Emotions and the Eye
We’re all so steeped in the engineering paradigm for how our
brains and bodies work, that scientific findings like this
come as a surprise even though they shouldn’t. Our emotional
brains aren’t part of a computer system where vision, feelings,
heat and pain all run on different circuits. It’s all one big
system wrapped around itself. Via the blog Neurophilosophy, we
learn of a study by Canadian researchers that:
“provides the first direct evidence that the mood we are in
affects the way we see things by modulating the activity of
the visual cortex. Their findings show that putting on the
proverbial rose-tinted glasses of a good mood is not so much
about colour, but about the broadness of the view.”
They showed that influencing someone to be in a better mood,
by showing them faces of happy vs. sad faces, actually
improved their peripheral vision. The effect happened without
a negative cost to the information received in the central
vision field.
The message for us folks in advertising is clear. If you want
people to pay attention to what you’re saying, explosions and
loud noises may be exactly the wrong road to follow. Warm
them up and mellow them out first, and they’ll pay more
attention to what you show them.
Twin Brother & Wife sing at HM&P
This is from last week when they were in the office. He (Sharvis) is a musician and she (Chantiel) sings, so they decided to do a little interactive jingle on a whim. Check it out.
Pentair Water Pool and Spa Poster
We Keep Pools Happy.
Pentair Water Pool and Spa tasked us with an e-mail blast and direct mail
campaign for 10 FREE POOL PUMPS and 50 Visa debit cards for the runners up.
Is Customer Service Killing Public Relations?
Before Howard Merrell and Partners victories at yesterday’s Raleigh Public Relations Society awards, I was able to sit down with Peter Shankman from HelpAReporter.com and talk with him about social media’s impact on public relations. Peter shares some interesting thoughts about customer service’s impact on public relations through social media tools.
A big thanks to Peter for taking a few mintues to sit down and speak with me.
Howard, Merrell & Partners Wins 8 Raleigh Public Relations Society Awards
Last night the Raleigh Public Relations Society held its annual Sir Walter Raleigh Awards dinner and celebrates the organization’s 50th anniversary. The Sir Walter Raleigh Awards honor outstanding public relations work in the Triangle area. The competition recognizes firms of all sizes for excellence in the field. Last night the Howard, Merrell & Partners public relations team took home many top honors!
Howard, Merrell & Partners earned the following awards:
Total Communications/Community Relations Campaign
Organizational Identity/Promotion:
Project Gecko Presented by Zilla – GOLD
Miscellaneous Special Events:
CORDURA® Brand Scavenger Hunt – SILVER
Special Event:
Butterball Grand Opening – HONORABLE MENTION
Public Relations Writing
Opinion/Feature Writing:
Butterball Op-Ed – HONORABLE MENTION
News Release:
Humanities Center ASC Conference – SILVER and BEST IN DIVISION
Publications
Open Category:
Project Gecko Presented by Zilla – GOLD and BEST IN DIVISON
The HM&P PR team would also like to thank Peter Shankman for an inspiring and thoughtful speech at last night’s dinner. It was a great event thank you to everyone who helped to make it possible!
Enviromentally Responsible Tip
Do you have tons of old status reports or stacks of paper from meetings? I did. I went through my huge stack of my documents and pulled out any important paperwork that I need to keep. The remaining pile of paper was huge.
We have this handy binding machine here at HM&P – so I created a recycled binder – and will write on the backs of my documents that I don’t need anymore.
My new notebook!
Try it yourself! It only takes 10 minutes to create!
Best Social Media Presentation Ever!
Wow! This is, by far, the best presentation I have seen that shows the conversational and viral nature of social media. DISCLOSURE: Video contains profanity.
Bing Dong is Google Dead?
Just when you thought that Google had run away with the online search industry and all other companies have given up, Microsoft has begun to fight back with a new search engine: Bing. Bing looks very similar to Google but displays very different results. In my initial testing, Bing seems to be turning out more relevant (to me) results than Google for many search terms.
So what does this mean to online marketers? This shows that though Google is winning, their remains competitors that are not yet ready to admit defeat. Those in the search marketing industry will have to pay close attention to Bing in the coming months. It has been reported that Microsoft plans to launch a $100 million dollar advertising campaign to support Bing. If you believe the response in this Tech Crunch article, then they may be pushing a product that is already changing the minds of early technology adopters.
Below are two shots of search results for “Howard Merrell and Partners” one in Google the other in Bing:
Google:
Bing:
What do you think? Will you be making a search engine switch?
