A marketing manager at an RV park developer wants to update the company’s online presence in preparation for a new product launch. Lacking any website design skills himself, he must address various issues, such as where to find potential web design agencies, and how to select an agency. Soon after selecting an agency, the marketing manager begins to doubt his decision. The agency does not seem aligned with the marketing manager’s strategic vision for the website, and has wasted valuable time producing work that must be discarded. The marketing manager, now too close to the new product launch to hire a new agency, must determine how to ensure the agency’s work adheres to the project’s strategy, budget, and timeline.
In April, 2009, the director of media strategy at henderson bas, a Toronto-based online advertising agency, was evaluating the current campaign for Primus Telecommunications (Primus). It had been two months since the Primus home phone bundle banner advertisement campaign had been launched, and initial results were not as expected. While there were a lot of visitors attracted to the Primus website, those visitors were not converted into paying customers at a high enough rate. This poor conversion rate had pushed the cost per acquisition of new Primus customers to uncomfortably high levels, threatening the campaign's future. By gathering form usage data from the website and subsequently implementing visitor-tracking software, the director focused her attention to analyze the results to determine why visitors to Primus' website were not converting into paying customers.
The director of client services at henderson bas, an interactive advertising company, was trying to decide how to set a price for the newly proposed campaign for Halpernia Industries, one of her clients. Though the strategic direction of the campaign had been agreed upon, Halpernia had rejected the two creative proposals already presented to it. The director was unsure how to set a price for the campaign. She needed to balance the need for the company to be profitable with the importance of maintaining the client relationship with Halpernia by deciding whether or not to charge Halpernia for the significant amount of work that had gone into the rejected proposals.