A new way to create your own – ‘NikeID’ Japanese site’

The Japanese really do have an interesting take on what works online. Most of the creative sites they develop combine a number of things that ensure the are engaging. The new NikeID (customise your Nike’s) is another example of that.

It combines animation, interaction and customisation. It’s a pretty shallow site, but still a great one to spend some time on. Below is the journey through the site and customisation.

NikeID Japan homepage

NikeID into the city - home page

NikeID - animation sequence

NikeID realcity - customise page

NikeID realcity customise

NikeID realcity customisation complete

NikeID realcity - navigation

The sites focus is branding, but it’s the perfect opportunity to be selling.

OBSERVATIONS

While the site is a good branding site, there are a few things that it could do to enhance it:

• Buy – there is no quick way to buy the shoes that you have customised. After the customisation has finished, you link through to another site and then customise the shoe again. It seems like a waste doing it twice.
• Save – there is an option to post this on your blog (I’ve tried to do that below), but there is no way to save this as a file that can be reused. You can download it for use as a screensaver or wallpaper, but not an image.
• Gallery – it would be great to see what all of the other colour combinations that people are selecting.

Day 1. Hungry for more info

Day 1 in a new job is always hard. You don’t know the process, the people or the way things are done. It is different to what you are use to and at times you definitely feel unsure of what to do next. I can happily say that day 1 for me was wonderful.

The top five reasons for it being wonderful were:

1. Familiar – I had met a few of the people and the digi team prior to my arrival.
2. Team – The digi team are all so nice and easy going that I’m sure I will slot straight into the team.
3. Lunch – Andy and Jay took me to lunch at the Italian place (I’m very big on first day lunches).
4. Meetings – I had was invited to meetings, which meant I got to meet more people and exposed to more of the clients.
5. View – I can see the whole Sydney Harbour Bridge if I turn my head 45 degrees. 

LEARNINGS

When you start a new job, make sure you are prepared before you get there.

• Meet as many people in the team as you can before hand 
• Make sure you have a lot of meetings organised
• Invite yourself to lunch.

Traffic driver with results – commenting on posts

I have been trialling a few things to help drive traffic to my blog over the weekends. There is normally a dramatic drop to around 20 – 30 views for one day of the weekend, see graph below. This weekend, I tried something new and commented on a number of blogs talking about Dell, retail email marketing and digital training. Even though a lot of the posts were from late September – early October – not always the latest posts on the blogs – it drove an increase in the amount of traffic to my blog

Blog traffic to Dominique Hind

QUICK UPDATE

As at 9.30am on Tuesday, 14 October the traffic to my blog yesterday was 214, which is a dramatic difference from previous weeks where the average was around 85 per day. This is the third highest trafficked day. This shows that commenting on other peoples posts really does help to drive traffic to your site. I am just disappointed that my two week holiday interrupts the momentum I have gained on the blog (well not really disappointed – I’m so excited about my holiday).

Blog traffic to this blog - 14 October 2008

BLOG ACTIONS

1. Do a search using Google Blog search for terms that you have blogged about (ie for me, my most popular topics are Dell, retailers emails and digital training for agencies)
2. Open what you think are relevant blogs and read through posts
3. Make comments on the posts and direct people back through to your blog posts and the blog URL
4. Record all blogs that you have made comments on and put them on your blogroll

SOCIAL MARKETING

In addition to commenting on blogs, last weekend I joined a lot of new social marketing platforms. These sites have captured some of my comments on blogs and are driving a few people a day through to my blog. Below are the top referring sites to my blog.

Referring traffic to Dominique Hind

Referring traffic to Dominique Hind

SOCIAL MARKETING ACTIONS

1. Subscribe to all new social networks (StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, MeeID, LinkedIn, Backlink, Tumblr, Popego)
2. Include your blog URL in all profiles you set up
3. Add all of your new posts to your pages and direct traffic through to your posts

LEARNINGS

Like everything digital, this needs to be nurtured. Any time you upload a new post, you need to promote it. Therefore you need to make sure that you do the above actions either immediately or in the following week.

RELATED POSTS

• Driving traffic to your blog – what works?
• PR vs email – what drives more traffic?

Australian Politicians, where are you online?

Most of the US election campaigning has been played out online. Hilary and Obama both used their communities and networks extremely well online. They gathered their supporters and they kept them updated on policy amends, gatherings and opinions. Rather than their online focus being inconsistent and dipping in and out, they were extremely focused on making sure everyone was updated constantly.

During the 2007 Australian election campaign, Kevin Rudd experimented with more online tactics than John Howard. It was a good trial, but nothing as conclusive as what the American’s are doing now. It showed that Rudd was a little more in touch with the younger voter and could leverage his supporters WOM (word of mouth) power, however, he still didn’t get it 100%.

There were a few missed opportunities by the Labour and Liberal parties:

1. Constant presence online - Rather than having a static website or one that is updated with minor superficial updates, there needs to be something else to capture voters minds…….and votes. The ideal would be for a political blog (or microblog), detailing the daily/weekly events, thoughts and responses to tricky questions that have come up during the day or themes that are coming out online/through press or articles.
2. Consistency within the party – Not one party had everyone aligned with what to do and communicate online. The ideal would have been to get the whole party using the same online platforms (video, blogging, websites, social networking, etc) and ensuring consistency with their online presence and communication. For example, during the election the Liberal party should have developed an overarching or umbrella campaign that communicated the do’s and don’ts of any online communications. There should have been a single platform (digital hub) where all of the ‘celebrity’ or ministerial politicians should have updated their daily events and trials.
3. Leverage social networks – there are so many Facebook pages and groups dedicated to political parties and politicians. The political parties need to use and leverage these. Getting involved with these will give the owner of the groups the satisfaction that they are being heard and people are getting involved.
4. Monitor the noise - the political parties had the perfect environment to monitor what were the sticking points and what were the topics that were getting the most coverage online. The easiest way to do this is via monitoring blogs, forums and using one of the free PR monitoring applications (see future posts for more on these free apps). The hardest thing is analysing the themes and topics that are most important.

There is a huge opportunity for an agency in Australia to work with the political parties to help them understand what they should be doing online and develop an ongoing umbrella strategy that they can all work towards.

Here are some of the political reference sites from the US and one from the politically correct, UK.

• Complete Analytics Election Hub
• Google maps showing the Primary results (Hilary vs Obama)
• Voter Voter – allows users to create their own TV ads and broadcast
• Clickz article detailing Obama spent $3mil just on Google
• Oh Boy Obama – the unofficial think tank for Obama where voters can put forward ideas and thoughts about what Obama should be doing
• C-Span - US Political site showing Capital Hill, The White House and National Politics
• Something from the UK, They Work For Your

Written by Dominique Hind

New starter checklist (process, process, warmth)

There are so many things that need to be done before a new person comes on board that it’s worth putting together a checklist of everything you need to share. One of the most critical things to do before starting the checklist, is to stop and think about your first day and how it was:

• What was good?
• What was bad?
• What was different?
• What did you expect?
• What would you change?

On your first day, you expect people to make a fuss, understand a little more about you and start the new relationship on a high. In reality, most places are dying for you to get there (they have waited four weeks while you served out your notice period) and don’t think too long or hard about what it is like for a new person walking into the place.

The new person is leaving behind processes, people and a company they may have spent a lot of time with and they feel like they are taking a risk joining a new company, with new processes, people and environment. It is a big deal, so you need to make them feel welcome. The more welcomed (and inducted) people are into a place the more likely they are to reciprocate to other new employees and share the love when they start.

The one thing I remember about my first week at Mark (M&C Saatchi) was that no one took me out for lunch, I was shown where the food court was and then had to fend for myself. I did write about this on my blog and the next day, a lunch was organised and most people attended. It was great. I felt special and secure, which is exactly what any new person wants in their first week.

Below is a simple checklist of everything that should be thought about when a new person starts:

The boring stuff: INTERNAL APPROVAL

To ensure the new persons’ first day isn’t their last, there are a few financial requirements that must be checked prior to them starting. These include:

• What clients will they be working on?
• Are they covered by retainer or out of scope work?
• If retained, what percentage of time? If not, how will their time be recovered? (For advertising agencies, the minimum is about 65% billable.)
• Have you allowed for salary on-costs in the amount? (For advertising agencies, this is around about 10%)
• Will putting someone on full-time allow the freelance costs to be reduced? If so, by how much?

The fun stuff: FIRST DAY

Whenever a new person starts, most companies assume that someone within their team will show them everything – all the details, the people to avoid, places to eat, process, etc. However, most companies show new starters not as much as they need. Therefore, this checklist is a minimum of what is needed (no doubt there are a lot more things to include):

• Admin – email signature, voicemail set up, stationery, security passes, kitchen, bathroom, shower, bike rack (very, very important)
• Process – department processes, client processes
• Finance – timesheets, pay details, tax file number
• IT – computer passwords, email client, intranet
• Client – key contacts, previous work, guidelines, expectations, relationship status, client contract summaries (retainer vs billed work), rate cards, previous billings
• Expectations – role expectations, company expectations
• People – introductions to heads of departments, daily contacts, finance, office admin, IT
• Company – culture, corporate events (Friday afternoon drinks, lunch time sport), vision, philosophy
• Location – closest dry cleaner, pharmacists, food court, running track (very important)

This is by no means a complete list, so please feel free to send any other critical things that need to be included on the checklist.

Written by Dominique Hind

The digital exam – for all new starters

With digital professionals being in such high demand, a lot of companies settle for anyone who will come to an interview and seems to know what they are talking about. At a previous company, we debated setting an exam for all prospective employees just to understand their level of experience and passion for marketing/digital.

Whenever I interview anyone, the key thing I look for is a connection or the personality of that person. It is better to have someone that will be a great cultural fit than someone who won’t get involved with the company. Also, experience is important, but not critical. It is something that can be learned on the job.

A key measure of their passion for digital is a must and there are ten key questions that can help you gauge their level of passion:

1. Which blogs do you read regularly?
2. Are you familiar with feed readers? What do you use?
3. Have you ever created a blog or written a post?
4. How often do you comment on blogs?
5. Have you ever uploaded a video to YouTube?
6. Have you ever uploaded digital photos to a site like Flickr?
7. What social networks do you belong to? Do you use them for personal, professional or both?
8. Do you use your mobile for anything other than making calls?
9. Do you have accounts on any microblogging sites such as Twitter, Jaiku or Pownce?
10. What is your favourite website or the website you spend the most time on?

Very simple questions, but it will provide a quick view into whether someone is passionate about digital and whether you do want to employ them.

Written by Dominique Hind