On Street Art in Marketing

Thanks to a recent work meeting, I've had to pay a bit more attention to tattooing and street art.

So needless to say, I was thrilled when I came across this fantastic little feature on PingMag.

It's an interview with Excusado Printsystem, a Columbian art collective geared at making art inventions in Bogata. It got me thinking about the recent craze on using street art in advertising. Pepsi Co.'s recent launch of the Green Label Art, for its Mountain Dew drink.

What I love about that campaign is what you never see in the ads, the partnership with the artists. These artists, who might never reach the audience that Mountain Dew can provide are getting a chance to have their work seen (whether you think the artist is "selling out" or not is irrelevant to me - artists and designers have to eat too!).

There seems to be a resurgence in allowing outsiders to have a crack at logos, designs and campaigns, and I like the spirit behind it. But it needs to be done very, very carefully. There's a cred that goes with graffiti and tattooing. And if you're going to allow people who claim they're "artists" a shot at shaping your brand, you'd better be damn sure they're legit and they're not going to blow it.

Today's appreciators of "urban" and "street" (whatever you want to call it) culture have a finely tuned bull shit detector.

Mountain Dew has always been branded pretty well in my opinion. They latched onto the X-Games before the X-Games were cool and use their sponsorship bucks very well. Nice to see they worked with some legit artists here as well.

At any rate, check out all of the above. Any thoughts on use of "Street Art" in a campaign?

On Online Persona Managment

What happens when you Google yourself? If you click that link, you'll see what came up when I did it. Thankfully, my personal Web page hits the top of the organic listings. I chalk it up to proper meta tags, title tags and clean code. I've also gone out of my way to try to properly manage my online persona.

Admittedly, as a young twenty-something in the Internet age, not everything that you'll find my name attached to is necessarily something I'd want everyone, let alone potential clients, vendors or employers to see. Now that I'm a late twenty-something, with a considerable amount of material that I either wrote in my newspaper days or that I was responsible for coding in my Web editing days, I have a nice body of work with my name attached to it.

So, when prospective employers Google my name, mostly the good stuff shows up. Sure, my foodie profiles pop close to the top, but I don't necessarily see them as detrimental to my reputation.

Lifehacker, recently posted a feature on managing your online reputation. While I think it misses out on a few social network identities that are an absolute must to grab, I think the post is informative and has a lot of good suggestions.

As a side note, I was an early adopter of Twitter, abandoned it, and have since come back. After I left, someone who I won't name, assumed my identity and did some pretty good damage. A lesson learned. I've since grabbed it back, if only to manage it. I'm still not sold on Twitter yet.

Pleasant surprises

I'm doing something today that I normally don't do. I'm sitting my bed, past 7 a.m. I've been puttering around on the computer and spending time with the dog, drinking coffee and catching up on sites I once used to frequent.

I was pleasantly surprised when Rafiki tensed up and got defensive at the edge of our bed. That usually means the mail has arrived or Vita is home. This time it was the later. Vita got home several hours early from call and we've been spending a nice cool sunny morning in bed... chatting, listening to iTunes and picking songs for the wedding. I don't have enough mornings like this anymore and it's nice to have the opportunity to spend time in bed with my lady, even if I know she'll be passed out a good chunk of the morning coming off surgical call.

I've already received a few emails from my digital-inclined friends about the redesign. I'm happy to report that the bulk have all been praise, while others were very constructive. Admittedly, Version 1.0 was looking really dated and was difficult to read at times due to its width in the center column. I'm happier with the new design. It's growing on me, but I'm not totally sold on the header image yet.

On a reading and link front, check out this feature in PingMag. It's about a photographer's adventures on an Alaskan fishing boat.

Some nice images and a pretty good little interview.



It's also a good reminder that Michigan isn't the coldest place on earth right now. Grab your coffee and your girl... it's a good morning to stay in bed.