We received the photo below today from our friends in the editorial department of the DAR in Washington, DC, with whom we work in publishing the organization’s national magazine, American Spirit.

Here are the facts about the photo we can piece together.

Rex Hammock, left, is wearing the cap of a Union soldier. While he’s a history buff, we feel somewhat certain that his Alabama and Tennessee roots make this a first. We have also learned that the woman on the right is an actress playing the part of Clara Barton, the angel of the battlefield, and founder of the American Red Cross, the next-door neighbor of the DAR in Washington. (Sidenote: While not related to the photo, we know that Miss Barton was a member of the DAR.)

We understand that the photo was taken at yesterday’s 83rd 92nd annual New York State luncheon at the annual Continental Congress of the DAR. And we’ve received a report from Rex that playing the part of a Union soldier is a great role if you’re on-stage in front of several hundred women from New York state.

Rex and Clara Barton, Daughters of the American Revolution

Correction: We’ve learned this year’s was the 92nd annual New York luncheon. After a decade of working with our friends at the DAR on fact-checking historical dates, we never cease to be amazed by their ability to track down such information.

[Hammock’s Current Idea Email was released this morning. Subscribe now to receive your own copy.]
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Idea: Provide the Content Customers Need Right Now

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At Hammock, we’ve spent several years researching and writing about the role time and context play in the effectiveness of content that organizations create for their customers.

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©ThinkStock

In the current Idea Email we once more explore the role of time in the use of effective marketing content. While the “journalist” in all of us may make us think the best information is what’s happening now, personal experiences throughout the day should help us recognize that the information we seek as we carry out our jobs or feed our passions or satisfy our curiosity often is found in content created outside the flow of today’s news.

Our point with this focus on the role of time is this: Often, the content your customers find most helpful may not be found on your blog or in the stream of your social media. Throughout the day, a customer may want to know if one of your products is waterproof and 30 minutes later, she may be curious about how to replace a broken part.

It’s easy to organize a website to be chronological. It’s a bit more difficult to develop a website in a topical or categorical framework that corresponds with your business focus. What is most challenging to the creator of a website, but most helpful to the users, is an organization built on a taxonomy of situations.

Your customers need help in some situation now. How easily they can find the answer they need or some type of help in making the best of the situation is the measure of your success.

Here are some simple examples of situations (you’ll need to translate them to your industry or market focus) that represent the types of needs where the definition of “timely content” is not related to when the content was created or posted, but is measured by how the content provides help to the customer at the precise time their situational need appears.

In the current Idea Email, we examine “Shared Links,” a new default feature that will be included in the next version of the Safari web browser. I believe this feature has the potential of broadening the understanding and popularity of what used to be called (by a small group of early social-media geeks) social browsing–taking it from a geek-user pattern of web usage into a mainstream pattern. Simply put, the concept adds a layer of “content suggestions curated by friends” to the typical kind of web browsing most non-technical people do.

For marketers, this presents both challenges and opportunities.

[Hammock’s Current Idea Email was released this morning. Subscribe now to receive your own copy.]
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Idea: How Safari’s Shared Links Will Reward Content Your Customers Love

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If you blinked, you may have missed it during the avalanche of announcements Apple made on Monday.