A hundred years ago, the first filmmakers built their own movie cameras and recorded the world’s first motion picture images. These pioneers correctly predicted that their business would change the world. Making the ‘dancing shadows of light’ on the silver screen would soon be regarded as the highest art form, a powerful new communication tool called cinema. Storytellers from around the world experimented with length, dialogue and genres, and eventually a common narrative form appeared, and an entire new industry emerged to repackage man’s archetypal myths on silver nitrate. Human brains need emotional narratives the same way our human bodies need nutritious food. Today we live in another great age of change – web media is a powerful new tool that’s quickly transforming our lives and changing the way we do business, and the way we tell stories. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. All… Read more »
Posted in: article marketing, business storytelling, Future Technology, Interactive, Personal Blog, Photography, Social innovation, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: Battleship Potemkin, constructing meaning on the web, Rudolf Arnheim, Soviet Constructivism, storytelling
One of the best parts of my job as Managing Director of Lenzr Corp is walking to work in the morning through the Distillery Historic District in Toronto. Located at 55 Mill Street, south east of Front and Parliament, this is one of the oldest parts of the city and was originally the busy lakefront up until the 1870s. I used to work as a grip in the film business, and I’d get called to shoot movies here in the 1990s, which was before it was restored to its present glory. Today the compound is still filled with cinematic old buildings and beautiful cobblestone streets, but also accommodates a thriving community of artists and theatre workshops, cafes, galleries, stores and specialty markets. The area has been preserved as much as possible to accommodate museum quality historic artifacts and tell the life story of a large Canadian distillery, Gooderham and Worts… Read more »
Posted in: corporate social responsibility, Interactive, Lenzr, Photography, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource
Taged with: Christmas Market, Distillery District, Electronic Engineering, Gooderham & Worts, historic buildings, Lenzr photo contest, mortgage broker, reed switch, Toronto
It’s October already. September was a blur, but there was one day I did manage to get out to my parent’s farm in time to help harvest honey. We brought in one hundred and forty honey supers in one day. Here I am helping my brothers harvest their honey crop. The harvest is late this year, and beeing out in a ‘yard-of-bees’ on a chilly September morning isn’t much fun – the bees were miserable! But the mist covered scenery is breathtaking. I love this particular beeyard because its centered in an old apple orchard. Its a trip back in time to when local farmers planted fruit trees and made their own home cooked pies and preserves. Now here in a very old field, far from any major highway there are a half dozen hundred year old trees and their children, and their forgotten fruit lies all around the perimeter… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, article marketing, business storytelling, Canada Blog Friends, Friends of Smojoe, Personal Blog, Smojoe Clients, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: brand story, business storyteller, design, Duo, marketing blog, Nora Camps, strategy
Saturday August 27 will see a great many blog friends and social media marketers gather behind CSI in the parking lot south of Honest Eds at Bloor St and Bathurst in Toronto. Word11 has been conceived as a 24hr blog media event, and hopes to be the first in a long series of annual 24hr events. It emerged from a minor kerfuffle between Cg6 and WordCamp, the details of which remain unclear. Some refunds were issued and are still the subject of excellent blog discussions and tweets. The event was preceded by something called Prefix which took us all by surprise. I ask you… Will WORD11 be the first occurrence of an annual social media festival? or will this be the only one? Whatever the case I’m sure we’ll make memories, and I reckon it will be rather historic day and night and day again. I intend to use this… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, business storytelling, Interactive, Lenzr, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Events, Social innovation, Social Media, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, workshop
Taged with: itinerary, party rentals, portable toilet rentals, property maitenance, Rob Campbell, social media marketing Toronto, speakers, tickets, Word11
Inside the 2011 Search for Miss Teen Canada World Saturday July 9th was a very special Registration Day for at least seventy five participants in the 2011 Search for Miss Teen Canada – World, as one by one teen girls age 14-18 from all across Canada checked their luggage into the sponsor hotel in downtown Toronto to start their week long adventure. One at a time they met each other in the lobby and corridors the massive historic hotel complex at the base of the city. In the antechamber of one of the enormous ballrooms, they found Michelle Weswaldi and lined up there to present her with their head shots, and CDs filled with pictures, videos and audio that they recorded at home in which they demonstrate their acting, singing and special skills for the upcoming talent show. After a brief question and answer with the Pageant Director they went… Read more »
Posted in: Friends of Smojoe, Interactive, Smojoe Clients, Social innovation, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Video, workshop
Taged with: 2011 Search, ballroom, banquet dinner, blog network, bloggers, doentown Toronto hotel, friends, July 15th Talent Show, Michelle Weswaldi, Miss Teen Canada World, particpants, Registration Day, Video, volunteers
As an interactive story engineer, I’m always interested in learning new ways to communicate business messages in digital media; I like to see companies doing exceptional things that ‘hook me’ and make me want to know more, and thereby bring attention to their products and services through story. There are many examples of how the magic of a good story has moved consumers, most famously, Ted Williams, the homeless man-with-a-golden-voice in Atlanta Georgia, the Old Spice guy, and Susan Boyle surprising Simon Cowell and everyone in Britain’s Got Talent. Susan didn’t win the competition, but her first moments on stage were so special that her fame will forever eclipse the names of the winners. She went on to sell millions of recordings and is living proof of the power of story. Business management consulting uses visual storytelling to communicate complex ideas. Each Lenzr Photo Contest is a Ready Made Story… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, business storytelling, Interactive, Lenzr, online business, Photography, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Events, Social innovation, Social Media, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource, workshop
Taged with: business storytelling, Click Clip Deals, free coupons, management consulting, printable coupons, social media marketing, Twitter and Facebook, video media
Lenzr is a serial photo contest website that lets business sponsor art. We started the website in August 2009, and have hosted over forty contests in two years. The average price of a photo contest is about five thousand dollars, with prizes and tax included. The companies that sponsor the photo contests get some buzz marketing, and notice some rise in traffic, but more importantly they get a shot-in-the-arm of social relevance that search engines can’t ignore. A photo contest is a catalyst to growing social capital. On February 1st 2011 nine different matches launched on Lenzr, with all manner of interesting and unusual theme challenges. For the first two days there were no photos entered into any of the categories… it was unnerving. But as of March 26th 2011, there were over 300 photos entered in all nine different challenges that compose the latest Lenzr offerings. In the ten… Read more »
Posted in: Analytics Software, Interactive, Lenzr, online business, Photography, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource
Taged with: creating social relevance, evolution of enterprise, Judges, Lenzr, photo contest, Web Marketing, winners
Are you looking for an SEO expert to bring search traffic to your website? So is Deb Lewis of TorontoCityEvents.ca, and on Oct 12th she needs your help deciding who to hire. As more and more people shop online, and more and more businesses compete for their dollars, Search Engine Optimization experts are now an essential part of mercantile success. But just who are these guys? Why are these web geeks getting out of limousines in front of bank towers, and taking the elevator to the 65th floor to meet the executives of Fortune 500 companies? Why are these otherwise nerdy smelly socially awkward guys suddenly so special? Maybe it’s cause they’re each rather unique, self taught web wizards – that’s right, they sure didn’t go to school for this lore. No college or university can teach Search Engine Optimization, although some may try. The craft is a strange mix… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, Friends of Smojoe, Interactive, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Events, Toronto, User Submitted Content, workshop
Taged with: 9th Sphere, Innate Media Group, internet marketing, Michael Cloke, Paul Coulter, Rob Campbell, Romanz, search engine optimization, SEO, Spoke Club, Will Webb, Wolf21
When Alex Blom first told me about Freelance Camp coming to Toronto he planted a seed which germinated in my brain a few days later… I guess it sprouted when I finally navigated my PC browser toward the ‘Suggest a Session’ page on the #flcto website. At that time, I volunteered to share my knowledge about how and why I do what I do when I blog. I thought perhaps I’d explain what I’m trying to accomplish when I create my distinctive looking WordPress sites, along with all of the cookie crumb ‘info kibble’ that I plant in my sidebars. The program is called Pimp Your Blog. My proposal was accepted! So now I’m on the Freelance Camp Toronto 2010 website’s official schedule. I’m slated to present Pimp Your Blog on Sunday 1:30 pm in Track 4. The idea that Alex planted is now bearing fruit in my brain as… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, Canada Blog Friends, Lenzr, Smojoe Events, Toronto, User Submitted Content, workshop
Taged with: Alex Blom, Allan Janssen, Blogs Canada, Canada Blog Friends, Erin Bury, Freelance Camp, Jeff Waldman, Rachel Young, sidebar widgets, SMM, social relevance, storytelling strategy, Toronto, Wayne Lee
Lenzr is a social media marketing masterpiece that’s tragically flawed, and that’s what makes it so interesting. The serial photo contest website is basic and clunky, and the rules and voting mechanisms are easily bent by human avarice, but at the end of each session, it works. With very few exceptions, every business that sponsors an imaginative photo contest on Lenzr enjoys an inexpensive boost in their business URL’s search engine findability. The last session received over 4000 visitors, over half of them unique. The average visitor reviews seven pages and spends four minutes on the website. On July 1st 2010 the May June Lenzr photo contests came to an extraordinarily dramatic conclusion, resulting in scandal. In the Portable Luxury photo contest, the winning picture was removed by admin (because of ‘voting irregularities’) a mere 15 minutes before the contest was scheduled to end. Debbie Watson felt like she had… Read more »
Posted in: article marketing, corporate social responsibility, Interactive, Lenzr, Search Engine Marketing, Social innovation, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: aerial photography, Bill Watson, Debbie watson, Lenzr, Mommakoala, photo contest, portable toilet rentals, Rockton Worlds Fair, Ve3bnw