Ad Majorem

Account. Creative. Planner. Client. Um, Media?

2012-01-27T11:20:00.011-06:00

You may have the seen the above chart already; it’s making the rounds of social media among advertising people this week. Summarizing some stereotypes about account people, creative, planners and clients, it also cross-references how they all perceive one another. (Click the image to enlarge it.) It’s funny because it’s true.

In fact it first came to me via an email from Mike Keeler saying, “Sent from my brother. True.” Then someone else replied pointing out that it’s also incomplete: “Genius! But yet again media has been left out!” Ouch. It isn’t funny because it’s true.

The same thing happened last year with another bit of agency satire, an infographic called “The Anatomy Of An Agency”. The roles in that case were accounts, art director, copywriter, developer, and finance. Media was left out there, too.

Do these ads even run anywhere?

Recently we asked if Creative and Media have forgotten each other. Perhaps it comes from the spinoff of media agencies back in the 1990s. Perhaps it’s too much focus on the steps required to get an ad out the door. But at some point you’ve got to ask yourself where is a consumer going to see this creative work?

It’s not an academic question, and it applies equally to SEM copy, Direct Mail, banner ads and TV commercials. In fact that’s why the question is even more important than it was in the days of Ye Olde Marketing. The media landscape is such a Gigantic Venn Diagram that Media, or Comms Planning, is absolutely vital.

In fact, not only is it vital, it’s fun. As we traded comments on this subject, Keeler reminded me that “In this rapidly developing world of new media, the planning and buying of media is one of the most creative aspects of any campaign.”

A Modest Proposal

Anyone want to take a crack at how Media fits into “Perception in the Advertising World”?

More Unusual Overlap on the Gigantic Venn Diagram

2012-01-23T09:40:00.009-06:00

Often on Ad Majorem we discuss the Gigantic Venn Diagram, a concept that captures how the media landscape continues to change all the time and how consumers use media in a lot of different combinations.

This morning I’d like to direct your attention to a good article that should have been datelined from “An Unusual Overlap on the Gigantic Venn Diagram.” No, not The Twilight Zone. The QR code.

Yes, the QR code. It’s been criticized for a number of reasons, mainly due to its misuse by clueless marketers who insist on putting it in useless places like 30-sheet billboards along major highways.

David Henkel points out, however, that a QR code can be an effective direct mail tactic. Now that U.S. smartphone penetration exceeds that of feature phones, it's easier to imagine someone using a QR code to get more information about the product or offer they see on a piece of paper.

I hasten to add that like all technology, QR codes are not a solution unto themselves. Consumers will only respond to them if marketers communicate something relevant enough to cause a response.

So, here’s an overlap on the Gigantic Venn Diagram to think about: Direct Mail, Mobile, and Websites. It hits all of the Three Ds (Digital, Direct and Data) but better still, it recognizes how consumers use media.

Thanks to my colleague Patrick Moorhead for pointing out Henkel’s article.

Social Media is Authentic, Not Automatic

2012-01-18T09:21:00.009-06:00

A garage door service man understands Social Media better than most marketing people I know.

He happens to be technically inclined, but that's not what makes him an expert.

Who is this guy?

"Brad" is the owner and chief mechanic of Garage Door Corporation in Skokie, Illinois. We needed to replace a garage door remote control, and after looking in vain at DIY and Hardware stores, I found Brad's company via an Internet search. So far, a pretty routine 21st Century shopping procedure.

My phone call landed in voice mail, but the message was courteous and efficient, promising a return call within ten minutes. Sure enough, about ten minutes later Brad called and listened to what I wanted. He actually counseled me against buying anything right away, instead recommending a different, no-cost solution. During this conversation he directed me to his website, which surprised me in more ways than one.

Brad: Social Media maven

Your first impression of Brad's website will be that GDcorp.com is a pretty typical small business website. Lots of information and the graphics won't win any awards from D&AD. Then again, you go to a site like this to be informed and not entertained.

Then you'll notice icons for Facebook, Twitter and the company blog. Everybody has these, but since we were still on the phone I asked Brad how this Social Media thing was working out for him.

For Brad it's not about the technology, although from our conversation it's clear that he knows his 1s and 0s. He's an electrical engineer and has a Master's degree, but he doesn't think he needs those credentials to succeed with Social Media.

How a Small Business Succeeds at Social Media

Brad’s garage door business is surviving a recession that’s hit hard anything related to home construction. Others like him have closed down. It’s not Social Media by itself that saved him, but a way of working that happens to work well with Social Media.

· What business am I in? “I don’t manufacture garage doors or parts,” Brad says. “I can’t control that. In this day and age it’s all about service.” He lives this to such an extent that instead of selling me a remote control, he sold me his expertise. “We’re running a lot leaner than we were during the home-building boom,” he observes. “The key (now) is to be helpful.”

· Customer focus. One of the most over-used and under-applied terms in business, I know. Few people have true empathy for their customers. Brad doesn’t really have a mission statement other than what he told me on the phone: “Let us know what you want and I’ll get you the right thing.” He’s not a one-man show and takes hiring very seriously. “Who wants to see a guy drive up in van full of propane torches with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth?”

· Social Media can’t be set-and-forget. Based on some of his remarks, it seems he’s been pitched by some so-called experts. (He may have thought I was leading up to a pitch myself.) Who should manage the Social Media? “Nobody but the guy who knows the business and which markets he wants and what his customers are looking for.” On the subject of offshore call centers, he says “Once you get past Level 1 (a basic question), the offshore call centers can’t help you.”

Fanfare for the Common Man

Brad is a serious businessman who doesn’t take himself too seriously. His Twitter feed isn’t what you would call “a great follow” unless you want occasional insight into the garage door opener industry. That’s not the point, though. The point is that Brad uses Social Media not as en end unto itself, not as something to bring measurable ROI, and certainly not as a substitute for customer service. Rather, Social Media enables all those things by allowing Brad to express himself authentically to a growing customer base that hires him because he knows what they really need. Lots of industry pundits talk about Social Media as a tool of customer relations, but Brad actually does it.

Creative + Media = Comms Planning

2012-01-13T11:42:00.007-06:00

Have Creative and Media been apart so long that they've forgotten each other?

Some will say, "No, how could that be? We hear every day about the changing media landscape, so how could anyone in advertising ever forget media?”

There's a difference, though, between what we hear every day and what we do every day. While it is absolutely false that legions of agency people robotically write only TV storyboards every day, it's equally true that few creatives get guidance on where and when their work will engage a consumer. Why? It could be lack of vision, adherence to a routine, or the artificial separation of Creative and Media from the spinoff of media agencies in the 1990s.

The Creative Brief is not enough

This week we had a group briefing for a new project. There were many great questions about the consumer, how she shops the category, and her decision making process. Suddenly the creative director asked an important question.

"Have we thought about Comms Planning?"

The very same question was on my mind, but it meant so much more coming from the creative director. She was clearly thinking about all the different ways to engage the consumer, and high on her list was how consumers could engage with their friends. (As I've written before, Social Media is just word-of-mouth + technology, allowing us to drive it better than we ever have.)

I'd like to think she asked this question because we're one of the few agencies that still has a media department, but that's not it. There wasn't a Media person in the room at the time. Besides, "Media" may not even be the right word. (I almost put it in scare quotes in the title of this post.)

Call it what you will, but there’s no point in calling it anything unless you’re going to do something about it in day-to-day business. “Media agnostic” is a bad term, partly because it describes a philosophy instead of something practical. “Comms planning” is better because it says we’re going to do something. (Notably, this was the first time I had ever heard an American ad person use the term "comms planning" in a regular, day-to-day meeting. It comes up in punditry all the time but as a business term it's rare.)

5 Steps to Comms Planning

If your normal practice is to just write the brief and hope that a media agency doesn’t prescribe 100% :15 TV ads when you thought shopper marketing was important, try taking these steps.

1. Leverage your work on consumer insights for the creative brief. It’s the same consumer and if you’ve done your homework, you know this person. That insight can help you understand how he or she uses media.

2. Apply that insight to how the consumer shops the category. At some point “the consumer” becomes “the shopper” and along that journey she uses different media. Think about how to engage her along the way.

3. Learn about channels outside your comfort zone. Technology is driving all the changes in the media landscape, but not all of those changes are digital. Retail disciplines like shopper marketing are important, too.

4. Prepare yourself to adjust the creative message according to channel. This is just common sense; a great TV spot drives awareness, talk value may be expressed via social media, and retail promotion may close the sale.

5. Think in terms of a business solution, not just a media solution. "Media" and "Channel" are both words describing a conduit, a means to an end, or the delivery of something. They don’t, however, just deliver messages or conduct word of mouth, they help you achieve a business objective.

You achieve your business objective on the strength of both Creative and Media. Don’t let them forget about each other.

Don Pegler's True Legacy

2012-01-02T14:28:00.008-06:00

Don Pegler was known in advertising for drawing animated characters. He was known to everyone else in his life as a man of character.

Don, an advertising legend, died last Monday after a battle with cancer. During his career as an illustrator and art director at Foote, Cone & Belding he created the Raid Bugs for S.C. Johnson. I had the pleasure of working with him near the end of his career and in his so-called retirement.

His personal story is right out of the Greatest Generation. An Army veteran, he seemed to have lived the classic Post-war American story. Don and his wife, Bridie, raised seven children in an impossibly modest (read: small) house in Park Ridge, Illinois. The photos on display at his wake showed the progression of time measured in children, grandchildren, confirmations and weddings. And of course many of his illustrations were on display.

It sounds quaint, almost cliché, to say he was a family man, active in his community. Don’t let cynicism lead you astray, because he was both of those things. The last two times I saw him were at a Park Ridge City Council meeting and at his house when my children and I stopped in to check on him. We didn’t have to check on him, of course; while we there his daughter Laurie arrived to do just that. It was clear from their easy rapport that Don had been a tremendous husband and father.

As I talked to his family, friends and neighbors this week, the memories told a tale of a man who not only treated other people well, but gave people a good feeling about themselves. We could all emulate Don’s character because it was based on simple things. A kind word. A ready smile or a good joke. A willingness to step up and do something positive rather than just complain. There was also a charming irreverence about Don (and his work). Chicago art rep Tom Maloney summed up Don well in a tweet: "Decent, humble and fun." You took him seriously because he never took himself seriously. Don inspired good things in others.

At FCB, many of Don’s friends worked on the S.C. Johnson account, which officially left the agency one month ago today. To the people who worked on SCJ, Don meant something. He symbolized our achievements: Just as the Raid Bugs is the longest-running, most-global ad campaign in history, many other accomplishments helped SCJ grow into a multibillion dollar enterprise.

More than that, Don’s example should inspire us on a personal level. That’s really his true legacy. Not what he did, but who he was.

(Please click here to read a wonderful tribute to Don written by Karen I. Hirsch, a Chicago-based photographer and former FCB colleague. Karen gets the credit for the above image of Don and his bugs.)

TV Keeps Rising from the Dead

2011-12-19T21:58:00.016-06:00

Today's business news brings the latest examples of why the death of TV is greatly exaggerated.

Apple, to no one's surprise, has been briefing media companies on the next evolution of its Internet-based TV services. Among the innovations: Wireless streaming of video content from TVs to mobile devices, and using devices like the iPhone as a remote control. Among the questions: Will Apple evolve its current set-top box, or actually manufacture what we now call TV sets? You can read the original reporting in today's Wall Street Journal.

Hulu, meanwhile, saw an audience increase of +23% in November vs. the same month last year. Adweek points out that the data, via comScore, comes on the heels of Hulu's fresh supply of content from The CW, Sony Pictures Television, and Univision. Greg Jarboe lists some other reasons in a good post today over on Search Engine Watch.

Social Television

In a post last week on the HBR Blog, one of David Armano's social media trends to watch in 2012 was Social Television. As predictions go, this one doesn't go very far out on a limb. We've already observed the intense cross-over between Social Media and TV in consumer media multitasking. Armano does point out new services such as Get Glue, which allows audiences to check in to TV shows much like Foursquare lets you check in to actual locations. (Or not.)

No More Zombies Wandering in the Vast Wasteland

Digital delivery of TV by the likes of Apple and Hulu makes TV Social -- and Social Television may make TV more of a connected experience. TV in its infancy was a family activity: one TV set per household meant everyone gathered for Ed Sullivan or Bonanza. Later, TV became more of an individual activity: multiple TV sets per household allowed each person to watch programs tailored to their own tastes. Could it be that Social Television brings back TV as a way to connect?

Not only does TV keep rising from the dead, it may wind up curing some zombies.

Previous posts on this subject:
The Changing Role of TV
TV is Dead – Long Live TV

Marketing and Public Relations Continue to Converge

2011-12-15T15:53:00.003-06:00

Marketing and Public Relations continue to converge.

This week Johnson & Johnson promoted Michael Sneed to VP—Global Corporate Affairs. What’s significant about this news is that Sneed will oversee both Marketing and Public Relations, which in many companies are totally separate or even siloed from one another. J&J needs to coordinate them, however, given the backlash from recent recalls of Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl and some other products. In those crises J&J learned an object lesson on how Social Media is a big force driving the convergence of Marketing and Public Relations.

Don’t Wait for a Crisis

It shouldn’t take a crisis to make companies consider this approach. The very existence of Social Media can accelerate word-of-mouth conversation, whether it’s bad or good for a company, brand or product. Keeping Public Relations close to Marketing can help raise marketers’ sensitivity to what’s being said. Recently I met with one of our U.S. clients, a VP—Marketing, who has the corporate communications people in his department and right down the hall. (He may be an integration all-star because he also shares his own office with the VP—Sales.)

A Seat at the Table

In one of the articles about J&J’s Michael Sneed, there is a negative note. Although Sneed will report to J&J’s CEO, he will not be a member of the executive committee. I’m not going to rant about how Marketing needs to be in the center of things – although it crossed my mind. The bigger question is why a company that had to shut down the Tylenol factory, pay over a hundred million dollars in settlements and defend against numerous lawsuits didn’t learn enough from the experience to keep external communications front and center.

100 Marketers in Search of Integration

2011-10-18T08:29:00.010-05:00

Digital marketers are ready to help drive marketing integration.

That was a common theme at Peer Summit Chicago, a gathering of about 100 marketing professionals seeking to improve on what they do by hearing from and sharing with their peers. It was organized by Econsultancy, a London-based firm that counsels clients on media and marketing with an emphasis on digital issues. They also publish a lot of research, often working with partners like Adobe and Google, who also co-sponsored the event. You can read about Econsultancy here and Peer Summit here.

My role was to moderate three discussions on “Integrating Digital Marketing,” each time with about eight marketers, while a dozen or so other tables were discussing other topics like Mobile Commerce and Email Marketing. We talked openly, under the Chatham House Rule, so I’ll only report some general things, not for attribution.

“Digital” vs. “Traditional”

Across the three roundtable discussions we had a good mix of seniority, expertise, and industry. E-commerce directors for insurance and for heavy machinery, manager of all creative materials for a financial services giant, director of digital marketing for a risk management company, and a book publishing executive responsible for digital marketing including product development for all her company’s e-books. Apparently if you’re a digital specialist they give you all things digital.

And that was exactly the problem. Every single digital marketer felt siloed in their specialty. Almost all of them either envied or resented their “traditional” or “offline” counterparts because they get more budget and more attention. When one of the speakers said “TV is the only non-discretionary marketing expense” they all nodded. No one argued the point.

Four Ways Digital Marketers Can Break Down Silos

So how do you break down the silos? Here were just some of the things the digital marketers said they would put into practice back at their offices.

The solutions lie in People more than Process. There’s no benefit in trying to force collaboration via some IMC process mechanism. Instead, there was a huge perceived opportunity in simply building alliances with like minds in other disciplines, even/especially “traditional” marketers. It seems like simple advice – “just open the door at the base of the silo” – but few had tried it.

Consumer knowledge rules. In a bit of self-criticism, most participants admitted they didn’t know their own consumers, customers or end-users very well. Instead, they wind up serving only their internal customers such as a project manager or “traditional” marketer, putting themselves at a disadvantage. Each of them needed to change that; it’s axiomatic that any kind of marketer needs to understand their consumer. There are two opportunities for digital marketers. One is to simply do their own homework on consumers because most marketers don’t. The second is to use digital’s own tools to get close to the consumer, either by research or simply as a listening post.

Digital has an opportunity to lead via Knowledge Management. Consumer product marketers were keen to hear about the Knowledge Management function in many consulting firms. “You mean there people whose full-time jobs are to organize, store and retrieve the company’s knowledge base?” I cautioned the group that Knowledge Management, done well, winds up being the full-time job of a lot of people. Nevertheless, digital specialists have the tools to champion the cause in their organizations, thus getting them out of their silo.

Share your specialty. Digital marketers sometimes forget that “traditional” marketers are mystified, even intimidated, by SEM, SEO, Demand Side Platforms, HTML5, etc. A great starting point is to teach others about what you do, so they can see the value and the utility of digital media.

There were some other discussion points, but these were the main ones. It was clear, at least from three roundtable discussions, that digital still lives in a silo, dangerously underutilized. Hopefully we sent forth some evangelists for integration.

The Role of Creative Production

2011-10-17T08:05:00.019-05:00

Exploding Growth in Media Formats Puts More Demand on Creative Production

It’s a cruel quirk of advertising lingo when financial terms creep into normal business practices and hijack their identity.

One such example is “below the line.” In the days of Ye Olde Marketing most agency invoices were simple calculations of a 15% commission. An accountant, faced with expenses that had to be billed as one-time fees, drew a line on the invoices and listed the non-commissionable items below it. The commission structure hardly exists anymore, but the important work of Digital and Promotion gets stuck with a moniker that connotes second-class status.

Production: "Non-Working?"

In a similar way, Media and Production expenses are defined on some budget documents as “Working” and “Non-Working.” Production is said to be “Non-Working.” More than a few agency producers have complained about this term, especially in an era of tight budgets. Anything called “Non-Working” is just begging to be reduced.

At the very same time in history that Production budgets are squeezed, its role is more important than ever. As a colleague succinctly put it the other day: Exploding growth in media formats puts more demand on creative production.

Production costs were predictable in the past. Each discipline, be it Advertising, Promotion or Direct Marketing, knew what kind of programs they could expect to do. The biggest variable was a higher cost for a more elaborate TV commercial, in-store display or mailer.

Two Kinds of Complexity

In modern times you see two kinds of added complexity. One is that there are many new channels of communication, or as my colleague put it, “media formats.” As we’ve posted before, even “TV” isn’t that simple because it entails various online versions on top of the standard broadcast :30.

The second kind of complexity is that if we truly start a project with a channel-neutral or media-neutral approach, we won’t know ahead of time what mix of old and new formats we’ll be producing.

How to Cope with Exploding Growth in Media Formats

Here are a couple of suggestions on how to cope with this new dynamic.

Consistent Brand Voice. If your brand reinvents itself every year or every quarter, you not only risk confusing your consumer, you make creative production less efficient. Even the most routine IMC program these days has many moving parts across Advertising, Retail and Digital. A consistent approach will make it easier to produce things on the fly. To be clear, the goal is not cookie-cutter creative, it’s running a tight strategic ship.

Plan ahead. A digital agency creative director joked to me once that IMC stands for “I already Made the Commercial.” Too often, TV artificially drives the process. Instead, use to your advantage the long lead times demanded by retailers. A good client-agency partnership will plan one year ahead of time for best synchronization of efforts.

Media neutral production. Starting a project with a consistent brand voice and one year of lead time is useless if you then just assign production silo by silo. How can the various specialists help one another? At some point each one has to tend to her own work, but starting everyone from the same place makes it easier to synchronize.

Be a cost-control maniac. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: That’s why God created Procurement. As marketers, however, we have a responsibility to deliver great work at a reasonable budget. Challenge yourself and your colleagues to find new ways to save money. (At some point in the near future we’ll elaborate on this point.)

Any other experiences, suggestions or questions?

Disintermediation II

2011-10-14T16:09:00.010-05:00

My presentation to BOLO 2011 is available on SlideShare. Click here to read or download it. The topic was "Disintermediation," or "cutting out the middleman." The presentation defines what it is -- and what it's not -- with some suggestions on how to prevent it. You may also want to read "Disintermediation," my post from last November.

Small is Beautiful

2011-10-13T14:10:00.007-05:00

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona – The most exciting places in the agency world have less than 50 employees.

That was my strong takeaway from BOLO 2011, held here on Monday and Tuesday.

BOLO, a conference for the principals of small and midsize agencies, featured Scott Stratten (UnMarketing), Ron Baker (Pricing on Purpose), and Jay Baer (The NOW Revolution). It's run by Agencyside, a consultancy that helps nimble agencies stay competitive.

Here are some of my observations from BOLO:

Small is beautiful. While large agencies struggle with structure and duck their overhead, this group gets down to business pretty quickly. Yes, it's a challenge to make payroll and keep clients happy, but necessity is the mother of invention. There’s less time and effort wasted. Plus, learning travels faster when it can be shared across a tight team.

Technology is part of the culture. BOLO is focused on tech-driven media, so the attendees came ready to learn. But they also had lots to say. I was blown away by the work being done, and the willingness to experiment with technology. There was only a little bit of theory – and lots of practice. More than a few have contributed to TED.

Community is real. "Social Media" starts with the word "social" and that's clear to this group. The way they use SoMe to build business relationships rivals how they use it on behalf of their clients. This week I made a ton of new friends (look for some great #FF recommendations in my Twitter feed tomorrow). In addition, they contribute to their communities. One example was The League of Innovators, a “creative club” allowing local brains to bring ideas to life.

Talent is diverse. Big agencies have a (deserved) reputation for hiring the types of people they already have. The people I met this week included tech entrepreneurs, TV producers, and of course statisticians. Entering the agency world did not kill anyone’s curiosity; everyone was hungry to learn more. (“BOLO” stands for “Be On the Look Out.” I love that.)

I’m hoping to be there next year and recommend the same to you.

Awesome Social Media

2011-10-10T20:07:00.009-05:00

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona – In this post I’m going to try and spread some awesome.

Not my own writing, but the great thoughts of Scott Stratten, the charmingly Canadian author of UnMarketing. Here were some of my favorite takeaways from his keynote address at the BOLO conference here.*

People spread Awesome – not Normal

This is a much pithier and more practical way to say that content is king (three overused words quickly losing meaning). If you’re going to post something on behalf of yourself, your company or your client, make it something awesome. Obvious advice? Sure, but do we always live by this principle?

Social Media ROI is Irrelevant

Stratten is equal parts insightful, funny and sarcastic and on this point those traits yielded an eloquent rant. In a more summarized way he made two points. (1) Social Media is really a form of Customer Relations. (2) Asking the ROI of Social Media is like asking the ROI of Customer Relations.

Brand Equity = Brand Reality

We’ve all discussed brand equity and written grand plans to describe what it should be. Stratten defines brand equity as what consumers think your brand is, not what you intend them to think it is. He told a wonderful story about how the Sous Chef at a Hilton did more for brand equity than any marketing plan.

Pick your Social Media Platform

With this last point comes practical advice and a personal aside.

Stratten pointed out that some marketers have avoided Social Media, partly due to the mind-boggling multiplicity of options. What should I use or recommend to my client? Facebook? Twitter? His advice: Just pick one and get some experience so you can figure out how Social Media works. It’s sound advice, and a path I’ve followed as well, first with Twitter in 2007 and then with Ad Majorem two years ago.

The personal aside concerns my close friend and Phoenix-area lawyer, Steve Adelman, an expert in venue safety and security. If that topic interests you, then read about him here on his website. You can also visit his Facebook page, though I’d always wondered why he had one. We got together this evening and I learned that he, too, was doubting whether Facebook was right for his wildly successful law practice. He gets a much better result from SEO and from an email newsletter.

Did he make a mistake? No. He experimented. Not only is there nothing wrong with that, there’s everything right with it. The same applies to all of us. You can start by making a comment in the space below.

* Today and tomorrow I’m at the BOLO conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, a gathering of 200 leaders of small and midsize agencies. BOLO is run by Agencyside, a consultancy that helps these agencies stay competitive. I’ll be speaking here tomorrow.

Blogs are Social Media, too

2011-09-13T22:18:00.006-05:00

Following up on our last post about Social Media Burnout, here is another thought on the subject, specifically having to do with blogs.

Blogs, as we’ve reported in the past, keep showing up in the obituary column. Blogging is dead. Blogging is journalism, and journalism is dead. Social Media has replaced blogs.

Blogs were the first major form of Social Media

Blogging, lest we forget, isn't really journalism -- it's the first major form of social media. Remember that when Facebook and Twitter were ramping up with early adopters, we called them "microblogging" platforms. This is important to remember, because if blogging is really Social Media, then we shouldn't use it to broadcast, we should use it to connect.

One less reason to fear Social Media Burnout

Aim your blogging at connecting with your social media community, not winning over legions of followers. Remember, authenticity trumps ubiquity. By just being yourself, you’ll be less likely to burn out.

5 Reasons Not to Fear Social Media Burnout

2011-09-09T17:14:00.009-05:00

Have you experienced Social Media Burnout?

If so, you’re in good company. Three social media masterminds recently admitted it was all getting to be a bit much. Steve Rubel blogged that social media might be getting tiresome – and then deleted several years worth of blog posts to start anew on Tumblr. Edward Boches went on vacation, literally and figuratively – and enjoyed getting off the grid. Bob Garfield confessed over the weekend that he’s talked a good game but hardly ever posts, tweets or tumbles. “I follow people who ovulate more than I tweet,” Garfield wrote, adding in some of the creep factor we’ve come to expect from social media.

All of these industry notables – each of whom I respect deeply – feel the pressure to post, tweet and blog on a constant basis. Maybe you’ve had the same feeling, even if it isn’t full-blown Social Media Burnout.

There is a cure.

“Hi, I’m Steve and I’m a…..”

I’ve felt the same pressure myself. Recently I’ve gone through some light periods on Twitter, and regular readers of Ad Majorem know this is my first post in a while. My Klout score has declined to around 50. Should I kvetch, worry, or otherwise vex myself? I’ve been pretty busy this year with important business, and the balance of the year doesn’t look much better. Would it be so bad if lightened up?

5 Reasons Not to fear Social Media Burnout

Stay committed, I tell myself. Here’s why.

1. Social Media is far from mature. Not only is Social Media not going away, it hasn’t even gotten started. Facebook of course has the most users, but usage penetration for Twitter and other platforms is still low, with many of the users coming from the opinion leader, creative class, leading edge crowd. Google+ may or may not reach a billion users, but it has certainly changed the game with its new features. The future growth will come not from signing up more users, but from inspiring even more innovative and useful features across the social web.

2. New features and platforms will continue to facilitate human interaction. What we now call “social media” is really just the digitally fueled accelerant of what we used to call “word of mouth.” Word of mouth is not a medium, it is something that happens among people. Advertising has always sought to influence it. Social Media can only facilitate it – and allow us to monitor and measure what people are saying, which we couldn’t do when those conversations took place over the backyard fence.

3. Learning is constant. I grew tired long ago of hearing that “change is the only constant” because it’s so obvious and really not that new of an idea. Change happens faster than it used to, however, which means that learning opportunities have multiplied exponentially. Social Media is the hottest hot-bed of learning because it is the literal intersection of psychology and technology. If I drop off the grid, I lose chances to learn and stay sharp.

4. Authenticity trumps ubiquity. The important thing about anyone’s participation in social media is that we contribute to the discussion. Large numbers of likes, followers or fans will always impress us, but they’re not as relevant in social media. You and I must be ourselves and add our perspective. Our networks – our friends, colleagues, whatever – will respond to authenticity, not ubiquity.

5. Corporations are still betting on Social Media. In an era when budgets are tight and results are hard to measure, no one is giving up on social media. Quite the opposite. A Duke University survey of 249 CMOs finds that social media budgets are expected to increase their share of marketing budgets over the next five years.

So, fear not. Stay social, be yourself, and keep an open mind.

Consumers, not Marketers, make IMC possible

2011-07-28T16:47:00.007-05:00

On the way to work this morning, my daughter noticed that just as we passed the billboard for Potbelly’s new Grilled Chicken & Cheddar sandwich, we also heard a radio commercial for the same product.

To her, it was coincidence. To you and me, it was Integrated Marketing Communications.

Actually, it was both.

Best Laid Plans

IMC is hard work. Not only must we find a simple idea that can work across different channels, we must decide which combination of channels will drive the client’s business.

The old-school, matching-luggage, spider-chart view of IMC is that if we surround the consumer with enough identical messages, we get a force multiplier that drives effectiveness.

It doesn’t work that way.

Only Consumers can put it together for themselves

We’ve made the point before that IMC is just a fancy acronym for “Marketing”. It makes sense that any marketing plan consisting of multiple channels should be coordinated so as to maximize the investment. The conceit of IMC is that consumers see the same spider chart we do.

That’s impossible. Not even in our best laid plans could we hope that most of the audience sees all the messages. Different people will see different combinations. Social Media makes this more true than ever. Ultimately each consumer will put it together for themselves.

Our goal isn’t for consumers to see the spider chart, or appreciate our IMC prowess, but to change their hearts and minds enough that the client sells more product.

Did we buy the Grilled Chicken & Cheddar Sandwich?

In the case of my daughter, who loves grilled cheese, we saw the billboard and heard the radio commercial. I dropped her off at her job as a day camp counselor at Chicago’s museum campus this morning, and this afternoon I brought her back to the office so I could attend an important meeting. Later I’ll take her out for a sandwich – at Jimmy John’s. Why not Potbelly? Because the radio and the billboard can’t compensate for the fact that there isn’t a Potbelly’s near my office.

AAF AdCamp teaches about Advertising -- and Diversity

2011-06-30T12:59:00.007-05:00

Last week we hosted a group of high school students participating in the AAF AdCamp program. Part of their two-week program entails visiting large ad agencies in Chicago. (Contrary to reports in the Pretend Trade Press, we have several such companies here.)

My role was to give them an overview of the agency, but inevitably the session turned into an overview of the agency business today. It was a bright group and they asked a lot of questions. Some of these questions were requests for career advice.

The majority of the questions, though, sought insight into what happens inside of an agency. “You talked about collaboration – what are some of the best ways to collaborate?” “What is the difference between a campaign and a creative idea?” “Are you allowed to handle two clients that sell the same kind of product?” “How many projects does a team handle at one time?”

One entrepreneurial soul asked, “I’m starting a t-shirt design company -- what's your advice on how to properly market to consumers and classmates?”

Discussing collaboration, one girl asked, “How do you get noticed as an individual if everyone is working together as a group?”

So what advice did I give them?

Regular readers won’t be surprised to know that students heard, among other points, two main pieces of advice. One is to be a good generalist. The other is to pay attention to channel-planning as well as creative.

The group was diverse, which made me happy. I pointed out to them that the agency business needs to be much more diverse, not only because it’s important to society, but because diversity affects the work we do. If you appreciate the diversity of the people around you, your mind will be open to new creative possibilities. That’s critical in a business where change is constant, and in a society whose motto is E pluribus unum.

What is Klout Perks?

2011-06-29T13:38:00.011-05:00

I feel so dirty.

A couple of weeks ago, Klout contacted me via Twitter, asking if I would accept a package from TNT promoting their new series, Franklin & Bash.

Sure, why not? It was a leather folio with a legal pad inside (pictured above), plus a DVD of the show. What was I going to do, blog about it?

Oh. Wait…

What is Klout Perks?

Klout is a social media analytics company that has popularized the Klout Score, a measure of overall online influence. They recently launched a new version which you can see here. My own Klout Score currently stands at 55, and I’m influential about retail, social media, advertising, and six other topics.

Klout Perks is a program where marketers can send swag to influential social media users, hoping they’ll tell the rest of their network about a product, service, or – in this case – TV show.

No, really, this blog post is about Klout Perks, not Franklin & Bash. Honest!

Do Klout Perks work?

It’s a little early to declare whether Klout Perks are an effective marketing tool because the program started a year ago, and just recently was featured on Klout's blog. One early result is that a lot of bloggers are writing about their experience. Will it take hold?

Here’s what Klout needs to do to ensure the success of Perks:

Think like a direct marketer. The first batch of clients is pretty diverse, including an automaker, a QSR, and of course Franklin & Bash. (Darn! There I go again.) Each client will have a different experience based on what they’re promoting and possibly the way they’re promoting it. The quality of the swag will matter in how much buzz they generate. Klout is a sophisticated analytics company, but some old-school direct mail techniques may help them diagnose what works and what doesn’t, such as comparing Offer A and Offer B, testing and tweaking their messages, etc.

Make it easy for influencers to influence. Blogger Mack Collier points out that his Klout Perks package contained no digital content to promote the TV show they sent him. All we got were souvenirs. He and I both had to take pictures of what we got in order to write our blog posts. Other than that, all I can do is direct you to the website for Franklin & Bash. (Grrr…)

Worry about acceptability as much as ethics. Klout provides an Influencer Code of Ethics and Disclosure. That’s helpful, but influencers are influential because they’re on solid social ground, not solid legal ground. Would I be embarrassed to shamelessly promote Franklin & Bash on TNT? Would you be embarrassed to receive a tweet from me about it?

I’ll be honest: I didn’t even watch the DVD they sent me, because Franklin & Bash doesn’t look like my kind of TV show. Nevertheless I appreciated the opportunity to participate in another attempt to mix marketing with word-of-mouth.

Hat tip: Thanks to Josh Brusin of Chicago Foodies for taking today's photo.

Foursquare: Ready to think outside the box?

2011-06-27T16:57:00.007-05:00

I quit Foursquare, cold turkey, on March 28th. This after a year and a half, 22 badges, and dozens of mayorships, including my client’s headquarters. Since quitting I’ve had an email about every two or three weeks telling me I’ve been ousted as Mayor of one place or another.

My biggest Foursquare accomplishment was the mayorship of a large metropolitan ad agency. Competition was fierce; it seemed like all 1,300 employees were playing Foursquare.

A couple of these colleagues even invented a fun Foursquare app, called HeatTracker, which you can read about here.

So why did I quit?

The thrill was gone. Or, rather, the thrill was merely a compulsive check in. Mrs. Ad Majorem was getting annoyed and Ad Majorem, Jr., age 4, was reminding me to check in almost everywhere we went. I realized that I was checking in for the sake of checking in.

Originally I started using Foursquare in an effort to keep up with the latest in social media. It seemed like an idea that could actually be monetized. Retailers could offer deals to regular customers who checked in on Foursquare.

Except very few did.

Check In and then Check Out

Foursquare had a couple of hopeful headlines in the news last week.

On Wednesday, Foursquare and American Express announced a deal where cardholders who check in can enjoy discounts when they check out. It’s limited to certain establishments, but Amex is hoping to appeal to consumers under 35, which isn’t their typical demographic.

Then on Friday, venture capitalists invested $50 million in Foursquare, which certainly seems to validate the Amex deal.

On Second Thought…

Maybe Foursquare will find its ideal business model. I hope so, if only because it will help other social media ventures to crack the code. The concept seems right even if no one has really leveraged it yet.

I may not be checking in on my mobile phone, but will definitely keep an eye on them.

Hulu, dancing

2011-06-24T21:37:00.010-05:00

Last week we met with some people from Hulu and in this post I’d like to share a couple of thoughts. Some of these musings continue the point that Digital didn’t kill TV, it propelled it.

Hulu’s competition is a Gigantic Venn Diagram

At first you might imagine that Hulu’s main competition is Netflix. Indeed, Hulu recently closed a deal with Miramax to compete more directly with VOD providers. But as their presentation continued, names came up like YouTube (duh) and Facebook (where you can watch The Dark Knight). Additionally Hulu competed on the turf of traditional TV during the recently concluded upfront negotiations.

This list of direct and adjacent competitors adds up to a Gigantic Venn Diagram, which makes sense because while the delivery methods differ, all provide video programming (and video advertising).

Screens everywhere

Hulu recognizes this proliferation of screens and the fact that it’s probably impossible to keep up with every single new screen or device. So their mission statement is screen-neutral and consumer focused. They’re not about online video but “helping people find, discover and consume media.”

Said another way, they’re in the entertainment business just as much as they’re in technology, distribution or programming.

Choose your ad

Hulu is testing a new option for video advertising, which is to give consumers the choice of which ad to see. If you’ve used Hulu, you know that commercials interrupt programming at certain intervals. If you see an automobile ad but you’re not in the market, you can click one of the other images and watch a different message from another advertiser.

Ostensibly this helps advertisers put messages with the most receptive consumers. I predict there will be another effect: Consumers choosing ads they want to see, purely for entertainment value.

Will Hulu survive?

None of the above guarantees Hulu’s future. Originally a joint venture among NBC Universal, News Corporation, Walt Disney and some venture capitalists, it may or may not be turning a profit. This past week Hulu received a takeover offer. Some speculated the whole thing was a ruse.

Whether Hulu dives, survives or thrives, it will be only one chapter in the continuing proliferation of TV programming – and yes, TV advertising.

Marketing Silos

2011-06-02T16:12:00.006-05:00

In the fields of marketing communications and organizational behavior, there is nothing more sinister than the silo.

Silos prevent cooperation and coordination. Silos signify self-interest and turf battles. Silos are a comfortable place to hide while we practice our specialties, oblivious to opportunities for working with others.

The Truth About Silos

The silo metaphor borrows equally from the Agricultural Revolution and the Information Age. The agricultural reference is a structure for storing bulk materials, usually grain harvested on a farm. An information silo, according to Wikipedia, “is a management system incapable of reciprocal operation with other, related management systems.”

Silos can be dangerous. “It may be fun,” advises an OSU fact sheet, “to jump in the grain or even bury yourself, but this kind of play is very dangerous. Flowing grain acts like quicksand. Once you start to sink it is impossible for you to dig your way to the top. As you dig, the grain keeps shifting under your feet, pushing you deeper towards the bottom.” Shudder.

Marketing Silos are Surrounded by a Barnyard Full of Manure

One of our clients recently ran a program in a medium we do not handle. Our creative director, always passionate about the client’s business, called me this morning to say “it’s not consistent with the brand voice,” and “it’s not relevant to our consumer.” He was right, because this work was done in a silo.

Silos are surrounded by a barnyard full of manure. That barnyard actually reinforces the silo mentality. We can stay in our silos instead of venturing out of comfort zones into something messy and complicated like interpersonal communication. Or a big pile of…. manure.

Connecting the Silos

Last year Evan Rosen wrote a column with good, practical advice for encouraging collaboration. My only quibble was with the title, “Smashing Silos”. The revolutionary tone is appropriate, but the prescription to me is more like “Connecting Silos”. We’ll always need specialists, and they’ll always need a place to put their grain.

Silos aren’t inherently bad unless we stay inside them. As modern marketers, we not only need to know our specialties, but get out of them and see the bigger picture.

(If you liked this post you may also like this one or that one.)

3 Reasons You Should Care About the BzzAgent Acquisition

2011-05-29T16:26:00.007-05:00

Last week Boston-based BzzAgent, a word-of-mouth marketer with extensive analytical capabilities, was acquired by dunnhumby, a direct-response marketer, also with extensive analytical capabilities, that in turn is also owned by U.K. retailing giant Tesco. (American readers should know that dunnhumby works extensively in the U.S. with Kroger.)

Bzz you should notice

I’ve worked directly with BzzAgent, and it’s always been a great experience. The starting point of their capabilities is a network of some 800,000 Bzz agents, consumers who receive product samples from manufacturers hoping to generate positive word-of-mouth. Just search on Twitter for #ImaBzzAgent, #BzzAgent or @BzzAgent to see the conversation they drive. As their CEO Dave Balter has pointed out to me in the past, BzzAgent is more than a network of “advocates,” they truly understand social media and analytics.

To oversimplify a bit, BzzAgent is great at driving consumers toward brands, and dunnhumby is great at closing the sale at a particular retailer – which is also known as shopper marketing. This is a powerful model for manufacturers and retailers alike.

3 reasons you should care about the BzzAgent acquisition

1. Shopper Marketing holds Social Media accountable. As Balter put it in an interview last week, social media “is still in the world of ‘likes’ and clicks, but substantial budgets just don’t come from that. Shopper marketing, on the other hand, is the ultimate measurement vehicle. It’s a thousand percent about ROI.” Yesterday someone posted on Ad Majorem that social media is just media, not necessarily an advertising vehicle, and they’re right if no one knows its effect on sales.

2. The path to purchase still ends at bricks and mortar. I’ve posted before that Social = Mobile. If you accept that premise, and observe that shoppers carry mobile devices into stores, we can also say Social = Retail. Apple and Google mobile platforms offer plenty of apps for looking up product information. Twitter is a secondary market for online coupon offers. At some point the cash register rings and its usually at a physical store.

3. There’s a trend forming. Not only did dunnhumby acquire BzzAgent but Walmart acquired Kosmix, which for lack of a better term we’ll call a “social commerce” platform. Read more about Kosmix here, here and here. And then there’s Groupon, which is also a blend of social media, shopper marketing and e-commerce. In short, retailers are figuring out how to harness the power of the Internet.

Perhaps now someone will figure out foursquare’s reason for being.

Are Social Media and SEM really "advertising"?

2011-05-27T13:35:00.008-05:00

In an early post, you can read that “the ‘ad’ in Ad Majorem means all marketing communications, from social media to direct mail to Internet gaming to television commercials. To most consumer audiences all of these are advertising.”

Today we’re going to debate that statement a little.

Is Social Media advertising?

On The Social Graf blog, Erik Sass noted yesterday that in recent IPOs for LinkedIn and Zynga, advertising revenue was not a big factor. LinkedIn makes almost half of its money from headhunting and job-finding services; Zynga makes 80-90% of its revenue by selling virtual goods. Does this mean “advertising takes a back seat”?

The question is not whether Social Media is advertising or is putting it in the back seat. They have a symbiotic relationship; great advertising has always driven positive word-of-mouth. The only difference today is that social media has turbocharged word-of-mouth. Maurice Levy of Publicis tripped over this dynamic the other day when he said “Recommendation and endorsement from a friend is sometimes more powerful than the greatest ad.” No, not "sometimes" – always more powerful than the greatest ad.

Word-of-mouth is advertising – advertising we can only hope to influence, never control.

Is SEM advertising?

Meanwhile, over on AdAge’s DigitalNext column, Josh Shatkin-Margolis says we should “Stop Pretending That Search Engine Marketing is Advertising”. He actually made a great distinction in his second paragraph: “SEM is the worst form of advertising, but bear in mind that it is the best form of targeting.” True enough. No one will claim that unclicked search copy is effective. Cheap? Yes, as in “the impressions are free.” You get what you pay for.

Yet is there any reason a consumer would not call this advertising just because it neither promises nor delivers a memorable, persuasive message? I don’t think so. We’re splitting hairs with some of these discussions.

Another headline this week proclaimed that “Google Passes Yahoo in Online Display Advertising”. So are we going to say that Google’s online display is advertising, while the search copy just pixels away is not?

What is advertising? What isn’t?

A wise colleague, now retired, used to say, “Everybody’s selling something, boitshick.” This is true of both search and display. Social Media, too, although it’s a little different because we are counting on consumers to help us do the selling. To those consumers, however, it’s all advertising.

Stumbled Upon by StumbleUpon

2011-05-24T17:58:00.007-05:00

This morning’s Ad Majorem site data included an extra couple of hundred visits, all reading a book review of The Shallows from last September. The source was StumbleUpon, a personalized aggregator of web content, or as Wikipedia clarifies, “a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that finds and recommends web content to its users.” I’m now one of those users, and you can follow my stumbling via Twitter or on StumbleUpon itself.

So what did I stumble upon?

A trusted colleague, Michael Leis, describes StumbleUpon as a fantastic and small community, and that it was a fellow “stumbler” who convinced him to try Twitter some years ago. (Read Michael’s “5 things I’ve learned about Social Media, StumbleUpon Style”.)

Notice that I didn’t write “a fantastic but small community”. The magic of social media is not the size of one's network, but its relevance. I’ve selected a few topics of personal interest and am sure I’ll find relevant content from like-minded stumblers.

Automatic for the Tweeple

Several friends on Twitter also use StumbleUpon, so I tweeted them this morning for more insight. Open government advocate John Moore and Social Media strategist Victor Canada both called StumbleUpon “my favorite bookmarking site.”

I still haven’t figured out why a lot of people suddenly stumbled upon my 8-month old post, but I’m glad they did, because I got a new resource out of it.

The Changing Role of TV

2011-05-13T12:26:00.008-05:00

50 years ago this week, FCC Chairman Newton Minow called TV a “vast wasteland”.

Today, we can argue if TV is a wasteland but there’s no question it’s a vast – and shifting – territory.

The Death of TV has been Greatly Exaggerated

It’s been fashionable in recent years to say that TV, and in particular the 30-second commercial, is dead. Yet people watch a lot of it, which means advertisers still pay for it and producers keep filling it up with content. Supposedly Digital was putting an end to this cycle but so far the billions of hours of video content available online look more like a wasteland than the five hundred channels of TV available to many households. (Attention, digerati, please keep reading before you flame me in the comments section.)

TV Renaissance

In fact the demand for TV content is stronger than ever because TV isn’t just an appliance in your living room anymore. You can watch TV content on any number of devices, and TV advertising in the form of things like pre-roll video and DOOH displays. Jerry Seinfeld, who just launched a new website, observed: "Why would I talk to a TV executive at this point, and ask them what they think? If I have this idea for a TV show, I can just put it up on the Internet." On top of all this, let’s not forget that traditional TV sets offer not only hundreds of channels but the ability to watch programs anytime via the use of DVRs.

Expansion of TV complicates planning, measurement

Regular readers know about the Gigantic Venn Diagram, which is the collection of all available marketing channels across Advertising, Retail and Digital. TV is almost a Gigantic Venn Diagram unto itself, which means it’s impossible to have a TV media plan considering only TV. The confounding thing is that viewership is also a Gigantic Venn Diagram because people are using more than one media at a given time. During the Super Bowl all my Twitter feeds were moving fast with commentary about the game and its commercials. (Mrs. Ad Majorem watches Dancing With The Stars on two screens at once.)

Supply and Demand

Part of the “TV is dead” narrative has been resentment over continually rising prices for TV advertising. In the U.S., two years of recession are now followed by double-digit price increases. We expect the same in Asia and Latin America. “How can this be,” people ask, “when viewership is down and marketers have so many other options?” Three reasons. One, viewership isn’t down – in fact it’s expanding. Two, TV still offers a familiar ratings system – advertisers understand what they’re buying. Three, many of the biggest marketers still depend heavily on high awareness and TV is actually the most cost-efficient way to reach large audiences.

TV is not King

TV is not king; more like a ceremonial monarch with a big bank account, a lot of influence, and an unclear future. While TV is strong culturally and economically, digital media continue to rise in relevance. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that digital ad rates are also up in double-digits. Social Media will force the development of interactive TV. Mobile threatens TV in another important way, taking away part of TV’s broadcast spectrum.

What should you do?

Keep experimenting. Stay abreast of the changes. Continue to take a true channel-neutral approach and use TV in a way that will achieve your own business goals. As we said in a previous post, “How TV fits into IMC”, TV should never be the default position, but neither should it be eschewed. Don’t let labels hold you back. If you shift TV dollars to pre-roll, you can plausibly say you’re “going digital” and that you’re looking at TV expansively.

Change vs. Progress

2011-04-22T08:39:00.021-05:00

“Now that we have progress so rapid that it can be observed from year to year, no one calls it progress. People call it change, and rather than yearn for it, they brace themselves against its force.”
-- Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now*

We live in a time of such constant Change that sometimes we see only the Change and not the Progress it brings.

If all you see is Change, the typical human response is to resist, or as Brand puts it, “brace against its force.” (If you’d like to know more about Stewart Brand, click here, and you’ll also learn that this quote is actually ancient 20th Century wisdom from his book published in 1999. That seems like eons ago but the quote is more relevant than ever.)

If, however, you look at Change and see the Progress it brings, you won’t brace against it, but embrace it. It’s a choice that you must address introspectively: are you going to be fearful or courageous? If Change is inevitable, do you really have any other choice?

It’s better to be courageous, of course. That doesn’t mean we should be foolhardy, embracing Change just for the sake of Change, or just simply “go with the flow”. Our pursuit of Progress should be neither foolhardy nor passive. Rather, we should always use a mixture of curiosity and caution.

Change is only Progress if you’re looking for it. It takes work. You have to stay on top of the trends. You have to see how they apply to your own or your client’s business. You have to be willing to try some new things, and be able to convince your colleagues to try them, too. That’s where the caution comes in. Some of these bets will fail. If you stop and think about a new way of working, you’ll reduce the risk of failure and increase the chance of learning.

How are you doing on your goals for 2011?

We’re about a third into the calendar year. How are you doing on your goals for 2011? Maybe you set some goals or made some resolutions. There’s a very good chance you anticipated 2011 would be a year of Change and planned accordingly.

So far, would you say you’ve experienced only Change, or Progress as well? The difference is up to you.

*Hat tip: Ross McLean, who used this quotation in his presentation at SXSW.

How to Get Ahead in Advertising

2011-03-06T14:42:00.010-06:00

The marketing and advertising world is constantly changing, and so is the way you advance through it.

Recently my business partner and I met with some human resources folks to talk about how our people are faring on the job. Sure, we spent time on performance evaluation, but the real purpose is people development. Nothing enthuses me more than seeing everyone perform up to their full level of potential.

We used to develop people by making them into great specialists, i.e., great advertising people. This meant we taught them to know the client’s business, their competition, their consumer, and of course the ins and outs of how to develop great advertising.

These days the conversation is less about how to make people better specialists, and more about how to make them better generalists. You still have to know the client’s business, but also the ins and outs of advertising, retail and digital.

Put another way, advancement is not so much a straight line through one discipline, but tacking like a sailboat across various disciplines. We will always need specialists, but it’s the generalists who will advance the farthest in agencies of the future.

Some people embrace this approach naturally, teaching themselves about shopper marketing or social media; others purposely change jobs to gain experience. Sadly, some people put their heads in the sand and ignore or even criticize different channels.

My own perspective is that I’d be bored doing the same thing, the same way, for more than a couple of years. I’m grateful that my current job brings new challenges every day, and the chance to try a new way of marketing my clients’ products and services.

The course to growth and advancement

These are some of the buoys in the water that can mark your path to growth and advancement:

Advertising. Yes, advertising. Companies still spend billions of dollars on it. Television is still the fastest way to build awareness of a message, and it’s adapting to a digital world with time-shifting, pre-roll and on-demand programming. A good agency executive gets familiar with all of it.

Retail. Most agency people don’t take the time to understand Retail, whether it’s promotion or shopper marketing. You will perish for lack of knowledge because retailers are gaining so much of your clients’ marketing budgets and this discipline has become much more strategic in the past decade.

Digital. For all the industry trade press coverage of “digital”, the people with practical experience are still a narrow subculture. Your agency may have hired some brand-name experts but you only benefit if you’re working on a digital assignment. You can study Digital but there’s no substitute for experience.

Channel planning. You can only be a true generalist if you know how to combine everything in a way that will drive your client’s business. This seems obvious but it amazes me how seldom it actually gets done, and even then it is not usually done from a true consumer perspective. Just a few years ago, the easy, almost lazy thing to do was draw up a spider chart and “surround the consumer” with as many “touchpoints” as possible. That never really worked.

How to Get Ahead in Advertising

You’ve become a generalist. You understand Advertising, Retail, Digital and Channel Planning. In one of these you’re a specialist. This is how you get ahead in advertising.

Where you work is also part of the equation. Your agency or consultancy may be held back by a traditional view, antiquated organizational structure, lack of capability in specific disciplines, or the lack of a media department that years ago was spun off into a separate agency. The biggest restraint, however, is when an agency loses its ability to know the client’s business, their competition, their consumer, and how to provide business solutions.

The “agency” only loses its ability to the extent its employees lose it. You can control your own development. Familiarize yourself with other disciplines, be a great generalist, but never lose sight of the need to be able to solve a client’s business problems. The path onward and upward isn’t a straight line anymore. You’ll have to be patient and continually improve yourself.

#IMCchat is now bi-weekly

2011-03-03T07:29:00.004-06:00

There was another great edition of #IMCchat on Twitter last evening, thanks to moderators Beth Harte and Anna Barcelos. At the end of the session they announced that #IMCchat will now run bi-weekly, so if you want to participate, mark your calendar for Wednesday 16 March at 7:00 p.m. Central U.S. time.

What is IMC?

2011-03-01T15:51:00.012-06:00

IMC, or Integrated Marketing Communications, has more than few definitions. Here’s mine: it’s Marketing.

The words “Integrated” and “Communications” are redundant

Any marketer who doesn’t integrate their various marketing communications, in even the smallest way, is so hopelessly siloed they will never survive. There’s simply no excuse in the year 2011 for developing separately your advertising, retail and digital programs. Even in a siloed organization most people acknowledge the need to work across disciplines. Even the most specialized agency acknowledges the need to cooperate with their clients’ other partners.

Thus the word “integrated” is redundant because all marketing must be integrated. I would argue, too, that “marketing” implies some kind of communications, so that word is also redundant.

IMC is just a fancy acronym for Marketing

I confess to having used the term myself, here, here, here and here. In each case the context was a program where we made a specific, dedicated effort to align all the disciplines and deliver for a client a truly integrated marketing program. This effort required a lot of heavy lifting strategically as well as during execution, not to mention the challenge of keeping all the various constituencies moving in the same direction. It’s hard work, especially if you have to wrangle a group of agencies.

We need hard work, because aligning the disciplines doesn’t come naturally. In the days of Ye Olde Marketing, advertising was relatively simple, retail was far less sophisticated, and digital didn’t exist. Today all those disciplines demand attention, so we need specific, dedicated efforts that change our behavior and help make IMC – uh, modern marketing, come naturally.

Stop calling it IMC

The risk in continuing to use the term “IMC” is that some marketers and some agencies will treat only some marketing as “integrated” – which means that other kinds of marketing are what, exactly? Disparate? Traditional? Antiquated? It starts to sound like Ye Olde Marketing.

I’m not starting to a campaign to extinguish the term “IMC”. I’m merely advising caution in using it.

Join #IMCchat Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m. Central U.S. time

Just a reminder that tomorrow night is another edition of #IMCchat, which we posted about recently.

#IMCchat

2011-02-18T16:22:00.005-06:00

Every Wednesday evening (7 p.m. Central Time in the U.S.) there is an hour of chat on Twitter about Integrated Marketing Communications. The moderators pose a question or topic for discussion and industry professionals give their points of view. You can follow it via the hashtag #IMCchat.

Better still, you can participate. It’s an open forum. On Wednesday I commuted home via train during that hour and spent the time on my smartphone taking part in #IMCchat. You can read the transcript here.

Forums like this can expand your horizons. One example this week was a familiar topic, consumer insight, being discussed in ways I hadn’t considered, from the point of view of PR experts and freelance writers.

Another good line of discussion centered on Six Sigma, the manufacturing efficiency process. I was interested because my agency has used its principles for project management in highly complex situations. The discussion explored whether Six Sigma is a way for manufacturing to be more consumer-centric.

I find in these discussions that fresh points of view challenge my own assumptions, and I wind up contributing to the conversation in ways I might not have before. That’s part of the process of self-improvement we all must undertake in the marketing business today. It’s not enough to do a better job at what we know, but to do a better job learning about things we don’t know.

The Blurry Line Between Public Relations and Marketing

2011-01-22T22:01:00.008-06:00

I continue to be fascinated by the blurry line between Public Relations and Marketing. Social Media is to blame.

The Difference Between Public Relations and Marketing

For most of my career, PR was something I saw only when working with my client’s corporate communications people on corporate image advertising or usage standards for the company logo. I knew their work was important, but I rarely had to consider it in my own plans. The client that most coordinated PR and Marketing was McDonald’s.

Social Media brings Public Relations and Marketing together

In the past couple of years, however, a lot changed. Social Media forced advertisers to share the megaphone with ordinary consumers. If you think that Social Media is automatically the province of a digital or ad agency, you’re overlooking the role of PR agencies, who understand how to field hot grounders from the general public. You’ve seen a lot of examples play out on Twitter. In fact, some of my favorite people to follow are PR execs such as Steve Rubel of Edelman.

What’s ahead in 2011

I’d recommend two recent articles if you’d like to dig into this topic a little deeper. The Economist had a long article last month describing the history of PR and its increased relevance today. Ronn Torossian, head of 5WPR, also published an article last month, but with a forward view, predicting five challenges for the industry in 2011. (I also posted on this topic in 2009.)

Practical advice for Publicists and Marketers

One naysayer commented on Torossian’s article, questioning the increased role of PR in corporate decision-making. Perhaps we can question whether Torossian’s vision will become real in 2011, but things seem to be headed in the direction he predicts. The key for PR people is to better understand corporate marketing objectives and strategies. The key for Marketers is to better understand how PR can help them connect with consumers.

Parents and Children, Then and Now

2011-01-20T07:15:00.009-06:00

The recent "Your Mom Hates This" campaign for EA's Dead Space 2 (TV spot here, website here, photo at right) is driving some buzz ahead of the video game's release date next week.

It reminded me a little of the campaign 20 years ago from Wrigley's Amurol division for Bubble Tape. You can see two of the spots on YouTube, here and here.

All of us can appreciate that parent-child relationships range from respect to rebellion. When respect is the norm, there is harmony; when rebellion is the norm, there is trouble.

Does this campaign push rebellion? I'll let you be the judge. If you are interested in thinking about it a little more, read this unexpected commentary from a game reviewer who's also a mom. She liked Dead Space 2, but she didn't like stereotypes.

"Where do you want to be in 5 years?"

2011-01-14T00:39:00.004-06:00

I have a standard question when helping employees plan their careers and when interviewing prospective employees: “Where do you want to be in 5 years?”

The answer shows how self-aware a person is, how well they’ve planned ahead, and importantly their capacity to dream a little bit. Some of the answers are very specific, like a job title or a function. Some are lofty, like having achieved something exceptional. Others are developmental, like having learned a new skill or discipline.

It occurred to me last night that this question may be unfair. Our business is changing so quickly that it’s hard to plan five years ahead. So now I’m going to ask, “Where do you want to be in 3 years?” If the answer is about next year, and has substance, I’ll gladly accept it.

You can still dream big about next year or even this year. Rapid change in our business also means that new opportunities arise all the time, and we shouldn’t be afraid to embrace them.

Kevin Carroll, Katalyst

If you want some inspiration, check out Kevin Carroll, self-proclaimed Katalyst. He addressed the annual meeting of Draftfcb Chicago last night and really inspired me. He publishes a blog and you can follow him on Twitter. That's his picture above.

Vox Populi

2011-01-03T23:30:00.011-06:00

The most-read posts on Ad Majorem

Here are the most-read posts on Ad Majorem, subject by subject:

Channel-neutral planning
1. None of us are “media agnostic”
2. Are you a Specialist or a Generalist?
3. Can One Agency Really Do It All for a Client?

Digital
1. Online Media is a process, not an event
2. Who “owns” Mobile?
3. Hyper Island: Burn the Ships

Retail
1. Reducing Assortment II
2. Reducing Assortment
3. “The changing media landscape” …of Retail

Advertising
1. iPad’s :30 in Oscars was not its first ad
2. The basis of all great advertising
3. TV is dead – long live TV

Agencies
1. Should ad agencies and media agencies re-bundle?
2. The History of the Ad Agency Business – in one easy power point slide!*
3. What does the future look like?

Results and Accountability
1. “Oh – were we supposed to prove the results of what we did?”
2. “I don’t know which half of my ad budget I’m wasting – and I don’t WANT to know!”
3. How to know “which half of my advertising budget is wasted”

International
1. Global assignments are complex, so keep ‘em simple
2. Canada and its consumers
3. Why Global Brands matter

Professional Development
1. 3 keys to (continued) survival in 2010
2. 3 keys to job survival for 2011
3. Why Diversity is important in Marketing, and how you can help achieve it in the workplace

Bubbling Under: 3 posts that didn’t make the lists above
1. 3 reasons you should care about Shopper Marketing
2. Hyper Island II: The Network
3. Have you allowed raisinets in your brand’s portfolio?

3 keys to job survival for 2011

2010-12-20T08:24:00.004-06:00

It’s December.

We’re all rushing to the holiday finish line, a swirling rush of activity. Some of us will keep working through Dec. 31st, nailing deadlines along the way. For some, it will feel like a crash and burn.

For others, it will be a crash and burn.

All of us should take the opportunity to stop and think about what we’ve accomplished in 2010 and what we want to accomplish in 2011. And then figure out how to get it done. Here are three steps you can take: Plan Big, Think Smart and Move Fast.

Plan Big

Whether your plan is to keep your job, change your job or get a job, it’s important to plan big. The end of year is a reflective time when you can dream a little bit and think about goals for 2011 that are ambitious and achievable. Last year at this time I made a 2010 plan big enough that it will continue into 2011.

Yes, I wish I had been able to check it off my list in 2010, but actually just having the goal has motivated me to do a lot of things I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. This is especially important if you are in the group of people who want to keep your job – apathy and the routine are your enemies.

Think Smart

This step is about strategy, or more prosaically, how you are going to get things done. Some element of strategic thinking is involved here, especially if you have planned big. You will absolutely have to think things through. You also need two other simple elements: People and Time.

Advertising has always been about collaboration, and now more than ever when no one has all the answers. So think about People you can enlist to help achieve your goals. They won’t be “your” goals anymore, but that’s OK because you’ll still get credit as part of the team.

Time is the other element of Think Smart: You will need to literally schedule time for yourself to work toward your big plans, especially if you need to schedule time with others.

Move Fast

The most underrated job skill in the advertising business is execution – the ability to get things done fast. Some us think big, a few plan smart, and not enough move fast.

The image above is from the tail of Elvis Presley’s plane. It’s the motto of his crew, the letters TCB with a lightning bolt, meaning: “Taking Care of Business in a Flash.” (Lee Knight had a good post on this last year.)

If you really did Plan Big, sometimes people and things around you won’t Move Fast enough. Try to be patient, not frustrated. Certain tasks and steps along the way can go faster, and others can’t. Just stay focused on what you want to accomplish.

A Modest Proposal

No matter what level you are, I’d encourage you to consider goals for 2011 that will increase your experience in digital. Even if you work in a digital agency, you’ll need to rise above the day-to-day and learn new things because “digital” is changing so fast we may not even use that word by the end of 2011.

The key is to get experience. All of us can read about it, participate and even start a blog, which is all beneficial. Doing actual work in your company is even better.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Feliz Navidad -- and have a happy, prosperous, change-embracing New Year in 2011.

* Note: One year ago, we posted “3 keys to (continued) survival in 2010”. It was inspired by Arthur Ashe. Today's theme, "Plan Big, Think Smart, Move Fast" was a motto hanging on the wall of Hank Feeley, President of Leo Burnett International, who hired me into this business, and who practiced what he preached.

Hyper Island: Burn the Ships

2010-12-17T19:07:00.005-06:00

NEW YORK – This is the end of my three days on Hyper Island. We learned a lot about Digital strategies, tools and measurement, all of which were important, but none of them are the most important thing.

Hyper Island really isn’t about “Digital”, it’s about Change. As posted on Wednesday, we didn’t just increase knowledge, we increased our ability to embrace the changes going on in our industry. The change is so swift we can’t even predict the terminology we’ll use in 2011. (Coincidentally, the BBH Labs blog ran this headline just last night: “Digital, can we kill this word for good?”.)

The organizers and instructors here were superior Digital practitioners, but their real strength was being superior Change Agents. Change was the explicit topic at the beginning and the end of the three days, and a constant theme throughout.

“Digital” isn’t just a change for our industry, it’s a harbinger of change. The changes and challenges will keep coming and always cause discomfort. Rather than trying to feel comfortable, the smart strategy is to embrace discomfort. Stick to the mission, which is keeping up with the changes.

Burn the Ships

Hernán Cortés understood how wanting to stick with comfortable ways could distract people from a journey into unfamiliar territory. He led a group of Spanish ships to conquer the Aztec Empire. When they arrived at Veracruz, he burned the ships so his men would have no way of going back.

That’s the spirit we decided to carry back to the office on Monday. Yes, we will go back, but having metaphorically burned the ships, we won’t go back to the ways with which we’ve grown comfortable.

It was a great week. Thanks very much to the organizers, instructors, and of course my fellow shipmates.

Hyper Island IV: A New Hope

2010-12-16T18:09:00.005-06:00

NEW YORK -- We're finishing off the day at Hyper Island by splitting into groups and responding to briefs clearly intended for Digital Strategy. Even if they weren't "clearly" digital, we'd be creating digital strategies anyway because this is Hyper Island.

I admire the quality of thinking represented in each group's presentation. It's evident that most people come from the perspective of starting with a solid consumer insight and trying to bring business solutions to their clients. On actual digital strategies, we were uneven, but as one of our judges said, "What are you going to accomplish in 45 minutes?"

The point is that we are coming at these briefs differently than we would have two days ago.

On a related note, I'd like to think that one of the main themes of the day -- collaboration -- seeped into the exercise. I really enjoyed working with my team.

I'm a Believer

One last point if you'll indulge me. I despise the term "media agnostic" so much that if you enter it on Google, my blog post lambasting it is the first result.

We're two days into Hyper Island and not one person has uttered it publicly. That alone gives me hope.

Hyper Island III: Hype vs. Results

2010-12-16T14:01:00.010-06:00

NEW YORK – This morning’s post touched on the effect digital strategy can have on brand equity. What other results should we watch?

This afternoon we’ve been looking at a range of digital programs and their results: Uniqlo, Old Spice, Kill Zone 2, Fun Theory and others. The results were reported in a number of ways: alleged sales lift, messages generated, downloads made, brand awareness, number of Twitter followers or Facebook friends, or the size of a community one builds.

Two quick observations:

Ultimately, Sales is what matters. All of the measures listed above are important, but if they do not grow the business, none of them matter.

Results can’t be put in silos. I’ve posted frequently about how various media can’t be planned in silos – and the same holds true for results. As Daniele Fiandaca told us, “It’s the combination of all the results.”

An example of both points was Kill Zone 2 in the U.K. The launch drove some six-figure participation numbers, which generated a ton of P.R. in gaming magazines, which drove the sales. The number of online participants alone did not tell the entire story.

Remember: Follow #HIMC on Twitter to listen in on our Hyper Island Master Class.

Hyper Island II: The Network

2010-12-16T11:30:00.012-06:00

NEW YORK – Every day at Hyper Island starts with a “morning reflection”. You get a chance to stop, consider what you’ve learned and how to apply it. Then you share insights in group discussions. It’s mandatory to take a lot of notes, which I’m repurposing here as a blog post.

Networks are the Base Unit of Communication

I learned a lot on Day 1 but the one thing that most changed the way I think was the concept of Networks. Your Network is the list of people you choose to read, listen to, and interact with.

Our lecturer, Mark Comerford, said this: “Networks are the base unit of communication. If you don’t reach the Network, then you don’t reach me.”

That was a radical idea for me, not because of my experience with mass audiences, but because I made a mental shift some years ago from mass audiences to one-to-one communication. My newer paradigm has been that Digital, Data and Direct all work together, allowing us to engage people in ways relevant to them, and measure the results.

In a bit of self-analysis, I realized that I had seen each individual person as their own gatekeeper – and that is true, by the way. What I had been missing is the fact that each individual person relies on their Network to be a gatekeeper. The implication for marketers is to figure out how you are going to offer something of value to these Networks.

That value is what matters to the Network of people. The currency of the Network is stuff that’s interesting to its members.

What My Network Taught Me This Morning

After a few minutes of journaling, we sat in a circle – a Network, if you will – and shared our insights.

My good friend and colleague, Terry Corrigan, shared something that anyone coming from a traditional ad agency background, big or small, would want to hear.

Terry observed that “the digital space isn’t about selling, it’s about being useful.” Many of you know this. He went on to describe how “being useful” builds brand equity.

Many traditional agency people and their traditional clients think about brand equity as a function of the TV advertising. What we say, how it looks, what products we choose to advertise – all of these contribute significantly to a brand’s equity.

The same applies to digital programs. Best Buy’s Twelpforce and Zappos customer service build brand equity. Motrin’s ignorance of the space hurt their brand equity. Brand equity is your reputation.

This point is significant because many clients ask about the ROI of Social Media. Instead of dissembling because we don’t know how to calculate the ROI, we should make the impact on brand equity part of the answer.

Time again for lunch. You can follow our Hyper Island Master Class on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #HIMC.

What is Hyper Island?

2010-12-15T11:56:00.005-06:00

NEW YORK – This is the first of three days I’m spending at Hyper Island Master Class, a sort of boot camp for marketing and advertising people catching up on “Digital”. For more about Hyper Island, read the recent article in Fast Company, and a response of sorts published in Adweek.

Even having read about Hyper Island in advance, I didn’t know whether to expect a class in writing code for HTML5, or how to sign up for Twitter, or… well, I imagined a lot of possibilities.

Here is what I’ve gleaned so far, after the first morning’s agenda.

Change Management. While the curriculum features digital tools, case studies, best practices and important principles, the real topic of discussion is adapting to changes around us. This isn’t only a matter of increasing knowledge, it’s about increasing our ability to embrace the changes going on in our industry.

Communication is what’s changing. Digital is partly a range of media we must all learn, but its significance lies in the way it permits people to comment and connect much more rapidly than in the days of Ye Olde Marketing. Word of mouth has always been the most reliable form of marketing communication, and it’s more out of control than ever.

It’s not about how you sell something, it’s about what you sell. The old paradigm is “market what we can make”, creating ads with finely tuned messages, hoping for big awareness among a mass audience. What shatters this paradigm? Consumer experiences drive commentary far more authentic than what we can possibly say about our products or services, regardless of medium.

Time for lunch now. I’ll write more later. You can follow all the action on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #HIMC.

Modern Retail is Full of Caveats, Part II

2010-12-03T16:31:00.004-06:00

Earlier this week we posted about DecorMyEyes, an online seller of designer eyewear owned by Vitaly Borker. The New York Times reported how Borker purposely angered customers who complained, so they would complain online and drive up search engine rankings for his business. It seemed to be working.

You can't beat the Algorithm

Apparently, Google was not amused by all this, and announced Wednesday that they had adjusted their algorithm to screen out merchants that "provide an extremely poor user experience."

It was a good, but possibly unnecessary move, as Borker's strategy may not have actually worked in the first place. According to Search Engine Land, you can't rank well just by cultivating terrible reviews. Google, however, didn't take any chances.

Disintermediation

2010-11-30T18:38:00.007-06:00

Has “disintermediation” become the newest overused word in the American business world? I seem to hear it a lot these days, and for advertising people at least, it’s probably a bad omen.

“Disintermediation” is an economics term for “the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain”. In the vernacular, it means “cutting out the middleman”. That’s why ad people should listen for this word.

The ways of ye olde marketing are going away slowly, and part of that is the supply chain, if you will, among advertisers, agencies and media owners. Almost four years ago you could read about “Google, Disintermediation and Agencies”.

Yesterday Adweek published an article about Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood talent agent, attempting to disintermediate ad agencies with his new venture, Lverage. The article mentions that talent agents tried this in 1998, but doesn't mention that in 2010 there are plenty of potential disintermediators out there, e.g., business consultants, comms planning shops, and data companies.

If you are a go-with-the-flow type of person, you’ll want to join the crowd using this word. If you are paying attention, however, you’ll want to avoid being the noun in a sentence somebody else uses where “disintermediate” is the verb.

Modern Retail is Full of Caveats

2010-11-28T22:29:00.007-06:00

Marketers today wrestle with how much power consumers have. Consumers can find your product at the lowest price possible, they can mercilessly criticize your product, and they can tune out your marketing altogether.

You might say caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) has been replaced by caveat venditor (let the seller beware). Two stories from today’s news teach us, however, that caveat emptor is a very contemporary phrase.

Caveat Emptor

The New York Times reports at length today on the fascinating and scary tale of DecorMyEyes, an online seller of designer eyewear. The owner, Vitaly Borker, discovered that customer complaints pushed his company to the top of organic search results. It wasn’t SEO. It wasn’t SEM. It was the complaints from people who tried to buy Lafont and Montblanc frames.

Sensing an opportunity, he purposely picked nasty Internet fights with those who complained. Traffic soared. Most of his sales are routine, straightforward – and profitable. Most of his time, however, is spent fighting, intimidating and threatening the customers who are not routine and straightforward. You don’t want to mess with this guy.

Caveat Lector

Walmart made some enemies of their own this weekend. In most of the United States they started their Black Friday sale at 12:01 a.m., but in Massachusetts the sale began at 4 a.m. Hundreds of Bay State shoppers starting lining up Thanksgiving night, expecting to be let in at midnight, and they weren’t happy (see local news coverage here and here).

As of this writing, there’s no official explanation, but here’s my analysis. Walmart stepped up its game for Black Friday this year, announcing it would open the doors at 12:01 a.m. and “leaking” its flyer full of midnight door busters two weeks ago. The big national news headline: “Big Walmart Sale at Midnight!” The small print, including this article from the Boston Herald: “Starts 4 a.m. in Massachusetts.” Caveat lector (let the reader beware).

Caveat Venditor

In both of these cases there are lessons for marketers. The first is obvious, that the Internet has democratized information such that everything is available to everybody. The problem is that nobody digests everything. Therefore a lot of people in Massachusetts got the national news headline but not the local story.

Another lesson is to be careful of who you are dealing with online, especially if you are a business-to-business player. Borker’s eyewear business hurt some wholesalers who didn’t know his m.o. Search may be a science, but it can be abused by mad scientists.

Most of us are not mad scientists; we’re genuinely interested in having consumers love us, really love us. If your company or client doesn’t engage in dialogue with its consumers, the time is well past due.

TSA's Recuitment Advertising

2010-11-24T10:34:00.023-06:00

Much has been written about the latest TSA security procedures, including backscatter X-ray machines and, uh, pat downs. But this is a blog about modern marketing, so imagine my delight upon learning about TSA's recruitment advertising. I wonder what the brief looked like (snicker).

The ads are not exactly new news, having been reported by various news outlets last summer. Given the recent scrutiny, however, they're back in the public eye. A typical headline: "A Career Where X-Ray Vision and Federal Benefits Come Standard." (Travellers weren't amused.)

The latest development is the media plan, which includes the tops of pizza boxes and signs at gas pumps. You can see a series of photos on this radio station's website.

Does anyone know if TSA has an ad agency of any kind? All we could find was this 2009 press release about TSA and The Ad Council. One agency looked into it, came up empty, but thought to ask whether the ads produced a result. Does anyone know?

In any case, readers, our best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving.

The Origin of lorem ipsum

2010-11-19T14:03:00.014-06:00

I like to think of myself as a Renaissance Practitioner, but this is ridiculous.

According to Mike Keeler, an East Coast advertising executive, we practice a Renaissance Era tradition every time we use what I can no longer in good conscience call Greek text.

All art directors should read this, reprinted from Keeler's weekly quickSilver newsletter:

This essay is just a draft. If it were final, it wouldn't contain the well-known phrase, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit.

Say what? Okay, an explanation. In the advertising world, when graphic designers create a draft of a layout, they often use placeholder text for the real copy - which has not yet been written - and they almost always use a phrase which begins, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit. It's known as "Greek copy" which is odd since it's not Greek, it's Latin, sort of.

We wondered why they all use that same phrase. Turns out that, in the days before computers, a company called Letraset sold blocks of this copy on adhesive sheets to advertising agencies. There, a lorem ipsum would cut the copy with an X-acto dolor sit amet and stick it on the consectetur for review by the adipisci velit.

And what does it mean exactly? According to the editors of desktop publishing magazine Before and After, "It's not Latin, though it looks like it, and it actually says nothing. Its 'words' loosely approximate the frequency with which letters occur in English, which is why at a glance it looks pretty real."

Oh really? According to Richard McClintock, professor of Latin and the publications director at Hampden-Sydney College, he found it in a passage from a treatise on the theory of ethics written by Cicero in 45BC. Specifically, Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit . . . ("There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain . . .").

Okay, fair enough, but why would Letraset have chosen THAT particular phrase? McClintock believes it was used by a medieval printer for one of the earliest metal type samples, and it just stuck. "What I find remarkable," he says, "is that this text has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since some printer in the 1500s took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book; it has survived not only four centuries of letter-by-letter resetting but even the leap into electronic typesetting, essentially unchanged."

Lorem ipsum! Over four hundred years of dolor sit amet without a change to a single consectetur or deletion of any adipisci velit!!

Actually, it's not really that surprising. It's just proof positive that, in advertising, there are no original ideas, just shameless plagiarizing of the classics.

Direct Marketing will continue to influence advertising

2010-11-12T17:11:00.005-06:00

Last night the Chicago Advertising Federation honored Howard Draft with its Silver Medal Award for lifetime achievement, which honors contributions to the local ad community as well as the community at large. The venue was a large dinner at The Drake Hotel and it was fantastic to see a lot of people I’ve worked with over the years.

Howard has obviously achieved a lot, including a series of agencies with his name on the door, which was a running joke throughout the evening’s remarks. It’s not all chest-pounding, though; Howard’s myriad agencies have been very successful. (Full disclosure: If you didn’t know, I work at Draftfcb.)

Direct Marketing in the Past

Most of Howard’s agencies were of the direct marketing variety. Back in the day, “Direct” had always been a little too scientific for most of the big ad agencies. Only David Ogilvy called it his “secret weapon”. The other agencies knew it was powerful, but as Rick Fizdale said last night, “What I knew about Direct could fit in a thimble.”

Fizdale, former Chairman and CEO of Leo Burnett, told the story of how he led an effort to acquire Kobs & Brady, the 1980s powerhouse Direct agency, and in the process met Howard for the first time. The acquisition didn’t happen, and I would never do justice to Fizdale’s version of the story, so I won’t try to retell it here.

One line of the speech is worth pointing out, however. Fizdale referred to “The advertising I practiced and the advertising (Howard) had mastered.” He was comparing traditional brand advertising and Direct Marketing, but what I loved about this line was how casually and naturally he declared both disciplines to be advertising.

Direct Marketing in the Future

Howard, in his acceptance speech, told how he failed to get a job at an ad agency when he was first starting out, and instead landed at a Direct agency. “I firmly believe,” he said, “I wouldn’t be here tonight if I hadn’t gone into direct marketing.”

This is true for a couple of reasons. One is that Direct allowed him to be the entrepreneurial guy he is, outside the stultifying structures of most traditional ad agencies. The other is that he prepared himself for the turn-of-the-century shift toward accountability in marketing. Direct had always been accountable.

This trend will continue, unabated, for as far as any of us dare predict. We’ve posted before about Direct, Digital and Data, and how you can’t have one without the others. The Digital Age is really the continuation of the Direct Age. Data gives us the ability – and the burden – to be accountable. In this way, Direct Marketing will continue to influence advertising.

3 Reasons You Should Care About Shopper Marketing

2010-11-11T07:56:00.011-06:00

This blog has always been about the complete range of ways to connect marketers and consumers. The definition of advertising includes all channels: broadcast media, promotion, direct, digital, word of mouth – everything.

Near the top of my list has always been Retail, with a bit of amazement that Digital seems to trump Retail in trade publications, at industry conferences and across the general buzz of Twitter feeds.

This week Retail won a moral victory. According to a Booz & Co. survey, major manufacturers expect Shopper Marketing to grow faster than digital, social and advertising. You can see two articles about it here and here, and the report is available here in PDF form.

Why you should care about Shopper Marketing

There are at least three reasons why advertising people should care about Shopper Marketing.

1. Your clients care about it. If you advertise a product sold at retail, think about the fact that your clients have clients, companies like Walmart, Kroger and Dollar General. Like you, those retailers want to sell a lot of your clients’ products. They also want to drive traffic to their own stores and increase the cash register ring for each customer. All of this is Shopper Marketing. Most advertising sells only the product; Shopper Marketing achieves objectives for the retailer as well as the customer. It’s not just a matter of shelf talkers and floor signage, it’s a strategic approach that approaches consumers when they are really shoppers. The Booz & Co. survey predicts that as Shopper Marketing rises, trade spending will decline. I’m not so optimistic, but if it happens, then retail will become more strategic and much less about pay-to-play.

2. Your competition is using it. If you’re a great advertising person, you’re helping your client identify a clear consumer insight, develop a compelling strategy, write a smart channel plan, and produce creative that’s memorable and persuasive. If it works, your target consumer will go and buy the product. What happens, however, if on the way to the shelf she sees some other offer or information that leads her to buy a competitive product? You will have been outmaneuvered. This is a wide battleground: Shopper Marketing vet Chip Hoyt points out that "the shelf" isn't just in a store, it can be at home or on the go.

3. Consumers take it seriously. It sounds trite but the store, however you define it, really is a medium and consumers engage with it. My colleague Jim Lucas observes that 110 million U.S. households make an average of 120 store trips a year, which means 13.2 billion chances to sell. Especially in a tough economy, consumers will read the circulars, cut the coupons and stop to see the end-aisle displays. In addition, one of the points made in the Booz & Co. study is how consumers research their options before making a purchase, using product information or pricing available on the Internet. Aha! I knew it. Digital does play a role! Yes, it does. If you work in a digital agency, you should be especially mindful of Shopper Marketing.

Take time to learn

Shopper Marketing has a place in the marketing mix just like any other channel. Take the time to learn about it so it doesn’t become a strategic blind spot. We’ve suggested some resources in the past (here, here and here).

Have you allowed raisinets in your brand's portfolio?

2010-10-29T01:10:00.007-05:00

I hate raisinets. You should, too.

This post isn’t really about Raisinets-with-a-capital-R, the candy. It’s about products that distract from the portfolio management of your brand.

What’s a raisinet?

I had a senior client who praised one of his top managers for “eliminating all the raisinets that consumed his time and attention.” The raisinets were newer SKUs, launched in the preceding couple of years to much fanfare and advertising investment, ultimately contributing only a small percentage of the brand’s total sales.

Everyone has tried a raisinet

We’ve all launched, inherited, managed or seen a raisinet. They are products somewhere beyond a line extension, restage or flanker, but not quite a new innovation. Numerous brands have launched SKUs that were consistent with brand equity but were virtually the same thing offered to the consumer by an existing product in the portfolio. Some are way overboard, like P&G’s Febreze Scent Stories, the hybrid CD player and home fragancer. Some stories have happier endings; Nabisco wisely turned down amaretto-flavored Oreos. You can acquire raisinets, as Crocs did when they bought high-end fashion footwear lines.

Don’t open a box of raisinets

In fairness many of the raisinets in your job are much harder to identify. They always seem like a good idea at the time. Large retailers get excited about new products that could drive store traffic. Management likes the sales volume the new item could bring. Marketing wants to launch something and it’s gonna be HUGE!!!

Raisinets go stale quickly

Sometimes they are huge right when they launch, but they go stale quickly because they aren’t very strategic. The retailer, the boss and the marketer all move on to something else. I’m watching one of these situations right now. A company invested in the launch of a product, then ignored it this year, and sales are declining every week.

Portfolio management

Good stewards of a brand’s portfolio don’t fall for the raisinets, and if they do, act quickly to eliminate them. I’m not referring to streamlining for the sake of efficiency. Portfolio management means knowing your consumer, identifying the segments as she sees them, and picking the products that most contribute to sales, share and brand equity.

Some call it marketing

These sound like basic principles any marketer can endorse, but in reality they take disciplined analysis and focused effort. If you make this effort, you will develop a firm sense of priorities nearly impervious to raisinets.

Gigantic Venn Diagram and the Rube Goldberg Machine

2010-10-13T13:04:00.006-05:00

This past week I had lunch with a client for whom we are handling a multi-channel project including advertising, digital and retail, plus a collaboration with their public relations agency. We talked about the complexity of projects that juggle many strategies and much execution.

Gigantic Venn Diagram

We’ve mentioned the Gigantic Venn Diagram before (here, here and here) so it’s worth defining the term.

The Gigantic Venn Diagram is the complete range of channels available to marketers today. Every conceivable broadcast medium, digital application, retail program, PR initiative – it’s impossible to even list everything because new channels emerge every week.

Moreover, the Gigantic Venn Diagram is dynamic. Not only are new channels emerging, they are converging and moving in relationship to one another. Like any Venn diagram, the circles overlap, but in different combinations each time.

The overlap, in fact, is different from brand to brand, from project to project, depending on the strategy demanded by the business objective. You should never have the same diagram twice.

Making sense of the Gigantic Venn Diagram is the key challenge of any marketer today. It’s also known as channel planning, or in some places “comms planning”. You must have a well-defined business objective, a clear consumer insight, and a channel-neutral mindset.

Rube Goldberg Machine

Let’s say you’ve succeeded at writing a modern channel plan. Your Gigantic Venn Diagram will be the blueprint for a Rube Goldberg Machine. If you didn’t know, Rube Goldberg was an inventor who built contraptions of impossible complexity. Real-life examples include a popular Honda commercial and the children’s game “Mouse Trap”. My real-life examples are marketing programs that attempt to drive awareness, entice with sampling, engage online, and a host of other things that will sell more products.

All Rube Goldberg machines are tricky. Making the parts work together is a complex task of turning many strategies into much execution. It’s hard to draw Gigantic Venn Diagrams and build Rube Goldberg Machines, and not many teams succeed at both. The most spectacular failure in recent memory was the short-lived Enfatico, a one-stop agency consisting of different WPP resources created especially for Dell. A new example is Travelocity hiring the Publicis combo of Razorfish, Zenith and Leo Burnett. Also new and intriguing is Ruth, the new integrated services boutique of PR giant Edelman.

Can One Agency Really Do It All?

We addressed this question in a recent post (“Can One Agency Really Do It All for a Client?”) and also started a few LinkedIn and Twitter discussions to gain wider input. There seemed to be two camps: optimists and pessimists. Count me among the optimists, mainly because I’ve seen the magic of channel-neutral planning.

Still, it depends on what you mean by “all”. If we mean one agency handles channel planning or comms planning, yes, there are several agencies that can do that. If we mean one agency draws the Gigantic Venn Diagram and builds the Rube Goldberg Machine – well, then the field narrows considerably.

Blogs are maturing as a marketing channel

2010-09-26T14:51:00.012-05:00

Are blogs dead? No, they are maturing and for that reason are an opportunity for marketers.

Economist: the growth of blogs has stalled

A recent analysis by The Economist suggests that the growth of blogs has stalled as many bloggers move to Facebook and Twitter. Some people are more comfortable “microblogging” in 140 characters than writing a blog post. As evidence, the article points to abandoned blogs that haven’t been updated in years.

The question is whether migration to microblogging is a permanent trend. The Economist didn’t convince me. Some of their evidence was questionable: an advertising sales company specializing in blogs grew tenfold during 2004-2008 and then “only” 17% since then. Most of us would gladly accept 17% growth in these economic times.

Ad Majorem: blogs are maturing

My own theory is that blogs are maturing. Facebook and Twitter are attracting people who would start a blog if that was their only option. Former bloggers are switching because they express themselves just as well via microblogging. There never was a vast population of people with the patience and perseverance to blog day after day. People who are meant to blog will continue blogging. A great example is Don Dodge, who claimed last week “I will never give up blogging.”

In the same post, however, he made a good case for the decline of RSS readers, which is how many readers learn about fresh blog content. For example, Ask.com will close Bloglines on October 1st, signaling the end of an era for the blogosphere. Another big change is that Six Apart, the blog company behind TypePad and other services, is being acquired by Video Egg.

Blogs are maturing and their role is changing. Social Media are not cannibalizing blogs, they are serving a different market for self-expression and they are supplanting RSS readers as a way to promote blog content.

What are the implications for Marketing? (“Marketing”, it’s very important to say, includes public relations, especially in this case. For a passionate view on this from a dyed-in-the-wool blogger, click here.)

Blogs are the ultimate vertical medium

In the days of Ye Olde Marketing we sometimes called magazines a “vertical medium” because an advertiser could reach very narrow, specialized target audiences via special-interest titles. Those still exist, of course, and blogs play a similar role. The Economist acknowledged this point as well.

To take this idea a bit further, let’s not lose sight of the fact that blogs help drive word-of-mouth for our clients’ products. A positive review by an influential mommy blogger can accelerate sales for a new product launch, simply by driving word-of-mouth.

A little to the side from marketing, blogs can promote free speech. In China, 70 million bloggers help promote views counter to those of the authoritarian government. We’ve seen the same thing in Cuba.

You’re probably not even reading this post right now….

Hopefully you agree that blogs are alive, well, and maturing. Perhaps you’ll consider their role in your marketing plans for 2011.

Ad Majorem celebrates 1 year of The Big Picture

2010-09-19T10:06:00.007-05:00

This blog is one year old. Thank you, readers: clients, agents, students, generalists, specialists, Renaissance Practitioners, accountability aficionados, media mavens, Mad Men and Women, retailers, digerati, and others who have been reading Ad Majorem. In particular I'd like to thank the 116 of you who signed up as "followers" of this blog. I sincerely appreciate that you took an interest and took the time.

The Big Picture

Ad Majorem has more or less stayed true to its original purpose of chronicling the changes and challenges of modern marketing. The top five most popular posts in Year One were about iPad advertising, being a generalist, global campaigns, "media neutral", and job survival.

To put it simply, Ad Majorem tries to see The Big Picture, which in marketing and advertising today is a Gigantic Venn Diagram of ways to engage consumers who choose the messages they receive as well as the products they buy.

This means Ad Majorem isn't a one stop source for the latest in digital, retail or advertising. Instead it is a one stop source for the latest in how all those channels work together.

Ultimately we aren't interested in marketing solutions, but business solutions. Measurement and accountability will continue as important themes here.

Thanks again for reading!

Channel Neutral vs. Channel Chaos

2010-09-16T21:16:00.007-05:00

TORONTO – Today in Canada we spent the afternoon discussing channel-neutral planning.

The U.S., Saudi Arabia, Canada and beyond

This story really started yesterday in Chicago, however, when we were working on a U.S. assignment. The client wanted us to get a brand “back on the air” after several years by virtue of a new product launch. The assumption was broadcast advertising. Thinking it over, the team saw for this product that TV advertising alone would only drive awareness, perhaps missing opportunities to engage the consumer much closer to the purchase decision.

A colleague who spent much of his career in the Middle East observed how this kind of channel-neutral thinking comes much more naturally outside the U.S. “This is how we always worked in Saudi Arabia,” he said. I’ve had exactly the same experience working in or with countries all over the world. Clients and agencies tend to be less divided into departmental silos, so teamwork comes more naturally.

This same integrated dynamic applies to Canada, where the channel-neutral mindset has always been strong.

Channel-neutral meets Channel Chaos

Having a mindset isn’t enough, though, because the choice of channels is complicated. In the days of Ye Olde Marketing, we had mass media, retail and perhaps direct mail or public relations. In the year 2010, we have so many options that some analysis is required, and that’s what brought me to Toronto today. How do you sort through it all?

The basic principles are simple but not always easy. Know your target. Understand what triggers a purchase. Identify what considerations ensue. Envision the moment of purchase. Figure out how to reinforce loyalty and ensure a repeat customer. You may have this down to a formula; in my QSR days our mantra was “bring ‘em in, trade ‘em up, keep ‘em coming back.”

Still, the choices available for engaging consumers at each part of this story are mind-boggling. Ironically, the efficient size of organizations that reduces departmental silos also reduces the available data and research you can use to analyze this process. Just like in the old days you must make some assumptions. In an age of data and research, this can be frustrating.

Channel Chaos meets Channel Control

There are a number of software developments in the market, in beta-testing or in development that will help us sort through these choices, so stay tuned. Today there was an interesting Adweek article about what IBM has been up to this summer. I’m not sure if it’s the wave of the future but it’s exactly the kind of tool that could help us all turn Channel Chaos into Channel Control.

Can One Agency Really Do It All for a Client?

2010-09-10T09:05:00.008-05:00

Can one agency really do it all for a client?

It depends on what you mean by “all”.

Almost any agency today, unless dedicated to a single discipline, will claim they can “do it all”. As Dan Goldgeier points out, this is often a questionable claim. Few agencies have literally every discipline right at hand. Many claim they can “do it all” with resources somewhere in their holding company. Let’s assume for a moment you can honestly claim to “have it all” either in-house, via corporate siblings, or by hiring free-lancers. Advertising, digital, retail, public relations – everything.

“Have it all” versus “Do it all”

Even if it you “have it all” there are still three overarching keys to “doing it all”:

Media-neutrality. This is a central topic on this blog so it hurt a bit when Goldgeier wrote: “Listen for a line like this: ‘We begin with the idea. We’re media neutral.’ More often than not, it’s bull.” He's right, though: few agencies have a true media-neutral perspective. Clients can hire almost any collection of agencies and get the various disciplines they think they need. They can't, however, write separate budgets for advertising, retail and digital, expecting them to magically fit together. Someone, either a sole agency or a lead agency, has to oversee a media-neutral strategy.

Mindset. Media-neutrality comes from a mindset that if everything starts with the consumer, we will combine all the disciplines in an optimal mix tailored to the client’s business needs. Perhaps we should call this an “open mindset” because my experience is that we must be open to where the data and the insights lead us. For the team to achieve this kind of open-mindedness, it needs great generalists as well as great specialists. If all you have is specialists, the work is likely to get bogged down in media-specific thinking.

Money. Teams of agencies have a hard time sharing projects because each one has its own profit pressure. It’s important for a single-agency team, working on a single assignment for a single client, to have a common P&L. This centralized accounting structure makes the whole team equally responsible for the result. Similarly, the client may want to consider media-neutral compensation. For example, if they normally pay a commission on media for TV advertising and an hourly fee for retail, maybe a unified fee structure is in order.

Why ask one agency to do it all?

I’ve come to the conclusion that one-agency-doing-it-all won’t be an industry standard. To Goldgeier’s point, very few agencies really have the resources. Fewer still are structured in such a way that they are truly media-neutral, have the right mindset, and can overcome money problems.

So why would you ask one agency to do it all?

Partnership. If you are one of the few clients today with a strong agency partnership focused on solving business problems, congratulations. Ask as much of that partner as you dare. If they care about your business, know your consumer and can outfox your competition, they’re a great partner.

Effectiveness. Having multiple outside partners fighting over budgets won’t solve much. Having a single, trusted partner will give you the best combination of an outside sounding board and a fair arbiter of how to allocate your budget among the many different media available today.

Efficiency. One creative resource at the helm means that you stand a better chance of getting a single, consumer-relevant, media-neutral idea that can be executed across channels. This will make your overall budget work harder because the messages will be synchronized.

This isn’t just theory, it’s my experience. Please use the comments section to tell me about yours.

Shop Small Stores

2010-09-08T08:55:00.004-05:00

This past weekend while shopping for ballet supplies with Mrs. Ad Majorem, we visited Allegro Dance Boutique in Evanston, Illinois. At the checkout counter they had buttons with the advice to "Shop Small Stores". There was also information about the 3/50 Project, which I knew nothing about.

The 3/50 Project is an alliance consisting of small, local retailers encouraging shoppers to patronize at least three independent stores to the tune of at least $50 a month. The website starts with the question "What three independently owned businesses would you miss if they disappeared?"

It's a timely message in a down economy. They leverage this sentiment further by claiming that every $100 spent locally returns $68 to "the community" via taxes, payroll and other expenditures.

Retail meets SoMe...again

This alliance is more like a movement, and provides yet another example of how Retail and Social Media intersect. By "social media" we really mean "word of mouth", which in the 21st Century is propelled by technology more so than a conversation across the fence between neighbors.

Still, there's an undeniably passionate, personal feel to the 3/50 Project you can't get from a Walmart greeter or the Starbucks barista who knows what you always order. The "movement" was sparked by a retail consultant, but it sustains itself on the energy of small enterprises on a mission.

The (endlessly clickable) Shallows

2010-09-08T08:40:00.004-05:00

Here's an epilogue to yesterday's review of The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.

Later in the day we were running through an important social media campaign for a valued client. The creative director presented the work as a series of screen shots on boards.

It wasn't intended this way, but there was roughly one presentation board for each link or object a consumer could click. When the creative director finished, we had boards lining every rail.

It wasn't a big room, but the long line of images was an impressive visual display of the endlessly clickable options available to consumers with short attention spans.

Book Review: The Shallows

2010-09-07T07:58:00.009-05:00

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
By Nicholas Carr
W. W. Norton & Co., 276 pages

Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Shallows, explains his theory that the Internet, like all forms of media before it, affects our brains by changing how we think and communicate. In the specific case of the Internet, this effect is to shorten our attention span.

Casting all irony aside, I will now blog about it, in hopes you will have the patience to read an entire book review. Ready? Here goes.

While Carr does believe Internet use reduces the attention span, he actually has a more elaborate thesis: Throughout history, humankind has created many tools, measures and media, all of which literally changed the way we live, usually bringing some advancement to civilization. The human brain adapts to each of these advancements. Neurologists have proven the brain to be plastic in nature, operating according to the routines by which we live. This principle explains muscle memory, addiction, and how we communicate.

The Shallows lasts ten chapters, with the charming irony that Carr interrupts some of the chapter transitions with “a digression”, perhaps to underline his overall point that few of us can stay on track anymore. Nevertheless he stays on track, starting with a personal perspective, then plunging deep into the science of neurology, followed by the history of communication media, and finally tying the two together to show that the Internet, like all media before it, influences our ways of thinking. It’s a compelling case.

This book is thick with science and history, all presented as the engaging story of our journey through oral traditions, cuneiform, papyrus, paper, books and the Internet. Carr sees the benefits of all these media. He embraces the Internet, pointing out how it not only stores information efficiently, but has developed our skills at locating the right information. We may not remember the Dewey Decimal System, because we don’t have to -- and that’s the danger. Carr quotes more than once a caution expressed by Socrates that writing down texts, instead of memorizing them, was “a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.”

Carr is neither Luddite nor Cassandra. Most of the books’ press coverage pursued a “bad Internet” storyline, but in reality Carr sees “the Net” (as he calls it) as simply another invention that’s not only a product of our brains but an influencer of how we use them. In that way the story is a bleak one for bibliophiles. A key finding is that just a decade and a half of Internet usage has reduced our ability to digest long-form literature such as an essay or a book. More than that, Carr laments in a personal observation, “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away at my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” There’s a kind of resistance-is-futile feel to this and other passages of the book.

Carr also captures a debate between Determinists, who say out technology affects our history, and Instrumentalists, who say our history affects our technology. Carr seems to side with the Determinists, based on his analysis of science and history. Science tells us the brain is “plastic”, forming neural pathways based on how we employ it most frequently. History tells us that we have always molded our brains with each new technology, including the map, the clock and the printing press. It’s worth remembering how revolutionary books were as the Renaissance dawned: “To read a book was to practice an unnatural process of thought, one that demanded sustained, unbroken attention to a single, static object.”

Pursuing the Determinist angle, Carr's examination of the Internet focuses on linked text and its cascading cross-references. Reading a page in a physical book leads merely to the next page. Reading a page on the Internet can lead to hundreds of other pages with just one or two clicks. Chapter 7, “The Juggler’s Brain”, explores how Internet multitasking erodes comprehension. You can access all sorts of data but not all at one time. The software you’re using to read this review isn’t called a “browser” for nothing.

Google comes in for some criticism in The Shallows for its über-quantitative culture. Google’s very business model is based on the number of choices people make, so the more links we click, the more data we feed to the beast. It occurred to me while reading this passage that SEM is like direct marketing on Red Bull. Instead of sending in a single BRC, the consumer votes early and often, every time they click.

Why this matters to Marketers

How does The Shallows matter to marketers? I see two implications.

The first implication is how we train ourselves as professionals. The Internet isn’t detrimental unless it becomes our exclusive way of working. The antidote to Carr’s dystopian view is a balanced use of various media, with a return to more contemplative experiences. Reading is solitary and the Internet is interconnected – you’re never alone with your thoughts. We need balance.

The second implication is that we are marketing to a consumer population that increasingly lacks this kind of balance. The advent of social media will drive short attention spans. How can we engage consumers in an environment like this? It won’t be easy. We can only do so much to influence society, but just going with the flow doesn’t do much good. Balance your messages.

I’m glad you stayed with me to the end of this book review. You probably realize that I recommend reading The Shallows, preferably the physical book. You may not have realized that in tribute to the book, this review contained no hypertext links whatsoever.

We will always need Specialists

2010-08-30T15:02:00.005-05:00

One of my four major agenda items, any given day of my career, is people development. In recent times the main task of people development has been to develop Renaissance Practitioners. Said differently, my task is to turn great specialists into great generalists.

Are you a Specialist or a Generalist?

Great specialists only see their own part of the marketing plan. Great generalists can play their position well and see how their work fits into the overall marketing solution we provide to a client. This way we provide business solutions, not just “digital solutions” or “retail solutions”.

SoMe specialist vs. SoMe generalist

Today I read two articles that show how Social Media, the industry specialty of the moment, is evolving in ways that should interest specialists and generalists alike:

A blogger at Sysomos, a business software company, opined today that while SoMe is a small slice of overall advertising investment, it will someday “rule the advertising roost”, eclipsing all known media except outdoor. Maybe so. Veteran ad people know that the #1 advertising medium cited by consumers as “most reliable” has always been “word of mouth”. SoMe is word of mouth in a publishable form.

Meanwhile, a “social media strategist” at Digitas Health laments her job title because it makes her sound too much like a specialist. “Social media,” says Sarah Larcker, “should really be viewed as an integrated part of the holistic strategy for a brand, not its own independent realm.” Sarah is an excellent example of a specialist-generalist.

We will always need Specialists

There’s no doubt that what we currently call SoMe will continue to be a major force in modern marketing. Everyone’s challenge is exactly what Sarah Larcker proposes, to make SoMe a strategic tool rather than a tactical silo.

We will always need specialists, however. Technology continues to develop daily and someone has to be on top of the changes – it’s a full-time job. New media will continue to evolve and we need specialists to show us how it can work.

The question is how much of a generalist do you aspire to be? You may always have your specialty, but having a big-picture perspective will keep your skills relevant.

Automatic Advertising

2010-08-29T22:02:00.005-05:00

As computers moved from computing to other intellectual tasks, people have wondered when computers would achieve artificial intelligence and take over tasks only humans could do, such as develop advertisements.

OK, maybe “develop advertisements” isn’t as high on the list of possibilities as writing great literature or curing cancer, but this is a blog devoted to modern marketing so please stick with me for a moment.

Automatic Advertising

Some recent news stories raise the specter of computer-generated, automatic advertising:

BETC Euro RSCG in Paris has, according to the New York Times, “developed software that can produce elementary advertisements.” It’s called CAI, for Creative Artificial Intelligence. Apparently the software requires you to answer questions such as you would consider when writing a creative brief and voila, hundreds of samples result. Industry veterans in the audience are thinking right now, “What if the brief is poorly written?” The New York Times skips over this point.

PlaceLocal, a startup that provides a similar service to local merchants seeking nearby customers, is even more automated. For example, a pizza restaurant need only provide its location, phone number, web address, et cetera, and PlaceLocal creates a simplified ad to run in local media. The program was developed by Paper G, an advertising technology company. This service strikes me as perfect for small business people who can’t hire someone to place ads for them.

It’s also perfect for local newspapers which can better monetize their web operations instead of pounding the pavement to sell ads in their print editions. That leads me to my next point.

Automatic Media

Both of these developments focus on developing an advertisement, but neither of them really addresses the best medium where the messages should be placed. Where’s the automatic media planning software? In modern marketing, finding the right place to invest the media budget is a much more interesting question than in the past. Back in the days of Ye Olde Marketing we had just a few vehicles to consider.

Today there are many choices. To be sure, there is software to help you navigate the options – Compose, for example. It’s not a substitute for decision-making, though. You use the technology to help you analyze, and then you decide based on everything you know. Similarly, after creating ads with Euro’s CAI software, someone probably decides which ad is the best (or if the brief needs to be rewritten).

Automatic for the People

Crowdsourcing is a phenomenon combining both technology and humanity. Many of you have seen or read about the various crowdsourcing experiments for Mountain Dew under the banner of their DEWmocracy project. Many of these projects sought consumer input in developing the right creative, but a recent experiment sought specific input as to what media vehicles are right for the brand. That’s worth watching.

It’s always important to determine what the right creative message looks like, but part of that determination process is writing a channel plan. A copywriter can hardly write the best print ad if she thinks she’s writing a TV commercial.

Take 2: Define "advertising" in one sentence

2010-08-26T16:44:00.008-05:00

In April we reported on a LinkedIn discussion where 200 respondents each tried to define “advertising” in one sentence. There was no consensus other than advertising has many definitions.

In the past week or so, someone restarted the conversation and we now have more than 360 responses. Talk about a long tail.

The absolute latest industry thinking

Here were some of the more interesting recent responses:

Bill Murphy, paraphrasing Claude Hopkins: “Advertising is salesmanship in print – the only purpose of advertising is to make sales.”

Ana Placinta, with a nod to branding: “Advertising is when a crispy brown beer becomes the Guinness beer.”

Al Shultz, pointing out a fundamental task: “Advertising is differentiating your product/service from everyone else’s.”

Anthony Butler, who understands channel planning: “The right message to the right customer at the right time.”

Damian Jozane, who understands common sense: “Advertising is finding what people know, but nobody has said.”

What is your definition of “advertising” in one sentence?

My answer appears in the LinkedIn discussion and in my last post on this subject. What is your definition of “advertising” in one sentence?

Please use the space below to add your thoughts. Maybe we’ll keep it to less than 100 answers.

Who "owns" Mobile around the world?

2010-08-20T09:24:00.005-05:00

Yesterday's post suggested that "Who owns Mobile?" is the wrong question for turf-conscious agency people. It's better to focus on learning about Mobile, because clients will ask "Who knows Mobile?" Who can give me a business solution?

In the other words, learn the territory instead of trying to grab it.

By the way -- it's a global territory.

Roaming charges

A colleague used to joke that any self-proclaimed mobile expert was required to say, at least once a day in a meeting, "The U.S. mobile market is in the Stone Age compared to what they have in Hong Kong."

It's no joke. Mobile has evolved in different ways and to different degrees all over the world. Many Africans depend on mobile services to do their banking. Britons driving into London can pay the commuting tax on their mobile phones.

It's 4G, comrade

The Economist reports this week that Yota, a Russian start up, has laid 3,000 km of its own fiber-optic lines to start a 4G network. Yes, 4G is coming (see the chart above).

You may also want to read this Economist article about the mobile market in South-East Asia.

Learn the territory

Yesterday's post advised: learn the territory. Today's corollary lesson is: learn the global territory. That way when clients ask "Who knows Mobile?" you can answer them with confidence.

A Note to Readers

2010-08-19T16:29:00.004-05:00

Two recent posts on Ad Majorem strayed a bit from our usual subject matter -- the changes and challenges of modern marketing -- into more general territory about Internet regulation.

To be sure, Internet regulation intersects with modern marketing. The Internet governs many aspects of 21st Century life, including marketing, and regulation has been discussed here before.

Still, this blog doesn't take sides politically. On the subject of Net Neutrality, for example, I invited a collaborative discussion which turned into a small political kerfuffle.

A bit of Internet research showed me that Net Neutrality has become a partisan issue of our times: Red vs. Blue, MoveOn.org vs. Tea Party, Newt Gingrich vs. Al Franken.

A related finding was that in place of thorough, inductive discussion there is a lot of back-and-forth argument and even name-calling. I'll stay out of that debate until it calms down.

The question I'd like to ask you, dear reader, is: Any advice? Anything you want to see addressed on this blog? Is there a subject you want me to drop? I'd love to have your opinion.

Thanks very much.

Who "owns" Mobile?

2010-08-19T16:14:00.006-05:00

Smartphones will eclipse feature phones as a percentage of the U.S. mobile device population by the end of 2011. Clients are discovering smartphone apps that offer an opportunity to engage and continue consumer relationships. Agencies each want to be the one to help their clients leverage these apps. All kinds of agencies: traditional, new breed, media and of course digital.

Which agencies own Mobile?

First we ought to properly frame the question. An AdAge.com article this week took the view that "creative agencies" and "media agencies" are fighting over the right to "own" Mobile. Apparently they put digital agencies into the "creative" category, which is fine as far as it goes.

It doesn't go far enough, however. Missing from the discussion is retail. Some promotion and shopper marketing agencies are starting to create mobile apps for their clients, and retailers themselves are developing programs in which their vendors - uh, partners - can buy into - uh, participate. One example described in Tuesday's NYTimes.com is Shopkick, currently backed by Macy's and four other retailers.

The gigantic Venn diagram

The landscape of agencies, clients and retailers is more complicated than just "creative" and "media" agencies. This shouldn't surprise us in an era where all available marketing channels form a gigantic Venn diagram that shifts and overlaps in new ways every week. We've observed this before (here and here) and in a way it's the point of this blog.

Asking who owns mobile is like asking who owns television: the agency who develops a 30" commercial, the agency who plans or buys, the network or station, the program developer or the cable service provider.

It's the same with mobile. Someone has to decide there's an opportunity to engage consumers via a mobile device. Someone has to develop the app or ad. Someone has to figure out the way to engage the consumer, which in some cases will be a display media buy and other cases something resembling word of mouth marketing.

Mobile survival guide

There are two implications here:

Who knows Mobile? Clients won’t ask which agency owns Mobile, they’ll ask who knows Mobile. If you’re an agency person, worry less about whether you should handle Mobile and more about whether you’re prepared to handle it.

Mobile is not a silo. This actually applies to all disciplines, but you can’t treat Mobile or anything else as its own discipline. It has to be considered as a strategic option from the beginning, and made part of the plan if and only if the business solution demands it. Planned that way, it will work well together with advertising, digital and retail.

"Net Neutrality"

2010-08-05T12:01:00.010-05:00

Following Wednesday's post about the role of government at the intersection of Marketing and the Internet comes the latest news about "net neutrality".

Net Neutrality

The actual term is "network neutrality", a concept where all Internet access would be treated equally. All access to all content would be available at the same speed. There's a complete article on Wikipedia describing it fully. In any case, it sounds like an appealing concept, doesn't it?

Not so fast...

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission tried to enforce net neutrality last year, but the courts ruled that the Internet falls outside their jurisdiction. The FCC regulates broadcast communications only, not even cable television, while the Internet counts as an "information service".

You get what you pay for

The opposite of net neutrality is a tiered system, where Internet users would pay their service providers a premium to access certain content faster. This would depend on an arrangement among Internet service providers such as Verizon, content providers and users willing to pay more.

The latest news

Since the FCC is powerless (for now) to enforce net neutrality, those who own the networks are starting to arrange tiered systems. This week the New York Times reported that Google and Verizon are close to such a deal; today Google and Verizon denied it, saying they were continuing to talk to the government. The FCC says that the talks are on hold for the moment.

What's my position on net neutrality?

No one can say how this will play out. The starry-eyed idealist in me wants to believe in net neutrality because it sounds fair and equal. Yet the Internet is not a government program, it's a commercial enterprise. Said differently, it's publishing.

If net neutrality had been applied to newspapers and magazines, then every consumer would have paid the same price for each magazine they received, no matter how premium the content or how many pages it required.

You may perceive that I haven't decided what I think about this. Please use the comments section to sway me to one side or the other.

The "marketing kill switch"

2010-08-04T08:24:00.015-05:00

You just arrived at this page from somewhere else on the Internet, perhaps by link, RSS feed or a tweet. Thanks to a combination of 1s and 0s, a microprocessor, some network switching technology and electricity, everything worked. We take this for granted.

No Internet?

When you can’t get a connection, it’s usually a problem with your server or your Internet service provider. But what about a mass outage where no one can get online? This situation was memorably captured in an episode of South Park, but some recent news items report very real threats.

“We’re from the government, and we’re here to help”

The U.S. Congress is considering the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (S. 3480), which has been reported as an “Internet kill switch”. The truth is a little more complicated, but undeniably the law would allow for circumstances where the executive branch of the U.S. Government could shut down the Internet. You can read the law for yourself and this letter from civil liberties groups opposing it.

Force majeure

NASA reported earlier this summer that an expected increase in solar activity will threaten our telecommunications infrastructure. “Our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms,” said NASA scientist Richard Fisher. The good news is that they’re watching the Sun carefully. If you’re reading this today it means we suffered no consequence from a “solar tsunami” that hit Earth last night.

Downtime

By act of Congress or act of God, a major shutdown would be catastrophic and few people would care if we couldn't sell our clients’ products. Fortunately, everyday life is much less dramatic. Technical downtime happens here and there every day, affecting about 0.1% of operating time in most commercial applications. Someone fixes it and we get back to business pretty quickly.

Marketing kill switch

The bigger concern is protecting commercial speech. There has been a lot of press lately about how corporations invade privacy via Internet data collection, and we should take those concerns seriously. At the same time, let's be aware of government abuse. Just as a local government used Google Earth to spy on residents' backyards, there are other efforts to restrict how we advertise and sell products online. These amount to a "marketing kill switch" that would a cause a scene in your office like the one in South Park.

Tell me your thoughts, readers, in the comments section below.

Copywriting versus Copypasting

2010-08-02T09:15:00.009-05:00

In my morning e-mail summary from MediaBistro, the following two items appeared next to one another (click the above image to read for yourself).

New York Times item about how digital technology is redefining for young people the concepts of authorship and plagiarism.

Media Bistro class on Copywriting for the Web.

One was about Copywriting and the other was about Copypasting. Now that's product placement!

Reducing Assortment II

2010-08-01T08:53:00.006-05:00

About a month ago we posted on the subject of reducing assortment, or retailers removing brands and SKUs from their shelves in an effort to make shopping simpler for their customers. In other words, reducing assortment is a matter of reducing complexity. Unfortunately it also seems to be a matter of reducing sales.

Ad people discover retail

This situation is starting to hit the radar screen of ad industry people. For example, this month AdAge.com published a comprehensive report, focusing mainly on Walmart and its Project Impact. The article comments were pretty good, mentioning other retailers' initiatives

Other articles worth reading

Walmart’s “action alley” started getting crowded again in March, with big displays from Pepsi and the New Moon DVD that month. For a hybrid industry/consumer look at the effect in stores, check out this post from Wallet Pop last week.

Hub Magazine -- a publication worth reading in general -- ran an article called "The Walmart Crapshoot", which offers an insightful analysis of Project Impact, including an important historical comparison between Walmart and Kroger.

What will Walmart look like this Christmas?

You can read a lot on the Internet, of course, but there's nothing like a good store check to figure out what's really going on. The next few months will be interesting as Walmart decides how their stores should look as we approach Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season.

The Man Who Sold America

2010-07-30T23:08:00.007-05:00

There's a new book about the old days of advertising. Before the Internet. Before television.

Before even Mad Men.

The Man Who Sold America

This new book, written by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz, is called The Man Who Sold America. It's a biography of Albert Lasker, who made Lord & Thomas into the most successful American ad agency before selling out in 1942 to three men named Foote, Cone and Belding.

If you believe the past offers lessons for the future, and if you're interested in the fundamentals of the advertising business, this would be a book worth reading. (We posted about this era back in May.)

Yes, it's a recommendation

Full disclosure: One of the authors is a former chairman of FCB, and yours truly is employed at Draftfcb.

But don't take our word for it; check out this review in the Wall Street Journal written by former O&M chairman Ken Roman.

Um... So why exactly did you buy this billboard, then?

2010-07-22T09:18:00.003-05:00

Why closing Agency.com is a good thing

2010-07-16T09:26:00.013-05:00

Omnicom announced this week the closing of Agency.com. They are dividing up its businesses and merging them with other Omnicom units like TBWA and its sister unit, production services shop E-Graphics Worldwide. This is a good thing.

The name alone should have been retired

"Agency.com" tells you in the most generic way possible "this is a digital agency". It also sounds a little out of date. When Chan Suh (pictured at right) founded Agency.com in 1995, the name made sense. Since then, however, even Publicis rebranded Modem Media as "Publicis Modem" which if it didn't sound like a Latin phrase would evoke ancient 20th century technology. Who uses a modem anymore? You might as well start an ad agency called Black Rotary Telephone.

Digital has evolved into much more than web sites

The ".com" suffix describes a company that came of age when most digital work was the creation of websites. Agency.com didn't seem to develop a reputation beyond that kind of work during most of their tumultuous history. Their biggest recent achievement was the 2009 revamp of Skittles.com. The world doesn't need an agency specializing in websites anymore, because people (read: consumers) engage with brands via many other vehicles such as social media.

The race to the middle has many courses

To that point, new breeds of digital agency have sprung up, some with highly specialized capabilities (Reprise for SEM, Ansible for mobile) and others with broader, evolving capabilities (R/GA, Digitas). As Forrester pointed out in their survey of digital agencies last year, many of these have distinct orientations, i.e. some are more analytical, some more focused on writing code, some more focused on creative, et cetera.

Closing Agency.com is a good thing

It seems Agency.com had solid skills in digital production, because many of their people and assets are being merged into Omnicom's production services companies. This makes a lot of sense given holding companies' move into the production business.

It's worth mentioning that Omnicom rechristened Agency.com San Francisco as "Signal to Noise" and according to Adweek it will "operate as an integrated marketing company."

So: The name was old. The business model was old. The work, and the people, live on in different business units better suited to their talents. And that's a good thing.

How to know "which half of my advertising budget is wasted"

2010-07-15T14:20:00.005-05:00

The biggest change in the advertising business today isn’t digital, social media or even the tectonic plate shifts of retail. It’s the measurement and accountability of marketing programs.

Measurement and accountability have been an issue for at least a century, as evidenced by the John Wanamaker quote, “I know half my advertising budget is wasted; I just don’t know which half.

We’ve written about this here, here and here, and made it a central theme in The History of Advertising, which is posted here on SlideShare. Today’s post won’t be the last one on this subject.

How do you know which half of the budget is wasted?

The simple – but not easy – answer: “do your homework”. Just by slogging through data and analyzing it you will learn a lot. So far there is no magical data processing program that can calculate the ROI of everything together.

You can still learn, however, by sitting down and concentrating on Nielsen data, costs-per-lead, et cetera, and figuring out what’s really going on. There is no shortage of data, just time to sort through it all.

Lesson from the world of Economics

Recently two economists published a book about financial bubbles throughout history titled “This Time is Different”. Their thesis is that every time an economic bubble grows, the market’s participants believe “this time is different” – and it never is. We’re always surprised when the bubble bursts.

What’s amazing about their work, though, is how comprehensively they collected and analyzed data. They reviewed economic records across five continents, sixty-six countries – and over a time period of 800 years. 800 years.

You’re a lot less likely to doubt their findings when they’ve put that kind of work into their analysis. (If you’re interested in what they did, you can buy the book here and read more about it here and here.)

Lesson for the world of Advertising

Surprisingly, economists seem to have the same aversion to data as many in our industry. In an interview about “This Time is Different”, the co-authors both observe that modern economic thinking emphasizes theories over actual analysis. Their 800 years of homework is apparently not the norm for economists.

This was reflected in one of Ronald Reagan’s better lines: “An economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders if it would work in theory.”

We run a similar risk, relying only on theories and never sitting down with the data to understand what actually happens. Doing your homework will help prove your worth, and perhaps which parts of the budget are being wasted.

Bogusky wasn't the only interesting personnel news last week

2010-07-10T22:07:00.005-05:00

Alex Bogusky’s resignation from MDC and CP+B last week created quite a stir in the ad industry. To be sure, it’s the end of an era. It wasn't a big surprise, though – Bogusky has increasingly worked on side projects to the point where it seemed his day job became a side project.

It might be an understatement to say his next moves will be closely watched by an industry hungry for heroes, prophets and high priests. There’s no doubt he will go on to pioneer some new ways to engage consumers on behalf of marketers.

Print and Digital at Condé Nast

Meanwhile, Condé Nast just promoted Scott Dadich, the creative director at Wired magazine, to the additional post of “executive director of digital magazine development.” According to some press reports, his mission is to replicate the success of such projects as Wired for the iPad at other Condé Nast titles.

With all due respect to Bogusky, this may turn out to be an even more interesting personnel move. Most of us have realized that Digital has affected Print media much more than it has affected Broadcast. Dadich is in a real position to leverage this shift for a big legacy print publisher.

The CMO: Not so endangered?

2010-07-10T21:40:00.005-05:00

Executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart has been tracking the average tenure of CMOs for the past few years. You may have the figure “18 months” in mind. You may also have in mind that this is an indicator of how hazardous is the changing landscape of marketing.

If so, perhaps the situation is improving. A year or so ago, CMO tenure was actually 28.4 months. Just a couple of weeks ago it moved up to 34.7 months. Healthcare and Financial services CMOs tend to stay longer. Automotive and media company CMOs don’t last as long.

None of this means that the pace of change is slower or that marketing no longer needs to innovate or adapt. In fact change is coming at us much more rapidly. It’s just that we won’t have to deal with the additional – and often unnecessary – change of command.

Freedom and Diversity

2010-07-02T23:35:00.006-05:00

We often post about diversity -- or the lack thereof -- in the advertising business. By virtue of previous posts I've become acquainted with Derek Walker of Brown and Browner Advertising in Columbia, South Carolina. Derek writes about diversity in AdAge.com's Big Tent column.

At least, he used to. On 27 May 2010 he published his last column. I'm calling it to your attention for two reasons.

First, Derek's is an authentic, frustrated voice. Reading this column may upset you, or make you uncomfortable. That's probably normal -- and good.

Second, scroll down if you would and read the amazing comment posted by Harry Webber. He wrote about a Memorial Day experience that's equally appropriate for July 4th.

You can find Derek's article and Harry's comment here. If you like what Harry Webber wrote, give it a "thumbs up".

After you read Harry's comment, you'll understand how the fight for freedom is like the fight for diversity.

As we say in Latin: E pluribis unum. Out of many, one.

Latin America: Cannes, World Cup, and the Economy

2010-07-01T10:37:00.005-05:00

I've been thinking about Latin America, my former home, a lot this week, partly because Mrs. Ad Majorem is in Guatemala on a missions trip helping run a medical clinic.

A few other things keep Latin America top of mind.

Cannes

Every year at Cannes the Latin American countries win recognition for their work, and this year was no exception. This morning AdLatina.com published a rundown of festival performance, with Brasil and Argentina leading the pack. (They list Spain as #2 because AdLatina represents an Ibero-American perspective.)

World Cup

Going into this weekend's games, four of the eight quarter-finalists are from South America. I'll be cheering for Brasil over Holland, Uruguay over Ghana, Argentina over Germany, and Paraguay over Spain.

The Economy

Beyond Cannes and the Cup, the region enjoys some economic success, at least for the moment. NYTimes.com has a good roundup this morning. Also see this article on Brasil's tax policies.

Reducing Assortment

2010-06-18T08:02:00.014-05:00

In the past year or so you may have read about retailers “reducing assortment”, which in English means taking some brands and products off their shelves. You may also have heard about Walmart’s Project Impact, which sought to de-clutter their stores of signage as well as low-velocity SKUs. All retailers are doing this to some extent, so watch out, because if you really like Brand X, it might be gone when the store you shop reduces their assortment.

Why reduce assortment?

Why do this? Retailers say it makes shopping easier for their customers. In an interview with MediaPost this week, Stuart Taylor, VP/Customer Analytics for Nielsen, highlighted the ease-of-shopping rationale, saying 60% of the retail chains they surveyed “are doing it to reduce shopper confusion.” Research would seem to back him up. In comments to analysts last year, P&G’s then-CEO, A.G. Lafley, cited store tests where reduced assortment had no negative impact on sales or consumers’ sense of variety. In fact, he said, consumers believed they had more choices. I don’t doubt his research.

Real-world experience, however, hasn’t been so rosy. The most recent press about reducing assortment has focused on the consumer backlash. What? You mean I can’t buy Ben & Jerry’s here anymore? Walmart shoppers loyal to a delisted brand would have to complete their shopping trip at Target.

Reduce this!

Taylor admits in the interview that “as variety goes down, sales go down, too.” He’s not the only one to have noticed this correlation, which is why you’re hearing about retailers reconsidering reducing assortment.

It’s important, though, not to overlook Taylor’s bit of analysis on why sales went down. “Instead of thinking of this just as a cost puzzle,” he advises, “we need to bring the consumer into the picture.” (Maybe he's read this, this and this.)

Don't kill the golden goose

My observation is that retailers focused less on consumer choices and more on which manufacturers would give them the best deals. Buyers know that if you tell four brands you are only going to accept two of them, you'll start a negotiation where at least one of the winners reduces price.

The case for reducing confusion and streamlining store operations is a good one. If it’s strictly financially-driven, however, it won’t benefit anyone.

Listen to your audience, not your gut

2010-06-16T22:55:00.020-05:00

One of the oldest criticisms of the advertising business is that its people are out of touch with its audiences. We hear this a lot because it's true.

Nature vs. Nurture

You may have read (here or here) about a recent Xyte Inc. study finding that most ad people are of a particular personality type that shapes the messages we produce.

Unfortunately, those messages don't connect as well with the other personality types that represent most consumers.

Blind Spots

The diagram above came from a colleague's presentation about social media. He was pointing out how most marketing people think iPhones are ubiquitous, while in reality they're not (yet).

iPhone penetration is such an easy thing to ascertain, so why would it be such a blind spot? Because we don't stop and look beyond our own experience.

Start with the basics

The implication is that we have to work extra hard to understand our consumers. Recently we've posted about empathy toward consumers (here and here), which takes sustained effort.

Start by using your iPhone to your advantage. Look up some basic data, such as the average weekly grocery budget in a typical household. (Some people say it can be $20.)

Make it a habit

Don't stop with one statistic, though. Work hard to get a feel for what your audience is really like. Listen to them every opportunity you get.

Regardless of your personality type, building a relationship with someone takes time and effort. If we treat our audiences this way, our messages will be relevant and our work better.

Democracy on Foursquare

2010-06-10T03:12:00.005-05:00

Recently on Foursquare, I was ousted as Mayor of my client's headquarters....by my client.

For the past few months I was unchallenged. No one at the client was checking in. This didn't seem right, even if you don't count my insistence on being addressed as "Your Honor".

Several of my clients now vie for the title, and I doubt I'll take it back anytime soon.

I wouldn't have it any other way. This is progress.

Is "Consumer" a bad word?

2010-06-09T10:22:00.006-05:00

EDINBURGH – Yesterday in our meeting with European colleagues we returned to the subject of empathy and Dev Patnaik’s book, Wired to Care. (We posted about this in January.)

Discussions with people from around the world always force us to clarify the meaning of our words. Dropping our idioms and figures of speech make us communicate clearly in international audiences.

In yesterday’s discussion we agreed that the word “consumer” describes what someone does, not who they are. Empathy is not about getting people to consume, but understanding who they are as people so we can get them to consume.

So, to drop the jargon and speak plainly: Shouldn’t we just call them “people”?

Transcend, Transcreate, Translate

2010-06-08T10:59:00.005-05:00

EDINBURGH – Meeting with colleagues from around Europe underlines the challenges of advertising the same message in many languages.

Increasingly, clients must market the same brands and products in different countries around the world. This isn’t a matter of simply translating messages into various languages. It’s having an idea that works across borders. I’ve posted about this before (here, here and here). It’s challenging.

My previous post about Story, Creative and Content made me think a little differently about this challenge. The point of that post was that marketing today requires us to distinguish among those three concepts. Story is strategy, Creative is an idea, and Content is what we produce to put in all the appropriate media or channels.

Here’s how that works internationally.

Stories must Transcend

Stories are strategies, and internationally they must transcend market situations and cultural differences. This often means we must look at similarities across borders, not searching for the lowest common denominator but the simplest, most powerful story. A timely example is Nike’s World Cup theme, “Write the future”. It’s a good story.

Create and Transcreate

Creative is an idea, and internationally one can transcreate these ideas – not translate, but transcreate. That means we think about how our story can or must be told in different market situations. Perhaps the creative varies because of differences in the frame of reference, source of volume or competitive set. The best case is to advertise a brand message, as in the Nike World Cup example, while specific product ads usually require more adaptation.

Content is what we Translate

Content is what we produce to put in the appropriate channels, and internationally this is what we translate into German, Dutch, Arabic, French, Mandarin Chinese, et cetera. Raid Kills Bugs Dead. Raid los mata bién muertos.

Transcend, Transcreate, Translate

Marketing today requires us to distinguish among Story, Creative and Content. Internationally this requires us to Transcend, Transcreate and Translate.

Story, Content or Creative?

2010-06-03T14:22:00.008-05:00

The other day the word "story" kept coming up.

The first mention of "story" came when a former colleague described his new startup, which writes content for brands that publish editorial related to what they sell, perhaps in a lifestyle magazine, social media app, or even simply a website. An agency that does this is actually called Story. It's fascinating when you think of all the content these initiatives require. Similar to what I posted about online media, content requires constant care and feeding.

Later the same day I interviewed a strategic planner candidate who, coincidentally, brought up "story" as the basis of all marketing communications. You hear this in advertising agencies. A great copy test researcher once told us his definition of great advertising: "A good story well told."

Lastly, someone tweeted about a book offering a "storytelling manifesto for change-makers and innovators".

This made me think about three overlapping words: story, content and creative. Are they the same thing?

Try this: story is strategy, creative is an idea, content is what we produce to put in all the appropriate media or channels.

How would you distinguish among these? Let me have your POV below.

The Race to the Middle

2010-06-01T19:31:00.009-05:00

Today we had ample opportunity to think about the Race to the Middle, which is Forrester Research's description of how traditional ad agencies are building digital/data capabilities, while digital agencies are building brand/strategic capabilities. Both parties seek the territory and clients of the other.

Winning the Race to the Middle

There will be many winners of the Race to the Middle, from both sides. They all will share some common characteristics, chief among them a willingness to break out of their comfort zones.

One giant leap

A large group of my colleagues got out of their comfort zones today simply by attending an agency-sponsored, daylong digital immersion, including a presentation by a Forrester executive. Although Forrester has cited our agency for its digital prowess, not everyone has the same level of learning, experience and capability. Most of the audience got out of their comfort zones simply by their willingness to learn.

There's no need to wait for someone to train you, however. We all must take a DIY approach.

One small step

For example: This morning there was an article on AdAge.com by an anonymous creative director at a big ad agency who went to his first digital creative awards show. It was a sincere reflection on what was obviously a new frontier for him. Still, you could be forgiven for thinking: Did this guy just wake up after 20 years?

Indeed, this sentiment showed up in the article's comments section. It seemed tragic that a creative director could be turning his attention to digital for the first time.

The bigger tragedy, however, would be if he stopped after one awards show. I wanted to track him down and exhort him, in Churchill's words, to "keep buggering on".

Keep buggering on

Our business isn't made of bricks or clicks, but of people. Agencies who win the Race to the Middle will owe their victories to individual employees who get out of their comfort zones and add to their personal skill sets. Find your own ways to participate and learn by doing. If you have any suggestions, please add them in the comments section below.

Get A Mac, 2006-2009

2010-05-24T11:39:00.007-05:00

Many of you knew that Apple decided, perhaps last year, to conclude the "Get A Mac" campaign, in which actors Justin Long (the Mac) and John Hodgman (the PC) carried on a three-year, 40-commercial compare-and-contrast between the two operating systems.

This week Apple confirmed that they're ending the campaign; MacRumors pointed out last week that they even took down all the commercials from their website. It's all sad because this was a campaign of great strategy and great execution.

Two great things about "Get A Mac"

There were at least two other great things about this campaign.

They proved demos need not be boring. One of the least imaginative feats of advertising is to insert a side-by-side product demo emphasizing the advertised product's advantage. It's much more effective -- and entertaining -- when the demo and the story are one and the same.

They proved operating systems can be an advertised product. Most of the campaign emphasized Apple's user-friendly operating system instead of its user-friendly hardware. An operating system really can't have a product shot, which makes this campaign such brilliant storytelling.

A walk down memory lane

Here is a 3' 45" tribute video of great moments from the campaign: click here.

AdFreak has the complete campaign all on one web page: click here.

Super Delicious Ingredient Force

2010-05-21T21:32:00.008-05:00

One of the conundrums of our business is whether advertising influences the culture, or the other way around.

It's both. We need to be really careful what we do, particularly when it comes to diversity, because it sets an example.

Some colleagues just launched a new program for Taco Bell that features a very, uh, diverse cast of characters, and it shows what happens when the culture influences advertising.

I'm talking about the Super Delicious Ingredient Force, which borrows heavily from the Filmation cartoons of the 1970s (see examples here and here).

Watch it yourself and enjoy.

Design, empathy and understanding

2010-05-19T14:58:00.008-05:00

NEW YORK -- Last night we had dinner with Bob Greenberg, founder of R/GA, Sam Farber, founder of OXO, and Patrick Whitney, dean of IIT's Institute of Design. All three men are successful because they take time to understand their consumers.

Sam Farber's story is worth telling because it's a great example of human empathy. In retirement he saw his wife struggle with utensils that could handle cooking but were themselves hard to handle if you suffered from arthritis. From this experience he came out of retirement and founded OXO, a line of easier-to-use kitchenware.

Whether you're designing a product or marketing one, it is absolutely critical to have empathy toward and understanding of the people to who you're selling. I've posted before on consumer understanding and some of the ways we can all gain it through our own daily initiatives.

Ethnography, the study of human society, is much more of an applied science in marketing today. Many clients and agencies recognize the value of ethnographic research and there are firms and consultants capable of helping them. These endeavors require significant time, money and patience -- but the payoff can be huge.

Whether you commit to ethnographic research or simply find your own ways to connect with consumers, empathy is critical. The most inspired designs and ads all started with a simple act of listening and understanding.

More from the Draftfcb global meeting

2010-05-18T23:26:00.009-05:00

MIAMI -- Our global managers' meeting continued today with presentations by the agency's leadership.

Here were some of the thoughts they expressed, with my own perspectives on them.

Ideas. Before Draftfcb and before FCB there was Lord & Thomas and one of that agency's pillars was Albert Lasker (1880-1952). In remarks today, Howard Draft pointed out that Lasker was a man who understood ideas. Lasker suggested advertising orange juice so Sunkist Growers could sell more oranges, naming rights on a baseball stadium so William Wrigley could promote chewing gum, and radio program sponsorship -- he invented the soap opera.

These are Ideas. In our industry we often confuse Ideas with Creative. All creative comes from an idea but Ideas should be bigger than the creative they inspire.

Touchpoints. Jonathan Harries has told me many times "there are many touchpoints but only certain points of persuasion." In other words we gain nothing by promulgating our messages in as many channels as possible. We must choose only the relevant ones.

Most of you know that IMC moved past spider charts (the more legs the better) and matching luggage (everything must look exactly alike) a long time ago.

Celebrate. You may not have noticed but Draftfcb is doing well right now. Laurence Boschetto encouraged us to stop and take a moment -- 3 years, 11 months and 18 days into the Draftfcb merger -- and celebrate what we've accomplished. We got into advertising because it's supposed to be fun.

Oddly, this morning while Laurence was talking, I got an e-mail from the guy who first hired me at Leo Burnett some years ago. It was a short, personal, encouraging note, completely out of the blue, that ended with this exhortation: "Have fun!"

Thank you, Hank! I will.

Draftfcb's global managers' meeting

2010-05-17T23:24:00.006-05:00

MIAMI – Draftfcb’s top executives from around the world are gathered here for a global managers’ meeting. The event began with an informal dinner tonight and continues with presentations and meetings tomorrow.

Given my work with global accounts, these are great-to-see-you-again, how’s-business-in-your-country, abrazos fuertes kind of affairs. It’s a blessing to have friends from many countries and the chance to catch up with them.

At the same time, there are new relationships and new business topics. This evening I got acquainted with some newer leaders from around the network. There was also the opportunity to connect two people who can now collaborate across agency subsidiaries.

“Ideas” will be a consistent theme over the next few days. Reading the ad industry blogosphere, you can see a lot about how “Ideas” are a common language across disciplines, as in: “A good idea transcends a TV storyboard and should work in other channels as well.”

True enough. Increasingly, though, we’ll also see “Ideas” as a common language across borders, as in: “A good idea transcends language and should work in many countries as well.” The close working relationships among my global colleagues makes this possible.

Focus Group Bingo

2010-05-12T10:44:00.012-05:00

Recently we held some focus groups with the aware/non-triers of a consumer product.

I love focus groups because you can listen to consumers talk about your product, your category, or your ads.

I hate focus groups for the same reason. Some people listen to consumers and quickly draw a pre-conceived conclusion.

Listen up

This hazard makes listening all the more important. You spend thousands of dollars renting a facility, hiring a moderator, writing the questionnaire, recruiting the consumers, preparing the stimulus. You want to get the most out of the investment. Knowing what people say is critical. So turn off the distractions and pay attention.

Focus Group Bingo

A fun way to stay engaged is play focus group bingo. Before you get to the facility, make a grid like the one pictured above and populate it with terms you might expect consumers to say. These could include a product benefit or feature, a brand name, a competitor, and ad, or an annoying, oft-repeated phrase (like "that’s how we roll").

When a consumer utters one of the phrases, place an M&M candy on that square. Most focus group facilities have a good supply of M&Ms.

Not exactly a new idea….

Apparently there’s a company that actually offers a focus group bingo board. See it here. Their idea is based on the obligatory getting-to-know-you chit-chat that starts almost every focus group.

What’s on your Focus Group Bingo board?

Please suggest your favorite terms for focus group bingo in the comments section below.

Why Global Brands matter

2010-05-10T09:21:00.010-05:00

When we think of global category leaders, Coca-Cola and McDonald's are top-of-mind examples. Even if they aren't #1 in every country, they're big globally.

Some big global brands, however, are a combination of different brands in different countries. If you travel abroad you may notice that Pledge in other countries is Pronto, Pliz or Blem.

Reckitt Benckiser, a large CPG company, recently rebranded some products so they could market the same product under a common, global brand. U.S. readers may have noticed recently that Electrosol dishwasher detergent is changing to Finish - as it is known in the rest of the world. Reckitt also rebranded many household insecticides under Mortein. It was noted this week that Starbucks' Via brand instant coffee is going global as well.

Why have a global brand?

Why should a brand be global? Most of the reasons cited in company propaganda tout the cost efficiencies of having the same product, package, and promotion around the world. To be sure, this benefit would extend to reducing staff in local subsidiaries who were responsible for commercializing products locally.

There is another opportunity to consider: Social media. A recent post by venture capitalist Fred Wilson points out that most visitors to major online resources are from outside the United States: 72% of visitors on Twitter, 78% on Facebook, and 84% on Google. None of these numbers are very surprising.

Fred’s point was that these companies need to pay as much attention to monetizing their usage around the world as they do in the United States. He wisely pointed out that this will happen faster for some countries than for others.

Global brands permit global conversation

If you have ever tracked your brand on any social media, you know that people are discussing it, and in some cases spelling it differently or slightly misstating the brand or product name. Imagine trying to track this conversation if your brand name is different from country to country.

Years ago this didn’t matter, not only because consumers didn’t regularly communicate with others abroad, but because marketing was so different from country to country. Today you are likely to have the same product marketed under the same name, if not globally, then in every country within the Euro Zone, NAFTA, ASEAN or other international trading areas.

Prediction about Global Brands

Social media is likely to speed the homogenization of disparate brands sold by global marketers.

An aspiring viral video with a guide for aspiring viral video makers

2010-05-08T12:31:00.008-05:00

Recently we posted about the formula Great Creative + Lotsa Luck = Viral Success. We stand by it but were reminded this week that "great creative" has different rules if you aspire to go viral.

Keep them simple

Giovanni+Draftfcb in Rio de Janeiro produced a couple of simple, smart videos and posted them recently on YouTube.

The first video shows an "Ant protest" or Passeata de formigas. Common, real-life ants crawl about, carrying placards in Portuguese, Spanish and English, protesting Baygon, a household insecticide well-known outside North America.

The second video shows you how the first one was made. Just how did they get real ants to carry those signs? This video tells you how, and it's a good lesson in viral video making in general. Keep them simple.

You can see the first one here and the second one here.

Keep the budgets low

When it comes to viral, million-dollar production values are unnecessary and perhaps wrong. The budget for one TV commercial can supply a dozen or more attempts at viral. The more shots on goal you take, the better your luck at actually "going viral".

Parabens to my colleagues in Brasil who worked on this project. They always do excellent work.

Media is the sexy part

2010-05-05T14:52:00.013-05:00

NEW YORK -- Today we had the pleasure of meeting with our IPG partner Richard Beaven, who has done amazing things as head of Initiative the past three years. We work with Initiative in service of several shared clients.

Media is sexy

It was a stimulating conversation because, as I've told many colleagues, "Media is the sexy part of what we do today." To be truly media-neutral one must consider an incredible array of choices to engage consumers. We all know that.

Shake those paradigms!

The more interesting part of our meeting today was having my paradigms challenged. Richard brought some perspectives from the front lines of media strategy that made me stop and think. Here were three of them.

Content, not "Creative". Content is a media-neutral term describing messages about brands and products. Content includes not only creative, but user-generated content, crowdsourcing and content developed by the media companies with which we collaborate.

Collaboration is survival. The incredible array of choices to engage consumers changes all the time, which means that nobody has all the answers. We depend on a rich culture of specialists who help us maximize the opportunity in each channel.

Control is dead. This is true not only in the sense that we can't control what messages consumers will accept. As well, no one discipline can control everything. "Control should be taken out of the dictionary," Richard maintained, "because it doesn't exist in our business anymore."

Lots to think about on my way back to Chicago. Please add your thoughts below.

Wow! Now THAT was fast!

2010-05-05T07:13:00.005-05:00

Headline, 28 April 2010: "Study: Marketing Departments To Reorganize."

Headline, 5 May 2010: "Mixed-Up Marketers: Execs Struggle With New Roles."

OK, ha ha. These two headlines are coincidental to one another, but both are really signs of the times. All of us struggle with continual changes in the media landscape (including retail), changes in our business models, and changes in how consumers choose to engage with our brands and products.

Here are the most interesting points from the two articles cited above.

Three-quarters of global marketing leaders expect to reorganize their departments by the end of 2011, according to a new Forrester study.
Why? The rise of digital and social media, plus "maladaptive" org charts that are slow to react to consumer needs, among other factors.
Marketers share only half their data with Sales, and assume that Sales shares only half their data with Marketing.
Among 500 marketers surveyed by Genius.com, 50% don't blog, 49% don't tweet, 25% don't use LinkedIn.

I wonder where they will be after the re-org? Readers?

"The changing media landscape" ... of Retail

2010-05-03T08:11:00.005-05:00

The other day at an offsite conference center, my client was running two big meetings, one focused on Marketing and the other on Sales. (Marketing and Sales are really the same thing, but exist as separate departments in most companies.)

I was in the Marketing meeting where we strategized about how to invest next year’s budget. There are a lot of options in mass media, retail, digital, et cetera. Every year the options multiply.

During a break I ran into a client who was attending the Sales meeting. How’s the discussion? “Great,” he told me. “It’s just that the retail landscape is changing so fast. Keeping up takes real effort.”

What’s he keeping up with? The largest mass retailer is rethinking its store layout and the number of brands it carries. The next-largest mass retailer is riding out recessionary price pressures. One of the big players in the Food class of trade is struggling. Shopper marketing as a discipline grows more sophisticated. Customer loyalty database analytics are being leveraged more strategically. The Dollar stores are evolving. Last but not least, online retailing continues to grow.

Clicks-and-mortar gets a lot of buzz, but bricks-and-mortar retail is no less of a changing landscape. The options are multiplying – and so are the opportunities. Keeping up takes real effort.

(Please use the comments section to suggest your most reliable online resources for news and analysis about retail.)

Quick! Define "advertising" in one sentence

2010-04-30T10:00:00.007-05:00

Last month a Philadelphia marketing executive posed this question to the Advertising Professionals group on LinkedIn: “In one sentence, what is advertising?”

As of today there are 195 answers – and counting.

The answers have ranged from academic to streetwise, and a few discussions broke out along the way. There’s even been a whiff of consumerism.

My own answer was: “Advertising communicates between buyer and seller, and in the modern day it’s successful when it starts a dialogue.”

Some other interesting ones were:

Erudite. “Creating an equity position among a target market that reaches and motivates a sufficient number of consumers so a business can realize a specific growth objective.” (James E. Friedman)

Mercantile. “The equivalent of having 5,000 sales people on the road.” (David West)

Uncomplicated. “The art and science of enticing buyers to purchase a particular product or service.” (Ted Rossman)

Personal. “Advocating for a product, service or social movement, etc., the practitioner believes in.” (Doreen Dvorin)

The protagonist, John Cooley, said he was asking for material to include in a presentation. I followed up with him this week to see how it went, and above all, what definition did he use?

The answer: "Hey Steve, It was perfect because my talk was about how many definitions we have for Advertising. I used many of them (quotes) from around the world and with the brightest minds in advertising. Thanks for asking."

At some risk, I offer you the opportunity to comment below. In one sentence, what is advertising?

The best ad

2010-04-30T09:05:00.002-05:00

"The best ad is a good product."

It drives word of mouth.

Canada and its consumers

2010-04-28T08:28:00.008-05:00

TORONTO -- In my international role it’s a privilege to work with my clients and colleagues in Canada. They have an amazing operation here. It’s a fascinating country with interesting consumers.

Sadly, Canada is a gigantic blind spot for most American business executives. Part of this is cultural since most Americans don’t know much about Canada at all. Corporate culture does little to change that. The Canada strategy of too many companies is to treat it as part of the United States: ship them the same products, air the same advertising, and let them try selling it all to the three retailers who dominate the trade.

To be sure, this strategy has its benefits, most of them related to cost efficiency. One of our clients generally follows this strategy with some success. Yet beyond the U.S.-made TV commercials for U.S. brands we also create many Canada-specific programs in retail, promotion and digital.

These efforts are justified by the opportunity we find in such a vibrant consumer population. There are many sources available where you can gain a deep understanding of Canadian consumers so we won’t try to duplicate them. Instead, here are some personal observations, vetted just a bit at dinner last night with my agency colleagues.

Mosaic, not melting pot

The first thing that strikes you about Canada is its cultural diversity. Immigration has been rich and abundant, particularly from China and South Asia. There is still strong European immigration, too. My friends distinguished between the U.S. melting pot and the Canadian mosaic; that is, American immigrants tend to assimilate while Canadian immigrants maintain stronger senses of national identity. On that point...

Quebec is not Canada

French Canada is an amazing, confounding jewel. Chicago-to-Toronto feels like a domestic flight while Toronto-to-Montreal feels like an international flight. It’s not just that Quebecois speak French almost exclusively. The customs, daily routines and value systems are unique to Quebec. You could say it is “European” but that would miss how unique Quebec really is. That's saying something, too, since Canada in general is unique...

Canada is not the U.S.

My question at dinner: What makes Canada unique? The first response was: “You mean versus the U.S.?” No, what makes Canada unique. Canadians, a very polite bunch, bristle at comparisons to the U.S. because a lot of Americans and other foreigners see only the similarities. There are indeed vast differences between the two societies – chronicled in the Canadian analysis Fire and Ice – even while they share a strong friendship and a 5,525-mile border.

Resourcefulness

This one didn’t get much traction at the dinner table but I’m sticking by my view. Through the people I meet, the stores I shop and the marketing I see, there is a resilient resourcefulness to Canadians. Perhaps it’s left over from the frontier era or it comes from all the new immigrants. Maybe it’s the spirit of cooperation we see in every meeting. My clients and colleagues move their business forward in a distinctly Canadian way, even while they also follow the marketing plans sent up by their American counterparts.

They’re an amazing bunch of people. I’m eager to come back and see them soon.

Pictures and Sayings

2010-04-27T09:26:00.005-05:00

A previous post, Brevity takes a lot of work, espoused this maxim: "The longer you think, the shorter the presentation." Today a topic in the news is that last word, "presentation", as in "PowerPoint presentation".

NYTimes.com reports today on how PowerPoint has infiltrated the military. You can also read this insider perspective from an Army captain. One of his observations is that "PowerPoint is everywhere--not only in the military, but also in the government and private sector."

And how. You've doubtless had some really bad PowerPoint experiences, either as an audience or perhaps as an author. Let's be honest, we've all used PowerPoint as a crutch, and the results aren't pretty.

One of my colleagues tells a good story about one of her mentors starting out at a local agency in Kentucky. The advice given about using PowerPoint was simple and straightforward: "Pictures and sayings."

Authors or presenters who follow this advice make it a joy to be in the audience. Keeping your content reduced to "pictures and sayings" usually means you have made your message exciting and sharp. As such, you can ad lib easily because your story is clear in your own mind.

Sometimes a PowerPoint presentation (or "deck" in the vernacular) really does need to have a lot of words, usually because it's meant to "travel" electronically so people can read it at their convenience. Fair enough. In most cases, however, PowerPoint gets presented, and perhaps should be written that way. With "pictures and sayings".

Your comments: Use the space below to tell us your worst PowerPoint nightmare or your best PowerPoint suggestion.