One to One’s Charlestown, MA location was pleased to recently host 17 participants at our third “Bootcamp” led by Chief People Officer, Bill Haeck. Leaders Ian Karnell and Jeremi Karnell, as well as our Managing Directors, enthusiastically shared their history, visions for and goals of the company, and details surrounding our divisions, One to One Interactive, One to One Connect, One to One Networks, and One to One Insight. There were team-building exercises, lively discussions — and even some improv! Also key to the discussions were introducing and integrating everyone to One to One’s Core Values through the “6 Beings of ‘I’” presentation. The day’s activities and education culminated with a chance to mingle with everyone at our fun cocktail party. And check out the resulting images at Bootcamp February 2011: The Movie (I laughed, I cried . . . )

It was great to start off the new year with a fact-filled staff meeting, a celebration of promotions and awards, memories of a successful Snocial, and a vision of the future for One to One — and the pizza wasn’t half-bad either!

For our January OMG Award, three talented, dedicated individuals were nominated: Mark Alexander, Lead Platform Developer, One to One Connect (Charlestown); Casey O’Looney, Account Supervisor, One to One Interactive (Reno); and Ryan Spence, Contextual Marketing Specialist, One to One Networks (Baltimore). Superman sailed South (smart guy!) to greet our smiling winner, Ryan, in our Baltimore office with a lovely gift card. Congratulations Ryan!

We also offered big congratulations on a job well done to those receiving promotions during year-end review time, as announced by Diana Brunelle, SVP, Human Resources:

Roumen Stoyanov- Associate Director, Application Development (Charlestown)
Charlie Bleau- Associate Director, Content Technology Solutions (Charlestown)
Derek Silvia- Manager, Analytics (Charlestown)
Sutee Pearce- Accounting Supervisor (Charlestown)
Greg Slama- Associate Director, Search Marketing (Charlestown)
Jay Keaveny- Search Specialist (Charlestown)
Amy Seeburger- Media Supervisor, Team Lead (Charlestown)
Jess Cohen- Media Planner (Charlestown)
Michaela Burke- Media Planner (Charlestown)
Mark Alexander- Lead Platform Developer (Charlestown)
Scott Hirschheimer- Search Specialist (Baltimore)
Gurvinder Sandhu- Lead Consultant (London)

Through our Chief People Officer Bill Haeck’s slideshow, One to One’s commitment to creating a cohesive, fun, and supportive company culture shone through loud and clear. From adding an extra week’s vacation to employees’ schedules to initiatives in providing world class management-level training to starting a “Think Differently” speaker series and discussing our “Six Beings of I” credo —- and even rolling out a new employee survey, from which we expect 100% participation – we want to hear your voice!

Leaders Ian and Jeremi Karnell shared highlights of our tremendous progress over the past year, goals for the new year, and offered kind words and kudos to the pitch team that worked night and day to absolutely knock.our.clients.off.their.feet last week – can’t wait to hear the exciting results!

Strap on your seatbelts, people, because 2011 is gonna be a fast, exciting, and yes – fun – ride!

OTOinsights presents our latest customer experience research findings for several of the most downloaded iPad magazine applications including Wired, PopSci, GQ, Dwell, and Time.

“Digital publishing has changed consumer magazine consumption; in the past three years over 1,000 have ceased publication,” said webinar presenter Dr. Philip Rhodes, Managing Director for OTOinsights. “The iPad offers magazines a new digital publishing platform that allows them to better present, control and monetize their content.”

OTOinsights’ task-based analysis focuses on the homescreen, navigation, layout, advertisement placement and overall user satisfaction based on these criteria:

• How does the layout impact user experience
• How intuitive is navigation
• What is the nature and quality of the content
• How efficient is it to use
• How likely are users to revisit the iPad magazine
• Does the application engender trust in the user

This webinar will help brands and publishers participating, or planning on participating, in iPad magazine applications as developers, advertisers or content authors.

Join us for this free webinar where we discuss this latest customer experience research and conclude with a best practice guide on how you can create the best experience for your customers. Webinar attendees will also receive copy of this presentation free of charge.

Presenter:
Dr. Philip Rhodes, Managing Director and Director of Research for OTOinsights

When/Where:
Thursday, July 29 at 11 a.m. Eastern Time

Click Here to Register for Free

Dr. Philip Rhodes, Ph.D.

Philip holds a Ph.D. in Information Design from the University of Portsmouth. He has extensive research and teaching experience in hypermedia design and information architecture. He speaks fluent Portuguese, having lived and worked in Brazil. Before joining OTOinsights, he worked with US solution providers Rare Medium and Sapient, as Director of Information Architecture. Specializing in offering user-centric online solutions within the banking, education, and telecommunications sectors. He also taught at several universities in Brazil and the UK, and has been widely published. Philip is both the Managing Director and the Director of Customer Experience Research & Design at OTOinsights, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

OTOinsights Overview

Technology innovation continues to create increasingly sophisticated and complex interaction touch points between brands and their customers. A customer’s experience with these touch points define what a brand means to them and their continuing engagement with the product or service. OTOinsights helps brands succeed in today’s rapidly evolving landscape by providing customer experience research, brand research, neuromarketing research and user-centered design.

When strategizing around online design in the European market, it’s important to remember that Europeans grow up with an aesthetically sophisticated eye, developed from the rich cultural and architectural environment they live within. This rich environment has always had a clear impact on European marketing, and current differences in online design strategy between Europe and the US go back to what was present in the advertising landscape before the Internet.

Previously in Europe, the poster was one of the main methods for attracting attention. The European poster was always there on the side of a building or urban environment, ready to grab attention. With strong and beautiful visual design, passers by could quickly get the subject, and find out what to do next. The poster tradition in Europe was not just advertising, but a form of art.

In the US, the role of the poster was very often for promotion and, like much of the architecture and culture, much more to the point. It featured beautiful typography, sometimes strong visuals, but was much more utilitarian in comparison. 

Developing out of its particular tradition, online design in Europe tends to focus on a very compelling visual intended to grab attention, impress – and then sell. Americans, by contrast, tend to have a very “to the point” style of online culture. The online game is around the pitch and the sell. Show me a message or a quick visual and then make me click.

To succeed in these different markets, online design needs to address the different cultures and expectations of the European and US consumers.

Loyalty program sign ups were much higher through SMS, the messages successfully focused on associating the brand with local events (stop by for a burrito on the way to the game) rather than coupons – but time-limited, locally targeted coupons were also used effectively to boost a weekend of sagging sales.

 Is this a glimpse into what’s coming – as the rest of the population’s mobile use catches up with mobile-friendly college students? Or is this mobile SMS success among college students dependent on their flexible schedule – is it easier to influence the plans of students weaving their way between classes, and the week’s open ended events, than to affect the more rigid schedule of a 9 to 5er adult?

The new medium of social media demands a new voice – that’s clear. The medium is the message etc etc. And one way media – the tottering dinosaurs of print, TV, radio and even their more nimble descendents, websites and email – look more and more like the forced propaganda of a failing regime.

The new medium provides – demands – an immediacy and intimacy that was impossible in the old world of crafted monologues. From monologue we’ve moved into dialogue, and the buzz words around the new medium (transparency, honesty, relevance, value and commitment, according to iMedia) have the monologue crafters very nervous. If marketing is now an open ended conversation, who needs to pay for an agency’s careful, expensive craftsmanship, when all you have to do is wire up to a social network and talk talk talk.

But conversation is not as easy as it looks. In fact, it’s harder than monologue – the difference between setting up a perfect three point shot on an empty court and making that shot on the fly in the middle of a fast moving game.

There is no reason to think a company will be any better at ongoing conversation than they were at creating their own TV or radio spots, their own banners or emails or websites. Finding your company’s voice, sounding like yourself – i.e., sounding like the best qualities your brand has to offer – is no easy task. Ask anyone who’s tried to, say, write a memoir, or even a good holiday card: expressing yourself, telling your story effectively, is going to demand as much creativity and expertise in the new medium as it did in the old.

Again, it will if anything be harder, because conversation demands more nuance and speed than monologue.

There is a certain charm and sense of honesty in a beginner’s clumsiness – that was a large part of what drew people to early YouTube videos. But the arc on YouTube, Twitter, even Facebook, has been toward people who are good at it; people who understand the medium and express themselves well through it. The more that people get comfortable using social media, the more clear it will become that the nuance and intimacy – the authenticity – of the social media voice is something that has to be crafted.

When is a website no longer a website?

The website isn’t what it used to be – it is rarely surfed in the old-school sense of the word, at best it is landed on from an external reference and then quickly departed from. Brands and organizations still have to have one, but increasingly your brand conversation is happening elsewhere, in places where brands have less influence using traditional online media.

Think of how you used to use the web. You surfed websites. You sent email. You saved links. Today? You’re sending messages through your phone as SMS, to your friends through Facebook, to your business associates through LinkedIn. You’re getting your news through aggregation engines like NetVibes or iGoogle, you’re finding content in Twitter streams, you’re watching video on your handset, you’re watching video on your big screen streamed from the internet.

You rarely save links anymore, and if you do you do so socially. You’re far more likely to search the internet for what you want when you want it, or maybe you search in community-driven information sites like Wikipedia for specialized information.

So what can you do to make your site relevant in this fragmented world? Stop thinking of your online presence as a website; think of it as a multi-faceted lens your brand shines through.

When your website is a lens, your brand shines through.

The very terms “Internet,” “online,” and “interactive” are starting to lose meaning. When aren’t you online? Non-interactive media is starting to stand out by its scarcity. And even the most ludditical among us still lives in inescapably digitally interconnected world.

And what does that mean exactly? It’s too early to be exact, but here are facets of the fly’s eye:

1. Conversations are happening in online venues that you cannot control, but only participate in
2. These venues seem resistant to traditional marketing penetration
3. There are many conversational channels each with different characteristics, best practices, and influencers
4. Search has become the de facto online navigation
5. Email marketing has become more complex, more important and the first channel among many
6. Traditional website interaction is declining
7. Listening and learning from customers is increasingly important
8. Brand message is not being delivered by your marketing or PR department but by everyone in your organization who is engaged in online conversations
   • By the way you cannot nor should not control this – the only way to do so is by squelching the very people in your organization who will enthusiastically spread your brand message
   • That said you need to monitor these conversations and apply education where necessary
9. People are increasingly accustomed to building their own pages out of simple template systems
10. Content surfers care less and less about the design or even navigation surrounding the content; in many cases they are consuming content without using site navigation or seeing the page design
    • This new mode of communication implies that it is better to make creating pages (content units) easy, and organizing pages (content units) automatic than spending time and money pre-solving design and IA issues
11. Content surfers are increasingly omnivorous about where and how they consume content, so make your content portable and easy to comment on
12. Test and optimize of course, but then think about what usage means outside of the frame you are measuring
13. Apply systems to chaos, but don’t try to organize the chaos. Learn from it.
14. Apply the correct level of conversational exclusivity: know who the conversors are: is it everybody? everybody self-grouped by interest? a defined collection of people like course attendees?
15. Know your audience individually – allow them to select what they are interested in – direct to them what you think they’ll be interested in
16. Employ expanding circles of control and content flow; from tightly controlled, to the monitoring of and participation in chaos
17. Use existing platforms – why own things when you can simply use things
18. Expand your brand’s online presence- but don’t let go of it