Old Spice Guy. Brilliant. But not Social.

July 20th, 2010 by Joe Mele

Before anyone gets into a tizzy, let me start by saying that I think the Old Spice Guy ads done recently by Weiden + Kennedy using near real-time video responses were nothing short of brilliant. They will become the gold standard by which all marketers will hold themselves. I know we will start hearing very soon, “can we do something like the Old Spice Guy ads”? 

And, by at least some measures, they were hugely successful. They got tons of buzz, tons of press, tons of views, and they did a brilliant job of connecting the brand/product to the ads. Something that is very hard to do. How it translates into increased sales is anyone’s guess (AdAge wrote that sales of the advertised product were actually down after the ads ran, but we’ll see how that pans out over time).

No question that these ads went viral. And they were powerful examples of how to leverage social media. But amidst all of the flurry and accolades is one key question: was the effort truly social?

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That begs a question, obviously, and was part of a really good discussion I had the other day with our Director of Social Media Ryan Turner. The question: was it an example of what success in social looks like? My take was no, mostly because they were an ad campaign and not truly social, despite the fact that some were calling this the triumph of social media.

It might help if we define social - which is not an easy thing to do. At its heart, social is a dialogue between people using digital technology to foster that communication. The dialogue can be with family and friends, colleagues, or companies we choose to do business with, and it can occur on a number of platforms and communities. But the point is that there is dialogue, which implies communication with someone - a give and take, an exchange that can be continued, that is ongoing, or at least has the potential to be.

If you agree with that premise, then the Old Spice Guy campaigns were not social, although they brilliantly used social. Instead, the Old Spice Guy ads were a carefully orchestrated campaign.

W+K planned the campaign very carefully. They shot the initial spots. They sought out bloggers and Twitters to respond to, but not in a random way. Then they quickly scripted and shot response ads. In general, they focused on people who had a large number of connections and/or were celebrities in their own right to respond to. Not completely, and not totally, but it is the fact that they were able to capitalize on celebrities and semi-celebrities that started the buzz. This was no groundswell in the truest sense of the word - it didn’t start because a bunch of nobodies stumbled upon the ads. No, it was a carefully calculated communication program.

And good for them. Again, I am in no way disparaging their work. It is amazing work - one of the best campaigns we’ll see this year. And it was risky - it took guts to do it, because it easily could have flopped - and the risk paid off big. But let’s make sure that in our hurry to jump on the bandwagon and proclaim that social has arrived, we take a step back to consider if that is indeed the case.

In many ways, this could become the next Subservient Chicken - it may become the acid test for social in the same way that the Chicken was for viral. Everyone will want one. Many will try and do it, but few will succeed. Because you can’t capture lightning in a bottle very many times. And the Subservient Chicken envy that followed led many advertisers down the path trying to match cleverness with poorly planned attempts of their own. I can see it happening again.

What we need to remember is that clever use of social is not necessarily social per se. And we have to remember that ad campaigns are ad campaigns, not matter how they try and dress themselves up. This ad campaign, and Subservient Chicken were not accidents - they were carefully planned and orchestrated, and took guts and determination - and some genius - to make work.

So what, you may ask? What difference does it make? After all, good advertising is good advertising, and social marketing is hard to evaluate beyond buzz it creates. All very true.

But the goal of social marketing is not really to make ad campaigns. And that’s the point. At its core, social is about creating a dialogue with consumers, not creating ads which are one-way communications. Yes, you can use social media platforms as opportunities to build buzz with customers - and that is legit - but social media in general is not an ad platform. It is, or should be, a dialogue platform. A communication platform that goes beyond simply calculated and orchestrated campaigns.

It’s ultimately probably nit-picking, but it’s a good conversation to have. Am I going to suggest to my clients that they don’t use social to build buzz or support campaigns? Of course not. Again, that is a valid use of the customer communities that are created. But I do have a responsibility to help my clients leverage social in other, more holistics ways - as a way to listen to customers, to respond directly to them, to create useful services for them that are dialogue or sharing based, and to foster meaningful dialogue.

There’s more to being a truly social brand than clever ad campaigns or awards or buzz. Ultimately, it’s about building a relationship with customers.

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Fixing a Broken Agency Compensation Model

July 15th, 2010 by Joe Mele

It’s an old adage that “you get what you pay for.” And generally I have found that to be true. Whenever I choose something based solely on price, that usually means some sort of sacrifice in terms of quality. I only have myself to blame when my cheap purchase fails to deliver, breaks, etc.My 2nd generation parents, who were born in the United States but were raised by frugal Italian immigrants, always believed that it was better to have fewer things if those things were of high quality. In return, those high quality things were treated as valuable investments. Hence the plastic covers on my grandma’s coach.

I was always raised to believe that payment is in fact a contract. In that contract, you indicate the type of relationship you wish to engage in. If I pay a premium for some product or service, I expect a lot in return, and I care a lot about that product or service. If I am most concerned with the lowest price, I don’t expect more than the basics, or I am at least willing to compromise on some level of quality or service.

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And, it’s also a truism that how you compensate drives behavior. If you compensate someone on hours worked, you incentivize them to work longer hours. If you compensate someone on completing a project, you incentivize them to finish the project as quickly as possible.

However, if you compensate someone in a way that indicates you are mutually invested - that you will pay for quality and reward that quality with guarantees of more work or continued loyalty - you are setting up a situation in which both parties win: you with high quality, the service provider with a valuable return client.

Ultimately, this is the issue when it comes to agency compensation. Clients want to get the best service, talent, and output possible from their agencies but are under pressure to reduce fees from upper management. Agencies are under pressure to compete for the best talent and deliver high quality service and output, but are often put in situations where compensation practices encourage them - or even force them - to focus on the wrong things.

I recently read an article in AdAge which talks about this very issue. The author of the article rightly indicates that everyone is generally frustrated when it comes to compensation models. In my job, particularly my previous role, it was my least favorite activity, especially when procurement got involved.

The problem with procurement-led compensation negotiations is that, in the words of a previous client of mine, they treat everything like it’s floor cleaner. As if paying less for something meant you were getting a bargain. While that may be true when what you are negotiating over is toilet paper with little impact on your business, it seems pretty ridiculous when it comes to compensating agencies, who ultimately should be partners in your business. But, we regularly see procurement trying to beat down prices without the requisite view of what it is that agency and client are trying to achieve together.

What is strange is that compensation models have not changed much over the years, and still largely encourage bad behavior, and I would argue outmoded behavior, in both agency and client.

The traditional percent of media compensation, while easy to administer and understand, is probably the worst compensation model but still widely used. It rewards agencies for spending money, it doesn’t tie compensation to effort (we all know that the number and complexity of campaigns is more relevant to effort than the cost of campaigns). Agencies have to make an investment in people, technology, overhead, etc. to service a client. But percent of media compensation gives them little guarantee that they will get paid as reductions in budget mean reduction in fees.

And in the modern era of paid-earned-owned media, tying compensation to percent of media makes even less sense. As we indicated in our Outlook report, and I wrote about in a previous post, media-based compensation, even tying agency compensation to media ratios, dissuades agencies from considering non-paid media and/or creating low-cost (but effective) experiences.

Project-based compensation is better, but is not perfect either. It at least encourages each party to think about scope and the effort required to deliver a campaign or website or project, but it rewards agencies for reducing costs and getting projects done on time rather than perfecting product, and it often pushes clients to want to “squeeze” as much out of the project as possible, leading to lots and lots of scope creep.

Ultimately, however, both compensation models are out of step with what both agency and client really want - a long-lasting, mutually beneficial business partnership that pays fairly based on both effort and outcome. Compensation models, if constructed carefully, should mirror the type of relationship that we know brings the best behavior:
• They encourage shared risk and reward based on mutually agreed upon results. Both parties share equally.
• They are focused on the quality and performance of the end product. And they honor the effort that it takes to get there.
• They reward quality with the promise of a larger, longer relationship.
• They pay homage to the “you get what you pay for” adage.

I know it’s not easy to find the right model and there is certainly no one-size-fits-all solution, but in the end, agency and client should be working as partners to find solutions and build the types of relationships that are built on mutual benefit and shared risk and reward. Otherwise, we run the risk of creating relationships that are myopic and one-sided, which do not benefit either party in the long or short run.

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Whatever Happened to the Jingle?

July 8th, 2010 by Joe Mele

I can still recall all of the words to the Big Mac commercial song. And the Sesame Street theme. And, to the great annoyance of my children, any song written by the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and, yes, even most Duran Duran.Think about it the next time you are in your car and a song comes on that you haven’t heard for 10 or 20 years, and you still know every word. Heck, you probably can sing the guitar solo. It’s is remarkable, particularly given the fact I can hardly remember what I had for breakfast most days, or recall what my wife told me to pick up at the store the minute I hang up the phone.

Music is an amazing thing. Studies have shown that it, more than any other sense, can bring back powerful memories and emotional attachments. “While all the expressive therapies capitalize on autobiography in one way or another, the sensory power music in particular quickly stimulates both long-term personal memory and emotion in ways no other art forms do.”

In fact, studies on patients with Alzheimers have shown that even those who are losing more and more of their memory over time are still able to recall songs from their past.

So what happened to all of the jingles? Yes, I guess there are a few still around. There are the super-lame Kit Kat spots that try to mimic the “Gimme a Break” jingle via people cracking and chewing on Kit Kats.

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There was the super-awesome “Free Credit Report.com” commercial - with the classic line “too bad I didn’t know my credit was whack cause now I’m drivin’ off the lot in a used sub-compact.”

But mostly now commercials are jingle free - not necessarily music free - but free from short catchy songs that make us remember brands. Recently, Forbes put out an article which named the greatest jingles ever. The interesting thing was that I could recall all of the songs and most of the words.  Most of the jingles we hear today are in fact not new, but re-hashes of previous successful jingles.

Don’t confuse jingles with the use of music. There are lots of commercials that use music to help make a point or create disruption or entertain. For example, the Kia hamster commercials use music to this effect very well. I’m not sure if I love them or hate them, but I do watch them, and I do connect hamsters and Kias.  For all that’s worth.

Makes me sad for the loss. I mean, what is more memorable and catchy - the “Be a Pepper” song, or lame Dr. Pepper ads starring KISS and KISS look-alike little people? Not even close.

So what happened? Why have we lost jingles? Is it because creatives think the jingle is below them? I would argue that if anything can cut through the clutter it’s a simple catchy song that people sing over and over again about a brand.

Afterall, it’s an expression of the brand that people can take with them. It’s an expression of the brand that has been scientifically proven to drive memory and emotion. Aren’t those the very things that we claim we want advertising to do in order to change peoples’ perceptions and behaviors?

And the way that media is interconnected today, it seems a natural extension that music in one arena, say a TV commercial, can find life in other arenas - being passed around on facebook or uploaded onto YouTube. They can become ringtones, or can be used as audio ads in services like Pandora. For the truly creative, the possibilities are great.

So, here’s the challenge - how do we bring the jingle back? Do we have the guts to?

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Mobile: Think Time and Space

June 30th, 2010 by Joe Mele

About a year ago, I wrote a post on mobile that I still think is mostly right. My main argument in the article was that advertisers miss the opportunity on mobile precisely because they think of it as an advertising medium.

That is still correct. I do think that iAd and the coming onslaught of better mobile ads will help transform mobile devices into more ad friendly mediums, but to me the iAd-type solutions are probably more for mobile devices like the iPad – which have large displays – than for the cell phone which will continue to be limited by its small form factor.

The real revolution in mobile, I think, is location. The rise of services like Foursquare which leverage both social and location have the potential to transform the landscape of mobile advertising on the handset. They allow marketers to not only live in the consumer’s pocket or purse, they allow marketers to reach out to them in extremely relevant ways – when the consumer is in a store, or close to a place of business, or at a restaurant and about to order.


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This seems to be a POV gaining traction with brands all over the country. A number of articles in brandweek, the Pittsburgh Post, and ClickZ last week alone reported on what brands are doing. Some really interesting stuff.

For mobile advertising to work we need to think about location, and to consider it in 3D - in terms of time and space. The limits of most advertising is that it does not really have to consider place most of the time. When advertising on the web, on TV, in a magazine, we are not really thinking about where the consumer is consuming the content most of the time. Instead, we think only about the context of the content – what show, website, or magazine it is in.

Mobile changes that relationship. If we can think of mobile marketing as a time and space medium, we start to think differently about the tactics we use. And we can start to think more holistically about how we communicate with consumers.

Consider the following thought experiment. Let’s say we are marketing for a national fast food restaurant. If we think broadly about mobile opportunities, we might do some of the following:
• We offer consumers a texting program that alerts consumers when there are specials and new products. When users are sent texts, they have the ability to adjust what messages they receive and when they receive them. For instance, we give them the option of just receiving coupons for special offers, and we give them the option of only receiving these offers on specific days of the week when they can actually take advantage of them. That way, we limit the annoyance of texting and send messages relevant to time and space.
• We create a foursquare offering in which consumers are given a special offer when they are close to a restaurant. Instead of just waiting for the next text, then, a consumer can get an offer based on where they actually are.
• When the consumer is in the store, we can set up QR code or bar code programs that offer consumers content and information relevant to their store visit and product purchase. If a consumer is a regular chicken sandwich buyer, we can ask them questions about products, get their feedback, ask them to be part of product testing, etc.
• If we can combine all of this information – and we should be able to if we can tie all consumer activity to an email address – we can start collecting really valuable information on them, and provide them even more relevant messaging – whether they are on a mobile device or not. With a properly sophisticated system, we can use the data collected to send targeted emails or online ads, and better understand their buying and shopping patterns.

If we start thinking more holistically and more broadly about mobile, and consider it as a real time and space medium, we can start creating truly meaningful communications for our clients.

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BP Buys “Oil Spill” on Google: Crisis Management Brilliance or Blunder?

June 16th, 2010 by Joe Mele

For the record, BP has done its part to destroy the Gulf via shoddy planning and unconscionable corner cutting. They deserve every bit of vitriol sent their way. Let’s just get that on the table before we go any further. What has happened in the Gulf is an unmitigated disaster that will take decades (or more) to fix. Are we clear on that? There are no apologies for BP here.But, their reaction in the digital marketing in the wake of the disaster offers us an interesting study and great case for debate on both general search and digital strategies as well as crisis management specifically. I have been reading a few articles on the subject recently here, here, here, and here and these articles should be discussed and debated among all of those who fancy themselves to be marketers.

What we know is true today is that people use the internet, and search engines specifically, to search for news. When a major news story hits, one of the first things people do is go online and search for information. So, it only makes sense that, if BP is going to launch a PR campaign to save itself, it puts digital advertising front and center. To not do so would be stupid.

As Forbes points out, BP is rumored to be looking to spend $50 million in TV to address the crisis and manage their brand. How is buying keywords like “oil spill” or “bp oil spill disaster” any different? (On a side note, I find it interesting that they did not buy those keywords on Bing, only on Yahoo and Google. Seems like a miss.)

And only the very dim don’t know that the differently colored links at the top of the search engines, which, by the way, say “sponsored link” aren’t ads. So no one should be surprised that clicking on the link leads them to information created by BP. Information, by the way, that is meant to look like a news source, but only contains very positive stories. (On another side note, I find it interesting that they are not better ranked or more ubiquitous in natural search. That feels like another miss. )

So, is this good brand management or not? Is this effective crisis management or not?

The Huffington Post recently ran an article that asked the question about whether or not what they are doing is unethical. The author makes the point that, distasteful or not, they would be irresponsible as marketers not do so - not to buy keywords and lead consumers to PR. And, he doesn’t think they’ll make much difference in the long run anyway, so what’s the harm?

Really?

Could it be that BP is simply making things worse by buying those ads and driving people to a PR site if we assume that people aren’t stupid, and aren’t fooled by the whitewash content?

I would argue that it’s not their keyword strategy that is wrong (although, I have to say that it is not very good - they should be doing a lot more than they currently are based on my side bars above), but the way they are responding overall in the digital space that needs to be overhauled.

Their take on crisis management, although in the guise of being very digital, is off. And off big. It is being run and managed by the spin doctors who think, somehow, if they keep talking like nothing bad is happening, we’ll all forget. Fortunately, it doesn’t work that way (except, I think, in politics). Lots of ads won’t help. Lots of keywords won’t help. They miss the point completely.

BP’s big miss is that it is not leveraging the power of digital to actually do something positive for itself and for the environment that it is helping to destroy. BP’s big miss is acting like all media is about talking to people. BP’s big miss is treating the digital space like a PR channel, rather than a communication channel.

To get a good sense of the missed opportunity, let’s play the “what if” game.

  • What if BP decided to be totally honest about what is happening in the Gulf?
  • What if BP allowed people to comment, to post, to ask questions on its website?
  • What if BP actually opened up a dialogue with people online, had conversations, forums, townhalls with people?
  • What if BP used digital to actually appear human, concerned, and sympathetic by giving people a place to volunteer, to donate, to help in the clean-up?
  • What if BP used the power of digital to listen to scientists and environmentalists, engineers and chemists all over the world to get their advice, ideas, and input on what to do next?

No, I don’t think BP is wrong for buying keywords associated with the disaster. That is the smart thing to do.

I think BP is wrong for not thinking more broadly about how they could turn their response to this disaster into something more than a PR festival. Their actions, in my opinion, make them look more guilty, more unethical, more bumbling. They could have turned something awful and made it at least into something proactive. Better yet, they could have taken something awful, and used it as an opportunity to bring great minds together to make sure nothing like this ever happened again.

Instead, they are using it to try and cover up a monumental mistake, like a little kid trying hide a mess under the rug.

What a big miss. What a huge message and learning opportunity for brands.

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A New Game in Town

June 10th, 2010 by Joe Mele

I am a sucker for loyalty programs. I am one of those who will go out of my way to book flights or rooms with certain airlines and hotels because of the points. I am a Reward Zone Silver Member at Best Buy, and Gold on two airlines (which only means I fly too much).

And I am not alone. Loyalty programs work, which is why so many businesses use them. People get addicted to points, and because of it, they share (knowingly or not) tons of information with the loyalty program owners. Loyalty programs that work well encourage their users to check in frequently, record every movement and interaction, and reward their users for doing so frequently.

In a way, loyalty programs are like a game. The more I interact with my airline, the more miles they give me. The more miles they give me, the more apt I am to use them, and find different ways to get even more points. I want to collect more and more of this currency. Companies then use the information collected to tweak products and services, and tailor offerings and messages to me.

And speaking of games, there is a rise in a type of social gaming which combines the power of collecting with competition which make them particularly addicting. Two of the best known examples are the location-based social service Foursquare and the Facebook applications by Zynga such as Mafia Wars and Farmville. A recent Ad Age article discusses these programs as does a recent eMarketer article.

Millions of people participate in these programs, and are willing to share their status, pinpoint their location, and annoy their friends all for the sake of collecting points and badges and gaining status by reaching certain levels or becoming mayors.


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What these programs really do is play on two very powerful parts of the human psyche: competition and hoarding. Indeed, both are central to our survival and evolution, and both are bred into our DNA. The need to compete – to win, to outdo others – is central to passing our genes along. It is competition for scarce resources that compels us as the most base level (because the individual best able to collect and use these resources is the more likely to be able to breed).

And collecting resources is something that we are also bred to do. From our deep human past as hunter/gatherers, we are compelled to collect resources when they are available so that we can compensate and take care of our needs in times of famine – again, increasing our likelihood that we will be able to breed.

Brands have been very active in creating loyalty programs that allow users to collect points: soft drink companies, credit card companies, airlines, hotels, casinos, retailers, restaurants, etc. use loyalty programs to reward users for buying and coming and to entice them to come back. As long as the rewards are valuable and attainable, they are powerful.

But these programs have usually lacked this second aspect of competition, which can make them even more addicting. The reasons why are generally obvious: you don’t want consumers to have a bad experience because they lose, or to feel like they won’t have a chance to win. Loyalty programs need lots and lots of members to be successful for businesses.

But games, especially the fun, social, and simple games like Farmville and Foursquare, offer brands the opportunity to add a little friendly competition to the mix. And the combination may prove to be extremely valuable.

These games offer brands the chance to associate with complementary addictive programs. They offer brands the chance to interact more often, and offer rewards more frequently than they can do on their own – particularly for expensive and/or infrequent interactions. And the fact that they are local makes them especially enticing. Brands can really enhance their local presence with them.

For instance, retailers and restaurants are starting to encourage “mayorships” by rewarding mayors and those close to being mayors on Foursquare reduced prices, free drinks, badges, and the like. These programs encourage customers to visit more frequently, and have the added bonus of “virality” by the fact that status, etc. is sharable via social programs like Twitter and Facebook.

I think it is still too early to determine who the winners or losers will be in this growing social gaming world. I find the Zynga games to be uninteresting and annoying myself. I strongly want to “unfriend” the people who play those games incessantly. But I do think that Foursqure is onto something. The connection that they are making between gaming, loyalty, competition, and real-world businesses is potentially very powerful.

Brands should pay careful attention to these programs and the powerful effect they can have on their customers. Any brand with a physical storefront needs to consider how it best can get involved with Foursquare.

The key to making these programs successful will be based in a brand’s ability to think beyond the confines of a campaign timeline. These programs will not work in short bursts – they have to be part of sustained, meaningful programs. Brands who are willing to really dive into these programs and do them right will be rewarded.

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Google TV. Meh.

June 2nd, 2010 by Joe Mele

Let me be the first to say that I believe video advertising, in whatever form it eventually takes, is going to be a huge deal. I am a firm believer that addressable video on our televisions and interactive video on our PCs and handheld devices are the coming wave, and that advertisers who can figure out how to take advantage of those platforms will have a huge advantage.

 

I am also a firm believer that the way we consume media will continue to adjust, and how we access it will adjust as well.  We will be able to get video and audio entertainment from many different places, and we will be able to access it on any device.   How that pans out is anyone’ guess, but there are a lot smarter people who are working on solving it.

 

In the midst of this, Google has announced its upcoming Google TV platform.  So far, my feelings about it are pretty mixed.  Recently, Bloomberg Businessweek published an article proclaiming that Advertisers are warm to Google TV. I am not so sure.

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Let’s talk first about the “killer app” of Google TV: search.  In my opinion, search on the TV is dead on arrival.  People do not, and will not search on their TVs, at least not in the way they search for content on the web.  Sorry, Google.  You have to find a new trick.

 

 Searching is just not how people find content on TV, and it’s not the type of experience that the TV was built for.  Oh, sure, they’ll search for specific movies and home videos from time to time, or for their favorite show from time to time.  But in general, people channel surf on TV, they don’t search.  The flip through channels to find something of interest.  They know what channel a specific show is on, or they look through the channel guide to find it.  They don’t search in the same way that you look for “best fried chicken recipe” on your PC.

 

In fact, my TV interface already has search.  And it’s pretty good at finding upcoming shows based on my search.  The problem is that I rarely ever use it, and almost never see anyone else using it.  Because that is not the interface the TV is built around.

 

When we look for a program or movie to watch as a family, we don’t “search” in the way you search on the internet.  Think about going into a Blockbuster Store.  What do you do?  You scan the new release wall to see if there is something of interest, with the hope that you will discover something interesting.  Oh, sure, sometimes you walk in knowing what you want, but most of the time you don’t.  When my family and I are looking through the on demand movies via our cable company, we do it via discovery, not search.  We scan the options and make a decision. 

 

Now, let’s talk about the next killer app: telescoping.  Imagine this – you’re watching a show and an ad comes on for Old Navy’s new fall line of clothes.  So you grab your remote device that has a cursor and keyboard on it, and you open up a Google search bar to type in Old Navy, you find the web site via your TV and begin to shop for clothes, all while your family is watching AND you are time shifting your show.  RIGHT.  No way.

 

Sorry, I just can’t see the day when people will, en masse, interrupt their viewing on the TV to search and surf.  And hasn’t this already been tried before and failed? 

 

Michael Gartenberg at Engadget pretty much sums up my thoughts on the subject:

The problem is the TV is not just another connected screen — the TV is the largest screen in the home, and it’s optimized for passive viewing of content as a shared experience. Research has shown time and time again that consumers don’t want the whole internet on their TVs. Consumers simply don’t want Gmail or Twitter or the “whole” web on the TV.

 

So, if Google thinks that it’s going to corner the market on TV advertising by creating a ton of revenue from searches on the TV screen, I think it is going to miss big time.  People don’t want to search or click on TV ads.  They want to consume passively.  I just don’t think that changes much.

 

Now, there are some aspects to addressable TV advertising that I think are revolutionary.  The first is the ability to actually measure if people are watching a commercial or not.  The beauty of TV as it becomes more and more digital is that we can know how many people actually watched a commercial, and finally be free of the shackles of the GRP and TRP estimates.  We know that people skip commercials, surf through them, etc.  Now, we will be able to actually tell.  And, we may be able to create a system where we only pay for those ads that people actually watch.  And we can actually optimize out of TV placements that are working on the fly, rather than after wasting a bunch of ads and getting a make-good.

 

The second is that TV ads will be able to be personalized at a level that to this point has been impossible.  The best that we could do is target either by show or by market.  These are very, very blunt tools for targeting.  But because digital TV allows us to know the actual box that the video is sent to, we can being targeting at the household level.  How personalized this becomes is anyone’s guess, but the reduction in waste may be significant.

 

This will revolutionize media planning and buying.  The efficiencies of bulk buying will be superseded by the efficiencies of precision and flexibility.  As I wrote about in our Outlook Report, flexibility trumps pricing in the long run.  When buying becomes more precise, the need to buy in bulk goes down (it never really goes away, however), and the impact of each dollar spent and each ad seen becomes greater.  As advertising becomes more relevant and more targeted, its effectiveness will increase.

 

I realize that we will have to take a wait and see approach with Google TV.  It is possible that I will be wrong and that people will start being more interactive with their TV sets.   But when I think about whether or not it will play in Peoria .

What I am sure about is that people will begin to source the content that plays on their TV from many different places, and whoever can win that race will win big. 

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Lessons from the Outlook Report

May 25th, 2010 by Joe Mele

I had the good fortune this year to participate in the creation of the Razorfish Outlook Report, and it was a very enlightening experience. In fact, I was asked to take on the article that probably gets the most scrutiny from the outside, and can raise the most controversial of topics. And this year was no exception.One of the most stunning, although for me not surprising issues was the fact that only small percentages of our client’s budgets were spent on mobile and social. Weren’t these, particularly social, all of the rage and what everyone talked about in the press? Indeed. But the truth is that social and mobile are harbingers of things to come in the media and marketing space in terms of the types of work we will be doing in the future, and the ways in which that work needs to be compensated.

It is a tired concept by now that media and marketing are changing. We all know that. We have all had our fill of fragmentation, disintermediation, discombobulation, and all of the other pithy terms we use to describe the changes in the space. But there are other important changes we need to pay attention to, and these were the things that struck me the most as I put together my articles for the Outlook this year.

Lesson #1: Agencies need to be business partners
Regardless of whether or not the economy is in an upswing or a downswing, the job of the CMO, and by extension her/his agency, is to drive sales. This means that agencies need to be equipped to address the hard questions around how marketing and communications activities lead to valuable actions. Agencies need to deliver on the “hard” ROI of ad spend to sales, not just how an ad campaign leaves a lasting impression in the mind of a consumer.

What the Outlook Report also pointed out is that clients were still willing, even in a down economy, to experiment, test, and shift budgets. My take is they continued to do this because it is a necessity in order to be relevant to consumers. But this doesn’t mean that brands are going to be frivolous with dollars. They need and expect agencies to be able to forecast the pay-off for these new opportunities.

In addition, agencies need to know our client’s customers intimately. This means that we must take the time to listen to them, ask them questions, and respond to their needs. In the digital age, this is easier to do, and all the more important because not doing so can have serious consequences. Knowing customers also means ensuring that the communications and experiences we create for them are as personalized and relevant as possible, and be based on the relationship that the customer has with the brand, not just on context or demographics.

Lesson #2: The definition of media and the media persons’ job has changed
Media is no longer about finding a space and time to place an ad. The work of media and marketing today is much more creative and much more complex than that. Today, for marketing and communications to be effective, media and creative teams must work in a coordinated and integrated fashion, and consider deeply the best ways to reach and create experiences for consumers. In the digital world, the palette is not set like it is in the traditional world, meaning that the media and creative teams have much more control over the environment itself. But if these groups are not in lock-step, there is trouble. Brands must expect that media and creative, along with account planning and business analysts, ideate and create from the same place at the same time.

In addition, media is as much about content as it is about time and place. Gone are the days where media provides space for creative. Today, media is as responsible for content as anyone. Particularly when we think about social, about the importance of search and SEO, etc., the media team needs to be intimately involved with, thinking about, planning for, and often creating the content itself. This is a huge shift in thinking and approach.

Lesson #3: Compensation models have to adjust
If the job of the media department is not just to buy space but to also think about content, and if the creative group is not the only group creating, then the way agencies are compensated needs to adjust. Percentage of media rewards spending dollars, but the media planners job is no longer about spending dollars. The most effective communication may entail no media spend at all - reaching out to influencers, creating a strong Facebook presence, building a mobile app - but agencies paid on a percent of media are not compensated correctly for this type of approach.

As we saw in our Report, despite all of the talk about mobile and social, not a lot of media was spent on them. This is because often the spend is in people creating content, responding to customers, building experiences, and not on spending money. Which means that paying media on percent of media spend and compensating creative on hours of production is an antiquated solution that must change if brands are to get the most out of their agencies.

Lesson #4: Organizations must change
In order to truly leverage the power of new platforms and integrated communications, we need to start thinking very differently about the types of people we have in our organizations, as well as the ways in which they work. Andrea Harrison and I expressed this in our article “How to Become a Social Brand” but the reality is that the people we outline are not just important for social, but for all marketing and media in the future.

Specifically, we need Account Planners that work with media as well as creative, content creators and community managers who can communicate with consumers in real ways, UX experts who understand how consumers use new interfaces like touch, technologist who understand how to create experiences that can live well past a campaign timeframe, media people who think like designers or architects rather than buyers, and analysts who can look at mounds of data and find actionable insights.

And clients must adjust as well to not just accept these changes, but to reflect them as well.

Please take a look at the Outlook Report and send me your feedback. As we start to plan for next years’ report, we want to make sure we are examining things that people really care about, and your input is crucial.

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Is User Generated Content Dead?

May 19th, 2010 by Joe Mele

I bet many of you recall hearing the following at meetings and conferences over the past few years: You don’t own your brand.  Your customer does.

Really?  If you’re like me, this sentiment always felt a little like over-zealous clap-trap.

I think it’s time to admit that this epiphanic belief that was all the rage a few years ago has run its course.  Of course you own your brand. The customer just gets to call BS on you.

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There is a huge difference between saying that the consumer owns your brand versus that your brand is a promise made to your customers that you must fulfill or get punished for - a relationship that you are creating between what your company does and the people it serves.  Customers no more own your brand than your friends and family own your personality.  You are who you are based on what you do - on the actions you take and the character you show.  Same with your brand.  If you talk one way and act another, there are repercussions.

So, the emergence of social media has not changed this relationship or reality.  All it has done is made it obvious when there is a distance between what a brand says it is and what that brand actually does.  What a brand does - how it treats its customers, its employees, the community it operates in, and the care with which it creates its products and services - is what the brand is.  When a brand says it is one thing but acts differently, consumers now have the voice to call it out.  But that doesn’t mean that they are in charge.

Which brings me to UGC - or User Generated Content.  Because there was this belief that consumers were in charge, it only seemed to follow that we should give them the reins when it comes to advertising.  Afterall, if brands are no longer in charge, then professional advertisers are no longer necessary.

A recent Advertising Age article by Rich Thomaselli really outlines nicely the issue with UGC.  The truth is that consumers are not in the advertising business, most of them don’t want to be, and those few who want to be are probably not in it for good reason.  Consider the time and energy that it takes to create an ad.  Who has the time or energy to do such things if they are not professionals or aspiring professionals, or people with too much time on their hands? 

I am not saying that the only creative people are those already in the business, far from it. But I am saying that it is very hard to ask people to put a ton of time and energy into something and expect high quality when the payout is limited or likely to be nil.

For this reason, most UGC is just not good, and the UGC that is often good is made by people who have the time, talent, equipment, and passion to make it good.  And I do think passion is key in this regard.  You will get people to put together good work for something they care deeply about, but most of the time that is not a brand but rather some cause - which a brand may be associated with. 

I don’t think UGC is dead, but I do think it needs to be very carefully considered.  In order to make it work, you have to be willing to deal with the following:

  • You are going to get a lot of crap.  Sorry, but the truth is that bad stuff will outweigh good stuff by a large margin, and you must have system by which you can review content before it gets submitted. 
  • You probably won’t get a lot of submissions.  This is highly dependent on what you are requiring from submitters, but if you are looking for a video submission, it is highly unlikely that you will receive submissions in the thousands - you should feel lucky if you get several hundred.  And then you can refer back to the first point above.
  • Find a passion point.  It is vital that you find something highly engaging for users to respond to.  Health, the environment, charitable causes, sports, etc. will get you submissions.  A highly loyal and committed user base will get you good submissions.  Condiments, not so much.  Contests will also get you submissions, but the contest prize and purpose needs to be closely tied to the brand and promotion.
  • Make it easy to submit.  The more tools and content you give consumers to work with, and the easier it is for them to download, upload, tweak, and mash, the more submissions you will get.  That doesn’t mean they will necessarily be better, but the odds that things will be on brand and on message will likely be higher.

I also really like what the AdAge article says about consumer content in general.  Perhaps instead of worrying about consumers creating ads, we should be more focused on listening to what they have to say and responding to that.  Maybe that is a better reaction to the idea that a consumers own brands (which they don’t) than expecting them to all of a suddent take over the marketing.

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The Click-Through Rate Must Die

May 10th, 2010 by Joe Mele

I’ll never forget one of the first conversations I had with a publisher in my early days as an Account Manager.  We called one of the publishers - and to this day I can’t remember who it was - to tell them that we were going to optimize out of their site due to poor performance.  “Sorry,” I said, “but we are just not hitting our goals, and we need to issue you an out.”  “Wait,” the person on the othe end of the phone pleaded, “before you do that, let us do some things to improve performance.”

Feeling generous, I decided to hear their ideas.  “Ok, see, we can improve your click-through rate a ton if you just put some pictures of chicks in bikinis on your ads.”  The silence on my end of the phone must have made them nervous, because the voice on the other end quickly added, “Look, man, if you send us the ads, we can put the girls on them ourselves.  We’ll do it for free.  Seriously.  It always works.”  I politely told them that we weren’t interested, and that increasing click-through rates was not our goal.  Not to mention that girls in bikinis was not exactly pertinent to the advertising we were running.  “Ok, man, suit yourself.  But we’ll seriously do it for free.  I guarantee tons of clicks.”

That was over 10 years ago.  Nothing could have made it clearer to me that the click-through rate was a seriously flawed metric.

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I find it shocking in 2010 to still be writing about this subject.  In fact, I wrote about the very same thing almost exactly a year ago, and I am flabbergasted that it is still an issue.  But, just last week, eMarketer sent out an article entitled “Is the Click Still King?” and my jaw almost hit the floor.

I guess I’m just not used to it anymore because measuring beyond the click just isn’t that hard.  It’s kind of a basic thing in fact.  The major ad serving systems measure beyond the click, and setting up ads and tags or beacons are pretty standard.

Not that the click is a total waste, mind you.  Clicks are obviously the measure of choice for search.  And, for rich media they can be an indicator of deeper interest, particularly if you measure clicks within the ad unit.

But seriously, who really clicks on ads?  When was the last time you clicked on an ad that wasn’t search?

It can’t be utter laziness that keeps us from measuring beyond the click, can it?  Actually, the eMarketer article points out a few things that I have seen in my time.

First, we have shown in study after study that people do take action after viewing ads without clicking, that conversion rates and awareness increase after ad exposure, and that viewing ads actually lead to more search clicks and more search conversions.  In fact, measuring conversion activities that are post-click only is guaranteed to lead you to make the wrong optimization decisions.  We have seen it time after time.  The challenge?!?  Doing this kind of study is not easy.  You have to have serious analytics jockeys on staff to set up a test correctly and to make sure that the results are measured accurately.  Measuring off of clicks feels “safe,” but we know that you must measure beyond the click to understand the true value of your digital advertising.

The second is that figuring out what to measure can be hard.  Clicks are easy to understand and easy to measure.  Other activities, particularly if they are not based on a purchase or a sign-up are harder to measure and harder still to evaluate.  Again, you need serious analytics and data jocks on staff to be able to connect ad exposures to meaningful value-driving activities, and harder still to connect online activities to offline activities that actually matter - things like total sales (online and offline), customer satisfaction, in-store traffic, etc.  And, for clients, you need to be able to connect different areas of your business together - something that can be very challenging in large organizations.

But, it’s not impossible, and it’s no excuse to still be using click-through rate.  In fact, I would argue that in most cases (excepting search and some rich media) judging by click-through rate may be the exact wrong metric.  If “chicks in bikins” get people to click, then it should be hardly surprising to find out that the things that people click on may be titillating or intriguing in some way, but may have absolutely no bearing on value-driving activities.

So, if you are one of those still using click-through rate as a measure of success, you have to stop.  There’s nothing else to say.

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