Paul Isakson

"You Can't Go Wrong With A Good Idea."

No need to say anything else really.

More related to the video here.

Linking Around

Wanted to share a few things I've been meaning to get to, but just haven't. A few of these will likely inspire future posts, but for the meantime here you go...

Charles always has good things to say, but has especially been on fire lately with some excellent posts, appropriately winning Neil's Post of the Month for November.

Gareth has three recent posts that will get your brain going in some good directions.

Adrian put up his presentation and some thoughts from the planning conference in Brazil and had a great post back in November on rethinking marketing.

Faris' post on Spreadable Media is rightly getting spread around.

Neil put up some great thoughts on goodness and happiness being the future of marketing last month.

Quite a while back, Aki shared the results of Fallon's experience using Twitter to promote the SCIFI Network's show Eureka.

Pedro asked if he could conduct an email interview with me and I accepted. If you have any questions you would like him to consider asking, get the details here. Anjali did one earlier this year that I neglected to post a link to, but meant to. You can find it here. She's got a great series of these going called Brain Tap. Be sure to check it out.

Earlier this fall, Adbroad shared her account of tweeting as @bettydraper. Last week, Bud shared a write-up on his experience with the Mad Men on Twitter experiment (he was/is the Twitter-exclusive Sterling Cooper Mailroom Clerk, @bud_melman). Bud's overall takeaway is exactly what was behind why I started tweeting as Don in the first place. It is well worth the read and supports a lot of what Faris has been talking about for the last couple years.

I think that's it for now. Whew.

Building Lasting Brands

Geometry... via re-ality

“Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for history but it’s not very deep. I understand that time has changed, we have evolved. But I don’t want to forget the beginning. A lasting architecture has to have roots.” - I. M. Pei

Mr. Pei's words aren't just true for architecture, they're also true for building lasting brands. For a brand to stand the tests of time, it has to have roots that help it stay true over time. Why? Because lasting relationships are built on a foundation of trust. If you are constantly changing who you are and/or what you stand for, how can anyone come to trust you?

In relation to this, if you are working on a brand that has lost its way, it's often very helpful to go back into the history of the company and find what they stood for when they first started. There are likely some great things there that can be polished up and brought to life in an appropriate way for today's culture.

As the economy contiunes to struggle and technology brings us more new ways to communicate with people, it will become more and more tempting to chase things that take us away from our roots. We have to do everything we can to not let that happen. It's important to always look at the core principles - the roots - of your brand to help guide the way.

What Should Happen To @don_draper?

Every time a client or prospective client asks what they should do with social media, the first thing that comes out of my mouth is "listen." So, that's what I want to do here.

Early next week I'll hand over the keys to @don_draper. Over the weekend I'll be working on putting together some of the things I learned from the whole experience of tweeting as him.

I think a nice way to wrap it up would be to include some thoughts from "Don's" followers and fans of Mad Men on what they think AMC should do with the account. After all, it's the followers and fans of Mad Men who made the whole thing take off like it did.

If you have any thoughts on what you would like to see happen with @don_draper, please let the people who will be taking over the account know.

Just leave your thoughts in the comments.*

Thanks.

*I'll attribute your thoughts to you automatically, so if you don't want your name tied to it, just put "A Mad Man Fan" or something like that as the name to the comment. Also, I have no control over what they do with it, nor any information as to what their plans are for it. All we can do is hope for the best.

the interwebs, by Clay Parker Jones

The above presentation is a bit of smart thinking from Clay that I thought was worth passing along. You can get the back-story for the preso on his blog.

Nice work Clay, and thanks for the note in your post.