If you have never done a March Madness bracket before, don’t be intimidated … and certainly don’t feel like you have to have background knowledge to join the competition! Here are some simple stats, tips, and tricks to help you fill out a bracket. Read it, ponder it, and then do what you want with it — a lot of it simply comes down to luck!
Pumpkins are perfectly fine in their own right – bold orange gourds, each with their unique size, shape, stem, and surface bumps. But when we pick up the knife to transform our pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern, the process of revealing the pumpkin’s identity really says a lot about the person carving it. Many of us get excited about the idea of carving a pumpkin, only to find suddenly that we are frozen by the endless choices. Should I carve a spooky face? A smiley face? A famous person’s face? What about no face at all – I could use this surface to unveil a ghost, or a haunted house, or my name instead. Ahh! The paralysis of possibility spooks us and some may never bother to carve, leaving instead a perfectly fine pumpkin, but one that just sits there on your front step without drawing any attention from the neighbors. Pumpkin carving takes decisiveness and commitment. So does marketing a business.
The Lutheran Malaria Initiative helps people suffering from malaria in under-served countries through a combination of education, treatment, and prevention. Before their national roll out, we completely redesigned LMI’s website to reach out to donors and people who want to get involved in the movement. The goal of the new site is to humanize the issue with the theme “Give a First Chance,” and to create an emotional appeal that encourages action. The highly interactive home page, motion video, and interactive quiz showcase personal stories and statistical facts about the disease and the value of intervention. Each of these elements were tightly integrated with social media as a way to further spread the word about this important cause.
When I was growing up in St. Louis we would often take a field trip to an amazingly cool children’s museum called. It was literally a huge house in suburban St. Louis where the rooms transformed themselves into scientific adventures where kids could learn while having fun. The most memorable of all of the exhibits was an indoor slide that took you from the third floor back down to the first floor once you were done exploring all of the rooms. The reason that it was so memorable, however, was because I was too scared to ride on it.
The great thing about fireworks is that they come in all different shapes and sizes, and no two shows are the same. Some are loud, some are REALLY loud, others are colorful, and some fill the sky. You can have your own little custom fireworks display at the end of your driveway, or you can watch the magnificent show downtown (although not this year, if you live in Chicago). With 2011 halfway over, this is a good time to take a step back and evaluate how your marketing efforts are working. Some companies might just need a little spark, while others might need to get out the old rocket boosters and make a bigger bang. Here are a few questions to help you figure out what type of fireworks your organization needs.
We just wrapped up our tour of duty at this year’s annual HOW Design Conference. It was hosted here in Chicago last weekend, and left us with the impression that we just experienced the business version of a “stay-cation”.
Perspectives, Ltd. specializes in helping make workplaces healthier by providing an organization’s employees with high-touch employee assistance programs (EAPs). Their goal is to create a more productive work environment by providing employees with resources to allow them to fully focus on work. They approached us to help them tweak their brand in order to better represent the quality of their company through their communication materials.
Don’t know much about basketball? Don’t know anything about basketball? No problem. Filling out a winning bracket has little to do with knowledge of the game and a whole lot to do with luck. Case-in-point: over the past four years, we have done a mini four-person bracket challenge with our wives — who care nothing for basketball, generally ignore our brilliant advice about who they should pick, and instead choose the teams located in places they’d like to visit — and each year one of them has won! That’s made for a bit of misery at home as we’ve had to humble ourselves in the face of endless victory dances, but it’s still so fun to play we’re doing again — with all of you!
Have you ever gone to a nice, chatty meal and noticed a piece of spinach stuck in the teeth of your friend or colleague? You try not to stare, but all you can see is that big green obstruction in their pearly whites. As you debate whether or not you should point it out, you find yourself so distracted that you don’t even notice the conversation anymore and you ultimately leave the meal remembering the green in their teeth and not the ideas discussed. That same distracting effect happens when you look at a website that is poorly designed. Disorganized layouts, poorly-fitted screen sizes, or bland information overload are like spinach in the teeth of an otherwise respected organization. A good website redesign is like a much-needed toothpick; it cleans up the distraction and helps you smile confidently.
There is a certain beauty found in the natural world that very few remember to recognize. And once found, it can easily be forgotten among the emails, timesheets, and expense reports. For much of the year, nature is understanding and patient of us, but every once and a while it likes to assert itself and last night it branded us in a beautiful, majestic white color palette.
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