Vegas is a city filled with distractions, as evidenced in the movie “The Hangover.”  So if you’re trying to promote an event in Las Vegas how do you grab people’s attention?

Our solution?  Make a lasting impression.

We created this custom E-Card to promote East Side Entrees at the upcoming School Nutrition Association Conference in Las Vegas.

Enjoy!

www.BreakfastBREAKSmilk.com

Videos stand a much better chance than a text page of being shown on the first results page of a Google blended search, according to Nate Elliot with Forrester Research.  Their research shows, “…any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index.” Continue Reading →

CBS Sports has enhanced their NCAA March Madness on Demand site by offering third party sites access to free applications that feed live scores and other information from games.

Additionally, the NCAA March Madness Developer site offers a selection of widgets that are more sophisticated than ever including applications dedicated to brackets, live scoring, and news on each of the Division I Men’s Basketball Programs. So, for example, we can feature this widget on our blog (just don’t tell our boss Doug, the die-hard hockey fan).

You can also provide a link to see games like Michigan vs. Clemson (Thursday at 6:10 p.m. CT) for free online in HD using Microsoft’s Silverlight player.  However, you’ll want to have Silverlight pre-installed, de-activate any pop-up blockers and in this case be a Wolverine fan.

CBS has said that they anticipate a 30% increase in ad revenue from their March Madness site this year reaching nearly $30 million.  Last year was the first that all games were available via the on demand site and revenue jumped 130%.

Baseball card manufacturer Topps is introducing a new card that will project a 3-D avatar of a baseball player on a computer screen if placed in front of a webcam.

Could this be the future of business cards?

Are you losing a significant percentage of your potential audience?

That’s the problem Manning solved by creating ABAnow.org, a website for the American Bar Association‘s Annual and Mid-Year Meeting news site that is optimized for viewing on smart phones.

Creating a mobile site especially makes sense for the ABA – according to 2008 ABA Legal Technology survey 72 percent of lawyers under 40 use a smart phone.

Using the power of PHP, CSS and a little bit of magic, Manning developed a site that detects whether the user is on a computer or a mobile device and then displays content accordingly.

During its February debut in Boston, the site was updated more than 100 times with news, video and audio items in addition to providing a new discussion board that allowed members from afar to participate in debates going on during the meeting.

In addition to creating the new site, we also had a hand in promoting it.  Playing off the idea of the ABA to-go, we created simple, bold banner ads promoting the site which were prominently displayed at the group’s Boston meeting.

Once again the creative forces behind Monty Python’s Flying Circus proved themselves innovators.  Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars suing people for sharing their ground-breaking comedy online, they decided to beat them at their own game.  They created a Monty Python YouTube channel with high quality versions of their movie and TV work available for free!

And now for something completely different: their DVD sales on Amazon.com went up 23,000%!  That’s not a typo.  23,000%!  So the group has proven that instead of being bitter about new technology maybe it is better to always look on the bright side of life.

Every once and awhile you get a project that makes you reflect upon the impact technology has on our lives. Recently, we interviewed Eugene Polley, a retired mechanical engineer at Zenith (now LG Electronics), who invented the wireless remote control back in 1950. We were hired by LG to tape an acceptance speech by Mr. Polley who was to receive an IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award for this work at C.E.S.

During the interview, Mr. Polley commented on being dubbed the “Father of the Couch Potato.” Yet if you think about it, he actually blazed the trail for a more recent wireless device that can hardly be considered passive: the Nintendo Wii Remote Controller.The Wii is getting people off their couches and using their televisions actively and collaboratively in ways unimaginable in 1950.

So who knows where the remote control will take us in the future?

Whether you voted for or against Barack Obama, you have to admit that Chicago looked great on Tuesday night.  I was fortunate enough to join 250,000 of my close, personal friends to witness history in Grant Park.  I didn’t have Oprah cry on my shoulder, but I did get to ride in an elevator with Jeff Tweedy from the band Wilco.

It certainly was a great day for local camera crews.  According to one local trade, at least $200 million was spent on production alone.  We had several friends working incredibly long shifts to capture the moment. And the moment looked amazing.  It was beautiful fall day.  The city skyscrapers perfectly framed the rally.  The crowds were joyous and reflected the melting pot that is Chicago.  If that footage doesn’t get this town the 2016 Olympics nothing will.

Manning is in the middle of producing a videotape for the American Cancer Society which seems like a good enough excuse to remind everyone that October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The most important thing to remember is that when detected early breast cancer is 98% curable.  That’s right…98% curable!

Fortunately, the effort to get the word out has gone high-tech. This year Estee Lauder launched an online marketing campaign to spread the word to younger women via social media and networking sites. The Susan G. Komen Foundation has online tools and printable cards to help women with self-examinations and the American Cancer Society has an online sign-up form to remind someone you love to schedule a mammogram.

It’s football season. So what better way to show your team spirit than with a tricked out truck to haul your squad’s gear? That’s what Navistar is doing to show their support for West Point cadets both on the field and in the field.

The Black Knights’ new ride is the star of a short promotional video shown at the school’s home football games. Manning produced the 30-second piece to generate excitement for the team, cadets and their fans.

Even though they’ve lost their first three home games so far, at least their gear arrived in style!