Megamillionizer in the Online Social Landscape
In conjunction with an online media campaign and retail tie-in, this branded Mega Millions microsite engages fun-and-thrill seekers, fantasy enthusiasts and emerging audiences in an entertaining way while driving purchase intent and offering a unique technological experience where users can learn about the product and interact with a gallery of user-generated videos.

The Key Component
The user-generated-content (UGC) is the key component of this promotion. We architected the program to provide an easy way for the user to share deep links on both Facebook and Twitter, respectively. It allows for an experience to be shared across each user’s individual social graph and generate tremendous brand engagement. Once UGC is shared via social media channels, the reach of the program has the potential to increase exponentially.

Augmented Reality Technology
Pop Art built a flash-based application that leverages Augmented Reality technology; which employs a web camera to read a unique marker downloaded from the microsite. This marker allows the Mega Millions Augmented Reality to unfold on screen for the user to interact with and record. To make things interesting to all users, Pop Art developed 15 unique 3-D models to be used in combination with a real time layer, or a variety of, fun backgrounds. These backgrounds range from a tropical beach scene to space exploration or living out your rock ‘n roll dreams on stage with thousands of admiring fans. The idea is to encourage users to mix-and-match in order to come up with the perfect way to envision their life as a Mega Millionaire. Initial sets of models are available to all users at the outset of the program. They include 3-D objects such as a unicorn, a diamond encrusted microphone and, of course have a space helmet to keep you safe on your travels!  Additional sets of models will be made available as the promotion continues throughout the summer so be sure to check back often!

Pop Art envisioned this as an integrated program to build stronger relationships among the Oregon Lottery, retail stakeholders and their customers. During this summer promotion, each ticket will feature a special code that unlocks unique experiences on the Mega Millions microsite. This promotion encourages users to visit retail locations and purchase Mega Millions product to receive the code. In return, the Augmented Reality technology offers the user a fun opportunity to take a break, and possibly win some terrific prizes.

Please check out the promotion today for your chance to win: www.megamillionizer.com

Part One: Introduction

I am Chris Cortez, the new Director of Software Development for Pop Art.  I moved to Portland six weeks ago with my wife and two daughters from Austin, Texas, where I was Director of Technology for the interactive agency Schematic.  I am writing this initial blog series to kick off my tenure here and explain my beliefs about and approach to software development and project management.  I will also probably write a little about rain, kids and bicycles.

Working for Schematic in Austin was an unbelievable opportunity, a great experience that shaped my thinking in ways I haven’t even figured out yet.  Schematic is a recognized leader among interactive agencies, well-known for big projects with marquee brands like ABC, Microsoft, PGA Tour, NBC Sports and Cannes Lions.  In Austin, we were the Interactive Agency of Record for Dell Computer and Reliant Energy, evolving their approach to user experience, social media, and integrated campaign strategies.

By contrast, Pop Art is a compact (read: tiny), razor sharp agency with a strong client list of national, regional and local companies.  Pop Art defines nimble, adapting to changing times and business climates through fluidity of project type, staff mix, and client list.  While reviewing a recent refresh of the Pop Art website (coming soon), I learned that we have produced over 500 projects since 1997, across as wide a range of services as any large agency — from software to branding to social media –  to a set of clients so diverse it includes both local non-profit organizations and global Fortune 500 companies.  The opportunity to shape and lead the technology discipline here is a dream job for me, and I am blessed to be surrounded by the most creative and tech-savvy agency team I’ve ever seen.  (Also, more foodie knowledge than even the culinary institute up the street…)

Whether as a consultant, an agency employee, or director of software project teams, I have long held the same three goals for my career:

1. “Move the needle” for clients through unexpected innovation and outsize results;
2. Provide employees and partners the opportunity to work on challenging, engaging opportunities that grow their skills and further their careers;
3. Make significant contributions to the continued development and community of the Internet and related technologies.

For a bunch of reasons I will describe in this series, a multidisciplinary boutique like Pop Art is a breath of fresh air for clients, employees and the web itself, an ideal place to innovate and put into practice the lessons I have learned in fifteen years of providing technology services to the world’s leading brands.

Innovation is the heart of interactive marketing.  Fresh thinking and new technology leads the way, and successful campaigns rewrite the rules, change the game, instead of just changing the score.  Over my next three articles, I will describe the characteristics and strategies of the small agency – of Pop Art specifically – that make us best suited to delight your audience with innovative and exciting campaigns and products.

Part Two: Surviving Innovation: Why We Code, and When We Don’t

Working in emerging technologies is exciting, for agencies and for clients.  It can also be expensive and fraught with risk.  Knowing the difference between high-value “imagineering” work and commodity development activities allows for amazing leverage in software resourcing.

Part Three: Tooling Up: The Project Management Tax

With agile methodologies, tech-aware employees and collaboration tools like Basecamp, are project managers still necessary? Small agencies are succeeding at revolutionizing the project management role and delivering increased value to clients and the bottom line.

Part Four: Conclusions: The Big Agency Model is Broken

The Internet changes fast these days, even for the Internet.  The intersection of traditional, social, mobile and physical technologies provides historic opportunities and equally historic challenges to large and small agencies alike.  The large, “full service” agency is proving to be a poor model for helping clients react quickly to the business opportunities made possible by this changing tide.  These agencies, and their clients, are more than ever turning to nimble experts like Pop Art for exciting and thoughtful experiments with emerging technology.

Congrats to Brad, partners and volunteers for putting together a truly special gathering of honest conversations, presentations, evening awards programs (where yes, Pop Art was honored with a Web Visionary award) and events for folks to gather. Attendees were richly rewarded by having far more offered than was possible to do. We were encouraged to get as much as humanly possible, out of the time and resources invested.

Humanizing Technology

An area of particular interest to me,  reflecting innovation Pop Art has been working on recently, is in the space of augmented reality (AR). It’s apparently “not new,” matter of fact, similar to the iPad, AR technology has been around for a couple decades. The difference now is that we have been empowered with devices, such as the “smart phone.”

So what makes a phone smart, versus say dumb, you wonder?

The popular culture creates language through an established shared meaning. Does the phone one has imply smart vs. “non-smart” back upon its owner? From the perspective of social science, how does this fit into “humanizing” technology? Say if that by owning one phone versus another really implied a level of intelligence within the technology, and by association, its owner.  If that was the case, could the technology one uses become a spoken or unspoken implication of  the “smart” vs. the “non-smart”? Will we start to introduce our technology, like part of our family; “hi, meet my smart phone?”

Technology’s infusion into the cultural fabric, and how this psychologically may implicate its human ”owner”  (or adopter) is increasingly an interesting area for marketers to watch. If we were to extend this concept to products; their relevance to consumers may come to be dominated by “smart” vs. “non-smart” brands. If we take a topical scan of the brands that are succeeding right now, looking at profitability as a criteria, there is much anecdotal evidence that this is becoming the case.

Smart Brands Make Technology Human

It is the beginning of something, I’d suggest, in its infancy.  State and national policy, regardless of partisan persuasion, also plays a role here. The unfolding outcomes of the net neutrality debate, regulation (or lack of regulation) around telecommunications, advertising’s function and role on the web, narrowed interest in the increasingly topic driven self-selection of content, consumers increasing demand for virtual sophistication of online channels and how brands play in this evolving landscape; collectively impart a profound influence how the internet will evolve, as well as shape and impact society, in the coming years.

To get a sense of what all that looks like, all in one place, following those that are riding the edge of the technology’s blade is time well spent. You may come away with more questions than answers, but the more we collectively ask, answer and solve these questions together, the more likely we are to keep technology human.

It did not.

Instead, when I arrived home Monday night and checked on the status of the package, I was more than a little alarmed to see that the package was not in the recipient’s hands, as I suspected it would be, but still in … Memphis.

So I called Ded Nex to see where the package was, and get an ETA to share with the recipient, which I thought would salve both our nerves. I’m not sure what I expected, but I guess I assumed that the real person who answered the phone would know more than what was being displayed on the web site (“Status: In Transit. Location: Memphis”).

I was wrong.

Not only were they unable to tell me what time the package would be delivered the next day (“Morning on Afternoon?”), but were unable to tell me whether the package was still in a warehouse, on a truck, on a plane or … lost.

Now, I know someone at Ked Fex had the answer. All those numbers and barcodes on the shipping label must mean someone’s keeping track. But that level of deep data wasn’t made available, either to me, or to the customer service representatives who were trying to talk me down. I was pretty upset, and I didn’t sleep well, mostly because of the doubt, for which there was no reason.

Deep Data as Differentiator

Someone in the shipping industry will figure this out, and use “confidence” as a selling point in their delivery model. It would certainly be a point of differentiation between the two largest shipping services (whose only difference today seems to be the color of their uniform). Live view of package location was a pretty nifty service back in the late 1990s, when it debuted, but there’s a huge opportunity to take package status to a new level using new technologies like RFID. I know I’d pay a little extra to be able to know where (in a city, in a building, on a shelf) my package was if shipping sensitive or valuable goods.

5. Jello Stapler

VP of Client Services Reshma Taufiq is one of Pop Art’s greatest pranksters. Any computer left unattended is at risk when Reshma notices, and her all-staff e-mails on behalf of her co-workers are infamous. Here’s one she sent posing as the fair-complected Anton Legoo shortly after her return from sunny Thailand:

Subject: Has anyone noticed that my skin is glowing?

I went to a new spa yesterday to start tanning treatments, and they talked me into a new type of facial which involves a mayonnaise rub. It cost me a lot of money. Can anyone tell the difference?

Glowingly yours,
Anton

So when Reshma left the country for a wedding, Copywriter Kevin Platt took the absence as a chance at retribution, recycling a prank from the television series, “The Office.” Here’s Reshma’s stapler encased in Jello.

4. The “New” Office Chair

When former UI Designer Ryan Parr started at Pop Art, the seating situation was somewhat dismal (it’s since improved dramatically). His desk chair was (un)lovingly referred to as “the fart chair,” for the strange sounds it emitted when sat upon. It was tattered and frayed, and probably pretty uncomfortable. He pleaded with everyone who would listen about requisitioning a new one, but other items took priority. As his pleas grew louder, so did the opportunity for a prank. Finally, the chair was ordered, but unfortunately for Mr. Parr, his new chair arrived when he was on vacation.

The box showed up the day before he returned, and the creative team decided to open it, not to ease their co-worker’s transition back to work, but to wreak havoc on his sanity. Each piece was carefully removed from the box, and packaging set aside. When all the parts had been removed, we began disassembling his old chair. Part by part, we packaged up the old seat, the old armrests, even the individual wheels, wrapping them in the new chair’s packaging. We re-sealed the box, and placed it at his desk where the old seat had stood. The new chair’s pieces were secreted throughout the office, and the setup was complete.

When Ryan came to work the next day and saw the box, he knew exactly what it was – his long-hoped-for chair. Before even turning on his computer, he set to work unpacking the chair. His brow grew more furrowed as each “new” piece emerged. The prank finally became apparent when the seat emerged – there was no confusing the tattered cushion inside with something new, and the office erupted in laughter as the joke slowly dawned on him.

3. Tinfoil Desk

Before the holiday break in 2009, Designer Anton Legoo spent more time in the office than he did at home as he worked on launching four or five massive projects. His time off was much-deserved, and he used the office closures to his advantage, taking off almost two weeks in late December and early January. Unfortunately, one of his co-workers was still in the office. Kevin Platt spent several hours on December 23rd encasing Anton’s entire desk in tinfoil, even wrapping individual objects in the stuff to take the prank to its highest level. His keyboard, mouse, stapler, pen caddy, and even the individual Post-It notes that typically surround his screens were wrapped. It took two full rolls of foil, and the resulting ball of foil after the covering had been dismantled was 18 inches in diameter.

2. Dressing as Your Boss

Halloween is traditionally a dress-up day at Pop Art, and we’ve had staff come dressed as everyone from Wonder Woman to a life-size margarita. In 2009, Kevin Platt (apparently the biggest office prankster … hmm) dressed as someone not so famous … Me. He colored his hair grey with baby powder, found a solid-color v-neck sweater, and even acquired some “designer-y” glasses. The resemblance is … disturbing.

1. 9,999 Luftballoons

While it’s clear that pranking is deeply ingrained in Pop Art’s culture, birthdays aren’t really as big of a deal. We go out for lunch to celebrate, but they’re generally not observed. Unless that birthday is an opportunity for a prank. So when CEO/Owner Steve Rosenbaum hit his 30th birthday, we decided to get him a gift. A gift that would keep on giving for days. You see, hundreds of helium-filled balloons looks like a nice way to commemorate your birthday, but as Isaac Newton so wisely discovered, what goes up must come down. You can’t fight gravity, and the real hilarity ensued when the helium-filled orbs began their descent. At first it was one at a time, but as the days passed, the balloons began to cover his office floor. He spent an afternoon popping them one by one, and as each “pop” sounded, the smiles in the office grew larger.

U.S. Local Search Advertising Market Worth $4 Billion

The way these technologies and experiences will be financed is likely through advertising revenue and brand sponsorship. It is said that the U.S. local search advertising market is worth more than $4 billion. According to The Kelsey Group, revenues for mobile local search advertising are expected to reach $1.3 billion by 2013. This means that there will be plenty of investment dollars available for R&D in geolocation technology. On January 31, 2010 The New York Times reported that the Bravo TV network has partnered with Foursquare in an effort to offer unique personal experiences to their fans and ad partners thereby reinforcing brand loyalty. This is just one of many examples to come where geolocation experiences will hit the mainstream in unique and interesting ways.

What Does this Mean for Marketers?

Geolocation is another opportunity to leverage emerging technology for the benefit of brands and the user experience. They already want to engage on their own terms, so location based services offer a unique one-to-one marketing opportunity to the marketer and user alike. Location based services are just heating up and will surely leverage existing social media platforms to tap a user’s unique social graph. This means that engagements have to be well planned and executed because the reach of a program could experience exponential growth through other social media channels. It is all about delivering the right message at the right time, so it better be a good one.

Web analytics helps the marketer is so many ways. Of course, it is fundamental to web site optimization where we aim to achieve the ultimate in conversion through continuous improvement of multi step process. This is an exercise that involves defining goals and selecting key performance metrics to measure against. But web analytics is so much more these days. With the rise of search, social media and mobile technology, there is a wealth of new information in which a marketer must capture to get the full story about a brand’s equity.  It is about measuring consumer sentiment and delivering targeted content to the proper segment at a specific time. This means that web analytics is not just focused on your web site, but it’s about measuring marketing efforts in a holistic way.

At the heart of web analytics is the collection of data or quantitative research that enables a marketer empirical observation into their efforts. The ultimate goal is better communication through improved consumer awareness, engagement, conversion and loyalty. The difficulty in web analytics is not the collection of data, but rather the qualitative analysis of that data. Sure, it is one thing to collect it but how do you organize it? What data is most important to collect? What is this data telling you about your approach? What other conclusions can we draw?

Pop Art uses web analytics to measure the effectiveness of our web sites and campaigns. However, we also leverage it to gain deeper insight into consumer segments and various audiences over time. In this sense, we see web analytics not as a single execution, rather as a practice that provides business intelligence over the long term. It is intelligence that enables better choices in strategy and the tactical methods to achieve desired marketing goals.

In my opinion, your corporate web site is better considered as part of your identity package, as timeless as a business card or a logo. Sure, things need sprucing up from time to time as technologies change, but you shouldn’t change the look and feel based on a whim. Redesigns are expensive, and too much change can make a company appear fractured and confuse frequent users if elements they’ve come to rely on move around or change appearance too often.

Microsites are perfect for things with an expiration date (think sweepstakes or ad campaign) or campaigns with a very narrow focus (our microsite for Freightliner’s Grille to Grille Challenge is a good example). They also allow the designer to break free of the corporate style guide to use design elements that might not work in the annual report (coffee stained paper napkins) but help support the microsite’s overall tone and specific audience.

Are there exceptions? Of course. Some “corporate” sites are redesigned near-quarterly (UFC redesigned their site for every match). And some micrositesare timeless; the microsite we developed for Leatherman’s line of luxury tools has remained unchanged for 2 years and counting.

The If I Win campaign provided an opportunity to tell fellow Oregonians how you would help to make the state a better place if you won a Powerball^® Jackpot. The campaign was about altruism and allowing users to make a pledge that was broadcast across the internet.

Web Mashups create multiple Channels for Brand Engagement

The Oregon Lottery partners with us to help them navigate through the social media landscape. The goal is to engage emerging audiences and create meaningful dialogue with customers. Part of the strategy is to leverage new technology and position the Powerball^® brand as an entertainment product allowing players to dream big.

Pop Art understands that successful campaigns provide multiple channels to interact with your brand. It’s about allowing a user to choose how they want to engage with you. So, we designed a web mashup using Twitter, a branded microsite and rich media banners to provide multiple touch points. The resulting campaign positioned the Oregon Lottery as a technically savvy entertainment company while users had a unique experience that drove purchase intent.

It’s all about Planning and Execution

Here is how it worked: Pop Art developed a microsite to display pledges of altruism submitted by users across the state of Oregon. It was a branded affair that lent an ethereal quality encouraging users to dream big. Some pledges came in as Tweets hash-tagged #ifiwin. Other pledges were submitted directly through rich media banners running with select online publishers. A third option for pledge submission was found directly on the microsite.

In order to promote the site we developed a media plan focused on entertainment-oriented publishers. Through geo-targeted rich media ads, we were able to target the key demographic and drive them to the site. Our interaction-heavy banners created a unique experience similar to that of the microsite. Furthermore, we utilized Influencer Marketing tactics to promote the site by encouraging posts on blogs, Twitter and Facebook, respectively.

Pop Art then had the challenge of managing all of this user-generated-content. We knew how we wanted it to display on the front-end but how should we capture the data? How could we moderate it ensuring it aligned with our clients brand attributes? What is the best way to retrieve this data for analysis? We quickly realized a need to develop custom software to handle this. So, we built an aggregation tool allowing us to retrieve content from Twitter, rich media banners and the branded microsite. This software also allowed us to capture other pertinent user data as part of our ongoing web analytics practice with the Oregon Lottery.

The If I Win campaign was successful for a variety of reasons. It captured the imagination of our targeted audience. It accomplished several marketing goals in terms of reach, frequency, and loyalty. It was fun for our team to architect and build. But most importantly, it was a success because the Oregon Lottery is a great client who trusted us with their brand. They allowed Pop Art to dream big which resulted in our ability to engage the user in a unique and meaningful way.

The promise of a CMS is as follows:

• You can update content on your own and respond to change whenever you like
• You don’t need to understand web development or HTML
• You can deploy changes at any time

Organizations are often tied up in the subtle nuances of selecting the right CMS solution and wrangling all the content that needs to end up on the web site. In my experience, there are a series of lurking issues that apply to any CMS solution. You would do well to get a handle on them up front.

Any CMS Uses Templates

The truth of the matter is that any CMS uses templates. That’s where they derive value. Just create 3 to 5 great templates, spread them out over your site and you’re golden; or so it would seem. Templates are great as long as you make use of them today, tomorrow and the next day. A template defines the layout of the page and how it looks.

If you want to move the large photo over a smidge and embed another transparent image on the page, you’re out of luck, unless the template accounted for it. One aspect that’s often overlooked is that templates are done before you launch. The developer has gone home and already cashed their check. Game over. Changes cost money. Perhaps organizations take those changes in house or return for a refresh, either way, its time and money.

If you can force yourself to live with the decisions of today for the next six to twelve months, then you’re doing better than most. It can be tough to explain to your boss why editing content “over here” is easy, but moving content “over there” costs money and requires a developer.

Good HTML/CSS is Hard

In my years here at Pop Art, I’ve worked with some seriously good HTML/CSS developers. Experts you might say. They’ve honed their craft and work continuously to stay sharp. It’s not easy; especially with the wicked cool designs emanating from our creative folks.

These experts use complicated text editors with lots of features to help them work, but it really all comes down to understanding how those angle brackets work in a variety of browsers. That takes time to learn and attention to detail. You’re not going to be able to hold a candle to what they can do with the flimsy HTML editor provided in most CMS solutions, so you need to have the proper expectations.

One point I like to make is that the system we provide is a “content” management system. You’re managing content. You’re not managing other aspects such as layout, style and design. Content means you can change “the quick brown fox” into “the lazy dog”. If you start your expectations from that point, you’ll be headed in the right direction.

You Have to Buy Into the CMS Framework

No matter what CMS you pick (Ektron, TeamSite, Drupal, DotNetNuke, Umbraco, etc), you have to buy into that framework. The story of the CMS you picked has to resonate with you because every change from the vanilla installation costs you money and generally causes maintenance concerns over time.

For example, you’ll have to buy into the way your given CMS does the following tasks:

• Author HTML content with an editor
• Create a new page
• Update an existing page
• Retire/Delete a page
• Restore a prior version of a page
• Deploy a change to the public
• Authenticate and authorize a new editor/reviewer
• Reviewing and approving changes
• Manage large amounts of images, audio and video content
• Integrate with 3rd party solutions (Twitter, Facebook, your own systems, etc)
• Customizations, additions and enhancements
• Security updates
• Backup and recovery

Every CMS does these tasks a little different. You’ll have to find one that resonates with you and matches the way you want to operate for the next couple of years. Swapping out your CMS in less than a 24 month period should give you pause require a pretty good business case.

For that matter, how long to plan on using this CMS? In my experience, you should plan on replacing it (or installing the next version) every three to five years on the long side. New features come out all the time. The developers of your CMS might release features weekly, quarterly, or annually. You should plan for ways to take advantage of these new features in a reasonable and effective manner that suits your organization.

You Need Training

The reason you’re interested in a CMS is because you want to make changes on your own and your people don’t know how to edit HTML directly. In many cases, if they did know HTML, you would be better off installing Visual Studio and showing them how to use your favorite source control repository. But they don’t know HTML, and its not practical to spend all that time learning it, so that’s why we’re here in the first place.

Since you’re people don’t know HTML, its probably fair to say they also don’t understand web development in general. That’s fair, they’re probably focused on delivering your products and services to your customers. You can’t be all things to all people.

So, the salient point here is that you’re people are going to need training. They’re also going to need mentoring and standards enforcement. It’s just too easy to deploy a page using Comic Sans font after a couple of months. Furthermore, when you encounter turn over, you’re going to need more training. You should account for these costs in time, money and productivity.

Patches Should be Installed

Every system worth installing and running for a couple of years will have patches. The developers of the CMS will discover flaws, fix them, and make a patch available to you. You’re expected to install the given patch before (1) the bad guys discover you run the given CMS and (2) your system is vulnerable because you haven’t installed the patch yet.

This isn’t a tough thing to do, but it does consume time and requires a consistent process. You should have a plan for installing these patches as they become available. Don’t be ignorant and think the system you launched two years ago is as secure as it was two years ago.

Whoops!

You’re likely to deploy something to your public site that you need to fix ASAP. Its the nature of a CMS. It’s so easy to deploy changes, even when you have a serious reviewer/editor policy in place. Something will happen where you say “Whoops! We need to fix that ASAP.”

You should have a plan in place that states how to handle changes that need to happen immediately; even if it’s just a service level agreement (SLA) with yourself. How are you going to restore the previous version of the page? Is that even possible? How often can you publish changes? How long does it take for them to appear. These are all questions that you should know the answer to before you need to execute them.

Summary

So, to be clear, content management systems are good, but make sure you’re aligned with what they can do. Don’t get too caught up in those common challenges of gathering copy and providing feedback on the graphic compositions without spending sufficient time understanding the total cost of ownership and the capabilities of your CMS.