Well, I’m kind of bummed today.  Yesterday we found out that VeriSign decided to pull the plug on the next version of the Liberty Fillmore, Cart Whisperer campaign, which was in fact a presidential campaign.  For a few months, we had been working on a new phase of the marketing campaign where Liberty was running for President.  VeriSign kept pushing back and saying they wanted to wait a bit, and kept going back and forth on what proposed new features they wanted and didn’t want, until finally they realized that they’d pushed back too much and it was now too late to launch.  So they’re just paying us for all the work done so far and the VeriSign team moves on to other projects.  This has been a great campaign to be a part of – it’s up for some national marketing awards and it’s just been a fun site to develop, but it’s over now.  It’s a shame, because a lot of really good work by a lot of great team members had been done on the site.  Since it won’t have a chance to be shown, I figure I can show it here for whoever happens to read this.  So here are a bunch of comps (that means mocked up images showing what the new site will look like, not actual live website pages) of the Liberty for President website that almost was. There’s some really choice funny lines on these if you want a good laugh.

Liberty and justice for Y’all!	Platform page 1	Get Poll-itical	Liberty Town Hall
Wreeeee the People!	The Green Bar Party	Encyclomedia – photos	Encyclomedia – photo detail
Encyclomedia – videos	Encyclomedia – video viewer	Encyclomedia – downloads

Last week we launched the new MightyDog.com website. We used some of the GMNext.com framework for this site, especially the social networking aspects of the site. This site ties in with a national ad campaign Purina is doing for their Mighty Dog line. So McCann also did the television ad production which meant there were a couple of days when we had a bunch of really smart, well-trained dogs and their trainers here in the office for filming. Anyway, check out the site – and send in some photos or videos of your dog!

We had an award show at work to highlight the best work done by the agency over the last year. The award they give out is a salt shaker on a glass base and is called a Salty. Apparently this title is simply because we are the Salt Lake agency of McCann Worldgroup, therefore Salty’s. The salt shakers are completely random, ranging from the Pillsbury Dough Boy, to a mermaid, to a cow, to this gold prospector. My trophy above is for the Cart Whisperer website. From a programming perspective, this one was fun because it was completely my baby. Much of agency website programming is done as a team, and that’s great, but it’s fun to have a project now and then that is completely your own, from architecture on through completion, especially when the project has a bunch of fun functionality like this one did, with the photos, movies, poems, and wallpapers. The whole campaign consisted of many different aspects, of which the website was just one part, and as a whole, the campaign took home a bunch of awards for one thing or another and was nominated for quite a few that it didn’t win. Additionally, various parts of the campaign are being considered for national marketing association awards of different types. It was definitely a fun project to be a part of and ended up being a VERY successful viral marketing campaign, perhaps McCann SLC’s best ever. We wanted to follow it up, keep Liberty’s momentum (and carts) rolling, with commercials, a blog, etc, etc, but VeriSign doesn’t have it in their marketing budget. So if you don’t know who Liberty Fillmore is yet, GIT ON OVER TO THE SITE!!!

I just completed a fun project that I’ve been working on since the beginning of the year. It’s for VeriSign and launched yesterday morning. The biggest problem online businesses face is getting customers to actually complete their order. One of the big reasons people don’t complete their order is a lack of feeling that the website they’re on is secure. The rate of online cart abandonment is very high and VeriSign is on a quest to change that with their new extended validation site seal. As part of the launch of this new site seal, McCann put together a campaign revolving around Liberty Fillmore, a Cart Whisperer who travels the world seeking to rescue abandoned shopping carts (the metal and plastic, not online, kind). He’s a man on a mission and feels strongly about what he does. Who better to speak to the plight of abandoned shopping carts, both real and virtual, than the world’s only cart whisperer? Here’s a message from him…

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Let’s cut to the rocky mountain oysters: this here’s one of them chainmails.
Or chain letters. Whatever. It’s galldurn serious stuff. See, the spirit of a shopping cart that was abandoned just up and takes the spirits of anyone who don’t forward this message and its correresponding interweb site onto at least 10 friends. T-E-N. An idiot’s dozen. But, fear not, it ain’t all curses and fire & coldstone. If you do forward this on to your interweb pardners, you just might get the name of your crush on your pager machine or in a text or dream or something.

The site?

www.NoMoreAbandonedCarts.com

It’s about me, Liberty Fillmore: the world’s only Cart Whisperer, a lone wolf in a world of coyotes, a sprinklefied donut in a pretendgious muffin world. I rescue abandoned carts. And this interweb site tells my story.
Please take a look-see. And look-see that your friends look-see as well.

Preciate cha!

Liberty
Sworn Defender of Abandoned Carts

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So get on over to the site and check it out. There’s some fun stuff. Currently our YouTube video, the “World Premiere”, is in 3rd place for most viewed with almost 1 million viewings since yesterday. And if you happen to upload any of your own photos of abandoned carts you can be entered in a weekly drawing for an overstock.com gift card.

So I mentioned that I’ve been in Redmond, Washington on the Microsoft campus since Wednesday for some training on the Windows Live platform. Lots of cool things that may or may not be practical and/or applicable to the types of work I’m doing. It’s been a fun trip though. My first impression was that I couldn’t believe how big this campus is. It’s truly a campus, easily bigger than BYU. There are over 30,000 employees that work here in some 45 large buildings. It’s really it’s own city. Really incredible. I think I’ve eaten more and better food than any 3 day period in my life. Our first night, we went to this great Oyster bar restaurant but got no oysters – instead Filet Mignon that was perfect. I’m here with 2 co-workers, Jason and Buster. The next day Microsoft provided a big breakfast and then a very good prime rib and tortellini lunch with awesome deserts. Then, last night a bunch of us training attendees here, went to this great Italian restaurant in Bellevue, called Maggiano’s. Everything was served family style and included a bunch of different appetizers, great green salad, the best baked ziti I’ve had, mushroom ravioli, loin tips, salmon, calamari, oysters, tiramisu and blueberry cheesecake. There was a ton of food and it was all excellent. Unfortunately I was dumb and left my camera at home, but I do have a few pictures from a Korean guy who was here. This was quite an international group. Microsoft brought in about 35 developers from all over the world. I met guys from Mexico, Canada, Argentina, Chile, Korea, Japan, and England.