Just think about it from a business perspective. You would offer free wifi for your customers and in exchange, they have your logo embedded in their videos, emails, etc. That sounds great right? You could even serve up coupons to them and the audience to their videos. But will customers be willing to commercialize their content in exchange for a free connection? What do you think?

If you visit the website for Modernista!, the advertising agency based in Boston most well-known for their ads for Hummer and Cadillac, you may be surprised. Instead of the typical flash-based website with luscious images and animation that occupies most major advertising agency websites, you are greeted with a Wikipedia entry and an announcement.

A red pop-up says, “Do not be alarmed. You are viewing Modernista! through the eyes of the Web. The menu on the left is our homepage. Everything behind it is beyond our control.”

That menu is “cute” at best. It is basic and simple. And it gives nods to various popular sites and web languages:

The “ab.ou.t” section, represented as a nod, no doubt to del.icio.us and other sites (mine included) that uses the full URL to an advantage, is the Wikipedia page and also a Facebook group. The “wrk” section links to a Flickr account displaying print advertising and a YouTube channel for TV spots. The “n3wz” section links to a Google News page displaying the latest announcements and news articles falling under the “Modernista!” keyword. Then there is a “cont@ct” page. Read more…

I was driving down the highway yesterday and notice a freshly installed sign along the way. It was one of those “Adopt-a-Highway” sign. On it, there was a logo from a generic tech company acknowledging their sponsorship and commitment to keeping that stretch of road clean.

This got me thinking. Can this be applied online?

What if we take the idea of trash along the road and associate it with SPAM comments on a website. The websites I write for are not even close to popular yet I still spend 5 minutes a day policing and deleting my SPAM comments. I can’t imagine the time and effort required to controlling SPAM for huge sites with huge traffic.

What if there was a company that handled all your SPAM for free? A company that made money by facilitating a new type of sponsorship for advertisers: adopting a website? Here’s how it would work:

You sign up with this made up company. They gain limited access to your commenting engine with the ability to monitor and administer the comments. They sell advertising to put up a banner on your website. Something like, “Forum Moderation Sponsored by Company X”

For all I know, this may already exist. But if it doesn’t exist already, do you think it would work?

Take a good look at this picture. What do you see? Do you see appetizing raisins, cashews and peanuts? Is your mouth watering with this enticing imagery? Or does it look like a garbled mess of shapes that look like the contents of a Death Star trash compactor?

This “First Class Snacks” image that I took at Logan Airport in Boston last week can tech us an important lesson in scale. Some things in this world should not be magnified larger than life. What makes Cashews delicious is not the shape or the texture. It is the taste. Save the beautiful food close ups for eggs and strawberries.

This enlargement of first class snacks just makes this look disgusting. When thinking about the scale in which you represent a product or service, keep in mind what make that product appealing in the first place and lead with its strengths.

It was a familiar sight. I was reading Boston.com, the online newspaper for the Boston Globe and I saw a series of familiar pink boxes and a coffee cup. Must be another series of Dunkin Donuts ads I thought. But after a closer look I noticed something interesting.

Those ads were not Dunkin. They were Starbucks. When you think of the color “pink”, Starbucks is the last thing that should cross your mind. As someone who has worked on the Starbucks account, I can tell you that browns, and earth tones are a mainstay. Not the festive pink and orange that defines Dunkin’s brand.

It looks as if Starbucks is playing in Dunkin’s sandbox. Read more…