How to Deliver Projects of Brief, on Time and Budget

What better situation to discover your capacity than a little challenge? Just as Erik Vervroegen, currently the most awarded creative in the world says, some of his most brilliant work came from moments of alert and tension: tight deadlines, seemingly insufficient money and half baked suggestions from exhausted creatives. In his own words:” Maybe it's just a case of the more problems you have the more creative you have to be."

Amnesty International Campaign, one of the campaigns Vervroegen developed without a lot of budget.

Having read a short but very interesting summary of his experiences under these circumstances, I came to the harsh but real conclusion that there is usually no time and no money. On the bright side, I agree with Vervroegen when he says that we can turn this disadvantage to our favour; pressure makes us focus and concentrate our energies more intensely. Here is a list taken from CIO.com by Ron Ponce, of 8 considerations to bear in mind in order to develop a fruitful project or brief:

1) Definition: To begin with, a company from CEO to team member must be concretely sure and clear of where they stand and what their goals are. The most important things to clear up are: the roles and duties of each member of the team, the standard that they are after and the policies, since it is important for a team to know in which format to operate, so the work is more uniform and organized.

2) Evaluation: A rational judgement of what to do first and where to invest the money must be present in the decision-making criteria. Just as Ponce says, there are always more ideas than resources so we must make good choices.

3) Human Resources: There is a reason why each of your team members is there; a good understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and the right distribution of tasks is vital.

4) Goals: A simple and clear understanding of what the objectives are and what is needed to get there is crucial for any project.

5) Control: As Ponce suggest, managers must understand that for every action there is a reaction and no matter how “simple” a change in plans might seem, when we are delivering a project it could signify a mayor alteration for timing and budget. The solution he proposes is to accommodate solutions to balance any change made within the project plans.

6) Monitor: A good manager must be alert and aware all the time, keeping track of the status of the project. It is important to document any comments, evaluations, results achieved, etc.; because these will determine future decisions. Transparency is needed to build trust around the project.

7) Measure: After all the work is done and delivered, it would be foolish to just pass to the next project without standing back and look what we’ve just done. It is amazing what we can get from evaluation, documenting and judgement; these are useful tools for reference and improvement in future projects.

8) Improve: Having the knowledge learned from past projects can track us in the right direction in future projects, making the team more likely to meet coming deadlines and budgets.

My Favourite Digital Campaign! McDonald's Digital Banners at Picadilly Circus

I remember one of my first sightseeing walks when I arrived to London in September of 2009. I was walking by Picadilly Circus when I suddenly see a bunch of people taking pictures of themselves in front of the massive wall of lights and colour that distinguish this famous landmark. When I realised what the huge digital and interactive banner consisted in
I was completely shocked for it's originality and it's extremely fun way to engage with people!

This campaign consists in displaying changing images on this huge digital bilboard located in Picadilly Circus. In the banner, they display all kinds of activities which the audience on the street can actually physically interact with. Some famous examples are the images designed to fit into original pictures, and the paper, rock or scissors game.

I think this campaign is very creative and very smart in many ways. One of them is the prime location to action it: Picadilly Circus is one of the key landmarks tourists usually want to see when they visit London; McDonald's know how many tourists snap pictures of that same spot every day, probably thousands!

Moreover, it's crazy to think how many of these people will put these pictures online and share it with all their friends and family! Even if they don't directly participate by engaging with the ads, McDonald's logo an image will appear in every single one of them. McDonald's have taken good advantage from this by placing ocassional McDonald's photographers who snap your picture and then invite you to look for it on McDonald's website; this strategy can be a great tool to attract online audiences.

Finally, the colorful and playful nature of the ads makes it really fun to interact with! People keep engaging with them because they genuenly have fun, it makes the sighseeing experience more original and trascendent, since it stays in the pictures.

Role Model and Digital Creative

Some days ago, while browsing the net in search for inspiration to write this post, I came across a really interesting character on TED. This spontaneous and multitalented guy has been lucky enough to work in a vast variety of companies, creating ways and strategies to achieve interaction between brands and their customers. His name is Renny Gleeson, and here is his TED channel and his website.

He started his career developing online and CD ROM games, opportunity that opened gates for him to start concentrating on other projects and jobs that called his attention. Since 1995, his Curriculum Vitae include companies like Cybersites, Saatchi & Saatchi, NBA, AOL, Nestle, Mc Donald’s , American Express and many others. Moreover, as a side project for all these jobs, Gleeson has uploaded and shared a good amount of videos, tweets, blog posts, articles and contributions to other websites that have helped him build a relevant online presence in the digital marketing world.

But what does his work for all these firms have in common? The main reason why I admire the content putted online by him: his creative thoughts on customer-brand interaction and his dedication to find effectives ways to do so. Just as he wrote in his article Advertising is dead. Now, Why Am I Exited?, a contribution article for Creativity-Online.com: “Brands need provocative relationships with good customers. They need their stories told, and "interactivity" is driving the reemergence of the collaborative narrative as art form and communications medium”. Here's a video where he explains further his thoughts.

Apart from his insightful articles, this man seems to have another useful skill to communicate his ideas: his speeches. With his dynamic way of speaking, humor and clarity, he transmits his ideas while keeping the audience entertained. Check out his Sneaky Moves of Antisocial Smartphones Users video where he comically picks on the issue of mobile phone addicts; or his Qik account, where he has posted 46 videos taken with his cell phone camera to highlight the way mobile devices are becoming a more and more an essential part of our experience.

Personally, personalities like this, beyond entertainers and informers, are inspirational role models; people who have radical different ideas, knows how to transmit them to the public and make an impact.

How to select the most appropriate channels to reach digital natives

What is a digital native, after all? According to Jane Friedman’s blog, There Are No Rules, this term refers to the generation that doesn’t really know a life without computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and so on; all the benefits that the digital era has brought to society. There is a bit of discrepancy on this idea among the ones the people who uses the term. There are some people feel strong about the innate nature of this knowledge, for example Ann Handley. However, Friedman and many other writers and media personalities think that this concept is limited; for them, digital knowledge is something that absolutely everybody gains by practice and involvement, therefore any regular participant can fit into this category.

Personally, I’m fond of the latter idea. Moreover, I think the plain definition of the term seems too bold to describe all the things that the label ‘Digital Native’ includes, so here is a short but concrete video that can help us to get a better picture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwKD-GuKkFc

This massive compound of consumers behaves differently than the ones that marketing and advertising agencies had dealt in the past with. Here, Jane Friedman posted the most important aspects of their mindset according to her view:

1. Connection: Online experience it’s extremely varied, so they are hybrids.

2. Media Neutral: Content doesn’t have to be physically produced to have real value.

3. Focused on Passion: The larger the options and sources people get, the more likely they are to put aside any other subject they don’t like and dedicate hours to read, browse, watch and see content related to the things they love.

This new sector of consumers needs new ways and paths to be reached through if that’s the intention of marketing and advertising companies. Ann Handley, in writer at MarketingProfs.com highlights a selection of channels and ways in which these digital natives can be approached by marketers.

As we have said clearly before, web 2.0 is not about marketers sending out information to consumers; it’s rather marketers taking content where the consumers are, to create dialogue and engagement. Many examples of this might be the spread of brands across Facebook, Twitter and Plurk.com, as well as blogs. Social media and sites with a free comments, forum and/or feedback space represent a great channel to engage with new customers. The selection of the specific website (which social network website, which blog, etc.), can be found with the use of market research and the observation of audience’s online tendencies.

Moreover, since digital natives spend loads of time researching for products and services before they purchase it, another appropriate channel to call their attention could be the searching engines. With a bit of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), brands can make themselves more visible and therefore more accessible to online customers.

Another meaningful way to grab digital consumer’s attention is by building brand loyalty. Email is a good channel that offers great opportunities to this: loyalty could be promoted by mailing lists, memberships, special customer offers, and so on. The personal approach that email can have –if used wisely - can also lead customers to build that engagement and connection that we want them to feel towards the brand.

Top ten considerations for an effective marketing strategy

Nowadays, the web 2.0 offers so much to customers that to make an impression, it is absolutely vital to stand out, and create value for customers. Now, that is very easy point to identify, the real question is how to get there. Undoubtedly, a good online marketing strategy is crucially needed.

A good place to start, as Freemarketingzone.com suggests, is having clear ‘who are you’, `who are your customers’ and ‘what do you have to offer’. In other words, to work out what your modus operandi is going to be like, you need to understand what are your customers looking for, how do you want to be perceived as a brand and how does your offer fulfils those objectives.

There are several marketing blogs and websites out there that offer their own versions of what are the top 10 tips to get where you want to be within the online marketing world. Having read loads of them I found several common opinions; the following list is what I would call a consensus answer:

1) Apply Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In order to be seen by customers and potential new customers you need to make sure your presence in the web is easily findable by maximizing exposure. Another big plus of this strategy is that it can generate a lot of traffic that is tangible, easy to measure in order to track how your popularity is doing.

2) Create Dialogue

Opening a blog, comment section or any kind of space where customers can interact. It is one of the basic ways of reaching customers with a personal feel, developing a relationship where they can actually engage with the company in a reciprocal way. This is also a great opportunity of getting feedback and valuable information that could cost millions to get only through traditional market research.

3) Be an Specialist

Don’t try to reach just about every user that you possibly can. The more specific you can make your strategy the better. With so much overload of information out there, web users look for very specific and customized content these days; specialized content will make the brand look more trustable, not to mention that it will be surely more helpful and knowledgeable, good reasons to make customers visit more often.

4) Diversify

A single website is not enough to turn viral. Try to find different channels or mediums (relevant to your target market of course) that you can use to spread your message across the web.

5) Keep the activity flow going

The addition of new material is very important if you want to keep your customers hooked to your online platform. This constant activity not only will improve the websites, blogs, etc. day after day, but will also create an image of innovation surrounding the brand.

6) Be Consistent

We want out brand to be easily recognized. Even though maintaining creativity and diversification are big part of the overall strategy, we must keep in mind that we don’t want the brand image or concept to change. Also, coherent internet content will help the brand to build a solid reputation within the online community.

7) Don’t be Pushy

One interesting observation that I encountered several times in my research is how customers are repelled by techniques and strategies that come across as pushy, such as spam emails. As Webmastercourse.com says, you should “help your customers to buy instead of selling”.

8) Be Open to Publish Content Beyond your Platform

Look out for other websites, blogs, electronic magazines and newspapers that are receptive of voluntary collaboration and material for new articles. This is an easy and effective way to get publicized, creating even more online presence.

9) Be Willing to Spend on Online Marketing

It is a fact that there are many expenses to be prepared for when executing an online strategy: the web hosting, the team creating the content, being included in search engines, etc. On the other hand, online marketing is one of the fastest and most popular ways to get brand names recognized, so the effort spent pays off.

10) Track your Results

Measuring the outcomes of every online move will lead you to find out what strategies worked out and which ones didn’t. Just like the old saying, “If it ain’t broken don’t fix it”, a good strategy is to keep the tactics that work simply until they stop working.