4 Shots of Espresso

Whatever it looks like, Apple will no longer be running a $10 million campaign for Adidas¹. Of course, one would assume a campaign like this would include complex and extravagant custom integrations, but let’s say it did not. What might $10 million buy?

Because ad rates can range dramatically depending on targeting, topic, geo, time frame, etc, I’ll use Adify’s network as a baseline. In Q2, 2010 the beauty and fashion sector on Adify’s network averaged a banner rate of $3.14 CPM².

$10,000,000 would buy:

• 3,184,713,376 impressions
• 31,847,134 clicks (@1% CTR)

Yes, that is over three billion impressions. This means that every person in the United States of America (all 307 million of us³) could see the ad slightly more than 10 times each. I don’t even think I have seen the Geico squealing pig ad 10 times yet, and Hulu Plus is actively trying.

How does your site handle a search for “Boston” when it’s a city in Massachusetts, 26 other cities around the world, a basketball team, and a band?

Metaweb has an interesting solution to that problem.

Find more information on Metaweb’s site.

Does your company already have a web application that would make a stellar mobile app, but you are concerned about the investment to produce the product? This investment can seem daunting and prohibitive as it can require:

• Mobile engineers specializing in one or several mobile platforms: Android (Dalvik Java), iPhone (Objective-C, C++), RIM (Java, J2ME), Palm WebOS (C++, JavaScript, HTML, AJAX) and Symbian (C++)
• UI designers familiar with cross-platform mobile conventions
• Retooled services for mobile
• Extensive QA process to identify and treat a motley collection of platform specific bugs
• Constant monitoring of OS updates and bug fixes
• Mobile marketing initiatives
• Monitoring new distribution channels
• Evaluating the impact on user life-cycle
• Updated business case and P&L estimates

I am sure that I have missed some other reasons investing in mobile applications can appear daunting, but ultimately the point is that this type of investment poses a significant risk. If your company is approaching this decision it might consider using a development framework to reduce expenses by condensing programing language requirements, increasing QA consistency, and reducing impact on the current system architecture.

One opensource framework I have worked with in the past, and enjoyed, is PhoneGap. It enables products to be delivered on many mobile devices with a singular code base. Of course there are UI differences that must be accounted for between mobile platforms so that applications look, act, and feel as users expect them to. Using a PhoneGap type framework significantly reduces product complexity, speeding time to market and reducing costs.

Here’s a brief video description of the platform and how to get up and running. The video features Jeremiah Cohick and was produced by Digital Dandelion.

Even though PhoneGap was a great solution for this project it may not be the best alternative for every mobile application. The deciding factor here is how much your application’s use of device inputs (e.g. Accelerometer, GPS, Camera, Compass) will stray from typical use cases. Even if you don’t end up using this or a similar framework, the initial investigation is worth the time.

For more information: PhoneGap | Sony WebSDK | Mavericks Application Source Code

After working as a product manager in the hiring space I could not help but pick up some Human Resources hiring best practices. Most of these items are common sense. If a company you interview with does not employ them, it is a likely sign of internal disorganization and poor communication skills.

• Auto responses to candidate applications are fine. Actually, they are great because they validate the candidate’s submission and give the hiring manager time to complete an initial resume screen.
• Auto rejection letters are fine if an initial resume screen determines a candidate is not qualified.
• Auto rejection letters are not OK when the HR team has had any form of direct communication with a candidate e.g. email, phone screen, in person interview. Auto rejection letters at this stage demean the candidate and hurt the company brand image within its industry.
• Status reports are important. Candidates can and should know that they are a strong possibility for a position, that they are not a fit, or that other candidates are still being interviewed. It takes very little effort to keep a candidate in the loop. Ignoring this simple step is an indicator of ill placed priorities and a tendency towards internal job self-preservation.
• If the HR team is using a hiring tool, verify the built in communication system. It’s difficult to build communications components that operate as expected. Try scheduling in-person interviews with a phone call; then confirm the appointment with the hiring tool’s communication system.
• Updating the job description? Make sure the update propagates to all the sites it’s posted on. Even though the hiring tool sends the job to Simply Hired, Indeed, Monster, Craigslist, Oodle, and more, it must be manually edited in many places like Dice, Linked-in, Krop, and in some cases, the hiring company’s company’s website.
• Job descriptions are marketing tools. Hiring organizations want great candidates, but great candidates skip posts with grammatical, spelling, and other general communication errors.
• Job descriptions are pubic company status statements. If a company is hiring 3 mobile engineers, they must be building a mobile application. If another firm is hiring a project manager who knows HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript, who also knows how to implement the MVC architecture, but can wireframe, build production ready designs, knows Project, Visio, Excel, can build product and marketing requirement documents and has a PMP, they must have lost a key developer, a designer, and a product manager, but don’t have the resources to replace them all.
• If candidates are allowed to upload a resume, they should not be required to also re-enter it just so the hiring tool can eliminate them more efficiently. Either the candidate should be required to enter it from the start, or the company should get a better hiring tool.

Ultimately, it’s important for companies and candidates to realize that the hiring process is not about either one individually. Companies expose their brand and offer strategy hints with job listings. Candidates expose personal information in an emotionally stressful way. Hiring the right way is as easy as clear, appropriate, and timely communication. It is a relationship after all.

This list will continue evolving. If you have your own thoughts please feel free to add them in the notes!