I’m trying an experiment down here in Austin to post 5 Stickybits around the SXSW convention center to:

1. Check out how many people actually scan these stickers
2. How many people scan vs. how many people contact ResumeGal
3. Conversion rates

We’ll be giving away 20-40% off any package on ResumeGal.com if you use the secret word/phrase located on the Stickybits.

Happy hunting!

P.S. and by “powered by stickybits,” we mean that it’s using their sticker technology, they are not publicly endorsing this to my knowledge (but are more than welcome!)

The energy was high even before leaving Newark Airport.  @sparkle201 (wife) and I were on a direct flight down to Austin and I’d say of the 144 people on the plane, 50% were heading to the conference.  I ran into Foursquare’s @naveen in the airport who is celebrating their First Birthday at the conference- Foursquare was born a year ago and is now over 500k strong loyal fans.  Happy Birthday guys.

Four hours later, I ran into friend and colleague @jstylman while checking in to the conference and picking up my credentials.  For the first time in a LONG time, I’m not speaking on a panel or keynoting, so I’m flying totally under the radar screen as a listener.  I’ve been longing for this day to just sit back, relax, and soak everything in.

After getting back to the hotel, I digested all that was in the schwag bag and there was a consistent theme:  stickers, QR codes, and most important and utilitarian to me:  cellphone/computer/ipad/kindle screen fiber wipes.  Genius- thank you AOL and Newegg.

The SXSWi bible is thick.  It lists all the panels/sessions and speakers as well as everything else that is going on.  What stands out immediately is the use of QR codes on every single page.  The company providing the codes is QMCodes and they are exhibiting – I’ll stop by their booth to further my education around them.  I’ve used QR codes in previous ad campaigns but the adoption in the US was rather weak a few years ago.  Can the use of QR codes in the US break out this year?   My immediate thought is that print publishers need to push these hard and how many print publishers are down here at SXSW?

There is even a twitter account setup to help people with QR codes here at SXSW:  @sxswqr

An instant favorite of mine are the products of stickybits.  For those unfamiliar (I was previously) with stickybits, it’s a simple barcode sticker that you can append any type of information to (pics, text, video, etc).  You stick them wherever you want and if people find them, they use their iPod or Android stickybits app to see what’s been virtually appended to it.  A nice way to augment reality.  Downside:  you need the stickybits app – and this may be a serious downside for the company.  I’d love to see a Verizon or AT&T snap up this company and instantly build this reader into the phone’s capabilities.

Looking forward to what starts unfolding over the next week or so – come and follow me on the adventure @dherman76

I created my initial schedule and have made it public – so if anyone has any comments of insights, I’d love to hear them.

I’m trying to do less “entrepreneurial” sessions and more about marketing, culture, advertising, media, and technology.  For me and my stage in life right now, these are much more relevant.  I’m also not speaking at the conference this year, so it’ll be nice to be a regular attendee and blend in with the crowd.

If you are down there and want to say hi – leave a comment on this blog or ping me on twitter (@dherman76).

Will probably post from Austin- see you down there.

One of the articles I want to share was written in 1998 by the NY Times which featured Silicon Alley Reporter (amongst others).

I like many of the quotes/lines in the article and in no particular order, here they are:

”The industry here is driven by people,” Mr. Calacanis, 27, lectured a magazine job applicant recently over breakfast at Balthazar’s. ”On the West Coast there are a handful of celebrities — Bill Gates, Larry Ellison,” Mr. Calacanis said, referring to the chairman of the world’s two largest software companies. ”Those people are boring. They don’t take good pictures.”

Mr. Calacanis’s irreverence is either refreshing or hopelessly sophomoric, depending on one’s point of view. Yet his shameless boosterism of Silicon Alley — New York’s downtown multimedia hub — has helped create the aura of community and even home-team spirit for a disparate group of colleagues and competitors who otherwise might have little more in common than being located in Manhattan and trying to find some sort of profitable business on the World Wide Web.

‘There are two Silicon Alleys — the one where people go to the parties and the one where people actually do the work,” Mr. Shannon said.

The Alley’s derivative nickname first caught on in 1995, with the explosion of Web and the conviction that its ”content” — the techie catch-all for magazines, newspapers, music, movies, TV, advertising and various vaguely defined interactive stuff — would be produced in the world’s media capital. But of all of those things, only advertising has shown a propensity to make money on the Web. Moreover, the truly successful Web content — at least this month — appears to be the information tools or ”portals” aggregated by major search engines like Yahoo, Excite and Snap, which are all located on the West Coast.

If you’d like to be alerted of the forthcoming full posting, follow me on twitter @dherman76

For those who do not want to click over to his post, it basically overlays tweets about the game (football related) to tweets about the commercials (ad related).   What the data illustrates is that there was a significant (at least 4x) volume difference between posts about the game than posts about the commercials.  More people were tweeting about Peyton’s interception, 4th and Goal stance by the Saints, and the Colts Touchdown amongst others.

After gazing at the chart, I also derived the following:   after the first hour of the game, the tweets about commercials lessened, even though the majority of commercials hadn’t aired.  If Google wasn’t in the back half of the game, it would have been “relatively” quiet.    There were the obvious spikes about the brands during commercial pods, but there was very little chatter after the commercial pods aired.  Additionally, after half time, the volume of game related conversation far outweighed commercial conversation.  Does this mean that the commercials weren’t that interesting?  Maybe.  Does this mean that since the game was close in score, people were more likely to talk about the actual game?  Maybe.

To paraphrase Kevin, The first @DoritosUSA ad at marker C caused the largest per-minute volume of commercial-related tweets — for the minute following the ad, related tweets were 19% of all tweets we saw, eclipsing even the chatter around the Super Bowl itself for a brief period.

Let me reiterate:  19% of all tweets Twitter saw for the minute following the ad were about @doritosusa.   Considering Doritos strategy was to crowdsource the commercial through social media, I’d imagine that this commercial hit the KPIs established by the agency/brand.

Question:  Could the amplification power of social media/communications platforms surpass the reach of the largest  US media event- the Super Bowl?  Oh wait, it did… and the Super Bowl could command $3MM/commercial?   Hmmm…

Learnings:  As a brand, if you want people to talk about you thru platforms like Twitter, be early in the program/event.

Don’t be a stranger and comment in the comments section… and come say hello on Twitter (@dherman76)

When looking at the impact that the web/Internet had on advertising, I think that one could easily argue that from the 90s through today, technological innovation led where marketing/advertising dollars would follow.   Let me rephrase this more simply:  the geeks determined where advertisements would show up as they were the ones building the websites.   A byproduct of this has been the types of ad units and opportunities available to marketers and their respective agencies.  Love them or hate them, technologists paved the path for marketers.

I think there is a major shift happening and fortunately, I’ve had a seat at the table.  Marketers and their agencies are getting more involved in technologies both at an infrastructure and placement level and are influencing the future of digital marketing greater than ever before.

There are two examples of this:

• DBO (dynamic media buying optimization) as written in a recent report by Forrester that I’ve made available for anyone to download here as a PDF
• P&G Productions (PGP) as a production company owned by guess, P&G, and their creation of digital properties following their similar model to their TV show offerings of years back.  This isn’t new, but we’ve been seeing an increase in the volume of these types of opportunities.  If interested, follow my friend Dave Knox on Twitter.

The area that I’ve spent the past 2 years exploring is the former – DBO – as I believe that the current buying landscape is changing and as more media becomes digital (television, print, radio, OOH), dynamic media buying infrastructure, training, and execution is going to be extremely important for agencies and brands to understand and harness.

So, the next decade or two will be about how agencies and marketers are applying themselves closer to the technologies and while it (tech) may not all be built internally, the marketers/agencies will have a seat at the table.

The net result of all of this is going to be change and with change, there is significant push back, screaming, and fallout.  Agencies are going to have to change their approaches and marketers are going to have to understand the implications of this for their businesses.  It’s not going to be easy nor fast, but it’s definitely on its way.

I’m personally fascinated by the shift that’s happening and look forward to continuing the conversation.

I think the most devalued word in the past decade was the word, “friend.”

I’m just another geek living in this world so I have no business enforcing my thoughts on Etiquette but since I think I was raised well (I’d like to think) and I’d like my son to be raised well, I’ll publicly share my thoughts.  Note, since I work in New York City and specialize in digital media, my thoughts are skewed towards the early adopter technologies, but over time, the rest of America/world will catch up.

Introductions

With email, text messages, and DM’s, it’s extremely simple to make fast introductions now.  Please do whomever you are introducing a favor and ASK the receiving party whether or not they would like to be introduced.  Just because Person A is friends with Person B (who is friends with Person C), does not mean that Person C will want to meet Person A.   Not only does this save Person C from being in an awkward position, but it makes the introduction much stronger if it should go through.

Meetings (including around a conference room table)

If I said “turn off” your electronics, about zero percent of the readers would actually do that.  So, put them on mute/vibrate and pay attention to the people in the meeting.  My guess is that meetings will go much faster and become more productive if everyone is paying attention instead of typing emails or texting on their iPhone or Nexus One that’s sitting in their laps.  You are guilty of this, admit it (we all are).

Location Based Check-Ins

I had breakfast this past week with some of the investors in the company Foursquare and they mentioned that they have began checking in about 3-5 minutes away from the venue that they are checking into.  Why?  It’s rude to have everyone check in at the table and waste the first few minutes of the meeting telling the world where they are.   The issue with checking in to a venue when you are enroute is that the venue may be closed or have no available seating, and I do not have an answer on how to deal with this.

If you are checking into a restaurant on Foursquare and in the comments section include the name of someone you are meeting (e.g. meeting @dherman76 for lunch), think twice.  What if the person that you are meeting didn’t want this particular lunch publicized for whatever reason?

Getting People’s Attention by Tagging Them in a Picture

If you have a Facebook account, I will wager that this has happened to you.  If you do this, then please stop.   How many times have you been alerted by Fb that you are tagged in a picture and when you go check out the picture, you are not present (and it may not even be a picture)?  This is just annoying.

Are You Really My Friend?

I think the most devalued word in the past decade was “friend.”  My friends are all people I’d grab a bite to eat with on the weekends, invite over for Saturday football, hangout with my wife/child with, and even get a little crazy with.  Inviting anyone/everyone to be your friend on Facebook devalues the word “friend” to many levels.  I turn down probably 10 friend requests for every one friend confirmation and I’m sure I still have not stuck to even my own guidelines.

BECAUSE YOUR KEYBOARD HAS CAPS, DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD USE THEM ALL THE TIME

Just because your shiny Macbook has a “Caps Lock” key, does not mean that you should type emails or tweets in capital letters.  As a reminder (as if you live under a rock), CAPITALIZED words are used for emphasis and in quite a few occasions, they are mean to be “yelling.”  Do yourself a favor and pretend that the “Caps Lock” key does not exist.

I’m not perfect and have broken many of the above etiquette rules.

I had some fun writing this and I’m sure I forgot quite a few.  Please write your comments/thoughts into the comments area.

You can follow me on twitter at @dherman76

My belief is that if you are going to create a sustaining communications experience in 2010+, you are going to require a digital backbone.  I’m not saying that everything has to be digital, but there will be at least some digital involvement and I’m looking forward to help educate internally, externally, and involve myself on many of kbs+p’s client businesses.  If you believe that television, print, radio, OOH are going to become digital in one way or another, which many have already become, then overseeing digital media is a dream job for someone who is a both a big thinker and geek at heart.

I learned at a young age that it takes a village to raise a child and I’m fortunate to not only have my immediate family close to my side, but also an extended family that I’ve met over the past 12 years in business that have all sent me messages through Twitter this morning: @jstylman, @jonsteinberg, @zachrodgers, @donalderyan, @adventurista, @adambain, @thatcherbell, @msg, @dandotlewis, @greenermags, @exchangewire, @johnbattelle, @scottrcrawford, @wmargiloff, @arijacoby, @natsturner, @pubmatic, @anwaraizer, @jonburg, @whitneyhess, @afloam, @davidhonig, @zachcoelius, @seph250, @lmai, @kevinvanlenten, @phineasb, @aaroncoles, @cliqology, @tylerathi5, @guybendov, @rafatali, @zimbalist, @1digitalworld, @vstesin, @chrismasters1, @jlkelly, @yuliz, @fndrsroundtable, @adstruc, @falicon, @davidhelmreich, @pamelaparker, @ericfranchi, @saarpa, @mikeduda, @daveknox, @stbullard, @eporres, @conradlisco, @chrisfralic, @malbonnington, @jonathanmendez, @caro, @clouvi, and of course, @jstnprnll, @sparkle201.

…and the above was just on twitter in a 5 hour period!

The next chapter is going to be filled with topics that I cannot even predict today and am looking towards being inspired from each and every one of you.

Do not ever hesitate to reach out.

To the future,
//dherman76

Much of these conversations are being sparked by the reports of the NY Times Online putting up some sort of paywall.

Here is what I think they should do:

Go to a pay model, but the pay model should be for the first 12 hours of any article/story.  Meaning, if the Times publishes an article about the latest angel investment I made, then for the first 12 hours of that article’s existence on the Times online, it would only be accessible by subscribers.

Why I think this works:

1. Online subscription model generates revenue for the NY Times
2. Stories go “public” after 12 hours, which allows for page consumption (and views) beyond the subscriber base thus increasing inventory for the NY Times sales force to sell against (advertising)
3. Online subscription model creates a velvet rope, less-so about actually consuming the content, but more-so about recency of consumption (all about getting it first)

What are your thoughts?  Think this can work?  I think this model can move well beyond the NY Times, no?

Before I proceed, let me preface that this is my personal blog and these are my thoughts, which may or may not be reflected by my employer.

A branding campaign is a proxy for “we do not have or have access to the right measurement tools to substantiate a fully measured campaign.”  Think about it.  Hollywood typically uses “branding” campaigns to launch movies because there is very little technology out there that can report back to say how many people actually saw CommercialX and went to Loews to purchase a ticket this passed Saturday.

There is $250bln spent in measured US advertising each year and we do not have the tools to adequately measure the entire marketing campaign.  Something seems off, right?

If we look to Wall Street for guidance on where importance is placed, goodwill (brand) is recognized on the balance sheet but at the end of the day, earnings is most important.  Google’s goodwill is a lot less than it’s operating income, which is where Wall Street tends to place it’s bets and the stock is performing well.

With technology penetrating the advertising ecosystem – i.e. Ad Servers, Databases, Optimization Engines, Bid Management Platforms, one would think that we’re closer to a measurable ecosystem.  We can only get to the end state if all of our media channels are digital (not necessarily laptop or desktop driven) as we will be able to measure and analyze.

As television (largest medium for ad dollars), print (Kindle, Nook, etc), radio (satellite, HDD), and OOH (digital-OOH) are all becoming digitized, then we can get closer to measuring campaign success.

What many of us deem as extremely important in both optimization and conversion is the actual path to conversion.  Atlas and DART all have special names for this but lets use Engagement Mapping.   If you are exposed to 7 different advertisements across multiple channels and you convert after the 7th, then generally the last exposure gets all of the credit.

Where this model breaks is upon any non-measured exposure component (today:  tv, print, radio, ooh, and sometimes search, yes, search if it’s not part of the database).  This is why we need all channels to have a digital backbone or be measured by one (and one without a biased panel set).  Lets assume this is fixed (big assumption) and we can measure all the way through from first exposure to conversion (and post).

If we are at this end-state, THEN why do we need a branding campaign?   Why should we not include a full call-to-action on each piece of media that drives the user to take some action and to properly associate value with each?

It may take 10 years to get us there, but at least it will be in this new decade.  If this happens, two radical things will occur:

1. John Wannamaker will roll over in his grave as we will have figured out which part of his ad-spend is working for him.
2. Marketers may realize that they are overspending or underspending with their media dollars.

Decades:
1990s – playing around and innovating
2000s – making things work, starting to track and monetize
2010s – realizing the potential and investing in the infrastructure to make this happen

Caveat:
One could argue that you need awareness before you can get to conversion.  Yes, that’s correct, but you can go from instant awareness to conversion much faster now.  We also know that consumers enter a purchase funnel from many different places and that some arrive at the funnel much lower than the awareness stage.  Just go with it.

If you can understand the technology infrastructure needed to make this all happen, then you can understand why I love where advertising & marketing is headed.  Happy holidays – @dherman76