Recently Published Article on QR Codes

Henry Schein, Inc., a Fortune 500 medical and dental product company, recently asked Patrick Kelly to write an article on the use of QR Codes in dental practice marketing. Click here to read the full article.

Project Management

Project management is an integral part of Method Engine. It may not be as exciting as strategy or as inspiring as design, but it's just as critical to the ultimate success of any initiative.

At Method Engine, we utilize a combination of best-practices, process and tools to ensure that all of our projects are managed efficiently.

Sample Best Practice: The Single Point of Contact
One best practice we follow is establishing a single point of contact on the Method Engine team and on the client team. Both contacts should have adequate time to dedicate to the project, knowledge of the creative and technical processes involved in production and authority to unite the different constituencies involved. They should also have some level of budget and timeline accountability.

Our clients have an immense store of knowledge about their business and their customers. The Method Engine team has expansive knowledge amassed during years of executing digital projects. The team contacts work together to make sure all of this knowledge flows freely and is leveraged for maximum positive impact on the project.

We've found that when this happens, projects are almost guaranteed to be a success.

Client Recognition

One of our clients, InContext Solutions, was recently selected by Gartner as a 2011 “Cool Vendor in Consumer Goods.” We couldn’t agree more! The InContext Solutions’ approach is based on research and supported by breath-taking technology. They are a great partner for any consumer goods company interested in gaining customer insight on attitudes, behaviors and actions. Check out the full report from Gartner here and the web site we did for them here.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Competitor Keyword Conquesting

Few things are sweeter than having someone begin a search for one of your competitor's products or services and end up buying one of yours.

In the United States, when executing a SEM campaign it's possible to bid on the trademarked terms of your competitors. The practice is often called "conquesting." Although it's a common practice, the question often comes up whether it's legal.

This question has been tested in the courts. Recently Rosetta Stone sued Google saying that Google was "unjustly profiting from its unauthorized sale of trademarks as keywords to its paid search advertisers." Their lawsuit was dismissed.

Google's position is, "Users searching on Google benefit from being able to choose from a variety of competing advertisers, and we've found no evidence that legitimate use of trademarks as keyword triggers or in the text of advertisements confuses consumers."

So for now, the practice of purchasing trademarks as keywords is allowed by Google and other major search engines. This may change, so for up to date information on Google's AdWords policies, make sure to check out their editorial guidelines.

In the meantime, enjoy the competition!

Social Media Strategy

Most every brand feels the pressure to engage in social media. It seems like every day there is another article on the need for brands to dive into social media or improve upon what they are already doing.

Here are a few quick observations on things that we've seen that have led to successful social media initiatives.

1. Coordinate. Make sure your organization either centralizes or strongly coordinates social media. If PR has certain ideas, different marketing managers have other ideas, and the CEO wants to start tweeting on her own, you are going to have a fragmented approach to communicating your brand in this space. Also, put a senior manager in charge of social media and hold them accountable for meeting goals.

2. Set goals. Social media does not have to be an experiment. It has matured to the point where real goals should be set as a part of a social media strategy. These can involve identifying top influencers, turning customer conversation into insights that are fed back into the organization and reducing customer service costs.

3. Measure. There are many tools available to support your work in the social media space. And there are tools available to meet almost any budget: Adobe's Ominture, Radian6, TwitterAnalyzer are just a few. Others are becoming available as new social media tools come on the scene.

Microsite vs. Primary Web Site vs. E-Commerce Site

When people refer to a "web site" they often mean different things. I thought it might be helpful to clarify some terms.

Microsite: This term is usually used to describe web sites made up of a small group of pages created for a specific purpose. They are often built to support ad campaigns, launch new products or have some other specific, limited purpose. There are some advantages to creating a microsite instead of adding new pages to an existing web site. One advantage is the reduced cost of search engine marketing. Because a microsite can carry content solely related to its purpose, ads are given better quality scores and clicks can be purchased at lower cost. Another advantage is flexibility in user requirements. Because of the limited purpose of these sites, they are great places to utilize animation, video and interactivity such as gaming. Your users will not be returning to this site on a regular basis like they would a primary web site or e-commerce site so more interactivity and richer content can really work well here to support your brand.

Primary web site: This term usually refers to a company's main web site. It is a place to store corporate information such as management team bios, career opportunities and maps to offices. If the company is public, this would be the place to show stock price, press releases and SEC filings. Sometimes a primary web site can house product or service information. This is especially true with B2B companies or companies that don't wish to draw a distinction between the company brand and individual product/service brands.

E-Commerce web site: This term refers to a web site whose sole purpose is to sell products or services. There are well-known best practices to optimize these sites to increase conversions and following these best-practices can substantially increase sales.

Those are just three of the most commonly used terms. Other terms such as blog, wiki and even Facebook page can be interchanged with the term web site, but the ones mentioned above seem to be the most common.

Atemporality Revisited

Recently I've been thinking about Bruce Sterling's 2010 TED Conference speech, "Atemporality for the Creative Artist." I like how he defines the idea of atemporality, but I think other examples may illustrate his point better. Many of his examples, especially those related to social media, do a great job showing how we've managed to create a world outside of space, but I think there are other ideas and products in the market right now, that will eventually help us create a world outside of time.

Take, for example, the growing ubiquity of devices like the iPad and iPhone. These devices have the potential to be always on and always recording. Couple that with the growing number of surveillance cameras everyone is subjected to, satellite images, mapping projects, geo-coded photos and tweets, etc... and you have entire portions of the world in which a substantial portion of the visual and mental landscape is recorded.

If these trends continue, and the cost to archive this content continues to decline, then without much difficulty you can imagine a future in which you can dial back time as easily as you can change the aperture on your camera.

For example, let's say I am sitting in my office on a beautiful sunny day in 2050. I hold up my future reality recording/augmentation device (or simply adjust the setting on my digital glasses) and dial back time 5 years. I can easily see this same office in 2045, the people that are here, the way the furniture is arranged, what people on the street and in the press are talking about. Enough adjacent content will exist that unrecorded objects can be extrapolated and rendered automatically.

Now, I've abolished at least a part of the concept of time and definitely changed the nature of history. I am well on my way to an atemporal world.