rachcreative

What's so [Bleeping] Hard About Social ROI? #SMROI #SXSMROI

DARBY director of everything at make a wish (branding and digital)
STRAUSS started a blog before they were awesome
SWAYNE -- moderator
RIDINGS founded sodera
DAITCH SM manager for Ford

{Questions in all caps, my commentary in these here brackets}

IS IT ALL JUST ABOUT MONEY IN/MONEY OUT?
RIDINGS: It's about cash at the end of the day but how do you arrive at cash. There are a lot of intangibles out there but how long do you look across the horizon to derive value? ROI is tied to a specific point in time so it's a misnomer.

DARBY: what we do all year determines how we do in december -- biggest donations. People are waiting longer and longer to buy cars.

DAITCH: The quality of our vehicles, and the general industry, means the perfect storm. We can be as efficient as possible -- does ROI maybe mean return on efficiency. Find the purchasers based on behavioral statements and amplify that.

STRAUSS: ROI really is -- monetary or relationship. It's like asking if there's ROI on your telephone or your pencil. If engagement is your goal, or community is your goal, then you've got an ROI in that place. It depends on your goal.

DAITCH: What's the ROI of NOT doing it? What happens if I remove the customer service people answering questions? It represents a dollar amount.

IS THERE AN ANSWER HERE THAT WILL MAKE A CFO HAPPY?
RIDINGS: Yes, it's less to do with your approach than how you communicate the business value. It's about efficiencies. A decent value prop makes them happy enough. 'I can produce this result by this time with this cost'

DARBY: social can have value that might not have an easy-to-quanitify solution. Whatever we posted about at MAW, people responded with their own experiences. They went from producing stories to having people tell their own. Went to a testimonial model. I've gotten 1000 stories through the website and it would have taken this much time and money to harvest that. {plus, the idea to have those personal stories came from social}

SWAYNE: Assign a value.

DARBY: We're not assigning values but we know that they benefit us. It's not worth the effort of all the tracking from point to point to point.

STRAUSS: The CFO question -- For CS or sales or interactions and engagement, if social is done well, it builds trust. Or true trust when it's done really well. Speed and Reach are two ways to measure trust. Speed: when you work with a customer who trusts you, it goes a long way to make things easier when you have to solve a problem. The vendors you trust versus the vendors that you don't -- the ones you trust make you more money and it's easier to work with them because you know they'll take care of it. Look at trust relationships and how it brings about true advantage to the bottom line and how they grow reach. 

RIDINGS: overcomplicated. Social is doing a lot of functions. Sales doesn't ask what the ROI is of taking that guy golfing last week, they ask if you made your numbers. ***
All of those functions, market research, exist within companies today without a problem from the CFO. He already knows. {excel spreadsheet for ROI is bullshit}

DAITCH: Affinity is the moment you love your brand the most. Ford HQ is the glass house. He would love to put these photos of the customers getting their keys on the building. DARBY: what happens if FB or twitter disappears. Your engagement needs to spread further than that. DAITCH: we have badges based on affinity. show your affinity. what you like. {microsocialsegmentation}
STRAUSS: you don't fall in love incrementally. DARBY: So you said I do on the first date?
STRAUSS: We got married in 42 days.

DAITCH: What's the ROI on that?
STRAUSS: Sometimes the offer that's made is larger than the trust that's built. Big brands say 'trust me trust me trust me' and then when you say something bad, they go into fear mode and they don't trust back. Needs to be two-way trust.
It's easy for everybody to detract from a brand. Everybody does it. You have to work twice as hard to convert them back, and then the affinity is stronger.

TRUST, LOVE -- CAN I GET THAT IN A DATABASE?
RIDINGS: What is advertising? It's the same thing! {surely he means broadcast}
The best tool is to ask people at the point of sale and ask them why they bought. It's not rocket science.
You've got a lot of people coming up in this space that don't have that experience. A marketing person is asked to justify their activities but really it goes across a broad spectrum of functions. We get too granular and forget about the big picture.

SQUISHY METRICS
DARBY: You can measure whether higher engagement on your website results in higher return.

STRAUSS: ROI is not measured by the tools, it's measured by whether your business is growing.

DAITCH: Until a tool can determine your business goals, then it's not going to work.

RIDINGS: You don't measure activity, you measure results. STRAUSS: $200,000 for X number of likes?

RIDINGS: if anyone thinks you don't experiment in the space and see what happens they're out of their mind. Use some business sense. You can look for generic tools. 5-7% should be spent on measurement every year.

ARE WE GOING TO GET TO THE POINT WHERE WE'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION? THERE WILL BE STANDARD WAYS TO GET IT DONE?

DAITCH: absolutely not. the moment we standardize, we fail. The way we engage, that's the most valuable thing.

STRAUSS: Didn't they say the same thing about trade shows? and internet advertising? DAITCH: If you're not always in beta, if you're not always innovating...Innovation is miles ahead of measurement.

Crowdsourcing: Next Gen Consumers in the Driver's Seat #SXchevy

THE OPTIMSM QUESTION. IS THERE CAUSE FOR OPTIMISM.
It's a fantastic time to be at the NY times. It's an essential part of society.
GET SPECIFIC: WHAT'S THERE TO BE OPTIMISTIC ABOUT?
Reporting. quality news, going in depth. eye witness, having feet on the ground. We've never cut our newsfinding muscle."
IN 15 THE YEARS YOU'VE BEEN THERE, WHAT ARE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT CHANGES?
It's tremendously different: came in 97. the website was taking off. Number 2 is changing from a local paper to a fully national newspaper. The transition we're in is going global. Expanding our footprint. India Inc blog project in India. Global news report."

THE METERED MODEL: IS IT WORKING? CONTENT/ECONOMIC STANDPOINT
It is working from both perspectives. our quality stands apart. people are loyal and addicted to the content. it's okay to ask them to pay for it. timing is everything. We're pleased with the number of people who have signed up for digital subscriptions. 390,000. It's a nice revenue stream. two revenue streams: adv and circulations, in the past. It's a good way to secure our future. Feels like we have the best of both worlds.

WAS THE FREE CONTENT DECREASING CIRCULATION?
No, it rose for Sunday especially, when the content was free. People were deep readers of the digital report but it's nice to sit with a paper on a Sunday. Digital hasn't had an impact on the editorial decisions made. Most popular articles are often the long, more challenging articles. Digging deep. That's my passion.

THE WEB IS NOT GOOD FOR LONG FORM, IT'S OFTEN SAID.
That's false. As we progress in our digital sophistication, the way that we can tell those stories is more powerful. Times is good at interactive storytelling. Important to keeping people interested. It's an organic part of digesting our stories. Readers come with the expectation that a deep profile of someone. Year's worth of reporting on young adults who are autistic. As you read the story you could literally meet the main character. Essential to understanding each character. Beyond the fantastic words, as you went. You didn't have to go somewhere else to see video.

HOW MUCH OF THAT IS TOP-DOWN VERSUS BOTTOM-UP? DO THE REPORTERS OWN IT?
It's much more the reporters owning it. Quicklinks is a tech that came up and we wouldn't have known about it. Every story doesn't have to have every bell and whistle though. We were definitely "old media." We are past that. Working to integrate the newsroom. No longer the web newsroom and the newspaper newsroom.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN UNDER KELLERMAN?
Got to know Andrew in digital, listening up and learning from people on the cutting edge of our digital news operation. How to deepen our stories through dashboards (live political results).

THOSE 6 MONTHS, WERE THEY SCARY OR HOPEFUL?
They were both. It was scary how much I had to learn. Even in my old trade, investigative journalism, these new technologies deepen the story. That was the hopeful part. Left me incredibly optimistic.

MOBILE/TABLETS?
I think we're doing really well. I'm surprised -- become addicted to ipad, iphone years before that. I started reading the news report on my ipad. Sometimes it's not until I get on the subway that I pick up the print paper. Digital only? We won't get there anytime soon. What I'm optimistic is that the quality of our journalism will be upheld, regardless of medium. After 2 years, many are addicted to the digital version. I would be a fool to become an economic soothsayer, but the thirst for stories that are elegantly edited and told in this way is there.
TEXAS PAPERS AREN'T DOING SO WELL, FW STAR TELEGRAM IS CLOSING, ETC. WHAT ARE THEY NOT DOING THAT THEY SHOULD BE DOING?
They don't have our audience or our newsroom. It's about quality journalism and keeping the process alive wherever it's published. Our news report is like none anywhere else. It's hard to replicate that.

YOU COMPETE WITH THE POST AND THE JOURNAL. Journal is a quicker delivery system now. Scoop on business. Piece on Syria or Iran that I think is smart. Murdoch's point of view: Not that different, the people who work there are still the same, straight as they come. Faith in them. Political editing/filtering of some stories is still there. Still a competitor.

WHEN YOU GET A BLUE BAG ON YOUR LAWN IN TEXAS (MAYBE NOT AUSTIN) YOU NEED TO PICK IT UP BEFORE SOMEONE THINKS YOU'RE A SOCIALIST. They use the blue bags for something for their dog in NY.

PEOPLE SAY THE NY TIMES IS A LIBERAL RAG.
It's a perception that people have. Abe Rosenthal had a conservative outlook. He wanted that he kept the paper straight on his tombstone. Journal is perceived as conservative because it has conservative editorial. That creates the perception rather than a bias. Opinion is completely sepearate.
I'm the kind of editor -- I'm tremendously proud of the work we create and I"m going to be in the foxhole with them. It's in my DNA.
I have to be thoughtful about what the public editor is writing. It was created to have more public accountability. HOW DID YOU GET ALONG WITH KELLER?
We were a really good team. He was managing editor when I joined. We worked on the Lewinsky thing then. We didn't know each other intimately. I was in Washington. Bill Keller wasn't addicted to politics. He likes foreign news and other subjects. He reads poetry on the subway. I read my horoscope in the NY Post on the subway.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE KELLER ERA THAT WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED IN THE ABRAMSON ERA?
A story might have come out differently. Relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist. I should have fought to shape it a bit differently. DECISION ABOUT WHEN TO RUN THE WIRETAPPING PIECES?
Weigh on the side of the public needs to know about this. SINCE YOU BECAME EDITOR AND SAM SIFTON NATIONAL EDITOR, PUSH FOR SOCIAL MEDIA. YOU ARE ALL OVER TWITTER. LISTS OF REPORTERS TO FOLLOW. WHAT DOES THAT DO FOR YOU INSTITUTIONALLY?
Drives traffic to our site, deepens reader engagement with our story which is fine. Twitter being used in news gathering itself is where it is really valueable. Politially, particularly. All the political editors have Tweetdeck up all the time. If a candidate is going to post a statement, it's on social media first. Do you break news on it, before you have anything to link to? I don't have a theoretical answer to that. Some people want to say never, but we're still in somewhat early days. WE TWEETED "DOJ DECLINES VOTER ID, STORY TO COME" EVEN IF THERE'S NOTHING TO LINK TO?
No edict.

INDIVIDUAL REPORTER BRANDS, THEY BENEFIT THE INSTITUTIONAL BRAND. NOT FROWNED UPON. Not everyone has to be out there. We benefit. David Carr's subbrand benefits. ARE YOU A WOMAN EDITOR OR AN EDITOR WHO HAPPENS TO BE A WOMAN?
You don't know what my answer so you're already apologizing. The interviewers say I know I'm not supposed to ask you. I'm so proud to be the first woman to be executive editor. I'm happy to talk about it. The most meaningful thing is what happened here. People, women or guys come up and say it's so great that you have this job. They're excited that they've lived to see a woman in this job. I'm glad about that. Who I am informs my work. It's like a key part of who I am. My collegues in political were very quick to jump on all the womens issues that came up. We were slow on Komen, so I'm not sure of the causal relationship.
BARNARDGATE WOULDN'T LET OBAMA TAKE YOUR SPOT HERE.
Sure. I got a lot of pity invitations to speak at commencements after that. Going to speak at a small HS in NY. All girls school. Sit out the rest. Come back next year. The pres of Barnard called me and I think she was worried that I'd throw a diva fit. I've sat through graduations. There's something fundamentally exciting and great about having the president be a commencement speaker. I was excited for Barnard, the students, and their families. My inner voice when "PHEW!"

QA- LINK SHARING WAS REMOVED FROM ABOVE THE FOLD? WHY?
We are still very active with facebook but we are playing with a couple of things. Nobody likes change of any kind. {especially in newspapers}
Social is one of the areas we're changing a lot. I give talks in NY and there's usually an older reader who will walk forcefully in my direction and I know they're going to complain that they don't print the TV book anymore. I understand why. I like the TV book too. I get that it's a true bummer; nobody likes to change a thing. IMAGINE IF YOU GOT RID OF THE PUZZLE!
We would NEVER do that. My family had two subscriptions growing up and they needed to both do it. Mom didn't like to tear out so we had to have two.

{lots of chatter about paid models. "News wants to be free," -- Abramson said in a tone of defeat.}

Social media extends the reach of finding sources. It doesn't replace other methods of interviewing. DO YOU ACCEPT THAT THE TIMES STORIES AND SOURCES ARE NOT DIVERSE ENOUGH NOW?
That's a criticism but you will never reach that. The Times brand promise is its authority and making sure that sources are themselves. We like real identity, yes. The idea that for every story you have to have a 50/50 balance is not right. Report as thorough as possible. If reporting evidence weighs on one side you go with that. You don't create a false balance.
WHY DON'T YOU LINK OUT? There is no policy. Curation is a form of editing. Similar. Linking out to other quality sources of news is something you're going to see more of.

These guys are all tech and creative. SODA is a network of agencies working on best practices.
This panel's premise sounds good and makes you feel good, but it's something they struggle with. Balancing good work with a good company that does good too. What is our responsibility to ourselves, our clients, the world around us. On the screen

Q: how do you look at the concept of good and how you work at it in your own agencies?
Edgerton: create a good environment that tracks and retains talent. In the service industry that is how you service clients. Allow them opportunities to work on the really cool shit. Sme f the bravest customers who will allow you to experiment. Not necessarily the deepest pockets. Working on something with a social component leaves a better taste in the mouth of the employee.

Panczak : specialize in ux etc. support our employees' when they participate in charity work like Movember, walks, etc. working for people who are less fortunate. We take on these projects and are able to treat them like real clients. Beausoleil: launching a new agency with social good integrated into it's fabric is timely. Workingwithlarge and small agencies, it's about giving a gift that keeps giving. Integrating edu and cocreation. Idea through execution for our clients. Demonstrating leadership by example in terms of strategic volunteering. Creative and proffessional.
O’dell: ad agency. Stumbled into social good arena by accident. Goal is to make money. Had a smaller space and when they outgrew it they kept it for raising money and event space. Charitable, nonprofit, mission is to help these companies outside of that.

Q: in the past, it was doing pro bono work. What other initiatives are you doing and why?
Panczak at reactive: leaders see the benefits. Personal satisfaction. Competency in this space is also a reason, and the employees get satisfaction too. Challenges in non profit is the misconception that the companies don't have any money to spend. We have to make them feel confident that they will get roi with us. Ensuring they see real results. Surveyed his employees and most people said they value it highly. (who wouldnt say that?)
From reviews ”Developing an interesting idea with less money makes for good work”
O’dell: unconventional cool idea with that space. How does that fit into the mission. By accident. Can we make money off that space. No, not in that business. It feels special there. Wyclef played. Everyone participates and play for free. Beverages are donated. The mission goes way beyond the agency. Kharma, not business motivated really.

Would you rather work on a social good project or one thats cool?
(UM, can't I work on both??) Nt mutually exclusive

Q how do we view social good projects when at the end of the day we need to run a business and keep people employed etc. how do you look at the success ofthem?
Edgerton: tag ”from bogota with love.” changed perception that there's not talent outside us. Worked on the Jamie Oliver food revolution. Not a moneymaking venture. Trying to help him get to his goals. (ted) we work with psfk. They get innovators and idea makers together to work on social good. Climate change or UNICEF. Get in with a game changing org and that really excites the team. Where would that money be better spent, where would it get better response? Can't put a price tag on it. The value transcends that.
Q: does doing social good have to be a less profitable way to do business?
Beausoleil: have to build and grow. How quickly. Would love ROI to be social too. We need people to create all the cool shit. Retention and loyalty is huge. I you do that you're outputting a great project. It's logical. You get karma. Build awareness, get recognized -- awards or in the community. How greedy is the question. How fast do you want to grow? Tradeoff? Immediately hired by two well funded orgs. Shouldn't need a tradeoff because it doesn't have to be pro bono work.
Panczek: if you can't covnvince an org to pay you money you haven't done a good job. Mst agencies use pro bono to allow them to win awards or do work they wouldn't be able to. And the client has to just accept because they're not paying. The agency won't be dedicating the same time or rigor. GOod intentions aren't enough. Need a standard commercial agreement or it's let down. Excited at the start but then priorities change, enthusiasm can wane. Discount is okay but not free.

Q: employee retention: poll about whether it helps you want to stayif you can work these types of initiatives. Happier? More engaged? edgerton: ***If the organization cares about what's outside it's walls using what's going on inside means they care more about who is inside. cenna in Columbia. Forced to bring in hs kids to the company. There's a sense of responsibility among the staff to these kids. We take on more than the requirement because it's helping the company so much. Staff is pleased and the kids are learning so much with so much pride. Can be more meaningful than just a piece of work you did for discount or free.

Q: does working with np define our other work as not as challenging or rewarding?
O’dell: opposite. Our intention is not to win awards with it. You see that a lot, and the work is free so the client had to just accept it. Or guys do it because they believe in it. Like the California state parks. Closing 70 parks. We have the ability to help these guys. Found some at the agency who were interested in helping and did some work that hopefully will keep someof them open. Our business is to create engaging work for our clients. So no, it doesn't mean that the mainstream work is lesser.
Beausoleil: Hiring someone who is nice and good. We can make them great. Hiring someone who is Great but only nice sometimes is not nearly as good. They're more likely to be disappointed and negative.

Panczak: did a survey. Working on different problems on different types of businesses exploring your experience is what it's about. Social good or not. You want to cross pollinate. The insights you gain at one can be of use in the others. All kinds of benefits in the variety.

QA: are you seeing from a client perspective if they're trying to spend less money on eyeballs and more on social good? O’dell: It's somewhat the agency’s responsibility to bring it up. Show them how we can work jointly to do good work. Want to do more of that. It's all about intention.
Edgerton: it's our responsibility to get them wise to the change in consumerism, reacting positively to something isn't enough.
Most value able component. What is that brand doing to make them feel like they're a better person (toms) everyone is in desperate need for value. Beausoleil: worked with ronald McDonald house -- how could McDonald's build brand trust? The trust perspective will get attention.
Panczak: donating points versus buying a toaster. Look for opportunities like that to create social good within campaigns. QA: dc agency that works almost exclusively with social good. They dream about working with big brands who are pushing to do the groundbreaking work and the social good clients are a little bit risk-averse. Is that true in your agencies? Switch from cutting edge to low budget, risk averse? Does that dynamic exist?
Panczak: limited resources forces us to be more creative but we still try to push the envelope. O’dell: doing cool work. What if you can't? A agencies still interested? It's not about that. The output of cool doesn't matter. You're doing it for the right reasons if you're focused on the intent. Hardly any of our clients have huge budgets. It's up to us to make the investment because we believe in it.

***QA: agencies doing regular work is also doing good. Keeping people in jobs. Keeping people paying taxes or disaster happens. Good or selling things are not mutually exclusive. That question is bullshit. (right on!)

Good point.

(Rowdy peanut gallery and i like it. Arguing about focusing on the negative of cancer, death etc., what about when coke preaches happiness in their advertising? Sure they're selling but they are making people Happy too.)

Chris Wiggins - creative lab based in ny
Evelyn kim - maps
Michael leggett - gmail
Nicholas jitkoff - chrome
Jon Wiley - search

Pleased with the result so there's probably some things we can take away from it. Mostly texans in the house!! Diversity, one Yankee.

Evolution of design at google, process, priority of design at google. Tweet: Design work is embedded in all the products. Creative lab is outside of those silos. Collaboration was part f the redesign. Google stood out originally because of all the things they didn't put on the page. More and more and more white space as time went on. '00, '05, '07 (?), '10, '11

Kanna in 2007: trying to find a balance between form function emotion. 100 brand attributes into 4 clusters.
Modesty and minimalism. Daring. (they look pretty similar.)

2011 redesign
Step 1: strawman
Soon-to-be-CEO im-ed them about a new design.
Sprint without knowledge of all the legacy restrictions. Jumping ahead without internally fighting about what would be best based on the past. Strawman was 12 screens of the google product.

Before and after style Grid, a little. White space, a lot.
(Small keynote hiccup)

Kanna versus strawman Projected presentation versus printed on 80 lb paper.
Included design process versus simply before and after.
Did it because they thought it would be new to him.
In agencies you still do it the kanna way, rationalizing the thing. Scattered a bunch of visuals out and asked ”like?” or ”don't like?”

AGENCY TAKEAWAY: Kanna put it on a platter. Four options. Range. strawman was he recommendation. The opinion. One option, not four.

timeline was ridiculous. April Larry becomes CEO, and tells them to redesign google. Launching that summer.

(cars and roller coaster analogies I'm not really getting)

Kennedy was the name of the effort.
Not by the end of the decade, but the summer.

A lot of people said that google+ redesigned google. ”yeah we redesigned, who cares who gets he credit” (laughs)

Series of mockups
Working with tech they had
Hard for designers to coordinate changes
HTML prototype Tried different fonts (comic sans very funny)
Looked at a unique google font
Ended up shelving that for now. Opensans.
Debates around every single design choice Subtle changes that impact so many people and products Flat versus in use
Tiny gradient that only designers can see
Could drop support for older browsers for the first time
218 milliseconds for a fade off the hover, because it's one of the designers' birthdays.
It was important to feel like all the programs were part of one big thing, versus islands of products. Unified experience. Lots of promise there. they we're running out of time so they started grabbing CSS and starting to implement before it was done and the designers were still messing with it.

Kennedy 1.0 style guide one pager.
Good way to engage with engineers. Give them what they're stealing, legally.

daunting scope
Office hours. Got to see the teams behind all the products.

Implementation

Measuring risk and measuring success. Google likes data.
We like to know so we can manage risk.
Qualitative research, showed 80 participants a variety of screens which included the new and old designs for ten seconds each. Then they filled out a questionnaire.
Rank the designs.
How did it go?
Out preformed the old design in
Clean, beautiful, elegant, modern, simple, sparse,less cluttered
Old design still had comprehensive, less lacking, traditional and ”for people like me” (change aversion)

Quantitative research
Search has an extensive platform for doing quan. Billions of queries every day, at any given time there's 200 experiments going on in search. Statistically significant fine-grained measurement for many things. You can know for a fact that one blue is better than another. The design is actually solving the problem I wanted to solve. Awesome versus lame.
Metrics are not absolute
(fuuuuuuuuuuuu)
”we don't want to break search”
Patience with the data is necessary
Run experiments longer than usual if there's change aversion there.

”Eating our own dog food”
Turn it on for internal gmail.
Gmailageddon!

Sent with Writer.

rachel pinn | writer
rachcreative.com
@rachcreative sent from my iPad

rachel edenson pinn
writer | rachcreative.com