We first met with the folks at the Portland Schools Foundation five or six months ago. They told us how their work with schools and the community had evolved over the past 17 years. How, as the backbone organization leading the Cradle to Career initiative, their name no longer reflected who they are today.

Instead of going with a traditional graphic design firm, they were looking for a creative partner who could not only develop their new brand, but could also engage the community to share their insights and aspirations. (and all on a shoestring, non-profit-sized budget.)

True to the 52 model, we set out to build the right team for the assignment. We searched for a writer and designer who shared our passion for education and had the experience to boot. Jake Murray (copywriter) and Greg Parra (designer), both accomplished creatives and parents themselves, raised their hands.

In addition, we needed an instigator. Someone with a deep connection to education and the ability to provide an inspirational spark to the community engagement process. Despite a full schedule of speaking engagements around the world, Kevin Carroll was the perfect person for the job and lucky for us, he figured out a way to make it work.

We started by hosting a series of internal discovery and community workshops that eventually led the 52 team to craft a brand platform to guide the naming exploration. We started concepting and presented our shortlist of ideas. One name immediately rose to the top. And so, with the unanimous support of the board, the Portland Schools Foundation has become All Hands Raised–A name that will serve as a rallying cry, mobilizing a diverse community passionate about helping all kids achieve their full potential.

We’re proud to have been partners on this journey and hope to continue to support Dan Ryan and his team as they grow into their new skin. For more about All Hands Raised and the work they do, visit:  All Hands Raised

When the economy went south, marketing budgets were some of the first on the chopping block. So the story goes, lower sales mean less revenue equals scaling back on expenses. Fast-forward two years and we find ourselves still teetering on tough economic times. Is your company now viewing the marketing department as a mitigated expense or an investment opportunity?

Unfortunately, we all know too well that lesser budgets don’t necessarily mean fewer expectations. In fact, in trying times despite waning resources, many marketers are asked to do more with less. Play short-handed. Stretch their dollars. Continue as before but with one hand tied behind their backs. So what do you do? Rely on Twitter and Facebook to weather the storm? We feel your pain.

When business is not “as usual”, traditional marketing resources may need to be reevaluated. You may need to realign your strategy. And the full-service agency you’re currently tethered to might not be the best bang for the buck anymore. If this is the case, consider exploring 52 Limited. Whether sourcing senior freelance talent to fill a temporary void or activating one of our custom project teams to provide fresh creative horsepower, we can keep your brand moving forward without showing up on the CFO’s radar.

By Ryan Gallagher, Account Director @ 52 Limited

Submit your ideas to engage kids in creative adventures!

Here are two “Brain Food” examples to get you thinking:

MUSEUM MAKER
Find or collect “artifacts” or works of art that are interesting to you. Some people collect shells, postcards, buttons, pictures, or figurines. Decide what you think is important about each artifact or work of art and make labels or signs to go with them. If you would like to give your museum visitors extra information about the objects or art, dive into some research! Arrange your objects or art in a special space, on walls, tables or surfaces where they look good to you. Spend time thinking about how your museum is arranged. Do objects that are similar in some way belong near each other? Where do you put your favorite item? How can you feature your objects the best with light or color? How will visitors look through your museum from start to finish? You can also lead tours through your museum to talk about the objects with your visitors. Be sure to ask them what they see that they like, and why.

HEAR ME ROAR
Go on a hunt to find your own voice. Our ability to make an amazing range of sounds with our voice is often under-explored. Think about the places you’ve been that made you hear your own voice in a new way – your bathroom, a hallway, under a bridge, or in an echo-filled canyon. If you have it, use paper or poster board to create your own megaphone and think about giving your voice a new character in this space. You can use your voice to sing, make noises, tell a story, or let others know what’s on your mind. How far can you make your voice travel? How many different tones can you produce? Can your voice bend around walls? What environments create the most echo? A group of voices who perform together is called a choir or chorus. With a few other friends, you can momentarily claim rooms, alcoves, tunnels, archways, or fields with your new found voices.

Read more Brain Food examples here.

Guidelines for Contributions:

In short, submissions all must include the following elements:
Creative Activity/Exploration + Easy-to-Find Materials + School Subject = Brain Food

The activity should be unique, easy-to-understand, and relate visual art, dance, theater, music, media or design to one or more subjects kids learn in school. Some example subjects are: Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Civics, Cooking, Foreign Language, Geology, Geography, Journalism, Math, Nutrition, Oregon History, Physical Education, Reading, Social Studies, Spelling, Theater, U.S. History, World History, Writing

-Whenever possible make the challenge relevant to the Portland community. This may mean including specific geographic locations and landmarks, history, or environmental details specific to the Pacific Northwest.

-Materials needed to complete the challenge should be easy to find.

-Challenges should focus on creative process rather than final results.

-They should be applicable to children in grades K-8 and performed under the guidance of a parent or teacher.

Submission Instructions:

Email your contribution(s) to socialchange@portland.aiga.org in text form, and attach any relevant images. (Images may or may or may not be used in final implementation). Provide your title for the challenge, and your full name. Once submitted, the challenges/activities will be evaluated and edited by Right Brain staff and teachers. If your submission is chosen, you will receive credit for being a contributor in the final physical piece.

If you have any questions about the above, email Melissa at mdelzio@portland.aiga.org
Remember, keep it simple and fun!
Thanks,
AIGA Portland & The Right Brain Initiative

Background

This project was initiated by the AIGA Portland’s Social Change Committee members Melissa Delzio, Brittany Hanson, and Tina Le. The committee sprung from a national AIGA call for designers to engage more in efforts of social change in their communities. As critical thinkers, artists, professional communicators, and designers have a unique skill set that can utilized by many non-profits. The AIGA Portland Social Change Committee has chosen to partner with The Right Brain Initiative because of their impact on local schools and focus on the arts. To find out more about The Right Brain Initiative visit their websitehttp://therightbraininitiative.org or email Rebecca Burrell rburrell@racc.org.

No one wants be held down by The Man. The Man has been keeping down rebellious and artistic souls throughout history. The Man has inspired everything from Jesus’ crucifixion and Western Civilization’s breakaway from feudalism to the shaking hips of Rock and Roll.

People I am here to tell you – Oprah is The Man. Sweeping powers over women, television, lifestyles, maybe even presidential elections. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of Oprah, do you? Ask Letterman. Now – The Man is moving her empire off of the “vintage media.”

The decision to end the syndicated show has tectonic implications for the media of the next Millennium. In short, stations can’t afford to pay the massive overheads due to ad revenue fallout, and the overall decline of content worth in the rise of the .com world.

U.K.’s Observer sums it up:

“In the months and years to come, whenever big programs like The Oprah Winfrey Show sit down to renegotiate their deals with local, broadcast stations they are likely to find a grim market where station-group managers are unable or unwilling to match the fees of yesteryear, let alone increase them. That leaves two options for the likes of Oprah. Lower your fees. Or pack up shop.”

You may not think this affects you, as a creator, as a designer, a mAd Man, whatever your gig, but it does. What they say about war goes for broadcast mediums: You may not go looking for it (in this case TV-Web convergence) but IT may coming looking for YOU. A channel on the digital dial is where your work is headed. And you don’t need to know the number.

The days of the Big Three are obviously long past us, and their power to hold advertisers’ dollars are being condensed, specialized, localized and downsized. These are your clients. This is your audience.

What it does is point to the power of networking in a job search. We advise that people do 3 main things when looking for a job. 1. Following job posting boards is a necessary evil of the job search. You may find a job here, but you are just one of thousands of people looking at the same posting. 2. A placement agency like 52 can open doors and provide opportunities that never show up on job boards. A placement agency is also a function of the next and critical step. 3. Network. Often networking is the most important missing piece. It’s also of course, the hardest one and the one that requires the most work.

So, getting back to the “who you know”. It’s not really who you know as much as it is what you know and who you know. If you don’t have marketable employment skills, it really doesn’t matter who you know, chances are you still are not going to be hired to run your mom’s friend’s marketing department. The key is to know as many people in your chosen profession and specialization as you can. If you are good at what you do, you should have a network of people that know it. When looking for a new job, you tap into that network and let it work for you.

If you need to build a network, it takes time, effort and focus. When you make a contact make sure you also ask that contact for a referral. That way one contact becomes two. And always follow up. Keep track of your contacts and the activity you have had with them. When trying to build a network on a job search you need to ask yourself, who would hire me? As in, what is the position or job title of the person who would hire me? If you are a graphic designer, it might be a creative director or marketing manager. Those are the people then that you target for your networking. You also target people who would be doing the same work as you, but they are more able to refer you to opportunities, the higher level people may be the ones doing the hiring. Either way, it’s still networking and building your sphere of contacts.

It’s good to get this skill down early because it is a recurring theme. A job search through proactive networking is very similar to the business development cycle that companies pursue. And it’s hard work. But, it is worth it because you never know the opportunities that will present themselves, either in the short term or years down the road.

Because, it’s all about who you know.

For those who delve deeper into the world of independent contracting and incorporate as a business, there are greater tax benefits and retirement plans available to them than W2′s. They can write off business expenses (iPhone anyone?), pay themselves a salary to fit into a lower income tax bracket, and more. We say kudos to those who have found a way to effectively work within a system that still only parses workers into Farm and Non-Farm, let alone has the sophistication to accommodate a dynamic workforce of freelancers and contractors. These career contractors will prefer and may even ask to work as an Independent Contractor. For those lucky dogs writing their own ticket, they might even make it contingent upon accepting the work! They will be willing to sign all the paperwork that states as much, but none of that matters if the “powers-that-be” deem this “Independent” to look like, walk like and talk like an “employee”.

The Council of Bureaucratic Elders

Who is this nebulous group of “deciders” behind the proverbial curtain deeming individuals as “independent” or “employee”?  They are the agencies that care about this great nation’s hard-working labor force; the agencies whose mission is to make the workplace a better, happier place, oh, and have a vested interest in income and employer tax revenue & Workers’ Compensation–the IRS, Departments of Labor, Departments of Revenue, and Employment Development Departments. Surprisingly, these disparate Federal and State bureaucracies haven’t yet agreed on a consistent set of factors that determine Independent Contractor status. Even when their questions coincide, they each weigh the answers to the questions differently. It’s like dealing with the government! Oh, wait…

Who Cares?

When big, big fines are determined by a set of compliance factors that are as clear as mud, Legal and Finance are likely to be most interested in making sure that there are controls in place and alternatives available to the choice of 1099 or employment. HR may join in on the fun, only because they love to be part of compliance (I have sat in Corporate HR!). Putting controls in place; saying “no”; and providing solutions that cost more are never crowd-pleasers, but just as you thank Mom for getting you to school on time, making you eat your veggies and do your homework, one day you’ll thank them, too.

Red Flag! Warning! Don’t Press That Button!

Smaller companies might convince themselves that they can fly under the radar on this. After all, this whole debacle was kicked off by Microsoft’s misclassification suit (several $MM fine and counting!), and they’re HUGE! But audits can be triggered by even the most well-intentioned, not bitter, non-retaliatory contractor whose contract has come to an end…particularly if they file for unemployment insurance or worker’s comp. You’re at a much higher risk if that contractor feels disgruntled and wants to cause some heartache by calling for an audit. Even hiring back the employee you laid off as a  contractor could trigger an audit.

Moral to the Story

Companies and workers be careful.  The rules are a little convoluted so do your research.  What seems like an innocent 2 week contract could turn into big problems if contractor status is handled incorrectly… or it could lead to a perfectly executed project as long as all parties involved are aware of which hoop to jump through!

Written by Tim Baker, Senior Manager of Social & Emerging Media at FD Kinesis.

An informative article in eMarketer shows that Twitter followers are more likely to induce advocacy and future purchases than those on Facebook. According to their data, 37% of respondents were more likely to purchase from a brand after following them on Twitter as opposed to only 17% of those that “like” a brand on Facebook.

The numbers are also pretty similar when asked if they would be more likely to recommend a brand after following them on Twitter or Facebook.

I can’t say that I’m surprised one bit by these numbers, and I believe the reason is simple: Twitter is a platform that attracts an audience receptive to marketing messages much more than Facebook. A great quote that I wish I could say I came up with goes something like this: “Facebook is for the people you know while Twitter is for those you want to know.”

Statistics tend to show that there’s a fork in the road that many new Twitter users reach. There’s a marked drop-off by users with only a handful of tweets that abandon the service versus those that continue to embrace it. Many of those that find value in Twitter gain that value from its function as a news platform. In fact, 44% of adult internet users aged 18-29 and 45% aged 30-49 are getting their news online.

Facebook is not a good platform for delivering news. The default front page view does not show a user every post from all of those in their network but rather an abbreviated feed that Facebook feels is most relevant to them. Additionally, the function of setting up lists, which are an excellent way to segment content on Facebook and could provide value in the service as a news aggregator, is vastly underused.

Lastly, a factor that I believe plays a part in gaining more quality followers on Twitter versus Facebook is the fact that it’s generally a two-step process to follow a brand as opposed to the one-click “like” on Facebook. One that visits a brand page and sees a “follow us on Twitter” option has to click through to the Twitter profile page of that brand, and from there they can choose to actually subscribe to their stream. This multi-step process not only cuts down on the number of more casual, less-likely-to-buy followers but also gives potential subscribers a taste of one’s stream before they are convert to a follower of the brand.

From my own experiences as a marketer, I consistently see this play out time and time again. Brands that have a much greater number of Facebook fans than Twitter followers that are serving their audience with the same discount savings offers consistently showing a higher return via Twitter. This is not to say that Facebook should be ignored, because there’s definitely  value in reaching a large audience with marketing information. What I feel this says is that those brands that are late adopters to the social media game and still don’t see value in Twitter, or are not using the site to its greatest potential need to understand that from a lead generation perspective, Twitter must be a part of their social media strategy. Social media is a quality versus quantity play and nowhere is it more apparent for brands than on Twitter.

Originally posted on SocialMediaToday.

Originally published on aiga.org in May 6, 2010. Reports then showed a market recovery.  How do you think we’re fairing?

The AIGA Design Leaders Confidence Index for the first quarter of 2010 reflects the strongest confidence yet in an economic recovery. The index rose to 103.73—up from 51 in October 2008—and is the highest since AIGA began measuring confidence in the design economy in early 2005.

While most respondents rated conditions moderately better—rather than substantially better over both the past six months and in anticipation of the next six months—the impressions that pushed up the index are widely held. AIGA had expected results from the beginning of 2010 to reveal whether American businesses had reduced their budgets for design based on 2009’s weak start, thus imposing a continuing negative impact on design business. The data and anecdotal evidence suggest investment in design is reviving.

More than a third of respondents (36.5 percent) believe they will be more likely to hire new designers in this quarter than last; only 15 percent felt they were less likely to hire new designers. And 48 percent felt their plans of purchasing new hardware and software had increased compared with three months ago.

Comparison to corporate and consumer confidence indexes

Design leaders seem to be more confident than other business leaders, according to the Conference Board’s measure of business leaders’ confidence, which declined slightly in the first quarter of 2010. CEOs’ hiring plans and assessments of their own industries have improved, yet their assessment of overall economic conditions is less optimistic than the previous quarter.

Parallel to the confidence shown by design leaders, the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® also continues to improve; it is now at its highest level since September 2008. Consumer confidence improved significantly in March of this year and continued its upward trend in April, along with an indication that concerns about business and the job market have eased.

Written by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman and originally posted at newsweek.com

Brainstorming in a group became popular in 1953 with the publication of a business book, Applied Imagination. But it’s been proven not to work since 1958, when Yale researchers found that the technique actually reduced a team’s creative output: the same number of people generate more and better ideas separately than together. In fact, according to University of Oklahoma professor Michael Mumford, half of the commonly used techniques intended to spur creativity don’t work, or even have a negative impact. As for most commercially available creativity training, Mumford doesn’t mince words: it’s “garbage.” Whether for adults or kids, the worst of these programs focus solely on imagination exercises, expression of feelings, or imagery. They pander to an easy, unchallenging notion that all you have to do is let your natural creativity out of its shell. However, there are some techniques that do boost the creative process:

When you write a DRTV spot, you are dealing with clients who want results. DRTV “works,” they have been told, and you don’t want to be the one to blame if it doesn’t. But have no fear! DRTV clients take comfort in mathematical formulas, and their expectations for your script involve a formula, too. A DRTV spot has a problem/solution at the beginning and includes product demonstration, customer testimonial, celebrity endorsement, product offer, and a call to action. All of these elements snuggle and mix inside a loose framework, which some DRTV people will inaccurately call the “idea.” This “idea” is really a hook, a catchphrase or (at worst) a hat on a dog, and once you put all that in your script, there’s really little left to write.

In a DRTV spot, problem/solution lasts about three and a half seconds. Witness: the next time you see an infomercial, notice how long it takes the screen to go from color, to monochrome, then back to color. That’s problem/solution. “Remember boring, old-fashioned sit-ups?” as we see someone straining over the most difficult sit-up known to man? You can bet that shot will be in monochrome black and white. Then, a flash to color on the Ab-Rawker, with its red seat and shiny chrome handles. Infomercials offer quick solutions through material purchases. Upgrading the black & white telly to a shiny new CT-100 persists as a social norm in that prosperity narrative, and DRTV people can’t do without this convention.

After the problem/solution, a product demonstration shows real actors using the product. These real actors then testify to camera, gushing about the product’s utility and their satisfaction. Don’t be afraid of this, either. It is simply Microeconomics 101 setting out to prove itself. Don’t fight it, just write it! (Fortunately for ad writers, it’s less damaging to sell a Slap Chop using antique formulas than Healthcare policy reform.)

After product demonstration, you’ll want an endorsement from someone of high esteem with the target audience. Enter Ed McMahan, or Alex Trebek, or an actor playing a real ITT Tech student, or a Ph.D.-licensed nutritionist with great buns as the case may dictate.

Finally, when you write the product offer, be extra careful of spelling and product points, because this is where clients will notice any errors or omissions. No, it’s not uncommon for the call to action to contain a simple $xx for price, xxx-xxx-xxxx for the phone number, and www.gadget123.com for the Web site. Those space holders leave the script open for segmentation and tracking in different markets. But those are minor details to you, especially compared to making sure the trademarked “InstaRachet System™” gets in there.

Now, all you have left for your infomercial script is the writer’s idea. Mind you, the DRTV spot is only 60 or 120 seconds, and once you put everything else in, there won’t be much room for an idea, especially if it has to be trimmed to a 30 or 15. Besides, what your clients usually mean by “idea” is a catchphrase. Sometimes it’s so minimal, the endorser provides it de facto: “Hi. Billy Mays, here.” Or maybe it’s a phrase one step removed from cliché: “When it rains, it scores! With the Gutter Gold water reclamation system, your water bills blah-bitty-blah.” Or, perhaps, it will come from the client: “So easy, you can do it with one finger.” As long as everything else in the formula is covered in the script, the “idea” will usually take care of itself. That way, everyone will be happy, the formula will be preserved, and you will get your money.

Later on, you can decide whether or not to own up to your involvement with Mr. T’s reincarnation as a FlavorWave cooking enthusiast. “My taste buds is going wild!” Now, that’s DRTV.

Written by KFann for 52LTD’s Blog.  Thanks so much KFann!!