Andrew Martin

Metia Appoints Digital Marketing Leader Peter DiBart as Regional Vice President

Andrew Martin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:33:00 +0100

New York, New York—February 14, 2012—Metia, a leading global digital marketing agency, today announced the appointment of Peter DiBart as its new regional vice president. Previously SVP Group Creative Director at Edelman Digital, DiBart brings 16 years of digital marketing agency experience to Metia. “Metia’s North American footprint is growing, and nationwide demand for our work underscores the need to cultivate Metia’s presence on the East Coast,” said Steve Ellis, CEO of Metia. “DiBart will be instrumental in extending Metia’s global digital marketing capabilities to major brands throughout North America.” “I’m extremely excited to be leading the regional charge of this dynamic, thriving organization,” said DiBart. “Clients demand that agencies offer core expertise with the platforms, tools and technologies necessary to engage the market consistently. Metia is a technology powerhouse when it comes to connecting all touch points, and produces remarkable results, insights and metrics for its clients. I look forward to leading the New York office and serving as a strategic counsel to the global business.” The hiring of DiBart comes at an opportune time, as Metia is strengthening its North American presence by way of its New York office to better serve existing clients. Metia is well known for its marketing prowess on the West Coast, with clients including AmazonFresh, Microsoft, Juniper Networks and AT&T. Metia’s growing New York presence delivers marketing services to clients worldwide. DiBart comes to Metia with a proven track record of connecting brands and audiences through innovation and powerful experiences across areas including brand strategy, platform ideation, visual design and social media. He has held high-level positions at i Edelman Digital, Tracy Locke Omnicom, and Euro RSCG Life Interaction. By integrating DiBart’s expertise in digital brand experience and social business with Metia’s considerable talents in BtoB marketing and customer engagement, Metia will be perfectly positioned for continued growth as a marketing innovator in the U.S. “Peter brings to Metia the perfect combination of executive expertise and experience essential to respond to the demand for our services across North America,” said Andrew Martin, Vice President of Metia. “Metia is a highly networked agency, bringing the best people and expertise to each client, wherever they may be.”

Metia produces convenient AmazonFresh mobile grocery shopping experience for Seattle iPhone users

Andrew Martin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:11:00 +0100

Quickly and Easily Order Groceries from Anywhere Using the New AmazonFresh iPhone App Kirkland, WA - November 2, 2011- Metia/Seattle, one of the Northwest's largest digital agencies and part of the global digital marketing agency Metia Group, announced the release of the AmazonFresh iPhone mobile shopping application for AmazonFresh, the popular online grocery shopping service provided by Amazon.com. The iPhone app joins the existing AmazonFresh Windows and Android mobile applications in providing convenient shopping for all your grocery needs and more on the go. The app is available in the iPhone App Store and the service is available throughout Seattle and surrounding suburbs. The AmazonFresh application for the iPhone offers a convenience not available with conventional grocery shopping. AmazonFresh customers can quickly and easily order groceries and thousands of other Amazon.com items and schedule deliveries from anywhere. Further, they can find all their items quickly and easily using the application's simple and clean-looking interface, speedy search and fast image loads. Customers can have a coffee maker, toy or movie delivered the same day along with their bread and toothpaste. The application takes full advantage of the look, feel and advanced functionality of the iPhone. For example, with just two taps shoppers can use their iPhone's camera to scan an item's barcode and automatically add it to their current or future shopping list. "We wanted to create a high-performance mobile experience where all AmazonFresh shoppers-whether they use an Android, Windows Phone, or iPhone-can readily access our service on the go," said Aaron King of AmazonFresh. "Metia has created intuitive, easy-to-navigate applications for our mobile customers, and the new iPhone application is no exception." Metia knew that the AmazonFresh iPhone application needed to provide on-the-go customers with a fast, high quality shopping experience. The application uses a simple design with a clean interface, and takes advantage of the iPhone hardware to maximize speed and efficiency. Intuitive and informative search features make it easy to find items. After finding an item, shoppers can simply tap it to view the product page, which includes details such as ingredients and nutrition facts or add it directly to their order. "When we designed the AmazonFresh iPhone application, we ensured that users can experience the same convenience of shopping for groceries that Windows Phone and Android users have been enjoying since those apps were released earlier this year," said Andrew Martin, Vice President at Metia/Seattle. "Now the most common shopping tasks are made easy using just an iPhone." For more information about the AmazonFresh iPhone app, go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazonfresh/id474067631?ls=1&mt=8 About Metia Digital marketing leader Metia/Seattle is the North American headquarters of global agency Metia Group, headquartered in London with additional offices in New York and Singapore. As digital craftsmen, Metia/Seattle blends a deep understanding of technology with strategy, creative, content, analytics and optimization. Their results-focused digital marketing solutions are used by brands including Microsoft and AT&T in websites, email, social, digital applications and other online communication programs. Visit www.Metia.com and www.twitter.com/metiasea. Images are available upon request.

Digital Marketing is Dead

Andrew Martin — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:53:00 +0100

Media Inc. just published an article I wrote at the beginning of the year. In “Three 2011 Marketing Trends You Didn’t Know You Knew,” I make three predictions: 2011 will see the death of digital marketing, content is still king, and making marketing fun is what all marketers should do. From the article: “Today, digital marketing is ‘marketing.’ Digital is so ubiquitous to every aspect of marketing that qualifying digital as its own form of marketing makes no sense. In 2011, marketing is digital. Period.” Do you agree? Have you seen a shift from thinking about channels in silos to a more integrated approach?

World's largest convenience store in your pocket

Andrew Martin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 01:39:00 +0100

Imagine having the worlds largest convenience store in your pocket all the time wherever you go. Well that's what the new AmazonFresh Windows Phone application allows you to do. We're lucky enough to work with great people and technology on a regular basis but this project has been particularly enjoyable. For the last few months we've been working with AmazonFresh, the grocery delivery division of Amazon here in Seattle, building a Windows Phone application allowing their customers to manage their orders from anywhere. It's been really interesting to learn about the AmazonFresh business and look at ways which Windows Phone works best in an ecommerce environment. For those of us that live in Seattle AmazonFresh can often be a life saver as you're able to place grocery orders and have them delivered the same day if there are delivery slots available. I often place an order just before going to bed and it's on the doorstep before I get up in the morning. Combining this great service with the convenience of being able to do it on the move really makes AmazonFresh, in my opinion, the best and probably the biggest convenience store in the world. There are lots of things to take into consideration when designing mobile applications and we're looking forward to adding new features over the coming months especially when Mango is released but I think Windows Phone worked really well for this project. Our Microsoft technology based development team were able to quickly build out the app and then focus on adding those little touches which make it really easy and intuitive to use. Working with the OS for a while even converted one of our card carrying Apple fanboy designers to use a Windows Phone. You an check the app out in the Windows Phone marketplace here (opens Zune) or search for AmazonFresh on your Windows Phone.

Metia director named Experience Design Chair for AIGA/Seattle

Andrew Martin — Fri, 20 May 2011 23:09:00 +0100

I'm pleased to announced that our Director of Interactive Design, Cassandra St. Louis, has been named Experience Design Chair for the Seattle Chapter of AIGA, the oldest and largest professional association for design. AIGA work to advance design as a professional craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force and nominate key industry leaders in strategic areas of design to lead a focused exchange of ideas, build community and increase networking. Experience Design is a fast-growing discipline of interactive media that takes an integrated perspective to designing experiences. It crosses disciplines from user interface and technology to the psychology of interaction and information design, to impact the quality of a users total experience with products, processes, services, events and environments. Cassandra is an exceptionally talented experience design leader and we're pleased to share her talents and expertise to support an important organization like AIGA. Well done.

Lost film returned

Andrew Martin — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 23:01:00 +0100

I saw this video about how a guy found a film in NYC, tracked down who it belonged to and returned it to them in Paris. It's a great story and is filmed really well. The reactions of the people he met on his trip to Europe made me think about how brands should interact with people. The ones who offered up help had a really positive experience whereas the person who had no choice or control, the girl who's film it was, had a more negative experience. Brands need to make sure that they allow people to interact with them in the most positive manner and not force them to have to interact.

Metia completes Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online web site launch

Andrew Martin — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:47:00 +0100

Kirkland, WA – March 8 2011– Metia/Seattle, one of the Northwest’s largest digital agencies and part of the global digital marketing agency Metia Group Ltd., recently announced that it has completed the launch of a new global Web site to support the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (http://crm.dynamics.com). The site, developed to be displayed in 21 languages across 40 markets, is the culmination of an 18-month effort that included strategic planning, analytics, design, and end-to-end development to meet Microsoft’s business objectives for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, as well as creating personalized customer Web experiences.To ensure rapid deployment, scale, and accessibility the site is hosted using the Windows Azure platform and is managed using a custom-built content management system developed using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Metia in-house content management experts make sure each local Web site is maintained in-line with Microsoft’s international sales and marketing objectives. This approach allows Microsoft to easily maintain control of its mission-critical web portal from a central location, guaranteeing a consistent customer experience while meeting the independent needs of local subsidiary marketing teams.Deepa Bala, senior digital marketing manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, stated, “The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online launch site project was critically important and highly complex. We needed an agency that had a deep understanding of both the Windows Azure platform as well as our customers’ needs to ensure that everything from multi-national content, to connected and intelligent experiences worked as needed.” Bala added, “Metia clearly understood our business objectives and was able to creatively use their deep integrated launch program experience in the design, development, testing and deployment of the site, making it easy for customers to use and seamless for Microsoft to update.”“It’s always great to know that our clients trust us with their critical business solutions”, stated Andrew Martin, Vice President of Seattle-based Metia Solutions, Inc. “Although the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online launch site was complex and critical to their business, our approach never changes; Metia delivers results because our digital craftsmen focus on using their technology, user experience, content and analytics expertise to creatively solve digital business problems.”About MetiaDigital marketing leader Metia/Seattle, opened in 2002 and is the North American headquarters of global agency Metia Group, Ltd., based in London with offices in New York and Singapore. As digital craftsmen, Metia/Seattle blends a deep understanding of technology with strategy, creative, content, analytics and optimization. Their results-focused digital marketing experiences are used by brands such as Microsoft, AT&T and others in websites, email, social, digital applications, and other online communication programs. Visit www.Metia.com.

SoDA 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook

Andrew Martin — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 01:14:00 +0100

I've been trying to get through all of this report this week but haven't quite made it. Some great info in there like - In total, 80% of marketers plan to increase the volume of digital projects in 2011. - Only 5% are planning a decrease in their digital work in the next year. - Marketers plan to invest resources in, on average, 5.5 digital technologies/tools in 2011. - Top areas include social networks/applications, brand experiences, and digital infrastructure—blogger outreach and games are lower priorities. - Overall, 95% of respondents plan to use some form of social media in 2011. - 67% of marketers are increasing investment to focus on unpaid/earned media. - Brand and product awareness, leads, and web analytics—”engagement” metrics—have surpassed traditional metrics like page views and CPM for measuring performance. Check it out for yourself Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook View more documents from Society of Digital Agencies.

2010 email statistics - Infographic

Andrew Martin — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 23:36:00 +0100

A load of statistics around the amount and type of email that was sent in 2010. I wonder how this will change in 2011.

Xbox Kinect - it's great

Andrew Martin — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 01:20:00 +0100

Today Xbox Kinect was launched. It's great !With some of the projects we're working on we've had one for a little while now and I've had a chance to use it, all in the aspect of research you know.I remember seeing a WII controller work for the first time (I worked in the gaming industry at the time and was still blown away) and Kinect takes things to a whole new level. I took my 8 and 6 year olds into the office recently to see what they thought and they loved it from the first minute, really intuitive.The downside is the space you need. It's very much a standing up jumping around device not sitting there on the sofa. This is great for small boys but not their dads who have to keep up/find space for it/ probably buy a new TV because they'll want to use it the whole time.We have some other soon to be launched hardware knocking about in the office and that could be just as impactful.

Close but no cigar

Andrew Martin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:28:00 +0100

Now that we're all back from MIX and the inbox has been almost cleared I wanted to say a big thank you to everybody involved especially those that put on The Phizzpop Challenge.Unfortunately we didn't win but to get to the final three of a national competition is a great effort by any standards. We'll be back next year. Metia Phizzpop Presentation Final View more presentations from andrewcm.

Phizzpop Vegas here we come

Andrew Martin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:34:00 +0100

I'm really looking forward to MIX next week with what looks like a great schedule of sessions and as always the chance to meet up with a bunch of great, like minded people. This year should be extra exciting as our office here in Seattle has just been announced as one of the three finalist in the Phizzpop Challenge a national competition open to all agencies in the US.It was a really interesting challenge to get over what we felt could be done with the Boys and Girls Club of America website especially when you only had 10 slides and 10mb to do it. We now have 10 minutes to present these ideas to a panel of judges made up of Chris Colborn, RG/A; Lori McLemore, Boys and Girls Club of America; David Pescovitz, BoingBoing; Nicolas Roope, Poke; Bill Buxton, Microsoft Research; and Jaime Endreny, Center for Architecture Foundation.If you want to see what we came up with the finals are on Monday March 15, 2010 from 6:30pm-7:30pm at the Mandalay Bay.Now to brush off those PowerPoint skills.

Let it snow

Andrew Martin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:37:00 +0100

With Christmas, or 'The Holidays' as we call it here in the US (strange for a Brit to get used to), fast approaching we wanted to make a WPF app to help celebrate.For all of you who love this time of year but possibly won't have a white Christmas where you live, here's your chance to enjoy one, on your desktop at least.Download and run the app from http://www.metia.com/snow.exe and make it snow, best viewed on a dark background.

Metia = Good friends, Good times, Good Beer

Andrew Martin — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:45:00 +0100

Knew there was a reason I worked here. Steve can I move to our beer making division? Found the image with Spezify

Maximising Marketing Efficiency - its science

Andrew Martin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:50:00 +0100

Recently, in a dead laptop battery on a plane moment, I was thinking to myself how has the drive towards technology and community affected marketing? Is there a formula or equation that I could devise to show this?I started from the commonly held view that, historically, marketing was considered a black box into which money was poured and out came something 'creative'.Moving on to where we are now, I began with the elements which are normally part of a marketing program: People - you've got to have great peopleMoney - you don't get anything good for freeTech - everything has some tech element Customers - customers are at the heart of everything, right? The next part of the process was to think about how these things interact with each other and this is what I came up with: How I got there was, budget and talent are constants between old and new school marketing and have a combined effect. Technology allows you to be more efficient and effective in your marketing, enabling you to get more done and in essence multiplying your output. Finally, your customers can have an exponential impact on the effectiveness your marketing, so the preceding bit has to be to the power of customers.

Flow chart for dealing with blog posts

Andrew Martin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:12:00 +0100

Interesting image from Scamp about how the US Air Force responds to blogs

Experience Experience Experience

Andrew Martin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:14:00 +0100

I enjoyed MIX again this year and some of the announcements especially around Silverlight 3 were great. The demo Jon Harris did of Sketchflow was fantastic and will allow us to continue to deliver better solutions to our clients.If Ballmer was there he would probably be on stage ranting as normal but rather than the well known "Developer, Developer, Developer" this year it would be "Experience, Experience, Experience". Most of the sessions I went to focused on this and it's great to see that Microsoft is thinking in this way and providing the tools to allow digital agencies to deliver amazing user experiences.One of the people I look forward so seeing every year is Lou Carbone and I think he puts it very well by saying Loyalty + experience = advocacy.

Everything's amazing, nobody's happy

Andrew Martin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:28:00 +0100

Funny video which was shown in a session the other day

Austin here we come

Andrew Martin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:36:00 +0100

Paul, our Creative Director, and I have just arrived in Austin for SxSW. Really looking forward to it as I've never been before and heard so much about it. I'm just looking at the schedule and the most difficult thing is trying to work out which of the many sessions I try and make as there seems to be loads I'd like to get to. Think I'll skip the first thing yoga session.

Sunday at SxSW

Andrew Martin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:31:00 +0100

Our first full day at SxSW and off to a bit of a slow start for me. First session on accessible Flash and Flex applications wasn't up to much mainly due to the panel not knowing how to present.Second session Designing for the wisdom of crowds seems much better.Follow Paul on Twitter here http://twitter.com/PaulBurcher

Twitter is no longer useful

Andrew Martin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:29:00 +0100

I've been to many conferences over the years which have set up a dedicated back channel which has always added to my experience of the conference. Twitter seems to be the back channel for SxSW and most people seem to be using it. I have an account but have never used it to tweet simply due to a lack of time and not wanting to start something which I simply won't be able to maintain in the longer term. In my opinion the volume of traffic on Twitter about SxSW has made it unusable and has got to a level of noise where nobody would be able to keep up with it and get any value from it. Some sessions have been setting up specific hash tags such as #kebab which does give you a more focused feed but these aren't always set up or widely published.

Designer - Developer Workflow

Andrew Martin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:44:00 +0100

The last couple of days finding out about the future of Silverlight have been great and I'm really pleased that we're at the forefront of this technology and the next couple of years should be exciting.Most of the information I'm not allowed to share but there is one bit I can because we produced it, I've been meaning to blog about it for a while. Its about how you can structure the designer - developer workflow for increased business benefit.We've delivered quite a number of Silverlight projects including some pretty large ones with tight deadlines and hard stops. This has meant that we've continually refined our processes to make sure we deliver these projects in the most efficient and reliable way possible.What we've found is that by using Silverlight and the rest of the Microsoft product set we've been able to reduce the overall amount of time that it takes us to deliver projects. The image above shows how this is possible but there are other bits which we've also implemented. One which is really effective is sitting the designer and developer who are working on things physically next to each other, not opposite but next to so that they can see each others screens and really collaborate. We've found delivering Silverlight projects in this way so much more effective that we're beginning to build other projects in this way too and will continue to iterate on it going forward.