“Don't say the old lady screamed—bring her on and let her scream.” In his advice on storytelling, Mark Twain’s timeless wit and wisdom holds true in the discussion of online video. Thanks to advances in Internet technology and increased bandwidth over the last few years, online video has emerged as the fastest growing media platform with an estimated 72% of Web users watching online video clips. In the next three years, Web video consumption is projected to double. The message to marketers? Visitors expect a rich experience when they come to your site. As one of the most powerful tools in the marketer’s arsenal, online video offers a wealth of opportunity for rich storytelling, differentiation, brand building and traffic-generation.

The resurgence of video in storytelling
In the 90’s, corporate capabilities videos were commonplace, but distribution was limited to VHS and DVD.
---More---

Being connected to customer needs and desires should be a key aspect of shaping your B2B brand. But the engine of growth needs to include creativity, something many B2B executives don't spend much time on. Others like Google stake their reputation on creativity. They walk the talk: All engineers are allotted up to 20 percent of their time to work on their own ideas. The result? Products like Gmail and Google News, seeds of which began as personal endeavors.

According to MIT Media Lab, a hotbed of creativity, the secret sauce for business creativity is developing an environment where different people from different areas and disciplines of an enterprise, work together to share ideas to innovate.

Dr.
---More---

Ah yes, math. As a creative, my old nemesis and I have made up and become friends.

In this day and age, analytics is helping us understand our target audience like never before. Because we can measure—well, just about everything, we are able to see what is working, and what is not. Analytics is an essential part of ongoing improvement for everything we do at Godfrey. As an art director, I have to pay close attention to the feedback we receive (which often includes numbers and percentages) to understand what I need to change and improve on.

So, if you haven't embraced analytics, now is the time to introduce yourself and become the best of friends, because your new friend will help guide you to your end goal.

In addition, art directors and creative folks must have an understanding of search because the visual world is changing fast, in relationship to
---More---

In my last blog on Creating and Maintaining a B2B Blog I offered some suggestions on who should write your company blog and how often you should post.
In this installment, I’d like to follow up a bit more on the frequency of posting and give some direction on what you should be posting.
The question we are often asked is, “How often should I add new content or post on my company blog?”
The simple answer is: When you have something relevant to say.
When you post and what you post is related. Let’s assume you’ve identified an internal “expert” or core team of employees with the responsibility of managing to your company blog. You now need to determine the frequency of posting and create a realistic schedule.
Let’s start at the top.
1.    Think Strategically
       a.    Does your company have a marketing and communications strategy? What you
---More---

As social media continues to make inroads into the B2B universe, more companies are including blogs as a communications tactic. According to the Society for New Communications Research, 16 percent of Fortune 500 companies support a corporate blog while Forrester Research reports the number is closer to 29 percent. Both reports are one to two years old so I suspect the numbers are much higher today.

As acceptance of blogging continues to grow I thought it might be helpful to give some advice on how to create and maintain a company blog. This is the first of several blogs, each focusing on a specific topic.

Let’s start at the beginning. You’ve decided to create a blog but are faced with two important questions:
1.    Who should write the blog?
2.    How often should you post?

Some companies are fortunate and have an “industry expert” on staff, someone with broad industry
---More---

When getting to know other design professionals, I often like to ask a version of "So, what do you do?" Since we all know — in the broad sense — what each other does, I tend to skew the question more toward the "how". "Tell me about your design style," is an invitation to discuss one's work, creative philosophy and tastes. Overwhelmingly, I hear people use the terms "simple" and "clean" to describe their ideal layouts.

Simple, clean designs are often the most clear way to communicate a given idea. A place for everything, everything in its place, with an effective rhythm and hierarchy to the elements on the page can really make a message sing. On its own, this fact is enough to make any communicator set "Simple" as their goal. Another reason is that, in our modern marketplace, with its cacophony of garish printed and electronic messages vying with our own thoughts for our valuable attention, a well-organized, well-planned, simple page becomes a visual
---More---

I don’t think print will ever go away completely, but less and less of it is being produced, in favor of the web, interactive capabilities, search, tracking, etc. And now, with the lackluster economy, and the sustainability trend growing, the web and search have gotten an even bigger boost.

So what does this mean to Art Directors such as myself? More fun! Seriously. It means that we have so many more opportunities to connect and interact with people through different mediums--making it a fun challenge to find different ways of connecting, branding and standing out.

Unlike print, the web is constantly changing. We have so much more data now to analyze the results of creative and make adjustments based on those results. Effective banner design will make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful online ad campaign.

In order to find the most effective marketing design, you must go through a period of testing, by running a banner over a
---More---

Keep tabs on your competition’s creative with this easy checklist

Quickly: Describe five of your competitor’s advertising campaigns and how they differentiate themselves in your industry. How do their advertising efforts match up to yours? If you’re spending more than a couple minutes thinking about this, then you’re not alone.

Given the fast-paced environments we work in, it’s all too easy to focus on short-term, easier to accomplish tasks, which prevents you from achieving larger objectives. Long-term goals, such as overcoming a host of competitors in order to position your company as an industry leader, require an ongoing cycle of industry observation, self-evaluation and refinement of your marketing materials. While this may seem common sense, too often we become so concentrated on our own marketing efforts that it’s easy to skip the most crucial aspect of this process—observation of the
---More---

Are you tired of all the gloom and doom news regarding the economy? I am. I watch the news constantly looking for any positive signs. I’m still watching and waiting. But I’m an optimist. I can’t single-handily fix the economy but I wonder what I can do, what I might recommend to B-to-B marketers that will help them get through this tough time and prepare for that eventual turnaround.

Last week I attended the monthly, early-morning coffee chat with members of our local chapter of the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts). The predetermined topic was, “What challenges are we facing in our business and what are we doing to cope?” Not surprisingly, many are experiencing similar issues: reduced staff, unpredictable workloads and just the uncertainty of what is to come.

There were a few positive indicators. Two firms noted that a few of their clients were taking the opportunity during the slow time to fine-tune their branding and these
---More---

While B-to-B blogs are prevalent, a lot of well-intentioned business leaders have yet to take the plunge for one reason or another. If that is the case with you, here are some things to consider when you’re ready to create your own B-to-B blog. 

1. Choose someone to be responsible for your company blog.

Your company blog is not a marketing tool, it’s a communications tool. For it to be useful, choose someone to over see it who understands your brand footprint, your products and or services and has the ability to communicate those company attributes. Let them be responsible for maintaining the blog. A blog is about being timely and current, so choose someone who has the interest to stay on top of what it is that your company is doing. Choose someone who has the same enthusiasm as you do for your company to succeed.

2. A name, is a name, is a name.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.
---More---