double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

Post By
Sean Fenlon

Merriam-Webster’s Word Of The Year 2007 = Sub-prime

Merriam-Webster’s Word Of The Year 2008 = Bailout

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/25/national/main4632824.shtml

What will the word of the year be in 2009?

Please use the comments to go on record with your prediction.

I predict two words — one begins with a T and one begins with an F — but I’ll resist disclosing them until a few others have chimed in.

SPF

Post By
Sean Fenlon

Everyone at DoublePositive is excited by the addition of Casey Cook to our team.

The news is all over Google already:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&fkt=572&fsdt=8037&q=%22Casey+Cook%22+doublepositive&aq=f&oq=

Here’s the link to the official press release:

http://www.doublepositive.com/media/news/article.aspx?articleid=153&zoneid=1

Welcome aboard Casey!

SPF

Post By
Brad Foutz

I have been using twitter now for about 3 weeks. I heard about it several years ago. When I checked into it for the first time and read some of the tweets out at that time, I couldn’t understand what the point was. Especially after reading a couple of them that said, “in the car driving up the 101 to San Fran” and “I just walked into Starbucks at Union Square” I was very doubtful about the future of this technology. But over the years I have been hearing more and more about the uses for business which grabbed my attention. Having network security training, I am still wondering how you can have meaningful business updates in twitter without compromising business security whether that be network or insider sales data. Although from a marketing prospective twitter is a free way of updating the world on new products or services. Twitter can create a buzz about these products or services just like a viral video does with YouTube. Here is an interesting example of the use of twitter at ad:tech in New York a couple of months ago.

This is a picture of the screen at the entrance to the conference that is displaying what people were saying about ad:tech in twitter. If you put @adtech in the tweet then it would show up on this screen.
Pretty cool.

Here is another use for twitter although not for business but the programming behind this could be used for updating twitter for some other business reason (for example updating the sales dept. on new client numbers on a flat screen in the office). Although these numbers would be available to the world, simply putting up a number may be cryptic enough to the world but meaningful to the sales staff.


Here is another interesting video about relationship building with twitter. It also gives some good websites to use to keep up to date with what people are tweeting about.


The twitter technology seems pretty simple. From a micro view it is just you updating a status that can only be 140 characters long. From a macro view it can be a view on the here and now in the world. Everyone putting up status updates that may collectively explain something from different viewpoints can have an unbelievable impact on our world and the way we see it. The Hudson River plane crash last week is a great example. Janis Krums posted the first photos of it on twitter.
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/us-airways-crash-rescue-picture-citizen-jouralism-twitter-at-work

Take a look at twitter, it may seem overly simple. But that is the beauty of it.

www.twitter.com.bradfoutz

Brad

Post By
Joey Liner

When times are tough we look around us for influence and leadership. It’s scary not to know what tomorrow will bring or what your next move will be. Your heart and gut may be telling you two different things and you just want to know that life will be better. Sometimes there are no immediate answers but if you have around you what is most important, you will succeed.

Everyone has a individual in their life that stands out where something was said so influential it was life changing. When Jimmy V gave his cancer speech at the ESPYs in 1993, I was moved. Jimmy knew he was months away from passing while he was speaking but that didn’t bother him one bit; he had an agenda and stuck with it. Along with most of America, I was so shocked by how energetic and gleaming his was with joy while speaking. I took his words to heart and was amazed at this individual and his character. I would love to live by his words and follow his accomplishments and to this day I try and apply my life philosophy behind these words that were said during the ESPY speech:

“I’m a very emotional and passionate man. I can’t help it. That’s being the son of Rocco and Angelina Valvano. It comes with the territory. We hug, we kiss, we love. When people say to me how do you get through life or each day, it’s the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.”

I read exerts of the speech at my grandmother’s funeral years ago. We were so close and she passed away from Dimensia, which is worse then Cancer; she was a warrior. Jimmy V was a warrior. They gave everything to what they believed in day in day out.

Jimmy grew up with nothing. He worked his way all the way up the food chain to coach the Wolfpack of the ACC in Tobacco Row during an era that produced some of the best basketball players of all time. He fought his way each year to get better and better and eventually won the national championship in dramatic style. His players believed in him. They respected him for everything the man stood up for. He was one of them in many ways. Jimmy was an amazing leader hands down but most importantly a better individual.

I watch the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePXlkqkFH6s) from time to time to keep myself in check. He is my motivational drive for excellence in my career and reminds me of how much I appreciate life day in day out.

Who is most influential speaker in your life…. please share :)

Joey

Post By
Sean Fenlon

Happy New Year everyone! :-)

I’ve literally been trying to time this blog post to be one of the first blog posts in ALL of 2009 (EST), so I’m literally hitting the “refresh” button on Google using the search term “TIME” to determine the “Official” start of this new year.

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=time&btnG=Search

Cool.  The Google clock just turned.  I’m going to hit the “publish” button now.

For many, 2009 represents nothing but uncertainty and fear.  I Can empathize with each and every one of you, but during a different “year” (aka 12-month span).  DoublePositive is a business located at ground-zero of this economic/market mess (housing, mortgage, advertising, etc.).  FWIW, I felt the same fear and uncertainty during the second-half of 2007 and the first-half of 2008.  Then, all of a sudden (almost as suddenly as the negative had appeared), things began to turn positive for us.

This is not revisionist history.  Here’s the email I sent to everyone on our newsletter list:

http://eletter.doublepositive.com/positivewire/pw_080710.htm

And now on to my much-anticipated Predictions for 2009:

1.  Things Changed

Is this a prediction?  Probably not.  Things are STILL changing.  Things WILL CONTINUE to change.  Now THAT is a prediction.  Probably not particularly valuable, but true.  Another way of saying this is economic prosperity still arrives but slower, fewer people will have a job in 2009 than in 2008, and consumers and businesses will find it more difficult to secure credit than in recent history.  Aside from that, nothing has changed.  Look in the eye of everyone you know and ask yourself if they have fundamentally changed in any way in the past five years.  The ultimate answer is that things changed, but people have not.

2.  People and Businesses Will Try Harder than Ever to Avoid Pain

During the dot-com bubble, there was the “Greater Fool Theory”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

The past few years has led to the “Well, there’s someone smarter than me who knows what the hell is going on Theory.”  Sorry, no Wikipedia entry on this one yet.

Bottom line is that businesses and consumers will begin relying on their own mind, thinking, and thought processes than anytime in recent history.

3.  People and Businesses Will Try Harder than Ever to Gain Pleasure

Whatever it is that made you happy today. could it make you happy tomorrow?  If yes, lather, rinse, repeat.

Expect TV consumption to go up (the cheapest form of entertainment), video game consumption to go up (the cheapest form of entertainment for young males), average weight per-capita to go up (tighter times means cheaper and more-fattening foods), etc.

4.  "Other" People in our lives become more clearly classified as either People, Friends, Community, Network, Associates, Colleagues, Traffic

People
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People

Friends
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend

Network
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

Associate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associate

Colleague
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleague

Traffic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_traffic

See “LIVE Matters” below for more color on this concept.

5.  The “Best” Athletes Emerge

2008 was the year of the athelete…  Tiger Woods (winning the U.S. Open on a broken leg), Michael Phelps (winning 8 Gold Medals and setting a new world record), the Redeem Team, etc.).  However, something tells me the REAL athlete stories won’t break until 2009.  No clue who or what they might be, but my Spidey-senses are tingling on this one.

6.  Internet Collaborative "Art" is officially born.

This may have officially begun in 2008, but will continue to blossom in 2009.

Here’s one of the first examples of this concept of "Internet Collaborative Art":

http://blogs.doublepositive.com/2008/12/18/youtube-symphony-doublepositivetv/

7.  Science Wins

As valuable as "gut calls" have been in the past, data-driven "Science" will again rule the day in 2009.  Hopefully will a more scientific acknowledgement to "The Black Swan" than in previous years.

http://blogs.doublepositive.com/2008/12/28/outliers-vs-the-black-swan/

8.  Mobile Explodes (but not Mobile Advertising. yet)

I love my iPhone.  I use it more than my computer.  I love competitors to the iPhone almost as much.  Nuff said. 

9.  LIVE Matters

Looking into the eyes of people and shaking-their-hand/touching-their-skin becomes more important than ever.

10.  Don’t Panic.  Be Happy

Fans of Bobby McFerrin and Douglas Adams will rise up and proclaim "I’ve been telling my philosophy for years!"

SPF

p.s. Hey Mr. Fellow-blogger. what EXACTLY did you predict?  Please use the comments to add your links.

Post By
Sean Fenlon

I genuinely love being part of history.

I’m thrilled that I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren someday that I was alive and witnessed Joe Montana, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, the founding of Microsoft, the founding of Google, the books of Stephen Hawking, the rhythms of Don Ellis, the music of Pat Metheny, the style of Bobby McFerrin.  I believe these are all names that will be in the same history books that my grandchildren will be reading.

But most of all, I’m thrilled to be alive.  I’m thrilled to be "in the game."  Every morning, I wake up, I’m "in the game" and that’s a blessing.

That said, 2008 may be the most "historic" year since 9/11/2001, 1995 (Netscape IPO), 1968 (putting a man on the moon), 1945 (the end of WWII), 1929 (the Great Depression), or 1776 (the founding of a nation based upon "Freedom").  I can’t wait to tell my grandchildren that not only did I live through 2008, but prospered.

That’s not to say I got it all right…

I made 10 Predictions about 2008 at the end of 2007:

http://blogs.doublepositive.com/2007/12/10/predictions-for-2008/

I nailed some and got some others wrong, but was directionally correct overall…

PREDICTION: The Mortgage industry finds its footing, more so than the mortgage leads industry

Yup.  Nailed this one.  If you are surviving and making money in the mortgage industry now, you’ve figured it out.  You’re a lifer. 

The mortgage leads industry is still scrambling to figure out how to reclaim its 2007 size.  Big banks stopped (or virtually stopped) buying leads.  Remaining lead buyers filter more and buy less than ever before.

PREDICTION: The Housing Industry closes the gap between BID and ASK

Still not there.  Mortgage rates are ridiculously low, but prices have not yet dropped enough to get things moving. There are anecdotal reports of home prices dropping 30% or more (which WILL get things moving), but this trend should be moved into the 2009 prediction category.

PREDICTION: Online Education and traditional brick-and-mortar Education lines begin to blur

This one is half-right and half-wrong.  The online/offline lines actually became MORE prominent with respect to advertising, marketing, and sales/enrollments in for-profit post-secondary, but the schools are seeing the lines blur on the delivery side of education.  I hope this distinction makes sense to the readers.

PREDICTION: Debt Consolidation Loans, Debt Counseling Services, and Debt Settlement Services skyrocket

Another half-right, half-wrong prediction here.  Advertisng, Marketing, and Sales of consumer-debt-help-solutions-products did indeed skyrocket but sadly their value to consumers did not.

PREDICTION: Facebook become a more-discussed Internet company than Google

Yup.  Nailed this one:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=google%2C+facebook&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

My next social networking prediction will be squarely based upon Twitter, but it will take more than 2009 for Twitter to catch Google or Facebook on this graph.  FriendFeed will also be in the mix.

Let’s not forget, however, that despite the trends graph most daily Facebook users STILL use Google to get there.

PREDICTION: Facebook and LinkedIn have (private) merger/acquisition conversations

I think they did, but I have no evidence.  I did however get the direction correct.  The name was "Plaxo" instead of "LinkedIn" but apparently a deal never got done: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/14/plaxo-and-facebook-merger-rumors-false-so-far/

PREDICTION: Mobile Advertising disappoints in 2008, but still remains a gigantic opportunity

This was a terrible prediction because I did not define anything.  What does “mobile” mean?  Phone?  Oh yeah, DP dominates the demand side there.  Mobile carriers continue to dominate the supply side but mobile ad serving is dead.

http://yardley.ca/2008/07/07/there-is-no-mobile/

PREDICTION: USA elects a new President

My guy didn’t win (frankly, my guy didn’t run).  I am however emphatically cheering our new President.  I believe he will inspire!  Nailed the prediction that DoublePositive will adapt to the new President in real time! :-)

PREDICTION: USA economy slows, but resists recession

Looks like I blew this one.  BIG time.  We’ll have to wait and see "how long" before the size of my miss here is fully-calculated.

PREDICTION: Second Layer Technologies and Solutions will continue to emerge and dominate

DUH!  Just change name to “Next Layer” and you’ll never be wrong.  Horizontal vs. Vertical.  The next horizontal always occurs more frequently than the next vertical.

SPF