I just returned from an overnight trip and was reminded how awesome in-flight literature is. Without SkyMall, we likely wouldn't have Doggie Thundershirts or Branded Steaks. And without airline magazine ads, we likely wouldn't know that freakishly ripped old man, or how to negotiate anything with anyone. I love reading these ads.  They give me a glimpse of what print advertising was like in its earliest days, when you took every square inch to load as much detail about how your product truly could deliver features and benefits no other product could. And what better time to engross someone in hormone optimization or dental surgery than when they're trapped in a cramped seat on an airplane?

I'm particularly fascinated by ads for professional matchmakers - no, not for my own personal use (I adore my wife of 9+ years). I have to acknowledge that what we (agencies) do is not that different from what they do. It's Just Lunch and Valenti international are my two favorites. Their goal is simply to put the right two people together and bring out the best that each has to offer the other, so they have the best chance of developing a long-term relationship (whatever they determine that might be). These matchmakers apply their expertise in understanding what people value, love, want and need from another person. They advise them on how to accentuate their attractiveness while still being themselves. And they coordinate a first date at the right place and time and situation where the two can really get to know each other and decide how much they want out of the relationship.  

Isn't that our job too? To help clients understand how to be the best version of themselves to attract long-term relationships with the right people (customers), and enable them to interact in interesting and meaningful ways?

I'd love to see how these matchmaking companies really go about this, and what agencies could learn from their approach. I just have to convince my wife I'm doing it for 'research purposes.'

Technically it was called a pre-event networking mixer, but everyone was drinking for free at Neptunes in Raleigh so it felt more like a party.

On February 17, Raleigh-Durham programmers, designers, e-book publishers and advertising peeps mingled, talked about the SXSW sessions we are hoping to attend, how to get around Austin and the immensity of the conference itself. SXSW interactive veterans were hounded for advice, and one SXSW representative gave practical tips like “wear comfortable shoes.” But she ended the official Q&A time with “Prepare your liver!”

Yeah, I was there. And there's a photo on the SXSW website to prove it.

Unfortunately I was not wearing a McKinney T-shirt. Fortunately I was able to achieve some liver preparation that night. Oh, and network.

We live in the land of mobile. So, how do you optimize your site for a mobile experience? The leading operating systems are Android and iOS. The catch is that Androids run on different devices, which in turn, have different specs. Let's talk about how to quickly get to the lowest common denominator.

Specs for the Apple iOS are easy enough. The screen size is 320x480. Just remember that iPhone4 has retina display, so the ppi (pixels per inch) is much higher than previous devices, 326 ppi vs. 163 ppi for iPhone 3GS. There is support for scaling here, but remember your user. Do you really want them to zoom into every text block to read? Or would you rather have them easily scan through text and scroll at their leisure?

How about Android? Yes, it's layered on lots of different devices, but the operating system has common support for sizes and densities.

• A set of four generalized sizes: small, normal, large, and xlarge
• A set of four generalized densities: ldpi (low), mdpi (medium), hdpi (high), and xhdpi (extra high)

Refer to the developer site for full info.

How do these specs match up? I'd recommend designing to 320x480, which matches both iOS and the "medium" Android screen size. No more than 160 dpi. I hope this quickstart is helpful for someone else. There's a lot of information that's rapidly changing. I'd encourage you to target a few devices and operating systems that you think your target uses.

A few months back a couple of us were talking about getting emails sharing cool stuff that we had seen via twitter weeks before.

We thought it would be cool if we could find a way to use twitter to discover these subjects as they become popular and share them in an interesting way much sooner. So we created a small site for people that are either too busy or don't want to be on twitter. 

Enter Crows Nest - a simple tool that collects tweets from a curated list of 300 active ad/ design/ tech influencers, and automatically creates a top ten list of URLs in almost real time. It's not perfect but for the most part the links are pretty interesting.

By filtering twitter content carefully we think we can create more tools that make the content more relevant to the individual. (btw this is something Evan Williams has talked about as one of Twitter's 2011 priorities). We hope you find it useful and would love to hear feedback.

No, not the late baseball great. The other one.  The more popular one. This one:

Enough has been said about the lessons he teaches all people: never give up, use your talents, blah blah.

I want to thank him for what he's taught advertisers and marketers: that quickly acting on a strong gut instinct far outweighs not doing anything at all.

I first saw the now-famous clip on YouTube on Tuesday of this week.  It had roughly 500K hits, if I remember correctly.  Before that video got into the millions, some smart people (mainly with the Cleveland Cavs, CP+B and Kraft) acted quickly. They saw an opportunity to help him and themselves. They didn't overanalyze it.  They didn't put it through weeks of qual and quant testing. They just, well, did it. I bet a lot of the confidence to pull the trigger came from knowing exactly who they are and what their brand stands for.

And I guarantee that more people will be interested in seeing more Kraft ads, listening to more Cavs' broadcasts (or whatever team hires him), and anything else he's involved with in the near future. 

Have you ever wondered why "provoke" is one of our five words? What exactly are we trying to provoke? In what ways are we trying to be provocative?

I am so glad you asked.

We are in the business of being provocative. Sometimes simply in the interest of creating a stir, yes. But more often we are trying to provoke connections between brands and consumers. The reason we say "provoke" is that much, much more often than not people simply aren't waiting around to be "informed" about a brand's products, goods or services. It would certainly make life easier if they were (but maybe less interesting and less profitable for us).

No, unfortunately it's not that easy. We need to earn consumers' permission to inform them. We must entertain and engage them (provoke a reaction, a response, a reason to give a shit) in order to gain the right to inform them. They must be PROVOKED. Once we have gained permission to inform consumers we need to keep doing so in entertaining and engaging ways. We need to keep the conversation interesting. You've certainly heard the old saw, "people don't read advertising they read what interests them and sometimes that's an ad." Never more true than now. But even more than being entertaining or engaging for the sake of informing we MUST provoke irrational connections to brands.

Why "irrational?" Because people simply don't make decisions about what brand of car to drive or shoes to wear, insurance to use or paint to paint with (or whom to marry for that matter) based on "rational" thinking. Human beings make decisions based on emotion. All decisions. Quite often those decisions are quickly buttressed by "rational" thoughts - it's safe, it's less costly, it's close to where I live, it has a new technology. But those things are used simply to support their desires.

So provoke irrational connections. Make them love. Surprise and delight them as Becky Minervino would say. Enrapture them, tickle them, excite them, make them cry. Entertain and engage. MAKE THEM FEEL SOMETHING! Think about that when you are doing work. Do you FEEL anything? Poked in the funny bone, punctured in the heart, stimulated in the cerebral cortex? If you don't, why would anyone else?

Let's Make 2011 The Year of Provocation.

McKinney Account Planner Hank Leber shared another thought-provoking video today.  It's worth 4 min of your time (link if below doesn't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU)

Two thoughts about this:

1) I love thinking of ideas & hunches as turtles, and not something rushed and temporary like, say, fireworks.

2) I also think the biggest challenge to Johnson's notion is ownership.  

If we think of ideas as “ours,” we treat them like possessions – and for the most part, humans don’t share our most prized possessions with others.  

If we think of ourselves as stewards of ideas, we’re not only open to collision/collaboration/connectivity, but we actually yearn to share them.  Credit becomes an afterthought - we just want to see them be born and develop in whatever beautiful ways they become. That's what we enjoy most.

The new McKinney.com provides a real-time, real-world example.  The site itself is great, but perhaps even better are the conversations it's sparking about simplicity and openness. Thanks in large part to a yearning to share ideas, both internally at McKinney and externally with the world at large.

Another in the deep well of “easier said than done” thoughts, but that's why we're in this business.

Last night our own Nick Jones started a firestorm when with a single tweet drove nearly 100,000 visitors to his site, www.narrowdesign.com/future, in about 24 hours.

His revelation was our inspiration - to design a website for McKinney that demonstrated our understanding of user experience and the massive move to mobile happening in the world.

Now, David Teicher of ADAGE has called out a number of agencies who's mobile sites are varying degrees of usable, jumbled or inaccessible.  The retweets and blog posts are growing too fast to count.  What an amazing reminder of the absolutely true power of social media.

http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=145956

Our desire to simply create a better user experience for more people on more screens has turned into a rally cry for the entire industry!

Well done, McKinney.

Here's Project Leader Grace Tarrant grace-ing (hahahahaha, I slay me!) us with a terrible joke.

Recently, three companies have begun to explore the value of a social network. The big questions is, who cares?

Well, I think I might if it get’s me free shit.

Our friends over at Freedom & Partners just launched PushKart, a new software platform that analyzes your social network and assigns you a social net worth.

They claim to have a custom algorithm that works behind the scenes to look at various elements of your online social life – sounds like voodoo to me. But I like magic, so read on.

To determine your value, PushKart looks at the size of your social network, the types of conversations you have and how active you are. The software even analyzes what conversations are most relevant to your social network —I guess the idea being that if the chatter in your network slants to technology, tech brands would be most relevant to you and your network?

Eventually, PushKart will likely enable brands to ask you to be advocates for them. In return you will get access to a special deal or an enhanced deal. PushKart’s premise is: you tell friends --> unlock deals --> enjoy rewards.  It’s simple and pretty cool  – it’s still very much in beta and they are looking for help and ideas.

Another company we have partnered with recently is Vitrue. They have launched the social page evaluator.  It attempts to measure ROI for brands who have created a facebook fan page.  I ran the Travelocity page through and it stacked up pretty well against other brands.

Virtue’s evaluator includes a couple interesting bits of functionality. Like ‘fan-tasize,’ which is a configuration tool that lets you see what your page could be worth. Plus, a compare tool that lets you look at how a brand stacks up against other brands.  There is also a nice tips section for creating and managing a brand page. Social Evaluator 

Yet another cool product is being developed here in our back yard, Argyle Social.  I attended a VC event the other week and caught wind of their offering – a way to measure social media effectiveness.  Argyle received a grant from NC IDEA in January this year to start developing their social platform.  Hopefully they will be stopping by at the agency next week so we can exchange ideas.

Now is trend time for these types of tools as people grasp for new ways to deliver and measure social media campaigns.  There are plenty of expensive Rolls Royce platforms that claim to measure all this stuff but I expect to see the innovation and new products come from smaller more progressive companies.

What do you think? Can you place a value on a social network?