Since this is a Jets office, this year Digital Natives Group was truly just watching the Super Bowl for the commercials. And, just like the outcome of this New York Jets football season, our team was let down by a crop of underwhelming and uninspired commercials (with a few notable exceptions). We know this won’t be the first, last or only blog post you’ll read on the subject, so below find an abbreviated list of our thoughts, as well as our favorite (and least favorite) ads of the night. More…

Once again, Ben and Jonathan were fortunate enough to be invited to Smithtown eatery Aji 53 to talk digital, this time focusing on the value of social media. Thanks to friendlier skies and a more well-known topic (everybody attending knew about “The Facebook” and was eager to learn more, whereas few knew ahead of time what a QR code was last go-around), business folk from across Long Island came down to hear Ben and Jonathan talk social media. The boys provided a synopsis of the social media scene, which included a look at the “Fab Five” (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Google+), as well as an overview of emerging trends and services. They left the crowd with some parting words on the best ways for a business to be engaged on social media. More…

What scares marketers so much about social media is also what excites them about it: the fact that marketing on the web is a two-way street. Just as a brand is able to engage with customers, customers are just as able to engage with a brand. There is no better example of how this can ding a company than what happened to fast-food giant McDonald’s last week. More…

I love football (J-E-T-S! JETS! JETS! JETS!), but when the Superbowl rolls around next week, the game going on in Indianapolis won’t be the primary thing on my mind.

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The other day news broke of Kodak’s impending Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, and we couldn’t help but be saddened by this end of an era. Kodak was, for generations, one of the strongest brands in the world, and to see it (perhaps) slip away, would be one of the most startling falls from grace in the history of modern business.

We all know why this is happening. The market began moving towards digital photography at the expense of film photography a decade ago, but Kodak didn’t move with it. Failing to adapt to the rapid and monumental changes of today can bring down even the strongest of businesses. All of us here at Digital Natives are photographers in at least some sense of the word, and while we’ve snapped our photos to SD cards instead of Kodachrome for years now, we’ll never forget our first roll of film in that yellow box. More…