Typos r Good
People in a hurry have to choose.
Choose a veneer of blamelessness. Or choose optimal progress.
It’s really that simple, and that difficult. Because people like to be blameless. They like to manage risk by trying to eliminate it. They want to appear all buttoned up, all the time. They don’t want be seen to fail, even in small ways on less important things.
But what if your choice is to risk failing on the small things versus a certainty of falling behind on the essential things? … Read more
Learn from PostSecret
PostSecret is the Haiku of the web. And it’s long been a very highly trafficked site. It’s so simple. People submit postcards, which conform to simple guidelines, sharing their secrets. PostSecret posts them online, and perhaps ads a bit of the comments they inspire.
What can you learn from PostSecret? To give people a simple art form, with rules that make success more likely. Discover something that needs to be expressed and give them the chance to express it.
DIGO did this when we created, “Talk Back To Cancer” for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. We knew people had an intense relationship with their cancer, so we built a simple social outlet for them.
It worked.
DIGO Brands The Marlboro Cowboy
If you ever doubt the power of what we brand builders do, pause briefly to consider the Marlboro Cowboy.
This image helped to addict millions. This after it transformed a minor women’s cigarette brand into a legendary masculine number one brand smoked by men and women alike.
Consider what that word “Cowboy” means to the American psyche, and indeed to the world. This is branding and image-making par excellence. … Read more
Are You An Incrementalist? Or an Optimizer?
At DIGO, we’re often asked how we approach our e-mail and other direct response testing. Do we have a list of variables and guidelines?
The answer is, at DIGO we don’t so much have a list as a testing philosophy. Of course we read Direct Marketing News, belong to the associations, read their websites, attend webinars, get newsletters, judge and attend award shows, and generally do all we can to get into the stream of information that professionals in the industry ought to digest. … Read more
DIGO Brands the War of the Inbox
The first “killer app” of the Internet is fast becoming the most important. Lowly E-mail!
Back in 1999, when Seth Godin wrote the groundbreaking book Permission Marketing, he predicted that an increasing percentage of marketing messages would be, “anticipated, personal and relevant.”
It was a radical idea at the time. E-commerce marketers with their frictionless webs were doing just fine, thank you. But today, the battle is on for the inbox. … Read more
Steve Jobs, and the one that got away
Marty Staff, our client at Joseph Abboud, told us about a call he’d received from Steven Jobs, the CEO of Apple. Marty’s company had their flagship store in a prime location in New York City, and Steve was looking for the perfect spot for the first New York City Apple Store. And here’s the first interesting thing: … Read more
DIGO Going Offline
Agencies should spend a lot of time coming up with ideas for clients.
It’s a simple thing, but the wall of information we all deal with can get in the way. That’s why, at DIGO, our most productive days tend to be Offlining Days.
What is Offlining? It’s a campaign we created in response to our growing attachment to devices, to encourage people to spend a little less time looking at screens and a little more time paying attention to the people in front of them.
This Friday, we’ll practice what we preach and take the entire agency offline from 10:30. Everyone in the office will put down … Read more
DIGO Brands The End of the World
The May 21 Rapture was rescheduled for October 21, and as communication practitioners and good citizens, we at DIGO wanted to do our part to ensure a safe, smooth rapture event for all, even those of us who get left behind. That’s why we agreed to take on this assignment from the NYC Rapture Readiness Committee, which reminds New Yorkers who plan to be raptured about what steps to take to make sure they don’t leave behind more of a mess than necessary. After all, Jesus was pretty big on neighborliness. Learn more at www.rapturereadynyc.org.
Game Changing Isn’t Game Winning
We love game changers. They drive the world forward. They are the natural force in national selection. They are the good guys of business. And I want them to win. I want them to end up on top.
But, often they don’t. Because game changing and game winning don’t automatically go together. … Read more
Match Words and Pictures
Talking things out can be a time waster. Especially when we imagine that once we agree on the words that all is solved, never suspecting that the pictures in our heads are not the pictures in other people’s heads. One of the most useful things we do with clients is simply to match words and pictures.
This simple process is so rare and such an effective shortcut to better communication that I would seriously recommend it to relationship counselors for serious consideration! … Read more
DIGO Brands Your Green Actions
Fresh in-market work from DIGO for brilliant client Recyclebank, the leading rewards program for your recycling and all your green actions. We’re so proud of this work and the impact it can have on families, communities and the environment we all share. We also think it’s a beautiful, elegant solution and we like looking at it! But… before you do, will you do something that will make you feel good? Go to Recyclebank.com and sign up to be rewarded for your green actions. It’s Free. There is absolutely no cost or obligation. No cost to you, ever. And, you get stuff… just for being good to your environment. You recycled. You carpooled. You rode your bike. Just report it on the site and Recyclebank rewards it. It’s “the first rewards program approved by planet earth!”
Digo Brands Multi-Tracking
You’ll find this works in most situations. Typically, there is an ideal. It may even be attainable. People may not be clear about how long it will take to get there, but they are enamored of it. Most teams, left to their own devices, will ruminate on this project of getting to the ideal for weeks, months, even years.
On the other hand, there is the attainable. The immediate opportunity. The low-hanging fruit. This is not a bitter fruit at all, but typically a quite tasty variety at the peak of ripeness, and within easy reach. Yet people will sit under that tree and plan for next years harvest and let those cherries rot on the vine. … Read more
DIGO Brands Our Mission
We do lot of things that ultimately add up to one thing: we help companies grow. We do that by building brands. And we do that with a myriad of different tools. Research. Strategic planning. Media planning. PR. Social media. Design. Direct response. All of that in addition to what people have now come to call “Traditional advertising,” i.e. television, print, and digital. All of it just comes down to communicating in a way that makes it easy for people to like your company. … Read more
Finding The Right Ideas
We are in the idea business. Actually, we’re in the business of executing ideas in service of very specific goals. But, to do so, we need to generate a large number of ideas. And, to do that really well, we spend a fair amount of time thinking about how to get to the greatest number of ideas and then how to separate the good — and even the great ideas — from the right ideas. … Read more
The Tale That Tells Itself
A closet down the hall from my office is about half full of brooms. Whisk brooms, push brooms, straw brooms… even a few bronze and pewter miniatures.
I don’t ask for them, I don’t encourage them, but people keep on bringing. or sending them to me and they have been for years.
It started more than fifteen years ago when I wrote about leaving a senior position at a big, bureaucratic agency. “I bought a broom,” I wrote, “and showed up at a great agency I had read about in the press. I took my broom to the top guy there and I said, “I’ve realized I’d rather sweep the floors in a great place than rule a mediocre place.” … Read more
Reorganize for the Engagement Revolution
By Jeff Pundyk
We’ve heard a lot of discussion about how marketers are losing control of their medium and their message as digital channels and user-generated content compete for consumers’ attention.
And, indeed, more consumers fast-forward through commercials and are finding their video on the Internet; traditional media properties are losing ground to blogs and social networking sites as the primary source of information, and, of course, consumers are completely absorbed by their smart phones. … Read more
Rebooted and Unplugged
Joe Burby, an amateur songwriter and former actor and playwright who works in sales, is the winner of the Cats in the Cradle Reboot contest. The contest, sponsored by our sister site Offlining, challenged songwriters to update the Harry Chapin classic to reflect today’s always-online culture. Burby, who accompanied himself on acoustic guitar (unplugged, of course), is featured in an article covering the contest in the New York Post. … Read more
DIGO Brands Offlining Day
We’re back. Hit us with your calls, your emails, your tweets. Text us. IM us. Go ahead and Poke us.
Friday was a DIGO Brands Offlining Day. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., we took ourselves offline and brought everyone in our organization together to focus their full attention on discovering, inventing and developing ideas for our clients. … Read more
Today, scores of former agencies are dropping the “agency” moniker. Where does DIGO stand? As usual, we’re going to give it to you straight.
If by “agency” you mean one of those traditional, hidebound, pretentious, print, radio and tv factories, with initials on the door, drawn from the names of dead white men, massive overhead, executive committees, public stock, analyst meetings, acquisition funds, full-time novelists with ten-year separation agreements, “integration” by acquisition, A-Team for pitches, B-team for clients, C-team for clients spending less than $100 million, trainees for you, bill by the hour and commissions too, “creative” timesheets, “well it’s your fault because you changed the brief,” If that’s what you mean by agency, then DIGO is definitely not an agency. … Read more
LOVE YOUR BRAND
People want to commit to things that give their lives meaning, but of course people fear committing to things that will fail to return the love. Many institutions have done just that, leaving people with a lack of faith in any organization. So today, the dream seems to be of “passive income,” “the 4-hour Work Week”, the billion-dollar exit, … Read more
DIGO Brands Turns 15, ‘Nuff Said
DIGO Brands Surfing
By Jeff Pundyk
Back before search, there was browse.
When I first started goofing around with the Internet in the early ‘90s, there was no directed search, no search engine optimization, no organic search, no paid search. We browsed. We looked for directories of links and followed them wherever they took us. We wandered. Often aimlessly. It was the thing that hooked me on the Internet – the idea that I could skip across the globe from computer to computer, driven by my curiosity and by serendipity, until I discovered something. Serendipity was the key. Serendipity meant unexpected outcomes. … Read more
DIGO Offlines Father’s Day
This Father’s Day, we’re looking for an artist who can give the song that made a million dads cry a refresh for the Facebook generation. Are you talented enough to do the job? Visit Offlining.com to enter the contest and find out.
The winning songwriter will get an aggressive P.R. push from one of NYC’s premier public relations agencies. We’ll get your music heard by all the right people (labels, press, blogs, etc). It’s a great way to make connections and get your career going. And maybe even make a difference while you’re at it.
DIGO Brands A Boom
We never owned one of these. While CEO Joseph Park was kind enough to offer us shares of Kozmo, now worthless, back then we said, “we’re still figuring out how to make our clients successful, and we don’t have time to figure out … Read more
DIGO Brands The Rapture
Nothing good ever seems to happen without a deadline. So we at DIGO, who build brands and businesses, are grateful to the crackpots out there who periodically predict the end of the world. This way, we get all the benefits of the deadline of deadlines, without having to take the inevitable hit to our brand credibility when it once again turns out that Annie was the better prognosticator, and the sun comes out tomorrow. … Read more
DIGO Brands Housekeepers
Everybody’s talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s now more than ten-year-old secret child with a longtime household staffer. The questions that typically come up are how he kept it a secret for so long and what this will do to the Arnold brand and business prospects. No one seems to bring up the housekeepers. Privy to secrets, to valued possessions and to private moments, they are often poorly paid, work long, unregulated hours and have no professional redress. … Read more
DIGO’S 15TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY!!
DIGO is celebrating its 15th Anniversary on June 23rd at 6pm! Join us. Check out the Facebook invite here.
DIGO Brands Brands’ Brands
Mark DiMassimo, seen on the left, discusses company brands and company performance on CNBC’s Power Lunch. To watch the clip click the picture above or click here.
DIGO Brands Never Says “Never”
National Jewish Health in Denver, Colorado, named by U.S. News & World Report as the #1 respiratory hospital in the U.S., is launching a new campaign created by DIGO Brands in New York City.
‘We never say never’ captures the spirit behind the extraordinary commitment and expertise that National Jewish Health brings to the treatment of people with respiratory, cardiovascular, immune and related disorders” says Mark DiMassimo, DIGO CEO and Chief Creative Officer.
“‘We never say never’ is the reason so many things that were once impossible are now routine, and it’s the reason that the intractable, the untreatable, the incurable and the unmanageable are routinely turned around at this leading academic medical center.” … Read more
DIGO Brands Fifteen Years
Royal Honeymoon Rumors Swirl. President Obama At Ground Zero. DIGO Marks 15 Years of helping visionary leaders grow brands and businesses. It’s a big week! We’ve gotten to see a lot of history up close in the past decade and a half. We had a front row seat for the pc goldrush, the first dot com boom and bust, the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the devastating fiscal aftermath, the electronification of the markets, the meltdown of 2008, the socialization and gamification of everything…
Through it all we joyfully hastened the extinction of dinosaur business models while championing the sometimes spectacular rise of new ones.In our first 15 years, we’ve relished the hard work of growing brands, campaigns and businesses. Even more so, we’ve loved building the relationships and credibility that continue to drive us relentlessly forward.People you will admire, will tell you how we committed to their success, then drove ourselves and everyone involved to do what it took to deliver what we promised, and more. People with whom we have been privileged to change the world, either a little or a lot. People who believe as we do, that there is no success without commitment.
So here’s to the next 15 years of Brand. Driven. Growth. Let the adventure continue!
A Teaser of the Playlist
- 1) Jenny (867-5309) –Tommy Tu Tone
- 2) Breakfast At Tiffanys –Deep Blue Something
- 3) Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap –AC/DC
- 4) All That She Wants –Ace of Base
- 5) Teenage Wasteland –The Who
- 6) Time After Time –Cyndi Lauper
- 7) Bohemian Rhapsody –Queen
- 8) Forgot About Dre –Dre
- 9) Hip Hop Horray –Naughty By Nature
- 10) MMMBop –Hanson
- 11) Pump Up The Jam –Technotronic
- 12) Tom Sawyer –Rush
- 13) More Than A Feeling –Boston
- 14) Like A Rolling Stone –Bob Dylan
- 15) Somebody To Love –Jefferson Airplane
DIGO Brands Put Down This Blog and Go Outside
Offlining is becoming a growing trend — online. It was a topic of discussion at the recent tech conference SXSW, where Mark DiMassimo exhorted the crowd to step away from their smart phones. DiMassimo and Eric Yaverbaum are offlining pioneers, having launched Offlininginc.com, a site that encourages visitors to make an “offlining pledge.”
An article this month in U.K.-based magazine Prospect takes a closer look at the phenomenon.
“We have (at SXSW) incredibly smart people, very capable people, very motivated people – and what are we working on? What are we obsessed with? We’re obsessed with engagement, stickiness, gamification, making sure that we’re attracting people to our worlds, engaging them. We are working very very hard at making sure that when people start to interact with whatever it is that we want them to interact with, that they go as deep as they can, stay as long as they can, they come back as much as they can. So there’s this incredible creative energy focused on the “on” button. Where is the business model in the off button? Where is the business model in helping people find some balance?” – Mark DiMassimo, speaking at SXSW.
DIGO launches Proove media
- Lee Goldstein, President of DIGO; Adam Lutz, Managing Director of Proove (sm); Mark DiMassimo, CEO and Chief Creative Officer of DIGO
Something to Proove: 3 minutes with Adam Lutz
Q: Let’s start with the name. Proove.
A. Proove is our twist on prove, which is a value we live by. It is a hard word for some people to commit to…I mean it is quite a word to live up to. That’s why I like it. It says everything we are: accountable, actionable and measurable. And we’re willing to prove it, not just say it. We live … Read more
DIGO Brands SXSW
Mark DiMassimo, C.E.O. of DIGO Brands, participated in a panel discussion at the SXSW Interactive Festival this week, entitled, “Tweeting On Weekends: Are We Becoming Socially Anti-Social?” Mark was there to discuss the insights and inspirations that led him to co-found the Offlining movement in 2010. Check out these beautiful visual notes taken during the forum by illustrator Sunni Brown.
DIGO Brands the Nation’s #1 Respiratory Hospital
Nation’s top respiratory hospital launches the second “We Never Say Never” television ad.
National Jewish Health in Denver, Colorado, named by U.S. News & World Report as the #1 respiratory hospital in the U.S., has released “Camping”, the second television ad in the “We Never Say Never” campaign launched earlier this year. This … Read more
Brand. Driven. Growth.
Growth. Let’s begin with the end, with the goal: Growth. Improbable, competition-threatening, critic-silencing growth is our aim and our comfort zone. It is what our clients have come to expect. It starts with a brand story so large that the only way to live it out is to grow. And then a plan. We help you define what growth means for your organization. We help you to quantify and measure it. We help you define and test a theory of growth. Then, optimize it and roll it out. Rinse and repeat. At DIGO, the entire organization shares a singular measure of success – we succeed when our clients grow.
Driven. Growth is driven. Working side-by-side with a who’s who of world-changing entrepreneurs, we’ve learned that driving change is crucial to growth. Those in the driver’s seat at ambitious organizations appreciate our dashboard of growth-driving services. They rely on us to to explore and chart new frontiers of technology, media and culture through Brand-Driven Acquisition, Direct and Digital Marketing, Innovation, Product Development, Customer Marketing and Retention, Brand-Driven Conversations…
Brand. To make sense of life, to motivate themselves, and to guide choice in an increasingly complicated world, people need stories. Becoming one of those meaningful stories, through what you do and say, is the ultimate growth fuel. That’s brand. The art and science of building and bonding people to brands is the key to leadership, innovation and marketing in a changing world. DIGO provides brand-driven strategy, insights, naming, launching, re-launching, advertising…
DIGO Brands Your Downtime
In this world of screens, one might be tempted to put on a blindfold from time to time… but that can lead to bad trips. Instead, DIGO has devised new technology for agency initiative OFFLINING. New OFFcovers give your Attention Deficit Disorder a rest, and given as gifts, they send a wry hint to your screen-compulsed loved one. Coming soon for sale to the Offlining.com site, you’re reading about them here first. OFFLINING was founded by Mark DiMassimo and Eric Yaverbaum in order to you gently nudge yourself occasionally away from the screen. To read more visit www.OffliningInc.com.
DIGO Brands The Huffington Post
by Ronit Herzfeld
The Huffington Post
February 10th, 2011
Last week my friend “Julie” and I finally went out to dinner. I had not seen her for a couple of months and we were particularly excited to have a chance to spend some quality time together. No sooner did we sit down at our table than out came her Blackberry. I felt a twinge in my chest, but held my tongue. A few minutes later, I was sharing some exciting news with her and heard that irritating text sound go off. She immediately reached out to check the message and began to respond. I suddenly felt invisible; it was as if I didn’t exist. When she finished, I asked her if there was an emergency or something critical that she needed to attend to. She said yes but gave me no further details. A few minutes later her text went off and she responded again. At that point I requested that — unless there was a life or death issue, I’d appreciate it if she turned her phone off. I could see how hard it was for her to let it go. It was clear to me that there was no emergency, and that my otherwise very sensitive and caring friend was at the mercy of this little gadget. We are all aware of how helpful, expedient and efficient our various technological devices can be. But what is not so clear is how they may be affecting our minds, our attitudes, and our relationships.
To read the full article click here.
DIGO Brands Workingmother.com
Workingmother.com
February 7th, 2011
Gift of an Unplugged Valentine’s Day
The gift of intimate time with your loved one (minus the Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, laptop etc.) may be the best gift you can give this Valentine’s Day. The team at Offlining.com suggests that you take a pledge to have several offline dates by Valentine’s Day and is offering a box of chocolates ($24.99, Offlininginc.com) hand-cut to cradle your Offlined phone or mobile device.
Unplug and reconnect with your loved one to have one of the most memorable Valentine’s Days in years. Read more here.
DIGO Brands Super Bowl commercials
Mark DiMassimo discusses the highs and lows of this years Superbowl commercials on Fox 5 New York evening news. To watch the clip, click the picture above or click here.
DIGO Brands Lürzer’s Archive
DIGO Brands’ campaign for Rare Conservation is featured in last month’s issue of Lürzer’s Archive, the premier magazine for Illustration, Advertising and Art Direction.
For more on Lürzer’s Archive, click here.
DIGO Brands Your Love Life
DIGO Brands not only helps to build brands we also make things! Ready to show a special someone that they have your attention? This Valentine’s Day, give more than your heart. Give them a box of chocolates, hand-cut to cradle your Offlined phone or mobile device. Each box comes with a certificate of our Offlining pledge. Only available until February 10th. Supplies are limited.
DIGO Brands the Super Bowl
DIGO CEO Mark DiMassimo discusses the 2011 Superbowl commercials of Fox’s Good Day New York. To watch the clip, click the picture above or click here.
DIGO Brands the NFL
by Alan Schwarz
The New York Times
January 21st 2011
A mother worried “about my son playing football.” Two children colliding helmet-to-helmet — with superimposed crashing sounds and force lines rippling from their heads — drove home her fears.
Unveiled by Toyota in November, the television commercial highlighted the carmaker’s decision to share crash research with scientists studying football concussions, and was an explicit reminder of football’s recent controversies regarding concussions.
So explicit, it turns out, that the N.F.L demanded that Toyota alter the 30 second commercial, and Toyota promptly did. Now, the commercial — which originally ran last November but is now running in its edited form — has the mother worrying instead “about my son playing sports.” The helmet collision has been removed. A spokeswoman for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., Zoe Ziegler, said in an interview that the changes were made at the N.F.L.’s insistence. If Toyota did not change the ad, she said, the league had threatened to curtail or end the carmaker’s ability to advertise during games. … Read more
DIGO Brands Legacy Site
Thank You, Dear Readers, for requesting this window into a broader range of our creative work and cases. You’ll see our work here in a very broad range of categories from e-commerce to electronics, travel, fitness, health & beauty, automotive, education, accounting, consulting, media, style, fashion, cable, credit, beverages (soft, hard and medium), people, ideas and causes. You’ll see us build up Vitamin Water than unsell bottled water (Tappening). We’ll sell you a top menswear designer label with a naked sports star model. We’ll seduce you off the Strip for some Advanced Partying at the Hard Rock Hotel… and along the way, we’ll ask you such fundamental existential questions as, “Does waking up with dollar bills in your panties make you slutty… or entrepreneurial?” We’ll overtake number one brands with 30-year head starts with the right idea and nine months (Island/Instinet). We’ll make you see spots (Gateway). We’ll give you something to punch at the airport (JetBlue & Crunch). We might even get you to love your cable company (Comcast). Enjoy! Click here or the click the picture above to go to the DIGO Legacy site now.
DIGO Brands Hope
Production teams have been working overtime in and around “DIGO West” where job one is DIGO’s first campaign for the nation’s number one respiratory hospital, National Jewish Health, an organization with a well deserved global reputation, … Read more
DIGO Brands the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
November 22, 2010
Offlining Inc. wants you to unplug from the computer and reconnect to flesh-and-blood family and friends. Not all the time, just some of the time. Like, during major holidays. The company was created after co-founders Mark DiMassimo and Eric Yaverbaum, two plugged-in New York businessmen, “looked up” one day and became reacquainted with the things they had been missing while going online — kids, wives, birds and nature in general, according to the company website. To read more click here.
DIGO Brands The Off Button
Extensive pick-up of our Offlining story for Thanksgiving. Enjoy the fruits of the Internet, but please do so responsibly ;-)
The Los Angeles Times
The Desert News
The Red, White and Green
(this blogger also writes for Huffington Post)
American Military University’s Silobreaker
Lehigh Valley Parenting
Topricin
The Y.U. Observer
DIGO Unplugs Your Family
by Julie Revelant
November 16th, 2010
NYmetroparents.com
Face it: You’ve got cramps in your thumbs from using the smartphone that’s practically attached to you 24/7. And your kids? They’re busy listening to their iPods, texting, playing video games, and gazing at their computers – all at the same time. Technology is great, but it’s changed the way families communicate and spend time together. Read on to find out how some families found a way to shut down – and how yours can to! To read more click here.
DIGO Brands Thanksgiving
New York, NY; November 8, 2010
Offlining Marks Thanksgiving with New Ads in Digital Print AND on Turkeys; Will give away up to 11,000 Turkeys to those who take the ‘Offlining’ pledge!
The dynamic marketing and “lifestyle intervention” duo – Eric Yaverbaum and Mark DiMassimo – who created the Offlining, Inc. initiative that highlights America’s ever-growing addiction to technology, are now introducing an unprecedented, first-of-its-kind marketing campaign: ‘Turkeytizing.’
DiMassimo explains, “”We’re thankful for the benefits of great technology. But, aside from carving knifes and special two-pronged forks, and perhaps a digital camera, the Thanksgiving table should be a place for people to connect with people, and some great food. And who better to stand up for a No-Device Thanksgiving than the center of it all – the turkey? We saw the opportunity to innovate by being the first advertisers on turkeys…and let’s just say we gobbled it up!” To read more click here.