Some cookies are best left to crumble.

I’m quite concerned about the stir cause by the knowledge that some etailers are delivering higher prices to returning ‘loyal’ customers than to new customers. What does this say to me as a loyal customer? It says; “We are complacent; we take your custom for granted so we will treat you like a mug!”

Of course we expect introductory bonuses and such for new customers, but loyalty is hard-earned and loyal customers should be nurtured.

It is often said that high street retailers can learn a lot from their electronic counterparts, but this is a case where etailers should take a leaf from the book of bricks and mortar retailers – why do you think they have loyalty schemes, give points and exclusive gifts etc? Because it costs a lot to secure one new customer, and far less to hang on to, and make money from those you have got.  Get greedy and those repeat customers will soon tell you where to stuff your cookies.

 

Twitter? You cannot be serious?

I was just reading an interesting post on Zdnet.. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-334651.html. Apparently Twitter is not serious enough for business. I know it is always a contentious issue when I raise the subject at training workshops I deliver – Twitter is kind of the Marmite of social media – you either love it or hate it. It is sure to raise the strongest of emotions.

I am still unsure why this is the case. Some very serious people and organisations are obviously using microblogging very successfully. True, it is a bit of an unruly child at the moment… an adolescent struggling for its own identity trying to find its place in the world.  But then, so was the internet back in the early nineties.

As I said at the start, opinions are strongly polarised and for everyone who hates Twitter I find support and adoption coming from the most unlikely quarters.

I would tend to be cautious when people state such strident views: maybe it is not the image of Twitter which is the issue, but their own self-image.

 

On the move

It seems like a long time since we first started hearing about the wonders or threats of convergence, but there is a strong indication that mobile in its various manifestations may be taking over the driving seat.

I’ve always been a bit of a purist so far as my mobile phone was concerned: it was just for making phone calls. Then I subscribed to mobile broadband, mainly to use a dongle on my laptop as I travel a lot (don’t get me started on the price hotels charge for broadband). Anyway, that permitted me broadband on my phone. My first use was Google maps when I was was lost. There followed a number of distress driven uses and soon I was hooked. My phone upgrade then led me to a bigger colour screen (my eyesight is no longer what it was… if it ever was).

So, where I always made sure I carried my laptop everywhere in its rucksack, I scaled down to a netbook for foreign trips. At one time I felt naked without some form of computer… now I am relaxed with just my phone, comfortably using it for most of my quick applications.

My tasks for the coming weeks?  Adapt and make sure my websites work well on mobiles.

 

Is CMS changing the face of digital project management?

Content management systems have been around a long time. Once they were custom-built and strictly for big organisations with the money to pay for them. Today they are commonplace for even the smallest enterprise. Building on frameworks such as Joomla they have shifted the project emphasis away from the management of development to the management of content.

This has some interesting consequences: the development of structure is far more in the hands of the managers. Does this make ’strategy creep’ more or less likely? In the previous model, if clients did not get their strategy exactly right, they would change or modify the brief, making amendments throughout the development stage. However, there was usually a substantial cost to these changes, perhaps mitigating against too many changes and (theoretically) an onus on the client to get the strategy right at the start. With a CMS, the client can more easily make changes… even serious structural changes, without such penalties.

So, what is more important, getting the project exactly right… even if you got your initial strategy wrong, or accepting something being 95% right but allowing the other 5% to go through to save costs?

With my project manager’s hat on I hate sloppy planning and I applaud anything that encourages people to get the strategy right at the outset. But in the real world I must accept that clients often DO get the brief wrong or unclear, or situations simply change and it is our job to help them get back on course as painlessly as possible.

The other aspect of the increasing use of the CMS is that it puts the emphasis firmly back on content. That means that it engages the client far more than the developer. There was a time when the the client passed a job over to the developer, with content as an afterthought, expecting the finished project to spring fully formed onto their server. Now the steps are far more synergic: get the design and structure approved, then develop the content… which after all is what the project is all about.

 

What is the most useful tool in project management?

What do you consider your most useful tool in project management… digital or otherwise? Is it your favourite software… critical paths or pertographs, networks on time perhaps… Microsoft project?

My candidate for the most useful tool is the humble post-it note. After the pencil (with an eraser attached) the post-it has been one of my fundamentals for getting to grips with a new project. It is clear, flexible and allows me to be creative and explain processes to clients.  Give me coloured post it notes and a blank wall and I’m in hog-heaven. So… what is your candidate?

 

Will it be a square world for Google?

Google’s new ‘Google Squared’ has been launched, but just in its test phase at the moment (www.google.com/squared). Basically it seems to deliver search results in a matrix with rows and columns… so what? Well I was sceptical – is this just another jolly wheeze from Google or will it have any practical use?

In terms of searching that we are all familiar with, the tried and trusted layout is probably ideal, and a casual searcher might find ’squared’ confusing. I certainly did when I first looked at it.  But when I started using it as a research tool for one of my other blogs, it all started to fall into place… I could put topics down the vertical axis and categories allong the horizontal axis. Once I ditched Google’s suggested categories (Star sign?) and put in my own… things started to fall into place.

It does get addictive as you can be interactive in a way that traditional search does not allow. I think I will be getting square eyes soon.

 

Don’t forget to write.

Despite the growth of rich media and the phenomena of such channels as You-Tube, digital media is still predominantly text based. Writing sound content has never been more important.  I watch the twists and turns of the search marketing fraternity with interest, but of great fascination is the importance and integration with good, engaging and informative content.  PR skills are now becoming deeply integrated into search and social media strategies. Electronic PR (EPR) and the production and submission of articles is now more than a promotional, awareness-building tool but becomes an integral part of a web marketing strategy.  Wordsmiths are back in fashion.

Content production for SEO now moves beyond the mathematics of keyword density etc. For articles to be accepted the must be interesting, informative, engaging and entertaining…  Hmmm, isn’t that what good advertising and PR copy should have always been? Perhaps when much trailed semantic search really arrives we will be seeing websites as well written as the best ads and press stories.

 

Reverting to type

At the risk of having a rant, I despair of the quality of typography in much of the digital media I have to deal with.  Now, I trained as a designer when typographical design was a distinct and highly prized discipline.  Print material - ads, literature, stationary etc. was created by a designer, then passed to a typographer or typographical designer to specify the type.  When DTP arrived, the designer’s concepts could go straight to print – so the output was purely dependent upon the quality of the designer’s typographical skills and understanding, which in many cases was sadly lacking.

So, why does this matter in today’s digital world? Because, despite rich media advances, the web is still largely a text based medium and an understanding of the principles of typography is vital if copy is to be easily read and understood.  Let’s look at just a few fundamentals:

Line length – the landscape format of a web page is not ideal (why do you think newspaper pages are vertical?). The ideal number of words to a line is about 10-12 max. Why? Because that is the ideal number for the eye to scan and move to the next line with ease – without struggling to find the beginning of the line again.

Text layout – ranged left text reads better than justified or ranged right text. Why? As above, it makes it easier for your eye to return to begin the next line as the lines ‘look’ different.

Upper and lowercase text reads better than all caps – Why? Because once we learn to read we then begin to recognise words by their shape, not by reading them character for character, and the ascender and descenders (the bits that stick above and below the line) in lowercase text help us see the shape more quickly and easily(that’s why motorway signs are in upper and lower).

Sadly, part of the reason for the demise of good typography is that text or content in digital media is often left to the final moment. Pages are filled with ‘greek’ text to view the designs, and nobody (certainly not the designers) ever has to consider how well the content is read.

I could go on… but I hope these few, simple examples make the point. There is an old truism… the best typography is never noticed – you are too busy reading the content.

 

Government IT project management – another one bites the dust.

Another government IT project, the government’s prisons computer system, has come in for massive censure and criticism for the failures in project management. A “masterclass in sloppy project management” which ran hundreds of millions of pounds over-budget, MPs have said. Almost doubled in cost and two years overdue, it was finally scrapped.

Prisons computer system ‘a masterclass in sloppy project management’, NAO finds – Daily Telegraph

But why is this scenario constantly repeated on public sector projects?  I cannot believe the that on all these projects the managers are any less able or the procurement officers any less rigorous than those in the private sector… so what is going on? I started reflecting on the difference between private and public sector tenders I have been involved in and these are my personal reflections:

There are more surprises in public sector tender awards – when I have lost on private sector contracts, the reasons usually make sense. We lost to someone who had some obvious advantages or our tender was not as well put together. Often when we lost a public sector tender and looked at the winner, often the first question was, ‘Who?’  And on other occasions we were equally surprised to win tenders against what we considered superior competition.

The selection process is often more remote – procurement and assessment panels are not homogeneous and are staffed by many people who will have no part in the delivery of the project.  This often means that once the tender is secured, the project brief ends up being re-written at least in part by those involved in the delivery. In the private sector, usually more of those involved in the tender process on the client side are those with a direct vested interset in the success of the project, not just political responsibility.

Perhaps I have only been involved in small scale tenders by comparison, but rarely has emphasis been put upon my organisation demonstrating project management methods or processes and it has usually been up to me to volunteer such evidence. Often when discussing project management issues with selection panels I have seen eyes glaze over… maybe that is my presentation style, or an indication of lack of interest.

I would love to hear other people’s experience – perhaps these issues are just highlighted on major projects, maybe it is just a question of scale?

 

Social marketing? I don’t think so.

Sometimes I get a little depressed by the misuse of the term ‘marketing’ – not just because I’m getting old and curmudgeonly, but because it flags up a basic misunderstanding of what I do for a living. Very often clients approach me saying they need some ‘marketing’, usually meaning the require some advertising or marcomms. Okay, I am not going to turn away business for the sake of terminology so I grit my teeth and get on with it. But in today’s Independent (03/03/2009) Yvonne Cook writes an article on ‘Social Marketing’ – by this she refers to such government or other social campaigns to try to stop us smoking and drinking and make sure we eat our five a day. There is now our first Professor of Social Marketing, Gerard Hastings, she informs us and an Institute for Social Marketing (ISM) run jointly by the OU and the University of Stirling. The Open University now runs courses on Social Marketing – and as an OU alumni myself I am reluctant to criticise them.  But it is the terminology that grates with me. There is some great work being done in the social arena, but for me it is not ‘marketing’ – it is ‘communications’.  Going back to my very first marketing text book and the hoary old 4 ‘P’s – Product, Price, Place and Promotion – there is no product, no price and no place – unless you really torture those definitions.  All there is is ‘Promotion’ or more accurately communication.  I am very impressed when I look at the activity in this field and there is some very sophisticated communication being done, using mainstream techniques learned in the commercial sector!

Anyway, rant over… I’m off to write a ‘marketing’ proposal for reducing teenage pregnancies!