Specialty products and gourmet products are becoming more popular and certainly more profitable for retailers.

Mario Frittoli is quite famous in Japan. he began his career here as a chef and became well known for his unusual Italian dishes. He is on Japanese TV with his own cooking show…The next logical progression is a line of products of his own.

I did his branding for his new line starting with Biscotti. Here is the main look and feel for the packaging.

Blueberry farming is poised to become the next multi-million dollar industry in the USA Southeast and there is more to it than just a delicious dessert.

Blueberries join the concord grape and the cranberry as being one of only three fruits native to North America, and the berries exude patriotic spirit.

The members of the Wiregrass Blueberry Growers Association group their berries together to market them. The final goal is to get the little berries into your homes and into your blueberry delight.

Japan has become blueberry crazy due the the health benefits from the fruit…more to come on that point. Activate will help with distribution and marketing here in Japan.

SkyVision is a new very lightweight blimp 40 meters long. Activate can fly this inside a domed stadium using remote control. using the latest in LED technology Activate can broadcast TV messages to almost any location.

Gerald Gentemann created Activate Japan in 2004.

No matter who the client is, Activate takes a business-based approach to communications. It starts and executes every assignment with the assumption that there is a tangible business goal to achieve and that communications strategies must align with the business objectives of its clients.

The pressure to produce return on investment on marketing dollars is here to stay and this no longer means just “building awareness.” It means “activating” sales.

Managing The Digital Media Evolution

The ability to influence word of mouth communication is at the forefront of any communications strategy. Once a big idea is identified, Activate leverages the digital media world and extends the creative concept online whether through digital media relations, 3G and mobile development, website development, or social networking.

Activate and its technical partner Sairis have a crystal clear vision of what needs to be done to manage this evolution in the best interest of our clients.

Delivering Big Ideas

The work reflects Activate’s creatively driven mindset. Activate knows that the best communications strategies need to be grounded in creative thinking in order to breakthrough the myriad of options that consumers have today for getting news and information.

More than ever, creativity is a “must have” as opposed to “value-add.” That is also why it is important to approach creative ideation without media parameters. What Activate calls “media and agency neutrality.” The key is to reach the target audience in a memorable way and to ultimately making a business impact.

Current key clients include Exxon Mobil, Japan’s Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry, Unesco, Itochu, Excite, MasterCard, Apple, Paramount and Tsutaya.

Omnicom’s 10 DAS Group companies (Diversified Advertising Services ) in Japan, WPP and ADK have all partnered with Activate to help clients go beyond traditional advertising solutions.

Activate will produce this year’s Global Summit for Ecology to be held in Japan in November with key speakers Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Great Video…who paid for matt to trot the globe for this? Who taught him to dance?

“14 months in the making, 42 countries, and a cast of thousands. Thanks to everyone who danced with me.”
Matt Harding

www.wherethehellismatt.com
www.stridegum.com

Nick Stamoulis wrote these ideas regarding effective blogging, should help us all I think. Blogs are generally a win-win situation IF you’re willing to set yourself up for success. To that end, here are some useful techniques to optimize your blog for the major search engines.

1) Update your content often! – This works for both your readers and the search engines. Your readers love fresh content and it gives them a reason to check your blog more often. If the search engine crawlers determine that your site is updated frequently, they will be more inclined to index your site more often and your ranking opportunities are enhanced.

2) Focus on one keyword per post –It’s OK to provide variations and modifiers on your keyword or phrase but don’t overdo it. In your writing, if you discover other ideas that you want to include, it’s often best to separate that idea into a different blog post.

3) Use the keyword in the title – Use the keyword you want to optimize in the title of the post and make it descriptive. Follow up by using it in the text of your post as well but make it comfortably fit into the content without seeming forced or repetitive.

4) Put the keyword in the URL – Putting the keyword or phrase into the page URL adds extra relevance to the page from a search engine’s perspective. Instead of www.yetanotherblog,net/IrrelevantQueryString, try www.yetanotherblog.net/ keyword-topic-title

5) Provide relevant links – Look around for related sites that reinforce or even differ with the point you wish to make in your blog post and include them in the body of the text. To take this a step further, make the link itself descriptive. Instead of saying, “Check out this guy’s opinion here,” say, “Check out this guy’s opinion on keyword here’. Also, remember that other blog owners love links as much as you do so if you link to their site, they may be more inclined to link back to yours.

6) Make your blog easy to bookmark and share –Don’t overdo it and make your page seem too crowded with these things but make it easy for your readers to bookmark your site and share it with others by including bookmarking widgets from Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, etc. These are great tools for creating good linking opportunities and add a very effective Social Media Marketing angle to the blog.

7) Make every post count – It’s important to update your blog often for the reasons stated above but you also need to focus on the quality of the post. Put yourself in another blogger’s position and ask yourself: Is this relevant? Would I want to link to it? Would it be of value to MY readers?

wow have you seen this? I know it is fake but was so well done it got a ton of attention…great for the brand that it promoted with all the TV coverage added as well. what do you think?

Mohawk Carpet? Who would have believed it…the CEO of Mohawk is very proactive in the green movement.

One person’s waste is another’s business opportunity. U.S-based Mohawk Residential is part of the new breed of green businesses aimed at making profit and environmentally-friendly goods.

Mohawk’s showcase product is carpet made from used plastic bottles. They process a staggering 14,000 used plastic bottles a day to produce their Everstrand carpet. The old bottles are cleaned and sorted by color, then melted and spun into yarn to make carpet.

In a country where some 3 billion bottles are used a year, it’s a business which is taking big steps to reduce our ecological footprint.

I will invite them the the Global Earth Summit in Japan this year.

Paramount’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull launch new 3G MobiActions Campaign.

Activate K.K. and Media Box tie-up to release a new MobiActions 3G promotion and loyalty campaign for the latest Indiana Jones movie release in Japan.

Tokyo, Japan, June 19th 2008 – Activate Japan utilizes the unique ‘MobiActions’ 3G interactive video solution in a tie-up with Media Box for an integrated media promotion and loyalty campaign. The campaign allows viewers to dial a 3G video call and access a variety of rich media and interactive games. Users may visit as often as they like, enjoying premium or ‘sneak peak’ contents while challenging themselves to quiz games about the movie.

MobiActions features patented technology to provide a compelling, interactive experience to the users. The experience is 100% ‘in video’ and requires no downloads, accessory applications or non-standard devices. The user simply dials a regular videocall..

“We need to communicate our client’s message to the consumer in effective and unique ways to maintain and drive interest.” says, Gerald Gentemann, Director of Activate K.K. “Our latest MobiActions application, puts our client’s message a simple video call away and literally in the hands of over 60 million consumers in Japan. We can deliver a digital communication campaign and experience with interactive video that is at the fore-front of mobile and digital advertising and marketing “

China charges U.S. Monopolizes the Internet and seeks global control.

China’s ambassador to the United Nations last year called for international controls on the Internet. I feel a little of the brunt of their control at times because clients, colleagues and friends cannot access my blog on Xanga from there.

Chinese Ambassador Sha Zukang told a UN conference that controls should be multilateral, transparent and democratic, with the full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations.

“It should ensure an equitable distribution of resources, facilitate access for all and ensure a stable and secure functioning,” he said at the conference on Internet governance.

Sha said China opposes the “monopolization” of the Internet by one state, a reference to the Untied States, which ultimately controls the digital medium.

“It is of crucial importance to conduct research on establishing a multilateral governance mechanism that is more rational and just and more conducive to the Internet development in a direction of stable, secure and responsible functioning and more conducive to the continuous technological innovation,” he said.

China’s communist government fears the Internet would dilute Beijing’s control over its population, as information passes unfiltered throughout the country and outside of strict government censorship.

China strictly prohibits any public criticism of the ruling communist party and closely monitors and censors Internet usage. Periodically, Chinese security forces raid Internet cafes and arrest people who violate Chinese rules.

Sha said China has 94 million Internet users out of a worldwide total of about 810 million.