And it has paid dividends.   At first, what would have taken me a few days to implement in PHP took a few weeks in Rails because I was figuring out how Rails worked, learning the “Rails Way” and discovering plugins.   Now a last minute feature addition that was dubbed critical was accomplished in less than an hour including testing and deployment.   The same feature would have taken at least 2 days in PHP based on how I used to develop.

All this to say, the Red Zone is a product that I’m very proud of.   It is well designed from the inside out.   There are some look and feel components that I’d like to improve on, but overall, the UI has been thought through so that the user gets maximum ease of use.  The user security schema has been thought through so that it works with how the users actually use it. The administration has been ‘DRY’d up so that changes only need to be made in one place, not 15–which makes for a very pleasant and consistent user experience.

The biggest advantage to using Rails has definitely been speed of development (and fun!), but the biggest pitfall has been speed of use.   When you compare it to other platforms, though, Rails just ends up succumbing to the same problems they have : when you deal with a lot of data, you’re going to be slow unless you know how to optimize it.

We did optimize it by putting all of our data into what is called a denormalized table. This allowed us to grab all the data needed without any complicated or expensive joins in the database.   Now you can pull a full months report in seconds rather than minutes, allowing our staff to spend time doing what they do well, rather than waiting on a web page to load.

We also added other features that took a fraction of the time to develop like moving our lead tracking system into the Red Zone and simplifying some internal processes.

All in all, it’s been a pleasure to work with Ruby on Rails to develop this business product for Red McCombs Media.  I’d recommend using Rails to nearly any company that wants to develop a feature rich product and knows how to properly optimize code.

Online is the present and the future of our advertising world. Connecting and being in-the-know, creating campaigns based around mobile, internet, SEO, etc. is a step many agencies shy away from. However, RMM is a forerunner in new ideas and innovation and that is why I was drawn to apply here.

I began my job at Red McCombs Media the week after July 4th. Having never worked in an agency setting, I am learning all new dynamics and methodologies that go along with the “agency life”. Specifically, interactive is a whole new bean, so-to-speak. I mean, I’ve had black beans and Ranch Style, but interactive is like chickpeas… It’s new, it’s fast, it’s EVER-CHANGING, and can be mashed to make an entirely different kind of food (hummus…yummmm). Everyday. Scratch that. Every MINUTE, the online and mobile realm revolutionizes. Transformation and flexibility is the name of the game.

Have you noticed that we are all copycats on the internet? I think the key to being successful for your clients is becoming the WOLF, the pack leader. Not a sheep who blindly follows, but a wolf who seeks out, knows what he wants, and creates his own destiny.

Facebook is king. Twitter, TripAdvisor, LinkedIn, and YouTube were all “firsts” of their kind (meaning most popular and first to have success in their chosen area). These are the wolves and the owners of social media. All other sites MIMIC the success of these core trendsetters. What does this have to do with agencies? We have to play the game and belly up to the bar. Unfortunately, a successful wolf attracts a huge pack, and these sites have become cluttered in a way that makes me wonder if advertisers benefit by solely investing their dollars in them… bold statement… but hear me out.

Look at twitter, for example. How awesome would this site be if say, AT&T had developed it? If AT&T had created this site, they would OWN it. Advertising for their services, phones, etc. They could encourage consumers to text in on their AT&T phone and have judges who awarded the #1 text of the day. That person could win some sort of prize from AT&T. Agencies have an overwhelming and challenging duty to create these ideas that directly benefit and hit the values of their client. We have such an exciting and creative challenge to get the word out in any way imaginable. We do not want to limit our abilities to simply putting advertising out. Why not create it from within?

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that all campaign strategies benefit by 360-degree marketing. Creating a site like the one above is just the first step, so next is getting the word out. As I said, playing the game of social media is pretty much a must for advertisers now-a-days. (I mean my mom and all her BFFs are on Facebook… it’s not just a college thing anymore.) The key element of social media is HUMANIZING your product, your company, your whatever. Because, we as humans want to speak out. We are opinionated, and we like being able to face-lessly vent. We like being able to hear, say, the new guy at ChipandDipCompanyA spout off about what’s really in the way-too-yellow nacho cheese at state fairs. We like the inside scoop, and we want to hear it from a TRUSTWORTHY source. It all boils down to that simple word; trust. Social media holds us as advertisers, businesses, and people accountable. As we’ve seen time and again, many advertisers have suffered like ChipandDipCompanyA will. Accountability in every sense of the word has become a core focus for consumers. They want to make sure you are being honest with them and others.

Honesty, creativity, and creating a campaign focused on the core desire of the advertiser are some of the keys, I believe, that create a successful social media campaign. Visibility and transparency, connecting with consumers, humanizing your company in a new way simplify your brand name. They put a face, a voice, a website to your company.

I hope you enjoyed my article! I look forward to writing again for RMM. Look out for more of my posts!

Category: Display Advertising, CPC Expandable & IAB Standard Banners

Client Demographic for IAB Standard Banner: Adults that are Teachers

Client Demographic for CPC Expandable: Men & Women seeking
Educational Opportunities on the Non-Profit

Campaign Goals: To target one U.S. state and to increase traffic to their landing pages was a main goal for both campaigns. For the Standard Banners they wanted to drive teachers to their landing page to download supplemental materials on lesson planning and to order resource kits for their classes.

The CPC Expandable campaign wanted to drive traffic to their website for those seeking to find out more about an exhibit they were hosting, to show the exhibit locations and to help visitors find out more about what the non-profit does and how to help internationally.

Challenges: Getting the desired reach and conversions, as well as visitors to their landing pages with a limited budget.

Strategy: RMM and client decided together to run their campaigns through our network on a Run of Network. This would help them maximize their reach as well as work for their budget.

Results: The Standard Banners delivered over 1,211,800 impressions and had a CTR of 0.15 for their two and a half month campaign. A typical CTR for a standard banner campaign is 0.05 but for the CPC Expandable, in just one month they delivered approximately 800,000 impressions with a CTR of 0.75. Thus far, the CPC Expandable has proven for this client to provide five times what the CTR was for the standard banner campaign and the client is very happy with the results.

When Twitter took the web by storm, it was just natural that people would want to share photos there, and Twitpic was the answer. As much as I like sharing photos with friends, I couldn’t bring myself to use their service because Twitpic requires your Twitter credentials to play. So, each time I had a picture to share I’d post it to Flickr, shorten the URL and post it to Twitter. That’s a lot of steps and I’ll bet you can guess the outcome, I didn’t share many pictures via Twitter.

But now that’s all changed! Just yesterday Flickr launched a new service called Flickr2Twitter. It does exactly what it says, email a photo to a specific email address within your Flickr account, and it updates your Twitter account with a URL to the pic and your message. And, it handles this via Twitter’s API, so you get to keep your Twitter password to yourself.

Because you’re sending the pic via email, you can do all of this via your phone. Also, if you find a photo that’s already posted to Flickr (yours or a publicly available one), you can share the photo from directly within Flickr. That’s pretty handy.

Flickr, thanks for thinking of us. Stay awesome.