The Ad Club opened the conversation around its Annual Women’s Leadership Forum with this:

We believe it’s no coincidence that the first two letters of the word FEMALE also represent the periodic element of iron.

Iron.

Right away I knew that the event will highlight strong and empowered women – and I was right. I was fortunate enough to attend the inspiring event, which was filled with women in varying career paths. But the lessons I learned that day are useful to anyone – female or male – who wants to be a successful business person, entrepreneur, and leader.

The speakers talked about the different elements of leadership (ambition, passion, vision, influence, tenacity, perspective, compassion, creativity, and integrity).  Below are my favorite segments:

The Element of Leadership – Charlotte Beers, former CEO of Ogilvy & Mather and author of I’d Rather Be In Charge

As advertisers, we are all familiar with the TV show Mad Men, and Beers is considered as a “Mad Woman” (similar to Jane Maas). She was the first speaker at the forum, and she gave direct pointers on how to be in charge. She said that it is very important to know who you are and how you communicate it to others, and that relationships aren’t so much about how are you as part of the team, but also how you are when you step outside of the team. One of her tips was “to speak and behave ever more clearly, ever more persuasively, and always more memorably.”

The Elements of Vision – Janet Marie Smith, VP of Planning & Development, Baltimore Orioles

Smith works in male-dominated fields: architecture, construction, and baseball. She is credited for the redesign of Fenway Park. I particularly liked her stories on how other people think her job is all fun and games, but in reality it requires serious hard work and dedication. She said that that her most important skills are her organizational and communication skills – skills that may be cultivated and utilized for all sorts of industries and careers.

The Elements of Creativity – Rebecca Eaton, Executive Producer of MASTERPIECE and Downtown Abbey

While it was very entertaining to hear from the executive producer of the Emmy-award winning series, I think her tip for success was the most basic yet powerful: know your audience. As marketers, media planners, and social media enthusiasts, that is something that should be ingrained in us. She also offered the following suggestions: be brave, “communicate less” (take the time to unplug every now and then), be more quiet (listen more), and think more.

I have learned many lessons from the Ad Club’s Women’s Leadership Forum, but the tips that resonated with me are things I can choose to act upon immediately:

• Relationships aren’t so much about how are you as part of the team, but also how you are when you step outside of the team.
• Polish your organizational and communication skills.
• Know your audience.

And in the words of Rebecca Eaton,

Whatever you do, do the thing you love.

Do you have any strong, iron-willed, and empowered women who inspired you? Share with us in the comments section!

These days everyone is looking for outlets to express themselves, share interests, and engage with the content posted by others.  While platforms like tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram allow you to express and share your thoughts, images, videos and more – the platforms are so rigged.  While platforms like WordPress offer the ability to customize your blog or site as far as your imagination can take you, you need to have some skills or spend some cash to get everything just as you imagined it to be.

Times have changed, more people want to share their own customized web experience but many people don’t have the skill sets to make that come to life.  Here enters the opportunity founders of The New Hive capitalized on perfectly.

The New Hive is a fantastic new user friendly experience that allows you to build one-off website pages to express yourself – no HTML skills required.  This simple drag  and drop user interface  enables you to layout your page, customize and add any assets you want – video, photos, audio, etc.  Once you have your site ready you can choose to keep it private or publish it for others to view – share buttons are available for most networks and allow you to broadcast your creativity even further.   While the site is currently in beta and working on an invitation only membership at the moment, this platform has all the makings of a hit in my opinion.  Visit the site to learn more and request your beta invitation.

Image above courtesy of TechCrunch

We’re very happy and honored to announce that we’ve received 10 finalist nominations from NEDMA’s 35th Annual Awards for Creative Excellence! The awards show and final results will be held on June 26th. This is a great accomplishment! Congratulations to everyone that worked on these campaigns! View the categories and campaigns where we’ve been nominated.

See a list of other awards that we’ve won here.

Google AdWords for Video allows advertisers to create, target, optimize, and report on video campaigns via a specialized video dashboard.  The new interface integrates with existing AdWords accounts and saves advertisers time by eliminating the need to log in and out of AdWords and YouTube to set up campaigns and track performance.

In order to access all features, AdWords and YouTube must be linked and the video option enabled. Once completed AdWords advertisers can access the below dashboards from their existing account.

The added interface allows for simplified campaign setup, and includes several views to help advertisers analyze campaign performance by segmenting ad formats, networks, videos and more.

Some of the benefits of the new platform include:

• -Simplified, faster campaign and creative set up
• -New centralized video dashboard
• -Improved targeting options
• -Improved reporting, insights, and optimization
• -Improved budget control
• -Ability to test several targeting groups within a single campaign

In the new video dashboard tool, AdGroups are replaced by “Targeting Groups” which allows advertisers to test multiple targeting combinations within a single campaign. Advertisers can layer in targeting groups based on user demographics, video categories, user interests, video placements. As more targeting options are included, a helpful visualization of the targeting group is created to show exactly how each targeting group will function.

All of the possible video ad formats were also re-branded under the “True View” umbrella which includes the “In-Search”, “In-Display”, “In-Stream”, and “In-Slate” ad formats.

Summary of True View Formats:

While the new dashboard is a nice new feature, there are still some challenges with running effective video campaigns. One thing that is lacking is integration with the AdWords Editor desktop software that allows larger advertisers to create and edit multiple campaigns in bulk. In addition, category targeting is still a challenge, as the video category is determined by the user uploading the video. So in many cases, videos within a category might not be relevant to the target audience. Even when categories are limited, a lot of negative matching of specific placements will be required to ensure relevant ad placement.

Let’s be honest, marketing and advertising students in Boston have it EASY.  I speak from experience. As a Boston University COM ‘10 graduate, I took full advantage of the wonderful resources that this city provides to aspiring young professionals. Networking events. Tweet Ups. Agency Tours. Digital Workshops. You name it, I was there. Pivotal to my own accessibility to all of these great events was being a member of the Boston University AdClub.

Overdrive Interactive was proud to welcome the BU AdClub in April 2012

The BU AdClub is a student run ad agency that operates on the passion of it’s members, who volunteer what’s left of their spare time to provide local companies and campus groups free advertising services.  I personally owe a lot to the organization. I mean, its deep network (Melanie and Laura, if you’re reading this…HI!) provided me with the stepping stones that landed me in my current role as Account Executive at Overdrive.

I thought I’d lay out the background check above to show how my life has come full circle. No more than two years ago, I was the shy guy attending agency tours and information sessions. NOW, I am leading them. Cool.

Last Friday, Overdrive Interactive hosted an agency tour for the 2012 class of BU AdClub.  The word “tour” doesn’t really do the event justice, actually. Beyond the plastic penguins, client success posters, and Nicholas Cage cubicle shrine hanging in the social media department, there’s not too much space to mill (we’re still a small agency!) around.

The tour really ended up being a three hour Online Marketing 101 class for the students, ranging in class from Freshman to Seniors. Our CEO, Harry Gold, presented a synopsis of his half-day online marketing seminar, teaching them about social media marketing, SEO, and the importance of asking “And Then What” when formulating your digital marketing strategy. They learned about Online Media Planning and Social Media from Bianca Garcia and Sarah Mitus. I spoke to what aspiring professionals should think about when being an Account Manager, and Michael Orlinski, Director of Search, rounded things up with a crash course in SEM.

Shaun Campos speaks to a few Do's and Don'ts of Account Management

Anyone who works in this field knows that education is as important as anything in the road to success. What we don’t always realize, is that allowing yourself the opportunity to educate others is just as important as the education one actually receives. It’s a fact, and Overdrive loved opening it’s doors for the BU AdClub last Friday afternoon. Thanks again to Kaylee and the BU group for being curious about digital (and the tweet love, of course)!

Pinteresting. Very Pinteresting. Everyone is all abuzz about Pinterest. But did you know that it has a competitor who does a few things alittle better and who has slowly been creeping its way into the market share?

Check out my Game Changer segment on The Pulse Network, where I discuss the major advantage The Fancy has on Pinterest.

What about you? Have you used TheFancy.com for your business? What benefits have you seen? We would love to hear from you.

Ask anyone who’s part of the Overdrive team and they will tell you that we know how to have a good time. Whether it’s the Summer Outing, Holiday Party, monthly Last Friday Party or one of our many company pot-lucks it’s clear that we know how to mix work with a healthy dose of play.

However, most recently a curve ball was thrown at all of us. What do I mean?

Well, it all started with an announcement around an all-hands company meeting. Everyone was told that they were to clear their schedule on the afternoon of Friday, April 20th from 1:30 – 5pm, as attendance was mandatory. The meeting request went out a week in advance so not only did everyone have ample time to reschedule any commitments, it also provided everyone ample time to wonder what was awaiting them. Of course there was an agenda which read as follows:

- Discuss social initiatives
- Group think tank/brainstorm

We will be conducting a workshop and series of exercises aimed at facilitating cross-departmental communication and collaboration. All you need to do is come with an open mindset and be ready to have some fun.

While this did help to provide a framework for what awaited, many people were still wondering what all was going to happen. Needless to say, throughout the week anticipation was mounting, as those responsible for scheduling the meeting were uncharacteristically tight-lipped when it came to offering any further details.

Friday, April 20th – 1:30pm

The moment for the meeting had finally arrived. Soon all of the Overdrivers filed into Google (our main conference room) and the stage was set.

The meeting began with a short intro about the importance of teamwork and collaboration during which the theme of the meeting was introduced, which read as follows:

- Good Times.
- Good People.
- Great Team.

This was actually a very subtle hint at what was to come, as this is actually ¾ of the inscription on the Overdrive Fenway Brick which can be located in the Jim Rice section near Gate C at Fenway Park.

This was then followed up by showing the team images of three local “establishments” that Overdrive had previously held events at. Again, there was a subtle hint buried in what was shown as one of the three featured establishments was Harry’s Bar and Grill, site of the “Epic” Bill Holmes Going Away Party in April 2010.

By this juncture many Overdrivers were likely scratching their heads, but hey, they had to be there and this did seem to be leading to something.

Next everyone was asked “Why is today (April 20th) special?”. This brought forth a myriad of replies, but it was Shaun Campos who provided the answer that was being a sought…it was the 100th Anniversary of Fenway Park!

This of course got people’s mind’s going and you could feel the excitement building in the room. While going to the actual game would have been great, when asked what would be the next best thing, everyone was quick to answer, virtually in unison, “Watching It!”

With the cat out of the bag, everyone was provided with the following set of “mandatory” instructions:

Were people surprised? You bet! Were they completely psyched to be heading out for the afternoon to watch the Fenway Park 100th Anniversary Festivities? No doubt! Did anyone decide to return to their desks and continue working? No way!

Needless to say, it was a great and very memorable afternoon. I have to say that most everyone felt that the “meeting” was a great success in terms of discussing “social initiatives” and as far as facilitating a great “brainstorm” and “cross-departmental collaboration”, the venue change to Harry’s Bar and Grill definitively accomplished that objective.

Most importantly this event was about celebrating Overdrive and the great team that makes us who we are. Yes, we have lots of good times, but that’s because we have a lot of really good people who in the end make for a Great Team.

Thank You!

This is an exact replica of the actual brick that you can find at Fenway Park near Gate C in the Jim Rice section

“Your ad being seen matters more than your ad being clicked.”

After analyzing 18 advertisers, and over 260 million impressions, a new study by comScore and Pretarget found that there is only a 0.01 correlation between a banner click and a conversion (0 = no correlation; 1 = a very strong correlation).

Meanwhile, the study did find that viewing the ad, or hovering over the ad, had a stronger correlation to a conversion. It was found that there is a 0.49 correlation between hovering over a banner and converting.

So what’s the key takeaway? According to the CEO of Pretarget, “optimizing to viewable impressions or hover time is a better proxy for a brand advertiser than a click-through rate.” What do you think?

At the core of most successful businesses are two key commonalities, a good product and attentive customer service.   Social media has proved to be a game changer in the way consumers experience a brand and how they express their experience with your brand.  As consumers become more connected they are turning to social networks like Facebook to express their positive and negative experiences with particular brands.  This shift offers a unique opportunity for brands to not only get to know their customers better, but also address their negative experiences and make them right.

Simply having a Facebook page or Twitter account is not enough when it comes to social customer service.  You can’t simply make yourself accessible and wait for people to come to you – in that same vein, responding to negative experiences with a generic apology will do more harm than good.  So, what’s the best approach to social customer service?  It’s all about building continuity with your existing customer service strategy.  Like in traditional customer service – social is all about being accessible, building trust and managing your reputation.  I’ve chosen to provide you with what I believe are the most critical areas of successful customer service in the digital space.

There is one less mystery in the world of Paid Search today, thanks to Google AdWords providing additional insight about the elusive Quality Score (QS) metric. Quality Score as defined by Google is:

“An estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Having a high Quality Score means that our systems think your ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad. Having a low Quality Score, on the other hand, means that your ads, keywords, and landing page probably aren’t as relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad”

This was predominantly a “black-box” metric driven by several factors but largely by Click Through Rate (CTR). Much like Google’s Pagerank scaled metric it’s something to improve but very little insight has ever been directly given by Google. It’s been on many advertisers’ radars for years as Google rewards high quality score with often a lower Cost Per Click. There have been plenty of myths and legends on how to improve QS, but until today there was no way to know which element was dragging you down.

Starting today you’ll be able to get some insight on which element to focus on: Campaign Structure, Ad text, or Landing page experience. QS is still done on a Keyword Level and according to Google there has not been a QS algorithm change at this time. Getting this data it’s a bit “clunky” with having to individually roll-over each keyword to assess the new Quality Score elements ranking. As a QS Algo change is inevitable, NOW is the time to review this new insight. AdWords is still only providing elementary data of Low, Average, and High to describe the rank for each of the three elements; nevertheless it’s exciting to see if all the speculation these years have been correct.

Links:
Google AdWords Official Announcement