We at Hammock Inc. have a profound respect for great creative work, and especially for work that relates to our clients—in this case, The Marine Corps League. On Jan. 16, the U.S. Marine Corps began airing a stunning new TV recruitment commercial featuring the Corps' legendary Silent Drill Platoon.

The Marines traveled to 15 locations in 10 states to shoot footage, from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to Times Square in New York, even to Columbia, TN. The video folks shot loads of scenes, probably enough to make a dozen commercials – in fact, they made an exciting teaser preview. Meanwhile, a still photographer and writer documented each location, including moving stories from veteran Marines, from parents and siblings and friends of Marines who came out to watch the taping.

The results are posted at the website, ourmarines.com, along with an extended version of the TV spot (click the video sidebar to view).

One incident is worth noting because it has another Hammock tie-in. Rex Hammock happened to be in New York City at the same time as the Drill Platoon. After filming from about 2 a.m. to sunrise, the Marines went live on Fox and Friends, then boarded a bus to CBS' Early Show, 11 blocks away. When the bus became mired in mid-Manhattan gridlock, the Marines debarked and marched to the CBS studios. As Rex was leaving his hotel to head out for JFK Airport and an early-morning flight, the Marines were heading back to their bus. "I've seen lots of unique things in New York City over the years," recalls Rex, "But nothing can compare with how impressive -- and surreal -- it is to chance upon the Marine Drill Team at six a.m. in Times Square."

From all accounts the platoon took Manhattan without firing a shot.

It's no secret that Hammock founder/CEO Rex Hammock is quick to volunteer as a lab rat when it comes to experimenting with any shiny new digital media.

So it surprised no one around here yesterday when the Nashville Tennessean ran a story about his use of Twitter.com during Tuesday night's New Hampshire election returns. The story was based on his post about the topic that appeared on his shiny new People page -- as well as on his vintage weblog, Rexblog.com, which he started nearly eight years ago.

Today, we launched a new blog on Hammock.com called Custom Media Craft. We'll soon be merging into the new blog lots of the items we used to post as "case studies." Our focus on the new blog will be to provide ongoing insight and observations on the crafts -- including lots of how-tos -- that are related to creating and managing successful custom media -- print and digital.

To kick off the new blog, we've posted a piece on a concept we're calling (although, we're sure many others have used it before, so we're not "coining" anything here) Mediacasting. The idea we're looking at is this: For most associations and non-traditional media companies, the reason to embrace digital media is to get your message to those who can act on it: your members and customers -- and to enable them to respond. For some reason, however, most associations and corporate digital marketers still use an advertising business model metrics -- page views or web traffic -- to drive their web strategy. Our post -- along with an accompanying post with some specific ideas for "webcasting" in 2008 -- takes a look at what your goals with digital media should be.