Happy Friday, we hope this PSA gives you some good advice for the weekend.

By Ted Dillon, Captains of Industry

The title of any piece of content is so important. All too often we concentrate so much on the substance of the content that the title becomes an afterthought. Titles can be your strongest content asset. For example, if you’ve gotten this far in this blog post and are hoping to hear about titties I’m sorry, but no more mentions of breasts here. Strong titles can significantly increase the reach of your content. Smart Water made great use of titles this year with their Jennifer Aniston Sex Tape video. The video has Jennifer Aniston, but no sex, yet the intriguing title drastically increased the video’s reach. At Captains we write titles every day, here’s three tips from us on how to write better titles:

1.Originality: You’ve got less than 3 seconds online to grab and hold the attention of your reader before they’ve moved onto something else. That puts a lot of burden on your title’s ability to form a lasting impression. Breaking the mold with your title is so important. Try relating your post to a topic outside the box, such as “Like the Kardashians at the mall, Medical Devices Corp drops $105M on new production plant” or, “If Obama groomed his dog with these tips the dog would be Vice President.”

2. Mystery: Pull readers in by sharing only a little bit of information, and tempt them to go further. It doesn’t have to be a Boxcar Children mystery, just leave something untold in your title. Use titles that offer a tip, such as “The second-best way to buy a used mobile home.” Or, answer a question like “Why Brian Williams doesn’t wear pants behind the news desk, and that’s OK.”

3. SEO: With any digital piece of content, be it a blog post, ebook, or especially video, your title gets special emphasis in SEO rankings. Having important keywords in the title and using keywords that also appear elsewhere in the article can help increase the reach of your content through search engines. This applies especially to video and audio content, as the title may be the majority of searchable terms for your content.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

I’m a big public radio fan, but their pledge drives have always been a big yawn – until today. You have to hear this new spot by Alec Baldwin, combining a delicious blend of venom, sarcasm, and dark wit. It’s absolutely hysterical.

By Ted Dillon, Captains of Industry

Over the past week or two Captains has done a serious office cleaning. We got rid of old computers stacked in corners, reorganized our design space, emptied out our wicked cool loft space in lieu of pimpin’ it out as creative space, and I even moved my work space to a whole new area of the office after we cleaned up the third floor.

So, what does this have to do with marketing? A lot. Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller, The Tipping Point, talks about The Power of Context. According to Gladwell, a large percent of our personalities and actions are influenced by the context of the situation or location. He uses the great example of New York City’s Broken Window Theory, which in a nutshell says that if a place looks like a shithole, people will act like shitheads. Now, our office was never a shithole and we’re definitely not shitheads – in fact we’re all pretty chill and our brick and beam building is in the oldest area of the oldest city in the country – but you can already tell this week that a good cleaning has given the office more energy and an even better vibe. And that helps us do great work.

Enjoy the weekend!

By Chelsea Hobgood, Captains of Industry

I don’t often think of public service announcements as compelling advertising. I, for one, am reminded of the anti-drug and crime prevention PSAs from the 90s. Even as a tween, I wondered whether anyone my age actually took these commercials seriously—seriously enough to be motivated to spread the word with the rest of the Saved By the Bell cast that “there’s no hope with dope!” or to “take a bite out of crime” for Scruff McGruff, the canine detective in a trench coat. Despite the nostalgia I feel when I watch them today, I wasn’t motivated at all when I was the target audience. They were cheesy, unmistakably scripted and shamefully inauthentic.

One of our missions here at Captains is to know your audience. Our Manifesto No. 7 poster drives that home: You’re always talking to one little buckeroo. A successful campaign requires that you know your audience well enough to create something that effortlessly grasps their attention, and motivates them to take action.

Let’s compare, shall we? Watch this CBS Cares PSA for testicular cancer.

“This Valentines Day, why give a diamond when you can give the family jewels!?” Funny, but unconvincing.

Now, take a look at the “Do men die of cancer of embarrassment?” PSA from the Male Cancer Awareness Campaign (bummer, it won’t embed). This multifaceted campaign addresses the sensitivities that can only be drawn from cancer survivors themselves. They know their audience because they are their audience.

And while I’ve got your attention, watch their ultra provocative youtube video that links you to their site, titled Rhian Touches Herself (might be considered NSFW).

If that doesn’t make you want to check your balls, I don’t know what will.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of deep thinking and culture changing books like his best seller, Hot, Flat and Crowded, is once again rocking my mind with his latest book – That Used to Be Us. Much of the book chronicles the slow decline of America as we lose our competitive edge to countries like China, but wedged into the folds of gloom are glimmering diamonds of ideas that are very useful for every American company, and certainly for us in the marketing world. One fascinating thing I found today is the way the U.S military is training its soldiers and conducting military exercises. It used to be that orders came from the Generals, and the lower level troops acted on those orders. Kind of like the top management I used to report to at a big ad agency in New York. These days, however, the specialization required to run a 21st century military operation calls for a very high level of training with all manner of high tech communications/battlefield information gizmos, so the Captains and Lieutenants are basically much more informed about how to run things effectively than the higher ups. The smartest Generals understand that they can’t know everything that their troops know – it’s too much to absorb; the generals run the risk of appearing clueless to their troops. The upshot is that the military – and top companies globally – are embracing a management approach that is based on “bottom up innovation.” That translates into two things for marketers. First, it means that all the classic top down org charts should be dragged onto the trash barrel icon. Don’t just “let” the troops be creative, make it part of the job description. Give them real control. Second, we have to find even more and better ways to put creative power into the hands of customers via social media . Try Googling “mascot contest” and you’ll see just how many companies are involving their customers into the creative process – as just one example, here’s the contest from Capital One: Capital One Bowl. This is all just a start, and I for one am happy to admit that I don’t have the answer for where it’s all going. And yet, by recognizing a certain level of cluelessness on my part, and embracing a non-hierarchical agency structure that stimulates creativity at all levels, my bet is that the Captains will find the answer first.

By Sarah Lombardi, Captains of Industry

As advertisers anxiously await the results of the popularity contest that is the Advertising Walk of Fame, I’d like to take this opportunity to make a couple of points about mascots.

Point 1: Mascots give your brand a human (or bestial) face. You don’t have to come out and say, “Hey my brand may seem like a big, faceless corporation, but in reality this corporation is quite light-hearted and likable.” Instead, you have a talking gecko to make wisecracks for you. This is not to say that a lovable, adorable mascot is the answer to all of your marketing problems.

Point 2: As with anything else that represents your brand (website, logo, a human billboard announcing CRAZY LIQUIDATION PRICES, ONE WEEK ONLY!), a mascot should be relevant and an accurate representation of your brand.

Some might say The Burger King was not a good mascot choice because he had a high creepiness factor. While this is a highly subjective claim, I can’t make the case that plasticizing human figures and then animating them creates an inviting and/or friendly character. I can, however, make the case that a monarch is probably not the first thing people think of when they envision delicious burgers. This does not matter to Burger King because consumers are already familiar with the brand, but if your brand is new or undergoing dramatic change, it’s probably best to choose a mascot that is going to easily form the association with the product in the consumer’s mind. For this reason, an anthropomorphic twig probably wouldn’t help you sell a lot of prosthetic legs, but it might help you sell some marshmallows. You know, to make s’mores? Mmm, s’mores.

In summation, mascots can sway consumer favor for or against your brand. The Burger King actually caused BK’s sales to decrease, while their competitor’s sales increased. Likewise, a pair of married, talking turtles caused my hatred of a cable company to lessen. (Sorry Comcast, but if you read Consumer Reports you know the public at large agrees with me that you are an extremely annoying company with which to do business.) I wonder if I can write-in The Slowskys for my vote of beloved ad icon?

http://www.theslowskys.com/home/

These guys are great. Enjoy the (rainy) weekend!

By Alex McKee, Captains of Industry

Every so often the collective power of a generation comes to a head in order to create fundamental change to global civilization. Without anybody actually telling the world what to do, it seems to somehow figure out on its own what is needed for survival – often with small changes that spread and add up to a really BIG impact. And due to the ability to share and distribute new ideas via channels like YouTube, everyone worldwide can benefit from innovation. Here are a couple of great recent examples, one from Soccket and the other from the MyShelter Foundation:

Simple solution to an every day problem:

New technology that could change lives:

People telling their stories like this, in a really simple but powerful way, is just one way that the world can get out from under the thumb of big oil and big coal. I think that Bill and Ted understood it best when they said, “be totally excellent to others”.

By Jean Levasseur, Captains of Industry

Apparently Facebook is planning to redesign user profiles. Again.

Can we have time to get used to the changes that you’ve made to our profiles already? I suppose some of the new features are nice (others are creepy – I don’t want people to be able to see what I’m doing elsewhere on the internet!). But there’s something to be said for consistency. I’ll be honest – I’m still not sure what was wrong with the first Facebook profiles that we had back in the day.

At what point are you just redesigning for the sake of it, rather than because it will actually be good for the consumer?

I guess we’ll all find out if this newest redesign will be worth it after Thursday. And have to learn a whole new way to change our privacy settings.

By Jean Levasseur, Captains of Industry

I’ve been impressed by Toyota’s Prius commercials for quite awhile now. For the most part, they’ve been very well thought out, and have established a well-defined brand. The new campaign for the ‘Prius Goes Plural’ concept has been no different. The newest commercial in particular really caught my attention.

The idea of the person made up of other people is clever, albeit a bit creepy-looking. Watching him go through his morning routine was captivating the first time, because I was trying to figure out how exactly he was put together. Which meant that when the purpose of the spot rolled out – the display of the different kinds of Priuses – I was already entranced and paying attention. Then of course showing each car and its use was great – I particularly liked putting the big shoe in “The big one,” to demonstrate the cargo room lacked by previous models of the Prius.

My favorite part of this commercial, however, is that Toyota has given consumers the vocabulary to walk into the dealership with. Instead of having to remember an obscure name or model number (think BMW 3 series), consumers just have to remember a catchy phrase.

And Toyota, if you’re reading this, I want the big one.