May 14th, 2009 by Steven Leung

In creating integrated marketing campaigns, or any company initiative, it’s essential to choose the right metrics so that how you’re measuring your success coincides with reality.  Here’s an example of how a company chose a metric that was both a cause and a symptom of a very large problem to come.

Over a decade ago, I had the opportunity to talk with the world’s largest technology company at the time about their hard drive business.  One of the managers there talked about how they were a metrics-driven organization and how they measured productivity.  He went on to talk about how every one of their programmers was rated based on the amount of code they produced.

That code controls how and how well the hard drive works, and it’s stored in memory that’s purchased and built into the drive.  The more memory you need to buy, the more expensive your COGS.

Code is like writing.  You can write either “six words to convey an idea” or “a long missive that meanders around the point you’re trying to make until you’ve finally communicated the gist of what you’re trying to say”.

The second phrase is four times more expensive than the first, but gets you a higher rating.  Basically, their way of measuring how successful their programmers were caused their manufacturing costs to rise in the same way.

What happened to them?  In 2002, the company sold the division, suffering 1,500 layoffs and a $2 billion charge in the process, including those “related to productivity initiatives”.

So what are the right metrics to use for measuring the success of your integrated marketing campaigns?  That’s the subject of our next blog post.

December 12th, 2008 by Steven Leung

In this article:

• Creating a community of evangelists
• Integrating online and offline community activities
• What every business can learn from a Christmas toy drive

Let’s not call them “virtual” communities anymore.  The people interact, they speak with passion, many create friendships, and their strength together can create action both offline and online.

Virtual communities are real communities built online.

And in a time when many more people are in need, online communities are calling people to action in the real world in ways that are faster and more effective than just traditional word-of-mouth, speaking engagements and mailers.

Case in point, the vibrant online community at Willow Glen 2.0, which is made up of over 500 residents of this San Jose suburb (total population 46,782) has called its supporters to action for the local Toys for Tots drive at the Garden Theatre in downtown Willow Glen.

This community has done what many businesses that have opened online communities haven’t been able to do: succeed.  The fact is, according to Deloitte’s Ed Moran as published in the Wall Street Journal, most online communities fail.  And the main reason cited is that “businesses are focusing on the value an online community can provide to themselves, not the community.”

For Oracle, in the early part of this century, I started one of their first online communities and signed up members from over 5,000 companies around the world without an extensive budget in marketing or technology.

I’ll talk about some of the approaches we used and the lessons we learned that contributed to our success — and how all businesses can learn a thing or two from the integrated marketing done by in Willow Glen 2.0.

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