January 8th, 2010
by Corey Mahoney

With the last few years’ escalation of conversation about customer engagement, it’s more than a little odd to note that some of the biggest marketing stories in the first week of this new year (and decade!) are actually about very traditional one-way marketing—or even customer dis-engagement. Case in point:

• Last week dating site beautifulpeople.com made a PR splash by culling its ranks of singles who’d gained a little holiday weight. Seems like the exact opposite of customer engagement, right?
• Polaroid named Lady Gaga as its new creative director: a perfect example of celebrity-centric splash-making.
• Today, as CES hit its stride in day two, more and more of its live tweet-stream is mentioning iPhone trouble. With thousands of gadget fans, marketers, and tech bloggers in one place, the overload on AT&T’s network means they can’t engage the way they want to engage—online.
• All the tech chatter is about tablets-to-be. They aren’t in consumers’ hands yet, so for now the chatter is confined to generalized hype and tech bloggers’ speculation.

What does this mean for those of use trying to engage customers in the longer term—those of us who care more about gathering customers’ reactions and responses throughout the product lifecycle than about an isolated PR splash?

Well, it seems like a great reminder that in getting customers’ attention, fun, surprising, and entertaining stunts still matter as much as ever. Creative diversions (like Lady Gaga), surprising moves (or even obnoxious ones, like beautifulpeople.com’s rejection spree), and big events (#CES) can kick-start the conversation. The trick is to make sure the tools are in place to support it, respond to it, and deliver on the promise—which is where the challenges lie for AT&T and tablets.

tags: customer engagement, events, marketing, PR

November 3rd, 2009
by Eric Larson

Fellow Projectliner Anika and I attended the 2009 Summit on Customer Engagement in Quincy, MA on October 19-21. We’ve finally managed to recover and really process all the great presentations on using customer input to drive corporate decisions.

Tim Thorsteinson (President of the Harris Corporation) and Sean Geehan (@seangeehan and Founder of the Geehan Group) started off The Summit by talking about how Harris drives corporate strategy through their Executive Advisory Board. Great presenters from AT&T, National Instruments, Microsoft Interoperability Council, and Intel followed with stories and advice about using advisory boards comprised of influential customers to guide and inform business decisions.

What’s stuck with me longest?

It was exciting to hear from Citrix’s Chris Fleck (@chrisfleck) about how customers’ voices can directly sway new product development. In his presentation, he mentioned that Citrix had intended to build a new Blackberry application. But, suspecting they needed more info, he blogged the question, “Do you want Citrix XenApp to run Windows apps on the iPhone?” When his post got more than 500,000 views, he used the interest to get resources assigned to building an iPhone app. By tuning into customer needs, they were able to prioritize the app that customer wanted most.

So, what’s next?

There seems to be a movement to integrate broader community-based engagement plans, like Citrix’s, with more narrowly focused advisory boards. As companies engage with customer communities, they have the chance to use community input alongside feedback from advisory boards and other councils. By posing questions to both the community and to advisory boards or internal leadership, you can find out whether there’s a single clear direction. Even when there isn’t a straightforward consensus, clear, genuine communication will let your community members and advisory board know you’re listening. Open lines of communication also mean that, if you change your mind based on the reaction from an advisory board or community, you can admit you’re wrong and amend your decision.

The big takeaway:

We came back ready to start working on coordinating advisory boards, communities, and all the other ways of engaging customers. With transparency and responsiveness, they can work together to strengthen your customer relationships—which is always the top priority around here.

tags: customer communities, customer engagement, customer engagement summit, customer reference, events, new media

October 13th, 2009
by Anika Lehde

In preparing for the Summit on Customer Engagement next week, I’ve learned that some of our clients are unable to attend due to budget restrictions or lack of executive sponsorship. It seems that some companies are still spending the majority of their critical marketing dollars on traditional marketing, but making only tiny toe-dip expenditures into Customer Engagement (reference programs, customer advisory boards, online customer communities, etc.). It’s a little heartbreaking to hear innovative marketers share that their companies aren’t willing to spend training budget on these types of knowledge sharing events or (even worse) that tight budgets are causing them to cut customer engagement marketing programs all together. Eeek.

The good news is that some companies are willing to make the investment into these critical and effective programs—and many of them will be at the Summit on Customer Engagement (like Cisco, ECM, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Open Text, and Research in Motion).

The way I see it, these organizations have looked into the eyes of our tough economic times and continued to march forward, unwavering in their belief that customer programs are vital to their success. Hopefully they, like me, are ready to absorb ideas from talks like “How Communities Foster Innovation at Citrix” and “Understanding the Value of Customer Engagement” and take those ideas and innovations home to their own programs. (If you like to follow events on Twitter, you can catch some snippets of insight following #SCE2009.)

Question for you: if you’re in the trenches working on marketing programs, are you having more success getting budget for customer engagement programs, or for traditional marketing activities such as direct mail and events? Is your company investing in your expertise and knowledge in the customer engagement area?

tags: customer engagement, events

September 30th, 2009
by Projectline

Learn more about the Customer Engagement Summit coming up in October and how you can get a discount. Eric Larson talks about mixing pleasure with business, where Quincy, MA is (hint: not quite Boston, MA), and his mustache envy.

tags: CRKSN, customer engagement, customer engagement summit, customer reference forum, events

November 3rd, 2008
by Anika Lehde

Projectline may be known for forward thinking and modernism when it comes to marketing ideas, but deep in our hearts, we are also a little nostalgic for the best of the past. This holds true even when it comes to networking – so last week we let our Facebook Group take a little nap and invited a few hundred people to visit us in person at our Seattle office. In person? I know, say it isn’t so. I met dozens of new friends, reconnected with some familiar faces, and thoroughly enjoyed the “live” experience, reminding me that there is room for both virtual and actual social spaces (speaking of, if you haven’t see it already, you should check out the Meet Up promo video). Have a look at some of the photos from our party here, and, if you attended, leave a comment on our blog and let us know what you thought. If you are looking for info on the organic and biodynamic wines from the wine tasting, you can contact Sara Maxwell Professional Wine Services at saramaxwellwine@yahoo.com.

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tags: events, Facebook, marketing, networking, seattle, social media, social networking

July 18th, 2008
by Lena Moses

How do you decide where you want to work?  Job description?  Location?  I say NO, you decide from the people you would be working with.  On that note, I want to show you the character and heart behind the cool people I get to work with on a daily basis.  Hope you enjoy…

tags: blogging, cause-related marketing, community partnership, events, responsible

April 6th, 2008
by Anika Lehde

Just a quick note for all marketers: Ad Club Seattle is hilarious. Check out their two promotional videos below.

For Puget Sound-based marketers: At 4 PM Thursday April 10, 2008, Seattle Ad Club plus the Puget Sound Chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) are having a “spring mixer” at Victory Studios (2247 15th Ave W., Seattle). (more…)

tags: advertising, community partnership, events, humor