Traction pulls ahead

San Francisco Business Times just published this article on Traction. You can read the original here.

Ad firm Traction's software supports creative side



As far as Adam Kleinberg is concerned, there are ad agencies and there are software companies. Traction Corp. is one of the few that blurs the line between the two.

“We work across integrated branding and advertising, interactive experiences and social media to create experiences and align human behaviors with the brands,” said Kleinberg, founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Traction. “We’re as much a software development company as we are an ad agency.”

This model of combining advertising principles with web applications has worked for Traction. Over the past three years, the company has grown 105.5 percent, to $3.7 million last year from $1.8 million in 2006.

Illustrating this is a campaign the company created for Adobe in 2008 that involved a Facebook application that allowed users to guess if an image was an original or modified using Adobe’s Photoshop software.

“They wanted to reach out to the college student audience, so we created a game called ‘Real or Fake’ that leveraged images created with Photoshop,” Kleinberg said. “It provided a really successful brand engagement for Adobe’s customers.”

Kleinberg said the company tries to align a brand’s business objectives with human behavior through something it calls “engineered marketing.” The traditional marketing that had audiences move from awareness to consideration to intent to purchase doesn’t work anymore because “consumers can consume media on their own terms,” Kleinberg said.

The company’s blend of traditional and interactive ad experience led to an identity crisis early on, said Kleinberg, who has a web design background. “Were we a web development agency or an ad agency?”

But Kleinberg and the company’s other founders, Theo Fanning and Paul Giese, who all worked together at Tribal DDB before founding Traction in 2001, decided they were both and decided to combine the two.

The lines were blurred further when Traction was hired by Bank of America to create an Internet application that allowed customers to engage with the BofA brand while investigating their personal finances through the bank’s web site.

“It was truly different from anything the bank had ever done before,” said Tim Brown, who was creative director for Bank of America’s e-commerce division. He has since moved to a similar position with Kaiser Permanente.

“Instead of just taking what we thought would be a good idea, they really went to town and did great research on how people view their finances,” Brown said.

Kleinberg said 2008 was the company’s best year, and despite a tough beginning to 2009 he expects the company to come out of the recession stronger.

“At the beginning of this year, we had two months where most of our clients froze and we were very touch and go,” Kleinberg said. “But things quickly picked back up and we’ve grown quite a bit this year.”

Kleinberg said that through the third quarter, the company was on a path for more than 40 percent growth compared to the same period last year, despite the lull. He said the recession has made the firm focus on companies that value their brands, choosing clients more selectively.

As a manager, Kleinberg has learned that the most difficult aspect of managing the firm has been hiring good people.

Traction has grown to about 30 employees, with 12 of them joining in the past three years. Kleinberg estimates that he will hire about 10 more in the next three years. He said he took one of the company’s biggest risks when he decided to keep a particularly cohesive team even after the project they were working on was canceled.

Among Traction’s competitors are San Francisco firms such as AKQA and Organic, Kleinberg said.

“The team knows that we really care about them and I would say to a man when the need comes to put in that extra effort and put in a long night, people don’t hesitate to make that happen,” said Kleinberg, who thinks the risk paid off. “That’s been something that has made us a stronger company.”

Twitter Lists to Followers Ratio: The new social media metric

Twitter has been aunching a slew of new functionality recently, most notably Twitter Lists. I say most notably because Twitter Lists addresses one of the most pressing problems with using Twitter.com as a primary Twitter client. It's very easy to follow so many people that you wind up really following no one. People's tweets just get lost in the stream.

Until now, I've solved that problem with 3rd party apps like Seesmic on my desktop and Tweetie on the iPhone that allow me to create groups of followers so I can filter down tweets to a manageable thread and actually keep tabs on the people I'm most interested in. Twitter Lists, however, allows me to do that right on Twitter.com and even better, share those lists with others. The lists I aggregate can become little tidbits of value I share with the masses.



That's really relevant to brands seeking a meaningful metric for how to measure the success of their social marketing programs. Just acquiring followers is really quite meaningless. It's relatively easy to do (follow a bunch of people and some subset will just follow you back), but says nothing about the relevance of those followers or if they are getting any value out of following you.

However, if someone adds you to a list, they are making a small, but conscious effort to say to the world, hey this dude's got some good tweets over here.

I propose that this will evolve into a truly meaningful metric for social marketing effectiveness. The more of your followers that put you on Lists, the more relevant and valuable your social media presence is. As of this moment, @adamkleinberg (that's me) has 1852 followers and I'm on 60 lists. That means I have a marginally respectable 3.2% List to Followers Ratio. This is a measure of my perceived relevant value on Twitter, and one I hope will improve over time.

There are holes in this theory of course. Take this Twitter thread for instance:

jack_benoff: @adamkleinberg but how many of your followers have even created lists?

adamkleinberg: Lists to Followers Ratio = new value metric for soc. media. Currently 3.2% of my followers think I'm valuable enuf 2 put on a list.

But even if this is brand new stuff and only active Twitterers use it, doesn't that add to the argument that it's a great metric to measure value of your Twitter presence? It's no secret that ninety-something percent of people on Twitter sign up, tweet once and disappear. Those aren't exactly valuable followers and they definitely aren't creating lists.

Stick that in your PowerPoint and guru it. As always, I love to hear your thoughts.

Marketing Megatrends redux

The "5 Marketing Megatrends You Cant Ignore" article I wrote for iMedia last week has gotten quite a bit of buzz. I did a search on twitter and nearly 400 people have tweeted about it since it was released on Monday (writing this on Wednesday). It's fascinating how Twitter allows you to watch something "go viral" in real-time.

It's also spawned a few interesting blog posts around the web. I thought I'd collect a few links to them here.

When Do Megatrends Matter? by Small Business Labs:

"What's interesting about these "new" megatrends is all have been talked about, at least in the trends community, for many years - even decades. This does not mean the list is bad or late. Trends take a long time to reach the point where they matter.

One of the key indicators that a megatrend is starting to have broad impact is discussion and activity across multiple disiplines. All of these trends have reached that point - and all of these trends matter or are starting to matter to small businesses."

Five “Megatrends” to Watch by Ed Lee at Blogging Me Blogging You:

"For discussion: is mass collaboration the answer for pervasive distrust in big corporations? It is interesting that big corporations are deliberately using social media to both seem smaller and encourage that collaboration.

We use the following formula when explaining this stuff to clients:

Engagement = Transparency + Co-Creation

5 Marketing Megatrends by Healthcare Strategist

"#4 is, I think, under-appreciated in health care. Doctors and hospitals like to think of themselves as the last of the white hat-wearing good guys, and maybe they are. But trust is a funny thing - built over decades and lost overnight. Screw it up and watch the laser beam of populist rage move from Wall Street to Medical Avenue."

sarica’s posterous

"I like the difference the author establishes between "regular" trends and "mega" trends, this is a quite interesting article... althought it takes a small effort to read it."

Five Megatrends--and how they are shaping crisis communication

"I'm once again stealing brilliance from others, but, hey, isn't that what blogging is all about?
Here's a very insightful article about the Five Megatrends impacting marketing. But these are also impacting crisis communication and the way we think, work, socialize and exist together in community. So here is my crisis communications take on these big ideas..."

Megatrends also drive new funding models

"I would say #1, #3 and #4 are exactly things we thought when we founded Grow VC. 1. Collaboration is needed for funding. 3. New funding models must be global. 4. Startups are important for growth and entrepreneurs don’t feel that large VC’s and banks are always the best source to get funding. I think #2 and #5 are also linked to the funding world.

We can always be sceptical with trends and especially with megatrends. But together with very practical experiences from the startup world, I see these trends are definitely shaping the funding models of the future."

5 marketing megatrends you can't ignore - iMediaConnection.com

"I just wrote this article for iMedia Connection and it's gotten some buzz (I measure buzz by retweets these days — this one got over 90 the day it was published). I'd love to hear your thoughts in comments."

Our society is undergoing massive fundamental transitions. Learn how these forward-thinking brands seized the underlying marketing opportunities.

View >>

Riding the Google Wave

Another guest post here, this time from Tractionista Carly Schwartz — @carlicita to the twitterati. Carly got her hands on a prized Google Wave invite (eat your heart out Willie Wonka — golden tickets got nothing on these). Her thoughts are below. And a few of mine are below that.



Carly says...


When I first heard about Google Wave, a pair of Australian developers’ take on the next generation of online conversation, I was skeptical. A longtime Gmail loyalist, I couldn’t understand what, exactly, needed fixing. Then the Mountain View megacompany released its demo to a limited, invite-only audience, and the blogosphere exploded.

After reading 140-character testimonials about the supposedly revolutionary—and highly exclusive—communication platform, I started to feel left out. When access trickled to a handful of my friends, I watched as they, too, tweeted their success stories.

Resolving to become a part of their inner circle, I submitted countless requests, even penning a Limerick (“There once was a girl named Carly, who thought Google Wave was quite gnarly…”). Luckily I managed to convince my roommate, a Google product manager, to trade me his last invite for a bottle of cheap champagne. Voila! Instant access to the Internet elite.

Google Wave is, in essence, email to the umpteenth power. It combines rich media like photos, videos, maps, and application plug-ins into a hosted conversation that can be edited in real-time by multiple end-users who share access. As edits are designed to flow seamlessly, such documents are called “waves.” Anyone added to a wave can invite anyone else they choose, thus eliminating the need for CCing and pesky 37-person e-mail chains.

Google captures a version of the wave as each new edit is made, allowing users to go back and view the document at every stage of the creation process using a simple “playback” button. Once the program is universally released, developers will have a field day creating extensions from Twitter plug-ins to Scrabble games using the wave’s easily accessible API.



Pretty nifty, no? In theory, Google Wave is the answer to collaboration and conversation in the twenty-first century. Gone are the days of clogged inboxes and larger-than-life attachments. Instead, the wave provides users with a full aggregation of all their media, the richest of rich communication tools.

Perhaps I wanted to throw a party for my friend’s twenty-fifth birthday. Using Google Wave as my primary means of communication would allow guests to divvy up responsibilities, determine a date and time that works best, map the location, tally up the invitees, and even share incriminating photos the morning after—all in a single shared document.

Or say Traction needed to conduct an internal brainstorm before a major client meeting. If said discussion took place via Wave, we could edit one another’s work, embed media to support our talking points, and finish with a clean final product.

But in its beta phase, developers still have more than a few bugs to zap. And even if every kink were ironed out perfectly before the program’s universal launch, Google Wave would still have its fair share of issues.

For one, a clunky interface prohibits users from accessing more than one wave at a time, making multiple conversations at once nearly impossible. Moreover, the ability to add anyone to a wave at any time takes the intimacy and confidentiality out of one-on-one communication.

Real-time editing, as cool as it is to watch, seems to me like a recipe for digital disagreements if certain wave users don’t like the changes others make. And a slew of awkward features, from the confusingly small scrollbars to the inability to actually delete waves (Google calls it “muting” instead), may deter otherwise early adopters.

After a week of playing in the waves, I’m equal parts impressed and ambivalent. The ability to communicate using a smorgasbord of media in one place is fascinating, but I can’t shake the notion that those Aussie developers tried to find a solution to a problem that never existed. I give it at least five years before the wave becomes, er, a tsunami. Until then, TwitMyFaceTubeGmailpedia will have to suffice.

And I say...


What's on the mind of many marketers (or at least the hipster digital ones) is what will Google Wave mean to the future of marketing? Will it change everything? Will they have to figure out how to do their jobs all over once again?

The good news: not so much.

Don't get me wrong. It's a cool tool. It's got great potential for creating brand narratives that engage and involve consumers. We'll see lots of forward-thinking brands using it in innovative new ways. It is a very real tactic that will make it into the social media marketing strategies of 2011.

But a tactic is not a revolution. Neither is the Wave.

Zappos Presentation from the Inc. 500 | 5000

This is Tony Hsieh's presentation from the Inc. 500 | 5000 Conference I mentioned in my last post. Great advice on how to build a brand from the inside out.

Zappos - Inc 500 - 9-24-09

View more presentations from zappos.

2 things I learned at the Inc. 5000 Conference

I’m leaving the Inc. 500 | 5000 Conference in Washington D.C. feeling inspired. The Inc. 5000 is their list of the fastest growing companies in the United States over the past 4 years. This year, Traction was ranked #1399.



I go to a lot of industry events for advertising and digital media, so it was a refreshingly optimistic opportunity to be in the presence of an “industry” of entrepreneurs. To be honest, before I went, I wasn’t too enthused. But I left feeling really humbled to be among this proud group of people who are making the American Dream happen for themselves every day.

Sound sappy? Maybe, but it’s how I feel this morning.

Last night, they gave the Entrepreneur of the Year award to a woman who, despite being severely handicapped in a car accident when she was 23 years old, invented an “invisible bib” for people in wheelchairs to protect their clothes—and turned her idea into one of the 5000 fastest growing companies in America. I’ve never felt so genuinely humble.

The conference brought in one of the best list of speakers I’ve ever seen. Jim Collins, who wrote Good to Great, tore the house down. Tony Hsieh from Zappos spoke. Randall Graham from (Traction’s former client) Bonny Doon Vineyards. David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue. Eric Ryan from Method Products. BET founder, Robert Johnson. ZipCar CEO, Scott Griffith. And so on.

I even got to have a one-on-one conversation with Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke (see video below). I’m hoping he’ll consider me to be part of the advisory council to the new Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. We talked about Twitter and how Traction’s healthcare premiums (they went up 40% between 2007-2008).



So, what did I learn?

Two things:
• Truly great brands don’t define themselves by their products, but by the experiences they provide to their customers
• What you do on the inside is as important as what you portray outside in creating a real brand

Just two weeks ago, I was in Hangzhou, China as a guest of my client, Alibaba.com to attend their 10th anniversary celebration and the APEC SME (Small Medium Enterprise) Summit. Great speakers there too, including Bill Clinton and Nobel prize winner Mohammed Yunnis.

Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, also gave a great speech at APEC.

And, here’s something telling: The advice he gave was almost a carbon copy of the advice I heard over and over again at Inc. 5000.

• Zappos does not define itself as a great online shoe store. It’s their goal to provide the greatest customer service in the world.

• JetBlue does not define itself as the great airline. It’s their goal to provide the greatest customer service in the world.

• Starbucks does not define itself as a coffee company. It’s their goal to provide the greatest customer experience in the world.

And all of these leaders had the same thing to say about how to get there. Exceeding customer expectations was not the most important thing in the world for their companies. What was?

Exceeding employee expectations.

It all starts with providing the greatest employee experience in the world. It was striking that again and again, the thing that made all of these companies so great was their people and their people were great because they loved their jobs, understood the vision of the company and their role in it.

Zappos employees are offered $2,000 to quit anytime during their training period to weed out anyone who doesn’t truly believe in the vision. One JetBlue employee told David that she was famous because she worked there—people would call out to her in church and at the supermarket. Woo hoo, JetBlue. Stuff like that.

As a branding professional, these are two insights that are critical to understand. The world's greatest companies don't position themselves around product attributes or holes in the competitive landscape. They define themselves by the experience they deliver.

That experience is not window dressing. It starts at those companies' very core—their people.

Traction has defined our mission as being a respected creative agency where the experience getting there is as great as the work itself. Since, we started our company in 2001, we've had three people quit ever.

The Inc 5000 made me feel like we're on the right track.

MC Hammer on Social Media Strategies

This post was written by guest blogger, Jim Reed

During Adweek's Social Media Strategies conference this week, keynote speaker MC Hammer told a childhood story about how he would walk to the Oakland Coliseum on game days from his Oakland neighborhood and watch 50,000+ people stream into the stadium. It didn't take long for him to realize that the likelihood of someone buying something from him was pretty good. He wound up selling popcorn, peanuts, soda, etc. but Hammer makes this analogy to a group of social media marketers because the odds are in the numbers. Facebook now has more than 300 million active users, so in the long run marketers are bound to sell something.



Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are the latest toys for marketers to ponder, but the results are still to be determined. Conference panelists and speakers agreed that brands need to be on these platforms now because it takes time to gather a following, to get a stride, to see what works, and most importantly to provide a channel for your customers to reach out to you and hear from you. There was a lot of discussion about putting an actual human behind the tweets and status updates. Rather than a stiff corporate logo with carefully crafted copy for each tweet, consumers will identify more with a real person who can type with wit in real time. Dunkin Donuts has Dunkin Dave. Comcast, who has a notorious reputation for bad customer service, now has a guy name Frank answering customer complaints via Twitter. We at Traction have several humans chiming in (Adam, Theo, Renee, Kellie, Jim) – the point is to maintain a personal voice.

But what about Facebook? The big takeaway from Facebook is to remember that microsites are islands in the Internet – no one will visit your pretty microsite unless you spend great effort and great cost driving traffic to the site. So don't make a microsite experience on Facebook. Leverage the features inherent to social media by encouraging users to express themselves and share with their friends. At Traction we incorporate these strategies for our client, Adobe. On Facebook we encourage users to upload their own creative work, to participate in discussions, enter sweepstakes, and of course share content such as tutorials and interactive games.

Small is beautiful

I'm in Hongzhou, China at the APEC SME Summit. "Small is beautiful" is the theme of the day. This event coincides with the 10th birthday celebration of our client Alibaba.com. Kobe Bryant is speaking today and Bill Clinton will be speaking to this crowd via closed-circuit video.

So, it's a big deal.

It's been an amazing weekend so far. One that I'll not forget anytime soon. Last night, AliFest, was a bizarre and magnificent celebration of Alibaba's success over the past decade providing a platform for SMEs (small and midsize businesses) around the world to survive and grow.

More to come...



-- Posted from my iPhone

Interview with Pandora founder Tim Westergren

This week I had the honor of being the first-ever guest host on Susan Bratton's DishyMix podcast! My guest was Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora. If you don't know Pandora, it's a genius service—are recommendation engine that creates radio stations customized to your personal tastes in music. Have trouble finding the music you love? With Pandora, it finds you.

How? You'll have to listen to the interview. Good stuff.

Download it on iTunes here. I'll update this with a link to Susan's blog when she gets back from Burning Man and posts a transcript.