Have you seen the cover of the newest Vampire Weekend album, Contra? It looks nothing like the picture above, by the way, which we’re showing you since we don’t own the image rights to the actual cover. Problem is, Vampire Weekend may not own the rights, either.

How’s that? Well, it’s actually a big, convoluted legal mess at this point, involving a twenty-year-old snapshot, a potentially forged model release, conflicting stories from the photographer and the talent, and a $2 million lawsuit. If you’re interested, you can find both the album cover image and details on the legal kerfluffle through a quick Google search. It’s been all over the internet.

We bring it up again now because the whole thing is an excellent reminder that, yes, many images are indeed rights-secured. And if you want to use such an image, whether for an album cover, an ad, a brochure, or a blog post, you need to license those rights. Sure, those of us who work in the marketing business already know this, on both the agency and client sides. But the uninitiated may not realize it, or at least they might not pause to think about it. Especially in an age of ever-sooner deadlines, ever-mounting pressure, and ever-increasing numbers of digitized images available through a quick and easy internet search. When your boss tells you he needs his Powerpoint slides jazzed up with some images by tomorrow, and he doesn’t want the usual clipart, it’s easy to conveniently forget that the literally millions of seemingly free images that are just a Google away are not necessarily free. Or maybe the boss doesn’t want to hear that you can’t just appropriate these images without checking the rights first. Or without, heaven forbid, paying for them. Heck, I’ve even seen advertising account execs, who certainly know better, try to skirt around this fact of life. “It’s just a one-time, in-house presentation,” they’ll say. “Who will it hurt?”

Well, it hurts the photographer or illustrator or computer wiz who created the image in the first place. It’s their work; they’re entitled to their fee. It hurts studios like ours, and our clients, as properly licensed images get more and more expensive, partly because of efforts to offset the losses of rampant thievery. And it hurts pretty bad if you find yourself on the receiving end of a multi-million-dollar lawsuit. Vampire Weekend is feeling that pain. And all indications are that the band itself had no idea the image hadn’t been legally procured. Whether or not that’s true, and regardless of the legal outcome, the band is paying a price in terms of headache and bad PR. Maybe their next album will be titled Cautionary Tale.

By now, it’s safe to say (or bemoan, depending on your point of view) that social media is here to stay. Even if Facebook and Twitter don’t endure (and aren’t they the old guard by now, anyway?), the model is entrenched (or, again depending on your predilections, the damage has been done). How we use the web to connect to one another has changed, irrevocably—as have our notions regarding what is private and what is public.

So the question is no longer when will Twitter tweet its final gasp, or when will Facebook’s “walls” be torn down, but instead: what’s next? Whether as complement, alternative, or replacement, something is certainly on the horizon (on the internet, something is always on the horizon), and much money and prestige await whoever first figures out what tomorrow’s big social media mediator will be.

If you ask Mark Coatney, the answer is Tumblr. He’s so sure, in fact, that he just left his job as senior editor at Newsweek to join Tumblr in the newly created position of “media evangelist.” To be clear, while Mr. Coatney believes Tumblr will be the next big thing, he doesn’t see it as replacing either Facebook or Twitter. He describes it as a space between the two. Founded as a blogging platform in 2007, Tumblr allows people to create their own pages and post images, videos, and audio, as well as short Twitter-like bits of text. But Mr. Coatney says that Tumblr, unlike Twitter or Facebook, isn’t about the number of followers or friends you have (in fact, Tumblr doesn’t even display a comparable number); instead, it’s about creative expression and broadcasting to a community. What’s more, he believes Tumblr’s unique middle ground allows users to create personalities and identities in a way that Facebook and Twitter do not. These and other bold claims are attributed to Mr. Coatney in a recent New York Times article, which you can read here. Lending credence to Mr. Coatney’s boldness is the article’s list of recent Tumblr recruits, including The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, BlackBook Media Corporation, The Paris Review, The Huffington Post, Life magazine, and The New York Times.

On the other hand, we have a New York magazine piece, which features the same list of media outlets, but opines in opposition to Mr. Coatney’s pronouncements. You can read it in full here, but the thesis is basically that a bunch of middle-aged journalists are over-hyping some new technology simply because they’ve decided to use it themselves.

Well, then. Are we in for a tumble or not? Here at Big, we offer no prediction. But we promise to keep an eye on the proceedings. So even if social media gives you social anxiety, we can help you and all our clients make the best possible impression.

(Pieter Bruegel’s “The Tower of Babel.”)

This week at Big, we were discussing a marketing project that will require reaching an audience whose first language is not English. There are, of course, a number of distinctive challenges with such a project, and accurate translation is only one of them. For example, you have to understand cultural differences, too. What happens when you don’t? Well, you may never get your audience’s attention. You may not be persuasive if you do. Or you may end up sending an entirely different message than you intended, even if your translation is technically correct. In fact, advertising is replete with cautionary tales, in which a company either didn’t get the translation of its message quite right, or it didn’t understand how the cultural differences at play would affect that translation. Below you’ll find a few of the more notorious examples, some probably apocryphal, but all instructive. Or at least amusing.

Come alive with the Pepsi Generation. When translated into Chinese, the message became: Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.

I saw the pope, translated into Spanish and printed on T-shirts, read: I saw the potato.

Turn it loose, a former Coors tagline, was translated into Spanish as: Suffer from diarrhea.

Nova may be a fine name for a car in English, but no va in Spanish means “doesn’t go.”

Another car mishap—GM sold its vehicles in Belgium with the tag Body by Fisher, which translated as: Corpse by Fisher.

Remember the success of Got Milk? A little less effective in Spanish: Are you lactating?

Finally, and perhaps most famously, is the case of Electrolux, the Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer. They had enjoyed great success in the UK with a tagline that, since it was already in English, didn’t even need translating for the American market. Those cultural differences do matter, though. Like when a word carries additional meanings in one country that it doesn’t have in another. To wit: Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.

Advertising, it’s often said, lies at the intersection of art and commerce. Some would describe it as art in service of commerce. Which is fair enough, as rough characterizations go, but advertising is hardly the only creative discipline in which this relationship with business holds true. Look at the entertainment industry, for instance—how much of its product (and it is frequently referred to as product) is developed without an eye toward eventual marketability? Art for its own sake is a rare thing.

But what about the inverse relationship—commerce in service of art? How often do you see that? Actually, it’s not uncommon, if your notion of commerce extends to foundations and fundraising and government programs and other financial means of supporting the arts. Of course, many would argue that what exists is not nearly sufficient.

Fortunately, and quite interestingly, there’s a whole new way for commerce to support art. It’s called Kickstarter, and it’s leveraging the same kind of Web 2.0 thinking that has created financial windfalls for all types of innovative businesses.

The people behind Kickstarter describe it as a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors. They believe that “a good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide,” and “a large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.”

Bringing those two quoted aspects of their system together is the Kickstarter website. The “good idea, communicated well” half is accomplished through an online directory of projects in need of funding. Creators—artists, filmmakers, musicians, designers, writers, illustrators, curators, performers, and more—are given free space to describe their projects, using not only text but pictures and video; they must also specify what funding is needed to complete their projects. The other half of the equation, the large group of people with money and encouragement, is comprised of the site’s visitors. They review projects and make contributions through the site. For these altruistic individuals, it’s often a micro-lending kind of scale—think $20—but the money is neither a loan nor an investment. The only return is the satisfaction in contributing toward the completion of a project, plus whatever rewards the project creator might choose to offer as thanks—for instance, an artist looking for funds to print a graphic novel might promise a free copy to anyone who contributes $50 or more.

What makes the model unique, according to Kickstarter, is its all-or-nothing funding method. Each project lists a deadline along with its funding goal—if the project is not fully funded by the deadline, no money changes hands.

To get an idea of the range and variety of projects that this new model has attracted, just visit the site—kickstarter.com. Maybe you’d like to put some of your own commerce to work for the sake of art.

As long-time experts in Investor Relations, we at Big help our clients keep up with the latest thinking and best practices, both in print and online. Of course, online is where change is occurring most rapidly. So we not only monitor the ever-evolving best practices of IR websites, we also offer ways for our clients to implement these advances. From video, blogs, and message boards to social media integration to disclosure management software and XBRL, we can help our clients identify the upgrades that make the most sense for them, and then put together the resources to make it happen. And when we assemble these resources, we are completely vendor-agnostic. Thomson Reuters, Shareholder.com, Q4 Web Systems, SNL, BusinessWire—regardless of who you already work with, or who you’d like to work with, we can successfully collaborate with them all.

Still, what is perhaps today’s most essential best practice is one that does not require special technical resources. This best practice has to do with the message and the personality and the ability to engage of your IR website. More and more, the home page of your IR site or section is expected to tell a full story, rather than rely on the main corporate site to fill in the gaps. Your IR landing page should answer the question, why invest in your company? It should provide an explicit market opportunity statement and a clear strategy description. It should not only provide links to bios of your leadership, it should explain why this leadership is the right group to execute your strategy and seize your market opportunity. And it should do all these things in an engaging, conversational, human manner. The web allows you to have a conversation. Your site should get that dialogue started. And this is where we at Big excel. Out of all of today’s best practices, this is where we put our emphasis and best apply our expertise. Because this is where it all begins.

To learn more about how Big can help your company implement IR best practices on the web, contact our president, Ed Lacy, at 804.355.9151 or ed@bigaddress.com.

Just when you think traditional advertising is past its prime and nothing can be fresh unless it’s got “2.0” behind its name, someone comes along to remind us that it’s all about the idea, not the medium. Take outdoor advertising, for instance. It’s not all billboards and bus cards. In fact, sometimes it’s something you’ve never seen before. Like an abandoned monorail truss. To most Jakarta motorists driving by one of these ubiquitous urban leftovers, they’re simply an eyesore. But to the creative minds at the ad agency Y&R Jakarta, they were an opportunity—an opportunity to spread an important message for an important cause, in service to the agency’s client Friends of the National Parks Foundation in Indonesia. The picture up top shows the trusses as they usually appear. After the jump, one of the trusses transformed with signage and imagination.

Like a significant portion of the world’s population, we here at Big have our eye on the various balls being kicked around right now in South Africa. But our interest is due to more than a love of the sport and patriotric fervor—we recently completed a project tied to the games.

One of our clients, you see, is the Country Vintner, the third largest distributor of fine wines on the east coast. And among the many exquisite vintages they import from all over the world is a select range of incredible South African wines. What better time to celebrate these wines (asked we and the Country Vintner) than during the World Cup? So we worked with our client to produce a set of marketing materials designed to educate customers about not only the South African wines and wineries that are part of the Country Vintner’s portfolio, but also about the amazing viticultural tradition of this truly unique land. (For instance, did you realize South African wine has a history dating back to 1659?) The release of these marketing materials was timed so that they reached customers’ hands right as the World Cup began.

As we watch the games (in fact, the U.S. - Slovenia match is streaming in our office as I write this), we feel fortunate to have worked on this project—it has certainly given us a keener appreciation for the heritage of the country so graciously playing host. So join us now in a metaphorical toast to the World Cup and to South Africa. Then perhaps sometime soon raise a literal glass filled with one of the country’s distinctive flavors.

What words come to mind when you hear “AT&T” these days? Incompetence? Ineptitude? Ham-fisted, ivory-towered, greed-driven mismanagement?

Suffice to say, AT&T has done its brand no favors during its tenure as the exclusive U.S. carrier of Apple’s iPhone. Hordes of the smart device’s users twitch and salivate at the merest hint of an imminent Verizon version, primed and ready as they are to jump ship to any other option. It’s an anticipation fueled by rage and frustration and indignation: how many dropped calls can a single human soul endure? How many broken promises? How many delays in services? How many outages and zero-bars and connections-lost?

But one also has to ask: is there a level of blundering so great that the tormented’s hatred for the tormentor can turn to pity? Can the villain shoot himself in the foot so many times that the victims turn their attention from their own wounds to the plight of the hapless bad guy? If so, AT&T might have just achieved that dubious distinction.

Only a few days ago, you see, it was reported that AT&T’s website was hacked and thousands of iPad 3G owners’ email addresses were collected. How many thousands? One hundred and fourteen thousand. Many of which belong to high-profile government and media types.

Ouch.

The timing, of course, only adds insult to injury. Because Apple’s newest iPhone, the iPhone 4, had been unveiled only days before the incident, bringing forth oohs and aahs for the Cupertino innovators, and a fresh round of scathing indictments for AT&T.

You have to admit, at this point, it’s actually kinda hard to be mad at AT&T. I mean, no one can get it wrong this often, even on purpose. The law of averages suggests they’d get something right once in a while, just out of sheer dumb luck. Clearly, these guys are simply cursed. Bless their pointy little heads.

The airport experience. Even the most mild-mannered of us can devolve into rage-blinded Neanderthals when confronted with the lines, the delays, the cancellations. How many times have you vented and ranted to friends and family after an especially frustrating encounter? So you can surely sympathize with Paul Chambers of South Yorkshire, England, when his flight to Dublin this past January was cancelled due to threat of snow at Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster. Chambers reacted as you might have—he joked with his friends that the airport needed to get its act together, or he’d blow the place sky high. Okay, maybe you wouldn’t have referred to explosive violence (still, how many of us have said we want to “murder the boss” after a horrible day at work?). And maybe you would have thought twice before making your comment on Twitter. But Mr. Chambers did not. He chose to tweet his frustration. In a manner obviously meant to amuse his friends. Or so he thought.

Turns out the joke wasn’t so obvious to the police. They showed up at Mr. Chambers’ workplace about a week after the airport tweet. To arrest him, under the Terrorism Act. Explaining himself was tough, especially since the police had never heard of Twitter (they had received an anonymous tip, and showed up with a print-out of Chambers’ Twitter page, but were unfamiliar with the service).

Eventually, Chambers was released on bail. But the police confiscated his iPhone, laptop, and home computer. He was banned from the aiport for life. And he was suspended from his job. Ultimately, he was charged and found guilty under the Communications Act for the offense of sending a menacing message. He has been ordered to pay a thousand pounds in fines and legal costs. Mr. Chambers may appeal.

Now, given the tenor of this blog’s past posts about Twitter, you might expect me to close with a scathing indictment of the service’s abundant evils. But really, given all the social, legal, privacy, and safety ramifications, I’ll refrain from drawing any sweeping conclusions. Other than to say this story would have been a lot more fun if the culprit had been Ashton Kutcher.

Photo available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license; author: Dylan Oliphant, originally posted on Flickr.

Of course, when we say “mighty fine art,” we’re not being colloquial (or not entirely). We’re purposefully using the term “fine art,” as distinct from commercial art, in reference to the kind of fine-art paintings that our art director John Oat has been producing for years. Still, “mighty fine” would be an apt description of John’s work, especially given the bucolic theme so prevalent throughout his oeuvre. But you don’t have to take our word for it. John has landed a show with the Glave Kocen Gallery, so you can see for yourself. It’s an online exhibition, so all you have to do is click the link below to take a look. And if you’re in the mood for a real-world visit to Glave Kocen, seven of John’s paintings will be hanging in the gallery partnered with Eldridge Bagley’s Annual Summer Exhibit from June 4 to July 3.

> Visit John’s artist page at the Glave Kocen Gallery site