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2016
TRENDS
INSIDE
Our mid-year analysis of
emerging trends of interest
for business owners,
advertisers and
marketing insiders.
SUMMER
READER

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e’re excited to bring you our second edition of the Trends Summer
Reader magazine! As a continuation of our annual Marketing
Tends book, now in its seventh year, we share stories about
how brands are taking advantage of these trends in their own marketing.
This summer, we are reporting on a compilation of trends with themes
such as Moment Marketing, Brand Evolution, Dynamic Engagement,
Iterative Design and Personalized Marketing. These trends all have multiple
components that consumers are expecting from your brand.
Inside this magazine, we interview marketers that are reaching customers
at their moment of need, updating their visual brand for the 21st century,
using live events to their full potential, embracing iterative design
philosophies and marketing one-to-one with their prospective customers.
As the marketing world continues to evolve, thunder::tech wants you to
have as much education to improve upon the past, shape the present and
invent the future for your organization.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your feedback. Happy marketing!
WELCOME TO THE 2016
TRENDS SUMMER READER
W
::Jason Therrien, president
jason.therrien@thundertech.com
@JasonTherrien

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4 8
PERSONALIZED
MARKETING
12 15
BRAND
EVOLUTION
Connecting the right message with the right person
at the right time.
You say you want a revolution?
MOMENT
MARKETING
DYNAMIC
ENGAGEMENT
Audiences are in the moment,
why isn’t your advertising?
Social media marketing for real-time events.
page page
page page
TABLE OF CONTENTS
18
ITERATIVE
DESIGN
Stop the madness of build/bust design with
sensible, incremental, strategy-driven improvements.
page
DOWNLOAD OUR
2016 TRENDS BOOK
Watch for 2017 Trends
coming in November!
trends.thundertech.com

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PERSONALIZED
MARKETING
CONNECTING THE RIGHT MESSAGE WITH THE
RIGHT PERSON AT THE RIGHT TIME
hat brand comes to
mind when you think about
companies that offer a
personalized experience?
Did Amazon pop into your mind? If it did,
you’re not alone. Amazon is the master
of delivering a unique, personalized
shopping experience for each and every
one of their customers. Any thoughts on
why? Because it works! Amazon sees
that delivering the same content to every
user is becoming a thing of the past.
Just because you don’t have the annual
marketing budget of a multibillion dollar
organization like Amazon doesn’t mean
you can’t provide your audience with a
more personalized experience, and we
are going to give you tips and quick wins
that you can implement now.
First, let’s determine exactly what
“personalization” is as it relates to
the customer journey. thunder::tech
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sees personalization and relationship
marketing at the intersection of content
and context. It is leveraging customer
data and dynamic capabilities of a
platform to tailor messaging, content,
products, offers, and so on, specifically
to the user viewing the information. By
adding context to the mix, content now
becomes more relevant to your audience
because you delivered the right message
to the right person at the right time.
Priming for Personalization
There are many reasons that the cloud
and the concept of Internet of Things
has exploded. It has much to do with
the need for companies to scale, move
quickly and collaborate across systems,
both internally owned and externally
owned. It has even more to do with the
deep hunger for companies to deliver the
best, scary-good customer experience
they could ever envision.
Without the cloud and the ability to
track a customer’s path across the
many touch points with a company,
personalization could only happen to a
very finite extent. Organizations need to
continue to connect offline and online
activity tracking together to form a more
beneficial view of a customer.
Make note that personalization doesn’t
just need to be for the retailers, and it
certainly isn’t only an online game. For
example, say you have sales engineers
across regions for a high touch product.
You also offer an online configuration,
price and purchase path. You can
connect the dots to relate more strongly
with your customer by establishing
proper workflows and expectations
across your sales, service and
marketing teams.
Enable your sales team with the proper
tools to interface with a cloud-based
customer relationship management
(CRM) system to record offline
conversations, action items and interest
levels. Connect customer service
and ticketing systems to your CRM
platform to allow bidirectional intel. If
your customer has recently complained
through an online live chat or through a
heated phone call, that should be noted
in that customer’s profile in the CRM and
followed up with during a sales meetup.
If there was a recent opportunity
and interest listed for that customer,
deliver personalized promotions or
insight within content online and in
email communications rather than
being caught in voicemail hell. You
can minimally view whether or not that
customer viewed, opened or clicked
the promotion to gauge any sense of
continued interest. Even if you did get a
verbal interest, remember that actions
speak louder than words.
Organizations can achieve remarkable
personalization with a well-structured
ecosystem of integrated systems. When
these systems are communicating
and activities are accurately attributed
to the right customer profiles, you
can be confident that your customers
are receiving the message that best
resonates with them exactly when they
want it. A good DevOps agency can help
you hammer out all the details.
There is a reason that cloud platforms
(Salesforce, SugarCRM, InfusionSoft,
etc.) need to have integration
components in their feature set. Stand
alone and die. Share data, connect
data and thrive.
Also know that there are even more
systems and innovative technologies
being launched monthly. For example,
Demandbase offers a wealth of
intuitive and personalized intel on
prospects based on IP addresses tied
to organization/corporation lookups.
Data.com is a platform that can
fill in the gaps.
With that data, we can more quickly
personalize and evolve customer
experiences to meet all of our ever-
changing online/offline expectations.
Quick Context Wins
Earlier we promised some tips on how
your organization can make the customer
journey more personalized, and below
you will find three ways you can add
context to your marketing efforts.
Email/Newsletter Form Updates
What we see often are organizations
asking for a customer’s life story when
they are signing up to receive email
updates, or simply asking for only email
and missing out on additional ways to
segment. Through some minor updates
to the fields in your form, you will be
able to further segment your audience to
deliver relevant messaging to them while
not turning away potential subscribers by
asking for too much information.
Instead, try eliminating unnecessary
components. Examples include, last
names, mailing addresses, an interest
check box section or asking how they
heard about you. Through free website
analytics platforms, like Google Analytics,
organizations are able to answer this
question through data rather than asking
the audience directly.
Recommended fields for email
sign-up are email address, ZIP code and
a question that puts your audience into
one of three high-level segments based
on interests. To use thunder::tech’s
emails as an example, we are able to
segment subscribers into audiences
interested in social media, application
development, creative design
and optimization.
Looking to step things up even more?
Try implementing forms with progressive
profiling functionality. Progressive
profiling, or smart forms, display new
fields to website visitors each time they
fill out a form so that more relevant data
can be collected rather than having them
answer the same fields over and over.

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LISTEN TO OUR PERSONALIZED
MARKETING PODCAST
THUNDERTECH.COM/PODCAST/
PERSONALIZEDMARKETING
Marketing Automation Processes
By following the first tip you now have
the ability to automatically sort your
subscribers into list segments. For
example, say you sell pet fish and other
related products and you updated your
email sign-up process to help determine
whether new subscribers are interested
primarily in fish, fish food, fish tanks, or
some combination of those three. If a
subscriber indicates they are interested
in “fish” then they should automatically
be added to an email list that focuses on
selling fish, not fish food. Once that user
has purchased a fish and that conversion
is tracked, or you learn that they already
own one, that is when the messaging
and content can focus on fish food.
You can reduce shopping cart
abandonment on your e-commerce site
by including a thumbnail image of the
product in the checkout list. Customers
will feel more assured that they added
the right products.
Also remove any coupon offers in the
checkout process. While this might
be a seen as a good way to upsell a
customer, it is also a great way to take
customers out of the cart conversion
path by distracting them. Don’t
cross-sell inside the checkout process.
Just like the coupon offers, we don’t
want to distract the user. Keep them
focused until they get across the finish
line. Finally, send a follow-up email.
Maybe the customer didn’t change their
mind, but they simply forgot to finish the
checkout process. It’s always good
to follow-up.
With competitive pressure increasing
every day, personalization isn’t just a
trend, but it will soon become a vital
piece of how organizations interact with
their audiences throughout the
customer lifecycle. ::
RIGHT TIME
RIGHT PERSON
RIGHT MESSAGE

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Listen in to THUNDER::CAST,
thunder::tech’s regular podcast,
for an insightful and slightly
irrelevant take on what’s
happening in the marketing and
advertising world today. Our
hosts’ interview a broad range
of marketing professionals to
gain insight and perspective
on topics of importance to
business owners,advertisers
and anyone interested in today’s
marketing landscape.
STEP AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD AND TUNE
IN TO THUNDER::CAST FOR ENTERTAINING
DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THE LATEST INDUSTRY
NEWS, TOPICS AND HAPPENINGS
HANDS-FREE
MARKETING INSIGHT
LISTEN AT
THUNDERTECH.COM/PODCAST

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BRAND
EVOLUTION
our visual brand isn’t working as
well as it once did. Do you
change it slightly or blow it up
and start fresh?
At least once a week we have a client
express how they’re unhappy with their
current brand identity and want a change.
That always prompts us to ask, “Are you
looking for an evolution or a revolution?”
Is it Time for a Change?
It goes without saying that a company’s
brand identity is a critical component
of its marketing efforts. Changing any
component of it without serious thought
and discussion is looking for trouble.
Identity changes should be conducted
for legitimate business purposes, not
because you want to “shake things up.”
While most companies focus on their
logos, keep in mind that visual identity
isn’t just the logo mark itself, but it’s
also your color palette, typefaces,
iconology, photography styling and any
other visual elements used to help the
Y
YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION?
brand connect with your customers. All of
these elements are interconnected and
should be viewed as a comprehensive
system.
Before you consider any changes to your
identity, ask yourself, “What’s driving the
decision?” Is your visual identity dated
and no longer accurately representing
the brand? Has your business changed
in some fundamental fashion requiring
you to rethink how you present your
company to the world? Are you just
tired of seeing the same old logo on
letterhead day after day?
Keep in mind that there’s no rule that
says you have to change your visual
identity over time. Coca-Cola uses
practically the same brand mark today
that they originally registered in 1887.
If you do move forward with changes to
your visual identity, decide if you need an
evolution or a revolution.
The Theory of Evolution
If your logo is still doing a decent job of
representing your brand, you probably
only need an evolution—that is, minor
updates to your visual identity, not a
wholesale change. Maybe that cute
curlicue font doesn’t cut it anymore, or
those ‘80s style speed lines seem out of
place. By keeping key visual elements of
your brand the same, you can maintain
familiarity with your audience while
adapting to better suit modern
aesthetic tastes.
Starbucks is a good case study for this
approach. On the next page, you’ll see
their past 45 years of brand evolution.
While the original logo from 1971 is
markedly different from the current one,
1887
TODAY

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the key brand element, the mermaid,
is still present and recognizable. In
addition, the brand color has remained
unchanged since the green was
introduced in 1987. Retaining these
elements keeps the brand familiar to the
established audience, while streamlining
the visual design to suit the tastes of a
contemporary audience.
A successful brand evolution hinges on
having a strong, functional brand to start
with (like Starbucks). If your brand is new
or has little brand equity in the market,
an evolution may be too subtle for most
people to notice. Altering an unknown
brand into a slightly more modern looking
unknown brand isn’t going to move
the needle. In that case, a more
dramatic revolution may be required
for people to notice.
A Revolution is in Order
If your brand is so dated that it no longer
resonates with your core audience, or if
it has intrinsic challenges that are too
numerous to easily overcome, it may be
time for a revolution.
We helped one of our clients, Lube Stop,
undergo a brand revolution recently. Lube
Stop is a quick service oil change chain,
and its core visual identity had been in
place for more than 30 years. Despite
being well-known and respected in the
market, the typeface had begun to look
dated. More importantly, the black oil
drop no longer expressed the key brand
attributes of the company.
“We never really considered a brand
evolution,” said Tony Cammerata,
president of Lube Stop. “The [quick
service oil change] industry is very
mature and very competitive. So as we
continue to grow and expand into new
markets, we wanted a fresh start. We
were committed to making a change.”
Lube Stop is dedicated to sustainability
and environmentally responsible
business practices, and the black oil
drop was saying all the wrong things
for the brand.
“The black oil drop of our old branding
always bothered me,” Cammerata said.
“That says old, dirty oil. The green drop
of our new logo better represents who
we are today.”
thunder::tech recommended that the
brand undergo a revolution so its
visual identity reflects its current
company culture.
1971 1987 20111992
STARBUCKS BRAND EVOLUTION
From the very beginning,
the mermaid was part of
the Starbucks brand.
First evolution and the
introduction of the now
iconic Starbucks green.
Second evolution to
coincide with Starbucks’
becoming a publicly
traded company.
40th anniversary
logo evolves into the
simplest design yet—
even the company
name is removed.

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We worked with Lube Stop to develop a
new visual identity that was respectful to
its heritage, but expressed their
forward-looking mission and values.
The typeface was replaced with a more
modern one, and the black oil drop
was replaced with a green drop to
represent their commitment to greener
business practices.
“[BRAND REVOLUTION]
ISN’T ALWAYS
THE RIGHT THING
TO DO FOR YOUR
BUSINESS, BUT IT WAS
DEFINITELY RIGHT
FOR US “
:: Tony Cammerata, president of Lube Stop
If you undertake a brand evolution or
a brand revolution, prepare for some
backlash from your customers and the
general public.
Thanks to the internet and shows like
Mad Men, the average person is more
aware of marketing and advertising than
ever before. Of course, when they’re
hiding behind a computer screen,
everyone is an expert. However minor or
major your makeover, someone is going
to have an opinion and tell you how
terrible the change is.
If you’ve gone through a sound process
and developed a new brand identity
that’s built on a foundation of insights,
best practices and support of business
goals, then we recommend that you
stand your ground. Don’t rush to make
additional changes to appease a vocal
minority. In most cases, the fervor
will blow over and you’ll be left with a
strong visual identity that positions your
company for the next phase of growth.
Embrace the Change
There are many reasons to refresh your
visual identity. A hard, honest look at
what’s driving the desire for change
will help you decide if your brand needs
minor alterations (evolution) or a major
overhaul (revolution). Either way you
go, be honest about your motivations,
explore all the options, don’t listen to
the internet trolls and keep your brand
moving into the future. ::
OLD
NEW
“[Brand revolution] isn’t always the
right thing to do for your business,”
says Cammerata, “but it was
definitely right for us.”
Another example of a brand that
underwent a brand revolution is Federal
Express. Despite being extremely
successful in the delivery industry in the
early ‘90s, Federal Express suffered
from the public perception that they only
delivered domestically. To overcome
this ingrained notion, they decided to
make a big splash in the industry to grab
shippers’ attention and retell their brand
story. The first move was the change
from “Federal Express” to “FedEx,” the
shorthand name that everyone used
already. Second, they tossed their old
logo and created an entirely new one.
After 200 iterations, they landed on
the famous FedEx logo we know today.
In addition to creating one of the most
iconic logos known in the business
world, they successfully re-engaged the
public to tell their real brand story.
LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST ABOUT
BRAND EVOLUTION VS. REVOLUTION
THUNDERTECH.COM/PODCAST/
BRANDEVOLUTION

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Stay up to date on the latest trends,techniques,
philosophies and events. thunder::tech has a
variety of free e-newsletters tailored to your
interests and business needs.
THESE TRENDS ARE JUST
THE BEGINNING
Social Media Update
Stay on the cutting edge with monthly
social media updates that feature
insights into the most important
social media news and how it impacts
your brand.
Search Marketing Update
Our quarterly optimization update
keeps you apprised of the latest
optimization and search news
and events and how they affect
your website.
Creative Update
Exercise your creative side with
this quarterly update featuring
digital design, marketing philosophy,
promotional methods and
similar topics.
Marketing Matters
Once a month, hot and fresh industry
news, trends, videos and updates
about your favorite marketing agency
are delivered right to your inbox.
Code Update
Get the inside scoop on platforms,
automation, CMS, CRM and
everything else development-related in
this quarterly newsletter.
SIGN UP TODAY AT
THUNDERTECH.COM/SUBSCRIBE

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oday’s brands face tremendous
challenges to acquire and hold
customer attention (ad-blocking,
DVRs, channel segmentation and
general marketing fatigue, just to name
a few). Other marketing trends, including
brand journalism, content marketing,
live streaming, marketing automation,
and others means customers no longer
have to sit still and listen to advertising
messages. In fact, they demand
messaging that is custom tailored for
where they are in the purchase cycle.
This has forced marketers to reach their
customers at the exact right moment,
giving rise to the newest marketing trend,
“Moment Marketing.”
MOMENT
MARKETING
AUDIENCES ARE IN THE MOMENT,
SO WHY ISN’T YOUR ADVERTISING?
Let’s discuss the difference between
what we define as the “Moment” and
“Moment Marketing.” The former is
a point in time when your customer
decides he or she has a need and then
looks for it to be fulfilled. The latter
is a singular opportunity for a brand
to engage a customer because that
customer has figuratively raised their
hand and said “please help me.”
Moment Marketing is providing highly
targeted messaging that gives solutions
to your customers and creates or
furthers a relationship when they decide
they have a need.
T

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Fit Your Offerings to Consumer Needs
Moment Marketing doesn’t happen
in a vacuum. According to Joey Lojek,
CEO of Premier Truck Sales (a national
truck sales and rental organization),
they have built up their marketing and
online tools to be ready for customers in
their moment of need. “Everything today
happens very fast, and our customers
are much more educated because
the answers are all at their fingertips.
Therefore, we have to provide them an
enormous amount of information about
our inventory so they can make their
decision quickly,” Lojek said.
“That’s why we write very thorough specs
and take between 15 and 20 photos for
each piece of equipment. It’s not enough
to just be found during a search online;
you also have to deliver the best web
experience, and then couple it with a very
fast sales response to win the customer
in the moment they need your help. Our
geographic expansion of our sales, now
coast-to-coast, wouldn’t have been as
fast or efficient without first studying
what niche equipment customers are
looking for, and then deciding to invest
more to build our stock.”
However, Premier Truck Sales hasn’t
forgotten about traditional forms of
marketing such as trade publication
advertising. “The trade magazines are
still important to keep Premier’s name
at the top of consumers’ minds, but we
use them for branding purposes and to
pull customers back to their site,” Lojek
said. “The investment we make today is
a fraction of what we used to because
of what immediacy digital marketing can
give us now to serve customers when
they decide they need us.”
Find the Mix that Matches the Moment
As digital has matured and grown to
become a vital component of even the
most traditional ad spends, the Moment
Marketing movement has evolved into
a mindset for marketers. Digital doesn’t
have to be the only medium activated
as a blend of social strategy, content
marketing and traditional advertising.
You can also create a moment
environment that speaks directly to
the audience. Tyler Adams, director
of marketing at Cedar Point Resorts,

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says the shift to Moment Marketing
has impacted his marketing strategy
for Castaway Bay Resorts in Sandusky,
Ohio. In his industry, the main goal is
targeting potential customers as soon
as they begin planning a vacation. “Our
marketing mix of traditional print and
direct mail combined with social media,
digital display ads and Google
pay-per-click focuses very heavily on
being at the right place at the right
time,” Adams said.
“We plan to be in mailboxes, online
and in search results when demand
for our property is at its highest and
families are planning winter getaways.
By offering promotional codes, we
can create a sense of immediacy to
seize the opportunity and also provide
trackability in end-of-season reporting.
Our customers have many choices at
their fingertips when it comes to family
entertainment, so it is imperative for us
to not only be relevant, but actionable
in all of our advertising and to present
ourselves at the right time when a family
would consider us.”
Reposition Your Ad Strategy in 4 Steps
Here are four steps that you can take
if you want to adjust your current
advertising approach to become more
effective, as well as evolve into the 21st
century expectation of your audience:
1. Trial Approach—Look to take a
small portion of your marketing
budget to test out this method for
a very specific call-to-action. If you
can successfully pilot a program that
shows results, this could influence
your boss to give you a bigger piece of
the pie in the next budget allocation.
2. Understand the Audience—Great
success and metric-proven results
won’t happen if you don’t understand
the very specific segments of
your audience and their journey to
purchase from you. Putting yourself
in their shoes anecdotally or through
measured market research will be a
great first step to setting yourself up
for success. Understanding how they
arrive at the moment and then move
through it is key.
3. Pick a Measurable Moment—Choose
your spots, and find an event or time
period that addresses a user at their
intersection of the problem and its
solution or opportunity. It could be
as simple as geo-targeting a location
that delivers your digital message to
select individuals via their phones
within that radius.
4. Tie Results to Business Logic—
Whether the pilot program is
successful or not, the metrics and
reporting can provide insights to
you and upper management. Look
to tie measured results to tangible
items like sales, unique web traffic,
social media engagement or digital
ad conversions to show an upward
trend. If the reporting is solid, look to
recommend further options if more
budget is given to a much larger
moment campaign in the future.
Take these Moments into the Future
Chances are that you are already
implementing at least one form of
moment-friendly marketing, whether it’s
PPC, SEO, remarketing, geo-targeting,
mobile push notifications, digital
billboards or one of the many other
tactics that target consumers at pinnacle
times. By keeping Premier Truck Sales’
and Castaway Bay’s stories in mind as
you pivot to meet your users at their
decision points, you will help future-
proof your marketing strategies as more
distractions arise and try to compete for
your customers’ time. Both brands use
what they know about audience behavior
to provide the right touch point and also
reach their audience on the right platform
when the moment comes around.
Lojek has a strong piece of advice
that marketers should heed, “I’m a
strong believer that if your business
approach stagnates, you’re going to
die.” Shifting your marketing to address
your customers in their moment of need
seems like a surefire way to stay
relevant today. ::
LISTEN TO THE T::T MOMENT
MARKETING PODCAST ONLINE
THUNDERTECH.COM/PODCAST/
MOMENTMARKETING

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SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
FOR REAL-TIME EVENTS
hances are that you can open
your favorite social media app
right now and find at least one
brand promoting an event of some shape
or size. Hint: It may look a lot like spam.
Whether it’s a formal fundraiser, open
house, community festival or product
launch, there are ways to proactively
and effectively activate social media
marketing to support and amplify the
event. Beyond simply posting an event
flyer on Facebook or tweeting a link to
the event’s registration page, brands
can influence and engage with online
audiences by incorporating social media
into all aspects and stages of event
preparation and execution.
Why Use Social Media Before, During
and After an Event
The always-on nature of social media
matches the real-time spirit of events
and event-goers who crave photos,
information and naturally have FOMO
(fear of missing out) curiosities. Events
are a great time to integrate marketing
tactics and explore the creative and
personal side of a brand.
As an event marketer, it’s vital to plan
the before, during (live) and post-
event tactics, but what’s even more
important is remembering that the
overall marketing goals should remain
the same throughout these phases.
Typical goals may fall within the realm
of brand awareness, industry education,
social media engagement or even lead
generation; and measurable desired
outcomes from these goals are usually
ticket sales and event attendance or
excellent customer service feedback.
While there isn’t only one way to plan
and prepare for hosting an event, there
is one clear tactic that can no longer
be considered an add-on right before
or during the event—you guessed it,
social media. We all know that activating
marketing initiatives to promote an
event and engage with event-goers is
nothing new, but the digital approach
from a cohesive, integrated angle is still
developing into an art.
Deciding How to Manage the Audience and
Message
Knowing the goals and messages of
your brand and event are key to success
and will guide every action, comment and
retweet along the way. The planning
period is what tells brands if they will
need a full staff on board with a command
center or if their internal marketing/events
team can handle the conversations and
content. This is the difference between
full-scale conversation monitoring
versus channel management with
only branded mentions.
C
DYNAMIC
ENGAGEMENT

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During this discovery, brands must ask
themselves if real-time marketing is
relevant to the brand, the message and
the overall campaign and event. This will
help establish the metrics for measuring
success. If the answer to, “Do we need
to manage conversations in real time?”
is yes, then metrics related to the goal
are needed. Some metrics may include
new leads, press mentions or social
media channel growth.
Next, the listening strategy can be
created. A deliberate, well-conceived
strategy can accommodate the entire
spectrum of engagement—from
everyday, real-time exchanges to big
event interactions. The following example
from social media advertising business
Pagemodo is a simple way to
break down content.
Planned: The event timeline is well-
known ahead of time and content
can be scheduled.
Opportunistic: The event is planned,
but there’s a probability of spontaneity
based on the timeline and audience
participation.
Watch List: Something will happen, but
it hasn’t happened yet and there are
multiple options for engagement.
Every day: The content in-between the
event promotion that relates to the brand
or is content created by others.
Understanding the variations in content
will help identify what to listen for.
This is when brands should make a
master list of content opportunities
key topics, phrases, hashtags, brand/
events names, and partner or influencer
accounts.
Publishing Content isn’t Enough­—
Act Quickly and Engage
Planning the pieces of engaging content
from contests to sharing crowdsourced
photos is the fun part, but there is
another side to integrating social media
into an event. Depending on the size
and how elaborate the event is, real-
time listening and monitoring can be
just as large of an undertaking as the
promotional “before” period of event
campaign planning.
People want brands (translation: brands
that sound like real people) to respond
to them within 60 minutes. While this
is often unrealistic for companies,
especially those without a dedicated
social media team, you should assume
that when it comes to social media
response time, the faster the response,
the better. This is especially vital from an
event perspective as a user’s message
to a brand on social media may often
center on logistics such as parking,
programming or weather. Subsequently,
your ability to respond quickly may
directly impact their desire to attend your
event, as well as how much they enjoy it.
Using a simple tool like Hootsuite to
monitor and schedule original content
may be enough for some teams,
but others may need an enterprise
monitoring tool like Brandwatch,
Salesforce or Spredfast to execute a
full campaign. In general, event teams
should listen for media mentions, watch
hashtags and brand mentions (both
tagged and “loose” mentions), keep
an eye on common misspellings for
keywords related to the event, brand or
area where the festivities are happening
and be prepared with a “cheat sheet” of
answers to common questions.
Constructing and Operating a Social Media
Command Center
Once you establish a strategy and the
tools needed to execute it, start thinking
about the functionality of a Social Media
Command Center (SMCC).
Some questions to ask:
What is the size of the team and the
space available?
Will you have Wi-Fi?
Will the SMCC be public-facing?
What’s the chain of command for
responding to mentions?
LIVE IN THE MOMENT
Leverage the power of
real-time social media.

17.
17
These are all important factors to
consider well in advance of your event
and should be clearly explained to all
parties ahead of the event.
But What’s the Point?
Why should brands consider this avenue
of marketing? Long-term goodwill,
creating a bond, boosting engagement,
drawing new leads into the sales funnel,
creating fan loyalty, demonstrating
brand expertise and personality to key
audiences, just to name a few benefits.
In the end, remember that the key
to activating real-time social media
marketing for an event is to amplify event
messaging. Doing so means planning
early and not making social media an
afterthought. This is not just an online
bulletin board where a flyer can be
shared once with the hopes of generating
buzz and attendance. Plan in advance
just like for the event itself. Marketers
wouldn’t try to secure the venue a week
before the event, so don’t assume social
media channels and followers are ready
to support the event the week before
either. Instead, create the tactics that
can be deployed to highlight the journey
of an event from start to finish, feed
the audience’s need for information,
and entertain users who desire to be
entertained both at the event and in real
time on social media. ::
#1
THE KEY TO ACTIVATING SOCIAL MEDIA REAL-TIME MARKETING FOR
AN EVENT IS TO AMPLIFY EVENT MESSAGING
GOOD WILL
BONDING
AUDIENCE
ENGAGEMENT
NEW LEADS
FAN LOYALTY
DEMONSTRATING
EXPERTISE
LEARN MORE, LISTEN
TO OUR PODCAST ABOUT
DYNAMIC ENGAGEMENT
THUNDERTECH.COM/PODCAST/
DYNAMICENGAGEMENT
DAZZLE THE DISTRICT
thunder::tech operated the
social media command
center for PlayhouseSquare
at the dedication of the
world’s largest outdoor
chandelier.

18.
TRENDS SUMMER READER
18
JASON THERRIEN CRAIG ISRAEL BRUCE WILLIAMS
hen businesses think about
iterative design—if they think
about it at all—they generally
consider quick cosmetic changes they can
make to their website, such as colors, fonts
and photography, but iterative design is as
much a philosophy as it is tactic.
We dug deeper into the topic in one of our
recent podcasts. Assembling our President,
Jason Therrien, our Senior Director of
Development, Bruce Williams, and our Creative
Director, Craig Israel, we recorded an open
conversation about iterative design and how it
impacts the industry and our clients.
The following is a partial transcript of that
conversation. If you want to hear the full
discussion visit thundertech.com/podcast and
download episode #XX: TITLE.
CRAIG ISRAEL: [Bruce and Jason] are here
because they are super knowledgeable
about today’s topic and, if I may be so
bold, are also very handsome men.
JASON THERRIEN: Thank you, Craig,
extra points.
ITERATIVE
President Creative Director Senior Director of
Development Department
STOP THE MADNESS OF BUILD/BUST DESIGN WITH
SENSIBLE, INCREMENTAL, STRATEGY-DRIVEN IMPROVEMENTS
So we should back up and talk about the
traditional method of web design.
So it’s: we need a web redesign. Let’s
get everyone in a room. Let’s talk
through it. Let’s hit each other over the
head. Let’s get a design together and
launch it. And then—
CRAIG: And as part of that, we’ll throw
away everything we’ve done before.
BRUCE: Right. We’ll go through a lot
of critical thinking. We’ll have a lot of
thought put into it, and then we launch it.
We check the box.
And it’s business as usual until either
a change of guard, be at the executive
level or a chief marketing officer comes
aboard and says, let’s shake it up and
let’s do it again. So at that point, we go
through the process again.
JASON: Right, a build-bust cycle. That’s
usually what we had seen for more than
a decade; build up, let it rust, tear it
down. That about right?
CRAIG: Before we jump into it, let’s define
iterative design. At its heart, iterative
design is just taking a product or a
service, making it slightly better with
each iteration, collecting feedback, and
doing that again and again until you have
a perfect, functioning, beautiful product.
Does that sound fair?
JASON: Absolutely.
CRAIG: So the idea of iterative design is
as old as people making stuff. Now, of
course, what we’re interested in today
is how this applies to a lot of what our
clientele does and how that lives in
the digital world. So Bruce, how does
iterative design come to play in the
digital world?
BRUCE WILLIAMS: So when you think
digital, you immediately think, what?
Websites, microsites, campaign pages—
JASON: Email.
BRUCE: Email templates, email design,
anything that takes a function and form
together in its interface for the customer.
W

19.
THUNDERTECH.COM
19
E DESIGN
CRAIG: That seems to be. The part that
really made it inefficient is that it just sat
there forever until there was a critical
need, right? There wasn’t any proactive
efforts to address it before it. But
essentially, you drove your car until the
wheels fell off and then you had to buy a
new car.
JASON: Right, absolutely. That’s where
we’ve been hearing from a lot of clients
the last couple of years on how do we
get more out of this investment? As
years have gone on, digital in general
has become more important to every
brand, some critically important, that
their businesses are built on it.
And literally many, many brands would go
away if it were not for a functioning site,
whether it’s e-commerce or some sort of
operational aspect handled through their
site. And they are asking, how do we get
out of this boom-bust cycle with website
launches?
And ta-da, we have web iteration, the
idea being: how do we take a little
bit more care and feeding of our site
over time, allow the data to drive us,
et cetera, et cetera? And all of this
sounds great. And most of the feedback,
especially a couple years ago, was how
this was only for big companies.
I think, Bruce, you can talk about this.
We’ve worked with plenty of enterprise
brands. They’ve been doing this. They
wouldn’t build their business on
something so significant and then not
touch it. It’s more on the middle-market
size companies and smaller ones that
see this as a newer approach.
BRUCE: Yeah. And I think it may be the
folks that are at the bigger corporations.
There’s a perception that they’ve seen
more, they’ve been through more of the
process. They understand what you need
to be looking at on a continual basis.
And they have, I think, more staff to help
them stay disciplined to do so. Where
mid-market, you could be literally a staff
of one.
But the mid-market is especially
interesting because there’s so much
opportunity there. Business opportunity
is speeding up and the first one to
market has the advantage. I think the
first one to make a splash with any kind
of experience or gain in customer service
experience journey, buyer journey,
et cetera, has a distinct advantage.
And those advantages eventually melt
away as others catch up.
CRAIG: It seems like the clientele is
accelerating, too. Or I should say their
attention span is decreasing, that there
“… YOU WOULDN’T STOP PUTTING OIL IN YOUR
FLEET OF TRUCKS WHEN IT RAN OUT.
YOU WOULDN’T IGNORE ROOF REPAIRS
…THE SAME IS TRUE WITH YOUR WEBSITE.”
:: Jason Therrien, president of thunder::tech

20.
TRENDS SUMMER READER
20
was a time where you could build a
website and if it was functional and
provided enough information, that was
enough. Customers could come and find
what they want. But now, it seems like
with a lot of online shoppers, they want
to be entertained. And so that requires
constant, frequent updates if not to the
content itself, then to the visual design.
JASON: Yeah. I think a lot of it has to
do with the consumerization of things,
that for many years, especially the
business-to-business clients or industrial
types would say, “Yeah, we’re not a
consumer brand. So we don’t need to
do these types of things.”
So today, saying my site doesn’t need
to be mobile is almost ridiculous for
any company because of the amount
of traffic that just comes through our
phones, it’s quite incredible. So from a
continuum perspective, there’s a lot of
options here.
We’ve been talking more philosophically
right now. But walk me through how I just
built a site and launched it. What are my
options next?
CRAIG: It starts well before the actual
launch phase, that you look at a site and
you figure out how you build a foundation
that can be iterated upon.
BRUCE: You’re absolutely right. What
we find with our small and mid-market
clients is that sometimes they’ll come
and say, I heard you talk about iteration.
I just want to iterate this home page or I
just want to do this or that.
But you need some good scaffolding.
You need some good bones to your stuff
to begin with, like you said, Craig. So
you need a good foundation. You
can’t avoid that.
CRAIG: We’ve seen this blow up
for clients too that have an old,
nonresponsive website, and they ask
us just to make the ordering page
responsive or one part of it responsive.
They end up investing more money and
resources to kind of cobble this thing
together than if they were to do it right
from the start.
BRUCE: Right, right. So it depends on the
step you want to take. If it’s gone from
desktop to responsive, it’s a pretty big
step. If it’s an iteration, if I’m responsive
but this page is not performing, hell,
this whole section of my site is not
performing, what should we do? Then
that’s a better case for an iteration with
a quicker turn, with more deliberate
intention than the big jump that typically
a move to responsive requires.
CRAIG: I feel compelled to mention that
iterative design isn’t just the structural
back-end, technical aspect of a site.
You can iterate on the visual design
of a site, too.
thunder::tech.com
2014
thunder::tech.com
Mobile 2014
thunder::tech.com
Mobile 2015

21.
THUNDERTECH.COM
21
In [the 2016 Trends Summer Reader]
I’ve written an article about brand
evolution. I’m going to touch upon
a couple of those points. The idea
of taking your brand and instead of
throwing away all the brand equity you’ve
developed over years and launching a
completely new brand, sometimes a
better approach is to tweak it, evolve
it a little bit, make it a little more
contemporary.
This isn’t just about websites, right? This
is about a holistic brand, where you can
apply it to your website, to your collateral,
your TV commercials, whatever. This can
be part of your iterative approach where
you take an old-fashioned website, and
maybe you don’t change the bones of
it all, that you just change the visual
design of it a bit to make it resonate
better with a more contemporary
audience.
JASON: Absolutely. That’s an easy first
step. I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts
from both creative and a user experience
standpoint on how more attention to the
metrics can really lead to a plethora of
iterative changes that are going to
have great return on that time and
money invested.
BRUCE: Yeah. So you’re pulling on
the metrics, right? Let them make
the decisions for you. That’s where
A/B testing, multivariate testing, heat
mapping, those all roll into it.
Those are all the things that we look
at and refer our clients to in order
to establish a regular cadence and
discipline to look at those things, and
then let those draw the conclusions
for you.
JASON: Right. That’s the stuff that I
hear about, how is it driving more leads
back to the business? Or it might be
e-commerce. So how are we optimizing
the experience? How are we getting
people to fill up that basket and finish
with a transaction?
For other businesses, it might just be
that we need to drive subscriptions. We
need to drive subscribers into email or
social media or other channels that they
want to collect information from.
Again, Craig, to your point, it’s how do
you push people towards that? How do
you incrementally improve that over time
and not take it for granted
that, well, it’s a nice big button, so it
must be clear to click on it, to become
a subscriber, or to call us.
CRAIG: I think that’s a critical point.
When we’re talking about iterative
design, it is incremental in general. It’s
small changes that have small effects.
JASON: Absolutely. The key to iterative
is that we get out of the boom-bust
cycle of these sites and we move the
needle slightly.
thunder::tech.com
2015

22.
TRENDS SUMMER READER
22
And that depends on the company.
Maybe you guys can talk about this.
How often should we be doing iterative
changes to a site?
CRAIG: To Bruce’s point earlier, a lot of
it is driven by data, that having a regular
schedule that’s arbitrary isn’t going to
help, either. If you change the visual
design of your site every month, every
quarter, that’s probably going to work
against you because then you’re going
to introduce confusion and you’re going
to make it an uncomfortable experience
for users.
But you need to monitor that data. And
when you start to get the dip, maybe
that’s the point where you introduce
some changes or maybe there’s not a
dip, but it’s not rising the way you want
it. So then you proactively say, well,
what can we do to tweak this, either
foundationally or visually or content wise
or through some other mechanism to try
to bolster the goals a little bit?
BRUCE: Listen. Listen to your customers.
Listen to your channels, your distributors.
If there’s opportunities, let them dictate
how soon you go after iterating an
experience.
CRAIG: So we haven’t talked about what
this costs. But maybe, Jason, you have
some war stories about how we’ve
been able to be creative and clever with
clients’ budget to make it work.
JASON: Yeah. That’s a great point, Craig,
because, again, a lot of companies
will go back to, well, this is just for big
enterprises. It can’t possibly be for my
brand. This is the key difference that’s
going to separate them from a lot of their
competition that Bruce was talking about
before—that first-mover advantage.
It’s across the spectrum from a
budgetary question. It’s really just
philosophically more important to have
the discipline, to put it in there, and then
the cadence to execute on it.
CRAIG: And even though you traditionally
think of something like a website coming
out of a marketing budget, we have
clients that are so invested in it or the
site’s so important that it comes out of a
capital budget.
JASON: Absolutely. That’s the really
interesting thing that got us thinking
about this iterative philosophy a couple
of years ago, when we started sitting in
front of capital expenditure committees.
After several of these meetings, we got
to the core of it.
It was that these committees were used
to investing in plants and equipment. I’m
going to build a building. I’m going to
invest in a fleet of trucks, whatever it is.
And we said, you wouldn’t stop putting
oil in your fleet of trucks when it ran out.
You wouldn’t ignore roof repairs on this
building ten years after you opened it up.
The same thing is true with your
website, and other digital means, too.
But especially the site is that hub of
your marketing communications and,
many times, your operations. So how
do we budget to take care of this initial
investment and make it last longer so
we don’t tear it down, because you never
tear down a building you just built a few
years ago.
CRAIG: At the end of the day, the
message is invest in your website, your
digital platforms, with the same care that
you would invest into any other aspect
of your business that’s client-facing and
critical to your business.
Hear the podcast in its entirety (with
comic timing and sarcastic asides
intact) at THUNDERTECH.COM/
PODCAST/ITERATIVEDESIGN
We go more in-depth about A/B testing,
talk more about budgeting and how to
determine where website development
and adaptation should fit into your
company’s budget and more. Check
it out, tell us what you think in the
comments and feel free to share it
with a friend. ::
LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST
ABOUT ITERATIVE DESIGN
THUNDERTECH.COM/PODCAST/
ITERATIVEDESIGN

23.
THUNDERTECH.COM
23
CONTRIBUTORS
Writing
JASON
THERRIEN
Writing
BRUCE
WILLIAMS
Project Management
ANDREA
ABER
Editing
HANNA
STEINKER
Creative Direction
and Writing
CRAIG
ISRAEL
Print Coordination
TREVOR
MARZELLA
Writing
J.P.
KRAINZ
Writing
KYLE
COUGHLIN
Design
JASMINE
MASSA
EDITORIAL
DESIGN
Writing
MADISON
BENDER
Development
CHRIS
KNAPIK
Multimedia
CHRISTIAN
DAUGSTRUP
Multimedia
MATT
STEVENS
DIGITAL

24.
TRENDS SUMMER READER
24
@thundertech
/company/thundertech
888.321.8422
THUNDERTECH.COM
DIGITAL EDITION:
summerreader.thundertech.com