Stemato.com - Stephen Tompkins’ Blog

In the past I have used my blog as a forum to both praise and criticize my college. Well today, I am proud to say that I am a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Why do you ask? Well, I was reading Bruce Nussbaum’s Innovation Design blog and I noticed that Businessweek had ranked the world’s top design schools. That is right I said WORLD’s Top Design schools. And SCAD was amongst the handful of North American schools that were chosen.

So without further adue, I will let SCAD shine today. Congrats Savannah College of Art and Design and thank you very much for the top notch education that you gave me. I am forever indebted to you.

Here is a link to the SCAD section.

Here is a link to all the College chosen.

Ok….I admit the title is a little misleading. Maybe it should have read “almost everything I learned in design school was wrong” but it does not have nearly the staying power. Anyway, I went on a Bruce Nussbaum reading frenzy yesterday and found out that design education in America really could improve.

First the good stuff about my design education. As I have stated before here, I am so proud to have received a BFA and how it helped me to be innovative to adjust my career path. I do not think a typical business education would have done the same for me but that is just me. I needed a different type of education to learn to adapt and to process different orientations.  Plus it was really cool to make pretty pictures and exercise my right brain muscle to the fullest.

Now the bad stuff that I believe needs improvement. As Nussbaum correctly points out, design is everywhere not just the touch points they teach you in school. Contrary to what I was taught, design is a journey not an finishline. We spent an entire semester learning how to make Rubylths, amberliths and ink drawings. A complete waste of time! Think about how much more effective it would have been for us to learn design as an experience instead of a process to an end.

All the blame cannot be thrown on SCAD as they did the best they could in the time alloted. I do think that they could have made the education a little more adaptable to current trends though. For example, I graduated in 2001 and attended most of my classes during the middle of the web boom and they still emphasized print design as a primary focus.

What if we did not spend time on a specific aspect of design and learned about how people experience design around them before stepping into techniques. Then gradually built up those techniques based on design as a journey from which people experience their lives. Almost a reverse concept of what was taught to us in school but definitely something that would have shaped a new type of designer.

A couple weeks ago, I read Bruce Nussbaum’s blog on the growing gap in China between Chinese designers and Western designers. I found it to be a really fascinating look into China’s economy for a number of reasons. For years, they have primarly relied on cutting cost and driving efficiencies to become the Global Supply Headquarters. Now that many other countries have begun to catch up to the Chinese, they are transforming themselves to meet the future needs of the world.

This transformation according to Nussbaum’s article is in the form of becoming more innovative and creative.  Apparently the Chinese government is throwing millions of Yuan into the design education departments at many of the universities in China. This is a great first step but I think to truly begin to transform the mindset of the people is to foster creativity from the start. You cannot just start in college.

Innovation and creativity is something that is nurtured over a lifetime and can take years to fully blossom. You cannot simply think that pouring money into design schools will solve a cultural problem. Chairman Mao squashed many of the innovative thoughts of his people during the Cultural Revolution.

I visited China last year and was instantly in love with the place. It’s a vast and amazing culture that spans thousands of years and has morphed from innovators to efficiency experts and more. But in order to meet the new innovation needs in this complex global economy, it’s going to take a major shift from the current thought process. Design education is a great step but its going to take a massive cultural transfomation in everything from education to social systems to clothing design to meet this challenge head-on.

One thing is sure to me though. If anyone can meet this challenge because of their diverse history and succeed, it’s the Chinese!

Recently, I was reading an article in AdAge about a new study Google conducted attempting to show the relevance of its Content Network. The article states that nearly 20 percent of clicks coming from over 25,000 advertisers  and representing some 7 billion clicks were from the Content Network. With 20 percent of clicks going into display advertising, I cannot help but wonder what does the massive amount of money going to search ultimately mean to the online advertising landscape.

Is search the ultimate conversion driver? And does it justify the uneven amounts of money flowing into it?

Without showing the inherent role of assisting search that display and rich media assets play in the online advertising funnel you are missing part of the equation. In fact, I read an article today that emphasizes the point that most planners still view search and display as separate entities. This seems like backwards logic in today’s integrated online world. With so much Research available online that shows search and display together can lift your online performance planning these together becomes crucial. In fact, marketers are leaving money on the table when they view campaigns as separate entities.

A quick look at estimated advertising spend from analysts would appear that search alone can conquer the web without any help from display. But the truth of the web is that conversions are varied and full of many different intents and assisted from various angles. One conversion could be from search and another from email marketing. The reality is that both users were exposed to some form of branding before they actively engaged your product.

The realization that search and display work together will be a fundamental element of planning’s evolution. Furthermore as marketing progresses on the internet expect planners to begin integrating these processes much more.

Disclosure - I work for Microsoft Advertising’s Atlas Media Console.

This morning I had my first look at the joint MSN-NBC Olympics videos on the web using Silverlight. I have to say, on first look, the video looks much better than any Flash video’s on the web. Pixelation was at a minimum and the it did not buffer for the 9 minutes I watched President Bush. Realizing my connection speed here at work is fast but still I was impressed with the quality.

I hope more online companies migrate to a platform with this style video. For now, I will just have to enjoy the limited videos that use Silverlight. Check this link out to see some of the material.

This week has been really interesting for me. I started a new job and left an old one behind. I made some great friends and really enjoyed my time at Nielsen. It was a lifetime of learning in a year. Thanks to all my Nielsen friends.

I guess the last few lines has you wondering where my career has taken me. The answer is to Atlas Solutions as a TAM. I am super excited and have been there three days but learned so much its amazing. I am looking forward to this path and all the challenges it has to offer it.

But, I digress. This post is about Twitter and the recent influx of followers I have recently received. As Twitter gains in popularity, I expect to see more notifications from people with backwards followers ratios but this week has seen a influx of dotcoms following me.

Is there something in the water that is making these folks think intruding into my lifestream will make me follow them back?

Last week, emarketer.com sent this email to me. It had some interesting facts about digital music and its growth over the last couple years. As consumers (me included) increasingly switch to digital devices and legal purchases of music, I began to wonder why digital packaging has not caught up to this trend.

The chart above shows that almost half of all US teens did not purchase a CD in 2007 ( a number which is sure to continue to rise). If teens are switching to digital music at such a dizzying pace, why has the packaging not caught up? Most digital albums still include mirror images of their in-store counterparts. Why not progress to something more dynamic to reflect the new error?

Dynamic digital album artwork is the next progression in terms of packaging design for a digital universe. I could see a whole industry built around buying cool iPod/iPhone screensavers with animated capabilities. Does anyone else agree?

Horse-racing fans are eagerly anticipating the Belmont Stakes as Big Brown will compete for the Triple Crown on June 7th at Belmont. After breezing through the Kentucky Derby in May and the Preakness later that month, Big Brown caused an uptick in online conversations around the Triple Crown. The first spike in consumer discussion took place on May 3rd, as Big Brown captured the Kentucky Derby crown. Conversation drivers included the remembrance of second runner-up Eight Belles, who collapsed after the race and was immediately euthanized, Big Brown’s big win, and references to Barbaro, the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner who shattered his leg in the 2006 Preakness, and then put to rest. Online discussions for the Triple Crown peaked again on May 17th as Big Brown won the Preakness, up 18.5% since May 3rd, while conversations increased 64% for Big Brown.

The horse racing world is eagerly anticipating the Belmont Stakes. Big Brown, the winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, will compete for the Triple Crown on June 7th at The Belmont Stakes in Elmont New York. With two-thirds of the Crown complete, Big Brown has been causing an uptick in online conversations leading up to and the day of the events.

The first spike in consumer discussion took place on May 3rd as Big Brown captured the Kentucky Derby crown. Conversation drivers for the first spike were not solely focused on Big Brown’s win. Other topics driving discussion included Eight Belles (the tragic runner-up who was euthanized on the spot after the race) and Barbaro, the 2006 Preakness Winner who was put to rest after shattering his leg during the race.

Online discussions for the Triple Crown peaked again on May 17th as Big Brown won the Preakness Stakes; it was up 18.5% since May 3rd, while conversations increased 64% for Big Brown. Discussions were primarily based around whether Big Brown would be able to capture the Triple Crown or if he would fall short like Smarty Jones.

Special thanks to Sandra Parrelli for helping with the data/idea to this post. And have fun at the race this weekend.

Below is my post for both the BlogPulse Blog and the Hey! Nielsen Blog:

Is it possible to predict how much buzz a movie opening will get based on the buzz three days before it opens? Using BlogPulse, Nielsen Online’s free tool that mines data from over 78 million blogs, I queried two recent movie premieres (Iron Man and Speed Racer) and one about to open today (Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull).

The results are interesting, showing that buzz levels for each movie seem to be equal as they spike and decline in the days before and after the opening. Does this pattern hold true for all premieres? Three days before the premieres of Iron Man and Speed Racer their buzz levels began to spike and eventually tripled on opening day. Iron Man went from 0.182 to 0.486 percent of all blog posts and Speed Racer went from 0.055 to 0.195 percent of all messages measured by BlogPulse.

The buzz level for Indiana Jones three days before was 0.273 percent of all messages. If the theory holds true on opening day, we will see the spike for Indy triple to somewhere in the 0.8 percent range… well beyond Iron Man which has been the biggest blockbuster this year. We’ll check back next week to compare the buzz and the box office for Dr. Jones.

Some data from my company, the latest information on social networks. Enjoy.

NIELSEN ONLINE PROVIDES TOP U.S. SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES AND BLOGS FOR APRIL 2008

Nielsen Online provides April’s top U.S. social networking sites and blogs for your reference. They are ranked by unique audience and rounded to the nearest thousand, so LinkedIn had 8.7 million unique visitors in April 2008, growing 361 percent over April 2007.

Please note that these are custom lists compiled by the Nielsen Online PR team with the help of our media analysts. While these lists are not meant to be exhaustive, they provide a good idea of the significant players in each space.

We periodically review the lists and add new sites, so the results may change accordingly. Please source data to Nielsen Online.