Westfield, the shopping centre developer, has launched an East End-themed Facebook competition to mark next month’s opening of its £1.45bn shopping complex next to the 2012 London Olympics site in Stratford.

The competition, created by Story Worldwide and entitled ‘Create your Take’, invites users on Westfield’s Facebook page to share their opinions about “East End classic” events, songs or locations.

Users have to upload imagery associated with East End classics, which include the song ‘Lily the Pink’ and the Hoxton Fin haircut.

The user whose post receives the most “Likes” will receive a cash prize of up to £10,000, depending on how many votes it receives.

Spot prizes from Westfield retailers will also be awarded to participants throughout the competition, which runs until 22 September.

Westfield has also launched a Westfield Stratford City website to showcase the area’s history and diversity and provide information about the shopping centre.

Users can upload stories of the area to an interactive map on the site.

Westfield Stratford City will be the largest shopping centre in Europe and opens to the public on 13 September.

Its two external pedestrianised streets will form the main thoroughfare into the Stratford base of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

In June, CBS Outdoor was awarded the £100m outdoor ad contact for the shopping centre.

In an interview that originally appeared on the Luxury Society website, Jim Boulton explains why marketing is no longer in the hands of brands and how the consumer has come to power in the post-advertising age.

The first in a series of conversations with our Corporate Members, where will explore and discuss the future of the luxury industry, we spoke with Jim Boulton, the UK based partner of global content marketing agency Story Worldwide.

After a six year career as a management consultant, Jim ‘acted on a niggling suspicion that the Internet was the most sigificant invention since the bicycle’ and embarked on a Masters Degree at the Hypermedia Research Centre. Following his studies, alongside chief creative office Lars Hemming Jorgensen, Jim established Large, a highly successful Internet consultancy that went on to deliver benchmark websites for some of the world’s top brands, including the groundbreaking Bang & Olufsen site and a series of audacious sites for Agent Provocateur.

In 2007 Large merged with Story Worldwide to create the world’s first post-advertising agency, an agency that believes consumers exist in an opt-in culture, where the only way to get positive attention is to create great media – desired content that is relevant, informing, entertaining and on-brand.

The ethos of Story, as per CEO Kirk Cheyfitz, is that ‘the only messages anyone will see and hear, are the messages they choose to see and hear’. How then as a marketing agency, can you continue to stay relevant?

Today, the only way brands can connect with customers and prospects is by genuinely adding value to their lives, either by providing a useful service or by telling rewarding stories. Brands have no choice. Messages that aren’t valued will be ignored. Traditional marketing agencies struggle here, as they start with the message the brand wants to communicate and then work marketing ideas around them. We turn this on its’ head.

Our starting point is that of a journalist, first and foremost, we are on the side of the audience. We actively listen to consumers and discover the types and styles of content they are interested in and then see where, and if, the brand message best fits. By offering content that wins an audience’s attention and, crucially, stimulates sharing and positive conversations we create an intelligent system, which shows what content people respond to and informs the editorial strategy for those individuals’ peers.

Click here to read the rest of the interview at Luxury Society.

WGN America to Air “How I Met Your Mother” Social Media Campaign and Mother’s Day Marathon

NEW YORK, April 27, 2011 – It’s going to be legendary! WGN America invites fans of How I Met Your Mother to share their Mother’s Day messages using social media with a chance to see their post on-air. Viewers can tweet and post their How I Met Your Mother’s Day message on WGN America’s Facebook page and WGN America’s HIMYM Twitter feed using the #HIMYMothersDay hash tag.

Beginning May 3rd, fan messages will run on WGN America in on-screen snipes in the 9pm E /6pm W broadcast of How I Met Your Mother throughout the week, and culminate in the mother of all marathons… a How I Met Your Mother’s Day Marathon on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 8th, which will feature 6 HIMYM episodes from 7-10pm E / 4-7pm W.

Earlier this year, WGN America launched a social media campaign for How I Met Your Mother using Facebook and Twitter to great success. In just under 2 months, WGN America’s HIMYM fan page has amassed over 150,000 followers.

“How I Met Your Mother’s Day is the first of many hybrid social & on-air campaigns where we will engage ‘Super Fans’ of How I Met Your Mother, as well as other WGN America off-network comedies, and invite them to use WGN America as their own platform to showcase their love for and fandom of these shows.” said Josh Richman Vice President of Marketing for WGN America.

As part of WGN America’s social media strategy, the network has partnered with Story Worldwide, a global content marketing agency, to help create and curate the ideal fan experience and drive tune-in to WGN America on air.

HIMYM currently airs on WGN America Tuesday through Friday (9pm E /6pm W,) Saturday (11:30pm E /8:30pm W) and Sunday (7pm E /4pm W.)

In the coming months, WGN America plans to expand the HIMYM footprint and to develop separate social media campaigns for our new programming coming in September, including 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Futurama.

ABOUT WGN AMERICA:
WGN America is everywhere America calls home. A broad entertainment network and destination for audiences across America, WGN America (also available in HD) is part of Tribune Broadcasting Company, and is nationally distributed via cable, satellite and telco with entertainment programming consisting of cable exclusives, first-run programs, blockbuster movies and live sports. For program schedules or additional information please visit www.wgnamerica.com

Article originally appeared on February 23rd, 2011 on the Association of Publishing Agencies site

Last week Story Worldwide unveiled Endless Vacation, an iPad magazine app for RCI, the timeshare vacation exchange network. Covering destinations around the world, the app offers “alluring photographs and intriguing content” to inspire readers to travel, as well as information about what RCI affiliated resorts and their benefits.

Endless Vacation might be among the first travel iPad magazine apps from a customer publishing agency, but it certainly won’t be the last.

The iPad enables publishers to provide inspirational, informative and interactive content to travellers in such a way that connects with their desire to explore, discover and remember. The way in which the iPad itself acts as a kind of light box also makes it an ideal way for people to look at images – a key element of travel magazines.

There are already several other branded iPad travel magazines. American Express Publishing digital take on its US Travel + Leisure magazine features the all of the content and formatting as the print versions with a couple of additional benefits such as video guides by travel experts, photo galleries and slideshows, in addition to travel advice, booking and buying links and audio reviews.

Dutch airline Lufthansa’s in-flight magazine has also made its way to the iPad. The free app, Lufthansa Magazin, gives readers access to the magazine regardless of whether they are flying or not. Following the current “template” of many iPad magazines it takes advantage of multimedia technology and offers videos, photo galleries and animations. Its December issue featured a film on the airline’s A380 with a 360-degree interactive cockpit tour – certain to attract the airplane aficionados around.

There is also a growing number of travel magazines from mainstream publishers. One of the best iPad magazines so far is Trvl magazine: a free magazine from an independent Dutch publisher that delivers compelling content and striking images. Each issue or ‘article’ concentrates on one destination, combining a couple of articles with gorgeous photography. And since readers can choose which ‘articles’ to download, instead of getting one vast monthly issue of which only parts is of interest, the user experience is exemplary with great shareability on social network, making it is a joy to flick through.

Although not strictly a travel app The Guardian’s Eyewitness app; the digitalisation of a very popular Guardian feature; features many travel-style images. The app was intended to “deliver a photographic fest, featuring the world’s most distinctive visual content, as curated by [their] award-winning photographic team.”

Another very popular travel app National Geographic Traveler aims to “bring readers to destinations without leaving their living rooms” and without the limitations of print taking the coverage of travel to a new level. Each issue, which users have to pay for, features exclusive photography that is not included in the print edition, as well as video and audio of the journeys and animated maps and information graphic.

It’ll be interesting to see which travel brands will be next to harness the iPad’s unique features.

Article originally appeared on November 10th, 2010 on the Wall Street Journal – Tech Europe blog.
by Ben Rooney, Technology Editor, Wall Street Journal Europe

As part of the mis-named Internet Week Europe, the first ever “archaeological dig” of the internet is being unveiled in London Wednesday.

The “archaeological dig” is being driven by Jim Boulton of digital content agency Story Worldwide, to highlight the loss of our internet history. The “dig” is actually an exhibition of early web designs recovered from designer’s hard drives, some of which are displayed on the original machines.

Running from Wednesday 10th November to Friday 12th November, the exhibition also includes film montages of interviews with the people behind those sites on display.

“This intense digital erosion of the first incarnations of web design has meant that with every update or site relaunch, the previous version is buried in a digital graveyard,” says Mr. Boulton. “As servers and hard drives come to the end of their lives, so will the opportunity to restore and resurrect the sites they house.”

Perhaps, but there is the Internet Archive to help out or the rather more obscure system called Memento.

It is all just a touch contrived but behind the rather grandiose statements there is a genuine issue — that of archiving digital content. Ironically while we live in an age of ubiquitous data, it is ephemeral. We can access information from Ancient Rome easier than we can from computer data stored only a few decades ago.

The “archaeological dig” should prove a bit of fun, even if only to make us all feel good about how far we have come.

Article originally appeared on September 10th, 2010 on the Campaign web site
by Sarah Kimberley

Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen-Cilag is launching its first social media campaign to raise awareness of people living with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

The animated film, ‘Living with ADHD’, was created by Story Worldwide and is shot through the eyes of a child living with the condition. It blends scenes of the child’s day with educational facts that dispel previous misconceptions of the condition.

The film is part of a strategic and targeted awareness campaign by the pharmaceutical company and is aimed at those living with or treating the condition on a daily basis.

The film is available on YouTube and on a dedicated microsite livingwithadhd.co.uk. Viewers are encouraged to share the film with friends.

Jon King, Story Worldwide, UK managing director, said: “The film’s been designed to kickstart a proper debate about the condition, as part of a wider integrated communications programme, and does it in a way that’s fun and interesting to watch – so that parents, teachers and doctors can help make sure that children with ADHD get the help and support they need. Hopefully, we’ve achieved that.”

Article originally appeared on August 6th, 2010 on the PSFK web site

Advertising And Design Agencies To Adopt Villages

Encourage every ad/design agency in the Western World to adopt a village in need. The agency would simply provide design and printing of posters and print outs that convey healthcare information, dosage information, numbers that can be texted for information, locations of CHW’s, reminders to register births and more. The process will be managed via UNICEF and they will deliver the packages of posters/print outs on a regular basis throughout villages.

Participating agencies receive a mark that they can show on their website acknowledging that they have adopted a village for UNICEF. This would be a very low cost contribution for agencies. The work they are do will be shown on a communal website with information about the villages.

Some posters could be in the Burma Shave style to illustrate messages in an easy to understand manner.

From posters in town/village centers, to hand outs, flyers and much more, ad/design agencies can use their skills and equipment to easy produce these materials and help UNICEF to spread much needed information.

Agencies would simply bundle up the artwork and hand over to UNICEF who can then utilize their distribution network and ensure they all get to where they need to go and are distributed.

UNICEF’s regional centers could also be outfitted with simple print on demand technology for when additional posters/print outs are needed.

Agencies can also go one step further and sponsor some additional GSM cell phones for their villages to ensure communications are kept between CHW’s, village leaders and UNICEF.

PSFK’s Future of Health Report shines a light on innovation occurring within the health and wellness space around the world. This document brings together both literal and lateral inspiration to provide a framework within which businesses can begin to contemplate the issues facing UNICEF and community health workers. These issues include limited resources, technological constraints, lack of health education, and limited access to timely and relevant health and wellness information.

In an effort to start this exciting conversation, PSFK challenged advertising and design agencies from around the world to react to the Future of Health report. They were tasked with developing concepts in the form of products, services or communications that addressed one or more of the needs set forth by UNICEF. The end result of this initial phase of ideation is more than 40 innovative concepts.

The following ideas are from Story Worldwide. The agency has responded with eight ideas; one concept, three products and four services. The full response is available for download on request here.

Article originally appears in the August 4th, 2010 online edition of Advertising Age

by Simon Dumenco

For this latest edition of Dumenco’s Media People — an ongoing series of conversations with media grandees — I interviewed longtime print guy Keith Blanchard, most famous for being the founding editor in chief of the U.S. edition of Maxim.

Blanchard was hired by puckish publishing legend Felix Dennis, whose original Maxim in the U.K. had already rocked the glossy world by popularizing the cheeky “lad mag” sensibility. Today Blanchard is North American executive creative director at Story Worldwide. I spoke to him about leaving a career in edit for life on the agency side. The interview took place at Story headquarters in Midtown Manhattan and was continued over lunch and supplemented by e-mail. What follows is a condensed version of a much longer conversation.

Dumenco: First, remind me how long were you at Dennis Publishing.

Blanchard: I was there for eight years, all told. Fall of ’96 was when we started working on the launch issue of Maxim, which came out on April Fool’s Day of ’97. I left in fall of ’04.

Dumenco: As a longtime company guy, there from basically the start of the U.S. operations, has it been surreal for you to see the rapid decline of Dennis? [Three of Dennis Publishing's U.S. titles -- men's magazines Maxim and Stuff, and music magazine Blender -- were sold to Alpha Media in 2007. Stuff was shut down later that year, Blender in March 2009. Dennis held on to the original British edition of Maxim, but shuttered its print edition last year, converting it to a web-only title.]

Blanchard: It is surreal, and kind of sad. In some ways maybe the company just burned too much wick too fast. Suddenly we were 300 employees instead of 50, and hundreds of millions of dollars instead of 10 million dollars, and we were all a little bit unprepared. Back in the day, Maxim was as big as Cosmopolitan — the same book size and same circulation. It was a very, very parallel type magazine; we were doing projects together, like this great sex survey, and [Cosmo Editor in Chief] Kate White and I became friends. Today, Cosmo is still a massive brand — and Maxim is not.

Dumenco: And Stuff and Blender are dead and buried.

Blanchard: What I would have done — if it had been me advising the purchasers — is make Blender online-only and fold Stuff back into Maxim. Stuff was launched specifically to fend off FHM, and it did that. Mission accomplished.

Dumenco: Yeah, I remember FHM seemed to be doing well in the U.K., and word got out that a U.S. edition was launching. Dennis was put on the offensive and launched its second U.S. lad magazine, Stuff. What did FHM stand for again? I can never remember.

Blanchard: Nobody could. It was really a terrible brand.

Dumenco: Seriously, what was it?

Blanchard: For Him Magazine. It’s always a good idea to name your magazine after a demographic sampling. [laughing] Remember Swing, for the “swing generation”? And in England they were launching a post-Maxim, a magazine you would graduate into after you got too old for Maxim, which was called, like, After or Over — literally, it was something like that, that made sense only to the ad-sales department. Just insane.

Dumenco: MFS — Maxim for Seniors.

Blanchard: Exactly. [laughing] Oh, I remember: It was called Later. That’s it. You know … for your later years.

Dumenco: That’s heartbreaking. [laughing] Resignation Magazine. For when you’ve all but given up!

Blanchard: Right, right, right. [laughing] One Foot in the Grave Magazine. OFITG.

Dumenco: You’re going to make me cry. [laughing] OK, well, let’s move on. I know that after Dennis you did projects and consulting for Hearst Magazines and for Bauer, among other companies, but let’s fast-forward past your adventures and misadventures in the magazine world to Story. What’s the story of Story?

Blanchard: Story’s sort of an amalgam of a few different companies. It’s about five years old, but some of the parts are 20. There’s a traditional custom-publishing company and there’s a digital agency in the U.K. and a digital agency in Connecticut and they all came together to become Story. Story was founded by five gentlemen: Simon Kelly, Kirk Cheyfitz, Oscar Mraz, Jon King and Jim Small. So it’s like, the ad guy, the finance guy, the operations guy, etc., combined forces to form this company. The founding philosophy of it is the interesting part — it’s what attracted me to this company — because it’s all about what happens next after the broadcast age.

The idea is, we can see the evidence piling up all around us that traditional advertising is ineffective today: People aren’t watching TV ads, people are not clicking on banner ads, nobody wants ads anymore. Advertisers have gotten more “in your face” — with pop-ups and other unavoidable ads, like pre-roll before you can watch your video, but everybody hates that even more. So this is a company that’s founded on the idea of engaging audiences, instead of just “reaching” them, with good content they actually want.

Dumenco: So, content as marketing — that’s the idea behind the ‘Story’ name?

Blanchard: Yes. We tell stories for advertisers. There’s academic research that shows stories really resonate with people — they’re what people remember. There’s a lot of information flowing over you all the time, but the things you recall tend to be those that we broadly think of as a “story.”

Dumenco: A narrative.

Blanchard: Exactly. So, for marketers, it’s about asking, “What are the stories that you have the authority, the credibility, to tell?” And “What do people want to hear, that they’ll accept from you and that they kind of can’t get from anywhere else?” Because these days there are just so many options for audiences to get information that if you are not operating at that core interest level, you’re just going to be dismissed or not seen at all.

Dumenco: The custom publishing part of this business, how long was that around?

Blanchard: Twenty years, right from the start.

Dumenco: Well, custom publishing as one of the DNA strands of the company that eventually became Story makes sense, because narrative-as-marketing was always the idea behind custom magazines.

Blanchard: Totally right. Simon Kelly, one of our founders, is also a founder of the Custom Publishing Council, and they gave him a lifetime achievement award. Story does custom publishing for the likes of RCI, the world’s largest timeshare vacation exchange network. We do their print magazine, which comes out four times a year, and we also do e-zines that come between the print issues. For Lexus we do a series of print magazines, a website, iPhone and iPad content, events. We recently signed with Holland America to do a new print title for them. We do maybe 10 titles in total around the world, and there’s usually something beyond print for each.

Dumenco: Your job at Story — was the position created for you?

Blanchard: Right. There was no North American creative director before I got here.

Dumenco: I’m sorry you don’t have South America, too.

Blanchard: Some day. [laughing] We have three U.S. offices: New York, Connecticut and Seattle, and a couple of satellite offices around the world.

Dumenco: So a potential client comes to Story, intrigued by the fact that there’s a veteran mass-consumer-media guy on board. What’s happens next? What are you selling them? What are you saying they should do? “Tell stories”?

Blanchard: The basic philosophy is, first listen to your consumers and find out what they really want. I think it does make a difference having experience on the consumer-facing side, where you do live or die based on audience — how well are your cover lines being received, your stories, your videos, your shows, whatever it is that you produce. There seems to be a lot of advertising work that pleases clients and gets commissioned and wins awards and nobody ever asks, “But did it work?” There’s that famous quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “Corporate marketing represents the last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America.”

What editorially-minded folks like myself can maybe bring to the table is that sensibility of starting with what people want to hear instead of just starting with what we want to say, which I think is the classic marketing pose. And constantly asking, “Did this move the needle? Let’s check.”

Dumenco: Tell me a story about a major client.

Blanchard: OK, Chrysler engaged us on the social-media front to relaunch their Dodge blog, Red Letter Dodge. Soon that became also launching a Ram blog, opening up Twitter feeds and Facebook and Flickr channels, and doing active response for issues that would come up — basically funneling questions and concerns to exactly the right person on the client side, for fast answers.

The brands were changing and management was changing, and everything had to move at top speed. One week the head of Dodge was going to go and test the next Viper, the 2010 Viper, on a test track at Laguna Seca, and they thought they might break a record. We got a call on a Tuesday — the next Monday was the test drive — and they asked, basically, “What can you do for this effort in social media?” So we invented this kind of social-media hub where reporters and bloggers could tweet in their questions and we would take them to Chrysler executives on the scene at the test track and get replies. We were uploading video updates all day long, and the Twitter stream updated every five minutes. So that was a very complex, real-time kind of engagement. Fun, high-wire stuff.

Dumenco: They broke the record, right?

Blanchard: They did break the record, which helped. Traffic on Red Letter Dodge went up sixfold, and there was all sorts of pick-up from auto blogs.

I think essentially it’s about rolling up your sleeves and saying, “We’re going to engage our audience, we’re going to answer questions and comments in something like real time, and we’re going to look for opportunities to tell positive stories.”

Dumenco: And dealing with any negative sentiment that’s out there, I suppose? Like, when people bash a brand in blog comments.

Blanchard: Right. We created this set of protocols so that when a negative comment comes in, before it can catch fire, we pass it onto the appropriate person at Dodge with a proposed response. Because the message that the social-media world likes to propagate is that if corporations won’t respond to us, it’s because they have something to hide, it’s because they don’t care about us. You have to respond.

Clients are only really comfortable speaking from a controllable broadcast perspective, and it’s hard to just jump into this new pool where other people share the control. They always start by thinking — hoping, really — that they can use social media as another channel to push PR messages out. That’s a broadcast mentality. It’s hard to wrench corporate marketers’ heads around the notion that the fact that people are commenting on your things, even negatively, is not a threat — or, at least, it’s also an opportunity. You can now literally read the minds of your customers, so what are you going to do with that knowledge?

Dumenco: I think a lot of corporate marketers don’t take the term “conversation” literally enough. If consumers try to engage you in a conversation, positive or negative, they’re not looking for a clinical, corporate, canned response. They want something that’s, you know, conversational. It’s about a human connection.

Blanchard: Exactly. Corporate blogs should be sort of as uncorporate as they dare. They need to publish interesting stuff that’s useful to their audience. It can’t be just about trying to sell cars to them: They know you sell cars. They’re enthusiasts, so talk about road trips and music and pop culture — and by the way, it’s OK to talk about the new Lamborghini because it’s not really competing with your Nitro; it’s not going to hurt sales to talk about it.

We’re already living in an age in which everyone is potentially a publisher. You have your Twitter followers, I have my Facebook feed, etc. If you’re a corporation and you speak in a corporate voice — if you’re still thinking press-release style — you’re not going to be able to compete because there are so many interesting, authentic voices out there.

Dumenco: Give me an example of the offline work Story does for clients.

Blanchard: Well, Ilori is a good example — they’re a high-end sunglass maker, part of Luxxotica. We sat down with them and figured out what their brand was all about, and then we did some consumer research and figured out that people were getting intimidated coming into the stores. You go into a sunglasses store or an eyeglass store and you’ll see all kinds of racks of frames and it’s like a wall of eyes staring at you, so you walk back out again. So part of the solution was these fun, inviting little written-card displays that could be read almost kind of museum-style as you wander in the store.

Dumenco: Telling stories in print, but in a retail environment.

Blanchard: Exactly. And it worked — their sales rose 94% in ’09 vs. ’08. We also did a physical print magazine — a spiral-bound little beautiful book showcasing some of their frames — that they’d give away in the stores. Not everything has to be digital; we find it’s usually about simple solutions, extremely well-executed.

Dumenco: Do you ever think, I used to edit Maxim — I don’t want to tell a story, I want to tell fart jokes?

Blanchard: I can still tell fart jokes. [laughing] Nobody wants to hear them now.

~~~

Simon Dumenco is the “Media Guy” media columnist for Advertising Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.

by Lynette Chiang

“Hey, seen that latest GM ad … ?”

I’m standing in the train with weekend warriors, and the conversation is about ads. Usually seated, suited and sullen during their daily commute, today they’re hanging off the pole in biking gear, yammering about the 30 seconds they pressed MUTE on last night.

“I know they turned themselves around, but the ad’s enough to make me throw up,” says Fred.

He’s not talking about a wonky car ad made with switchback-cam, but the one starring Ed Whitacre walking and talking about GM. As Slate pointed out, featuring the Big Cheese is getting popular.

“Hey, what about the ad with the blonde in the suit who floats out between two panels talking about ‘the new oil’?”

Collective groans.

From loitering in adland with intent I know one thing: ads are expensive. Big ass humming trailers, 500 watt lights, gourmet lunch spreads on the pavement, lots of people running around with clipboards, board meetings, claustrophobic studios, Powerpoint rationales, and loads of overwrought revisions. And lots and lots of hangers on.

What’s the end result? Millions of dollars later, something roundly lampooned by consumers standing in trains.

“It’s like throwing a mil off the top of a roof,” said one straphanger.

Go to your laptop and Google “ads are boring.”

As the hits show, people are annoyed by Blandads– bland, boring ads.

Even worse, people are annoyed by the heightened volume of ads– go and google “TV ads too loud” and marvel at the results.

Why do companies continue to commit the felony of blasting us with blandads?

I’m not sure who is in charge of the master volume control, but as far as the ad itself goes, the single most useful test I learned in adland was the “Do I Give a ****?” test.

Put more politely (for ‘merican audiences), it’s the “Do I Care?” test.

It’s really simple. Forget research groups sitting in boardrooms plied with chip’n'dip and the lure of forty bucks. This test is best done by the CEO, and the filing clerk, and maybe one other person standing in front of you in the bagel line. How about the janitor (didn’t someone in a modest role suggest an extra hole in the top of the baby powder can would sell more product?)

So, Mr. CEO, get your team to put together a typical segment of ad-smattered evening viewing with your proposed ad inserted in the mix. Put on your slippers and robe, grab a beer glass or soda.

Sit comfortably in front of TV. Hold the remote in one hand, finger poised over the MUTE or CHANNEL button–just like us, your customers. You’re not the CEO. You don’t work for your company.

Now pay close attention to the ads as they pop up. For each one, ask yourself,
“DO I CARE?”

When your own proposed ad comes up, be honest now. Ask yourself,
“DO I CARE?”

If the answer is no, you better believe that none of us will either. Not only will we not care, we will diss you mercilessly and mock your product while standing in bagel lines at barbecues and ballgames all over the country. We will hit the MUTE or CHANNEL button so hard it will break and Radio Shack China will be rejoicing.

Don’t forget to apply the “DO I CARE?” test to music and voice over too–the same ole same ole sound of an ad will not make us turn to face the TV as we raid the fridge.

So what kind of ad should you be doing these days, if at all?

According to Storyworldwide, an agency that clearly understands we’re all tired of ads in their present form:

Intrusion is dead. High impact, engaging content is the only way to reach ever more cynical consumers.

The clearly fed-up-with-ads CEO Kirk Cheyfitz expands on this.

So how to create “high impact, engaging content”?

And I’m not talking about the zillions of lame e-articles clogging the Web, created purely for raking in as many Google Ad-cents as possible. I’m talking about content that people want to read and can’t help remembering.

First, apply the “Do I Care?” test.

Second, look what’s happening on either side of the commercial breaks.

The wildly successful Undercover Boss is a great example. People loved seeing the boss step down the corporate machine and Just Like Us, crawl down on his knees and scrub, baby, scrub.

What a story–and an incredible non-ad for that waste management company – which memorably calls itself Waste Management. Despite the formulaic tv-land delivery it is content you can believe in – especially when they included a drone or two who looked like he wasn’t quite with the newly enlightened boss’s program.

Now imagine if instead, they’d featured the CEO floating out between two digital panels with hands clasped, simpering about the company’s latest eco-techniques? Hello, fridge, who carpeted the cheese?

What makes great ad content these days is a whole other blog post, but suffice to say I have encountered few oddballs who relish blandads, and absolutely no one who likes them blasted at a louder volume than the surrounding program. So if you’re going to shout at us, you’d better be good.

Try the “Who gives a ****?” test on your ad today. You’ll be so glad–or maybe mad–that you did.

Former adwriter the Galfromdownunder insists the most convincing ads are the little anecdotes broadcast at a normal speaking volume while standing in a line for bagels or the restroom or in a subway car. The shirt touts of Asia are of course, experts at this cheap, non-intrusive, centuries-old advertising technique.

My Latino Voice Speaks with Chiqui Cartagena, Story Worldwide

We visited with Chiqui Cartagena, Senior Vice President, Story Worldwide Agency, to catch up on her latest career adventure and her journey, as a journalist, filmmaker, book author, marketer and inspiring Latina role model.

Chiqui has worn many hats throughout her successful career. As a journalist, she helped develop and launch the popular People en Español magazine. As a fan of film, she founded her own film production company when she was 27 years old (and has written several Latino scripts that she hopes to produce in the future.) Chiqui then became a successful Hispanic segment marketer, leading efforts for major companies such as Sony.

Her marketing book, “Latino Boom,” is a must-have manual for marketers seeking to succeed in reaching and engaging the Hispanic segment.

Chiqui has also learned that balance in life is important and is involved in projects outside of the “office.” One such effort is the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in NYC (Chiqui sits on their Board.)

The festival runs June 3 – June 13th at the School of Visual Arts in Chelsea and includes many Latino stories (so don’t miss it!)

Watch our interview with Chiqui, where she candidly talks about her heritage, her career, her success and what being Latina means to her.