The best ad agency in Farmington, Utah

What? It's been a year already?

Today, most people are ending their second week of New Year’s Resolutions and evaluating their progress. And this is the point at which many people realize that they may have made some pretty unrealistic goals for themselves. Well, not to be out-done, this is also the point in the year when we like to present our own goals for 2012. We have thousands, but, to save everyone time, we whittled it down to 5.

Our Top 5 Social Media Goals for 2012:

1.     Clean Up Our Desktops They say that cleanliness is somehow related to godliness, and we think that’s a pretty good standard. So, we want to approach godliness by straightening out the documents and toys that cover both our computer desktops as well as the physical workspaces that surround our machines. Let’s revisit the world of file folder creation and, surely, some of this stuff can go in the trash. We may not hit the goal of godliness, but increased productivity would be fine, too.

2.     Make Social Part of Our DNA We understand the power of social media as a separate communication channel for a brand’s customers. Now, let’s integrate social media into our projects, strategies and campaigns from the beginning so that interaction and dialogue are central to our clients’ long-term business goals.

3.      Social is NOT a synonym for Facebook We’ve learned there’s more to social media than Facebook and even Twitter. Let’s introduce our clients to the broader spectrum of social media and the audiences that can be reached through great tools like Flickr, Foursquare, Ustream, Groupon, Tout, Viddy, Instagram, Tumblr, Slideshare, Reddit and let us not forget our old friend, the blog.

4.     Use More Video We learned the power of YouTube in 2011:
- 3rd most visited site in the world, 2nd largest search engine
- 140 million+ unique U.S. visitors per month
- Over 3 billion videos viewed each day
Campaigns like Orabrush and Cheapster have shown that YouTube can actually be the centerpiece of an ad strategy. Video is also the easiest format to spread a message quickly through social media networks. Plus, it’s fun.

5.     Remember the real meaning of “Social” The agency is filled with people, most of our clients live near one of our offices, and EVERYONE has a cell phone. Let’s take a little more time and reduce the amount of emails we’re sending to each other by doing more “real-time interfacing.” We also want to focus more on events during and around the workday where we can talk to the great people we work with that remind us why we chose agency life over, say, working in a toll booth.

Yesterday I attended the Shift Summit at the Grand America Hotel here in Salt Lake. One of the speakers was Clark Gilbert, president and CEO of the Deseret News Publishing Company and Deseret Digital Media. His specialty is disruptive innovation which he has studied extensively at the Harvard Business School.

He talked about how titans of industry can be overturned, shrunk or entirely passed by because of disruptive innovation. The reason, he said, is because they’re at the top of their game and think of disruptive sources as “Not what we do.”

He asked what industries out there have been stopped dead in their tracks by disruptive influences. The first thing that came to my mind was music, so I offered it as an answer.

Clark then asked a series of questions:

Clark: “Who made the Walkman?”
Me: “Sony.”
Clark: “Who owns three music labels?”
Me: “Sony.”
Clark: “Who owns VH1?”
Me: “Sony.”
Clark: “Why didn’t they create the iPod?”

Bingo.

Later someone else asked “the million dollar question”: How can one tell if something is going to be disruptive?

Clark responded that it’s a lot easier to be a historian/academic than it is a CEO but offered this key insight in the form of a rhetorical question:

“Is it good for the consumer?”

Exactly.

Disruption thrives if it’s good for the consumer. If businesses can see what that’s going to be, embrace it and even promote it (even if it may seem detrimental/cannibalistic at the time), they’ll stay ahead of the curve.

Today Hulu announced a new product, Hulu Plus. For just $9.99 per month you get full current seasons popular TV shows (not just the five most recent episodes) and entire past seasons as well.

You will be able to get all seasons of (but not limited to):

• The Office
• X-Files
• Arrested Development
• Heroes
• 30 Rock
• SNL
• Dancing with the Stars
• Grey’s Anatomy

You can see the entire list here.

Watch out Comcast

By signing up with Hulu, networks are effectively bypassing cable companies and creating their own distribution network. It’s the cable companies’ worst dream come true: they’ve become dumb pipes. And when your only differentiation from your competition is speed and bandwidth, Moore’s Law takes over and prices fall. Sorry suckas! (But not really.)

Everyone wins

This is great news for the consumers. Instead of paying $78/month for cable (and a bunch of shows you don’t want to watch), cancel your cable (or drop it down to basic cable so you still have your local news and sports) and keep your Internet. Pay Hulu $9.99 per month and get the most popular shows streaming whenever you want them; no cable bill, no DVR hardware nor DVR subscription fees to worry about. Watch them wherever you want – no Slingbox required.

The networks win because they’re doing what iTunes did for digital music – making it so affordable and so easy to legitimately get media that most folks won’t find it worth the effort to pirate it.

OK. That was a lie. Not everyone wins. The cable companies take one giant step toward obsoleteness. Suckas!

Hulu – Not just on your computer

Another perk of Hulu plus is that you’ll be able to watch your content on your HDTV. Yes, content is coming in HD and will be streaming to certain Internet-enabled TVs, Blu-Ray players, set-top boxes, game consoles and – here’s the kicker – the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

I’m so excited about that I think I just wet myself a little.

Bonus: Save money on DVDs

Want to catch up with Psych (great show) and see if you can find the pineapple in each episode? You could go buy all four seasons for, on average, $30 per season or you can plunk down $9.99/month and watch them all over a couple of months. Then, if you really love it and want to invest in the DVDs you can do so.

What do you think? Is it this really as earth-shattering as I’m making it out to be? Would you kill your cable TV and just go with Hulu? Leave word in the comments.