Karen Rubin's Ramblings

Remarkable content is simply content that is worth remarking on. One store in New York is certainly being remarked about, with a window display that includes women taking your clothes off.  

I have to say, they have succeeded in making remarkable content. Taking your clothes off is certainly one way to go about it, but it's not the only way. There isn't a formula for remarkable content, but being unique and a little big controversial is a good place to start. 

Brian Halliagn (HubSpot's CEO) recently said that remarkable content is  "kind of like pornography. You know it when you see it." It looks like the folks at XOXO took this to heart, but to be clear it doesn't have to be pornography!

 Side Note: This video was sent to me by a former co-worker. This store is about half a block from my old office in NYC. I haven't wanted to go back this much in awhile!

The staff at the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, OR knows what to do when it comes to dancing and to promoting breast cancer awareness. Medline Industries recently came out with a new style of latex-free gloves in pink, and said they would donate a portion of the proceeds to fund mammograms, to help spread awareness. The doctors, nurses, patients, cafeteria crew, janitors, technicians and business folk at St. Vincent took it one step further and created this video to help spread the word. 

 The video has been out for about 2 weeks and has over 1.7 million views on YouTube. Think about giving the folks at your company the opportunity to do something fun for a good cause and who knows what can happen. 

It's true there are things the White House can do that you can't. (Lunching a nuclear weapon, borrowing any painting from the national gallery and demand appearances from the Russian ambassador, to name a few.) But if they can launch unedited, on the fly videos of their people, why shouldn't you be able to?

@RickBurnes brought these videos to my attention and I love them. They are high ranking (well they seem high ranking to me, but it's not like it's the Chief of Staff)  folks from the White House talking about what's going on, sharing information about the President's trip to China, the people they are seeing and what the vibe is. 

 I have said it before and I will say it again, video doesn't have to be hard! It doesn't have to take hours in the editing room! It just takes a video camera (talk to the nearest new mom or dad) and someone who can talk without tripping over themselves. Try it out, you'll be surprised how easy it is. After all, just because the White House can do it, doesn't mean it has to be hard.  

My husband sent me this video the other day. The video is a little long, but I watched the whole thing and have been thinking about it for a couple days. Two things are clear, passion for what you do helps sell and I have to try the cucumber soda! 

This weekend, I was watching a video of Don Norman talking at TED about ways in which design makes you happy.

He tells a story about a study in which students were asked to solve a problem. The first group of students failed, but the second succeeded. The only difference between the two was that before the study began the second group was given a box of chocolates, and it made them a little happy.

 Normal explains that this little bit of happiness enhances your problem solving ability because you "squirt dopamine into the prefrontal lobes which makes you a breadth first problem solver, you are more susceptible to interruption and you do out of the box thinking." 

I realized that HubSpot has done a really good job of getting us all to squirt a little dopamine and perhaps this is why we create cool content.

We have crazy amounts of food,

 and beer, 

and Ping Pong!

My theory is that this makes us happy, which helps us think outside the box and do crazy things like HubSpot.tv and our newest music video.  

If you work in an environment that doesn't value the creative energy in a bag of M&M's and you are a marketer looking to create great content. I recommend you invite all your craziest people to lunch, buy them some pizza and get them squirting! 

I don't spend a lot of time paying attention to the traditional advertising industry. In my world, it is an old school, outbound marketing, TV and magazine ad producing, industry that doesn't understand much about inbound marketing.

As a result, I was impressed when I learned that agency Crispin, Porter and Bogusky is releasing (it hasn't actually launched yet) a beta site that is very inbound marketing focused.

 The site, beta.cpbgroup.com, does a couple great things. When you arrive, there is a spunky, short video explaining the site. In it @Bogusky explains that they hope the site will be "a giant digital fishing net that gathers everything that is relevant about us and out clients."

Great Thing #1: The intro video is short and not over produced. I can't imagine it took them long to pull together. Video doesn't have to take forever!

@Bogusky goes on to explain that there is only one section of the page where CP&B controls the content, the rest is auto generated coming from blogs, twitter and other news sites. 

Great Thing #2: CP&B has accepted letting go and losing control. By using content created by others, CP&B opens themselves up to whatever the loonies that inhabit the internet want to say. They also make their site a great hub of information for the industry and create a cool site that doesn't need a ton of management to keep running. 

I clicked around the site, and realized the home page is all about CP&B and the ad industry.  Then I noticed the true brilliance, at the top there are 9 tabs each going to the same type of page for a different big name customer. This means, I can go check out the latest TV ads from VW, Burger King or Hulu and read the buzz about them on Twitter, in the blogosphere and in the news. 

Great Thing #3: There are really two great things here. First, GP&B is doing something @mvolpe and I talk about on HubSpot.tv all the time. They are using the information and data they have as part of their business to create a cool/fun tool online. HubSpot does this with the State of the Twittersphere and Technorati does this with the State of the Blogosphere. If you have interesting information that people want, you should use it to your advantage!

Second, they have pulled the site together for themselves AND ther customers. This will help their customers (see Great Thing #2) and shows their prospects that they are an ad agency that understands this new inbound marketing thing. Brilliant!

Sanoma wine vineyard, Murphy-Goode, has launched a AReallyGoodeJob.com to find someone willing to live the wine life for 6 months, for $10K a month while doing social media marketing for the vineyard. Sounds like a pretty good gig to me!

Their website explains the position in detail (what you would be doing, how you are compensated etc.) and urges you to apply by submitting a 60 second video. 

 What a cool way to market what sounds like an awesome position. If I was one of the 80%* of undergrads coming out college without a job right now, you better believe I would be applying for this!

* I think Katie Couric said this was the number when she was on the Daily Show, but I can't find the numbers online. Whatever it is, this year I am sure a lot of kids need jobs! 

Okay, it may be a little farfetched that Nationwide Insurance read my blog post on industries that need to meet the internet, but I wanted to give them some props as an insurance company that is at least trying to make it easier on their users. 

My sister just pointed out to me that Nationwide has released an iPhone app for their customers. According to their site it,

• Calls emergency services
  
• Helps you collect and exchange accident info
  
• Stores your insurance and vehicle info for easy lookup
  
• Locates Nationwide agents near you
  
• Takes and stores accident photos
  
• Converts your iPhone into a handy flashlight
  
• Helps connect you with towing services*
  
• Helps you start the Nationwide claims process*
  
• Finds Nationwide Blue RibbonSM Repair Facilities* 
  

 *** Update ***

I tweeted about this post, and look at the reply I got!

Again, kudos to Nationwide! Any small, medium or large business should be on Twitter if for no other reason that to look out for people mentioning them.