This morning I received a team email from our Performance Manager about a recently launched site that tracks TriMet in almost near real-time. I open it up and was immediately faced with the same visuals TriMet uses for their horrible-terrible-no-good map. I was disappointed.

Then magic happens.

Almost immediately a number appears on the screen. Then four, ten, and so on. Bus numbers. And they’re moving! It is beautiful.

As an avid public transportation rider for years, I have a serious love/hate relationship with TriMet. I love the actual service. I have frustrations with their execution—their advertising, marketing, services, communications (I can go on), et cetera.

I want them to be amazing.
I want to root uncontrollably for them at every stop and every conversation. Yet, in the end, I am left with late or early busses, heavy unfriendly maps, stale design, and the smell of either urine or body odor.

I use PDX Bus, on my iPhone.

I have favorite stops saved, it is on the first screen on my iPhone, and (for the most part) it is the best app out there for tracking TriMet arrival times. Unfortunately, though, it is only as reliable as the information it is given. It was built by Teleportaloo in September 2008 using roughly the same technology as today, by a developer not affiliated with TriMet. It is on the sixth iteration. Oh, and PDX Bus is open source, the code is available on GitHub.

Our developer, Matt Grantski, uses PDX Transit Finder for Android and loves it. It was a labor of love by Ryan Roemmich who sadly moved away and no longer supports his app.

PDX Live Bus
Jason Brown is a developer and Portlander. He rides TriMet and was feeling the same pain points we all face—the transit tracker is not amazingly accurate. Jason, however, has the power to do something about it. He’s a developer at LogicBox* and in his spare time he created PDX Live Bus. I will reiterate that last point—in his spare time.

First, go check out the map.
It updates every 6-20 seconds to give you a very close to real-time picture of where your bus actually is. Oh, and his code is open source and also on GitHub.

And now, back to my point.
The app and the new live map are clearly labors of love, yet TriMet doesn’t make it easy for the community (Brown to the Oregonian: ‘The GPS data set “is hidden very well” in the code, Brown said. “They’re not really being as transparent as they say. Definitely not.”’) and the map on their site is barely usable.

TriMet should partner with the creative community for the marketing, tracking, on-board collateral, et cetera all for the promise of free-advertising by the creatives involved. I am not advocating Spec Work. I am talking Pro-bono, at cost, in exchange for advertising creative work, strategy, and possibly even development.

TriMet is a huge part of our community but they seem to keep the greater-Portland area, and especially our talent, at arms length.

People already do this on their own. In their free time. Embrace our community and ask. I bet the response would be more than successful.

*Amazing coincidence, LogicBox is moving in the same building as eROI on May 15, next week!

Beth Palmer: Can you take us through your career highlights that lead up to joining eROI?

 Kim Pearson: I’ve worked really hard, learned a ton, and have had a lot of fun getting to where I am today. Highlights include:

• Directing an after-school program for 40+ elementary aged kiddos
• Learning and growing within a startup community, always doing what it takes to get the job (any job) done.
• Building a customer service and social media department from the ground up alongside an amazing crew.
• Joining the awesome and talented eROI team! So stoked to be here

BP: What have you found the most rewarding in your professional experiences?

KP: Connecting with people, learning from them, and working as a team to bring a project together. I’ve been very fortunate to work among some of the best people I’ve ever met, all fantastically creative. Whether it’s colleagues, vendors, or customers/clients — the value of human interaction and continually re-discovering the limitless possibilities of what we can accomplish together is the core of my professional experience.

BP: We know you’re an Instagram rockstar. What are your go-to tips for brands building engagement and a community of followers on the photo-sharing social platform?

KP: Be real. People love interacting with real people, and finding ways to relate to them. Use #hashtags and @-mentions, but don’t overkill. Find interesting perspectives (literally and figuratively) with everyday objects/environments/people to create beautiful images.

BP: Challenge: Describe in emoticons how your first weeks at eROI.

KP: (BIG grins), *\0/* (team work), ;D (funny jokes), o/\o (high fives!)

BP: In the length of a Tweet, what’s your ideal day in Portland?

KP: Cool & brisk AM #run, #vintage browsing on Hawthorne, @WaterfrontBlues grooving, EOD drinks on the back patio, all with my #besties.

BP: We’re excited for you and your upcoming race! What’s the mileage, and how does this race’s distance rank among others you’ve run? What’s one of your favorite running routes in Portland that you’d recommend?

KP: I will be running the Foot Traffic Flat Half Marathon that loops around beautiful Sauvie’s Island this Fourth of July. This will be my fourth half marathon, and it just happens to be on the FOURTH of July. I didn’t plan that, I promise … but I love happy accidents. Hey look! It’s 11:11, make a wish!

My favorite run in Portland is a nine mile loop (which I don’t do all that often). It incorporates all of my favorite parts of the city: from my doorstep in SE to the Eastbank Esplanade bridge loop along the waterfront, through Ladd’s Addition, and back home. A great tour of our beautiful city.

BP: Do you like the stomach-knotting hilarity that is NBC’s Parks and Recreation?

KP: YES. However, I have to admit I was just recently introduced. I’ve flown through the first three seasons, and am concluding the fourth (and, enjoying every second). Ron Swanson is my hero, and I <3 Ben and Leslie.

BP: Awesome. Well, what a great segue; that really worked out. Next question: In Parks and Recreation, Ron Swanson has a secret identity, Duke Silver, a smooth jazz saxophonist. What would you (or DO you) do in a secret life, and what would be your alias?

KP: Queen of Ping Pong. I will defeat all the people. I’ll let you decide whether this is an alias or a reality.

BP: Whoa, who is Queen of Ping Pong and will she be my friend, and should I want her to be my friend?! You won’t reveal? Fine. What else will you reveal about your primary identity, Kim Pearson?

KP: I’m an avid U of O Duck fan, and Duck Football Season ticket holder … now, at eROI, sitting across from Strategy Manager Matt Popkes, hard core OSU Beaver fan. (And, the rivalry has begun.) Also, I’m an auntie of five: four nieces and a nephew. I’m in love with ALL of them!

BP: Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions, Kim! Readers, follow Kim on Instagram here.

An envelope choice for our  Movember Stache Seeds initiative inspired Envenlopes.com to interview eROI for their Customer Spotlight series. The photo illustrates the need for Stache Seeds. Click it to read the case study!

And while I value and appreciate the digital communication methods that allow me to, day in and day out, successfully communicate with my clients, a seemingly crucial component of any successful client relationship has become a rarity on the spectrum these days: the face-to-face meeting.

I get it – clients are often time scattered across the country, and with limited budgets, distance and busy schedules acting as barriers, it is challenging to prioritize in-person client visits. Our fallback is to utilize all of the great digital tools at our disposal to communicate with clients, keep projects on track and connect. Though, on a recent trip to visit one of my clients I was reminded of the importance and unmatched value prioritizing face-to-face client interaction brings to a client/agency relationship.

I carefully created a good working relationship with my client, communicating on a daily basis for several months, countless emails were exchanged, and many gotomeetings were had throughout the course of the project.

Before my in-person client visit, I felt that I had successfully fostered and maintained a growing client relationship—which to some extent, I had. My client and I had hit our stride, our communication back and forth was efficient and easy. But undoubtedly, like any relationship confined to the digital space, the depth of my relationship with the client was limited and, to some extent limited in depth. It was largely based around action items, deliverables, and project timeline.

Most simply stated— the issue with relationships limited to the digital realm, is the absence of key relationship strengtheners: trust, humanization and familiarity.

My in-person client visit changed the entire dynamic of our working relationship. Taking us beyond task-oriented emails and small talk about the weather, and allowing us to connect on a human level through shared experiences, common goals and even a few laughs along the way. The client was able to put a face with my name, obtain insight into my character and personality, and, most importantly—establish a deeper level of trust with me.

Without dismissing the cost of traveling, its importance and value must not be overlooked or fall by the wayside in our digital age. It’s important. Continue to rely on and utilize all of the digital communication methods at our fingertips, but not lose site of the fact that at the end of the day face-to-face interactions still seem to be the ultimate relationship solidifiers.

Snipe hunt. I first learned that term as a Boy Scout on an overnight. A “snipe hunt” is essentially an impossible or an imaginary task given to people to make fun of them. You tell them that in order to catch a snipe you have to run around naked in the middle of the night humming the words to The Star-Spangled Banner, which in turn will lull the snipe to sleep allowing you to catch them. Cue hilarity as pictures are taken and the snipe hunter is laughed at. This is how I viewed jobs that people supposedly love to work at. Finding one of these imaginary jobs was impossible and the thought of going in search of one was not only impossible, but ridiculous. I’ve been tricked into a snipe hunt before, I wasn’t falling for it again.

The thing is, snipes are real. They are a type of shorebird that are notoriously difficult to hunt. So much so that the word “sniper” is derived from it and refers to someone skilled enough to shoot it. No, I’m not a sniper but I have found a job that I love.

My parents think I live in a sitcom. They see our posts on Facebook, hear my stories, and wonder when we actually work. We’ve had MONTHS-long cocktail contests and lounge around on ugly velvet couches. Work hard, play hard. Nothing could be closer to the truth. We always turn out amazing work while making that work amazingly fun.

We work in Old Town, Portland, where there is always something crazy going on and 99-percent of that craziness is caused by the crazy people that congregate here. The things that I have seen while walking the seven blocks to Whole Foods would boggle your mind, but that’s what makes every day an adventure.

I find something new that astonishes me every day I come to work. There is never a time where I can rest on my laurels because the marketing industry moves so fast. Our team is filled with voracious learners always willing to teach or help out with new projects and new technology. It’s exciting to be an integral part of something and not just be a cog.

Above all else, though, we come in for the people. I love coming to work because I enjoy working with my teammates. Developer Dan Gonzalez said it best in explaining life at eROI: ”Can you take a joke?” is a required interview question because if you can’t laugh at yourself you are taking yourself WAY too seriously and we will fix that real quick.

I’ve caught my snipe and earned my badge. Thanks, eROI.

The Magic Department (or, as some agencies call it, The Development Department), recently took a field trip to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry to the “MythBusters” exhibit. A fully interactive exhibit, once we got past the, “Are we too old, too cool, et al for this?” trepidation all team members dove in. We sat in the fart chair, we dodged “bullets” (OK, light beams), hung from ledges, and tried our hands at dressing as fast a superhero. Rarely in my work history has a department been so loose and comfortable around each other without fear of an awkward conversation or having to avoid eye contact the next day.

Our work environment reflects this. In a communication style just outside of what is traditionally “professional,” we operate. How is this? This is good. Compliments and criticism roll off the tongue. “Hey guy, hey boss, hey champ… let’s chat” gets delivered without fear of reproach and with the expectation of progress and resolution. The integration and understanding wasn’t instantaneous, but then I understood why “Can you take a joke?” was an interview question at eROI.

How about when it’s not a joke? The open style of communication lends itself to these situations as well. You can tell your relative that the turkey was in fact, a little dry, and still know that you’ll hear from them on your birthday. If the time ever comes for change, we’ll certainly remember that time we did something and we shared that inside joke.

Some of the fresh thinking from the employees at eROI that helped inform this Painted Picture was added focus at eROI. You’ll see from Slide 6 that our whole company is focusing our energy around 3 vertical industries: consumer product goods, publishing (media), and technology. This informs our thought leadership, the type of new clients we go after, and where we spend our energy and resources.  Additionally, this painted picture exercise put a finer point on the meaning behind each of our company values and a reminder that we need to be addressing these on a weekly basis in our staff meetings to make sure we are living those values.  Without further ado, here it is:

It’s 2013 and the future has arrived. Robots. Automation. Instant attention. Instant everything, at our fingertips. Digital technology has made it all so easy to get what we want when we want it. For brands, it seems so easy and virtually free to get a message out through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, SMS, email, and online via websites. Since there are virtually no barriers and no cost to getting one’s message out there in this environment, we find consumers and brands today swimming in unwanted effluence.

Concurrently in 2013 a heritage reinvention is happening: there’s a new trend towards the old-school, no short-cut, no easy out approach. While personally we are choosing to work to make meaningful connection in our lives, we see this reflected in fits and starts online.

Humanomics & The Digital Marketing Scene

Emerging today is a digital awareness that’s more about the human aspects of tech: from how we are using the human brain, to execution with the human hand on keyboards, smartphones, video cameras, and more. The trend of digital craft is about finding your unique ability, being true to it and sharing what you have discovered. Professionally, it’s all about leveraging these crafted local talents into a new idea of marketing–much more intimately expressive and broadly inclusive. This is the niche to mass world we have been speaking of for awhile now but it has normalized and is integrated in our daily lives.

As an example of this trend, at eROI, employees engage with digital as they would with the craft heavy culture of Portland, Oregon, where they reside. They have shown they are serious about the trends of digital marketing craft and have started a social media program within the agency to drive thought leadership. Each week across 5 social channels – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and the personality driven THINK blog, one employee is dedicated to one digital channel (meaning five employees are engaged in five marketing channels that week) and posts their leadership perspectives throughout the week. The next week a different group of 5 employees takes over.

This approach provides a flow of creative new input that is human-powered, theme-driven  and strategic in its offer of new content through various perspectives.

Big Movement to Include ‘Little E’ Entertainment

Big E entertainment is something most of us grew up with from Ovaltine to Think Different. Little e entertainment is much more personal and allows the end user to share their love of your idea, particularly if it resonates with their lives and with their world. Today our intimate worlds amplify quickly and a collision is occurring.

Digital Craft shows up with messaging that emotionally connects with the audience. Portland ad agency Wieden + Kennedy spent hundreds of hours with the target audience, Moms of Olympic athletes, for a P&G ad that gained traction around the world on YouTube. “Thank you, Mom” is so universal in its connection for any person to appreciate the deep emotions connecting us with our own Moms. So unique and so effective in its execution, that today 2,845,000 have viewed it online.

In Baltimore, Digital Craft is about the reinvention of the newspaper industry by connecting to the younger 25-45 year old demographic gravitating towards digital subscriptions. eROI and The Tribune Company began this shift by producing The Baltimore Sun – NFL Ravens campaign and within the first week of the campaign, digital subscriptions had increased over 50% from the same week the previous year. It was the research and the crafting of the digital message within the context of the end users world that cinched it. The Ravens winning the SuperBowl will help the campaign last 5 months instead of 5 weeks. It never hurts to get some outside factors for your digital craft to be enhanced.

The Future of Marketing?

Digital craft is rewarded by consumers like us who are smart enough to know what’s automated and what is truly unique and special. While brand advertisements on YouTube that have your own image and story woven into it by automatically pulling content from other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter truly means brands will need to adapt something unique to demonstrate the authentic permission and certain human-ness of this pulled content. Oreo captured this ethos by having a team of people ready to create something unique during the Superbowl. Their tweet of an image of an Oreo pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC with the caption “You can still dunk in the dark” was the most shared and favored tweet of the Superbowl.

In marketing today we are also on a massive communications playing field evolving through strategies and applications that bring failures, success, fumbling and learning. When it comes to digitally crafted marketing, humanly playful and personal seems to be the true win of the day.

Bios

Jody Turner is founder of Culture of Future, the brand strategy and marketplace consultancy influencing for future betterment via strategic insight applications. Jody has worked with IDEO, Nike, BMW, Apple, The Gap and others. Currently on the board of directors for the Empowerment Plan Detroit, Jody is also an advisor for Cria Global, the cause-driven branding group out of Rio, and the A+D Museum L.A. Jody is a long time partner with and speaks globally via the London group trendwatching.com.

 Ryan Buchanan is CEO + founder of eROI, a digital marketing agency mixing creativity and strategic thinking with an emphasis on insight and data-driven optimization. Clients include Aramark, The Baltimore Sun, CBS, Columbia Sportswear, Conde Nast, Experticity, Intel, Lightspeed Retail, Nike, and ScienceLogic. Ryan is on the Board of Directors of the Portland Advertising Federation, Friends of the Children, and Entrepreneurs Organization. For more content see his blog post on Portland Craft and his presentation, Optimize Your Brand with Social Media.

We wanted to welcome him in the usual manner–shining an uncomfortably bright spotlight his way, in the form of the following Q&A. Say hello to Colby in the comments!

Beth Palmer: We can already tell you have a few catch phrases (double thumbs up, Zang, etc.) and we’re enjoying them. Mind sharing a bit about their origin?

Colby Wilson:  I guess I do have catch phrases.  Thumbs up needs no explanation, nor does double thumbs up.  Zang is from Wayne’s World, it was subtitled as “Excellent” in the movie.  I have more, but we’ll roll those out over time.

BP: Is there anything you wouldn’t eat bacon on?

CW: Bacon makes everything better.

BP: Let’s go there. Let’s discuss small talk no-no’s: sports. Who are your teams?

CW: First, any team that my sons are a part of.  Second, NBA – Utah Jazz, back to the days before Stockton & Malone; NFL – Denver Broncos; College – University of Utah; Soccer – Portland Timbers (of course)

BP: You have a rich history in the Portland agency scene. What are some of your greatest memories and learnings?

CW:  All of the wonderful and talented people I currently work with and have worked with both on the agency-side and the client-side.

BP: We know you’re passionate about client relations and about marketing. Our audience might not know that yet. Can you explain?

CW: For me, it’s pretty simple, it’s about solving problems and making people happy.

BP: You’re taught in journalism school to save the questions that will most likely make the source sprint away for last. So, will you eat this food item I currently have in my hands and I’m handing to you?

CW: Not a chance.

BP: Zang.

Upon hearing the news, British Footballer, Wayne Rooney did this. Image from Google Image search and Football-wallpapers.com.

No matter how we could have possibly manipulated the rules of this tournament, it was essentially Nike vs the world.

The only question worth asking when it came down to predicting the finalists was “Well, who gets to lose to Nike?” Asking what logo could defeat Nike was akin to asking what three things you would bring to a deserted island. It’s an entertaining notion, but it’s not really a world you want to live in (My three things, by the way, are a guitar, a book on how to make beer on a deserted island, and a girl who has survival experience and also gets to bring three things, so she brings things that would actually help us survive this situation). Since the concept of this tournament, it’s boiled down to a month long coronation for Nike. Even my behind-the-scenes fraud and corruption (not that, that happened) could not prevent the manifest destiny that was The Swoosh being crowned the greatest logo of all-time.

Taking the inevitable Nike victory as a given, there was still a lot of drama in this tournament. A few of the storylines:

• The #1 seeded golden arches of McDonald’s could not escape the first round. Some may speculate this occured because they played hometown favorite, the Portland Trail Blazers (eROI is based in Portland, OR), but a theory I have that I can’t prove but you must accept is this: the fans probably went to McDonald’s feeling a bit peckish but not starving. They likely decided that they just wanted a burger, or maybe a couple of chicken nuggets, and maybe a little bit of fries and a drink, but not so much they would have a tummy-ache later. You know, just enough to get them through the next few hours to dinner, as not to be irritable throughout the day. “Actually, hey, a Happy Meal would probably hit the spot! Oh man! They have Hot Wheel toys today? Hell yes,” they could have decided. So they theoretically ordered and waited patiently in line, and as they drove away, they opened their happy meals and found that their toy was not included. “Where’s my Hot Wheels car, dammit?!” the fans surely shouted in their cars, having already left the drive-thru and deciding it’s not worth it to go inside and ask for a toy, choosing instead to sulk the rest of the day, perhaps. “They ruined my life and I’m never going again,” the fans probably thought to themselves later.
• What was I talking about?
• Oh yeah, compelling story-lines.
• #11 seed NBC made it all the way to the Final Four, losing to the champion by birthright. This underdog going this far was surprising to some, confusing to others, and completely irrelevant and impertinent to everyone that is completely oblivious to this entire tournament. Go Peacocks!
• The corresponding teams of Logo Madness to the NCAA Men’s Tournament would have meant a Final Four of Louisville, Belmont, UCLA and UNLV, with Louisville beating UCLA in the finals. So, it would have been about as good as 90% of the brackets filled out this year.

So there you have it. the unanimous favorite Nike wins the finals in dominant fashion just like Louisville won on Monday, and now we have no sports events in the near future to concoct silly brand parodies of. The Kentucky Derby is in the first weekend of May, maybe we’ll figure something out for that.

In case you missed it, here are the previous entries in the series.

This is Logo Madness, an introduction
Round 1 results, an unprecedented upset occurs
Round 2 results, Jack Donaghy answers a phone call.
Round 3 results, we eulogize Amazon
Round 4 results, the quarter-finals
Round 5 results, Nike vs NBC, Google vs Olympics

Here’s a shortlist why_

Asana has a clean and user-centered design.

Asana has a beautiful interface. Could it be more visually appealing? Sure. However, considering the robust tool that it is, and the wide audience that it must manage, Asana delivers on design almost every time. Visual. User Experience. Intuitiveness. Asana is clearly working diligently to evolve their product to near perfection.

Asana will rollout a new task pane design in the following weeks, but you can opt-in early. I did and I do not regret the move over. They have worked hard to streamline and refine the most important features of the task pane while integrating in helpful tips and tricks. This will add more focus to the communication side of Asana, one of Asana’s strengths. All superfluous information has been replaced with icons or avatars (which is excellent, though gravatar integration would be awesome). If you have not yet opted-in, I suggest you do.

I appreciate that Asana has not fallen into the customization trap. They zero-in on functionality changes and making the user experience better. How can design help our everyday? They’re customers are not looking to spend hours customizing their personal views or profiles or experiences. One experience, out of the box, continually refined and improved. Could it be a better tool with customization, yeah, sure—to a certain extent. However, I am glad Asana has concentrated on improving their product in tangible ways that help our everyday workflow instead of falling back to backgrounds or color swatches. Those things can come when Asana is closer to perfect. For now, thank you for continually improving and thinking. (Now please, go back to the old way of organizing the projects list. ‘Load more…’ is terrible.)

They provide stellar customer service (especially in the follow-through department).

Asana works hard for their customers. Their customer service, communication, and attentiveness is enviable especially when you consider their price tag (free for up to 30 users per workspace). Every time that we have missed or recommended a feature through one of their channels (twitter, twitter, email, facebook, and in-app communication) we get a response. May not be the one we wanted (in the case of their change to the project list) but they have always responded and that is way more than half the battle.

Additionally, Asana lets (or encourages?) their employees to respond directly with their personal accounts. This is a huge differentiator and increases our engagement with the brand. We create relationships with the humans and a love for the company. (It is no secret that I love strong, human personalities.)

Aside from their social channels, Asana also communicates in the app with their notice bar at the top of the screen. New feature? An alert comes up at the top of your screen, like it did last week for their task pane redesign, and guess what? I clicked to their blog, read about the change then opted-in earlier than the full-release. Communication and control. This is what good customer service is—give customers the information and the autonomy to choose. Like it or hate the change, users will automatically be more amenable to it when provided with the choice and/or the plan. Change without communication is frustrating.

And now, what could they work on?

Dare I say it again? Infinite Scroll.

Asana admits that Infinite scrolling is not in their overall ‘design plan’ yet they still retain that functionality for the Task List. Why? Because in some instances infinite scrolling works. And in most, it can be tailored to the use-case (You do not need to load the entire list if you’re concerned about load). Infinite scrolling will always be a more user friendly alternative than a button to ‘load more’ and it should be brought back for the project list or Asana should allow users the choice. The current ‘Load More…’ option harkens back to the internet of the nineties. Please do not make your users work for their information.

Create Levels

Humans invented punctuation, upper and lowercase letters to provide their users (readers) visual cues. Asana should create levels within projects to help sort and filter workflows. This may help with your infinite scrolling problem (making the list smaller) and will operate more true to the way projects operate in real-life. Allow for priorities. And yes, I am aware of your subtasks functionality, but you’re not there yet.

Keep up the good work Asana; we’re hooked.

Stay tuned for a future post next week on our internal processes
for integrating Asana into our everyday workflow.

Nike vs NBC

Congratulations are in order again for NBC, which — along with Nike, Google, and The Olympics — fought its way to the Final Four of Logo Madness. That they did this as a #11 seed, their Cinderella story mirrors that of 2006′s run from the George Mason Patriots. If you’re unfamiliar with the historic and unprecedented run, George Mason was able to grab one of the coveted at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament in the 2006 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament as a #11 seed, despite losing to conference rival Hofstra twice in the span of ten days. Hofstra did not make the tournament. Many media personalities criticized the choice of their inclusion, and with the Patriots facing off against the Michigan State Spartans, a Final Four contender the previous year, many thought #11 seeded George Mason would be a one-and-done. Instead, they put together one of the most memorable and unlikely runs to the Final Four, knocking off Michigan State, North Carolina (the defending champions at the time), Wichita State, and #1 seed Connecticut Huskies (the team favored to win it all) to cut down the nets of the Washington D.C. regional. The game vs Connecticut was decided in overtime, and the last 12 seconds are something historical.

No, ’24′ fans, not *that* George Mason…

However, just like George Mason losing to the eventual champions — the Florida Gators — the NBC Fighting Technicolor Peacocks had its work cut out for them when they squared off against the heavy favorite to win the whole thing, Nike. The Swoosh. NBC fought as hard as they could possibly fight, and it was closer than many expected.

In fact, the 11th hour was showing a tie, and Nike not representing in the finals became a worrisome possibility.

But in the end: sanity was restored, Cinderella lost her slipper, and a catastrophe was prevented. NBC, I personally will miss your silly, fun little technicolor bird in this tournament, but Nike in the finals is justice. Nike advances — barely defeating a #11 seed — but has shown it is mortal, and can be defeated.

Google vs The Olympics

The Google logo is the only dynamic logo in the tournament i.e., it’s the only logo to change based on events. Whether you think that it’s a crutch or an invaluable quality is a personal and subjective opinion, but there is no denying that Google made it this far because of the Doodles. Commemorating and honoring holidays, pioneers, and current events, the Doodle has been a fun little distraction every time we visit the search page. If it weren’t for the Doodle, we would probably looking at the Apple logo representing here. Thankfully, we live in a world where we could wake up tomorrow and see a new illustration or interactive experience on the home page, when maybe we were intending on finding a great cat site.

I couldn’t help including one more Olympics Doodle.

However, there was no defeating the symbolism, simplicity and inherent beauty of the interlocking rings of The Olympics, who will now square off against Nike, in the final match. I’m really excited for this. This is the match-up I wanted from the beginning. We all knew Nike would at the very least make the finals, and very likely win it all, but the #5 seeded Olympics had a lot of tough matches to overcome. So we have one final match for you to vote on. The Nike Swoosh? The Olympic Rings. God, I’m so friggin’ pumped for this!

THE FINALS: Nike vs Olympics

There’s no need to hype this up any further. We have the two greatest logos of all time. They are simple, yet inspirational. Will The Olympics pull off the upset, or will Nike live up to the expectations and win? This is Logo Madness.

TIME TO GO VOTE IN THE FINALS!

Disclaimer: These logos are provided for not for profit informational purposes only and should not be considered an endorsement of a brand or product. 

We are trained to recognize them and in general, Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail are also trained to recognize them and send them straight to the junk pile. Subject lines are important, we know that. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you the magic formula for writing a 100% successful subject line. At eROI, we test and test and test for our clients and I wish that we had the key (aside from offering a free iPad).

The Guardians of the Email Fiefdoms all have their proprietary filters and just because you have the words “free” or “uncle in Nigeria” in your subject line does not automatically relegate you to the junk folder.

Deliverability is a cumulative thing with many factors. The main one is your reputation. Do you send unwanted payday loans or are you offering your (hopefully) opted-in subscribers something they need and want? It’s not 1990 and an engineer is not manually adding spam keywords on a punch card into their mainframe. Google and others have some pretty smart people working for them and artificial intelligence is a real thing.

Your subscribers’ interactions with you matter. Did they add you to their contact list (you did ask right?)? Have they opened your emails consistently? Have they clicked? Shared? Honestly why would you want to be emailing people that didn’t do those things anyway? List management people! If your clients don’t want your mail and it’s not relevant to them it has a higher chance of being sent to the junk folder.

The key here is putting yourself in the client’s shoes. What would YOU like to read and what would you like to open? Make it relevant, test it, track it, measure it.

Subject Line Best Practices (some of these should be obvious):

1. Keep it short. 50 characters or less is best.
2. Skip the personalization, adding someone’s name is creepy and doesn’t work.
3. Avoid excess use of spam words such as “free,” “cash,” “click, “guarantee.”(Ultimate list of Spam words)
4. Set expectations for the contents within. Three things should be in alignment
   1. Subject line
   2. Email content
   3. Landing page
5. Use spell check and then have someone else read it for errors.
6. Test, Test, Test the open rate
7. Adjust based on tests

Email is always evolving, as are your subscribers. Keeping your program fresh from Subject line, to content, and landing page is important for your success

In last week’s post we looked at a bit of history for the eight logos remaining to set up the semi-finals. The resulting votes eliminated four very great and iconic logos. At the end of this tournament there is going to be one winner and 63 very sad logos, but these four should not be dismissed as losers. Let’s have a moment of silence for the bunny, the silver star, the apple, and the arrow. Playboy, Mercedes-Benz, Apple and FedEx made it very far and lost to what has been determined as four of the greatest logos of all time. Let’s take a look at the results in the bracket below. (If you want to get straight to voting, go to our Facebook page to vote)

A word about the seeding committee. Looking back on it now, NBC as an #11 seed was an egregious oversight. The seeding selection was not the most rigorous process. Matt Popkes and I went to Old Town Pizza for a slice and a drink, while we went through all 64 logos and took turns selecting logos for seeds #1-#16. Somehow NBC ended up as the 43rd logo selected. We won’t apologize for our mistakes, because you, the fans, voted to fix and overcome this atrocity, putting them into the field of the final four logos, where they face their biggest challenge: the undisputed #1 overall swoosh of Nike.

No match-up last round was ever very close. Nike blew out Playboy; NBC did the same with Mercedes-Benz. Across the aisle, the Google giant toppled the Apple giant, earning this #6 seed a surprising upset and command of the region. The Olympics dispatched of FedEx relatively easy as well. Toppling Target and Apple back-to-back is an impressive feat for Google. There is no doubt at this point that the frequent Doodles are propelling Google to victory. Will it hold on for another victory against the rings of the Olympics? During last year’s Summer Olympics, Google ran some Olympic Doodles (17, to be exact), providing an interesting collaborative angle to this contest.

So here we are. Two contests to determine the last match-up. Four logos. Head over to our Facebook page to vote for who you think should be crowned the greatest. Nike vs NBC. Google vs Olympics. This is Logo Madness.

Round 4 Results

[1] Nike defeats [6] Playboy
[11] NBC defeats [8] Mercedes-Benz

[6] Google defeats [1] Apple
[5] Olympics defeats [2] FedEx

Help us determine the championship match and crown the greatest logo of all time! VOTE ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE.

Disclaimer: These logos are provided for not for profit informational purposes only and should not be considered an endorsement of a brand or product. 

This is Madness!

In Tuesday’s post, Matt Popkes summarized the first round of our sports-related competition of Madness taking place this March, which we cannot refer as a certain alliterative event for legal reasons. Popkes saw a few powerhouse logos lose to brands that we thought did not hold as much weight in terms of brand recognition or simplicity. Most notable upsets: #2 seeded Pepsi lost to H&M, #14 Red Bull (included as an afterthought and as a nod to our Creative Director’s favorite beverage) defeated the iconic AT&T logo, and the coup d’état of the first round was the heavily favored golden arches of McDonald’s losing for sentimental reasons to the hometown favorites that are the Portland Trail Blazers.

Other than a few surprising upsets in the first round, most of the first round went as the logo committee expected. Furthermore, we expected the rest of the round to be mostly chalk and there to be only the favorites winning.

Thanks to your votes on our Facebook page this week, we’ve narrowed the field down to 16 remaining logos.

[If you'd like to just vote for these matchups, you can VOTE ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE.]

Click to download bracket

So let’s dive into the second round to set up our Sweet Sixteen while I write in my favorite style: over-analyzed rants about minutia!

There’s not much to say about the North-West region, where Nike and three other logos advanced. Isn’t this entire region a contest to see who gets to lose to Nike? We can just pencil Nike in for the finals and just focus on who likely gets to lose to them. In the other regions, there is greater room for competition and interesting outcomes. I don’t know if you pick your preference in these battles based on simplicity, artistic merit, or how much you like the brand. I’m not here to tell you how to vote. I’m just the same as you: I want to vote on the best logos based on my instincts and my heart. But I beg of you, stop voting for logos which are literally the representation of their company name. Apple and Target? What is this? What came first, the logo or the company name? And when they did, what was asked for the logo? “Just make an apple.” “Just make a target.” I might understand the respect for these brands to put in the Sweet 16, especially when they square off weak logos in the first round. But do we really want to live in a world where the little Twitter bird or the NFL badge is less awesome than Apple’s apple or Target’s target? Come on. Help me out here. Please vote for a web-giant round by voting for Amazon and Google over these lazy logos.

There were some interesting happenings in the south-west region. There was one question our readers answered with authority: Pepsi or Coke? To which, the polls showed that the audience prefers German car manufacturers, as #1 Coke lost a heart-breaker to Mercedes, and #2 Pepsi lost to Audi. Volkswagon easily dispatched of #12 seed North Face. There is a 75% chance that the winner of this region will be a German car manufacturer. Interesting.

 NBC vs GE

The only non-automobile match-up in this region was a very tough match-up as GE faced off against NBC. I called Mr. Jack Donaghy, who went from Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming for General Electric to President of NBC, to Chairman of GE. After tricking his assistant that I was actually Richard Nixon and still alive, I was able to get a few words with the man with a vested interest in both logos.

“Hello, Mr. Donaghy.”

“Who is this?”

“This is Matt Grantski. I’m a . . .”

“Stop right there. I don’t know how you got this number, but I do not speak with people whose title begins with an ‘a’ and not a ‘the.’”

“What?”

“If you introduce yourself with ‘the,’ you are THE President, or THE CEO or THE Ohio State University. If you introduce yourself with an ‘a,’ you are probably A barista or A pizza delivery boy or A farm-hand, whose knowledge of the English language and importance in society commands as much respect as A Polish army.”

“Hey!”

“Hay is for horses, which if I recall, makes up the majority of Poland’s cavalry?”

“I just want to . . . ”

“Do you know what sound a computer mouse makes?”

“I don’t . . . ”

*click*

Okay, so, whatever. Jack Donaghy didn’t provide much detailed analysis of whether he liked NBC or GE more, but NBC won anyway, and let’s never speak of this again.

Round of 32 Results

North-West Region
[1] Nike defeats [8] Yankees
[5] MTV defeats [4] Starbucks
[6] Playboy defeats [3] BMW
[7] Adidas defeats [2] Facebook

South-West Region
[8] Mercedes-Benz defeats [1] Coca-Cola
[4] Volkswagon defeats [12] North Face
[11] NBC defeats [3] GE
[10] Audi defeats [2] Pepsi

North-East Region
[1] Apple defeats [9] Twitter
[4] Amazon defeats [12] Levi’s
[6] Google defeats [14] Red Bull
[2] Target defeats [7] NFL

South-East Region
[9] Toyota defeats [16] Portland Trail Blazers
[5] Olympics defeats [4] NBA
[3] ESPN defeats [6] UPS
[2] FedEx defeats [7] Microsoft

Polls are open for the next round, VOTE ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE

Disclaimer: These logos are provided for not for profit informational purposes only and should not be considered an endorsement of a brand or product. 

It’s becoming easier to predict the future.

At least when fortune-telling concerns the intersection of publishing, tech and design.

As eROI foretold, Facebook recently unveiled a sneak peek at a simplified user interface redesign featuring bigger visuals, less copy and less modules of information. (See for yourself and sign up for the redesign wait list here)

The New York Times calls the move “another signal that design is becoming one of the most important factors in technology,” in an article previewing Facebook’s new look.

The publishing giant goes on to point to its own shift toward featuring less content on its print homepage, and noted: “Facebook is finally learning the lesson that all media empires must eventually grasp: for the people who consume its content, less is often more.”

Since eROI creates websites, email and Facebook campaigns, as well as a plethora of integrated digital efforts for clients in the publishing (The Baltimore Sun, for example) and technology (Intel, for example) realms, it made sense to poll the Creative, Strategy, Development and Account teams for their take on Facebook’s impending design overhaul.

Tamara Crawford, Creative Director -

Why not address bigger issues such as increasing distrust of the brand, unease about privacy control, abandonment, and poor filtering and delivery of posts and ads?

Gerry Blakney, Managing Art Director -/+

I am a huge Facebook supporter and do not fall into the “Facebook rebellion group of cool kids who hate it” category.

I am an early adopter (original .edu account member) and have generally been pleased with the direction that Facebook has moved in.

That being said, while I am a fan of their new direction—their delivery is lacking:

Facebook has trained us to engage in a particular way, i.e. often and with as much content as possible. Moving in the opposite direction is the right way to go to preserve our attention span as users (and humans). However well-intentioned their shift is, though, they should start that change in a similarly slow fashion. Turning an about face immediately, as they’re attempting, breeds confusion, then boredom and resentment among their users.

I, personally—when presented with the new layout and direction for information sharing, thought it was a mistake.

And this behavior is exactly why Facebook gets such a bad rap—they change elements without notification, frequently. That is a recipe for user resentment.

Matt Popkes, Digital Strategist +

Beth Palmer, Project Manager +

Facebook’s redesign is nothing more than on trend.

That’s clear in that: Standing social media and news media giants have adapted a similar aesthetic en masse (think: Pinterest, Linkedin, Google+, Ebony, USA Today, and many, many, many more). And, simultaneously, brand new online publishing sites like Medium embody less-is-more  right out of the gate.

So, I’ve accepted it. And, I do like it. But, it doesn’t concern me because I know, if the past is telling (and it is) the next game-changer’s around the corner.

Remember the redesign avalanche Pinterest’s success created? All of a sudden, all sites that knew anything about anything adopted the mosaic, waterfall, image-driven fluid layout (eROI THINK and eROI WORK pages included) made popular by Pinners. That’s the type of game-changer I anticipate.

I wonder who is collaborating and coding right now, dreaming up the next major desktop/tablet/mobile/touch user experience design innovation? Is it a person or company you know? Let me know, because, I’m excited. (Seriously, do. I’m best reached @bethsheapalmer on Twitter.)

Is there anything quite like the first round of Logo Madness? I asked the committee, to which they responded, “Stop asking us our opinions on things. We’ve spent the last several hours evaluating logos.” Needless to say, the competition was fierce, tensions ran high and the field of 64 hopeful logos was narrowed to the remaining 32. 

Logo Madness: Round 1 Results

Click to download bracket

Highlights from Round 1

Here’s a look at some the highlights, lowlights and compelling story lines that we’ve come to expect in this journey towards logo supremacy. Web Developer and tournament madness enthusiast Matt Grantski (He’s crazy. He took Thursday/Friday off just so he could watch basketball all day) will be joining me in providing commentary on some of these highlights.

Grantski: Before we recap the first round, a question that was brought up in the selection process and may concern some of you in voting on our Facebook page is, “What exactly about the logo are we voting on?” It’s a good question. I’m glad I hypothetically asked it. A certain measure of brand recognition was responsible for seeding some logos very high, and some seedings were based on the success of the company more than the aesthetics of the logo. So, we could vote based on brand awareness, color scheme, simplicity of design, subtleness of message, or in the case of McDonald’s vs. Trail Blazers match-up, blind home bias. The simple answer to that question is: Vote for what you like more, unless you disagree with my picks.

Google Search vs Bing. Office vs Google Docs. Gmail vs Outlook. It’s a rivalry as old as the internet itself. Google entered the tournament as a 6-seed, much lower than anticipated, and drew a difficult 11-seed match up vs. the gaming console powerhouse. What began as a hotly-contested match-up ended with the Google logo running away with a dominant victory over the green, spherical X. Google wins.

Grantski: There’s not much going on with the “Google” logo in RGBY (Red, Green, Blue, Yellow), but I think it’s the Google Doodles that made the difference here. And I think we can all consent that the XBOX logo looks like a split baked potato that came from a nuclear waste farm.

Facebook, as a 2-seed was highly favored in this match up. But, our judges and fans were quick to remember that one should never underestimate the power of Jack Daniel’s. The margin of victory was very slim but in the end, Zuckerberg and Co. walked away with the win. Facebook wins.

Grantski: I wonder how well the Al Pacino logo would have fared against JD. In related news, Facebook changed their logo three times since this tournament started.

In the long, storied history of Logo Madness, 16-seeds are easily dispatched by 1-seeds. It’s just a fact of life. BUT, let’s not forget about the importance of home-court advantage, which in this case was the deciding factor in the Trail Blazers logo winning in dominant fashion over the burger behemoth. Portland Trail Blazers win!

Grantski: A #1 seed loses to the 31-36 Trail Blazers? i’m lovin’ it.

The “Uncle-Phil” showdown was not the epic battle it was predicted to be. 1-seed Nike and the world-famous Swoosh won handily over the green and yellow. The lone highlight from this match up was the jaw-dropping halftime performance by “Supwitchgirl.” Nike wins.

Grantski: I love Fresh Prince, bit I don’t even get this reference. Matt Popkes is like 90 years old though, so maybe he’s referencing a Vaudeville act or something. I don’t know. Is anything ever going to defeat Nike’s Swoosh? Is this tournament just a contest to see who gets to lose to them? Do I ask a lot of hypothetical questions to pad my answers and sound smart? Do I want a gyro for lunch?

Sides are drawn. Allegiances are made. Families are divided. Such is the nature of this storied rivalry. The job of our illustrious panel was to strip away “Jetah” and “Nomah” and evaluate the strength of logo alone. This 8-9 match up resulted in a runaway win for the pinstripes (There were a lot of sports references in there. Summary: New York won). Yankees win.

Grantski: I asked some of my Boston friends what they thought of this, but nothing they said was suitable to print here. It was wicked profane.

And there you have it fans. One round down, 32 hopeful logos remaining. Stay tuned for upcoming eROI coverage of the remaining action by following us on Facebook, Twitter and as always, our blog. And don’t forget, there’s  only one way to see your favorite logos advance.

Vote now on our Facebook page!

 Disclaimer: These logos are provided for not for profit informational purposes only and should not be considered an endorsement of a brand or product. 

How does Logo Madness work?

Similar to a conveniently timed college basketball tournament, 64 logos are divided into four 16-team regions and assigned a seed number from 1-16; 1-seeds being the most highly favored logos to win it all, while 16-seeds are the lowest.

How are Head-to-Head Match-Ups Decided?

eROI has formed an esteemed panel of experts across a series of disciplines, all with a keen interest in brand logos. Creative directors, designers, developers and many more make up this panel of judges, which we’ve deemed…

Agency Logo Committee Of Honestly Objective Logotype … or A.L.C.O.H.O.L.

Ranging from global brand recognition to basic color scheme, logos are judged and voted for or against based on a wide range of criteria. Each match up will be carefully studied by the panel, whose votes will determine the ultimate winners, losers, bracket-busters and Cinderellas in this tournament.

How do I Follow Along?

Follow eROI Think as every week we’ll reveal round-by-round winners and losers, from 64 contenders all the way down to championship and crowning of the greatest logo of all-time.

You can download your printable Logo Madness bracket here for your own predictions. Shoot your completed bracket to us via-email and we’ll even track your progress!

Hit us up on Facebook and Twitter to vote and comment on match ups and follow the tournament story-lines.

And Now, the Contenders:

A very diverse field in this region, with head-to-head match ups between power players in apparel, technology, sports and the almighty booze category.

Matchups to Watch:

2 Facebook vs. 15 Jack Daniels – Upset Alert. When Jack Daniels is involved, expect the unexpected.

8 Yankees vs. 9 Red Sox – A much anticipated match up with fans in the North East … but nowhere else.

This region features highly favored, perennial American soft-drink super-powers, Coca-Cola and Pepsi as well as a strong showing from the German automobile category.

Matchup to Watch:

7 MLB vs. 10 Audi –  In what’s been dubbed “Baseball vs. Bratwurst”, Major League Baseball takes on the sleek German auto manufacturer in a highly contested match up.

Time to super-size the competition as fan favorites from American fast food and Japanese video gaming face off in this unpredictable region.

Matchups to Watch:

1 McDonald’s vs. 16 Trail Blazers –  The Trail Blazers are a huge underdog against french-fried superpower McDonald’s but never rule out an upset when the hometown has your back.

5 Olympics vs. 12 Disney –  Two brands steeped in winning tradition and glitter offer one of the most compelling first round match ups of all.

Apple comes into this region as a heavy favorite but will have to get past some major challengers in Target, Google and Twitter.

Matchup to Watch:

6 Google vs. 11 XBOX – The search giant intends to make XBOX look like a bunch of tournament N00bs in this first round, multi-player battle royale.

Disclaimer: These logos are provided for not for profit, informational purposes only and should not be considered an endorsement of a brand or product. 

Wrong. Email is still subject to the hiccups and lost packets that the USPS subjects us to. Yeah, we won’t ever get an email that’s been kicked around, smashed, and tossed over the fence but sometimes, sometimes it just won’t arrive.

Wait, what’s that you say? It’s a computer! Nothing ever goes wrong with computers. Wrong again. We all have used the excuse on dear old Aunt Mabel about how we just didn’t get her email. The truth is, it happens all the time. The good thing is, there are steps you can take to make it less likely to happen.

Email marketing is inherently built on trust. I’m giving you my email address with the idea that I’m getting something out of it. Early access to information, deals, special offers, are usually the bait. In return, you are getting my money with the understanding that you are not going to sell my information to the highest bidder or spam the hell out of me with ten emails a day. I’m talking to you, Living Social and Groupon.

This is the best case scenario where the marketer has asked for and received your permission to email you. This would all be fine and dandy if there wasn’t a middleman. Your ESP. Google, Yahoo, heaven forbid, Hotmail, all have a giant wall around their fiefdom of internets.

As an email marketer, if you’ve ever taken a look at your bounce records, you may have had a time where you noticed there was an inordinate amount of bounces from from one particular domain. For example, in my experience it has been unbelievably difficult of late to crack Yahoo’s inbox for some senders, especially if you are sending from a new IP address. (Warming up an IP is a must, but that’s a talk for another post.)

So, what else can email marketers do aside from asking  new clients to add our sending address to their address book? In response to the never ending deluge of spam, there have been several standards that help to identify legitimate email. SenderID or SPF and DomainKeys or DKIM are, respectively, Microsoft and Yahoo’s forays into removing the processed ham product before it gets to your inbox. If you do a search for each of these you will find that there is a lot of confusion surrounding all of these standards. DomainKeys was created by Yahoo and DKIM was created by open source internet. There is a lot of conflicting information out there regarding these, but luckily for us, adding SPF records and DKIM records to your DNS will, for 90% of people, be plenty of identification.

So what exactly are these records doing?

Understand?

No? Good, it’s not simple stuff. Essentially, SPF verifies your mail by checking the sending IP address against the address you specified in your DNS records. If they don’t match it’s off to the junk folder with your Viagra email.

DKIM

DKIM is a lock and key model like you see here. Your DNS stores a public “key” that can be accessed by receiving mail servers that will unlock the encryption that is added to your email’s headers when sent. If the key doesn’t fit the lock then your clients will never know how large their, ahem, bank account could be.

Does this affect deliverability?

Yes and no. It is well documented that Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, and Hotmail use some combination of these identification options, along with IP reputation, and proprietary algorithms checking for spam indicators in deciding where to send your message. Enacting these measures does not ensure that your mail will be getting to its recipient but it definitely seems to help. You wouldn’t let someone in your house you didn’t know unless you could positively identify them right? Makes sense.

The other piece of this is sending email to a business that has their own rules, read firewall. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with clients that have been sending email to a client forever and then suddenly the same email with no changes gets barred at the gates by the company firewall. It’s frustrating. Despite your best efforts in signing your mail with every manner of identification it’s still not making it. Thankfully, it is decidedly easier to improve the situation provided you have the ability to talk to their IT department. Usually the situation can be remedied fairly quickly by asking to have your IP or Domain whitelisted.

Email deliverability can definitely be a bit of a black box when it comes to the machinations of ESP’s. They have a reputation to uphold with their clients. Ultimately if you’ve enacted some identification procedures like DKIM and SenderID, are acting in good faith with the recipients of your material, and your material is something that the people want to read you will make it to the inbox. A good rule of thumb is to think about what YOU would like to have make it to your inbox and shoot for that.

One major shift that anyone who isn’t rocking a Nokia 3315 is aware of is how much we use our mobiles for browsing the interwebs. Whether it is cat videos on YouTube or pictures of cats on Tumblr, we use our phones for everything. According to this awesome chart Litmus put together on Email Market Share, Apple iPhone ranks number one among email client usage with 23%, followed by the stubborn Outlook desktop application with 16% and Google Android coming in 5^th with 8%.

Even though mobile views are dominating our world and are on the rise, it’s still too early to even think of abandoning our old-school classic desktop versions (Wah Wah).

Alright, so what next? How do you give your customers the best email experience when you have to take into account multiple devices?

Before we can successfully adopt an approach to suggest to our clients, we need to start with ourselves, at eROI. After signing up for a few webinars, playing around with wireframes, code snippets and some open conversations over coffee, we decided to meet as a group to take a look at our current newsletter and build a new, multi-device email as a group, both designers and developers.

First, we took a look at our company’s current e-newsletter.

Things we were doing right:

Current Newsletter

• Concise preheader that is under 85 characters, displayed ahead of the “View as webpage” so it will follow the subject line when an email is viewed in an inbox
• Clear hierarchy of content using both font-size and color
• Large hero image
• Links to blog posts and social channels, including large icons in the footer

After a brief round of pats on the back, we started the discussion about creating a multi-device email. We decided we needed to implement the following:

• Less content. According to the Email Stat Center, the majority of viewers will not read the entirety of the email, especially large content blocks, making concise copy and visual cues extremely important to keeping their attention.
• Higher call to action. We wanted to make sure that we had a clear way for the subscriber to access the content on our site, whether they were viewing it in a preview pane or the top-left corner of their Android phone.
• More white space. This doesn’t necessarily entail that the space needs to be the color “white” but provide more room for the content to be fluid. For us, this meant taking away our container and letting the color flush full width.
• Discard columns. Columns in general do not scale well.
• Larger text. Both in headline and in copy. And while you are at it, make those headlines actionable.
• Larger imagery. Let’s face it, we love pictures.
• Finger-friendly buttons. Yep, we said it. Bonus points if you use web-friendly text too.

As a result, we designed and developed a winning template. Take a look. This isn’t the end of our discovery, but it is the first (public) draft. Our last template lasted for a little under a year. Don’t let your email get stale. Evaluate its effectiveness to your goals and rebuild.

If you aren’t already subscribed to our newsletter, please sign up below so you can see it live in your inbox next week!

Is a multi-device email for you?

How does your subscriber base behave?

First things first, figure out who your subscriber base is and what email clients they use. Do they work in sales or travel a lot? If your subscriber is constantly on the go, chances are they will be viewing your email on a mobile device. To take the guess work out, many email service providers offer testing for your subscriber lists, including Litmus’s Email Analytics, which will show you a breakdown by percentage of what email clients are being used.

Won’t people just save it for later?

According to Litmus, only 3% of users will view the email on multiple devices, so while you might see a fascinating email on the bus that you want to read in detail once you get to work, it’s a good chance your ADD mind will forget about it as it gets piled on by the other million emails you subscribe to.

Isn’t it a lot of additional coding?

Not necessarily, as long as you include a multi-devices approach as part of your strategy. It’s not impossible to manipulate an existing email campaign into a mobile one, but as we learned during our Collaboradabra, it’s more successful to establish a base level of user experience that all email clients will be able to render properly.

Whether you decide to shift your campaign to be multi-device friendly or not, it is always important to constantly re-evaluate your strategy and make sure you are obtaining the highest engagement and conversions.

Hungry for more?

We attended the Multi-Screen Email Design: Lessons from the Pros webinar hosted by Silverpop, Justine Jordan from Litmus and Brian Sisolak from Trilogy Interactive and was definitely one of our favorites. Check out the following whitepaper on Multiscreen Design.

Campaign Monitor also has an extremely comprehensive guide to designing and coding multi-device emails.

Make it Actionable

Feedback without context or direction is simply fluff. “This isn’t working,” does not help us understand your pain point, the symptom for the issue, or what you want. Feedback without context is not helpful. There were a thousand variables and solutions for your particular design issue and by telling me “it doesn’t work,” you have only narrowed the field by one.

If you do not know what bothers you, say that. Be honest. “This is not working, but I can’t put my finger on ‘why,’” gives your designer the ability to ask questions and work through the issue with you to find out what is bothering you. This will help your designer know how you approach problems, your thought processes that will eventually produce ‘better’ design for you in the future. (In this instance, “better” means design that fits or pushes your current brand in a way that improves your return on investment, appeals to your target audience, and meets your goals.)

Do Not Crowd Source Our Work

When you do this you’re asking for trouble. No literally, you’re asking for trouble. Anyone who needs to provide feedback should be in every meeting we have. Obviously there are a few exceptions to this, but if you’re someone who likes generalities and rules to guide you—they need to be in every meeting.

Take “Jill in accounting”, who doesn’t have a marketing background. She thinks in numbers and cents (and a foggy world that be) and has no concept of the strategy or the context for the decisions we’ve made together as designer and client. Plus, Jill is applying all her feedback as a thirty-year accountant, then given the opportunity to give feedback on something that she didn’t have a role in making. Of course she will find something to nitpick! (You will recognize Jill’s feedback isn’t Actionable—instead she just doesn’t like Sans Serif fonts.)

Never Borrow

Remember that you are working with artists and artists invest a tiny (or large) part of themselves every time they create. Now imagine what it feels like if you ask for the button from someone else’s campaign, the copy treatment from Cabella’s logo, and the color scheme from a competitor. It hurts. Somewhere a fairy dies every time someone asks a designer to steal.

We do our best work with great collaboration and rapport with clients and the brand, add time, a lot of coffee and music, and you get your design. This didn’t exist before and now it does and it came from our minds. A designer pulled it from your mind, through theirs and out their fingers. Seriously. Not only will it probably fail to look cohesive or meet your goals as well as it could, but you will kill a fairy. Do not steal.

Instead, tell us what you like about the button. (The button really stands out and almost begs to be clicked because it looks like pillows and dreams), Cabella’s logo treatment (script font for the “Letters from the CEO” section just seems more personable and approachable), or the color scheme from a competitor (their colors just make me feel confident, secure, like my money will always be there and it’s safe). That helps! Stealing doesn’t.

Provide Examples, Don’t Mark It Up

The “red pen” is just now starting to have a comeback and print publications had to start dying off for that to happen. No one likes a critic, an editor. It’s human nature to take over, just do it, and write all over someone’s work. Please do not. This is a huge offense to designers everywhere. To you, it’s a gesture to help that is almost always overlooked, driving us faster into disengagement. If we “missed the mark” with your design, show us examples of other successful campaigns where you feel your brand (or goal) is better represented.

If a client sent me eight examples of headline treatments that they like better than the one I delivered, with the feedback to talk about headline treatments in the main content, I would pee-myself-excited. This shows your designer you respect their work and want to work together to solve the issue they’re having. Allowing your three in-house designers, or taking the work into MS Paint yourself, to mark up or change the work is the opposite of working together. (See Make it Actionable, or Do Not Crowd Source Our Work.)

Trust your designers

We’re professionals—literally humans who are paid to design. I know the unknown is scary, but we’re here to help guide you through this. If you follow my feedback at the end of your project you will probably find a blossoming work-friendship, new brand loyalist, and a trusted designer. It is a leap of faith, and we know that. Most of us have a genuine need to help, we love our work, and will eventually love your brand. Let that happen. We’re here to catch you and you’re there to make sure we don’t go too far for your comfort.

(Cue the music. Fade. Fin.)

Need to know whether the money you spend on your monthly newsletter is working or even worthwhile? Tack this string onto the end of your inbound links in your email:

?utm_source=”emailsoftwareprovider”&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=”monthlypromotion”

If you are an ecommerce company, you can track these subscribers through to conversion and get an idea of how much your email campaign is worth to you. If you are not an ecom company, you can track goal completions (you do have goals set up right??) attributed to this sect of subscribers and at worst you can see how they interact with your site differently than people coming to your site through referrals or direct routes.

If you are active in social media, a string like:

?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=landingpage1

can be helpful in determining what channels are converting for you and what ones aren’t. Replace “twitter” in the “utm_source=twitter” section with facebook, pinterest, linkedin, etc. for wherever the link is being posted. This will allow you to track inbound visits via campaigns, medium, or source, and give you a better idea of who is coming to your site and where from.

The more places you have links being put out, the more confusing it can get, so I recommend having a spreadsheet for naming conventions. It could look something like the Excel chart to the right. Make sure you update it with any ongoing campaigns you have. This is a great way to benchmark various campaigns’ effectiveness. You can easily generate any number of tracking strings at Google’s own URL builder and if you need more specific tags you can add utm_term and/or utm_content as well. Just make sure that you have Source, Medium, and Content at a minimum, or the link will break.

Any inbound link that you are putting out into the ether should have tracking strings attached to it otherwise it’s no good to you from a reporting standpoint. With the exception of Google Adwords, this is mostly a manual process but it is well worth it when trying to determine the worth of your marketing efforts.

There exist two mainstream ways digital news can find a sustainable profit: through ad sales, or through paid digital subscriptions.

Paid digital subscriptions should not be a choice for news sources that charge for their print editions; they should be the standard. Successful and long-term sustainable paid digital news subscriptions require two things, simultaneously: omnipresence and strategic audience profiles.

Omnipresence

There’s not much sense in offering a free, easy-anywhere-access version of the same valuable news content online, then wondering why ever-busy humans don’t take the time to find a physical establishment that sells the news source in print and then pay for it.

The content present on both online and print versions of a news establishment is worth paying for because it’s researched and reported–theoretically in an ethical and objective, watchdog way–by professional journalists who have learned their craft while earning a Bachelor’s Degree, sometimes honing it further earning a Master’s Degree, at paid and unpaid internships, and by keeping up with the latest in news reporting technology and standards on their own time.

But, if there’s one thing we know about the Internet, we know people have a sense of entitlement, now, since content on it has been free for so long. Look to TV, movies and music for examples: with each new paywall, a new illegal download–albeit free–site popped up.

So, all major newspapers and news establishments that charge for their print versions, must all begin to charge for their digital versions. No exceptions. It won’t work unless it’s omnipresent, because, if humans can find news for free on another site, they are less likely to pay for it on your site. And, yes, this would mean the end of aggregates that republish other sources’ stories. Instead, other sites could link to the full story on its original site, where a paid subscription is required.

Audience Profiles

It’s not enough for news sources to create a paywall between readers and their content. Long-term success requires a curation of sorts, based on in-depth research into a news-market’s readers.

News enterprises, find a great agency to take the time to profile your audience: What does your audience care about to the point they’d be happy to pay to have access to that type of information on the web and on apps? Do this before you roll out your paywall, if you haven’t already. It works post-paywall, too.

Now, when that subject-worth-paying-for has been identified, the agency you’ve hired should create a digital marketing plan tailored to your audience, that outlines the access to info they care about that they’ll receive upon paying for a digital subscription.

The idea is to call out the specific content and perks related to your audience’s main interest, attract them to the digital subscription, even though the access isn’t different than what’s already granted to paid subscribers.

The team at eROI implemented this strategy for The Baltimore Sun after the Tribune Company selected the Baltimore paper as a mid-market test to identify a successful paid digital subscription model. Through extensive interviews and research, eROI outlined main topics Baltimore residents care about, including: Super Bowl XLVII Champions, The Baltimore Ravens.

So, eROI created a multi-channel campaign to kickoff at the beginning of the NFL season in 2012, and within the first week of the campaign, digital subscriptions had increased over 50% from the same week the previous year.

Going forward, eROI will create additional marketing campaigns aimed to increase digital subscriptions to The Baltimore Sun by narrowing the focus to other topics of interest. eROI will also spend additional time at the beginning of each campaign to strategize how to improve online registration to increase the number of conversions to paid digital subscriptions by making the process the most appealing and simple.

I think this approach is incredibly smart, but it really rests on tried and true wisdom: measure twice, cut once. Spend the extra time in the beginning for strategy and audience profiles, and the digital subscription conversions will increase exponentially.

Moment of Silence

Let’s pay respect to the fall and decline of publishing giants in the last year, and the hundreds of writers, editors, photographers, marketers, and other professionals, who find themselves jobless as a result.

If we take time to strategically analyze each audience and tailor a paid subscription plan for the news and perks the respective demographic truly cares about, we may find ourselves having access to more robust news coverage since more professional journalists will be paid; feeling the difference in the public sector when the press has its balance of power, rather than the imbalance caused by a thin news staff; and attending less publishing funerals by this time next year, meaning through strategic marketing, the print publishing industry will finally have found its secure place to stand in the digital world.

Time, Inc.

• In January 2013, Time, Inc. reduces global staff  by about 500 employees. The company publishes print media including TIME Magazine, People Magazine and Sports Illustrated.
• In February 2013, reports show Time, Inc.  parent company Time Warner is looking into selling Time, Inc. to Meredith Corp., a move that would likely result in more layoffs and high-level shakeups.

Newsweek

• On Dec. 31, 2012, Newsweek published its final issue, after nearly 80 years in print. The news magazine now lives on the digital format only.
• Layoffs accompanied the closure of their print operation.

The New York Times

• In January 2013, The New York Times encouraged staff to take buyouts, in order to reduce the number of looming layoffs.

Reader’s Digest

• In February 2013, the private owners of Reader’s Digest put the 91-year-old publisher into bankruptcy, shedding $465 million in debt.

And So Many More.

Kuhnian Paradigm Shift:  Scientific revolution occurs, according to epistemologist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies that cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn’s view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it.

We live in exciting times. We are living through a Kuhnian paradigm shift. We can see this happening all around us in many different applications, but for now let’s focus on our space. The wonderful world of the Internet. I wonder if you can go to any digital or Internet marketing conference nowadays and not hear the words “content marketing”. It’s everywhere. Since I have been in this business, there have been a couple of golden rules I learned at the beginning and rule number one was content is king. I mean, that was all the rage in this digital marketing space when I arrived here. So, in the context of some common sense, it’s a bit ironic that now, seven years later, it’s back … with a vengeance.  And, rightly so. I am glad there is a shift from smoke and mirrors to the user … back to the content … back to being useful. The future of all this is the 1-to-1 relationship.  It’s our density … oh, I mean, destiny.

There is evidence all over of old digital marketing models crashing and new ones beginning. Let me tell you, I am on the front lines of a few of them  … traditional ad agency models … magazines … media networks … political campaigns … banks … and maybe the roughest … newspapers. Darwin was right. Adapt or die. Hear me now, listen to me later, the future is here.

So, newspaper. As I said, they’re probably the hardest hit by the digital paradigm shift. Let’s dig in to that a little. How bad is it? And, I think the appropriate question is how bad was it? This is an article by Ben Parr on Mashable.com from three years ago. Emphasis on three years ago. This is not new news, I just want us to contemplate how we got here. First step: check the numbers. From Ben’s article, here are the years of steepest decline by total industry revenue:

• 2006, $49.275 billion
• 2007, $45.375 billion
• 2008, $37.848 billion
• 2009, $27.564 billion

In four years, newspaper ad revenue dropped by 44.24%. That’s nearly half of the industry’s revenue. That is pure craziness for a bastion of American business and industry. Citizen Lame.

Check out the full chart: Annual Newspaper Ad Expenditures

Ben goes on to describe the fact that journalism isn’t dead, it’s evolving. So true. No one said newspapers had to throw their hands up and give up. They already had the best poll position from the start … the best writers … proven content strategies … a built-in loyal community … a point of view … and, oh right, whole histories’ worth of content to pull from. Why didn’t they succeed? They didn’t adapt. They didn’t realize they were on the wrong side of the paradigm. I hope I can learn from this.

Who in media is doing digital right? One word answer from me is VICE. They know their audience, they create outstanding content, and they evolve. They know publishers are brands … and brands should be publishers. To spare you another five minutes of your life you won’t get back, here is a great article from Digiday on why VICE rules. You can read that later. I think the main thing they do is treat authenticity as currency. We had it right in the ’90s … keep it real.

There are other kernels of truth that we can learn from newspapers’ struggle. While content is king, that isn’t enough to get you by. You have to adapt in more areas than your content. You have to adapt to technology, whatever the next big thing is—and when I say big, I don’t mean Facebook or Pinterest, I am talking about the next big thing like the next Internet. That kind of game changer. When that thing comes along in 20 years, content will still be king, but if digital content and brands don’t adapt they will be talking about blogs like we talk about newspapers.

Now, back to Kuhn. He used the duck-rabbit optical illusion to demonstrate the way in which a paradigm shift could cause one to see the same information in an entirely different way.

Here are some other Kuhnian paradigm shifts [Source]:

• The transition in cosmology from a Ptolemaic cosmology to a Copernican one.
• The acceptance of the theory of biogenesis, that all life comes from life, as opposed to the theory of spontaneous generation, which began in the 17th century and was not complete until the 19th century with Pasteur.
• The transition between the Maxwellian Electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian Relativistic worldview.
• The development of quantum mechanics, which replaced classical mechanics at microscopic scales.
• The acceptance of plate tectonics as the explanation for large-scale geologic changes.
• The development of absolute dating.

IF YOU READ JUST ONE PART OF THIS POST READ THIS:

• Adapt or die

• Journalism isn’t dead, its evolving

• Brands are journalists; journalists are brands

Wrap Your Brand’s Mind Around Content Marketing

Keep your voice true to your audience, develop a cohesive strategy across the channels that matter for your brand, and find a space to add value. These tips and more, live-Tweeted by #PDX digital marketing agency eROI (www.eroi.com) during the #ContentWorks webinar on Feb. 12, 2013.

Storified by Beth Shea Palmer· Tue, Feb 12 2013 11:53:59

@danmoyle Yes! But then again, there’s the long game to keep in mind, too! It might not be evident immediately. #ContentWorkseROI

Where did this craft movement start?

The resurgence of craft across nearly all industries can best be seen, smelled, tasted, heard and felt in the city of Portland, Oregon.  Let’s focus on taste.  A friend of mine, Kim Malek, who was a marketing executive at lots of big brands including Tazo Tea and Starbucks decided to move back to Portland and start the ice cream company Salt and Straw. Kim’s and her cousin/co-founder Tyler’s craft is to “use ice cream as a platform to provide all the best things that Oregon has to offer.” Flavors like “Cream of Bone Marrow and Cherries”. What? Somehow it works. Check out the video to see how they collaborate with  local cheese-makers, chocolate-makers. Salt and Straw is at the center of an entire local culinary craft industry. Their ice cream is not cheap. It’s expensive to make, it takes time, and it takes a lot of failed attempts at new flavor combinations, but consumers are willing to pay for the best in the ice cream craft.

Other examples of craft in Portland:

• Jacobsen Salt – Founder Ben Jacobsen took hundreds of trips carrying a 5-gallon bucket (40 lbs) of sea-water in each hand from the Oregon Coast Netarts Bay to his pick-up truck and would go home each day to harvest small amounts of salt to sell to Portland restaurants. No one else was crazy enough to form a business around this back-breaking work, but Ben is the best at his craft and is being sought out all over the world for his salt.
• Voodoo Donut – Keep Portland weird. Founders Kenneth Pogson and Tres Shannon have no problem with weird. They innovated with donut flavors like maple bacon bars and created a brand that is so sought after, people fly to Portland just to experience that special Voodoo Donut sugar high.
• Sweatpea Bicycles – Natalie Ramsland, a former architect and bike messenger, started a hand-crafted bike frame business that has a 4-year waiting list. She is a master of her craft and people pay top dollar for a truly custom bike made from pure love and a little bit of steel.

Portland isn’t the only place where craft thrives.  In Japan, Jiro Ono, 85-year-old sushi master is continually making minor improvements to perfect his craft every day. He has dedicated his whole life to sushi.

Part 2 of the blog post will discuss how Portland craft is influencing digital marketing—Here’s one quick example:

Employees at eROI have shown their manager (me) that they are serious about digital marketing craft by starting a social media program within the agency to drive thought leadership on eROI’s behalf across 5 social channels – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and our Think blog.  Each week, 1 employee is dedicated to 1 digital channel (5 employees for 5 marketing channels) and posts on eROI’s behalf every day all week, then a different crop of 5 employees takes over the next week.  That is human-powered, strategic, constant improvement, filled with personality and driving excellence in the company.  Check out our Slideshare presentation on how this works:

Seoul Virtual Shopping Center

In part 1 of this post I promised a follow up focusing on the retail and publishing industries as technology is dramatically changing the face of business in these sectors and both are struggling to keep pace. It wasn’t until I started really digging in that I realized the breadth and complexity involved on both fronts. It makes keeping up with digital marketing trends look like child’s play. Therefore, for sanity’s sake on both my end and yours, I’ve decided to tackle them one at a time, starting with retail.

As in my last post, we’ll take a look at the current state of affairs, trends on the horizon and potential scenarios of a technologically transformed future.

Current State

E-commerce growth is significantly outpacing overall retail growth. The National Retail Federation (NRF) projects a mere 3.4% U.S. retail growth compared to a whopping 9%-12% growth in U.S. retail e-commerce in 2013. And this data provided by The Census Bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce [PDF] shows that e-commerce’s share of retail sales has steadily increased over the last decade…

US Retail E-Commerce 2003-2012

Source: Census Bureau, U.S. Dept. of Commerce [PDF]

New(er) contenders, mobile commerce and social commerce, have now joined traditional e-commerce in the fight for consumer attention and dollars. Both are showing healthy growth themselves…

Mobile Commerce Sales 2011-2016

 Source: Internet Retailer http://www.internetretailer.com/trends/sales/

Social Commerce Sales 2011-2015

 Source: Internet Retailer http://www.internetretailer.com/trends/sales/

To add fuel to the fire, many (if not most) people are now armed with smartphones while shopping and wield them to find the best deal on the products they’re browsing in-store, frequently leading them to purchase elsewhere (online or at another retailer).  This phenomenon, known as “showrooming,” has retailers up in arms and scratching their heads for a solution. You can hardly question their concern with a reported 20% of consumers admitting to price comparing in-store and one-third purchasing elsewhere (and other studies I’ve seen report even higher numbers).

Reactions have run the gamut – from disconnecting wifi and blocking cell signals, to implementing or sweetening price matching policies, to offering products not available online. Mobile commerce leader, ShopSavvy, further stokes the fire by allowing brands to reach ShopSavvy users in competitors’ stores with targeted ads and special offers.

If consumers are browsing in-store, but ultimately (and largely) purchasing online, why don’t they simply shop online in first place? A survey conducted by Ipsos in September 2012 revealed that 6 in 10 Americans (age 18-64) prefer to shop in-store. Unsurprisingly, this number decreased by approximately 10% amongst the 18-34 set. I found similar results in other studies I came across, indicating the in-store experience is still a pull for many consumers.

Smart retailers are capitalizing on this and getting in front of showrooming by reimagining the in-store experience. By and large retailers agree this is the smartest solution to stopping the in-store sales bleeding, but are having a difficult time figuring out exactly how. One encouraging example – while only really scratching the surface – is Nieman Marcus, who is looking to develop an app that identifies when customers enter the store and prompts staff to engage with them based on purchase history and preferences. On a somewhat larger scale, Walmart, is partnering with Razorfish, BodyMetrics and Microsoft to embrace new technologies and integrate them into the shopping experience. Their plans include virtual fitting “rooms” and Microsoft Surface displays that allow shoppers to mix and match looks and then swipe them onto their mobile device.

The real challenge (and latest retail buzzword) is Omni-Channel Retailing, which is basically convergence within the retail experience. It means streamlining the customer experience by integrating customer data across all touchpoints and using real-time data to deliver rich, personalized in-store experiences. Shifting to true omni-channel retailing is an enormous undertaking as most retailers will need to completely retool (or more likely replace) their entire systems infrastructure, not to mention overhauling processes, procedures and the actual physical stores.

While omni-channel retailing is the future, many retailers are woefully behind. They’re still playing catch-up on mobile-optimized e-commerce sites. They struggle to collect and leverage customer data in an effective way. Even technologies that have been widely available for years are not being utilized: automated, behavior-based communications and offers, customized online experiences, recommendation engines, social integration…to name a few.

What’s Coming

In the short-term, retail experts detail what’s ahead for 2013: http://www.retailtouchpoints.com/retail-crm/2175-13-retail-experts-share-predictions-in-2013-rtp-outlook-guide

There are also emerging technologies and trends in augmented reality (virtual dressing rooms, virtual floor attendants), haptic technology (texture virtualization) and see-through display windows.

One smart example of advanced technologies changing the face of retail this Seoul subway shopping center (and shopping wall) where commuters can shop while they wait and have goods delivered when they arrive at home later that day.

The Future of Retail?

Scenarios:

• You walk into a retail store, whip out your mobile device (or whip ON your Google Glasses) and a virtual personal shopper identifies items in the store that align with previous purchases, set preferences and items your friends have liked/purchased. The floor attendant collects items in a cue, that a customer can virtually interact with or try on and show to friends for a thumbs up/down. Accepted items are collected on their mobile device, purchased with a tap, wrapped and delivered to them as they depart.
• The mall is transformed. The social aspect is retained through reserved shopping rooms – similar to private karaoke rooms. Groups can gather, with curated collections for individuals for virtual try-on, visible to their group of friends for immediate feedback – both onsite and via social.
• As imagined in my last post – your mirror records every outfit you wear and a holographic interface recommends wardrobe additions/replacements, based on your style, that you can virtually try on and subsequently purchase, on the spot – all within the course of getting dressed for work on a given day. How does this impact how goods are delivered? Is manufacturing re-localized? Can you order from your mirror and have items delivered the same day (a la Amazon same-day)? Does this lead to a more rental vs. purchase society?
• Or, as depicted in this image from Frog Design, you shop off passersby, calling up info on their garments and purchasing via holographic display. Pretty sweet (if not a little stalker-ish).

In all of these scenarios (and beyond), retailers must consider how drastically this changes how they reach and interact with their customers. If getting in front of social and mobile seemed daunting, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Because of our work with the Sun, a lot of us at eROI have adopted the Ravens as our favorite NFL team to root for. We’ve kept a few of the great posters and print ads we’ve made and have them up in various parts of the office. We have more Baltimore Ravens representation in the office than any other professional sports team, and we support a lot of different teams here. Popkes’ and KC’s desks represent the Beavers of Oregon State, Tam has a pennant of her school’s basketball team, the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) Balls. Their mascot is named Scrotie. It was fun for the office to keep informed on the latest Ravens game and their succesful season. I’ve always liked them because they are named after the poem written by the greatest American poet of all time, Edgar Allan Poe. But no team will ever usurp my favorite team. The team the Ravens just so happen to be playing this Sunday. The matchup has created interesting dichotomys. Harbaugh vs Harbaugh, eROI vs Matt Grantski. Monday at the office should be an interesting day.

During the season, Amanda ran a very successful weekly NFL pool, where winners were picked for each game and whoever got the most right would win. You know, if gambling were legal, that is. I won it 5 out of 16 times, so if gambling WERE legal, and if we hypothetically made the entry fee $20, then I would have hypothetically won almost $600 in profit, you know, if gambling were legal.

We didn’t do anything for the playoffs, but we are having a fun little pool for the Super Bowl, where we hypothetically wager on many of the ancillary prop bets that have little to nothing to do with the game. I did this a few years ago and it was really fun. Here’s a list of what we have this year, with my thoughts on each.

1. How long will it take Alicia Keys to sing the US National Anthem? (Over/Under 2min10sec)

I looked up a few anthems and found that not many went longer than 2 minutes. I did some math here, and considering there are 8 lines of the song, she would need to spend on average over 16 seconds per line, including pauses. This sounds like an unreasonable expectation considering she isn’t known for holding notes or exaggerating her voice. She has been out of the limelight for a few minutes, so maybe she will stretch it out, but she seems like the type to do this by the books and avoid much criticism. I vote under, and I expect it to go about 1:50.

2. Will Alicia Keys forget / omit / mess up at least one word of the National Anthem? (Yes/No)

3. Will Alicia Keys add at least 1 NEW word of the official US National Anthem? *repeating a word does not count* (Yes/No)

For the same reasons above, I think she will nail every word. She won’t forget a line, add new words, or repeat a line in her rendition. No to both.

4. What will be the result of the coin toss? (Heads / Tails)

Tails never fails.

5. What will the first play from scrimmage be? (Run/Pass) *A pass play where qb is sacked or scrambles counts as a pass*

My beloved 49ers are going to win the coin toss because the Ravens are fools and will pick heads. The 49ers will defer the kick, electing to get the ball in the second half. The Ravens will get the ball first, and the expectation is that they will run first to calm Flacco’s nerves. However, John Harbaugh will be expecting that, and will elect to pass first. However, Jim Harbaugh will be expecting THAT and come out with an outside linebacker blitz in a man coverage. Flacco will throw it away to avoid a sack, right into the arms of Navarro Bowman. INTERCEPTION! So yes, pass.

6. What will the first commercial after the opening kickoff be an advertisement for? (Food/Drink/Other)

You can rest assured this will be a Bud Light commercial featuring an animal being cute.

7. Will Beyonce be joined by Jay Z on Stage during the Super Bowl Half Time Show? (Yes/No)

My money (if gambling were legal) is on NO for this one. Jay-Z loves to bring Bey-Bey up to the stage because he likes to show off that he’s “got the hottest chick in the game wearin’ my chain,” but does she want or need to show him off?

The real question is whether or not you think she will perform “Crazy in Love,” the duet she did with Jay-Z. His presence is probably entirely predicated on this song, and if Beyonce does it, he will probably appear. So, will she do it? I did some research to compile her most popular songs both as a solo artist and with Destiny’s Child, including Survivor, Halo, Independent Woman, Say My Name, Single Ladies, Irreplaceable, etc., but come on. Listen to the first two seconds of this song and try to tell me that it WON’T be the highlight of her set? When you factor in the horns, the chorus, the “dance” and the “uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, oh no no” part, you can’t convince me she’s not doing this song. I doubt anyone other than Jay-Z will do the rap in his place, so you can lock this one down too.

This is a good dance.

(Bonus pick: I predict Destiny’s Child will reunite at the show. I predict they will officially announce a new album. AND I predict Justin Timberlake will join Jay-Z and Beyonce for a song. You saw it here first.)

8. What predominant color will Beyonce’s top be at the beginning of the Super Bowl Halftime show? (Black, Yellow/Gold, Silver/Grey, White, Red, Pink, Orange, Blue, Green, Other)

This one you just have to close your eyes and pick what’s in your heart. In my heart, I know she will walk out with the fans wearing some big robe or something, and then toss it off when she’s on stage, revealing an outfit glittery and shining like diamonds. I pick Silver/Grey.

9. Which team will throw the first challenge flag? (49ers / Ravens)

Throwing a challenge is akin to not liking how the game is going. Since the 49ers are going to steamroll the Ravens, John Harbaugh and Baltimore throws the first challenge flag.

10. Which team will win? (49ers / Ravens)

You know what I’m picking by now.

11. What will be the color of the gatorade splash? (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue/Violet, Clear, Other/None)

For some reason, Clear is the heavy favorite. I don’t like that. It might as well be water. I like the pictures that come out when a coach is drenched in Yellow #5 and Blue #1 and Red #42. If it’s clear, I don’t get the same satisfaction. It probably won’t even have high fructose corn syrup, and what kind of sports drink doesn’t have that? The next two highly favored colors are Orange/Yellow, followed by Red, Green and Blue as long shots. My favorite Gatorade is Orange but you never see that anymore, so I’m going Yellow here. Yellow #5.

12. How many times will the game be referred to as “Harbaugh Bowl”, “Harbowl” or “Super Baugh?” (Over/Under 2.5)

Phil Simms is the color commentator here. Phil Simms is the worst person at talking football. He says football more than any other football commentator in the National Football League of Football. All announcers are guilty of padding their commentary with empty calories that don’t enhance their point but fill up time. This is one reason why I love tennis. The announcers have to shut up while a game is going on, and they only insert commentary after a point, and it’s directly related to what’s happening. Football announcers make empty statements that have nothing to do with how the game is being played all the time, and Phil Simms is the master at this. Any time the conversation steers towards the Harbaugh brothers, I feel that Phil will name drop this as the Harbaugh Bowl. He will also mention the game they played last year on Thanksgiving as the “original” Harbaugh Bowl, and this will be Harbaugh Bowl II. That’s two right there, and look for Jim Nantz to supply the third. Over.

13. If Ray Lewis is interviewed on TV after the game on the field or in the locker room how many times will he mention “God/Lord”? (Over/under 3.5)

This is Ray Lewis’ last chance to be Ray Lewis after a game, and he will pull out all the stops, win or lose. Over. Over. So much over. Lock it down.

There’s only one more question left, and I’ll let Beyonce ask it.

Now that we’ve all consumed our fair share of 2013 predictions—year of the tablet, RTB (real-time bidding) grows up, augmented reality goes mainstream, big data gets wrangled in, SoLoMo hits its stride, etc.—let’s take a step back … and look BEYOND.

After all, evaluating technology one year at a time is a losing battle, and companies should take note.

Let’s take a look at how we got here, what’s coming and what you need to be focusing on…

Consumers & Companies

Despite dramatic spikes in consumer adoption rates, companies continue to lag behind consumers in adapting. Many are still scrambling to catch up on mobile (while still busy getting in front of social), nevermind planning for the next big thing. In fact, according to Mongoosemetrics’ Mobile Readiness Study published in February 2012, which examined the top 1 million sites on Quantcast,

“… only 9% were deemed mobile ready. The rate of mobile readiness grew for websites in the top 100,000 of the Quantcast Top Million, but the increase was only to 14.8%.”

Yikes. Especially considering the steady increase of mobile searches over desktop searches and that consumer expectations rise along with their adoption rates.

It’s time to stop catching up and start catching ON. It’s a necessity, not a luxury, if you plan to stay relevant, competitive and, well…alive.

Let’s be honest…consumers, by definition, need only consume what’s provided them. Given the experience is tolerable (not even necessarily good), they show a great propensity for adoption, as long as there is value in doing so (utility, entertainment, efficiency). Companies have much more to contend with when addressing new technologies. Each advance impacts communication channels (outward-facing AND data wrangling), internal processes and human/capital resource planning—no small feats to say the least.

Regardless, technology will continue to outpace itself and the next big thing is no little challenge. The interface, like a small chick, is breaking free from the eggshell and will soon be device-free. What does your brand look like in this brave new world?

First, let’s look at the trends to-date and how they inform our future-state…

Current State

Technology has advanced at a dizzying clip over the last 20 to 30 years. Since the dawn of the personal computer, consumer adoption of new technologies has spiked in percentage and rapidity T-O-T (technology over technology).

If these stats are any indication of future adoption rates, I think we’re looking at the “next big thing” arriving closer to 2016 than 2020 (as more commonly predicted).

Source: New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/02/10/opinion/10op.graphic.ready.html

Source: Gartner, IDC, Strategy Analytics, Business Intelligence via http://www.nateriggs.com/disruptive-technology-adoption/

The result? An unsustainable level of fragmentation for consumers and companies alike. The sheer number of communication channels (and resulting data sources) is overwhelming. Keeping up with traditional digital communications (websites, email, etc.), the plethora of social sites and mountains of apps across multiple devices flies in the face of Dunbar’s Number saturation theory. This theory applies to social relationships specifically, but if people tap out at 100 social relationships, it stands to reason there’s a saturation level for interactions in general.

Clearly companies need to find a way to get in front of the advance and adoption trends. Recent indicators also point toward a desire to simplify on the consumer side. Everyone is trying to reign it in.

Convergence

The only reasonable future-state for both parties, in my opinion, is convergence – of devices, interactions and data.

There are several trends that support this theory:

• The topic of social media fatigue pops up more frequently, especially amongst early adopters.
• Online activities are increasingly shifting to mobile/tablet and the demand for multi-function devices is increasing, signaling a desire to consolidate activities into a single device.
• App downloads are predicted to peak in 2013, but then begin to decline in 2014. However, app revenues are projected to skyrocket, indicating that the market has matured and people are getting more selective.
• Consumers increasingly expect inter-connectivity between their technology touchpoints (devices and applications).
• Social media sites continue to mimic and/or import each others’ functionality in an attempt to win marketshare and provide a single destination for social activity.
• Companies are busy getting in front of streamlining, and subsequently leveraging, big data (multiple sources that don’t resolve against each other) in an effective manner. The bigger players are planning major system consolidation in 2013 to help facilitate this. The goal in all of this is not only to use this data to inform business improvements, but to deliver highly-customized experiences to customers.

What The Future Holds

• Augmented Reality
  New developments in several supporting technologies have hopes raised that augmented reality will finally go mainstream in 2013. AR-equipped smartphones, GPS-enabled experiences connecting with niche mobile technologies like NFC and, the much-anticipated availability of THE GLASSES or <ahem> “wearable augmented reality devices” are the most tangible developments.

• Haptic Technology
  Touch response technology has been around for decades. For early gamers, the physical sensation of hitting the “rumble strip” in video game, Pole Position, shows the early stages of this technology. It’s evolved significantly, and heavily informs human/touchscreen interactions. Its greatest promise is texture simulation and humanizing device-free interface interaction.

• Device-free revolution
  Before Google Glass is even available to consumers, the Google team is already thinking beyond the device…with contact lens displays. Depending on how these products roll out, the lens may eclipse the glasses and take mankind one HUGE leap toward device-free interactive experiences. Projection interfaces have been popping up on the scene as well. Interactions mimic touchscreens, but the interface can be projected onto a multitude of surfaces…including human skin.

• Real-time, Responsive, Personalized Everything! (App-nostic?)
  I don’t have a specific example of this, but I invite you to envision a not-so-distant future where big data has been wrangled and every interaction – active or passive – is smart, responsive and real-time.

Scenarios:

Your mirror records every outfit you wear and a holographic interface recommends wardrobe additions/replacements, based on your style, that you can virtually try on and subsequently purchase, on the spot – all within the course of getting dressed for work on a given day.

Your bed records your sleeping habits and automatically adjusts lights and alarm clocks as well as sending data to your shopping list and informing an AR overlay in your refrigerator to recommend food intake for the day. Ideally, robotics advance in pace and can pack your breakfast and lunch based on your bed monitor’s recommendations.

As demand grows for more integrated and streamlined computing interactions, the entire computing experience begins to focus more around activities – communicate, collect, document, produce, explore, shop, etc. – rather than specific applications.

Many of  these technologies already exist in some form, but are fragmented and not connected in an efficient way. It won’t take long before it’s all streamlined. Are you ready? Are you contributing?

What Companies Need to Ask

What frequently gets lost in discussing how to get in front of new technologies, are the logistics of getting there. It’s easy to say “X is coming”, but does anyone break it down and map out the logistical steps of actually getting there?

For instance, I downloaded a TV remote app for my iPhone 3G a few years ago. It didn’t work (or I couldn’t figure out how to GET it to work), so I abandoned it. Recently, the topic resurfaced in my home while reassessing our entertainment setup. I remembered the app I downloaded and thought, “well, it probably works better now.” This is a common experience in a world where technology moves at lightning speed, with decentralized app development rooted in a beta-to-beautiful rollout philosophy.

So, how does this apply to future tech-thinking for your company? While adoption overall may be rapid, there will be ebbs and flows of adoption, abandonment and rediscovery—especially as it pertains to large shifts in technology – such as device-free interfaces. There will be transitional periods where old technologies and new technologies are being used simultaneously. There are advantages to being on the scene early, even if you aren’t perfect, and advantages to waiting and learning from others’ mistakes. Which way to go depends largely on your brand, its values and the nature of your competition.

Here are some questions and considerations bouncing around my brain as I think about charting the course forward…

• How will device-bound and device-free environments interact and/or overlap?
• What will your audience migrate to device-free for first? What will they stick to device-bound for during the transition? What will they expect from you? How does this shape your plans and priorities?
• What does making the transition mean for your company? Which digital properties/assets need to change and how (ex. – how would your website need to change to incorporate haptic technology or gesture-based nav?)
• What can you learn from how people interact with touchscreens, audio commands and gesture-based interfaces (Kinect)?
• What new communication/data channels, if any, will come into play? Which existing ones can go away or be phased out?
• Removing devices solves part of the fragmentation. How do peoples’ needs around the actual experience change in response to a device-free world –where everything is ‘smart’, responsive and hyper-personalized? Will this drive toward more ‘app-nostic’ experiences that focus more on activity (i.e. – produce, record, collect, share, communicate, shop, etc.)

The above is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it helps get the wheels turning.

My main point is two-fold:

1. Companies need to get in the habit of looking forward in an effort to be more forward-thinking and less reactionary. It needs to be part of their core process, not an afterthought.
2. Continual explosion and expansion of technology is not sustainable from a consumption and support perspective. Focus and convergence are inevitable.

I am insanely curious about all of YOUR thoughts on the topic. Are you PROactive or REactive? Why? Can you change? How? Let’s get a discussion going because catching ON over catching UP is going to mean the survival of us all…sooner than later.

In the next installments, I’ll cover emerging trends and technologies in the retail and publishing industries specifically. There are some exciting shifts I’ll think you’ll find very interesting.

Read Part 2: Retail

I want to like it.

We flew American Airlines when I was young. I remember staring expectantly through terminal windows at the shine of the unpainted fuselage. I still have a little metal souvenir they gave me as a child. I flew American through college. They solidly shuttled me from SF to the East Coast and back. I grew up with the brand. It was a good time to fly.

Then something happened.

The planes rattled. They became dingy and dirty inside, the service robotic and rude. Their rewards plan became increasingly complex and unfriendly. With no idea why it all changed, I switched my allegiance and haven’t flown them in years.

American Airlines just unveiled a rebrand. It made me hopeful to hear of it. I empathize with the team behind the rebrand too, because the buy-in and development process of a rebrand of this scale is designed for an endurance athlete. But here’s the thing…

Visit their site. Watch the video that pops up. In it, their CEO talks about the brand’s change. The video starts with the expected historical flashback, highlights a new fleet of planes (good move), awkwardly mentions a vague merger (strange move) and then says the attendants and pilots will have iPads (shouldn’t the pilots be flying the plane?). The words “modernize” and “modern” are used frequently. Many gratuitous plane shots ensue. Finally, the CEO goes for the big reveal…the new logo and paint job.

Stop.

Is it me, or is it decidedly myopic and old-fashioned to place so much rebrand attention on a logo? If you step back to the reasons my relationship with AA broke apart they went much deeper than the paint job. Yet much of the rebrand PR focuses on the superficial look of it all. There’s weak attention paid to service or innovative customer experiences—the aspects of travel that make people rant and rave about a brand.

If you dig further you’ll find a few snippets of insight. They are re-training their flight attendants. And the “iPads” gain some context: “Galaxy Note™ tabs will give our flight attendants immediate access to your connecting gate information, loyalty status, special preferences and more.”

Inevitably, the new AA identity system was a popular topic of debate at the office. Some people really like the new logo. For me, the fact that the iconic eagle looks like a peeling piece of fuselage doesn’t erase my earlier associations with their planes. Nearly everyone agrees the design on the airplane’s tail is “hyperpatriotic” and as one person put it “the brand equivalent of American flag sweatpants.”

Symbols of American patriotism sell. As far as rebrands go, this is one to watch to see if its over-the-top flag waving livery design has an impact on AA’s’ struggles. It’s also one to monitor to see if their changes go deep into the brand to alter the sentiment and experience of their passengers. The airline says “For more than two years, we’ve been building toward a time when the outside of our aircraft reflects the progress we’ve made on the inside.” They sound like they get it. Let’s see if they succeed. Next time I see a smiling family come off one of their flights, I’ll know they’re on their way.

It will be uncomfortable for some.

But, the introduction of Facebook graph search on Tuesday sets in motion an entire new standard in the way people approach their personal and company pages on the social media giant.

“Graph Search is a completely new way for people to get information on Facebook,” Founder/CEO/Chairman Mark Zuckerberg said in Menlo Park, Calif., during a press conference Jan. 15. The so-called “third pillar” of Facebook is expected to roll out in beta over the next few weeks to a few hundred thousand users in the U.S., he said.

Essentially, graph search allows users to find  information within the site that’s been shared with them over time by their friends–or, based on privacy settings, by friends-of-friends and the public–on specific attributes of people, places, companies, photos and videos. For example, recruiters and business development staff will be able to find those who have worked at a certain company; marketers will be able to identify people who have certain interests; and single people will be able to locate fellow singles who have Likes in common: music, movies, activities, etc.

Facebook users’ efforts to capitalize on these personal and professional networking and resource-finding opportunities will create an organic transformation of user behavior. In case you want to get a head start on readying your own personal or company profile for graph search, the new standard will look a little something like this:

Privacy settings, relaxed

Facebook graph search only works as much as you allow it to work. In order to be “matched” via search results to the widest pool of potential employers, consumers, clients, activity buddies or romantic dates, your information will have to be available to friends-of-friends or even the public. Those who had always kept their profile on lock down will be drawn out, for the simple reason of the potential added personal and professional value graph search enables.

Detailed lists, a necessity

Lists will become the bread and butter of maintaining Facebook as a place where you can post photos of you and your friends at Tequila Tuesday, but at the same time show your best self to potential dates and your professional self to would-be employers. New lists segmenting your different types of Friends will have to be created with this in mind, and each share on one’s Facebook timeline must be accompanied by a carefully selected list.

Profile info updates, often

The job of your dreams, the love you’ve been waiting for, could potentially find you via Facebook graph search, or so it’s been hyped. Whether or not the fairy tale will come true, it is accurate to say your profile would come up in results based on the key word queries of recruiters and potential dates. Basic personal profile information, now housed in the “About” and “Likes” sections, will have to be up to date if the “matching” service is to be effective. Constant tweaking of the personal profile, due to a new skill added to one’s resume, or a just-discovered best-band-ever, will ensue. Same goes for company pages. SEO applies here, in the same way it has dictated how Linkedin company and personal profiles are written.

Company reviews, frequent and high quality

It’s the egotistic and altruistic nature of people to offer their opinion when they know it will be considered by those in their circles. With graph search allowing friends, and potentially friends-of-friends, to view a person’s  insights into local hits and misses, Facebook users will think twice before closing out the box that prompts them to leave a  helpful tip at a place where they just checked in or post a review for a company page they just Liked. Additionally, the assurance their every word will be on full display in search results begets more honest and thorough reviews.

What other aspects of user behavior will change in a post-graph-search world? Share your insights in the comments.

Friends, word pundits, and industry professionals: eROI would like to invite you to play our latest, greatest, Pinterest game: Words With eROI!

The goal of the game is to guess the secret word: to play, visit the Words With eROI board on Pinterest. Every day, for the next seven days, eROI will flip one tile on the board to reveal a letter in the secret word!

Will There Be Hints?

Yes! HINT #1: There are 11 letters in the entire word, but only seven unique letters. HINT #2: The secret word in this month’s edition of “Words With eROI” has to do with predictions for 2013. Read Digital Strategist Matt Popke’s blog post on this theme to get the brain juices flowing!

Why Play?

The winner of this installment of Words With eROI wins glory; a $20 gift card to one of our amazing clients, Sock It To Me; and a shout-out from eROI on Facebook, Twitter, and this blog—in other words: social fame!!

What Are The Rules?

1. Follow eROI on Pinterest.
2. Repin a letter from the Words With eROI secret word onto one of your own boards. IMPORTANT: Change the description of the pin to the word that is your guess! (For example: “My guess is: ecommerce!”)
3. Email Words With eROI at pin@eroi.com and include a link to your repin with your guess in the description. This way we’ll know you met the rules and we also will know your email address so we can send you your prize if you win!
4. Read the Fine Print for Words With eROI game.
5. If you are the winner, then the last rule is to enjoy some snazzy socks!

ELIGIBILITY:
Contest is open to all Pinterest account holders who a) are followers of eROI on Pinterest, b) are legal residents of Canada or USA; and c) have reached the age of majority in their province/territory of residence at the time of entry. Employees (and those with whom they are domiciled) of eROI and the Contest judges are not eligible to enter.

HOW TO ENTER:
1. Follow eROI on Pinterest.
2. Repin a letter from the Words With eROI secret word onto one of your own boards. IMPORTANT: Change the description of the pin to the word that is your guess! (For example: “My guess is: ecommerce!”)
3. Email Words With eROI at pin@eroi.com and include a link to your repin with your guess in the description. This way we’ll know you met the rules and we also will know your email address so we can send you your prize if you win!
4. Read the Fine Print for Words With eROI game.
5. If you are the winner, then the last rule is to enjoy some snazzy socks!

Limit of one (1) Entry per person/Pinterest ID per day permitted during the Contest Period. eROI is not responsible for late, lost, misdirected, delayed, incomplete or incompatible Entries.

REPIN REQUIREMENTS:
Your submitted board (“Entry”) must include all of the elements listed under HOW TO ENTER in order to be considered a valid entry for the contest.

By participating in the Contest, each contestant agrees to be bound by these Official Rules (the “Rules”) and by the interpretation of these Rules by the Sponsor, and further warrants and represents that his/her entry:
By entering the Contest contestants agree: (i) that the Sponsor shall have right to publish, display, reproduce, modify, edit or otherwise use the Entry, including, without limitation, any photos included on the Entry, in whole or in part, on the Sponsor’s website, Facebook and twitter accounts, Pinterest, blog and/or for advertising or promoting the Contest or for any other reason; and (ii) to release and hold harmless the Sponsor and its advertising and promotion agencies, the contest judges and each of their respective agents, employees, directors, successors, and assigns against any and all claims based on publicity rights, defamation, invasion of privacy, copyright infringement, trade-mark infringement or any other intellectual property related cause of action.

THE PRIZE AND APPROXIMATE RETAIL VALUE:
There will be one available prize, consisting of a single $20 gift card.

PRIZE WINNER SELECTION:
Contest winners will be selected by the eROI Pinterest Team, based on timeliness and accuracy of Entry.
On January 25th, 2013 eROI will contact the winner via email and Pinterest. Contest winner must then follow the instructions in the comment section of the pin provided in order to claim the Prize. If the contestant does not respond within three (3) business days as instructed, or there is a return of any notification as undeliverable, then the contestant will be disqualified and next contestant with the most creative and original entry in the opinion of the Panel will be selected from amongst the remaining eligible Entries.

GENERAL CONDITIONS:
Without limitation, the Sponsor, its advertising and promotion agencies and the contest judges will not be liable for any failure of the website during the Contest; for any technical malfunction or other problems relating to the telephone network or lines, computer on-line systems, servers, access providers, computer equipment or software; for the failure of any Entry to be received by the Sponsor, its advertising and promotion agencies or the contest judges for any reason including, but not limited to, technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any web site; or any combination of the above. Further, the Sponsor, its advertising and promotion agencies and the contest judges will not be liable for any injury or damage to an contestant’s or any other person’s computer related to or resulting from participating or downloading any material in the Contest.

I’ll admit, I’m about a week late on the “Predictions for the New Year” blog post. By now you’ve undoubtedly been exposed to countless articles, blogs, Facebook posts and drunken rants about what 2013 has in store. Especially in marketing and advertising, there is no shortage of clever quips and presumptions about the year ahead. After all, the only prediction that rings true every year is that everyone will have a prediction and will want to tell you about it.

So, better late than never. In no particular order, here are my predictions for the wide world of media, marketing, and the mayhem beyond for 2013.

1. Facebook will make changes to the user interface. People will lose their minds and forget about it five minutes later.

As sure as the sun will rise, the almighty and powerful Facebook will make a change to your news feed, photo gallery or God forbid, your privacy policy. The townsfolk will gather their pitchforks and torches and march towards Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto estate screaming of crimes and injustices against humanity. The audacity that they would make changes to the free service that you voluntarily participate in on a daily basis is just unforgivable. Then, in a few short mouse clicks, everyone will forget that anything was changed at all as they realize they…just…can’t…quit…Facebook.

 2. Super Bowl commercials will cost an all-time-high $4 million for a 30-second television spot and at least two will feature Kim Kardashian.

This is less a prediction and more scientific fact. You don’t become the #1 searched term in 2012 (Kim Kardashian) and NOT end up in a Super Bowl commercial. Personally, my money is on Pepsi, who will become known as the Official Soft Drink of Talentless Media Whores Slowly Draining the Soul Out of Humanity™. Also, a quick Google search will also reveal that $4,000,000 is roughly the GDP of Mauritania. God bless ‘Merica.

3. People who work in social media will make very public mistakes and get very fired.

In 2011, it was @ChryslerAutos Tweeting to the masses…

I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive.

In 2012, @KitchenAidUSA weighed in on the presidential debates with…

Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’. #nbcpolitics

Of course, in both cases it was some poor soul, entrusted with the keys to the Twitter feeds of these major brands that mistook the brand pages for their own personal accounts. In both cases, the accidental tweets were quickly deleted but not before being retweeted thousands of times (Seriously, who follows KitchenAid on Twitter? That’s the real sad part to this story).  Make no mistake, this will happen again in 2013 to some unfortunate, soon-to-be-fired sap because social media is human interaction in the digital space and humans make mistakes. They’re just not always this public and hilarious.

 4. Brands will overextend themselves, releasing inexplicable new products

Established brands can generate sales based on brand name alone. So, what’s to stop a brand from entering new categories by simply slapping their brand name on entirely new lines of products? In fact, it’s done often and often done well… but, not always. In fact, you can currently vote in an AdWeek poll for the best and worst brand extensions of 2012. Contenders include Paula Dean’s Kids Furniture and Dr. Pepper Beef Marinade. These things exist.

So what can we expect in 2013? Nokia® Gluten-Free Microwave Pizza? Nascar® brand Volumizing Conditioner? Only time will tell.

5. Myspace is “Rebuilt, Redesigned and Reinvented”. Still a glorified music player.

I’m honestly not too sure what to expect here. The word is the new Myspace layout and interface is pretty damn impressive. Personally, I’ve used Myspace over the past few years, but only to find bands I wanted to hear as it seems bands were the only ones actively using Myspace anymore. Now that Spotify has come along, I don’t even use Myspace for music anymore.

Not that I speak for the masses but I’m having a hard time believing that people can be uprooted from their current social networking and online habits to devote significant time to a new and improved Myspace. Regardless of how great the redesign may be or how many pictures of Justin Timberlake there are, it simply might be too late to make an impact. However, I could be way off on this one. Aside from ‘The Love Guru’, JT can do no wrong.

6. Daily Deals have hit the iceberg and the engine rooms are flooding

Groupon’s rapidly plunging stock price has lead to CEO Andrew Mason being named the Worst CEO of 2012 by CNBC.  Living Social concluded 2012 by laying off all but a couple dozen of its U.S. workforce. Suffice it to say, the once mighty daily deals ship, that saw Groupon go public with the second largest IPO since Google, is starting to sink.

Getting merchants to discount their products by 50% in the name of driving foot traffic while you pocket the proceeds has never seemed like a viable, sustainable business model to me. If the two largest players in the daily deals category are in this much trouble, the countless copycats they spawned during the craze don’t stand a chance of surviving 2013. The string quartet is playing and you better make your way to a lifeboat.

 7. Your parent’s television will soon be connected to the internet and you will have to explain to them how to use it.

At the end of 2012, 25% of households had TVs connected to the internet either directly or through an external device like a game console or DVD player. That number is expected to climb to 1/3 of TV households in 2013.

Remember teaching your parents how to check their email? Or maybe you’re currently fielding calls from home asking you what a “Friend Request” is and what the proper protocol is for responding? Regardless, it won’t be long until you’re giving a tutorial on how to access Netflix through the new Blu-ray player because Mom needs to catch up on episodes of The Good Wife.

Phew… so there you have it: good, bad and potentially, grossly inaccurate predictions for the next 12 months. 1 week down, 51 to go.

KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid. When I look at an analytics program like Google Analytics, or begin to delve into the reporting in ExactTarget it can be just as overwhelming as Christmas shopping unless I have a goal. There’s so much information at your fingertips that it can be hard to choose what you should be looking at. Narrowing your focus to some KPI’s and creating measurable reports around them will winnow your choices enough that you aren’t immobilized by choice and instead can see a clear action plan.

This time of year is all about money (don’t let people fool you into thinking it’s caroling and yule logs) so it’s a good time to take a look at who your most profitable visitors are. Analyze how customers who buy in larger quantities are interacting with the site and where they are arriving from by creating a segment of people whose orders are greater than your average. Are they different in some way? How can you reproduce that success with other visitors? Maybe it’s a specific banner ad that is driving those whales. How can you capitalize on that?

Ask yourself what success looks like for your goals.  If social is a focus than using Google’s social reporting can be helpful to see where you have the most influence and which channel is pushing people to your site. Are you tagging your links? Using a tagging schema allows you to see not only what channel is converting for you but what TYPE of links are converting the best. Are they videos? Links to your blog? How are Pinterest users interacting with your site compared to Facebook? Maybe Facebook isn’t as big as you really think it is and Twitter is bringing in the bucks.  Actionable, profitable, and easy to see if you know what you are looking for heading into your search.

What’s important to YOUR company? Is it acquisition? How are you acquiring people? PPC? Organic? Banners? Social? Is it sales? What do you THINK is driving your revenue? Where are you spending the majority of time and money?  That’s where you should begin.  One size doesn’t fit all so use your company goals to drive the discussion around KPI’s and segments that you can use to measure them

A lot of things can go wrong for you at an office holiday party, but if you know what your goals are, as well as the pitfalls, you can navigate yourself to a very successful office event. As an expert on social interaction disasters, let me give you a few tips to rock your office party.

#1 Arrive late

Let me set the scene here. This party is very likely on a Friday or Saturday night. This could have been a relaxing evening of spending time at home doing whatever your favorite thing in the world to do at home is (mine is drinking my roommates’ beer and watching Mean Girls for the 50th time, but different strokes for different folks). But now you have an office holiday party! This is YOUR time. You see your coworkers about 40% of your time awake, and now you’re obligated to spend MORE time with them… interacting… pretending to care about their kids or their dogs or this thing they never noticed in Mean Girls until their 50th time watching it. Honestly, how did Aaron Samuels get into the AP Calculus course with Cady Heron? He gets an answer wrong because he forgets that multiplying two negative numbers is a positive.

The concept of numbers in general is pretty confusing for me

Anyway, the point is that you’re mingling now. You can’t hide in your headphones or in your special conference room where you can avoid everyone. The worst thing you can do is be one of the first people showing up, because do you know who else is going to be there when you arrive? I won’t even let you guess. It’s going to be the two or three people you have nothing in common with, setting up the appetizer plates. Trust me, I love the stuffed sausage balls and spinach-artichoke dip as much as the next guy, but it’s not worth showing up on time for. You are doomed to spend an hour making small-talk while you wait for the coworkers you can actually stand to get there. Your conversation topics are going to range between talking about work, talking about kids/pets, talking about work, how nice the food layout looks, work, work and more work. You will end up shame-eating all the sausage balls and cheese and drink so many vodka sodas that you are incapacitated for nearly the entire party. Don’t show up early. But when you do finally show up, and all the coworkers cheer and applaud your arrival (or at least that’s what you imagined anyway), there’s something you need to take care of right away…

#2 Talk to The Boss Early

You might have expected me to advise you to avoid the boss at all costs, right? So far, I’ve advised you to avoid any extra interaction time with co-workers, but avoiding interaction with the person bankrolling this whole shindig, not to mention signing your paychecks, could be disastrous for you. You need to say hello and make a little small-talk. You need to thank him for funding this get-together. This needs to be done before you let your wine-fueled split-personality take over and babble about everything wrong with the office’s coffee maker and drop f-bombs about how smelly Alison from Accounting’s lunch is, and if you have to smell her tuna melt ONE MORE TIME I’M GOING TO SMASH IT ON HER KEYBOARD. Sorry, where were we? Anyway, the key is that you need to make brief chit-chat and then avoid any more interactions for the rest of the night. You’ve paid your dues, you were able to handle an actual light conversation with your boss and it wasn’t too awkward. It’s time to let loose, and this is the one person you want to avoid embarrassing yourself in front of. With that out of the way, the next step is the bar. That brings me to…

#3 Don’t Be The Drunkest Person At The Party (Be The Second Drunkest)

Just like you don’t want to be the fastest car on the highway to avoid a speeding ticket, you don’t want to be the drunkest person at the party to avoid months of regret and shame (if you’re reading, hi mom!). The blessing of the office party can also be its curse: not much will be remembered. But what *will* be remembered are the highlights. They will remember you mouthing off about the boss. You will remember the ashen look on your coworker’s faces as you have to ask “…he’s behind me, isn’t he?” They will remember you drunkenly hitting on the office hottie…in front of their significant other (they call it significant other because they are significantly more attractive than you). 

This is how impressed the girls in your office are with you if you hit on them at an office party.

You will end up apologizing to people on Monday that you’ve never talked to before this party because you laughed when you were shown a picture of Kathy’s kids. What you want to aim for is to be no worse than the second drunkest person. They will see you as a lively and fun friend in contrast to the office drunk: whether it’s the woman stumbling in her heels into the ice chest or the guy “resting his eyes” on the couch because the room is spinning too much for his Jagermeister Vertigo to handle. Having a two drink buzz going into the party is advisable. You take some of the edge off from having to see your coworkers again, and you aren’t seen double-fisting a beer and a glass of wine, with a rum&coke waiting in the dugout, thereby earning you an unjust and completely unfair reputation. Having this buzz may also help you tolerate inane conversations about process and communication you’re inevitably going to have with a project manager. Trust me, only one person will be labeled as The Lush/Alcoholic, while everyone else is home free. Have you seen Die Hard? Remember Ellis? Don’t be that guy.

#4 Don’t Go For The “Mistletoe on the Belt” Trick

Just… don’t. But if your boss is pulling this move, ignore rule #2.

#5 Handle the “Significant Other” Situation

If you are not allowed to bring a date, it’s game on. But this probably means your office is too cheap to spare an extra meatball or a glass of wine that was $6 at Safeway for the extra weight, so maybe bring a flask.

Find your own plate, sir, and good day.

If you are allowed to bring a date, then there are two ways to handle this. One option is that you can bring them as an anchor. Someone to talk to when you’re done mingling, so you’re not just spending the whole time trying to scoop the entire bowl of 7 layer dip with a single chip. While we’re here, let me talk to you about 7 layer dip. Oh man. 7-layer dip… When I see that casserole dish on the table and it’s barely touched, my eyes light up like an obnoxious Christmas-decorated house that you can see from space. In that moment, I am hunter; I am lizard-brain. My only thought in that moment is coordinating the quickest distance to the dip and avoiding eye contact with everyone there. No one will stand in the way of my dreams. And whoever is responsible for bringing this treat of the gods needs to double up on this. It will be the first to go; I promise you that. You will have a dish scraped so clean you don’t need to wash it, and you will have two or three full bags of chips left over. No one is here for the chips. I would gobble it down like a pig in a trough if it was socially acceptable. Oh man. 7-layer dip. You complete me.

The other option is to not tell them at all, because she’s a Judge Judy when it comes to how you conduct yourself at a party, and you want to eat a gallon of 7-layer dip, drink to your liver’s capacity. Do you really want to hang out with everyone you’re committed to spend time with all at once? This is obligation overload. Don’t be a chump.

#6 Don’t Linger

The party is starting to wind down. The couple that came in and talked to everyone so efficiently they were in and out in 20 minutes are gone. One of your favorite coworkers is heading home early citing their “ball-and-chain” with a defeated and resigned laugh. The 7-layer dip dish has long looked like an apocalyptic aftermath, but it’s likely there is still booze. Not just any kind of booze though. Free booze. It’s a rookie mistake to extrapolate the savings on booze into more time spent at the party. The drunkest person in the party has lost count of how many drinks she spilled. It’s DEFCON 2. Time to mobilize and deploy. If you end up lingering you will end up helping clean up, or you will pair off with the only single person left in the office (surprise, also doubling down as the drunkest too!), or you are simply wearing out your welcome. Make your coworkers wish they got to spend more time with you, not less.

It’s a lot to take in, but it’s a pretty simple approach when you break it down. Just remember to balance showing your best side to make your coworkers like you with drinking a lot and eating your weight in 7-layer dip. Arrive late, do a little chit-chat with everybody. Keep a close eye who you designate as the drinker and keep a little distance, and bail early. Have a great office party, and maybe let us know if you heeded my advice!

BONUS TIP

#7 DEFCON 1

Okay, so you didn’t heed my advice and you found yourself being the drunkest person at the party. I warned you not to. You lingered way too long. I warned you not to. And now you find yourself waking up next to Secretary Sally or Designer Dave. That’s ok. I’m not sure why you’re reading this blog post right now instead of doing damage control, but I’ll help if I can. Maybe nobody saw you two leave together to another bar, and maybe they didn’t see it coming for months, and maybe they didn’t have money riding on it all. Just play it cool on Monday. Be vague. Remember that they remember you were pretty blitzed. Play the rest of the night off as nothing more than drinking too much. It’s ok and believable if you claim something along the lines of “I don’t remember much after leaving, and that I just got a drink somewhere I don’t recall the name of it now and I might have eaten a burger and went home, crazy party, right?! hahaha oh man how bout them [INSERT LOCAL SPORTS TEAM HERE]?!“

Have you ever built a website? 

Have you been in design review meetings where someone chimes in (with a little smugness, let’s admit it) and asks: ”Where’s the fold?” You look around the room, a few eyes are rolling, and someone starts explaining that the fold doesn’t have the same importance it did a decade ago because people know how to scroll now. Well, I’m here to tell you that they are right, and they are wrong.

It’s also something that can have unintended consequences, like this publicity photo of Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman from the set of I Dream of Jeannie. It was the lead photo in one of the articles that came out in the past week. Because of where this particular photo hit the fold, I got a completely different impression of what the story was about to tell me.

Which leads me to point #2, above. Be mindful of the content near the fold. Very, very mindful.

NOW, PLEASE SCROLL UNTIL YOU HIT THE FOLD

v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v
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It would start with the outdoor decorations. I wasn’t old enough to remember his outdoor decorating hay-day, but he’s got the trophies to prove it was serious enough. What I do remember is that my sister and I were not allowed to touch ANYTHING while the procedure of decorating the tree took place.

We’d kick off the Christmas season with the hunt for the perfect tree. We had vaulted ceilings, so the tree had to be 14 feet tall, a Silver Tip, and have just the right kind of structure. The branches had to be full, but with proper spacing to display ornaments correctly; they may never touch the branch below when hung. It had to have even branch distribution as well. We’d shop every lot in town, not to leave the elusive perfect tree unseen. Generally, it would end up being at the first lot, however. On occasion, if perfection was not available, my father would have the tree “plugged” with the correcting branches to achieve perfection. One Christmas the tree was brought home, wired with lights then brought back to the lot to be flocked over the lighting. This was amazing because it really gave the look of a decorated tree that had been snowed on.

The wiring of the tree was an amazement in itself. Each light was affixed to the branch so that it stood straight up with no wires visible above the branch. At just the right height, the placement would change from top-of-branch placement, to underneath-branch placement, with wiring above the branch. The completed work (yes…it was art) looked like the lights were individually placed, as the wiring could not be seen. Until they died from old age, the giant old fashioned lights were used. I miss this look, as the new tiny lights just aren’t the same; although they do require a very large tree.

With the tree wired and ready, the decorations would come out. Each was lovingly wrapped in tissue and stored together neatly in ancient boxes that were antiques in their own right. They ranged in age from one to sixty years, each with a history and story of its origin. My dad would unwrap each and every one of them and place them on every surface in the room. There were hundreds, but he needed to survey them all, in order to place them on the tree in the most strategic location. Optimum reflection, visibility, and height were all factors. It was understood that this was my father’s job. We would watch with great delight, but were not permitted to help until we were well into our teens. Each ornament was greeted with nearly ceremonial glee, and we each had our favorites that we looked forward to seeing. Once they were all put onto the tree, the tinsel would come out. This was no ordinary tinsel. This was the genuine article; corrugated lead tinsel that hung straight down from the branch, due to its weight.  This was draped over each branch to achieve the look of cascading sheets of rain coming from every branch.  The tree was such a thing of beauty that the neighbors would bring their guests by to look at it.

This kind of preparation comes with a side effect. The tree took soooo long to put up, and brought such joy, that it would not come down until Spring. Yes…you read that right.  It wasn’t rare at all to have the tree up through February.

Well, the pine cone doesn’t fall far from the tree it seems. I’ve found myself doing the exact same things, varying only in later years. I too would search high and low for that perfect tree. Take hours lighting it, and then place each ornament according to my hard wired decorating traditions. I too would not allow my children to help until they were young adults. I too would keep the tree in the house until it started curling in on itself as if it would swallow everything on it and implode. In most recent years, I’ve let go of the idea that each ornament has a certain place in which it belongs. I can actually hang them any old place, and it only bothers me a little. The wiring… that’s a tough one to shake. I didn’t hide the wires last year, or this year, and it does creep me out. But I found one solution to two problems, in the most unexpected thing. I use upside-down Christmas trees. They are artificial, so they can’t implode, grow crispy, or stink; and they allow everything to hang perfectly without touching the branch underneath. Perfect in their imperfection!

My father is 89 now, and lives with me. We each have our own upside-down tree, his with ornaments that are as much as one hundred, ten years old. One day, they will be passed down to my sister and I, and then to our children, and then to theirs. My tree has ornaments that are up to fifty years old, and these too will be passed down. Bottom line; we’ll need more trees…

So if life is giving you Christmas fits, remember, it could always be MORE of a chore. Be thankful that you aren’t hard-wired for lengthy decorating. But if you are… let me know. I’d like to hear if there are others out there with similar memories of Christmas.

Our society is built on exchanges between two parties. To me, it only makes sense to be honest about this relationship. And with that honesty comes a certain amount of drive to create and enrich these relationships. This isn’t a used car type of sales, the ol’ bait and switch. This is genuine, honest relationship building to facilitate trust and, in turn, facilitate the mutual exchange of goods or services that each party needs.

My dad was a barber and at the beginning of each appointment, he would strike up a conversation about their life. He knew names, birth dates, anniversaries, relationships, career paths, their stories, their likes, dislikes, their cut, their color, and dare I say their hopes and dreams. When he retired, he moved the chair into a room we built onto our house where he would cut a few, very close friends’ and families’ hair. Near his barber chair, he placed a box filled with index cards.

I asked about their relevance once and was amazed to find each card held the notes from every hair cut he ever gave. Let me reiterate that—every hair cut he ever gave. Those cards contained the names, birth dates, anniversaries, relationships, career paths, stories, likes, dislikes, cut, color, and dare I say, hopes and dreams of every person to ever grace his chair. It did not matter if they were one-time customers. Everyone got his undivided attention when they sat in the chair. Before each appointment, he would reference that person’s card to remind himself of their life. This wasn’t disingenuous. He deeply cared for his clients and the relationship of their transaction, the haircut.

What does this have to do with Digital Marketing, or my position as Art Director? Everything.

Relationship building does not stop at the sales funnel, nor at the hand-off of an account to the account team, after design rounds 1, 2, 3, 4, (or God forbid 5). Every interaction with our clients is an opportunity to reinforce our product, our services, and our company. This, in turn, reinforces the client’s infinite wisdom in choosing our agency.

We’re all humans and we all share quite a lot of relatable experiences. Find the common ground, work hard to create a common language, and start understanding the “other side.” However, consistency is the key for the relationship to honest and true.

Always Be Selling.

For now, I do not need a filing system for the people I interact with. However, at the beginning of every client interaction, I ask about their lives. I ask about the small facts I have gathered in our past contacts. I make sure they know I am here for them, I care, and that I appreciate our relationship. This is what I mean by “Always Be Selling.” Every client interaction is an opportunity to reinforce our product, our services, and our company. We have an invested interest in the well-being of their company, in the successfulness of their campaign, and in our work.

Selling shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of your sales department, new biz person, or management team. Selling is the responsibility of everyone in your company, or it should be. And here is where “Always Be Selling” takes a sharp turn from the movie—this shift happens only if you allow your team the freedom and trust to sell through their actions, talent, great service, and not from fear.

Watch the movie again, I think we all can agree that Alec had some issues. Unfortunately a lot of businesses still run in this outdated model, from the top down, with fear and blackboards. Instead, reinvent the wheel and give your employees the latitude to surprise you. They’re the best brand ambassadors you have and the work they perform, daily, is the strongest sales pitch you can hope to send out.

(And if you haven’t yet, go watch Glengarry Glen Ross…)

“Each year during the month of November, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of mustaches on hundreds of thousands of men’s faces around the world. Men grow and women support the mustache for 30 days to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate and testicular cancer initiatives.”

First and foremost EVERYONE has been very supportive. It is the outward facing gesture of growing a mustache that opens the door for dialog bringing attention to the cause.
Here is our progress report for eROI’s Movember participants (in alphabetical order):

• Aldo, Aldo, Aldo. All that’s left is the support.
• Chris works hard and plays hard and his mustache is no exception. Almost on command the chris-stache can go from a train-driving cabbage patch doll to Magnum PI. My request is that it flourishes like the Hawaiian countryside from whence it came.
• I, Dan, am making good progress. Once a year (Movember) I jump in and pray the waters are warm. This may be the best effort so far but still not quite as full as I think is acceptable for a day-to-day stache. I can’t go beyond looking like I haven’t shaved in two weeks.
• Gerry is very enthusiastic despite not having a very full pattern. Normally put together it’s been a stretch here in the office and apparently at home for him to keep trucking on, but truck on he shall.
• Matt A. also falls prey to the light pattern. He too is being a good sport by sprouting what he can. Drawn from some comment this morning, I think this is the longest he’s ever gone without shaving. Participation award is being considered.
• Matt G. got a running start into Movember. Already showing his hand with a full pattern and good downward growth he has given the others something to work towards, or simply dream. He has had to change his eating habits to make room for his new friend- NO CAKE.
• Matt P. has been holding back, in my opinion. Here’s a fella who could no doubt go young Santa Claus on us over the weekend but he chooses to stay leading man getting ready for brunch. Matt- put down the mimosa and please deliver the goods.
• Ryan has been busy this month, rumor is his razor has been too.
• Tyler is 100% on board but 100% cannot grow anything visible beyond three feet away.

More progress reports to come, in the meantime to learn more about our efforts go to eroi.com/get-your-stache-on.

As I read the above mentioned article in an old edition of ESPN, I found some commonalities with what Chipper was saying and what we do at eROI. One clarification…switch hitting in the big leagues is ridiculously difficult and rife with hidden horrors of laboring attrition. Compared to switch hitting digital marketing, it’s a walk in the park, a pat on the back, a sip of tropical rain forest well water. I do not have a round leather 90-mph projectile zooming towards my head on a daily basis. So with that said, let’s see what I learned form Chipper.

1. ITS GOT TO BE IN YOUR BLOOD: Chipper Jones’ dad had more than 30 years of coaching experience and by the time Chipper was 7, they were watching games together, imitating the teams player-by-player. He said that this “laid the foundation for his whole career”. I used to wonder why kids often end up doing just what their parents did…I don’t anymore. When it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood. Its the same thing for your digital marketing. Don’t put the guy who doesn’t use social as the head of your social team. It seems like common sense but I would bet that right now someone that doesn’t belong is riding the bench on your social media team cause they don’t understand what a ‘like’ is. Trust me, we see it everyday. Get a team together that has it in their blood. There will no longer be a generation that doesn’t know computers. Hire them.

2. PICK YOUR BATTLES: Chipper began hitting left-handed competitively during high school summer ball. This was the time to focus on personal development. This was the time to get better. He says, “My coaches respected my goals and knew helping me become an elite switch hitter would endear me to scouts”. Ok, so let’s replace coaches with bosses and scouts with customers. Pick your battles to ensure that their outcomes make you better. Show your customers that you aren’t afraid to take risks and it will pay off. You don’t have to win them all, just most of them.

3. A COACH CAN BE YOUR BEST FRIEND: One of Chipper’s coaches in the minors gave him some advice when he said, “Swing twice as much from my weak side as I do from my strong side.” So he would do 100 from the left and 50 from the right. He credits that advice with helping him set a foundation for hitting in the bigs. Never dismiss advice from anyone. You never know where your next content idea might come from. Leverage all your experiences to mold a unique perspective and they will come…they will read…they will buy.

4. BUT NO ONE IS PERFECT: In his first year in the minors, 1990, he was hitting about .300 from the right and .180 from the left. He told his manager he was going to stop switch hitting in games but the coach continued to have him work in practice. They wanted him to stick with it and didn’t care about the numbers. A year later in Class-A, everything clicked and he was hitting consistently from both sides. I love this story because looking ahead is the hardest thing to do when you are in build mold. Trust in your abilities by being consistent with your practice. I think that is the lesson here….if your brand is true then consistency will win. Don’t worry about the numbers so much, worry about the consistency. Get that email out when you said you would, answer your tweets, and create content everyday.

5. TWO SWINGS? DOUBLE THE WORK:  ”Switch hitters have to work harder, which often gets overlooked. When I was younger, I’m sure people thought I was showing off because I would hit from my weak side in low pressure situations. But that helped me develop. Now I feel like a natural left-handed hitter” So what does this mean for us? It means work harder. People ask us how do you get a good email program up and running or how can we get Facebook to help our brand? The simple answer is hard work and not being afraid to fail. Getting your hands dirty and actually creating something instead of just planning is the key. Don’t worry about what people will think…just worry about what your customer will think.

6. WE’RE A RARE BREED: “I think every hitter would rather face certain pitchers form the other side of the plate. If a left handed hitter is facing Randy Johnson, he would rather face Johnson on the right side. I’ve had a 100 hitter say to me “why didn’t my dad make me a switch hitter?” I think if we were all good at everything we would all be the same right? So, there has to be those that can and those that can’t. Be on the side that can.

The key take aways….don’t be afraid….take advice….work hard…have a smart dad that teaches you stuff.

In honor of everything the game of baseball has taught me over the years, thanks for killing it Macklemore:

Think of Guitarfish as Nasa’s mission control but you are the astronaut. The sky’s the limit.

In our modern age of political divisiveness and partisan bickering, it’s nice to know we can all agree on one thing; political advertising has become an unbearable and inescapable force.

Campaign messaging, whether it be for a candidate or ballot measure, locally or nationally, has effectively invaded and monopolized nearly every means of communication and channel for advertising in our lives. From your television screen to your mailbox, your social feeds to your cell phone, attempts to form and mold your opinion on things you didn’t know you cared about are being made every minute. This isn’t new. This is how election season works. But, the more efficiently we communicate and interconnected the world becomes, the worse this is going to get. Something has got to give.

I’m not advocating an end to political advertising and campaigns as it’s a necessary, albiet irritating aspect of our democratic process. What I would like to see, however, is a more creative approach that gives more credit to the audience. Political advertising treats people like they’re idiots, more often than not, attempting to exploit the more negative aspects of the human condition; fear, jealousy, greed, insecurity, anger, et cetera. Have our expectations of political campaigns fallen to such an insurmountable low that we’ve accepted that this is “just the way it is”? We demand integrity and accountability of our elected officials but hold no such standards when it comes to the campaigns that get them elected?

It’s 2012 and there are more specialized ad agencies than ever. The level of talent and plethora of agencies to choose from has driven both fierce competition as well as some of the most creative, strategic and memorable campaigns to date. If you can afford otherwise, having bad advertising is just no longer an option. And considering most political campaigns have ad budgets larger than entire world economies, they can afford to do better.

You, the reader, deserve a heartfelt congratulations and pat on the back. No, seriously. Your display of self-control and level headedness over the past several weeks is commendable and deserving of a genuine “atta kid”. The fact that election season officially ends this week and that you made it all the way through without hurling your laptop out the window and smashing your television screen with a projectile is truly admirable. Well done.

Hurricane Sandy on Bikes in NYC from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Incredible Pumpkin Stop Motion from Auke de Vries on Vimeo.

We’re a $66 billion dollar food and beverage company of which a large part of our audience is millennials or, I’ll say, “born digital.” We’ve always been a company focused on building consumer brands and innovation. So our brands have used a number of cutting-edge digital marketing platforms.

It’s really about investing in talent and relationships and building a network of companies…So we look at this as an investment in digital innovation that pays off in immediate programs and in long-term relationships.

Do these initialives affect your group?
Do you see value in these kind of initiatives or are they for show?
In what ways if any are you held accountable to these types of brand values?

We did wonder how much this roll out affects your marketing efforts through out the year? Do they dictate or are they a guide? Do you have complete freedom? We noticed that there seem to be micro campaigns that launch through out the year running on a similar theme. We also wondered how much of these spots are still tied to social or email efforts. Does that just occur always or just with the Fiesta Bowl campaign> Like this recent one about the elections

Was there a digital marketing campaign associated with this too?
Do you segment?

I thought this was a good recap in your own words.

The new campaign includes three new national/local television spots, two of which debuted for a nationwide audience during the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and other BCS bowl game broadcasts. The campaign also includes a unique digital and social media activation that incentivizes people to join together for parties and post about their social celebrations through the Tostitos Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Tostitos) and Twitter handle (www.twitter.com/Tostitos). In addition, the new spokesbag is featured in print media, as well as banner ads on pop culture and sports websites.

“For more than 30 years, the Tostitos brand has been about bringing fans together around the chip and dip bowl, and making any occasion a social celebration,” said Justin Lambeth, vice president, marketing, Frito-Lay. “This new campaign takes us back to our party heritage in a fun and unique way that we hope will spark even more social gatherings in 2012.”

Source – http://www.fritolay.com/about-us/press-release-20120102.html

“Companies have tried to emulate Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) emphasis on style for years. After all, Samsung Electronics Inc. in August lost a patent suit over similarities to the iPhone. What’s different now is that more companies, even large ones, are trying to bake innovation and free-thinking into their corporate cultures. That’s why PepsiCo recruited a chief design officer, Mauro Porcini, from 3M Co., and MillerCoors snatched Dyson’s David Kroll as its new vice president of innovation.

Grafting a design ethos onto a company with 300,000 employees such as PepsiCo won’t be easy, said Bruce Hannah, who co-invented the Nerf football and teaches art and design at the Pratt Institute in New York.
“You can say, ‘Let’s create a design culture. Everybody wear blue hats today,’” Hannah said. “That’s lovely, but that doesn’t change the culture. What changes the culture is when people become engaged with their own ideas.”

- bloomberg.com

First let me start by saying that the last 7 years of our relationship had been amazing. I really love your content and who can forget your sweet images and life-building information. But, if we are going to stay together, I feel like I need to get some things out in the open. I mean I love being with you, I really do… but wow, there are some things you need to know. First…

Why are you always late to the party? For years now, I’ve said things like:

“Hey babe, I really think you should start getting ready for the holiday party. No seriously, remember last year when we were scrambling even to get in? The booze was gone, the food was picked through and we barely got to meet anyone. Dude… you already know what to wear, all you have to do is put it on.”

So if we are going to move forward together, let’s work on getting to the party early this year.

Also, why do you fight with your family?

I don’t understand why you and your other magazine departments can’t get along. Doesn’t it make sense that your older brother, Editorial, should give your younger sister, Aud Dev, more assets and freedom? What’s the sense of pitting one sibling against the other? In the end, if everyone is working together you will go further.

Why do your parents not share any information with you? So let’s see… you are almost 100 years old and you still can share what’s going on with the family?

Now, this one is the real winner. I know paper doesn’t give you analytics but let’s get with the program. In countless situations, I’ve asked and asked for some real data but get only the thumbs up or thumbs down. What are you guys hiding back there? Why can’t I see when they opened the email or how many people clicked the button? I think I know the real answer….you don’t know, do you? Why is that? It seems like you of all people should be spewing out data to me about how we can move that needle.

I really hope we can work this out. I mean, look at what we have done together. We introduced you to the tablet, we’ve taken you on countless dates, not to mention all the work we both have put into this relationship. But I need a sense of urgency from you. I want you to want me. I want you to FEEL the internet…and love it. Why just the other day, you brought up a project we did almost 11 months ago. I can’t believe you haven’t tested that yet. But alas, I am proud of you and I do want to see you succeed. But going forward let’s think about some of these things. I know you know that I know that you know that you can get better.  XOXO

The great Einstein once said that creativity is only a matter of hiding your sources, so why not use content that exists already and re-purpose it for your brand? In a bit of hyper-relevance, I want to provide a couple examples of this. As you probably know already from Google’s home page art that this week marks the great Bob Ross’s birthday. My wife Tatom went as Bob Ross to the aforementioned Halloween party. I wanted a way to communicate the greatness of both the costume, the party, and the relevance of it being Bob Ross’s birthday. So I re-purposed some content. I took an already made PBS remix and incorporated my own content pieces in it.

This is a triple re-purpose.

Here is the king of re-purpose content…why can’t we all be geniuses?

With a lucky 13th place finish, he crossed the orange N with no time to spare. What’s the best thing after a full-on half ton of dirt is in your face?

General Ninkasi….Years ago you served my father in the Beer Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Anheuser Busch. I regret that I am unable to convey my father’s request to you in person, but my ship has fallen under attack, and I’m afraid my mission to bring you to Eugene has failed. I have placed information vital to the survival of the Rebellion into the memory systems of this eROI unit. My father will know how to retrieve it. You must see this droid safely delivered to him in Eugene. This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Ninkasi. You’re my only hope.
[pause]

“While in college at the University of Oregon, I bartended at Max’s Tavern. Like eROI, we were a very small, very tight crew—we loved our bar and we appreciated a good time, but we respected great beer. As the oldest bar in Eugene and arguably one of the most notorious (rumored to be the bar that inspired Moe’s Tavern in the Simpsons), Max’s was one of the first Eugene establishments to carry kegs of Ninkasi Total Domination. And Ninkasi was the only sticker you’d see attached to our bums at our team BBQs.”

1. Pick a company that has some relevance to your team - This might be by what they sell (ie sports equipment), who they know (ie business or family contacts) or where they are (ie the garage next door to the sports field).
2. Do your research - Find out about them. What do they do? How do they market themselves? Who are the key personnel and managing director or other decision makers?
3. Use your contacts - If you can, approach a company where someone can prepare the ground for you. Nothing beats a personal contact in getting your foot in the door!
4. Know your stuff - Be friendly but professional and business like. Know exactly what you are asking for and what it will mean to you and the potential sponsor. Be specific and know what sum you plan to ask for. You may like to have a fall back position or a range of lesser options but one simple request is usually best.
5. Overdeliver your side of the bargain - Getting the sponsorship is not the end of the deal. Your job now is to continue to help the sponsor feel involved, respected and informed of progress. At the very least a monthly update on team progress.
6. A picture tells a thousand words - Take pictures at every opportunity and send them to your sponsor. What better way to show them what they are getting for their money. Encourage them to use them in their company marketing. Make your team a real part of the sponsor’s business.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, comes in two very different varieties. Methods recommended by search engines as part of good design practices (white hat), and methods search engines frown upon (black hat). While white hat practices produce lasting results that are solid and founded, black hat practices come with a quick result that is soon banned (temporarily or permanently) when they are discovered by search engines.

Search engines try to diminish the effect of the black hat practices, but it’s an uphill battle. Every day there are new scams, adding to the already huge number of scammers out there. There are so many people looking for a quick way to cheat you out of your hard earned dollars. They want profits with little to no effort, and have no qualms about misleading or outright steeling from you. It takes a great deal of ingenuity, ambition, diligence, and sometimes money, to accomplish profits legitimately. Unfortunately, many don’t have the conscience required to stop them from taking unscrupulous shortcuts to financial gain. This causes more difficulty for everyone, as we all have to sort through all of the unfounded material to find the products, services, or information we desire. Just as shoplifters contribute to the higher costs of merchandise, scammers add to the expense that search engine proprietors and companies incur. Search engines have to devote large sums of expense dollars to staying ahead of the latest web scams. Companies have to fight to remain unburied by scammer’s junk sites in addition to competing with other like businesses.

With the ever growing need for outstanding SEO in order to be seen, comes the need to find the right company to partner with in accomplishing your goals. It’s important to choose carefully. Find the company that understands your business, your objectives, respects your time and resources, and knows how to get the job done effectively and beautifully.

Whether you’re simply surfing the net or the owner of a site, SEO affects you every day. As an internet user, you’re bombarded with results to searches that are anything but what you’re looking for. Site owners fall prey to these black hat practices because the clients that normally would have found them quickly are busy sifting through irrelevant results. Searching can be safer and more effective when you know what to watch for; look at the URL associated with the item that got your attention. It’s often a quick give away that the site could not possibly be official, or even informative.  Site owners can increase the probability of prospective visitors finding them successfully, by investing in good SEO strategy with a reputable company. Never underestimate the power of good, viable, strategic, SEO. It’s not just getting your site seen, it’s increasing your sites value as a whole; getting the right people to take notice of what makes your site/company of value to them.

Oh, and for those of you who have no interest in SEO and stopped here hoping to find answers to the questions above, I have a few concrete facts for you:

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson value their privacy.

You can lose weight eating all day, but what you eat matters.

Stuffing envelopes at home is not a career opportunity.

To help further the reach of the campaign prior to the jump, Red Bull Stratos released a site full of great content, with all the campaign information and interactive material in one place. And to take it one step further, Red Bull created a hashtag frenzie on Twitter: #SpaceJump, #Stratos, #Baumgartner, and #RedBull. The day of the jump alone, Red Bull gained over 17,000 new twitter followers.

According to redbullstratos.com, their mission “seeks to advance scientific discoveries in aerospace for the benefit of mankind.” Throughout the project Red Bull maintains that it is more than just a stunt. They hope that the data obtained from the jump can be put toward developing systems that would allow astronauts to escape from malfunctioning spacecraft afer launch.

Red Bull has seemingly mastered the concept of turning a marketing event into an international news story. The risks were high, but the reward was higher—begging the question, what if something went wrong? Millions of viewers could very well have witnessed tragedy on live television. How would Red Bull react under those circumstances? Inevitably there would be public backlash, but would it matter? The amount of exposure was so great that regardless of the outcome, they still gained global attention.

Fortunately, the stunt was successful and records were set: free falling for over 24 miles (4:19 minutes), 833.9 miles per hour – breaking the sound barrier. Check it out for yourself.

Here at eROI, we are no stranger to setting records in the name of marketing. Check out this promotional video to see how Sharp SunSnap™ was able to set the world record for Fastest Time To Install A Residential Solar Photovoltaic System.

We handed over the final design files to our development partner, DPCI, for The Latin Kitchen who performed a seamless adaptation of the creative assets in May and now that the dust has settled we wanted to shout it from the rooftops in our cozy northwest corner of Portland.

Latina Media Ventures, a long time partner, came to eROI to create an online destination for Latin-based food and entertainment. The Latin Kitchen is a community grounded, digital property on Latin cuisine, recipe and menu ideas, food how-to’s, entertaining tips and the latest food news.

Latina Media Ventures, already a giant in the publishing world with their flagship magazine, Latina—employed Maria Elena Martinez to oversee TLK as the Founding Editor and curator of the site. She brings with her an enormous level of experience from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Women’s Adventure, and websites like The Daily Meal, Condé Nast Traveler, Fodors.com, and Men’s Fitness. Martinez said to the examiner.com earlier this summer that The Latin Kitchen will place a premium on telling stories, an unusual and compelling direction for a recipe site:

“For example, she posed the question, ‘Why do we love avocados?’
Martinez goes on to explain that this is a story that needs to be told. ‘It’s not about just a recipe with avocados but it’s about the entire background avocado food story,’”

In two months eROI created a fresh, vibrant, and engaging site that showcased the love and affinity TLK brings to the table for Latin cuisine. The project’s lead designer, Aldo Mollinedo, brought a strong design background in user experiential design and a deep understanding for modern, clean web design. The work of our team provided a strong foundation for all of TLK’s social channels, a mobile site, and online contests that have catapulted The Latin Kitchen to the forefront of the online Latin cuisine community. It is great to see the design grow from the website into a full-branding package, creating a seamless visual identity for TLK.

eROI partnered with DPCI for development of our designs to Drupal 7. DPCI worked with Latina Media stakeholders to create wireframes and the initial interactive solutions for TLK’s website, then collaborated with eROI to finish the foundation and hand-off the visual design for completion. There are a ton of great facts on the development of The Latin Kitchen at DPCI’s website that were picked up by Drupal here.

We at eROI are proud to be part of the rich history of The Latin Kitchen. Check out the site, share a few recipes, and by all means, create a profile_ www.thelatinkitchen.com.

For consumer brands, especially retailers, the importance of an active Pinterest account is a no-brainer. It has the most direct social-to-buy experience among the main social media channels. In fact, according to some research from e-commerce firm RichRelevance, the average sale resulting from a Pinterest user following an image back to its source and then buying the item is $180, compared with $80 for Facebook users and $70 for Twitter users.

But for a non-(direct to)consumer industry like a marketing agency, the real question is: what’s the value? Time is money, so is Pinterest the channel to give us the most bang for our buck? Right now, eROI pivots its social brand strategy around Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and this blog. Should we alternate Pinterest for Google+ for better SEO? Or maybe for LinkedIn for more networking connections?

This post doesn’t attempt to answer that question, as the agency hasn’t settled on the answer itself. But we are hoping to open up the conversation. Like any client, approach the question with a budget mindset – in a marketing department with limited bandwidth, where does Pinterest fall on this list?

Full disclosure: this author is rowing for the pro-Pinterest boat, as I believe vehemently in the power of practice. By enlisting a streamlined set of best practices for our own Pinterest channel and tracking its success, we’re better equipped to provide actionable and proven recommendations to our clients. Additionally, Pinterest is about as visual as social media gets – and marketing is a visual industry in its own right. All self-promotion Pinterest rules aside, it’s a match made in heaven, #amIright?!

Finally, Pinterest is one of the best social avenues for showing followers what’s important to you, and what makes you say “OoOo.” We adore our dogs. We relish our ‘hood.  We gravitate to stylish innovation. And we love to ask why.

In the works, companies like Dobango are working to monetize the brand-engagement aspect of this channel via sponsored pushes not too different from the new Facebook ad model. Meanwhile, analytics junkies can get their fix with new up-and-coming tools like Curalate, PinReach and PinPuff. Retailers are already doing some great things to utilize their engagement on the channel (see Grey Poupon’s web site swap-out for Pinterest).

So what about eROI – what should be our Pinteresting angle? Or should we ditch the digital pin-board all together? Share your thoughts.

At October’s Social Media Club Portland event, we had the chance to present a case study approach to our social media experiment and the findings, both good and bad, along the way.

You’ve heard it here before and you will hear it many more times to come; ‘Why?’ As we begin relationships and explore opportunities with clients, we spend a lot of time asking “why”, especially as it relates to social media.

Why allocate time and resources to social?

Why do you want more Facebook fans?

Why is social important to your overall goals?

Asking “why” shapes our strategy, deepens our client relationships and ultimately drives our campaigns. At eROI, “why” is our North star.

Sometimes, we need to turn the “why” question on ourselves. Recently we took a hard look at our own social media efforts across multiple channels and began exploring the same questions we ask our clients. The result was the development of a social media initiative that involved contributions from every team member at eROI. Based on measurable goals, empowerment of team members, and the free flow of ideas across departments, this initiative has been a great success since its launch in July.

For those that missed the event or simply want to reference the deck, feel free to download it below.

Thank you for an amazing evening!

What is particularly exciting for myself, and eROI, is the opportunity to structure the New Media class around one of our core tenants—’why’. Or more specifically, asking ‘why’:

‘Why’ is our North star. It keeps us focused on the real value of y/our programs and keeps everyone from turning into tactics zombies (link to previous email newsletter on Tactic Zombies).

We use it while hunting for insights, scouting analytics, and hitting the streets to understand how your business can truly connect with what people need, want, love, and simply must have.

‘Why’ leaves no question off-limits. It fearlessly looks inside and outside your business to uncover new opportunities and improve the programs you’re running.

GD328 / NEW MEDIA
A course designing digital informational systems;
Focusing on conceptualization, diagramming, & user-interaction.

Thursday was my first day of design school; I got to see ‘why’ in action.

The basic framework isn’t spectacularly groundbreaking, though it is targeted. The students were assigned four TED Talks for inspiration and split into groups. They are tasked with promoting a one-time event through three channels—a web presence, social or guerrilla marketing, and an email. This is all packaged into one cohesive and compelling final client pitch deck. They work independently in their groups, using them as a support network, to share, compare, and critique each other in a closer knit group than the full class. Working in a small group also gives the design students real-world practice working with (and sometimes in competition against) a small team. Everything else, from concept to final design delivery, is up to the individual students.

Watch the videos; let’s start a dialog around social change, design, and anything else you all are open to_

Tristram Stuart: The global food waste scandal
Dave Eggers‘ wish: Once Upon a School
Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology
Margaret Wertheim: The beautiful math of coral

I love working agency side. I love clients and particularly fun design projects that stretch what we previously thought possible. Teaching, however is exhilarating. It’s a time that I get to talk true design theory, and be inspired by the moment of brilliance a gifted design student can bring to the table.
Throughout the term I will update you all on the progress of the design class as a way to involve you all in the lesson, at least vicariously through my posts.

In the interest of complete transparency: I know Christine Gallagher as an amazingly talented graphic designer, who just so happens to be one of the teachers I studied with the most for my undergraduate fine art degree. I owe a lot of my design aesthetic and definitely my love for design theory to Christine. It is a pleasure to work with her again. This term will be fun. Work, but fun.

I have attached the Syllabus for the class written by Christine Gallagher at the Oregon State University. Download it below.

As most entrepreneurs do, Angela Jackson and I took a risk and we decided to sing (which was really more like shouting) an entrepreneurial re-make of the Beastie Boys song “You Gotta Fight for your Right to Party!” Background instrumentals blaring over the speakers, we had no choice once the music began to do anything other than go 110% into our rap routine trading each line below as our own anthem to the crowd of 800 shocked people who went from silence to fully joining us in the chorus the last half of the song.

The video from the OEN Awards dinner has not yet been released, but here are a few photos and the lyrics to wet your appetite.

Photos by Edis Jurcys Photography

Lyrics (written + produced by Ryan and Angela):
You start a new company and risk it all.
You’re naive as hell, gonna have a ball.
In no time flat, you’re out of money.
Start robbing nest eggs like the Easter bunny

You gotta fight, for your right, to PROFIT!

Your product has bugs, but it’s got to ship
Each of your advisors has a different tip
Your market’s gonna love it if they take a look
And you know you’re ’bout to be the next Facebook!

You gotta fight, for your right, to PROFIT!

Now you’re at the Awards for OEN
One day they’ll all say, “yo, we knew them when.”
Get the mic outta our hands cuz we can’t sing
Finalists t’nite, yo y’all are the KINGS

You gotta fight, for your right, to PROFIT!
You gotta fight, for your right, to PROFIT!

I thought the nature analogy was particularly relevant to Oregon restaurants and hotels as there is such consumer awareness in the Northwest around local, natural ingredients in restaurants and even hotel chains like Doubletree differentiate themselves in Portland as being the green hotel for business travelers. Additionally, like in nature where animals and their environment is all interconnected, Oregon farmers and food (like my restaurant marketing panelist Kim Malek of Salt and Straw ice cream) and beverage companies (like one of my other panelists Jamie Floyd – founder of Ninkasi Brewing) are all customers and suppliers for one another.

As marketers, we are overwhelmed. We’re constantly feeling like we should be doing more even though we are already stretched so thin. First, it was maintaining a great website, making sure it was search engine optimized, then it was building out an email marketing program, a PPC program, then Facebook and Twitter came along and we dove in, now there are dozens of new marketing channels that are being added to our marketing mix at a dizzying pace – Foursquare, Pinterest, Instagram, TripAdvisor, Yelp, LinkedIn, optimizing for mobile, and the list goes on and on.

As marketers, we need to start with our primary goal and, at every step, make sure our marketing activities map back to helping us achieve that goal. Ask “why?” at every turn. Often, so many of us are doing something new just to do it instead of being strategic about our efforts.

I recently came across it while doing some research on hotel marketing. After a quick hit with the defribillator, I managed to collect myself and rub my eyes to make sure I was seeing straight. Sure enough, I had indeed read “$18M Website.” Now, I’ve been at this interwebs thing for well over a decade and haven’t seen such a seemingly inflated price tag since The Bubble. I mean, I’ve personally worked on multi-million dollar site designs/redesigns of complex web-based applications, but we’re talking maybe $3M–$5M over several years involving large corporate teams (which may be the case here, too). Naturally intrigued, I headed over to fourseasons.com ready to have my mind BLOWN. And it was…but not in the way I was expecting.

The site is bursting with spectacular photographs of each of their locations around the globe (around 90). Clearly, visually stunning imagery is an important factor in selling luxury accommodations, but if the entire site experience doesn’t also delight visitors with its ease of use, timely delivery of information and seamless translation on mobile devices, imagery alone won’t close the deal. Unfortunately, the website fails to meet a surprising number of basic user experience best practices and, frankly, the design gets pretty generic once you’re off the location landing pages. It’s also not truly mobile-optimized as advertised. For anyone who was tracking this story when it originally hit, I’m sure this all sounds very familiar.

UX expert, Tom Stewart, commented “Despite the umpteen millions it cost, it still appears to have been designed by a photographer (they are stunning) and a computer programmer.”

While I might not go that far (having seen my fair share of true developer designs), a peruse through usability.com’s assessment and econsultancy’s assessment quickly reveals a host of issues and oversights. Perhaps if this other commenter’s quip were true, it would ease the pain – ” I just did a search on their new site and a $20 bill just shot straight out of my MacBook!”

So, will the new website increase direct online sales from the purported current 12% of overall sales? I haven’t seen any numbers, but it got me thinking…what else could you drop a cool $18M on, and would it be worth it?

Let’s take a look…

Mariah Carey for one year

photo source: http://popstoptv.com/entertainment-411/mariah-carey-signs-on-as-american-idol-judge-pop-or-stop-16632.html

Whether this is worth it remains to be seen, but the diva drama already stirring between Carey and Nicki Minaj could be just the thing AI needs to boost its ratings back up.

Peyton Manning for one year

photo source: http://keepingscore.blogs.time.com/2012/03/21/peyton-manning-will-wear-number-18-in-denver-why-exactly-do-we-care/

Probably safe to give this one a solid “worth it,” though the stock dipped a little after his performance this past Monday night against the Falcons. (love that he’s #18, too. perfect!)

Mitt Romney

photo source: http://www.trendmixer.com/cpac

Politics are always prickly, but, personally the sound of “President Romney” makes me shudder. Keeping it to the facts, though, the words “Republican” and “balanced budget” (or god forbid, “surplus”) have rarely appeared in the same sentence unless “don’t know how to create a” occurred between them. So, squarely in the “not worth it” column.

A luxurious townhouse in NYC’s Upper East Side

photo source: http://www.homedsgn.com/2011/08/09/what-kind-of-townhouse-does-18-million-buy-in-manhattan/

This might depend on how long you’re planning on living there given the still sad state of the housing market. Historically speaking, though, properties in elite areas of the Big Apple are a solid investment as they almost always increase in value. So, as long as the market improves and the neighborhood doesn’t turn, grab it if you got it I guess.

Winklevoss L.A. Mansion

photo source: http://www.tmz.com/2012/08/27/cameron-tyler-winklevoss-twins-facebook-hollywood-hills-mansion-mark-zuckerberg-millions/

8,000 square feet seems a bit excessive for one person (only one of the twins will live there), but, if you have $18M to drop on a bachelor pad then extravagance is par for the course. Even “average” houses in L.A. start around $2M, so, in comparison it’s not all THAT extravagant. Plus, there’s a level of reputation investment that comes along with being a VC and, if you’re a smart one, this will be a drop in the ole bucket before long.

180 Jet Packs

photo source: http://www.jetlev.com/index.html

This is the stuff rockstar parties are made of – Jetson-style fun for you and 179 of your insider-elite island party attendees, right? Well, if you want to look like a test case for the Science Club, maybe. I mean, it’s cool until you consider the dryer vent tube-like connection device to the boat. For a bargain $540K you could score 180 parasail kits, which seems SO much more elegant. Then again, if you’ve got $18M to drop on jet packs, you may as well get the Rockettes all trained up and put on a one-of-a-kind show worthy of your hoity-toity guests.

Batman’s Tumbler Vehicle

http://www.funonthenet.in/articles/batman-gadgets.html

Carpe diem! Geek is the new chic. With this stealth, jet engine, self-destructing, armour-plated, machine gun outfitted, remote controlled, GPS-enabled ride, you could swoop up the whole “I <3 Geeks” fan club of bandwagon blondes and head over to the Winklevoss mansion for some unadulterated fun (he won’t even notice – he’s hangin’ in the east wing, plus…you’re buds after hanging at Lindsay Lohan’s shin dig last year anyway, right?)

Diamond-laden Duds

photo source: http://www.interestingtopics.net/dress-of-20-million-dollars-id-330

If you’ve got a date with the red carpet and the gathered mermaid look that’s all the rage just isn’t your style, consider THIS deluxe Marie de’ Medici (1575 – 1642) gown, originally purchased for $20M (in 1606 dollars). It’s “gently used” – as in she wore it only once. Rendering Joan Rivers speechless is worth the $18M alone, wouldn’t you agree?

3D-ification of “The Titanic”

photo source: http://images.wikia.com/twilightsaga/images/d/d2/419177_10150592809136604_563691603_9553503_303175424_n.jpg

Last, but certainly not least, is the making of “The Titanic 3D.” Most of us enjoyed our first 3 hour big screen experience (complete with intermission in many cases), but how much oomph does 3D really add to the story? Oh please let me feel like I’m right there at the table with Kathy Bates or so close I can practically FEEL the paper Leonardo is sketching his beauty onto. Give me a break! Spend $18M on an original movie idea and maybe you’ll get the “worth it” rating.

Getting back to the main point of this post – whether Four Seasons’ $18M website redesign was worth it – only time will tell (and hopefully eConsultancy or the like will follow up). However, when you consider the sheer cost of the photography, not to mention a new online reservation system, preference-driven customized site experiences and the audience research (evidenced by their 2012 Luxury Travel Trend Report), you can see the costs start to stack up. Yet another commenter on eConsultancy’s original post broke down the ROI math…

At first I was a bit shocked with the spend, but when you unravel the math of this it is not necessarily that much money. With 30M visits per year and a conservatively low average online conversion of 0.5% you’re looking at 150,000 bookings per year. Assuming an average order value of $600 (which may also be low) then the site generates $90M in revenues. Here’s the interesting part, for every 0.01% increase in conversion they add $18M in revenue.

When you look at it like that, it doesn’t seem so outlandish. Or does it (given the quality of the final product)?

(Note: If you don’t know what the Wire is, I need you to stop reading right now, get on Netflix and spend the next 3 days watching the entire series. Only then, once your mind is fully blown, may you continue reading.)

Our client, the Baltimore Sun, happened to be the focal point of Season 5 of the aforementioned greatest show of all time. They came to us with a specific goal in mind; increase the number of digital subscriptions to the Baltimore Sun’s website. The Baltimore Sun had, months previous, began charging a small subscription fee in order to access the endless, localized news content on their website. Although this was a seemingly straightforward objective, it came with an obvious and difficult challenge. With news and information readily available for no cost, in real-time throughout the web, why would someone ever pay to get the news online?

We pondered. We postulated. I made Wire references. As we asked ourselves what type of news would be important enough for this audience to pay for, given the time of year, the answer became clear. Baltimore is a blue-collar, NFL city, filled with die-hard football fans and we happen to be launching our campaign just as the most popular sport in the U.S.A. kicks off its season. Couple that with the Baltimore Sun’s unparalleled, insider coverage of the city’s beloved Baltimore Ravens and the timing couldn’t have been better.

As the NFL season kicked off last night, we launched a multi-channel, digital subscription driving campaign, geared at Ravens fans looking for insider coverage. The campaigns includes dynamic marketing components across email, print and online display that will remind this audience all season that the Baltimore Sun is the source of everything Ravens, all the time.

We’re incredibly excited work with the Baltimore Sun and to see this campaign drive subscriptions for them all NFL season long.

At eROI, we recently launched our 2012 Digital Marketing Strategies & Trends survey to find out the root cause of exactly why marketers are feeling so overwhelmed.  I know this is a crazy thought, but as marketers, we do have a choice. We can choose to evaluate which of all of these digital marketing channels work for us (that drive meaningful Return on Investment) and first focus on those 1 or 2 marketing channels before adding more to your plate.  To many marketers, these dozens of choices of where to spend our time, energy, and budget leads to paralysis and everything gets watered down and is left ineffective.

Let’s use nature as a metaphor for this conundrum that so many marketers are finding themselves in. We need to step back and figure out what animal species our company is like. Is your company like a spider that lays thousands of eggs in the hopes that a few dozen thrive or is it more like an elephant who has one or two (twins) offspring at a time to nurture over a long lifespan?

Here’s one big bonus if you take 3 minutes to take our survey.  Participate » and you’ll be entered to win a:
• $250 Visa gift card
-OR-
• $250 donated to a charity of your choice!
Take the survey now »

The answer is, whatever metrics are important to you. I come from a small town so the phrase, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” is really relevant here. It’s a puzzle. The tough part is that it might change from week to week. Even day to day depending on your needs. I wish I had a magic bullet but if I did, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t be writing this. I’d be off gallivanting (yes, gallivanting) with my wife somewhere exotic with great food. Instead I get to play with numbers and weird codes all day. It’s fun, and I love it, but gallivanting it’s not, so I might as well make myself useful.

In lieu of giving you the answers and since it’s usually all about me I thought I would take a look at something that has been consuming a lot of my time lately; Social. Google has made it a lot easier to track your traffic with the implementation of their social reporting within the traffic sources report and there are other things you can be doing to really drill down into how to make your social program perform.

One thing to keep in mind as you parse through numbers is that when you set the date in the top right hand corner, it will not change no matter what reporting you are looking at. It’s easy to forget you were looking at last year’s numbers when you really want to be looking at the current numbers.

The social reporting is an entire set of reports on the left hand side of the standard reporting screen. Taking a look at the overview it gives us the top ten referring social networks. This includes the total number of visits from that channel as well as the % of the total referrals that channel garnered. In ours, almost exactly 75% of our traffic comes from Twitter or Facebook. Clicking into these channels provides us with a look into what pages that channel is actually driving traffic to.

You will also notice Hootsuite, which we use to manage a lot of our social channels and monitor trends. It’s a great tool for research and I recommend it. Let us know if you are interested in a Pro account which offers the ability to do a lot more things and gives you some flexibility.

The Sources report is very similar to the overview but provides a graph comparing overall site traffic vs. the social traffic.

The two most interesting and useful reports for me are the conversions reports and the social visitors flow report. Being able to set up goals (I’ll be covering goals in a later post) surrounding our social initiatives is very important from a ROI perspective. In this case, I’m not talking about dollars and cents but really just seeing how our social efforts are driving interaction on the site. Are people clicking into the link and immediately leaving (high bounce rate, low time on site)? Or are they progressing through various pages and (hopefully) filling out the form to get more information? This is a quick way to see how your work is progressing by using goals and seeing which ones are converting.

The final report, the social visitors flow report is really interesting to compare against referrals from non-social channels. Do people interact with your site differently entering in from an email newsletter than they do clicking in from a tweet? There isn’t any true site depth, it’s very superficial. It’s interesting to play around with the various paths your visitors take. In my experience tweets garner a higher bounce rate which makes sense if I consider how I use Twitter. Quick bites of information and then move on.

In my mind the social reporting doesn’t take the place of conventional google link tagging. Being able to see WHICH posts garnered traffic is important for content review. WHY did that specific tweet or post garner so much traffic? If we aren’t refining our process we aren’t learning and we aren’t improving.

How about you? Do you use the social reporting feature? Are you even active in the social space? What’s your thoughts on their usefulness? Feel free to comment or hit me back on twitter @eroi or @ep_analysis with your reply’s.
Next up, creating a tagging structure that makes sense and produces results.

Analytics are SO important and I think some small and medium size businesses who don’t pay someone to do it for them sometimes might be a bit overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. First off, don’t worry, you aren’t going to break anything. Unless you delete something or add filters to your default profile, but even that can be reverted back to default.

In the picture below you can see the basic structure of how accounts are set up.

A Web Property is a domain. Something like www.site1.com. Each Web Property has their own unique ID associated with it that allows Google to know what that domain is.

Profiles are different ways to look at the data from a Web Property. Think about your default profile as a giant sewer main with everything flowing through it. You could take out all of the dirty diapers and count them when they get spewed out onto the beach OR you could create a window to look at JUST the dirty diapers while they are in that pipe. Creating a profile is making a window to look at just certain parts of the data you are interested in without having to go through extra steps EVERY time you log into your default profile. It’s important to remember that you should never filter your default profile because once you do you start losing data (and never flush dirty diapers down the toilet). You want ALL of the dirty diapers, goldfish, and random alligators to still be spewed out onto the beach. I know it’s not eco-friendly but this is a metaphor people.

When you create a Google Analytics account you associate it with an email address. You can have up to 25 different web properties and have a total of 50 profiles in one account. If you ever run into a space issue you can always create another account associated with another email address.

One common profile to set up is one in which all of your internal traffic is taken out of the data. I will walk you through doing this below. First navigate to your default profile for your web property and then click on the “Admin” section in the top right of the screen. This should take you to the screen below:

Click on “+New Profile” and the screen below should pop up. Give it a new profile name such as “www.site1.com Internal IP Traffic Filtered Out” and click create profile.

On the next screen click on the “filters” tab and under the “filter type” dropdown choose “Traffic from the IP Adresses” “That are equal to”.

Enter in your IP address or range of addresses and click save.

After clicking save you should see your newly created profile

Congratulations, you now will be seeing only the traffic you care about when you use this new profile. Your office traffic will no longer bloat numbers.

Ahh, I see what you are doing there…

I consider myself a social person. I like to go to my friends’ DJ gigs (shut up Gerry!) and grab coffee with coworkers. I also enjoy spending some quality time on Facebook and Pinterest, talking about my cats and posting pics of rad nail art. So when we started our Social Media Program at work, I figured I would be set.

Then it was my turn to do Twitter.
Not really sure I exactly excel at Twitter. Not my cup of tea. Takes me a bit more than 140 characters to talk about anything, especially if it’s worth even mentioning. Needless to say my tweets weren’t very popular. “Hey here’s a link to an article I liked,” Snooze.

What does a person need to do to get people’s attention? Check Alton Brown for instance, who has taken to responding to tweets with a picture of a post-it on his computer screen. Fantastic. I want to hang out on your Twitter page and see what you do next.

After talking to eROI’s Managing Art Director Gerry Blakney, we came up with an idea to send hand-written cards using the same language as a tweet (Twitter handles, hashtags and ow.ly links) to say thank you for engaging with us on our Twitter. Now this is something I can get behind. Nobody sends snail mail anymore, but they should!

#snailmail #nofilter #jkthereis

This isn’t the first time we’ve thought outside our computer box…es. We concocted an idea to expand our “Work From Home” days to be “Work From ____________” days. We could check out local businesses, invite our industry colleagues and work alongside each other at tables rather than at our desks. We would live tweet the event using the hashtag ‘#WF_‘ (there’s an underscore in there, I promise), have a libation or two and hopefully come away with new ideas and friends (awww).

So far it has been a success and growing with each event. Next month on September 7th we will be at one of my favorite venues, Produce Row, in industrial SE. Go ask your boss or your staff to head out of the office for the day and grab a seat next to us. You’ll be working, trust us. Check out our fully-responsive event site for some more information and pictures of past events and then Join us on Facebook. We want to talk to you about how you are engaging with others in our industry.

Can’t make it next month? Let us know what crazy place you think we should have it next. Zoo? Oaks Park? Trimet? Tell us your ideas and we’ll explore the possibilities together.

The flight attendant on the return flight, #2853, who pantomimed the welcome, safety procedures, in-flight directions, and finally the final ‘welcome to the city you flew to, have a nice day’ speech was a marketing genius. She was informative while being personable and funny which, because of this,  caused me to listen to her every word. I listened with anticipation to all of the in-flight information like it was my first flight ever.

And in some ways it was, this is the first time that such a large brand- Southwest Airlines- showed an engaging and intelligent personality while still giving me the directions I needed. And honestly, I found myself craving more.

“…if you are with a young child, please secure your air mask first before securing theirs. If you are sitting next to my ex-boyfriend don’t even bother.” -Southwest flight attendant

This unique approach, that I am sure is not regulation- but should be, was so refreshing that I have now liked, tweeted, and written this blog post about Southwest Airlines. If you could guarantee that each and every flight would have an ad libbing mastermind, I would fly Southwest exclusively (despite your screwy general seating scheme).

This level of brand-loyalty is from one person, on one flight— imagine the impact if more of your big-brand interactions were as honest and hilariously-human as my flight attendant’s quips. Give your brand a personality and your customers a friend to relate to, they’ll thank you for it.

“You may now turn on your electronic devices to Facebook, tweet, and instagram about Southwest getting you to your destination ahead of schedule because we know you certainly would if we didn’t.”

I’ve been to a few of the CSPDX meetups and the question is always asked, “What IS a content Strategist”? There always seems to be a hundred different answers and none of them ever seemed to resonate with me. I’m a Performance Analyst. I work with numbers, things that are concrete. Of course there is an art behind the analytics but for me everything comes down to what can be proven, what has significance.

Scott says a content strategist manages the cost of value. They are business consultants that deal with content. Everything needs to track back to value for them. They do the math, that determines the value, that makes their case for content. Value can be looked at in one of two ways, either savings which can be done through optimizations of efficiency, or sales.

Everyone is in the business to make money. If we don’t make money we don’t exist. If we don’t exist, neither does our content. No matter what business you are in your content needs to work for you otherwise what’s the point?

Scott asked us how a style guide, or a brand book makes a company money. The answer is that it doesn’t. In fact you actually LOSE money running the huge committee that takes hours to MAKE the brand book.  Now where can we leverage the style guide to create value? If we can automate some of the stylistic mandates through something like XML, or a template of some sort than we begin to work with efficiencies.

I really enjoyed the talk because I am a numbers guy. I’m a performance analyst and though some of what I do has some art and finesse to it, at its heart is raw data and numbers. What’s driving traffic? What’s the ROI? If you can’t prove to the finance department that what you are suggesting will create profits then it isn’t happening.

I think that all content should have a provable purpose. What do you think? Are there cases that require content simply for content’s sake? Where could your content work harder for you or how could your content change to produce profit either in savings or sales?

UNLIKE the freedom movement of the sixties, however, I do NOT feel liberated. I’m the Strategy Director at a digital marketing agency for cryin’ out loud. I can’t DROP OUT, right? I mean, what will my peers, clients and – perhaps more importantly – potential clients think when they go to validate my credentials by assessing my social activity? “She hasn’t posted in 3 weeks?!! Preposterous! How can I trust her to advise US?”

Maybe what’s preposterous are the expectations around my individual social activity. After all, do you ever see Don Draper taking an ad out for himself in The New Yorker? No, you don’t. It never would have happened. And it certainly wouldn’t have happened everyday, multiple times a day.

Of course, the internet has transformed us forever and we can’t look back – not that I even WANT to – but keeping pace with the current proliferation of new social sites and apps is not sustainable. Not for me, you OR your company. Furthermore, if I’m feeling this way – as an early adopter – isn’t that an indicator that the rest will follow? What happens when your tediously cultivated community decides to ‘drop out’? Or, at least, drop somewhere else?

Consolidation is the only manageable future I can imagine and we’re already seeing it starting to take hold.

As I imagine it…

• Twitter becomes “the peoples’ news”, sitting alongside media news, providing data visualization in real-time and driving awareness and participation in world events.

• The many video and music providers – YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, MySpace (yes, keep reading) Spotify, Pandora, etc. – consolidate and sit under one overarching entertainment umbrella, seamlessly integrated with TV.

• Facebook becomes your diary (a natural leap based on the move to Timeline) – linking directly to Ancestry.com (or the like) – with sharing features focused on smaller, much closer-knit communities of friends and family.

• Pinterest plays the part of a truly curated sharing space due to its more timeless nature, lack of linear structure and visual foundation. It will maintain its role as a personal catalog and likely incorporate public/private settings like other bookmarking services currently do.

• Apps get folded into this central system based on function and only the ones that can easily integrate survive.

That seems more manageable, no?

There are inklings of this consolidation already happening, but it’s early and there’s still a lot of fragmentation – and so it will likely be for the next 5 years at least. There are definitely murmurings, though…

• The “I exist for you to buy me” trend amongst internet/app startups continues (like American Idol for technology)…
  • Oracle buys Vitrue for $300 million
  • Salesforce.com buys Buddy Media for ~$700 million
  • Google buys Wildfire for $250 million
  • …to name a few

• Twitter “Cards” bring Twitter closer to Facebook (though I think they may refocus to news as stated above)

• MySpace (see, I told you to keep reading) refocuses, resurges and challenges Pandora and Spotify in the music space (attracting 29M visitors/mo. and reporting 1M new users in a single month earlier this year)

• Altimeter Group releases a report about how brands are struggling to streamline and consolidate their efforts across paid, owned and earned media…and how to solve it.

I am hopeful for a manageable future. In the meantime, I will refocus my own social efforts based on some sage advice from some well-respected friends in social…

• Carri Bugbee, award-winning tweeter for Mad Men character @PeggyOlson, says she felt overwhelmed by the fragmentation by 2009, but contends that marketing/communication professionals do not have the option of dropping out. They need to understand the ethos of various social platforms, not just the mechanics, in order to make smart choices about where and how you (and your clients) participate. (translation: Suck it up.)

• Olivier Blanchard, all-around marketing smarty pants, says he takes a different approach – only posting when, and where, he feels compelled to post. You can be sure he’s keeping on top of what’s new – just not participating everywhere, everyday. (translation: Spread it out.)

Thank you, friends, for putting things back in perspective. With that, I’m off to “drop back in” and find a way to manage the seemingly unmanageable, until my utopian convergence becomes reality.

Maybe Seacrest didn’t get the memo. Phelps is a mega celebrity in a highly dramatized global event—of course people are following him to get closer to the action.  Besides, the look-at-all-my-followers story went out with Ashton Kutcher’s Twit-fest. It’s not news. But if an erstwhile entertainment host didn’t know any better, maybe it’s still worth talking about?

While the number of fans and followers has its value, quality (of fans) and engagement (you have with each) should be your focus, because social media is a relationship platform. And if you’re in a position where people around you are still obsessed with sheer quantity of likes, clicks, fans and followers, try to get them talking about validity instead.

Did you see this story about a Facebook “Like” experiment with a fictitious company called Virtual Bagels? It’s a good read about how dicey and inexplicable “likes” (and their value) are in the real world.

In addition, a recent chat with an industry coworker turned up some interesting facts about validity in online advertising. He’s developed an expertise in forensic clickstream analysis to determine if real people are clicking on your ads. The big statistic? He says “most advertisers have no idea that 25-40% of their online budget isn’t reaching human beings.”

The lesson from all this? Whether you’re the most decorated Olympian of all time or one the wealthiest pretty faces on TV, be sure the people who love you really love you.

In honor of all things random but interesting, here, in no particular order are the top ten most recent links and stories from eROI social:

1. For those of you following the heated Account Vs. Strategy Princess basketball game the results are in!

2. In case you didn’t know there is a company named “Google” they search stuff and have a rather large bank account. In what could only be seen as a salvo on Facebook they bought Wildfire which helps people manage their presence on Facebook and Twitter. Should the Zuck be worried?

3. We have some very avid cyclists who avidly follow Le Tour De France. Why wouldn’t we? The winner wears Yellow which EVERYONE knows is eROI’s color! Thanks for the shout out Bradley Wiggins!

4. Beer! Portland loves it as well as MOST of our office. Portland is home to several amazing beer fests. Our Art Director and Performance Analyst managed to attend both the International Beer Fest and the Oregon Beer Fest . When I say attend I mean, managed to drink copious amounts of wonderful beer and make it home alive. Including a glass of 50$ a bottle goodness.

5. We’d like to say that we killed off all spam but alas, we just didn’t have time. However a group of global Bad@$$3S managed to take down the “Grum Botnet” reducing spam by what some say might be 50%. Less pleas for money from far off places is a good thing.

6. Our team is really creative. People make things, send things, and talk about things…creatively. Here’s something creative we got hoopla for.

7. What retailer hasn’t lamented the death of brick and mortar stores because of Amazon? People come to try on but buy online all the time. How can mom and pop compete? Here are some great suggestions including using Amazon’s own massive budget and R&D to your advantage.

8. Is it Christmas already? If that’s the case it is definitely not going to be a white one and my wife is going to be ticked off I didn’t get her gifts or a tree. Didn’t we JUST pay our credit cards off?

9. NBC has been flogged in the media recently for their time delayed broadcasts. I for one am glad that I don’t have to get up at 1 AM to watch my favorite trampolining athletes. Here are some apps to help you keep abreast of the action as well as a link to trampolining because I know you are intrigued now. It’s EXACTLY what you are thinking it is, they are just a LOT better at it than us when we were kids and jumping off the roof was a “trick” not sheer stupidity.

10. When building a brand it should be special. How do you make it special? Video. Check these out and tell me they aren’t cool. This post is from our New York sales team. Blocks making funny noises make me want to spend all kinds of money.

Consider yourself informed.

Editor’s Note: This guest post is written by Mike Arnesen, Senior SEO Analyst at our search partner, SwellPath. SwellPath is a digital consulting agency specializing in custom analytics tagging, SEO, and PPC campaigns.

Think of the last time you visited a website on your mobile phone. Your experience probably fell into one of three categories: terrible, decent, or awesome. Let’s go for a quick dive into the details of what could have defined your experience.

A terrible mobile experience

• The site used media like Flash, which wasn’t supported on your mobile browser.
• You couldn’t pinch or tap the site to zoom in on what you wanted to read.
• You may have been redirected from whatever page you requested to the site’s “mobile homepage” and had to navigate back to what you wanted to see originally.

A decent mobile experience

• Even though the experience wasn’t designed for mobile, you could at least zoom in on the important areas.
• You may have encountered a pop-up asking you to download the site’s mobile app. It didn’t help you access the site, but at least they were thinking of mobile.

An awesome mobile experience

• The site’s color scheme and text site was optimized for reading on a small screen.
• The site was optimized for on the go browsing: important elements were highlighted (e.g. location info, phone, and menus)
• The site’s navigation was reorganized to take up less screen space.
• All functionality was usable through a mobile browser (think videos).

So what was responsible for your last awesome mobile experience on a site? All the bullets above came from having a dedicated mobile design. This was a result of the developer taking the time to think of mobile users and trying to provide them with exactly what they needed. When you browse the web on your mobile device, it’s not hard to tell which sites have taken the time to provide a dedicated mobile design.

What’s harder to tell is how they did it. Did you pay attention to your mobile browser’s address bar when you visited the site? If you visited a URL like www.eroi.com, it either changed to m.eroi.com and delivered you to the mobile experience or stayed the same and delivered the mobile experience to you. For search engine optimization, this can make all the difference.

Dedicated Mobile Sites

If the URL changed and your browser was redirected to http://m.mysite.com or www.mysite.com/mobile/, then you’re looking at a “dedicated mobile site”. This is a completely independent site built solely for mobile visitors. While it likely has the same content, it can be build using entirely different technology and delivered in a different manner than the main www.mysite.com.

Responsive Web Design

If the URL didn’t change in your mobile browser but you still got an awesome mobile experience, you’re looking at Responsive Web Design. Responsive Web Design allows a website to respond to your screen size and give you an appropriate experience, all via the same URL.

Why is Responsive Web Design Better for SEO?

I’ll let the UX experts expand on why Responsive Web Design is killer for your users, but now let me get into why it’s amazing for SEO. Let’s start off by listing some of the disadvantages of having a dedicated mobile website(s):

1. Duplicate Content
   In the majority of cases, search engines will see that you have the same content on both the mobile and desktop versions of your website. If you look at it from the point of view of a simple web crawler, the text content (or page copy) of m.mysite.com/about/ is going to look incredibly similar to www.mysite.com/about/. This makes your website’s content much less valuable in search and can have a negative impact on organic ranking.
2. Link Dilution
   Search engine ranking is largely determined by the number of links pointing to your website (I’m really oversimplifying this, but it makes it easier to understand). Social  links/sharing also plays a big role these days. If you have two versions of the same site, users can either link to pages on m.mysite.com or pages on www.mysite.com. If you end up with a handful of links pointing to each version, your SEO power is going to be divided. This makes your website much less effective in ranking in search.
3. Authority
   Assuming you don’t have an SEO specialist on your team, it’s going to be very challenging to signal to search engines that they should be sharing “SEO Authority” between two sites. In Google, you set this up using “canonical tags” and the recently debuted “switchboard tags”. In Bing, you might be out of luck. In fact, Duane Forrester said outright about dedicated mobile sites, “most of them will never accrue any value and rarely, if ever, rank in any form of search“. That’s bad news all around.
4. Search Engine Confusion & UX as a Ranking Factor
   Search engines are very simple minded. If you have a mobile and a desktop site, you’re relying on search engines to sort that out (and, believe me, this can get hairy). Search engines have a vested interest in sending mobile searchers to a mobile-optimized site and desktop searchers to a desktop-optimized site. Therefore, if you make it hard for them to figure out which of your sites will offer the best user experience, you’re gonna have a bad time.
5. Tablets
   So where do tablets get sent in the dedicated mobile site model? The mobile site is likely pretty basic for someone on an iPad but the desktop site might still be overly complicated for tablet display. Do you create a third tablet only site that only compounds the above issues further or do you simply let users “deal with it”? Again, UX ties into modern SEO.

If organic search traffic (and user experience) is important for your business, we already have a strong case for adopting Responsive Web Design. With Responsive Web Design, you only have one website at www.mysite.com. Your website’s structural code and text (your HTML) is always the same no matter what device accesses it. However, the CSS (style rules for the website) changes depending on the screen size of the device that’s viewing the site. An iPhone viewing the site gets CSS that makes it look awesome on an iPhone; a standard desktop browser gets the regular CSS that makes it look awesome on a desktop monitor; a tablet gets the CSS to make it look awesome on a tablet display. Now how does that affect SEO?

1. Duplicate Content
   With Responsive Web Design, each piece of content has only one URL; duplicate content is a non-issue.
2. Link Dilution
   Since there’s only one website, all the links and social recommendations (likes, Tweets, +1s) out on the web point to a single website. All your SEO power goes to a central location for maximum ranking efficiency.
3. Authority
   See above. With Responsive Web Design, there’s no need to worry about your mobile site having trouble getting off the ground, even in Bing.
4. Search Engine Confusion & UX as a Ranking Factor
   Engines only have to deal with one site. They can send mobile and desktop users to the same site and know that they’ll be getting a good experience.
5. Tablets
   Under Responsive Web Design, all devices are covered. Tablets get an experience that’s just as awesome as phones and desktops.

If you’re a developer and you’re wondering when I’m going to get into the technical details in this post, I’m not. I may put a tutorial together at some point (let me know if you want to see that in the comments), but this post is about educating people about Responsive Web Design and making RWD evangelists. Responsive Web Design is the future: it’s great for users, it reduces the code maintenance for your dev team, and Google just made it the official recommendation this month (Bing officially recommended it previously in March, to the sounds of crickets). Also, if you’re a developer/designer, your clients will love it (if they haven’t heard of it) and want it (if they have)!

If you’re interested in learning more about Responsive Web Design, I had the pleasure of appearing on a Max Impact Hangout on Responsive Web Design (30-min, but great video). There’s also Google documentation on how to make RWD happen and a great blog post on it by Scott Vandehey.

It also aptly characterizes one of the main goals of visualization, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of data quickly. It is believed that the modern use of the phrase stems from an article by Fred R. Barnard in the advertising trade journal Printers’ Ink, promoting the use of images in advertisements that appeared on the sides of streetcars. The December 8, 1921 issue carries an ad entitled, “One Look is Worth A Thousand Words.” – Wikipedia

So true so true. I think its also ironic that the first use of this phrase was to describe an ad. Figures.  So if a picture is worth a thousand words what’s a video worth? I have always been a fan of using video to communicate and from where I sit the branded video is the new business card. Give me a story, tell my eyes, tell my ears….

To prove my point check this out and tell me this doesn’t make you want to work with these guys:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I would much rather sit through that video than read a 4 paragraph about page. Wouldn’t you? I think all brands of all sizes should have a snippet like this some where in there arsenal. Think beyond just making a commercial. You want to connect with your community not to sell them something but to tell them something.

Here is another very cool one:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What does your brand sound like?

Everyone loves lists.

Top 10 ways to make a million dollars

 Top ten things to do in Portland

Top ten longest words in the English language

Top ten foreign Mcdonald’s meals

and one very close to Portland’s heart:

Top ten beer festivals we’re number 2!

So in the spirit of top ten here, in no particular order, are the top ten most recent links and stories from eROI social:

1. Need help coding responsive email design? Maybe just some helpful rendering tips and tricks? Check out our Development Manager’s blogpost

Flashback to 1999-Email Development

2. Need some things to test? Tweeted out

101 Things you could be testing

3. Need a laugh? This Advertising Life always does the trick for us

When Presenting Work to the Client We Enjoyed Creating

4.  How about dogs? Everyone loves dogs right?

The Dogs of eROI

5. Infographics, are all the rage and we’re aggregating.

Infographic Love

6. Portland is a city built on food beer and booze. What makes a good restaurant website? Find out what we think here.

Cheap Food Now

7. We love to work, and we love who we work with, eROI culture:

We make pickles

8. Not only do we love to work, we work from anywhere.

eROI works from 

9.  We are incredibly athletic

eROI Scores!

10. We have traditions, and they are AWESOME

Bloody Mondays

Phew. That took a lot. We scoured the inter web so you didn’t have to.

As I began reading recaps of the 2011 Holiday Season it became apparent that being proactive is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a necessity to stay competitive. In a great article published by internet retailer, they interviewed Charlie Cole, Vice President of Online Marketing for LuckyBrand.com. They quoted him saying, “I’m going to be buying my ads for [Cyber Monday] in June or July because I want to be able to get my ad into impactful branding spaces. You want to get your offer in front of people in a big way, and I expect people to charge a premium for it.” The article went on to point out that Cole and others were already focusing on how they could squeeze even more growth out of key sales days, refine promotions and more effectively invest their marketing and advertising budgets for the 2012 season.

I know it’s tempting to sit there daydreaming of summer fun, keeping your company’s 2012 Holiday Campaign as far from mind as possible, but doing so could be detrimental to your bottom line. Your planning must start now.

Even with the urgency, we shoudn’t simply replace holiday stress with summer stress, so let’s ease into this a bit. Over the next few days, I task you with looking back at your 2011 Holiday season to consider the following elements. This will be the first step in a planning series to have you well on your way to a successful 2012 Holiday before Labor Day.

Your Campaign Calendar. Take note of what dates, or time periods, saw the most activity. Note any big opportunities you may have missed. For instance, e-tailers who didn’t have campaigns ready for last year’s Cyber Monday missed out in a big way. According to comScore, Cyber Monday 2011 was the biggest online shopping day in history – bringing in $1.25 billion for e-retail.  Don’t let delayed planning create lost opportunity.

Your Holiday Audience. What do you know about them –  Were they mostly new or existing customers? What devices did they use to interact with your brand? Did they have any significant shopping patterns? You’ll want to gather as much as possible about these shoppers and tailor a great holiday experience just for them. Segment, personalize and use dynamic content where possible. Fully QA your campaigns and ensure the best experience no matter what browser, mobile device or tablet they are on. As read on my Yogi® Tea Bag this morning, “In order to be remembered, leave nothing behind but goodness.”

Your Digital Marketing Mix. How integrated was your approach last year? Did you fully capitalize on cross-channel synergy? For the holidays you should have one set of objectives aimed at engaging your audience and use your various channels to create momentum around achieving those objectives. Your channels should be strategically selected to reach your audience and no channel should work alone. Learn from last year (and these months that have followed.) If you didn’t get traction from a channel, don’t be afraid to leave it. Focus on those that work for you and, on the flip side, don’t be afraid to try those that may.

Your Offering. What resonated well with your customers last year? Discounts? New Products?  Were your campaigns successful at up-selling and cross-selling? Take a close look at what worked well and focus on up-leveling it this season. Make your customers feel special. Make them feel like they are getting a great deal. Plan to be creative with your messaging– test new offers, product positioning, urgency messaging, etc. This year, don’t just give them a reason to buy from you, give them a reason to enjoy (and talk about!) their experience buying from you.

Market Trends.  What were the market trends last year that may have impacted your results, either positively or negatively? Consumer spending was up, but so were the number of promotions, discounts and free shipping deals offered by retailers. It’s highly important to consider how these and other factors may have affected your results. For the 2012 season, there’s a lot of hesitance to make market predictions just yet.  The fact that last year’s success was unpredicted, that it’s an election year, that uncertain economic influencers, such as tax changes, are looming around us, all play a part in this hesitance to make predictions. Perhaps unpredictability IS the new trend. While we wait for these insights to surface, keep focused on creating a great, noteworthy experience for you customers and be confident that you are on the right track.

Putting immediate thought into these factors will help build a great foundation for this season’s plan. There’s obviously much more to think about, and we will help you do that. Over the next month or so, we’ll provide various tips and ideas to make the 2012 Holiday Season magical (read: highly successful and not so stressful.)  We’ll be posting these here on the blog, on our Facebook page, Twitter feed and Pinterest boards. We encourage open interaction as we do and want to hear any tips or suggestions you may have to add. Our goal is to ensure that you are prepared for the holidays, that you position yourself competitively and, when all is said and done, that “relaxing holiday season” is never again an oxymoron – something I’m excited to hold up my fruity summer drink and cheers to!

It’s Portland Dining Month so let’s talk about food. Portland is a city on the go. We walk and ride everywhere. Our feet, bikes, street cars, and insanely tall and impractical unicycles are our preferred modes of transportation. Portland is a food, beer, and cocktail city. We are a Happy Hour culture. We are looking for the best (and cheapest) drinks as a prelude to an incredible meal, followed by late-night nightcaps, and finishing with guilty pleasure snacks (on the cheap of course).

The first stop might be planned from a laptop at work or home and all the full featuredness of the internet that provides, but chances are the second and third stops are going to be planned from your phone. Most likely with second or third drink fingers.

How can businesses help us out, while at the same time sell their product? Do we need an incredibly cool immersive experience requiring us to enter in information on our hopes and dreams in order to pair our feelings with our food? No. Instead, I think we’d all agree that we want a more streamlined experience that places our goals (to find an inexpensive, well-rated dining experience close-by, quickly) at the forefront of the design with the content we need (location, hours, phone number, and menu—with prices).

Your site might be amazing but if I can’t get to the restaurant I don’t care. What’s more important, your diners coming back time and time again for your incredible locally sourced, free range, humanely treated (insert main dish here)? Or a site (though beautiful) that leaves your diners searching desperately for a phone number hidden at the bottom of the page in 8 pt font not readable by phones for automatic dialing to make a reservation?

How many times have we heard from friends in the food business, chefs on TV, and every foodie out there, “It’s all about the food!” So why are we not spending more time making sure that the diners can find that food? There are so many little things that can be done quickly and easily. Here is what I’d like to see in my mobile dining experience:

1. Simple: My dream. Your logo + 3 big buttons above the fold
   Call UsFind UsMenu
2. Simple: As few images as possible. Images mean load times, load times mean frustration, and frustration means customer bounces.
3. Simple: Design for multiple devices. If you are already taking note of #’s 1 and 2 than you are ahead of the game. Not everyone has an iPhoneand not everyone’s Android is running the most current software. In fact a full 65% of users are 2 food-levels behind. Most are eating Gingerbread when they should be enjoying an Ice Cream Sandwich.
4. Simple: Use an “M-Dot” URL. Google recognizes and indexes sites appropriately. Make one click a reality with “m.yourrestaurant.com/food”
5. Simple: Your contact info and hours on EVERY page so no matter where I’ve navigated, when I’m ready to find you there are no back buttons involved

If it’s all about the food let’s make sure your food gets to your customers.

As sure as accomplishment and achievement will bring you supporters, it will also breed a legion of haters who love nothing more than to watch, analyze and celebrate your often-public failures. As I sat on my couch watching the NBA Finals last night with Facebook open in front of me, I realized I spend a lot of time hating the two things right in front of me; Facebook and Lebron James.

And, they’re both about to make me look foolish.

I am not saying my hating on Facebook and Lebron was completely unwarranted. In fact, the two have more in common in recent years than you might think. Observe…

• The past three years have seen both Facebook and Lebron grow into cultural, almost uncomfortably unnatural phenomenon—Facebook nearing 1 billion users and a valuation of over $100 billion; Lebron’s highly criticized move to the Miami Heat to join two other All-Stars (where absurdity and self aggrandization hit an all time high), 3 MVPs in 4 years and back-to-back NBA Finals appearances.

• There’s an almost unbearable level of smug arrogance—Mark Zuckerberg’s “You need me more than I need you” display of wearing a hoodie on his IPO road show and his basic demeanor in interviews and appearances. And any appearance made, photo taken, or word spoken by Lebron to anyone, ever.

• There has been an unprecedented amount of scrutiny and criticism of their very public failures—Facebooks’ dumpster fire of an IPO in 2012 and Lebron’s failure to win an NBA title in 2011. (I read, laughed, and wrote about both)

• Both are responsible for endless hours of entertainment and enjoyment—daily time spent on Facebook is soaring; Lebron James is good at basketball.

While they both have had carefully analyzed recent missteps and failures, they also have another similarity in their rise; they both stand on the precipice of unparalleled success in their fields that may silence the haters for good.

In Facebook’s case, their Achilles heel has been mobile, as they have not found a way to successfully monetize their rapidly exploding mobile audience. This has led to advertisers jumping ship, valuations to be dropped, and in some ways, contributing to their disastrous IPO. Zuckerberg and Co. are bolstering that weakness with the launch of  a mobile-only ad platform that has ad partners lining up to purchase. Coupled with unprecedented user engagement over desktop users (another Facebook weakness) and Facebook may have solved their mobile monetization woes to cement their long standing dominance of the social space for both desktop and mobile.

And then there’s Lebron, long criticized for shrinking in crunch time and thought to be doomed to retire with no championship ring. Winning his first NBA Championship last night over the Oklahoma City Thunder, with seemingly no holes in his game to speak of, Lebron is poised to potentially rattle off a string of championships, the likes of which fans haven’t seen since MJ (who happened to have a few haters himself).

So in my face, right? Haters gonna hate. Winners gonna win.  And I’ll see you on Facebook.

Purging my inbox of the multitude of daily deals and discounts has become such a fixture of my morning that I don’t even notice when I’m doing it anymore. Just to have some info to write this, I needed to scour my email Trash bin to recover the half dozen or so I had thoughtlessly deleted a few minutes prior. It’s a reflex, a mindless chore, a daily task as engrained in my day as tying my shoes.

Fact is, I just don’t have time to care. I don’t have the luxury of sifting through the daily barrage of 50% off knitting lessons, 30% off turtleneck cat sweaters and 25% off a pedicure (only good 10am-10:07am, on even days, every other leap year) to find an offer that is actually relevant to me and my interests. Because of that and without a second thought, Groupon, Living Social and the 500+ uninspired rip-offs that make up their competition get a quick, daily delete from my inbox. Everyone else must feel the same fatigue, right?

As it turns out, a recent study shows that of the 15% of the U.S. population that subscribes to at least one daily deal, more than half are purchasing and using them as frequently or more frequently than when they started. 15% may seem like a small concentration but in terms of the total population, that’s nearly 50 million active subscribers, the majority of which continue to purchase, although sometimes reluctantly.

Despite the ranting of supposed time-starved people like myself, daily deals are still very much alive with tremendous potential for growth, especially considering that 85% of Americans still don’t subscribe. Additional opportunities lie in segmentation and targeting of the current audience to deliver hyper-relevant deals and discounts to a specific audience. Give sports fans discounts and tickets and apparel. Send a pedicure discount to someone who has bought similar deals in the past.

Learn as much as you can about your subscribers and customize what you’re sending them. In my case, it could eventually turn my daily morning deletes into a daily purchase or two.

We tried this on our most recent send, advertising #WF_, a mobile coworking event at Mississippi Studios Bar Bar. Click the button to add the event to your Google calendar seamlessly, and join us at Bar Bar while you’re at it!

Read more about Google Calendar’s Event Publisher at Google.

And while we’re on the topic of email, I want to discuss another feature we’ve been testing for bullet-proof emails that are stable and consistent on all email clients.

Stable shadows
For too long shadows have been dropped, or faced the possibility of image-drop, in email marketing. This isn’t a problem anymore. By nesting tables, as well as using a combination of padding and background colors, you can easily create image-perfect shadows that are stable on all email clients. And viola. Check our most recent email send to have a look. Can you tell the difference?

Case and point—Google’s Project Glass. It has been suggested that by as early as next year, we’re all going to have the opportunity to wear the Internet on our face, taking another giant step towards our ultimate goal of becoming a robot.

The project is currently under development by a future technologies lab Google is calling ‘Google X’. And from the name alone, it sounds like it’s headquartered in a hollowed out volcano secretly hatching plans to blow up the moon. Recreating Geordie Laforge’s eyeware should be easy.

Project Glass brings all the possibilities and benefits of augmented reality direct into view, quite literally. An optical device gives you the ability to navigate around town, take photos, make and receive calls, check the weather and much more. All of this can be done, hands-free while walking down the street, going about your everyday life. Google’s vision of the everyday application can be seen here.

Hopefully ‘Google X’ puts aside their hopes for world domination long enough so by the year 2013, people will be walking the streets wearing a style that LeVar Burton was rocking back in ‘86. I said ’86!

Keep up the good work LeVar, there’s a butterfly in the sky and you can go twice as high.

*Tapper is still one of the greatest games ever made.

(Unsure just what Shazam is? Here’s a quick summary)

The only time I was actually able to pull off the intended “engagement” in the 30-seconds allotted, I was given the opportunity to download a holiday shopping jingle about discounted cardigans for Mom . Why anyone would ever want to do such a thing was beyond me. But surely it sounded good in the presentation to the client.

The whole experience made me picture a sleazy ad salesman who just learned a new buzzword, telling the client that their ad campaign will be “Shazamable”, giving little to no thought to what it actually means. Wanting to be up on the latest digital trends and thoroughly impressed by the saleman’s depth of industry knowledge and creativity, the client enthusiastically agrees that their ads simply MUST be “Shazamable”. Everyone leaves the room confident and proud to be on the cutting edge of advertising. The actual strategy behind this tactic can come later.

Since then, there have been some excellent uses of the Shazam app’s technology, especially within major live television events that are not bound by spot length. Rather than a download of a commercial jingle, users are able to use Shazam to unlock unique content and special features. The use of this engaging technology to further audience interaction has a much more strategic focus. Seemingly, it just came later.

Avoid the temptation of jumping into flavor of the minute marketing concepts with no real substance, objective or strategy behind them. Ask yourself why this concept makes sense for your brand and what you hope to gain through the use of certain new media. If you are going to further engage and interact with your audience, whether on their TV screen, desktop or mobile device, ensure you have something of value to offer them. Does your audience really want to download a jingle about sweaters? Think through the user experience. Put strategy first.

Three days before Facebook officially goes public, the third largest advertiser in the U.S., General Motors (GM) announced that they would be dropping all Facebook ads due to low consumer impact. GM will continue to utilize free Facebook Pages for brands and models but will pull its roughly $10 million on paid Facebook ads. True, $10 million is a small portion of Facebook’s total ad revenue, which in the U.S. alone was $2.2 billion in 2011. However, the true damage to Facebook is in the message General Motors’ announcement sends to the rest of the country – that Facebook advertising does not work.

What makes this story so interesting is the not-so-passive aggressive timing of the announcement by GM. As their stock debuts on Friday, the question of how much they’re actually worth is top of mind this week. Placing significant doubt on the effectiveness of paid Facebook ads, which currently account for over 80% of their overall revenue, in the minds of those making these valuations is the last possible thing Facebook needs this week.

Could this decision by GM have waited until next week and would it have gained such attention? What does GM have to gain by attacking Facebook’s primary revenue generator just before they go public and jeopardizing their valuation? And if you want to take this down the conspiracy theory road, does the fact that the U.S. government still owns a controlling stake in GM only make this more interesting?

I am by no means a conspiracy theorist, I just find the timeline (pun sort of intended) interesting and thought provoking. Talk amongst yourselves, or with us on Twitter and Facebook, and stay tuned for my next piece about Siri becoming self-aware and the Obama Administration spying on you through your iPad.

You + Pinterest

Your brain is wired to process images in milliseconds. With that in mind, how can you optimize your site and imagery to play well with Pinterest?

Remember the Peacock
Pinterest is full of good-looking things. Invest in stunning imagery, differentiate and brand yourself. Then, evaluate your work with one simple test: Does it tell a story without words?

Speak Softly
80% of pins on Pinterest are repins. Get shared through creativity, concept, and emotional appeal, and target content to what people on Pinterest are interested in. Don’t shout your message or be overly self-promotional.

Evaluate your Code
If your site uses a lot of background images, people won’t be able to pin them. Pinterestable images should use the “img src=” tag. Pinterest does video, but it doesn’t do Flash.

Go Big. Go Home.
A Pinterest page has five columns of thumbnail images, each 192 pixels across. While you may only get 192 pixels in width, you can make a taller image that tells a long, creative story like “40 Ways To Tie Your Scarf,” or “6 Styles for Your Hair.”

An original 960×3500 pixel image will scale nicely into a tall, skyscraper-like visual in your pinboard. And create large source images that link from your thumbnail for maximum visual impact.

Pinterest is Social
Just like your Facebook and Twitter channels, it takes care and feeding. You can connect all three channels together, and addFollow and Pin It buttons to your site to make it easier for people to pin your content.

Plan Your Follow-Through
On Pinterest it can take a few clicks until you reach the website source for an image. If someone’s made it that far, they’re likely very interested in your content. Suddenly one of your standard site pages becomes a landing page if a photo from it gets pinned. That means when you build product, recipe or similar pages, think of them as the first point of entry for your site. And to manage your analytics to see traffic drivers, try these suggestions for Google Analytics and buildingRSS feeds.

De-stress the Stress
It’s possible to be upfront about how you’d like your images and video to be used. If you own rights to your images, consider choosing a Creative Commons (CC) license (there are six) that meets your criteria. All CC licenses require attribution, but at least this way visitors will know where you stand on image sharing and can feel more confident in their pins.

The last time we ordered office supplies, we ended up with triple berry smash fruit-scented whiteboard markers. It sounds good until you’ve got a blueberry xylene buzz after an hour-long brainstorm. So we found a greener solution: AusPen. These markers are xylene and scent-free, refillable, and as a bonus clean off the whiteboard funk the other markers left behind. And it’s all for the same price as the disposable kind. They also have fancy metal handles, which makes us feel a little more Dieter Rams, a little less school kid when we’re writing. You can get them here: http://www.ecosmartworld.com/ (where they have great customer service too, thanks Kerry!).

WHAT IS IT ABOUT TACTICS?

Tactics are tangible. Tactics can create an immediate sense of ‘We’re doing something’ or “We’re getting something done.” As marketers, this happens because we often feel pressure to rush to that ‘new thing’ our competitor is doing. Maybe a few of us feel like we know better but are pushed into something by the well meaning powers above us. Oh, and let’s not forget those alluring tools and technologies that spring up weekly promising a better mousetrap, guaranteeing better results and a whole lot more

SOUND FAMILIAR?

Avoid being a Tactic Zombie, start asking ‘why’:

1. Ask why as your first step in planning. Doing so will ensure you are creating authentic goals and objectives that map to your larger brand and business. It will set the best long term foundation for everything moving forward. Ask: Why are we doing this? Why is this a priority right now?

2. Ask why throughout developing your strategy. This will help make sure you are choosing the most relevant tactics, ones that map directly to fulfilling an objective or support the fulfillment of an objective. Ask: Why will this (tactic) create the best chance for success? Why will this be the best approach for reaching our audience? Why are we suggesting this?

3. Ask why when you set your performance goals. Targeting unfounded goals will cheat you from real learnings about your brand, offerings and audience. To set realistic goals, examine metrics from previous campaigns and/or industry standards. Ask: Why is this our target for conversions, likes, percent of growth? Why do views of these pages indicate success? Why is this download more valuable than another action?

4. Ask why when developing creative. Follow the credo of ‘everything for a reason.’ When you push yourself to answer ‘why’ of your creative, be it graphic or written, you will stay aligned with both the strategic and tactical goals. Ask: Why is this element necessary? Why would the target audience care about this? Why is this layout the best hierarchy of elements?

5. Ask why when you evaluate after launch. Question why you are seeing certain results at particular stages. Doing so will give you the opportunity to identify key insights and adjust the current campaign for improved results. This can also lead to refining how and to whom you roll out your next campaign. Ask: Why is this group engaging at this point? Why is there drop off at this page? Why did this campaign perform differently than previous campaigns?

Taken last night at the Mall 205 Target. Yet another cleaned-out Missoni shelf.

High-end designer does affordable line for Target. That’s an old story, isn’t it? What made the Missoni launch so successful it crashed Target.com and cleared shelves across the country? Whether you prescribe to the 4Ps or the 4Cs, Target + Missoni got the mix right (and then some):

• Product—Missoni. An iconic luxury brand that, like Goyard or Louis Vuitton, carries a signature look that’s unmistakable. For fashionistas, Missoni at Target is an irresistible combination. Plus, the few products they teased us with (a bicycle!) were exciting, along with a promise of 400 total to choose from. Check out this hauler sharing her feelings about the launch.

Louis Vuitton, Goyard, Missoni. Iconic luxury brands.

• Price—Target’s designs are affordable at around $50 for a sweater vs. $700 at Neiman’s.

• Promotion—They stirred up serious publicity around this launch. The well-orchestrated buzz campaign included fashion magazine previews, influencer and blogger seeds, pop-up preview stores, and quirky, creative TV spots.

• Place—With a reputation built on making great design accessible, Target has a built-in frugal fashionista fan base.

With the P’s in place, what else made this such a runaway success?

There’s a little brand alchemy here, but I’ll speculate years of pent-up longing for Missoni manifested in this collection’s launch. Until yesterday, Missoni’s been a brand out-of-reach for many. Missoni also ambitiously stretched across store aisles making a range of products available for people wanting more than apparel. Finally, there’s just something about them. Their varied color stories appeal to a range of tastes, and their designs are easy to work into most collections. Pucci might want to take note.

Ironically, Missoni is still out of reach for people. This limited-edition release is practically sold-out, and in the process has created a new kind of status. This time, it’s not about price and luxury, it’s about “I got in. I got mine.”

But I’m more interested in what comes next.

Are we there yet?
Right now, two people are passing each other on a downtown street, each recognizing the other is wearing something from the new collection. They both know they belong to the exclusivity of this moment. Soon the scarf or the sweater will be old news, but today they’ve got considerable cultural value: so valuable that some designs are selling on eBay for close to the price of a regular Missoni piece. A few enterprising people predicted the sellout and are making a hearty profit on this sliver of a must-have frenzy. How long before the high is gone? Tomorrow? A week? Are we already there?

Trickle-up economics?
I’ll be watching to see what effect this success has on Missoni’s other line. Some of their items (scarves, for example) are somewhat affordable for many, and occasionally show up on DOD sites such as RueLaLa.com. If I were a retailer, I’d be setting up a Missoni scarves promotion right about now to see if I could capture some of the love.

What about mama?
Finally, what’s the effect this lower-end line will have on the parent brand? This collection is decidedly different in quality and product selection, but it’s still Missoni. Strangely, it feels like they’ve made a small act of goodwill. Bringing color and affordable acrylic-knit-joy to people at a time with mixed economic news seems like something the Missoni brand purists can forgive. I’m always a fan of making design available to all.

Creating an email will be done in the Content section of your account. The folders in the left window correspond to the different content areas you can build to put together your email. They will hold any information you create or upload. More folders can be added and labeled to organize your content by right clicking and selecting “new folder”

• My Emails: Where your completed emails are stored
• My Templates: Where your email templates are stored
• Portfolio: Where you can house any uploaded images, documents, etc.
• My Contents: Where you can store frequently used blocks of content

The first step to creating an email is actually creating a template.

(If we have built you a custom template you can skip this step, if not, go ahead and click on the “My templates” link in the left hand windowpane.)

1. Click create at the top left hand corner of your center window. The only required portion of this is the name. You will want to name your template something that you will remember later because you will be choosing this template to base your content around.
2. The default location for your new template is the “my templates” folder but you can change that later if you would like to keep your account more organized.
3. The “template source” is where you choose to either use the ExactTarget editor or upload your own HTML. We are going to cover using the editor so leave that option checked.
4. Click save and you will taken to the “header editor” section

The only content you will be defining in your template is your header and the actual layout of your content boxes you would like for your email.

1. Click on “create header” to start a header area from scratch(you can use the “retrieve header” option if you have previously stored a content area under the “my contents” folder).
2. You will have several options for a layout including uploading your own HTML. Choosing a layout with an image will allow you to either choose from assets you have previously uploaded into the portfolio, pull in an image from the web, or upload from your computer.
3. You also have the option to size your image, though this can be done later in the editor as well.
4. Once you have inserted your image you will have the option to place a border around your header, choose a border color, a background color, font,padding, etc.
5. All of this and more can also be edited in the next screen. This is where you will be entering your text if you chose a layout that included a text option. Feel free to play around with the immense amount of content styling options available to you including dynamic content, hyperlinks, and other standard features you would find in any word processing software.
6. Once you are happy with the look of your header you can click save. This will show you what your email structure is going to look like.
7. You again have the option to add a border around the entire email and set colors.
8. The final thing you are going to want to look at before you save your template is the layout. There are seven different options. Choose the one that fits your purpose remembering that you will not be able to add content areas later but you don’t have to use all of the areas available to you within your template. Unused content areas will not appear in your final email. Clicking save will move your template to the folder you specified earlier.

You are now all set to start creating the content of your email.

1. Click on the “My Emails” folder in the left window pane and then “create.”
2. Choose the “build new email from existing template” option and click next.
3. Choose your template from the drop down, name your email so you can find it later and also give it a subject line. You can pull in dynamic content here and all of this can be edited later on before you send as well.
4. Click on save and you will be taken to the editor where you can begin to create your content.

Each content area has the same editing options as the header from the template creator.. You can preview your work in HTML as well as the text format using the tabs at the top right hand corner. When you are satisfied with the look of your email you can send it directly from this editor or wait for a later time. The changes you make within this editor are automatically saved as you work so you can come back to your work in progress at any time. Just browse for the email you created within the “My Emails” folder.

ExactTarget is a very powerful platform with which you can create your campaigns. We will be covering these features in later articles and would be glad to also set up training with you and your staff with our support team if you would like a more in depth look at ways to increase your deliverability, ROI, or improve subscriber interaction.

Let us know how we can help you by contacting us at Support@eroi.com

• Shadows
• Strokes
• Text Wrapping for input fields
• Opacity
• Hue/saturation/luminance
• Rounded corners
• Gradients
• Background sizing
• Multiple backgrounds (my favorite!)
• Transitions
• Many, many more!

This, much like other new technologies (HTML5) do not work in all browsers, that is where the concept of Progressive Enhancement comes in. It’s always been something that we developers keep in mind, especially here at eROI with all of the email work that we do … we love building for Outlook

Essentially, the theory behind it is that all websites don’t need to look the same in all browsers, but to try and keep a good user experience throughout. For a basic example, rounded corners … For the browsers that do support it, great but for the others that don’t (IE6-8) the user will see square corners. Does this change the user experience at all? No, and someone using IE most likely won’t even realize there’s anything missing.

Here are a few guidelines when thinking about Progressive Enhancement:

• Websites do not need to look the same in all browsers
• Take full advantage of each browser’s strengths and weakness based on web standards
• Basic functionality and content should be accessible to all browsers
• Respect the end user’s preferences:
  • Some users have special stylesheets applied to all websites
    (enlarged fonts, hearing impairment, etc.)

For more info, check out Jason Cranford Teague’s post about the seminar.

“Six months ago, 25 strong-willed SAO Board members locked ourselves in a room for a day to get aligned on our vision of the software community in this great state.  Yes, it took an entire day and a lot of debate to come up with one sentence. But, it’s an important one:

“Our vision is to make the software industry the catalyst for Oregon’s economic renaissance and a mecca for innovation.”

There is ONE phrase that really stands out here and is rarely ever used in a vision statement and that is “economic renaissance.”  What does this mean?

The first part of renaissance means that we’ve been through the dark ages or dark times of the past couple years of the downturn where there have been times where it’s sucked.  We’ve had to work seemingly endless 60-80 hour weeks without any immediate payoff. I don’t see anyone in this room that fit the Portlandia profile of “where young people go to retire.”

The second part of renaissance is the good part – it means innovation AND creativity.  It means job creation AND company growth.  It means leveraging what we as Oregonian tech and business leaders do so well – collaborate, mentor, and improve ourselves and our businesses through the mentality that rising tide float all boats. Like Charlie Sheen, we all want to WIN, but we want to win together as a vibrant business community.

How are we doing this? We are forming value networks through partnering with the PDC and City of Portland to support mentoring programs like PDX11 and Portland100. We have monthly Leadership Exchanges for CEOs, CFOs, and Technology Leaders. We have Fireside Chats that connect and feature public and private industry leaders like the CEOs of PGE, PacificCorp, and NW Natural who spoke about the importance of technology innovation in their own companies.  And lastly, we are educating our future leaders at a K-12 level through our non-profit Techstart, and we are driving tangible career development opportunities through SAO Programs and workshops.

I’m going to share some simple advice from one of my mentors:
Keep working hard and get involved in the software community.

The Renaissance is happening.  In fact, we’re making it happen here in this room, in this city, and in the state of Oregon.  Thank you.”

In print design we are fortunate enough to know the scope, target, and end-state of the finished product. Print design knows what the content will be. Static. Printed. Set.

As an interactive designer I was handed a project without clear deliverables, message or content. Everything was up for discussion and everything was an option. Dream task or impossible endeavor? Initially I floundered and thought the end-goal, an email marketing newsletter, impossible.

Taking a step back, I was thinking the glass was half empty. Instead of looking at the larger picture, I felt tied-down in the endless nothing, lost.

The client wants an email newsletter that fits the brand. I know that they want everything and I get to set that ‘style-guide’ in to motion. Instead of viewing the trees, I took a step back and viewed the forest. I know they want video, text, images, primary and secondary CTAs within a generic framework. Working within those parameters and building a comprehensive library and guide for how to proceed in the future we were able to meet the clients’ needs now and later.

Thinking about content strategy and planning for eventual ‘what-ifs’ allows the designer to plan and design according to the present and the future. Thinking about it in a print world- it is an illustrative brand, style guide. Designers who have thought out the piece’s content strategy know the physical state that the design was created for, and where and how it will evolve. Successful interactive designs have successful and thorough content strategy plans which allow for a dynamic, beautiful end product.

The lack of information is not a hindrance to the designer as long as we have listened to the information the client has given. It allows them to plan their designs to grow and change as the eventual happens- instead of designing for now and worrying about later, later.

With our recent decision to focus our services primarily on online marketing campaigns that integrate email, mobile, social and websites, we also made the decision to expand our 3rd-party software toolbox.  We still offer and support emailROI, but because we want to offer the best in campaign strategy and creative services, we knew that we needed an advanced software tool to support advanced ideas. ExactTarget is the industry leader in email, mobile, and social messaging software and this partnership provides us limitless opportunity to help our clients execute and track advanced campaigns that extend to channels beyond email.

We are excited to be able to share some of ExactTargets fantastic resources with you, and plan to do so on a regular basis. To get started, here’s one of our favorites from their “Subscribers, Fans and Followers” series. Enjoy!

FREE GUIDE – THE COLLABORATIVE FUTURE

Despite common assumptions that email, Facebook, and Twitter are in direct competition with one another, consumers communicate freely across these channels, never isolating one from the other. Shouldn’t you do the same? We’ll turn common assumptions about channel competition on their head so you can develop a tightly integrated strategy that combines—not isolates—the powerful strengths of email, Facebook, and Twitter.

Inside this report, you’ll learn:

X The Email, Facebook and Twitter x-factors
X The distinction between SUBSCRIBER from FAN from FOLLOWER
X 12 ways to integrate these channels for increased ROI

Google web fonts is in beta testing and has been for quite some time. Google web fonts is a free, robust web font directory that allows users to download the font for use in designs or on users’ personal servers, as well as copy their code to host it on Google’s servers, and they are all open source.

Ahh, open source.

Google fonts works reliably on most modern browsers, which usually is a a disclaimer statement to explain the exclusion of Internet Explorer, mobile devices, et cetera. Not so in Google’s world. Google fonts work. Google fonts work on IE 6, Chrome 4.249.2, Firefox 3.5, Safari 3.1, Opera 10.5, Android 2.2 and iOS 4.2 and above. Reread that last statement: “and above.” (!)

Google offers a font previewer which allows you to set custom text, at whatever settings Google web fonts supports including CSS3 features like text-shadow and rotation. Set the copy the way you want it to appear on your site, copy the code and its business time!

Check it_

*Quick disclaimer; I am a huge Google friend, supporter, cheerleader. I like Google and firmly believe that if Google made a crappy product we, the people, would finally understand how much Google runs the world because they rock.