This summer, companies throughout the world will be headed to the Olympic Games in Beijing to take advantage of opportunities to build brand awareness by attaching via sponsorship to national teams, sports, and athletes. Major brands use the exposure to reinforce their presence worldwide, while up-and-coming brands may use the opportunity to gain entry into the global marketplace. At the center of this whirlwind of the corporate sponsorship lie the games themselves, and the unique design systems which are employed to symbolize and commemorate the event, usually chosen from hundreds of entries in competition for the distinct honor. The design of emblems, posters, and most recently the event locations all bear a task in common with brands seeking to reach the global market: the ability to precisely communicate your message across geographic and cultural barriers.

The modern Olympic games offer us a wealth of inspiration and guidance for creating design which can pack a wide variety of meaning into a singular visual statement: National heritage, global diversity, sportsmanship, and tradition. Add to that the task of having appeal to the world audience, and you've got quite the design challenge on your hands.

The following are some of the more successful designs employed for past games:

The emblem of the 1964 Tokyo games, designed by Yusaku Kamekura, shows gold Olympic rings superimposed on the emblem of the Japanese national flag, representing the rising sun. The use of repetition of the circular forms creates a harmonius and ingeniously simple visual symbol which is loaded with significance.

For the 1968 games in Mexico, a team of three artists created a logo which is a combination of the five Olympic rings and the year. The repeated outline recalls the patterns of the Huichole Indians, combining national heritage and tradition while advertising the global event. 

http://blogs.mediapost.com/online_minute/?p=1719

Above is the link to a post by Wendy Davis entitled, “Buzz Kill: CW Cancels ‘Gossip Girl’ Streams” where she announces just that, that CW has decided to no longer make free streams of the show available online.

Their argument, that the free streams have given their audience another alternative to watching the broadcast and has thus negatively impacted the ratings. And this despite the argument and research claiming just the opposite is true.

You’d think the Networks would have learned a thing or two from the record companies and their unsuccessful plight against downloading, legal or otherwise. Whether the networks realize this or not they have already lost this fight. They now have two choices, to embrace this new way of ingesting media and leverage it or even monetize it, or continue to lose market share.

People are now wanting and even expecting more control over the content they ingest. They want and are expecting to be able to watch it when they want to and at the pace they want to and through whatever means they want to. People no longer want to be a slave to the networks and their broadcast schedule. If you are not willing to relinquish that control, people will ultimately find a means of wresting it from you. You want to pull the episodes from your site? Fine, I’ll stop visiting your site and look for it elsewhere. Think I won’t find it? Willing to take that chance and alienate me all at the same time? Talk about a win-win combination.

The only thing networks are accomplishing by no longer providing free streaming of the full-length episodes is the following:
- Giving people less incentive to visit your site, guaranteeing yourself less visits, thereby making your site less attractive to outside advertisers.
- Denying fans the opportunity to watch their favorite episodes again, especially certain steamy scenes that I’m prone to forwarding to friends.
- Making it impossible for people like me who want to get into the show but haven’t the opportunity to catch up and perhaps become a coveted viewer. Now I’ll just have to wait until the entire season comes out on DVD and rent it.

Ok, so we’re in agreement that pulling the episodes entirely from the site probably wasn’t the best strategy. Here’s what CW should have done:

- Knowing that the streaming videos boast a lot of traffic, charge companies more to run online ads during them. That should counteract at least some of the shortfall. There’s arguably the traffic to justify it.
- Only stream the episodes a week after the episode originally airs. Teens can either watch the broadcast or risk being perceived as irrelevant when the latest episode is hotly discussed during recess.
- Stop streaming the episodes once the season ends. This way, it won’t bite into revenue from sales of the entire season.

XOXO,

Flightpath “Gossip Girl”

I just finished a great book, titled Waltzing with Bears, Managing Risk on Software Projects by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. Risk is something we all deal with in our day to day lives, and probably don’t deal with enough in our professional work. The authors open with the idea that if a project doesn’t have any risk to it, it’s just not worth taking. This notion is especially applicable to the interactive design field that Flightpath is in.

The authors share the analogy presented by risk management expert Bob Charette, who proposes imagining your company and its competitors as a set of down escalators.

“You are obliged to climb up the escalator, which is moving against you. And your competitors are doing the same thing on theirs. The faster their stairs move, the faster everyone has to climb to stay even. If you pause, even for a moment, you begin to fall behind. And, of course, if you pause for too long, you will drop off the bottom, no longer able to compete…

Competitors get to enter their escalators halfway up. Falling behind, then, guarantees that the new competition will enter above you.

At the top of each escalator is a level that will allow you to control the speed of not just your escalator, but of everyone else’s as well. If you’re the first to reach the lever, that shows that you’re a better climber than your competitors. So, you can speed up all the stairs so that you can stay even but your competitors can not.

…This is an era in which risk-taking is rewarded, leaving companies that run away from risk as a plunder to be divided up by the others.”

But taking on the most innovative and thus risky projects is not all about being the sexiest agency out there; risks have to be managed. To take on a risky project without a formal plan in place to manage those risks is taking a major gamble with your project, your stakeholders, and maybe even your career.

The book states that risk management is like project management for adults. Something which adults have that children don’t is a willingness to confront the unpleasantness in life, from the little annoying things to the cataclysmic (examples such as putting a band-aid on a cut to keep it from getting infected, or taking out life or home-owners insurance policy as protection against the bigger challenges). Taking note of bad things that can happen and planning for them accordingly is a mark of maturity.

What can you do to make your project sexy (and of course risky) at the same time? Examples are trying out a new technology, working with a third party application that does some incredibly cool stuff, or doing something that nobody else out there has done before. Then there are the core risks that any project (no matter how un-sexy) can have, the book lists these five core project risks:

- schedule flaw, interruption
- scope creep
- turnover
- specification breakdown
- under-performance

To ignore any of these is as disservice to your project team, your stakeholders, and yourself.

But risk discovery and planning can be an unpopular task and can make the risk identifier look like a ‘can’t-do’ person or a whiner. Risk management makes a limited amount of can’t-do thinking okay. It’s better to raise the issues early on and be prepared for them if and when they come, then to ignore them entirely.

So, I’m ready to become more of a can’t-do person, and ready to be more prepared for anything good or bad that will come my way. I hope that you’ll join me, and I’ll see you on the escalator!

We’re used to hearing how beneficial a paid search program can be for a company. What we don’t hear is how difficult it can be to effectively manage and optimize the program. I’m not lying when I tell you that it can be a full-time job in and of itself. Knowing that not everyone has the time or resources, I thought I’d share with you a few tools that Google offers to help you make the most of your Adwords program.

Traffic Estimator

This tool is designed to help you estimate the costs and opportunity (number of impressions) associated with keywords that you select. This will give you a real sense of how many leads (impressions) are out there and how much it will cost to reach them (budget).
For each Keyword you select, you will see the following information:

- Minimum bid or the amount you’ll have to pay in order for your ad to appear
- Maximum Cost Per Click or the most you are willing to pay in order to see your ads appear
- Predicted Status, the status your keyword will be assigned, based on your CPC bid (active or inactive for search)
- Search Volume or traffic, how many people are likely to search for those terms
- Estimated Average Cost Per Click, what you are likely to pay every time someone clicks on your ad for specific keywords
- Estimated Ad positions, where your ad is likely to appear

Below are detailed instructions from Google on how to use the Traffic Estimator with or without an account.

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
2. Click the campaign containing the ad group and keywords you want to review.
3. Click the appropriate ad group.
4. Select the Keywords tab.
5. Click Edit Keywords at the top of the table.
6. In the field provided, enter any additional keywords so that each word or phrase appears on its own line. Do not use commas to separate keywords.
7. If necessary, enter the new maximum cost-per-click (CPC) amount in the Default bid field.
8. Click Estimate Search Traffic. You will see all of the estimates for each of your keywords. If necessary, you can adjust your maximum CPC and recalculate your estimates.
9. Click Save Changes to keep the new settings or Cancel to delete them (in which case your original settings will be applied).

You can also access* our standalone Keyword Traffic Estimator this way:
1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
2. Click Tools on the Campaign Management tab.
3. Click Traffic Estimator.
4. Enter your keywords: In the field provided, enter your keywords so that each word or phrase appears on its own line.
5. Choose a currency: Select your currency. Then enter a specific maximum CPC for your estimates, or let us suggest a value. Our suggested value should deliver your ads at the top position a majority of the time.
6. Choose a daily budget: Enter a daily budget. Or, let us suggest a value to see the maximum number of clicks that your ads could receive.
7. Choose your target language(s): Select which language(s) you'd like to target.
8. Choose your target location(s): Follow the instructions on the page to select which location(s) you'd like to target.
9. Click Continue when you're finished to see your traffic estimates.
10. If necessary, enter new values in the Maximum CPC and Daily budget field. Click Get New Estimates to see how your statistics change.

*If you don't have an AdWords account or don't want to sign in to your account, you can access the standalone Keyword Traffic Estimator at https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox?hl=en_US.

Edit Campaign Negative Keywords

These are words that you would NOT want to trigger your ad. For instance, let’s say you are selling a service. That service has a defined cost attached to it. If the search contains the word “free” in it, you might not want your ad to appear because he or she isn’t likely to become a customer of yours. To not suppress those searches can only drive up costs and negatively impact your quality score.

Conversion Tracking
Using conversion tracking, you can measure how effective you are at converting leads or getting them to perform certain actions through your paid search program. Conversions could be any number of things, depending on your site: newsletter sign-ups, contact us form submissions, etc. This way, you can not only view the quantity of traffic you are driving to the site but more importantly, the quality.
Once you define a conversion, Google will provide you with code you will need to add to the confirmation page for that defined action. Once you have that in place, you will be able to track how many submissions, sign-ups, or downloads came from your ads.

Below is some more information from Google on how conversion tracking works exactly:

• Our googleadservices.com server places a temporary cookie on the user's computer or mobile device.
• If the user reaches one of your designated conversion confirmation request pages, his or her computer or mobile device passes back the cookie and requests that our server send the conversion tracking text. If cookies are rejected for any reason, the conversions made from that user won't get recorded. Conversion tracking is also not supported if the mobile phone user disables images.
• Google records the conversion event and correlates it with your campaign, Ad Group, URL and keyword.
• At the next report update, you will see conversion statistics from the campaign level down to the keyword level.

Ad Scheduling

With Ad Scheduling, you can determine what days and during what hours your campaigns or ads run. If you only want your ads to appear on weekdays during the workday, you can easily change the settings to change that.
Follow the path below to access Ad Scheduling:
Campaign --> Edit Campaign Settings --> Advanced Options

Delivery Method

This allows you to choose at what frequency you’d like Google to serve your ads. You have two options to choose from:
- Standard or over time (over the course of a day). This may mean that you don’t always see them since they try to space them out
- Accelerated, showing the ads as quickly and often as possible until you hit your daily budget

Ad Serving

With Ad Serving you can choose Optimize and have Google serve up the better performing ads more often or Rotate, and show all ads evenly. For those who don’t have the time to closely monitor their ads, I would let Google do it for you and choose “Optimize”.

Position Preference

This is where you tell Google where on a page you’d prefer your ads to appear. For instance, if you’d prefer that your ads appear when they rank between positions 2 and 4, you can set that and will only try to serve your ad when your able to claim one of those rankings. They don’t guarantee it, but they try. Isn’t that the best we can honestly expect these days? I would only use this once you’ve established a position that works for you.

Utilize some or al of these tools and you’ll likely find a more optimized solution to your paid search quandaries. Your program will reap the benefits and you’ll come off like a genius without having to do any heavy lifting whatsoever.

Happy Optimizing!

Many companies choose not to spend money on usability testing. Oftentimes, the costs of formal usability testing at a facility with two way mirrors and recording equipment can be prohibitive. There are times when this very formal usability testing is absolutely necessary. At Flightpath, we have discovered that there is an alternative to spending big bucks on usability to settle key design issues. 

We all know that user-centered design that relies solely on the client's approval (or subjective opinion of what the users really want) will be less successful than a site that actively considered user feedback during design.

So what if the client is willing to pay for design but not usability testing to validate that design with the user? If you have a good user experience designer or information architect, testing can be done with wireframes via a webex session and a conference bridge with a user that meets the demographic profile of the website's target audience.  Our design team has learned valuable information about design, instructional copy, flow, and other unexpected details that only users can point out.

This kind of testing can be done for a fraction of the cost of going to an outside facility. Candidates for the test pool can be recommended by clients. Clients typically know people who meet their demographic footprint who are more than happy to participate in exchange for in-kind product, a simple gift card or even the satisfaction of knowing they've participated in a re-design for a favorite brand.

It is very possible to embed this kind of usability into the design costs of a typical project. This way, “Usability Testing” as a line item doesn’t have to be stricken for budgetary reasons. This protects the client from themselves by allowing the user to clarify what they expect; it can really take the guess work out of a website design without breaking the bank.

 

 

We're pleased to report that Flightpath has been engaged by Building with Books to design, build, and deploy a new web presence for them.  BwB is a dynamic not-for-profit organization that engages American youth through in-class and after-school programs in 108 high schools around the U.S. Students also volunteer in their local communities and help build schools in developing countries. BwB has built more than 240 schools in villages worldwide, providing more than 104,000 children and parents with access to education.  

BwB is an amazing organization that is doing exceptional work and we feel privileged to be able to work with them.  Watch this space for details on their new site.  Meanwhile, you can learn more about BwB at their current site at www.buildingwithbooks.org.

- Jon Fox

BtoB Magazine just issued their special report on Top Agencies and we were pleased to see Flightpath was included on the list.  You can view the list on their website and/or download a PDF by clicking here.  We think this is a great distinction. 

We're not shilling for BtoB here, but a few weeks ago, we were also noted in their 2008 interactive marketing guide. This is a great resource that covers news and trends associated with web sites, email, online advertisign, search, social media, analytics, and more.  A great read for anyone interested in the current state of interactive communications and maketing.    You can download a pdf or the guide by clicking here.

 - Jon Fox

What do web sites and reality TV show contestants have in common? They both desperately want to be seen. If your site doesn't appear as one of THE top results in search for terms that speak to your business offering, you quickly become the Justin Guarini of "American Idol". Who? Exactly! Here are a few tips from a reality TV wanna be on how your site can be "discovered" and eventually become infamous.

Have a great "body"

Plain and simple, people with great bodies are often times more noticed. The same could be said of web sites. Spiders, aka casting directors, sent out by the various search engines crawl the body copy of your site to determine just how viable or relevant you are when it comes to phrases people are searching for. "Beef up" your copy and include keywords/phrases that your customers are likely to search for.

 Declare a role and fill it well

Casting directors are always looking to cast people to fill specific roles, whether it be the vixen, the girl-next-door, the heartthrob, etc. Casting directors rely on hunches and/or interviews. Search engine spiders rely on meta tags, which includes heading tags, the most important being the title tag, keywords tags and image alt tags. Combined with body content, it helps search engines determine your relevance for specific search terms.

Be accessible and "friendly"

Don't give people any reason to dislike you, especially if you have to rely on their support. Web sites should do the same with search engines. Search engines are currently unable to index or read most client-side scripting including JavaScript and Flash. Content created in this format is essentially invisible to them. If your site relies heavily on these, you risk alienating them.

Actively build your fan base (or have people do it for you)

You are only as popular as the number of fans you have. For a site, incoming links are viewed by search engines as a reflection of that popularity and relevance. The more sites that link to you, the more relevant search engines think you are and the more likely you are to show up in search as a result. Reach out to web sites with similar content especially and see if they would be willing to link to you (aka give you props). Blogs, syndicating content, articles and press releases are also good ways to build incoming links.

Be your own biggest supporter

Don't be afraid to cultivate a little hype for yourself and shamelessly flaunt/pose for the camera. Sites can use internal navigation, linking within your web site, to do the same. Pages that are poorly linked are often considered, by search engines, to be less important. Leverage comprehensive navigation and a site map to help ensure that important areas of your site are more accessible to spiders. Link to the camera now, click, click!

Whether you are a reality TV star in training or a webmaster, above are a few tips to help you achieve notoriety. Are you or your web site ready for the spotlight? And can you turn that 15 minutes of fame into a lengthy career? Now that is for a future entry...

 

After managing a web site redesign project for one of our clients, Seventh Generation, I've jumped on the Going-Green bandwagon and made a resolution to "go green" for 2008. I wanted to share some tips for Going Green...

...at the Workplace

• Bring your own mug - you'll reduce waste since you won't be using disposable cups
• Only print if necessary
• If you must print, tweak your printer settings - Microsoft Word allows you to easily output two (or more) reduced-size pages on a single sheet of paper.
• Make a scrap paper pad
• Turn off your monitor if you're not using your computer for a long period of time

...with Marketing Strategies

• Send e-mail newsletters to communicate with customers. For example, e-commerce sites can drive traffic to their sites by sending a promotional e-mail newsletter to their subscribers.
• Create printer-friendly web pages/e-mails newsletters
• Web catalogs - instead of spending money on printing catalogs, put your catalog on the web.

Every little effort to saving the planet helps. Join the green revolution.

A colleague pointed out an article today presenting the results of a survey on why decision makers at leading brands choose one agency over another during a competitive pitch.   After presenting a prioritized list of 24 reasons, ranging from "Good chemistry with us" to "Will collaborate with my other agencies," they began to explore how and why agencies getting to the pitching stage in the first place and a primary answer was:

"Decision-makers want to be approached by agencies that have smart, well thought, sector-savvy understanding of their particular organization and role... unless an agency has something to say that's several levels more tailored and relevant than other agencies seeking their business, that agency is likely to fail." 

This seems like a very important learning to me.  You can find the whole article here.  Enjoy!

 - Jon Fox