Stemato.com - Stephen Tompkins’ Blog

With the growth of computers also came the growth of naming and the ever perplexing decision of what to call a file you created. I remember back when I was a art director we had strict naming conventions for all files built. They were required to have certain variables in them that would help anyone working on the file to locate and eventually work on them. Now that I have moved over to the client side of things its a bit different. I deal with an exponentially larger number of files and there is no required variable on these files. So I thought I would offer up a few easy rules to help you keep and sort your files easier.

1. Always place the document birth date date in your file name (YYYY-MM-DD) - Using this format will place the files chronologically in order when trying to relocate them.
2. Include the Client name in the document - Always make sure to include the client name/campaign name or media plan name in so you can quickly identify the file from many files.
3. Always place the document type at the end - This is self-explanatory but it helps.

By following these three simple rules you can greatly increase your efficiency when trying to locate a file. And we all know that can be an issue sometimes. So happy hunting!

budget planner – Mint.com

Some really interesting news in the holiday season. Enjoy!

In the past I have used my blog as a forum to both praise and criticize my college. Well today, I am proud to say that I am a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Why do you ask? Well, I was reading Bruce Nussbaum’s Innovation Design blog and I noticed that Businessweek had ranked the world’s top design schools. That is right I said WORLD’s Top Design schools. And SCAD was amongst the handful of North American schools that were chosen.

So without further adue, I will let SCAD shine today. Congrats Savannah College of Art and Design and thank you very much for the top notch education that you gave me. I am forever indebted to you.

Here is a link to the SCAD section.

Here is a link to all the College chosen.

Ok….I admit the title is a little misleading. Maybe it should have read “almost everything I learned in design school was wrong” but it does not have nearly the staying power. Anyway, I went on a Bruce Nussbaum reading frenzy yesterday and found out that design education in America really could improve.

First the good stuff about my design education. As I have stated before here, I am so proud to have received a BFA and how it helped me to be innovative to adjust my career path. I do not think a typical business education would have done the same for me but that is just me. I needed a different type of education to learn to adapt and to process different orientations.  Plus it was really cool to make pretty pictures and exercise my right brain muscle to the fullest.

Now the bad stuff that I believe needs improvement. As Nussbaum correctly points out, design is everywhere not just the touch points they teach you in school. Contrary to what I was taught, design is a journey not an finishline. We spent an entire semester learning how to make Rubylths, amberliths and ink drawings. A complete waste of time! Think about how much more effective it would have been for us to learn design as an experience instead of a process to an end.

All the blame cannot be thrown on SCAD as they did the best they could in the time alloted. I do think that they could have made the education a little more adaptable to current trends though. For example, I graduated in 2001 and attended most of my classes during the middle of the web boom and they still emphasized print design as a primary focus.

What if we did not spend time on a specific aspect of design and learned about how people experience design around them before stepping into techniques. Then gradually built up those techniques based on design as a journey from which people experience their lives. Almost a reverse concept of what was taught to us in school but definitely something that would have shaped a new type of designer.

A couple weeks ago, I read Bruce Nussbaum’s blog on the growing gap in China between Chinese designers and Western designers. I found it to be a really fascinating look into China’s economy for a number of reasons. For years, they have primarly relied on cutting cost and driving efficiencies to become the Global Supply Headquarters. Now that many other countries have begun to catch up to the Chinese, they are transforming themselves to meet the future needs of the world.

This transformation according to Nussbaum’s article is in the form of becoming more innovative and creative.  Apparently the Chinese government is throwing millions of Yuan into the design education departments at many of the universities in China. This is a great first step but I think to truly begin to transform the mindset of the people is to foster creativity from the start. You cannot just start in college.

Innovation and creativity is something that is nurtured over a lifetime and can take years to fully blossom. You cannot simply think that pouring money into design schools will solve a cultural problem. Chairman Mao squashed many of the innovative thoughts of his people during the Cultural Revolution.

I visited China last year and was instantly in love with the place. It’s a vast and amazing culture that spans thousands of years and has morphed from innovators to efficiency experts and more. But in order to meet the new innovation needs in this complex global economy, it’s going to take a major shift from the current thought process. Design education is a great step but its going to take a massive cultural transfomation in everything from education to social systems to clothing design to meet this challenge head-on.

One thing is sure to me though. If anyone can meet this challenge because of their diverse history and succeed, it’s the Chinese!

Raise your hand if you have been hugged or kissed on Facebook against your will by some intruding application that seeks to mine and destroy all your personal information. Ok, you can all put your hands down or if you did not put it up then you should pay very close attention to what I am about to write. Those virtual hugs, kisses and fairy dust that are hurled around Facebook are not as innocent and cute as they seem. That is right. They are pirates looking to steal you and your friends’ information for free. So stop buying into it!

First, I should admit that I have fallen prey to a few of these dumb applications over the years. But as of Monday, I will not ever fall for them again. In fact, if I see you doing one in my newsfeed I will block it and you from being in my feed. I know it sounds like harsh treatment but it’s time to use Social Media sites for what they were intended to be used for. Not throwing fairy dust or finding out that because I answered 5 questions I exhibit traits of Chester Arthur. I mean seriously, the insanity has to stop!

Why am I taking such drastic methods?

Because what most people don’t realize is when you load those quizzes and such you are giving the creator of these applications the ability to access your personal data to use for their own purposes. This is sometimes done legally (to post in your newsfeed) and other times illegally (to steal the password for your AIM account). And, the simple fact is that Facebook does not have enough of security monitoring to know what these applications are doing with your info. Nor do they probably care because you authorized it (Read the fine print next time you decide to see what 80’s movie character you are.).

So, the next time you decide to kiss or hug me via Facebook give me a call and we can set it up in person because I am sick of the illegal notifications, and I am sure you do not want your data stolen!

Marketers are always talking about listening to the consumer because its the best source of information. I could not agree more and over the last year and change I have done just that. I left my job at Nielsen in marketing to get closer to the client and to learn as much as I could about them from daily interactions.

First, I want to say its been very humbling to sit on this side of the fence and to absorb all the positive and negatives of client service.

After just over a year, I think I am ready to impart some of my findings on you. My number one learning this year is:

Clients want information.

Good Information and Bad information it does not matter. They just want whatever you have and they want it as concise and detailed as you can give it to them. They do not have time to fumble through lots of rhetoric and information to find the solution. That is what we are there for.

Patience is a virtue

It is an old lesson but definitely one that is important when dealing with clients. Be patient - they don’t have as many insights as you. That is why they called/emailed you. You are the expert and being patient benefits both of you.

Listen, listen and listen more…

This is perhaps the most important. Listen to what clients say and then listen to what they don’t say. Because they don’t always use the same terms that we do. So its important that you listen carefully and address each concern they have separately. This way you are giving information and also showing that you are truly concerned with getting them a satisfactory outcome.

All in all, its been a huge learning curve this year and a great experience that I look forward to another year of learning! What client service lessons have you learned?

Measuring ROI for online campaigns is time consuming work full of numbers and spreadsheets that seemingly go on forever. The media planners days are filled with data crunching and searching for the metrics they need from various sources. Everything from time spent to search queries crowd the typical day and marrying this data together has become a great challenge. It seems everyone has a custom solution.

And as online marketing tools progress, products that deliver excellent data visualization tools will hold a significant competitive advantage moving forward. Why? Well, the ability for a planner to quickly gather the data they need to make decisions is crucial to success and a great dashboard is the lynch pin of this process.

With this in mind I started thinking about Search Marketing interfaces. The differences between many of them are minor but the experience differences are major. The ability to consume keyword group data and which keywords are performing is integral an integral function for search marketers.  But many interfaces create a complicated gossamer of reports and internet pages to give you the information you need. It can feel like Indiana Jones searching for the Ark of the Covenant to find what you need.

Many of these interfaces gives you great amounts of aggregate data but fall short in providing a great quick glance at the keyword and keyword group level. I am aware of all the dashboards that these programs have but I still need more. Its this keyword data that have been thinking about lately. What if you could quickly see in graphical terms what is performing vs. underperformers?

In the following weeks, I am going to build out a sample of this data visualization that I am talking about.

Recently, I was reading an article in AdAge about a new study Google conducted attempting to show the relevance of its Content Network. The article states that nearly 20 percent of clicks coming from over 25,000 advertisers  and representing some 7 billion clicks were from the Content Network. With 20 percent of clicks going into display advertising, I cannot help but wonder what does the massive amount of money going to search ultimately mean to the online advertising landscape.

Is search the ultimate conversion driver? And does it justify the uneven amounts of money flowing into it?

Without showing the inherent role of assisting search that display and rich media assets play in the online advertising funnel you are missing part of the equation. In fact, I read an article today that emphasizes the point that most planners still view search and display as separate entities. This seems like backwards logic in today’s integrated online world. With so much Research available online that shows search and display together can lift your online performance planning these together becomes crucial. In fact, marketers are leaving money on the table when they view campaigns as separate entities.

A quick look at estimated advertising spend from analysts would appear that search alone can conquer the web without any help from display. But the truth of the web is that conversions are varied and full of many different intents and assisted from various angles. One conversion could be from search and another from email marketing. The reality is that both users were exposed to some form of branding before they actively engaged your product.

The realization that search and display work together will be a fundamental element of planning’s evolution. Furthermore as marketing progresses on the internet expect planners to begin integrating these processes much more.

Disclosure - I work for Microsoft Advertising’s Atlas Media Console.

Last week was my birthday so I am going to go out on a limb and announce: CPM’s are useless gauge only half the story online! ( I know you have heard that before but it remains true today as it was yesterday. And no one has come up with a comparable metric to challenge it. I can see my ex-colleagues at Nielsen rolling their eyes and saying the “time spent” conversation was soooo last year.)

Why are CPM’s a poor indicator of success online?

To answer that question, we first need to talk about where the CPM originated. Their origin was in print media allowing publishers to price their inventory and maximize exposure to their assets for advertisers. In short, publishers needed a way to show advertisers they were getting tons of “bang” for their buck and the CPM was born. That was all nice when you are dealing with something like newspapers and the limited metrics available to track exposure. But with online-advertising you have the ability to track in ways not available when the CPM was invented.

Pew research states that, “Fully 80% of Generation X internet users buy products online, compared with 71% of internet users ages 18-32.” With so many folks buying stuff online and searching for product information before they make the purchase, its a no-brainer to be online. In fact, the internet has become an unprecedented tool for reaching your customers. With tools such as advanced log files, marketers can now know more information than ever about the habits of the folks buying from their sites.

We can segment, re-message and apply any number of methods to the way media is delivered based on the personal histories of each viewers PC. But unless we make impressions count its useless. Instead of blasting out millions of impressions, we should attempt to blast out thousands of impressions to the right computers improving ROI and many other metrics.

Furthermore, these meaningful impressions are not blind attempts but based on actual recorded habits and can be applied in real time. With these types of advanced functionality it becomes even more important to stop our dependence on mindless blasting of users as possible and hoping one of them sticks. Its archaic methodology applied to a sophisticated system and its exacerbating banner blindness. The future is about making every impression count.