Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Kate Spade has launched a minisite off of their ecommerce site called, “Behind the Curtain”. It bills itself as “News and Ideas from the Kate Spade Design Studio.” Not only is the content surprisingly interesting, but the execution of the site itself is clean, beautiful and effortless. I particularly like some of the small design touches, like how text starts to fade at the bottom of the page so you intuitively know to scroll, that there is more to come.

The Things We Love page is exceptional in its layout, the horizontal scrolling motion of the page, and most of all the content itself. It encourages the exploration and discovery of diverse and interesting things. From simple pleasures in life like Red Hots, Helvetica, Audrey Hepburn and Laduree macaroons, to more esoteric multimedia adventures such as a Flickr photo pool of guerilla knitting, The ADC Young Guns site, a You Tube clip of Michel Gondry solving a Rubik’s cube with his feet, and one of our favorites, www.wefeelfine.org. This collection of links displayed as objects communicates the quirky aesthetic of the brand and the personalities behind it. As a final touch, the site prompts users to submit their favorite things too, creating a collaborative dialogue between the user and the brand.

Whitney Browne

Earlier this week, I brought up an example of the web reflecting rather than driving popular culture, in this case,  websites that create artificial exclusivity to mirror scarcity offline.  Well here's  a counter-example: cross-shopping behavior. 

The web has drastically reduced the effort required to cross-shop, particular by price.  And comparison-shopping engines like Froogle and Shopping.com have the task even easier. 

Now Vimo.com is looking to bring private and public data to help you cross-shop for...health care services.  The site lets you compare health plans, doctors, or even individual treatments side-by-side.

It's a classic problem for the Internet to solve - a huge lack of pricing transparency, uneven distribution of information, and a vexing intermediary (your health insurer) that may or may not always act in your best interests. 

My Medical Control, another web-based company, tackles the post-service end of the business- they will take your medical bill and bargain it down for you, the same service a claims adjuster would do for a major insurer- less a 35% commission on any savings. (According to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, health care spending is set to double in the next decade, to more than $4 trillion a year, a fifth of the gross domestic product).

Of course, there are limits  to cross-shopping for healthcare by price - your out-of-pocket costs will vary, quality of care is an intangible benefit, and your specific treatment will likely differ from your neighbor's.  Still, it's fascinating to see the Internet-led "informed consumer" model seeping into the byzantine health care system.  Read more in the New York Times.

Misha Cornes

6 Billion Others is an ambitious project from reknowned French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand.  Although he is typically known for his aerial photography, this project features video diaries of people from all over the world, talking about life, love and happiness.   It's a beautiful utopian idea that world harmony begins with an understanding of what matters to a single individual.  And it features an intuitively designed Flash interface and great video implementation.

Yee Peng Chia

It's not often that we point out display advertising; however I discovered an exceptionally eye-catching ad for Ralph Lauren which I wanted to share.  Besides being appropriately placed in a contextually relevant environment (the fashion section of the New York Times), the creative “elegantly” uses in-banner video to promote Ralph Lauren’s fall fashion show.  The video is fluid and the banner does a great job of maximizing its size. 

According to Jacob Ford, “it looks like they are fully taking advantage of Flash 9 and its stellar video compression trafficked through Unicast.” I also like how they use multiple videos (refresh the page) to showcase different clothing accessories.  There is definitely room to enhance the banner, however I like the simplicity of it as well.  The real pay off is the video of an actual fashion show which resides on their website.

Here's a link to the video at Polo.com.

Chris Portella

This portfolio site uses a 3D navigation system that is very usable and creates a nice dimensional feel.

http://www.screenvader.com

Bob Kuck

I ran across this Australian Honda CRV site, a very nice and elegant piece.  Not overly flashy and a pretty nice way to look at the vehicle.  Check out each environment the vehicle is positioned in.  They're really detailed and have some nice motion and interaction going on.

http://www.crvplay.com.au/

Zander Waldman

This week USAToday.com revealed a new look and a serious upgrade to its features.  Along with Web 2.0 standards like article tagging, tabbed browsing, and more white space, what you'll really notice are the new community components.

In a clear acknowledgement on the shifting balance between newspaper-as-authority and newspaper-as-content-curator, USAT offers:

• In-screen content feeds from other sources
• Reader comments highlighted against every article
• Digg-style voting for popular stories, with a directional stock indicator
• Photo uploads from citizen journalists
• User profile pages
• Recommend stories or comments to other readers

While they have clearly taken some pages from the New York Times playbook, the site goes even further in trying to redefine what a newspaper website can be.  In a letter to readers, the editorial staff lay out their ambitions clearly:

"[The redesign] is a mission recast for an era in which readers are inundated with information, have little allegiance to a single news source, struggle to assess the credibility of what they read and have the capacity to share their own insights with a wide audience."

While USAToday has never been considered a paper of record, it's very significant that America's most-read paper is seeking to democratize news.  When it comes to information consumption, the user is more in control than ever.

Misha Cornes

I'm not the guy to get all starry-eyed about the Next Great Social Music App but I'll usually give them a spin just to see what's up. After all, Audioscrobbler cum Last.fm wasn't much more than a nice idea until it reached critical mass and now I'm paying (PayPal-ing to be exact) to support my addiction. So when my friend Anthony invited me to join iLike, I did so without expecting much more than a download I'd later have to purge to make room on my hard drive (for more MP3s, of course). Along the way I got sidetracked by the iLike Challenge, a timed Name That Tune game similar to the one bundled on iPods that entices you with progressive levels of mastery. I was able to reach Music Explorer while downloading, then I had to go to a meeting. When I next opened iTunes, iLike's fancy little sidebar slid out to the right showing me what Anthony (who lives about 500 miles away in Brooklyn) was currently listening to...nice, I'm into musical voyeurism (or is it eavesdropping if there's play button?). So I, like, like iLike, but I can't help but wonder why someone more XML-savvy than me doesn't just build a similar sidebar based on Last.fm data and save us all the hassle? Holla if you know of one. Or join iLike so my sidebar doesn't look so empty.

Sam Cannon

A usability study by The Nielsen/Norman Group (June 2006) highlights (literally) the importance of “breaking through the clutter,” or in this case, “content.”  The study uncovered a phenomenon called ‘Banner Blindness’ where users focus almost exclusively on the content of a page and ignore the banners.   

As you can see, the diagram shows a F-shaped pattern for reading web content also revealing that users primarily focus on introductions and bulleted content.   There are significant implications for marketers who are not only seeking engagement, but also sheer exposure.   Because of this tendency to focus more on content, we as marketers must continue to develop innovative and creative ways to attract customers.

Chris Portella

Via Asi Sharabi of Poke London, here's an interesting new concept from travel publisher Dorling Kindersley, a downloadable version of their Eye Witness Travel Guides that allows the user to customize their content. 

Personalised guides are free in PDF form until March 12 (then around $5), and there are plans to offer special one-off bespoke books, delivered straight to your door or hotel.

For all you Mac users who want some really great screen savers,  Japanese artist Futurismo Zugakousaku has some great Quartz Composer projects.

Download the file and place them in you screensaver folder and enjoy.

Baron Conway

Sony presented the game Little Big Planet for the PS3 yesterday at the GDC and it has me very excited.

The idea is you can build a level to run, jump, and solve physics based puzzles with up to three other people, connected over the internet and playing on the same screen.  From there, you can upload and share the level over their online service for other people to play, rate, and comment on.

The videos show a very stylized world with felt trees and cardboard cut-out backgrounds. The characters are cute and customizable.  The music  sounds great.  I could see this being a very immersive and fun experience to play with four friends.

Read more and see a demo at I Make Websites.

Adam Sullovey

I had never steered far away from Planters Nuts before.  My Dad favored them and I did what my Dad did, snacked like my Dad snacked.  The I came across a banner ad for www.emeraldnuts.com.  Fans of Monthy Python could certainly get lost here, as did I. And you have to imagine that the designers (our friends at Goodby Silverstein) had a ton of fun conjuring up these transitions, sounds and uncommon navigational elements.

Any site that sues Robert Goulet to goad you into closing a window by saying "That's right. Click it. You know you want to." is OK by me.  So guess what snack I picked up for my Super Bowl party? (Don't tell Dad.)

Wayne Mitchell

http://sixjourneys.mercedes-benz.co.uk/r-class/home.php

Here's a nice site from Mercedes R-Class.  Simple.  Elegant. It's not about 40+ widgets that the car has.  It's not about what color I can get it in or what I get with each trim level.  Of course those widgets, colors, and trim levels are to come.

But first, lets just meet.

Its focus is more about aspiration.  A connection.  A story.

I like it.

P.S. Pull the little orange slider at the bottom left over to the right.

Casey Riggleman

[Need more diversions from Mercedes UK?  Try Mercedes A to S, a fun way to play with the web interface - Ed.]

http://labs.digg.com/bigspy/

I saw a demo of this last fall at the Future of Web Apps conference, and have been checking Digg Labs every week since. I may have missed the official launch, but there it is!

The other real-time Flash visualization tools are impressive, but Big Spy one really knocks it out of the park.

It's what my brain has always wanted to see when it heard "news feed."

Dan Sicko

360° panoramas projected to look like small planets. View complete flickr set here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/gadl/sets/72157594279945875/

Talk about some amazing pictures, just wow.

They are also available at large enough sizes for your computer's wallpaper.

James Ellis

A couple of developments this week have got me thinking about how we measure advertising success.  According to a new study release by Forrester this week, many marketers are dissatisfied with advertising's return on investment.  No surprise there. 

"There's always an undercurrent of discontent with agencies," says Peter Kim of Forrester. "They're dissatisfied, yet on what basis? It's not because the agency didn't help them drive sales or meet some other business outcome. It's a vague disenchantment, or disappointment; it's a feeling that there isn't data to back up."

The interactive channel is held to the higher standards than other marketing communications.  It's easier to measure, and the industry grew up at time when accountability was becoming the watchword for CMOs.  So the preference for accountability is shared by interactive ad planners and buyers.  Two thirds of respondents surveyed by NSON Opinion Research and the Audit Bureau of Circulations would be more likely to advertise on Web sites if the results were independently verified by a third party .  You can read more on these reports at eMarketer.

You can contrast this obsession with measurement with the break-up of the six-year Career Builder/ Cramer-Krasselt relationship this week.  According to some reports, C-K was essentially fired for the dismal performance of their Super Bowl ads on USA Today's Ad Meter.  The opinions of 238 people in two cities cost an agency a $60 million account.  Is a laugh-o-meter the best measurement tool we can muster after more than fifty years of showing commercials? 

AdAge offers a nice critique of USA Today's methodology.  Everyone knows the system is flawed, but it lingers on because (1) it's an easy metric to understand (2) it's published by the nation's best-selling newspaper, itself an arbiter of Middle America's tastes.  By definition, then, the winning commercials follow a strict (and by now predictable) format of cheap laughs and entertainment over content.  The system is gamed for Budweiser.

Have clients gone too far with their insistence on metrics?  Or are we as advertisers still too quick to dismiss measurement as a tool to improve the creative process?

[photo credit: jo.k]

Misha Cornes

I heard www.dontbebob.com advertised on the radio several times and decided to take a minute to check it out.            

I found it interesting that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan took on a marketing initiative specifically targeting uninsured twenty-somethings.  The site and radio promos are clever and fun appealing to those who do not think they need health insurance because they are, in fact, healthy.  But, what about the unexpected encounter with an angry robot or ninja ambush?  Don’t be Bob!

Erin C. Patterson

[This campaign parallels Tonik, another edgy Blue Cross/Blue Shield program aimed at college students in six other states.  -Ed.]

February’s Harvard Business Review features its first article on understanding customer experience, offering an overview on the definition of CE, the main causes of CE failures in organizations, and methods to obtain actionable customer insights.

Defining Customer Experience

Authors Christopher Meyer and Andre Schwager define customer experience as the “internal and subjective response customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company.” Direct contact is consumer initiated, occurring as customers purchase, consume, and service an offering. Indirect contact refers to unplanned encounters with a product, service, or brand, and can take place through word of mouth, product recommendations, and advertising.  The distinction between direct and indirect contact is an important one to consider, as we often get too caught up in designing and monitoring direct customer touch points, rather than planning how to influence indirect interactions.

What’s the secret to creating a good customer experience? “[It] isn’t the multiplicity of features on offer … A successful brand shapes customers’ experiences by embedding the fundamental value proposition in offerings’ every feature.”

Organizational Challenges

Creating engaging customer experiences is still a challenge for most organizations, as recently evidenced by some of the biggest experience-focused brands (Starbucks, Home Depot, and up in the Great White North, Loblaws). So where does the problem lie? The authors have identified three factors:

• Overspending on CRM data that captures what a company already knows about their customers. In contrast, CE data looks at capturing a customer’s immediate response to an interaction.
• Lack of top-management empathy towards customers needs. Executives rising from finance or technology backgrounds still regard customer experience management as the responsibility of sales, marketing, and customer service departments.
• Fear of qualitative customer experience insights. Organizations are still driven by quantitative data. By combining CRM and CE insights, organizations can not only identify new trends taking place (the “what”), but understand how internal forces and subjective factors are driving these changes (the “why” and “how”). 

Audrey Carr

MySpace still rules the web.  The site took the overall page view lead from Yahoo! in November 2006, and hasn't looked back since.  According to a Pew Internet Report on Teens and Social Networks, which came out around the same time, more than half (55%) of all of teens use online social networking sites.  The survey also found that older teens, particularly girls, were even more likely to use these sites.

But massive social networks are so 2006.  This year, it's all about niche social networks.

As usual, teen early adopters lead the way, and where they go, marketers will follow.  Tampax bypassed MySpace and developed a campaign with Takkle, a social network for high school athletes.  Girls submit a video clip of a cheerleading routine, with the community-determined winner taking home $10,000.  It's also a way for Procter & Gamble to build it's database of names on BeingGirl.com, an education and information site sponsored by Tampax and Always brands.  While WalMart's generic teen site was widely derided and ultimately shut down, it makes sense to develop a social platform that's directly aligned with a niche interest, particularly something private and potentially embarrassing.

Anheuser-Busch chose MingleNow, with a mere 300,000 members, as a partner to develop Clink, an unbranded photo-sharing site showcasing the bar scene.  Why MingleNow?  For one thing, there are too many underage members on MySpace and FaceBook.

As social networking goes mainstream, will everyone find a vertically-oriented niche that aligns directly to their interests?  And where will that leave "mass-market" social networks?

[photo credit: m.a.x.]

Misha Cornes

Organic alumnus Shawn Smith sent this interesting homepage page takeover from Pandora, one of the earliest music recommendation and Internet radio services created by the Music Genome Project. Organics love web-enabled music.  And we love smart media buys.

"I like the way Jameson has tailored a call-to-action with the publisher site in mind. Pandora is one of my favorite things on the web, and Jameson's is one of my favorite whiskies, so I admit I'm curious about what "Radio Jameson" has to offer. Unfortunately it changed to a Chase Freedom ad a few minutes later when I went back to look, so I guess I'll never know."

Misha Cornes

Last week, we looked at the very progressive community strategy involved in the redesign of USA Today.  Now that it has been live for a while the feedback from their readers is rolling in, and it is not all good.

It seems that every week we are having conversations about how brands can harness the power of their communities. We are also having conversations about being prepared to receive criticism when you open up your brand to the public.

The strategy is sound and well implemented, but as Charlene Li at Forrester says, they can't afford to ignore the swell of negative feedback on the redesign from their readers.  The real test is what they do next. They are in a perfect position to respond to the very direct feedback from their most active members. A lack of response could damage the integrity of the whole strategy.

Their readers are loyal and have been trying to live with the new design but seem to be giving up fast. When you dissect their comments they are giving very direct feedback. They miss elements from the old design and identify problems with the new design. USA Today has opened a channel for their brand, but need to take advantage of the fact it is two-way.  I know they value their readership so they should respond to the comments in the forum, and defend their design decisions.

Once I got past my own issues with the layout, the new features hav