Marketing and Management Thoughts

I recently read the article ‘Managing an Online Reputation‘ by Kermit Pattison in the NYT. It was a great article and we recommend that you check it out online.  The three keys are to Monitor, Manage, and Promote. Below are some of the highlights:

To monitor your online reputation check out some Web tools that do just that. We use Google Alerts here at nineteen05 and simply subscribe in our RSS reader to get updates daily. We have several set up for our business name, staff member names, and some key terms related to our business. Some of the tools in that review are free, others can get quite expensive. For churches I would recommend the free options.

Free Automatic Alert Options

• Google Alerts – Searches blogs and more
• technorati.com – Blog Search Engine
• keotag.com – very simple, but lacked ability to search all sources at once
• monitorthis.info – Blog Search Engine (found out of date entries)

This is what the twitter community would look like if it was only 100 people. It’s a fun play off the ‘if the world was a village‘ concept. Thanks mkandlez, for the graphic.

Asking someone to do work on Spec means that they put all the time and energy into the work without any guarantee that they would ever receive any compensation for the work. We are nineteen05 are whole hearted against SPEC work. So why is it wrong?

The reason it has been an issue for designers in particular is that after a designer has finished their work, the client would reject it not liking something and the designer is then out of their time/effort/money. While the concept of spec work does exist on large scale (competitions for major building designs). Unless you are holding a competition for your new church building, don’t do spec work. Even with volunteers.

The newly appointed president of AIGA (the international designers association), Debbie Millman, on Spec Work.

I am personally vigorously, passionately and fundamentally AGAINST designers being asked to do work on spec and neither I nor my firm will ever participate in speculative work. I have said it before and I will say it again: Speculative work denigrates both the agencies and the designers that participate. If we give away our work for free, if we give away our talent and our expertise, we give away more than the work. We give away our souls.

Read the full interview over at NO!SPEC.

For more information on the NO!SPEC movement.

In another article about the Debbie Millman, the author referenced these great articles. The top three are particularly helpful for how the church is most likely to cross the SPEC boundary line.

• Spec Work Is Evil / Why I Hate CrowdSpring, by Andrew Hyde
• More logo design contest nonsense, on The Logo Factor
• Spec Watch on design contests, on Logo Design Love
• Don’t design on spec, by Jeffrey Zeldman
• Spec Work Arithmetic, from the Speak Up Archive
• An interview with SpecWatch, on Web Designer Depot
• Pay the Designer, on 8164
• The Personal Cost of Designing on Spec, by Mark Boulton

Hat Nod: swissmiss

While many churches never think twice about Intellectual property when it comes to what they use. Even fewer look at protecting their own intellectual property. For many they might see it being to expensive or not worth the time.

The reality is that it can be quite cheap, and will be worth it if problems arise later down the road.

Common Fallacies:

1. it’s not worth the time or effort to secure intellectual property rights.
2. Once I get a trademark, my brand is safe.
3. Having a patent gives me the right to produce something.
4. If I have a patent or trademark in the United States, I don’t need to worry about the rest of the world.

The first 2 points

It is these first two points I want to touch on quickly, since the last two aren’t particularly relevant for the church.

If your organization does any sort of mass mailing it is smart to at least get a trademark of your logo. This can be as cheap as a couple hundred dollars, but it will allow you recourse if someone modifies your mark to defame you. Having trade marks can help give you the necessary leverage to protect your brand and identity.

This protection is all the more important for the church since culture so closely identifies our ‘brand’ (for lack of a better word) with that of Christ.

Read the full New York Times article here.

Communicating the meaning and value of an idea (and the Gospel) has been a goal for as long as civilization has existed. This video takes a look at some of the physiological factors that cause our brains to create meaning. Understanding this can help us create more impacting messages and better forms of communication.

Watch the 6 minute video for all the details

Keys to help the brain understand meaning are:

1. Use Images to Clarify Ideas
2. Interact with images to create engagement
3. Augment Memory with Persistent & Evolving Views

If you have been reading here for a while you’ll know that I love the TED conference (Technology Education and Design). I love even more that I don’t have to shell out thousands of dollars to attend plus the cost of room+board and can instead watch video of the talks online or through iTunes.

Little of us know the extent to which the work of men like Saul Bass (a personal hero of mine) have had on the visual language the world around us speaks. Saul was the first to use moving title sequences in film. Today these sequences have come light years from the early roots.

Title sequences can be great for video announcements or promotions, and for creating clean, simple, and easy to understand flash animations for a church website.

The top five title sequences of the year according to the NY Times are: (more…)

Hope - Obama by Steve Rhodes

Just about two weeks ago we wrote about the legal case around the image the iconic Obama hope poster was created from. It is an issue of what constitutes fair use, and what is copyright infringement.

This issue alone could cost a church millions of dollars if ignored. Thankfully fellow bloggers over at Church Marketing Sucks came out with a three part series on fair use, from a Copyright Lawyer Richard Byrd.

Check out each of the three parts:

• Part 1 – Defining Fair Use
• Part 2 – Understanding Intent
• Part 3 – Use of the material

Follow Up Post: Psychology of Tropicana Re-branding Failure

Yesterday it was announced by Pepsi Company (the owners of Tropicana brand Orange Juice) that the new packaging/brand that they rolled out in January for Tropicana will be removed. Over the last two months Pepsi has undergone a very aggressive re branding campaign of many of their largest products (Pepsi brands, sierra mist, mountain dew).

Now in a statement released by Pepsi Co and an article in the NY Times Pepsi says they are rolling back the brand to the much more familiar orange with the straw in it. So what was the problem?

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This video is inspiring and really well done. Each of the people were asked one question, “Where would you like to wake up tomorrow?” The answers varied with a few below and creative editing could provide a really dynamic sermon intro video.

“Today I’m actually feeling a little bit homesick, so to wake up there would be really nice.”

“I’d probably be in a graveyard looking at my fathers tombstone.”

It’s an example of something that could be easily done in the community surrounding your church. This is a great way to interact with your community, invite people you wouldn’t normally bump into, and give people a reason to come in the doors on sunday morning.  There are more 50 People, One Question videos on their vimeo profile page.

Check out their website at fiftypeopleonequestion.com

In the ongoing debate over what constitutes fair use of another persons work, the iconic poster of Barack Obama has been brought into the spotlight.  The conflict is under the Fair Use section of the copy right law and their may be implications for your church.

For those of you unfamiliar with this struggle, copyright law has for a long time been a point of struggle for artists. Part of the brilliance of Andy Warhol was his re-purposing of a popular image (Marilyn Monroe, or Campbells Soup Cans) into something totally different.

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