1. An understanding of the real problem that led to this new agency search. Brenton believes that the client, in collaboration with the new agency, should delineate the “lessons learned from the past” – specifically, what worked and what did not work in the previous client-agency relationship.
2. An inventory of the actions taken to solve the problem. The client must be open and honest so that history does not repeat itself.
3. A realistic and true budget. “No agency can offer recommendations on a zero-based budget and it’s an exercise in futility for a client to project an inflated budget. It’s not fair to the agency and it dishonors and devalues both the client and the agency,” says Brenton.
4. Your expectations on ROI. Ask the agency to demonstrate projected ROI. Brenton says, “If an agency truly believes in ROI, that agency should almost become an aggravation to the potential client, continually asking about the budget and the expectations on return.”
5. The decision makers. Who is involved? The agency that is given the task of solutions has an obligation to look at possibilities through different filters. The client should be upfront about who is involved and give the agency access to those people.

1. Case histories that dignify and value the client contribution. A good agency presents its success as a result of collaboration with its valued client. A bad agency presents the work as the agency’s alone.
2. Their process. The agency process must promote the client contribution to the work – collaboration between the agency and client is key.
3. Hard metrics on ROI. Brenton advises clients to look at hard metrics, such as profit generated from increased sales, rather than soft metrics alone, such as increased awareness.
4. Positive interaction between the agency team members. The agency people must treat one another respectfully in the presentation. Brenton says that too many times, presentations reveal an agency of individuals, not a team, all fighting for the microphone. A good agency’s people obviously value each other, actively listen to one another, and refrain from interrupting one another.
5. Its own unique differentiation. A client that wants unique positioning to separate itself from the competition in a meaningful way should see the same thing at work in an agency presentation. Brenton claims that, all too often, agencies say the same thing, with the only differentiator being the production values of its leave-behind. “An agency should be able to clearly articulate its core competency. A simple but telling question the client should ask the agency is, ‘If there is one thing I should take away from this meeting with you, tell me what it is in one sentence.’”

1. Company Buzz — The level of buzz a company, brand or product is generating over time.
2. Relevance — How relevant is the company, brand or product to its consumers’ needs?
3. Sentiment — What’s the positive, negative or neutral opinion about the company, brand or product?
4. View Throughs — A user sees the company’s online creative and goes to the site, but never clicks on the ad.
5. Interaction Rate — The amount of time a user spends interacting with a piece of a company’s creative.
6. Video Plays/Streams — The amount of time an online video was played.

In 2005, Amazon introduced the Amazon Mechanical Turk, where users can reach out to a collection of researchers who answer "human intelligence tasks." The idea is that a group of people with predetermined qualifications can perform certain jobs more effectively than computers, whether it is scanning photos or providing shopping recommendations. 

The most controversial area of crowdsourcing is likely in the field of citizen journalism, wherein web publishing might be outstripping an editor's ability to monitor what is going out. As the news cycle gets faster, the danger is that journalistic standards could be relaxed because of an assumption that mistakes tend to be discovered and amended quickly. Consider the recent example where a post on CNN's iReport website claimed Steve Jobs was hospitalized for chest pains. Apple's stock plummeted and the company was forced to issue a statement denying the report.

Origin:
Writer Jeff Howe coined the phrase crowdsourcing in a June 2006 article in Wired magazine to discuss how cheap labor was being discovered via the Internet. Howe later wrote the book, Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, which theorized that we were undergoing a cultural shift that redefined corporate research and the marketing process.

With the rapid spread of ideas on the Internet, memes have exploded online. An Internet meme starts with a song or catchphrase, for example, that is spread virally. Bloggers often add their own spin or humor to the original idea and that sparks even more discussion. One of the most popular Internet memes is LOLCats, where cat photos are paired with grammatically incorrect captions. If you want to track Internet memes, you can use a service like GoogleTrends to look at a concept's popularity through search engine results.

Marketers have tried to take advantage of memes, which are essentially viral campaigns. The challenge is to discover what makes one meme successful, while another languishes.

Origin : Researcher Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" in his 1976 work, The Selfish Gene, as a "unit of cultural transmission." He used it to describe how evolution could account for the proliferation of religious ideas or building techniques.

The concept of a mashup dovetails with the rise of social networking as websites like Digg or Reddit, acting as aggregators, pull together news or feeds from multiple sources. That platform is then often designed to be interactive, allowing users to share opinions, reviews, or update information in a fashion similar to Wikipedia.

The idea of creating web-based applications is also a popular choice for mashups as developers have used mapping software, such as Google Maps, to create everything from restaurant guides to real estate comparison sites. Mashups have also been popular in music as artists sample parts of another song to remix an entirely new song.

The mashup is indicative of the way we now consume media as traditional sources are intermingled with online campaigns in an attempt to discover what appeals to consumers.

Origin: Mashups are considered a part of Web 2.0. The term was first used to describe a web application that pulls together content from a variety of sources to perform a specific function, whether it is comparing airfare rates or finding new restaurants.

Accordingly, the ways in which products are being marketed have shifted online. As brands accumulate information about consumers' preferences, they can place advertisements in front of customers who are more likely to champion their message. Companies are now becoming personalities on Facebook, with brands like Seventeen encouraging people to become fans online and promising insider access.

Corporations seek out fansumers to act as brand loyalists, translating the virtues of a product or service online into the new world of social media.

Origin:

Forrester Research introduced the concept of the fansumer in order to describe the evolution of the consumer online as they interact with targeted advertising on social networking sites.

The movie "Polar Express" was panned, with critics contending that the motion capture process created animated characters that were more disturbing than cuddly. And video gamers have remarked in recent years that digital characters are becoming unsettling.

The idea of the uncanny valley has even been extended to photo retouching, as consumers have difficulty reconciling digitally altered photos with their expectations of a subject's appearance. A recent advancement in photorealistic characters from design firm Image Metrics may have provided an answer by analyzing specific movements and timing gestures.

Origin: Japanese robotics inventor Masahiro Mori defined the concept in 1970. He was looking to explain why people suddenly rejected his creations as they became more evolved. Mori based his theories on the philosophies of Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud, in which both men expounded on the idea that something can be familiar and unknown at the same time.

Correction: One of our eagle-eyed readers noted that the connection between Mori's theory and the work of Freud and Jentsch was made after his postulate was released. Mori's work was not based on their philosophies, it is just a correlation that has been drawn by subsequent researchers.

Google AdSense is the most popular form of contextual marketing. A search engine bot, known as Mediabot, indexes the material on a website and determines which advertisements submitted to Google are a match. Search engines, including Yahoo! and Microsoft, display advertisements on search results pages. Those advertisements are selected based on the key words that a person enters into the search engine.

The idea of contextual marketing has been controversial because critics claim it represents an invasion of privacy. In 1999, when the search marketing company DoubleClick (now owned by Google) attempted to use the information it had collected online about consumers to create targeted promotions offline, the corporation was taken to court over its privacy policies. Public reaction led online marketers to focus on delivering marketing messages that drive responses without being intrusive.

Origin: Contextual marketing is based on the idea of personal profiling, where information about web surfers is collected via cookies. In 1995, permanent cookie technology was invented, which allowed servers to send packets of information to web browsers, and vice versa, in order to track the websites visited by the person at the computer.

Corporations reach out to brand evangelists to ask them to create commercials or new brand messages for products they love. The user-generated content is then uploaded to brand-specific websites or video-sharing sites like YouTube. By yielding brand control, companies like MasterCard and Converse have managed to engage customers in promotion across social networks.

Participatory advertising also involves the changing manner in which people consume marketing. Instead, customers are now interacting with brand campaigns, as the Internet has moved marketers away from traditional, static methods of advertising. Under this methodology, consumers are no longer willing to passively digest product information, but instead want to form a connection with a brand. In a recent successful example, Dove leveraged this approach with the Campaign for Real Beauty, which asks consumers to help change stereotypical ideals of beauty. 

Origin:

The first examples of participatory advertising were seen in the early 1990's as Nike parlayed a series of advertisements with Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny into the creation of a feature-length cartoon, "Space Jam." Advertising evolved into a participatory model with the introduction of the Internet and a corresponding change in consumer culture.  

A successful murketing campaign is intriguing enough that potential customers will seek to discover exactly what is being sold or who is the one selling to them. The consumer then ascribes values to the brand and is the one to proactively establish a relationship. Critics are split on whether the murketing of viral videos, like BMW's "Rampenfest" ads, will ultimately damage or save brand reputations.

Origin: New York Times columnist Rob Walker coined the term "murketing" in an article for Outside magazine when he was seeking to describe the deliberately obsequious marketing of Red Bull. He regularly explores the relationship between consumers and marketers on his blog, Murketing.com and in his new book, "Buying In."

The University President: The New CMO

Why would a prospective student, faculty, donor or alumni want to live your brand? Why are you the first choice for some students? What gets your faculty up every morning? What keeps alumni connected emotionally and financially? It is the desire to be part of a unique community that shares a vision. It is participating in a differentiated experience that springs from the very soul of the institution. It is the university brand.

Administrators, faculty, and students all contribute, shape and help build a brand.   Traditionally, the university president's responsibilities have been focused on institutional planning, balancing the budget and exceeding university fundraising and endowment goals. Over time, the president has become responsible for student recruitment and retention and improving the overall student experience.

Who is the custodian of the soul of a university? Now, it has become a university president's responsibility.

Voice of the Customer

In other industries it is the CMO, or Chief Marketing Officer, who is responsible for ensuring that a company remains focused on the customer. The CMO manages a company's communications and actions to deliver a clearly defined customer experience.

"Many colleges and universities are failing to develop their marketing potentials because their presidents are mistaking insular admissions, promotion or development activities for total marketing activities," writes Dr. Eugene Fram .

Higher education institutions historically do not have a centralized customer marketing organization. As a result, college marketing efforts are often disjointed, occasionally overlap, and lack a university-wide focus. Many institutions have let the market define who they are. Today, to be successful, a university brand needs a champion at the top to lead that process and provide focus to the university's message.

Evangelist for the Brand

And no one is better positioned to be that champion than the president. He serves as the public face of the university, and acts as an advocate for his or her faculty, administration and students to the Board of Directors. As such, the president has the unique perspective to create a shared vision for a university, one that can align internal stakeholders and more effectively utilize resources and actions. The president's commitment to marketing and communicating a university brand sends an important signal to the institution. But how do you deliver on student expectations and ensure student retention without first defining those expectations?

Translating and expressing the brand is the first step. By working with an agency or brand consultancy that specializes in education marketing, the university president can develop a plan for approaching university stakeholders in order to help them understand the brand's values. Once you've established the basis for a unique experience, the key is to roll out the new identity from within.

Catalyst for Collaboration

Successful university marketing begins with internal constituents, especially faculty. Stereotypically, faculty is resistant to marketing efforts because they have not been involved in the choices that led to resource allocation. This can be avoided, simply, by including faculty in the formative stages of the brand decision-making process. You can build trust and buy-in by demonstrating how a new brand vision will not only benefit the students, but also the faculty and university as a whole.

Then, when the president reaches out to all constituents to bring them together to find common ground, he or she is acting as a powerful instrument for collaboration and change.

Champion of Resources

The president is also responsible for institutional planning and budget allocation, a political hotbed, yet an important strategic component in brand building. When budgetary resources are prioritized and allocated to deliver on a promise of a quality student experience, all constituents are working toward the same goal. Discussions can begin by simply asking: "How does this decision strengthen our brand, our student experience? Are there other priorities?" Soon all funding discussions of any institutional initiatives, be they faculty recruitment or meeting student enrollment goals, have a singular focus.

Another area that needs to be aligned is the disparate communication resources spread across the university. By tradition, education budgets are fragmented under different departments, reporting structures and promotional goals. The approach and strategies for individual schools and programs are frequently inconsistent with overall university messages. Often there isn't a singular communication plan that focuses all of the university's resources on established goals.

Without a definitive message, you can't expect students, faculty and donors to come to the same conclusion about what you stand for. The president must integrate all communication efforts, from advertising, public relations, website development, search engine marketing, brochures and newsletters to student retention efforts, under a specific reporting and management structure in order to easily direct university-wide communications. Establishing a consistent brand message for the university allows you to use resources more effectively and increase the impact of outreach initiatives.

Magnet for Support

According to the Council for Aid to Education, declines in government funding are requiring colleges to actively solicit private donations ($29.75 billion in 2007 ) and rely more heavily on fundraising. Being a worthy cause just isn't enough anymore. There are many institutions vying for project funding. Donors want to invest in institutions and programs that share their values, have a clear focus and can make an impact. Fundraising can be more effective when you have specific student goals in mind because it helps donors understand where the university is headed and how contributions will help achieve that goal. The more powerfully you can make your brand's purpose come to life, the more effective you will be at generating support for achieving its goals.

The Brand Starts Here

When a president starts thinking like a CMO, all of those seemingly disparate duties become unified under a clear objective: building the university brand.

The university president must be ready to provide the inspired leadership that will define what a school stands for and where it is going.  By actively defining the values and marketing position of the university brand, the president can galvanize resources to gain university endowments and exceed performance goals. The brand vision must start here.

The customer or student can get lost without a champion at the top. The time has come for the president to take responsibility for defining and executing the university brand. He, or she, is the difference engine who will shape the future through a well-articulated higher education marketing initiative that involves all aspects and participants in the university life.

Marriott International and American Airlines contend that this practice is potentially driving up costs and confusing potential customers. American Airlines filed suit against Google last year, arguing that unchecked piggybacking was a case of trademark infringement.

Origin
Piggybacking was initially a business term that referred to reducing costs by adding a new project to an existing one. It was extended to the online arena with wireless networks to refer to computer users hopping on an unprotected wireless connection.

As such, digital immigrants experience the same difficulties when they come into contact with digital technology as adults. Their learning curve is steeper and they may be reluctant to adapt to new systems.

The process of assimilation is always easier for those that learned the language of our digital world while growing up. Digital immigrants are often juxtaposed with digital natives, the younger generation that is accustomed to using the wealth of digital technology. The Digital Natives project, a collaboration between Harvard University and the University of St. Gallen, is looking to understand how different generations understand and apply information.  

Origin: The term digital native is attributed to writer and consultant Marc Prensky. He coined the term in a 2005 piece for Educational Leadership, while explaining what teachers have to do to reach students based on how they currently receive and process information.

An onsert is a standard marketing piece commonly used with newspapers and magazines, and recently applied to direct mail. It is a separate advertisement that is attached to a page of a publication or a customer mailing, and usually is in the form of a takeaway product, like a compact disc, magnet, or small booklet.

Onserts have recently been used to explore the field of scented advertising with newspaper companies like Gannett considering pages or stickers imprinted with smells. 

A derivative product of the onsert is the "onstatement," where advertisements are included on an invoice or account statement from a corporation with no distinction between the content.

Origin: Onserts were developed, and named in contrast to the insert (where a marketing piece is included within a publication). Early uses of onserts were the ubiquitous AOL membership CDs or the sticker covering the masthead of your USA Today.

Why you should have a corporate blog:

You can align yourself with your customer's values. A corporate blog lets you establish a dialogue with the people who use your products and services most often. It can even lead to the organic creation of brand devotion blogs.

You can change ingrained perceptions. Beginning in 2000, Microsoft launched a series of employee blogs that showed a human side to the monolithic corporation. Microsoft employee Robert Scoble has an estimated 3.5 million readers. 

Mainstream media journalists read blogs. The Wall Street Journal recently quoted Google's corporate blog and a new study suggests that 75 % of journalists get story ideas from blogs.

Proper blogging helps improve your search engine rankings. Corporate blogs drive traffic to your company's main website by allowing you to continually upload new content that is rich in keywords for search engines.

It's a trend that is not going away. 10 % of Fortune 500 companies currently operate corporate blogs. Whether the business is General Electric or Amazon, corporations are finding ways to connect with their customers.

An effective corporate blog can be a sales and marketing blockbuster. Or it can be a public relations disaster careening down the Internet superhighway challenging your carefully crafted brand message. And, if not built and managed properly your blog can remain unsearched or blacklisted by the big bad Google. So, it is important to acknowledge that a blog takes a seemingly disproportionate amount of commitment. The process of creating new content for a blog can become a task that even a company with the most enthusiastic prospects begins to dread.

You can combat that by identifying the stakeholders in your organization- those responsible for the design and generation of content, monitoring responses, and improving your search rankings. Work with them in the launch phase to establish your expectations and make sure the blog is a responsible extension of your brand. After that, give them the resources and time that they need to succeed. Once out of the launch phase, there are a few more difficulties you may encounter.

A blog requires transparency. The blogosphere (collection of bloggers and readers) demands an honest view, one that acknowledges criticism and mistakes, for you to establish credibility.

The blogosphere thrives on conflict. Perceived slights or corporate indifference fuels Internet watchdog groups like the Consumerist. If your response isn't appropriate, the resulting public relations fallout can be bigger than the initial issue.

Your ROI is undefined. It may be difficult for you to determine your return on investment. If you can't develop metrics to measure how the blog integrates with your marketing and sales strategy, you can't assess the value of your assessment.

With imperfect metrics, it's ultimately up to you to decide what you need from your corporate blog and establish an acceptable rate of return. Whether that comes in the form of sales leads or mainstream media coverage, you can begin to measure the efficacy of your blogging after the first six months of being online. If you don't have six months to wait for results, then don't launch a blog.

You don't need a corporate blog; but a well-managed, tightly focused effort could improve the public relations and sales initiatives of your organization. As you work to increase the transparency of your organization and develop values that align with your customer base, you can develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that synchronizes traditional and new media components.

Matrix organizations arose in response to "silos," divisions wherein a strict hierarchical structure left employees in isolated groups only responding and communicating to their direct supervisor. Since information was not effectively shared between the silos, project coordination fell to a C-Suite executive.

In a matrix organization, synergies can be realized by combining elements of project and functional management, as the sharing of resources and employees leads to cost reductions and a more efficient organization. The silos, which in a matrix organization consist of a group of programmers or engineers for example, are now required to communicate. 

Critics question the sustainability of matrix organizations over time as the fluid nature of the corporate structure means that employees can have several superiors and talented workers might feel overburdened.

Origin:

The concept of the matrix organization rose to prominence in the 1970's and 1980's. It was outlined in Professor Jay R. Galbraith's work, Matrix Organization Designs: How to combine functional and project forms.