Dukky Hearts Convofy and Office Humor

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Renee

Over my past few years here at Dukky, our inner-office mojo has evolved into one of pure honesty, collaborative thinking, fast paced execution and an office tone of complete sarcasm that leaves us in tears multiple times a day from laughter. I sure hope your office is as witty and quick as Dukky. It really makes work a lot more fun.

As a start-up marketing tech company our team has grown quite dependent on each other to meet deadlines, stay ahead of the curve and up to date on new trends & research, as well as keep simplicity & innovation at the forefront of how we communicate to build our platform for our clients. Needless to say, we need each other. This inherent “need” makes it vital that we know what is going on at all times. Things can change quickly and priority and projects may need to shift on the fly. You have to learn to embrace flexibility and quickly adjust and refocus to run with the big dogs. Continue reading →

Dukky Hearts the New Orleans Hornets “I’m In” Campaign

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Dominique

Whether you’re a New Orleanian or a fan of the NBA, you may have heard of the recent problems plaguing the New Orleans Hornets. In a town where football reigns supreme, especially after the Super Bowl win two seasons ago, the relatively young NBA team was having trouble getting its ticket sales up this season and generate a greater community interest in the team. Enter the “I’m In” campaign.

This thing is everywhere. And you know what? It’s working. Launching a full impact, multi-channel release, the campaign touches New Orleanians on all fronts – print, tv, radio, web, interactive and social media. I live in New Orleans and when I say this campaign is everywhere, I mean it. It’s on stickers in my coffee shop’s windows. It’s on my radio station. It’s on my Facebook and Twitter feeds. The kids down the street are wearing “I’m In” t-shirts while they practice their 3 pointers in the driveway. It’s on signs posted in my neighbor’s yards. It’s on car stickers. It’s EVERYWHERE.

As an avid black-and-gold wearing, “Who Dat!” screaming football fan, I have never been one to watch much basketball. But, as you may have noticed in the past few years, NOLA people are a little fanatical about supporting their own. It’s been no different with the Hornets since this campaign has come out. And why? Cause the campaign hit at the very core of what NOLA cares about – our traditions, our underdog status, our heritage and uniqueness. Here, we rally to protect our own.

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Dukky Hearts The Angry Mob

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Dominique

I should begin today’s blog by stating that the idea for this post was not my own. I was working on a report for the boss man when a chat window popped up on my screen from an old college friend, Janna.

“Do you have a blog written for Friday yet?” she asked me. “Cause Southwest’s Facebook page is flooded with complaints about their recent changes to their Rewards program (mine included) and they aren’t responding. AT ALL.”

So naturally I went and checked out the page. Whoa was she right. Flooded was an understatement. The page, which has 1,289,731 followers, was inundated with frustrated, confused and angry posts. Here’s a sampling of my favorite posts:

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Dukky Hearts Social Media Amber Alerts

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Dominique

Tis the season for goodwill toward men, right? Helping a neighbor out and all that compassion for your fellow man jazz. Well as I was searching for a brilliant social media campaign to write about today I came across the story of a man using the power of social media to find his missing brother and the outpour of support and assistance the campaign has received. So here, a tale of the new ways people are harnessing the power of social media for good, or in this case, in the name of brotherly love.

Late last month Joe Sjoberg went missing in Wisconsin. According to an article in The Atlantic he was last seen by his roommate on Monday, November 29, in Madison, where the two shared a home. A graduate of Carleton College in Minnesota known for his extroversion and warm, welcoming personality, his disappearance was a shock to those who knew him, the article said. Unwilling to wait while the police conducted a missing persons search, Joe’s brother and family went to the fastest way they knew to contact people about what had happened and enlist help – social media. Their first stop was Facebook, where they created the Help Joe Sjoberg Missing group. Since it’s creation, the group has gotten over 10,000 members who are constantly checking-in for updates, providing possible leads, posting flyers and faxes to businesses and groups throughout Wisconsin and volunteering their help in any way they can to find Joe. They didn’t stop there either. The family continued posting all around the Web, pushing a flyer with Joe’s face and standardized message onto Twitter, Reddit, Digg, YouTube and Craigslist. There’s now a Facebook page as well. They even got their story covered on blogs. The virtual flyer they put out with photos and description of Joe and his car, license plate number and a link to the Facebook group and page has been passed around the Web in more places than they can count now. Here’s what the article went on to say about the response the campaign has received.
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Dukky hearts unimpressed social media users

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Dominique

Perhaps you noticed a few articles or blurbs in the past week touting the “deaths” of several celebrities. If you were like me you saw one of the ads (like the one to the left), clicked it to see what it was all about and then said “who cares?” and quickly went back to Facebook stalking your friends. Well it seems that in an effort to raise money for the AIDS research charity Keep a Child Alive, celebrities like Alicia Keyes, Lady Gaga, Ryan Seacrest and the Kardashian sisters have “digitally died”, promising not to update their Twitter or Facebook accounts until $1,000,000 is raised through donations. Wait, what?

Now, let me first say I’m all for raising money for AIDS research and the Keep a Child Alive charity is a wonderful organization that does a world of good. That said, this is probably one of the worst social media campaigns I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’d go as far as saying it’s one of the worst marketing campaigns I’ve seen, period. The entire campaign hinges on the belief that fans of these celebrities spend all day everyday waiting to hear what they are doing or thinking. Cause we can’t live without knowing what Justin Timberlake is up to. And now that we, the masses of social media users, have been deprived of said updates we’ll pay to have Kim Kardasahian back telling us what she thinks about her latest shopping purchases.

Am I the only one who finds this a wee bit arrogant?
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Dukky Hearts Blogging Bishops

Posted on November 19, 2010 by Dominique

A few weeks ago I was having drinks with a guy someone had set me up with. I was rather reluctant to go out with someone I had never met but since I’d been told that we were both in marketing I figured we’d at least have a common thread. Oh how wrong I was. Though this young man was a supposedly an established freelance ‘marketing consultant’ when I asked him how he went about branding his clients I quickly realized there was a giant hole in the marketing schemes he offered. Not once did he mention social media. Not Facebook, not Twitter, not blogs, not even a peep about pay-per-click ads.

“What about social media?” I asked him. “Oh, that’s a fad. It won’t be here long,” was his his reply. Did I mention he was a marketing consultant? Three rounds later and I realized I wasn’t going to convince him that he was completely and utterly in the wrong about this. Then I left. We clearly had nothing in common.

Well this week I was skimming the news wires about social media and came across a quote proving that social media is indeed NOT a fad from an authority recognized the world over. That’s right, the Church itself is endorsing social media.
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Dukky hearts Celebrity Peer Pressure

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Dominique

What do Jimmy Fallon and The Queen of England have in common? It’s not everyday the newbie to the late night talk show arena and the monarch of 16 countries share a commonality, but in this instance they do. That’s right, Jimmy and Her Royal Highness have both embraced the power of social media to reach out to and engage their fans (or in the Queen’s case, subjects?).

Fallon was the first among the late night crowd to understand that his viewers were more apt to stay his viewers if he could stay a part of their lives even when the show was off air. His network of choice? Twitter. As it stands now, Fallon has 2,957, 839 followers to his @jimmyfallon account. Since his first “I’m getting started on Twitter” tweet in December of 2008 his show has revolutionized the way Twitter is used and how the media powers that be promote shows. Mashable recently wrote, “from Late Night hashtags to viral video mashups, to LNJF, a mobile app featuring clips and joke-apps, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon has staked its ground as a tech-friendly kind of show.” I can’t tell you how many times a viral video from Fallon has popped up in my Facebook news feed. Fallon even boosted viewership of the 2010 Emmys by encouraging his viewers to tweet comments about the show’s presenters, incorporating the best into his live material. It proved a powerful tool, boosting the ratings to 13.5 million viewers, the highest since 2006.
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Dukky hearts Movember

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Dominique

Yesterday I read a heartwarming tweet from one of the people Dukky follows on Twitter, @JoannaSutter. She wrote “I just saw a guy buying up all the @Starbucks VIA to send to military troops serving overseas. Warmed me right up.” After taking a moment to relish this good samaritan’s selfish move, I found myself on Starbuck’s Twitter page clicking their ‘follow’ button. This got me thinking about using social media to get the word out on doing good and how businesses can leverage this in their interests. After all, I ended up following Starbucks from a tweet that they didn’t even put out themselves.

As Renee pointed out yesterday, the holiday season is upon us, and we here at Dukky are constantly looking to help our clients grow their businesses in new and effective ways through the power of social media. So today I want to talk about the awesome movement to raise awareness and research funds for men’s health. If you weren’t already aware, November is now Movember (Mustache + November = Movember). Inspired by the massively successful movements to raise awareness and research dollars for breast cancer, the guys behind Movember challenge men to grow a mustache for a month and get people to donate money to their cause. The Movember Foundation’s two main beneficiaries are Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong Foundation and the Prostate Cancer Foundation. What started as a fun joke among friends to ‘bring back the mustache’ and in so doing direct attention to men’s health issues in 2003, has now grown into an international month-long movement that last year alone raised $42 million from over 1 million donors. Impressive, no?

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Dukky hearts Sears’ Zombie Takeover

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Dominique

Just in time for Halloween, a stroke of marketing brilliance from Sears. This Friday I’d like to talk about Sears.com/zombies, a site that combines two of my favorite things – social media and all things zombies.

A dummy site set up specifically to highlight Sears’ large selection of Halloween products, jazzes up their regularly offered merchandise in a new and fresh way. I don’t know about you but when I think about cool department stores that I’d like peruse through Sears has never been at the top of my list. But this gives me hope. Their new social shopping feature that allows online shoppers to ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ items and recommend them to other customers (similar to Facebook like buttons) and recent ad campaigns featuring the Blue Crew have helped their image greatly and jumping on the country’s currently booming love of zombies can only help.

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