Sundog

Stop Using Digital - Use Film!

lon.keller@sundog.net (Lon Keller) — 2014-03-04T18:30:41+00:00

I recently found myself looking back at some old TV advertising. Here’s a (now) humorous spot promoting Vivitar film cameras. Perfect for people afraid of all those computers and wires and stuff!

Olympic Advertising Wins With Women

lynlee.espeseth@sundoginteractive.com (Lynlee Espeseth) — 2014-02-28T23:34:21+00:00

During the Olympics, an average of 21.4 million people tuned in per night. While down from recent games, that is still a lot of viewers. Numbers also spiked during popular events, such as hockey games and figure skating.

Considering how many people watch, and how long the games go, Olympic advertising has become a big deal. While not as hyped as an event like the Super Bowl, it is still something many companies deem important, due to the long-term captive audience they have at their disposal.

Women are usually not portrayed very well in advertising during big events. Only recently has Super Bowl advertising started embracing the women who watch, and even then, it could be considered baby steps.

Compared to these other events, the Olympics won big time when it came to making impressive ads featuring women. Though some came at the detriment of dads, many featured women in strong, take-charge roles that we usually don’t see in the media.

Take this ad, from Visa, featuring the voice of Amelia Earhart and ski jumper Sarah Hendrickson:

This ad, from GE, ran frequently:

As did this ad, from COVERGIRL:

These are great examples of where companies can go with their marketing to women. Visa and COVERGIRL made it obvious that they were talking about empowering women. They used successful women, including successful female athletes (who have frequently faced adversity throughout history) to tell the story of how women can overcome challenges and prove people wrong. Visa’s ad doesn’t have very much to do with its product, it is much more of an emotional appeal. COVERGIRL’s ad is more product focused, but it does a good job of not giving out a contradicting message. Rather than attempting to say that beauty products don’t matter, they blend the concepts of being both strong and powerful, and “easy, breezy, beautiful.”

The GE commercial is more subtle, but no less purposeful. Women are needed in the STEM industry, and the commercial’s constant repeating of the phrase “my mom, my mom, my mom,” makes a strong point about the amazing work women can do in the field.

Showing women as strong and successful shouldn’t be a unique concept, and yet it is rarely seen in advertisements, particularly those shown during big events. Companies who chose to showcase strong women in their Olympic messages likely attracted more female fans and customers, and furthered the idea that women’s achievements should be celebrated just like anyone else’s.

Finding Creative Inspiration - 5 sites to inspire you

rob.burke@sundoginteractive.com (Rob Burke) — 2014-02-28T21:26:20+00:00

We all hit that slump in our creativity from time to time. When you feel you have nothing new to try and wonder if you are still good at what you do. Well for those times the best remedy is to look back at some of your best work and to look closely at what some of the best are creating now. I find that Fromupnorth is the best place for me to find inspiration or a new trick to try, but below are five site you can use to view some truly inspiring work.

From Up North has amazing work to find your drive; from print to motion graphics.

Dribble is a place for artists to showcase their work and get feedback. So don’t just look, but join the community!

You The Designer has great inspiration in the form of interviews and lifestyle posts.

Adfreak from Adweek shows off their choices of the weeks best and WORST ads. So if you need to see some work worse than your own, check this out.

Grain Edit is a great blog showcasing some inspiring work.

What are some sites you use to be inspired?

Why Did Olympic Advertising Leave Dads In The Dust?

lynlee.espeseth@sundoginteractive.com (Lynlee Espeseth) — 2014-02-28T19:05:17+00:00

The way media portrays dads has long been a point of concern. Making dads out to be bumbling, stumbling fools who can’t figure out how to get their kids dressed, much less instill values in them, is an out-of-date stereotype that doesn’t fit with modern parenthood anymore. If there is one redeeming quality in the portrayal of fathers, it involves sports. Dads play catch in the front yard, cheer the loudest at soccer games, and coach little league.

When you consider our long history of embracing dads as champions of their athletic children, it makes some Olympic marketing, particularly that done by Procter and Gamble, really confusing.

The company’s ads during the Olympics were titled “Pick Them Back Up,” and featured touching images of moms helping their children get to the elite Olympic level:

Similar ads were run during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London:

P&G / Best Job from Karl Lieberman on Vimeo.

All of the ads include the tagline “Thank you, mom.”

Stay-at-home-dad and blogger Andy Hinds wrote an interesting article about how problematic these ads are. P&G all but eliminated dads from the picture, suggesting that they do nothing to help their children grow as athletes. It’s particularly strange (and hurtful) because for many dads, that was the one area where the media gave them some credit. As Mr. Hinds goes on to talk about, the reality is that many Olympic athletes were raised by single dads, are coached by their dads, or at least had dads who were incredibly supportive as their children pursued their dreams. So, why not “Thank you, families” or some other such phrase that could acknowledge the many, many people who give up time, money, and their own personal needs to help Olympians reach their goals?

The most likely explanation makes sense, and is difficult to deny. Moms (or women in general) are the major purchasers of the household goods P&G sells. It’s smart to market to them, just like it’s smart to market just about anything, from cars to stocks to shoes, to them. On that front, P&G wins. And indeed, the ads win on many fronts. They create an enormous amount of good will towards the brand, largely because the campaign doesn’t just sell stuff, it also helps pay for moms to attend the Olympics and hosts them in style, something that is cost prohibitive for many families.

But, as dads discussed these issues, they brought to light a very important point. These ads are about so much more than what P&G sells. That’s what makes them such incredible ads. They are about us as people, us as a society, triumphing over adversity, incredible feats of athleticism, and what it takes to make it to the top. That’s also what makes them so dangerous. When we leave dads out of such a powerful message, it sends a very clear message about what we think of them. And the message is that we don’t.

Award-Winning Digital Signage

shawn.tennyson@sundog.net (Shawn Tennyson) — 2014-02-28T15:55:39+00:00

It’s awards season, so why not celebrate some truly creative digital signage executions from 2013? Recently, Digital Signage Expo, the international conference and trade show dedicated exclusively to digital signage, interactive technology and digital out-of-home networks, announced its Apex and Content Awards for 2014. Below are some of the more innovative winners:

In the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation Division, a Gold Award was presented to Crayola Experience created by GestureTek Systems, Inc.

“GestureTek created ‘Art Alive!’ a permanent installation for the new Crayola Experience, a hands-on family attraction, in Easton Pennsylvania. Crayola Experience’s objective was to promote, encourage and inspire creative self-expression in kids of all ages through their 21 hands-on attractions. One way to encourage this creativity was through ‘Art Alive!, a digital creative experience that utilized an existing Crayola app called Crayola DigiTools which allows children to create with the latest technology. By marrying Crayola DigiTools with GestureTek capabilities, it allowed digital creations to come alive in a larger than life way that was unprecedented.”

MaxMedia was presented a Gold in Retail, for content created for the AT&T Michigan Avenue Flagship Store Lifestyle Walls.

“The Michigan Avenue Flagship Store experience is more theme park than a product and service store. Our purpose is to enhance the architecture and in-store experience to provide a reflection of AT&T’s mantra of ‘It’s what you do with what we do’. AT&T provides an enhanced life experience through mobility and our intent is to reflect how our customers live in the modern world with the freedom to stay connected from anywhere, any place.”

Kbs + Spies & Assassins was presented the Apex Award of the Year and the Content Award of the Year for their BMW i: A Window Into the Near Future.

“The BMW i Window Into The Near Future digitally transforms passing cars into the all-electric BMW i3 and plug-in hybrid BMW i8 Concept vehicles — and showcases our vision for the future of mobility. The window also calculates how much money would be saved and how many tons of CO2 emissions we can reduce annually if each transformed car were all-electric. BMW i vehicles will be on the road in late 2013.”

What’s Your Content Rallying Cry?

dean.froslie@sundog.net (Dean Froslie) — 2014-02-28T03:18:41+00:00

In “The Advantage,” his book on the power of organizational health, Patrick Lencioni writes about the power of a thematic goal – or, as he calls it, the Rallying Cry.

A rallying cry helps an organization identify what’s most important right now. Lencioni believes that every organization can (and should) establish a rallying cry, even when it isn’t in crisis.

He describes a rallying cry as singular, qualitative (no specific numbers attached to it) and temporary. In his words, a rallying cry should answer a question: If we accomplish only one thing during the next [x] months, what should it be? It offers clarity around how and where to spend time, energy and resources.

Although Lencioni writes about the power of an organizational rallying cry, the concept also has value and application for content strategy. If you’re a content creator within your organization, you may struggle to look beyond the day-to-day, week-to-week tactics and priorities. A rallying cry can help you think a little bigger, bring more strategic thinking to your work, and sharpen your efforts.

Some possible content rallying cries:

Assessment
Inventory your existing content
Conduct a qualitative analysis
Perform a competitive analysis

Audiences
Talk to your audiences and learn about their needs
Make content more user-centered

Structure
Shore up your SEO tactics
Plan your mobile content strategy

Messaging
Fine-tune your brand’s key messages
Bring more consistency across your content channels

Governance
Overhaul your internal content processes
Create stronger style standards

Finding your content rallying cry – even if you’re a team of one – might be the spark you need to build a stronger, rejuvenated content strategy.

SUNDOG SPOTLIGHT: MATTHEW M.

dani.krolak@sundog.net (Dani Krolak) — 2014-02-26T19:25:52+00:00

This guy knows how to impress when it comes to his fellow Sundoggers. You may know him as the fella who brought in dozens of donuts on his first day, but he’s also an avid sports lover and one heck of a dad. (Not to mention, he’s an overachiever when it comes to answering questions for this edition of the Sundog Spotlight.) Meet Matthew McGarry.

Position at Sundog:
I will be working as a Business Analyst providing value-added business solutions for the customer to maximize ROI.

Work experience:
I come from the Caterpillar Remanufacturing Drivetrain facility based in West Fargo, ND as an Information Technology Analyst. I held this position for a little over 8 years, and due to the smaller size of the local facility, I was responsible for anything and everything ‘IT’. Outside of the local responsibilities, I also held the role as Caterpillar’s Enterprise SharePoint Administrator, Primary Project Manager of the CRDL Production System rollout, and all Inter-forest Active Directory Migrations across the North American Region.

Favorite thing about being a ‘Dogger:
The culture here is amazing and everyone is so friendly. That may be because I bought them all donuts on my first day, but only time will tell.

First impression of Sundog:
It’s just an overall fun place to be.

What brought you to Fargo:
I think it was a 1983 Buick Riviera

Best spot inside Sundog’s space:
The fireplace in the Zen

Best way to spend the weekend:
With friends and family…preferably at the lake…with an ice cold Michelob Golden Light!

How you get inspired:
By pretty much everything around me and positive people.

Things that make you go “hmmm”:
We wear diapers as we come into this world and wear them on our way out.

Last concert you went to:
Justin Timberlake – It was phenomenal!

Go-to beverage:
Tall glass of ice water

Celebrity crush:
Candice Swanepoel

Tell us about your family:
We put the fun in dysfunctional.

Guilty Pleasure:
Mountain Dew

Currently obsessing over:
Candice Swanepoel

Thing you can’t live without:
My iPhone

Favorite TV show:
Sons of Anarchy and 24 are in a first place tie

Dream vacation spot:
Greece

Thing you collect:
Knowledge

Song you’re listening to on repeat:
Aloe Blacc – “The Man”

Most recent purchase:
New clothes

What you’re doing when you’re not at the office:
I’m probably at a sporting event for my son and/or just for fun.

Weirdest thing at your desk:
Me

Zodiac symbol:
Taurus

Nicknames we ought to know:
‘Lil Groove

Industry trend you’re most interested in:
Kickstarter Campaigns

Secret power you wish you had:
Reading peoples’ minds

Advice you have for students looking to get in the business:
Stay up to date with technology trends and understand all aspects of the business.

Thing that makes you cringe:
Bad spelling and grammar (ie. The use of their, there and they’re)

Most prized possession:
A full head mount of the first deer I got at the age of 14

Favorite Restaurant:
Red Pepper

And, because sharing is caring, you’ll leave our readers with…
Be yourself: everyone else is already taken.

Beautiful Branding Versus Messy Missteps

lynlee.espeseth@sundoginteractive.com (Lynlee Espeseth) — 2014-02-25T21:41:10+00:00

During the 2013 Super Bowl, after the power unexpectedly went out, Oreo tweeted this:

It was an example of what a perfectly spontaneous, branded moment can be. It looked like Oreo, it felt like Oreo, and it became one of the most buzzed about moments of the night.

Compare that to the 2014 Super Bowl, when J.C. Penney started sending out a series of bizarre tweets that made some wonder if an intoxicated social media manager was behind the keyboard:

It turned out the company was just promoting their Team USA mittens ahead of the Olympics, and the typos were supposed to represent tweeting with those mittens on.

This also gained a lot of attention during the Super Bowl, but most everyone was left confused, not inspired. Was there a drunken social media manager about to get fired? Was J.C. Penney hacked? None of it made much sense, and it did nothing to really connect followers to the brand.

The differences between Oreo’s viral Super Bowl moment and J.C. Penny’s are interesting, because they speak to something much bigger about each brand.

Oreo sales are booming across the globe, despite a society that puts value on the all natural, organic, and fat free. Compare that to the ongoing store closures J.C. Penney continues to face.

Oreo knows who they are, and because they know exactly who they are they can instantly make the most of every possible advertising moment. They have used their cookie imagery to support everything from gay rights to Star Wars to Labor Day, and their quirky, happy messages make the brand something innovative and fun, even though they are, at the end of the day, just a cookie.

J.C. Penney lacks an image that is truly theirs. They stated that they wanted to create their own Oreo moment, rather than wait for that moment to come to them, but it wound up being an example of how a company with no clear brand can’t create a beautiful branded moment, no matter how planned or intentional it was.

The moral of the Oreo versus J.C. Penney story? A great branded moment takes a lot more than a great copywriter and designer (although those things are integral too). It takes a brand that has been empowered from top to bottom to create a consistently great, brave, and engaging brand experience. It takes a willingness to take risks, and the ability to make those risks work. Most of all, it takes a brand that can make every interaction, from Facebook to packaging to emails to websites work as one, so everyone knows what they are getting with the brand, and more importantly, they want to get it. That is what makes branding so integral to sales, and why Oreos booms while J.C. Penny busts.

Integrating Salesforce and LinkedIn

terry.luschen@sundoginteractive.com (Terry Luschen) — 2014-02-25T17:07:24+00:00

Salesforce and LinkedIn already have some integrations that can be leveraged from the AppExchange at Salesforce.

1) LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Salesforce can be found here. This app costs users $39 a month and is created by LinkedIn itself.
2) Ebsta for LinkedIn can be found here. This one seems to have a cost only if you want to update the Salesforce data within LinkedIn. This app appears to keep the user in LinkedIn and then will query Salesforce to see if there is a match.
3) Ecquire - Add Contacts from LinkedIn with One Click can be found here. This one costs $19 per user per month and the integration also works from the LinkedIn side. The user clicks a button in LinkedIn and the data is sent to Salesforce.
4) Redkite Connector - This one is no longer available because of changes to the API with LinkedIn, but it seemed to have been a very popular AppExchange download for a while.

So these are just a few of the off-the-shelf tools that are trying to integrate Salesforce and LinkedIn for you. But what if you want to do something custom? I will walk you through a few steps to get you started.

1) Sign up for a Salesforce and LinkedIn account.
2) Sign into the LinkedIn developer account at: https://developer.linkedin.com/
3) Under your name in the upper-right corner click on ‘API Keys’
4) Click on ‘Add New Application’
5) Fill out the form and click on ‘Add Application’
6) You will get a confirmation page that includes your API Key, Secret Key, OAuth User Token and OAuth User Secret
7) One thing to note right away is that this basic LinkedIn application has limits on it for the number of calls. If you click on the ‘VIEW API USAGE’ link you will see your daily limits.
8) Now everything is setup so that we can write the integration code for LinkedIn in Apex.
9) The first step in the OAuth sequence is to call a LinkedIn endpoint passing your API Key and the redirect_uri among other things. Basically, you are sending the user to LinkedIn where the user will login and then grant access to your LinkedIn application. LinkedIn will then pass back an Authorization Code on the query string to the URL that was passed in the ‘redirect_uri’ parameter. Here is some simple Apex code to make this call.


public PageReference newAuthorizationCode(){
 	string APIKey = getMyAPIKey();  //Store the API key in a custom setting
 	/*
 		https://www.linkedin.com/uas/oauth2/authorization?response_type=code
                                           &client_id=YOUR_API_KEY
                                           &scope=SCOPE
                                           &state=STATE
                                           &redirect_uri=YOUR_REDIRECT_URI
        */
        
        string state = 'Anything you want returned to you'; //This state value will be passed back on redirect_uri
        string myEndPoint = '';
        string redirectPage = 'https://na6.salesforce.com/apex/LinkedInReturn';
        string scope = 'r_basicprofile r_fullprofile r_emailaddress r_network r_contactinfo rw_nus rw_groups w_messages';
        redirectPage = EncodingUtil.urlEncode(redirectPage, 'UTF-8');
        scope = EncodingUtil.urlEncode(scope, 'UTF-8');
        state = EncodingUtil.urlEncode(state, 'UTF-8');
        myEndPoint = 'https://www.linkedin.com/uas/oauth2/authorization?';
        myEndPoint += 'response_type=code';
        myEndPoint += '&client_id=' + APIKey;
        myEndPoint += '&scope=' + scope;
        myEndPoint += '&state=' + state;
        myEndPoint += '&redirect_uri=' + redirectPage;
        
        PageReference pr = new PageReference(myEndPoint);
	return pr;
 }

The scope parameter is important as that specifies what access the caller should have when accessing the LinkedIn API.

10) Now you need to add code to the ‘LinkedInReturn’ Visualforce page in order to get the Authorization Code off of the URL. The Authorization Code will come back in the ‘code’ query string so you will be able to get it like this in Apex:

myoAuthCode = ApexPages.CurrentPage().getParameters().get(‘code’);

11) Now that you have the Authorization Code you get call LinkedIn to get an Access Token. You must POST to an endPoint that is built like this…

LinkedInEndPoint = 'https://www.linkedin.com/uas/oauth2/accessToken?' +
        	'grant_type=authorization_code' +
        	'&code=' + oAuthCode +
        	'&redirect_uri=' + redirectPage +
        	'&client_id=' + APIKey +
        	'&client_secret=' + ClientSecret;

This will return some JSON that will contain your Access Token.

12) With this Access Token you can now make your calls to LinkedIn to get the data that you want. For example, passing this type of data to the v1/people/id endpoint will return JSON data that has information about that specific user:

Http h = new Http();
HttpRequest req = new HttpRequest();
string accessToken = getAccessToken();  //This is the Access Token which we retrieved earlier.  Maybe store it in a custom setting.
req.setEndpoint('https://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/id=' + linkedInKey + 
        		':(first-name,last-name,headline,location,distance,num-connections,picture-url,positions,public-profile-url)?format=json&oauth2_access_token=' + accessToken);
req.setMethod('GET');

The linkedInKey can be retrieved by using the search API calls from LinkedIn.

13) At some point this Access Token will expire so you should try to refresh it before that happens. If you do not do this, then you will have to repeat all of the steps above to get a new Access Token.

I hope this gives you a jump-start in building your own integration with LinkedIn.

If there is an integration that you would like to see me blog about please let me know. I would love to dive into APIs like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram in future blogs.

How Airbnb took advantage of social during the olympics

alyssa.greve@sundoginteractive.com (Alyssa Greve) — 2014-02-25T04:34:28+00:00

As journalists, media and athletes arrived at the Olympics this past February, some were greeted with less than what they expected upon arriving at their hotels. Tweets and photos started to pour in online.

Let’s take a step back and learn more about a company wanting to improve the lodging experience for these tourists. Airbnb is a social site that allows travelers to create an account and find affordable lodging outside of hotel accommodations. It mainly consists of local people renting out their homes to travelers to make some extra cash. Each user has reviews and a profile that is verified prior to a rental agreement.

When Airbnb heard about housing problems in Soshi, they took to social media to find the individuals experiencing issues and responded with a suggested Airbnb Sochi listing for them to rent. As of February 7, 2014, there were over 700 locations on Airbnb in the Soshi area and many were still available to rent.

Currently there are not any reports on the success of this social campaign, but the story of how the company worked with a digital agency to capitalize on this major opportunity has generated a considerable amount of buzz in the industry.

Personally I haven’t used Airbnb but I do have coworkers that use it frequently when traveling and hosting their own home. It is something I may have to check out in the future!