As we prepare for NYE, the anticipated busiest day of our cross-channel campaign with Vans, we’re faced with the question of measurement. Multi-multi-measurement.
To put it mildly.

Let’s back up. Single-modal campaign stats can be broken down into fairly standard tables with the traditional cast of characters: users, pageviews, impressions…

Even digital or otherwise ‘dynamic’ campaigns have become digestible enough over the past few years; interactions like clicks and txts have accumulated the necessary precedence to be adopted into the common marketing vernacular and hold meaning at face value. In most cases, digital numbers can be chopped finely enough to be contained within a traditional analytic structure (with possibly a few relational clauses and an asterisk or two).

But what about a campaign that asks users to click, txt, view, visit, watch, write, submit, photograph, playback, share, and embed? And do so in their own particular way, using whatever combo of devices they want, globally, 24/7?

Welcome to our world.

Cross-channel campaigns like Vans BeHere require an entirely new measurement rubric- one that involves far more than Excel tables and line graphs. User engagement becomes a complex equation involving all of the verbs above, some multiplied, some summed. But here’s the kicker: the three-click rule still applies, and it’s no longer confined to just the web or the mobile phone. When ’spreadability’ reigns, you just better make sure that you let the user decide which three clicks (or txts, or playbacks, or embeds) he wants to make.

From a brand perspective, the ultimate success of a campaign like this isn’t raw numbers; that’s far too compartmentalized and myopic to mean much of anything. The ‘win’ here is verifying that the audience has been given the tools to craft their own user experience in an instinctual way, and can then pass these tools to friends (so that they can then use them in their own way…) Boiled down, it’s a matter of containing viral spread to the point that it captures and engages a critical mass of target users without losing effect.

Toss that in your pie chart.

CEO @StephenRandall found this floating around the internet. It’s a “notificator” or robotic messenger used in the 1930s for friends to leave messages for each other at a specific location. People put a coin into the machine and wrote a message on a continuous strip of paper that stayed up for at least two hours.

Digg calls it the First Twitter, but it’s really more like the First Wiffiti, with the whole broadcasting a message to a screen for all to see.

While essentially the two fulfill the same purpose of connecting people, I have to say our Wiffiti’s a bit more advanced. It’s bigger, quicker and allows you to connect to a lot more people at a lot more places.

Another app hits the big screen…

Working with the good folks over at ObamaMinute, we’ve launched Obama Wiffiti in Times Square!

This will be running 24/7 through the election, so crank up your texting to show your support! And, if that’s the way ya swing, head on over to ObamaMinute and register to be part of “An Obama Minute” on Monday, October 6th at noon. They’ve been a wonderful group to work with!

You can also embed this screen into your own blog or website and spread the love (it’s just a quick copy/paste of code at the bottom, just like you’re embedding a YouTube vid).

As you can see, Steve King, our VP Sales, is in NYC today and wasted little time making his presence known… :)