I'm a media director at an advertising agency. So, I blog about media and advertising.
The views expressed on this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer
Blogging about media trends, analytics, media planning, and more.
Some marketing tactics appear to be alive, but are actually dead. These zombies are dangerous and it is the job of brave marketers to kill these hideous un-dead monsters. Use this guide to spot Zombie Marketing.
APPEARANCE: From a distance, Zombie Marketing looks like regular advertising, promotions, or sales tactics. Upon closer examination, you will notice a lifeless hue. Headlines will include clichés and images will look like cheap imitations of real marketing. It will move with predictable patterns in a hopeless effort to simulate life.
FUNCTION: Zombie Marketing can be defined by its lack of function or purpose. It exists only to feed itself and to continue its existence for eternity.
HABITAT: It lurks in darkness until it needs to feed. Watch for tactical rationale that include the words “continued from last year”, “the competition is doing it”, or “season tickets included.”
DIET: Consumes budgets, sometimes with a voracious appetite, and sometimes with a slow but prolonged sucking.
SOCIAL LIFE: None. Zombie Marketing has no friends. It hangs out on dull corporate Facebook pages, lifeless branded Twitter accounts, and abandoned YouTube channels.
REPRODUCTION: Zombie Marketing has several methods for replication including reactionary decisions, automatic renewal clauses, corporate politics, sacred cows, rushed timelines, fear, and tradition.
WEAKNESS: The bright light of critical analysis will kill Zombie Marketing. Bold marketers must be willing to question legacy programs and challenge assumptions. Note: Not all zombies are as strong as they appear. Some may even be brought back into the world of the living with just a little attention and accountability.
In the September issue of Wired (“The Problem with Advertising” issue 19.09), he suggests more online services and publishers should charge fees to eliminate the need for advertising. Thompson argues that paid models will, “Save the Internet from… the bloodless logic of advertising.”
Bloodless logic? Harsh words, Clive.
We all have problems, and we all need redemption. Therefore, in the interest of mercy, I suggest Thompson consider these three redeeming qualities of advertising:
1. Advertising Subsidizes Innovation:
Thompson calls advertising, “one of the most corrosive forces affecting [the Internet]… this inevitably produces horrid, cynical designs that work against what the people want.”
Yes, there have been horrid designs to create clicks, but they often backfire over time as viewers abandon the site. Digital advertising is very democratic: every click is a vote up or down. Google’s homepage is proof that good design and advertising can co-exist. It is an ode to white space - pure and functional - and it exists to generate advertising.
Advertising builds much more than it corrodes. Advertising created much of what we take for granted online. For decades, the Internet existed only as a connection between various non-profit institutions. The World Wide Web and browsers made the Internet accessible to everyone, and those ugly banner ads paid for the massive build-out. Thousands of innovations at Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft have been funded by advertising.
2. Advertising Creates Diverse Choices:
Thompson believes the advertising model was partially justified in the early Internet years because micropayment options didn’t exist. I agree that Amazon and iTunes accounts are convenient to pay for content. However, people use micropayments for services and content they are already familiar with like music, movies, e-books, and news. Micropayments favor the establishment.
Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief at Wired, calls the Internet a “long tail” of content. Can we really expect people to pay for every bit of online content? It would be difficult to discover new opinions, new events, and new services if every idea had to live under a micropayment. Advertising keeps the long tail of diverse ideas available to everyone.
3. Advertising Protects Freedom and Jobs:
Would the Arab Spring have occurred if Twitter and Facebook were paid services? Free content, subsidized by advertising, is what has informed and entertained us for over a hundred years. News, events, opinions, and new ways of thinking have been spread by free and independent media. Paywalls and micropayments would only create a wider digital divide.
And in a weak economy, we need to keep the wheels of commerce spinning. Nothing gets done until somebody sells something, so let the humble banners and text ads do their work of selling.
Yes, advertising has problems. But the problems are a small price for the innovation, selection, and information we gain. Limit paywalls and micropayments to the large publishers and established services.
Full disclosure: Yes, of course I work in advertising.
The newspaper industry was buzzing yesterday when a conference speaker said, "print is the new viynl." Poynter.org followed with a roundup of reactions (see below). Overall, being compared to viynl is a big step up from the "print is extinct" exclamations.
Social TV is the offspring of social media and traditional TV. This evolution will impact the viewing experience, but it will also impact advertising. I wrote about 4 big benefits to advertisers over at MarketandMain.com. Here is an excerpt:
Consumers are already making a habit of sharing their media habits online. Social TV will just make it easier.
Here are the benefits for advertisers and networks:
Higher product integration value
Conversation leads to greater engagement. If I’m engaged in a program, then I’m less likely to miss details. Product integration becomes more valuable as friends discuss the outfits, the cars, and the music in the program.
Less channel surfing
Social TV makes it painful to change the channel if my friends are watching the same show. This returns value back to traditional commercial pods. It also gives networks an incentive to create buzz-worthy programs to keep friends watching together.
Less time-shifting
The DVR takes a back seat during real-time viewing. With social TV, any ordinary program can become a must-see appointment. If it becomes a habit with my friends to solve the murder together during CSI: Miami, then I will miss-out if I’m not watching in real time. This makes the DVR less of a threat to commercial ratings.
More brand chatter
The conversation doesn’t stop during commercial breaks. Expect users to comment and review every spot the same way that Super Bowl parties produce chatter about commercials. Marketers have an opportunity to identify brand enthusiasts and extend the conversation.
Part 3: The Square Shooter
In my last post about Sam Walton, we heard an audio clip of Walton’s biographer Vance Trimble saying that Walton’s success was becoming addictive. He wouldn’t stop opening new locations, even after friends told him he was in over his head.
Why would people follow a risk-taker? How did he get associates to catch his vision?
They trusted his character.
The audio clip below has Trimble’s complete answer. At first, it sounds like simple economics: people followed Walton because he paid them. But the salaries are more than a payday. They are the outward expression of Walton’s character. He wanted hard-working employees to share in his success. In turn, his employees felt they were treated fairly, and they followed his demanding and risky adventure in retailing. As Trimble says, people knew Walton was “a square shooter.” He could be trusted.
Do your friends and associates trust you? Do your outward actions demonstrate that you are a square-shooter?
Here is the audio from my mid-90’s interview with Trimble:
Question 3: What was it about Walton that made people buy into his vision for Walmart?
(download)
Media publishers are bypassing agencies to work directly with brands. This disintermediation threat has been well summarized in a recent post by Tim Williams of Ignition Consulting Group ("Ad Agencies and the Decline of the Agent"). Williams suggests that agencies embrace their new role as “curator.”
But marketers need more than just curation. Media planners, strategists, and buyers perform critical roles that cannot be replicated by publishers. These roles include “advocate,” “analyst,” and “auditor.”
Advocate: Publishers have a vested interested. The most common example is when publishers bundle premium ad placements with remnant inventory. Clients without a third-party advocate will not discern the true value of packaged elements. Agencies can discern value and negotiate from a position of strength because they have experience working across multiple brands and publishers. Marketers need this kind of independent advocacy.
Analyst: Marketers need media analysts to plan and optimize campaign performance across multiple publishers. Media campaigns generate lots of data, and most marketers don’t have in-house resources to react to these inputs. It is no longer enough to approve a concept and sign a contract. Campaigns must be monitored and adjusted in real time. Brands need the independent analysis and optimization of an agency media team.
Auditor: Did the campaign deliver what the publishers promised? This isn’t as easy to answer as you would think. Marketers lack the expertise to monitor delivery and justify makegoods. Agencies have resources and experience to ensure accurate delivery and hold publishers accountable.
Media publishers have every right to seek deeper direct-to-client relationships with marketers. Agencies shouldn’t be an obstacle to good ideas. Instead, agencies need to leverage their strengths to add value to these important partnerships.
Part 2: Success Builds Momentum
What was Sam Walton’s original vision for Walmart? Where did he see Walmart going in the future? These are questions I asked Sam Walton’s biographer, the Pulitzer Award winning author Vance Trimble. The audio below is my phone interview from a college project in the mid-90’s.
Trimble’s answer surprised me. “He didn’t set out to be as big as he got to be. He just set out to have a good, satisfactory business.”
Friends and family would advise Walton to stop expanding the chain of stores. The idea of operating more than a few dozen locations probably sounded crazy to people at the time. He would listen to friends, and tell them he might stop after a few more store openings. But Walton couldn’t quit. “It was too successful,” Trimble noted. “It went of its own volition.”
Success often builds unstoppable momentum. The trick is to know when to put the brakes on before ruining your business, your family, or your well-being. Walton’s instincts told him his store concept could grow without burning-out, but he had no idea he was permanently changing the global retail industry.
The audio clip below is Trimble talking about Walton’s unstoppable momentum. My previous post, which you can read here, was about the moral principles which guided Walton.
Question 2: What was Sam Walton’s original vision for Walmart?
(download)
Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, valued more than just low prices. He lived with a high moral character at his core. He had the right balance of self-assurance, humility, and centrality to guide his decisions. And yes, one result was that he sincerely wanted to deliver great values to his shoppers.
I’m sharing a series of brief clips from my interview with Sam Walton’s biographer, the Pulitzer Award winning author Vance Trimble. This phone interview is from when I was in college – circa 1994.
Question 1: What principles guided Sam Walton’s life?
BDI and CDI are easy and effective tools for marketers to analyze local market sales. Media and communications planners typically look at both when considering which markets or regions should receive heavier media weight. The following are instructions to understand the formulas, chart the data, and apply the results.
Understanding BDI and CDI Formulas
BDI and CDI are indices comparing the relative strength of a market to overall sales. The Brand Development Index (BDI) is an index compared to overall brand sales. The Category Development Index (CDI) is an index compared to overall category sales. Like any index, a score of 100 is average. The formulas are simple:
In the following example, Market A represents 10% of the population, but 11% of category sales. Therefore, the CDI is above average. Brand sales in Market A represent 7% of total brand sales, so the BDI is below average. Market B has the opposite situation because the market is 20% of the overall population, 19% of category sales, and 28% of brand sales. So, Market B has a low CDI but a high BDI.
Charting the data
It is critical to have population data that exactly correlates to the sales data. If you have sales by DMA, then must use DMA populations. Also, use the total adult population when you are working with total sales. If your sales data is filtered against a certain demo, then you may change the population base to match it.
Set your data into Excel columns like in the example above. Let Excel quickly handle the formulas for you. Highlight the data in the BDI and CDI columns, and push the scatter graph button. If you are working with dozens of markets, then you will want to download an add-in to automatically label the markets for you. I use the X-Y chart labeler from AppsPro.
Using the data from the example above, the chart will look like this:
Applying the Data
Visualize your scatter graph in quadrants divided at the 100 index. I apply bold lines like this:
The markets falling into the upper-right quadrant are the best performing markets. For media planners, this often means you can add media weight to these markets to boost or support brand performance.
The markets falling into the lower-left quadrant are the weakest markets. Media planners should have a cautious attitude towards these markets.
The remaining quadrants are the most interesting. Markets in the upper-left area may be over-saturated. You may want to consider broad-reach media to bring more people into the category. Markets in the lower-right corner may be facing distribution or competitive problems. Dig deeper and ask more questions to understand what is happening there.
This chart helps me remember these strategic guidelines:
An index is a useful tool to find insights from data. However, planners should remember that an index rarely provides a definitive answer to a marketing question. Sometimes the questions raised by a BDI/CDI scatter chart are the most important result of the exercise.
Qwiki.com shows us how shoppers will learn about new products in the future. The premise is that humans absorb information through storytelling better than raw data, so Qwiki auto-produces video narratives on any subject.
The Alpha version has a few bugs, but you can see how the technology could evolve into a next generation search-engine. It performs best on encyclopedia topics, but the Qwiki team foresees it helping with consumer decisions like choosing restaurants and much more.
Qwiki depends on royalty-free content and public sources like Wikipedia. As a result, many of the videos are a painful reminder that auto-generated content sometimes needs a human editor. To solve this, the Qwiki team has added a submission feature to suggest photos and videos on any subject.
Marketers should be checking what Qwiki has to say about their brands, and consider submitting better product shots and videos. We may soon find ourselves involved in a new discpline... Machine Knowledge Optimization?
Check out this example about the Honda Accord:
I'm a media director at an advertising agency. So, I blog about media and advertising.
The views expressed on this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer
I'm a media director at an advertising agency. So, I blog about media and advertising.
The views expressed on this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer
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