tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37100248168092438042019-01-13T04:31:03.083-05:00no one likes a smart assTravis St. Denisnoreply@blogger.comBlogger113125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-74879741478491007102014-07-31T09:13:00.004-04:002014-07-31T09:15:30.478-04:00the nyc marathon wearablei won't bother addressing my long absence from this blog (despite two posts, two years ago saying i will do more with it - perhaps in an upcoming post). rather, i'll just get right into what i do want to share here. that specifically is a new area of interest i've decided to pursue and an immediate application of it.<br /><div><br /></div><div>the preamble first. for reasons i can not honestly recall, i decided to get into electronics and circuitry, specifically the arduino platform (read more <a href="http://arduino.cc/">here</a>). skipping ahead through a number of weeks of exploration and a course at OCAD on the subject (tl;dr it's been great - perhaps another post on the whole pursuit), i'm tackling my first real project, one that will actually be seen by lots of people. that's exciting.</div><div><br /></div><div>a friend of mine, <a href="http://ca.linkedin.com/in/michaelbodsworth">Mike Bodsworth</a>, is running in the <a href="http://www.tcsnycmarathon.org/">NYC Marathon</a> this year. when he told me i immediately said "how about i make you a wearable for the race?" the response that followed was "sure, what does it do?" i offered the comprehensive response "stuff. for the race. you know, something to track you and give you some feedback. and some flair. that kind of thing." and so it was ordained.</div><div><br /></div><div>here is the real response to that question and what i'll be building, testing, tweaking, issuing on race day and creating a memento of the day.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>my approach</b><br />going in i wanted to keep some core principles (ie. restraints) in mind so this wouldn't get out of hand and be a functional system.<br /><ol><li>the technology can't get in the way of running. this takes a lot of different forms from size, weight, movement restriction and just general comfort. primarily he's there to race and the technology is a complement to that so it need not be a constant annoyance. this would limit some of the devices to be employed, where they are placed (no wires running down limbs) and how (if in any way) they need to be interacted with.</li><li>durability. it's a 4+ hour time period, jostling about, potentially poor weather and being attached to a sweaty dude (weatherproof).</li><li>collect lots of data for later use. there is the device part and the data part as two separate parts of this project. the device for the race and good data to create a keepsake of the race itself (more on this later).</li><li>provide some real time feedback. while much of the device will be passively collecting the data, some will be used in real time to provide simple feedback to the runner (more on this later). Simplicity is essential and what and how it's provided can't conflict with the other principles.</li><li>add a bit of flair. mostly to support the charity he is running for; to visually represent the organization and be noticed. and again, can't conflict with other principles.</li></ol></div><div><br /></div><div><b>why create something?</b></div><div>the other question implied in this is "why not just use what already exists (namely a smartphone or some other existing wearable like a fitbit or fuelband)? the simple answer is: to make something. making things is a goal unto itself. but there's more to it than that.</div><div><br /></div><div>first, to eliminate the existing devices, from the available options. primarily, these two gadgets use a basic accelerometer. that's great and they've taken that simple sensor really far. so what you are are really paying for is the software and nice industrial design. those wristbands are essentially a fancy algorithm to provide approximates for all the stats it gives you based on manipulating and interpreting the data points from the accelerometer. the apps they come with are handy and all but that's their secret sauce. for this project, i didn't need the fancy software stuff. i'd be writing simple code to collect essential data points that i would then do stuff with after-the-fact. while we're on data, that's the second big problem. getting the usable data out of these would be a pain in the ass to use how it want to. that's reason enough. especially when you consider my final point, cost. the cheapest fitbit or fuelband costs $99 which is pricey for an accelerometer that i can't get raw data out of. the accelerometer for this project to give me actually usable data costs $15. easy decision.<br /><br />using a smartphone would be nice, but i'm not an app developer. i'm not an electronics maker either but simple devices are far easier to build than learning an entirely new programming language and user interface design. and again, the data. it would be tricky to get the data out and that's fundamental to this project.<br /><br /><b>what's all the data talk?</b><br />as much as this is an exercise in making a functional device, it's also about making use of data (as another interest of mine). because the NYC Marathon is kind of a big deal, i wanted to make a memento of the day for Mike. essentially a snapshot of the race and his 4+ hours of torment that he can be reminded of on his condo wall daily. using the data collected (the device description below will outline what i'm gathering), i aim to create a really interesting data visualization as art along with parts of the device and other pieces from the race weekend (namely pictures). more to come on this once we get into the next phase. in all honesty, this will be the most difficult part of the project for me. i'll do a few future posts on that phase of this.<br /><br /><b>race assist</b><br />capturing data for after-the-fact is pretty easy, but processing it real-time and providing some visual prompts to help with the race is another thing altogether. i talked to Mike about what he wanted out of the race and what was valuable for him to know. as he isn't a serious runner, the only thing that really mattered to him was a time goal and beating his personal best. that made it easy in not having to add in a lot of extraneous biometric sensors, displays for real-time updates or anything overly complicated.<br /><br />what i arrived at (that you can see below) was a simple display mechanism that gave him only the essential information he would need to alter his run while in the race. it also delivered on the flair. using a basic lighting system, in an easily visible area, it would track his progress of distance run and remaining with a simple visual cue if he was on-pace or off-pace. a binary approach to the only things he cares about.<br /><br /><b>and now the device</b><br />let's start with a sketch that should explain the main components (click image to enlarge).<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5BCE47cy3Wo/U9fFYdnUrdI/AAAAAAAAFNU/BDURElvf-Gs/s1600/20140728_225412.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5BCE47cy3Wo/U9fFYdnUrdI/AAAAAAAAFNU/BDURElvf-Gs/s1600/20140728_225412.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div><br />i aimed for minimalism and simplicity in the visible elements and hopefully delivered on my principles. the heart of it all is in the water bottle though. the one asterisk on there is the camera. the belt was the best place to mount it for steadiness and unobtrusiveness even though the images might look a bit weird. it also might not even make it in the final design. no point in having it if the images are going to be crap.<br /><br /><b>what now?</b><br />as of the date of this post, i have about 3 months to build the final device, write all the necessary code and actually make it work on race day like it should. what's in between is a lot of trial and testing of each component and some sewing (weird). who knows what will change from this initial design over 3 months.<br /><br />first up for testing - the accelerometer.</div>Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-6424334570747849182012-06-04T08:54:00.001-04:002012-06-04T08:55:38.217-04:00sorry, that's a brandyes, this comes more than a month after the article was released, but such is the nature of catching up on my blog reading. this <a href="http://adage.com/article/adages/design-icon-james-dyson-i-brand/234494/">article</a> from Ad Age, on the topic of james dyson, reveals that the brilliant designer doesn't believe in brand. at all. to the point that the word is taboo within the walls of his company (so he says).<br /><br />as a guy who believes quite a bit in brands and is in the business of propelling brands forward, i'm alright with this assertion.<br /><br />the reality is, who cares if dyson believes in brand or not. that's not his role. he is a designer. if he was to worry about brand, then that would detract from his product designing, and that would be bad for the brand. the product is the brand. everything he talks about is, by nature, a version of a brand. so without his dedication to product, the brand has no story behind it, no credibility and no reference point to consumers. yes, that's brand, but he doesn't need to believe in it, or do anything more to create it, it's a natural output.<br /><br />the Ad Age article points to the company having run commercials as their proof to discredit dyson and that, in itself, is fallacy. having a tv spot does not a brand make. many of the commenters miss the mark too by parroting the same or calling dyson a hypocrite.<br /><br />brand's have a measure of artifice and dyson is more genuine than that. the intentional creating of a brand adds layers of meaning or communication pieces to messages that connect with consumers on different levels. dyson as a "non-brand" strips those things away. for instance, there's no tagline on the tv spot. the article (subtley) and comments (overtly) deride dyson for his a-good-product-sells-itself mentality but it's obviously working.<br /><br />so he puts product first when others put brand first. that's refreshing and different these days. he's not putting lipstick on a pig and he's not adding fluff to substance. isn't that commendable?<br /><br />dyson doesn't need to believe in brand not just because it would take him off task, but because brand's are created in the minds of consumers. at least in part. sure companies help that along with advertising and other activities, but it's not the only piece. products themselves play just as heavy a role. he simply decided to strip the company and branding bits out and let consumers formulate it for themselves (with some reminders of the product - ie. tv spots).<br /><br />see humans crave structure, associations and relationships. whether a company creates those or not with branding, people will form them and thus creates the brand on it's own, organically. all this method does is completely hand-over the brand to consumers to formulate their version of a brand rather than the usual shared way (or forced in many cases). that is a perfectly legitimate approach. not one our industry can really choke down because it goes against much of what is espoused and charged for. whatever the case, a brand lives in the minds of its consumers, just different ways of getting it there in the first place.<br /><br />what happens when the consumer opinion changes, though, how will dyson recover? the point is that should he do what he does best in creating great products, there is no pivot point for consumers. say it still happens because some other product comes onto the market that is better. again, it goes back to the product. it either won't happen because of continuous improvement or it is immediately reworked in response. in both cases, the product reigns supreme and consumers remake the brand better in their minds as a result because they still got something beneficial.<br /><br />in the end, just because one marketer doesn't believe in brand doesn't mean brand's don't exist (even his own) or that brand's don't have power. all it says are there are different ways to create and nurture brands because there are different types of brands. dyson should be lauded for the design genius he is because that story has transcended what we see is a normative way of creating a brand.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-48954717107343000182012-05-11T08:40:00.001-04:002012-06-04T08:55:16.012-04:00more than just content<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-67DSCJdL3lI/T60HbAulEQI/AAAAAAAAEEA/tSnFC6KqP8I/s1600/vice_party.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-67DSCJdL3lI/T60HbAulEQI/AAAAAAAAEEA/tSnFC6KqP8I/s320/vice_party.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />last thursday i had the privilege of attending the Vice upfront party in new york city (thanks Mediacom). for those who don't know <a href="http://www.vice.com/">Vice</a>, they are an authentic, gritty, counter-culture, cross-media publishing group with a very defined aesthetic, POV and editorial style. they are also pioneering a new age of content creation, distribution, monetization and brand integration. hard to believe they started in canada.<br /><br />much of the evening was professing many of the mantras about content marketing i'm trying to bring to the forefront in my new role (ie. nothing new - just a Vice spin), but it wasn't until nearly the end that i heard something that was newly resonant. it was one of those things that you know implicitly, but haven't talked about it or even fully realized it yourself.<br /><br />i can't recall the person who said it but it went like this: <b>"<i>we want to create culture with [brands] that means something</i>."</b><br /><br />i'm not going to begin to try and pin down a definition of culture or what constitutes culture. i think we'd all naturally agree that brands are part of culture and ever more so in a hyper-connected and digital world. we can also all probably agree that advertising is also part of culture. but i would posit that it was always a subset of culture though, a strain of culture perhaps. whenever it was discussed, it had the stink of advertising on it; fleetingly alive within that narrow scope of being (only a few ever transcending that - such as Apple's 1984).<br /><br />what i think the gentleman was alluding to is not contributing to a genus of culture but to culture itself. to something that is elevated, powerful, legitimate, contributing to the zeitgeist. not an ad, but something tantamount to the regard of a movie, an album, a tv show, a book, an article or a piece of technology. these all hold a place in the esoteria of culture. a piece of brand content can too. that is a whole other thing to strive for.<br /><br />what it prompted for me was a new perspective when entering into formulating content; to start from the viewpoint of creating culture. to have that as a guidepost in concepting and developing. to strive for something that can penetrate beyond a brand message and into the very fabric of culture. definitely to not be an ad, and to go beyond just being a similarly transient piece of content. to be a lasting, revered artifact of a brand that doesn't wain in public consciousness for some time.<br /><br />branded culture > branded entertainmentTravis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-8525244286097824902012-03-15T22:37:00.004-04:002012-03-15T22:38:40.707-04:00poised and readya big part of my new job is to take ownership of the somewhat established, but still very foreign, concept of media as Paid, Owned, Earned (POE from here on out) and to instill it with everything our agency does. that's a weighty task - one that i'm super charged about.<br /><br />where i'm going with this post is to flat-out proclaim that this holistic view on the media landscape needs to be owned by a media agency. full stop. there is no other entity with the ability to herald this vision. the real purpose is to put on the table that a shift toward greater reliance, trust, and increased responsibility that the media agency has within the advertiser's communication and even business domains.<br /><br />at the simplest of levels, our deep understanding of the Paid sphere is a primary differentiator. many agencies share a on Owned and Earned, including media ones, but only those media agencies truly understand the Paid space. to clarify, by "many agencies have a view on Owned and Earned" only means that there is a general shared understanding of the principles and what works for those and not the nuance and expertise in executing. media agencies don't have the latter in all cases. the Paid space doesn't not have that same understanding beyond media agencies. so just in that, media agencies are better poised.<br /><br />stemming from that, and ironically what has pigeon-holed us for so long, is our ability to leverage our investments and partnerships to better exploit the entire POE landscape. lines are blurring constantly and money still talks. that influence, unique to media agencies, opens possibilities. you don't have to like that fact, but it's true.<br /><br />media agencies have also shown a greater aptitude for consumer understanding. everything we do is rooted in consumer understanding across all sorts of markers and we've owned that for a long time. as communications need to be ever more consumer centric, media agencies are positioned to best service those demands.<br /><br />then there is channel planning. as a derivative of communication planning, it is the de facto right approach to formulating a go-to-market plan. in the age of an attention economy and massive fragmentation, channel-led communications are what win, not creative led ones. when technology is driving down the cost to iterate messages, the channels are what become chiefly important and the creative flows from that. channels are the unique domain of media agencies. no two ways about it.<br /><br />the last point i want to make is that this isn't a call for world domination by media agencies. on the contrary. i'm only saying that our approach and position to lead that approach is the way, but other agencies with specialized services are absolutely required to realize the elements constructed in the communications planning process.<br /><br />that's right, i'm calling creative agencies, technology companies, public relations firms, digital specialty shops and a host of others as specialty areas that support the communications planning process. they execute on the needs of plans derived from it. don't forget, media companies also fit into that as we execute the buys and other media elements - the stuff we've always done.<br /><br />the other part to keep in mind is that the intention is not to exclude any of these agencies from the process. absolutely, they must contribute to it and be involved. i'm merely stating that my belief is that media companies lead it through their holistic view and procedures to deliver communications planning. these other partners aren't order takers to the media companies either. they are order takers to the plan, just like media companies are order takers to that same plan.<br /><br />i wholly believe that this is the future shape of things. i'm excited to help make it a reality. i don't know how long it will take, i just know that it is inevitable. i'm sure there's a lot of disagreement and i'd love to open the discussion about it.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-80361557277676005502012-02-23T23:59:00.002-05:002012-02-24T08:52:21.668-05:00marketing pinsanityin case it wasn't glaringly apparent, Pinterest is the social network du jour. many have held that mantle, this is just the latest. it's a great story for an interesting niche product. rampant growth, fanatical usage, massive time sucking and heavy dashes of inspiration.<br /><br />as invariably as every other social network, the questions of whether brands should use the service or not have sprung up. the social media navel gazers have been ebullient about it, naturally. content producers (namely media companies) have taken a liking to it. some natural fit industries (ie. fashion, design, food) are downright zealous about it. but the broader brandsphere still has a question mark around it.<br /><br />i've already heard it tossed out in a few meetings with little regard. "that'd be great to do on Pinterest." i shudder on the inside. remember, it is just a channel that is still very embryonic when it comes to sophistication for brands to be involved. and frankly, there is a certain aesthetic required, an expectation of illiciting emotional responses, and a required caliber of effort just to fit in there.<br /><br />here's my solutions to how brands should approach Pinterest:<br /><b>create things that are worthy of pinning</b><br />or<br /><b>inspire people to include or re-imagine your brand (in a good way)</b><br /><br />that's it. that's all any of the current users are doing, brands are no different. leave the conversation about "marketing on Pinterest" at the door. don't force it. if either of those is an action they want to take, great, leave it to them.<br /><br />you might need some kind of awareness behind whatever it is so people know it's there to pin. it can be discovered through your other communities or PR or elsewhere. nothing splashy. don't make a big deal about the fact your on Pinterest or try to game it somehow. don't beg for pins like you did for Likes.<br /><br />after you've done that and the space matures a bit, then decide whether you need a profile or you need to invest resources here. see if warranted because it just creates yet another space to maintain that has heavy demands. are the people you want to talk to even there? don't forget to ask that question.<br /><br />can we can start the conversation about the value of a pin?Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-35154400925965594002012-02-22T21:42:00.000-05:002012-02-22T21:45:26.377-05:00a giant leap for brands as content (not advertising)of course, branded content or brand storytelling is not news. nor is the shift of communications away from 'ads.' i myself have been pursuing this paradigm shift to our industry for many years. until now, there was the theoretical approach as this video does well to elaborate.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='640' height='360' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/4NyXzir2yKg?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0' /></div><br />but there was always a hesitation or a missing proof to the approach. it's a massive leap without much in the way of the empirical data to say there is another side to land on. let's also be frank, likely a lack of skill to execute on such a demanding way to generate brand communications.<br /><br />sure, there were dabblers, but recently the game changed and took a massive step to legitimacy and action. it took the likes of Coca-Cola, but i think this is a watershed moment and think it worthy to share.<br /><br />in this incredibly well thought out, detailed and methodical blueprint, they've taken the theory, layered the brand purpose and built a platform that is beginning to end meaningful for the brand to pursue this course. the execution of the blueprint is high caliber too which already shows a commitment to producing top notch brand pieces.<br /><br />i find it incredibly interesting that they would publicize it. of course they want to get credibility and recognition within the industry, but its specificity really reveals their hand. i'm conflicted on it. that they've bought into the approach so vigilantly is laudable and to share it opens up doors for the rest of us. but it could have been a competitive advantage, at least for a little bit. that they've declared this as what's right and competition be damned also opens up scrutiny and even distances any consumer who might now be in the know of their changing ways and still objects to this new assault on them.<br /><br />either way, it's exciting to see the broader effect this will have.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://1.gvt0.com/vi/LerdMmWjU_E/0.jpg" height="360" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LerdMmWjU_E&fs=1&source=uds" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <embed width="450" height="259" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LerdMmWjU_E&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='640' height='360' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/fiwIq-8GWA8?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0' /></div><br />Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-87903906754992508922012-02-13T21:38:00.000-05:002012-02-13T21:39:30.863-05:00back to itit's been nearly a year since i last blogged. in that time i've thought many a time that i should really get back into it. the notion obviously never stuck. i asked myself "does anyone still blog?" more than once. here i find myself eager to renew my efforts here.<br /><br /> so what changed?<br /><br /> for one, i've had an incredible urge to be creative lately. that i'm through with just being on the sidelines and taking in. time to contribute. blogging was always just about writing for me and a creative outlet. if something was salient, great, but it was more to just put out. the mantra for this year was "do". do whatever, but just don't make excuses or find walls to put up stopping me. so now when i feel the need to blog, i will.<br /><br /> there's also the matter of being rejuvenated in my work life. forty days ago, i started a job with Mediacom Canada and am fully invigorated into the position. it's a dramatic change from my last job. as i aim to push myself in this new position, putting ideas out there and the simple act of writing will be a boon for my productivity there.<br /><br />another reason is a little more meta. i've been thinking about the act of sharing and i feel that blogging still has some value to it. sharing, like the size of consumable media and general attention, has become ever-more brief. that sharing is almost an inconsiderate act as people simply push buttons and add little or no additional meaning, insight or connection to objects. in a world where people can contribute in a variety of ways, sharing trumps new idea generation or even building off existing ones.<br /><br />so, to do my part in adding meaning to what i share and to put new ideas out there, this will be the platform. i don't know the shape of things shared and created, just that i will.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-30449002486363736382011-03-26T10:37:00.001-04:002011-03-26T10:37:00.190-04:00cause for concern<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_FInfBTZ6n-o/TY0DqVuEeeI/AAAAAAAAD6s/09micn7eTik/s800/cause-marketing_101_330x150.jpg" height="150" width="330" /></div><br />right now, CSR or causal campaigns are the "campaign du jour" for many brands. it's a noble pursuit, but i think it's misplaced and as such, it's being done wrong - for the most part. what i see is that companies and brands are attaching themselves to causes because it's a trend they should pursue in order to ingratiate themselves with consumers who are leading said trend, but ultimately are falling short of bona fide good intentions.<br /><br />social media is obviously the impetus behind the exploration of this new territory. as a first point of contention, i think a lot of the reason for doing CSR with social is because brands really haven't figured out other ways to activate a brand in the social space properly and causal is an easy avenue. so often times the true benevolence is shallow. that leads to the main issue in that the altruism of these efforts isn't completely embedded with the organization, it's just marketing.<br /><br />to date, most of these causal campaigns are being constructed where the brand will do something if consumers engage. all fine and well, but that puts the onus on consumers and wrongly so. it's faux corporate activism in this way. instead, brands should be doing it anyway and using the consumeers as the amplification, reversing how it's currently constructed. the way i interpret it is "if you do this we'll contribute, but it's contingent on you.' with the subtext that, "if we don't do as good a job, it's your fault but also that if you don't contribute, we aren't going to either." layered on top of that is a layer of consumer engagement where they do something fun, cute, clever, customized, or otherwise mostly superficial as a wrapper to slacktivism.<br /><br />i won't single anyone out, we've all seen them and rolled our eyes a bit in skepticism. i won't pretend to know the inner-workings and people involved and pass judgements. i will call attention to a pair that i think are doing it half right.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_FInfBTZ6n-o/TY0GJ2KRlRI/AAAAAAAAD7A/8DWt0Nj_MmU/s400/quaker_unlock_amazing.png" height="267" width="400" /></div>Quaker just recently finished their "<a href="http://www.facebook.com/quakercanada">Unlock Amazing</a>" program on Facebook. the gist of it is that for each customized bowl a person creates, a donation of breakfast is made. it's simple enough; low involvement always works. their stated goal is to have 25K bowl contributions equaling 2 million breakfasts. they started by donating a million right off the bat and asked consumers to fill the rest. good start, but wrong positioning. there's something a little wrong with that. beyond that, wall posts from the brand, focused on upping the bowl count and encouraging people to make more bowls. good motivation, but the wrong motivation. from what i can tell, they had to open the bowl creation from once a week to once a day. to me, that implies they wanted to limit the bowls donated (not too many bowls they would have to donate form their coffers) and that they might not meet the goal and looking evil by not donating at least to the intended amount.<br /><br />as one idea on where to take it, show the actual company/brand involvement in dispensing these bowls or how their own employees stand behind the cause and are actively pursuing it. engage the community in how to further raise awareness, grow the contribution, actually participate in getting the bowls to those in need and sharing the experience.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_FInfBTZ6n-o/TY0F1lXK46I/AAAAAAAAD68/lc1hDDopueE/s400/campbells_nourish.jpg" height="252" width="400" /></div>the other is <a href="http://www.facebook.com/CampbellCanada">Campbell's Nourish</a>. again, very worthy cause and they have the same approach of starting with a base of 100,000 cans and looking to donate 100K more. it's not really clear how; i assume by just 'liking' the page or video. low involvement, good, but still misses. the socialness of it isn't strong, the stories behind what the company is 'actually' doing are limited to a 2 minute video. Still missing the true corporate involvement. still question why they are limiting it to just another 100,000 cans to donate instead of just opening it up and donating what the people will (i understand their are manipulations that could happen, but really who cares).<br /><br />the edge definitely goes to Quaker though. they had a fun engagement in the bowl creation and sharing so that helps it spread and be shared in a more interesting way. the Nourish piece is very staid and there isn't that fun layer to add to the proceedings so i'm not as compelled to share.<br /><br />again, it's a good thing these companies and the others are trying to do, i'd just like to see it done more altruistically and less campaign-y. it's a big shift, i know, so i can't expect it be perfect form the get-go but i would expect more legitimacy.<br /><br />if a brand truly wants to create a sense of benevolence and goodwill with consumers so that they'll like them, then they need to be doing it anyway, not just when a short term campaign strikes using some social media gimmick to appear as such. if you're brand was going to donate a million bucks if you got 10,000 likes or something superficial like that. instead, already be donating the million bucks but the involvement is the additional to that. right off, you've already given consumers a laudable reason to be involved and not just another marketing campaign with a thin veil of interactivity. no, you're already showing that you're doing good and now you want to do more, but you need their help.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_FInfBTZ6n-o/TY0EYv_gdQI/AAAAAAAAD60/IkAS9JBgXw0/s400/pepsi_refresh_project.jpg" height="110" width="400" /></div>the most famous example right now in corporate benevolence must be Pepsi with their '<a href="http://www.refresheverything.ca/">Refresh Project</a>.' i think they got it three quarters right. they are putting up the money and providing the facilities to dispense the good, but stepping away. mostly, it was just a redistribution of funds. it doesn't mean the company is actually that benevolent or altruistic. it's over to the accountants now. i haven't seen how they continue to draw attention to it, magnify it, really get behind any of the winners, or create stories around the Pepsico employees getting more involved.<br /><br />social media is new. deep consumer involvement around causes using social media is new. perhaps this is just the tip of the iceberg and the further understanding will come on doing it 'right.' i hope so because we don't need just another marketing angle or gimmick, we need a new corporate involvement paradigm.<br /><br />what have you seen that's been a good approach or a bad approach? what would you have done differently?Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-54226531863528862842011-02-25T16:19:00.014-05:002011-02-26T16:07:39.035-05:00who/what is king?<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_FInfBTZ6n-o/TWgcr6k36nI/AAAAAAAAD5g/WQiJt-kaPf0/s800/content_is_king.jpg" height="300" width="340" align="bottom" /></div><br />there's plenty of debate around what is king. the axiom of "content is king" was and is again at the top of the list. maybe it shifted away for a little while, but it's back. there's many contrarians to this though. a few of which i found in the comments of this <a href="http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/brands-media-easy/149029/">ad age article</a> today.<br /><br />some counters to the mantle of content as king that i've seen<br /><ul><li>distribution</li><li>consumers</li><li>attention</li><li>conversations</li><li>promotion</li></ul><br />let me take a stab at retorting to each of these claims. make no mistake, they are all important and vital to the success of any type of content, but not the king.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">distribution</span><br />first, there is nothing to distribute without content. second, great content can find or make it's own distribution whether through virality, or discovered pickup by distribution sources. this goes hand-in-hand with promotion as general ways to make people 'aware' of the content, but without something strong to back it up, it still falls short.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">consumers</span><br />this is the one i could argue most for as a usurper to content. the consumer-centric notion emerged in the 50s or so when the marketing world turned around to be consumer-centric and we put them front and center in our process. What content does, is fill a role of value with consumers. It is what media outlets use to garner audiences and what brands use to engage them (directly or indirectly). What elevates content above consumers though is that content creates its own consumers. consumers don't always know what they want and great content is persuasive.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">attention</span><br />yes, it is an attention economy with so many companies and forms of consumables out there and brands fight for a lot of that. content, as a consumable, needs to stand apart and to do so needs to be interesting, innovative, relevant and engaging (sorry for all the buzzwords). when it is, it garners attention, so it begins with content. as a corollary, the distribution and promotion are the means to also fight for attention. lasting attention though is from killer content and consumers deciding to spend time with it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">conversations</span><br />conversations only matter when they are about something relevant and meaningful to a brand and valuable when they are positive. the chief way of doing that is to have good content for conversations to form around. without it, conversations are just noise, and the lack of them are opportunities. both are served by creating amazing content which elevates its importance.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">promotion</span><br />i've already drawn promotion into the fray, but to add one more point, you can promote a piece of shit, but no one will buy it (ie. you can't polish a turd). the fallout of not promoting something actually good is risky business and potentially damaging. you can spend all you want to promote something less than stellar, but it's probably a waste.<br /><br />if you broke it down into a logical pathway, you'll easily find that many of these are just subsets, fallouts or plugins to great content. but it starts with great content and so that inherently must remain at the top, the rest flows from it, but primarily, resources should be dedicated to building great content.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-51264418588011565062010-11-23T08:25:00.001-05:002010-11-23T09:01:32.092-05:00stop the forced UGCUGC was always heralded as the pinnacle of social media - consumers who are passionate about a brand and taken it unto themselves to make or say something about it. this was genuine and transformational - consumers who really wanted to participate in a brand who would do the marketing work with and for us.<br /><br />these people were truly influencers and dynamos that contributed a great deal to the paid efforts of a brand. and then UGC became a buzzword. then it became a tactic. now it's become a cliche.<br /><br />we wanted UGC to the point where it was made a mandate. this led to our bereft situation now where it is just plain forced. campaign after campaign we demanded of our consumers that they make something for the brand. that was how they had to participate with the brand, like it or lump it. of course it was positioned as true participation in that it meant something (ex. the ads would be used in a later campaign). but it was really an attempt to game a trend.<br /><br />the net effect, in my estimation, is the blatant use of UGC as a tactic that is all too often pointless, uninteresting and not strategic. it's been diluted and devalued to the point of ambivalence or worse detestation by consumers.<br /><br />i'll revert (again) to forrester's technographics ladder to point out the folly. there is only a small percentage of people actually willing to make any kind of social content, much less for a brand. the industry has taken a niche interest and attempted to make it a play for everyone. that's a cardinal sin for the ad world.<br /><br />the fallacious appeal of positioning a brand as in-touch or relevant or hip to the social movement is now turning on itself as fatigue of doing the advertising job for a company sets in. <br /><br />doing this forced brands to heavily incentivize the program to make it have more mass appeal. essentially it gave an easy campaign route or made it palpable as a promotion. it's a thin veil and has just been a way to run a promotion. so it's not some vaunted social media and UGC garnering effort,it's just a promotion with the barrier to entry as making a hokey piece of content. <br /><br />much of my issue is that it defeated a few of the core social media precepts.<br /><br />1) influencers<br />one might think that social media finds, nurtures and leverages these critically important voices and you'd be right. these people are out there making brand content and sharing to their network (and sometimes elevated beyond that). so naturally, people who make content around a brand are influencers. in this case, you're wrong.<br /><br />the artifice under which the content came from doesn't identify influencers it merely identifies people who want to win a prize. congrats, that's a lot of people, but few if any actually may be the loyalists willing to genuinely, recurrently participate with your brand.<br /><br />2) credibility<br />someone in it for the money doesn't make a convincing spokesperson. it holds true elsewhere and it holds water in this case too. people incented to do something are less credible resources than those who have more pure intentions.<br /><br />social media is a relationship builder, but these forced UGC campaigns are just an attempt to do something different, quasi-aligned to a consumer interest. especially egregious is where there is no strategic link in doing a UGC campaign - it's doing it to do it. that seems wrong to me. shiny new object syndrome at its worst.<br /><br />a UGC component should be a natural fallout of a great campaign or the place where the brand is amplified organically. i'm not convinced that the crux of a campaign should be based on user submissions or the only reason for a campaign to exist is to get UGC. <br /><br />some examples. <br /><br />3M did a campaign for post-its called "you stuck it where?" asking consumers to submit videos of them using it Post-Its in an innovative way. i guess it could be fun, but i don't understand how that makes for anything interesting other than to say they did a UGC campaign (hopefully with the adjective 'successful'). who really cares to see the tepid product of such an endeavor? and it's not as if they are creating a new market or use for post-its so it's not strategic or relevant.<br /><br />cadbury had a campaign for their picnic chocolate bar asking consumers to send in their videos of them trying to eat the bar in 30 seconds. so what, i can watch people eat a chocolate bar? <br /><br />so then what's a good use or a strategically relevant use. the tourism queensland "best job in the world" is a great example. the UGC served an actual purpose. it actually created advocates and influencers. it was incredibly interesting to a broad group of people. and the UGC was just natural to the endeavor they were partaking in.<br /><br />i'm a little on the fence with the doritos 'white bag' UGC campaign. it was an interesting quasi-crowdsourced initiative that would have been good with or without the UGC component. but it was seemingly a natural extension of the premise around naming and marketing a new flavor of doritos from a consumer perspective.<br /><br />lego has a great community with UGC out the wazoo but it's purposeful and the company only embraced it, not forced it into existence.<br /><br />old spice could have asked for copycats but didn't because it wasn't right. the copycats happened and did so organically which made them far better than the coaxed variety. <br /><br />i think the industry has already gone a little overboard with the whole UGC affair and it's getting tired. i'm writing this because i think there are completely valid uses for this and directly asking for it, but its overuse is going to spoil it for everyone. not that it matters to many that it gets spoiled so long as they could potentially benefit from it. it's worth protecting because in the right cases, it's powerful.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-33541973533925252282010-08-11T08:37:00.000-04:002010-08-11T08:41:41.446-04:00primary & secondary mumbo-jumboa communication plan is a whole. the comprising channels shouldn't be viewed in isolation. they shouldn't be dissected and itemized with appellations such as primary, secondary, lead, support or whatever.<br /><br />i hear quite often channels referred to in such ways and it shows lack of understanding. in this heavily fragmented media world, with attention at such a premium and ad scrutiny by consumers soaring, there is no silver bullet to reach anyone. a primary medium for one is not for others. each individual's selection is not as homogeneous as it once was.<br /><br />at the heart of the fallacy is a number of misunderstandings<br />1) multi-media approaches are always best and in this world, it's how these media compliment each other not take priority of one another. you lead with the whole plan, not any one component. how you might lead with one or use them playing off each other is a tactic of the plan not a reflection of the media.<br />2) terming anything as primary or lead implies that it can stand alone. this is fraught with potential for not reaching your target.<br />3) it can put an overimportance on any channel (most often TV) that does a disservice or denigrates other media that they aren't sufficient, capable or otherwise as valuable as they could be.<br />4) it also implies that the other media is there to prop of the deemed to be primary channel. while that might imply a deficiency it is also a misnomer in what is being supported. the other channels are not there to make up for the shortcomings of one channel, but rather support the entire plan in affecting the target.<br />5) the new digitization of the media landscape opens up the possibilities for reaching different parts of the target, in different ways, with different messages. the blanketing of a primary medium doesn't have to be the case anymore.<br />6) a primary medium begs more attention in executing and analyzing fully. this mentality leads to sub-standard execution of everything else. instead, everything should be executed to the right level depending on the channel.<br /><br />the other aspect of the thinking is that there are traditional channels like TV, Radio, Print and OOH. digital continues to be an afterthought. it can't be a lead medium in the minds of most. my quick snipe to that charge is some agencies not seeing their profit centers of TV production being lost if they don't protect the medium of TV by elevating it to 'primary' status.<br /><br />so let's all rid ourselves of these pointless adjectives when we talk about our channels. it's inconsequential to apply them and does more harm then intended.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-23427602609096777432010-07-21T08:21:00.001-04:002010-07-21T08:21:00.455-04:00artifacts of thoughtas someone who puts a lot of ideas, thoughts and just words out there one the internet through various channels, i ponder the lasting effect of that stockpile of intellect. and i am in no way as prolific as some so i imagine this applies even more to others. what i mean to say is this digital age brings about an accountability of thought not seen before.<br /><br />in the digital age, things last forever. ideas are artifacts. what we say, write, record and generally produce have an indefinite lifespan. but what if we change? what if we contradict? what if there's new information that bears consideration and alters our thinking? what if we encounter something that just radically reshapes us?<br /><br />mainly i think about this because ideas are always popping into my head and i let them out. whether online or in conversation or elsewhere, i put them out to see what kind of life they have. i do and say a lot to get reactions from people. i don't always like to ponder ideas on my own. instead i like to put them out there to see what others think and how they can elaborate on them. i am by no means an expert on anything so i value what others can input. agree, disagree, doesn't matter, i'm just testing the waters and often don't have a firm stance myself.<br /><br />the thing about online though is that it becomes part of you. another piece to your sum. people can interpret that as being your views, opinion, stance, whatever. it becomes part of your legacy. deviations aren't always well received so what happens if you do? what's the effect on perception people will have if they find two colliding ideas?<br /><br />in politics it's called "flip-flopping" and it rarely, if ever, is an ingratiating quality. ask john kerry. it's not a moniker that is a hallmark of success. most of us have a lot less at stake, but the personal (and relative) stakes are still high. <br /><br />i'm not saying this is going to happen a lot where people are burned by antithetical ideas, but it's becoming a lot easier to arise. job interviews are a universal experience that these instances can crop up in. public figures of all ilks are more acutely susceptible to this. and a lot more people are public figures these days.<br /><br />this is a different concern than just the personal brand debate that still has verity today. it's part of it, but a different angle. more meta. less about inappropriateness and more about discrepancy. <br /><br />so should we carefully consider every little thing we digitize? or should we be open with our ideas and put them out there for the world to do what they want with whether you are fully onboard with them or not?Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-14928535249723790642010-07-13T08:30:00.000-04:002010-07-13T08:30:01.062-04:00embrace the bottom dwellersyes, i'm back after a lengthy bit of time off. work was busy, the move, the house renos, and taking a break. but the idea engine was stilling churning so i've got lots to write about for the next few months at least.<br /><br />i decided to start back with this post because i ran into a friend 3 days ago i hadn't seen in a while. we were catching up and i noted a recent activity she had done that i read on twitter. her response was "ahh, you still read my blog." my retort was "of course i do, i don't respond or comment much, but i still read it. i'm a bit of a lurker you could say." at that moment, a thought that had been percolating for a while coalesced.<br /><br />forrester defines it as a '<a href="http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/ladder.html">spectator</a>' and not a 'lurker' as i flippantly termed it. someone who just consumes social content, but doesn't really join the conversation (at least in my case, other people's conversations - bad social media travis). what doesn't get talked about is that the majority of people fit into the 'spectator' classification according to their data (or at least a substantial amount of the population). but that's not the part that gets talked about, we only talk about the top rung or two - the 'creators' and 'critics'.<br /><br />marketing is still a numbers game and it always will be. like it or not, accept it or not, it is still fundamental to success. yes, we are far more sophisticated about it now, but in the end, it takes large amounts of people to buy into your brand for them to be successful and sustainable. plain and simple, irrefutable. <br /><br />so the 'spectators' are the numbers game (the few at the top being the influencer game). they are there, extracting value, receiving our messages, and likely still being impacted (hopefully positively). they don't want to interact, they don't want to talk, they don't want to dialog. if they did, they would. what i'm trying to point to is the value side of our social media efforts for the 'spectators.' too much is focused on the upper tiers while ignoring the effect we are having on the lower ones.<br /><br />i suspect that part of the issue lies in that it's not immediately evident the effect we are having on them. it's easy on the higher levels because we have actual consumer output to verify and validate our brand activities. well we don't have that for the bottom. so it's much easier to glom onto the importance of the upper echelons because it can be discerned much easier and that serves the industry. the problem is that the industry isn't thinking of the marketing/advertising industry holistically, they are just thinking of the social media industry and that's self serving.<br /><br />this isn't morphing into me saying we should use social media as a broadcast channel. not at all. not solely anyway - there's still good effect it can have (more to come on this). all brands should be social. but they can only be social with the consumers who want to be. that's the value they want - the interaction. but there's a whole other sphere who want value from just consuming the content. they are getting value from both the brand's content and from the content derived from the interactions with consumers. but we aren't understanding that side of it and we need to.<br /><br />how you ask? well, clearly not with social tools. it's back to some more traditional ways like interviews, intercepts, questionnaires to find out how the brand is increasing in key measures, whatever the important ones happen to be for your brand.<br /><br />is this a more esoteric pursuit of roi than number of comments - yes. does it have its place in our work in social media - yes. if you think about it, the 'spectators' have been the audience of media advertising since forever. we've always valued them before so why should we stop now? we shouldn't. they are a huge market, one that is still very valuable, needs to be included in the mix and substantiated in our overall assessments.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-66705085950046388162010-04-06T09:02:00.000-04:002010-04-06T09:04:15.239-04:00a brief hiatusdedicated readers (however few you are),<br /><br />at best i've been sporadic with my postings as of late. not due to lack of inspiration, just time. between a heavier work load, school teaching and my impending move, i've just not been able to get anything posted. i will return though in may when much of the dust on a few things has settled. see you then.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-24861418641860660372010-03-10T08:46:00.001-05:002010-03-10T08:46:00.658-05:00who owns social mediabelow is the unabridged version of an article i wrote for our company newsletter.<br /><br />so who owns social media? that it is so hotly contested is itself dripping with irony. the answer is simply no one owns it and everyone owns it. okay, so that's still a little cloudy. let me explain.<br /><br />when i say no one owns it, i mean in the strictest sense that no one person or group outright has dominion over the channel (if you can call it such). that any one part of a company's business is singularly responsible is a recipe for failure.<br /><br />instead, everyone owns it. the collective of all an organizations disciplines internally and all its partners externally. true social media practice is built on a key precept of the channel: collaborative approaches. remember, social media isn't just about consumers participating in marketing, it's a structural shift with tools that can enable both sides.<br /><br />naturally, this falls to areas in the company whose function us communication (Marketing, PR, etc). yes, they lead the charge but the whole of the company plays a role. every employee represents a network that is a communications vehicle of great power and influence in building successful activations and corporate prosperity. everyone has a vested interest across the organization, so each must own it in their own way.<br /><br />apart from the broader employee base, the communications departments, as stewards of the corporate and brand trademarks, are the internal champions for socializing the organization with their consumers, they need to own it by reinforcing its place with the broader marketing plan and invigorating it into all areas.<br /><br />of course, the comms groups rely on a suite of external partners (like us) who support their efforts. when it comes to social media, it is not a turf war for ownership, but a shared responsibility. social media is a unique situation where the channel crosses all disciplines. all partners own it collectively in so far as we can facilitate it through our respective areas of expertise for clients.<br /><br />the best outcomes are always going to emerge from collaboration and social media is no different. in fact, it is the space most in need of it given its scope and requirements for success. no one can own it outright, but we all, as contributors to the business, need to own it so that it is firmly entrenched into all areas of our clients' business.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-26344001560857783982010-02-08T08:48:00.000-05:002010-02-08T08:51:07.542-05:00superletdownbowl for canadian advertisingso i was asked by media in canada (MiC) to give my thoughts on the superbowl - canadian edition. this gave me reason to watch a sport i otherwise don't much care for, and pay special attention to the canadian feed that is far inferior to that of the US one. that and host a party where i drink some beer which has delivered me to this state of hyper-incredulity i find myself writing this post in (at least first draft to be edited by a sober mind).<br /><br />i'm going to go out on a very sturdy branch and say most (ie. all) canadians are quite discontent that they are forced to watch the canadian feed of advertisements during the superbowl. there's all the hype around the american advertisements and then all the disappointment when they see the canadian offerings. at least there's the internet to temper that letdown now and we don't have to wait for those retrospective shows to air the spots (every 5 years or so).<br /><br />i'll just be one of the choir boys by saying the canadian offerings were standard fare. nothing really imaginative, nothing provocative, nothing gritty, nothing clever, nothing entertaining even. just a lot of by-the-book ads. it's to be expected really except that we have an expectation from years of superbowls to want the advertising to be special. yet we hope.<br /><br />where i'll take this commentary on the (canadian) superbowl experience is from a strictly media perspective (supposedly my expertise). what i found was not just bereft of excitement and allure, but prodigious in its repetitiveness and unoriginality. to be upfront, in writing this article i tracked every commercial in a spreadsheet (oh the nerdiness) for later comparison so i'm supposedly informed in my statements.<br /><br />my main finding was that repetition was a rampant theme. i'll get to naming names, but i just don't see the value in the buying strategies i saw in this year's superbowl. there were more than a handful of advertisers, each of whom bought more spots than i feel was really necessary. to the point that it was overkill and maybe even left consumers with a negative feeling for the brand by sheer volume alone (ie. annoyance).<br /><br />if the superbowl is the epitome of destination viewing and not partaking in commercial avoidance, than what i saw was aiming to fight that opportunity and punch it in the face. in the superbowl is a captive audience who, in a high percentage of the audience, is there for the commercials or at least is not zipping, zapping, or walking away. that attention can work in favor of a brand by creating something memorable and playing it once or creating something pedestrian and repeating the hell out of it until it sinks in.<br /><br />well, canadian advertisers in the superbowl, you went with option #2. resoundingly. kudos.<br /><br />amongst my small gathering of friends, i asked them about the ads. asking if they had seen them when they were on their 3rd viewing. as validation for everything i have been lead to believe in my career, the notion of 3+ frequency holds true. while they had vague recollections of the spot previously, on the third go-round, it had reached its saturation point. then the spots kept airing.<br /><br />remember, this is one of the largest audiences of any show and people care to watch the commercials. it's not a show with the passivity that plagues normal tv advertising in attaining traction. so why all the spots and why the utter mundaneness? <br /><br />my assertion is purely a factor of the canadian approach to the superbowl. rather than mimicking the US model of a big splashy, high production spot that is memorable, we in canada rely on the traditional safe spot, and run it into the ground so as to have the same effect. i suppose that's fair given the relative situations. but why does it have to be that way?<br /><br />in totality, the ads were like the party mix i served. all the dregs of many bags, thrown together, and presented as something new. a melange of old ideas, sedate creativity, and pinpoint banality wrapped up in borrowed excitement coupled with a media buy that allowed the repeated airing of innocuous ads.<br /><br />here's the point where i become an apologist. if all that was presented to the media planner was a standard, conventional ad, then what i saw was the best strategy for it. without standout creative, then the media has to work hard to hammer the point home. it's just a numbers game. <br /><br />but as quickly as i dole out that apology, i take it right back as i challenge the industry as a whole. that shouldn't be the case, superbowl or otherwise. we shouldn't aim for middle of the road. mediocrity shouldn't be our strategy and media shouldn't have to make up for it. we're better than that.<br /><br />the media strategy in place, though, is completely legitimate. take a lackluster ad and show it multiple times, eventually people will pay attention (that's a generous characterization). but what could have made it incredibly compelling is instituting the notion of storytelling as the creative message. there were a plethora of companies who had at least 2 minutes or more of airtime and wasted it on rote tv ads. that's a lot of time to be able to tell some kind of insightful, product-driven story that makes the consumer take notice. <br /><br />that's two minutes of airtime that could have weaved a deeper story, explored an insight, involved consumers, emboldened the audience, shown the company to be caring and not faceless, spoke to how they are making canada a better place or otherwise been anything but what they were. the oomph and impact of something meaningful was mostly absent. i'll repeat, this doesn't need to be expensive.<br /><br />yes, storytelling is a vague and non-uniform concept, but it is nothing if not absorbing. what we know of tv ads is becoming passe. we as marketers need to find new ways of speaking product truths, virtues and benefits and that way is by weaving an interesting and compelling story about the brand or involving the consumer themselves.<br /><br />as a parting shot (and not wholly unrelated) i would also challenge the notion that this year's canadian superbowl was sold out for ctv. what would they have done if they weren't flogging the olympics? probably ran ctv ads which, wait, i guess is no different from what did happen. i get promoting the olympics, but there were very few commercial breaks void of some kind of ctv olympics spot and an athlete profile heavily branded with ctv. it was just too much.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-23290353161562592842010-02-03T08:48:00.004-05:002010-02-03T09:30:23.836-05:00apple's slap to social media's face<img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_FInfBTZ6n-o/S2l-KodzMfI/AAAAAAAADuA/7955nGZF0Kw/s400/iPad-vs-Rock.jpg" /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">image from <a href="http://www.mobile-t-mobile.com/mobile-network/iPhone-vs-Rock.html">http://www.mobile-t-mobile.com/mobile-network/iPhone-vs-Rock.html</a></span><br /><br />yes, i'm a week late in talking about the iPad. i guess i'm too contemplative to shoot off an instant treatise on the matter and i wouldn't want to be accused of linkbaiting. i shall save you my scathing remarks about the iPad as a failed execution of a promising idea (and complete naming fail) and stick to how this non game changer will affect the digital media ecosystem. and by changing it, i mean it won't, but will allow others to.<br /><br />the iPad is being heralded as the savior of the slowly withering print media business. a meritous prospect and certainly a company who has shown aptitude for bailing out industries unable to acclimate themselves to new business models and changing consumer sensibilities. it is essentially the device i envisioned as the <a href="http://travisstdenis.blogspot.com/2009/01/weighing-in-on-death-of-newspapers.html">future modus operandi</a> for journalistic distribution.<br /><br />what a device like this brings to not just the industry, but the medium itself (as a disassociated form of communication) is mainly:<br /><ul><li>real time content</li><li>simple sharing</li><li>rich content and experiences</li><li>interactivity (content and ads)</li><li>ancillary content readily available</li><li>direct link to advertisers (site, purchasing, social, promotions, etc)</li><li>searchability</li><li>mobility</li></ul>a compelling set of reasons to believe people will flock to it and advertisers can support it.<br /><br />however, all that is at the expense of the prevailing social trend that apple loves to ignore. for starters there's the noncollaborative approach they take. they have the most rabid fan base and tech outlets fawning over their every move. not tapping into that community is a massive shame. especially when everything i read leading up to the launch was a better product than what it turned out to be. then of course there is the closed nature of the applications and approval process that is not open source to say the least.<br /><br />apart from those ample shortcomings, there are a couple other points that make this anti-social to the core.<br /><div><ol><li>the limited typing (unless you're lugging around the keyboard) make it difficult to do many things like say commenting or blogging</li><li>no multi-tasking means that your socializing around content will be severely limited. so no IM'ing while you read a newspaper article and talk to your friend about it. heck, can you even listen to music while you surf the web?</li><li>no networking or means that you will not be able to easily access your files for sharing. since this is a complimentary device to another computer, it's folly to think that you shouldn't have centralized files that this could access so they don't live in 2 places. and there is no SD card on the device just these snappy, sure to be <a href="http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/01/27/apple-has-a-solution-for-the-ipads-missing-sd-card-slot-and-usb-port-adapters/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">overpriced accessories</a> that apple forces you into to have any kind of memory input.</li><li>of course there is the most common gripe of no Flash support. think of how much content on the web (YouTube, games and otherwise) is not only inaccessible form the device, but not sharable.</li><li>no camera. this is probably just the bullshit game apple plays to get you to rebuy the device in a year's time like they did with the iPhone. but no picture or video support for people to create content for their networks is inexcusable. </li></ol><div>sure there are the apps for social things, but it's not enough for what this device is supposed to be. it's not enough beyond it's little brother the iPhone to really consider buying. sure it might save newspapers but it's not close to giving the consumers what they want in the social domain. with that list of flaws, what will the consumer uptake really be and if it flops, does it take the hopes of the waning print world with it (probably only temporary)? is this the first flop for apple since jobs came back to the company?</div></div>Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-33311284529941307512010-01-20T08:42:00.002-05:002010-01-20T08:46:21.325-05:00social media roi - as i see itmuch of the accumulated mass of information on social media concerns roi, a favorite topic of the multitudes of experts, gurus and the like on the subject.<br /><br />at times i think the focus there is more abject defensive posturing to an infant medium vs. pondering on the natural course of things. i make this statement because it is such a transformational vehicle that truly rattles the cage of established thinking and the roi justification is a a natural high ground that is unassailable.<br /><br />i do believe that in whole or at least in part. roi is truly important, but we may have vaunted it before really understanding how social media works for the purpose of legitimizing the new space. that being true, then i'm fine with that discussion as it seems to have moved the needle, but we need to take the foot off the peddle some.<br /><br />please don't take the above (and below) the wrong way, roi is absolutely important, but let's be fair about it, especially in comparison to other media. that's where i think all the friction comes from. it's so dramatically different than other media, we have to use roi as the only point of comparison. but social media has been impugned and held to a higher standard than the old ones.<br /><br />i would lump in other digital media into the same camp in terms of standards it's held to. since the dawn of digital media, the underlying technology and trackability has been both a boon and a bane to the industry.<br /><br />i'm going to re-iterate this because i could be made to be an roi hater, when i'm just a malcontent. media roi is incredibly important, but it must be fair and universal across all media. i'm also going to state that my major focus in the following is around brand advertisers. that's the field i play in and where so much of the money in advertising, and more broadly marketing, is spent. there is likely a different case to be made for retail or direct response advertisers, but they are a different beast and outside of the scope i want to tackle.<br /><br />my qualm with social media roi is threefold<br />1) the measures are meaningless unto themselves<br />2) the necessity to validate social media is more pronounced than with other media<br />3) it is myopic to view it in isolation of other marketing efforts<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">meaningless measures</span><br />the measures that are bandied about routinely are mostly meaningless. what does a comment, a blog post, a tweet, or whatever really mean? is that really engagement? is it really making your brand more favorable to consumers? and how is any one of those things unto itself indicative of a relationship to a brand?<br /><br />they might mean something on some level. it took some time for the consumer to do each of those, so there is some affinity, or it might be artificial if say an incentive was involved (ie. contest). it's not to say those things are bad, they are quite important to the ongoing dialogue around a brand, but i wouldn't use them as the best measures of social media efforts.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">validating social media</span><br />as my tangents above would indicate, there is an asymmetry in the standards between social (and more broadly digital) media vs. traditional media. social media is beholden to far more scrutiny. might as well jump right to the main point of contention and the main driver of any business – profit.<br /><br />i'll come right out and say it, when have we ever directly linked brand building efforts like a tv spot, a newspaper ad, or outdoor billboard back to a sale? don't think we have. we can interpret or assume that they are doing that, but can't completely verify it, especially down to a granular level of any one spot, ad, or billboard. yet, we are asking a contest on facebook to do just that. why? doesn't seem fair.<br /><br />again, i think it's because we had to validate moving the industry towards a social media mindset but now we've established a double standard.<br /><br />a big shortcoming of the industry so far is we haven't put social media alongside traditional media and tracked it on the same measures. it's always been directional at best for brand advertisers, but still very valuable. these are measures like favorability, purchase intent, brand specific metrics, and the like.<br /><br />this is slowly taking root, and i for one am pushing this forward on my clients. it's the fairest way to judge social media, especially in light of my final point. let's shift our efforts to promoting these bad roi readings and into making better, more standard measures.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">it's part of a whole</span><br />judging social media, or any media for that matter, in isolation is folly. every marketing and consumer activity contributes to and coalesces as the sum of a brand's existence, as it impacts consumers. in reality, no one part is ever on it's own in impacting consumers. none. so why are we making social media accountable on it's own?<br /><br />all types of media – paid, earned and owned – work together to make behavioral change on consumers. this can be said to happen at any one time, but also over the course of time. it is really the entire history with the brand and all the messages consumers have ever seen that make an impact on consumers.<br /><br />not even direct response or retail advertisers can escape this truth. it is everything in market and over time that impacts a consumers ultimate behavior – a purchase. while a consumer may buy something because of that one ad (and use the specific tracking device to measure it like a unique url) that is not the only way in which they decided to take action.<br /><br />where this is likely to be solved is greater campaign integration of social media and more holistic tracking of those campaigns. then we can get reads on how all the paid, earned, and owned media associated with a campaign are working together in a meaningful way. we may also be able to isolate any media performing better or worse, but at least all on the same scale.<br /><br />that, though, is slow coming. the research has been slow to integrate new media forms in their broad brand studies. or it's in there in a token way and certainly not as robust as say tv tracking is. which is fine, because we have many years of experience there to have that level of sophistication. so it will grow for social media, but in the interim we'll be left with a gap.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">wrapping it up</span><br />if anything, the limited roi values we do and can assign to social media should force us to scrutinize traditional media even more. but it doesn't seem to be going that way.<br /><br />part of the problem is, the many who write on social media, that's all they do, so it is only seen in isolation. that's why i'm a proponent of not segmenting this work out to specialty shops, but rather holistic media companies (like my own) who see the entire picture of paid, earned, and owned media.<br /><br />let's also consider the primary function of social media - relationship building. like any human relationship, it takes time. most don't get married or make a friendship on one encounter, however intimate. we are challenged on the roi because it has to fit nicely in a fiscal year. well, that's not realistic with social media.<br /><br />so sometimes the equation doesn't balance because our efforts may be realized later. take for instance higher involvement categories where the time between purchases is longer. it's hard for any media to accelerate that, but ongoing presence over time will be valuable when that window opens. yet, we still hold accountable social media to an unfair roi standard.<br /><br />in closing, let me re-iterate that i'm not an roi hater. a realist, yes. it is just another media form and only part of greater efforts. so, say it with me now - campaign roi, not social media roi.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-19364333440926730142010-01-12T08:36:00.002-05:002010-01-12T09:11:45.650-05:00disassociation of information - travel editioni'm not a big traveler by any stretch. this past vacation was my first in 7 years (my honeymoon) and only by virtue of having won the trip (otherwise it would have been longer). i like seeing the sights, but it's often very shallow for me so i'm not keenly interested.<br /><br />you see, i'm a big nerd, information junkie (most often a useless information junkie) and somewhat history buff. i like knowledge, but too often that knowledge is disassociated with the physical object or site you are seeing. some people like just being there and seeing it, but for me, what makes it interesting is all the information behind it which is located in a library, or online, or in people's heads and not all at the source.<br /><br />that's disassociation. something i've been meaning to write about for some time and will shortly about a number of other things. digital solves the disassociation.<br /><br />sure there are tour guides (or small tour books), but that's still very superficial. maybe enough for some, but not for me. also, the tour guides can't possibly speak to everything and perhaps i'm interested in something they don't know about or isn't part of the tour. if i'm looking at the mona lisa, that's great, i can see it's well painted. but the real interesting part is about da vinci, the time it was made (all the cultural and economic influences), the style, who it was (though i don't think that's known – bad example), and how it got to here (changing hands, restoration, preservation, etc). if it's a building, then the architect, the style, why is it important (who used it and for what), factoids about its features (hidden symbols or what-have-you) and anything else notable.<br /><br />to me, this type of information is most valuable when presented with the thing of note. you can behold what you're reading and see it with a much more informed viewpoint. it's much more powerful to solidify the imprint in your brain of the object along with its corresponding background<br /><br />as a fun little bit of synchronicity to go with theses thoughts was all the talk about the changes in the mobile world, namely Android and the Apple tablet. both of these technologies and whatever else becomes of this unfolding landscape are precisely the answer to the disassociation.<br /><br />imagine going to an art museum or in my case a site of the mayan ruins, and renting out a tablet or downloading a digital tour guide to your mobile device. there you'd have the breadth of information of your location to make it a complete and informed experiences. you become your own tour guide and build your experience as you wish with vast knowledge on the subject matter and also the inputs of everyone else (as noted above).<br /><br />aside from renting a device or downloading something, the evolution of location based services has a huge impact on the travel industry. aside from that wealth of information being accessible instantly as your location is determined, there is also the casual tourism side of things. walking down the street in a foreign place just opened up a whole lot of opportunities with LBS.<br /><br />information is freedom, and the new digital tourist will have the freedom to take in as much or as little of the experience as anyone could want. and the ever emerging mobile platforms will be driving force to combat disassociation of information.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-83766639475849148352010-01-11T09:26:00.000-05:002010-01-11T21:43:49.426-05:00vacation connectednessi'm sitting here in the cancun airport after a week long vacation (first in 7 years) in the mayan riviera. i've got a few hours as our return flight has also been delayed, albeit, only 2 hours compared to the 14 hour delay for our departure. i thought i would take a few minutes and write some thoughts on connectedness, especially as it pertained to vacations.<br /><br />unashemedly, i love technology. i love it always being around and feel somewhat empty if it's not within arms reach. i was derided by many (including my wife) for checking facebook and twitter and posting therein. i see no problem in doing this, so long as it doesn't take over your trip – which it didn't. it's simply staying connected with your social graph and the real world. you being at a resort is but a respite from reality.<br /><br />i see little difference between using downtime beside the beach/pool to be on a wi-fi connected netbook (my acer aspire one) or iPod Touch and reading a book or magazine as some would state. the coming onslaught and proliferation of e-readers are going to throw those people who cling to that belief into a tizzy.<br /><br />in my mind, a vacation is not a vacation from technology as many would see it. technology is an integral part of everyone's life and a part that i don't want to vacate from. there's still some stigma there that i don't understand. my various devices allowed me post pictures daily and exchange fun comments from people thousands of miles away. i was able to stay up to date with the 100+ or so rss feeds, which as fellow readers can attest, just a week away is a mountainous backlog. my netbook gave me plenty of opportunity to do some much needed writing both by the water and on the plane. there was also ample time to catch up on a backlog of podcasts and explore new ones.<br /><br />technology didn't impede me taking day long excursions to mayan ruins, just amplified it by sharing with others. it didn't stop me from drinking (many) cervezas by the pool or eating mightily. it didn't stop me from relaxing, but gave me a relaxing activity that fueled a lot of thoughts (or maybe people want to be free from thinking). technology enhances. it's only when it overtakes that it's problematic.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-37444781181034744252009-11-02T08:34:00.001-05:002009-11-02T08:39:47.011-05:00lessons from the entertainment industrywhile social media has been a boon for everyone (those who've taken to it anyway). the area it has most naturally fit into and leveraged exceptionally well is in the entertainment field. whether it's actors, artists (of all shades), bands, writers, performers, personalities and entertainment entities themselves (movies, tv shows, plays, etc), they all are woven well in the space.<br /><br />the linchpin of it all is that those in the entertainment field (to varying degrees) have a network of passionate, dedicated and loyal followers, fans and other interested folks. they are cultural beacons we can all identify with our own select group out of the lot. it binds us to them and to others of a similar affinity.<br /><br />how lucky they are and how so few in the corporate brand world are as fortunate. that kind of rapacious following can only be dreamed about for all but a handful of brands.<br /><br />the entertainment industry has it real easy when it comes to engaging in social media. and there's lessons in there for us less fortunate stewards of brands in the space.<br /><ol><li>notoriety & celebrity<br />this has always been and will continue to be a potent weapon. people love and relate to public figures very well. how can you tap into this directly or indirectly? how can you leverage some kind of celebrity and share in their spotlight?</li><li>they have the goods<br />the entertainment biz and the personalities have the goods for engagement. content, access and rewards that are not just there, but at the core of what they do. do you have any of these, are they of sufficient quality, and do people actually want them?</li><li>they are experts<br />it is all about them after all. they are their brands and obviously the experts on the subject. not only that, they are empowered to act or have empowered others to act for them. do you know your business through and through? do you have the power to be present in all your brand spaces and be a leader?</li><li>passion<br />their livelihood is at stake everytime they put their face or product out there. it's no different for a corporate brand. there are people in every organization who are deeply passionate about the company and the business it does, but also social media itself. find the passionates and give them license.</li><li>know your tribe<br />the entertainment business is incredibly adept at creating followings. the last 15 years have given them other technologies to build, maintain and message that following to all kinds of success. if you don't already, get to know your consumers and start keeping track of them. build a database, talk to them, get their input, send selective messages. build your loyalty as any band might do.</li><li>paid and owned channels<br />these are the channels that you have some degree of control over (vs. earned which the consumer mostly does). these two media forms help fuel much of what happens in the earned side (ie. social media). there needs to be some critical mass to it to get you the requisite exposure. then the earned side can sustain you once the word is out there. but it has to be interesting, relevant and sociable. so little marketing is. do yo uhave a checklist to make that happen?<br /></li><li>earned channel<br />once you have the paid and owned stuff figured out, the earned side needs to be in full effect. but not in the old ways it ways. it needs to have value and importance. the entertainment business has the gossip sites and rags, news shows, fan sites/forums, and embedding in each other. these do a lot of heavy lifting for the industry. is your PR team lifting as much? and is it on strategy and message as much as it should be? it it consumer-centric and not the old corporate speak?</li></ol>Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-4904074445696750032009-10-20T08:44:00.000-04:002009-10-21T21:31:08.707-04:00ode to contentcontent. i've been talking a lot about that lately. around all facets of clients' business, but mainly social media and search. it's the great enabler. let me explain.<br /><br />let's start by settling a debate (or at least dismissing it). the debate rages about what's king: content or conversation. why do we have to crown something? they're not mutually exclusive and the real value of one isn't realized without the other. <br /><br />without content, conversations have little to form around. without conversation around content, you're missing a key point of engagement and enhancement. not everyone wants to converse, but everyone wants to consume content. but the conversation is what you've earned and who we identify as being advocates, likely to work hard for the brand.<br /><br />so let's stop declaring kings (much like we need to stop titling things as 'killers' - another post altogether). neither is the end, both are just components to the bigger picture.<br /><br />with that put to rest, let's get back to talking content. i don't think it gets enough attention amidst the vast deluge of social media discourse out there. same in the search world. in social media, it is that which conversations are based on. in search, it is that which makes a link relevant to a keyword or consumer interest. in both cases, a brand has no license to partake without the appropriate content (we'll get to the ever important 'appropriate' part later).<br /><br />previously, all content consisted of, from an advertiser viewpoint, was their ads. to varying degrees of branding, it was paid attention getting, whether wholly produced by the company or in a muddy way with publishers (advertorials). wither way, it was one-way and dictative. any resulting (minuscule amounts of) conversations were entirely brand-centric. very few were talked about and in a very limited way.<br /><br />the new marketing world is shifting in what the definition of content is. the models for accommodating that are not yet (yet another entirely new post). ads are just one form of content, and a decreasingly influential one as the are now.<br /><br />-related aside-<br />(i'm a heavy bracket user, but this needed more than what i think is an acceptable amount of bracketed words)<br />ads have evolved (if you want to call it that) to be jumbled messages of heavy marketing that are highly polished and mostly devoid of real deep consumer interest. they've become formulaic, outmoded, overly commercial and corporate in nature and rarely engaging. the typical names rise as exemptions to this epidemic: apple, nike and a select few others who have a moment of breakthrough. discerning, trained to tune-out consumers have less attention to give to these staid messages and our investment erodes in value. as content, as sociable spring boards, these types of ads are low probability contenders.<br />-end aside-<br /><br />other content falls in three camps: 1) brand produced 2) consumer produced, brand shared 3) other content producer made, brand shared.<br /><br />1) brand produced<br />it's just that. anything non-mass channel message that brand funds the production of. could be video, picture, podcast, whatever. it is typically (or at least should be) subtle on the brand integration and not heavy-handed with the selling. they are 'feel-good-about-the-brand' pieces made for pure enjoyment and sharing.<br /><br />2) consumer produced, brand shared<br />what a place to be. consumers have taken to your brand and made something about it. where it turns into brand content is when it's celebrated by sharing it through a brand's channels.<br /><br />3) other produced, brand shared<br />there's countless pieces of content that is professionally made that unto themselves are interesting. it's tapping into these affinity areas where we can align our brands to consumer interests and build our personality that way. could be an interesting show, video clip, song, whatever a brand can exploit to build conversations and sharing around the brand.<br /><br />to address the appropriateness side of content, well it needs to be that. duh. it's not just developing or sharing any ole piece of content, rather it is doing it in a way that fits with the brand character.<br /><br />content is essentially a doorway to participation. brands are brokers of content. their facilitation of it enables them to be included in the dialogue between consumers in the world of social and gain favorability by doing so. in the search world, brands can fully capitalize on consumer interests and drive traffic to their various outposts.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-57216205783035774042009-10-08T08:45:00.002-04:002009-10-08T08:45:00.440-04:00indicting the sacred cowsa main theme in all the things i do this year is to challenge every notion. to turn my skeptic eye on everything and as a first step to whatever, i question everything about it. it's easy to get stagnant, to rely on how you've done things, to make the same assumptions, to approach things as you typically have, or accept that it's worked so let's continue it.<br /><br />so it was my delight that at yesterday's <a href="http://atomic.strategyonline.ca/">AToMiC conference</a>, the first keynote was two gentlemen who like to blow accepted concepts up. their presentation was entitled 'the indictment' and consisted of 9 sacred cows (their words) that needed slaughtering (my words) for creativity to prosper and flourish in an organization.<br /><br />at one point, there was a telling quote that concisely sums up their radical assertions to not stifling creativity.<br /><blockquote>landforms come from volcanoes</blockquote>the meaning being that violent change, while unsettling for a brief period of time, results in stability in newfound ways of operating.<br /><br />without any further adieu, here are those accepted modes of operation that are false:<br /><ol><li>all ideas are good ideas<br />this is simply not the case because resources are finite. with infinite resources to process, ponder and evolve all ideas as we'd like, then yes, everything is meritous. but we don't and we also know that not all ideas are equal or equally good. to get at the best ideas and have the best resulting product (ie. a solid, well-formed idea the client can understand and approve) then we need to shift from a divergent method (an idea buffet that has ideas removed, the remaining ideas frankenstiened together and watered down) to a convergent method (not removing ideas, but focusing and revisiting each as a new jumping off point)</li><li>ad campaigns are an essential marketing expense<br />to use accounting parlance, an expense uses an asset, and often incurs a liability. it is transient. the shift in thinking lies in looking at creating marketing assets that have permanence and are leverageable, not as a support service. the former is a more inclusive and integrated mindset.</li><li>disagreement = disrespect<br />it's not about authority or a tenured viewpoint, it's just about varying ideas and opinions. we often hold back for fear of offending or being out of place, but creativity does not know these sentiments.</li><li>the best teams are a collection of superheroes<br />most often we prize specialists and the very best of them. but the real value is in a broad range of skills. intersectional innovation requires generalists among specialists.</li><li>each employee should strive for perfection<br />our typical evaluation systems focus on weaknesses but that doesn't foster creativity. our aim should be to create the perfect job, not person to optimize results of human talent.</li><li>creative leaders should be the most creative<br />just because a person is really creative, doesn't mean they can lead others in that field. creative rockstars are the doers and moving them to lead puts them outside their skill set. leaders cause creativity, but don't necessarily need to be super creative themselves. identify people's strengths and reward differently.</li><li>bonuses should be objective and clear<br />creativity isn't so easily boxed. this concept is very tricky, and standardized systems aren't always the answer. new subjective bonus systems should be developed.</li><li>marketing is a masterpiece to be revealed<br />the marketing industry has relied on a system of holding our cards close and then gloriously releasing them in a big burst. the problem with that is what happens if we were wrong? the idea is to keep marketing in beta and have an iterative approach to launches and campaigning. this graph easily explains how this would look.<br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_FInfBTZ6n-o/Ss1Vu9s_KWI/AAAAAAAADsQ/ORqbn-TsvAc/s288/collaborative_vs_traditional_launch.gif" /><br /></li><li>integration is the ideal<br />we've striven for years to make campaigns and platforms and matching luggage. it's time to embrace the one-off. the unified campaign has too many moving parts and it's extremely difficult to align the stars and truly execute against that premise. by doing stand-alone efforts (while maintaining brand character and semblance) we can more quickly test and fail then move on.</li></ol>all in all, a refreshing stance on what we've come to accept as operating systems. while all great, radical shifts in approach, can we change the matrices to implement?Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-39297633360029114392009-09-29T08:40:00.000-04:002009-09-29T08:41:41.719-04:00redesigning the websitei took a spin of the recently released google <a href="http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/">fast flip</a> (i know i'm late to the game, it's all about <a href="http://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en/index.html">sidewiki</a> now) and it got me thinking of how bothersome going to websites is these days. as fast flip rethinks how we read news, i believe a rethink needs to happen on how we view web content.<br /><br />here's where we are in 2009: sites are all about stickiness and page views. ad supported sites deliver an incredibly cluttered experience for their audience, and the advertisers. a page is peppered with all manner of navigation, info-buttons, promotions, ad units (multiple), forms, calls-to-action, links, columns, and every-which-way to serve up the content in tiny slivers. the result is pretty ugly. the hope is that the more you readily see, the longer you will stay on the site because something might grab your interest.<br /><br />it's all too much, really.<br /><br />beyond the visual look of the site, it's about structure and experience as well that need an overhaul. content isn't seamless and integrated, it's linked out (still on site though). articles are spread over multiple pages. there's a lot of scrolling to get through a page in it's entirety (which means it's mostly ignored). social tools are rare. content types are siloed (video player vs. integrated with the page).<br /><br />it can be quite onerous to navigate and enjoy.<br /><br />i come at this from both an advertiser and audience perspective. as a site visitor, i'm being bombarded and am overwhelmed with the plethora of (mostly) garbage a site is throwing at me. as an advertiser (or agent thereof) i'm not getting the value out of my ad placements i could or should be.<br /><br />yes, people wanted more at their fingertips so sites put more there. but they missed the 'more' part they should have focused on - more intelligence in structuring it, laying it out and presenting it ('it' being content). there's certainly a fine line between just enough and too much on a given webpage. more often than not, it veers toward the 'too much' camp, often wildly.<br /><br />as an advertiser, i've seen the value of ad spaces on websites deteriorate over the years. you've got banners in inconsequential locations where they are out of the viewer's periphery, and a cornucopia of ad units littered across the page fighting to stand out. yes there's some new impact ad units that are starting to become more common, but that's not changing the standard much nor is it solving the experience.<br /><br />here's some initial thoughts on what i'm thinking that would make for a good site design<ul><li>a site 'capsule' that is properly sized to maximize the user's browser window and usable space (vertically and horizontally)</li><li>the centerpiece acts as a 'content' player so all media types are viewed in this window, not separately as is with text (main content), video (players), and photo (albums) now</li><li>little to no scrolling (no more 'fold')</li><li>ancillary content area served based on user interest, habits and inputs (not throwing everything under the sun at them)</li><li>navigation that is tidy, concise and expandable to be more robust when interacted with</li><li>1 or 2 meaningful, integrated ad positions that are noticeable and have value (still accommodates custom units and over-the-page)</li><li>powerful search capabilities (a must in these content rich times)</li><li>strong social integration (a must in these social times)</li></ul>maybe i'm off on this or alone in it, but i feel we need an overhaul or at least rethink how we see websites as experiences. right now, they're a cluttered mess and advertisers are not seeing the value they should. maybe it's not as drastic as outlined above, but work needs to be done.Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3710024816809243804.post-55656083781503120692009-09-08T08:32:00.000-04:002009-09-08T08:33:56.117-04:00all or nothing: drinking kool-aid and not doing favorsi read a lot of blogs on a lot of different topics under the marketing umbrella. most people sit in their camp and evangelize, from ivory towers, that their particular area is the king. it gets pretty discursive because there is no mediation. i spend my time not absorbing the content, but mostly applying a rational filter to the greater scheme of things.<br /><br />it's kool-aid drinking at it's finest. self interest prevails and people start defending their area. it's in the language, the tone, and facts presented. you can include the absence of facts to that as well. mostly, it's the lack of context to the greater marketing picture that is most troubling.<br /><br />the search people do it. the social media people do it. the online ad network people do it. the tv people do it. many others too. each trumpeting their wares and pedestalling them (yes i made a verb of pedestal).<br /><br />each has strengths, each has weaknesses. it's a media mix, not a media exclusive. this is where a channel neutral media agency is so important. we take the inputs of glorification and meter them to a cohesive, cross-media plan for a client's communications.<br /><br />we are in a time where the consumer has so much control over their experiences. the world is highly fragmented. it's an attention economy. no one thing is the savior. it's how many things work together.<br /><br />media is content. content is media. media is social. social is media. it's all intertwined, and only one perspective sees it all and how it can work together - the media agency. we also have all the tools to measure all sides of a marketing plan and not in isolation of any one or all other components. it's holistic.<br /><br />i know this isn't a popular view and angers a lot of specific segments as it takes some of the wind out of their sales. the point is two-fold<br /><ol><li>for the areas of specificity, stop the over-glorification of your area as the be-all and end-all of marketing. start thinking bigger picture and the role your media plays amongst a cross-media world, not a singular one as you often profess.</li><li>for the clients, start looking to your media agency as greater partners. if we are the purveyors of the landscape our consumers are immersed in every day, then our role is seemingly amplified.</li></ol>Travis St. Denishttps://plus.google.com/100572232726331638491noreply@blogger.com0