Kevin Rothermel

No Spoilers.

Brand Strategist
Professor, VCU Brandcenter

No Spoilers.

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Killzapper and VidWipe

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Brett Terpstra is the only developer that sells his own t-shirt. Or I should say, he’s the only developer that sells a t-shirt that I bought.

Why did I buy a t-shirt made by a developer?

Because Brett Terpstra makes tools and services that make Macs more powerful. And usually he posts them for free on his site.

Here’s two bookmarklets that he developed to kill things on websites (like autoplay videos or ads) with the click of a mouse or a keyboard hotkey:
1. KillZapper – Click to Kill web annoyances:

Click the bookmarklet in the menubar, then click anything on the page. Once you click (or hit a key), it turns off, so you don’t risk deleting anything else. It specifically targets the tags div, video, figure, and aside, and iframe. That should cover the majority of annoyances.

  1. VidWipe – Delete ’em all:

Ok, so KillZapper was kind of cool in the way it let you target specific elements, but after running into issues on sites like CNN where I couldn’t easily control the click handlers and determine parent elements, I decided to just make this simpler. Click this bookmarklet to just kill all iframes and HTML5 video elements on the page without prejudice.

Dogma is comforting, and in this business it goes by many names.

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So says Erika Hall of Mule Design in her recent Medium piece: Design Sprints Are Snake Oil.

What promised to be a vicious takedown of the institution of agile methods like design thinking, was really a takedown of the idea of design sprints as the One True God.

Agile processes can be useful. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have taken hold in business to the extent that they have.

The problem is that not all problems can be solved by the same silver-bullet process:

… many methods start out as legitimate tools to promote better, clearer thinking faster and end up as activities substituted for thinking.

Yes, sprints can be useful. As can Design Thinking and agile processes and all of the rest.

We teach them at the Brandcenter because they are useful and students need to have an understanding of how it all works.

But they are only one arrow in the quiver.

Let’s use them that way.

Biases Against Podcast Professionalism

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A note on podcast tonality from Kari Gee(?):

Some podcasts & hosts are almost too podcast-y, you know? The production values are slightly too polished, the voices a little too smooth. It’s like a schtick sometimes, like a schmoozy Rat Pack Vegas number: they hit every single beat you expect them to and leave no room for chance. But my biases against “professionalism” are my own cross to bear, so I barrel through.

Samesies. If it sounds too glossy, and it’s not from the NYTimes or a big media company, I’m out.

I’m not sure why. Are they too self-assured? Faking it instead of making it? It almost feels unprofessional, in the way recent college graduates will show up to their new jobs in shiny dress clothes for the first month or two. They think they appear professional. But they look like newbs to everyone else.

One constant problem you run into when showing ads to people in focus groups is the snap-to-grid tendency. People judge an ad by whether or not it looks and feels like their expectations of an ad.

No one needs an imitation of a radio show.

Just make it good.

Don’t worry so much about making it glossy.

Glossy attracts glossy listeners.

And they’ll want to connect on LinkedIn.

VCU Brandcenter Week at Modern Copywriter

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Modern Copywriter has made Brandcenter Week an annual tradition. They’ll choose the work of a student or two to feature daily this week. The full list of portfolio sites will go up on Friday.

Today he’s featuring Thea Ryan (and her Daily Warmups for Chicks)

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And Allie Carr (and her Boy Scouts campaign that is hitting a little to close to my two-boy home):

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If you’re looking to hire some writers, keep an eye out over there.

Writing For People, Not Machines

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As I’ve been spending more time reading blogs and publication home pages again. The content that is served up in social media isn’t holding up so well. It’s a little … loud and shallow. Stimulating in an entirely wrong way.

Like Carrot Top.

I hate Carrot Top.

The Real Interesting is still found out in the open web, where ideas and writing styles haven’t been sanded down for the benefit of algorithms.

Venture there and you’ll find headlines that weren’t written for SEO. Writing that has paragraphs. And thinking. And sometimes nonsense. Sometimes it’s long and sometimes it’s short. Sometimes it’s just an image.

But there’s and honesty and integrity to good web writing that just doesn’t work on networked platforms.

Maybe because success in the wild open web seems to come from a consistent body of work.

It’s writing meant to communicate with people, not impress machines.