creativity

Give Me One Reason to Share It and I’ll Spread Your Post Around

There are a lot of blips on our daily radars. We check our Twitter stream. We drop in on Google+. We comb through our RSS feeds. And for the most part, we ignore most of the content we see. Why? Because we’ve read it before. Because it sounds too familiar. Because it’s obvious. Because it’s […]

Mr. Editor, Tear Down This Wall

You know what word I hate? Advertorial. I’m not alone. For those of us who cut our journalistic chops in the newsroom, the division of editorial and advertising is as sacred as the constitutional separation of church and state. My first reporting gig out of college was covering the use of technology in education. Eager […]

Is Your Content Worth Stealing?

I hope you steal this blog post. There won’t be an alarm that goes off. The Feds won’t come to get you, and no one will probably ever know that you did. It’s not a trick, it’s not a trap, and it’s not a lure. I actually want you to. Because that means I’ve done […]

4 Ways to Get More Mileage Out of Old Content

nickelodeon old content all that, picture of a girl getting slimed

I’m a ’90s baby. I grew up during, at least what I believe to be, the peak of Nickelodeon’s programming. These classic Nick shows represented an iconic part of tv’s pop culture and had everything from talking babies (Rugrats), a dog and cat conjoined (Catdog), action shows (Legends of the Hidden Temple) and pretty much […]

Kenny Powers, K-Swiss, and the Ramifications of Viral Success

By now, you’ve probably seen the radical campaign from K-Swiss where Kenny Powers (a fictional character played by Danny McBride) takes over as CEO (ahem, mother***king CEO) of the company and reinvents their image via profanity-laced one-liners and no shortage of comic gold. (If you haven’t, scroll down for the video. Make sure you’re wearing […]

5 Tips for Successful Magazine Covers

You know it when you see it. It might catch your eye and prompt you to flip the pages. It might capture a famous person or an iconic moment and ask all the right questions. And sometimes … it might even make your jaw drop. Could it be the typography, the image, the colors, the […]

Goodbye, Voice of God (in Journalism)

voice of god is dead in journalism, picture of speakers

For political junkies, there was no more bizarre and fascinating news night than the 2000 election returns. Among the embarrassing moments that night—and there were quite a few—was when anchorman Dan Rather announced that Al Gore had won Florida, and then proclaimed, “If [CBS News] says someone carried a state, you can take that to […]

Fighting Words: Marketing Lessons From the UFC

Your organization can learn a lot from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Yes, I’m serious. No, I don’t mean you can learn flying knees or triangle chokes, although those might come in handy when meetings get heated.

This Blog Post is Brought to You by Paper…Mostly

This blog post was written mostly on a blank piece of paper. Yes, actual paper, with ruled lines and everything. I can’t remember the last time I sat down and scribbled away until I figured out what on earth I was writing about.

How to Starve Ideas to Death

We’ve all had these meetings: Big ideas are being discussed. The future of the company is being diagrammed on a whiteboard. The word “should” is being used a lot. The greatest thing since sliced bread is being articulated with passion. Everyone is smiling. People are enthusiastic and everyone pats each other (and themselves) on the […]

How to Kill Creativity With One Simple Phrase: They Already Have That

Every day, this four-word phrase murders innocent ideas before they had a chance to grow up. It suffocates its victims with a blanket of negativity. It is the leading killer of creativity. It runs rampant in the offices and minds of people in those offices. And it needs to be put behind bars, never to […]

4 Tips to Develop Engaging Story Ideas

“That’s a story idea,” I would often think as a general assignment newspaper reporter and editor. So many of my friends’ and family’s stories about lively debates at their jobs, old friends they ran into or the TV shows they were obsessed with would often lead to an article idea relevant and interesting to our […]

5 Ways to Break Creative Block

The blank Word document taunts me without saying a word. Writer’s block has set in, even though my imagination is working just fine. I close my eyes and picture hurling my computer out the window. I can see the cables, mouse and keyboard trailing behind it for eight stories, then catching up after multiple thwacks […]

The Tao of Quality (Or, What I learned from Auto-Tune)

If you’ve heard any pop music at all over the past several years, you’ve probably heard Auto-Tune, seasoning and sometimes overwhelming the performances of the gifted and mediocre alike. It forces sounds to conform to a particular musical key, eliminating the hundreds of deviant microtones that distinguish the human vocal instrument—which may be why digitally […]

Lead and I Will Follow: On Writing Good Leads

You’re making me nervous. You clicked on this link expecting to learn something or to perhaps be entertained. I could boldly hope that you may even retweet or bookmark this article. But a lot of that depends on my lead. Here’s hoping it worked.

Rebecca Black and the Art of Being Bad

It’s official: Bad is the new good. For the moment, anyway. While music tastes and styles have always been subjective, there’s no disputing that the buzz that built overnight around “Friday,” fledgling teen “singer” Rebecca Black’s ode to the weekend, is a sign that you don’t necessarily need to be good at what you do […]

Lessons In Social Capitalism

By now you may have heard about Kickstarter.com, the web site where entrepreneurs with compelling ideas but empty pockets can go to crowdsource the financing they need to make their crazy dreams a reality. The site calls itself “a new way to fund and follow creativity,” and it functions as a platform for “patrons,” or […]

Want a Viral Video? Just Add Humanity

Despite the Internet’s reputation for being mean-spirited, cruel and heartless, it turns out that most people who surf the web love a fairytale happy ending. How else can you explain the “viral video” phenomenon that was formerly-homeless Ted Williams’ rise to superstardom?

What Making Sandwiches Taught Me About Marketing

I’m about to break an unwritten rule of social media. I’m going to talk about what I had for lunch. But I’m not going to bore you with a Twitpic and a quip about the chili con carne I brought in Tupperware from last night’s dinner (though it was delicious). I’ll save that for a […]

Big Red Things? Priceless Marketing

Last week I was rushing through Union Station’s marble halls to the Metro when I was stopped in my tracks by a very enormous red high-heel shoe (and a peep-toe one, no less). Other people were hovering around also marveling at the monstrosity, which seemed to have absolutely no explanation for its existence.

Fall into the Gap? More Like Piling On …

Unless you’ve spent the last week under a rock (or in an Old Navy or Banana Republic), you’ve probably heard the backlash over Gap changing their logo to a “new” logo. It was announced. Then it was denounced. A lot. And now it’s a footnote in the history of “how not to handle your brand’s […]

“When life gives you volcanoes, make magazines.”

Remember that pesky Icelandic ash cloud? You know, the one that grounded thousands of European flights for weeks? Backpackers and businesspeople were all stuck in a collective volcation, stranded and left to bum couch space and beg for hotel rooms. So what do you do if you suddenly have a few weeks to spare? If […]

Herding Cats, Shepherding Brand Awareness

You don’t even have to be a cat lover to be sucked into this week’s viral video. One hundred untrained housecats were let loose in a British IKEA store (overnight; no customers; and they vacuumed after, don’t worry). The curious creatures explored, climbed, and chased each other around the familiar furniture. With all the right […]

Video: Design of the Times

It has only been 10 years, but magazine design has come of age in the digital world. It’s gone from page turning to page swiping, scrolling, and tapping. Suddenly your art director is bombarded by visual inspiration and influences. You can collaborate and get feedback at the speed of light. All of this is made […]

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