Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

I had the chance tonight to attend a screening of the recently released Art & Copy documentary presented by BCAIM as part of Advertising Week. This is at times a humorous yet down to earth look inside the advertising business, from the perspectives of some of the biggest names in the agency world.

The film provides the context for advertising as we know it today, touching upon the space that the craft fills in modern culture. Some of the familiar subjects include industry icons including the blunt and animated George Lois, the man behind the idea of ‘The Big Idea’, Dan Wieden & David Kennedy of Just Do It fame, Jeff Goodby & Rich Silverstein, creators of the Got Milk? campaign, Hal Riney the creator of the classic american dream styled television spot, and Lee Clow, who’s work includes the much lauded 1984 spot for Apple and pretty much every campaign for that brand ever since Steve Jobs returned to steer the ship.

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Wow! We’re so busy with 2010 that we’re having trouble keeping track of the accolades that are still rolling in from 2009. Which, in all honesty, is just fine with us.

The SWISS WATER® Process, along with Engine Digital, was featured in the December 2009 issue of Direct Marketing Magazine for our “Relax. Enjoy. Awaken.” campaign as being one of the best of the year. Our relationship with the fine folks at Swiss Water started back in 2008, and the campaigns that we’ve launched since then have far exceeded expectation from both a marketing perspective and as a heavy hitter on the awards circuit.

Unfortunately, Direct Marketing is a print only magazine, but you can still download a copy of the issue that features The Swiss Water campaign via PDF with this link.

We started 2010 off with a little thank-you to a few our clients in the form of cupcakes. These tasty treats are the handy work of Lyndsay at Coco Cake – a local cupcakery (is that a real word?!), and are our way of saying, ‘clients, you sure helped to make 2009 a swell year!’

Interestingly, we’ve learnt that cupcakes do not ship well. One batch only barely made it to its destination in Saskatchewan.

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The Internet, no longer just a series of tubes, continues to expand and attract a broader, more global audience.

Server uptime and performance monitoring service, Pingdom, has pulled together a list of Internet statistics. These are hefty numbers that indicate just where things (or more specifically, the general public) are headed. Some of the more impressive figures that caught our eye include:

• 90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
• 81% – The percentage of emails that were spam.
• 1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.
• 47 million – Added websites in 2009.
• 1.73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009) – An 18% Increase over the previous year.
• Internet users per region: 42.6% Asia (Yup, they’re leading), 24.1% Europe, 14.6% North America, 10.3% Latin America / Caribbean, 3.9% Africa, 3.3% Middle East, 1.2% Oceania / Australia. Imagine that, we’re 3rd!
• 126 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
• 350 million – People on Facebook.
• 50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
• 2.5 billion – Photos uploaded each month to Facebook. – Yuh, Billion!
• 1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.
• 82% – Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA).

Get the report after the jump…

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SoDA 2010 Digital Marketing Outlook – released today!

The Society of Digital Agencies released their 2010 Digital Marketing Outlook today and it’s packed full of great survey data from hundreds of executives from major global brands, traditional and digital agencies, and vendor / service providers. Some key stats and points of view that have caught my eye so far:

• 81% of brand execs expect an increase in digital projects for 2010
• “The most effective digital platforms have shifted from ‘disruptive’ to ‘productive’ by providing a service or utility…[they] fundamentally change the approach from “how we reach our customers” to ‘how we make their lives better.’” K. Blitz
• 59% of respondants say that cost-per-click, conversion, and ROI are the digital marketing metric they’re least interested in
• Most important technical skill sets to hire / contract in 2010 (in order): Flash, ActionScript, CSS, PHP, iPhone SDK – showing that the microsite is indeed still alive and kicking

Get the report after the jump…

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