It’s always an interesting discussion when you sit down with a prospective client for the first time and the first things out of their mouth is, “so we have all these great ideas, but we’re not sure if they are any good, and we really have no clue where to start”.    Many of these ideas stem from the over stimulation of creative and experimental media we are bombarded with on a daily basis.   We think to ourselves, what would I respond to, what really works.   But how do you decide where to start, what to do first, and how much budget or simply human resources should you dedicate to new ideas.   Notice, that I’m not detailing what type of ideas, since they can pretty much be anything - spanning from whether or not to attempt a viral-based or social networking campaign to whether or not to put a new arcade room in your office (wink).  

A few weeks ago, I was part of EMG’s executive retreat in which we were determining the future of our agency and how we could continue to effectively set ourselves apart from the competition, continue to grow soundly and profitably and how to remain at the forefront of what many consider cutting-edge marketing and technology strategies.   The format that we followed in order to achieve this came from a fantastic book called “Blue Ocean Strategies”.   The premise essentially is to make your competition irrelevant by creating and developing a new uncontested marketplace.    Sparing you the details, there is one central theme to this concept.  Using “value innovation” as a guiding rule for determining which ideas to move forward with.   Value innovation is simply a different strategic logic and mindset.    It places equal focus and weight on both value and  innovation.    

Value without innovation tends to focus on “value creation” - or otherwise something that is not sufficient to make you stand out in the marketplace.   Likewise, innovation without value tends to be considered market pioneering or futuristic, however it often shoots beyond what your audience or consumers are ready to accept, engage or even pay for.     So next time the light-bulb goes off or a think-tank, or even dare we say a COMMITTEE is formed, take into account this concept of value innovation to determine the best ideas to support and commit to.

Allow me to take you back to high school English class, when all but the bravest of introductory paragraphs began with a deeply thought out quote snatched from the thickest book to be found in the non-fiction nether regions of the library (or media center - for the younger ones in the bunch).

“The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception.” - Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium Is the Message,” Understanding Media

Brilliant, right? The last few weeks, I’ve been revisiting some texts I too hastily read back in the day, and when those words went from page to perception for me yesterday, I was utterly floored. I’m pretty sure I made some sort of sound of astonishment to mark the occasion, too. I mean, come on. Not that I fully grasp the fullness of McLuhan’s statement even 24 hours after I read it, but it’s clear the implications of just this single set of words and ideas are massive - for EMG, for my role and responsibility within the company as well as for me personally not to mention what this means for everyone who considers themselves a serious artist (whatever this means should be saved for a later post!).

Now, since I’m writing a blog post and not the novel I’ll never write, I’ll stick to the first couple ideas McLuhan’s prophetic prose brought forward for me - specifically regarding EMG as an organization. First off, EMG functions best when all three of its operational efforts - Strategy. Artistry. Technology. - are organically giving and taking, working toward unified project-specific goals, and McLuhan’s belief’s about the Artist and his or her unique ability to identify and respond to Technology’s impact on the user illustrates the wild need for Artistry when developing effective Technology solutions. And, if what McLuhan says is true - that a “serious artist” is the ONLY person able to engage in technology without being significantly changed by the technology itself, an artists’s input and inquiries from a user perspective is vital to an effective process for us and an effective end product for our loyal client.

This leads to another thought, and this one’s about why the EMG team works as well as we do together. Artists of all kinds have found a 9-5 home at EMG - painters, musicians, composers, essayists, directors, producers and even a quilter or two to start a short list - and up until now I thought our good rapport had more to do with personalities than job function. But, after considering the artist’s role and responsibility for shaping technology, an artist at EMG is in his or her element - continually shaping technology from a place of difference as McLuhan proposes. So, it’s okay that the user scenarios we propose in meetings seem to come from left field sometimes, and it’s okay when we need assistance from time-to-time understanding what seems so logical to techies and analysts because it’s essentially an artist’s job to see things differently. As artists we are - for better or worse - hardwired to be in tune with the way an audience accesses or perceives a message or process as much as we are equipped to create artful products to best serve these sense perceptions - in their endlessly unpredictable and dynamic glory.

It occurs to me that likely, the most valuable document in a project is the weekly client-facing status report. Hear me out here, it’s not a boring as it may sound– the status report works on many levels and I am a huge fan/believer/proponent of the document!

I’ve been asked, “Why waste time on a status report when you already have a project plan?”

Really, do I even have to dignify this with a reply? Fine…status reports serve as timely snapshots of a project plan. Status reports should only show the most immediate and current work needs as well as red-flags and/or modified timelines that the client needs to know about. Keeping a client apprised via a formal weekly document will be a huge help in managing their expectations– because they are updated weekly, issues are less likely to come as a shock to them and necessary steps to avoid issues can be addressed proactively and/or as they arise. The status report should give a nice, concise window into what is being worked that week related to the project deliverables.

Also, project plans usually have internal deliverables and timelines that a client doesn’t necessarily care about. A client status report helps to focus on the “here & now” of a project. So, you see…a status report is needed in conjunction with a project plan. It helps compliment the details of the plan with summaries and works to focus communication on immediate needs rather than the long-term goals of a project.

The simplicity of a status report is what makes me the happiest! It consists, at its most basic-level, of a task-title; a delivery date; a resource (responsible party); red-flags/notes; and a document timestamp. And that is it!

Revisiting the status report weekly for updates takes all of 15 minutes and I find it also helps focus me on the project– especially when the project might be just one of 3-5 active projects I am working on.

I’m telling you, the power of the client status report is great! Catch the fever…and Happy New Year!

This is a nice article on the importance of stepping back and realizing how much progress we’ve made with the Web.  If you haven’t recently, step back and realize the progress that has been made on your organization’s website. 

Web History: Middle of the Beginning
New Thinking Newsletter
Gerry McGovern
Date: December 16, 2007 

“The Web has only just begun to make its mark. As we approach 2008, we are only in the middle of the beginning of a revolution that is transforming humanity. 

I often meet web professionals who are frustrated with their websites. This is quite understandable. Change can seem quite slow at times. I have even seen websites go backwards for a while. 

However, the problem we have as web professionals is that we live every day in the center of the Web. We see the challenges all around us. We see the future clearly and want to get there as quickly as possible. 

Sometimes we see the future too clearly. Sometimes we are too impatient. To move forward, sometimes we need to look backward, and upward. 

We need to look backward to see all that we have done, because, let me tell you, an awful lot has been achieved in a very short period of time. Look back even 5 years. What was your website like then? What was management thinking about your website back then? You have made an awful lot of solid progress. 

You can read the entire article at: http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-12-17-web-history.htm

Thought I’d take a break from signing Christmas cards to settle in for a long winter’s night of blogging. Ok, maybe more like 10 minutes.

So the Holidays are known for bringing out some of the most in-your-face advertising and promotions from every corner of the retail world, and across every media channel know to man, woman or child. From silly jingle bell burger commercials to a never ending stream of stuffed mailboxes, all of which seem to the most horrendous misspelling of my name, or better yet refer to me as Mrs. Navarro - oh my mother would be so proud. And of course we can’t forget the wondrous chore of deleting thousands of SPAM e-mails from my quarantine box. A box that of course also seems to always hide the most important of e-information from a client or the accidental cancellation of my reservation amongst the kilobytes of junk.

However, this year I’ve noticed something a little bit different. Could it be that the marketers of yore have finally gotten ahead of the game and decided to do something different? It could be because the talk of….”recession” has scared the knickers off of the retail world - but I’d like to think it’s due to marketers finally having the chutzpah to try something new. They’ve finally found a way to cut through my clutter. Hit me with the memories of youth!!!

And regardless of what you think, I feel it’s refreshing nonetheless. In my opinion, if you want my dollars, it’s all about tapping into the nostalgia of my past. Unlike an unfair fight, I say, make it personal, pull no punches and force me down that long dark path to my childhood days of cardigans, He-Man and Woody Woodpecker.

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Although the field of web analytics is still in its infancy as it continues to change and adapt to new and emerging technologies it has made tremendous strides in the past fifteen years. Gone are the days where a simple counter at the bottom of almost every Geocities website was enough to get an indication of visitor interaction. This was a very primitive method of checking hits, and early counters simply allowed visitors to hit refresh to see the counter increase. Later counters fixed this problem and added information such as “X amount of hits since Y date” to give additional insight as to how long this data has been collecting.

In the mid 1990s some smart fellow looked at gleaming information from web server logs and log file analysis was started. Web server log files allowed for the introduction of metrics beyond hits, and included items such as page views and sessions. While not terribly important it allowed for greater insight as to visitor behavior than just hits which counters were collecting. In the late 1990s search engine spiders and other robots added to the complexity of tracking visitor behavior, and it made it hard to discern the difference between human and non human visitors. One such application that utilizes web server logs is Urchin 5 which is pictured below. Still heavily used throughout many companies it has a new version Urchin 6 in beta, and is one of the few surviving applications that still rely upon web server logs.

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There’s been a lot of talk lately on the value of social networking tools, sites, blogs, blah, blah, blah… and it starts me wondering, “How do you build community?” Seriously. So, the social scientist in me takes over and I begin to digg into this deli.icio.us question and see what the rest of the oncomm has to say about it. I’m sure if the information is out there, by now I must have reddit.

This concept of building community sounds great, especially to marketing types who see this as a way to generate traffic “for free” but kind of breaks down when it comes to actually starting to build. Lets consider for a moment the reasons why we might “build community” purely for marketing reasons and then we’ll dive into perhaps the factors that actually drive community which might give us some insight into how community actually gets built.

• TRAFFIC-> Interesting content means interested visitors, right?
• KNOWLEDGE -> Sharing or obtaining. If you write it, they will come.

Now, let’s think about what these factors mean to community.

First, we should probably establish the difference between traffic and community. Amazon.com gets a ton of traffic and plenty of comments and feedback on products. Does it have “community” or “web2.0″ features? Is it a “social networking” site? Hardly. It’s pretty clear that traffic isn’t community. Next let’s consider knowledge sharing and community. For this let me use the example of, well… how about Micro$oft. Like many other software vendors, the redmond elite have used their online presence to produce a great deal of “knowledge” to be shared with the world. This certainly generates a certain amount of “traffic” and “content” but again, hardly creates “community.”

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OK…well as a first post…I just can’t write about what I do every day…

So instead, I am going to tell you about something I really enjoy!  Succulents.  You may be asking…what is a succulent??  Well…a succulent is a juicy leaved plant (much like a cactus but much cooler) that stores water and is very hard to kill.  In fact…they can go weeks without water and remain very nice looking!

 I have a collection of succulents at home…and thankfully a very rarely kill them

As soon as I figure out how to upload photos to the new blog…you will see some of the succulents I have at home!

There are no real rules for kicking off a blog, I guess. And, even though this may seem on the surface contrary to the creative process, rules are a very good thing in my book. At the very least they channel energy and provide texture for ideas to bump up against, shaping and defining impulses and impressions until they become viable “somethings.”

So, when it comes to things like this blog - something that (fingers crossed) will sustain itself because of its liminality - a girl like me finds herself without much of a place to start. This coupled with the fact that the majority of my time is spent observing and processing practical and phenomenological subtleties that scream “writing for a vacuum is for crazy people” makes blogging a conflicted task.

(How’s this for a contemplative little start to our blog!)

With the “why blogging is weird” behind us, let’s move on to what makes blogging powerful: connections, connections, connections. I had a professor in college who, when he described postmodernism and what he called THE WORLD TODAY (even though him using that word to describe “today” immediately discredited him) would link his fingers, palms flat in front of him and say something like, “Today, we are always at an intersection of influences.” That’s not something unique for us today, though.

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First and foremost, I hope that you are never able to dig down to this inaugural gem of a ‘welcome’ in the months and years that pass from this day in time. Why? Because you won’t believe the incredible amount of talent, personalities, goofs, characters, and all around great group of individuals that will be adding their own spice, wisdom and flavor to this blog - keeping you busy exploring much more important, interesting and exciting content. You may wonder what’s going to make ours different - you won’t have to wonder for very long. So please - feel free to wander and please, please, please don’t be shy. I challenge you all to push the envelope and challenge us anytime you’d like – we love it.