89 years ago the Summer Olympics were held in Antwerp (Belgium) and hometown of our agency These Days part of the Wunderman/WPP Network.

Also 89 years ago Lester Wunderman, one of the living legends of the advertising agency world,was born. Lester started the Wunderman multi-million-dollar business, coined the term “direct marketing” and anno 2009 our agency remains a thought leader in the industry. But read on since Lester’s early days  story is still relevant to all of us. To summarize:

• Lester and his brother, Irving, started an advertising agency in New York City during the height of  The Great Depression “because no one would hire us.”
• Lester had no clients and used to walk around from office to office selling himself.  At one point he saw a man about to jump out of a window and pulled him off the ledge.  The man thanked Lester and asked how he could repay the favor.  Lester asked for his advertising business, and thus won his first client.
• The pressure to win in this tough marketplace drove Lester Wunderman to “promise clients that their advertising would deliver results.”
• According to Wunderman: “We couldn’t sell on our experience or awards, and we didn’t have an education in advertising.  All we could really say was that we got results.”
• “No matter how much firepower other agencies had they couldn’t win if we had results.”

Obviously, in this case the pressure to survive as a business led Wunderman to innovate in a way that drove improvement for both his clients and his business.  The idea of results-based-marketing is seen today in marketers’ focus on Return on Investment and, eventually, the idea of relationship and data-driven marketing.  Here’s Lester addressing all Wunderman creative directors worldwide, talking about our agency’s mission of accountable creativity.

Today the idea is that to win in a world of consumer control, you should listen instead of shouting and create marketing that people actually choose to engage with.  Advertising becomes a dialogue that becomes an invitation to a relationship. Thus, the legacy of improvement doesn’t stop with one man or one business, but can echo through the generations.

For those who have been a sleep for the last 3 days, let me give you a small recap of Kimberley.

Kimberley Vlaeminck, an 18-year old Belgian girl, wanted to be even more beautiful than she already was (uhm…). So she decided to have 3 little stars tattoo’d on her face, next to her left eye.  But poor Kimberley was so tired, probably from the school exams or the partying afterwards, that she fell asleep during the tattoo-process (or how do you call it?). The tattooist, never a real genius with numbers, and so pleased with the few stars he had already put on Kimberley’s face, suddenly felt that his moment of glory had arrived and started tattooing stars like crazy. Finally, after a well deserved nap, Kimberley woke up, and was so NOT pleased with…. 56 stars on her face.

The news of this truely sad, sad story was frontpage news on almost any Belgian newspaper and was covered by all television news shows. But even faster than the tottooist could count to 10, Kimberley’s 56 stars travelled around the world and was covered on multiple international media such as The Daily Mail, The Mirror, Algemeen Dagblad, and even the BBC!
And of course everyone else talked about it Facebook, Netlog, Twitter, and tons of blogs. The YouTube video below was already viewed 143252 times within 3 days after the facts. The agency Famous even came out with the ‘Kimbelizer‘ app, or check the screenshot in this blogpost if the App would be down.

I don’t know about you, but in my humble opinion and being a down-to-earth guy, this smells like a hoax and is appearing to become 1 of the most wide-spread buzz-campaigns in Belgium  (and beyond). How can you fall asleep while being tattood on your face? How can you tattoo 56 stars when your client only orders 3? Something is not right.
My hunch is that this is a buzz campaign for MNM, a Belgian radio station, as they have the same stars in their logo and Famous was their agency that rolled out the strategy when the radiostation was launched. Some of my colleagues think that Starbucks is behind it, other thinks it’s all about ‘K2 zoekt K3‘ (which I’m not going to explain ;) ).

But hoax or not, I was quite interested in the impact of this story on the social media channels, and wanted to know how fast the ball is rolling. So I did a quick scan with Radian6, a powerful social media monitoring solution which we, at These Days, use for our social media research and analysis of our word of mouth campaigns.
Here are some quick reports I cam up with within 10 minutes:

1. Topic Trends: From this widget we see that the most buzz was created at day 1 when this ‘drama’ was first made public. At the speed of lightning the news traveled very fast. Then the storm went down a bit but from day 3, probably due to the ‘Kimbelizer‘ app. Buzz buzz buzz…
2. River of News: Via the River of News we can take a look at all post, tweets, comments, video’s, etc that have been published. This widget allows the marketeer to verify what is being said about his campaign, and if this hoax is being experienced as positive or negative.At the same time, via this widget you can take part of the conversations by adding comments, tweeting, replying, etc directly from Radian6.
   In addition some content could bring new ideas to the marketing/communication team, so they can build their buzz campaign further on top of it.
3. Top Influencers: Who is taking part into the conversation, or in this case the hype? Who is spreading the word? Who can the marketeers use for future steps in this campaign? In other words, who are the (positive and negative) influencers? At the same time this widget gives you an idea about the network of each influencer so you get an idea how big his or her reach is.
4. Media Type Analysis: Via which channels is this story spread? This will help you to decide on which channels to focus for the remaining of the campaign, or help you identify where you need to put a bit more resources.

I have not taken the time to really analyze the collected data and evaluate the real impact of this campaign so far. As said, these reports were created with Radian6 within 10 minutes. But of course you need some human resources to validate the different posts that were tracked, to do the analysis and optimize the further campaign strategy.
But almost on the fly you can get your hands on an incredible amount of extensive and powerful data on what is happening with the conversation that was launched.

Anyway, I hope Kimberley will be happy again at some point. And hopefully MNM will get more listeners due to Kimberley. Although it will not include me!

Tonight, the third Web Analytics Wednesday is taking place at the officies of These Days.

Follow the live twitterfeed or browse through numerous articles on web analytics here at waw.thesedays.com

Web Analytics Wednesdays (WAW) is going social!

This 3rd WAW of 2009 will be held in the These Days offices in Antwerp on the 3rd of June 2009, starting at 6:30 PM, and will be all about social media: listen, measure and engage!

Bart De Waele from Talking Heads will kick-off the evening with his view on the value of social conversations, and why listening is critical nowadays.
His session will be followed by Siegert Dierickx from These Days who will cover the possibilities of of social media monitoring, based on the Radian6 monitoring solution. And to close this WAW Maarten Sambre from Webtrends will share more details regarding the recent partnership between Webtrends and Radian6 and explain us why they are a perfect match.

So the agenda of the day would look like:

The event is completely FREE, and is targeted towards anyone interested in Web Analytics & Optimization, Online Marketing & Communication, etc. The goal is to meet peers, share experiences, educate the market (and move it forward), AND have fun. Come and join us whether you are from Belgium or from any surrounding countries!

Drinks and appetizers are generously offered by Webtrends!

!!! Register now !!!
You can find full details (address, map) and register on the official worldwide Web Analytics Wednesday site by Eric T. Peterson, the founder of these events.
To stay informed of any update, do not hesitate to join the Web Analytics Wednesday Belgian group on Facebook or on Web Analytics Belgium group on LinkedIn (pick your favorite… or both).

See you in Antwerp on June 3rd!

Inspiring quote I picked up this week from my Wunderman colleague in Chicago:

“Make the call: Don’t wait for inactive clients to tee up another big budget project–let them know you can impact their short-term revenue.”

By Laura Maness (Director BizDev for DesignKitchen/Wunderman)

When you want to compare or benchmark a web analytics tool to another, save yourself a lot of time and a headache by reviewing CMS Watch’s “Web Analytics Report 2009“.

The report reviews a total of 20 commercial tools (including mobile analytics) and 4 open source web analytics tools. Including but limited to: Coremetrics, Yahoo! Omniture, Google, Unica, Webtrends, Mobilytics, Admob, Amethon, Bango, Awstats, WebAlizer, and so on.

The report addresses several essential issues for an enterprise investigating Web Analytics solutions, including:

• Business-case analysis
• Detailed functional charts explaining essential Web Analytics features
• Implementation advice and best practices
• Head-to-head comparisons of the leading products, with detailed evaluation charts
• When not to use free services like Google Analytics or Yahoo! Analytics
• Critique of new vendors providing video and mobile traffic analytics solution

This is the most comprehensive vendor neutral report on this subject and a good reference. But if you still need support for running a personalized vendor selection process, pulling a short list based on your business objectives, avoiding setbacks or budget overspent, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Source: www.cmswatch.com

Just like any advanced software, you have to know how to manipulate it to your advantage; getting the absolute best you can out of Google Analytics takes time, know-how and insight.

Here’s where These Days can help you.

As Google Analytics Authorised Consultants (GAAC), These Days has spent the time, effort and training in gaining an intimate knowledge of the tool – and we want to share this knowledge with you.

On 21 April, you can expect a day of intensive, hands-on training:

1. Part one is an introduction for beginners, ‘Google Analytics: Getting Started‘

• The importance of Web Analytics
• Google Analytics Methodology
• Implementation, set-up and tracking code
• Understanding and managing profiles and filters
• Conversion really matters: Goals and funnels
• The Google Analytics interface: Understanding Dashboard & Reports, Calendar, Exports, Visualization

2. Part two delves deeper into advanced analytics, ‘Google Analytics: Advanced Analytics‘

• Campaign Performance: Tracking and reports (E-mail, Adwords, Banners, Off-line)
• Advanced Segmentation and Filters
• The value of Custom Reports
• Event Tracking
• Measuring e-Commerce performance
• Introduction to Google Website Optimizer
• Tips & Tricks

Feel free to attend just one session – or both, depending on your needs.

Registration is open until 15th April 2009.
Register before 17h00 on 1st of April, and receive an official Google Analytics IQ Voucher, which will give you full access to the Google Analytics online certification examination.

Seats are limited, so don’t wait too long.

An interview with Jim Sterne, Chairman of the Web Analytics Association, discussing cookies, customer tracking, targeting, analytics, and the privacy issues affecting online marketing.

Source: Goallover.net

Following the successful WAW in Antwerp at These Days last January, the next event takes place in Ghent (my favorite city) on 25 March 2009.
We hope to welcome even more people than the 50 which attended the Antwerp edition.

This time the event is hosted by the Web Analytics Association and bSeen, and will focus on segmentation, targeting and optimization. Isn’t this what analytics is all about?!

Agenda of the day:

• 18:00: Venue opens & welcome
• 18:35: Introduction & updates on the WA Belgian community (Michaël Notté, WAA Country manager for Belgium)
• 18:45: “Targeting customers and optimizing lead generation @ Volvo” (Jourik Migom from Boondoggle)
• 19:15: Tool/vendor demonstration – Sitestat Live Segmentation (Nedstat)
• 19:30: “Practical customer segmentation: basic ideas with great results – Isotrie.be & Combell.com” (Steve De Veirman from bSeen)
• 20:00: Networking

Adress: Zebrastraat Center in Ghent

Registration: via WebAnalyticsDemystified

Looking forward to speak to you there!

A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at the Webvertising Forum in Brussels about measuring your visitor’s engagement and taking action based on it to maximize the online performance.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it

The fundament of the presentation was the importance of measurement and analysis. Without measurement, it’s almost impossible to take action for optimization. However, although measuring everything is cool, sometimes there is just too much information to look at. And so it becomes very hard to take decisions and make optimizations to meet the objectives.
Because of the changing technologies and online processes, the time that marketeers should only focus on pageviews is far away. The real importance lays within the online objectives and visitor processes.

Focus on Engagement

These customer processes can range from buying a product to downloading a white paper, from viewing a page to adding a comment, from becoming a member to uploading a video, etc.
By focusing on these customer processes and understanding the different levels of engagement and contribution of each of them, you can help your brand(s) to optimize and monetize investments in digital communications.

The essence of customer engagement is about creating relationships, customer value, relevancy and loyalty. Different strategies and tactics can be applied to create an added value based on this engagement.

Actionable Analytics

According to the 3rd Annual Online Customer Engagement Report 2009 from cScape and e-Consultancy, more than 85 % of the surveyed companies (over 1300) see engagment as a way of deepening and enriching a product or service offering and a method for gaining customer insight. However almost 60% did not have a customer engagement strategy in place for 2009.

I covered 4 possible tactics which can be applied to leverage the customer engagement and increase the Reterun on Interaction:

• Content targeting
  Focus: Show the right message (= value), at the right time, at the right segment (based on visit behavior, referrers, technical vairables or offline crm data).
  Tools: Omniture Test&Target, Nuconomy, WebTrends Score, Optimost, etc.

• 1-to-1 Communication via E-mail
  Focus: Improve both effectiveness and cost-efficiency of direct communications
  Tools: These Days Elastic (of course :) )

• Social Media Monitoring
  Focus: Learn what people say about your brand and learn what motivates them to engage with your brand. Make use of the positive influencers, and communicate appropriately with the negative ones.
  Tools: Radian6, Visible Technologies, etc.

• Satisfaction Survey
  Focus: Ask your customer’s opinion and ensure your customers are satisfied.
  Tools: 4Q, Kampyle, etc.

These are just a few examples to engage with your customer, but the possibilities are endless. It is a continuous process of optimization. In this ‘not so bright’ economic climate, the focus should be more than ever on increasing revenue, lowering costs and raising satisfaction. But be ware, due to the current economic climate, time is short!

Take a look at the presentation I gave at the Webvertising Forum: