We are so excited to announce that we have expanded into the Netherlands.  Why the Netherlands?  And what does expansion mean?  Ok, one thing at a time so let’s first get to why we chose the Netherlands.

Nicoline Maes, Director of Business Services (and most recently Director of Business Development/Netherlands as well), moved with her family from the Netherlands to the U.S. in 2006 and in 2007 came on board to Creative Concepts.  At this time, Nicoline began working on developing our client reporting tools and then added working with David Borzo to the mix where the two became a very effective content management team.  Together David and Nicoline have managed our writer assignments and schedules as well as having developed content topics while editing drafts of blog entries, Facebook updates and more.  While Nicoline was helping to bring success to our clients she became a true believer in the power of social media as well as our other services: public relations, design and branding, events and video production.  When the opportunity came for Nicoline and her family to go back to her homeland in the Netherlands, she happily made the move and took with her the goal of expanding Creative Concepts internationally.

Video presents a unique opportunity for brands to showcase their products in a way that’s not possible through print or the in-store experience. At Creative Concepts, we partner with brands to help them create engaging and informative videos that tell a story and draw the viewer in.

Our client Ecover recently hosted an Earth Day event in a jaw-dropping New York City penthouse, teaching guests how to make sustainable choices inside their homes. Attendees were taken on a tour of the penthouse and given tips on how to make healthy living choices for each room. Celebrity interior designer Robin Wilson along with Ecover’s Kipling Wagner brought the event to life on video for all to see.

When Ouidad threw a curly party, our cameras were there to record the effusive guests who were ecstatic about their gorgeous new hair styles. Their enthusiasm was contagious–something that definitely would not have come through had it been only in writing.

Video has the ability to turn something static into something dynamic. It brings the brand into the context of real life and helps people interact with the brand. The recipe for a successful video? Feature people who are passionate about the brand, add an expert who can teach the public something interesting about the brand, keep it exciting and easy to watch. Then put it on You Tube and get ready for the hits!

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If you’ve ever hit balls at a driving range, swung a tennis racket or attempted a free throw, you’ve already learned one of the most basic tenets of sports: always follow through.  A golf swing doesn’t end when you make contact with the ball; it ends when your body completes the action.  Stopping short not only decreases the impact of your efforts, but it’s bad for your body.

Social media works the same way.  Unfortunately, many social media practitioners don’t notice the resemblance.  They see individual actions (a tweet, a Facebook message, a video, a campaign), but they don’t acknowledge that each action or engagement point is all part of a larger process.

Your social media efforts don’t end the moment you tweet about a new sale or reach 1,000 fans on Facebook.  Like all marketing, the social side began before that tweet was sent, and it’ll continue long after that 1,000th fan has closed her browser and turned in for the night.

If you’re measuring your success by your actions, rather than by your process, you’re only seeing part of the picture.

David Murdico recently shared some excellent tongue-in-cheek “advice” in MediaPost, in which he offered five tips guaranteed to make sure no one will ever see your great new video.  As amusing as his advice is, it’s frustrating to realize that hundreds of decision-makers could read that article tomorrow and pat themselves on the back because they’re already making these same mistakes every day.

• Do you promote your sales and news across ALL your social media channels?
• Do you use content from one channel to feed the others?
• Do you have a multi-stage outreach plan for each new media campaign?
• Are you tracking your efforts to see where you’re gaining traction?
• Do your social media, marketing and PR departments overlap?

If you’re not supporting your great ideas with a great process, your efforts are falling short.

Having a great idea is easy.

Having the follow-through to make sure that great idea becomes a great experience is what counts.

(Image by HaraldMM.)

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That’s how TV and radio got their initial push. “Program X, brought to you by Company Y.”

Or, commercials featuring the stars of everyone’s favorite programs would be planned to run during those same shows.  For example:

These days, we’re more used to hearing and seeing commercials segmented to run between the entertainment itself.  But the advent of view-on-demand devices like TiVo (not to mention mobile devices and the Internet) have made it quite easy for viewers to circumvent (or block out) traditional ads.

Now, enter (or, more accurately, re-enter) sponsorships, under the guise of branded entertainment.  In fact, web content creators are seeing increasingly robust payouts as advertisers begin to embrace video embedded ads and branded entertainment as a new opportunity for increased brand awareness.

And while the future of branded entertainment looks rosy, it also presents a new set of questions that your company should be investigating to find a good fit for your brand.  For example…

• Are your customers regular consumers of mobile entertainment?
• Which content creators have a track record of generating serious buzz?
• Which YouTube videos are most popular with your target demographic?
• How easily could your existing messaging be converted to video-ready advertising?
• Is your competition creating branded entertainment?
• If so, is it successful?  If it isn’t, why not?
• Are certain types of content (comedy, horror, sci-fi, documentary, etc.) proper or improper fits for your company’s culture?

As laptops, iPads and cell phones continue to gain critical mass (and more eyeballs every day), your opportunities to connect with those same consumers will continue to grow just as quickly.

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“Where do you think sustainability will be thirty years from now?”

After all, for a company who designs every aspect of their cleaning products with the environment in mind — from their ingredients to their facilities to their packaging — the future really is their business.

This question may have initially been asked of some of the country’s top eco-bloggers and entrepreneurs, but that’s was just the tip of the iceberg.  Who Ecover really wants to hear from is you.

(Yes, you.)

They’ve opened the discussion to everyone, because they believe everyone has a stake in our planet’s future.  And Ecover is listening — on Twitter, on Facebook, and on their blog.  They want to know what you think about sustainability, and what concerns or suggestions you might have.

Because reaching a business milestone is certainly something to celebrate, but if there’s one lesson Ecover has learned in their thirty years of creating eco-minded cleaning products, it’s that tomorrow is what really counts.

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Have you checked out these lists of YouTube’s most-watched videos of 2010 or YouTube’s 10 favorite videos of 2010 (according to fan voting)?

As usual, the top videos are a mixture of humor, spectacle and quality (OK Go, Antoine Dodson, “Double Rainbow”).  But perhaps most surprising among the Top 10 is the inclusion of the original Old Spice Super Bowl ad that spawned the company’s ongoing TV and web campaign.

Why is that surprising?

Because, simply put, there’s no reason that anyone online ever needs to watch an ad.

Yes, you may have to watch an ad in order to get to the video you actually want or need to watch, but when you have complete control of your online time, there aren’t many cases when you’ll consciously choose to spend it being marketed to.

At best, a good web video ad is one that doesn’t aggravate us while we’re waiting for our chosen video to load.

So how did Old Spice make a commercial that became one of the year’s most-watched videos?

Three answers:

• It was funny
• It was absurd
• It was incredibly well-made

Humor, spectacle and quality.  Those traits were commonly seen in this year’s (and, really, every year‘s) most-watched videos.  Old Spice happened to combine them all into one video, and did so in a way that surprised the media at large — which, as a result, couldn’t stop sharing these videos.

Because no one expected Old Spice to reinvent themselves in this manner, doing so created a series of talking points that pushed these videos to the forefront of everyone’s infostream.

Can your brand do that?  Doubtful.  Catching lightning in a bottle is an annual rarity.  Not every ad campaign will be “the new Old Spice.”  In fact, almost all of them won’t.

And that’s actually good news.

Trying to be the most popular video on the web is going to be an exercise in frustration that distracts from your company’s actual goal: to be profitable.  Is Old Spice happy that they greenlit a popular ad?  Sure.  Are they happier that Old Spice sales skyrocketed as a result?  Undoubtedly.

So instead of trying to produce the most-watched video of 2011, focus on producing videos that increase your brand’s audience awareness and drive sales.  (Or, if you’re a non-profit, create videos that drive awareness and donations, as these popular videos for Toronto-based charities have done.)

And if you have a sense of humor about it, so much the better.

(Have we mentioned we produce web videos for our clients?)

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As we’ve mentioned before, our client Ouidad is quite adept at creating hair care products that work wonders for those who otherwise struggle to tame their curls.  And while her core customer base is adult women, Ouidad long ago realized that most of these women were also mothers whose children’s curly hair needed just as much TLC.

So… voila!  Ouidad became a brand that was also kid-friendly!

But what happens when those kids become teens?  Does their attitude toward Ouidad as a brand begin to change?

To help navigate these waters, Ouidad highlighted yet another upside of her products: they don’t just provide a service; they solve problems.

Parents love Ouidad because her products allow them to style their childrens’ hair with no tears.  But teens love Ouidad because her products allow them to style themselves — with confidence!

Teens are a tricky demographic.  Marketing to teens is often like trying to hit a moving target that hasn’t yet made up its own mind about where it wants to go next.  But Ouidad removes some of that uncertainty by solving a key problem: her products grant teens the power to feel better about themselves.  Rather than viewing Ouidad as a trend or an option, they’re invited to embrace Ouidad as a solution.

Does your brand solve problems?  If so, your customers want to view you as more than just a line item on their shopping list; they want to consider you their ally against life’s uncertainties.  That’s a bond that even teens will remember well into adulthood — and it’s the kind of brand equity you can’t invent simply by positioning your products as a trend.

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So, naturally, we helped Ouidad find a way to scale their hair care tips down for kids!  (Or, in this case, for moms, who sometimes feel like a straightening iron or a ponytail is their only recourse for getting the kids to school on time.)

Wondering whether your content might scale to kids and parents?  Ask yourself these questions:

• What are your brand’s core beliefs / offerings / products?
• Do the problems your brand solves also occur for kids?
• How would your products’ implementation change in the hands of kids (or parents)?
• How could your packaging or marketing change to appeal to kids (or parents)?
• Are kids (or parents) reachable via your current messaging channels?  If not, where are they reachable — and how would your message need to be adapted?

In Ouidad’s case, their core products solve a universal problem: “How do I look good without taking forever?”  Their products improve their customers’ self-esteem and self-awareness.  And these same needs and impacts are just as valuable (and maybe moreso) to kids and parents.

It helps that Ouidad has a line of KRLY Kids products specifically designed for kids’ hair.  But even if that weren’t the case, the same basic principles of content scaling apply.  Once you’ve identified your brand’s core values, adapting them for kids and parents is a great way to expand your customer base while simultaneously endearing your brand to a whole new generation.

And if your content (and your products) could be useful to children and parents, who else should you be reaching?

Want to learn more?  Follow us on Twitter or Facebook!

The video was supposed to be simple: a before-and-after interview with the winner of Ouidad’s “If These Curls Could Talk” contest, including a glimpse of her fabulous post-makeover ‘do, live from Ouidad’s New York City salon.

But we had one problem: the East Coast had just been buried by a blizzard.

In fact, the winner herself lived in Baltimore, which had just set a snowfall record.  Amtrak wasn’t running, the highways were shut down, and there was a very good chance the shoot would have to be canceled.

And then, miraculously, everything came together.

Trains and buses began running mere hours before the shoot was scheduled, and the winner arrived just in time…

… and with straight hair.

For those of you who don’t spend your lives in a hair salon, this is the equivalent of winning free tickets to a hockey camp and then showing up with a broken leg.  Whatever the camp intended to teach you, they suddenly realize they’ll have to heal you first.*

So Ouidad and her stylists set to work, not only to give their contest winner the curls of her dreams, but to help her understand why straightening her hair wasn’t the best idea in the first place.  We’re pretty sure their advice worked, because the contest winner was awestruck by her new look and her newfound understanding of how to best care for her curls.

The results?  See for yourself:

The lesson?  As we’ve mentioned before, live video shoots are all about being adaptable — even when time, weather and the video’s topic itself all seem to conspire against you.

So remember: in social media, there’s no such thing as a true negative.  Every stumbling block is really an opportunity for improvement, and another positive just waiting to happen — and when it does, you end up with an even better story to tell!

(Speaking of improvement, for more helpful haircare Q&As, visit Ouidad’s info-packed website.  If you’re not curly by nature, you’ll wish you were!)

* And speaking of hockey, enter this Facebook contest from Bigelow Tea — who is also our client — and you could win tickets to Wayne Gretzky’s hockey camp in 2011!  (But be careful about that broken leg.  Seriously.)

Want to turn your troubles into treasures?  Join us on Twitter or Facebook!

In theory, we knew the focus of the video was supposed to be Bigelow’s organic teas, but as we’re well aware after having filmed dozens of videos for our clients, live video shoots are unpredictable and you never know what the real story might be, so we kept our options open.

As it turns out, the story behind this shoot turned out to be the remarkable similarities between Bigelow and Bruegger’s, both of whom pride themselves on seeing their employees and their customers not as numbers but as family.  Whether it’s a friendly glimpse of Cindi Bigelow scrambling to make a bagel sandwich for a Bruegger’s customer or Jim Greco’s tale of how his mother first intoduced him to tea, it’s these wonderfully human moments that remind viewers and employees alike that the companies they work for (and buy from) are, ultimately, comprised of people.

And, as we’ve said before (and we’ll say again), people like doing business with people, not brands.

How is your brand reminding its customers and its employees that it is refreshingly, endearingly  human?

For tips on humanizing your brand, follow us on Twitter or Facebook!