birddog

Top Digital Tips – in plain English

If you’re still struggling to work out digital, here are a few basic tips that should help you along the way.

1. Assess your company’s digital strategy – is it fully integrated into your marketing mix?  If it isn’t, why not?  The opportunities the web presents to you as a business are immense, so you should make sure you’re exploiting all available channels.
2. Are you engaged in any social media activity?  Even if you’re not, chances are other people are talking about you and your brand right now – from your staff, your customers, or independent reviewers, someone will be.  Make sure you’ve got a presence in these channels and get engaged.
3. Do you use your own website?  Poor user experience is the number one gripe people have with businesses online.  Frustrating navigation, unnecessary long user journeys, shopping carts that don’t work.  Today’s programming languages enable websites to do pretty much anything; there aren’t any constraints any more, so there are no excuses for the technology letting down the user experience.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong.
4. When was the last time you updated your website?  Websites generally need at least a design refresh every 12-18 months to ensure they remain looking fresh.
5. Are you thinking about the mobile web?  Whilst ‘web-on-the-go’ has been around for quite a long time, it’s only over the past year or so that it has become more and more mainstream.  With more people accessing the web on their mobile on a regular basis, does your offering sufficiently cater for mobile web users?
6. Are you looking to save money in the recession?  If your website is built in .NET – a Microsoft technology, then chances are you’re paying hefty annual licenses for the server software.  You might want to consider a re-build in an Open-Source language such as PHP.  Open-Source languages have come a long way.  So far in fact that they now serve the platform for some of the highest trafficked sites in the world – such as Facebook, Twitter and Del.icio.us – all built in PHP!
7. Search is still huge.  Despite everyone talking about Social Media all of the time, it’s vital that your organisation has a search strategy in place.  This will cover both paid (PPC) and natural (SEO).  After all, over half of all people online start their journey with a search!

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director

Facebook Open Graph and what it means for everyone

Many people see Facebook as a closed space or ‘walled-garden’, and rightly so.  The original Facebook model was built around the content [and functionality] contained within the site only being accessible to registered users.  That’s sort of still the case now, but gradually Facebook is opening up the platform, to enable it to be integrated into website content that sits outside of facebook.com (or whichever country specific version of Facebook you access).

Facebook are constantly implementing news ways of interacting with other users of the site.  These interactions have come to be known as ‘social actions’. Sites such as Facebook offer many new ways in which to interact with content, such as commenting, ‘liking’, updating a status, tagging, opting in and out, polling, submitting content, discussing and sharing. These social actions are the new currency in the online social space, and social networks (or utilities as Facebook likes to be referred to) have quickly recognised this and have been developing their APIs to enable developers to integrate functionality from these networks into content that sits outside of the network itself.

Social actions also offer marketers a new type of metric by which to measure activity within any given campaign which involves social channels in the mix.

A while ago, Facebook launched ‘Connect’ which allowed content owners to include Facebook login areas – enabling visitors to log in to sites using their Facebook login credentials – sort of like Open ID.  Due to the success of Connect and the increasing demand from developers to do more with Connect, Facebook has now launched ‘Open Graph’.  In a nutshell, Open Graph allows website owners to integrate some of the functionality of Facebook into their own sites, such as allowing visitors to ‘like’ something, just as they would with a piece of content served within Facebook itself. For example, someone on Hewlett Packard’s website could ‘like’ a new server in a news release, just as they would ‘like’ something on Facebook but to use it, users need to be registered members of Facebook, and the content they are ‘liking’ must link to content within Facebook – the Hewlett Packard fan page for example.

Why are Facebook offering this I hear you ask?  Well let’s be clear. Just as Google created ‘Google Analytics’ and offer it for ‘free’, in return, they get statistics on millions of websites around the world, Facebook will now gain huge insight into the behaviour of its users on the sites they use when they’re not on Facebook.

It’s an advertisers dream!

Just think for a minute, detailed insight into user behaviour on a granular level never seen before, means being able to really target products and services at users on an entirely reactive level.  I’ll elaborate…

Imagine someone (let’s call them Mike) is in the market for a new TV.  Mike uses Facebook and has updated his status saying he’s off shopping, but he hasn’t said what for – it doesn’t really provide advertisers with the information to deliver a targeted and relevant advert to him.  He leaves Facebook and goes to Google and searches for ‘LCD TV’s’.  He then visits countless numbers of sites, including retailers, TV forums and shopping comparison sites to find out about the latest models. He eventually decides he likes an LG model but wants to get more information about it so he visits LG’s website to get the full specification. Whilst on LG’s site, he sees there’s an option to ‘like’ the TV, just as he would ‘like’ something in Facebook, so he clicks it.

He might just be window shopping at the moment, with the intention of buying within the next few months and so often, that is where the user journey ends – with a bookmark to the TV spec on LG’s site which he may or may not re-visit in a month’s time.  But by ‘liking’ the TV, he is then also doing a number of things in the background.   Just as any other Facebook action appears on your wall, so does an action using Open Graph.  Your friends can see what you’re doing outside of Facebook and can then interact with you.  Mike’s friend Chis is a bit of a TV geek and comments on Mike’s wall entry telling him that the TV is awesome and a really good choice, but in addition, Currys [the retailer] could serve Mike an advert tailored to that specific TV, offering Mike a discount.  Mike gets a relevant advert, Currys gets a sale. Everyone wins.

People may argue that this is yet another invasion of their privacy, but I don’t agree. It’s always optional to interact with content and actually, by ad and social networks gaining greater insight into their users, adverts will only become more targeted and more relevant to their audiences. Something’s got to pay the bills right? Bring it on!

The convergence of media – increased choice for consumers but is it a good thing for advertisers?

In terms of developments in Media technology, the past 12 months have been incredible, for consumers at least.  Actually no, for everyone – but not everyone realises it yet.

So what’s happened?  The most significant change has been the growth and adoption of IPTV, or ‘TV on demand’ as it is often referred.  The BBC’s ‘iPlayer’ is probably the most well-known example.

TV on demand is essentially the beginning of the democratisation of one of the most powerful and popular formats of traditional media – Television.  No longer are consumers fixed to watching programmes in the order dictated by the broadcaster and the programme guide, they can now choose to watch what they want, when they want, on whatever compatible device they want – Television sets, desktop and laptop computers, smart phones, games consoles, the list goes on.

But what does this mean for advertisers?  Is the killer ad-spot on a Saturday night still as relevant if the people seeing the programme are watching it on a Tuesday lunchtime?  You could argue that video recorders have been around for years so there’s always been this problem, however people were generally more select with what they recorded, plus programmes weren’t ‘on-demand’ – we couldn’t watch something we hadn’t remembered to record.

In addition to the increase in programme choice, new platforms are emerging, aggregating multiple ‘on-demand’ services, such as BBC iPlayer, Channel 4’s 4OD, ITV’s ITVPlayer and so on, and delivering the content through one site, making it easier for consumers to view and choose content without having to navigate multiple websites.  This is the first part of convergence – the channels no longer sit in isolation.

I see the second part of the convergence happening when devices that can play this content through people’s televisions in the lounge reach tipping point.  I see myself as an early adopter, I’ve got to have the latest gadgets as soon as they hit the market so I regularly make use of the excellent iPlayer application on the PS3 – linked to my TV in my lounge.  I also get Sky TV through the net, through Sky Player, however I’m in the minority.  People don’t want to watch an evening of TV on their laptop, and until such a time comes where you can view iPlayer and all of the other on-demand services through your TV using your remote control (without the need for other devices such as games consoles) things won’t change much for most people.

Phew! So advertisers still have their prime ad slots… but what new opportunities does TV on demand present?

Hey! It’s the fucking Internet right? Guess what that means? ANALYTICS. Yes. Analytics, fucking loads of stats and monitoring. What percentage of 50 plus women who watch Coronation Street also use ASOS? ‘click’.

This is REALLY exciting. Really exciting. Behavioural monitoring, contextual advertising, hey, what about personalised advertising? ‘Hi Bob, you drive a BMW, ever thought about an Audi? You nearest dealer is… Yeah, that made you sit up didn’t it?

It’s not just about the analytics though.  Once the channels and ad networks crack it, we’ll get advertising that really is relevant to us, taking into consideration the TV and radio shows we listen to, not just the websites we look at – which are often very different to the types of TV we watch. I watch Eastenders, I don’t go on the Eastenders website. Ever. Nor do I Google pictures of Barbara Windsor. (Well, maybe once or twice).

TV has sort of been trying to achieve this for some time now – watch an ad, text a short code to get more info/a free sample/book now, or hey, visit our website – but how many people sit in their lounge, laptop at the ready for the TV ad web addresses – some of us yes, but we’re in the minority. How about a contextual, personalised TV advert which takes Bob to a contextual, personalised web page – how’s that for a good user journey?

I predict big things happening in the next 12 months, check out the following sites for a glimpse of what’s to come:

http://www.seesaw.com

http://zattoo.com

http://www.teev.co.uk

http://www.hulu.com

http://www.playon.tv

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director

10 tips for effectively planning your agency website

If you work in an agency, one of the hardest projects you’ll ever work on is your own website.  Often, it will take a lot longer to complete the project than any piece of client work you will ever do, due to many factors including (but not limited to):

• The work getting bumped due to pressing client deadlines
• Different people within the agency getting involved at different stages and not agreeing on some aspect of the site
• No-one having any time to create content for the site
• New technologies rapidly emerging that you feel just have to be included in the site, pushing the development time out even further

Sound familiar? We’ve all been there. Here are some tips that I feel should help you in planning and delivering your company website faster.

1. Make sure the project has an owner – a champion. Assigning the project to a group of people will often never work. Everyone has their own agenda and client work will always take precedent. If someone is given ownership responsibility they will ensure the project is pushed through and delivered. Make sure this person is someone who is well connected within the agency and knows how to get their own way when it comes to getting things done.
2. Treat your company as you would any client – give the project a job number and book in agency resource including an Account and/or Project Manager. By doing this, it is more likely that you will get access to the right resource at the times you need it, rather than trying to fit it in during the odd hour here or there.
3. Run a questionnaire with multiple choice answers to gather feedback and information [bit from Scot’s book]
4. Plan who you are going to involve.  If you ask a hundred people a question, you will get one hundred answers.  Run focus groups concentrating on the areas of specialism of the people in those groups. Involve as fewer [more from Scot’s book]
5. Whilst the creative team might all have some input on the new design, try to ensure the same designer/design team work on the design from start to finish. This will help in keeping all of the various aspects of the content consistent, and will also make it easier to adapt the design quickly, should part of it need amending.
6. Look at your competitors. Not because you want to emulate them but to make sure none of them already have a site that looks exactly like the one you’re planning. Sounds obvious but launching a site that looks like the competition never looks good. You’re there to differentiate from the competition right?
7. Plan your copy. Content is one of the hardest challenges in any new site build. Good copy requires time to create, something many agency staff don’t have the luxury of. Create a template people can just type into, and include a wireframe showing them what the page will look like so that they can get a feel for the content. Give them a content brief that shows them the tone of voice for the new site and make sure you set a strict word limit. If what you get back is wrong, don’t be afraid to push it back with some constructive feedback and get them to have a second stab at it.
8. Make sure Social Media courses through the veins of the site. Not only should your site become the example of others to follow, by integrating services such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr as well as having comments enabled on all of your site articles will encourage both staff and external visitors to get involved in contributing a wide range of content, from something as simple as a Tweet, through to detailed responses to one of your blog posts.
9. Don’t forget the right order in which to plan your site. Usability should always come before Design. You new site might look pretty, but if you have to explain to visitors how to use it, if it takes ages to load on a 1mb broadband connection, if it’s style over substance people won’t use it and it will most likely become a talking point for all of the wrong reasons.
10. Plan your SEO. Whilst it could be argued that SEO is gradually becoming less relevant, with more traffic now going to Social Networks as opposed to Search Engines, search engines such as Google still usually deliver the majority of traffic to most sites, so it is important to plan your search strategy from the outset.

There are probably many more points to be added, so feel free to add your own comments below.

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director

Believe in the Concept

I have had a busy summer shouting at stupid people. Having received a brief for a European corporate ‘Awareness Campaign’, I duly presented the accumulated wisdom of my many years of awareness campaigning to Sir and a considerable flock of subordinates, (including a slightly sallow, moist and inexplicably flaking representative from a media agency…). The client expressed his “disappointment” that I hadn’t addressed their need for a “value proposition”. He worked his way around the room gathering opinion from his team who all said, “Baaaa… oooh yes Sir, you’re so right…”

I felt like a gunslinger walking into the saloon where the conversation stops and the piano player dives behind the bar. The safety catch was off. I now had a choice. I could back out the door slowly and hope I made it to my horse before my mouth started firing random abuse, or I could slug it out. Sometimes I wish I could just, you know, ‘not’. But there we are…

The red mist welled up and all I can really remember is that I didn’t jab my finger in anyone’s face. I saw an interview with Bill Clinton once where he said that in heated debate, it was essential not to point fingers as the gesture was overly aggressive. Clinton used his thumb which, apparently, is politically correct. So there I was, purple faced, neck vein bulging, spraying spittle across a good metre and a half of conference table as I ranted uncontrollably and all I could think of was, “It’s Ok Scot, it doesn’t matter what names you’re calling him, you’re not pointing, you’re using your thumb. All is well.”

All was in fact very far indeed from ‘well’. It was unacceptable in my opinion that a two billion dollar company should ask a number of small agencies for their unpaid responses to their brief and then move the goalposts from ‘awareness’ to ‘value proposition’. I was particularly incandescent because this was at least the second time this particular client (I use the term loosely) had shape-shifted mid stroke. 18 months earlier the brief had been for a (expressly and specifically) “radical and creative brand strategy.” That’s what I delivered. Turns out my proposal was “too radical…” and, “too creative…” The agency appointed was, “safe, with a process.” Safe it may well have been, but the client had seemingly spent 18 months producing a brand strategy with a worthless proposition and decided that the best time to be disappointed at my lack of telepathy skills was after I had presented the requested brand awareness campaign. Tisk.

At some undefined point, my spleen was fully vented and a stunned silence reigned. (There was still a wild howling in my ears of course, but for the most part, the room was quiet.) I packed up my things, and, with the surprising absence of ‘any further questions’, I left.

He called me the following day. I’m still not sure why. Apparently, “it’s important to follow these things up.” Well, no, it isn’t. Everything had been said. It turns out he still thought he was right and just wanted another fight. I nearly gave it to him too. But as the red mist rose, I caught myself, took a deep breath and simply said, “Look, you’re worth nothing to me. You’ve been worth nothing for years and you’ll never be worth anything. You’re a drain on my resources and my energy. I can apply both to considerably better commercial advantage elsewhere. The conversation’s over. Goodbye.” And I hung up.

It’s possible I was wrong. It’s possible that the work didn’t answer the brief. It’s even possible that it just wasn’t good enough. But that’s not the point. The point, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is that you have to believe. Not a little, not a lot. You have to BELIEVE with every single fibre in your body. Because no one else will. Least of all the client. Believe it, live it and hang up on any mutthafuggah who isn’t prepared to die for the cause.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666