Eric Williamson
VP/Digital Strategy Director at The Martin Agency
AdGeek, Social Media & Web Addict, Insomniac Blogger, Husband & Dad
My Twitter Stream- Pixel Maverick Blog
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Tweets
- So long, blind buys: Consmr’s iPhone app gets 100K downloads in just two weeks (exclusive) http://t.co/Vld2RizK
- Facebook Adds Tiny Playable Games to News Feed http://t.co/0jNhiAP9
- Brands Will Go Gaga Over This New Facebook Feature http://t.co/VFgp3SIq
- Agencies Vs. Start-ups: Who Defines the Future? http://t.co/KlQIf8CD
- Converse Is an All-Star on Facebook http://t.co/xMj7jnJ7 Great interview & breakdown of Converse's content strategy
- Facebook launches standalone camera app for iOS http://t.co/QOd7BEig
- Distributed And Destination Thinking http://t.co/nI9O0nZS
- Oracle Bets Big on Social Message Management, Acquires Vitrue http://t.co/Rv1OHk5Y
- Is a vast video library worth the time and money? http://t.co/8YBaQOqp
- Multiplayer Doesn’t Need a Narrative Story Framework http://t.co/8pIbFxsh
- Many Companies Need Online Voice Lessons http://t.co/k0uQzCit
- RunWilder looks to mobile to build out an entertainment franchise for grownups http://t.co/YEdleZRn #SubservientTalkingAlf
- Engineer Guy shows how a phone accelerometer works, knows what's up and sideways (video) http://t.co/Jp8Wf1HG
- Elaborate Nike YouTube video has hidden Sonic Game (video) http://t.co/cPpa53q8 via @engadget
- Are You a Human replaces annoying CAPTCHAs with games http://t.co/zeRIpgFf #BrandedHumanTests
- StyleSaint Secures $1.5M to Create Pinterest With an E-Commerce Twist http://t.co/dthJp4kL
- @domanistudios thx for the RT
- Lessons from Dell’s Dedication on Twitter http://t.co/4hEt6V1v - Nice case study on Dell's use of Twitter
- Setting Down a Manifesto for Web Content http://t.co/1A6fPkFz
- On Facebook IPO Day, Twitter Sentiment Correlated With Share Price http://t.co/fAavlybH
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Posts
- Dec 24, 11
I was getting my morning fix at the closest Starbucks this morning and I witnessed a very cool display of brand & customer fanaticism that is worth sharing.
The Scene
The place was completely packed with customers. All the seats were taken, and the line to order stretched all the way to the door. Needless to say, every single Starbucks barista & employee available was behind the counter whipping up drinks as fast as they could to handle the rush. While I was in line I was near the table where you add your cream/sugar/stir, and a minor customer issue was brewing…
Lady 1: [Sigh's Loudly] “Where is the Splenda? I don’t see any Splenda.”
Lady 2: “I don’t see it either. Great – I think they are out.”
Lady 1: “Hello…Do you have any Splenda? Helloooo!!” [No Answer. Barista's could not hear anything over the customer noise and whooshing & blending]
[Both Ladies begin to bitch and moan about their inconvenience & debated wading through the crowd to get to the counter]
The Mutual Fanatacism
As the two ladies discussed their Splenda-less plight, one of the customers who was enjoying his coffee & NYT morning gets up from his nearby comfy seat and walked over to the scene. Without saying anything to anyone he began to open up all the various doors and shelves under the table and hunted around and ultimately he located the supplies. He found a box of Splenda and he replenished the empty container. He even refilled the stirring sticks that were looking a bit low. After spending the 2 – 3 minutes to do this, he returned to his comfy seat and resumed enjoying his morning. The ladies said “thank you” and left the store happy.
At first I thought he might be a Starbucks employee on his day off, but then later after I had gotten my coffee and was walking out the door I noticed that the store manager was talking to the good samaritan. She had noticed the nice thing he had done and was introducing herself and thanking him profusely. In addition to her verbal thanks, she gave him a hug and a handful of free drink vouchers.
Granted, this customer’s actions were pretty far into the “pay-it-forward” space, but I think he would not have even considered doing it if he did not already have a lot of love for Starbucks and think of the place as “his own”. If this scene had played out at a random McDonalds or some other place where he had less of a personal connection, I think he would have A) not been there enjoying his morning and B) not have cared enough to help the brand out.
The Question
When is the last time someone loved your brand this much?
When was the last time your brand loved them back just as much?
- Dec 04, 11
I got a mysterious @Mention tweet from Santa today using the hashtag #santaclout. Well, to be clear it was from @SantaClout who it seems has been busy since December 1st sending @Mention tweets to a list. That’s right folks @SantaClout has made his list and he is tweeting it.
Upon closer inspection, Mr. Klaus has sent 188 tweets at the time of this post with @Mentions to a long list of people. From the looks of the list of people that I recognized, I would speculate that @SantaClout is targeting people who have +40 Klout scores and/or are on certain twitter lists for media, advertising and social media.
All of Santa’s tweets are tagged with #SantaClout. I checked out the hashtag and thus far there is only a small build of buzz for that hashtag, but @SantaClout is still in buildup mode. If he follows up his initial @Mention buildup with some other tweets to increase suspense that buzz around #SantaClout should grow nicely.
So, who is @SantaClout and what is he building up awareness of #SantaClout for?
Is this the early stages of a twitter campaign for a brand/ retailer? Initially I thought of a campaign from Klout, but I think if it were something from them you would think they could have managed to get @SantaKlout.
Who knows? Maybe it is the real Santa and he is checking his list.
What do you think?
UPDATE TO ORIGINAL POST (12/11/2011)
Well, it appears that @SantaClout is BBDO Proximity. A timely Christmas app that assesses your social influence and lets you know if you are naughty or nice.
Apparently I am not getting coal this year. Whoo hoo! A nice little app from Proximity, kudos.
- Nov 18, 11
Stimulate your friends.
Great campaign from two badass Martinites with a $500 and a great idea. Submit your idea and follow their campaign until they run out of $$$.
The Hi-Five at the end is freaking genius.
- Nov 07, 11
Unless you were asleep for the past 12 hours, you are well aware that Google+ opened things up for Brands today. There is no shortage of articles and blog posts that covered this in depth today. The best of them from an agency or brand consultancy standpoint are the following IMHO:
- TechCrunch: How Google+ Could One-Up Facebook Brand Pages
- Google Blog: Google+ Launches Brand Pages
- ReadWriteWeb: Google+ Launches Brand Pages
- Mashable: Google Direct Connect Hooks Search and Google+ Brand Pages Together
- TechCrunch: Google+ Launches Pages, Opens Floodgates for All
I am still poking around and “Circling” various brands to see who is jumping in and what they are doing, but I had to laugh a little at the brand page that Facebook quickly put up with a not-so-subtle jab with their pics.Ironically, most of these articles were published and teams like mine were already fast at work on their “Agency POV” before the trusty Google Reps sent us the news that G+ Brand Pages had launched with the following overview:
Here are a few of the ways we hope Google+ can help you make lasting connections online with your customers:
- Have real conversations with the right people: Hold Hangouts to chat with your customers face-to-face and use Circles to share specific messages with specific groups of your followers.
- Inspire customers to recommend new ones: With Pages, people can now recommend your brand, not just your individual ads or sites, helping your +1’s add up faster.
- Increase the performance of your ads: +1’s surface recommendations in search and display ads, driving better performance.
- Across all of Google: Your +1’s reach not only the 40 million users of Google+, but all the users who come to Google every day.
As I have written about previously, I am still looking for that game-changer from Google+ that will offer the general public a unique feature that is worthy of switching (or even splitting time) from Facebook. Perhaps there is something in the content or connections that will arise via brand pages that will create that motivation.Until that competitive advantage is identified, I suspect that most brands will create near mirrors of what they are already doing on Facebook. I don’t think that will motivate switching, but it will definitely create some chaos for those of us who work at ad agencies & consultancies that manage social presences for our brands/ clients. - Oct 23, 11
I was doing my regular Sunday morning Feedly browsing and stumbled across a wonderful Slideshare deck by Made by Many. It dives into a number of different process and structure topics for how agencies and brand consultancies must work today VS the assembly line approach of old advertising. I am sure the deck would be even better with the V/O from the actual presentation.
Enjoy!
Silicon beach d01View more presentations from Made by Many - Aug 21, 11
Procrastination is a terrible thing. After what seems like forever, I finally took a vacation this week and had the time to realize that my “clean” blog theme had become a bit cluttered. It was definitely time for a theme upgrade and a bit of a widget cleanup. The new theme keeps with the simple/ minimal style that I prefer but I went from a 3 column to a 2 column in order to give more weight to the posts themselves.
- Jul 26, 11
As of today there is a total BS number of 1.4 Zillion blog posts and techie op/ed articles that provide a high-level overview on Google+ …… “The Pros and Cons of Google+” and what not.
So, as an up-front effort to keep you totally glued to this post through the end I can promise you that this NOT another one of those. I am going to breeze right past the overview and dive into one specific feature and a deficiency that I think could easily be fixed by the brilliant minds at Google.
The Lazy Problem with Google+ Circles
If you read my blog, then you are probably a bit of a DigiMobiSocial Nerd type with a raging case of AdGeek too. So I will make the assumption that you were one of the first to jump into Google+ and have been using it for about 4 weeks. You have probably made a few posts and maybe even redirected all your Facebook pics through Picasa and into G+ (you are a freaking Google+ Samurai almost). You have most likely spent a considerable amount of time with Google+’s most distinguishing feature — The Circles.
Your experience with the now-infamous circles may have gone something like this:
Your First Impression – “It’s so easy. All I have to do is click and drag people into circles. I love this …Google is so cool!”
The Early Stages — “I have my friends and family setup and strangely a whole bunch of Google people since they were all over G+. I just realized that these circles remind me of that ‘Real Life Social Networks’ presentation by that Paul guy.”
Exploring Further — “Hello Larry and Sergey …good god Scoble talks a lot huh? I am going to create a special circle for you digerati types”
A Couple Weeks In — “Man I am seeing a ton of my Tweeps on here. Wait a second, my ‘thought leaders’ circle is becoming twitter basically. …Shit! I think I am using Google+ wrong. How embarrassing. Glad I caught this early”
Post-Realization Cleanup Attempt — “Just gonna create a sub-circle of my thought leaders for all my fellow AdGeeks and agency folk. (10 min later) …WTF? This takes too long. I am ok with my circle being a twitter copy.”
So while the circles are one of my most favorite things about Google+, I think it also is missing some key elements to be a true game changer. As powerful as the concept of circles is, it is only as strong as a user taking the time to set them up …manually. And there is the rub. Bottom line, we humans are extremely lazy when it comes to the interwebs. We have become accustomed to things being automated and to be able to outsource our long-term memory and other seemingly insignificant evidence points for why we deserve the SkyNet ass kicking that is coming. So the ask to manually segment and assign what is likely to become a large number of Google+ connections is a daunting one to put it lightly. In my opinion, it is an ask that will not be answered by the vast majority of users. I think that some of your early adopter types will take the time to laboriously craft their circles …but Average Joe is definitely not going to do it. This is a major problem for Google+ as far as going mainstream to ever really scale and compete with Facebook.
Why Doesn’t Google+ Just Make Passive Circle Suggestions?
The data is all right there in user’s profiles. Simple things would work. Suggestions based on where user’s work (company, industry type, etc) seems like a total no-brainer. Taking it a step beyond that, I think that Google+ could start to look into people’s social graph and begin to offer up suggestions that are based on the “Six Degrees of Separation” thing (i.e. The following people are connected to more of the same people that you are, the next group is one tier down, etc).
Put the suggestions in a friendly space in the real estate of the circles UI. Make it so a user can accept the suggestion and “Poof” the new circle is created with all of the suggested users dropped in place automatically. Give the user the ability to maintain & update this in bulk quickly and easily. The user can add some basic profile attribute values to a circle …and either automatically or in bulk Google+ will find people that you are connected to and make sure that your circles are always filled with the people you intended.
This seems like something that Google could do easily. Maybe they are already working on it.
What do you think? What would you suggest to improve Google+’s Circles?
- Jun 16, 11
If you work at an advertising agency, then you are are probably dealing with the “digital strategy” dilemma right now. Most of the top agencies around the world have reached a point in their digital evolution where they no longer need the digital silo that they bolted on a few years ago.
Getting rid of the digital silo is the right thing to do IMHO, but I would be lying to you if I said it was easy.
An important part of silo busting is figuring out how to reallocate the digital talent to the other departments within the agency. To accomplish this, you assemble a group of some of the smartest thought leaders in your agency together in a room and start people shuffling. Some of these reallocations are pretty simple (“Hello Digital Artist, welcome to the creative department”), but there are a few that fall into a grey area… and that is where the dilemma presents itself. One of those grey area roles that is sure to spark debate and some political posturing is the digital strategist.
The “digital strategy dilemma” discussion might go something like this…
Account “Well their title has ‘strategy’ in it, so they should go to the strategic planning department right?
Planner [Sighs audibly and stops scribbling in moleskin] “I think you are interpreting it too literally. Digital strategists are not really strategic planners and to be honest our planners disagree with the role even existing because we think we are capable of providing digital & social strategy without them. Look, I sketched a venn diagram to explain how we should put them somewhere else.”
Account [Finishes banging out an email on his Blackberry and holsters it in his belt clip] “Ok… Well how about creative? The digital strategist is always working closely with them to help guide them to turn their raw concepts into a series of refined executions within a larger communication strategy.”
Creative [Looks up from doodle sketch pad and removes fedora hat] “Yeah, but they are not art directors or copywriters, so they are not a fit in our department. What about account? Can we stick them there”
Account [Looks up from Blackberry and holsters it in belt clip] “Well, I know that account people do rely heavily on them for guidance on how to scope, setup and manage a digital/mobile/social project and they help us on calls with the client too. So, I guess we could take them in our department.”
Digital Strategy [Looks up from iPhone and pushes pause on Angry Birds game] “When you really think about it, digital strategists have a hand in providing guidance to all of the departments at our agency in one way or another. So, as long as we can keep doing what we do best and as long as the department we move to has legitimate career advancement opportunities for us, then we don’t care what department we move to.”
[Silence and some staring around the room]
Account “Um …well, ok I have a hard stop in 5 minutes so let’s put this digital strategy thing in the parking lot for now and we can revisit it later in another meeting.”
Digital Strategy [rolls eyes and returns to Angry Birds game]
Creative [Puts fedora hat back on but backwards this time because it looks cooler that way]
Planner [Lost in his own head as he scribbles out a "No Digital Strategy" manifesto in the form of a haiku]
Project Manager [Never heard a word of the entire discussion since she was tapping away on her laptop the whole time and never looked up]
[Group leaves the conference room with the digital strategy dilemma still in the parking lot on the whiteboard]
Sound familiar?
Let’s be honest, the task of reallocating digital strategy to another department is not the problem. The real problem is that your agency was probably never very clear on what the hell a digital strategist IS or what they DO as part of a project flow. What they do know is that the digital strategy role seems to be very helpful and important to the agency to be able to successfully execute digital/ mobile/ social project …and that digital strategists are consistently providing expert guidance to several other roles on the team ultimately making the work better.
Perhaps the best way to resolve the dilemma is to step back and take a closer look at the role and maybe that will help us find a new home for the misunderstood digital strategist.
What skills does a good digital strategist have?
Good digital strategists tend to be T-Shaped people who have a generalist level of expertise across many roles with a deep expertise in 1 – 2 specific areas (An expert in Social, Mobile, Analytics, Gaming, etc). This allows them the ability to move comfortably throughout the various roles on the team and give each of them relevant guidance to make their work better. A good digital strategist is as comfortable totally geeking out in a pile of data and graphs as they are leading a swarm/brainstorm to help take a raw concept and turn it into 10 executions that all work together in a communications plan.
What does a good digital strategist do with those skills?
When you look at the wide range of activities & outputs that a digital strategist contributes through the lens of a project and the stages within, the best word that sums it up to me is “GUIDANCE”. At a high level, the first half of a project for the digital strategist is about combing through tons of data and turning that into key insights and observations that inform the brief. The second half of a project is about taking a raw idea from the creative team and building an entire ecosystem of messaging and touchpoints around it.
Pre-Idea – Research, Planning and Brainstorming
The digital strategist is primarily working with the account management and strategic planning team during this stage of the project.
- Assesses the initiative that is about to begin and advises the account managers on which additional digital specialists should be added to the team in order to reach the best results.
- Performs research based on the task or business problem that we are addressing. The findings should be used to inform or accompany the Creative Brief and this is where the digital strategist will be working closely with the strategic planners.
- Identifies the measurements of success based on the business problem(s) that we are overcoming and the objectives.
- Provide crucial project planning and advice to the account & project managers for how to best organize the steps of the effort.
Outputs Might Include: Social/ Search Scour, Online Ecology Audit, Online & Social Performance Metrics Analysis, Customer Analysis/ Persona Development, Online Competitive Analysis, Measurements of Success Statement.
Post-Idea — Creative Guidance & Communication and Content Planning
The digital strategist transitions from working with the account and planner groups leading up to the “Big Idea” to working with the creative and technical/ developer teams to refine the idea and turn it into reality during this stage of the project.
- Works with the creative team to give them a clear view of the various opportunities in emerging tech, social, online, etc in a “blank slate” manner to not direct what the idea is but to help inspire their ideas.
- Evaluate and refine the “digital creative” work to help ensure it is best practice and has the user experience (UX) in mind.
- Identifies all of the possible properties within the brand/ campaign relative to the initiative and recommends how it will all link together + the role that each property should play in the overall experience.
- Identifies all of the development & hosting implications and creates the proper technical requirements documentation for our production partners (also serves as liaison to the technical team who may document this part).
- Works with the strategic planners and creative teams to think about the content plan for how we will continue to refresh this ..site/ page/ campaign over time after the initial launch.
- Works with QA, Production/Dev and UX teams to plan, execute and evaluate the early and in-development prototyping efforts.
- Works with the analytics team to identify the type of reporting that the team will be doing post-launch, then works with the account management team to start thinking about the ongoing operation of …data >> analyze >> insights >> recommendations that will need to occur on a weekly or monthly/ quarterly cycle.
Obviously I am just hitting the high-points here for a typical process that could be applied to a variety of different initiatives. There are a ton of other details that go into a typical initiative, but that just adds to the areas and tasks that a digital strategist plays a key guidance role.
So is the problem REALLY just the name itself?
I admit that I am totally biased here, but even if you water down my description of what a good digital strategist does …I think it is clear that they serve a very important role in the work that an advertising agency does. So, is the “digital strategy dilemma” that agencies are having right now just an issue with the title name itself? Understanding that the main argument is that nobody likes having the word “digital” in front of the strategic/ guidance part of the title — I don’t think it is as easy as just removing the first word. If that is all that we needed to do, then it would indicate that all strategic planners & brand planners can do what a good digital strategist does and vice versa (which is NOT realistic situation at all in most agencies btw).
So what do we rename digital strategists?
Engagement Planners? [feather ruffling & grunts inserted here].
Connections Planners? [more ruffling and posturing inserted here].
…Engagement Architects? [ok, I was just reaching here a little..]
What do you suggest? I would love to hear your recommendations for a name OR do you think the name is fine and the agencies should embrace it?
Comment and let me know.
- Mar 14, 11
The first day at SXSW was a bit of a blur. The actual conference got kicked off at 2pm, but the place was buzzing and getting packed by 9am when Eric Hanson and I went by the Austin Convention to pick up my badge and some VIP badges for an event.
After picking up my SXSW Badge and getting some breakfast tacos, Eric H and I headed back to Barton Creek Resort where about 6 of the Martin Agency crew were staying to pick everybody up for Day 1 of SXSW. We left the resort around noon so we could have lunch before going over to the conference center. We had an amazing TexMex lunch at Polvos thanks to a tip from Rad’s wife and a good review on Yelp. The food was awesome, but we were all a little sleepy after gorging which was a bad plan before going to conference panels.
Our plan was to try and split up as much as possible so we could divide-and-conquer and cover as much SXSW ground as we could to bring back the most knowledge to Martin. I went to “Do Ad Agencies Need to Start Thinking Like Software Companies” as my first panel, and it did not disappoint.
First Panel – “Do Ad Agencies Need to Start Thinking Like Software Companies?”
Panelists – Rick Webb, Matt Gallagan, Rob Rasmussen, Ben Malbon and Allison Mooney (Moderator)
The panel got off to a rocky start ironically because of technical issues trying to get the presentation to load up properly. After about 5 minutes tinkering with it, the panel decided to just motor on without much visual/ slide support. Not surprisingly, Rick Webb (Barbarian) was the jokester and most vocal in the group with several really great comments/ contributions, but all-in-all the entire panel was good and I thoroughly enjoyed the session. The topic focused on some of the challenges that agencies today face in trying to produce work that the old-agency-system does not necessarily support very well. The panel discussion went on several tangents but all within the zone of the topic at hand which was really about “how to run an ‘agile agency’.
My big takeaways from this panel were as follows:
Your agency needs to have a group or at least a person who is passionate about and empowered to be the Emerging Tech/ Innovation/ Startup expert. This person needs to know what is bleeding edge and make connections with these startups. This person needs to be positioned within the agency so they know a little bit about what every brand/ account within the agency is doing – that way they can identify relevant opportunities where he/she can connect up a brand with a new emerging thing to try new innovative things. This person needs to be empowered and able to execute on these opportunities, and not just a research expert with no status within the agency.
To truly be agile, you can’t plan on having massive strategy efforts to make everything “perfect” before beginning the initiative. You need to have enough strategy to pick a direction, but then you need to be able to Create >> Test >> Optimize >> Create and so on and optimize strategy along the way. Constant prototyping through the entire initiative is how you run an agile agency.
“Platforms Enable Campaigns” but the funding right now in advertising is all backwards. Right now all the funding goes to the campaign (Media) with no real money left over for the platform. There needs to be a better balance for this going forward.
Software companies still need ad agencies. As great as agile software companies are, they are not able to truly be successful without the creative contributions of people that ad agencies typically employ. Ad agencies do a much better job at capturing and distilling culture and making that part of the brand at its’ core.
It is important to have some “untethered creatives” that are part of your agency system. The panel agreed that some of the best agencies they have ever worked at had several creatives that were not dedicated to any one brand/account at the agency, but rather they roamed about and were able to pitch in on various brands as needed. The crazier the better for this group as sometimes the best inspiration an agency can have for a client comes from an outside and way-out-there perspective.
The team structure for each brand at your agency needs to be flexible enough to pick different leads for each one. Sometimes the UX Strategist should be the lead, sometimes it is appropriate for the traditional art director/ copywriter team to lead, sometimes the developers should be the lead. Assess the situation for each client and create a team based on the need, not based on how old advertising worked.
For my second group I went to “User Research in Gaming”. I was not sure that this would be appropriate since I worried it might be too in the weeds of gaming, but it was awesome. The panel ended up being 95% about user research and testing based on behavior and 5% about hardcore gaming stuff. My review is below.
Second Panel – User Research in Gaming
Panelists – Bill Fulton, Rich Riden, Ray Kowalewski and Marina Kobayashi (Moderator)
This was my favorite session/ panel of the day. I am not a big gamer, nor do we develop a lot of games for clients but the focus of this panel discussion was about the user research that goes into the games that most major game developers create. The type of user analysis that these guys do is completely applicable to the work we do at ad agencies, and in many cases it is a smarter way to approach the audience research than how agencies do it. The guys on this panel were all extremely smart/analytical thinkers and in many cases had Masters or Doctorate level degrees in areas of Psychology/ Neuroscience/ Human Interaction. At times, the panel would go way down into the weeds and specifics of gaming but on the whole they kept it about the research methods and I was able to apply it to what we are doing for brands at the agency.
My key takeaways from this panel were as follows:
User’s don’t read instructions so you have to know them to make things simple/ fun/ intuitive. Remember how big the instruction booklet was for games 10 years ago? Now most games come with a small little insert of basic instructions at best. That is because the games are much more intuitive, and because user research showed that the instruction booklets were worthless. People don’t read them, they just get in and start trying to figure it out. If you have to read the instructions to play, people will not play. Totally applicable to advertising. If you have to try too hard to explain your point and engage a consumer, then it is too complex and you need to rework.
You can’t build a game and then plan on doing all the testing at the end. You have to build a little and test, shift/ tweak/ fix and build some more and test again. It is a constant iterative process and that is the ONLY way to build a great game.
Demographics suck. The only real user information that is worth relying on is behavior. They have observed people who are 7 and 70 who play a game and the way they play it and the behaviors that they exhibit will many times be exactly the same.
Focus groups suck. The only real way to learn what is good and bad is to observe humans interacting with your game/ product/ message. In a focus group, 9 times out of 10 the group gets swayed by the loudest and most aggressive person in the group. The data is flawed.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in user research is to not use an experienced researcher to establish the test. Someone who does not know how to properly setup surveys and moderate usability groups can do more harm than anything to the data you can get from the effort. If the researcher does not know how to properly set things up, the results you get back are skewed due to user confusion.
Biometrics and Biodata and integrating that into the game experience is the newest next big thing that is emerging in gaming and will be big next. Integrating the user into the game by incorporating their own biostats is a new thing that most game developers are playing with and figuring out what users react to.
The Overall Takeaways from Day 1 at SXSW
- Pick at least two panels/ events per time block. If your first choice sucks, get up and move on to your second choice.
- Don’t start drinking too early. That 5pm time block will be rough if you start drinking at noon.
- Try and break away from your group and go off on your own. Sit next to strangers, you will meet more people and learn more.
- Skip out on at least 1 time block per day. There is more stuff going on in and around the conference center that you can learn from as much as you could in a session/ panel.
- Bring your power cords for your laptop and various gadgets.
- Beluga app is so awesome and simple. Perfect for keeping up with your group throughout the day.
That is a wrap on Day 1. Will post the Day 2 recap tomorrow.
- Mar 10, 11
I arrived in Austin today and am looking forward to kicking off SXSW tomorrow. As a precautionary measure I figure I should use tonight (aka “SXSW Eve”) to run through my personal SXSW Readiness Checklist.
- Laptop backpack to be able to stop, drop and blog instantly - check
- Available room in my laptop backpack for various badges, t-shirts, stickers and other ridiculous SWAG - check
- Multiple gadgets fully charged - check
- Power cords for said gadgets to refuel midday – check
- “Yes” RSVPs to so many events that I have lost track – check
- New accounts for various emerging social media apps that will definitely forsure maybe sorta blow up here at SXSW – check
- A gang of other nerds from my agency to hang out with and that have my back in case we get into a gadget-scuffle with another nerd gang trying to steal our wifi – check
Clearly, I am ready to go get my SXSW nerd on.
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Info
- Marketing and Advertising | Greater Boston Area, USExperience
- Mar 2012 - PresentSVP/ Director of Digital & Content Strategy / MullenUS Cellular, Grey Goose, Google
- Jan 2009 - Mar 2012VP/ Digital Strategy Director / The Martin AgencyMicrosoft, Walmart, Norwegian Cruise Line, Discover Card, UPS, Manpower, Hanes, Boeing, Rosetta Stone, American Cancer Society, USTA, Pizza Hut, FreeCreditReport.com, GEICO
- Oct 2007 - Jan 2009Account Director / IMC2Account Director in charge of Pizza Hut account.
- Aug 2003 - Sept 2007President / NetSuccess, Inc.President of an interactive agency. Daisy Brand, Maggiano's, On The Border
- 2001 - 2003Account Services / MasterLink Group
- 1998 - 2000Recruiter / Merritt, Hawkins & Associates
Education-
2004 - 2006The University of Texas at DallasMBA in Marketing/ MIS Focus
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1994 - 1998Texas A&M UniversityBS in Political Science
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1993 - 1995Missouri Valley College
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Checkins
- Rabia's73 Salem St.
- Mullen40 Broad St.
- Hillstone Restaurant60 State St
- Boston Logan International Airport (BOS)1 Harborside Dr
- Hyatt Rosemont6350 N River Rd
- Mercadito108 W. Kinzie St.
- Hyatt Rosemont6350 N River Rd
- Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)10000 Bessie Coleman Dr
- Boston Logan International Airport (BOS)1 Harborside Dr
- The Cottage190 Linden St.
- The Landing Restaurant81 Front St
- Mullen40 Broad St.
- The Publick House1648 Beacon St.
- Mullen40 Broad St.
- Za Restaurant350 Third St
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