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On behalf of CEO Max Fose, we are tickled pink to announce the arrival of Olivia Maelynn Fose yesterday at 5:57 p.m.
Olivia weighed 8 pounds, 15 ounces and arrived at 21 1/4 inches long.
She and her mother, Shannon, are doing well. So is Max.
Olivia will start her summer internship with IWS upon her graduation from high school in May 2029.
As I get ready for an expansion of my family — any day now — I’m a little bit more alert to what’s going on with American families in general.
Nielsen, in reporting earlier this month on our family dynamics, media and purchasing trends, found “a multi-layered, multi-cultural construct dominated by older, childless households.”
A lot of diversity. This, we knew.
The takeaway for those of us in the communications business:
Advertisers need to have a multi-channel strategy for reaching different types of families, one that accommodates differences in media preferences, device usage and time-shifting behavior.
Forgive me for crowing, but that sounds like an argument for integrated strategies.
One commonality among all this diversity struck me: “… the smartphone … has emerged as an equalizing agent across households of all income levels.”
I would add that it is an equalizing agent across generations as well. What 12, 13-, 14-year old doesn’t have a cell phone? They sell throwaways in dollar stores for less than $20.
It’s not all new research, but it pulls a lot of strands together and is worth reading. Thanks to Nielsen for a useful piece.
As far back as I can remember, the lesson from St. Luke has always rung true: “Of those to whom much is given, much is required.”
I have certainly felt blessed, and even more so as I await the birth of our first child.
So I am really pleased to extend my volunteer work to service on the board of our Phoenix Symphony.
The symphony is more than a collection of musicians who play classical music inside a concert hall. Symphony musicians are out and about in our community, promoting the arts with individual and group performances for young people in our schools and around the holidays for everyone in our churches.
I’m proud to help them and honored to serve. I hope you will support the symphony as well when the opportunity arises.
Just following up on last week’s observation that the Flip Cam is dying because it did not keep up.
Along comes TechCrunch today with a long analysis of the most popular cameras posting pix to Flickr. Apple’s iPhone4 is about to overtake the Nikon D90.
And where are the point and shoots? They are doing a nose dive to oblivion. Couldn’t keep up.
Just saying …
We are psyched to introduce our newest hub for all things creative on the World Wide Web – Five Minutes Daily.
A collection of inspiring photography, Web design, illustrations, website architecture and online images, Five Minutes Daily shares the Web’s most interesting imagery from the perspective of the IWS creative team.
Yeah, it’s got examples of our own design work, but we are casting our net wide to show off stuff that we think is cool, cutting-edge and creative.
Get your daily dose of inspiration; visit FiveMinutesDaily.com!
In a world where technology is always changing and keeping up is a full-time job, products frequently fail to stay current. Yesterday, we saw another casualty of the tech rat race as Cisco announced it was putting its iconic Flip Cam to rest.
Cisco initiated the Flip shutdown “to save money in its lagging consumer products division,” according to NPR. However, several news organizations speculated that the real reason why we’re saying goodbye is because the simple-to-use camera is no match to today’s faster, smarter and more-efficient smartphones.
It didn’t have to be that way. In many minds, the introduction of Apple’s iPad doomed Amazon’s Kindle book reader. Kindle didn’t give up. It went color. It lowered the price. It lowered the price again this week with the help of advertising. Long story short: It watched the market change and it reacted.
Having said that, I stopped reading my Kindle after I bought an iPad. I may have to go back to it, however, since I can’t get it out of my seven-year-old’s hands. My point is, Amazon could have tossed in the towel, and Cisco could have added wifi downloads to the Flip.
Lesson Learned. If you can’t adapt, get out of the workshop. Whether you’re a technology company, marketing firm, traditional business, online retailer or brick-and-mortar shop, you’ve got to be able to keep by adjusting your strategies, tactics, goals and expectations.
President Obama made it official.
And not surprisingly, he’s pitching his campaign where the audience is — Facebook.
On his website, he asks “Are You In?”
You have two choices (See below): Give your name and zip code (great for organizing) and enter via Facebook.
Click the Facebook button, however, and the Obama site starts taking over. First you grant permission to suck in all your Facebook information. Then you get a prompt to update your wall with the Are You In message. (Our social media VP offered up his personal account to show you the process. He neither advocates nor disavows the campaign.)
Then it shows you some of your friends (complete with profile photo) who are not yet “In” and gives you the option of posting an invite on their wall. Some might consider that intrusive. (Our VP did and changed the name of his friend in the example below.)
Why all the attention on Facebook by Obama’s team?
I think it’s like why Wayne Gretzky was so successful – he went where the puck was going to be. Obama is going where the people are going to be, just like retail/corporate America.
You heard it here first.
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