Starbucks for years has had an assortment of pastries and donuts ready to infuse carbohydrates into your bloodstream, and more recently they’ve dipped their hand into the breakfast food basket offering oatmeal (don’t get me started), english muffin sandwiches, tortilla wraps and such. The concept is solid. I’m coming there for coffee, why not offer food? So I obeyed my hunger pangs and picked up the Chicken Sausage Wrap. Score?

Jack Squat

Starbucks has been a mistress of mine for years. I wake each day jonesing for her dark elixir. So, I’ve tried just about every donut-frappuccino-latte-concoction they have. At times I’ve ventured out and sampled many of the breakfast products, but found them lacking and oh so bland. The purchased wrap would be no different. One bite. Done.

After my rant to my fellow workmates I pondered why Starbucks venture into uncharted waters of breakfast cuisine (*cough* Money). For me, and many brands (and people) fall prey to this, why expand your offerings – and if you do, why put out sub par products? (Obviously, Starbucks intention wasn’t to shoot a brick.)

The expression, “Jack of all trades, master of none” comes to mind. I found a better translation in Mandarin… yes, Mandarin, “All trades known, all trades dull.” And who doesn’t remember that old Esperanto saying, “he who chases two jackrabbits catches none.” By offering “everything” are you at risk of offering nothing? Possibly. It’s true that having a single focus allows you the luxury of honing your craft.

That said, I am and will forever be a Starbucks Man, but just their coffee. Coffee is the one thing they do well and when I think of that morning fix, I think of Starbucks.

Do fries come with that shake

Just this week, while out to lunch with @mugrad, he suggested we visit Five Guys. Not having sampled Five Guys goodies… um, wait. They do burgers and fries – so we went. The “burgery” boosts white walls with red trim, a full view of the grill and modest tables and chairs. @Mugrad gave me the insiders scoop on how to order. The menu is clean (not counting the grease) and simple. What you see is what you ingest. Burger eaten. Burger good. Burger, very good. They do burgers. They do burgers exceptionally well. It made this consumer take note. I didn’t find their brand suffering from an identity crisis. Instead I found a company who knew who they were – they make burgers… really well. Burger (good) is as burger does.

So, being good at one thing is… good. And just because you are, doesn’t mean you should make really bland chicken sausage wraps.

Introduction

Hi again!  As you all know, I am new to The Creative Department as a Brand Coordinator.  Today, I’d like to introduce my first client, ProKids, a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of Hamilton County’s foster children.

I knew I had landed an awesome gig when I learned of our newest pro bono client.  We are donating time to ProKids’ marketing and strategy efforts for 2012.  It is important to me to “give back” to my community; and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to lead these efforts on account of CD.

I’m especially pleased with leading ProKids’ account knowing the controversy that surrounds the “working for free” mentality.  Here is an AdAge article that shares supporting arguments on why agencies should donate their time and services to nonprofits.

Left to right: Jennifer (ProKids Community Director), Jonathan (CD Sr. Interactive Media Strategist), Chris (CD Sr. Business Strategist), Katie (CD Graphic Designer), David (CD Brand Leader), and Stacey (CD Brand Coordinator). ProKids Young Professionals happy hour at Arnold’s Bar and Grill.

So, what’s the big deal?

This year in Hamilton County, over 2,000 children will be abused and neglected to the point of removal from their homes and placed into foster care.  Many assume that the county is taking proper care of these children.  The Child Welfare League of America recommends caseloads between 12 and 15 children per worker.  Nationwide, the average caseload for a child welfare worker is twice the recommended number.

What many don’t know about the foster care system:

• Children in foster care are 10 times more likely to be abused than children in the general population.
• Less than half of foster children graduate high school, only 38 percent find a job within 18 months of leaving the system, and only one in eight graduates from a four-year college.
• A child is nearly twice as likely to die of abuse in foster care as in the general population.
• Take for instance, the two year old foster child, DeMarcus Jackson of Cincinnati, who was fatality beaten two months ago.
• Almost half of foster children will spend at least two years in care, while almost 20 percent will remain in the system five or more years.

How is ProKids helping the situation?

About ProKids

ProKids was founded in 1981 and is part of the National CASA Association.  This private nonprofit ensures Hamilton County’s foster children receive safe, permanent, and nurturing homes.

ProKids recruits and trains volunteers known as CASAs (Court Appointed Special Advocates) to operate as activists for these children.  If you’re wondering who becomes CASA’s, check out the “I am for the Child” campaign video from National CASA.

Click here to view the embedded video.

ProKids also provides leadership and education to the community by creating specialized programs such as Building Blocks for children ages 0-3 years old, Steps to Peace (STOP) to address family violence, and CASA University training program.

PKYP

ProKids recently launched ProKids Young Professionals (PKYP) to provide younger people, with limited time and money, a way to help out.   This year, 19,000 children across the U.S. will turn 18 and “age out” of the system without ever finding a permanent home.  PKYP members can volunteer to support these young adults’ transition into the “real world” by assisting them with college applications, writing resumes, and apartment hunting.  You can also partake in fun networking events like the one pictured above at Arnold’s Bar and Grill.

Ready to Help Out?

Find more ways to get involved by visiting ProKids’ website and stay up-to-date on events and volunteer opportunities by liking ProKids’ facebook page.

Whether you work at an ad agency, law firm, accounting firm, etc. there are many worthy organizations and causes that could benefit from your pro bono services… get out there and make a difference!

My name is Stacey and I am the “newb” here at The Creative Department.  My role is Brand Coordinator and simply, I help manage clients’ accounts.  I become the expert on the client’s business, an active participant in strategy development, and I maintain the relationship between the client and the agency. Besides working at CD, I enjoy riding my bike through town, eating my fruits and vegetables, and hanging out with my scrappy cats Frankie and Bonnie.

Frankie

Bonnie

How did I get here? 

I am a proud graduate of Northern Kentucky University where I studied abroad in England while also traveling to France, Scotland, and Ireland.  I’ve worked in quite a few marketing departments from local public radio station WNKU 89.7, to one of the Nation’s top zoos (yes, the Cincinnati Zoo), to The Princeton Review in Irvine, CA.  I was introduced to The Creative Department through a friend and former manager whom I’m forever grateful for.

Scotland

Cincinnati Zoo

I remember driving my airconditionless Sebring (AKA the “Michael Scott Mobile”) to Over the Rhine on a scorching August day for my first visit with The Creative Department.  Stepping inside was a breath of fresh air (literally) and one of the coolest office spaces I had ever seen.  First of all, the lobby welcomed me with a bathtub turned coffee table (AKA The Tubble), a telephone booth complete with a superman costume, and an antique elevator the size of my bathroom.  After lunch, my tour of the office followed with brightly colored paint, neon signs, and delightfully, quirky décor.

Michael Scott Mobile

Superman Telephone Booth

As for the employees and my future co-workers – just as quirky as the décor and as witty as their advertising.  I was in love.  I had known the people and the space for a mere hour and a half, but already felt oddly comfortable.

It was nice “meeting” you

I’ve been here a little over four months and am still ecstatic that The Creative Department has so warmly welcomed me to their team – I think I’ll stick around for a while.  Look for my next post about ProKids, my first client and CD’s 2012 pro bono client.

Many personal and company blogs fail not only because it’s hard to find something to write about, but it’s also difficult to find the time and the people to keep it up-to-date.

Yet for some reason it’s easy for us to find time to share content with friends, family, coworkers, and even clients by emailing them links to interesting articles, videos, and games or even posting on Twitter or Facebook.

If you visit this blog regularly, you’ll notice on the left, we have posts (like this one) where we found the time and the energy to write. But in the center column, titled “Seeds of Inspiration,” you’ll see a bunch of short posts, which are essentially links to stuff we found interesting elsewhere on the web. If you click one of the links it will take you to that site.

For a company, this is a great way to show how you and your coworkers think. It shows what you enjoy and appreciate. And it keeps the content on your blog fresh, which Google likey.

Journalist and fellow blogger, Jeff Jarvis, said, “Write what you know best, and link to the rest.”

So I’m going to show you how to link to the rest by syndicating interesting content across the web using using a social bookmarking service like Delicious or Diigo.

Step 1: Grab Your Feed

At the Creative Department, we use Delicious, but you can use whatever social bookmarking site you like, as long as they provide RSS feeds for the stuff you bookmark. The reason you need an RSS feed is because it is the secret sauce to updating our blog, Twitter account, and Facebook page.

Let’s look at my Delicious account. On the right hand side you can see the public and private RSS feeds for my bookmarks. But I don’t want to share EVERYTHING on our blog, this is MY personal Delicious account.

Again, if you look at my Delicious page you’ll notice that a lot of my bookmarks are tagged with ‘cd’.

I do this because THESE are links I want to share with the Creative Department audience. And on Delicious, every tag ALSO has an RSS feed. If you add a slash and the tag, ‘cd’, to my RSS feed, you get the feed for everything I’ve tagged for Creative Department. You can add whatever tag you want to your posts to differentiate them from your personal bookmarks.

Step 2: Syndicate It

Now to publish this feed to your Twitter or Facebook account, we need a syndication service. We use dlvr.it, but twitterfeed provides much of the same functionality.

Simply create a new Route, add your Delicious RSS feed as a Source and connect it to your Twitter account and Facebook pages as destinations. The nice thing about dlvr.it is that it allows you to schedule the days and times your feed items post. That way you don’t overwhelm your followers with tons of posts. Dlvr.it also tracks how many clicks you get on each service.

To publish our feeds to our WordPress blog, we use Charles Johnson’s FeedWordPress plugin to syndicate (again, just enter your Delicious RSS feed and select the keyword(s) and category(ies) you want news feed items to post to) and Justin Tadlock’s Query Posts widget to show these specific posts in the sidebar.

Step 3: Relax

And that’s pretty much it. Now you have bite-sized fresh content coming into your blog and social media accounts for doing what you normally do when procrastinating writing that next long blog post – surfing the web.

A client of ours recently asked us to Search Engine Optimize (SEO) their website for a long list of keywords. Due to the nature of their numerous offerings, we could have easily taken a “mile wide and an inch deep” approach. The result would have been that their rankings wouldn’t have performed well inany search.

The Creative Department tends to target even less words – up to five Primary keywords (usually 3-5) and several potential Secondary keywords. We do this for the following reasons: 
[Note when we say ‘keywords’ we usually mean ‘key phrases’ e.g. “digital agency” or “Cincinnati digital agency” = 1 keyword].

• The success of the Primaries is what success is ultimately measured upon. If we’ve ranked the website toward the top of the first page, we’ve succeeded. Depending on the market, it may make sense to place Secondaries on tertiary or landing pages, but not to the detriment of the Primaries. Once you place the Primaries and appropriate permutations thereof, there often is little room left on a given site. If you have five primaries, you might have ten or twenty plus permutations to also take care of.

• In the same vein, it comes down to room within Meta Tags, Page Titles, etc. These have to be in a certain order and length, and most of these tags can barely fit three, much less five, keywords. Note that we will also need to have these keywords in the rewritten URLs and, of course, permutations thereof. Does you site even have ten or more main pages?

• In order to succeed we will need to get links for these Primaries. For example, within a given Link Building campaign, let’s say you plan to obtain 1000 links. With five Primaries, you can choose to get 200 links for each keyword (or some combination thereof). With ten Primaries, only 100 links, and so on. There is only so much ‘link juice’ to go around at any given time – it should be focused on your Primaries.

• As with most advertising campaigns, you cannot take a shotgun approach with SEO. This is not like PPC where you can target hundreds of words at will and overnight. Advertising campaigns must have a targeted purpose. For example, you cannot say everything to everybody all at once. Similarly, Google will get confused as to what your site should really rank well for. After appropriate research and careful writing of tags, we will plant the seeds and, over time, they grow into what we desire.

• After performing proper keyword research, often there aren’t more than five Primaries that represent substantial, qualified organic search traffic ­ especially in your software market. There may be more, but they will represent a fraction of the potential traffic and therefore, by definition, are Secondaries.

• Lastly, once we win with the initial keywords, one can always start to introduce more. By adding specific landing pages, sub-domains, and micro-sites, more space can be added to target more words (while leaving the originals alone).

In short, pick your battles. A website can target a lot of searches poorly or a few really well. Since your site will not obtain traffic unless it’s on the first page of results, the trick is to identify the most important keywords to win with. If you win at those, move on to the next ones.

MORE CONTENT

If content is king, generating content is the key to the kingdom. Just how does a company find the time to ascend to the throne and generate content? A couple ways, actually. Services like Brafton and Reachcast not only make it possible, they make it workable.

SAY IT WITH BRAFTON

We currently recommend Brafton News for a quick start out of the content blocks. They generate News content, not Blog content (the two are slightly different in nature — front page news vs. Op Ed). We employ them to write our own News page. Brafton is a network of professional writers supplementing their careers by freelancing online content according to the prescribed editorial slant of the company that hires them. For us, they devote 2-4 writers to our content and they send us 15-25 articles per month via RSS. The content is good but not Pulitzer-winning – that’s not the point. We receive, approve it and release it out thru our Web page and our own RSS feed as our own CD content (unique content that we own). Cost: ~$2000/mo entry level. But sometimes the supervising of this content can be painful in itself. We happen to have a brilliant editor-in-chief on staff who performs this function. It draws a regular readership, but more importantly, the fresh stream of content landed us in GoogleNews which now helps us put an iron hold our rank at the top of the marketing/branding charts in Midwest regional searches. Creative Department has recommended this tactic to several of our clients and they like it as well.

REACH FOR MORE

Recently, we met with ReachLocal regarding their offerings. In addition to having a pretty stellar PPC solution, they have branched out into other services in the past few years. One of these is content generation, ReachCast. The cost $1,299 – $1,799/mo depending on the number of News articles AND Blog entries you need. The main difference from the Brafton service is the blogging feature. But they also employ intriguing technology to track and promote the content. It’s probably worth your time checking out. We were impressed, but we have not had the opportunity to implement a solution like this for any of our clients.

GET LINKY WITH IT

In short, either solution delivers way more content than you can probably generate on your own in-house (yes, we’ve tried). And you can use this content to grow fresh content on your home page which as you know, works like crack for the GoogleBots. And you can use it to go for the bonus – a metric ton of SEO links. (The RSS feed can be submitted to several places (in particular, Google News) and burble up into a nice wellstream of links – and your subsequent perception as an industry thought leader. (Which, of course, you are if you follow us.)

HELP IN A HURRY

Also note: If you’re in a hurry for success in this area, we can help implement these strategies (especially Brafton), as we know the best practices at this point and can save the headaches that we went through – to keep it from becoming a royal pain.

“Should we have a blog?” said the client.

If I had a Bulleit Neat for every time a client asked that question, this blog post would be coming to you live from Betty Ford.

The term “blog” originally was the mixture of two words – Web and log, or weblog. A blog is simply an online journal. The intent around personal opinion, likes and dislikes – A place for recent events and updates – Pictures, videos and links to things you deem important… to you.

Corporate blogs sprung up as a way for brands to update their customers on news and events around their products and services. Brands with a current and healthy blog are in some ways viewed by Internet users as “experts” in their industry.

Reasons to blog

Fresh Content

A ginormous reason to begin blogging for your brand or business is the impact new content can have on your search engine ranking. Search Engines love fresh content. As you post new articles around products and services, search engine crawlers can take notice and develop a pattern of visiting your site more often in hopes of feasting on some crisp and savory content. Write more content, get more drop-ins from the search engine crawlers.

Become an Expert

“If it’s on the Internet it must be true.”

For some enigmatic reason, when we read articles by Geraldine Whithycomb on the impact of kidney health as it relates to beer consumption, it’s feasible one may come away feeling the author has some knowledge or regard to the subject.

Get Real

With Social Media and Cause Marketing eruptions, brands are being viewed through some new consumer filters. As customers, we now expect “behind the scenes” access to the brands we use. We want to see if a brands philanthropy is showing. A blog is a great place to let your corporate hair down. Posting articles on brand culture, events, recent conferences (with pictures and video) allows your new and existing customers that opportunity to see inside your walls. Don’t be afraid to be real or transparent. People respond well to honesty. Go figure.

Reasons NOT to Blog

I Have Commitment Issues

An uber reason many blogs fail is lack of commitment. In most corporate/business environments, there aren’t “blog guys” to magically conjure up the daily dirt for all to see and cheer. For a blog to be successful, it must have regular posts, at least one a week. There’s nothing more glaring than a brand whose blog page is outdated and stale. No Blog For You! So if you know up front that producing a post weekly or even bi-weekly is going to be an issue, then don’t have a blog.

A Little Agency Told Me

Many, many, many, many times businesses seek the help of “professionals”. They just came back from a Zig Ziglar pep rally and Ziggy told them they should be blogging. Or your competition just started “blogging” and you feel a sudden urge to blog the hell out of blogging the blog… thing. So you seek out the help of some agency blogging sensei. Surprisingly, they agree with your notion to blog. You’re submerged in a deluge of PowerPoint slides and charts on the urgency of blogging to your business’ online success. I’m sure it was a “working lunch” and they filled your bellies with nom-noms. You sign on the dotted line; you receive a Content Management System (CMS) that you’re told is the Blogging Messiah. You are ready to blog. What will you blog about? Who’s going to blog next week? You still have to plan for that meeting tomorrow… Oh and those vendor invoices aren’t going to fill themselves out either. You’ll blog tomorrow.

Blogging is akin to relationships. You have to commit to it. You have to sit down and plan a life together (strategy). It’s the ancient formula in action. You’ll get out of it what you put into it. I hate it when my Mom is right (again)!

If you’ve not run in terror to this point, and wish to continue on this quest to have a blog, then follow this recipe and you’ll be pontificating in no time.

Blogging:

• Assemble a team – bribe, solicit, blackmail, tempt with ice cream any of your coworkers who have shown an interest in writing. (Blood Oaths, though not required, have proven effective.)
• Choose the Topics – You’ll need to develop ideas and topics for your posts. A simple way might be to select categories around your products and services, corporate life, events etc. It would be better to have fewer categories than many to start with. Once you have your categories, brainstorm on subjects within those funnels you might blog about.
• Set a Schedule – Probably one of the toughest components of having a consistent blog is creating and keeping to a writing/editorial calendar. Its good to set a 6-month calendar and assign dates to your writers.
• Just Go Man – Start writing. Schedule the first post. Put it on the calendar. Share the calendar. Stick to the calendar. Be the calendar.

Read the rest of the Making the Brand series:

(Part 1) The Name of the Game
(Part 2) Finding the Sweetspot
(Part 3) What’s the Big Idea
(Part 4) Turning Ideas into Creative

And Sarcastic Thursday was fun for all involved. Or not.

But to us, Thursday became a day to look forward to, when we were free to unapologetically dole out sarcasm to anyone who crossed our paths. For one day of the week, we had free reign to spread our sense of humor across campus, and everyone just had to deal with it.

And even though I left Luxottica for my current job at The Creative Department, Scott soldiers on. Even in my absence, he continues to fly the flag of sarcasm every Thursday without fail.

So I got to thinking, shouldn’t I do the same?

And so it was that I introduced Sarcastic Thursday to CD.

A rogue band of beer guzzling intellects proceeded to hold up Thursdays to the highest standards of caustic commentary. And the popularity soared – at least among 3 or 4 of us – so we created other days of the week – Bitter Mondays and Condescending Fridays.

Condescending Friday has become the favorite and not just because it falls on the last day of the work week. Being able to talk down to people with no consequences until Bitter Monday? It’s a dream come true!

Tuesdays and Wednesdays have been left untouched to save some room for wild cards and give everyone else a break.

How do you pass the time (or justify your attitude) during the work week?

I’d love to know.

Or not.

That’s not to say I’m addicted to food, but rather perhaps the culture, processes, science, and creativity of food. And these days it is so painfully easy to get my foodie fix: technology enables my addiction. It has changed the way we eat.

There are now two cable television stations in America dedicated to cooking 24 hours a day. When I’m not watching one, I’m watching the other. I wikipedia ingredients while I watch so I can look up ingredients I don’t know (most recently shiso and harissa while watching Iron Chef America). I immediately Google chefs that I am unfamiliar with and read their restaurant menus online. I prop my iPad up on my kitchen cabinet doors so I can look at recipes while I cook, then I tweet pictures of my food after I plate. I recently downloaded Chef Grant Achatz’s memoir on a wifi connection at an airport and read the iBook on my iPad.

And perhaps the internet is to thank for the rise of the celebrity chef, as I was giddy when Chef Michael Symon tweeted to me and Chef John Besh answered a question I posted on Facebook. I follow Anthony Bourdain AND Ruth Bourdain (a fake Twitter account that is a snarky, hilarious hybrid of Anthony Bourdain and renowned food critic Ruth Reichl). And when my nose isn’t in an iPad or MacBook, I’m in culinary school learning how to cook (while of course, jotting down that day’s knife cuts in the Notes app on my iPhone).

My name is Becky and I am an addict. Thank you interwebs.

In illustrated form (thanks, Ryan!), here’s an example of what happens when a hyper plugged-in foodie like me decides it is time to eat:

The relief is that I’m not alone. According to a 2009 Simmons Market Research Bureau’s national consumer survey, Packaged Facts determined that 14% of U.S. adults are foodies. Foodies have created a community all their own, much of which is manifesting itself online. Similar to the Mommy blogger craze (which is arguably an overlapping circle with the foodie community – see also: Pioneer Woman), foodie bloggers and foodie based communities are a dime a dozen. Allow me to generalize a little and group online foodie resources into two categories: tools for the creation of food and tools dedicated to restaurants.

Here’s a short look at a few that I sample regularly.

In the food creation category, there are thousands of foodie blogs and recipe sharing sites. Some of my go-tos for sharing and looking up recipes are Food Network, Tasty Kitchen, and Epicurious (especially the rockin iPad app!). When utilizing online recipes, I look up four or five different recipes and make some Frankenstein of them all to suit my tastes. I try to keep track of recipes I like by bookmarking them on delicious or posting my own recipes online.

As noted by the Art Institute’s Culinary Blog, foodie blogs are becoming more and more sophisticated in their delivery of content as the many foodie blogs compete for followers. Imagine if Julia Child had posted step by step photos in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a popular feature of many foodie blogs. There are also some beautiful foodie blog aggregators, like Taste Spotting, which draw you in with food porn then you can click out to the blog with the recipe. More recently has been the emergence of recipe search sites that aggregate recipes from all of these various communities and blogs, such as Foodily, Yummly, and Google Recipes.

In the world of tools dedicated to restaurants, there are massive websites like Eater dedicated to the big foodie towns, which keep up-to-date reviews and news of the restaurant goings-on in towns like New York, San Francisco, and Chicago to name a few. No need to feel inferior, Small Towners, because thanks to geolocation you do not have to be in a big city to check out local restaurant reviews on apps like Urbanspoon, Chewsy, and Yelp. Then of course, there’s Groupon and other daily deal sites, as well as checking in on FourSquare which can also result in surprise discounts and deals at your restaurant of choice. Picking a place to eat requires a lot of digital hand-holding!

Chefs are plugged in as well, promoting their restaurants and themselves on Twitter and Facebook. Restaurants are relying heavily on social media sites as evidenced by food trucks, and some restaurants only post their daily menus by posting a photo of their menu board on Facebook. As SmartBlog on Restaurants notes:

Restaurants clearly understand how some of the biggest social sites can work for – and against – their businesses. A recent survey done by restaurant equipment and supply vendor Tundra Specialties found that 43% of restaurant owners believe Yelp provides a forum for consumers to broadcast small slights and bad experiences, and 41% said Groupon’s daily deals do more harm than good because it trains consumers to become addicted to discounts. Meanwhile, more than half the respondents said purely social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and geo-location services including Foursquare, have an overall positive impact on the industry.

And what may perhaps become the next wave of online engagement with restaurants has just come to fruition: ticketed dining. The aforementioned Chef Achatz’s newest concept, Next, uses ticketed dining where – just like a concert or sporting event – consumers pay a flat fee online for a ticket to dine. Their ticket gets them in the door on a specific night and covers a prie fixe menu as well as wine pairings. And just like a sporting event, scalpers almost immediately started hawking tickets to the restaurant on sites like eBay and Craigslist.

From the 50,000 foot view, the tubes have changed the way we eat – right up there with fire, the microwave, and the onset of (ick) processed convenience foods. Mind-blowing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m hungry.