Sometimes I feel I’m on a personal quest to make the complex simple. I hate dealing with the over complicated and I absolutely believe that complex problems can only really be solved if you can break them down into their component parts. To that end I have, over time, developed a number of guiding principles that help me (and hopefully the teams I work with) get to grips with Digital and do it better.

Here are three of them.

Number one.

Digital marketing is really only about two things. Content and distribution. That’s it. We as digital marketers are in the pursuit of the Holy Grail and it goes something like this.

Getting the right content
In front of the right customer
At the right time
On the right device
At the right point in their decision making process
To drive the right action

It puts content and the customer at the heart of what we do and helps prevent us taking a channel or technology led approach. That’s good. Really good.

Number two.

So, along comes digital, followed by the truly empowered consumer and now a super connected world. It turned everything upside down and our marketing departments and organisations were left in disarray. We’ve come up with a range of different solutions to deal with that problem. Businesses send their staff on training courses and we hire consultants to help us develop the right to-do lists. But in their own right neither of them drive real change. In my mind the formulae for real transformation looks like this;

consultancy + skills development + facilitation = change

That’s the way most of our projects work. The really successful ones anyway.

Number three.

Success in digital is all about people. Never forget it. Things go wrong when you loose sight of the fact that real people are involved. That includes your customers for sure but it also includes your staff and your agency teams. In fact anyone and everyone who is working into the business or project. If you are leading those people your job is really only about three things.

Developing and communicating a clear vision
Getting the right people in the right jobs
Creating the right environment for those people to thrive

There you go. Three guiding principles for doing Digital better.

Clearly there are plenty more. What are you guiding principles?

KISS. Keep it simple stupid. I like that.

Tags: digital marketing, random thoughts, strategy

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Our Managing Director Jon recently celebrated a big birthday. One with a zero involved, that’s all I’m saying. His birthday present to himself was a ‘top of the range’ road bike.  He sure does love that bike. I’ll ask him to post his thoughts on how much he loves his new bike very soon. In-between his euphoria he has fleeting moments of tormenting guilt about how much it cost.

This got me thinking about how pre-purchase thinking and consuming conscientiously is in part about making sure you’re really going to love something for the long term. If you love it, you value it, and if you value it, you’ll care for it.

Nowadays I seem to agonize longer over purchases then I ever did before. Shopping is something I avoid unless absolutely necessary. Some of the questions I try to untangle go like this:

Did the person (or company) have ‘fire in their bellies’ about making it the best it could be? Were they passionate about it? Has obsolescence been sneakily built into the design? Is it inherently disposable? Do I love it? And will I love it ‘long time’. Why do I love it? Fashion? Kudos? Have I given this purchase proper thought? Will I use it regularly? Is it practical? Ahhhh! Buying things is tough.

Here are a few things I thought hard about and decided yes I would love them and yes they would bring me a bit of joy every single time I used them.

My ‘box of Poppets’ size camera. It’s dead handy and bloody lovely to look at and hold.

My Roberts Radio. It’s on almost 365 days a year in my house. I love the buttons and the lovely rounded, deep sound.

My new shower cap. An obvious solution to keeping the ‘hairdo’ in check and adding a bonus ten minutes to my day. Got to love that.

And so to the real ‘digital’ point I’m trying to make. Web content, websites and blogs need constant nurturing; they are living things that are never finished. Owners have to continuously invest time into maintaining and developing the content and functionality. Being the demanding little buggers they are its vital that people love their websites and that using them brings them joy.

Making sure users enjoy their websites is a core design and UX (user experience) challenge. Not only should it look lovely up front it should be quick, easy and enjoyable update and maintain from the back end.

If using your website brings you (or the team) no joy it’s destined for neglect and will inevitably end up in the big digital landfill in the sky. Our Word Press blog is testament to a great back office user experience and a great design by Pete and his team on the front end.

We love it, it’s a joy use.

Tags: design, nice stuff, random thoughts, usability, user experience

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If this is shameless self promotion please forgive me.  We have been two plus a tight network of partners since we started this adventure back in 2004. Since that time it has served our clients and us well. But in the near future we are hoping to become four plus a tight network of partners. The four of us have been working on some new products that we can get the business behind. It’s enlightening, exciting and it has given us an opportunity to stop and think a little more around what we are about and the way we approach things.

We talked about personality. The stuff that defines you. The stuff someone might use to describe you and your character. Here are ten things we have on that list so far.

Serial helpers.
Obsessive list writers.
Pretty bloody positive almost all of the time.
Full of beans and always moving forwards.
We love starts, ends, outcomes and learning.
We really enjoy developing teams of  people.
It matters to us that people are happy and fulfilled at work.
We really care what people think about us.
Unless things are changing and we are driving forward we get restless.
But perhaps most of all. We love what we do. We feel lucky.

For those of you who know us we really hope you agree. We are proud of what people say about working with us. Our testimonials are one of our greatest achievements.

“The great thing with Jon and Beth is that what you see is what you get. Which is pretty rare these days. They really are an endless source of energy, enthusiasm, and know-how. And with the number of calls I put into them, I’d certainly have caught them on an off day by now! They always remain true to a campaign idea from start to finish, no matter how long the process, they’re open to discussion and debate at any stage, and with the complete absence of any ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality, their approach is truly a collaborative one. Quite frankly, it’s refreshing to find two people who intuitively ‘get’ marketing and all its inner workings, and who you really look forward to picking up the phone to”

Caroline Macpherson | Partners Andrews Aldridge

I  hope we can remain true to our values and what people are saying about us once we are four. I know we can and I know the guys that are joining us will help make our personality even stronger and more colourful. I’m looking forward to it.

Tags: Our News, random thoughts

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Following my recent  blog posts about stuff like Agile marketing and ‘give it a go and see what happens’ and Developing a digital marketing strategy in the real world here’s something a bit more random and based on the stuff which rattles around in your head. My head anyway!

On my way into the office I cross a busy road junction and four pedestrian crossings. Sometimes the man is green … but sometimes the man is red. When the man is green I walk and so does everyone else. When the man is red I sometimes walk but more often than not everyone else waits for the man to turn green. That’s the rule. That’s the procedure for crossing the road safely. Sometimes the road is reasonably clear and with good timing and appropriate care you can still cross safely. Sometimes the road is entirely clear of traffic. But people still wait. Because that’s the rule.

Rules and procedures are there for a reason. They provide us with a prescribed direction and a basis for progressing a particular course of action. But we must think and make sure we apply the rules appropriately – in a way that does not prevent us from reaching our end goal, take us an unnecessarily long time to get there or even undermine the very thing we are trying to achieve.

But often people don’t think. In fact some rules are there so people don’t have to think. A pilot’s pre-flight checklist for example. But not all rules are like that. Not all rules are to be applied blindly and indisciminately. Sometimes it is safe to cross the road when the man is red.

Tags: organisations, process, random thoughts

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