Jan
29

Road kill Meets the Runway

Searching on the streets for road kill definitely doesn’t inspire me or is my idea of a good time, but designer Reid Peppard may beg to differ. Peppard’s London based fashion line RP/encore mixes fashion design with taxidermy, turning dead creatures (mainly rodents and vermin) into wearable accessories. Many people may be offended by Peppard’s use of dead animals, but Peppard thinks of her work as “walking the line between fashion and fine art.” You may find some comfort in knowing that none of the animals featured in her designs were harmed, Peppard (a vegetarian) only uses animals that are victims of road kill, pest control, or natural death. It may be no surprise then that the queen of creativity and just plain weird “Lady gaga” wore one of Peppard’s rat head pieces in her “Bad Romance” music video.

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What do you think about this fashion line would you wear it? Or does it take self expression and creativity a little too far?

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Jan
29

Beautiful Public Safety Announcement

This PSA which was featured on AdFreak.com from the UK is not like any I have ever seen  before. Images of a father pretending to drive in his living room as his family watches takes a turn as he begins to ”crash.” Thankfully, his wife and daughter take hold of him where a seat belt would. This powerful spot ends with the father putting his hand around his family and then the tag line ”Embrace Life.” Check it out, and tell us what you think.

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Jan
26

“Come As You Art”

The third annual Beaux-Art’s Ball at the Portland Art Museum is approaching on February 6th from 8:00-2:00 am. The Ball will be electrified by unbridled creativity, incorporating interactive art and performance and culminating in appearances by Seattle burlesque star Lily Verlaine, Gang of Four’s Dave Allen, and New York rock band Morningwood. The event will be hosted by the Young Patrons of the Portland Art Museum to help fund Museum education programs. The theme of the evening is Icon: Come as You Art, and guests are encouraged to let their own art icons inspire their attire. Guests may mingle with performers whose bodies are painted to resemble iconic works of art, and will enjoy hosted cocktails, beer and wine, and hors d’oeuvres.

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Tickets are available at the Portland Art Museum or online

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Jan
26

Consumer Packaged Goods = e-commerce?

What could be more convenient than buying everyday necessities online?
According to AdAge.com  2010 is going to be a big year for e-commerce, particularly for the consumer packaged goods industry. Proctor and Gamble Co. and General Mills both announced last week that they will be expanding their online retail efforts this year, what’s even more significant is that websites such as Alice.com  (launched last summer) are pooling together the efforts of CPG marketers into a single site with a single shopping cart, and free shipping. Alice.com is creating e-stores for 29 marketers and will link them to their brand websites, participants include: Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Novartis, Bausch & Lomb, General Electric, Sara Lee, and General Mills.

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Less obvious reasons for CPG companies to include e-commerce is to develop one on one relationships with consumers, and to enhance company branding. “The point is that we want to be everywhere our consumers want to shop or gain knowledge, and in that sense we have to be ubiquitous … and that requires a big presence in e-commerce,” said P&G Chairman-CEO Bob McDonald in an interview. According to Alice.com CEO Brian Wiegland there is a downfall to CPG companies selling online, Walmart.com for example, added more CPG products to what it sells in the past year. Manufacturers have the power to set prices at Alice, and “no one is coming in lower than Walmart,” said Wiegland. “If you want the absolute lowest prices, you’re still going to find them at Wal-Mart. Target is generally 5% higher than Walmart, and that’s generally where we fall in.” What do you think about this new trend in the CPG industry? Would you purchase shampoo, razors, or toilet paper online? What if you could still buy it for less at Wal-Mart?

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Jan
22

Obama Rama meets the iphone!

The White House has just released its own app for the iPhone and iPod touch! Users will be able to download live streaming of White House events, press conferences, and web chats with government officials. The app also hosts on-demand video, updates from the Briefing Room, posts from the White House blog, and behind-the-scene photos. The US administration will also soon launch a new mobile website, mobile.whitehouse.gov, to let users of other phones stay in touch with what Obama and his government are up to.  Did I mention the app is available for free on iTunes?

 

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Jan
22

SEO vs. Traditional Marketing

There are multiple reasons businesses are moving their marketing efforts from traditional marketing to search engine optimization. Since the recession, many businesses have dramatically cut or even eliminated their marketing budgets. It is no surprise that business owners are seeking effective and efficient ways to market their businesses. Since traditional methods are becoming less relevant to audiences, business owners with smaller budgets are beginning to use SEO because it is measurable and targets audiences directly through search engines, such as Google. Using tools such as Google Analytics, companies can calculate their Return on Investment (ROI) for online marketing efforts. Harlo Media, website development company, harnesses Google Analytics and tools like the keyword tracker to create quantifiable results for their clients.

It is statistically proven that SEO improves your online ranking. Throughout 2010, online marketing is expected to expand. It is projected that online advertising will increase 19% and search engine advertising will grow 26%. While more traditional methods such as print will only reach 2%, and TV and radio are only predicted 2.4 % growth. When deciding where you should allocate your limited budget, you might consider: Where is your competition’s budget focused: Traditional or Online Media? A better consideration might be: how are your clients looking for your product or services? Search Engine Optimization increases your online presence by directly targeting audiences who search for key words related to your business.

Search Engine Optimizations results are dependant on many factors such as: how much effort is added to online marketing, the marketing tactics used, the industry of the company, the amount of blogging the company does, the amount of key words they use on their website, the amount of competition, and the number of search engines they appear on. Online Marketing no long consists of solely having a website and tracking the amount of visitors each month; as a business owner, you need to track your results and actively update your website.

Harlo Media is a web design company that specializes in online marketing. Harlo Media’s core services are to develop websites for their clients, give them the capability to maintain those websites in-hour, and generate leads and provide quantifiable results using Google analytics. On average, Harlo Media’s clients see a 75-80% increase of new visitors and the averages 1-3 minutes time spent on a their clients websites. These statistics suggest a high level of exposure to new potential clients and interaction with these companies’ online brands.

By: Andrea Wilson, Harlo Media Inc. Team. For more information about Harlo Media please call or email Cody Galloway at 503.517.8074/cody(@)harlomedia.com or visit www.harlomedia.com

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Jan
18

We Feel Fine

TED posted this video featuring Jonathan Harris, co-creator of We Feel Fine. Harris first talks about the art of storytelling, and how story telling has changed in the past few years due to Blogging online. Then he talks about the website We Feel Fine. This fascinating website scans blogs for the term “I feel” or “I am feeling” and records the entire sentence. The talk explores how people all over the world have similar feeling and life changing experiences, such as a first kiss, first child, getting married, first pet, or first car.

Harris definitely saves the best for last when he speaks about the new website, called ”Universe.” This website takes the information from We Feel Fine and creates constellations. This video and these websites are mind blowing. After watching this video, I looked for the Interactive Site, from We Feel Fine, and ”Universe.” On the interactive website, from We Feel Fine, you can search by feelings, gender, age, weather location and date. I suggest you check it out.

We Feel Fine: http://www.wefeelfine.org/index.html

Universe: http://universe.daylife.com/

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Jan
15

3D: Invasive or Creative?

Word on cyber space is that the 67th annual golden globe awards (which airs live on NBC Sunday, January 17, 2010, at 8:00) will be adding a 3D twist. The TV Guide Network will be bringing red carpet coverage to fans both on TV and online, and will be debuting “the hologram glam cam.” The idea is that the cam will generate virtual 3D images of the stars in previous red carpet looks, so fans can compare and contrast fashion hits and misses. The use of 3D won’t be as technically advanced as Avatar, but using 3D elements in such a large award show furthers the notion that 3D is becoming the new trend in television, film, and advertising. How do you feel is it too invasive, or simply creative?

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Avatar

 

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Coraline

 

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Jan
14

Analyze with Ease by using Google Analytics

Remember in college, how everyone talked about SMART goals? When online marketing started, it was incredibly hard to set a SMART goal. I am sure the fact that you weren’t able to create a SMART goal woke you up in the middle of the night, but I am happy to tell you that the nightmare is over. There are now tools within SEO methods that have made it easier to create SMART goals. It still comes with challenges but certain tools, such as Google Analytics, have made a marketer’s job easier. Harlo Media is a website design company uses Google Analytics on a daily basis to provide their clients with quantifiable results.

 

Be Specific

Especially when using online marketing, you need to be specific. There are many broad goals you could choose within an online marketing campaign. Do you want to decrease your average bounce rate? Maybe the way to do that is by making sure your website is being clicked on by people who are truly your audience. Want to increase the time spent on you website? Maybe you need more blog entries so people have more reading options. Google Analytics allows you to see bounce rate, time spent on website, whether the viewers came from an organic search or PPC (Pay per click), the average amount of pages visitors look at, the amount of visits, and the count of new visitors. When setting a marketing goal, pick one or two of these aspects to improve on.

 

Measurable Results

This is the one people find most difficult. Measurability online has many challenges, however by using Google Analytics you will be able to see a daily, monthly, and even yearly changes. You can keep track of when you get spikes in traffic to your website and many other trends. Was it after you created a new blog and sent it out to your readers. Or was it after you hosted a networking event? Keeping track of what creates buzz on your website and what other efforts you are making will help you connect the dots of what is working and what isn’t working.

 

Achievable Goals

Your goals of course should be achievable. Think about what factors you can control and which ones you can’t. You can’t control how long people are on your website, but you can control the content on your website, how many key words you use on each page, or how many directories you are listed on. Another great use of Google Analytics is tracking the key words you use, and the search engines you rank on. You can also see where most of your organic search traffic comes from.

 

Relevant Content

You want your goals to be relevant to whatever is going on in your business. Are you hosting a networking event? Maybe you want to increase traffic flow to your event page through social media networks such as Twitter or Facebook. Through Google Analytics, you can track how people are linking to your website. If you notice that a lot of people link to your home page from Twitter, maybe you want to increase your tweets.

 

Timely

Of course setting a time frame to have your goals met is always a good idea. Having a goal such as increasing your organic traffic by 5% in the next four months is an example of a goal you might want to use. Google Analytics gives you a daily overview, a monthly overview and a yearly overview. You can see and compare your progress with previous months and even the previous year. This allows you to see the progress you’ve made in the set time period you determined. You will sleep peacefully know you are not throwing money into the Social Media bag without any gain from it.

 

Harlo Media Inc., a website design company, sets strategic internet marketing goals and monitors effectiveness through Google Analytics. Harlo uses analytics software to interpret website performance and identify the most successful strategies. They empower their clients by teaching them how to monitor and fine-tune their websites and use Google Analytics to quantify results.

 

By Andrea Wilson, Harlo Media Inc. Team. For more information about Harlo Media please call or email Cody Galloway at 503.517.8074/cody(@)harlomedia.com or visit www.harlomedia.com

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Jan
14

Tagging 2010 Style

 In December of 2009 self professed copy right violator and graffiti artist Evan Roth photographed over 2,400 graffiti tags found in each of Paris’s 20 districts. Photographs were then archived, tagged and sorted by letter. The ten most commonly used letters by Paris graffiti writers (A,E,I,K,N,O,R,S,T and U) were identified for further study. Evan explains that the sets are not intended to display the “best” graffiti tags in Paris, but rather aim to highlight the diversity of forms ranging from upper case to lowercase, simple to complex and legible to cryptic. His work is now on display at the Foundation Cartier-Born in the Streets graffiti exhibition in Paris. Click here to see the video Graffiti Taxonomy

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 Recently Roth and artist/developer Chris Sugrue created an app that allows graffiti artists to create and database multidimensional tags. This app is part of an ongoing study on the motion of graffiti. Artists use the app to create four dimensional tags that can be saved as GML (graffiti markup language). This project is open source and invites others to use the archived data to create new application and visualizations.

 

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