Easy! Reader

I just saw a copy of the latest issue of DMNews and Dave's hard work garnered the Wadsworth Atheneum a feature story and Cronin and Company some major kudos. Here's an excerpt from the article:

An online campaign initiated by the 161-year-old museum and developed by Glastonbury, CT, ad agency Cronin and Company Inc. doubled visits to the site at www.wadsworthatheneum.org. Components included a SurrealPainter Web tool, banner ads and the seeding of blogs.

Central to the campaign is the tool at www.wadsworthatheneum.org/painter. Visitors through Dec. 18 can choose from various colorful backgrounds and objects, then flip, copy, layer or scale them. Once completed, the online artwork can be titled, printed, published and e-mailed to family and friends.

Be sure to make your own surrealist painting, while you still can.

One of the web's preeminent marketing websites, MarketingSherpa, has just published an article which may start a web standards stampede. The focus is Firefox, but the underlying message is standards, standards and more standards:

Your more savvy Web designers are likely all agog over Firefox, because its support of Web Standards makes it easier to design and maintain effective Web pages. …

For marketers, these standards are so darn important because they affect the bottom line: your budget. In fact, The Web Standards Project … estimates that before today's growing lack of support for standards, the "fractured browser market" was adding at least 25% to the cost of developing Web sites. And that's just one tiny piece of the revenue picture.

"Housing construction, electrical wiring, automobile design, all these benefit from design standards," says Scott McDaniel, MarketingSherpa's own Internet Director. "Web site construction is maturing in much the same way."

The author, Heidi Anderson, even tallies her "6 Business Benefits of 'Web Standards-based' design":

1. Increased search engine optimization
2. Proper content presentation, including shopping carts and "contact us" forms
3. Decreased development and maintenance costs
4. Lower bandwidth usage
5. Faster download times
6. Web viewing beyond the computer (your site on wireless devices & RSS)

It's nice to see marketers taking note of all we can do for them. Now roll up your shirt sleeves and get to work.

In the interest of observing politics and activism online, I have signed up to receive numerous newsletters and "action alerts" from groups ranging from MoveOn and the ACLU to the GOP. Politics aside, one thing I find very striking is how much freedom is given to an individual to add a personal message or rewrite a letter in support of or against a particular issue by the "left." The "right," however, does not seem to have any interest in their activists' opinions.

When I received this recent solicitation from the GOP, for instance, I was not given any opportunity to rewrite the letter in my own words or even add a personal message to the missive. All the GOP seems to want is my signature and the email addresses of my friends. Even if I were to agree with an issue the GOP were asking for my support on, a practice like that makes me very disinclined to take action.

On the other "side," you have action requests such as this petition from MoveOn. Much more emphasis is placed on personalizing the message of the action. Even if I do not have the time to add a personal message, I appreciate the effort to include me in the process and am more likely to take action.

Perhaps it is just my conspiracy-addled mind working overtime, but I find this dichotomy more than a little odd. What does the GOP have to fear from their own activists?