11/18/2008:: Categories:
n-tara staff, fun stuff
Posted by Mary Ellen Miller, Director of Marketing
In our second installment of our getting-to-know-us series, David Siepert reflects on n-tara’s history and future.
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David Siepert
What is the most significant thing that you see coming down the pipe here at n-tara?
n-tara works has some new and exciting technologies that solve people’s communications challenges. What’s exciting on the n-tara interactive side is the strategic and long term relationships that we have established with new client companies like Hunter Fan Company and Edwards & Associates (Bell Helicopter company). I also think that our Sales Enablement solutions are going to continue to draw more and more attention and that we will be doing plenty more in the near future. We have been providing Sales Enablement solutions (interactive sales tools) for our clients since before I started at n-tara but we have evolved, and so have our offerings. I think the market has finally caught up with our capabilities and we are seeing more and more demand for these types of solutions.
What is unique about your role here?
I was the first account manager hired into n-tara in April of 2002. Previously to that the founders and principals did all the selling. Then they would project manage the job and there was the production talent who would produce the deliverables. I was the first extension arm of the company other than the principals.
Currently, I’m very excited about being the team lead for our Sales Enablement solutions practice.
What is the hardest thing you have to deal with pertaining to clients?
Sometimes clients make it difficult for us to help them. They do that when they withhold information; they don’t give us enough information to help them. We have a few relationships with customers that don’t withhold or filter information and we are able to help them a great deal. But then there’s some that hold back, like they have been through some sort of vendor management training from the 1950s…it just prohibits us from helping them achieve their goals. That’s the difficult part. But once you start helping them win they open up more and more to you because you gain credibility and they start to trust you -- that’s when we can help them more and more.
What’s the most significant thing you’ve had to deal with pertaining to a client in the last six months?
The most significant thing in terms of helping a client in the last six months, from my perspective, is the customization of the npowered Enterprise platform to meet Lexmark’s field sales model. To go in and really understand what they are trying to do and make it work for them, overcoming some challenges in the way their technology is set up and the way they run their business. n-tara’s provided them with something that is really, really helpful and we will continue to do so.
In your time here, are there any client visits that stand out as a unique experience?
Yes, the Iams / Eukanuba sales enablement tool for Procter and Gamble. Their famous mascot, a golden retriever named Euka, was usually in the lobby to greet me. The dog would sit with me as I waited in the lobby. Sometimes the receptionist would give me treats to give to Euka. Also, employees were allowed to bring pets to work and every employee had pictures of their pets all over their work space. It was a fun working environment to visit.
We also supported them with their interactive kiosks at their big national dog show. Their display vendor had configured the hardware inappropriately and the wireless data capture wasn’t working. Shane (McCown, VP, Production) and I stayed up all night the night before the show started, making trips to an all night Wal-Mart to get stuff to hard-wire the network. All of the dogs were asleep (thousands of them) and we walked in the back door. Slowly the dogs woke up. First a few barked, then some more, then even more. As we walked to the exhibit the noise of the barking got louder and louder until all the dogs were awake and barking. It was really loud. It was like something out of a horror show.
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Screenshot from the Eukanuba Sales Enablement Tool How have you watched n-tara evolve?
The best way to describe it is to go back and look at our tag lines and the evolution of our tag lines. We started a marketing department a month after I got here. That’s when Thomas (Eorgan) came in. Our first tag line was “High tech visual storytellers.” We centered around three skill sets that we were excellent in: one was 3-D visualization and animation, one was digital video (it was newer back then) and the other was interactive technologies. It was Web 1.0 at best then.
People would come to us with a communications problem and we would develop a solution that was usually a combination of those three components. That’s the logo – the original n-tara logo. The three arcs represent the three skill sets -the magic is in the middle, a combination of the three; something in the middle is created that solves the problem. As we evolved, we then became a “high impact visual communications company” then a “digital media communications company.”
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Seemed like a good idea in 2002 As we continued to hear different customer’s needs and problems and providing solutions for them we developed as a company. In the beginning we had the front end design work. Then we would hear from clients that “we want to measure that, we want this to do that without having to do the other thing, we want to have administrative control, we need several permission levels” etc.; we kept building up all this technology base behind the presentation layer which was really when we started developing rich internet applications. That was the birthing process of both n-tara works, and our Sales Enablement solutions practice.
In terms of n-tara interactive….we have evolved into a full service interactive agency. As companies got to know us, they started to utilize n-tara as experts in interactive marketing and sales strategy…..we have evolved from an interactive job shop to a long term strategic partner.
There is one thing that has not changed. I said this a long time ago and it still holds true. If there is an interactive communications challenge that needs to be solved for, no matter how complex, I would put our creative and production people up against anyone. They are truly world class talent. They are brilliant.
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"What will it take to get you to try some high-tech visual storytelling?"Next year is our 10th anniversary. Do you have any predictions?
By our 15th anniversary the world will be very different than it is today. We will be speaking in a new language about new technologies and new business models. n-tara will continue to evolve on pace with it all because our focus has always been on solving client problems. The only thing that will be the same is that everyone will still use TLA’s (Three Letter Acronyms), they will just be new ones.
What is your favorite n-tara memory?
My funniest n-tara memory is when we were working for UPS and we had to mail assets back and forth during the production phase of the project (back then the ftp sites weren’t as robust) and we had to ship media back and forth; and we shipped something using FedEx.
How did that go over?
It didn’t go over very well.
Did you keep the account?
Yes. It was a great project. And we quickly setup a UPS shipping account.
What is your favorite sandwich?
A good chicken parm.
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Dave's dream foodWhere do you get that around here?
Well they closed. Philly’s had a really good one. Philly’s had a New York chicken parm that was terrific. I haven’t found one that meets it but I haven’t tried all the places.
What is your home town?
Nutley, New Jersey.
What is something about you that we might not know or that might surprise us?
I was a college basketball coach for 14 ½ years at five different universities. I changed careers in 2000 because that profession was incongruent with my life goals and values. In college I installed underground sprinkler systems as a summer job. In high school I delivered pizzas in a 1978 Volkswagen bug (in Nutley, New Jersey, a suburb of Manhattan, just 12 miles from the Lincoln Tunnel.)
11/6/2008:: Categories:
marketing, news
Posted by Mary Ellen Miller, Director of Marketing
What an honor. Our company was named a Hot 100 Company by Business TN magazine in its November/December 2008 issue.
The magazine described the selected companies as being “fast-growing, emerging (and) simply full of promise.” Business TN said that companies listed in the Hot 100, “represent the best Tennessee has to offer in terms of entrepreneurial vision and growth.” It talks about our founding nine years ago, as the brainchild of three then-faculty members at the ETSU Advanced Visualization Laboratory. Amazing to think of where those humble beginnings have taken us!
Selection to the listing was based on several different criteria including revenue and employee projected growth over a period of years, growth as compared to industry average, projected growth, etc.
I had the chance to speak with our CEO Ralph O'Dell right after we were named to the Hot 100 and here is what he had to say:
“It is indeed an honor to be recognized as one of the fastest growing, entrepreneurial companies in the state of Tennessee,” said Ralph, “In the nine years that we have been in existence we have grown tremendously and evolved into a true thought leader as both an interactive agency and a software development company serving sales and marketing organizations within Fortune 1000 companies.”
10/22/2008:: Categories:
marketing, n-tara staff, news, PR, fun stuff
Posted by Mary Ellen Miller, Director of Marketing
Ralph addresses the hard questions, and some fun ones too, in this first in a series of get-to-know-you interviews with n-tara's Director of Marketing, Mary Ellen Miller
What is the most significant thing that you see coming down the pike for n-tara?
Business opportunity for the works group.
What is unique about your role here?
Being the CEO ….I’m very sales and marketing focused, so as the CEO I’m also CMO.
What is the hardest thing you have to deal with?
The hardest thing we have to deal with is to manage exponential growth on cash flow.
What is the hardest thing you have to deal with pertaining to clients?
From a sales and marketing aspect its setting their expectations and dealing with the very severe budget cuts and turndowns that we’ve had in the last six months.
Due to the economy?
Oh, yes. There’s no question we’ve been impacted by the economy although we still enjoy phenomenal growth it’s not at the same level it has been for the last five years.
The hardest thing we have to deal with, with clients, is getting information from them so we can do our job. Those are the two number one things in my mind that stick out.
What is the most significant thing that you’ve had to deal with a client in the last six months?
It’s the budget cuts with our two largest customers; 50 percent.
What is your favorite sandwich?
Oyster poor boy.
And how is that made?
Fried, oyster poor boy. It’s just a poor boy with fried oysters on it.
What is something we don’t know about you that might surprise us?
I ran a 4:19 mile in high school.
And I was a PADI SCUBA instructor for 11 years.
10/20/2008:: Categories:
marketing, website development, news
Posted by Andy Didyk, Director of Business Development
I love it when a new client website launches. There is so much that goes into it, from the initial sales effort, to ongoing consulting, creative work, development, quality testing, etc., that when it finally goes live one gets an incredible feeling of accomplishment (and sometimes a healthy amount of relief).
For the past several months, I've had the pleasure of working on changehappensindegrees.org - a funky site that is the beginning of the “Look Up” campaign focused on saving energy and money for a lot of people. The site is targeted at homeowners, who can reduce the amount of money spent annually on energy bills by up to $500 simply by using their ceiling fans and thermostats correctly.
Hunter Fan recently commissioned several independent studies that confirmed with cold, hard facts, what many assumed to be the case - you can raise your thermostat in the summer, and lower it in the winter, if you're properly using a ceiling fan to keep yourself comfortable. This saves energy and money while you feel basically the same level of comfort in your home.
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These studies caught the attention of celebrity environmentalist and successful actor Ed Begley, Jr., who agreed several months ago to endorse the campaign and who has begun a media tour in support of Look Up. What Ed, and everyone else involved in this project, is excited about is that unlike installing expensive solar panels, or re-insulating your home, using a ceiling fan and thermostat is something that most people can do with little trouble. It's a small step that most can take to both positively impact the planet and save some money.
We will be adding several interactive modules, including a region-specific home energy savings calculator, throughout the year, so I'll keep everyone posted.
n-tara interactive is partnering with Caffeine Communications (PR) and Doner (media buy) to bring the Look Up message to as many consumers as possible.
10/15/2008:: Categories:
marketing, fun stuff
Posted by Thomas Eorgan, SVP, Marketing
As the days grow shorter and the leaves begin to turn vibrant colors, I stop and realize Autumn is in full swing. My thoughts turn to....holiday e-cards, naturally. We normally produce our holiday greeting in late November / early December, and those days will be upon us before we realize it.
I can't say we're a very 'green' company, but we try to do our part. As a company, we recycle and take little steps to preserve our natural surroundings. We have managed, however, without real intention, to eliminate sending thousands of paper cards and envelopes during the holidays. Since 2004, we've issued interactive 'e-cards' and web delivered video to extend holiday greetings to our friends and customers. With the digital channel as our distribution method, we can also eliminate printing costs and mailing costs, plus reach a larger audience and extend our brand footprint through pass-along marketing.
The environmental benefit to sending an e-card is of course, reduction in waste. It is estimated that Americans will send over 2 BILLION cards this holiday season. That equates to over 250,000 trees sacrificed for Santa. And throughout the year, on a daily basis, 1.5 pounds of waste paper per employee is generated by a small to mid size company. So why not try to limit extra recycling load or landfill waste with an electronic greeting this season?
Financially, it makes sense as well. If the average cost of designing, producing and mailing a card is $1.70 (assuming bulk quantities and bulk mailing rate) and your company sends 3,000 cards, that equates to over $5,000. And that doesn't include the time it takes to construct mailing lists, print labels, add postage, and deliver the cards. This also assumes you're doing it yourself. Add a mailing service and the price increases.
By comparison, an e-card costs a bit more to produce, depending upon the level of animation, design, etc., but an e-card also has the advantage of being passed along to many more people beyond the original recipient. Not so easy (or desirable) with the standard printed corporate holiday greeting. An e-card we produced for a client resulted in over 100,000 views, passed along from approximately 25,000 original recipients.
So as we begin to strategize the theme for this year's holiday greeting, it's nice to know that we are contributing in some positive fashion to the environment and having fun while doing it. To see how much fun, click on the image below to view last year's holiday video, now a customer favorite.
Enjoy and consider "going green" this holiday season.
10/15/2008:: Categories:
marketing, sales enablement, fun stuff
Posted by Thomas Eorgan, SVP, Marketing
Would you hire this guy? Or THIS guy?
If you're a fan of The Office like we are, and you're looking for a hotshot new sales person for your company, you'll appreciate this campaign from CareerBuilder. You can vote for The Office character that you would most likely hire if you were required to pick from one of Dunder Mifflin's crack sales team.
Do you hire your sales force based on sales skills or soft skills? Do candidates with great personalities and a positive, winning demeanor appeal to you more than an industry performer with quantifiable results?
In our view, both types of personal skills can lead to great performers, with a little help. When we create sales enablement solutions for our customers, we first conduct interviews of top performers, middle of the road performers, and new, growing performers to discover their personal hurdles in the sales process. We've learned that often times the challenge isn't with the sales person's skills (soft or sales), but with the tools they are using to present to their customers and prospects. We've discovered that there is a general lack of understanding of products and services, and how offerings can be bundled for the greatest opportunity to make a 'solutions sell' vs. an individual product sell.
Through well designed and thoughtful sales enablement solutions, we are able to achieve wins for our customers through a more engaging presentation of offerings that elevates an entire sales team to top performer status. As a value add, these same tools can be used to impart product knowledge and training for new or existing sales professionals - same tool, same message, but for an entirely different need - sales training.
On our website, you can read about some recent successes with sales enablement solutions.
Meanwhile, sales enablement tools aside, who would you hire from Dunder Mifflin?
10/8/2008:: Categories:
marketing, news
Posted by Mary Ellen Miller, Director of Marketing
This report just crossed my computer from Marketing Daily. It indicates that internet ad spends were up 15.2% in the first half of 2008. No doubt this is a part of a trend toward increased online spending and a steady move away from the more traditional advertising channels. With the economy in its current mode, customers will demand and desire the ROI metrics that their internet marketing spend can provide.
10/8/2008:: Categories:
marketing, SEO, fun stuff
Cool retro Google logo, circa 2001 Posted by Thomas Eorgan, SVP, Marketing
It's hard to believe that n-tara is closing in on its 10 year anniversary (we were founded in May 1999) and another company you may have heard about is also celebrating 10 years in business this month: Google. In honor of their anniversary, they are letting users journey back in time to 2001 (their earliest available index) where you can search webpages and actually see many of the 2001 era webpages. When you click on a webpage result, you get taken to today's live version of the website. When you click on the link to "View old version on the Internet Archive," you are taken to the earliest 2001 copy of that webpage on the Internet Archive so you can see what the full webpage used to look like.
You better act fast, because the journey to 2001 search is for a limited time only: Google is turning off the feature in mid October.
As we all know, search has come a long way in 10 years. Back in 2001 there were a whopping billion+ web pages in existence and today there are over 1,000,000,000 (that's TRILLION) unique URL's. Google is now a verb, and thousands of firms (including us) have made search marketing a staple for their clients seeking to be 'front paged' in keyword searches. To that end, n-tara interactive has a suite of tools and a staff of experts that can help you dissect the art and science that is SEO.
While you're Google-ing, you might also want to check out Google 'Easter Eggs', hidden frivolity that Google has surreptitiously unleashed upon web surfers. PC World has compiled a great list of the 17 best Google easter eggs.
You can also view some fun facts about Google in their corporate timeline, including this nugget:
Google was originally called "BackRub". "In 1997, Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google -- a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web."
These guys truly had a vision.
Have fun and Happy 10th Birthday, BackRub Google!
10/6/2008:: Categories:
marketing, n-tara staff, news, PR
n-tara interactive welcomes Aaron King to our development team. As an interactive developer, Aaron creates and maintains websites and rich internet applications for our customers, utilizing a variety of development tools and programs. Aaron began working with us in May as a contract employee before moving recently to full-time status with n-tara interactive.
Aaron's technical experience includes work as a freelance PHP developer for Globi Web Solutions Inc., of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He was a PHP Programmer for Cannon-Sears Group where he developed and maintained web based applications for a wide variety of customers as well as sales of various web related products. He is a former PHP Programmer for Business Information Systems where he developed and maintained web based applications for various county level and in-house customers.
“We are always on the lookout for talented people like Aaron to join our team. We are delighted to have someone with his capabilities and skill set on board with us,” said n-tara interactive’s vice president of operations, Shane McCown.
Aaron is a 2004 graduate of East Tennessee State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science. He resides in Bristol, Tenn. with his wife Olivia and their son, Connor.
9/25/2008:: Categories:
n-tara staff, news
Posted by Mary Ellen Miller, Director of Marketing.
Jeff Morris has been named by the Business Journal of Tri-Cities/Tennessee/Virginia to the 2008 class of the 40 under Forty. Jeff will be honored at Friday's gala dinner at Millennium Centre. Jeff is n-tara's co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. With his leadership, the company has grown from five people at its founding in 1999 to over 45 employees serving Fortune 500 clients worldwide.
Jeff is a graduate of Purdue University with a B.S. in Technical Graphics and an MS in Computer Graphics Animation from East Tennessee State University. He was Assistant Professor/Co-founder of the Advanced Visualization Lab at ETSU. It became the premier site in the world for the program he and his colleagues created in Computer graphics and 3-D animation. Jeff designed and taught courses in digital imaging, computer animation, motion graphics and computer illustration at both the graduate and undergraduate level. The program grew from 47 students to over 350.
In addition to serving the students he taught and mentored through the years, he is an Eagle Scout.
9/24/2008:: Categories:
marketing, presentations
Posted by Mary Ellen Miller, Director of Marketing
Mary Ellen and Tim speak to the Tri-Cities P.R.S.A.
Media, Trends and Visibility that is.
That's the subject Tim Story and I spoke about at today's Tri-Cities Chapter of the P.R.S.A. (Public Relations Society of America) meeting in Kingsport. I covered some of the current PR Trends and then Tim took over with a discussion of SEO and engagement. I tried to synopsize some of the latest information that I learned at the Hubspot Inbound Marketing Summit held recently in Boston as well as some of the information I've just gathered along the way when it comes to today's changing face of marketing and PR. It was fascinating to talk with PR practitioners who are out there "in the trenches" every day and to get their take on where PR and social media is headed. We particularly had a good discussion around LinkedIn and the benefits of using it as marketing and PR professionals. The question and answer period was so lively and interactive they didn't want to leave. Maybe an afternoon-long round table discussion held here at n-tara is in the offing. I taped the whole talk for podcast and plan to post the slides as well to this blog. Be back soon with that information!
9/15/2008:: Categories:
design, branding
Posted by Thomas Eorgan, SVP, Marketing
Our creative director, Ethan Blumenstrauch, guided our brand development process and envisioned the story that’s told in the ‘gateway’ of each website. He’s a great storyteller, so in his own words, Ethan defines the meaning behind our new brands:
“n-tara’s focus is to create branded user experiences that connect buyers to brand, and sales to prospect, in an innovative, emotional way that inspires wonder and fuels business opportunity. Our designers relish the discovery of crucial consumer insights that organically – from the targeted individual user up - drive a user experience, and our creative culture is one of fluidity, flexibility and is highly reactive."
“In designing the brand signatures of both n-tara interactive and n-tara works, we turned to nature and viewed how organic elements – especially water – interact with one another. The brand signatures reflect the idea of “connection” in an ever-changing, always evolving fashion, much like an amoeba or sea-borne organism, hence the visual bridge between two forms contained within the mark. The particular shade of green utilized in the n-tara interactive mark reflected the rites of spring, the greening of a new season, signaling the birth a new era for n-tara. The particular shade of burnt orange used in the n-tara works signature reflects the larger idea of fire and energy.”
9/15/2008:: Categories:
marketing, design, branding
Posted by Thomas Eorgan, SVP, Marketing
With the launch of our new brands, you’re bound to have questions regarding our motivations behind why we launched divisional brands, and what the brands mean. I’m hopeful this post will explain our new direction. And don’t worry, the familiar ‘arcs’ of the original n-tara logo are still around, but now they’ve been joined by two closely-linked children to round out the n-tara family.
So first, why: the re-branding initiative was begun to better position our offerings to our customers and future customers. n-tara has always been a unique company – rich in the dual heritages of design and technology, fortified with an underlying current of strategy and the discovery of critical insights. With that much capability, (from a marketing perspective) it was often difficult to ‘bucket’ our offerings in the most efficient manner.
We also analyzed what our brand means through the benefits and value we provide to our customers. This exercise included reviewing every project we’ve ever put out the door and a detailed analysis of our customer interactions and why our customers keep coming back to us. We found one common thread throughout every endeavor: our work creates connections. This became our theme. Our new mantra started with a simple statement:
n-tara connects buyers and brands.
This was fortified with other connective relationships:
-sales and customers
-marketing and prospects
-presenters and audiences
Out of our own applied discovery process, we had a clear roadmap of how to revise our brand platform, create our new marks, and position our offerings. Out of this effort came the logo designs you see here, the color palettes, the messaging, the imagery, and so on. Ethan Blumenstrauch, our world-class creative director, led the redefinition of our brand, which you can read about in this post. Joshua Hathaway, our talented lead designer, materialized the brand platform into the graphic elements that you can see on our websites. And our peerless team, whom we’ll introduce you to individually on the blogs in upcoming posts, programmed and developed the sites and blogs.
Some brand facts:
1. The original n-tara brand mark ‘arcs’ symbolized the synergy of three core technologies: animation, interactive, and digital video
2. The word ‘n-tara’ is a derivation of a Malaysian word meaning ‘between the curves, between time and space’. The word was chosen for its symbolic meaning…and because the five letter domain name was available back in 1999.
3. The n-tara company logo was reverted back to its original dark charcoal color from a brown/orange color used for the past 3 years
4. The icon in the new interactive and works marks is symbolic of human connection, and the potential for connection. Thus derived the ‘glue’ metaphor on ntarainteractive.com
5. The two marks are nearly identical in design to symbolize the close collaborative, cross-functional relationship of the divisions.
We hope you enjoy our ‘new look’ as much as we do. We’re always open for your feedback, to help us continue to grow our company and most importantly, to better serve you.
9/15/2008:: Categories:
branding, website development
Posted by Thomas Eorgan, SVP, Marketing
Welcome to the our new front door - an all new online experience for n-tara. The websites and blogs you are viewing represent the materialization of our new brands: n-tara interactive and n-tara works. For an interactive design firm to launch its own new web presence (even a single one) is a daunting task, especially for our company, which has seen phenomenal growth over the past 4 years. It’s daunting, because our pipeline is full of online endeavors, sales enablement tools, and branding strategies for our growing customer base. But, we made a committed effort to apply our discovery and development processes to the creation of our own websites, with good success.
The new websites are a work in progress, with many improvements to be made. We hope you’ll keep visiting the sites to see additional features and content, and we especially hope you will subscribe to our blogs and join in conversations with our team and other marketing professionals.
Again, thanks for visiting, thanks for being supportive of n-tara, and if you find any bugs or misspellings - or even colloquialisms -please don’t hesitate to point them out to us.
9/15/2008:: Categories:
marketing, social media
Posted by Mary Ellen Miller, Director of Marketing
Mary Ellen Miller and Brian Halligan swap cards at the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Summit.
If there is one thing that I can feel confident of after the Hubspot Inbound Marketing Summit I just attended in Boston it is validation. Validation that in creating this new web site, and in particular this blog, n-tara interactive is capitalizing on the sea of change that is currently taking place in this country. Marketing as you and I once knew it is taking its last gasps.
As Seth Godin said in his keynote address, every 30, 50 or 70 years an industrial revolution takes place and we are in the midst of one now.
Godin urged the sell-out crowd of 300 professional marketers to “be remarkable.” Then tell the story and spread the word. This blog is one opportunity for n-tara to tell our story (to our sneezers as Seth says) and spread the word.
What makes us remarkable?
Here’s a quick history:
- Three Purdue colleagues begin teaching at East Tennessee State University in the 90s.
- They plant the seeds for what becomes the premiere advanced visualization laboratory site in the world. (Competing against Singapore, Vancouver and 11 other cities around the globe.)
- They watch their students going to Sony and other places in California and say “Let’s stop the brain drain. Let’s keep these people here where we have such a fabulous quality of life in the mountains of northeast Tennessee.”
That was nine years and hundreds of awards ago. The most recent of those awards was Best of Show at the Horizon Interactive Awards (our work for client Xerox Global Services competed against over 1000 entries from agencies around the world.)
Now that is remarkable. Gesundheit!
9/15/2008:: Categories:
marketing, events, PR
Posted by Mary Ellen Miller, Director of Marketing
“You must unlearn what you have learned.” -Yoda, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back(as quoted by David Meerman Scott at the Hubspot Inbound Marketing Summit, Boston, MA September 8, 2008)
All of us in marketing/PR these days are in the process of unlearning.
What were once tried and true methods of reaching an audience are now becoming the ways of the past. As PR folks, we no longer have a target audience of just a few key journalists. Likewise, as David Meerman Scott told us at the Hubspot Inbound Marketing Summit, marketers used to focus on nameless, faceless prospects. Today there is no such thing. There’s a human being connected to each personal engagement out there and as Scott says, one can become 80,000.
Scott told us to “think differently” and be “willing to lose control.” This made me think of Tiger Woods. He attained some of his greatest feats after stepping back, and along with his coach, breaking down his swing and unlearning it. Each time he broke it down, he would go through a lull only to later achieve even greater victories with the new swing.
For those who haven’t read Scott’s book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” as the cover states, it discusses using news releases blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly. No more middle man. We all must think like a publisher. I read the book just before joining n-tara earlier this year. I knew that it was time to step into a new world and break down my swing after years of traditional marketing and PR.
I’m still in the process of unlearning but the conference made me realize we are all unlearning together. This blog is just one part of my new swing. Fore!
9/15/2008:: Categories:
marketing
Posted by Mary Ellen Miller, Director of Marketing
What’s it like to be around 168,000 of your closest friends? Anyone who has ever been to the night race at Bristol Motor Speedway, knows.
This year we took n-tara interactive’s clients and friends from New Hampshire, New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C. on a trip to see “racin the way it oughta be” at the Sharpie 500. Turns out they were in for a treat as they got to see some bumping and jockeying for position and a race that really got under way after 470 of the 500 laps when Carl Edwards sped past Kyle Busch and never looked back.
Our company has 30 seats in the Bristol Club suite. The fantastic folks at Bristol Motor Speedway took great care of us, making sure we never went hungry or thirsty. Our guests had the opportunity to go on a track tour and see the cars up close as the crews worked on them just prior to the night race at “the world’s fastest half mile.” For the second year in a row Edwards emerged the victor in the #99 Office Depot car and marked the win with his trade-mark back flip to the delight of the crowd.
The most exciting part for me was walking down to the track with my husband while the cars were racing. All of our senses were engaged as we got to feel the heat and the grime, hear the sound of the engines (even with earplugs), smell the rubber and the exhaust and be one of 168,000 NASCAR fans. On that particular night in August, Bristol Motor Speedway ranks as one of Tennessee’s largest cities.
It was a great time and we think we’ve even turned some of our friends from across the country into NASCAR fans! (Thanks to Harold Ross Jr. for the photo above.)
9/15/2008:: Categories:
marketing, website development, events
Posted by Rachel Whitten: Manager, Online Marketing Strategy
Learn. Discover. Network. Explore…. That’s the theme of the Ektron Synergy 2008 Worldwide Customer Conference coming up October 21-24 at The Westin Boston Waterfront. n-tara interactive is pleased to sponsor and participate in this year’s conference which will showcase best practices, real-world examples, tips and tools for effective website management.
If you’re privileged to be among the attendees, please stop by our booth and meet Neil Owen, chief operating officer, Bob Markham, chief strategy officer, and Thomas Eorgan, SVP of Marketing. Also, make plans to join Bob at our table for an interactive lunch and learn discussion on engagement.
What is engagement? How can it strengthen conversations with your customers? How is it measured? Bob will share insights into why engagement is the hottest marketing initiative, how to create engaging experiences, and how to measure the success of your online marketing ventures.
We hope to see you there!
9/15/2008:: Categories:
marketing, events
Posted by Rachel Whitten: Manager, Online Marketing Strategy
This November, n-tara interactive will be attending the 12th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference: The Marketing Edge. The conference takes place November 10-12 at the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate in Orlando.
The conference will be two and a half days dedicated to helping those in the healthcare industry pinpoint the technologies, strategies and solutions to best position their organizations for a consumer-driven future. The information to be presented promises to help us better serve our clients in the healthcare industry, and it’s a great networking opportunity.
If you’re planning on attending the conference, please be sure to stop by our booth and say hello.
9/15/2008:: Categories:
marketing, social media, presentations, events, SEO
Posted by Rachel Whitten: Manager, Online Marketing Strategy
On August 22nd, n-tara interactive was privileged to have several clients and other marketing professionals join us for a seminar entitled Reach, Engage and Measure: Building Successful Customer Relationships.
Thomas Eorgan, SVP, Marketing, delivered the first presentation, nSight Segmentation: Paint a Complete Picture of Your Customers and Prospects. Thomas discussed how n-tara interactive’s segmentation methodology, nSight Segmentation, differs from traditional segmentation studies in that it examines three dimensions – needs, attitudes and behaviors – and cross-tabulates the data to reveal factors that motivate audiences to make purchase decisions, as well as the best messaging and media to reach the target audiences. Not only does an nSight Segmentation Study predict revenue driving behaviors, but it uncovers opportunity gaps between importance and satisfaction among segments with common needs. Thomas backed up his claims with a case study of an nSight Segmentation Study we performed for Bristol Motor Speedway – which was appropriate since the seminar was held on the morning of the NASCAR Nationwide Series Food City 250 at nearby BMS. You can learn more about nSight Segmentation and take a fun little ‘quiz’ at www.nSightSegmentation.com.
Next on the agenda was Bob Markham, EVP, Strategy, talking about Engagement: Marketing’s New Imperative. Bob explained what engagement is and why it’s important. As one example of engagement, Bob showed the very entertaining YouTube video of the Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments. It’s a great example of customers engaging with brands, although it’s probably not the way the Diet Coke and Mentos intended. Nevertheless, the reach has been incredible with hundreds of thousands of viewers.
As an element in the engagement process, Bob went on to explain search engine optimization and dispelled five myths about SEO. He discussed selection and measurement of KPIs (key performance indicators) and techniques to improve a site’s search engine rankings. Then he elaborated on the four stages of engagement: involvement, interaction, influence and intimacy, and the metrics used to measure each step. For a copy of the SEO myths and an overview of the stages of engagement, please download this pdf.
Last on the agenda was Neil Owen, EVP, Strategic Solutions. Neil’s presentation was entitled Web Analytics and Measurement: Making Sense of the Data. To begin, Neil summed up the challenges of web analytics with a very appropriate quote from Albert Einstein that is worth repeating - “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” That statement couldn’t be more true about the topic at hand.
Neil discussed factors that influence web site traffic, like SEO and SEM, site structure, design, copy, meta data, titles, links, etc. He then explained Forrester’s Three Step Process for Establishing Website Performance Metrics: 1. clarify site business goals, 2. identify critical tactics, 3. choose indicative metrics; and he reviewed key questions that should be asked during each step.
At the end of Neil’s presentation the floor was open for a lively discussion. All in all, the morning was very informative and a great opportunity for networking. Those in attendance offered positive feedback.
We hope to hold another presentation in the spring. If you would like to be added to our invitation list, please email us.