Perceptint Musings

The past month has been a merry go round of creative brain sparking in the search for a name for the new product I’m working with some associates on. I realized this morning, it’s like spearing pickles in a barrel of jello, trying your hardest to strike upon and retrieve the right one.

At the same time the left side of my brain is trying to help capture that elusive pickle and figure out how to structure a new company, the right side of my brain is knee deep in organizational issues working with my direct client. The overlap has been great though lately because I feel more engaged to tackle both sides.

And in the midst of stepping outside this whirlwind to write a new post, a new name popped to mind that I really like. I need to send this one out before it’s gone. Back again today or tomorrow with more.

I’ve written previously about how my current work with a client has grown and I was looking to diversify my interests to spread my risk out. Having those feelers to the ground, sniffing for moments of opportunity, is a great feeling. I would highly recommend it to anyone feeling caught up or lost in their current job.

And because I was out looking around, an opportunity has come along that’s really set my antenna twitching. I’ve been asked to run the domestic operations for an undisclosed startup that is in the early planning stages. This company would reunite me with some former colleagues I enjoy working with, as well as expose me to a whole new group of challenges and potetial rewards.

I wanted to let those of you who do stop by to read the blog know why you’ve seen even less of me. One post in a month was never my intention. As time progresses I’ll be able to share more details about the new company and what we’re doing. In the meantime I’m going to do my best to post something at least once a week, more frequently if I can.

But I’d like to know from any of you, do you find there were times where you had an opportunity that you knew you needed to take on? Or not take on? What came of it and did it pay off? I’d love to know if my experiences are similar to others. Thanks again for your patronage and I’ll see you soon.

So lately, I’ve fallen completely off the blog wagon. Partly due to being busy with other things and partly due to needing a little bit of a jump start.

I’m also trying to make sure that when I publish something to the blog I believe in it 100% and I think it has value to anyone who might read it. Like I said early on, I don’t just want it to be a “commenting on the daily news” type of blog so it’s been a few weeks since I’ve had anything I thought was valuable to write about.

Until today, when I have to express my sheer frustration with blog spam. In the past two and a half weeks off, I have received over 60 comments on several of my posts. These aren’t comments that have anything to do with the topic, they don’t contribute anything to the conversation, and they are really starting to annoy me to no end.

So far, I’ve gotten comments from people pushing porn, gambling and ringtones. I had no idea that ringtones ran with such nefarious partners. Especially free ringtones. And I didn’t know that free ringtones needed so much help in advertising themselves. If your product is free, you’re halfway to producing a good transaction for someone looking for something free.

The comments that confuse me the most are the ones that appear to be full of gibberish and gibberish domains. Like a monkey sat down at a domain registrar and just registered every combination of keystrokes it could come up with.

If the best way to market yourself is to pretend to contribute to blogs or other sites you have nothing to do with, you really need to get outside more often. The Internet might be the wrong avenue for you. It’s like selling tickets to a street race and then showing people a documentary on butterflies.

So to all of you out there trying to monkey market your business, I say step away from the keyboard. I’m just a little old blog on the fringe of the web read by a few hundred people at best right now. If I’m a target, I can’t imagine what some of the blogs with larger audiences are sifting through.

Who’s with me on this? Is anyone else suffering from the burden of spam like I am? Let me know what you think and if you’ve had any horrible spam experiences to share with others.

With the continuing growth of digital marketing technologies, many companies are faced with the challenge of dipping their toes into new channels they may not be fully prepared for. Given the complexities of new channels like mobile advertising and social media, to move from a pilot marketing program into an official marketing protocol is a tall order.

That’s why I firmly believe that most companies need a digital risk center. This would be a marketing group that’s sole charter is to experiment with new channels and help guide the company through the potentially rocky roads without exposing the entire corporation to a greater risk. They are like the digital Sherpa’s, setting the ropes and ladders for the greater hordes following behind.

Here’s a quick list for how it could work:

1. Digital Risk Center is formed. Their charter is to identify new channels that might satisfy current marketing goals.
2. The group would have a separate budget from overall marketing. They would be responsible for vendor management.
3. From the first pilot of a new campaign, the group would be responsible for documentation and case studies of each new channel.
4. From the case studies, best practices for the organization should be developed. Once best practices are in place, the group would be responsible for partnering with the appropriate internal sponsors to turn the best practices into official marketing protocol.
5. As channels are approved and move through this process, the group would be responsible for assisting in the hand off of the channel to the larger marketing organization.
6. Repeat and rinse.

In this model, experimentation and learning are actively encouraged. One of the goals is to ensure that someone’s job isn’t hanging in the balance due to a lapse in judgment by their use of a new channel and subsequent failure. This model accepts that failure will occur, but understands that failure with learning’s can help the overall organizational health. It is also an acknowledgement by the company that they need to mitigate risk and create a method for keeping up with the ever-changing digital marketing picture.

What are your thoughts on this digital risk center concept? Does your company actively take chances or does your corporate culture wince from the thought? As always, your thoughts and opinions are welcome.

Until next time, may risk and the proper handling of it bring you and your organization the rewards they deserve.

When I took the dive this time, I swore my goal in starting this business was to keep myself smiling. My background in start-ups educated me to the level of work and dedication it will take to make Perceptint real and ongoing. What I was
striving for mentally was creating a job with a perfect blend of excitement, engagement, execution, and open-ended flexibility.

When I posted the bullet list that kicked the business idea for Perceptint into a reality, I believed I knew how my model would play out. I would begin an engagement with an ongoing client, dive in deep with them, and then resurface three months later, ready to take on another client or two. Basic risk analysis said my need to get more than one client was very high and should be acted upon with haste.

In the reality of those three months working as a digital marketing advocate for my first client, the client and I realized the engagement we had needed to grow. My time was proving to have more of an immediate impact than expected because I was providing more benefit to the team in the short term as an operational medic, helping stave off a world of fast moving bullets.

The digital marketing strategy of the client is in pretty good shape. It needs some sculpting, but overall it’s running on a well defined track. The world that is bleeding and suffering most is the internal pipeline tasked with getting all the digital marketing projects out the door. Second behind that is a need to tie together a vast mountain of campaign reporting data into a more digestible, public facing team data point.

The client employs well over 150,000 people across a variety of regions. As more of the organization wonders about digital marketing tactics, the need to satisfy those demands grows even faster. A group that a few years ago was managing fifty to one-hundred projects is now pushing close to one-thousand projects through a pipeline that has not scaled as much as needs.

My background in project management and delivery in the agency world means I am bringing new ideas about running production and forecasting into a group where these concepts can have a very rapid impact. If we implement it correctly, it should help them scale to meet ongoing demand, and help build a clear picture of the groups’ immense value within the very large world of the organization.

These are near real time additions to the work that I defined early in the client engagement. Some of the elements we identified for me to work on are coming to fruition now that we’re through the deep dive – building a centralized knowledge base using wiki technologies and creating the Vision Report for this group to help broadcast success, failure, what we’re learning and where we’re going.

The core information offering I put forth is also proving to be a helpful addition to the team. Technology reviews, being a better ambassador to IT, and helping them better understand their agencies and their need to better lead them are all becoming topics I am no longer selling internally in conversations.

At the same time that we knew the first engagement needed to grow, I also knew that my need for diversity in my business wouldn’t be served with another direct client relationship. My scalability in the consulting side would only be to add more hourly based projects for myself or begin hiring other consultants. I’m not ready to hire and I’m not ready to triple my workload, so…

Since I have the freedom to do it, I can toss the first growth model in the virtual waste bin. Sizing up the next chapter of the business, writing, publishing and speaking more - the true core of what will keep me smiling - are to be attacked
with haste and urgency.

The satisfying part is that I’ve laid out this plan with my client and they are whole-heartedly onboard. Part of their perception of my ongoing value is my presence in the organization as an outside thought leader.

Developing this flexible model of the insider/outsider within the organization engages both sides of my brain in a way that I was not expecting. Being an ER stabilizer and a surgeon in the same day pushes my thinking, keeps me nimble, and forces me to focus in ways I am just now discovering.

I’ll keep you in the loop as to how it all develops and give you tips from what I’m learning as they come along. As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

© 2008 Keith Boswell