Digital Brain

NGAGE Talks to Scientists and the FBI for Creative Inspiration

Looks to Outside Experts for  Insight and Innovation

ST. LOUIS (September 29, 2009) – Bringing in a world-renowned scientist generally isn’t too high on the list of guest speakers at most digital advertising agencies. Nor is the head of the FBI’s Cybercrime Unit. But that’s just what the folks at NGAGE are doing – looking to unlikely sources for creative and digital inspiration.

The St. Louis agency is hosting a series of events they call Brainfül, bringing leaders on the frontlines of innovation, in strictly non-advertising fields, together with select clients and agency partners. The goal is to provide different perspectives that reach beyond traditional industry customs and mandates. In a nutshell: Brainfül is where inspiration comes to life.

The first Brainfül event featured FBI Special Agent Rueben Lopez. His gripping exchange focused on the link between cybercrime and technology and the creative ways cyber-terrorists utilize the internet including social media and e-mail.

Building on that success, Dr. Elaine Mardis, Director of The Genome Center at Washington University, will be headlining the next Brainfül event on Saturday, December 19 at Left Bank Books downtown St. Louis location. Dr. Mardis’ work in leading the technology development efforts at The Genome Center has played a pivotal role in the evaluation, optimization and application of gene sequencing and is helping improve genome sequencing cost and quality. In other words, she’s a technology expert who can teach us all a thing or two about innovative thinking.

“The ad world and the digital advertising space have traditionally not been progressive enough when it comes to innovation,” explains Dan Curran, president and CEO of NGAGE. “That’s why we want to hear from outside experts on the cutting-edge of technology for their insights. The hope is, taking pause and listening to someone who comes from a radically different background, will spark new ways for us to think about what we do and how we do it.”

Change is Violent

We have created a speakers series at NGAGE called Brainfuel.  The remaining 2009 calendar is already booked with a who’s who list of leading scientists and social advocates (all on the front lines of the digital space). Today, we had an FBI Special Agent talking to our team about the frightening world of cyber crime.  The cliff notes are as follows:

• The Chinese have us by the balls.
• The US government is not going to provide much help.
• Identity theft is big business.  Intellectual property theft is a bigger business.

Although my expectations of his talk (it being our first in a series of brainfuel speakers) were moderately high, I was pleasantly surprised with the overwhelming feedback that I received from my team.  It certainly exposed the underbelly of the 2.0 world. No doubt the agent had a pocket full of frightening predictions and real life criminal case studies………it was however his off the cuff remarks and  ‘word to the wise’ that put a bit of sweat on the brow.

The presentation today left me feeling that our private/personal information is way too intertwined with a fragile infrastructure; credit card companies and the nations power grid to name just a few.

I make a living embracing the ever changing digital environment.

Today I learned that Change can also be violent.

Ephphatha

Ephphatha is Aramaic and whose meaning is  “Be opened”

This word was recently used in a religious context and immediately resonated with me on several levels.  I am almost a tortured soul as it relates to opening my mind to see the world (my business in particular) from all possible vantage points.  Knowing that our future depends on escaping the grips of our own comfort zones and instead depends much more on pointing our ship towards those waters that could very well (at times) be uncomfortable. Yes, I will work diligently this coming week (after a relaxing Labor Day weekend) on being “open” to those people/places/things that can be transformational.  I imagine that such behavior will involve (require) more listening on my part than the requisite CEO talk and pontificating.

I wonder if I will “hear” what I need to hear?

Ephphatha!

Never read a blog that you could have written yourself

How come I am so much more interested in Context vs. Content? The latest social media statistics or  meandering rants about this/that are the underbelly of web 2.0 in my opinion (me so guilty   see below).  I find my fav blogs are those that are more philosophical in nature, more retrospective.  Find me a wordpress URL  that speaks to the authors trials and tribulations (even mistakes) and I will be one happy Okie from Muskogee.

BTW – I am back and definitely have some things to say…..

Stay tuned.

Hardees Team

Our Hardees French Me team did an incredible job during the AllStar Game.

A Digital Cheat Sheet for CMO’s

The average tenure for a Chief Marketing Officer range from 18 months to 23 months depending on which report you read.  The five-month differential notwithstanding, your rank and file CMO seems to be on the hot seat from day one. Only 14 percent of the world’s top brand CMO’s have been with their companies for more than three years — and nearly half are new to the job over the last 12 months (Spencer Stuart study).  T-Mobile, Yahoo, Coke, YUM Brands and Goodyear are just a handful of notable companies that recently recruited a new CMO. *** I haven’t a clue about what’s going on in this CMO department over at Anheuser-Busch InBev. (someone tell me if you know).  Anyhow, there was a time, generally speaking, that marketing held precedence over sales and the CMO was king of hill. Due to the turmoil of an economic climate, I am not so sure the perceived esoteric nature of ‘marketing’ can out flank the (often desperate) needs of immediate cash flow (i.e Sales).  Trust me, the 99 cent value meal did not come from the CMO.

Perhaps it all starts with recruitment. Most CEO’s did not attain their position via the marketing department and therefore have gaps in their knowledge about the latest trends in marketing.  The result, CEO’s and senior management are not allowing for any kind of learning curve for the incoming marketing head.  Performance grading starts on day one and any honeymoon is short lived. CMO’s must hit the ground running, make immediate impact and be well versed regarding all emerging medias AND understand the finicky nature of today’s consumers.  Not that I feel sorry the new guy/girl, but this is no small task.

The executive recruiting firm, Spencer Stuart, has some great insights into how this relationship between CMO and brand marketing company can be less dysfunctional and more efficient. First, mismatched expectations and a poor cultural fit are major force behind CMO turnover. “many companies are asking the CMO to be the ultimate change agent, yet most aren’t prepared to give the new marketer
enough time to be truly effective” according to their report.

What’s a poor CMO to do?

Aside from realistic and shared expectations between CMO and CEO, CMO’s, in my opinion, need to focus on all things strategic and hire brilliance as it relates tactics and channels. The trick is to understand that to be strategic, one must be alert to the constant evolution of the marketplace and articulate such changes back to the organization – with a vengeance.  The biggest marketplace game changer being that of the ‘digital’ space.  Whether it’s an established brand, a new product or service extension, B2B or B2C, all roads will eventually have digital and emerging media exposure. With a new digital ecosystem born every 6 months, CMO’s cannot be neither passive nor can they be stubborn and hold on to their long held beliefs (just because you believe something is true, does not make it so). Let me humbly offer up a few morsels of advice to CMO’s everywhere… a digital cheat sheet if you will.

Integration – No department works in a vacuum, therefore no media channel can work in a vacuum. Get buy in from all departments that digital can thread the needle.  Brand assets can be disseminated in ways never used before; the combination of technologies joining together to form a new frontier in how products and services are advertised.  This is tremendous opportunity for the savvy CMO to combine all brand assets and allow consumers the ability to see, hear, experience, comprehend, retain, and assimilate information in a way that’s intuitive and on their terms. As we often say at NGAGE, it is better to throw lots of nets instead one BIG net.

Social Media – The numbers here are staggering.  Don’t be foolish and ignore its implications. Trust me, social media needs to be (at minimum) one of your nets.  The statistics below will be antiquated by the time you get to the bottom of the list:

Twitter stats
1,111,991,000 – number of Tweets to date
4,000,000 – number of Tweets/day (March 2009)
165,414 – number of followers of the most popular Twitter user (@BarackObama) – but he’s not active
86,078 – number of followers of the most active Twitter user (@kevinrose) in 2008. Today, he has 591,000 plus
63% – percentage of Twitter users that are male (from Time)

Facebook stats
200,000,000 – number of active users
100,000,000 – number of users who log on to Facebook at least once each day
170 – number of countries/territories that use Facebook
35 – number of different languages used on Facebook
2,600,000,000 – number of minute’s global users in aggregate spend on Facebook daily
100 – number of friends the average user has
700,000,000 – number of photos added to Facebook monthly
52,000 – number of applications currently available on Facebook
140 – number of new applications added per day

Search –  I am not going to give the latest statistics or whether or not Yahoo is going to be around (or acquired) in the near future, or Google is going to buy Twitter (I give it 50/50 chance). My advice relates to in house SEO/SEM staff vs. using outside resources.  I have seen it both ways and can categorically say that an outside search expert should be heavily considered.  This discipline, SEO/SEM is changing minute by minute and revolutionary changes can come about at the blink of an eye.  I believe this should be an outsourced specialty – they simply have a better pulse on this ever-evolving channel. When it comes to SEM – the vast majority of clicks that search marketers buy don’t translate to conversion (lots of clicks, but no buys). Note to CMO’s – its all about conversion and nothing else matters. Best practices as it relates to conversions should be left to the pros.

CRM – My research tells me few so-called CRM firms are truly embracing web 2.0 (and beyond) communication.  First they owned direct mail and then e-mail. I have seen very little sophistication with the CRM folks as it relates to social media CRM.  It would behoove CMO’s to push their CRM companies to get on the ball (see above Social Media numbers).

Usability – This is my favorite topic and an area completely ignored by most of today’s advertising agencies – which is fine by me (selfishly) because it is a core competency at NGAGE.  A usability expert (UI / UX) must be sitting at the table from campaign launch thru execution. There’s no point building the latest social media campaign, iPhone app or robust e-commerce website if they are frustrating to use or simply not intuitive to your users.
CMO’s need to take seriously the importance of functionality, labeling and usability. But marketing departments and agencies often overlook this key component, and the result is an execution that, however pretty, ultimately leaves the consumer frustrated.

So…. that’s my digital cheat sheet for today’s CMO.  I will have another one in about 18 to 23 months.

4/13 Travels

My blogging has taken a backseat to more pressing issues: A new client, personnel changes, an RFP, various client meetings, an old employee stopping by and (my fav) our new server taking a 4 hour nap. Anyhow, I pulled down my browser history tab and wanted to cut/paste a few sites I visited today:

Honkiat.Com.  Lots of blogging tips and links to very inspirational and creative sites…..

STLToday.Com  I hate this site. But, I need my sports, business, politics and news (local/national). I also need business news. They do such a poor job on all fronts. I need to move on…..

Tribble  My favorite website/blog as of late is Tribble Agency. Perhaps the TMZ of the agency world. I really don’t know why I like it so much…….they just have a point of view that is uniquely theirs

NGAGE  Because.

FlaFin.  I usually take 5 minutes every morning to get my fix.

SUPERHAPPYFUNTIME Although Jeff is a very nice / kind person. I must say I like this blog best when he is pissed off.

THE SOCIAL PATH I am very picky about which Social Media opinion sites I visit. Someone in my office turned me on to this guy a few months back. This David Griner site seldom hits foul balls. Most often sharing interesting insights and worthy links. I usually learn something worthwhile every time I visit.

SCOTTRADE  One of our clients. I am one of theirs too…..

4/09 Easter

NGAGE will be closed tomorrow.  My employees need the break. I need the break.

4/04 Long Tail x10

Digital Marketing is fast becoming the niche of all niche industries: SEO/SEM, E-Mail, Social Media, Content Producers, Digital Strategy/Integration (NGAGE), E-Commerce, B2B, B2C, Analytics and the list goes on and on. Most interesting is that no company within any of these sectors can lay claim to owning even 1% of market share. Throw in the fly-by-night operators and you have the longest of long tail industries.

To make up for lack of girth, agency practitioners sometimes evoke the sly tactic of self-proclamation  -  the infamous expert (social media expert, SEO expert, etc..).  Funny.  You cant be an expert when the industry ecosystem is changing hour by hour, minute-by-minute. Rather than self-proclaimed experts, I gravitiate to true specialists who are simultaneously both intellectual and voyeuristic about the digital space.   Trust me, the voyeurism is essential.

Via the Center for Media Research, a new executive brief by IBM Global Business Services, reports that to compete in the new era of advertising will require a fundamental change in agency capabilities. The study findings show that several trends are raising the bar for consumer-centric marketing: consumer adoption of new distribution formats, a shift in advertiser spending, the digital migration of platforms and the emergence of new capabilities due to game-changing moves by both new entrants and existing players.

The report offers these “implications,” concluding that:

Mass marketing alone is no longer feasible. Reaching these diverse segments requires niche offerings and context via approaches that are tailored for new platforms, new offerings and, new experiences

A strategy of permission-based marketing, tailored by geographic market and segment, can help avoid privacy concerns while providing valuable information about consumers.

Not only do advertisers expect truly innovative, breakthrough campaign alternatives, they also require the ability to analyze campaign results to prove the value of spending.

Key finding – Participants that previously focused on delivering either ROI-driven marketing or brand-oriented advertising to the market can now cater to both sets of objectives 

 You can learn more about this @  IBM Institute for Business Value study.

You can learn about digital strategy and voyerism @ NGAGE

3/28 Book

Someone in my office was kind enough to give me this book a few weeks back. I have walked by this Chuck Klosterman paperback about a zillion times at Borders – always mildly interested – but never pulling the trigger. 

My bad for not grabbing it sooner.

His deconstruction of pop culture and mass media left me thinking……..that even the most dim-witted events of the past 30 years have had some semblance of importance. Rather than being cynical about anything and everything, he was able to draw parallels to those things that actually matter. It takes some serious talent to extract substance from the likes of Pamela Anderson, The Zodiac Killer and MTV’s Real World**.

**Excluding season 1 and 3. Which you have to admit……were pretty damn good (Kevin, Puck, etc..).