Looking for a job in advertising

Many of you aspire to a career in advertising or would like to change jobs within the industry.

Here is a useful resource: the "links" page for Big Shoes Network, a job board.

I learned about it when they put Ad Majorem on the list.

Happy hunting!

Outputs vs. Outputs

A former colleague, Miguel Gonzalez, made this statement about mobile marketing at NATPE 2010 last week in Las Vegas:

“Mobile is the enabling device constantly in the possession of every consumer,” he said. “Instead of counting clicks, look at engagement metrics to measure how you’re doing in the marketplace.” (See the full article here on MobilizedTV.com.)

There are Outputs -- and then there are Outputs. It's not the total impressions that matter, it's how engaged someone was with your content. In Ye Olde Marketing we cared mostly about gross impressions; in modern marketing we care about engagement as well as impressions.

You clicked your way to this blog entry, but what I really care about as a publisher is that you read this far into the text. Do I look at hits per day? Sure. The numbers that matter, however, are new followers who took the time to sign up, time spent on the site, pages viewed and comments written. (A lot of this resulted from my Christmas holiday experiment.)

Miguel's statement was about mobile marketing, but I would argue it applies to all modern marketing. Measurement tools permit us to understand engagement much better than we did before.

Check out Miguel's new blog, Depth on Demand, now appearing on Ad Majorem's blogroll.

Inputs vs. Outputs

A key tenet of channel neutral-planning is that budgets are not pre-assigned.

In Ye Olde Marketing, each discipline was given its budget before the fiscal year began; thus a marketer would usually spend the same amounts on TV, promotion, etc., from year to year.

In modern marketing we start with a consumer insight and figure out the mix of channels that will best engage the target and achieve the business objective.

So it was interesting to read this article on Adweek.com this morning telling us that "CPG's Online Spending Lags". The data, shown in the chart above, appears valid.

The headline, however, represents an old mindset. "Online spending lags" -- lags behind what? CPGs have a lot of smart people helping plan their budgets, people who actually use online media and understand its power to engage consumers. Isn't it possible they are assigning a budget to online media that properly leverages its power to engage their consumers? Or is their some percentage of the marketing spend CPGs "should" assign to online media?

The percentages assigned to all marketing channels -- retail programs, mass media and digital -- should be outcomes of the planning process, not inputs.

Message, Media, Creative

My first-hand lesson about how social media messages depend on content and relevance, posted on 11 January, reminded me of a successful client we worked with in the late 1990s.

This client had his own formula for marketing: Message, Media, Creative. The idea was to start by figuring out what you wanted to say (Message), where is the place to say it (Media), and how to say it in a way memorable, convincing, and relevant to the medium (Creative).

This formula works as well today as it did way back in the 20th Century. The greatest channel-neutral plan or the most entertaining creative don't mean bubkes if the message isn't appealing.

A modern example of this principle is the above Google diagram* describing how your SEM copy is everything when inviting consumers to your cause. It's actual advice is: "A successful link bait can increase inbound links, traffic and brand awareness."

In English: If you have a strong message, suitable for SEM and write it well, you can meet your objective.

* Hat tip: the blogress Little Miss Jen.

It doesn't matter whether the iPad succeeds

My inbox this morning was full of marketing missives about the official announcement of Apple's iPad. There was Apple's own e-mail linking to the official propaganda. There was the story in the Self-Proclaimed Newspaper of Record. A couple of marketing news feeds (here and here). There are two important questions: Will it succeed like the iPhone? Why does it matter?

Will it succeed like the iPhone?

The blogosphere's commentary is mixed so far, mainly because this is a completely new kind of device and we can only talk about it in terms of known references. Thus you hear the iPad is "an iPhone on steroids", "a really big iPod Touch", "a Kindle killer", "an imitation Kindle", and even -- I am not making this up -- a feminine hygiene product.

The main thing for us all to keep in mind is that the iPad (snicker) is a mobile device. As my colleague Michael Fassnacht opined recently in a blog post about mobile marketing in 2010, "the definition of the mobile device will change dramatically." Regardless of whether Apple succeeds again, the iPad will definitely change our frame of reference about mobile devices.

The iPad is a big new product launch. One of the laws of Ye Olde Marketing that's likely to stay constant in modern marketing is the 90% failure rate of new product launches. Not even Apple can defy this law; see this list of the Top 10 Apple products which flopped.

One of Apple's secrets is to learn from failure. The road to the iPhone is littered with Newtons and Lisas that flunked with consumers. In the end, though, they changed how and when we communicate with others, receive entertainment, take pictures, shop and many other routines. (Along the way they transformed themselves from a computer hardware company into a consumer electronics company -- another harbinger of convergence.) It doesn't matter if iPad succeeds because they will have set the stage for a future success, either their own or someone else's.

What matters is whether the iPad permits engagement with consumers

What matters to marketers is whether the iPad permits engagement with consumers. There was a bit of a dust-up in the comments of an AdAge.com article this morning over whether the iPad will support typical online advertising technology. It seems the answer at this moment is "no" or "in some ways" but those are merely the answers of the moment. Everything in marketing changes so fast that it's a safe bet we will all find ways to engage consumers on the iPad. (For more on this, read Josh Bernoff's piece on the "Splinternet".)

If the iPad fails, you can count on three things. 1. Apple will learn from failure and invent something better and more successful. 2. We will all gain more experience with mobile marketing. 3. Mobile will continue to be an important place to engage consumers.

2 CPG companies, 3 approaches to social media

I was amused by these two stories that appeared today on AdAge.com:

"Clorox Seeking Attorney to Oversee Social-Media Programs"

"P&G Embraces Facebook as Big Part of Its Marketing Plan"

Based on these headlines, which company do you think will have more social-media success?

Wait! Before you answer "P&G", consider that we don't know whether Procter also has a social-media attorney.

We do know, however, that Procter's GM of interactive spouted some words that in print resemble a skeptical anti-social-media rant*. Quoting from the AdAge.com article:

"What in heaven's name," he asked, "made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?"

"Who said this is media?" he said. "Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren't trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. ... We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it."

Wow.

This is simply proof that we are all trying our best to figure out the landscape. Nobody has all the answers, not even a colossal CPG empire in Cincinnati.

* As opposed to an "anti-social, media rant."

Wired to Care

Yesterday we helped a big client run an off-site meeting about empathy.

Empathy with consumers, that is. Sincerely understanding the people who buy, rent, use or refuse your product or service.

Empathy is critical if you work in marketing and advertising. The one main lesson of my career (learned and relearned) has been know your consumer. Knowing your consumer permits you to invent the right product, find the right message to sell it, choose the right media to engage consumers with it, and design the right ads for each medium.*

Before yesterday's off-site meeting we all read the book Wired to Care by Dev Patnaik. It's a great book and we had it brought to life by the author himself, who helped us run several workshops. (That's him in the above photo, flanked by two of the meeting organizers.)

I read very few business books but strongly recommend this one. In summary, it says (1) empathy matters, (2) as humans we have a natural ability to empathize, and (3) if we develop this ability in our professional lives, the business payoff is huge. Read the book as a way to start developing your own empathic abilities.

The book is just a start, however. Knowing your consumer is a simple concept to understand but a hard one to practice. My challenge to myself is to continue practicing these principles of empathy in my business going forward.

* Remember that the "ad" in Ad Majorem includes all marketing communications, from social media to direct mail to Internet gaming to TV commercials.