Startup Websites – People Not Things Sell

Chris Heivly, Dave Neal Triangle Startup Factory
(Fall Applications Now Closed)

After a great trip to the Conversion Conference in Chicago, read my Conversion Conference Liveblog Notes, something important struck me. Selling something when attention is as hard to get, as it is these days, is difficult and likely to get harder before easier. This post is about how almost every startup company website is doing it wrong.


July 3rd Update - People AND Things SellI
I created a "my bad" here. The title should be People AND Things Sell. Many sites are all left brain things because that is what they love. The passion for those things is important and should be on a startup's website balanced with pictures of people who matter in either the creation of those things or the legitimacy of their functionality and use.

This is another way of saying, if you are camera shy, you don't have to have your CEO or Founder pictures on your homepage, but find some people that will add to your product's story and include them in a power position on the page (i.e. above the fold). This post is on a trip around the world via Re-Scoops and ReTweets, so I wanted to be more clear. Like almost all things Internet marketing hard and fast rules don't work well, but thinking about your audience and their concerns and how they learn in your website presentation is always a good idea.

Chris Heivly’s Wisdom
About a year ago I had a chance to sit down with startup investor and coach Chris Heivly. Chris and his partner Dave Neal have created a Y-combinator-like startup incubator in Durham called The Triangle Startup Factory. “What,” I remember asking Chris, “do investors look for in companies.”

“Teams,” was Chris’ single word answer. He went on to explain he and his fellow investors know whatever a team is working on, that thing they are so passionate about and in love with, is going to morph ten times before exit. You can’t invest in the widget because the widget isn’t long for this world Chris shared. 

People matter most to Chris and investors because We BUY people not things. This People beat THINGS truth struck me first when I ran a multimillion dollar ecommerce website. Pictures of STUFF, no matter how popular the stuff was, never performed as well as pictures of people. We came to calling our largest image on a web page our “hero” image.

Hero is the appropriate word. We tested different versions of people shots including:

• People engaged in games with each other.
• People with babies.
• People staring lovingly at each other.
• People (usually one person) staring straight out at the camera.
• People (usually one person) looking off the screen into the site.

We judged success based on engagement metrics (time on, pages viewed) and a soft conversion (email signups) and a money conversion (buying something even if it wasn’t a product on that page).

Like most things Internet marketing there is no silver bullet, no one rule we found for all occasions. Our results showed:

• People looking right out at the camera-increased engagement and had a positive impact on conversion (over the other options and control with was a picture of a product). 
• People staring off the screen had the biggest impact on engagement and money WHEN we aligned the eye line with a Call To Action (CTA). 
• Babies are TOUGH since they increased engagement, but were negatively correlated to conversion UNLESS they were staring at a CTA. 
• Even staring at a CTA babies underperformed people (at least on our site).

People Matter
Between Chris Heivly’s lesson, my ecommerce experience and published "best practices" you would think startup websites would open with pictures of their team, board members, and/or gurus they follow or some warm, human, intelligent HERO of a picture. You would be dead wrong.

Here are a few of my favorite startup websites:



Daily Digital and KISSmetrics are two of my favorite sites, but I know what they do for a living. Any visitor wants to feel, as my boss so eloquently put it the other day, like they are HOME. Visiting a friend’s house do you walk in the door unannounced or ring the bell, seek permission and look for a guide? If this is your first visit you ring the bell, seek permission and look for a guide.

Of these two KISSmetrics is the stronger, but not by much. KISS destroyed a brilliant, clean design with a laptop in the middle in favor of this faceless silhouette. KISS is hoping we will put ourselves in the silhouette, but that is not how it works. Read Brainfluence by Dooley or Mind of the Market by Shermer or look at Dooley’s excellent slideshare presentation on neuromarketing (all linked at bottom).

What these books prove is what we know in our hearts. We humans love looking at people. What we marketers know in our hearts is people love looking at “like me” people. If I put you inside of a MRI and presented the sites above vs. the startup sites below I guarantee your brain lights up more and in better places with the examples from SpringMetrics and Argyle Social below.


Spring Metrics and Argyle feature founders looking intelligent and like they are about to teach us something. Here are a few nit picks:

• In both cases I would pull Peter (Spring’s CEO) and Eric (Argyle’s Founder and CEO) out into a hero image controlling the quality and gaze better. 
• CAPTIONS, CAPTIONS and CAPTIONS – this drives me so crazy, the hottest place on any website is immediately below the pictures yet we never put anything of meaning there.
• I would have the video in close proximity to the hero image with the white triangle. Never and I MEAN NEVER put a white triangle over your hero’s head as Spring Metrics almost does. 
• Video is so POWERFUL (just ask my friend Alan at mailVu) you don’t have to oversell it.
• Argyle has way too much going on. I like the use of the Twitter logo but I would eliminate everything else since those charts and graphs make it look like I might have homework. 
• Kudos to Spring Metrics for a 100% improvement over their old page that used to drive me AWAY (image of a nerdy looking guy in pain), and for the biggest CTA button I’ve seen.
• Argyle is going for the clinical blue and they are almost there. Too much of anything is not a good thing. I would tone down the blue into an accent role so it doesn’t overwhelm.

Those nit picks aside, Spring Metrics and Argyle are closer to understanding what starts the conversion funnel than Daily Digital and KISSmetrics.


Trust, Conversions Start With Trust
I have several reasons why PEOPLE beat anything else for website heroes, but creating trust is the most important. Think about this problem critically for even half a second and you see the answer. Ask these questions:

• When you were a child what was the first thing you remember seeing? Mom? Dad?
• In a time when everything changes all the time what is more trustworthy people or things?
• Who do you follow people or things?

We trust, care about and empathize with people.
When I arrive at Spring Metrics and Argyle Social there is a wise guide ready to offer assistance (once they introduce themselves with a CAPTION lol). We can buy anything we want now from at least 5 sources. When everything is equal we buy from people we like, from people we respect and believe in, from people we trust.

Just like Chris and Dave, when I review vendors I’m review the team. Will they follow through? Will they help us when life goes bad and going gets rough? I know the answer to these critical questions faster when I look in your eyes, assess who you are and then study if your presentation matches what others say about you.

Since we rarely sit across a table from one another anymore, don't forget how critical it is to greet me, introduce yourself and ask me to come in even if such an invitation is only a metaphor and carried out on a website. 

I’ve been trained by the best companies (P&G, M&M/Mars, 4 startups) to see dissonant elements a mile away. If you present your software or THING first my warning klaxons go off. “Engineers,” my klaxons scream at me.

I love engineers. My father is an engineer. My mother is an artist and I rest comfortably between them, as do most people in positions to BUY any B2B tool. Why do software creators keep insisting right-brain customers buy from our left-brains?

Last time I check when I have something you want there is at least 50% requirement to make it EASY for me, make it easy to buy. Why am I forced to conform MY thinking and needs to YOUR engineer-thinking left brain script? Read Pink's Book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future if you are an engineer and need to be scared straight.

Because everyone does it that way is a poor reason to do anything. In fact, if I were your marketing guy I would explain that our jobs, at least initially, is to use enough convention to create comfort while standing out in a significant way.

How to match convention to your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is a lesson for another day. Today’s lesson is if you don’t have your CEO, President, favorite guru or best looking salesperson as you site’s hero with a CAPTION and an easy to find link to read about the rest of the humans involved in your company then you are doing it wrong :).

Marty

Neuromarketing Resources

Mind of the Market by Michael Shermer (notes studies of linked empathy when people are looking at people and is a favorite book.

Brainfluence by Dooley and his excellent slideshare deck on 90% of my favorite ecommerce secrets.

WRAL Techwire article about Triangle Startup Factory, Chris and Dave.

An article on AttorneySync urging use of people (I mean if lawyers are getting it there is no excuse for startups, none LOL). 

Showrooming - Best Defense Is A Good Offense

 

Last Act Of The Truly Desperate

Scooping an article from Forbes about how Best Buy's latest showrooming defense was scary off legitimate customers I had to weigh in.

Forbes Best Buy Showrooming Defense Scares Customers Post

Recent WSJ Article on Can Retailer Halt Showrooming 

 

Here is what I just wrote on Curation Revolution on Scoop.it

***** Best Buy's Last Act of the Truly Desperate
The best way to defend against showrooming is to embrace it, build it into your campaigns and be creative with rewards. People aren't all that complex when it comes to buying things, though we are predictably irrational. We go where the incentives are best. Best Buy would be better served to think about how to engage, reward and create community around showroomig instead of "defending" against it as if it could be stopped without damage or consequence.

Nothing in the digital revolution has to destroy anyone or anything. I love the alarmist "a practice that threatens to destroy big box retailers", but Forbes has to sell views like anyone else. Ecosystems (i.e. companies) that flourish in these digital times are creative, adaptable and fail fast. I've yet to meet the company who has defended themselves to greatness. Defense is for suckers. Creation is where the juice lives, where the gold can be found.

My favorite goofystupid move is Target removing Kindle's because people were shopping them in store and buying them from Amazon. Shame on you Target. Gut up and match Amazon's price and do something Amazon can't such as give me 10% off my groceries when I buy a Kindle or create a community of Target Buzz Teamers who insure you have the lowest prices as you profess is your desire. Problem is we both know your "Price Match" is gutless and soulless. Amazon may be a brand vampire but at least they have the courage of their convictions even if those convictions are to suck the life out of any hot brand as fast as humanly possible (lol).

I hope this latest goofystupid move doesn't mean the end of Best Buy since it is nice having a showroom to view all of those electronics in, but, if it does, some wiser startup will take its place, a startup capable of holding two opposing ideas in their head a little better than Best Buy can (at the moment). Come on BB don't become a Zombie, snap out of it and get creative.
Marty

Hollywood BI: Horror, Sex, Adventure In The Summer If In Movie Biz

Predictive Analytics World
Ever wanted to be in to places at once? Monday and Tuesday I wished I could be in to conferences at once. Predictive analytics world was going on right next to the Conversion Conference I was attending and liveblogging.

Since I couldn't attend I'm researching their papers and presentations. Here is a cool conclusion page from one presentation that examined how Hollywood was using BI to predict what kinds of movies to produce. Seems like they did a lot of cool work to accurately predict what I could have told them, but cool none-the-less :).

Predictive Analytics World Agenda

Predicting Opening Week Box Office Performance
The following are the key insights that we found regarding prediction of whether a Hollywood
movie will breakeven in its opening week.

Both genre and distributors have an impact on a films ability to breakeven in the opening week

• Key genres drive revenue: Adventure, Drama and Horror
• Key distributors drive revenue:  Paramount,  Warner Brothers, DreamWorks, Miramax, 20thCentury Fox

1. Type of content plays an important role in determining the success of a Hollywood movie in its first week of release
2. Sexual content tend to be positively correlated with higher ROI (Appendix C)
3. A summer release is a strong contributor to a film‟s success in breaking even within the opening week
4. Screens and Budget are the most significant variables in predicting whether a film will break even in the opening week.

Though the model does not have the type of accuracy of the Hollywood exchange (96%),
inclusion of other key variables like Marketing budget and channels and running on model on a
bigger database will definitely improve its accuracy.

Predicting Opening Week
Box Office Performance of
Hollywood Movies
Analysis Summary, Insights & Methodology
Deepshikha Yadav
Vibha Naryan
Udayan Dasgupta
Santosh P N
Shanawaz Janmohamed
12/24/2010

Branding - 5 Rebranding Mistakes You Must Avoid

Chicago 2 AM
Hyatt at McCormick
Attending the Conversion Conference (my Live Blog Notes) and can't sleep. My version of counting sheep is to think about Internet marketing. I woke up thinking about what someone said to me today about re-branding. "We are going through a bit of a re-branding exercise," they said. The problem is you don't ever really "re-brand".

Re-branding implies we are in way more control than we are since brands are organic almost sentient pieces of our tribal cultural. All brands are memes or cultural ideas sticky enough to be passed around. If you create a "meme with legs" capable of being passed around your brand/meme walks around on its own much like a 2 year old. Ever notice how 2 year old experiment with new wobbly legs? They climb up on things using chairs and tables as rails and then, as soon as possible, go randomly mobile. Blink an eye and your toddler is running down the hall for no other reason than that they can (lol).

Brands are culturally much like a two year old. They run out into traffic and seem to have willy nilly patterns because they are blown by the emergent weather of the cultural meme. Brands and memes have core ideas that are less in flux than information on the margins. It takes a mighty shaking to change core ideas. It takes less shaking to impact information on the margin. Think of how snakes shed skin. They molt their outer layer and leave it behind. Memes and brands molt too.

Brand Architects
Buildings may seem permanent and impenetrable, but anyone who owns a home knows that is not the case. Buildings, like memes and brand ideas, need constant maintenance. Weather, use and time can crumble concrete and steel. Brands are subject to decay too. Brands decay from the margins in.

Morton Salt's famous logo of the girl with the umbrella proves the brands molt but core remains point. If you can brand salt you can brand anything. In the 1930's when the brand genius at Morton Salt created the girl with the umbrella and the famous, "When it rains it pours," tag the company successfully branded a life sustaining commodity. Morton salt was better, more pure because when it rains their salt continue to pour and that is pure marketing genius. The value of Morton's efforts must be in the billions since they've owned "salt" ever since. Scoff if you like, but nothing and I mean NOTHING is without vicious competition these days. Morton created enough of a power position there haven't been any, "We are better than Morton," ads in a hundred years.

Salt isn't sexy and Morton's 1930's branding is looking long in the tooth, not as relevant now as it was then. Morton has molted several times, but it is easy to see the unchanging core. I used to live near a Morton plant with that distinct logo painted on the roof. Morton knows branding.

My point from this long open is you don't re-band Morton Salt. You molt it on the margin or kill it outright. In Morton's case killing such a well established brand would be goofystupid. If architects know buildings will go through changes then brand architects must expect brands to do the same. My new friend who told me about his re-branding "exercise" doesn't realize there is no such thing. There is molting an existing brand at the margin or killing it outright and no part of it is anywhere near an "exercise".

5 Rebranding Mistakes You Must Avoid
When you, as brand architect, are mucking about inside your brands put on a HazMat suit and proceed with extreme caution. Here are 5 rebranding mistakes to avoid:

• Operate only on the margins, never on core brand values. 
• Never attempt to change 2 marginal brand properties at once.
• Brand visuals and language are synced so change one, change them both.
• There is no way to test meme changes.
• Rebranding is disruptive so expect and plan for loss.

Margins Only
Morton Salt could lower the girls skirt and then after acceptance of the first edit change her hair style. These are marginal changes. Morton can't change core values such as that amazing tag. When It Rains It Pours is inviolate. Morton's brand tag can't be touched without destroying the brand. The typeface and color are core values that can't be changed (much) without destroying the brand. If you are under the potentially mistaken impression you can rebrand then be sure to know what is CORE and inviolate and what values are on the margin and so are able to be changed. If you don't know what is core vs. marginal brand values then hire someone who does.

Never 2 Things At Once
Marketing's version of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is you can never really know two brand attributes because the act of observing changes the data. Marketers think we know more than one brand attribute. We think we know and control our brands. Becoming an Internet marketer is humbling. Internet marketing is about creating ripples in a pond, listening to those ripples and asking others to create more of the same. You can see it right? You see how relative and subject to the mob our marketing efforts have become.

In such a relevant and fickle world the best you can hope for is acceptance of single tiny changes on the margin. Attempting to change more than one small marginal brand attribute at a time is crazy. Morton can change the girl's hair not hair and shoes. Bake in the hair change and then go after the shoes. Brand architects who take wrecking balls to their company's history are criminal and don't understand how brands work. You can't change brands to a wrecking ball degree and still have them identifiable as a brand. Once the wrecking ball hits you've KILLED the brand and are really constructing a new one.

Visuals and Language Synced
If you change your tag you change the visual presentation of your brand. You may think NO we just changed the tag. Once a tag is associated with a brand ( a visual logo or mark) the words and image form a painting, a cohesive whole. You can't remove a piece of a painting without changing the painting. Brands are the same. You change any word associated with it and you've changed its visual presentation. Remember the Never 2 Things At Once rule. If you change your tag DO NOT touch the rest of the painting. Changing the tag is going to be disruptive and damaging enough. Give your patient time to recover before attacking the logo's color, font or other visual attributes.

No Testing For Memes
Any branding person who convenes a focus group to test brand changes is a fool. Memes are cultural ideas. You can't test cultural idea formation in a lab other than real life. Any security you perceive from testing is false. Ever heard of New Coke? New Coke was a disaster, but I bet it tested well. New Coke violated my, "only change things on the margin," rule and paid the price ( a huge PR disaster and being forced by Coke's many brand advocates to return to Coke classic). There is no panel you can create that can accurately forecast the weather of branding and meme formation so don't try. Re-branding is a jump out of the plane and hope there is a parachute leap of faith.


Expect Pain
Even following Martin's Rebranding Guidelines you should expect PAIN and frustration. Key idea is to remember YOU are not in control. When you begin to change marginal brand values do so lightly and listen for acceptance or rejection. If you attempt re-branding without a strong social presence especially Facebook you are goofystupid.

Facebook because that is where you can HEAR the mob (if you are listening carefully). Change a marginal brand value and then listen for the ripples in your pond. If your changes are built on by the mob immediately capture and claim those changes to amplify them. One way to reduce PAIN associated with rebranding is to do what the mob tells you. Want to turn up the pain? Don't do what the mob tells you (lol).

Rebranding is disruption of the first order so proceed with caution and go slow and listen after each small step. Any "brand expert" who tells you not to worry is not to be trusted as they are about to swing a wrecking ball at your building. Brands MUST molt, so you have to "rebrand" to some extent, but doing so with no sense of proportion or permission is New Coke crazy. Don't be New Coke crazy, proceed carefully and with permission or not at all.

Time to start counting Morton Salt rain drops. Be sure to follow my Conversion Conference Live Blog assuming I can wake up tomorrow.

Marty

Conversion Conference Chicago - Chicago Pictures

Chicago Goes Pop & Serra Stands Alone

Monday: Conversion Conference Live Blog Notes On Atlantic BT Blog

Sunday, June 24
Arrived in Chicago yesterday and living here almost 20 years ago now feels like a dream. Ever been somewhere you used to know well and feel like you've never been there? That was how much of yesterday felt. One reason is Chicago has been on a building boom. I swear half the city seems new. Spent the day at the Art Institute at the Roy Lichtenstein Exhibit and visited some old friends (Hopper, Stuart Davis, Cy Twombly). Biggest surprise was finding Reading Cones, a Richard Serra, standing all by itself in Grant Park.

Standing inside a Serra is as close to religious as I get (lol). there was great graffiti inside the Serra. The face was magical. Looking forward to live blogging today's Conversion Conference on AtlanticBT's Blog.

Even casual readers of ScentTrail know how much I love Piet Mondrian. I spent several months creating his grid for the first website I ever created for FoundObjects.com in 1999. FoundObjects.com is, sad to say, gone, but my love for Modrian's magical grid remains.

You could get a pretty good view of art history at the Art Institute's Lichtenstein's exhibit, but my favorite Roy take on art history was his application of those Ben Day Dots to Mondrian.

Despite feeling dislocated with a flood of water having passed under my bridge in the last 20 years, I found old and new friends in Chicago yesterday.

Also found it ironic the best thing I found in the Art Institute store were some crazy good glass pots by an artist, Pablo de Soto, from Penland in NC. Have to remember to visit the craft school at Penland soon.

What Is A Streisand Effect And Marty's $10,000 SEO Offer To Drop A Lawsuit

Here is a $10,000 SEO offer I just made on my Curation Revolution Scoop.it Feed to help an Austin company understand how the Internet really works and clear a frivolous lawsuit off the books.

What Is A Streisand Effect

Barbara Streisand is rich and a bit of a diva. Before someone explained how the Internet worked she believed she could control it. Control, as it turns out, is one of the rules this engine runs on. I should say rebelling against any impression of some larger force using their riches or diva-nature to attempt mind control is an Internet marketing fuel. Instead of Barbara's intended result, control over information, she ignited an explosion. Here is an excellent description I scooped to Marketing Revolution the other day:

The Streisand effect is used to describe an instance in which a person or company attempts to suppress a photograph, story, or any piece of information—only serving to exacerbate the problem and bring more unwanted attention. In short, the attempt to suppress becomes bigger news than the information itself. It makes that company look like a big ol’ fuddy duddy spoil sport that doesn’t understand this newfangled Internet thingy.
From Marketing Revolution on Scoop.it

Austin Gutter King is about to be on the wrong side of a Streisand Effect. It is not the reviewer who was surely exercising their first amendment rights who is in trouble. Say goodbye instead of to a company sure to not be around much longer unless they can do a 180 and plead ignorance of how the Internet works.

I feel for Austin's Gutter Kings. The review may have been nasty, mean and ill tempered. Life and content marketing networks aren't FAIR. They do love a good controversy though and suing customers who write reviews.....well let me know how that works as a business building tactic (heard of tripping over thousand dollar bills to pick up pennies).

Other ways Austin's Gutter Kings could have solved their problem with a better outcome:

•  Appreciate the review even if you disagree with the content. Only 1% of people take the time to write reviews, but any review usually represents a tribe of people who believe those things. Rare to have a true outlier, so appreciate the review and change what you can.

• Not a big fan of justifying actions or policies in response to negative reviews as that kind of soulless speak fans the flames, but you can use specific examples where what one person hates another loves (even better if the other customer fights this battle instead).

• Bring the review to your site and write an appreciative blog post. Again, you appreciate the feedback without agreeing and share any soul-searching moments the review brought to your attention. Also share foundation stories and passion. Why did you get into gutters in the first place? What is it you love about cleaning gutters? I'm not being trite. If you spend your life doing something like cleaning gutters it must be because you like helping people protect their largest investment (their homes) and you probably have stories about how your work has made a difference in the world. Sharing stories like this as you discuss a negative review provides context, it expands the conversation away from the point of conflict without an endless, "He Said, She Said," debate.

• Connect with the negative reviewer and move them from detractor to supporter. Most people who complain just want to be heard. Once they are heard, so listen carefully again without agreement, find a way to keep them involved and providing feedback. The most valuable thing online is the 1% of the people who will give you feedback (for more on this idea Google 1:10:89 Rule and read my ScentTrail blog post about just how valuable the 1% is).

I feel for Austin's Gutter Kings even as I know they have just blown themselves up. Internet marketing is a live grenade best approached with CARE and a good guide. I hope the Gutter Kings haven't cleaned their last gutter. They may want to read my Turn Negative Reviews Into Money post too.

I'm so moved by their plight I will give what must be the best gutter cleaners in Austin $10,000 worth of my SEO consulting at no charge IF they withdraw their sure to be painful lawsuit over the negative review.

Google Martin Marty Smith Austin G Kings and you will find how to connect with me :). Hope we get a chance to work together (my work email is Martin.Smith(at)Atlanticbt(dot)com).

Marty

Curation Revolution - Thoughts On What Is Content Curation

Almost two years ago I wrote Curation - The Next Web Revolution. I'm glad I wrote that piece not because it is one of my most popular and cited ScentTrails, but because one of the creators of Scoop.it (Marc) saw it and offered to let me drive his magical car in beta. Scoop.it is my favorite curation tool because:

• Its community of curators is amazing.
• It is set up as close to perfect as it can be (especially love their use of leaderboards and the game within the game, in fact I wrote extensively about these tactics in my Gamification White Paper for Atlantic BT). 
• Scoop.it's ability to easily spider the social web based on keywords I provide. 
• Its ease of use.

Scoop.it's grace and helpful beauty is why I wrote Why Scoop.it Rocks. Will get around to supplementing my first Why Rocks post with another soon :). 

Two of my favorite curators are Robin Good (@RobinGood) and Michael Smorgon (@maxOz). Today I had an interesting conversation with Robin on two of his scoops. The first scoop was about how simply rewriting content isn't content curation. Here is the link and what I said:

Rewriting Content Not Content Curation (Robin Good scooped to Curation Revolution)

My Comment...

Like Robin I give this 7 out of 10. There are some curators such as Robin I rarely add much content to because they are expressing my thoughts in some cases better than me. Part of good curating is to select and share, or just select. I just posted a great Infographic by MaxOz (how the world spends its time online) because it fit something I believe or am interested in. In Such a case a rare straight scoop is fine.

Mostly I am way to talkative and full of beans to not weigh in (lol). As far as the "rewriting" goes I agree with Robin, not adding anything and calling it yours doesn't make it so. If someone were to paraphrase my writing, call it their curation and then give credit they insult me. Like shooting me and then apologizing - the one doesn't compensate for the other :).

And on Robin's Scoop of a new SlideShare-like tool called DisplayNote:

My Comment...

I just curated a piece of Robin's into Curation Revolution explaining there are times when a straight scoop or curation without much comment makes sense. This excellent summary of Robin's is a perfect example. The other thing I keep in mind on my straight scoops, curation without much comment, is where am I curating too. If I were moving Robin's notes and this new Display Note tool into my blog or my Technorati startups series I would write more, but it can be safely "Scooped" into my Startups feed inside of Scoop.it because that is where I share cool tools like this one. Sometimes I scoop naked first and then go back and fill notes in after I've had a chance to take a pass through the tool. I do this to rescue the piece so I don't lose it back into the sea of STUFF I review daily.

This "naked scoop" reflects one way I use Scoop.it to support curation. When I see something cool, something I don't want to forget, I move it to one of my feeds as a way of archiving and tagging (been meaning to get better about tagging inside of Scoop.it too since know it could save tons of time). When I am writing about mobile I check my Mobile Revolution feed for helpful factoids, authors and blogs. One role this cool tool plays is writer's assistant and note archive.

If I were writing about SlideShare-like tools I would return to this scoop and check out DisplayNote and any other similar new tools stored there as reference and helpful information, but for today, there might be little to add other than, "cool, agree with Robin and will look into it". Part of what Robin and other curators I trust do for my curation is to reduce my sourcing time. Another role to help me form up those philosophical areas I curate such as curation itself, marketing and branding. Robin and Michael also teach me new things almost every day. They keep my mind OPEN as it has to be to achieve any success in Internet marketing.

For what they do I am grateful and hopefully show my gratitude with the high respect I have for great curation and each of them. Robin and Michael (maxOz) don't need my credit, but they appreciate my input, respect and admiration. Admiration because only a fellow curator knows just how hard all of this is despite how easy they (and all great curators) make it appear. 


What Is Content CurationI share these comments because there are a lot of questions about what is content curation. I wrote a piece for Atlantic BT recently. What Is Content Curation was a fine start, but we are working on this race car (content curation) as we drive so wanted to share my conversation on Robin's scoops from today.

Martin

Great Comment From Liz Wilson on Curation Revolution Scoop.it

« I am no fan of the kind of news rewriting you talk about but I do think there is value in choosing news or analysis pieces, collecting them together and writing a summary of each as a guide to the reader.
This is what The Browser does - take a look if you don't know it.(No connection, I'm just a reader). Imho it's news curation at its best. If the magazine was just made up of links I'd never be able to pick what to read. The fact that they "rewrite" a paragraph upfront helps me by adding context and depth to the link.
That brings me to my real point: do we really need a very specific definition of curation? Isn't it many things to many people? To me, it's a general description, like "cooking". I don't suppose many of us cook the same way. (Don't get me wrong, I am completely with you and Robin - I see you both as informers/mentors). Just my tuppenceworth.  »

June 17, 6:37 AM

Ecommerce Revolution - Why The New Ecommerce Will Convert Better

Sometimes your reach exceeds your grasp. As a former Director of Ecommerce for a multimillion dollar B2C site my reach exceeded my grasp daily (lol). You know you are an ecommerce online merchant when the disparity between grasp stops being unusual or strange. You know you should go to a conference like The Conversion Conference in ten days in Chicago when your Keep Calm, Carry On genes are tested, worn like an old boot and easy to hear or feel.

As Director Marketing for Atlantic BT I face different challenges. Unlike most, I don't see B2B as different than B2C in tactics or strategy (mostly). B2B's relationship time frames are different, but the tools and tactics feel the same including:

• Great, authoritative content.
• Email Marketing.
• Social Support. 
• Content Curation about half the time. 
• Content Marketing (tell great stories)
• Video Marketing. 
• Mobile Marketing (because the Tsunami is here). 
• Cause Marketing (important to save the world even if only in a small way these days). 

I rack these pool balls into the 4 C's: Content, Community, Campaigns and Conversion. For the sake of the Conversion Conference Scholarship Contest, let's work backwards. As a Director of Ecommerce my team and I performed an exhaustive analysis of our shopping cart. We concluded a half a point saved from the maddening HELL of cart abandonment was worth a cool million bucks.

A million bucks THIS year, and, on further analysis, we discovered such a gift would keep on giving since the Lifetime Value (LTV) of those new customers rescued from the jaws of or competition would contribute another million by our second year of cart improvement. Here were the A/B conditions we set:

• Addition of Trust Marks vs. No Marks (Trust Marks won).
• Color of trust marks (strangely blue won, strangely because other button tests had red and orange as winners, but the cart was a slightly different design environment so we chalked it and moved on).
• Stacked Sequence On Page vs. Appearance of Movement (movement surprised us by winning)
• 4 Step vs. 3 Step (no surprise here as 3 Steps crushed 4)
• Finally additional, new and unrelated offer on the thank you page vs. no offer (Offer crushed no offer)

 We had a problem. The mechanics of the cart could only pull so many customers back. We needed to create a cart abandonment drip campaign. Just as we were lined up to conduct this test I left to ride a bicycle across America. Martin's Ride To Cure Cancer was an amazing experience, but one thing I wanted to happen didn't.

I expected, somewhere on this 3,000 mile ride, to have a vision for my next company (I've started 4 already: FoundObjects.com, PoetrySlam, DadaBox and StoryGlasses all now RIP). Surely somewhere in Utah some pointer would appear or a loud booming voice would say, "Martin, you are to build an arc," or something. Believe me if something like that was going to happen the beautiful and all Utah's almost deserted mesas, plateaus and God's sculpture Garden would have been where.

We left God's sculpture garden for the long, dry, hot plains of Nevada without a clear director for after Martin's Ride. Working for a brilliant entrepreneur back home crystallized a vision - CONVERSION and RELEVANCE. C&R go well together. I'd tested a "read the cookie, fire the site" tool called Baynote back in the day. Now Jon wanted to use behavior tracking and predictive modeling to achieve Asimov's Foundation Dream of predicting the future.

Granted it is a tiny future of what is about to happen between website and visitor, but Jon's idea, after I'd had a chance to think about it for a bit, was cool and sounded like fun. Jon wanted to find a way to mashup marketing automation, Google Analytics and predictive algorithms we create to predict the future in real time (or near real time). COOL right, only what tools should be part of this new idea. What could we borrow from companies like Marketo and what did we need to create for ourselves?

With NO IDEA how to fully answer this question I used some personal savings to head to the first Agile Marketing Conference followed by the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. Found cool stuff there I will write about soon, but did not configure our future predicting mashup crystal ball.

Personal savings spent two things have to happen at the next conference or it is my ass :):

• We need to know the other pieces of our conversion engine (we are now partnering with Marketo and are talking with SiteCore). 
• We need to understand the conversion landscape better (a lot has changed in the 2 years since I was a Director of Ecommerce)

Can both of those questions be answered in Chicago? Not sure, but short of winning one of the 20 Scholarships there is no way I can afford the trip back to my old stomping grounds (worked for M&M/Mars and NutraSweet in Chicago). Rest assured, if ScentTrail wins a special pass I will live blog the event just like the Agile Marketing Conference.


Stay tuned.

Marty

Agile Marketing A Hero’s Journey

Other posts in ScentTrail live blogs San Francisco include:

Sprint0: The First Agile Marketing Conference

Agile Marketing's New Revolution

Agile Marketing: Why A Marketing Revolution Is A Must




.
2:00 AM
Atlanta Airport
Almost Home from the Agile Marketing conference and Inbound marketing summit I realize marketers are heroes. We are asked to do more with less. Our profession is seen as less arduous or challenging than engineering. We know the truth. Marketing is the new frontier, the most important challenge for any engineered thing. If a tree falls in your new product’s desert and there is no one there to care about it then your new brand, product or idea will not succeed.

A few years ago some of my engineer friends were asked by our CFO to create a business plan for a failing product. We pulled out the P&L, started researching the market, competition and wrote a marketing plan. About halfway through a week’s worth of marketing ditch digging work my programmer friend turned and said, “Wow, this marketing stuff is as hard as what we do.” I laughed and said something like, “As I’ve been saying,” and went on to explain how as much work as my programmer friends do to stay current, understand how to do things in the ever changing NOW that is Microsoft development mirrors the journey we marketers are on.

The idea is we are all heroes. My engineering friend used to work for NASA. He kept our network attack free and up way more than it was down. The problem is a guard and prisoners; right brain creativity meets left-brain engineering kind of a problem.

Guards and Prisoners refers to Philip Zimbardo's famous psychology experiment at Stanford. The Stanford Prison Experiment had to be stopped because Stanford undergrads were dangerously close to hurting one another. Seems we tribe up fast and one tribe forms less than generous ideas about the other, the NOT US tribe. We are at an inflection point where marketers are techies and vice versa.

We will look back in three to five years and be unable to distinguish between marketing, technology and right or left brainers. Success depends on our ability to get over such petty distinctions. We need to put the canoe in the river and take the rapids together. And rapids there will be.

Internet Time & The Hero's Journey
Our programming and marketing worlds are collapsing. Chaos and the unknown reign. There doesn’t appear to be a safe way home. Once cherished truths are over. What we marketers have worked so hard to know is blown away like dust in the wind. We face several important choices NOW.

Managing Content Marketing's author Robert Rose spoke yesterday at the Internet Marketing Summit in San Francisco. Robert forcefully encouraged several hundred marketers to rise up, break the spell and see important and difficult truths. Robert said, “If you have to spend the next 20 or 40 hours trying to get one more half a point of conversion out of some landing page you will lose.”

Robert’s impassioned battle cry was for marketers to pick up a sword, and a shield and take the field. Become a HERO. Robert’s book explains how all marketing is, in the end, about the same thing. He borrows from myth guru Joseph Campbell to explain. All marketing is about the hero’s journey. If your marketing is not about the hero’s journey then you are a fool. If you can’t see the heroic in your business and articulate those principles and values then you are a damn fool.

The hero’s journey is a common tool for screen writers (and should be for web copywriters). Here is a diagram of the hero’s journey.....

This graphic helps map the journey, the real hero’s journey. The hero’s journey is not linear. Heroes don’t just sign on and that ‘s that. He or she goes back and forth throughout the journey. Can I do this she asks? Do I have what it takes to be a hero he wonders? Internal questioning goes on until the central question any hero faces is answered in the affirmative.

 Yes, finally and completely, the they recognize, “I am a hero, you are a hero, we marketers are heroes.”

Agile Marketing: Why A Marketing Revolution Is A Must

Agile Marketing: 
Top 10 Reasons A Marketing Revolution Is A Must
Wrote this post just before organizers of what is sure to be the beginnings of a new marketing (Jim Ewel and John Cass) generously asked if I would be part of their Agile Marketing panel at the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco.

Read ScentTrail's liveblog of the first Agile Marketing Conference

Read ScentTrail's Day After Thoughts: Marketing's Agile Marketing's First Solvay Conference

Join By Liking Agile Marketing on Facebook

Why A Marketing Revolution Is A Must
After suggesting we need to "storm the barricades" at Internet Marketing Summit yesterday thought I needed to follow up with thoughts on why creating a marketing revolution is important. This post is not the Cluetrain Manifesto, but thoughts on where and why marketers may have lost our way along with ideas for how to pick up the scenttrail and find our way home :).

1. We marketers are in danger of speaking to ourselves about ourselves; we’ve lost our way.

2. As I write this TOOLS not PEOPLE, VALUES, EMOTIONS, or HEART seem cool and sexy. Like fish, the shinny lure, the next tool, and the next promise hypnotize us.

3. TOOLS are agnostic and should be fitted to form, function and needs because tools are NOT an end unto themselves. Tools serve us not the other way around.

4. Tools and machines have “requirements”, people have PAIN, LOVE and CARE (Empathy).

5. No one now or will ever love a tool; we love the new US tools enable.

6. Marketing is now and always has been about LOVE, but we’ve lost our way hypnotized by the same shinny things that are catch many fish now.

7. People buy (join or contribute) with EMOTION and justify their decisions with logic so marketing is a synergy of right brain creativity and left-brain engineering pragmatism.

8. Much like tools, marketing isn’t an end unto itself; great marketing is created in service of some greater idea, some greater object, purpose or art. The implication means sustainably great marketing can’t be greater than the thing itself. If marketing is what is remembered then the thing itself, what we are marketing, isn’t sustainable.

9. People don’t buy brands or products anymore, they join them so marketing is a form of enlistment with stories as our stock in trade, stories are how marketers touch hearts and then convince minds to develop the advocacy necessary to thrive.

10. Our human desire is to belong to something bigger, more important and rewarding then our solitary existence. Our genes make our lives about adventure and our desire to help is manifest. Every life is a journey, so marketing, at its core, is about a hero’s journey and the tribe created in support of the hero's mission.

Join the revolution by LIKING Agile Marketing's Facebook page, stop by Jim's AgileMarketing.net site and becoming part of the 1% of people who will read this note and contribute comments, Tweets and ideas (not that there is anything wrong with the rest of the 1:10:89 rule :).

If you are ready for a new marketing revolution raise your fist, stand up and let's change Internet marketing today and the world of marketing tomorrow.

Marty
Director Marketing
Atlantic BT
Raleigh, NC

Agile Marketing's New Revolution: Sprint0 First Agile Marketing Conference

Read ScentTrail's Live Blog of First Agile Marketing Meeting.

Marketing’s Solvay conference is over.
We were a ragtag group of revolutionaries. The first meeting of the Agile Marketing Congress was well run and productive. The idea that marketing needs a revolution or a good shaking isn’t surprising to marketers. Even non-marketers immediately get it when asked a simple question, “How do you feel about the way you discover and interact with products?”

Futurologist Faith Popcorn famously said, “People don’t BUY brands they JOIN them.” The amazing thing about Faith’s statement and what proves she is indeed a futurologist is her famous quote was shared well before Facebook, Twitter or StumbleUpon. The irony of having more ways to join brands and fewer brands we want to join hasn’t escaped most marketers.

Marketing is sick and overwhelmed. Sick because we don’t know how to “make” markets anymore. Every favorite tactic from print ads to TV is contra-indicated. No one has enough money to force anything down anyone’s throats anymore (thankfully) in a flat, furious world of ubiquitous “always-on” connection the marketing game changes.

Even more than the state of our technical world is our hearts and minds. Our hearts, shaped by seeing thousands of ads daily and the constant strum and Drang of interruptive media shouting media demanding attention for nothing at all, have sent a clear message to our brands – ENOUGH.
Marketers are nothing if not empathic. We sense shifting winds and changing weather. We sit on long boards bobbing off the coast waiting for the next big wave. Marketers’ ultimate hubris, so well evidenced in AMC’s MadMen, was to believe they could swell the ocean with waves on demand. Great brand marketers such as David Ogilvy were humble despite their ability to be otherwise:
A good advertisement is one, which sells the product without drawing attention to it.

David Ogilvy

Marketing’s Messy Room
Wonder what Ogilvy would make of the mess we’ve made with the art he left? Instead of heeding Seth Godin’s call to STOP interruptive ads, stop attempting to speak to people we don’t have permission to touch, we increased the volume. Perhaps, faced with an extinction event, doubling down is an understandable human tendency. Surely Godin is wrong and the world as we know and love it will go on. Not so much as it turns out.

Our room is messy cluttered with yesterday’s clothes and broken toys. Inviting our friends into such a room is proving increasingly painful since they leave quickly and in droves. What Godin couldn’t convince Google has made certain. Goolge’s latest algorithm changes, innocuously enough named Panda and Penguin, are Moore’s Law of the first order.

Moore’s Law, in case you’ve been under a rock somewhere for the last twenty years, is the fuel of our new Internet connected world. Intel founder Gordon Moore wrote a paper noting and predicting an exponential increase in the power of integrated circuit, those little chips the power everything now, even as their costs would fall through the floor.

Google is the natural extension of Moore’s law. Google’s ability to employ more integrated circuits than the military is possible because of Moore’s Law. Google ability to search an infinity of information to find anything much less a relevant answer to our questions is fueled by the nuclear engine that is Moore’s Law. Make no mistake; if Google didn’t exist someone would have created it. Google, Facebook and Twitter were inevitable.

Moore’s Law makes it possible to date the death of Madison Avenue, the end of advertising to 1965 when Moore published his paper. The world was already changing. Moore articulated the change that Google would then make billions from as if they had the ultimate “insider” knowledge. Moore’s law was a wave most marketers missed save the bald startup entrepreneur of YoYoDyne Industries (Seth Godin’s company’s name before selling it to the ill fated Yahoo).

Agile Marketing To The Rescue
Having missed the big wave, or more accurately having the big wave knock us off our boards, marketers need to jump back up and surf again. Problem is, despite the loud and incessant alarm, our room is so messy we can’t find our board, our wax or our wetsuit. Marketing is an ACTION profession. We do things even if they are the wrong things. Not so much lately. Lately we just sit on our beds staring out the window thinking about the surf.

Thinking of waves not ridden is enough to crush the spirit of a true surfer. Meeting a true surfer recently on North Carolina’s coast he said, “Yeah we surf everyday.” His life was organized to afford him the ability to do what he loved. Every marketer’s life is similarly arranged, so thinking about marketing instead of actually marketing makes us want to jump off the roof (or the pier).

Marketing needs a rallying cry, a maypole we can wrap our ideas around as our community cleans up its room, grabs its board and does what it does best – SURF. Sprint0 – The Physics of Agile Marketing a conference of about forty people held in San Francisco on Monday June 12^th was the beginning of a new day for marketing and marketers.

Life as we know it has irrevocably changed. Marketing life as it will become started yesterday. Reading ScentTrail’s live blog notes from the day convey some of the particulars but little of the force bending spirit. We are ready. We want to surf again. We are bobbing in a line now, long boards waxed, wet suits on and the waves off half-moon bay at Mavericks are big enough people are watching from shore with binoculars.

As our little community sits floating in the ocean’s infinity impressed with nature’s force we see how tiny we are, how our physical presence is humbled by Mavericks’ force. We draw strength from each other and our newly aligned hearts and minds. We come now not to conquer nature but to appreciate and benefit from her. We’ve cleaned our rooms well enough to be here, we see the NEW the FREE and Agile Marketing is both. More courageous together than we could summon on our own we are ready, willing and finally able to surf again.

Sprint0 - First Agile Marketing Meeting Live Blog

The Agile Marketing Revolution Continues

LIKE Agile Marketing on Facebook to Join the Revolution!

 Since gathering more Agile Marketers in one place than at any time on the plant on Monday June 11th, Agile Marketing was included in what one Internet Marketing Summit attendee called, "the best panel of the day," several Agile Marketing Posts have been published.


Panel pictured from left: Marty Smith, Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, Andre Bourque, John Cass, Jim Ewel

Jim Ewel (@JimEwel)
Jim's excellent post on creating a manifesto and starting a new marketing movement:
The Making Of A Manifesto

John Cass (@JohnCass)
John's great recap of our meeting:
Recap of Sprint0: The Physics of Agile Marketing and John's article that motivated me to head west: What is Agile Marketing And Why It Is Essential.

ScentTrail Marketing
ScentTrail's Live Blogs San Francisco Trilogy +1 series:

Agile Marketing's New Revolution

Agile Marketing: Why A Marketing Revolution Is A Must

Agile Marketing A Hero's Journey

Monday June 11th Agile Marketing's 1st Meeting Live Blog Notes

Agile 101- Introduction

Jim Ewel
@JimEwel
AgileMarketing.net



SprintZero Agile Marketing on Evenbrite

Synopsis of Agile Marketing by Travis Arnold (helpful macro doc)

Other Host: John Cass, Boston Marketing
@JohnCass

PR Communications (John's blog)




#Sprint0 on Twitter Search

(Cool one of my favorite bloggers, Steve Farnsworth @Steveology and his great Steveology Blog is here). Met Steve at break and he is very much what you think when you read his Tweets and blogs: smart, generous and able to find the pulse in the middle of a SCRUM of mess (lol, bad Agile Marketing joke). Highly recommend following Steve's tweets and blog - Marty.

Steven just shared his favorite marketing auto resource Brian Kardon (@bkardon) at Lattice Engines. Going to be reaching out to Brian before I leave SF.

Big A Agile:
Little bit more formal statement of values.
There are no established values and principles. Today is the day we establish Marketing's Agile. In addition to values is principles, so what are principles of Agile Marketing. Finally there is process.

AgileManifesto.org

Scrum is not mentioned in founding manifesto. Scrum is a wishlist, things that need to be done. Then there sprints are prioritized. Sprint happens in 2 to 4 weeks. First IT Agile meeting in Snowbird they argued about how long a "sprint" is now there is no definitive time. Spring cycles are up to teams.

Mountain Goat Software powering much of the slides.

One debate is do you allow change during a sprint. IT says NO, but marketing not so cut and dried. What changes can be allowed during a sprint might be useful discussion.

Sprint Process Control Levers

•  Product Role
• Scurm Master (secret weapon of scrum)
• Team
• Pigs vs. chickens (ham and egg breakfast chicken is involved, Pig is committed, pigs = accountable)

Scrum Master is a "peer to the team" dedicated to obstacle removal.  SCRUM = pigs talk chickens don't but not always so rigorous.

Spring Planning Meeting
Start with inputs, know capacity.
Helps to have executives in order to set priorities and not make the team blow in an uncontrollable wind.

How achieve sprint goal? How measure? Define KPI. User stories. I want to do X to accomplish Y (format of user stories). Epics (big user stories). Themes are bundles of user stories with something in common.

Team has autonomy to accept/commit. Agile is not top down. Agile is about team having some autonomy and decides what to do.

Daily Scrum - time bound standup daily meeting. Don't try to solve. Answer three questions. What did I do yesterday. What working on today. What are obstacles. These are not reports to Scrum Master. Commitments to your peers. Not a report card. (Atlantic BT does have a daily Scrum meeting we implemented after reading Rockefeller Habits and it really helps).

Marketing backlog

Biz Priorities

Product Status

Competition 

Backlogs
Common to post on white boards, use post it notes or HubSpot does with public document.

Burn Down Charts
Regression analysis to predict what will be done by when. Keeps accountability high and easier to trend resources to avoid Mythical Man Month problems.

Agile Practitioners Insights Panel

Jascha Kaykas, CMO MindJet
@KayKas
We are still in process stage. I will say from a demand generation perspective Agile has been a huge boost. Mindjet published a case study. "Marketing is pretty miserable at time management generally," Jascha Kaykas. 

Rohn Jay Miller, Group Account Dirctor, SapientNitro
@RohnJayMiller
We have to stop campaigning and start committing. We need to focus on what do we need to do to get things to the marketplace. How do we move past branding fluf and move to the values, what we deliver. Key idea is prototyping and iterations. Ad Agency organically becoming tech based because that is the way the world is going. Agency = tail and client dog, so must collaborate with clients to go to market in more collaborative ways. Jim Keene CMO at General Mills.

The Agile Waterfall Tim Malbon at cool agency Made By Many

Nick Muldoon, Atlassian
@NickNuldoon
NicolasMuldoon.com

Nick made good points on morning panel.

Ken Olofsen, Atlassian
@kolofsen
JIRA 


Ken made an excellent point about how to organize to push fast. Atlassian has a Product Manager, a Marketing Lead and a Development Lead working as a collaborative skunk works within Agile to insure tactics and execution are aligned and happening fast enough to meet market, client and competitive needs.

Check out Ken's posts

Cool Agile Marketing book from Anthony Freeling.












Cool Book brought up in peer-to-peer: Imagine by Jonah Lehrer
From Katlin

TRUST
Huge part of Agile @KayKas explained. That echoes one of best presentations I saw on Scrum from New Media Campaigns where trust of each other kept coming up. They had to decide they would put up with a bigger error rate to achieve speed. Fascinating tradeoff. I wrote about New Media for Technorati:

New Media Campaigns From Technorati

What about gamifiction and Agile? from @KayKas 

Nick from FindLaw.com
Evolution of agency structure to distributed teams. How we aggregate and pay for our teams will evolve. Vendors are part of team whether they are Agile or not. Nick is talking about how he uses structures and games to create fair mutual incentives. If you are tracking then you can track to your successes and can make it fun.d

Lunch Notes
Great conversation with Simon Ward from Ayzenberg.com, Ken from Atalassin, Rohn Jay Miller from SapientNitro and Jafez Adel from Regargeter.com about gamification. Here is a link to the paper I wrote a few weeks ago on gamification (sort of a how to for marketers):

Gamification: Winning Hearts, Minds and Loyalty Online

Currently the quid pro quo for the paper to tweet about the paper and then download it (so called "Pay With A Tweet". If anyone wants the paper without having to Tweet let me know and I will send my draft version (not as pretty but words are same LOL, send requests to my personal email: mobriff(at)gmail ad I will send you my word doc).

Cool smart guys from lunch.

Peer-To-Peer - How Write The Agile Marketing Manifesto
John and Jim leading a discussion on crating a manifesto. "Part of why agile came out was to bring introvert developers out of their shell and on the other side face up against ROI and metrics.

Cluetrain Manifesto came up as an example of how to write a meaningful statement of being.

Steve (@Steveology) making a great point about staying flexible and publishing as a "finding" not the final, penultimate definition of What Is Agile Marketing. Simon just pointed out that an "open source" approach would be consistent with an Agile approach.

Will post a picture of the values charts in a moment once we go through a Vox Populi dotting process to identify what stands out to this group.

Values

Voting on these values:

1. Responding to change over following a plan. (8) #6
2. Flexible planning vs. rigid planning (11) #5
3. Many small experiments over a few large bets. (8) #7
4. Two Way conversations over one-way interpretations.  
5. Individuals and interactions over process and tools
6. Validated learning over opinions and conventions (15) - post vote #1
7. Engagement and transparency over official posturing.
8. Working outputs over comprehensive inputs.
9. Tools and collaboration over contracts.
10. Customer focused collaboration over silos and hierarchy (13) #2
11. Strategy implementation over strategy planning.
12. Smaller more frequent deployments over lengthy major launches.
13. Authenticity over image.
14. Execution as competitive advantage
15. Getting out of the building over formal market research. 
16. Great customer experiences over impersonal mass markets
17. Adaptive and iterative campaigns over Big-Bang campaigns. (13) #3
18. Responsive and iterative over predictive 
19. Process of customer discovery over static prediction (13) #4

First Round Vote Winners (total votes (xx))
1. Validated learning over opinions and conventions (15) - post vote #1
2. Customer focused collaboration over silos and hierarchy (13) #2
3. Adaptive and iterative campaigns over Big-Bang campaigns. (13) #3
4. Process of customer discovery over static prediction (13) #4
5.  Flexible planning vs. rigid planning (11) #5
6.  Responding to change over following a plan. (8) #6
7.  Many small experiments over a few large bets. (8) #7

Agile Marketing Principles

• Simplicity is essential
• Learning via build, measure, learn feedback loop is primary measure of success. 
• Sustainable marketing requires you to keep a constant pace and pipeline
• Don't be afraid to fail; just don't fail the same way twice
• Continuous attention to marketing marketing fundamentals and good design enhances agility
• Deliver marketing programs frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months with preference for shorter time frame
• Great marketing resources requires close alignment with the business people, sales and development
• Build marketing programs around motivated individuals, give them the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job done

Brainstorm Notes
Rohn Jay Miller - How is Agile different than traditional marketing?
From The Lean Manifesto
Assume customer and connections are unknown. Have to break out of the constraints that established convention are necessarily and automatically correct and so must be rigidly adhered to (the Black Swan thing).
Adaptive and iterative campaign management.

Responsive and iterative over predictive and grand plans. Simon Ward.

Steven (@Steveology) there are 500+ plus ways to get information. Is the customer experience unknowable. Is there a difference between unknowable and unpredictable.

Jim just made a point that Amazon knows more than you think. They know how you came in, who you are and so they can predict and model your behavior. "It is not the Heisenberg uncertainty thing," Jim Ewel.

There is a word we are not using and it is called "Discovery" we have to respect the process is one of discovery. Discovery over static prediction.

Customer focused collaboration with cross functional teams over siloed process planning - Rohn Jay Miller.

The History of Agile Software Development by Wayne Kernochan

There was a real religious flavor to the whole thing (the beginning of Agile). That kind of religious enthusiasm really got the movement going. You, the Agile Marketers in this room, need to think about if Agile marketing is a movement how do you foster the movement. ***** KEY QUESTION ****

Why did Agile development scale?
It is really nice to have an elder statement, but there needs to be a balance. It was the wild and crazy experiments that led to things like extreme programming that refined Agile and Scrum. You want many experiments going on feeding into it. What the manifesto accomplished was to get feelings about the process OUT. Felt lousy about the old development process and Agile made the founding fathers feel better.

One thing is Agile programmers did was to badge themselves as liking these values and principles. The marketing process itself is different in many ways from programming and programmers. The nature of the job has much less face-to-face interaction. Marketing has much MORE face-to-face so that means Agile marketing is much different. Marketing becomes a different use case for Agile.

Enormous resistance at corporate until some champion at a Fortune 100 said, "Let's try this." As you try to develop an industry there will be barriers at corporate. "This is a nasty risk for me to try," will be the reaction unless there is a compelling use case. There has to be one point of scalability that says I'm betting my company on this but it is a safe bet.

British Telecom was the dam breaker for Agile Development.

Read an article about British Telecom's early Agile use case HERE.

What made people move so fast into Agile Development was that people who were "more" agile won. Continuous delivery is a natural extension of Agile, but the take off happened because of Darwin. Those who were more "agile" were getting more work.

Should be able to reach the point of takeoff, the point of a network effect in about 3 years.

John Cass
How do we evangelize Agile Marketing? We expect, like Agile development, we will have many experiments.

Idea: Case Studies 
Idea: What is wrong with traditional ?
Idea: Personas /case studies
Idea: cookbook of experiments
Idea: How agile
Idea: Develop AgileMarketingManifesto.org site.
Idea: Core set of evangelical materials.
Idea: Infrastructure
Idea: Real time collaboration
Idea: More Events
Idea: Create Swag (I volunteered to do this)


And with that we close the day. 

ScentTrail Live Blogs San Francisco - Poets, Dooley's and Escape From Alcatraz

Marty Live Blogs San Francisco II
Sunday June 10th
SF MoMA

Sitting next to Louise Bourgeois spiders (The Nest, 1994) in SF MoMA’s sculpture garden. There is a light breeze coming in the open bay doors to the tiny replica of MoMA’s much larger garden. The MetLife blimp is floating by between a building under construction with silent cranes (it is Sunday) shooting pictures of the Giants vs. Rangers baseball game.

I just heard about a museum’s guard’s desire to become a pediatric nurse. “I’m a published poet,” she told me proudly. “Three anthologies,” she said letting the deep sigh explain the need to let youthful passions go. After helping a seven year old boy lose a battle with the EVIL C she found her calling. She will go to a pediatric nursing program at City and then transfer to State.

Riding the bus to arrive at one of my favorite museums, I spoke to a man from Monterrey, Mexico who had just finished the grueling Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. Sounds like something my sister Caroline would enjoy, swim 1.5 miles in that nasty bay that keep Al Capone and others safely locked away. Next is 18 mile bike race up and down even more grueling San Francisco mountains/hills with grades that have to be in excess of 10% and finally a mad scramble through the “rugged trails” of Golden Gate Park (remember that sequence in Dirty Harry when they run him hither and yon, that was Golden Gate park at least some of it). How was it, I’d asked with the admiration I felt. “Grueling but fun,” the nice man from Monterrey said and his two year old thumbed his iPhone with picture of his father flying by.

Having just paid $4.00 for a 6 ounces of “sparkling lemonade” my mind turns to pricing and context. Reading Roger Dooley’s BrainFluence on the flight out some cherished pricing and Internet marketing ideas were confirmed such as:

• Babies – After reading Attention Economy the power of babies jumped off the page. Not long after babies started appearing inside of tires and all manner of brand marketing. Dooley confirms our babies rock as attention getters. Thinking about the family atmosphere of Atlantic BT where every other team member is having triplets, babies seems an important manifestation of our company values, of Jon’s values, of Mark’s values. Will think more on this.

• Line Of Site – Studies Dooley quotes confirms my experience as Director Ecommerce. Visitors to your website follow the line of site of the people on the screen begging the question where are your lines of site (lol).

• Learn From Magicians – Dooley riffed on the secret to magic is movement and misdirection, but mostly movement. I made a note to write a post about magic and marketing and need to think more on how movement can contribute to conversion since misused movement can reduce buying intent. People get too caught up in the movement’s magic to follow your path. Maybe that is good and alright, but, typically, when I design a site there are particular destinations, end points, and sometimes I went to get you there fast (if your visit is pregnant with buying or converting intent) and sometimes slower (if further sifting is required before it is clear how to serve or what to serve).

• Goal Gradient Hypothesis – Here I need to quote Dooley to do this new to me idea justice:

“Back in the 1930’s researches made an interesting discovery: rats running in a maze to reach food ran faster as they got closer to the food (been there, done that). This finding led to the goal gradient hypothesis, which states that the tendency to approach a goal increases with proximity to the goal. Simply put, the closer the goal, the more effort you expend to get there.”

• “You can trust us to do this job for you.” Dooley recounted a fascinating story about how merely calling attention to trust with the, “You can trust …” statement at the end of an auto service ad jumped conversions 33%. I don’t know how to work this in to our Magento Moments Campaign yet, but you know I’m cooking ideas as I write.

• Show Trust To Get Trust – There was a very “Eckhart Tolle” section on you get the love you make (or something out of a Beatles song). A company’s culture is like a great violin. In the wrong hands even a strad sounds bad, but in the right hands you hear the mind of God. One takeaway for me was the importance of love and forgiveness, of trusting our customers and asking for trust in return. Life seems way to short to do anything other than trust, trust and trust some more. Can we get burned putting out so much trust? Possibly, but the over and under still favors the assumption people are good and so are we.

• Smell Your Way To Success – There was a long section on aromatherapy for business. I’ve wrestled with the five sense problem on line. Websites tend to be so heavily visual that the other four senses get left behind. How can we use words to bring sense memories to the table? Cinamon tea on a cold winter night moves the reader’s mind to warm Christmas or holiday moments. How can we use touch, smell and sound to better position products? Moon Audio is one of my favorite Atlantic BT accounts. Drew and Nichole create magical audio cables and combine those genius creations with headphones that make you feel like James Taylor is in your living room with you. Music isn’t just sounds. Music is tattooed on every important moment of my life such as:

• Lynn Brostof teaching me about Glen Gould at Vassar.
• Greg Arnold sharing his favorite jazz (McCoy Tyner, Oscar Peterson and from there I found Keith Jarret and Chic Corea).
• All that teenage angst at Choate with The Who, Led Zeppelin and being introduced to southern rock by Mark Starr (his real name).
• The folky house concerts in Chapel Hill that re-introduced me to the guitar and a simple smoky voice telling a complicated story.

How do we help Moon Audio find a voice half as true and intelligent as its owners? How can we use language, pictures or stories to build a complete experience online? Our goal should be even if you don’t have a pair of amazing headphones powered by Drew's cables on you feel like you do, you sense the experience across all sensory inputs: taste, smell, sight, touch and sound.

• Passion – Long section on hiring passionate people. Passion is hard to fake. I interviewed Jon the other day and he said, “I look for people who would be doing this (Internet marketing and web development) whether I was paying them or not.” Within seconds you know a fellow traveler, a person in it for love not money. The web can make passion a challenge. The web is like a soundproof room. All white, noiseless and cold our jobs as Internet marketers is to warm it up, to use language, images and design to invite people in, to get them to jump into a midnight swim in an unknown reservoir safely and with friends.

• I got to magic word #1 FREE as we landed in San Francisco. Earlier Dooley discussed how free trials were more than currency, more than a deal. Free trials were a form of trust with customers. Free trials also create a tangible Quid pro quo, something we in the west can’t help but right, can help but even out.

More ScentTrail Live Blogs San Francisco tomorrow from the Agile Marketing Conference.

Marty