Ilana Kavadlo
As an Interactive Services Project Manager, Ilana does her best to keep up with the quickly changing, and ever expanding interactive landscape. She also likes to crochet - and wear - super chunky scarves.
Posts by Ilana
Ready to go mo?
No, that isn’t an invitation to join the Mo Rocca fan club. It’s a rallying cry from Google to help get brands and organizations to mobilize (as in enable to behave nicely in mobile browsers) their web sites, and to do it now.
Sure, the fine folks at Google have an obvious self-interest in mobile, but that doesn’t change the fact that their site www.HowToGoMo.com is an excellent little starting place for the mo-curious (I’ll refrain from postulating on why the site doesn’t fully work in FireFox, Chrome’s biggest rival, but it’s interesting to note).
First and foremost, is making clear the distinction between simply being able to access a site on a mobile device, and a site that is designed to cater to the mobile experience, which is ruled by screen size and bandwidth.
Next, is appreciating the arguments for why going mobile has shifted from a nice-to-have to a must-have. Case in point: “By 2012, more people will use their mobile phones than PCs to get online.”
HowToGoMo also features a fun and useful tool – its GoMoMeter – to provide a sneak peak of how a given site looks on a smart phone, and to provide any top-line recommendations for how it could be improved for mobile browsing (hooray! The recently launched m.theshelterproject.org scores a perfect 4 out of 4!).
Recommendations are rooted in Google’s 10 Mobile Best Practices – a set of guidelines that is certainly in line with, and as good as any I’ve seen out there. To my eyes, there’s a sense of priority in how their best practices are ordered, so check out the top 5 below, and you’ll be off to a good start in understanding the nuances of what makes for a good mobile site.
Top 5 Mobile Best Practices from Google
- Keep it Quick: fast load time and copy/content that can be scanned quickly
- Simplify Navigation: a clear hierarchy, vertical only, a prominently available search box for complex sites
- Thumb-friendly: users lack the finer control of a mouse or stylus
- Design for visibility: use sufficient color contrast and plenty of negative space
- Make it accessible: site should work across all mobile devices and handset orientations. Avoid Flash – it doesn’t work on all devices.
Google’s full set of best practices is available as a handy-dandy PDF you can save and print as a reference.
Not an Amy Winehouse Post
The recent and sudden death of Amy Winehouse, a celebrity known to suffer from substance abuse, got us wondering… where is the line between capitalizing on a headline as a teachable moment and shamelessly piggybacking onto that headline?
As we sat around discussing current news, trolling for items that may be relevant to our partners and other social marketers, the subject of Amy Winehouse obviously came up, as it most likely did for a myriad other organizations and corporate marketers having similar discussions. We quickly agreed that as we didn’t have anything relevant or useful to contribute to the larger conversation, then we shouldn’t say anything at all. But it did get us thinking about that larger question.
This comes up frequently; whether a celebrity death, a political scandal, or natural disaster, it’s tempting to ride the wave of a big headline to help amplify your voice. But do you risk coming off as cheap or insincere if you don’t go about it just right? Could the risk be worth it? Did we just risk this ourselves?
So many questions to consider. What do you think?
Filed under: Communications
Tags: Amy Winehouse, celebrity
Is “Cause Marketing” the Hot New Field?
I was surprised and excited to receive an email recently from a younger cousin of mine that included the following:
“I didn’t know if you could tell me a little about your job, because I’m looking into graphic design, specifically “cause marketing” and am curious about what you do and how you got your current position.”
A simple enough question, but I just found the question itself – and choice of words – so dang interesting! Our jobs page on Ad Council.org consistently ranks as one of our top pages. It’s a tough economy, and there are a lot of job seekers out there, but it seems that more and more of them are expressing a desire for the work they do to be in pursuit of a good cause.
Below was my response:
What can I tell you about my job? The Ad Council’s most basic function is to connect non-profits and government agencies who are working to address major social issues – high school dropout rates, teen dating violence, fatherhood involvement, etc… – with the nation’s top ad agencies who then volunteer their services to create comprehensive, fully integrated ad campaigns to inspire action around those issues. And then we get the media to donate ad space to run those campaigns. That’s it in a nutshell. But there is A LOT going on to make all of that happen, and to make those campaigns successful.
As far as my particular role, I manage various interactive elements of campaigns. This may be the development of a new website, a mobile app, an online contest, you name it. All in an effort to extend the reach and increase the impact of any given campaign.
Filed under: Communications, New Media
Tags: Campaigns, cause marketing, marketing, Social Media
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