What’s Movember? Movember is an annual, month-long “celebration” (their words, not mine!) of the moustache, highlighting men’s health issues — specifically prostate and testicular cancer. I had never heard of Movember until I started working for an Australian-headquartered company where I’ve watched as my male colleagues have grown ’staches for the last four years. This year, I’m going to join them… much to the consternation of my wife who would like nothing less than to see fur beneath my schnoz.

This is a really tough year to give to charity — and there are lots of charities asking for our help — but if you have $5 or $10 that you can donate, I would really appreciate it. My donation page is here. Thanks for your help! And come back in 25+ days to see my ’stache!

Going through email at work this morning and saw that a relevant, decent comment came through on a blog post from last year. I was about to respond to the comment when I noticed the funny (not haha funny) name of the commenter.

How did a spam bot write a relevant comment? This must be a copycat spam bot. Smart, but not that smart.

copycat spam bot

Back in another day and time, I wrote a blog post about transparency in marketing. This post today is about authenticity, and how Atlassian created a campaign that focuses on the user experience rather than the marketing message.

One of the several announcements Atlassian made at its first ever worldwide user conference was the launch of a new minisite, Agile @ Atlassian. While we were not Agile subject-matter experts, we could provide some important insights into our own understanding of Agile. That’s an important distinction, because it guided our decision on how to produce a campaign. There’s an excellent TED talk by Joseph Pine on creating an authentic voice in marketing. Our campaign was based on creating this type of authentic talk based on our experiences rather than on marketing messages.

A site is born.

Atlassian’s developers have been doing agile for 7 years, and many of our customers do as well using our developer tools. “Agile” in this context relates to how software developers engineer products. The Agile Manifesto and hundreds (thousands?) of agile evangelists are spreading the gospel that there’s an “enlightened” way to code.

Many people don’t know how to take advantage of Atlassian tools for agile software development. In fact, there’s a whole lot of agile developers that are searching for better ways and tools to make their team agile. Atlassian’s software was engineered more broadly to be used by any type of development, but they can be used for agile software development, and the mini-site provided a glimpse into how we take advantage of our own tools for agile.

Thus, Agile @ Atlassian was born. The campaign breaks down as follows:

• We spent a grand total of $1000 on the campaign and minisite — the money was spent on a professional videographer to tape our developers talking about how they do their jobs.
• The mini-site was designed and produced by our in-house design and web teams. The videos were edited and pimped out by an endlessly talented and creative developer on the marketing team.
• We included previously recorded customer webinars with S1 Corp and Replicate Tech that discuss how customers user our products for agile.
• Atlassian developers have been blogging about agile@atlassian, and an RSS feed of their blogs is included on the mini-site.
• New product descriptions were written to emphasize how our products can be used in an agile environment.
• To tie up all the loose pieces — videos, blogs, webinars — we design a brand for the agile@atlassian series that appears in the the blogs and anywhere agile is found on our website.
• We used the campaign as a platform to announce our latest agile project management offering, GreenHopper.

One Twitterer wrote:

“Listening to agile@Atlassian while working. I’m a huge Atlassian fan and this is a nice peak into their world.“

Since launching, the minisite has seen over 6,000 visits, with the average person viewing 5.63 pages on the site/visit. This is a short recap of the effort we put into the site, and I think it’s a very good template for other B2B marketers for creating similar campaigns, esp. those who dare to go from a marketing voice to an authentic one.

We recently went through a redesign of the Atlassian newsletter. The newseltter, we decided, had become long in the tooth, it was time for a refresh. I’ve read up on Newsletter design at MarketingSherpa and other sites, and our team had a pretty good idea for how we wanted to see it evolve.

But before taking the plunge, we wanted feedback from our subscribers. What do they think about it? Are we the only ones bored with the design, or are others hoping for a change? Can the content be improved, and if so, how?

Over 100 people responded to our survey that went to newsletter and blog subscribers. Here’s one of my favorite replies:

Generally, I regard the Atlassian newsletter as one of the best produced by any company. A good blend of company news, products news and things of general interest.

Wow! Others concurred.

Only that it is about the best I have ever seen in ANY company – (x30 or more I have seen). Also that it has jumped and improved a lot more in the last 5 months, from my outward perspective. You guys are rockin’ it! But you know that. Keep it up!

Nice clean, feature rich, informative and well organized.

It is great. In general I think Atlassian is my favorite design/structure of all my various newsletters. I also really like the random links at the end, usually I find 1 or 2 really useful links.

It wasn’t all rosy — there was a good deal of constructive feedback too. We’ve posted more comments and displayed the before/after design on the Atlassian Blog. Curious readers can subscribe to the Atlassian newsletter here. Our next steps are to monitor clicks and open rates to see if that improves over time.

If you’ve re-designed your newsletter lately, please let me know, I’m very curious to see more examples and learned how others have done it.

Love the pig!

This week only, Atlassian, the company I work for, has a special offer for JIRA and Confluence. For just $5 each, you get 5-user licenses of the products, including technical support. It’s the same deal that the big guys get, but tailored for small teams and small business. My favorite bit: all the money raised goes to Room to Read, a charity that helps children in developing countries get schools and libraries.

There have been many fantastic Twitters so far about the offer:

An amazing $5 deal on Jira and Confluence from Atlassian for small orgs, I use these fantastic products every day… http://tr.im/j4nA

- scottmanley

@tarasis atlassian have personal licenses available too, which didn’t work for my needs, but the $5 plan definitely hits the sweet spot

- janeylicious

Oh, nice. Atlassian is donating proceeds for its starter license of JIRA and Confluence ($5/ea) to charity. http://snurl.com/gb7ys

- ITSinsider

Check out the offer… and hurry, because the sale ends on Friday this week!

It kind of goes without saying that the reason Atlassian has hit $100 million in cumulative all-time revenue is because of the products. But as one of the employees charged with the task of marketing these great products, I tend to think about the other side of the equation: the word of mouth that Atlassian has generated that helped us reach this milestone. As it turns out, JIRA not only served as a great product for customers, but as the key ingredient for word of mouth marketing.

Some perspective

I’ve attended the last two CM Summits in San Francisco. For a marketer, they’re great events. The conference focuses on the changing of the guard: leaving the old school marketing techniques like direct mail, big company PR, and 1-way communication, and turning instead towards creating open dialogues with customers, creating fan sites, and generally keeping it real.

In other words: it’s not about marketing anymore, it’s about creating conversations.

Enter the JIRA

In 2003, before Facebook and other social network sites captured our collective imaginations, Atlassian built a website that allows anyone — customers, prospects, partners, journalists, etc. — to submit product bugs, feature requests, and other issues, which are visible to the entire community.

In our lingo, it’s called JIRA. Nothing was (or is) censored. While most other B2B enterprise software companies in the world spent energy obfuscating problems with their products or services, Atlassian listened to it’s customers, built a loyal fan base, won over thousands of customers, and beat most of the big-name venture capital-backed Silicon Valley companies (in fact, most of them are customers now!).

And to be clear… JIRA is a product, not a marketing tool. And yet, it has been a platform for thousands of conversations in the last 6-7 years.

One of the things I’ve learned on the job is the power of listening, and responding, and building trust (as opposed to the old school marketing of just ’spinning’). The folks at the CM Summits call it ‘marketing’ but Atlassian has called it ‘just doing good business.’ JIRA has given us an incredible feedback loop, it’s allowed developers to speak directly with customers (as opposed to the typical situation where developers are locked in the basement* while the marketing types filter conversations to them), and in turn it’s fostered trust between customer and company, something that other companies have pushed aside in the name of an obfuscating public relations strategy.

Of course, this is in hindsight.

When JIRA was first being used, it was also a dog food mentality. As a product JIRA has improved immensely under seven years of heavy use, from novice and seasoned users alike. No one ever thought of it as marketing, it was (and still is!) an issue tracker.

Being transparent and open makes you vulnerable, too: there are lot of feature requests, suggestions, gripes, etc., that have not been closed out. Mike wrote about a rather infamous issue some time ago. But that’s the conversational marketing dilemma: criticism is part of being open, it’s part of winning the trust of your customers.

On the whole, JIRA has been of incredible service to the company. As Laura wrote the other day, Atlassian is surpassing $100 million cumulative sales revenue in just seven years. I have to think that that figure isn’t just based on JIRA sales, but also JIRA transparency and lots and lots of conversations.

Links:

• JIRA, the product http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
• JIRA, the “conversational marketing” site http://jira.atlassian.com

Button, Button

There was a Twilight Zone episode called Button, Button where a stranger gave a man, Arthur, an empty box with a button on it. The stranger explained that if Arthur clicks the button, someone somewhere in the world would die… and Arthur would be paid $200k.

• What are the odds that Arthur would be picked?
• What if you cannot determine who died or was hurt as a result?
• What if the offer seemed irristable?

I’m going to stretch the analogy for Linkstar, the company behind what I call link spam.

• A representative from some company (presumably Linkstar, but I’ll never know) contacted me with an offer to sponsor my blog.
• In exchange for a small sum of money (much less than $200k!)
• I would have to put ads on my site that build link quality for viagra and vitamin spam sites.

Unlike poor Arthur, I didn’t take the deal. However, had I been offered $200k….

An investigative reporter, Dan Tynan, contacted me because he was writing an article about Linkstar. I’m impressed at what he’s learned.

As far as I’ve been able to determine, Linkstar isn’t doing anything illegal or particularly shady. But its penchant for secrecy is troubling. As a general rule, I don’t do business with any online company that does not clearly identify its principals or provide its actual place of business – and I don’t think other people should, either.

Can running the wrong kinds of ads on your blog or Web site hurt you? Absolutely.

Read Tynan’s two-part series here:

Part I: The curious case of Linkstar Media

Part II: Bloggers beware: Bad ads can come back to bite you

There are plenty more than 5 ways to generate traffic and buzz at a conference, and strategies will differ depending on the size of the conference and amount of “noise” with which you’re competing. That said, I’m re-posting my list below — after blogging them here — of the most basic blocking-and-tackling methods for promoting yourself on the tradeshow floor:

Getting noticed

Idea 1: Sandwich board
You need a sign at your booth, something to advertise who you are and what you do, more than just a logo and slogan:

• Include the product name & logo
• 3-5 bullet points, ideally none of which wrap around to the next line
• Big font that can be seen from 10 or 20 feet away
• A screenshot or graphic
• URLs are optional; they’re nice for design (I think) but not necessary because people will Google your company or product name. Better yet, they’ll take a brochure.

Unless you’re a PhotoShop maven, do not attempt this at home. Instead, hire a graphic designer to work on it so it’s produced for print-ready production (300dpi or greater, unaliased, and in color). For self-standing signs, I have them printed on foam core, which is light and rigid and easy to transport. However, because foam core can easily crack, you might wait to have it printed locally at a Kinkos close to the convention center so you can pick it up before the conference. Extra tip: If you need to ship it to the conference, use a flattened cardboard box to ship it.

Idea 2: Prizes!
Run a prize drawing in the booth. Give one free copy of your software, a free iPod, a hot date with the CEO over a candlelit meal at a fine restaurant (ok, I’m reaching now), or something in exchange for their business card. If they don’t have business cards, you should have a pad of paper and pen at your booth to record their name and email address.

If nothing else, play Bruce

Idea 3: Max HeadroomishAlways have something showing on your computer. When you’re not demoing the application to someone, you should leave the demo running in a loop so people stop to watch. Don’t have a product demo? Make a video of customers giving testimonials. Or, hire an animator to create a Flash-based demo or cartoon that you could also leverage on your website. If all else fails, put the Enter the Dragon trailer on loop.

Idea 4: Fa-fa-fa-fa Fashion
More expensive idea… print up tshirts with a funny graphic or slogan and give them to anyone that gets a demo. If they sit through a 4 or 5 minute demo, they get a shirt. Make it something they would want to wear at the conference. And hopefully other people around them would see the tshirt and want one too. If you can afford it, print more shirts that you think you’ll need. You could always give the tshirts away to employees or at other conferences. The two major drawbacks of tshirts are the cost to print and the cost to ship. They’re very expensive to ship in bulk. Alternatively, you could print baseball caps or pens. Personally, I much prefer something I can actually use, like a tshirt or baseball cap, versus random merchandise like toys.

Idea 5: Promotion
Offer a 10 or 20% discount coupon for conference attendees only that expires 3 or 6 months after the conference. Bonus idea: So you only have to bring one piece of collateral to the conference, print the promo code on your product brochure.

Oh, and remember to bring collateral to the booth… a product brochure, datasheet, business card, or case study… you should have something that people can walk away with. Don’t forget to include your URL and an email address.

Atlassian Summit

“Should we run an Atlassian User Conference?” I asked that questions last year, on St. Patrick’s Day to be exact, and the response was overwhelmingly YES. It’s been over 18 months, but we’re finally doing it.

In the time between first proposing the idea to actually executing on it, the customer base has nearly tripled. The Atlassian marketing team has done the same, which is good because we couldn’t possibly have put on an event as ambitious as the one we’re planning without the full support of our studly team.

In a past life I organized and ran a user group at a company with 50 customers. Atlassian has 260 times that number and 8 times more products. Not to mention that our customers live in more than 100 106 countries.

It’s not just the scale that’s daunting. The Atlassian community is vibrant, opinionated, and passionate about the tools they use to collaborate and develop, so we didn’t just want to run any ol’ conference. We needed something big and brash and fun. Well, it’s happening, it’s really happening.

Some people, inside and outside the company, have questioned our timing. Global economy, recession, gloom and doom. Yeah, it’s a scary time. We’re taking a gamble. But I believe deeply in our community. I also know that many companies are turning to Atlassian and companies like ours to find inexpensive solutions that allow them to do more with fewer resources. In some ways, as trite as it may sound, I think there may be no better time than now… to squeeze the most value out of the products you’re using… to maximize existing investments… to get more involved.

Well, as you can tell, I’m psyched. If you’re a customer or evaluating our products, I encourage you to check out the Atlassian Summit website to learn about the event. We’re holding it at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco (which, I’m constantly reminded of by Jay, was the filming site for The Game’s opening sequence) in June 2009. Hope to see ya’ there.

It seemed impossible just 10 years ago that a Black American could win the presidency, but that’s exactly what happened earlier this week. I cannot describe the feeling. I imagine that it’s what people felt when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon — incredible; awesome; transcendent — except better.

Just saw these photos today of our President Elect today (thanks, Robyn, for pointing them out!). They’re wonderful. Makes you realize that we not only changed the course of history, but we elected someone who is thoroughly down-to-earth and real. It really gives me hope.