It’s been over 2 months since the Great Cupcake Taste-off , and I think I’ve only just now recovered from the sugar-induced coma that followed. It was a battle of epic proportions: 10 very brave colleagues stepped forward to taste 4 different cupcakes each. We laughed, we cried, and thankfully no one puked. Keep reading to find out if our beloved Baked and Wired came out on top. Read the rest of this entry »

About a week ago six fellow RTCRM employees and I began walking our way around the world. Well, not literally, as we don’t have enough vacation time for that, but rather virtually. Let me explain. For the next 118 odd days (we started on May 22) we’re wearing pedometers to track how many steps we take. We then entered our steps at Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) site and as a team track how far we’ve moved from one point on the globe to another. FYI: the route is kept secret, so we don’t know where we’re going until we get there. Our kick-off location was Valparaiso, Chile and after 8 days of counting, we’ve collectively walked 128 miles to Agua Viva, Venezuela. We’re averaging 10,000+ steps a day–GO TEAM!!!

The winners are the first team to walk our team around the world. We’re competing for honor within a variety of categories: The World, United States, WPP, and of course against the four other RTCRM teams. Teams and companies from all over the world are participating with the Aussies dominating the leader board –cheaters . My team the “RTCRM Hot Steppers” is currently ranked 516 out of 7000+ teams. Not too shabby. We’re in 5th place within WPP companies and we’re the leaders in the RTCRM race.

More updates in the coming weeks. Keep up the amazing pace Hot Steppers!

Author’s Note

I had originally intended today’s posting on consumer privacy issues to be the second of a three part series. But after last week’s discourse , response from the public was immediate and massive. “We can’t possibly wait two entire weeks to hear about HIPAA or the Final Word on RTCRM’s baseline approach to managing PHI!” they shrieked, frantically wagging their thin claw-like fingers at me. “Post both remaining chapters next week — or else,” they threatened.

“Or else what?” I asked, wishing quietly for the millionth time that I’d gone to librarian school.

“Just finish the post, pretty boy. Don’t make us hurt you,” they said.

“Okay, okay,” I acquiesced. “I’ll finish it up next week. Jeez, Mom.”

Thanks for reading.

ZR

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Data is the lifeblood of relationship marketing and we live and breathe it. Industry studies and sales numbers are starting points, but a more profound understanding of consumer behavior requires insight at a more granular level. So we assimilate, study and mine data provided to us by our clients to inform how we segment, target and position marketing communications. And when existing data about our clients’ customers is not enough, we go directly to the customers themselves through the administration of surveys and the integration of transactional data. We build upon and enhance our data – constantly seeking better means of nurturing the delicate relationship between a brand and its customers.

Use and possession of this type of data brings with it a solemn responsibility to protect individuals’ privacy, and nowhere are these issues more important than in the pharmaceutical industry. Customer data related to health is not only inherently more private, it is also protected by a host of industry ethical guidelines and legal statutes. Read the rest of this entry »

I just celebrated my 2nd year anniversary here @ RTCRM. It’s not just a lifespan marker that signals to me that I’ve met and worked with all the teams across the agency but more so a threshold recognizing the establishment of a discipline.

We aren’t talking about media purely from a planning, buying and implementation standpoint. The core part of the practice is really focused on being a consultancy…working across all the teams to help provide insight, perspective and strategic support. Being at the heart of marketing planning and program development is so helpful in ensuring that the teams think as holistically as possible about the target and potential communication touchpoints. Online and offline.

The other parts of “the practice” lie in the areas of “parternships” and “information.” Partnerships are our relationships with media agencies. One of our key objectives for our teams to have strong working relationship with them. The on-going connection of creative and media is so important. It’s an opportunity for all of us to take advantage of our collective thinking and experiences.

As for “information,” it goes without saying that there are so many ways in which research, secondary and proprietary, can infuse great strategy. Media is a central point to many sources of secondary research…through our network and our media agency partners.

So what now as I, and the practice at large, begin the 3rd year? Evolution and innovation. Evolution because the discipline needs to continue to listen to the needs of our clients, agency teams and partners. We need to continue to think about how to continue to deepen our channel and communications savvy. Innovation because we need to keep challenging ourselves to think of new ways to create, nurture and loyalize our relationships. New tools and tactics are coming about…even old ones that are enhanced technologically that allow direct marketers to utlize.

You Tube “views” may be small compared to other media, but those views are from active, engaged consumers seeking out content. Compare that mindset to the average television consumer, TiVo remote in hand, distractions abounding. Also, keep in mind the sheer breadth of content on YouTube. One video with a million views may not seem impressive, but what about a thousand videos that a million people have chosen to watch? The most popular video on YouTube has 76 million views (and counting); the hundredth most popular has 13 million (and counting). Those figures are up dramatically from 40 million and 3 million, respectively, a year ago. Imagine those numbers when YouTube’s been around for a decade or two. Compare this to television. Ten years ago, Bruce Springsteen sang “57 channels and nothing on…” A decade later we’ve got more channels… do we have anything more to watch? Do you know anyone who channel surfs any more? While Viacom may have slapped the hand of YouTube, other companies are embracing it. Search for any Letterman appearance you may have missed and you’ll find it uploaded by CBS itself. Like any medium, the Internet and YouTube in particular, has more than its share of tomfoolery, but watch some of the videos mentioned in this Washington Post article and see if you don’t come away with new respect for the emotional impact potential of this nascent art form (did he just say art form?).

Everyone is talking about about social media and word-of-mouth marketing these days and acting like it’s a new phenomenon. When, in reality, it’s the same thing that’s been happening for centuries (if not longer) just now we use fancy technology to do it. Word-of-mouth referrals are the holy grail of marketing. Just how do you convince someone to tell someone else about your product? How do you convince someone to share their opinion on their blog, on your website or in a cafe? Really, it’s quite simple — do something that is actually worth talking about.

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Years back I was doing research for a competitive overview and typed in the name of a large toy manufacturer into my browser — I spelled it phonetically and it was therefore slightly incorrect (back then I wasn’t a parent and didn’t remember the correct spelling).

Shame on me? The manufacturer thought so - and in a carefully worded, multiple paragraph error page they told me all about how to spell their name correctly, and how I should click on the correctly-spelled URL to go to the site.

What arrogance! Now that I am a parent, I would steer friends away from this company if a good alternative is present, even though the company in question now simply redirects the mispelled domain traffic to their main site.

The takeaway here is that it pays to open your online shopfront to everyone, as you would offline, especially when many pay enormous sums to gain the awareness threshold of “branded recall ” that might bring customers to your door in the first place.

The best marketers will embrace imperfection in recall if it leads prospects to purchase and blocks fraudulent interception - and these companies will invest in domain names and search engine filings that harness that “imperfect” traffic.

Now that the trend for new “Web” companies to have cool, incorrectly-spelled names, these same potential customers might get punished for spelling brand names “correctly .” Shame on them. LatR…

*I’ll give you a preemptive warning: this blog entry ends with a question, rather than an answer.

A recent article from eMarketer.com throws water on the fervor surrounding socially-oriented, or “Web 2.0,” technology by arguing that media dollars are still directed towards traditional online media, namely banners and search words. This article is flawed.

First off, in a tongue-in-cheek sense, I have trouble with any article that uses the phrase “Web 2.0″ more than zero times per 200 words.

Seriously, though, while the online ad spend is still significant, I was disappointed that said article did not include any perspective on the ROI of social media. I don’t know what the numbers would be, but it seems to me that this is the true value of social media as a marketing tool.

Also, I’d chalk up at least a portion to the online ad spend to institutional momentum, rather than consumer behavior. From the linked article:

“Marketers are aware of the impact that social media marketing can have on their overall program but view it as uncharted territory, not worthy of their budget,” said John Squire, senior vice president of product strategy at Coremetrics, in a statement.

…So why isn’t Coremetrics, or eMarketer for that matter, focusing on charting this territory rather than reciting old figures? Participation in a campaign by civilians is a far more robust consumer brand experience and cannot be ignored.

OK, so when we talk about the delivery that is Wireframes, what we are really talking about User Interface Design. The granularity to which these wireframes should be designed is a topic of constant debate. At RTCRM, we design wireframes across a spectrum of fidelities, depending on the type of project we are working on and the proclivities of other design team members. There are some really good information architects out there that will tell you that wire frames should be as sparse and minimalist as possible, and that most of the information needed to create the interactive experience in question can be realized form flows and maps. While this IA-centric approach is fine for some projects (typically content heavy sites without much functionality), I think there are situations where such a dogmatic methodology comes up short. Many times, we need to create high fidelity wireframes in order to properly articulate an a user experience. This is why I i try to push our designers to be both great architects and user interfaces designers. To me, User Interface Design makes up one third of the User Experience Design equation, with the other two thirds being User Research and Information Architecture. Now that Rich Internet Applications lets us do on websites what we used to be able to do only in software design, the role of User Interface Design is more important in web experience design than ever before.