Powershifter's New Addition
JP Holecka Jul 23, 2010 - filed under: Powershifter Media Comment (0)

I would like to take this time to announce that our agency has grown just a little bit more this month. It is my absolute pleasure to welcome Ryan McCormick to the team in the newly created position of Director of Integrated Production. Ryan is an industry veteran that has successfully produced award winning work while at both Blast Radius and Tribal DDB. Ryan's experience producing both digital and broadcast for such brands as Clorox, BC Dairy, BC Tourism, Boston Pizza, EA, PBS and many others.

Ryan's roll here will be to produce all digital projects that we are engaged with. He will also continue to develop our professional network of contractors and partners that are hired to execute the work. Ryan will draw on his existing large network of professionals and seek out new ones that will add to the breadth of Powershifter offerings.

More quick facts on Ryan:

  • Lives on an island in his quest to shatter the myth that no man is an island.
  • Uses almost 6 gigs of tethered data on his iPhone monthly commuting from that island.
  • Dad to 3 lovely girls that keep him pretty busy while not at the office.
  • Caused quite the stir with the co-invention of luggage stickers for The Cheeky.com
  • Gets more done in a day than most do in a week.

We are scheduled for some corporate shots in the coming weeks and will reveal what this mystery super producer looks like when they are done.

 

tags:// Powershifter Media , business , agency
**Blog Post Update**Crowd sourced editorial staff for everyone.
JP Holecka Jul 21, 2010 - filed under: Social Media Comment (1)

In February of 2009 I blogged about the fact that Twitter was becoming more and more a crowdsourced news editoral application for me. In the post I reviewed how I was using Twitter more as a way to source content and less about conversation.

Let me break it down:

  1. I create a Twitter account.
  2. Then I start to search for, and follow people with similar interests either personally or professionally. Or if you are like me, both.
  3. Download an application like TweetDeck that allows you to group the people you are following into categories. using Twitter lists, not unlike sections of an newspaper; News, Sports and Entertainment, Technology etc.
  4. In each of these sections I follow people that are either experts in their field or have a passion for athe topic of interest. Either way the posts will be relevant.
  5. Now what do all of these people that you are following Twitter do all day? Well they post stuff. They post links to articles in newspapers and blogs, videos, music [http://blip.fm/all] and much, much more.
  6. Breaking stories are now hitting Twitter first and I no longer have to wait for the old world media publishing systems latency to get the stories quickly.
  7. The topics that are trending and are important globally can be easily viewed right in TweetDeck's trending cloud tag.
  8. Now because I have selected people based on similar interests and passions, the content that is posted, is for the most part ,very relevant  to me. The Twitter base becomes my very own editorial staff picking only the best of the best and then posting it to your Twitterstream.
  9. Now add the NYTimes, CBC, Fox News, NPR and CNN into your Twitterstream and you have it all the topics and news covered.
Since that post I believe that I have tweeted about 10,000 or so times. I guess I was a little off on the conversation part. Now for an update on how this has progressed over the last 1.5 years. There is no question that in recent weeks my outbound and conversational habits on Twitter have dropped substantially.

This is due in part for a few reasons. The first is that the agency has gotten very, very busy and there really is less time to converse with others in social networks. Second was the discovery of a very cool, but simplistic, Twitter app called Twittertim.es. Twitter Times is then linked to your Twitter account via  it's oath and then spiders all of the people that you are following. The application crawls your list and then pulls all of the great content, pictures and all, that is being posted in your stream. The page looks nothing like a Twitter stream and resembles an online news or magazine site. The app then weighs the importance of the tweeted links by the frequency that it is posted and re-tweeted by those that you follow. This is the crowdsourced editorial staff that I referred to in the past. Only this time around their commentary is diminished and the posted content is made more important. Sure the "postees" are listed at the bottom of each story but their conversational tweets are removed. As your day fills up with important activities it's nice to be able to get the hyper relevant content, from those you follow, without being sucked in to the conversation.

Now let's step that up even further with the announcement of the new iPad app called Flipboard. The application looks very much like a magazine but all of the content, like Twitter Times, is from your social networks. This time they have included all of the links in your Facebook, Flickr and other social feeds. In fact the crowdsourcing is upped in power but the fact that you can subscribe to user generated Twitter lists to create categories.

If you look at the preview video below you can get a pretty good sense of how it works and how gorgeous it really is. I must admit that I was holding out for the second generation iPad until I saw this app. I consume a ton of social contributed media from the people I follow and would love to be able to take it with me and to view it in a much better UI.

Flipboard is not the first iPad app that is based on this concept and I suspect won't be the last. The talented folks over at Teehan + Lax have a very cool looking iPad app called TweetMag that is soon to be released as well. There is now a race on and this is where I think social is really going in the next few years. I think this is bigger than geo-location apps to be honest. People really do want to know what your reading more than they want to know where you are reading.TweetMag







































tags:// twitter , social media , facebook , apps
Top Ten Advertisers for Q1 2010
JP Holecka Jun 14, 2010 - filed under: Advertising Comment (0)

Top Ten Advertisers (Q1 2010)

Rank

Company

Jan - Mar 2010 ($Mil)

Jan - Mar 2009($Mil)

% Change

1

Procter & Gamble Co

$772.6

$656.5

17.7%

2

AT&T Inc

$576.4

$455.0

26.7%

3

General Motors Corp

$533.7

$415.5

28.5%

4

Verizon Communications Inc

$517.2

$569.1

-9.1%

5

Pfizer Inc

$396.4

$271.1

46.2%

6

News Corp

$366.8

$340.4

7.8%

7

Johnson & Johnson

$344.1

$390.3

-11.8%

8

Time Warner Inc

$304.3

$265.3

14.7%

9

Walt Disney Co

$267.6

$303.6

-11.8%

10

General Electric Co

$264.6

$261.3

1.3%

 

TOTAL

$4,343.9

$3,928.0

10.6%

Source: Kantar Media, May 2010

tags:// trends , Strategy , metrics , advertising
Getting Down to Business!
JP Holecka May 11, 2010 - filed under: Marketing Comment (0)
I was quite flattered to be profiled in Business in Vancouver Magazine last week. It was a real hit with the friends and family on my social networks when I posted it. Kidding aside, the timing could not have been better to be honest. We have been working non stop now for quite some time and it feels good to see that we are getting a little visability for it. There is also something very tactile with being in a print magazine. In our digital work space we forget that there is a tangible world of print. I scanned it to make sure that the wrinkles and 150 dpi where not lost on the viewers here on the blog. You can see the entire 'newsprinty' profile by clicking the details link.
would also like to thank my lovely wife for snapping the awesome shot.

tags:// Shameless Promotion , Powershifter Media , Newspaper , Branding
Less is more - Powershifter Shifts to Mini Cards
JP Holecka May 3, 2010 - filed under: Powershifter Media Comment (0)
With a new Yaletown agency address came the requirement for new business cards. That got me thinking...I really don't use dead tree cards that much anymore but not enough to cut them out completely.

So when I was cleaning out my office drawer I found an old box of Moo Mini Cards that I used personally. I thought that these could be the solution I was looking for. The response when I handed the little cards out personally was always the same. That of wonderment and affection. Those are emotions that I would love to have associated with the brand. They are also very Web 2.0 like us and as new employees come into the fold we could order them up easy peasy. That said they are so cost effective that even contractors could get a set. Couple that with the cool key chain case and it was a no brainer.

So with that I present to you the new POWERSHiFTER mini cards. [Cool black case sold separately].

tags:// marketing , business , Branding , agency , advertising , 2.0