The Digital Influentials, by Cory Treffiletti

Never Trust A CMO Who Won’t Go Out And Sell (Mediapost 5.22.13)

I’m a marketer and I’ve been one for years, regardless of what my title was or where I worked.  In my career I learned one inalienable truth; that if you want to be a successful marketer, you need to learn how to sell.

Most people don’t have “sales” in their title, but selling is at the heart of what we do.  If you’re not good at selling then you can never be good at marketing.  Marketing is all about the development of the message, but selling is the art of delivering that message.  Selling is about reading the room, understanding the reactions and responding with the right slant to generate “epiphanies” in the eyes of your audience.  They need to “get it” and see the value, and most importantly they need to see the value to them, and that only comes from customizing the message to meet their needs.  The best marketers are the ones who go out into the field and experience the customers.  They join the sales team on sales calls.  They actually get involved in the back and forth that can only arise in a customer setting. 

The worst marketers are the ones who sit on high from their ivory throne rooms and dictate messaging without ever joining the “feet on the street”.  I’ve heard of CMO’s at Ad Tech companies who deliver positioning and sales materials that the sales teams despise.  I’ve heard of taglines being delivered that literally make account executives cringe knowing they’re expected to be the ones to deliver these corny one liners while being taken seriously by their customers and prospects.  Marketing is hard enough.  It doesn’t need to be unnecessarily complicated by the development of messaging without practical knowledge from the field.

Marketing is indeed an art form and like any art, it takes practice.  You have to hone your craft and you have to re-evaluate the way you approach things.  I like to develop a hypothesis, review the landscape of the competition, engage with customers to test out your hypothesis and use the feedback to further refine the strategy until I get something I think will work.  Once I have an idea that I think will work, I move to execute against that strategy with an open mind towards continued evaluation and refinement of the strategy.  The more you engage with your audience, the more opportunity you have to integrate their feedback and once you feel you’ve gotten things to the perfect place and its working smoothly – that’s the best time to start over anew.

People think I’m crazy based on that last statement.  I believe in disruption.  I believe in the “hangin’ curveball”, so to speak (and to quote Bull Durham).  I like to throw the curveball to switch things up a bit because as soon as you rest on your laurels is when the market will pass you by.  It doesn’t mean you have throw out what’s been working.  It means you need to be willing to throw it out if a better hypothesis comes along and can be proven through testing in the field.  According to a recent article I read, the average tenure of a CMO has increased from 23 months to around 43 months and I think its because more CMO’s agree with me.  The short term CMO’s are the ones who think they’ve got it all figured out whereas the long term CMO’s are more like me – they’re always on the lookout for something new.

Which brings me back to the original statement – the best way to judge whether your strategy is working is to go out and sell it to your audience and your CMO should be doing that as well.  Take them through the thinking and listen attentively to their feedback.  The old saying goes “the customer is always right” for a reason  -  they’re the ones with the money.  If they don’t buy your story, then they certainly won’t buy your products or services.  And if your CMO isn’t willing to go out and sell those ideas, then its very possible they don’t believe in the story either.

Heard any good horror stories about Ad Tech CMO’s?  Post them on the Spin Board but please leave off the names to protect the innocent.  Remember – nothing is anonymous when you write it on the web.  

Can Responsive Design Provide Scale To Native Advertising? (Mediapost 5.15.13)

The question facing most marketers is one of scale, and probably the single most overlooked challenge comes from how to design experiences for dozens of different platforms in an efficient manner?

In 1995 you only had to design for the desktop web browser.  By 2000 you had to design an experience for a desktop browser plus WAP for early mobile access.  In 2005 things got more challenging as you were forced to design for the desktop browser, WAP, and iPhone as well as Android phones.  In 2013 you have to design for the desktop, iPhone, multiple Android phones with different screen sizes, a number of tablets from Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Samsung and Microsoft.  You have to design experiences for the browser as well as for your app environments, and all of these need to be customizable to some extent so the interactions can be optimized based on the users when you are leveraging 1^st or 3^rd party data for those purposes.  Most marketers have come to recognize these issues and are focused on Responsive Design as the solution.

Responsive design is a huge consideration and surprisingly not everyone is up to speed on it.  Regardless of what you may think you know, not every platform is designed to be responsive to the platform it is delivered on.  Some platforms are unable to be rendered properly on all devices, and as more and more devices are being launched every month, the need for responsive design is increasing quickly.   Responsive design also applies to advertising units because they need to be able to be inserted into the design specs for all these channels and devices. 

When you tie responsive design into data-driven targeting, you enter into a world that is interesting and scalable.  Responsive, optimized solutions are the future of the web-marketing world as more systems shift to automation and optimization.  More marketers are implementing dynamic creative based on data, and once these are dropped into a responsive design platform, its feasible that you can have a single point solution for all your digital advertising creative.  Take it one step further and have that system feed into the content management system for your core site or apps and you can truly have a scalable, native advertising solution that functions across multiple platforms to deliver high performance experiences to your prospects and customers.  That’s the goal, after all!

Knowing who your customers are, where they’re accessing your information from, and what they are looking for is the objective of every marketer in 2013.  Thankfully the solutions you need to realize these dreams are literally only a few clicks away as most of these solutions are layering into the “marketing stack” that most companies are evaluating right now.  The marketing stack can be broken down into 3 areas; the data layer, the execution layer and the reporting/optimization layer.  These kinds of creative solutions fit squarely in the execution layer, with capabilities for reporting and optimization either being integrated or outsourced to a partner in the tech stack.  Have you started to examine these solutions and see how they plug into one another?  If not, you should probably start looking into it because I am pretty sure your competitors have already begun!

Automating The RFP And Buying Process (For Real) (Mediapost 5.8.13)

There’s an area of the advertising business that’s not so patiently waiting to be automated and I think 2013 is the year this finally, finally gets taken care of.  I am speaking of course, about the actual media RFP and buying process.

Before you get all bent out of shape and try to tell me, “Geez Cory – it already is – you are so out of it”, be sure you have all the facts.

Fact #1: Outside of a self-service seat on a DSP, the vast majority (if not 100%) of all media is still managed through the traditional insertion order signature process.   This applies to online and offline alike and just about every media planner will tell you the same thing; this archaic process is awful.

Fact #2: Close to 100% of all online media RFP’s are still handled through an outdated, almost laughable, excel-based template approach.  Even the agencies that issue a web-based form for filling out RFP’s end up pushing the info out to excel and managing the RFP process through pivot tables, sorting and hiding rows and columns until they know what they’re going to buy.

Fact #3: Without a doubt, the advertising business is a relationship driven business, meaning the majority of media buys are done off a combination of past performance combined with personal relationships.  With so many choices out there in the marketplace for a media buyer to choose from, many of the final decisions are based on the relationships between buyer and seller.  At least the first “test buy” is driven in that manner.  Once you’re on the buy, performance dictates whether you stay. 

I’ve done surveys over the years when I was doing more consulting-type projects and most buyers have 4-5 “usual suspects” they put on a buy, even though they tend to RFP as many as 10 in a specific category.  Most of the RFP process is client-driven; meaning they want to see the competition, but the agency has a good feel for what they’re going to recommend.  As much analysis as they do, much of the value assigned is qualitative and subjective.  Its “analytics” obscuring relationships.  It’s not a bad thing that this business is so relationship driven.  We just need to be honest about it.

But what if the business were driven by true analytics rather than “analytics”, and there were tools that made the process of issuing RFP’s, selecting vendors and executing campaigns – even those with multiple rounds of optimization – in a more efficient manner?  I think this is the year.  I have personally heard of 4 companies in the last 2 months who are trying to build this toolset and the market seems poised for 1, 2, or even 3 of these platforms to take hold and gain usage quickly.

For a business that is as fully automated as ours, it’s crazy there’s still a manual process for determining campaign placement.  The IO process itself is onerous, and it leads to millions of dollars worth of errors in the agency media management process every year.  Ask any CFO or Controller in the agency world why it takes so long for them to pay their bills (many are regularly as far behind as 120 days on payments) and they will tell you its because of the process of reconciling their media buys.  If the process were truly automated on both sides, this would be a much easier problem to solve. 

From what I’ve seen recently, 2013 and 2014 are the years when the business of buying media finally gets efficient.  Don’t you agree it’s about time?

“A Computer Can’t See A Face In The Clouds” (Mediapost 5.1.13)

The world of advertising and marketing is no longer a battle between art and science, or man and machine.  It is no longer about creative vs. media.  It’s programmatic vs. human insight and the winner is… balance.

We have officially evolved past the tipping point of any ludicrous argument about “A vs. B”, either or.  Advertising and marketing is about balance.  You balance the message with the media.  You balance the big ideas with the tactical execution. 

The most important balance required is that to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time and that is only achieved through the balance of big data systems with human insight and experience.

As I was watching one of a series of videos from GE last week I heard a quote that struck me as prophetic and applicable to this discussion.  I paraphrase the quote, but it stated that regardless of how much programming you do, no computer can see a “face in the clouds”.  No computer can recognize the “man in the moon”.  Human insight and creativity are what give these ideas life, and these exist because our brains our wired to see patterns and create imagery that can never be replicated by a machine.  Human insight is unique in the way it parses and makes sense of data and in advertising and marketing this insight is key to success.

As more of the business is shifting to a programmatic model, companies are trying to determine the depth to which they will allow advertising to rely on pure data.  I work in data and I can truthfully and confidently say that no company will succeed when they rely solely on the data.  You cannot relegate all decision making to the cloud.  You need humans layered over the top to provide that unquantifiable analytical value that can weave together something which resonates with the consumer.  Consumers are people and they look for stories that only other people are capable of telling.  Any story that would be woven together by a machine would be nothing more than a mad lib on steroids.  Fill in the gaps and the arc of the story remains the same.  Human beings add significant value when identifying trends in data that are influenced by other factors such as human emotion, fiscal environment and too many other elements to even list in this article.  A machine looks for a pattern that is repeatable and distinct whereas humans understand when a pattern can and should be broken and a new direction is required. 

Programmatic media is the rage right now, and deservedly so.  There are a ton of execution platforms that are taking media buying to a completely automated level.  If I had to hazard a guess, I would predict that as much as 70% of online media buying will be programmatic in the next 5 years.  I would also predict that Television and Radio buying will be executed through programmatic means within the next 10 years.  The only reason I think it will take that long is because of the turnover in systems that would b required to make this a reality.  Programmatic drives the future of advertising, but take note that I only said 70%.  That still leaves at least 30% of online media buying and a percentage of other media that will not be bought through a programmatic marketplace.  The upfronts can be executed programmatically, but there will always be media buyers layered over the top to add the element of human insight.  No machine can accurately predict a hit on TV.  No machine can predict that a site will become one of the most trafficked sites on the web.  No machine can predict the next Google or Facebook.  Humans can, even if many of them are consistently wrong.

Programmatic media and eventually programmatic creative are here to stay, and here to actually dominate the world of advertising, but they will always require the human insight layer.  They will always require that mammal brain to look into the clouds and recognize the face looking back at them. 

Teaching The “Old Dog” Some New Tricks (Mediapost 4.23.13)

“Business has only two functions.  Marketing and Innovation”

This quote is attributed to Milan Kundera, according to everywhere I searched (some people incorrectly attribute it to Peter Drucker).  It’s a great quote though I have very little idea how Milan Kundera can be qualified enough in this arena to have made this statement in the first place.

What I find most interesting about this ideas as a thought starter is we live in a world where marketing IS innovation and now we’re knee deep in the evolution through two generations of marketers. 

Allow me to explain.

When this business started, back in 1994, there were dreamers and visionaries who foresaw an opportunity.  They foretold of a world where the Internet would become the central tool for communication and interaction and they established a basic business around it; a marketing business.  During those years we sat back and pontificated about a world where the “dinosaurs” would become extinct and the new generation would take over.  We imagined what it would be like when the marketers who believed in digital rose up through the ranks and took their rightful seats at the head of the table that were being slowly vacated by the old marketing guard.  This old guard firmly believed in one inalienable truth – that TV advertising was the driver of growth in business.    That day of change and succession came not so long ago and most every major brand in the world has awoken to the idea that digital drives their customer interaction strategy and digital sits alongside TV as the lynchpins of their marketing efforts.  All roads drive to digital, and those that don’t are slowly creating atomic bonds with digital as a means of measuring their traditional performance.  That brings us to where we are today…

We sit at a tipping point that is driven by data and the quants are saying the same thing about the generation in front of them… they can’t wait until the “digital” leaders move out of the way and make way for the data scientists.  Those “established” marketers who believe (unfortunately) in click through for direct response and reach/frequency for brand building are on the precipice of being succeeded by the data junkies whose analytics chops are deeper and more determined.  These are the people who revel in the value of database analytics and the algorithmic modeling of customer profiles.

Nobody likes to admit they’re wrong, and even fewer like to admit they don’t know or understand something.  If you’re 20 years into your career, or even 30 years into your career and you plan on working for another 10-20 years you are being forced to acquire a whole new skillset and one that may not come naturally to you.  That can be hard.  Many years ago I wrote a column about how our brains, those of us in our 30’s and 40’s now, are being rewired to process information particles from numerous sources differently.  We are satisfied with input from many sources, only an inch deep, to allow us to formulate our opinions.  We are directional in mindset and can make our decisions, implement and move quickly, all the while understanding that we may have to revisit those decisions later.  Behind us sits a generation of employees who are more deeply analytical and who thrive on the ability to run permutations of data to determine the proper decision to be made.  They will take longer to make a decision, but that decision will be more informed and odds are that it will survive in the long run.

These are the people you are hiring and these are the people who will eventually inherit your job.  In the meantime, this is what you need to do to be successful for the rest of your career – you need to learn some new tricks.   You need to be comfortable with the fact that innovation does not always look like revolution, but that it can be an evolutionary.  It can be slower and in can actually take more time.   You may have to look deeper at challenges and find different solutions rather than work the first one that comes to you.  You may need to become more analytical, or at least make space for those around you who are naturally more analytical.  Marketing innovation is being driven by analytics and the ability to put analytical outcomes into action.   That is a skill you may not have but you will have to learn it.

The rate of business growth is not directly proportional to the process by which decisions are made, but its very possible that if you crunch enough of the data that your decisions, once implemented, will have a more profound effect on the results than the agile-driven, directional decisions that were previously being made.  Think of it this way; a more well thought-out strategy can have a more impactful result than a quickly determined, hastily implemented revision to an existing strategy, no matter how you arrived at that decision.

Are you the old-guard now?

Pick One Horse In The Race Or Else Even When You Win, You Lose (Mediapost 4.10.13)

Having previously spent almost 18 years on the agency side of the business, and having had many of those years spent handling consumer advertising for a number of the biggest brands in the world, I think I am qualified to say this…

It’s a bad idea to split your business between multiple agencies.

There are far too may examples of this “strategy” and I have never actually seen them result in strong, effective, painless execution.  Too often a client will undergo an agency review and they will come to a conclusion that there are strengths in more than one of the agencies they examined and they decide on the “best of all worlds” scenario.  In some cases that means they divide media and creative, or planning and buying or even digital and traditional – all of these are actually situations I can sort of understand though I may not like them.  In more extreme cases they go so far as to split up media strategy from media buying across all platforms, then separate out digital and some of the more focused efforts – all going with different agencies.  This can be a recipe for disaster – I know first hand.

I understand the option to split media and creative, at least in theory.  These are distinctly different disciplines and there are truly only a handful of shops in the US that do both really, really well.  I can also grasp the desire to split digital from traditional, although in that instance I think you have to let the digital shop do both media and creative and the traditional shop should be awarded the same responsibilities for offline.  Digital does have a different skill set when it comes to understanding technology, but that line is starting to blur and I foresee a world in the next 5 years where the stand-alone digital shop is less and less the norm, with all efforts being brought under a single roof.   In the meantime, if you have any hope of being successful, you (the client) needs to establish boundaries and manage budgets accordingly.  There’s no room for discussion or you open up Pandora’s Box.

I personally think if you make the decision to go to an agency with your business, you should have the nerve to go all in with someone.  Having all those ducks under one roof enables your agency partner to truly effect change.  They can drive the message AND the medium.  They can use their resources properly to execute a campaign that conveys your message to the right people, at the right time.  This hand-in-hand ability to refine and revise a strategy works better than a disjointed one that requires offline meetings to determine next steps.  Tie the two together and your results will be better, faster and more efficient.

I know the concept of separation is that competition breeds innovation and creativity – the fact is that it rarely does.  What it breeds is infighting for budgets and a dis-taste between your partners.  They spend more time trying to “manage” one another and jockey for position in the eyes of the client than they do brainstorming ideas and innovating.  As the customer you sometimes spend 3x the standard amount of your time in status meetings, listening to presentations that are likely disjointed as one agency proposes a tactical idea that supposedly builds on what the other agency came up with, but in reality steers you in a different direction, takes you down a rabbit hole and you don’t know where it will lead.

I once worked in an environment where there was a lead planning agency, a media buying agency and our team of digital strategy and planning/buying for media as well as separate agencies for 2 other divisions within marketing.  The planning agency routinely was incapable of allocating money to digital, even though it was one of the top 2 performers and the traditional buying shop kept buying digital media, even though it was not in their purview to do so.  This happened because all of the agencies were paid on a commission, which means they are only incentivized to spend money – not to act in the interests of the customer.  The client never spoke up and they created an environment of “pirates” where every agency was out for themselves – hijacking budgets and driving different agendas.  Strategic planning was somewhat laughable as everyone just went for the highest possible budget regardless and the work reflected it.  The result was disjointed, the efforts were nominally effective and the agencies ended up being consolidated after 3 years of this fruitless exercise.  Along the way people were fired and a bad taste was left in the mouths of many.  That’s not what this business is about, and it never should have happened.

I understand the rationale for breaking up your agency responsibilities (I really do), but if I could leave you with a single piece of advice I would say, “make a decision”.    It’s always best to pick one horse in the race and cheer for them because if you pick more than one, even when you win, you lose.  Give them your heart and give them your head and work with them.  If you selected them because you think they can do the job, then actually give them the job to do.

The Brooklyn Nets: A Master Class In Branding (Mediapost 4.3.13)

A few weeks back I was visiting New York and had the opportunity to go to a Brooklyn Nets game.  Having grown up a Knicks fan in Albany, and now a Warriors fan due to my proximity over the last 15 years, I was intrigued to see what Brooklyn was like now that they had their own basketball team and I have to say I was extremely impressed.  As an ad guy, a trip to the Barclays Center is a master class in branding!

The Nets’ move from New Jersey to Brooklyn may have only been about 20 miles, but it’s a world away from where they were.  That shift in location brought with it a shift in attitude, not least of which comes from the association with Jay-Z and hip-hop in general.  The Nets feel like a team who aspires to represent more than a location.  I may never change my allegiance from the Knicks as “New York’s team” but the Nets could take ownership of a tagline much greater – that of a generation!

The colors are stark – a simple black and white motif – and the music is omnipresent – driving beats with a real sense of swagger.  The arena is clean and it’s centrally located and everyone who works there is smiling, helpful and demonstrates a true excitement to be in the house.  The food is delicious – all local flavors and local brands you recognize.  The logo is everywhere – on hats and banners and signage and its being shot into the stands on t-shirts every 15 minutes or so.  Brooklyn even takes advantage of its star quality courtside – actors and sports stars line the court for a showtime-like experience in the “borough that sports forgot” for many years.  It feels like you stepped into an exclusive event, more so than when you enter Madison Square Garden, which is clearly recognized as the world’s stage.

While the Knicks may have a sense of history the Nets represent a feeling of “now”.  They may not be as good as some of their peers, even though they’ll make the playoffs this year.  Regardless of their status as a contender or not, there’s a feeling of excitement and a level of engagement that can be lost when you go to other arenas and root for other sports teams, regardless of the sport itself.   They bring you in.  They get you pumped.  There’s rarely a dull moment in that arena and they try to keep you involved.

Why should you care about this piece of perspective?  As an ad guy I tell people to look around and find inspiration from the least likely of sources.  When the Nets decided to move into New York, many people were pessimistic about their ability to succeed.  How can they gain a foothold in the city owned by the Knicks?  The answer is simple – present a different experience and one that resonates with their target audience.  Build it with frequency and consistency.  Learn what your audience wants (swagger is key among them) and deliver it in everything you do.  The food, your colors, your logo, your music, the events you host to balance out the arena - All of it carries over to the brand you’re putting out there.  As a brand manager you tackle the same set of challenges and though you may not have the same tools in your toolbox to work with, the solution is the same.  Understand your audience and deliver what they want in a way that expresses what you want them to hear.

The Nets are not the only shining example of branding in the sports world, but they are certainly one of the newest to take that step into re-imagining and re-launching their brand.  To me, as a student of advertising, it feels like what Cadillac did about 12 years ago when they rode the opening drum beat of “Rock N Roll” by Led Zeppelin to re-launch their brand for a new generation.  Remember that?

How are you identifying the needs of your customers and moving ahead with them?

We Are All Data Scientists Now (Even You)! (Mediapost 3.27.13)

Whether you like it or not, you are most likely a data scientist now! 

Your titles may not represent it, but almost everyone in the marketing industry is now a data scientist of some fashion.  Everyone spends at least a portion of their time focused on data.  From media and account management all the way down to creative and project management, data permeates everything we do and very few decisions are made without first looking at the numbers.

Ad Tech, agencies and brands are leading the way.   In an sfBIG (The SF/Bay Area Interactive Group) event last week this topic was addressed head on.   Christian Juhl of Razorfish stated he has seen a “huge increase” in the number of people in the agency that have data in their titles, while almost everyone in the agency had data in their purview.   The growth of the eco-system around the world of data, measurement, and attribution proves that Pandora’s box has been opened and marketers want to see the numbers.  Even the role of the CMO has shifted as more and more Chief Marketers are coming to realize the potential for Big Data and are creating positions in their organizations to harness the power of this valuable asset.

So how does this apply to you?

First off, you need to look at what your peers are doing with data and then look at how data is being used by people higher up in your organization.  If you want to advance up the corporate ladder, you need to know what skills will be valuable and analytics is prime among them.  You should be starting to foster your skills around analyzing key measurements and metrics for your organization and how these numbers can be used to improve the efficiency and performance of what you are being tasked with. 

Next, get to know the landscape of the solutions that are trying to support your career track.  If you are in finance, IT, sales or operations you already have solutions that can help you succeed.  These solutions are now also being offered in marketing and while all of these are still relatively new you can get up to speed quickly and accumulate more knowledge than others in your peer set.   Imagine someone in sales who didn’t have any familiarity with SalesForce?  They could quickly be surpassed by others in their organization if they remain on the “outside” of that industry-standard tool.  You don’t want to put yourself in that same boat!

Of course there are going to be different layers and levels to your expertise in data science.  Your role may be more creatively-focused than analytical, and as such you can expect your mastery over data need only be minimal.  That outlook will get you by in the short term but you need to keep pushing and find ways to integrate it into your understanding.  In the long term I personally think you would be doomed if you don’t.   You can joke all you want that you got into design because you hated math, but math has always been an underlying factor in great art.  Think about the symmetry of the human face and the mathematical formulas that were commonly used to depict the human body in Renaissance-era art work.  This truth is becoming more self-evident now that we live in a digitally-driven world.  Whether you like it or not, your art is influenced by data and vice versa as well as data only goes so far without the human insight, ability to craft art and the storytelling required to unite the two aspects. 

Just by reading this column I think you likely agree with me, but if you don’t then please let me know!

Does “Real-Time Marketing” Mean Decreased Quality In Favor Of Relevance? (Mediapost 3.20.13)

Does the development of a Real-Time Marketing culture deliver true value to brands or does it create an opportunity that sacrifices quality in favor of relevance?

On our panel this week at OMMA RTB we discussed the idea of Real Time Bidding (RTB) driving a Real Time Marketing Culture and the give and take associated with that dichotomy.  RTB is a driving force in the industry these days as more and more data is made available and there are more platforms being created to extract value and drive efficient execution in digital media.  As these platforms expand in use and potentially broaden their scope to include other channels such as digital OOH and network-connected TV, how does the role of insight and storytelling fit into the mix?  The advertising and marketing industry is one that thrives on storytelling and the ability to creatively weave together insights into messages that resonate with the consumer, but if we move to real-time execution is it possible we lose the quality associated with taking your time to be creative?

I would argue “no” and most of the panel agreed as such.  Our panel was very agency-heavy (with the exception of myself), but I feel they were accurate in stating that real-time marketing in order to be effective, actually requires more upfront strategic planning than any other kind of marketing.  To make it work you need to be capable of proactively establishing scenarios upon which your marketing will react.  It may be counter to what one might expect, but to react in real time you need to have more pre-planning in place.  If that is the case, agencies and marketers actually can create a stronger, more holistic strategy in anticipation of a real-time execution platform and as a result you are not sacrificing quality in favor of relevance.  In most cases you are increasing relevance while also increasing quality!

To do this requires substantially more work than is currently being applied to marketing, and that creates opportunity.  That opportunity however also requires significantly more training and experience, so what you effectively do is create a stronger opportunity for those with the appropriate skillsets to do strategic planning while marketers and agencies that can rise to that challenge will succeed the quickest. 

My biggest beef with the agency world of the last 15-20 years, and I say this with a deeply rooted appreciation for the agency model, is that training has been close to non-existent.  I know this because my agencies were amongst some of the biggest culprits, but I sense the winds changing and the large shops are getting in line with the fact that there is immense opportunity for revenue in this sector.  To be honest, I am surprised we haven’t begun seeing “Real Time Marketing Agencies” emerge as a result since our industry has a love and a passion for identifying new trends and creating niche services around them.  Maybe its only a matter of time – where there’s money, there’s positioning to be had. 

The fact is that real-time marketing is a component of a much larger brand interaction strategy; it is not the entire strategy unto itself.  It can almost be considered a line item or a campaign concept.  It’s something that can be implemented in conjunction with a standardized reach and frequency effort to convey a core message and build trust in the eyes of your target audience.  Real time can be very effective at reaching consumers when they are in a timely mindset, but its not for everyone because you cannot establish a 100% connection to all consumers “in the moment”.  It’s simply one opportunity out of many.

So in summary – I don’t think real-time means you sacrifice quality, though it certainly does create the opportunity to make more mistakes.  If you plan in advance and establish a roadmap for how your real-time marketing efforts can be integrated into your overall strategy you can effectively transform your culture and hopefully increase the effectiveness of whatever budget you apply to speaking to your target audience.

How are you looking to integrate real-time into your marketing efforts?

Where Does The Time Go? (Mediapost 3.13.13)

I read in USA Today this week a report that details the top 10 most visited websites based on time spent, with Facebook being the top of the heap.  Its not a surprise that Facebook led the list, but the numbers behind the numbers are very interesting when you break them down from the perspective of an Internet veteran.

According to the research they posted, Facebook represents 10.8% of all time spent on the Internet with more than 150 million desktop visitors and 97 million mobile.  Those are some pretty staggering numbers, but I recall a TV news story from back around 2002-2003 when MySpace was at the peak of its popularity and they represented approximately 10% of all page views on the web.  MySpace was predicted to be an Internet giant, but we all know how that story ended (regardless of what Justin Timberlake may think).  According to the study, 61% of Facebook users have taken “breaks” lasting more than a week, which means users are indeed willing to give up their time on Facebook due to Facebook-fatigue.  If that’s the case, does it bode well for the future of the machine that is Facebook?  Can users eventually leave the site and go somewhere else with their time? 

Google is number two on the list, which makes sense but I still expected them to be number one, to be honest.  Search and video are the hallmarks of Google between their ubiquitous search tools and YouTube, which has fast become the next best thing to network television.  The study throws out that 66.7% of all Internet searches are done through Google… call me old-fashioned, but I remember when that number was closer to 90%.  Bing and others made a dent in the core business for Google and mobile search is still an open opportunity for someone to come in and get a foothold.  Siri represents the most interesting threat to Google on mobile if the experience can improve – Siri and I have a communication problem.  Will Google survive in a voice and gesture-oriented world?  Will Google offer search capabilities on the connected television? 

I love seeing Yahoo! And Microsoft respectively at numbers three and four because it means that some of the “original” brands to stake out the Internet are still doing well.  AOL is in the top ten, parked at number 5, which also gives me the same warm and fuzzy feeling.  What I find interesting is that AOL and the number ten slot of ESPN show that content is still king.   Content still grabs eyeballs and sports content is among the most highly viewed on the web; a world dominated by quick info and short clip and highlights.  Tumblr made the list on the strength of content by aggregating millions of little sites through their publishing platform.  All of these brands can continue to thrive by aggregating content across devices in a way that is of interest to the general consumer.  Microsoft is the most interesting though because they have clearly made a play in mobile, with Windows Mobile representing a very positive user experience and one that users are talking about.  They may have had their issues in the desktop world as of late, but they are certainly looking strong in mobile and that’s not a bad place to compete for going forward.

The rest of the list is rounded out by commerce forces like eBay, Craigslist and Amazon.  These folks represent the backbone of the e-commerce revolution.  Speak to anyone with an email address and they have undoubtedly done business on one, if not all three, of these sites.  Amazon is the most impressive as their business went from that “little online bookstore” that competed with Barnes And Noble’s website to competing with Walmart for the title of largest retailer in the world.   I hear rumors of online stores creating offline retail fronts as arenas for “trial”, and that Amazon may be one of these folks in the near future.  If that happens, these experiential environments may cement the foothold that etail has for consumers.   Brands like Bonobos are doing it already, and that model was established by Apple with its amazing retail experience.  The future of the brick and mortar store may be far more virtual than you think if these folks have their say.

Who would be on that list next year?  What about in five years?  I can guarantee only that the list will be different.  My prediction, if you go out five years, is that Facebook will no longer be number one, and that some new company will push into the top five.  Tumblr would be the most suspect of them all in my eyes, while ESPN could continue to build a digital behemoth, continuing its ascent from a little property represented by Starwave to cross-platform dynasty, jumping higher in that list maybe as high as number seven.

Of course, what do I know.  I still try to do searches on Alta Vista from time to time (yes – it’s still there).