Lisa Philips of e-marketer gave a great presentation at the Millennium hotel, where as luck would have it Sarah Palin was staying during her visit to the UN. How Ironic! There was a noticeable buzz about the republican VP candidate in the hotel lobby when I arrived that morning; one observer told me that she looked very short. I wonder if the Governor could see Canada from her hotel room in Manhattan.

Lisa shared a few fun facts with us:

 -Obama has more myspace friends than McCain.

- Many voters are going online to check out the candidates: 42% of US adults said they get political information from the Internet.

- eMarketer estimates political online advertising spending will reach $50 million this year, between the presidential and congressional campaigns and advocacy groups.  I think we all know Obama has won the fund raising battle thanks to the web.

How much the world of politics has changed thanks to Al Gore’s invention of the internet!

There was a time when you one had to wait for the news in the form of a paper, tv broadcast, or radio. I can remember settling in on the couch to watch Peter Jennings religiously with my grandparents. Missing the news meant you were missing information. Now you can get it at will on the web thanks to online video, podacsts, etc.

On Wed October 22, 2008, George Stephanopolus reported (on the evening news) that the Obama campaign is so effectively using the web to dominate battleground states, republicans are actually scared. The Obama operation is “High Tech and High Touch.” Stephanopolis reports with a degree of awe that Obama’s campaign uses “email, the internet, facebook, and text messaging” to help augment “boots on the ground.”

CHECK OUT THIS ABC NEWS CLIP:

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=6091836

It sounds like someone in Obama’s camp knows about the power of using the web as a hub of a 360 degree experience that can wrap around a big idea(in this case, genuine change) and turn the execution into something extra special. And it’s something so special, it’s historic: when Obama wins this election, much credit will be given to his campaigns expert use of the internet. 

I predict a new maxim for elections forever more will become “he or she who has more friends on Facebook will win the election.” 

I was fascinated to read the obituary of one Lou Dorfsman, the long-time CBS creative director who died last week at age 90. 

Dorfsman joined CBS as an art director back in 1946, was named creative director of CBS television in 1959 and in 1964 he became the director of design for the entire Columbia Broadcasting System.  He was a pioneer in the field now universally recognized as “branding.” 

According to the New York Times, Dorfsman’s graphic design style and aesthetic sensibility presented CBS ads and corporate communications via “clear typography, simple slogans and smart illustration.”  This was in contrast to the accepted advertising design approach in vogue throughout the 40s and 50s which was typically visually mundane and text heavy.

Today, in the world of web 2.0, 3.0 and the rest, it’s eerie to consider just how highly those same attributes (simple, clear, to the point) that Dorfsman harnessed to build the CBS brand are valued as good web site design.  Even the cover of the CBS annual report shown here, dating back to 1981, has a lot in common with a well-designed web page.

A few months ago, I posted to this blog with my subjective opinions on the Obama and McCain web sites (and predicted an Obama victory at the polls).  Now, our friends at First Insights in partnership with Murray Hill Centers have published the results of an official usability study on the two sites.

The full 65 page white paper and video clips are available at http://www.firstinsights.com/articles.htm

The researchers conducted one-on-one qualitative usability testing interviews with 43 undecided voters ranging in age from 19 to 77 in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles.  Participants were asked a series of task-oriented questions as they explored the Obama and McCain Web sites for 60 minutes.

When asked if either site had changed their status as an undecided voter, and if they were now leaning toward a specific candidate, participants responded as follows:

Now leaning toward Obama: 12
Now leaning toward McCain: 4
Still undecided: 27

That translates to a 35% conversion rate for Obama and about a 10% conversion rate for McCain.  Compare that to a recent list of the Top 10 Converting Websites according to Nielsen Online:

1. ProFlowers 35.70%
2. Office Depot 31.40%
3. Blair.com 23.80%
4. FTD.com 21.30%
5. QVC 18.70%
6. CDW 17.90%
7. Lands End 17.50%
8. 1800flowers.com 16.80%
9. Drugstore.com 16.20%
10. HSN.com 15.80%

Kudos to the folks at Blue State Digital, who I’m pretty sure are the forces behind the Obama web site and overall digital strategy.  And a tip of the hat to Lon Taylor and the people at First Insights for a fascinating study.

A great article appeared in Fast Company called ‘Abusing Social Media.’ In comic/tragic ways, it details how some very savvy brand marketers like Starbucks and Papa John’s have done some pretty stupid things when attempting to use leverage web 2.0 platforms and technologies like widgets, Facebook or Twitter.

In order to help companies avoid wasting money and/or looking foolish when stepping into the world of social media marketing, here are some best practices to follow:

1. Know Your Audience: This is a fundamental consideration in any marketing endeavor but it’s doubly important with breakthrough-type efforts that run the risk of not garnering the attention they deserve or alienating your customer base.   Once your audience is identified, deeply explore and understand the platforms, tools, methods or styles under consideration to reach your target.

2. Align with Your Strategy: Make sure your campaign is clearly correlated with your business goals for maximum impact and ROI.  Carefully plan tactics to convert user engagement into brand awareness, customer acquisition, retention, or upsale.

3. Be Creative: Presumably, your reason for entering the social media space is to effectively connect with customers and prospects.  Hence deployment of a lone corporate Twitterer talking about nothing of value isn’t going to get you anywhere.  Invest in inspired brainstorming and superior creative thinking so your campaign can make a genuine impact.

4. Establish Realistic Benchmarks: The Fast Company article references a Facebook widget with 34 active users that may have cost $34,000 to build and deploy.   When defining your social media plan, carefully research competitive campaigns to help determine reasonable, comparable participation/penetration metrics.  These numbers, in turn, should help validate your budget.

5. Make a Commitment: Even if you’re simply testing the waters, back up your social media marketing with a bona fide commitment from your organization and your team.  Invest appropriately in creative, execution, and support.  Back up your campaign with a well-considered outreach strategy and a reasonable p.r. effort.  A half-hearted operation may do considerably more harm than good, while a successful one can make a tangible impact on your business in many ways.

It’s Monday morning and you’re getting ready to settle into your week.  You are sitting by your desk with your usual breakfast and large (very much needed) coffee.  You start your morning routine today as always: ritualistically unwrapping your breakfast while opening Outlook to read your mail, snapping back the tab of your coffee lid to take your first sip, opening your web-browser to Yahoo to take a quick look at …Wait!  What the??  

Something’s wrong.  Suddenly you feel uncomfortable, ungrounded.  You feel like you’ve entered and alien world:  Yahoo has completely changed its layout!  How could they do this?  You feel betrayed, lost.  Nothing is where you expect it to be!  Disgusted, you leave the site and go elsewhere to get your morning news.

It’s unnerving when a site changes – and when a staple like Yahoo changes the effect can be users leaving in droves to get their news and email elsewhere.

This is the scenario that Yahoo is trying to avoid by introducing changes to their homepage ever so slowly over the course of the next few months as they make their way to a completely different layout.  As reported in the New York Times article Changing That Home Page? Take Baby Steps, Yahoo is trying to avoid losing users by releasing only small changes to a few users at a time. 

Change can be disastrous for a company.  I have to commend Yahoo:  They are painstakingly taking the time to not only release each change to the public slowly, but they are also usability testing each change and revising to make sure  that it will be accepted by as many users as possible. 

But what about the rest of us?  While it may not be as cost effective to test and release every change individually, we can eliminate user-frustration through timely releases accompanied by usability testing.  In this way your site can grow and remain fresh without throwing off users.  – And grow in a way that the users want.  

There are many reasons to upgrade and change a site, but each change should be a type of evolution: slow, methodical, and containing only those enhancements that were the fittest to survive usability testing. 

Often times change can bring on such a strong emotional response that no matter what it is (even those great enhancements to usability) will wrongly give users the impression that a site is more difficult to use.  These emotions and subsequent brand perception can be easily avoided by acting slowly and with a game plan.  Take it to the users and let change evolve over time!  Releases should show off new features not a blindingly different site.

A researcher named Tom Smith at Universal McCann has published a fascinating study called “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers.”  After interviewing 17,000 people in 29 countries he convincingly explains (as we thought) how and why social media and online experiences in general directly impact purchase decisions. 

The report chronicles the rise of social media, explains the phenomenon of digital friends, and untangles the proliferation of influencer channels. Some interesting takeaways from the study include:

• Music, films, and technology are the categories most discussed online, but even low interest categories like finance, real estate and insurance have high participation rates.

• Holidays and travel are the most sought after for information.

• We are more likely to be influencers than receivers in the age of social media. 

• The new world of influence needs a more conversational approach; advertising should encourage interaction, input and community.

You can download the whole report here.  Valuable stuff for marketers.

Last week, it was interesting to see that magazine veteran Tina Brown (Vanity Fair, New Yorker, Talk) had planted her flag on the web. Her new web destination is The Daily Beast --www.thedailybeast.com, a news/opinion/sensibility site backed by Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp and powered by Ms. Browne’s “gilded e-Rolodex.” (See the NY Times article heralding the site launch).

Apart from the site’s scoops and opinions, it was my great hope that The Daily Beast would break new ground in information and visual design but alas, that was not to be.

I’m not here to weigh in on the value or relevance of stories about staff shake ups at the National Review or one-stop shopping for last night’s Daily Show or Keith Olberman clips. But I can say that the cluttered layout and red/black/gray color scheme certainly don’t bring any real excitement or break new ground in web design. A pity because I’m sure this endeavor is exceptionally well-funded and that they sunk hours and hours of work into this thing and came up with something that looks dated and uninspired.

Ms. Brown counters that “we are tweaking and refining even as we speak…that’s the nice part about doing something on the Web.” – She definitely has that right and we wish her good luck. We will check in every so often to monitor the evolution of the beast.

My boss Jon Fox knows that I love to quote John Wooden from time to time in the Flightpath office.  So, when I had a chance to meet Bill Walton at the All-Star Game in New Orleans this past year, I said, “Bill, I quoted Coach Wooden the other day in a meeting: ‘Never confuse activity with achievement’.”  Bill smiled a broad smile and corrected me in his kind demeanor, reminding me that the actual quote is: Never MISTAKE Activity for Achievement.

How can I connect this to Web 2.0?

I attended a presentation by Avinash Kaushik at the Web 2.0 conference. Avinash focused on the details of web reporting in a 2.0 world.  He encouraged us to go beyond the page views. His message: track individual transactions against real goals. The traditional way of reporting web data was just dumping page related statistics (read: Activity). He is encouraging us to do more with the new tools that are available (read: Achievement). You can check out his blog to learn more: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/

Web professionals, how many times have we mistaken visits or page views or number of visitors for real achievement when reporting to sr. management? I think we are all guilty of this travesty...until now, thanks to Avinash.

Although I am willing to bet, he doesn’t play hoops, Avinash would agree with coach Wooden’s maxim. I feel like in many ways Avinash is saying the same thing when it comes to Web Analytics in today’s environment. For too long we have been confusing (forgive, me, Bill, mistaking) activity for achievement by looking at the numbers which Avinash likes to refer to as numbers that are just “puked out of the reporting tools”. Now that there are tools to track more meaningful details effectively, let’s start using them, people!

PS- Avinash, if I’m wrong about the hoops thing, I’m happy to challenge you to a game of one on one at Rucker Park.  We could post video of our game on YouTube and then track the site activity. Heck maybe we can get Bill Walton to give color commentary.

PPS- Bill, thanks for the pictures and for the autograph for my dad – it’s on the wall in a place of high honor, right next to Joe Paterno’s Autograph.

What a feeling it was to meet someone you've done a project for...especially a celebrity...Thursday night I got to meet Paige Davis!!!

Last week, my colleague, Joshua, and I attended an event for Prevention Magazine in celebration of the launch of a new feature within their magazine called Cook! I had a chance to mingle with people in the food industry, including well-known chef celebrities and cookbook authors. What a small world! ...the Emcee for the party was the host of TLC's Trading Spaces, Paige Davis.

Earlier this year, our team launched an awesome interactive game for the eighth season of Trading Spaces. You can find more about the project on our portfolio. So after looking at comps of web pages with images of Paige all over them throughout the year it is was very exciting to meet the real live Paige Davis. And yes, she is just as nice as she seems on TV.

PS - Thank you for inviting us to the event Tanya!