Check out Adam's channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/adamatumbc

This is where all the vids will be posted eventually. He WILL find Freeman Hrabowski and he WILL show us the amazing hot dog machine at UMBC! Next two episodes!

I'll write more about the success of this project later, but for now, the viewings have grown exponentially. Day 1: 2-10 views; day 2, 150 views; five days later, we have 608 views on episode 1 and almost 175 on episode 2, two days post-release. I am hoping the charm of Adam, his view of the school, and the honesty of these videos is connecting with people.

Labels: adam kurtz, online video, umbc, viral

We just launched the first episode in a series of web videos for UMBC and I have to say, at the risk of tooting our own horn, I've never seen any other college or university willing and able to be this authentic and disintermediated in their marketing communications.

Adam's Awkward Awesome UMBC Episode 1:



The video was shot entirely, without help, by Adam Kurtz, a senior at UMBC. We gave him a camera and sent him loose; he returned a week or so later with a bunch of tapes. Our partner, Houpla Inc., edited the footage together, highlighting the best parts. Neither we, nor UMBC, nor Houpla was quite sure what to expect with such an open ended assignment that was so controlled and driven by the students, but it turned out so well that we ended up planning to do 4 mini webisodes. I'll post them as they're released.

We've been advocating for quite some time that there's a place in every organization's marketing for authenticity and disintermediated communications. Most organizations, however, are so focused on controlling their brand that to relinquish control in this way is seen as too risky. What they don't realize is that this stuff is ALREADY OUT THERE... as a cursory search on YouTube or CollegeHumor.com will tell you. Might as well get right in the middle of the mix and start communicating with your constituents where they communicate with each other.

The nice thing about this video, though, is that it's NOT fake. No one is pretending it's not for marketing purposes; and no one directed it in its shooting or its content. We really let the students speak for themselves and when they did, we were pleased by the results. (It helps that UMBC students are generally smart, funny and nice... which is exactly what we wanted to showcase.)

Labels: higher ed, Old Media Deathwatch, viral

At the risk of making AttentionScan all about politics lately, this website deserves a mention: Change.gov, which was put up very quickly after election night by the Obama team. The site features lengthy descriptions of each of the new administration's agenda points, as well as a newsroom and blog section. There are pages called "Share Your Story" and "Share Your Vision", where users can submit suggestions and ideas to the administration. It's a clear, concise explanation of who the players are and what they stand for, and the design is elegant and understated: it's red, white and blue without being all about flags and eagles and fighter jets. It's a 21st century approach to the idea of government by a campaign team that gets it (see Claire's earlier post).

But something more important deserves to be mentioned here. This is a comprehensive website, and as someone who plans, builds, edits, and maintains websites for a living, I can see it was no weekend project. The Obama campaign obviously planned it out months ago, collected the assets, and built everything with no guarantee the election was won—a level of forethought some might find presumptuous, but I personally find reassuring.

As consultants, we are asked to help shepherd projects from their infancy to completion, and gently remind our clients of all the small things they might not have considered—and there are usually many of these. Sometimes the follow-up details are more important than the launch itself, and it's nice to see an administration setting the bar so high this early.

2:01am, Wednesday November 5, 2008

Wow. History.

Never before in my life have I felt as truly proud to be an American like I did last night. It's the first time in my life Ive been proud of our political process. It's the first time in my life I've felt that things worked the way they were supposed to. It's the first time in my life I've felt that the vote actually matched how I felt.

To me it's the end of cynicism. Its the end of 'politics as usual.' It's the end of well, that's 'just the way that things are.' It's the end of the 'lesser of two evils.'

To me it's the end of the decline of the Baby Boomers. It's the end of the generation that supposedly espoused values of free thought and tolerance but ended up being repressive, rapacious, and greedy. It's the end of the feeling that me and my generation has always nursed, a feeling of being fed a line, a feeling of "do as I say not as I do," a feeling of hopelessness that no matter what I did the plutocrats and the establishment were going to get their way...even if they cloaked their way in phrases that seemed to echo my values but always rung hollow.

To me it's the end of realpolitik. It's the end of "the end justifies the means." It's the end of do what you need to do to get elected but then never following through on your ideals because you've been corrupted by the process.

To me it's the end of identity politics and divisiveness and the feeling that I lived in an America that could never come together again. It's the end of feeling that were all somehow irreconcilably different, even if we wanted to be equals.

To me it's the end of despair and alienation. It's the end of feeling like no matter what I did I was never going to fit in. It's the end of feeling like an outsider while still maintaining my place in the status quo while feeling like I was an actor in a play that lacked a director.

This is a beginning. It's the beginning of something that hasn't been seen for nearly half a century. It's the beginning of a new day for those of us in my generation and generations younger than me who have spent most of our lives feeling like this day would never come. It's the beginning of a new consciousness that yeah, were all in this together (even if we always felt that and didn't know what to do with it.)

This is the beginning of shared sacrifice. It's the beginning of a new America that doesn't feel itself separate (and better and more blessed) than the rest of the world. It's the beginning of a new world in which we finally realize that were all connected...even if we've all realized that already but thought that it was only our small slice of our social group that recognized it.

This is the beginning of the end of our narcissistic navel gazing and self-actualizing baloney. This is the beginning of us all realizing that were part of the human race. This is the beginning of every American being able to look at every other American--regardless of status, of class, of disability, of infirmity, or mental state, or even of clothing style-- and being able to say "yeah, you and I share something great that we both want to continue...what can we do to save it?" And after we've thought that, having the courage and the chutzpah to actually do something about it together.

This is the beginning of the left-out, the disenfranchised, the alienated, and the lost to come together for the first time. This is the beginning of the life that most of us children of sixties parents have always been prepped for but never seem to have been exposed to. This is the beginning for everyone whos' ever wanted to make a difference to stand up and say "Yes, I can change things."

This is the beginning of mass recognition that the world has changed. Forever. It's the beginning of the red tie/blue tie talking heads and white-haired old media scribblers realizing that we're not slaves to our media outlets. That we're not content to be defined as "consumers" and fed the lowest common denominator in 24 hour news cycles. It's living proof that regardless of the fact that we may often divide ourselves in ever-narrowing niches but we're not disconnected from one another. It's the ultimate demonstration that, yeah...technology has brought us all together in ways we could never have imagined. And that we're all better off for it.

We're empowered. I'm empowered. I no longer feel left out of a process that seemed to be dominated by those who knew how to play the game or those who were willing to sell out their principals in order to get what they needed to win. This is the first time that I, a 40 year old white guy of a somewhat liberal persuasion, has felt that I can actually make a difference in my country, a country in which I feel a shared purpose.

Is Obama going to lead me to the Promised Land? Maybe not...I guess I'm still cynical enough to doubt the hype. But man...I want to believe. And (believe it or not...I scarcely believe it myself) I do believe. For the first time in my life. In the first time (Im completely convinced) in the lives of my contemporaries. I believe that the world doesn't have to suck. I believe that people can actually seek political office because they want to make the world a different place. I believe (at the risk of sounding like a cliche) in hope. And I rejoice in the possibilities.

Is digging ourselves out of the mess we're in right now going to suck? You bet: we all have to do an extraordinary amount of work to make things better. Is it going to be painful? I have no doubt. Is it going to require sacrifices that nobody my age has ever had to endure (save those who've given their lives in the service of their country)? I'm sure it will.

But will it be worth it? Yes, it will be.

Id like to say that it doesn't matter who's going to be President. I guess I'd love these "truths" to be "self evident." Tonight I actually I believe they are. But after a lifetime of seeing them subverted and sold out, it's a relief to seem them lived through a leader I believe in.

It's not going to be easy. It's not going to be something we all intuitively know how to do. And it's definitely not going to be something that I can just put on a charismatic leader who seems more than able to pull me through by himself. No: it's up to me and to us individually and collectively...and there's nothing more scary than that kind of responsibility.

But I have hope now. And that makes all the difference.

Just to add to my post of earlier today, CNN.com has posted (at 1:56am) the final results of the election. 338 Obama, 159 McCain.

It seems like these betting sites are worth looking at in the future.

This is the first event in my lifetime that I will remember as a great moment.

My parents had JFK, the moon landings, V-J day and many other memories. We haven't. Seeing the crowds tonight united as one country not against an enemy, but with each other, was unbelievably touching. I love America.

Historians will note this night, 11/4/08, not only as the night a serious female vice-presidential contender and the first black presidential candidate went head to head--but as the first time "the interwebs", with its series of pipes, became a reality.

By "the interwebs," I mean not only your laptop computer with its wireless connection--but your cellphone, your kindle, your PDA, your satellite radio--all those things that occur as a network instead of as one-to-many communication. The days of one-to-many communication, as opposed to truly and honestly networked communications, ended tonight.

In 1992, a year which was certainly pre-Internet for most of us, a writer named Tom Forester wrote:

"Suggestions by, for example, Toffler, Naisbitt and Williams that the IT revolution would lead to 'push-button voting', to the holding of 'electronic town meetings' and the creation of a 'tele-democracy' have proved to be wide of the mark. Despite increased access to information and communications technologies, electoral turnout in the U.S. and most other Western democracies continues to decline..... 13 major 'teledemocracy' experiments' impact on political participation levels was only marginal because of the powerful forces working against increased involvement - chiefly the fact that people are so bombarded with media messages that they actually absorb less and less. Teledemocracy is unlikely to cure America's severe turnout problem, let alone lead to a transformation of the political system."

Now, I'm the first person to question happy-happy technology predictions. I hate Wired Magazine and always have. But this prediction (from 1992 of all times!) was beyond the pale. After all, I always believed in new media, not only because I worked in it but because all my peers were involved in the Internet before anyone else--and I just couldn't see that the momentum being built by the culture was a mere blip. We were building a new world; only no one else knew it, and it's been ten long years before they caught up. And as far as the really important stuff went? Political campaigns, nonprofit efforts, healthcare? Until Obama, they were all still lagging, and many of them still are, caught in a paradigm of print that they cannot escape.

Boomer pollsters during this election dismissed the cell-phone voters; most of the polling organizations argued that their sampling was still valid, even though they were neglecting huge components of the real population. "Oh, those people don't vote..." They didn't understand the generation behind them, just as the generation ahead of them didn't understand the Boomers. For the Boomers, everything was one-way mass media; now it's a group conversation in which they cannot meaningfully participate, because they cannot control access to the conversation any more.

I've heard before--seriously--"Oh, our poorer audiences don't go online." What a condescending attitude--that people without landlines or dedicated internet connections in-home aren't connected, or able to connect with the network in a meaningful way. Go to the library on Friday night--it's packed, jammed. And not with the privileged--the best things libraries have done in the last ten years, in terms of public service, is to provide internet access. Anyone who believes that huge segments of the American population are not online need only stop by their local library and notice who's using the computers, and how.

In the case of the Republican and McCain failure of imagination, the blame finger is already being pointed at Joe the Plumber and the campaign and changing "demographics" and the culture wars by people who never did--and who still don't--understand the power of the networked Tower of Babel we've unleashed on the world. Everyone talks about "post-civil-rights" or "post-culture wars" or "young voters" but really? Really what's happened is that this technology--this network--has allowed us to transcend our regional and cultural boundaries. The Obama campaign got that; the McCain campaign wrongly assumed (like many advertisers) that their older and more conservative audience doesn't use these technologies. This is demonstrably false.

The very fact that Obama understands the network, understands and listens, in a two-way dialogue, what people need and want and go through--will be central to his presidency if he is to be successful.

The great hope used to be that we were creating a technological utopia that would transform ourselves. That hasn't proven to be true. Technology hasn't changed us in any fundamental way, but it has allowed us to communicate more information to each other, faster, and in new and unprecedented ways. Like all technology, it depends who's using it and for what. The idealistic vision outlined by James Snider in 1994 is part-true and part false:

"New technology ... facilitates previously impractical forms of democratic deliberation. With the electronic town meeting via television, computer, or some synthesis of both, citizens are offered direct contact with public officials, unmediated by journalists. The idea is to force politicians and the media to talk to the public about important issues that might otherwise escape the political agenda."

Back then, all of fifteen years ago, no one could think beyond the television when they thought about electronic communications. What is next, then, in a world in which cell phones rule? To live, communicate, and lead in such a world is to be flexible enough to imagine a world that's beyond imagining; a world in which our technology outpaces our ability to evolve.

The great hope here is not that we're electing a black man (or that we had the possibility of electing a woman of either party)--rather, the great hope is that our prejudices have been defeated by our ability to talk with each other and communicate in wholly new ways, unimagined by the conservative mind. We are talking more often and more clearly to each other, in more and more unmediated ways, every single day. The candidate who understood this--and who didn't attempt to impose on our communication, but insisted on facilitating this conversation--is the one who wins tonight, and who represents the future of America in ways we still cannot imagine.

The future is now.

Keith Thomson wrote a really interesting post today over at the Huffington Post about how the best predictors of elections seem not to be pundits or polls but rather handicappers. Why? This quote from a University of Kansas economics professor does a good job of summing up the issue:

"Relative to the polls, the betting markets have to think hard about what they're saying since they are putting their money at stake. Also polls tend to reflect what people are thinking at a given moment, versus a forecast of what will happen on election day -- post-convention bounces, for instance."

Which, of course, makes a lot of sense: if you actually have to put up money (and not just yap) then you're probably going to take a lot more time with your decision and include a lot more objectivity and reality than someone who just has to proffer their opinion. "Talk is cheap" isn't just a saying...it's the truth.

The most fascinating part of the article, however, was its look at two British online betting sites: Betfair and Intrade. Not only did they both correctly predict the outcome of the last presidential race, they were correct on every single state! It's one thing to make a 50/50 guess, it's quite another to actually predict down to the final electoral vote!

Want to see for yourself? Check out the Intrade predictions embedded below. I guess we'll see on November 5th if they can repeat their past success.


ps. Online betting is illegal in the US, so don't get any fancy ideas about hopping in on the action! Besides, given the odds that they're now giving, chances are you'd make about a buck for every $7 you wagered.

I spied these cookies for sale at the Los Angeles Farmers Market while on vacation last week.

The question is: Do you support your candidate by buying his cookie, or by biting the head off 'that one' you don't prefer?

Either way, get out and vote: victory is sweet, and someone's got to win!

Labels: cookies, la farmers market, presidential cookies, vote

Mom & Dad kicked you out of the house after you finished art school? Not sure what to do with your life? Try the Hipster Institute of Technology!



This is a parody advertising project that Sean and I have been thinking about for a while, but never had time to get finished. Hope you find it amusing--it was fun as heck to put the absolute tackiest transitions and effects in the video ON PURPOSE.

Labels: advertising, parody, side project