Spotlight: Clarence Kwei
Posted on | September 30, 2009 | No Comments
Clarence Kwei is the Executive Producer in the Style & Entertainment Group of Time Inc., a division of Time Warner. He manages technical production for PEOPLE.com, InStyle.com, EW.com, and PeopleenEspanol.com. His team has launched numerous products in 2008 and 2009, including People TV, CelebrityBabies.com, PeoplePets.com, EW Picks, InStyle Makeover, and multiple redesigns. He’s on the forefront of new/digital media, and it is a pleasure to feature him in this week’s Spotlight feature.
How Frameworks Help Your Projects
Posted on | September 27, 2009 | No Comments
There’s a post over on Chris Brogan’s blog about “How Frameworks Improve Your Business Thinking.” Food for thought, for sure, and the money quote (as my buddy Drew would say) takes the form of a couple of important questions Chris asks: “What are the parameters of what you’re doing? How do you align them with the business goals of the company?”
I’ve been involved in some really exciting projects over the years and the thing that made the raging successes just that (besides great people!) was time spent defining business requirements – exactly what the business needed the project to deliver. On the other hand, the projects I’ve been called on to rescue have also shared a common thread; a lack of clearly defined business drivers and a very weak project framework.
Developing a project framework shouldn’t take a lot of time or generate pain and overhead, if the team members involved have a good understanding of the business and the desired outcomes of the proposed initiative. Further, a solid project framework provides a way for teams to work efficiently and effectively, both individually and collectively.
Where do you start when developing a project framework for your initiatives? There’s no cookie-cutter approach, since most initiatives are handled as innovations. However, I’ve come up with a basic formula that’s worked for me:
- Needs analysis. You really need to take some time and figure out exactly what the business (and the people it serves) really want to carry out through the initiative. As Chris says in his post, “What are the parameters of what you’re doing? How do you align them with the business goals of the company?” Involve stakeholders and anyone else you think can help you develop a road map for success on a particular project. And don’t forget to ask “Why?” quite a bit when defining these parameters.
- Capabilities assessment. Now that you know what the initiative is trying to do and “Why?”, you need to figure out what the organization (and the people it serves) is actually organizationally, socially and technically (if applicable) capable of. It’s an informal gap analysis, focused on organizational capabilities.
- Balance needs against capabilities. It’s really an art to ride the crest of change and even more of an art to teach others to ride the crest with you. But this is where your experience and business sense come into play (and face it, this is why you get the big bucks, dammit.) Helping the organization figure out what they can do internally and what they’ll need to do to get external help to fill any gaps is almost as important as the needs analysis itself.
As Chris says, “…this seems simple, and yet, it’s part of what many of us forget to do.” By no means is the approach above the only way to develop a meaningful, useful framework for your own initiatives, but it’s definitely a good start. Modify the formula as you see fit so it works for your initiative.
Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear about your approach to building a useful project framework.
Calling All Marketers and Clients: Get Your SMS On
Posted on | September 19, 2009 | No Comments
Over on the Forrester Blog for Interactive Marketing Professionals today, Neil Strother briefly recaps some stats released by Verisign this past week.
“VeriSign said it delivered a record 94.8 billion mobile messages (SMS, MMS, A2P) worldwide in the second quarter, up more than 82% from the same quarter a year ago. The company delivered nearly 179 billion messages globally in the first half of the year. To put this into perspective, that equates to 26 messages for every person on the planet (6.7 billion).”
That’s mind-blowing. And this is only one company!
Don’t Leave Home Without It
As Charles Landry, vice president and general manager of products and innovation at VeriSign, said in a Mobile Marketer article, “The mobile phone has become the most pervasive, personal communications tool available. We hardly ever leave home without it.” I don’t know about you, but most of the people I know get so freaked out if they forget their cellphone at home or leave it behind at a restaurant, you’d think they’d left an infant in a stroller in a mall parking lot.
He adds, “SMS is a lowest common denominator technology that is easy to use, appeals to all consumer demographics, and access to it is now 100 percent available on mobile devices in the U.S.” Let’s read that again – 100% availability of SMS on mobile devices. Wow.
Landlines and Dinosaurs
Yesterday I tweeted (@gendelibero) about Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg’s comments to the audience at a Goldman Sachs investor conference that the company is just not interested in telephones connected with wires.
He’s right. With mobile use at an all-time high and services like Google Voice, landlines are going the way of the dinosaur.
“Video is going to be the core product in the fixed-line business,” Mr. Seidenberg declared. And the focus will move from selling bundles of video and landline to video and cellphones, he added. Does he sound like he’s crazy? Yeah… crazy like a fox!
All-You-Can-Use
Let’s not forget what makes the cellphone so popular. How about convenience, safety, and now for all of you hyper-consumers out there, all-you-can-use calling and data plans (forget about the radiation issue or the fact that people like my brother-in-law, a telco employee for many years, will be looking for a new career at some point soon.) These little gems aren’t just phones – they’re full-blown productivity stations, allowing us to do many of the things we do at our desks using our cellphone anywhere we like.
The fact that Verisign sees SMS requests from mobile phone users equivalent to 26 SMS messages for every human on the planet is a wake-up call to any marketer or organization on the fence about mobile marketing.
It’s time to get your SMS on.
Feeble Attempts at Survival or a New Business Model for Newspapers?
Posted on | September 14, 2009 | 1 Comment
Check out the post at Reflections of a Newsosaur today. They’ve had a peek at a new American Press Institute study and share some of the more salient points in the post.
It’s going to be interesting to see who does what as far as charging for content. Google’s micropayment system (via Google Checkout) that will allow publishers to charge for pieces of content might help on the execution side, but they’ll need a serious content marketing strategy.
Speaking for myself, there are so many ways for me to get content from many different places, I’m not sure I’d have the impetus to whip out my credit card all that often. Granted, there may be times when I just have to have something, but I think those occasions will be few and far between.
Is this an industry gasping for its last few breaths? It’s going to be interesting to see how this long tail paid content approach plays out.
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