Entries from February 2010

I’m trying something new on the blog where I post some of the best articles that I encountered during the month.  If people like it, I will do a link round-up at the end of each month highlighting articles that I find most relevant to the world of interactive marketing.  Leave a comment if you think I should continue on with this column!

When Life Hands You Lemons…

You make a documentary about how you turn your misfortune into lemonade – an inspiring tale about how to make the best of an unfortunate situation.  The premise of this feature film (35 minutes, available for free on Hulu.com and embedded below) is about how several people were laid off from large agencies during the recent economic downturn, and made the best of their situation by finding their true calling in life.

There are some very interesting stories to be told during this quick documentary and my words could never do all of them justice.  I suggest that you take a half hour out of your day to watch Lemonade!

5 Good Reasons Why Designers Should Code

I found this article particularly interesting because it lays out many of my thoughts about the disconnect between designers and coders. I often see web design mock-ups that are clearly more suited for print than the web. In my opinion, a good web design is far less about the creative presentation, look and feel and far more about creating a user-centric design that incorporates web best practices/standards and choosing creative that works with this user focused paradigm.  Needless to say, this is a quality that we are looking for as we seek to hire a front end web developer for Three Deep.

Here are 5 Good Reasons why Designers Should Code

Fortune 500 Spending $1.2 Billion on Paid Search, Because They Can’t Rank Naturally!

Hello opportunity!

For as long as I can remember, corporate websites have never provided much value to me and many years ago I simply stopped visiting them. I think it’s because they are projecting their vision onto me (in inhuman corporate speak) rather than taking the time to write their website with the users in mind.

As a result of a customer non-centric approach to their web presence, many corporations have forced visitors to find information about the company elsewhere, often through third party websites. They have lost the opportunity to have a dialogue with millions of potential searchers each year because they don’t understand how to speak in Vox Populi (the voice of the people).

Now we have an article that might finally cause corporations to listen.  Marketing Pilgrim’s piece about the Fortune 500 spending $1.2 Billion in Paid Search hammers this point home.

Rebuilding: The Strategist

I am a huge fan of Kevin Hillstrom’s “Mine that Data” blog because he provides incredible insight into multichannel marketing through examples, lessons and simulations. In this particular article, he talks about a role that many companies sorely lack: the strategist.

The word strategy and a position titled “strategist” can mean many things to many people.  Hillstrom’s article helps define exactly what a strategist is, and how a company arrives at a need for this position.  Here’s an excerpt:

“A CEO hires a Strategist only when Organizer, Miner, Targeter, and Futurist roles have been clearly defined. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without an Organizer skilled at providing a quality data infrastructure. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without a Miner skilled at telling the company how customers are behaving. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without a Targeter who takes profitable action on customer insights. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without a Futurist who pushes the company in new and interesting directions that are likely to fail.”

Read the rest of Rebuilding: The Strategist

4 Things You Didn’t Know About Mom

If you follow Three Deep’s twitter account, you may have seen a link to an article I wrote on Google’s CPG Blog (a blog dedicated to the Consumer Packaged Goods industry). I really appreciate Google giving me the opportunity to write a featured article on their blog and represent the voice of a CPG marketer. Over the years Three Deep has established a great relationship with the CPG team at Google, and we hope to publish more articles and case studies in the future.

You can read the entire 4 Things You Didn’t Know About Mom article on their blog. For those of you who just want to know what the 4 things are, here you go:

1. Moms use the Internet
2. Coupons Create Loyalty
3. Search Loves TV
4. Search Evolves with Mom

Want to be a Favorite Place on Google?

A few months ago I blogged about Three Deep becoming Google’s favorite place. While I was intentionally boasting about our designation, knowing that we were really just one of 100,000 businesses receiving the sticker.  Now Google has announced a new round of stickers going out to even more local businesses.  If you own a business with a retail location, I highly suggest that you read Google’s instructions about how to become a favorite place.

In December, several members of the Three Deep team attended an event at Google’s offices in Manhattan, NYC.  Google’s offices made for an intimate setting, and compelling presentations from BabyCenter’s Tina Starkey and Google’s Jim Lecinski made for a particularly worthwhile event for our team to attend.  Since many of our clients tend to be in the business of marketing to moms (and we often execute these marketing programs), this event was right in our sweet spot.

Parisian Love

The event started with a quick video that was produced by Google that told a love story through search.  It was a compelling video and told a great story of a long distance relationship where the subjects are brought together through the magic of Google.

Continue Reading Moms Are Searching For YOU →

It’s time of year again – a night of exciting football and advertising frivolity.  Sunday, February 7^th 2010 marks Super Bowl XLIV (that’s Super Bowl 44 for those that are Roman numerically challenged), an annual event where commercials command just as much attention as the game itself.  Raking in as much as $3.1 million per 30-second spot, it’s the priciest bit of commercial real estate in the advertising landscape.

Over the years, folks have tuned-in to watch Cindy Crawford sip Pepsi, witness Ali Landry pop Doritos and learn that the FedEx package Tom Hanks held so dearly in the movie Castaway, ironically, contained a survival kit.

But times have changed.

Continue Reading Super Bowl, Chips and the Internet →