Since its founding 21 years ago, Hawthorne Direct has never been afraid to take chances. The company launched a new website—The Hawthorne Videoactive Report—just a little over a year ago that features a brief daily newscast about interactive, video-based advertising.

I caught up with Scot Wilcox, the Report’s writer and editor, to chat about the site—and its relationship to the parent company. Hawthorne has produced about 220 reports to date, and Wilcox thinks that the project is hitting its stride. “The Videoactive Report is pretty multi-faceted,” he says. “It’s a way to share good information, to test new ideas and to ensure that we stay atop the hot trends. That’s not to say that our agency will offer every single tactic we talk about, but you certainly can’t innovate from an information vacuum.”

The project is the brainchild of DRTV pioneer Tim Hawthorne, a founding member of what is now ERA. According to Wilcox, the Report reflects Hawthorne’s creative and community values: “Tim has been out there networking and sharing his ideas for years. The blogosphere is a particularly efficient medium to continue that process. Plus, we’re doing it in video, the most engaging format there is.”

Although the site includes advertising news, Wilcox explains that “the HVR,” as he calls it, is more of a trends and analysis site. “Don’t forget that we’re first and foremost an advertising agency, not the Associated Press,” he says. “We really don’t worry who’s first with a story. What we care about is how these events impact the agencies doing the work.”

Perhaps the site’s most interesting feature is that Hawthorne Direct views it as a hybrid of sorts: part working content site, part test lab. For the daily videocast, the agency has tested different formats, emphases, production software, studio arrangements and distribution options. The website also provides the agency a vehicle to test layout, optimization, ad creative, media buying and social networking. Wilcox says that from the agency’s perspective, The Videoactive Report will always be something of a work in progress, but viewers should still enjoy it as a time-saver. Deputizing someone else to scour hundreds of resources for the critical content should always be appealing.

Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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Earlier today while “Facebooking,” I saw that my friend Savannah had posted a YouTube video on my friend Emily’s wall. The video was a teaser/preview for an upcoming string of new episodes for MTV’s widely popular “The Hills.” Although the show is completely ridiculous, it is a mindless, guilty pleasure nonetheless. I quickly copied the link and placed it into e-mail to shoot out to a few friends, jokingly telling them to mark their calendars for March 24th when the show returns. Although I’m slightly embarrassed, executives at MTV should be thrilled that this viral transgression of its content happened. Moreover, it was my friend’s response to my e-mail that I found most interesting.

“Sorry bro, I can’t tube at work,” Boris said. It was at that moment that I realized ERA’s keynote speaker at the upcoming eRetailer Summit in Miami on Monday had truly made the map. Like its parent Google before it, YouTube has become an action verb! Join me in Miami on Monday to hear YouTube’s Brian Cusack discuss the promises and challenges of video in advertising.

Click on the video if you’d like a peak at the senseless L.A. drama.

Hopefully, I’ll see you in Miami where we can discuss issues that actually matter, involving not only your bottom line, but also your company’s future.

Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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We know what works in radio advertising. It comes from the thousands of tests we’ve conducted over many years that have filled in the vast universe of possible actions one can take in building a radio advertising campaign, with reliable guideposts pointing toward success and away from failure.

But there’s a subtle paradox involved in that “knowing” of what works—a paradox that we’re required to understand fully before we can actually provide people with the benefit of our knowing.

The moment you believe you fully know everything, you essentially know nothing.

Think about it this way—if you know everything, you stop questioning. You stop looking, asking questions, seeking answers. And when you stop looking, you stop growing and learning—you stop getting better. Worse, though, you become rote, acting out of habitual patterns and approaches. You get mindlessly repetitive. You become boring—and if you’ve been exposed to advertisements lately, you’ll see how common this is. How all ads start sounding the same and they all air in the same places.

So “knowing” successfully requires the combination of two mindsets. One mindset is that of the wise old sage. It’s a mindset that acts with a confidence that comes from the combination of deep experience and lots of hard data about what works and what doesn’t.

The other mindset is the “child’s mind” approach. The approach that encourages us to look at a situation, a campaign, with fresh eyes as though we’re seeing this campaign and radio advertising for the very first time. Think of the way children are curious, uninhibited, not afraid to fail or ask a direct question, unencumbered by knowledge and unconditioned by experience.

Do you agree to the mindset paradox? Can this be applied across all media channels?

Jeff Small is CEO and Brett Astor is vice president of Strategic Media Inc.

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Amnesty International “Protect the Human” project has gone to some interesting lengths to promote its cause for human rights. It’s even employed shock tactics to drive traffic to its website. However, one of its recent campaigns pokes fun at the DRTV industry.

As an industry that’s had its battles with credibility, many direct response marketers try hard every day to improve our collective image. This is one of the main reasons ERA (formally NIMA) was founded in the first place!

Does this sort of joke offend you? Or, are you flattered that an international cause would use a faux live shopping segment to promote its agenda?

Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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Pat- Thank you for your post. We at Quova enjoyed reading it and were glad to see that you appreciated the spirit behind our Valentine’s Day package. While the gift was clearly the attention-grabber, we did have a serious intent—to demonstrate the very real threat of card not present fraud, a critical security issue for online retailers. After all, online fraudsters worldwide weren’t joking around when they unlawfully carried off $3.1 billion in goods from e-commerce sites in 2006.

But there was another clue in our mailer as well. Pinpointing the physical origination point of an order on the Internet and comparing it to the bill-to and ship-to address is one of the most effective tools in combating online fraud.

Many online retailers already use some type of fraud risk scoring method. They may look at whether the buyer is a new or repeat customer, the nature of the purchase, especially a very expensive one, the type of shipping request, credit card security codes and more. But one item frequently overlooked is reviewing a customer’s location when they place an order online. By adding just this one step of comparing the customer’s billing address to his IP address location to the transaction, one Quova e-commerce customer was able to detect an additional 70 percent of his online fraud.

Think about it—nearly every business decision is affected by geography: language, currency, shipping, taxes, licenses, government regulations and more. When a customer walks into a brick-and-mortar store you can tell a number of things about them right away: age, gender, what they’re shopping for, whether they’re return customers. But when a customer visits your retail website, you know exactly none of these things…where they are, what they want, what brought them in, or how likely they are to be crooks. It’s an anonymous process. Knowing the geographic location of your web visitor can provide the same sort of data for an online transaction. So the fact that Tom isn’t actually based in your office was an indicator that something may have been amiss with the package.

Quova does this with a technology called IP Geolocation, which can tell you where your online customers are and how they connect to the Internet as soon as they visit your site (through their IP address). There’s no need to ask for further information or store cookies in their browsers. The service is offered on a subscription model and is easily deployed with an API to your web application.

So while we see we sparked some humorous discussion around your office last Thursday, we also hope that we spark some more meaningful discussion among your readers about the best practices in geolocation technology, and the role it can play as part of a comprehensive online fraud prevention strategy for retailers.

Kerry Langstaff is vice president of marketing for Quova, Inc.

Do you think Quova’s marketing tactic was successful?

As multichannel retailers, how do you help secure your customer’s data?

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Never would I have thought that something in my office would happen today that would be more entertaining than what the guys at CollegeHumor.com came up with in the post below. But, here’s my story…

As you may know, Electronic Retailer magazine is based in Southern California. However, I work out of ERA’s D.C. office. I often get mail for my California co-workers at the ERA address and I simply put it in another envelope and send it on. Earlier today, my co-worker Stephanie came into my office and placed a FedEx box on my desk addressed to our executive editor, Tom Dellner. I e-mailed Tom and told him I had a package here and asked him if he wanted me to open it and see what it was, or simply send it along in another FedEx box. Tom told me he wasn’t expecting any mail, that it was probably a press kit, and that I should just open it and make a judgment call.

As I’m opening the FedEx box, I hear my co-workers chatting down the hall. I walk into Robin Greenspan’s noisy office while slowly opening up the box. As I look inside, I see a red bag with hearts all over it. I realize it’s a personal item and my face begins to blush a bit. Everyone in the room starts asking me what it is, as my co-worker Stephanie blurts out, “It’s for Tom.” That’s where the trouble begins.

“It’s a gift!”

“Tom sent you a gift?”

“Tom Dellner??”

“Is Tom gay?! I thought he was married??”

“Is Tom having an affair?!”

Avoiding the awkward questions, I rush back to my office with Stephanie to look up Tom’s home address and ship it out ASAP. While trying to move the contents from one FedEx box to another, I see an order form that reads “Fuzzy Handcuffs,” right as Stephanie pulls them out to place in the new box. Not being able to fathom that things had escalated to handcuffs, our co-worker Christy walks by, sees our astonishment, and demands that we tell her what else was in the bag.

Acknowledging that things couldn’t get much worse, I pull out the order form and much to my surprise, a note was attached to it from a company called Quova. “Hello Tom. Relax. Don’t panic. It’s just a joke. We at Quova just wanted to send you a nice little Valentine’s Day surprise we knew would grab your attention.” The note goes on to talk about Quova’s expertise in online data security and privacy. Congratulations to Quova—your guerilla marketing tactics mortified me and certainly got our attention and disrupted our entire office.

Oh, and don’t think I wasn’t above putting the gift bag on Barbara Tulipane’s desk while she was out to lunch with a note that read, “From Your Office Crush- XOXO.”

Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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At a conference two weeks ago, I had the unique pleasure of hearing Ricky Van Veen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of CollegeHumor.com, speak about engaging users and developing ad platforms. Van Veen started CollegeHumor.com as a freshman at Wake Forest and by 2006, Barry Diller was knocking down his door to buy the site. Now part of the IAC family, CollegeHumor continues to engage its users on an interactive, participatory level. “Everyone forgets that viewing videos on TV is a passive activity, but viewing videos online is an active activity,” said Van Veen, acknowledging the delicate balancing act of mixing online entertainment with brands and advertising.

During his keynote, Van Veen said he has monetized CollegeHumor by starting a t-shirt company (BustedTees), which sells shirts on the site. He also tries to entice brand advertisers, but most importantly, he likes being upfront with his audience- letting them know that they’re being advertised to. Van Veen thinks the Internet content world is heading toward the migration of advertising budgets and big talent. Can anyone say Budweiser and Will Ferrell?

While discussing online videos, Van Veen talked of an inter-office prank-rivalry between two employees, Amir and Streeter. He then shared this hilarious video with attendees. I thought it might be fitting for a cheap laugh. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Pat Cauley, eMedia Editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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Were you at Electronic Retailer’s LiveEdit Lab in Santa Monica on January 30th? If not, you missed out! Enjoy a slide show from the event.

Save the date! Electronic Retailer LiveEdit Lab New York: April 30, 2008

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This past week, I attended a conference for retailers. Most of them were from the traditional brick-and-mortar world—unlike the virtual retailers I’m used to working with. Maybe everyone was just having a bad week, but I sensed a great deal of fear from this group. I shared my observation with an advertising agency and a media buying company —separately. Surp