Picture of the Week: Healthy Refrigerator

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Company, Marketing Musings, Pic of the Week

Here at Projectline, we’ve recently started a project to capture all the places we work and bring together our team around the world. Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. Each Friday, we’ll choose our favorite picture of the week and share its story here.

Does this look like your refrigerator at work? At home? If you’re eating the suggested 9 servings of fruit and vegetables each day, it may. But let’s be honest, not many of us are THAT healthy. I’m pretty proud of this image because it shows Projectline’s dedication to going green – not just from a commuting, low-energy appliance, and paper-saving side, but with our food as well. Each week, “Veggie Queen” Holly Noll comes to both of our offices and prepares a tray for each day of the week full of yummy vegetables, nuts, and healthy snacks. At first, I was a little alarmed when I heard we weren’t going to have jelly bellys and peanut butter M&Ms around the office all of the time, but I realized this is a much better snack for the Projectline team to be eating. We need to be consuming brain-energizing and nutrient-rich foods that keep us at the top of our game.

What does your company have in their refrigerator? Send us a picture!

Growing and Training at Projectline

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Careers, Company, Marketing Musings

For many companies, adjusting to economic decline meant that employee training budgets have been slashed or removed completely. When sales slow down and budgets are stretched thin, companies may delay training until the business is profitable. However, it’s imperative to a company’s growth to keep investing in employees’ development. The best way to overcome an economic recession is to make sure employees are motivated and happy by letting them know they are valued.

I consider myself lucky to work for Projectline, an award-winning marketing consulting firm that has never cut their training budget. I was impressed when I first learned about Projectline’s generous yearly training budget. Leisl Hill, Projectline’s HR director, commented, “Part of how we assess employee’s performance is by gauging how they’ve grown. We recognize we can’t expect growth if we aren’t willing to invest in our employees’ development.”

It’s imperative to instill confidence in employees in order to increase loyalty and employee retention. This is indispensable for the long-term success of an organization. When asked how Projectline’s training budget has affected her, Kim Johnson, a marketing consultant, replied, “I have taken a wide variety of design courses that have helped me become a better consultant to my clients and provided more effective creative direction when working with designers.”

Projectline Consultants at a Training Event

Training is very important to Projectline’s success because keeping abreast of mushrooming technologies and improving productivity is vital for client satisfaction. One way a company can initiate a training program is to create a vision statement that explains how the organization supports the continuous improvement of its workforce at the group level as well as the individual level. At Projectline, we believe the secret of our success is “Good people = good business.” Our mission statement, which aims “to positively impact the people we work with,” shapes every decision we make, including employee training. Very simply put: If employees like and respect their work, they’ll be personally invested in the overall success of the organization.

At first glance, attending a training session may seem to only benefit the attendee. John Bush, Campaign Desk Marketing Coordinator, demonstrated how providing a training budget can have a ripple effect. “I attended the Seattle GoGreen Conference, which gave me a chance to gain new understanding and knowledge while developing alternative skills. Since the conference, I was empowered to help launch Projectline’s Green Team, which raises environmental awareness and encourages sustainable practices both at home and in the workplace and in the community,” he commented.

The bottom line is that companies achieve success by empowering productive, knowledgeable, happy employees. If you want great employees, believe in them, and they will in turn believe in your organization.

It takes a village . . . but how do you get a village?

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Marketing Musings

As an expectant father, I’ve become very interested in the idea of community—and in different tools for creating and organizing one! There are some wonderful sites out there wherein you can invite (recruit?) your friends and family into cooking meals for you over the first few weeks after the birth, and even organize a schedule so you don’t end up with seven lasagnas in a row (though I wouldn’t complain about that!). I haven’t yet found a site for overnight babysitting that works that way, but there must be one…right?

The saying goes that “it takes a village” to raise children, and I’m sure that I will quickly come to appreciate the truth of that.

It’s also a truth that marketers are realizing that, when it comes to helping clients with their figurative babies, creating and/or utilizing customer communities is the best way to encourage engagement with the marketed brand and/or product—and it reaps many other benefits as well. Just as with a child, raising your brand or product baby in a community exposes it to invested feedback and advocacy that, just like a parent, you must moderate, measure, and reflect on to ensure the best results.

But how do you get a village? As I’m fairly new to the country, I am also reflecting heavily on that fact! We have one set of friends and family in the US, but another much larger set in the UK, and I can’t fly them all over. Nor can I immediately generate a similar village over here on a weaker foundation. “Hey, we worked on a project together once! Fancy cooking me dinner in September?” doesn’t go over so well with most people, especially in the Northwest!

Communities are driven by what unifies them. If what unifies them isn’t a compelling reason to engage, then there won’t be much engagement. As a general rule, you need something stronger to drive community engagement than a unifying statement like “We worked together once,” or, more interestingly for marketers, “These people use our products.” When you have a diverse product set, that won’t be a strong motivator to engage, as many members of the community you’re hoping to build may have nothing in common if they use different products. The fact that they use your products isn’t a strong unifying factor from their perspective. You can get over that by motivating with incentives, BUT it would be much better to find a compelling reason for a community to exist or find vibrant communities of your customers (or people who could be your customers) that already exist.

Getting back to the baby analogy, friends and family offer to help out for a variety reasons:

  • Some are heavily invested in the new baby, as close family members. They feel an obligation to provide support and may engage more, especially with feedback, than you’re comfortable with! You might need to set some ground rules here for best results. (Marketers: For this group, think of customers who feel a strong affinity with your brand and use your products very frequently, to the exclusion of competitor’s products. They feel they have a right to influence the future direction the company takes, which is great, but it could hamper innovation if they drown out other voices.)

  • Close friends may feel just as invested and are likely to be great advocates for your children, but they may need encouragement to provide feedback. (Marketers: For this group, think of customers who use your products frequently but don’t exclude competitor products as a matter of course. They have an affinity with your brand, but it is not the key driver in their purchasing decisions; hence, they don’t feel particularly strongly about defining your future direction. However, they will provide great insights if encouraged to do so, and this will increase their affinity.)

  • Others in the outer reaches of the friendship circle might really only want to see a cute baby, so you need to play up the cute factor to get them to engage and then catch them when they’re in the area. (Marketers: For this group, think of new or infrequent users. They don’t really have an affinity for your brand, as they chose your product based on a feature or aesthetic that appealed to them. They could easily switch allegiances in future, so they need careful and constant encouragement to engage in communities, which may well involve incentives.)

Because customers also have these different levels of investment in brands and products, different strategies are needed to get them to engage in a community—and also to decide whether a single community or a set of communities is the best option. Depending on your desired outcomes, it may not be useful or appropriate to have your “close family member” customers engaged in a community with your “outer friendship circle customers”—though alternatively, it could also be ideal!

Sound daunting? Well, we have a community here ready and willing to help you: consultants who are experienced across the board of customer engagement and who have special focuses in creating and/or successfully engaging customer communities.

So don’t lose sleep over your customer community needs—let us help! Or rather, let my colleagues help; I’m having twins.

What is a TAP?

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Marketing Musings, Technology Adoption Programs

Projectline’s Customer Engagement Group is excited to present a blog series exploring what a Technology Adoption Program is and how it can benefit both you and your customers. The first installment provided an overview of Early Adoption Programs. Here is the second installment in the series.

Now that we’ve heard what Early Adoption Programs are all about, I’d like to focus on one of the two previously mentioned types of EAPs: the TAP, or Technology Adoption Program.

I’m a big fan of www.acronymfinder.com. If you plug the ‘TAP’ acronym into that site, you will find “Technology Adoption Program (various companies)” as the second entry.

This definition is found in the following Acronym Finder categories:

  • Information technology (IT) and computers
  • Organizations, NGOs, schools, universities, etc…
  • Business, finance, etc…

So if you’re working with or for a business or organization that needs to vet a technology product prior to its formal commercial release, one of the best ways to do so is via a TAP.

A TAP is a type of beta or pre-release program that allows a business or organization to collaborate with its customers and/or partners by making pre-commercial release software available to them for testing and evaluation in a controlled environment. Both the business and its external TAP participants benefit.

Let’s look at what a TAP does:

  • Captures valuable feedback about the functionality of a single technology product or suite of products, which allows for product improvement. This feedback typically comes by way of the submission of “bugs”, which are issues or problems found by participants during testing.
  • Validates the usability of feature sets or the functionality of the pre-release product in a customer’s own environment and compatibility with other systems.
  • Helps businesses identify which features are most important to their customers, as they typically begin when product teams are seeking this early feedback.
  • Builds trust and creates product buy-in by allowing for a limited set of a business’s influential customers and/or partners to act as trusted advisors.
  • Helps to create a feeling of partnership with a business’s customers and/or partners by engaging their participation to help make the product better and specifically suitable to their own needs.

Now let’s look at how a TAP is administered:

  • A TAP can be administered (or put in front of) a business’s customers and/or technology partners, using any number of IT infrastructure tools and communications mechanisms, but the broad objective is to make pre-release software available to a limited set of external organizations.
  • A TAP’s exposure and access to software should be strictly controlled, using legal nondisclosure agreements for participants, to limit the risk of leaks to the broader public.
  • TAPs typically offer a support channel to their participants, so that all technical questions can be quickly addressed and remedied.
  • TAP rules, restrictions, and duration should be clearly and explicitly defined to all participants in advance of admission to the program.

All Technology Adoption Programs are a little different, so we’d love to hear from you. What benefits have your business and its customers realized as a result of running TAPs? How did the TAP experience impact your business? What worked well? What didn’t work so well?

And if we can help, please don’t hesitate to ask…

Picture of the Week: Erin’s Work-from-Home Supervision

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Company, Marketing Musings, Pic of the Week

Here at Projectline, we’ve recently started a project to capture all the places we work and bring together our team around the world. Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. Each Friday, we’ll choose our favorite picture of the week and share its story here.

10:42 July 8, 2011 – Erin B, Home Office in Ballard

This week’s picture of the week comes from Consultant Erin Brandon. Sometimes working from home has its benefits—like being able to hang out with this guy. Looks like someone is ready for Erin to take a break!

Projectline Named One of Washington’s Best by Puget Sound Business Journal

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News

For the fourth consecutive year, Projectline has been named one of Washington’s Best Workplaces by the Puget Sound Business Journal. The Best Workplaces program was launched in 2007 to identify and recognize best practices in the hiring and retention of great people. Out of a pool of more than 230 nominated companies, the survey responses provided by Projectline employees regarding benefits, leadership, and company culture earned Projectline its place on the list of finalists.

“This is the third Best Workplace recognition we’ve received this year,” says Projectline Human Resources Manager Leisl Hill [previous 2011 recognitions have come from Inc. Magazine and Seattle Met]. “We couldn’t be more amazed or excited.”

“We’ve worked hard to create an environment where employees can flourish,” adds Vice President Anika Lehde. “But what keeps our company healthy and thriving is the employees themselves. We have a ton of awesome, talented people here who maintain the culture and spirit of the company day-to-day.”

Puget Sound Business Journal is the region’s premier source of business information, serving an unparalleled audience of business and community leaders.

When Video Budgets Are as Tight as Your Hipster Nephew’s Skinny Jeans

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Customer Evidence, Marketing Musings

It must be conference season! I’m getting many requests from clients who have an event coming up this summer and would love to showcase their customer stories on the event screen. One common thing standing in their way is that they don’t have a lot of budget. But don’t fret. You can develop a fantastic video even on a tight budget. You just have to be smart about where you focus your funds so that you get the best return on your investment. Here are a few tips:

Leverage existing b-roll.

For many companies, this is probably not their first video. Always check with the public relations department to see if they have b-roll or stock footage they have already captured for a previous project. Having back-up b-roll is pretty common for enterprise companies. If the b-roll is shot well and can be used for your video, it could reduce your video shoot day by a few hours and save close to $500 based on production rates. But be sure to view the footage before you remove b-roll from your shoot schedule! You wouldn’t want to get home after the shoot and realize they shot it in SD and it would look horrible on an event screen.

Pre-interview the customer.

Have you ever shown up to a video shoot and the customer wasn’t prepared for the interview? You can save a lot of time by scheduling a pre-interview with the customer before you fly out to their location. Be sure to let them know the amount of time you need on the shoot day, review the questions you’ll be asking, and block off time with them for b-roll shots (if you need them). If you are up front about your needs and what you plan to capture on the shoot day, you can avoid running around on the shoot looking for people and reviewing questions before they get in the hot seat.

Use freelance/remote crew.

One of the big (and I think extra) costs for videos is flying a very experienced crew across the country or world for a one- or two-day video shoot. Although you probably have your heart set on an amazing videographer in your area, I’m sure there is an equally great one based in one of the nearby metropolitan areas. Ask your video crew to cut costs by leveraging their freelance network. Many companies have connections to crews across the world and can help you get connected. They’ll also get a cut of the project, so don’t worry about them getting taken out of the loop. This could save around $2,500 per person, depending on the location.

What should you not skimp on?

Audio

Nothing is worse than listening to a crackly video at an event. Your audience may completely disengage after 20 seconds, so be sure that your audio is crisp and free of all background noise. Invest in a great boom mike or verify with your production crew that the audio will be crisp for the video. Things to avoid on the set when listening for good audio: fans, air conditioners, people answering calls or typing in the background, a humming refrigerator, etc. You may not hear it very well in person, but a great microphone will quickly prove that you have horrible hearing. Quiet on the set!

Lights

Wouldn’t it be terrible if your audience was watching your prized customer on a very dark event screen in a dark venue? Your audience would be squinting! You don’t have to get fancy with the lights—just make sure that the set is bright, colorful, and the hues and shadows on the camera show the customer in a positive light (no pun intended).

(The example on the right does not use good lighting and by the way, Projectline did not shoot this.)

For more video best practices, download our Customer Video Tips and Tricks.

If you have any links to videos that are great examples of the topics above, please share in the comments! Questions or tips? karinz@projectlineinc.com