March 16, 2011
John Kottcamp
Uncategorized
#Forrester, #ForresterResearch, analytics, CIO, CMO, digital agency, integrated marketing, marketing technology, Metrics, ROI
Let’s start with understanding the problem. It’s not that CMOs and CIOs speak different languages, it’s that they fundamentally approach problem solving differently. Most CMOs come out of the advertising and creative world of the “big idea.” At the end of the day, they are dealing with abstraction, creating emotional ties to an ephemeral concept, known as the brand. While they can measure success from outcomes, they can never conduct QA testing to see if the solution works or not. Whereas most CIOs come from an IT background where at there is ultimately a “right” answer or solution to a given problem and it is easily measured b whether it works or not. And the outcome of working is out of scope.
At our company, Blab, I’m lucky that our CTO Joseph and I have a strong working partnership. It comes mutual respect (very common at C level), shared goals (common if business focused) and most importantly, because we spend a lot of time together talking through ways to solve problems.
I’ve learned some of the lingo of technology. I have a rudimentary understanding of database schema and at least don’t cringe when I hear the terms php, ruby on rails and lamp stack. I recognize they are development languages. But what is more important is that I understand that they are critical to my being able to effectively and efficient communicate with my customers across multiple channels.
Joseph, on the other hand, has not spent his entire career managing IT infrastructure. He can write code himself, actually thinking its fun and is excited about solving challenging problems. He’s learned something about frequency and reach and the abbreviations, cpc, seo, sem and crm don’t make his eyes glaze either.
But the real key to our mutual success is sitting down together in front of a whiteboard and sometimes over a beer, talking about the big picture issues we both face. Are we keeping up with our customers? Do we understand the problems they have? Are we equipped with the ability to listen to our customers, analyze what they’re saying and acting on the insight before it’s too late.
Joseph’s mind certainly works differently than mine. He often comes up with a completely different perspective on the issue and as often as not, his logical rational mind is as perceptive as the most gifted and creative brain. And then he tells me how he can build whatever it takes to bring the idea to life.
September 7, 2010
John Kottcamp
Ascentium, Closed Loop Marketing, CMO, community marketing, Customer Engagment, customer lifetime value, enterprise marketing platform, integrated marketing, Marketing Strategy, online marketing suite, Rainier Advisory Group, SDMA, Strategy, web marketing
agency2.0, Ascentium, B2B marketing, Closed Loop Marketing, CMO, CRM, Customer Experience, Customer Lifecycle, Customer Relationship Management, digital agency, integrated marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing Automation, marketing technology, Metrics, ROI
After nearly 5 years, I’m leaving Ascentium and starting my own consultancy, Rainier Advisory Group specializing in helping companies navigate the complexity of the marketing technology landscape.
I’m very proud of the success I’ve had growing Ascentium from a small technology consulting firm into the 5th largest independent digital agency according to AdAge and being called out with the highest customer satisfaction scores in the country by Forrester Research in their 2009 Forrester Wave® of Top Interactive Agencies.
Now is the time to move on and focus on my real passion of mastering cross-channel customer experiences through the integration of the technologies that are helping transform the marketing landscape from search to analytics, lead management to CRM and everything in between. With the maturation of cloud-based services, today’s marketer is faced with a myriad of choices and almost no one to help navigate not only the applications and services themselves, but how they fit into an integrated cross-channel strategy, Forrester calls Digital Brand Orchestration.
I believe that my combination of executive experience on the client side for Lufthansa, T-Mobile and Gateway, agency consulting experience working with companies like Microsoft, Intel, Lexus, and Ford as well as start ups like Marketfish, Quasar, and Surveyanalytics as well as my thought leadership and speaking engagements for organizations like Forrester Research, the DMA, Digital Hollywood, Mirren New Business, The Integrated Marketing Conference and MarketMix, position me well to provide the strategic consulting services needed by leading companies, marketing service providers and advertising agencies.
Please feel free to reach out to me if you’d like more information or if you know of any firm in need of my services.
I will also be devoting time to my commitment to our industry in my capacity as past president of the Seattle Direct Marketing Association, incoming president of the Pacific Northwest Business Marketing Association chapter as well as lecturing on digital marketing at local institutes of higher learning.
Most of my contact information remains unchanged, with the exception that I can now be reached at john@rainierag.com or jkottcamp@gmail.com . Today I have also launched my new company website, www.rainierag.com . Farewells are always sad, but new beginnings are even more exciting. I continue to wish everyone at Ascentium continued success and I look forward to sharing new stories with each of you in the near future.
April 21, 2010
John Kottcamp
Uncategorized
Closed Loop Marketing, Interactive Marketing, integrated marketing, Customer Experience, marketing technology, Customer Relationship Management, Metrics, digital agency, marketing2.0, agency2.0, web2.0, social networking, CMO, #Forrester, B2B marketing, Ascentium, Adage
Increasingly CMO’s are being brought into the technology buying process as technology is becoming even more intertwined with today’s multi-channel, multi-device world of marketing. And it’s up to us in the agency world who call ourselves trusted advisors to come to their aid.
It’s impossible to be a successful chief marketing officer (CMO) without becoming engaged in the understanding and decision making regarding technology. In a recent Forrester Research study, “The CMO’s Role in Technology Decisions”, David Cooperstein states that while “traditionally, marketing leaders treated IT as a foreign land that had a native language they didn’t speak… today’s marketers can’t afford to be lost in translation because digital channel embed technology in everything, marketing and the multi-channel customer experience are inextricably linked and fewer resources require strapped marketers to use technology to scale.” In other words, CMOs don’t really have a choice, either they need to learn the language of technology or they will not be able to compete in today’s digitalized, mobilized and socialized world of the interactive, integrated customer experience.
So who can help CMO’s learn the language of technology? Most (55%) look to their own IT departments , even though “strained” was the most common word to describe the typical relationship between CMOs and CIOs . And in smaller numbers, they look to their traditional agencies (21%) and management consultants (17%) for support. But almost half are looking towards their interactive agencies (49%) and their marketing services providers (44%) . And it is this audience that I believe has the responsibility to take the lead in helping CMOs navigate and make the smart business decisions that make the difference between leadership and falling behind.
But even within the worlds of the interactive agency or the marketing service providers, there are still large gaps in understanding what technology means for marketing and how to make the most of limited resources and the rapidly changing world of the customer experience. Most interactive agencies are either focused on online advertising or the increasing diversity of rich applications for platforms like Facebook or smartphones. While marketing service providers continue to concentrate on the silos of their own product’s capabilities despite the expansion of technology communities like Salesforce.com’s Appexchange or Omniture’s Genesis program.
At the risk of drawing the ire of my agency colleagues, I see the greatest opportunity in the hands of the emerging marketing practices of marketing consultancies like Accenture Interactive or McKinsey or the consulting arms of research organizations like Forrester or eMarketer. If CMOs have to be able to understand how technology will help them in the achievement of their business goals, then they need help from someone who first understands their business, their customers and how the complexity of the customer experience across all touch points can be influenced, optimized and in the end monetized.
And so it’s up to all of us in the agency world to embrace new roles as not just stewards of the brand, but as, business consultants who look equally to the worlds of creative, big ideas and technology as the best way to add values to our clients, the CMO. Because if we don’t step up to the challenge, someone else will.
1 Forrester Research, June 2009 Global Marketing Leadership Online Survey
2 Forrester Research, 2008 Partnering for Success: The CMO-CIO Relationship
3 Forrester Research, June 2009 Global Marketing Leadership Online Survey
March 19, 2010
John Kottcamp
CMO, Customer Engagment, integrated marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Strategy
Adage, brand marketing, CMO, Customer Experience, digital agency, Forrester Research, integrated marketing, marketing2.0, Metrics, social networking, Starbucks, web2.0
I don’t ever like being critical of any of my peers, but sometimes, I just have to call a spade a spade. I just finished reading an article in Adage, entitled, “Our Biggest Brands can no longer be managed by nerds” by Tom Hinkes. His basic premise is that using data to inform marketing decisions somehow is responsible for the loss or the demise of CPG brands.
While I agree that “brand marketing is not a science, it requires analysis, discipline and detail. Even more, it requires intuition, flair and vision,” what I disagree with is the confusion between data and “numbers”. Using advances in market research, analytics and more recent social monitoring to listen to your customers, gain a greater understanding of what motivates them and responding to their needs/desires is not being a “bean counter”.
What made Starbucks a success was not that Howard Schultz ignored the research and went with his gut; it was that he was able to see the real needs/desires of his audience. They weren’t interested in coffee or soft drinks; they were interested in human interaction and a place where that could happen. And that type of insight is exactly what data and the successful understanding of data can bring about.
So I would counter that it’s some traditional brand managers who can’t see the forest for the trees and it takes a new more strategic business focused approach to be successful in today’s marketplace. So instead of being afraid of nerds, learn to listen and then apply the intuition, flair and vision that makes brand marketing as much art as science.
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
Closed Loop Marketing, integrated marketing, Customer Experience, branded entertainment, marketing technology, Customer Relationship Management, Metrics, social media, marketing2.0, web2.0, social networking, B2B marketing, SDMA, Ascentium, Twitter, Privacy, Digital Hollywood, #DH09, Simulmedia, Dave Morgan, Michael Dougherty, Jelli, Shai Samet, Samet Privacy LLC, Jason Cieslak, Siegel & Gale, Mark J. Kapczynski, Kontrol Media, consumer privacy, tracking and targeting, consumer rights, commerce services
I’ve been given the privilege of speaking on a panel at next week’s Digital Hollywood in Los Angeles. The topic is Consumer Privacy, Tracking & Targeting: Consumer Rights and Enhanced Technology and Commerce Services. I’m being joined by a great group including Dan Palmer, VP, Atigeo, Bant Breen, President, Initiative, Dave Morgan, CEO, Simulmedia, Michael Dougherty, CEO, Jelli, Shai Samet, CEO, Samet Privacy LLC, Jason Cieslak, Managing Director, Siegel & Gale and moderated by Mark J. Kapczynski, Chief Operating Officer, Kontrol Media.
I will be tweeting from Digital Hollywood as well as posting after our panel discussion. It looks like it’s going to be a lively topic and I’m excited to be participating.
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
agency2.0, analytics, Ascentium, B2B marketing, branded entertainment, Closed Loop Marketing, CRM, Customer Experience, Customer Relationship Management, digital agency, ecommerce, Groundswell, integrated marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing Automation, marketing technology, marketing2.0, Metrics, microsoft, ROI, SDMA, social media, social networking
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
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.
Older Entries
