1.
"Being Digital": Five key tactics
for modernizing your organization and ideas
MNAMA @ Fallon
Thursday June 24, 2010

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Hi. I'm Aki Spicer.
Director of Digital Strategy
Veteran Planning Director
Blogger
Author
User
Co-Founding "Officer of Good" for Planning For Good
Forging standards and practices for social media analytics
Bringing planning into the age of participation

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So, what’s a "Digital Strategist?"

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Simply: bringing grounded creativity to
technological opportunity.
Computer Artistes Code Monkeys
User Insights
Big Picture Integration
Social
Content Strategy
Web Entertainment Transactions
(ideas, not solutions) Mobile and Everyware (efficiency, not ideas)
Tools and Apps
Data Analytics
Innovation Pipeline

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I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned about
adapting marketing strategies and creativity in the
face of new technology.
The importance of embracing uncertainty and cultivating a start-up
mentality within your own organization
Steps that can spark 360° marketing thinking and integration
How to "sell" experimentation–low risk starting points that help
create buy-in for the longer-range strategy
Sounds hard, huh? I want to share some easy ways in…

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What we'll discuss: Five key tactics for modernizing
your organization and ideas.
1. Follow User Insights
2. Free the Geeks (in you)
3. Build R&D Labs
4. Outline the Engagement Opportunity
5. Get Post-Digital

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Nicholas Negroponte made some landmark
predictions back in 1995.
Televisions parallel the electronic architecture of
computers
…more individualized viewing of programs
Computing interfaces: eye tracking, speech
recognition, and touch
Ubiquitous computers “beyond arm's length”
Agents, and "digital butlers knowledgeable about
the users' tastes, interests, acquaintances, etc.
Internet lead to a "new, global social fabric.”
Computers will work together for individuals and
for groups to solve problems

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"Nicholas Negroponte declared
the digital revolution over in 1998, but it took adland
12 more years to rework its basic creative, technological,
philosophical and procedural assumptions."
Teressa Iezzi
Advertising Age, May 23
"Post-Digital Era Brings Traits of Web to Real World"

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Being Digital also foretold other realities...
At the same time, technological improvements and advancements will need to
be coupled with improvements in "artistry of content."
(Technology) will facilitate companies and different disciplines working together
by using a common language.

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We now find ourselves in need of building and
scaling new models for everyday living and working.
Let’s talk about “improving the artistry of content”
in face of these new technologies, as well as how to
get “different disciplines using a common
language”.

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"We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.
We march backwards into the future."
Marshall McLuhan
12

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Brands and their marketers today have generally failed
to shift from viewership mentality toward user mentality.
Viewing Participation Advocacy

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Liminal Space
14

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Many organizations go the wrong route towards
“getting digital”:

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“You will be assimilated...”

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“Hidden away in our basement dwells an advanced
specialist team who will kick mucho digital ass and
neutralize the crisis.”

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Both approaches are knee-jerk reactionary and often
lead to failure…
Can’t think holistically for brands
Leaves your organizational
assets underleveraged
Solves every problem with a widget Temporary fixers, not builders
Abandons institutional memory/ relationships “Project” battles, not the war
Fails to leverage people in the org Fails to leverage people in the org
Expensive and unwieldy Expensive

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Some easier tactics to consider towards
“Being Digital”:

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1. Follow User Insights
Whatever the device or channel,
seek the human motivation.

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For us, the creative digital ideas that lacked user
insights fell flat because our users didn't really need
our ideas.

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For Totino's, young users give us some permission
to engage them in social channels.

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In redesigning a bank rewards site, we realized that
user engagement demands more than mere
pantones and logotypes.

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User Insights complement our target insights and
bring rigor and inspiration to our digital ideation.
• Know more about our targets in the digital context
(usage data, lifestyle needstates, device penetration, personas,
usability and multivariate testing)
• Widen your insight resources beyond the survey and the focus
group; i.e., Google Analytics, Overheard™, and "Listen Research"
• Get granular about the moment: think of “Target Insights”
thru a more granular filter
• Outline the Engagement Opportunity: demand that creatives
ask, "What is the role that people may play in the idea?”
• Sell with Insights: clients who are cautious about the
unfamiliar can be comforted with rigorous rationale

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2. Free the Geeks (in you)
Normalize technology across more of your organization

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Tech savvyness first demands tech familiarity. Find
the opportunities to get new technology normalized
into the everyday life and style of your organization.

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Because digital thinking rarely "sells in" but rather
"sinks in" among the uninitiated, we plug teams into
20+ "HotDish" blogs that detail the latest sharings.

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One of our clients led its teams in conducting a week-long
research immersion wherein each member monitored a
social site and reported back findings and implications.
"Project Radar"

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For Fallon, it is probably less about hiring more
"geeks" and more about getting everybody to know
and use digital and social technologies.
• Encourage Normal Usage of social media and digital
technology, i.e., teamshare iPad, officeshare Boxee
• Immerse Clients in social media discovery of their own brand
and target; for example, "Project Radar"
• Contribute and distribute
• Fallon "HotDish" blogs
• Fallon Brainfood
• Cross-disciplinary approach to conferences, including SX35W
• Integrate digital staff into the mainstream
• Hire "T-shaped People," including Digital Strategist,
UX Designer, Creative Technologist, and Content Manager

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3. Research and Development Labs
Make stuff. Because.

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Google 70-20-10: Spend 70% of your time on the
core business, 20% on related projects, and 10% on
unrelated new business.

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We've been nurturing an intrapreneurial mentality,
incorporating the behavior of tech start-ups.

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Real Voices in Real Time.
Overheard™ is Fallon's proprietary analytics tool for wiretapping social web
chatter for insights and ideas—Real Voices in Real Time.
Overheard™ listens for real-time conversations about your brand throughout
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Blogs and plays back the key trends and
insights hidden within (sentiment, viral reach, and influence)
to inspire winning creative ideas.

33.
Fallon HotHouse: E.I.N.A.R.: Exploratory Interactive
Networked Area Rover
E.I.N.A.R. is a live, always-on "factory tour" of Fallon via the Web
and an RC camera robot made from scrap parts!

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Caprica's Open Mic App on Facebook invites fans
to talk back to the show's cast and producers.

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Never before has it been easier to make interesting
stuff on the Web.
• Embrace experimentation (and failure)
• Jump in and invent something that is relevant to your
business, target, or organization
• Remember to follow insights
• Start cheaply, measure results, and assess the next
investment level
• Iterate fast

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4. Outline the Engagement Opportunity
Ask "What is the role that people may play in our ideas?"

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It's a misnomer that simply hiring more youth will make
your organization and ideas strategically modern…

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…and assumptions that it's about getting on the
bandwagon of Twitter, Facebook, etc. are faulty, too.

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Today, ideas driven by the language of actions and
participation demand clear input on what we want
people to do with our ideas.

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From "simply said" toward the
"engagement opportunity."
[How may we engage audiences as
active users and participants?]

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A good engagement brief/idea uses action verbs—
it asks people to do something. And it is seeded in
insights for why they want to do it with us.
• Insights, now more than ever
• Strategy, now more than ever
• Outline the role for people in our ideas; brief it in early
• Toward platform ideas, not channel tactics
• Evolving brand strategy more broadly across design
thinking, usability and UX (user experience), IA (information
architecture), functionality, data flow and Web/social chatter
analytics, media and connection planning

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5. Get Post-Digital
The truth is, most of the lives and emotions that we share
take place in the real world—get back there.

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From "above-the-line" and "below-the-line" toward
just blurred lines…

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@WhiteRabbitInc invited people to play along and
participate in our advertising across a wide range
of touchpoints.

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Improvements in the "artistry of content" challenges
us to broaden "what now constitutes an idea?"

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Take the shareable, interactive, participatory nature
of digital and create brand experiences that matter
to people in their real, everyday, flesh and blood lives.
• Less about impacts and disruption, and more about value,
usage, and experience
• Informs new and evolving skillsets like messaging maps,
metadata frameworks, SEO, taxonomy, content management,
folksonomy, quality assurance, and licensing evaluations

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Five key tactics toward modernizing your
organization and ideas.
1. Follow User Insights
Give people what they want (What do people want?)
2. Free the Geeks (in you)
Normalize technology throughout your organization's life and style
3. Build R&D Labs
Start making stuff
4. Brief the Engagement Opportunity
Outline the role we want people to play in our idea(s)
5. Get Post-Digital
Get back to the real world

48.
Thanks.

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Let's continue the conversation.
This and other Fallon Brainfood presentations may be found at
http://www.slideshare.net/group/we-are-fallon
@akispicer
#MNAMA
http://www.linkedin.com/in/akispicer
http://www.fallon.com