Monthly Archives: March 2014

March 21, 2014 · 9:12 am

Caul Fat And Management

Foodie Friday, and today the topic is caul fat. “Never heard of it” you say?

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Caul fat is one of those ingredients that is rarely used by the home cook and sort of falls into the “secret ingredient” category along with duck fat.   It’s the web of fatty membrane that encases the internal organs of various animals.  Pork caul fat is the one most cooks prefer but cooks use that of cows and sheep as well.

The cook wraps whatever he’s cooking in the fat before cooking it and it adds moisture and flavor. Most of the time, you see caul fat being used as natural sausage casings in crepinettes (fegatelli for my Italian friends) or to wrap items that lack a great deal of their own fat such as game birds.  It’s also used as an outer shell of sorts for patés when they’re being cooked.

What does this have to do with business?  I think good managers are like caul fat.  They bring things to the business that aren’t always readily apparent unless you dig down into the recipe.  It may be how they set the tone for the business.  It may be how they hold the team together, much as caul fat holds the sausage patties that are crepinettes together.  Caul fat is one of those ingredients for which you have to search.  You probably won’t find it in your supermarket.  Great managers are the same way, and like caul fat, when you first come across a great manager you might be surprised by it.

Secret ingredients are what make any dish really memorable.  After all, if every restaurant cooked the same dish the same way, why would we try new places?  Those ingredients are things that help a dish, a restaurant, or your business stand out in a crowd.  Caul fat’s why one cook’s roasted chicken breast is moist and flavorful and another’s, who cooked it the same time at the same temp with most of the same seasonings turned out a dry, flavorless product.  Great managers are a secret ingredient which, like caul fat, make a huge difference in the finished product even if it’s not clear who that fabulous final product came to be.  They make the difference between a good business and a great business.  That’s my take – what’s yours?

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March 20, 2014 · 8:41 am

Data, Data Everywhere (Part 2)

Yesterday I discussed finding a couple of articles that didn’t make sense in the context of one another.

Image representing IBM as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

The first was about a lack of data from digital media and how that medium needs to be more accountable.  Today’s article is about a study conducted by IBM.  As they said in their release:

The study, entitled “Stepping up to the challenge: How CMOs can start to close the aspirational gap,” is based on findings from face-to-face conversations with more than 500 CMOs from 56 countries and 19 industries worldwide. Conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBV), the study reveals that 94 percent of CMOs believe advanced analytics will play a significant role in helping them reach their goals. However, an increased number of CMOs say their organizations are underprepared to capitalize on the data explosion – 82 percent compared to 71 percent three years before.

In other words, there is already too much information crossing the desks of the folks in marketing and the people in charge can’t make sense of what they have now.  It’s only going to get worse as the marketing information generated from mobile and social continue to grow.  Is digital media not accountable as claimed by the head of the ANA or is it TOO accountable and overwhelming as found by this study?

These two pieces taken together point out the reality of marketing these days.  We are awash in an ocean of data and it’s no longer about “do we have the information?” but “can we find the right information among all of the data we have?”  I’ve had clients who told me they had little transparency into what was going on with their customers but because they didn’t have a thorough understanding of data systems they already had in place – web analytics, social media measures, etc. – they were wrong.

The claim that digital isn’t accountable and lacks data is a negotiating position, similar in my mind to the dance that goes on each year before the networks begin to sell in their upfront season.  If anything, the fault with digital is that it’s still relatively new and old ways of thinking about media and data are changing (or should be).  So yes, to paraphrase the Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, there’s data data everywhere but I think there’s plenty to drink. Maybe even too much. What’s your take?

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March 19, 2014 · 9:48 am

Data, Data Everywhere (Part 1)

Today’s rant is one of those about a couple of discordant pieces of information that found me this morning.  Maybe I read too many things and I get confused – it happens.  On the other hand, the two articles I’m going to cite are fairly typical of some thinking that’s floating around in digital media and marketing.  I’ll deal with the first one today and the second one tomorrow since I’m not big on 1,000 word posts . Let’s see what you think.

Both these pieces came from MediaPost – one from a marketing newsletter and one from an agency newsletter.  Let’s start with the latter.  In an article entitled “Digital Is The Least Accountable Of Media,” the head of the ANA  is reported as having claimed that

Digital media, once thought to be the most accountable media turned out to be the least accountable, with viewability levels, according to some studies, hovering around just 50%. That’s got to change or advertisers will pull dollars off the table…the industry has to improve media measurement significantly. Marketers obviously need and want to buy digital media, but the return on investment has been hugely disappointing.

There is that nasty term – “viewability”- again.  It means that some ads on web pages are on parts of the page that aren’t seen (scrolled down to) and yet since they are served when the page is served they’re counted as having been displayed.  I’ve added a couple of articles on the topic below.  I have issues with digital being singled out for that since no one takes people leaving the room to go to the bathroom into their TV commercial ratings nor people turning down the volume for radio measurement.  Frankly, given that digital is the only medium of which I’m aware that doesn’t use sampling when gauging audiences I’m not sure why it’s held to a different standard.  Sure, digital has other issues (traffic fraud being the worst) but data isn’t one of them.

Which leads to the second article about that data and a new study about how it affects the top people in marketing which I’ll cover tomorrow.  Let’s just say there doesn’t seem to be a demand to get more data from digital.  Stay tuned.

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