February 25, 2010
John Kottcamp
Uncategorized
agency2.0, Ascentium, Customer Experience, digital agency, Groundswell, integrated marketing, social media, social networking, WebTrends
A couple of weeks ago, I had the privledge of speaking at Webtrends Engage 2010, their annual user conference. Each speaker was given 5 minutes to present a keynote. Here’s the link to the video http://tiny.cc/P2xgp
November 13, 2009
John Kottcamp
Ascentium, CMO, integrated marketing, Interactive Agency, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, SDMA, social media, social networking, Strategy
#Forrester, Adage, agency2.0, AKQA, Ascentium, CMO, Customer Experience, Customer Relationship Management, digital agency, integrated marketing, Interactive Marketing, Jacques-Herve Roubert, marketing technology, marketing2.0, Metrics, ROI, SDMA, social media, Tribal DDB, Twitter, web2.0
I read a very good and insightful article in today’s Adage, “Why Digital Agencies are Indeed Ready to Lead” by Jacques-Herve Roubert. I agree with his contention that Digital agencies are indeed ready to lead and as he points out, our company, Ascentium, is demonstrating that in fact with our relationship with Precor, but also increasingly so with some of our other accounts who are looking for to us for ideas and strategy and their traditional agencies for mass advertising.
The reasons for this are many and you pointed out some really good ones regarding where the energy, ideas and innovation is coming from. But the basic underlying reason is rooted in the business model of the big traditional agencies more than anything else. The traditional business model is based on revenue streams from media, not direct billable hours. This means that to be successful, agencies were forced into thinking about media as the prime distribution channel because that is how they make money. Digital agencies are not boxed in that way and as a result, they are able to look more broadly across channels and take a more customer-centric approach to communication than a media or product based approach.
Devotion to gathering customer intelligence across multiple channels online, offline and emerging social channels and then applying that to create customer experiences which produce trackable and measureable results is the key to our success at Ascentium and I believe that same can be said for the other great emerging digital agencies cired as well, like AKQA and TribalDDB. The big agencies are saddled with the innovator’s dilemma and while it won’t be the end of them, it certainly erects a big speed bump to innovation.
October 18, 2009
John Kottcamp
Uncategorized
Closed Loop Marketing, Interactive Marketing, integrated marketing, Customer Experience, marketing technology, Customer Relationship Management, Metrics, digital agency, social media, marketing2.0, web2.0, social networking, CMO, B2B marketing, SDMA, Ascentium, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Integrated Marketing Communicaitons Conference
My company, Ascentium, was named by Forrester Research, as one of the top web design agencies in the country last summer. It was an honor and I think a fair reflection of some great Web sites we’ve been building. But at the risk of diminishing the importance of Web site, I believe we’ve entered a new era, when producing a great web site is not enough to have an effective web presence and to keep up with your customer’s digital experiences.
The other week, I had the privilege of speaking at the first annual Integrated Marketing Communications conference in Kansas City. My topic was the introduction of the Integrated Digital Experience concept. Its premise is fairly simple and does not represent rocket science. But like most important concepts, its not the understanding that’s difficult, it’s the implementation that’s hard.
I’ve uploaded my slide deck to SlideShare and in future posts, will begin elaborating on what IDE means and what are some easy steps to making it happen. Check it out at http://www.slideshare.net/jkottcamp/the-digital-experience .
October 18, 2009
John Kottcamp
Uncategorized
#ForresterResearch, agency2.0, B2B marketing, CMO, Customer Experience, Customer Relationship Management, digital agency, Facebook, Groundswell, Integrated Digital Experience, integrated marketing, Integrated Marketing Communications, Interactive Marketing, LinkedIn, marketing2.0, Peter Burris, SDMA, social media, social networking, Twitter, web2.0
I had the opportunity to speak to the Forrester Research Technology Marketing Executive Council recently in conjunction with the Technology Forum in Chicago. The central theme of my talk was simply stated, as marketers, we need to start integrating social media into the rest of your marketing strategy and programs and stop treating Social Media as some magical new quasi religion.
I do not mean that there are not unique attributes of each of the various new channels, media and technologies that comprise social media; blogs, social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter that we must examine, learn how to use and take advantage of in creating dynamic and meaningful experiences for consumers and businesses alike.
What I do mean is that instead of starting off with the attitude of “I’ve got to get me some of that Social Media stuff,” and invariably jumping right into figuring out which technology you need to buy, install and staff up to support, marketers needs to go back to their overall marketing strategies and figure out how each of the facets of social media can be leveraged to support their strategies, not drive them.
At this Forrester Research event, I had the privilege of delivering my talk on the heels of a presentation by Peter Burris, a research director at Forrester and a really smart and articulate guy. Peter’s theme was based on his recently released piece, Turning Your B2B Web Site Into A Community Hub. His premise, which I completely agree with, is that you need to start looking at how you integrate social media into your corporate Web presence. It is also related to the presentation I did at the Integrated Marketing Communications conference in Kansas City (see my post entitled, It’s time to look beyond Websites and start looking at an Integrated Digital Experience).
I won’t go through my entire presentation here, I’ve uploaded it at SlideShare and I encourage you to take a look. http://www.slideshare.net/jkottcamp/marketing-and-social-media-tmec-oct09
August 26, 2009
John Kottcamp
community marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, SDMA, social media, social networking, User-generated content, Web 2.0
agency2.0, Alaska Airlines, Ascentium, comcast, Customer Experience, digital agency, Groundswell, Huffington Post, integrated marketing, marketing technology, marketing2.0, Metrics, PCC Natural Markets, rei, ROI, SDMA, social media, Social Media Club, social networking, The Seattle Times, web2.0
There was a full article in the Seattle Times this morning about social media. It’s amazing that a major media outlet either just discovered social media as a topic or there wasn’t enough new news to fill the dwindling number of printed pages. But let’s not get on the subject of newspapers and why most journalists seem to be more afraid of social media than taking steps to become the leaders of it.
What I want to talk about is not newspapers and not about what social media is, isn’t or what its good for. I don’t know and I’m supposedly an expert on the subject for my agency Ascentium. What I do know is that I don’t want to see, hear, blog, tweet or otherwise spew about the definition of social media and how it’s going to change the world, or at least our way of thinking about the world. Been there, done that.
It’s time to focus on the reality, not the potential of social media. Look at what Twitter is being used for politically around the globe. See how the Huffington Post has already redefined journalism. And as marketers, let’s start talking about the work we’re at our companies or for our clients. Let’s see what is working and what isn’t. And let’s define success, not at the nebulous level of “building brand awareness” or “increasing reach”. Let’s apply real metrics to determine the ROI of a very broad array of activities, campaigns and applications that we lump under the category of social media.
As president of the SDMA, we created an editorial calendar of the coming year’s series of monthly events. The kickoff event, to be held on 09/09/09 at the Bellevue Hyatt was listed in our working calendar as social media. From there, we went about selecting a speaker(s). It was easy to find some really smart people who could pontificate on social media. In fact, last week the Seattle Social Media Club had a great presentation on “What the f**k is Social Media?”
But we’ve tried to set the bar higher. Our moderator, Blake Cahill, of Visible Technologies, a social media expert in his own right, reached out to his considerable network and looked for marketers who were actually using various social media techniques and asked them for examples of what is and isn’t working in the very real world of corporate marketing.
The result is a great panel representing brands including Alaska Airlines, Comcast, REI and PCC Natural Markets who are willing and able to talk about what they have learned about social media.
So if you’re interested in going beyond the hype and seeing what social media can really do when applied by top marketers, come join us on Sept. 9, 2009 at 5:30p at the Bellevue Hyatt for the kick off event of the season of the SDMA.
August 21, 2009
John Kottcamp
Ascentium, SDMA
CRM, Closed Loop Marketing, Interactive Marketing, integrated marketing, Customer Experience, branded entertainment, marketing technology, Marketing Automation, Customer Relationship Management, Metrics, ROI, digital agency, microsoft, social media, marketing2.0, ecommerce, agency2.0, analytics, social networking, Groundswell, B2B marketing, SDMA, Ascentium
In addition to my role at Ascentium, I have been privileged to be elected president of the Seattle Direct Marketing Association, SDMA, and as we kick off our new 2009-2010 season of events I’d like to welcome back all our members, colleagues, friends and everyone that has an interest in the marketing profession.
We’re in the home stretch of summer. Our sub-baked brains are shifting from vacation to back to school, from playing hooky on a sunny Friday afternoon to getting the next proposal out the door. In other words, the fun’s over. But wait a second! Just because it’s no long 103 degrees outside, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to look forward to. The SDMA is here and it’s time to kick off another great season of speakers, events, networking and the continuation of our exploration into the art and science of modern marketing.
Last year we debuted a new tagline for the SDMA, “thinking outside the mailbox” in recognition that direct marketing has evolved into integrated marketing. We’ve taken the expertise direct marketers have gained in the areas of targeting, segmentation, analytics and ROI and are applying it to email, online advertising, search and social media. We’re extending brands across multiple new channels like mobile, branded content and the Web. And all while remembering that traditional media and direct still make up the lion’s share of marketing budgets and are evolving just as much as the new media is coming on the scene.
This season, the SDMA is going to mix things up a bit. In response to our success last year in Bellevue, we’re going to host some events on the East side and some in Seattle. We’re going to experiment with different formats including thought leader interviews, competitor panels and bring you real-life case studies showing how companies are using new ideas as well as re-inventing established methods to produce tangible and measureable results for their businesses. For this year’s calendar, visit www.sdma.org/events
In addition to our monthly events, we are partnering with the PSAMA and the Social Media Club to produce the region’s premier marketing conference, MarketMix 2010, to be held on March 10, 2010, at the Bell Harbor Conference Center. Mark your calendars today.
If you haven’t checked us out in awhile, visit our website at www.sdma.org, our groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, or even better, join us for our season’s kick-off on Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 5:30-8:00p at The Bellevue Hyatt for our evening event, “Transforming your Marketing and Customer Relationships with Social Media – Real Tweets from Real Practioneers at Leading Northwest Firms,” with panelists from Alaska Airlines, REI, PCC and Comcast. To register, visit, www.sdma.org/events .
Looking forward to seeing you and having your participation in another great year for the SDMA and for the marketing profession in the Pacific Northwest.
On behalf of the entire SDMA board,
John P. Kottcamp, President
August 19, 2009
John Kottcamp
Ascentium, CMO, Interactive Agency, Marketing Strategy, microsoft
#ForresterResearch, agency2.0, Ascentium, avenuea/razorfish, Customer Relationship Management, digital agency, integrated marketing, marketing2.0, microsoft, Razorfish, web2.0
I was just reading Harley Manning’s post on the acquisition of Razorfish by Publicis. It’s a good read, check it out. I posted the following comment on Harley’s blog, but thought it appropriate to repreat it here.
While I fully agree with Harley that Razorfish was always an afterthought at Microsoft and never made sense as a strategic fit, I’m not sure I buy the idea that selling to Publicis is either good for Razorfish or good for its customers.
I don’t believe the fact that Digitas and Razorfish are different types of digital agencies matters nearly as much as that Publicis and Digital agencies in general, have continued to be almost like oil and water. The problem is not simply possessing enough creative juices, Publicis certainly has plenty, and it’s not just having the technical skills that Digitas brings to the table.
The problem is that the cultures and ultimately the business models of traditional advertising agencies and digital agencies continue to be fundamentally different. And as long as that difference exists, mergers of mega agencies will falter.
Now, if Digitas and Razorfish were to be combined and then spun off, there would be an incredible powerhouse. But in fact, there are already some agencies, including Sapient, and my own agency, Ascentium, that have been building up this balance between great creative and deep technology expertise for several years. So in that context, a merger between Digitas and Razorfish wouldn’t produce a new kind of agency, simply the biggest one of its kind.
But it doesn’t sound like it’s a merger between Digitas and Razorfish, it sounds like another attempt on the part of Publicis to integrate a digital agency into a traditional advertising world. And I predict the outcome will be no better than what we’ve already seen with Digitas. As a marketer, it’s a waste of great talent. As a competitor, it’s great news. Big isn’t always better.
June 9, 2009
John Kottcamp
User-generated content, Marketing, Web 2.0, web marketing, Strategy, integrated marketing, community marketing, social networking, social media, microsoft, aQuantive, Interactive Agency, Marketing Strategy, Closed Loop Marketing, customer lifetime value, Customer Engagment, ecommerce, Ascentium
#ForresterResearch, agency2.0, Arc Worldwide, Ascentium, B2B marketing, Blast Radius, Cisco, CMO, Critical Mass, CRM, Customer Experience, Customer Relationship Management, Dell, digital agency, ecommerce, IBM Interactive, IconNicholson, iCrossing, imc2, integrated marketing, Interactive Marketing, marketing technology, marketing2.0, Metrics, microsoft, Molecular, OgilvyInteractive, Organic, R/GA, Random House, Razorfish, Resource Interactive, Rosetta, Sapient, SDMA, social media, T-Mobile, VML, web2.0, Whittmanhart
On Friday, Forrester Research published its Forrester Wave™, Interactive Marketing Agencies – Web Design Capabilities, Q2, 2009. Ascentium was covered for the first time along with other top digital agencies including Sapient, imc2, Razorfish, IconNicholson, IBM Interactive, Organic, Blast Radius, iCrossing, OgilvyInteractive, Resource Interactive, and Rosetta, Critical Mass, Molecular, R/GA, VML, Whittmanhart and Arc Worldwide.
In addition to just being favorably reviewed among such a great group an agencies, we take pride in that Ascentium scored the highest out of all the agencies in the category or customer satisfaction. We credit that in large part to emphasis we have given to growing customer loyalty and constantly measuring it with tools like Net Promoter Scores.
When I joined Ascentium almost four years ago, we were primarily a technology consulting firm with strong Web development skills and some good design talent, but we hadn’t yet made the commitment to become a true full service digital agency. But we got together as a team and agreed that the future was in leveraging technology to advance marketing and to move from advertising to engagement.
Three years and a roster of blue chip clients like Microsoft T-Mobile, Dell, Cisco and Random House, later. We have garnered the attention of the likes of Forrester Research and have grown from a local Seattle-based firm to an agency with offices across the country and internationally as well.
It’s been a privilege to be a part of this journey and to have helped nurture it along the way. It wasn’t always easy teaching technologists and marketers to not only get along, but to actually work synergistically, to create a new model for what Forrester has called, the agency of the future.
So congratulations to all the other agencies featured in the Wave, thanks to all the analysts at Forrester who have seen value in what we’ve created and well done to each and every employee I have the privilege of working with at Ascentium. Just wait for what we have in store for you next.
March 24, 2009
John Kottcamp
Uncategorized
Closed Loop Marketing, integrated marketing, Customer Experience, marketing technology, Marketing Automation, Metrics, ROI, digital agency, marketing2.0, agency2.0, web2.0, B2B marketing, Forrester Research, Ascentium, IBM, Digital Consumer
I just read a very good report prepared by the IBM Institute for Business Value entitled, “Beyond Advertising, Choosing a strategic path to the digital consumer.” While the article itself doesn’t contain and new thinking, that I haven’t heard discussed across many of my peer networks and among the analyst community like Forrester Research, what does stand out is that IBM, a technology and business consulting company demonstrates it understands what most agencies and marketing services companies still fail to grasp. What it tells me is that instead of worrying about other agencies, especially the large traditional holding company ad agencies, my real competition is going to become more and more the big consulting firms who see the challenges of marketers for what they really are, business issues, that affect the very core of how a company operates and what will make it successful in the future.
The only solace I can have is the fact that while the big consulting firms can do a good job of identifying the problems, they are not equipped to actually produce integrated brands, marketing programs and technological infrastructure necessary to achieve the solutions they will recommend. That still leaves an open field to companies like Ascentium and Sapient and a handful of others. But we had better not slow down the innovation we bring to our clients, or Big Blue will be pushing us out the door.
February 7, 2009
John Kottcamp
aQuantive, Ascentium, integrated marketing, Interactive Agency, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, microsoft
agency2.0, Ascentium, avenuea/razorfish, Crispin Proter and Bugusky, digital agency, down economy, integrated marketing, layoffs, marketing2.0, microsoft, Razorfish
I just read a few minutes ago that Razorfish, one of the top digital agencies, and one my company, Ascentium’s, chief competitors, announced layoffs of 70 people. This is hours after I heard about Crispin, Porter, & Bugusky, one of the brightest shining stars in the advertising agency world, and a partner of Ascentium, announced layoffs of 60 people this morning. Both companies are considered at the top of the industry. Both excel at creative ideas, well-executed and yet both are taking pretty big hits on the same day. And personally, I know people at both companies from our work together at Microsoft. So what does this mean?
The deep answer is I don’t know yet, but it will make me take a look in the mirror and make sure I’m doing everything at my company so that we don’t suffer the same fate. However the more immediate answer is that this sends a clear signal about the progression of this economic downturn. When good companies make cuts, it’s a sure sign that even in the new digital world of marketing, most of the fat must already be gone, because the industry is cutting into the muscle.
My heart goes out to everyone at these two organizations who is out of a job. They say it’s not personal, it’s just business, but having personally been on both sides of the axe. It’s a lot more personal if you’re the one without a job. Good luck to everyone and let’s hope for the change sooner rather than later.
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