It’s official! I’ve joined Fleishman-Hillard’s digital team in Dallas.

This decision happened rather quickly, in fact I accepted the offer to join the talented FH Digital team right before the New Year and last week I rolled up my sleeves and joined the crew in Dallas.

Fleishman-Hillard is a global public relations, public affairs and marketing communications company. The digital team in Dallas is guiding some of the world’s largest brands through the space where digital marketing, social media and mobile are converging. The opportunity to dig in and join great minds like Matt Dickman, Brad Mays and Mike Cearley was one that I couldn’t pass up.

For anyone that has been following this blog from its beginning, this news shouldn’t be much of a surprise. The topics of discussion here have been edging more and more into how technology is changing the rules for how brands, well… do everything.

Stay tuned for more exciting things coming down the pipe! And if you’re in Dallas, let’s connect.

This is something I think we really started to see come to life with Twitter and the evolving network of connections it provides. We are able to maintain loose connections with large groups of people around a number of different interests. For example, I’m connected with people on Twitter around a very eclectic set of topics: branding, social media, music mashups, location (Oklahoma City), mountain biking, and other topics might be on my mind.

Some have argued that these loose connections don’t provide as much value that a smaller community that is focused around a specific problem or topic can provide, especially when it comes to solving problems or making something happen. And I agree totally, but I also think that the value of Twitter comes from the way it creates serendipitous crossroads of opportunity for us to connect with others we may never have come into contact with otherwise.

It’s amazing to watch Twitter, which is seemingly unorganized, to see how people cluster together in discussions around ideas.

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Have you found value in loose connections?

How often have these connections developed into something greater?

There is a lot great content on the web. (Understatement of the year.)

Everyday I wade through piles of RSS feeds, funneling blog posts and the long list of various industry and client-related keywords that I track into one spot. And everyday I come across some really cool stuff, stuff that I find valuable in some way. Whether it be an interesting case study, a informational slide deck, or an original and creative marketing approach, I take it in, store it, if I think I might want to reference it later and then share it if I think you will find it valuable.

If you are following me on Twitter (@freshpeel) you probably see some of this content, because I share a good portion of it there.

A few months back I started a posterous account to collect and share more of these chunks of content with you. I’ve found posterous to be the perfect place to record and share slide decks, infographics, videos and content that doesn’t need much, if any additional commentary. It’s become a new bucket for me share things of value.

If you haven’t already, please check it out. And I hope it will be a nice accompaniment to the content you find here at the Fresh Peel.

Subscribe to my posterous

Jeff Brenman, of Apollo Ideas, adds his thoughts in a presentation about the future of work and they are a nice continuation to the future of work discussion.

Here are a few key points from Jeff’s deck.

The future of work is…

• Transparent – Your activities will be tracked, measured and tied to the bottom line.
• Flat – Location won’t matter.
• Competitive – No one is going to pay you for a degree. Performance matters.
• On Demand – There is no guarantee of a lifetime career.
• YOU.

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Also, check out why Cubes are Evil.

I’m a believer in the idea that the way we work – the freedoms or restraints we put on ourselves when we work – has a large impact on the results that we produce, or in some cases, the results that we fail to produce. This is a topic I’ve explored this topic before with The Future of Work: Interview Series.

As our world shifts in the way that information is shared and how we are connected to one another, the way organizations function internally and externally is being forced to adapt as well. Organizations that have been quick to embrace new methodologies are reaping the benefits. You don’t have to look any further than companies like Google or Best Buy to see that there are other ways to get things done than the typical 9 to 5 cube format.

Mollie Partesotti and Ben Alter are two communications strategists that are tackling the problems in how we work for their master’s thesis project at the VCU Brandcenter. The project is a video series called Cubes Are Evil. They explain:

“We as a society need to reconsider what contributes towards and takes away from productivity.”

So far they have done just that. There are two videos in the series so far, with more to come. Watch below.

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Mollie and Ben’s work on Cubes Are Evil has me contemplating bringing back the Future of Work Interviews for a second round.

If I did that who should I interview this time?

What aspects of work should we focus on?

Alan Wolk over at The Toad Stool, pointed to this meme resurrection, as he was one of the first to participate last year. Since I didn’t participate, I wanted to give it a go this time around.

Here’s my brand timeline.

Isn’t it fascinating how many things you can learn about a person just by knowing what brands they use. You can probably look at my timeline and make some accurate guesstimations as to what my typical day looks like.

Now it’s your turn.

Create your own brand timeline and share it in the comments. The William Burk Agency has created a web application to make the process a lot easier. Click the start button below to get going.

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(A side note: It’s interesting to see how some things on the internet come and go in waves, a lot like fashion trends that come back around every few generations.)

If you want to gain insights in what the future holds, ask them.

For most of my readers there isn’t anything shocking about the kids preferences, in fact you’ve seen dozens of charts like the one below, illustrating generational shifts in media habits. But what I find quite revealing is their excitement for the internet and what they do while they are online. When asked, “which is more fun? Internet or TV?” Without skipping a beat they shout, “internet!” and then laugh because they unintentionally said the same thing in unison.

Other comments from the kids make it clear that they don’t have anything against TV programming itself but want to do more with what the media they consume than sit and watch like kids of past generations.

So what’s next for TV? If the opinions of these kids are any indication of what’s to come, we can expect to see television evolve into something that is less passive, more interactive and on-demand.

What do you think the future of TV holds?

(Video via: Hard Knox Life)

One of these projects will come to life tomorrow night, Thrusday May 14th. If you will be in the Oklahoma City area or are within driving distance, I hope that you will attend a blowout tweetup that will that will be hosted at the Iguana Mexican Grill from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM.

There will be two great speakers and tons of great prizes to give away. Currently we have right at 200 people registered for the event so you can be sure to meet lots of new and interesting people. Register to attend and find out more information at OKCtweetup.com

If I haven’t sold you yet, maybe my friend and weblebrity Ronald Jenkees can persuade you.

The Post2Post bus has just pulled in!

The Fresh Peel is pleased to welcome Marty Neumeier, brand consultant author of a number of the popular whiteboard overview business books, The Brand Gap, Zag, and now The Designful Company, which is the featured book for April’s stop on the Post2Post Virtual Book Tour.

It’s been very exciting for me to interview Marty because his work has done a lot to shape my own thoughts and methods when working with clients. Not only that, one quick search for on this blog for “Marty Neumeier” will show you how often ideas from his books and from content produced by his company, Neutron, inspires and shapes my thoughts here.

In this interview with Marty, we touch on a few of concepts from The Designful Company.

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Q: You open up The Designful Company with the idea that, “We’ve been getting better and better at a management model that’s getting wronger and wronger.” What’s wrong with the way companies are managed?

Marty: The management model we’ve been using is based on the cold mechanics of the assembly line. The assembly line was successful partly because it turned a blind eye to morality, emotions, and human aspiration—all the better to make your competitors and customers lose, so you can win. We’ve spent the last century making minor tweaks to this same narrow idea of success.

But now we’re finding that innovation without emotion is uninteresting, products without aesthetics are uncompelling, brands without meaning are undesirable, and companies without ethics are unsustainable. We need a new management model that replaces the win-lose nature of the assembly line with the win-win nature of the network. I call the new model “the designful company.” It harnesses broad-based creativity to build a culture of nonstop innovation.

Q: How must the traditional views of design and designer be redefined in order for a company to build a culture of nonstop innovation?

Marty: We need to get past our view of the designer as a shaper of objects. The dictionary defines a designer as someone who plans an artifact or system of artifacts—in other words, the “posters and toasters” of the 20th century. This is too narrow. I prefer Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon’s definition: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” In this definition, design is a way of thinking, and anyone in the company can be a designer, including the CEO.

Design thinking is about refusing to accept the easy answer. It’s about imagining new possibilities that weren’t on the table before, and prototyping those possibilities so they can be tested. It’s the difference between “deciding” the way forward and “designing” the way forward. Deciding only works in a stable market where innovation is a low priority.

Q:  In what areas of business can design thinking be leveraged?

Marty: Well, of course, communications and products—the aforementioned posters and toasters—are still important, and can be designed a lot better. But we can move design thinking up the ladder to more important levels, such as brand strategy, end-to-end customer experience, organizational design, decision-making, business models, and corporate vision. When we apply design thinking to these questions, we get even more bang for the buck.

 Q: How does design thinking lead to a culture of innovation?

Marty: Design thinking creates the process and vocabulary for a designful company. It runs on human qualities such as empathy, intuition, imagination, and idealism, which in turn lead to customer focus, holistic problem solving, innovative ideas, and extraordinary quality. The overall advantage that a culture of innovation gives you is enterprise agility. It allows the company to maneuver as a single entity.

Q: Looking at Interbrand’s Best Global Brands list, are there any that standout as designful, innovative companies?

Marty: Not as many as there should be. I would say IBM, Disney, Google, BMW, Apple, Nike, and IKEA are designful companies. But Coca-Cola, Microsoft, GE, and Cisco are not so designful.

Interbrand’s formula seems to be a rear-view assessment of brand value. I’d like to see a formula that gives more weight to the momentum of a brand, which would offer a better predictor for a brand’s future value. Y&R, for example, has a formula called the Brand Asset Valuator, which takes into consideration a brand’s “energy.” Designful companies are full of energy.

Q: What will the fate be for brands that fail to fully embrace design thinking?

Marty: Generally speaking, they’ll find their products and services will become increasingly commoditized and even obsolete as their competitors race ahead.

Q: You discuss the importance of collaboration within companies, but what opportunities do you see for companies to collaborate with groups (i.e., consumers) outside the company walls? What about online collaboration?

Marty: The web is actually the technology that unleashed collaboration. I’ve always said that we don’t live in the Information Age—we live in the Collaboration Age. The web has allowed people to work together across distances in real time for almost no money.

This new connectedness has also made it necessary to work together, because there’s no place to hide in a network. Customers now know things about brands and companies that even their employees don’t know. Customers are literally running the show. So it makes sense to enlist them as a functioning part of the brand machinery. I love how Skittles has turned their website into a forum for customer opinion. What they get in return for their transparency is a direct view into their customers’ brains, plus extra credit for having confidence in their brand.

Q: In a designful company what is the attitude towards failure?

Marty: Designful companies embrace failure as a learning step. Companies with a traditional “deciding” mindset are uncomfortable with failure, since they expect to be successful immediately. The only way be successful immediately, however, is to make small, safe moves.

Q: Please explain the stage-gate innovation model and its purpose.

Marty: Stage-gate innovation allows you to make big, bold moves by turning innovation into a journey. It was pioneered years ago by oil-drilling companies to minimize investment risk. Later it was adopted by venture capitalists for the same reason. The concept is that you start with a large crop of bold ideas, then invest increasing amounts at each stage for the ones that pass muster. Only one or two ideas make it through the funnel, but they’ve been de-risked without having to compromise their boldness.

(Click to view a larger version)

Q: When it comes to measuring a potentially innovative project as it moves through the stage-gate process, what metrics should we use to determine if it should move to the next stage?

Marty: It depends on whether it’s a product, a business model, a strategy, and whatever. For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s a product. In the first stage, you might create a prototype and measure customer excitement. At the next stage you could measure usability. At the next stage you could test various price points. And so on, until you’re satisfied that you have a winner.

The beauty of the design process is that you can test assumptions quickly and cheaply, so that you never have to play it safe. Playing it safe is the most dangerous thing you can do in a time of fast-moving markets and leap-frogging innovation.

Going forward, the bottom line is this: If you want to innovate, you’ve got to design.

Thanks Marty!

Click through to view the video

Be sure to connect with me on Facebook, “the electronic friendship generator” if you haven’t already.

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(Via: Six Pixels of Separation)

Whether you’re a Guitar Hero Rock God, or if the extent of your gaming experience goes about as far as a game of computerized solitaire, it’s time to get to know the video gaming industry and it’s full potential.

Gaming has evolved quite a bit over the decades. The gaming industry of today is far what it was in the days of Pong and Arkanoid, but it’s some of the more recent developments that marketers should take note of.

With advancements in the interactive experience of gaming, previously separate areas of life are now starting to overlap with the gaming world. Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band are on fire because of the way they bring the culture of the music industry into gaming. Not only can you listen to some of your favorite rock music, but you can become a member of the band and interact with the music experience in ways you never could before. I imagine games embracing Hip/Hop and Rap cultures aren’t far behind.

Nintendo’s Wii Fit is an even better example, as it fuses together activities that were previously thought to be in conflict, video games and physical fitness, and creates a seamless step-by-step program for anyone wanting to improve their physical health.

Things really start to get interesting when you imagine the possibilities for how other sections of life could overlap the gaming industry.

• What’s keeping Apple and Nike+ from adding a level of game play to their community for runners?
• How long before major food brands like Kraft or Nabisco create a game that mashes the world of cooking with gaming? (featuring branded recipes of course)
• Why couldn’t gaming platforms be leveraged as training methods for Do-it-Yourselfers?

We’re moving closer and closer towards a connected way of life. Only the brands that understand this will survive, and you can be certain that gaming will play a large role in that life.

A Short History

So you want to get to know the video game industry? Start with this video by Kyle Downes, which artfully presents a short visual history of video games.  

(Via: PSFK)

A few more facts and figures about the gaming industry:

• CNBC gives their account of how the video game industry went from Pong and PacMan to a $27.5 billion industry.
• Video game advertising alone has a projected value at $1 to $2 billion.
• Gaming isn’t just for teens. 50% of American men and women play video games.
• The struggling music industry places bets on gaming.

You don’t have to look any further than the Christmas pickle if you want a seasonal example of how the evolution of myths and stories around a brand, can drive word of mouth, and in this case has create some unusual family traditions.

Legend has it, that after the tree is completely decorated, the pickle ornament was hung by parents deep in the branches of the Christmas tree where only the most observant of the children could find it. The first child to find the pickle would receive a special treat or extra present.

There are numerous variations on this myth. Some say it is of German origin, others Bavarian-American. But regardless of where the story originated or how the story is told, it’s the ongoing evolution of the story and the mysterious details that keeps it alive and well.

And as the Firehouse agency in Dallas has exhibited, take a folk tradition and mix it with popular culture, and you get something hilariously bizarre. (Thanks Zack)

(Click to watch The Carol of the Christmas Pickle)

Merry Christmas Peelers!

(View YouTube Video)

• The fight for attention isn’t just between Brands anymore. Now the voices of consumers are demanding attention as well.
  
• We all have a voice, but if everyone is talking, who is listening?
• Is it time for brands to do less talking and more listening? (Listening followed by action of course.)
  

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(Via: John Winsor)

Have a Fresh Halloween!

(Via: The Responsible Marketing Blog)

During the Olympics I wrote of Speedo’s overwhelming dominance at the event despite a minor goggle malfunction. Through the brand’s connection to historic champion Michael Phelps and successes of other swimmers wearing their signature LZR suit, Speedo gained a lot of valuable exposure and interest in their clearly superior suit.

This month, Speedo started taking preorders for the $550 consumer version of the LZR. There’s no word yet on how many orders they have received so far, but the white parkas are flying off the shelves. You know the big white robe-like coat that Michael Phelps wore before and after races? The parkas were never intended for retail but were quickly rushed to production after a large consumer demand.

To add an interesting twist into the mix Rob Walker, in the NY Times, explores the motivation behind someone who actually purchases one of these parkas and then the subliminal affects it can produce.

It’s not as if the material you wrap yourself in before and after a race can affect your performance, right? Walker cites a recent research study conducted at Duke University to imply that it very well could.

Walker states,

Thus he suggests even a Speedo jacket might actually have a functional payoff — but only when you stop thinking about it. “The trick is, the first time you wore the warm-up parka,” it wouldn’t have any effect, he says. “Because you’d realize, Oh I’m being ridiculous.” Wear it often enough, though, and you’ll probably stop ruminating about it. “Below the level of conscious awareness, you’d put the jacket on, and what’s activated in your mind is maybe Michael Phelps going very fast,” he continues. “And those things could actually kick up your motivation to go faster.”

Last year we had the comic illustration of the islands of social media to meet our entertainment and educational needs. This year, an even wider net was thrown with the creation of Web Trends Map 3, which covers the web’s most highly trafficked sites, social media and beyond (and it looks a lot like a map of New York’s subway system).

I’ve found it to be a great resource for quick scanning. True enthusiasts can even get their hands on a full version 33.25in x 46.75in poster.

(Via: Pure Thinking)

(Feeds click here)

On a similar note, if you thought that Porsche’s moving into SUV’s was a bad idea. What about this?

I mean, Segways are known for their speed after all. And if anything could give Segway more relevance to consumers, a limited edition, more expensive Ferrari model will definitely do the trick. (Please tell me you sense my written sarcasm.)

Here are some interesting facts about the ole’ US of A, and Independence Day. Not surprisingly, China has a hand in producing for the festivities.

• In July 1776, there was an estimated 2.5 million people living in the newly independent nation. (Historical Statistics of the U.S.)
• On this July Fourth, there is an estimated population of 304 million living in the United States. (Population Clock)
• In 2007, $4.7 million in American flags were imported into the United States. The majority, $4.3 million, were made in China. (Foreign Trade Statistics)
• Also in 2007, $1.2 million in U.S. flags were exported from the United States to Mexico. (Foreign Trade Statistics)
• China exported $217 million in fireworks to the United States in 2007. (Foreign Trade Statistics)

Have a safe and happy holiday!

What about when the sound of car doors slamming is set to music ?

  Via: adgoodness

Feed Readers Click Through for the juice.

The farmer in says, “you can’t go wrong with a good idea.”

What do you think? Will ideas alone be enough to keep advertising and marketing agencies alive?

Via: PSFK