Creative Agency Secrets

If you are interested or curious about what the Current Big Thing called Social Media is, who does it and what they are working on / talking about.  There are a wide range of great groups mainly based inLondon (sorry outatowners) that happen most weeks / months.

If you ahve a reason to come to town.  Try and drop into one or other of these.

Listen, Learn, Talk….

Chinwag event  NMK’s Beers & Innovation, Minibar, London Geek Dinners, MoMo London, Social Media Club, Creative Geeks, She Says, Swedish Beers, Open Coffee, Tuttle Club / Social Media Cafe, Girl Geek Dinners, Wiki Wednesdays, Next Wednesdays 

 And of course the BIMA events

Thanks to Dierdre of Chinwag for the summary list. 

Links to some sessions that I wanted to attend but couldn't / didn't.

10 Ways to Piss off a Blogger  Follow the other links from the piece for different attendees' take on it

The Art of Self-Branding and another one here    Wesabe is an interesting site because it's ostensibly a personal finance management tool but it has great VRM possibilities.  And slides here

Stories Games and Your Brand which Rachel Clarke was speaking at (she invited me to come over here) 

Peter Eckert, projekt202

Chris Bernard, Microsoft

Kevin Flatt – Tribal DBB [agency of the year]
Brooke Nonberg – Pixel
Garrick Schmitt -Avenue A Razorfish
[I came because this session is supposed to be about the intersection of the traditional agency and the new online agency and how they and clients transition].

PE - if you are nimble it’ll be easy to move to this new paradigm.  The culture is changing and the internet is becoming mainstream and so this is the key for agencies with specialisations that fill a niche but others will find it hard to move out to this space.

CB – Any creative route or client if you don’t understand it you will risk falling behind and your voice stops being heard.  Step out and learn – recipe for continued evolutionary success.  

PE -it is going to be very hard to stay up with all the new social media outlets / trends…
BN – it comes down to ideas, she has seen powerful things from unexpected agencies.  There are wonderful things out there.  Either you have the client relationships and ideas or you let politics get in the way.   The team works hard together.
KF – Tribal was born out of DBB and the changing environment.  Because it is part of an organisation with a long history there was a lot of learning, transferred over.  Our medium is digital but we aren’t ignorant of the wider world of advertising.  Across all our offices we can see digital and all forms of communication.    The most interesting are the agencies that forget about the medium but focus on the communication and the engagement you seek.
GS – Creative ideas – you need a mastery of the data and the understanding of a user interacts with touchpoints and the influence of each.  How to change message and campaign structure to adapt to each one, and what people are saying online and on Facebook etc.  This medium is still evolving, data and how to make the judgements against it is native to the net and this platform and it will be harder for traditional agencies to apply their skills over to it.

BN – the net is just one channel not ALL the digital channels – there is so much.  The blood will be where people think it’s just about email or a website…. the consumer is moving through all these things all the time, they don’t stop.  There won’t be one single answer.  Authentic conversations within social media channels?  It is a dangerous space to push inappropriately into these channels – social media is something that you need to have a reason to be in… Insights come also from watching what they do as well as data and conversations with real people.   Take the tone and attitude and recognise it’s about sharing freedom of speech not pushing adverts.  

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The dark underside of the internet - picking up all the things said about your brand online.  Within a short period of time things can go wrong and the internet can change.  But we can harness that open-ness for good.A future that is basically here, the near future.  If we all have access to all the photos and live video of ourselves this protects our privacy more.  Many of the tools are already available.  The unbridled stream of information “ the new superpowers”.  The great shift – we are used to small communities and cultivating reputations there but it is now moving wider.  The networks can build a very complex reputation.  It requires the viewer to do more interpretation for themselves.   You work out which are the extreme viewpoints and discount them from your overall opinion.  

How can you control your reputation? the site reputationdefender.com – they sell the lie that you can control your reputation…. Not true, you can curate it.  
Five acts
1.    Six judo moves
2.    Griefer madness
3.    A tale of two lawyers
4.    Lane Hartwell
5.    Arin Crumley

The challenge: Reputation versus privacy versus free speech.  The management of reputation often had headlong collisions with  these other needs.  
Thor runs get satisfaction.com concept if you are a company you are vulnerable to what other people can say about you…When they respond to blog posts companies can be perceived as being over-protective.  This site invites the companies and customers to participate.

Judo moves

1.     Cast a long shadow.  In a world where anyone can bear false witness, try to make sure there are lots of witnesses!  Accrue more positive content about you to inoculate yourself against bad stuff.  This is a baseline plan.  There is a context for any comment.

2.    Tell your side of the story.  Julie Melton valleywag. Record your position online and send your version to your key audience, selectively.  Be engaging and non-defensive.  Use terms like proactive, nip in the bud.  Post a reply before they have the chance to strike.

3.    A heartfelt apology.  SW Airlines has a chief apology officer!  JetBlue apologised in a third party space and left comments open.  His criticism was in the context of the apology.

4.    Sarah Lacy: no apologies.  She apologies by blaming the audience.  Google results for today and an apology video showing above the critical bloggers.

5.    Inspire an Army.  Sometimes it isn’t enough just to tell your side of the story alone – get others to tell it for you.  Mike Brown of Foundation Capital’s clients used the Funded to say how well he’d treated them and what it was like working with him.

6.    Stand for something.  Patti of Timbuk2 started using get satisfaction – free advertising on the home page we used to have a strong point of view and being ‘snarky and opinionated’ and when she rejoined the company.  “here today, gone tomorrow just like that guy who stole your virginity”  an email campaign she wrote.  Her opt in list was 110k but the concentric reverberation from the womens rape advocacy group got their teeth into it.   She took a lot of direct correspondence back to their blogs.  But other evangelists started picking it up and responding to the bloggers.  Defence from outside the employee base.  She is still trying to be amusing, funny and opinionated but a lot more careful!
7.    Celebrate your critics.  Brian Shaler BitGravity videos people criticising himself!  Celebrate the worst of the haters in your life!  
Griefer madness – people who exist to make life hell for others.  Michael Crook (got a name change), A man who exists to destroy his own reputation.   You cannot control your image online.  He used the DMCA even though he was a ‘true villain’.

[not sure how I managed to write 7 down….. time-space-continuum issues, clearly!] 

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Control your email.… deal with it in different ways from postal mail. – Volume.  This is huge.  Great for the sender but not for the recipient.  Search for the term “email bankruptcy”. It is easy – leave it open while you work and scan every new message as it comes in and you’ll find it wastes too much time.  

Spend 30 minutes a day on email.  Process messages in bunches in between other tasks.  Keep the inbox free.  Small changes, better habits, practiced daily.  
Folder system for keeping the in-box empty, writing  quick messages.  

Clear your mind..…. it can work against you sometimes – nagging thoughts when you don’t need them.   Short term thoughts often represent unfulfilled commitments you make to yourself.  Your conscious mind is a focusing tool not a processing space.  So try to clear out these quick ‘rememberances’ by capture the information and organise it as an outboard-brain, leaving your brain free for the current task at hand. Capture tools: Reminders from Google calendar, personal wiki, password manager, cameraphone to remember things.

Firewall your attention!  This is your most important resource. Software is helped to allow you to multi-task like multiple windows.  Phones, and IM allow interruptions constantly.  Your focus is more important than this.  ADT – attention deficit trade (caused by the constant distraction of technology devices).  Shut off the interruptions.  Turn cellphones off when in transit and use the time for thinking.  Do one thing at a time, do it well and move on.  Block out irrelevant distractions to enable you to achieve ‘flow’ within the task you are doing.  Use virtual desktops to split your key work with fun work.  Signal that you are not available to outsiders.    

A general theory of creative relativity….. not a universal theory!

Coudal Partners

Part One – when we evaluate a work of art it is difficult to get to the heart of the creative process because there are many moving pieces….. e.g. film includes many people’s contributions. 

Booking Bands – a word game to combine the title of a book with the name of a band and try to make it fun.  “the Who moved my cheese” “Dexy’s midnight typerunners” “the old man and the seedcake” “ET Rex” . Try this for yourself - it is really entertaining…

This is the 'quantum mechanics' of creativity because it represents the most elemental particle of creativity.  I know HOW you are thinking about it… you are either holding a book title and reeling through band titles trying to find one to match – or the reverse.  You are not randomly picking one of each because the chances of any one fitting in an entertaining way are too slim.  There is a variable and a constant and the association makes it work.  The known and the unknown and association is the action (creative event).

Part Two – the ignition (big bang).  Sometimes you may find it hard to price your services – when you have the inspiration and it just happens versus one where you really have to slog out an answer.  how do you value the first versus the second event?

The initial moment of enthusiasm about a new idea – this is the juice that amplifies the unknown/known.  The creative process comes from inside and the moment of ‘divine’ intervention comes with great curiosity and enthusiasm.  The moment of ‘falling in love’.  This amplifies the association make in part one of the theory.  Blow up the association and amplify it.

Part Three – now we need to communicate the ‘thing’ and it’s powerful but unformed.   Light to the power of 3 gives a blast under it. 

Light to power of 1 = the art of metaphor… easy to explain.  

Light to the power of 2 = executive summary a powerful shorthand. 

Light to the power of 3 – judgment and aesthetic decisions (taste?).

The association between the known and the unknown amplified by the enthusiasm we feel for a new idea divided by light to the power of 3 to give it energy.  

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Heath Row - Doubleclick - as a blogger he wants to do more for small companies

Darren Rowse – ProBlogger has a book coming out “ProBlogger Secrets for Blogging”

Wendy Piersal – E Moms at Home, an internet magazine

Jim Benton – VP sales for AdBrite

Rett Clevenger – Backcountry.com online marketing mgr incl affiliate marketing
Focus on Monetisation for Blogging and small publishers – affiliate, display, affiliate, sponsorship

Ads are only one piece of monetisation for blogs:
DR – two areas you can make money directly by ads or affiliates or indirect revenues by selling yourself.  Direct ways – advertising esp cost per click contextual e.g. Google Adsense (biggest money maker for most of his readers), Affiliate programme like Amazon where referrals get a small fee.  Advertising, as your blog grows you may get approached directly and selling display ads, sponsorships – a banner per month to align brands with yours, pop-0ups, RSS advertising in the feed, text links can also be sold (google doesn’t like this).  Affiliate programmes, writing reviews and being paid, selling classifieds e.g. job boards, merchandise, donations or tips (doesn’t work well for most), membership areas – secret bonus areas.

Indirectly – sell yourself as a consultant, book deal, selling a product, training, workshops, conference.  (more…)

Just got recommended this Samson recorder for good quality audio thanks Pete Ashton

Key learning:
Community is Grown not built. “building community” is for architects not online. Read the wisdom of crowds. And build the tools people can use and trust them to use appropriately.

You may remember Fray from very old web. Derek started it in 1996 as a live story telling site. Each story ended with the question “when has this happened to you?” . This started his interest in community online and how to invite participation.

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro” Hunter S Thompson

Today the web enables people to get exposure that used to the exclusive preserve of adults, authorities and experts. So what can you do if you want crowds on your site?

| View | Upload your own

Content owners have 3 lies they tell themselves when confronted with free content:

1. Everyone on the net is an idiot.

2 Good stuff is too hard to find

3. You can’t make any money.

1. Everyone on the net is an idiot… for past 10 years the mainstream media only focused on this. But refute it using Google – value based on number of links to pages… proxy for votes and voters are important. Kim Pedersen’s Backyard Monorail – 300 feet of track costing $4000. He shares what he knows for free – created a community of shared interest. Wikipedia because it was the first makes it a bad site to copy, now. But the small community of editors who do the most (0.7% of users) are key to small edits/spell checkers (tend the Drafted Postsgarden) and new users who post substantive new articles.

2. Good stuff is too hard to find. Traditional ways of finding good stuff is human editors (magazines / newspapers), non-traditional editors took this and applied to the web (Amazon where users were reviewers) and moderators. Computers took on the task (text search), Google’s page rank (more sophisticated weighted by incoming link) and technorati. But the middle path of hybrid using both human and computers is where most of the opportunity lies today (Flickr interestingness, community vote and best of both). Flickr algorithm is voting by actions (going to look at photos). Displayed by leader board by day. This created a competition and people trying to gain the system. Later they made a 7 day version, recent randomised of 9 images.

The Wisdom of crowds – the number 1 book to read. It is about how people can use groups to be smart. Summarised as selfish behaviour aggregated for a common good. The interaction is simple – key. Simple questions. “did you like this?”. You need diversity across the spectrum to make this work. But selfishness is important – design for selfishness [we think our products are awesome and anyone who disagrees is an idiot!] High on our own supply. If you can create a desire for the user to put their voice onto something you may succeed. Rewards can be ego or money.

Assignment Zero using wiki software collaboration with Wired Magazine – crowdsouring stories. The crowd didn’t want to participate by writing stories. So they changed to asking for research… asked people to sign up for interviews (instant response!). Doing an interview was a simple task compared to writing something. Read a list of people and decide to take action by asking a few questions… their editors condensed into print-worthy text. Using crowdsourcing as a cost-saving measure doesn’t work. Communities must be cultivated, respected and managed if they are to create economic value” Jeff Howe who coined the phrase crowdsourcing.

3. You can’t make any money. Threadless is a great example – t shirt store with no designers, just an interface. The best get printed, bought. A trusted middle man. Golden tag in 1 shirt per 1000 (Willy Wonker thing), member forum for people who’ve won in the past… cultivating a winner class. Have a plan with good answers ready for when you get ‘busted’!

Derek's new startup Pixish – bringing the threadless happiness to any image based contest. Cautionary tales – Yahoo games Wii site…. create niche sites pulling stories, photos and stuff tagged Wii including a strip of photos from Flickr. They didn't’ give the users any way of opting out… all sorts of things tagged Wii including Yahoo sucks, baby weeing etc… It wasn’t a legal reason. Because there was no clear way to opt out users rebelled. Copious opt ins and opt outs are needed. Need a group opt in. GM Tahoe Apprentice Campaign. User generated content to make an advert…. but users put their own captions on “Waaa? No iPod plug-in??” and you could only use their existing photos and videos… you could add text over the video. “We paved the prairies” and “The ultimate padded cell! “Global warming isn’t a pretty SUV ad”, “The Earth is now your bitch!”. They designed for their own selfishness not the participant. Narrow scope of creativity – text only. Content was greedy – couldn’t export to any other place….YouTube or your site. The audience was wrong – this should have been just GM owners not the entire internet! Cf Saturn owners club. But it worked.. really well. the microsite had 600k visitors in 3 weeks with an average 9 minutes online and many visited Chevvy.com too which was what they wanted.

Community is Grown not built. “building community” is for architects not online.

How to do it. 5 steps

1. Give people tools they want
2. Trust them to do good
3. Reward good contributions
4. Punish bad contributions
5. Expect the unexpected

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They wrote a book, called Web Design for ROI.

Key learning from this session: Judgements made are very quickly online. Improved design can make users take more actions that you want them to do. Small % improvements can lead to significant ££$$ revenue growth.

Reasons for writing it – frustration… the business case and the design guidelines.

Clients don’t understand the impact design can have on their
business metrics led by a good user experience and a better web
interface.
Clients mostly think they want a Ferrari website… but it frequently
doesn’t lead with a clear business objectives. Usually they need
functional, utilitarian but good looking. What they have is a long way
from either of these!

• 43% of retail (offline) sales are influenced by knowledge gained by
  online research. 83% of businesses use the internet to research and
  find potential vendors. [true – I did the database research in this
  way].
• Judgements made are very quickly made online. Reactions to a new
  web page are made from 1/20th of a second…. likelihood of interaction
  is part of the reaction to these first snap impressions.

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