Judging by the the bump in Twitter followers and the number of phone calls I’ve received this past week, I probably don’t need to share this link, but I/Hauck Interactive was featured in this past week’s Central Penn Business Journal.

(Yup, a little late with the link. I’ve been a bit busy)

I pretty much swore off print in college after realizing I was killing too many trees during the design process, but I made a rare exception for my friends over at TorchBearer Sauces. They’re introducing a new, taller bottle for their products that makes it much easier to pour their sauce. I took a quick stab at scaling the characters from the existing bottle designs but ultimately convinced the guys at TorchBearer to let me redraw all of the labels from scratch.

I picked up a few of the newly-labeled bottles at the last Vidian (hot sauce party). Judging from some of the pictures I took (like the one above), I discovered I still have a lot to learn about my Flashbulb and white balance.

It was a fun assignment, as I don’t often get to draw really wacky characters, plus no paper was harmed in the making of the bottles (thanks to my trusty Cintiq). There are a few older bottle designs still out there (as well as a few new ones that aren’t yet out), but the new bottles should be hitting Giant Food and Whole Foods in the near future.

It’s still a little weird to see my handwriting on labels when I go through the supermarket aisles . . .

I’ve felt compelled to write this post for some time, and I’m writing to Central PA openly because I’ve seen a lot of embarrassing trends in my hometown’s Web industry (not the local individual-driven blogging community, which I like to keep up with as well). In particular, I’ve seen the use of corporate blogs as sales tools executed by Harrisburg, Lancaster, and even Reading interactive and advertising agencies.

My message to them: Please, do it right or don’t do it at all.

Why do I make this recommendation (aside from hometown pride)? Well, assuming the traffic stats from Google Analytics aren’t already telling you, let me come out and say that it’s compromising your company’s image as a local tech leader–a leader that truly understands how a tool is used and doesn’t corruptly wield that tool. It might not be immediately apparent now–your clients may applaud your blog’s launch–but unless they’re actively commenting on your posts, chances are they’re either being polite or don’t really subscribe to blogs. Also, keep in mind that the tech-saavy clients you want to service and the talent you may want to hire–or already have–may negatively react to how you use a blog.

Without going into names (since my intention isn’t some witch hunt) here are some of the troublesome characteristics I’ve seen of Central PA’s “Corporate” blogs.

1. Lack of posts. Simply put, this will kill any blog. Make sure you and your team have something meaningful to say. If you’re considering a blog, definitely draw from the advice/experience of an employee that runs their own–even (especially!) if they don’t think it’s a good idea.
2. Welcome to WordPress! syndrome. I’ve come across some un-promoted blog installations that clearly designate the company it was set up by/for, yet have no posts (aside from the “Welcome to WordPress” default post). While I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to find these sites, they’re out in the open, available to be found, and have been in their current state for MONTHS. Bottom line, don’t leave projects like this in the public space as it inadvertently represents your company.
3. Lack of commenting functionality. If you’re not allowing comments, you’re losing a great opportunity to share and learn from your audience. If you’ve disabled comments because of spam, you’re exposing your technical inability to handle the problem. If you’re filtering comments you don’t want, you may want to take a step back and ask what you’re doing wrong.
4. Criticism of national advertising campaigns by (smaller) ad agencies. Granted, there are a lot of poorly executed advertising campaigns out there, but making open criticisms without positive recommendations comes off as, well, whining. Such posts neglect to consider all the unknown factors involved (client, deadlines, budget) in the job.
5. Posting for search engine rankings (SEO). Umm, this is just wrong.
6. Blatant advertising of your firm. If you have an editor that’s moderates your topics or counts your search engine keywords, you’re not using a blog, you’re assembling a sequential advertisement. There are plenty of other places people could read ads if they wanted to.
7. No real opinions posted. If you’re not allowing your authors to freely submit their opinions for fear of having them tarnish your company’s brand, you might want to keep your corporate blog limited to your intranet. Hopefully, your employees are responsible enough to recognize the differences on what to publish and not publish, and an honest post will likely invoke more audience response.
8. Selling blogs to clients. First off, do they want a blog, or do they really want a news section to their site? Do they know the difference, or are they exercising their buzzword vocabulary? If a client hasn’t been motivated enough to set up their own account (which is so easy to do these days, even for those not technically-oriented), they might not realize the effort entailed and could fall victim to #1.
9. Employee embarrassment. Are your employees proud of your blog? Do they read it, or see it as a silly marketing ploy with no real content? Keep in mind that this can really affect your employee morale.

So what makes a successful corporate blog?

1. Start with your employees. If you can’t find an audience with your authors–the very people involved in the industry you’re blogging about, then you probably shouldn’t run a corporate blog.
2. Create a dialogue with your customers, not a sales pitch. Depending on your industry, a corporate blog should make announcements of new product releases from the insider’s perspective–with the goal of getting customer feedback to provide the best product possible.
3. Building an audience shouldn’t be your goal, but rather a welcome side effect. I’ve had the opportunity to work with a number of different firms and seen a lot of successful (as well as failed) blogs. The ones I still subscribe to aren’t out to prove their technical skill or their innovative process, but rather to create a dialogue internally. It’s these blogs–the ones that aren’t out to show off or sell–that end up exposing the company’s talent and selling the company more effectively.

Obviously, I can’t say that I have the definitive answer on how to use a corporate blog successfully, but I do hope this post gets to the right audience and we see less of the current trends in Central PA. If you agree, disagree, or think I missed something, please comment.

I’m a little shocked to not see The Key to Reserva hit mainstream on the Web after all this time. I’m not a huge Freixenet fan, but I love this ad. The graphic intro, the first-person camera shots, the MacGuffin, the blonde, ahh…

Who knew the future and technology of the past would be so bright? I just came across Paleo Future, a blog dedicated to the future that never was. Highlights include some amusing AT&T promotional videos and some Apple technologies that clearly never took off. Remember AT&T’s 1993 “You Will” ads? Who knew AT&T was so good at predictions, even if they weren’t the sole provider of such technologies?

In general, I guess people just never stopped to think, “hey, this video conferencing gets really awkward since you have to maintain eye contact to remain polite!”.

My friend Moses got me to come along and attend my first NY Tech Meetup on Tuesday night. I was about to list all of the presentations I saw, but I’ll let Silcon Alley Insider do it for me (Coincidentally, there’s a picture of me sporting some serious red-eye there, too).

Some general thoughts:

• DesignMyRoom.com seemed to breath some life into the stale, “hey, I had that idea!” Web 1.0 concept with a very sharp-looking Flash front-end. Kudos to my hometown’s andCulture on building the site–and recognizing there’s a bigger market than just Central PA. Now if you could just do something with your own cooler-than-thou Web site …
• Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman succeeded to annoy me–”Okay every presenter gets 5 minutes–Oh, except for you, Mr. former-CEO-of-DoubleClick-turned-startup-celebrity Kevin Ryan. We’ll dedicate as long as I deem it necessary for you!”
• I really liked what BookSwim’s presenters were suggesting, but I guess I was alone, as no demo = booing offstage. I suggested a similar model to a Brooklyn librarian trying to find ways to re-connect the library system with the public … there’s gotta be promise somewhere with this idea (Oh, and hey, guys, don’t let NetFlix’s lawyers find your site).
• I’m in like with you stole the show in my opinion, from the “Business model? Huh? This is for fun!” approach in their presentation to their uber-impressive Flash frontend/Rails backend UI.
• No Mobile apps. A little surprising to me.

Overall, the well-packed room was a bit stuffier than the typical NYC gatherings I attend, but it’s nice to see there’s that startup energy around here …

I had to see for myself what Second Life was all about after hearing about all of the marketing dollars going into this massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). If you’re unfamiliar with Second Life, it’s a multiplayer online game built in 3D that just went from 100,000 users in January to 1 million not too long ago; IBM held a business meeting to discuss MMORPG in this virtual universe, and Fox recently held a movie trailer premiere within the game. SMS in the game has been incorporated to work with the real world, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about companies pouring more marketing dollars into this program.

If you haven’t tried Second Life out yet, I highly recommend checking it out once (it’s free, at least if you don’t plan on getting THAT involved).

I would predict that Second Life’s user base will continue to grow, but, ultimately, Second Life really only suites a niche audience, and given the occasional performance lag and the clear financial and time investment required, I wouldn’t be too concerned about MySpace’s position at the top of the hill.

Second Life wreaks of the Matrix to me in some regard; it’s a virtual world where people define their virtual identities and the virtual environment around them. I don’t plan on becoming a resident (my first life is enough!), but it’s utterly fascinating to explore the different residences and see how much effort players put into creating their virtual identities. To think that people invest the time to build houses, furniture, and items for sale . . . you’d think Second Life was training the next generation of 3D artists!

I’ve only started drinking Starbucks, as I was (and still am) against them overtaking the world of small, local coffee shops. They don’t hold a candle up to some of the local NYC shops, but I blame my change of heart on a 60 Minutes documentary, along with the fact that their drip coffee is good and consistent (I wish they’d put the creamer in, though, rather than force me to use the sometimes-nasty public creamer station).

I caught myself reading their packaging the other day, and while I like their campaign, I’m not crazy about that exclusivity of it. For those of you that don’t read Starbucks product packaging in their spare time, the whole idea is a play on starting conversations at coffee shops, and it involves displaying the opinions of famous and influential people.

It’s all done tastefully (I’m thankful to read Bob Edwards’s opinion rather than Paris Hilton), and it invites consumers to mention the way they see it on the Starbucks Web site (see http://www.starbucks.com/wayiseeit). My question is, why stop there? Why not display the common consumer’s opinion on the packaging? Why must it be some well-known or “successful” person? So long as it’s interesting to read, I don’t think I should matter who’s voice it is.

Too expensive to produce, you say? Hogwash! Look at Jones Soda. They’ve been publishing submitted pictures for years.

Well, Starbucks, keep up the good coffee, but think about giving the little guy an equal soapbox.

Joshua Davis, the guy who was skooling wannabe Flash rockstars like me on algorithmic programming before we knew what to call it, has just finished a series of prints for BMW. Looking at this site, I was wondering how BMW promotes this campaign (since I’d not have heard of it without going to Mr. Davis’s site), but I guess me posting about it does the job, doesn’t it?

ESPN has an interesting little article on the Jordan: 2nd Generation spot by Wieden + Kennedy. I think it’s interesting to see that Air Jordan’s shoes stay true to his winning colors of Chicago red, white, and black rather than his twilight days as a Wizard. I suppose it only reinforces the myth.

We’ve seen Kobe, and now we’ve seen King James, but will there ever be another Michael Jordan? I doubt it. I don’t think it was solely Jordan’s talent on the court, but also the infancy of what has become an industry of athlete endorsement. It’s difficult to create an icon, regardless of the talen, when the public is now so familiar with the term.