The <$10K Website

If you're a small company or nonprofit, here's the good news about websites: Many elements of a solid site are becoming increasingly commoditized and are getting cheaper. Cases in point:

- Most every site should be built on a content management platform (in other words, allow you to update it easily without paying an agency $200/hr. to add a comma). CMS platforms abound, ranging from "free and limited" to "expensive and robust." But the pressure is downward. Costs are going to come down as more and more elements of content management are packaged and commoditized.

- E-commerce functionality has also fallen to earth. Especially if you're a nonprofit, merchant accounts have also gotten more and more commoditized. In other words: Need to take credit cards? Not a big deal.

- Design should never be considered a commodity. I say this as the originator of Handshake Watch and as fervent opponent of using stock photography. But again, if the budget is extremely tight, the thousands of free WordPress themes out there can provide a decent design groundwork (although the integration from blogging themes to a "normal" website is not as easy as it looks).

This is all a long way of promoting one of my projects ... a website that took full advantage of this growing world of web commoditicization to give a nonprofit organization a good-quality site, with no handshakes or stock photography, linking to full e-commerce functionality and including some audio/visual bells and whistles--all for well under $10,000.

I mention this client because this client also represents a great cause: raising money to provide free legal services to people with disabilities and low-income families. So check out The Fund for the Legal Aid Society (and while you're at it, view their e-commerce section and send a few dollars their way). Thanks.

The Sorry State of Conference Room Communication

This has been a growing observation/pet peeve of mine for about three years now, and it has now reached epidemic proportions.

People don't communicate.

I'm serious. Everybody talks. Nobody listens. And the more people who are involved in any given communication, the less effective it is.

The first problem is the organizational setting. Some organizations are healthy and based on respect; others are clearly fearful and dysfunctional. You can tell immediately. My rule of thumb is that the people who claim to have "thick skin" and be "brutally honest" are actually the most over-sensitive and passive-aggressive. In the faux honest setting, people appear to confront each other without really doing it. By the end of the meeting, they're all nodding and happy, as if they've come to some agreement. In truth, they have come to no consensus whatsoever.

The second problem is this: Our verbal communication culture is mirroring our virtual culture. Right now I'm writing in one tab in Google Chrome. I have five other tabs open. I'm checking my email. I just got a call on my cell. I have IM open. According to my toolbar, I have 12 programs open at the same time, and I'm toggling between almost all of them.

In other words, if I get 30 seconds to devote to any one task, I'm lucky. Interruption has become the norm, so much so that we've internalized exterior interruptions and have started interrupting ourselves when no one else is around.

In conference room communication, the level of interruption is astounding. It used to be considered rude to start talking before the guy next to you has finished his sentence. Today, it's expected. Which means that when you talk, you have to talk quickly before you get interrupted. Talking, in fact, becomes a competition. Which is why in the end, everybody is talking and no one is listening.

Now tell me, if you actually got to the end of this post, did you do it without getting interrupted?

Viva la VIA?

Introducing the newest CC visual post, this time explaining in 90 seconds why Starbucks is making a branding mistake in introducing its new VIA(tm) instant coffee.

Strange Budfellows

Introducing the first Conk Creative TV commercial produced for Anytime Fitness. This is currently running for four weeks in five states. In Minnesota, you can catch it during the KARE-11 and WCCO morning shows.

Feedback welcome.

Simple Works

Once in a while I catch a real-life reminder of the benefits of "keep it simple, stupid"--or as former Gov. Jesse Ventura was fond of saying (in my opinion, Freudianically in relation to himself): "Keep It Simple AND Stupid."

Freudianically is not a word.

For all the hand-wringing about photography, copy and art direction, the concept (and how well it communicates) is what matters most. In this billboard campaign, which I see every day on the corner of Snelling and St. Clair, the client clearly wanted to communicate one thing: People who think they're driving "buzzed" instead of drunk are most likely fooling themselves, and they're a danger to themselves and the rest of us. How to communicate that on a billboard?

They could have gone any number of ways, but the execution they use is simple and perfect. First, they show the outcome, not the problem. (They could have pushed the edge and shown a cadaver, but that's going a bit too far.) Second, they show the exact same picture twice. The result is a Highlights Magazine effect, where you immediately start looking for differences between the two photos... only to realize, of course, that there aren't any.

Mission accomplished. Drunk driving and buzzed driving are the same thing. Stop fooling yourself. I get it.

The only worry now: a billboard that's so effective, it distracts drivers, like they're drunk. Or buzzed.

Red Flag Phrases, Part 1

Introducing a new feature on Chaos2Clarity joining the ranks of "BrandWatch," "HandshakeWatch," "Focus vs. Inclusion" and "Random Rewrites." I'm calling it "Red Flag Phrases." Its purpose is to provide some preventive medicine for the marketing world by exposing the words and phrases that mark the early warning signs of impending catastrophe.

Kicking off Red Flag Phrases is the mother of all red flags. If you or someone you love says the following in a marketing meeting, stop immediately:

"We'll do that in a Phase 2."

What does this phrase mean? It means that the client has scaled back its expectations and/or budgets for a particular project... or it's been decided that surviving politically means tackling things in smaller bites instead of all at once. As in, "We'd love to have the bells and whistles on our website, but let's just get something up in time for the trade show and handle everything else in a Phase 2."

In the realpolitik of marketing, this phrase is very common and completely understandable. The issues marketing directors face related to budgets, politics, deadlines and unreasonable expectations are staggering (especially today, when those who are fortunate enough to be employed are expected to do the jobs or two or three people).

The problem is, the phrase spells impending doom for a project. I'm quite certain that in some universe, at some time, Phase 2 has actually happened according to plan and everyone has been happy. I've yet to experience it myself. More commonly, what happens is that the creative agency does the interim work (minus the "Phase 2"), and the client isn't happy with the results. Why? Because Phase 1 is boring, and even though clients say they don't expect to see Phase 2's bells and whistles yet, deep down they really do.

The key for both sides in this situation is to stop for a second and hammer out what they really mean by Phase 2. More often than not, with early detection, Phase 2 can be reached in Phase 1 without anybody getting hurt. (I was going to write more about this topic, but I'm saving it for a Phase 2.)

SEO vs. Brand

I recently found myself in a place of clear brand contradiction. These are the moments when Philosophy (how you want people to behave) meets Behavioral Psychology (how people actually behave). And the two go at it until they either shake hands or kill each other.

Working with a client in a brand consulting capacity (Philosophy), I followed the adage that the best way to cut through in terms of marketplace positioning is to define not only your organization or product, but an entirely new category around it (think "SUV" or "overnight delivery service"). I thought they should define themselves in a totally different way than their competition, and then name it. I presented the idea. I proposed a name. They liked it. It was time to do a new website. Time to use the new positioning. Time to conquer the world.

I put on my writer hat and developed a whole page devoted to this new angle, this new perspective, this new term. I storyboarded an animation they could use to show it visually. Then I made sure to sprinkle the term throughout the site to achieve consistency, clarity, repetition and reinforcement. Mission accomplished, right?

Wrong. Now it was time to look at the site from the perspective of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO, at least in terms of title and description tagging, is the ultimate in behavioral psychology. To be effective, you have to live in the real world. What do people look for? How do they search for it? What terms do they most often use to find exactly the information they want?

SEO has quickly become one of the most important marketing considerations for virtually any company--especially business-to-consumer organizations. The problem is, it flies directly in the face of otherwise-effective branding. To effectively position something, you have to go against the wind. To make something SEO-savvy, you have to go with it.

If FedEx had been founded today, there would have been a huge fight among the marketing folks about whether to create the category of Overnight Delivery Service:

"It's original, no one else has thought of it!" would shout the philosophers. "And if we don't take it, someone else will!"

"No one is searching for it!" would shout back the psychologists. "It has no relevancy!"

In the end (as with everything except politics these days), the solution was a compromise. The new positioning could still be there front and center, but the site still had to be loaded with already-used keywords--both in the copy and in the tags.

Now comes the experiment: Will anyone start searching for the new term and create a truce between these two warring camps?