Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

If a 150-million-year-old Brachiosaurus could talk, what would it say?You can find out at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, where many of the exhibits will soon tell their own stories using local voices, thanks to an initiative from local museum advertising specialist Leo Burnett.

The agency wrote more than 100 short scripts, each a paragraph or two long, designed to capture the “voice” of various plants, animals and minerals in the museum’s permanent collection. The write-ups combine history and humor. For example, the Brachiosaurus bemoans its girth while also discussing the contributions of paleontologist Elmer Riggs.

Everyday Chicagoans are invited to record the first-person monologues in a special pop-up audio booth that is traveling around the city this summer. (It visited Chinatown this weekend.) Ultimately, the best voiceovers will be accessible via smartphone for Field visitors to enjoy on audio tours....

...Lens choices, camera angles, color palettes, editing rhythm, and more are all elements in a specific vocabulary created to best express the story.

Here’s the insight for color: instead of trying to map colors back to cultural associations (which are not fixed across all cultures, but change with every micro-culture), it’s better to assign meaning to each color and stick with it.

This trick works perfectly as long as you never break your own rules, unless, of course, the shock itself creates a greater truth....

Shot of the first post WWII nuclear test, Operation Crossroads in the Marshall Islands

Social media managers pride themselves on coming up with fresh ideas and interesting content. Likewise, business owners and entrepreneurs active in social media need to stay compelling and helpful. It’s how ibusinesses maintain relevance and add value to our social streams.

One of the best places to find inspiration is from other creatives. Reading online marketing quotes from some of the top social media marketers around the globe inspires me to want to work harder, and better. So hopefully these online marketing quotes can have the same effect on you....