The new website makes ample use of the new TheftZapper brand and logo, which features a menacing, dark-hatted criminal silhouette. Strategic Insights proposed the brand as a way for the technology to become more memorable and allow Perimeter Security to further differentiate itself from its competition. Dean Lowder agreed immediately that such a powerful name and logo would significantly enhance his marketing efforts. The Strategic Insights team consisted of Bill Cokas, creative director, and Jenn Soloway, art director and web developer. The selected logo was designed by Chris Griffin, associate creative director, following an agency-wide exploration.

To further dramatize the benefits of TheftZapper Electric Fence, Bill Cokas traveled to Charlotte, NC and Rock Hill, SC to interview Dean Lowder as well as satisfied TheftZapper customers. The results were captured on video, edited and posted to TheftZapper’s new YouTube channel, and fed into the new website.

“We are extremely pleased with the overall effort,” said Bill Cokas. “This is Strategic Insights’ sweet spot: helping a solid company with a respectable product or service establish a firm footing with its brand, preparing it for the next level of success.”

I think most people aren’t getting the point of Google Buzz. Yes, right now it may seem annoying because everything is just popping up. People are asking “Doesn’t _______ already do this?”

The answer is yes, but what Buzz does do that nothing else does is aggregate everything together AND allow you to pick what you see.

With Twitter and Facebook, you get everything with no filters (aside from Twitter Lists). Google Buzz learns what you like and don’t like. After a while, even though everyone’s posts are constantly updated, you only get things you find relevant. So, Twitter, RSS, and other posts are made visible to you ONLY if you actually find them relevant.

Furthermore, the innovation of Google Buzz will drive other social networks to better organize content within their platforms. I believe that it is still overwhelming right now. That’s why “non-techies” view it as a time waster. Once there is an easier way to sift through the noise, I believe social networking and content sharing will boom with other audiences.

Will Google Buzz stick around? Probably not or at least not in its current state. Will it make a difference? At the very least, we will know what NOT to do.

What are your thoughts on Google Buzz?

Josh Gibbs (@jkgibbs) // Social Media Consultant // Strategic Insights

“Google introduced a social networking tool called Google Buzz Tuesday that allows sharing of status updates, images, and videos via a new Gmail tab called Google Buzz. The Google Buzz features will also be available on Android based phones as well as the iPhone (via a Web-based application) allowing for real-time updates to your Google Buzz feed that can show up on a new version of Google’s mobile maps.”

Read entire article »

The great thing is that if you embellish both the good and the bad, and handle the bad with proactive and open efforts, it will make your brand look even better. Clients and potential customers will flock to a business that can show the ability to respond quickly to problems and questions. Making your efforts visible in a public or social network is one of the easiest ways to do this.

Keep in mind that no matter if you are the one that creates the place for discussion or not, the discussion will and is taking place. Whether or not you are a part of that conversation, negative or positive, is what makes the difference and can show that your brand is able to respond to problems and questions. If you are facilitating the environment in which people are commenting, you have the ability to not only establish rapport and control your image, you also gain  insight into your own brand or product(s). You may even learn that you need to pitch your product in a different way, change your value proposition, or even make the product/service better.

If you start it, you have to maintain it. Allocate a resource to your social media communications. It looks worse for your brand if the conversation is happening right in front of you and you still are not acting. This same principle applies to any aspect of your business. If people are calling sales and you don’t respond, you lose a sale. If they call customer service to get a question answered and no one responds, they go to your competitors for help.

Josh Gibbs (@jkgibbs)  //  Social Media Consultant  //  Strategic Insights

Surely there can not be a more quintessential example of a cheesy animated .gif than the infamous bouncing ball.

But because of this fascination with online animation, over the years, I have tried to keep up-to-date with the latest technologies and techniques for creating animations for the web.  Years ago, options were limited.  Of course there were animated .gif files, but as the digital equivalent of flip-books, they were inherently restrictive and not especially interactive.  Or you could work with java applets, but those involved an unfamiliar programming language to learn, the cpu requirements were often unrealistic (for the time), the viewer needed the correct version of java on their machine, etc.  The results for java were fairly hit or miss.

For easy web animations, Macromedia Flash (later bought by Adobe) was pretty much the only game in town. Used primarily for simple animations based on motion tweens, Flash was easy to learn, didn’t require a heavy-duty processor and was widely supported even in its early days.  Flash enjoyed quite a heydey as the default for online animation and quickly and continually expanded its capabilities to become an object-oriented programming environment capable of complex animations, pulling dynamic content from external sources, video and audio playback, 3D animation, etc.  For a while, there was a trend for building out entire websites completely in Flash, full of motion and interaction and shiny bits and baubles.  Needless to say, I fell in love with it and used Flash at every opportunity for several years.

Then came the advent of three little letters which caused me to question my Flash fixation – SEO.  Google and other search engines came on strong and suddenly everyone was concerned about Search Engine Optimization – where does my site rank?  Flash is strong in many areas, but a core weakness has always been that the content inside flash apps is largely inaccessible to Search Engine Robots.  So, with few exceptions, the entire body of content on full Flash websites is basically invisible to Search Engines.

Now, there had been an alternative to Flash that had been quietly simmering in the background that suddenly seemed a lot more appealing – javascript animation (not to be confused with java applets – I never understood why the two were named so similarly when they had nothing in common).  Several competing and cooperative javascript libraries appeared on the scene, which allowed web developers to take standard SEO accessible HTML content and animate it using client-side javascript code.  Some of the early javascript libraries were MooTools, Scriptaculous, and Prototype.  I used each of these for various projects without favoring any of them.  There were some cross-browser issues, but for the most part, I was able to achieve simple animation effects with relative ease and without sacrificing SEO.

Then I happened upon jQuery and fell in love all over again.  The jquery javascript framework was lightweight and easy to code for.  It has an ungodly amount of developers providing open source examples and tutorials and more extensibility plug-ins than you can shake a stick at.  I was up and running and animating within a matter of minutes – all while maintaining SEO friendly site content.  jQuery has become my defacto javascript animation tool – I use it for accordions and tabs for better organization of page content, slideshows for product galleries, drawers for hiding and showing page elements, navigation dropdowns, etc.  And these applications just scratch the surface of its capabilities.

Now, to be fair, there are a number of things that jQuery – or any javascript library –  isn’t great at and Flash still takes the prize.  Javascript animation is generally fairly simple in nature and is more often used for User Interface elements rather than complex, image heavy animations.  There are definitely instances when one technology is a better fit than the other.  Still, there are areas of overlap that used to be dominated by flash animation and now can be handled rather easily by jQuery.  Check out the following comparisons as offered by DLL at LogicPool (http://logicpool.com/archives/30).

The Pros & Cons of using Flash vs Javascript:

When to use Flash vs Javascript:

The available applications for  jQuery are growing daily and I look at it as in being in an adolescent stage of development, much as Flash was when it was primarily used for tweening animations.  Given another year or two, jQuery will certainly gain more ground and expand its capabilities.  Flash will likely always have its place, but even now there are jQuery scripts being used to control flash apps. (Has the student become the master?)

Designers, developers, end-users – what do you think?  Has Flash had it’s time in the sun? Are the growing capabilities of javascript animation the better alternative and will they eventually be advanced enough to overthrow Flash as the dominating force in online animation?  Or should we relegate javascript animation to niche User Interface elements and stick to Flash for the major eye-candy?

I’ll be eagerly awaiting your response.  In the meantime… (menu goes up, menu goes down, menu goes up…)

Chris Griffin
Assoc Creative Director
Strategic Insights

See entire article: US asks Twitter to maintain service after Iran vote: official

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“It seems that everywhere I look, I am reminded that we are battling tough economic times. Whether watching the news or my favorite TV programs, reading content on the web, at the bus stop, or while reading magazines…I am bombarded with advertisements on how I can afford products and services in an economic time that rivals the Great Depression. Most advertisers seem to recognize that in order to keep sales up in a time when many are cutting “unnecessary” purchases, they must appeal to consumers where it counts the most…click here for full article.

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