MIMA – Joe Kutchera – Localization and Internationalization – Spanish-Language Markets

Joe Kutchera  gave a very insightful presentation  about developments and challenges of Spanish-language markets.

Ideas from the presentation:

Term “g-commerce” – global e-commerce

Touch of globalization: HomeDepot created a web site in Spanish and took it down after several months. Most of the visitors were coming from the outside of the US and could not purchase anything. Best Buy also has a Spanish language site, where it sees visitors from Latin America who do not necessarily buy; however, some show up in the stores with printouts from the site. Many Spanish language US sites receive significant portion of traffic from abroad.

Where Hispanics live in the US? An interesting advertising campaign – In an Absolute World

The obstacle: Spanish speaking people throughout the world find attractive goods on American web sites (and the goods are cheaper than in their countries); however their credit cards can not be used for purchases and shipping is very expensive if possible at all. But people abroad also want to shop!  Some do purchase and ship the goods to their American relatives addresses (to pick up when they travel to the US).

Global trends

Current map of internet penetration of the world  does not represent population numbers and most common spoken languages.

However, the price of computers is trending down and soon the current “map” will change. At that point different cultures and languages will become more important.

Practical advice: for some businesses specifically targeting people who live in Mexico and coming to the US to shop might be very beneficial.

Joe Kutchera’s company site dotGlobal  is an excellent resource for anybody interested in international e-commerce.

Another resource: Portada – Latin advertising, marketing, and media magazine.   The magazine was available at the event.

MIMA – Obama Online – Design View

Even if a presidential campaign can not be compared with normal marketing operations, its lessons are extremely valuable. Last MIMA event  was a great opportunity to hear perspective of Scott Thomas  on the Obama campaign – a perspective from a design standpoint. The campaign truly accomplished its goal to “go where the people are.”

The most interesting ideas from my perspective:

• “Killing the fold” on the home page. The designers decided not to limit themselves by the attempt to fit all important information “above the fold” of the home page and linked it to other portions of the site. Too much of the information was important; the links would be too small and difficult to click. The designers gave more “space” to the information, but abandoned the fold. However, the home page of the site was designed to hint that something exist below, encouraging people to scroll. Site visitors scrolled.
• Importance of collaboration. Designers worked with developers; designers worked with web analysts. The decisions on which web initiatives received more attention were based on traffic analysis.
• At the point when the goal was to encourage people to register to vote, Obama branding became unimportant for the task. The goal was registration, not choice of the candidate at that point.
• The campaign had surprising level of trust… The campaign hired passionate people who were experts in their field and allowed them to do their job without intruding into minor details. The designers, in their own turn, allowed other designers to participate in their efforts – they posted necessary files for local organizations to create their own materials.
• Analytics and testing. The designers tested everything possibly (buttons shapes, colors, wording etc.) and based design decisions on the results of the site use that came from the analysts.
• To succeed, the site should be constantly evolving…

MIMA – Web analytics for people who hate web analytics

Actually, the event attracted those who love web analytics and everything related to it… and sometimes struggle to show others the beauty behind the data.

The insights that Chris Wexler and Kristen Findley shared were…  “actionable.”    Though as an analytics enthusiast I was ready to scream “yes!!” after almost every statement, some ideas were refreshing.

New insights (or better arguments to achieve our perpetual objectives):

• Share analysis with designers… they rarely receive the information how their creations work
•  How to approach a designer: “I have something that will help you to do cool things”
•  How can analytics help
  • Executive: help to decide where you should spend budget
  • Designer: where to apply your creative expertise
• Questions to get business goals from stakeholders:
  • What do you want people to do? (works!! My favorite   )
  • What would it be if we succeed?
  • What would it be if we don’t succeed?

 To attribute costs better, different conversion points can have different values (visit – 1; creating and uploading a video – 10,000)

Web analytics term is too narrow – we should be channel agnostic – “interactive analytics”  is a better term

Chris Wexler demonstrated a wonderful image to illustrate the difference of insight v. data.

Data can sing…

Era of analytics “post” is changing of analytics “pre,” but as before, we can over-rely on analytics.

MIMA – Living in the Post-Advertising World

Michael Lebowitz, CEO of Big Spaceship, addressed the change that brands and agencies experiencing now and offered a few interesting suggestions during May MIMA event. He suggested to “never waste a good crisis” and experiment with new tools and possibilities.

Interesting points from the presentation:

Full service interactive agency may not exist – there are too many services and it is not possible to specialize enough in all of them to perform each service well.

Traditional advertising model is broken – consumer is in control. Advertising is competing not with other advertising but with the life itself; brands need to understand how brand can make consumer life better.

Example: Penguin Dating
Instead of creating a totally separate dating web site for book lovers, Penguin   formed a partnership with Match.com what became Penguin Dating.

Strategy is needed; marketers should be aware of “shiny object syndrome” when a particular new technology is used for the sake of the technology itself. Any technology needs to contribute to the business goals of the company.

Thinking about strategies, plan to adapt. Too much change and too many unknown parts that need to be considered.

Recommendations for agencies:

• don’t concentrate on metrics only
• focus on culture
• build things (don’t outsource craft)
• stay flat (allow some chaos)
• experiment constantly (not only for clients)

Approach to a project – all functions need to be involved at the beginning to allow collaboration and use of new opportunities. This approach is also helpful for “adopting on the fly.”

Experiment. Try something and see if it works. If it does not, drop it. If it does work, optimize and improve.

Example: Qapture  an aggregator of most popular links on Twitter in three categories. Qapture was built in a day and a half by Big Spaceship unrelated to any client requirements.

MN AMA and MIMA – Search 101

It was wonderful to see a mixed crowd of AMA and MIMA. The event presented by Azul 7 concentrated on basics of search engine marketing; however, it still had a couple of nuggets that I would like to mention.

Universal search is a known phenomenon, but it was interesting to research Wolfram Alpha (expected to launch in May) and its approach to universal search. Alpha separates the screen into results categories. I wonder how the new categories can be added (when they unexpectedly appear) and how category priority can be managed… I am a little cloudy on PPC opportunity

Search perspective: big brands should not have just one Web site. Yes, I was advocating this approach for a few years, but it was a pleasure to hear much more educated opinion than my own. Different audiences and needs demand different web sites for specific products or services. While the corporate site can certainly serve as a hub, searching and optimizing happens based on clearly defined needs of the target audience. The goal is not demonstrating a company to the world; but making as easy as possible for a qualified prospect to find the solution/information the company provides.

Content optimization – one idea per page.

Creation of pages for specific market/vertical. Somehow I limited this approach to landing pages (PPC or display), but did not think about SEO. It makes perfect sense!

MIMA – David Armano, The future of Advertising

The event exceeded my expectations… David Armano was able to articulate ideas that I thought were “hanging in the air” for some time, but were still difficult to see. Marketing world is changing and we have no other choice as adapt… or extinct.

Ideas from the presentation:

The most important now is to provide value through function.

Why agencies have challenges:

• advertising is the creation of the campaign for the mass, while social media is niche
• agencies have silos – collaboration does not happen
• many companies are built on large-scale production of banners…

However, there are changes. Flash microsite is going away… at least from the point of view of the most progressive agencies. The Barbarian Group simplified its web site recently to make it more functional (quite interesting – the portfolio is very functional – it is showing the projects rather than the company’s

ability in “creativity” of the showing process). The idea is that regular people use the web differently. The site is not going to win a award for the agency, but it is useful and functional for its target audience.

 Agencies are competing with passionate individuals deeply knowledgeable in topics of their interest. Typos do not matter – the passion and expertise attract the niche…

Example: Ford created a rather simple site, but gave free Fiesta (plus free gas) to several highly influential bloggers. 100 of people who wanted to participate in the Fiesta movement were selected and now THEY produce original content in the introduction of the new model to the public.

 Me-conomy – life around the “me” in social networking; the user is surrounded by his blog, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc.

Why shouldn’t agencies create products that they can sell?  Not necessarily creating campaigns for clients – but creating apps that will bring money in the future?  Example – IDEO labs. 

Agencies used heavy Flash applications hoping for “engagement…”  But what is engagement?  Leaving a comment on a blog is significantly more “engaging” than waiting for unnecessary animation to load…

The difference: OLD – everything is “thought-through” to the minute detail before launch…  NEW – apps are lunching in beta and modified as needed later – co-created with the users… Product development is mixing with marketing…

Viral video is a gamble – it can not be a part of business strategy.

How the NEW can be approached?  The organizations will need to adapt – and start adapting from the inside.

MIMA – Bob Thacker

Bob Thacker, the legendary person who commissioned ElfYourself.com seem to like to say “yes” to unusual ideas and believes that “it can’t be done” simply means “it has not been done yet.”

Ideas that I found especially interesting:

• “Elf Yourself” was one of 20 innovative web sites created for the season; only one of the sites was so wildly successful
• “If you don’t have big bucks, you need big ideas”
• “Look before you leap, but then leap… do something”
• After “Elf Yourself” campaign Office Max was more associated with holiday season and considered fun
• “Don’t make ads – make news!”
• Fear kills creativity
• “No true pessimist was a true marketer”

Most of the examples – wonderful, spectacular examples – were still an “advertisement on the next level” – an ingenious methods of attaching a brand to something that inherently has no relation to it.

However, one example seemed different – it was an example of including of marketing into the product development process (what is spectacularly illustrated in Meatball Sundae). The product was specifically created for a certain audience – women – and connection of the product to the promotion was more natural. 

 

A great quote for our times:

If you can not decide if the glass half empty or half full – order a double.

MIMA – User Experience Utopia

A few notes from another MIMA event – a conversation about user experience presented by Nick Finck.

Facets of the User Experience  (Peter Morville)

The article explains facets in quite a few details.

We looked at the example where animation was used heavily on non-essential elements of the site – the animation did not help the user experience, but hindered it. The example was quite typical – the animation was used for its own sake – rather than to help the user achieve the goal.

User Experience Treasure Map (Peter Morville)

I guess it is one more variation on the web site creation process – the discipline that is changing daily. It is interesting to watch the changes in the industry and marketers’ attempts to understand them…

… what leads to WaSP Interact – a living training course that tries not to capture a constant change, but to adapt to it…

Technology is changing

We are no longer building for the specific device, we don’t know what we are building for…

What is important?  Coming together – it is about the user.

MIMA – Content Strategy

Wow!  Before I could thin about typing my notes, the presentation and the video was already posted!  The event was as great as usually, and it was a pleasure to hear from a friend that I lured to attend how much she liked the event.

Kristina Halvorson impressed my friend (and probably everybody else) with wonderful information and exceptional delivery.

Points from the event:

• In most cases, brands are now evaluated for their “usefulness” rather than “preferability.” Brands are expected to be functional.
• Offline: passive engagement (we hope to capture attention)
• Online: people are active (getting attention is not enough) ; the brand must be
  • Useful
  • Usable
  • Enjoyable
• Content strategy plans for creation for useful, usable content
• Content should “support” for business goals and needs of the user

Example: Ford Models

Web content allows the modeling agency to create a new successful business model – the agency uses beauty tips and other beneficial for the target audience material to attract attention (and sponsors) to its videos. The agency is keeping careful balance of authenticity of the advice and product promotion.

Business case study -  Ford Models YouTube Channel

 Web content is different from the print – it is permanent and requires maintenance; the company needs to

• Plan
• Create
• Publish
• Govern 

 

 

Example: Money management software

 

Example of content not as useful form the user standpoint (I would simply call it product centric this malady does not affect online content only… )

 http://quicken.intuit.com/

 

 

Example of content that is more beneficial from the user’s standpoint (I would simply call it customer-centric approach – but marketing was struggling with it for a long time not only in the area of web content)

http://www.mint.com/
Brands are looking for functionality and usability that can bring measurable results online.

From the questions:

• people do read online after they finished scanning
• newspapers are dying because we are going online to read
• however, we need to support pre-read activities

An exercise to “put the stakeholder into user’s shoes” – offer the stakeholders to “shop” for  car insurance online (for example).  Start with the list of questions that they would like to answer, then visit several sites trying to answer these questions…  The exercise should help stakeholders to view their site from the point of view of the users.

Social Media Breakfast – Irresistibly Delicious

I finally was able to attend Social Media Breakfast – loved it – and immediately registered for the Ning. Great group (part of which I knew already) and exciting topic. This was an anniversary meeting for Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis, and all I was thinking… what took me so long? 

At the time when even BusinessWeek writes “For companies, resistance to social media is futile…”  keeping in touch with the industry becoming more and more important. Even if I don’t completely agree with every point of the article, I am so happy to see it online.

Two little notes from the event:

• WordPress blogs might be better indexed if they are hosted by WordPress comparing to other blogs… It verifies my preference for blogs hosted in a “proper” blogging neighborhood…  because the purpose of the blog is to be found first, and look/feel/familiar CMS second…
• People who twit too often may loose their followers… I must admit that I “un-followed” some particularly fruitful twitters in my network too, but have never thought about the issue…