The idea of creativity is held in high esteem by a great many people. When you see a fantastic work of art, or see a new piece of technology that blows your mind, you can’t help but feel appreciative of the creativity that went into making it. You may also feel envy. “Why can’t I be that creative? My world is too structured to be able to do those sorts of things.”

In my position at our creative advertising agency, it's my job to "be creative", but the truth is that anyone can, and everyone should, be creative. In many ways, I believe people are more creative than they give themselves credit for. It is easy to appreciate grand gestures of creativity: the Gugenheim Museum in Bilbao, the XBOX Natal project, Avatar. But you must realize that those large expressions are merely the accumulation of small frequent expressions of creativity. The people behind them are disposed to looking beyond the boundaries of the everyday. By opening yourself up to the idea that each choice you make can be infused with the unexpected, you will begin to see your life and your business enriched with the individuality of creativity.

So what does it mean to “be creative”? You may not have a gift for the arts, but that in no way hampers your ability to be creative. Simply doing something or seeing the world in a new way is the very essence of creativity. Break free of what you know and get outside of your comfort zone. In its purest form, creativity is anarchy. Of course that type of creativity is only useful in an abstract sense, wielded as a hammer to break through a wall of convention. Truly inspired creativity brings about brilliant new ideas within the constructs of necessary guidelines. For example, I can strap an accordion to a rodeo bull and record the “music” as it tries to throw its rider, but likely that will only result in a painful accumulation of noise. It certainly would qualify as a creative act, but that creativity would be wasted in the final product. It’s important to break out of our familiar way of thinking and acting, but do so while still respecting the natural boundaries of human perception.  Creativity is a delicate balance between spontaneity and limitations. Often “new” ideas will be criticized as derivative. That may be true, but that in does not diminish the achievement. No matter how “out of the box” you get, it is still related to the box in some way. Anything that ignores all conventions is only interesting in the abstract. A relationship to the world we live in and the conditions our lives and businesses thrive in is a necessity for success.

Not everyone can throw away convention and embrace the unknown, nor should they. Clearly, some level of control and stability is necessary in business and in life. But being comfortable with the unexpected will allow you to make more creative choices, and, perhaps more importantly, accept and encourage creative choices in those with whom you work. Start small: re-arrange your office, take a new route home, or run a meeting differently. These things have little risk, but will force you to see things in a new way. It may take you longer to get home, but you may see or experience something new that spawns new ideas or growth in your life. Each small act will make you more open to new ideas and change. Many consultants will tell you that a repeatable process is necessary to create an environment of measurable success, and that is certainly true, but innovation is equally important to business. Repeatable process is the antithesis of innovation. Even the most successful business will ultimately stagnate if it does not embrace change. Indeed you must go beyond simply rolling with the changes of industry and be an initiator of change to truly rise above the rest.

Whether you are a designer or an accountant, a CEO or a secretary, make an active effort to infuse creativity into your life. Train yourself to be open to the new and unexpected, whether it be a new, but accurate use of your brand or an off the wall execution for a social media strategy.  It will make you at least a little uncomfortable and anxious (it should or you are not doing it right), but even the smallest of gestures will also enrich you, both professionally and personally. Where should you start? I don’t know… be creative.

Lori Willard, Online Media Specialist here at Def 6, passed along a MediaPost Research Brief that shows that reduced advertising during a recession negatively impacts consumer perception.

According to a new Ad-ology Research study, "Advertising's Impact in a Soft Economy," more than 48% of U.S. adults believe that a lack of advertising by a retail store, bank or auto dealership during a recession indicates the business must be struggling.

Conversly, a vast majority perceives businesses that continue to advertise as being competitive or committed to doing business.
 
Other key findings include:

• 40% of consumers use coupons more now than a year ago

• Most consumers are as willing or more willing to pay more for ‘healthy' or ‘organic' products than they were a year ago

• A ‘deeply discounted price' was the number one factor that would make consumers more likely to purchase a big-ticket item (+$1,000)

• Store websites ranked second only to search engines as the way consumers research products and shop online

Ad-ology summarizes the research by saying:  “It is critical to advertise in the current economic climate, to maintain long-term positive consumer perception of your brand.  Advertising not only assures consumers of a business’ reliability in a soft economy, but it can influence where and what they buy, especially when the ads address concerns about value.”

Definition 6 offers strategy consulting services to help you with your advertising initiatives for the following disciplines: email, SEO, SEM, online media, social media, and mobile.  Don't let your advertising negatively impact consumer perception.

In my continuing research into marketing to the Hispanic consumer, I'm finding great articles from MediaPost that provide good information on why and how to reach this particular audience.  So here is an article by Joseph Kutchera (Why Does Google Send U.S. Hispanics To Foreign Web Sites?) that talks about what Google is doing with search results for the Spanish speaking community and how you can apply similar ideas to your marketing campaigns.

The first thing he points out is that if you search in Google using Spanish words, 50% or more of your responses are going to be for sites outside of the U.S. borders.  So why does this happen and why do marketers miss this target audience?  Kutchera provides the answer.  "Google and other search engines index sites globally while we marketers, agencies and media sellers work within the economic and political borders of the U.S."  When people search using Spanish words and terms, Google is going to return sites that have Spanish content on them.  Does your website have Spanish content?  If you do, you may still be missing out on this audience for a few different reasons.  Kutchera points out the following.  1) Your Spanish site may not be optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) like your English site.  2) Many Spanish speaking Hispanics like to go to sites of their country of origin. 3) Spanish language markets are more likely to spend time on their content, making it more relevant than someone from an English language market who is updating a Spanish language website. 4) U.S. advertisers have been slow to move budgets toward online marketing and therefore not providing the resources necessary to provide the content that is necessary.

So what can you do to reach the Hispanic population:

- Purchase non-U.S. targeted inventory on your search buys along with your U.S. targeted inventory.
- Reach out to Hispanic country-of-origin web sites through ad networks.
- Apply behavioral, contextual, and language targeting to further segment and understand your Hispanic audience.

As a Senior Consultant at Definition 6, an interactive marketing agency with expertise in Web Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing Consulting, I'm seeing lots of evidence for companies to shift some marketing dollars to specifically target Hispanics in the U.S.  This growing population is getting online at a very fast pace.  There are millions and millions of them out there that could be buying your products or services if they could find you.  Are you willing to let them go to your competitors?  We can help you target them.  We can help you get ahead of the curve.
 

Domino's Pizza's response to a video on YouTube is getting good marks for crisis management.  A video on YouTube shows an employee "doing gross things to a Domino's sub sandwich he is making."

Two employees were fired and face felony charges of food tampering.  You can read the USA Today artlcle at www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2009-04-15-kitchen-pr-dominos-pizza_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip.

What I wanted to focus on was key things experts say marketers can do to quickly and effectively respond to similar social-networking attacks.

• First, you have to actively monitor the social media space so that you are even aware of conversations that involve your company or products.  Domino's responded within hours.  

• Domino's first responded on The Consumerist blog and asked for help tracking down the employees involved.  Then, Domino's responded on Twitter where it was a hot topic. 

In summary, the critical factors to success are monitoring and timeliness.

Two other items mentioned in the US Today article shouldn't have to be mentioned:

• Foster a positive culture so that employees and customers aren't the source of negative press.  Duh!

• Set clear guidelines about what is allowed during working hours — and what isn't.  Do you really have to tell employees what NOT to do to food being served to the public?

As a result of the incident, Domino's is looking at banning video cameras in stores.  I think this sends the wrong message.  Customers want assurances that food preparation is safe.  Banning vidoe cameras implies that Domino's doesn't want to know if its happening.  I agree with everything else they've done to manage the crisis but not this.

Definition 6 provides Social Media Marketing Consulting.  We're located in Atlanta, but have clients across the nation.  We'd love to help you optimize your efforts in the social media space.

I came across a Mediapost article that I found very interesting because as a technical project manager at an online agency, I work with several clients that do market to the Spanish speaking community. It shows that most US Hispanics who prefer to speak Spanish are using a lot of websites outside of the US.  In fact, 7 of the top 10 are websites in Spain, Mexico and Columbia.  So companies that need to reach out to Hispanics need to find ways to advertise on these non-US websites in order to bring those customers back to their US websites.

Here are a few key points I got from this article:

1.US Hispanics who prefer Spanish prefer to read Spanish sites and most of them go to websites outside of the US to get the content they want.

2.To reach US Hispanic consumers, companies need to run their media and advertising on non-US Spanish websites.

3. US Spanish speaking consumers use non-US sites more than the major Spanish portals in the US, such as Yahoo! En Espanol, Univision, Telemundo and AOL Latino.

In addition to builing multilingual websites, Definition 6 is an interactive ad agency who helps clients strategize on how to best market to different segments, which can include cultural, regional or age groups.
 

As the CEO of a traditional Atlanta Interactive Agency I find the evolution of Socail Media Marketing to be a great emerging domain for our consultants and our customers. I am attending Socon 09' and will be bloging a few times today.
The breadth of this conference is pretty wide and it appears taht the use of eMail Marketing, Web Site Design, Search Engine Optimzation have evolved as teh buidling blocks of a digtial stragey but the newest engagment tool has truly become the social network. That community of on-line users who connect to share, colloboarte, publish, listen, learn and grow, all digitally and all the time. This makes the job of a marketer harder than ever because the messages crafted to describe why to use our customers products or services is now being absorbed and maniupulated by the end users and then enforced by feedback from others. Like an echo chamber the expereince, good - bad - or avearge is amplified, repeated, and heard hundreds or thousdands of times over.

It should be an interesting day, I imagine a few new thoughts will emerge and couple of old ones will die and mostly more details will emerge as the conversation continues.

I came across a great article yesterday on MarketingSherpa.com which summarized some very practical and useful tips on improving email opt-ins.  Below are 10 low-cost tactics collected from past MarketingSherpa case studies including how to’s on boosting referrals, establishing co-registration barters, optimizing registration pages and using offline channels for email address collection.

Low-cost Tactics for Opt-in Growth

1.     Increase incentive for referrals - offer a discount coupon to encourage your customers to recruit new opt-ins to their email newsletter and promotional messages

2.     Highlight relevance in co-registration placement - find relevant partners and present your offer in a compelling way

3.     Create co-branded sweepstakes – recruit partners to share the promotion with their own customers and in exchange, trade opt-in checkboxes on one another’s sites.

4.     Combat email address typos – conduct tests to capture email typos before they reach your database

5.     Test a delayed intercept for opt-ins i.e. test a version of on overlay that appears only after your visitor spends 1+ minute on the site.

6.     Test additional locations for opt-in checkboxes i.e. add them on higher traffic web pages

7.     Test small tweaks of registration form such as offer type, images, required fields, amount of information and submit button copy

8.     Use telesales and customer service reps to collect opt-ins – have your inbound call center representatives ask for email opt-ins during calls

9.     Print an opt-in URL on receipts for POS registrations – let customers enter their own information through a custom URL on a sales receipt

10.   Add change-of-email address form to site - place reminders throughout your site that ask customers to report a change of address.

Definition 6 leverages expertise in website integration, managed computer services, design, marketing and consulting to create solutions that help our clients increase revenues and reduce costs to build competetive advantage,

Director of Software Development, Graham Street on the popularity of website integration with content management tools.

I've been noticing in recent months that the development projects crossing my desk for estimation have more and more in common. It's CMS, CMS and more CMS (Content Management Systems.)  Everyone feels entitled to have administrable content on their corporate website. CMS solutions have been around since the good old days of dial-up BBS systems. They've been steadily improving every day, from complicated systems that allow you to jump through 10 hoops to edit a sentence, to 1 hoop to edit a whole page. But this incremental improvement in CMS technology doesn't explain the spike of interest that I am speaking of.   

My father even asked me about a CMS topic on a recent trip home. This is the same Dad who showed me Lotus 1-2-3 on my first Compaq 286 in 1984. I still receive all tabular correspondence from him as a 1-2-3 attachment. So for him to be asking about easy self administration of web content for a non-profit, I was a little perplexed.. Excited and definitely proud, but also perplexed.

It's like activism for free speech at the corporate level. Only the cause for oppression is the "old system" that either allows very limited content administration, or perhaps offers too much flexibility with no boundaries, requiring that "editors" learn a syntactically obscure markup language specific to their respective system.  

As an employee of an online agency, with experience in website development and website integration, I hear things like "I want to update every page on my site, and I want to be able to do it just like I do here on my MySpace." It seems these users have learned how easy it "should be" to author some content and publish it to a web-page. I'm quite sure we can thank MySpace, FaceBook and Gmail for much of this. They've set a precedent for what is literally "even your parent could use it" usability standards.       

This new user group is a diverse group of people from all walks of life, from all generations,  who are ready to add content to their respective  enterprise's website. And where CMS systems do not already exist to support that in those organizations,  they're ready to spearhead an initiative to get it implemented,  because they know it can be done at a competitive cost,  almost as easily as creating a new my space page.

Will you need to pay license and support renewal fees in 2009 for the existing internal technologies you use?  Are you looking to lower your IT operational costs or lower capital expenditures in 2009 for hardware?

Definition 6 can help you leverage SaaS as an integrated part of your overall technology infrastructure to help you significantly lower costs by using things like Google Apps, Microsoft BPOS, Salesforce.Com, Twitter, Yammer, Tumblr, Skype, and Gotomeeting.

During a 1-Day workshop our experienced engineers and consultants will lead you through SaaS Infrastructure concepts, educate you on what some of the larger SaaS providers are doing and also educate you on how you can utilize these providers in order to integrate your services in a secure and seamless fashion.  Contact us today for more information.

Even in a turbulent economy, when IT spending cuts are at a high, we understand that you still need developers to build and maintain basic business applications.  We also understand that you may have recently been forced to reduce internal headcount or use of local contractors.  Although utilizing offshore may be slower and a bit challenging at first you still need to maintain existing applications or build new ones that can create efficiencies.

How can Definition 6 help?
1. We can provide dedicated offshore software developers that work directly for  you in a staff augmentation format
2. We can also offer onshore team leads, project management and consulting on building a global sourcing program

What do we deliver?
1. Staff augmentation development resources to work under your guidance
2. Assistance and consulting on how to utilize offshore developers
3. Optional project management of your offshore teams

Contact us today for more information.

Lisa Seals, a Definition 6 Technical Project Manager, recently shared an article from Marketing Sherpa that focused on search engine optimization solutions for microsites...

The article talks about companies who have a multitude of dedicated URLs for specific campaigns or product lines have a harder time coordinating search activities and presenting a unified brand.  However - consolidating those sites into one URL poses its own risks – you don’t want to lose the search placements and keyword coverage those microsites have carved out over time. The article offers top tips from a marketer who unified multiple sites and got an 83% lift in organic traffic:

Tip 1 - Benchmark existing sites and search coverage.
Tip 2 - Analyze keyword strategy to develop comprehensive approach.
Tip 3 - Choose an existing URL to host unified site.
Tip 4 - Index existing pages and create a site map for new site.
Tip 5 - Create new content to bridge gaps between microsites.
Tip 6 - Connect forms and calls to action to the right product group.
Tip 7 - Communicate proposed changes internally and externally.
Tip 8 - Use Web analytics to test and monitor new site.

Lisa's closing thoughts were that microsites are a great way for an online agency to segment your online audience, support specific campaigns, and provide targeted content for different divisions and product lines.  However, microsite creep can limit these benefits and should be considered as a contributing factor to your search engine optimization solutions.  The full article can be viewed at: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30813#

Mike Reese, a Definition 6 Technical Project Manager, discussed an artice he read in Website Magazine...

So you've invested time and money to get people to your site, now what? You've got 10 seconds to not only interest that visitor, but to engage them in some action on the site. You can achieve this by knowing your users and grouping them accordingly by interests and goals. Each group should know what you have that they want, and how to get it.

Mike mentioned some key points related to business website development:

1. Defining personas goes a long way in developing an accurate design that engages each type of user.
2. Users notice visual design, whether or not it relates to them and if it is up-to-date.
3. Make sure that the content and navigation is structured in a way that makes sense to your user and be sure the site has a purpose.

Mike's final thoughts to the group was that there are a lot of things that can happen in a short amount of time - a lot of tangents users can engage in that will inevitably take them off course from their primary goals. Focus on the goals of user segments, what is important to them and display that in a visually appealing way. Make it easy for them to engage. We don't want a design that's visually appealing and then leaves the user frustrated with where to go after that first experince has been absorbed. An online agency can really focus on the design elements and layout that will keep a user on the site for more than a few seconds - ultimately leading to a conversion.  The full article can be viewed at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/articles/User_Personas_Wireframes_First_Ten_Seconds.aspx

When it comes to a search engine optimization strategy, many of our clients are either puzzled by the ever changing algorithms or mislead by the differences between paid and organic search.  Undoubtedly, there is a great deal of misinformation out there when it comes to search engine optimization marketing.

Lance King, a Definition 6 Technical Project Manager, researched the topic and came across an article written by Michael Estrin who addresses some of the most common misperceptions about search engine optimization marketing.  A common thread that Lance sees when talking to his clients about search engine marketing is that they think that if it’s not paid search, that it’s free.  Depending on the website and the campaign objectives, you will want to budget properly for an SEO program.  Just as important, you need a seasoned SEO consultant on hand who not only understands the strategy behind internet search engine marketing but who also knows how to benchmark and measure your SEO successes.  To read the article in its entirety, go to:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/19803.asp