eROI Days Email Agency » Cause-Related Marketing

The Need Map Project

Ryan Buchanan — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 01:57:19 +0000

Our team at eROI came up with a really cool concept called The Need Map project to make a difference in our own backyard. I love that this is a hyper-local effort that is focused on filling gaps that exist, instead of re-inventing the wheel.

To all the folks who are driving this effort, thank you thank you. This is just the beginning of helping the community for the long term, not just a holiday effort. Looking forward to seeing this seed germinate. Please go to www.needmap.com to give us your ideas.

2 Days until the Old Town Block Party!

Ryan Buchanan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:58:11 +0000

We are only two days away from the Old Town Block Party and the entire neighborhood is buzzing with anticipation. As I mentioned in my last Block Party post, this was born out of a brainstorming session at eROI and now has grown into an event with over 20 booths, a record release party, Seven Planet store opening and a rummage sale just to name a few happenings. The eROI lounge will be by the exit on 5th, between Couch and Davis. Come down and say hi to us and all the other Old Town businesses. I can’t think of a better way to spend a Portland Saturday then with food, drinks, shopping and a lot of music. Let’s celebrate our community and help re-erect the Hung Far Low Sign!

Check out the Old Town Block Party»

Donate to help re-erect Hung Far Low»

Ignite6 – Only in Portland do You see this

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:43:46 +0000

Dawn Foster just sent out an awesome Flickr slideshow done by Aaron Hockley. I’ll figure out the iframe work-around to get the embedded slideshow working correctly when I get into the office tomorrow. As I was sitting next to fellow current, current, and former eROI teammates Dylan, Summer, and Garrett, I couldn’t help but commenting on all of the things that Portland creativity, informality, and general vibe offer that you simply can’t find anywhere else. For example: I would never see a toddler or infant at a late-night business event on the East Coast where “ear muffs” are needed in many of the presentations. I doubt other cities have women crescendo into near-real orgasms over vegetables during a presentation. So, to start off my twitter stream from the big Ignite6 night, I’ll pick the one that sums it all up – “What’s great about portland? So communal – techies bring kids to the event, casual, real, accepting, creative, inspiring.” Here’s the rest of my tweets:

# James keller on being a hooker in rugby. Great lessons, entertaining #ignite6

Eva – brilliant thinking

Authority – like librarians – its about what’s real

Anything happens at #ignite6 – veggies an aphrodisiac

Ice cold swim after sauna – shrinkage can be an issue #ignite6

Sauna cleanses you inside and out #ignite6

After intermission – sauna etiquette pres, #ignite6

# Kgw – lesson 1 – be careful who you call a hipster. Epic fail. At #ignite4

http://ohac.org – getting kids insured

Healthcare presenter – diy – ducttape your broken finger, mental stuff, manage risk. 1 of 6 americans don’t have health insurance

Pet your dog at shoulder, not on head.

Pet your dog at shoulder, not on head

Treat your dog like a dog, not like your inner child #ignite6

Bridget talks about how you can stop shitty little dog syndrome. Like junk-scratching in public

The turk was a machine in 1734 that beat chessmasters of the day ( actually a man hidden in the machine)

@magicseth is up now #ignite6

Myofacia – gotta learn good posture to optimize muscle memory in your body

Chris espouses mindful commerce in last slide – love it – thinking of @sevenplanet

Chris doing presentation on being a gentleman – great delivery

Multi-touch acquarium app on display table – art coming to life

Microsoft display costs 17k, todd’s team create display table for 1k and do it 2 weeks #ignite6

Todd – presenter 1 – multi-touch display like iphone

Startupalooza is oct 10, #ignite7 is nov 12

What’s great about portland? So communal – techies bring kids to the event, casual, real, accepting, creative, inspiring

@ignitepdx, very simply, I love portland.

Tom Szaky is Gold at Greening of Greater Portland Event

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:07:04 +0000

I met Tom Szaky, barely 25 years old at the time, and a pure, scrappy, entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, at the 2007 Inc. 500 conference in Chicago. He spoke before keynote President Clinton and was clearly the more engaging speaker of the two (a pretty tough feat considering how dynamic Clinton used to be). Tom, born in Hungary, grew up in Canada, and dropped out of Princeton to start “The Coolest Startup in America” called Terracycle where every product and its packaging is made out of garbage. His story is fascinating and the lessons business leaders and public policy-makers can learn from his success are significant. The irony for Portland, one of the greenest cities on Earth, is that most business leaders and policy folks had never heard of him and were quite doubtful that some young kid would be any good as a keynote speaker at the wildly successful Greenlight Greater Portland annual event – thankfully, Tom proved them wrong with an excellent presentation of how to win by innovating and by being greener, better, AND cheaper. I don’t have his presentation electronically, so until I get it, you’ll have to settle for the YouTube video on his Good Morning America and Oprah appearances six weeks prior.

The fun part of the day came later when Portland entrepreneurs John Friess (Wired.MD, Journey Gym, Seven Planet), Josh Friedman (Eleven Wireless, NedSpace), Martin (Climate Prosperity Portland, Formos) and I had drinks with Tom Szaky – it wasn’t your normal night of casual conversation over a beer. We took a detour to NedSpace and watched Friess give a straight-faced demo of his prototype product Journey Gym while the four of us were heckling him (at 10pm with a few drinks in us). The evening continued at next-door bar Lotus where we all brainstormed various products to make out of used toothbrushes, sun glasses, and dozens of other waste streams that could now have innovative uses once they’ve been separated from the rest of garbage before they get to landfills. Most off-the-wall idea: make kid-wagons out of compressed, used toothbrushes. Friess – you’re going to need to explain that concept a little better to me now, because it sounded so good Thurs night.

Ignite NYC – creative vibe to NYC tech scene

Ryan Buchanan — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:14:29 +0000

My two fellow eROI NYC folks, Chris Masagatani and Kavita Makadia, joined me in attending the June 1 Ignite NYC event just a block from Chris’s apartment in Midtown. I had been to an Ignite event in Washington DC which was pretty good, but a little stiff and serious, so my expectations were moderate before going to the event. At this NYC event, I was blown away by how creative, funny, and polished each of the 5-minute presentations were. I highly highly recommend you watch the video below of the brilliantly funny Baratunde Shares of The Onion.

Here is my Twitter stream from Ignite NYC in reverse order (most recent to oldest posts):
# Kickstarter.com seems really cool as crowd-funding concept. Like kiva.com for the usa. #nyc4

# @ignitenyc vibe is awesome – crowd is into it and super supportive. All presentations except one have been solid

# Oh: “the greatest trick the devil ever invented was convincing the world he didn’t exist. I wrote him back, baby!” #nyc4

# @the_swine_flu hilarious @theonion. Brilliant!

# Charitini a very cool concept #nyc4

# Online dating pres of 16.1 million profiles and made a census by congressional district. Amazing.

# Dollhouse earth part 1, 2, 3 – love the disconnectef thoughts all coming together at the end #nyc4

# Overview effect for man on the moon – altered consciousness #nyc4

# Unicef built rapidsms to facilitate sms and problem solving for malnutrition in africa #nyc4

# Beautifully done @cstoller

# First presenter is from organic. Study kindle page like rock layers. I will show u mine if u show me yours. Money. Hilarious #nyc4

# @ignitenyc kicks off with a really positive vibe. I think it might beat out wash dc, but tough to beat pdx. #nyc4

OK, I love these YouTube Ignite NYC IV videos so much I had to show more – check ‘em out below:

Tim Hwang starts off the first few seconds a little tough, but is really really good after…

Kickstarter.com is a really cool concept – like kiva.org for US companies:

Please comment below in the form of a Haiku! Thank you.

Obama’s Rahaf Harfoush Rocks Keynote Speech at Innotech

Ryan Buchanan — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:34:33 +0000

The unsung hero behind an amazing integrated, grassroots campaign of traditional marketing, in-person events, and social media (well, she was mainly the social media part) gave a great keynote speech at the eMarketing Summit of Innotech today. Rahaf Harfoush was great. I show my twitter stream below of notes from the event, but also noticed she just launched a new site and blog – http://www.rahafharfoush.com/

Here is my twitter stream from Rahaf Harfoush’s awesome keynote speech at Innotech:

Very progressive. We can’t go backwards now to restrict all info to public.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Impossible to replicate. It was the perfect storm.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Grant park had 1 million deliriously happy people. Thx for great presentation @rahafharfoush about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Weekend before election – 1 million doors knocked on in pennsylvaniaabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Oh: this pumpkin was on messageabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Empower grassroots neighborhood movement. Mybo find an event near you. Yale grads did community service with obama gear – live obama brandabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Americans really cared – personalized the mission. People owned their part in obama’s successabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Rewarding the right behavior – activity index ranked the value of blog posts, hosting events – took into account taking action nowabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

#inpdx – kudos to raven and @grigs for kicking ass on the obama iphone app. Super cool.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Is @kentjlewis the only other person in room of 250 at innotech twittering now?about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Converting low end users – main way was thru email marketing. 1 billion emails sent by obama. Hyper-segmented based on location, donationsabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Advice on engagement – focus on quality of commenters, fb friends, twitter followersabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Random thought. Obama logo about promise and positivity. Mccain logo evokes military imagery.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Obama had 5x to 10x metrics over mccain on facebook, myspace, youtube, and twitter. 1 billion minutes obama video watched.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

2 million profiles created, 400k blog posts, 200k offline events all thru mybo community siteabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

New media had to be integrated into every traditional marketing and pr communication peiceabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Simple mesage. Hope. Change. Action. People resonated with that.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

In sept ’08, obama raised 150 million, 2/3 online. Largest month in political history.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Lastly, focused on small donations. Most donors had never given to any candidate before. Obama raised $750 million. Wow!about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Obama online very innovative from the beginning. 50 state strategy. Target the disaffected center. Focused on message of obama as unifierabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Watching rahaf harfoush speak #innotech about obama’s social media strategy #inpdx. Very engaging. Great topic.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Video: Why Portland Rocks for Business and Life

Ryan Buchanan — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:44:17 +0000

The PDC (Portland Development Commission) put together this video featuring business folks from Laika, Ziba, Columbia Sportswear, Oregon Iron Works, Vestas, Wieden+Kennedy and eROI. If you dig Portland and the surrounding area, check out the video below.

eROI Team Helps Friends of the Children: Bowl-a-thon

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:28:39 +0000

eROI employees, significant others, and kids joined in the festivities to help raise $110,000 for Friends of the Children in this year’s smash hit Bowl-a-thon! More than the dollars raised, we had an awesome time this past Saturday rocking out to Britney Spears (special request from Sydney) to learning more about the Friends organization in movies and meeting a bunch of the kids and mentors in the program. Check out this slideshow:

2009: Here We Come

Ryan Buchanan — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:29:22 +0000

In case you missed them, here is one post with all 10 eROI Online Marketing Predictions for 2009:

10. My Dad will use Twitter for first time and get hooked

9. My Mom will get on Facebook and get addicted to chatting non-stop with family and friends

8. Skype and other easy video-creation apps will take off in ‘09

7. Open-source, powerful tools like WordPress and Magento will become more like social apps and promote UGC (User-Generated Content)

6. Email campaigns and customer life-cycle email triggers will integrate seamlessly into social networking sites and tools.

5. Email is a whole lot more mobile today, but the formatting is still crap. You’ll see this improve dramatically in ‘09.

4. Social TV on your computer will become more popular than Regular TV among core online users.

3. Advanced site search is becoming so natural and intuitive – marketers will prioritize this as an easy implementation with huge ROI for their site.

2. CRM and Email Automation

1. The Economy will grow in ’09! Optimism will Conquer Fear.

A Few Good Holiday Emails

Ryan Buchanan — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:08:46 +0000

Like most of you, I got dozens of corporate “Happy Holidays” emails. Most had great intent behind them (donating to good causes instead of sending a paper card or gift), but these email campaigns lacked creativity and fell flat in their execution. GoDaddy’s holiday email and flash landing page was so tame and off-brand from the edgy stance they’ve taken with their Super Bowl ads. Some of our vendors sent me holiday emails that were strong sales pitches – not appropriate for a time of reflection and authenticity. Most other emails had generic subject lines like “Happy Holidays from x” and generic email design with low or generic results to their campaigns. I liked 2 holiday emails (beyond our own holiday email) – the first was from Michelle Obama – the main thing I liked was that the Obama campaign FINALLY didn’t ask me for money for themselves – they did ask me to donate to my local food bank.

The second holiday email campaign (see above for email design) had such compelling and humorous, original content on its landing page that it made up for a slightly expected subject line and simple email design and copywriting. Basically, this email from Sandstrom Partners was incredibly effective at getting me to click on the main call to action and even better at getting me to laugh as I completely connected with the agency gift conundrum. See if you think their video landing page is funny too >>