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For your Friday, a few nooks and crannies of the interweb that I found.

MUST READ FOR THE WEEKEND

Washington, We Have A Problem. A day in the life of the president reveals that Barack Obama’s job would be almost unrecognizable to most of his predecessors—thanks to the enormous bureaucracy, congressional paralysis, systemic corruption, and disintegrating media. Inside the West Wing, the author talks toObama’s top advisers about the challenge of playing the Washington game, ugly as it has become, even while their boss insists they find a way to transcend it. Go.

TO READ

5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now. Go.

Skip the check-out lines with your iPhone. Go.

How Do You Win Users with Gadgets? Go.

QR Codes Help Consumers Shop for Wines. Go.

82% of shoppers use their phone in the store. Go.

McDonald’s Netherlands ceases operations on its digital signage network. Go.

Will rebranding baby carrots get kids to eat them like junk food? Go.

TO ENJOY

Stamps of Disapproval Go.

Greatest Invention of The Week: Song stuck in your head? Unstickify it. Go.

The cell phone camera stroboscopic effect, or, a glitch in The Matrix. Go.

Google fun of the day: Google Realtime Go.

Google Fun of the Day part 2: Go to Google, type in elgoog, and hit “I’m feeling lucky.” Go.

The Solar System. To Scale on your browser. Go.

Emotionally intelligent invoice. Go.

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Listening to NPR’s This American Life, Ira Glass and the gang were chronicling the experience of summer camp. About halfway through the program, Glass provided this perspective (Italics are my emphasis):

“Most of this simply has to do with tradition. The special songs and ceremonies are a part of so many American camps, and not just because they’re fun. A camp director in Wisconsin told us. . .that financially, you cannot run a camp without lots of repeat customers. These traditions bring kids back, year after year. You have the kids singing constantly about their loyalty to their cabin-mates and their camp, you let them know about all the extra rites and priveleges and honors they’re going to get if they return as older campers. It is part of making the business run. And, in addition, it is part of what makes camp thrilling. It is using all of the stagecraft that all of the world’s religions have always used, the ceremonies, the chanting, the repeated words, the official honors and offices, but for an entirely secular purpose: to thrill children, to make them feel part of something big and special.”

Three female campers chimed in:

“I think it’s really an important part of camp. . .I like the traditions. . .you know what’s going to happen. You can trust things.”

“It’s expected.”

“I come back for the traditions. I expect everything to be here the way it was last year because that’s the reason I come back. If everything changed, I don’t think I would like it anymore.”

Does your brand do that? Would your customers say this about you?

Episode: “Notes From Camp,” July 4, 2010.

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Me.

Well, I have been “on the speaking circuit” for a while now, but this is a new opportunity to help those who want to succeed with digital signage, digital media, and customer or viewer engagement.

I have created a series of seminars and presentation subjects based on my experiences in digital signage, and can lead half-day or full-day education sessions.

The core of my seminars and speaking is on the strategy, marketing, branding, and advertising side of digital signage, digital interactivity, and viewer engagement. With respect to technology (which I also speak about), once we all have a network, we need to do great things with it. How do you create real impact with digital media? How can you leverage the power of mobile devices with your venue?

That’s where I come in.

I spent 10 years running three networks. I have spent the last year consulting companies from every corner of digital signage on best practices for network management and execution. I have built a network, managed every aspect of its operation, produced content, collaborated with brands, agencies, production houses, and media planners and buyers, developed budgets (and met them!), and measured the network’s effectiveness.

Basically, I have been there and done that.

And that’s what I bring to my seminars and presentations – real-world insight that I believe is needed to help move this ecosystem of multi-channel communication in the right direction.

My practice is to tailor my presentations and seminars to your needs. I have yet to do the same presentation or session twice because no two audiences and needs are the same. While I use foundational topics, I know your time is valuable, so I’ll work with you to outline the important subjects. In the end, you get a targeted and unique session with takeaways that send you forward with your initiatives.

Please navigate over to my new section of this site, or click on the “About Paul” button on the right. You can learn all about my speaking and seminar services. You can also see some of my experience and testimonials from event and seminar planners, and industry leaders who have heard me speak.

I’m really thrilled to offer this. If you’re interested to learn more about how I can help you, please contact me.

Thank you so much.

(We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled blogging next week.)

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This is a terrific way to get people engaged with a brand. And Kraft and MonsterMedia took the essence of the product – the elbow macaroni – and created a fun and engaging interactive. Very well done.

But here’s the problem. This doesn’t sell Mac and Cheese. That’s the point. Right?

These interactive screens were placed around the country (Chicago, New York, LA) in high traffic areas. And it looks like it got a lot of audience engagement. But did it sell any Mac and Cheese? Here are three reasons why this is a challenge:

Where Can I Buy? One of the most important tenets with digital engagement is the viewer’s ability to act upon what she has just experienced. The takeaway here is not the smile, it’s the brand impression. She needs to move that impression forward on the path to purchase. But if she can’t, the impression is lost as soon as the next bright, shiny object enters her field of view.

There Is No Takeaway. Unlike the Smile Happy Ice Cream campaign that Unilever created, this doesn’t give the viewer any takeaway, like the product, or a coupon, or a QR code for their mobile device to really open the gates of communication. With an immediate return, the customer connects the impression with the result – the product or access to it. This creates an indelible mark on the viewer’s mindset, and provides marketers with real data on the success of the device.

Using a Shotgun When You Need a Sniper Rifle. These were placed in high traffic areas to get viewer engagement, but I’m willing to bet that a large percentage of the people who interacted with it aren’t really Mac and Cheese fans. Sure, you’ll get a massive amount of people who will try it, making the numbers sexy, but if those viewers are not customers of Kraft or Mac and Cheese, it’s an inefficient execution. The value of each impression is much lower because of the high traffic strategy.

In the end, someone has to pay for this (yes, I know it’s the customer, but bear with me). As these devices become more prevalent in our culture, so too will the need to justify the expense on the marketing budget to create and deploy them. This is advertising, and advertising is made to get people to buy. If they don’t buy, these devices are no more than costly wet noodles.

Ba dum dum.

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It’s a must read for anyone who works in digital media, regardless of whether you think this is an industry or not, and it’s vital for anyone that considers marketing part of his or her professional function.

The book provides “10 rules for digital marketing success in an anytime, everywhere world.” Rick calls them rules, but they are more like 10 methods for digital marketing. He doesn’t tell you how to do it, instead he gives you understanding on why multiple channels of engagement are important for marketing in what he (rightfully) calls the “now media” culture – a smart way to approach this since technology makes things invented yesterday obsolete. If these were truly “how-to” rules, the book would be out of date before it hit the shelves. It’s not really a business book, but a series of observations on the various degrees of digital engagement, and how brands can better understand and harness the power of branding in a “pull vs. push” culture.

It’s not enough to just know that the other channels – online and mobile engagement to name a couple – exist, but to know how these channels work and affect one another in the ecosystem of consumer engagement. Each rule is valuable in gaining greater understanding of impact. Right off the bat, he starts with “Insight Comes Before Inspiration,” where he very clearly shows that, like all marketing efforts, you must know the customer, and that you can’t really move forward until you do (something I have been preaching forever). He continues by showing that every channel of engagement deserves its own contextual approach, meaning you can’t re-purpose content for another channel (AMEN).

The book is loaded with current and relevant case studies. I have heard of almost every one of them, and I saw most of them in a new way when reading how they were developed and deployed. The beautiful part is that if you are unaware of any of these, there’s a very good chance you can find them online.

Rule 9, “Always Keep Surprises In-Store,” Focuses heavily on the in-store environment, and brings much of the previous eight rules together as a point of execution. Rick writes about ‘Social Retailing,’ the idea of bringing online experiences into the retail environment to enhance the product shopping experience. And he stresses that this kind of interactive engagement will require a new partnership between brands and retailers (again, something I have been preaching for a long time).

A fabulous feature of the book are the interviews Rick conducts with some industry heavyweights, including Laura Klauberg, Senior Vice President of global media at Unilever (“So it’s really about being in tune with the culture, and then finding the points where there might be a great intersection of a brand and what’s important to customers.”) to Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter + Bogusky (“…the consumer – whether you embrace it or not – is involved in the creation of your brand.”) to Tom Nicholson, the CEO and founder of LBi IconNicholson and the ‘Father of Social Retailing’ (“The place where individual product brands can play [a role] is in creating experiences tied to the mobile device-services that consumers will want to access when they are in a physical store environment.”).

Klauberg, Bogusky, and Nicholson. The Engagement All-Stars

This book is loaded with practical and comprehensible insight, and belongs on every marketer’s list to read. Reading this before too long will even prepare marketers better for the coming holiday season, when consumers will hit the stores and websites even harder with greater demand on those brands that want to engage them at those levels. My copy of the book is completely dog-eared, post-it marked, and highlighted with several places where I can leverage his insight in teaching clients about digital media in a digital culture.

Rick provides a companion site to the the book: GENWOW, where you can read more about digital marketing and listen to interviews with other industry leaders. I suggest you subscribe to his RSS feed as well.

Go read this. Now. Before everyone else does and beats you to the customer.

You can buy the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders.

Read my other book reviews:

• Noise Wars by Robert Freedman
• Sound Business by Julian Treasure
• Unleashing the Power of Digital Signage by Keith Kelsen
• Why We Buy by Paco Underhill

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