When you have a long history of innovation, building a site called MedcoGameChangers.com seems perhaps a bit too boastful. But if you’re Medco, and you’re looking to grow your customer base, you have to strut your stuff. What’s more, the program surrounding that peacock-like claim has to be just as inventive as the company itself. All of which is the rationale behind the lead nurturing program we built for Medco.

The digital strategy rested on these four pillars:

1. Hyper-personalize the experience to demonstrate Medco’s commitment to one-to-one service.
2. Create a hub of engagement that provides information via videos and articles, and offers a portfolio of free, informative downloads.
3. Modulate the dialogue to keep interest high and pass-along vigorous.
4. Use data to drive content decisions and, most important, to inform the dialogue between sales rep and prospect.

A year and half later, web metrics for MedcoGameChangers.com are through the roof. And there’s a new $18-million client. Icing on the cake—come October 2011, the Medco-True North team will be accepting an International ECHO Award.

Now that’s a healthy return on investment.

ThomasNet.com recently launched its new product finder and wanted to preview it at upcoming trade shows. This is big news for anyone who sources and buys industrial products and services, because this new tool transforms the sourcing discovery process. It’s a new dimension in product search, and we created an equally dramatic trade show experience.

Direct mail with 3-D glasses invited attendees to stop by the booth to get their 3-D picture taken in another dimension—and to preview product finder. An email connected to a landing page was waiting for attendees when they got back to the office inviting them to a private trial of the service and to give feedback. The photo participant email version performed ridiculously well – 153.73% click total/opened. Attendees not only clicked, but either clicked multiple times or forwarded to colleagues.

No, that isn’t a typo. We meant to write “winners” because, in a perfect world, almost every program should have multiple controls for the obvious reason: different segments respond to different messages.

The point of no return comes when too many controls cost too much money and response rates per segment are too low.

But the point of no return in online advertising is so far away you can barely imagine it. Ad-serving technology combined with a sophisticated knowledge of the customer/user, overlaid by malleable creative strategies allow us to come as close to one-to-one advertising as technologically possible. We are no longer forced to make heart-breaking decisions about which creative to keep or kill. We can have them all!

The Excel maniacs love this: matrices can get uber-complicated. We market to micro-segments. Counter to our intuition, we often learn that by sifting out what appears to be unproductive creative can lower overall results. Which may mean the ad that isn’t earning clicks is in fact an important response driver. So we add it back into the mix and response rates rise.

We’ve seen over the years that a True North online ad program never has one winner. And there are rarely two. More ads that make for bigger response rates are more better. (And that’s not a typo either.)

This weekend, a few of True North’s creative cooks’ sketchbooks will be displayed at SXSW as part of the 2011 Sketchbook Project tour. If you’re in Austin for the festival, check out the four books crafted by folks from our Creative department. For details on where to see them at SXSW and the rest of the Sketchbook Project tour click here.

If you’re not at SXSW, don’t fret. Our books are posted online. Click to view Sherman Huang’s book, Bhanu Arbuaratna’s book, Maryah Arangio’s book and Daniel Brown’s book.

Online display ads are dead! So is direct mail! Catalogs, prints ads, television commercials, too! If the trend continues, soon only search and social media will be left. But wait, didn’t someone recently declare search is waning?

At True North we treat these death declarations suspiciously, especially when our experience proves otherwise. So-called “dying” channels can in fact be vital—providing the programs are built with an intuitive knowledge of the audience, the media in their lives and a value proposition that has emotional, motivational appeal. (Some call that “strategy.”)

So while pundits are writing about the death of various advertising channels, we’re proving their worth with in-market testing verified by solid measurement and positive ROI.

Take, for example, online display advertising. In 2010, not one, not two, but three True North clients tested and rolled out campaigns using online display as the primary messenger. As we put the results under a microscope to see what worked and why, we identified two process differentiators:

1. The True North optimization control room was constantly on the prowl, pulling the right lever at the right time. Even though the promise of automation has opened up a world of possibilities, every online display program still needs human oversight and judgment. And human thinking that’s not afraid to test risky ideas, as long as you plan to minimize the risk. Because we sometimes find risk pays off.
2. Media and creative worked hand in hand—planning, building and optimizing. This provided utter flexibility and fluidity when it came to reacting, with virtually no missed opportunities. What often results is multiple controls and multi-layer programs.

Based on these tests, can we now boast with pundit-like pomposity that online advertising is alive and kicking? Well, no.

What we can say is that it’s not the medium. And that’s our message.

True North’s spreading holiday cheer with Big Air Santa: Snowboard Xtreme – the free game on the App Store for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

Help Santa take on the slopes using his whole bag of tricks. With a few shakes, rattles and twists of your device you can make Santa jump, flip, spin and kick to rack up points. Save your high score to Game Center to compete against friends. We’ll see who makes the good list this year. Watch our game demo to see the Santa in action!

Two of our esteemed Art Directors, Bhanu and Maryah, have been busy exploring the intricacies of type design. Their typographic expedition has culminated in two custom typefaces. Bhanu’s BEHOLD and Maryah’s AROUND delicately balance form and function. Best of luck to both font creators as they enter various type competitions.

Watch the San Francisco Giants championship parade live from the True North SF office.

Congratulations to our friends in San Francisco on their World Series championship. If only it had been Yankees vs Giants we could have gotten a real inter-office rivalry going. Maybe next year.

It was a great year for True North, topped off with a triple win at the annual International ECHO Awards in San Francisco. ECHO is awarded to campaigns that combined brilliant strategy with stunning creative to elicit jaw-dropping results. Here’s a look at our three award-winners…

ThomasNet.com connects virtually everyone and everything in industry—from purchasers and suppliers to designers, engineers, and managers. For their 2010 tradeshow campaign, we brought to life ThomasNet.com’s tagline “Connecting Industry” with a campaign inspired by futuristic high-speed rail lines. An interactive landing page featuring sleek graphics and animation invited users to board the “Industry Line” and explore the various “stops” which explain everything ThomasNet.com has to offer.

The teaser and contest winner notification emails True North created resulted in a 90% click through rate.

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