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Archive for the ‘Advertising & Marketing’ Category

Raising The Bar: Professional Growth in a Down Economy

Fuel Up

Every industry and profession in the world has conferences. If you are in a licensed profession then chances are that you have to attend conferences, classes, and seminars to maintain your certification. For the rest of us, a conference is a vital part of staying ahead of the curve.

A conference of any kind is only has good as you make it. A well-run conference will have an agenda that is timely, informative, and on topic with current trends and advancements. If you attend these sessions then you should walk away with new ideas that can not only help your company but will help you with your career advancement. If you feel like you are in a rut, then go to a conference and re-charge your creative batteries.

Networking

Networking is always a big part of any conference. It’s not just about hanging with friends and business partners. It’s about meeting new people. It’s about sharing ideas. When you have an opportunity to talk face-to-face you will find that many of your colleagues have the same issues. You have a relaxed setting to share these issues and ideas.

You could also use a conference to pitch new business and maintain current clients. If you plan accordingly you can “kill two birds with one stone”. You can save travel expenses by getting several face-to-face meetings at one conference.

EAMC 2009 at Colorado Springs

The Event and Arena Marketing Conference is coming up June 10th thru June 13th in Colorado Springs. carbonhouse is a sponsor of the conference. We sponsor this for two reasons: 1) we want to expose and market our product to this industry. 2) We want to learn as much as possible about the industry. We need to stay as up-to-speed as you do. We need to hear from our current clients and potential clients. We take this info back to the office where we can create new products that the event and entertainment industry needs to market in the 21st Century.

We hope you will join us at this year’s conference. We plan to be part of a panel session discussing online sales & marketing. We also will host a breakout presentation on what we can do for you. If you see us at the bar, tell us you read this blog and we will buy you a drink. Cheers!

EAMC 2009 Registration

Author: James Sack

Posted On:
May 1st, 2009
Author:
by James Sack
Filed Under:
Category: Advertising & Marketing, Creativity, Events, Marketing, Venue, social networking
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Behind the Screen: Anatomy of a carbonhouse site

The cobbler’s kids.

It is always a tough task creating a website for your own company. We do this all the time for our clients, but as a creative shop we always want to be…well…creative. After many iterations, we decided the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) approach was best. Get all the good stuff out and available and keep the fluff to a minimum. Really, the problem we were facing was not the look of the site, but the delivery of content.

With that in mind and a blank slate, simplicity became the main goal in the new direction for carbonhouse.com. Building off one of our product sites, venuelements.com, we wanted to keep it uncomplicated, clean and clear, and allow the work to speak for itself. We relied on the typography to create the space, but also improve usability, by providing quick access to all the pertinent information (the good stuff). Taking the single page site concept and amping it up, we used the mootools framework to dynamically deliver the content from our greenhouse content management system and create transitions that aren’t just fluff. These transitions ensure the correct flow of the content to the user and communicate our message.

Design

  • Clean, uncluttered design to communicate and focus on work and let the interaction via javascript provide the ‘bling’ or motion
  • Single-page format to allow visitors quick access to pertinent information and messaging
  • Object-oriented approach to home page spotlight area that showcases recent projects in a less traditional, more unexpected way
  • Utilization of sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) to present titles and headers in Helvetica Neue Light, which offers a more sophisticated look than the standardized web font palette.

Technical (all the techy goodness)

  • A degradable javascript navigation for users with javascript-disabled browsers allows the site to be navigated while also providing search engine-friendly standard hrefs for our links.
  • We utilize AJAX calls with the mootools framework to load page content and project details from our greenhouse CMS, thus avoiding page reload.

Accessibility Benefits

Overall, there are a lot of different ways to handle navigation. By incorporating the degradable javascript within our navigation, we have reduced the possibility of viewers not seeing the site as intended, while increasing the ability of Google and other search engines to find our links.

Author: Taylor Nall

Posted On:
February 20th, 2009
Author:
by tnall
Filed Under:
Category: Advertising & Marketing, Design, Our Office, Social Marketing, Technology
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carbonhouse supports Facebook addiction

carbonhouse, inc., the leader in digital marketing for sports, hospitality and entertainment, is helping venue websites easily partner with the popular world of social networking by integrating Facebook Connect right to their site. Utilizing the booming world of Facebook will allow venues the ability to automatically connect their events to millions of additional fans, send venue alerts to Facebook users and see other friends who will be attending the same event. In turn providing venues with additional marketing resources to sell more tickets. James Sack, carbonhouse Partner and Creative Director, “carbonhouse has added the option of Facebook Connect for our clients and is administered within carbonhouse’s greenhouse content management system for all events. As an administrator for your site, you will not need to learn or use another interface to enable your events to be shared on Facebook. Adding an event through greenhouse will automatically populate your site, as well as your company’s Facebook page. One quick step to reach millions of users.”

Statistics published on Facebook.com show more than 150 million active users and more than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide) with the fastest growing demographic being 30 years and older. The average user has 100 friends on the site and more than 20 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each month. <http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics>

Posted On:
February 6th, 2009
Author:
by lgalloway
Filed Under:
Category: Advertising & Marketing, Design, Marketing
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Getting Better Buzz: Generating Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Beehive illustration

“PR plus word-of-mouth equals marketing’s new power couple.”

—Andrea C. Wojnicki, Rotman School of Management

One of the leading gurus of word-of-mouth marketing, Dave Balter of marketing firm BzzAgent, is out with a new book: The Word Of Mouth Manual, Volume II. The book, which costs $45 at Amazon, can also be downloaded for free in PDF format from a bunch of other smart marketers that Balter reached out to, including Todd Deffren of PR-Squared, Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures and Jason Fried of 37 Signals. See the whole list of resources here.

Now a note of fair warning: I am a registered BzzAgent myself, and Dave sent me a free copy of the new book (along with a previous book he wrote) for signing up to help him promote the book. That’s smart—and that is just what BzzAgent does. Also, I haven’t read the book yet but eagerly look forward to it. Because let’s face it–everyone wants to generate better word-of-mouth marketing, but few really know what it is or how to go about it.

carbonhouse was fortunate to have one of Dave’s top notch colleagues, Joe Chernov (BzzAgent VP Communications), stop by our office recently. He was in town to give a talk to an PR group on the whole subject of WOM. The following are excerpts from Joe’s talk, which no doubt are expanded upon in Dave’s book.

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Posted On:
July 3rd, 2008
Author:
by admin
Filed Under:
Category: Advertising & Marketing
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Why Company Loyalty is Bull****And Other Thoughts From the Godfather of Integrated Marketing Communications, Bob Lauterborn

Robert LauterbornYesterday marked the official “retirement” of one of the icons of the advertising & marketing world, my good friend and former professor Robert (Bob) Lauterborn. I was honored to attend his bon voyage celebration at UNC Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1986, after leaving a storied career in the corporate world behind, taking a 50% pay cut and joining the world of academia. I took the opportunity to sit down and talk with Bob about his lifetime of experiences, before he dives into retirement headfirst, starting with teaching gigs in Macedonia, India, China and Croatia. Also, Bob will debut his newest book, Print Matters: How to Write Great Advertising at the AAA annual conference in May.

The following is a transcript of our conversation.
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Posted On:
April 17th, 2008
Author:
by admin
Filed Under:
Category: Advertising & Marketing
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Archive for the ‘Advertising & Marketing’ Category