Spring Creek Blog

Congratulations: Jim Copacino

Jim1 226x300 Congratulations: Jim Copacino Social Media photo

Tonight’s the night for the Annual Seattle ADDY Awards bash! We are looking forward to spending quality time with our agency friends and partners. If you haven’t heard of the ADDY awards, and are curious check them out here.

We are especially excited to congratulate our friend Jim Copacino of Copacino + Fujikado for receiving this year’s lifetime achievement award. Lifetime achievement is a pretty good description of the effort, time and passion Jim has brought to the advertising industry and Seattle brands.  He started his career in New York more than 35 years ago and has been leading campaigns with his own agency for more than twelve.  If you are lucky enough to know Jim, he is also an incredibly generous guy. Congratulations!

Hope to see you tonight at the bash!

YouTube Rolls Out Site-wide Video Captioning

The previously announced auto-captioning beta on YouTube has finally gotten a site-wide roll out, but it’s still only available for English speaking countries.  Although an extremely useful tool in theory, the results have been less-than-impressive for many users.

Voice recognition software has always gotten a bum rap from the beginning and no one has been able to get it quite right – though, not without a lack of trying.  Even though Google’s technology is some of the best we’ve seen, it can’t escape the inevitable mistakes that plague voice recognition services.  Engadget turned its critical eye on some of the more hilarious auto-captioning results:

03 08 10appleyoutube1 YouTube Rolls Out Site wide Video Captioning Social Media photo

Of course Google understands it’s not perfect and most users have come to expect a tolerable amount of error. YouTube offers the following caveats in their latest blog post:

  • While we plan to broaden the feature to include more languages in the months to come, currently, auto-captioning is only for videos where English is spoken.
  • Just like any speech recognition application, auto-captions require a clearly spoken audio track. Videos with background noise or a muffled voice can’t be auto-captioned. President Obama’s speech on the recent Chilean Earthquake is a good example of the kind of audio that works for auto-captions.
  • Auto-captions aren’t perfect and just like any other transcription, the owner of the video needs to check to make sure they’re accurate. In other cases, the audio file may not be good enough to generate auto-captions. But please be patient — our speech recognition technology gets better every day.
  • Auto-captions should be available to everyone who’s interested in using them. We’re also working to provide auto-captions for all past user uploads that fit the above mentioned requirements. If you’re having trouble enabling them for your video, please visit our Help Center: this article is for uploaders and this article is for viewers.

For users and companies with a massive backlog of un-captioned video content, this tool is an invaluable head start in the race to make their content accessible to everyone.  It’s far from a turnkey solution and requires users to manually submit their video for captioning, then perform a secondary quality check that can sometimes be daunting, and finally do a manual language conversion for non-English captions.  However, given the alternative, YouTube has made everyone’s jobs a hell of a lot easier.  Spending the time updating your video’s captions now could pay huge dividends down the road as Google starts properly indexing video content.

Pete Carroll on “How to Run a Social Media Program”

It’s not often that you get the chance to sit down with a two-time NCAA National Champion, and current NFL coach, to talk 1-on-1 about business and strategy.  And sadly, this was not one of those times.  But I did get to share a room with 300 other people to listen to the new chief Seahawk, Pete Carroll, share some wisdom and philosophy about business and coaching.

Carroll’s presentation was not actually entitled, “How to Run a Social Media Campaign.”  But with 400,000 Twitter followers, he could probably run an entire event on the matter if he so wished.  He spoke about general leadership and business philosophies, but when you peel away the adjectives, they are also extremely sound strategies for a social media program as well.  In honor of the 12th man, here are 12 philosophies I walked away with (and which will likely soon in up in one of our presentation decks).

(Quotes are paraphrases of Carroll’s speech, not necessarily direct quotes.)

1)      “I wasn’t ready to be a head coach when I ran the Jets.  So it was a mistake to get involved.  But when I finally figured it out and was ready for the next role, I knew exactly what I needed to do, and what it would take to put it together.” Social media translation – If you don’t know what you are doing, don’t rush in.  Figure out what you need to do, and what it will take to get there.  Write everything down, start your program and make refinements along the way.  But know what the goals are, and what pieces you need to make them happen.

2)      “Look forward to the challenges ahead of you, rather than worry about them.” – If you’ve built out a solid plan, you can anticipate where there may be hurdles. When you are prepared and ready to face difficulties, whether they are organizational, technical, or content centric, you are in the proper mindset to find the right solutions in an efficient manner.

3)      “We all win sometimes.  But if you want to win forever, you figure out why you are winning.” –It’s not just that anyone can get lucky, it’s that everyone will get lucky at some point.  If you rest on a few wins without figuring out what exactly got you that bump in traffic or spike in friends, you’ll only be successful until the next company (possibly a competitor) gets their stroke of luck.

4)      “Winners battle for a competitive edge in everything they do.  Find those who want to do things better than other people, and you all will achieve greater things. Fight, scratch and claw to find a better way.” –Don’t just pick an employee or agency because they are convenient or easy.  Pick those with drive and passion to be better than others, and your campaigns will reflect that more so than someone who just wants to get a check.  Simply doing something because, ‘it’s how we’re used to doing it’ is not acceptable for a social media or marketing program.  Do what it takes to make something special happen.

5)      “Accomplishment is one thing, but it’s more important to understand how someone feels about that accomplishment.” –A line on a resume or a completed project only gets you so far.  Understanding whether the person thinks they could have done better, and how they’d do it over, is a better predictor of who is going to execute a quality campaign for you, and how your campaign is going to evolve over time.

6)      “Find the folks that other people are listening to.  Make an impact on them first, then the rest is easier.” –Identify your influencers.  But don’t try to sell them garbage.  Carroll used the word “impact” which is key.  Be “impactful” to those who matter the most, and you’ll get their support.

7)      “3 or 4 people in a crowd out of 15,000 can change a community.” –Carroll’s program to fight gang violence had a monetary return.  It cost about $100k to support each of these 3 or 4 influencers.  Each gang-related death costs the city $1 Million in legal fees.  So for every death Carroll’s group prevents, the city avoids having to pay out $1 Million.  Social media may not lead to direct sales, but can you determine if it is preventing additional costs on expensive PR efforts later?

8)      “Do things better than anyone else has ever done before, in all the things you choose to do.” — You don’t have to do everything, but if you are going to do it, don’t just do it well, shoot to do it better than everyone else. Basically, “mediocrity” not “failure” is the enemy of “excellence.”

9)      “Know your philosophy.  If you can’t articulate your own philosophy in 25 words or less, how do you expect anyone who works for you or around you to explain it to others?” –Your social media program needs a vision and a voice, and it needs to be articulated to everyone in your company.

10)    “John Wooden had his own way of doing things that were unique.  He could draw on people from all walks of life, because they could all focus on his unique way.” –Your brand needs its own unique identity, philosophy and vision if you want people to be drawn to it.  If you do things out of a standardized process or playbook, you only cater to those people who agree with that playbook.  If you do your own thing, you can draw everyone who believes in the vision.

11)    “Empower yourself to do everything you can do, in the areas you control.  Don’t worry about the things you can’t.” –Don’t stress about whether people will say something negative.  You control the product you develop, the price you sell it for, and the way you promote it.  You control how you respond to your customers and how you cater to their needs.  Focus on that, and don’t waste energy on the other stuff.

12)   “Evaluate, Address areas of concern, and fill the holes.”  –This goes to the Spring Creek Group philosophy of 1) Analyze Data, 2) Develop a Strategic Plan, and 3) Engage the Community.  Take a good hard look at what you have, figure out the best course of action, and then be relentless in fulfilling those needs.

You can follow Carroll on Twitter at @PeteCarroll.  Also, a full-length video of his speech can be found on the Seahawks Web site.

Location Based Marketing Gets Textually Active

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While the talk of the town is still social media (even if it’s a day late and more than a dollar short for some), creating a seamless experience with brands is quickly becoming the focus of many an internal marketing team. In Andy Boyer’s last post he took a look at the tide of users logging into the Facebook environment on their mobile devices (HINT: It’s a big, big number). Here, I’m looking at the recent launch of location-based mobile marketing campaigns and seeing how they tie in to larger campaigns.

If you’re keeping up with the news, you’ve probably seen the story from location-based marketer Placecast (owned and developed by 1020 Inc.) which is working with the likes of Sonic, American Eagle Outfitters, and REI to integrate their ShopAlerts application into their wider marketing campaigns. The North Face Inc. also just launched a campaign to drive foot traffic to their brick and mortar stores in New York, Boston, San Francisco and here in Seattle.

As more and more companies are looking at social media and other new tech-propelled forms of reaching targets many are making the OR mistake and only putting one horse in the race. Where companies small and large are making a splash is in creating a seamless brand experience by using traditional, social, and mobile media to reach their brand loyalists where they are and in a way that resonates with them. Here’s a look at a couple brands doing this well:

American Eagle Outfitters

AE, a lifestyle clothing brand is aimed at college-age men and women, is always working to keep up with current marketing trends. Their presence in the social media world is anchored by a strong presence in Facebook and Twitter, but by adding a text-based element they are able to bring customers through the doors.

Blog2 Location Based Marketing Gets Textually Active Social Media photo

The North Face

As one of the leaders in advanced outdoor gear, The North Face operates at the higher-end of the retail spectrum and has a varying array of customers from advanced mountaineers to sporty urbanites. Their presence in social media plays well with their changing Web presence and reflects the current campaign pushes of the time. However, The North Face, along with Placecast, just launched a mobile location-based text campaign meant to draw already interested brand loyalists into their stores for even more gear.

Blog3 300x216 Location Based Marketing Gets Textually Active Social Media photo

In addition to their text campaign with Placecast, The North Face recently launched an iPhone application aimed at providing snow conditions for those headed to the mountains called The North Face Snow Report.

But, Where are the Numbers?

Oh, we’ve got numbers for you. Participants who opted into receiving updates from several major retailers including Sonic, American Eagle Outfitters and REI had this to say:

  • 60% said that they found the lociation-triggered messages to be cool and innovative
  • 79% said it increased their likelihood to visit a store
  • 65% made a purchase as a result of a ShopAlerts message
  • 73% said they would definitely or probably use the service in the future

From those numbers you can see the power of opt-in services that are delivering right-sized messaging at the correct targets. The users are already connected with the brands and are receiving information that they’ve already deemed “worthy.” It’s not like having a person stand on the corner handing out fliers for your store to every passersby – it’s targeted.

So, as we continue to move further into the world where marketing truly can reach anyone, anywhere (given, of course that the technological infrastructure is there), I think it’s important to realize that no new technology or tactic is the silver bullet. It’s not traditional advertising or social media. It’s not in-store or mobile – the list goes on. Speaking of that list of location-based services, looks like it’s about to get one name longer very soon.  It’s about creating the seamless experience for users from store to online store to community to mobile that builds brand loyalty and gives back in the end.

Join Our Growing Team: Engagement Leads Needed

recruitment Join Our Growing Team: Engagement Leads Needed Social Media photo

Spring Creek Group is looking to add a few Social Media Engagement Leads to our team.

Ideal candidates will have 1-3 years experience, with some functional experience in online marketing.  More importantly, you love Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and some social networks that most people have not heard of.  You are also fascinated by the business side of Social Media, quickly evaluate opportunities, converse fluently in the online world, and understand how this channel fits into a larger marketing campaign.

This job is perfect for people who have built large or small blogs and/or web sites and tried to get them a larger audience. You see potential in this industry, and want to get in early.  And, you are looking for a new job where you get to work with a team of like-minded, hungry, entrepreneurial types, to build large and small social media campaigns for major corporations and underfunded start-ups.

Salary Range: $32,000 – $36,000/year

Please send your resume, but also send along links where we can see your skills.  Please reply to jobs@springcreekgroup.com.

What Channel is Your Phone Turned To?

There was a time when you used your remote to change the channel.  Now more and more often, the remote and channel are the same device.

Pew Research released a report that claims 33 percent of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.  So we’ve finally figured out what the people who aren’t Facebooking or texting are doing with their phones – they’re reading the New York Times or Perez Hilton.

The Pew report discusses, “two significant technological trends that have influenced news consumption behavior: First, the advent of social media like social networking sites and blogs has helped the news become a social experience in fresh ways for consumers. People use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess and react to news. Second, the ascent of mobile connectivity via smart phones has turned news gathering and news awareness into an anytime, anywhere affair for a segment of avid news watchers.”

pew1 What Channel is Your Phone Turned To? Social Media photo

Younger cell phone owners are more likely to look for news on their phones than from Katie Couric. In fact, according to the report, about 43 percent of those under 50 said they are mobile news consumers.  And social media plays a big part, as more than 80 percent of respondents get or receive news via e-mailed links.  But as Breitbart points out in their analysis of the report, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  People’s #1 one concern is still the weather (72 percent), followed by current events (68 percent).

John Cook from Seattle’s own TechFlash found it worthwhile to mention that, “The authors of the study write that news has become omnipresent and people’s relationship to news is becoming portable, personalized and participatory.”

I think John is right when he focuses on the fact that news (and other information) is omnipresent.  The “news cycle,” so to speak, is no longer valid.  The classic product launch is a thing of the past.  Making a big splash with a marketing or ad campaign is not effective unless there is credibility in the claim, and you can prove that the message is sustainable over time.  There’s an effect in which every marketing action has an equal and opposite reaction.  The more you promise, the more upset the crowd will be if you don’t deliver.

So how is this affecting the way news is being delivered?

“In one way it’s uplifting that over 60 percent of people using their phones for news are logging on to check current events. That goes against the passive news consumer we’ve heard about in TV for years,” says Cale Ramaker, an anchor at WOFL-TV in Orlando.  “On the other hand it means all news outlets, in any median, need to refocus on not only delivering the news in multi-formats – but do it with an emphasis for the right now consumer.”

Cale’s point is valid.  We now have more sources of information, more editors of the information, but also more opportunities to make critical decisions on whether the information is tainted.  And seventy two percent of the survey’s respondents said that “most news sources today are biased in their coverage.” If the “objective” sources are biased, then the marketing sources are unbelievably easy to see through.

So at the end of the day, information continues to flow, and people can find it whenever and wherever they are.  In fact, even if a marketing team lands an article with Kara Swisher, we may not read it there.  We may get it via a friend’s Facebook post or Tweet while waiting for the bus.

We’re Getting in Shape Tomorrow at PR+Mktg Boot Camp

You don’t often hear the terms “Boot Camp” and “Library” in the same sentence.  For that reason alone, we would have decided to take part and be a panel moderator at tomorrow’s big PR and Marketing Event.  But when we found out some of our favorite people, including Betsy Aoki (@bing), Elliot Pesut (@alaskaair), Shauna Causey (@ShaunaCausey), Rod Brooks (@NW_Mktg_Guy), Ben Straley (@meteorsolutions), Scott Porad (@scottporad), not to mention too many others to list (about 40 overall) will be there as well, we had to sign up.

So come see Clay talk about Measurement and Analytics tools, and come say hi to Grant and I as we walk around soaking up knowledge.  Hope to see you all there tomorrow.

Twitter Gives Seattle-area Tool CrowdEye the Firehose

CPW 039 edited small Twitter Gives Seattle area Tool CrowdEye the Firehose Social Media photo

When Twitter announced they’d be giving basically unfettered access to their data stream to a select number of companies, you can bet that local player CrowdEye got a bit giddy.

When we first checked in on CrowdEye back in June, they were just getting started, but already were showing value in the realm of real-time Twitter search. Now, over half a year later, CrowdEye is about to get more data thrown at them than they probably could have imagined – and they join an elite group in doing so.

To clarify, Twitter puts the number of applications accessing their rate-limited, freely available offerings at more than 50,000. Today, CrowdEye joins Ellerdale, Collecta, Kosmix, Scoopler, twazzup and Chainn Search (not launched) as the newest batch of partners to gain access to the holy grail of Twitterdom – the Firehose.

We’ll be watching these inventive partners in the near future and can’t wait to see what they do with the data.

Learn more about the image used in this story here.

Windows 7 Launch Rides the Wave of Social Engagement

Win7cs 231x300 Windows 7 Launch Rides the Wave of Social Engagement Social Media photo

When you’re Microsoft drumming up buzz about your biggest product launch in recent history isn’t all that hard. The challenge, even to one of the largest, most-known brands in the world comes when you look at that buzz and decide what to do with it. In this latest case, the Windows 7 OS launch, Microsoft and the Windows team linked their goals of creating awareness with new consumers, engaging existing consumers, and building advocacy and empowering champions by monitoring and engaging in the online communities where today’s consumers live out their lives: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and forums specifically.

Laying the Groundwork

While the excitement around the campaign drove large quantities of engagements, the Windows Team was out for months before launch, building support and creating lines of communication in the communities. The study lends weight to the practice by noting that the Windows Outreach Team was able to scale to fit needs during the natural product lifecycle.

Through the LookingGlass

With the addition of Microsoft’s own tool, LookingGlass, the group was able to not only monitor volume and sentiment around the launch, but also create an information loop as the chunks of info from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, and forums were streamed to their tool for all to see on their Social Media Hub. For the first time during a major product launch, Microsoft fans and critics alike had a near real-time look at the information their fellow Web colleagues were discussing and were able to jump into the conversation themselves.

The Case Study

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Windows7 Social Media Case Study

View more documents from martyc.

Wrapping Up

For more information, visit Marty Collins’ blog – Marketing Today.

*Full Disclosure: Microsoft Corporation is a client of Spring Creek Group

I Didn’t Write This, My Personabot Did

Image of sims party with text overlay - personabot party

Last night’s SMC Seattle event at Swedish was one for the history books, or one for the future books, depending on how you look at things. The social media Twitterati were out in force, yet again, to sell out another SMC Seattle event which featured Gartner analyst Adam Sarner. Sarner’s talk focused on how the Web will look in the future as it relates to CRM – definitely an intriguing topic given the crowd on hand.

Basing the majority of his talk on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Sarner wove a tale of a Web-filled future where Personabots (automated, personality infused, self-learning, self-replicating, virtual representatives that will be used as a tool for facilitating life events) do our bidding in the virtual world, thus enhancing our actual lives in the meat space. Sound a little like the Matrix? My favorite example was a person sending out 10,000 Personabots on 10,000 speed dates to find women that the man would be compatible with.  Sign me up— that’ll cut my bar tabs significantly.

If you can get past the actual thought of thousands of Rons running around the virtual world, the leap to a future where online personas become testing and learning grounds for not only how we as humans live, but how businesses and brands interact in that future environment the possibilities open right up. Sarner spoke a bit about how brands would interact with Personabots in these virtual environments and take on characteristics of those Personabots they come in contact with by using the example of someone noticing a tennis racket in the back of someone’s car and using that as a conversation starter. Much in the same way, Sarner sees these virtual brand ambassadors taking stock of traits, likes, and dislikes in Personabots and using those characteristics to communicate in the virtual world. When you think about it, it’s basically what Facebook is doing when serving you ads already except it’s you, not your Personabot who sees the ads.

We try not to make wide-sweeping generalizations about what we think the future of computing and the Web will look like (we’ll leave that to Gartner), but you can bet we’re pretty excited to send our Personabots out into the wild virtual world to go skydiving.

Also, for those of you born in at Swedish (or have had a child there), you can join the Swedish Facebook page just for you: http://www.facebook.com/swedishbabies. Our very own Aaron Graham is a Swedish baby, so you’ll soon see him sporting his t-shirt.

Again, and we can’t say it enough, a big thanks to the SMC Board and Swedish for making this happen.  After getting a chance to try out the Da Vinci robot, we’re trying to write a business case for buying one for the SCG offices. We’ll let you know how that goes.

For a snark-free look at the talk, check out Veronica Sopher’s post Jeramy Rich’s post on the SMC Seattle site.

AG vogues

Local company PM Photobooth was on hand to take wacky pictures – Aaron obliged.

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