Andy Kennedy

The 5 Characteristics of a Good Driver

Good drivers…

1.) Are aware, they don’t sit in blind spots, make others unnecessarily slow down, sit in the left lane while going the speed limit, or wait until the last second when the “lane ends” sign has been blaring for 2 miles.

2.) Brake minimally. Guess what? You DON’T have to be on the gas pedal or brake at all times. Your car will coast. This is a great way to slow down efficiently. Also, overuse of brake lights can cause unnecessary traffic jams.

3.) Are Time Efficient. They creep forward on yellow lights when turning left, drive 10-12% over the speed limit, turn right on red, and take advantage of safe passing opportunities to avoid getting stuck behind slow traffic for extended periods of time.

4.) Are Fuel Efficient. They don’t accelerate too quickly off the line, look ahead so they can coast to red lights rather than stopping at the last second, and utilize the cruise control when at all possible.

5.) Are Safe. They don’t drive the speed limit, even if it’s 30, on Halloween evening when kids are trick-or-treating. They anticipate the moves of others to avoid accidents.

That’s all.

Branding Yourself for the Job Hunt

I recently relocated to Traverse City, Michigan to birth a new branding agency. This forced my lovely fiance into the job hunt for an elementary teaching job in Northern Michigan - one of the hardest places to find a teaching job in the country. With that in mind, I knew she’d really have to stand out from the flood of resumes schools receive all summer long. Here are the steps I took to make Carol Weatherford, star elementary teacher, irresistible.

1. Create a simple identity that genuinely fits your personality.

Build your brand by using the identity across all touchpoints. She’s a sweet, gentle, caring young lady and she absolutely LOVES purple. 

2. Create a flawless, informative, memorable resume.

I’ve never agreed with the idea that a single piece of paper listing one’s accomplishments is an effective method for finding good talent, but most employers expect it. So challenge yourself to create a resume that will stand out in a stack of 50.

3. Tell your story.

It’s great that you increased workforce efficiency by 12% or that your students showed a 5.7% increase in attendance during your tenure. But remember that you are selling yourself to a human. Appeal to their emotional side, let them connect with the real you.

Carol Weatherford: Online Resume View more presentations from CarolAnnW

4. Drive people to your personal about.me page.

At the top of her resume I created an about.me button and provided the link to her page. Here, employers could find more content like youtube videos of her students, information on her current teaching job, and photos. Call it overkill, but if nothing else, it shows initiative.

5. Be persistent.

Of course employers will say NO CALLS PLEASE. Of course employers will request that you ONLY email resumes. But I say forget that. If you follow the rules you’ll be just like everyone else. We printed everything out and sent it to 15 schools at a cost of $140. Carol called schools once a week just so they could get familiar with her name. It wasn’t as easy as the pdf upload and cross the fingers, but man it was worth it. 

RESULT:

She was offered a kindergarten teaching job at Grand Traverse Academy just 2 weeks after mailing the first round of resumes. 

The Long and Short of It; Visitor Time On Site as a KPI

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Is it desirable or undesirable that visitors are spending less time on your site? Yes. In the right context, both can be correct. Think about the concept offline. Best Buy’s units per transaction and customer time on floor have a direct relationship. On the other hand, a fast food restaurant would argue this relationship to be inverse. Below are some quick examples whereby both short and long time on site metrics may indicate strong site performance.

Shorter time on site may be desirable if…

• Leads are converting.
• Repeat visitors proliferate; they may not stay long, but they’re finding what they want. Google, anyone?
• Time on page for high value content represents a sizable percentage of visitors’ total time on site.
• Visitors are clicking on ads…and you’re getting a piece of the pie when they do.
• Drop-offs are exiting to view more information about you elsewhere.

 Longer time on site may be desirable if…

• Leads are converting.
• Your site isn’t e-commerce.
• Visitors are consuming pages with information about your offerings.
• You’re not generating revenue from advertisements on your site.
• Visitors are engaging with content; watching videos, leaving comments, playing with cursor trackers, etc.

The long and short of it; context is king. Analyzing metrics in a silo can be misleading.

Super Bowl Ads: Integration Fail

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If I were the only Monday morning quarterback critiquing last night’s Super Bowl ads you might expect to see a list of my 5 favorites, 5 duds, and plenty of self-promoting discourse about product positioning, creative excellence, and blah, blah, blah. But I’m not the first, thousands of bloggers beat me to it.

Instead let’s chat about last night’s digital integration fails, citing my favorite spot of the night (ok I had to) as a perfect example of how marketers are just barely missing the mark. Watch the ad…

Very cool. And the curves on that thing, whoa, looks like Ms. Ladybug went through a gender transformation. Last night this made me thirst for more information about the 2011 Beetle - (this is also known as an ad doing its job). So, like most Americans, when I’m thirsty for more information I hop on Google to get the story. But apparently VW doesn’t think like me. Below is a screen grab of the results returned as I searched for “2011 Beetle”.

Concept car images, automobilemag, examiner, and motortrend…really? Hey V-dub, your $3 million spot did its job…I actually cared about a Beetle last night. So why didn’t you buy ‘2011’, ‘Beetle’, ‘VW’ and sponsor the results for the time frame during the Super Bowl so I could get some more info? I mean, why not drive me to an incredible purpose-built microsite with sneak-peek photos, behind the scenes design work and a history of the slug-bug to supplement this great ad? Integration fail.

Takeaways:

1. Understand and predict behavior; if this marketing effort goes exactly to plan, then what?
2. Timeliness is key; for one moment in time I was excited about the 2011 Beetle, it may never happen again.
3. Mass media and digital content are both the chicken and the egg; there are no rules for which comes first.

To VW’s credit, the Youtube page is very cool and they now (at 2:00pm Monday) are sponsoring results on Google (albeit to a youtube channel with no additional information).