Hello Viking

Which one is it?

As Armano tweeted, "Just watch it." (Great dissection of the issues in the current Writers strike.)

Facebooking

Yes, we did it. We took Facebook's bait and created ourselves a Page. Come visit. Become a fan. We would really dig that.

Subaru goes to CL

Congratulations to Carmichael Lynch on picking up the Subaru account without a review. The good people at 110 N. 5th Street deserve the win. And the Minneapolis advertising community definitely needs the good news.

Note to RGA (current incumbent for Subaru interactive): Watch out for Herb, Sean, Wex, Mike and Dan!

Thanks, Apple

We dropped iPhone #1 last week.

Granted, we've dropped iPhone #2 several times and it's been fine. (Of course, now iPhone #2 gets carried around in a lucite case.)

But iPhone #1 got hurt. The glass cracked. Totally our fault.

And Apple's response has been nothing short of outstanding. The people on the phone were kind, efficient and understanding. Clearly, Apple's worked through this process and trained appropriately. How many companies bother to prepare for these inevitabilities of customer error? Not nearly enough.

The loaner iPhone showed up this morning.

Apple sends you a new paperclip to assist with opening your broken iPhone. They send you a paperclip!!! They send brilliant, simple instructions. They send packing tape to seal up your broken iPhone in the return box.

Clearly, Apple has bothered to think about us, the end users, working throough even the most mundane scenarios.

And for maintaining this keen, deep-reaching eye on customer experience, we're going to thank Apple by continuing to buy and recommend their products. We're also going to continue purchasing more of their stock.

MIMA Summit 2007

So we joined the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association last week, and attended the 2007 Summit today.

(Check out our photos here. And our tweets here.)

Over 630 people showed up. The event was sold out. We got there a bit late and missed the first keynote. But overall, we had a really good time. Our highlights:

"Quantifying the Overall Value of the Web Channel"
Jason Burby, Chief Analytics & Optimization Officer, ZAAZ (Seattle, WA)
Interactive/digital work is inherently measurable--it's unescapable--which is both a blessing a curse. Because on the one hand, we finally have a basis for understanding what works and possibly why. On the other, we've got a massive responsibility to do something with the information. Burby's presentation was a solid exercise in understanding the role of metrics as a foundation for monetizing user behavior -- and then figuring out what to do about it all. We'll be buying ZAAZ's book on the subject.

"Unconventional Collaboration: Insights Gathered from Three Years of Collaboration at 37signals"
Jason Fried, Founder, 37signals (Chicago, IL)
We use Basecamp from 37Signals, so we were biased in favor of this presentation. It was really nice to discover we share many of 37Signals' operational practices: Working apart--working virtually, no (or extremely few) meetings, focusing on smaller decisions that can be solved quickly versus the paralysis of large problems. Plus, Jason sounds oddly like our friend Dmitri Cavander. What Jason proposes is powerful stuff, and it clearly works--the challenge is in scaling the methodology up to larger entities. But an awesome presentation, nonetheless. And we're buying 37Signals' book as well.

We weren't nuts about the huge bottleneck to get to the free lunch, so we ate across the street at Subway. But the open bar at the end was nice. One comment: Seems like a vast majority of interactive marketing people in Minnesota have very well-designed eyewear.

We'll be back.

Huzzah, Jan Ulrik Leth!

A fearsome Viking congratulations to our friend Jan Leth on his recent promotion at Ogilvy to Chairman of Vice or some such thing. Well deserved, Jan!

And thanks to Jan's vast knowledge of viking lore, we now bask in the glorious understanding that Bluetooth wireless technology was essentially named after the Viking King Harald Bluetooth.

Hello, Sports Illustrated!

And a helmet tip to our pal Marty for the heads up. Go Sox!

Widget This.

Nifty post over at Mark Silva's Share of Voice blog on the increasing influence of widgets. According to the comScore data Silva crunched, all widgets combined generate a greater worldwide audience than single sites like Amazon.com, Apple.com or The New York Times.com. As it's been said, there appears to be something there, there, with these widgets.

We've been working on a few widgets and widget-like objects recently. Seems like the real appeal here is compartmentalized convenience. Just enough scintillating content. Just enough interactivity. Just enough user control. And advertisers, as well as users, can place or re-distribute them almost anywhere.

Those qualities seem to be catching on.

Neat, Joe. Smart, Marc.

Neat post from Joseph Jaffe on Marc Ecko's new campaign soliciting feedback on what to do with the homerun record setting ball that Marc now owns.

We totally agree with Jaffe on the brilliance of using the ball to further a conversation on so many levels.

Wonderful stuff.

VMAs and Emmys

The Foo Fighters and Cee-Lo playing Prince on MTV's Music Video Awards? Get out! Brilliant live mashup. We need lots more of this, recording industry! (And shame on MTV for not allowing true embeds...sure, you can grab the code, but you end up with a "Visit MTV.com to see this video" message. Lame, MTV!)

And then there's JT.

From the Associated Press: "I think it's safe to say that when we first set out to make this song, we were all thinking 'Emmy!'" Andy Samberg (of SNL) said in accepting the award Saturday for best original music and lyrics.

"The other thing we were thinking was, 'Hey! Here's this young up and comer, Justin Timberlake, who is clearly very talented and could clearly use a break,'" Samberg said. "So, Justin, if you're out there, congrats to you, kid.'"

Dick In A Box is funny, absolutely. But it's also an example of how an artist can step outside their "box" and offer something worthwhile--witness FF and Cee-Lo playing Prince. It's another product, probably even more funny than Tenacious D.

Where's the follow-up album, or at least another single, JT and SNL?