Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Our culture places a great value on loyalty. Families instill it. Marketers crave it. But loyalty - blind loyalty - has been shown to lead to lying. How many cases have we seen in the news recently of political aides lying to protect their bosses? One need look no further than Andrew Young, the aide to presidential candidate John Edwards, who agreed to admit paternity of a child out of wedlock that Edwards had fathered.

Those of us who work for others, either directly or in a client relationship, must walk and chew gum at the same time. I love my clients. I am deeply loyal to them. But I shouldn't and wouldn't lie for them.

This July I moved to Oregon and began my career as one of Capstrat's remote employees. An amazing opportunity and growth experience. On average I have one or two conference calls a day. I have learned a few things about what makes them successful. My top 5 tips:

1. Be an active listener - this tip is for those that are remote. Take notes, ask questions and speak up. This might require turning off your IM, closing your email program and your numerous open applications (that means you Facebook and Gmail). Without having the physical connection of sitting in the same room as someone it is easy to zone-out. However, by actively listening you can continue to stay connected to the conversation and ensure you continue to stay engaged with the rest of your team and clients.
2. Be strategic about where the conference phone is - this tip is for conference calls happening in large groups. Nothing makes me more flustered during a conference call than the sound of someone typing (click-clack on loud speaker for an hour would make the most saintly person nuts). The phones pick up everything and magnifies the noise. This also goes for paper movement, sounds silly I know. However, the sound of papers shuffling across a desk or being leafed through sounds likes a tornado coming through a conference phone. This goes for projectors as well, don't place the conference phone directly beside a projector. That little fan can get loud.  (Note: this tip also goes those calling into conference calls. Phone microphones pick up more than you think.)
   
3. Whispers and shouters sound the same on a phone as they do face-to-face - if you are a soft talker it makes sense for you to locate yourself near the phone microphone. This goes for shouters (which I am) if you can be heard from ¼ mile away you don't need to sit by the phone. Trust me you will be heard no matter where you are.  
4. Cut the cross talk - when you don't have the benefit of seeing the people you are speaking to your ears have to work double time. This means having four people speak at once is near impossible to understand. It makes sense always to have one person speak at time and not to have your own side conversations during group meetings, having someone call in just encourages this more.
   
5. Be prepared - if you plan to talk through a document or present something send it out ahead of time. If everyone in the room has a document they are reviewing, the person calling in is virtually helpless in following along without it. Same goes for presenting, send your PowerPoint in advance or even better, setup a WebEx.

 

Having a business relationship completely over the phone can be a challenge. It does; however, encourage you to be prepared, listen hard and ask questions, which can't be a bad thing.

Subaru recently unveiled a new series of TV spots called "Dog Tested." The premise is this: dogs at the wheel of a Subaru Forester. The campaign follows two dogs on their driving adventures -- picking up a yippy pal at the airport, trying (and failing) to parallel park, losing a parking space to a cat in a sedan (you know how it is).

Depending on how you feel about dogs, you'll either find this campaign ridiculous or brilliant. I fall firmly in the Dog-Loving Camp, and I think it's brilliant -- but not just because I love dogs. This is not a stunt or a gimmick on Subaru's part. It's smart branding.

In looking at their market data, Subaru discovered that about 50% of their buyers are also pet owners. Last year, they ran a sales campaign that gave customers the option to donate $250 of their purchase to one of five charities. It turns out a large number of those donations went to the ASPCA (the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).

So, the lesson is this:

Get to know your audience.

We tend to make a lot assumptions about our audience without talking to them -- or better yet, listening to them. Our default setting is to think about our product, our organization, our selling points, instead of thinking about what makes an audience tick. Isn't is annoying when someone is "me, me, me" all the time? Yes, it is. The best brands know their audience well and let them guide the message.

Look for the audience insight.

Subaru looked beyond basic demographics to learn more about their audience. That's when they discovered a dog-loving crowd. Sometimes the insight will surprise you. Be open to what you'll discover about your audience, and don't overlook a surprising trend in your audience -- it could be the connection point you've been searching for.

Love what your audience loves.

Here's what the Subaru spots says to their target audience: "We know you. We get you. You love dogs. So do we." A brand is a relationship, and like any relationship, it's part emotion. So, maybe Subaru isn't touting the Forester's super-charged GPS system or roomy cargo space in these spots, but they are cultivating a connection with prospective buyers, and they're giving current owners one more reason to love their Subaru.

 

 

In addition to the great speakers at the Omniture Summit, some of the breakout sessions teach me things about Sitecatalyst and web analytics in general that I hadn't considered previously. 

This year was no different. I took some notes on a few of the sessions and what I learned. First up was the Advanced Power Strategies.

SiteCatalyst : Advanced Power Strategies - hosted by Ben Gaines

Quick note on Ben - I've been communicating with him for years through Twitter as he's helped me with numerous Omniture issues and this was the first time I met him in person. Really good guy and always helpful. Loves his job, its obvious. His session was one of the best I've seen in 3 years of going to this Summit. Here are a few he uncovered during the breakout session:

1) Measuring engagement - while the topic of measuring engagement is controversial (another post on this later in the week), Ben and crew had some tangible ways on computing an engagement score. First off, you need to decide which events on the site qualify as 'engagement' activities. Each one of those events would get a value. You would capture that value in a counter eVar (conversion variable).

Example: Say you have 4 things on your site you to show someone is engaged with your site and assign values accordingly

Email a Friend - 5

Subscribe to a newsletter - 8

Upload a video - 2 

Write a review - 4

If someone came to your site and subscribed to the newsletter and emailed a friend, their engagement score would be 13. The values need to be thought through to determine which activities are more valuable. Now that you have that engagement score, you can relate it to campaigns, keywords, anything to use as a criteria for success. Really clever way to use eVars to create the scoring.

Additionally you could classify the scores into ranges with names such as 'Low Engagement', 'High Engagement', etc.

You could also use an incrementor event to score it so you could create calculated metrics, such as enagement per visit, etc.

Check out the Omniture blog  for a ton more on this. 

2) Use a new plugin called GetPercentPageViewed to figure out if visitors are scrolling vertically to see content. ClickMap is useful to a point but doesn't tell you how many visitors scroll to the bottom of the page to see everything. You can capture the percentage as an eVar and then classify them into ranges to see what percentage makes it all the way down. Very useful in designing pages and to understand if your content is even visible to visitors.

Again, Ben can talk more eloquently on this on the Omniture blog.  

3) Participation is a different way of attributing credit to web site activities. Typically, credit for pages is split it up amongst the pages encountered. Participation gives full credit to a page or activity so that you can figure out which content is the most valuable in driving conversion.

Example - say you have 10 pages involved with a $100 order. In the normal way attribution occurs for a page, each page would have a value of $10 (100/10).

With Participation you would give $100 to each of the 10 pages involved. That way you can determine the relative value of pages in generating conversions (or revenue). You can do similar things with other events such as a lead or subscribing for an email to understand which parts of your sites are a part of the conversion.

I've been using this one for the past few years, but wanted to share in case you weren't aware it was there.  

At Capstrat, we spend a lot of time creating marketing campaigns for high school students. On Friday at the NC DECA Career Development Program Liz Hamner and I had the tables turned on us. We spent several hours having high school students market what they have learned to us.

NC DECA is an association of high school students enrolled in marketing programs. Through DECA, students learn marketing, management and general business skills. This year more than 2,000 students from across North Carolina came to Greensboro to compete in a series of written and verbal competitive events which were evaluated by business, education and industry professionals.

I was pleased with the imagination of the students I met. In our role playing exercise I was an owner of a manufacturing company that was considering a four-day, 40-hour work week instead of a five-day, 40-hour work week. The student acted as a manager meeting with me about my proposal. The student was to show they understood how the proposal would impact the profitability of the company, show empathy for workers and determine the best way to roll out the plan to the employees of the plant.

The students had 10 minutes to read the scenario and prepare for the assignment. The creativity was inspiring. I could not have made such strong arguments as a high schooler. To respect the privacy of the students, I don't want to go into detail on the responses. It was hard to make choices knowing that my decisions would impact the future of these young students.

After meeting these quick-witted students I believe our industry will be in great shape. It also gave me a new way to look at some of our client challenges. I look forward to the competition next year.