These include items with licensed designs, such as "Mad Men" mugs. But most designs are customer-generated. Dozens, for example, riff on the "Keep Calm" Internet meme.
Why agile marketing important: CafePress wants to engage consumers in conversation and collaborate with them in real-time as they upload their designs. "When consumers say I need to buy a gift for a friend or a T-shirt to wear to the Star Trek premiere, we want them to come to us first," said Jason Falls, CafePress’ vice president for digital strategy, in an interview with CMO.com. Top search terms on the site early this month included "Class of 2013" and "zombies," while "Hillary 2016" was popular among people looking for political-themed items. "Where we can see there are designs around a given topic, we can put those at the forefront of our Web site" or use social channels to promote them, Falls said.
How the company does agile: Falls joined CafePress last December to build a social media presence for the company. "I wouldn't say we're doing 'agile' consciously," he said. But interacting with consumers in social spaces requires speed and flexibility.
So far, like Teradata’s Arthur, Falls has taken steps to improve internal communication. He's also investing in customer service; the company recently assigned a dedicated representative to handle questions or complaints it gets through social channels. "We've gotten really good at the reactive stuff," he said. "I don't think we've gotten into a sweet spot of having a lot of proactive agile marketing."
One key to marketing agility, Falls said, is a closer relationship with company lawyers. The legal team needs to be an active participant in marketing decisions. Marketers "need to know what they can and cannot say," he adds. "But you can't afford a 24-hour legal team response. I think I've done a good job relating why we need a less-than-20-minute turnaround on things."
The takeaway: You need cross-functional teams or, at least, close collaboration across marketing--and business--functions. "Being truly agile really does require a lot of people's work to come together at one point in time," Watson said.
"I've never run into a member of a legal team that has resisted something," said Falls, who has been a consultant to companies on their social media strategies.
Nevertheless, WhatsNexx’s Watson said, marketers are generally uncomfortable with formal agile methods because the emphasis on collaboration and constant iteration changes how individuals are recognized. "The advantage of traditional waterfall phases," where projects are completed in discrete steps, "is that they come with a pat on the back." Management, Watson added, must find ways "to recognize people based on their contributions to broader goals, but do it in a way that enforces agility as a desired behavior."
Xerox
What the company does: In recent years, the 107-year-old company branched out into document management, IT, and business process outsourcing services in addition to selling multifunction printers, software, and supplies. The Xerox.com Web site, managed by the company's digital marketing team, provides information and access to corporate and customer support, as well as drivers for its products, in 26 languages for customers in 173 countries.
Why agile marketing is important: To keep up with demand from customers and internal marketing teams around the globe, "We knew we needed to simplify how work was being processed," said Judith Frey, vice president for interactive marketing, who runs the team. Agile methods have made the team better at predicting and meeting its delivery dates.
"We would focus on a project at a time, and that did not allow us to be adaptable or flexible to handle new initiatives," she told CMO.com. When an urgent project came along, the team would either stop what it was going to do the new project or try to work on both simultaneously with the same resources. These shifts were stressful and sapped productivity.
But the short, iterative work cycles that define agile marketing mean multiple deliverables are completed in two weeks or less, and the team is constantly making room for new ones. "You're able to adapt to any inquiry that's coming in," Frey said. You don't have to refocus the team; you can reprioritize the work and quickly move it through the queue."
How the company does agile: Beginning in 2009, the digital marketing team adapted agile work processes used by its product development teams. They set up three queues: one for work that required new development, one for creative projects, such as artwork, and a "rapid response" queue for site updates that take eight hours or less to complete. Projects are broken into small chunks, which the team calls "user stories," and prioritized according to the business objective. "Anything date-driven goes to the top of the queue," Frey said.
Recently, the team built a case-study selector for the site, which allows customers and others who are interested in case studies to filter them by industry, service, product, or company. The team began by talking with stakeholders about their requirements and business objectives, Frey said. A cross-functional team broke the project into user stories, each of which could be completed within three days. Each story was prioritized weekly and worked in order from the queue.
The takeaway: One common approach to agile marketing has been to launch it within one group--typically digital marketing and e-commerce, CMG Partners’ Hardy said. "Because of the volume of projects that come up in the Web environment, you're changing things on an ongoing basis. A way to manage those and prioritize them so you're always working on the highest value projects is very much congruent with how agile operates."
Even so, it took time and training for the Xerox.com team to change the way it works. Frey had worked in operations, so she knew how to lead and manage change. To head up the transition to agile, she chose the person who proposed it and had a technical marketing background.
"He had been with Xerox for a while," Frey said. "People trusted him. He was very flexible. He had no personal ties to what was getting done. His foremost responsibility was to deliver quality in short, iterative cycles that were meeting the needs of the business."
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