Mediaboss Marketing

By Amanda Buchanan | More Articles May 30, 2012 |

The shift to digital has become a trend affecting every industry imaginable. The transformation is still in its infancy, though, as companies experiment with different ways to utilize everything that digital spaces have to offer.

Some companies, like Nordstrom, have proven successful at marrying traditional and digital shopping experiences for customers, which has led to market-beating returns for both the companies and their investors.

Meanwhile, retailers like Best Buy have struggled the last few years to stay afloat, with little more than an online store to offer shoppers. See what I mean?

^INX data by YCharts.

Companies who embrace digital, rather than shun it, have a shot at making great long-term investments. Take a look at these three companies that are finding new ways to successfully integrate digital.

1. Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (Nasdaq: RRGB) recently launched Burger Hub -- a social-media website for Red Robin burgers that allows customers to upload their own pictures and videos of the food and experiences they're having at the restaurant. Red Robin then links these to the online menu. It's kind of like an updated version of user reviews, which could prove to be really innovative and useful for the restaurant industry as a whole.

2. Target (NYSE: TGT) has recently partnered with Shopkick to offer shoppers incentives for shopping in store. Shopkick is a free app that offers points for things like entering the store and scanning items. Points can then be redeemed for gift cards or charitable donations. Target is now the largest retailer to partner with Shopkick, which could give it an advantage in this rocky retail climate.

3. Safeway (NYSE: SWY) launched its own money-saving app earlier this month. The app, called "Just for U," stores your Safeway Club Card information along with featured ads, in-store and manufacturer coupons, shopping lists, and even a few individualized coupons based on your shopping history. Safeway has virtually redefined the word "convenient."

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3 Companies Unexpectedly Embracing Digital

We all hear it every day: The Internet and digital technologies are changing everything. Its become one of those big pronouncements that tends to end a bad conversation or start a good one.

But few people have thought about the subject as clearly and completely as Mary Meeker, the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers venture capitalist and former Wall Street analyst, who in a presentation at D: All Things Digital illustrated those changes in their historical context.

Were pretty familiar with the well-worn tales of how the Internet is disrupting the 305-year-old newspaper business, and how mobile phones are messing up the 125-year-old landline telephone business. But Meekers presentation goes a lot deeper than that.

The Internet is also disrupting the creation of art, how people document and record the histories of their life, how they take notes, how they borrow money. Roughly a third of Meekers 125 slides are devoted to this theme of change and disruption, and when taken as a whole, its startling. A lot of it is stuff you know, but when packaged in a way that you see it all together, Im overwhelmed, she said.

People used to put pictures on their walls, and now they have Facebook, Meeker said.

Other examples: Groupon and clipping old coupons. Also, going to school. Education and learning will become as fun as video games, Meeker said.

Something else thats changed: How people cope with traffic. During a follow-up interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Meeker talked about Waze, a navigation and traffic app for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. She described how, when she saw a burning semi truck pulled over on the side of the road, she reported it first to Waze before calling 911.

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Mary Meeker Talks About How Digital Is Changing Everything

As many industry observers are well aware, the Web Analytics Association, to which many of us are members, changed their name to keep up with the times. The newly named Digital Analytics Association ushers in a time to revitalize and refresh the values of the industry, so I could think of no better way to welcome this change than to redefine our industrys commandments.

If you cant measure it, dont waste time or money doing it. Recognize that all business activities cost money, whether that involves running paid search advertising, communicating via social media channels, and even search engine optimization (SEO).

It isnt the responsibility of the digital analyst to come up with KPIs anymore; its their job to answer business questions. Bring your burning business problems rather than data requests and get ready for meaningful insights rather than tired trend analysis.

Visitors to your website have names, families, and rights, so treat them as neighbors and not numbers. Do your best to avoid collecting sensitive personally identifiable information, whenever possible.

Digital analytics marks a departure from web in favor of integrated. Be prepared to collaborate with database administrators and analysts to define complex compound business metrics.

Good, better, and best is a thing of the past. Big data is all about cross-channel segmentation and modeling. Certain types of data lend themselves to certain types of analysis or action planning, but no one source is the best. Break down the walls and build bridges between silos for truly remarkable achievements.

With so many tools that can retrieve and display data, its easy to get carried away. Spending time on reporting meaningless data is a waste of an analysts and stakeholders time.

Comingling two distinct data sets that are not, in any way, shape or form related only adds confusion and misleading insight. Dont be afraid to use secondary data sources to dive deeper or test a hypothesis, but ensure your documentation includes assumptions, limitations and confidence levels.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Digital analytics is the intellectual property of the business and should not be regarded as sole property of the analyst or organization that collects or reports on this data.

Breaking commandment 0111 wouldnt be considered a deadly sin, but this one surely is. There is no room in digital analytics for cooking the numbers. Big data affords us the ability to endlessly segment and analyze data until we find appropriate proxies for data that cant be directly collected. Put away the Excel =rand() function. Dont make up numbers.

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10 Commandments of Digital Analytics

May 29, 2012

Written by Aaron Chimbel

By the time what we now call legacy media was able to present the news it was inherently old.

Times, of course, have changed. News organizations have to change, too.

That's the basic idea behind why at TCU's Schieffer School of Journalism, where I work, were going digital first with our student media and realigning our structure to allow us to make that happen. Weve been converging our student media operations over the past few years and this is the next logical -- and perhaps most important -- step.

We have a four-day-a-week newspaper, the TCU Daily Skiff, a weekly television newscast, "TCU News Now" (which also produces daily updates), Image magazine and our one-year-old converged website, TCU 360.

Since 2009, our student media have moved into a new converged newsroom, began holding joint budget meetings, moved to a single website and switched the copy desk from the newspaper copy desk to copy editing for all of student media. That was just the start.

Now, the separate news organizations are being reorganized into a single news gathering force that will focus on digital and then use the content that is produced to serve the legacy outlets. There is a caveat. Because of its much different cycle, Image will remain largely independent initially. As will the109.org, a community news website that our program also runs.

Rather than centering the newsgathering on a particular media platform, the goal will be to have reporters produce content in real time and digitally. Its not a revolutionary idea, but its one that has to be embraced and sooner, not later.

In our setup, a student general manager will oversee all of student media. Working with that top leader will be a group of journalists focused mostly on content news, sports and visuals, plus an operations manager to make sure the content gets where it needs to go.

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Refocusing student media to align with digital first approach

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Alcatel-Lucent Says Europe Risks Turning Into ‘Digital Desert’