Josh Sklar

Get the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Doesnt-Matter-advertising-heresies/dp/0692226850

We’ve been hearing the complaints from within the advertising industry for years, so I finally decided to put it to the test with perhaps the largest panel of experts ever assembled on the subject (over 130) by crowdsourcing a book. This project is all about helping advertising professionals adapt to the massive, global change that has put audiences in control. Brands and agencies are… Show more

Get the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Doesnt-Matter-advertising-heresies/dp/0692226850

We’ve been hearing the complaints from within the advertising industry for years, so I finally decided to put it to the test with perhaps the largest panel of experts ever assembled on the subject (over 130) by crowdsourcing a book. This project is all about helping advertising professionals adapt to the massive, global change that has put audiences in control. Brands and agencies are struggling to keep up, although these days, it’s mostly the agencies. The book explores where the industry went wrong, what needs to happen to put it right and what will happen if we continue to let things go on as they are – driving talent out of the industry and the marketers into the arms of technical specialists.

The Internet, social networks and mobile devices have exposed the advertising business model as dysfunctional and not forward thinking. Traditional agencies are having their lunches eaten by, on one front, big consulting and technology firms that are gorging themselves on those plum strategic and branding assignments. On the other front, smaller, more agile specialists in media, direct, digital, social, mobile, shopper marketing, analytics, search and a host of others are consuming all those scraps once considered too difficult and unsexy. What’s left behind is TV, but not the strategy. Agencies are becoming assembly lines that are sucking the life out of the people that have devoted their lives to their craft. Show less

There are a lot of crowdfunding sites out there and most of them are fairly similar in their offerings. EasyRaise, however, was created to fill a void for nonprofits that found the options difficult for their generally small, non-technical staffs to manage; do not provide reporting that is useful for their management and supporters; and rely upon hitting up their own social networks over and over in order to gain any traction toward their goals.

EasyRaise helps the charities with all of… Show more

There are a lot of crowdfunding sites out there and most of them are fairly similar in their offerings. EasyRaise, however, was created to fill a void for nonprofits that found the options difficult for their generally small, non-technical staffs to manage; do not provide reporting that is useful for their management and supporters; and rely upon hitting up their own social networks over and over in order to gain any traction toward their goals.

EasyRaise helps the charities with all of that by living up to the name Heresy gave it by being exceptionally simple to set up, providing hand holding support for those that don’t have the inclination to give it a shot on their own, providing detailed reporting on every facet of the people donating and what has enticed them to support the cause, giving 100% of the funds to the charity (if someone gives $50, the campaign receives $50), and providing a feature called “The Hero’s Challenge” that activates a participant’s own social network to amplify the call to arms. The reporting system logs the people who have taken it and how much they have raised so the administrator can reach out to them for help with future campaigns.

A charity that is too small to afford or maintain their own web site can even create an EasyRaise landing page with their own branding that allows them to state their mission and collect funds perennially without a timeframe or goal amount (and has The Hero’s Challenge available, too), and to create as many campaigns as they wish, with those that have expired archived for historical reference. Heresy created the brand platform, the name, the strategy, the design, the site, the marketing material, the pitch decks for each charity, and supported the launch events and PR activities that resulted in hundreds of TV and print news outlets picking up the story. Show less

Firetag is an integrated social mobile cinema entertainment platform I conceived and designed that makes going to the movies more social, more engaging, more fun and more rewarding. It handles ticket sales, gaming, rewards, promotions and social engagement to keep audiences coming back for more.

Investors in startups have a couple of problems: 1) They have no idea if some other group is already working to solve the same problem (and maybe doing it better) and 2) they don’t usually have much insight into the personalities of the team in which they are putting their money. The Research Exchange (aka REX) solves those key problems by bringing together all of the disparate data from R&D groups at universities and major corporations into a standardized format and providing a social network… Show more

Investors in startups have a couple of problems: 1) They have no idea if some other group is already working to solve the same problem (and maybe doing it better) and 2) they don’t usually have much insight into the personalities of the team in which they are putting their money. The Research Exchange (aka REX) solves those key problems by bringing together all of the disparate data from R&D groups at universities and major corporations into a standardized format and providing a social network environment where the potential investors can observe the individual members of the teams and how they get along.

Heresy was involved with REX from the time this idea was merely sketched out into some diagrams. We designed the look and feel, streamlined the logo, envisioned the platform, the user experience, and built it out into a scalable system, bringing to life the visual search that allow investors to use a number of tools to find intriguing technologies that they may wish to help bring to life with funding. The search not only shows them how many active projects are underway, but uses color coded bubbles to alert them to related areas that they may not have even knew existed.

In addition to the sophisticated search mechanism, the unified format for all of the researcher data that for the first time makes it simple for investors to compare projects, and the robust social network environment similar to a system like Facebook that we built from scratch, Heresy created illustrations and crafted a video commercial using rotoscope to convey the company’s brand personality and benefits to potential users of the system. Show less