What's the Idea?

There are two factions in online marketing these days: Cashiers and Conversationalists. 

Cashiers

Cashiers care about the sale. They have the small dashboard that tracks click-to-sale and spits out an ROI calculations. Cashiers can’t wait to wake up in the morning to see the new numbers. They are in to usability testing, shopping cart abandonment, media optimization and other measures but their interest and energy pretty much stops at the sale. The buck stops there.

Conversationalists

Conversationalists are a daintier.  They immerse themselves in the process.  They want to make friends.  (Like the kid with the runny nose in grade school, sometimes they just walk right up to you and ask “Do you want be my friend?”)  In my world, conversationalists are actually more likely to find truths and insights about their products and win in the long term.  All the pop marketing gurus today are into the conversation. They are not technologists, thank God, so they are easy to listen to and learn from but their failing is that they’re a little too caught up in the sausage making, not the sausage tasting.

CMOs

For a CMO it’s great to have both types of people on staff.  A Yin and Yang thing. Cashiers are imperative for sales now. Conversationalists care about future sales, and loyalty and sale predisposition. But it’s hard to take predisposition to the bank. Good CMOs have a brand plan in place that gives direction to the factions.  A brand plan is informed by the work and findings of both factions, but it drives them.  A brand plan helps Cashiers and Conversationalist organize “claim and proof” in a way that creates Return on Strategy near and long term. Peace!

Possibly Related Posts:

• An unlikely mind.
• Upwardly Mobile App Neighborhoods
• Tattoos or Marketing with Meaning?
• What Keeps WPP, IPG and Omnicom Up at Night?
• Rubel, Facebook and Fruit Cocktail.

Noah Brier is an exciting, off-piste marketing strategist.  His post the other day suggesting some businesses would do well to have born on dating is a case in point. 

 Head of planning and strategy at the Barbarian Group, Mr. Brier is unique because he likes to question rules, norms and the tried and true. He looks at the blacks, whites and grays.  His mind mashes up things and, I suspect, he sometimes introduces a bit of randomness to his rigor – just for flavor. In the advertising or creative business some might call this approach disruptive. I think of it as natural. Seeds grow in the oddest places…not always where the farmer plants them. They blow around, are carried by birds, find unlikely hosts for germination. If Steve Jobs is embodied by the advertising tagline “think different” Mr. Brier of similar mind and value in a strategist’s body.

 Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Brier can go head-to-head with traditionalists – he just doesn’t always chose to.

 His monthly likemind – something he and Piers Fawkes came up with – is an audacious idea bringing people of similar views together in coffee shops around the world.   I suspect it won’t be long before he and Mr. Fawkes invent UnlikeMind.  Let’s start with one here in the states on the topic of healthcare. Might work. Peace!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cashiers, Conversationalists and CMOs.
• Upwardly Mobile App Neighborhoods
• Tattoos or Marketing with Meaning?
• What Keeps WPP, IPG and Omnicom Up at Night?
• New Brief Against Tobacco

Nice article over the weekend in the New York Times on the growth of web start-ups in NYC.  Silicon Valley East some might say.  Other suggest the East coast is trumping the West when it comes to start-ups in the media, mobile and publishing areas.

NY is likely to be the hub of these companies not just because advertising, publishing and media companies reside in NY, and lets not forget the financiers, but because the next “haps” development area is mobile and there’s no better place on earth to test mobile apps than in a city of 8 million people — and the businesses they frequent. It’s a commercial petri dish. 

Brooklyn Vs. SoHo

There seem to be two factions in NY where the action is. Brooklyn is where the gearheads and coder-savants have their businesses and SoHo is where the artsy, consumer-savvy go to work. The two areas are only a couple of subway stops away and are feeder neighborhoods, but they are different mindsets indeed.  I’m not sure which one is the shark and which the pilot fish but I’m working on it.

I haven’t forgotten you Union Square and Flatiron people, but you are just a little too focused on da monies and PPT and not enough on the art and code so I’ll remove you from the fray for now.  Anyway, there is something very exciting going on in these two communities and it will be a hotbed of technology innovation and seriously cool mobile growth. Ride the subway between these two communities and watch the future happen.  Peace!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cashiers, Conversationalists and CMOs.
• An unlikely mind.
• Tattoos or Marketing with Meaning?
• What Keeps WPP, IPG and Omnicom Up at Night?
• New Brief Against Tobacco

Here’s one of my favorite song lyrics. It’s from the rawness that is David Allan Coe:

The old man was covered in tattoos and scars;
He got some in prison and others in bars.
The rest, he got workin’ on old junk cars…
In the daytime.

I was reading the paper paper today and noticed a nice big Rolex ad featuring Lindsey Vonn skiing.  She is not covered in tattoos but might as well have been.  Here are some of her sponsors: Red Bull, Spyder Thinsulate, Nature Valley, Charles Schwab, Audi, Visa, Sprint and Alka Seltzer Plus – and that’s just on the front of her racing suit. She also represents Head skis, I believe, but they’re on her feet and hard to see.

Red Bull

I tweeted a couple of weeks ago before the Olympics that someone smart should pick up Lindsey and sponsor her. Within an hour someone from Red Bull (good job monitoring, btw) responded that they were her sponsor. Red Bull has done a better job than some with Lindsey – they own her helmet – but the reality is much of their stuff is still tattoo-like.  As Bob Gilbreath says in his good book The Next Evolution of Marketing (better known as Marketing with Meaning), tattooed logos aren’t particularly meaningful.  The reason I didn’t know Ms. Vonn had sponsors was because no one had really pushed their brand idea into her being.

I read somewhere that the Red Bull branding idea has something to do with “flying.” Can’t tell from their website.  And if I can’t spot a brand idea, there probably isn’t one. Sponsors need to understand themselves before they can create a meaningful and promotable relationship with a spokesperson. They need to know their idea. Peace!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cashiers, Conversationalists and CMOs.
• An unlikely mind.
• Upwardly Mobile App Neighborhoods
• What Keeps WPP, IPG and Omnicom Up at Night?
• New Brief Against Tobacco

Google and Facebook are collecting scads of data about each and every user of their applications.  They are doing something smart with that data, serving ads, but have not yet scratched the surface of what they can do with that data.

Google bought DoubleClick a couple of years ago, the world’s leading advertising server and analytics company. Facebook is also strengthening its analytics capability.

Planning and buying media, both online and offline, has always been a pretty technical and complicated science and it still is to a large degree. The practice has been specialized and data-driven but always managed by the capable hands of usually creative human beings.   Yet if Google and Facebook use the algorithm to parse and predict buying behavior, and do it with NASA-like precision, what will become of ad agency media departments? Or Nielsen? Or stand alone media buying agencies?

Do you think C-level agency executives are thinking about this?  Does this keep Mssrs. Levy, Wren, Sorrell and Roth and their successors up at night?  Mr. Levy and Publicis own Altas – that was a smart move. Do you think there will be a backlash against Google and Facebook? Are they getting too much power? Love to hear your thoughts.  Peace it up!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cashiers, Conversationalists and CMOs.
• An unlikely mind.
• Upwardly Mobile App Neighborhoods
• Tattoos or Marketing with Meaning?
• New Brief Against Tobacco

There’s a pretty interesting debate going on over at Steve Rubel’s Posterous stream.  It revolves around his moving his stream (sorry, guys of a certain age) to Facebook.  He’ll continue at Posterous but feels Facebook gives him more visibility, a bigger audience and a richer discussion. 

Mr. Rubel initially moved to Posterous because it was a place for him to aggregate his musings. Plus it was an easy and elegant interface.  (The aesthete in me likes the Posterous look better than the templatized Facebook frame.)  Sequestering most of his business and digital observations on Posterous and moving everything  else — business, personal, real time – to Facebook seems like a good strategy. But is it? Time will tell.

Specificity

In America and countries that look to America for tech and taste, specificity rules the day.  No one ever became president (of anything) being a generalist.  Let’s leave Mr. Rubel for a moment and use Ms. X as an example.  Say you’ve never met Ms. X but you think she’s a brilliant marketing mind. She may be a lousy partner, driver, dancer and cook but she can really mesmerize a room filled with marketers. You may be marginally interested in her meatball recipe but it is certainly not the driver of her attention.  The more meatball recipes in her stream, the less likely she is to be unique. By mixing all of her postings into one stream, Ms. X is not managing her brand very well. Her fame is diluted.

Moving Toward the Middle.

This is another example – common a couple of years ago when social computing companies were all trying to match each other’s feature sets – where everyone is moving toward the middle. It should not be. LinkedIn is about business relationships. Twitter is about real time info and immediacy.  Facebook is about friends and self and entertainment.  As Facebook moves to the middle, attempting to be all things to all people (brand fan pages included), it becomes like fruit cocktail — that can of fruit in the back of the cabinet where everything tastes like peaches. As quickly as Facebook is growing, I’m afraid it will mirror Google and turn into nothing more than an amazing advertising platform. (And then divest.) Peace!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cashiers, Conversationalists and CMOs.
• Screen Grab Retouching for All.
• ROI and a Field of Weeds!
• Facebook and Google Hit the Highway.
• Google Buzzed?

 We have spent million of dollars and Euros and rubles around the world trying to get kids to stop or never start smoking.  The brief has always been about one thing: smoking will kill you. It will turn your lungs black and you into a seething ball of cancer.   After all these commercials and public service efforts kids and adults now know the dangers of smoking.  ( I once convinced NY State to make wearing the nicotine patch a fashion statement among African America males — another strategy — but that’s a story for another day.) In France the anti-smoking forces have decided to try a new strategy brief. And it’s a good one.   

Corporate Manipulation

The new brief is all about subjugating kids and making them do what corporate tobacco wants. And their print ads do it in a very dramatic way.  Some say too dramatic. In fact, the ads have been banned in some places.  Beyond the visual idea, the line “To smoke is to become the slave of tobacco” elicits powerful ideas and images.  Women’s groups and child porn groups are all up in arms…and that’s okay. They should be.  But this advertising is powerful and effective and it needs to run.

Good advertising makes you feels something then do something. In this case, hopefully it will keep kids from doing something. Smoking. Peace!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cashiers, Conversationalists and CMOs.
• An unlikely mind.
• Upwardly Mobile App Neighborhoods
• Tattoos or Marketing with Meaning?
• What Keeps WPP, IPG and Omnicom Up at Night?

I suck as an art director but that doesn’t keep me from appreciating art and wanting to play at it. Having looked over the shoulder of some pretty good art directors, watching them silhouette and manipulate images and color, I know what can be done with the right tools. The problem is the tools aren’t ready for mainstream.  And they are not free.

Polyvore

Polyvore is a women’s fashion website gets this and has developed a smart application where users drag and drop various clothing and accessories together into “sets” or looks. The UI (user interface) lets you flop things, flip things, enlarge, reduce, change color and purchase. By surrounding that functionality with comments, a community of fashionistas, and smart curating (showcasing Taylor Momsen and Keira Knightly sets, for instance) Polyvore has created a business. 

Snagit

Polyvore has tapped into people’s need to art direct or fashion direct and it points to a business I think is ripe for the taking.  A company by the name of TechSmith is aware of this and sells a product SnagIt that lets you grab and copy pictures and images via screen grab and do with them what you will. It looks fairly easy and for active users is a deal at $49.95. But the web needs an ad-supported version of this software for free. Think of it as a rudimentary retouching site – much like Flickr was to photo sharing a few years ago. Make it simple and they will come.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cashiers, Conversationalists and CMOs.
• An unlikely mind.
• Upwardly Mobile App Neighborhoods
• Tattoos or Marketing with Meaning?
• What Keeps WPP, IPG and Omnicom Up at Night?

If you were doing a survey on healthy food habits in America would you stand outside of McDonald’s and recruit?  That’s kind of what the Pew Research Center did with the sample for its 2010 survey of Millennials (late teens and twentysomethings).  Check it out:    

Results for the January 2010 Millennial Survey are based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Abt SRBI Inc. among a national sample of 2,020 adults living in the continental United States, 18 years of age and older, from Jan. 14 to 27, 2010 (851 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 1,169 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 538 who had no landline telephone).

 Granted, the study polled more than just Millennials since it needed the other generations for comparison purposes but a study about Millennials with half the respondents polled over a land line seems a little silly. Ask any Millennial on the street when the last time they answered a land line or if even if they know what a land line is and watch their expression.

 That caveat out of the way, I’m going to admit to not having read the whole report. It’s 149 pages and I shoveling snow this morning, but I did want to comment on a telling question about Millennials.  For the important open-ended question “Can you tell me some ways you think your generation is unique or distinct?” Millennials had the highest measure of any in the study with a 24% answering “Technology use.” The next highest measure in the study was Baby Boomers with 17% of respondents saying “work ethic/hardworking/motivated” and Boomers again with 14% for “respect.”  For Boomers that hippie ethos is still in tact. (Thanks Jimi, thanks Owsley.)  Back to Millennials, the second highest measure upon which Millennials agree as making their generation unique is “music.”  

This leads me to believe Millennials define themselves by their environment not their values. One could interpret the technology score as a means of communication (a value), but I’m not so sure.  My prediction yesterday that Millennials are the be-all of marketing research was, therefore, questionable. I’ll stand by my point about using them to understand “usability,” but will move off point on studying them for subjects of conscience.  That said, remember the sampling caveat. Peace!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cashiers, Conversationalists and CMOs.
• An unlikely mind.
• Upwardly Mobile App Neighborhoods
• Tattoos or Marketing with Meaning?
• What Keeps WPP, IPG and Omnicom Up at Night?

I love testing this raggedy brain when it comes to prognostication, so I’m going to stick my neck out before I read the Pew Research study on Millennials and venture a predition. 

People are a little like products.  In the lifecycle of a product there are stages just as there are stages in life. In the first stage, infancy, the form is sponge-like, taking in everything and developing on all fronts.  In adolescence, there is growth and testing — sticking fingers in electrical sockets – an amazing amount of learning and change. By the time people and products are Millennials they are still open to change but have become invested in their personalities. They’ve been around, yet they don’t always have the resources to do what they want.  Let’s leave middle age and the autumn or harvest years for a later discussion.

The Pew Research Center Report on Millennials (the people, not the products) entitled “Confident. Connected. Open to Change.” looks at the demographic: late teens and 20 years old.  It’s suitably named, albeit perhaps not completely seen through the steadied lens of our financially challenged times. (My take is that Millennials will be a little less confident, a little less open to change than the report states, but still quite connected.)

Marketing Planner’s Dream

Here’s the prediction: This group is a marketing planner’s dream. Especially so, because they’re amazingly attuned to usability.  Millennials are open to new ways, yet judgmental. Product and marketing planners should be studying Millennials for everything: healthcare, energy, clean tech, diet. Everything.  There will be some gems in this research report and many ideas to have ideas.

 Tomorrow, my take on the report. Peace!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cashiers, Conversationalists and CMOs.
• An unlikely mind.
• Upwardly Mobile App Neighborhoods
• Tattoos or Marketing with Meaning?
• What Keeps WPP, IPG and Omnicom Up at Night?