Planning a thoughtful search strategy for the holiday season can mean the difference between a load of presents under the tree or coal in the stocking of our retail clients.

To get a jump on the festive season, Razorfish dispatched Laura Landesman to attend Google’s Think Holiday conference.  She reports back on two of the hottest presentations:

State of Shopping 2010

Google’s State of Shopping 2010 presentation showcased four main trends:

• Shopping starts early and ends late: many shoppers start their holiday shopping as early as May and others wait until the weekend before Christmas.
• Coupons still reign: people are trained like Pavlov’s dog to look for deals online and, since everyone is doing them, to remain competitive it is necessary to have deals.
• Shopping early…in the week: online shopping will continue to perform as it typically does with days at the beginning of the week remaining the most high trafficked days.
• Deciding who to buy from: people already know what they want to buy (i.e. clothes, electronics, etc.), but not necessarily the brand.  It is our job to tell them what brand and why.

The Post-Crisis Consumer

John Gerzema, author of upcoming book Spend Shift, presented on the topic of “how the post-crisis values revolution is changing the way we buy, sell and live.”  In this presentation he explained his belief that we are entering an era where values now define consumerism and competitive advantage.  This is a shift from mindless consumption to mindful consumption as people are scaling back.  This is giving the consumer more control and is causing (smart) companies to demonstrate their value.  Gerzema’s presentation also focused on the need for companies to be transparent instead of illusive, to play fair, and to portray values, empathy and respect.

The real question is: will this trend last once the economy rebounds?  Gerzema believes, at least for the near future, that the consumer’s focus will remain on this almost 1950′s approach to buying.

Our very own Maaria Husain recently attended the Twitter & Automation session at SES San Francisco. There was a lot of debate around Twitter automation and whether or not it is actually effective.  The key learning is that a campaign should focus on the quality of Twitter followers, and not the quantity.

Communication entrepreneur Jeff Pulver opened up the session claiming “follower count” is a flawed metric, and that the key impact Twitter has had on this world is its “homogenization of communication channels.”  Pulver drew upon examples of national disasters, e.g., how Twitter closed the communication gap during the Haiti earthquake, and how it could have benefited relief efforts during 9/11.  We appreciate his take on Twitter; the reason it’s so sticky is the level of authenticity and realness it provides to users.

The discussion started heating up as Tracy Falke of Freestyle Interactive took the stage. Her take on Twitter is that users should spend time upfront understanding the space and then create a customized Twitter campaign.  Falke promotes launching, then “listening;” rather than having a CMO, businesses should have a CLO (Chief Listening Office).  Here Jeff Pulver disagreed, questioning how many hours a day she spends monitoring the tweets and retweets.  Tracy responded with the 80/20 rule (nothing new), where 80% of effort is spent creating content and pushing it out, and 20% is “checking in on the content responses.”

What Husain found most useful were some of tools Falke uses to monitor and manage Twitter.  Here are her top three:

1)      Cotweet: Tweets between different brands

2)      Hootsuite: Allows you to segment across different issues or topics (e.g., defects with new iPhone 4)

3)      Social Oomph: Automated segmentation platform (pick time of day, day of week, promos, etc., upload and push out via social oomph)

The last speaker up was Paul Madden of Automatica.   Their business model is based on making a Twitterbot look like a real person. Frankly, this turned me off, as it seems to defeat the whole point of Twitter, which is all about communication with real-time authenticity.  Madden went into some technical details, but all in all it was packaging black hat tactics in a pretty box.

While many people and brands feel like they need massive Twitter campaigns with large numbers of followers, we agree with Jeff Pulver:  Twitter should be used as a communication platform, simulating an in-person conversation, expressing yourself to individuals who care about your brand or opinion.

We leave you with a favorite Pulver quote from the session: “It’s loneliness and laziness that lead people to innovation.”

Today Aaron Goldman visits SearchShots as part of his Googley Lessons blog tour promoting his new book, “Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google.” He has a little fun with numbers, and the math adds up: his book will cost you a week’s worth of Starbuck’s lattes and it’s 1,131 pages shorter than “War & Peace.”

Check out the video to witness his impressive freestyle rap and improv skills.

At the Mashable Media Summit yesterday, Adam Ostrow of Mashable interviewed Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare, who got the crowd excited about his company’s plans.

This year, the company raised capital, hired 25 people and made some money. Still, Foursquare has yet to make any profit because, as Crowley explained, being profitable is not a focus right now. Instead the team is focused on innovating new features and building an infrastructure to support their impressive growth.

According to Crowley, the Foursquare team has so many ideas they ran out of whiteboards at the office. For users, this may mean more badges, city travel guides based on your friends’ favorite places, more “to-do” features, the ability to connect with people at your location, retail rewards for check-ins and maybe even another title to strive for in addition to Mayor. For businesses, this may mean more partnership opportunities, more input on badge creation, greater access to customer data and the ability to design rewards for check-ins or mayors.

When asked about Foursquare haters (Time magazine labeled Foursquare among the 50 worst inventions), Crowley politely countered with the notion that people like software challenging you to do something, inspiring you to do it and rewarding you when you achieve it.

If you’re attending a lot of Internet Week events, don’t forget to check in and get your badge!

Yesterday Mashable hosted its first conference, marking the significant growth the social media blog has experienced over the past year. The agenda was packed with presentations and interviews designed to make you think a little differently about how digital channels can help your brand.

Ricky Van Veen, co-founder of CollegeHumor and CEO of Notional, shared 10 myths about online content. While some of the myths Van Veen spoke about were basic considering what we know today, there’s no denying the fact that his understanding of what makes digital content so appealing is what made CollegeHumor a success. And talk about foresight – the site was founded in 1999!

Here are two myths that stuck out:

1. Myth: We have no idea why things go viral. Van Veen definitely knows why things go viral. Good online content provides a person a reason to pass it on. The act of sharing a link is a way for someone to say something about themselves (I’m smart/ funny/interesting/edgy), so the content needs to hit that emotional appeal. Van Veen says a successful viral video will have “candy corn.” What’s candy corn? The thing that everyone knows about but doesn’t necessarily think about all the time. Check out this video for Van Veen’s example of good digital candy corn.
2. Myth: Experience leads documentation. According to Van Veen, documentation leads experience. Technology has broken down barriers to content creation and people want to document (and experience) moments. He likened the Facebook and Twitter phenomenon to high-tech bragging: people want to show off how cool/smart/interesting they are.

Over the next few days, we’ll continue to share highlights from the conference.

A few weeks ago Razorfish Group Search Director Adam Heimlich and VP Josh Palau were fortunate enough to speak at the Search Insider Summit at Captiva Island, FL. SIS is a great event that brings together a lot of the leading minds in the industry. This year’s format provided a breath of fresh air in the form of a series of 15- and 5-minute presentations. Quicker pacing allowed for a diverse group of presentations and plenty of new faces.

Crowd favorites included Chris Copeland’s “What if There Were No Google” and Mike Moran’s “Online Transparency and Authenticity”. Copeland provided a realistic plan to diversify out from a world that is currently Google-dominated (he also managed to work in references to Brokeback Mountain and Tiger Woods).  Moran’s presentation distinguished myopic search “optimizers” from strategic “connectors.”  Connectors do what’s best for the user, which leads to better long-term performance. Optimizers chase the algorithm in the moment.

Here’s what the Razorfish guys presented:

Prospect Expectations and Loyalty

Heimlich went full-on college professor with a thesis and three points — no slides – to challenge the notion that search can’t build loyalty. He said users are so loyal to search itself that advertisers who support search experiences on their site can have a loyalty advantage over competitors who don’t. Heimlich’s support was anecdotal, though he promised data in a Razorfish POV later this year:

-          Bounce Rates – Bounce rates provide a view into the mindset of searchers. People abandon search landing pages early and often because it’s jarring to move from the user-centric design of a SERP to the non-user-centric design of most search landing pages. If a site doesn’t serve a user, she quickly goes back to search. Bounce rates evidence users’ confidence that someone else will serve them better.

-          Digital Natives – Heimlich implored marketers to understand that young searchers have good reasons to expect experiences designed for them. We’re not spoiled — we just grew up in a world where information has always been at our fingertips. Marketing messages that only exist outside the world of free entertainment and utilities don’t deserve to be heard.

-          Google’s Development Road Map – Heimlich pointed out that despite Bing’s promise of easier decisions, Google’s “extensions” strategy will make the leading search experience even more info-rich and quantitative than it already is. Paraphrasing a Google developer who claimed “Influence can only occur in the context of meeting users’ criteria for engagement,” Heimlich said it’s up to advertisers to figure out the role info experiences play in building brand affinity.

Marketing in a World of Search Everywhere

Palau talked about how to elevate the search conversation within a client organization. He followed a string a talks about how search has changed — blue links are out, universal search is in. Palau claimed search didn’t really change as much as marketing in general. He advised the search-industry pros in attendance to wrap their heads around the big picture or forever be banished to the kids table.  Palau concluded with these five ways to make search matter to the CMO:

-          Speak the Language – The boss doesn’t care about match types. They care about revenue, fame and solutions to business problems.

-          Don’t Disparage Other Tactics – Search is great, but not in a silo. Advertisers need effective broadcast and display media in order for Search to perform as well as it can. Talk about how search works with these channels.

-          Transcend Direct Response – Search does so much more than DR. If you focus only on click-to-conversion, search will get a fraction of its due.

-          Enable Stories Everywhere – Engage the audience and make it easy for them to share. The stories they tell become the brand stories prospects find via search.

-          Learn to Forget ROI and Remember the Audience – If you focus on keywords that meet ROI goals, you end up ignoring many customers who want to engage. When you pay attention to the user and what he wants, new horizons open up. 

If you’re ever looking to go to an online marketing conference, we highly recommend the Search Insider Summit. As long as you’re willing to engage during the breaks and share your challenges, the payoff is well worth the fee. And Captiva is beautiful in April.

We’re so pleased to have been able to participate in a Q&A session with an experienced search engineer, we’re going to forgive the narcissism required to pack yet another all-day event almost entirely with content irrelevant to everyone not infatuated with Google. The agency-relations team saved this one by drafting Daniel Dulitz, one of its few engineers who works on both paid and natural search, to represent the company for a few precious minutes. There’s nothing like hearing how something works from someone who helped build it. It’s all the more satisfying given how much Razorfish has contributed, by driving the growth of search marketing within so many large organizations, to Google’s reinvention of media and advertising. Thanks, Google, for finally looping us back in.

Though we can’t disclose what we learned, we’re pleased to share that one sneaking suspicion we’ve had about Google was ruled out: Last year, when Google banned A/B testing of landing pages across multiple domains, it was NOT because Google forgot that the $14-billion-per-year SEM industry pretty much grew up on A/B testing.

This week’s Search Celebrity Sighting is of Razorfish Senior Search Account Manager Joe DeVita. Joe was only mistaken for a search celebrity, but he’s a bigshot in our book, and by going all the way to China to get caught on camera witnessing the biggest search story of 2010 so far, he’s earned a place in the SEM Hall of Fame. Here’s Joe’s first-person account of what it’s like to be Big in Beijing.

I was in China last week to meet with Google’s China COO, Yuri Narciss. I met with Yuri the day Google.cn was redirected to Google.com.hk. It was a top news story in China.  When my cab pulled up to Google’s Beijing office, 30 reporters rushed over to take my picture. One guy held my cab’s door shut with his foot so he could get a shot of me in the car.  The papers ran stories about “unidentified foreign visitors” — that was me. The TV news showed me walking out of Google’s office that night (0:40).

Yuri and I planned to talk about Chinese consumer behavior and Google’s Chinese position, but the news of the day was more interesting. Yuri explained that nothing will change for Google’s China staff as long as the government doesn’t block google.com.hk. That’s the big uncertainty bomb, still ticking. The office will stay open since most of the staff are working on research and development. They have other products like email, music and shopping that are gaining traction.

Google users in China seem to be loyal like Apple users here. The loyalists I spoke to said they won’t stop using Google just because they are being routed through the Hong Kong site.

While meeting with Razorfish teams in Beijing and Shanghai, we evaluated the Google Hong Kong experience.  Google.com.hk results used to be in traditional Chinese characters. On March 23rd the site was updated so users from the mainland could see results in simplified characters. Google figured that one out fast! I was curious about irrelevant results when searching for local information, but everyone agreed the experience with Google.com.hk was fine.

In the short term, it’s not likely Google will lose much share in China unless the Hong Kong site is blocked. Our Google and Baidu search campaigns targeting the mainland looked steady for the first week after March 23.

Last Friday, Joe DeVita, Senior Search Manager at Razorfish, embarked on a journey to Beijing to meet with Razorfish, Baidu and Google. We were excited to send him off on Friday, but we had no idea that he’d be in China when Google finally reached a resolution on their threats to leave China due to censorship and intrusions by Chinese hackers.

No doubt that Joe will encounter many search celebrities during his trip. We’re excited for him to report back and are soliciting input for questions that Joe can ask Baidu, Razorfish and Google while he’s in China. So please post comments below or email us at razorfishsearch@razorfish.com

SearchShot of Joe before he left for China last Friday:

In our new feature, Search Celebrity Sightings, we’ll report on encounters with search luminaries. No matter where they show up, count on us to get the story.

Last Tuesday, our retail search team in NY attended Think with Google: the Future of Multi-Channel. The event discussed how retail companies can integrate online efforts with offline activity. We asked the team to rate the sessions on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is most useful to marketers.

Not surprising, Avinish Kaushik was the big hit. His session, Blurring the Line: Nonline-Driven Analytics, received the highest usefulness score. For those that missed it, here are the key takeaways from Avinash’s talk:

• What ecommerce people routinely fail to understand is how important the site is to 98% of shoppers who don’t visit to purchase.
• More and more evidence is showing that people research online before purchasing offline.  Why they do this doesn’t matter — what matters is whether your site meets the needs of all visitors.
• Primary Keys are unique identifiers that allow two sets of data to be combined without duplication. The hard part about integrating online efforts with offline activity is finding a primary key. Companies that manage to do this will invest more in online than their competitors.

Did you attend the event? If so, post your comments and let us know what you thought!

Have you just spotted a search celebrity recently? If so, we want to hear from you! Email us your stories or photos at razorfishsearch@razorfish.com