Harmonic Aftershock

The Future of Marketing Is Less Advertising.

Brands fighting the daily share battle have a better weapon.

Six centuries ago, English soldiers brutally defeated French forces amidst a muddy field in northern France. The Battle of Agincourt was a pivotal victory for Henry V, whose unorthodox deployment of English longbowmen proved superior against Charles VI’s tried and true attack of heavily armored French cavalry. Agincourt was a standout battle in the Hundred Years’ War (which later became a major plotline in Shakespeare’s Henry V) because the English army was severely outnumbered more than five to one. The odds were indisputably stacked against them, yet still they won.

Human instinct coaxes us to think more is always better, until the law of diminishing returns prevails. And so it goes for brands fighting the daily share battle against competitors armed with massive marketing budgets that flood media with louder and more intrusive advertising impressions. Just as the French troops, so high in numbers, became immobile on the battlefield, big brands are no longer properly equipped for today’s marketing conditions.

In fact, serving audiences ads with high frequencies over short flights can negatively affect brand perception and response rates (Millward Brown AdReaction Study). This is one of the reasons why a staggering 40% of 19-25 year olds are using Ad Blocking software. And it’s forecasted that this behavior will increase to half of ALL consumers in the US in less than 2 years (eMarketer, Millward Brown).

Ad avoidance isn’t the only thing causing chinks in big brands’ armor: There’s an abysmal 44.7% viewability rate for digital display ads in the US (Integral Ad Science’s Media Quality Report). This means that audiences who aren’t already using ad-blocking software will never see 55% of display ads served to them. Yet our “more is better” mentality continues to fuel brands and agencies that plan to increase their display ad spending through 2020 (eMarketer).

Just like challenger brands, the English army was forced to do more with less—and this became their greatest competitive advantage. They had to focus their resources on the highest-impact targets. How does this relate to brands? Let’s remind ourselves that three of the top four biggest influences on consumers’ buying decisions are all word-of-mouth-derived: Friends and family, recommendations from within one’s social media circle, and online reviews by other people (Deloitte 2016 Digital Democracy Survey). Given this, brands fighting the daily share battle have a much better weapon that will generate positive word-of-mouth and ultimately sales: Great customer experience.

Forrester Research defines “customer experience” (CX) as one’s perception of their interactions with brands. This not only includes customer service but also things like physical locations, websites, tools, apps, and, yes, even online advertising. Any interaction with a brand is a customer experience—and they’re not only critical to get right but especially important to make delightful. While 3% of consumers will tell 15 or more people if they’re unhappy, 72% of consumers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people (U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs 2015 Survey).

It’s been shown that brands that get CX right outperform their competition through big gains in stock price (Forrester’s Customer Experience Index). This is why within 4 years, more marketers will interact directly with their customers through technology and personalization than interact indirectly with them through media and advertising (The Economist’s Path to 2020 Report).

Unfortunately, we’ve got a ways to go. While 90% of marketers agree that personalizing the customer experience is critical to their success, nearly 80% of consumers stated that the average brand doesn’t understand them as an individual (IBM Econsultancy Study). This is what’s called the “experience gap”—and a much greater focus on narrowing this gap is how challenger brands will win the daily share battle.

How? Here are some starting points:

1. Brands: As technology takes center stage in marketing, CMOs must break down the barriers they’ve traditionally had with CIOs and play the role of CX champion and integrator. This means caring equally about delighting customers at every brand touch point—not just those in media and advertising. Doing this requires planning marketing budgets differently to create value in each interaction versus sheer tonnage of ad impressions. “Another department handles our website” can no longer be an excuse not to enhance a customer experience.

2. Agencies: There is no more powerful marketing tool than the customer journey—and modern lead agencies must own it in order to express big creative platforms as the right kinds of delightful brand interactions at each point along the journey. Today’s definition of “creative” should hone in on that which is purpose-built, contextual, and personalized. Agencies need to abandon legacy ways of working and invest and lean in to their experience design talent more than ever before as the stewards of CX.

3. Publishers: Customers want greater control over their media experiences as well as peace of mind with how they’re being targeted. Publishers should stop debating about what makes a better ad and think about how to make better user experiences—change the game, challenge the status quo, and level the battlefield in favor of consumers. Things like YouTube TrueView, Facebook Canvas, and Shapchat geofilters & lenses are just the very beginning of paid branded experiences that empower users.

4. Consumers: It’s consumer behavior that’s forcing the hands of brands, agencies, and publishers to rethink advertising. On the marketing battleground, consumers are fighting to seize greater control of their user experience. They must continue to skip content that’s not relevant, block ads that are invasive, bounce off poor click-through destinations, and abandon useless apps. Change will never happen if most consumers tolerate bad experiences.

In the Battle of Agincourt, the English army didn’t choose to be outnumbered—neither do challenger brands. The muddy battlefield (thanks to an overnight rainstorm) tired out French soldiers wearing heavy armor as they tried to maneuver. Like many big brands getting suppressed in today’s landscape of ad avoidance, the French were ill equipped and too dense to mobilize. In contrast, the English used light footman who adapted quickly to their environment in order to flex their bows. Today’s challenger brands must also aim for the heart—not to kill their competition but to win the love of their customers.

Happy 20th Birthday Banner Ads. Now Please Retire.

Exactly twenty years ago today, NBC aired the sixth episode of Friends (the one where Joey gets cast as Al Pacino's butt double), Boyz II Men’s I’ll Make Love To You was at the top of the charts, TV personality Kelly Osbourne turned ten years old, and the movie Stargate was just about to hit theaters.

Something else happened, within the World Wide Web, that very same day. On Thursday October 27, 1994, online “magazine” HotWired made its big debut and along with it, the launch of the very first commercial banner ad.

That ad was from AT&T and simply read, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.” And people did just that, in droves, as the ad boasted a 78% click-through rate (CTR) and was touted as a “wonderful tool for marketers.”

Ironic, ‘eh? Since over time, banner ad CTRs have plummeted to an average of .08% (yes, that IS a decimal point). To put this in perspective, my colleague, Noah King, helped me to visualize this: Take four airplanes filled with people and expose them to a banner ad. In 1994, every single person in three of those four planes (and then some) would have clicked the ad. Today, merely one person on just one of those planes would click.

So on this day, should we be celebrating the banner ad’s birthday or planning its funeral? You might be thinking how far ad tech has come in the past two decades: targeting, audience buying, dynamic creative, and of course, the word du jour, “programmatic.” These are all great advancements that, by themselves, don’t solve the fundamental issue inherent to display ads: banner blindness.

If the masses are subconsciously not seeing our ads in the first place, no amount of automation will make a material difference – we’re merely optimizing advertising mediocrity.  And how’s the industry responding? Spray and pray – We’re flooding the web with more impressions and higher frequencies hoping our target happens to glance over at the right place at the right time and want to read our marketing messages.

There’s a reason why “native ads” have been hyped up these past couple of years. They show some promise in that (when done well) they bring an element of creativity back into online advertising. The tradeoff? It’s more work to concept individual experiences platform-by-platform and site-by-site. But perhaps that’s how it should be. Because when creative, technology, and user experience all come together, great things can happen. 

Or we can simply continue to keep the two-decade old banner ad on life support. But if we do, its copy should read, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You won’t.”

The best direct mail piece...ever.

99% of the time when I get direct mail it goes immediately from my mailbox to my recycling bin. I suspect that’s the case for many of us. But every once in a while, I get something like this:

From the outside, it’s a hand written card – of course, I’m going to open it. As I removed the card from the envelope I see an awesome picture (as the front of the card) of the boat I keep at a marina in Boston.

Inside was a personalized message along with an additional hand-written note from a local business (Birch Marine) that does boat servicing, repair, and upgrades.

The entire experience of receiving, opening, and reading the card put a big smile on my face and got me immediately thinking about things I may want to use these guys for work on my boat.

In a world of a lot of email spam, I have to say receiving such a personalized, warm, and meaningful piece of physical mail absolutely resonated with me in a big way – even though it is, technically, direct mail.

No one wants to feel generic which most direct mail (and direct email) evokes. What I received two days ago made me feel human…and special. Isn't that what all marketing should do?

 

3 Ways LinkedIn is #Winning With Content Marketing

To say that LinkedIn has had quite an interesting past few months is an understatement. In March, the social network reached 100 million registered users and in May, the company went public with a very successful IPO.

Throughout all this, LinkedIn has really upped its game with its content marketing efforts that show (not tell) its value beyond the perception it’s just a social network for job seekers.

#1 Infographics: LinkedIn has been sharing via their blog a number of insights by mining the vast amount of data that’s built up on the site over the past 8 years. Their latest looks at the differences in how men vs. women network. 

#2 Tools: LinkedIn labs recently released a very simple yet enticingly engaging way to navigate one’s connections. The genius behind how they executed it is in the way that it taps into one’s nostalgia.

#3 Engaging & Timely Emails: Not more email! Yes, we all get lots of emails from companies that never see the “open” button. But it was a recent email (below) from LinkedIn which prompted me to write this post. Not only was it timed on or around my graduation anniversary from b-school but it prompted me to look back and reconnect with some people by using Linked In. Mission accomplished. 

Brands that do content marketing well take it a step (or many steps) further beyond blasting email newsletters. They create experiences (that can be simple) that appeal to individuals to want to share and spread them to others. The kinds of content that LinkedIn has been producing are great examples of how to do it. Yes, brands are, indeed, becoming publishers.

I work for Apple’s Marketing Team…

…or at least it feels that way. You see, apparently owning an iPad comes with it an unpaid part-time job doing word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) for the product.

I pretty much carry my iPad around with me most of the time:  I read (and Tweet) on the subway into work, I respond to emails in-between sets at the gym, and I check-in to wherever I go on Foursquare.  Apple has done such a good job of making the product so coveted yet scarce that when people see one, they don’t hesitate to ask questions. It usually goes like this:

“Wow is that an iPad?”
“Ya, it is.”
“Do you like it?”
“I love it – it hasn’t left my side since I got it.”
“What do you like most about it?”
“I can get instant access to pretty much any content I want, easily.”
“I’ve been thinking about getting one.”

[Word-of-mouth is the tipping point.]
And it’s that last statement that’s the kicker. What Apple has done by inherently having me do their marketing for them, is that that I become the tipping point for those under consideration. Not only do “prospects” see the product and a very happy “customer” but they also get a candid and trustworthy validation for them to go ahead and buy it.

The media hype has and will certainly put people into the consideration set but it’s word-of-mouth and actually seeing/holding the (amazingly designed) product that works just as hard (if not harder) as part of Apple’s product marketing and sales. And they’re not paying me a dime – for those obsessed with ROI, calculate that.

Fellow iPad owners, you know exactly what I’m talking about. How many times have people come up to you when using your iPad and eagerly asked questions about it?

What is the ROI of Twitter? CMOs are asking the wrong question.

Last month, I blogged about the differing “social voices” on Twitter and how different brands use the popular microblogging service across a spectrum of objectives.  As a follow-up to that post, I wanted to re-affirm Twitter’s importance to social media marketing and address the commonly asked questions around Twitter’s “ROI” and social media measurement.

In February, Twitter  announced that it is seeing more than 50 million tweets per day and climbing.  The fact that 2007 daily tweet volume was .000001% of what it is today (5,000 tweets per day in 2007) and Twitter now averages 600 tweets per second is further evidence of the platform’s explosive growth and usage.

And now with Twitter’s official launch of @anywhere just a few simple lines of JavaScript easily embeds the service across the web, thus exposing Twitter to a new wave of adopters. It’s a pretty sure bet that, at this point, some growing slice of a given brand’s target audience is using Twitter.

[Do not get hung-up on an ROI calculation]
Instead, as your brand considers using Twitter to reach your audience, do an exercise in business goals alignment.  CMOs should be asking, “How does Twitter support my business and marketing goals and how will I measure whether or not it’s having an impact?”

The chart above maps back to our previously plotted “social voices” chart. This is a sample snapshot only and is not intended to capture all objectives, goals, and KPIs but instead help provide a framework upon which you can begin to define your Twitter strategy.

1.Servicing (Customers): There is a growing list of brands who have built their Twitter engagement strategies around, “improve customer service” business goals.

By now we’ve all heard about, and maybe even used, @comcastcares which started more organically within Comcast and has now grown to be a seemingly key part of the company’s customer support operation.  @twelpforce is Best Buy’s answer to social customer service. So much so, that the company used high cost broadcast TV spots to promote and help activate their channel.

2.Broadcasting (News & Alerts): In its early days, those who used Twitter as more of a broadcast communications tool got a bad rap but we are now living in the instantly gratified real-time web where content can spread like wildfire and Twitter has proven its usefulness in efficiently communicating news and information.  This is why we see more than 1.6 million followers of @breakingnews.

While more of a two-way conversation, the American Red Cross designed their Twitter strategy around disaster preparedness and @redcross provides helpful tips, updates, and alerts.

When it comes to for-profit brands, a recent eMarketer article cited that that the top reasons people interact with brands on social sites were to get a good deal and learn about products. @DellOutlet is a great example of this with over 1.5 million followers as is @JetBlueCheeps.

3.Sharing (Thought Leadership): Twitter’s content-integration partnerships with Google, Bing, and (most recently) Yahoo have redefined organic search results by including Twitter’s 140 character content, literally, the second someone posts it. And now my Twitter feed is accessible directly from my Yahoo Mail page which further integrates Twitter into my existing online behaviors. Creating and distributing content has become a crucial part of inbound marketing.

Whole Foods’ presence on Twitter has been defined around a general food and environmental conversation and @wholefoods has over 1.7 million followers.  Although Forrester Research’s very nature is thought leadership, @forrester provides an abundance of useful short form stats and sound bites to its 35k followers.

4.Humanizing (Brand Personality): Some brands on Twitter take steps to humanize themselves and further cultivate their follower relationships. @dunkindonuts has 45,000 followers who can engage with the brand through the personality of, most recently, “Java Josh”. Other brands take it a step further where the official brand’s Twitter channel is actually an individual’s personal account as is the case for @zappos and Ford’s @ScottMonty.

A brand’s presence on Twitter will most likely touch more than one of these categories or employ different Twitter channels for different goals. For instance, while I used @wholefoods as an example of thought leadership, the brand very much engages in customer service inquiries on the same channel whereas Jet Blue uses @JetBlue primarily for customer service and a separate, previously mentioned, channel @JetBlueCheeps for deal alerts.

[Twitter by itself is not a marketing strategy; it’s just a platform]
Ultimately, the real value in social media is its usefulness in helping to foster customer relationships. In the end, what a company chooses to do with Twitter as part of its business and marketing operations is what really matters. Twitter has and will continue to grow in its importance for brands that are passionate about directly engaging with its customers.  While measurement is always a critical question for any marketing initiative, it might not be a black & white quantitative metric and, most likely, NOT an ROI calculation.

Note: I also posted this on Hill Holliday's blog.

What’s your core social voice?

Partnering with my colleague Steve Bagdasarian, we took a stab at categorizing how brands engage on Twitter. The model uses two axes to form four quadrants:

Axes

• X-Axis (Content): The degree content is customized/produced specific for Twitter
• Y-Axis (Conversation): The level of 2-way interaction with followers

While, arguably, many of the brands we plotted might also fit into other quadrants, we looked first at how the brand has defined their channel. For example, the American Red Cross’ social engagement is primarily around disaster preparedness updates but that’s not to say that the company doesn’t also engage with its followers.

Some brands have set up separate channels for different “social voices” as is the case for Jet Blue. The company’s primary Twitter channel is focused on customer service but they also set up @JetBlueCheeps channel to broadcast limited time airfare deals.

[In the end, is any one quadrant better than the other?]

It all depends on your company’s business goals. Some may criticize that using Twitter simply to broadcast goes against the “social” purity of social media. But if you look at @DellOutlet and its 1.5 million followers and the fact that the channel generates sales for the company, how can this be a bad Twitter strategy? Especially since Twitter’s partnerships with Bing, Google, and (most recently) Yahoo gets Twitter content into the hands of the “non-tweople.”

This post was cross-posted on Hill Holliday's blog.

Fragmenting Marketing? Digital vs. Social Media Agencies

Last November I wrote a post in response to a debate that’s been happening about “traditional” agencies and “digital” agencies in terms of what kind of an agency is best positioned to be a lead agency. In it, I questioned if we were on the verge of further marketing fragmentation with the onset of specialized social media marketing agencies.

Triggered by a recent Ad Week article that featured the acquisition of Joseph Jaffe’s CRAYON by Austin-based Powered with the goal to become the “lead social media agency” for clients, Mitch Joel (of Montreal’s Twist Image) debated Joseph Jaffe on his Six Pixels of Separation of Podcast.

SPOS_187_-_Social_Media_Agency_Jaffe

Boiled down:

• Joseph Jaffe’s stance: Social is its own category like digital became its own category.
• Mitch Joel’s stance: All media is social media…Agencies must evolve to where customers are engaging – there isn’t a need for another vertical agency.

It’s a debate worth listening to as both Joseph and Mitch bring up compelling points. And my perspective remains as I originally posted: The one thing that is certain, is that advances in technology will continue to change how people consume and interact with media (and brands). So whether or not a given and specific agency has the capabilities to deliver an effective marketing strategy (given the ever-changing landscape) is what’s up for debate -- there will always be "new media."

And if you’re craving more about the future of agencies and live in the Boston area, be sure to check out the MITX/Forrester roundtable on Thursday, February 25th.

#brandbowl 2010: Is Pepsi the real winner?

Mullen and Radian6’s Brand Bowl was almost as interesting as last night’s actual Super Bowl. For anyone who’s interested in real-time conversation monitoring (or as Mitch Joel often says, “Permission-Based Stalking”) the experience was extremely well done.

Pepsi chose not to advertise last night and while Mullen declared Doritos the winner of #brandbowl 2010, was it really Pepsi after all? Check out my post on Hill Holliday’s blog.

The Value of a Fan

The big question amongst many-a-bean counter is “What is the value of a Facebook fan or Twitter Follower?” And while it’s difficult to quantify, it hasn’t stopped companies and brands from using paid media to try and acquire them. 

This is just one of two places I stopped in on my way home from the office making the appeal for both Facebook fans and Twitter followers:

Now if only the folks behind Boston's Copley Place Mall marketing used Pongr to automatically make me a fan when I took this picture ;-)