Molecular Voices » Dirk Reckerman

Dirk Reckerman

As a senior program manager for Molecular, and am currently working on the adidas miCoach program which allows me to incorporate my passion for technology into my everyday life. To me, technology is an enabler, rather than a solution unto itself.

XMPP/Jabber: dreckerman

Posts written by Dirk Reckerman

October 29

adidas embodies brand as a service with miCoach

by Dirk Reckerman

On Friday, October 23rd 2009, adidas launched the next generation of miCoach – the interactive coaching system that delivers audible coaching while you run. At its conception miCoach was a means by which to allow users to experience the adidas brand in their daily life.

Home

An innovative blend of hardware, software, and web experience – the system empowers users to set and achieve goals – being coached by adidas every step of the way. The system allows a user to manage their active life, and be motivated by seeing their workout results on a highly immersive web experience.

Workout

For adidas, the interactions that users have with miCoach reinforces the users relationship with the adidas. In other words, it creates time with the brand. This approach is a more effective investment of marketing money because of the depth and longevity of the interaction with the target audience. Moreover, the interaction creates valuable insights into customer behavior and allows adidas to market to the user in a more relevant way – in the context of the users life.

The service itself has been extended to allow users to take miCoach into the users social realm – namely Facebook. Users are now able to share their latest workout with their personal friends via Facebook or email. The benefit for the user is that they can share an important aspect of their life with friends. For adidas, this is an invaluable manner in which to get trusted referrals for their service (and brand) to a broader populous.

Molecular has been a key part of the realization of this adidas service from its conception. By partnering with Molecular, adidas has a partner capable of pairing insightful user experience design, stellar creative and deep technical expertise to bring miCoach to life. As the nascent marketing initiative transforms into an exemplary digital and business marketing stalwart, Molecular is enabling adidas to push the boundaries of interactions with its key audiences.

miCoach has successfully bridged the gap between the users analog and digital daily lives. By providing hardware to coach you while you run and then parlaying that information to the web where the users transformation is illuminated, adidas is establishing its brand in the users life. miCoach is the future of marketing and branding.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

October 2

Shift in the advertising power base

by Dirk Reckerman

After years of anticipation – the shift from traditional to digital is becoming real. The UK became the first major economy to achieve this milestone – according to the Internet Advertising Bureau of Britain. Internet ad spend accounted for 23.5% of the British advertising market . Print was still in first place, with 30% of the market, but had recorded steep declines.

As the internet begins to replace print as the primary source of consumer news and information, as well as encroach upon television as a deliver vehicle for info-entertainment, this trend will only continue to be more exaggerated.

The industries recovering from the global economic downturn will demand measurable channels in which to spend their marketing budgets. Internet has an inherent advantage around measureability – although solid practices enabling this are still in its early stages . As he internet transitions into the central medium around which overall marketing campaigns will be based, digital marketers will be tapped to deliver robust strategies to lead the marketing initiatives within their organizations.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

September 24

Creating Waves – Google’s fix on communication and collaboration

by Dirk Reckerman

Google Wave Logo

I checked out the Google Wave preview that was offered up at Google I/O 2009 and I was impressed. The demo itself was an hour and twenty minutes long, and when you watch it, you know they were doing some rather clever and special things, but it is more powerful to think about what they are building in the context of your digital life.

For those of you who don’t know what Google Wave is, it is a Google Wave is “a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web”. Another one?! Yep, it is another one, but I appreciated their take on communication and collaboration. The go to market strategy for this innovation will be the key to its success, because I believe it is dependent upon proliferation to be successful – i.e. you and I both need to have one to unleash its true power.

Let me come back to the ‘powerful to thing about what they are building, in the context of your day’ comment – above. And here, the little things matter. I believe the Wave team managed to answer the following challenges -

Don’t you hate it when you get an email, or a post on Facebook and someone rattles off a bunch of questions and you can only reply to one of them? Or you can’t split the conversation so that you can insert your answers at the end of each question they asked?
Doesn’t it both you to get added to a group conversation (on email) late, and you need to decipher the context of the content?
Don’t you wish you can combine your IM and email clients into one solution? And more over, take the content that you might have just collaborated on and spit it out into a document or blog?
How about contextual spell checker so that you don’t get suggestions for spelling correction that have nothing to do with the content you are authoring?
Wouldn’t it be cool if you can convert a conversation or document into a Blog and then see and respond to the responses to the blog from one interface? And do so for all the external ‘publications’ that you might have?
What about collating pictures that five different friends might have captured from the same event into a single album?

And these are just some of the day-to-day things that they thought about. The technology itself is pretty darn cool – like the fact that multiple users can edit the same content at the same time, and they call see what’s happening in real-time, while the system also manages history, tracks changes and mergers these changes. Oh… and you can do this on a mobile device!

See how Google Wave might answer some of the small (and big) experience challenges in your digital life… (I promise Google didn’t pay me to say that – I just appreciate technology with purpose!)

posted to: Molecular News, Technology, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

September 21

The future of public relations

by Dirk Reckerman

When you live in the middle of the digital marketing and media revolution, it is sometimes easy to overlook the problems and changes that many industries are experiencing. Not long ago, Public Relations (PR) was considered the most cost-effective way of getting an organization’s name out to the masses. Here in Boston, there are a myriad of PR organizations, and they are fighting tooth and nail to retain business. I wonder, however, if they don’t see the change that is happening around them. Or perhaps, similar to print media, they see it, but are not quite sure what to do about it.

As I pondered this dilemma, a few possibilities occurred to me. I segmented my thinking in the three ways- short, medium and long term. I also realize that painting in broad strokes affords me liberties that are not true in business. Oh, the beauty of blogging!

I strongly believe that the goal of public relations has a great deal of value. It is not the value proposition that needs to change, but rather the mechanism/tactics through which it is delivered. Therefore, in the short term, the tactics employed by a classic PR agency must evolve to embrace and leverage social media elements. If you consider the capabilities being offered by many PR agencies today, they still tout old school capabilities like press releases, media tours, messaging, highlighting executives, by-lines etc. These are all well and good, but how many of us read a press release? And if I wanted to learn about an executive, I expect to hear what that person has to say on YouTube or perhaps read it on their blog. A PR agency does not have to change the overall strategy, It simply has to incorporate these social media elements and tactics.

In the medium term, there may be opportunities for intersection of PR and digital marketing. To this point, digital marketing has been focused around traditional marketing through digital media. The skills and approach that PR experts bring to the table might be key to understand what drives people to organically and virally consume content. Communication strategy has not been the strong suit of digital agencies, but by virtue of being a rapidly evolving space, it may be time for the digital team to drive this strategy. In other words, leverage the experience, approach and thinking that is the corner stone of PR , but apply it to the digital medium and realize that the sum of these parts will be greater than the whole (i.e. PR + digital agency = future)

The long term approach is far more radical. It is anyone’s guess as to where the quickly changing environment will settle. The good people in the print media are having one summit after another to morph their operational and profit models to return to viable businesses. These media outlets have been the main stay of PR – not to mention the bane of their existence. My belief is that the trade of PR relations will begin to focus on experts and consumers. The middle ground of journalists and print publications as we know it will seize to exist. They will be replaced by centers of interest (i.e., think communities or groups), who create and maintain their own ecosystem content creation, commerce, reviews, communities – specific to that interest. This would not only impacts PR, but digital marketing and business in general.

There is a future for PR, but it is irrevocably coupled with the digital medium and digital marketing. The scary consideration is that these PR agencies must act now so that they do not face the same predicament as the print industry.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Industry Trends, Web 2.0 & Social Media | 1 Comment »

October 16

Reaching your target audience uniquely

by Dirk Reckerman

As marketing professionals, our main goal is to try to cut through the clutter and create time with our key constituency. Delivering key messages in terms and forums that are relevant to users allows these messages to have a far higher impact. Furthermore, uncovering white space in the media market that allows your message to be delivered without dilution gives the advertiser an unparalleled advantage.

An organization that has done this very successfully recently is the Obama campaign. A key part of Obama’s key target audience are young people. One can assume that the primary infotainment outlets that these individuals dwell on are online and television. Gaming and ‘wired’ gaming however, is a very interesting and in my opinion hugely effective channel to consider. The Obama campaign leveraged the gaming channel, by delivering its campaign message in the context of the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise.

This type of innovate advertising delivery requires that an organization very clearly understand their target audience, where they dwell, and where a marketing message can have a high impact. Gamers might spend multiple hours a week playing these games. If this advertising message (without relavant competition) appears to the user multiple times during this period, an organization may well be getting the marketing impact that they might be looking for.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Molecular News | No Comments »