I need to listen to the Social Media Intelligentsia a little more often. Maybe a year ago, a friend of mine (I’m looking at you, @93octane) predicted that Instagram would be the next big thing. It would be the Twitpic killer. It would be the way people shared images. It would be a game changer.

Well, I don’t think he predicted it would surpass Foursquare (maybe he did, we didn’t talk about it), but after reading the news, I was immediately reminded of the conversation.

For details. check out this article over at Social Fresh. Granted, we’re talking about mobile Social Networks, so Facebook and Google+ are safe (for now), but people do love to share their images – a lot more than they love sharing their location, it would seem.

If you have an iPhone, and you don’t have Instagram, check it out. Bonus points if you upload a picture of a PBR for Lyell.

–Ant.

This commercial started with a different idea – see vimeo.com/​5110747

So this year, due to our client’s limited budget (existing footage), they wanted a new solution for the 2011 Summer School, “but keep it edgy”. With a quick VO session from Anthony and pacing/graphic changes, we came up with what we thought was another strong spot for the 2011 Summer School.

A recent spot we did for CBS Radio – Charlotte’s own sports talk station THE FAN.  It’s what can be done with one texture, some logos, and an audio bed.  I LOVE After Effects!

GMC, the Christian music channel, put out a vote to the public – “What’s Your Favorite Christian Music Video?”  And lo and behold, Michael W. Smith’s “Save Me From Myself”, edited by 1060 Creative, comes out on top!  It’s good to be loved by the public!

Check out the link:  http://www.gmclife.com/

1060 Creative teamed up with Director Kevin Adamson and West Side Studios in Nashville to put together “Save Me From Myself”, the new single from Michael W. Smith’s 23rd album WONDER. The deadline was tight; the entire work-flow took a week to complete.  Michael’s record label wanted to release the video at the same time as the album.

How do you get from Michael W. Smith to 1060 Creative? As Peter explains, it helps to know people.

“I knew Kevin from my work at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Organization. I’d worked with him on other music videos (see Remedy Drive and Skillet), and he knew he could trust me to take his vision effectively to Michael. In the end Michael REALLY liked the video.  He even premiered it on Foxnews.com. I looked up the audience of that site, and they have 8.5 Million viewers each month, so 283,000 people are looking at this every day.  We were psyched! Our biggest audience! “

Like most of my blog posts, I’ve been kicking this one around in my head for a while, not really sure if it’s worth posting or not. Then I heard about the upcoming Evolution of Foursquare Marketing Social Fresh panel, and thought the post just might be topical enough to publish.

For those of you who don’t know, Foursquare is a location-based social media service that allows users to “check in” at locations using their smart phone of choice. It was started by a couple of guys in New York City who wanted to get to know their city a little better by keeping up with where their friends were hanging out; e,g.,”Hey, I see that Chet just checked in at Clyde’s Pub over on 98th. I didn’t even know there was a pub over there. Nice.”

Right away you can see the marketing potential for restaurants, bars, retail outlets, and other places that have (and want more) foot traffic. When I check in at my local deli/pub Southsiders, all of my Twitter followers and Facebook friends (and Foursquare friends, for that matter) know about it. If they trust my judgment and have never heard of Southsiders, they might be inclined to check it out.

That’s all fine and good for places that get a lot of customers through the door, but at 1060 Creative, we’re a service-based company. Hence, we don’t get a lot of foot traffic. Sure, clients will come by to drop off or pick up stuff, or sit in on an edit, but largely, our door remains closed throughout the day. So how does a company like us market themselves with Foursquare?

Warning: what follows will probably not rock your Marketing World, but maybe it’ll spark an idea. The bottom line is that I don’t have a complete answer, but I can tell you that the use of Foursquare’s “Tips” feature is a way to at least let people know you’re in the area. Basically, Tips work like this: a user can leave a recommendation for visitors to a particular venue (“While you’re at Clyde’s Pub, please…try the veal”). These tips will pop up when a user checks into the venue. Furthermore, and this is important, a user’s phone will also display recommendations for venues that are near his or her current location; e.g., Chet checks in at Clyde’s Pub and a tip pops up, “Since you’re near Tony’s Pizza, try the Wednesday special. Free anchovies!”

To that end, we recently received a couple of inquiries about our services based on tips I posted. They’re pretty simple and generic, really:

• The tip for our current location in Fort Mill states, “Call on 1060 Creative for all your video production, post-production, and motion graphics needs. Visit www.1060creative.com or call 704-332-0111 for more info.” Well, someone checked in at location nearby, and our tip popped up. He called us the next day.
• Our old offices were in the Uptown Charlotte area. When we moved, I left a tip that informed people that we had moved, along with all the pertinent information. That tip also resulted in a phone call when someone checked in at a nearby business. (Note: yes, I know I should mark that location as “closed”, but, um, I have no plans to do so. Do the math. Bonus discussion question: Does that make me a bad Foursquare user?)

I related the above to a friend of mine (Jim Mitchem of Smash Communications) over lunch at a local sushi restaurant. In a more clever approach, he left this tip for the restaurant: “I had my first sushi here. Which reminds me, you should hire me for your next communications campaign.” I don’t think he’s had a nibble on that yet, but it’s out there, and who knows? Right? Hell, I’d call him I ran across that tip. Makes me chuckle…and I like hiring people who make me chuckle.

Anyway…look, I’m well aware that two measly phone calls and a non-sequitur comment made at a sushi joint is neither proof nor an example of the sizzling success that can be had by using Foursquare to market your company. But then again, to paraphrase an old friend, those phone calls were “two more than we’d received the day before”.

Something to think about, anyway.

–Ant.

MI-Connection, a community-owned cable system serving Mooresville, Davidson and Cornelius, NC asked 1060 Creative to do a :30 commercial for their new “Refer-A-Friend” campaign.  The goal was thank current customers for, well, being loyal customers.  And, to add even more customers by giving them bill credits to refer friends to MI-Connection. They wanted an eye-catching spot that would be fun and within their limited budget.  So, 1060 Creative suggested doing a graphic-only spot with retro images (inexpensive to buy), and simple motion graphics.  Doing a spot this way saves a bunch of money on a video shoot, while keeping a professional image for MI-Connection.

The campaign began in April and has been a success for MI-Connection.  The spot is running across all of their networks and has prompted many current customers to participate by visiting the MI-Connection web site and submitting their friends.

I edited this music video for Remedy Drive featuring their new Coldplay-esque single “Rescue”.  In fact I edited this one several weeks ago, but the group’s record label just gave permission to post it last week on Ransom.tv.  Gotta love record labels!  So, now it’s live and 1060 Creative is VERY excited to post it on our site as well.

This one had more of a story than the Skillet “Awake and Alive” video.  It took a solid week to put together NINE cameras’ worth of footage! And I believe I made something special.  It was fun to bump it up a few levels with some lens flares and color correction.  No one will notice, and I guess that’s the point, eh?

Enjoy!

The other night we sat down with Dr. Vincent Voci of the Voci Center to talk about how and why he brought Boston’s St. Anthony’s Festival to the Queen City. Five years later, the festival is still going strong and is showing no signs of slowing down. The festival is this Sunday, May 16, from 1:00PM-5:00PM at Camden Grandview, 209 East Morehead St. in Charlotte.

The ticket price includes unlimited food and wine from the city’s best Italian restaurants. Proceeds from the festival benefit the Nevins Center.

For more information and to buy tickets in advance, go to www.stanthonycharlotte.org. Hope to see you there!

NOTE: For those who might wander in and see this post, we’re seeing some difficulties with Vimeo (the video hosting site) today; for some reason, the video’s not coming up like it should. We’re not sure what’s going on, but we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience! Keep checking back to see the video…

Scott Health & Safety is an international Monroe, NC based fire safety equipment company. You would likely know them best from the “SCOTT” logo on a firefighter’s breathing apparatus. Scott needed a video to address their distributors during the FDIC conference (the world’s largest firefighter training and exhibition) in Indianapolis. We knew they needed to get a lot of information across to the audience, and we didn’t have a lot of time to produce it.

After a round or two of meetings we came up with 3 areas in which to focus the video – Innovation, Technology, and Distribution.  The video served the purpose of rolling out a couple of new products, providing an update of a couple of recently introduced products, and solidifying the relationship between Scott and their distribution partners. Further, instead of making one long video (which would be difficult to keep “lively” for the audience), we decided to break it up into 3 separate videos , each separated by a live presenter.

1060 completed the project – a grand total of over 20 finished minutes of video, including shooting in both St. Louis and Monroe – in a little over a week! Scott was very happy with the end result, and 1060 Creative gained a new client.

The video above is the short piece produced to introduce the live presentation as well as a small part of one of the sections (featuring a product demo).

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