By Jean Levasseur, Captains of Industry


The front-end design of your site is important, but so is the back-end structure of the site – the part that makes it actually work. If the website isn’t programmed on a solid platform, it might not function properly, and it will be difficult to update and maintain. Based on our website development experience, here are the five most important questions that you should think about when talking to your site programmer.

1. What platform will the site be built on?
   With the plethora of free, high-quality content management systems (CMS) available online, you shouldn’t have to settle for an HTML-only site that you can’t update yourself. The two content management systems that we use are WordPress and Drupal, but there are many others out there, all of which give you control over your own site. Never settle for a setup that doesn’t allow you to easily update text and images on the site with your own in-house resources. Read more Share This
   

By Ted Dillon, Captains of Industry

I’m so sick of Green Lantern and Hangover 2 trailers. You can imagine my surprise this past week then when I watched a new Green Lantern trailer that actually turned out to be a trailer for The Muppets movie. The Muppets movie? That’s right, the two most recent trailers for The Muppets are spoofs, one of The Hangover 2 and the other of Green Lantern.

But why? What is the target demographic for The Muppets movie? Their first trailer was a spoofed romantic comedy, and now these two. Are they targeting teen girls who see rom-coms, comicbook fans and Canadians who see Green Lantern, or college kids who love The Hangover? I guess all three. It’s tough when most everyone born after ’65 has grown up with a Muppets movie release.

I enjoy the angle they took: They made sure to stay fresh by including modern content, and in every trailer they say nothing about the plot except to ask themselves “What are we hiding? Is the movie in Swedish?” By doing this they don’t have to appeal to just one demographic and typecast their audience. Kermit can cast the net wide by parodying movies from an array of audiences and hype his movie based on the child in all of us that remembers and loves The Muppets. Green Lantern and Hangover 2 both ranked #1 their opening weekend so choosing to play off those movies was a sure way to get wide exposure. Gotta say I’m definitely gonna go see The Muppets, even if I haven’t watched once since A Muppet Christmas Carol came out, because who knows what will happen in this one?

Happy Friday!

By Jean Levasseur, Captains of Industry


Most website redesigns succeed or fail before the actual design takes place. That’s because not enough companies really think their strategy through ahead of time. Based on our experience here at Captains, here are the five essential questions to ask at the outset of your web design process.

1. What is the goal of the website?
   A good goal is specific and measureable. If you find yourself stating a goal of “letting people find out more information about your company,” you need to take a step back and think again. Websites convey information, sure, but why are you conveying that information? Why is it important that people find out more information about your company, both for you and for them? Some examples of good goals are “to attract 5,000 new members in the first year” or “to increase revenue by 25% in the first 6 months” or “to generate 5 new leads per week.” Read more Share This
   

By Jean Levasseur, Captains of Industry


On Monday at around 10:30am, I posted about how Comcast had hung an ad on my door for a service that I already subscribe to. Around 3:30 that afternoon (barely 5 hours later), Mark Casem from Comcast’s National Customer Operations department posted a comment apologizing and asking for my contact information so that he could share it with the local team and make sure it didn’t happen again. Signed his name and everything.

That’s how companies are supposed to use social media. Good for you, Comcast – you’re redeemed in my eyes.

Many companies are embracing content marketing as a better way to pull customers to their websites – but there’s also a lot of confusion out there. What is content? What can it do for me? How can I make it? Here’s some much-needed clarity on the topic from Seth Godin’s blog:

In praise of programming
Not computer programming, which is important, but content programming.
Someone decides what to put on the radio after that song you just heard. Someone realizes that Conan needs to do more than just tell stand-up. Someone decides that if every tweet is just like the tweet you just sent, it’s boring.
We’re all programmers now. We all have to decide what to post next, what to point to next, what to launch next. Is there a skill in dreaming up Must-See Thursday nights, or in establishing a season of Shakespeare or even in deciding what’s on the special list at the restaurant? I think there is.
Yes, you must do great work. You also need to figure out how to program for your audience, even if the audience is only one person.

By Jean Levasseur, Captains of Industry


I came home from work on Thursday to find two identical two-foot tall door hangers on the knob extolling the benefits of XFINITY Internet by Comcast – a service I already have. I understand what happened. A person was given a stack of these, and was told to put a hanger on every door in the neighborhood (two of them got stuck together for our door). But there has to be a better way. In addition to being a waste of money and paper, getting an advertisement for a service I’m already using makes Comcast look disorganized, and it’s really annoying. Doesn’t Comcast have a list of all the addresses of current customers? Can’t they cross-reference that, and skip over doors that have XFINITY? That might require a bit more thought on the part of the person doing the hanging, but the added care would mean that I and other existing customers wouldn’t think of Comcast as douche bags. Isn’t that worth it?

Buy Volvos. They’re boxy, but they’re good. Happy Friday!

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry


It used to be that if you were unhappy with an airline, you just grouched about it around the water cooler. Fortunately, the times are a’changin’ thanks to ubiquitous little video cameras and YouTube, allowing us to bitch slap companies in public when they misbehave. As evidence, check out this video made by soldiers who had just returned from Afghanistan and were charged nearly $3,000 for extra bags – like the one holding the firearm a soldier used to defend himself in the war. Even though their military contract with Delta specified that they were allowed the four bags each they were actually carrying.

It’s interesting that for our soldiers – trained to handle machine guns and tanks – their most powerful weapon is a video camera. Delta Airlines quickly apologized, but the damage is done. I sincerely hope that the airlines, and all companies, start to recognize that they are on camera and they had better do right by their customers. And as for our troops just back from war, God bless you all.

By Ted Dillon, Captains of Industry


Why is it that Facebook and Twitter are so often lumped together as the two big social media platforms?  Everyone and their aunt is on Facebook, but only an intimate handful have active Twitter accounts – only 8% of Americans are active Tweeters.  Here are three misconceptions about Twitter:

Twitter is the same as your Facebook news feed.

So I ask my pal if she’s got a Twitter handle, and she says, “I’ve already got a Facebook news feed.” People who aren’t part of the Twitter community tend to believe that Twitter is just a bunch of Facebook status updates. Not true.  Twitter is a tool for sharing information and links to content. The smart Twitter user isn’t using Twitter necessarily to keep up with his/her friends, but to stay abreast of the most current news and information on the web, and to share that news as well.

Twitter is a waste of time.

Another complaint: “I don’t care if my friends ‘just got back from a run’ or are ‘feeding all the cats.’” Many non-Twitterfolk think Twitter is just full of useless status updates.  This misconception comes from the origin of Twitter’s fame: celebrities.  Twitter’s popularity originally sprouted from the Hollywood celebrities tweeting their every move to the drooling TMZ addicts and Hollywood wannabes.  But now Twitter is something much greater. Businesses discovered Twitter and now they can share valuable content, host cool deals to engage their customers and allow the consumer to talk directly to them through the platform.  That’s a whole arm and leg above the older usages of Twitter.

There’s too much information to sort through.

Valid point.  Once you’re following a good size number of handles your Twitter feed could be overwhelmingly full and change drastically by the minute.  All that information can be time consuming to sort through.  But never fear!  There are great third party apps now that can organize Twitter for you and help you find what you want. Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, and Twitpic are all apps that can enhance the Twitter experience beyond using Twitter.com to monitor your feed.  Now you can organize your followers into separate streams, check in on just the ones you want, and find the information you’re looking for quicker and easier.

Of course when I tell people I use Twitter the pessimistic response is always some joke like, “Oh you twat?” or “You gonna twit about this ice cream sandwich?” Hopefully you’ll look past the sometimes off-putting name and get a Twitter account, or log back in to the account that’s been vacant for months.  Twitter is a great source of interesting information and personal connections; it’s worth another chance.  And if you’re there, follow us at @captainsboston; we share advertising and marketing insights, posts from our popular blog,  news from the energy sector, and just plain funny stuff we find on the Interwebs. But NOT what we’re having for lunch.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

Have you ever tried explaining to an engineer at a high tech company why it’s important to create a messaging platform for his marketing? If you’re like most creative folks – me included at one point – you might have said something like, “My feeling is that getting your story right is an important first step in our marketing campaign.” You might as well be speaking Urdu. That’s because the words “feeling” and “story” truly are a foreign language to them when it comes to how they think about their business (not surprisingly, like an engineer). In order to get your idea to sink in, you need to approach your pitch from the perspective of the person you’re talking with. Re-craft your approach to something like this: “Bob, you wouldn’t build anything without first making a blueprint, right?” Bob nods. “Ok, so what we’re going to do for you is engineer the message you tell your customers so they really understand your products and see what they can do for them. And once we have that message, we’re going to create a messaging platform, which is the blueprint that all your marketing efforts will be based on.” I’ve seen this work again and again. Once you craft your own message so that your clients get it, you not only show that you speak their language (literally) but that you understand their business – a critical step in building a strong and long-term working relationship. At least, that’s the way I feel about it.

Exactly what it sounds like. Happy Friday!