We've written quite a lot about how powerful social media can be as a tool to engage with your audience in meaningful ways, and this is a classic example of how it can be done right. By listening to their loving customers and responding personally in a creative and playful way, Starbucks has really shown that they take their customers wants and needs into consideration, even if they can't directly satisfy them. Plus, they reaped the benefit of the tons of buzz this promotion created.

Well played, @starbucks, well played!

Our solution incorporates advanced functionality including voiceover narration, video and Flash-based games to help users retain and recall information as well as streamlined navigation, bookmarking functionality, SCORM compliance and a post-training evaluation. The result is an effective WBT that speaks to the Audi brand and ensures that the deep knowledge of the brand is easily transferred from employee to customer. Here's a few screenshots of the final product:

We are excited to be underway with our second WBT project for Audi, creating a module for Audi TDI® and Alternative Fuels training. Stay tuned for more details.

What do you think? Are you ready?

In fact, here are two "official" versions of the poem:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November:
All the rest have thirty-one,
Except for February,
Which hath twenty-eight days clear,
And twenty-nine in each leap year.

Or

"Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
Which has but twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.

No wonder I'm fuzzy about leap year. Who could remember those last two stanzas? And it still doesn't say it has to be a year that is divisible by four...

Julius Caesar or rather Sosigenes, his astronomer, invented leap year in 45 BC. At that time the Roman Calendar had 355 days. So in order to keep the seasons and festivals even with the calendar, a 22nd or 23rd day was added every second year. Eventually, Pope Julian refined the calendar making leap day occur in years that are divisible by four. And Leap Day, is just a day to "leap" over.

So, for all of you "leaplings" who will have to celebrate on either February 28th or March 1st, here's a little ditty to help you celebrate.

Check back in 2012, when I get to recount how Leaplings celebrate their actual birthday.

I talked about The Sutter Group's use of social media as a tool to build awareness and establish thought leadership among our peers, our work on behalf of the BMW Car Club of America to engage BMW fans that are "on the fence" about membership or already members, and Dell's status as one of the best case studies out there for the power of social media engagement. They've used social media to take customer service to a new level, disseminate corporate news, cultivate innovative ideas and even to hawk hot deals on Dell products. As I told folks at the CRTC event, Dell has made as much as $6.5m on Twitter alone according to analysts.

Now all that said, you'll often hear me note that social media isn't the end-all, be-all in the marketing world (like HERE). As students of the power and importance of integrated marketing, we truly believe that social media needs to be a part of an overall marketing strategy. Working hand in hand with other efforts and mediums, it can be wildly effective in helping businesses connect with its consumers (and even increasing revenue).

Still think it's hype? Check out this article from AdAge about businesses using social media and reaping the rewards. And of course, don't hesitate to give us a shout if you're feeling lost in the woods. We've got you covered there!

His open letter actually received a response from a member of the user experience team at American Airlines explaining that, unfortunately, it's not their lack of abilities, but rather the sheer size of the company and numerous corporate layers and that inhibit them from delivering a positive user experience.

Sad. But true. It highlights a problem that we wrestle with often when clients come to us to deliver a new interactive experience for their business: Too many cooks in the kitchen. While at times we understand the need for more than one party within a company to be responsible for making design decisions, we also feel strongly that the best designs come from a clear, singular vision. This vision, combined with a solid understanding of user wants/needs, and an interactive design team adept at creating the best possible solution will always result in a stronger end product than anything that comes from design by committee.

One of the other more creative support mechanisms I've seen was passed along by our friends at BFFB. It's a website called Avatar for Haiti, and it's based on the premise of donating the price you'd pay to go see the film (again) in theaters to relief efforts instead (UNICEF). It's not that they're encouraging people not to see Avatar. They're just saying that if you've already seen it and are thinking about going again, maybe you can donate that money instead--and they're giving you an easy, seamless way to do it. Pretty creative, and impressive that they responded so quickly with the idea and the development of the site!

And finally, we wanted to give others a chance to voice their own pothole... All you need is a microphone, and whenever you speak, your pothole will move accordingly. Enjoy!

We're torn on this. On one hand, we have a deep-seated love and respect for print as a medium. After all, it's where we started back in 1987. That said there's something about holding a tangible printed piece in your hand that the digital media just can't convey. On the other hand, we're a full-service marketing firm with a serious command of interactive media and we love exploring ways that we can use new technologies to communicate our clients' brands (and hey, who knows, maybe yours someday...).

Is it possible to be both a little sad and positively thrilled at the same time? That's where we are right now.

Dell recently took the idea of using interactive and social media even further by creating an online effort allowing customers to contribute their ideas for how to improve Dell products and services. The effort is branded Dell IdeaStorm and is centered around a website at ideastorm.com, but also includes a Twitter account (@IdeaStorm) and presumably a PR push and support in other Dell promotional materials as well, not to mention Dell's countless other Twitter accounts. The IdeaStorm website gives customers an easy way to contribute their ideas and voice any feedback or frustrations they might have, but also allows them to promote and demote the ideas that others have contributed that they feel strongly about.

The key here is that today's consumers want to have a voice. In order to have a successful brand (particularly consumer-facing) it's crucial to allow consumers to take ownership of that brand. Dell does a great job with this branded, integrated effort because it both allows customers to have their voices heard, but also acts as a vehicle for Dell to learn what consumers want. The knowledge they are able to take from this will not only help them in new product development, but it will help them create a successful, consumer-focused brand.

Shameless plug: There's a good chance a similar strategy could be taken with your brand. Interested in the possibilities of using interactive and social media to better communicate with your consumers? The Sutter Group would love to show you the possibilities. Contact me at garret[at]sutter-group[dot]com or on Twitter at @SutterGroup.

In doing some initial research on subject lines, we came across a great article written by Mailchimp, one of the leaders in low-cost email marketing services.  They have some great metrics on which subject line strategies work, and which don't. You'll be surprised by the results, which you can read in their entirety HERE.

Mailchimp is a great service, especially for small businesses that need to bring their email marketing to a new level of sophistication at a low-cost; however, for our larger clients that have more robust email marketing needs, we typically recommend Blue Sky Factory, a company located in nearby Baltimore. Blue Sky Factory is by far the hottest email service provider in the industry, providing an acclaimed, feature-laden platform and beyond amazing service. Their platform, Publicaster, does things no other email platform can do. These folks just plain know email better than anyone. Make sure to check out their website, and follow them on Twitter!

• What is the government's view of "the Cloud" from the inside and the inherent challenges associated with it?
• What can industry do to potentially solve these challenges within the public sector by helping it adapt these technologies/ trends?

The event will feature several CIO panelists who will focus on:

• Emerging technologies/ trends (VMWARE, SaaS, VDI, etc)
• Challenges (Security/ DIACAP)
• Opportunities (Apps.gov.) or what opportunities may exist within this FY(10) within the agency.

The event will be held from 7:30 to 9:30am at L-3 Communications - 2720 Technology Drive, Conference Center, Annapolis Jct., MD 20701. You can sign up here. If any of you would like to go and aren't a member, I'd love to get you in for free. Just send me a note and ask me how!

Rather than preach to you about why you should be engaging, I figured I'd take a moment to get you started. A logical first step is to evaluate the landscape to identify opportunities to forge a presence. While there are many tools and methodologies that can be used to assess the situation there are a few in particular that will give you a broad overview of where your brand, product/service or industry is being discussed. We'd recommend starting with Google Blog Search, Twitter Search, as well as a new tool, Scoopler.

Google Blog Search and Twitter Search provide real-time search results for their respective services, allowing you to find out a multitude of things including where your brand is being talked about, whether your competitors' brands are being talked about, the quantity of conversation around your industry, opportunities for you to address problems that your company may be able to solve, and more. Scoopler, currently in beta, is another tool that we like for evaluating the social media landscape because it allows for real-time searches that include blogs and Twitter as well as other social media outlets like Flickr, YouTube and Digg. It even shows popular links that contain your search term.

Once you've used these tools to search for keywords relevant to your industry and/or business, you'll have a much better sense of the quantity and quality of the opportunities you'll have to engage in a fruitful social media campaign. While the resources above aren't nearly a comprehensive list, hopefully they've given you a few ideas on where to begin. Please feel free to contact us if you're interested in learning more about how you can harness the power of consumer conversation for your brand.

The app is called "iBurgh" and it is billed as the first mobile application for city government. It allows iPhone users to snap a picture of an eyesore, nuisance, crime, etc in the City of Pittsburgh, attach a quick note and send the geotagged information to the city's 311 operators. No muss, no fuss, and this will undoubtedly get citizens to engage with their city much more than in the past. iBurgh is available for the iPhone through this LINK.

The article got us thinking about the possibilities for an application like this. While it's currently pretty simple, the iBurgh application could easily be expanded to include other cool and useful features like city maps, weather reports, restaurant locators, parking garage locators, traffic reports, bus schedules, etc, etc. The possibilities are limitless, and with reasonable development costs, not out of the question for a city like Pittsburgh (or DC, or Baltimore, or Annapolis...).

If you're a local or state official that happens to be reading this and the idea is appealing to you, but you're not sure how to make it happen (or how much it might cost), we can help. Yep, we do that too!

Via engadget.

Our team accepted the challenge and recently launched a great temporary landing page for the 40,000 square foot Harrisburg, Pennsylvania club. The site establishes a fresh, new visual brand identity reflective of the personality of the club and includes a revamped logo that preserves some of the existing equity the brand had accumulated throughout the years. While the site is simple and will be fully developed into a robust, dynamic and information-rich site in time, this temporary landing page succinctly makes the case for Central Penn as one of the area's premiere health and aquatic centers, and invites interested visitors to sign up for a free 3-day "wellness pass" by completing a form that further qualifies prospects for Central Penn membership staff.

Visit the site HERE, and stay tuned for more great work from The Sutter Group on behalf of Central Penn Health & Fitness.

The list, compiled by Six Revisions, a weblog that provides practical, useful information for the modern standards-compliant web designer and developer, is billed as a "look at some impressive Twitter profile designs that stand out from the micro-blogging site's millions of users."

Feel free to browse the link and check out some of the other great designs, and check out our Twitter profile for yourself at http://www.twitter.com/suttergroup (make sure you're following us!). And as always, if you are looking for help making sure all your marketing channels are properly branded and on-message (even social media), please don't hesitate to contact me - garret[at]sutter-group[dot]com.

Among the conclusions she drew was that the time is NOW for government contractors to invest in building their brand to differentiate themselves from the competition. With competition tighter than ever and new firms emerging almost daily, the only firms that are able to elevate themselves from the fray are those with brands that differentiate them in a meaningful way.

We couldn't agree more-After all, the parties responsible for evaluating proposals and choosing vendors at government agencies are people too, so just like everyone else they're motivated to choose a firm that has a brand that speaks to them.

The lesson? Define what it is about your company that stands out in terms of what your customer is seeking (as the author notes, it's not your disadvantaged status...). Then engage a creative team to execute that positioning throughout your branded materials. That's the recipe for a successful government contracting business.

The fundraiser will be held at the Kenwood Golf and Country Club in Bethesda, and will include lunch, hors d’oeuvres, dinner, open bar, live and silent auctions, contests, prizes, and more!  Last year, the event brought over 100 people together, including politicians, scientists, sponsors, and donors from around the world.

Register today at www.GolfforaCure.org or call 1-800-321-CURE (2873) for more information. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to join their Facebook group HERE and follow them on Twitter HERE.

If selected, the plea and associated images are added to the Intern Hero blog at http://internhero.com/ and muffins are sent in return. It’s a pretty cool campaign that has been getting a lot of play, thanks in part to word-of-mouth marketing on Twitter, Facebook and blogs like this one at The Sutter Group. On top of that, we can’t imagine this was expensive to put together.

If you’re interested in creating a viral stunt inspired by this one, or something completely different, give us a call. The Sutter Group knows viral marketing, and would love to help your message spread like wildfire!