This whole site, really, is a testament to the kind of thought leadership thinking The Barbarian Group can bring to the table when it comes to mapping out your internet strategy. We live and breathe this stuff. Many of our clients put us on retainer, just to think and write about the strategic problems around their brands online. Others commission briefs – high-level documents that tackle the strategic challenges around an online marketing issue. We confess that we delve into the strategy of even some of our most straightforward production jobs: we’re always looking at how we can do something better, whether it’s positioned correctly, and whether it’s the right thing to do. It’s not uncommon for us to tell you when you call that we believe the strategy is off, and that we’d feel bad taking your money just building something we’re sure probably won’t work.
The level of strategic thinking on interactive marketing issues is second to none. Harness it for your organization. We’re here for you.
on November 03, 2011 at 11:30 AM
filed under: Strategy
One of my favorite creepy moments in film is the opening scene to The City of Lost Children, by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. In the scene, a small boy is delighted to find Santa come down his chimney on Christmas Eve and present with him with a magical little toy. But when more and more santas keep coming down, the boy gets confused and overwhelmed, and soon his dream becomes a nightmare. Too much of a good thing can certainly be tiresome, and I feel that society as a whole has become inundated with new technology and is beginning to fall victim to innovation fatigue.
We now live at a time when the pace of innovation is staggering. If it’s your full-time job to keep up with all the new platforms, and apps, and sites, and devices, it’s completely exhausting, and there are still things that slip past your radar. While professionals are struggling to keep up, most ordinary people have simply stopped trying and have settled for what they’ve already got because they don’t want to start fresh again with something new. I think this feeling of innovation fatigue explains why no new offering has dethroned Facebook as the giant of Social Media. After moving from Friendster to Myspace to Facebook, and each time starting from scratch, no one wants to rebuild a new social network. Even if it’s brilliantly designed and extremely easy to get on board with, like Google+. The same is true with apartments when you live in New York. At some point you just get so tired of moving that you stick with your current apartment; it’s not because it’s necessarily the best apartment, but rather because you already live there.
So what does this mean for brands, marketers, and other professionals creating innovative new experiences for their customers? For one, it means that your audience isn’t as receptive as you’d like. And it means that reaching your audience is only half the battle; even if a loyal customer is convinced that your latest offering is a must-have, they still might not go out and get it. This explains why Apple fell short of its quarterly goals earlier this month. Customers anticipated that an even newer model was coming out soon, so they simply didn’t buy any iPhones all summer. And now that they’ve waiting this long, what’s another few months?
I think the secret is to empathize with the average consumer and to be patient. Feel their frustration. Feel their fatigue. And find ways to break through the apathy and disappointment to show them that your brand and your service is here to make their life better. Demonstrate that you’re listening and you care. When you’ve had a long day, the last thing you want is a salesman showing up at your door. Instead, be the friend that comes by to lend a listening ear.
on October 04, 2011 at 11:31 AM
filed under: Strategy
After several years in the web analytics industry, it pains me to see the quality of some people’s “analysis” (if you can call it that). I’ve attempted to come up with a Rubric scale for comments & analysis written in reports. It’s a scoresheet of sorts, used to measure the usefulness of any type of analysis one does. While this is by no means perfect, or as straight forward as it appears in this article, I wanted to have this documented to remind myself to keep pushing.
on September 28, 2011 at 01:19 PM
filed under: Strategy
Are you interested in becoming the next Twitter, but have trouble writing with brevity? Do you feel you could have made Instagram, if not for your fierce devotion to your StarTAC? Despite all this, you still have the opportunity to create the Next Big Startup, thanks to Vitamin T’s latest offering: the Starter Upper. It’s your one-stop app for starting up your startup, based on a tried and true method of entrepreneurship – simple addition.
on August 05, 2011 at 03:46 PM
filed under: Strategy
We frequently advise brands on how to create engaging content and connect with the users of their services. For every brand, we offer a unique cocktail of tips and techniques, but at the core, what we recommend is to be conversational, ask questions, and focus on the user. One great example of this type of thinking is the recent launch of a new site by Google: http://wdyl.com. With it, Google is asking users one big, awesome question: What Do You Love? After you click the heart shaped submit button, Google serves you a clean, organized page of results, all of which feature various existing Google services.

This would be a great idea for any company, but for Google, this idea is pure genius. Not only are they offering users a great, simple, fun experience, but they’re taking all of the separate Google sites and services and bringing them together into a single page of results. We’re all inundated with emails, tweets, and products launching every day, so it’s incredibly refreshing to see a service that just simplifies everything, killing so many birds with one stone.
Additionally, the Google experience tends to be utilitarian. After all, there is great utility in most of Google’s products. But something is different with this site. It’s inviting. It’s personal. It’s human in a way that Google has never been before.
With the release of Google+, a refresh to the UI of core Google services like Gmail, and this new What-Do-You-Love site, it’s clear that Google is trying to reinvent itself. So far, they’re doing an awesome job at raising the bar.
on July 19, 2011 at 01:45 PM
filed under: Strategy
For a lot of companies, creating and integrating a socially focused team is a huge transition. Sometimes this change happens slowly and organically, while other times it is planned and implemented strategically. Many companies don’t have the luxury of planning, but even for those that do, it can be challenging to decide what organizational structure to use. Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group is recognized as an authority on this subject. In one of his blog posts, he breaks down social organizations into five types, and explains the benefits and tradeoffs of each. To simplify this even further, his five models can be grouped into two different categories: dedicated and integrated…
on July 12, 2011 at 02:50 PM
filed under: Strategy
Last week an article was published in Fast Company about a study at MIT and NYU regarding marketing a Facebook application for a new brand. The study compared whether it was more effective to attract new users thought passive sharing, in which automated messages are sent on the behalf of existing users, versus active sharing, in which existing users proactively send personalized messages to their individual peers. It turns out that both techniques are effective, but are each optimal in different scenarios.
on June 07, 2011 at 04:07 PM
filed under: Strategy
Now that creating a video is as simple as using your cell phone camera, teenagers love posting videos to YouTube documenting the pranks they’ve pulled at the drive-thru window. But recently this juvenile brand-badgering has evolved into an international YouTube trend and a crowd sourced, brand-friendly advertising campaign for McDonalds. All without McDonalds spending a single dollar…
