Steven Keith, Director of Interactive Communications
Bio
Steven is fascinated by how technology can maximize the acquisition of information, while minimizing the time, complication and space required. Mining the small and distinct spaces between technology, marketing, language and media, Steven helps clients exploit all media forms to tell their story and get results.Articles
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I found it "inside the box"
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Advice I Just Gave an Intern
- Spend more time completely out of your comfort zone.
- Work at an odd time, one that you are not used to.
- Set a target number of hours you will work...then work 30 more minutes.
- At the end of the day, write down 7 things you want to do better tomorrow.
- Think of the best thing you did last month. Do it better next month.
- Ask someone you admire how they take notes.
- Look at the sky more.
- Suspect.
- Imagine solving the problem behind the problem.
- Avoid committee thinking at all costs.
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How Data Dies
What will happen to all my information when I die? As of today, I have over a TB of music, movies, files, documents, images and other stuff on disks and drives. Some of it is in my possession and some of it is on servers all over the world, just a password away. When I pass away, hopefully that won't be for several more decades, I may have thousands of terabytes.
When I pass away someone will grab one of those big drives and do what with it? Presumably it would be a family member...maybe one of the more luddite ones. They will throw it in a box or a garbage can. All of the data I have stored on servers spread across the world don't know me or have any connections to me and will have no idea.
What do they do with aging data? Does it have a life? Does privacy keep everyone from accessing it? Does your data have a will? Do you have impossible passwords that will guarantee no one will ever see it? Weird to imagine, isn't it?
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Easter Peeps Jousting
This afternoon we jousted peeps.
Here is how its done.
1.You take a peep and equip it with a toothpick or cocktail sword.
2. Line 'em up and prepare them for the joust. We put them on a paper plate and then place our bets.
3.Place them gingerly into the microwave.
4. Whichever peep falls last or whose sword (toothpick) lands on top, wins. Enjoy!
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Skillz Passport
I had lunch with a colleague this past week and we were talking about recruiting design talent.
We chatted about what it was like when designers come in for an interview and "blow smoke" regarding how much they like our current design portfolio.
We agreed how refreshing it would be to have a designer come in and tell us something less flattering. What does that really accomplish for either person in the interview?
Because in the end, we strive on constant improvement and we aren't that interested in people, specifically design talent, that like what we have or where we've been. We want someone that has the courage, vitality and vision to tell us where they would like to go.
(full disclosure statement: this is about you, superstar. Give us a call.)
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Kinda Sorta going to War on Softspeak
I hate very little. But today I have launched a new war on something I hate a lot. A war on something so despicable it deserves the grizzliest of all deaths. I want to launch a war on softspeak. Sawdust. Diet interjectives like "kinda" and "sorta". What the hell is wrong with us? Why do we all seem to say these? Really strong speakers are saying these things. I sorta want you to notice if you are kinda hearing these things too. Or is it kinda just me?
When people fill their sentences with "kinda" and "sorta" I immediately wonder if they know what they are talking about. Is it just a confidence thing? Then like a timid monkey, I start doing it...unknowingly aping them with this scourge of conversation. I hate it! I hate that I say it too.
There is another one too. "I mean." Oooo I hate that one more than the others despite it being slightly less prevalent.
"I mean, I kinda want to make sure we are sorta giving you what you sorta paid for in the first place. I mean, you know what I mean?"
My war has three parts.
Part one: I want to know if it is truly as pervasive as I think. So I am reaching out to everyone to check the communal pulse on this one. Is it just me?
Part Two: If it is as truly epidemic as I think it is, I want to come up with a strategy to get people to notice it and how ridiculous and destructive it is and sounds, and to take note of its sour consequences.
Part Three: Let's come up with a way to help people regain the courage to talk without filler words like "kinda" and "sorta" and "like" and phrases like "I mean". This will be the hardest part. But I think it will be worth the effort.
So, what do you say, are you with me?
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The Miracle of Designer Notetaking
Have you ever noticed how some designers take notes? I work with a lot of designers in a strategic communications agency and we talk a lot about how to help our clients meet their goals. Much of what we do is story-telling through design. In our agency we do an enormous amount of brainstorming in special brainstorming rooms.
When we are running through dozens of ideas for a particular client several days after a brainstorm some of our designers will pull out a moleskin or sketchpad they used to record the session. In that book are a multitude of doodles or sketches having what seems to me to have nothing to do with the brainstorm we both attended.
Our designers will open to the page and read back through their sketches, recalling exactly what happend in a strikingly accurate blow-by-blow.
I am so impressed by that. It is like a parallel syntax they use with fluency. What's more, in much of our work, it gets used in our creative concepting and its smart.
So, if you are in a brainstorm and your designers are doodling, don't worry, its their way of taking notes, passing time, rapid prototyping and rendering a flurry of ideas into an indellible picture for later.
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How Web Agencies Select Clients
I was recently asked by a close client contact, "How does Capstrat determine which Web projects to do and which not to do?" She wondered why we pursued some with vigor and turned down or passed on so many other projects.
I told her it was one part reputation, two parts politics, one part economics and a thousand parts experience.
As far as reputation is concerned, we want to do work that matters. We want to feel great about making HTML products that create value for people and help communities. We want the world to know that we want this. We also want to do work that is exciting and cool--work that makes other potential clients notice us.
In terms of politics, we are a relatively big (88 FTE's) independent firm in the southeast and have alot of big clients. Because we are an integrated firm, it follows if we are doing crisis or reputation management, we are also likely doing interactive and advertising or marketing of some sort. To me it’s all storytelling. Another perspective sees it more about relationships than politics. This is an important piece. We like to work with people who understand projects worth doing are worth sharing risk. To that end, we work with people that trust we can measure and mitigate project risk. It generally takes a good relationship dynamic to make a good project succeed. Client is just as important as agency. Clients tolerant of candid discussions about doing what it takes to succeed are clients we value.
Last, it is about economics. We want to do work that wont break us financially. Believe me, there are many projects on which we take a bath because it is a relationship investment or a cause we are willing to support. But mostly, we do work for clients that understand and value the price of a deliberate and considerate strategy.
So, here is one approach we take on the Web team to help us figure out how to spend our resources:
Client Challenge or Problem
What is it?
What’s causing it?
Are there unstated problems hiding behind their stated problems?
What business benefits will they gain by solving these problems?
Is this problem worth solving?
How does this project relate to the company’s current top priorities?
Our Solution
What form ought it take? (components, timeframe, $, etc)
Why do we feel this is the best solution for the client?
What other options (competitors) are they considering?
What additional information do we need to do an estimate / proposal?
Urgency
When do they need the solution live?
What is driving the date?
Is the client team on the same page regarding vision, scope, urgency and ownership?
Access
Who are the decision makers? Do we have access? Will they trust our ideas?
Who owns the vision for this project? Who is the person driving this day-to-day?
What is the decision process?
What are the decision criteria?
Expectations
What do they think it will cost to solve their problem?
How long do they think it will take?
What resource commitments are they willing to make?
Have these expectations been set internally?
Are the client’s expectations in line with ours?
If not, what’s our plan to calibrate expectations?
Money
Is this a funded project? If yes, how much?
Whose budget will this come out of?
If not, how do projects get funded? How can we help?
Are there unanticipated potential revenue streams we can help tap?
Are there creative budget sharing ideas to follow?
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The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief
Was at WholeFoods in Durham, NC waiting on line to pay for my salad and overheard two executive types talking about one of their clients, presumably.
They were talking about how their client was going to fire them for some reason. One guy says to the next, "Hell, we need to charge them for everything under the sun if they are going to fire us."
"I'll be gettin' Shelly on that this afternoon."
The next thing I heard made me laugh out loud. One of the guys says to other, "The robber that laughs last steals from the thief... Keats." He actually said that and finished it off with, "Keats"
I could barely maintain my composure as a good eavdesdropper. This dude not only had the spirit of the quote wrong but maligned the quote itself and he attributed incorrectly. That is worth a thousand points isn't it?
If I am not mistaken, the quote is from Shakespeare's Othello and is actually, "The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief." And in the scenario I overheard, it would be the client whose smiling, not the crooked executive. Damn that was funny. I hope it really backfires for them.
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Behavioral Targeting stole my weekend
So I was thinking about the RAND corporation this weekend and how they used marketing back in the day, given the work they did. I don't know, I was just curious. I looked it up in Wikipedia. It was immediately after my son went to sleep at about 9:00. Then I stumbled on game theory. When I looked up, it was 4:00 am and I was writing about what I believe is the future of behavioral marketing.
Since then, I have been thinking about how all that applies to my work as an Interactive strategist/marketer/story-teller at Capstrat.
First of all, game theory is a branch of math and economics (I guess all disciplines can apply) that looks at causes and effects of interactions between outcomes. Then it perfects strategies based on optimization of subsequent approaches. We use game theory to help us understand how to get the most out of an outcome based on what events other "players" choose. If player A does X then I should do Y. If player A's counter-action is Z then I should do N. And so on... They used game theory in the Kennedy administration to arrive at the following: "if worse comes to worse, the USA's outcomes are better if they launch the first nuclear device toward the USSR as opposed to the alternative."
Okay, so bear with me. Let's overlay game theory upon marketing. Here is where my mind started to melt.
Now that marketers, ad networks and really smart game theorists are seeing their targets (customers) move online toward IP-based devices, they begin to know more about individual users' behaviors, ideas and desires--or at least the Web sites they've been to recently. It is called "behavioral targeting." Using companies like Blue Lithium, advertisers can effectively predict and serve messages or outcomes on an individual basis with increasingly scary precision. They put two variations of an ad in front of you and people like you and see which yields the most favorable outcome. Then they flock around the one that wins and trash the other that didn't. Wash, rinse, repeat.
On top of that, these "agents" run by Blue Lithium can be and typically are, self-learning, self-correcting and continuously improved. And on top of that, the larger the ad network Blue Lithium and others create, the more data there is to help feed this artificially intelligent machine. Soon that data will be pooled with business intelligence gathered from your last 300 grocery visits and detailed browser history.
And if you're reading this, chances are you are a target whose name is somewhere in a database. How suprised will you be when you next go to CNN.com and see a banner for the same Volvo you test drove yesterday?
Don't be. Someone, somewhere is working really hard to model the game where the outcome has you and your advertisers both winning.
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