My first visit to Target Field

It's early Sunday afternoon and I knew that the Twins were having an open house for Season Ticket Holders at the new Target Field. So my son and I decided to go visit the stadium on the chance that we could somehow get in. We didn't have the tickets to the open house as my good friend and leader of our Twins ticket consortium had used the tickets on Saturday.

Anders and I parked near the stadium on a bright and sunny day and we were expecting to just visit the new Twins Pro Shop and Target Plaza. As we walked up to the stadium we noticed people just walking in and not handing off any tickets so we decided to just go for it. And we are glad we did as we just walked in.

It was pretty cool to see the excitement in my son's eyes and to hear the excitement in his voice. "Dad this is the coolest stadium" ever. When we walked down to our seats in Section 119 we were amazed how close to the field we were and basically at eye level instead of looking down to the field as we had at the Metrodome. For 10 games this summer I'll have the opportunity to enjoy this beautiful new ballpark. On some chilly spring and fall evenings and on some warm summer evenings. Bring it on - my son and I can't wait.

We walked all around the park for two hours seeing the field from all levels and enjoying the wide concourses and seeing all the food options. "This is not your father's Metrodome." The Legends club and Metropolitan Club are unbelievable. Great entertaining experiences and great views of the field. Great job by all who have put this great park together.

If you get a chance go see the stadium this coming Saturday 3/27 with the public open house. It's fun to see and if you are a baseball fan - you'll be pumped up to see MLB outside in Minnesota again.

Let me know your first impressions of the new Target Field. What did you think?

Friday night spots and social media

This past Friday night I was watching some of March Madness (NCAA Men's BB) on CBS and the WCHA Final Five hockey games on FSN. And via a live feed on the computer I was watching my high school team compete in the North Dakota HS Boy's Basketball tourney. Lots of juggling and it was a blast.

But you know what made it all doable? I was listening and conversing with friends and family on Facebook and Twitter via my iPhone. And did I say I was also texting with a friend at the X watching the hockey games. I was a juggling machine and engaged in many sports games at one time. It was a sports feast all made possible by digital technology.

Four years ago I would not have been able to interact with friends and family while consuming all these sports events. But it is 2010 and for me and many others the way we are going to be watching live TV has changed forever. We are literally watching live TV and then conversing about it over a "virtual water cooler".

Whether it has been the Super Bowl, the Grammy's and the Academy Awards this year has been a year of change with the opportunity to connect with friends and others via the social media platforms. And the TV ratings for all activities were up this year. Clearly social media is changing the way that we watch and interact with major and minor TV events.

The ability to converse with others about something that you are passionate about it is a great deal of fun. It adds to the excitement and interest in the actual activity.

How about you - are you using social media to converse while watching your favorite TV event/show? Let me know what you think.

What title do you want in the future?

As the marketing world continues to evolve and change - what new job titles will be out there at your agency or your company?

The media department has been changing titles over the past 15 years to things like Connections Planner or Contact Planners. The Account Management department has changed to incorporate titles like Brand Stewards.

However the creative department for the most part (outside of the interactive creative area) remains fairly consistent with the past. A creative director is still a creative director.

I believe that the creative department is on the cusp of title and definition change. Creative directors really need to become experts in all parts of the new media world. They remain key strategists and have to be experts in creative execution across a wide variety of execution platforms. However, I've heard the term used "chief choreographer" recently and I have to say that does encapsulate what the future holds for creative people. To be an expert in the convergence age they need to be able to choreograph creative for brands across many creative platforms.

So I'm wondering if our Executive Creative Director at Preston Kelly should be called our Executive Chief Choreographer. I think it's got a pretty cool sounding name. So what does everyone think of that? Time to change our creative titles?

Let me know what you think.

Green Bagels?

OK yes it is St. Patrick's Day but now we get to celebrate with green bagels?

Yesterday I received an email from Brueggers Bagels touting that they had green bagels for St. Patrick's Day. So the curious part of me said - yes I'll have to try the green bagels. Well I stopped by a Brueggers on my way into the office this AM and bought a bunch of green bagels for the team at Preston Kelly.


And yes they are truly green in color. It's just a plain bagel with green food coloring.

It sure seems like all marketers are taking advantage of special holiday themes to try and provide some retail excitement. M&M's have been making colored themed candies for specific holidays for years. I personally think it's fun and I'm glad to see more and more retailers and manufacturers jump on the bandwagon. Of course as long as they keep the holiday theme platform within reason. We don't need to do this for obscure holidays right?

What do you think?

What I learned at Leo Burnett

Once upon a time I worked at Leo Burnett in Chicago. It was the largest ad agency in Chicago and employed over 2,000 people. Almost as many people as lived in the little hometown I grew up in.

The first day that I went to work there is something that I will never forget. Everyone who started at Leo Burnett then got to sit and watch a grainy black and white film of Leo giving his famous "When to take my name off the door" speech. A link to the speech is below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WUxb8YB88o

Why was this important? Why did it make an impression on a young advertising person. One word - passion. Leo spoke from the heart in this speech and wanted to remind everyone who was working there and for the many thousands who would eventually work there that passion matters.

Every day as we go about our jobs and our personal life a good rule to live by is that passion matters. Passion is what drives us to do our very best, to go the extra mile and to do great things.

As you start each day do you think about how passion can help you do great things? Take a look at the old film clip of Leo Burnett. He was a passionate advertising visionary and he built a dynamic agency from the ground up in the depression.

Are you passionate enough in your job? Are you passionate enough in your personal life? I think those are two good questions for everyone to ponder. Tell me what you think.

What I learned from @faris

This past Monday night I had the pleasure of attending a journey at the Conversations About the Future of Advertising at the Fine Line in Minneapolis. Presenting was Faris Yakob (@faris) the former Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson in New York.

It was an interesting journey as he made the key point that "technology is stuff that really doesn't work yet". That's a keen observation as we are in the midst of a very big change in the marketing communications business. The Digital Tsunami is here and what Faris reminded us that the Internet is still relatively young at 15 years old. But think of the impact that it has had on us as both consumers and professionals.

I loved this platform - "you no longer search you share". And clearly this is the inherent beauty of the social media space. You jump in and you participate in this platforms. Again both as a professional and personally.

Another great quote that Faris shared was from William Gibson - "The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed." And then he broke down the difference between generations raised by television content and those by Internet content. Clearly the generation raised by Internet content is consuming media much differently than those of us raised by television content.

A major theme of his talk was how advertising has to adapt to a post-scarcity media environment. And that laying down a bed of content as we do that - it lasts forever. The ability to develop and distribute great content will always be the key to reaching consumers. He really stressed the need to do stuff that gives consumers a role. His analogy was that in a mousetrap you have to leave room for the mouse.

He is a big proponent of Twitter as he loves the brevity of this platform and really believes that is the soul of it.

At the end of this winding journey through technology the one message that has stuck with me is "don't panic". And I'm always reminded of my favorite Hoopsnakes song - "Jump in and Hang On". Clearly I need to live this motto as our business continues to evolve and change.

What are you doing to change the way you do things? What are you learning out there? What's next? Let me know.

What I learned at SMBMSP #24

It was a great Social Media Breakfast/Minneapolis St.Paul #24 held at the Mall of America on Friday 3/5. The panel consisted of @derickson of Tunheim, @jenniferrock of Best Buy, @bmjewell of the Mall of America and the co-founder of @izzysicecream.

The panel was focused on the retail environment and had both large businesses (Best Buy) and a two location business Izzy's ice cream. My key take-aways were:

Social media right now is still about experimentation. A good example is what Punch Pizza did recently after the Vikings playoff loss to New Orleans by offering free pizzas the next night - and they generated great press coverage and people lined up around the block to get their free pizza. Also the Mall of America (a Preston Kelly client) started doing a Twitter announcement for parking last December and get great mainstream press coverage and yet they only had 1,000 followers on Twitter.

In talking about how to handle "crisis" situations on social media - all the panelists agreed that people, especially your brand loyalists will come to bat for you and defend you if someone is making outlandish claims against you.

One other key takeaway was the importance of knowing your audience and what's of value to them. When you understand this you can truly have great conversations with your followers/community.

And finally there was a great comment from Jennifer Rock of Best Buy who mentioned that people there had started a "Supportipedia" along the lines of Wikipedia to help people with various electronic questions that they might have. It just goes to show how important is to engage and involve your employees in the power of social media platforms.

As always I come away energized with the discussion and information exchange at the Social Media Breakfasts.

Do you think you could learn something at the next Social Media Breakfast? Try it you'll like it.

What I learned at UST?

On Monday night I had the opportunity to guest lecture at the University of St. Thomas for an old boss John Purdy. John's class is COJO 4070 a campaigns class for seniors. It was bascially the same class that I taught at the University of Minnesota when I was adjunct professor there from 1991-2004.

I always love the opportunity to be back on campus? Why? I find a college campus to be full of energy and excitement and as a place of higher learning I always find it stimulating. But it is truly the opportunity to listen to the students is what I truly enjoy. To hear about their hopes and dreams for getting into the marketing business whether it is in advertising or public relations.

While the class lecture was about research - I quickly shifted gears and gave a lecture on the future of agencies (Advertising or PR). Where are they headed and what they need to do to survive. My lecture could be summed up in one word - Digital.

I started my talk with three pictures of "famous" ad legends - Leo Burnett, David Ogilivy and J Walter Thompson. While I didn't expect any of the students to know who they were it set the stage for a key point. While all these great men built great ad agencies in their day - those agencies need to evolve to stay on the forefront of the business and that is get digital inside and out. Edward Boches recently said "Everything is powered by digital - so you need to hire digital, think digital and learn digital or die".

This is the world that these students are venturing into and I believe they will be well prepared. Why? Clearly they are growing up in a digital age and totally get it. While some of the current people in our industries don't get it. As a result they can come in and make an impact right away.

After listening to them talk about their habits of media consumption it again re-inforced the need to be digital and get more digital into my work life.

Are you getting enough digital into your work life?

Have you Four Squared yet?

Have you tried Four Square yet?

Foursquare.com has become one of hottest new tools in the social space. If you haven’t heard about it is a location-based social network where users “check in” wherever they might be. And whoever checks in the most at a specific location becomes the “mayor”. Well I’ve always wanted to be a mayor how about you?

I’d say that most people are saying “who cares” and you know what that’s what most people said about Twitter a few years ago. And I believe that Twitter just published a stat that over 50 million tweets are made each day. So Twitter has had a bit of an impact in the social media world. Will Four Square ever has this much impact - who knows?

I’ve been using foursquare for about a month now and I’m really interested in where it could go. I think the opportunities for retailers are significant. An example was that a few weeks ago I was at a Lund's store and when I "checked in" a message about a special nearby come up and I could go to the Bulldog NE to get a free beverage. Think of the retal possiblities for this. And most interestingly Four Square does not charge businesses for this feature.

So how could you use foursquare for one of your clients? If you are a retail business and you want to get frequency how about a reward for people who check in a few times a month - a true loyalty program because they would need to be at your store.

Yes there are the naysayers like the Rob Me site that has started publishing the whereaboouts of people and thus you could break into their house/apartment. So maybe enthusiasm should be tempered.

What do you think? Where will Four Square lead us?