Taxes, unemployment, class warfare: The haves and have-nots have consumed much of the rhetoric in this year’s election cycle. Today’s political discourse would have many believe that most of the country is wildly divided, occupying opposite ends of a political spectrum with little to no overlap; however, the truth is very different. Most Americans are moderate, and though political ideologies may differ, we generally seek similar goals.

Throughout what has seemed like an endless procession of debates, a comment made by one candidate was particularly jarring as it highlighted a troubling trend: a growing gap between politicians and the people they represent.

Newt Gingrich recently said of the poor, “You have a very poor neighborhood. You have students that are required to go to school. They have no money, no habit of work… They have no habit of showing up on Monday and staying all day or the concept of  ’I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal…What if you paid them in the afternoon to work…What if they became assistant janitors, and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom?”

Forget for a moment the disregard for child labor laws, even the displaced workers (replaced by a cheaper child work force). His solution centers on the premise that there is an inherent flaw in the poor that is best fixed through imposed manual labor.

How is it that in a society more open and connected than ever before the gap between politicians and voting Americans has never felt larger? If politicians (not their staff members) actually used the Web, specifically social media sites, they’d begin to understand their constituents more intimately. It’s something that can easily be done everyday, not just during election cycles. President Obama’s recent Google+ Hangout – albeit during a campaign season – is a perfect example of a politician using social media to connect with his constituency.

Obama was recently challenged by the wife of an unemployed American semiconductor engineer on his visa program that allows highly skilled foreign workers to gain employment within the US. Obama, perplexed, insisted she send her husband’s resume so he could look into this matter further.

We watch politicians debate bills like SOPA and PIPA and believe these moments expose how far removed and out of touch they are with technology, the Web and social media. But the truth is, false statements, outrageous stereotypes and inane proposals expose their disconnect.

As a politician, it is your civic duty to be in touch. Rejecting the vessels that connect you to your constituency is a failure of responsibility as a candidate and elected official.

The comments made by Gingrich offend me not because they are representative of Republican values, because they aren’t. Rather, they offend me because it is yet another glaring example of a politician pontificating while ostensibly removed and out of touch with the real issues and the people he claims to represent.

http://perezhilton.com/2012-01-31-adele-turning-tables-live-performance-live-from-the-artists-den#.TygSyePHtpY

Over Christmas most of my friends were out of town  and while the streets may have been quiet and empty, the overall feeling was anything but. Thanks to my other friend…the Internets!

It’s times like this that being connected is nice. It allows you to have a greater appreciation for what social media can do for grandparents or friends whose lives have taken them to places remote and far away.  In NYC its easy to become spoiled and take for granted how close everything and everyone is.

Once Christmas had ended and everyone had landed back in New York, the second half of my annual ‘week off’ was to begin. I planned a ski trip to Vermont with a fairly large group of my closest friends. After having spent the last few New Years in NYC, I was ready to avoid the crowds and do something slightly more low-key.

With the expectation that I’d have to do some work over break, I brought my computer and all my gadgets. Even without the expectation of work, parting with these things can bring about a great deal of anxiety. I know… pathetic.

Upon arriving at our cabin, I realized that – much to my chagrin- we had no Wifi. Panic set in.  I calmed myself with the knowledge that I was with friends (and humans) and my reliance on my devices would be pushed aside by quality time with people I cared about. As I went about my week, in the beautiful mountains of Vermont – skiing, building fires, cooking food, playing board games etc. I found what I had originally viewed as a ‘disconnection’ became contrarily, refreshing. By week’s end, I hadn’t so much as glanced at my laptop.

It wasn’t until I got home and saw my Facebook wall, Tumblr blog, Instagram posts and tweets that I realized… I hadn’t disconnected at all. We talk about social media as though it’s a special thing that takes place in a vacuum. The truth is that social media doesn’t exist. ‘Social Media’ is a behavior, an attribute that we apply to forms of media, which have existed for a very long time.

The ubiquity of distribution and sharing by individuals has contributed to the erosion of this notion of ‘connected’ and ‘not connected’. In turn, the distinction between ‘media’ and ‘social media’ should erode as well.

If you are still relegating your social media team to some far away understaffed corner of your office in 2012, you’re doing something wrong. Your social teams of 2012 should be integrated and with the rest of your marketing department and have an equal voice at the table.

Social media is dead because it never actually existed. The truth is that your marketing departments needed to label something they didn’t understand. They stopped evolving and the new kids at the table needed a title. Assimilate your teams and let knowledge sharing trickle up and down. 2012 is going to be a fascinating year – start it off right.

My father has served as a director of finance for various non-profits both large and small for several decades. One of the difficult issues he is forced to confront is where and how to allocate funds. The organization’s cause? Salaries? Marketing? Fundraisers? The challenge: how to maximize each dollar and every resource so that the organization can A) stay afloat and B) carry out its mission.

He taught me that one of the best ways to save money is to create an environment where a salary is not the single defining assessment of an individual’s value to an organization. The truth is, money has and always will be an important factor for employees. However, deep down we know that money is only one of many factors, and its significance diminishes greatly after a certain point. Princeton University conducted a study and determined one’s happiness as it relates to the amount of money he or she makes starts to level off at around $75,000. It’s at this point that other factors play a surprisingly more significant role.

Whether or not you subscribe to the theory that a happy employee is a productive employee, the science backs it up.  Results of a study conducted by the University of Warwick‘s Economic Research Institute overwhelmingly support this idea.

“We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity,” the team said. “Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings, while negative emotions have the opposite effect.”

The study goes on to conclude:

“If happiness in the workplace brings increased returns to productivity, then human resource departments, business managers and the architects of promotion policies will want to consider the implications.”

So the question then becomes, absent of money, how do we make employees happy? Sure, compliments, greetings and everyday friendly gestures can make a difference, but it’s a small (albeit important) piece of a much larger pie. The seemingly obvious solution would be the public recognition of an employee’s contribution or success. Yet even as this basic act can often go unrealized, the larger challenge for managers can be how we deal with errors, missteps and failures. Harvard University and the Stockholm School of Economics investigated the benefits of a reward-based strategy as opposed to one that focused on punishment. The study found:

“When both options are available, reward leads to increased contributions and payoff for the group, while punishment has no effect on contributions and leads to lower payoff for the group.”

Often when we think of rewards in the work place we think money. It just simply isn’t the case. What we do know is that there are several factors that motivate us, and each seemingly contributes to our overall happiness. Congruently, the factors that demotivate contribute to our unhappiness and ultimately detract from the group as a whole. If revenue is down, try working to get employee spirits up, and just maybe the revenue will follow.

For more information on what motivates us see Daniel Pink’s (author of Drive) video “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.”

Rdio launched in the US a full year before Spotify, so naturally when Spotify with all it’s marketing dollars and buzz plopped in from overseas I was a bit skeptical. Sure enough, the service wasn’t bad, in fact it was pretty good… but not nearly as good as Rdio. You see, Rdio wasn’t just a music streaming application, it was like my personal music concierge service. It curated music for me based on what my friends and trusted sources were listening to, and delivered it in an easy to use interface. I was swooning from day one. I’d watch in my newsfeed as friends would appear, listening to their music using the popular Spotify service and like a Mac user watching someone on a PC, I’d think… “Why are you using Spotify? Rdio does the same thing…. just so much better.”

Then… last week happened. Spotify Apps.

Spotify Apps came in and shattered my world. Akin to when my parents told me I was Jewish and Santa was never coming again, everything I thought I knew was out the window. You see, Spotify Apps with its wildly open API, allows all the trusted music sources you’ve relied on for the past 5-10 years to curate customized music experiences; essentially building their own little music apps on the back of Spotify’s library and music deliver system.

Spotify is to the music-blogosphere, as steroids are to Barry Bonds career (umm… allegedly), making something good into something great.  Spotify has essentially empowered your favorite sources for music discovery (blogs, magazines etc.) to become a true access point for music consumption.

Reading Pitchfork? Like that song, album? Add it to your favorites. Now you have it on your computer and phone. Spotify Apps have made themselves a blog’s best wingman. You’re going home with that record tonight, because quite frankly… it’s just so easy.

Dear Rdio,

I love you and I know we haven’t been spending that much time together… but there’s someone else….  I’m sorry.

New York – Dec. 2, 2011 – Glow Interactive, a leading New York-based interactive marketing, advertising and creative agency, today announced it has signed on as the agency of record to drive online marketing, public relations and digital content strategy for the fourth season of public television’s hit show, Live from the Artists Den. The digital campaign is being led by Glow Interactive’s Social Communications group and will kick off on December 2 to drive tune-in and viewer engagement in advance of the show’s season premiere on February 3, 2012 featuring multi-platinum artist Adele.

“For our new season, we’ve enhanced and expanded our social media and digital channels to allow us to more effectively interact with and entertain our audience outside of the actual broadcast,” said Mark Lieberman, Live from the Artists Den creator and executive producer. “Glow Interactive’s Social Communications group has worked with us on an outstanding campaign to make Live from the Artists Den more of a social television experience.”

The campaign focuses on utilizing digital and social media channels – such as Facebook, Twitter, third-party blogs, digital properties like Hulu, as well as music, general entertainment and lifestyle outlets – to increase user engagement, introduce the show to new fans outside of the traditional music scene and ultimately drive TV show tune-in. To do this, Glow Interactive is connecting writers and fans to the compelling stories and memorable music experiences of Live from the Artists Den through site and blog partnerships that leverage exclusive video footage for editorial placement; facilitate personal interviews with the artists and executives of the show; enable content distribution and social content activation; and drive social community growth via content and creative access.

“This is a major new initiative from previous seasons of Live from the Artists Den,” explained Howie Kleinberg, president of digital communications for Glow Interactive. “There is something inherently social about music, and the executives of the show recognize social media as a powerful way to interact and engage with their viewers on a more personal level than ever before. That’s what this campaign is about: bringing the musicians, the fans and the show all together through social media for an enhanced experience all around.”

The fourth season features Adele, The Fray, Death Cab for Cutie, Kid Rock, Iron and Wine and Amos Lee with special guests Calexico and premieres nationwide on public television beginning February 3, 2012 (check local listings at www.artistsden.com).

ABOUT GLOW INTERACTIVE:

Glow Interactive is an award-winning, digital marketing and creative agency based in New York City that is driving an online evolution that puts consumers first, ensuring they’re engaged, entertained, challenged and connected no matter the medium. Over the last decade, Glow has focused on using the latest design practices and technology to develop successful, dynamic interactive marketing and advertising campaigns, branding initiatives, games and viral applications. The company’s success is illustrated by its long list of Fortune 500 and 1000 clients, including USA Network, Toyota, Showtime, Canon, Discovery Channel, Avon, The History Channel, A&E, Condé Nast, Wendy’s, Microsoft and others. Divisions of Glow Interactive include Glow Productions, Glow Play and Glow Social.

For more information about Glow Interactive, please visit www.glowinteractive.com.

ABOUT ARTISTS DEN:
Since its launch on U.S. public television, “Live from the Artists Den” – created by Mark Lieberman – has become a three-time New York Emmy-nominated series, has expanded digitally to include Hulu, Pandora and Vevo and internationally, through Northstar Media, to include Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Latin America. Past artists include Robert Plant, Ray Lamontagne, Elvis Costello, Ringo Starr, Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette, The Black Crowes, Ben Harper, Regina Spektor, Corinne Bailey Rae and David Gray. Interviews at each show are conducted by noted music critic Alan Light, the Artists Den’s Director of Programming.  Concert events take place throughout North America and are by invitation-only. Artists Den Records offers live concert CDs, DVDs and now digital episode downloads from its shows. For information, and to join Artists Den’s guest list, visit ArtistsDen.com

Press Contact:

Jamie Larson

Intersect Communications for Glow Interactive

PH: 512-296-9611

jamie@intersectcom.com

One of the many benefits of working at a small agency is getting to know and interact with every single person in the company.  This promotes such a great sense of togetherness and makes the working environment open, friendly and comfortable.  We know and care about what’s going on in each other’s lives and have a sense of camaraderie almost by default since we all see each other and come into some kind of contact everyday.

However, the advantages of this sense of community do not end at mushy feelings about liking one’s coworkers.  We are a true team and this gives us an important business edge: we communicate.  Account managers, designers, developers, programmers, partners…we all talk to each other and this affords us with a number of important advantages.

1. Limited distortion of client comments, or what I like to call, “the Password effect.”  At our company, client directives goes through one person and then directly to the team.  This helps to prevent the message getting changed and garbled, as is often the case, when it has to go through several different people before getting to the production team.  Like a game of Password, the closer you are to the source, the clearer the message.
2. A united vision for the project at hand.  When the entire team is involved in the process from the start, everyone has the same understanding of the goals for the end product.  We keep each other on point by asking questions, talking things out and checking in frequently.  This focused approach keeps things running smoothly and more importantly, efficiently.
3. A sense of pride in the work.  When everyone is in the loop and communicating extensively throughout the course of a project, each member of the team wants to put forth their best effort to keep things on track and create the highest quality product possible.
4. Accountability to one another.  Directly relating to the point above, we are driven to do our best work not by fear, or financial motivations.  These may be influences to some degree, but a major contributing factor is that we don’t want to let down our teammates.

This is not to say that life at a small agency is perfect – communication occasionally breaks down and mistakes still happen.  But our unified team approach helps keep these instances to a minimum. At many larger agencies, it seems that because of the added layers of hierarchy and bureaucracy, the old adage often rings true that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.  Luckily, we don’t have that problem.  For better or worse, we are all in it together.  And most of the time, it is for better.

In a January (2010) blog post I attributed platform loyalty to more than just user interface and network availability. Additionally, I stated that a consumer’s investment in applications – many of which do not operate cross platform – would play an important factor:

“Every app purchased on a mobile device represents a small investment by a mobile user in their respective mobile ecosystem.”

Today, Apple far outpaces Google in terms of dollars generated through app purchases. As we’ve learned from Microsoft, there is big money in software. In a staggering figure, Apple accounts for roughly 85-90% of all dollars spent on mobile applications.

These numbers are alarming when one considers that Apple accounts for only 5% of global market share for mobile devices. This is a massive problem for Google, and the longer it goes unchallenged the bigger the problem will become.

The study released by GfK regarding platform loyalty further illustrates the dangers posed by Apple to its competitors. Apple’s 80% retention rate can easily be tied to several factors beyond investments made into the App Store. The study underscores that unseating current Apple users is an uphill, if not futile effort. Imagine how this will translate to tablet market where the iPad enjoys a 75% market share.

Fortunately, the smartphone market is anything but mature with a global penetration rate of 27%. There is still plenty of room for platform growth in the tablet market. The mobile market, whether it be a smartphone or a tablet, represents the future of computing. In two years we’ve seen companies who’ve pioneered and ruled the marketplace diminish in influence, and dance with death (RIM, HTC, Nokia, Motorola etc.).

Microsoft dominated in the 80’s and 90’s and what we are seeing now is a battle for the new king of computing. With no apparent heir, what’s becoming apparent is that a cohesive, cross-device platform will rule the land. With a king yet to be crowned, iPhone loyalty, iPad market dominance, App Store dollar spend and the introduction of iCloud, seem to be positioning Apple as the frontrunner for succession.

There was a time, way back in 2006, when we were lucky enough to be a part of these kinds of collaborative efforts. For me, digital media was at its best when we (the creative agency) were sitting around a table along with the media company, the social outreach team, the client and their marketing team, all discussing an upcoming campaign and brainstorming ideas together. The media plan had not been set, blog outreach had not begun, and there wasn’t even key art available yet. All of these parties came together to discuss the tone of the campaign, the target audience, the goals of the project, and we put our collective heads together to develop a unified plan of attack. If we came up with a great creative execution that the client loved, the media team could send RFP’s with this in mind and the social outreach team could plan ahead for where the best buzz would be generated. This was a time when the creative team was brought into the fold much earlier so we were a part of these critical conversations from the start. As a result, the user experience was better, everyone was happier and the media was badass. As a team, we were kicking ass and taking names – we were, innovating and making great strides forward in the digital media space.

And then, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, it all came to a screeching halt. It feels like we’re starting over from square one, which is frustrating because we’ve been saying the same things, making the same recommendations for the better part of a decade. It’s all about teamwork. It doesn’t make sense for a creative agency to have a brainstorm after the media plan has been purchased. What happens when we devise a killer cooperative roadblock execution, but the IO’s are already signed and there are no placements on the plan that fit the bill? Either a mad dash to try and secure a placement at the last minute, resulting in a stressful rush job, or the client will opt to scrap it altogether, but “keep it in mind for the future.” And round and round we go.

In the end, this comes back to something that I just can’t wrap my head around. The vast majority of planning, time and money spent on media are still focused on print. Most clients spend weeks and weeks waiting for a piece of artwork that a digital agency will then have a fraction of the time to translate for online. This is extremely frustrating; especially when you consider that print is floundering while digital is flourishing. For example, the New York Times newspaper is down to under 1 million copies per day in circulation for the first time since the 1980’s, while their website is getting over 45 million monthly unique visitors. Shifts like these can be seen across a number of properties, yet digital media is still consistently getting the short end of the stick when it comes to planning.

It’s past time to start bringing digital into the creative fold earlier and making a splash with online media again. It has worked in the past, so we know we can be successful again. We just can’t do it alone.