Thursday, March 31, 2011

Peanut Butter Jar Redesign


1 Peanut Butter Jar = 20 sticky knives in the dishwasher.
Plastic knife attached to the top also makes it easier for on the go.

You Fully Charge Your Phone, Why Not The Person Operating It?

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Hyper-Personalization

This morning I was fortunate to attend AdFed's event which featured Ann Mack, Trendspotter at JWT, speaking on '10 Trends That Will Shape the World in 2011 and Beyond.' There I ran into fellow VCU Brandcenter alum and strategist, Ed Reilly.

Matt: Ed, what's up with the new age camera?

Ed: It's my business card.
Matt: Huh?
Ed: It's my business card. [Turns to the person sitting next to us] Would you mind taking a picture of us?

[Camera prints photo and I'm handed his business card, which has a front and back]













When getting back to my desk I type in the URL from the business card and receive this personalized message:

" Hi Matt - Thanks for your willingness to test my new business card format. I think it's a bit inconvenient though having to ask someone else to take the photo. We'll see if I continue.

My original thought was in this new world of "hyper-personalization," why should business cards be left behind? It's all about customized personal connections.

Thanks again for the referral to the position at Carrot.

Let's keep in touch,

Ed Reilly "

Ann Mack's trend #9 was 'hyper-personalization.' Ann's presentation was consumer focused as Ed has brought 'hyper-personalization' to networking. This interaction was memorable, engaging, and continued after shaking hands when the event was over.

Ed reconfirmed why I happily referred him.

Lab Rats - The Packaged Deal

Consumers not only need simplicity, clarity, personal relevance, and emotional appeal, so do group/community members. If is often a task to generate creative ways to make someone feel a part of something larger than themselves and to feel 'invited.' I felt honored when receiving my package in the mail after accepting the invitation. Cabell Harris, founder of Work Labs, has unique gene in his DNA to develop the complete package.


Lab Rats is just one example of a unique way to package a program from top to bottom.

Lab Rats started recruiting “Alpha Rats,” in 2010, a group of well-known brand marketers and creative thinkers who are experienced in all facets of brand management and brand development, from account planning to brand strategy and from ad writing and art direction to the digital space. Beyond that group will be a much larger group of several hundred “Lab Rats,” the majority being graduates of the prestigious VCU Brandcenter, the number one advanced degree advertising program in the world. The core of the project will be made up of an army of disruptive thinkers contributing their thoughts and ideas to solve problems.

The innovative initiative is designed to reengineer the
concept of crowdsourcing to make it a pragmatic tool for focusing the
thinking of experts from many different disciplines on specific brand
problems. “The trouble with crowdsourcing, in a general sense, is the
quality of the crowds,” said Harris.
"This new effort, which I call ‘brandsourcing,' solves that problem by assembling a crowd of pedigreed ‘Lab Rats’ that can take on a client challenge, provide feedback and generate ideas that are on strategy and focused on tangible, bottom-line business results.”



In addition to addressing the crowd quality issues, Lab Rats has also
designed a unique compensation model. According to Harris, “Lab Rats
need ‘cheese’ to keep them fueled up and engaged, and we’ve designed a
compensation system that departs from the traditional model of paying
crowd participants. Briefly, the system serves up four basic types of
cheese. First, we are investing significant dollars in the Lab Rats
community website to give Lab Rats a place to meet their interests and
needs and to interact with other Rats. Second, they will get cheese
points whenever they give feedback on WORK Labs’ own work, points that
are ultimately redeemable for cash or merchandise. Third, when they
participate in a project, they are compensated for the ideas clients
accept and again if they agree to continue their participation in the
ongoing scope of work. And, finally, they will receive a 10% finder’s
fee if they are successful in finding a home for one of WORK Labs’
intellectual properties. So, active Lab Rats can get fat eating a lot
of cheese!”

One product that needs a home:

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

This Is Not a Tweet

Being able to distribute ideas and information where people, and more of them, are more likely to receive it and converse with others on the likes of Facebook and Twitter has funneled me away from the Blogosphere. Undoubtedly, blogs produce much more personal insight on a topic than a Facebook status or 'tweet.' But the simplicity of a two-click post on a phone generally wins every time over sitting down and typing a thoughtful post. I'm guilty of it myself.

A blog provides a platform that allows others to see what's inside your head. To understand why you found something interesting or why an idea you have is worth sharing. I'm naive enough to think someone stopped here to see what I'm currently thinking rather than posting thoughts of their own.

So what am I thinking... Much like how a blog provides a platform to share creative ideas, many corporations need a platform that provides a place for employees to share their creative ideas. To share ideas in-depth, without a character number restriction. I'm an advocate that creativity can be learned and can come from anywhere. Yes, an accountant can be creative. Have you tried telling a story using only numbers? I've seen it done.

Under Work, you can find a Keynote titled 'The Roundtable.' This idea was designed with a specific company in mind in order to accelerate engagement among future leaders that are hungry to do more. There are two components: (1) Educating - Building a knowledge base to be a more efficient employee will aid in frameworking ideas. (2) Innovation - Providing an experience to collaborate on ideas that employees have a vested interest in.

Two videos I grabbed clips from that are inspirational in making my case for 'The Roundtable':
David Logan - Tribal Leadership
Daniel Pink - Motivation