Free Flowing Thoughts

Why I left on the biggest day of the MCEC conference

If all works well this will post automatically on my 10th wedding anniversary, July 25.  I will be nowhere near a computer in an undisclosed location.
 

Today Army Chief of Staff Gen. Casey opened the morning session. A few hours later Secretary of Defense Robert Gates closed the largest meeting of people who take care of military children. For the past several months I have worked with MCEC's Laura Campbell and Brian Wommack, Jennie and Katie at Powell Tate to drum up media interest. We had a great turnout of tv and print journalists today. But last night I caught a plane home and missed the day.

Today is a very special day for me, and there is nowhere more important or special to be than with Courtney.

We met in high school, and have been together since.  The picture here was taken at Astroworld in Houston after we had dated for about six months.  We have a really great marriage and it makes me profoundly happy to think of spending many more years together. 

One would think after 10 years of marriage I would know a lot more about this than I feel like I do, and that's largely because it seems so easy to me.  The most important thing I have learned about having a great marriage is that it's really easy when you have a great spouse.  Courtney is an amazing person, she has always had great strength, poise and intellect that is rare to find.  In the past year I have watched her become a mother and the already great respect I had for her absolutely exploded into something hard to describe.

Why I Volunteer With Military Child Education Coalition

Throughout the conference we have been taking short videos of board members and volunteers about their experiences with MCEC. Mine is below, and you can watch all of them at YouTube.com/MilitaryChild

MCEC Chairman talks about why supporting military children is so important (v-log)

When I was invited to join the board of Military Child Education Coalition.  It was an overwhelming honor.  There are not many opportunities to work up close with a leader like General Tom Schwartz.  He is inspiring and tough, and brings out the best in people.  We filmed the clip below at the conference this week.  He talks about how the organization was founded 10 years ago and why the work we do matters.

Military Child embraces social media tools to reach our audience

This week we launched a new Web site for our organization at www.militarychild.org.  It's a massive improvement over our old site which was launched ~5 years ago and only lightly updated since.  There is a lot of work still to do on on the new site, I certainly welcome your ideas and input.  The greatest addition was building the site based on a content management system (CMS) that enables us to make changes instantly without having to contract out the work.  We were able to make several changes from the conference floor today.  This technology used to be very expensive, but today there are free open source solutions which have the same functionality as systems that were once $1M+. 

The core web site is important, but it is only one part of our overall online marketing plan.  We also launched an organization blog, www.VoiceForTheMilitaryChild.org which will cover many topics important for military families.  Each of our board members and staff will be posting, and we will include bloggers outside our organization who have something important to bring forward related to military children. 

We have also setup groups on Facebook for MCEC and one of our programs specifically targeted to teens, Student2Student.  This is an important step in bringing the online conversation to where our core audiences are already talking.  You can also follow our updates on Twitter and watch MCEC TV on our YouTube channel. 

Later this week we are going to announce another major part of our online marketing plan which I believe is very unique and will be a key part to getting out our message.

UPDATE: The 5 Best Practices of Great Clients

Good feedback from a friend at Crispin Porter + Bogusky.  They are doing some of the more interesting creative in the market today, particularly the Burger King and Sprite campaigns. 

Totally agree on the importance of building a partnership vs a vendor relationship.  It's too easy in the corporate world to let procurement run the agency relationship.  Procurement has an important role to play, but Marketing needs to own the relationship once a selection has been made.  Will be very exciting to watch Dell's new agency strategy unfold as it embraces the idea below.

"As an agency person, I seek out clients who treat my agency team as a valued PARTNER vs. a vendor. To me, a vendor is more of a short-term relationship. Partners are more vested in the business because they feel like they are a valued part of the team. Vendor is like a dirty word to me. It seems harsh and impersonal...almost like an insult.

Communication with an agency is key. It's hard to bring value to a client's business if an agency partner is only looped on tactical projects and isn't looped in on larger business goals and objectives.

A good agency challenges its clients on a regular basis. It's not always the most pleasant experience but the client should choose an agency that will help them push their limits. It takes a lot of trust and a few leaps of faith, but it should be worth it in the end if you have the right agency."

The 5 Best Practices of Great Clients

Before leaving Dell to be the CMO of Bazaare Voice, Sam Decker was my boss.  I learned a lot from Sam, and continue to do so from his blog deckermarketing.com. His online work gives me the opportunity to keep a solid marketing mentor…without the annual performance reviews. Recently on his blog Sam gave some advice to ad agencies.  It's a good read and the advice is right on point.  But it made me think about the other side of the relationship between agencies and clients.  

What makes a great client?

The impact agencies or marketing consultancies have on your business is all about the specific people who work on your account. Treat them well and you get the superstars who will make a major impact on your business. Treat them badly and you get people who require a lot of hand holding for a mediocre result. When it comes to creativity and great ideas some people are just more talented than others. The best people at an agency get to pick their assignments. Ideally you want them picking you.

So I conducted extensive research on this topic (asked a few agency friends) and present:

The 5 Best Practices for Great Clients:

1. Regularly update your agency team on strategy and business objectives. When possible, invite your account service leaders to be part of major planning sessions and business updates. Your agency team will deliver more relevant work for you when they understand the context and objectives. Ideally your account service leaders feel like an extension of your team.

2. Co-develop a thorough creative brief template with your agency, and require your staff to use it every time they submit a project to the agency. Unclear requirements ensure unimpressive results.

3. Conduct regular performance reviews with senior leaders at the agency and from your organization. Be sure they understand how you are evaluating their work. Equally as important, take in the feedback they for your team is working with them.

4. Treat agency contacts with respect. The most common negative client stories are being berated over something minor or similar anecdotes that will take a very long time to fade away. Ensure your team knows you expect agency contacts to be treated with the same respect they would any co-worker.

5. Don’t fight over the small stuff—and you don’t have to win everything. Creatives are going to be more engaged with your objectives if they feel they had input in the process. While it is your job to ensure the work meets business objectives, arguing over whether the line should be red vs blue usually does not matter much. Let the agency feel some ownership in the work and you will get more out of them in the future.

Word of mouth marketing in action

BzzAgent is offering a money back guarantee for a client willing to run a side by side test of a traditional media campaign and a word of mouth marketing campaign. 

"Dave Balter, founder-CEO of BzzAgent, said word-of-mouth performs better than any other medium. He's hoping this program will convert some nonbelievers.

"We know the medium has significant impact, and one way to help [hesitant] marketers dive into the pool is to guarantee it," he said. "Are we 100% sure we can outperform all other mediums by 20%? No, but we're pretty confident we can do something special here. It's time to put our money where our mouth is."

The offer is getting quite of bit of attention, but more interestingly is a good example of a word of mouth campaign in and of itself.  This takes on the primary concern people have with WOM: measurability.  And it creates a lot of buzz for the agency at very little cost.

Well played...

My fascination with infographics

Like most marketing professionals at Dell I was recruited from business school for my ability to make charts and graphs.  In my last 4 years I have made somewhere between 10-15,000 charts and graphs.  Unlike mere mortals I do not use PowerPoint (charts for beginners) but instead purchased special chart making software (Mekko Graphics) which churns out incomprehensible but impressive looking charts shaped like boxes. From the right angle, a Mekko chart can be confused for a Tetris screenshot.

Fortunately most people are too embarrassed to admit they cannot read a Mekko chart which means I am rarely asked to explain or defend the data.  My MBA training has prepared me to use the exact same data to recommend we spend $millions, cut $millions or buy a small island in the south Pacific. 

Being my life's work I greatly admire others people's ability to visually show a set of data.  I thought this infographic from the New York Times comparing the volume of content on Wikipedia to the dictionary or an encyclopedia was a piece of art.  Too often people use tables of numbers to convey a point when a visual has so much more impact.

Another great recap on why Twitter matters

Funny, I think most people go through this exact process before the social media addiction kicks in.  From Typepad Hacks, John Unger:

"I  have to preface this post with a confession: The first time I heard about blogging, my response was "That's the dumbest @$%#&%$ thing I've ever heard of. Why the hell would I want to do that?"

I said the exact same thing about Twitter when I first heard about it. The exact same words.

Of course, both times I was totally wrong…"

The rest of the post has great tips on Twitter tools.  Worth the read.

Public vs private speech online: evolving expectations

Interesting amount of chatter around the AP piece picked up on various news sites. Due to overly aggressive and short sighted AP limitations I cannot quote from the story.  But the core of the piece is while free speech is protected offline, it is not in many online sites. 

There is an indignant tone to the article that suggests individual rights are being violated by private companies choosing to remove user content from their sites.  The simple truth is that free speech protection as a constitutional right does not extend into someone's property.  It is interesting to me that people expect the opposite.

Deciding what to allow on company sites is a complex issue.  Dell's rules of engagement are often cited as a good example, and it covers both our commitments as well as what we ask of the people participating in the conversations.  At Military Child we are about to launch our new site which will include a new focus on conversations both on our site and others.  While every organization needs to decide what is right for their own brand and audience, in general the policy should lean toward openness.