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Welcome to the first post of Spoken Whirred, the new Spoke Marketing blog. (note: there are old posts on here from my old Creative Reason blog but this is the first post under this new name and design.) 

Spoken Whirred will be an outlet for our thoughts on marketing topics, advertising campaigns, client work and anything else that we feel is worth sharing.  Authors include Dan Klein, David Meyer, Chuck Hart and me (Brian Schwartz).

In this first post I want to make sure to thank everyone who attended our open house.  It's humbling how many of our friends showed up to wish us well and see our new office.  For those who missed it, you missed a great night of networking with 250+ business movers and shakers (and drinkers). 

Also we need to thank Sub Zero, Juniper Grill and The Fountain on Locust for their generosity and the wonderful drinks, food, wine and deserts. 

Below are some pictures from the event:

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Cheers,

Brian Schwartz

Please stop using Internet Explorer 6.  It came out in 2004, is riddled with bugs and forces developers that want to use cool tools like MooTools write CSS and HTML hacks that make me cringe.

I understand you are fearful of change.  I get it.  Don't upgrade to Office 2007.  Doesn't bother me at all. Don't upgrade to Vista.  Heck that OS compelled me to switch to a Mac. I also understand that your IT support staff is not prepared for the onslaught of calls due to the ribbon replacing menus in Office 07. 

But the whole goal of Internet Explorer 7 was to be more secure (i.e. less for you to worry about).  Especially now that it's been out for 2 years.  Also, it's a browser, so it won't crash your network or cause a flood of calls to your IT support center.

In conclusion, this is my plea to you corporate America, to do what's best for web developers everywhere and upgrade to IE7 already.  The world of tab pages and standards based CSS support awaits you.

Sincerely,

Brian Schwartz

I often watch The West Wing re-runs when I'm working at home and since I'm working I don't use the DVR as quickly as I would if I was actively watching the show. 

Most commercials harmlessly play in the background, however I can't help but nearly jump off the couch as soon Billy Mays starts yelling about Oxi Clean or some other home cleaning product. 

I don't understand why Billy Mays must yell at me every time he is on TV.  Also, why is this an acceptable and popular form of television advertising?

I'm sure he's a nice guy and all.  But please stop yelling at me.

So today I'm listening to Pandora again and I see the ad below, confirming what I guessed at in a previous post – Pandora is geographically targeting ads to users. 


This banner ad is specifically for an open house at the University on November 21. This Open House is in St. Louis.

The landing page is also well-done because it's well designed and has the requisite social media sharing toolbar.  Although it should probably list the address of the open house on the landing page somewhere. 

 
A few years ago I managed a similar campaign for another college in St. Louis, and although those campaigns were successful at driving traffic from direct mail, organic searches and pay-per-click advertising , it
would have been nice to use other tools like this.

Well done Fontbonne and well done Pandora.