Monthly Archives: February 2014

February 6, 2014 · 11:26 am

Ads Are Easy – Content Is Hard

For some reason many of the people with whom I spoke  yesterday had content creation on their minds.

Old AD (L1010566)

(Photo credit: Foread)

All three were former clients who wanted to understand the latest buzzword, content marketing.  As with the use of any term, I first wanted to understand what they thought the term meant.  As it turned out, they had widely differing definitions.  These ranged from what I’d call advertorial to what the industry does term “content marketing.”

My point of view is that brands have always been content creators.  Ads are content – their channel of distribution is paid media.  PR is content – it gets picked up in earned media.  Today, websites, social presences, and who knows what else by the time I’m done writing this (things DO change kind of quickly) are also content and are put out through channels brands own themselves.  I think, however, this is missing the point.

Customers want to be educated.  Sure, it’s nice to give them a laugh or a tear as many brands did during the Super Bowl, but the nature of marketing today is that ongoing conversation I’ve written about before.  Customers want smart brand representatives who can educated them and help to solve their problems when they arise.  However brands touch and audience, I think it needs to be less about the sale and a lot more about engagement.  That comes from an honest and open dialogue with the consumer, not by tricking them into reading a sales piece in the guise of a magazine article.  Posting fake reviews to enhance your brand does nothing except risk massive embarrassment when they’re discovered and sound a discordant note when real reviewers point out how the fake reviews bear no resemblance to reality.

Creating ads is relatively easy.  Everyone sees them as a brand message, a certain amount (and it’s tiny) of hyperbole is expected, and it’s clear something is being sold.  Creating content that educates and informs is much harder.  Maintaining a transparent and open social presence is as well.  That, however, is what marketing has become, at least for those brands that are in touch with their consumers.  Are you?

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February 5, 2014 · 9:39 am

Prognostications

Want to have some fun?  Do a search for “predictions for 2013″ and use a search range of the six weeks prior to the start of the year.

Super Bowl Sunday Crystal Ball

(Photo credit: circulating)

You can do this for any year, but I took 2013 since the results of those predictions are still fresh in our minds.  Throwing out the fringe sources, one can find respected publications and authors making predictions about what was supposed to have happened last year.  You can click though here to a bunch from The Washington Post, as an example.  In some cases, they did pretty well.  In others, they could not have been more wrong (predicting Michelle Bachmann would become House Speaker when she ended up leaving Congress is just one example).

This sort of exercise seems sort of silly yet every business does this on a regular basis.  It’s important that we do so to a certain extent.  We need to predict demand and project sales.  We need to anticipate tastes and try to be ready when our customers need us to be.  The real issue, however, comes when we think we can predict the unpredictable.  To me that’s anything more than about six months down the road (something to think about the next time you’re asked for a five-year plan).

Most of us tend to weigh recent events much more heavily than longer term indicators. We also tend to forget that the past can only predict the future to a limited extent. Using data to make educated guesses is great, but it’s not the same as  predicting.  A forecast is an extension of trends.  It’s almost something a computer can do with a well thought out algorithm.  A prediction takes other factors into account.  Political realities that might change trends.  New technologies that can be disruptive and change those historical trends.

10 years ago here was one sage’s prediction for Facebook:

Facebook, lame or not, was certainly a heavy hitter of 2004, but watch out, I have a strong feeling it’s going to jump the shark. Maybe it already has.

Maybe so, but a billion plus users 10 years later shows just how hard accurate predicting can be.  Have any predictions you’d like to share?

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February 4, 2014 · 9:46 am

Yeah Yeah Yeah

It’s TunesDay, and today’s story has been a half century in the making.  It was 50 years ago this week that The Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show and the world changed.  For those of you who were watching that night (as I was), you know that’s not hyperbole.  It seems kind of quaint now, but here is how that change began:

We’d lost a president a few months before.  America was sort of depressed.  Four young men from Liverpool brought us out of our funk and showed the world that performers could also write their own material (something not very common in pop music to that point).  They were just as impactful off the stage.  Their press conferences were filled with laughs but also with pointed jabs at authority, setting the tone for the tumult of the next decade.  50 years ago, the revolution began with pointy boots and a smiling drummer.  Which is, of course something we need to remember in business.

Everything began to change that February night and yet very few businesses were prepared.  How would you like to have been a barber shop and seen those haircuts (or lack thereof)? The record business was one of singles.  Albums were a couple of hit singles and a LOT of filler material.  The Beatles made the entirety of an album important.  Putting aside that almost every cut became a hit, three years later Sgt. Pepper set a new artistic standard that changed the business.   The cultural changes came faster.  Everyone knows someone who saw that broadcast and picked up a guitar – you’re reading someone who did so now.  Their talent was enormous but subtle and it was easy to think “I can do that.”  Sort of how digital business is 50 years later.

As business people our radar needs to be extremely sensitive to change.  When that radar goes off we need to ask a great number of “what if” questions and pay attention to how things are progressing.  The first PC’s were met with shrugged shoulders.  25 years later the PC in our pocket is more powerful than the computers that took man to the moon.  Facebook is 10 years old and there wasn’t a “social media marketing” requirement many businesses are just learning to fulfill now.

I know – the only constant is change.  True enough, and it’s rare when that change happens very loudly and clearly on a winter’s night with drums and guitars.  It hasn’t been quite as obvious since then and won’t be the next time either.  Are you listening closely enough to hear it?

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