By Anna Sternoff, Captains of Industry


Last week we blogged about Daniel Craig’s tongue-in-cheek support of International Women’s Day, and the benefits of using video humor to gather a following for a non-profit.  Turns out IWD had taken a note out of another organization’s book, the American Jewish World Service, an organization that supports grassroots organizations in the developing world. For their 25th anniversary celebration last year, Judd Apatow volunteered to do a PSA (totally pro bono, and totally unsolicited–scouts honor) on their behalf. The piece features a slew of Hollywood stars, some of whom might come as surprise spokespersons for an organization with Jewish in the title–Lindsay Lohan? Heh, not a Jew, and Iam McKellan? Well, not exactly–and a few very vocally Jewish all-stars, Jerry Seinfeld and Sarah Silverman.

Summary would pale in comparison to the real thing, but let’s just say I have to admire an organization like AJWS for having the gusto to allow such off-color humor (Helen Hunt nonchalantly saying she’s African American, Sarah Silverman completely knocking both Jewish and Asian people in one breath!). The spot even goes so far as to completely mock AJWS’s ponzi-scheme sounding name.

Sure, they risked a PR hooplah, but AJWS gets that laughter and supporting serious causes like famine and poverty don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  The era of Suzanne Somers holding a malnourished toddler whose hollow eyes haunt viewers until they pick up the phone to donate is long gone. And if your board or executive team still needs to be convinced that pushing the envelope is a risk worth taking, point them to the number of views on YouTube.

By Jean Levasseur, Captains of Industry


Yesterday was officially Pi Day. For those of you who don’t know, that’s because March 14 (3-14) is the first three digits of Pi – 3.14. All across the country, students from elementary school to high school diligently tried to memorize as many digits of the irrational number as they could. Good for them. Here’s a little ditty developed by Michael Blake that should help them with that memorization, at least for the first 31 digits. Brilliant and beautiful.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry


Here at Captains of Industry, we do a lot of marketing communications work for clean energy companies, so a fascinating article in this Sunday’s New York Times caught our eye: “Not in My (Liberal) Backyard.” It’s a paradox in the renewable energy world that many people who consider themselves environmentalists nevertheless end up opposing “green” initiatives (like wind farm developments) that are close to home. It turns out the problem goes a lot deeper than NYBYism, with roots in how our minds work and how this guides decisions to change behavior, or not. For example, if you’re doing communications for a hotel, how do you convince guests at your $350 a night pad to re-use their towels? Appeal to their good natures? Nope. You let the guests know that a majority of previous guests chose to re-use their towels and not just toss them on the floor (darn, that’s me). Here’s why: Research shows that humans have a tendency to “hew to normative behaviors of their community.” If you’re in a community that already has curbside recycling, you probably won’t mind if your town asks you to recycle more types of things instead of just newspapers and tin cans. If your local area already has a lot of solar panels on houses, you’re probably not going to object when your next door neighbor has solar installed (and you’re more likely to get solar as well). Even saving money on home electricity is not enough of a driver to get people to cut their power consumption. What gets them to change? If they know their neighbors are doing it, and the community as a whole, they’ll go along, too. This has major implications for all of us in marketing as we develop ad campaigns designed to change behaviors and sell products or services. And it will certainly make me think twice before I use a hotel towel just once and toss it on the floor.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

I saw this commercial for Iceland tourism on a friend’s Facebook page and absolutely loved it, but the fact that it’s great isn’t really news.

When I dug a little deeper, I found out the campaign launched 9 months ago. Think about that. In the age of YouTube, gaining visibility for great web content often takes about as long as making a baby. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen something work after 9 months. When we at Captains did our “I’ll eat my shorts for a solar energy account” video, we did land a solar account in one week – but we also landed another big piece of solar business exactly 9 months later based on the same video.
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By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

A few years back, the Heath brothers – Dan and Chip – blew my mind with their book, Made To Stick, which demonstrated how to create ideas and marketing campaigns that stuck in the mind (think Velcro for concepts). Now they’ve done it again with their new book, Switch. They’ve basically created a road map for how to bring about major change in organizations, the culture at large, and in individuals – all of which is incredibly important to know if you’re in marketing. The insights in the book are based on psychology studies that show how the mind absorbs information that triggers behavior change, and they provide some excellent case studies that illustrate how the change blueprint works in real life. As just one example, they cite the mind’s need for specificity in direction, and a campaign that was geared towards bringing about healthy eating habits. Telling people to “eat healthy” is too vague; nobody knows how to process that. So the campaign organizers did their homework and got really specific. They found that Americans on average drink a lot of milk. If the average person switched from whole milk to reduced fat milk, obesity rates would drop. Their marketing then encouraged people to drink 1% milk instead of whole milk – but they did it in a way that was (again) very specific, as well as visual and emotional. They showed consumers that a typical glass of whole milk contained the equivalent amount of fat as 5 strips of bacon. Yuck! The result was that more people switched to low fat milk – something that would never have happened if people had been asked to just eat healthy (huh?). Some of the tenets in the book are already used by ad agencies, based on their experience with what works. But there’s a lot here that will come as a revelation – just as it did for me.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry


Often when we at Captains start working with clients, one of our first recommendations is that they create a blog and have a social media strategy. The response is usually, “I know I need to do it, but I just don’t have time.” Whenever I hear this, I think about people like Louise Cady-Fernandes, a mother of two who runs a successful specialty fashion business. Louise is a one-person band. And she’s raising two kids. And she’s managed to grow her business with social media in a way that doesn’t eat up her whole day. I asked Louise to provide some tips for now she gets it done. Here’s what she has to say:

• Set up a personal Facebook page for yourself (not your company). Post pictures & tell people about what you are doing. Connect with as many friends in your current and past life as you possibly can.
• Set up a Company Facebook page for your business. Invite your friends from Facebook to “like it”. Ask friends to invite their friends to “like it”. Return the favor.
• Set up a Twitter account and a Linked In account. Connect with as many people as you can. When you make a tweet on Twitter it automatically updates your Linked In account with your new tweet. Voila!
• Set up a presence on both Digg and Stumble Upon.
• If it is relevant for your company, start posting videos about your business on YouTube and create podcasts (It’s easy- just Google ‘how to create a podcast’).
• Be sure that all the above accounts link to your business website.
• Be clear about what your message is. Make it fun. Make it fresh. Make it exciting.
• Every day (okay, at least every other day) take 30 minutes and give the above sites some TLC. Post updates, pictures, tell the world what you are up to and what new and exciting things your company is doing. Get your branding and your message out there.
• If you have a blog go on your favorite blogs and make comments that link back to your blog. Join websites that have similar interests with your business. The point is to go to where your audience is and start a conversation. Knowing what your audience is looking for is fundamental in reaching them.
• Lastly, get to know your competitors. Find out if any of them are using social media and learn from their achievements. If they aren’t using social media, you already have an advantage. If they are and you aren’t, they have the advantage.

To read more from Louise, stop by her blog Lines of Beauty

By Anna Sternoff, Captains of Industry


It’s come to our attention that it’s International Women’s Day today. In fact, it’s the centennial celebration. I must admit (please forgive me all-women’s college alma mater), I didn’t even know this day existed. I must also admit that I’m generally skeptical about grand-scale awareness-raising celebrations, even those dedicated to the ladies out there (please forgive me feminist mother).

I’m as gung-ho as the next femenista out there, but there’s something about how leaden or sappily earnest initiatives like these tend to be—it simply doesn’t connect with me. Gen-Y cynicism? Guilty as charged.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the she-powerhouses over at IWD headquarters have taken the plunge at appealing to the web 2.0 crowd. For starters, they’ve turned the quintessential womanizer into…a woman. That’s right, James Bond, as played by Daniel Craig, dolled himself up in a dress and heels in a PSA narrated by Dame Judy Dench. The spot details the still ever-present inequalities between men and women. One pinch irony, two dashes of self-aware humor and you’ve got this hater’s attention.
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By Ted Page, Captains of Industry


A new post from marketing guru Seth Godin suggests that trying to convince people based on facts and evidence simply doesn’t work (see Seth’s “The limits of evidence-based marketing”). Seth suggests that “what would change the mind of many people resistant to evidence is a series of eager testimonials from other tribe members who have changed their minds.” We at Captains couldn’t agree more, and we offer an example of how to do that. One of our renewable energy clients, First Wind, needed to counter anti-wind myths and show that wind farming is good for communities, all with the goal of getting more wind energy projects approved. We figured no amount of catchy ad headlines would convince anyone of the merits of wind farm development if they were opposed to it. So we made a video that featured community members in a town that already had one of their wind farms. And we included footage of a guy who said he was originally concerned about what the wind towers would look like, but came to see them as kind of cool once they were up.  This video and others like it helped convince community members in other towns of the merits of wind farm development, and led to major growth for the client.  This year their electricity generating capacity is projected to double.  No amount of advertising would have accomplished this. So, if you want to convince people, find respected people who have already been convinced, get them on camera – and play the video on your very own TV channel. Otherwise known as your website. It works.
 

By Ted Dillon, Captains of Industry

A Cigarette Pidgeon Reports for Duty at Inman Square, Cambridge

What’s more annoying than pigeons scorning the streets and littering park benches looking for food? I know what: smokers who ditch their cigarette butts on city sidewalks and in street-side gutters. But worry no more: The Cigarette Pigeon is here, and genetically designed to feed off of only cigarette butts! A Cig Pig for short, these bio-vacuums have an industrial grade stomach that breaks down cigarette filters and paper into its most basic chemical elements. When the pigeon is through sucking all the energy possible out of those filters the waste is excreted as a common fertilizer. Local governments are sure to flock to Cig Pigs to save on their city waste budgets. After the initial investment Cig Pigs take care of themselves.

The Cigarette Pigeon is a pest solver as well. But how do we differentiate Cigarette Pigeons from your normal pesky pigeon? We’ve taken care of that for you by engineering the feather coloring of cigarette pigeons to resemble a cigarette butt.

And if you’re worried about too many Cig Pigs flying around airports and hitting planes, fear not, we’re in the final stages of testing for Cigarette Squirrel too.

By Anna Sternoff, Captains of Industry


If someone was to create a mash-up of things that tickle our fancy here at Captains of Industry—green energy and savvy ways to engage customers—they might just make a solar-powered advertisement. No, dear readers, you are not reading an installment of ‘Products We Wish Existed,’ this is a bona-fide printed ad for a real company. Created by BBR Saatchi & Saatchi in Israel, the ad looks like a plain-Jane black & white sketch. However, when held up to natural sunlight it turns into a lovely full-color piece. And what’s this ad for, pray-tell? A solar company, of course!

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By Ted Page, Captains of Industry


The Animated Blog Post
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By Ted Page, Captains of Industry


This week, Google announced that is was changing its algorithms, which to a lot of SEO specialists is the web equivalent of a five alarm fire on top of an earthquake, a flood, and Moses changing the 10 commandments (thou shalt not mess with Google). The goal of the change is to improve search engine rankings by battling “content farms” that aggregate text from other sites and pack in the typical tricks of the trade, from key words to more advanced black hat code. What does it mean for content marketers? Absolutely nothing. That is, if your approach to content is based on doing the right thing in the first place – making great web videos, ebooks and other stuff that’s genuinely useful to your audience. People will always work hard to game the system. So the Internet is constantly flooded with garbage designed to trick machines. But that’s nothing new, and it never will be. Just keep it real, and respect your audience with content that helps them do their jobs and be happy, every day.