My son, God love him, is 15 and in the 10th grade. I recently was told by his teachers that texting during school was a distraction. He has become so sophisticated at texting that even with a broken screen (which I refused to fix, thinking it may resolve the problem) he can text in his pocket without looking at the letters. Now you can imagine how surprised I was to learn from Nancy Giles on CBS Sunday that Jurors and Senators are now twittering during trials and presidential speeches.

In my own experience, at events like AdAge, DPAC, and other industry events it is now common to see monitors that share tweets from audiences who theoretically are paying attention to the presenters or panels.

I went to Catholic school and while I was no angel I can’t imagine what sister Condradine(shown here in the middle of the picture holding her standard issue Smith and Wesson with the rest of her posse) would have done to me if I tried to tweet during my calculus class in the ‘80s.  I mean my buddies Greg, Brian and I had a pretty sophisticated communication system that included passing notes, hand signals and code words to mess around during class.

How I would have loved to have some monitors up in the classroom transmitting 140 character comments about the teacher!

Then of course as you can see they did have a Dirty Harry, "Go ahead, make my day" kind of approach to that stuff that is lacking in today's world.

But what do I tell my millennial son about paying attention in class if our nation’s leaders and jurors can’t keep their hands off their pdas during mission critical moments to send 140 character messages to lord knows who about who knows what? Shouldn't they be paying attention to the matters at hand?

Now in preparation for this article I did a quick google search on nancy's report and it seems like she is taking a little heat from the twitter enthusiasts, one of them even claims tiwtter was responsible for helping overthrow Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan. How can you argue against that?

PS- I am on twitter at http://twitter.com/joshuablair

I attended an interesting presentation earlier this week at the New York chapter of the American Marketing Association.  It was headlined “The Nature of Marketing -- Marketing to the Swarm as Well as The Herd.”

Jeff Swystun, Chief Communications Officer at DDB presented a strong case in support of the hypothesis that today’s marketers need to communicate effectively with two distinct groups:

• The Herd: Jeff explained that the herd is the more traditional consumer base.  – You can show them a compelling 30-second spot and they may passively choose to purchase or engage with your product.

• The Swarm: The swarm, on the other hand is active.  You can’t lead the swarm.  The swarm makes determinations on its own.  The swarm, as described by Jeff, is a batch of regular folks that are using social media to advocate for or agitate against brands, products or organizations. 

The herd might be shrinking but it really isn’t going anywhere.  Meanwhile, the swarm is growing in size, influence and purchasing power.  In 2009, marketers are well schooled in marketing to the herd but are just trying to figure out rules of engagement with the swarm.

What does it take to make the swarm your ally? Jeff pointed out three key ingredients: conviction, collaboration, and creativity. 

• Conviction is really a code word for authenticity.  It’s your wit and/or unique point of view.

• Under the heading of collaboration, he effectively pointed to a case study for Clorox Greenworks, where the household product company teamed with British artist Paul "Moose" Curtis on some very non-traditional advertising (YouTube clip here). 

• Creativity, elusive yet somewhat self-explanatory, was identified as “the most powerful force in business.”

So, effectively marshalling these three core attributes and spinning them to a hypothetical group of influencers is your basic toolkit for taming the swarm.

The problem with this perspective is that it assumes that you’ve got a swarm at your beck and call to begin with.  It’s my belief that with the exception of a number of Prom King Brands, the heavy lifting begins with trying to manufacture your swarm in the first place.  

There’s the occasional situation where a viral video comes out of nowhere and takes the world by storm or someone at the event referenced the Snuggy phenomenon which practically spawned a cult.

However, the reality of today’s environment is that most organizations and brands need to start from square one and grind it out until their own swarms achieve critical mass.  It’s true that social media’s built-in multiplier effect can accelerate the process.  But it’s of crucial importance that companies big and small invest in and experiment with different strategies and tactics on a rolling basis in order to build their swarms one fan at a time, leveraging conviction, collaboration and creativity all along the way.

As the popularity of interactive design has grown over the years, there has been an increasing amount of articles, lectures, tutorials and books devoted to the topic of working harmoniously clients. Follow a few designers out to happy hour one night, and you'll be sure to hear them trade horror stories of clients past, like old soldiers comparing battle wounds. It is an aspect of the industry that has spawned multiple humor websites on the topic, and message boards where designers can go to blow off steam for the amusement (or commiseration) of their comrades.

Whether you are a seasoned marketing manager or the owner of a small business, it can not be ignored that a successful relationship with your designer is a vital ingredient to the eventual success of your campaign. Fear not, oh citizens of the interactive world- I am here to offer, to clients and designers alike, my invaluable primer on dance floor etiquette: 

Rule #1: Lead Us  -  No one knows more about your organization than you do. I remember reading a quote about how to approach a design for a client you are unfamiliar with. It went something like "If you have to design a campaign for a laundromat, the first place to start is inside the laundromat." Design begins at the source, and in the current climate of rapid-fire communications and telecommuting, its often difficult for the designer to make it down to your laundromat. We need to know everything about your organization in order to learn what makes you unique. Chances are we've only just met, and if you're trusting us to tell you're story, make sure we get the story straight.

Rule #2: I Said Lead, Not Carry   -  The single most prevalent gripe you'll hear from any designer is a client who starts dictating the work. "Make this blue", "Move this over", "Hey how about a picture of the skyline?", "NO! not THAT Blue, the other blue!". This is typically due to frustration on the client's part. They aren't seeing progress in the right direction, and are making an attempt to try and help. A good designer is a problem solver - let us know what isn't working and why, and let us develop an intuitive solution.

Rule #3: Don't crowd the dance floor (or, Who Invited THAT guy?)  -  In a recent Salon.com article entitled "10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites", the #8 harsh truth was "Design By Committee Brings Death". It is difficult for us designers to hit a moving target, so it is a blessing when we get to deal with a small group of focused individuals. Too many conflicting opinions on the client side causes chaos, like a mosh pit (do they still have those?). The opposite is too much compromise, and thats how the Electric Slide was created. And that ain't dancin'.

Rule #4: Let Us Lead You  -  Your designer wants your interactive campaign to succeed. Thats right. We design interactive work day in and day out, and we know a thing or two about what might help to make your campaign a success. We could also advise you about possible pitfalls that could lead to less-than-graceful results. Give us a shot and don't lose faith. We want you to be happy. We want to be part of developing super cool content for the web. When it launches, we show it to all our designer friends.

Now, I can only speak for good designers like myself and the design team I'm a part of here at Flightpath. We can tango like the best of em'.

Bill Nussey, President and CEO of Silverpop, a leading email service provider, made some great points in a recent Q&A with eMarketer.  One of his most salient points was the fact that marketers shouldn’t consider their email campaigns in a vacuum. 

According to Nussey, consumers relate to marketing-related email as one big bucket and can typically digest a finite number of emails at any one time.  That means that it’s incumbent upon marketers to insure that their messages and offers remain relevant.  Good methods to insure that this is the case include:

• Surveying recipients regularly to insure that they’re receiving emails they care about at a frequency that works for them. 

• Reviewing performance data often and deleting list members that aren’t opening or clicking-through on your mail. 

Nussey reminds us that, “What you really need to be concerned about is total respondents and total conversion rates, not how big your list is.”

He also points out that well above 90% of all online retailers of all sizes—have an e-mail capture on their Website.

You can read the whole article here: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006951

Flightpath | Strategic Interactive Communications

This was our tagline when we had our company rebranded in 2008. I joined the Flightpath fleet in 2004 when we were Xworld. We specialized in Web Design and Development. Our services then evolved into email marketing and execution services. Then came reporting. Then social media. And then...then what?

Then we, along with the help of Cliff Medney, adapted the tagline "Bringing it to Digital." Emphasize the it. What are we bringing? The digital sphere is evergrowing and so has our product offerings. Yesterday our writing department had a special training session on SEO and writing for the web. We're bringing content to digital. Snazzy designs come from the creative minds of our designers and into Facebook applications and Fan Pages to award-winning online games to social online communities. Our developers take their masterpieces of code - from Java to Javascript to XML to .NET to AJAX - and build the web sites you see on our portfolio. Our Quality Assurance team ensures the product is functionable and meets our standards of excellence. Our Project Managers adapt the processes preached by the PMBoK, manage the team and deliver outstanding products that you interact with today.

All these resources Bring it to Digital.

What a tagline! I'd love to go over in more detail what we do, but I'll save that for another post.

But where did my inspiration come from? Reading Entrepreneur's March 2009 edition's article "Take your tag line from drab to fab" by Gewn Moran (no relation to our editor, Rachel Moran), I think of how our new tagline, amongst other things, makes me feel more excited about the company and what we do. Not only does the tagline give our brand a boost, it gives my confidence a boost and it also stirs up a nice conversation when someone sees it written on my business card.

We're Bringing it to Digital - You'll see.