Out Loud, Online!: 5 Keys to Generating Passionate and Active Board Outreach
Thursday, May 30th, 2013 06:00 PM CDT
Free, Open to Everyone

Are your board members and supporters consistently and passionately sharing your organizational stories? Could you be putting Social Media and other technologies to better use in communicating your stories? Join us May 30th to create a more productive and engaging outreach strategy! Identify your stories! Prove your value! Find your passion! Craft your strategy! Make it simple!

Click here to sign up.

 “What’s up with these hashtag things?” — We’ve all heard it (as social media aficionados) or we’ve asked it (as Facebook-only users). In this episode we discuss the uses, annoyances, and pop culture affects of the social media hashtag.

• Why employees are natural brand advocates
• The value of turning your employees into advocates
• How to develop a winning employee advocacy program 
• Why every department has potential brand advocates waiting to be turned on

Click here to register!

As you can tell by the title of this post, this is not social media related. But since I also cover advertising and marketing on occasion and since I'm trying to fit in more Detroit-centric topics, I figured this would be okay...

So I am a huge Red Wings fan. Actually, I'm a huge hockey fan in general--college, youth, pond. I watch but never play since I wasn't born with a coordinated gene in my body. On top of loving the game of hockey, I've developed an obsession with the Winter Classic games. And when they announced the 2013 Winter Classic would be in Detroit, I all about died. I started early and my family and I acquired early tickets from a season ticket holder.

Part of the fun about the Winter Classic (at least from the perspective of an advertising/marketing professional) is the big unveiling of the vintage-inspired jerseys and other official merchandise specifically for the game. The NHL and teams build up the releases of the merchandise, which are then just produced for a limited amount of time (which I believe may just be through the end of the season). People go crazy and buy them all up. The last Wings Winter Classic jersey is still really popular.

Without getting into the drama of this season's lockout, the 2013 Winter Classic ended up being canceled before we ever got a glimpse of the special jerseys.

Earlier this year the lockout ended and we went back to playing hockey. Last week during the Red Wings Maple Leafs game, the NHL unveiled the 2014 Winter Classic designs for the jerseys and for the additional merchandise like hats, tshirts, and other fun stuff.

The official merchandise includes this hat:


Notice anything interesting about the hat?

NHL Winter Ass

Yes, here is the NHL's Ass Hat.

My questions is: How the hell did this design make it all the way to production?

I always assumed that dozens of people would be reviewing and signing off on all the official designs to ensure spelling, continuity, brand consistency, etc. But apparently not. Or did really no one ever notice this?!

I'd expect this from some of the non-licenced products that you see sold outside the arenas and at convenience stores but this is the official design sold at Joe Louis (and I'm assuming at the Maple Leafs' arena) for $30. This could be the hat we see players wearing.

I picked this hat up earlier this month at the Joe as a laugh but it really has me thinking...

Anyone else see this hat or have any thoughts on the topic? Am I just blowing this way out of proportion or is this a huge marketing and branding blunder?

Here's what you've missed:

• Yahoo Acquires Tumblr - Yahoo has officially announced the all-cash acquisition of blogging site Tumblr, picking up the six-year-old company for a cool $1.1 billion. (Promises "not to screw it up")
• Klout Now Lets You Share Your Expertise on Bing - Starting last week Klout is offering the opprtunity for topic influencers to increase their influence in an area by answering topic-related questions that Bing users often search for.
• Facebook Rolling Out Video Ads to News Feeds - Facebook will give brands four demongraphics to target with 15-second video ad spots.
• Microsoft announces the Xbox One - On Tuesday Microsoft announced its next-generation Xbox console, the Xbox One.

Today I came across this great resource from ExactTarget on creating measurable strategies for social media customer conversion.

The numbers show that most businesses are not fully leveraging, or even understanding, the world of social media marketing and social business. The advent of social media left many marketers feeling as though they had a new, free way to market directly to their customers. Over time, it has become apparent that getting return on social media marketing use is not as simple as just creating a dialog with contacts.

In order to be effective, social media marketers need to implement the same types of digital marketing tactics that ecommerce and search engine technologists have used for years. In this guide, The Mathematics of Social Marketing, you’ll:

• Discover how to determine the number of social media contact views you need in order to convert contacts to customers 
• Learn about back and front-end efficiencies that will help drive your business with social media 
• Find out how to move beyond “launch and hope” to develop measurable strategies that will drive social media customers to take action

If you're interested in downloading their FREE quick guide (which I highly recommend), click here.

Here's what you've missed this week:

• Facebook Rolls Out Trusted Contacts - It's common practice to give out spare house keys to a few trusted friends in case of an emergency, but would you take the same approach when it comes to backing up Facebook login information?
• Instagram Adds People-Tagging to Photos - Instagram is adding one of Facebook's most popular features — photo tagging — to its iOS and Android apps Thursday. You can now tag people in photos, and browse feeds of photos you and others appear in.