Interruption-based mass marketing that simply shouts messages one way to customers is not only one of the most ineffective strategies for today’s landscape, it’s also a red flag when it comes to building your brand’s image, reputation and value. To us, the smartest brands are now listening to the conversations their customers are having, watching where they are taking place and engaging with them on an individual level to add value in real time. Even better, an increasing number of marketers are not only deploying programs specifically created for the social platforms, they’re strategically harnessing insights from the data and using them to help plan and develop stronger brand positioning and marketing programs in the future.

From a marketer’s standpoint (especially those that fall into the challenger brand status), last year was about how to make your business run harder and faster in a bid to stay competitive in a downturn. In 2010, we at Sigma believe it’s going to be about proving value through both your consumer conversation quotient and the product experience. Brand value will be influenced more and more by the consumer, making it more important than ever for brands to deploy programs that are authentic and conversation-worthy. For challenger brands, this is going to aid in brand differentiation and consumer engagement. Differentiation needs to be bigger than just a brand name. True differentiation will come from consumer engagement strategies and a brand’s willingness to involve customers. Visibility and opportunity await the brand that is best at engaging their customer as well as making the product experience richer and better than the rest.

Last year, we worked with clients in footwear, burn care, technology and professional services, helping them embrace new marketing approaches fueled by the changing landscape. Fostering brand advocates and evangelists is not just for brands in the consumer space. It’s everywhere, and it applies to both consumer and B2B brands alike. As the new year kicks off and while writing your marketing game plan, ask yourself: Are you equipped in 2010 for true differentiation?

We’ll kick-off the first conference recap with John Battelle’s (CEO/Founder, Federated Media) keynote on “All Media is Social.  Now What?”  John’s keynote was brilliantly right-on-topic to get us all kindling new ideas.  Here are four key areas he covered:

1.  The Rise of Conversational Marketing: First we declared our intentions (what we want) through search.  Then we declared our relations (social graph — who we are as defined by how we are connected to other people) on sites like Facebook.  Finally, during the past year we declared our utterances (what we are doing, what we are interested in, etc.) on sites like Twitter.  When you put all these declarations together — intention, relations and utterances, you have an economy of conversations.

2.  Conversation Economy: Every marketer is a publisher and every publisher is a marketer.  And every consumer is both.  What was once a one-way conversation has now become a two-way conversation. To succeed as marketers, we must leverage appropriate digital media and have conversations with customers at scale.  If you believe conversational marketing is real, we have to contemplate how we can best market in that native environment.  It’s a new form of exchange between numerous participants, and we as marketers are one of those participants representing the brand.  We are still in an early stage and we have to learn new skills by trying and relentlessly testing.

3.  What Brands Need to Succeed in Conversational Marketing: Marketing must become everyone’s job and it must become a horizontal practice rather than a vertical specialty.  This means rethinking from the top down and the bottom up.  To succeed in the Social Media, brands need the same things that are required in a Packaged Goods environment.

Scale + Safety + Quality + Engagement

4.  Conversational Marketing Guidelines:  Fuel for Thought tips and suggestions include:
-  Find conversations you want to join or start
-  Find the natural leaders of those conversations
-  Listen first, then join
-  Add value to the conversations
-  Make media annuities

To hear more great nuggets from John, be sure to follow him on Twitter at @JohnBattelle. To get an electronic copy of his presentation, please email me at jkim (at) sigmagroup.com.  The next post will recap Radian6’s workshop on “Why Listen to Social Media?”

The needs of the world just seem so overwhelming, right?  We find ourselves saying, “Why bother? We can’t fix everything!” and then doing nothing.  I think that’s probably a very logical solution according to our selfish, perfectionist, overachieving natures –  “If it can’t be done right, why do it at all?“  Sound familiar?

While it is true that one person can’t solve all the troubles of the world, we at Sigma have realized that everyone holds great power to make a big difference.  The power that one person has to improve the quality of life for a few, or the ability that one person has to lend a helping hand, is tremendous.

We recently created a community outreach program called Team Hercules (we have a tradition that lends itself to all things Greek).  There were two reasons we created Team Hercules.  Reason #1: It’s a program that empowers all of our employees to reach out beyond themselves and beyond the confines of these office walls to give back and better our community.  And Reason #2: I’ll get into that in a minute, at the end of this post.

So why should I — an HR manager challenged to come up with ways to build teams and increase productivity — think it is important to enact the whole “Think globally, act locally” mantra?

Empowering our employees to serve their community and help those in need has given Sigma the opportunity to build and strengthen core relationships that are built on more than doing good work.  This program helps employees find factors that motivate them beyond the mighty dollar or pat on the back.  These community outreach programs sometimes force our employees to reach beyond their comfort zones and dig deeper into themselves, and maybe their pockets, while getting a glimpse into the lives of others.

Whether it be a team going out to deliver and stock the shelves of a local food pantry, or collecting school supplies for children in need, or simply reaching out to the community to lend a helping hand — everyone wins.  There is something for everyone — for the company, for our employees and for the recipients of our good will.  We all win!

We gain appreciation.  There is nothing that feels better or can put more pep in you step then true appreciation.  Knowing and feeling it from head to toe.  An employee that feels appreciated is more likely to show appreciation, and so on and so on…

We get great experience.  Every new experience is an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to feel, and an opportunity to use our knowledge to make a positive change.  With every new experience we fill up the creative banks within our brain and we see the world a little differently.  Experiencing new things is never boring.

We get fulfillment. I don’t normally like this word because in suggesting that we need fulfillment can suggest we might feel empty.  However, let’s be realistic and admit that at times we all can feel a little empty.  I have never walked away from a volunteer event that didn’t leave me feeling like I got back so much more than I gave.  Bye-bye empty feeling.

So in a business that is fueled by wins — new clients, new accounts, new assignments, great press — that drive our bottom line, can Team Hercules really be counted as a business “win” for Sigma?  I certainly believe so.

My final thought — a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson and my Reason #2 for creating Team Hercules:  “Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.”

The reality is that things never go as planned. But when you think about it, is that a bad thing? Those shaping the world make a difference by going beyond the expected. They figure out ways to capitalize on the unexpected twists and turns that come their way. They relish in the opportunities that are presented when unexpected things happen and as a result make great strides in the economy, environment, society, etc.

Business owners and entrepreneurs…the best bubble up when they expect the unexpected. They plan for the unexpected. They know that nothing should be taken at face value. And even further, it’s their ability to capitalize on unexpected opportunities that really makes them superstars. Even world-class athletes qualify here. Think about the NFL player who intercepts a pass in midfield–do you think he wasn’t already prepared for what to do should he unexpectedly catch that pass? Maybe the sports analogy isn’t the best when it comes to thoroughly modern intellect, but at least it says the same thing: moving forward by leaps and bounds is about seizing unexpected opportunities and doing something with them.

But beyond expecting the unexpected, what about doing the unexpected? There is real power there. From a very positive and uplifting point of view, you can make someone’s day by doing something unexpected. You can get someone to laugh by telling an unexpected story. You can surprise someone by giving them something they didn’t know they were getting. You have the power to make someone’s day by unexpectedly telling them you “like that dress” or “you have a nice smile” or “you did a great job.”

Why all this deep thought around the unexpected? We recently launched a fun consumer campaign for our partners at Famous Footwear called Make Today Unexpected. And while the punchline for the campaign is really about elation and how women feel about shoes, it’s the twist and the unexpected way we tell that story that I think makes it sing.

The power of the unexpected.

Find an unexpected way to make someone’s day. Expect the unexpected or you won’t find it.

Recently comScore reported that in April 09, U.S. Internet users viewed 16.8 billion online videos.  Nearly 152 million folks watched an average of 111 videos, and an average online viewer watched 6.4 hours of video.  The age of online video viewers trends slightly younger, however, viewership by Generation X and older boomers are at no small scale.

That’s a lot of folks watching videos online.  And every minute there’s around 20 hours of new videos being uploaded to YouTube.  However, videos that generate millions of views overnight are few and far between—especially those uploaded to support a marketing agenda (e.g., commercials or promotional videos created by companies to promote their brands).

Here are some basic, yet essential, guidelines for online video success that we use to provide results for our clients.

1. Take a Long-Term Perspective:  While it is true that some online videos became an overnight sensation (e.g., Susan Boyle), the reality for most is that building an audience takes time—weeks, months and perhaps even years.  Keep in mind that unlike running a TV commercial where your ad/message disappears after your schedule runs out, online video has a potential to be active for years, accumulating viewers all along the way.  Therefore, creating content that has long-term relevance is key, which brings us to our second point.
2. Content is King:  Don’t just put a TV ad online (unless you have an incredible, one-of-kind commercial).  Create a short, entertaining message through a good story (e.g., humor, heartfelt tales, did you know, can you believe this, etc.).  People love to be surprised and everyone enjoys a good laugh.  Just as laughter works, so do tears, joy, compassion and a poignant moment.  The key is offering the viewer some quick entertainment that will engage them to respond, further investigate and/or share with their network.
3. Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan:  Just like you would with a TV commercial, incorporate a strategic plan behind your online video. Don’t just count on people stumbling onto it.  Remember that your new video has a shelf life of 48 hours before it’s moved from the Daily Most Viewed list to the Weekly Most Viewed list on most video sharing sites, so it’s important to share and spread the video quickly.  Some basic tactics that should be included into the online video launch include sharing and posting on social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, MySpace), reaching out to bloggers and sending out email invites to your circle of contacts.
4. Engage with Your Viewers: Some of the most successful videos are those that are able to solicit comments and start discussions with their viewers.  According to Tim Street, creator of French Maid TV, in order to get your video to a higher plane, “It needs to interact with the viewer, and allow the viewer to interact with the characters or the creators.” Comments are a great way to hear feedback and receive ideas for future initiatives.  Keep in mind that comments may not always be positive, but they present the opportunity to connect with your audience one-on-one.  Therefore, make sure to properly monitor the social web sphere across all chatters on your video and brand.

Related articles:

The grim destiny of brands/companies we know so well is unavoidable, as their downfall has stemmed from a variety of areas (lack of innovation and reluctance to change applying to many of them).  But while many will fail, many more will survive and come out even stronger.  It all depends on what we do along the way — including some key strategies for surviving and thriving in today’s business.  Starting this week, we will highlight each one.

Part 1:  Adapt to the Changes.
Know your current and emerging customers — their needs may have changed because of the downturn. Your service offerings, messaging and brand experience may also need to change in order to properly connect with them.

A fine example of adapting to change is Home Depot’s current focus on catering more to the everyday homebody/do-it-yourselfer to offset the decrease in the stream of builders and contractors. Here’s a selected list of marketing/sales efforts they are implementing to energize their business, as covered by Mercury News.

1. Power Hours between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., Monday through Friday, when sales associates are placed at the end of each aisle to assist customers who shop during their lunch hour.
2. Ladies Night Out classes geared to women with a common interest. At the store located at The Plant in San Jose, for example, female customers buying expensive tile wanted lessons on installing it themselves.
3. Free Weekend Clinics for Kids on how to build age-appropriate toolboxes, planters, derby cars and other projects, materials included.
4. Do-It-Yourself Workshops where homeowners are taught how to repair screens, paint, install plumbing and other tasks usually done by pros.
5. A Garden Club customers can join for access to master gardeners, project ideas, coupons and a buying guide for anything related to gardening.

So, what are you doing to adapt to the changes?  Share them with us.

With a goal of streamlining overhead without reducing workflow or impacting our creative product, we found eight positions in the company that could benefit from a reduced workweek (4 days) while also helping to shed some weight from our bottom line. As a result we were able to save jobs and in turn we have been encouraged by the new vigor and level of productivity that we’re seeing. The outcome? Inspired employees who thrive in the condensed workweek, an even better and more focused creative product and an improvement to operating expenses that allows us to focus on growth, innovation and further expansion.

Just goes to show what happens when creative minds work together. CNN and Alina Cho – thanks for featuring us today!

I recently took an online course with John Grden of the Papervision Core Team, and added a whole bunch of optimization strategies to my bag of tricks. The class was offered at the Rich Media Institute.   John is an awesome teacher, and I highly recommend the class if it comes up again. It’s a lot to follow online, but the modules are available for 30 days after the class.  Here are a few helpful strategies that I picked up from John’s course:

1. STAGE QUALITY. Set it to Low or even Medium if possible. High will kill the processor.
2. MIPMAPPING. Keep your texture width and height divisible by 2 (such as 128/256). Avoid odd numbers or decimals and smoothing comes for free.
3. VIEWPORTS. Keep them as small as possible. And do not apply filters to Viewports.
4. BITMAPS vs. MOVIEASSETMATERIALS. Use bitmaps if possible. MovieAssetMaterials, even if they are not animated, cost more.
5. TIMER. Try using a timer for your render loop. It can save you precious processing power. But it won’t play well with timeline animations on your textures.
6. ANIMATION. Set the animation Boolean on MovieAssetMaterials to False when the animation has ended.  Keep animated material as small as possible.  Non-animated materials may be bigger.

John also included a highly useful FramesRipper class in the source code for the course, which I’ve already found useful for a project. It basically takes a movie clip and turns the frames into bitmaps that are stored in an array. The class includes methods for playing the ripped frames just like you would a timeline. If you have a MovieClip with lots of filter tweens or other elements that are taxing the processor, this class works like a charm. The FramesRipper class alone is well worth the price of admission.

The shift towards social media today is huge. Numerous articles, case studies and statistics extol the myriad benefits of this powerful new marketing movement each day.  However, getting your feet wet in social media can be quite a challenge as social media is not just another medium or channel where traditional marketing messages can be pushed. Instead, it’s all about understanding the culture of participation. And then harnessing and incorporating that into all your marketing and business processes.
So, what is the best way for an organization to embrace social media?  Here’s some of our top-line suggestions:

1.  Set a goal. All marketing programs, from advertising to promotion, starts with a defined goal. The same is true for social media marketing. Some of the common SMM goals and uses are:

• Converse with your market:  Corporate voice community
• Build and reward loyalty:  Loyalty community
• Generate ideas: Innovation community
• Customer support: Peer support community
• Stimulate a passion: Enthusiasts community
• Build and maintain buzz: Events community
• Create excitement: User-generated content or contest

A note about virals: As much as you may desire a “viral-something” (video, site, email, etc.), please keep in mind that “viral is a result, not a goal/strategy”, as Scott Monty stated in his recent tweet.  Also keep in mind that something will only become viral if your prospect thinks it’s worth passing along to other like-minded individuals, and so on.

2.  Realize and accept that everyone now has a voice. This mean your employees and customers as well as your detractors.  Technologies collectively known as Web 2.0 have spread widely among consumers over the past five years and today, everyone has the potential to be a content creator. Social networking websites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, etc.) attract more than 120 million unique visitors per month and more than 82 million people in the US created content online last year.

Therefore, if you want to succeed in this new social world, you need to engage the people you want to reach by meeting them on their own turf, or by creating a turf that you make available for them (e.g., community).

3.  Don’t fall for ‘build-it-and–they-will-come’ syndrome. We have seen so many programs where a company focuses solely on a splashy design and tools and forgets to pre-populate their community with valuable content. We have also seen programs launched with promising content only to find out later that there are no updates as well as those without a proper marketing plan behind it to gain traction and visibility.  Please keep in mind that when a potential member comes to a community, the only way to have them join, share and return again is through fresh, compelling content.  Additionally, build out a support plan and schedule to promote your social media effort (e.g., SEM, SEO, social media seeding, PR, display ads, integrated into appropriate offline messages, etc.).

4.  Social Media is more than a campaign. It’s about having a holistic marketing program that includes leveraging social technologies over the long haul. It’s about socializing with your brand fans through commitment, integrity and honesty. At the end of the day, social media is about building relationships—this means you don’t just show up one day and then disappear when your campaign is over.   Just like in a real relationship, you have to treat social media users as you would treat the people in your life. Get to know them, interact without promoting and earn customer trust through transparency.

5.  Find the team to champion your SMM effort. Identify and enlist the right people in your company to spearhead the social media program. These people need to believe in the initiative and have the experience, energy and passion to engage others in the effort.  Additionally, choose a social media-marketing vendor to help you bring your goals to life and deploy the appropriate technology solution.  There are only handful of companies in the world with the right suite of in-house resources to effectively and efficiently support/operate a social media program.

The above is just a sample list taken from hundreds of suggestions. To find out more, feel free to contact us or explore some additional information on the following posts.

-  Ron Jone’s Social Media Marketing 101 – Part 1 and  Part 2
-  Adam Ostrow’s (Mashable) What are the Benefits of Social Media Marketing
-  The McKinsey Quarterly’s Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work

While some marketers can afford sophisticated software, tools, dedicated internal teams and outside partners to analyze their efforts, most are still trying to get the basics of measurement right—the fundamental steps and process. In many cases, the following six steps can create sound marketing and media plans that repeatedly deliver results.

1.  Develop and agree on the measure of success based on the campaign objective. As simple as this sounds, campaigns are often launched without a clear definition of success metrics. No matter how complex and outrageous your business plan may be, from 30,000 feet every aspect of advertising can be broken down into a combination of four primary marketing objectives:

• Driving sales (online, offline or both)

• Getting leads

• Creating brand awareness

• Fostering relationships / engagements

Establishing your campaign and conversion goals in advance will save you from many costly mistakes.

2.  Benchmark. Based on your past initiatives, place a value (scoring system) against your success metrics—a number that will differentiate success from failure. For example, is a cost per sign-up of $100 a success or not? If you do not have historical data to benchmark, initiate a small test program to gain insights prior to fully investing your budget.  See Step 4 for testing options.

3.  Establish reporting standards and processes. Often times the most critical component of an online initiative, reporting, ends up getting the least attention or even completely ignored until well into the schedule. This may result in making costly mistakes and/or missing out on valuable insights. As Robert Blakeley from WebMD puts it, “Analytics helps your team understand how well your online investment/campaign is doing and how you might be able to do better. But that understanding is not useful to the business if the insights are not shared in a way that the rest of the organization can focus on and get behind. Getting their attention usually means making Web Analytics part of your regular business process. Part of that regular process is the reporting.” Blakeley’s An Approach to Reporting offers valuable suggestions, tips and examples on reporting best practices.

Based on your goals, success metrics and benchmark, the variables you measure and your KPI will vary, as no two organizations and/or campaigns are alike. Below are links to industry standard analytics definitions and online advertising terms that will help you select which variables should be incorporated into your measurement and reporting.

• WAA’s Web Analytics Definitions
• IAB’s Interactive Advertising Terms

4.  Select the right tracking tools. A key factor in analytics is to find and use the most accurate and consistent data to monitor and measure your online performance over time. Online measurement and tracking breaks into two areas:

• Website Analytics: If you do not have good software and tracking tools in place, Brian Gilley from Social SEO has an expanded list of web stat applications that are available in the market.  It’s free, easy to use, scalable and offers high-end analytics tracking to understand your visitor’s path and their usage of your website.

• Online Ad Serving and Tracking: There are a number of ad management solutions on the market offering integrated ad serving, tracking and reporting (search, display, site sponsorship, etc.) as well as various targeting features to help you measure, monitor and optimize your campaigns.  For ad serving service, iMediaConnection has a great post on How to Pick an Ad Server.  Although this article is from 2006, it still offers excellent tips and suggestions.

5.  Test. When and where possible include a portion of your marketing/advertising/media budget and plan towards testing creative execution, sizes and media placement— especially if it’s going to be a long-term and/or ongoing program. Again, there are no two similar situations in online marketing and even the most seasoned marketer cannot predict a consumer’s behavior and actions regardless of how brilliant and flawless the campaign/execution may be. There are many ways to test your online components and here are two of the most commonly used methodologies:

• A/B Testing: As its name implies, pits one version of variant against another. Used to test simple alternatives, such as color, copy, and position of an image to see which converts better.
• Multi Variant Testing:  All elements of a web page or online ad are interrelated; images, colors, headlines, copy, call to action, etc. Multi variant testing determines which combination of elements work best together.

A rule of thumb with research is to keep it simple. We often see tests failing because people make it unnecessarily complicated and become overwhelmed with the sheer number of variables. Instead, focus on measuring one or two variables at a time to keep things manageable. Additionally, create an action plan before testing. Consider in advance the potential outcomes and the steps you will take for each, as this will prepare you for immediate action.

6. Be flexible and ready to respond. Numbers are wonderful and no one loves them more than we do. However, they are just numbers and can have many disadvantages. Numbers unfortunately do not explain the qualitative human factors and at times the conclusions may not make sense. Additionally, it is easy to get trapped at a granular level and become distracted from the bigger picture. The bottom line is that all the data in the world won’t do you any good unless you use it as a means to learn and improve upon it. So be persistent, open-minded and tackle each element one at a time.

What we have outlined above is by no means conclusive, but a list of basic steps and practices to help you map out a road to a successful Analytics and Measurement process. Although these are fundamental steps, getting them right is much more difficult than it appears and without them, all the sophisticated and exciting new measurements will amount to nothing. Whether you’re considering implementing your first online ad campaign or your 100th, working through this basic checklist can be an invaluable tool for your organization. Make sure you’re asking the right questions at each step to ensure you integrate the solution best suited for your unique needs and business challenges.