The Year That Was: 2007

At Kinesis, we’re all about momentum, moving forward, perpetual motion. But at the end of the year, it’s worth a quick look back to examine what went right and what went not so right in the digital marketing world. And what a year it was.

While many Kinetics met personal milestones like weddings, engagements and babies, (congratulations Paul Sekerka, Kate Rumore, Diane Puma, Katie Babinski and Anthony Vespucci) as a group they lamented the fizzle of Second Life. While we all heralded the release of the iPhone itself, the iPhone campaign left us under whelmed in comparison to the Mac vs. PC ads.

It was the year of Intranets and Web 2.0, as social networking, content-rich, user-driven sites, ajax and flash became tantamount to digital marketing, while mobile marketing still never found its groove.

Windows Vista was perhaps the biggest let down in 2007, although not entirely unexpected, especially to Mac lovers, and re-designs of both Amazon.com and Yahoo.com reaffirmed the status of two of the Internet’s mainstays.

Email marketing continued its decline, while search got local and overall ad spending continued its meteoric rise. TV watched both DVRs and the Writer’s Guild strike claim more advertising casualties, even while all the networks fortified their Web presences.

On the home front, the Kinesis Knights softball team went 10 and 2 in its inaugural season, losing in the last round of the playoffs in a game of questionable integrity, and the annual paintball outing once again left no client or staffer MIA.

It was also the year of User Experience, as a reorganization of Kinesis’ IA practice, led by Brian Kempf, began paying dividends, winning two prestigious Nielsen/Norman Group awards, one for the Comcast Store and one for ColdwellBankerWorks.com.

The circle K saw its creative product jump a few notches with stand-out efforts by newly promoted Design Director Trevor Aldinger for Comcast and Coldwell Banker, Larry Latore for Coldwell Banker and Goodwill and Amanda Thieme on Gain Capital and Coldwell Banker Commercial, and the media team’s Frank Puma made Second Life a real estate reality for client Coldwell Banker as Mike Pierre took the reigns on Web 2.0.

The Program Management team added Katie Babinski and Amanda Sackawicz and also made remarkable strides this year, taking control of the work product and solidifying new relationships, including those with new clients Gain Capital, Equifax, Feedroom, Anbau Enterprises, and Great Freedom, three of which were led by Pam Holland.

On the technical front, it was a very big year. 2007 saw the addition of Derek Grier as a technical lead, the release of the new Comcast Store, the successful integration of Canada into the Coldwell Banker system, and widgets for Siemens, Wyndham and Coldwell Banker, just to name a few.

And with the addition of new clients Deloitte, Rodale and Round Table Brewing, the stage is set for 2008 for Kinesis to continue generating business momentum.

Yes. It was a very good year.

Widgets are Predicting the Digital Future

We spend a lot of time thinking about where this is all heading around here. By “this” we mean the web, interactive marketing, and the like. One of the things that we’ve been thinking about lately is those nifty little items you can download to your desktop to keep up on sports scores or the weather or the top ten

iTunes singles or just about any other piece of information that you deem important enough to want to reach to in an instant. We’re speaking of course about Widgets (or Gadgets for those of you brave enough to be using the first release of Windows Vista). And we’re not the only ones. Widgets are fast becoming the most recent belle of the interactive marketing ball (see this ClickZ article for instance.)

And for good reason. Widgets are beautiful little applications that are more than a novelty from our perspective. They truly are the future of the digital landscape. Today, you can visit Yahoo Widgets or Apple Dashboard and download thousands of different mini desktop applications that will help you reach the information you want even faster than going out to the web. Download them to your desktop and bang! Instant access to Martha Stewart Recipes.

But this is just the beginning. We’ve just launched two such widgets: one for our client Coldwell Banker and one for SIEMENS. Both these widgets stream data to the desktop so that users can instantly and constantly be updated on either new listings on coldwellbanker.com or, in the case of SIEMENS, on the latest NCAA Tournament scores (Also look for the new SIEMENS Sports Gadget coming soon). But what makes these widgets so interesting is not just the info they provide or the way they brand the users desktop. It’s because folks, this is where the entire digital space is heading in total. Imagine having widgets not only your desktop, but on your cell phone, pda, ipod, or any other portable digital device. In fact most major e-commerce sites are already getting “widgetized.” In other words, you as a user will be able to visit a site and pick the section, function, or data points that you want instant access to and drop it from the site right to your desktop in one fell swoop. (HINT: Kinesis is working on a site for a major client now that will allow this very thing. Stay tuned to this blog for more.)

The benefit for users is obvious – instant access to information they want when and where they want it. The benefit to marketers is that when you package relevant information and make it easily accessible to your users, you make your customers and prospects happy, strengthen your brand, drive more traffic and increase sales. Pretty obvious, right?

So think about widgets and gadgets. Start testing the waters. The technology is here and now. What can you do with it?