Kate Emanuel « AdLibbing.org

Kate Emanuel

As Senior Vice President of Non-Profit and Government Affairs, Kate Emanuel oversees the Ad Council's relationships with the non-profit community, Congress and the Federal Government. Ms. Emanuel also oversees the Ad Council's Advisory Committee on Public Issues, which helps the Ad Council identify pressing social issues for its docket.

Posts by Kate

Hamlet’s Blackberry: Are you addicted to yours?

Written by Kate Emanuel | 1:21 pm April 26, 2011

HamletsBlackberry

Are our digital gadgets committing us to a life of unprecedented multi-tasking and busyness? And if so, are we missing out on what’s perhaps the most important factor to a happy and fulfilling life: depth?

These are the questions author William Powers grapples with in his book “Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age”.

As Powers asks, “so what?” Life’s always been an exhausting grind. We’re all living like this–racing and skimming our way through our days.

Well, maybe that’s the norm but much of it is self-induced—we’re pursuing busy-making activities and digital technology is helping us be more hectic.

And along the way, here’s what’s happening: We’re becoming less productive at work (one study has found we spend more than a quarter of our day managing distractions). And we’re not thinking creatively (we don’t have the time and mental space to take a thought and follow it wherever it leads).

And by scrambling all the time, we’re scrambling our inner lives. A tad philosophical perhaps? Yes, but worth thinking about.

The author doesn’t rehash all the headlines and stories about multi-tasking – he wants to figure out how to change it.

Oh and is other main point? Lest we think the digital age has created an unprecedented situation of super-connectivity and distractedness, it hasn’t. This conundrum is as old as civilization. As human connectedness advances (i.e. the advent of the printing press, the railroad, the telegraph), it’s always made life busier. He examines a handful of iconic philosophers–Plato, Gutenberg, Thoreau, Ben Franklin, Shakespeare, Seneca—all of whom faced astonishing new inventions during their lifetimes. And they all faced the same problem–striking a healthy balance between connected and disconnected.

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Filed under: Communications, New Media

Tags: changing behavior, Hamlet's Blackberry

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Google’s Doodles

Written by Kate Emanuel | 5:21 pm February 16, 2011

Who doesn’t love Google’s doodles–those whimsical, light-hearted decorations that Google lends to their logo every so often.

Like these:

(50^th anniversary discovery of DNA)

(Alfred Hithcock’s birthday)

(Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday)

(Jane Austen’s birthday)

(guess)

(Persian New year—yes, there are internationally-themed Doodles!)

Sometimes the Ad Council gets asked—can’t we do a Google doodle for _____? (fill in the blank with your social issue).

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Filed under: Communications, Internet, Just for Fun

Tags: Google

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YouTube: Best Practices & Tips for Success

Written by Kate Emanuel | 12:24 pm December 9, 2010

Does your YouTube channel need a boost? We have a few tips to share…

Last week, the Ad Council and Google hosted a seminar on some best practices for YouTube. We tried to go beyond the basics and covered things like analytics, increasing traffic to your channel and the latest tools.

Our top-notch panel included YouTube, Blue State Digital, It Gets Better Project, EPA, and Natural Resources Defense Council.

Click here for the presentations…and before you go, a few tips:

YouTube’s Roy Daiany (Display Account Manager) covered “7 Ways To Get Your Videos Discovered”:

Categorize and Tag Your Content
Add annotations, captions, subtitles
Get Interactive with Google Moderator
Share Your Uploads & Channel Activity
Enable Embedding
Add Subscribe Button to Your Website
Utilize Paid Media (things like Pre-Roll InStream, InVideo Overlay, banners)
Track Your Performance with YouTube Insight

Blue State Digital discussed the wildly successful It Gets Better Project which was recently created to inspire hope for LGBT teenagers facing harassment. Within two months, this project–which started with one YouTube video–turned into a worldwide movement, inspiring over 5000 user-created videos and over 15 million views. How did they do so much so quickly?

Create a simple page that could capture emails and collect videos
Work with YouTube’s API
Help keep the barrier to entry low
Make the page shareable over social networks like Facebook and Twitter

Kay Morrison from EPA, talked about the unique challenges facing Federal agencies—things like 508 requirements, disclaimers, cookies and copyright issues.

And the Natural Resources Defense Council provided some great case studies and discussed the Hot Spot tool. That’s where you can view the ups-and-downs of viewership at each moment in your video. Bottom line? Keep your video short (no more than 1 ½ minutes) and display your “call to action” throughout your video, not at the end.

And finally, we didn’t cover what makes a good YouTube video but you can learn more by viewing a previous webinar (hosted by GSA’s Web Manager University) that featured YouTube’s Steve Grove (Head of News and Politics). I like these points in particular:

What if I don’t have any resources?