The Future of Media in 100 Words.

My friend / Draftfcb compatriot Andrew Eifler has been doing some thinking around the future of media, gathering short-form thoughts from media professionals with the aim to publish as a collaborative post on several forums. When he approached me about contributing to his project, The Future of Media in 100 Words, I was more than happy to throw some thoughts his way, for three main reasons:

1. It seems to me that the media community is largely underrepresented in the social sphere. I'm not talking about "social media experts." I'm talking about media folks: spreadsheet-making, calculator-touting, hardcore-negotiating, rep-hobnobbing media planners. For whatever reason we don't seem to be a big blogging bunch, so it will be nice to hear from a few people in my line of work.
   
2. Cross-publishing is fun. I did a cross-publishing project with Adam Kmiec (also the DFCB blog) a while back, and it was awesome. Cool to get perspective from commenters that don't normally read my pith. Collaboration! Sharing of ideas! America!
3. 100 words = yes. Appreciate the effort to keep things concise. Good thinking.

Andrew kicked things off yesterday with his 100-word thesis, below. It's exactly 100 words, which is awesome. Count 'em.

Five years from now – Data will be King.

New complex tracking and data capture techniques will allow for all advertising, regardless of media channel, to be purchased based on audience demographics and lifestyle variables. Reach, Average Frequency, and GRPs will give way to much more precise metrics and – not without a touch of irony – the media industry will no longer find importance in the channel of media distribution, there will only be content and audience.

The kind of data-driven quantitative analysis that has revolutionized Wall Street over the past 10 years will soon make its way uptown to Madison Ave.

Here are my thoughts. Not to be outdone, this is, of course, exactly 100 words.

Five years from now, I’m hoping we’ll be of the mindset that providing relevant information to information-seekers yields greater returns than screaming our messages at the masses.

I’m sure we’ll still be buying SuperBowl spots and wallpapering Times Square with glittering, high-def awareness messaging. I hope we’ll also be continuing to use the internet to do more refined listening to consumers, to active information-seekers, and carefully and respectfully distributing relevant content as such. With major media channels becoming less passive, we need to proactively step away from old-timey objectives and instead provide interested consumers with the information they actually need.

I think we're kind of saying the same thing, which is interesting.

Andrew and I have a list of DFCBers that we'd like to contribute to the project, but if you're a media assistant / planner / supervisor / director / guru out there in the interwebs and would like to contribute your two cents, drop a line in the comments and we'll be happy to add you to the list. And, tune in to Andrew's blog and the DRAFTFCBlog for updates.

Happy reading!

Shack attack.

Radio Shack, I'm not 100% sure what you sell (radios?) or why you feel it makes sense for your brand to align with the Tour, but I capital-A Adore these spots. Can good writing and a celebrity spokesperson redeem a seemingly obsolete brand? Sometimes. I think chubby sidekick Alphonse is the hero in these spots, but Lance is pretty good, too.











"They're raising French babies and throwing soft cheeses, as is the custom here."

Dead. Tell me more about radios, and shacks. I'm listening.

Pancake heaven: King Arthur Gluten-Free Mix

I've had celiac disease for as long as I can remember. I haven't always eaten gluten-free. Per doctors' suggestions at lack of symptoms, I'm glad to have had fifteen or so (mostly) symptom-free years with which to experience some of the finer things in life: pizza, bagels, cupcakes, and craft beers, to name a few. I always knew it couldn't last. When I turned 21 and the symptoms came roaring back, I was left with an extremely unappealing choice to make: give up gluten forever, knowing exactly how delicious and chewy and satisfying and wonderful the food it inhabits is, or deal with being sick for the rest of my life.

I chose to go gluten-free. The point being, although I am very happy to be well, I know what a pancake is supposed to taste like. And I know it well enough to have a good solid craving.

Gluten is a protein that resides in wheat, barley, and rye. It's the honeycomb structure of gluten that helps build air pockets and gives bread and pasta its springy texture and form. Gluten-y goods are complex in structure; ergo, delicious. It follows that it tends to be somewhat difficult to find gluten-free products that aren't incredibly dense. A pancake, for example, should be almost crisp on the outside, light and fluffy inside; a hockey-puck pancake simply will not do. Much to my delight, in the years spent sampling gluten-y eats, the gluten substitution industry has really come quite a ways.

I came across this review of King Arthurs' Gluten-Free pancake mix in my reader in conjunction with a serious pancake craving early last week. Fate? I think so. I've tried several decent, even good gluten-free pancake mixes in the past three years, but nothing that really blew my socks off.

So I bought online.

My set-up.

Combination of different types of flours; rice, potato, and tapioca, with xanthan gum.

Started off kind of soupy... concerning.

But then started to thicken

until it coated the back of a wooden spoon; a standard batter consistency.

They held together nicely for the flip. Voila! Pancakes!

I made slightly larger pancakes than recommended, and the batch yielded 11 instead of 16. Plenty for two, plus leftovers.

These blew my socks off. They were rich and tasty, light, chewy and even fluffy. They also tugged at the socks of my somewhat picky gluten-eating compatriot, who so generously agreed to go gluten-free for the morning and pronounced them "delicious" and "just as good as real pancakes." Hooray!

It's taken a few years to stop seeing my gluten-intolerance as a prison sentence, and start viewing it as a way to be able to live and be healthy, while still enjoying simple pleasures like a pancake breakfast. Fancy things, too. We made gluten-free tiramisu the other night using gluten-free cake as a ladyfinger stand-in. Our friends agreed, it was delightful.

I've been looking for a new creative outlet, and think I may have found one in attempting to understand and improve upon gluten-free cooking. I'm hoping that doing my research and trying new things will open new doors in regards to cooking delicious gluten-free substitutes for myself and my friends and family. In the meantime, try King Arthurs. Delish!

I'm also going to be working on my photography skills. Clearly, they could use a bit of spit-shining as well.

NYC: Week 1 Overview.

I've been a New Yorker for one whole week now. Pretty excellent, yes? I've been crazy busy trying to sort out a new apartment, get rolling with my new job, test-ride my new commuter bike-cycle and figure out where I'm going and how to get there. But, now that I'm established and cool as a cucumber, I thought I'd throw out a few things that I've found noteworthy in my first week in the Big Apple.

Top four items of note thus far:

First and foremost, there are ice cream trucks everywhere here, like beautiful mirages in the waves of summer heat. It's amazing. I am developing a srs ice cream habit - not good. OM NOM NOM sprinkles.

I borrowed this photo from the internet.

Secondly, there are a TON of options everywhere when it comes to craft beer - awesome. I found RedBridge (gluten-free!) this weekend at a tiny convenience store, right next to the Miller Lites. My friends confirmed that it is awful, but at least it's readily accessible. It's super cool to be able to find cider in non-specialty stores, and even cooler to find g-free beer. High five, NY.

Third, oy. If I thought I was bad with directions in Chicago, I'm seriously awful with them here. I don't think the city planners were trying to help me, either. It took most, if not all of week one to determine that 6th Ave, Broadway, and Ave of the Americas are all the same street, at least down here in Herald Square.


View Larger Map

Funny joke. Also ran into some issues with trains not running on weekends - thank goodness the cabs here are credit-card equipped, even if they don't seem to like to take me to DUMBO.

My fourth and final note relates to the incredible awesomeness that is the Brooklyn Bridge. A slow and painful way to die on a bike on weekends, but on an early morning run, it's like this incredible glorious gateway to all things New York City. This photograph, borrowed from Flickr, is about right. The apartment is just a few blocks from the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge pedway path, so lucky me. Totally amazing, totally note-worthy.

I'm so stoked to have landed, albeit still waiting for my moving truck to arrive. My friend Ian wrote a lovely post about moving to NYC as a young pup - "it's like swinging with a doughnut. A beautiful and complicated city." I love it. I'm hoping to expand my bloggery to include thoughts, recommendations, and analyses of the city as I get to know her a little better.

I've been truly awful about taking and posting pictures, but I will try to remember to take more once the apartment is set up and I'm feeling less hectic about everything. Here's a view of lower Manhattan from our rooftop, in the meantime.

And, since I'm in hipster territory now, the tilt-shifted version: (tech via @clayparkerjones)

Cheers!

Running and writing in NYC.

I'm  a runner and a writer. I like to think that I am, anyway. I've always thought these two descriptors to be independent of one another. But, perhaps not.

I've moved running to the back burner as of late, exhausted by weeks of trying to tie up loose ends on one life and organize/coordinate/jump-start another. I didn't really write anything during that time either, save for this post announcing my transition, for presumably the same reasons - exhaustion, stress, lack of free time. Despite my prior conclusion about mental and physical training being two distinct faculties, I'm starting to hypothesize that it was the lack of running that lead to lack of writing. It makes sense - there is no better facilitator for writing than a long, steady run, where I am my own captive audience. No alone time in my head, no space to ponder the universe, no place to organize my thoughts. Which leads me to:

Bogus Transitive Property of Running and Writing: If A = B, and B = C, then A = C, where A is running, B is time for organization of thought, and C is writing. So, no running leads to disorganized thought, and disorganized thought leads to not writing. Therefore, not running leads to not writing. Or something like that.

Side note: I'm quite sure that making time for running (and therefore writing) would have eased some of the moving and job-shifting stress. Too late for that now, I suppose.

Now that I'm comfortably set up in my new DUMBO digs, I've jumped back on the pavement-pounding bandwagon with a series of short jaunts on the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. The first was godawful, fueled by 90-degree heat and swarms of tourists (not to mention I hadn't been training for a few weeks, fail). The second was a cool, tourist-free early morning run, and was a little, if not a lot easier. Since my iPod armband has yet to be unpacked, it was a very quiet run, interrupted only by drumming heartbeat, my own cadence and early-morning city sounds. And wouldn't you know it, I'm writing. And hypothesizing. Saints be praised!

Moral: figure out what it is that allows you time to think, and prioritize it. This city is amazing, and I'm so excited to be running and writing here.

Empire state of mind.

I bought a one-way plane ticket yesterday. With any luck, and if I don't get detained for suspicious one-way activity, I'll be arriving in New York City on May 27, 2010.

I am so thrilled to announce that I'll be joining the Draftfcb NYC media team on June 1, a group of folks who have taken to chewing gum and winning Media Plan of the Year awards. And they're all out of gum.

New York is in my blood; my great-grandfather Veisel (son of) Beio arrived on Ellis Island from Albania, paving the way for my my paternal grandparents, who grew up on the Lower East Side. My maternal grandfather went to high school in Williamsburg. Both of my parents grew up on Long Island. Currently, I have various assorted cousins, aunt, uncles, and grandparents all over Brooklyn, Long Island, the Catskills and Buffalo. It only feels right that I give New York a whirl.

I'll be living in Dumbo and working in Herald Square - I'm always down for a drink and a chat, so please don't be shy.

I'm a very lucky so-and-so to be starting a new chapter of my life in another great city and couldn't be more excited about it. I'll miss you, Chicago. Hello, New York!

Do something: KFC and cause marketing.

Disclaimer: KFC is a client of Draftfcb. I do not currently work on KFC, nor do I have any insider information about the Pink Bucket (or any other) campaign. These are my opinions only.

If a tree falls in the forest and you don't particularly support the tree or the way in which it was taken down, is the wood useless? Should you throw it away? Or should you use it to build something anyway?

That was ridiculous. My apologies.

On that vein, Seth Godin's blog recently offered up a little something that made me think.

"You can spend your marketing money in more ways than ever, live in more places while still working electronically, contact different people, launch different initiatives, hire different freelancers... You can post your ideas in dozens of ways, interact with millions of people, launch any sort of product or service without a permit or factory.

But no matter what, don't do nothing."

Do something. 

I've been conducting a bit of personal research lately about the ethics of cause marketing. Nothing official, just kind of... listening. I've noticed that there is a lot, a LOT of discussion around whether cause marketing is abhorrent. Yes, cause marketing happens when brands align with good causes and probably aim to boost their brand metrics in the process. Yes, that smells like exploitation. What I'm wondering is, in the case of a cause, does it matter? Isn't doing something better than doing nothing?

There's a lot of dissent around the KFC Pink Bucket campaign for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. You buy the pink bucket of chicken at KFC, and fifty cents on your purchase goes to Susan G. Komen for the cure. On Twitter, in the blogosphere, kind of all over, people are really pissed about this. They're furious that a brand that can be linked to obesity, which increases one's chances of contracting cancer, would purport to care about an anti-cancer message. And, they're furious with Komen for agreeing to align with it.

What exactly are the dissenters condemning? There is nothing illegal going on here. People are purchasing chicken of their own free will, and part of the proceeds are going to something better.

Sure, KFC sells a whole bunch of really fattening awful stuff. But, they wouldn't sell it if we weren't buying it. And yes, people could skip the pink bucket and donate their entire chicken dinner fund to cancer research, circumventing the entire program. But would we? We don't seem to be doing so currently.

Consider this chart. KFC, I'd say, sits squarely in the 'evil, but beneficial to society' quadrant with the rest of corporate America. Sure, corporate America is evil. It's malicious, it's vicious, and it looks out for itself above all others. But it also creates jobs for Americans and provides a means for us to sustain ourselves as a country, at least for the time being. So, beneficial to society. The vast majority of industry, the real moneymakers out there, sit somewhere in this quadrant. Should we force them to stay there?

Does being pegged in an evil quadrant disallow KFC from being able to dabble in the good? As far as I know, the money they donate is worth just as much regardless of whether they are hoping to boost brand favorability ratings in the process. No, I would never say that KFC is an agent for goodwill. That said, should Komen have turned them down? Should KFC be excused to do nothing?

Nay-sayers, I urge you to take your judgy eyes off the means and focus on the end.

Per Daily Finance, if KFC donates the $8.5 million that they've hinted at, that would be the largest single donation in the history of the Komen foundation. My boobs and I agree that if chicken money finds a cure for breast cancer, we are okay with that. I am also okay with chicken money saving my mom's life, my grandmother's lives, my friends' lives and the lives of every woman (and man!) that has ever and will ever be threatened by breast cancer. My boobs and I will take your chicken money, KFC. Thanks for offering.

All of this says something really hypocritical about society. The American dream dictates we be doers, yet we seem to get to pick and choose who's allowed to do. If we condemn cause marketing because it's not pure, where do we draw the line in terms of trying to do good? Are hybrid cars okay? NASA? Livestrong? Hybrid cars aren't going to save the planet, NASA rockets burn a serious amount of fossil fuels, and some people say Lance Armstrong is kind of a jerk. None of these entities are free of flaws. But we see merit in working to do something, and we excuse the flaws of these organizations to allow them to do so. There is no merit in sitting on your ass, and yet this is what society is prescribing for brands rather than allowing them to leave to play in the cause marketing arena.

I guess I just don't understand what is so awful about trying to do something, regardless of your flaws.

Doing something is better than doing nothing. 

To the people who argue against cause marketing: there is no pleasing you, so I'm not going to try. But I will encourage you to take some initiative to change your quadrant, like our evil friends at KFC. The poorly-felled wood in the forest deserves a shot at construction, don't you think?