of it. That’s exactly what happened to us. After seeing it played over a few funny YouTube videos, we wondered what would happen if we applied it to our AMP Agency capabilities video.

The video and song were both the same length. Weird. Then we watched it…

Our minds = blown.

And if you haven’t seen our original capabilities video, which might help the above video make a little more sense, check it out here.

From 1987-1997, the FOX television network aired “Married With Children,” its most successful live-action sitcom to date. The show chronicled the miserable Al Bundy, a former high school football star turned women’s shoe salesman. Ever since Al scored 4 touchdowns in a game for Polk High School, his life went steadily downhill. For Al, work was no relief from his miserable home life, as he would routinely make fun of his customers for his own personal enjoyment. Something tells me that if social networking and local search were around back then, there is no way Al would have been employed at the same shoe store for 11 years.

Local search has proven to have a major effect on search engine marketing. For example, the other night I was looking to purchase a new pair of sneakers and I was trying to find shoe stores that I wasn’t previously aware of. I did what the majority of people would do; I typed in www.google.com and searched for “boston shoe stores.” Out of the 10 search results on the 1st page, 5 of them were local search websites, and the #1 ranking was held by Yelp. Now that the communication of social networking has been combined with local search, word of mouth marketing might as well be renamed “word of viral universe marketing.” This should be exciting for many business owners, as they have a new source for free advertising that outreaches the scope of their previous efforts. However, notice I said this should be exciting for “many” business owners.

One of the main reasons why it has been difficult to convince many businesses to embrace social media marketing is that the business loses control of its desired message. For business owners not completely comfortable with the ways of the Internet, this can be a scary thought. If a business is a respectable establishment that treats customers with respect, social media should only benefit them. However, if a business makes a habit of shady dealings and rude customer service, you better believe that they will get some horrible reviews from angry customers, which will only lead to horrible “word of viral universe” marketing.

Before I started this blog entry I did some research and found that about 1900 people searched the term “boston shoe stores” last month. That means that 1900 people also saw similar results as I did on the 1st page of Google. That also means that up to 1900 people saw the 74 mostly atrocious reviews that a certain Boston shoe store received from the online social universe on Google Places alone. The reviews weren’t much better on Yelp either.

According to dissatisfied customers, this company’s employees have done everything from not honoring returns, to belittling customers, to even flirting with a customer’s girlfriend! What would be even sadder is if this company was unaware of the power of this thing called the Internet.

In addition to being a respectable establishment, a certain degree of public relations needs to be present for the most effective social media marketing. Instead of trying to hide negative comments and reviews, companies should be trying to embrace them to improve their business. By conversing with customers, businesses are getting on their level and showing they care. That action alone will more than likely make up for any wrong doing the business did in the first place, and ultimately the customer will probably give the business a second chance.

Luckily for Al Bundy, his company wasn’t forced to embrace social media back in the 80′s and 90′s. If the real life version of Al Bundy is still selling shoes today, he better keep his wisecrack comments to himself.

If you haven’t read the article from Newsweek on “The Creativity Crisis,” you should get on it. Go check it out.

According to the article and the studies it references, the experts claim that creativity can be learned. So, if humans have the ability to learn to think abstractly, uniquely and creatively, why would they ever choose not to? If you’re reading this piece, you’re likely a marketer or have something to do with the marketing field. If you had the ability to better at your job, be known as an “idea person” and not regurgitate the same old ideas over and over again, doesn’t that seem like an enviable proposition?

Personally, I consider myself a fairly creative person and have always felt bad for those that dismiss themselves as “I’m just not creative.” Like the article states – I think we all have the foundation to be creative, it’s just a question of what you do to build that side of your brain and change your thinking to be more dynamic. To me, thinking is fun. Coming up with ideas is fun. Doing “creative” things is fun too. I strongly feel that those that dismiss themselves as “not creative” are really missing out on the energy and excitement that comes with having a fertile mind.

So if you’re one of those dismissers (<– look, I just made up that word!), you should really give creative thinking a shot. It might take a little work, and it might not come overnight, but what does? Many of the tools and skills we need to be good at our jobs take years to develop – and creativity is no different. You now have no excuse for a lack of ideas or new thinking. Seriously, have a go at it. I think you and your coworkers will all like the results.

I can’t speak to the validity of the recent results shared on the declining creativity in our country but I can share a perspective on whether or not as a society we’re as willing today as in years past to the success and failures of creativity.

To be free to be creative means being free and open and willing to fail along the way. However, the risk of failure along the path to creative greatness is what I suspect is affecting our overall creativity success. Have we stopped taking risk? Are we more aware of the public scrutiny when we do so and fail? The answer is absolutely – the expectations from ourselves and others is to push the levels of creativity in ideas, solutions and overall out of the box thinking but the freedom to do so with the possibility of not knowing, with 100% accuracy, what the final result will be is what is changing.

There is an increased desire to be different while still being liked and respected within your defined group – whether you’re a company, brand, agency or an 8 year old child. I imagine that once the hypocrisy stops then creativity will begin to increase again. Let’s truly reward creativity.  Let’s embrace the notion that two people can look at the same problem and solve it differently. Let’s be open and willing to support those that try and fail along the way because we believe and know they’ll learn, refine and find the creative magic in the end.

I’m not so convinced that American creativity is declining, based on the evaluation criteria described in Newsweek. But rather that it’s being channeled elsewhere.

Relating it to our business, we are witnessing a huge shift in the expression of creativity: from the simple ‘what’ are we saying, to a more holistic ‘where’ and ‘how’ and ‘when’ are we saying it.

In other words, creativity is no longer just the domain of the creative department, but of everyone who thinks about where and how we deliver our message. The channel options are exploding and will likely continue to do so.

At the same time, the creative product itself is evolving: becoming less constructed and more iconic. Words play a lesser role in advertising today. Consumers respond more viscerally to imagery. In all media, they expect to read less and indeed either can’t or won’t stick with messaging that requires the kind of time and effort that reading more than a few words requires. But that’s hardly a function of the creativity quotient per se.

So is advertising ‘less creative’ today than five or ten years ago?

I believe that there are fewer overt ‘stand out’ examples of creativity now than then. Compare the selection of Super Bowl or Oscar night commercials over the years, and consensus is that the offerings have become less original, less funny, less clever and less visually stunning.

The same is true of other traditional channel work -print, OOH- that can be compared over a long period of time.

And the reasons can be debated – does increased clutter demand more branding and allow less whimsy? Does the kind of measurement increasingly applied to ads cause a dumbing down so that ‘everyone’ gets it?  Is the pool of ideas finite and running low? (Certainly we’re seeing more and more old concepts being re-made.)

But the range of channels is so much wider now, I believe there is as much creativity as ever, it’s just being stretched across so many more media.

If you were to select 50 pieces of great creative from each year, I believe you’d find the quality as high today as 10, 20 or 50 years ago. But today’s 50 would include virals, banners, micro sites, widgets, apps, experiences, AR’s and many other vehicles unheard of when TV and print ruled the award shows.

The good news is that given the increased range of options today, we will surely need more and more creative minds to fill them. And we will. Because creativity entertains, and entertainment sells.

A few weeks ago, Newsweek published an article titled The Creativity Crisis. Essentially, the article discusses how “creativity scores” in American kids are declining. Creativity scores? Basically there is a test that can gauge creativity. Creativity is defined as “the production of something original and useful.”

First, who knew that sort of test existed? I know that school (middle school and high school) has changed a lot since I was there … but a creativity test? Poor kids… they are graded on everything.

I find it so interesting that something that is so subjective as creativity can be measured. But then again, it sort of happens every day in our business. Return on Investment (ROI) is something that we hear every day. Sure, that campaign is funny, clever and captures my attention. But how much? And if something captures my attention what does that mean for sales? How does / will  this “creative” impact my bottom line?

Campaigns or ads cannot just look pretty for pretty’s sake but they need to have a purpose, they need to resonate with the target consumer and result in some sort of measurable consumer action (i.e. awareness, consideration, purchase, loyalty, or evangelism). So a “creativity test” happens on regular basis in the agency world.

I just wonder if testing kids may be taking things a bit far (but it has been going on for over 50 years now).

Second, I wonder what my score would be… but then I sort of don’t want to know. I think of myself as a somewhat creative person and I think that if I took a test that told me otherwise I might be a little bit devastated and I really don’t have time for an identity crisis right now.

So I asked a couple of my colleagues to share their reactions to the article – we will be sharing their thoughts over the next couple of days.  In the meantime – what do you think?