The brilliant packaging and design of The Rolling Stones masterpiece, Exile on Main Street.

Tuesday, May 18th marked the re-release of what most music critics and fans alike agree is The Rolling Stones at their finest, the album Exile on Main Street.

This classic album is ranked seventh on Rolling Stone Magazine’s “Greatest Albums of All Time” list.
Though he thought all the material had already been used for the album, Rolling Stones‚ front man Mick Jagger was asked by Universal to find some bonus songs.

And yes, he did.
10 never-before-heard tracks.

The 18-track double-album was originally recorded in a few different locations, in a non-consecutive manner.

At Olympic Studios in London, Richards‚ mansion in France, and Los Angeles, where the real Main Street inspired the album‚s title.

It was originally released in 1972.

Exile on Main Street’s cover design artwork and was created by John Van Hamersveld.
When the buying public took their first look at the design and imagery of the sprawling record cover, most people admitted that they didn’t “get it”.

Having just soaked in Warhol’s ultimately-iconic zipper cover for Sticky Fingers, fans should have been ready for anything, but John Van Hamersveld’s designs seemed to confound them, asking them to digest a rough, anti-establishment, punk-before-there-was-punk collage of images that may have, initially, combined with the unfamiliar musical stylings to impact sales (don’t worry, as the record was supported by the now-famous 1972 American concert tour and songs such as “Happy” and “Tumbling Dice” got some significant radio play, the record went on to top the charts in the U.S. and the U.K.)

Fans and critics finally, got it.

The Stones spared no expense in re-releasing this classic masterpiece.

They always have understood their fans appetite for art, design and pushing the boundaries of marketing and merchandising.



Their blazing red and black stick your tongue out at the world iconic logo is still one of the most recognizable brands id’s in the world.

The Rolling Stones “get it.”

Sure you can download this double album and new tracks online.
Watch it upload every song.
Hear it and experience nothing but the music.
Not that that’s all bad.

But as the Stones see it, why would you want to do that when you can buy a vinyl/cd/dvd limited edition box set for $179.99 and be there, again.

You can tear off the shrink-wrap just like you did back in the 70’s.
When you can pore over the liner notes and photos of this vinyl masterpiece, with reproduced postcards from the original album, get a 64-page book with photos from the recording in France to the Tour of 1972 by photo legends Dominique Tarle and Ethan Russell.

This re- release takes you back to 1972 to experience this music as it should be experienced.
Frankly the way ALL music should be experienced.
When buying music in a record store was an event, something you waited for, and something you always remembered.

When you took home the prized album, unwrapped it, read the stories, the credits, hung the posters on your wall, then carefully pulled the shiny pristine album out of the paper sleeve and delicately place it on the turntable and finally and oh so carefully, dropped the needle.

Heaven.

You lost yourself in the experience, not just the music.

I bought the vinyl/cd/dvd limited edition set. Setting me back that $179.99.
And you know, it was worth every penny.

Check out the brilliant packaging and merchandising created for this album.
Yes, nostalgia and memories comes with a heavy price tag.

You can pay $2500.00 for a limited edition set of 1000 that includes among other goodies, 3 posters each hand signed by Mick, Keith and Charlie.

Or you can buy the road case complete with reproduction hotel room keys, ticket stubs, and a number 81-football shirt worn by Mick during the recording of Exile in France.

It’s as if you were there, part of the crew, the entourage, at the shows, and backstage partying it up with Keith.

Thanks Mick, Keith and Charlie for reminding us that appreciating music is more than just listening to it.

The Boston restaurant and marketing communities converged in Dialogue’s first Eat Drink and Be Social event. Thanks to Tyson Goodridge , I had the privilege of moderating the panel on location based marketing in the restaurant business. The panel featured the CEO of Foodspotting, Alexa Andrzejewski and the mop-haired, minor pop culture icon (he’s no Justin Bieber yet, but they have the same haircut), Dennis Crowley of Foursquare. We discussed the platforms, their potential and how to activate in the space.

What is Foodspotting?

Foodspotting is media-first, location second. People take pictures of food that inspires them and then tag them with a location to share with friends. It is focused on providing a window into the entire dining-out world. The exploration options are particularly strong. Not only can you follow people and the food that inspires them, you can follow updates on places and dishes. This is excellent because there isn’t really anything like it in Twitter or Facebook. It takes advantage of tagging to improve the overall information received by the user. We are talking about the incorporation of business intelligence into the tool. Foodies are always on the lookout for the next great food destination and this could inspire them not only to try places in their locale, but travel to other places with interesting fare. It can also be used for competitive intelligence / community monitoring by restaurants.



Alexa encourages restaurants to create Foodspotting accounts to showcase their favorite dishes along with the user community. The platform is still in its infancy, but growing quickly. They have 100,000 active users in just 3 months time. Users can connect their accounts to their Twitter and foursquare accounts (and I am told Facebook is coming soon) which gives Foodspotting exponential reach.

Foursquare Activation

Location and Foursquare are the hottest things in social media and emerging technology right now so we grilled Crowley and Alexa on specific ways that people can use their technologies to promote loyalty and increase share of wallet. Mayorships are great, but they give a benefit to one person. Crowley talked a lot about Foursquare specials, which are benefits given to anyone who checks into a location on Foursquare. They are free for any business who wants one, but there currently is a bottleneck in the process. Each business needs verification to ensure that the owner really is the owner and that people are not putting phony specials on a business. Seems this is the responsibility of the new business lead, who is also trying to graduate from Stanford. Foursquare has a serious, yet dreamy problem. Everyone wants to work with them.

The queue for business verification is 10-15,000 businesses deep and they have 20 people on staff only one of whom is dedicated to new business. Per Crowley, the company is working on tools to automate the process. An interim, cost efficient step could be to contact a call center in Omaha to call businesses and verify the ownership while automation is being developed. Why aren’t they doing this already? When I asked Crowley how much it costs to use the “specials” feature, he said it was “totally free”. They are probably reluctant to place resources in a verification bucket without a quantifiable return for Foursquare.

The original question was: “How does the restaurant business activate? How can we better understand the components of your services model? How do we activate? What is the cost?” Custom services like badges for achievements are available, but his focus in answering my question was more on how local businesses, specifically restaurants can use Foursquare to attract people. What it takes to create custom campaigns and badges was a little murky and suggests that those are opportunistic and pricing, details and timing are up to the discretion of Foursquare. You need to make it easy and lucrative for them. Why is this? To paraphrase Dennis, everything is happening faster than they imagined and they are focusing their resources on scale. They are only 20 people. They are working on figuring it all out.

When Foursquare first came out, I used the hashtag #failsquare every time I could not check in. It was supposed to be funny and they took it really seriously and not personally. They have done an amazing job of keeping foursquare up and running while adding 15,000 users a day. The system is fast, lean and until version 1.8 which has had a few recent hiccups (although not near as many as Twitter in its early days), largely bulletproof.

What about you?

I asked the audience too: If you could be the mayor of anywhere, where would you be mayor and what would you want the special to be? Me? The Ginger Man in Austin, TX A beer on the house. How about you?

With over 20 years in the experiential marketing space, Chris Donnelly, Managing Director of Allen & Gerritsen’s Brand Promotion practice, has designed and executed branded experiences for top brands including Bonefish Grill, New Balance, Old Neighborhood Foods, Nantucket Nectars, Hannaford Supermarkets, Thin’n'Trim Quality Foods, Papa Gino’s and Cabot Stain.



In Schneider Associates’ recent book, THE NEW LAUNCH PLAN, Joan Schneider and Julie Hall ask Chris’ insight into the elements that make a successful and high impact contest promotion.



Excerpt from THE NEW LAUNCH PLAN: 152 Tips, Tactics, and Trends from the Most Memorable New Products by Joan Schneider & Julie Hall (BNP Media II, LLC, copyright 2010), pp175-176

TIP 97: Make sure your launch contest theme and prize are something to talk about.

“I think the key for a contest to be memorable is the sincerity built into it so the contest naturally fits into the new product launch,” said Donnelly. “A little humor doesn’t hurt either. One experiential contest I developed and executed was for a regional chain of hamburger restaurants based in the heart of NASCAR and racing country. The contest had a $100,000 prize challenge for two lucky consumers to attend a NASCAR event. Both finalists won a try to the races, including a meet-and-greet with a NASCAR driver. They also got the chance to unwrap a hamburger at the race event in front of a live audience, and one lucky person was awarded $100,000. There was a lot of publicity, a lot of excitement and everyone was treated like a winner. Plus, the promotion drove in double-digit sales increases to a NASCAR-themed, new hamburger product launch.”

THE NEW LAUNCH PLAN is a great read if you are planning to launch a new product or service. The right brand promotion can solidify your brand positioning and accelerate your launch results. The wrong one can cause positioning confusion that your brand may never recover from. Trust your new brand to experts who deal with this every day… Let’s launch!

The 14th Annual Rosoff Awards, presented by the Ad Club, recognize companies that have meaningful diversity, mentoring, and inclusion programs and was held (fittingly) at the John F. Kennedy Library this week. In addition, $110,000 worth of scholarships were presented to eleven gifted and diverse high school students - “Rosoff Scholars” - who will be mentored by a sponsored company throughout their four years of college.

Given that the advertising industry has been challenged with increasing its diversity practices, I am proud of the Ad Club for leading the way. As Kathy Kiely, President of the Ad Club pointed out in her introduction of the Rosoff Awards, Boston has a rich history of Human Rights firsts and we are a city that is arguably one of the most tolerant places to live in America.

Our Keynote speaker, Harvard Business School professor David Thomas , author of “Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America” talked about applying business practices to diversity. In other words, diversity initiatives should not simply be an HR program, they should be woven through a company’s strategic business plan.

Some of Thomas’s thought provoking points included (paraphrased):

In order for an organization be diverse and support differences in the workplace, executive leadership needs to form relationships that are transformative.

We want a diverse workforce, but are not always willing to learn from our diverse employees.

With these points in mind, I challenge my fellow CEOs:

Get out of your comfort zone and get to know a business colleague or form a new business relationship with someone different - not the same people you see at every event. Learn from the experience. Shake things up.

Be inspired by the companies that were honored by the Rosoff Awards and other companies that work hard to support diversity, not only because it is the right thing to do, but a smart business decision in the long run. Use the Rosoff Awards as a model in your city.

Show support for programs like the Rosoff Awards through sponsorship, volunteering and mentoring - offer up what your company does best. Show your employees that these types of programs matter and encourage their participation (setting an example from the top down is the best way).

The Ad Club has stepped up its commitment to fostering diversity since the Rosoff Awards were founded 14 years ago. How can you do your part?

The Boston Celtics are in the midst of another great post-season run. After winning their 17th NBA Championship in 2007, they are back in the Eastern Conference Finals - playing their best basketball of the season. Led by future hall of famers Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen, and emerging superstar Rajon Rondo, the green have seized the attention of Celtics nation and NBA fans everywhere.

But does their post-season success materially impact the Celtics brand and business? You bet it does.

The Celtics are among the most successful and storied brands in all of professional sports. Their 17 world championships over five decades is a testament to their organizational drive and continued commitment to their fans, community, and to themselves. The core essence of the Celtics brand is championships, driven through exceptional talent and a will to win. Competing, and winning, in the post-season both affirms and advances that brand image.

Winning in the regular season is entertaining, but it’s only in the post-season that legacies are made and brands become legends. Ask the Cleveland Cavaliers‚ fans about the post-season, and it’s crystal clear that for all of their regular season success and highlights, it means nothing without post-season validation.

Post-season success connects a team to its fans, its community, and its business partners. Winning both deepens connection with loyal fans as well as brings new, casual sports fans into the franchise. For the Celtics, it reassures fans that the 2010 Celtics are driven to be Champions, just like the 17 Championship teams before them.

The success of the 2009/2010 Celtics team has virtually assured the organization of high renewal rates from season ticket holders, another sold out season at the Garden, and strong support from their numerous corporate sponsors and partners.

And in a sports crazed town like Boston, it also serves as a point of pride that its the Celtics who are occupying the front page of the sports section, dominating blogs and providing positive content for talk radio. There is a real buzz about this team, and it’s good for business.

As the marketing and advertising agency of the Boston Celtics for the past six seasons, a&g is thrilled to be a small part of this great franchise. We know the important impact that post-season success has on Celtics fans, the city of Boston, and the business success of the organization.

We’re looking forward to seeing Banner 18 in the rafters - go Green!

Foursquare just passed the million user mark with 40 million check-ins. This explosion of location-based social networking is generating a wealth of data that can be used for smarter marketing. With the availability of data, arises the need to integrate, synthesize and ultimately visualize this data to derive patterns and relationships and most importantly, insight.

Integrate & Synthesize

Often referred to as spatial intelligence, the ability to discover and analyze relationships using location as a dimension and integrating it with other business intelligence elements can lead to data nirvana. However, the biggest potential of location-based data is the insight that it can offer to what might happen in the future. (Feel like Nostradamus yet?)

Predicting patterns of behavior based on ‘check-in’ behavior can help marketers achieve what they have always strived for: being in front of the customer at the exact time the need exists. Think contextual marketing (but defining context became a challenge, think behavioral targeting (‘uniqueness’ in online behavior is debatable). How about trip-based segmentation and targeting based on Foursquare/Gowalla streams? Trip-based predictive segmentation is not new especially in the traditional DM world built on the RFM model. Imagine adding a content layer to that model, with attitudinal intent. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start talking about persona-based segmentation and then clustering various personas into communities based on the user’s paths and check-in trajectories.

Mary, the social butterfly

• Mayor of 20 clubs, bars

John, the ‘living-out-of-a-suitcase’

• Mayor of home airport and checked into 12 other airports

Jack, the responsible husband

• Bi-weekly trips to the grocery store, bank

Visualize

Powered with the ability to segment location-based data and its predictive possibilities, how do you manifest it into a compelling visual? Let’s look at of one of the most famous information design artifacts: Charles Minard’s representation of Napoleons retreat from Moscow in 1812 and understand how we can apply some of Tufte’s fundamental principles to location-based data visualization



More than 2 dimensions (multivariate)
Current location-based visualizations are map-based and some have attempted the geo-temporal dimensions. Austin Vicarious.ly‘s time-lapse visualization of check-ins during SXSW had two dimensions, time (temporal) and location (geo). On the other hand, Minard’s representation has multiple dimensions (army size, location, direction, time, temperature).

A multi-dimensional approach to location-based data visualization can be to integrate time, location, size (based on check-ins), pre-defined content clusters or segments, non-spatial attributes (financial, economic, competitive), predictive variables like propensity to check-in etc. The possibilities are endless.

Mix words/images/numbers
If an info-graphic can survive without the help of a key, it has done its job. Often times ‘content’ and ‘data’ are not uttered in the same sentence, because of the perception that data is ‘structured’ and content is ‘unstructured’. If the visualization can marry the two, the result of the insights can be far more than cursory.

The ultimate potential of location-based data and visualization is the ability to identify patterns, causality and relationships to formulate smarter strategies. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out for business intelligences providers, marketers who want their hands on this data, marketing services companies that will emerge and of course for Mary, the social butterfly who will be leaving much more than a digital footprint the next time she checks into her favorite club.

Knowing where something happens can often lead to knowing why it happens.