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So you built a website and it seems to do everything you need. Then someone points out that it looks pretty terrible on a phone, so you build a mobile website. Then you realize that it isn’t optimized for touch screens and doesn’t work on an iPad, so you build an iPad version. Then you get a memo from the Chairman asking why it doesn’t work right on his wife’s new Kindle Fire, and your sales director calls and says it looks terrible on his Mac Mini, which he is viewing on his 42” living room TV, and then…well, you get the idea.

The moral of the story is that the one thing you can count on in our technology drenched world is change, which is why you need a better way to approach creating things for digital channels.  That better way is called Responsive Web Design. Not very catchy, but as you’ll see in a minute, the name pretty much sums it up. Continue Reading

You’ve probably seen the commercials Samsung and AT&T have been running lately for the Galaxy Note – Is it a phone? Is it a tablet? – luckily for me it was a money maker. I bought the “phone” a month or two ago, and honestly I really dig it – but that’s probably a topic for another blog entry.

Timing would have it that Samsung announced a developer challenge shortly after my purchase – with a crazy development turnaround time of a month – and of course I didn’t hear about it until a week after the contest was announced. During those remaining 3 weeks I had a vacation in Vegas planned on top of my already busy work and personal life schedule (which includes a 15 month old). On top of that I’d never personally developed for Android before, hadn’t coded in Java in about 10 years, and wasn’t familiar with Eclipse either. It also looked like the only time I would have was 2 weekends – before and after my Vegas vacation - and maybe a few weeknights if I was lucky. So, of course I went after it – cash prizes can be quite a motivator.

I ended up working two weekends of long hours trying to learn Android, the Samsung S-Pen SDK, and write an entire game from scratch. I ended up working two 25 hour weekends and a handful of super-late nights (thanks to my lovely wife watching our son). In the end I submitted my app at 1:30am in the morning on the Monday due date – needless to say I was worn out. After having felt burned in my last developer contest a few years ago, I doubted my sanity in killing myself trying to compete in something like this again. Now I just had to wait ~20 days to find out the results.

As it turns out, I placed 2nd in the contest. Honestly, when you win $50k you still feel like you won 1st place. Of course Uncle Sam is going to want his $20k, but I can’t complain. In the end it was all worth it, and of course now I have the time to go back and really learn how to develop properly for Android vs hack at it for a crazy deadline.

As someone who doesn’t code all day for a living anymore, this was quite a challenge – and one I really enjoyed. The contest was powered via ChallengePost.com, which has a bunch of other challenges for those interested. Over this last weekend Samsung announced another contest – this one with $4 million in prizes – guess I better start resting up.

I first met Dick when I was producing the Marconi Awards, the Emmys for radio. Dick agreed to be the host and can you imagine a better host for anything? The next year he came back and hosted them again and that was where I saw what he was really made of.

It was a jam packed program of music and luminaries all working for the good of the radio industry. So when the road manager of Tower of Power demanded cash for his band to go party after the show, I said no, we didn’t have any cash. I then didn’t think of it again until we discovered the road manager, upset at the lack of party favors, had shut down all of the sound computers for Kenny Loggins, who was next up. In the 25 minutes it took to boot the computers back up again, Dick took to the stage to save the day.  He proceeded to regale the black tie audience with wonderful stories of the music and radio industry people he had met over his already illustrious career. He was so engaging that when Kenny was ready go on again no one wanted Dick to stop. It turned out to be the highlight of the evening. Continue Reading

PRYOR, Oklahoma – If you’re looking for a perfect lesson in how to master CRM in the digital age drop by the Mid-America Grill, along U.S. Highway 69, more than 250 miles from the nearest big city. You can also get a pretty good New York Strip while you’re there.

I certainly wasn’t looking for marketing strategy when I ran into the grill. Actually I was trying to escape a hellacious Oklahoma thunderstorm, the kind where the sky takes on unnatural colors and the rain is moving sideways. But what I got was a lesson on how easy it really can be to connect with your customers. Continue Reading

You’ve got to feel for professionals in the financial services industry. All the world is talking about the power of social media for marketing professional services, but there is a seeming mountain of regulations standing between them and an active Facebook page.

And yet who better to ride the wave of social media than a breed of individuals who have the ability to talk to people about the most sensitive issue we have, money. The problem is there’s a very tricky line that financial services professionals have to toe or risk falling into a world of trouble.

The Wall Street Journal defined the line quite nicely.

“It’s one thing for a baker to crow about his cupcakes on Facebook or for an athlete to talk trash about an opponent on Twitter. It’s something else entirely for an adviser to talk business online; there are rules, after all, that govern advisers’ public communications, to protect investors from being misled. And nuance—so crucial when discussing money and investing—can be lost in the social-media world.” Continue Reading

Last summer, IQ’s Strategy team was joined by a superstar intern named Travis Chambers. He came with great ideas and was an incredibly hard worker who diligently tweeted and called Internet celebs to promote our Web IQ Quiz. As awesome as the quiz was, it wasn’t easy to get the viral activity we hoped for. We learned the lesson we tell clients when they ask: You don’t decide whether someone goes viral or not, people do.

And through Travis, we’re seeing that lesson at work again in the explosive popularity of a simple video he and his wife posted to share with family. You may have seen his story on Good Morning America this morning or numerous other places, but he was nice enough to give me the chance to interview him for the IQ blog. Like I said, he’s a great guy.

Emily: So, start from the beginning. You filmed a funny conversations between you and your wife. What made you post it to YouTube?

Travis: We posted the video youtube together to show Chelsea’s brother. We have a great relationship with her brothers and it was a safe and loving environment where everyone was able to understand the context of the video and the teasing. With things that were going on we forgot to make the video private and forgot about it for three months. We’re pretty sure it went on with 7 views for months, my feed had minimal traffic and we never could have imagined this would happen. I honestly think getting struck by lightning was more likely than this happening. I would never ever subject Chelsea to public ridicule, I take protecting her very seriously, it has hurt me deeply that this ability escaped me when the video went viral. I didn’t promote the video, someone found it and promoted it. Continue Reading

We created the deck above on Slideshare to help explain Pinterest, show how brands are using it, and provide a few recommendations that we hope help you.

Pinterest is growing fast and is particularly powerful as a traffic referral source for retail (mostly clothing) brands. But how should your brand be using it?

We’ve fielded this question from a few clients and wanted to cut through the hype to the real promise of Pinterest for marketers. And since our clients are not clothing brands, we wanted think more broadly about the type of customer interaction and engagement possible through the service. Continue Reading

Savvy brands will seize the opportunity to swear off banner advertising in favor of building engagement with users on Facebook’s platform.

Facebook has established itself as a powerhouse of marketing for brands around the world. But it has provided brands relatively few tools to build meaningful connection with the more than 845 million users. Ad formats are small with minimal room for branding and measurement is restricted to a few metrics that Facebook opts to report.

To date, most of the innovation demonstrated by brands on Facebook has come from adapting formats and tools created for fans wanting to share the source of their enthusiasm. That is changing now as Facebook brings its new timeline format to brands. Indeed, the very nature of the new timeline format provides platform for brands to build powerful new ties with their advocates and reach out to new fans. Continue Reading

Mike Kruzeniski is a Creative Director at Microsoft, working in the Windows Phone design studio. He recently posted on his blog his top 12 favorite Metro design Windows Phone applications, based on visual design style. His top picks include Kindle, Bank of America, Evernote, DC Comics, Flickr, and the New York Times. Kruzeniski’s list includes examples of the great work going on in the Windows Phone and Windows 8 space. Check out a few snapshots below and even more from Kruzeniski’s site http://kruzeniski.com/

At the top of Kruzeniski’s list (although I don’t think order was relevant) were two of my favorite and most used iPhone applications: Kindle and Bank of America. All of the brands in the list have noteworthy applications on competitor platforms. I find the Metro design versions fresh and visually more appealing than the iPhone or Android counterparts. What do you think? Continue Reading

4 things I learned last week @ AgileUX NYC 2012 and IxDA New York and NYC-CHI Present: New and Up and Coming Rapid Wireframing and Prototyping Tools