Keelan Green and Leisha MacDonald holding the Olympic Torch in Ottawa on December 9th.

I am pleased to announce the launch of Thornley Fallis & 76design’s new online presence.

Our new websites, conceptualized, designed and developed by our team of creative masterminds and technology all-stars, exemplifies our capacity to push the limits of innovation in the world of social media and digital marketing.

Thornley Fallis & 76design is made up of individuals with fun, smart and professional personalities; personalities that have all contributed to the success of marketing & communications projects. To fully demonstrate the range of personalities, talent and intelligence our team has to offer, we’ve done something a little outside the box. Something very brave… or maybe something very stupid – we’ll let you know

We’ve created a live LifeStream for every one of our employees. This is more than just a standard funny profile picture and biography. It is an aggregate of their work and online profile, intended to paint a picture of who they are, what they do, what they think and what they are interested in.

To explore the diverse and unique characters at Thornley Fallis and jokers at 76design, take a look through our people profiles and find out who you could be working with on your next project.

Not only is our team exceptionally talented (and good-looking), we are experienced & passionate about the work we do. While adventuring through our People pages, zoom over to the Work & Services sections to see what Thornley Fallis & 76design has to offer.

My colleagues and I hope you enjoy perusing through our new sites.

Oh and one more thing… if you like what you see, don’t hesitate to call us, we’d love to hear from you!

Readers can consider this a blog post by popular demand. The blogosphere and twitterscene (a word I hope I just coined) are small places; look around and you’ll see a familiar handle.

Futurecasting—something I enjoy as a mild hobby—is a career byproduct. Most PR counsellors practice it at some level. As a lazy blogger (I want to, but I find I don’t make time for it) I have been encouraged to blog more, worry about it less, and go for broke.

This, therefore, is broke. This is what I am following, noticing, observing and paying attention to across various media, scenes, sites and places:

The world’s greatest ponzi scheme is unfolding; Bernard Madoff (which google) is in jail and the legal entities of the United States and Elsewhere are now eyeing his family’s assets with narrowing eyes and a sceptical expression. In a time when many people are questioning how oversight bodies (SEC et al) failed to catch a theft of such magnificent proportion it behooves government agencies to now—perhaps “at last”—step in and show that they are up to the job at hand. That means that la famille Madoff can expect a large team of forensic accountants to exhume every cheque, chit, IOU and other financial instrument going back to who-knows-when and—I hereby predict—confiscate anything that isn’t nailed down. (Even the family piano, according to one report, is under threat of immediate confiscation.) Taking possession of Mrs Madoff’s piano will not nullify her husband’s crimes, but it looks good (the optics of it, if you will) for a public eager to see justice served no matter how late or cold.

Live cheaper to live better? When times get tough people turn to kith and kin for solace and comfort. What is more comforting than a home-cooked meal? A pleasant stroll through a local bookstore conglomerate reveals the new reality of kitchen fun: Cookbooks promoting casserole cooking, slow cooking (see: Futurecasting) and all manner of delectable meals on the cheap are currently in vogue. The very notion of “cooking” is now back in vogue after a long-ish hiatus as a pleasant pass time for busy people. Cooking—the dreary need to prepare meals for yourself or family—was a basic fact of life through much of history. In the latter end of the 20th century, however, cooking—the bane of housewives for eons—morphed into a soci0-economic totem of the good life. Cooking became an activity for couples to share as they entertained on weekends with artfully turned out meals paired with the proper wines, artisan cheeses and unique appetizers. By the turn of the century (that is, 1999 into 2000) fast food, take-out, home delivery, personal chefs and “assembled meals” had taken precedence at the family table and cooking was firmly established as a hobby.

Luxury that shows is no longer desirable. Famous brands (Royal Daulton, Waterford Crystal, Wedgwood) that reigned for the longest possible time in the finest homes and dining rooms are facing the sad fact that they are in trouble. Public Luxury—which used to something most people aspired to—is now unfashionable. While it is possible to hide your luxury at home (you can drink beer in a Waterford goblet if you draw the curtains) it is impossible to hide your luxury in public. Famous automobile marques (Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Bentley and so forth) will sit longer on the showroom floor while a careful public reconsiders its values. Marketing luxury in an economic storm requires a deft touch; the focus needs to change to “value” and “craftsmanship” and there can be no references to ego-features (custom stitching on leather seats, say, or engines with 8 more cylinders than are strictly required) as in the good old days of joyful and exuberant conspicuous consumption.

This blog is dedicated to Jason Ashton.

Last year, I did this post about Holiday/Christmas cards after receiving several crappy electronic cards, some of which were simply sad looking emails with “Holiday/Christmas” clip art in them.

As I said in my post last year, a Holiday card is an opportunity for contact with your network of customers, partners and suppliers, and like all such contacts with those parties, it is an opportunity to build the relationship, so it should be done right. 

When you meet a client for breakfast, lunch or dinner, you don’t go to McDonalds.  When take a client to a hockey game, you don’t buy seats at the top of the upper level.  And when you take client golfing, you don’t go to the $14 green fee municipal course.  So why then do some senior corporate executives think that it is acceptable to send out a Holiday email that clearly took no more than 5 minutes for their assistant with zero graphic design skills to prepare?

Anyone that has ever been in my office can attest to the fact that when comes to paper, I don’t want it around.  But I’m sure I’m not the only person that likes to put received Holiday cards up on the window sill.  Now I’m not saying e-cards can’t be well done.  I have seen several clever ones and even forwarded a couple to friends and colleagues.

At Thornley Fallis & 76design a lot of what we do is electronic communication (websites, multimedia, online communities, blogs, etc), but I still think its important for our staff to send their network of contacts a physical Holiday card that will stay around their office longer than the time it takes to open, maybe read, and delete an email message.

We usually start work on original concepts in October, we then have them printed, pull together about 1000 addresses/labels, and get them in the mail first week of December.  Over the years, I think we’ve come up with some pretty good cards that reflect the ‘personality’ of our firm and the people that work here. 

This year, our Creative Director Dom Coballe and Designers Shawn McCann, Jeff Young, Ben Watts and Meghan Gough took things to another level.  We asked staff to bring in personal Christmas/Holiday photos on themselves from when they were young.  We then designed a series of four retro-looking cards (shown below) that the photos were incorporated into.  We identified the staff members in the photos by name, current title at the firm and age at the time the photo was taken (e.g. Keelan Green, Vice-President & General Manager, Age 4).

We also produced a website so card recipients could view the other three cards in the series and we added in an interactive photo album so we could include more of the staff photos we collected.  The website address (www.onepiecesnowsuit.ca) is on the back of each card.

Now, of course, not every organization can design a card in-house like we can, but firms like 76design are available for hire. If you can’t do it in-house, hire a design agency or freelancer to help you do it right.  It won’t cost that much and it will enhance this contact with your customers, partners and suppliers.

I just received my welcome package to Fairmont President’s Club Premier.

I don’t normally get excited about stuff like this, but this was a very impressive, first rate effort by Fairmont.

Included in my package (shown spread out on my desk in the photo above) was:

• My 2008 Membership Card,
• Three room upgrade certificates,
• Two certificates for $25 off lunch or dinner, and
• Three luggage tags with my name on them and a Fairmont phone number and email address. If someone finds my bag(s), they (presumably after removing any valuables ) can contact Fairmont who will contact me to arrange for my luggage to be returned.

This is the type of customer service/relations that guarantees I will always look to stay at a Fairmont Hotel when travelling.

More knowledge from the recent Social Media for Government conference that took place in Ottawa this week.

Following demographic developments is a fascinating study. Society is changing as new technological advances change the face of one generation and redefine how that group interacts, understands, consumes and advances their culture.

From a presentation from some thinkers at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum I learned about Millennials (for more on the ROM surf this). Intrigued by this demographic, I did some research.

Millennials are broadly described as being born post 1980 (say, between 1982 and 1994) and only know a world with digital technology. They signal the largest shift in media and behaviour since the dawn of television, which separates them in numerous ways from an older generation of media consumers.

Millennials have some interesting characteristics that further define them as a demographic group.

Socially expressive and inquisitive individuals, Millennials are the product of a society that included high rates of divorce and two-income families. Some theorists believe this translates into Millennials lacking an automatic deferral to authority and a new take on romantic and personal expression.

The ability to recreate, remix, retrieve and reconfigure the past (through technology) is expected. Millennials are resourceful and collaborative and have proven to be innovative thinkers.

Highly social and interconnected, Millennials work well in teams but are not considered highly loyal to employers, work places, or even–it is believed–romantic partners. There is no broad consensus if this “lack of loyalty” stems from social conditions (for example, divorce rates) or from some other factor. Millennials expect–and subsequently create–challenging and stimulating work experiences and places with a strong focus on the “team” and social life. (That is, they work and play together.)

This is an interesting demographic now assuming positions in the workforce and in the broader community of consumers. It will be interesting to watch them and their impact on society, consumer culture, communications and social media development.

Yesterday I substituted for Joe Thornley and chaired a conference in Ottawa about Social Media for Government. The conference was hosted by the Advanced Learning Institute under the direction of Kelly Flynn, who put together a one-of-a-kind event.

The attendees were engaged, interested (and interesting) and all were either operating with social media tools now or preparing to launch them in the near future. It was a high-energy day with ideas, innovation, thought-leaders and learners collaborating together in sessions, presentations and meals. (Kudos to ALI for creating dynamic lunch and supper sessions that offered both choice and networking.)

Joe has a following among innovators who are active with social media tools and there were a number of people who already interact and communicate with him now plus a new cadre of people who joined social media sites–for the first time–yesterday and learned directly from Joe how to make these cutting-edge tools a part of their work lives.

This was a connected day. I was learning myself while chairing the day and I made some great contacts among the crowd.

Today (Weds) Thornley Fallis was again present; Joe is back to chair and lead the day while John Sobol and Nick Rusczkowski (my colleagues) presented at the morning session.

I will be adding more information about individual sessions as soon as I touch base with the presenters. As a teaser, however, I can announce that there are a number of federal government entities who are planning to launch social media tools in the near future. What I would like to do is post some Q&A sessions on CapitalPR with these innovators and share their message and knowledge with  an even broader base.

I thought this was a pretty good CSR / marketing initiative by Banana Republic.  Bring in a gently used sweater that they will donate to Goodwill and receive 30% off a new one. I brought in a sweater that I hadn’t worn for a while last week and picked up a new one.

Who hasn’t had to send a file yesterday that was too large for email?

Next time you find yourself in this situation, try YouSendIt.com.

I’ve used it a few times.

Not only can you get it there in a few minutes, eliminate the hassle of over-sized email attachments and avoid clogged inboxes, but you save the overnight courier cost of sending a CD/DVD.  Plus its really easy to use.