By Greg Kihlström

When Jon Stewart tapped the Trust for the National Mall as the official non-profit of the Rally to Restore Sanity last October, the three-year-old organization was thrust into the national spotlight. Carousel30 Interactive, the Trust’s digital agency, helped plan and execute a digital campaign around the rally that saw an increase in website traffic of 1,700 percent and over $500,000 in donations.

Traditionalists take note: Only 25 percent of social media users say their friends/peers are credible when it comes to making recommendations online (down from 45 percent three years ago). And, 72 percent of news consumers still get their information from traditional sources like television, radio and print media. But don’t get too happy.

By Matt Goddard, CEO of R2integrated, and a believer in the networked world.

When the writers of Star Trek created the civilization “The Borg”, they provided us with an interesting glimpse into what decision making behavior might be like if we could communicate better. The Borg was a race of humans who once lived their lives like you and I. Over time, the Borg created a set of communication tools that were so efficient that everyone in society was networked to each other and all information flowed from a single source… in their case,

R2integrated CEO Matt Goddard recently joined other digital marketing thought leaders from Google, AOL, Yahoo!, and NBC Universal (among others) to discuss how brands find their customers in a data-driven world as top industry experts and insiders dive deeply into the challenges and success stories of audience targeting, management, and monetization.

By Rebecca Woolf,

How do you measure success?

This is one of the first questions we get at West Glen from clients when distributing a public service announcement. Is it media value? Markets aired? Viewer impressions? How do you measure success in your own professional life? Often, our most memorable professional moments are those when we feel powerful and motivated by an achievement

Awkward question: Are your social media followers actually interested?

As more brands get online, customers are getting bored. They hit the 'like' button but you never hear from them again.

Results from a nationally-representative survey concluded that about 40 percent of iPad owners have not used the device to read a single e-book. According to media and publishing forecast firm Simba Information's "Trade E-Book Publishing 2011," the survey also revealed a shift in demographic makeup of the e-book buyer from men to women during 2010 - which brings the e-book format more in line with longtime trends in print books.

By Jeff Caporizzo

One result of the overload of messages and marketing that defines communications today is the increased emphasis on good creative. Remarkable work goes a long way in punching through the noise out there. It's no coincidence that two strong brands -  Apple and Starbucks - also boast and leverage award-winning design teams recognized the world over for their talent and vision. (It's my opinion that Starbucks' success rests solidly on great design, but that is another post.)

By Dan Rosenthal

Has anyone noticed?

Communication is all over us. Our eyeballs are measured on some researcher's screen 24/7. It's on our bananas, our Facebook page, our baseball bats, our apps. But.

By Amy Garland

It all starts with the open.

It’s likely that the end goal of your email marketing campaign is to get your subscribers to convert. Whether it’s purchasing your product, taking a survey, or signing up for an event, you want recipients to take a certain action, but that’s not an issue if no one sees your email in the first place, right?

ZilYen teamed up with the American Marketing Association's DC chapter and delivered a tutorial presentation on how brand relates to business and the bottom line.  Covering recent brand gaffes

While the top-50 U.S. newspapers seem to be just starting to build their Facebook fan base, reports Journalistics, Twitter has been a priority for a while. If you were to rank the top-25 U.S. newspapers by Twitter followers, the order would be much different than if you were to rank them by circulation, it continued.

Forbes Jeff Bercovici had an interesting piece on March 25 about a list compiled by NY Times blogger and "statistics-dicer extraordinaire Nate Silver (see above) as evidence that the Times is uniquely well positioned to charge readers’ for online access. (The paper is the second most-cited news outlet after the Associated Press, and it’s the most linked to by bloggers.)"

By Jeff Caporizzo

The Capital Cabal presents CMS Outlook: Case Studies in Evolving Web Content Management Platforms. The event will be held March 30 at the City Club of Washington, Columbia Square, in D.C. This seminar explores the state of the tool sets, trends, commentary and predictions for how the content management sector is evolving. The session will include real-world case studies from marketing leaders and publishers, discussing the results of evolving their web CMS into development platforms.

As you will note in a Capitol Communicator post in our News section, Gannett Inc., has launched its first-ever corporate branding campaign to highlight the sum of its parts to advertisers. Nat Worden of Dow Jones Newswires, had an interesting insight into the campaign, and part of his story, edited, follows:

By Tracy Schario, APR

Donald Trump's foray into reality TV has made "you're fired" an engaging melodrama. But in real life, that's a very challenging pronouncement.

By Jeff Caporizzo

From time to time, I'll be sitting across from a client making a case for putting emotion in a message, brand, or brand story, (and by emotion I mean something that goes beyond a proof point, that builds

Google is making changes to its U.S. search engine that are designed to reduce the ranking of low-value or lesser quality web pages produced by "content farms." According to a Google blog post on Feb. 24, the change "noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what's going on."

By Jeff Caporizzo

Honda just revealed its updated minivan, the 2011 Odyssey. The reviewer in the article at first objects to the Odyssey ads for using Judas Priest, and thinks "If you think you're going to make me think your stupid soccer mom taxi is cool, well, You've Got Another Thing Coming!"

Washington Women in Public Relations hosted a lunchtime discussion on Feb. 17 entitled "Starting, Growing, and Optimizing Your Business in 2011". A panel of five women shared best practices, tips, resources, interesting, and times comical business stories.

Only around one in ten of respondents (11%) to the survey run by news navigator www.onenewspage.com were aware that unexplained falls in their site traffic could result from obscure penalties applied by the leading search engines.

Penalties are routinely imposed by search engines on websites

By: Jeff Caporizzo

There is a lot of buzz over the Eminem Superbowl ad for Chrysler 200. The views tally for the spot on YouTube is over 7 million.

Why is it resonating so much with audiences? Short answer. The American Car represents America. Longer answer: it taps into emotions and associations that go way beyond

By Joie Chen

What’s left is T.B.D.? 

Allbritton’s decision to dial back on its daring digital experiment—a hyper-local online news channel for the metro area—made concrete what seemed suspect almost from its launch: TBD.com had been DOA. Read More »

By Wendy Moniz

Two weeks ago, my colleagues and I at PlowShare, along with our partner, Hager Sharp, launched a public service advertising campaign to educate women about the signs and symptoms of a heart attack and the importance of calling 9-1-1 immediately.

By Jeff Caporizzo

I recently was invited to judge the ADDYs in Norfolk, VA.

This is the second time I've filled this role. About two years ago I visited Fort Worth, Texas, for the cause.

By Mack McKelvey

Compare features and pricing. Find local promotions. Locate an area dealership. Schedule an oil change. Consumers who own a car, or are in the market for a new one, expect to be able to do all of these things and more on their mobile devices. Last year, automotive advertisers responded to this consumer need in a big way – a very big way.

By Ken Pfeiffer

Did you know Canada passed a new anti-spam law? 

If you are an email marketer, the chances are quite high that a portion of your subscriber base is located in Canada. If this is true, it’s imperative that you are aware of the new Fighting Internet Wireless Spam bill (FISA), that became effective December 15, 2010.

By Jeff Caporizzo

Some folks think "brand" as an idea and objective is pretty squishy. Understandable because typically the strength of your brand isn't easily measured unless you're using the Zilyen Brand Index (more on this later).

You can measure message retention, advertising penetration, a host of web advertising tracking metrics, product sales, rebate redemption, store traffic and the like

All-news radio is thriving, states an article in Media Life by Mike Stern.  In his Jan. 31 piece, Stern writes:

“Fewer Americans are relying on radio as their chief source of news. The number of Americans who say radio is their primary news source has dipped from 18 percent in December of 2008 to 16 percent by December 2010, according to the Pew Research Center for People and the Press.