"Being Digital": Five key tactics for modernizing your organization and ideas

MNAMA @ Fallon Thursday June 24, 2010

Hi. I'm Aki Spicer.

Director of Digital Strategy Veteran Planning Director Blogger Author User Co-Founding "Officer of Good" for Planning For Good Forging standards and practices for social media analytics Bringing planning into the age of participation

So, what’s a "Digital Strategist?"

Simply: bringing grounded creativity to technological opportunity.

Computer Artistes Code Monkeys

Web Entertainment (ideas, not solutions)

Transactions (efficiency, not ideas)

Social

Content Strategy

Mobile and Everyware

Data Analytics

User Insights

Big Picture Integration

Tools and Apps

Innovation Pipeline

I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned about adapting marketing strategies and creativity in the face of new technology.

The importance of embracing uncertainty and cultivating a start-up mentality within your own organization

Steps that can spark 360° marketing thinking and integration

How to "sell" experimentation–low risk starting points that help create buy-in for the longer-range strategy

Sounds hard, huh? I want to share some easy ways in…

What we'll discuss: Five key tactics for modernizing your organization and ideas.

1.   Follow User Insights 2.   Free the Geeks (in you) 3.   Build R&D Labs 4.   Outline the Engagement Opportunity 5.   Get Post-Digital

Nicholas Negroponte made some landmark predictions back in 1995.

Televisions parallel the electronic architecture of computers

…more individualized viewing of programs

Computing interfaces: eye tracking, speech recognition, and touch

Ubiquitous computers “beyond arm's length”

Agents, and "digital butlers knowledgeable about the users' tastes, interests, acquaintances, etc.

Internet lead to a "new, global social fabric.”

Computers will work together for individuals and for groups to solve problems

"Nicholas Negroponte declared the digital revolution over in 1998, but it took adland

12 more years to rework its basic creative, technological, philosophical and procedural assumptions."

Teressa Iezzi Advertising Age, May 23

"Post-Digital Era Brings Traits of Web to Real World"

At the same time, technological improvements and advancements will need to be coupled with improvements in "artistry of content."

Being Digital also foretold other realities...

(Technology) will facilitate companies and different disciplines working together by using a common language.

We now find ourselves in need of building and scaling new models for everyday living and working.

Let’s talk about “improving the artistry of content” in face of these new technologies, as well as how to get “different disciplines using a common language”.

"We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future."

Marshall McLuhan

12

Viewing Participation Advocacy

Brands and their marketers today have generally failed to shift from viewership mentality toward user mentality.

14

Liminal Space

Many organizations go the wrong route towards “getting digital”:

“You will be assimilated...”

“Hidden away in our basement dwells an advanced specialist team who will kick mucho digital ass and neutralize the crisis.”

Both approaches are knee-jerk reactionary and often lead to failure…

Solves every problem with a widget Abandons institutional memory/ relationships

Fails to leverage people in the org Expensive and unwieldy

Temporary fixers, not builders “Project” battles, not the war

Fails to leverage people in the org Expensive

Can’t think holistically for brands

Leaves your organizational assets underleveraged

Some easier tactics to consider towards “Being Digital”:

Whatever the device or channel, seek the human motivation.

1. Follow User Insights

For us, the creative digital ideas that lacked user insights fell flat because our users didn't really need our ideas.

For Totino's, young users give us some permission to engage them in social channels.

In redesigning a bank rewards site, we realized that user engagement demands more than mere pantones and logotypes.

User Insights complement our target insights and bring rigor and inspiration to our digital ideation.

•   Know more about our targets in the digital context (usage data, lifestyle needstates, device penetration, personas, usability and multivariate testing)

•   Widen your insight resources beyond the survey and the focus group; i.e., Google Analytics, Overheard™, and "Listen Research"

•   Get granular about the moment: think of “Target Insights” thru a more granular filter

•   Outline the Engagement Opportunity: demand that creatives ask, "What is the role that people may play in the idea?”

•   Sell with Insights: clients who are cautious about the unfamiliar can be comforted with rigorous rationale

Normalize technology across more of your organization

2. Free the Geeks (in you)

Tech savvyness first demands tech familiarity. Find the opportunities to get new technology normalized into the everyday life and style of your organization.

Because digital thinking rarely "sells in" but rather "sinks in" among the uninitiated, we plug teams into 20+ "HotDish" blogs that detail the latest sharings.

One of our clients led its teams in conducting a week-long research immersion wherein each member monitored a social site and reported back findings and implications.

"Project Radar"

For Fallon, it is probably less about hiring more "geeks" and more about getting everybody to know and use digital and social technologies.

•   Encourage Normal Usage of social media and digital technology, i.e., teamshare iPad, officeshare Boxee

•   Immerse Clients in social media discovery of their own brand and target; for example, "Project Radar"

•   Contribute and distribute •   Fallon "HotDish" blogs •   Fallon Brainfood •   Cross-disciplinary approach to conferences, including SX35W

•   Integrate digital staff into the mainstream •   Hire "T-shaped People," including Digital Strategist,

UX Designer, Creative Technologist, and Content Manager

3. Research and Development Labs

Make stuff. Because.

Google 70-20-10: Spend 70% of your time on the core business, 20% on related projects, and 10% on unrelated new business.

We've been nurturing an intrapreneurial mentality, incorporating the behavior of tech start-ups.

Real Voices in Real Time.

Overheard™ is Fallon's proprietary analytics tool for wiretapping social web chatter for insights and ideas—Real Voices in Real Time.

Overheard™ listens for real-time conversations about your brand throughout Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Blogs and plays back the key trends and

insights hidden within (sentiment, viral reach, and influence) to inspire winning creative ideas.

Fallon HotHouse: E.I.N.A.R.: Exploratory Interactive Networked Area Rover

E.I.N.A.R. is a live, always-on "factory tour" of Fallon via the Web and an RC camera robot made from scrap parts!

Caprica's Open Mic App on Facebook invites fans to talk back to the show's cast and producers.

Never before has it been easier to make interesting stuff on the Web.

•   Embrace experimentation (and failure) •   Jump in and invent something that is relevant to your

business, target, or organization •   Remember to follow insights •   Start cheaply, measure results, and assess the next

investment level •   Iterate fast

4. Outline the Engagement Opportunity

Ask "What is the role that people may play in our ideas?"

It's a misnomer that simply hiring more youth will make your organization and ideas strategically modern…

…and assumptions that it's about getting on the bandwagon of Twitter, Facebook, etc. are faulty, too.

Today, ideas driven by the language of actions and participation demand clear input on what we want people to do with our ideas.

From "simply said" toward the "engagement opportunity."

[How may we engage audiences as active users and participants?]

A good engagement brief/idea uses action verbs— it asks people to do something. And it is seeded in insights for why they want to do it with us.

•   Insights, now more than ever •   Strategy, now more than ever •   Outline the role for people in our ideas; brief it in early •   Toward platform ideas, not channel tactics •   Evolving brand strategy more broadly across design

thinking, usability and UX (user experience), IA (information architecture), functionality, data flow and Web/social chatter analytics, media and connection planning

5. Get Post-Digital

The truth is, most of the lives and emotions that we share take place in the real world—get back there.

From "above-the-line" and "below-the-line" toward just blurred lines…

@WhiteRabbitInc invited people to play along and participate in our advertising across a wide range of touchpoints.

Improvements in the "artistry of content" challenges us to broaden "what now constitutes an idea?"

Take the shareable, interactive, participatory nature of digital and create brand experiences that matter to people in their real, everyday, flesh and blood lives.

•   Less about impacts and disruption, and more about value, usage, and experience

•   Informs new and evolving skillsets like messaging maps, metadata frameworks, SEO, taxonomy, content management, folksonomy, quality assurance, and licensing evaluations

Five key tactics toward modernizing your organization and ideas.

1.  Follow User Insights Give people what they want (What do people want?)

2.  Free the Geeks (in you) Normalize technology throughout your organization's life and style

3.  Build R&D Labs Start making stuff

4.   Brief the Engagement Opportunity Outline the role we want people to play in our idea(s)

5.   Get Post-Digital Get back to the real world

Thanks.

http://www.slideshare.net/group/we-are-fallon

Let's continue the conversation.

#MNAMA @akispicer

http://www.linkedin.com/in/akispicer

http://www.fallon.com

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