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‘Converge’: How Razorfish Innovates Marketing and Advertising

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convergeSo much has already been written about innovation that books specifically on that subject sometimes read like academic treatises buttressed by examples whose end result, at least, fits the treatise. A book by an innovator on how they innovate can be much more instructive, as well as a much better read.

Converge: Transforming Business at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology is such a book. Written by Bob Lord and Ray Velez of Razorfish, the book details how digital technology changed the marketing and advertising fields by telling the story of how Razorfish, a pioneer in the digital marketing, figured out how to do what it does so well. More importantly, the book details why digital technologies forced marketing to innovate, what that innovation looks like, and how others can do it. Coming from an innovation perspective, that’s a tall order, and this book delivers on it.

I had the chance to talk with Ray Velez recently, and our conversation focused on three important concepts in the innovation world — “convergence”, “silos”, and putting customer needs and desires first.

Q. Talk about your understanding of the concept of “convergence” as you use it in the book.

A. Part of the reason we wrote the book is that we’ve been questioning convergence a long time, since Razorfish started…to start, we think in order to innovate [in marketing and advertising], you need to bring together technology, creative, and media. They allow you to be part of the convergence, to be part of the rapid change that technology has brought.

We’ve grown the definition so that to us it’s more than just discipline diversity. Frans Johansson’s broader definition of convergence in The Medici Effect is that convergence involves bringing together different skills. However, computer science is incredibly global, so now we see an intersection of different cultures and global, which is a second level of convergence. The third level of convergence is a greater gender diversity, and not just in technology. In the ad industry, just three percent of creative directors are women.

I learned early on when working at Cambridge Technology Partners that you can’t have tech guys writing code for interfaces, because the result is an interface that just prints out reports. When Razorfish started in the late 1990s, we were competing with both design and software shops. But the technology needs design and creativity to be useful to the customer. You need a convergence of both disciplines.

Q. In the book you have a whole chapter on the “religion of convergence”. Why does convergence need to be a religion?

A. Because there’s tons of friction around convergence. Nobody wants to do it. If you’re not an evangelist, not willing to push through that friction, you’ll retreat to your silos. Negative relationships across disciplines hold things up.

To counteract friction, we’ve extended our use of extended agile development to include both creative and user experience. We never mention anything about design, but focus on our process of agile development. Agile perhaps is a language that everyone can speak together. I’ve been passionate about agile for 10 to 12 years.

We offer a “Scrum for Teams” workshop for our employees and our customers. They learn the principles, and go through a sprint iteration with all the disiciplines. They go through two cycles in one afternoon. This makes a huge difference.

Q. Beyond using agile, what’s your advice on breaking silos?

A. It’s tough. Silos are much more ingrained at large organizations.It’s easier for us because we’re distributed and nimble. You have to understand that it’s much harder for a large organization. The second half of the book is about changing your organizational structures to support agile processes. It was a little concerning to put it in, but we must press through the enormous friction between disciplines.

You have to drive toward an approach that is much more iterative. Software development is not easy, and it’s all software development. You have to drive a process that aligns with building software and aligns with the customer at the center. Customers want choice and control, and they must have that. Iterative processes put the customer in the center. Even “data-driven” means you’re listening to your customer. You measure their reactions and adjust in the next sprint.

We’re advocating for a new role: the product manager. The previous roles — marketing manager, technology manager — have nothing to do with customers. The product manager prioritizes features around customers. You can expect them to understand the challenges the product has, to make prioritization trade-offs between the customers and the technology. Right now, too often the trade-offs don’t happen. The technology team prioritizes based on technology goals and the marketing team prioritizes based on leads. So, brand managers need a team of product managers, not marketing managers.

Q. If you’re a traditional marketing or advertising agency wanting to innovate, what’s the first thing you should do?

A. First, start aligning your organization around the customer. If your marketing managers are only driving leads, change that role into a product management role. You have to recognize success, and use that to create customer-centric needs. Uber is one of my favorite examples….Uber fulfilled a customer need, but why didn’t the Taxi and Limousine Commission fill it? They were looking at the wrong metrics.

Q. What are the right metrics?

A. What we learned as we stepped away form the book was that it really does boil down to the simple principle of putting customers at the center, using data. We need customer-centric metrics, and we haven’t found the silver-bullet metrics yet. Traditional segmentation makes no sense online — there are so many more “segments”. This is such a huge, fundamental shift.

Good metrics to look at would be engagement and Net Promoter Score. At least those help you look at the customer. And measure engagement around the customer experiences you’re creating.

You have to change the mindset from adding more people to CRM databases to helping customers do something. I don’t know what that metric is, but you must use data to help understand customers.

You can use sentiment to help understand what customers want. Responding to customer messages is important too, just listening to your customers. If you’re not listening to customers, you’re not paying attention.

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Note: This post is part of a Virtual Book Tour. See other posts about this book at these blogs:

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