Looking for some ideas for using imagery to communicate complicated subject matter, I stumbled across this site that curates or creates infographics from around the Web. This post from Smarter.org shows that infographics are so great, they can even be used to compare apples and oranges.
Bon apetít!
- Cam Beck
Facing a deadline for my contribution to the Click Here blog, I finally settled down on a subject. However, it was a bit different from the one I previously said I'd write about. John Keehler asked to see it before I posted it, so I took the opportunity to tell him that I had changed subjects, but -- not to worry -- he'd love it.
"Is it about zombies," he asked.
And I thought about it.
No, it really wasn't, but it with a tweak here and an insertion there -- it very well could be. Or at least I could use them as an analogy to make the point.
Why are they so controversial?
Because everyone wants a piece of the action. Because organizations typically work in silos, different departments feel slighted if their discipline isn’t “adequately” represented on the home page. One would think by all the name-calling and weepy eyes that the home page is kind of a big deal.
And they’re right. The home page is – kind of – a big deal. But not for the reasons people tend to get worked up about. After all, typically, only 40% of traffic to a website comes through the home page.
But as a consequence of their inability to set boundaries and priorities, they compromise the very purpose of the page. Every piece of real estate is up for grabs. The result of all the haggling may actually, as Krug suggests, kill the home page. But unlike a typical dead thing, it doesn’t go away. Like a zombie, it is reanimated into an unrecognizable abomination of its formal self.
Read the rest of Your Home Page is a Zombie at the Click Here blog. - Cam Beck
I heard on the radio that there was a site out there that analyzed the text on blogs and determined from your writing style what your personality is.
A short Google search later, I found Typealyzer, which had this to say about the writing style of ChaosScenario:
To help give the analysis context, the site gives a "scan" of the brain parts presumably most heavily used. Here's what ours looks like:
The site doesn't claim to test the actual personality of the site author, but rather the personality of the role that person assumes when writing the blog. Hence, on another blog I author, though my brain diagram was similar, my analysis seemed much different:
It's an interesting exercise and you should really try it out, but without a clear view of "the man behind the curtain," I'd admonish you to take Typealyzer's advice and "don't take it too seriously."
It doesn't measure the quality of a blog; it just gives you something to think about. - Cam Beck
P.S. Typealyzer would do well to turn its results into distributable content. I'm sure a lot of bloggers would be glad to spread the word if it were easy to do so -- even if, like me, they don't completely understand it.
In last night's debate between Senators Barrack Obama and John McCain, the "undecided voters" were introduced to a person some of us political junkies had known about for several days. Joe Wurzelbacher, a plumber and hopeful entrepreneur, confronted Obama at a campaign stop in Ohio about the higher taxes he'd pay if the Senator from Illinois had his way.
Joe felt cheated. As if he were being punished for having some success in life.
After all, he'd been working about 15 years to get to the point that he could afford to buy a business and improve his family's quality of life only to have someone come in, under threat of penalty and imprisonment, to take away what he earned through his hard work and effort -- not to mention the capital he put at risk.
Obama responded, (paraphrasing) "Well, you'd be taxed more now, but for the 15 years leading up to this point, you'd have been taxed less under my plan. I just wanna spread the wealth."
(Or, as Joe heard it, Obama wants to spread Joe's wealth.)
Now, before you run away, this isn't about Joe's, Obama's, or McCain's politics.
It's about Joe's desire to be free from someone telling him that they're restricting his freedom for his own good.
It's about the audacity of anyone to suggest that people perched high in their offices (political or corporate), know better than the Joes of the world how their time or the fruits of their labor should be spent.
Sadly, in spite of a wealth of information that should discourage the practice of such tactics, companies still fall victim to the same, navel-gazing mindset -- particularly on the Internet.
The intent of the marketers is not to "punish" their visitors. Quite to the contrary. They covet and need these people as customers. So why do they insist on getting in their way? Don't they know that damages their brand?
They just don't understand what's required of them with respect to visitors who have plenty of options to get their questions answered.
Hint: It usually starts with a Google or Yahoo search.
But the marketplace doesn't succeed or fail on intentions. Its success rests on the the participants' ability to deliver. Since Web users are absolutely ruthless in pursuit of their goals, companies need to check their egos and their fears long enough to get out of their customers' way -- or else they'll be gone before the company even knows what happened.
And once gone, it will be terribly expensive to get them back. - Cam Beck
Through Facebook, someone I chatted with awhile back (through a different platform) sent me an invitation to a private beta for this interesting career-related social networking site called FDCareer.com that mixes some elements of networking, education, and gaming.
It has a few bugs still, but they’ve been very responsive so far.
Despite the bugs, I think it’s an interesting approach to professional advancement that facilitates and rewards participation and learning. In particular, the “quests” include a mixture of networking tasks that help grow the community and learning tasks that both increase the participant’s status, or “level,” and at the same time, if the users take it seriously, it can really get them to think.
In addition, the participants get to review the companies they’ve worked for according to several criteria. In that way, it can also be a useful listening device to see if there might be cause for concern about employee morale.
Check it out. I’d love to see a career platform succeed that is built on encouraging self-improvement and is more than building the biggest contact list. - Cam Beck
Awhile back I had to give a presentation on experience planning to a bunch of traditional advertisers. In preparation for this, I asked the audience to email me examples of bad websites so that we could discuss what it was about them that made them bad. One of them was so bad that I was sure it was a mistake -- that it was a relic of a company long gone out of business. However, as it turns out, not only is the company still in business, but they actually promote their website on the product, or at least, they promote the fact that they have the website, and then trust that people wouldn't bother to check it out.
The product, Toast 'Ems, is almost identical to Pop Tarts. I'm sure someone with a more distinguished palate can tell the difference, but I'm at a loss.
At any rate, I chanced across them as I was walking by the dollar aisle at Albertson's, a grocery chain here in the deep south. I looked at the package, and on the back noticed the invitation, "Visit our website at www.toastem.com." (Please note: You MUST put in the "www.")
Go ahead. I'll wait.
It's fairly generic. Besides the gaudy animated gifs on the home page, the main sections are:
Now, I don't have any idea what their marketing plan is or how they're doing financially. It would be a colossal mistake to assume that, just because their website is "horrible," they are in a poor position. We have thousands of years of history to prove that the Internet isn't the only way to make money.
I bring this up only to point out why they can get away with building a bad website. The reason is this:
Their audience doesn't care.
Granted, the website doesn't give them any reason to care, but even if they did, what is the likelihood that, while eating toaster pastries for breakfast before school, kids are going to see the website, decide they just have to visit at that moment to see what the company has to offer?
It is so statistically small that it really isn't worth considering. The world doesn't operate that way. People don't operate that way, because they don't care nearly as much about your brand as you do.
I have no doubt that the Internet could be used in this company's marketing mix effectively. For not a whole lot of money, they could hire a student to redesign the site they have to make it more aesthetically pleasing, if nothing else.
However, this company has decided not to jump into a space to invest in something that, even if they did everything right, may not produce a return that couldn't be beat by investing in other things.
If nothing else, I have to admire them for not thinking so much of themselves that they have to overwrite, overproduce, and overspend -- just because everyone else seems to be doing it. They have a Web address. And (in the name of made-up statistics) for 99.9999% of the people who are exposed to the address, that will be enough, because only .0001% are going to bother to visit, and they won't care that it sucks. - Cam Beck
Via Tangerine Toad's post, I came across this website for The Brooklyn Brothers, which, as far as I can tell from a brief look, is some sort of marketing agency. In a lot of ways, the website is unfortunately typical for a marketing agency. However, they do something good that a lot of companies are afraid to do -- that is, inject an interesting personality.
Usually I caution against getting cute with symbology and navigation names. It rarely aids in navigation and ease of use. I have to admire the personality they injected into their work, though. They're not goofy, but they don't take themselves too seriously, either.
None of it is really persistent navigation anyway. It serves as the content -- which allows them to get away with being more clever within the context of page than typical persistent navigation would allow them.
Of course, the first thing I clicked on was the skull and crossbones icon warning users not to click it. How could I resist?
Some of the payoff the site offers could use some work, and I can't hyperlink past the home page because they didn't build their Flash file in a way that would allow it. However, that's not to take away from the positive lessons we can learn from it.
For more on how to find and incorporate your personality in your marketing communications, see Rohit Bhargava's excellent book, *Personality Not Included. - Cam Beck
Next Sunday is mother's day. Write it down now, don't forget!
So why get mom to go to a screening? Not a movie screening but a cancer screening. Yeah, it's not fun to talk about but cancer screening saves lives. Screening exams allow cancers to be diagnosed at the earliest stages and then treated when treatment will be the most effective.
This Mother's Day, send a gentle reminder to your mom to get those screening done:
This is self-promotion, the company I work did the work for this campaign. However, it's true, the early cancer is detected, the better the chances of successful treatment. You can learn more about cancer screenings and checklists here.
For my fellow bloggers, if you're so inclined, help us spread the word. - Paul Herring
This weekend the American Heart Association trained me in and certified me for CPR and first aid. It was the first time in about 16 years I'd been certified to perform CPR, although I had since been trained for particular emergencies (mostly dealing with sucking chest wounds and other battlefield injuries). A few things had changed since my last certification. One of them was something that someone might ask you for one day, and if you don't know what it is, the person being rescued might die. Also, if you happen to be the person in a dire situation, it's imperative that others know what it is, too.
It's called an AED, or Automated External Defibrillator. Until you get your CPR certification, what you need to know about it is this:
An AED could save your or someone else's life.
They're not always available when you need them, but many public places require them. They may be available at malls, airports, and other places where people gather in large numbers. Your work may even have one or several.
I write this now because, up until Saturday, had someone asked me to, "Call 9-1-1 and get an AED," I would have been able to do exactly half of that. I would have been clueless about the second half.
At a minimum, know what an AED is (they are not all identical in appearance) so that you can be useful should anyone suffer a problem that might require the use of one, but I also ask you to consider getting certified in CPR by visiting the American Red Cross or the American Heart Association.
The world is too small to assume it's someone else's problem. - Cam Beck
Tim and Wendy McHale of Madison Avenue Journal kindly invited me to attend Ad:Tech in the hopes that I would extend my meager observational talents to review some of the finalists for the "People's Choice Awards."
I know that some of you are thinking, "Cam, what qualifies you for this duty?"
As evidence of my expertise, I submit to you Exhibit A.
As you can see, I am, in fact, a people (The indefatigable Doug Meecham snapped that shot with me and my two friends, David Reich and Lewis Green).
For my first review, I took on the ever-popular ElfYourself. please do me the honor of heading over to Madison Avenue Journal and letting me know what you think. - Cam Beck
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