Traction named Top Interactive Agency for 2nd year in a row!

We're drinking champagne again this week! BtoB Magazine just named named Traction runner-up for Interactive Agency of the Year for 2010. This on the heels of our winning Agency of the Year for 2009. Here's a snip from the article:

“What differentiates us is that we're thinking about how the marketing landscape works in a world where the funnel no longer exists, and we're creating plans that not only move people toward conversion but toward a conversation,” said Adam Kleinberg, CEO of the San Francisco-based agency. “We believe everything is interactive.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

PRESS RELEASE: Traction named top interactive agency by BtoB Magazine

We're shouting from the rooftops and cracking the champagne over here at Traction. BtoB Mag just named Traction THE NUMBER ONE INTERACTIVE AGENCY IN AMERICA. Wowsa.

Here's the press release:

Traction Named #1 Interactive Agency for 2009 by BtoB Magazine

SAN FRANCISCO – April 7 - Despite the turbulent economy, San Francisco interactive ad agency, Traction has had a year of new account wins, growth of existing accounts, award-winning marketing innovation and now, has been recognized by BtoB Magazine as the top interactive agency in the United States for 2009.

Traction’s billings soared by over 60% in 2008, fueled by new client wins for business-to-business clients such as Adobe, California Bank & Trust, Message Systems and Egencia (an Expedia company), and consumer brands like Walmart.com, CamelBak, AAA and DriversEd.com. The agency also saw additional revenue from growth of existing accounts, including Sun Microsystems.

Traction also has confidential relationships with one of the largest financial institutions in the U.S. and one of the most celebrated consumer electronic companies in the world.

Each year, BtoB names the top business-to-business agencies in the country. Traction was selected as the winner in the Interactive Agency category. Digitas was the runner-up in the category.

BtoB’s selection criteria include new account wins, growth of existing accounts, quality of campaigns and marketing innovation.

"We are a creative agency with a digital core. We are strategic in everything we do and see every point of contact between brands and their customers as interactive," said Adam Kleinberg, co-founder and CEO of Traction, winner of the interactive agency category, "we’ll use print or television, but view them as part of an interactive experience that always drives consumers online. What we do is design experiences—brand experiences, social experiences and user experiences—that seamlessly move people from awareness through conversion."

Traction’s main areas of focus in 2009 were providing a clear path to ROI for every engagement and developing best practices for emerging media channels. "We knew that for us to be successful, we had to become a metrics powerhouse so we could provide the value they need," said Kleinberg. "For our clients to be successful in a changing media universe, they also need to provide value to their customers. Innovation has been the key to make this happen—for both our agency and the brands we’re privileged to work with."

You can read the special report, 'BtoB' Top Agencies Report: Not all gloom and doom, in its entirety at http://tinyurl.com/btob-topagencies. Traction is featured at http://tinyurl.com/btob-traction.

About Traction
Traction is a creative agency with a digital core. Founded in 2001, the agency has crafted interactive marketing programs for Adobe, CamelBak, Clos du Bois, Sun, Virgin Mobile and Walmart. To view Traction’s work, visit www.tractionco.com or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/traction.

Online marketing in a downturn

I attended a BtoB Magazine marketing event this morning here in San Francisco. Some interesting presentations from client-side marketers and some good insight during the Q&A session into how companies are reacting to the financial crisis. The presenters were from SAP, Sybase, Visa and Barclay's, so it was a good sampling.

So, how are these companies approaching the meltdown in the market? Differently.

If you want to skip the details, here the summary;

SAP - cutting budgets
Sybase - increasing budgets
Visa - not changing budgets

If you do want some details, keep reading...

My friend and client, Kevin Cox, Director of Strategic Initiatives for SAP Global Marketing told us that SAP is cutting budgets—but will continue to invest in building their brand while striving to find the most cost-efficient means of driving traffic to their online properties. He stressed that while budgets were being trimmed, "we're not shutting off the lights." Comforting.

Kevin gave a very insightful presentation on how SAP has evolved their use of search. SAP first started using SEM as a more cost-efficient means of driving traffic than print and traditional direct marketing. However, after observing their online properties, they found that investing in SEO by developing search engine-friendly content led to even more traffic through organic search. So much so, that now, they've abandoned landing pages and now focus on building optimized resource centers for customers on their website. Is it working? These resource centers are getting 40% of their traffic from organic search.

SAP is cutting, but Sybase is going the other direction. Mark Wilson, their VP of Marketing feels like now is the time to make some noise and be provocative. He said that Sybaseis actually increasing the budget for a new campaign set to launch in the coming weeks. Comforting.

He also characterized himself as a "chronically stingy" marketer and gave three tips for inexpensive, yet effective techniques he thinks works.

1. Video. Lots of it. Sybase is shooting cheap, single camera videos with limited production value of product managers writing on whiteboards, product demos (imagine someone just holding up an iPhone and walking you through an app) and customer testimonials. Then they distribute them everywhere they can: the web, sales presentation, even email. He cited a 50% increase in email newsletter click-through rates when Sybase started adding video to their emails.

2. Mobile. It's easier than you think to publish a short-code and get a mobile program up and running. Sybase used it at a golf event they sponsored and awareness rates for those who received the mobile ad were exceptionally high compared to those who didn't.

3. Conversation Monitoring. We've done a bit of this at Traction for some of our clients. There are a number of vendors out there that allow you to monitor the volume and tone of conversations about your brand and your competitors online. Sybase monitors them regularly to see what the customer is saying about them and adjust their messaging accordingly.

Alex Craddock said Visa is "keeping marketing budgets static" and continuing to shift toward online media and finding innovative new ways to connect with their customers. Comforting.

He showed off their Visa Business Network Facebook app which is pretty cool. I actually had joined it a few months back because they give away $100 free credit in Facebook ads as an incentive for joining. Great incentive. Very relevant to their mission of helping small businesses leverage new channels like Facebook. The app is kind of a community with a community on Facebook. I'm not sure if they've actually created a valuable tool that has staying power, but they have 70,0000 people who have added the app, so if they can continue to provide ongoing value, this could be a really great program for Visa.

Also spoke to a few agency people I know. Like Traction, they are staying busy and doing well (knock on wood). Interestingly, Traction is participating in an RFP for a major travel company right now. The reason they are looking for a new partner: because they want to shift their marketing budget online and need a partner that can help guide them toward a path of being ROI-focused marketers. We also just won a major account (that I can't talk about yet) that is looking for us to come up with big viral ideas—that are not dependent on big media budgets. Seems like a trend.

So, there you have it. The trickle has not yet come down whole hog on marketing yet. I'm sure it will, but the trend is toward innovation and online channels. I'm glad Traction doesn't make our bread and butter on mega-budget TV spots.

It's official. Traction is a hot shop.

I'm kvelling today. I just got a copy of BtoB Magazine's Interactive Marketing Guide 2008. Traction was one of five agencies in San Francisco (I think seven in the Bay Area) named on their list of Interactive Agencies in the US. The others include AKQA, Organic, Butler Shine & Stern, Modem Media, Eleven and Publicis. Pretty good company to keep—especially since I'd venture to guess we're the only one on this list under 50 people.

Woo hoo.