life with a little pizzazz
We had a very long weekend updating MyPCC, our student portal, this weekend. Coming out of the weekend we were not happy with the status of our systems but today saw many of the issues getting addressed.
Now we look forward to seeing how the new systems handle the beginning of winter registration this Friday — our busiest day of the year.
On Friday I enjoyed these sessions.
This panel of key players discussed the recent Nike ZOOM advertising campaign presented via interactive television (Dish Network). This “Quick is Deadly” campaign presents world class athletes providing tips to aspiring athletes and fans. Presenting unique detailed views of the athlete’s trademark moves and behind-the-scenes training experiences promises to draw the user into the experience and build the connection between consumer and brand.
The session included highlights of the LaDainian Tomlinson sequence highlighting his spin move. The ability to view in full motion or down to 1/32 speed is impressive and intriguing. The use of military grade motion cameras also drew in the talents and interests of renowned creative talent.
It was noted that issues with retailer processes kept the campaign from providing “buy now” options but the interactive environment did include local retailer information.
This promotion from Nike Brand Connections promises to build the Nike base. The campaign is just concluding so the panel did not have many measurement statistics. Without data it is left to conjecture as to the continuance of similar campaigns. If moving forward it would be exciting to see the social aspects of these campaigns expanded upon.
This talk, Invergence: Too many Touchpoints…too little Measurement. What has to change?, by Ken Papagan of Rentrak was a focus on measurement tracking across a media channel pie with more and more slices in a sea of wandering and disparate consumers. Media producers are struggling with the need to get their content in front of the right consumer wherever they are and whenever they want it. Similarly marketers are looking to get their products in the face of the consumer wherever and whenever the moment presents itself. They are trying to maintain their corporate driven marketplace in a world where the consumer is now much more in control.
Old-world marketers have an interest in basic demographic data of an audience. New-world marketers are scientists of details not complacent with this rudimentary information. The new-world marketer wants their product in front of “women that like blue blouses when they are watching whatever show they like at whatever time they please and via the media of their choosing.”
As can be expected the data is collected. For example, hashed MAC addresses of appliances are collected and media consumption tracked. Web traffic is tracked and analyzed. We also see people using Gmail’s of the world where advertising is presented based upon content from our private email. Purchasing habits tied to credit card purchases collected and analyzed.
We are welcoming further collection through tools such as Google Web History which provides a data collection tool camouflaged as a service. I liken this to the self-application of radio collars. How far will the consumer go in helping marketers track our own movements and preferences?
I had read and followed some of Nau‘s rollout as a sustainable clothing retailer, so this chance to hear the story from Nau President and CEO Chris Van Dyke was intriguing. How they made use of social media during development of the brand is a great case study for today’s marketplace.
Nau started a blog regarding their product and brand long before a product was available. This was part of their development strategy. Along with an early commitment to donate 5% of revenue for non-profit organizations found their blog getting tens of thousands of hits a day. Friends helped take the still-in-development brand further when Nau posted video of one friend that had taken to living small and mobile. That is she reduced her footprint by moving out of her
traditional household and into a hand-built 10’x10′ home she towed behind her diesel truck to friends’ yards. This living simply video caught the eye of a Yahoo! editor which later resulted in 500,000 hits. Nau had grand success at broadly promoting the company concept and product before a product was available for sale.
This social success undoubtedly helped in Nau’s search for funding but Van Dyke was still finding that their concept was a hard sell. Apparently there is doubt out there that a company can do business sustainably while supporting social activism and still make money for their shareholders. Regardless of over 200 refusals, Nau found the necessary funding and is in
operation with 15 stores. They plan to have 200 over the next two years.
Van Dyke highlighted the purchasing process at a Nau outlet. The consumer finds tags next to products that inform the consumer of the product’s history, details and price. If you want to purchase the product you take the tag up front to a computer and fill your cart. Apparently you can choose to carry the product out with you or have it shipped to your home. Surprisingly Van Dyke states that 50% of customers prefer purchases be sent to their home, rather than the immediate satisfaction of carrying their goods out of the store.
The question was raised as to how this extra shipment of product, when the customer could have carried the product home, is in line with the sustainable business practices Nau espouses. Van Dyke expressed his initial concern as well but went on to share that managing product from regional warehouses is more efficient than shipping product to retail outlets and then shuffling product between outlets as necessary to push aging product lines.
It appears they are keeping to their original goals of quality products made in a socially responsible manner and we can only hope they succeed. As I stated earlier I had read up on Nau and was intrigued by their business methods. At the same time I was frustrated that doing business the ‘right’ way apparently is very cost intensive as the product line is expensive. My hope would be that the business model can be realistic for a company that can introduce products with price points more in line with the mass consumer market. That will be true change, but for now we hope that Van Dyke’s success will be a catalyst for others to follow. It is long overdue for the fashion industry but we can hope this is the beginning of change just as we are seeing change come to the food industry.
Regardless, Nau is a prime example of today’s social brand building.
I’m planning on attending Inverge 2007: the interactive convergence conference. As the Inverge site states, “Inverge is a multi-disciplinary conference happening on September 6-7 in the Pearl District of Portland, OR that focuses on the invergence of media platforms, of online + offline, content + advertising, and corporate content + consumer-generated content.”
There look to be some great speakers and the event is tied to the Time-Based Art Festival, MusicFestNW and the First Thursday Gallery Walk.
Unfortunately I’m only able to attend one day of the event but still feel that this will prove valuable.
Another chance to see Luke Wroblewski talk in Portland on the heels of his earlier session at WebVisions. His focus tonight was “The Shifting Role of Design” which dealt with the role of design in the strategic definition of products. Design is maturing beyond simply “icing the cake” to being a leader in innovation.
Luke spoke of design thinking as the ability to tell a story that grows from empathy and vision in an iterative manner. Empathy to design with an eye and ear for the user — the ability to internalize real world situations. Vision through abductive thinking to keep an open mind for what could be and building a framework for growth and possibilities. Iteration to grow the story from possibility to reality via an evolution of trial and error and prototyping.
In my world I see creatives hampered with an overload of work and with direction that often does not include their imaginative powers to define a story. They need to be at the table when the concepts are first taking shape to best leverage their expertise. Often a concept is defined too well by the time the creatives see it and, by then, the ability to influence the path is curtailed by deadlines, lack of conceptual awareness and the reluctance to modify what many already have a vested interest in.
Luke speaks well of the increasing overlap between the business, people and technology components of developing a product. For success their needs to be deep integration between the components. I believe that around us we see many success stories in businesses where their is leadership made up of people that can talk and walk across these functional areas and they understand how each impacts the other. Within these relationships Luke discusses “crowdsourcing” as an impact on business and people where the public becomes a source for marketable content either freely or in a low-cost environment. “Fab labs” are impacting business and technology with much reduced costs for prototype development. Associated here we also see low entry costs for technology infrastructure.
Overall, another enjoyable and rewarding session. You too can enjoy the session by visiting Luke’s site. Luke won out over the Harry Potter opening night for this group of Portlanders enjoying this CHIFOO session but, alas, I did not take the opportunity to introduce myself to Luke personally — perhaps the social equivalent of purposely choosing to eat an ear wax flavored Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean since he linked to my previous entry on his WebVisions talk.
Suggested resources:
Luke also reference the Apple Knowledge Navigator, the 1987 Apple concept product, featured in a five-minute video sporting many features we now take for granted. If you have time you can also take a corny “look into the future” with Sun from 1992.
Closing keynote at WebVisions featured Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine of askaninja.com fame. Their discussion covered the business aspects of developing a creative media business success. Running through their inspiration (e.g., redvsblue.com, tikibartv.com…) they shared the good of each inspiration and where each — and therefore us — could improve upon their business model.
Just as you’d expect from a ninja, the talk was filled with humor as we learned from their success and struggles.
I won’t pretend I knew much about the ninjas before reading about their presentation in the Web Visions materials. I did get to enjoy a few minutes with them at a table outside the meeting rooms before their talk as they prepared and I fixed something at work. Both are obviously fun and lively men that are passionate about their business — feel strange using “business” but in the context of their presentation today it seems to fit. Hopefully they enjoyed their visit to Portland and will be back again soon.
Luke Wrobleweski from Yahoo! presented on Web Application Page Hierarchy. He focused on the use of design elements to provide visual hierarchy in a web page. Making use of the usual graphic tools of size, color, contrast and placement, he showed numerous examples of simple page tweaks to visually prioritize important content.
Luke discussed emergent networks of loosely coupled content replacing strongly hierarchical web page structures. Closely mimicking content relationships to the relationships found in crowds and friendships. Content as incidental networks, or a more organic structure. This leaves content to reign over the hierarchical demands (e.g., site structure navigation…) a site’s structure often imposes. How often on a site have you found the content hard to find amongst the mass of navigational tools?
Luke used measuremap as a sample of decent attention and contrast in the content items. Another good sample is the evolving patientslikeme site. Aerobahn traffic display is also a good information sharing tool. It was very nice to see the evolution in each sample that he shared and how truly identifying the focus and then actually using this to drive the design created a much more effective tool.
I see his talk as kind of reminding you to stick to what’s important and keep it simple. Remember that the page is there for a reason, don’t lose the focus during the journey. He also talked about the little things like the rampant “sign-up” buttons. Luke dislikes the primary action option being to “sign-up” as this isn’t what you really want to do. In the physical world the registration forms get recycled. Let me in, let me play with it, then I want to join and register so I can keep using it.
There was also a nice sample of a simple table clean-up. Luke showed the progression of a basic enough data table that displayed information before, but after some rearranging it displayed information in a much more effective manner.
I highly encourage you to take a leisurely walk through Luke’s slides. I’ll plan on keeping up with him on his Functioning Form blog and I’ll be adding his book, Site-Seeing, to my reading list.
May 8: Updated my incoherent note taking into something that is hopefully more helpful.
Learned about the Zimmer Twins site at the WebVisions Event today. Checked it out and even produced my first Zimmer Twins movie. Be sure to check it out and rate it accordingly.