Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) was a great marketer. Shallow assessment? Offensive, even? The recent experience of one who followed in his footsteps may illustrate my point.

Former Washington Mayor at U-M
Adrian Fenty, former mayor of our nation’s Capitol and featured speaker at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business on Martin Luther King Day this year, was once described as a “reform-minded problem solver.*” So I found it ironic that Fenty began his speech by alluding to the election he lost after a single term in office. Maybe he felt that his audience would be wondering why the D.C. voters gave him only four years to make good on his campaign promise of reforming the schools.

Fortunately, Fenty also described his approach to fulfilling his promise, how he consulted with the mayors of New York City and Chicago, and ultimately selected a Chancellor, Michelle Rhee,who warned him that if he wanted to be re-elected he shouldn’t hire her. By “taking control of the school system,” Fenty and Rhee brought about dramatic improvement in graduation rates, test scores and the budget in just four years—an impressive record, but apparently something was missing.

Looking Back from the Mountaintop
There in the distinguished Ross School on MLK Day, Fenty called up King’s “Mountaintop” speech, delivered just before his assassination.

This speech communicated to the depths of people’s hearts. How? King knew his people and their sufferings. He had suffered with them. King was comparing his (and their) experience to that of Moses and the enslaved Israelites in the Bible, where Moses led the people out of Egypt to the Promised Land which he viewed from a mountaintop, but did not enter with them.  

Looking back we hear King imploring the people, “We need all of you.”

 Fenty’s speech set me thinking. First, I care about kids and their education. I have five grown children, a grandchild and two degrees in education. I have spent much time in the schools, both as an educator and a parent volunteer. As a company we at MOVE have done projects for higher-ed institutions like the University of Michigan, Michigan State, Spring Arbor University and Cornerstone University. Lastly, as a business owner I am keenly aware of the symbiotic relationship between school success and business success.

The marketing business is really about helping businesses build relationships. Businesses strive to satisfy customers’ needs. To succeed they have to do it again and again. That takes a relationship in which the customer feels an emotional connection, a loyalty to a brand. When King cried out, “We need all of you!” he was building an emotional connection, a loyalty within the people.

In business and in politics, you can’t leapfrog that connection. Perhaps that’s where Fenty and Rhee misjudged. Perhaps they felt that if they took the time to put relationships first, they would lose the opportunity to get the job done.

I’m fortunate to have had the chance to celebrate MLK Day by hearing Fenty’s story and I commend his efforts on behalf of justice in education. I hope that all adult Americans will take some time to reflect on how they can build relationships with the next generation. 

*The Huffington Post

Happy Friday everyone! I am Claire Harold, the newly hired Graphic Designer for MOVECommunications.  Last week I had the pleasure of attending AIGA Detroit’s Information Architecture & Usability Research workshop for the web as a part of their Design+Business series of presentations.  I learned a plethora of things about the importance of information architecture and usability. 

The first speaker was Chris Farnum, Senior User Experience Designer at ProQuest here in Ann Arbor.  Information Architecture is the navigation, organization and labeling of content on a website in order for it to be “user-friendly.”  In small companies, like MOVE, the designers do most of the information architecture along with the graphic design, but in larger companies they are separate roles.  The IA (info architect) provides a guide for the designer--a blueprint of the content.  This is given to the designer as a wire frame, which is similar to a design layout (but isn't), and the graphic designer then uses that blueprint to lay out the design and visuals.  In an ideal work situation, this is a fluid process.  Chris talked about the fact that there can sometime be tension between the IA and the designer--with the designer feeling that their creative vision is being "stepped on" and the IA feeling that their need for familiar conventions and mass of information is being restricted.  This is an internal conflict that I often deal with when managing a lot of content.  Where do you draw the line between needing a clean, crisp, original design and, at the same time, needing to maintain the practical conventions to please the client?  There is no clear answer to that question other than to say that there has to be a balance.

Chris provided us with some great resources for reference.  Two books that he really endorses are Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Rosenfeld and Morville and The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Grant.  He also suggested looking at Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Library Science, The Information Architecture Institute, The Information Architecture Summit, ASIST SIG-IA, IUE Conference, boxesandarrows.com, and the IDEA Conference. 

Jodi Bollaert, the second speaker and Vice President of Information Architecture & Usability Research at Team Detroit, spoke about website usability research.  I never realized how important it is to research the effectiveness of the navigation and design of a website. How do you know if your website is successful if you don’t ask the users?  It seems like a no-brainer.

Jodi also talked about various research possibilities and techniques and how to, before you research, define the objectives for your website.  What do you hope your users are doing there?  What do they want to accomplish while on the site?

The first research tactic is interviews--group or individual.  This requires an experienced interviewer to asks non-leading and open-ended questions so as to not form a bias within the question.  These interviews can be conducted via phone, online or in person.  The second is tactic is have a Focus Group that lasts about two hours and is a forum setting to inspire conversation about the usability.  It is important for group members to be the intended audience.  The third, Expert Usability Evaluations, involves having highly trained usability judges evaluate the website.  The big downfall is that it does not involve actual users.

The fourth, and Jodi’s favorite, is Usability Testing. These tests can be done on the phone, face-to-face, or remotely online. Face-to-face and phone testing is done by the user being prompted to actively find specific things on the website. The web testing is done via survey or screen sharing.  This tactic is much more cost effective and provides very specific information. Some samples of online testing services are Ethnio, Webex, and Go To Meeting and they are referred to as "intercept recruiting" because they catch and prompt a user while they are trying to use the site on their own.  The user is also usually given an incentive such as a gift card to Amazon.com.

Jodi’s resources included orgaizations like Usability Professionals Association and the Michigan Usability Professionals Association, websites like Useit.com, UIE.com, and Usability.gov.  She also recommended these books:  Rocket Surgery Made Easy and Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug,Designing Interfaces byJennifer Tidwell, About Faces by Alan Cooper, and Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen.

I will absolutely be attending more of these workshops.  They are a wonderful community of professional designers and design thinkers, and they're available to bounce your ideas off of and to answer your questions.  Please visit Detroit.aiga.org for information about their weekly Design + Business workshops.

It's not an earth-shattering revelation that people are increasingly watching video on the web and mobile phones.  The average person can easily post their own videos to YouTube, Facebook or a blog.  Hulu offers free tv programs and movies on-line and Vizio announced during the Super Bowl that it is bringing internet apps to TV. 

As delivery gets faster and systems more capable of processing larger amounts of information, we're seeing more and more video.  So how do you make use of video online for your business or organization?  Here's our top 10 list of things to keep in mind for creating effective video for your website. 

1. Use video for its strengths--creating emotional impact and a memorable impression.
2. Reflect your brand.  Make sure any video that you post expresses the essence of your brand so that the viewer's connection with it is strengthened.
3. Define a clear structure.  If you're promoting a product, express one or two key benefits and do it in a memorable way.  If it's a corporate overview, create a 3-minute version and a 30-second version.
4. Billboard key ideas.  Focus on the one impression you want to leave with your audience.
5. Create emotional impact.  This can be done through music, a story or images.  Try to fit one emotional moment into each minute of a 3-minute piece and one into a 30-second piece.
6. Convey personality.  You can achieve this through many things, including music, images, writing style, humor, and showcasing employees from your business.  People like to see people.  Choose an on-camera spokesperson or a narrator to present your story with personality.
7. Ensure rapid downloads.  Online users quickly lose patience.  They will wait a little longer for a video to stream than a webpage to load, but not much.  Having a visible progress bar will keep users interested because they have a general idea of how long they will have to wait.  Keep mobile viewers in mind as well.
8. Decide your budget ahead of time.  Not every video needs to have the highest production value.  A corporate overview should have a higher production value than a video blog.  Once you decide what your video is, let the creative team take it away.
9. Invite your audience back for more.  Point out opportunities to go deeper into your website or encourage them to contact you.
10. Make video production a regular part of your integrated marketing communications strategy.  Online video content is going to grow as the world becomes more image and motion-oriented.  Stay current and active.  It will pay off in customers feeling more strongly about their relationship with your brand.

See how we created a variety of lengths and subject matter videos for the Michigan State University Broad Full-time MBA program on their website.  They have received really positive feedback about how these videos have helped potential students connect with their brand.  You can also see other examples of videos here on our website. 

At this moment, there are prospective students who are the right fit for your college or university that are yearning for someone to engage them in discussion on questions that matter to them.  They may not even know they are waiting, but when they see you stimulating a dialog in their area of passion and inquiry, like a match to dry tinder, their interest will ignite.  And you will have begun to build a relationship that, because it is based on common interest, has intrinsic value and directed purpose.

So, how can you start this dialog?  A robust way is to connect online through a Discovery Microsite.  Here, the student has an opportunity to engage in a faculty-led discussion blog, connect to a professor, student or alumni, learn more about your distinct approach, and click to apply.

You can drive traffic to this site through online banner ads, Facebook or Twitter references, or through traditional print, radio, T.V. and outdoor media.

In future blog entries, we’ll talk more about how these work.  In the meantime, ask your current students about what issues they are most interested in; then ask yourself which of these topics most align with your core expertise as an institution.  When you find that intersection, you will learn where you should begin the dialog with your prospective students of fit.