Famine City

Interactive Goes Small

by Marty

More and more marketing dollars are making their way to the Internet. With more money going to the Internet, what should the call to arms for interactive companies look like? I think there are a lot of big and small companies thinking about this question. While many companies are seeing television budgets go to non-television endeavors, the answer isn't use those budgets to build bigger interactive programs at all. That's the paradox here. Big companies are looking for their interactive companies to act small, but what does that mean exactly?

Build more nimble "things" and test more hypotheses. While this could seem less holistic overall, there is a sense of experimentation abound. The investment and return models are still being learned all the time. Use it to your advantage. Larger companies are looking for more exposure, learning and measurable results to fall out of their interactive dollars. I think this means we have to build test smaller more nimble applications. Nimble in this case will mean quicker to implement and codify/deploy.

The biggest shift in thinking will be challenging the comprehensive destination website ideas. Big ideas are going to fall from testing many hypotheses. The hardest part for interactive companies is battling the comprehensive destination website to build smaller applications, but we must move in this direction. Simply said, there are too many opportunities that fall outside of the big destination that have a lot more impact. To that end, we have to follow our consumers to where we can activate their participation and that isn't in the destination brand site.

More dollars does not equal bigger in this case. It means smaller. That's hard for those trying to deliver great "big" ideas. The return model for the interactive companies will be productizing and scaling these nimble applications. Realistically, this should not be such a surprise. This is what happened to software development in the last twenty years. The learning is out there. We just have to find the right analogy.

The next time you are challenged to act small, remember what that means. Test more hypotheses, build more nimble applications. Look for the right mix. Productize. Scale. Easy, right?

Post a message to our Wiffiti board

by Marty

I really like this technology, Wiffiti. I've been following this for a while now and it's catching on now. The website and ability to share this now is hitting mainstream. Just remember, I'm claiming that I was preaching this gospel about 1.25 years ago.

To leave a message, type @famine + message to 25622.

Widgets Get Wasted

by Jason

I refuse to be one of those ad-industry blogs that reviews and trashes the work of other agencies. So I'm not going to share a specific example, but wanted to highlight a consistent problem.

Widgets, you see, are not a singular tool. They're a channel--a beast--that must be fed.

Once you do the work to make consumers aware of your brand's widget, and convince them to download it, you have to give them a reason not to rip it off their homepage or desktop.

Otherwise, the consumer uses your widget for a few days or weeks, gets rid of it, and your investment is wasted. So the next widget-friendly content or promotion you have will require a whole NEW investment to get the same  consumers to download again...which they'll be less likely to do  after you've burned them the first time.

Think of every widget as opening a channel on your consumer's homepage or desktop. Now that the consumer has the channel available, what will you fill it with? What's your editorial calendar? What's your sweeps-week hit? What will give them a reason to keep it on their desktop or homepage day in, day out?

If you don't know, your widget is...well...wasted.

Looking for comments here, what brands are doing it well?