If you’ve been to a shopping mall in the United States, you’re probably familiar with Brookstone and The Sharper Image.  If not, let me jog your memory with a photo of a Brookstone:

Brookstone

I’d show you a photo of The Sharper Image too, but seeing as they filed for bankruptcy and are now a mail order business only, I didn’t think it made a lot sense.  Although, oddly enough their business failure will help substantiate by belief that engagement is an irrelevant objective.

The image you see above is what every Brookstone in America looks like.  There are a bunch of people standing just outside the store debating if they should walk in.  Inside are people trying out the vibrating massage chairs, 100s of iPod/Music devices, and playing with other strange “cutting edge” devices.

I’ve been going to malls for over 20 years.  Let’s say in a given year, I go to a mall once a month.  That’s 12 times a year for 20 years, for a total of 240 visits.  I’m sure I’ve been in them way more than 240 times, but these round numbers work.  Also, let’s assume each visit runs 5 minutes.  That means I’ve spent 1200 minutes or 20 hours with the Brookstone brand in the last 20 years.  Do you know how many things I’ve bought from Brookstone and The Sharper Image in those ears?  0.  Yes, that zero.  Nothing.  Nadda.  They haven’t gotten 1 penny from me.

Think about that?  Forget about me, rarely in my 5 minutes visits have I seen anyone actually purchase anything.  Sure, I see a lot of engagement happening.  People are walking into the store, trying out products, and spending a lot of time immersed in the Brookstone brand experience.  So, they’re engaging, but not buying.  Kinda takes the wind out of the sales of engagement.  If engagement can’t be tied to a specific desired interaction (usually a sale), it’s an irrelevant objective.

Stop focusing on engagement.  Start focusing on conversions.  You’re clients will thank you and you’ll be a hell of a lot happier.

1. Embrace Data: I love watching my creative team looking at Google Analytics.  Data, reporting, metrics, and measurement aren’t one person’s responsibility.  It’s everyone’s, because we’re all accountable for the end result.  Don’t be afraid of the data when your campaign/site/program isn’t performing as well as expected.  That’s the beauty of data; it tells us exactly how we’re doing.  The key though is to make sure you’ve set aside time and dollars to optimize.  It’s never a good thing to know your site is underperforming and not be able to fix it because of limited funding.
2. Remove The Buzzwords: It’s not about baffling with bullshit.  Really, its not.  Clients are getting smarter.  Heck, all marketers are getting smarter.  There’s no need to dumb down the conversation.  When we use buzzwords, do you know what we sound like?  We sound like we don’t know what we’re talking about and that our only knowledge comes from AdAge.
3. Extend Interactive Marketing Beyond The web: The nice thing about 2008 was that we got to see technologies like Microsoft Surface offer a glimpse about what INTERACTIVE can really mean.  Interactive marketing is no longer just about emails, banners, and web sites.  We’ve evolved.  Digital billboards can be interactive.  Television can be interactive.  We need to think beyond the web site and start thinking about all the other ways we can bring interactive to the people.
4. Nail The Fundamentals: The web is old enough that we should never ever miss the fundamentals.  Please buy multiple variations of a URL.  Make sure you have a paid search campaign in place when running TV.  Ensure tracking tags are in place.  The list goes on and on.  It amazes me that marketers continue to overlook the basics.
5. Educate Legal: It’s really easy for legal for shoot things down, appear uncooperative, or seem difficult when they don’t even understand what they’re reviewing.  My personal POV is that legal should never make a decision; they’re role is to advise.  However, many brand managers don’t view things that way.  Legal is a security blanket that often has far too much power.  The best way to leverage that power is to influence it.  The easiest way to influence things is to educate.
6. Leverage All 5 Senses: For too long we’ve focused on just site and sound.  The iPhone brought us touch.  While the ability to actually taste and smell through a flat screen monitor is a few years off it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to delight all 5 senses.  There’s plenty of research to show how visual stimulation can impact taste and smell.  As digital progresses, figuring out how to connect with me through all my senses will become a game changer.  Yes, I used the buzzword game changer.  Do you see how dumb I just sounded?
7. Hire Well, Retain Talent, Compensate Fairly: It’s not easy to find solid talent.  When you do, hold on to that talent.  Don’t let it go.  If you lose good talent to a competitor it’s a double whammy.  Compensation is always tricky…well unless of course you abide by the golden rule: pay people based on their value to the company.  Let’s say person X is making 50K, but the market puts his worth at 70K.  If person X is a great performer and you won’t give him/her market value or close to it, you’ll lose person X and have to pay 70K to an unknown.  Think about it.
8. Don’t Wait For Nike And P&G To Do “It” First: When I was working on Kellogg’s, Similac, Healthy Choice, and just about every other consumer packaged goods brand our recommendations for new, different, and innovative ideas would be met with stone walls.  That is, until P&G or Nike did exactly what we were recommending.  It seemed that once P&G or Nike did something it opened up the door for other brands to do “it.”  You can be innovative.  You can do things first.  Often times losing out on first mover advantage can set you back years or in some cases, you’ll never get any traction.
9. Look Beyond The Usual Suspects For News: AdAge, AdWeek, Wired, and Fast Company are great publications.  But, if those 4 and some of the other publications that everyone is reading are your go-to reads, you have a problem.  This world moves to quickly to wait for a weekly or monthly update.  Real time information is where it’s at.  Places like TechCrunch, Engadget, and iMedia give that and more.  Broaden the horizon…your competitors already are.
10. Get Involved: Start a blog.  Join Twitter.  Engage in a message board.  Create a Facebook account.  Build your own social network on Ning. Many of these things are simple to do.  Once you starting joining in on the fun, you’ll start to see the marketing possibilities.

1. Everything you always wanted to know about Google, but were afraid to ask: Just a real eye opened for me. It’s rare that I come across something that makes me say WOW. And this deck did it.

2. Obama and Social Media: I’m not even an Obama supporter and this presentation rocked. Who says a person can’t be a brand? Who says Social Media can’t amplify a message? This deck proves the power people have in carrying a brand and a message…when it’s something they believe in.

3. Widgets 101: I can’t even remember the number of times I’ve referenced this presentation to clients and agencies folks. The presentation does a fantastic job of breaking down the industry and explaining what widgets can do…AND should do.

4. Starbucks Tribal Knowledge: Slides 15 - 18 make the whole presentation. It makes you wonder how a brand that knew itself so well could have fallen so far from the path?

5. Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3: Fantastic research. You will be referencing the data from this presentation for months to come. I want a Wave 4.

6. Discovery Is The New Cocaine: Are you sick of using the term engagement? Yeah, me too. I hate referencing engagement as an end goal. This presentation will help you evolve from engagement. You’ll feel better about yourself when you stop using the “E” word.

7. Modern Brand Building: Paul Isakson is really smart. His presentation is great. If only we could get everyone to drink the Kool-Aid from this deck. Compaigns are designed for short term gains…like political campaigns. Campaigns are not long term enablers of success. If you want branding, don’t campaign.

8. What’s Next In Media: Neil Perkin created a masterpiece. I love slide 21. I’ve referenced it often. He talks about social media in REAL marketing terminology. Yes, the information is actually applicable and not just “Web 2.0″ B.S.

9. Big Spaceship’s Manifesto: Every single agency should have a deck that explains who they are so simply. This presentation offers sharp and often overlooked thoughts like “hire to be the dumbest person in the room.” If more companies followed that thought instead of hiring old pals they’d be better off.

10. Creativity & Innovation: I’ve seen a lot of the information before, but never served up so well. Everyone from strategists to copywriters should read this.

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This might be as bad as Nike’s use of Revolution.

I just can’t imagine that this is what John had in mind for his legacy.

1. Transparency: I loathe this term.  Just can’t stand it.  It’s over-used and often used incorrectly.  I’ve already talked at length why I have problems with the term, so I’ll try to make it quick here.  People don’t want transparency.  They don’t want to see how the hotdog is made.  I promise you, no one wants to see meet crammed into a casing.  However, they do want to know that the nutrition label is accurate and a fair representation of what’s in the hot dog.
2. Conversation/Dialogue: How many times did you hear, “we need to start a conversation.”  Or, “it’s about having a conversation.”  Yawn.  It takes two people, at a minimum, to have a conversation.  If you’re having a conversation with yourself, I have someone you should meet with :)  There’s 24 hours in a day and with all due respect we/me/you/they don’t want to have a conversation with your/their company.  Do you really want to talk with person X at Sprint?  Guess what?  Sprint doesn’t want to have a dialogue with you either.  There isn’t enough time in a day to have a real conversation or to carry on a dialogue for several days.  We don’t want story telling, we just means for communication.
3. Micro-Blogging: Sigh.  Whoever started this needs to be shot.  People, for whatever reason, feel the need to put things into defined boxes that they can make sense of something.  That’s exactly what happened with micro-blogging.  Someone realized they didn’t understand things like Twitter and decided to give it the phrase micro-blogging.  Do you realize how silly we sound?  While we’re at it, let’s create the term mobi-sode for video content viewed on a mobile device.  Yes, that sounded dumb
4. Streaming: “Hey, I’m live streaming right now.”  Hey, that’s great.  I remember in 1999 when the term streaming was big.  Broadband penetration was increasing and content was actually being streamed.  This whole concept of people life-streaming, live-streaming, etc. is silly.  Please stop saying it Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis
5. User Experience: It’s all about user experience.  Well duh.  We aren’t selling products to ourselves.  The fact that the concept of user experience has been created in a functional discipline, with people billing themselves as user experience experts is mind boggling.  You know who’s a user exeperience expert?  The user.
6. Integrated: Oh boy, what a whopper.  We’re a full integrated agency.  We need to make sure the creative is integrated.  Sigh.  Creative shouldn’t be integrated.  Well, not in the way the term integration is used.  When the term integration is used in marketing/advertising it’s used to denote that all the work should look the SAME.  Hate to break it to you, but it shouldn’t.  Should a 60 second TV spot look the same as your website?  Gosh, I hope not, since they are two differen’t communication channels.
7. User-Centric: Similar to user experience.  But, where as user experience has people and companies claiming to be experts of a discipline, user-centric is a philosophy.  For example, user-centric design.  Wait a second, you’re designing for the user?  Isn’t that what we’re paid to do?  If we start designing/creating for ourselves, well you’ll get Orville Deadenbacher and no one wants that.
8. Web 2.0/3.0: Oh boy, this is a big one.  By my count we’re on version 8 or 9 of the web.  Using the term web 2.0 simply dumbs down the conversation.  Web 2.0 is used as a catch all phrase meant to dumb the conversation down and avoid discussions about technology like APIs, AJAX, embedding, etc.  Instead of creating terms like web 2.0 or web 3.0 (the person at Razorfish that used this should be shot) we should be educating people, especially decision makers, so that everyone is a little smarter.
9. Media Agnostic: Really?  You don’t care, nor have an opinion on media?  And you have a job?  Wait, and you’re considered smart for being agnostic.  Damn, I want that job.  Media agnostic isn’t a point of differentiation…well not when every company is claiming they are media agnostic.
10. Thought Leader: I cringe when I hear this term. Wikipedia says, “Thought leader is a buzzword or article of jargon used to describe a futurist or person who is recognized among their peers and mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights (thinklets).” Well, even they call it a buzzword. Some how a thought leader is supposed to denote how smart you are and give you instant credibility when you walk into the room. If that’s the case, let’s just change people’s titles to Sr. Thought Leader and Director of Thought Leadership. I’ve me a lot of the supposed thought leaders and I gotta tell you, not impressed. Becoming a thought leader, if we’re going to continue using the term, should be like getting knighted. Only royalty can denote that you are a thought leader. Seeing no other hands, I will take on that role

My one request for 2009 is not world peace.  It’s please stop using buzzwords and instead be more transparent about your thought leadership when you integrate your micro-blogging, life streaming, and other web 2.0 tools via a media agnostic user experience and user-centric approach to maintaining a dialogue.  Does that make sense?  Good, I didn’t think so…and that’s exactly what you sound like when you talk in buzzword speak.

1. No More DRM - I hate DRM.  I love iTunes.  I want apple to get it’s act together and drop DRM from the iTunes store.  Just dropping it though won’t be enough.  They need to make music previously purchased by consumer convertible so that we/they can remove DRM.  Oh, and they need to make this reverse conversion free.
2. Crystal Pepsi - I want Crystal Pepsi back on the market.  They were too ahead of their time, when Pepsi release it.  It tasted/tastes great and Pepsi should consider bringing it back.
3. U.S. Auto Consolidation - We don’t need as many U.S. auto companies as we have and we don’t need as many product lines as we have.  I’d love to see GM and Chrysler merge.  I’d also like to see Ford get rid of brands like Mazda and Mercury.  We aren’t dumb, the Ford Taurus and the Mercury Milan are essentially the same car.  Hey GM, we don’t really need GMC, Saab, Saturn, and Buick.  Let’s consolidate and focus on making 1 or 2 car lines really good.
4. Hiring Smart People - Can we please stop hiring the same type of people?  It amazes me that as progressive as we’ve gotten we still hire archaically.  We still ask for X years of experience, Y type of degree, and of course the requisite MBA preferred.  Companies need to hire smart people that have a good pedigree.  If they keep hiring for specific titles and use old school boxes to define candidates, they’ll never evolve.
5. Better Tools To Measure Social Media - Vitrue is cool.  Twist is nice.  Google Trends is ok.  But, there just isn’t a real legitimate tool to measure social media impact easily.  We have great tools like Quantcast and Compete, to measure web demographics and traffic, but we’re still lacking in the social media measurement department.  You’d think this is one of the big things Google would be working on.
6. Google Chrome For The MAC and Flash Support for the iPhone. - Simple.  We have Chrome for the PC, but we don’t for the MAC.  Should be a no brainer.  Not having Flash support on some level is ridiculous for a product that touts itself is giving the consumer the web in their pocket.  Tsk Tsk.
7. An Alex Cross TV Series - James Patterson’s books are great.  The two movies based on the Alex Cross books, Along Came A Spider and Kiss The Girls, were solid.  Given America’s love for cop dramas, this should be a no brainer.
8. Real Time Web Integration For Cars - I want my car to provide web access for use in the Heads Up Display (think traffic, directions, sports scores) and for my laptop to connect to.  This really should be easy, no?  We have satellite radio.  We have live/real time traffic updates, so why not go the extra mile and offer web access.
9. The TSA Become Consistent and Logical - Why do some airports make you take off your shoes and others don’t?  How come O’hare requires me to take off my belt, but MSP, doesn’t?  MSP doesn’t require me to show my boarding pass anymore when going through security, but JFK does.  Even though all items get x-rayed, passengers can’t take wrapped presents on a plane.  If this is how grocery shopping was, we’d change how we buy.  But, the TSA and the airline industry have us by the short ones.  We gotta fix this.
10. Serious Challenger To the iPhone - I don’t think the Google Android platform is the answer.  So long as Apple has a lock on the OS and the hardware, it’s going to be tough for someone to challenge them. But, it’s not impossible.

1. AllTop - Guy Kawasaki was brilliant for concepting this idea. Alltop aggregates all the top stories/pieces of content from the best websites…so you don’t have to. Talk about a time saver. The site covers topics from fishing to poker.
2. Hulu - Great video content served up in HD. Lot’s of solid older (aka canceled) shows. They let you be in charge of what type of advertising you see. The only thing they don’t let you do is download the video.
3. MadMen - How did I miss the boat on this one? I ignored the show when it launched. Didn’t pick up on it, after the first season. But, then I decided to tune in 1 night and after the first episode I saw, I said to myself, “why wasn’t I watching this earlier?”
4. Red Bull Cola - Passed on trying it in Vegas. Then went on a mission to find it. Finally I found a can. Drank it…and was blown away. It’s a GREAT drink.
5. Internet Activity Index - I pride myself on being on top of a lot of different online measurement tools. How it is I never knew about the Internet Activity Index is beyond me. The index measures what people do online and segments the behaviors across 5 categories.
6. Twitterific & Twitterfon - Both are iPhone application that let you interact with Twitter. I’ve found that I need them both. They both rock.
7. Wordpress - for years, my site was built in Flash. It was sexy, but it was a pain to update. Someone recommended I try Wordpress and I’ve never looked back. From the plugins to the themes, the community does a great job of making Wordpress fantastic.
8. What If Sports - This site let’s you simulate games between sports teams from different eras. Want to see how the 2007 Celtics would do against the 1992 Jordan lead Chicago Bulls? This site will let you do it. This site has helped me end so many sports arguments quickly and painlessly.
9. Twitter Grader It’s not perfect, but it’s the best tool out there for measuring how good of a tweeter someone is. Twitter Grader is addictive too. I find myself checking my score weekly. It’s another great tool from the folks at HubSpot.
10. Amazon MP3 Store: Should have gotten on this wagon/bus/train a while back.  When you consider my hatred for DRM music, it just makes sense.  Since discovering Amazon MP3, I’ve stopped buying music from iTunes.  In fact, I’ve refused to purchase music from iTunes until it becomes DRM free.

1. BMW 328i - Really, do I need to say anymore? I traded in my 2002 BMW 530i for the 328i. It’s amazing similar in size they are. The new 3 series platform is so much larger than the previous platform generation. Given that I use the car, nearly every day, I’d say the ROI is fantastic.
2. Tickle Me Elmo Live - Perhaps the best $60.00 I’ve ever spent. Cora loves the new Elmo. I’m amazed with how smart they’ve made these toys. It has a sensor in the doll that indicates when Elmo has fallen over. The sensor triggers Elmo to ask you to please stand him up. Are you kidding me?
3. iPhone 3G - This is a funny purchase given I don’t actually own the 3G. My wife does. The reason this purchase made the list, is because looking at her iPhone 3G makes me feel really good about NOT upgrading. There just isn’t anything in the 3G that I wish the first generation had. Seriously. The 3G speeds aren’t legit and all the problems people have had with the 3G just reinforce my decision not to upgrade.
4. Apple Macbook Pro 15″ - I’m typing this post on the Macbook Pro right now. It’s been reliable as hell. The battery life rocks. The screen is bright. And…I can run Vista on it.
5. Apple TV - The Apple TV has changed the way I think about music and photos. Being able to sync all my music and photos and watch them on a 50 inch TV is just amazing. I wish my car had an Apple TV like device. It would make my life so much easier. Imagine driving into your garage and having the car sync automatically with the files in your house.
6. Yard Machines 8HP - First time owner of a snow thrower. It’s worth it’s weight in gold. Why I never had one in the past is beyond. Talk about being stubborn and thinking shoveling was manly.
7. Nike Hatphones - Why Nike discontinued this item is beyond me. It’s amazing. The Hatphones are a warm Nike Thermafit hat that has headphones embedded into the hat. This let’s you keep your ears warm and listen to music at the same time.
8. Nike Lunar Trainer Shoes - Without a doubt the best running shoes I’ve ever owned. Light, durable, stylish, and they work with Nike+.
9. Tivo HD - After having a Comcast DVR for about 3 months, we realized how much we missed Tivo. A quick trip to Circuit City took care of that longing. The Tivo interface is still the gold standard for DVRs.
10. Nikon D700 - It’s Nikon. It’s digital. It’s full frame. It’s an SLR. It’s basically perfect. Image quality is amazing. I thought my D2Hs was great, but the D700 takes things to another level.

1. The Dark Knight

2. Superbad

3. Havoc

4. Across The Universe

5. Hot Fuzz

6. I Am Legend

7. 1408

8. Shooter

 
9. National Treasure: Book of Secrets

10. Rambo