Strategies And Tactics | T2 + Back Alley Blog - Part 2

Strategies and Tactics

February 17th, 2011
by T2 + Back Alley Team
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Mobile Apps – One Hit Wonders?

Apparently first impressions are very important on first dates AND with those using your mobile app for the first time. According to a study released by Localytics, 26% of apps are downloaded once and never used again. You heard that correctly – never! Talk about one hit wonders. And taking into consideration the cost of developing an app, that’s a big deal.

The good news is that the number of SmartPhone users has grown from 42.7 million to 61.5 million over the last year alone. The bad news it that usage stats show, roughly 35% of SmartPhone users that have access to apps add them to their phone, and only 24% use them.

Bottom line is clear. Although the market for mobile apps is strong – and growing on a daily basis, it’s really important that you (or your clients) have a strong sense of strategy in place to market the apps you develop.

Also, be sure and spend time analyzing your user data so that you know who your ‘loyal’ users are and how much return traffic you have. That will go a long way toward showing you (and your client) how the app is working in conjunction with the rest of your marketing efforts.

Teri Rogers
January 24th, 2011
by Teri Rogers
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Advertising. It Works.

Gladys Glover Billboard in Times Square
Advertising works. Doubt that? A recent article by Steven Heller in Daily Magazine inspired me to think about advertising – and how important it is to success. For those of you not familiar with Heller, he’s kind of a big deal. He’s the author, co-author and editor of more than 100 books on design and was an art director for the New York Times for more than 33 years. And the right kind of advertising can even manage to take someone (or some thing) from nobody status to somebody status – and pretty quickly

Heller’s piece explored the 1954 George Cukor film “It Should Happen to You” starring Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon. The film’s main character was Gladys Glover (played by Holliday). Much like the Kim Kardashians and Paris Hiltons and Perez Hiltons of today, Gladys was a nobody who wanted to be somebody. And she was determined to get it, come hell or high water. And, the fact that she was loaded and not afraid to spend money didn’t hurt her in her quest for fame.

To accomplish her goal of ‘being somebody’ Gladys rented an empty billboard in NYC’s Times Square. A manufacturing company who wanted the space was surprised when she turned out to be a tough negotiator. Six billboards later – billboards bearing nothing but her name – Gladys had what she wanted. Attention. And just like the ‘somebodys’ of today, she milked it for all it was worth.

Heller calls it the beginning of the ‘me’ generation. That may well be the case. But I think it’s also a pretty good example of the old adage: Advertising works. It can even make a nobody a somebody. And it never ceases to amaze me how many businesses forget this simple adage. Just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. Advertising – of some form or another, is just about always an important component of any successful strategy.

Teri Rogers
December 2nd, 2010
by Teri Rogers
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Experience Design – The Future of Online Search

Qwiki - Experience for Search

Experience design is not just the hottest thing in marketing and for brands trying to drive engagement and sales, it’s soon to be an even bigger part of our lives. There’s a great new search tool, Qwiki, that was introduced during TechCrunch Disrupt this past September that brings experience – and experience design – into the search process.

Currently, when you search for something you get a list of links that may or may not provide all the information you seek. And it’s not always a very dynamic way to find what you need. Qwiki provides interactive video presentations with dynamic information pulled from a multitude of sources. What’s better, is that each information element that’s pulled into the presentation is interactive. So, if you click a video or photo while watching a Qwiki information experience you can interact with that piece individually. Also all related maps, timelines and other elements are highly interactive as well.

Qwiki at TechCrunch Disrupt from Qwiki on Vimeo.

Right now Qwiki is a very cool interactive reference tool, but it is actively working on developing products for small businesses and social media users. Social media users will be able to create Qwikis based on their social data aggregate, while small businesses can aggregate reviews from sites such as Yelp, Gowalla and others. Regardless of the end user, Qwiki CEO, Doug Imbruce says their ultimate goal is to become “a ubiquitous layer that augments the traditional web.”

You should definitely go check out some of the sample Qwikis available on their site. The Eiffel Tower Qwiki is a great example of a simple search and infinitely more interesting than what you get from a Google or Wikipedia search. There’s also a Qwiki about Gregory Smith that shows how social media information can be aggregated

Qwiki founders believe that the best ideas are experienced – so if Search goes experiential – what’s next? Since experiential projects and experience design are a big part of what we do – and since we believe that any information is better when it is experienced by the user, we will love seeing how quickly Qwiki will change the way we all search for information. Love, love, love it.

Teri Rogers
November 23rd, 2010
by Teri Rogers
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Developing Mobile Marketing Solutions Is Good Business

Why We Do Mobile Design

Designing mobile marketing solutions for our clients is an integral part of our business plan. If you’re reading this blog, I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know. We are a mobile society and carry our mobile devices with us everywhere. If we leave the house without them, we turn back and get them — the thought of getting through a day without connectivity in the palm of our hands is untenable.

A billion people accessed the mobile Internet worldwide in 2009 and Gartner forecasts call for expect usage to double within five years as mobile overtakes the PC as the most popular way to get on the Web. Additionally, according to MarketingProfs’ mobile devices are the most personal method of reaching people and messages are more likely to be read on the small screen than they are on the big.

According to an Outsell study, consumers who have a smartphone spent an average of more than 25% of their waking hours interacting with their device. That same research shows that by 2014, more than half of web browsing will be done from mobile devices.

Despite this clear trend, 56% of marketers are currently doing no mobile or browser advertising. With devices such as the iPad, Android and iPhone becoming capturing increasingly more marketshare, marketers could be missing out on big rewards.

Mobile advertising is still in its early days but this space represents huge opportunities for marketers across B2B, B2C, E-commerce and non-profit organizations. Gartner predicts that by the end of 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce and that that will be the preferential way of reaching consumers.
This is exactly why my company is designing for the mobile space. It’s not going away — and according to the stats above, helping clients develop mobile marketing solutions should be a growing business segment for T2+Back Alley Films.

Teri Rogers
November 2nd, 2010
by Teri Rogers
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Online Video Facts That May Surprise You

Occasionally I get sucked into the Internets. You know what I mean. You start out looking at one random thing and, before you know it, hours later, you’re off on a tangent and discovering things you can’t get enough of. This week, stats about online video hooked me. I started reading some stats from comScore’s annual video matrix that was published in the spring and, well, they’re pretty compelling. Here are a few:

• The average U.S. Internet user watched 186 videos per month.

• 183 Million Americans watched a total of 33.9 billion online videos in the month of   May alone.

• YouTube, naturally, is the top dog when it comes to online video content viewed at 143.2 million unique viewers, with Yahoo! Sites coming in at 55.1 million unique viewers.

• Facebook is rocking it as an online video portal, coming in third overall, with some 46.6 viewers (only a million more than Microsoft sites.

• Americans viewed nearly 3.6 billion video ads in July, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at 783 million.

• comScore calculated that video ads reached nearly half (44.5%) of the total U.S. population an average of 27 times in the month of July alone.

• More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all 3 major US networks produced in 60 years.

• From 2005 to 2010, Online video grew at a phenomenal rate of 910%, versus 114% for the Internet and 0% for TV.

910% growth? Oh yeah, video is everywhere. And now you know why I spent so much time checking this out. It’s an optimistic sign for our industry – and certainly our experience in the work we’ve been producing this past year back all this up. These ad spending stats from eMarketer back all this up as well.

eMarketer Online Video Stats

And the world of video content production has changed significantly. Back in the day, the agency world (and thus my world), used to focus on the :30 spot. Today, there are less ads and more branded content. We see less advertising produced by creative teams at agencies and executed by motion graphics firms and more content produced by way of partnerships between advertisers and content producers. For consumers who live in a fragmented world and who are constantly bombarded with stimuli and messages of all kinds, one piece of content (e.g. that :30 spot) just isn’t enough. Smart marketers are adopting a strategy of enveloping their audience in a fog consisting of a variety of messages rather than hitting them over the head with just one message.

And the reason for the messaging has changed. The website has become the hub of a brand’s business operations and a significant place for brands to engage their customers. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media outlets are becoming equally as important, and viewed as a complement to a brand’s website. Thus, it’s critical that branded video content is created with these different venues and varying strategies in mind. Sometimes the content is developed for brand enhancement purposes, sometimes it’s to entice them to a site, sometimes it’s goal is to engage website visitors once they get to a site, and keep them there longer. And other times, it’s developed for lead generation purposes. And more goals mean more content.

I think the future of video content is pretty clear. I bet at T2 + Back Alley Films, we’ll just keep producing more of it and doing it less expensively. It only makes sense.