We wouldn’t say we are addicted to coffee. We would say we love coffee…and often!

And we especially love this great little site dedicated to coffee art. Fun.

artinmycoffee.com

@artinmycoffee

In honor of Mother’s Day this coming Sunday, a few interesting facts about Mom’s and digital:

Mom’s are tech savvy (and love Pinterest): Our moms are actually more tech savvy than we give them credit for. In a recent study (http://www.babycenter.com/100_press-release-21st-century-mom-media_10365618.bc) researchers from Baby Center (http://www.babycenter.com) and Nielsen found that Moms are the new force in technology, becoming early adopters of the latest tech trends. Recently this was especially true in regard to the massive growth of Pinterest (http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/958469/how-moms-can-use-pinterest).

Mom’s and blogging: Stay-at home moms have been blogging for several years now and the numbers are increasing annually. One in three bloggers are moms with the majority of bloggers being women according to previous Nielsen studies (http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/buzz-in-the-blogosphere-millions-more-bloggers-and-blog-readers) reported earlier this year.

Mothers have confessed to mobile-multi-tasking by browsing online content and chatting on the phone or sending text messages. In order to target this mass usage of moms on their mobiles, marketing campaigns are gearing more towards mobile ads. (http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/those-multitasking-smartphone-connected-tv-loving-moms-139710)

Brands love Mom’s: To honor moms of Olympic athletes, Proctor & Gamble has rejuvenated their Thank You Mom (http://www.youtube.com/user/PGThankYouMom) campaign online and will begin airing the commercials during the 2012 games.

With great love and admiration Digital Pulp would like to wish all of the moms in our lives a very Happy Mother Day! #thankyoumom

There’s quite a bit of conversation going on these days in the industry (and in our hallways) about Responsive Design.

We’re working with several clients on assignments that incorporate this design technique. Very interesting and exciting stuff…more on that to come.

In the meantime, we thought it would be fun to revisit our Holiday site: youbetternotstress.com, which was developed with Responsive Design.

It was a big hit, and we had a blast putting it together. Have a look.

We are proud to announce that we have just helped launch manaba in the U.S.

manaba is a new generation learning system developed in Japan. Digital Pulp designed and developed the website, the corporate identity (logo), a collateral system (including sales materials), the brand launch video, and much more.

http://www.manabalearning.com/

manaba is much more than just another learning system, it’s the next generation. manaba embodies the joy of learning: empowering teachers to become personal coaches; encouraging students to share with and inspire each other; enabling communities to blossom.

Wonderful clients to work with, and a special organization. All of us at Digital Pulp wish manaba much success.

Renovations at Digital Pulp have begun. Stay tuned…much more to come.

Very proud of the mobile site we just launched for the Pittsburgh Cultural District. You can look at the events calendar, buy tickets, plan a visit, and discover all of the wonderful events happening in this vibrant arts community!

www.culturaldistrict.org/m/

Mitch Caplan and Gene Lewis of Digital Pulp were interviewed on “Game Changers Live”, where leaders in the marketing industry discuss various topics with the team at The Troyanos Group.

Here is the link to the interview:

http://troyanosgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/GCL_DIgital-PulpV3_Mp3.mp3

Nice Valentine’s Day infographic from our client H.Bloom? Which path is yours?

Ever wonder how we got our name?

Well, it’s a bit of a long story. Our name is a combination of digital + print (we got our start in 1996 doing websites and print work…”Pulp”…get it?).

It’s also based on the medical definition of the tip of your finger. In 96′ this finger was only hitting a key board or drawing board. Today, the finger tip is at the center of our tapping, swiping, digitally centered world.

We’re pleased to announce that Digital Pulp has been retained by the Sotheby’s Institute of Art to develop their new online experience.

“Digital Pulp exhibited not only a great passion for helping us to develop a world class online presence, but also exhibited a strong understanding of our brand, and distinct core competencies, and how to make it attractive to prospective students and other visitors to our site”, said Jonathan Friedlander, Global Marketing Director.

Gene Lewis, Partner and Creative Director, Digital Pulp added: “To be working with one of the premier brands in the world on an initiative of such great importance is exciting to our entire team. We have a special passion for working with learning institutes, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art is the best of it’s kind.”

The renovation continues…new lights for our entry way and furniture being delivered today. Momentum.

We are proud to announce that we have just helped launch a new online presence for QuantiaMD.

www.quantiamd.com

QuantiaMD is a free resource for physicians and residents available both online and on your smartphone. It provides access to quick, short, narrated power point presentations that are thought provoking and sometimes even fun.

QuantiaMD helps physicians form a global community, inspired by one another. Hundreds of thousands of physicians have already returned to the heart of medicine, interacting with colleagues and researchers; sharing ideas and building expertise; and doing what they went into medicine to do – help patients.

Digital Pulp has worked with QuantiaMD over the past several months to design, develop, and now launch, a new web presence which allows for a seamless and easy-to-use experience which will help participating physicians to find the information they need.

This is a nice piece, but we think it’s great advice not only for CMO’s but for anyone working in marketing (at any level).

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/170356/the-dna-of-the-digital-cmo.html

Our only add would be an appreciation for the ability to tell stories through digital. More and more, brands are launching and promoting themselves strictly through digital channels only. As more and more marketers learn that this is possible (and in many ways more effective and efficient), it will be important for them to be able to see how the brand eco-system needs to be developed to support such an effort.

LOVE this, but wish they would sort out the Wifi issue. Would you pay and extra 25 or 50 cents a ride for Wifi? We would. Bad enough we can’t get it on most planes (but we love the gogo app).

http://bit.ly/Hg0Pug

University of Notre Dame

Sometimes smart Web design works so well that you may not even notice it; and that’s often the case with responsive page design.  Responsive sites have been carefully designed to ‘know’ what will work best for each audience member’s browser, and deliver up the ideal layout for the situation.

Today, increasingly large audience segments are browsing the Web on smartphones and tablets of various shapes and sizes, and that fact presents a host of challenges for designers of complex sites with lots of content. We’ve all experienced the frustration of trying to navigate a dense, wide homepage on a smartphone screen — it’s often annoying enough to bounce a mobile user away from browsing a site at all.

Past solutions to this problem have been to offer a mobile version of a site on a dedicated URL, or to encourage users to download an app which has been custom-developed for an individual  device.  But as new devices continue to be adopted by consumers – (for example, since the upstart tablet Kindle Fire was released last November, it’s estimated that more than 5 million were sold) – it’s becoming clear that trying to create versions for each and every mobile device can be a costly and endless rabbit hole.

But there’s another approach that is ready to adapt to all new devices as they appear:  responsive design.  Responsive design allows a site’s layout to reconstruct itself on the fly, based on how each individual user is viewing the page.

We really liked the way the Notre Dame University used responsive design to build an experience that seamlessly adapts to the user’s situation.  To understand the concept, just open nd.edu in a full screen view on your desktop and take a look. Next, squeeze your browser’s width smaller, and watch what happens.  You’ll see the site dynamically reconstruct itself, dropping the large image background, reconfiguring menu elements, repositioning links lower on the page in a vertical stack, and generally keeping the site uncluttered and usable in every browser situation.

It’s cool because it works at every size, but even cooler because it’s automatic. This approach takes a great deal of user interface thought and planning during the design phase, but when it’s executed properly, every user on every device will have an ideal experience.

Jack Loechner over at MediaPost had a nice piece this morning about Content Marketing.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/171498/video-and-social-marketing-drive-content-marketing.html

He points out that Content Marketing is being driven by Video and Social Marketing. A bit of a surprise to read that 87% of marketers are using video to drive their brand awareness (production companies must be having a very, very good year). But no surprise that 96% of marketers are using Social Media to distribute this content.

Email marketing was collectively viewed as the least effective tactic for creating brand awareness. Again, not a big surprise to us but an important point. Marketing messages to someone’s primary inbox will swell to an average of more than 9,000 annually in 2014 (via Forrester Research), with retention email making up the largest permission-based share. No wonder opt-out rates are growing.

Consumers, already stretched to the limit on the amount of time they have, are being highly selective about the kind of content they want to engage with. And more and more, it’s content they have “found”, not content that has been sent to them in an email.

This is critical to marketers and their agencies, as it directly impacts the importance of developing content that users WANT to engage with. It must be relevant and engaging. It’s one of the reasons that the integration of your content to your social media strategy is so critical. Users are more and more likely to engage with your content if it’s passed along from another person in their social sphere (”Like”), or is housed within a platform they have chosen (blog, news site, etc.). 82% of brand and agency marketers expect to increase content marketing efforts in 2012.

Be found.

There’s an awful lot being discussed these days in regard to the marketing of a University or College.

Pinterest: http://targetx.com/facebook-without-the-whining/

Facebook: http://www.eduniverse.org/facebooks-new-feature-groups-oberlin

All good subjects (and including others, such as the use of online video,  other social media platforms to recruit and retain, etc.) and it’s important that institutions pay attention to the ever evolving landscape.

Often what gets lost in the swirl of all of the new media platforms available to .edu marketers is in fact the most important issue: your school’s brand.

What is your school’s unique proposition? What makes it special as compared to other schools your prospective students may be considering?

As competition continues to increase for new students it’s more and more important that a school identify and own a unique brand position.

Colleges take the competition among high school seniors for slots at their schools very seriously. Over the years, many schools have altered their recruiting tactics to fit the market. How? By turning themselves into brand names. via Peterson’s College Search

We’ve worked with school’s that have tackled this issue and built a unique online experience that tells their story in a user-friendly and unique fashion.

The NYU Stern School of Business is a great success story. We worked with them to develop their brand proposition, “Possible”, and their school website reflects this unique positioning. NYU Stern can now say that they are the one school that allows students to experience the richest environment for learning business in the country by their commitment to four values:

Academic Excellence, Collaborative Community, IQ + EQ, + The Energy of a Global Hub NYC) = “Possible”

So when you are building your schools new site, always remember that in addition to sorting through the opportunities to engage with potential students (and faculty) that you also need to have a unique, differentiating, and engaging Brand platform.

http://www.stern.nyu.edu/

We spend a lot of time thinking through our clients’ needs and developing custom software solutions that enable them to communicate better and connect to their audience with less effort and more results. But not everybody can work with a digital agency to architect their ideal application, and sometimes it’s people whose work matters most that have the least resources to acquire digital tools. Teachers often fall in that category.

That’s why we love to see off-the-shelf tools that make educators’ work easier and more productive…and cost nothing.  Just look at all the great ways a teacher can use Pinterest to help enrich their students’ experience. Each one of the capabilities in this infographic might have been on an individual teacher’s wish list, and now all these powerful features been served up on a silver platter to anyone who wants them.

So much of student work now happens online, and methods for aggregating content are key to enabling teachers to steer their class’ conversation. The way Pinterest allows easy group sharing and commenting is perfect for instantaneous presentation and collaborative research, and the visual paradigm makes any content lively and inviting for the class.

It’s no wonder that Pinterest has gone from a prototype in 2010 to become the #3 social network in the country, and we’re glad that such a robust tool is finding its way into the hands of teachers.  (It’s just too bad that kids under 13 aren’t allowed to pin!)

Great Things Have Happened!

Thing have been pretty busy around here. So busy, in fact, that we’re adding to our Executive team.

We’re thrilled to announce that Brian Loube has joined Digital Pulp as Executive Producer. Brian brings a wealth of incredible experience to DP. He was the original founder of the interactive division at R/GA, and over the course of four years built the business into a group of 35.

That’s impressive and all, but what we think makes Brian super cool is that he ran the first online team at Sesame Street, where he built innovative and creative user experiences for kids of all ages – and got to hang out with Elmo.

Awesome.

Brian is well versed in all aspects of digital marketing, including Social Media and Online Marketing. He has worked in the public and private sectors, and has teams that created solutions for variety of brands including Pepsi, AOL, Mattel, IBM, and Levis. Brian brings a unique and very clever perspective to managing digital projects.

Welcome Brian!

We’re also thrilled to announce that Sarah Blecher is evolving to the newly created role of Director, User Experience. Sarah has evolved a love for all things UE, so now she can focus her energies and shape the way we make Great Things Happen!

Onwards and Upwards!

GroundLink, the next generation car service, has named Digital Pulp to work with the company on two digital engagements: the redesign of their website and the development of a new mobile application.

Since its inception, GroundLink has processed and executed more than one million transactions. GroundLink offers travelers highly personalized service, reduced wait times and lower costs in all 50 states and 110 countries.

“Digital Pulp exhibited a great passion for both helping us to improve on our customers online experience and in helping us to develop an innovative mobile application. The agency also exhibited a strong understanding of our brand and how to make the user experience as simple and seamless as possible, allowing us to ensure that a customer interaction with GroundLink is of the highest quality,” said Seth Lasser, Chief Marketing Officer.

Gene Lewis, Partner and Creative Director, Digital Pulp added, “To be working with GroundLink, a company so keenly focused on providing a great experience for their customer is a real treat for us. GroundLink is redefining their industry, and we’re excited to help them continue to improve their user experience.”

About GroundLink

GroundLink is the next generation car service. They’re your local car service everywhere you go, rolling in every U.S. city and 110 countries. Their drivers arrive on time, guaranteed or the next ride is free. The whole process is easy. Order the closest car or schedule a future ride online , on one of their apps, or even via phone. Customers can track their drivers turn by turn on their mobile app. Paper vouchers? No way. Passengers get the receipt in their inbox before leaving the car. Forget what you know about car service. GroundLink: Your Driver is Here.

As many of you know, Digital Pulp has over the years worked with some of the leading College’s and Universities. Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, Emerson College, The NYU Stern School of Business, to name a few. Over the years we’ve learned quite a bit about the .edu space. We’ve also met and worked with some amazing people. So in the spirit of furthering the efforts to improve online experiences in the .edu space, we’ve started a new Twitter feed: @edu_MarketingIdeas.

Through this Twitter feed (entirely curated by Digital Pulp), we’ll be sharing our thoughts on best practices in the .edu space, and how schools need to think about leveraging the digital space to attract new students, faculty, stay engaged with their alumni and donors, and improve their over all digital brand presence. Some of the leading marketers in the .edu space are already a part of those following @edu_MarketingIdeas….we invite you to join the conversation.

So check it out and please “Follow” @edu_MarketingIdeas. Thanks!

https://twitter.com/#!/edu_marketing