The Final Answer is in! Thanks for playing!
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Well, today is Moped’s Official 3rd Anniversary. Happy Birthday, everyone! We enjoyed a fantastic pizza and wine celebration this weekend. Now it’s time to buckle up and keep moving. 2010 looks to be an exciting year. For our final Tuesday Trivia, we’ll make it easy on you.
The answer is…
Mobilize your mission. While we do, in essence, also help mobilize and move messages, as well as help you reach your goals by way of strong storytelling and audience engagement, at the end of the day our slogan is Mobilize Your Mission. Ashley Faison and Mo Isern concocted this phrase the summer of 2008 during a spontaneous brainstorming session a full 18 months after Moped was started. We’ve always known that our role is not to reinvent the wheel, but rather to get it moving in the direction that will help further your organizational goals, whether it’s with a promotional, pitch or outreach story. Think about it the way a good friend once framed it to me: A moped is a bike that already possesses the power of the driver, but has the extra push of an engine. We’re the engine on the vehicle that you’re already steering – and we’re here to give you an extra boost.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Our first trivia question was focused on a bit of the history behind Moped Productions. Now, let’s look at the here and now regarding communication tools. There are lots of forms of social media which we use to share the content we create, but have you thought about what makes social media “social”?
The answer is…
C. Social media is disseminated through social interaction, and tends to be built around concept, media and engagement.
Here’s a run-through of what the options were.
A. Social media requires significant resources in order to be able to publish information. False.
Social media is a relatively inexpensive and accessible tool that allows nearly anyone to publish information, without the resources typically neededto print a newspaper, build a full website or buy airtime on television.
B. Social media usually requires specialized skills and can provide scale to a message. Partly False.
While social media does allow a message to be scaled to reach a global audience, it usually does not require specialized skills in order to to use it. Platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, networks like JustMeans and Facebook, and news websites like Digg and Reddit, have democratized the creation, distribution and access to content. The steps to start using these platforms are basic and tend to be well-explained on each website. The most challenging part is usually deciding which of all the options are the best fit for your message and resources, so as to not overextend and then fail to maintain your interactive activities.
C. Social media is disseminated through social interaction, and tends to be built around concept, media and engagement. True.
Social media is all about interacting with both targeted and broad groups of people via online platforms and communities, and the key to success is the interaction. Like most relationships, you get out of it what you put in, and it’s easy to forget that there are real people on the other side of these communication tools. Similarly, just because something is posted doesn’t mean it’s going to be well-received. Most of the content on YouTube for instance, gets only a handful of views per day, despite the millions of views across the site. The competition is the other billions of videos on the site. What often differentiates highly-shared content from content that disappears into the online abyss is the strength of the concept using art and information, the creation of digital media that is sharable and often has a physical component, and the consistency of audience engagement across multiple platforms, with a plan for interactivity whether it’s online, in your community or repurposed into physical media.
Check out some examples on Mashable.com of how small businesses have succeeded using social media.
Last year, they also posted 10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media.
What social media tactics have worked for you, and why? Post your thoughts!
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
We’ve officially been around for 3 years this February 23rd! We are so proud and honored to have had all your support over the years. Now let’s test how well you really know Moped!
Check back in for the answer and full story this Thursday, February 11, and be sure to tune in for next Tuesday’s Trivia, happening each week until our anniversary date!
And the answer is…
C – mtvU
On February 23rd, 2007, I was editing this sizzle reel at mtvU. It was official in my mind that I wanted to transition from working as a freelancer into establishing a company. I was getting too busy to handle my current workflow all alone, and each client was important to me, so I didn’t want to start turning them away! But the one holdup was the name. It’s the first thing people would hear. It would leave an impression. It would say something about us, me, our work. How was I to pick?
I started dissecting my name, Maureen Teresa Isern. MTI? No, sounds like a phone company. My nickname is Mo. Anything there? Mofo Productions… Um, no. Mojo Productions… Website was taken. In fact, websites were taken for almost every name I came up with. I tried coming up with names related to my Puerto Rican and Venezuelan background. But I was born in Ohio. Would that be weird? I spent weeks going through different names, googling abstract terms and images, looking for inspiration while I looked for something to eat in the fridge. Nothing. Plus, still no name. And my friends were getting sick of my repeating my same laments.
Finally one day as I was finely-tuning an edit at mtvU, deciding between a hyper-paced edit choice and a super-hyper-paced edit choice to help pitch Campus Invasion to future sponsors, I was thinking about how much of the work I was doing, and wanted to do, was helping move messagessss … forward, fitting into a larger wheel… and helping move companies closer to their goals, helping mobilize, helping drive a message… AH! I’m onto something!
Right then, I overhear someone in the hall say they want to get a new moped. Aha! MOPED!!! That’s it! WHAT!!!! It had an energy I liked. It was speedy. It was versatile. It got you going places. It was small (like me). AND IT HAD MY NICKNAME IN IT!
How did I not think of this before?! Paperwork was started, and Moped Productions was born that day.
Over the last few years, I’ve enjoyed the mix of reactions I’ve gotten to the name. It’s teetered between the amused Oh, how fun! and the crooked-browed Oh, why “Moped?” When I tell people the very short version – because it has an energy of mobilizing your message, and it has my nickname, ‘Mo,’ in it – it seems to pass with flying colors. And the more I talk to people about it, the more it makes complete sense. More than once, we’ve debated what all the parts of a Moped are comprised of. In fact, here’s one rendition by Ashley Faison, with the client in the seat.
I’ll never know who said those words that helped me launch Moped Productions. But now I can’t imagine this company going by any other name. We do get the occasional phone call from someone looking to repair their 1984 Derbi Variant, but that just comes with the territory. We keep moving forward.
- Mo Isern
