-The customer

-The business

To make the customer happy you must

Make the experience of finding, researching, purchasing, using, fixing, upgrading and explaining your product amazing.

To make the business happy you must

Create a culture that inspires top talent to join. Push for action over politics. Establish an infrastructure that can pivot quickly. Push marketing dollars to product/service improvement dollars.

—Ian

The late Hillman Curtis nails it here:

I start each project with the assumption that everyone involved is creative. I really believe this. While some people’s creativity may not be readily apparent it’s there and not to be disregarded. So whenever appropriate, I kick off the first meeting by telling everyone in the room, at the conference table, or on the phone that I believe in their creativity and that I intend to utilize it. In other words, I make it clear that I can’t produce a great design without them. I make it clear that we share responsibility for the final product, and more often than not, they accept that responsibility with pleasure.

Every project should start off with the line “We can’t produce a great design without one another.” Clients and agencies need to commit to one another through their commitment to the project. Sketches and drafts, wrinkles and bad hair days are all a part of that process. Being committed to timely feedback and not taking calls during meetings is a part of that process.  Trying new methods of communication when the current one isn’t working is a part of that process. Starting from scratch is a part of that process.

Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa shows 3 other versions when placed under X-ray. David Ogilvy, the greatest copywriter ever, wrote 20 headlines for each ad.

When we decide together to show our concepts to one another, we are investing in a relationship first and the project second and that is when the magic happens.

You can be assured that there will be times things will be unclear. The agency may tell you that a campaign you love dilutes your brand. The client may think you really don’t understand them when you suggest a new color palette. That is the process—push through. There is no magic in the creative process—just work.  Creative is not a vending machine where retainers go in and ideas and execution come out. It is, at it’s best, a transparent process full of pivots and edits and ah-hahs.  It is a coin with two sides: Agencies need business objectives. Businesses need creative.

—Ian

It will be companies that figure out how to communicate the non-fiction story of a company, so it’s going to look a lot more like a communications company than a creative branding agency.

Doug Rushkoff (Co.Create)

* See Doug Rushkoff speak at Rhizome 4.14.2012

1. “We need a Content Strategy”

When clients make this statement they are usually looking for a magical report that will make all things right in their domain and on their domain. The problem is, there is no said “righteous report” to be had — just work. Deeply linked, cross-practice work. Copy on newsletters lead to forms, forms lead to databases, databases lead to CMSs, CMSs lead to content types & metadata and copywriting… Something as simple as new copy can trigger the need for new UX/IA with and entirely different navigation system. This is not to say that things can’t be done iteratively. But when “a solution” is the goal the answer is not always simple.

-7 out of 10 times a content strategy engagement will require some new design and code

2. “We’re looking to redesign our site and want to incorporate a Content Strategy”

In this request the intent is spot-on, let’s review our content and let that investment shape our strategy for the site. This is an exciting call to get. The challenge here — determining how much operational change can be introduced without you (the client) feeling like we are selling you something you didn’t come buy (even though that may be exactly what you need). There’s a reason you got to this point, you’ve probably had other vendors or internal folks work on this initiative and it never came out quite right— why? That’s our real work here — asking why — to the point of exhaustion. Legacy systems, cross-functional team breakdown, poor execution, poor strategy – why, why, why, why and why? Turning all those cards face up allow us to better solve the problem and implement a solution that is sustainable and nimble. You don’t want to do this again in a year, do you?

-Start at the end of your customer’s experience – the receipt or form. Work backwards until things become resonant, fix everything below that point.

3. “We need a writer/copywriter”

We feel your pain. Great writers/copywriters (for arguments sake there is a difference) are hard_to_find. Expressing the intent of your business, crafting a voice that is consistent with your brand and nailing calls to action are critical. Writing done well requires a deep domain knowledge of the subject/industry as well chops. Chops are hard to come by and domain knowledge requires strategy. The depth of the strategy required is dependent on your goals, your brand strategy and the shape of your current “content strategy” – whether you call it that or not. Often “content strategy” is fully flushed out in organizations that have never used the term. In other places it’s a scapegoat practice stuffed inside an organization lacking the ability to stitch parts together holistically and/or politically.

-Rule of thumb – a weeks worth of writing requires 2+ weeks of research.

4. “It’s a mix of Product Strategy and Communications and Marketing and..”

Damn tootin’ it is. Customer acquisition and retention reside inside the product (Saas) and the marketing site. Customer development affects not only your messaging and positioning but also your features. Building a product and telling people about it cannot be separate items with uncommunicative teams and slow cycles of innovation/iteration. These types of engagements usually involve a surprising amount of: change management, workflow assessment, customer experience assessment as well as the content and content design. So while you were thinking press releases and case studies don’t be surprised if design studios and customer experience sessions are part of the scope.

-Invest in a customer experience mapping session – one very long, very valuable day.

Content strategy, content design and any other flavor of digital strategy and implementation are highly interlinked practices full of deliverables with predecessors and inheritances. When your designer, developer, copywriter or strategist wants to dig deeper than you expected to go – Celebrate! You are on your way to a real solution instead of a band aid.

THE EVENT

AgileUxNYC – Feb 25, 2012

14 Speakers/8 hours/1 location

Eric Burd

Phin Barnes

Josh Seiden

Tomer Sharon

Anders Ramsay

Todd Zaki Warfel

Jonathan Berger

Jen Gergen

Will Evans

Neil Wehrle

Jeff Gothelf

Giff Constable

Reasons I attended:

I just completed two projects using a waterfall process. While the projects and processes were fresh in my mind I wanted to envision their outcome if they had been run using an Agile process.

I wanted to get a better handle on how a smallish/ boutique shop like ours could run Agile.

I have two new internal projects/products that are just beginning and I want to run them through an Agile process.

Overall Takeaways:

Agile requires your entire organization to buy-in to the process.

Agile simultaneously goes against the grain and with the grain.

AgileUX uses design as both leverage and springboard.

Every practice wants to have a prominent seat at the table.

“Iterate the thinking not the pixels.”

All of the presenters’ slidedecks are available here.

-Ian

1. Who are you again and how did you get my email?

When I receive an email the assumption is that it was sent to me, and only me. If a message is sent to a prospective customer and it feels like it was sent to a million other people your intent gets slippery and the angle of repose increases. This sits in stark contrast to a billboard or TV advertisement, which I know is broadcast to a zillion other people. Despite the knowledge that I am not “the one” these emotional-contextually ads feel even more impressive when they work. The biggest difference between TV/Billboard and an email-initiated communication is audience focus and location. It’s my inbox, my email address and in-turn some permission-based respect is expected when you contact me.

Ways you got my email:

-You scraped my email or bought a list. [You're playing a numbers game hoping that 1 in 100,000 people will respond.]

-I gave you my email address and you took that as a license to communicate with me about everything. [You're hoping I'll I remember why I signed up and keep your brand in my thoughts just in case.]

-You inconsistently send out updates in a voice that assumes I’ve been keeping track of your every move. [You're posturing.]

-I “traded” my email address in exchange for specific content. [Whitepaper download.]

-I gave you my email address because I am genuinely interested in your brand, service or product. [Basis watch.]

2. Are you communicating to me or to 1,000,000 “me’s”?

Communicating with me via email is either very easy or very difficult depending your goal(s). “Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient.” It’s the “intended recipient” part that is often misunderstood or ignored. On one hand, every communication cannot be 100% customized — entirely impractical. On the other hand, FIRST_NAME in a MySQL database is not indicative of an “intended recipient.” The trick/craft lies in making me feel like the email was sent to either:

Me only.

Success details: You know why I gave you my email to in the first place. Are aware of any support tickets, demos and purchases, etc. As well as where I am in your buying/attention cycle.

Other people like me.

Success details: You make me feel like I am part of a tribe of smart, informed people. 

People I want to emulate or be aligned with.

Success details: You make me feel like I am behind the scenes with the cool kids. Privy to trends, behaviors and events that I wouldn’t otherwise know about.

3. Is the content relevant?

“Why are you sending me this?” — Not the reaction you want from people receiving your email communications. While I’ve recently shied away from the concept of “building trust to knowingly exploit it for a sale later”, there is something to be said for being interested in your customers and being consistent with your relationship with them. Analytics are the equivalent of “How have you been?” Content is only relevant when you put the needs of your customers ahead of your needs to contact them.

4. Is the content presented well?

There is no such thing as utility content. Any communication with your customers, or prospective customers, is a showcase of  your writing and design skillsets. Design exists to communicate. And if you don’t have the time or talent to properly design your content, don’t be surprised when it: Raises more questions than it answers, is ignored, or entirely turns people off. Attention to detail is what separates a Ferrari from a Ford Focus.

Copywriting

It is more than information on a page. It is a commitment to understand how your customers, constituents and friends want to be spoken to. (+ best-practices)

Design

There is life beyond Verdana and Arial and starbursts.

Information Hierarchy

EVERYTHING PIECE OF INFORMATION CANNOT HAVE THE SAME WEIGHT AND PRIORITY 

CTA

What do you want people to do with the information you are providing to them? Is this clear and engaging? 

-Ian

There was a long pause

There was a tremendous pause during which I stumbled through design and content to find meaning

There was a pause broken only by the striking of keys, the sound of me leaving said website

—Ian

New content from old publishers with little value
I’ve come to expect these pseudo-articles from sheisty marketers offering first dibs on infographics. As well as fascinating Ehow articles that show you turn on the tv without a remote. But the trend of otherwise reputable content creators performing a lowest common denominator of this content mixture is frustrating and a bit saddening. Just because “everyone is now a publisher” does not mean that historically reputable publishers should dumb down. Too much traffic is like a parking lot and you can’t do much there but wait and collect dents.

—Ian

Committing to Content Strategy without a Brand Strategy  When a client is not established yet, or in startup mode, brand strategy is part aspiration and part adventure — these are exciting times. But when you are working with an established company the rules are bit different and excitement is tempered by the stakes being much higher. Early this year we entered into a lengthy content strategy engagement with a large company that admitted it did not have a brand strategy in place — we’re “working on it,” they said. While we did a lot right: conducted internal interviews that identified disconnects in a +$1mm content strategy process, established baseline communication guidelines and fixed huge holes in a supposed “Agile” process — we never got over the hurdle of brand clarity. It nipped at us during every turn because we had no baseline to build on. Throughout the process of establishing and tuning the strategy we inevitably kept asking -  Does this fulfill the brand promise? Is this message on brand? We never had an answer. So…we never had an answer.

Lesson learned: Brand needs strategy and strategy needs brand.
Tip: Get 5 min of (non-marketing) C-suite time and discuss brand. Ensure this resonates with your stakeholder’s version of brand and buy this Four Steps to the Epiphany

MISTAKE #2

When you think small. You stay small. When we started the business 5+ years ago I had an imaginary number of 11 as a perfect head count. We had good reason for the smallish number (so we thought) 2 children under 2, experience managing/working with smaller teams and some (now transparent) quality of life requirements Tim Ferriss sold us. When you’re small you need to hire yourself (the owner) to do many things you wouldn’t otherwise hire yourself for if there was someone else more qualified. Sometimes this is challenging in a good way, like: Our mobile strategy work with Weendy. Other times it is challenging in a bad way, like: stuffing boxes when you should be wireframing. I now realize that establishing a business based on head count is crazy talk. We need to be the “size of amazing” and that number might be 5, 500 or 5,000. Whatever size is required to provide the best customer experience for our clients and our client’s clients, that’s our goal. Of note we are growing and looking to hire a Sr. Strategist. Now!

Lesson learned: We are our people.  Not the # of desks we have.
Tip: read this Minimum Viable Personnel article from Inc. 

MISTAKE #3

You can’t do everything, at once. Historically I’ve successfully* been able to break this rule, but time catches up, luck runs out and magnification points out flaws. During Q4 I put some ridiculous deadlines on my team and myself. (So ridiculous I’m embarrassed to list them out here.) It took attending Seth Godin’s Medicine Ball event and a LeanStartup event (on the same weekend) to realize I was pushing too hard. Specifically I realized that it was unfair to my family, friends, employees and investors for us not to be operating at optimal efficiency on every project. In our case, that means moving forward we are only taking on client projects that I am 100% committed to and if they are internal projects they need to have the ability to go big. If I don’t follow these rules I’m not just wasting my time but the time of those most important to me: family, friends and co-workers. Somewhere in a book, or on the Twitters, I picked up the line – “Do fewer things extraordinarily.” It’s a hard transition for someone infinitely fascinated in possibilities but it’s the right direction to take for 2012. (As of 3 weeks ago I stopped working on 3 pet projects and turned away 2 smaller jobs that would strain the team.)

Lesson learned: Not every good idea has a viable market. Having a great idea and bringing a great idea to life are two very different commitments with two very different responsibilities.
Tip: 2+2+2 = If you had 2 people that could work on 2 projects for 2 months each, every year, would you choose this project to be one of them? Ask yourself this whenever you are wondering whether or not to dedicate time to pet projects.

*Example: Rebuild house while living in it, while having a newborn and launching a business and coaching basketball. 

MISTAKE #4

Hiding behind email.  There is a strange device on my desk that gets less attention each year despite its power — the phone.  Three proposals last year with potential clients totaled over 400 emails. Let’s write that out in check format – Four Hundred Emails and Zero Sense. I should have trusted my intuition as well heeded last years #2 rule. Notwithstanding that flub-up I should have just picked up the phone and said, “Hey, let’s nail this down, on this call.” Instead, I wasted 33 hours on email (400 emails x 5 min).  Emails are great for binary decision making but not so much for back and forth conversations. You lose the nuances, pauses, concatenated thoughts and the process becomes less of a playing field and more like a race track.

Lesson learned: Pick up the damn phone! Emails rarely clarify things and almost always lead to more emails.
Tip: If you find yourself substantively rewriting an email — call instead.

MISTAKE #5

Not Celebrating.  The founders of Eat Media (that would be Britta and Ian) tend to be a fairly serious duo. Not Accenture Consulting, Brooks Brother suit serious but intense and focused serious — like Janáček – we tend to wear our hearts on our sleeves, to a fault. When we land a new account we tend to get right into solution mode, before the ink dries on the contract. Internally the team deserves to celebrate a win and too often we skip that part.  On the external/marketing side of things we tend to believe in that old adage of “great gets found”.  I think great “used to get found;” now what gets found is what gets heralded. Under promise, over deliver. Get paid a dollar, do a dollar-fifty worth of work. Great building blocks and inspirational bullet points, but announcing a win and celebrating that win with others gets both internal and external teams excited for you and with you.

Lesson learned: Lunch on the boss is not celebrating. Celebration is active and necessary.
Tip: Go a little crazy every once in awhile.

These are my confessions of a growing agency. What were your 2011 mistakes?

—Ian

@eatmedia

Like this article? Check out the Top 5 Mistakes I made in 2009, and 2010.