8ninths

BACKGROUND

MRSC Rosters is a convenient service used by Washington local governments to contact businesses about small public work projects, consulting opportunities, and contracting of goods or services. Its membership database is used by over 440 participating public agencies to easily and affordably connect with our 5,000 verified businesses. As the Executive Director of MRSC, I lead the team that provides this service.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

In 2014, we redesigned the project website to improve functionality and user experience [UX]. We quickly found that we hadn't solved all the user experience pain points, and we were still devoting too much staff time resolving customer support issues. It became clear that we needed help from a team that was experienced in developing elegant and highly functional UX solutions. Our top three objectives were: 1) Decrease the number of customer service queries, 2) increase conversion rate, and 3) boost customer retention.

SOLUTION

8ninths was introduced to us by our trusted developers, Upwards Technologies. They demonstrated a fantastic working relationship with our developers, and boasted an impressive portfolio and diverse range of clientele, the combination of which made us very confident in our choice. It was an 8-week project. 8ninths provided user experience design, interaction strategy, and developer support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

We're thrilled with the solutions 8ninths developed and anticipate that they will save employee time, improve customer satisfaction, and increase revenue. The project was on time and on budget. Their level of creative adaptation, mindful collaboration, and innovative problem solving was inspiring.

BACKGROUND

Could you provide a brief description of your organization and your role there?

I did a lot of work with 8ninths and with Adam [Sheppard, co-founder & CEO of 8ninths] when I was at Microsoft. I was chief creative officer at Microsoft for a while, running advertising across the brands. Adam did a lot of work with us on some innovative branded experiences, and some interactive experiences. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge you were trying to address when you approached 8ninths?

We did some work with them on trying to create interactive experiences that would take some of our traditional ad campaigns and make them more participatory. I’ve always found that the 8ninths guys, both Adam and William [Lai, co-founder and president of 8ninths], are really good at actually thinking through and bringing new and next technologies to the table, new ways of thinking about the leading edge of what’s possible and then how to apply that back into whatever core campaign or brand or storytelling platform it is. 

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the work?

They did two different kinds of work with us. Some projects were direct with us on the client side. These were some of the small, more nimble opportunities that weren’t part of our large, TV, global advertising campaigns. They were always great and really responsive. It might be that we wanted to go head to head with one of our competitors, we wanted to get some buzz, or we wanted to engage the IT [information technology] community specifically, so we played around with different ways to get those viral ideas out there. That was usually client direct. They’d brainstorm with us and some of our PR and advertising team and they’d come back and pitch ideas and go execute those fairly independently.

There were some projects we’ve worked on through the years where they’d be part of these large, global brand advertising campaigns, like a global Windows campaign. In that case, we’d bring them in to think about how to execute or how to build interactive or experiential extensions to the core idea. They did a lot of work with Crispin [Porter + Bogusky] on some of those ideas, the agency of record for Windows at the time.

How long was your relationship with them at Microsoft?

Since they started, Adam and I had worked closely together on MSN, on some of the branded experience things then. Once he went out on his own, we started working together on some projects within MSN and then eventually when I took over advertising at the corporate level. I have no idea how many years that was.

Could you provide a sense of the size of the projects in monetary terms or work hour figures? Ranges would be fine.

There was a huge range. Most of them would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. There were some smaller things we did. They did some good work for us on Bing to build some mobile apps when that was not as easy or ubiquitous as it is today. In the early years, they did some interactive Bing apps for us, to find food trucks and things like that, leveraging search technology. It was particularly good for us because they’re really well-versed in the Microsoft platforms and products, but they were also very well-versed in new and next technologies that were out there. They usually did a nice job of taking our stuff and then layering in other ways of making it accessible or interactive.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

Perception-wise, internally, a lot of the stuff they did for us was the innovative edge of the campaigns. We felt a lot of the work we did with them was some of the coolest and sexiest pieces of the campaign. What’s great about that is it helps us understand the power of some of these new ways of communicating with consumers and very much on the learning agenda for us.

They were generally deep in the impact that they had with people who discovered and played around with their experiences.

When working with them, is there anything you’d consider unique or special about their approach that distinguishes them from other companies with which you’ve worked?

There’s a level of creativity, but there’s also a fearlessness and a willingness that you don’t often find with technologists. They’re very willing to try new things and bring new things that haven’t been done before to the table. Very often, engineers can be more resistant to things that haven’t been proven and tested and that they haven’t had a lot of time to play around with. I always found 8ninths were willing to learn with us. There was a great sense of freedom and possibility. They also brought a lot of ideas and newer, more leading edge technologies and new approaches that often our agencies weren’t well-versed in yet or weren’t seeing yet, because they do seem to have their pulse on what’s next and what’s just about to happen. They tended to be a year or so ahead of a lot of the digital agencies and the pitches we were getting from traditional digital advertising shops because they really are engineers.

As far as the experience working with them, they always delivered on time. They came in on budget. They always did what they said.