If you’ve been living in a cave or had the great fortune to go on vacation to someplace like, oh I don’t know, Bermuda (I hate you John Waddy), then maybe you’ve missed the Simpsons Movie marketing attack that’s been in full force for months now. I finally found what I’ve been looking for - a list of the many ultra-creative ways they are promoting this movie - on one of my favorite blogs, Agency Spy. The list includes the limited set of Simpsons-skinned Xbox’s and 7-11 / Kwik-E-Mart mashups - hilarious. There’s even an interesting debate on whether or not the agency is the brains or the client.

When it comes to words and the web, you may have heard less usually is more. What you may not have heard? How on earth to do it. Here’s the nitty gritty on 4 tactics for content that’s nice and concise.

• Use the Right Subjects and Verbs
  Writing style guru Joseph Williams recommends viewing each sentence as a story. Readers expect main characters to be subjects and their main actions to be verbs. Not only is this structure more clear, it’s also more concise. In the After example below, Spunlogic is the main character.
  Before: There has been a green initiative launched at Spunlogic.
  After: Spunlogic launched a green initiative.
• Don’t Be Redundant, and Don’t Be Redundant
  Spotting redundancy can be fun, and the fix is easy.
  Obvious: Orange in color, period in time
  Implied: Imagine a picture
• Avoid Meaningless Modifiers
  Basically, you really, really want to stay away from virtually all the various modifiers that don’t add meaning. (Translation: Stay away from modifers that don’t add meaning.)
• Why Use a Phrase When a Word Will Do?
  The more carefully you choose your words, the fewer words you have to use. Here’s an example.
  Don’t use this: Due to the fact that
  Use this: Because

Quick!  Match the following menu items to the type of food.  Your choices are: Burritos, Fajitas, Quesadilla, Salads, Nachos and Tacos.  GO!!

• Alfredo Garcia
• Art Vandalay
• Billy Barou
• Close Talker
• Fat Sam
• Homewrecker
• I Said Posse
• Joey Bag of Donuts
• John Coctostan
• Pinky Tuscadero
• Ruprict
• Sherman Klump
• The Full Monty
• The Other Lewinsky
• The Ugly Naked Guy
• Triple Lindy

So, how’d you do? 

Beyond the fact that these names say nothing about the food items they represent, I don’t even recognize several of them from American popular culture.  Imagine now that you’re a foreigner that has never been exposed to TV. 

To be fair, this menu has descriptions of each item categorized by type of food. But the point is that if you were just looking at the name of the item, you’d have no idea.  To top it off, you have no frame of reference for Pinky Tuscadero if you’ve never seen Happy Days.

I noticed this the other night when I went to order Chinese food.  I was using the menu I pulled off of my mailbox and noticed that they only had the title of the dish.  I have to tell you ‘Happy Surprise’ doesn’t sound like something I want to eat.   Sticking to what I know – beef with Broccoli, I may have just missed out on a yummy dish. 

Same goes for websites.  You may think that your product names or site navigation names are cute and ‘hip’ - but do they have meaning?  If they are cute and funny, is there some kind of context?  Does your audience understand the language you’re using?  Be careful what you call things on your site, you don’t want your customers missing out on that ‘Happy Surprise’.

Ok, I’m going to have a very hard time making this fit into interactive marketing. I’ll just start and see if I can manage to tie it back to the industry somehow but I have to talk about this show - here goes.

I went to dinner a few weeks ago with some friends and the bartender couldn’t help but interrupt our conversation to tell us about this TV show that he was obsessed with. I think my initial thought was, “That’s great, now could you please shut up?”  You know how there are some bartenders that know when to leave you alone and know when to keep you company?  Well this wasn’t one of those guys.  And in this rare circumstance I’m glad he wasn’t.

If you haven’t seen Man vs. Wild on The Discovery Channel, then you’re just not as cool or hip as I thought you were.  The show is described on the website as:

“In each episode of Man vs. Wild, adventurer Bear Grylls strands himself in popular wilderness destinations where tourists often find themselves lost or in danger. Once there he finds his way back to civilization, demonstrating local survival techniques along the way.”

That’s one way to say it.  I tell it a little differently though:

“Bear Grylls gets dropped into places that are known to take the lives of hundreds of lost hikers/travelers every year with just a knife, water bottle and a camera crew, and he’s expected to find civilization before he dies.  In the process, the dude eats anything he can get his hands on, including maggots, frogs, ticks, oh and a dead sheep’s eyeball , drinks things that you don’t even want to know about but I’ll tell you anyway (yes, including the juice from fresh elephant dung and at one point his own urine… I am not making this up) and sleeps in places you can’t even imagine.  It usually takes him three days of this stuff to find his way out.”

If you don’t believe me, check out some of these Youtube videos:

He does all of these things not because he’s a big Fear Factor fan, but because he’s trying to show the audience how to survive in the most desperate situations.  Plus it makes great TV.

Caution, lame attempt to tie this to interactive marketing coming in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

When I watch this show I can’t help but see a corollary between the desperate things that Bear does to survive and the way marketers today are desperately trying to figure out ways to make their ads relevant.  And the end results are often just as disgusting.  For instance… ok, I can’t even keep this up.  Just watch the show and you’ll thank me for it.

Yet another virtual world has surfaced, this time from China. Like most virtual worlds HiPiHi’s main purpose is for users’ to interact and socialize. In Chinese HiPiHi means something similar to “a world created by you”. Many bloggers refer to HiPiHi as the Chinese Second Life or as a Second Life clone. But, what exactly are the similarities and differences between these two virtual spaces?

THE SIMILARITIES
HiPiHi has many similarities to Second Life. The avatar creation, avatar motions, and construction abilities are almost identical. HiPiHi residents can also buy, sell, trade, and manage their own piece of land. Both worlds are built around a socializing community, and both seem to focus on town centers, meetings, and malls as centers of attention and get-togethers. Although they seem so much alike, HiPiHi claims that they did not even know that Second Life was under construction at the same time that they were developing their world. Also similar to Second Life, the construction engine looks to work on the same physics engine and the building editor tools look exactly the same as in Second Life.

DIFFERENCES
The HiPiHi creators seem to pride themselves in the fact that HiPiHi may be similar to Second Life, but that they have worked hard to improve the graphics and user flexibility. In my professional opinion, HiPiHi is like Second Life; but with modified graphics, a different base language, and leans towards a female population. It should be noted that HiPiHi also claims that they are not focusing on a female group - even though 6 of the 10 characters are female and in all of their official promotional videos, there are few if any male avatars present. HiPiHi also prides itself in its helicopter control panel, which feels as if they had brought in a helicopter pilot to get ideas on how to make it more realistic. The HiPiHi creators also gloat that they include a parachute option so that avatars can jump out of flying vehicles in mid-flight. Many blogs that I have read say that the main difference between Second Life and HiPiHi is that they focus on different cultures and values.

Here are some links to blogs and websites that support these claims:

China’s Virtual World War

The Top 10 Things About HiPiHi

HiPiHi.com - What is HiPiHi?

The Chinese clone of Second Life: HiPiHi

Interview: HiPiHI, a 3D digital world from China

The Second Life competitors materialize?

Not only is UPS one of the largest and most influential companies in the world (and one of our favorite clients), they are also very focused on helping save the environment in a variety of ways. I had a chance recently to ask Lynnette McIntire, the manager over their Corporate Reputation Management group, about their green efforts. She pointed me to the UPS Community website and the UPS Sustainability website, and was also kind enough to answer some of my questions.

Please explain the UPS green efforts from a high level.

We tackle environmental issues on a variety of fronts: our investments in alternative fuels for example. But probably the biggest area is the way we run our business - for example, drivers are taught not to leave the engine running at their stops; we aim to eliminate left turns because you are often stuck idle at intersections; our dispatch technology minimizes miles driven by optimizing the routes. At our airline, we have a fuel conservation manager who continually monitors fuel use and finds ways to reduce fuel and emissions. Last year, we reduced emissions by 6 percent through operational improvement.

We are very aware of the packaging we use and the recycling of electronics which are a big part of our business.

How/when did the initiative(s) begin?

Since fuel has always been a big part of our costs, we have always been conscious about fuel conservation. In fact, our first all-electric cars were in the 1930s!

UPS obviously has the ability to affect the world at large due to its overall size. How is the company measuring this impact, both internally and externally?

UPS’s modus operandi is to measure everything. And many of those measurements are reported in our annual sustainability report. That includes carbon footprint…we were one of the pioneers in this area when we started our report five years ago.

Our environmental key performance indicators (KPIS) include measurements of water consumption, energy footprint, ground network fuel efficiency, global aircraft emissions, noise standards requirements, and CO2 footprint.

What type of incentives or encouragement does UPS give to employees to contribute to the cause? And what efforts are they able to contribute towards (recycling, telecommuting, etc.)?

In our offices, we have motion-detecting lighting to shut of lights when rooms are unoccupied. Our computers are shut off automatically. There are incentives for carpooling. We also have very active volunteers in the community who work on parks restoration, tree plantings, and nature conservancy. Drivers right now are receiving communications to remind them of the importance of minimizing air conditioning and engine idling. We are now encouraging our customers to switch from paper bills to electronic bills as a way to reduce paper waste.

It’s the everyday things that can really add up.

Are there any opportunities UPS has found to partner with other companies or vendors?

Our alternative fuel fleet research is done with both the EPA and manufacturers. We have a “rolling laboratory” in that the alternative fleet is on the road and being tested in a demanding driving environment. This means that the manufacturers can tweak the vehicles to be more commercially-viable, which helps them and the transportation industry going forward. All that knowledge and experience gets introduced in the next generations of vehicles.

Spunlogic is going green! We’ve formed a team that will be responsible for helping to make the company more environmentally responsible. Our “Green Team” will be working on energy conservation, waste reduction, reuse and recycling, emissions reduction and water conservation.

Do you want to get more info on the Green Movement and/or how you can help on a personal level? Check out some of the following sites and blogs.

Green Web Sites:

• Green.Yahoo!
• Greenedia
• The Daily Green
• Be Green Now
• Lime.com
• Environmental Defense
• Conservation.org
• The Carbon Neutral Company

Green Blogs:

• Triple Pundit
• World Changing
• Treehugger
• Inhabitat
• Next Billion
• Grist.org
• Technorati’s List of Environmental Blogs

Yesterday our Director of User Experience, Donovan Panone, spoke at a lunch & learn about how Web 2.0 is changing the landscape of user experience. He specifically focused on the psychological reasons that people want Web 2.0 capabilities (sharing, collaborating, etc.) rather than focusing on the technologies that enable this type of interaction. It was a great event and I expect he’ll be cranking out a white paper on it soon that we’ll be happy to share (sans his cheesy jokes I suppose hope).

One of the things he noted that I found particularly interesting was that companies should stop thinking about their interactive efforts as “one-offs”. No more website redesign or email campaign RFPs. Instead, companies need to first address what they are trying to accomplish and then task agencies to come back with an integrated plan to hit those goals. Sometimes a redesign of a corporate website is going to be the answer, but likely that’s not where your users want to be anyway.

I posted a few months ago about the death of the corporate website. In the post I was trying to make the point that search is really the way most people begin their web browsing and because of this, we know exactly what a user is looking to find. If someone searches for a product that your company sells, you certainly don’t want to have the user click directly to the homepage of your site and then have to navigate to that product. You want them to go directly to the page for that product. The very essence of a homepage is to help the user get to where they want to go - no one WANTS to be on your homepage.

Maybe I should emphasize that again, NO ONE WANTS TO BE ON YOUR HOMEPAGE. Why would they? Search has started to replace the homepage and this will only continue to be the case. The homepage is like Yahoo’s early efforts of directory-based search. Great for it’s time, but time has changed (if you don’t believe me, check the increasing usage of RSS as a reminder).

A decent article by Nilofer Merchant in this month’s Advertising Age makes essentially the same point and emphasizes that we should be looking to have our users help us create the experience - co-creation she calls it. That may be a little ambitious but the point is still clear - we need to really understand the user experience today and what that means.

Maybe our old/current conventions of user experience, information architecture, etc., need to be re-purposed to take these things into account because you can create the most usable, best laid out homepage but if people never see it, what’s the point?

Not since David Hasselhoff joined reality TV have two of my favorite things come together like this. R.E.M. has embraced Web 2.0 with their recent R.E.M. in Dublin website. In a recent concert there they actually encouraged people to bring video cameras to record the concert and put it on Youtube and other social networking sites. They’ve got Flickr photos, a blog, tags and even RSS feeds. Might Athens, GA be the next Silicon Valley???

PS - for those of you that don’t know me, I was kidding about “the Hoff” being one of my favorite things. He’s barely in my top 10. Again, kidding.

To the naked eye, a dog’s tail wags when he’s happy. But careful study reveals something more. Recently, a team of researchers used cameras to study tail wagging. And in doing so, they made a remarkable discovery. When dogs experience positive emotions, they wag their tails a little more to their right. When they experience negative emotions, they do the opposite.

Sometimes, a dog’s tail wags when he’s not happy.  But we’d never know it – even if we watched him very closely. Even if we loved him very much. It reminds me that there’s so much more to this world than we can experience with our eyes alone,  that our world is so rich with things to discover … but our eyes are only one of many tools we can use to study it. It also reminds me that sometimes other tools work much better. Because oftentimes, our discoveries are largely dependent on the tools we use to make them. As in the case of dogs. As in the case of many other things …