It was a coooold morning, but the energy of the crowd kept our teams of volunteers going. And by all counts, the campaign was a success: PAHC experienced a significant increase in direct traffic and new visits to their site. Thousands of people are now linked in to the good works they’re doing for DC kids affected by HIV. I was even contacted by a pastor in Austin, TX who was so moved by the stickers that he asked if we had extras for his entire parish!

So I’m sending out a big thanks to all of our volunteers. And if you’re interested in practicing the art of hope, we’re working on plans for some future projects with PAHC—so stay tuned!

• See more Hope stickers in action on Flickr here , here , and here !

Marketers come from the world of persuasion and influencing customers that products/experiences are relevant to them and worth purchasing/adopting. To this goal, modern marketers bring incredible sophistication in research, strategy, measurement, and message-making that comes from a century of practice.

The Web is More Complex Than Other Advertising Mediums

However, the Web is fundamentally more complex than all advertising mediums ever before, and hence the IT-world has gotten mixed up with the marketers. Creating sites is much more like software engineering than traditional advertising in two main ways.

The Web empowers:

1. huge volumes of information, and
2. real-time interactions with customers.

Before the Web, advertisers were limited to a one-way message that could fit on a billboard, in a TV commercial, or at most, in a brochure or booklet. Advertising was about getting a customer’s attention and quickly selling an idea in the limited space and time. Hence, messaging has always been such a focus for marketers .

However, when you have a library framework combined with a software application platform , there is a lot more that marketers can do suddenly, but that power brings its own challenges. Web users tend to actively seek out information and actively “request” pages rather than to accept messages flowed at them. While entertainment is still a big goal of web-surfing, lots of users have other specific tasks they are trying to achieve online, and thus, their state-of-mind is dramatically different from someone who is reading a magazine or watching TV. It turns out that the Web is a very dynamic place – it’s user-directed; it contains machines, and it is information-centric.

With Great Power Comes Big Challenges

The problem with all of this new horsepower that the Web offers is that it is so powerful and there are so many options and so many decisions about how to use a site. In the past, advertisers were forced to be minimalists and create universal messaging for entire segments. Now, the Web lets them customize information and messages to more precise segments and even to individuals. Additionally, the Web lets marketers deliver greater depth of information as well.

Customers behave differently on the Web too. Since visitors choose which sites they use or ignore more than they do with other advertising, we need to understand our target audience even more as individuals and users in order to design interactive website experiences that people will accept. We have to figure out how to prioritize information and how organize it to enable customers to navigate the new volume of information we have for them. In addition, we need to design the site experience within the context of what our user experienced before they arrived and after they depart, as well as within the context of the wider marketing campaign.

UX Designers Are Essentially Product Engineers

This is where UX designers get called in to help. UX designers bring expertise in content strategy and interaction design and thus, tend to have close affinities with the world of software engineering and library science. They are accustomed to building software and libraries online, creating products and content structures that must stand up to the test of actual users.

Thus, marketers and UX designers approach online marketing in two fundamentally different ways. Marketers are focused on selling and messaging, while UX designers are focused on designing products. So viewing it from that perspective, it is understandable that there is a natural conflict between the desire to persuade and influence versus the desire to create streamlined relevant experiences. But that doesn’t mean the two approaches can’t learn from each other and contribute to each other; it just means it will take time, some careful thought, and mutual openness.

Of course, this connection made it imperative that I watch the inauguration and, of course, catch the Punahou Marching band.  It was a proud day for Hawaii and, even, more so for the Buff ‘n Blues.

I couldn’t get down to DC so I had to stream the event on my computer.  Experiencing the event that way wasn’t so bad.  It was amazing to be connected to CNN.com and tie into my Facebook account.  I commented and read all my friends’ status.  I even received notes from a friend in London and one in Switzerland.  All connected and involved in the event.

I wasn’t the only one watching for the band.  I guess a number of friends were expecting to see them.  Friends from LA alerted me to Obama’s reaction to the band.  A warm "shaka " sign came from not only Obama but his entire family.  Of course, did I see it?  Nah.  Missed it but I caught a glimpse by going over to the Honolulu Advertiser web page. Is it me or has the world just become smaller?

Email is an incredibly cost-effective, green, response-generating medium, and by implementing best practices , marketers are now delivering real value to their customers via email.  But now i think we need to figure out how to turn all that requested spam into requested content.

To address this challenge, marketers need to focus on where to be flexible, and where to be rigid.  Being flexible in allowing us to opt-in to a frequency that suits them , and allow us easy re-setting of this counter.  Being rigid in sending us content that is deeply relevant – at a reasonable frequency, or, saying "NO" to "spray and pray" when sending us messages, in the hope that a small % of us will respond or buy.

Given the economics of email marketing, paying us this attention and showing restraint in blasting emails will require further discipline and a possible re-thinking of what constitutes"success" when organizing an email marketing plan.  It’s in the marketers interest to do so…

…after all, we’re not really reading our requested spam.

Some of you know that I teach an early morning boot camp here. And for the record, it’s not that early. Only at 7am. I also teach spin and sports conditioning classes at local gyms. So yes, fitness is a big part of my life. I do it because it’s fun. It’s a great way to meet people. And changing people’s lives is a complete sugar rush sans sugar.

I’m gonna post some tips on fitness, since i’m kind of a freak in this arena. These suggestions are merely for the benefit of mankind and womankind. So taking as you see fit. And if you want to be more fit, I suggest taking them.

Of course, if you have any questions, please, please shoot me an email. I’m more than happy to help and offer any advice I can.

20 Ways To Be A Smarter Eater
By Liz Applegate, Ph.D.
Runner’s World

It’s been over 2 months since the Great Cupcake Taste-off , and I think I’ve only just now recovered from the sugar-induced coma that followed. It was a battle of epic proportions: 10 very brave colleagues stepped forward to taste 4 different cupcakes each. We laughed, we cried, and thankfully no one puked. Keep reading to find out if our beloved Baked and Wired came out on top.
The newcomer Georgetown Cupcake put up a good fight (never mind the 45 minute wait in a long line with screaming children, just to get the sample cupcakes). But in 5 separate head to head flavor match-ups, Baked and Wired edged out the competition.

B&W’s highest ranking cupcake was the Strawberry, with perfectly delicious frosting and gooey strawberry center. GC put forth a very strong showing in the Red Velvet category with “yummy” cream cheese frosting. Unfortunately that cream cheese frosting showed up on other flavors like Vanilla Squared. And while GC also scored high in the Chocolate/Vanilla category, their bittersweet chocolate cake and ganache bombed in the Chocolate Squared face-off.

Overall, I think tasters were drawn to the homemade quality of B&W. Their dense cake, dreamy frosting and cute paper wrappers brought us to a warm and happy place. So for now, it looks like all is right in the world of cupcakes. Or is it ?

We aren’t talking about media purely from a planning, buying and implementation standpoint. The core part of the practice is really focused on being a consultancy…working across all the teams to help provide insight, perspective and strategic support. Being at the heart of marketing planning and program development is so helpful in ensuring that the teams think as holistically as possible about the target and potential communication touchpoints. Online and offline.

The other parts of “the practice” lie in the areas of “parternships” and “information.” Partnerships are our relationships with media agencies. One of our key objectives for our teams to have strong working relationship with them. The on-going connection of creative and media is so important. It’s an opportunity for all of us to take advantage of our collective thinking and experiences.

As for “information,” it goes without saying that there are so many ways in which research, secondary and proprietary, can infuse great strategy. Media is a central point to many sources of secondary research…through our network and our media agency partners.

So what now as I, and the practice at large, begin the 3rd year? Evolution and innovation. Evolution because the discipline needs to continue to listen to the needs of our clients, agency teams and partners. We need to continue to think about how to continue to deepen our channel and communications savvy. Innovation because we need to keep challenging ourselves to think of new ways to create, nurture and loyalize our relationships. New tools and tactics are coming about…even old ones that are enhanced technologically that allow direct marketers to utlize.

Shame on me? The manufacturer thought so – and in a carefully worded, multiple paragraph error page they told me all about how to spell their name correctly, and how I should click on the correctly-spelled URL to go to the site.

What arrogance! Now that I am a parent, I would steer friends away from this company if a good alternative is present, even though the company in question now simply redirects the mispelled domain traffic to their main site.

The takeaway here is that it pays to open your online shopfront to everyone, as you would offline, especially when many pay enormous sums to gain the awareness threshold of “branded recall” that might bring customers to your door in the first place.

The best marketers will embrace imperfection in recall if it leads prospects to purchase and blocks fraudulent interception – and these companies will invest in domain names and search engine filings that harness that “imperfect” traffic.

Now that the trend for new “Web” companies to have cool, incorrectly-spelled names, these same potential customers might get punished for spelling brand names “correctly.” Shame on them.

A recent article from eMarketer.com throws water on the fervor surrounding socially-oriented, or “Web 2.0,” technology by arguing that media dollars are still directed towards traditional online media, namely banners and search words. This article is flawed.

First off, in a tongue-in-cheek sense, I have trouble with any article that uses the phrase “Web 2.0″ more than zero times per 200 words.

Seriously, though, while the online ad spend is still significant, I was disappointed that said article did not include any perspective on the ROI of social media. I don’t know what the numbers would be, but it seems to me that this is the true value of social media as a marketing tool.

Also, I’d chalk up at least a portion to the online ad spend to institutional momentum, rather than consumer behavior. From the linked article:

“Marketers are aware of the impact that social media marketing can have on their overall program but view it as uncharted territory, not worthy of their budget,” said John Squire, senior vice president of product strategy at Coremetrics, in a statement.

…So why isn’t Coremetrics, or eMarketer for that matter, focusing on charting this territory rather than reciting old figures? Participation in a campaign by civilians is a far more robust consumer brand experience and cannot be ignored.