Grounded In Reality

After a terrible week of grey New York weather, myself and the rest of the New York Digital team were thankful for a bit of sunshine at the AIDS Walk in Central Park on Sunday. The AIDS Walk is the largest AIDS fund raising event in the world, and with over 45,000 participants in New York, it raises millions of dollars annually for those affected by HIV and AIDS.

For me, being new to the city and a Brit, it was a good opportunity to see more of New York, and I was excited to check out Strawberry Fields and the Dakota apartment block, the scene of late Beatle, John Lennon’s, death.

Of course, we also made use of some new technology and shared photo updates in realtime on Andrew Foote’s Twitpic page. If you want to keep up with the latest developments in mobile social networking, download Twitpic, a new Twitter application which means you can now Twitter with pictures and video. It’s great fun and designed so that you can update your friends with pictures, video and a short message direct from your mobile. I am definitely a convert!

Thanks to family, friends and all at GCI who sponsored us. Our first foray into fundraising was pretty successful and we managed to raise over $1,000 for charity. Oh, and for those that didn’t get a chance to sponsor us this time, there will be plenty more fundraising initiatives from the digital team later in the year, so watch this space…

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Charlie Hart
GCI Group Digital

Google’s recent spectacle of lights in NYC was impressive. If you missed it, earlier this month the company turned the meatpacking district into a canvas of psychedelic video projections to celebrate the introduction of 70+ iGoogle artist themes.

Stunning projection technology aside (Obscura Digital did the work), I love that Google used an offline event to spark interest online. They could have stuck with the standard homepage promotion and logo re-design (aka Google Doodle) to announce the new iGoogle themes. Instead, they brought the designs to life and created a memorable experience.

Search superiority and intuitive services aside, Google is loved because it has mastered the ability to humanize a 100% online brand. Everything they do is centered around the user. Check out this post by David Armano about Google’s razor sharp focus on user experience.

For me, user experience means every touchpoint with a brand, whether it be online, offline, functional or observational. Google understands the importance of a 360 experience, both from the design side and the human interaction side. Other excellent examples are Google 4 Doodle and this video contest.

The takeaway: User experience is about delivering exceptional brand navigation and story flow online. It’s also about extending that story beyond the screen and into the physical world to strengthen brand affinity.

Interesting read here on SocialButterfly related to defining Health 2.0. I found this post most valuable because of the examples of online resources related to Health 2.0, especially because it’s hard to grasp the concept of the amount of health info online. It’s not a complete list, but it will give the general consumer a good sense of what’s out there related to Health 2.0 websites, podcasts, wikis, social networks, blogs, video sharing and online forums. Check out the post if you’re interested in a quick read and some great online health resources.

The author raises some solid questions related to Health 2.0 and its future. The first, “Is Health 2.0 helpful or harmful?” This could be debated for days, but as we’re a society that thrives on evolution, we should embrace Health 2.0 and the potential positives for patients and physicians. Yes there will be setbacks, but that’s how we learn. Sermo, for example is a positive example of Health 2.0 because physicians can discuss real world clinical issues and make changes to their practices based on online consensus.

What are your thoughts on Health 2.0 being helpful or harmful?

Few would argue that the Internet and blogs (as platforms) lend themselves rather well to facilitating the ability to share personal perspective. So, in that spirit, we’ve got a one-word opinion of Buzz Bissinger we’d like to share: blowhard.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the latest scandals to rock the sports blogging world, you may have missed the recent HBO special on the role of the Internet in the broader world of sports journalism, society and, well, seemingly everything else in the world. Earlier this week, Bob Costas welcomed Deadspin founder/editor Will Leitch to join what was likely pitched to him as a “panel discussion,” alongside renowned author H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger of Friday Night Lights and (somewhat out of left field, or whatever the appropriate football-related pun) Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards. What ensued on “Costas Now” was an ambush that bared no resemblance to any sort of discussion.

However, somewhere between the venomous expletive-laced tirades of “old-school Buzz” lies infinitely fertile ground for countless discussions relevant to modern media, blogging, the role of the Internet and what it all means for PR, marketing and the like. Instead of launching into a dissertation on the topic, take a look for yourself at some of the very cogent, passionate and revealing sentiments from some of the most popular sports blogs on the Web including Fire Joe Morgan (also featured in HBO segment intro), Every Day Should be Saturday, Awful Announcing and Leitch himself (also here). Mainstream journalists have also latched onto the story from Richard Sandomir at The New York Times to Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star (alas, it’s on Barnhart’s…[gasp]…blog!).

So, take a read and form your own opinion. The number of angles from which can tackle this debate are infinite, but one thing is clear for PR professionals. The writing is (and has been) on the wall. Whether anyone likes it or not, blogs, if not the prevailing new media, represent a channel that cannot be ignored. Of course, we all already knew that. Wonder what kind of week Bissinger’s PR folks are doing today? Talk about an interesting “fly on the wall” situation.

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Steve Bonsignore
GCI Sports