This week, Base Camp is headed out to Santa Fe, NM and Boulder, Colorado for media visits and client sales meetings. It’s always an adventure. You can tag along as we’ll be posting updates on our Twitter feed HERE.

AKQA Co-Chief Creative Officer…Lars Bastholm’s guest feature in the latest issue of Creativity dissects the new story-telling paradigm, saying that no longer do stories need to have a beginning, middle and end…”The objective is to tell a story in a way that leaves room for the consumers to fill in the blanks, to add their own tendrils to the main storyline.” Good social insight from someone on the ad agency side of things.

He offers six checkpoints “that’ll help get you started mastering the art of social storytelling and invite consumers into the conversation”:

1. Look at any marketing effort as the beginning of a conversation.
2. Closely monitor the conversation and be ready to respond to consumers.
3. Provide consumers with tools that help them carry on the conversation for you.
4. Leave room for consumers to interact. Make sure your creative universe is big enough that there are unexplored areas.
5. The conversation is over when the consumers say it is, not when the media plan (or the budget) says it is.
6. Listen and learn from the feedback loop.

You can check out the entire piece HERE.

Undertaking substantial home improvement projects are the best way to insure that you’ll have zero free time for recreation on the weekends. We’re adding a mud room to the chateau. This weekend was drywall, plaster, siding staining…RoCt:

Green is Out: Economic blues leave no room for green - Study finds focus on environmentalism waning in tough times.

Blogs are Out:  Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004 - “Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge.”

Paddler Mag is Out(?) - Rumors this a.m. that Paddler Magazine is folding. Anyone?

Marketing Video of the Year?

It is an internal joke video but will probably get a lot more views than the official corporate version. Shows the corporation has a sense of humor. Check out the whole story at TechCrunch (yeah, it even got them on TechCruch).

I love music and you do too. But my music is the best and so is yours. That’s because nothing elicits as strong of an emotional reaction and personal attachment as music. Which is why marketers continue to explore ways to incorporate music into their brand experience.

REI just launched REIgoplaylist.com, a “rich online experience”,  in an attempt to…? Anybody? Establish a stronger emotional connection between the brand and their customers?  Be younger? Hip? Cool? According to the release, REIgoPlaylist.com “…gets new and current customers and members excited about the upcoming skiing and snowboarding season.”

The Gap tried something similar this summer with their Sound of Color campaign even budgeting enough for top tier artists to write songs specifically for the Gap’s Color marketing theme.

Music is an important part of a retail experience. It can enhance or detract from the experience, as demonstrated by my recent visit to an AT&T store to pick up an iPhone. You would think that a brand that was trying to position itself as the most progressive communications solution on the planet would have  chosen to subject me to something more progressive than 1/2 hour of crappy country music to relay that brand message.

Marketers have to be clear on the brand/music connection. You can buy a connection to music (like REI and The Gap) but you can’t buy the same emotional connection to your customers that the music has (which is what everyone is after.)

The only way to make a direct emotional brand connection is if the music was written and performed by a band consisting of REI employees,  similar to how Home Depot employs Olympic athletes as part of their Olympic sponsorship.

I recall a story about how a bunch of journalists stationed in Paris were living large in a grand restaurant…Picasso was also dinning there that night. When the bill came the journalists were floored by the amount and began fumbling about in an attempt to pay it. Picasso summoned the garcon to his table and sketched a, well, a Picasso and gave it to the waiter as payment for the journalist’s meal.  The journalists understood…You can pretend to be but you will never be unless you are.

What does this have to do with PR?  Other than Picasso’s obvious PR savvy play in buying a bunch of media dinner…We’re going to start writing songs instead of press releases for our brand communications campaigns. We’re now hiring for a lead guitarist and a keyboard player.

Wilson Canyon is the Sirenum scopuli (for Schnitzspahn) for Jackson mountain bikers. It lures you in with it’s enchanting rolling and twisting singletrack that runs alongside a small creek embraced on both sides by scenic buttes.  But just when you have entered its embrace, the bottom drops out and you find yourself in a steep, rocky, slat walled canyon with no escape routes.

There are two extremely technical sections inside Wilson, each are ride-able but require that the rider not pay too much or too little attention.  The consciousness level has to be  Zen in order to emerge from these lines unscathed.

With said Zen in action on Saturday I was able to float through the first section. However as I entered the second section I suddenly realized exactly where I was and in doing so completely upset the attention balance and henceforth was pitched over the bars into the steep, field of boulders. You do fall farther on 29-ers.

Nothing broken, but there should be. And I hurt. RoCT.

Let’s do it for the retailers in our audience this week:

Gut Check for Retailers (FutureNow) - “Will retailers finally focus on optimizing their customer experience and improving their sales conversion rates? Many, perhaps most, won’t. It’s hard to build a culture of continuous improvement, especially under pressure. Some, a few, will. They will not only survive but they will also improve their market share and profitability. ”

Using Twitter for Retail Marketing (GetElastic) - “If you’re going to use Twitter, keep your sales tweets and customer service tweets separate. Some people will want to get your deals, some your customer service - don’t mix the 2 or you’ll turn off those who don’t want certain messages. If you’re doing sales promotions, unique and time-limited deals can work well.”

Get in the Game or Lose; Ranking what Consumers Look for in Retailers (NPD Group) - Interesting study results on what consumers look for when considering retailers.

Zappos Shows How Social Media is Done: (ReadWriteWeb) - “What’s more stereotypically trivial than shoe shopping? Using Twitter, of course! Online shoe retailer Zappos does shoes and social media remarkably well.”