A rockin’ good time!

We recently returned from our annual company trip. This year, we took a trip to the Bahamas via Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Seas. This year’s theme was “What Happens on Spunlogic’s Cruise, Will End Up On YouTube.” While we’ll certainly make good on this theme, the video is in post-production. As soon as it’s available, there will definitely be another blog post.

In the meantime, we thought we’d post a couple of the favorite stories and pictures from the trip.

The first 5 comments on the blog (from non-Spunlogic employees who provide their email address) will win a Spunlogic Cruise t-shirt in the size of your choice (see design below near comment box)!

1. Amber Thomas - Thank You!

This year, Jamey Halpin took over Mike Richard’s legacy for dollar bets. For his initiation, we bet him to walk through the entire main dining room and thank all of the non-Spun tables for coming on Spunlogic’s cruise. He took this in stride, and jumped up to make good on the bet. Though he didn’t make it to all 300 tables, he did manage to reach all of the tables that surrounded the Spun area. Guests were amused, as he went from table to table, shaking hands with complete strangers and thanking them for their patronage. (Joe took a picture of one of the Non-Spun tables by accident too):

2. Jay Jhun - The Best Lobster and Conch Salad Ever

Above and beyond the great time my wife and I had dining and hanging out with the Account Managment team and fellow Spunnies, our best memory will be the sweetest, tastiest chunks of savory lobster tail that were battered and fried to perfection at a shack in the Arawak Cay Fish Fry – a neighborhood filled with mostly restaurants that serve fresh seafood, Bahamas style.

Our host was a boisterous and friendly Bahamian named Eddie. For $50, we had healthy portions of lobster, red snapper, conch fritters, conch salad, beer and beverage. Plus entertainment provided by locals talking about Barak Obama and a brew-ha-ha about the local authorities towing away cars (if we understood things right) just because they felt like it.

This Bahamas junket has become my annual 3-night date with my wife where we get to sleep in, do no dishes, answer to no children, and do no laundry – all because Jeff wants to thank us for the work we do.

Memo to Jeff: No, no…Thank you.

Fellow Spunnies

If you’d like to share one of your favorite stories from the cruise, or a photo album on Facebook/Flickr/KodakGallery/Shutterfly/etc - please do so! I know we have lots of pictures to share!

Want a Spunlogic Cruise Shirt?

Again, the first five people to comment (and provide an email address - we won’t spam you) will win a t-shirt with this year’s cruise design:

(front)

(back)

Ever since I could remember, I’ve watched the Super Bowl strictly for the commercials. Not being a huge NFL fan, the game doesn’t really all that much matter to me (however, I did pull for the NY Giants this year). But in the past few years I feel like the commercials have gone downhill, and from what I can gather, I’m not the only one. This year I took notes on the commercials and did a bit of analyzing.

Of the 60 commercials I kept tabs on (I excluded all FOX commercials and may have included locally shown commercials), it broke down to 41 brands who spent the dollars (approximately $2.7 million dollars for 30 seconds!) to air several sub-par commercials. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized there wasn’t much integration with the online channels that many of these brands have created. Only 23 brands listed URLs in their commercials! You’d think with spending that much money on a commercial(s), they’d do everything possible to extend the brand experience online. Of the 23 URLs displayed along the way, 13 were direct links to the brand’s website, 3 were URLs that either mirrored or redirected to the same page used as the homepage, and 7 were microsites dedicated to the campaign.

What’s even more surprising to me is that many recognizable brands didn’t include their website URL on their commercials (Coca-Cola, Bud Light, Budweiser, Victoria’s Secret, and Gatorade). Yes, we’re familiar with your brands, but are we familiar with what you’re doing online? Maybe, but why chance it? With the way marketing is heading, it’s safe to say all of the brands have a website, but is the URL known? Make it easy for consumers to find you and put your address in front of them when they’re captive!

I have to admit, my favorite commercial was the Tide-to-Go talking stain, it was priceless (and so true). I have a hard time focusing on what someone is saying if there’s a stain on their shirt, so distracting! In case you missed it, you can view the commercial here. The microsite allows visitors to watch the ad again, participate in contests, as well as take part in filming a spoof and interacting with their channel on YouTube. To me, Tide-to-Go got it right this year: entertaining commercial, microsite dedicated to the commercial, and social/interactive/engaging aspects of the site. Way to go!

And in case you missed any of the other commercials, you can view them on MySpace – they have them hosted for your convenience. And if you’re interested, I’ve listed out the brands (and linked to their sites) that make up the numbers mentioned above.

Brands who listed website URLs:

Planters
Under Armour
Sales Genie
Bridgestone Tires
GoDaddy
FedEx
Cars.com
Toyota
Garmin
Career Builder
ONDCP
T-Mobile
E*Trade

Brands that used URLs that mirror/redirect to site:

Doritos
Taco Bell
Sunsilk

Brands who listed microsites:

Tide to Go
Audi R8
Sales Genie
Hyundai
Dell
Sobe Life Water
Pepsi Stuff

Over the Labor Day weekend I caught up on the TivoCast items I downloaded from Rocketboom, and saw this clip that featured an interview with Susan Crawford about OneWebDay (OWD). OWD is a yearly celebration of the Internet that takes place on September 22^nd. What a great idea! As I listened to Crawford’s passionate statements about the yearly global event, I decided to go ahead and check out OWD’s website.

As I perused the blog, I came across one post (“Have you thanked the web lately?”) that noted “OneWebDay gives us a chance to reflect about the ways in which the internet has changed the world, and to shed light on information-flow blockades around the globe.” and provided a list of suggested activities one could take part in to participate in the global celebration. Since there’s not an event in Atlanta this year, I thought I’d share the online activities for OneWebDay to help spread the word and maybe gain interest in a local event for next year.

Their main goal this year is to encourage people to make their own short videos and post them on blip.tv or YouTube tagged “onewebday2007″. Some of the suggested topics for user generated videos include:

• how the web has changed your life
• how you’d like the web to change the world in the future
• highlights of what you’ve seen online the day you make the video
• your favorite online event ever
• something you’ve done online with other people in other countries

I think these are great topics, and if I didn’t have this thing about posting video of myself on YouTube – I’d definitely submit one. I don’t mind writing though, so I thought I’d take a minute to talk about how the web has changed my life.

Through the years I’ve had access to the Internet, I have used it as a tool to meet other people and connect in a fashion that wouldn’t be possible without the use of the web. Growing up, many of my friends were people that I met online in IRC chat rooms. I wasn’t the coolest kid in school (which I know is hard for many of you to imagine now), so I didn’t have many friends and I had a hard time confiding in others. With the anonymity of the internet, I was able to discuss issues and obtain viewpoints from others. Along the way, I found ways to express myself and build confidence in the person I was. Since those awkward years, I’ve managed to make real life friends, but I’m still in contact with a few of my IRC buddies, which makes me very happy; they were a key part in my formative years and I won’t ever forget them.

Since then, the Internet has played an even bigger role in my life. Without the Internet I:

• Wouldn’t have my awesome job
• Wouldn’t have found my awesome apartment (yay for Craigslist!)
• Wouldn’t have an efficient way to communicate with a large group of people all at once (where would we be without email or social networking sites?)
• Wouldn’t have met one of my very best friends

But enough about me…I want to hear how the Internet has changed the lives of our blog readers. For those of you without a YouTube-phobia, I encourage you to submit video for OneWebDay and share the link on this blog post. If you’d rather not create a video, at least share your thoughts and feelings on the Internet in the comments below. I’m fascinated by the different stories I’ve heard so far, I’d really like to hear yours!

Within the past year, Spunlogic has jumped from 30 something employees to around 70 employees. In the two years (or so) that I’ve been with the company we’ve only had one microwave. When we moved from the Zonolite location to our Midtown location, it came with us. Of course, until recently having only one microwave was not an issue. One generally only had to wait a few minutes before they could warm up their coffee or lunch. Now that we’ve doubled in size, the queue generally built up quickly. Because of this, someone recently started a “Second Microwave Fund” via a Styrofoam cup on our sole microwave.

The last time I checked, there had been 35 cents donated, we were on our way to getting a second microwave!

Yesterday, as I went to warm up my leftovers from the night before I noticed there was a second microwave that had magically appeared!

It was donated by our fantastic Project Management intern, Katie. Katie joined us this summer after her trip to Spain, and has been a tremendous asset to our department. We’re really sad that she’ll be leaving us for her last semester at Mercer University (Go Bears!). Thankfully, she’s leaving us with a “warm” daily reminder in the break room.

On behalf of Spunlogic, I’d like to say “Thanks again, Katie!” Have a great semester – come back and see us soon!

While doing a little research on email marketing, I came across this nifty site called EmailStatCenter.com.  Since I found it to be helpful, I wanted to pass it along to you guys.  This site is the first centralized online repository of statistics and research specific to the email marketing industry, with a broad range of topics included. 

EmailStatCenter.com provides statistical information for those looking for quick facts, but also provides the name of the reports if you’d like to research further.  Let’s face it, if you’re trying to convince people there’s value to an email marketing program, stats will be extremely helpful in your argument.

Here are some facts that I found particularly interesting:

• Of the largest online retailers that send welcome emails, 69% of them send their welcome emails in HTML, while the remaining 31% sent theirs in text-only format. - Email Experience Council/RetailEmail.Blogspot (September 2006)
• 55.3% of marketers surveyed currently use, or plan on using an outside vendor for email marketing. - Datran Media Research, “The 2007 Email Marketing Survey: Looking Forward” (2007)
• 56% of the world’s heaviest online advertisers revealed that they had budgeted significantly for landing-page A/B tests in 2007. -MarketingSherpa (2007)
• The majority of marketers annually allocate less than $250,000 to each of the discrete email functions of acquisition, retention and creative. - JupiterResearch “E-mail Spending and Governance 2007″ (2007)
• U.S. marketers spent $300 million on email in 2005. - 2006 Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report, WebTrends
  

As much as I hoped to hear those words spoken while on my trip to Los Angeles, I never did.  I did, however, have a wonderful time in a great city. 

Thanks to my fabulous co-workers at Spunlogic, I had the honor of being named Spunlogic’s Employee of the Year for 2006.  Along with that honor came an all-expense paid trip for two anywhere in the US.  I opted to go to Los Angeles, as its always been a dream of mine to be on The Price Is Right.  With Bob Barker’s retirement quickly approaching - the timing was perfect.  I invited my mother to join me for a little mother-daughter bonding.  I figured after all the family vacations we’ve taken it’d be nice to return the favor.  

Although I didn’t see as many celebrities as I would have liked, my trip was complete after spending the afternoon with Bob Barker at a taping of The Price Is Right.  The short version of the story is that we didn’t make it into the Tuesday taping that we had tickets for.  Instead, we spent Tuesday night in line, sitting on plastic chairs along Fairfax Avenue (in 40 degree weather with 15 mph wind) with the hopes of somehow obtaining tickets for the Wednesday taping.  We were in line at 9:30 pm until 5:55 am before we received tickets from a very kind group in front of us.  They had group members that decided against coming to the taping, and just so happened to have two spare tickets that they handed over to us.  It was one of the happiest moments of my life – only because I knew my mother would have killed me if she spent the night on the street (without sleep) for no reason!

I was number 101 in line, which means there were one hundred other crazy people in front of me – all excited about seeing Bob Barker.  After eight more hours of waiting, we made it into the 2:30 pm taping.  Having had no sleep the night before, I’m still amazed at the enthusiasm many people in the audience exerted.  When Bob stated his famous line from Happy Gilmore during one of the commercial breaks, the audience went berserk.  Looking back now, I still feel that it was worth a night of insanity to mark off one of the items on my “to-do-before-I-expire” list.  If only I could have been on stage!  One of the guys I met while in line actually did.  In the video (see link or click image of Bob Barker above) you’ll see Keith get called down to the stage, make a bid, and make it to the stage.  If you look closely to the left of the video as he’s running up to meet Bob, you’ll see two people standing up: one in orange (me!) and one in black (my mother).  It’s the closest I’ll ever get to Bob, but I’m okay with that!

We stayed at the InterContinental – Century City, which I must recommend if you’re ever in Los Angeles.  It was close to everything and the staff members were extremely friendly.  While staying there we passed former American Idol contestant Chris Sligh in the lobby.

While in Los Angeles, we also went to Staples Center to see the Lakers play the Golden State Warriors (the Lakers won).  To the surprise of the arena, Boyz II Men sang the national anthem.  I thought these guys were finished years ago, but apparently they’re attempting a comeback.  They also performed during half-time, singing some of their new songs, as well as some of their old songs “Motownphilly” and “End of the Road.” 

Along with the video above, I’ve uploaded all of my photographs from the trip into an album on Facebook, feel free to take a peek. 

Thanks again to the Spunlogic crew for granting me with an amazing honor and the chance to take such a great trip!

Posted in Inside Spunlogic | No Comments »