Up until recently, I haven’t been exposed a great deal with using APIs. The only APIs I have interacted with are Google Maps and the occasional Facebook commenting system on other websites. Since I’ve become a little more in the know as to what APIs are, and how they can empower an app/service, I’ve become more fond of apps/services that use them.

Path Mobile App

Path, a journal-like, mobile-only software, is an excellent example as to how developers and designers alike are making use of APIs. Path, which is very similar to the popular social media services pointed out above, is actually a hub of sorts. It allows for content published in the app to be pushed to Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, and Facebook. Path is an interesting step in mobile software. For starters, it is mobile-only, meaning users can only post content from their mobile device. You can still “like” and comment on content in the web version, but only by clicking through a permalink when an update is posted. This facet of the software was a little jarring at first, but what Path has created is an on-the-go social media platform that makes use of these popular services. For me, it made me more willing to trust and engage with the app. Not to mention it’s incredibly well designed.

I’m not necessarily here to plug Path, but I wanted to take a minute and share a service that I enjoy using. Path was an acquired taste, and I think it’s important to note that partnerships with the big players might even help start-ups like Path gain momentum. No one wants to post their content to a service that will die in a few months. With the conceived failure of Google+, I have been left a little exasperated when it comes to the birth of new social media platforms. The fresh approach to Path is they aren’t necessarily introducing something new, rather, they are building on the services we use today. In Path, I am able to check in on Foursquare, push to Twitter, and post pictures and status updates to Facebook. All the while it lives in my Path timeline.

APIs are something a developer or designer (and even client) should consider when starting a project. It is true that APIs are not always viable, but in situations where they are, it creates a more comfortable user experience. In the case of Path, I was at ease using this program as it used the APIs of other services that I have come to know and trust. All of these are important components that factor into the success of an app or service.

We are very proud of our new work for retail training giant, MOHR Retail, the company that has trained the staff of household brands including T.J. Maxx, New Balance, and Verizon Wireless, in its 30 years in business. Through a discovery process that included a brand audit, interviews, and a competitive review, we were able to define four brand pillars that helped  establish a clear strategy for the web redesign. The site focuses on the importance of MOHR Retail’s trainings by using the main messaging area to promote the core attributes that set them apart from other training programs. Our brand study also made it evident that a name change would reinforce their expertise in the retail space and MOHR Access—became MOHR Retail.  Brand strategy always guides design at Grafik—and that is why clients like Michael Patrick of MOHR Retail have this to say about working with Grafik.

“We are all so proud of what you have created. Thank you for listening, bringing your expertise, and translating our vision into reality. The site shows us in the best possible light. It communicates that we are a leader in retail training, offer fresh and important insights, and are a substantial organization that is ready to handle the full range of needs retailers may have. If this doesn’t grow our brand and drive business, I’m not sure what would. We made the right decision when we chose Grafik!” —Michael Patrick, Founder & President, MOHR Retail.

I first heard about Pinterest from my sister, a fourth grade teacher in Michigan who is not known as an early adopter. I was reading one of my favorite blogs, clicked on a Pinterest button on the site, and all of a sudden found myself in a different world that I knew nothing about. Just at that moment, my sister called me. I told her that I had just found this interesting site, Pinterest, and she told me it is one of the best places online for teachers to share ideas and curriculum—she has been using it for months. Three hours later, I was hooked.

These are a few of Grafik CEO, Judy Kirpich

I have been trying to figure out the many ways to use this new social media tool. Growing from 1.2 million users in August to over 4 million in January 2012, it is a site that allows users to share images they like about objects that they like. Each time you choose an image—whether it is from a website or within the Pinterest boards, it is called “pinning.”

A user can group infinite numbers of images into a board that can be organized and categorized according to the users preferences. The site is being used predominantly by women, and there are myriad boards on kitchens, fashion trends, bridal dresses. There are also boards featuring textures, art, places to travel, black and white photography and architecture. If you find someone who is constantly pinning up images that are interesting, you can choose to follow that person, and can select which of her boards you want to follow. If you see an image you like, you can repin it on your own board, like it, or even make a comment.

A shot of Judy

By installing a Pin It button on your desktop, if you see a beautiful image of an elephant on a nature site, you can click on the button and it will be added to your collection (board of images).Well, lots of sites allow you to post images, Grabbit for one, but what is interesting is that the Pin It photo arrives at your board with the credits and original site attached. And here is where I think it gets interesting…since Pinterest allows a “pinner” to see where the original content is from, if you repeatedly see that images you like are from the same website or blog, you are encouraged to visit that url. In this way Pinterest can subtly act as another method to get people to your own blog or website.

I decided to try an experiment. I posted eight images from my own blog. On a good day I normally get about 50-70 page views. The day before I started pinning on Pinterest I had 62 page views. For the next few days after I had started pinning, my page views went up to 379 and the views have remained higher.

After adding images from her own blog, Unmultitasking, Judy's blog traffic experienced a bump.

More research has to be done on Pinterest, however right now it is currently the seventh highest trafficked social media site. The demographic is predominantly female which should be interesting to advertisers. And in talking with some of our social media team and our creative directors we are already thinking of ways we could use this both for our clients and internally. One cautionary note—it’s addictive and can really suck up a lot of time, so be prepared to spend hours investigating it. Enjoy, and happy pinning!

While waiting for my flight at Reagan National Airport, I happened to look up and experience one of the most striking technology campaigns I’ve seen in a while. The Smarter Planet campaign, designed by Ogilvy Paris for IBM, employs a collection of simple yet sophisticated illustrations by Noma Bar titled Outcomes. His work precisely uses shapes, form, and negative space showcasing his skills as an artist, illustrator, and designer. The resulting images are deceivingly simple and often require an extra moment to see the meaning within. I only wished I had taken a photo of the actual display at the airport, however the images below should give you a good idea.

Noma Bar's Outcomes illustrations for IBM's Smarter Planet campaign

Case in point: Grafik’s 2011 Holiday E-card which was sent out to clients, friends, and our social followers early this week. Yes, it may be a bit tardy, but it’s still darn worthy of the mere 30 seconds you need to view it. So if you haven’t given it a look, click on the image below. Immediate smiles guaranteed!

Washington Area is Key Destination for Strategic Communications

WASHINGTON, DC, January 6, 2012 – The DC Ad Club, metropolitan Washington’s chapter of the American Advertising Federation, announced yesterday that Teddi Alyce Segal is chairperson of Advertising Week DC 2012 scheduled for this September. Segal is vice president of marketing and business development at Alexandria, VA-based, Grafik, the creative agency for the event. Advertising Week DC attracts communications professionals to a four-day event engineered to keep practitioners current on all aspects of marketing communications. Although major metropolitan areas such as New York and Los Angeles have more employees in the advertising and marketing sector, the Washington area has the highest per capita among all the major metro areas in the nation.

According to IHS Global Insight and the Greater Washington Initiative studies, the Washington metropolitan area is home to over 300,000 advertising-related jobs and is the highest per capita employer in the advertising sector. Over 21% of the $489 billion economic output in the Washington area is attributable to advertising expenditures.

“The high concentration of communications professionals is indicative of the demand for top-notch, strategic talent in our region for a breadth of communications disciplines, including marketing, advertising, public relations, advocacy, digital media, social media, and more. Our program is developed to serve the needs of all marketing communications professionals,” said Segal.

Every fall since 2004, Advertising Week DC celebrates the best of the advertising, marketing, and media community with a week dedicated to networking, professional development, and education. It is the area’s largest professional and networking event for advertising, marketing, public relations, and media leaders. The Advertising Week DC Steering Committee is comprised of key players from companies in the Greater Washington advertising, marketing, and media industries. The event will feature nationally recognized marketing experts in an extensive program of discussions and presentations focused on best practices in the rapidly evolving field of marketing communications. The conference will be attractive to client- and agency-side junior talent and, of course, the mainstay of seasoned professionals, and those currently in college studying communications.

“Advertising Week DC is the place to listen, learn, contribute, and engage in lively discussion around our profession. Our objective this year is to raise national awareness that the Washington area is the “go-to” market for strategic communications because of the breadth of marketing work being performed in the region,” said Sherri Anne Green, president of the DC Ad Club. “We’re excited to have Teddi spearheading the effort.”

Segal served on the Advertising Week DC Steering Committee in 2010. She joined Grafik in October 2008 and is responsible for business development and marketing efforts, as well as all public relations and social media on behalf of the agency. She previously served on the American Marketing Association-DC Chapter Board of Directors and is currently serving on the DC Ad Club’s 2012 ADDY Award committee.

Prior to coming to DC, Segal was with several agencies in Miami, FL, including Zimmerman and HDC. Advertising Week DC is a mix of professional development and networking. Both events have taken place annually since 2004. Past speakers have included Joe Grimaldi, Chairman & CEO, Mullen; Shelly Lazarus, Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather; Liz Dolan, former Chief Marketing Officer of The Oprah Winfrey Network; Stuart Elliot, Advertising Columnist of The New York Times; and Miles Nadal, Founder, Chairman & CEO, MDC Partners.

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About The DC Ad Club

Since 1918, the DC Ad Club (a.k.a. the Advertising Club of Metropolitan Washington) has served as the premier industry organization for area advertising professionals. As a chapter of the American Advertising Federation (AAF), the DC Ad Club promotes integrity and excellence in advertising through professional development seminars, recognizes industry leaders andoutstanding work, and serves as the leading networking venue for the industry. The DC Ad Club membership represents all segments of the industry—clients, agencies, production companies and the media. Ad 2 DC, a subset of the DC Ad Club membership, represents and provides programming for young professionals (age 32 and under) in the industry.

Grafik had its holiday party this weekend.  Here are a few of the photos from the event.  If you would like to see more photos, check out our Flickr page!

The Smithsonian announced this weekend that they are launching a new brand line, “Seriously Amazing.” Before you read any further, in the interest of complete disclosure, you should know that Grafik has worked with the Smithsonian on many of their initiatives including the branding of the National Museum of the American Indian, and a brand exercise for the Smithsonian Institution’s Latino Center. And we have had a beef over the years, on behalf of all of the excellent branding firms in Washington, D.C., that we are never invited to the dance. So in the context of having a large chip on my shoulder, I have to say that the new tagline for the Smithsonian is really pretty good—excellent in fact. The firm called in for the assignment is a well-known branding agency in NYC, London, and Dubai Wolff Olins and branding museums and international institutions is their specialty.

A news item in the Washington Post on Sunday shows that Wolff Olins spent the time to research, and get input from many of the museum directors and board members. As a pre-eminently political beast it must have been a huge endeavor to interview all of the people necessary to build consensus for the new line—one that costs $1 million dollars. It seems they hit the nail right on the head, getting a huge round of applause when they launched the brand last week.

I personally like “Seriously Amazing” as it taps into the research as well as the vast store of treasures that are held by all of the museums making up the Institution. Known for years as the “Nation’s Attic,” the new tagline has a more forward direction. It remains to be seen how the mark will play out in future fundraising and the awareness building campaign.

Job well done, Wolff Olins! Oh, and a note to self: Every time the Smithsonian cries poor to our local D.C. agencies, we should think of the tagline’s million dollar price tag and refuse to do their work on a pro bono basis.

Driving home from work the other day I was listening to NPR and heard a story about a battle between Chick-fil-A and a small Vermont T-shirt manufacturer who is producing T-shirts saying “Eat More Kale.” Chick-fil-A owns the tagline “Eat Mor Chikin” and, indeed, the corporation has done a splendid job advertising their fast food chicken restaurants through the Eat Mor Chikin campaign. It seems that the T-shirt manufacturer, Bo Muller-Moore, has been doing a booming business producing “Eat More Kale” shirts out of a studio above his garage and has enough orders to support himself. He decided it would be wise to apply for a trademark for “Eat More Kale” and was confronted by a cease and desist letter from the chicken guys. In a statement, Chick-fil-A  said, “We must legally protect and defend our “Eat mor chikin” trademark in order to maintain rights to the slogan.”

Laws regarding trademark and patent infringement are complex, which is why we always tell our clients to consult with their own trademark lawyers or use one of ours. But one test of trademark infringement is whether there would be confusion in the marketplace or whether the existing brand equity would be diluted. Muller-Moore’s lawyer commented in a New York Times article, “There’s no one out there that’s going to come forward and say, ‘I thought I was buying a Chick-fil-A product but I got this T-shirt.” Add to that the fact that the food chain does not have a franchise operating in Vermont so there is even less chance for confusion.

Can a company or brand own words exclusively? Clearly many wonderful campaigns have been copied such as the Got Milk? campaign that I wrote about several weeks ago. Harley Davidson has copyrighted the sound of their motorcycle—and no other motorcycle or bike can use the same sound. But can you hold a copyright to the words “Eat More”? I did a quick search on Google to see how many “Eat More” campaigns and ads there have been. Witness just a few.

Clearly there have been many campaigns that have used the the words “Eat More.” And it is equally clear that Chick-fil-A has done a superb job of imprinting their brand through their deft ad campaign. So what has been accomplished and what are the effects of this lawsuit? Well, Eat More Kale has gotten way more publicity than they ever thought possible, getting national coverage in the NY Times and an NPR spot. Muller-Moore has tapped social media and drew incredible support from Facebook followers, both a former and the present governors of Vermont, and a groundswell of kale lovers nationally.

At a recent press conference, Governor Peter Shulmin of Vermont noted, “If you think that Vermonters don’t understand the difference between kale and a chicken sandwich, we invite you to Vermont, and we’ll give you a lesson about the difference between a kale and a chicken,” Shumlin said. “There are some very distinct features that should be noticed in that difference. Kale is a vegetable; chickens are birds. Birds create manure; kale eats manure.”

What has the Chick-Fil-A brand gained—a tarnished reputation as a corporate bully that flies in the face of its humorous campaigns. How many people will look at the cows and think of the “Eat More Kale” controversy and leave with a bad taste in their mouths? With little possibility of confusion and not even one Chick-fil-A restaurant in Vermont, one has to wonder if this was a giant mistake by the Chick legal department with little thought how it might effect their brand. In this case their cease and desist order may have a real correlation to less counter orders. Governor Shumlin sent this message to Chick-fil-A, “Don’t mess with Vermont. Don’t mess with kale. And, Chick-fil-A, get out of the way because we are going to win this one.” (Source: NPR.org—Chicken Vs. Kale, Kirk Carapezza)

Vintage Ivory soap

Okay. I freely admit that I love old packaging. My house is filled with thousands of antique tins, old boxes, and discarded packaging from days gone by. I notice packaging, so when Procter & Gamble decided to pump up the packaging and advertising for one of its oldest brands, Ivory soap, I was eager to see what change was in store.

The new campaign devised by Wieden+Kennedy is nothing short of brilliant. But the new packaging by Sterling Brands is uninspired. One has to wonder why their advertising agency did not show the new look on any of their ads, TV spots, or online placements. If you want to look at 125 years of Ivory soap packaging, Procter & Gamble has set up a Facebook page that shows all the different ways they have wrapped their pure white soap.

The most controversial aspect to their simple blue and white packaging was the Procter & Gamble logo which was thought to have ties to Satan.

Old Ivory soap packaging the showcased a P&G logo that was thought to have Satanic themes

For years urban legend maintained that the man in the logo was proof of the company’s ties to Satan. Supposedly the curlicues of the moon man’s beard was an array of 6’s and if you connect the dots with the 13 stars, three 6’s appear. The curlicues at the top of his head resembled the horns of a ram representing the false prophet. Eventually in 1985 the Procter and Gamble logo was taken off of Ivory soap. Over the years the Ivory logo has been modified and most recently Wieden+Kennedy modernized the wordmark. Tag lines have also changed and those in use over the years have included:

• Pure Clean. Pure Ivory.
• 99.44% Pure.
• So Pure it floats.
• Keep it pure, clean and simple

“Ivory is P&G’s oldest and most beloved brand, and while consumers relish in the nostalgia and heritage of the product, it’s time for a holistic reinvention of the brand as we work to touch and improve more consumers’ lives in more parts of the world more completely,” says Jay Sethi, Ivory brand manager. “We’ve answered the call for consumers wanting a ‘simple and clean’ solution and the most powerful aspect of Ivory still remains the simplicity of the product.” Lisa McTigue Pierce—Packaging Digest Oct. 4, 2011.

Karl Lieberman, creative director, Wieden+Kennedy, spoke about the new advertising. “Unlike a lot of other brands, Ivory has stayed true to its equity. It has remained the antithesis of the overly complicated—from its ingredients, packaging and advertising—it’s a throwback to an era where there wasn’t time for such things. And that’s what makes its new voice so refreshing.”

Ivory has changed its look over the years, but has always kept it simple.

But while Ivory has remained a strong brand since 1879, competition in the soap category has changed. The Ivory brand has been running third to Dove and Dial. (Source: NY Times, Nov. 7, 2011). Product managers felt that with the increased consumer focus on cost savings during the recession years, it was a good time to promote the Ivory brand promise of “value and simplicity.” “Renée Richardson Gosline, an assistant professor of marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management, also predicted the simplicity of Ivory and its campaign could appeal to consumers. However, she also questioned the absence of the new Ivory packaging in advertising. ‘If you’re proud of the packaging, show it off,’ she said.”

Display of Ivory soap products