A Tale of Two Sneakers

Ad Campaigns Will Fail in the Home Stretch if Your Brand Reps Aren't On Board With Your Message

According to an article by David Marsh in today's Financial Times, "service blossoms in a downturn. Waiters wait, usherettes usher, doormen open doors." I'd agree with this 110%. As budgets get squeezed, buyers have greater choice, and competition intensifies for each new sale.

Unfortunately, no one has conveyed this message to the sales reps in New York City's Nike store.

Yesterday, I was coming out of a midday meeting in midtown. I've been looking to purchase a new pair of sneakers for weeks but time is always so tight. Anyways, being relatively close to the Nike store, I thought I'd drop in. I mean, it's Nike, you can't go wrong. I've bought into their million dollar ad campaign messages, "Just do it," from back in the day, Tiger Woods, etc. And, honestly, even though I don't quite recall what Nike's post-"Just Do It" tagline is, I'm still on board. I was looking forward to exploring the myriad options at my feet in their mega-flagship on 57th Street. I could even see myself trolling down Fifth Avenue with my "swoosh" shopping bag, and going to Cardio Kickboxing sporting my phat new gear.

Unfortunately, Nike, "Just Blew It!" After 1) dealing with three sales reps who seemed to have very little, if any, product knowledge, 2) finding it tough to get anything beyond a one-word answer to my questions, and 3) getting one of those "try those over there" (with a point across the floor, as if I could call the stock room and try shoes on myself), I was done. I left and decided that my quest for a new pair of sneakers would just have to wait.

Later that day back in the office, I thought, "Why not try the Adidas store?" I'll admit, I know Adidas by name but I'm kinda old-school - my perceptions of that brand went out with Run DMC back in the late '80s. I really didn't know much about Adidas besides the fact that it's a big European label (pronounced over there as "Ahh-DEE-das"), I've got some of their workout wear (which I dig), and I'd guess their main spokesman is David Beckham. But I'm a Europhile so I'd check it out. Plus, I was leaving work soon and their mega-store, on Houston Street, is just a few blocks from our studio on Canal Street.

What a great experience! My sales guy, Stefan, clearly knew all his stuff, was extremely helpful in answering my questions, and allowed me to sample many different styles and sizes, and all while never rushing me despite the fact that I arrived within 30 minutes of closing time. Not only did I walk out with a new pair of sneakers, but I definitely plan on heading back sometime soon to browse the rest of the store when they're not so close to closing. And, next time I'm looking for a new pair of sneakers, I know where I'm going.

Unfortunately, situations like this are way too common. As companies spend tons of money on long-winded marketing campaigns to impress consumers and external audiences, many times they fail to recognize that one of their most important target groups are their own employees. A million dollar ad campaign will only get a brand so far if client-facing ground troops - the men and woman who deal with the customers and prospects all day - aren't on board with the message. After all, Tiger Woods might come to mind when I think of Nike, but he's not the guy helping me try on a pair of "Air-Whatever-The-Hecks" during a long-winded lunch break. In my opinion, Nike clearly doesn't get it. Adidas clearly does. Another brand that immediately comes to mind as one that gets it, is Apple - the reps in an Apple Store are so on board they must bleed 1s and 0s!

Another company that clearly gets it is one of our clients, INTTRA. At Y INTERACT, we are currently in the middle of a marketing campaign with INTTRA - the shipping industry's preferred e-commerce platform - called "The Next Wave". The target audience is all INTTRA employees, with a campaign that includes posters, plasma animations for worldwide reception screens, desktop screensavers, the intranet (which we call the "INTTRAnet"), and more. The objective is to inform and educate employees about new initiatives at INTTRA. Their marketing team understands that communicating a message out to the world will only get their brand so far. However, if the representative picking up the phone, or the sale rep making a client call doesn't understand the messages swirling around them, it could cost them business. And these days, that business is more important than ever.

Ahmed Yearwood
President
Y INTERACT
www.yinteract.com

Calvin Klein knows fashion, but they have a lot to learn about designing e-marketing campaigns!

I'll admit it - Nothing comes between me and my Calvins. I'm a total Calvin Klein loyalist, and have been for many years in everything from blue jeans to whatever products they are selling in their John Pawson-designed flagship on Madison Avenue. At one point a few years ago, I was even putting out feelers to people at both Calvin Klein and Philips-Van Heusen (parent company) about the possibilities for a calvinklein.com website – at the time they did not have a website – yet that never materialized for us. And when calvinklein.com finally launched, I was all over it (despite the fact that it was not a Y INTERACT site). So, when I received a recent promotion to join their email list, it was a no-brainer. Of course I'd like to be kept abreast of sales and promotions. Sign me up!

Unfortunately, however, I'm disappointed. Over the last couple of days, I've received a handful of email promotions from calvinklein.com, but all for woman's wear – dresses, knits, female underwear, etc. From the perspective of a customer, it's annoying to have my in-box littered with promotions that, not being a woman, are completely irrelevant to me. As a marketer, this simply strikes me as poor email strategy. They are clearly just blanket e-blasting and not targeting, and what many fail to realize is that targeting is the beauty of email communications.

With just a few quick questions at sign up (for example, male/female, perhaps ZIP code), marketers can get enough information on a prospect to keep messages pertinent while avoiding long-winded questionnaires. When a visitor expresses interest in your brand, product or service, marketers have a little bit of wiggle-room to gather the basic information you need to make your messages relevant. This will help keep your prospects on board and convert them into buyers. In the reverse case of poor email marketing, I (a Calvin Klein brand loyalist) am now just 1-2 messages away from that dredded "unsubscribe" link. Of course, these e-transgressions won't keep me from stepping into the Madison Avenue store the next time a "40% off" flag is waving outside, but in terms of their online communications channel, that low-hanging fruit might soon be falling off the tree!

People are busy. They don't have time for noise in their in-box. Last fall, we worked with our client, INTTRA – the shipping industry's preferred global e-commerce platform – and a partner vendor, 1to1 Dialog, to create a Flash-animated product tour that included a very quick questionnaire (just six fields) for interested visitors to get additional information. The sequence was not blocked by the questions – it appeared on the right of the animation to allow interested viewers to complete it before, during or after the product tour, and get more information from INTTRA. Armed with just a little bit of information such as name, country and job title, INTTRA can now segment their communications by region, job responsibility, or even distribute messages in multiple languages.

After all, to regularly send US customers promotions for products that are only available for Asian markets is simply noise. And gets your prospects that much closer to their "unsubscribe" link.

Ahmed Yearwood
President
Y INTERACT
www.yinteract.com

It's 9.26pm on a Thursday Evening and I'm Social Networking

The term, "social networking" is extremely ironic since there's absolutely nothing social about sitting in your office at (now) 9.27pm on a Thursday evening tapping away into a laptop. At this point in the evening, I'd much rather have caught the tail-end of the Happy Hour somewhere. Or tonight's rugby practice that I was telling myself I was going to get to. But I'm here in our Canal Street design studio. Social networking.

Being more specific, I just finished 1) claiming and 2) updating my ZoomInfo.com profile. Honestly, I never really gave ZoomInfo much credit until I read quite recently that it is a trusted resource for getting information about people, so I thought I'd better update it. And not necessarily because I expect a journalist from Time magazine to be scoping me out for an article (well, perhaps not this year!) but because ANYONE can be scoping me out as a potential vendor, business partner, or whatever. I had noticed that ZoomInfo ranked pretty high up on a typical "Ahmed Yearwood" Google search, so I figured it was time to finally correct the handful of inaccuracies in there. There were just a couple. I'm sure Brangelina has teams of people to sort out all the junk they've got out there against their name(s)!

These days, EVERYONE's talking about social networking. I don't think many quite get what it's all about (and I'll raise my hand and admit I'm still trying to get my head around it!) but the one comment everyone seems to make is that it's rather time-consuming. And it is. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious, Flickr, ZoomInfo, High5, Blogspot, etc, etc, etc – it's a lot of content to manage and working through it all IS time consuming. Big companies like Dell hire people whose sole responsibility is to manage their web 2.0 communications. Well, Y INTERACT isn't that big (yet), and that's why I'm here, in the office at (now) 9.43pm on a Thursday evening social networking. During the course of the business day, I've got "regular course of the business day" responsibilities to manage – like clients, my design team, and all the ins and outs that come with running a design studio, or any business for that matter!

It's definitely got its advantages, however. For me, the 2.0 channels offer an opportunity to expand Y INTERACT's brand in a way I never would have thought imaginable a few years ago. And, while everyone's always banging on about S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimization), the 2.0 channels are a great way to cast an extremely wide Y INTERACT net for great Google pickup. My objectives are very specific – I'm not targeting people who go online Googling "website designers." After all, there are a ton of companies out there who do what we do (although not as well of course) and broad searches like that are a short route to mini sites for magicians that simply aren't our market. However, when someone types in "Y INTERACT" after hearing about us, by either word of mouth, meeting one of us, a job bank, or from an event that we were involved with, that's what I want to manage. Additionally, given that at least 50% of Y INTERACT's revenue comes from developing online media (the other half coming from print media/graphic design), we've got to be clued into this stuff. And lastly, I'll admit it's also kinda fun at times, it's a GREAT opportunity to keep in touch with friends I haven't seen in ages, and I'm a bit of a workaholic anyway. If I weren’t in the office social networking, I'm sure I'd be doing some other form of work right now! And watching two hours of Anderson Cooper "Keeping them Honest" on his CNN soap box gets rather mind-numbing after about 10-15 minutes.

At Y INTERACT, I think we've got most of the "of the moment" channels covered

• We use our Facebook page for more fun items – event photos, new client gigs, random stuff that we just like to toss out there as a design group
• On our LinkedIn group, I post articles of interest. These can be related to design and architecture, business/finance, technology/IT, the works. I read the Financial Times every morning so a good number of articles come from the FT.
• Twitter is a bit more random, "What is Ahmed doing right now???" It's fun and a great way to engage people with similar interests to yours. I've got some AWESOME music tips from others who I follow on Twitter
• We use Flickr for posting and tagging photos (and DON'T FORGET TO TAG YOUR PHOTOS, BECAUSE THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT) from our events, such as the Race for Kids Fundraiser, or our Chinese New Year party.
• And this blog, "Notes from Canal Street" – I still haven't entire figured this one out yet as this is just my second blog. But here I will be posting more PR-related content such as product launches, milestones in our studio, and rants just like the one you're reading now

If, after reading all this, you find yourself more confused then you were before, then join us for an event that we're calling "Social Networking 101", a cocktail party and panel discussion on how individuals and marketers can make heads and tails of all this 2.0 stuff. It will be on April 30th at Certe (20 West 55th Street, b/t 5th and 6th), from 6-8pm and Y INTERACT is the sponsor. Details and online bookings will soon be available via the Financial Communications Society website, http://www.fcsinteractive.com/. Panelists are still being finalized, so watch this space for details!

It's now 10.08pm on a Thursday evening and I think I'm going home. Or, on second thought, I think I might actually stop off for that (now) non-happy hour beer. So what if it's no longer half-price, or two-for-one, or whatever the special-of-the-moment was. I'll pay a bit more for it but, as Beyonce famously says for L'Oreal, "I'm worth it!"

Ahmed Yearwood
President
Y INTERACT
http://www.yinteract.com/

One Quarter Down, Three to Go!

Today is a great day to start a blog! Not because it's April Fools Day, but because we at Y INTERACT are one quarter down, three more to go for the oh-nine.

I'm glad to say that Y INTERACT has started the year on solid footing. Of course, our design studio has been affected by the economic downturn just like everyone else, but we still continue to work with core clients, while also managing to pick up some groovy new business as well. In fact, I see these times as an ideal opportunity to further develop the range of services that we offer at Y INTERACT, as well as expand our portfolio of work.

We started the year with a new client, MTS Health Partners (http://www.mtspartners.com), one of the preeminent healthcare merchant banks, on a website redesign that's moving along well! We just finished the design phase of the project and we're now building it all out (HTML production, content management application development, testing). Watch this space for the new site!

Y INTERACT recently launched a redesigned website for Victor Buhler, the Academy Award-nominated Director whose film, "Riker's High", won the "New York Loves Film" Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, and has also been nominated for an Emmy Award. Check it out at http://www.victorbuhler.net.

Expanding our community initiatives, Y INTERACT is proud to be a new supporter of Cool Culture (http://www.cool-culture.org), a non-profit organization that provides underprivileged children and families with free, unlimited access to 80 of New York's finest museums, botanical gardens, zoos, and other cultural institutions that they may not otherwise have access to due to financial constraints.

In February, I was invited to join Cool Culture's board of directors, and I also agreed to co-chair the Cool Culture 2009 Spring Benefit (May 14th at the South Street Seaport – details to follow!) I am extremely excited about both of these. Y INTERACT donated creative services to the Spring Benefit by designing a killer save the date and invitation. We just got the invitations from the printer, and they look amazing (if I do say so).

Y INTERACT continues our on-going relationship with INTTRA – the leading global e-commerce platform for the shipping industry – to design and construct media for all INTTRA office locations worldwide (and in over a dozen languages!) We recently completed an overhaul of INTTRA's core collateral, started design on an exhibit kiosk for the INTERMODAL South America 2009 Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil, delivered a suite of print material for INTTRA's team at the Transport Logistic 2009 Conference in Munich, Germany, and continue to maintain their website, http://www.inttra.com, as well as their client extranet.

And we finished Q1 on a high note – delivering a Flash widget to our newest client, the National Basketball Association. Created for the WNBA, watch this space for it at http://www.wnba.com when the season starts on April 9th, 2009.

Looking ahead at Q2, we've got plenty in store for the months to come. Y INTERACT will be collaborating with an artist in London on a new site design, we've got event sponsorships in the works, and perhaps will even host an event or reception here at our studio on Canal Street, New York City. In the middle of all this, we plan on launching our own new site at http://www.yinteract.com.

It's all very exciting stuff, and that's no (April Fool's) joke!

Ahmed Yearwood
President
Y INTERACT