• Be Specific in Your Messaging: Why “Live, Work, Play” and other clichés will harm your marketing efforts.
• Does Your Economic Development Website Speak Effectively to Site Selectors?:  Highlights from a US-based study of site selectors regarding their frustrations and preferences when it comes to ec dev web properties.
• 8 Tips for Getting Started with Social Media and Email: As more economic developers embrace new social tools, it is important to realize that when it comes to these new marketing channels, the old rules simply don’t apply. Here are 8 tips that cover ideas, etiquette and advice for getting started.
• Has Branding Become a Dirty Word? Our most popular EDAC White Paper, where we explore myths and misconceptions about place branding.
• Branding a City: One of our very first blog posts, this one covers off why place branding is different, and more complex, than other types of branding.
• Place Branding Inspiration Gallery: Over the years, we’ve reviewed quite a few logos and re-branding efforts from cities and regions around the world. Here are 7 posts to get you thinking about your own visual identity and branding program.

Have you subscribed to our RSS feed yet? Grab the feed here.

My reaction when I saw this was “Neat!” And it is. It’s a really different and interesting concept, and a surprisingly hip little move on the part of the Canadian government (for which they should be applauded). That said, I’m skeptical about how effective it will be. Surely the American passerbys will also think it is neat, but will some random tweets and photos be enough to lure their tourist dollars to Canada? Or will they simply say “neat” and carry on with their lives? The displays ran until the end of July, so time will tell if they had any measurable impact.

You can learn more here.

The 173% figure comes from an experiment carried out by Dustin Curtis, who played with the language that directed his website visitors to his Twitter account. He took his existing call to action: “I’m on Twitter” and played with the wording of the link, resulting in some extraordinary insights.

Dustin Curtis experiment

Through trial and error, he discovered that a move from “I’m on Twitter” to “You should follow me on Twitter here” resulted in the whopping increase in clicks. In his words:

As the forcefulness and personal identifiability of the phrase increased, the number of clicks likewise increased. “You” identifies the reader directly, “should” implies an obligation, and “follow me on twitter” is a direct command. Moving the link to a literal callout “here” provides a clear location for clicking. I tried other permutations that dulled the command, used the word “please” in place of “should” and made the whole sentence a link. None of them performed as well as the final sentence.

At the very least, the data show that users seem to have less control over their actions than they might think, and that web designers and developers have huge leeway for using language to nudge users through an experience.

Too often, we add words and images to something without a second thought about whether they are the right words and images. There’s only one way to find out, and that’s through testing. If the experiment above doesn’t convince you that it can be extremely worthwhile, then I don’t know what will.

Ask yourself: What are you trying to accomplish with your website or email campaign? Sign-ups? Click-throughs? Social media followers? Play with the variables around your particular call to action and see how a small change can score big results.

To get started, I’d highly recommend Smashing Magazine’s definitive guide to A/B Testing. It offers an excellent primer and practical advice, as well as top-notch tools, resources and examples, all in one spot. (It’s where I found this experiment.) Check out some of the other great case studies there too, like how 37 Signals increased sign-ups by 30% with a new headline or how Jason Thompson doubled the number of people contacting him by using his photo instead of a telephone icon.

The brand placement in the web spots is fairly subtle, and from what I can tell it’s not present in the actual public installations at all. Simply a sign indicating “fast lane” for the slide and skateboard carts. They wrap it all up nicely with language around people that like to “speed things up” and who are “driven by fun”.

Really neat.

via I Believe in Advertising.

“It’s a worldwide campaign to let the rest of the world know that Iceland isn’t completely covered in ash,” Icelandic tourist board director of marketing Jon Gunnar Borgthorsson said.

The country has created a new website: inspiredbyiceland.com and a really wonderful ad (shown below) asking Icelanders to spread the word via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in an effort to improve perceptions and salvage the tourism industry that the country has come to rely on so heavily since its major banks collapsed in 2008.

Inspired by Iceland Video from Inspired By Iceland on Vimeo.

Appealing to people that know and love the country to act as ambassadors in the face of a tourism crisis is smart strategy on Iceland’s part. The ad is beautifully executed, the cinematography is breathtaking and the ad is brimming with personality – from the all the crazy dancers to the naked couple to the old guys in the pool.

I love that group dancing timing is always off, I love that the people are laughing at each other during the filming, I love that the guy almost falls off his bike – it genuinely portrays Iceland and its people in a wonderful and honest light. The music is catchy too – “My heart is beating like a jungle drum” by Iceland’s Emiliana Torrini.

It may have taken a giant ash cloud to do it, but this campaign out of Iceland is top-notch.

From The Sydney Morning Herald via AdPulp.

Every increase in freedom to create or consume media, from paperback books to YouTube, alarms people accustomed to the restrictions of the old system, convincing them that the new media will make young people stupid. This fear dates back to at least the invention of movable type.

As Gutenberg’s press spread through Europe, the Bible was translated into local languages, enabling direct encounters with the text; this was accompanied by a flood of contemporary literature, most of it mediocre. Vulgar versions of the Bible and distracting secular writings fueled religious unrest and civic confusion, leading to claims that the printing press, if not controlled, would lead to chaos and the dismemberment of European intellectual life.

The author goes on to point out that in fact print advanced our intellectual pursuits and abilities to a degree that nobody had dreamed possible: print ushered in scientific journals, scholarly knowledge-sharing, newspapers and non-fiction. At the same time print made trashy romance novels possible, and most would agree that there’s a lot of mediocrity lining the shelves at your local Chapters. Similarly, the web creates vast opportunity for enhancing and enriching our intellectual lives, but it also provides gossip blogs and YouTube. The author argues that the Wikipedias outweigh the “LOL Cats”, and that the internet is in fact making us smarter.

The case for digitally-driven stupidity assumes we’ll fail to integrate digital freedoms into society as well as we integrated literacy. This assumption in turn rests on three beliefs: that the recent past was a glorious and irreplaceable high-water mark of intellectual attainment; that the present is only characterized by the silly stuff and not by the noble experiments; and that this generation of young people will fail to invent cultural norms that do for the Internet’s abundance what the intellectuals of the 17th century did for print culture. There are likewise three reasons to think that the Internet will fuel the intellectual achievements of 21st-century society.

First, the rosy past of the pessimists was not, on closer examination, so rosy. The decade the pessimists want to return us to is the 1980s, the last period before society had any significant digital freedoms. Despite frequent genuflection to European novels, we actually spent a lot more time watching “Diff’rent Strokes” than reading Proust, prior to the Internet’s spread. The Net, in fact, restores reading and writing as central activities in our culture.

It’s an excellent article that reminds us of the incredible potential of the open web and what it might mean for our evolution, depending on how we choose to adapt to it. Read it here.

1. Hasting County

Hastings County recently released the first Canadian iPhone app for economic development. Dubbed “iHastings”, the app allows users to view news, events, videos and link up with Hastings County in various social forums like Twitter.

2. Calgary

The City of Calgary has also come out with a “Build a Pass” app that allows citizens to create custom recreation passes for individuals and families. It would be nice if there was a way to actually purchase the pass as part of the app, but perhaps that feature is coming with future versions.

Calgary also has a great walking tour app of downtown public art, complete with maps and audio descriptions you can play while you stand and admire at your own pace. Walking tour apps are a dime a dozen, but this is one of the first I’ve seen developed proactively by a municipality rather than a travel or GPS company.

3. Chicago

Chicago has partnered with foursquare in one of the most innovative social web offerings we’ve seen come out of a city. It has both tourism and economic development applications to it, not to mention the value that comes from leveraging such a popular social platform.

As time goes on, expect to see mobile apps for cities become as commonplace as annual reports and brochures. GPS-enabled smartphones make this a perfect medium for showing off what a city has to offer.

Our predictions

So what does on3 predict for municipal mobile apps? We’re glad you asked. Here are some of the things we’d love to see cities develop:

• Site selection tools – including searchable real estate directories
• GPS-based business directories
• Tax and incentive calculators
• More foursquare integration
• More open municipal data – see this post for a great backgrounder on this trend

Have any other ideas? Leave them in the comments!

“Dancing in the Streets”

The opening line: “It’s a curious thing that happens. It seems when we get to a place where no one knows us, we become most ourselves…” immediately resonates.

“A Simple Sunrise”

“25,000 mornings, give or take, is all we humans get…”

“Trailhead”

“Let’s take a walk…” Shot from the perspective of walking through a forest, historic street, and an underwater tunnel at the aquarium to name a few. The cinematography makes the viewer feel as if they are the walker on each of these adventures.

See all the ads here.

The City of Chicago is the first community to formally take advantage of this new social medium, one that is still under the radar for most despite its explosive growth over the past few months. Chicago’s decision to make such a significant investment so early is a strategic one, as it takes time to establish a presence on Foursquare, largely because content is user-driven. As other cities come onboard, Chicago will already be well established as a destination for Foursquare users.

Chicago is using Foursquare to promote tourism and offer specials at local businesses, and has created 60 check-in locations and 200 “tips” that provide background about landmarks or alert users to live music or restaurant specials.

Visitors to the Windy City can earn Chicago-themed badges, like the on-location “Bueller Badge” for visiting sites from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or the “High Fidelity Badge” for cruising the record shops featured in the film. There are also badges for visiting the city’s many blues clubs and for sampling its iconic hot dog stands.

The result is another tool for promoting tourism and stimulating local business in Chicago. As the prevalence of smartphones and the popularity of Foursquare increase, expect to see more cities and regions taking advantage of the GPS-based game to promote their community. You can view Chicago’s Foursquare presence here.

- via National Geographic

BMW then uses that idea to show just how fast its new BMW S1000 RR motorcycle is. It is a very cool video that easily became a viral hit, receiving over 2 million YouTube views in just 1 month. No dialogue. No overt sales pitch. Just a really cool stunt. It’s worth a watch below: