Wu hoo…activism.

    Google Reason.

    Marketing

    Gawker With a Capitalist G.

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    Gawker is one of my favorite blogs. It’s the reason I love blogs. Attitude is what makes Gawker work for me. It speaks to me in a voice I rarely hear anywhere else.

    Today, its managing editor Choire Sicha and two key writers left. Their gripe? They don’t like the new compensation system that will pay them based upon the number of page views their stories generate. They want to be paid by the post or, perhaps, by the hour. The pay-per-view approach, the departing writers say, will encourage them to be more competitive and outlandish. Hello? Have they read their own stuff? That’s what they do. 

     
    I am very sorry to see them all go`and do hope the writing will not go so cartoonishly over the top it becomes unreadable, but the pay-per-view compensation system is here to stay. It’s the American way baby! 
     

    Return on Strategy

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    Ad agencies make money selling stuff. Want a TV commercial? That will cost you $350,000. Want a billboard? $25,000. How about a direct mail program? $125,000. Website? $75,000, if we don’t have to outsource it. If there is commissionable media…all the better.

     

    As an ad guy coming up in the business a great day was one during which you presented brilliant creative and the client approved it with excitement, energy and money. If the creative really worked and sales followed you could just smell success.

     

    But, today, as a brand planner the real excitement comes from presenting a brand strategy that lights up a CEO. When s/he reads the paper or the screen and breaks out in a smile and says “You get me” that’s the home run.  A brand strategy is not the creative, it’s the idea that leads the creative — it is the long term idea that makes the money.  I use a line in presentations all the time “Campaigns come and go, but a powerful branding idea is indelible.” Powerful branding ideas are how agencies should make money. Their ability to deliver on that idea should be the key to remuneration. Therein lies the ROS (return on strategy) conundrum.

     

    Any thoughts on how to make this work? Drop me a note at steve@whatstheidea.com Peace!    

     

    Ready, Shoot, Aim the Arrow

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    What is it about this marketing stuff that is so hard? Sergio Zyman once said marketing is about “Selling more product, to more people, more times, at higher prices.” Why can’t we just focus on that?
     
    The Journal today discusses how Phillips-Van Heusen is using social networking and Ellis Island in its latest marketing campaign as a way to sell more Arrow shirts. Either I’m missing something or this is a barrowed interested stunt to get visibility.  And I’m not even saying it won’t work. They may indeed get good visibility, with this tactic de jour, and sell a few cotton oxfords. I don’t see any pink polo shirts moving, but that’s just me. Long term, this is just a mistake. 
     
    It’s clearly one of those programs where someone in the company, or at the agency, said “Hey, social networking is big today, let’s build a program.” Clearly the mobile marketing idea (cell phone) didn’t rise to the top of the planning session.
     
    These men and women should have taken the $50M they are spending and hired a great shirt designer to invent the next belly shirt or something. Or how about men’s underwear that is “A” cup, or “B” cup. Now there’s an idea.
     
    Marketing tactics without strategy dilute brands.
     

    Neutered Agencies

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    Gavin O’Malley, in his MediaPost column today, talks about Open Source in the marketing and advertising world. Those who know the provenance of Open Source trace it to the technology world where Open Source software is software available to all, with no intellectual property restrictions. Linux was an Open Source phenomenon years ago and it hurt Microsoft’s business. In the advertising world, it simply refers to a marketer and its agencies sharing intell. 
     
    Because agencies are competitive animals, they are always looking for advantage. A general ad agency doesn’t want to lose budget to the direct agency. The direct agency doesn’t want to lose budget to a digital agency. None of these want to lose money to a promotional agency….
     
    Well, what if the marketer and agencies were able to aggregate their best learning, best research, best practices, and share it with one another? In other words, if all agency partners had access to the same code? Would this Open Source marketing world be more effective? Would the ideas be stronger? The process more streamlined?
     
    Nah!
     
    It’s up to the client to share what’s most important with its agencies. The marketer needs a tight product, a tight brief, and lots of consumer insights. Also, it needs proper budgeting and budget allocation to meet the objectives of the business.
     
    Making all agencies play nice neuters them. Agencies that work well together, will. Otherwise, let them do their own thing. Who needs neutered agencies?

    Too big, too fast?

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    Well, Google just stepped over the line. Their recent YouTube purchase only made sense to me because it furthered Google’s franchise as the world’s best search engine. Though video hosting is not a core competence of Google, searching for those videos certainly can be. Now Google has made a deal to buy DoubleClick, the Web’s leading ad server business.
     
    Some might say an ad server uses search algorithms to find the most appropriate place to host an ad, but I’m going there. This purchase is about growing bigger and growing faster…in almost Googolplex dimension. It will prove too much food on the plate for one company to eat with elegance. Is anyone getting a Monty Python image?

    Product Placement Finesse.

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    I’ll soon be sending my son off to college and he has no real reading skills. Were college conducted as a videogame he’d be golden.  Some college kids in journalism class, by a show of hands, have never read a newspaper. Magazines for teens, tweens and millennials…well you get my drift.

     

    TV, computer and mobile phones are the media of choice for kids.  Product placement on those screens is a viable investment for marketers. But product placement is a funny thing; it can be amazingly persuasive or it can fall flat. When well integrated into a story it’s a beautiful, ferociously effective selling tactic. Yet when slapped into a story without finesse, it just lies there like a stanky flip-flop. If a cast member of Gossip Girl drinks a bottle of Honest Tea, it’s “passive” and smart. When the Celebrity Apprentice builds a project around, say, a Maybelline cosmetic, it’s “active” and weak. 

     

    Forced product placement sticks out and everyone recognizes it. It just doesn’t feel right. As marketers we need to minimize that smelly flip-lop or we’ll alienate consumers young and not so.

     

     

    Reverse Supply and Demand

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    DentBetty.com is an exciting example of supply and demand in reverse. Car owners post dent and ding photos to the site so car repair shops can provide competitive estimates. Ain’t the Web grand? When body shops compete, you win! (DentBetty is in Beta and not available everywhere, but has bust-a-move upside.)  Currently free until they prime the user pump, DentBetty has a business model that will be mimicked across the Web benefiting both consumers and wired entrepreneurs.  As my kids used to say “I yike it.”

     

    Which brings us to AOL.  Huh? AOL’s new shtick is to become the single greatest source of advertising supported content on the Web. (They should leave off the advertising supported part of their mission; it’s irrelevant and brand-limiting.) You might think being a content provider is being in the supply business — and it is — but as AOL uses that content to analyze and learn about online behaviors, it will find itself in a better positionto create new, un-thought of content. And if it develops new online inventions and conventions, like DentBetty, will attain revenue heights not yet seen. Content is king for sure, but it is not always one way.  User generated content isn’t just text and party pics. Peace!

    Keep Logistics Out of Clothing Design.

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    “Logistics Are in Vogue With Designers” reads a headline in today’s Wall Street Journal. With the economy continuing to soften, some of the larger design house brands such as Valentino and Bulgari are investing in IT and more robust supply chain systems; the thought being, if they know what is selling where and when, they can quickly course correct and optimize profits.
     
    As a planner, one of the businesses I’ve always loved to watch is the clothing design business. The best designers look ahead for inspiration. They bet their careers on it. Yet with all of this new reporting from stores and more science in the equation, inspiration will wane. I often squawk about “rearview mirror” planners.  I have no problem with data collection and analysis, but it does not provide the way forward.  

    The best clothing designers know this and should swear off these sales reports.
     

     

    Kindling of a sort.

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    You don’t have to be a Star Trek fan to believe that one day the majority of books will be distributed digitally and read on non-paper devices.   Amazon believes this and spent a good deal of money developing the Kindle in an effort to get out in front of this market. The kindle allows owners to download books wirelessly to the device for $9-12 dollars each then read them one page at a time with a battery powered flat panel tablet. The product costs about $400.
     
    It sounds like a good first start, but has been panned by some pretty smart people. Robert Scoble did a vlog screed on the design here http://www.kyte.tv/ch/6118-scobleizer-sponsored-by-seagate/77475-dear-jeff-bez#uri=channels/6118/77475 .
      
    The Journal’s Walter Mossberg was nicer but echoed Robert’s points about button position and clunky usability. I have yet to touch one and being a tree-hugger wannabe applaud the effort, but must agree that Amazon may have been long on vision but short on execution. They should have done a lot more usability testing on the Kindle before finalizing design and rushing it to market.  (Hear that Microsoft Zune marketers?)  People read books everywhere. With feet up, down, tucked. Standing in subways.  Slouched in beach chairs. Not just in Seattle test kitchens.
     

    Newsday’s New North Star.

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    Patrick Dolan bought Newsday back from European Telecom company Altice yesterday and so Newsday is in the, tah dah, news. I like the move. Over 15 years ago I wrote the Newsday brand strategy that went on to be its tagline for many years.  It was a tight brand strategy — competitive with the NYT, offered a very home-town and hearth angle, and strong family pull.  The brand claim was “We know where you live.” (A brand strategy remember, is one claim, three proof planks.) The tagline ended up being “It’s where you live.”

    By substituting “It’s” for “We know” the strategy was more than partly eviscerated. The emphasis is all wrong. The push back from Newsday was “It’s stawker-ish and creepy. Voyeuristic.”  Too silly for words, was that criticism.  Putting the emphasis on Newsday as a place or community, rather than a journalistic endeavor devoted to understanding what makes Long Islander tick, may sound subtle but it was huge.

    We know where you live is a strong today as a claim, as it ever was. Perhaps stronger. As an organizing principle for news, community and digital experience, it is a north star.

    Good luck with the ownership Mr. Dolan, let’s talk brand strategy.

    Peace.