chatter

Leap into February with thunder::tech's new wallpaper

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:21:00 +0000

Will there be six more weeks of winter or an early spring? Either way, your screen will be decorated with an adorable groundhog and a quote to remind us to sit back and enjoy the winter season... spring is on its way!

Download it, with or without a calendar, for your desktop computer or mobile device today!

February wallpaper with a calendar
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February wallpaper without a calendar
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February wallpaper – mobile version

A marketing agency’s perspective on the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:46:00 +0000

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been an industry stop for those in the consumer electronics industry for decades. If you've followed tech publications for the past several years, you've seen that this show has morphed into a much more important presence for all things tech, and then of course for all things marketers must be using to reach their audience.

I decided to make the pilgrimage to Las Vegas in January to see it firsthand.

Social Connectivity
The theme that ran through much of the show could have replaced the name - Connecting Everyone Socially. Yes, the heads down culture is driving into all our devices and will further deepen this mentality. TVs, super-thin ultra books, tablets, game consoles, home appliances and automobiles are all being connected and encouraging two-way conversations among brands and consumers. In the words of Walmart's chief marketing officer (CMO) on a panel at CES: “There's no going back.”

3-D Technology
There were plenty of shiny objects and displays to grab your attention at CES. Though that’s the point of these types of shows, it’s still important to look at the possibilities and what they would mean to your audience. 3-D technology was a big part of the show, one that is becoming bigger and better through TVs, projectors and now consumer cameras to capture it all. ESPN 3-D had a major presence, showing off their investments in major sporting events. Marketers need to keep their eye on this technology. Once 3-D matures to the point where we can lose the glasses, video viewing will never be the same.

Widespread Apps
Another CES trend was apps. Apps on everything, especially televisions; you saw them on almost any device that had a screen. For marketers, this delivery method is about providing something of value to your customer. How do you build utility into your brand through an app that will eventually engage your customer on multiple devices?

Related to apps, but for screens in general -- interface design is collectively improving and sharing similarities between devices. For example, the new Cadillac dashboard and information area looks and acts a lot like features on your mobile phone. This should provide a more level benchmark for marketers when they're creating interfaces online, mobile, touch screen retail and tradeshow displays in the next few years.

Mobile Growth
“Exponential mobility” continues to be an important theme, and your phone will continue to grow in importance as the center console of your life as it plugs into everything else and shares data across the tools you use in your daily activities (car, home automation, TV, etc.). The ability for marketers to share, transfer and secure more data continues to be of importance as the expectation of consumers is that it will all interconnect effortlessly. To put global mobile growth in perspective, a panelist at CES said, “the next billion people on the Internet will come via mobile as primary device.”

Continuing Innovation
The final piece of wisdom that I'll share with you came from Ursala Burns, CEO of Xerox. On the topic of innovation, she said, “you have to innovate just to stay flat today.” I hope that the theme of innovation isn't just a luxury, nor just confined to R&D. Innovation can drive a business renaissance in how we provide products and services to our customers and how we market and communicate about them, but it has to be ever present and required inside organizations.

About the Author::
Jason Therrien is the president of thunder::tech.

Hey there, strategic thinkers! We’ve been looking for you.

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Are you looking to join a collaborative, innovative and creative team? We’re hiring an account manager who can drop threes in cornhole.

This position includes managing key accounts, working with production teams to ensure client projects are on schedule, guiding client marketing strategies and cultivating and maintaining client relationships.

Individuals interested in this position should have a bachelor’s degree and experience in both marketing and project management.

For more information on this and other career opportunities, view our Careers Page where you can also submit a resume. We’d love to meet you!

Apple attempts to change education, one “i” at a time

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:09:00 +0000

On Thursday, Jan. 19, techies, fan boys and the like gathered at the Guggenheim Museum in New York for an education event hosted by Apple. There, Phillip Schiller, Apple’s vice president of worldwide marketing, unveiled some great new innovations for the education community. A new version of their e-reader app, updates to their university Web portal and an e-book creation tool.

Let’s start with that last one… iBooks Author. It is a new desktop app available only on Mac OSX Lion. It allows anyone to create an e-book. Anyone. For free. Users can then publish their book to the iBookstore or iTunes U (more on those in a minute). But the really great thing here isn’t that anyone can create and publish a book. The exciting part about this is that Apple is pioneering a relatively new format. It isn’t just a book. It’s more than words on a page. Apple gives users access to a wealth of multi-touch widgets. Interactivity. Additionally, users can add videos, keynote presentations and interactive 3-D objects.

Apple also announced a new version of iBooks, their e-reader app. Thanks to syncing via iCloud, users can bookmark their page on their iPhone, and when they pull up the same book on their iPad, they are right where they left off. Additionally, this is how users access iBookstore and where they can purchase books created with iBooks Author. All books are $14.99 or less (most novels fall around $10).

The big thing to note here is the addition of textbooks. Imagine a searchable textbook! And if that feature alone doesn’t seal the deal, textbooks in the iBookstore are interactive. Your Anatomy 101 book -- now with 3-D models! Architectural History with a video walkthrough of Chartres Cathedral!

iTunes U offers students and educators at any level a portal for all things education. Apple has partnered with three main educational publishing companies: Houghton Mifflin, Pearson and McGraw-Hill (which combined, account for about 90 percent of all textbook production) to begin creating textbooks specifically designed for the iPad. In addition to textbooks, students can access related course materials via iTunes U: audio, video and presentations from lectures, course-related handouts and documents, notes and quizzes.

Of course, all these new opportunities come with a few significant limitations. First and foremost is price. The iPad starts at $499, which is many a night on the town for a broke college student. Furthermore, at that price point, it is all but out of reach for most public K-12 schools (although Apple does have a history of partnering with public school systems). Also, mom and pop bookstores and local libraries tend to be rather unenthusiastic about e-books from Amazon . This new push from Apple probably won’t do much to calm their fears.

Apple claims there are currently at least 1.5 million iPads in classrooms -- not a huge number, but it is significant. Furthermore, a recent report from the Pew Research Center suggests that tablet ownership nearly doubled during the 2011 holiday season. Now almost 20 percent of the population owns a tablet or an e-reader, and with Apple expected to launch the long rumored iPad 3 in March, those numbers are only going up.

This news has the potential to affect quite a few people: students, teachers, publishers, libraries, booksellers, avid readers, etc. Additionally, it will affect how users interact with their favorite brands by inevitably putting tablets in the hands of more people.

Have you thought about how your online presence comes across on a tablet? Let us know in the comments section below!

About the author::
Justin Smith is a Web and multimedia developer at thunder::tech. He is also a founding member of the t::t bike club and the proud parent of a basset hound.

2012 Social Media – The Ultimate Year of Share

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:12:00 +0000

If we learned anything about social media in 2011, it’s that it is almost impossible to predict, but we figured we would try to anyway, just for fun. Check out what we think will happen with social media marketing in 2012:

Your friends will have more influence than ever
(Yes, we started off with an easy one.) We’ve already seen Facebook place a large amount of weight on the “share” button as it now appears on every wall post, and new analytics keep track of how many people share your brand with their friends.

In addition to that, the recent introduction of Google’s social search shows your friends’ likes, dislikes and overall commentary on almost anything you search. We saw this rise toward the end of last year and then receive a power boost at the start of 2012. This will only continue as marketers have determined that you are more likely to make a purchase based on a friend’s recommendation.

Social customer service will improve
This has been a tricky area for a lot of brands. One of the most astonishing stats we saw in 2011 is that 90 percent of brands don’t respond to users on Facebook. We hope companies will see the light this year and realize social media is an extremely valuable tool for customer service. There will come a point when brands can’t ignore their fans’ demands and questions in the social world. They’ll have to learn how to respond quicker, too.

Not only that, listening to users talk about competitors or comment about your product can give you an advantage. Real-time feedback also means companies will need to be more flexible and understand a business plan may need to be reworked many, many times.

Converting “like” to “buy”
Oh, the ever-elusive social media ROI conversation. Can you measure it or not? That answer will become clearer in 2012. As analytics tools evolve, we’ll gain a better understanding of our customers and their purchasing habits.

The problem is, we’re trying to understand and scale human behavior and not just measure how many times something gets clicked on or viewed. Once businesses invest in their customers, brands will begin to see the return. We just need to look at it from a different viewpoint than what we’re used to.

Social TV just keeps getting bigger
Have you noticed all the hashtags and Twitter handles popping up all over TV lately? Not only that, social tools such as GetGlue are growing in popularity as people flock to their mobile devices to dish about the latest movie or what that actress was wearing on the red carpet.

Even brands such as Nike are starting to integrate hashtags and Twitter accounts into their commercials with campaigns like #KobeSystem. The integration will only continue to get more noticeable and become common practice.

EVERYTHING becomes more social
Facebook introduced the new Open Graph Applications to developers last September. You may have already seen an example of this with the Spotify app that keeps you updated on the music your friends are currently listening to. The Open Graph offers a whole new way for users to experience a brand and share that experience with friends, which, as we mentioned above, is going to be an important aspect as friends continue to influence purchasing habits. The Open Graph allows users to tell their friends what they are doing with your product in real time. Also, this handy new tool allows brands to target ads to people who like your content (for a fee, of course).

Likes and followers aren’t the best gauge of success
When companies first started jumping on the social media bandwagon, watching likes and followers increase was viewed as a factor in determining success on the platform. At one time, more Facebook likes were valuable because each company update would show up in each users’ feed.

Facebook threw us all for a loop last year by changing the way status updates are viewed and now the emphasis, again, is on sharing. The focus has shifted to how can you gather valuable information from users (whether they click the like button or not) and what you do with it. Keep in mind users can share or retweet your information to 100 users instead of merely clicking like, so who that person is sharing your content with also matters.

Understanding online influence
Klout is considered the leading free tool when measuring a users’ influence right now. There are extremely differing opinions on its effectiveness. We have a pretty strong opinion that this tool is pretty much hogwash, BUT this premise is genius. We do need to find a better way to understand influence, but again, we’re trying to measure human behavior and it’s hard to tell someone who influences you about something and why. Only you know that. In the “Ultimate Year of Share,” we’ll be forced to figure this out.

Demonstrate your value
Sure Facebook and Twitter contests are fun and attract people to your page, but does it really translate into anything more than a page like or follow? First of all, done the right way, contests, discounts and giveaways can provide valuable customer insight, but to keep them coming back, you need to demonstrate your value to them. I’m rarely blown away by an email I receive from a company, but Ann Taylor Loft really hit the mark when they sent an email to all cardholders to introduce their new Facebook tab designed specifically for me (see below image.)

Notice how they point out exactly why I’ll want to keep coming back, and I can even share this awesome news with all my Facebook friends directly from the email. There are many things they are doing well here and is a great example of what companies need to consider in their social media marketing strategy for 2012.

That’s all folks
So there you have it, some of our top predictions for social media in 2012. It will be fun to look back on these come December, because the fact is, we really can’t predict social behavior, much less social media. Basically, just be prepared for the unexpected.

Did we miss anything important (or just think we’re crazy?). Tell us in the comments section below.

About the author::
Melanie Eyerman is part of thunder::tech’s Public Relations team where she concentrates her efforts on this crazy thing we call social media. When not obsessively checking mentions, posting comments or analyzing stats, our Georgia Bulldog loves playing rec. sports, cheering on her favorite football teams and enjoying a good bottle of wine with close friends.

Catch up with thunder::tech and our complete 2011 recap series

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:41:00 +0000

As we bring our annual end-of-year chatter series to a close, we hope you’ve enjoyed learning about the productive 2011 we had within all our departments. Our managers also served up their takes on what we can expect in the coming year.

If you missed any of our posts, catch up with us below.

Account Services team
Our fearless leader Jason Therrien kicked off our 2011 series with an overview of the Account Services team’s successful year.
President Jason Therrien recaps 2011 success for Account Services team

Creative department
Dave Berman, Creative department manager, explains why 2011 was a year of growth for his department, which includes the Design and Multimedia teams.
More: Creative Department Manager Dave Berman recaps 2011

Multimedia team
Manager Matt Stevens reviews the biggest trends and client projects for thunder::tech last year and what’s ahead in 2012.
Multimedia Services Manager Matt Stevens reviews 2011 trends and projects

Data department
Bruce Williams, Data team manager, reviews an eventful year as his team added members and expanded services.
Data Team Manager Bruce Williams reflects on a busy 2011 for his team and in the industry

Public Relations and Communications team
Misty Fry, public relations and communications manager, “pins” the team faves of 2011.
The Pinterest of 2011 for the PR and Communications team

The Pinterest of 2011 for the PR and Communications team

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:22:00 +0000

Misty Fry, public relations and communications manager, “pins” the team faves of 2011.

Although the thunder::tech team spends much more time thinking forward than looking backward, the best part about writing a post to recap the year is seeing just how far the Public Relations and Communications team and the agency as a whole have come!

As Jason mentioned in his previous Account Services post, thunder::tech’s goal is to continue to live out these four guiding principles:

Create great work
Provide a high level of customer service
Lead and support innovation
Be an educational resource for clients

So, what better way to recap the great year than to review how the PR/Communications team achieved this in 2011? Here’s a quick look at some of our favorites.

Create great work.
Thanks to our awesome clients who allowed us to test the marketing waters with new ideas and tactics, we achieved quite a few client “firsts” and helped create better connections with current and potential customers, fans and influencers. Media relations success stories soared, exciting social media contests and campaigns were launched and community engagement was at an all-time high.

Highlights included:

Developing and leading the first-ever mom blogger event for Castaway Bay. More than 10 mom bloggers attended a weekend of fun at the indoor waterpark and resort. The event resulted in 16 blog posts that included special giveaways for Castaway Bay, four videos, one week-long blog series and multiple Twitter mentions.
Increasing media hits for Prestolite Performance by 123 percent compared to 2010.
Bringing approximately 50 media visitors to Cedar Point during the season to write about the amusement park.

Provide a high level of customer service.
Client trust is important in every department (and heck, every industry) and the PR/Communications team does not take client relationships for granted. To be a true trusted advisor, the team did what it took to get the job done.

In addition to responding to late-night social media queries, fielding client questions and advising on crisis communication issues, the team also:

Helped secure a Guinness World Record.
Cleaned bathrooms.
Gave away a car.

Lead and support innovation.
Being a knowledgeable leader and supporter of innovation is obviously important here at thunder::tech (again, it all goes back to client trust). In this past year, the PR/Communications team made quality R&D time a priority by sitting through more than 30 demos on new products, platforms and technologies. Got a question on the best social media monitoring services such as Alterian or how to use platforms like PitchEngine to bolster media relations initiatives? Ask us!

In addition, the team:

Sent regular emails to our client list alerting them on the latest social media changes or updates, as well as recommendations on how to use that information.
Got more creative with our media pitches, particularly via email. Thanks to our wonderfully integrated marketing teams, we were able to design and develop some pretty fun, informative emails to attract media attention.
Led strategy and development of nearly 20 Facebook tabs including writing rules/regulations for contests and defining communication tactics to increase visibility.

Be an educational resource for clients.
The PR/Communications team learned early on that an educated client is a more happy, effective client. This is a win-win for everyone. To help clients take their marketing initiatives to the next level, the team:

Compiled countless media relations and social media reports that distilled a tremendous amount of data into something that is easy to understand and learn from.
Took part in thunder::tech’s Marketing Trends Event to educate clients on key marketing themes to look for in the new year.
Participated in numerous speaking events on topics including social media, media training and how to build an effective resume.
In addition to all of this, Marissa Mendel joined our team as a PR coordinator, 50 percent of the team bought a new car and were named victors of the pumpkin carving contest. We also invented the concept of the team drunch (you’ll have to ask us the details on this one) and launched @thundertechPR.

Here’s to another great year full of favorites!

About the author::
Misty is the PR and Communications manager at thunder::tech. A lover of good words and fine sentence structure, Misty enjoys watching her team achieve bigger and better goals. When not rocking out to public relations, Misty enjoys the Cleveland food scene, biking to thunder::tech with coworkers and enjoying the view of Downtown Cleveland and Lake Erie from her balcony.

Data Team Manager Bruce Williams reflects on a busy 2011 for his team and in the industry

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:17:00 +0000

Our 2011 recap chatter series continues as Bruce Williams, Data team manager, reviews an eventful year as his team added members and expanded services.

We didn’t sit still in 2011, nor did we sell off our belongings and wait for the apocalypse. Some believe that 2012 will be marking the end of days; we in the development world would simply settle for the end of some inferior browsers as well as the wide adoption of new technologies and services by our clients.

Going through our 2011 yearbook, we found it to be one of the busiest in planning and architecting new, custom solutions with our clients. This past year, we reiterated that we can execute just about any digital project imaginable, and we also found that a good deal of our time was dedicated to mapping and developing new processes and applications for our clients. Not only did these requests come from new clients and potentials, but also from our very valued existing client base.

As demand grows for our thought leadership, we still need to attend to and deliver on time the many diverse projects we are so graciously awarded. That is why we were very grateful for the efforts produced by some of the new team members. Savvy veteran Justin Smith came aboard this past year and produced an amazing portfolio of results not only in Web and client-side development, but also in multimedia work. Nathan Smetana joined the team as the ever-available intern to expedite projects and provide an even greater degree of service to our existing clients.

With these two additions and the very experienced senior leadership of Jerry Sen in application development, Josh Mathe in search marketing, Chris Knapik in all things networking and digital and Benjamin John in client-side engineering, we found ourselves taking on an amazing number of diverse projects.

The two hottest areas of work right now are in the mobile space and search marketing, and we believe we have excelled in both during this past year. Clients such as DDR, Cedar Point, COSE and Winking Lizard all have emphasized and catered to the evolving mobile consumer with their own offerings with great success. We were lucky enough to execute projects using traditional mobile-optimized Web applications and native iOS and Android applications.

Our search marketing clients have come back again and again for recommendations after realizing return on investment (ROI) success after success.

On top of mobile, we have been awarded the opportunity to take many of our clients online with e-commerce offerings, redesigns of legacy sites and installations of various content management system (CMS) platforms.

Our social platform and third-party service integration footprint was expanded as well. We created numerous Facebook applications as well as leveraged services and application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by Twitter, Salesforce, Google and other leaders for specific and focused marketing campaigns for our clients.

Our method of operation has been refined and polished this past year out of necessity. We have increased our manner of communication and continued coding improvements internally through collaboration and research and development.

Like any self-improving organization, we have audited existing partnerships and pursued new ones. With mobile and high-performing client applications in mind, we have initiated partnerships with Rackspace, specifically their Cloud-based products, and Sitecore CMS offerings.

As we look into our crystal ball to see what 2012 may offer, we realize that our crystal ball is no longer holding onto the appropriate browser market share and we should be consulting our Android for a more widely adopted user experience.

Alas, it is all in a year’s work for the thunder::tech Data team. We won’t be standing still in 2012 and we anticipate that our clients won’t either.

About the author::
Bruce Williams loves a good database schema and watching his team astonish clients with new JQuery tricks. He is the Data team manager at thunder::tech during the day (and occasionally at night). When he isn’t programming, he and his wife are pulling their kids through the neighborhood in their favorite wagon.

More: Creative Department Manager Dave Berman recaps 2011

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:51:00 +0000

2011 was a year of growth for the thunder::tech family in general, but that theme rang especially true for the Creative department, which includes the Design and Multimedia teams.

More.

More teammates:
Our Multimedia team doubled in 2011, allowing us to take on more projects. With an increased talent pool, we were able to offer more multimedia services and add to our portfolio of videos, 3-D capabilities, interactive video boards, touch screens and mobile and tablet integration.

More advertising:
We were able to flex our design and creative copywriting muscles more this year through several integrated advertising campaigns. In our second year with Castaway Bay, Cedar Point's indoor water park, we were able to evolve the “Escape With Your Family” campaign through more billboards, print ads, free standing inserts (FSIs) and media-rich digital ads. We were also able to integrate the campaign into their Facebook page and social media posts.

We created bilingual billboard and kiosk art, downloadable fliers and a Facebook page promoting the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center's “Let it Out!” campaign. We partnered with Munchkin to create a print and digital campaign for their Arm & Hammer Diaper Pail themed “Hold Your Baby, Not Your Nose.”

Prestolite Performance raced into 2011 with us promoting a re-envisioned Modern Muscle X campaign as well as beginning work on brand awareness campaigns for its brands Mr. Gasket, Lakewood, ACCEL and Mallory. We enjoyed another year with Cleveland Beer Week, developing online ads and digital billboards for this year's event. We also continued working with Ty Pennington Impressions and added print work for Westminster Fibers lines FreeSpirit, Rowan and V&A.

More tradeshows:
What happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas (except for what's recorded on our camera phones) as thunder::tech returned to SEMA with Prestolite Performance and continued to assist them with media relations. In addition, we designed new stationery in preparation for the show and handled multimedia production during the event. We also developed tradeshow graphics for Speedeon Data this year.

Seattle was added to the destination list as several thunder::techies attended PAX Prime with Handelabra Studio to help put up the tradeshow booth and video displays we designed, as well as work the crowd passing out swag and coordinate promotional events and media interviews. Note, we did not participate in the cosplay, but have definite ideas for next year.

More reach:
Cleveland and Northeast Ohio will always be the heart of thunder::tech. However, each year, our creative tentacles sweep farther across the country. We continued our day-long excursions throughout Ohio, amassed frequent flier miles galore meeting with clients everywhere from New York to Chicago to California and dealt with time zone differences in Europe and Canada.

More miscellaneous:
Some random accomplishments/feats/facts from the Creative department in 2011 include:

We provided audio talent for a video game trailer
Planking was done on the diaper pail
Sasquatch was designed into a brochure
We went 3-D
Nobody was injured playing with our newest video equipment: glide cam, car mount (aka Joe Cola in a trunk)
We worked with five automotive clients, five clients in the alcohol industry, a handful of sports teams and several entertainment venues
We continued to recruit people into the tuna melt club
We continued to NOT win the office pumpkin carving contest

And looking forward to more more in 2012.

About the author::
Dave is the art director at thunder::tech. His brand would best be represented through a stand-up routine by Holden Caulfield as written by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. as visualized collaboratively by Ralph Steadman and Keith Haring and brought to life through the magic of Jim Henson Studios...but unique to Dave.

Our new January wallpaper features snow you don’t have to shovel

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:54:00 +0000

Whether it’s sunny or a blizzard where you are, one look at our January wallpaper will transport you to a charming winter scene where snow plows are unnecessary.

Escape with us to a winter landscape by downloading our wallpaper, with or without a calendar, for your desktop computer or mobile device today.

January wallpaper with a calendar
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January wallpaper without a calendar
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January wallpaper – mobile version