kentlewis

When I logged into my Facebook profile, I found a message from Kevin regarding a sweet offer from Portland-based McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants: get $20 off your next dinner when you print the $20 off coupon, make a reservation online and bring your confirmation in.  Pretty low bar in order to get a free [...]

I’d thought I’d had the automotive-adventure of a lifetime driving exotic cars with World Class Driving in Bellingham, WA this past April, but I was wrong.  Having had so much fun this Spring, I decided to take another go with the folks at World Class Driving for a few reasons: repeat customers get special attention, [...]

You could say I had a busy week.  I hit a Seattle Mariner’s game Monday evening, watching the M’s reverse a 5 run deficit to beat the Twins 11 to 6. I then hit the road early Tuesday morning to make it to OMS Portland at the Oregon Zoo. On Thursday, the Anvil team spent [...]

For those of you that may not already know, I’ve been a long-time supporter of Oregon’s early literacy reading program for struggling students.  In 2003, I created SMART Gala to raise awareness for the SMART reading program among a new generation of volunteer readers and financial supporters. Over the course of 4 years, Anvil Media [...]

I arrived at The Oregon Zoo for OMS Portland just in time for the first session of the day, presented by Thanh Ngyuen of BusinessOnLine. Her session, titled: Complete Website Strategy & Usability provided helpful insights for the non-geeks in the crowd. A few of the nuggets are outlined below:
 
·         Users generally cognate [...]

I’ve built a career as an Internet marketer since I optimized my first Web site in 1996. Back then, it was the Wild West. Academia and early Internet adopters eschewed commercialism, but alas, it was inevitable. Fast forward a few years, and a similar situation arose with the explosive growth of the blogosphere. Bloggers enjoyed [...]

After 14 arduous days of growing and grooming, search engine marketing agency Anvil Media announced a winner of Anvil’s Stash Bash 2008. The winner outperformed and outlasted 6 other men and was able to secure the coveted prize: a gift certificate at HairM good towards a King Cut and Ultimate Shave. Each member [...]

Chris Shimojima at Nike brought big brand entertainment to ISF Summit.  He opened with an inspirational video about the history of Nike, full of footage of athletes, sports footage, vintage shoes and ads. Great plug for Wieden & Kennedy’s work, as well as that of their all-star stable of athletes. Chris wanted the audience to [...]

Nancy Bhagat with Intel tackled the topic of end-to-end marketing online (a fundamental shift). Fundamentally, marketers are facing a media revolution: the increasing number of media outlets, noise and costs are compounded by time-shifting (Tivo effect).  With so many media outlets, reaching an audience is a cost-prohibitive endeavor. Nancy reminded us that there are [...]

Dan Stickel, current CEO of WebTrends and former Google executive, shared his thoughts on Google’s business model (70/20/10 framework), which includes advertising, applications and other skunk works. For a CEO and former Google employee, he’s refreshingly honest about his experience and opinions of Google’s overall market strategy. He quickly moved to examples of how brands [...]