Join us this Thursday, September 9th, the night of the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk for Groop Showcase: an event featuring the work of one of our talented Groop members. This month we will be showcasing the work of Manny Garcia, a CALARTS graduate and member of the Groop network.

About the Artist:

Manny G grew up with his uncle airbrushing and designing movie posters right in his own backyard. Already with a natural inclination towards art, Manny knew working in design would be the best way to harness his abilities.

Manny attended CALARTS, starting out in print but quickly realizing the world of design stretched far past the horizon in medium and purpose. His interest: Art that faced no boundaries but had the ability to cause an effect or provide a solution. Since graduation Manny has worked on various projects creating visual identities and most recently created a whole world for FOCUS project, an online, interactive training program to help military families learn how to overcome the challenges of stress and deployment.

Manny hails from LA, roaming the streets of the Laker Parade and managing his trade at the Groop in the historic/gallery row district, hub for artists and suits alike. Constantly observing and critiquing the world around him, Manny applies his discerning eye towards his own constant sketching, music writing, and tattoos.

Tuesday, Sept. 14th
7:30 am to 9:00 am

Akasha Restaurant
9543 Culver Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232

Come join us September 14th, 2010 at the renowned Akasha Restaurant for Groop Skool’s Executive Breakfast Series: “Digital ADD” Breaking Through. A panel of experts from some of LA’s Top media and entertainment companies will be discussing how to break through the clutter of today’s complex digital media ecosystem.

The breakfast will be held at Akasha restaurant located in beautiful Downtown Culver City’s restaurant row. Enjoy a locally grown, organic menu to the insightful discussions of our talented and experienced panel. Come prepared to jump in the conversation as we intend to answer all your questions on developing digital products that reach and engage today’s hyperactive users.

For more information or to sign up visit www.executivebreakfast.eventbrite.com

Are you struggling with managing online products? Do you wonder where in the project things went wrong? Have you asked yourself if there is a better way to do this? We have been addressing these questions with our clients for 10 years and would like to share our experience and solutions with you.

A typical digital project consists of 6 distinct phases: The Idea, Project Initiation, Designing, Building, Releasing and Iterating. Let’s start with the First Phase: The Idea. During this first phase Executives often make some crucial mistakes that will determine the success of the entire project moving forward.

Here are the Top 3 Mistakes:

1. Wanting a product simply because your competitor is doing it

As media and technology continue to advance many companies are feeling anxious that they’re being left behind or not capitalizing on the next big thing. This “herd mentality” leads to jumping the gun and not defining what the problem was in the first place. In the end you’ll find you’ve spent a load of money developing a product that doesn’t serve a need. Even worse, you’re not quite sure what it does or how it will generate a revenue.

2. Not brainstorming with the rest of your team

With most corporate business models, planning consists of top down decision making. The top tier being management, who are often unclear of their own creative and tech team’s capabilities. Without considering the important aspects of the project on their end, expect a jungle of speed bumps, miscommunication and don’t even think about making it on time or budget.

3. Not knowing your users intimately

Defining who your users are may be one of the most important steps of your digital project. If you begin developing without determining the “for who” and why they should care, your end product will have no relation to your target users. Develop a deep understanding of your users, or your product might find itself without an audience.

Stay tuned for our next Groop Skool posts where we’ll introduce Groop Tools to help you avoid these mistakes. Remember, digital projects should be fun and engaging vs. frustrating and exhausting. (Really)

For more information about Groop Skool visit
http://www.groopskool.net

or contact Wesley at
wesley@thegroop.net

FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress) provides a training program designed to help military families learn practical skills to meet the challenges of deployment as well as create a happier, healthier family life. The Groop is translating this program into an interactive, online experience through FOCUS world. Parents, spouses and children will be able to explore tools, play games and learn from exercises designed by The Groop. The Groop has also recently launched their HQ website, where military families can discover the offerings of this amazing program.

Visit Focusproject.org

If you have been working as a producer at a digital agency for a few years and the thought crossed your mind that “There has to be an easier way to do things” we have an opportunity for you.

The Groop is looking to pay you to learn Agile Project Management! in the “Groop Way”.

What you need:

1. To be a digital agency producer. For at least the past 12 months.
2. The burning desire to learn a way to do things easier without a million spreadsheets, countless long meetings, and pulling 80 hour work weeks.
3. To want to get paid to learn.

What we need:

1. Both a tactical and strategic leader that works well with clients and teams.
2. An excellent communicator both written and in person.
3. A cover letter with the “5 top reasons why I would rock at learning “The Groop Way” and a resume.

Please email our Groop Talent Coordinator at
alice@thegroop.net

We believe that simple is better. So instead of writing a long and complex job description we asked ourselves what are the top 6 traits a great executive producer should have. Here they are:

1. Be able to lead complex digital projects to success. Success defined as first high client satisfaction from world class creative work, on or under budget, on time, within scope and with awesome team member satisfaction.

2. Have 4+ years experience leading successful digital media projects in an agency environment.

3. Be able to prioritize what’s important and what’s not in producing projects.

4. Be both a tactical and strategic leader that works well with clients and teams

5. Be able to write project Statement of Works focusing on Scope, Time and Cost

6. Be able to resource and allocate Groop team members and freelancers on projects

* Understanding of Waterfall and Agile methodologies is a plus.
** Better yet if you have produced both digital projects and live action film projects that is a big plus.

If you feel this is you, email us your resume and a cover letter to Alice@thegroop.net

Bring it!

A must read for all start-ups.

Logic+Emotion: Social Business Design @ Social Fresh.

This is an amazing video. Must watch.

From Fury.com

If you are an integrated media producer at an ad agency or a marketing executive at a fortune 500 brand then you have already dealt with creating an online video campaign. And whether your goals where to build brand awareness, drive online sales, capture emails or simply to educate your customers the sheer number of options, collaborators and budget constrains likely made the experience challenging.

In our experience the most common challenges are:

1. Figuring out what to do and how to get consensus amongst your many stakeholders

2. Maintaining expectations during the production of your campaign

3. Follow-up after the launching your campaign

We have talked to integrated media producers, marketing executives and countless others and determined that there is no clear agreement on what makes a good online video campaign. The one thing that remains constant is that with the increased complexity and quantity of moving parts you have to take a more strategic approach to solving these three challenges. In our experience we have found that the same tools developed to create successful user experiences for websites apply to creating video. With that in mind we have created 6 rules that you can apply to your online video campaign website.

Here are the six rules:

Rule #1. Have a shared language:

Have everyone agree on who your viewsers are and what is important to them. It allows the teams to ask the question “does this idea or solution work for our viewser”.

We helped Savings.com rally around their viewsers’ needs and created a common language from which to frame our conversation. This can sometimes be dismissed as “fluff” but if used correctly can be an effective way to communicate and produce better results.

Rule # 2. Have clear measurable goals:

Create simple measurable goals. For example: To increase return visitors by 10% in one month.
Instead of having your team focused on a set number of features, “shots” or functions have them ask “what will it take to meet our goal?”

In The Groop school of thought we use the Agile concept of the “Global Business Objective” as one of our tools to help keep the team focused on “the prize” not fighting over some of the minutia.

Rule # 3. Create approach consensus:

Working to define your goals together allows for both creative and technology partners to feel part of the process. The traditional hand-down from strategy or planning to creative to technology simply does not work.

Our experience has been that consensus is best reached when all of the parties involved participate in
the process of defining the goals and the viewsers for the campaign.

Rule # 4. Have flexible execution:

As with most websites it is better to release less features that are awesome versus more features that are mediocre. Quality of experience trumps quantity of options. More importantly even if you plan well things will change and you will have to be comfortable with cutting features to meet your deadlines and budget caps.

We use a project approach that resembles film and animation methods used today by companies such as PIXAR and Dreamworks. Shorter cycles with more with frequent adjustments towards a shared goal.

Rule # 5. Measure often but plan it well:

Measuring often is much easier than knowing what to do with the data. For optimal data analysis make sure that you plan your tests, and conduct A/B or multivariate testing. That is what makes online video campaigns so awesome. It’s like TV but you can fine tune even after “airing” the campaign.

Google Analytics, Omniture, Webtrends and others provide you with the tools and metrics that you need but only if you use them with A. a cleal goal and B. Well planned analysis will you get optimal results.

Rule # 6. Plan to Adjust:

Launching is only half the battle, the real work begins in the small adjustments that you will continue to make on an ongoing basis. Always plan for several releases in the life cycle of an online video campaign. It’s ok if you don’t get it exactly right the first time, you can adjust it.

To the left is the first design of a Savings.com coupon page. To the right you can see the evolution of the design based on the results of multiple rounds of testing.

We would love to hear what you think. What are your experiences? Leave us your comments below.

José Caballer
Chief Visionary, The Groop

For more information about The Groop’s online video capabilities please email us at video@thegroop.net

You can also call us at 213.613.0066