Fionn Downhill – Digital Shenanigans

I just returned from a business  trip to the UK.  It was interesting to see how the recession has affected the UK and certainly my impression from everybody I talked to particularly home owners is that they have not been as adversely affected as the US well certainly not Arizona in any case.  My home is now worth 2 and sixpence not quite what I expected after 10 years in the same place. 

Anyways on to the good stuff.  The trip started very well with a great trip in Business class out of Phoenix to Heathrow.  Terminal 5 is a tranquil place and not yet suffering from the mayhem I was used to in the other terminals.   I had a wonderful time in London and completely lucked out with the Indian summer.  Seven full days in the UK  and not a drop of rain.  Visited some great restaurants and of course Harrods food Hall which is still one of the best in the world.  I travelled to Berwick on business which is a few minutes from the Scottish border.  I had the privilege of staying in this beautiful Berwick Holiday home.  This is a fully restored and modernized country home and I was fortunate enough to stay as the guest of our friends at swiftrank.  We travelled across the border to Scotland a full 10 minute journey to have dinner one evening and ate at a simple Scottish pub called the Cross Inn a perfect example of how good home cooked food can still be the very best option.  When they first told me the salmon was farmed I looked concerned and almost did not have it thinking of the farmed salmon in the US full of red dye and waiting to poison you on every bite.  I relented and they are definitely kinder to the salmon on the farms in Scotland as it was delicious added to the homemade soup and desert it was a truly great meal.  If you are ever in Berwick I strongly recommend this great pub and restaurant.  You can see more details here on Berwick Restaurants.co.uk.

I was truly shocked at how expensive British Rail was 262 pounds round trip to the North of England for a three hour journey.  How can they justify that?.  The trains did arrive on time though and I was very pleasantly surprised to get on a train with free wi-fi and electric power so no running out of battery. Not the British Rail I remember from my old days as a British rail commuter in the UK but I digress.  I have posted a picture of me with two of my beloved nieces outside a phone box in London.  I thought these phone boxes were now part of history but was pleasantly surprised to find this one in full working order in the City of London.

I was heartbroken to hear from British Airways that effective October they will no longer allow 2 bags per person just 1 at 23 kilos.  How on earth am I going to bring back 40 lbs of chocolate and 1000 tea bags now?

They still have some red phone boxes in London

People ask me all the time Fionn “what has changed in SEO”? and I answer with “not a lot”. The tactics for good SEO have not changed but what has changed are the assets you can SEO. You still have web pages and your still need a great website with good code, and on and off page optimization. However, now the top 10 is no longer about web pages and you see video, images, press releases and so on in the results. This is where SEO has changed you need to optimize all your digital assets to ensure you cover all the channels in Universal Search. I start all presentations on Universal Search covering the basics of SEO as you need to follow the same best practices to optimize all your assets and do the same research for your target audience.

This presentation covers the basics and gives good cost effective tips on how to create digital assets to ensure you get your piece of the action.

On Sunday my daughters and I were driving down Scottsdale Road when we noticed a store called Sprinkles Cupcakes.  My youngest daughter the ultimate princess decided we simply had to check it out.  I must admit I was fascinated too and intrigued that a store could just sell cupcakes.  We parked up and entered the store to find that indeed the store only sold cupcakes.  Needless to say to complete our research we decided we needed to try some.  We handled over our $7 for two of the delightful looking treats.  We rushed home to try these special cupcakes to find that well they tasted just like CUPCAKES!! Except a little on the sweet side.

I found it fascinating that the store was packed and the rest of Scottsdale Road deserted.  I find it hard to believe that a store could survive just selling cupcakes in any economy but in this economy mind boggling.  Apparently this is a Hollywood Phenomenon enough said!!

Our Company has been providing Online Reputation Management Services for a number of years.  It still never ceases to amaze me how little work is still done in this field by PR agencies and corporate communication departments.  The following is a video which describes Online Reputation Management and how we do it.  You can also see a presentation of a case study on my slideshare channel.

You can also download our whitepaper on Online Reputation Management here

The US open Tennis tournament kicks off tomorrow.   A highlight of the Tournament is Arthur Ashe Kids Day  which took place today the 29thof August with a star studded line up.  From Jordin Sparks to Andy Roddick  the event took place in a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium full of families and children.

My money is on Federer again!..If you are watching it from home this year you could be there next year if you win the Tennis Channel’s sweepstakes to the US Open 2010.  You can enter here.

One of my favorite sessions at the C-level track in San Jose was “The view from the CMO’s office”.  This very lively panel (panels with Kevin Ryan are always lively) gave some great insights into why the CMO doesn’t get the SEO.  Liz Miller – Vice President of the CMO council was an excellent panelist.  She gave some really good down to earth advice and was very funny when she referred to us as the ‘nerd herd’The panel closed with all panelists giving sound advice  to the SEO’s on how to work better with the CMO.

1. Passion is good but save it until you know them better.  Do not over do it. Educate first before showing your passion.
2. Crazy is bad (although I do not know why Kevin would say that!!).
3. Do not get personal.  Its none of your business that they water ski that is their hobby.  Liz said it creeps her out when people get right into personal conversations.  Despite the wealth of information available out there about anybody on the web do not act like a stalker.
4. Always come prepared with a business case, do your research into the company and try to have a pre-presentation call to hear the pain points and address them in the presentation.
5. Ask yourself, “If I was presented with this proposal would I walk into the CFO’s office and ask for money” Remember that is often what the CMO has to do make sure they have a strong case.
6. Do not be generic be specific, More web traffic is good will not work, but more web traffic from these search terms will increase your traffic by X and based on  the current conversion rate the percentage conversion will result in X # of $’s will help.
7. Find the pain points ask and listen.
8. Customer references are critical.

A Great session and another great SES San Jose.  There is a rumor that it is moving to San Francisco next year now count me in…

On a recent trip to Oklahoma City I had the pleasure of meeting once again with my friend and colleague from PRSA Mary Myrick.  As President of Public Strategies, Inc Mary is a busy lady and a lot of fun to be around.  When I met with Mary at the PRSA Councillors Academy in Palm Springs she was on her way to L.A. to purchase a smart car.  With true Mary Myrick style Mary chose a bright green car needless to say I am impressed with her choice of color.  The lovely little car made its way back to Oklahoma City and I had the pleasure of seeing it when I visited.  You can see the now award winning green (very appropriate) vehicle on Mary’s blog.  The car is called Bev although Mary did not share with me how the name got chosen.

These very cute and very fuel efficient cars have been available in Europe for some time and my children were fascinated by them when we visited England.  despite being very environmentally conscious  I would not drive one in Phoenix.  The idea of going on the Freeway with the SUV’s in one of these cars is about as desirable to me as becoming the next governor of Alaska.

This video by Matt Cutts gives good advice on chosing an SEO. Now why cant Matt say “but Elixir are the best” I should never have called him Sinead O’Connor at SES. You can see my post realated to hiring a SEO consutant here

On Tuesday I moderated a panel titled Integration the New CMO Imperative at SES San Jose.  The panelists were,Jessica Kornacki, Vice President of Marketing, Endless Vacation Rentals by Wyndham Worldwide, Sam Decker, Chief Marketing Officer, Bazaarvoice, Inc., Gary F. Spangler, Corporate E-Marketing, DuPont.  The session was an  excellent insight into the client side of online marketing implementation and the challenges they face taking the brand outside of the borders of the website.  The rewards are great and Jessica Kornacki from Endless Vacation Rentals presented a great social media case study they ran this year called Your Fat Chance.   Endless Vacation Rentals works with search aagency iProspect who recently took top awards in Forrester Wave for search marketing agencies themselves. 

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessica after the session and you can see our interview here:

Following an introduction from Bill Hunt to the CMO track the First session of the CMO Track at SES has Brian FetherstonhaughCEO of Ogilvy One worldwide keynoting.  Brian has 30 years of experience in marketing and in his role at Ogilvy deals with CMO’s of some of the largest organizations in the world daily.  According to Brian the marketing Agenda of the entire world is in the hands of about 1000 CMO’s.  Given this statistic it is no wonder we are still only seeing 10% of  the spend online.  The search marketing industry has done a horrible job of communicating the value of search to this elite group of budget holders.  Until we find a new way to communicate to this group we will stay on the peripheral of marketing. 

Brian gave a great example of the  13 year old having a better performance dashboard on his video game than the average  CMO.  Raised onthe 4P’s and still being taught in schools Product, Place, Price, Promotion Brian offers another alternative  as the new fundamentals of marketing.  The 4 E’s Experience, Everyplace, Exchange, Evangelism.  Brian uses Apple as a good example of the 4E’s.  There is one gap in the Apple process and that is service and repair.  Brian goes on to  use the Dove real beauty campaign as an example of a very effective campaing very notable because the media budget was zero.  Brian then showed a very funny parody video of the evolution of the man worth checking out.   With 500 million views of the Dove campaign for free Dove decided they could live with the parody.  Brian talked about the Obama campaign and one aspect of the campaign the use of performance metrics which has been somewhat overlooked when the campaign is discussed.  IBM is a company to watch for the 4E’s style marketing.  Their smarter planet campaign is excellent. 

Brian then went on to talk about the role of search in marketing going forward.  The search mind share of the CMO is probably 1.5% maybe 2.0% but its very small.  There is a space in the CMO’s mind for Marketing ROI, there is a large space for Job Security, may be as high as 15%,  marketing organization, Global and Matrix,  and marketing communications.  The CMO’s mind is very busy.  Approx 15% of the CMO’s time is taken up with digital and only half that is search. 

Brian proposed 3 options

1. Whine that they don’t get it
2. Wait until they die
3. Or do something about it

5 ways to move up the CMO Agenda:

1. Do not start by talking about search start with the customer journey.  Talk about trigger and research and how it can help them beat their competitors.
2. Search=Research – This is how you will get the attention of the CMO. It is vital to their role and decision making.  Speak to search in the the language of the customer, Real-time, global+massive scale.
3. More lift, less attack.  Search is better than t.v, e-mail, print is the search marketers mantra.  Marketers start withsearch to beat up on the other media.  Do not do this, make them bigger, prove the lift Effects of Search on  Television, Direct Mail and e-Mail, Print, Telemarketing and customer service, Face to face/retail, Social Media, Sponsorships.   They really care about the impact of search on brand.
4. Search can help CMO extend power.  Global search governance can reduce inefficiency + duplication, Bring $ value to to business units, Create a global best practice.
5. Search + Innovation, Innovation is very important to the CMO while maintaining ROI.  Ogilvy has digital labs in 4 countries, addressing such sisues and Mobile, Social Media, LBS and local, Digital POS. 

Question: Are the 4′E’s a subset of the 4 P’s, from a marketer in the audience.  Feels the 4 P’s are still valid.

Answer: The 4 P’s  are a subset of the 4 E’s they are needed but are not sufficient.  There is a need for a re-interpretation of the the 4 P’s. 

Question:  How do you sell consulting to the CMO’s into a bigger engagement that is not just performance metrics.

Answer: These are big decisions for the CMO.  Choose an enlightened and empowered CMO first.  Put your best people on the job who have been trained to communicate with the CMO.  Pick a place you have a good shot.

Question:  Expand on the CMO side on what they expect from an ROI

Answer:  Devote more to the R&D and impact on sales.   clicks and conversion data will not sell search to the CMO.  Lifetime value is very important.

Excellent presentation with the message that we as search marketers need to hear to help us communicate with and speak the language of the CMO.  After all they have the budgets we  want a greater portion of to improve that 10% spend online statistic.