“I love your videos” said a client recently, delivered with a slightly wry Glaswegian lilt. Was she being genuine or just taking the piss? A low-level paranoia has typified mine and Mark’s feelings about the monthly ‘2-minute to camera’ videos that we put out each month as part of Third Thursday.

This week saw the public lambasting of SapientNitro’s own take on just how cool it was to work there, with their “Idea Engineers” video. It lasted a short time on Facebook before the piss-taking became too much and they pulled it down. Publicis’ “I’ve got a feeling”, PHD’s “We are the future” and Agency.com’s “Going to work for Subway” have all come in for a similar amount of ridicule over the years, so there is always that fear that we could be next. 

As you would expect from a busy agency, as the third week of the month approaches there is a bit of a last minute scramble to get articles written, a video recorded and an email produced. Sometimes Third Thursday has even become Third Friday.

The videos themselves are hastily planned, normally along the lines of ‘can we mention x yet?’ – ‘great, you say that bit then’. We don’t rehearse and we rarely start again if one of us messes up: resulting in an output that makes us wonder whether we just end up making idiots of ourselves.

Which all begs the question: is it worth it? 

We thought we would practice what we preach and measure what it costs and whether it can be justified by ROI, and whether there are other intangible benefits to committing to a monthly newsletter. 

So, what does it actually cost us each month to make? Well here is a rough attempt.

We write, normally, four articles: two serious-ish opinion-piece ones, one comedy one and one educational one. All but the ‘grind my gears’ ones take a few hours research, probably another hour to write and they all need to be proof-read by someone else and images found to go along with them. I’d say about 12 hours in writing time. Taking a point somewhere between raw costs of hiring and housing people and opportunity costs (the money we could have made had we been charging people out to clients rather than doing stuff for free), I’d estimate somewhere in the region of £800 to write the newsletter.

The video takes a few minutes to record, but about an hour to encode and edit. The design is probably another couple of hours. Building the email, testing it, messing about with various elements and then broadcasting is another 2-3 hours.

So all in all, we’re probably talking about somewhere in the region of £1,200 per newsletter. And we’ve been doing the full-on video-enriched Third Thursday thing since May 2010. So this month is number 19. Which makes it just slightly shy of £23,000 we’ve invested so far.

The newsletter goes out to just under 1,000 people each month, and we have an average open rate of approx 20%.  So, about 3,800 ‘views’ of our newsletter email, plus the people who actually read the blog posts – about 6,000 (assuming most of them are newsletter recipients too).  

So, all in all it costs us about £4 each time someone reads anything to do with Third Thursday. Would we be better off just buying everyone a sandwich?

ROI measurements
Ultimately, the ROI has to be financial. Unless it’s a vanity thing, at some point it has to deliver value. However, how this is measured isn’t always as immediately straightforward. Here are some of things we consider:

New work
Do we send out a newsletter and then see a load of orders the following week? No (is the simple answer).

But we do definitely win work off the back of Third Thursday, but bear in mind that most of the recipients are existing or former clients. If nothing else, it acts as a prompt to remind people we are here. They may have called us anyway, it’s hard to say, but often it acts as a catalyst.

Punching above our weight?
We’ve always loved the idea of out-teaching our competition. We know we have sector experts here because we only hire people who are passionate about the medium. And we know that bigger agencies are often forced to hire job-a-day software developers who just don’t care. So why not share the love? We actively encourage everyone in the agency to write. We think that their wisdom is of interest to our clients and ultimately shows us being thought-leaders (for want of a less hackneyed phrase).

New ideas
Much of what we talk about involves emerging technologies or practices. We think, if nothing else, we can give our clients a competitive advantage by keeping them abreast of what they need to know. And, hey, if they pick up the phone and ask us if we can help them, too, then that’s all the better.

Our company
We tend to be a bit too fluid to have anything that resembles a mission statement (not that anyone reads them seriously anyway), so writing about what we think seems to be a better way of reflecting who we are. It’s kind of low-key PR.

Personality
We all know people buy people. One value we’ve always espoused is honesty and transparency. It might put a few people off: but that’s a good thing. We only want to hire people who want to share those values and we only want to work with clients who do, too. So, in some ways, we get what we ask for by talking about it.

Hymn sheet harmonisation
Because it’s such a shared, collegiate kind of thing – and because we know we have to do it every month, it means that it’s not left to one person to think about. We don’t have a marketing department responsible for broadcasting the company line on “social media” or “Google” that everyone within the company promptly ignores. It genuinely means that we all have more of a stake in thinking about what we think about things.

Word of mouth
We’ve definitely seen our referrals increase over the last year or so, and many people when they write to us make reference to one or two of the pieces they’ve read on our blog. If we didn’t have this self-imposed monthly deadline, we’d certainly write less and there would be less for prospective clients to base an opinion on.

How was  it for you?
The consensus internally is Third Thursday is worth it. It can always be improved and should always be evolving. But we’ve found a voice that suits us and we think that it can only be a good thing.

....some Christmas campaign ideas.

Well it’s that time of year again and there is no escaping the fact that Christmas is just around the corner. The Christmas ads have started and there is a box of quality street for sale on every street corner. Boots have launched their infamous 3 for 2 offer and I’m sure we’ve got months of ‘here come the girls... girls’ to look forward to again. I had a near death experience with a piece of discarded tinsel in Homebase on Sunday whilst shopping for paint... yes it’s definitely that time of year again.

When it comes to Christmas shopping there are many types of Christmas shopper. Maybe you are an ‘Aunt Liz shopper’ who did all of her Christmas shopping in the January sales last year, or are you the ‘Facebook status Christmas shopper’ who has already bought 3 presents, 5 cards and one roll of wrapping paper and counting! If you're like me ‘Michael one day Christmas shopper’ you give one Saturday in mid December to bulk buy gift vouchers and wrap them up that night during X Factor. The advantage with a gift voucher is that it also doubles up as Christmas card so a bit of paper and a bow and you are done. Or are you a ‘Mark last minute Christmas shopper’ who saves it all up for the Christmas eve afternoon rush?

Anyway I digress and so moving on to the reason for this article – Christmas campaigns.

This year I have been given the enviable title of Codegent Christmas campaign project manager. If it was a case of buying some cards or sending a bulk email then it wouldn’t be worth mentioning. But in true Codegent fashion the answers to my initial briefing questions were as follows:

Will it integrate with social media – yes

Will it have user generated content – of course

Will it have an api feed – I’m sure it will.

So it looks like November is now classified as busy!

Before we get started on this year’s campaign I thought I would do a bit of digging around to see what I could find on Christmas campaigns and share some of my findings with you.

1 - Elf yourself
The Elf yourself campaign has been going for  a few years now and is always extremely popular. It is currently closed until the next ‘holiday season’ however click here for a nice video of what you can do with it.

2 - Origami Christmas tree
A nice Blue Peter style make your own tree with animation and step-by-step instructions.

3 - Christmas feed
This site searches for keywords from various online platforms and displays the results as a feed.

4 - Charity message
This is a nice little twist on the charity Christmas message and not a goat in sight!

5 - Christmas games
A couple of Christmas themed games which could be built around any product or service. Give the Snow Line one a go when you have a few minutes to spare.
Thin Ice
Snow Line 

6 - Microwave the Christmas carol
This was one of my favourites from last year as it feels innovative and really stands out.

7 - Augmented reality Christmas tree
And finally probably the best one from last year! Our augmented reality Christmas campaign.

8 – Apps anyone?
I did have a look in the iphone app store but have to say that I was a bit underwhelmed – however it is still early days and I have no doubt there will be some great Christmas themed ones appearing soon. I did come across one. The iTree snowglobe updates over the weeks to show the different stages of Christmas. You can also shake your phone and see the snow flakes fall.

Hopefully the list above gives you some ideas about what you could potentially do for your campaign. Christmas is a great opportunity to get creative, however, before you start planning how many reindeer will be in the chorus line, don’t forget that like with any campaign it’s important to decide what you are looking to achieve and set your objectives first. Is it to generate sales over Christmas? Is it to raise awareness of your product / service? Is it to give your stakeholders or supporters an update on what you have achieved in the last quarter? Also don’t forget that funny is good but your campaign must reflect your brand and positioning as well as the product or services you provide.

Finally Christmas is a busy and competitive market - make sure that your campaign stands out from the crowd, for the right reasons!

This is your official ‘65 days until Christmas’ warning, look out for our Christmas campaign in December and get in touch if you would like some help delivering it!

It seemed like 2009 was a Social Media land grab of contacts and connections. Hopefully you are all building your brand presence and conversing regularly and honestly with your new found audiences. (If not please give us a shout!)

I think that one danger with embarking on an extensive Social Media strategy is that, due to its immediate and noisy nature, it can accidentally replace a solid Customer Relationship Management (CRM) plan. In my opinion 2010 will be a time to pull our heads above water, take a deep breath and think how we are going to work these new channels and manage these relationships in an appropriate manner.

Firstly, what is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management references the symbiotic relationship between an IT System and a Contact Strategy. It is as much about the technology and integration methods you adopt as it is about actual message content and frequency of interaction. Sounds complicated? Not necessarily.

Imagine a small company of four people each using Outlook. Invariably that creates four different address lists all living separate lives under the control of individuals. There will be duplication, out of date information and a lot of value living in the heads of single employees rather than in a company-wide system. What if, on the company file server, there was a simple Excel spreadsheet that each person kept up to date? So when your good client Rachel mentions in a meeting that she is changing companies and gives you her new details you give your own colleagues back in the office (and future colleagues) a fighting chance of keeping in touch.

Sounds better already but what about the scenario where Rachel is already talking about a new opportunity with you and another person in the company sends her a cold sales email asking if there was anything in the pipeline? You're going to look stupid and disorganised. Or what if Rachel says give her three months to settle in then get in touch. How is that hot lead going to be recorded and actioned at the appropriate time?

At this point it's clear that Excel is going get a little stretched and someone internally needs to decide the appropriate times to contact your customers and for the message and delivery to be consistent so you don't look foolish. Nothing annoys me more than three recruitment consultants from the same firm phoning me on the same day. It happens quite a lot.

Let's bring this back to the web because the game just got tougher. Your contacts don't just live in Outlook, your mobile SIM and your business card box anymore. They are also your twitter followers, facebook fans, LinkedIn connections, newsletter subscribers, RSS readers and the list goes on. How are we going to manage all of this then?

It's clear we need to consolidate our knowledge, organise what we can into one repository and get our story straight!

'Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die'

So many briefs we get simply list out the contact functionality and platform presence that the client believes they need without much thought as to why they should be there and what they want to do when they court their potentially brand new audience.

With so many platforms to work on you must decide on where your presence is relevant and then communicate to the user your plan on how you will use them. One real life example of where we did this was with a high-end events client of ours. We decided on the most appropriate channels and then on the best use of each. We let our audience decide which suited them the best.

• Email Subscribers - I want to be marketed to about upcoming events and offers directly and in detail but in a consistent, timely manner via email.
• Facebook fans - I want to hear about new events, share and tag photos from when I go to them as well as RSVPing my attendance. NB We gave event staff a basic digital camera and told them to snap away to encourage the viral effect of tagging photos on this powerful platform.
• Flickr - I want to see the professional photography you have taken at each event and possibly use it in our press articles or for PR.
• Subscribe to the blog feed via RSS or Email - I am interested in your news and what you have to say as a company. I prefer my information more passively and I am looking for an industry focus.
• Twitter - I want to hear about your events and insights but not necessarily enough to be emailed direct. I might go to an event in the future if one catches my eye or take you up on a last minute special offer. Conversely I might be a very keen member eager to hear all the news immediately.

With these profiles in mind we developed a content and contact strategy based on frequency, date/time and weighting of message. Look at all these channels (and more!), experience them for yourself if they are not familiar and ask whether your audience is really here. If so, what would they want and expect from you?

The basics of CRM - what should you do?

• Get organised early in your campaign or company life-cycle and save yourself the pain and confusion of consolidation later.
• Try and store as much of your data centrally by integrating your systems - especially your website and your CRM or office management software. Software like Salesforce and all credible CRM packages have an API. Duplication of information is the ultimate enemy!
• Don't over complicate things. There is no need to become Big Brother and collect every morsel of information going. Concentrate on what matters to your business and make sure those priorities are communicated internally as well.
• Train your staff to use and believe in your IT systems. CRM solutions don't work if people do not use them consistently and regularly.
• Track now, analyse tomorrow - you may not have the budgets or resource to fully analyse your contacts and clients behaviour right now but one day you will. You can't work with what doesn't exist so insist on logging crucial data early. Just think of the critical touch points and store it in a database for future reporting when you have built up enough data to make the resulting information worthwhile.
• You can look smart with personalisation and segmentation but you can also look really stupid! When you begin to understand your audience better you can increase your effectiveness hugely by tailoring your message more to their needs. But assume too much and get it wrong and you are basically communicating the message, "We don't understand you."
• No dead ends - Great news, they converted and clicked on a link, signed up to your list or purchased something. Big tick in a big box. But what next? Never leave a contact with nowhere to go next. They will decide when the story ends.
• Be respectful - Let the contact opt out at any time or change their preferred method of communication and make sure all systems are updated to reflect that. For everything you can get right with CRM I would honestly say it's better to do nothing at all than rush in and get it wrong. Simply think to yourself, "If I were you, would I want to hear this?"
• Don't over complicate your strategy - I have seen clients get very excited about the possibilities of effective CRM. However they often make the mistake of taking on too much. My mantra is to keep it simple, understand it fully, give it time and then incrementally build. This is a continual conversation with your contacts so there is no need to throw everything at them all at once. The chances are they will be as overwhelmed by it as you are.

I hope this has been useful. I have kept this blog pretty simple and of course there is much more to CRM than what I have written here. However, before committing wholly to digital marketing I was a CRM Integration Consultant working in the mobile sector for clients such as Vodafone and Three. Even when we worked on massive systems and implementations the principles I have outlined above were still at the forefront of our thinking.

I often get asked 'what makes a website design great?' So I thought I would put together what I feel are the 3 most important steps.

Step 1: Know your audience
Step 2: Know your audience
Step 3: Know your audience

This may sounds rather repetitive; however every design decision must come back to what your audience wants. So how do you get to know your audience?

1. Define Your Audience
   I have lost count of the number of times a client has returned a creative brief to us with the audience section filled out with “equal split male & female, Aged 8 – 80”. That’s basically everyone except the family pet.
   
   Obviously, from a communications point of view this isn’t very useful. You talk to an 8 year old girl, very differently to her 80 year old grandfather. What we do here at codegent is try to break down this age demographic by looking at the reasons they will come to the site; the 8 year old needs help with her homework and her grandfather is part of a lobby group looking for information.
2. Audience Interviews
   This step is too often forgotten in the design process; however nothing clears out the assumptions of a designer faster than a 5 minute chat with their audience. Ideally this is best done with a large sample size of random members of the target market but, as we all know, budget constraints don’t always make this possible. When this isn’t possible, we always make sure that we chat to at least a couple of people that fall into our target audience. It is an essential sanity check for all of our thinking.
3. Research
   Once we know who will be coming to the site, we will go out and find out everything we can about them. How much time they spend at a computer, which sites they visit every day, what sort of things are they comfortable doing online. All of these questions (and many more) help us build up a profile of the target audience. It is from this profile that we are able to establish the most effective visual language with which to communicate with them.

Once we have gathered all of this information and come to our conclusions, we present this back to our clients, as this will be the reference point we are going to justify all of our decisions back to when we are working on the art direction & information structure of the work being produced. All of this “design work” has to be done before we can power up photoshop and get stuck into the visual phase.

Last night we had the pleasure of taking out some of our wonderful clients from Youth Music for a night of good old fashioned campness.

We have had the pleasure of working with Youth Music for over 4 years now working on some really exciting projects with them, most recently Music Is Power and Underage Festival a competition giving teenagers the opportunity to perform at the Underage Festival this summer.

So when we heard that Priscilla - Queen of the Desert, the cult Australian film had just opened at the Cambridge Theatre in London - it was too much of a good opportunity to miss. There is a small taster of the experience in the video above :)

It turned out that we were all slightly under dressed for the night!? But a great time was had by all and we ended the night with cocktails - just because it seemed the right thing to do!

A great night, perfectly summed up by Dulcie from Youth Music

"I've vowed to make sure I have more sequins and leopard skin in my life now"

I think we could all live by that motto - Mark?

We were thrilled to be invited to the launch of Searcys 1847's new St Pancras Grand restaurant, in conjunction with GQ.

You know the usual thing with these types of affairs - you get a glass of champagne that is replenished before you get a third of the way down and then to soak it up you get 3 tiny hors d'oeuvre, so after a couple of hours you can't see straight.

The launch party at St Pancras Grand was different: the food, whilst still bite-sized, was absolutely amazing and there was plenty of it. It was quintessentially British food: bubble and squeak, fish and chips, roast beef and yorkshire pudding, as well as classic favourites such as oysters, smoked salmon.

Duncan Ackery, CEO of Searcys 1847, has selected an expert team, passionate about innovation, quality and service. Critically acclaimed, Billy Reid, is the executive chef. Having previously worked his magic at L’Escargot, the Vineyard at Stockcross and The Belvedere, Billy comes with excellent credentials and forms a formidable duo with Tom Aslanian managing the front of house.

How do we know all this? Well, we've had a long relationship with Searcys and have recently redeveloped a suite of sites for them including St Pancras Grand and 40|30, the restaurant at the top of the Gherkin (see McD's earlier blog).

www.searcys.co.uk

One of our clients, Cat Le-Huy, otherwise known as "Diz" has been arrested in Dubai for allegedly smuggling drugs. In reality, he claims that all he had were legal sleeping tablets that can be bought over the counter.

We've known Cat, who is head of technology at Endemol, since we started working with them on a variety of projects about 2 years. Cat is a great guy, very very smart and respected by the techie dudes within Codegent. It's a total outrage that he is still being incarcerated whilst it appears there is no evidence of any laws that have been broken.

This seems really surreal until you delve a bit deeper and see the ridiculous reasons they have given for holding foreigners in prison in Dubai. One guy was sentenced to 4 years because they found poppy seeds on his clothing which had fallen off a bread roll he had eaten at Heathrow Airport. Another had 0.003g of cannabis stuck on his shoe - according to an item on the BBC website.

Codegent regularly flies people to Asia, and Dubai is a common stop-over point. We can't risk any of our guys getting caught up in this nonsense so any flights that land in that country are now strictly off limits for us.

To find out more, visit the Free Diz website

To add your support, join the Free Diz Facebook Group

Codegent has launched a series of seven websites under a group umbrella for the rebrand of ICM, Europe’s leading privately owned, full service talent agency, to Independent.

The largest site of the group was for the modelling wing - formerly ICM Models. We decided to move away from flat html and design a richer flash experience that allows the user to fluidly browse through the model catalogue and pick the relevant, or most attractive, for their personalised casting room. The casting couch idea has been phase 2'ed unfortunately!

The re-brand was launched from the web so we hope their new, sexy online presence gets them off to a great start :)

Independent Models »
Independent Group »

In this age of spiritual emptiness have we lost the resources to be inspired by religion? And what can centuries old manuscripts teach us about the world today?

Codegent was hired by the British Library to help support the launch of their most ambitious exhibition of the year. "Sacred: discover what we share", which brings together the biggest collection of Christian, Jewish and Muslim holy books. The exhibition contrasts and compares beliefs and teachings to show that faiths share much in common.

In this major exhibition, the rarest and most exquisite sacred books and manuscripts presented and explored, side by side, for the first time.

A major event required a major bit of thinking from a smart digital agency. We're guessing that's why they called on Codegent.

Check our portfolio for a bit more information on how we worked with the British Library to support the exhibition online.

British Library 'Sacred' exhibition »

Codegent gets Paxmanned!

We have been working on the online political TV station 18 Doughty Street for the last couple of months and launched phase 1 last week. It seems to have taken off rather quickly and is already getting quite a bit of attention from other parts of the media.

The new campaigns section of the website will be discussed on tonight's edition of Newsnight on BBC2.

"The creators say that the mainstream political process is ignoring huge swathes of public opinion - a niche they propose to fill by running attack adverts (campaigns) sponsoring arguments on both sides of the political debate (or so they say).

Is this the start of a new Americanisation of British politics or have the authors misjudged our political culture?"

Well I guess we will find out the result tonight!