June 4, 2012 by mudhut

Ripping the Phone Book in Half

So many changes in just a few years! I have to shake my head in wonder at some of this. I know businesses that were paying over $1000 a month for yellow page ads. Now let’s be clear, people traditionally USED yellow page ads and this expenditure was probably justified. Ironically, some of the last consistent advertisers were pizza shops… many people still used the phone book to order pizza… now we can basically text and pay for orders from our phone. So, how does a company reach people that no longer use phone books? Is there a way to spend money on marketing that has a chance on reaching an audience? What does $12k buy you these days?

As I stated in my article, Digital Dog Years, the world is split into two categories; things you can do on your handheld device and then… everything else. Are there things that your firm can put online that could provide consistent information to your potential clients/partners? After all, normal business hours don’t apply if we’re all connected to each other all the time. Website FAQ’s, Articles, and YouTube videos can answer most of the same questions your staff normally answers during the day. We might even argue that it can be more effective. People are used to media telling them why they should buy from the advertiser. It doesn’t matter whether it’s on TV or YouTube. It takes pressure off your sales rep too.

And, by the way, $12k buys you alot of media production these days. I have clients who’ve committed to putting their entire product line in short Impact Media clips on YouTube. Not only will they save money this year, they won’t have to update the media for some time. AND instead of a marketing expense, these clips become company assets.

RIP!

April 6, 2012 by mudhut

Can You Afford Paper?

There was a time in our history when paper was too expensive for the average writer. Paints and canvas were an indulgance for the rich; materials were simply too costly. It’s crazy to think that these items were for the elite, not the everyday artist.

Prior to the 1990’s, the equipment used in recording studios was so expensive that musicians were paying more than $100/hour to get the use of a facility that owned some of it. In fact, time was so expensive in the early days that only well capitalized record companies could afford to rent the studios for the musicians. The rate included the studio engineer who, by the way, most likely had a college degree in electrical engineering.

Video equipment followed the same plot line. Before the early 2000’s, Only TV stations and high-end independents with rates to match could afford the equipment necessary to produce professional looking videos.

Today, with a credit card and stops at a big box electronics retailer and a music store, you can take home enough equipment to do both jobs. Hey, pick up some paint and paper and you can be a writer and an artist too! I’m being facetious. The point is this; if you think that media communication is important enough to do it regularly, than you need to consider doing it yourself.

Ian Kanski from IMR Digital and I have discussed this many times. He believes that once technology can be placed directly into the hands of creative people, everything changes. The story teller, the artist, and the musician need no go-between. Once they understand the tools, they can begin presenting their vision.

Sometimes technology learning curves require patience and practice. Just because we can go buy a Fender Stratocaster at any music store doesn’t mean we’ll be Jimi Hendrix. So before we set up media production in that empty bedroom/cubicle by HR, there are a few questions that I usually ask my clients;

Do you have a creative person on your staff that would be interested in this type of role part time? Maybe they have media experience. Maybe they think it would be fun.
Do you have a digital media strategy that includes the need for professional final products? Hey, smart phones do a great job of taking pictures and capturing video. Audio is another story, but if short, regular FB posts are your objective, then good audio may not be necessary.
Is there a way that Mud-Hut Studios can help you set up your studio cube, train personnel, or even provide on-site production/examples for you? I am happy to work myself out of a job… I’m used to it!

March 4, 2012 by mudhut

Little House on the Scary. A Brief History.

How far back in time would we have to travel to find our families gathered around a fire? It would have been a near daily occurrence. fire had warmth, light and was basically the stove. As education became more common, male family members may have taken turns reading from the bible or borrowed novels by fire light. Eventually even the girls were allowed to go to school, and they participated. It’s not too hard to visualize this picture. If we haven’t been camping, we’ve certainly seen examples of early living in movies. Versions of this family gathering played for centuries around the globe and it certainly still exists today in much of the third world.

Urban homes began installing electricity in the early decades of the 20th century. The first radio broadcast was in 1920 and by 1922 there were 600 radio stations. While probably in the same room as the fire place (central heating didn’t become a common goal until the 1930’s), the radio caused the family to lean in together to hear the static, words, and music. The radio had replaced the fire as the central gathering point.

In the 1950’s the television replaced the hulking radios in the family room. We moved as a group from the dinner table to watch Gunsmoke. Whether we really liked the programming or not was irrelevent. The TV was the new fire and like the vacuum tube radio technology before it, you could even say it glowed…

Whether the family gatherings were mandatory or not could be argued, but it was probably punishment to be banished from them.

Today, If your family consistently eats together around a table, I congratulate you. If you move en masse to a family room, I envy you. If by chance you then regularly carry on meaningful conversations, I gape at you.

Everyone has their own TV; we can access the world from any room in our home via wireless link; and if you’re reading this, I guarantee that you have used electronics to communicate with another member of your household who was somewhere in the same living space.

Here’s the undeniable irony; We are more connected now than ever before. Despite the weirdness of texting someone in the same house, it doesn’t matter whether they’re even in the same state. It feels the same… like they’re under your roof. This is why anybody can do business with anybody. We’re all just settin’ ’round a bigger fire.

February 4, 2012 by mudhut

Digital Dog Years

The processor in the IPhone 4s is 100 times more powerful than the Intel 8088 CPU in the original IBM PC.

Yawn… Well of course it is. We’re old farm hands at technology change and that farm’s been bringin’ in a personal computing crop for 30 years. I get it.

The reason we should stop right where we stand in the middle of the field during harvest time is this: When was the last time you burst through the front door with a new piece of technology and exclaimed, “It’s twice as fast as my old machine, and only cost half as much!” Has it been two years? Five years? More? We don’t talk about hardware technology advancement any more. We talk about applications. We’re concerned about what we DO with our new toys. This represents a MAJOR shift in focus. Think about what first time users (aren’t many around any more) say when they show you their new smart phone… “I can do email, Facebook, Twitter, text, watch video, TAKE video, scan bar codes, get recipes, Skype, and… I can even make phone calls.”

We don’t mention “the Internet” anymore. We can do ANYTHING we want to with music. Well… you get the picture (and don’t forget to take that picture and share it with your phone). Our lives are now broken down into to two categories…Things that CAN be done on our smart phone, and things that CANNOT be done on our smart phone.

Here’s the thing. The introduction of the original IPhone (which arguably ushered in this era) was a minute ago in 2007. What makes this so important is that it’s more than good ol’ advancing technology; we are witnessing CULTURAL change. The way in which we consume information has changed. Has your business kept pace?