Archive for May 2009

Work From Home

May 13 2009

At about noon yesterday (GMT-2) the Internet went out in our Bucharest office, so we sent everyone home where it was believed the Internet would be more reliable. And it was.

The outage was caused by a government initiative to crack down on illegal hacks into the nation’s cable television and high-speed Internet system. (Don’t worry, we pay our bills.) Luckily we have a second line unrelated to the first that kept me going long into the evening yesterday and again today.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere. If we can close up the office for two days and send everyone home, why do we have an office. Maybe I’d have more time to stumble across articles like this from Faustine in Tanzania if I was parked at my casita.

Some people are just more comfortable working out of the home.

Some people are just more comfortable working out of the home.

Face-to-face communication must have some value. In our business it can lead to creative break throughs. If travel weren’t so expensive, we’d spend more time sitting across the table from our clients. Creative reviews over the phone lose some of the pomp you get from a in-person pitch.

Not everyone has the discipline to work from home. Many are faced with distractions at home that make work there tough. I love my daughter, but “Daddy, hugs?” in the middle of that conference call can be distracting.

If the stars and incentives are aligned, a business might just be able to operative sans office. There are obstacles. It’s tough to build a car in your living room, but the majority of these stay-at-home jobs involve a computer. We employee a fair number of stay-at-home mom’s that tend to our fulfillment needs, but they are tech savvy and armed with computers and Blackberry’s.

One key takeaway for those of us in the Internet business is that the number of people working from home is on the rise. Many of them are sitting in front of their computers, which gives Interactive marketing firms just like ours something to smile about.

Eyeballs available. No bosses looking over shoulders. Yahtzee!

Bookmark and Share

99% Use Flash Player

May 12 2009

We made a strategic decision to offer our clients custom flash websites over three years ago promising a better user experience, more vibrant, engaging content and a stickier message. We believe our clients’ successes, our customer loyalty, and increasing time-on-site numbers are delivering on that promise.

Still the news gets better. Adobe announced that a record 99% of Internet-enabled computers in mature markets (US, Canada, France, German, UK and others) are now running Flash Player 8. Adobe also made a technical change that means users are encouraged to adopt newer versions of Flash Player. Already 75% are using Flash Player 10.

Millward Brown survey, conducted December 2008.

Millward Brown survey, conducted December 2008.

Newer versions of Flash Player open new and more exciting creative opportunities. Combined with increasing adoption rates for broadband Internet connections, Flash continues to be a dynamic platform for truly engaging websites. Because broadband and disposable income are correlated, Flash become a viable platform for in-home, strategic marketing initiatives.

Flash Player is the dominant force on the market today, beating the pants off Java, Windows Media Player, Apple Quicktime Player, and RealOne Player. Looks like our little gamble paid off!!

Bookmark and Share

Advertisers Get Perspective

May 11 2009

Even ad agencies need to find some perspective ever so often. Our clients are looking for the same thing. Sometimes you find yourself so close to a problem that you can’t see a solution.

Many of you know that we export partial development of our websites abroad to Romania. More perspective. In fact, I stumbled across an article about sourcing perspective after arriving in Bucharest. Apparently even the big boys of advertising find themselves too close to the problem and too far from a solution.

What can we as a creative shop do to stay fresh without losing perspective? We look for inspiration in some unusual places.

Advertising has global reach and uses basic emotions common throughout. Even here in Bucharest on a Monday morning.

Advertising has global reach and uses basic emotions common throughout. Even here in Bucharest on a Monday morning.

We enjoy our work. It’s the challenge of listening to a client explain their product and how they’ve taken it to market. At the end of the day it’s not our perspective or the client’s perspective that matter, it’s the customer’s.

Bookmark and Share

Generation Facebook

May 6 2009

How do you harness the potential of a new generation of tech savvy, SMS text heavy users that leverage social media to network in ways few deemed possible just a few years ago? Generation Facebook poses new challenges for managers, marketers and parents. They may be their own worst enemy.

Imagine your entire adult life documented in detail with quips about party’s that rocked and with the pictures to prove it. From the bizarre to banal, Gen F may hit some unexpected land mines when running for political office, or moving up the corporate ladder. Gen F joins the workforce with some baggage.

For managers and the businesses they run Gen F poses new challenges and risks. Will an off-hand wall post by an employee tarnish your company’s reputation?

We use Facebook and LinkedIn religiously around here, but at what cost? Whether networking through groups online in Facebook, or forming closer ties to a vendor, customer or colleague, all this real-time chatter can’t be all bad. I’d probably be floored if I knew the amount of personal traffic my team generates within Facebook on company time, but I’m willing to risk it (for now) to curry favor with those that positively impact the organization. Besides, containing Facebook status updates and wall posts is virtually impossible unless you start confiscating mobile phones at the front door and blacklist the site.

What Gen F doesn’t know, or maybe they do and brush it aside, is that unfiltered content carries some amount of risk. Every wall-to-wall, or status update, any app installs and quizzes taken can spread like wildfire. The trick is learning to balance the upside of this social network with the trivial, separating your personal life from business.

The trick for managers is to learn how to motivate Gen F, because they are a heck of lot different than Gen Y, or X. In comparison I’d say F falls somewhere between X and Y. The apathy of X without the pessimism and the entrepreneurial savvy of Y without the drive.

As for marketers, we already feel the impact F makes on the crowded social media landscape. Our philosophy is to go micro and hone in on a very cliquish generation. Unfortunately success is not easily measured and the shifting sands make it difficult to hit a moving target. Fortunately this type of challenge often leads to some pretty cool marketing campaigns and a shift in thought leadership. Marketing could use a little of both today.

Bookmark and Share

!Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

May 5 2009

We’re keeping an eye on Hispanic consumers during this down economy. Why? They will emerge a hugely powerful consumer group when the dust settles. The market is the proverbial sleeping giant of consumer spend in the US.

So, as we celebrate Mexico’s victory over the French you can’t help but notice a growing trend in the United States. If we are all Irish on St. Patty’s Day, we must all be Mexicans today, right? !Viva Puebla! Felicidades amigos! Of course not everyone agrees that this holiday should go mainstream and turn into a drunk fest.

There are loads of misconceptions about this demographic and choosing the best advertising media to drive demand and build consumer loyalty. We’re down here in Texas and if you’ve ever traveled to Mexico (or Southern California) you know that Hispanic women are gatekeepers when trying to build intrinsic brand value. However, when it comes to engaging a Hispanic audience watch out for the trap doors!

Bookmark and Share

Revenue-Based Marketing

May 1 2009

In B-school you run through all sorts of labels we can put on marketing to define its role in an organization. Response-based marketing, cost-based marketing, or value-based marketing immediately come to mind. Quick refresher:

Response-based pegs marketing budgets to customer acquisition goals and the objective (yeah, okay) measurement of response to ad spend. This approach often gives marketing a bad rap, because the results tend to point to overspend that affects to profitability. If you work in an organization with this approach to marketing you just had your budget slashed and maybe survived a round of layoffs.

Perhaps the most popular approach to marketing is cost-based. Estimate total expenses and use some percentage of that number to meet your marketing budget needs. I’d call this the lazy way to draw up a marketing budget, because it seems to ignore shifts in market opportunity and breed a humdrum marketing mindset.

Finally, value-based marketing seeks to define lifetime customer value (LCV) in time-value-of-money terms with marketing budgets set to reflect the probable net income contribution of each customer. For liberal arts majors cum marketing managers this financial approach to market makes us cringe, but it’s a solid way to ensure you don’t negatively impact profitability through marketing spend. In the end, per customer profitability is not entirely reflective of marketing, or its budget and we need to apply some sort of discount rate to account for the gap. Cringe, again!

What’s a small business or start-up to do when establishing a marketing budget?

We’d suggest a fourth approach. Revenue-based marketing aligns sales goals with marketing spend. We find that a direct correlation between sales and marketing, including shared milestones quickly allows you to spot weaknesses on either front. Everyone is in sales. That’s the message we need to send to our entire organization. When you apply the same level of accountability to marketing that you do sales, where and when to spend your marketing dollars becomes abundantly clear. As you grow your business you may adopt a combination of these four approaches, but in the beginning the focus must be on sales-back marketing. No revenue, no cash flow, no business. Sell, sell, sell!

Bookmark and Share
Newer Entries »