A great line in otherwise shill filled keynote today by David Carlick (Doubleclick founder/ investor). I could be mad, but he gave me this line to think about (and probably copy and take credit for) so job well done.
He was talking about how much harder it is to truly engage someone than buy a GRP at them. I interpret “harder” as expensive, time consuming and personally risky.
I think as a marketer you need to be honest about this. Each marketer needs to answer the question, “Do I want to impact tons of people a little bit (awareness), or a smaller number of perfect people a lot (engagement)”. If both, what’s more important? How do I spread my scarse resources (i.e. time, money) against these goals? This is going to vary from business to business.
But regardless of business once you make that choice I think there are some consistent best practices about how you allocate funds within the awareness and engagement filters.
Awareness = lots of media, lower investment in creative/ strategy/ and campaign stewardship.
Engagement = Creative/ Strategy/ Stewardship gets a lot more money and the media budget should shrink.
If you stick to an awareness based business model and try to generate engagement you’ll fail quickly. But if you stick with model you know and never fund engagement in a manner and scale that is logical you’ll fail slower.
And the meek shall inherit awareness and weaker brands.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Planting Seeds and Harvesting Crops
A smart guy once told me that advertisers are either planting seeds or harvesting crops. What he meant was advertisers were either generating demand for a product or they were taking existing demand and turning that into money.
When Bob Iger said, "I'm not worried about Google cannabilizing our advertising." I thought of this statement.
Google (all search really) is a fantastic tool for taking existing demand and turning it into money. Disney uses it to take existing demand of its content, harvest the demand into visitors, and sell other advertisers the opportunity to plant seeds. Advertising around (and yes even interrupting) content is a one (of many) tactics used to plant seeds.
Now is interruption the best tactic to do this? No. There are deeper ways to plant seeds w/ people through engagement and CRM. However, the ability to scale the reach of your seed planting is limited compared to interrupting great content. Interruption can go wide but not deep, engagement can go deep but not wide. An advertiser needs all of this. And impactful creative has to be everywhere.
This doesn't mean it will always be the biggest piece of the pie, or detract from the value of generating engagement but if we think interruption is going away completely we are kidding ourselves.
Disney's Iger: No AOL Bid
When Bob Iger said, "I'm not worried about Google cannabilizing our advertising." I thought of this statement.
Google (all search really) is a fantastic tool for taking existing demand and turning it into money. Disney uses it to take existing demand of its content, harvest the demand into visitors, and sell other advertisers the opportunity to plant seeds. Advertising around (and yes even interrupting) content is a one (of many) tactics used to plant seeds.
Now is interruption the best tactic to do this? No. There are deeper ways to plant seeds w/ people through engagement and CRM. However, the ability to scale the reach of your seed planting is limited compared to interrupting great content. Interruption can go wide but not deep, engagement can go deep but not wide. An advertiser needs all of this. And impactful creative has to be everywhere.
This doesn't mean it will always be the biggest piece of the pie, or detract from the value of generating engagement but if we think interruption is going away completely we are kidding ourselves.
Disney's Iger: No AOL Bid
Friday, March 14, 2008
Friendfeed Makes the World's Collide
A couple former Googlers created this social network aggregator and it bubbled up on Techmeme. I saw a line about "2008's Twitter" so I needed to check it out.
What it does is brings all your social networking venues such as Twitter, Google Reader, Delicious, Facebook, Blogger all together in one stream that you can view and publish.
Problem for me is, I use all of these services quite differently. I'm experimental in Twitter and Blogger. I use Google Reader as a personal link archiving tool. I use Facebook to keep up with real friends. I use Delicious to promote social learning at my company.
By putting all this info in one place it zaps some of the value of each. As a content producer it bothers me. But as a viewer, I think I might enjoy tracking people across different vehicles, I might learn useful things or see a more complete picture.
What can marketers do with this? First they have to make the commitment to be a social marketer, then a diverse social marketer, then an aggregator of their own diverse voices. Is it worth the time and money, that's for you to decide.
What it does is brings all your social networking venues such as Twitter, Google Reader, Delicious, Facebook, Blogger all together in one stream that you can view and publish.
Problem for me is, I use all of these services quite differently. I'm experimental in Twitter and Blogger. I use Google Reader as a personal link archiving tool. I use Facebook to keep up with real friends. I use Delicious to promote social learning at my company.
By putting all this info in one place it zaps some of the value of each. As a content producer it bothers me. But as a viewer, I think I might enjoy tracking people across different vehicles, I might learn useful things or see a more complete picture.
What can marketers do with this? First they have to make the commitment to be a social marketer, then a diverse social marketer, then an aggregator of their own diverse voices. Is it worth the time and money, that's for you to decide.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Really, Apple. You can't get this together?
All the hipsters love Apple. I see them lined up outside the store in SoHo, this is how I know. Well, I tried to do something as hipster as it gets and Apple can't deliver
There's a song from a SWEDISH HIP HOP ARTIST, that I read about, ON A BLOG. I was going to DOWNLOAD IT ON MY IPOD from ITUNES, so I could listen to it on my way to work at AN AD AGENCY IN THE WEST VILLAGE.
They tell me I can't buy Swedish music. Thank g-d its not easy to steal music or else the music industry would be wasting precious opportunities. Wait... umm...
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
The New Advertising Outlet: Your Life - New York Times
The New Advertising Outlet: Your Life - New York Times
Here's an article in the NY Times about a shift away from traditional media by marketers. What I think is interesting is that the mainstream press isn't saying, "Everything's going digital". They are looking at from a broader perspective and recognizing how advertisers are merely shifting their support from content to tools.
Advertisers are moving away from making content "free" and towards making "tools" free. Those tools can be a running club or a matching making service. It can be digital or live in the real world.
This doesn't mean ad supported content is dead, it means the bar is raised. It doesn't mean "tools" will achieve an advertisers goals. Its means awesome tools will meet advertisers goals.
In the end, it will be marketers looking at their customers, (and to steal a line from this week's Private Practice) figure out what they want, and then give it to them.
Here's an article in the NY Times about a shift away from traditional media by marketers. What I think is interesting is that the mainstream press isn't saying, "Everything's going digital". They are looking at from a broader perspective and recognizing how advertisers are merely shifting their support from content to tools.
Advertisers are moving away from making content "free" and towards making "tools" free. Those tools can be a running club or a matching making service. It can be digital or live in the real world.
This doesn't mean ad supported content is dead, it means the bar is raised. It doesn't mean "tools" will achieve an advertisers goals. Its means awesome tools will meet advertisers goals.
In the end, it will be marketers looking at their customers, (and to steal a line from this week's Private Practice) figure out what they want, and then give it to them.
BusinessWeek Debate Room E-mail Faces Deletion
BusinessWeek Debate Room E-mail Faces Deletion
As a professional digital marketing guy I always feel I am not reading enough, sharing enough, blogging enough. (as can be seen by this pathetic stretch between posts). But I do think the reason is that I am crushed by emails. Merely deleting them and filing them takes hours a day.
Can there be tools better than email to conduct business? Most definitely. Scoble is on to something here.
I manage a group of three people (hardly a daunting number) and they copy me on tons of emails to make sure I am "in the loop", can cover them if they decide to get sick or go vacation, and can advise if I see a major issue. Its very important I can do all those things. I don't need to engage with these emails on a daily basis but they clutter my inbox and take up valuable time. I can't imagine how the person that manages 30 people gets by.
There must be a better way. I don't know, as Scoble suggests, the answer is twitter and facebook though.
As a professional digital marketing guy I always feel I am not reading enough, sharing enough, blogging enough. (as can be seen by this pathetic stretch between posts). But I do think the reason is that I am crushed by emails. Merely deleting them and filing them takes hours a day.
Can there be tools better than email to conduct business? Most definitely. Scoble is on to something here.
I manage a group of three people (hardly a daunting number) and they copy me on tons of emails to make sure I am "in the loop", can cover them if they decide to get sick or go vacation, and can advise if I see a major issue. Its very important I can do all those things. I don't need to engage with these emails on a daily basis but they clutter my inbox and take up valuable time. I can't imagine how the person that manages 30 people gets by.
There must be a better way. I don't know, as Scoble suggests, the answer is twitter and facebook though.
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