This year, we at DBD, transformed our creative-advertising agency vibe of an office space into a holiday crafting mecca!

Atlas’ 2012 message of holiday cheer comes in the form of a cookie tin filled with the most delicious of delicious soft-bake cookies! DBD helped create this message by working with Atlas on their packaging design; which features a fresh-baked gingerbread moving man and his gingerbread Atlas truck.

Watch the making of this sweeeet gingerbread holiday sensation!

Do know, the story you are about to read is true. Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent, and to save us from any possible law suits.

MT and a few of her girlfriends flew out to LA to celebrate the birthday of one of their best friends who happens to work in the entertainment industry. Get your mind out of the gutter! We mean she works with celebrities, the ones you see on primetime TV.

They were able to let loose and relax for 4 full days! During that trip, they saw the views offered in the Hollywood Hills:

“The view was absolutely breathtaking, and the weather was magnificent,” said Merissa.

They spent her friend’s birthday attempting to go to Universal Studios theme park (@UniStudios). . .which was a bust due to their hours of operation this time of year. However, MT did get some pretty sweet shots of the shopping and restaurants as well as a fantastic lunch from Karl Strauss Brewing Co. (@Karl_Strauss) She recommends the portobello sandwich!:

They were able to spend the evening celebrating near a warm fire at Perch (@PERCHLosAngeles) rooftop restaurant, sipping cocktails, reminiscing and getting hysterical dance shows from “spirited” Oregon football (@GoDucks) fans who were there to watch their ducks defeat the USC Trojans (@uscfootball).

Believe me, we wanted to show you more pictures MT took of their private dancer, but we would hate to embarrass the ol’ chap for celebrating!

During their last full day in LA, they first visited Pink Taco (@PinkTacoLA) for a quick lunch and a small drinkie-poo. Little did MT know that when she ordered her strawberry margarita, she was going to receive a frozen pineapple too!

For the finale, the girls were able to go to a couple of studio viewings and see how things worked behind the scenes and what it was like being there, celebrity-style.

They took a tour through Universal Studios (@UniversalEnt) and saw the awesomely huge New York movie set. “It was like you were really there! Minus the scissor lifts and camera cranes of course.” - says MT

After the quick tour, they went to a viewing of TV’s #1 reality show NBC’s The Voice! (@NBCTheVoice)

They got to hang out in the artist compound and meet some of Hollywood’s finest! (If you watch the show, I’m sure you might have a guess. *wink *wink—talk about jealous!)

After it was over, they took a trip over to Los Angeles’ premier shopping center, The Grove (@TheGroveLA), to enjoy a few tasty tidbits and drinks at Mixology! (@Mixology101LA)

Could you believe the luck she was having when she saw that Mixology happened to be directly above Dylan’s Candy Bar?! (@DylansCandyBar) Of course, MT stopped in for a sweet treat from Goo Goo Cluster! (@GooGooClusters) Peanut butter are her fav!

Merissa said that her trip was pretty fantastic and more fun than she could ever describe, but she sure was happy to get home and back to the DBD grind. Hahaha, we may have made that last part up, but we sure are happy to have her back!

See what happens when some of our DBDer’s put on their stretchy pants and eat themselves into a food coma to continue their Thanksgiving traditions or start new ones!

As a kid I was a huge fan of Cocoa Pebbles® because I felt like I had a friend in Fred Flintstone – but could never figure out why. Could it be that as a child, eating chocolate for breakfast was the greatest thing ever, so I HAD to have it? Or, was it that most, if not all, of these cereal box characters were drawn to make me feel like they were looking right at me? This simple but clever marketing shows that a little research goes a long way. These characters are looking down because as kids, we were looking up. Unbeknownst to me, I was having a personal connection through eye contact with these icons of the cereal world.

These nuances are what makes a campaign successful without being abrasive and shoving it down your throat. The emotional responses we experience everyday can be so subtle, we would never notice them, yet wonder why we choose one brand of another.

Every other year, Phil returns to the campus of Wabash College in Indiana to experience the football rivalry with DePauw University. One of his sons, David (@DavidIWright), and his daughter,Hannah (@Hmowrey), join him on the trip.

The rivalry between Wabash and DePauw is still as intense as it was when the two schools first met in 1890. In 1932, the Monon Railroad donated a 300 pound bell to the game, and the game has been known as the Monon Bell Classic (@MononBell) ever since. The Division III game airs annually on ESPN, and was Voted “Indiana’s Best College Sports Rivalry” by viewers in 2005. The series is as close as a historic game can be. Yet Wabash has won the last four meetings, bringing the series to 58-53-9 in favor of Wabash.

While the winning team keeps the Bell for the following year, several instances of Bell theft have been recorded in the game’s history. Days before this year’s outing, DePauw (@DePauwU) made an unsuccessful attempt to again steal the Bell from Wabash (@WabNews). One of the most infamous thefts involved DePauw stealing the bell from themselves to prevent a Wabash theft. DePauw then buried the bell in their north end zone for safety. However, Greencastle had a deep freeze the evening before the November game which left the ground too hard to easily unbury the bell. The bell was excavated only minutes before the game began.

In the game on Novemer 10, 2012, Wabash shut out DePauw the with a score of 23-0!

Be sure to check out the photos from the game! David is wearing a pretty risque vintage Wabash tee from 1983…HE WASN’T EVEN BORN YET!

As a thank you for DBD’s work, NCT generously sent over tickets for their once a year event, “Big Kid Night”.

“Big Kid Night"…what’s that you might ask? NCT has this awesome once a year event where you can feel like a kid again (and the performance is slightly altered to fit a 21&up audience!). Your $25 purchase includes some cold Yazoo Brew, light food, and, of course, an entertaining show!

Katie and her gang attended the latest production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” and said “…it was hysterical and one of the most entertaining shows- the cast was great! It was a fun night all around!” Check out Katie’s photos from that evening in the gallery below!

And as far as what was “altered” well… we’ll never tell—you would have had to been there! You better believe we’ll all be anxiously awaiting (and attending!) next year’s “Big Kid Night”! 

To learn more about the Nashville Children’s Theatre, visit their website by clicking here Nashville Children’s Theatre

You can also check out their Facebook page here at NCT Facebook

Or send them a tweet using the Twitter handle @NCT_ChildThtr

Preparation

Atlas marketing teams included a group of twenty from across Atlas corporate, Atlas subsidiaries, and Atlas agents. The inclusiveness of the team proved to be its greatest strength. Members of the marketing team met with DBD early in the process to discover the project. Everything was put on the table – including the definition of the objective – in a process known as DISRUPTION. The years since 2007 had changed the industry, it was time to look at everything.  Every sacred cow was put up for scrutiny – from communications plans and tactics to business policies. Many cows became part of a proud history. The three-month process included two disruption meetings involving corporate and agent representatives. In a third meeting of all marketing team members, a direction was proposed and approved. A fourth meeting had marketing team members present a proposal to the company’s board of directors. Following board approval, the new Atlas direction was previewed in November to 600 members of the agent in attendance at the annual convention.

Solutions

Most important during all of the preparation, it was understood that all customer relationships – whether corporate or residential – begin with human, emotional involvement. “Atlas. Go new places.™” became the new company statement to customers and internal headquarters staff, agents and partners around the world. Sometimes, going to a new place just meant doing something in a slightly different way. Sometimes it meant moving things to a whole new town. Sometimes it meant moving several things to many towns, all at once. But, regardless of how small or large the move, it could be a big leap from where a person or organization once was. Atlas and its customers were going new places, inside their organizations and around the world. The communications objective was to let the world know that Atlas was a diverse company with the resources to take them to whatever new place they needed to go – whether it was new systems for greater efficiency, new domestic relocation solutions, or worldwide logistics and facility management.

New branding solutions included:

• DISRUPTION process initiative
• New branding message and presentations to company stakeholders – senior management, company board, and agent family
• New Atlas look and feel
• Identity guide
• B2B message and presentations
• Consumer collateral
• Trade print advertising
• Event support
• Annual report
• The process is ongoing…

We’ve had many clients ask whether or not they should invest in creating and managing a new Google+ account for their company and brands. The major source of concern seems to be using staff resources for “yet another” social media platform that needs to be managed beyond the Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn pages they already manage. Maintaining regular and relevant posts, photos, and truly socializing with followers on each network can be a drain on staff time.

Our first response to that is about your business priority – customers first. It’s not about what’s easy for you, it’s about making access to your brand easy for your customer. However, marketers are always strapped for time, so it is important to put that time in the best places. How do we determine the best places?

Online Brand Management Principles

As we manage our clients’ brands on the web, there are a few general principles of web presence management that are becoming clear:

1. Search Engine results rankings are improved by the use of many small tactics. Google doesn’t put its stock in the word of just one or two sources. It looks at votes of confidence from as many sources as exist. So, it’s not a question of which social network to use – it’s a question of how to manage each network your audience is using.
2. There is a big benefit in being an early adopter. There is more leverage to be gained from being on a social network at its inception (and before it’s perfect). You simply have more visibility on the network before your competitors (and others) arrive.
3. Building and maintaining an online presence is time consuming and labor intensive. There’s just no way around it.

Is Google+ One of Those Best Places NOW?

Yes. Google is strong and if they can find the right mix for how to combine Google+ with their other services, it could turn into a social network that is hard to avoid. More importantly, as Google successfully integrates its social experience with other popular every-day services, it will truly make users’ online lives easier and more consolidated.

Why Now?

Google+, at this time, offers that unique opportunity to get on board early and to be there when new users start looking for people and brands to fill their circles.

It doesn’t matter that techy writers criticize Google+ and that there have been legitimate missteps in the rollout. Nothing on the web is perfect and things change quickly. In order to be on the web in places before your competitors, you will always have to jump on the presently imperfect bandwagon. It’s like recognizing an undervalued stock before the market does.

Or consider how Google AdWords used to be less expensive because fewer advertisers were there bidding up the price. Early adopters received more value for their time and expense. Likewise, in this case, we suspect you will get more value for your time by joining early on.

If Google+ Isn’t Viable Now, It Will Be

It’s true… Google has tried numerous times to venture into social media without success. Some of the attempts were Google Buzz, Google Wave, Friend Connect, Google Lively, and Open Social. Despite those attempts, and because of those attempts, we believe Google+ has a more promising future ahead.

Aside from the rocky start and the numerous opinionated articles that criticize the current state of Google+, Google, as a company, is popular and has the capital to burn until they get it right. Google Search, Google Docs, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Analytics, Google AdWords, YouTube, and Android are all tremendous successes—you can’t just write-off the idea of Google being able to successfully break into social networking.

Google+ is Showing Up in Organic Search

+1 Recommendations

Google has already begun integrating the +1 recommendation functionality and social information into search results. When someone searches and sees in the results that five of their close friends have +1’d your webpage, it’s very persuasive for getting clicks. People trust their friends.

Direct Connect

Getting to a Google+ business page is very easy and can be done through search with one click. Google+ is promoting a new feature called “Direct Connect.” This feature allows a brand’s public website to be directly associated with its Google+ brand page. The feature enables searchers to type in a plus sign followed by a brand name and be directed straight to the brand’s Google+ Page as being the “official” company.

…why would any business want to push people to search with a + symbol to arrive on a page that Google effectively owns, rather than the company’s own website? Answer? If you do a Direct Connect search, you’ll get only one result, an official page. If you don’t do that, then you end up with the classic “10 blue links” which might do things like suggest your competitor or a critic.

Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land
Article: A Look at Google Direct Connect

A Steady Stream of Improvements

Google is moving fast. They have recently announced two other new Google+ features that will soon appear in their search results.

1. The “Add To Circles” button will appear next to search results that have brand pages associated with them. They can add a brand to their circles without leaving the search results.
2. The two most recent Google+ posts from a brand page will appear in search results underneath the website’s link. If a searcher is logged into Google+, they will see even more.

What It All Means For Your Company

Be Where Your Customers Are

Marketing is all about talking to your customers where and when they are most apt to be considering your products, services and messages. With the number of hours people spend on sites like Facebook, Google+, YouTube, or Google Search, you need to try and be there with them – don’t fight them by trying to funnel them to your most convenient location.

There are over 62 million users on Google+, and if momentum in Google+ stays up, these users are certainly going to act like Facebook users – wanting to hear from and communicate with brands right inside the social platform they enjoy.

There Are Tools To Help

Some marketers are bemoaning the fact that it’s “yet another” communication tool to manage… But don’t fret, there are tools available to make managing multiple social-media accounts easier. HootSuite is just one of the many that help simplify multi-posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others from one location.

Google+ just recently released their API, so we expect to see many new tools coming that integrate with Google+.

So roll up your sleeves and get a Google+ brand page set up NOW. Your customers will appreciate it.

Unbelievable, another twelve months have passed, and it’s that time to reflect on the past year and look ahead to new opportunities.

DBD is grateful for the action-packed, challenging and strong 2011 activity. We experienced the highs and lows that come with the advertising business. We leave the year with great client partnerships. And we enter 2012 with continuing projects and programs on our plate that will take us even more new places.

In 2011, as great need persists, we continued the tradition of donating to the Salvation Army in lieu of sending gifts to clients and friends. The gift is labeled as “From the friends and clients of DBD.”

Our 2011 Holiday Card sports a comical image of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, built with found objects by our very own David Wright. Art Director Matt Breivogel finished off the card with original artwork of a magical winter scene. We hope it brings a light-hearted smile to our clients, friends, family, and partners.

We wish you all Happy Holidays, and a fantastic New Year!

Ontario-based AMJ Campbell is the largest Canadian agent with Atlas Van Lines (Canada), and one of the largest agent families among all Atlas World Group affiliates.

In August of 2011 AMJ Campbell opened a new branch office in Florida, their first venture in the United States. From its location in southern Florida, AMJ Campbell Florida, Inc. operates as a full-service moving company offering home and corporate relocation services locally, nationally and worldwide. Storage, commercial relocation and specialized transportation services are also offered.

AMJ Campbell partnered with DBD and Atlas Van Lines to launch the Florida branch’s new website. This site leverages AMJ Campbell’s long history as a reputable mover, and its backing by one of the largest moving networks in the U.S.

AMJ is using the Atlas Agent SEO Program developed by Atlas and DBD to quickly produce high quality, search-engine-friendly websites for Atlas agents.
The initial setup includes DBD’s custom design services, and the most up-to-date best practices in web development and SEO. A content management system (CMS) makes it easy for AMJ to add, edit and delete content as needed. And Atlas’ continued investment in SEO research will be applied to the site by DBD as SEO best practices evolved over time.

The AMJ Campbell Florida website also offers industry-leading, instant online moving quotes for both traditional moving services and new container-based moving and storage.

Visit the site to see the final results:
http://amjmoversflorida.com

A creative process without allowances and encouragement for mistakes is not a creative process. Some of the first creative attempts may appear clumsy and too far off the mark, but those very attempts are often the genesis of a disruptive concept that breaks the conventional wisdom. Approaching failure is part of the process, and is sometimes the only way to break through to a new place.
At DBD, our creative process is built to fail.

If we can get that surprise out in the open in the beginning of the process, there will be more nice surprises along the way.

Download: “The process is built to fail.”

1. Money
2. Business
3. His Life

This simple act of self-restraint that keeps him focused and prevents him from dabbling all over the place has sweetened his pot tremendously.  Especially for his Dairy Queen (DQ) brand in the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) arena.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is the parent company of Dairy Queen.

He gives his internal DQ marketing team and ad agency, Grey New York, complete freedom to spread their creative wings and fly—you’ve caught the rock & roll falcon hawking the DQ Blizzard in the, “So Good It’s RiDQulous” campaign. It’s just one of the live action spots shot by Academy Award-nominated Black Swan Cinematographer Matthew Libatique. And the human DQ spokesguy (a featured player on “All My Children”) is so appealing in the TV spots, he’s made it into the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine.  “Cosmo’s Summer Hot List” crowned him, “Dude we’d buy anything from.” And that includes dethroning the king of female-fantasy-granters, the “Old Spice Guy” in the Cosmo picks of all that sizzles this season. See? Cool things happen when cool clients like Buffett know when to get onboard and when to get out of the way. Including going along with the PR agency’s idea of having the DQ Blizzard Mobile deliver the featured treats to attendees at the annual shareholders’ meeting of Berkshire Hathaway.

The message here is more than a frozen shake concept that kicks ice. When an agency partner is trusted to work within its own “Circle of Competence,” the client is served results that are extra large.  It’s a client/agency relationship of mutual respect. Grey noted and honored DQ’s internal “Circle of Competence.”  An educated guess gives us an idea of the responsibilities contained within the DQ “C of C”:

1. Providing product that truly delivers on the brand promise that, “Good Isn’t Good Enough”
2. Crafting Blizzards in combinations of flavors and ingredients consumers crave (Mango Cheesecake, Caramel Cashew, Nutter Butter, among others)
3. On-premise DQ restaurant experiences that support guest expectations

How did Grey communicate these areas of expertise via a series of funny and gritty TV spots?  By featuring the food in beauty shots that didn’t compromise the appetite appeal for the sake of laughs or creativity. Introduced in 1985, the Blizzard’s current marketing stewards treated the product as hero, presenting it with the respect its 26-year equity and history of earning-power deserve. 

Ever had a Blizzard? Then you’re probably a fan of the frosty concoction. DQ even hosts an online fan club with 3.5 million members at last count. Visitors are greeted with this message:
THIS IS HOME TO ALL THOSE THINKERS OF THICK, SWEET THOUGHTS.
ALL THOSE CONNOISSEURS OF THE COLD AND CREAMY.
UNITED IN THE BELIEF, THAT, WELL, BLIZZARDS RULE.

So, do consumers think the Blizzard TV spots rule?

Ace Metrix, is an ad tracking company which measures advertising success using online panels of TV viewers to score spots based on metrics which include persuasiveness and likeability. Ace Metrix reports that DQ’s “So Good It’s RiDQulous” is this year’s most effective campaign in the entire QSR segment.

Bet McD’s is having a meltdown.

That’s what my accountant says about creative people as opposed to the people in her office.  “Creative people are just bananas when it comes to numbers.”

Maybe she is right.  There are levels of “bananas,” however.  I’m not that bad with the numbers (the finances of our business), but I do hope that her expertise by comparison makes me look bananas.

On the other hand, at DBD we like to extend “numbers” to represent a lot of analytical thinking beyond just the accounting of revenue and expense. The numbers for us mean the measurement of several things.

The measurement of a market size, the value of potential share gain, how sustainable is a market, is there a better market with better numbers in which to spend a client’s time and resources? We love the numbers.

And we love creative.

Sometimes “bananas,” (as in being bananas) goes a long way toward achieving good creative. We do have to let ourselves go there to get things done. And, we know how to come back.

We learned something recently about ourselves.  And, we’re not sure exactly what it means, or if it is true about us because of the new economy (an economy which we think has actually been around for the last 20 years), but we’ll tell you what it is.

I’ll try to explain what we learned with an example of how we hire creatives:

When we hire production artists or graphic designers we tell them that their job performance will be reviewed in three months. And part of what we tell them is that they will need to set type with the eye of a designer (in the case of a production artist), and will be expected to layout a page with the eye of an art director (in the case of the graphic designer). We don’t hire persons to do a particular job within our process unless we think they have the potential to move up in our organization.  A graphic designer, for instance, must be able to take a communications challenge and layout a page. But we want every graphic designer to become an art director. The role of the art director is to understand the complete communications challenge (from the marketing perspective even) and layout several pages (several pieces, and in effect, much of the campaign). And we want some of our art directors to become creative directors someday.  That is, understand the global, market, and client ramifications of certain actions that are taken by our clients or competitors. Understand the impact of new mediums, and how to make a connection with target consumers in the many places they live, work and play.  We’ve come a long way in this paragraph from the simple line of type. But, the “simple line of type” is no less beautiful when it is understood by the creative director, as well as the production artist. In fact, it is more beautiful.

The purpose of that simple line of type is to be a part of the largest communications goals in the project or marketing plan. Not every member of the organization knows exactly why it is produced in the final form that it is –– but the creative team as a whole knows why it is there. One may get the wrong impression of our meaning here, and think that we’re expressing that the creative director knows more about why the type is the way it is than anyone else in the process.  But, that is not our meaning at all.  The creative director knows a portion of the reason of why the type looks like it does, and why it says what it says, but the good production artist, for instance, has a better understanding of the type for reasons that the creative director no longer considers, or perhaps has never learned (things change).

So, “get to it.” you say, “what was it that you learned about yourselves?”
Just as we ask our production artists to become graphic designers, and graphic designers to become art directors, and some of the art directors to become creative directors, we ask our whole business to know why it does what it does. And, we want every member of the creative team to have some ownership in the outcome. We haven’t hired a stable of creative people to live “over there” in another room and be tapped when necessary for an idea.  We’re not asking them to go bananas for us, and then have a marketing person walk in and pick up the pieces to look for a great idea.

We’re asking all members of the team to understand the objectives of a project. Sometimes we have to lose ourselves, lose our pre-conceived notions, to even get at the core of what the objective is, or what it ought to be. We always have to lose ourselves and walk on the side of suspended disbelief for a while to get to the creative options. We didn’t know it, but the fact that we’re also asking all of our staff to know why we’re doing what we’re doing is different than other creative agencies. We’re not a divided house with creatives on one side and account people and marketing staff on the opposite side, and with information technology people on yet another side.

We thought every communications business that had a chance to do meaningful work and serve clients was operating this way, especially in the last two decades. In today’s efficiency-demanding world, there’s not much room for members of the team that don’t know why we’re doing what we’re doing (or at least understand there is something to understand — even if they don’t comprehend every part of the plan). None of this is to say that creative is lost, nor that creative is controlled — because creative that is controlled is lost, and is only production. It’s still true that we don’t know where some creative comes from when we look back. And, we do not know where it will come from tomorrow when it is called upon. We still have the fear of clumsy inadequacy when we go into something new. That’s how we know we are even approaching creative. We are not afraid of looking ignorant (temporarily). In fact, we say our process is built to fail along the way — and that’s why it will succeed creatively at some point (at the end, if there is an end in today’s quick-change media).

To operate this way is to work in a fashion wherein the whole team knows that there is something to understand (even if it is not totally clear to each of us in every part). In effect, we build a model to understand the environment we’re operating in. As long as the model is predictive for us, we understand enough of what is happening to communicate effectively and creatively.

What does it mean to NOT function this way? It means to let the creatives go bananas, and never ask them to come back. To set them aside, therefore, and only go to them for insanity. This kind of team is divided and has distinct parts that can only do one part of the advertising process.  Today’s creative communications are both creative and analytical, and require communication at all times. The first communication required is with the client.

We learned that a lot of creative groups are divided houses.
We learned that our process is not divided (we didn’t know there was any other way).
We also learned that the best creative houses are not divided.

We were just doing what we thought was right for our clients.
We found out that we were also doing what was right for creative.
I love it when one slips into the correct mode by simply being true. Is that bananas?

Preparation for a comeback.

Escalade Sports purchased Bear Archery in 2005. Bear began to engineer a comeback – driven by product development. DBD pitched to become part of the marketing team, and topped three other outdoor sporting goods marketers to be selected by Bear. The effort, first hitting the market in 2006, has met with success and weathered economic ups and downs to place Bear among the industry’s top-tier suppliers by 2012. Today, Bear takes its place among brands such as Mathews, Hoyt, and Bowtech. Bear’s market position began in 2005, when much of the industry’s marketers were awash in hype over sometime baseless feature or performance claims. For Bear, it was simply true that they were making a high-quality product again – and at more than modest prices. The first new Bear communications reinforced to the audience that 1) Bear was not “about the hype and high cost,” and that 2) with Bear you received “performance above price.” Both statements are still true of Bear. By 2012, the company’s industry leading product development has made Bear a sought after product at any price point. Likewise, aggressive print, unique TV and pioneering web & social communications keep pace with the product. The compelling truth remains that Bear loyalists are paying only for genuine performance.

2012 solutions.

The latest Bear marketing solutions include the introduction of a bow called Anarchy.™ Bear Archery loyalists and prospects are ask to “Rise Up. Join Us.” The message is that the bow is the peoples’ bow – and not the result of a company building a bow that satisfies a need of the company, or which conveniently fits a manufacturing capability. It’s another genuine message from Bear. The Anarchy is the result of Bear product development, on the shoulders of other great Bear bows. And it’s the result of customer feedback. It’s not a product that hypes a feature. It’s not a product that tells the customer what they ought to want. It’s a bow that gives hunters the genuine performance they’ve asked for.

New branding solutions included:

• Anarchy™ Bow identity
• In-product identity
• New Bear logo evolution
• Motion spot for outdoor sport TV networks
• Trade and consumer print
• Collateral

What I like about this infographic though is that it shows very well that Flash is far from dead, and it should remain an option to be considered for specific projects with specific audiences. But as with any project you must know Flash’s weaknesses in order to know when to use it and when not to.

The same, of course, can be said for HTML5 and iOS apps.

The web continues to be in turmoil when it comes to standards and best practices (no thanks to Microsoft and Internet Explorer). Flash is a mature, highly developed plugin from an extremely respectable company (Adobe). It works consistently in all desktop browsers if the plugin is installed. It is proprietary, and thus has a very mature product development lifecycle. HTML5 on the other hand is not proprietary, and further more is an interesting conglomeration of technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SVG). Beyond that, HTML5 is modular. You can use HTML5 that is limited to certain “features” and is 100% backward compatible all the way to IE6 or even Netscape. Or you can use some of HTML5’s new features like video and audio tags or the canvas, etc. These then, would fall short on support in the browsers (at the time of this writing).

iOS is what it is… Apple is a master at marketing and creating desire. I personally think that the App Store is an over-hyped sensation that spurs from a lack of knowledge about how to get “apps” on your phone by any other means (such as saving to homescreen from the Safari browser—See how Basecamp has done theirs…kudos to them). For now, I completely understand the need to be “in the App Store” for the sake of being there. Easy to find you, easy to install your app. But, the iPhone’s market share isn’t ubiquitos even though they command a large share. Using an “HTML5 App” like Basecamp works on both iPhone and Android phones, as well as others.

Honestly, the “should I use this or that” debate is narrow-sighted. If you’re building a robust solution for your clients you need to take all factors into consideration. If you opt for an interative and dynamic Flash element to describe something, then you merely have to determine if providing a non-Flash alternative is also needed. This has been done for years on websites, and is why SwfObject was developed. It allows your HTML to have the alternate non-Flash content be default, but if JavaScript and Flash are available it is seamlessly replaced with the preferred Flash version. Of course, the alternate form is not required if your audience is defined, such as an intranet application where you know the users and what they use.

Preparation

Goalrilla’s marketing and engineering worked with DBD during the product development phases to establish a new Goalrilla identity without losing the powerful legacy that Goalrilla basketball had established. New identity extended to every part of the product design – including the placement and the color of powder coating and inks used to identify the former and new product.  The specifications for the new equipment were driven by the history of Goalrilla as The Toughest Systems On The Planet.™ Importantly, Goalrilla consulted with the training expertise of professional trainers and coaches to develop the product line and the communications. Several generations of prototype products and communications were developed during the collaboration, and were tested among young athletes.

Solutions

New branding was developed for use in the product, in the store, electronically and in collateral – all to support the history of Goalrilla as a tough system of equipment and expertise that delivers and authentic training experiences at the home or on the field – in several sports categories. The B2B sell-in was critical, and included showing a fully developed consumer message.

New branding solutions included:

• Final new consumer look and feel of the product line
• B2B message and presentations to introduce the new Goalrilla paradigm
• In-store presence in POP and packaging (Goalrilla product wasn’t formerly sold in boxes from the shelf).
• A New Goalrilla logo, joined by the new tag – THE POWER TO CHANGE YOUR GAME.™
• A new consumer website, expanding the product line across several sports categories, directing users to big box stores and specialty dealers across the country.

If you have had a multiple page document in InDesign with many vector images, you may have noticed it is difficult to export a reasonably sized PDF.

Why?

This is because InDesign exports all vector data, and does not compress it. If you have a vector image placed in an image box within InDesign, even though you only see what is within the box constraints, InDesign will attempt to export ALL the data from that placed file, even what you cannot see. It also does not compress or degrade the image quality of a vector image (isn’t that nice **insert sarcmark**). This began with the CS versions of Adobe software. This results in PDFs that can just won’t get small enough.

So… how do you overcome this?

If you chose “print to PDF” from your print menu, instead of “export PDF” from the export options, InDesign will properly compress and crop vector data, resulting in a smaller PDF file. You must have Acrobat Pro installed on your computer, and “print to PDF” will be an automatic option in your print menu.

Most recently, the smallest we were able to export a particular PDF in InDesign was 19MB. We tried every option to “squish” it we were aware of—19MB was the limit. When we “printed” the same file to a PDF, it shrank to 9.7MB, AND it was better quality.

Hope this helps…

Definitely can give you pride in our industry to hear the great minds of the recent past and today in our line of work talk about what they love.

“Helvetica” is another good film, by the way, but more specific to the typeface.

CSS is the new Photoshop

It’s talking about CSS3 and HTML5’s ability to render graphic elements with absolutely no images involved. The benefit being that you have fewer calls to the server to retrieve images (why CSS sprites have become popular).

The print guys can think of it like Illustrator vs Photoshop. This new process doesn’t use pixels (like Illustrator). Where Photoshop pixels have the overhead of downloading from the server, these can render within the browser itself.

Nested several links deep it gets to this CSS Images example page (requires the latest Safari or Chrome):

It’s not necessarily the slimmest HTML out there (you can see how they built it in the view source)... Their comment is that people pop-the-hood on HTML but they don’t on PostScript files.

To me it seems interesting, but not yet usable (look at it in Firefox or IE). It is something to look forward to as an option in the future. And of course they’ll get better at it. I can already hear the jQuery plugins coming (though using JavaScript muddies the principle of it).

IE9 is already being highly talked about as having many of the features that developers have been asking for (HTML5, CSS3, Canvas, etc.), but the disappointment for developers is going to be more for the fact that Windows XP users won’t be able to upgrade to IE9 at all.

Internet Explorer users still hover around 70% of all browsers used by the general public.

That breaks down by version:
—IE8: 59%
—IE7: 30%
—IE6: 11%

IE8 has done better at getting users to upgrade than IE7 ever did. But IE6 still hangs around despite (or “in spite”).

Operating systems very similarly show Windows at about 87% of all web users.

That breaks down by version:
—XP: 61%
—Vista: 20%
—Windows 7: 11%
—Server 2003: 7%
—2000: 1%

Windows XP is the highest percentage of users. Which means IE9’s popularity will be severally diminished. And roughly 50% of our site visitors will be stuck at IE8 or below until they buy a new computer.

(NOTE: the numbers above are derived from the more popular sites that DBD has developed, but we have seen in the past that our sites aren’t too skewed from reports from other internet tracking firms.)

We had a site recently that was built to have a number of dynamically generated pages based on geographic locations. These were setup using a URL rewriting tool for “pretty URLs” and as such we wanted to make sure that Google always attributes the page to the nicer “pretty URLs” instead of the possible alternate URLs that include QueryString variables.

For this specific case, Google pioneered the “Canonical Tag” which is a flavor of the LINK tag that looks like this:

<link rel=“canonical” href=“http://dbdnet.com/” />

Where the “href” attribute is the desired URL for the page being looked at.

With this tag Google views it as a recommendation from the web developer as to which page should get the link equity from external links to a page even though the URL may be different. This also allows them to understand that these pages aren’t meant to be purposefull mirror pages but rather two URLs that simply end up displaying the same content, and the Canonical Tag shows Google which version of the URL you prefer.

So two URLs like these:

1. http://dbdnet.com/test/indiana/
2. http://dbdnet.com/test/index.htm?state=indiana

These could display the exact same content. Through the use of the Canonical tag, you can tell Google that you prefer that it recognize #1 as the true URL.

Another example could be if your site uses QueryStrings to keep track of user activity or marketing campaigns such as this:

 
1. http://dbdnet.com/marketing-campaign/
2. http://dbdnet.com/marketing-campaign/?user=XYZ

Google would normally index both pages as unique URLs, and then the two would confuse Google as to which page should be displayed in the search results. Using a Canonical tag allows us to tell them that #1 is all they need to remember.

Latency Issues with Canonical Tags

So to the point of this post… We had an error in the dynamically generated Canonical tags when the pages first launched that pointed Google to a level higher in the site heirarchy than it should have. So Google ended up on our geographic pages but then attributed all the links and information about that page elsewhere.

We caught the issue rather quickly and corrected the code that generated the tags. Then we waited… And waited… Generally it takes a week or less for Google to index new pages. We waited nearly three to see if Google would re-index our pages. Google was not coming back around for these.

We finally decided we couldn’t wait any long and through collaborating with our SEO friends at Performics the call was made to change our URLs slightly so that Google would view them as entirely new pages. We also decided to NOT put in 301 redirects from the old version to the new version as to have no chance that Google would pass on any bad karma from the old pages.

As soon as we made the new URL change, it was right at a week when Google started indexing those geographic pages under the new URLs. Just as expected.
Lesson Learned

Even though Google talks lightly about Canonical tags as “recommendations” that they may or may not listen to… If their algorithm decides to record the recommendation, then it doesn’t want to let it go.

Just watch your Canonicals closely and make sure they are the EXACT URL that you want them to be.

Brandon Luhring

A review of the error logs showed the following error:

Description:
Failure to Open Database Connection

Error Stack Trace:
  at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection)
  at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenConnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory)
  at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.Open()
  at LeadManager.Data.DataAccessBase.openCNX()

This indicated a connection leak issue. There are a limited number of sql connections in the connection pool for any application. When the application attempt to obtain a connection and all the connections in the connection pool are in use the application will wait for a connection to be released back to the connection pool. However, it will only wait for the length of the connection timeout setting. If no connections become available it will timeout and throw an exception.

After a thorough review of our data access layer we determined that the connection leak issue might be caused by sqlDataReaders not being explicitly closed. There were potential instances in the data access layer where an exception in reading from the sqlDataReader might cause the processing jump out of the try block to the catch block essentially jumping over the explicit close of the sqlDataReader. To fix this potential issue we changed all instantiation of sqlDataReaders to ‘using’ blocks like this:


using (SqlDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader())
{
  if (dr != null && dr.HasRows)
  {
    dr.Read();
    // process data reader here
  }
}


After moving this attempted fix to production we saw instant improvement. However the improvement was short lived. Within 12 hours the issue was occurring again. We had not fixed the issue but something we had done had alleviated the problem short term. At this point I turned to the Database to try to review the connections and from where those connections were coming. Not being an sql Database pro I turned to google and found two very helpful items.

1. The sysprocesses table
2. DBCC functions

The following queries pointed me to exactly where my problem lied.

First I wanted to see the total number of connections to my database:

Select count(dbid) as ‘Total Connections’, DB_NAME(dbid) as ‘Database Name’
From sys.sysprocesses with (nolock)
where DB_NAME(dbid) = ‘MyDatabaseName’
Group By dbid

Next I wanted to see from where those connections were coming. In particular I wanted to see the oldest connections:

SELECT * FROM sys.sysprocesses WITH (nolock)
WHERE DB_NAME(dbid) = ‘MyDatabaseName’
Order By login_time asc

Third, and most importantly, I wanted to know what sql script or stored procedures where these oldest connections to the database running. Using the spid (sql process id) from the previous querys oldest connections I ran the following:

DBCC INPUTBUFFER(87)

This query gives the stored procedure or sql script being run by the connection using the specified spid.

I ran these queries in my QA database for testing purposes. The results of these queries showed that even in the QA database where there was little traffic I had over 100 open connections to my database. The oldest connection was almost an hour old. And the sql script being called by almost all of the open connections to the database was the same script. Searching my data access layers for the script I quickly found it and immediately saw that this particular method was missing it’s ‘finally’ block from where all methods in my data access layer close their database connections. This particular method turned out to be a method called by a scheduled job that runs every 60 seconds.

After adding this ‘finally’ block to close the connection and updating the web service in QA, My open connections went from over 100 to 3. After checking back 2 hours later there were still only 3 open connections.

My research for ways to detect and diagnose this connection leak issue pointed me toward many tools some free some very expensive. But a couple of well crafted sql statements were the best tools I could have used.

Gregg Duncan