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I’ve been MIA for a while now, because my wife just gave birth to the latest member of our family, Kaela Ruth.  Our new daughter is incredibly beautiful and keeping me very busy.

I started this post a few weeks ago, and decided to finish it today while in the Atlanta airport.  I watched this great Google Tech Talk video in which Merlin Mann of 43 Folders fame talks about how to better manage your email.  The upside of me not blogging for a month is that I’ve had 30+ days to put these habits into practice, and let me tell you, it’s changed my digital lifestyle for the better.

The video is excellent, but it’s 60 minutes long.  If you’d like the highlights and my opinion, then read on.

Here are seven philosophical points about the “whys” of controlling your email, rather than letting your email control you.

1. Knowledge workers make money by turning knowledge and information into value.  You can’t effectively do this if your time is all tied up in pointless emails.
2. Where you decide to put your time and attention says a lot about who you are.
3. “Time and attention are finite, but demands on your time and attention are infinite”.  You have to filter out what gets attention and what gets ignored.
4. Never check your email without “processing to zero” - actually doing something with the email you receive rather than merely “checking it”. In sum, you have to look at every piece of email in your inbox whenever you check your email, and you have to decide what to do with it. Not necessarily respond to every piece, but you have to make a decision about each and every one.
5. Once you’ve gotten the info that you’ve needed to from the email, it’s useless to you. Get rid of it!
6. Make your system as simple as you can stand it.
7. If you’re not in customer service or some other extremely time-sensitive email situation, then turn off your email app and only check your email once an hour, or less if possible. As much as you can, try to reduce the number of times you check it.

Mann then asserts that there are most 5 options that you have for processing a given email:

1. Delete it! (or archive it if it’s really something worth saving).
2. Delegate it. If you tell someone else to do it, set a reminder to yourself to ensure that it in fact took place.
3. Respond to it. This is a tough one for me to follow, because I’m a writer. But email isn’t the place to debut my next philosophical tirade. Mr. Mann suggests placing a line in your footer that states, “I will not write any email longer than 5 sentences”. If nobody reads long blog posts anymore, certainly in a business context no one reads long emails anymore. If it’s that long of a response, then schedule a meeting.
4. Defer it (will need a response, but could take additional time). I don’t know if I like this one. At least in my world, I can respond to most emails fairly quickly.
5. Do it. If something requires action from you, just get it done. If you can’t do it right now, schedule a meeting or reminder for it, and then it’s taken care of.

This has truly helped me to tame my inbox and to stop using it as a reminder system.  I was very guilty of reading the emails when I didn’t have time to respond to them.

Anyways, it’s good to be back.  I still have no idea why Google still refuses to index my blog, so I may go ahead and move it from a Wordpress platform to something else, or redesign it and see what happens.  At any rate, it’s not like I’m selling ads or anything, so I’ll keep writing for now.

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May 22nd has been a deadline that has been staring me in the face for the last 7 weeks, starting with the signing of a proposal I wrote. Today is the launch of the “reskinned” HunterFan.com. It has been an ambitious journey, reskinning an entire site, plus completely designing and building 3 micro-sites for the same customer, all in less than 2 months! I’m proud of the work our excellent creative team has done, and I truly get fulfilled watching a project go from conception to completion. It was also cool to witness some hardcore legerdemain (YES! I used that word in real life!) by our programming staff to resolve server-side issues I won’t even pretend to comprehend.

The new homepage is much, much cleaner than the old version, and it has a variety of ways that a customer can navigate to the same information. As you can see, our client is really making a move to embrace the new green color, which I think works very well on the live site.

All we had time to do in this phase is redesign the homepage, add a few features, and add a new look and feel to the interior pages - still a huge improvement over the previous site. Of course, now comes the real work: Phase 2. Phase 2 will bring this site up to a new standard. Stay tuned!

Someone on LinkedIn asked the question, “What are the top 5 things you are thinking about in eMarketing? I responded to her, and I thought I’d share with you the top 5 things on my mind:

1. Valuation of Social Media users - how can you determine their worth to an organization?
2. Engagement - how can you ensure online audiences are genuinely engaged with the brand, both on- and offline?
3. Analytics - eMarketing is unique in that with the proper analytics one can easily measure true ROI on a campaign, rather than nebulous “impressions”
4. Permission-based mobile marketing - mobile marketing is great, but without gaining the permission of the users, it’s just expensive spam and an ineffective marketing tool.
5. Convergence - no, not the buzzword of the late 1990’s, but the idea that people’s lives and technology are becoming increasingly inseparable and in some cases, wholly integrated. A marketer can take advantage of this by facilitating conversations and interactions the user is already interested in.

Last minute changes, client “re-orgs”, agency reviews, new management, etc., it all happens to everyone involved in an agency on a regular basis. Those headaches, major as they are, will never go away. I think every creative person has spent immeasurable hours complaining about how non-ideal most situations are for developing great creative concepts. But that’s why I love this new phrase, which has been making its rounds throughout boardrooms and conference rooms all across America:

“It is what it is”

Loosely translated, it means “look, you creative and/or overly concerned person, I/you can’t change certain aspects about our situation - let’s focus on a solution rather than on the problem”. In the past few months, I’ve made quite a few comments on the business speak and buzzwords of our industry. Indeed, if you Google “marketing buzzwords” you’ll come up with hundreds of thousands of websites dedicated to tracking the somewhat ridiculous sayings that we creative people make up in order to add some spice to our everyday conversations. n-tara even made our holiday video from last year satirizing marketing-speak by parodying a 1970’s infomercial.

Generally speaking (pun, pathetically, intended), I have little use for most of this jargon, although I certainly am guilty of using it in a pinch with clients. One phrase, however, has been slowly gathering steam in our industry and I find it to be actually useful. It is what it is. Got difficulties? Get over them. Change what you can change, otherwise focus on creating a solution and getting the job done.

And because I like you folks, that motivational seminar is on the house.

Advertisers can get such a bad rap in the name of trying to better the world, can’t we? A recent CNN article details some innovative (and presumably cost-effective) new ad placement technologies that Microsoft is developing for online applications. Of course, because it has to do with advertising and with Microsoft, all new technology must be “scary”.

What they are talking about actually sounded really cool to me. Check out this excerpt regarding the new role of advertising in streaming video going forward:

Microsoft — along with Google Inc. and other competitors — is also hard at work on new ways for companies to advertise their brands to Web surfers watching video clips.

One crunched a clip, looking for the most appropriate stretch of time and spot on the screen for an advertiser’s “bug,” or logo. For example, if a car company wanted to show its logo for 10 seconds in the bottom-right-hand corner of the screen, the computer program would find the 10 seconds in which the logo interferes least with the action in the video.

Another used speech recognition to make a transcript of a video, then served up ads — in the demonstration, they were text links — alongside the video. As the topics discussed on screen changed, so did the ads.

The third program scanned a video for surfaces where ads or product images could be inserted later. The demo showed how the same frames could display a Coke ad one moment and a Pepsi ad the next, without having to reshoot the video.

This isn’t scary to me…it’s exciting for a couple of reasons.  First, inserting bugs or other visual content into videos is already highly annoying, so any technology that reduces how obtrusive those elements are is great with me.  Second, we’re all looking for ads to be more relevant to us - both advertisers and consumers.  Most people are at best disinterested in an ad that is irrelevant to them, at worst they are downright offended.  I remember watching an episode of “Dirty Jobs” online at Discovery.com, and every single online ad was for a “regenerating facemask”cream that I had absolutely no use for (this did, however, confirm for me that there must be a lot of middle-aged women watching Dirty Jobs, or there was a totally inept media buyer for the facemask company.).

How much better would your media consumption experience be if it were personalized to you?  Every other aspect of consumerism is heading this direction, and with good reason, because we’re all unique as people.  Ads finally catching up with this isn’t “scary smart” to me, it’s refreshing.

Debuting during the Super Bowl (and what a Super Bowl it was!), Coke’s new ads got my ad-sensibilities as tingly as Mitt Romney in a Utah primary. Gone were the ridiculous, “soft branding” tactics of bubbly music and roller-skating hotties, and in were a couple of ads that really get to the heart of who Coca-Cola undeniably represents worldwide today: America, and her uncanny ability to be the melting pot of the world.The spot with Democrat James Carville and former Senator Bill Frist is definitely my favorite. What other soft drink brand could make the claim to bring disparate people together and not be totally laughed at? Sure, Pepsi tastes better, but globally the world revolves around Coke. Overall, I was disappointed with the rest of the Super Bowl ads. Sure, it’s easy to be critical when my client’s $2.7 Million isn’t on the table, but I was pretty shocked at the overall mediocrity of the ads. Most disappointing to me (besides the horrific salesgenie.com ads) was the fact that several companies tried to bank on the success of a previous idea rather than coming up with something original. During the Bowl, I spotted the following:

• Audi R8 – parody of The Godfather “horse head” scene
• Budweiser – gratuitous use of the Rocky theme song
• Bud Light – “Breathing Fire” spot is a direct rip-off from the DQ and Taco Bell “breathing fire” commercials
• Diet Pepsi Max – ripoff of Saturday Night Live “Night at the Roxbury” sketch
• Life Water - ripoff of Thriller, with a dancing girl

I use the term “ripoff” and “parody” loosely, just to conserve words. What I’m talking about is using an existing, popular idea instead of a new idea in order to sell your product. Sure, it’s great to make your ad buck go the extra mile in today’s congested, information-laden airwaves, but using iconic, if not the classiest, entertainment parodies to promote your brand doesn’t seem that valuable to me. It was also unusual that only a couple of advertisers decided to push a website along with their ad (Tide and Doriotos).

Either way, even though USA Today would disagree with me, I think Coca-Cola won the day. And I’m pretty non-biased because I only drink a soft drink about once a month, and it’s usually a Pepsi product =).

Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent posted an article today that also contains some interesting perspectives on consumer pricing. Evidently, according to a study reported on by the Economist, people who pay more for something enjoy it more. Imagine that.

But what’s really interesting is that if you tell someone something is expensive, even if it isn’t, they will enjoy it more than if you tell them that it’s something cheap. My guess is that Freud would have predicted that, but it’s still interesting to see a legit study that backs this concept up.

So, if I were a seller, I’d immediately do three things.

1. Raise all prices on any goods that are not staples and/or have percieved value aside from necessity
2. “Precise up” all prices and eliminate all round numbers
3. Hire some really good marketers

And as a buyer, I’m going to immediately do three things:

1. Disregard an exact price and haggle anyways
2. Ignore most marketing that I didn’t sign up for
3. Look for social media and user-generated content to guide my purchasing decisions

On a side note, I just recently found out that the Economist isn’t about the economy. It’s about a bunch of different topics economized into one magazine. It’s well written and a good read, too.

A recent study completed by the Social Science Research Network confirms another quirk of human behavior that is sure to get marketers’ attention. Evidently, if something is priced with an exact dollar amount (e.g., $1174 vs $1100), people are much less likely to debate the price. Indeed, the study found that if the price were “precise”, retailers and sellers could raise the price and people would be more likely to pay it without debating than if a round number were selected instead. People will actually pay more and ask fewer questions if the price isn’t a round number!

This, however, is my favorite part of the study (which, by the way, could benefit greatly from a table of contents and a better layout…ahh..science):

“These results have important substantive implications for buyers and sellers (and their agents). Buyers (and their agents) should be more cautious in their price magnitude judgments in light of our results. Sellers (and their agents) can strategically “precise up” their prices, i.e. choose a higher precise price rather than a lower round price.”

Behold the power of the information age. This is one case where knowing more will really pay off. I know that I certainly won’t look at a price of $150 the same way again.

High-five to these guys for bringing the study to my attention. Thanks!

David Armano of “Logic + Emotion,” the quintessential web 2.0 blog, has a great post today about what he calls reducing the “signal to noise” ratio in his life for 2008. He cites an example of someone leaving Facebook due to the unwanted complexity it has added to his life.  The burden of the “noise” outweighed the value of the “signal” he was able (or willing) to consume.

This is precisely why I do not have a MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter account. I love how the social and information revolutions have dramatically impacted the way in which people can communicate with each other, but the information and relational overload that I experience at times leaves me wanting to unplug my life from the constant din of information and to return to a slower pace. I did this last weekend while camping with some very close friends; it was wonderful.

Here’s the deal: human beings were never designed, whether you believe they evolved or were created, to maintain so many relationships as are possible in our current situation. Excluding the past 90-100 years of the history of humanity, people more or less could only maintain relationships within their geographical boundaries. Then the telegraph, telephone, radio, and television allowed individuals to maintain their social networks over distances, but with the exception of some uber-geek Ham Radio operators, no one could create a new social network that didn’t directly correlate with their geographical location.

I have a hard enough time keeping up with the people in my life that I can actually see and touch, let alone maintaining meaningful relationships with those I care about the most. I like LinkedIn’s signal to noise ratio, because it’s a less intrusive networking tool and not something that really encumbers me with too much data.

Is this approach right for everyone? No way. But we each have to choose what is most important us, and use our “bandwidth” for information appropriately. I’m a pretty outgoing guy, but I’d much rather have 10 real relationships with people I can truly connect with than to waste my time trading micro-bits of information with 100 people.

What works for you?

What will Gates do next?

So, if you were the richest man in the world, knew lots and lots of famous people, had virtually unlimited resources, and had spent the last 50+ years of your life being completely serious, what would you do with your last keynote speech at the company you started? Check out what Bill did (or rather, Bill’s PR and Marketing departments?)…it’s pretty funny.

And yes, for the grammatically inclined, you do place an apostrophe “s” after singular nouns that end in “s”.  I looked it up.