a thousand cuts :: adam cohen's blog

Changing markets cause change for those who serve them. As businesses adapt and figure out how social media will impact how they conduct day to day functions, service providers are adapting too.  These days companies have a high probability of encountering any of the following providing social media services:

• Sole prioprietor (independent contractor)
• Social media agency (small, medium and increasingly larger)
• PR agency (traditional, new media, all sizes)
• Digital or interactive agency (all sizes)
• Advertising agency (all sizes, but particularly the big dogs)
• CRM consulting firm
• Database marketing agency

In an effort to help bring some clarity to the situation, friends (and business partners, and competitors) Todd Defren of SHIFT and Aaron Strout of Powered have collaborated with me to give you a snippet of what makes us different.  We have some overlap and we also have some ways we can complement each other.  We are doing business together and competing.  Either way, hopefully this lets potential clients know more about what makes us different.  How’d we do?  I’d encourage your to read Todd’s post and Aaron’s post to get their commmentary as well.

Todd Defren

This is my company…

One of the top-25 PR agencies in the U.S., with offices in NYC, San Francisco and Boston, SHIFT is an agency that helps organizations of all sizes better communicate with the people that matter to their business.  Sometimes that’s “the media,” sometimes that’s “some loudmouth on Twitter.”  Companies ranging from Quiznos to Club Med, from tiny start-ups to established tech companies, look to SHIFT for counsel and execution on both branded and earned media.

What we do…

SHIFT focuses on “on-going engagement” vs. “campaigns.”  And because relationships change over time, our targets and tactics evolve as-needed.  Thus the portfolio of services a client will tap into can include: Traditional Media Relations (coverage in NYTimes, TODAY Show, eWeek, etc.) + Social Media Relations (dialogue with relevant Facebook Group admins, Twitterati, etc.) + Content and App Development + Community Management (running a YouTube channel or Facebook Fanpage).

This is why you should call me (type of challenge or project)…

We are generally called on by large brands that need to act more like a start-up or by small companies that want to take things to the next level.  If your company needs more overall visibility (“get ink!”); needs to better engage with consumers (“that Social Media stuff!”); or needs to brand or re-brand in the marketplace, it’s worth a conversation.

This is when you should call someone else…

While we bring plenty of creativity to the table, when it comes to execution portion of app development, videography, website development, advertising campaigns, media buying and SEO, SHIFT will turn to quality partners like Powered and Rosetta, among others.

Aaron Strout

This is my company…

Powered is a dedicated social media agency that helps brands fully capitalize on their social initiatives. With 75 employees in four offices (Austin, New York City, Portland and San Francisco) we brings “best-in-class” expertise across the social spectrum to our clients by offering a combination of strategy, planning, activation and management for social presence and programs.

What we do

Okay, I guess I answered this in the “this is my company” section but to add on, we help big brands with strategy and activation (getting their key stakeholders like customers, prospects, partners or employees) to do things that create value for their brand. Those activities might include evangelizing, contributing, participating or learning.

This is why you should call me (type of challenge or project)

We’re really at our best when we’re helping big brands (mainly B2C) connect their social efforts to their marketing efforts. We start by fleshing out a cohesive strategy and then move toward the activation. In many cases, this includes focusing on things like influencer outreach, ambassador programs, Facebook Fanpages, applications and customer tabs and the building and managing of branded online communities.

This is when you should call someone else.

We’re still not particularly good at media buying, custom web development (outside of Facebook and community building), SEM and general site SEO. We also don’t do any traditional PR. For those activities, I’d strongly recommend talking to our friends at Rosetta and SHIFT, both of whom we partner/work with.

Adam Cohen

This is my company…

Rosetta is the largest independent digital agency in the US. Using a patented approach to segmentation, called Personality® Segmentation (yep, it’s patented and a differentiator), which provides deep insights into the drivers of consumer behavior, Rosetta’s teams translate these insights into relevant marketing solutions to attract, retain and strengthen a brand’s most valuable customer relationships. With 720+ team members, Rosetta is headquartered in Princeton, NJ, with offices in NYC, Cleveland, Boston, Chicago, Denver and most recently Toronto.

What we do

We help companies develop strategies and implement marketing tactics, combining the best of insight + technology – from eCommerce to Paid Search to Creative to Analytics to Relationship Marketing. With all the tools in a marketer’s toolbox, we strive to be a CMO’s most trusted partner.  Our industry expertise includes Retail & Consumer Products; Healthcare; Financial Services; Communications, Media & Technology, and B2B.

This is why you should call me (type of challenge or project)

We’re best when we bring to together marketing disciplines and industry acumen to provide measurable integrated solutions.  We shine we get the opportunity to demonstrate business results across tactics – like integrating eCommerce with paid search/SEO, driving the best creative with analytics and measurement, or infusing CRM with Personality Segmentation.

This is when you should call someone else.

Traditional media outlets are outside of our sweet spot (TV, print, radio), along with traditional PR.  Our social media practice is focused on infusing social into all of our marketing disciplines, but we are partnering with world-class agencies like SHIFT on outreach programs and Powered on designing the best approaches to engage and activate communities.

***

Thanks again to Todd and Aaron for providing thought provoking insights for the topic – these are two guys for whom I have the utmost respect in working with (and occasionally against).  Todd says it best: “Where we compete, we do so with respect and good humor.  Where we can cooperate, we do so with gumption and gusto.”

Did this help provide clarity? Where do you think the market will be in five, ten years? We’re all a ways away from the winning formula and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Photo credit: eworm via flickr

Over the last couple of years I’ve been fortunate to get to know the founders of the Community Roundtable well. Jim Storer and Rachel Happe are two talented community practitioners with tons of experience. When Jim told me about his idea for TheCR (as it’s known in short), I was intrigued from day one. While there are many social media practitioners, blogs and community platform companies to leverage out there, TheCR provides at least two unique differentiators as part of its value proposition:

• The Community Roundtable is a peer network of social media practioners and community managers. In essence, TheCR is using community to enhance and better people and businesses who are practicing community management every day. This isn’t social media or community 101, it’s 501. It’s a network for people who practice the discipline daily.
• The Community Roundtable is pushing the envelope to advance the field. With their background in organizational design, TheCR team has built a framework of business processes to apply to various stages of community lifecycle. This isn’t (only) for selling community into an organization, it’s aimed at best practices at sustaining and growing them. TheCR is the answer to the question, “You have a community. Now what?”

As companies look at branded and non-branded, public and private, enterprise and customer-facing community platforms and decisions, TheCR provides a highly concentrated armament of resources and network of peers for support. Rosetta, my agency has been a partner from early on due to the complement to our own value proposition, and as Rachel describes it, I’m a self-professed “Cheesehead.”

So it’s not a surprise that Rosetta is pleased to be a sponsor, along with Fuzebox and Powered (another Rosetta partner), of The Community Roundtable’s first annual State of Community Management 2010 report. This 60+ page report, with an introduction from Altimeter Group‘s Jeremiah Owyang, is a tremendous resource that combines the voice of participating members representing “over 180+ years of community management experience” and what the group learned in 2009. It’s an asset to anyone exploring starting or improving their community initatives in 2010.

In the last 2 years of blogging I’ve been able to share my own views on social media, interactive marketing and other topics.  During that time my day job at Rosetta has evolved from working with exciting companies like Coach and Borders to leading our Search and Media practice.  I’ve had the fortunate experience of working with talented teams and innovative clients, with an agency leadership team who was willing to help me launch our social media practice over a year ago.

Helping clients leverage social media has been a passion but up until recently only a part-time gig; I’ve had many fun and challenging responsibilities to work on in parallel while trying to see if we can add social media to the value proposition Rosetta brings to the table.  In the meantime, this blog has served as a way to capture thoughts and more importantly to hear from you, continuing conversations that weren’t as suitable for Twitter or some other forum.

For my two-year blog anniversary post, I’m excited to share details about my expanded role.  As we’ve grown our social media team, I’m pleased to share that my role is now 100% focused on helping clients develop social media programs.  My goal is to build integrated programs that treat social media tactics as informed strategies, leveraging deeper understanding of a brand’s most valuable customers and prospects through Rosetta’s Personality®-based segmentation.

What this really means:

• After 15 years in consulting (first 12 at Accenture), I’ve been able to craft a role for myself (with leadership team sponsorship) at a digital agency I’m excited about.
• For a long time I’ve been advocating that social media marketing tactics should be treated alongside other digital initiatives in an integrated and strategic way, leveraging CRM, segmentation and consumer insight.  Now I get to truly focus full time on making that happen.
• I’ve spent the last two+ years learning and applying what I’ve learned in social media, now I get to learn and apply on a full time basis.  (But I’m no expert, just trying to help clients make informed decisions).

Frankly I’m very grateful to see a more formal career path emerge from ideas.  I’m looking forward to sharing more here with a reinvigorated sense of purpose, and to thanking a lot of people in person over the next few weeks.  At risk of forgetting to call out a few, a hat tip to a few folks who continue to inspire me in this space:  Len Devanna, Ken Burbary, Marc Meyer, Aaron Strout, Jim Storer, Kyle Flaherty, Tim Walker, Amber Naslund, Beth Harte, and Rachel Happe.  And certainly Mark Taylor who has been my biggest advocate.  Now to deliver on the promise…

Photo credit: st3f4n via Flickr

The devastation in Haiti has struck a chord in individuals and organizations around the globe. I’m going to shamelessly plug this app since it’s a great way for our agency to contribute to the cause.  What started off as a project to showcase Rosetta‘s mobile team skills turned into something better – a useful app which allows people to look up charities that accept donations via SMS and click to donate.  It’s a simple directory service with buttons to send a text message right from your iPhone. Donation Connect also allows you to promote your donation and the app through Facebook and Twitter. The app is free; if you like it please use it and tell a friend about it. Let me know what you think. This was created on volunteer time after hours from our mobile and creative teams.

Donation Connect (iTunes App Store)

What do augmented reality, snowdays and New Orleans have in common?  A Happy Holidays card and helping to spread some joy from Rosetta.

Every year agencies of all types like to show their stuff with digital holiday cards.  Looking to raise the bar from last year, the Rosetta team is trying something new.  Our team took their passion for technology, social media and working for a good cause to dream up something fun – and we hope people find it to be a “different taste” from the usual agency card.  Grab your webcam and see what I mean.

Happy Holidays from Rosetta

What’s more joyful than catching snowflakes on your tongue?  If we catch a million snowflakes, on February 20, 2010, we’ll be in New Orleans providing some joy to local children at City Park: a snow day.  Read more at the card site, and I look forward to sharing stories of the joy from that event in a couple months.  Have a happy and healthy holiday season.

Note: We’ll be watching usage and looking to fix or upgrade features – would love your input on what we could improve.

UPDATE: The WSJ covered our holiday card today (“Stop Licking Your Monitor,” 12/15/2009).  My favorite quote is about “on-tongue recognition technology” from Rosetta partner Toni Hess.

Google Sidewiki is a perplexing new product from our friends in Mountain View, CA.  Sidewiki requires a toolbar download but enables anyone to comment along side any website.  Here are three key posts that have been helpful to understand it – and I’d highly recommend reading them.

• Shift’s Doug Haslam shares thoughts on the positive potential of Sidewiki’s future.
• Jeremiah Owyang explains the disruption Sidewiki is creating – be sure to read through the comments.
• Jason Falls discusses the dangers when social media is forced on brands.

As people try to sort out what this all means, Rosetta’s Search & Media group teamed up with our Healthcare practice to create a quick point of view and some recommended actions.  You can download the PDF here:

Google Sidewiki and Implications for Pharma Brands: Rosetta’s POV

What would you do? This has applications outside of pharma – would this be helpful to your organization?  We hope to keep the document up to date with more information, but in an industry that is highly regulated it’s important to act quickly.

UPDATE: Rosetta’s Chris Boggs also published some thoughts today on Search Engine Watch, providing more discussion about the implications of Sidewiki for SEO.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I’m grateful to AdAge for publishing my first post there – Big Pharma and Google Sidewiki: A Sink or Swim Situation? – Please let me know what you think.  Thanks to Rosetta partner Jason Whitney and Search manager Ian Orekondy for helping with the content.

UPDATE: I’ve heard some feedback about issues downloading the PDF from Rosetta.com – so I am attaching the document here for posterity.  Please reach out to me with any concerns.

On Tuesday, May 12, the first annual Marketing and Advertising Thought Leaders Summit will be held in NYC.  I have the pleasure of joining Rosetta‘s CEO Chris Kuenne to attend what is looking to be a very compelling gathering of industry leaders.  From the MATLS website:

“This one-day summit will present a series of dialogue-driven forums on the changing trends in innovation, technology and consumer behavior and their impact on the marketing and advertising industries. Join us and our line-up of more than 25 industry leaders for a compelling day of insights, information and networking.”

Chris will be speaking on a panel moderated by Forrester‘s Interactive Marketing analyst Sean Corcoran on the topic: “Next Generation Digital Agency” along with C-level leadership from iCrossing, Initiative, Innovation Interactive, and Resource Interactive.

I’ll be there both on Twitter and posting here with thoughts and commentary – it looks to be a valuable gathering of CEOs, CMOs and private equity leadership.  The attendees have a heavy hand in shaping the future of our industry, it should be intriguing.

Will you be there? Please reach out, I’d love to connect.

Few marketers dispute PPC as an effective and measurable online channel.  Social media, in contrast, is currently subject to dispute.

One of the more compelling arguments for pay-per-click search marketing is the ability to attribute web sales directly to clicks from search advertising.  ROI can be measured to multiple decimal points tying the amount of spend invested in bidding on keywords to the direct revenue and conversion.  When the conversation changes to social media, there are debates about ROI, a lack of proven approaches and many marketers still viewing social media as experimental.  ["Conversion" for those not familiar with web analytics is defined as a visitor to a web property who completes a targeted action, including signing up for an email newsletter, adding a product to a shopping cart, or completing checkout.]

Skepticism Abounds

A way to address the skepticism marketers have about social media is to draw the same correlation to the purchase path as search marketing.  Notice I did not suggest “the” way to address the skepticism –  providing better metrics won’t give the complete picture of social media benefits, but it will start to quantify the role social media can play in a marketing strategy in terms that internet marketers deal with already.  For example, today Webtrends and Radian6 made a joint product announcement tying traditional web analytics to social media monitoring, through Webtrends’ Open Exchange platform.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Establishing Credit

Traditional analytics tools give credit for conversion to the tracked marketing activity before the conversion takes place – a “last click” methodology.  This could be a search query prior to a site visit, an ad clicked through on a search results page or a banner ad.  Those in the SEM and Display Advertising industries would tell you that while these metrics are precisely measured,  a major challenge is to quantify all the “other” touchpoints a consumer has prior to conversion.  (Rosetta, my agency, has a differentiated approach to marketing analytics that does capture “view-thru” – tracking that a user saw a display ad days or even weeks prior to a conversion event).

Here is what I would like to see analytics vendors or social media monitoring platforms do to start to quantify the measurement:

• Track participation in social technologies in similar fashion to traditional ecommerce sites (defined conversion events, page views, length of visit).  A potential limitation is that brands may only be able to track measurements based on assets they control (hosted communities, hosted blogs, custom widgets, etc).
• Tie search engine queries, organic search site visits and PPC ad clicks – and ultimately, conversion – back to whether the user had participated in a social technology, and measure typical length of visit/level of engagement both before and after conversion.
• Provide in one dashboard the ability to identify the direct correlation between social marketing initiatives to conversion and revenue.

This level of data would help marketers more directly measure the success of social marketing initiaitves and make at least part of the intangible, tangible.  Is that a lot to ask?

Photo credit: premasagar via flickr

Alternate payment methods (APM), in eCommerce terms, are ways to complete a transaction without using the normal credit card authorization process.  For the past couple of years Rosetta has completed a quick study of a hundred leading online retailers using the big players in this space.  Paypal, BillMeLater, and Google Checkout are the ones we have measured mostly due to marketshare in the large online retailer category.  New services and startups continue to crop up, as evidenced by the buzz related to Chris Brogan’s sponsored post around the new service eBillMe.

The major play for each of these payment methods is the additional uptick in conversion – the premise that providing alternate ways to pay will reduce people from abandoning their shopping carts and more broadly appeal to those worried about giving their credit card to a website.  Our study shows that both Paypal and BillMeLater have gained retailer adoption in the last 18 months.  Google Checkout appears to have maintained ground at the same relative group.

The list of retailers surveyed is the same list from our recent study on Facebook.  While not scientific, it shows us some trends in the marketplace.  The major points of the APM study this round are that the growth rate is continuing among retailers, and Google Checkout is stagnating.  Two major questions have come up:

• Why is Google Checkout not keeping pace?
• Why are other big name retailers still sitting on the sidelines?

Google Checkout recently dropped their incentive program for AdWords customers, but retailers aren’t typically quick to respond.  BillMeLater was recently acquired by eBay from Amazon, who also owns Paypal.   I wonder if the ROI is really there, despite low cost to implement these programs.

What I am more interested in is hearing from you.  Do any of the online sites you shop at regularly offer these methods?  Do you use them, or would they influence your buying decision?  Why or why not?  Our study was picked by DM News and Storefrontbacktalk.com (thanks!) but I’d love to hear what people use and why.

Photo credit:  nicmcphee via Flickr

Every year there is a round of agency e-cards that intend to dazzle – digital holiday cards that serve as a promotion vehicle about an agency’s capabilities and culture.  This year’s holiday card from Rosetta, my employer, is no exception.  In our case it shows a lot of our core values: work hard/play hard, have fun, and make it count.  Throw in a couple of inside jokes too, why not.  It gives some insight as to who we are.  In a year that saw us merging offices in New Jersey, New York, Denver (all Rosetta) and Cleveland, Chicago, Boston (all Brulant), this was a great way to show off the team working together.  Not to mention providing a few good laughs to our clients.

Have a very happy holiday and enjoy our Rosetta eCard… Take a look around the fireplace too.