The result of this may influence a marketing manager’s ability to adequately balance the needs of the organization. Often the marketing manager’s expanded role also means their focus, which should be driving strategic marketing initiatives, often is muddied with opinions and commentary from colleagues who don’t have a clue (or training) in classical marketing strategy.

What does this have to do with interactive marketing? Often it can be brought into the design process where client-side contacts, not integrated with the marketing team, provide design influence.

We call this “Entrepreneur Design Syndrome” because often, design direction can be directly influenced by the last meeting that the client attended. This concept is very similar to the entrepreneur who when starting a company, is often heavily influenced by what someone told them in their last meeting.Most of the time, marketing managers do not even realize this is happening. Left unchecked, the creative process evolves into “design by committee” decisions, driving the original marketing strategy off course.

Here are a few ways marketing professionals can help reduce the effects of “Entrepreneur Design Syndrome”:

• Remember the big picture. Don’t let short term “fires” influence the long term marketing strategy.
• Give the committee input, not control. Gather feedback from the appropriate influencers in the process, but set their expectations about marketing decisions that may supersede their feedback.
• Leverage your marketing partner’s influence. Use your marketing partner to help sell design decisions. Often opinions from outside the organization carry strong weight toward influencing a committee’s opinion on design.

If it does what it says, media sites should be excited with the opportunity to push out full-screen 720p HD video to their website visitors. Silverlight also offers new opportunities for small downloading games,” or as Atomic Fusion refers to them: impulse games.

To learn more about Silverlight and what it brings to the web development table, check out one of Microsoft’s developer blogs.

The action from Viacom will only continue to muddy the water and make contributors think twice before posting content to social media sites, in fear of getting wrapped up in the middle of a copyright battle. After all, the Napster downfall didn’t gain any traction until copyright holders started going after users, rather than the network.

This is also a double-edged sword for content developers. On one hand, people are posting their content to these social media sites “without their written consent,” which by law is a no-no. On the other hand, these same sites are bringing much larger attention to the big gun’s and their various media franchises.

In order to not fall into the same fate as Napster, YouTube will need to take a preemptive strike in dealing with these media outlets, rather than trying to pass the buck to their users. A revenue sharing model would provide a kick-back for copyright holders, while allowing the social community to determine what’s relevant for posting.

Read You Tube Domino Effect, Part I

From a true interactive marketing perspective, Web 2.0 is not the “next new thing.” It is a new opportunity for companies to begin to think in a new way about their websites. It is time to take advantage of the media as it was originally intended to be: an interactive communication tool.

Over the past 10 years, companies have done to the web, what has been done to other media channels over the last 100 years. They have systematically neutered it into a one way broadcast channel, delivering static information. It’s not their fault. This is a conditioned response to thinking about new media options.

Companies that truly want to take advantage of the interactive channel must make a conscious effort to use the available tools to move past a “broadcast mentality” to a true one-to-one communications approach. Web 2.0 offers part of the solution, but the rest is up to you.

Web 2.0 and the supporting bag of tricks that come along with it (including AJAX and other technical oddities), should be looked at as tools to help build stronger relationships with customers, prospects and investors.

The real energy can only be realized with an internal commitment of your company to proactively revisit and constantly improve your website over time. The day your site is launched should be viewed as a start, not the end of a process. Continual improvement will drive a visitor’s positive experience with your brand.

As an example, I was a loyal user of AOL’s chat function for years. But, like it’s predecessor, ICQ, AOL continued to add new features and functions to the chat engine. Web products tend to all want to do the same thing: mimic browser functions. Over time, these functions got in the way of the original purpose of the product which was allowing quick and easy text-based chatting.

I soon moved to Google Talk, when it was introduced, offering a simple interface and functions. To date, Google has stayed true to the format, not allowing new features and functions to get in the way with the product’s original intent.

There’s an underground rising of people who appreciate the original intent of web-based experiences. Take for instance “Give Me Back My Google.” This site presents current Google search results, in the original, “affiliate free” format. If you do some searching on your own, I’m sure you can find many of these grassroots movements out there.

We all understand that the addition of new features and functions are often driven by expanding the revenue opportunities for a company. However, when these new opportunities get in the way of the original intended use of the tools, the end user experience and future loyalty can be harmed and ultimately, they find other sources to fill the need.

It will be interesting to watch this play out and there are two resulting paths that this could take. If Fox decides to go after the “poster,” we’ll see a similar effect that mirrored the Napster fall. The media companies will “scare” posters into not interacting with YouTube for fear of legal action. Timely and interesting content will then drop-off the site, reducing the viral nature that the site is known.

Feeling the pinch, and the possible loss of interesting content, YouTube could also make the move to provide media companies with a “cut” of their ad revenue dollars that relate to videos that are posted to the site. If this happens, media companies could take a free ride and leave the heavy lifting of encoding and posting of what YouTube users is timely and relevant content, get exposure for their media properties, and get a piece of the action.

Let’s face it, there are only so many home shot movies and low production videos that can draw interest over time. YouTube’s biggest impact is the immediacy of being able to have discussion around the water cooler that drives online viewing a funny skit from Saturday Night Live or a great play that happened in the big game yesterday. For long term success, everyone will need to play well with others in the sandbox, or we will all lose out.

What am I talking about? In this case, a “third arm” relates to adding new features or functionality to an existing website. Adding new features and functionality can help optimize your ongoing marketing efforts and provide more value to website visitors.

We all know that everyone wants to get a good return on their interactive investment. Most times a website launched and forgotten, with marketing and brand managers moving on to other “hot” priorities within the marketing mix.

As time passes new technologies and better building practices become available. It’s good to stop and take some time to see if new web development practices can help your existing website. These can include an ongoing Search Engine Optimization program, the addition of a search function (you know, help users actually find what they are looking for), or the incorporation of a Content Management System, allowing others in the organization take responsibility for updating their content.

The next time you think about evolution, remember growing a “third arm” can be a good thing.

Read Part 1 of this series:

Website Evolution: Part 1, Awareness

Sure, we’ve come a long way since 1995, but we still have a long way to go. Large companies are just starting to get the understanding of using interactive marketing to reach a targeted audience, providing focused messaging and highly targeted outlets (target audience-focused promotional sites, etc.) to communicate more effectively with prospects, customers and “the street” as some refer to it.

What we are missing is the same innovative thought that was first used in the late 90s that pushed companies to say, “We need a website. Now.” Today we need for companies to start thinking about their interactive marketing as untapped opportunities. Companies that truly want to be progressive need to look at how “the big guys” are embracing video, thriving with social networking tools, or leveraging viral marketing.

In my eight plus years of helping companies with their interactive marketing needs, it’s very rare that someone says, “We have only one target audience to reach.” Mose have two or three distinct segments they are trying to reach. Why not build and online experience that caters directly to the needs of each of those audiences? Remember the 80/20 rule? What if you developed a highly focused campaign toward the 20% that were driving 80% of your revenue?
It’s time to think differently about interactive marketing. Remember, we’re not building things in stone. Let’s evolve. Let’s reach out. And let’s communicate effectively.

A well planned website does wonders for a company’s “street cred,” but if the site does not evolve over time, it can become a dinosaur of the past in the minds of prospects who are mulling over a decision to buy your products of services.

Whether you have a defined marketing plan, or not, you need to think about those visitors who visit your website, go away and think, then come back over time. Providing them the same message you gave them last month, quarter, or last year, does not send them a good message about your company.

I know, I know, it all comes down to time and resources, doesn’t it. Staying aware of the state of your website can be a great first step to prioritizing future needs. From there, it gets easier to generate an action list for proactive updates moving forward.

Read Part 2 of this series:

Website Evolution: Part 2, Does Your Site Need A Third Arm?

Featuring: New Avyve Brand Launch, The Reactor Moves To Midtown

Click here to view the March 2006 issue of Atomic Fusion’s newsletter, Friends of Fusion.