Well over a year ago I was looking at digital trends and it struck me how many of the very same trends I had been musing about the year previously still applied one year later. Whilst fundamental and revolutionary change kept cropping up in our conversations so did the application of simple, well-understood and unifying themes. It really felt like digital was growing up.

That represents an interesting time for an industry that, whilst wholeheartedly supporting a ‘test and learn’ approach, also evangelises each individual step forward only to then find fault in it and then shoot it down in flames. Well you know what I mean. No wonder our CFOs and Finance Directors are skeptical!

At the same time we are starting to develop models around maturity that describe what is happening in our organisations and marketing departments from a development and process point of view. Here is one by MarketingSherpa around Strategic Social Media Marketing (Note to self – sponsored by facebook!). It provides a useful roadmap that charts the progression from trialing a new tool, technology or channel through the development of specific guidelines to a more strategic phase where appropriate governance and management processes are put in place. It points out the critical role that the development of a fit for purpose measurement framework plays. One that supports the calculation of channel-specific ROI in the kind of terms that the CFO or Financial Director understands.

That is exactly where a lot of the organisations and businesses I am working with are. They absolutely understand that the customer journey is becoming increasingly complex and they are already implementing measurement models that move beyond just visibility and conversion. They are developing a set of appropriate metrics based on customer engagement in the pursuit of a better understanding around what is actually happening across that sometimes grey area between brand awareness and a sale.

What is clear however, is that this story is far from complete. In almost every case the link between what are essentially digital outputs and those business outcomes which really matter is far less clear than it could be. Let’s be honest. Whilst the CMO or Marketing Director is starting to become comfortable with investing more heavily in customer engagement programmes I’m still not convinced the guys holding the purse strings are. We need to build stronger business cases around what we are trying to achieve – based on the facts backed up with a supporting narrative.

Enter attribution. The next big thing for us to evangelise? Makes for an interesting read right now. Try Marketing Attribution : Valuing the Customer Journey for starters if you are an econsultancy member. Key take-outs for me include the following;

1. For those organisations that are engaged in attribution they are still in the early stages but increasingly organisations are adopting attribution based on the accountability that it offers.
2. Challenging the status quo is always going to be difficult. Building approaches and developing the tools that mean you can focus on the facts help drive change and deal with politics.
3. Some of the changes in channel investment exemplified were reassuringly surprising and challenged some of my own preconceived ideas. The surprising impact of digital display on search ROI and brand lift is a good example.

Where the two specific measurement projects I am working on now are concerned the case for understanding attribution is clear. What is less clear is the practical implementation of it. That’s the area I am researching now.

Thoughts and feedback most definitely welcome!

Maybe attribution will finally put that phrase to rest that still rings true today; I know half of my marketing budget is wasted but I just don’t know which half. Or maybe it is just another marketing holy grail that is a little too far from our reach?

We are all in pursuit of the holy grail which goes something like this.  We have to get the right piece of content in front of the right customer on the right device at the right time in their decision making process to drive the right action. All within the context of a set of specific marketing targets that are tied closely to a defined set of business objectives.

Enter Place and Destination Marketing.  It’s an interesting beast. You don’t own the product. In many cases you don’t sell the product. There is no try before you buy and you are selling an approximation of a holiday or trip the visitor might have. Sounds tough doesn’t it.

Expectation and reality can only be addressed through content. For destination marketers content is all they ever had and likely all they ever will have. Place and Destination Marketing really is a content led business.

Luckily destinations generally have a huge network of content creators, curators and consumers around them. That represents a hugely valuable content ecosystem. At the nation level that network extends across a whole country and incudes anyone and everyone who lives there, works there, visits or has an interest in that country.  The content challenge therefore must be how you harness that potential and support the effective distribution of great destination content.

Offering that network something to line up against is certainly part of the solution. The destination’s brand defines a point of view around what that destination stands for and a basis for engaging with customers as well as creating the right kind of content. The story that the destination is trying to tell adds further clarity around the type of content  to create and when to create it. Finally, and crucially, defining and offering up an appropriate taxonomy around your what your destination has to offer and it’s particular strengths provides a basis for organising your destination’s content. That provides a common language for creating, sharing, relating and distributing content.

Visit Wales have made some good progress in this area and they are working hard around getting the industry, marketing partners and other stakeholders to contribute to the Wales content ecosystem through the better tagging and sharing of great Wales content. They have produced three explainer videos covering the concept, tagging and sharing as well as how you apply the approach to sharing Wales images on flickr. They’re worth a watch. Here’s the first one.

The videos introduce what Coca Cola call the move from ‘creative excellence’ to ‘content excellence’ and describe the role and evolution of different types of storytelling … and the bit on research is also really interesting.

This stuff is applicable to almost any content related challenge.

Whatever the brand. Whatever the industry.

I’d love to see how they drive cultural change across the organisation to support what the videos are saying. I guess that’s one of the reasons they made them!

Despite what you might think of their products this is great stuff.

It’s January 31st. The year is in full swing. Last chance to post something on what 2012 will bring! So, here goes.

It is certainly an interesting time for destination marketing and the national, regional and city Destination Marketing Organisation – the ‘DMO’. We have been talking about fundamental and revolutionary change for a while now. The hyper connected economy in which we live means our customers are now truly empowered and we are facing up to the fact that they are getting increasingly turned off by one-way communication. The current economic climate has brought with it austere times in many countries around the world and with that comes cost cutting and spending controls.

There are however plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the opportunities that 2012 brings for digital and destination marketing. Here are five.

1. There is a real opportunity, through better collaboration, to get what could be a whole country behind creating, sharing and distributing great content about your destination. Imagine that! The potential to leverage a hugely valuable content network to help you achieve your marketing objectives from awareness raising to conversion is indeed a huge one.
2. We have been saying that this year will be the year of mobile for at least 5 years. This year probably will be! And mobile is intrinsically linked to local search. If you have not done so already your destination marketing strategy needs to consider the opportunities mobile brings and how you develop marketing programmes and platforms to support that.
3. Integration really is important. Destinations really are thinking about multichannel now and we are even starting to define multichannel roles within the organisations we work in. Those organisations are starting to figure out how to deliver integrated marketing campaigns across multiple channels. Furthermore, words like engagement, participation and sharing are becoming part of every destination marketers vocabulary.
4. It is finally time to put that campaigns mentality you have been developing for the last 25 years to one side. Yes, your campaigns still have a place but you need to start putting relationships at the heart of those campaigns. An unending dialogue between your destination and the customers that are interested in talking to you.
5. Focus and prioritise. Probably the biggest challenge you face is time. A list that is far too long for you to have any chance of reaching the bottom of. At its simplest level developing strategy is about making sure the right things are at the top of the list. This presents an opportunity in itself – making the right decisions around where to invest, where to test and what deserves a rest.

Perhaps ironically some of the biggest challenges you are going to face are likely to exist closer to home.

Paradoxically, success in delivering digital is more to do with people than technology. The skills shortage and lack of experience that exists in other areas of digital applies equally to the DMO. Success very much depends on getting the right people in the right jobs – and creating an environment for them to thrive.

The destination’s relationship with the tourism industry is critical. Even smaller tourism businesses are empowered to act like never before and reach out directly to the customers they are targeting. How the destination enables and supports those tourism businesses as well as defines the DMO’s role across awareness, consideration, planning, booking and advocacy will dictate whether the destination creates an effective and collaborative relationship with the industry it is supporting.

And finally, just a little bit of tech. Developing a destination content ecosystem, taking advantage of the opportunity that mobile brings and undertaking useful evaluation and measurement in a truly multichannel environment demands more of your platforms and toolset than ever before. Just like the marketing programmes you are running, success is going to depend on effective integration of different systems and technologies in the pursuit of delivering a seamless customer experience.

Good luck!

Of course the world we work in continues to change and the economic climate we are experiencing sets the tone. What we are experiencing now has become the new normal. Interestingly what is often perceived as the face of adversity is also driving positive and interesting changes in our behaviour. Here are ten to mull over.

I’ve been following a guy called Gerd Leonhard for some time now. He calls himself a media futurist, I buy into what he is saying and I like the way he says it. He spoke at the Do Lectures last year around what he calls ‘the journey from egosystem to ecosystem’. It’s worth watching.

Thinking about some of the things I am involved with right now – including the interesting and big challenge which is how to get a whole country behind sharing good quality content in pursuit of becoming a more attractive and successful travel destination – a lot of what he speaks about resonates with me. That includes the following … in his words plus some of mine (and I guess that’s the point).

We used to live in an egosystem. Everything was big. Big companies, big government and of course big budgets.  That has changed in so many ways. We are starting to figure out the value and benefit in small and the challenges and problems associated with big.  We have been hugely empowered and we are living in a hyper connected economy.

 Collaboration is increasingly becoming the business model of the future. Whilst not impossible, it is going to become increasingly difficult to achieve things on your own.  The smartest stuff is often ‘proudly found elsewhere’ and there is nothing wrong with that. Embrace it. Add to it.  Make it better. Success is increasingly dependent on return on engagement rather than return on investment. But in pursuit of that success we might have to give up some of the things we like and have become accustomed to. Including control.

 These days nothing is ever finished and things are in a constant state of evolution and flux. Being in permanent Beta can be stressful. We have to get used to it.

Interestingly enough much of this will happen in the developing world. Places which are less constrained by ‘the way we do things’ and the structures that exist around them.  Increasingly the wisdom of the crowd is driving new ways of doing things and a win win for all concerned.

Regarding that challenge I mentioned earlier these are exactly the sorts of things we are becoming acutely aware of where rising to that challenge is concerned. And I am pretty excited about it. More on that in the New Year so watch this space.

Afterthought one.

I remember someone telling me a while back that the single most important factor affecting whether a business is still in business 10 years after it starts is the strength of its brand. Yep, that makes sense.

Afterthought two.

But what determines the strength of a brand? Branding people talk about the core idea – the thing that drives an organisation, is what the organisation is about, what it stands for and what it believes in.  Successful brands project that core idea across everything they do – their products, their environment, their communications and the way they behave. It drives consistency of purpose.

Afterthought three.

It’s all about people.  It doesn’t matter how technical or digital your business is – people really matter. Your customers. Your staff. Your suppliers. I think if you can put that somewhere close to the core it’s going to make a big difference. Now more than ever. I think it’s going to be the single most important thing in determining the success of your brand in an open and networked economy. If not it should be.

• I take my head out of the day to day grind for at least one day.
• I take away a few really useful insights that help me on my way.
• I tend to come up with some useful ‘thinking frameworks’ that help me solve real work problems on my return.

Sometimes you are just too busy or you just don’t have the budget to attend these kinds of things in person. But that doesn’t stop you consuming the content. Be it in real time on twitter by following the conference #hashtag or afterwards through slideshare and Vimeo. Of course what these events bring with them is a content legacy that lasts long after the event. One that you can catch up on.

That’s what I have been doing this morning. The sorts of things I am working on at the moment include writing a number of chapters for a new digital marketing handbook, a big user experience and design project for a new website and trying to figure out how the hell we are going to come up with an organisation wide content strategy to better deliver everything we do. I need help.

So I came across the following deck on slideshare and what I ended up doing was very quickly flicking through the slides. What I picked up were a number of useful insights and thoughts around content strategy. For example the basis of the problem we face as an organisation; fragmented content management, fragmented organisational structure and fragmented platforms and devices.  And a reminder that developing content strategy really is about change management.

Then I looked further and came across this video of the same person doing another presentation on content strategy. I made myself a cup of tea and watched the whole thing. I started to develop a thinking framework around some of the relationships between information architecture  (and user experience), content management (and technology) and social media (and marketing). I started to figure out what the processes were that might help me solve or more importantly create the content strategy problem we face. Of course what I was doing this time is properly engaging with the content. It was video content this time but it could have equally been a blog post, a white paper or even the same slide deck I had flicked through earlier.

Now I don’t feel so bad about missing those two conferences I just mentioned. The stuff we do is a never-ending learning journey. One that is never finished and one that you must never neglect. So in the absence of unlimited time and enough budget to attend every conference you would like to here’s a rule of thumb I have just developed that should help me (and maybe you) maintain your staple diet of digital marketing brainfood.

Flick through some stuff once a day but at the very least once a week
Properly engage with some stuff once a week but at least once a month
Go to a conference maybe once a quarter but at least once a year

I guess it is a bit like your five a day. A useful guide to stick to.

Oh, and make sure you check out Karen McGrane if you are in any way interested in content strategy.

Strategy and planning is our core business. We work with a diverse range of clients from travel through online retail to charity to undertake this type of work. We’ve been doing this for some time now and without trying to blow our own trumpet too much we think we’re getting pretty good at it. In fact one of the things I really like about working on strategy and planning is that, whilst it is wrapped in a clear process and the application of an appropriate framework, coming up with a successful end result is one that relies on a nice blend of the logical and creative. It’s left and right hand brain stuff.

So why is it so damn difficult? Working on strategy and planning is never an easy ride … and it shouldn’t be. It should be about understanding change, challenging perceived wisdoms and taking a critical look at the way you do things. Don’t expect it to be simple. Here are some of the reasons why.  We think that taking these on board from the outset helps everyone involved in the process.

Digital really is different

Success across digital channels relies on a lot of the same things that success across more traditional channels does. Things like understanding your audience, a clear approach to segmentation and targeting and a robust approach to measurement still apply. But digital is different and it does require a different mindset. Digital channels are always on. Increasingly it is about understating networks rather than understanding media. Taking a more agile approach where test and learn rules is critical to success. Those with a more traditional marketing background need to get to grips with where it is different and where it is similar. More importantly planning needs to drive integration across multiple channels and that represents a significant challenge.

The outcome and implications might be uncomfortable

Digital marketing is increasingly becoming more about mouse clicks than media spend. It is also about thinking creatively and being smart. Perhaps ironically, as digital channels continue to develop it is more about people than technology. That puts greater demands on those people involved in delivering strategy and the associated tactical plan. This applies to both your in house and agency team. It can require different people with different skills and experience who are organised in a different way. Those kinds of changes have some uncomfortable realities around them. Senior management must be up to speed and on board if these kind of things can be addressed successfully.

You might not trust what we are saying

No more have I experienced the process that is often described as ‘forming, storming, norming and performing’ than when I have worked with new clients around planning and strategy. The starting point is that we will never understand a client’s business like they understand their business. We say that from the outset. But we do understand digital and marketing and we do bring a process into play that can and does facilitate the better understanding of the opportunities that exist. What is true however, is that after starting out with a shared ‘lets change the world’ vision, we will probably enter muddy waters when you don’t entirely buy into and trust what we are telling you. The best thing I can say is that if you hang in there the useful tension that is created will drive a positive outcome. In each and every planning exercise I have undertaken it has done exactly that.

One thing for sure is that the success or otherwise of any strategy and planning process comes down to the people involved and how they work together to address the issues that arise. Like anything it helps if you are honest and open about some of the challenges you are likely to face from the beginning.

There are probably more than three reasons … but then I can only count to three. This is, like a lot of our work, a work in progress so comments and thoughts are entirely welcome.

I’ve been on holidays. A three-week holiday in fact. For the most part I didn’t try and check in with the office, keep tabs on email or maintain a blog.  Because what I really needed above all else was a proper break. Sure I spent the best part of three months preparing things for my departure, tying things up and handing things over … but guess what … it was worth it.

Paragliding is one of my passions and one that I have somewhat neglected since the arrival of young Tom 627 days ago. But on this trip I managed a handful of really good days flying, amongst stunning glaciers and 4,000m peaks in Switzerland and some ‘chocolate box’ flying around Lake Annecy in France.  Paragliding might be boring, dangerous and expensive but for me it represents one of the few times in our day to day lives when you really are, once stepping off that hill, responsible for your own destiny. It’s pure. It’s liberating. It’s reviving.

But why?

It’s good for the soul

There’s a lot of waiting around involved but more often than not you are in a stunning, or at least interesting place. That’s good in itself. Once you do step of the hill it’s the simplicity, independence and focused nature of free flying that really works for me. You can’t step off or take a break. You have to deal with what happens there and then. Feedback and results are immediate. It’s a great antidote to the sometimes complex world of work.

It’s good for the mind

A break from work helps you find perspective. Something else to focus your attention on speeds up that process. It’s a kind of disk defrag for the mind. It’s a way of rewiring the neural pathways you develop when working too hard for too long. What’s more that helps great ideas come to light. Like it or not back in the office things won’t change or happen without them.

And it’s often about the people

I have lived, visited and flown in over ten different countries.  Many of the people I have met along the way I am either still in touch with, or for the brief time I spent with them, they have often inspired me or at the very least brought a different perspective on things.  Mad Dog Chris who I flew with last week for example, who lives in Hawaii and works in a restaurant but spends more time flying, kiting and surfing than waiting tables. These people help remind you there is a whole world out there and there is more than one way to skin a cat.

So armed with a better state of mind, some fresh ideas and maybe a different approach to things I am returning to the office. And that’s good for business.

So take a break and pursue your passion.

And if you want to learn to fly you could do a lot worse than go visit my good friends Rob and Nic at Fly Spain in Andalucía. You won’t regret it.