REWORK

Posted by Laura McCulloch on August 27th, 2010 at 02:15 PM | Comment!

Just finished reading REWORK, the new business book from our friends at 37Signals. Highly recommend to any and all. Check out an excerpt here.

building bridges with book trailers

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on July 23rd, 2010 at 04:48 PM | Comment!

Marketing books has become more than just good reviews and snappy jacket copy.  Social media, You Tube and other viral engagements are now baseline for getting the word out on books. More and more, readers want to connect with authors, and book trailers are making huge inroads in service to this need.  A recent NY Times article offers great insights into this evolution, as well as pointing out how to attract viewers with “star studded” content and production.

Walker & Associates interviews BPC

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on July 17th, 2010 at 12:25 PM | Comment!

Check out our recent interview by Walker & Associates principal, Rodney Walker.  Hear our thoughts on marketing, social media, interns and more!

what will the future bring for Facebook?

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on June 14th, 2010 at 07:27 PM | Comment!

More scrutiny?  More Power?  More fun?  Hear what

thinks!

Get a Yale education—for free!

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on June 10th, 2010 at 08:57 AM | Comment!

Thanks to generous funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Yale Center for Media and Instructional Innovation, anyone with Internet connection can “audit” an intro level course at Yale.  Yup—that Yale.  Here’s a tidbit about the how and why:

Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

Open Yale Courses reflects the values of a liberal arts education. Yale’s philosophy of teaching and learning begins with the aim of training a broadly based, highly disciplined intellect without specifying in advance how that intellect will be used. This approach goes beyond the acquisition of facts and concepts to cultivate skills and habits of rigorous, independent thought: the ability to analyze, to ask the next question, and to begin the search for an answer.

We hope the lectures and other course materials on this site will be a resource for critical thinking, creative imagination, and intellectual exploration. All lectures were recorded in the Yale College classroom and are available in video, audio, and text transcript format. Registration is not required and no course credit is available.

Courses span the educational and alphabetical continuum from Astronomy to Religious Studies.

life styles of the rich and social

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on June 9th, 2010 at 01:39 PM | Comment!

Interested in the socio-economic breakdown of social media?  This study just out by Unity Marketing offers a glimpse into what aspects of social interest affluent participants:

Facebook, friend or foe?

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on May 18th, 2010 at 11:51 AM | (1) Comments

With all the privacy issues, aggressive spammers and the social protocol ever-changing on the world’s most popular social network interface, there’s been some hiccups recently, and lots of rethinking on the part of many Facebook users.

As a veteran writer, I’ve always pondered a medium that has me thinking about audience before content.  It took me quite a while to find my voice in the advertising/marketing industry for the same reason.  The filters of censorship one must consider before pressing “cook” on a message that goes out to the known world are myriad and stymieing.  So why am I drawn to such a giant of intrusiveness and exposure?  Why, as a business person and a writer and a human being with an honest-to-goodness, flesh-and-blood community, would I continue to embrace a tool where misstep can cause misery, and there are no undo, undo, undo buttons once you’ve pressed the “share” key.  (Well, there are, but it can be too late.)

I think my answer has much to do with Joan Didion’s oft-regurgitated aphorism about “writing so I know what I think.”  Making one’s thoughts public takes that a step further.  I post on Facebook so others know what I think.  As a business owner then, it’s not a stretch to call this a fundamental part of “brand building.”  Facebook, Twitter, blogging, these are our culture’s most contemporary methods for direct brand-building.  On the other hand, it’s also an interface for brand-bashing.  If you’ve followed some of the Facebook faux pas of late, you’ll realize that social media is a two-way street, and sometimes cars come at you on your side of the road!

Take the Nestle debacle, for instance.  Admonishing your customers publicly is the biggest type of public relations suicide an industry can demonstrate.  Then there was the Dominoes Pizza fiasco.  Companies that aren’t offering employees social media and Internet sharing guidelines are finding out the hard way that YouTube can be a disgruntled worker’s best revenge.

Folks, communication is just different now.  We’ve all got access to that little red button that can topple fortunes, kings and friendships.  If we’re going to have to “like” Facebook and its inevitable offspring, then we’re going to have to learn how, as writers and speakers, to measure twice and cut once.  Our busy team at BridgePoint Creative is working on learning how to do just that.

Facebook-the inside dope

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on January 21st, 2010 at 01:59 PM | Comment!

Facebook has changed the landscape of, well, everything.  My mom’s on facebook, so’s my dad.  Obviously my kids are.  Various past husbands, classmates, colleagues.  Sometimes I feel as though the Rubbermaid tubs in my basement, replete with personal archives and memorabilia, just vomited their collective content into cyberspace and the result is the ever-so colorful splatter of my life upon my “wall.”

With all of this warp speed tmi now at our fingertips, it’s hard to figure out where the brakes are.  Privacy issues abound, and, like many, I have questions about how the myriad privacy-related concerns are addressed at Facebook HQ.  Thank goodness for the Internets and the double-edged sword of information, because by following the breadcrumb of links on the subject, I found this newsy piece.

The article in The Rumpus unpacks the particulars on how the whole “suggest a friend” thing works.  And why, for instance, I might find sleep apnea aide ads in the sidebar of my profile page.  The article also divulges what Facebook employees have access to (everything, as long as they’re in the Facebook offices), and whether or not they can log onto your account (yes).

As we usher in a new decade, I imagine the digital privacy issue will become huger than huge, and social media giants, like Facebook, will continue to sit front-and-center on the cutting edge of the way we explore the edges of our humanity.