Why is there so much WHITE SPACE

If you use the web browser Firefox, there are numerous add-on applications to block ads. One of the newest replaces online advertising with works of art. Brilliant, although it makes marketing more of a challenge.

No wonder more marketing dollars are put toward search, as this poll indicates.

—Scott

As we enter this season of appreciation, it seems only fitting to have at least one entry that pays homage to the brands that make my life a little more peaceful. In other words, this is a tribute to the brands that do things right (in general) and don’t make me jump off the couch during a commercial and yell at the TV or roll my eyes and gripe out loud while surfing the net. And while it is tempting to just point out the brands that violate every consistency rule and best practice in the proverbial book, in honor of the Holiday this week, I am going for a positive spin on things.

Thanksgiving Award #1 goes to Apple for consistency. Whether you like the brand or not, across the board, everything they do is coordinated and supportive of their core brand values. They move way beyond the usual consistency in visual style, and push the envelope on tone and approach so that every TV script and every little piece of web copy communicates the same messages – both the obvious and the subconscious.

Thanksgiving Award #2 goes to Ikea for relevancy. Ok, so hats off to company who can take something as boring and staid as furniture and not only make it appealing to Gen X and Gen Y, but also make it hip to be cheap. By targeting specific demographics and relating to their unique social status requirements and budgetary needs with current, affordable, and trendy solutions, Ikea has changed the paradigm in the furniture industry forever. Target also came in as a close second for me for many of the same reasons.

Thanksgiving Award #3 goes to Intel for being memorable. Being memorable in the B2B space is is so difficult since mass media often seems wasted in reaching your actual buyers. That’s why Intel deserves incredible recognition. By reaching consumers and establishing a demanded brand, they have achieved tremendous pull-through from the consumer side to sell more products to their business clients. Not only that, they have significantly heightened emotional attachment among B2B customers to the brand through viral videos (check out the Intel You Tube channel) and TV spots such as this one.

– Kim Stiver

So weird…. but it does work..The Facebook trick:

While on Facebook, press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, enter key, then right click (or control + click for you MAC users). Then press up then down & magic circles will appear!

Beware! The only way to stop it is to log off or reload the page.

Did it work for you?

I just want to know who has time to come up with this stuff?!?!

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz-
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench-
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again?’

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack-
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads-those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.

From Aftermath (1919) by Siegfried Sassoon

My father never complained about the snow and cold of a Maine winter, a vow he made to himself during World War II when he was sick with malaria in a 105° Burmese jungle. Like many in his generation, he was eager to serve after the Pearl Harbor attack, so he joined the Army Air Corps and became a navigator, stationed in Burma. When I was growing up, he shared some stories of the war, but only as I got older, and usually just when I asked him. Perhaps he had made another private vow: If he survived, he would avoid talking about the experience. I suppose that many events, while acutely remembered, can be revealed only with time.

My parents bought their first house in a Portland neighborhood off Ocean Avenue in the 1950s. Neighbors became friends, in particular a family whose father, Carl, was also a World War II veteran. Our families took ski trips together, shared dinners, and rode sleds in winter down the hill at Payson Park. Carl and his wife remained good friend with my parents.

Carl died a few years ago, almost a decade after my father. At his memorial service, the minister chose to read some of what Carl had written about his war experience, of which I knew little.

Carl was born with a heart defect that disqualified him for service. Despite that, he took a military physical and begged the doctor in charge to pass him, which he did. Carl joined the Army, shipped off to Europe, and was captured by the enemy at the Battle of the Bulge. On that day, as the Germans gathered the GIs in the middle of a snowy field, he expected to be killed. But, as he wrote, “even the Germans must have been sick of all the killing,” and he and the other captives were sent to a POW camp.

Conditions were wretched, since it was the end of the war and even the Germans had scarce supplies of food and medicine. The Allies looked after their own with what little they had. Carl volunteered as an assistant to a dentist in the camp, another POW, who had to administer care without anesthetics. But the dentist was also a gifted vocalist. As he treated a soldier he would sing, soothingly, to distract the patient from the pain. Carl remarked how strange it would have been, for someone passing by and unfamiliar with the circumstances, to hear such an ethereal voice rising out of such a terrible place.

— Scott

I love social media! I love Facebook and Twitter and blogging and updating my status and learning about new ways to use it all. I happened to come across this video by Socialnomics09, and even though it’s probably considered old news by now since it was posted on YouTube waaaaaay back in July, I think it sums up social media perfectly in four minutes and twenty-two seconds. And I learned something very important from it too. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web. Wow! Some people wonder when the bubble will burst… I think it’s just going to get bigger!