Strategy
In mid-January (6 weeks prior to the conference) Waggener Edstrom approached tenfour with a proposal to extend the functionality of their existing app on three native platforms (Android, iOS, WP7). We countered with a recommendation to look at new mobile web app concepts that better fit the bill, time, cost, distribution and reach for the target audience in Austin.

Tweet-a-Beer was one of three concepts tenfour hatched just hours after the initial meeting. At its essence, Tweet-a-Beer allows people with Twitter and PayPal accounts to send beers via tweets. The service actually transfers $5 between PayPal accounts…loosely earmarked for beer. Tweet-a-Beer leverages the Chirpify T-commerce platform that had debuted only weeks earlier. Staff at tenfour were early adopters to the beta service and saw endless application possibilities. tenfour has a history of seeking out and engaging early-stage start-ups (Geoloqi, Revisu, Spotsi, GreenGoose), and Chirpify is the first of these unions to come to fruition.

We vetted the concept with Chirpify and learned that they were just beginning to develop an API. tenfour was the first to use the third-party API from Chirpify and help battle-test it in the three weeks prior to launch. During the development of our back-end and API, the UX and branding efforts were brought to life with a brewpub aesthetic and unique brand voice.

Beyond just integrating the API, tenfour automated the process for crafting the proper tweet format of outbound payment tweets to ensure typos didn’t corrupt a transaction. With backgrounds in online finance, our team also added enhanced security settings (session and secure log-outs) on top of Chirpify to ensure that lending someone your phone didn’t equate to lending someone your wallet. Tweet-a-Beer also integrated Foursquare to recommend nearby watering holes and display photography from venues.

Motivation
Combining Twitter with beer was too good pass up. It enabled people to do something nice for others – even strangers – nearby and on the other side of the world.
1. Targeted – a commonality between all SXSW interactive, music, and film attendees
2. Scaled – beyond Austin and around the world
3. Original – different enough to garner attention and be memorable
4. Baked-in social hooks – each beer is sent via a public tweet with a mention back to the app.

Rollout
Both agencies coordinated a three-day soft launch to iron out any final bugs with friends and family (‘Beers for Bugs’) and then began the formal PR campaign and outreach efforts four days prior to the start of SXSW. Key editors, bloggers and press outlets were identified early, promotional imagery, quotes and a behind-the-scenes video were produced and available to media for launch. Lastly, dozens of key celebrities across the Twittersphere were singled out to receive gifted ‘beer-outs’ with custom messages that were particular to them.

Results
Local press and twitterati jumped on the app and praised its ingenuity. Broadcast news channels began rounding out their broadcasts with segments on Tweet-a-Beer and local mentions started surfacing. Quickly, national and international blogs picked up the story and then on the opening day of SXSW, Mashable’s in-depth review prompted coverage on CNN.com and Tweet-a-Beer became the number-one trending story on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Mashable. Thousands of beers have been purchased around the world; during the launch flurry we had ten beers being sent per minute and tens of thousands of Twitter mentions.

At the end of the day, we doubled the traffic typically seen on our agency websites, have been invited to speak at conferences, fielded dozens of business and sponsorship opportunities and have been invited to sit down with many large brands to discuss their mobile initiatives since launching Tweet-a-Beer. All parties involved have been floored by the enthusiastic response from around the world.

Alternate Design Concept

Behind the Scenes

Ted Zahn

Creative Director
Ted is passionate about the daily chase of “the idea.” He’s a lover of design, words, photography, interaction, and the notion that once in a while they can be whipped into something that makes the world better and people’s lives richer. “In this marketing landscape of too much of everything, brands need to find ways to be truly useful, and stop shouting. Proving this to them is a difficult – but noble – pursuit.”

Ted joins tenfour from ZAAZ, where he was responsible for managing digital and social experiences for InterContinental Hotel Group, Microsoft, and Janus Mutual Funds. Ted’s digital career spans more than 10 years, including stints at McCann Worldgroup and Real Branding in San Francisco, where he created campaigns and experiences for Anheuser-Busch, Disney, Unilever, Microsoft, Evite, and more.

“It’s a great time to be jumping on the tenfour bandwagon. The talent and client roster is stellar, and I’m impressed by their to ability to consistently create share-worthy, usable experiences – unburdened by the process constraints you can find in larger agencies. Creatives cannot live in their art & copy silo anymore. User experience, activation strategy, and code are just as integral to the big idea. tenfour lives by this integrated approach, so I’m thrilled to be a part of their growth.”

In addition to his marketing chops, Ted also possesses moderate skill in baseball, karaoke, bowling, billiards, pickup basketball, gardening, cooking chili, parenting, and husbanding. He grew up in Wisconsin, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and remains a disturbingly fervent Badger, Packer, and Brewer fan.

Sheryl Maloney

Senior Digital Producer
Sheryl has been in the digital space for over 14 years. She has a passion for social media engagements with a strong emphasis on mobile technology and application development. She got her start early in digital project management while attending Michigan State University and working for their cutting-edge Virtual University. She has spent her post-graduate career working at digital agencies Medialab 3D studio and eROI, with a focus on helping them build solid digital departments before joining tenfour, where she is now a digital production lead. Her expertise lies in leading digital teams, building mobile applications, e-commerce implementations, email marketing, and social media campaigns as well as product strategy and development. She believes strongly in agile development methodologies and exercises this in her approach to development and project management. Sheryl has managed a large variety of client engagements from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies including Microsoft, Whirlpool, Sears and Intel. 

She lives in Portland, OR with her husband, two boys and dog. She loves coffee, staying up late, small towns and making homemade pasta with her kids. 

Logan Bennett

Account Planner
Logan’s career in digital marketing is a lucky by-product of the Great Recession. Three years ago Logan found himself on the long list of unemployed Portlanders after a round of layoffs that affected his job in the financial industry. After he briefly considered giving up the city life and heading back to the farm he grew up on, Logan decided to head in a different direction and get some re-education. Now, after a formal education in marketing and advertising, and a much more interesting education at the School of Digital Marketing Hard Knocks, Logan is a consumer insight specialist, a digital strategy newbie, and a social media fiend – you can easily get in touch with him most hours of the day on Twitter: @logbennett
 
Usually Logan and his wife are thick as thieves, enjoying pastimes such as beer drinking (no Pabst, sorry), jogging, snowboarding, and chasing his cat around the apartment. When he is not engaging in general tomfoolery, you can find Logan at tenfour working as an Account Planner. Logan has a knack for peering into the brains of consumers to figure out what makes them tick – a talent he hopes can contribute to the development of meaningful brands and campaigns for tenfour’s clients.

Erik Ratcliffe

Front-End Developer
Erik started adulthood in the civil engineering industry as a draftsman and a site designer. After a decade or so of that, he broke camp and set himself up in the Linux industry where he did all things technical, co-authored a very long Linux book, and followed the dot com wave to stock-option-millionaire status only to lose that honor when the market crashed in the early 2000s (not his fault). He walked away from Linux a few years later and entered the University of Utah as a graphic design major. Immediately after graduation, he and his wife packed up their cats and traded arid Zion for damp Portland. 

Since moving to Stumptown, Erik has kept busy with executive board duties at AIGA Portland, his freelance design and web development business, and now front-end web development at tenfour. When he’s not bailing out his basement, he’s making hummus, reading, spending time with his wife and cats, and not watching TV.

We’ve decided to change that. tenfour has put together a mobile infographic series entitled “Uncommon Knowledge” where we’ll curate the interesting, odd, and formative data points for marketers in the mobile space.

The first in tenfour’s infographic series focuses on the rising population of people whose primary (if not only) lifeline to the internet is via their mobile device.

If you find this type of curated research valuable, please share it.

@dtwood

Mad Skills:

• 2-4 years deep experience in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript for both mobile and desktop applications
• Extensive experience with JavaScript Libraries, APIs and runtimes including JQuery
• Have background with implementations on open source frameworks such as WordPress and Drupal
• Familiarity with Git or other source code management systems
• Experience with integration of a multitude of web services and APIs
• Experience with responsive site development

Tool Belt:

• Ability to balance multiple development projects simultaneously
• Work hand in hand with back-end developers to deploy mobile applications to the web, iTunes App Store, Android Marketplace and other device environments
• Ability to adapt to iterative requirements while under tight deadlines
• Rapid estimation, with good accuracy, of the time and effort required to deliver large and small software projects

Brownie Points:

• Experience with open source frameworks such as Tizen and PhoneGap
• Experience working full-time or freelance for a creative/design agency
• Experience with user interface design or design for usability
• Experience building casual gaming or other entertainment software
• Experience building native mobile applications for iOS or Android platforms
• University degree in Digital Graphic Design, Computer Science or Engineering

The Team:

The Software Engineer will work with Creative, User Experience, and Client Services teams to build the bedrock foundation of our marketing campaigns. The ideal candidate will leverage cutting-edge technologies to extend our portfolio of award-winning mobile apps, social media apps, gaming and web applications used by millions.

Who do we think we are?

We are tenfour. We’re a creative agency with a rare mix of clever strategy, technical smarts and thoughtful design. We design compelling experiences for bright brands and their agencies.

Put your hat in the ring: talent@tenfouragency.com

Mad Skills:

• 4+ years of experience in Object-Oriented design and development
• Proven experience following Agile methodologies in a test driven development environment to deploy successful applications
• Deep knowledge of JavaScript and experience integrating with HTML5 and CSS front ends
• Experience working with XML/JSON and familiarity with REST/SOAP methodologies
• Experience as a development lead as well as the ability to collaborate with a greater development team
• Experience with multi-device and browser deployments of applications
• Familiarity with Git or other source code management systems
• Ability to develop in Ruby on Rails and PHP and knowledge of other frameworks such as Zend for building MVC applications a plus

Tool Belt:

• Ability to balance multiple software development projects simultaneously
• Be responsible for the deployment of mobile applications to the web, iTunes App Store, Android Marketplace and other environments
• Follow Agile development methodologies including strict prioritization of user stories, rapid delivery of high-value or high-risk features with good quality, and ability to adapt to iterative requirements
• Rapid estimation, with good accuracy, of the time and effort required to deliver large and small software projects
• You must have some experience in each tier of an n-tier web application

Brownie Points:

• Experience integrating third-party push notification technologies and geo-location services
• Experience with open source frameworks such as Tizen and PhoneGap
• Custom implementation and integration with third-party platforms such as Drupal and WordPress
• Experience with user interface design or design for usability
• Experience building casual gaming or other entertainment software
• Experience building native mobile applications for iOS or Android platforms
• College degree in Computer Science or Engineering

The Team:
The Software Engineer will work with Creative, User Experience, and Client Services teams to build the bedrock foundation of our marketing campaigns. The ideal candidate will leverage cutting-edge technologies to extend our portfolio of award-winning mobile apps, social media apps, gaming and web applications used by millions.

Who do we think we are?
We are tenfour. We’re a creative agency with a rare mix of clever strategy, technical smarts and thoughtful design. We design compelling experiences for bright brands and their agencies.

Put your hat in the ring: talent@tenfouragency.com

Tweet-A-Beer is an app brewed by tenfour that mashes up your Twitter account and Paypal (courtesy of the geniuses at Chirpify) to let you buy your boss, buddy or that special someone (that you have yet to meet in real life) a beer. They don’t actually get a beer – transportation of matter through the Internet is complicated. What actually happens is that you send them five dollars with which they can purchase an ice cold, tasty microbrew (or 4–5 PBRs) courtesy of you.

It’s not a native app, so you can tweet a beer from most any web enabled device. We’re thinking you’ll probably use your phone. Here is what you’ll need: a Twitter account, the Twitter @handle of the person you want to tweet-a-beer and a PayPal account. It’s that easy.

We’re launching Tweet-A-Beer at SXSWi with our friends at Waggener Edstrom. But you don’t have to be there to participate. Go to www.tweet-a-beer.com right now and make someone’s day!

Cheers from @tenfouragency.

The term “brainstorming” was popularized by BBDO’s Alex Osborn in the 1950s. (Sound familiar? The agency Sterling Cooper in the hit TV series Mad Men, set in the early 1960s, is inspired by BBDO and its practices). He was frustrated by employees’ inability to develop creative ideas individually for ad campaigns. In response, he began hosting group-thinking sessions and discovered a significant improvement in the quality and quantity of ideas produced by employees.

Most designers love to brainstorm. Partly because it gets us up and away from a particularly monotonous round of changes on a project, partly because it lets us legitimately goof off for an hour. But mostly because it allows us to stretch our design and writing chops that can go dormant in the day-to-day grind. Sometimes it’s hard to find the time, and it feels easier just to slave away at your desk on your own. But it’s important to remember that no matter how great your idea is, it can always be BETTER. And bouncing it off of a few noggins is a great way to make that happen.

Some argue that you are more creative working alone. In her upcoming book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Just Can’t Stop Talking, author Susan Cain explains that for people who are a little more introverted, group sessions don’t always encourage creativity, due to the social pressures they bring. Yes, voicing your ideas in front of a room full of your colleagues can sometimes go horribly wrong. Believe me, I’ve wanted to crawl under the table several times after shouting out something that sounded really good in my head. But, as we repeatedly call out, our mantra is “No idea is a bad idea.” It doesn’t matter how idiotic (Cowboy on a rocket comes to mind), it gets written down with all the rest on the white board. And, every once in awhile, an idea that seemed off its rocker in the beginning gets revisited and something magnificent evolves.

Here are some brainstorming tips that we follow here at tenfour:

• Invite as many people as you can.
  Don’t just let the design team take over. Some of the greatest ideas I’ve heard have come from people that are far removed from the topic. If your back-end developer and project manager have a few minutes, invite them along!
• Go offsite or quarantine yourself from the rest of the office.
  Nothing kills a great idea flow faster than people popping in and out with distracting topics.
• Generate as many ideas as possible in the time frame.
  Give yourself a large pool of ideas from which to pick and choose later.
• Don’t criticize.
  It kills creativity and intimidates people that don’t normally want to speak up.
• Don’t kill an idea because it’s “been done.”
  Just because somebody else has used it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve done it well. Write it down anyway – there are ways you can make it your own.
• Push the envelope.
  Sometimes the weirder the better! You can always scale back.
• Combine ideas to improve them.
  Look for ways to take several “weaker” ideas and see if they can work together.
• Take a break, let it stew and come back to it the next day.
  Things always look better in the morning. Also, once you get those creative juices flowing, ideas can pop up in your sleep, in the shower, on your commute. Just like a fine wine – good ideas expand and get better with age!

When I see a brainstorm-session invitation pop up on my calendar I get a little giddy. Not only do I dig the chance to take a break and hang out with my fellow creatives (it’s always going to be a good time!), but I love coming up with, and hearing other people come up with, new and original ideas. It’s great for a good laugh, but it reminds and amazes me that I have such brilliant minds around me.

Long live the brainstorm!

@pontomama

But that isn’t quite what happened.
Take Our Poll

The iPhone 4S won decisively, that’s clear, but what was surprising was Windows Phone’s second place showing. How did that happen?

I think there are two key reasons. First, many voters were local Portlanders who are iconoclasts by nature, always very supportive of the underdog in situations. Second, was the curiosity factor of having me get the Windows Phone and report back on the experience. No one wants to be a guinea pig for new tech (unless it’s an Apple product) so why not make me do it!

There is also the fact that despite a meager share of the market (projected to be 6.2% by the end of 2012), Windows Phone is a generally well-reviewed platform. It’s elegant, vibrant and on the upcoming Lumia 900 from Nokia it’s downright sexy. So maybe people voted for it because it’s good. Could be?

But here I am, iPhone 4S in hand and ready to wax poetic about its virtues and shortcomings. But why did it take me so long to write this post? There were a number of factors including the holidays, CES and client work. But the biggest delay was the near impossibility of getting my hands on the device. After the poll closed I started calling around looking for a 64 gig black iPhone 4S and I might as well have been asking for a ’64 Pontiac XP 833 Banshee coupe. It wasn’t happening. I finally had to lean on family connections at Best Buy to scare one up, but that took two weeks. I had heard stories from friends who had ordered online and waited 3 weeks to a month to have their iPhones ship directly from the factory in China.

But I have to believe this shortage is manufactured. Apple’s supply chain is like a well-oiled machine and they knew this device would sell well. I think they rolled the dice on better marketing through scarcity. Even in Samsung’s commercial for the Galaxy S II deriding the apparent flaws in the iPhone and mocking Apple fanboys for waiting in line to get one, they inadvertently pointed out one important fact: People will wait in line and be terribly inconvenienced to get their hands on a device that they know is flawed.

Of course if you want the Samsung Galaxy S II, you don’t have to wait. But would you?

I won’t be able to answer that question for at least another 18 months and in the meantime I’ll provide my thoughts on why this device is so desirable to so many people. Now, it’s been covered from head to toe, so I plan to focus my thoughts on a few key areas of the user experience:

· The upgrade (from 3GS to 4S)
· iMessage
· iMatch
· iCloud

Stay with me over the next several weeks and please share your thoughts in the comments below.

The great thing about this book is you can watch it.

tenfour will again be hosting the event – feel free to RSVP at upcoming.yahoo.com. To stay abreast of the next title, join the Google Group.

Hawaiian Airlines and tenfour worked together to create a social promotion that highlighted the carrier’s many global destinations via recipes that locations inspired among fans. Food has always brought people together and for Hawaiian Airlines, customers were more than happy to share an original dish and a memory – sometimes in the form of images and even video uploads.

Sharing a recipe was the entry method for the contest. Eligible participants were entered into weekly giveaway for HawaiianMiles points as well as a digital bake-off. The top ten contestants with the most votes at the end of the contest were advanced to a final round of judging by Chef Chai. The winner was then given a vacation package to Oahu to join Chef Chai on a morning news program as he cooked up the winning recipe with the creator.

11X Return on Investment
Limited to email and social outreach, the program struck a cord with community members and fans. Over 1,000 original recipes were published by community members, generating over 12,000 votes, 11,000 shares, and 122,000 visits to HawaiianAir.com. The impact on ticket sales was a solid 11X ROI for the client.

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Banner on HawaiianAir.com

Wall Post

The Winner