Denver: Thursday, June 21st; San Diego: Tuesday, June 26th

In today’s fragmented marketplace, brands are returning to the art of storytelling to communicate their message: they’re designing powerful multi-media narratives through content development, distribution and promotion. Successful brands know how to tell, augment and refine stories that effectively engage, delight and inspire customers to connect more deeply with the brand and of course, to pass along to friends. In this session, we will explore why content is the future of marketing, and how brands can leverage content-share across the web to gain and keep the attention of customers and prospects. The panel discussions include experts from Sanuk Footware & CareFusion in San Diego and Boppy in Denver.

Topics Include:

• Identifying the stories and story-tellers within your organization
• The art of SEO and Social Media in content success
• Content strategy basics – development, distribution, promotion
• Making the most out of each story – platforms, partnerships
• Energizing brand advocates to carry the story forward

SAVE THE DATE
The Denver event date will be Thursday, June 21st; and the San Diego event will be Tuesday,  June 26th.

• 8:30 – 9:00 AM Registration, Breakfast & Networking
• 9:00 – 10:00 AM Presentation & Questions
• 10:00 – 10:30 AM Networking

Who Should Attend:
Marketing Execs, CMOs, Marketing Directors, Search Strategists, Social Media Directors, Social Media Managers, Analytics Managers, Business Strategists, Product Managers & Brand Managers for national consumer brands and retailers.

Mike Richardson, Pioneering Agility Expert & Author of  Wheel$pin:  The Agile Executive’s Manifesto

Like it or lump it, meetings are the back bone of our agility as an organization. Agile meetings that is!  In many businesses, meetings are a source of wheel-spin. They start late, run long, don’t achieve much in between and have poor follow-up.  As a result, they are seen as time-consumers and everyone is in some state of meetings-overload.  Sound familiar?  Big mistake, think again!  Agile meetings, whether face-to-face or virtual, are at the heart of our agility as an organization.  They are essential to drive the communication, collaboration and coordination we need as a team to prevail. Done well, meetings are time savers, chaos savers and crises savers!  Here are ten tips to get organized with an agile portfolio of meetings, the agile flow of individual meetings and the skills of agile facilitation.

Agile Portfolio of Meetings

Think of your portfolio meetings as the gearbox in the transmission system of your business vehicle.   We need the right cogs, being kept well oiled, individually turning over well and meshing well with each other to work as a whole, with smaller cogs turning over with higher frequency and larger cogs turning over with lower frequency.  It’s a design challenge, which I urge you to invest in just like you do in designing products. 

Tip #1:  Create a Matrix of Your Meetings which outlines a recurring portfolio of regular meetings:  Name of the Meeting; Frequency and Recurring Schedule, Attendees, Chair and 2^nd Chair/3^rd Chair (so the meeting always happens); Outline Objectives and Agenda; Inputs (who presents/reports what), Throughputs (what discussions occur)  and Outputs (what decisions get made); Annual Calendar of Which Meetings Happen When (so everyone can plan around this recurring schedule).

Tip #2:  Review Your Meetings Matrix to add, subtract or modify.  Modify those meetings which aren’t working well but have the potential to add value.  Subtract those meetings which aren’t adding value and you can do without.  Add those meetings which we ought to be having but aren’t (in particular, paying close attention to cross-functional meetings we really ought to be having to overcome silo mentality).  In the mix, you will probably end up unbundling some meetings and bundling others, to optimize your portfolio.

Tip #3:  Continually Improve Your Meetings Matrix & Annual Calendar to learn as you go, seek feedback from participants on what’s working well and not working well, making design adjustments and seeing how they work.  Version 1 of your meetings matrix and annual calendar may not run as a well-oiled machine, but later versions can.

Tip #4:  Consider a Morning Meeting (or daily huddle at some other time of day if shift patterns or time zones dictate).  Yes, that’s right, every single day of your top executive team!  Why?  Consider the  words of some practitioners:

• “Game-changer!  Initially I was very skeptical about morning meetings – too expensive I thought – we can’t afford the overhead of taking 30 minutes of the senior management’s time every day.  But now, only a few weeks later, I don’t want to start my day without it!  The opportunity to check in with everything going on helps me immerse myself in what my focus needs to be for the rest of the day, confident that everyone else is doing the same, that no news is good news and that we can re-synchronize again tomorrow morning.  I also don’t stress if I have to miss a meeting as I know I will be right back up to speed in the next one.  Morning meetings have been a game-changer for us: in my opinion, we can’t afford not to have them”.
• “Amazing!  Adopting morning meetings has had an enormous impact on our agility as an organization.  We have revved up our communication, coordination and collaboration as a team and, as a result, I get half the e-mails I used to get and have half the ad-hoc meetings I used to have.  We are getting much more done in much less time with much less chaos”.

Agile Flow of Individual Meetings

Each individual meeting needs to be agile and traction creating. 

Tip #5:  Meetings Should be Easy for You (or whoever is Chairing the Meeting).  You should be able to sit down and ask, “who’s up first?” which is crystal clear as there is a standing agenda, a master spreadsheet with tabs in order of agenda and the expected inputs/throughputs/outputs are crystal clear.  Go electronic and capture everything in-process (action items are captured real-time electronically, projecting for all to see, in the master spreadsheet which is hosted on the server for ease of access for all) so there is no work for you to do before or after the meeting.  There are also many online team coordination and project management software tools available these days, which you may prefer to a spreadsheet.

Tip #6:  Time-Box Everything.  Time-box the meeting overall (for example, by default meetings last 45 minutes, from 5 after the hour to 10 minutes to the hour), individual agenda items and especially presentations.  Get people used to the fact that you will guillotine anything which runs over and they have to figure out how to get it done in the time available.

Tip #7:  Leverage the Wall-Space.  The wall space is one of the most underutilized assets in your business.  Have the standing agenda on the wall, creative problem solving frameworks, your core values, key elements of your strategic plan, inspirational quotations etc, all in large enough format that you can standup and point. Plus have other ideation resources in the room, such as a white-boards, flip-charts, blank paper, templates, mind-mapping software etc. Create a container people walk into when they come into the room.

Agile Facilitation Skills

Facilitating agile meetings is an important skill to be working on.

Tip #8:  Set the Tone/Bar for the Energy Level by playing a video or some music, having something physical on the table to interact with, telling a story, reading a quotation or a short passage from a book.  Mix it up from meeting to meeting to be unpredictable, create a surprise factor and a sense of anticipation.  Frame the purpose of the meeting as a Question (how do we best …?) as the human brain starts thinking in response to a question so that everyone starts to get intellectually and emotionally engaged.

Tip #9:  Generate, Extend and Expand Input.  Generate input by asking everyone to “take a quiet minute to write something down and then we will go around the table”, or break them into pairs/triads, “to discuss and be ready to report out”.  These approaches set the expectation that we will hear from everyone.  Extend the input by saying “tell us more” or asking, “what-else?”, “how-so?”, “how does that fit with …?”.  Expand input by asking “what are our other options?”, “what are we not thinking about?” and “what are we missing?”

Tip #10:  Get Fast Consensus to Fast/Good Decisions.  We don’t have the luxury of slow/perfect decisions these days.  In any case, they typically turn into slow/bureaucratic decisions (we have meeting after meeting after meeting on the same issue!) and then slow/bad decisions (made by committee!).  We shouldn’t be making fast/reckless decisions either, with insufficient dialog.  The right answer is somewhere in between, fast/good decisions through fast consensus.  After facilitating a focused dialog with an appropriate sense of urgency and time criticality, it’s a leader’s job to make a judgment call about when to move for fast-consensus on a fast/good decision.  Say something like, “it seems like we have all the options on the table and, having listed to the dialog, on balance I am leaning towards option ….…”, “does anyone have any violent objection towards that?”, and, “can everyone get behind that?”.  If so, then move the dialog into one of implementation, “so, how would we best do that?”.

These top 10 tips will help you make your meetings traction creating and a crucial part of your agility as an organization.  Well-facilitated individual meetings and a well-designed portfolio of recurring meetings are essential.  Their absence means every hot-potato issue which comes up has to be handled through ad-hoc meetings, which is what typically tips most organizations into meetings overload.  Regular meetings are time-savers, chaos savers and crises savers.  They will help you get much more done, in much less time, with much less chaos!

Join Red Door’s Executive Creative Director, Lisa Schiavello, & the social summer interns as we begin the conversation about taking Creative Risks.

Want to join us? On Thursday, August 11th from 1 to 2 PM (PST) we’ll be tweeting via #creativechat  & @RedDoor  asking Lisa about some risky business!

Have some questions you want to create buzz about? Send ‘em to our Facebook or Twitter by August 10th!

Want to meet us face to face? Join us for our San Diego Speaker Series on August 24th or our Denver event on September 13th where the lively discussion around Creative Risks will continue!

Let’s chat.

Creative Risk Taking: When thinking outside the box just isn’t enough

The Old Spice twitter campaign. Subservient Chicken. Apple’s 1984. Great advertising has always been about taking risks. But it’s not just the creatives that push the envelope with their ideas. It’s also about the marketing leaders that are willing to approve work that makes them just a teensy bit nervous. Or the account director that provides proof points for why the risky idea is worth pushing through. Creative risk is a part of the process from start to finish and we all have the opportunity to take that leap of faith. Our panel of experts will discuss the importance of creative risk-taking and what it’s like to be the person who pulls the trigger.

Topics Include:

• What does “creative risk” mean to you?
• How do you and your team come up with that risky idea in the first place?
• What are some tools or exercises your team uses to break out of the creative norm?
• What categorizes something as a creative risk?
• How do you measure the pros and cons of taking a creative risk?
• What makes a risk worthwhile?
• What do you do if the risk doesn’t pay off?
• Once a risky idea is on the table, how can you convince the client, your team or yourself to say GO?

SAVE THE DATE
The Denver event date will be announced soon; and the San Diego event will be Wednesday,  August 24^th.

• 8:30 – 9:00 AM Registration, Breakfast & Networking
• 9:00 – 10:00 AM Presentation & Questions
• 10:00 – 10:30 AM Networking

Who Should Attend:
Creative Directors, Marketing execs, CMOs, Marketing Managers, Social Media Managers, Product Managers & Brand Managers for national consumer brands, retailers & anyone else interested in the topic.

 
Keystone Solutions
Rudi Shumpert, Sr. Director – Technology Solutions Group

Digital Measurement: Current Challenges and Emerging Opportunities

How does your comprehensive digital program measure up?

During any recession, the need to measure the profitability of online initiatives becomes even more important for your business. What types of traffic acquisition are working? Is your business converting potential customers into sales or leads? Are visitors engaged on your website? What is the overall profitability of your online efforts?

Because the online world changes fast, there will always be new digital measurement challenges. Are my social media efforts successful? From desktop to tablet to smart phone to gaming device, how can I track my customers? Is my buget best spent on traditional or online or social media branding and acquisition initiatives? How will the proposed “Do Not Track” and consumer privacy regulation affect your ability to measure your business?

In this lively discussion, our panel of experts will discuss the successes, challenges and opportunities in measuring online acquisition through website, mobile and social media behavior to get a 360 degree view of our customers. They will also will discuss and share what they are doing to prepare for the potential regulation of online tracking and data collection.

Topics Include:

• Website analysis and optimization
• Measuring mobile initiatives: successes, challenges and opportunities
• Data overload? How to identify what you should measure
• New analytics tools and capabilities
• Social media: moving from just getting involved to measuring your success
• Potential consumer privacy regulations and what they mean for your company

SAVE THE DATE
The San Diego event will be held on Tuesday, April 12th; and the Denver event will be Thursday, April 14th.

8:30 – 9:00 AM Registration, Breakfast & Networking
9:00 – 10:00 AM Presentation & Questions
10:00 – 10:30 AM Networking

Who Should Attend: Digital Analytics professionals, Marketing execs, CMOs, Marketing Managers, Social Media Managers, Product Managers & Brand Managers for national consumer brands and retailers.

The Review-Colorado
Ken Custer

The panel all agreed that mobile can be an intensively social medium and it is important that businesses work on a mobile model that is best for their needs, no where their customers are and set the goals they wish to accomplish with those customers. Mobile keeps a company in constant contact with customers and allows the company to add value and use location-based marketing. As mobile is still fairly new, it is not yet overloaded with messages and now is a good time to get involved. It also allows for the use of QR Codes and Snap Tags on products.

Full Story>>

The San Diego Union-Tribune
Tanya Mannes

You may not have to invest a lot of money up front to get your business noticed by iPhone users.

Businesses of all sizes are using applications that already exist instead of developing their own. Some are free while others have fees or require sponsorships, but they’re generally cheaper than building an app from scratch.

A few examples:

-A restaurant can sign up for the mobile website grubhub.com to allow customers to order food on the run.
-A store can partner with mycardstar.com so that customers can accrue “loyalty points” with any smartphone, from iPhone to Android.
-One toilet-paper company sponsored a bathroom locator, SitOrSquat.com.

Those were just some of the suggestions offered by San Diego marketing gurus at a panel discussion hosted Tuesday by Red Door Interactive, a firm that specializes in “Internet presence management.” About 50 marketing professionals attended the event to hear tips from the creative minds at Red Door, Brand Anywhere and the restaurant chain Johnny Rockets.

Full Story>>

Red Door Interactive is excited to kick off the year with the first of our Speaker Series events for 2011. Our event will focus on Practical Approaches to the Vast Possibilities in Mobile.

Think deeper than 2011 being the year of mobile.

We’re living in a unique moment in time where new mobile technology is reaching an adoption level that opens the door to tremendously powerful business opportunities for the future. Join us for a compelling and informative session that will provide examples of the truly pioneering, as well as, practical possibilities in mobile marketing and offer specific tools, techniques and strategies to help you create or advance your successful mobile strategy.

Topic Points:

• The vast and practical possibilities in mobile
• When does mobile make more sense than existing marketing efforts?
• Developing a mobile strategy
• Tools and resources that are available in mobile from free to enterprise level
• Putting it all together to create or advance your mobile strategy
• Metrics that brands are using to measure ROI
• What won’t be around in 2 years?

SAVE THE DATE
The San Diego event will be held on Tuesday, January 25; and the Denver event will be Thursday, January 27.

8:30 – 9:00 AM Registration, Breakfast & Networking
9:00 – 10:00 AM Presentation & Questions
10:00 – 10:30 AM Networking

We look forward to seeing you!

Thanks to everyone who attended the latest installment of our Speaker Series! For those who may not be familiar, we host quarterly panel discussions focused on specific online marketing topics. A group of subject matter experts and thought leaders in that particular subject engage in an interactive panel discussion. These events are hosted both in San Diego in our beautiful space on the 15th floor of Diamond View Tower (equipped with spectacular panoramic view of downtown and Petco park) as well as in Denver, CO at the hip and funky Fuel Cafe. Don’t miss our next Speaker Series which will be in January.

This latest event was focused on Social CRM: Understanding and servicing your social customer. Social CRM is becoming increasingly important as consumers no longer have to rely on a company to answer their questions about products or services, but instead can search the internet for reviews from consumers just like them. In response, brands must address that dialogue not only from marketing or PR, but from sales, customer services and product development as well. In short, companies can no longer silo their social media into a single department; it needs to be embraced throughout the organization and customer touch points.

For many marketers Social CRM can seem undefined and daunting but starting to employ a plan offers a wealth of opportunities to strengthen relationships with your customers. Simply put, embracing a Social CRM philosophy means no longer looking at social as simply another channel.  Instead, Social CRM builds on the understanding that the customer now owns the relationship.  For companies like Qwest and Comcast, that means they are relating with customers on Twitter in coordination with their traditional phone based customer support.  For companies like Vail Resorts, it means understanding the unique interests and opportunities of their social customer and creating engagement through user generated content such as  videos and photos.       

Whether you subscribe to the term Social CRM or not, embracing your social customer leads to a more genuine, mutually beneficial and lasting customer relationship.  In the words of Jive Software’s Ari Newman, “There will soon be two type of CEOs.  Those that embrace social business, and those that are looking for a job.”

Tools and resoureces: Jivesoftware.com, Google alerts, Addict-o-matic, Social Mention, BuzzStream, Hootsuite, Alterian, Radian6, crowdfactory.com, klout.com, flowtown.com, grader.com 

San Diego Panelists: Alan Cole (VP Media+Marketing , Active Network),  Brian Vellmure (Principal/Founder, Initium LLC), Crosby Noricks (Senior Social Media Strategist, Red Door Interactive) and Peter Green (Director of Marketing, Genica (Geeks.com)) made up our expert panel. Red Door Senior Strategist Brett Johnson moderated the hour long discussion on the increasing important and emerging topic of Social CRM.

Denver Panelists: Ari Newman (VP Strategic Partnerships, Jive Software), Stephanie Taylor (Online Marketing Manager, Vail Resorts Inc.) and Tony Felice (Senior Strategist, Red Door Interactive) made up our expert panel. Scott Esmond (Director of Business Development, Red Door Interactive) moderated.

Here are some photos from the San Diego event:

Here are some insights from the @reddoor Twitter feed (#reddoor hashtag to follow along):

“Social CRM: extension of CRM, recognizing u don’t own the conversation. SCRM listens to convo 2 learn about customers”

“Social CRM is the company’s response to a new brand of customer/consumer: The Social Customer. – @crmstrategies”

“Radian 6 and even Twitter keyword searches are tools to find influencers and customers. – @activeallen”

“Customer referral value is different than influence. Influencer make not purchase, but may advocate for your brand – @crmstrategies”

“Every single person has the capacity to be an influencer – whether on or offline. They have a network. – @pr_couture”

“A person is 10 times more likely to share information from a friend than something sent by brand. – @ActiveAlan”

“If you’re not able to respond fast enough, you can have a nightmare. Why risk it? Have a plan for responses – @pr_couture”

“Free monitoring tools: google alerts, addictomatic, social mention, buzz stream – @CRMstrategies”

“We often create a list of FAQ’s for responses. We set up community guidelines for Facebook pages to set expectations. – @pr_couture”

“Respond to the customer the way (channel) they want to be responded to. – @crmstrategies”

“We use Hootsuite to manage responses. Team and client has access to this. – @pr_couture”

“Check out Nimble.com (in beta mode) to bring social and CRM together. – @CRMstrategies”

“Customers don’t want to be managed, they want to be heard.” Ari Newman

Our next Speaker Series event will be in January. We hope that you can join us!