Eric Williamson

I was getting my morning fix at the closest Starbucks this morning and I witnessed a very cool display of brand & customer fanaticism that is worth sharing. The Scene The place was completely packed with customers.  All the seats were taken, and the line to order stretched all the way to the door.  Needless to say, every single Starbucks barista & employee available was behind the counter whipping up drinks as fast as they could to handle the rush.  While I was in line I was near the... Read Full Story

I got a mysterious @Mention tweet from Santa today using the hashtag #santaclout .  Well, to be clear it was from @SantaClout who it seems has been busy since December 1st sending @Mention tweets to a list.  That’s right folks @SantaClout has made his list and he is tweeting it. Upon closer inspection, Mr. Klaus has sent 188 tweets at the time of this post with @Mentions to a long list of people.  From the looks of the list of people that I recognized, I would speculate that @SantaClout... Read Full Story

Stimulate your friends. Great campaign from two badass Martinites with a $500 and a great idea. Submit your idea and follow their campaign until they run out of $$$. The Hi-Five at the end is freaking genius. Read Full Story

Unless you were asleep for the past 12 hours, you are well aware that Google+ opened things up for Brands today.  There is no shortage of articles and blog posts that covered this in depth today.  The best of them from an agency or brand consultancy standpoint are the following IMHO: TechCrunch: How Google+ Could One-Up Facebook Brand Pages Google Blog: Google+ Launches Brand Pages ReadWriteWeb: Google+ Launches Brand Pages Mashable: Google Direct Connect Hooks Search and Google... Read Full Story

I was doing my regular Sunday morning Feedly browsing and stumbled across a wonderful Slideshare deck by Made by Many.  It dives into a number of different process and structure topics for how agencies and brand consultancies must work today VS the assembly line approach of old advertising.  I am sure the deck would be even better with the V/O from the actual presentation. Enjoy! Silicon beach d01 View more presentations from Made by Many Read Full Story

Procrastination is a terrible thing.  After what seems like forever, I finally took a vacation this week and had the time to realize that my “clean” blog theme had become a bit cluttered.  It was definitely time for a theme upgrade and a bit of a widget cleanup.  The new theme keeps with the simple/ minimal style that I prefer but I went from a 3 column to a 2 column in order to give more weight to the posts themselves. Read Full Story

  As of today there is a total BS number of 1.4 Zillion blog posts and techie op/ed articles that provide a high-level overview on Google+ …… “The Pros and Cons of Google+” and what not. So, as an up-front effort to keep you totally glued to this post through the end I can promise you that this NOT another one of those.  I am going to breeze right past the overview and dive into one specific feature and a deficiency that I think could easily be fixed by the brilliant minds at Google... Read Full Story

If you work at an advertising agency, then you are are probably dealing with the “digital strategy” dilemma right now.  Most of the top agencies around the world have reached a point in their digital evolution where they no longer need the digital silo that they bolted on a few years ago. Getting rid of the digital silo is the right thing to do IMHO, but I would be lying to you if I said it was easy. An important part of silo busting is figuring out how to reallocate the digital talent... Read Full Story

The first day at SXSW was a bit of a blur.  The actual conference got kicked off at 2pm, but the place was buzzing and getting packed by 9am when Eric Hanson and I went by the Austin Convention to pick up my badge and some VIP badges for an event. After picking up my SXSW Badge and getting some breakfast tacos, Eric H and I headed back to Barton Creek Resort where about 6 of the Martin Agency crew were staying to pick everybody up for Day 1 of SXSW.  We left the resort around noon so we... Read Full Story

I arrived in Austin today and am looking forward to kicking off SXSW tomorrow.  As a precautionary measure I figure I should use tonight (aka “SXSW Eve”) to run through my personal SXSW Readiness Checklist. Laptop backpack to be able to stop, drop and blog instantly - check Available room in my laptop backpack for various badges, t-shirts, stickers and other ridiculous SWAG - check Multiple gadgets fully charged - check Power cords for said gadgets to refuel midday – check “Yes... Read Full Story