Liz Farmer of the MD Daily Record attended the Interactive Essentials: Search Engine Marketing seminar that Emily Chua put on here at Congruent Media last Thursday and wrote a nice story. The seminar was produced in association with the Advertising Association of Baltimore and was filled to capacity. Another seminar is being scheduled for those who were wait listed or not able to attend the first session. If you're interested in attending, email Emily.

I was shopping for the Congruent Media Team at Safeway in Canton this morning and learned a little lesson from the best checker in the joint. His name is failing me now, but I'll be sure to get it for a follow-up post.

I've been going to that Safeway for going on 10 years now and have seen the best and worst of checkers. People who you are happy to see and catch-up with, and those that don't give you the time of day and tell you with their body language that they're dying to get out of there. They are worlds apart in how they make you feel for the few moments that you're hanging in their space, so much so that I'll wait in a longer line for the more friendly folks.

Today I was fortunate to line up with the best. As we were going through the routine, he spotted a co-worked and asked, "Were did you get that blue gold?" I turned to see that she was carrying an armful of blue plastic bags, a much better looking bag than the pale brown plastic he was putting CM's food into. I asked him why he referred to them as "blue gold." Was it that they were somehow better?

"Oh yeah. They're much better. They don't stick together. You can put more in them. You can work faster with them." "Not to mention they look a whole lot better" I added.

He went on to tell me that last week a shipment of those bags came in and to the checkers, it was like getting a raise. His words presented with a smile.

I can't help but assume that somewhere in Safeway management a decision was made, at least in part, due to a lower cost of the inferior bag. That's so shortsighted. It sounds to me like if the front line folks were asked about the change, it simply wouldn't have been made. It's also likely that the moral hit and the productivity loss using the inferior bags offsets the line item savings using the pale brown junk. Maybe that's why I've been seeing more of the "not the friendliest people in the world" checkers these days.

I realize there may be an environmental element at play here, and if that's the case, the Safeway management needs to do a better job of educating the front line team members so they understand the change and can explain it to the customers who might ask about the switch.

If Safeway's agency has a Google Alert setup or a Tweetscan pinging them of Safeway mentions, here's a tip for you: I suggest taking a look at bringing back the blue bags and telling the checkers that you're doing it because you listen and appreciate their input. Or if it's an environmental move, tell us all why you did it.

Team CM is super happy to announce that Jeffrey and Sarah had a little baby boy yesterday evening in Minneapolis!

Otto [TBD] Rudolf - what a cool name!
8 lbs. 3 oz.
21 in.

Everyone is healthy, happy and resting at the hospital!

That's it for now. I'm sure there will be some online galleries available soon.

Thanks, Dan

Dave Balter, founder of BzzAgent, is spreading the word about his new book, Word of Mouth Manual Volume II by giving away free copies as PDFs.

I like it. This cat knows a ton about generating buzz and the book is a great read.

I'm interested in hearing how it drives sales of the printed book where he'll make coin. I'm sure he'll follow-up at some point.

Anyway, it's a great read. You can download it by clicking the [Download] button below, for free. Spread the word.

I've been a big fan of Seth Godin for a long time now. I just received his Tweet about his email checklist and took a look. It's basic - but awesome. Forward this to those friends, family, clients, etc. that keep messing up their emails :)

Let's recycle our magazines! I was getting ready to throw some away last night and realized that instead of dumping them, I could share them with the Team at Congruent Media.

If you're interested, start bringing in your magazines after you're done with them. If you're like me, you browse through them when they arrive, then hardly ever reference them again. I'm sure we have a quite a variety being delivered to our homes that other team members would be interested in.

I'll start with late copies of Boating World, Money Magazine and Real Simple Travel. They're now with the regular business publications we get. Help yourself and enjoy!

After a 6% sales tax on technology services was passed in the special session last fall (literally in the middle of the night) the Team at Congruent Media worked with the Tech Council of Maryland and the Maryland Chamber of Commerce to build FightTheTechTax.com.

The purpose of the website was to provide information about the tax and to help people express their opinions to the appropriate people in quick and easy ways - phone, email and snail mail.

For those who wanted to make calls, the site allowed users to find the appropriate legislators for their districts and provided the accurate phone numbers for them.

For those who preferred email, we provided a customizable template and the search tools to select the appropriate email recipients. These consisted of Delegates, Senators and Governor O'Malley for the sender's districts.

The website was launched in a very grassroots manner, with the main players emailing colleagues and business associates about the tax. As a viral marketing play, we provided Fight the Tech Tax buttons which showed-up in many a blog post helping to brand the mission and generate traffic to the main website. Many of the members also added information to their internal enewsletters.

It was very cool to track all of the site activity over the past few months. We watched traffic and site actions spike as the press paid more attention to the growing lobby against the tax. After one hit on WJZ we saw the email system use increase 5x the next day. As bloggers worked their keyboards, we saw referral traffic to the site rise. Cross-linking with members and other organizations helped to make sure all of the bases were covered.

In all, it was a great lesson in how to empower people to have their voice heard -- in the right way. By taking the time to put together an easy to use system, we enabled a lot of folks to direct their concerns to those who matter without bombarding legislators out their districts. It used to be that it wasn't so easy to find all of that contact info. Now automated systems make it a snap.

Over the past few months the system generated over 4,500 targeted emails, untold phone calls and a lot buzz. We saw it and the lawmakers did too.

We weren't alone though as Tom Loveland and John Eckenrode, co-Founders of the Maryland Computer Services Association, did a bang-up job in bringing support for the repeal as well building a team of lobbyists and communications pros to push the right buttons. Tom became somewhat the "face" of the fight and did a great job in all of the interviews as well as keeping folks up to speed on the activity. I was impressed to receive updates from Tom late on the weekend with instructions on where to meet the next morning.

All of this is a great example of how groups can rally together to fight for something they believe in. Early on it was said that this law was not going away, but through everyone's continued efforts right down to the last minute, we were all able to get the gov't to make the change we believe in. Sweet.

Ryan did an interview with Daniel Sernovitz of the Baltimore Business Journal a couple of weeks ago and the article came out in this week's edition. You can view it here (subscription required). It's a nice article on what companies are doing to help reduce the amount of stress in the workplace -- especially in very deadline-driven businesses like ours.

Featured prominently in the big color photo are Ryan and a few team members having a good time playing some foosball. It's a friendly game as you can tell from all of the smiling faces, as most are.

Sometimes though, the competition gets a bit heated after work as you can see in this shot as Eric chalks up the winning goal as Sean looks down in disbelief. I think this particular game may have actually caused some stress for Sean :)

Google is always tinkering, inventing, reinventing and otherwise expanding their offerings to stay in front of the pack. Friday's announcement on the official Adwords blog that their demographic bidding is out of beta and into the hands of all Adworders falls in lock step with that strategy.

In short, advertisers can tweak their campaigns to only show ads on the Google content network to those that fall within reported demographic segments. Bids can also be adjusted accordingly. Think about being able to run your ads on MySpace based on what those users report as their age and gender. There's a lot of potential for increasing ROI when properly executed.

We're going to be running some tests here and will report back initial findings shortly.

The Team at Congruent Media is excited that we're getting into the development phase on Greenbean.com - a mobile marketing network.

We're expecting to do a soft launch in March/April and will need some early players to help test the system. Interested? Head over to the site now by clicking the logo below and be sure to sign-up for the eNewsletter. We'll announce all things Greenbean there.

Fun!