The merger expands One to One Interactive’s comprehensive suite of digital marketing services, technology and media offerings by incorporating Twelve Horses’ agency practice and innovative marketing products.

The move represents the fourth time OTO has grown through a merger or acquisition, a strategy the company embarked on beginning in 2005. The addition of Twelve Horses gives OTO a significant presence in the West and Twelve Horses’ many East Coast based clients will welcome the OTO East Coast footprint. Both OTO and Twelve Horses service accounts in Europe and Asia. Twelve Horses, frequently recognized for its innovative work in the travel-tourism industry, also services such global clients as J.P. Morgan Chase, Deloitte and Bill Me Later, a PayPal company.

The western-based Twelve Horses will integrate its trademarked and patented technology platforms, including MessageMaker™, which delivers multi-channel direct digital communications to customers via email, web, mobile, voice and fax messaging, into current One to One Interactive offerings. As a result, OTO clients, which currently include Comcast, Rite-Aid, McGraw-Hill and Partners Healthcare, will be able to leverage the company’s expanded portfolio of services and tools in executing their one-to-one digital marketing strategies.

“Our merger with Twelve Horses enhances and extends OTO into the type of unique firm brands seek in today’s digital marketing landscape, one that can come to the table with leading marketing services strategy and execution capabilities as well as a full suite of proven technology products to integrate and deploy quickly and efficiently,” said Ian Karnell, chief executive officer of One to One Interactive. “By leveraging the platform capabilities and innovative intellectual property we’ve acquired through our expansion efforts, our clients can expect greater efficiency in strategy execution and in speed to market, which is essential for remaining at the forefront of the marketing evolution.”

With its newly expanded product and service lines, nearly 30 percent of revenues will be driven from the firm’s unique portfolio of permission based digital messaging  technologies, which include multi-channel messaging platforms for email and mobile marketing, content management systems, ticketing and event management, desktop widgets and plug-ins for improved workflow. A large portion of the remaining revenue stream will continue to be generated from services such as branding, web site development, customer relationship management, search engine marketing and social web strategies.

“At a time where every marketing services firm is being asked to bring more to the table, our clients benefit from this merger by having immediate access to a broader organization with incredible experience and depth in quality, customizable technology products and solutions,” explained Twelve Horses CEO David LaPlante, who will serve as OTO’s Senior Vice-President of Sales & Marketing. “Our newly combined company significantly enhances our ability to accommodate our client’s broad and often unique set of marketing services and technology dependent requests, as opposed to simply providing a one-size fits-all-solution.”

The merger is designed to accelerate growth and innovation, including a new management structure to help achieve that vision. One to One Interactive Chief Executive Officer Ian Karnell and President Jeremi Karnell will remain in their roles, while Twelve Horses executives Steve Spencer and Martin Gastanaga will serve as senior executives for its OTOlabs division. The company will remain headquartered in Charlestown, Mass., with additional offices in Baltimore, Reno-Tahoe, Salt Lake City and London.

About One to One Interactive
Complete One-To-One Solutions for Brands, Agencies, and Publishers

Established in 1997, One to One Interactive is the first enterprise to assemble a complete solution for brands, agencies, and publishers executing one-to-one marketing strategies. By bringing together one of the nation’s leading digital marketing agencies, the worlds most comprehensive portfolio of permission marketing platforms, performance marketing solutions, and cutting edge neuromarketing research techniques, the companies of One to One Interactive build informed and creative customer/constituent strategies on the belief that digital media’s ability to enable engaging one-to-one dialogues is the future of marketing.

One to One Interactive has recently been ranked by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in America, one of the Top Interactive firms in the United States according to B2B Magazine, and one of the world’s 20 hottest independent digital marketing firms by Ad Age.

Please visit one of One to One Interactive’s web sites for more information:

    * One to One Interactive: www.onetooneinteractive.com

    * OTOi: www.otoi.com

    * OTOlabs: www.otolabs.com

    * OTOnetworks: www.otonetworks.com

    * OTOinsights: www.otoinsights.com

About Twelve Horses
Twelve Horses has historically been a global provider of Web site design and development, multi-channel marketing, business process automation, customer relationship management (CRM), search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Operating as an online brand marketing and messaging technology agency, Twelve Horses assisted businesses in translating and transforming their brands online.

Twelve Horses provides One to One Interactive with operations in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Reno-Tahoe, Nevada.

Twelve Horses has been recognized for being a “Top 30 Innovative Company” by Utah Business, and “Technology Company of the Year” by the Technology Business Alliance of Nevada.

Please visit Twelve Horses web site for more information: www.twelvehorses.com

For more information call 1-617-425-7369 or visit www.onetooneinteractive.com

Download Press Release
Download the FAQ

###

Despite all that, we love it here! And while most of us thought Reno 911 was/is hilarious, it was hard not to feel the show gave Reno an unfair representation, especially with most of it being filmed in Los Angeles. Well, so what, right? Is there a marketing point to be made here?

When Thomas Lennon announced via Twitter that the show was going away our client, the Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority (RSCVA) came up with a smashingly good idea to create a website based on Saving Reno 911. There was no time to do much custom work or anything like that, but we banged it out in good measure and immediately people began letting their intentions be known – bring back the show!

This sort of grassroots, social media endeavor changed the conversation from “Oh no, don’t say that about our town.” – to – “Bring it on!”  and it landed the whole effort in an article in USA Today titled, “‘Reno 911!’: The city it mocks tries to save it.”

Maybe Reno 911 will actually film a show IN Reno after all?

37 of the Best Web Designs from the Travel Industry
Published August 10th, 2009 in Galleries

“Travel websites often feature large, attractive photos because of their emphasis on visual appeal. In this post we’ll look at 37 well-designed sites from the travel industry for your own design inspiration. Some are state or government tourism websites, and others are for hotels or business involved in the travel industry.”

Source: vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/travel

A note about Wordpress survey tools: some are better than others, some take more time to use, some are compatible with older releases and not new ones. But sometimes it is just about getting a job accomplished, developing some insight, and moving on to the next item on your list. Either way, they’re free! I’ll let you know what I think of this one.

Answer to the best of your abilities, and if you have any other questions you would like to see added please comment on this post. I will share the results of the survey one month from today. Hope you have a good week!

Follow these steps in Google Analytics so setup social media marketing filters:

1. Click on ‘edit’ to the right of your website profile on the main login screen.
2. Click on ‘Add Filter’ in the ‘Filters’ section on the next screen.
3. Name the filter something like ‘Social Media Grouping’
4. Select ‘Custom filter’ as the ‘filter type’
5. Select ‘Advanced’ from the radio button options list
6. *In ‘Field A -> Extract A’ select ‘Campaign Source and enter the social media marketing sites you want to capture in the text box, see below for more information
7. ~In ‘Output To -> Constructor’ select ‘Campaign Medium’ or ‘Campaign Name’ and enter ‘social’ in the text box, see below for more information
8. Leave the rest of the ‘yes/no’ boxes as-is and save the filter
9. You will have to wait 24 hours to start seeing the traffic being filter in the manner you just setup

* Note: for convenience sake you can copy paste this text to add some of the most prominent social type sites on the internet to your filter: twitter.com|facebook.com|myspace.com|flickr.com|linkedin.com|Wordpress.com|blogspot.com|youtube.com|stumbleupon.com

~Note: this will change the ‘campaign medium’ from ‘referral’ to ‘social’. There is one drawback to this as you will not be able to see the referring website url from traffic coming from your tagged social media marketing websites anymore. There is an alternative to this. Instead of marking the campaign medium as ‘social’ you can mark the ‘campaign name’ as social. Then to see your social traffic you will have to go to ‘traffic sources’ -> ‘referring sites’ -> select a site -> filter by ‘campaign name’ to see your ‘social’ traffic.

Screenshot 1: Setting up the filter

Google Analytics Social Filter (above)

Screenshot 2: Viewing Social Site Traffic

Social Filter Website Traffic Screen

When it comes to an online presence, libraries across the nation are notoriously out-of-date and lack a certain modernity needed to get people excited about reading and research. With Washoe County Library we took a new approach to the website design and functionality. What you will find with this site launch are a few different personalities – within one primary website – geared towards the varying demographics that make up any library system.

The Good – The Bad  – The Needed

To start, we sent the client a questionnaire, or survey if you will, to get them thinking about where they wanted the website to go. They came back to us with keywords and messaging they associated with the site, as well as other websites they liked and specifics about them. After establishing the client’s expectations we moved to the design phase.

Design & Website Functionality

To lay the foundation for each site we first constructed the individual logos, and then it was on to the manufacturing of the website designs.

The homepage is based primary off of the serif fonts from old literary books. As lead designer Christine Harcinske explains,

“I wanted to capture that classic literary look.”

We think she nailed it along with the other demographic portals. The Kids Zone went for more of the picture book effect. Christine drew the majority of it in Photoshop and Illustrator.

The Teens Site is a reflection of what is going on graphically at present in various media outlets and retail locations for this demographic. It is also supported with social media interaction such as Flickr, Facebook, and MySpace.

The Senior Central is tailored to their preferences with applicable graphics and content.

Each site required the functionality needed to display the age specific, demographic content with the homepage acting as an aggregate for all. Nothing a little XML parsing and displaying can’t handle!

We hope you enjoy the feel and functionality of the new Washoe County Library website. It was a fun project made even better by the fact that, despite being web creatures, we love books and even better, free WiFi!

Huntsman Gay Global Capital is one of Twelve Horses’ most recent website designs to find new life on the Web. The design is simple, yet powerful, and properly communicates the collective experience and capabilities of this well-seasoned private equity company. The website makes use of our content management system to control website content and layout, as well as add new press releases, update Team information, and continually hone their search engine optimization efforts. Team members such as Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, and managing director Richard Lawson also integrate social media activities such as YouTube videos and Twitter posts into the website.

Operating out of Palo Alto, Salt Lake City, Boston, and West Palm Beach, Huntsman Gay is a unique private equity firm with world-class investment experience. Founder Jon Huntsman is a true American businessman and philanthropist, and he is both one of the top 50 richest men alive and one of the nation’s top 50 givers. In addition, he is the father of the Governor of Utah.

For us here at Twelve Horses it is always a great experience to work with such a wonderful variety of clients, and Huntsman Gay is no exception.

tags: huntsman gay global capital, website design, utah website design, salt lake city website design, john huntsman, content management system

Website Refresh Items

1. Define value from customer’s perspective and multiple personas.
2. Focus on emotion.
3. Focus on end-benefits (from all clients)
4. What are the customer’s real needs/wants?
5. “Why should I buy from you?”
6. What other options are there?  Address them.
7. How is your product and company different from others?
8. What process does the client go through to buy the product/service?
9. What information do they need to know before they buy?
10. Establish trust!
11. Identify clearly points-of-action.
12. Internal linking!  Link keywords to relevant pages.
13. Find “hidden area” – information they are looking for that they can not find anywhere else.
14. How? Why? Who? What?
15. Be relevant – address needs, values, beliefs.
16. Make copywriting personal!  “you” not “We” – address feelings.
17. Establish confidence!  Use emotion to appeal.
18. Scanning – use headings, quotes, links, bullet lists.
19. Homepage – communicate UVP and get them to click deeper.

Generating Leads

1. Time is precious to clients, value it and get their attention by showing how you can help their business by speaking in their terms.
2. Questions potential clients have:

1. 1. How will this service help my company?
   2. We’re doing okay, why do we need it?
   3. Is there another company out there that is better?
   4. Will their solution really work?  Can they prove it?
   5. Is the company credible?
   6. Can we afford it?

1. Focus on the positive aspects, not negative pain points.  Ask the client ‘where do you want to be after this project?’
2. Automate lead generation with items such as messagemaker that are based on actions and behaviors taken by the lead.
3. Use stories and case studies to communicate with your leads.
4. Increase the likelihood of closing deals:

1. 1. Design marketing communications for each phase of the sales cycle, from awareness through consideration to purchase.
   2. Focus your marketing efforts on points in the buying process where high potential prospects are leaving.
   3. Increase face-face time you have with clients.
   4. Track marketing leads that close.

Not far from the offices of Twelve Horses is the West Shore of Lake Tahoe. A beautiful place where dramatic snow-covered mountains cascade downward in to the sparkling blue waters of one of the clearest, most breathtaking bodies of water in the world. Juxtaposed to this raw beauty are businesses that depend on the Web to communicate their brand to the wayward traveler looking for information to help them make informed decisions.

Last year, Homewood Mountain Resort came to Twelve Horses for a website redesign, which you may have read about here. Like many of our website design projects, we were tasked with organizing large amounts of information into a user-friendly format that satisfies both the client and their end user. A common practice we employ to accomplish this delicate balancing act are module tabs or user interface (UI) design patterns. Whenever possible, we strive to accompany these tabs with both text and graphics to improve the experience.

Smashing Magazine just recently published an article titled, Module Tabs in Web Design: Best Practices and Solutions. The article features Homewood Mountain Resort along with some other exceptional examples of module tabs being used to optimize web pages. Here is an excerpt from the article:

A module tab is a User Interface (UI) design pattern where content is separated into different panes, and each pane is viewable one at a time. The user requests content to be displayed by clicking (or in some instances hovering over) the content’s corresponding tab control.

Module tabs are seeing an increase of use as websites and web applications push for optimizing web page screen areas without sacrificing the amount of information presented at once. For example, in weblogs,  they are used in secondary content sections (such as the sidebar) to present relevant and interesting information such as a listing of blog posts which users can interact with to get to web pages quicker. This inevitably allows for an unobtrusive and compact manner of presenting content.

This article discusses the use of the module tabs design pattern for use in websites and web-based applications. We share with you some best practices to consider when using module tabs, a listing of real-world examples of websites the take advantage of module tabs, as well as tutorials and free downloadable scripts for building and deploying module tabs in your sites.

Give it a read.

Downtown Reno: Nevadan Hotel, 3rd Floor Club Cal Neva (West side of Virginia Street)

Proceeds benefit Reno Bike Project and The Holland Project

Register Now

On the heels of National Bike Month, the Tour De Nez and the Reno Film Festival, Reno’s cycling culture gets a special pre-release screening of Veer. This award-winning, feature length documentary film explores America’s fast-growing bicycling culture by profiling five people whose lives are inextricably tied to bicycling and the bike-centric social groups they belong to. The film follows these characters over the course of a year, offering a behind-the-scenes look at their personal struggles and triumphs. 

Described as a “breakthrough documentary,” the film made its world premiere at the Victoria Film Festival earlier this summer and has won a Jury Award for Best Doc at the Calgary Film Festival, won Best Documentary at the Calgary Underground Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Documentary at the San Joaquin International Film Festival. Veer examines what it means to be part of a community, and how social movements are formed.

REGISTER NOW AND GET YOUR TICKETS

CHECK OUT THE FACEBOOK EVENT

FLICKR PICS AND GOODS

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

TRAILER

Come out and support your local community cycling and arts organizations!

The event is a benefit fundraiser for the Reno Bike Project, a community bicycle shop and cycling advocacy organization, and the Holland Project, Reno’s non-profit youth-run arts, music and culture organization. Sponsors include Twelve Horses, Club Cal Neva, Chrome Bags, Jet Lites, and Silver Peak (“It’s only beer, and it’s only at Silver Peak Reno.”).

See you there!

Mike has a lot of experience producing videos, and proliferating them online, for service industries, travel and tourism, and non-profits. He has his own unique style that goes above and beyond the typical boring corporate messages that do little to resonate with their audience. Mike mixes amusement and creativity with tested experience in social media and video production.

There is no cost to participate, but it is requested that attendees register for the event online at: http://smcsac0616.eventbrite.com/. Space is limited, so those interested in participating are encouraged to RSVP today.

How did David LaPlante, CEO of Twelve Horses go from being a ski racer to the head of a successful online marketing company? It was a little accidental.

But anyone that has worked closely with David knows that it has also taken a whole hell of a lot of work, creative thinking, determination, and very little sleep. David juggles a ridiculous amount of responsibilities. Along with leading this snarky band of brothers and sisters, he serves as chairman of the Nevada Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, and on the board of several organizations including, the local economic development authority (EDAWN), Entrepreneur’s Organization, Artown, The Holland Project, Reno Bike Project, and the local school district. On top of that he is a father of two boys, which he is begrudgingly pulled away from for numerous speaking engagements and client meetings.

Despite this herculean load of work, David also manages to project a relaxed and fun demeanor that echoes the unique culture of Twelve Horses that we all enjoy. Obviously, the Reno Gazette-Journal sees it in him as well.

Twelve Horses’ David LaPlante: Living a new, better dream

As iconic daredevil Evel Knievel learned in more ways than one, accidents happen.

It’s a lesson one Reno CEO also happened to learn more than two decades ago, courtesy of a snow-covered mountainside.

As a kid growing up in Crested Butte, Colo., going to college and forming his own company wasn’t exactly on David LaPlante’s radar.

“I wanted to be a ski bum,” LaPlante said. “I wanted to go to Europe and race.”

The first wrinkle in LaPlante’s dreams for a grand European tour surfaced on April 1988 during his final ski race in high school. LaPlante hooked a tip during his last slalom, disqualifying the aspiring skier. It was after the race, however, that LaPlante’s European dream would jump the shark. With his racing plans temporarily on ice due to the disqualification, LaPlante went skiing with friends at an out-of-bounds area. The accident that followed proved to be more serious than simply hooking a tip. LaPlante said he essentially “obliterated” his knee.

It was while LaPlante was recovering at home that his father would float the “C” word. Perhaps the young LaPlante should consider going to college, his father said.

Following the conversation, LaPlante and a friend soon found themselves touring the University of Nevada, Reno, as part of a recruiting visit for the ski team. Little did LaPlante know that his first step into the university would also be the first step in heading his future company, Twelve Horses.

“I just fell in love with the place,” LaPlante said. “Next thing I knew, I was going to Reno. So if I hadn’t hooked that tip in that slalom — if I didn’t have that 1-centimeter judgement error, who knows where I would be now.”

Taking the reins

Featuring a unique fusion between marketing and technology, quickly explaining what Twelve Horses does in layman’s terms can be tough even for its CEO.

In the simplest terms, Twelve Horses can be defined as an online brand marketing and messaging technology company, LaPlante said. But labeling his company as just a marketing firm would be oversimplifying at best. After all, not many marketing agencies have their own research and development departments, much less their own patents for messaging, ticketing and data replication technology.

Read the rest of the article here…

Jeff comes to Twelve Horses with a portfolio of online marketing experience developed over years of providing many different industry verticals with custom programming and website development services.

To Jeff: “The Internet is more than just a web page, it is an experience.” And what he loves most about his work is:

“Understanding what the client really needs and taking the brand in the direction it needs to go.”

Jeff is a graduate of Utah Valley University with a degree in business management and a complementary specialization in entrepreneurship. Very active in his community, he serves on the board of directors and the executive board for the Sandy Area Chamber of Commerce, teaches Sunday School, and is a long-time supporter of the Boy Scouts.

When Jeff is not busy crafting online marketing strategies, serving his community, or chasing his son, Connor, he can be found playing volleyball, golfing, gardening, and hiking around the great state of Utah.

From Men’s Journal:

RENO, NV

Two hundred and fifty days of sunshine per year, skiing up the road, runnable whitewater in town, and an influx of creative types make Reno the new Boulder. One of its oldest neighborhoods, the Old Southwest, is its best, with quiet, leafy sidewalks near an up-and-coming part of downtown (at California and Sierra).

OGDEN, UT

Once abandoned for gated communities on the city’s fringes, downtown ogden is in the midst of a comeback. Buy a bargain Victorian near galleries and restaurants, and still take advantage of nearby bouldering and whitewater. A commuter rail whisks you to Salt Lake City (for your day job) in an hour; Snowbasin is half that by car.

Download the Extended Audio Podcast Here

You can’t just do social media

Morgan does a great job of relating social media concepts, tools and potential to the goal of portraying a brand or client in the best possible way on the web. “You can’t just do PR and you can’t just do social media,” he says, “because everything has to work together.”

As we are finding with Twitter’s trending topics notifications and hash tags, social media and twitter in particular can be a powerful way to spread ideas. They go “from one person’s idea to a mainstream news story over the course of minutes,” says Morgan.

Filtering those ideas from the background noise is a challenge, and Morgan says that it is up to the individual to accomplish because you can’t automate it. So you have to become engaged and grab a hold of the all powerful CONVERSATION.

Is it REALLY all about Conversation? (yes it is…)

“Conversation means actually engaging with the people who want to engage with you,” says Morgan. Though it isn’t always important or even necessary to have a conversation per se; there are plenty of special cases where information sources, agencies, companies and especially celebrities do just fine without really worrying about conversations.

Still, as Morgan says, “you need to be involved in the conversation instead of having things pushed to you all the time.” Most users are seeking real interactions. Often those interactions occur with or even around a brand.

Social Media As PR

That can be intimidating not only to a lot of PR and marketing professionals, but also to CEOs. Morgan adds, “that should energize companies and really scare them.” Though many companies have stepped into social media to react to emergent issues, it is a far better policy to engage before trouble arises. You can easily quell the bad (if you do it right (OK, and are lucky)) and accentuate the positive.

As we learned from Krista Parry, companies can have a lot of success putting their own info out there for users to find, by posting breaking news and info on blogs and podcasts. “The great thing about using a podcast or videocast for that,” says Morgan, “is you can have everything you want to say encapsulated there.” There are people out there who are super interested in a topic and will seak out lots of information and eventually become defacto experts, sources and influencers, “and you want to be able to provide those peole with as much information as you can,” says Morgan.

Great to meet you Josh, and thank you very much for inviting me out to speak to your class!

Note: In the audio version of this episode you get a few extras. 1) A lot more insight from Josh into how businesses can benefit from using social media for PR (and that’s not just lip-service either, he actually does it), 2) a segment where Josh asks me about my observations on the use of technology I observed on my recent trip to Morocco, and 3) a stumble where my sleep deprivation and jet-lag leads to a funny quote regarding the CDC and swine flu.

-M

Download Audio File Here

Alan Hall is also Founder and Chairman at MarketStar, a successful sales and marketing outsourcing company that he started in his basement in Ogden. Hall is involved in almost every level of entrapreneurship promotion in Utah, from finding venture capital dollars to having simple conversations with new entrepreneurs and answering questions. Our President, Steve Spencer, caught up with Hall last year at a Funding Universe speed pitching event and was very impressed with both his knowledge, passion and ability to help new entrapreneurs find direction.

Hall is taking his show on a much longer road over the next year with Grow America. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me Alan. It was great to meet you!

-Mike

Using a light source the right way can add dimension and beauty to a website design. Strong light sources create a stark contrast between light areas and shadows in a design, making the elements look more realistic and dimensional and less flat. Read more…

Here are some examples:

BestWebGallery | TheBestDesigns | CSS Mania | CSS Drive | Smashing Magazine | Abduzeedo | CSS Idea | 1st WebDesigner

Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp a Big Success

April 27,2009

Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress and UNR student Colin Loretz, the driving force behind Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp. Photo by David LaPlante.

As Matt Mullenweg described how he came to develop the popular software WordPress, some of the 70-plus attendees in Saturday’s Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp twittered Matt’s geocities page, scrolled through his photo blog and checked out his demo sites on Automattic.

Mullenweg, who wrote the original code for WordPress and is still intimately connected with upgrading and expanding the capabilities of the original idea, previewed upcoming products that allow for multiple users and more social networking.

“We create things and we have no idea how people will use them,” he said. “It’s amazing to hear what people are doing with these tools.”

Saturday’s Wordcamp, sponsored by Twelve Horses and the Reynolds School of Journalism, featured a day-long series of speakers on using WordPress, developing a personal brand and understanding social media.

In his keynote address, Mullenweg described the history of WordPress and how much the process of open-source software development influenced his interest and direction.

In another popular session, David LaPlante, CEO of TwelveHorses, described an epiphany his company had as they watched site useage over the past few years. “People care about people,” he said. “Trust is the first thing we need to do business together. It comes with connecting with you as an individual.”

LaPlante emphasized his view that information is getting more personal, transparent and authentic. He noticed that on the sites they build, “about us” pages that feature personal insights about the individuals in the company attract a lot more page views.

RSJ alumna Annie Flanzraich asked LaPlante how to navigate the online emphasis on personal and transparent disclosure among journalists or bosses who don’t understand – or agree with — this kind of personal divulgence.

“The water is moving that way quickly,” LaPlante said. He described a disequilibrium in the marketplace as we move from one set of expectations to another. He pointed out the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women over 55. “The stronger your brand, the more  you will connect with some and disconnect with others,” LaPlante said.

RSJ Professor Bob Felten organized the school sponsorship of the event and helped host a welcome breakfast for attendees. “It was an amazing day,” Felten said. “We want RSJ to be at the center of this conversation in the community, and Saturday was a great demonstration of why that’s important.”

Couldn’t make it? Many Wordcamp videos have been posted on WordPress.tv. Copies of the presentations from Saturday’s Wordcamp will be available online in the next few days. Check out http://renowordcamp.wordpress.com for updates.

Which is better?

That can be a daunting question. Do I go with an open source company like Drupal, Mambo, or Joomla!, or a proprietary system like Twelve Horses? Unfortunately, the answer isn’t cut and dry. It requires a significant amount of research, evaluation and judgment that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Content Management System

Step 1 – Be realistic

Don’t kid yourself, there is no silver bullet. Every option has pros and cons, but the goal is to find the solution that will provide you the most value and the least headache. Here is a comparison of the two:

Open Source:

Pros: Upfront costs are minimal. Many vendors are able to work in the major platforms, and if they aren’t, the learning curve is low. Updates and modules are typically free, abundant, and help is available all over the web.

Cons: Customization is more limited. Modifications and custom  integrations are susceptible to upgrade issues that typically are not supported. Because open source is community driven, it is a one-size-fits-all approach that can create bloated features. Free add-ons can be buggy and present possible security threats.  Potential downtimes can also present high risks for businesses.

Proprietary:

Pros: Business driven not community driven. Streamlined skill sets allowing for faster development times, and customization options are more flexible. Typically niche driven keeping features lean and inline with your industry. One company means greater support and accountability. In many cases, especially for medium to enterprise-level businesses, total cost of ownership is less in the long run.

Cons: There is a higher initial investment, licensing fees, and you are tied to one company for customizations and updates. Switching vendors can be difficult and expensive.

Step 2 – Define your needs

As with any integration of new technology, defining your end goals will help drive the tactics and products to support it. Ask your team the following:

• How large will the site be?
• Is it one site or multiple sites?
• How many users will be accessing the system?
• Will you be integrating your website with any other online marketing applications or vendors?
• Who will maintain the site?
• Do you have internal resources, or will you need outside support?
• Do you require database and code level control?
• What other supporting products and services does the CMS vendor provide?

These types of questions are critical in determining the best solution.

Step 3 – Research

Look at what is core to your company’s online success and find vendors that support the mission. If an open source option fits, look at the community and ensure that the development path is inline with your company. If a proprietary system is deemed the best path, make sure the company has a solid history of continual CMS development. Also, remember to look at total cost of ownership. Your time equals money, so the less time spent managing vendors is more time you can spend growing the business.

Step 4 – Act

Choose a solution and stick with it, but at the same time be aware of what your exit strategy would be and how much it might cost.

At the end of the day, you’ll find that a proprietary CMS is a targeted solution that offers less risk, more accountability, and greater scalability where an open source system offers greater internal flexibility and an abundance of add-ons that are generally free at face value. The real question is whether you want to concentrate on the execution of the medium or on your business? The choice is up to you.

In the meantime, we will experience the migration of software evolving into websites, and Twelve Horses is expanding its boundaries with these new technologies. Recently, we created a new event planner that integrates the functionality of software but utilizes the power of the Web.

Dynamic Meeting Planner
Our client, Dynamic Competence, needed a way to transform a paper-based meeting system into a dynamic communication tool that facilitates conversations for meeting topics. To be successful, the client needed to manage and monitor meeting plan revisions, improve group communication, and use a medium that would help save time and effort for meeting planners.

In this project we developed features that we have not yet seen: the website works more like a software application than a traditional HTML site. Below I’ve highlighted some of the functionality we developed.

Features for Success

1. Drag-And-Drop Interface A planner has the ability to categorize their contacts into different groups before sending out the meeting invite. To help increase speed and usability, the interface allows the planner to drag-and-drop their contacts into the available groups before sending.  This saves the planner time and effort when creating the invitee list to be a part of the meeting process.

2. Double-Click Editing Instead of making edits via a regular textbox and hitting save, a meeting planner simply goes to the topic they need to edit, double-clicks on it, and this opens up the section to be edited. This dynamic interface also allows editors to add and disable topics with one-click, saving time and effort.

3. User Feedback System The success of the system relies on the interaction of the client’s users. If, for any reason, a user has an issue with a website or wants to comment, a Feedback button is provided on every page. To provide more insight into the feedback, the user’s comments, current page, and date submitted are all tracked by the System Admin Inbox (see below). This valuable feedback data also provides insight on how to improve the application for future use.

4. System Admin Inbox The system administrators wanted to be sure all the feedback was being read and responded to appropriately. With multiple feedback messages, this could be a daunting task to make sure everyone is receiving a response. To complicate matters, there could be multiple System Admins in the system. To resolve this, the feedback items are displayed in an email inbox format (read or unread), and the message tracks which System Admin first read the response.

5. Versioning Each iteration of the meeting process is saved as a separate webpage to the website. With this, a meeting planner can see how the meeting agenda transformed from the first draft to the final version of the agenda. This tracks all comments and changes, keeping the meeting processes organized and easily retrieved for historical purposes.

Using web-based applications provides many advantages: updates and new features are rolled out across to users in real time; data is stored on the server and is accessible from anywhere that has Internet access; and custom solutions are tailored to a client’s needs, which isn’t as easily done with software.

Soon we may solely rely on the Web for our daily workflow. Until that happens, we will continue to push the boundaries of Web technology to help meet clients’ needs and increase the usability of applications.

At a recent TED conference, best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert stated, “we have completely internalized and accepted collectively this notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked.” She goes on to further frame “the utter, maddening, capriciousness of the creative process” by suggesting that we pull from something greater than ourselves. Maybe Gilbert was thinking of the late Carl Jung who once said, “Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.”?

When it comes to email marketing, designing for your objectives can be a little maddening. If you do pull from something greater than yourself, and then translate that perfect vision to strategy and paper, you may find that your creative team is not realizing it. So, back and forth you go until there is no time left. A deadline is a deadline. But there is no doubt that the battle for the inbox – and your customer’s attention – requires engaging, actionable designs. What can you do to minimize your suffering and help aid that creative process along?

Know Your Audience

Through personalization, you no doubt consider who you’re addressing with every send. But who really is your audience, and what are they expecting from you? If you have a sizeable database with varying preferences, this is where you can not only practice segmentation, but also employ different designs and messages for each segment. What a great way to make your audience feel like you are personally interested in their needs and goals. Not to mention leveraging different designs for newsletters, promotions, events, and important notifications, as many businesses do.

Get Your Rendering Right

There is nothing worse than a well-designed email that just doesn’t render right. Ask yourself whether your recipients are primarily businesses or consumers? This will determine if the majority is using say, Microsoft Outlook vs. Gmail or Hotmail, or perhaps even receiving their emails on a mobile device – keep in mind that 30% of B-to-B recipients are receiving emails on their mobile devices. Regardless, it is impossible to get an email design, or the content offer itself, to render perfectly in all email clients, so you want to shoot for the top 2 or 3 and then make sure you test – test – test before you launch.

Avoid Graphical Overload

Remember less can be more. It’s especially important not to overuse graphics in an email to the point that images constitute the entire message. It is that much easier to delete an email message if nothing at all captures the consumer’s attention before they have opted to download images. Ask yourself, what are recipients going to see above the fold? Does it stand out? Does it speak to their needs? Call upon Maslow’s hierarchy of needs if you need some help with this.

Content is King

Great designs fall flat without good content. No amount of slick design skilz are going to carry your customer over the line if the message doesn’t add value to the recipient’s life. Subject lines, headlines, offers and calls to action are all crucial to a successful campaign. With one quick glance of these elements a recipient will understand what the value is immediately upon viewing the email. Easier said than done, but if you solidify the messaging first, establishing a strong supporting design can be made much easier.

The Beauty is in the Data

Don’t be afraid to test a few different designs early on in the game. Many email marketers get their template and design down to a point where everyone internally is pleased with the outcome. But no one has any idea what the customer really thinks! Each time a client has pursued A/B testing, it was completely obvious which email design performed the best. Also, don’t be afraid to test offers and subject lines. As you achieve greater relevance it will have a direct result on your clickthrough rates. Yes, you may have to invest more time in creating additional versions at the outset, but the payoff will be greater conversions with the final send.

Break the Rules

The email marketing industry loves to apply various rules and best practices by which we should guide our “online lives”. While it’s great to have a foundation to work from, don’t let best practices become a burden either. At the end of the day, your job is to move the needle more than you did the last time, so don’t be afraid to experiment with the experiential and maybe even defy conventional wisdom.

Considering these factors during the early stages of an email marketing campaign will lessen the suffering and assist you in finding the drive to make email a more effective instrument.

Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp
When: April 25th, 10am – 6pm
Price: $20 Registration (includes lunch)
Where: Reynold’s School of Journalism (UNR)

What is WordCamp?
Wordcamp is a community driven event that brings together casual users and core developers of Wordpress all around the world. Together, passionate bloggers and web developers discuss, share, and learn all that Wordpress has to offer to become even better communicators, designers, developers, journalists and marketers.

If you’re interested in attending, you can register for $20 at http://renotahoewordcamp.com. Check out the website for more information or you can follow @renowordcamp on Twitter!

A few weeks ago we launched a new blog for a local Tahoe adventure guide, Doug Stoup, and his guide service, Ice Axe Expeditions. This week Doug and Michael Mitten are trekking across ice and open water through horrendous weather and conditions to the geographic North Pole.

Adventure for a Cause

This isn’t just an adventure. Doug and Michael are out to raise awareness and support for
Macmillan Cancer Support. For years, Doug has been working to raise awareness for environmental, educational and charitable causes, and has always used technology to get the message out about what he and his clients are experiencing and observing. That has included webcasts, photos, voice recordings, and text updates. But we thought they should kick it up a notch and be more social.

Social Media for Expeditions

Doug has a handheld PDA that links up to a satellite phone so that he can send images and messages back to Ice Axe Headquarters in Truckee Ca. There Karyn Stanley, Ice Axe Managing Director, posts the updates to the website, which we built on the WordPress CMS.

Doug and Michael are also sending Twitter updates of their adventure as they get closer to the pole through the ice and open water of the Arctic Ocean. I’m digging following the challenges and trails of their trek on twitter!

You can listen to audio updates that they call in using the file and media sharing service drop.io. This service receives and records the calls, creates an embeddable audio player, and produces an iTunes subscribeable feed so that you can sync the updates to your phone or ipod every day.

The images Doug and Michael are sending back end up on Flickr.com where you can view, bookmark, share and comment. There are some amazing images there!

And all of this is happening, albeit with a little help from basecamp, as the expedition is unfolding, rather than days or weeks after. While we wish we had been hired to tag along and be the tech geeks for the expedition, once we set it all up and got it live, Doug and Michael are able to easily send updates and Karyn is posting them from home — all on their own! On top of that, they now have multiple avenues for commenting and interaction with their growing community.

If you love adventure, please check out what Doug and Karen have been able to do for Education, Environment and Charity with Ice Axe Expeditions. And please also take a minute to look at the important causes they are working for on the True North and the upcoming Two Feet on the Table (launching in April 11th) expeditions. There’s a lot more content and media we’ll be adding to this site in the coming months.

-Mike

On Wednesday, April 8, our director of search, Eric Morgan will be speaking on the subject of search engine optimization (SEO) in Salt Lake City at the Utah Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS). He will cover reciprocal linking, meta tags, html structure, and the basics of what makes Google (and other search engines) tick. Eric has more than ten years of online marketing experience improving businesses’ search engine rankings and website traffic.

Eric develops comprehensive search engine optimization plans for Twelve Horses’ clients, as well as guides Pay-Per-Click advertising and Persuasion Architecture. He has attained upwards of 3,000% ROI improvements for some clients, which is something a lot of businesses could use right now. And through detailed analytics reviews, call-to-action clarifications, multi-variant testing, customer research, changes in page layouts, and better content generation, he has dramatically improved conversion rates from existing website visitors for many different types of industries.

Eric has a lot of wisdom to share with both beginner and advanced marketing professionals looking to take their online initiatives to the next level, so check him out!

For more information and to register, visit the SMPS website.

Lots of Ski Resorts are using social media to market online, but Krista and Eric, Interactive Marketing Manager at Park City, recognized early on that the web was going to change the way they managed the PCSki message. They stepped in with a blog that they could use to communicate mountain information directly to customers and visitors who needed to know. What they found was an audience with a great desire to consume information and an ever increasing interested in exchanging information.

Since then, they have engaged their audience on Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and even created dedicated channels that communicate directly moms, a core segment of their customers. Their microsite which can be found at smowmamas.com helps mothers plan ski vacations for their families at Park City and gives them specific information to their needs and interests from real moms who write about real experiences. Eric has a great post on ski resorts using Twitter on his personal blog. There are some great comments there about how resorts are using twitter and social media for PR, marketing and engaging customers.

It was also my first time skiing at Park City, and @photo_John, @Jenni_LMT and I were happy to find some steep technical POWDER infested terrain to go along with all the moderate groomers on the mountain. It was a great day!

@pcski on Twitter: 956 Followers, 898 updates, Tweetstats for @pcski.
Park City Blog: 4 authors with profile pics, Video and Flickr slideshows, 19 comments on page 1 for 10 posts.
PCMR on Flickr: 18 sets, 2 friends (wha?), 404 items since NOV 2008.
PCSKI on YouTube: 11 videos, 1531 channel views, 4839 average views / video.

In Social Media it’s good to know what the “gurus” are saying and what the new tools are, but it’s far more important to know what the people in the trenches are doing. Krista, Eric and Park City are a team to watch. What do you think is good or bad about what they are doing? What other examples of Brands using social media effectively are there out there? What new directions are we going to see ski resorts (or any brand for that matter) take in the next year?

-Mike

Note: The video is about HALF the total interview. For the full deal, download the audio, or subscribe in iTunes.

The RGJ is engaged in a lot of interactive efforts to bring community and news content to the public on the web, and a lot of them involve user generated content. Through the years news institutions like the RGJ have had some successes and some failures with this. Beryl says that some of their initial efforts didn’t pan out due to a misunderstanding of what involvement the readers really want to have.

Blogging and social networking are commonly thought of as threats to big J Journalism. But with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceasing publication of the Dead Tree Edition, and the RGJ and Gannett as a whole engaging in blogger relations and online community outreach and management, we are seeing the two become even more mixed. The eventual result will be institutional and grass roots Journalism becoming even more connected and dependent on each other.

With the acquisition in the last year of Metromix and Ripple6, Gannett has jumped into the nitch social network market, and with great initial success. The Reno Metromix site generates traffic well in excess of similar markets, and social communities like MomsLikeMe are bringing people together to interact while providing valuable user analytics for advertisers.

Beryl also laments the fact that the content management system used by rgj.com and most other Gannett papers is not able to give the community of bloggers what they really want to participate. Beryl however suggests a better solution that would allow bloggers to easily participate while exchanging content for readership in a way that bloggers and news institutions can benefit from and be happy with.

In the end we’ll all have to work together to prevent the loss of either the hard and heavy Journalism News institutions with revenue streams, overhead and full-time staffs, as well as the lone gunnman blogger exposing the stories the paper can’t and won’t cover, even if that occasionally includes his nephew’s B-Day party at Chuck-e-cheese.

Thanks Beryl!

-Mike

ps The video is slightly truncated, but the audio version is the full conversation.

What is a podcast?

Video

MidWest Teen Sex Show: A hilariously funny show intended as an educational resource to communicate sex ed topics to teens. It’s smart, clever, creative, and incredibly entertaining.

Slate V: A short news and entertainment show with varied content from Slate Magazine. It’s a quick little bite of info and perfect for the podcast format.

Freeskier: A great podcast, if infrequently published. They show reviews, athlete interviews and full on ski movies made by independent filmmakers. There is some AWESOME ski content there. Check out the “44 days” episode from October, 2008.

Heavenly Ski Resort Mobile Site

From our experience, the needs of a mobile website user can vary. The heavenly mobile site feeds up mostly information in the form of news, conditions and media updates, and resort info and data. The result is an easy access look at the mountain from anywhere your data plan works, whether that is from a South Lake Tahoe hotel WiFi Link or the 3G network in downtown San Francisco.

Mobile Site Features

Standing in line at a South Lake Tahoe starbucks and want to see which part of the mountain has the best (or worst) weather? Click over to the heavenly mobile webcam page and check them all out. 

Want to know the latest Heavenly snow totals? It’s right on the front page with the temp and current weather. Click through to read the daily conditions narrative, and if you need even more click through to view the full report on the main site. 

While you’re chilling in the airport waiting for your connecting flight, keep the stoke burning and check out the latest Heavenly TV videos from the terminal over the free airport WiFi. The blog page also features more content from Twitter and the Heavenly Blog so you can stay up on the latest wherever you are.

Click “Info” and you’ll find a simple text list of information links for Conditions, Directions, Roads, Tickets, Lodging, Ski School, Trail Map and Contact. It’s all really simple and loads up quickly. The “Roads” link on the info page takes advantage of nvroads.mobi and the CalTrans mobile road info search page. 

Tahoe Mobile Sites

Destinations Showcase Conference & Expos are the meeting industry’s largest forums exclusively bringing attending corporate, government, association, and independent meeting planners together with exhibiting destination marketing organizations (DMOs and CVBs) from the U.S. and beyond.

The details of David’s presentation are:

 Meeting Expectations with Greater Integration & Multi-Channel Marketing Programs.

Sponsored by MPI
Never before have there been so many technology-based tools and strategies available to meeting planners. Never before has there been so much confusion and consternation on where, when, what, and how to use them. Compounding the challenge is the disparities between what “IT and Operations” leaders feel are appropriate, and what you need at your fingertips today.

In this session, David LaPlante, CEO of online brand marketing and messaging technology company, Twelve Horses will share with you stories and strategies of how to “sell technology” to your management and what strategies are having a meaningful and competitive impact today.

In this session, you’ll learn about:

• Comprehensive solutions for integrating and automating.

• What new technologies successful and leading meeting planners are relying on.

• How to sell the adoption of new technology to your management.

• Avoiding common pitfalls of implementing new technology.

• Proven strategies for building a better online collaboration.

• Leveraging latent and persistent online conversations to drive greater attendance and interaction.

• Deriving new revenue streams for your events with new technologies.

Once again, if you are planning on attending, please look for us and say hi or leave a comment below. We look forward to seeing you there!

One of our SEO clients, Setpoint Systems, has been producing a video podcast for the last few months. It’s not high production, or high gloss, but it is pretty high on interesting content and info about the busness and economic issues that affect their operations and profitability.

A few months back i was really happy to see their video on the “Financial Crisis” and who is to blame. It was simple, and easy to understand, and I’ve gone back to it a number of times and sent the link to friends and family.

Now they have a new video out discussing the weekly financial health and wellbeing of their company and how they go about determining it. Clark Carlile and Joe Knight even discuss their gross and net profit for the week with actual numbers.

It’s a great little podcast! It’s funny, informative, personal and useful. It makes the people seem like people you’d want to work for or do business with. Since we know them we already knew that, but as a strategic communications tool, it’s a great example of a business being real, and talking about what they love to do.

About Setpoint Systems:

Since 1992 Setpoint Systems, Inc. has delivered industrial automation equipment to manufacturers for testing, inspection, or assembly. These machines are designed following the Toyota Production System philosophy for lean automation. Setpoint designs, programs, fabricates, and assembles machines that help businesses become more efficient in their daily operations and improves the consistency of their product.

Such was the case a few weeks ago when I got a taste of “excellentsalmon” and a random connection over chat…

I was working remote when a chat window from “excellentsalmon” popped up posing the question, “wouldn’t it be cool to play with a kitten the size of an elephant?” I thought for a minute. I had a couple other chat windows open a phone call pending, other people in the room and an event to get to in the next half hour. But I responded with, “Think of the size of the cat box!”

The conversation started a little rocky. Each of us figuring out slowly that an unknown third party had somehow connected us, that i was in pacific time and he was in Central Time and that neither of us was a spammer or malicious weirdo. At first i thought it might be a cosmic connection to the future, but being only a few hours different that wasn’t a significant finding.

I did a twitter and google search on “excellentsalmon” and found one tweet and blog post about a previous incident. In both cases the person assumed it was spam and the conversation didn’t end well. Then I got followed by @caylorb. My chat buddy was on twitter! How cool is that! So we ended the conversation, i saved screen grabs of the chat and we went about our lives.

But here’s the interesting thing. I’ve actually found value in @caylorb on twitter. We’ve pinged back and forth several times. He’s recommended music that I’ve ended up downloading and liking. He’s funny and seems to think i’m funny, he does a video podcast on tech and social media and is into web video. So through a random mischievous chat hack, I’ve made valuable social media contact.

In my mind, and this won’t surprise people who know me, this shows the power of randomness, the usefulness of mischief and, most importantly, the value in taking each conversation at something other than face value. In business and in life, you can loose out on good opportunities by judging situations and people on what they seem to be at first.

This was a small simple event that has continued to inspire me. The connections we have with people are usually so linear. I know bob, who knows Ryan, who knows Martin from another job who i know from an interview 10 years ago… That’s great. They always say that it’s not so much what you know, but who you know.

But how often does the line jump so far outside your sphere? How do you get outside your network and find ideas and people you never would have seen? Just another example of Twitter providing value in meaningful exchange of ideas and social media tools acting as communication hubs and facilitating connections.

And all you have to do is take the time to answer the question…

-M

Read the whole chat.

Chat client: Digsby

Email account: gmail or yahoo
Username: excellentsalmon, ignorantsalmon (more than once?)
Other: i have the digsby chat widget on facebook.
Related links: http://groups.diigo.com/groups/salmon-chat

In the A.M. it was with Pro Sports/College Athletics Mini Conference. The group was mostly ticketing directors and box office managers from the MLB, NFL, NBA and colleges, but had vendors like Tickets.com, Ticketmaster, Veritix and of course Twelve Horses. The “Sports Guys” are relatively new for INTIX (last few years) but absolutely came out in significant, if not the majority numbers.  Topics ranged from ticket printing, to print@home, box office logistics etc. There definitely was an underlying consensus around the down economy and how to continue to maintain attendance levels. The tactics that put butts in seats and performed were, deferred payment plans, payment installments and franchises using financing vendors that extended credit to purchasers who in turn paid over time. Groups that adopted these practices (US & Foreign) were reporting anywhere from 15% to 25% bumps in their ticket sales. I would say when your spending $1,500 to $10,000 on season tickets payment plans definitely would help. Great session with LOTS of open collaboration.

Later in the day I went to the “Breakout Sessions for Non-Sports Topics – College & University PACs” (Performing Arts Centers), The “Artsy” side to see what they were spending time and energies on. Because most of these organizations are non-profit or extensions of state agencies, “Doing more with less” was a significant topic. Also how to incentivize students to use these amenities and facilities. While there were not any commonalities in the tactics these groups were using, like with the Sports guys, there were lots of small ways that add up. Bundling of the entertainment and then food was a big one. We all like to eat right! I think the one I found the most profound was around the perception of value for these tickets. Basically if tickets are given away to students, the perception is they don’t have any value. But! If tickets were packaged as a student wide activity fees (everyone pays) or charged for, even if only a few dollars, then attendance went up. Perception of value, just like perception of brand, was a huge factor. Again LOTS of open collaboration and sharing of ideas.

Real. Pure. Authentic.

Three words that Alpine is known for. Three words that have helped mold a website, guide blog posts and continually increase web traffic to keep sales steady despite a slow economy and a late starting season. Of course, it isn’t just the words, but the translation of these words across multiple channels that are bringing them continued success.

Real Communications

Alpine maintains a constant stream of video, photography, blog posts, as well as events and promotions to help drive home those three key tenets of their brand and increase conversions through search engine optimization and stronger relationships with their customers.  Many companies view social channels like Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools in the same way they view a print ad or TV spot. But the users of these social networks simply won’t allow it.

Studies have proven that people are tolerant of advertising in exchange for good content. The same goes for the Web. But no one is willing to follow a company on Twitter if the majority of their tweets offer no discernible value and are purely promotional. It is a tough concept for many to understand, and spending two hours a day keeping up with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr is a hard concept to swallow. If you do it well the results are quite rewarding, but you must first have a good base.

Pure Design

Every good online strategy starts with a home base, a place where all the information is stored and transactions can be facilitated. Because of this, websites and their accompanying databases serve as the most important interaction points in the online marketing mix. But many websites end up overflowing with too many promotions and special offers competing for precious real estate on the homepage. Not the case with Alpine. Instead, they use texturing, leverage terminology like The Blogosphere, The Haps and The A-list, and utilize image-based navigation with animation. The end results is a better use of graphics and messaging that support one another in order to produce the desired conversion. But how do you get new customers to the website, and once you do, how do you keep them coming back?

Authenticity

Many companies choose to portray only the best about themselves on the web. They remove negative comments from their blog and they push the same print and TV messages across all available channels. But there is nothing real or pure about that. Alpine embraces the negative and uses it to stay authentic. They don’t lower their voice when bad weather and lift holds hit, they don’t produce video that is just a smaller version of their TV ads, and they definitely don’t consider their website to be an online brochure. Instead, they inform their customer. They send twitters when the lifts are on hold, they tell you to sleep in and wait for the avalanche crew to blast the hill before heading up, and they let negative comments spark greater conversation on their blog. These tactics might make the average marketer nervous and feel as if they are not in control, but in many ways they already aren’t, and the only way to help guide the brand forward is by openly engaging with the consumer and interacting well.

The Stats

In the month of December, with much less snow fall and much harder economic times, Alpine has seen an increase in overall traffic to their website by 25%. Web analytics show that this increase in traffic has much to do with their Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and blogging activities. Since the redesign of the website, Alpine has also seen a 19% increase in email subscribers and a 22% increase in text messaging subscribers.

Of course, we can’t all be ski resorts. Design, messaging, and communication channels are going to vary for different industries. Nevertheless, Alpine serves a great example of how we can all benefit from a multi-channel marketing mix that stems from a well-constructed brand that delivers on its promises and keeps it real.

A web widget is best explained as a mini-application that runs on a web page. Bloggers use widgets to update their content, such as a twitter feed. Financial institutions use widgets to add value to a users’ experience such as providing a currency converter.  Other businesses use widgets to push time-sensitive promotions or extend their services on other sites, such as Google maps.

Recently, Twelve Horses developed a custom Flash widget to help increase a client’s services. Have you ever traveled to a distant place and wanted to know what there was to do? Our client, BeDynamic, provides content for event/venue information across major cities for travel-oriented businesses who are continually, answering the traveler’s question, “What’s to do?”

The interactive and extensible widget allows BeDynamic to install the widget on their client websites. This permits BeDynamic to easily share its event data with their travel partners and push ticket sales.

Visitors go to a client website, such as an airline, and search through the widget for local events. If the person finds an event that they are interested in, the person can buy tickets to the event, map the venue location, or build an itinerary that is then emailed to the user.

The widget works off of BeDynamic’s XML event data. The XML feeds the widget, which organizes and displays this information based off the XML event category. Also through a configurable XML file, the widget’s design and featured city can easily be managed by BeDynamic. Therefore, if an airline company or convention and visitors bureau wants to use their widget, BeDynamic can install this application on their client’s site to easily match their brand.

A separate, but similar widget was developed to show “Featured Events” on the BeDynamic site as well. The feed randomly displays featured events in the XML files, showing ticket and event data for different locations. This helps communicate the type of event data that BeDynamic could provide for a potential client.

 If you are looking for another way to engage your users or learn more about them, a widget is the way to go. A widget adds new functionality to a site and improves the user’s experience.

Best practices suggest every marketing budget should include a line item for usability testing. But what exactly is usability testing? When do you employ it? And how and where do you start?

What is Usability Testing?
The goal of usability testing is to measure your product’s ability to complete or accomplish its intended function or purpose – basically, to affirm whether or not you are truly building your product with your end-user in mind. A few usability goals when building a web site may include:

• Understanding how different visitor types look for information
• Collecting feedback on the types of services/solutions/products your customers might look for
• Getting responses on the tone and amount of information you supply
• Identifying preferred information architecture, terminology and design for your target audience(s)

When Should You Use Usability Testing?
Usability testing is best employed early on in your effort, preferably at the wireframing phase, or at minimum to test initial design prototypes. Many marketers who use testing in their build process do so to validate their efforts after the effort is already completed. There are several challenges with this approach. What if the feedback you receive shows you may need to consider major design, navigation or content rework? Do you still have the time, or the budget, to execute such changes?

With usability testing, you hear straight from the user the problems they’re encountering with your product, helping you identify problems and devise solutions before you introduce your product to your valued customer. This saves you and your customer from a potentially very big headache.

How does Usability Testing Work?
Usability measures four core areas¹– performance, accuracy, recall and emotional response. Let’s consider a session focused on reviewing a new web site.

• Performance: How much time, and how many steps, did it take your site visitor to finish a task? To find a product or sign up for a newsletter? 
• Accuracy: How many mistakes did the user make? And were they able to get back on track with the right direction? Or does the error require changes to your site?
• Recall: How much did the person remember after the testing?
• Emotional response: Was your test subject confident in their abilities to complete the task at the end of the session? Were they stressed? How did they feel about their experience with your site?

To conduct a usability test, first, a scenario is created. Perhaps you identify trouble or problem areas you’d like greater insight into. Then, a series of tasks to complete the scenario is created that move users through the site to identify if those problem areas are, in fact, issues and to what degree. Throughout the session, users are prompted to provide their feedback on potential solutions.

By the end of the session, you should know more about whether or not the naming conventions used on the site, the navigation structure and the site design will meet your user’s needs, or if it needs revisiting. You can also glean feedback on the user’s expectations of your site and if it did or did not meet them. 

How and Where do I Start?
Sometimes the hardest part of usability is determining how and where to start. There are a variety of methods – from one on one interviews to focus groups, to individual sessions to surveys – that you can employ. And while many companies try to take on the task of usability themselves, they are not always experts in the user experience arena. Determining what you need and how to best attain the results you seek can be a daunting task.

There are experts in this field that can make usability a turnkey operation for you and direct you down the shortest (and most affordable) path to getting there. One expert in the field, User Insight, is both a partner and client of Twelve Horses. Their collective experience of over 20 years of user experience testing makes them one of the top 3 usability firms in the U.S., as rated by Forrester. They offer a variety of services that can help you ensure that your product or site development effort is on the right track, or to determine next steps for your existing efforts.

1 Nielsen, J. (1994). Usability Engineering, Academic Press Inc.

Spam is on the rise and has been since its origin. It was recently reported[1] that close to 200 Billion spam email messages are sent each day – approximately 90% of the world’s email. To combat this, Internet and email providers aggressively monitor their networks for user complaints, stale data, and malicious content. They establish reputation models that identify if an email sender is legitimate or not, and then use this data to determine whether to deliver, bulk, or block incoming messages.

Companies that are in the business of sending email marketing messages find themselves in a position where they are trying to send large volumes of legitimate email, but at the same time not look like a spammer. To help bridge this perception gap a number of email sender best practices have been developed and recommended by the email industry at large. These best practices help email senders to identify themselves as legitimate companies, sending legitimate email to recipients that have requested it.

There are some fundamental steps you need to take on your own, but then there are also several services your ESP should provide.

Accountability

Email providers continually monitor their inbound mail to determine what messages are legitimate and don’t cause user complaints. To that end, there are a number of steps a sender can do to look as legitimate and authentic as possible:

1. Authenticate email with the authentication standards available (i.e SPF, Sender ID, DomainKeys, DKIM).
2. Ensure that WHOIS information for the sending domain is correct and accessible. Don’t mask this information using domain privacy services.
3. Ensure that sending IP addresses have valid and correct reverse DNS.
4. Use a dedicated sending IP address.
5. Add verbiage to the top of the message asking the recipient to add the sender email address to their address book.
6. Provide a link to an online version of the email.
7. Make unsubscribing obvious and easy.

If you are not sure whether your ESP provides these services then now is the time to ask. Nevertheless, not all deliverability services come automatically, and some take a little more effort on your part. But it is worth it.

Project Your Brand

Companies often make the mistake of not leading with their brand when they send email messages. Use the “from” field and subject line to distinguish your company, and live text in the preview pane to again communicate who the sender is. Be very aware of how your emails appear before images are downloaded by the recipient’s email client, and when in doubt setup and test send to multiple email clients from Gmail to Microsoft Outlook.

Maintain a Two-Way Dialogue

It is important that you give your recipients an easy means of responding. If you can email them then they can email you. Many times recipients will simply reply to the original senders address, so be sure to monitor those requests. It also helps to clearly provide a “Contact Us” link, or a preferred “reply to” address. Another means of leveraging the conversation is to point your email communications back to a company sponsored blog or forum.

List Hygiene and Maintenance

In order to maintain good deliverability rates, it is important that you keep your email lists up to date. The best means of doing this is to be sure you email everyone on your list at least once every 90 days. Senders should keep historical data on subscription signups, and quarantine email addresses that bounce, or are returned as not deliverable.

The plague of Spam has taught society to not trust email. As such, it is a continual uphill battle for legitimate senders to get their email delivered successfully. Nevertheless, if you take these steps it will go a long way to demonstrate accountability and maintain email marketing as one of the most effective tools to reach your current and potential customers.

[1] “Cisco Report Spotlights Worldwide Cyber Security Threats”, http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_121508.html

Rock On Amy!

Here a just some of the clients Amy has helped craft web and online marketing initiatives:

When it comes time for a new website design, many companies simply trust their perspective, or even just the web dev shop they selected, to properly design and architect the navigation and layout of their website. They don’t take into account the usability of the website from the customer’s perspective. Skipping this step can equate to user frustrations, deviations or disjointed paths through the site, and ultimately poor conversions resulting in lost revenue.

Don’t make this mistake!

Web analytics and recorded on-site sessions can tell you a lot, but it is only half the picture. User Insight provides businesses with extensive usability testing to ensure everything from branding and navigation to terminology and messaging is spot on.

Of course, if User Insight is going to redesign their own website they need to practice what they preach.

Before embarking upon the redesign of User Insight’s website, Twelve Horses provided them with several different wireframes to test. They set up user paths equivalent to A/B testing and recorded and eventually incorporated the feedback. For a complete explanation, please visit their website for an informative breakdown.

Needless to say, this process saved considerable time and dollars in the design phase, and the end result is a website that gives the customer what they want instead of what we/they think they need.

At the same time we’re hard core geeks, to varying degrees, and we love the gadgets and code almost as much as the snow! (actual results may vary). And we also are really into blogs, twitter, forums and online magazines and video. So it was really awesome to partner with Heavenly to run the first annual Tahoe Snowcial last weekend.

What is Snowcial? Well you could check the buzz around it on twitter, check out the photos on Flickr, and the videos on Viddler, but that might not get you the whole way there…

Social media, online storytelling, and snow sports are all about interaction, collaboration and having fun with friends. So Snowcial was a natural fit once all these guys got in the same place to have some fun. Our original vision included top professionals in social and online media, snow sports media and athletes getting together to talk shop, learn from each other and get some, rather a TON, of turns in on the mountain. It went down perfectly!

We had Ray Sidney pummeling Aaron Lowe, Paul D, and Abe Cunningham at the poker tournament. We had John Shafer talking about the birth of online user generated communities with Pete Blackshaw while touring the mountain. I saw Eugene Lee and Brian Hafer talking with Greg Prosl. It was great to get some of our favorite people in tech, web and snow sports talking together about working together and regrouping again for Snowcial next year.

It was great to meet all of you and see how the worlds of social media, snow sports and online storytelling come together and hit the slopes.

What does Tahoe Snowcial have in store for next year? Plans are still hazy, but everyone was stoked to come back and bring all their friends, and Abe tentatively promised a private concert from the Deftones!

So stay tuned…

-Mike

PS As Brian mentioned int he video, HUGE props and thanks to Heavenly for treating the group so well. Russ Pecoraro and Aimi Xistra organized a great event and we were all super impressed and had a great time!

Also thanks to sponsors Mont Bleu Resort who set us up in some great rooms with jacuzzi tubs and Solscice who hooked us up with some sweet jackets!

Product development and entering a new market can be a lot like judo. According to Wikipedia, Judo is “characterized by the indirect application of force to defeat an opponent. More specifically, it is the principle of using one’s opponent’s strength against him and adapting well to changing circumstances.”

This strategy is at the heart of our new ticketing platform.

Give the interview a listen.

FYI – To listen to the podcast via Utah Daily Pulse, you may have to exclusively use Internet Explorer.

Audio: CouchCast – Steve Spencer of Twelve Horses

This week on the CouchCast we are excited to talk with Steve Spencer, President and CTO of Twelve Horses, a Reno Nevada company with an office in Draper Utah.

Twelve Horses recently released a new product called Twelve Horses Ticketing. During our interview, Steve talks about why the company felt this was a market worth going after, even when it’s dominated by giants like TicketMaster, StubHub and Tix. The company is focusing on a market segment they feel has been overlooked by the big players, and priced out of for the small to medium sized business.

Twelve Horses is a full-service relationship marketing and messaging company specializing in designing interactive communication solutions. Utah is proud to have this company in it’s community. To find out more about Twelve Horses and what they can do for you, please visit their web site at http://twelvehorses.com.

In the past year, we have worked very hard to bring to the market place an innovative new ticketing system that provides airline quality ticketing for medium-sized businesses. While there are quite a few masters of ticketing out there, we feel that we have a unique perspective and position in the electronic ticketing space.

A few things we made sure to address:

• Price: We found current pricing to be ridiculous and borderline monopolistic.
• Integration: Ticketing should not be a closed system and instead play nicely with other platforms like, for example, Salesforce.com.
• Mobile: There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to get a ticket to your mobile phone.
• Customer Service: We are getting rid of frustratingly long and unnecessary Will Call lines.
• Branding: It should be your branding on all customer touch points including:
• Web
• Email
• Mobile
• Printed Tickets
• Kiosks
• Security: Can you believe an airline was not encrypting credit card information?
• Marketing Meets Operations: Managing and implementing multi-channel ticketing should not be confined by complex systems but instead be easy to use.
• And much more in regards to ticketing, fulfillment, customer service, and reporting.

Needless to say, we hope to be chosen in our category. As you can see below, winners will be announced on January 28th. Wish us luck!

Utah Business and Wasatch Digital iQ are pleased to announce the finalists of the 2009 IQ Awards, the second annual innovation recognition program that highlights some of the most exciting and innovative products, processes and procedures coming out of Utah’s bright minds.

This year, 30 exceptional companies were selected as finalists in nine categories, recognizing the most innovative as well as creative ideas and solutions in technology. These tech-savvy businesses are pioneering a space in their industries – or creating a whole new one. Join us in saluting the innovations that will change the way the world lives, thinks and works.

The finalists will be featured in the February 2009 issue of the magazine and the winners will be announced at a luncheon sponsored by Utah Business on January 28. For more information or to register for the event, please visit www.events.utahbusiness.com.

The exhibition, “Between Grass and Sky,” features craft work, art and poetry meant to coincide with the 25th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV in January. If you are traveling to the event, be sure to check out the exhibit in Reno at the Nevada Museum of Art as part of your trip. Nik is very interested in themes and imagery of the American West as well as the contrast and interplay with more modern and evolving themes, and he has designed an exhibition which will act as a commentary on that contrast.

This podcast was recorded in Josef’s Vienna Bakery and Café at 933 W. Moana Lane. This is one of the best places for breakfast and coffee in Reno and our Favorite. They have great coffee, pastries, food and WIFI! Thank You!

-Mike

Quality Design = Visual + Technical + Creativity

A while back we launched a new legal website for Kummer Kaempfer, and they were kind enough to submit it as part of the PRSA Las Vegas Valley Chapter’s annual Pinnacle Awards. They snagged a few awards in the categories of Internet Sites, Electronic Newsletter, and News Release. Nice work ladies and gents!

How many people do you think search for and make a judgment about a law firm based on the integrity of their website?

To all of you out there in the blogosphere and beyond, we at Twelve Horses would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays!

In addition, we have a little confession to make. This year we didn’t do a catchy holiday marketing campaign, an interactive card, or donate a lot of money to charities. Why you may ask?

We’ve been working our butts off on client projects, as well as improving our offerings and building new products.

While all you may get for Christmas is a pink bunny suit, we got a stylish new Blog Design and Events site. Also under our tree is plenty of continuous process improvement to our core products, namely the Twelve Horses Ticketing platform, which was recently topped off with a big, bright red bow. I think Mike’s partial to the new wide-angle head cam and 5 feet of fresh powder in the Sierras, but now we are just rubbing it in.

But the other thing to mention is that we don’t believe giving back is reserved for just one part of the year. Our management team and staff are actively engaged in many different community organizations with purpose of improving education, environment, and the economy. As examples, check out our Philanthropy page, or read about our COO recently receiving the “Spirit Award” from the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Of course, if you did choose to give back over the holidays then Thank You! You surely made the world a better place for all of us. And if you could just do one more thing it would most appreciated.

Pray for Snow!

And even though I have to shell out a pretty penny when you take into account the babysitter, food, tickets, etc, there is one thing that inevitably irks me to no end – excessive ticket fees. Why do I have to pay another 25-30% on top of what the ticket costs? And “convenience fee”? For what? Great master of tickets didn’t find me a babysitter or convince my wife that we should go!

That’s why I was completely behind Twelve Horses’ initiative to develop their own ticketing system.

The ticketing industry is in need of a major overhaul.

75-90% of the market is run by 2 entities. You know who they are. Not only that, these entities have been known to command upwards of 25-35% of a venue’s total ticketing revenue. Their convenience fee model (and the model many copy cats have duplicated) often takes a minimum fee plus a percentage. I just can’t understand why these guys get a larger fee for selling a $250 as they do for a $20 ticket. Plus, the whole “convenience fee” is only convenient for the ticketing system provider collecting it, and definitely does not endear the purchaser to them or the venue they are servicing. 

The openness of these systems is a huge pain point as well. They all need to take a lesson from the SaaS and web development revolution. Open standards and plenty of interoperability is just what the doctor ordered. Think about all the travel portals and concierges that need to sell tickets from different venues and providers. It’s just better for the consumer to allow these exchanges. I think you will see the industry go through a standardization to accommodate this in the future.

And for all you venue and event management people out there, ask yourself why these big ticketing providers should get their branding material all over your event? Why can’t you control the branding and even throw in a few sponsors’ branding as well?

For these reasons, and many others, Twelve Horses has launched its own ticketing platform. We are embracing the ideals of fairness, openness and control. Give me a shout, I’d be happy to show it to you…

Automatic will be releasing WordPress 2.7 in the next few days. This will be a very significant upgrade for quite a few reasons. One of which makes me very very excited. Automatic Upgrades! Not only is it an important security upgrade, but it also has the potential of making future upgrades painless and far less time consuming for both Twelve Horses and our clients. The first thing everyone will notice is that the Administration area has received a major overhaul. The navigation menu appears to have taken on a more classic CMS design, and is now on the left side with collapsible menus. The Dashboard is now customizable with drag and drop widgets including a simple WYSIWYG quick post widget. Plugins now have a “Search and Install” feature built in, so you don’t need SFTP access to install your FlickrRSS and wptwitter plugins. Like I said, there is also the new Automatic Upgrade tool. A feature I cannot wait to test and use in the future!

One personal reason why I posted most of the email verbatim is because I find it quite amusing. IT get excited about something?!? Ha! Shows you how much we all love Wordpress.

Props to the Wordpress crew for this excellent video detailing its launch. It is soooo Matt Mullenweg with the jazz theme.

Planning conferences and tradeshows is big business, and there are accredited meeting planners or CMPs who specialize in architecting very complex and multi-faceted events. As attendees, we often take conferences and events for granted, but behind the scenes these meeting professionals are managing a myriad of tasks from:

• Scheduling
• Location
• Hotel & Venue
• Transportation
• Packages
• Bids & Contracts
• Audio & Visual Equipment
• Online Marketing
• Database Management
• Meetups
• Follow-up Surveys
• And the list goes on…

Needless to say, there is a lot of room for things to go wrong in a BIG way, or for something simple to get overlooked. Fortunately, a lot of this process can and is automated.

Destination Marketing

Destination marketing clients like Monterey, America’s Adventure Place, and City of Henderson really strive to provide a seamless solution for their sales teams as they service the requests of meeting planners from all over the globe. After all, these folks are competing against countless different locations to attract that next big event. They need to rely on an effective means of delivering the required information and documentation, as well as recording data.

Making use of web technology to provide front-end information for meeting planners like videos and virtual tours, location options and specifications, and exciting activities for conference attendees to do when they are not meeting is just one part of it. On the back-end there is both the routing and response of RFPs, as well as receiving and recording signed contracts and valuable feedback.

The destination’s sales team work closely with meeting planners to tailor the event and make sure they are getting the most out of it. When this particular client hopefully returns the next year, they need to remember prices, attendance, problems, successes and so on.

If a particular meeting planner decides to go with another destination the organization needs to know why so they can address problems and improve their experience – they need a process in place to request and record valuable feedback. Furthermore, what happens if one particular sales rep leaves? It is imperative that he organization have centralized, integrated access to all of this information.

Think about dealing with all of this over the course of many years and hundreds of thousands of different events, meeting planners, and sales reps. That’s a lot of data!

Now let’s look at it from the side of meeting planners.

Meeting Planners

I’ve done my fair share of event marketing and management, but I was interested in hearing what someone else had to say in regards to the challenges of meeting planning. Therefore, I reached out to Vicki Hawarden, vice president of knowledge management and events for Meeting Professionals International (MPI) to ask two questions:

1. What are the biggest challenges meeting planners face when it comes to using web technology to orchestrate a successful event?
2. How much of a role does social media play for meeting planners, and if it is significant, what are the benefits and problems?

She was kind enough to answer, and here is the response:

1. To me, the biggest challenge is integration. So many software programs and technology vendors offer solutions to one or more pieces of the puzzle, but few of the solutions are comprehensive. And if they were comprehensive, it would be a little scary to put so many eggs into one technology basket. So for me, the challenge has always been how to balance our supplier solutions so we get the best from each partner, without excessive overlap or without creating difficulties with disparate systems talking to each other. For example, suppose we want to allow our speakers to submit content on-line, push that to our community, let attendees interact with speakers or create their own unique agendas, plus input exhibitor appointments into that schedule. We could work on this project with a content vendor, our audio visual company, our on-line exhibit software or a combination thereof. It’s hard to know what will be easiest to implement and provide the most seamless and user friendly results.
2. Social media is probably not a big issue, yet, for many planners. But given how interconnected we are all becoming, and how easy it is to use the new social media on our cell phones, I’m sure it will become an issue sooner than later. I’ve grown used to staying in touch with my friends and associates through Facebook, and it would greatly enhance my meeting experience to have this same connectivity with peers, speakers, potential suppliers and so on. The trick is to provide something easy to use that’s not intrusive, and the choices are confusing at the moment. Again, there are so many features to evaluate, and without experimentation, it’s hard to know which ones will really be a hit with attendees. MPI is experimenting with different types of social media tools at our MeetDifferent conference in February, in Atlanta, and the whole point is that MPI will try out some options so meeting planners can experience the results.

I couldn’t agree more with Vicki’s response to the first question. It is important for your organization to align itself with vendors that play nicely with other platforms, or choose one company that provides a suite of systems that address your needs. My vote would be the latter because it will save you an excessive amount of (no pun intended) meetings communicating the same requirements over and over again and dealing with different individuals.

When it comes to second response, I will take the opportunity to interject some recent personal experience. Not too long ago I conducted a follow-up survey asking attendees how they heard about the event. The overwhelming response was Word-of-Mouth. Now I know that cannot be true because of the location it was held in and the other questions asked. Furthermore, when I looked back at the analytics I saw a good amount of traffic coming from places like Twitter, Facebook, and the blog. This is interesting because it shows that discussion of the event had became such a part of the online conversation that in hindsight attendees believed they simply heard about it. Combine this with some of the onsite event Twitter apps we’ve seen in use, Facebook groups, YouTube video campaigns, Flickr views, friends feeds and RSS readers, it starts to add up to an even greater event experience.

After all, don’t we want folks to come to our next event?

Here is a little video of the event.

And some pics:

This Thursday Mike will join Stanley Hainsworth on stage at The Depot in downtown Salt Lake City for a branding symposium focused on how to translate and transform brands online. If you are wondering whether you’ll enjoy it, I can promise you that it will be like a conference, but thankfully not a conference.

Building up to the event, Mike took some time to talk with the UtahPulse about some of what you might expect from attending. Here is the interview in its entirety, but you might prefer to listen to the podcast recording on their website.

Brand Evolution: Mike Bonifer

Any good businessperson should be able to improvise. The best improvisers are good listeners. So says Mike Bonifer, author of Game Changers and co-founder of a company by the same name. “I think it all begins with an understanding that we are brands who perform for the marketplace. Everyone has a vested interest in listening.”

Bonifer says the immediacy of today’s business environment, with blogs, microblogs and social networking, makes being able to improvise important. “Let’s just contrast it with scripting. Scripted behaviors are, by their very nature, about something you want to happen, and it’s almost like you envision it and you write about it after the fact. Stories and the narrative form are designed to chronicle something that’s already happened. So, you’re imagining that something has already happened, and then you go out with the script and try to make it come true.”

Bonifer says that game plan worked when the communication channels available were limited, but no more. “With things happening so quickly today, there is no time to script for every scenario, and by the time you’ve scripted to accommodate a certain scenario, that scenario has already evolved and changed. The script is no longer applicable. What do you do? You improvise your narrative, and improvisation is the discipline that lets you do that in a way that makes it not just random and ad-hoc, but disciplined and focused.”

If you want an example of businesses that are well suited for an improvisational environment, Bonifer says you need look no farther than Silicon Valley. “I think they understand that there is no dishonor is failure, and there is a tremendous amount of learning that comes with it. That’s why you see venture capitalists step up to the plate repeatedly with people that tried to launch an application or product and have failed, but there’s been a lot of learning and there’s been progress through the effort.”

Contrast the nimbleness of Silicon Valley with companies that are rooted in the industrial age. Bonifer says all companies are discovering the need to be more agile and more improvisational. “On one end you have silicon valley and the technology and media companies that are constantly renewing their relationship with the marketplace. On the other hand you have companies that have been selling the same product since the turn of the century and don’t see a real reason to rock the boat, or don’t see it until it’s too late.”

Stanley was recently interviewed by UtahPulse.com about his experience working with brands like Starbucks, Nike and Lego, as well as his new direction running his own company, Tether Inc. Here is the text interview (below) in its entirety, and you can listen to the podcast interview here at UtahPulse.com.

Also, if you are interested in following the speakers on Twitter or joining up with them on LinkedIn, you may do so here.

He’s overseen all of the creative aspects of Starbucks Coffee. He helped make Nike a global brand. Stanley Hainsworth, who now is the Chief Creative Officer of his own agency, Tether, says he likes to use branding to tell the story of a product. “What I love to do is be a storyteller. Looking at the brand and figuring out what the story is and figuring out from there what’s the best medium for telling that story, whether it’s a new product, a retail experience or a digital experience online, and not being constricted by any preconceptions or mediums.”

Hainsworth will bring that know-how to Brand Evolution 2008. The seminar, sponsored by Twelve Horses, aims to help businesses transform their brands to connect with customers both on and offline.

When working to tell a brand’s story, Hainsworth likes to think of the brand as a person. “The way that you wear your hair, the way that you talk, the way you act, that all defines the way that people think about you. A brand is no different. A brand is perceived in the way it communicates, and the way it looks and the way customers respond to it.”

Taking those human qualities, and using them to create a memorable experience is what it’s all about for Hainsworth. “One of my favorite projects at Nike was a shoe called Presto. It came in 17 different color combinations, it was very iconic and a beautiful shoe. We decided to do something non traditional and rented an art gallery in New York City and put the shoes on the wall and called them art. There was no branding anywhere, we put posters up around town for the “art opening,” invited art critics to the opening. We got huge press and when they shoes went on sale the next month, they sold out everywhere.”

Hainsworth says the way that designers work with products has changed radically with the increasing relevance of online marketing. “No longer are there strictly these graphic designers, or web designers or environmental designers. It’s getting mixed up and it’s really exciting. These designers are able to work in these multiple mediums.”

With millions of blogs, and websites and other online destinations, it’s hard to break through the clutter to tell a story. Hainsworth says it’s a challenge, but not impossible. “I look at everything with the arc of a story and I look at it with the viewers eyes. Whether it’s a play that you’re watching or a piece of music that you’re listening to or a piece of design that you’re looking, it all has a story. It affects is a lot, and I tend to juxtapose a lot of unexpected things together and see what will happen, where it will take me to keep it fresh and not rehash things that have been done before.”

Public television is an important asset for both kids and adults when it comes to education and awareness. Recognizing that the web is another powerful means of connecting your community, KNPB decided to pursue a redesign of their online presence and looked to Twelve Horses to do it.

Before	After

One of their biggest challenges was the organization of content. As you can see from the screenshot of their old website, it was difficult for them to effectively emphasize the most important information and provide intuitive navigation. If you look at the new website, we sought to alleviate this issue with a change in both.

The Flash area in the header and footer make use of a cost-effective and easy-to-use solution via Slideshow Pro. The client simply logs in to their interface and creates albums and upload videos. Once they are done they simply post the xml snippet or make a slight change to the variable in to the content management system and voila, there it is.

Some other things they use our CMS for are:

• Custom Contact Us editor that allows them to select a department or person they want to be contacted and stores the information for future use.
• A Calendar Application that is easily updated and capable of being placed on multiple pages.
• Press Release application for their press room.
• Subscription Management that allows for sign ups to their enewsletter and pushes their information into groups in MessageMaker.
• An iFrame Puller that gives them the ability to paste code from the national PBS organization and pull into the template. (See example)

KNPB was a great client to work with, and we trust their enhanced web presence will help them to further deliver relevant and timely content to the community at large.

Ryan also talked about one of his first projects in national advertising when he worked on the Jared campaign with Subway. Initially, the commercials featured Jared and a voiceover narrator. Ryan had the idea to let Jared speak for himself and that was when the campaign took off.

He also gave some good SoCal insight on Reno and Tahoe as brands and how they interact with each other in the minds of travelers in other parts of the country. Basically, our Sushi is good even by SoCal standards, and the $18.99 All-you-can-eat doesn’t hurt either!

It was great to get the chance to spend time with Ryan and talk branding and advertising with an expert who has worked on major brands like Subway, Olevia, EAetna and Unicef. Their work looks tight and spot on to me.

The local professional associations are stepping up the game in recent months with the AIGA, AMA and A2N2 putting out some national experts like Ryan. Be sure to keep up on the latest speakers and events for the Advertising Association of Northern Nevada.

All of these horsepower podcasts are available and downloadable to your iPod as well. Be sure to click the video subscription button above and get it on your iPod or mobile device for the next time you’re on a car trip, buss ride, or waiting in a long line on Election day!

-Mike

Set in a collaborative environment and designed to get at the heart of questions such as:

How do businesses effectively translate and transform their brands to connect with their customers both online and offline?

How do businesses stay ahead of relentless consumer expectations, and form emotional connections between customers and products.

To answer these questions and more, Stanley Hainsworth, world renowned global creative director for Starbucks, Lego and Nike is joined on stage at The Depot November 13th with fellow digital storyteller and business improvisation visionary Mike Bonifer, and  David LaPlante, entrepreneur, web strategist, and CEO of Twelve Horses.

In 1994, Disney became the first entertainment company to boldly drive its customers to a narrative brand Web experience by launching the Toy Story movie web site under the creative strategy of Mike Bonifer, a move that forever changed branding.

In 1995, David LaPlante launched Lake Tahoe’s first ever ski resort website – skiheavenly.com. Today, Heavenly Mountain Resort ranks number one in skier visits, commands an impressive presence on the web, and delivers its message via video, podcasting, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, email, and more.

In 2004, Stanley Hainsworth left Lego and took the helm of Starbucks as VP-global creative and set in motion transformational creative and design strategies that created the ubiquitous brand of our coffee-shop connected generation today. As stated by AdAge.com, “Stanley Hainsworth put his stamp on nearly every piece of creative at Starbucks; he devised the “brand book” that defines the Lego image; and he helped push Nike into entertainment.”

In addition to gleaning real world branding experience, you will also benefit from a collaborative workshop that takes participants beyond the scripted and linear models of strategy, and challenges them to engage in an improvised branding discussion. The exercise is designed to develop greater emotional intelligence, and push the boundaries of defining a brand.

Come be a part of it!

For more information or to register for Brand Evolution visit events.twelvehorses.com.

When Mockstar Baby approached us with a business strategy similar to that of Steep & Cheap, but instead of outdoor gear you would find great deals on name brand baby gear, we immediately looked towards our Ticketing system as the appropriate solution. While it is typically used for venues, events, and transportation, there was no reason why it couldn’t be used to process last minute deals on baby gear.

Not only does the Twelve Horses Ticketing system give Mockstar a secure payment processing solution, but it also provides an easy to use content management system that allows them to add new products, set pricing, update web pages, and host of other functions including:

• Front-end customer login that allows review of orders
• What orders have been placed.
• Status of orders.
• When it was shipped.

Beyond the back end, the front end of the website itself offers some other very cool online marketing tools.

• There is a Desktop Widget built on Adobe Air that updates customers with the latest steal.
• Email Subscription and forward-to-a-friend functionality for the latest products.
• A Share to Facebook feature that allows Mockstar the ability to cross-promote products on individual Facebook pages.
• A Blog that serves for extended conversation, search engine optimization, and an archival area for products that customers might have missed.
• And of course, Really Simple Syndication for inclusion into your favorite RSS aggregator.

These communication options are all designed to satisfy the varied customers preferences for receiving information. As Mockstar evolves, mobile marketing would be a natural addition, for any one with kids knows that time is of the essence.

Leilani Schweitzer’s story is one of aesthetic. Not only does she bring beauty to the greater community through her work as a designer, but also through her time, charitable contributions, infectious personality, and tireless pursuit to shift the paradigm.

Just this year alone, Leilani launched two very successful initiatives: One involving a life-threatening disease called, hydrocephalus, and then on the other side of the spectrum, the first ever AIGA Chapter in Reno-Tahoe.

Recognizing that the web is a powerful means of reaching large populations of people irrespective of time or place, Leilani decided not only to fund the creation of a better, more efficient and informative website for the Hydrocephalus Association, but also create a community-based website where people impacted by hydrocephalus could share information, tell their stories, and connect with like-minded individuals. This community website came to be known as GabrielsLife.org.

Only a year old, GabrielsLife.org serves as a resource for people all over the world. Individuals come there to share their stories, participate in the forum, create their own blogs, and learn from other people’s experiences so they are better prepared to handle their own.

Leilani is also responsible for helping to successfully launch the first ever Reno-Tahoe chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the place design professionals turn to first to exchange ideas and information, participate in critical analysis and research and advance education and ethical practice. Today, Leilani serves on the Board of Directors and works to bring some of the world’s most accomplished branding experts to educate the design workforce of Reno and Tahoe. This year she will also bring the Elevate Conference to the region, which constitutes more than 150 leading designers from around the country.

And I’m just getting warmed up! The point is, Leilani isn’t afraid to stand up and make a difference.

This picture of her taken at a protest by the RGJ says it all.

To Leilani: Congratulations from all of us at Twelve Horses!

Though that has been around for a number of years, the impressive thing about wordpress is the open source
model and the cool features and updates that keep coming out, incorporating the best of what the community
comes up with.

The cool thing that open source paradigm allows guy like Mullenweg to do is, exactly what they want to
do, for their own reasons and scope. They innovate in creative ways and create products that inspire
culture, are widely popular, and are in the end profitable for the creators and the community. My own
introduction to blogging came from my love of writing and my need to have a format that would allow me
to think in small chunks. Blogs are fairly freeing. They let you focus on the craft of creating content,
not the grit of navigating the digital landscape. As such, the Wordpress motto, “code is poetry” is both
representative and prophetic. Matt, Joseph and the Wordpress team won’t become the Steve Jobs or Bill
Gates of their generation, because what they created and will create will be as much ours as theirs.
The intellectual property is their vision, and their spirit of cooperation to create community driven
software with the end user in mind. Hope you enjoy the video from Matt’s Keynote Address to the group
and the interesting info below about WordPress…

Interesting wordpress facts:

• blogs get 50 to 60 % of traffic from search
• 11.1 million downloads so far in 2008
• 35million new posts this year on wordpress.com
• 4 million per month
• 6.5 billion pageviews
• 230 million unique visitors
• 5 billion spasm were blocked by Akismet and it is 99.925% accurate.

Top Ten Wordpress Plugins:

• cforms
• wp-polls
• WP automatic upgrade
• wp-cache
• wp-db-backuo
• wp.com stats
• nextgen-gallery
• google sitemap generator
• all in one seo pack
• akismet

Great to meet you Matt and see all my SLC peeps, @libel_vox, @Thomallen, @bradbaldwin, @ashbuckles, @cspencer, @thedruidxpawx, @whyisjake, @lauramoncur & @robertmerrill. -Mike

Click To Play

It was no coincidence that Jeffrey came to reno during Hot August Nights. He’s known for photographing cars, muscle cars, motor cycles, “anything with a motor.” See some of his stunning work @ www.congerstudio.com.

-Mike

WordCamp

Our president, Steve Spencer said it well on Utah Tech Spotlight. Wordpress is an incredible story of a business that is more than a business. It is an idea that evolved into a community of users and contributors that has empowered millions of people to communicate and express themselves more effectively and efficiently. It has certainly changed my life, and many of those around me.

So Blog On! And come on down if you are around on Saturday.

When? Saturday 27 September 2008

Where? Novell (1800 Novell Place) Open Source Technology Center in Provo, Utah — Map

Why? Bring together people interested in WordPress, blogging (and the web in general) to talk about what’s possible, where’s it going

Grammar Girl, the podcast, is quick and straightforward, giving you a memorable lesson on English usage and grammar. Each podcast is a few minutes long and deals with one issue. Though some topics are big and annoyingly ambiguous, Mignon keeps it simple by focusing on easy to remember rules and examples from common speech.

I met up with Mignon at Java Jungle in downtown Reno, Nevada. We all have special places where we work well and environments that inspire us, and Mignon does a lot of writing from the funky little coffee shop on the Truckee River.

One thing we are always concerned with as a messaging and marketing company is communication, readability and being able to get a point across. Mignon is all too familiar with the issues that social media and technology create for writing. While deemphasizing voice communication and relying on email, text messages, social media, migroblogging and whatever may come next, we have not only increased the amount of writing we do on a daily basis, but we have created multiple new protocols, paradigms and lexicons to go with them. Add on top of that the need to be concerned with how your writing will be indexed by search engines and you complicate the issue even more.

So while you’re driving to work in the morning plug in the iPod and catch up on your grammar with the Grammar Girl and think about all the writing, reading and listening you do.

Thanks for your time Mignon! It was great to meet you and interview another New York Times Best Selling Author (NYTBSA). If you’re in Reno, even if you’re not a NYTBSA, come see us; we’d love to chat about business, technology and communication.

-Mike

SCI is in the new Warnock Engineering building on the University of Utah Campus. The building was donated by UofU alum, John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe. As we found out, the University of Utah has been an amazing incubator for technology innovators, cultivating the minds–such as John Warnock, Ed Catmull, founder of Pixar, Jim Clark, founder of SGI and Netscape, Alan Kay who invented object oriented programming–behind companies like Adobe, numira biosciences, Rayscale, and others.

Chris’ impressive experience includes:

Director, Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute (SCI).
Co-Director, Center for Integrative Biomedical Computing (NIH NCRR).
Distinguished Professor of Computer Science.
Research Professor of Bioengineering.
Adjunct Professor of Physics.
Faculty Member, Computational Engineering and Science (CES) Program.
Faculty Member, Brain Institute .
Co-Founder, Visual Influence Inc.
Co-Editor, The Visualization Handbook.

It was great talking with Chris and learning how the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute is developing world class technology right here in Utah. If you’re in Utah and you want to talk tech with Steve, stop by our office in Draper or give us a shout.

-Mike

What are you most excited about right now?

It is not any one item, product or industry but technology period. There is a lot of fantastic innovation and discovery going on. I just saw the Space Cube, which is a computer condensed into a 2-inch cube. It has decent memory, USB, VGA output, Linux operating system etc. Something that used to take up a whole room can now easily fit into your hand. A large number of our cell phones have more computing power than NASA had when we went to the moon. There is just a plethora of technological innovations going on out there. Moore’s Law is in full effect for not only hardware but innovation as well. And where I get excited is finding that innovation and bringing it to use.

What changes have you seen in the company since you first started?

I actually have the proud designation of being the first Twelve Horses North America employee going back to when we merged in 2002. It was at that time that we went from being a 12-person web development shop called, Aztech Cyberspace to an international email marketing company…overnight. At first we focused on email software solutions but quickly found that people still need web services and integration; so we made sure those areas had the proper people and resources. We had our MessageMaker platform and Content Management System already, but over the years we developed quite a few more systems (Compliance, Automated Alert Systems, Membership Managment, Ticketing etc.). We went from being a web service company to a software company, to where we are now, which is a full-scale web development company helping automate and streamline all of the above. We have the brains (the people) as well as owning the development and IP for several software platforms.

And it makes perfect sense for us when you look at it from a competitive position. Most interactive companies don’t own their own solutions. They have to go out and find an email provider, a website designer, a content management system. Because we own them we are not limited to some 3rd party’s off-the-shelf feature sets.

What is new in enterprise-level application development?

Different industries are asking for different things. For instance, the financial industry is very focused on security. If they send an email they want to be sure the information in that email is secure. Having data portability is also really important. Sharing information internally, with 3rd parties and vendors, but doing it securely. Also, where the data is actually stored.

We are still very focused on technology systems that allow us to  alleviate physical resources. Figuring out how we can automate and pull the labor out of it so the company can focus on how to make the business better, not just simple execution of processes.

Also, the ability to track data and put together actionable items. Just tracking is no longer enough. Don’t tell me I have 10,000 visitors, but tell me what they want. You not only have to provide insight, but you need to integrate it with multiple applications so you can get more of a holistic and aggregate view.

Tell us about a difficult challenge you’ve recently been faced with?

It is really the people equation. We can’t automate  a solution around people acting differently depending on the variables within a situation. While there is fuzzy logic built into many systems, we can’t really automate a relationship decision, or a decision that is based on loose variables involving the human element.

For instance, clients place value on the relationship – the history, loyalty, and personality – you can’t automate that. We use Salesforce, love Salesforce, and have dedicated employees who only work on Salesforce; but Salesforce cannot go out and meet with a client.

What are you currently working on?

I have taken a very active role in business development because of our recent product developments. For instance, with our CMS system we have done 3 major new releases since the beginning of the year. Going out and talking to our customers is very important. Internally, you can talk to project managers, developers, and designers, and while they can give you great feedback, you have to get the full balance. You’ve got to know what your clients are doing, and what they are struggling with. You need their feedback. If you are not out in front of your customers hearing what their needs are, what their goals are, then you can’t build a great solution. That is how you bring real value.

We have a lot going on particularly with our CMS and supporting application development. The applications are much like plug-ins. For instance, we have a lot of CVB clients, so we have developed a stakeholder application for them. It gives the hotels, eateries and other businesses within the community access to manage content on the CVB’s site. It gives the stakeholder control of their interest and removes the labor component from the CVB.

Also, I’ve been working for quite some time on a ticketing system. The ticketing industry has been going through a lot of changes. Technologies have improved dramatically since the early 90s when many of these original ticketing systems were being built. A lot of old ticketing systems focused on the operational side, but they overlooked the marketing piece of it. Also, if you don’t provide some of that data on what your customers are buying and their demographic information, purchasing habits, etc, then you’ve really falling behind. There is also a lot of opportunity to take these transactions to the mobile environment, both on the payment side as well as using your mobile device as the ticket itself.

What would be your one piece of advice for database and online marketers out there?

Work smarter not harder. Find ways to bring exponential value to your clients both internally and externally. Don’t just implement changes to save a penny but sacrifice your brand by ticking off a client. Also, over the years I’ve seen companies invest a lot of money developing or buying closed systems. But to get into a system that does not take into account the other systems within your company, or integrate with them, is shortsighted. If they don’t play friendly with other companies and other solutions then you should be suspect. Getting locked into these long term contracts with closed system means they basically don’t have to develop new solutions and features and compete for your business as aggressively. That is why companies like Google have done such a great job. Many of their systems are open and continue to add value. They continue to innovate at a breakneck pace.

Custom vs Out-of-the-Box?

A lot of clients think they need a custom solution, but they really don’t. You have to ask, what is the cost vs benefit? Sometimes we have customers that come to us and the solution just doesn’t exist. So we have to determine whether or not it makes sense. An example of that is an economic development authority we recently worked with. They were shopping for an event management solution. We showed them what we could do, as well as what some other competitors were doing. They did a considerable amount of research and after that came back to us. They couldn’t find one that fully integrated with their systems or managed their groups the way they wanted. So we built it; and the ROI has far exceeded their and our expectations.

When TJ is not busy strategizing, scoping, and architecting technology solutions, he can be found playing golf or hanging out with his wife and twin boys. He even on occasion finds a little time for abstract blogging.

This year, though I was invited to the Media Preview of the Great Reno Balloon Race. So I went, and took the video camera with me…

2008 is the 27th annual Great Reno Balloon Race, and they had over 100 balloons and thousands of spectators.

By chance I was assigned to a balloon sponsored by Cathy Blair, owner of Vino100, a little wine shop just down the street from our office. We use that shop frequently for gift baskets or boxes for clients and friends and are always happy with the service and product. Thanks Cathy!

One of the things I mentioned in my blog post about the experience is contrast between some of the other events in Reno that are loud, fast, dangerous and generally have a larger impact on the city. Not that there’s anything wrong with Hot August Nights, or Street Vibrations, or the Air Races, but the balloons are so relaxing, and quiet and slow as the float out of the park and spread out across the skyline @ dawn…

Thanks to the continued support of generous sponsors, the Balloon Race continued as a free event for its 26th year. This year’s Major sponsors include: Wells Fargo Bank, the May Foundation, Silver Legacy Resort Casino, Eldorado Hotel Casino, Harrah’s Reno, Lennar, Shell, Bear Industries, Reno.com, Bonanza Casino, Jack in the Box, Great Basin Internet Services, Communications Installation Services Inc. (C.I.S.) of Reno, KRNV News 4 and KOH Radio. With a special thanks to our underwriters: Club Cal Nevada, Circus Circus Hotel and Casino, Fitzgeralds Casino Hotel, Grand Sierra Resort, IGT, Peppermill Hotel Casino, Sands Regency Casino Hotel, University of Nevada, Nancy Gilbert Attorney at Law and Muckel Anderson CPA’s.

If you missed it this year, check it out next year. Get there early and help launch a balloon. I’d recommend also riding a bike up there as parking can be a major pain. This year the Nevada Bike Coalition set up their Bike Valet.

-Mike

For more great events from the Reno Tahoe Chapter of the AIGA, see renotahoe.aiga.org.

AIGA Online Branding Panel Discussion

(Fade In)

Gene Keenan: That or the concert or whatever and turn that into a participatory experience, using the mobile phone and creating a positive branding experience for the brand with the consumer. And the key to that is creating utility or usefulness for that consumer.

In other words, it’s not about serving up an ad or serving up like a message. It’s about bringing value to that consumer’s life. That’s what’s going to bring, that’s what’s going to make a positive impact on the brand and make a consumer remember that brand for the rest of their life.

Like an example, I haven’t pulled this example out in years, but something we did a long time ago, for Motorola in Times Square, probably like five years ago, we did a simple thing where people could text messages, calls to each other on a board in time square, using their mobile phone. We had 12 marriage proposals in the 24 hours, 36 hours that that board was up.

This is an experience that those people are going to remember for the rest of their lives. It’s a positive brand experience.

David LaPlante: So where do you find your brand inspiration right now, internal, external, what’s got you jazzed up there. Who’s doing good work, what makes your jaw drop and go that’s cool?

Rob Bynder: To me it seems like the question to branding to what end, because it’s easy to have I’m not knocking the kind of stuff you’re doing, because it’s actually really, really cool. But one of the questions I always ask my clients is branding to what end.

Remembering a brand is important, but acting on the brand is really the goal, right? Hopefully people continue to buy Motorola phones or it means something to them.

Gene Keenan: If they continue to make more Motorola phones, which is debatable. (Laughter).

Rob Bynder: You can have that one.

David LaPlante: There’s one we should come back to. Because there’s Motorola at the top of its game the razor, defined the mobile industry. The brand is in the toilet. Let’s save that and come back to that.

Rob Bynder: I think you could say you see that a lot. It’s happening really easy. You could go straight to Apple and say everything they do is golden. They run their brand very well. I can refer to them any time I want to think about how to do something well. I think I can refer to them. Maybe for the last, not all the time. But maybe the last five years.

David LaPLante: Starbucks, you also have to say what you didn’t like about the Starbucks brand.

Stanley Hainsworth: I admire the like you were saying, it’s the brands that have the staying power. Some brands have come out and they made a big hit. And whether their product is differentiating in the marketplace or their advertising is incredible, but it’s the staying power that’s tough for brands.

Brands have been around for 50 years or 30 years and they go through all the cycles. They might have been the industry leader. They might have been the innovator they came out with a product that no one else or did it in a way that no one else did it. But then the competitors or the wannabees, they copy and so how do you continually evolve as a brand? How do you continually reinvent yourself but keep that core that you had intact? Which helped define you in the first place. And one brand that I’ve always admired is Corning. Corning is one you don’t think a lot about as a brand.

But they did dishware, started in 1908 as glassware, innovative glassware is what they started at. Corning is mostly what we know them for, for their glass dishware. Now they make fiberoptic out of glass.

So they kept their core. It’s about innovative glass things, but that’s always been their expertise. But 70% of their business now is in things that didn’t exist five years ago. So they couldn’t have predicted where they’re going to go. And so I admire brands like that that can stay alive and keep reinventing themselves and a company like Starbucks is in that point right now.

How do they reinvent themselves? They’re going through a tough time right now. I was at Nike during two big lay offs and things looked very dire for a while there. That’s when Reebok was a big competitor. They came out with remember the white aerobic shoes. That was like a huge thing. (Laughter) and Nike missed that whole boat. They smeared that.

So Puma was huge. Where is Puma now?

Gene Keenan: Everywhere.

Stanley Hainsworth: So admire those brands that know who they are, that have defined their core and are able to keep that core intact while continually tacking with the wind as it moves.

Rob Bynder: I think related to that is the ability to know that there’s a difference between a superficial aspect of a brand and really maintaining their brand. Whereas, I don’t want to jump the gun on the whole Motorola, jumping back to it, but if they can’t execute, if they can’t continually execute up to their brand promise, no matter how good the advertising is, the brand fails. Because they’re really not living up to the brand promise. So it’s a lot more than sort of the superficial marketing of it. It is can you run your business like Corning possibly, and a lot of other companies, and not screw up the delivery of the rest of the brand promise, product design, delivery, customer service, all these other brand mentions.

Stanley Hainsworth: Fun to see some of these brands that have been hot recently, you know like Method is one that a lot of people talk about. And Erica speaks at every other conference. They’ve done great work, brought innovation into a boring space, previously boring. But you know the things they’ve done like online that People Against Dirty, you saw that website. We can go in and write little confessions and then the hands wash, have you seen that, anybody.

I mean it’s great. It’s addictive. And it’s very much supports their brand promise as well. So it will be fun to watch brands like that to see how they can continue to evolve.

David LaPlante: Gene, what are you liking out there?

Gene Keenan: What do I like? I’m going to take an easy answer. I think the stuff I admire, we just won Walt Disney, I’ve been spending a lot of time watching television, watching a lot of movies. I think the movie industry is interesting constantly have to be innovating, creating great product, whereas a lot of brands like Motorola, for instance, they could skate by. They came out with the razor. Rather than improve the razor, they diluted the quality of the brand by reducing the price of the product and not, instead of putting, instead of taking that money and putting it back into making the product better, they just went to the route and sold trillions of them, not trillions but millions and millions of them.

Look at the entertainment industry, boy, if you’re not producing a great product, you’re out of business instantly. And I think that’s one of the things Walt Disney is trying to do. Walt Disney is actually trying to create a brand around their whole film franchise.

So, for instance, you typically don’t think: Oh I can’t wait to go see the latest Paramount release or latest MGM release. You’re thinking it’s like Will Ferrell, can’t wait to see it. Might have been produced by Disney or Paramount. Disney is actually trying to create a brand around Walt Disney films, which I think is kind of interesting. So they want to create a community around their films and keep consumers engaged across multiple titles, which I think is something that’s really interesting, something that nobody else has done in the entertainment industry. It’s typically been, like, for instance, we do a lot of media planning and buying.

We can work for six different film companies because there’s no conflict of interest. Boy, that light is shining right on me like the spotlight of God. (Laughter) So we can work with a bunch of film companies because there’s no brand there. It’s like you’re promoting a specific film and then it’s gone.

I think what Disney is doing is pretty interesting. They haven’t come to market there with it yet, but I’m going to digress a little bit. One of the things I learned about Disney is they have cut all their fast food they don’t do any single serving restaurant promotions anymore. And they have created food guidelines for all their partners.

So, in other words, if you are a partner of ours, we will not partner with any company that produces super sugary or fatty food or any food that has trans fats in it. Which is a huge departure for Disney, considering they were part of McDonald’s for many, many years. (Laughter) you’ve got the hand over it.

>> Blocking the sun from his eyes.

Gene Keenan: I think it’s interesting that Disney in my mind has always had this family wholesome image they’re trying to live up to that brand promise now by saying you know what we’re not going to partner with companies that are causing obesity in our children, or causing poor health in our audience. I think that’s really noble of them.

David LaPlante: So let’s crank this down to, we’ve all dealt with this situation, either it’s a client or it’s someone, the CEO or someone, organization that can’t get past self referential branding. If it was up to me everything would be put through the filters of skis and bikes and gadgets and that’s the way the whole world should be. And you’re dealing with that client that says: Well, I like red wine and everyone else on the planet likes red wine.

And that’s going to be it. And they don’t listen to the audience. They don’t listen to you. I know, and I’m looking at faces that I know have felt this pain. How do you fight that? How do you get past this self referential marketing?

Gene Keenan: And everybody thinks they’re a comic brand when they’re not?

David LaPlante: Yes. There’s only a handful of those you may have come across one. War stories around this or it’s just changing a brand, changing a paradigm, you’ve got to change people’s minds on that. War stories and tips and techniques on fighting that battle. I know you’re itching to go on this.

Stanley Hainsworth: I’ve worked a lot with internal clients on this, and a company like Nike, we worked from the kids division to the golf to the basketball, and they’re as different, almost as different companies. The audience is so different. And then Starbucks you have the entertainment division, and you have coffee and you have food and car groups, very different kinds of clients.

And there’s a lot of personal taste involved on the client side. And so I think I was able to successfully block a lot of that without being harsh about it because someone says I don’t like green. And so that’s why they’re not going to approve the creative that you show them.

It’s about training your clients how to write good briefs. And then letting them know that you’re going to stick to that brief is going to be your bible you’re going to go with. So any comments will always filter back to the brief. It’s forcing them to think up front and be strategic and really figure out what they want before, because many clients use creative as a means of developing their strategy. Because when they see it, they start seeing it. They’re saying oh, that doesn’t work, I didn’t really mean that.

So we did a lot of training, client training on how to write briefs, how to respond to creative, when we present creative to them. We do everything like role playing and all those things. Put themselves in our shoes and all that so that they could see that if someone says: You know what, I just don’t it just doesn’t feel right. If that’s their feedback, well that’s not very helpful. We don’t know what to do with that.

They need to run it, again, through the brief.

Gene Keenan: Needs to be edgier.(Laughter).

Rob Bynder: Make it more designed.

Stanley Hainsworth: So I would say as a we were talking a little bit about this, creatives are some of the more strategic people that I’ve ever met. And the reason why is because their job is to put together disparate things and make them all funnel together in one message to the consumer.

You might be handed 10 things, didn’t really have much to do with each other. You had to make a campaign around it or website around it, whatever it is. So we tell stories that are at our core. We are storytellers, we have to figure out what the story is. So I find that creators are very strategic. Standing up to clients in a way that let them know we’re strategic thinkers and that we can be their partner on the business side. And that’s the conversation we were just having right before this, is some designers fall into the trap of kind of making fun of clients. It’s like they don’t understand type faces and that stuff. They don’t get creative. That’s not a good thing.

We have a lot to offer each other. And the only way we’re going to get to the real result is in problem solving which is what we do for a living, we solve problems, is by both of us living in each other’s shoes and understanding each other and helping each other to get to that solution.

That was like a lecture, wasn’t it?

Gene Keenan: I thought it was really good, completely. Very empowering. We hear it all the time at work. We always want to make our clients wrong, like they just don’t understand. Or I can’t get them to understand. It’s a disempowered situation for both sides because you walk away from a situation rather than trying to solve that problem. Or you’ll say I don’t want to work for this client anymore, or I want to get transferred, or whatever and I quit my job and go work for somebody else.

David LaPlante: Do you have a good story for that?

Gene Keenan: No but it happens yeah, I had that come up in my work all the time. Like I was talking to Colleen about it. Girlfriend Colleen about it the other night, who is there in the audience, about how I just don’t want to work on this one client. They just don’t understand. They want to hire us as advisors but they don’t want us to be advisors because they want to control everything we do. And I haven’t found, it’s like a Rubics cube and I haven’t been able to solve it.

Rob Bynder: We try to do research because everybody has opinions. And a lot of clients actually surprisingly have not done research. Some of the bigger ones have, but a lot really haven’t. One of my clients is AEG. Has anybody heard of them? They’re based in Denver. They own half the world. Never heard of them but they control everything you do. They own Staple Center down in Las Vegas and half The Kings and the major league soccer league. They either own or run about 20 other venues around the world.

So we went in to do the Staple Center website and the creative director said, I drive a Harley Davidson and I love that website. And you know I hang out on it and write stories on it and I go there every single day and that’s what this website should be like. We had to come back and say, look, there’s a reason that’s not the right solution. Maybe it’s a good idea but it’s not the right solution here.

What we did we did a little bit of solution, we used a lot of common sense and experience, but we did a little bit of research and looked at what the people were using the current Staple Center website for. Which is pretty obvious what they’re doing. They’re researching events. They’re buying tickets, they’re researching parking and they’re gone in 15 seconds. I mean it’s literally like a 15 to 30 second transaction. People are not hanging out. They don’t go to the Staple Center website to interact with that brand.

They don’t care about the venue. They like it. They have a good time there. They care about the Lakers or Garth Brooks or whoever the heck is playing there, right? They want to interact with that. We had to come back and sort of prove to them, or at least lay our case on the table and say, no, we really don’t think that’s it. What’s your product? Your product is events. Let’s sell your events. Let’s not sell the community. People have their own community.

Lakers have their website, their community is happening there, why redo it. So we try and fall back we try and use research and sort of common sense as much as we can. And train them to think about creative and think about briefs and goals.

David LaPlante: So there’s this guy Clay Shirke who writes a lot of crazy stuff out there. Doesn’t get into branding but talks about how things are shaking up, everything is getting weird out there, all these gadgets and technology, all these super smart people. Google has leveled the world. And so he wrote this blog post. Getting a ton of discussion out there right now. And I’m just going to read a little bit about him, kind of use that to set the stage. Then we’ll take it off to the audience.

He said: “I was recently reminded of some of the reading I did in college way back in the last century by a British historian arguing that critical technology for the early phase of the Industrial Revolution was gin. The transformation from rural to urban life is so sudden and so wrenching that the only thing society could do was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing. There were gin push carts working their way through the streets of London.” He goes on and on to talk about how for a whole generation everyone was drunk on gin, nothing happened.

Gene Keenan: Nothing’s changed.
(Laughter)

David LaPlante: He uses that to talk to the world that we’re just emerging out of, saying, you know, television and radio in this one to many noninteractive, we sit around on our couches, our couch potato generation, our fathers and to us many of us for a while, that was our gin of marketing media and branding in that generation.

Now we’ve got gadgets. I’m sitting here I can send Flickr photos up to you. I can Twitter you and U stream you and do a kick video. You’re bad mouthing me in the background, I can hit my Twitter page see what you’re saying about me. People in the Twitter world asking me to ask you guys questions. It’s getting real weird out there. There’s design and brand principles. There’s still print. There’s still all that, but it’s getting weird. What do you guys see, how is that changing your world? Are you excited? Where are you taking advantage of that? Where are we going? Give these guys the spotlight. Start with the gadget guy.

Gene Keenan: Gadget guy, I’ll give you the company line. Our company line which I think is accurate, and you probably heard this before, that brands are losing control, because the brands are really a reflection of the consumer. The consumer controls the brand. And if you go to a site, say you’re going to buy a vacuum cleaner, for instance, you go to a vacuum cleaner site. You see a bunch of glowing reviews about the vacuum cleaner. It’s probably going to be bullshit, but if you go to a blog site and you read a review about that vacuum cleaner you’re probably more than likely to believe that.

And so we have this saying: The brands will win are those whose consumers tell the best stories about those brands. And I think that is so true because in this online world where we’re in this digital world where we are so connected as you were just talking about, you can’t lie to people anymore.

It used to be you could like put together a campaign. You could do a TV spot. You’d hit the whole world, and you could lie about what your product could do and what it couldn’t do.

You cannot lie anymore. We’re in a world where truth prevails 24/7. And there are no secrets anymore. And I think that in a clam shell.

>> Nutshell.

>> Nutshells are bigger.

>> Let’s go with scallop. So I think that is so true. So you look at the videos that just got released of that poor kid in Guantanamo Bay or what happened with the guy who shot Saddam Hussein being hung just terrible thing was happening to him on an old camera, on a little cell phone camera, video camera. That got out to the world, because there are no hidden places anymore.

And so we have to be really careful about what we say. Authenticity and truth is what is going to make us survive and make our clients survive or our brands survive. Like I was talking to my boss the other day, and we were doing this we were doing a campaign. It didn’t go that good. How can we spin it. You know what she said to me? We can’t spin it. We have to tell the client the truth, and we have to say this is what happened and this is why we think what happened. We can’t say like, oh, we knew this was going to happen because of X, Y and Z. We just have to be really honest with our clients.

And our clients have to be really honest with their consumers.

Stanley Hainsworth: Along the same lines, I did a fun presentation in San Diego where I forced myself I wasn’t going to use any imagery that I had. It was just going to be a reflection off I just did screen grabs of how a consumer I started with myself. I kind of Googled myself, and I did screen grabs of that. And I did all the companies that I’ve worked for, Nike, Lego, and Starbucks to show we can put things out there but in the end it’s the consumers who are going to form their own opinion of what the company is.

And as I think about brands that have created communities, Harley Davidson, Lego, other brands who have created communities that exist outside of those brands.

And they have there’s a whole life outside of the brand. And communities and you can generate or facilitate experiences and hope that they catch fire and you can do something online and hope that it gets picked up. But in the end it might be some YouTube video that is a fan of yours but nothing you did actually has much more impact than a multi million dollar campaign that you did.

So it’s such an interesting world right now. I am so excited about it. I embrace all of that technology. And I think they’re just more tools for brands to use to create the community and tell their story, because in the end that’s all that brands are. They’re telling a story. They’re creating an emotional connection.

Gene Keenan: Sounds like a dream.

Stanley Hainsworth: Creating an emotional connection between the consumer product and experience.

Rob Bynder: I hate to think, though, when brands start catching on and they are about doing it in a very inauthentic way, planting a row and pretending it’s real. Or going out and soak a river that’s so underground pretending this is a community.

Gene Keenan: I’ve got to tell you they get busted. It happened to us like six or seven years ago. We tried to do a whisper campaign when we went online to like blog sites and community sites started posting things check out this show or check out this product.

I gotta tell you, there are people out there, because it happened to us, they trace back the they look at the poster. They trace back the ID address, they look at actually where that posting is coming from and they tell the whole world.

Rob Bynder: That’s awesome.

>> That’s what I’m saying, you can’t

>> But what kind

>> You can’t be unethical anymore.

>> What damage does that do to your brand.

Gene Keenan: The brand wanted to do it because they thought they could be smarter than everybody else. Like we were just working in a chop shop. And we were just doing what the brand asked us to do.

Rob Bynder: But you know the whole other the whole social networking aspect of that, and twitter is sort of one thing, but the idea used to be that you make a website and then you get links and you get people to come back to your website. And what’s happening now is that really you build a website and then what you try to do, which I’m just trying we’re working on remax.com right now. So we went to them with this great idea. We thought it was fantastic.

Facebook apps, MySpace pages, Facebook pages. Google apps. Widgets. All these things that are out there that are small representations of the website and the brand online, and rather than expect links to come back to the website, take chunks of the website and put it

Gene Keenan: There are no websites anymore. It’s the brand consumers are allowed to take the brand wherever they want to. If you have a widget, it’s like something we did. I’m sure other companies have done it. But I’m just going to use this example, which is Nike ID, a site where you can go on and create a custom shoe. We create a widget so anybody can take that widget and put it on their school site. They can put it on their facebook page. So you could create shoes on that site wherever it was and you could buy those shoes directly to that widget.

Rob Bynder: That’s right.

Gene Keenan: And the thing is, my phone, like my iPhone, like the 2.0 version of the iPhone had the apps one of the apps I downloaded called app page 1. They have an online version of it started online app page one. What it does it allows me to aggregate all my different websites that I would normally go to, it’s all personal financial stuff.

Like etrade, Wells Fargo, Bank of America. My United account. Like 12 different sites. I can aggregate it all into my own personal website so I don’t need to go to the individual websites anymore. I go to a website that I’ve created.

It’s the idea of like my Google. You go to the Google page. There’s all these different widgets. Create your own home page by pulling in all these feeds from different sites.

>> Net vibes is a great one, too.

>> Net vibes. Or

>> [Inaudible].

Gene Keenan: Yeah, and I think the future is all about contextual perception. And I think Pandora is a fantastic site application. You go on who has used Pandora?

Stanley Hainsworth: Lastfm.

Gene Keenan: That’s another good one. Pandora is a site you can go to, you do a search for an artist. Do a search for The Kinks. It will play a Kinks song. You can say I love that song or don’t love that song. If you don’t love that song, it will pick out artists that are similar to The Kinks within that genre you like. You keep saying yes or no, yes or no. And it creates a recommendation engine. Essentially creates your own personal radio station. For instance on I Pandora, iPhone if I had a 3G phone I could literally plug it into speakers and have my own personal radio station that I created because of my preferences in my car, party, no matter where I go my personal radio station based on my preferences being generated on the fly because of my musical preferences. I didn’t have to create a play list. It understands what I like and generates that play list automatically for me.

David LaPlante: Last question. I want to get

Stanley Hainsworth: One quick on Nike ID. One interesting insight on that. When I was at Nike there were sneaker freaks that would take Nikes and customize them. Combine a golf shoe put the flap on a basketball shoe and color them up and all those things.

So that’s another example of a community developed. Nike watched that community and they said oh, customizing sneakers, so they developed

Gene Keenan: Developed their own sneakers. We have kids lining up. It’s like I have friends who own three, 400 pairs of sneakers they’ve never even worn. They keep them in the box or they put them on a shelf. It’s like they’re pieces of art.

David LaPlante: Last question, before wrapping to the audience, with trying to be authentic, it’s hard to have people who don’t know what they’re writing about be truly authentic. Google controlling your page one Google results, your digital identity is your page one.

The personal brand has come out of the woodwork in the last three years especially. Agencies are looking for personal brands that are congruent with the brands that they have to manage. It’s easy to put a skier in front of a ski resort. It’s easy to put a runner in front of a running company, because there’s no line.

It’s transparent. There’s the passion. There’s the emotion, the connection. That seems to be a trend out there that I’ve observed and I’ve heard dialogue on. Is that something you’re seeing out there and just for the folks in the audience, what are maybe some techniques or tips for managing your personal brands to help snap you to that future brand client?

Stanley Hainsworth: I’m kind of hypersensitive about it right now, as I go from my identity being tied closely with brands. With like Starbucks, Nike, Lego, to creating my own brand and my own agency. And as I start as I choose which clients to work with, that starts forming who you have become, the personality of your agency. And so there’s, it’s interesting it’s a combination of survival. We want to take jobs for money. But that job that you do might not be something that fits with your brand personality that you want to develop.

So it’s interesting going through that right now. And also before I was in the business of promoting other brands, now I’m promoting my own brand and my assistant the other day just called me narcissistic because it’s all about blogging now, and self promotion.

And that’s what we have to do to be heard and to develop your brand, because as you said it’s just, someone just goes on Google and looks you up. It’s not only what you put out there but it’s what others put out there about you. You go and speak at a conference and you’re really lame. Well, that’s up there. Someone’s commented about that.

And maybe that’s a client deciding whether to use you or not. So every move you make is part of your that’s why when I used to when I worked with brands, I always use the analogy of a person, a brand is a person and everything that you do reflects on you as a brand and the way you the person the way the hairstyle they choose or the clothes they choose or the way they talk, the way they interact with people, that all reflects on who you are and the opinions that people form about you.

The same with the brand, everything you do, online, off line, whatever you do reflects back.

Gene Keenan: I don’t know if I have anything to contribute. I’m going to digress and go to a tangent of mine.

David LaPlante: So Gene Keenan got the mobile industry off the ground in the U.S. with a rag tag crew. But sometimes people wouldn’t remember his name, but they would always remember he’s the guy with the scarf.

Gene Keenan: I’m not wearing a scarf. I’m wearing an oink T shirt instead which was three minute music download site before it was shut down. So what was I going to say? Personal brand. Personal brand, I think about me Gene Keenan, personal brand, my stuff, what am I interested in and I’m a conglomeration of brands, right, and I think about how I use brands. For instance, the example I was giving on my cell phone. For me everything is contextual, like what communities do I want to belong in or belong to. And how did different brands fit in. There’s different communities within those different brands that I have specific affinities to. Right?

So, for instance, what’s an example? So say I’m into wine. I have an affinity for a specific wine site. I’m part of that community, but there’s specific people that I’m interested in having relationship with on that site.

It’s all part of this big wine site brand. But within that site, within that brand I’m only having an affinity with specific things. For instance, if you look at you’re talking about how great Apple is. I may only have an affinity for Apple when it comes to the iPhone, right? But I’m really not interested in their computers or iPods or anything else.

But that’s not true, really. (Laughter) But I think that’s true for anybody. There’s plenty of products or brands I can think of that I have an affinity for that I have no interest in anything else they do. And I don’t even know where I’m going with this. (Laughter).

Stanley Hainsworth: Tires or

Rob Bynder: It’s interesting being defined by brands. Your personal brand is being defined by other brands than you’re associated with.

Gene Keenan: Say that again.

Rob Bynder: Your personal brand is defined by the brands you associate with. In other words, I’m defined

Gene Keenan: Absolutely. Because even like there’s a mobile marketing company out there that is they have their idea is you know what a ring back tone is, when somebody calls you there’s a music track playing instead of a ring. So this mobile marketing company came up with the idea we’re going to allow consumers to make money on their ring back tones instead of having to pay for the ring back tones.

The way it works you sign up, go online and choose brands that you have an affinity towards. For instance, I have an affinity for Apple, maybe BMW, BW, or like General Mills, whatever the brands are. I choose the brands I have an affinity for, when people call me they hear marketing messages that are personalized by me about Apple or General Mills. Because you may think it’s awful, but

Rob Bynder: It’s awful. (Laughter).

Gene Keenan: We’ve done research with teens. And teens have come up with this idea themselves, because they don’t want to be advertised to, but they don’t mind advertising to their friends.

Rob Bynder: They don’t know (Laughter).

Gene Keenan: I think it’s funny.

David LaPlante: All right. We’re at a good point to get some audience participation. I meant to say I’ve got a present. They went thrift shopping today. I got you a new one. I want to make sure you compete with Stanley.

If you do go to Stanley, you’ll find many, many mentions of the hair. Great aspect of personal branding. (Laughter).

Transparency. Authenticity. This is the game today. So Jeff, Derek, you guys want to help with the audience figuring out

Questions of the panel?

Audience 1: So we talked a lot about these big brands that you’re kind of pushing to the online space, but it seems like a lot of the newer start ups are leading with that as opposed to building their brand and then taking it online.

What are like the pitfalls and things to watch out for because it’s so transparent? You don’t really know where it’s going to go. You don’t know how it’s going to take it. How do you help funnel that into the right direction or to the right area.

Rob Bynder: Can you be more specific about one of these new brands? Just doing a pure play for the web?

Audience 1: No, no, I’m saying you start up a company regardless if it is a brick and mortar, if it is anything.

David LaPlante: You’re saying they’re starting up a new company?

Audience 1: Exactly.

Stanley Hainsworth: You’re talking like a looped, that’s a company that exists only on the web. But I’m working with a few Silicon Valley start ups like that, and the reason why they were interested in working with me is because they’re interested in building a brand and not just building a website.

So start ups like that have become very conscious of branding, because there’s so many almost identical applications going on right now in the online search space and other places.

So you could it’s interesting taking just take something like Looped, for example, a brand that is about knowing where your friends are on your phone or on your computer.

Can you take that brand, can you figure a way to start extending that into the physical or the nononline space?

Yeah, if you thought about it you could probably it’s about community. It’s about common interests and all those things. So as many brands are moving from physical bricks and mortar into the online space, a lot of the online companies are interested in doing the opposite as well for staying power.

It will be very interesting, Google, you know, there’s no telling where they’re going to end up doing. But pretty much guaranteed it’s not going to be just restricted to the online space because they’re going to have so much money they won’t have to do it.

So I think it’s extremely interesting time we’re in right now.

Rob Bynder: And also to that point, I think as the web is sort of a default marketing channel, the first place I work with a lot of start ups and we don’t print brochures. We don’t do a lot of direct mail like we used to do. We’re doing websites, e mail marketing, campaigns. Based on brand strategies, sound traditional brand strategies. We’re just not going to press quite as much as we used to.

And if we do, we tend to do it after the website is written. All the stuff is written, it’s already there. Sort of flopped from about 10 or eight years ago where it’s the exact opposite. Just make my brochure a website.

Audience 2: It’s true that you have to communicate the web and print and it’s kind of two different communication messages in a sense. I mean it’s all ultimately the same message, but the verbiage is a little bit different. But do you find it more difficult to develop the actual brand platform and the whole design, everything, just starting right with the web? I mean when you don’t have the print and all of the radio and all the media, the traditional media that goes into it like that, where you see and the customer sees or your client will see firsthand the development process and their brand creative and then it’s a little bit easier to transfer into the web, or is it a little bit harder starting at the web and you’re trying to discover your brand.

Rob Bynder: I think you need to start there’s nothing different. The web is just another medium. You need a brand platform. You need a positioning platform. A mission statement. A creative brief. A marketing plan. I mean those are all things and it’s the same thing we’ve been doing for a long time in this industry the web is just a different medium to do it in.

If you don’t do those things you’ll be screwed up on the web or you’ll be screwed up when you get to a brochure. You’ll be screwed up any time you try to manifest that brand if you don’t have that platform, you’ve got nothing.

Gene Keenan: I think it’s a colossal mistake to only do online or I mean depending on the brand, of course. But we work with clients that they have success online. It’s like we’re going to dump all our money online. We’re not going to spend our money on TV, print, radio, anything else because online has been so good. Well, it doesn’t quite work that way.

There’s a, what do you call it when the sum is greater synergistic effect between the media channels that ends up being greater than the individual media channel.

For instance, I work in mobile. Mobile can’t survive on its own unless we’re doing display advertising on mobile sites to drive people to a mobile experience. Mobile is about connecting the different media channels and making them interactive. It’s not so much an individual media channel in itself. Honestly, in my experience off line and print people totally get mobile better than digital people do, because digital people, I think, we’re already have an online experience why do we want to send them a mobile phone. Digital and print people are thinking mobile, my God I don’t have like a static print ad anymore or static TV experience, I can turn it into an interactive experience.

And then maybe they go online. And so I’m digressing again, but I think it’s a colossal mistake to think of like individual media channels I’m going to focus on line or I’m going to focus on print. Really depending on brand, what the strategy is, and what you’re trying to achieve, but keep like I am not a proponent of killing TV. I think TV is going to be around forever in some form.

It might not be the way we watch it today. But TV makes the daily sacrifices of life possible and solves the riddles of our lives. (Laughter)

Audience 2: I feel where this is going, you feel like your creative juices flow more with the traditional media, developing those concepts, because when you were mentioning start ups and going maybe straight to online first or maybe that’s all they have and then you’ve missed kind of the rest of the picture which kind of helps in those creative processes. But, yeah, I know, you have to have nice

Rob Bynder: Can’t work in a silo.

Audience 2: No. Yeah.

Audience 3: I really appreciate the very 30,000 foot discussion. Great to have the quality speakers. Thank you guys. I guess to bring it down a couple notches, 10,000 feet, more tactical: If a brand has traditionally been very much we tell you, you don’t tell us and dabbled in blogs and dabbled in the main community or the sub community, one of our communities, [Inaudible] communities, that’s looking at a facebook fan page, perhaps. We’re not sure. What are some of the strategies that makes a facebook fan page successful? Starbucks having several hundred thousand members and is it around a campaign or is it just creating the community and letting it run, or what are some practical how tos on the facebook page. If that is passe, maybe it is, but maybe it is not.

Gene Keenan: For me I think the whole widget thing and facebook stuff, the stuff that’s successful, is the stuff that actually creates news feeds. If it’s a stand alone widget and nobody is going to come back to that widget.

But, for instance, I get facebook updates from my friends. I get updates about specific applications. Whatever widget you create, you have to make sure that you’re creating a news feed so that it spreads virally consistently every single day that somebody interacts with it or whenever that application is updated. If you don’t have that, it’s kind of like you built a field and nobody’s going to come to it because they don’t know about it.

And secondarily, this is more of a strategic thing, I’m going to talk about Nike, because Nike just launched a facebook application called, The Ballers Network, which I think is a spectacular idea. The idea is you can find basketball courts in your area and sign up for a specific time and have other people in the community sign up for those basketball courts also.

So you can do pickup games with people you don’t even know in basketball courts in your community. I think it’s a fantastic idea. Totally wrong place to do it. Facebook is not the place for a basketball player to hang out. They’re on MySpace. Facebook is primarily, hate to say it, but primarily it’s college educated, primarily white demographic. MySpace is much more of a younger demographic, kids who are just look at the genesis of the two sites, right? Facebook came out of Harvard. MySpace came out of very much a grassroots effort, very focused around youth and music.

And so great idea. Bad execution.

Stanley Hainsworth: I think also feel for Starbucks, for instance, for a MySpace page, sometimes they’ll put up a MySpace page just for that, that current campaign or that drink that’s launched, and that gets back to there’s a lot of tentacles out there, they’re doing sampling on the sidewalks and in the stores and creating awareness and they’re doing advertising. So the communication is happening at a lot of levels. And you’re also starting with a fan base.

And there’s a fan base for every brand. And then there’s those that need to be converted as well, and so you tackle those both in different ways.

Gene Keenan: Then there’s those who have a love/hate relationship with the brand, like me.

Stanley Hainsworth: I guess there’s no secret to a MySpace page. But it’s the momentum that gathers and the momentum comes from starting to roll several small rocks down the hill instead of just one big rock. That wasn’t a bad metaphor was it?

Audience 4: Do you have any stats on how many facebook users actually viral applications?

Gene Keenan: How many facebook users what?

Audience 4: The apps, the facebook apps how many are using them, engaging with them, sharing with friends?

Gene Keenan: You know, I’m not the facebook expert within my company. So I can’t give you

Rob Bynder: I think unless it’s Scrabulous they have short shelf lives especially with privacy issues. I think

Gene Keenan: And the spam issues, like a lot of the apps have, there’s spam apps. When you sign up for the app you have to invite like 20 friends.

Rob Bynder: It’s a big deal.

Gene Keenan: Those apps die pretty quickly, because people dis the gap and say get this out.

Audience 4: What’s the secret to a flaming hot facebook app?

Gene Keenan: You have to provide some useful utility. Some stuff like the little green patch app, I get 30 green requests a day. But that app is generating income to buy rainforest. So it’s an app that I’m willing to participate in, even though I know it’s a spam app. It’s providing useful utility in my mind like I’m thinking like I’ve saved a couple of square feet.

And several million other people save a couple square feet. It adds up to some acreage, right? But that utility, has to provide utility.

Rob Bynder: One of the tenets I have for all the websites that we do, all the interactive projects, and I think you could actually apply here, would be is it useful? Is it usable? And is it desirable? And I think you could apply that to any component you do online and say, you know what, that’s going to work. Hopefully it works, hopefully like the 14 year old kids pick up on it.

Gene Keenan: I just downloaded an app on my phone called the Carling Beer app, cool app. What you have to do is navigate a pint of beer across a bar until you get it into somebody’s hand. It’s a cool app, but it only has like three levels and it takes about two minutes to play. And it’s like, all right, done with that one, no reason for me to come back. No reason to believe. As you were saying is it useful, desirable, what was the other one?

Rob Bynder: Useful, usable and desirable.

Gene Keenan: Useful, usable and desirable. I like that.

Audience 4: One other area that’s like a good example.

Gene Keenan: Useful, usable desirable app, there’s tons of them, man. Like on the iPhone there’s one that’s called, it’s actually being burdened because it’s so useful. The yellow pages, the yellow pages app or Ware.

The one I really love is Save Benjis. Save Benjis. For instance, it’s location of where apps for the phone. I use this as an example. I just went to Greece. I was at the Parthenon. I wanted to read about the Parthenon. I pull out my iPhone, fire up Safari browser. Go to Wikipedia, do a search on Parthenon, click on the link. A lot of clicks. With location aware phone I fire up my phone, there’s an app that fires up a geo app, you’re at the Parthenon. Want to read about it. I click on it and I’m right there.

Tons of apps like that. Imagine you’re standing in front of a restaurant, don’t know if it’s any good or not. Location aware. You pull out your phone. You’re right here in front of Starbucks on 4th and Howard. That’s a bad Starbucks. Don’t go to that one go to the one that’s two blocks away or across the street. Right? So it’s all about utility. I mean for the phone there’s tons of apps. Obviously my specialty is phones. So I’m going to talk about the phone.

But online, Colleen, can you think of any good actually you’re not a facebook user, are you?

Colleen: I cannot think of any good online apps.

Gene Keenan: Games are actually good. Like there’s some facebook games that I play.

David LaPlante: I’ve got one. Megan brought it up. If you don’t get clouded by emotion what you’re trying to do is get your brand in front of the motions that are congruent with the motions of your branding folks. So no secret I love skiing and I joined one million strong preskiing in the Olympics, and if your brand is congruent with my brand, and what I’m emotional and passionate about, come on, let’s go mob scene the Olympics and make sure we’ve got some super pipe going on in the next Olympics for us free skiers, the app is out there someone else created it but you have the opportunity to capitalize on that emotional plug.

Audience 5: I want to ask you about TV on the web. About what Revision3 is doing and Twit television where they’re trying to produce programs that are at a much cheaper level and get advertisers to advertise. Do you think IP television is going to succeed?

Gene Keenan: Here’s my form of IP television. We don’t have fast we don’t have big enough pipes in our home. Have you ever played with IP television. It’s like click, change a channel. And tonight is happening. Click, change a channel. And on the next episode is going to be. It’s like the delay is too great. We don’t have big enough pipes in our house yet.

That’s been my experience with IP TV. But watching it online. I watched, there was a story in Ad Age. I think it was Nielsen that did a study that showed that consumers are more than happy to watch advertising before a video or after a video online in order to get the content for free.

It’s considered a fair exchange.

Rob Bynder: I think it’s a great

Gene Keenan: I watch a lot of TV online. Do I? I watch a lot of YouTube online.

Audience 6: I would just say one thing to his point a second ago. Go do Google I have some experience in IP TV. Do a Google over the top video. I think that’s kind of where you’re headed with that question.

There’s some interesting things to your point. The pipe is getting fatter.

You’ve got the cable guys and the phone guys, but AT&T universe and Vios is rolling out pretty successfully across the country. You’ll have choices to Charter here.

David LaPlante: All right. Last question, Mr. Pickett.

Jeff Pickett: I would like Stanley and/or Robert to talk about AIGA and how it’s important to their career and how it’s relevant and important to the design community at large.

Rob Bynder: Who is not a member here? Raise your hand. Stand up. (Laughter).

Go write a check to this guy.

You’re on the board.

Stanley Hainsworth: I accepted a position on the national board recently and so I have a three year stretch ahead of me to give back to the profession. And that’s what AIGA is. I think Leilani and I were just talking today about how lucky we are as a profession to be doing what we do.

You know, it’s really fun what we get to do. And it’s pretty easy. We have to think hard sometimes, but it’s pretty easy work, as work goes. And so it’s so we have a skill set, and as I said before, I think designers are some of the most strategic people, and I think we have a lot to give back to our communities and back to our professions. And one way we can give back to our communities is through our profession. And a lot of pro bono work and all that we do. And AIGA is a professional organization that has a structure for us individually to gather together and do something bigger through the chapter level and then through the national level as well.

So, AIGA isn’t perfect. Neither is any organization. But the way that it’s going to get stronger is by having more passionate members and more members who are willing to give of their time.

And it will only help all of us in networking, education, all the different things that we’re looking for in our profession.

Rob Bynder: You know, I just have to add: I was talking to somebody about this over I forgot who it was, but I’d say 90% of my business has come through connections I’ve made through AIGA. Whether it’s direct referral, directly working with people I’ve met at these events or projects the connections I’ve made through AIGA have built my business for the last five and a half years.

And business is really good. And the question is, you know it’s only as good as you get out of it only as much as you put in. But it’s true. It’s worth every dime. If you only come to two events and disappear back into the woodwork, you’re not doing yourself any favors. It’s a good community. It’s a good way to give back.

Jeff Pickett: Thank you very much, guys.

(Applause).

NCET and DRI recognized for excellence by EDA

The US Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration (EDA) has recognized NCET, Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, and DRI, the Desert Research Institute for excellence in economic development grant performance.

Both NCET and DRI have received previous awards from the EDA, which announced that NCET will receive an additional $20,000 grant while DRI will receive an additional $5,700. The original EDA grants in 2006 were facilitated by Nevada Senator Harry Reid when NCET received $200,000 and DRI received $57,000.

NCET was recognized for its work on a variety of programs designed to encourage Nevadans to start new businesses, and to then connect them to the resources they need to succeed.

“NCET’s work with entrepreneurs and small businesses is very important for Nevada’s economic growth and vitality, and I am pleased that the EDA chose to recognize their efforts,” Reid said. “DRI plays a critical role in the environmental research that occurs within Nevada’s System of Higher Education. I’m excited about the prospects of the research park, which will tap into emerging technologies and clean energy.”

“NCET won for its notable demonstration of organizational leadership, innovation, entrepreneurship and regional collaboration to achieve greater competitiveness in the global marketplace,” said Barbara Earman, from the EDA.

“We are honored to be recognized by the EDA for NCET’s work in helping Nevada’s entrepreneurs and small businesses,” said Dave Archer, NCET’s CEO. “They drive Nevada’s economy, and we are pleased that we’re able to help them.”

DRI was recognized for its feasibility study and business plan of a new business incubator to be located at DRI’s Research Park in Reno, NV. The proposed incubator is designed to provide resources and expertise to technology based companies from the local community and emerging technology developed at DRI and the University of Nevada.

“To be recognized by the EDA for performance excellence with an additional financial award is a tremendous shot in the arm, and even more important are the relationships our community is building with the EDA and the Department of Commerce,” said Jeff Pickett, Managing Director of the DRI Research Park.

NCET and DRI were notified of the awards by Congressman Dean Heller’s office. Congressman Heller noted, “I am very pleased that the EDA has selected two Nevada organizations for this honor. DRI and NCET are excellent examples of how the private and public sectors can work together for the betterment of all Nevadans.”

A considerable amount of schools, and an even larger amount of people, are served by the Washoe County School District (WCSD). Administering the internal and external processes of these schools is no small endeavor, and it takes a significant level of business automation to keep everything running smoothly. This particular organization found itself running into some challenges regarding the management of their online resources, and it was then that they decided it was time for a new website.

Before Twelve Horses embarked upon the design and development of the new website, we first set out to determine the client’s specific needs. While web design was important to WCSD, the areas of utmost importance were the access and administration of information and payment processing.

Design

The WCSD needed major reorganization of content. Our initial research showed who had been coming to the website and where they were going, which helped determine the primary navigation. As you can see now, there are 5 primary entry points for:

Community – Parents – Students – Staff – Trustees

To the right of these primary navigation items are some supporting links that are frequently used; therefore, they are deserving of a little lesser but comparable prominence – you can see them highlighted in a different color and separated to the side. Below these items is a text resizer, which ensures the organization is within compliance for website usability. As you carry your eyes down the homepage you will see distinct boxes that are of utmost importance to visitors and the organization.

News – Calendar – Quick Links – What’s New – Topics

The naming convention is easily understood, and again, the information contained within the boxes is representative of what users are typically looking for, as well as what the WCSD wants to place the most emphasis on.  Take note of the balance and white space used to facilitate a positive visitor experience.

Underlying the design is the fact that the navigation, along with everything you see on the homepage and beyond, is completely editable with the Twelve Horses Content Management System.

Content Management System

The Twelve Horses Content Management System provides the WCSD with the following applications:

Community Education eCommerce Platform

One of the additional services the WCSD provides are for-pay enrichment classes. To support these they needed a means of managing these transactions online. Through this platform they can:

• Set-up Classes
• Accept Purchases Online
• Stop Registrations Once the Class is Full
• Email Receipts
• Run Reports

Directories Database

The WCSD possesses a huge directory of assets, and managing the information for each school such as location, people, and corresponding documentation is no small task. Tieing it all together can get even more complicated. Some of the features the directories database allows the WCSD to do are:

• Add PDFs and Links
• Tag Contacts and Information to Places
• Integrate Google Maps with Zoning Changes
• When they upload a csv file it directly integrates with the Google Map and automatically updates.

Other Applications

• WCSD staff can push alerts out related to weather and school closures.
• Calendar items can easily be added and updated.
• Press releases and general news can be added and syndicated to the homepage.
• Topic images and website information can be uploaded and pushed to the homepage.
• Permissions can be assigned to multiple departments and users across the entire organization.

With the new website and content management system, the WCSD now has greater control over the organization and dissemination of their assets, offers a more seamless and positive user experience, and has the ability to delegate management and responsibility of the website over multiple departments and individuals.

If your county or school district needs an enhanced website presence, let them know we are here to help.

The options with the Control4 Technology are amazing. You can store music and video in multiple, or central locations, and it catalogs it all and auto detects it’s presence. It also links systems so that if there is a fire the alarm sounds, lights come on, blinds open, fire trucks are called, the HVAC shuts off to avoid spreading smoke and feeding flames, and the front porch lights start flashing so the emergency responders know which house their looking for. Simply amazing. And the ability to catalog and view 400 movies at a time isn’t bad either!

It’s awesome to have so many leading technology companies for neighbors in Salt Lake City. If there is another company that you’re dying to learn more about please let us know and we’ll go see them.

-Mike

Drawing on our collective experience with destination and ski resort marketing, we are pleased to bring you the recently redesigned web sites of Alpine Meadows and Homewood Mountain Resort. While both properties are located in Lake Tahoe and owned by JMA Ventures, these mountains possess their own unique set of attributes, attract different demographics, and project distinct personalities akin to their branding platforms. 

Scope:

All Twelve Horses website projects begin with fundamental questions that define the scope of the project:

• What are their strengths and weaknesses?
• What are the unique differentiators?
• Who is the target audience?
• What does the website need to achieve?

We combine the answers to those questions with the primary objectives such as:

• Increase Lift Ticket Sales
• Grow the Customer Database
• Build Participation in Clubs and Ski Schools
• Achieve More interaction with Social Media Marketing

These initial steps were taken to ensure a cohesive strategy and a finished product that was properly aligned with the client’s expectations and their branding guidelines.

Branding & Design

Generally, the client has built the base for their brand before pursuing a web project, but website design and online marketing strategies often help them refine or refresh that brand platform as they further position themselves for the web.

For instance, with the Alpine Meadows website we focused on giving the website a real personality. It is designed to help the visitor feel comfortable. Other competing ski resort sites are often very boxy, heavy on promotions, and only rely on photography for positioning. We instead centered the site and used graphical elements and labeling to support the primary objectives. Alpine’s brand is about being authentic and pure and even a little rough around the edges. We hope the design communicates that it is a skier and snowboarder’s mountain first and a resort second.

Homewood’s positioning is decidedly different. The design really reflects the move towards more of a resort community, and if you visit their website you can learn more about their Master Plan. But as you can see the site design is clean, accessible, and supportive of the primary objectives that were defined. If you were familiar with their old website, you will immediately notice the heightened sophistication in combination with earthy tones indicative of its mountain environment.

Strategy & Functionality

Beyond the design, we were able to re-purpose much of the strategy and functionality to save the client time and money. In other words, the client did not have to pay the same amount for the second site. We were able to build efficiency into the project by, for instance, making use of similar applications and giving administrative control over both websites through one single content management system.

Beyond being able to manage the templates and content on both sites, as well as apply administrative control, both properties make use of the following:

• Multimedia Gallery Application that pull content from Flickr and YouTube.
• Snow Report Application that is prepared to send email and fax condition reports via MessageMaker to participating media, partners, and websites.
• Calendar Application for upcoming events.
• Press Release Application for news.

Online Marketing:

Both Alpine and Homewood make use of similar online marketing strategies by:

• Managing customer information and pushing relevant messages through our multi-channel marketing platform.
• Using blogs to project personality, feature additional content, and assist with search engine optimization.
• Interacting with new audiences outside their traditional channels by participating in social networks such as:
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Flickr
• Facebook

Many of us here at Twelve Horses are already getting excited with the prospect of new snow coming soon to both our Reno and Salt Lake offices. When we are not making turns, we will be actively engaged in the progress clients like Alpine and Homewood achieve through the combination of our online marketing and messaging products and services.

See you on the hill!

“WingateWeb is the leading provider of enterprise event management software. Our software solutions offer more than just commodity online registration, they enable event managers to produce a truly spectacular event experience for their customers. We pride ourselves in driving innovation and value to your events from start to finish. We have been building innovative event management software and online registration tools for Fortune 100 companies since 1998.”
find out more about WingateWeb products

It was great chatting with Jason in the WingateWeb office, which is just around the corner from our office in Draper. If you’re in Salt Lake City, please stop by and see us!

-Mike

I also got a TubeMogul t-shirt!

-Mike

First off, you will see that the homepage has been architected in a manner that organizes the primary content more efficiently. When you visited the old site there were too many conflicting entry points and messages that made it hard to decide what action to take first. Now the information is more honed down so that the visitor can quickly find what they are looking for at the zoo. The homepage is clean, centered with plenty of open space, and easy to navigate.

On the backend, Hogle Zoo makes use of the Twelve Horses eComerce solution to automate payment processing for:

• Tickets
• Donations
• Memberships
• Education Classes
• And Products Like Art Posters

The Twelve Horses Content Management System not only enables them to change templates and update the content on individual pages, it also provides them with a few other applications.

• The Payment Form is customizable to allow for new fields and order changes. In addition, the confirmation email can be customized and individual alerts can be specified.
• The Animal Finder Database allows non-technical staff to add new animals, as well as specify sections and regions. They can also remove and take live certain pages whenever they choose with a simple click of a button.
• The Media Gallery offers complete control over the podcast and video pages. They can upload photos, podcasts and video and push those out through an RSS feed.
• The Event Calendar can easily be updated, and it automatically pushes the most recent information to the feed on the homepage.
• The Contact Us form also has administrative control for things like routing to specific individuals within the Hogle Zoo organization.

As you can see, even zoos require business automation and web technology to interact with their customers and manage their assets. Of course, we will be monitoring the web analytics and looking at usability to ensure visitors are enjoying their experience, and we will keep you posted on any new exciting developments for the Hogle Zoo.

How long have you been in the SEO game?

I’ve been working on SEO for 8 years.

How do you get into it?

My mother-in-law asked for some help on her adoption site, and I wanted to drive more traffic to it. So, I started researching how to get that done. It was then that I realized I could make a living doing it.

What are you currently working on?

I feel very fortunate in my position with Twelve Horses because I get to work on a variety of different clients. Many SEO managers work on just one specific industry where I get to be exposed to a lot of different companies.

For example, ski resorts like Alpine Meadows, Homewood, and Heavenly are definitely fun. I’m also working on Solera Networks, which is a company that provides network monitoring services and network appliance products. It’s a unique challenge because their products and services are new and relatively unknown, so I can produce some real results for them by building up their rankings from the ground level.

Uppercase Living is another one. They do vinyl lettering for home decor, which allows you to decorate your home for very little money. It is an exploding market, and they are probably the biggest player in their industry. Finally, another example is Set Point. They do industrial automation for faster and efficient manufacturing processing.

Wow, you really are working with wide array of different industries. How does a company like Set Point benefit from SEO?

You’d be surprised at the amount of people that are researching what Set Point has to offer. It really opens your eyes to how many people are typing in terms like, ‘custom automation solution‘ or ‘industrial automation‘ to improve their business. Where I come is helping make sure they get introduced to a company like Set Point.

What tactics are producing the best results for your clients?

Link building has the biggest impact on SEO, specifically from bloggers and copywriters. It also really helps to get fresh content on new topics, which in turn expands their website. Another one that you may find surprising is educating the client on SEO. Ingraining these fundamentals, truly getting the client to think in terms of SEO, makes a huge difference when they go to make changes to their own website or blog. It is often things they do every day that can make significant impacts on SEO.

What are some common mistakes that businesses make when it comes to SEO?

Biggest one is they fail at the very basics of SEO…ones that are well known. For example, the first thing we fix are title tags and meta description. The next thing we find is that companies did not do their keyword research well enough. That, or they focused on keywords that are not obtainable, do not represent significant enough search volume, or they are simply not relevant.

Others common mistakes are embedding text in graphics, which the search engines cannot see.

The URL structure is another fundamental mistake in the sense that they just don’t take it into consideration. Search engines don’t index dynamic pages as well as static pages. Also, I will often see random variables in the url as opposed to logical words that pertain to the specific page and company offerings.

How does SEO relate to website architecture?

That is another common mistake. Companies focus on just SEO, but if the traffic is being directed towards poorly constructed pages then they don’t convert. If the customer is directed towards a web page that has nothing to do with what they are looking for, or if it is too confusing, then you lose them. But if they are directed towards a well-constructed web page that is optimized to encourage them to take an action on the website, the chances are much higher that they will.

How often do use PPC or SEM in combination with a SEO strategy?

It is ultimately up to the client and their budget, but about 65% of our client are engaged in both.

Why is it important to do both?

As long as it has a positive ROI, why wouldn’t you do it? But many people think that PPC will help SEO ranking – they are not directly related. Where it helps is keyword research and retooling the website to better handle those conversions. It also helps test specific keywords up front instead of getting 3 or 4 months down the road with an SEO campaign and finding out that those are not the best words to focus on.

What are some new tactics that you are employing and testing?

Lately, we have been doing a lot of testing with bloggers and link building; interlinking where we make sure copy is linked to other pages within the website. This has also had a big impact on persuasion architecture.

How do you stay informed about SEO?

Mainly from other blogs and website such as SEOMoz, Marketing Experiments, Marketing Sherpa, and Grokdotcom.com. But there is no better way to stay informed, especially about your website, then practicing SEO, studying the results, and rinse and repeat.  I like to focus on experimentation, trying new things and constantly assessing what works and what doesn’t, and then applying those strategies to other websites.

Has there been any news lately that has gotten you excited about the industry?

The news that Google can better index flash files is pretty cool, but it still has a ways to go. Google Adwords has started to release search data through AdWords, where before you could only get that through WordTracker. But the fundamentals have not really changed that much.  Trends come out like social media marketing, but it is still the same fundamentals such as link building, html, and content. Often companies just don’t focus on the basics and instead get caught up chasing the latest fads that are kind of worthless in many instances.

What is the benefit of a business outsourcing SEO as opposed to doing it in house?

What you should get by outsourcing SEO is not only a deep level of experience with what works and what does not, but also a clear set of deliverables, a dedicated resource, and a fundamental understanding of web design and web architecture. Not only that but also how to effectively convert qualified traffic, and finally, how to interpret the analytics and create a dashboard that serves as a guide going forward.

It takes time, patience, and perseverance, and frankly, not everyone is cut out for SEO, but I enjoy it. It’s great to see results!

Eric Morgan can also be found blogging on SEO and web related topics at Marketing Morgan.

Chelsea moved from Las Vegas to Reno to pursue her journalism degree along with a minor in digital media at the University of Nevada. Along the way, she became the senior web editor for the school’s print and online newspaper,  The Nevada Sagebrush.

While she does not ski or snowboard replying – “I think I am too clumsy…I would probably kill myself.” – we won’t hold that against her. When she is not spending her free time doing “computer stuff” she does get out on her bike. Although, it is a kind of riding that I am not too familiar with and a little apprehensive to try.

Welcome Chelsea!

In this episode Dave visits with Darik Volpa, founder and CEO of understand.com, a business that helps doctors and surgeons explain and illuminate the nature and realities of surgery. The understand.com service goes above and beyond the 30 year old diagrams they show you in the doctor’s office to 3D animations created by the same guys who create video games and cinema graphics. Understand.com’s animations show exactly what the surgery entails from the outside in.

We hope your surgeries are few and far between, but if you happen to be under the knife, or scope as I was just a few weeks before this podcast, be sure you ask your doctor to see the understand.com video that relates to your particular procedure. We also hope the CEO of your company never threatens you with dismissal for insubordination on a video podcast… (Ouch, Dave. That hurts… [;-)])

-Mike

10,000 years ago horses were native to North America. Those horses migrated to Europe and Asia as humans did across the Bering straights. Horses were were eventually re-introduced to North America by the Conquistadors, as humans began the process of re-introducing themselves. Stillman’s book begins with the idea that since horses were once native in North America they essentially came home to re-populate their old stomping grounds: a familiar and welcoming environment.

Stillman’s writing is at once poetic and logical with a strong narrative voice. The book is filled with vivid views of the past through the eyes of the ancestors of the Wild Horses that now roam the west.

“Perhaps the ones that were passed over when the men went below the decks to make their grisly selection sensed—in the way that all animals have a homing instinct, and generation after generation make their way back to their ancestral turf—that they would soon be home, back on the continent that had spawned them, thirteen thousand years after they had dispersed and mysteriously disappeared from their birthplace.”

It was great to meet Deanne and get a chance to sit down to talk with her at her book signing at Sundance Books in Reno.

-M

Flash

Flash is great for designers who are looking to create graphics and animation. They can building everything from the ground up to create:

• Visually stunning web pages with capabilities for intermixing rich media such as video, graphics, and animation.
• Interactivity that is persuasive and creates a positive user experience.
• Flexibility for use in many different business applications.
• Extensibility for use in different platforms and devices.
• Small file sizes for quick initialization and load times.

Asynchronous Flash and XML give you greater control over applications, and it can also be used to trigger additional interactions, launch supporting communication channels like email or sms text messages, and store valuable data for reporting and analysis.

Early on, Flash presented many positive use cases but faced significant hurdles dealing with compatibility and lack of installs amongst personal computers. These days 98% of computers have Flash installed, and it works seamlessly with a variety of different programming languages and devices. Furthermore, recent news from Google reports they have made significant steps towards improved Flash indexing for search engine optimization (SEO).

Now enter Flex.

Flex

Think of Flex as Flash for web developers. Instead of using it for visual design, Flex is better suited for business applications that require data manipulation and visualization. It has more components than Flash for achieving this, and the resounding feedback from our Technical Services team is that it is much faster and easier to use. Flex can integrate into any database or work with any web programming language. Flex is a framework for Flash, so you can build something in Flash and then export it as a Flex application. It will work with Mac or Windows, so you don’t have to create separate versions to work on both.

Part of the framework of Flex is that it gives you a lot of different libraries that are at your disposal. For example, Flex easily consumes RSS and XML to parse the feed to display whatever information is needed. This is great for something like a widget where you would want it to check for the most recent information to display.

Sound complicated? Here are a couple of use cases to give you a better idea.

Kiosks

One of the ways Twelve Horses has been using Flex is for Kiosk interfaces. It works very well for getting things to work like.

• Touchscreen Technology
• Text to Speech
• Ticket Scanning
• Credit Card Scanning
• Printing
• Braille and ADA Compliance

Flex also works well for the backend management of the Kiosk. You can check the status of the Kiosk, as well as update it with new content from anywhere in the world. Because all of the interactions with the Kiosk are fed into a database, you can also use it to run reports based on customer behavior and total sales generated.

Project Management

Because Flex does a great job of visualizing data, it works really well for running visual reports like Gannt Charts and graphs related to new business, productivity, status, resource forecasting, profitability analysis, and so on. Combine this with the Salesforce.com toolkit for Flex, and now you can pull data through their API for any object in Salesforce.com. Ordinarily you have to build all those functions into the application, but instead it is done for you. Combine Flex with Adobe Air, and now you have a desktop application that is easily deployed across the entire organization to facilitate everything from time entry to new business opportunities.

As you can see, Flex is another great tool in our quiver of programming languages and frameworks to pull from. It is fast, flexible, and capable of being customized for a variety of different business applications. Contact us to find out how we can further integrate your online marketing endeavors with Flex.