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Latest Updates: Digital Strategies RSS

  • Zach Blank 2:28 pm on August 18, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Digital Strategies,

    Interaction design has its place, it beautiful dabble point between idea and execution. It is the crucial bridge that takes idea to reality.

    I have been thinking about my understanding of interaction design as I am preparing for a BIG round of interviews starting Monday in New York. I still haven’t quite gotten over my Jeff Benjamin SNAFO and I am trying to make sure It doesn’t happen again. So with that this is my idea of interaction design’s place in the process and why I take to it.

    Photo by: isabelle boring
    Photo by: isabelle boring

    I am passionate about strategy. School pounded it into my head and it is almost all that I think about on projects. But all too often does a great idea fall to pieces because of poor execution. And what a disappointment it all becomes.

    With regards to interactive assets for brands the piece that takes idea into execution is interaction design. It is the liaison between the two and done properly can drive the execution to success. Interaction design allows for so much input into strategy and execution it is the obvious spot for me.

    The happy medium is the wonderful squeeze between idea and execution where interaction design lives.

     

  • Zach Blank 10:18 am on August 1, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Digital Strategies, hyper local

    Global brands can have tremendous traction on the local level, if they can find out how to appeal to locals of an area on their terms. We see hundreds of national campaigns and even regional campaigns for huge global brands but not too many hyper local campaigns. Campaigns aimed at a city, not New York City or even Los Angeles City, but Portland Oregon City, or even Boulder Colorado City. But how do brands become a part of a small community? How can they successfully run a hyper local campaign?

    Like they say, start the campaign at digital and build out. But it takes a bit more than that. What does digital mean on the local level? How can a brand leverage events, activities, parties, anything on the local via digital or the web? There is a bunch of hype about location based anything. But we always cry privacy there. And we can always just build a new social network for every community that ever existed. “Mayan Space” for the Mexican restaurant on 10th and Morrison, that makes sense.

    I tend to always think the key is integration. We don’t need any more stand alone social networks, or opt in location based SMS messages with coupons. How about turning away from the brand and towards it’s product (or service) and appeal what the brand offers on a local level. The web is all about personal customization - Firefox and Google lead that revolution. But those are digital assets, it’s time to get some traditional brands to appeal their products on the local level. And their brand will follow.

    I want to see a brand bring a community together through its product. I want somebody to show me that I can join in with my city or neighborhood to design or create my local version of Nike Dunks. I want to collaborate with 100,000 other people via the web to make the perfect Portland shoe. People have a lot of pride for their city, why don’t we see brands leverage this more?

    Take this idea down to the university level. A 20,000 person online collaboration to make the University of Oregon iPod. How much longer until the web is no longer a global communication tool, but a local one? I think we are on the way.

     

  • Zach Blank 6:04 pm on January 16, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: adSense, adWords, Digital Strategies, , Media Planning

    Creating inspiring advertising moments isn’t easy. One step further, creating these moments and then making sure the right people see them is even harder. We are taught in school how to create a brand image, position it and have an insightful, effective strategy associated with it. I personally take pride in developing advertising campaigns. Evening so often becomes morning as an idea grows and the plan is refined. But is the big giant making it all a moot point?

    It is no secret that digital branding is key, key to image, position, audience and the life of a brand. Advertising can really be broken down into digital strategies and everything else, digital presence and the rest of it. This is not to say that they need not live cohesively, rather that each need equal resources and thought put into them.

    Just as quickly as the job of a digital media planner proliferated the friendly giant Google is on the verge of steeling it away. AdWords (Google’s advertising expert) has the insight and manpower of all the ad agencies in the world. This advertising engine knows the insights, trends, positions, and strategies of every know Web site as well as every one of its 60 million unique users a month. With this knowledge adWords can perfectly and precisely target an ad to any user and actually make it worthwhile for them, the advertiser and the publication serving the ad.

    Although some disapprove, Google watches us. From the first search until the moment that perfect Web site is discovered the ads are all calculated to make them as useful to the user as possible. That is where adWords gets its edge. Not by deliberate Meta tags to mine for ads relevant to the site. Yes this is part of the equation, but Google knows what is being searched for and places ads on a participating Web site based on that. What could be more accurate? No media planner can compete with this.

    Media planners however are still an integral part of advertising; they are just being called on to be nimble because like it or not Google is stealing their jobs as advertisers opt to place the media planning responsibilities, at least those digital, with Google. The position of ‘keyword planner’ is up and rising. Google still needs to know what the ad in its grips is about. Perhaps less exciting a keyword planner is responsible for coming up with every possible word and phrase associated with the advertising and passing it along to their successor, salt in the wound isn’t it.