Advertising Ourselves to Death

About Your Soon-to-Fail Business...

Dear coffee shop owner,

I watched you try to kill your business today and couldn't help myself from eavesdropping. As I sit in your mostly empty shop I couldn't help but think about what a great little location you have, right on the main drag in a hip new mixed-use neighborhood, up the street from the theater, across from a major grocery store. Indeed, you have some good foot traffic, as evidenced by the dozen or so people who came in between 2 and 3 p.m. today.

But you probably missed that as you were head-down in deep discussion with the rep from Delta Sky Miles trying to sign you up for a $5k weekly commitment for their email program. You were concerned about the cost vs. the return of the program. Yet you've paid no attention to harnessing all that you already own to drive more business.

True, you do encourage people to share your web site on Facebook and Twitter with those tiny little logos on the front page. But you're nowhere to be found on either. If I wanted to check in here on Facebook or FourSquare, I draw a blank on search results.

Those hundreds of people walking by your store can see a couple fliers taped to your window (ugh) and a free WiFi banner. But there's no visible suggestion to find your online. Nor are customers urged to follow you on Twitter for special offers and announcements, like your new flavors.

Now you're lamenting to the sales rep the high food cost and waste. Hmm, instead of your two employees staring at the ceiling, could they instead be kicking out a special offer via Twitter for the next two hours on those cup cakes starting to near the end of their shelf life?

You have some interesting events here too, like cupcake decorating classes. I know that from your web site, so kudos. But I don't see any pictures. Would it kill you to post a half-dozen shots on Facebook and tag your best customers? Heck, maybe even offer them a discount on a half-dozen cupcakes if their friends come in and say they saw the pictures.

Your shop built into several hundred brand new apartments, all less than a five minutes walk from your front door. Yet your online ordering is clumsy and hard to find. Seriously, how hard would it be to offer people to start their day with the delivery of a couple fresh cup cakes and hot coffee?

No, instead of thinking about any of this you're busy talking about the next Groupon knock-off and email programs that will hit me seven times in the next month. Sad.

I would have gladly mentioned all of this to you, as your were sitting three feet from me. But you never bothered to ask how I was doing, of if I enjoyed your products. Well, it was nice visiting your store. I wonder what will open here next.

The Terminal Velocity of Your Message

There's a certain weightiness of the phrase terminal velocity. It sounds so final, like the next step stop must be doom. So imagine my surprise as a teen when I learned it really means the limit of how fast something can fall, more or less.

But the phrase remains one of my favorites, and it has taken on new life for me in the world of marketing. I am convinced there is a terminal velocity of any marketing message, which I define as the fastest a message can spread before the inherent meaning is lost.

For example, Just Do It, has taken on a life of its own, but at some point it stopped being just about Nike shoes. Hell, it's now even the title of a book about a couple having sex for 101 days. That point was its terminal velocity. To be sure, Nike continues to benefit as the Just Do It phrase spreads, and countless attorneys are making a mint with trademark enforcement. But as a drive to sell Nike product, the phrase has hit the wall.

So what? Well, think about it this way. You are playing the social media arena because you want to get more bang for your buck. Ideally your consumers will drive the marketing for you, increasing your reach while reducing your expense. Have you ever paused to consider how successful you can afford to be?

Let's say, for sake of argument you come up with the next Just Do It. How far would you go to keep control of the message. Would you let people put in their own designs? Sell it on t-shirts? Turn it into a double entendre? Get the point? You have to go into any social media engagement thinking about the boundaries. Think about the disasters.

If you are posting a copy line then think through the off-brand variations. Any successful image will be reused without permission. Videos? Expect to see them mashed up with new audio, images or remade all together. After all, you asked for it.

The mere act of entering the social media arena means that you are empowering people to talk about your brand. You're not licensing them, nor are you paying them. So your control is non-existent. And that is a good thing.

What you'll get from your real audience is far more captivating than anything you can come up with. It may be crude, simplistic or even tone deaf, but it's theirs and they did it because your work triggered something strong enough in them that they wanted to create their own take.

So, how far can they go and still help the brand? You can help extend that range by making it easier to create their own content the way you prefer.

• That means making your logo available in common formats, on clean backgrounds, but never in separate elements.
• Host videos on a streaming server that allows users to embed them on their own site, but still stream from yours.
• If you must post the actual video file, use a creative watermark that incorporates the brand.
• And train your PR and social media teams to engage questionable behavior by re-channeling it back to the key message, not merely trying to shut it it down. "We appreciate your enthusiasm and creativity, but please remember that Brand X is about blah, blah, blah."

The more you prepare for the worst, the faster and farther message can travel before it achieves terminal velocity. Damn! I do love that phrase.

Enough! Calling out the hucksters peddling social media

There's some crazy crap happening in marketing world these days, with snake oil salesmen falling from the woodwork offering their services to companies trying to crack the social media nut.

A former colleague told me her company was shelling out big bucks to some self-proclaimed expert who's scintillating insight was to use social media monitoring to see what people were saying about the brand. This genius actually wanted the client to write his proposal because his time is too valuable to do anything for free. 

Igor Beuker went even deeper into this emerging world of madness with a great post on the Viral Blog dissecting the weirdness in this space where companies tend to either relegate social media to interns or let themselves be held hostage by assholes. He notes that CMOs trying to do right by their brands are encountering a brutal sellers' market if they want to hire an expert and arrogance if they seek assistance from a so-called social media agency. He notes that many of these agencies are refusing to participate in pitches, instead picking and choosing what clients they deem worthy of paying their bills.

All of this poses more than a passing interest for me as I ponder my next career move. After 14 years working for advertising agencies I find myself disheartened by the lack of desire to truly create value for consumers online. Perhaps the solution is in the world of public relations agencies, where substance is as important as style. Or maybe it's time to work directly with clients, helping them find the valuable content lingering in their halls that social media demands.

No matter where I land, it seems only fair that I provide complete transparency for future employers, and put my money where my mouth is by laying out to expect if you work with me.

1. We define success up front. It seems simple enough, but I've seen it left until the end far too many times. What are we trying to do? How will we measure it? Define those two questions and you're already well on your way to disaster-proofing your work.
2. Listening is a pre-requisite, it's not a strategy. Look, you don't conduct any other piece of business in a vacuum, nor would you consider listening to your customers the destination. It is a means to an end. Let's figure out what they're saying. Do we need to counter a misconception? Is the volume of discussion too low? Or are people telling us what your business needs to do and we just need to let them know we're listening?
3. Your company is going to produce something of value for consumers. If you aren't willing to invest then this isn't an arena for you. If you're willing to spend hundreds of thousands on a commercial (if not millions) and tens of thousands of dollars on marketing materials, why would you try to talk directly with consumers on the cheap? The good news is that a smart strategy will find ways to re-purpose content already in-house.
4. Recognized social media is earned media, not free. The currency you spend may be time or it may be production budgets, but success in social media requires investment. True, it can be cheaper than traditional media, and if successful the results are disproportionately higher for the investment. But get ready to roll up your sleeves, this isn't a task you delegate to an intern.
5. Social media is part of the mix. We aren't going to jettison your other marketing efforts. Those are your mass media tools. We are working on a means of making those efforts work harder and more effectively. The good news is that in all likelihood we'll find money to move from mass media to social media.

So why will you hire me?

• Because there's a realization you need your marketing efforts to work smarter.
• You're leery of relying on your teenager at home or the interns walking through the door to be your experts in the digital space.
• Because you want to do more than check the box for emerging channels like social media. You want to walk into the next meeting with your boss or the board with something more than reassurances that you're on it.

Oh, one more thing, social should never equate to arrogant.

Why Newspapers Keep Getting It Wrong

As I spend time pondering my next career move I've had a fair amount of time to reflect on my unlikely path so far. There's no logical route that takes someone from covering breaking news on deadline three times a day for The Dallas Morning News to being paid by clients to help them master marketing on line.

I find myself increasingly explaining to former colleagues how I made the career shift. And that inevitably leads to reflections on why so many great journalists have been made jobless by a technology which should have ushered in the second golden age of local news.

So much of the focus seems to be on the flight of advertisers from print to online, which makes sense since that is the bottom line. Rick Edmonds raises the issues again in his post on the Poynter Institute blog after watching a 2-year-old video on how Best Buy was moving money from print to online advertising.

But the reality is that advertisers taking their budgets elsewhere is just a symptom of the real problem -- newspapers have made themselves irrelevant. Scratch that. They allowed themselves to be made irrelevant. And advertisers, agencies and most of readers seem to get it, even if pubishers don't.

No where is that more evident than in the most basic of journalism tasks, writing the daily stories for publication. In the pre-internet days my job as a reporter was to gather as many pieces of information and points of view as possible, then synthesize that content into as fair and balanced piece of content as possible given the limitations on newshole. Several tiers of editors further scrutinized my work and trimmed as necesssary.

With the advent of the web in the mid-90s the limitation on space went away. Yet newspapers did not take advantage of the limitless space of the web to offer more in-depth versions of their print stories. Indeed, when we launched DallasNews.com we didn't even post most of the stories from the print edition, let alone any of the paper's award-winning photography.

Then came blogs and social networks in the last 10 years, and with that the range of voices available on any topic exploded. And yet newspapers continued to cling to the tried and true journalism, perhaps quoting a blogger or Facebook post. But in the end the reporter continued to function as a bouncer at a very elite club, granting selected voices and facts into the exclusive club called the printed paper. Only the club was no longer elite, or even sought out by readers.

People went elsewhere, in droves. It was easy. Now they had access to all the voices reporters and editors once enjoyed exclusively. Hell, sitting in a Starbucks I have access to more sources of information now than I ever had as a reporter. In many cases I am learning about breaking news at the same time as my newspaper.

Think about it. When all hell broke loose in Norway did you turn to your local newspaper? Even the next morning did you grab a copy to get the details? Here in Atlanta the story wasn't even the lead story on AJC.com. The paper abdicated its relevance on the story. How stupid.

All the news that's fit for blackmail

So the New York Times wants me to pay to access their content. Fair enough. The truth is I value their content highly enough that it’s probably one of the few newspapers I’d open my wallet to read online.

Sadly, I wont.

The Times' pricing scheme is an ill-advised, and perhaps even mean-spirited approach that would be mirrored off-line only if they tried to charge a variable price based on which room in which you intend to read the paper. I suspect readers will punish them accordingly.

History it seems is anxious to repeat itself when it comes to newspapers. Let’s just review the past decade, shall we? First came newspaper web sites. They launched them with some hesitation, only to insist that the online content mirror what was in the print edition.

It took a couple years, but eventually editors realized that TV station web sites, blogs and just about anyone with laptop was spanking them and swiping readers. So their sites started updating throughout the day.

Then came classified ads. Publishers scoffed at giving them away. People had to pay more if they wanted ads both in the paper and online. Craigslist killed that cash cow.

And so it goes. Auto listings, gone. Movie times, gone. Local event listings, restaurant reviews, and so it goes.

Oh, and let’s not forget local market advertising. Can anyone think of a valid reason why newspapers shouldn’t have developed Groupon a decade ago? If you’re a merchant trying to jump-start your business would you rather invest in ink on dead trees or a Groupon-like offer?

Look, don’t get me wrong. I am a huge fan of newspapers. I spent 12 years writing for the Dallas Morning News. So I have great respect for journalists.

But newspapers aren’t charging so that they can build great content. Hardly. They’re cutting staff and corners. No, publishers are charging to recapture revenue that poor decisions let slip away. Yes, by all means lash out at consumers for your mistakes.

Which brings me back to the Times pricing scheme. The plan starts out smartly, offering up to 20 articles per month free. That doesn’t include articles I click to from search results, blogs or email. That doesn’t turn away the light reader from the paper.

If I want to read the site on a computer, that will cost me $195 a year. Ouch. If I want to pull up articles on my computer and the New York Times iPad app, that will cost $260. And, if I have the audacity to want to get content on my computer, iPad and my smart phone, well the old grey lady figures that’s worth $455.

Scratching your head yet? Why does the paper care what form I read? It doesn’t cost any more to publish one digital format over the others? Nor is there content I that’s unique to any digital version.

And here’s the real kicker. If I subscribe to home delivery for the printed newspaper that is only $385, AND I get all the digital content I want for free. Hell, I can subscribe to just the Sunday newspaper for $195 a year and still get all the digital content for free.

Seems to me like someone is trying to bully me into getting back into home delivery. Instead I will vote on March 28th, when all this goes into effect, not to be blackmailed by keeping my credit card in my wall.

Hulu’s plan for TV domination

Originally posted on BBDO Incite.

Let's see if we can recall all the ways TV advertising was destined to fail.

1. Remote controls will allow people to skip commercials by changing channels.
2. The VCR make it too easy to fast forward through commercials.
3. Subscription services like HBO make commercials irrelevant.
4. The DVR make it too easy to skip commercials.
5. The Internet makes television commercials irrelevant.

Did I miss any? And yet TV commercials continue to thrive. So will services like HULU be the death of commercials?

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar says no. But it may well kill off broadcast television, he says. And he may be right. Earlier this month Kilar fired off a treatise about the future of television. In it he asserted three truths:

• There are too many ads on TV today. People will continue to find ways to skip those that annoy them.
• People want TV content to be more convenient for them, when they want it and on whatever device they want it.
• Viewers are far more powerful than any studio at deciding what shows are must-see-TV.

Armed with those insights, he argued that the future of TV looks more like HULU than NBC, ABC, or FOX (a bit awkward since NBC Universal, Disney and FOX are partner in the HULU venture). But his logic is solid.

First the explosion of video on demand services reinforces the value of consumer control. Layer that on top of the popularity of the DVR and you quickly get to a viewing public that doesn't care when a show is aired, only when they have time to watch it.

The argument grows even stronger when you consider that half of Netflix's 12 million subscribers use its streaming service and nearly one million people have signed up for HULU Plus' paid premium service.

Next he turns to advertisers, the very bedrock of broadcast television and cable television. Here his argument is simple. Advertisers will spend more if they can be certain their ads are being seen by the right people. The key is less waste, which means relying less on vague demographics of who is watching each show.

And lastly there are the content creators. They want and deserve to be paid more for their investment, he says. That means cutting out the middleman deals where they license content to the networks. Not too surprisingly he foresees more deals like those that HULU strikes, some of the studio's content is offered for free and the rest is offered as part of a subscription.

Kilar's post offers all sorts of charts and graphs, but it doesn't take lot of thought to see the wisdom of what he's saying. It doesn't unless you're a network TV exec. Then you are feeling very threatened right now.

 

Screw FaceTime, Here Come Holograms

Originally posted on BBDO Incite.

Tell anyone that you earn a living as a digital strategist and I can guarantee one of the first questions you’ll get is, “What’s going to be the next big thing after Facebook?”

I’ve tried every polite way I can to laugh it off, pointing out that if I knew I wouldn’t be working for a living, or that my crystal ball isn’t working. But now I have a better answer, holograms! Right there in your living room, talking with you just like Princess Lea in Star Wars. (“Help me Obi Wan Kenobi.”)

And if that doesn’t impress them I’ll have four more predictions, all thanks to the big heads at the IBM Research Labs. Buried in my holiday backlog of messages was a stunning list of five innovations IBM predicts will change the way we live, work and play over the next years.

Called appropriately, “Next Five in Five,” the report predicts:

• Real-time interactive holograms summoned from your computer, television or any mobile device.
• Batteries that last 10x as long as now, and some that recharge from breathing in air or static electricity.
• All of us will be citizen scientists, streaming a stunning amount of real-time data about our environment from devices we already carry around.
• Powerful computers feeding information to you to alleviate traffic jams and optimize your daily commute.
• All those data centers pumping out tons of heat will be put to work powering our cities.

Want more details, there's fact sheets on all the predictions at the bottom of this page.

Sure, it’s all cool stuff to think about. But I dare you to stop your mind from wandering when you see the piece on holograms. Suddenly every sci-fi movie scene comes to mind. Video chats seem limiting. And the marketer in me is off the races with the possibilities.

True, none of this is ready for prime time, yet. But the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show starts later this week in Las Vegas. And suddenly big announcements about 3-D televisions and new tablet PCs just don’t seem like such a big deal.

... In Which I Admit Breaking My Newspaper Addiction

Originally posted on BBDO Incite.

To quote my colleague Markham Butler, it’s all even-steven now. Television and Internet consumption that is.  Forrester marked the event on Tuesday, noting that the trend is reflected in Proctor & Gamble’s decision to shift budget from TV soap operas and daytime dramas to digital channels.

So what. No, seriously, so what? It’s easy to read this as a if people are walking away from their TVs and running to their computers. But does that jibe with your own experience?

Look, I’m a digital strategist, and I can honestly say I consume just as much television as ever. I’m not an elitist who swears they don’t watch much TV, or have little need for a DVR. But the vast majority of my time in front of the TV also includes an iPad or laptop computer propped up on my legs.

Given the slightest lull in the action, I will be looking down to click to another page, load another clip, try out another word (I am a terrible Scrabble player, just for the record), or changing the channel. So if you’re marketing on either TV or online, you have to fight twice as hard now to grab my attention.

And I’m not alone. Check out the survey Forrester recently completed about what we’re doing while “watching TV.”

So if TV isn’t losing out, who is? Print, big time. I dare say that at any point in time I have half dozen magazines in my living room that I haven’t even cracked open. A year ago renewing my subscriptions was a given. Now, not so fast. (And if you want to know the ugly truth, I’m a former newspaperman who for the first time in his life doesn’t get paper thrown to my door.)

Getting back to my question of so what, I’ll tell you what. The fact that we’re even-steven now really means that if you aren’t matching your TV investment with an online play then you’re really only covering half the bets. The smart marketer now accepts that TV is still a critical part of the mix, but no longer expects it to be THE critical part of the mix.

Next time you’re sitting on your couch with the TV on, look around. It should be obvious that its time to do something more.

 

Best not to creep 'em out

(Update: As this was being posted the FTC released a proposed Online Privacy Plan that would require consumers to opt-in to all online tracking. You can download the proposal here.)

Previously posted on BBDO Incite.

After looking at pair of shoes on Zappos, you get an ad for those same shoes served across four sites. Is Zappos stalking you? A financial services company ad seems to know that you’re nearing retirement; does it set off alarm bells?

Are you creeping out your customers? Before you scoff at the idea, think about it. Are you retargeting with your ads? Using localization? Modeling? If so, it’s quite possible you are setting off privacy concerns.

Sure, your intentions are good. We all understand that serving more relevant ads is in everyone’s best interest. Users get offers that matter to them. Marketers get better results. But in our zeal to make it better, we really may be screwing things up.

That was a topic of great debate at a recent IABInnovators Roundtable dinner here in Atlanta. It was a great discussion that involved a number of us agency types and key players from companies like ING, Coke and The Home Depot.

No one doubts that making ads more relevant is critical to creating better online advertising. But if consumers don’t understand how we’re doing that it’s quite possible we unleash a firestorm of privacy concerns. One marketer even worried that it could touch off a wave of regulation from politicians who think they’re protecting consumers.

Maybe we need to be more transparent. Ads could be more like Amazon or Netflix. “Because you liked xxx we thought you’d be interested in yyy.” Or perhaps the industry needs a better PR effort explaining to journalists just what’s going on and how it’s no different than decades of accepted direct marketing practices.

Or, maybe we just need to ask ourselves “why” a bit more often. Seriously, I think that one little word can make a big difference.

Yes, you could segment your ads based on site demographics. You could also cross that with a predictive model based on years of purchase data and reinforce that with  retargeted offers.

With all the data available to marketers these days, pretty much any type of segmentation you can imagine can be done. But why?  Is it actually going to provide enough lift that it is worth the effort?

The Battle For Convergence, Finally!

Originally posted on BBDO Incite.

There’s a great commercial for DirecTV these days where a pair of battling robots crash from room to room as a guy keeps shifting his attention from screen to screen. It’s a perfect metaphor for the clash of titans that’s coming to living rooms everywhere.

For years, actually more than a decade now, industry pundits have talked about convergence – the merging of experiences previously divided among computers, cell phones and television. That hasn’t happened. Instead we got more segmented content and the emergence of a fourth screen, the tablet.

But the time has come and the combatants are lining the field. Over there we have GoogleTV, AppleTV, Roku, Boxee and slew of others devices that promise to bring rich content from your computer to the big, shiny flat-screen in your living room.

Across the way there’s VisibleWorld, Canoe Ventures and similar technology ventures that intend to make the existing cable set-top boxes more powerful. All of the combatants have a similar vision – your TV delivering ads that are personalized to your taste, and not just the show you’re watching.

Do you care who wins? Not at all. But if you make your living in the marketing/advertising world you better start shifting your thinking. Forrester’s David Cooperstein has a great report that breaks down the changes racing at us. He summarizes the implications into five key points.

• Measurement firms need to change. The shift to reaching individuals rather than huge audiences will require a different set of metrics. Internet marketers already do this, TV measurement will need to catch up.
• New ad formats will emerge. We as an industry blew it when we created banner ads. Let’s hope there’s more thought given to how to use the new technology to connect with consumers.
• Brand and direct marketing will merge. Let’s hope this artificial boundary is erased once and for all.
• Agencies will need to be media agnostic. He’s not talking about just media buying agencies. And I’d add that clients need to break down the internal barriers as well.

To appreciate the level of change awaiting the winner of the battle it helps to understand how both sides are approaching the future. The Internet players, Google, Apple and such, want to let you decide what programs channels you want and will deliver that via the Internet. That enables marketers to buy presence in the programming based on where it will be delivered, just like they do with banner ads.

Technology vendors like VisibleWorld, envision a direct mail approach where ads are built in modules and assembled on the fly for the segment that you fall in. In this scenario you and your neighbor could be watching the same show and get different versions of an commercial.

Canoe, a joint-venture of the major cable companies, plans to bring the click-through of banner ads to your viewing experience. Ads on this system will allow viewers to request more information with just a click of the remote. Given that your cable company already has your address and email address, the follow up can be via email or snail mail.

At some point we'll all end up placing bets, but you can be sure that one way or another that television advertising will never be the same.

Is Email a Relic of the Past?

Originally posted on BBDO Incite.

Call it a sign of the times, but we're about to embark on a debate about the future of email.

If you missed it, Facebook declared email too big, too slow and too antiquated to survive. In its place Facebook will rollout a new "modern messaging system" that will combines emails, instant messages, text messaging and telepathic thought. (Okay, they haven't announced that last piece, but you never know.)

Now odds are that if you're over the age of 35 you didn't realize that email was on its last legs. It's quite possible you're still happy with one email address, a mobile phone number and a Facebook profile. You might even be getting by with an @aol.com address. (If so, you might be my father. But I suppose there are still others out there.)

If, however, you're under 30, it is quite likely that you have already moved beyond email.Facebook wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg insists that's what he and his engineers discovered talking to high schoolers over the last year. Email is just to "formal," Zuckerberg says the teens told him.

Just imagine what they would think about real writing on real paper, sent by envelope with a postage stamp. Nonetheless, I don't doubt this is true. At least twice a week I'll ask my kids if they got an email I sent them. Only to be reminded they don't check their email very often. But, when I send a message on Facebook the response is rapid. If you post a message on their wall, particularly embarrassing questions, the response is near light-speed.

The new Facebook Messages system promises to bring all the communication into one, easy to access location. The result, they promise, is that no one has to worry about how they send the message. In fact, Zuckerberg said during his presentation that future generations won't have to even think about how best to reach someone.

I'm intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From "hey nice to meet you" to "do you want to get coffee sometime" to "our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight." That's a really cool idea.

So you can be certain email marketers everywhere are sitting up and taking notice of Facebook's latest innovations. While no one is expecting the ubiquitous @mydomain.com to go away soon, the clock is ticking. And there are billions of dollars tied to its continued longevity, or figuring out how to move forward with whatever is next.

So it’s okay to hate zombies?

Orignially posted on BBDO Incite.

This zombie infestation is getting out of hand. They’re everywhere, have you noticed?

Seriously, you can’t turn the corner without running into a zombie these days. They’re on TV with AMC’s new hit series The Walking Dead, and IFC’s Halloween mini-series The Dead Set. They’ve invaded literature, rewritingPride and Prejudice and filling shelves with survival guides. Movies likeZombieland have taught us critical lessons like rule #21, zombies can’t climb. And, perhaps the most certain sign of the pending apocalypse, Sears releases a zombie version of its catalogue.

There are any number of theories of why zombies are all the rage. Wired Magazine even put researchers to work to debunk the thought that zombies increase in popularity when the stock market tanks.

Being a strategy guy all of this is more than a passing whimsy. Clients count on their agencies to tell them if zombies represent a critical segment that they should be reaching with target messages. (Current research suggest the undead do not reflect accepted patterns of consumer behavior. But this is somewhat skewed since no one has conducted a successful focus group with zombies. And by successful I mean surviving.)

But I do have a real theory on why we’re seeing so many zombie manifestations. It’s because we know it’s okay to hate zombies. Really, other than Shaun Of The Dead, every presentation of zombies makes them a one-dimensional target of loathing and aggression. That kind of black and white definition is lacking from every other aspect of our lives.

At the risk of sounding like a movie trailer, in a world of woeful economics, shrill politics and daily struggles, everyone wants someone to hate. Maybe hate is too strong of a word. But zombies offer us a humanoid form that is just enough not human that we feel no shame enjoying their demise. Look at Wired’s chart. Zombies started gaining popularity as the world around us became dizzyingly complicated in the post 9/11 world.

If I’m right we should see an ebb in the zombie infestation as soon as the economy starts firing on more cylinders. Then again, if I am wrong you might want to head over to this architectural competition where they’re vetting designs for zombie safe houses.

And don’t even get me started on the whole vampire thing.

 

Who dreams up this stuff?

Originally posted on BBDO Incite.

Walking through ad:tech in New York it’s hard not to have flashback to the Internet boom of the late 90s. There are far too many people, pushing far too many half-baked ideas. Six months from now most of them will be two business plans down the road.

Having been in the thick of the first Internet boom, I have this protective wall of cynicism that pops up when BS is detected in dangerous concentrations. And on the exhibit floor that warning system was in full-force.

Booth after booth there were vendors hawking solutions in search of problems or just dumb ideas. But by far the worst was back in the corner with new mobile solutions. To be fair, there are some smart start-ups that I hope beat the odds and find their niche. But consider the following pitch I was given.

Company X (no, I won’t identify them) has a custom QR Code that it believes consumer package goods companies will want on their box. Why? Well because with it you can deliver rich information to consumers right there in the stores. How will it work? Why in just these few easy steps.

1. Consumers download company’s iPhone app. (No marketing plan on driving downloads, trust us it will be huge.)
2. Walking down the grocery aisle you see a sign for your product offering cool content just a click away. (No explanation about who’s going to pay to get the store to install your signage. But, let’s not dither over details.)
3. You’ll stop in your tracks, turn the product around, spot the little QR alternative, open your iPhone app (ok), type in the product name (why) and snap a picture of the little logo. Then the magic happens. (No, trust them, you will be so excited about this that you’ll do this over and over in the store.)
4. You see a mobile web page with menu ideas and other “great content.” (Wake up, you’re missing the big pay off.)
5. You’ll need to go retrieve your kids who are now three aisles away racking up impressive charges for damaged goods. (OK, I made that one up.)

If someone had paused just once to question why, maybe this train wreck could have been avoided. But sadly there is once again too much money chasing too few good ideas.

The investors were out in force, walking the same show floor. I’ll bet more than a few are buzzing about this little start-up.

(For a slightly saltier view of the mayhem, check out this snarky YouTube video.)

Consumers, content and no fear

Orignally posted on BBDO Incite.

The semi-annual digital ad-fest known as ad:tech New York kicked off today and an old-school media maven (self-described) wasted no time in bringing everyone back down to earth.

Quit talking about iPads, pay walls, apps and piracy and focus attention on what matters, Lauren Zalaznick, the president of NBC Universal Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, said in her keynote address.

“The very technology that let people mash-up, skip through, and yes even pirate our content is also that technology that will let more users enjoy our content,” she said. Instead, focus on consumers, content and having no fear, she said. “If you do that, the technology is irrelevant.”

It was a sharp about face for ad:tech audiences, who only last spring were told by the publisher of Wired Magazine, that if consumers weren’t forced to pay for content, and fast, the publishing industry was doomed.

This time attendees were again surrounded by hundreds of companies who promised new and highly profitable ways to harness the latest technology to get consumers to open their wallets. But Zalaznick’s message for success was much more simple.

“Technology is not our savior, nor our scapegoat. It nourishes the audience’s new found addiction to choice,” she said. Those predicting the demise of the 30-second TV commercial, magazines, newspapers or entertainment media as we know it are forgetting their history.

“We’ve been to this scary movie before,” she said, likening current innovations to radio, tv, cable and digital video recorders. “It always ends on a happy note, the girl lives.”

But she was not advocating business as usual. Her presentation was peppered with powerful examples of how NBC/Universal properties like Bravo, Oxygen and iVillage have created new experiences for entertainment. “Niche is the new mass in television these days,” she said, noting that fragmentation was set in motion by the birth of MTV and CNN nearly 30 years ago.

But the core value for marketers remains brand recall, message recall and likability. When marketers smartly combine broadcast ads with great use of online, mobile and other digital channels, the results go up dramatically, disproportionately higher than the spend, she said. Not to mention ratings. In the case of one Oxygen show, an 88% increase when the network enabled realtime chat with the stars online simultaneous with the broadcast.

On iVillage 96% of the women reported that if they like a product they’ll talk about it in their posts, and recommend it to “everyone they know,” she said. And that is because iVillage carefully matches the content to its audience, and the advertising benefits from that.

“The content that wins is the content that relentlessly captures and reflects that audience’s point of view,” she said.

The other lesson she said, was not to expect consumers to change because media companies want them to. She pointed to the music industry’s many lawsuits against consumers for piracy.

“The digital horse has bolted out of the barn, but we still hold the reigns,” she said. “Consumers will decide what content wins, so fear not.”