A post from Paul Barron’s Social Coco briefly sums up where directions in Social Media are going in the very near future and what it means for businesses like restaurants and other service businesses that rely on word of mouth and daily foot traffic. Geo location and social media connections will mean that you can be near a restaurant, get notified that your friends are nearby having a brew, and that should be all you need to say “hey, im going to come too!”
Butler isn’t at Coke to change a billion-dollar brand — he’s there to reconceive the design of 13 billion-dollar brands. Since he arrived in 2004, he has torn down and rebuilt the design strategy at every level of the company. And he has managed this epic list of projects with a low-key but extraordinarily effective strategy: Avoid using the word “design” at all costs.
From reimagining the soda fountain machine found in millions of restaurants worldwide (in a way that sounds absolutely AWESOME), to changing the way the brand THINKS about itself, to building a completely automated self-service collateral engine that allows vendors from all over the world to access Coke approved and branded assets unique to their needs and get them produced quickly and efficiently, Butler seems to be succeeding.
Want to ensure that your social media content is actually being read? Well, then take these tips (0ffered by Lee Odden) on crafting effective headlines to grab your specific audiences interest. Odden outlines 5 strategies he’s seen emerge through his experience as a blogger, social news user, PR pro, and marketer.
Work backwards — Content first, then headline
Leverage archetypes/formulas which work for others (especially outside your niche)
Headlines should be outrageous, engaging, emotional, useful, counter-intuitive, or remarkable — not to the world but to your community
Don’t just create content, actually use social news sites
SEO intersection — frequently forgotten, always vital
To real the list, complete with Odden’s advice, visit his blog on Social Media Today:
A blurb about our second place win in the First Annual Athens Habitat for Humanity ReStore Commercial Contest was featured in the Business Whirl in Sunday’s business section of the Athens Banner-Herald. The full press release is below the YouTube video.
ATHENS, GA – December 16, 2009 – Athens-based advertising agency, Sliced Bread, recently placed second in the First Annual Athens Area Habitat for Humanity ReStore Commercial Contest. The commercial produced by Sliced Bread will air on local TV along with the first-place-winning entry.
The contest, sponsored by Athens Habitat and students in a Leadership class for Management majors in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, was held for the purpose of having a new commercial developed to promote the Habitat ReStore. The ReStore is a thrift store that accepts new and used home furnishings and sells them at up to 90% off retail cost. The ReStore also offers the community an active venue for reusing/recycling building materials and home furnishings that would otherwise be thrown away.
Sliced Bread’s 30-second commercial spot, “Be Our Guest,” is a parody of the song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, and employs stop-motion animation with paper cutouts to illustrate the wide range of items available at the Habitat ReStore.
“We had a great time producing the spot for Habitat,” said Thomas Meimarides, Creative Director at Sliced Bread. “Everyone in the office got involved – the “Be Our Guest” song you hear in the commercial is an a cappella performance by the entire staff!”
Athens-based full service advertising agency, Sliced Bread, strives to develop marketing communications that are the best thing since sliced bread! The firm specializes in marketing, advertising, business development, public relations, graphic design, web design and brand management. For more information about Sliced Bread, call (706) 546-7137, or send an email to info@slicedbreadco.com. Visit us online at www.slicedbreadco.com.
Athens Area Habitat for Humanity
Athens Area Habitat for Humanity, an independent affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International, is an ecumenical, not-for-profit organization dedicated to the elimination of substandard housing in Clarke, Oconee, and Oglethorpe counties in the state of Georgia. The organization was founded in 1988 based on its strong belief that everyone in the Athens community deserves the opportunity to own their own home. Since its inception, Athens Area Habitat for Humanity has built homes in partnership with numerous deserving families in the Athens Area. For more information, visit www.athenshabitat.com.
In a news post by Fast Company author Dan Macsai, apparently the Fla Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee has banned judges from “friending Lawyers on all social networking sites, which would include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and many more. Apparently, it “reasonably conveys to others the impression that these lawyer ‘friends’ are in a special position to influence the judge.”
Argue for or against, I think this is the first step in probably many that these angles will take. Doctors friending clients, attorneys friending clients, etc.
They say it best: A business blog achieves elegance in the same way. It helps accomplish all of the goals listed below with a single thoughtful stream of content. A traditional marketing team would have to address each of these goals with a separate campaign:
1. Improves Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – More links + more content = more relevancy and more searches
2. Social Media Optimization – Cross linking with social media increases traffic and exposure
3. Lead Generation – Interested readers or people that find your post informative will be more likely to contact you when they need your services
4. Educational Value – The more educated people are about things, the better they can execute them or leverage them to their benefit. It also helps you by putting them on the same level as you so that you can work efficiently and towards the same goals.
5. Thought Leadership – See above. Practice what you preach.
6. Nurturing – You’re not only nurturing your clients, your work, and your own brand, but your nurturing the industry and the brand
7. PR – Easy and simple way of getting your info out there, and more friendly than a newspaper.
8. Brand Building – Need i say more?
9. Recruiting – is self explanatory. If you’re blogging about important work or great ideas, its a given that people will want to work for you.
10. Company Communication – Keep your own employees and team members abreast of what you are doing, and what the industry is doing, so that you are all on the same page when it comes to doing the same things for a client.
And they close the argument the best: Yesterday New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote about a Great Inflection in the U.S. economy. He described it as a “mass diffusion of low-cost, high-powered innovation technologies …transforming how business is done.”
Blogging is a powerful, elegant technology at the core of this Great Inflection Friedman describes — and one of the techniques that will help your business get through the Great Recession we’re in the midst of.
So, if you dont yet have a blog, ask us how we can help!
In the October issue of Fast Company, columnist Nancy Lublin, CEO of the non-profit organization Do Something wrote about a recent PR event for her company that she thought had all the right angles. To her dismay, the PR fizzled, and they didn’t get the response or the traction out of the event that they had hoped. Reflecting upon lessons learned, she has some great advice for anyone doing a PR event:
1. Dig for great photos (and get others to help, or crowdsource if you have to: see #5 below)
2. Treat your celebs or exclusive folks as partners or as brand ambassadors. It helps them as much as it helps you.
3. Get free PR by engaging people who already have big followings either in real life or in social media. Let them promote your event, because they can probably reach people you cant.
4. Take care of the staff & people that put it on. they’ll remember you for it later.
5. crowdsource your photos!
6. meet immediately after event and figure out what went wrong, and what went right, and strategize how to get everything together so that you can:
7. follow up: follow up with attendees and media after the event and express what all went well and what was accomplished!
Sliced Bread has launched a new website for Athens Property Management firm Parker & Associates. Starting with an update to their existing logo, Sliced Bread redesigned the website from the ground up to improve user experience and site structure. Amongst the notable changes to functionality, we made it easier to search properties by features or by location using an expanded search feature and an integrated Google Map API. We also created microsites for two of their biggest properties: The Summit of Athens and The Woodlands of Athens to provide even more information about those properties to potential tenants.
Sample View of CMS
For their Association clients, a secure microsite was created to provide each property owner with a calendar of events relevant to their properties, and association documents for their properties such as owner lists, by-laws, association meeting minutes, and other news and documentation.
All aspects of the website are editable via a completely new, custom content management system (CMS) to allow easy updates and additions of new properties, association documentation, or featured property information visible throughout the site.
In an article for Marketing Daily Commentary, Vanessa Horwell outlines her top unpredictions for the coming year. She presents an “anti-forecast” for the PR industry in 2010. Horwell “un”predicts the death of facebook and twitter, the end of blackberry’s and iPhones, as well as the last issue of the New York Times. Obviously by unpredicting all these trends, she is really saying the opposite will really happen. So look to 2010 to be a year full of more social media, more connection, and even more cell phone apps.
Horwell sums up her predictions with the disclaimer: “…all of these unpredictions represent my guess at what’s ahead for the PR industry, and I’m fairly confident that none of the nine headlines above will see the light of day in 2010. Trust me, I’m in PR.”
Sliced Bread has launched the new website for Pensacola, Ft. Walton Beach, and Crestview, Florida attorneys Michles & Booth, PA.
The complete site redesign includes a custom full Content Management System (CMS), Flash Video Avatars which use custom javascript to highlight or activate sub-menus to reference various areas of the site, news article archive and full blog, as well as image arrays for each page, and additional flash video.
An article in a recent issue of Fast Company about 
Sliced Bread has launched the new website for Pensacola, Ft. Walton Beach, and Crestview, Florida attorneys Michles & Booth, PA.