Kendall Card 2.0 » Marketing

Marketing Position Opening Soon

kendall — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:20:52 +0000

I walked into my friend’s office and he exuberantly told me about a marketing position he knew of that was opening up soon which he felt I’d be good for. After replying that I didn’t want a job working for anyone, he placed this before me:

While I’m not sure if there is indeed a marketing position opening up soon, I’m sure my 9 year old who took first in the 3rd grade spelling bee last year would be willing to apply as a copywriter for In Utah.

Sure, it’s easy to poke fun of this instance. The truth of the matter is that we all make mistakes in business and thankfully mine aren’t quite as glaring (most of the time) as the one above.

And no, her name isn’t Chris. It’s Jen Hardman from Park City TV’s Mountain Morning Show.

Telling Stories

kendall — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:12:10 +0000

When you hear the phrase “Telling Stories”, aside from the connotation of fibbing, what’s the first thing you think of? Someone verbally telling stories? Perhaps a poet? A storyteller?

Did you think of a photographer?

Meet John Hafner (self portrait below) who my friend Derek at Piton Productions told me about. He’s an outdoor and hunting photographer whose website and blog contain images of hunts and products he’s shot which do more than convey an image, they tell a story.

In his own words:

I’m one of the youngest and hardest working photographers in the outdoor industry. I have a tremendous amount of passion for what I do. I love telling a story with my camera and helping my clients convey their messages.

I’d like to see more ski photographers use this same philosophy of telling a story rather than capturing the super-duper-gnarly-rad-sicko-huge-air and calling it “remarkable”. Bah.

It’s no wonder brands like Realtree, Cabelas and Primos have worked with John in telling their story through the visual medium. Kudos John.

Blogging from WordCamp Utah

kendall — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:12:15 +0000

The weather outside is 80 degrees, not a cloud in the sky and my options for today was a century ride, plant grass, go for a hike….but alas, I’m indoors today, all day.

All day? Yep!

I’m currently at Word Camp Utah (being held at Novell) which if you walked into the room would look like a ‘geek’ conference. I know this because when the asked for programmers and designers to raise their hands I almost rose my hand so that when they asked for “others” that I wasn’t the only one.

But it’s been really cool and time very well spent. $20 for this conference with a T-Shirt, a hearty lunch and snacks = I SCORED!

So far I’ve heard from:

Matt Mullenweg – Co-founding developer of Word Press. Lots of great things coming, including a new version of WordPress (2.7 due out in November) with a new dashboard that is customizable. Matt did a demo of it and I’m really stoked for this.
Richard Miller – He spoke about using WordPress as a CMS tool. Really interesting stuff here and some great examples of how some sites use pages and others use posts. I personally prefer posts since they are fed through RSS while pages don’t have that advantage.
Cameron Moll – I would have paid $20 to just hear him speak. His presentation was entitled Good vs. Great Design. One of the biggest take aways from his presentation was this idea (from my notes)

Homogenecity vs. Heirarchy: What is the visual heirarchy of your site/page? Let the prominant stuff stand out and the secondary stuff follow. Try this with your next web/e-mail design:
1. Grey scale your web page/document
2. Blur it in photoshop
3. What stands out?
4. This will tells you about where people are looking and what is the real focus of your site/e-mail.
5. Adjust your design accordingly to make the most important elements stand out or draw the eye.
Thom Allen (currently speaking) – Thom is in the above image as he introduces his topic of Podcasting. Good stuff for sure.

2 more speakers to go, one who is talking about SEO for blogging and the last one about writing plugins.

If WordCamp comes to your city and you do anything with blogging and in particular Word Press, you NEED to attend.

Building a Community

kendall — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:22:12 +0000

We all belong to at least one community of some sort, whether it’s formally organized or not. In my work and in my life away from work I participate in and bring value to a number of communities. Some are huge, some are small, but the approach is the same when looking to build a community.

If you’ve thought about being part of a community or perhaps starting your own for your company or brand, this video from Barry Libert, Chairman of Mzinga, is a great starter on the 7 rules of creating a community.

I like #6 – Relinquish Control. You’ve got to trust that the community will guide the direction and creations (or destruction) as a collective.

As I see it my role in building a community is to be the enabler, looking out for ways that I can help them, not the traditional “how can they help me” perspective that is so easy to fall prey to (often the result of a number cruncher who demands traditional ROI on community efforts)

Check it.

Pirates of the Great Salt Lake

kendall — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:55:32 +0000

As far as I can tell from the Pirates of the Great Salt Lake website, the movie was never really shown to the public. But boy did the marketing look good. I mean, check out their website, complete with an “enter to win pirate booty” contest.

Although I would really like to have seen it, I’m perfectly content watching the trailer over and over and over as it makes me laugh each time.

Perhaps the trailer was too good? Perhaps the movie was really the trailer?

July Bumper Sticker Photo Contest!

kendall — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:16:22 +0000

It’s the first annual (sounds so much better than first, even though it may not become an annual) bumper sticker photo contest. Send ‘em in and you could win some stuff.

Guidelines

Politics, sports, anything but racial or sexist bumper stickers are fair game.
It doesn’t have to be your bumper sticker
You have to take the photo – please resize to 500 pixels wide (not required, but spares me editing time)
Send photos to kendall(nospace)card AT gmail D0t com
Aug 3 is the deadline.

Winner gets?

The winner will get some cool gear from me. (I’ve got a DNA hoodie, a sleeve of Nike golf balls and a brand new Backcountry.com organic cotton tee shirt up for grabs so far. I’m making this up as I go so bear with me – trust me, if anyone can round up some free gear I’m the man!)

Here’s my entry which I’ll start things off with.

All entries will be posted to my Flickr Bumper Sticker Contest set of photos

Kona Africa Bike

kendall — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:38:14 +0000

Kudos to Keith at Base Camp Communications for a cool PR hit for the very worthy Africa Bike project (click that link)

Video is Marketing

kendall — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:29:21 +0000

Video. It’s a medium that has so much potential for marketers but still requires the story telling mastery of print with captivating imagery of the movies. Just because it’s video doesn’t mean you’ve got limitless amounts of time. It still needs to be done quickly because I, Joe Consumer, still have the power to click away if not immediately intrigued. This is especially true when video used as a marketing medium.

But video does something that is beyond print. It can reach the senses in an unique way. Walking the fine line between marketing and captivating takes mastery, or luck.

The following video walks the line and does it well.

It engages, it pulls you in, it makes you feel like you’re on the front row. And when done right, like this video, you feel like it speaks to you. This one speaks to me, makes me smile, and made me want to spread the message…and (news flash) I don’t drink!

This is video well done. I’m Kendall Card and I approve of this marketing.

Nice work NBB.

Blog Class at the Park City Board of Realtors

kendall — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:47:52 +0000

I was lucky enough to teach a blog class today for the Park City Board of Realtors. This was the second class I taught. The first was, for lack of better definition – Blogging 101. It was more conceptual, the “why” and a few pieces of “how” to wrtie, what to write, etc.

This class, Blogging 102, was more nuts and bolts. We looked at the various dashboards (Blogspot, TypePad, WordPress). This post is part of the course “posting images”.

This is how excited they looked.

Joe Kinder – Gregory Goes There

kendall — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:37:14 +0000

Marketing is different these days. The more I think about it, it’s story telling really. Tell the right story to the audience, one they want to hear. One they will enjoy hearing.

The video I was working on with Piton Productions for our client Gregory is done. It’s not your typical climbing video – fast cuts, strong hip-hop tunes, etc. But like Joe says in the video, the life he is living right now is “really peaceful, mellow…it’s like this totally different pace than I’m used to” so I think it fits.

Personally, I dig the final edit. But my opinion doesn’t really matter that much. The hope is that in someway you, a climber, backcountry skier, hiker, adventurer will think something like “Hey, that’s cool. Imagine that, Gregory Backpacks making a cool little climbing vid about their boy Joe Kinder.” Or something like that.

Well, you like? you no like? Let me know.

YouTube version if you’re a Tuber.