Meetings with Meaning

Jul 23, 2010 Ideas, New, Project Management

Meetings – everyone has them, everyone hates them, and they tend to take up more time than the allotted 30 minutes or one hour we have scheduled in our calendars. Internal meetings are the worst; you start to talk about everything on your plate, giving the purpose for the meeting less priority. Not only does this cause you to lose your focus, it also renders the meeting “a waste of time”. Losing focus in a meeting can be detrimental to the purpose of the meeting.

SJG is no exception; we have in the past fallen into this trap of internal meeting hell. Our meetings would spiral down into production details of our clients work.  We would lose sight of the big picture. We would forget what the meetings purpose was.  We needed a framework for our internal meetings in order to regain focus on our what was important to our company. In short we needed to think of our team as a client.

Here is a set of tools and techniques that we came up with to apply to all of our internal meetings:

• Have a published agenda: Publishing the agenda to the team shares accountability for the meeting. An hour is not a long time, and an agenda will ensure each topic is addressed.
• Set the timer: Deadlines are your friend and meeting them provides a great sense of accomplishment once completed.
• Action items: What needs to be accomplished for the next meeting?
• Ownership: Who is responsible for each action item?
• Commit to next meeting! Another deadline that will ensure your team meetings are successful.

One of the outcomes was our bi-weekly blogs. We now apply the knowledge we have with our clients to the SJG team. What can you do to make your meetings more profitable and enjoyable?

Playbook in App Marketing: Diversify the Portfolio

Jul 12, 2010 Ideas

Today one in four Canadians have smartphones, and the numbers are expected to rise dramatically in the coming year. Taking this into consideration, imagine a playbook for app marketing, the purpose of which is to target high-income, educated smartphone users. The popular choice would have been the iPhone. With 75-million in combined sales of iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, the iOS empire is a gold mine for marketers and developers. Marketers enjoy a single-distribution channel, while consumers enjoy a one-tap access to 225,000 apps. Big brands like Amazon Kindle and FedEx have developed their apps with success. However, if a marketer only focuses on the iOS, they risk losing out on the rest of the audience, for example, Android, BlackBerry6, Samsung Bada, Symbian^3, WebOS, and Windows Phone. Considering there were 1.2-billion smartphones sold in 2009, there’s plenty of room to be the No. 2 and 3 platforms. With such fierce competition, the marketplace is confusing, so it’s hard to make sense of it all.

In the midst of market confusion for both consumers and marketers, opportunities arise for those deploying a more diversified strategy. Consider it as a diversified stock portfolio to nurture the next high-growth platforms or the next cool spots. In fact, in a recent “Mobile Developer Economics Report” by VisionMobile, most developers work on 2.8 platforms on average.

Multiple platforms

Take the Amazon Kindle Reading apps, for example. It’s available on Android, BlackBerry, iOS, and as well Mac and PC, and the physical Kindle. Amazon has the advantage of being the first mover in the e-book world. It’s a numbers game to build the install base. Once Kindle hits the critical mass, it will be a home run for their book selling strategy. The upside is building an integrated experience on each platform, plus Amazon can cater specifically to people’s tastes based on their smartphone choices. The downside is multiple platforms are costly to build. Versioning and support can be cost prohibitive. In Canada, TD and CIBC have recently launched multi-platform apps.

Web apps

Alternatively, the lowest common denominator in smartphones is the browser, as most are now WebKit-based and HTML5 ready. Adobe Flash would have been a logical choice, but the Apple-and-Adobe kerfuffle makes it unattractive. Google Canada demoed their Gmail web apps with the user interface customized for the iPhone, iPad, and Android platforms. The advantage is that Google only has to deploy once on their servers, and it works on most platforms.

Diversification

In an ideal scenario, I would consider multiple platforms, which is the Amazon Kindle approach. First, pick ecosystems with high market penetration. Creative marketers can segment their target audience — the trendsetters, business users, geeks, and average Joes — based on their respective choice of OS.

Second, personalization is the key to marketing effectiveness. Make each customer feels like they are the only customer. It increases customer satisfaction and brand awareness. Apps are intimate experiences. With many users checking apps on a daily (if not hourly) basis, brands can develop a deep and interactive customer relationship, which was not available in the past. The end goal is to demonstrate brand leadership using technology, which can lead to stronger brand loyalty.

To be sustainable in the long run, this app competition will converge. Marketers who get to the converged platforms first will demonstrate marketing leadership and break through the noise. So, be the first to reach out to these smartphone users in one of the fastest growing segments of the marketing world.

So what’s your favourite smartphone? Here’s a free book sample of The 8 Traits Successful People Have In Common: 8 To Be Great. Try it out on your Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, or Amazon Kindle. I hope you like it.

Objects of Desire: A Marketer’s Perspective

Jun 25, 2010 Ideas

Okay, I admit it, I am an early adopter. If it’s new, if it’s shiny then I am probably hatching a plan for why I need it. The iPad was no exception. So it was really no surprise to my colleagues or family that I just had to have one. But the question is why? I am swimming in computing power at the office and home. Within my reach at any given moment is my laptop, my BlackBerry, high-speed Internet access, a myriad of hard drives, and peripherals that let me be a marketing strategist, or a videographer, or a musician. Then there are other times I am a learner, or a consumer, or an audience. Clearly I do not need another screen, right?

Well, the iPad has got me thinking about what business Apple really is in. It is not computers or phones or MP3 players. Apple is in the business of seduction. It creates beauty. It creates objects you desire and want to possess.

It starts before we even see the product. Off in the distance we hear rumours of something new from Apple. There is talk of a new device, and Apple’s history of innovation feeds the rumour mill. “What will it be?” is the chat around the water cooler, or its digital equivalent, Twitter. Then there is the announcement, straight out of the P.T. Barnum playbook, complete with its own ringmaster, Steve Jobs. Steve is a master marketer because he gives the audience what it wants to hear. Hope. Hope that there is a computer out there that will lets us live happier and more productive lives. He breaks the story down to a simple clear message. You can feel his passion for the new and his frustration for what current technology does not deliver.

Next is the reveal. The iPad is elegantly simple. It is seductively sleek and seems to be missing everything you think a handheld computing device would need. Steve Jobs hates buttons – he never wears buttoned shirts and you don’t see many on his devices. It looks more like an object of fashion and less of a technology device.

The packaging is great, simple and to the point. It shows the product and little else. You do not see features and benefits, system requirements, and marketing hype. The packaging is as beautiful as the product. In short, you want to keep the box.

Opening the iPad box was like Christmas Day. Each layer of the package was simple and beautiful. The power cord and the owner’s manual were clear and self-evident.

Getting it running was simple. Three minutes was all it took for me to get it running, another two minutes and I was buying my first movie and application from the iTunes. Seamless from start to finish.

People want to hold it, as seen by my daughter who ran in from school and grabbed it out of my hand and disappeared into her bedroom. She emerged an hour later and handed it back to me with five more applications loaded onto it. She had Facebooked her friends and told the world she had a new iPad. Well, it was nice while it lasted.

All this to say that marketing is more that just telling your audience what your product or service can do for them. It is about creating an end-to-end experience that starts long before the product is launched and continues long after the product is sold.

The Journey to Clarity

Jun 2, 2009 Ideas

The flash of brilliance, the light bulb going off, the big “ah ha”, are what we at SJG call moments of clarity: the magic point where everything becomes clear and understanding rushes forward. Seems simple. Archimedes “eureka” moment took place while sitting in the bathtub. But what they don’t tell you is, the bathwater had long gone cold and he was a wrinkled as a prune.

You see, getting to a moment of clarity is not a simple task. It is a journey, and it starts before the creative flows and long before the cameras roll or the designs begin to take shape.

Clarity Starts by Getting Curious
When you get curious you’re going to be asking lots of questions. The right questions, the tough questions. You’re going to deep dive for the nuggets of truth. Get ready to swim in a sea of content. You will be immersed in the flotsam and jetsam of messages, specifications, facts, figures, reports and competitive analysis.

Content is King
After thoroughly saturating your brain in a tidal wave of information it is time to sort and organize. Okay, it sounds boring, but stick with me. It is going to pay off big time. More than just a quick creative brief by an account manager, it is an in-depth enquiry into the entire content landscape. This is going to build a foundation for your moment of clarity. Content is one of the cornerstones to achieving clarity. It is the blueprint for creative development and the document we use for reference as we come up with ideas. The better the content is, the better your ideas will be.

Creative Collaboration
Isn’t it great to sit alone in a room and come up with brilliant ideas? Well, sometimes it is, but we have found it is a whole lot better to collaborate with other people. We have a saying here at SJG: If your idea sucks it was probably created in a vacuum. Get up from your seat and start having conversations with your colleagues. Don’t worry about where the idea came from. Just care that you generate lots of ideas and make sure they are documented. On any given day here at SJG, we will have quick phone calls with our clients; have hallway idea exchanges with our colleagues; we have run an idea past a barista at our local coffee shop (White Squirrel Café is our new local); or even get input from our families. We scribble on pad boards, Skype our way to a solution, or jam in a boardroom. It really doesn’t matter – the key is to roll up you sleeves and collaborate.

Compress to Clarify
The last step on the journey to clarity is to distil your creative into the smallest possible package. Get out the red pen and ask, what is the minimum amount of information possible without losing the entire concept?  Einstein said everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. We love this idea and are constantly asking each other if there is a simpler way to get this idea across.

That’s it. The journey to clarity starts by listening big and ends with a big idea that your audience will love.

Tags: clarify, clarity, collaboration, compress, content, creative, curious