Agency wish List

As the year comes to end, agencies were asked one simple question: What do You Wish Your Agency Could Do? This article along with the answers comes to us courtesy of www.onedegree.com. Sapient Interactive conducted a survey to 200 agencies and based on their answers came up with the following as the top 10 wish list for agencies in the future. Not surprisingly the number item on their wish list is for greater knowledge of digital space; More than a third of marketers surveyed revealed that they are not confident that their current agency is well-positioned to take their brand through the uncharted waters of online digital marketing and interactive advertising. Coming in second is more use of "pull interactions" such as social networks followed by leverage of virtual communities, both public and private in order to learn more about target audiences. Coming in fourth is that agency executives using the technology they are recommending. Rounding off the last five are agencies with Chief Digital Officers are more appealing, agencies should be Web 2.0 and social media savvy, understand consumer behavior, demonstrate strategic thinking, have branding and creative capabilities, and the ability to measure success. This is a useful article because it will help me when looking at what agencies are looking for in their employees.

Jargon Explained

My next article comes from the Blogging Me, Blogging You section of www.twistimage.com. The phrases Above The Line, Below The Line, and Through The Line have finally been explained in layman's terms. This article basically just breaks each term down as simply as possible. Above The Line means that you are just creating awareness so you can come up with the most amazing creative there is no way you can measure sales. Above The Line gets the perk of winning the shiny awards though. Below The Line not only drives sales, customers, brings in new clients and retains them but they also receive approval to move on to the next step of the process. Through The Line works as a symbiosis which is something that will point the consumer to a web site or an in store promotion. It is a key message that will push the consumer to your product. This is a great article that will help me in the industry because now that I know what some of the key phrases are it will help me when working on accounts.

The New Generation of Literacy

Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write, but in today's age it is so much more, enter the Jacob Burns Film Center. My next article titled "Westchester Children, Prison Inmates Take Lesson in Digital Literacy" explains all about how reading and writing needs to step up to the digital level. I found this article on the site www.marketingvox.com. Basically the article speaks about how this Media Arts Lab will help children, prison inmates, and instructors from other countries learn digital literacy. The founder Stephen Apkon saw that his children had were disconnected from their classroom and the world they were growing up in. Although the Lab has brought the attention of many famous names like George Lucas, Apkon is most excited about the problem solving skills and creativity that will not only exercise young people's minds, but anyone who visits the Lab. The Jacob Burns Film Center will focus on film making and animation programs, which will incorporate math and science and students will also improve their writing skills as a result. The Center is not vocational therefore these skills will apply to any profession. This is a great resource to the community and it is good to know that there are such centers out there because it is shaping the next generation. I think this is important to the industry because this way people will get the right skills to get the job done efficiently.

Technology Isn't Always The Answer

Mobile Devices, GPS Systems,Laptops they all make life so simple today, but have you ever thought that technology isn't always the answer? My next article "Tech Christmas in Calgary" from proves my point. It is a simple blog about a guy who attended a Christmas Bash for the Calgary Council for Advanced Technology who invited Paul Vikers to be a guest speaker. Paul Vikers is an entrepreneur who owns night clubs/restaurants, but he was there to talk about his new idea for a business, which is US Flood Control. This blogger refers to Viker as a genius for thinking outside the "technology box" for the future. This is a good blog to read because it reminds us that technology is not always the way to go so we have to think of other ways to do things and that goes for media as well. We can not always stick to the same secure path, but we should venture into new territory.

TV + Web= Future of TV?

My next article "TV Tunes In to Interactive" by Rebecca Lieb was taken from www.clickz.com takes a look at cross media behaviour, digital measurements, and web and TV coming together. Cross-Media behaviour findings were presented by ESPN's Artie Bulgrin, SVP research and analytics and Glenn Enoch who is VP integrated media research. The discovered that Overall, 58 percent of the total audience is simultaneously active on the Web and watching ESPN on TV, but that only accounts for 31 percent of all ESPN's Web usage, but that does not necessarily mean that everyone who is online while watching ESPN is on the ESPN web site (only 0.02% users were on both simultaneously). They also made sure to point out that a user is not interchangeable and used the differences between female and male audiences to show that. Their final conclusion was that just because you are tuned into one channel of communication it does not mean that you are takingaway from another. Next we come to ABC's Patrick McGovern, SVP of sales and strategic planning and digital media who spoke about video-on-demand (VOD). He said that currently, it is not possible to measure the ads inserted into VOD programming, but instead, the whole package is measured as one big block of content, ads and all. He goes on to say that it gets worse because networks do not wants ads to be fast forwarded so they disable that function making it even harder to measure. Lastly, the article looks at the convergence of web and TV. Therese Falcone spoke about how the youth oriented Current TV station that experiments with integrating internet to TV. She currently used the US presidential election as an example how Current teamed with Twitter to bring the two types of media together. This important to know coming into to the industry because it helsp to know the current trends when measuring media usage.

Tweet, Tweet, Tweet

My next article talks about the next step in a social network hierarchy, becoming "Tweetable" which is the highest form of praise that one can receive on Twitter. What does it take to be tweetable? Well according to the article you must add your own insight and value to the community along with breaking news. Another tweetable factor is knowing when your community is online and that way you can deliver to them as soon as possible, keeps you on the cutting edge. Last but not least, since Twitter is a place to post your thoughts keep your messages clutter free and break out from the rest. This was in interesting article because it will help me understand twitter better and how to keep others coming to my posts should I chose to join.

Kiss Off

For my next blog I checked out ADVERBLOG and found an intriguing blog called Don't kiss the Smoker which actually brings you to a advergame called "Kiss Off" where the purpose is to stay away from the characters who are smoking. This game comes to us from New Zealand and brings us a clear and simple to youths: stay away from smoking and smokers because really, at the end off the day do you want to kiss a smoker? I think this company has hit a great insight a tremendous way to get the right message to the right target. Most kids are online playing games anyways so this. Ideas like these will help the industry reach out the the younger generations and bring awareness to them for other issues as well.