In those days, aperture referred to the right place and time for television, radio, print or outdoor (this was waaaay pre-internet…are you sensing a theme here?).  It was an important thought then, but today’s hyper-connected, social media/web 2.0 times magnify aperture’s importance ten fold.

According to a recent statistical analysis by Buddy Media, a leading supplier of social marketing software for clients and agencies, 89% of retail brand posts launch between 8 AM and 7 PM Eastern Time.  That makes sense because those are the work hours of the corporate people writing the posts.

Except it doesn’t make sense, because that’s when subscribers and consumers receiving those posts are busiest.

According to the study, brands reach people more successfully when they launch their messages in more favorable apertures.  For the Facebook crowd, engagement with retail brands rises 20% on posts between 8 PM and 7 AM.

In fact, it’s not just time of day but day of the week that drives engagement.  Buddy Media’s data reveals Facebook user engagement varies over the course of a week, peaking on Wednesdays and Sundays.  In comparison, Friday is the worst day for consumer engagement.  Retailer fans engage most with posts outside of traditional workdays.

All of which means it might be time to rethink our posting schedules and perhaps even invest in publishing tools and software, which not surprisingly, Buddy Media offers.  You can download their statistical report and check their methodology here.  Self-interest notwithstanding, it’s a pretty compelling argument for adjusting when we try to engage consumers online.

Other quick highlights of the report?  Facebook engagement drops with the frequency of posts during the day–less than three seems ideal for generating Likes and comments.  And keep them short: lengthy posts kill engagement. Only 5% of retail brand Wall Posts are less than forty characters, but those receive 86% higher engagement.  And in a sucker punch to the hopes of every creative in marketing, posts containing ”$ off” and “coupon” pull a 55% higher user engagement rate and simpler posts work better than more interesting and involved ones featuring links to video and photos.  Apparently when you are interrupting someone’s social experience, they are hopelessly self interested and simple-minded.

If I learned anything from Jim, it’s that aperture matters.  Which means this blog post is waaaaay too long.  Oh, and perhaps not surprisingly, Jim now teaches at Northwestern University.  Some folks can’t stop learning. And teaching.  For that, thank you Mr. Chips.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson

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I’ve enjoyed a terrific career making advertising but three years ago, when my prior agency’s fortunes changed suddenly and radically, I looked up and realized the world had changed while I was busy making TV campaigns. I had largely ignored the biggest revolution in marketing: the pervasiveness of digital screens, the stunningly-swift adoption of social networks and the increasing presence of mobile marketing.

I started blogging everyday to force myself to explore all these emerging platforms and immerse myself in the new reality. As Facebook continued to work it’s way every deeper into our lives, I started to recognize how social networks can provide savvy brands with crowdsourced PR. I was amazed how transparent and public people had become, sharing remarkable details of their personal lives. I learned about search and geo-tagging and the seamy creepiness behind unchecked online tracking. And I probably saw more than my fair share of virals and flashmobs and public self-destruction at the hand of Twitter.

I learned a lot, both by actively searching for subjects to discuss and happily, by reading comments posted and emailed from smart people offering their own points of view.  It’s been wonderful catching up.

But I gotta cut back. We’re doing lots of interesting things up here in Minneapolis, expanding the agency as we build and activate all sorts of brand communities for a wide range of clients. And I need to dedicate more time to that process.

So thanks for reading, thanks for your attention, thanks for your help. Going forward, I’ll post every now and then–habits can be tough to break–but my pace is definitely gonna slow.

Because advertising’s pace certainly isn’t.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson

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Television advertising generates $70 billion a year.

Online video produces $1.5 billion.

That’s just over 2% of television. Yes, online numbers are growing but remarkably, so are television’s.

So what this really means is that things won’t be getting any more obvious any time soon.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson

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That’s encouraging news for advertising creatives steeped in video production and storytelling. In fact, it’s yet another piece of evidence that despite what others may want to assert to fulfill their agendas, television is not dead. But it has migrated. And looks like it will keep moving.

Start writing those scripts…

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson

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Thinking back to two weeks earlier, at that same concourse in the same situation via the same media, I learned a Seal team had assassinated Osama Bin Laden.  And the realization that the Facebook platform had worked it’s way into my life on a fundamental level hit me like a ton of bricks.

Or maybe like a ton of impressions.  According to comScore’s Ad Metrix, Facebook delivered nearly one third of the 1.1 trillion display ads on America’s internet during Q1 2011, leading all online publishers.  By any measure, that’s a dominating advertising platform and it speaks to the utility and fun of this ‘free’ opt-in medium. But Facebook’s ‘free’ differs significantly from television’s.

I first became aware of the ‘cost’ of free media in the early 70′s when my Dad explained that the reason I had to go to Richie Tanguay’s house to watch Ultraman was that they had this thing called ‘cable.’ They paid to watch TV, which allowed them to watch some channels that didn’t even have any commercials at all. Ours was free because ours had commercials.

But Facebook’s free contract with users runs far deeper than the flood of display ads.  Facebook owns yottabytes of personal data on all of us: where we live, what we like, who we follow, even the very photos we post for our friends. From this perspective, the ongoing farce that is their nonstop series of security lapses begins to look less like the missteps of some crazy overwhelmed kids trying to keep up and more like brazenly calculating moves by a cadre of opportunists with a generational disregard for any limits of access. Or privacy.

Which is a whole new kind of free. Not better, but decidedly new.

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By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson

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God love Italian advertising…

Happy Friday!

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By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson

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PS:  Thanks to Joe LaPorte for passing this along.  Fun stuff…

PSS:  And thanks to Steve Brodwolf for pointing out that today is Friday the 13th. Nice build…

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But like all sarcasm, each insult contains a grain of truth, even if it’s ridiculously exaggerated.

When it comes to digital efforts, you must start by realizing that anyone online is only ever two clicks away from sports, gossip. comedy, prOn–the endless parade of distraction that makes up the world wide web. You must be relentlessly self-interested, but the self in question here is their self not yours.  Or your brand’s.

And worse, you also must realize that you’re vying for attention amidst a Niagara-esque deluge of digital information that anyone even remotely plugged in deals with these days.  Our computers, our phones, our iPads–every platform presents endlessly renewed tsunamis of information and distraction. Which makes even something as light as Facebook both a joy and a chore.

But that’s anecdotal research. Now some smart people, the kind who probably wear lab coats, have actually done studies on the subject. Not surprisingly, their results match how most of us feel: we can’t quite keep up.

Of the people polled by Magnify.net for their April Digital Lifestyle survey (download it here), almost half admitted to being connected to the web  “from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed.”  Oh man…  Worse, nearly three-quarters of them called their data stream ”a roaring river”, “a flood”, or “a massive tidal wave.”

This access is literally changing human behavior. Over three quarters of us regularly respond to emails on nights and weekends, half of us never turn our cell phones off, and perhaps worst of all, 40% ignore family and friends with over 35% answering work emails while with our kids.

And technology will only increase that data stream.

So the real hard question to ask is this:  is your idea worthwhile enough so it can pull people away from their friends and kids without making them resent you?

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By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson

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When you try to capture sentiment with film, you dance on a knife’s edge: push too hard and your idea dies the ignominious death of the maudlin. Hold back too much and your idea dies the flat, easily-forgotten death of non-commitment.

But when you get sentiment right, when you truly capture all the emotional heft of a parent’s dreams for their child, when you weave the product into the narrative seamlessly and the music accentuates without overwhelming…well then you get something like this.  Something wonderful like this.

Happy Friday.

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By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson

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Then suddenly, as we started spending more time online, television ads got small.  TV took a rocketsled to the bottom in search of  ”relevance” and in the process, visually-uninspired descriptors like “real” and “authentic” became enduring marketing buzzwords.  All sorts of people–agencies and clients alike–mistook the promise of digital, and began rendering it into small bits and bytes of uninspiration, an electronic halfling hobbled by direct mail’s metric-centricity.

And the world became a more boring place.  No longer inspired, consumer conversations moved on and elsewhere.  And clients suffered, though many failed to recognize exactly how…or why.

But ads like this give me hope.  Ads like this spark the waning flame of possibility and light the way back to cultural relevance for commercials.  This type of ad–and the visionary agency/client teams behind it–once again impact the culture and generate talk value by leveraging the big market impact of our industry’s most powerful media platform.

At least, that’s how I choose to see it.  Or maybe I just like watching things blow up.  Either way, enjoy this bit of high-octane and strategically-relevant brilliance for “Black Ops”–the latest installment in the Call of Duty series.  And recognize that an authentic insight–’everyone likes to play make believe soldier’–can be presented in a badass way yet still be friggin’ “authentic.”  Lovely work, Chiat LA.

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By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79

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Production has many uniquely wonderful joys: the discovery of location shooting, the challenge of designing shots on the fly, the plentiful gums and mints on the craft service table.  But best of all are the stories; the hilarious, ridiculous, remarkable stories that crop up any time a team of creative people work together for any length of time.

The following came verbatim via an e-mail from Creative Director Canice Neary last week.  Enjoy, won’t you?

“When Patrick Victor Brennan awoke at 4:45am on Tuesday, May 25, at the Holiday inn Express in Mineral Wells, Texas, he had no idea that this was the day he’d (almost) be a hero.”

Patrick V. Brennan, Producer/ (almost) Cowhand

We were setting up a shot where the director’s kid was to throw rocks into the Brazos River.  Young Josh Witherspoon was the first to spot a water moccasin, sunning itself on a river rock with a very full belly, right next to the area in which said youngun was to hurl the scalloped stones (being an art director by trade, Josh’s keen eye shouldn’t surprise anyone).

One thing was certain; that snake had to go.

After one of the ranch hands initiated the battle. brave Patrick began looking for boulders that would (almost) put that serpent out of it’s–and our–misery.

One after the other, rocks pelted that poisonous beast.  After about the fifth stone, it appeared the job was complete.  Until the ranch foreman lifted up the largest stone with the biggest walking stick these slickers from Chitown had ever seen.  Jaws agape, the snake prepared for it’s final defense.

Well, lemme tell ya…  They don’t call it ‘the Wild West’ for nuthin’.  With one whack, the moccasin slid into it’s watery grave for good.  And we got the shot.

And that my friends, is the story of how Patrick V. Brennan (almost) killed a water moccasin.”

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There really is no greater joy in this business than making stuff.  And when it’s great–when it inspires and surprises and sells, the reward is the opportunity to go back out and make even more stuff.  Here’s hoping those two weeks provide nothing but good things for Wolf Brand as we go to edit.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79
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