Cool.
I got to return to Harvard to give a talk to students at the Kennedy School of Government.

A new, digital chapter

Good Fruit Grower will soon launch new Web site.

Good Fruit Grower's November 2013 cover 

(Crossposted from Good Fruit Grower magazine)

Welcome to the Good Fruit Grower issue themed on technology. On that topic, I’d like update readers on how we’re using digital tools to serve growers better.

Good Fruit Grower began in print in 1946. The magazine moved into the digital age in 1996 when it launched a Web site. The current site reflects a 2009 redesign.

Today, our Web site needs to change again. We need to think of the Web as not just a repository of printed matter, but another platform with unique benefits.

That’s a big message we got from a recent survey of readers and advertisers. People love our excellent print product, with its gorgeous cover images, in-depth articles, and helpful charts and photographs.

They don’t want our print product diluted by resources being shifted to the Web. Nor do they want our Web presence to serve as a mere depository of print articles shoveled into digital buckets. Make the Web site distinct and valuable, they said. Give us enhanced archives, better search capability, and galleries of video and still images. Give us a means for discussion and ­sharing.

I take this as a message to strengthen and extend our brand. To do that, we need to achieve online the Big Three. That is, make our content findable, searchable, and shareable. All this is made possible by several trends:

• Increasing bandwidth for desktops and mobile devices, via electronic pipes or over the airwaves, has made it possible for readers to tap large amounts of data.

• Devices are getting smarter and more portable. Today’s grower with a question no longer needs to call somebody or sit down at a desktop computer. In the orchard, he or she can tap a screen and access live weather reports, research, or Good Fruit Grower pages. Applications built for mobile devices perform dedicated tasks tailored to a grower in a specific location.

• Digital platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are making it easier for content creators such as Good Fruit Grower to push desired content to growers and allow them to share it with others.

Because of technology, a grower today has many choices, including access to information and services from advertisers. That presents an obligation and an opportunity for our magazine to seek and present quality content. Part of this obligation is our comprehensive presentation of advertisers.

Online, we must continue and enhance services to readers who want information from respected providers of chemicals, equipment, rootstocks, and other products for growers.

So, how are we making Good Fruit Grower even more useful?

We hired a digital producer, T.J. Mullinax, to work with editor Geraldine Warner and production manager Nancy Jo Born to improve print and online content with better photographs and online content, such as videos, that strengthen how we convey information to growers.

We’ve changed our delivery systems to make our content easier to read on mobile devices. We reworked our Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook accounts to make content easier to find and share.  We revamped eFlash so it’s easier to access and read.

In the next few months, you’ll see a rollout of the centerpiece of our online strategy, our new Web site, goodfruit.com. Look for many improvements in presentation, navigation, and overall utility, including integration with our other digital platforms. We’re making a major leap in our services to growers, advertisers, and the overall grower community.

Our commitment is to relentlessly seek ways to improve. But the real test is what you think. Let me know.

(Go to original posting.)
 

Messaging: What's the most effective path to your point -- and you do have one, right?

Hot Button Studio

In a world where people get bombarded with messages, what's the most effective way to convey your message?

Sometimes, you want to roll it in slowly or subtly. But often, respect the fact that people are busy. Respect the audience. Have a point and get to it quickly. Though my personal origins began as a writer, over time I learned that info graphics are incredibly powerful, perhaps surprisingly even in video.

Here's a nice piece by Beth Kanter on graphics. I love the image of Legos (shown at top) sorted to make a point, a graphic credit to Hot Button Studio.

Here's a link to one of my favorite videos using graphics to tell the story of the astonishing growth of social media, done by Socialnomics.

...And of course, something so dramatic and discussed couldn't get by without a parody. And this parody is pretty funny.

Apple introduces the Twiggy, the impossibly thin new iPhone 5

iPhone 5. Thin, very thin.

I stand among the irrational customers of Apple who got hooked on the Cult of the Mac and the late Steve Job's  famed "reality distortion field." I bought the original Mac and stayed with the company during its worst years when some of its products were overpriced, not greatly superior in overall value and, gasp, not even that attractive.

I also stand among those who follow the best in marketing and Apple is unsurpassed at engaging its base and igniting passion. The announcement today of Apple's new iPhone 5 is a case in point.

Apple's Jony Ive: "Your iPhone...unique relationship."

It's easy to make fun of designer Jony Ive's videos selling products, but they work  (e.g., iPhone sales and Apple's share price). Ive takes an object and gives it a personality and presence that's almost too private to discuss in public. It's a "unique relationship."  (He speaks respectfully). You'd hardly realize it's a handheld computer that so far has been a pretty lousy telephone. Where Jobs emphasized words like "magical," "revolutionary" and "amazing," making himself both CEO and responder to the Apple experience, Ive has shifted the ground to more objective but still effective language, chiefly "thin." It's almost as if Apple is selling thin. And nobody is complaining that a $2,000 or so device (counting cost of that 2-year contract) is now obsolete.

Apple exists in the real world so each iteration of a product, however "revolutionary" at birth is only that, an iteration, as customers complained about the iPhone 4S (which nonetheless sold in huge volumes). In introducing the iPhone 5, the first emphasis goes to thin, hence my playful nomination of Twiggy as a name for the phone. This suggestion will fail faster than a Newt Gingrich run for the presidency because only the wrong demographic has heard of Twiggy, an ultra thin British supermodel from the 1960s.

The iPhone 5 has some other improvements. It's also faster. But that can be said or even expected for any new computing device. The camera is improved, ditto for that. The screen is bigger, still no big excitement. What does Apple do? Interestingly, Apple takes you into the manufacturing process, where its innovations may be matched by others but certainly not presented in so seductively (how did they do that?). Apple makes its sausage making almost as desirable as its sausage. Few competitors even try to compete in this area of marketing. Apple engages the customer with the creation (idea) and execution (manufacturing). The product itself is a story, to borrow from another context, hope and change. It's a brilliantly executed effort at deepening customer passion by extending customer awareness into further reaches of the company and the brand.

Twiggy: very thin and she sold clothes

When you view the new Apple video promoting the iPhone 5, check out the relatively small amount of time is given to scenes of customers actually using the device. For this essay, I watched the video once. If it has  muchvideo of customers actually interacting with others as they use the device, that did not stick in my head. I'm thinking of the solitary person shooting a panorama image, but mostly I'm thinking of Ive's bold positioning of the device as a thing of intimacy and desire. The bulk of the video makes a luscious presentation of a hunk of wires and silicon transformed into an object of art.

Are you not entertained? Have you been moved so effectively at a deep level that you must have one, no matter what the price? That's how I got my first Macintosh. Apple does this so well. To buy is to belong. To buy is to gain cool. Brilliant.

Microsoft's new logo -- a winner or a cracked Window?

Janet Tu of the Seattle Times has a good piece on Microsoft's announcement of its new logo, the first change since 1987.

Once a skeptic that logos were often overrated and over-considered, I've since learned that a logo can have a dramatic effect, good or bad.

Microsoft's new logo

In Tu's story, she quotes a Wharton professor about how a logo is an instant communication of the brand, what's  seen over and over by consumers and employees. Is anything communicated? Or is it just a graphic with no effect. Or, ideally, does it convey the authentic identity of the brand and help activate passion for the brand.

Tu quote a Microsoft executive discussing the details of the logo -- and it's sort of talk that fuels skeptics who think a slight change here or a subtle change in a font is a bit like that hair cut given to the Cowardly Lion in Oz. Snip, snip here. Snip, snip there.

I've learned, especially in working with a former colleague, Mary Olson, that a logo well considered, designed and executed can be powerful, and more so over time. Mary led an effort to change the Seattle University Athletics Redhawks logo. She did scores of refinements. In the end, the new logo looked similar yet far more powerful. Among other changes, she closed the bird's mouth (which I always thought looked like it was whining to referees) and added a bump to the beak so the creature looked tougher, more confidant, a winner.  People like winners. The logo and other changes led to a dramatic increase in sales of apparel wear.

Cool in 1975

Check out Tu's story to see how the Microsoft logo has evolved since 1975. It's hard to imagine that the 1975 logo was cool in anyone's mind. But so was really big hair in those days. Don't forget MSFT then was by geeks for geeks, not for corporations and later a world-wide base of customers.

Microsoft's logo change coincides with a re-positioning of the company as a whole, shaking off the perception by some that the company had gone stale, though still hugely successful by anyone's measure. Microsoft has a bag of new products coming soon, most especially a new OS. The company astutely realizes this is a time to leverage those different product launches as an integrated campaign. Though some still may snicker at the brown Zune and other Microsoft efforts in the past, one of the company's great strengths was marketing. Great marketing involves risk and courage.

Update: Seattle Times describes mixed review.

Instant celebrity by a hair: meet Bobak Ferdowsi

Looks count.  Shakespeare said clothes proclaim the man.

Sometimes, the "face" of your organization is not what you expected.

In an instant we went from Gabby's smile to Olympic sprinter Sanya Richards-Ross billowing hair to...wait! In that photo of the NASA engineers, famed for their Right Stuff crew cuts and pocket protectors....does that guy have a Mohawk???

His name is Bobak Ferdowski. His hair and looks quite possibly upstaged, at least for a moment, one of NASA's greatest achievements in a decade, landing that explorer vehicle on Mars. Twitter quivers with talk of this rising star (pun intended).

Houston, we have a Mohawk

Suddenly everyone wants to know more about this man, already dubbed Mohawk Guy. His Alma Mater, the University of Washington, is celebrating its association. England's Daily Mail is examining the Deep Meaning.

My advice to NASA: Boldly go. Have fun with this. It's been so long since NASA made effective use of its incredible talent (and now hair) to strengthen the case for space exploration.

Did social media find David Pogue's lost iPhone? Ah, no.

David Pogue with his beloved iPhone

Social media is a fantastic tool to activate and empower audiences. It's an exciting part of a marketing tool kit. Only part.

I'm a huge and long-time fan of David Pogue. In a recent blog posting, he seems to be giving credit to the social media community for finding his iPhone. CNN goes even farther with,  with "How the Internet found David Pogue's iPhone." (Now it's the entire Internet,.)

However, David's own story seems to suggest a less extraordinary tale.

I contacted the Prince George’s County police department.....By the end of the day, the local police were actually at the house, with me on the phone. 

The Find My iPhone function disclosed the device location and David called the cops.  Pogue has more than one million Twitter followers. Many offered to help and did spread the world. But this case seems solved by what Crimestoppers would call dropping a dime.

Twitter did not find his phone.

Freecreditscore.com=sleazy

Warning to all those watching the hipster ads by Freecreditscore.com

People! The best clue that it's NOT free is when they say it's free!

It's a hook for those who don't read fine print.

The web site itself contains this disclaimer:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

When you order your free credit score here, you will begin your 7-day trial membership in freecreditscore.com. If you don't cancel your membership within the 7-day trial period*, you will be billed $14.95 for each month that you continue your membership. You may cancel your trial membership anytime within the trial period without charge.

Cancel within 7 days or they start charging. 

Not free.

Not hip.

Smart money has one report on this.

Caveat emptor. Beware of scruffy hipsters with guitars.

Colleges, cash in on the Downton Abbey craze

For-profit universities are attracting controversy almost as fast as they are attracting students. Wall Street likes the business: low barriers to entry, high profit margins, and product lines that can scale up. Looming threat: increasing government scrutiny.

But there's no denying the rise of these institutions and the change they are forcing on traditional colleges and universities, which already were recognizing the need to adapt to online learning and the needs of older learners.

So just for fun, what name would your pick for a for-profit university? The Franciscan U of the Prairies became Ashford U.  Beaver College became Arcadia University. Trident University became Trident University International.

For profits aren't alone in changing names, as US News reported back in 2009. (And wait a minute....didn't US News itself have a longer name? Oh, yeah.

It's clear that for profit institutions want a name that conveys a strong brand, rootedness, quality, good experience. Harvard is taken, though Harvard itself had no name till a donor by that name left money.  Duke went through several names before accepting a tobacco fortune.

So I'm thinking of a name that conveys lively people, a gorgeous campus, well-dressed leaders,  upwardly-mobile boarders, cool clothes, a nearby pub, a great library, a regal dining hall and, one must have, fox hunting. For differentiation, you need the unique quality of full pursuit of the uneatable. I'm calling it Downtown Abbey University.

The name says urban and rural, plus people find the campus life irresistible to watch.

Very good, m'Lord.

Integrated marketing in higher education: Nice work at Portland State University

I had a chance recently to hear people at Portland State University talk about what they are doing in social media as part of their overall brand marketing. I was impressed.

At the gathering of District 8 of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, PSU and others are recognizing that universities face great challenges: greater competition for students, faculty, research dollars and donor support. If you factor in the rise of for-profit universities, online learning and a new thinking in how state and federal governments relate to higher ed -- it's a new world. All the more reason to work harder to differentiate your institution and better tell you story. Success means a strong institutional commitment, a well considered plan and measures, execution by people with authority, message discipline and a relentless focus on evaluation and re-assessment. Oh, and some resources. If you don't invest in this effort, you can be certain of falling behind competitors who are making smart investments.

Here's a link to PSU's marketing page. And check out their photo contest.

The people of PSU said one of their foundations for their marketing was a video that sought to capture the essence of their university. Doing such a video is ambitious and risky. So many institutions are doing these -- so how do you re-invent the messages of academic excellence, the student experience and transformation that awaits those for whom your school is a great fit? What visual "vocabulary" and style do you use?  Here's what PSU did. One noticeable element: they embraced the character and beauty of Portland. What do you think?

Hey, person in Hong Kong -- why are you reading my blog?

Google analytics has been updated to show in real time the geographic origins or your readers.

Right now, somebody in Hong Kong is reading my blog.

Please! I'm dying of curiosity! My one Hong Kong reader, please go to the comments and just say who you are. If you are a cyber warrior, sniffing for a backdoor into NSA's mainframes, use the code, "I love Jack Bauer." I will write back, "Cloey, I don't have time to explain. You'll just have to trust me."

We will meet at the Kowloon station on March 1, 2012. I will be wearing a Redhawk warm up jacket, holding a copy of Lonely Planet.

Disguised as a conspicuous middle-aged white man, in Seattle University t-shirt, America's undercover agent prepares to  steal recipes for Dim Sum.

Can fishing be an act of cruelty to a human? Watch Eisenhower and Nixon

I felt more than a twinge of sadness to see Gen. Eisenhower humiliated his 1952 running mate by inviting the media to watch Dick Nixon learn fly fishing. Poor Nixon looked awful, and you have to wonder if the General was just training his subordinate on the relationship they would have. And to think years later an Eisenhower married a Nixon after both saw more of this.

By the way, later as President Eisenhower had extra trout dumped into a river before the news cameras arrived.

Sally Tonkin honored as photography educator

Sally Tonkin tonight at ceremony in Spokane named 2011 Honored Educator by Society for Photographic Education.

She gave a very moving speech that honored two great callings, photography and education. I'm proud to say she's excelled at both.

One year, a third of Shorewood High School's students signed up to take her class. She's been shown at the Frye, published in books and showcased by the Seattle Times and many others.

Much deserved recognition.

Steve Jobs: "Insanely Great" applied to him. RIP

Steve Jobs has passed away.

He will endure as one of the great visionaries of the beginning of the digital era. He transformed personal computing and several other industries. He changed our culture. All this began from a point of reflection that led him to drop out of college.

He told the story in a speech he gave at Stanford University.

Non believers? The 8th Proof of God's Existence

From the New York Times:

Prevention: Evidence of Heart Benefits From Chocolate

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

An analysis of studies including more than 100,000 subjects has found that high levels of chocolate consumption are associated with a significant reduction in the risk of certain cardiovascular disorders.

The seven studies looked at the consumption of a variety of chocolate — candies and candy bars, chocolate drinks, cookies, desserts and nutritional supplements. By many measures, consumption of chocolate was linked to lower rates of stroke, coronary heart disease, blood pressure and other cardiovascular conditions.

But there was no beneficial effect on the risk for heart failure or diabetes.

Over all, the report, published Monday in the British medical journal BMJ, showed that those in the group that consumed the most chocolate had decreases of 37 percent in the risk of any cardiovascular disorder and 29 percent in the risk for stroke.

Still, the lead author, Dr. Oscar H. Franco, a lecturer in public health at the University of Cambridge, warned that this finding was not a license to indulge and noted that none of the studies reviewed involved randomized controlled trials.

“Chocolate may be beneficial, but it should be eaten in a moderate way, not in large quantities and not in binges,” he said. “If it is consumed in large quantities, any beneficial effect is going to disappear.”

Seattle's tunnel viaduct debate -- cue the videos

A decade after an earthquake revealed a highway that had to go in downtown Seattle, voices arise via video to make the case over a Seattle ballot measure.

Should Seattle replace an elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct highway with a deep-bore tunnel, a "surface option," or just keep talking?

Who decides the fate of one of the world's most fabulous waterfronts, while also resolving conflicting priorities over freight mobility, sustainability, transit and the car in the city of my birth? Dare we vote in a manner that further degrades our standing as the coolest city in the Northwest?

I so miss Emmet Watson.

It's a a huge civic debate, submitted to voters in mid August, when most of us are thinking of swimming and hiking in a region where the clouds have lifted after an 11 month wait.

Roll the tapes.

David Brewster, long one of Seattle's finest journalists, analyzes the long civic toothache. With his usual combination of wit and stylish mastery of detail, he sees a debate about the soul of our city.

An earlier post, containing Matt Smith's hilarious satire on the argument to keep the Viaduct is here.

To take down the other guy, is funny video the kindest cut?

Wit is a strategic asset in marketing communications.

You can use it to disarm an issue, minimize a blunder and change the subject. But when to use it? And how can you do it well and effectively?

Here's a recent video reportedly done by Microsoft to advance its email program over Gmail, Google's free product that comes with ads served when monitoring search gizmos detect key words. I give this a 7. It doesn't reach a 10 because using the child to express moral indignation is overused, but mainly because I'm touchy about picking an actor with hair loss. (Hair-ism is the final scourge in our culture, yes?) I assume not a fragment of this ad is accidental.

I did a piece on Gmail and Google's privacy policies in 2007 for Crosscut.

Now, reaching back a few years into Seattle politics, I still love this video that sought to use humor to break the log jam around our city's debate over replacement of the aging, crumbling, unsafe Alaskan Way Viaduct on the central waterfront. Casting Seattle's Matt Smith in the lead role to stop the destruction of "big ugly things" was inspired. I think the guy scratching himself in the background (at 32 seconds) perhaps was an unscripted homage to Charlie Chaplin. The video failed in its intention. Seattle is year 10 in discussion on this issue. Ugly prevails.

A post script. How did the New York Times learn funny...with celebrities too?

P.P.S. Now, a digression. Half of YouTube is funny pet videos. This one is okay....

.....but this one just kills me. Counting its various postings, I think it's been seen by half the planet.

You're heard of dog bites man, then man bites dog. How about dog bites shark?

Further proof that yellow Labradors are the greatest dogs of all.

Save money on fishing tackle, licenses, books, etc. Let the dog do it.

In Seattle, a blinding orb appears. We're asking, Is this the Second Coming?

The sky turns blue. Are we doomed?

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

--Lifted in total from W. B. Yeats' 1919 masterpiece. Some think it's about World War I. In Seattle, more than 6 hours of sunshine gets us thinking of the Apocalypse.

Bill Cosby: "In Seattle, they think the sun is evil."