Mike Halminen, VP, Co-Creative Director, “MacLaren McCann Direct & Interactive”:http://maclaren.com/, has spent the past nine years in the interactive industry, building brands of all scales from as large as GM Canada, to as small as the Sam Roberts Band.
With over a dozen international art direction awards under his belt, Mike has put his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology to good use in both interactive and mass advertising.
In his past life, Mike wasn’t a rock star, but he’s met plenty. As Creative Director at Maple/Universal Music, he worked with award winning musical talent including the Tragically Hip, Sam Roberts, Bruce Cockburn and Cowboy Junkies.
As the interactive creative leader and new media expert at MMdi, Mike supervises a talented team of art directors, writers, designers and other specialists. He inspires both the account and creative teams to think beyond what’s expected to create online experiences that surprise and delight.
*One Degree: What’s the basic idea behind the “Johnny.ca”:http://www.johnny.ca/ campaign?*
Chevrolet would like to be on more young people’s radars. With that in mind, the “Johnny” campaign focused on Chevrolet vehicles that are most relevant to youth by showing them in a unique way, both in message and delivery.
In the campaign, traditional mass, online, and guerilla-style tactics delivered the rules of safe and responsible car ownership through an “after school special” theme, presented in an unconventional, quirky tone. Johnny, the young Chevrolet owner hero, is constantly confronted with driving situations that could compromise his own safety and the safety of others. Holding true to his values, he constantly makes the “right” choice.
*One Degree: How is the Internet being used in this campaign?*
The Internet is being used as a continuation of the story that was set up with the TV spots. It allows consumers to enjoy a more in-depth experience with the Chevrolet brand and vehicles by having the characters come alive online and be “spokespeople” to promote the features and benefits of the Chevrolet small cars. We also used other online properties, including MySpace, to see if we could generate some interest at a more grass roots level by creating MySpace pages for the main characters. Here’s “Johnny’s MySpace”:http://www.myspace.com/johnnysmyhomeboy page for example.
Category: Five Questions
Ideas, connectivity and community. Those elements are the essence of One Degree.
When Ken me to Five Questions about a year ago, I was honored to be included on the list. I was the eighth person to be interviewed, only four removed from marketing guru Seth Godin . (That’s is likely as close to 15 minutes of fame as I will probably get.) The roster of individuals for Five Questions has become a who’s who of the digital industry – a huge accomplishment in just over a year.
But there is a glaring omission on the list. It dawned on me that no one has interviewed Ken Schafer. So, after becoming a One Degree contributor myself recently, I told Ken that my next contribution would involve rallying up five industry leaders (also One Degree contributors) and turn the table on him – interviewing the brains behind it all.
So, without further adieu, here are Five Questions for Ken Schafer, one each asked in order by Michael Seaton, Kate Trgovac , Sulemaan Ahmed , Mitch Joel Bill Sweetman .
Seaton: “Ken, what are two major changes you have witnessed in the digital world since launching One Degree that you believe will change marketing forever, and why?
Two major changes in the last 18 months, huh? I know online marketing changes fast, but I’m not sure it changes _that_ fast. 🙂
The two things that weren’t on my radar a year ago were the importance of social media sites and video.
18 months ago when we launched I would have cited “LinkedIn”:http://www.linkedin.com/ and “Flickr”:http://www.flickr.com/ as my prime examples of social networking. But the concept has now exploded and we’re seeing community, communication, colloboration, and shared wisdom flowering all over the place. I’ve been expecting this for ages but now that the “hive mind” is starting to emerge it is truly exciting.
Video has been on the Net for ages of course but the ascendence of “YouTube”:http://www.youtube.com/, “Google Video”:http://video.google.com/ and video content via “iTunes”:http://www.itunes.com/ has reshaped the online landscape this year in ways I wouldn’t have expected.
My guess is that we’re seeing an acceleration in adoption of new services and business models that will make business that much harder. How do we keep up when sites go from not existing to the top ten most trafficked on the net in a year or two?
Trgovac: “What is your career-planning advice for a high school grad that comes to you and says “I want to get into marketing.”
Ross Rader is Director of Research and Innovation at “Tucows”:http://www.tucows.com/. A long-time contributor to the ongoing governance of the domain name system, he has made substantial contributions to CIRA, ICANN and many of the predecessor organizations that define the way the internet operates. In a former life, Ross was the Director of Marketing for one of Canada’s first successful ISPs, Internet Direct. Ross is a mostly-devoted blogger writing on a variety of topics at byte.org .
Note that I work with Ross at Tucows so I’m not completely unbiased here.
*One Degree: Does domain name governance impact marketers? My guess is many of our readers will do a “whatever” at the mention of the topic but I sense this might be short-sighted.*
“CIRA”:http://www.cira.ca/ sets all policy related to how internet users interact with and register dotCA domain names. For example, CIRA is in the process of implementing new privacy policies that have a direct impact on how much domain name information is available to and can be used by marketers.
In the past, similar policies have been implemented outlining who qualifies to register dotCA domain names (which is of a high level of interest to companies who operate as subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies but want to be accessible on the web using a dotCA domain). CIRA has also been responsible for raising the awareness of the availability of dotCA names to Canadian internet users. All of this comes from CIRA’s governance mandate. Fortunately, CIRA involves its membership when it makes these decisions, so being involved really has its advantages if you are doing business on the internet in Canada.
*One Degree: What is the role of the CIRA Board?*