Thank you for viewing our second 2013 edition of The SoDA Report.

We are delighted that The SoDA Report has become one of the most viewed digital trend publications in the world, with over 140,000 views per issue. In this latest issue, SoDA’s elite membership, partners and other industry leaders provide their latest insights into digital innovation and the blurring borders of digital marketing, customer service and product design.

SoDA is gaining unprecedented momentum as the organization enters its seventh year of existence. From a base of 13 founding companies in 2006, the organization has grown to 75 handpicked member companies with 200+ offices worldwide. SoDA has truly become a global network made up of the most respected digital agencies and creative companies in the world.

Getting into SoDA is not easy. Only 11% of the companies that applied over the past 12 months have been invited to become a member. It’s a rigorous process. A member must nominate candidate companies. Based on their HQ location, regional membership committees from North America, South America, Europe or Asia then review their work and culture. Those that pass go on to be reviewed by the board, which presents its recommendations to the entire membership for a vote. This direct democracy and

“ SoDA has truly become a global organization made up of the most respected digital agencies and creative companies in the world.”

Tony Quin

Intro

commitment to the highest standards of excellence has produced a peer group that is different from any other in the digital world.

What makes SoDA truly unique though is the open and candid culture of the organization. SoDA members share a belief that we gain much more by collaborating than by operating in isolation. So we choose to help each other have better businesses and compete based on the quality of our ideas rather than the mechanics of our businesses. The result is an organization like no other.

In the coming year, you will not only see more editions of The SoDA Report, but also SoDA’s expanded presence at SXSW, Cannes and other major industry events, in addition to our own event series. You will see a continuation of our Digital Marketing Roundtable webinars, many open to the public; the growth of our Peer Collaboration Groups that currently involve 800+ members spanning 15 disciplines and topic areas; more developments in our IP defense program; the continued growth of our benchmark studies, unique in our business, and other ambitious initiatives to be announced in the coming months.

I hope you find this edition of The SoDA Report valuable and enjoyable. Take the time to explore our website at www.sodaspeaks.com, where you can also sign up for our mailing list and keep informed about upcoming SoDA events.

Best wishes,

Tony Quin Chairman of the Board, SoDA CEO, IQ Agency

Welcome to our 2H 2013 edition of The SoDA Report. For both marketers and agencies, we offer some “secret sauces” to help you navigate the current business climate, stay ahead of technology trends, deliver creative excellence and simplify some of life’s complexities.

We entertain you with digital detox recommendations and suggest how agencies and brands can play on the same team. We also cast a spotlight on innovative ethnography techniques and employ the metaphor of a rhizome to help you better understand human behavior and improve your creativity quotient.

The issue also presents some back-to-basics on how to operate and structure a successful creative or production company as well as an in-house creative team. For the geeks in all of us, we explore the user-friendliness of new mobile development tools, the effectiveness of creative workflow applications and the promise of wearable technology.

Our human vs technology discussion continues with more future gazing into our relationship with technologies and how the Internet of Things is evolving. This volume closes with an exploration into the digital agency’s role as both a client and consumer advocate, and how we can facilitate and empower better dialogue between brands and consumers— and between agencies and clients. Enjoy!

Angèle Beausoleil Editor-in-Chief

Angèle Beausoleil

Foreword

Content DevelopmentAngèle BeausoleilEditor-in-Chief of The SoDA Report, Founder & Chief Innovation Officer of Agent Innovateur Inc.

Angèle Beausoleil has spent the last two decades working with digital agencies, technology companies and consumer brands on identifying market trends, leading research and development projects through innovation labs and crafting strategic plans. Today, she balances her graduate studies (PhD in Applied Innovation) with teaching Thinking Strategies at UBC’s d.studio, and a strategic marketing consulting practice. Angèle is also the Editor-in-Chief for The SoDA Report and is an advisory board member for the Merging+Media Association, Vancouver International Film Festival, Kibooco (kids edutainment start-up) and the Digital Strategy Committee for the University of British Columbia (UBC). Angèle lives in Vancouver with her husband and son.

Chris BuettnerManaging Editor of The SoDA Report, SoDA Executive Director

After a career on the digital agency and publisher side that spanned 15+ years, Chris Buettner now serves as Managing Editor of The SoDA Report. He is also the Executive Director of SoDA where he is charged with developing and executing the organization’s overall strategic vision and growth plan. And with roots in

The SoDA Report Team & Partners

journalism, education and the international non-profit world, the transition to lead SoDA has been a welcome opportunity to combine many of his talents and passions. After living in Brazil and Colombia for years, Chris is also fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and is an enthusiastic supporter of SoDA’s initiatives to increase its footprint in Latin America and around the world. Chris lives in Atlanta with his wife and two daughters.

Editorial TeamSean MacPhedranIndustry Insider, Group Planning Director, Fuel Industries

Sean is Group Planning Director at Fuel Industries (based in Ottawa, Canada), where he currently works with clients including McDonald’s Europe, Nokia, Mattel and Lucasfilm. He specializes in youth marketing, entertainment & game development, and the incorporation of pirates into advertising campaigns for brands ranging from Jeep to Family Guy. Outside of Fuel, he is a co-founder of the Ottawa International Game Conference, managed the category-free Tomorrow Awards and spent a good deal of time in the Mojave Desert launching people into space at the X PRIZE Foundation. They all came back alive.

Matt GriffinAdvocacy, Founder/CEO, Deepend

With over 15 years’ experience in design and interactive media, Matt was an active participant in the formative years of the digital communications industry, gaining valuable experience with Deepend in London, before setting up Deepend Sydney in 2000. An industry leader, Matt has been on many interactive panels and award juries both in Australia and internationally. Amongst

other positions, he is an Executive Academy member of IADAS, Executive Juror of the Webbys, and Grand Juror of CRESTA.

Jean-Pascal Mathieu

People Power, Chief Innovation Officer, Nurun

As the chief innovation officer and director of the Nurun Lab, Jean-Pascal Mathieu is always looking for new digital solutions to solve consumer problems. Previously the vice president of strategy, Jean-Pascal has contributed to the design of new service offerings and has ensured the diffusion of innovative technological expertise throughout the company. A keen observer of the evolution of interactivity, he is a frequent contributor to industry publications.

Mark PollardModern Marketer, VP Brand Strategy, Big Spaceship

Mark is a brand planner who grew up digital. He built his first website in 1997 then published the first full-color hip hop magazine in the Southern Hemisphere, while working at dotcoms, digital agencies and advertising agencies. He is featured in the AdNews Top 40 under 40, and won a Gold Account Planning Group (APG) award for his McDonald’s ‘Name It Burger’ strategy. A New South Wales government initiative listed him as one of Sydney’s Top 100 Creative Catalysts. Mark is now VP of Brand Strategy at Big Spaceship in New York City.

Zachary Jean ParadisTech Talk, Director of Innovation Strategy, SapientNitro

Zachary Jean Paradis is an innovation strategist, professor and author obsessed with transforming lives through customer experience. He works at

SapientNitro, teaches at the Institute of Design and lives in Chicago. Zachary works with companies to become successful innovators by utilizing “experience thinking” as a strategic asset manifested in better offerings, flexible process and open culture. He works with start-ups and Fortune 1000 companies as diverse as Chrysler Auto Group to Target, Hyatt Hotels to John Deere, M&S to McLaren, and SAP to Yahoo! evolving service and product experiences across digital and physical channels. Zachary recently relocated to Chicago from SapientNitro’s London office.

Kate RichlingSoDA Showcases, VP of Marketing, Phenomblue

As Phenomblue’s Vice President of Marketing, Kate Richling oversees the agency’s marketing and social media outreach, as well as its inbound marketing efforts. Previously, Richling worked in public relations, creating and executing strategies for institutes of higher education and Blue Cross and Blue Shield, as well as providing social media counsel to various non-profit organizations. While at The Field Museum, Richling pitched and received media attention from national outlets including Good Morning America and the Chicago Tribune.

Cover DesignStruckwww.struck.com

Content/ProductionSoDAwww.sodaspeaks.com

Organizational SponsorAdobewww.adobe.com

The SoDA Report Production TeamNatalie Smith, Head of Production Samantha Lynch, Production Designer

Partners

The opinions and viewpoints expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent or reflect the opinions or viewpoints of SoDA

Industry Insider

Section PrefaceThe Digital Agency Paradox: Teaching Clients to Do What We Do

A Lesson from a “Learn Everything Yourself” ChampionFrom 6 Months to Real-Time: Innovating Creative Workflow for

Smarter DevelopmentBrands: How to Get Agile with Your Agency

The Ever-Shrinking Purchase Window

The SoDA Report 2013

TheSoDAReport Section 1 : Introduction

Traditionally, the digital agency has ruled the technology and digital production service arena, but as this expertise becomes more commoditized, the value provided by the digital agency has had to shift towards business strategy and creative innovation. Our fall issue takes a more nuts and bolts look at what’s happening inside agencies from an operational perspective during this shift.

Some clients are now competing with their digital agencies by developing parallel expertise centers as their internal web development teams grow stronger. With the overarching strategy driven by clients, and their increasing ability to execute, how do agencies define their own “secret sauce” in the relationship? David Maren from EffectiveUI explains how his agency is navigating this trend.

For developers, we explore the proliferation of off-the-shelf tools. Microsoft recently launched a platform that makes core Windows Phone App development as user friendly as building a Lego set. Are templated tools a risk or an opportunity for agency developer teams? Enlighten’s Kim Maida makes the case for efficiency over 100% proprietary code.

We then connect with Ray Velez, CTO of Razorfish, and Scott Morris, Senior Marketing Director for Adobe Creative Cloud and Creative Suite, to discuss the evolving nature of production within the studio, and the technologies that are making it easier to focus less on operations management and more on delivery of creative excellence. Lastly, we hear from Jack Skeels, CEO and Co-founder of AgencyAgile, who provides good news surrounding

Sean MacPhedranIndustry Insider Section EditorGroup Planning Director, Fuel

the shift in the way agencies are structuring their teams - allowing for more innovation, shorter timelines, and better prices.

Enjoy this edition of SoDA’s Industry Insider.

Section 1 : Industry InsiderTheSoDAReport

David Maren, VP, Brand Strategy & Innovation, EffectiveUI

The Digital Agency Paradox: Teaching Clients to Do What We Do

There was a time companies only engaged us – the digital agencies of the world – to create something. Seeing the value in what we deliver, clients now want more from us. They want strategic guidance, employee training and mentoring. Clients want us to educate them — but why? Are clients looking to take the work in-house? If so, what is our implied responsibility to our clients and our shareholders? Do we teach our clients to do what we do?

An Oxford-educated brand strategist and innovation professional, David is currently focused on the creation of new digital products and services at EffectiveUI, where he also oversees the Outreach team and manages the Boeing account.

The Conundrum We fear that if we teach our clients how to do what we do, they won’t need us anymore. Conversely, if we don’t cater to our clients’ needs, are we a good service partner? That question is amplified for any digital agency claiming to care about user or customer experience. Wouldn’t it be hypocritical not to give our clients the service and experience they seek?

The Reality For clients looking to take work in-house, the rationale is typically stated as “This will save us money and make us smarter.” In reality, clients seeking to bring agency work in-house discover how difficult it is to do so successfully – even when shown the way – and come to appreciate our value even more.

Structural and Cultural Roadblocks Large companies often have strong technical teams, and some also have strong design teams. But, unlike many agencies and production companies, these companies often have a wall between their design team and technical team creating separate groups, residing in separate buildings and operating with separate budgets.

Agencies have learned that it’s exceedingly difficult to create exceptional digital experiences and campaigns when a barrier exists between design and development. There’s a great deal of overlap between the two disciplines, with a significant amount of design occurring within development. The high level of design/development collaboration required is one of the primary reasons why bringing our services in-house — and getting great results — is so much harder than it seems.

Creating digital experiences is not the core competency of most large enterprises. The organizational culture and processes in place at many of these companies

“ It’s exceedingly difficult to create exceptional digital experiences and campaigns when a barrier exists between design and development.”

may be at odds with the beliefs that underlie human-centered design. Often, the customer comes into the creation of a digital experience at the end, rather than the beginning of the process and simply plays a validation role.

Essentially, clients seeking to bring great digital experiences to life without agency help, must break down existing silos and reengineer their organizational structure, culture and processes.

Finding and Keeping Talent When thinking about the best creative directors, designers, strategists and developers, the common trait is that they all have a strong desire to take on new challenges. This may prove more challenging in a client environment than at an agency. To replicate agency success in-house, recruiting and retaining great talent is yet another challenge facing clients who want to build a team of agency-types in-house.

The Way Forward At EffectiveUI, our commitment to education gained momentum in 2010 when O’Reilly Media commissioned us to author a book (Effective UI) about what it takes to bring great digital experiences to life. Today we’re going all-in when it comes to teaching our clients how to do what we do. We are now engaged as creators as well as educators, strategists and embedded experts. Drawing from our experience, I can provide some suggestions for agency peers.

Educational Services Consider offering a series of workshops to help nascent in-house UX/CX teams become more fully integrated within their larger organization. Focus different sessions around the classic pain points these teams face, for example:

• Low amount of organizational knowledge and buy-in of UX

“ Clients seeking to bring great digital experiences to life without agency help typically find that such efforts often require breaking down existing silos and reengineering organizational structure, culture and processes beforehand.”

• Many team members inexperienced with selling the value of UX

• Weaving UX methods and values into organizational structure, culture and processes.

Strategic Services In addition to presenting insightful and actionable reports, consider using these engagements to teach clients how to identify opportunities and solve problems through human-centered design. With so many companies today simply creating mobile versions of their desktop applications, there’s a great opportunity to show them an alternate, outside-in approach to going mobile that begins with uncovering the user needs.

Embedded Services Listen for opportunities to embed talent that rises above ‘staff augmentation’, as in-house client teams are often looking for additional guidance and mentorship from their agency partner. Somewhere at this very moment, there’s an IT executive on the client-side looking for an outside expert to ensure that their in-house interaction designer, who lacks mobile experience, is following best practices in designing a sales enablement app.

You may be wondering, does pursuing a commitment to educating clients mean that digital agencies will do a lot more teaching and a lot less creating in the future? It is doubtful. What it really means is that agencies will do a lot more teaching and a lot more creating. After all, when we educate clients on the intricacies of what we do, they end up understanding the value of our services even more.

“ When we educate clients on the intricacies of what we do, they end up understanding the value of our services even more.”

Section 1 : Industry InsiderTheSoDAReport

Kim Maida, Software Engineer, Enlighten

A lesson from a “Learn Everything Yourself” champion

When I was a fledgling web creative, I wanted to learn everything. I thought I should learn everything in its infinite detail because I believed it would make me smarter and more valuable to employers. After years of learning as much and as fast as I could, with too many technologies simultaneously, I discovered one simple lesson: you can be skilled and desirable without needing to know everything.

Kim is a designer and front-end engineer with a passion for beautiful, clean things. She also dabbles with back-end development. She loves doing adaptive work that is friendly to the full spectrum of devices.

The “Learn Everything Yourself!” phase is necessary but should have an expiration date. Countless computer science students, programming interns and junior engineers are determined to learn and do everything from scratch “for the experience.” This is a solid approach for someone with an abundance of time and energy. It’s a necessary stage in the progression to full-fledged engineer. This was the phase during which many people (myself included) churned out oodles of inefficient code to do things that more experienced people had already figured out, tested, and developed into readily available tools, plugins, libraries and frameworks. The “Learn Everything Yourself!” phase is important, but it’s equally important to know when to begin utilizing the available resources. Otherwise, it’s easy to find yourself biting off more than you can chew in a competitive, fast-paced work environment.

You don’t need to know everything, however you need to know what you need to know. It isn’t realistic for an engineer to master all of the countless web technologies down to their finest minutia. And you don’t need to. What you need is a solid knowledge base and a willingness to learn whatever you need in order to get the job done efficiently and professionally. Sometimes this doesn’t mean having every Git shell command or JavaScript cross-browser fix memorized. Instead, it might mean that you need a solid grasp of source control workflow and a good understanding of JavaScript libraries.

Smart monkeys use tools. Once you know your craft, be willing to explore the tools that make that craft easier and more efficient. If you had a perfectly functioning dishwasher, chances are you

“ Once you know your craft, be willing to explore the tools that make that craft easier and more efficient.”

would not volunteer to do the dishes by hand simply to preserve the integrity of your scrubbing technique.

An oversimplified analogy, perhaps, but how about this one: for a long time, I resisted CSS preprocessors like SASS. I felt that they would lead me to write CSS as a bastardized presentation/programming hybrid, which just felt wrong. I felt like SASS (and similarly, CoffeeScript) was cheating. I was also resistant to installing more stuff (i.e. Ruby in this case) on all my computers or servers just to get a preprocessor to compile.

Then I discovered CodeKit. It is a building tool that is capable of compiling a number of different languages, adding debug information, linting, concatenating, compressing, and returning resulting files that are as production-ready as you need them to be. There is no need to install additional software or languages or use the command line. Using SASS with CodeKit made my work more modular, efficient and manageable.

When the “Learn Everything Yourself!” mode is dialed down and you’re ready to streamline your craft, remember that most of the time, someone out there has already solved your problem. You can benefit greatly from their experience. In fact, it’s critical to understand when to use the tools, frameworks, libraries and other resources the community has created to make all developers’ lives easier.

Agencies can and should take advantage of the available tools to improve workflows and efficiency. Care should also be taken to allow engineers to work in the capacity they feel best maximizes their own productivity. The imposition of too many tools and rules can frustrate and hinder people. For example, if your company uses Git for source control, encourage individual team members to choose their own method, be it the command line or their favorite GUI. Engineering leads should consult

“ It is critical to understand when to use tools, frameworks, libraries and other resources the community has created to make all developers’ lives easier.”

with their teams and establish workflows and tools that best suit the project at hand. It is also beneficial to share experiences within the department, highlighting successes and identifying pain points. When people are passionate about their methods, curiosity and interest level is kept high.

Keep in mind that tools with a steep learning curve might not be the best way to introduce teams to their use. I recommend starting with tools like CodeKit, SCSS (the more CSS-like version of SASS), or TexturePacker (for CSS sprite management) to get teams up and running quickly. The more experience people gain and share with these types of resources, the more knowledge they will acquire and in the end, the management of projects will become much more streamlined.

Section 1 : Industry InsiderTheSoDAReport

From 6 Months to Real-Time: Innovating Creative Workflow for Smarter DevelopmentDigital creative tools — from Photoshop to Maya — have fundamentally changed the way advertising is made. The new area of opportunity lies in improving workflow — a circuitous process that doesn’t always move in a predictable direction. We connected with Ray Velez, CTO, Razorfish and Scott Morris, Senior Marketing Director, Creative Cloud and Creative Suite to get their perspective on how technology is going to impact creative workflow over the next year.

MACPHEDRAN: Ray, how do you approach the creative workflow process with your clients?

VELEZ: Increasingly, our agency is leading creative efforts for clients, with our technology teams driving the physical software implementation. The first step is aligning with the skills and approval processes of our clients. By approval, it’s about driving innovative collaborative sessions and working towards agreement of creative directions. Oftentimes when using the term workflow, we immediately think about visual identity as the first step. However, gathering inputs and insights

As Senior Marketing Director for Creative Cloud, Scott is responsible for driving the go-to-market strategy for Adobe’s flagship applications as well as Adobe Creative Cloud. Scott joined Adobe in 2005 from its Macromedia acquisition, where he ran integrated marketing for vertical segments. Scott has been in marketing for over twenty years on both the consumer and business-to-business side.

Interview with Scott Morris, Senior Marketing Director at Adobe for Creative Cloud and Creative Suite, and Ray Velez, Global Chief Technology Officer, Razorfish

from the planning and strategy teams prior to creative concepting should be the true starting point.

MACPHEDRAN: How do you see creative workflow evolving between client and agency over the next year?

MORRIS: In the past, digital agencies were brought into client projects by more traditional agencies to work specifically on the digital pieces of the campaign. Today, digital agencies are asked by their clients to take the lead on everything in the campaign. We expect this trend to continue, as clients ask not just for the creation of digital media, but for the analysis and optimization related to the performance of that media. We also expect that clients will also be sharing more of their creative assets with agencies and looking to have agencies leverage those assets across as many devices and screen sizes as possible.

VELEZ: We would like to see more traction towards the creation of “real-time” responses. One example of our work that required real-time creative was a SmartUSA initiative where a tweet in the morning resulted in a full-scale response in the afternoon. Similarly, in a recent campaign for Axe Anarchy, creative was introduced by the Axe community and ended up in a graphic novel. This means we need to develop a more responsive and agile approach to client approvals than just scheduled creative reviews. Easy-to-use tools that can facilitate conversations outside of scheduled meetings, are critical.

Just as critical is the ability to enable workflow that drives conversations around dynamic data-driven creative. The ability to dynamically assemble content and experiences for both client approval and alignment, along with legal approval, thankfully requires us to move away from static files.

MACPHEDRAN: Adobe in particular is making a lot

As the global chief technology officer for Razorfish, Ray manages the agency’s capabilities in Web technology strategy, architecture and development, overseeing all of the company’s technologists. Most recently, Ray was the start-up CTO in Razorfish’s role as incubation partner for Bundle, a personal finance start-up. He previously worked at Cambridge Technology Partners and Scient, and has been in the industry for close to 20 years.

Interview conducted by Sean MacPhedran, Industry Insider Section Editor and Group Planning Director at Fuel.

of strides in this area, what new tools can we expect to see?

MORRIS: The file sharing capabilities in Creative Cloud will be key in helping ease these workflow challenges between agencies and clients. Today, agencies can share files with clients through Creative Cloud without requiring the clients to have programs such as Photoshop or InDesign installed. In fact, the client doesn’t even need to be a Creative Cloud member. The ability to “see” into the file is something only Adobe Creative Cloud is offering and it is a key differentiator from other file sharing services. We just introduced the ability to upload files directly from the program they are created in, and set restrictions on the files to control who can access them. These files are viewable by your clients within a browser, regardless of whether the browser is on a computer, tablet or even a smartphone. Clients can turn layers of a file on and off to review different design options, comment on the files, and view internal data such as the fonts and colors used – all without having the desktop apps installed on their system. And if they do have the apps, they can download files for editing in the desktop app. In the future, Creative Cloud will offer a visual history of files to allow a client to quickly review how a design has changed, with the option to go back to an earlier version. At Adobe, we are constantly looking at ways to help creatives and clients work together more easily by innovating right in the creative workflow itself.

MACPHEDRAN: We still have a ways to go before we can lean on a single source for all tools. An agency might operate iteratively with a client using Basecamp, and another purely through a weekly status in a more formal presentation. What do you see as the major challenges remaining in workflow optimization?

VELEZ: I think the remaining challenges are specific to dynamic data-driven experiences and creative. Tools

“ We need to develop a more responsive and agile approach to client approvals than just scheduled creative reviews.” — Ray Velez

like Basecamp or the Atlassian Suite are great at sharing files and text documentation, but not at expressing dynamic data-driven components. For example, we need for tools that drive product recommendations to assemble dynamic text and visual identity permutations across 29,000 segments. That’s a real-world example from work we’ve done for Staples and it’s still a workflow challenge.

Section 1 : Industry InsiderTheSoDAReport

Jack Skeels, CEO, Co-Founder, AgencyAgile

Brands: How to Get Agile with Your Agency

Brands and marketers want deeper partnerships with their agencies…but realizing that goal can be elusive. The good news is that agencies are changing – many are shifting to a team-centric “Agile” model which speeds innovation cycles and can provide better results, faster, at a more competitive price. As a brand manager or marketer, you’ll want to shift your model slightly as well in order to better take advantage of these changes.

Jack leads AgencyAgile, the LA-based consultancy that helps agencies achieve better margins, faster delivery and happier clients and teams, using its proprietary Agile values-based methods, tools and training. He is a two-time Inc. 500 entrepreneur who previously led SapientNitro’s LA office, worked as a senior management systems analyst at RAND corporation, and ran his first web development project in 1996.

Understanding the “Two Guys and a Bong” Agency Model One of the largest dilemmas that agencies face is growth. While a ten-person agency can operate with its management functions as part-time roles, once an agency grows to twenty or so people, full-time management roles (such as account, project management and discipline leadership) become the norm. At that point the agency’s effectiveness begins to decline. Almost every agency leader we speak with agrees that growing bigger has meant getting slower, less nimble and losing a bit of their “edge.” This is a huge concern for established agencies because starting up a new agency has never been easier than it is today. Top talent often leaves one day and competes the next day against their former agency. Being small, these start-ups compete on cost, for sure, but they also boast the ability to partner well and work closely with their marketer clients on a day-to-day basis. One agency executive recently lamented, “These days it seems that some of our toughest competition is from ‘two guys and a bong!’” The established agencies are responding to this by re-organizing into flatter, self-empowered teams of 8-20 cross-discipline roles – essentially creating multiple “Two Guys” agencies within the company. This approach is often labeled “Agile” both because of the methods involved, but also because these teams are more responsive to marketer’s needs, delivering results better, faster and leaving everyone much happier. Marketers get the best of both worlds: “Two Guys” style attention, focus and interaction, combined with the established agency’s depth, breadth and quality of talent, and its ability to scale and integrate larger, broader work. If you find yourself with the opportunity to work with this type of agency team, here are some changes you’ll need to get used to…and even enjoy.

You’ll Brief the Agency Team, not Agency Management The “Team” will consist of the people who actually build what you receive: creatives, strategists, analysts, developers, etc. When you tell your account person what you need, like the “telephone game,” information quality drops as it is passed along. The same is true for writing briefs, SOWs or change orders – nothing works better than people talking directly with each other. An Agile agency team will want to work directly with you – no middlemen. And chances are you’ll find it fun and empowering. We had one marketer tell us, “They [the agency] feel like my right hand now.”

You’ll Meet Early and Often, and Need to Tolerate Incompleteness Collaboration means working together frequently, well before the deadline. You would do that with the “Two Guys” in order to make sure that they “got it,” right? Frequent (informal) reviews will boost quality and the Agile team’s engagement…and yours too. Make sure they know that you’re okay with looking at incomplete ideas and work. They’ll still try to crush it, but they’ll be grateful that you’re a friend, not foe, and you’ll be grateful that they’ve gotten some sleep and your comments aren’t life or death to them.

You’ll Get Better at What You Do, Too Not only will your agency get better at working with you, but you’ll also get better at working with agencies – that’s a vital career skill for any marketer. One of the tragedies of large brand-agency relationships is the distance between the people who are really doing the work (the agency team) and the people in the brand marketing organization. In the Agile “Two Guys” model, as a marketer, you’ll learn new things every time you meet with your agency team – they are a hotbed of the latest, trending ideas and technologies. Keeping up

“ One of the tragedies of large brand-agency relationships is the distance between the people who are really doing the work (the agency team) and the people in the brand marketing organization.”

to date with them will not only put you ahead of your peers, but will give you the knowledge and real-world experiences of how to actually do this stuff.

Section 1 : Industry InsiderTheSoDAReport

The Ever-Shrinking Purchase Window Digital Empowerment Leads to Shorter Purchase Cycles Across Categories

The research team at AOL, a SoDA partner, recently conducted a study on purchase window trends across a wide array of product categories. We are pleased to unveil key highlights from the study in this edition of The SoDA Report as AOL’s exclusive media partner for the distribution of the findings.

INSIGHTS

• Due in large part to the vast amount of information available on demand, shoppers are increasingly comfortable making major product purchase decisions in significantly shorter periods of time.

• Most shoppers are comfortable deciding on products across a wide variety of categories — including technology, appliances, financial services and home décor — in either a single day or two weeks.

• Smartphone users feel particularly empowered about making product purchase decisions across all categories of shopping – not just on those occasions where they use their phones for shopping.

Research Insight

Purchase Windows

Question: How comfortable do you feel making purchase decisions for the following product and service categories within the specified periods of time?

SHOPPING Shoppers are comfortable making quick purchase decisions.

When asked how they felt about their product purchase decisions, an overwhelming majority of shoppers were somewhat or very comfortable making a very quick decision.

ENGAGEMENT

Smartphone users feel especially empowered in their purchase decisions

Shoppers with smartphones have internalized the benefits their devices provide. Even when not explicitly using their phones for shopping, they still feel more empowered than non-smartphone users.

“Describes me somewhat or completely” 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Modern Marketers

Section PrefaceThe Six Signs of Analog Craving

Integrating Multiple Agencies into One Brand TeamJob Description: VP of Marketing at ‘tlbt’ (thelatestbestthing)

Cultivating a Brand, One Online Community at a Time

The SoDA Report 2013

TheSoDAReport Section 2 : Modern Marketers

Some days I think psychopathy must be the route to business success. Those days typically involve meetings in which everyone else in the room grew up watching some 1980s power-business movie on repeat at a time when I was listening to rap music and watching kung fu flicks.

You know the movie genre, where people are all business-like, very-detached, domineering, all-knowing, jargon-spouting, expensive-car driving and shoulder-pad wearing. Today, you can find these characters in business-centric reality television shows.

If, like me, you don’t understand why some people in business act like psychopaths — or possibly are psychopaths and are still successful — then the following articles are for you. Jessica Elefante points out little cultural corrections happening right now because of digital clutter and analog nostalgia. Stacie Hoffmeister from LVMH discusses how to get your agencies to work better together while Joshua Dean from Chobani writes a job description for you — literally, you — or the person who’ll replace you. The last piece comes from Emily Schildt, also from Chobani, a company who has utilized the consumer to make a name for themselves - without the use of traditional advertising.

Humanity in business is on the rise. The concept of purpose continues to imprint itself on the business world. Pesky numbers people also known as economists have shown that businesses with a profit-only view of success underperform businesses driven by a specific point of view on how to serve humanity (not to be confused with Corporate Social Responsibility). Spoiler alert: these companies attract

Mark PollardModern Marketer Section EditorVP Brand Strategy, Big Spaceship

better talent intent on doing incredible things for humans.

Here’s to fewer psychopaths in business – and fewer psychopathic businesses.

P.S. If we ever happen to work together on a piece of business (even if we’re at separate companies), can we just, like, hang out a little, get to know each other, maybe share a laugh, and then do the best work of our lives without all the bullshit? Because that would be awesome.

TheSoDAReport Section 2 : Modern Marketers

Jessica Elefante

The Six Signs of Analog CravingThe natural form is making a comeback. What is analog in the way I am referencing it? Quite simply it’s the opposite of digital. Examples of things now deemed analog: books, music created sans computers, paper and pen, nature and whole foods. Bloggers are ahead of this trend. Many are concerned about the effects their tech usage has had on their families and they are making strides to correct it. Read their posts and words such as quit, blackout and detox are often referenced when sharing their challenges about their digital life. They are not alone. Do you suffer from these symptoms?

1. Camp Grounded: Operated by the Digital Detox, Camp Grounded recently gained coverage on BuzzFeed, NPR, CNN, Huff Post, NYT, PBS, Mashable and Inc. for the launch of their sleep-away camp where adults go to unplug. Campers had to trade in computers, cell phones, Instagrams, clocks, schedules and work-jargon for an off-the-grid weekend. http://campgrounded.org

Jessica is a brand strategy and communications consultant with a heavy inclination towards content, community and digital channels. She joined the brand GoGo SqueeZ as the Director of Digital Strategy & PR in 2011 and was a key player in helping it grow from $6 million in annual revenues to $100 million in just two years. For her work she was awarded Brand Innovators “40 Under 40.” With years steeped in brand building, influencer outreach, and public relations, she specializes in growing “emerging” brands in new categories.

2. Skeuomorphism: Defined as the pomp and gloss of analog objects that are technically no longer needed. Examples are Apple’s “old” calendars with leather binding, yellow notepads and bookshelves with felt and wood veneers. Apple is ditching these for a simpler, less stylized design aesthetic. Users will enjoy a more “analog” user experience, digitally. Looks like flat is the new black.

3. Blogger Blackouts: Time spent offline to focus on children, families and friends. Often referred to as hand-free as well. Meaning no phone in hand.

4. Email Bankruptcy: Deleting every email in an inbox or closing your account altogether. Some opt for a second chance with an away message stating “you can now find me here” while others throw their arms up and succumb to the fact that Facebook messaging and text is better than 6,813 emails. A number of CEOs and high-level executives have been quoted as bankrupting their email to better spend their time.

5. Slow Living Summit: For the 2nd year in a row, the Summit took over Brattleboro, Vermont. Slow is the opposite of “fast” — fast food, fast money, fast living — and all of the negative consequences “fast” has had for the environment and for the health of people and societies. Slow Living is more time for family, community and self.

6. NYC Restaurant, Edie & The Wolf: Observed in the bathroom of the divinely decorated eatery were handwritten pieces of ripped cardboard reminding people to wash their hands. I noticed it because it was out of place. And it worked. I washed my hands. So what does this mean for you and digital marketing?

“ We are no longer beating our competitors. We are racing to beat ourselves. Truth be told: we are the media clutter that we so often complain about.”

As marketers we have been taught that we need to “break-through the clutter,” “push the envelope” and “disrupt.” Each advertisement, post, application, email, website, promotion, and campaign we create is sexier, faster and glossier than the last. We are no longer beating our competitors, but racing to beat ourselves. Truth be told: WE ARE THE MEDIA CLUTTER that we so often complain about. Brands that realize this will have their finger on the pulse of their consumers. So what’s a digital marketer to do?

1. Think twice before sending an email. Is it necessary? If so, try sending an email that is not html coded. Think about it. Just a blank email with text from a brand. That would create a double take, don’t you think?

2. Create tangible things that people can touch and feel. Instead of a customer service email full of niceties or apologies, how about a hand-drawn “I’m sorry?” Add stickers. Drive it back to your other properties with a fun hashtag and see if you turned your jaded fan into a superfan.

3. Support bloggers’ desires to simplify and streamline. Don’t waste their time with blanket PR pitches and weekly mailers. Get to know them before reaching out to them. Be authentic. Consider if you could offer a way to partner on content around unplugging? Or better yet, send them to a conference about unplugging, on your brand’s behalf.

4. Do a double take before creating your “much needed app” to check the mobile-friendly box on your marketing strategy. I’ve almost been guilty twice. Almost. Ask yourself and your team the following types of questions. What problem are you solving? What value are you providing to your consumer. And more importantly, how will you market it and with what percentage of your budget will you support it? After you answer these questions, you may end up creating one less app for the world, or the app we could not live without.

5. Open your arms up wide and wrap a big bear hug around nostalgia. With things moving too fast and everything feeling the same and unoriginal (hello every single new movie), people like to “remember when” and “look back” to the old days. Well, the old days weren’t that long ago. It was 2007 when the first iPhone was available — six years ago. Six whole years. Can you even remember what life was like before it? Nostalgia is a gold mine for content. Just look at what BuzzFeed has done. You have an entire generation out there that loves to reminisce as well as another that is up and coming in the ranks and needs to be educated on some pre-iPhone stuff before it becomes extinct. Case in point is the tweet from the 2012 Grammys:

In a sea of digital trends don’t rush to be on the forefront of disruption. Taking one step back may be just what your brand, client or consumer needs to be in order to stand out in the crowd.

TheSoDAReport Section 2 : Modern Marketers

Stacie Hoffmeister, Global Marketing Director, Belvedere Vodka at LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton

Integrating Multiple Agencies into One Brand Team

Today, just as a lead surgeon relies on a team of doctors, nurses and professionals to perform a complex operation, a brand leader relies on a team of specialists to elaborate an idea into a tightly integrated plan. As a result, a new kind of workplace diversity is emerging: a brand team made up of external agencies. The key variable within the brand leader’s influence is the time it takes to get to higher levels of productivity, which is a difficult task in any team situation, let alone when the team consists of people from different companies.

Stacie Hoffmeister is branded for life as a luxury goods marketer. Her current passion is exploring ways to bring the power of digital and innovation to luxury brands. She currently works at Global Marketing Director at LVMH. Prior to that Stacie held various brand management positions at Coty Prestige and Unilever Cosmetics. She resides in New York with her husband and two children.

From one brand leader to another, here are some ideas on how to reduce the time it takes to get to high levels of team productivity — and still manage to have some fun at the same time:

1. Work with the best For each marketing function that requires external expertise, hire best-in-class agencies. Don’t be seduced or intimidated by sexy client rosters or hefty price tags. Consider the agency’s unofficial reputation (I regret the times I disregarded a colleague’s warnings about an agency). Seek evidence that the brand has captured their curiosity. (I look for subtle, physical signs such as a sparkle in the eye, active listening behavior and wry smiles).

2. Agree on the brand team For each agency that you hire, identify 1-2 people to sit on your cross-functional brand team. Choosing people who play nicely with others will make team life easier. Document your expectations of the brand team member(s) in your service agreement with the agency.

3. Get to know the culture of each agency This can be accomplished efficiently by working out of the agency’s office for a day. There are invaluable cultural cues about the organization waiting for you to observe. For example, leaving a little thank you gift for the agency at the end of the visit generates good will (a flourless chocolate cake is my favorite leave-behind).

4. Get to know the team on a personal level Go out for drinks and dinner as a team and one-on-one. A “rite of passage” activity builds bonds quickly. Karaoke works wonders. Aha moments often come in casual and social settings. We are more open, trusting, calm and creative when we are having fun.

5. Treat agencies as partners, not contractors After years of doing it wrong, a valued mentor taught me to adopt a consultative approach with agencies. I began to ask questions instead of assuming answers. I learned to seek the agency’s input on decisions that affect them. When you hire a best-in-class agency, treat them that way. Then they will move mountains for you.

Taking these five steps (ideally prior to the first team meeting) sets up the team for a faster move towards high productivity. The dynamics of the meeting room bring new challenges. The following five ideas are in-meeting behaviors that encourage high productivity:

1. Get everyone in the same room There should be an in-person team meeting once a month at a minimum. Put aside T+E for faraway team members to travel to these meetings. Experience on globally-dispersed teams (13 years) and in marriage (14 years) has convinced me that people need to see each other to trust each other. Lack of face time deters high productivity.

“ When you hire a best-in-class agency, treat them that way. Then they will move mountains for you.”

2. Model behaviors that build trust I’m sure this never happens to you, but I am often tempted to behave in ways that are contrary to what I expect from others. As a team leader, I’ve been guilty of arriving late to meetings at times. If I continuously check my handy (i.e., cell phone) and then snap at a team member for not getting to the point quickly enough, I’ve effectively told the team that not listening and poor behavior are acceptable practices. An effective team environment is a place where people feel respected. That means that the leader models punctuality, preparedness, attentiveness and compassion, among other things.

3. Prepare yourself for weird science We all know it. Brilliant people can be strange, so be open and tolerant to behaviors that you may find odd. A meeting may include a 3-minute meditation or a mid-day cocktail. (I’ve seen both). Stay in tune with the mood of the team and go with whatever it takes (within the law) to get creative juices flowing and people working together.

4. Don’t go to bed angry When you encounter behavior that erodes the team’s progress toward productivity, deal with it that day, with that person, one-on-one. Healthy team relationships allow for open discussion about difficult topics. If the work continues to suffer due to someone’s bad behavior, the offender should be swiftly replaced. The team will thank you for it.

“ Experience on globally-dispersed teams (13 years) and in marriage (14 years) has convinced me that people need to see each other to trust each other. Lack of face time deters high productivity.”

5. Allow natural leadership to supersede titles and hierarchy Adopt the attitude that teams are flat organizations. While there may be a team leader or facilitator, everyone must be treated as having an equal voice. Such an environment allows team members with the appropriate expertise to take a leadership role at the time the work demands their expertise. For example, the PR gal may have the most in-depth knowledge of the target consumer. Even though she is not the marketer, she should take leadership of a discussion or work stream that relies on consumer expertise.

Being a brand leader at the helm of a multi-agency team requires a large measure of humility. Get used to being the unsung hero. When the teamwork is going well, your integration efforts may go unnoticed because all the broader organization sees is the good work. However, when agencies do not work well together it is certainly noticed because its ouput suffers. It’s the brand leader’s responsibility to keep everyone moving towards one goal — the success of the brand. This comes about when the team tasked with delivering the tools of success is a high performing team.

TheSoDAReport Section 2 : Modern Marketers

Josh Dean, VP Brand Communications, Chobani, Inc.

Job Description: VP of Marketing at ‘tlbt’ (thelatestbestthing)Wanted: a constant questioner, one who has unparalleled insight, curiosity into the lives of people who love our brand, a champion of new and a disruptive thinker. He or she learns very quickly and is not afraid to fail. If that sounds exciting, read on. If that scares you, definitely read on. A strategist, psychologist, writer, artist and geek We are looking for someone to get their hands dirty in many disciplines. The many areas of marketing — PR, publishing and technology — are blurring, and that is a good thing because it is in this blurry space that we often find great ideas. You’ll need to recruit, lead and inspire a team of misfits, people who want to change the world with something new. An inner child At tlbt, we believe that every question is a good question. We like to challenge everything and leave nothing un-disrupted. After all, who would have thought that taking the most popular soft drink in the world and doing the opposite (bad taste and expensive) would have been so

Josh Dean is a recognized leader in brand development with 10 years’ experience in the UK and US. Josh has extensive experience working collaboratively with both traditional and digital agencies. He has helped bring an array of award-winning initiatives to fruition, most notably on Axe. He is a champion of enabling large organizations to embrace change and controversial ideas. Follow him @mrjoshuadean.

successful (kudos Red Bull)? You need to provide that challenge, ask the questions that nobody would ask, and produce unexpected solutions that surprise our customers and provide new sources of growth. A creator of a ‘story-room’ To survive in the millennial world, this brand needs to be a story-telling powerhouse. Sometimes, this may entail more classic filmmaking, but increasingly we will need you to create everyday short stories that spark an emotional connection with and among our fans (like The Beauty Inside — a campaign created by SoDA member company Pereira & O’Dell). It’s about the quality of our content and the quality of our followers. A great cook who is both a masher and a baker Do you have the ability to mash products, ideas and technologies together? Like the Nest or like Red Tomato did with the fridge magnet? How can you open up your brand’s own API and look for ways to mash this with other technologies? We’re also looking for someone who can lead agencies to concoct an integrated idea that can live on multiple screens and spaces and have consumers be part of the conversation. An inspiring human engine for the brand While we want you to relish logic and be great at analyzing data, you need the other side too...the human touch and the magic. You need the gut and the holistic POV to spot a great idea and help champion that idea within the business. Sometimes you won’t be right or popular, yet to be remarkable you can’t please everyone and we don’t want you to. You need to be the catalyst that always moves the brand forward and you need to do as well as say. You have that energy that people want and magic is made from.

“ While we want you to relish logic and be great at analyzing data, you need the other side too...the human touch and the magic. You need the gut and the holistic POV to spot a great idea and help champion that idea within the business.”

Tap sources of inspiration daily, if not hourly Run and when in doubt, look no further than your mobile. For this role you will need to be light on your feet, to “move fast and break things” as Facebook says. Be prepared to change course and make things quickly. Here’s to the future So, if what you have just read inspires you (and makes you feel a little bit scared) we want to see you. You have what it takes to be a marketer at tlbt. We want you to come to work every day and to love your job. You have the opportunity to turn this brand into a powerhouse that can make a real difference to people’s lives while also having a lot of fun. We look forward to meeting you.

TheSoDAReport Section 2 : Modern Marketers

What few companies are willing to admit is their greatest opportunity: the consumer defines your brand. With the saturation of social media today, the best planning and strategy in the world can’t account for the amplification of popular opinion. Smart companies leverage this with heavy emphasis on listening, adhering to consumer interests, behaviors and demands, and allowing insights to drive innovation, communication and marketing.

A fervent foodie, born with the gift of gab, Emily Schildt has found a home with Chobani as their Director of Digital Engagement. Since joining the family in 2010, Emily has established highly engaged digital communities for the Chobani brands, securing its #1 position in America’s hearts. A Maryland native, Emily currently resides in New York City. In her free time, she enjoys reading (more) blogs, trying her hand at photography and perusing antique shops.

Emily Schildt, Director of Digital Engagement, Chobani, Inc.

Cultivating a brand, one online community at a time

Without any traditional advertising, Chobani Greek Yogurt rose at rapid speed to the top of its category. From the beginning, we made a conscious effort to focus on social media, investing in cultivating a passionate following to authentically influence others, all the way to the checkout lane. With communication standards matching the excellence of our products, and ‘giving back’ a core corporate value, no tweet and no Facebook post went unanswered without a human response. That was the simple start of it all — top-notch customer service. As Chobani’s popularity grew, so did its fan base — resulting in the pleasant surprise of an echo chamber of delight among vocalists online.

The function of social media quickly advanced from customer service to proactive conversation. As we listened closely, key influencers weren’t just talking about our products — they were talking about our brand. Consumption was habitual, rooting Chobani in an everyday healthy lifestyle. It was associated with highs, lows, routine, milestones, emotions and hobbies. To propel conversation, our model evolved to organizing communities around these shared interests, and reaching like-minded audiences beyond the yogurt-enthused. Internally, we restructured to focus on these communities, developing everything from content to experiential activities. With a laser-focused team, we could capitalize on topic trends and platform-specific opportunities per community, and allow external agency talent to support larger campaigns, initiatives and fresh thinking. Many companies choose to put their community management efforts entirely in the hands of their external agency partners, often losing the speed, agility and intimacy necessary to sustain an ongoing drumbeat of conversation. While time-consuming and demanding

“ We know that modern consumers make decisions based on functional benefits and price, but also on participative and emotional benefits.”

of human resources, we believe our commitment is in keeping this practice in-house – which we owe much of our success to. Apart from a steady share of voice, our social media engagement has allowed fans to play an active role in molding our brand into what it is today. The feedback loop has informed everything from product development to marketing and communication. Tweets line the halls of our offices across the globe. We know that modern consumers make decisions based on functional benefits and price, but also on participative and emotional benefits. Millennials seek brands with which they share values and a sense of ownership. With an overwhelming array of options in every aisle, each purchase is a statement of identity. And as we move forward as a company, we’ll continue to ensure we’re dedicated to listening and evolving our brand to excite, delight and collaborate with our core consumer base.

People Power

Section PrefaceThe Power of People through an Ethnographic Lens

Simple and Valuable Recruiting AdviceFocusing the Rhizome

The SoDA Report 2013

TheSoDAReport Section 3 : Introduction

As technology becomes more sophisticated, understanding its uses is critical. The tensions between empowerment and intrusion, between the simplification and complexity of everyday life, between freedom and dependence, and between adoption and rejection are on the rise.

Look at the example of Google Glass. What better source of inspiration for a section called People Power than a device that gives users the ability to discover things from angles never seen before, to augment reality with useful information and to have access to a computer at any time without even thinking about it? And yet, look around you. Half the people you talk to consider Glass to be a technical marvel and a dream come true, while the other half believes it foreshadows the worst possible future for humankind.

This divisive example illustrates how difficult it is to draw conclusions about future trends when the reassuring rationalism of innovation does not produce a uniform, coherent reaction among people. Other scenarios involving the tension points mentioned above are even more nuanced. Where humans are concerned, situations are rarely black and white, but rather on a continuum with an almost infinite variety of greys. The ability to assume the emotional complexity of each human being, encapsulate that complexity to make it intelligible, and derive actionable models is a skill shared by the three contributors to this section. Tracy Johnson from Nurun explains how a rigorous ethnographic approach can help us understand why people act as they do. Matt Paddock from Grow Interactive suggests how to identify talent and make decisions fast enough to retain employees. And Julianne

Jean-Pascal MathieuPeople Power Section EditorChief Innovation Officer, Nurun

Beswick, from Phenomblue, smartly uses the metaphor of the rhizome to share her creative method adapted to the complexities of our time.

The last words of this introduction go to Antoine de Saint Exupery, “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

TheSoDAReport Section 3 : People Power

The Power of People through an Ethnographic Lens

People Power… people are powerful because they are complex. And because they are complex, their motivations and behaviors are not easily understood. Indeed in today’s world of rapidly changing and complex market environments, demonstrated ways of truly understanding people are in high demand.

Tracy Pilar Johnson, PhD is an anthropologist who has been conducting market-focused ethnographies for the past 10 years. Currently the Director of Ethnographic Research at Nurun, throughout her career she has worked with companies as varied as Google, Time Warner Cable, Target, The Associated Press, Sun Media, Kraft Foods, General Mills and Merck, Inc.

Tracy Pilar Johnson, PhD, Director Ethnographic Research, Nurun

In more and more situations, businesses are turning to ethnography for its ability to offer contextual insights into how people live. In particular, I believe that businesses look to ethnography to understand how people use stuff – all those products, services, designs and so on that the companies we work for produce – to make meaning in their lives. Arguably, the expectation is now set that businesses find some way of talking about how they use ethnography – or human-centered research, design research, etc. – to really understand their consumers.

Within this context, how do we differentiate among all the practices that have assumed the mantle of ethnography? Such diverse techniques include everything from in-store interviews, to on-site observations, living with a consumer for an extended period, and ethnographies conducted online. Given the variety of these practices, what can we really say is going to achieve ethnography’s true goal: to describe and illuminate people’s lives – their behaviors, beliefs, motivations and habits – within the context of their culture? While certain techniques may lend themselves to particular consumer or market segments, the objective remains the same: to take all of that complexity, be true to it and translate it into ways that we and our clients can come to a deeper understanding of people, their lives and their culture.

A critical way to understand whether the methods we have chosen and the context in which we are deploying them are on target to carry the mantle of “ethnography” is to think about whether it fits the “thick description” test. Take, for example, the situation of when someone winks at us. Without an apparent context, we don’t know what it means. It might mean the person is attracted to us, that they are trying to communicate secretly, that they understand what you mean, or really anything. As the context changes, the meaning of the wink changes.

ALL human behavior is like this – complex, contextually bound and culturally influenced. We therefore distinguish between a thin description, which describes only the wink itself, and a thick description, which explains the context of the wink within the norms and practices that form the backdrop of that particular culture or society. Accordingly, it is the task of an ethnographer to not simply rely on thin descriptions, but rather to provide “thick” descriptions that illuminate the complexity of people’s lives.

Here’s an example that ties into a technology and cultural phenomenon more closely related to the digital marketing world – “always-on” connectedness. When working with a large media conglomerate in the United States, several participants brought up the ways in which their smart devices made them feel more “connected.” However, contrary to mainstream coverage in the media, this connectivity was not without its problems. While spending the day with a woman in her twenties, she shared a story with us about how she would leave her cell phone on a shelf outside the shower so that she could respond to texts while bathing. After recounting this story, she stopped for a moment to reflect that, in fact, she probably needed “an intervention.” This thick description – behavior set within the context of an individual’s life – gave us greater insight into the ways in which people struggle with connectivity, or perhaps intrusion would be a better word, of technology into their daily lives.

“I believe that businesses turn to ethnography to understand how people use stuff – all those products, services, designs and so on that the companies we workfor produce – to make meaning in their lives.”

TheSoDAReport Section 3 : People Power

Simple and Valuable Recruiting Advice

Retaining good people is challenging, but finding them is one of the hardest tasks any leader will face. Being a good judge of talent is fine, but the hiring process can feel like a pageant where the contestants don’t show up or won’t cooperate. Even after attracting good people, there’s still the challenge of closing the deal. Every search is slightly different, and no system is perfect, but here are some immutable truths that can help improve your odds of success.

Matt Paddock began his career in human resources and recruiting over 15 years ago, and has worked for both large and small technology firms in talent development, succession planning and training. He currently serves as director of engagement for Grow, a digital agency based in Norfolk, VA.

Matt Paddock, Director of Engagement, Grow Interactive

First, Know Thyself

None of us perform in a vacuum, so the best candidate for one team may be a poor fit elsewhere. Too little context for your hire increases the potential for a bad match. Well-written job descriptions help, and a great question to ask during the first interview is, “What did you see in the posting that excited you, and that you felt matched up with your background and experience?”

Speed, Spend and Skill

Every hire comes down to these three elements, and a good general rule is that you can only prioritize two per search.

• Speed: When you must hire quickly, know you’ll either pay more or compromise on skill. Hiring freelancers is an example of prioritizing speed and skill, occasionally to the detriment of your profit margin.

• Spend: Hiring on a budget generally means searching longer, unless you’re targeting inexperienced talent. Interns are thrifty entry-level hires, but even here you can’t pay under market and expect top skills.

• Skill: When you can’t compromise on skill, expect to spend either time or money. Finding superior talent on a shoestring budget under a tight deadline isn’t a good strategy, as many frustrated hiring managers learn.

How It Starts Is How It Stays

Early impressions you make on a candidate directly affect your hiring outcomes. If you think of the interviewer as a gatekeeper, remember that door swings both ways. Your firm is judged by your actions, down to the first email you send, whether you call on time for a scheduled interview, and how you describe the position. Predictably, many bad hires originate with bad

interviews. Skipping steps, asking weak questions and failing to check references all increase the odds you’ll hire the wrong person or miss hiring the right person.

Your Recruiting Network = Your Recruiting Net Worth

Most opportunity is at the top of the recruiting funnel, where people aren’t looking for a new job and may be unaware of your firm. Building and leveraging a strong network helps avoid sloppy, stressful and reactive recruiting. Complaints about job boards or recruiting agencies usually come from people who aren’t cultivating a network of potential candidates and referral sources.

Delay Only Increases Risk, Never Reward

Timely action is critical during a search, especially toward the end. Classic examples of bad behavior during the interview process include delays in responding to candidates, or failure — on the part of candidates — to respond back to potential employers in a timely fashion. A 24-hour wait for you or your candidate feels like 36 hours on the other side of the desk, especially when an update is due. You wouldn’t leave a client waiting on the line about an important deal, so treat your prospective new talent the same level of respect.

Most of this advice boils down to combining thorough planning and process with good objective decision-making. These approaches are easy, and can make a huge positive impact on your firm’s talent strategy. The only hard part is the discipline required to consistently add these five elements to your hiring process.

“Predictably, many bad hires originate with bad interviews.”

TheSoDAReport Section 3 : People Power

Focusing the Rhizome

Think of a tree: its internal root system sprouts from the ground and delivers nutrients and water to its branches and leaves. For years, this model shaped the way huge brands would traditionally influence consumer behavior. Here’s some tasty and affordable Colgate — and it only costs a dollar! We were hypnotized.

Julianne Beswick is a Design Director with a background in interaction, user experience and new media. She works with Phenomblue’s internal groups to define and implement innovative and effective UX solutions that communicate both high-level design strategies and detailed user interactions. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design.

Julianne Beswick, Design Director, UX & IxD, Phenomblue

Now, imagine a piece of ginger: its multiplicity of arms growing every which way. This complicated biological structure, categorized as a rhizome, is much closer to the communication systems we work with now. Each twisted, snarled stem is effectively an independent bio-communication channel.

Rhizomes hold an eerily close resemblance to media today. However, it was over 30 years ago that Deleuze and Guttari first began discussing this principle in their 1980 book, A Thousand Plateaus. In it, they compare modern modes of expression with the rhizomatic structure. It’s amazing how pertinent this foresight grew over time. Every single aspect of our world has grown in complexity. Today we find ourselves designing for a culture so extremely rhizomatic that it has created a true need for designer’s focus and skill.

Designing with the Rhizome’s Characteristics in Mind

We are continually reminded that capturing consumer attention is problematic. The challenge lies in the fact that our coping mechanism for dealing with this problem remains unclear. In eMarketer’s “Time Spent With Media: Consumer Behavior in the Age of Multitasking,” the challenge is measured in terms of how we consume and interact with content and platforms. For instance, 69% of consumers engage with personal email while watching TV, 57% visit social networks, 32% IM or chat with friends. This is a problem when it comes to design.

How do you make focused decisions or compelling work in this rhizomatic environment? Brands are looking to agencies for guidance. Therefore, as agencies, it is imperative that we develop a clearly defined POV based on insights into how consumers are likely to interact with the brand and content in this multitasking milieu. While there may be an endless array of possibilities, it is

impossible to execute on all of them well, so you need to choose wisely. Develop a Process

Sticking to a set of loose guidelines yields a sense of control. Here are five ways for the project team to simplify and focus:

1. Determine whether to take a multi-pronged approach or to adopt the craft method. It’s a contradiction in terms to promise a product that is highly-crafted as well as all-encompassing. You honestly can’t do both (at least not well), so pick — A or B. There’s nothing wrong with choosing a limited direction. In fact, it’s a relief to unload that kind of pressure because as the scope of a project broadens and as its feature set grows, the more research, design, time and expertise are then required to put out a quality product. And from the consumer’s perspective, the broader the scope of utility, the less one can focus on any one tool set. Smaller, more focused concepts are more nimble, able to receive crafted attention and can be understood more readily by consumers.

2. Anticipation around the start of a project can materialize as excitement or anxiety. This is the hot mess that produces great work. Embrace uncertainty, do your research and sleep on it. Your subconscious mind will work on a solution and sort things out even when you’re unaware that it’s happening.

3. Establish a point of view. Define it and stand by it because weakness in voice inevitably leads to a weak product. It isn’t hard to do something halfway. In the same way that users consume media with split attention, products are often designed with split attention. This work finds its way into the marketplace, but lacks a strong, focused brand or

“In the same way that users consume media with split attention, products are often designed with split attention. Such products lack a strong, focused brand utility and prove to be another unremarkable tangent within the rhizome. ”

utility, proving itself to be another unremarkable tangent within the rhizome. Devoting sufficient attention and time to do good work has become a challenge (and a luxury), but it’s worthwhile nonetheless.

4. If you can define a few questions that need answering, use them to establish the borders of your new project. Find your competitors within those walls and determine what’s going to distinguish you from this group.

5. Temper. It feels really good to establish direction, but that should never be the end of ideation. Once your brain has switched into making mode, it’s tempting to let it off the hook. Instead, take continual steps back and be sure you’re happy with the path you’ve chosen.

These words of advice may come across as common, obvious or insignificant, but they help untangle the mess.

In the Field

When designing for user experience (admittedly a vague expression), we should be crafting experiences around the complete life cycle of a product (an equally vague expression). So how do we reduce the vagueness to produce truly great work? Projects invariably take unpredictable paths. However, through persistent questioning and a willingness to put a stake in the ground and focus at major milestones, you can begin to craft an informed approach that yields quality products.

Tech Talk

Section PrefaceThe Personalization of Everything

The Rise of the Interest-Based NetworkThe Internet of Things: Billions of Marketing Opportunities

Interview with Mike Kuniavsky, Principal PARC Innovation ServicesMarketers and Big Data

The SoDA Report 2013

TheSoDAReport Section 4 : Tech Talk

The intent of Tech Talk is to “future gaze on the technology developments and trends impacting the industry.” Given the state of marketing and the larger context of our world, just about everything we do is either being directly delivered or enabled by technology. This fact is more remarkable given the great majority of marketers likely never got into the business out of a love of technology. Ironically, marketers today can’t be successful without it.

That said, technology should not feel foreign. While critics since the industrial revolution have introduced a “human versus technology” dynamic, it would seem to be a false opposition. In the end, humans — unlike the 99% of other species on our planet — naturally extend their capabilities through various technologies. We crafted that first spear to gain reach, the wheel to enhance mobility and eyeglasses to help us see clearly. That humans conceive and build technology is absolutely natural.

Yet, all too often technology has resulted in a binary experience, hard and unforgiving. Perhaps the “versus” critics could not have imagined the future in which we now live. They could not imagine how organic and fluid it feels to take an iPhone – not really a “phone” but a More Personal Computer (MPC) – out of one’s pocket to book an appointment and put it back again. Connected thinking and the blending of science with the humanities can result in truly natural and useful communications, products and services. The hard edges of engineering can and should be softened by an understanding of people.

Naturally, the articles in Tech Talk all introduce ways in which technology enables more effective

Zachary ParadisTech Talk Section Editor Director of Innovation Strategy, SapientNitro

and more human, interactions between people and brands. Stephen Foxworthy, Strategy Director at Reactive, opens the section with an exposition on The Personalization of Everything — painting a world on the cusp of extending what we’ve come to expect online to the physical as well. Samantha Afetian, Social Strategist with Digitaria, explores the Rise of the Interest-Based Network, flipping the long assumed notion that the value of a network is primarily based on its number of nodes. Tarah Feinberg, CMO & NY Managing Director of KITE, provides a glimpse at the Internet of Things and the opportunities it provides. An interview with Mike Kuniavsky, author of Smart Things and Principal at PARC Innovation Services Group, predicts three technologies on the horizon which will radically change people’s lives. And the section ends with one of my colleagues at SapientNitro, Technical Architect Santhosh Subramani, helping tame the abstract concept of “Big Data” into an understandable and actionable focus area for brands.

Beginning-to-end, each article highlights how technology can enable both people and the brands serving them. The purpose of technology is to extend what it means to be human. One could say the best technologists are, in fact, great humanists.

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TheSoDAReport Section 4 : Tech Talk

Stephen Foxworthy, Strategy Director, Reactive

The Personalization of Everything

Remember the scene in the movie Minority Report when Tom Cruise is greeted as “Mr. Yakamoto” by a holographic apparition as he walks into a futuristic Gap store? This type of personalization via facial recognition, CRM and digital screen technology is already possible, but everyone who has seen the film knows just how creepy it was. While companies are collecting masses of

Stephen has over 15 years’ experience in digital, with a focus on high performance online retail, customer experience management and multi-channel marketing. With a strong belief in data-driven decision-making, Stephen is an evangelist for effective design, maximizing the measurable return on investment of online activity by enhancing the user experience. Find him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

customer data, what most brands do with this data is not very impressive. This will change over the next few years, as the Personalization of Everything becomes a reality. Behavioral Analytics If another person says “Big Data,” I’ll scream. (Ahem, notwithstanding the excellent article on Big Data in this section, obviously!) Collecting masses of data on your customers is fundamentally useless, unless you know what you want to find out from it and how you’re going to adapt to it. Behavioral analysis tools are now maturing to the point where they can quite accurately predict what customers are likely to want next based on what they do and personalize their experience to match, even via salespeople, over the phone or in-store. Recommendation Engines Anybody who has ever shopped on Amazon knows just how good they are at recommending products to buy based on what you’ve looked at or bought, but every now and then, their recommendations can be quite random. We all want to be different, just like everybody else, but we’re still often more alike than we think. Now there are engines – driven by collaborative or taxonomy based filtering – that can be bolted onto most websites and ecommerce stores providing Amazon-style recommendations on the fly. These systems are performing better and better, with suppliers like RichRelevance or Barilliance offering engines that automatically generate effective recommendations based on surprisingly limited user data.

“ As Bill Gates once famously quipped, ‘Content is King’ but personalized content will become the Über-Galactic Emperor.”

Dynamic Content & Flexible Content Management As Bill Gates once famously quipped, “Content is King,” but personalized content will become the Über-Galactic Emperor. One limiting factor of personalizing a customer’s online experience used to be the need to customize a website content management system to serve different versions of content to different audiences. Now, content management systems such as Adobe Experience Manager, SDL Tridion and Sitecore make it much simpler to define rules for personalization and to manage the content required to enable it. This wave of truly capable content management systems is making personalized multichannel experiences practical for every brand. Changing Consumer Attitudes on Privacy Companies such as Google and Facebook are already sitting on deep and valuable information about you that allows them to target you with far more relevant ads. Whenever we talk about personalization of the customer experience, the conversation almost immediately turns to privacy, identity protection and intrusion — not the benefits that personalization might bring. In truth, nearly every interaction we have online is already being tracked, adding to data profiles of who we are, what we do, and what we like. It is clear that our comfort, with less privacy, given a real benefit, is a new norm. What’s Next for Personalization? The technology driving the ability to deeply personalize the customer experience is now commonplace and

“ Collecting masses of data on your customers is fundamentally useless, unless you know what you want to find out from it, and how you’re going to adapt to it.”

getting smarter by the minute. Hotels and retailers are already using advanced techniques such as shopper tracking, data mining and facial recognition to identify high-value customers. Soon, being welcomed by name as we enter a store won’t seem creepy anymore. It will just be the way business is done.

TheSoDAReport Section 4 : Tech Talk

The Rise of the Interest-Based Network

Some may think that with monsters like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter eating up the social space, there isn’t much room left in the market for competitors—but they’d be wrong. Interest-based networks are becoming our go-to social spaces and most don’t even realize it. An interest-based network is exactly what it sounds like: a social network built around interests, using common threads to bring members of an audience together. Whether it is travel, food, fashion or cats (check out Catmoji), interest-based networks are taking

Samantha Afetian is a social community strategist at Digitaria in San Diego. She works with brands in the retail, tech, health and financial industries to create end-to-end social media strategies. Sam enjoys long scrolls through Pinterest, tweeting influencers, and assuming the identity of brands to build relationships with loyalists. Tweet her at @SamAfetian.

Samantha Afetian, Social Community Strategist, Digitaria

over the social media scene, and brands that get it stand to reap the benefits. Interest-Based Networks Explode There seems to be an infinite number of interest-based networks these days. Though they vary in size and quality, these networks are segmenting web users into niche audiences. Sites like IT Central Station (a platform for enterprise technology gossip), Sermo (one of the largest medical social hubs for physicians and scientists), or StyledOn (a worldwide network of fashion enthusiasts and trendsetters) are attracting users due to their specific offerings that cater to interests, hobbies or professions. As “Facebook fatigue” sets in, web and mobile users are turning to these niche networks for content that specifically appeals to them. As an industry, we definitely should not underestimate these communities. Just because they’re niche doesn’t mean they are small. Take for example that fairly new interest-based network that has a user-base of 70 million members worldwide. What’s it called again? Oh, yeah--Pinterest. Everyone’s favorite pinning site, with 11.7 million unique monthly visitors, is an interest-based network. With an experience concept that allows users to sort through and pin content to and from categorized pinboards, Pinterest is a shining example of the power of interests. With categories like weddings, travel, DIY, food and education, Pinterest has created a site where users can build an ecosystem based on their own interests, which others ultimately share and follow. But Pinterest isn’t the only “niche” site that has seen success. TripAdvisor, a network for travel enthusiasts built on user-submitted reviews, recently hit more than 200 million unique monthly visitors. A recommendation

network catered to those researching their next trip, TravelAdvisor has amassed more than 100 million reviews of more than 2.5 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions. Big Gets Specific In fact, some big networks are finding cozy niches to settle down in, instead of playing to the masses. Even for Millennials, in our lifetimes, we have already witnessed the rise and fall of social media giants. While most of the platforms never managed to resurrect themselves (i.e. Livejournal), Myspace was lucky enough to rise from the ashes. Earlier this year, Myspace reemerged into the public eye, not as the one-size-fits-all social network of yesteryear, but as an interest-based network. With features aimed at connecting musicians, writers and other types of artists with their fans, coupled with a music-streaming function, Myspace has repositioned itself to become the premier network for the music industry—though it’s not there yet. As social networks peak in adoption, we will likely see more of them begin to turn over to interest-based experiences. Could Facebook reinvent itself into a network where we can connect with people from around the world to have conversations about one topic, while still holding on to its core functions? It sounds far-fetched, but possibly. With the introduction of hashtags and the further integration of Graph Search into the system, we may very well see Facebook become more interest focused in the coming year. What To Do About It Regardless of the vertical your company or client falls within, there is likely a relevant interest-based network. Ready to harness the power of the niche? Here are three things to consider:

“ While it is true that social media as a whole works best when brands engage in two-way communication, interest-based networks require extra effort.”

Go big, go niche, or go home: Some marketers will say that your brand should be everywhere, on every network, but if you do have a niche audience, your resources may be better spent on just a few. Consider the options, and prioritize networks aligned with your target market. Interest-based networks require authenticity: While it is true that social media as a whole works best when brands engage in two-way communication, interest-based networks require extra effort. Imagine walking into a book club and trying to discuss the plot without actually reading the novel—your fellow book club members will know almost immediately that you are faking it. That’s kind of how niche networks work. Continue Listening: Always keep an eye out for new networks. Regularly watch for content from industry trendsetters for information on new platforms and trends. Institute ongoing listening and search programs to watch for conversations about new social spaces for the industry. Interest-based networks are popping up daily. One of them may be the perfect place for your brand.

TheSoDAReport Section 4 : Tech Talk

The Internet of Things: Billions of Marketing OpportunitiesAs more of the objects we interact with every day begin to communicate and share data with the Internet, huge opportunities arise for marketers to learn about consumer behaviors, and how they can make their messages and products more relevant and timely. This linkage between physical objects to the Internet or virtual objects is often referred to as the “Internet of Things” (IoT). This term is not especially new, but the concept is now being realized in a variety of powerful ways, across a wide range of human life.

The term IoT was invented by Kevin Ashton in 1999, co-founder of MIT’s Auto-ID Center, “which created a global standard system for RFID,” according to Wikipedia. Back then, IoT was mostly the stuff of science fiction; a Jetsons/Knight Rider/Bond dream of connected cars, robot maids and devices triggered by biometric monitors. However, RFID began to push the concept into reality and, over the last few years, innovation and advancement in this space has exploded. Bosch Software Innovations predicts that, by 2015, 6,593 billion IP-ready devices will be connected to the

Tarah Feinberg has 15+ years in entertainment and marketing as a translator, creator and ambassador for emerging technologies. He launched new divisions and practice areas, like the Digital Studio at NBC Universal and iCrossing’s social media and real-time content marketing group. As CMO and NY Managing Director at KITE, Tarah leads communications and customer development.

Tarah Feinberg, CMO & NY Managing Director, KITE

Internet and that about 75% of the world’s population will have online access. The distinctions between the “online” and “offline” worlds are shrinking fast. IoT covers an immensely broad range of tech, including wearables, “quantified self”, connected homes, Internet-connected automobiles, smart cities and the supply chain (the original motivation for Ashton and the development of RFID, who was working with P&G at the time). Marketers are beginning to tap into all of these, as they offer valuable insights and potential touch-points to reach people in more powerful ways. Consider just a few of the remarkable business and marketing implications of this data, if harnessed effectively:

• Send prescription reminders or automatically add food to shopping lists when supplies get low

• Promote a new bathing suit line as a sunny weekend approaches

• Entice runners with a nearby refreshing drink as they hit their fifth mile

The possibilities are endless — as everything in our lives becomes more connected and we become more comfortable sharing the minutiae of our daily activities with marketers. At KITE, we have built a platform containing over 260,000 startups, across practically every area of emerging technology, platforms and media. Each week, we curate a different category and encourage our agency and consumers to rate and review the companies in that area. When we recently focused on IoT, these five companies rose to the top:

“ The possibilities are actually endless, as everything in our lives becomes more connected and we become more comfortable sharing the minutiae of our daily activities with marketers. ”

Withings creates smart products and apps to take care of yourself and your loved ones through smart scales, baby monitors, blood pressure monitors and activity trackers. Nest Labs is the creator of the world’s first Learning Thermostat, using your temperature adjustments to program itself to keep you comfortable and guide you to energy savings. MakerBot Industries is a Brooklyn-based company that creates affordable, open source 3D printers. Fitbit creates a suite of health/fitness data-tracking wearables that monitor and analyze your daily activity. Twine alerts you to small in-home problems before they become big problems. Tell a web app what to listen to with simple rules, and you’ll get notifications and peace of mind via email, SMS, Twitter and more. Company scores and descriptions powered by KITE The biggest challenges for marketers are to leverage IoT effectively by turning the massive amount of data into actionable insights, and learning to use this information in a way that doesn’t alienate consumers. Overall, as long as the computers don’t turn on us, the IoT movement is making the world a healthier, more efficient and safer place to live.

TheSoDAReport Section 4 : Tech Talk

Interview with Mike Kuniavsky, Principal PARC Innovation ServicesTech Talk Section Editor, Zachary Paradis recently sat down with Mike Kuniavsky, author of Smart Things and Principal at PARC Innovation Services Group, to discuss and predict three technologies on the horizon which will radically change people’s lives.

PARADIS: So, we’re walking around with what was, not too long ago, considered a “supercomputer” in our pockets. This obviously had a massive impact on everyday life, especially now that we’re reaching mass penetration of these devices. If you had to select three technologies set to change people’s lives, what would they be? KUNIAVSKY: Predictive Analytics, drones and Collaborative Design Software. PARADIS: Why Predictive Analytics? KUNIAVSKY: It is what makes sense of the Internet of Things. We are in the process of injecting networked information process and technology into every possible

Mike Kuniavsky is a user experience designer, researcher and author. A twenty-year veteran of digital product development, Mike designs products, business processes and services at the leading edge of technological change. He specializes in multi-device interactions, cloud-based service design and the design of hardware products connected to cloud-based services. At PARC, his group helps companies invent the future using a mixture of ethnography, future scenario development, opportunity discovery and user experience design.

niche in our lives: into every possible device, into every possible crevice of our body, into every part of our work, home and interpersonal lives. The issue with these technologies is that you have to make them work together and make sense. It’s not all about watching Ironman on your phone and then flipping it over to your TV. That’s the most rudimentary form of multichannel integration, and no one has even gotten that right yet. To me Predictive Analytics is about creating systems that can interpret information coming from all of those devices, identifying patterns found within, and then making decisions that allow you to predict and act on future behaviors. In the analytics world there are three different kinds: descriptive–what has happened; prescriptive–recommendations on what is happening; and predictive–identifying what will happen in the future. We’re pretty good at descriptive and prescriptive analytics, but we’re just getting a handle on predictive. A good real-life example is Waze, the social mapping tool recently bought by Google for $1B. Waze systems can figure out where a traffic jam will occur in your driving route before it occurs, and can proactively suggest a path to get around it. It is powerful stuff that can obviously make Google Maps better. Now, just imagine that type of predictive thinking applied to your personal finances: don’t buy that car today, wait 3 weeks because you’ll get a better deal and a better car. There are applications in every facet of our lives for Predictive Analytics to make an impact. PARADIS: Your examples really bring Predictive Analytics to life. What about drones? Why will they be so impactful to everyday life? KUNIAVSKY: Drones create the ability for these information-processing devices to move around, untethered. Consider London, perhaps the city most

“ Enabling global collaboration caused an explosion of incredible software that everyone now uses, whether they know it or not. ”

densely covered with closed-circuit cameras. Imagine replacing all of those fixed cameras with a drone cloud that could hover 100 feet off the ground, powered by the sun; taking pictures all the time, landing when it needs to, and generally acting autonomously. Drones are high on the current hype cycle, but they are also here to stay. They take all of these types of capture technologies and make them intensely mobile, detaching them from people or environments. Why not have a drone follow your family around Disneyland taking pictures of your great fun? In video games you have people who map the best camera angle for a race or scene to make it as dramatic as possible. What if we could do it for our lives with drones? And although I certainly don’t think surveillance is necessarily a healthy thing for society, I see drones as more than just cameras, just as phones are more than a portable Facebook. PARADIS: What about Collaborative Design Software? Why will this change people’s lives? KUNIAVSKY: To me Collaborative Design Software is the key to unlocking the power of distributed manufacturing. It is important because there is already a lot of digital manufacturing and 3D printing out in the world today, but this hasn’t necessarily translated to everyday experience. One reason is that CAD software is complex and really only handles one facet of design. If you look at the model of how collaborative tools changed software development, you see there is a progression from simple file sharing to GitHub. Enabling global collaboration caused an explosion of incredible software that everyone now uses, whether they know it or not.

If we map this arc to the physical world, you envision this entirely different means of manufacturing. Skills all over the world, digital manufacturing tools, crowd-funding: all these pieces are in place. The one missing piece is Collaborative Design Software to facilitate the creation of a single, shared representation of a product.

PARADIS: In your book, Smart Things, you share approaches to tackling the design of offerings with embedded intelligence — which is essentially sensor data collection plus a localized information process and cloud-based analytics. We have seen this carried out through products like the Roomba room cleaner, Nike+ Fuel Band, Jawbone UP, Fitbit. What are the biggest challenges you see for marketers or designers in leveraging these emerging technologies?

KUNIAVSKY: All of these technologies are still in that early phase and hold promise, but there aren’t enough examples to wrap our heads around applicability to current problems. We’re in a “crossing the chasm” dilemma because people can’t see how it can apply to their specific situation.

The tools we now have are still raw, providing technical capability with no framework or affordance for easy use. We haven’t figured out what isn’t valuable so we haven’t constrained the tools. We have a whole array of tools that are all too flexible because we’ve seen a fundamentally new way of interacting with the world be introduced every one-and-a-half years or so. We’re always at the edge of the flexibility curve.

PARADIS: So what advice do you have for marketers or designers working in these areas today?

KUNIAVSKY: It might sound obvious, but literacy in these new technologies is really important. People need to use them to understand how they could apply to their customers’ lives. Wear a Fitbit. Own a Roomba. Get something 3D printed.

Also, skills around being able to see through technology to the social effects they are causing are really valuable because it pulls you out of the technologies trenches. Why would people want it? Should we use it to positively affect behavior? The corollary skill to making good use of technology is getting good at understanding people.

TheSoDAReport Section 4 : Tech Talk

Marketers and Big DataBig Data is one of the most discussed topics in the industry – and there are good reasons for it: the volume and variety of data available is growing at an explosive rate; and, the velocity at which this data is amassed is beyond what most existing Enterprise systems can handle. So, go ahead and scream Stephen Foxworthy, because I think this is a topic clearly worth talking about. Brands are frantically seeking solutions and expertise to turn this real and growing challenge into an opportunity. But, how do you define a Big Data challenge? Should you use Big Data technology or more traditional approaches? What are real life applications for Big Data in marketing? Big Data is defined as data in multiple shapes and forms which is predominantly unstructured (variety), is accumulated in huge amounts (volume), all within a span of time (velocity). Social media data, logs generated by web and other systems and data from sensors are all potential examples of Big Data. These data contain huge amount of intelligence, however the real value of their intelligence ultimately depends upon

Santhosh Subramani is a Director of Technology with SapientNitro. With a background in engineering and a passion for data management, he has led many turnkey data projects throughout his 20-year career. He evangelizes data driven decision-making, and currently lives in Toronto.

Santhosh Subramani, Director of Technology, SapientNitro

the problem or challenge that needs to be solved. A key tenet for creating value from Big Data is that analysis should therefore start from the business challenge and not from the data. An analysis needs to done to evaluate whether the challenge could be more simply solved using traditional data analytics. Other key factors to include:

1. Total cost of ownership (TCO) of your systems and solutions: Which path is more cost effective? Big Data systems provide you the ability to leverage commodity hardware, helping to keep costs low, yet they still require additional investment over traditional systems.

2. Data processing time: Big Data systems use massive parallel processing, to help turn around results quickly. But, does the business require that data to be analyzed on a near real-time basis?

3. Availability of skill set: Big Data systems introduce new technologies into your organization. Do you have the people it takes to adopt these?

For example, let’s consider analyzing typical system logs. System logs are data accounts of human interaction with channels. Of course, there are an incredible number of interactions (volume), the data itself is unstructured (variety) and machines generate them at a fast pace (velocity). This is Big Data! Real value can be generated by sifting through this avalanche of data to analyze customer behavior. Behavioral analysis can then be used to inform and increase the efficacy of focused marketing efforts. The most difficult challenge to solve is moving beyond behavioral analysis

“ A key tenet for creating value from Big Data is that analysis should start from the business challenge and not from the data.”

to create accurate models for predicting future customer behavior. Web analytics can help uncover intelligence in human interaction with channels. It can help plot aggregate trends, frequency and related elements. Big Data takes it a significant step further by introducing the power to plot patterns and predict customer behavior. Chart 1: Output from Web Analytics

Chart 2: Output from Big Data Analytics

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Chart 1 above shows the results gathered from traditional web analytics. It highlights how the trend of searching for stores roughly aligns with searching for products on a site. It’s a logical and potentially obvious pattern.

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Chart 2 represents an output from Big Data Analytics. Here, the log data was processed to capture individual users’ behavior. At which point while looking for products on the site did they start looking for the nearest store to buy that product? As illustrated from the chart, the first visit to the site is the best chance to convert this prospect. By the third visit, you are likely to lose them altogether given that very few prospects return to the site after visit number 3. And while, as the chart shows, the probability of locating a store may go up from the 4th to the 10th visit, the universe of consumers actually returning to the site four or more times is so small that capturing them during visits 1-3 becomes critical. This chart gives the kind of insight that can help a marketer take appropriate action: produce targeted promotions for the kind of products a user is looking for and run targeted remarketing campaigns — specifically during a second and third visit. Producing predictive and probabilistic insights like the one in the second chart demands a vast processing of data, at the most granular level. Achieving the same output from traditional web analytics systems would require unrealistic investments of hardware, software, time and human resources. They just aren’t built to scale in this way. Big Data systems provide realistic opportunities in massively parallel rapid data processing through cost effective commodity hardware. So what does it take to do Big Data Marketing Analytics? Marketing managers must identify relevant dimensions of their customer’s behavior, such as what elements of behavior are most critical to the business? Big Data analysts and technologists take this input, create a data dictionary and apply it to given data sets to produce Big Data output aggregated around individual customer visits. The lead analyst then applies various statistical

methodologies to generate predictions for customer behavior. The value grows further as disparate sources of data (CRM, eCommerce, social, etc.) are connected. With each addition connection point, we continue to refine our ability to predict customer behavior. In summary, a Big Data approach can turn seemingly unstructured warehouses of data into a well of actionable insights and predictions. Particularly innovative Big Data approaches integrate each individual’s series of connections with a brand and its products. As marketers continue to develop end-to-end customer experiences, an individual user can generate an incredibly strong feedback loop through which increasingly one-to-one prediction and optimization can occur.

Advocacy

Section PrefaceConsumer Control: Coming to a Store Near You

A Call to (Legal) Action

The SoDA Report 2013

TheSoDAReport Section 5 : Advocacy

We recognize that in today’s new business environment, agencies play a key role in giving clients the competitive advantage they need to reach the highest levels of success. Our deep insights, strategic rigor, integrated expertise and relationships with stakeholders and other audiences uniquely position us to identify, mobilize and engage advocates for our clients’ products, services, brands and issues anywhere in the world.

As ‘agents’ for our clients, we have an obligation, an advocacy imperative when delivering sound communication programs. We need to put advocacy in the center of our ideas from the very beginning; considering how we enlist advocates, increasing the places in which we engage with them, activating the right networks to leverage discussion and delivering campaigns that ignite conversations.

But the face of advocacy has changed dramatically over the past decade with the growth and reliance on digital platforms to connect people and the power this has brought to the consumer. Alessandra Lariu, in her article “Consumer Control - Coming to a Store Near You” advocates for the rise of consumer power through the advent of ‘Personal Servers’ and how consumers are taking back control of the data they are creating online. The final word is left to Brad Gross, who passionately requests your attention to a digital war that threatens the very foundation of our industry.

The common thread across these view-points is that Advocacy and the connections we forge with our peers, our competitors, our suppliers and our agencies have become an integral component to lasting success.

Matt GriffinAdvocacy Section Editor

Founder/CEO, Deepend

TheSoDAReport Section 5 : Advocacy

Alessandra Lariu, Co-Founder, SheSays

Consumer Control: Coming to a Store Near You

Stephen Wolfram is a scientist obsessed with data. He analyzed 23 years’ worth of emails in order to find patterns in his behavior: when he is more creative, when there is a dip in his productivity and so forth. No doubt that data pattern analysis can reveal a lot about us, but if, unlike Wolfram, our private data is housed, or even owned, by third parties such as Facebook and Google, then how easy will it be to actually carry out that data analysis? Moreover, who will own or have the rights to the outcomes of such analysis?

Ale Lariu is the CEO of shout and co-founder of SheSays a five year old, award-winning global organization focused on the engagement, education and advancement of women in digital marketing. Her 16-year career in advertising has led to 18 prestigious industry accolades. She is a guest teacher at Hyper Island, Berghs and Miami Ad School, writes a monthly column on digital culture for the Brazilian version of Wired magazine, is on the board of the Art Directors Club and helps Wharton with their Future of Advertising program.

In the age of the ‘powerful consumer,’ the more data we share the less power we actually have. To put things in perspective, five years ago you probably had one internet-connected device in your living room while five years from now that number could be fifty. From your fridge to your clothes, your belongings will become ‘always on’ devices able to exchange information about you and your habits without as much as a touch of a button. So what about the wealth of data you are continually generating each and every day. Unfortunately, the terms of service and privacy policies for nearly all service providers are a one-sided joke. The power currently belongs to companies. We’re simply there providing the data. So, as consumers, what can we do? We have to start changing our relationship with the companies that consume our data, by protecting it ourselves. In 2012, we saw the rise of the notion of VRM (Vendor Relationship Marketing/Management). Unlike CRM, VRM aims to provide consumers independence from vendors. Simultaneously, a number of disruptive start-ups launched the concept of ‘personal servers’ where, instead of giving brands your data, users withhold information in a closed, personally-managed network or ‘server’ so they can decide what information they show, to what company, and when. Some great examples of putting the consumer truly in control are projects like Lockr and Tent. With Tent, users prevent their information from ever becoming someone else’s property by participating in social networks based on distributed technology. Imagine a Facebook or Twitter where anyone could operate their own server instead of signing up for an account. Tent offers users the same freedom for social data.

So what could ‘owning your data’ mean for consumers and brands? Individuals owning their data could enable consumers to form the equivalent of “buyer groups” to negotiate for better deals or to get brands to create products that meet a certain group’s needs. This could be as complex as a crowd-sourced design for a kitchen appliance, or as simple as a small group of friends out one night looking for a good deal on drinks. The group could broadcast some basic facts about themselves: number of people, how long they wanted to stay out and solicit bids for the next bar they visit. A bartender having a slow night might offer them a free drink. This system could be completely automated on both sides—think high-frequency trading—not eBay. The bidding process would be private. It would be based on each party’s needs and offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis to individual customers. Brands, on the other hand, will have to master the art of truly personalized experiences where most of the input for advertising opportunities comes from the users. Right now companies look at big data or combined behavioral patterns of people so they can pretend to personalize experiences based on aggregated behavior. That’s not anywhere near true personalization and does not give consumers differentiated experiences.

When consumers are in control of what they want a brand to know about themselves, it will change the dynamics of advertising.

“We have to start changing our relationship with the companies that consume our data, by protecting it ourselves.”

TheSoDAReport Section 5 : Advocacy

Brad Gross, SoDA General Counsel and Global Legal Advisor

A Call to (Legal) Action

“There are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know.” Donald Rumsfeld, 2002.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war. You, the agencies and productions companies who seek to innovate and explore cutting edge technologies, face a global threat that challenges the very foundation of your industry. I am referring to, of course, patent trolls. These enemies of innovation embody a patent system

A technology law attorney with thirty years of experience in the computer and technology fields, Brad is SoDA’s General Counsel and Global Legal Advisor. He educates SoDA’s members about the laws, cases and legal trends that impact the business of digital marketing, focusing in particular on intellectual property and contract issues that are crucial to the viability and stability of digital marketing agencies and their clients.

gone awry, supported by an arsenal of archaic laws wielded by lawyers who seek neither fairness nor justice. You cannot hide from this enemy: if you are abroad, then they will sue your U.S.-based clients. If your clients aren’t in the U.S., then they will sue your client’s customers. Either way, the path of liability will eventually lead to your front door.

We could end this war tomorrow, if only we had the guts to do what needs to be done.

Known Knowns

We know that patent trolls are a menace. We know that they disguise themselves as corporations, and recede to the shadows of a handful of venues that welcome them with open arms and open wallets. We know that they distribute demand letters with reckless abandon that resembles confetti being tossed about in a macabre celebration of legal fiction and lawyers’ fees. We know that most of their so-called “rights” rest upon flimsy and overbroad descriptions of inventions that are neither original nor innovative. We know that these “rights” have been given the imprimatur of legal validity by a U.S. Patent & Trademark Office that, for years, was asleep at the wheel. We know that patent trolls continue their war against agencies and production companies, all while claiming to be on the side of innovation and invention.

We know that several laws and U.S. Presidential Executive Orders attempted to curb patent troll activity. We know that the America Invents Act took a step in the right direction by restricting a patent troll’s ability to file mass litigation. We know that the White House recently ordered the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office to provide new training to examiners on scrutiny of software patent claims—the type of claims at the heart of most patent troll litigation. We know that President Obama (and others) asked the U.S. Congress to amend the law

to require the losing party in a patent infringement case to pay all attorneys’ fees.

But there is much we don’t know.

Known Unknowns

We don’t know whether recent laws will significantly reduce the number of patent troll cases being filed: indeed, to date, they haven’t. We don’t know whether agencies and production companies can continue to withstand the onslaught of claims for indemnification received from clientele who have been targeted by patent trolls. We don’t know the precise extent to which the threat of patent trolls has caused agencies to steer clear of creative thought, or to impede innovation. We don’t know what strategies patent trolls will devise to circumvent our attempts to curb their activities though, clearly, they will not stand idle.

Ending the War

This war could end tomorrow with the passage of simple legislation requiring patent trolls to “use it or lose it.” Put another way, by requiring patent trolls to produce something based on their patent portfolios, they would have to demonstrate that they deserve to enforce the rights they purport to hold. This is not a far-fetched idea. Trademark owners have long been required to use and enforce their rights on an ongoing basis or face abandonment of their intellectual property rights.

Inventors will claim that they don’t have the money to create and distribute their inventions. To them I say, “License your inventions to those who could make use of them,” and everyone wins. Trolls will claim that requiring them to produce something would severely curtail their ability to acquire and enforce large patent portfolios. To them I say, “We’re here to encourage invention, not portfolios.” Inventors will always have places to go. There will never be a shortage of

companies that are willing to acquire great patents to do great things.

“Use it or lose it” would be a game changing and war-ending strategy. If only we had the guts to do it.

SoDA Showcases

Flying HighCapturing the Action

Spider Plotter We Are Earthlings

Lincoln Says “Hello Again”Re-Imagining Analytics

Empowering Kids through Knowledge and EntertainmentBurberry Kisses

Transforming the TV Buying ExperienceWaveRunnersThe Defector

The SoDA Report 2013

The SoDA Report 2013

Festival ReadyThe Pursuit

My Wild Kingdom The Value Navigator

The Most Powerful Arm Ever InventedLYNX Apollo

IZOD IndyCar SeriesDesign Book

TheSoDAReport Section 6 : SoDA Showcases

Flying High

iFly KLM Magazine is the digital customer relations platform of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines aimed at broadening and deepening the relationship between KLM and its customers.

KLM’s iFly Magazine gives customers many reasons to travel. The periodical consists of multiple pillars and themes that are closely connected to KLM’s brand values. The platform offers personalized marketing content and interactive stories — based on customers’ unique profiles — that inspire KLM customers. This highly engaging digital CRM solution has been running for 4+ years, and has reached more than 6 million unique visitors with an average engagement time of over 7 minutes per visit — which is incredible figure for a digital publication / CRM platform. The print version

ClientKLM Royal Dutch Airlines

MeMber CoMpanyborn05.nl

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of iFly KLMMagazine is distributed in 18 countries and has won several national and international awards. The digital magazine’s content is repurposed on multiple platforms including KLM’s social channels, the InFlight Entertainment system and KLM.com.

With 30 editions to date, iFly KLM Magazine has reached more than six million unique visitors with an average engagement time of more than seven minutes per visit.

Capturing the Action

CloudRaker always encouraged internal experimentation but ActionShot took things to a whole other level.

When CloudRaker dreamed of what its digital creative team would look like and produce, it had projects like ActionShot in mind. The project represents the full integration of concept, technology, branding, UX and willful determination all wrapped up in a collaborative, entrepreneurial spirit.

The idea for an app like ActionShot emerged from the team’s passion for action sports and photography. The app lets you shoot any movement and turn it into a sequence shot with an iPhone. Capturing the course of

ClientActionShot

MeMber CoMpanycloudraker.com

The ActionShot experience cemented CloudRaker’s commitment to launching its own IP and branded properties. The agency has since co-founded a modern urban bike experience company www.fitzandfollwell.co, launched a print magazine www.rakeandco.com, and is investing in an augmented reality solution for the print media world called Paper/Connect.

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an action in a single image gives users photo sequences to show off to friends and on their social feeds. It’s a simple idea, but one that required a tremendous amount of finessing to address the technical complexities and bring the project to fruition.

Within a couple of months after its launch, the experimental app went gangbusters and even spent some time in the top spot above Angry Birds. ActionShot now has millions of users worldwide and was selected by Apple as a Best of 2012.

Spider Plotter

Created for the Brazilian edition of the Google Creative Sandbox event, Spider Plotter is an innovative wall-climbing drawing machine. Together with Bullet Events, D3 created a very special project to be part of the recent Google Creative Sandbox event in São Paulo, Brazil. The challenge consisted of designing an experimental drawing machine in order to marry design and technology in a truly creative way to drive innovation. The result was the Spider Plotter! Spider Plotter is a small robot capable of bridging the digital and physical realms via art. It was designed to create intrigue. During the event, it listened to every participant’s check-in, totem interaction, or drink consumption, and drew a small “+1” on the wall for each action. Little by little, the individual drawings and

ClientGoogle Creative Sandbox

MeMber CoMpanyd3.do

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symbols morphed into the Google Creative Sandbox brand, welcoming everyone to the entrance hall, inciting interaction and introducing attendees to one of the spotlights of the event.

Held together by a pair of nylon strings, the robot uses stepper motors and pulleys to silently climb the walls. The strings carry a pen attached to a little electronic board and a servo that controls the pen pressure. On the back-end, there is a computer that wirelessly transmits commands to the plotter — controlling both the pen pressure and movement simultaneously.

Spider Plotter bridges the digital and physical realms via art.

We Are Earthlings

In collaboration with Whole Foods Market, Digital Kitchen (DK) launched a social media driven campaign to celebrate and redefine the often under-appreciated subculture dedicated to sustainable living.

Whole Foods Market reached out to DK to break through the noise of Earth Month and authentically engage with those who share sustainability as a mission, not a fad. The agency set out to establish Whole Foods Market as a company that celebrates the core values of Earth Month, engages in sustainability practices and with local communities 365 days a year.

Earthlingmonth.com was created as a real-time hub for Earthlings to authentically engage with other members of their “species.” DK stripped away overt Whole Foods Market branding and focused the messaging on Earth

ClientWhole Foods Market

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Month, making way for a positive balance of user’s submissions, items created by DK as well as partner content.

DK created over 90 pieces of original content to be posted in weekly social challenges across Whole Foods Market’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. The content guided consumers from various social channels to the Earthlings Month experience. DK also sent out Influencer Kits, equipped with Earthling Ambassadors, delivering personalized “directives” to high-profile sustainable living proponents. Additionally, DK created large-scale posters and point-of-sale graphics featuring curiously provocative portraits of earthlings in action using visual language that played on sustainability.

Earthlingmonth.com racked up over 40,000 unique visits during Earth Month, surpassing expectations by 372%. Clocking an “unearthly” average visit time of 3:17 (compared to the standard :10-:20 average site visit), the initiative also produced a dramatic uptick in Twitter conversations. The Earthling campaign fostered an authentic eco-dialogue that established Whole Foods Market as a company that celebrates the core values of Earth Month, 365 days a year.

Lincoln Says “Hello Again”

Re-launch the Lincoln automotive brand to a new generation of drivers.

After 90 years on the road, Lincoln was still largely associated with airport limos. They needed to inspire a younger audience to see a classic car through new eyes. In partnership with Lincoln’s agency Hudson Rouge, Digitaria designed, built and helped conceive the “Hello Again” destinations well as the official vehicle sites for the new Lincoln MKZ, an inspired redesign of the legendary elite luxury car. The goal was to create digital experiences as technically adept, luxurious and elite as the car itself, through multi-channel touchpoints (mobile, desktop, tablet). The result was a seamless connection and experience between the website and the vehicle cockpit all in the same breath, using cutting-edge HTML5.

ClientLincoln

MeMber CoMpanydigitaria.com

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The “Hello Again” initiative has turned out to be the most successful digital campaign in the history of the Lincoln Motor Company.

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Re-Imagining Analytics

Water For People is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting improved access to water, services and sanitation systems in developing countries. The organization enlisted EffectiveUI to create a reporting platform as part of its Re-Imagine initiative in order to provide a new, transparent way to manage information, improve outcomes and share results with stakeholders.

The new Re-Imagine Reporting platform represents a dramatic shift away from traditional non-profit financial

ClientWater For People

MeMber CoMpanyeffectiveui.com

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reporting structures, providing stakeholders and donors with a visual application that shows the progress being made with their contributions. The platform:

• Visualizes financial data, partnership assessments and yearly country program analyses in a way that is meaningful and easy to understand

• Displays the totality of ongoing work, allowing stakeholders to see the overall impact as well as the ability to drill down into regions, countries and districts

• Allows donors and the broader development community to see the breadth of outcomes and impact

The Re-Imagine Reporting platform gives Water For People’s program team and their partners in 10 countries a way to measure progress and adjust programs for even more impact over time.

EffectiveUI looked at different visualization techniques to determine the best way to provide a easy-to-grasp snapshot of results and progress, along with the ability to drill down deeply into the data. The team took a storytelling approach, combining financial and statistical data in a highly visual way with emotive video and stories to help stakeholders understand the impact of their contributions.

While delivering the familiar look and feel of an interactive financial report, Re-Imagine Reporting creates empathy among stakeholders and donors by supplementing the data with videos, photos, social media and stories giving rise to an emotional experience that demonstrates to donors how they helped Water For People work toward its goals, as well as show the work that still needs to be done. Ned Breslin, CEO of Water For People, believes this reporting tool can change the way all non-profits demonstrate their progress.

This reporting tool can change the way all non-profits demonstrate their progress.” - Ned Breslin, CEO of Water for People. Since the site launched, the average time spent on the site has increased by almost three minutes.

Empowering Kids through Knowledge and Entertainment

One Laptop Per Child (OLPA) is a program spearheaded by the Cambridge-based OLPC Foundation (OLPCF) which aims for equal access to technology and empowerment through education for children. This includes the distribution of a laptop to each child aged (6-10 years). In Uruguay, OLPA is called Plan Ceibal. The program has built a strong reputation and provides every primary school student with an XO computer designed specifically for children in developing countries who live on the outskirts of cities. With Plan

MeMber CoMpanyencident.com

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Ceibal, 98% of all students now have internet connectivity at home and can consume a wide range of educational and entertainment content in a digital format.

Encident’s client, a local water brand, concerned with increasing health problems in Uruguay resulting from bad dietary habits, launched the prefieroagua.com project. The aim of the project, which was distributed on the Plan Ceibal platform, is to deliver a positive message to kids and adults about the benefits of a healthy diet and water consumption.

Prefieroagua.com provides useful information about healthy diets, conservation and water consumption for parents, teachers and kids. This project involved developing an integrated platform for kids to learn about the importance of healthy foods while playing digital interactive games in a school environment.

Encident conceived and developed an edutainment portal that would contain downloadable information for parents and teachers and four interactive games for kids. Information and entertainment merge seamlessly in this portal with a unique visual language. Filled with a lively cast of characters from the jungle the game dynamics were also co-designed by a nutritionist. The Encident team was responsible for concepting, design, 3D modeling, 3D animation and scene integration. The scenes were done in CGI with a unique fantastical-natural aesthetic treatment. Crafted using responsive design, the portal was built in HTML5 and the games were developed in Flash and XO. With a smart strategic approach and a forward-thinking distribution platform, Encident was able to deliver extremely important information to an at-risk population via an immersive and entertaining experience.

Aimed at public school students (Grades 1-3), the program is expected to reach 100% of the target audience within the first year.

Burberry Kisses

Create an emotional connection between the Burberry brand and millennial consumers, who easily tune out from traditional fashion and beauty marketing.

Burberry Kisses invites viewers to send personal messages sealed with an imprint of their real kiss. Grow created the site as part of Google’s Art, Copy & Code initiative, where the agency served as the creative and technology partner for brand collaborations with Burberry and Volkswagen.

Capturing a kiss and facilitating a personal exchange of affection is at the core of the platform, representing Burberry’s romantic view of the world. Modern browser

ClientBurberry

MeMber CoMpanythisisgrow.com

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technologies such as WebGL and WebP were used to craft real-world destinations and landscapes in loving detail, while location-based services such as Google Earth and Maps, provided cues that made the delivery and receipt of messages more relevant and personalized.

Burberry Kisses is truly cross-platform, providing an equally rich experience through multiple ad formats on mobile and desktop. This fresh take on display advertising — transforming the display space into a full site experience — helped people think differently about the potential for engagement with an ad — with help from tools like Google’s Lightbox. The campaign connected with the millennial audience, allowing them to give and receive a Burberry Kiss any number of ways, on any screen and in any context.

The campaign is still fresh and continuing to roll out with strong social engagement from users who sent and received kisses in over 13,000 cities within the first 10 days. Media outlets praised Burberry Kisses for both its technical innovation and how it reimagines the potential for digital advertising.

Transforming the TV Buying Experience

Help people make a high-involvement purchase decision in a digital context.

It is always a challenge to provide consumers with a convincing way to sample a product online—particularly a high-cost item like a television. TP Vision (Philips TV) sought a simple way to offer product advice and reduce customers’ anxiety around making difficult, technical choices. In addition, Philips TV wanted to emotionally connect people to the product by letting them experience the TV in a room similar to their own home environment.

ClientPhilips

MeMber CoMpanyindg.com

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INDG created a highly immersive product experience based on 3D visualizations for Philips TV that was also consistent across all traditional and digital touch points.

The user experience was based on thorough research of the customer decision journey and complemented existing channels with online and mobile applications. The online version offers visitors a range of living rooms that help them to imagine what the product would look like at home. Going one step further, the mobile version uses augmented reality to project the preferred TV in their own living room.

The online TV Buying Guide was deployed across 22 countries in only 6 weeks, staying on time (and on budget) for a launch at the IFA event. Soon after launch, the application received a REDDOT design award. The click-to-buy ratio increased nearly three-fold to 13%. The mobile app has achieved similar click-to-buy ratios and has been downloaded over 60,000 times.

WaveRunners

Pretty is great, but pretty that works is better.

Great user experience is all about good design. The result should look simple, but for IQ getting there is usually a comprehensive strategic process of understanding the category, the brand, the competition and the consumer.

The new Yamaha WaveRunners website is an example of utilizing strategy to inform design, which melds together beautiful imagery with usability and connects perfectly with Yamaha’s ideal consumer.

ClientYamaha

MeMber CoMpanyiqagency.com

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The site redesign by IQ has led to a 24% increase in virtual product walk-arounds, 12% increase in sales during the initial campaign period, and has produced US $1.2 million in incremental revenue (versus cost of build).

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The Defector

Experience what it’s like to escape from North Korea.

The Defector is a timely and gripping online interactive documentary housed within a website. The site was built to give users a first-person glimpse at what it’s like to be a defector on the life-threatening journey to escape North Korea, navigating a long and dangerous path toward freedom.

Hidden camera footage and photography were integrated into one singular animated narrative that puts the user in the shoes of a defector.

All of the stories, images and footage are real and based on true accounts of North Korean defectors interviewed by Jam3. The site draws attention to crucial issues and the harsh reality of North Korea.

ClientFathom Film Group

MeMber CoMpanyjam3.com

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The project generated a tremendous response, including articles featured in Ad Age, Fast Company, Creativity Online, Google Creative Sandbox and the FWA, in addition to coverage in numerous blogs and traditional media outlets.

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Festival Ready

Inspired by the Original Swiss Army Knife (an iconic multifunctional tool), Less Rain helped Victorinox create a mobile app that offers a selection of useful, context-free digital tools for the modern adventurer.

Less Rain helped Victorinox create the ultimate Festival lover’s app earlier this year. Festival Ready proved to be a great companion for the ‘13 Festival season. It has useful and innovative tools to help with all your festival-related needs. It helps you find your friends and locate your previously marked campsite, in addition

ClientVictorinox / PD3

MeMber CoMpanylessrain.co.uk

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to providing live weather reports, packing checklists, festival tips, ticker messaging and a “Sound Flare and Torch.”

The app allows you and your Facebook friends to create and share pins of your favorite locations, including stages or any other cool place you discover. You can find your way to all these places using the in-camera 3D View or the traditional Map View. Other handy tools include an LED Message Display so you can send visual messages to the world when you can’t be heard, as well as a Sound Flare to make sure everyone knows and hears where you are.

The app has been widely used during the 2013 festival season in the UK and Less Rain is currently working on a version for the urban adventurer.

The Pursuit

LiveAD created a social game to coincide with the launch of the Lenovo Ultrabook Ideapad Yoga 13 in Brazil. “Lenovo - The Pursuit” was created to be played among fans of Lenovo on Facebook and was a race against time to discover a four-digit combination code. In connection with Lenovo’s launch of the Ultrabook Ideapad Yoga 13 in Brazil, a digital strategy was required to engage consumers and generate excitement around the arrival of the new product to the market. To accomplish this, LiveAD created a social game to be played among fans of Lenovo Brazilʼs fan page on Facebook — rewarding two winners with the new product. “Perseguição Lenovo” or “Lenovo The Pursuit” was a game played directly on Facebook in which the users had to race against time in a challenge to discover a

ClientLenovo

MeMber CoMpanylivead.com.br

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four-digit combination code in order to win the new computer. But, as soon as one of the players took control of the product after unlocking the code, that code automatically changed and other players could steal the Yoga 13.

When the user was in possession of the Yoga 13 during the game, his/her time was documented. In the end, the player who retained control of the prize the longest ultimately won the computer. The first winner was in control of the Yoga 13 for more than seven hours, while the second-round winner retained control of it for more than four hours.

Through an integrated strategy of paid, owned and earned media, Lenovo Brazil reached more than 43,000 players who attempted to solve the game’s code more than 1 million times.

Lenovo Brazil reached more than 32 million people, and built a fan base of 230,000 Facebook users that interacted with content and brand experiences everyday via social media channels.

My Wild Kingdom

In 1963, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom broadcast its first episode on NBC, sparking the adventure show genre and a television dynasty that lasted over 25 years. For its 50th anniversary, Wild Kingdom sought an ambitious branding campaign to reengage fans of the original show. For the generations that missed growing up with the Wild Kingdom (and to meet its business goals), Mutual of Omaha partnered with Phenomblue to create a digital solution that would appeal to 7-to-12 year-olds—a

ClientMutual of Omaha

MeMber CoMpanyphenomblue.com

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tech-savvy audience that loves animals, video games and social media.

Welcome to My Wild Kingdom, a wild animal adventure app that lets users turn any photo or video into a fun virtual habitat and share it with their friends. Users can go on adventures, earn badges and unlock re-sizeable virtual animals to add to photos and videos. Camera filters can be engaged to customize each adventure and even capture the look of classic nature footage.

Users can unlock and choose between ten different animals to populate their photos and videos: giraffe, zebra, lion, meerkat, gorilla, alligator, kangaroo, penguin, hippopotamus and elephant. The My Wild Kingdom app, narrated by Jim Fowler (the show’s original co-host and field correspondent) keeps kids engaged in a fun and positive way when using their parents’ smartphones. The app is also full of fun facts about animals in their natural habitats that can spark a lifelong passion for animals, conservation and the environment. The app is equally designed to get kids out of the house and interacting with real animals.

My Wild Kingdom allowed Phenomblue to “stretch our own wings,” as the team designed the 3D and VFX environments, as well as the animation, compositing, augmented reality, interface and sound effects. All of the iOS development and social media integration was also done in-house. The app is a seamless convergence between the digital and physical worlds, inspiring users of all ages to interact with nature via the devices they use every day.

My Wild Kingdom is the only app on the market today to offer such a rich and engaging wildlife experience for kids. My Wild Kingdom was featured as FWA’s Mobile of the Day in May of this year.

The Value NavigatorThe Adobe Target | Value Navigator tool is a responsive web application built for Adobe to allow their sales team to graphically map a customer’s core business objectives to Adobe Target’s capabilities. The tool communicates the potential lift for the customer (i.e. increase in site conversion) utilizing the recommended capabilities.

Piggybacking off of Rain’s successful launch of another Adobe analytics application, the agency was tasked by Adobe to create the Value Navigator tool. It utilizes complex Key Performance Indicator (KPI) calculations to help Adobe sales consultants determine the potential lift for their customers if they were to use Adobe Target.

Rain gathered its best and brightest to design and wireframe the beautiful experience detailed in the screenshots shown below. The team built the tool as a one page application using angular.js., PHP, and HTML5. Rain’s developers had a lot of fun creating the digital displays and creating a friendly face for Adobe’s complex calculators. The tool walks the user through a basic four-step wizard to help them determine their website lift.

ClientAdobe

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Step 1:

The user: 1) selects their business objectives from a drop-down list, 2) chooses the page they wish to evaluate and 3) assesses their company’s decision-making maturity on matters related to IT and analytics. Step 2:

The user is able to view the potential lift for the page selected. The customer is also able to add additional pages for evaluation.

“The Adobe Tar get Value Nav i ga tor has been very pop u lar since its launch, and many current and potential clients have used the tool to com pare lift ranges and iden tify the opti miza tion meth ods that are likely to be most effec tive. — Ryan Hobson, Senior Marketing Manager at Adobe

Step 3:

The user can allocate resources to the pages selected from step 2 and view the change that resource allocation will have on the results. Step 4:

Shows the top three lift recommendations including a “request for information” form connecting the customer to Adobe.

The Most Powerful Arm Ever Invented

The charity Save Our Sons has been raising funds to bring Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy research trials to Australia, but the organization needed to generate even more attention to the cause. Reactive and collaborators Finch, Havas and Red PR co-developed a bionic arm and digital campaign that would encourage signatures of a petition to Australia’s government on behalf of DMD sufferers. “The Most Powerful Arm Ever Invented” is the robot arm for those who can’t physically provide a signature.

ClientSave Our Sons

MeMber CoMpanyreactive.com

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Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) affects 1 in 3,500 children (99% male) and causes a progressive deterioration of muscle leading to a loss of movement, immobilization and eventually premature death.

Reactive’s aim was to start a petition that got the Australian government to create a policy on DMD and to also match the money raised by the DMD charity “Save Our Sons.”

The agency’s strategy was threefold: first, to use an innovative technology that turns signing the petition into an experience; second, to make it visually attractive to attract mainstream media; and third, to add a strong social media component that allows supporters to spread the message.

The Most Powerful Arm became the first robot ever whose writing was entirely driven by Facebook. Facebook Connect was then also utilized to authenticate signatures and track analytics.

The Most Powerful Arm streamed live video of the robot signing a signature and was connected to Facebook so that a photo of that signature was automatically shared on the supporter’s Facebook timeline, furthering attention to the cause and encouraging others to join in support.

To make the arm even more powerful, the robot was given handwriting based upon the writing from the last item Jacob Lancaster, the face of the campaign, ever wrote — a Mother’s Day card.

Within ten days, The Most Powerful Arm cleared the threshold for the number of signatures needed to be brought before the Australian government. Media attention generated over 32,000 signatures and a spate of donations to the cause. The petition was brought before the Australian Parliament on June 18, 2013.

LYNX Apollo

The new global LYNX Apollo campaign gives four Australians the chance to travel to the LYNX Space Academy in Florida, where they will compete for a seat on the LYNX SXC Space Shuttle, set to blast into space in 2014. To help them get there, Soap Creative developed a multi-platform LYNX Lunar Racer campaign.

The campaign invites budding astronauts to put their moon buggy driving skills to the test, with the LYNX Lunar Racer game. It comes with four epic vehicles and

ClientLYNX

MeMber CoMpanysoapcreative.com

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nine space zones to explore and race across.

The 3D game is playable across desktop, iOS and Android and is available for free on the App Store.

Soap Creative also collaborated with Evolution Motorsport to build a real-life, fully functional LYNX Lunar Racer. It embarked on a tour of Australia, and was spotted in King’s Cross and on the iconic Sydney Harbor Bridge. The LYNX Lunar racer is capable of 0-100km in 6.5 seconds. It also has a wi-fi hotspot satellite dish to enable budding astronauts to download the mobile game from sampling events.

The mobile game was downloaded 118,000 times for iOS and Android, and reached #2 in Racing and #8 Games in the Australian App Store. The average game session time was more than 23 minutes, and the game was played over 1 million times in the first month alone. The new global LYNX Apollo campaign also experienced 200,000 video content views and 210,000 visits to the Lynx Apollo site.

IZOD IndyCar Series

INDYCAR is the pinnacle of open-wheel motor racing in North America. The racing series captures the attention of race fans worldwide with a rich history of almost 100 years with world-class drivers from around the globe and its crown jewel — the Indianapolis 500.

The existing IndyCar.com site had been the main online point of contact for INDYCAR fans. At the time proposals were requested for this project, the site had over 10 million unique visitors each year with News, Schedule and Drivers being the top visited areas of the site.

ClientIZOD IndyCar Series

MeMber CoMpanyterralever.com

proJeCtVisit Here

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For the 2012 season, INDYCAR introduced a brand new car and engine to the Series, making the sport much more technologically advanced. With technology advancements on the track, they decided the same was needed for their website that would connect with a new generation of racing fans. The goals and objectives of the new website centered on informing, educating and communicating with user personas.

Terralever recommended a two-tier approach that started with an “engagement strategy” focused on creating a captivating experience that would drive deeper engagement. The second was an “attraction strategy” to pull in new fans by providing a clear roadmap to content.

The new homepage provides much greater visibility to video content by integrating the YouTube API with custom JavaScript coding — allowing video in the carousel at the top of the page. Pages were equipped with custom Open Graph tagged Facebook “Like” and Twitter “Tweet” buttons so fans can share the whole INDYCAR site or a specific article to their social community, which in turn exponentially multiplies the organic reach of the new INDYCAR site.

A custom next/past race detail widget was built into the homepage to provide fans with quick access to pertinent race documentation and a snapshot of the past race’s results. Schedule pages were designed to keep the next race on the schedule at the top of the page, and allowed for content to have a pre and post state so only the most current and relevant information would be provided to fans.

The brand went from 0 to 18MM impressions on Facebook. 32% of traffic on the new Indycar.com site came from new visitors, plus there was a 3.5% increase in time spent on the site and a 16% drop in bounce rates.

Design Book

A luxury jet aircraft showroom experience rendered on an iPad.

Legendary aircraft manufacturer Gulfstream wanted to transform their jet sales process into an ultra-high end, digital design experience. Gulfstream’s goal was to bring the luxury jet showroom experience to life in a completely mobile, intuitively customizable and eminently compelling digital experience. Zemoga delivered on the challenge by creating DESIGN BOOK, a native iPad application optimized for Gulfstream’s Design and Sales teams. DESIGN BOOK empowers the sales team to configure aircraft options in rich,

ClientGulfstream

MeMber CoMpanyzemoga.com

VideoWatch Here

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photorealistic 3D views. Customized jet interiors and exteriors come alive in real time, visualized as first person gyroscopic walkthroughs. With Zemoga’s help, Gulfstream exceeded their expectations to reach the height of digital perfection.

The application debuted at NBAA, the trade show for jetsetters, to overwhelming praise and delight. Hailed by Tray Crow, Gulfstream’s director of interior design, as a powerful sales tool due to its ability “...to show clients their vision, real time, right in front of them.”

SoDA serves as a network and voice for entrepreneurs and innovators around the globe who are creating the future of marketing and digital experiences.

A Society is Founded Miami, March 2007: 13 leading digital agency CEOs decided to meet up and have a talk about where our industry was headed. New friends were made, business problems and solutions were shared, and a society was formed. We were on a mission to advance this industry we all felt so passionate about. We made it official at SXSW in March 2008 and welcomed our founding partner, Adobe.

What SoDA is SoDA is an international association of respected digital marketing leaders and entrepreneurs with a history and a vision for the future of marketing. SoDA remains an extremely selective association of the world’s most preeminent companies with digital DNA. Membership includes 70 leading digital agencies and elite production companies with offices in 22 countries on five continents.

SoDA provides leadership, platforms, infrastructure, processes, and products to enable collaboration between members around education, best practices and advocacy. SoDA’s Peer Collaboration Group Program, launched in 2011, now includes over 600 thought

leaders from member companies sharing knowledge and best practices across 15 different disciplines. Click here to see the SoDA reel.

SoDA Board of DirectorsTony Quin, IQ, Board ChairmanNancy Daum, Pereira & O’DellStuart Eccles, Made by ManyDJ Edgerton, ZemogaRebecca Flavin, Effective UISteve Glauberman, EnlightenAndrew Howlett, RainJoe Olsen, Phenomblue Matheus Barros, CUBOCC, Alternate

SoDA StaffChris Buettner, Executive DirectorKendyll Picard, Operations and Events ManagerNatalie Smith, Associate Operations ManagerUfuoma Ogaga, Finance and HR Samantha Lynch, Production Designer Via Tendon, Peer Collaboration Group Manager Lior Vexler, Social Media Manager David Hartvigsen, Developer

SoDA Contact Information: communications@sodaspeaks.comwww.sodaspeaks.com

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