The Internet is Just a Fad

11 Reasons Your Site(s) Will Never Get Any Better

And by site I mean the most important public facing marketing and communications asset you have.  In no particular order . . .

1.  IT is responsible for it - "The admin and workflow on the new CMS kicks ass.  Everybody will love it"
2.  You don't make it (policies and enforcement) part of the way your company works - every department and every division
3.  Marketing is responsible for it - Oh lord, talk about no juice to get anything done
4.  You continue to fund and resource it with nickels and the jv squad
5.  You continue to line item budget it to death - One Facebook page, $245,000, check; two microsites . . . Find someone (owner or agency) responsible enough to make decisions quickly.
6.  You don't change the development cycle - quarterly releases, even monthly releases are silly
7.  CONTINUE TO IGNORE SEARCH - it's easy and it's how people find your stuff
8.  It's not an art and design project, period.  Not a print ad.
9.  You forget to ask customers what they think - until after it launches, then who cares?  Do you have a usability plan that has actually impacted design or functionality?
10.  You continue to talk and 'message' without listening - your guests couldn't care any less how your organized and what you have to say.  They want to find and do stuff quickly.
11.  You're completely missing the connections - you spend inordinate amounts of time and money on events, packaging, direct mail, advertising, talent rights fees,etc; yet you wave past the site.  Take some time and get it together!

Digital is not analog.  Stop treating it like it is.

Magic Pixie Dust for Ad Banners

Man, I hate that term, ad banners.  Said that way, they seem so weak, feeble and even a little dirty.  I've been wrapped up in my share, and I get defensive when folk ask 'do those things really work.'  'Better than you think' is my stock answer. 

Mr Cummings has a great post - The Risky Business of Ad Banners at iMedia (hey Rick Parkhill, fancy the site up and make it shareable, you've got some good stuff) on the fundamental flaws of how creative is developed online.  The linear approach to a single creative with traffic, job jackets and multiple rounds of revisions is silly.

Here's a nice start.  Go to adverlicio.us and take a look at what's happening  in the big leagues.  Thing is, your stuff is going to show up rotating with these so don't come weak with a 4 panel rotating 'gif'.  That's the impression you want to make?; much less think anyone would consider clicking on that rickety thing.

Also, don't even look at the stats, click throughs, panel views, et al if you didn't think through the interaction.  Compelling visual with a quick message and a strong call to action.  Pay attention to the placement site layout and what nuances would make the creative work contextually; focus some energy on the timing  too.

It's a lot to think about and get right.   Not just throwing up some ad banners.

Where Do You Find The Time?

You slant your lifestyle to those things that matter to you.  If I was a coin collector, I'd take every free minute I had to be researching the latest trend on the reemergence of the '22 nickel slug and how it showed up at some random event at a Holiday Inn by the airport in Skogie, IL.  I'd commune online with my fellow coinatarians and I'd probably have a favorite tee shirt or hat with some arcane show reference as a point of pride for my hobby.   

Coins aren't my thing, nor civil war reenactments, nor throwback jerseys, nor logo golf balls.  As you've read here, I'm more into marketing science, linguistics, memetics and basic cultural anthropology; a good wine pairing, breaking 80 more often and a fresh pot of steamed crabs on the deck.

Straight to the point, how do you find the time to work, blog, twitter, exercise, relax, flickr, church, lunch, vacation . . . ??

Noah Brier pointed me to the Web 2.0 speech transcript from Clay Shirky - Gin, Television and Social Surplus that gives great insight into where the time comes from; and gives a brilliant history lesson on the difficulty of society to digest the shift in communications underway.  Here's a snip:

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

So what?  Well I have a near four-year-old and I'm not interested in being irrelevant.

 

Online Identity and Privacy

Great post from Sean X on Online Privacy this morning at iMedia.  BTW, iMedia, you are killing me with your terrible site.  I'd like to share the link and participate in a conversation . . . let me know when you get around to that.

Some legislation pending in NY for companies to identify when they attached online activity to Personally Identifiable Information.  So it raises the fever again about the topic. 

Advertising is paying for what you are consuming!  Again, advertising, marketing, communications are paying for what you are consuming!  Would you rather have a micro-payment system that hits your charging plate for $.14 for every page you read or for search?  I didn't think so.  Hey, Ballmer, you really want to win with consumers?  Charge them $250/mo for an ad-free surfing environment!

Here's a spot on quote from Sean:

Why do you think that grocery stores give you discounts for using a simple card? Because they so value you as a customer and they are just being nice? Are you really that naive? That information with your purchase habits is immediately tied to your name and your address. Are you single and do you buy booze, condoms and cigarettes? Guess what? Don't be surprised if you start getting some fun, hip catalogs in the mail. But that is not where the danger is; the danger is that some health insurance company buys a grocery chain and then starts to adjust insurance rates based on your lifestyle. Think about that the next time you throw your grocery card down for that carton of cigarettes and the three liter bottle of vodka. That is scary, and a much more probable scenario than all the scare tactics about online privacy and behavioral targeting.

Let's introduce legislation to have retailers more explicitly ask for permission to attached diaper purchases to our VIP cards!!!

Online Advertising Works!

Holy cow, who knew??  But if Harvard Business Review published it, then it's true!  Do they sell online ads??  That sure is one fancy expensive glossy magazine!

Having seen recent press about online advertising being analogous to billboards on the highway, I was starting to lose faith that banners would ever get their due.  Well, thanks for Fred at A VC, we've got some evidence that this stuff really works.  I've been supporting those banner guys for years.  Hell, I even was involved in you seeing "punch the monkey" and "X10 camera" creative back when.

It works (offline, online, sideline, above the line, wherever) when you know what you're doing.

The Recent Backstory on Social Media Metrics

So you probably read Brian Morrissey's  piece in Adweek on social media metrics: Conversation Quotient.  Hyper-relevant given the dustup at recent conferences and the intense heat and bright light on the topic.   I certainly scurried over there with butterflies in my stomach hoping to see the ever elusive bullet, the silver bullet.  Low and behold a bunch BBs scattered on the page with a roundup of Twitterati and their accurate, but less than definitive postulations.  Quite a bit of dodging and parrying from agency brethren on the hopes, fears and shoulds with Social Media and its impact on communication and marketing.

Then I ran across Max Kalehoff's follow up giving much more detail on his discussion with Brian.  If you start to extend social media through an enterprise beyond just marketing, you can see that there is a much broader impact to be accounted for.  Both in cost to implement as well as what and how to measure.  Much much more opportunity and data points to consider to assign value.   A quick quote from Max's post below -

"However, the major point I made in our interview, which he wasn’t able to unpack in this short article, is that social-media metrics are expansive and applicable to nearly all business processes, from innovation to product development, from strategic and communications planning to communications management, from marketing effectiveness to loyalty, as well as customer service, experience and beyond."

The measurement question comes up every day - social media, site traffic, clips, blips, pass-alongs, GRPs, etc .  As I've written before, it takes a hell of a long conversation - and commitment to come up with what to watch and why.  Most clients, agencies and affiliated aren't patient enough to work through it.  There's a silver bullet out there somewhere!, right. Some clients have set arbitrary values to impressions in an ad-equivalencyish approach.  In those cases I've recommended units as opposed to dollars or cents,  because it just doesn't make any sense to use the completed flawed ad model to measure anything.

Brian, I like your idea of an additional story about the enterprise. Maybe a meet-up at the Silver Bullet Lounge?

The Selling of Social Media - intro

Just so you know where I'm coming from, there should be no selling involved.  Social Media principles should be integral to every brands' communication and marketing projects, programs and philosophies.    Period.  As intuitive as not spending 96% of your marketing dollars on TV commercials.  I'll assure you though, I'm still in the minority on both points

But, in an ironic twist Social Media is having a hard time with its brand.  What started as a participatory movement of the PEOPLE to publish their opinions, support things they like and reward authentic with loyalty continues to grow and thrive.  However, a very very very tiny few companies have embraced the idea(s) and reported success.  Certainly there are even fewer that have adjusted their brand style guide accordingly, retooled the corporate communications group, shifted considerable dollars and resources, and opened up to be more transparent.  Lots of talk and chatter, not much gettin' to it.

Now, Social Media is on stage - hit the big time.  All ears and eyes are waiting . . .

Here come the agencies!!!  "Oh client, we're here for you, we'll help you understand!"  Ad agencies sell the emotion, digital shops sell the increasing numbers of broadband adopters, pr sell reputation - credibility  - relations, and the holding companies sell the dream.  After hours of meetings and presentations from all of them, client goes back to their day, just as busy and nonsensical as it was before.  Social Media ain't really helping much.  It sounds really hard, there's a whole new vocabulary and nobody has any answers.  Nothing in it for them.

Part of the problem is that those that KNOW this stuff, get it, feel it, need it, want it, embrace it, are so damn excited that they can stop wetting their pants with the new stuff that comes out everyday.  Trying to impress the other KNOWERS that they KNEW first. 

Bit of advice, try understanding your audience before walking into a room and starting to sell the game-changing virtues of twitter, utterz, facebook, lijit, delicious, flickr, moveable type (the company, not the movement). 

Even though they (client) asked to get the 101, the audience in the room (CMO, Marketing Manager, PR Director, et al) barely knows how a website really works, much less what an api is, or how rss is completely changing how they should be doing marketing.  Jump to marketing as utility for their customers instead of just messages, and you have successfully ground your audience to pulp with jargon and crap.

Don't start by giving some context, and certainly not the participatory "fundamental shift" stuff from the Economist in '06 with references to Gutenburg (see, referencing something traditional - printed in a magazine is the opposite of the point).

Also, don't start with what Dell does, or WalMart did, or what Target wrote back to that blogger.

Don't say you were talking to Joeseph Jaffe, Steve Rubel, or David Armano the other day, and . . .

Don't lead with, now, you have to be listening to your consumer. 

I'd start with search, their terms, places they should own! (simple proof point on where and how people get information).  Yes, I recognize that the audience in the room has little or no knowledge or appreciation for search, so I hammer home that they should!!!  Then I say it again.  Then at the end, I say it again.  They will understand the sheer number of disconnects their audiences are seeing.  At XXX searches a day domestically in Google alone, you can imagine what could be.

Social Media Opportunity - use search a starting point to see results.  Pay attention to it every day!!!

I'd then ask, who owns the consumer/audience opinions.  CMO, call center director, corp comm???  Ask if they would share a few comments that came in yesterday, last week, whatever about their brand, products or services.  Nobody in the room will have any.  So then, I have a few of my own that I dug up.  My best guess is that you're getting XXX a day.  This is where I'd show the groups that have already formed for or against on various social networking sites.  Clearly, you've got people interested in what you have to offer, and they are predisposed to talking about it, publicly!

Social Media Opportunity - monitor.  Somebody own this!!!  Pay attention to it every day!!!

More to come.

Maps, swirls and visualizations

By way of Stephen Gates, a spot where there is always incredible stuff, here's a link to a new MOMA exhibition, Design and the Elastic Mind.  WOW.  I guess I'm not the only one that finds it fascinating.  My wife is/was an art major, and shakes her head disgustedly when I bring home this stuff to hang on the wall.

So check it out if you like inner cell animations, or terrorist cell mapping.  Interesting connection to cells, no?  No, probably not to you.

BTW, there is a whole world of infographics out there.

Flares

I've recently used flares as a metaphor for various client campaigns.  It's the "big idea" concept of communication and marketing.  Each successive campaign needs another idea.  You put your head down for 6 weeks cranking out the gunpowder, cartridges and plugs, only to fire the thing into the sky.  Burns for a minute and then peters out.  You're out smithing another one (or some other agency is) to send out.  Each with a half cranked target and no feedback for the next one or the next guy. 

I read this little piece at AdWeek from Jaffe, and he mentioned the same idea.  So many organizations are so focused on that "big idea" that they forget all about the little stuff. 

I had a small role in a big presentation recently where I pointed out a number of these small things online that could be connected.  Client was fascinated at the idea that digitally they weren't really missing the big stuff, they just had never looked at the hundreds of little things.  My point.  They matter for sustaining any campaign.

How or who breaks the cycle? 

Well, it seems Lego listens pretty well to it's various audiences, but it took a pretty courageous soul to make the company see that.  Not because he could say, if we do it'll be worth $XX, but because he had a boss that believed that this new way had the consumer first, not the company.

Psst, Marketing and Sales - connected, just not mutually exclusive

I like John Bell and his commentary at Digital Influence Mapping Project.  Lots of ideas and experiments flowing, so it's nice to check in and see what he and his team are up to.  Lately, there has been a trend there around WOM (substitute public relations if you like) being measured on the same scale as advertising.  Well, I guess this supposes that advertising measurement (GRP, TRP, Rating Points, Circulation, Clicks, etc.) are even worth a c-rap to begin with.  Let's be clear - they are not.  It's why advertising is just above lawyering and used car selling and just below insurance.  No more marketing seats at the Board Room table with Trump and ever increasing CMO attrition velocity.

Note to self, let's not measure anything with that ruler. 

Blinded by the HUGE dollars that advertising gets (not to mention the sexy shoots in exotic locations), other marketing services firms are trying to stake their claim on these untold riches.  It's a sunsetting business, so let's look at this problem a little differently. 

Let's go old school and start asking some questions of ourselves, our friends and the brands we represent.  Let's clarify (really really do this; not just suppose that you know) who the current or target audiences are, find out what make them tick (aka consider, try, buy, recommend), ask (and answer truthfully) if our experience is different in any way from the cat down the street, build a model, try an approach, and then commit to the resources and change that is required.  Then measure against that . . . with customer service scores, satisfaction indexes, contribution to sales, employee morale, whatever.  But squeezing year over year same store sales out of your ad creative or press releases is just silly.         

Where's my piece? The PR (aka full-service communications services) version.

Hey, so us online advertising folk don't get our share of the pie.  No mystery right.  TV and print time spent is down overall, yet their ad spend still slightly grows.  Doesn't really make sense in the aggregate, but there are many broken industries out there - how could we actually not buy TV?  That Hawaiian beach shoot would be in jeopardy.  Oh, gosh . . .

I'll plug Joe Apprendi and iMediaConnection for having a timely piece on this; my weekend was filled with it and I've been working on the post for a while.  Joe's an ex-24/7 Media fellow and is off to starting his own online ad network (congrats Joe, btw), so take anything you read with a grain of salt.  Really, all of those "networks" get their inventory from the same exchange(s), but another post all together.  Joe claims that online advertising makes up 7.6% of all ad spend (I've got it at 6.9% globally, but who's counting).  Time spent with the internet  makes up somewhere around 20 - 25% of "media time".  On average people spend more time with TV - debatable on which medium is more effective, but that's a semantic argument that will never have an answer.  The truth is that there is a huge gaping discrepancy in the aggregate for where spenders spend and where their audiences really audience.

Now, enter Public Relations.  Lots of chatter online about communications in general and how companies/brands can and should be using internet stuff to solidify a message, commune a community, get bloggers to blog about stuff, et al.  No question, a significant portion of budget should be shifting here vs. stock pressers, media events, pitching trade magazines, etc.  Well, the reality here is that companies (huge and small) are spending a tiny fraction of the their overall "communications" budget online.  If I had to guess, it would be less than 2% in many cases for companies you are very familiar with.  Talk about a discrepancy!!!  Add to that, the internet is the primary medium "at work" and holds an overwhelming share of time spent there . . . an even bigger discrepancy than online advertising.  Oh my!  The PR machine for the PR industry is missing a big opportunity.

Now that's Engagement . . . or is it Entrapment?

So the writer's strike and all that is going on.  As a result my Denny Crane fix is quickly coming to an end.  What am I going to do . . . ?  Maybe I'll head to the movies??  What?  So Mediavest is going to take $100MM and move it from TV to cinema advertising.  Radio or sandwich boards on the highway are better bets don'tcha think?  Why would clients give you their money to spend?  I so clearly don't understand.  It must be some really complicated stuff that I will never have an understanding of, like quantum mechanics or linguistic control.  One day when I'm all growed up it will seem so clear . . .

I like this guy! A tear in my eye.

We all know that Greenberg is a beacon in the fog.  But then I read a column (aka blog post) back from September in AdWeek called Funnel Clouding and found a tear gathering in my eye.  He really gets it.  He really does.  Here's a quote.

The fact is, the role of traditional media is more limited than ever before. Our ad messages co-exist alongside thousands of other voices that consumers trust more, like their peers. In the past, marketing went deeper into the funnel, beginning with awareness and continuing into consideration and preference. But now the drivers of consideration and preference have shifted in droves to the Web and social media, confining traditional media to mere awareness drivers. This is a shift as dramatic as anything in our industry, with ramifications far and wide.

When a single TV spot or print ad used to be able to simultaneously drive awareness, consideration and preference, marketers got a lot of value out of this ad. But now the best ads can do is start the consideration process, which more often than not is happening online. And although a punchy line might trigger awareness, it plays almost no role during consideration. Here, the "rational" experience of brands trumps the "emotional" delivery of a clever tagline or visual. Yet ad agencies have almost no experience in the former and way too much comfort in the latter. Even when they develop online campaigns, traditional agencies tend to approach the Web as just another place to deliver a metaphor. So instead of creating useful tools, applications, demos, customer support communities or streamlined ways to complete a transaction, they fall back on familiar stunts and gags, such as viral videos.

I suspect the reason agencies haven't tackled consideration and preference is because they are far beyond their capabilities rather than simply outside their comfort zone. Real engagement requires entirely new teams of people—like information architects, data analysts and an army of technologists of various stripes. The traditional teams found at agencies simply do not possess the skill sets needed to tackle areas that are deeper inside the funnel, where purchase decisions increasingly take place.

Read'em and Weep!

Funnels, touchpoint maps, transmedia planning, engagement, influence.  Reminds me of Dennis Hopper line in Blue Velvet, "when I say dog, what comes to mind?"  For me it's a stupid dalmatian one of my roommates had in college, for you it's probably that fluffy white thing yapping at the window right now.  Say any of those words above without explanation, and one thing is certain - 2 of the 3 people in the room are already confused without even getting started.  "Ambiguity is like oxygen to me," a planner come account director at a DM shop (irony obvious) once said about this beautiful swirling communication mess.

This is why I read Mr. Hillstrom regularly.  HE'S WILLING TO TAKE A CUT!!  Scary proposition - A 2008 Contact Strategy for any of your clients!  He's got a snappy timeline dating back 30 years or so, but here is his estimation (with industry definition!) for 2008:

Your leading specialty catalog brand adds RSS feeds to the mix, allowing you to see new and exciting merchandise offerings once every three days. E-mail contacts have increased to three every two weeks. You visit the website once every three weeks, and you use Google to search for comparable merchandise once every three weeks.

    * Total marketing contacts = 102.
    * Total pull-based contacts (RSS) = 17.
    * Customer-driven contacts = 34.
    * Total interactions = 153.

Doesn't matter if that is +/- 5%!  Are you saying something compelling and personalized all 153?  No?, wasting time and money.

The Measurement Swirl!

Prospective global client asks, "how do we measure if the campaign was successful?"  You reply, "let's chat a few minutes about what you (client) would like to see happen as a result of the campaign - steady some brand wobble, sales lift, double subscribers?"  Agitated client, "well there must be some best practices for measurement in this business!!!"

"Sure" I say, "but those practices are applied to an expected outcome for the campaign.  Once we can stick the landing on that, we'll be in good shape and will share our approach."  Blank stares all around.

Funny, 'cause this was happening while I was attending The Strategy Institute's Digital Media Pricing and Measurement conference in New York. 

Good times in the city, but overall the empirical data on specific and/or comparative campaign successes was thin!  If you want some of that, check out Kevin Hillstrom or Avinash.  (Note, Coke and GM still likes the TV and somehow, the digital TV 2009 is really big for such brands - absolutely no idea??? how that will be any better for the consumer or more effective)

So anyway, back to measurement, and how to get at the/an answer.  If I asked how much a website costs, most would reply with a series of questions to gauge the magnitude of effort we were talking about.  How much does a house cost? On and on.

Similarly, what are best practices in cooking?  Well, is that kitchen layout, utensil selection, food preparation, or ladling techniques?

My take is that measurement of any flavour is a discussion, not an absolute?

I'm no Libertarian . . . or am I (smirk)

Recently, The Guardian had a fantastical story With Friends Like These  . . . on what is really behind The Facebooks. 

One ginormous shell game by Peter Theil to operationalize his libertarian agenda.  Multi-tier investment laundering with stealthy capital coming from the shadows of renowned universities and governmental central intelligence slush funds. 
Makes you think twice about what you put where online.

Massive conspiracy - who doesn't love a story like that!? 

Frankly, I still think the Magic Johnson/HIV thing was just a marketing lollapalooza for Stern and the NBA.   They played the all-star game in Orlando that year (Magic - coincidence?) and the league star torch was passed to Jordan (who still has never traveled and always got the call).  But this Facebooks thing?  Theil creates PayPal to liberate the "money" and now this to free "information".  Certainly a chess game I can't imagine.  Or maybe Thiel just flipped in some cash early with little diligence and now his legend grows beyond mythical proportions. 

Campaign 2016 - Scientology vs. Libertarian.  Is that what the founding fathers had in mind? 

Lemmings . . . Cliff . . . Oops

I read this stuff Reach Still Top Rationale of Major Marketers and it drives me crazy.  Note to self, stop looking at AdRags headlines.  Beyond asinine, the "marketers" (read media shops taking orders from client) contradict the entire premise when quoted.

"Clients want to know [about ROI]. It's no longer just about eyeballs; it's about what is this ad doing to drive sales?"

ROI is quickly approaching the exact opposite of Reach.

"Broadcast still works," he said. "I don't think you are going to see a wholesale shift, but instead [buyers will shift dollars] little by little."

How does it work?  For what?  For whom?  You?  Expensive creative fees, expensive placement fees with little tracking.  A lot easier to make money, no?

I'm not sure engagement is the grail, because that doesn't necessarily ring the till either.  Certainly more akin to ROI than reach.

The REAL Digital Revolution - as it applies to advertising that is

Ran across The Real Digital Revolution this morning and it's worth a read.  Not long, just a simple take on the effect of consumer empowerment in relation to your brand, product of service.  My friend Larry Everling called a version of it Connective Tissue back in 2005.

It's happening to every industry, travel, pharma, musics, real estate, vacuums, toilet paper, whatever.  And it's not just the kids anymore.

On this very blog, I've called it owning the experience longer.  The executional agency of past has been paid handsomely for providing materials to feed into broadcast media machine.  Materials placed, job done, bills paid.  Results anecdotal.  Audience satisfaction measures unmeasured.

Enter digital.  Limitless potential yes, but how does it fit into our established practices and processes of media?  Let's try to use it like that.  Guess it doesn't really work.  We'll go back to way it was.  Paid well and everybody at the company and agency was happy.  Audience restless again.

I usually use the Williamsburg, VA example.

January - Family wants to book summer vacation

January - Sees very patriotic advertising campaign, TV, online, print (ad agency and pr firm similar messages; they did their job right, awareness/interest . . . )

February - Visits www.visitwilliamsburg.com; a fine site, decent home page, lot's of stuff, starts getting loose one page down, content stale, no compelling offer or validation, 404 errors at the bottom of some of the offers (digital agency did its job; site live and functioning)

February - Decide to look first for a hotel that might work first.  Visit www.tripadvisor.com (substitute the 22 other review sites out there) and start reading reviews of the hotels, the city and trips people have taken.  Biggest question, "what is there to do?".  Many bad reviews;  questioning the idea, sounds boring (hello ad agency, pr firm and digital shop -get your voice out there; people are looking elsewhere to VALIDATE what you advertise and say)

March - Book trip to Kiawah (why there, another post . . . )

Rinse - Repeat.  Apply the same to every industry or product.

How GE Does It? Measures Marketing That Is.

Check out this interview with Dan Henson, CMO GE.  Dave Reibstein of MarketingNPV supplies the questions.  Awfully stiff with the 70's groove track in the background.  Get over that and there are some nuggets.  Dave, I'd post the video and promote if you made it available.

Interesting points in the video -

They don't have a marketing dashboard at the corporate level.

Each business unit has a dashboard for the metrics that are important for them.

$500-600 MM incremental revenue (now that's a hell of a gap) from the sponsorship $$ spent on the Olympics (undisclosed spend) - got them on the list with Chinese gov to supply infrastructure stuff.

No ROI benchmarks across the organization.

Claims to track everything infinitesimally but no real examples.

Mentions "gut" a few times for the measuring stick.

1/2 of revenue comes from outside of the US.

Seems like the marketing spend is organized; just a little squishy on the measures.

Where Does the Agency Fit?

If you've read previous posts here, you know that I am critical of the executional position most communications/advertising agencies find themselves.   Who's to blame, those stupid clients or the myopic ($$$$) agency?

"Give 'em what they want!" is what an old colleague K. Richmond Temple frequently suggested as the primary role of the agency.  I guess you get what you pitch for, no?  Agencies - If you want to change your lot, then pitch different clients who want your new brand of thinking and dump those that expect you to churn out whatever crap they suggest.

Leads me to The Content Manifesto, a brilliant collection of posts about the continued demise of the current agency; and the "content" life preserver that is floating nearby.  We've been chattering about the need for brands to become content producers for a while now.  My assertion is that there will only be a few brands that can do it well in-house, culturally, and that the modern agency should serve the need looking a lot more like a production house.  Fahrenheit 212  and TAXI seem to be on the right track.

My favorite quote of the bunch is from Gavin Heaton (www.servantofchaos.com),

“I strongly believe that the Agency World is well overdue for an overhaul. In fact, I fully expect a wave of business consultants to descend on the rich agency pickings any day now… once they have a model that can demonstrate the linkage between brand value, activation and the balance sheet, McKinsey & Co will cherry pick the brightest minds and wipe the floor with what/whoever is left.”

Let's Plan the Plan

Media buying departments have become contact strategy groups.  I guess this assumes that tv, magazine and OOH ads are actually, or ever have been, contacts to apply some strategy.  More like passive and fleeting views if you ask me.  Changing the department  name is lipstick rubbed on a worm really; attempting to rationalize that this media buying function in a traditional agency provides some strategic relevance with a real customer in mind is silly.

Enter connection planning.  Here's Trumpet's fla la. And here's a good analysis of why and what's possible.   Cute and lovely that some scholarly thinkers muse about the theories of orchestrating the intersection of human behaviour and commerce.

Low and behold there is also transmedia planning upon us.  Long form and short form.  Frankly, I think this idea is great.  Theoretically correct (such a subjective judgment) or at least approaching it; therefore should be possible. 

Enough people in a coordinated fashion with a clear mission should be able to pull it off.

Now let's talk the rub with all of this.  It doesn't take into account that every day you are planning, your ideas and resultant campaigns are approaching obsolete.  Now Burger King CMO claims that in their new regime ideas are only partially baked when greenlighted in order to fend this off.

My take is that you have to create an organization (whole company - Nike, or marketing department, whatever) that thinks and operates around adaptive planning.  This is the action process and triggers that are in place to contort to a moving target and market.  The monstrous idea and budget approval process that everybody goes through is counterintuitive to the expected result.  Oh, the daily struggles . . . Takes the agency out of rationalizing bad creative at the client's request toward valuable partner - the grail at every agency's sr. executive offsite this year (and last), no?   

Fashionably Late!

Executing a flawless room entrance for the fabulous is a life's work (tongue meet cheek).

It's funny though, in the web world too, so much effort and focus is placed on the entrance.  "What's the homepage going to look like?"  "What's the user experience when they get to the site?"  Wireframes, mindmaps, storyboards and flows abound for that entrance location.  Important, yes.  Interior pages, forms, and other content templates - yeah, yeah we'll get to that.  Not now. This homepage needs some sizzle!

I ran across Ending With the Beginning in Mind from Ion today, and it cemented some of what I've been spinning lately.  Measurement is the king, right?.  If you've read my earlier posts you know that I have a problem with that term without some explanation.  But in this context, for many organizations (most I'd venture), measurement assumes to cover outcomes.  Registrations, unique visitors, ads served, product sold, etc.  Measurement rarely focuses on "incomes", but the majority of focus and energy for web teams and their agencies is on the homepage and the entrance.  Nice, but with interactive marketing we own more of the user experience and should be responsible to provide the kind of customer focus that is required.  If we started with how we want the visitor to exit, then we could think about the entrance that would get us there.

In the Box? . . . Out on the Edge?

So now content is at the top of the chain.  Not sure that has ever been any different, but now the programming framework to consume and distribute it is decaying.  Why? 

We all want what we want when we want it.  Simple.  The media empires don't support such.

The intersection with marketing, advertising and communication doesn't really work so well anymore as defined by said decaying framework.  It's why media are in such a tizzy.  What does the modern brand look like/act like? Apple, Google?   Where does media fit?

So leave it to Umair to illustrate how this works now and why.

What if brands really thought of themselves as producers?  Not advertisers.  Not communication pushers.  But, conveners of like-minded consumers.   What would that look like?  What would that act like?

According to Nike.

“We’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive,” Mr. Edwards says he tells many media executives. “We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”

Where Oh Where to Begin?

It's a fun time to be in this business . . . any business really.  Some don't see it that way, and I think is causing the current nasty strain of organizational paralysis that's going around - keep doing it the way we know and were taught how, or scrap most of that and build some new models.

Here's an interesting approach from the folks at Digitas.  Connection planning as guide for creative and context.  Why not.  Online, some/much of this can be automated for execution, but developing the campaign strategy should be driven from many data points.  Sure, gut emotion being one of them, but there are so many more. 

I've been meeting with SEO people over the last few weeks and has me considering so much of this.  Intersecting anthropology is incredibly fertile ground to cover when you are asking yourself where to begin?  An audience/user/customer/prospect-centric approach to marketing requires a heavy lift on curiosity and research.

Here's a great place to start.  Put in a keyword and you'll be clicking for hours on all of the detail that is out there on a term like "recycle".  Thanks Aaron!

Keyword Suggestions for:


USA UK Australia Austria Denmark Finland France Germany Italy Netherlands Norway Scotland Spain Sweden Switzerland

By Aaron Wall's SEO Book

What's it worth?

Marketing or PR?  Who owns what?  And what's the value?

Was in a meeting yesterday and PR spend got called to the carpet.  Was there really any impact from it?  No measurement or research mechanism in place, so anecdotes are the guide.  I heard from a client, we got some calls, etc.  Lot's of $$$ spent and opportunity cost for a few phone calls and a few clicks at the web site that seem to correlate. Should there be a reallocation of resources and spend now that the organization has an increased focus on sales vs.  nice nice stuff?

It brings up the question of value.  What's the value of a quote placement in a story on page 3 of the WSJ?  Circulation of the pub [minus] the percentage of people that actually read it that day [minus] the number people that happen upon page 3 [minus] the number people that found the story on the bottom right [minus] the people that got to paragraph 3 [minus] the number of people that really took note of the person or company quoted.   Quite a bit smaller than originally reported, and suspect metrics with all unknowns for trying to figure that out.

Changing hearts and minds, right.

Now brings me to an experiment from a chap named Ben Cook.   Ben had a great idea for a blog post/content.  Rather than rushing to scribe, he set up a little infrastructure to evaluate the impact/value of such a post that gets picked up by Digg.com.  Tiny stuff really, but this same level of measurement has never been done by mainstream pubs to validate their impact.

The Lasting Digg Effect is a great case for justifying why Digg, StumbleUpon, et al have a strong case to be included as PRIMARY vehicles any organizations' messages.  For companies trying to sort out the value of PR and marketing, tens of thousands of visitors to a site is a hell of a lot more tangible than circulation numbers and potential impressions.

People keep telling me that their site is THE most important marketing channel they have.  Yet their focus, budget, resources and actions don't reflect it.  If this single little experiment can drive this kind of traffic, what if your communications group focused on these activities and put the releases, pitching, traditional media flogging on the back burner???

No Answers - Just a Proposition

I've been reading Kevin's stuff for a few months now, and it's certainly one that I recommend you check out.  There is great insight specifically about retail and e-commerce, but the advice is definitely applicable to whatever service or mission you sell!

How Online Advertising  Channels Fit  Together is a great post and sounds so definitive and exact, but really provides ONE model or approach attempting to qualify and quantify traffic and sales by channel.  The point is . . . PROPOSE YOUR OWN MODEL!  Take a shot.  You've got enough smart people or agencies or consultants, etc. that could help.

I like the CSI-ian approach to the investigation of such mysteries . . . Multichannel Forensics; of course it's minus the sexy set location, super high end fake technology and zinger one-liner.

What The Queen Wants.com

So, the servantofchaos.com posed a challenge, So You Think You Can Market?  On behalf of bargainqueen.com, Gavin and team asked for submissions of some marketing strategies for this site to better reach a male audience, oh yeah, with only $500 and a killer tech team at your disposal.

Brilliant because who cares who wins, there was no prize other than pub and links to your site/blog whatever.  In the end, his client I presume, got a bunch of good, cheap ideas they can implement.  Didn't cost 'em a thing.

Here were my suggestions -

1.  Register whatthequeenwants.com

2.  Copy and paste the items at bargainqueen onto the new site

3.  Send new url to existing bq purchasers and bq email list with instructions to pass new queenwants url immediately and directly to their significant other, upon any purchase conversions (or other qualifying conversions) suggest purchasers send it on to their clueless friends of the same ilk

4.  Repeat for all future purchasers and email captures

5.  Build queenwants application for FB

6.  Have a few influential male friends download it and jock it

7.  insert conversions into email stream above

8.  register whattogetherthisyear.com redirect to queenwants and repeat

In a heads up format, I lost in the first round to someone suggesting some sort of charity connection.  Fine generally, but light on the detail.  I purposefully didn't post the challenge or solicit mass voting.  I thought merit would win out.  Guess I was wrong.  No worries, fun to go through the exercise.




Imagine my surprise though when I discovered that what the queen wants.com and what to get her this year.com were both registered 3 days after I submitted my entry?

Coincidence?  Brilliant work, Gavin!

Facebook Ads . . . Cute, but It's Got to Work!

So I thought I'd test drive this new, new paradigm in advertising, called Facebook Ads.  What's to lose?  $20 a day at $.05/click.  Interface is easy enough, told me after choosing some keywords/behaviors/interests to target that I could potentially reach 8,700 profiles (no indication of active or not).  Although, thinking about it, the process is overly simplistic without any of the tweaks Goo, Hoo and Soft have worked out over the years. 

Doesn't give me any confidence that this was really thought through.

Okay, won't take American Express.  Explain please!  Thousands of $$ are on a corporate amexes every month with search engines.  You don't take that card for payment?  Moving on, it couldn't verify my address with the card entered.

Unable to verify credit card address. Please check that your address is entered correctly. If so, you may want to try a different card or contact your card issuer to insure that your current address is up to date.

I have this card all over the place with the same address.  Your advice to me is that I work it out on my end?  Can I call someone or live chat - because you really want my business!  Nope, just policies and threats about canceling my Facebook life . . . Oh My, don't do that, where would I turn?  And, I suppose "insure" and "ensure" are synonymous, but I'm not convinced that insurance is what my bank will provide in this case.

Not the experience I was expecting, but beyond that IT'S GOT TO WORK!!!

Again, Scott Karp provides great insight on Facebook's Vulnerabilities and points out that sort of open isn't really open and that advertising is only as good as the relevance to the user no matter the context.  Otherwise it continues to be be interruptory and not voluntary.

More from Nick Carr and Umair.

Best quote so far

"The social graph, it turns out, is a platform for social graft."  Robert Handrow November 7, 2007 07:33 AM

A Shot Across the Bow

Rubel was the first, well after Scoble, to raise the flag on the 2.0 hype machine with The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on Its Own Kool-Aid.  Funny really because PR firms are in this thing deep, but let's separate the man from the tribe.  Too many conferences, too many parties, too much money, too much new stupid stuff . . .

I commented that this is a little different.  And frankly, so many brands are just catching wind of the benefits of 1.0 much less 2.0, so there is a lot of marketing $$$ in limbo.

"I said so" really is a hollow consolation isn't it? Wait, I need to post this on my Tumblr account. I don't attend many conferences, but I should. I don't know enough about search or analytics. Never will have it cold. And neither will you. Yes, you, reader of this post. You need to constantly be filtering the good stuff from the bad. Just the modern cycle.

The difference now is Google and the massive advertising dollars it is bringing to the market. The market has been validated and is drawing dollars that frankly should have come in those "bubble days".

If you can't keep up, then you're not curious enough, and rest assured that 22 year old junior staffer can . . .

Always good to be cautious, but this time it's a little different.

Exuberance will give way to rational.  MySpace built off of Friendster and others, Facebook built off of MySpace and Google certainly won't miss with their completely open API version.  The hype is the learning curve in getting this right.  And the number of huge successes this go around that are soley in it for the money will be very few.

Measuring the ROI of Social Media

Define Measuring! 

Is is participation or units sold and out the door? 

If participation, let's discuss how that fits into the current customer lifecyle. 

Oh, that hasn't been nailed down just yet.  Well, here's one approach. 

Okay, it's really units out the door you want to measure. 

How does marketing currently measure their campaigns?  You're not sure . . .

What site metrics can we have access to?  You don't know, hmm.

Should we set up a call with them to discuss it?  Oh, they don't have time for that.

Hard to measure when you don't have access or anything to work from, wouldn't you say.

Peter Bihr of thewavingcat.com provides a list of links on the topic.

UNO  DOS  TRES  CUATRO

Here's another link that has a good round up.

Sales numbers and business results are thin, but a decent list.

So the philosophical debate between 3rd party tracking as standard still rages on. Purists see social media as art and therefore debunk the idea of really measuring it - beyond existing circulation, impressions, feeds, etc. numbers. Framed in SEO mythology, by redirecting, you would risk losing the associated search juice. Again, not tied to any business metric, just that page 4 of Google is better than page 10; we know, but empirically can't prove.  Framed in "Blogola" this is just another form of affiliate marketing with the "journalist" seen as no more than a shill.

It seems that social media more often than not is driven organizationally by the communications or pr group. They've never been held to a revenue metric or even participated in the discussion about acquisition costs and LTV. Now they see an opportunity and turn to their agency/consultant to provide them predictive modeling for success. Problem 1, the communications group can't get near the e-commerce or acquisition teams to navigate connecting the dots. Problem 2, the agency/consultant can't fathom reaching out to bloggers (who are business people as much as journalists) and actually suggesting that they properly attribute the story, piece, post with accurate links to track attribution. Somehow, there is still some notion that journalistic integrity would prevent such blatant product pushing. Long gone!!!

3rd party tracking is certainly not without baggage; cookie deletion %, general consumer mistrust, et al. But, would provide further detail (clickstream vs. polls aka "research").

It takes both sides agreeing on the metrics and committing the time and resources necessary. We all know it is valuable (in some degree), just hasn't been validated yet.

So when you say taxonomy, you really mean . . .

You start to go down the road about taxonomy, information weighting and such.  Then you notice people holding their yawns down.  You say, yeah, yeah, but this is really important stuff.  It's what make the web so cool.  Then the full blown yawn and they bring up the Red Sox or something. 

This morning Gavin pointed me to this brilliant video from Michael Wesch that simply explains this stuff, but with a daunting proposition - - - we know nothing about what the future of this will be (yes, intentionally vague).

Google by Google and for Google

So when someone (client/friend/stranger) asks about redesigning a site and how difficult it is to prioritize thousands of pages of stuff, make it look uncluttered and to satisfy all of the chirping chirpers, my stock reply is . . . "What site has the most information on the internet?"  Some get it right, and other look bewildered, but that's neither here or there.  I say "Google of course.  Take a look at their home page.  If you've got all you ducks in a row in the backroom, then the storefront can be that simple."

Long lead up I know, but take a look at this little show from meangene.  What if Google had to be designed to be seen and liked by the likes of Google?

There are so few people in the world that would find this remotely humorous, but I got a chuckle.

Of Course . . . It's Nike!

That's what everybody says when Nike does stuff like this.  It's not about the design or the fancy web bling or how many spots and dots they push to get people involved.  Sure, they did some advertising, but they don't have to anymore.

When everybody in the company "gets" marketing, it's not that hard.  Product team works with pricing who works with partnerships who works with promotions and marketing.  I'm sure the TrailMax brand manager and the Huarache brand manger weren't fighting over their little silos.  Good ideas are good ideas.  Useful is useful.

They created a application that has built a community.  Now they are part of the conversation.  Did they predict the sales outcome of such an effort?  Probably not to the dime; actually it was probably wildly off, but weren't afraid to experiment.

Hey GM and Ford, people drive your cars to work.  Build a community of "rideshares" (aka sluggers here in DC).  Stop pushing ads on the TV!

Hey AB, Miller and Coors, people like to enjoy your beverages during happy hour.  Connect those similarly inclined.  Stop pushing ads on the TV!

Hey local restaurant, people in the neighborhood know other people in the neighborhood.  Find that out and create a local portal, hell even blog from the owner with news, events, oh yeah your specials and menu!!  Stop ignoring me when I've been in your place 100 times! 

Mo Money - Mo Money!

"Sanely applied advertising could remake the world".  - Stuart Chase

Aw, that little online advertising industry  just posted some favorable results for the first half of 2007.  From the IAB and PwC - $10B in the U.S.

Globally, we'll clip (or eclipse?) radio this year and magazines next year.  On to newspapers and the telly.  Did you really not see this coming?

What am I clairvoyant?  No, I just know things.

Engaging - The Measure of a Site?

It comes up over and over.  In a recent email conversation with an ex-colleague assigned to again redesign his agency's site, engagement is the top priority!!!  When I ask for a specific definition and measure . . . crickets.  Same is true for client sites, microsites and ad creative; same request . . . crickets. 

BTW, speaking of agency sites, take a look at this one.  What the hell are you doing?  Who is this for?  A CMO considering hiring you?  Come on.

Engaging (aka sticky) has been around for a while.  It's the elusive grail that is assumed to  be the proxy measure that should obviously lead to further interest, consideration, purchase/conversion and loyalty bliss.  Sounds lovely and looks fancy with some swirls and circles in PPT, but most transactions aren't that linear, and corralling persistent attention repeatedly in any mass is not feasible .

So as a designer/developer/UX craftsman, what is that "precious" that will have such universal appeal?  A flash game, some video asset, CEO avatar with bad voice over, white paper, podcast, client testimonials, blah blah. 

Sure - all of them.  Test 'em out.  But, DEFINE ENGAGEMENT!!!  Goal? - pick one!  Sales - which of the above leads to increased time on the site, more pages viewed (nice to have), and which lead to more sales (mandatory)?  Action from your testing, heavy up on the game and white paper because they clearly drove more sales.  New hire candidate applications - repeat.

You read this whole post?  Now that's engaging.

Email - Not Dead Just Yet

E-mail marketing works. Seventy-nine percent of consumers have signed up to receive e-mail  at least from one company, according to Forrester Research, and two out of three people surveyed said they read e-mail every day of the week. E-mail marketing delivers a US$51.45 return on investment (ROI) for every marketing dollar spent, according to the Direct Marketing Association.

Further, a survey of 55,000 consumers by Decision Direct Research revealed that the number of respondents that visited a Web site when they received an e-mail promotion increased to 62 percent in 2007.  Ecommmercetimes.com

Shucks, and you thought it was going away.  Point is, do it right and it works well.  Do it poorly, get blacklisted and go back to the mail and 800# method.

Brilliant . . . and Well Executed!!!

We all have the same problem.  You need to go to the Dr. for one reason or another; kids, aches, twitches, red spots, whatever.  Same is true for a lawyer.  Sure, we all have friends that are each or both, but friend doesn't necessarily mean you can call at all hours - and, frankly I don't want them to always know everything about me and the family.

Check this out!  I AM A NEW KIND OF PHYSICIAN 

This business model would work for so many professional services.  Fantastic idea, and a clear website explaining it!

I might just move back to NYC to give this guy some business!

Also, check out the WIRED piece.

More Chuckles - Online Advertising Not Measurable

I was over at Churbuck.com, scrolled down the page and saw a post titled Online Advertising Not Measurable Enough highlighting a McKinsey survey of marketing executives .  That lead me to Scott Karp's site and comments.

Not sure how I missed this news/survey because I love this stuff.  Actual return on investment isn't more measurable than assumed results based on historical statistical fluff built from hand-written diaries?  It baffles me.  Scott's comments are dead on!

There is some collective stoning of McKinsey for this, but they are the messenger here.  Personally, I think they and their ilk will make a major push in the direction in the next few years - it is infinitesimally  measurable and therefore will directly impact business results; huge consulting hours with stuff that clients can't get their heads around - that's their sweet spot.

Maybe though, by measurable, these marketing executives (who will be replaced sooner than they think) are actually thinking about all-in; what would it take and cost to really do it?  Because it would cost mucho (and take longer than their current tenure) to make the jump to real tangible measurable.  And who should they trust to give an accurate predictive model, and to guide them through the rough times of making the leap?  A digital agency that's worked with some big clients but only been in business for 8 years?  A traditional shop that has an interactive department of ONE that's been around for 30 years?

If I told these marketing executives that what you need to do is hire a 12-person internal team (read $1MM+ in overhead), hire a creative shop like AKQA (read $100k/mo. in fee), find a local SEO agency, start using Efficient Frontier for search bid management, sign-up with Offermatica as your testing platform, buy a license for Omniture as your analytics package, subscribe to comScore and HitWise for planning, and run everything through Atlas; what would their reaction be?  Oh, and all of this without even touching or putting a dime into the existing piece of crap website.

The answer would be "I am too busy right now to think about that".  "Budgets for next year are due".  More than likely measurable is the scapegoat for not being able to decide where to begin.   

Just a Chuckle

I spent 15 minutes or so yesterday watching the Google/Doubleclick hearing to the Judiciary Committee and I continue to chuckle.  For a lot of reasons really. 

On a certain level the stupidity of it.

Companies and organizations, MSFT, big telcom/wireless (oops, I mean some shill they prop up), PFF (used to be on one side, but now got hired by the other guys) and EPIC, just wanting to take their licks at Google.  They've all gotten lashed in the past so got to take their shots.  There's a book to be written and movie to be shot about Drummond and Smith getting together at the Occidental Grill weekly to smoke and joke about all of this.  Ira Parker from AOL probably drops by the Grill every now and again.

What a waste of time and money.  GoogleTubeClick will offer some concessions and it will be done.  Everyone knows it.

On another level, hearing these lawyers trying to explain the nuances of online advertising to Leahy, Kohl and Hatch, makes me laugh out loud.  These elected props haven't figured out how to use an ATM machine much less the differences in search and display ad delivery, automated bid management, and predictive yield metrics.  It illustrates for me the idiocy that is government in this country, and confirms the complete citizen apathy.  These are our representatives?  Ideology makes no difference; if you are out of touch . . .

Finally, it makes me smile that this little cottage online advertising industry that started 12 years ago and has gotten maligned and marginalized constantly, is now on the radar.

The Experience Matters!

From Mr. Armano, here is a