Category Archives: Consulting

March 26, 2014 · 10:01 am

That Does Not Compute

One of the challenges any of us have in business is to predict the future.

English: Knuth's version of Euclid's algorithm...

. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The hardest part of my job – and maybe yours – is seeing over the horizon to help my clients get prepared for what is to come.  That might be a change in a market or it might be a change in technology.  No matter what it is, any of us who look ahead do so by gathering data.  In many cases that data is some measure of past behavior – how people bought from your website for example.  In many cases, those data points are put into some sort of algorithm which predicts what is to come.  Increasingly, many marketers and others use these models to drive their own business behaviors as the amount of data available grows exponentially.  While I’m not a believer that “big data means big problems,” a blind reliance on these algorithmic predictions can mean just that.

Let’s take one simple form of algorithm.  You probably see it every day.  it’s known as collaborative filtering and if you’re on Amazon or Netflix or any other site with a recommendation engine you’ve used it.  You may also have seen things offered to you as content on YouTube.  The algorithms use measures of your past behavior as well as of others like you (“people who bought XYZ also bought…”).  But what if you were buying a gift and the purchasing is not reflective or your tastes or interests at all?  What if someone else used your browser to search and purchase?  Cookies are browser-based – they have no way to tell if the activity is from one person or six.

Another problem.  Algorithms are built by people and those people are..well…human.  They might have confirmational bias operating as they refine the formula to eliminate noise – data that’s not germane to the prediction at hand.  The problem is that you don’t really know if it’s noise until it proves to be not significant.  Maybe it’s a new trend that your model misses altogether.

The thing to keep in mind is that modeling can only go so far.  It’s not very good  at predicting the unexpected.  It tends to ignore outliers.  As with all things, you need to ask questions, search for facts, and draw your own conclusions.  Yes, it’s impossible to make sense of all this data without algorithmically based analysis.  Just remember that while machines don’t make computational errors it was a human that gathered the data (or installed the code that does) and wrote the formula.  People often don’t compute.  Make sense?

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March 24, 2014 · 9:55 am

What Oreo Has Wrought

Let’s begin the week with another entry in the book of social media marketing stupidity.

English: Two regular Oreo cookies. Please chec...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One trend of which you might be aware is real-time content marketing – brands responding to events as they happen. It’s rapid response content creation and the best-known example is Oreo tweeting out a clever marketing message in response to the blackout at last year’s Super Bowl.  This wasn’t the result of a smart intern winging it.  There were ad agency and brand people at Oreo’s social media command center during the game.

The success Oreo had inspired many copy cats.  In fact, a study done around that time found that over half the brand folks surveyed thought they’d be making greater use of real-time data in their marketing.  Fair enough.  Now let’s see what Oreo has wrought.

Yesterday during the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, CBS showed a shot of a young Kansas fan who was crying as his team lost.  Some marketing genius at KFC thought it would be clever to tweet out a screengrab of the teary child along with a marketing message to the 500,000 people following their Twitter account.  After all, what better way to sell fried chicken then on the back of an upset kid! It was such a good idea that KFC pulled the tweet down shortly thereafter as someone woke up and realized that finding a sales message in a crying kid’s unhappiness is way over the offensive line.  Credit them for moving fast to pull it down (although it would have been nice if they’d have issued an apology as well).

Contrast this with something I saw this morning in an online golf publication I read.  The former head of the USGA passed away yesterday – the announcement came late in the day.  Less than 12 hours later, the USGA has a tasteful ad in the publication saluting the man.  Real-time?  Not exactly but certainly quickly after the event.  Different from social media?  Yes, although they certainly could have used this in all of their social channels and they did, in fact, do other things in those channels.

Real time doesn’t mean “speak before you think.”  It means coming across as authentic and relevant (and really funny never hurts either).  That’s not as easy as giving a kid the keys to your social account and a TV to watch what’s going on.  It may not take a lot of planning to be good in real-time – that would kind of negate the purpose.  It does take managing, however, which is clearly what someone did after the KFC tweet went out.  Do you see the difference?

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March 7, 2014 · 9:59 am

Getting Your Business On A Scale

One of the most basic kitchen skills is our topic this Foodie Friday: measuring.  If you cook, at some point you use standard measures – cups, tablespoons and such.  Even those chefs you see on TV grabbing pinches of salt know how much they’re pinching (you use your thumb and one finger, then two fingers, then three fingers and measure each result to have a sense).

English: Kitchen scale, electronic, household ...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Baking, which is basically chemistry, requires very precise measuring to ensure success.  Sometimes, however, something doesn’t come out the way you’d like even though you measure carefully and that’s our topic today.

If you ask 10 people to measure out a cup of flour and then weigh each result, you’ll find that there is a huge variance in the amount of flour.  That can be fatal to a cake or in making pasta.  One thing I find incredibly useful in my kitchen is a scale.  I use it for cooking as much as I do baking (OK, I really don’t bake) and I seek out recipes where the measures are by weight and not just volume.  After all, the cup of grated cheese called for in a recipe could be finely grated and weigh more or relatively coarsely grated and weigh a lot less.  100 grams, however, is always 100 grams.  I find recipes that call for “1 medium onion, chopped” or “two ripe bananas” to be pretty useless since what I consider a medium onion or the size of those bananas may vary considerably from what the author had in mind.

It’s incredibly useful to have standardized measurements that are truly standard when you’re trying to get the best results.  Which is, of course, the business point.  One thing I spend a lot time with clients on is identifying and measuring the business in a standardized, objective manner.  Putting up a new website may cause you to think it looks better but that’s not measurable.  What is measurable and actionable are thing such as bounce rates, time on site, page views, and conversions.  If the new site causes those metrics to improve, it’s a better website.

The same is true about other business elements.  Presentations that look nice and flow well are good; presentations that result in decisions made in the presenter’s favor are excellent.  “Look and feel” is the cup of flour.  Data driven decisions are flour measured on a scale.   If you want success in the kitchen, get a scale.  If you want it in business, find ways to take subjectivity out of the process.  You with me?

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