In advertising you rarely get a chance to save lives, but once in a while, you can help change them, and when you do, it feels really good.
On Ideas is proud to be involved with the North Florida chapter of Junior Achievement. Recently, they asked for our help in promoting their “Smart Women Make Change” luncheon event to benefit JA Girl$, a new initiative focused on career preparation, entrepreneurship and financial literacy for young girls.
We developed a microsite to promote the event and allow users to purchase tickets and/or donate to JA Girl$. We also assisted with media outreach leading up to the event, scoring a feature story in The Florida Times Union as well as coverage on First Coast News and Channel 4.
The luncheon was held on October 26, 2010 at the University of North Florida with former First Daughter and “Today” correspondent Jenna Bush Hager as the keynote speaker, and we’re happy to report it was a massive success. More than 450 guests were in attendance, including 15 JA Girl$, who led the program and showed everyone just how much potential they have.
SEO, S-ShmEO
Did you know some websites are now getting more traffic from Facebook than from Google? Right now, this new reality applies mainly to brands that skew young, but with middle-aged moms and grandmas being the fastest growing demos on Facebook, it won’t be long until this trend impacts the entire online universe. What we’re saying is, SEO isn’t dead (we’re still happy to do it for you) but it is fading, being replaced with a new normal called SMO, short for social media optimization.
How can you get on board with SMO? Well, for starters, be interesting! (We can help with that, too.) No matter what technology, apps or trends are of the moment, content is and always will be king. Anything you create should be useful, entertaining and share-worthy. And SMO really kills two birds with one stone, because major search engines count links and “shares” as if they were votes for your site, increasing your SEO.
So the days of cramming keywords into content so that pages get a higher search rank are over. With SMO, you appeal to your audience, not some automated intermediary. And if you can appeal to a given person, their friends and associates will probably find you appealing too. SMO is really about creating a positive feedback loop, where users are rewarded for both consuming and distributing content.
On October 18, 2010, Monday Night Football came to Jacksonville and Mayor Peyton declared an official Teal Monday to get the city pumped up for the big event. The Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce upped the ante by offering a prize to the office with the most Jags pride. I think you see where this is going….check out some of our most Jags-crazed staffers celebrating our big win. The prize, an official football autographed by Darryl Smith, now holds a place of honor here at the agency, cherished every bit as much as our ADDYs and almost as much as the coffee maker.
On Ideas kicked off Halloween weekend with its first ever agency-wide costume contest. The festivities began around lunchtime and started out with a delicious potluck lunch. It was said that this was one of the healthiest potlucks yet, featuring carrot salad, pasta salad, veggies and coleslaw. That was until the pizza and wings arrived and not to mention the spread of cookies, brownies and dirt pie.
Everyone gorged themselves with delicious treats with Halloween themed-background music and, contrary to assumption, Monster Mash was not played every thirty minutes. The music eventually shifted to the tune of Lady Gaga, going with the theme of one of the employee costumes.
Judging for the costume contest took place after all the eating. Three judges used a system based on a points scale to determine the winners in two costume categories: Best Pop Culture Icon and Best Character in Current Events. The winners were as follows:
Pop Culture
1st: Logan as “Where’s Waldo?”
2nd: Claire as “QR code Dolly Parton”
3rd: James as “QR code 80’s Cheesy Pop Music Video”
Current Events
1st: Candace as “Lady Gaga”
2nd: Jenna as “Snookie”
It was a great opportunity for the agency to let loose and have a little fun together. When it was over, Lady Gaga took off her glasses and heals, and Snookie let down her poof because it was time to get back to work!
Almost everybody has a Facebook page these days. There is a movie scheduled for October and there are over 128,936,800 users. It is the new way kids and adults communicate and it’s not slowing down.
Branded Facebook pages offer up to a 260% increase for major organizations (even those that aren’t very interactive pages or companies). Being able to communicate with so many more people and have such increases is really only possible on the web.
Facebook is also breaking into the forefront of search (beating out Google in 2010 for search queries), working heavily on geo-social communications and again… there is a movie. So with all of this in mind, what does your corporate Facebook page look like? Does your page look like mine? If so, you or your company is not leveraging the sheer power of this Internet giant.
There are some very easy ways to make Facebook work for your brand, gather clients and potential clients as well as bring in more sales, leads, foot traffic, branding… whatever you are looking for – you have over 128,936,800 people to choose from.
Here are the Top 10 reasons to build your branded page on Facebook.
- You can set priorities for people to act upon. For example, if you want more foot traffic, you can offer a specialized coupon for Facebook “likes” only.
- Facebook offers very inexpensive advertising with a phenomenal targeting method (that’s what “likes” are for).
- If you’re leading people to your page, you can represent it with your brand on a more fun and interactive level.
- You can control the conversation by keeping a positive/personal voice on your profile.
- Poll the audience and find out what they are interested in.
- Gain popularity on search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo! by leading people back to your website from your branded page (through SEO).
- Re-target your potential customers on their Facebook wall after they have looked at a product or service on your website (yes, you can do that).
- Build brand ambassadors who lead more people back to your page organically.
- Run contests on your branded page and lead more people back to the profile.
- Produce a method where your audience can file complaints and do away with your call center.
- Easily update content and lead people directly, too…. Oops that’s 11.
Take a look at your Facebook Fan Page – is your Wall worth liking?
The Catlin Arctic Survey 2010 is focused on what is widely considered to be the ‘other’ carbon problem beyond climate change . . . that of ocean change. The Survey is undertaking vital research into how greenhouse gases could affect the marine life of the Arctic Ocean, including some species that can be described as the core of life on our planet.
In the time-honored tradition of exploration, the mission connects scientists and explorers in the quest to advance scientific understanding of the world we live in. Bringing together marine biologists, oceanographers and polar explorers, this international collaboration aims to study the impact of increased carbon dioxide absorption by our seas. This is changing the chemistry of the water, potentially leading to a phenomenon known as ocean acidification.
Within only a few decades, an increase in ocean acidity may cause seawater to become corrosive to the shells, skeletons and armor-plating of many marine life forms, and could seriously undermine the growth of coral reefs.
Since CO2 is more easily absorbed in cold waters, the changes highlighted by scientific research in the Arctic Ocean could act as an early-warning system for change around the globe.
Following work begun by the Catlin Arctic Survey 2009, more measurements and observations will also be collected on the thickness of the sea ice. This information is vital to understand the impact of ice cover reduction on acidification as more water becomes exposed to increased CO2 absorption.
Three teams are instrumental to this mission: a group of leading scientists operating from the polar Ice Base under the guidance of Arctic experts; an Explorer Team gathering complementary data over a much greater area across the floating sea ice and a 24/7 Operations Team based in the UK.
The “This Is Catlin” campaign was developed by On Ideas to become an all-encompassing vehicle to identify Catlin as having set the standard for leadership, innovation and service within the specialty insurance industry.
See the work >>
On Ideas Digital Designer, Claire Jackson poses for a photo shoot outside a Ponte Vedra, Winn-Dixie. The team built a branded Facebook tab for Winn-Dixie fuelperks! with a coinciding video tutorial on how it works. So where does the motorcycle come into play? See for yourself.
Winn-Dixie FuelPerks!
