I’ve worked on car brands in the past. The build your own tool/section was always a heavily debated area of the site. Sure it needs to be functional, but it also needs to be sexy and sell you on the car. With the number of people using iPhones and other mobile devices you’d think car companies would start investing in their mobile presence. Audi has done a great job of reaching out to mobile users. Recently they launched two very cool, smart, and progressive features:
An iPhone formatted site. The site even lets you build your own car on the iPhone and locate a dealer
An iPhone game that’s 100% free from the APP Store. The game relies on the physics of the iPhone rather than the touch screen.
If Audi, who isn’t a market leader, can do this quickly, efficiently, and really well; then why can’t market leaders like BMW, Lexus, and Mercedes?
So I finally made it out for my first run. I had planned to start running on August 4th, my birthday. However due to some gear arriving late, getting sick, and work travel I wasn’t able to find the time. This was my first run using Nike+. I have to say, it worked really well. The Nike Lunar Trainer shoes were outstanding and the Sennheiser PMX70 headphones were better than advertised. So the gear was great, but I wasn’t. The last time I actually ran a real 5K race was in 1996. I ran a 19:27, which is a 6:15 per mile pace. My personal best is somewhere in the neighborhood of 16:12. Tonight was not quite that. You can see the results here.
So I’m basically 25% worse than I wa 11 years ago. Actually, that’s not too bad. My goal is to get up to about a 25 mile a week base and get back to the 6:15 per mile average for a 5K. We’ll see.
Yes, you read that correctly. Seriously, knowing that a championship exists for air guitar makes me feel so much better about my 4th grade field day participation ribbon. It also makes rhythmic gymnastics look like a legit olympic sport.
Came across this ad today on SI.com. Is this a preemptive strike to try and convince people Budweiser is an American beer, even though the brand will be owned by InBev? If it is, I have to say, banner ads aren’t going to cut it.
I’ve been a big fan of Microsoft’s Surface technology platform for a while now. Unfortunately, there have been very few real world examples to point to. I came across this demonstration earlier today.
BMW will be using it in their dealerships as a way to feature cars for customers. This is a great example of how companies can start thinking about uses for Surface. The iPhone and Apple have done a great job of conditioning consumers to use, understand, and want touch screen driven devices. With so many people using touch-screen driven tools there really isn’t a learning curve anymore, which opens up the possibilities. So, what would you do with Microsoft Surface?
My experience working on GoArmy.com while at Leo Burnett was fantastic. I was at Leo when we completely changed the Army’s branding. We even evolved the Army from “Be All You Can Be” to “An Army of One.” That was a big shift in positioning and communication for the Army. I’ve watched the site from afar and love the direction it’s been going. This morning I noticed several new features that really impressed me.
GoArmy.com Home Page
The site opens with a video intro that isn’t a splash page. The main feature area serves up an entire library of videos, but does so in an easy to digest manner. The videos can even be downloaded for use on your iPod. Very nice.
I would have liked to have seen predictive search. However, the use of a Tag Cloud in the lower left of the page, to surface the most popular items visitors are searching for is a solid alternative. I’m shocked actually at how progressive and open they are being with the data.
Right next to the Tag Cloud area is a module that serves up the most recent posts from the discussion board. It’s a nice way to serve up what other people just like YOU are looking for. The only catch is you need to be a registered member to participate in the discussion. It’s a smart move the Army’s part.
I love the use of the dual navigation. They opted to leverage the top nav for the main sections of the site and the right hand NAV for content that is community driven or personalized. I just wish the login call to action was more prominent.
Many of these ideas aren’t new. Several are ones we recommended to the Army in 2001. However, back then they weren’t ready or able to make the recommendations come to life. Today though, tt looks like they have their eye squarely focused on being progressive. Very cool!
I love it when a company really gets “it.” I’ve continued to talk about the value of micro Interactions for a while now. Really, it’s all about making the little things matter. Check out this video from EA in response to a Tiger Woods 2008 game owner’s youTube video. The game owner believed there was a glitch in the game…EA is proving him wrong.
This works for so many reasons. First, it shows how engrained in consumer culture EA is. They really are listening and paying attention. Second, the response offers a tongue in cheek approach to acknowledging the “bug.” Let’s face it, there is a bug. Third, this does great things for the Tiger Woods brand. After all, only Tiger could walk on water
Product placement is an interesting business. When Michael Phelps wears a Speedo swimsuit it means something. When Kobe is featured in a pair of Nike shoes, ditto. The list goes on an on. The one product placement that has me perplexed is the Chinese Olympic Anti-Terror Force’s use of the Segway. Yes, that Segway. Don’t believe me? Check out this photo.
Segway
Am I now supposed to want a Segway because people who shoot other people for a living use them? I’m just seriously conflicted on this example of product placement, because I have no idea why it makes sense. Thoughts?
Ok, that’s a gross over-statement, but they don’t matter as much as they used to. This great article at HubSpot says much of what I’ve been professing for the past 8 months, but it explains it a hell of a lot better than I do. At a high level, here is why open rates don’t really matter:
The open isn’t usually the desired action. The action is embedded in the email itself. You/we want the recipient to click and ultimately do the desired response
The conservative nature of email programs, like Outlook, are blocking our images and thus not reporting email opens accurately.
Mobile and handheld devices like the Blackberry are great for instantaneous delivery and action. However, an open on a Blackberry is not reported as an open.
Most reported open rates don’t take into account bounces. If you send out 10,000 emails and 1,000 end up as hard bounces, you have a net delivery of 9,000. We should key off of 9,000 and not the 10,000.
Spam filters have gotten so aggressive that many emails end up being seen as junk mail even though they aren’t. Most of those recipients will never open that email.
I’d really like to see us move away from opens as a metric and look at the following instead:
Total Distribution - Fairly self explanatory.
Net Delivery - this shows how accurate your list data is. If you end up with a lot of hard bounces you have some serious data accuracy challenges.
Total Actions - whatever your desired action is, let’s report on it. If you want 10,000 completed surveys we should use that as the metric.
I think if we focused on the end result instead of the steps in between we could be smarter and ultimately more strategic about looking at results.
