Been a while since I posted. I'm tired and I've got no rants, approvals, or opinions on marketing at the moment. Forgive me, gonna stray off strategy.
I'm enjoying a final glass of wine after a wonderful Chanukah party with family. We played, we watched sports, I had a hundred eager helpers to take care of Harry. I'm not ready to discuss the Jets loss, but although the Knicks lost, this Chanukah, I'm thankful for Nate Robertson. (is that this holiday?)
He is 5' 9''. This isn't a dunk contest, or an alley oop, or a fast break. this is a put back off an offense rebound. Are you KIDDING ME!!!? Points off the offense boards alone are pure hustle and scrap plays. You got to work, no one's setting you up, and your not relying on trickery or snazziness. Its just force, will, and attitude. Its, "I'm not leaving this side of the court without a basket, and its not going to be cute. Maybe we will miss, but I will outfight you for the ball, and put the mother in the hole. Mother-EXPLETIVE" This is that on crack by a guy almost a FOOT shorter than the average NBA player. Enjoy.
Mike Shields wrote an article about the end of display ads. I was happy to provide a quote and serve my role as the grumpy internet curmudgeon.
"Greg March, digital group director at Wieden+Kennedy, put it more bluntly. “Internet ads are small and out of the way,” he said. “Advertisers want to deliver impact, and I don’t think the impact for these ads is always that strong.”
Darren makes salient points about how engagement mapping will make banner ads more measurable, that integration with other mediums can enhance the value, and that there are business models and client careers invested in building off of these tiny little banners.
I totally agree with him.
Your probably thinking, "Greg, you are a fence sitting, waffling, vacillating, weak-kneed codfish hemming and hawing your way through your career trying to be everything to everyone." At least that's what you'd be thinking if you had a thesaurus handy.
Truth is he is right. The problem is that he's only addressing a portion of a robust communications plan. There is an aspect of a strong communication plan that relies on engagement, and a portion that relies on impact and disruption. Why can't the digital landscape house both? 200 million Americans are going to eat ketchup this month, how many of them are going to play (even the coolest) ketchup game or engage AT ALL with ketchup marketing. 1%? 2%?
That said, I don't think banners are "dead", I think they should continue serving their role of being low cost, navigational media that survives on targeting the perfect people at the perfect moment. Perhaps leads to immersive experiences that drive Word Of Mouth.
But as much as engagement is useful (and probably underutilized) the money in disruption is currently much larger. Whether its entertaining the masses to generate a feeling about your brand, or getting the word out about a sale, or owning a moment of popular culture, advertising often needs to get in peoples faces.
In order for digital marketers to have the strategic conversations with their clients about how much to allocate towards disruption and how much to allocate towards engagement, they need to accept that the disruptive piece has value.
When all the digital ad sellers and digital ad buyers ignore that, we reduce ourselves to a niche and get left out of the big picture discussions.
CEO of Hulu talks about their Mission, Culture, and Vision. Premium video content is highest CPM (non-search) media on the internet, with the highest sell through, and the most potential for growth.
Dow continues to plummet, the bank's wouldn't let you borrow a pen, budget's of all kinds are cut but you know what, there's upside to all of this.
Here are 3.
The ad industry luminaries are going to have to roll up there sleaves and do some real work. Everyday hard-working smart people hustle, think, and sweat to bring marketing campaigns to life through complex bureaucracies only to unfairly read some luminary (that hasn't executed anything in years) snipe at them from their blog for not living up to some myopic tactical ideal. Later for that. Job descriptions of "I go to conferences, blog and Twitter" are going bye-bye. Some will roll up their sleeves, serve their clients and push the industry forward with action rather than opinion. The others will go back into the family business, or start selling something. "I used to be the Mobile Evangelist for ZebraZoo, and I can tell you, your clients need to advertise on calling cards!" Enjoy kicking them out of your office.
New digital media opportunities will be made available. Anyone hear this before the burst bubble burst. "You will NEVER buy an ad on the front page of Yahoo". I did. Now, for a price, I can turn it into a carnival. I know many luminaries hate this because its "intrusive". And to that I would quote Hyman Roth
We're in advertising. Sometimes we have to intrude on people to sell our products. I understand all the benefits of conversation. Engagement is a growing piece of what we do, but sometimes people need to be interrupted to learn that people buying a Toyota will be saved by 0% APR's and Subway sandwiches has some excellent $5 footlong options. Its not sacrilege to embrace that side our business. So let's see digital opportunities that are little less small and out of the way and might actually disrupt and impact people.
We will finally stop having to play pattycake with Millenial employees. I know I'm not the only one to notice this latest round of kids out of school that have known nothing but growth and 15% annual raises and complaints about working late. (not the ones that work for me, those are the best millenials alive, no joke) I've been saying for a while, these other kids need a little recession to whack them in line and recognize that this is the time in their career to work their asses off, learn their craft, and be reliable. To them I quote Judge Smails.
So yes I've quoted Hyman Roth and Judge Smails. Not the most beloved characters of American Pop Culture. I've praised interruption and minimized conversation and engagement. You may think I am the oldest, orneriest 31 year old in the world. Read the rest of this blog, you'll see I understand the value of conversational marketing, giving high level opinions, and even youth culture. But momentum usually carries popular ideas past rationale ones. Alot of digital marketers need to understand the historically successful ways of marketing products and the younger generation needs someone old fashioned humble pie.
Maybe its somewhere in the middle of these high minded new ideals and an old school approach that will sell the most stuff for my clients. And if it takes a recession to realign the talented people that work in marketing to achieve more success and become more valuable to their employers and patrons, so be it. Hopefully it will make us all richer in the long run.
I met Tom Cuniff at the MIXX conference a couple weeks ago. A colleague of mine asked me to maintain continuous tweets about the conference. I could not oblige, when I try and do that I don't end up following what people are saying.
Through Twitter Search I saw that Tom, (who I didn't know at the time) was keeping up posts aggressively, so I pointed my collegue to Tom. After speaking to him at the break and following his blog, it became apparent that it was worth my while to pay attention to what he says so that I can copy it and feign brilliance.
I've been trying to imitate really smart people and taking credit my whole career and no one seems to care. So I'm taking it a step further. For those that I work with, I WILL BE TAKING CREDIT FOR TOM'S EXPERTISE OFTEN. Feel free to beat me to it.
Check his blog out today and on the first page you'll:
Learn what marketers can learn from this election and social media's role in it
Read about a fantastic Kraft social media case study
See new innovation by the New York Times that justifies "tradional media" role in the digital landscape
Laugh at a hysterical video encouraging kids to vote or not to vote (with lefty celeb's almost holding back their gushy Obamalove)
He covered a lot of ground here but one of the more interesting points for me was that when bringing to life social ideas we can stand a little less planning and embrace a little more failure. Instead of investing tons of time and money on 1 idea, take a little bit of money and time and get 10 ideas in the marketplace. This might be a way to get more people participating with your idea (or if your a marketer, your brand). Then watch what happens kill the failures (learn from them), and optimize the success.
If you can agree that participation has value in its own right, that it in fact creates more passion around your brand, and that passion (even amongst a few people) makes your other ad tactics work harder, why not try a little more fail and little less plan.
Been a while since I posted. I'm tired and I've got no rants, approvals, or opinions on marketing at the moment. Forgive me, gonna stray off strategy.
