Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Day: Tuesday, June 17
Weather: Crispy, with bursts of rain
Energy Levels: High (though Conor has a head cold from riding too much)
Mental State: Curious

Yesterday was the big registration day, with most of the attendants rolling into town. So today is the first day proper with all of the media, talks, seminars, kicking in. The awards part is in full swing as well -- they handed out awards last night for Direct and Promo. No idea how any of that went, though, as we have been holed up preparing for our workshop this afternoon. It will be about Camp Organic on the road; we're bringing it to the masses. Hopefully people who attend will take the idea of workshop as literally as we are: "work" = you will be expected to do something, and "shop" = come together as a group, not buy Chanel (very popular in these parts). We will be filming and posting, so keep on the lookout. We will report in tomorrow on how the workshop went, media and what we are seeing that is exciting. Let the games begin...

Conor Brady + Sam Cannon

(For those of you who haven't seen the announcement, Mark Kingdon, Organic's CEO, is stepping down to lead Linden Lab, the maker of Second Life.  Tomorrow is his last day.  -Ed.)

When someone chooses to leave the company at a natural point in their career, when their work is done and the timing is comfortable and right for Organic, I like to say that person is "graduating."   I am officially "graduating" from Organic on Friday, May 2nd.

Omnicom has begun a search for a new CEO for Organic.  Until the role is filled, an interim management committee made up of seasoned Organics will be responsible for major executive decisions:  Chuck Russo (EVP of Client Development), Marita Scarfi (CFO and COO) and Jonathan Nelson (Founder and Chairman).  

On a personal level, Organic has been my life for seven years.  It's not easy to leave but I am very confident the company is in a terrific place which makes it a comfortable time for me to graduate.  

The company:

•    Has superlative talent in every corner of the company and a tight-knit management team
•    Is doing some of the very best work the company has have ever done
•    Has a premier roster of client relationships
•    Is  considered a leading brand in the marketplace
•    Has a unique and cohesive culture that allows people to learn, grow and do great work

Organic's people and culture are the magic in the company's success.  Organic has this hidden, hard-to-identify attribute that it's taken me the better part of seven years to understand.  It's a mash-up of natural intelligence, great creativity, kindness, sincerity, compassion and determination.  I think it's very evident in Camp Organic - an exercise in customer empathy.

I am very thankful for my time at Organic - and by extension, my time over the past several years with Omnicom. I met and worked with many, many exceptional people who are responsible for the company's success - a special thanks to each of them.

The past seven years would make a great business book because it's three success stories in one:  turning around a dot-com darling, repositioning the company as a leader in user-centered design and online marketing and managing through a period of rapid growth period that redefined the company.  I finished the final chapter, and so it's time to move on.

Thanks to everyone for making this a truly exceptional life experience.  And, a big thank you to all of the bloggers and readers of ThreeMinds for your support since our inception.  

Mark

PS: Follow the jump to learn more about the picture above.

Flickr has been a godsend for a designer putting together comps for clients.  Fast, no watermarks and a HUGE variety of images for inspiration.

Comp Fight builds on all those good things by tapping into the Flickr API and giving the intrepid visual designer the ability to search tags or text, sort by CC or commercially available assets, quickly gives you image scale, etc.

Basically everything you love about Flickr for making comps only faster, easier and an even more stripped down interface and no-nonsense functionality.

http://www.compfight.com/

Sean M Rhodes

Organic is happy to announce a new, cross-network internship program, The Farm. Our long-term goal is create as one of the best digital programs in the nation – growing exceptional talent within the company.
 
We’re currently accepting applications from interested students and we are excited to show off our new micro-site:

http://www.organic.com/farm/

Besides submitting a typical resume or portfolio, students are also invited to submit their own two-minute video to express why they should be chosen as an Organic intern.  We're looking forward to hearing from bright students (or their teachers) who are interested in growing in the digital space with Organic.

Stay tuned for more info about Life On The Farm.

Traci Armstrong

Being a web developer & a user of the web since the early 90’s I consider myself to be a pretty savvy surfer.  I did something last night that I hardly ever do – I clicked an ad on purpose!  *gasp*
 
So I visit the site I do the video tour (4 demos about 20 seconds each) and they had me.  I signed up and played with the service for about a half hour and came away impressed.   Their free version lets you handle 1 project up to 8 pages – more will cost money but it’s not ridiculously expensive.
 
We can all appreciate that for clients it’s sometimes hard to fathom how a site will look and/or behave when all they have in front of them is a collection of flowcharts, wireframes, and visio docs.  That’s the beauty of this service, you can quickly create a site shell in a matter of minutes that produces standards compliant css and xhtml.  The interface is easy to use & updates in realtime (I especially liked their “reorder” nav tool).  
 
My favorite part was the export feature.  You take the zip you download and then place anywhere.  You post it somewhere where the client can see and voila, they have a clickable & interactive shell that gives an insight into the user experience and how the content will be organized.   Instead of a mass of papers/files & the client trying to picture the experience in their head, they now have a clickable and usable “site”.   From this point you can take what was produced by JumpChart and customize the CSS as much as you like and can add all the bells and whistles you desire.
 
To me it’s a no-brainer and an ideal starting point to get up & running quickly. 
 
My one negative is that the service doesn’t appear to accommodate any layout – but that may be asking too much.
 
http://www.jumpchart.com/
 
Patrick Dunphy

If you’re a Web designer or IA, you’ve probably heard the following statements many times:

“Make sure everything is located above the fold.”
“If it’s below the fold, users won’t see it.”
“Users won’t scroll to view additional content.”

What exactly is this mythical “fold” anyway? It’s basically an invisible line on a Web page based on where the bottom of the browser likely will be within a given screen resolution. It hearkens back to the days of newspapers, when important content was kept above the fold of the newspaper in order to grab people’s attention in the newsstand. If you think about it, any given newspaper is usually a fixed size, and doesn’t scale to fit the content. Readers are drawn in by what’s above the fold of the paper, and flip it over or open it up to view additional content. There are visual cues to help people realize the newspaper has another side to it, and for most people it’s common sense that newspapers are folded in two.

So where is the fold on a typical Web page?  I would argue that it simply doesn’t exist. Much of the “page fold” misconception is due to outdated thinking – a misconception that users won’t scroll down to what they can’t see. But this thinking has long since been debunked by factual data and sound research. The “fold” adherents assume everyone uses the same size monitor, the same monitor resolution, the same Web browser, the same size icons in their browser, the same number of toolbars, the same size of browser window. Obviously there are too many factors involved to identify a consistent fold location. The mouse scrollwheel is now in common use by practically everyone who uses a computer (PC users have had them since 1996). And even back in 1997 Jakob Nielsen found that the majority of users had accepted scrolling and would do so to find additional content.

In an excellent study on page scrolling, Clicktale compiled data on how many pixels users would actually scroll to view additional content on a page containing scrollbars. Their study results were telling:

At the time of this writing, a search of ‘Jeep’ on Flickr.com yields 99,794 results. That may seem rather inconsequential when you consider the volume of user-gen photography on Flickr, or the entire web for that matter. But consider this - that’s 30K more than if you search ‘Toyota’ or ‘Coke’; 50K more than ‘Nike’ or ‘Chevy’; 80K more than ‘Scion’. I think our strategy folks say it best…”Jeep people don’t collect things, they collect experiences.”

There are, of course, more scientific ways to measure brand affinity, but our search query test certainly helped in showing the client that the Jeep brand mojo is very much alive and well in the world of user-gen, social media. Whether its Youtube, Flickr, Myspace or any other place on the web where people share experiences, Jeep owners distill the brand down to its very essence, celebrating one simple truth – these are fun machines, for fun people.

Our partner agency, Cutwater, has tapped into that fun mojo with the new brand campaign and tagline, “Have fun out there. Jeep.” And in collaboration with Cutwater, the Organic Jeep team built havefunoutthere.com, the tip of the iceberg in what will evolve into a long-term, social media party where everyone is invited. Later this Summer, Phase Two will launch with expanded reach into more social media properties, more user-gen interaction and more of that Jeep mojo.

By the way, after an hour of writing this post, ‘Jeep’ results on Flickr are now at 99,872.

Happy 4th of July! Hope you're out there having fun and collecting the experiences!

Adam Wilson and team
 

Reinventing a tired category in the face of aggressive competition.
 
Solving the problem by mining nuggets of customer insight. Converting that insight into a design idea inspired by popular culture. Customizing the design and marketing strategies to different market segments.  

Sounds very familiar. 

Check out this BusinessWeek case study about the redesign of the Norelco razor. I found it very relevant to how we create online experiences.

Adam Turinas

Back in August of last year, Sprint came to Organic looking for a way to create buzz and raise awareness for their recently launched Music Store.

We went in knowing two things:

1. the space was very crowded – Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T/Cingular and even Walmart offer music downloads. Whatever we did, it had to stand out.
2. the audience we wanted to reach, called "Advanced Connected" in Sprint terminology, is extremely averse to traditional advertising and blatant promotion.

Our solution was to create an entertaining and engaging online destination featuring two “music experts”: Ian and the DJ. Each has a back story – Ian is a washed up pop star from the 1980s running a record store on Melrose and DJ is an aspiring turntablist, working in Ian’s store. Users participate by creating playlists and getting a personalized “expert” review of their choices.

To further embellish the story we created a music video for Ian’s one and only hit from the 80s, “Under the Moon”. Launched simultaneously on YouTube and Ian’s MySpace page, the video has gone viral, currently appearing on 25 sites. Music video legend Nigel Dick, (Tears For Fears, Guns N’ Roses, Britney Spears) directed both the “Under the Moon” video and the Mix Sherpa video performances.

Visit the site:
http://www.mixsherpa.com/

See the entire Ian experience:
http://www.sprintspecialoffers.com/ian/index.html

Dave Sylvestre and the Sprint cast and crew

IDEO's Diego Rodriguez and Ryan Jacoby have written a new article on design thinking and risk in the Spring 2007 issue of Rotman Magazine (download PDF here. Article starts on page 57).

"Embracing Risk to Learn, Grow and Innovate" speaks about how design thinkers openly acknowledge, embrace, and often times, amplify risk as a key part of any engagement. Rather than fearing the risk of failure, designers view failure as part of an iterative process involving repetitive cycles of feedback and innovation.

While designers openly embrace risk, they are also careful to mitigate their actions through a systematic approach to design thinking. This approach is based on three building blocks: empathy, prototyping, and storytelling.

• Marketing things people don't want substantially increases the risk of failure. Design thinkers listen, emphasize, and co-create with customers through ethnographic research, persona creation, and collaborative workshops/insight sessions. Furthermore, design thinkers obsess unreasonably about what is desirable: from the visceral, to the behavioral and emotional.
• Prototype early and often to accelerate feedback and failure. Design thinkers engage in different forms of prototyping to gather feedback before an idea or concept is considered "finished."
• Use stories to communicate intent. As discussed extensively in Dan & Chip Heath's Made to Stick, telling simple, emotional, and concrete stories is a means of inspiring action and ensuring team members are working towards a common vision.

At Organic, these elements form the foundation of our approach to creating exceptional experiences, from gathering three minds, to listening for insight, and embracing risk through multiple rounds of ideation and prototyping, where ideas freely diverge and converge.

Audrey Carr