By Brian Barth, Captains of Industry

Ladies and gentlemen—back up your Facebooks! Download your profile and look longingly into your social media past! I bring you Social Safe—the Facebook backup application from the British tech-wizards at iBundle. Marketed as a means to protect against the hassle of restoring a lost account, Social Safe provides a much more meaningful service to its customers: searchable social media history reports stored offline. While the Library of Congress still can’t explain why they are cataloging Twitter, Social Safe in making digital reminiscing even easier than ever.

By Brian Barth, Captains of Industry

Intel just released something called Museum of Me, and it still doesn’t make much sense to me. Connect the site with your Facebook profile and BLAM-O!—your life becomes a modern art installation. Trendy twenty-somethings with ponytails stroke their goatees while viewing your “Trip to Cancun ’09” album, and robotic arms arrange pictures of your friends into a collage that is—you guessed it—your profile picture! Hot damn.

While the video is certainly slick and the music is compelling, the viewer is merely left with a lukewarm wash of egotistical catharsis and self-affirmation, almost as if it was “worth it.” “Yes,” protests the bespectacled creative executive who created the video, “isn’t that what everybody wants from the internet!?” Unfortunately, probably.

By Brian Barth, Captains of Industry

It’s not news that the biggest cash cows on the internet are data organization and analytics, but applying those techniques to our social life online is bubbling up as a new trend. This is not to say that *ahem* advertising agencies haven’t been collecting and analyzing peoples’ social data since the dawn of Web 2.0, but now that data is being sold back to the people sharing the content to start with. Enter Social Memories, a Facebook application that creates a digital booklet analyzing your online social activity since May 31st 2009. After wistfully sighing your way through the pages, Social Memories prompts you to buy a physical version of your book. Does it make much sense to print out my Facebook activity? Not really. But do I want one? Hell yes.

The hook here lies in our obsession with permanence. It’s the same reason we take photographs, because our memories fail us daily. With so much social information zooming around the internet, this is the best we can do to grab on and hold tight.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

Check out this insight from today’s Smart Brief on Social Media: “Keep your blog relevant and it will remain a high-ranked blog in search results. The key is creating content that speaks to your intended audience, not stuffing your page or your blog title with keywords.” In other words, it’s about facts, not fluff. Which, by the way, was what the greatest ads of the past had in common with the best of today’s SEO techniques. I got into this business largely due to the legendary ad man, David Ogilvy, who based his creativity on research and knowledge. His headline for Rolls-Royce said it all – “At 60 miles per hour, the loudest noise comes from the electric clock.” If you had the dough to spend, and you were searching for a great luxury car, you were hooked. That’s what good SEO is all about today. No trickery. Just real insights, real facts, real knowledge – made all the more compelling with simplicity and honesty.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

Reaching and influencing C-suite executives is one of the most daunting challenges in B2B marketing. The smartest and most powerful CEOs have excellent gatekeepers who block and screen just about everything before it can reach them – they only want the filtered, relevant stuff that will help them make better decisions. From my experience, things like Twitter and Facebook are just other forms of noise to the CEO – they sense that social networking is important for their business, so they hire a 22-year-old to take care of it for them, then check it off their to-do list. If you really want to connect with CEOs, invite them to play golf with you. Simply being a golfer makes a statement that you are like them, which is the first hurdle to pass. Think about how this relates to LinkedIn. You typically have to know somebody who is already connected to someone and get an introduction before your offer to connect is accepted. This is just one example of a social construct based on the offline golf experience and human nature (“Oh, you’re friends with John? Ok, let’s meet at the course at 7:00”).

Once you’re past the initial hurdle, then the way you play the game speaks volumes about your character, and is one of the ways that CEOs judge whether they can trust you and work with you. Do you mark your ball? Are you willing to let faster moving groups behind you follow through? Do you carefully replace a patch of grass (a divot) after a faulty swing? And the most important golf convention to follow is to NOT try to sell anything. You’re there just to play the game, to be outdoors and exercise, and get a break from the office. When you’re done for the day and kicking back with a drink at the 19th hole, what you do for work will inevitably come up. But, still, you should never pitch. It’s just a conversation. This is similar to the best techniques of online social networks; jumping right into a sales proposition is obnoxious, especially on sites like Facebook. You need to build a relationship over time based on a real dialog. Whether or not you ever gain a valuable new account as a result of playing golf is almost irrelevant; golf is fun, and it’s enjoyable to spend time with great people out on the course. The important thing is to simply be social. When you get that right, everything else falls into place.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

Have you been to a party where you met someone for the first time and were describing what you do for work, and had the feeling they were not really listening – and, worse, that they were just waiting for you to finish talking so they could tell you what THEY do? It makes you want to drop your cocktail napkin in their drink. Unfortunately the same conversation-hogging, self-focused “hey look at me” behavior is prevalent on a lot of blogs. The comment streams look like this:

“Nice post, Bernie! Your well-thought out and very informative post reminds me a lot of the posts on my company’s blog, in particular something I wrote today that you should read at http://www.iamwaysmarterthanyou.com/”

People see right through this squealing piggishness. A better track is to join the conversation in a thoughtful way, just as any nice person would do at a party.

By Ted Dillon, Captains of Industry


So, I exercise at Planet Fitness near our office in Government Center. The other day, while I was pumpin’ mad iron, an ad comes on over the loudspeaker: “Stop in every Monday here at Planet Fitness when we give out free slices of Pizza!” Really? I’m trying to get in shape and eat right and you’re offering me free pizza? I see right through your cheap ploy to keep me out of shape and coming back, but I like pizza so much I’m going to go for the big cheese anyway. And it got me thinking about other types of businesses that can run subversive ads to drive their sales, such as:

· Coupons for free Snickers bars when you visit the dentist
· Two-for-one Absolut Vodka cocktail Happy Hour at the auto repair shop
· Free tanning salon certificates for Tanorama with every visit to Dermatology Associates.

You just have to love advertising.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

Last week I blogged about new scientific research that maps brain activity with the use of ultra-sophisticated MRIs – quite literally showing how parts of the brain light up when we are exposed to certain stimuli (like an ad or video). On Friday, news broke that researchers in England used this technology to show that the Apple brand triggers “religious” reactions in fans’ brains. In other words, the same parts of the brain that light up when a religious person reads a Bible, for example, also lights up when a Mac-head checks out the newest iPhone.

The report and subsequent news struck me as negative – as if Apple was somehow brainwashing consumers into joining the all powerful Apple cult. But what the researchers didn’t show was that any great brand would have the same impact on a consumer’s brain – and it’s something all of us experience on a regular basis to some extent – at least when the branding and marketing is done well. If the researchers really wanted to see how brain activity changed in response to different brands, they might discover that when consumers are exposed to Ford commercials the same part of their brain lights up as if they were shown a bowl of oatmeal. Or, being told that Microsoft is introducing a new smart phone actually induces sleep, or – in extreme cases – an allergic reaction.

As marketers, we’re looking to create brand religion all the time. It’s what makes people want to get involved. To buy things. To tell their friends about their experience. This is what we do when we go to work. Just as a test, match these top brands with the thing or experience that you feel would create the same brain activity. You can also make up your own list of matches to share with other Captains’ Table readers:

Brand:
General Motors
Kia
Patagonia
The State of New Hampshire
Hilton Hotels
Steve Jobs
Google

Thing or experience:
Heaven
Jesus
Putting on your favorite blue jeans
A bad headache
A Snuggie
The smell of roses
An orgasm

By Anna Sternoff, Captains of Industry

Awhile back I wrote about some very inspiring chums of mine who are dedicating themselves to making a difference by starting an NGO that helps communities build renewable energy projects in Asia and other parts of the developing world. A bit of a mouthful isn’t it?  Oftentimes clients come to us with complicated descriptions of what they do or their mission/vision for their companies.  My pals at what is now called Empower Generation had just that pickle: an ambitious but complicated goal that needed to be succinctly described in order to access potential funders and partners.
 
Enter: video storytelling. Empower Generation’s founders, Anya and Bennett, signed up for indiegogo, an online crowdraiser site for soliciting donations for projects.  And how do you explain those projects? Video! Employing our collective creativity we used kinetic typography to illustrate the Empower Generation mission based on content they designed, but with the pizzazz of a Captain’s project. We also had the opportunity to help them better leverage social media as a way to expand their network of contacts. In order to get off the ground running, Empower Generation needs to keep raising funds and connecting with other partners. We hope the video does the trick and that people will be inspired to lend a hand.

And not to worry, we put our money where our mouth is: we’re making a donation.

By Mike Kennedy, Captains of Industry


The sun is out and it’s got us thinking about baseball. Or baseball snafus, rather. Enjoy!

By Mike Kennedy, Captains of Industry

Since web video storytelling is at the heart of what we do at Captains of Industry, we wanted to share with you some insights from one of the very talented filmmakers we work with on the tools and techniques he uses to capture top-notch video footage:

As a cameraman/director, I’m always looking for new ways to help pull the viewer into the story and convey the experience. One of the coolest tools that I recently acquired to do this is the Go Pro POV (Point of View) HD camera.

It’s small, has a large suction cup to mount securely to just about any smooth surface, comes in a waterproof housing, and records full high definition video in a variety of flavors onto cheap SD cards. It’s simple, with just two buttons, and a fixed wide angle lens. And the video looks pretty darn good!

So when I recently had a shoot for Captains of Industry in northern Maine involving snowmobiles, I knew this would be a great opportunity to use the Go Pro. Imagine trying to strap yourself and a much larger HD camera to the front of a snowmobile looking back at the driver! Instead, I turned on this little wonder, used the suction cup to mount on the tachometer, and carefully aimed it up at the driver (since there is no viewfinder, you just have to guess at framing the shot) I filmed from the back seat while the Go Pro recorded the driver from the dashboard perspective. After the ride, I immediately pulled the camera from the snowmobile, went to my computer and plugged in the SD card from the camera. I was smiling from ear to ear as I showed the producer the footage. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to get this kind of shot. The story we told was enhanced by giving a sense of speed and adventure.

The key to being an effective video communicator is not only knowing the tools available, but knowing when and how to use them. Now if someone could just invent a tool that lets you shoot at a waste water treatment facility and convey what the cameraman is smelling, that would really be revolutionary. Or maybe not.

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

We tend to think of the act of looking as essentially passive and immobile – maybe the eyes move, but that’s about it. I’ve actually found through experience that the best creative, whether it’s a video, an ad, or website experience, makes people’s heads snap back. Now a new book helps explain what’s happening in a brain that’s responding to different stimuli, and why certain stimuli create a bigger physical response: Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines—and How It Will Change Our Lives, by Miguel Nicolelis. Apparently when we see/hear/smell/touch things, the neurons in our brains flare up in different parts of our brain that relate most directly to what we are experiencing. Music, for example, tends to stimulate a particular part of the brain, and with new, very sensitive MRI technologies, scientists can see clear pictures of this brain activity. It’s no coincidence that our vocabulary around thinking is based on light; we talk of ideas that illuminate. We shine a light on different topics. In history, there was an age of enlightenment. We even picture light bulbs going off over our heads. It turns out the bulbs aren’t going off over our heads, but inside them. I’m no brain scientist, but I’d bet the most powerful ideas we see, the most amazing music we hear, the most aromatic smells on a walk through a rainy garden, all light up the neurons in our minds to a greater degree than ordinary stimuli. And big ideas – the ones that hit you like Bruce Lee – set off a blaze of fireworks, and we’re set back on our heels. So, the next time you’re evaluating which campaign to pick, pay close attention to the physical reaction in the room when the work is unveiled. Does it move people? I mean, does it really move people? Pick the campaign that does.