Bullseye worked with the natural health brand to implement Sitecore CMS software and Online Marketing Suite (OMS) solutions to build a digital platform that connects more personally with its customers. The new website is personalised to each individual who joins, and is designed to inspire, inform and educate Australians to achieve better health.

“We were thoroughly impressed with how Blackmores and Bullseye have built a website with Sitecore’s technology that has engaged their audiences by offering dynamic content and Enterprise 2.0 features and functionality,” said Kim Elsass, Chief Information Officer, Sitecore. “By creating such a strong and attractive community, Blackmores has become one of the top websites in Australia and New Zealand. We are proud to recognise and congratulate them.”

According to Jason Davey, Managing Director at Bullseye, “Consumers have little patience for irrelevant content, and everyone’s health and fitness outlook and experience is different. Using the intuitive features of leading edge technology, we have built a website for Blackmores that offers a totally personalised experience. It’s slick, clever and designed entirely to delight each individual visitor.”

Sitecore’s Site of the Year contest recognises customers who have leveraged Sitecore’s technology to develop the most outstanding websites. The Sitecore judges considered creativity, integration with rich data sources and applications, overall user experience and the ability to educate, inform and motivate an action.

The MVP program recognises exceptional technical community leaders who encourage free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing their real-world Web CMS expertise. For 2009, twelve individuals from around the world were selected to be members of the program and honored with a Sitecore Most Valuable (MVP) Award. We’re particularly chuffed that Jason was the only Aussie selcted to join the elite group, including: Guillaume Buat-Ménard/Aqueduct, Sebastian Winslow/Codehouse, Stefan van Dockum/Colours, Kern Herskind Hansen/Consultant, Vincent van Middendorp/Evident Interactive, Sean Kearney/Hedgehog Development, Andreas Bergström/Metamatrix, Jens Mikkelsen/Pentia, Matt Hovany/The Revere Group, Aren Cambre/Southern Methodist University and Gabriel Boys/Velir and, of course, Jason Davey/Bullseye,

Congratulations Jason!

There was a lot of hype and expectation around the American Chamber of Commerce lunch with new Telstra CEO, David Thodey, and for many it was the first time we had the opportunity to hear his perspectives first hand.

There is no doubt that David has to mend many bridges with customers, shareholders, industry, partners and government, as Telstra and its Exec team have been renowned for their arrogance. David seems to bring some humility into the Exec team.

My overall summary was that David skirted around the big issues, and was not keen to tackle any highly sensitive matters, but at the same time we got an insight in to his make up and passions.

Key take out points for me were:

• Thodey is very passionate about technology and its advancements as an enabler for business opportunity realisation
• Technology is NOT the panacea, but part of the solution
• Technology should be part of government policy
• Customer service is the number one focus for Telstra, and they are committed to being number 1 in customer service in 3 years’ time
• Telstra has transformed from a cable business to value adding in software and applications (60% of Telstra capital now invested in software and applications)
• Telstra is on a mission to increase broadband capacity. Thodey cited examples with schools and recent deployment of 100mbps in Melbourne city
• Thodey could not discuss the NBN or Telstra’s role

Overall, the presentation was an informative, centering on the technology opportunities now and in the future, and how government and business can take advantage by starting to think strategically.

This sets the platform apart from competitors Facebook and Twitter which focus on members updating each other with short sound bites of information. MySpace will now focus more on what people are into as opposed to what they are doing (a shift anyway from being focused solely on user generated content).

Advertising on the site is also to become more entertaining – on the weekend just gone a giant wolf took over the homepage to further add to the hype and anticipation of the Twilight- New Moon movie.

Movie advertisers frequent the MySpace homepage but this is the first time a takeover of this extreme has occurred on the site. With some calling it a “highly intrusive” placement it will be interesting to see what the My Spacers think of it…no doubt it further fuelled the excitement of Twilight fans who have already been able to watch the movie premiere’s red carpet event on the site, follow the stars who regularly update their statuses and sample the movies soundtracks.

I think this type of interactive entertainment led advertising and content is a good move on MySpace’s part. There isn’t any room left in the Facebook/ Twitter world so this gives them a point of differentiation and importantly provides the audience with an experience.

By Claire ‘Coops’ Cooper (@ccoops)

Dataportability open standards group has been marketing the concept for a few years now, which supports the OpenID login standard and has been adopted by Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter, and MySpace. Google’s Friend Connect and Facebook’s Facebook Connect are both offering open API’s to developers who can integrate their own login details with one of these major players.  Mashable has a good coverage of both of these tools here

Whilst this is interesting, it’s often not easy to visualise the possibilities of what Data Portability actually means for the end user.

This presentation from Razorfish looks at what might happen if Amazon and Itunes implemented Facebook Connect and cleverly paints a picture of how the experience of their sites would be enhanced.

Portable Social Graphs – Imagining their Potential

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: retail marketing)

I have no doubt that sharing of information between social networks will continue to be embraced, and as long as consumers feel safe that they are in control of their own information and relationships, then the privacy issues can be managed.

facebook connect

For business, allowing ease of signups, as well as potential access to the large amounts of personal information presents a great opportunitiy. So if you have a site that has a large database of users, it’s probably a good time to be considering integrating Facebook’s Facebook Connect and / or Google’s Friend Connect

1. Mobile apps
Goldman sachs estimates 210 million  iphone apps will be dowloaded by 2010. Much of this will be monetized by the emerging mobile ad market, e.g. www.admob.com

2. Video streaming from mobile
e.g. www.qik.com www.kyte.com www.ustream.com
Soccer mums through to corporate presentations will be beamed from mobiles directly to the internet

3. Syndication and widgets
Content syndication will become more mainstream
Value will emerge in personalized aggregation services
Rss will start to include ads (most rss feeds are ad free at present), this will finally convince the major publishers (news sites) to publish full feeds rather than only the article teaser.  e.g. Springwidgets.com/ and Sproutbuilder.com/

4. Location based services
Thanks to the GPS functionality on the Iphone and other smartphones, the use of location based services will rise turning the yellow pages directory listing businesses on their head.  e.g. iloop.com and brightkyte.com, but I expect facebook and myspace to integrate location based services in 2009.
Social recommendations will add value creating a mashup of recommendation & discovery services. e.g. tribesmart.com

5. Social media matures        
2009 will see social media mature as brands, organisations and politicians read about why Obama’s campaign was so successful.

6. Integrated campaign metrics
The holy grail of marketing .. will get one step closer as technology starts to allow a more integrated metrics reporting of campaign media.  This will accelerate the move to digital and digital agencies will start to play the lead role in marketing initiatives & strategy.

7. Personalised Knowledge Discovery
Recommendation engines and personalisation will start to produce some value as people learn about needs they didn’t know they had.
Attention spans will overflow forcing a change in information distribution.  E.g. Twitter will be used for what I call SPR or the “short press release”.

8. Attention Surplus Disorder will be coined as a condition that affects a growing number of people.  Media saturation will start to drive a market for a growing range of filtering services, many of them specialised on a niche topic.

9. Opinion fraud will become common place with companies paying for positive recommendations for their products and services.  Traditional media will continue to publish the worst of these stories, but even that will not be enough to discourage a growing number of companies into this activity.

10. Life Streaming will explode as devices simplify the ability to record experiences. Examples Socialthing.com/ (recently acquired by AOL) and Friendfeed.com/ 

All in all 2009 promises to be an exciting time for innovation and despite the economic climate, I believe that emerging tools will continue to prosper.

Not only is the work judged on the creative output but on its effectiveness and I thought Nick Mercer this year’s chairman on the jury summed it up well by saying:

By the ADMA definition, the winning work should be:

> A big and original idea
> Well executed and within budget
> Innovative in approach
> An example of excellent and effective direct marketing

With only a select few picking up on the night we were in good company so congratulations to the team from Bullseye and Blackmores, more awards to follow.

With over 1.88 million SMBs in Australia, technology can be used as a competitive differentiator for SMBs competing in the global economy, and the right technology is key to survival. Having worked with SMBs extensively in the past, I know firsthand that SMBs have the greatest technology needs, but are often restricted by limited budgets and a lack of access to IT know-how.  This is a fantastic initiative by Dell that provides a useful resource to help Australian SMBs make the right technology purchase for their business.

I am delighted to be part of this initiative as the IT Expert. Keep an eye out for the monthly articles as they are both educational and informative.

Website:
www.dell.com.au/sb360

First Articles:
Does Social Networking pose a threat to your business?
Boost your business with online technologies

Bio: Pedro da Palma Rosa

- 133 million Blogs indexed since 2002.
- 7.4 million Blogs had posts in the last 120 days.
- 1.5 million Blogs had new posts up in the last 7 days.
- 900,000 Blogs had new posts in the past 24 hours.
- 76,000 Blogs have a Technorati Authority of 50+.

Global Snapshot of Bloggers

Who are the global bloggers?

• Two-thirds are male
• 50% are 18-34
• More affluent and educated than the general population
  • 70% have college degrees
  • Four in ten have an annual household income of $75K+
  • One in four have an annual household income of $100K+
• 44% are parents

Using the term "Generation V", the research confirms that segments do not relate to age, gender, geographic location or social class, but instead are grouped by their interactions and behavioural usage preferences of digital media consumption.

The 4 levels of engagement in Gartner’s model are creators, contributors, opportunists, and lurkers.

The report suggests

• Up to 3% will be creators, providing original content. They can be advocates that promote products and services.
• Between 3% and 10% will be contributors who add to the conversation, but don’t initiate it. They can recommend products and services as customers move through a buying process, looking for purchasing advice.
• Between 10% and 20% will be opportunists, who can further contributions regarding purchasing decisions. Opportunists can add value to a conversation that’s taking place while walking through a considered purchase.
• Approximately 80% will be lurkers, essentially spectators, who reap the rewards of online community input but absorb only what is being communicated. They can still implicitly contribute and indirectly validate value from the rest of the community. All users start out as lurkers.

“Companies should plan to segment all four levels in the community – each has significant business value,” said Adam Sarner, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Differentiation exists between sectors and industries. Marketers with strong brands attract more creators. Certain industries, such as insurance, draw more lurkers.”

Successful communities support the needs of all four segments, and my research suggests that as communities grow, the percentage of each segment will remain relatively consistent.