Polymer Studios::Web Consulting

Marketing heresies

30. September 2008

In preparation for a discussion called “Marketing Heresies,” which I’m instigating at tomorrow’s UnSummit “unconference,” I’ve tried to jot down a few statements that I hope will spark some discussion. I’m sure I’ll be shouted down on some of these and taken to task on others for lack of evidence, but hey, heresies are beliefs [...]

A massive, subprime bailout of links

24. September 2008

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Oh my, has it been a week since we last talked? If we follow each other on Twitter, then it’s probably been more like a few minutes, as that’s where I’ve been spending/wasting my time. Which brings us to the first in this cavalcade of content: Graeme Thickins, of DoApp and Tech~Surf~Blog fame, ponders whether using [...]

Social media: What’s keeping you from wading in?

15. September 2008

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There’s a fair amount of hand-wringing on the part of marketing execs over what to do with social media (aka Web 2.0, Social Web). It’s on the news and in the papers, so the CEO hears about it and asks the CMO, “should we be doing that?” And so the lukewarm potato gets handed downward [...]

Cut-and-paste learning

7. September 2008

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It just might be true that everything you ever needed to know you learned in kindergarten. Check out the work done by Commoncraft. They create videos that use paper cutouts and white boards — a process they call Paperworks — to explain complicated software and technology concepts. As someone who has created his fair share of [...]

Infographicmercial

24. June 2008

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Anyone seen the Areva commercial? Just saw it on Olbermann and it reminded me, appropriately enough, of the video for “Remind Me” by Royksopp. Is it the same creative shop reprising an old fave or outright copycatism? I sure like the genre of animated infographics, but it seems a little close for comfort. Check for [...]

Making change happen

11. June 2008

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The first picture that turned up in a Google images search of “meatloaf.” Turns out it’s a vegan meatloaf by Field Roast Grain Meat Co. Go figure. Mark Bittman, food writer at the NYT, just wrote a column about how to reduce your meat intake. With the rising price of oil directly and indirectly pushing up [...]

Amateur era

4. February 2008

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myRaganTV, a video site for corporate communicators, just posted an interview with Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture. I have to admit, I was only vaguely aware of Keen’s book and premise, which (if I gather correctly) is that Web 2.0 has shortcircuited the process [...]

Banking 2.0: Banks Leading the Charge
(Part 2 of 3)

13. November 2007

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In part 1, I gave an overview of core Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, podcasts, wikis and social networks. Now I’ll discuss some examples of how several banks are leveraging some of this new technology to initiate and support deeper relationships with their customers. Wells Fargo fosters an informal, ongoing dialogue with its customers Wells Fargo [...]

Pet Peeve #124: Cryptic Filenames

4. November 2007

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Nine times out of 10, when I download a PDF, Word doc, etc. from a site, the filename is some cryptic string of letters and numbers. I’m sure it makes sense to the code crackers at NASA, but when I try to download a printer template, how the heck am I supposed to find it [...]

What if Customer Service ran the Web?

2. November 2007

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What marketing begets… Customer service queue at ORD. Uploaded by jaychi. When I came of age on the Internet, Gopher servers dominated the land. Usenet was the primary “peer-to-peer” file sharing medium. And Mosaic, the predecessor to Netscape Navigator, had just been introduced. Who knew what the Web would become? It certainly wasn’t a foregone conclusion that [...]