AOL / QUALITY EMPHASIS LATE (AND INTEGRAL)
23 March 2010
Discussion on agile brand strategy turns to new Beat the Internet initiative to boost internal quality
- Brand
- AOL
- Media Type
- Online
- Websites & Microsites
- Country
- USA
- Source
- News
- Agency
- Wolff Olins / New York
- Tags
- AOL
- Tim Armstrong
- SXSW Interactive
- Advertising
- Bebo
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong began a breakfast chat at its branding agency Wolff Olins with a significant mea culpa.
Armstrong, eleven months on the job after running Google's U.S. ad sales operation, revealed how a major quality lapse had caused an eleventh-hour scramble as the company's Seed content-funding project was set to launch, and admitted his single greatest failure was not addressing quality from the start of his engagement.
Seed, a project to fund bits of content from writers contributing to various AOL sites, was to make its debut at SXSW Interactive, behind major AOL sponsorship dollars at the festival. The first task? Interview every one of the SXSW music acts, which works out to around 2,000 groups. Pro-am journalists were contracted, for $50 each, to do the work.
The trouble, though, came on the Friday before the launch, set to take place the following week.
Armstrong saw the site. And it was bad.
Project managers cracked the whip, teams worked overnight through the weekend, and the site got better.
'[It] went from a D to a B+', Armstrong said. But the change inside the company was palpable, and spread quickly. 'The health care team got into action, re-doing our health care coverage, getting CEO interviews.
'The company learned in 12 hours we could have a whole different outlook. It started a nuclear reaction.'
To that end, Armstrong announced his executive team was launching a new initiative, called Beat the Internet, which would highlight inside the company how to create a higher quality threshold than the rest of the competition online.
'As a company we didn't have a bar that was set', Armstrong said. Had quality controls not been strictly enforced with his late-night call to the Seed group, 'we probably would have cranked out [more] sub-par product'.
Ostensibly the breakfast was converged to talk about the need for faster and more agile strategic brand solutions in light of Wolff's recent rebrand and logo treatments, but it was mostly devoted to Armstrong explaining AOL's strategy in key areas.
While it's descended from its throne atop the internet in the late '90s (counting 25 million subscribers) and further shed influence through its disastrous merger and unraveling with Time Warner, AOL is still a major force--Alexa ranks it the 14th largest site in the US by traffic rank, and has been slowly shaping the role of content and dynamic advertising post-print. The company has been aggressively pursuing journalists to provide expert content for its various properties, and now with Seed is looking for a la carte contributions as well.
How does this fit into the grand scheme of things? Armstrong also mentioned AOL's move toward structured data projects to curate running stories, like the health care legislation debate in the US, humanising the data that the company's reporters gather, placing it in perpetual containers, to grow and evolve with the issues.
Armstrong also hinted at a revamped advertising platform for the company, emphasizing the social referral aspects of the web gaining on search, and how soon we'll treat those verticals as equals, with search engine marketing and optimization sitting with social media referrals.
'Is there a way for people to go beyond a transactional relationship? How do you connect that in a social world?' Armstrong asked. 'In the future people will choose their own ads; letting people select the brands they want exposure to, that will be a massive benefit to people like AOL'.
Armstrong touched on a few other management changes, including a lock-out rule which excludes employees more than five minutes late to meetings. As discussion moved to his ex-employer Google, he was quick to address the company's struggle with the Chinese government as 'a seminal event for how powerful the future of the internet can be.' He called AOL's treatment of Bebo, the social networking platform it acquired two years ago for $850M, 'kind of a shame', explaining how it tried to make the brand something it wasn't. 'Looking at it now', he said, 'it doesn't look like a good acquisition'.
Armstrong, eleven months on the job after running Google's U.S. ad sales operation, revealed how a major quality lapse had caused an eleventh-hour scramble as the company's Seed content-funding project was set to launch, and admitted his single greatest failure was not addressing quality from the start of his engagement.
Seed, a project to fund bits of content from writers contributing to various AOL sites, was to make its debut at SXSW Interactive, behind major AOL sponsorship dollars at the festival. The first task? Interview every one of the SXSW music acts, which works out to around 2,000 groups. Pro-am journalists were contracted, for $50 each, to do the work.
The trouble, though, came on the Friday before the launch, set to take place the following week.
Armstrong saw the site. And it was bad.
Project managers cracked the whip, teams worked overnight through the weekend, and the site got better.
'[It] went from a D to a B+', Armstrong said. But the change inside the company was palpable, and spread quickly. 'The health care team got into action, re-doing our health care coverage, getting CEO interviews.
'The company learned in 12 hours we could have a whole different outlook. It started a nuclear reaction.'
To that end, Armstrong announced his executive team was launching a new initiative, called Beat the Internet, which would highlight inside the company how to create a higher quality threshold than the rest of the competition online.
'As a company we didn't have a bar that was set', Armstrong said. Had quality controls not been strictly enforced with his late-night call to the Seed group, 'we probably would have cranked out [more] sub-par product'.
Ostensibly the breakfast was converged to talk about the need for faster and more agile strategic brand solutions in light of Wolff's recent rebrand and logo treatments, but it was mostly devoted to Armstrong explaining AOL's strategy in key areas.
While it's descended from its throne atop the internet in the late '90s (counting 25 million subscribers) and further shed influence through its disastrous merger and unraveling with Time Warner, AOL is still a major force--Alexa ranks it the 14th largest site in the US by traffic rank, and has been slowly shaping the role of content and dynamic advertising post-print. The company has been aggressively pursuing journalists to provide expert content for its various properties, and now with Seed is looking for a la carte contributions as well.
How does this fit into the grand scheme of things? Armstrong also mentioned AOL's move toward structured data projects to curate running stories, like the health care legislation debate in the US, humanising the data that the company's reporters gather, placing it in perpetual containers, to grow and evolve with the issues.
Armstrong also hinted at a revamped advertising platform for the company, emphasizing the social referral aspects of the web gaining on search, and how soon we'll treat those verticals as equals, with search engine marketing and optimization sitting with social media referrals.
'Is there a way for people to go beyond a transactional relationship? How do you connect that in a social world?' Armstrong asked. 'In the future people will choose their own ads; letting people select the brands they want exposure to, that will be a massive benefit to people like AOL'.
Armstrong touched on a few other management changes, including a lock-out rule which excludes employees more than five minutes late to meetings. As discussion moved to his ex-employer Google, he was quick to address the company's struggle with the Chinese government as 'a seminal event for how powerful the future of the internet can be.' He called AOL's treatment of Bebo, the social networking platform it acquired two years ago for $850M, 'kind of a shame', explaining how it tried to make the brand something it wasn't. 'Looking at it now', he said, 'it doesn't look like a good acquisition'.
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