Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

July 21, 2014 · 8:40 am

Following The Audience

One of the biggest things one can learn in the business world is how to adapt to changing environments.

English: American family watching TV (cropped)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I suspect that a lot of executives believed they were good at it until they faced the challenges of the last decade.  It’s relatively easy when you’re in start-up mode to pivot the business from one model to the next.  Once you’re a mid-size enterprise or a public company (much harder since every move is public and scrutinized by analysts and shareholders).

The better media companies can and have done this.  For example, most of the traditional television networks have accepted that their role has changed.  They once were programmers who decided what the audience would watch based on time of day.  Audience flow created by content choreography was a big deal.  Today they are curators.  They have learned to buy or create programs and to present them in a channel-agnostic fashion.  Why?  To survive.  37 percent of U.S. consumers now own a tablet, a smartphone and a laptop, which is a whopping 42 percent increase year-over-year. Women comprised 35 percent of this group two years ago; now they account for 45 percent of the group.  Failing to address this change in consumer habits could have been fatal.

We live in an A.D.D. world.  Everyone’s brain is focusing on something for a few seconds and then it’s on to the next bit of information or device.  86 percent of U.S. consumers multitask while watching TV, yet only 22 percent of these activities relate to the program being watched.  If you’re a marketer, how can you become part of the conversation that’s occurring around the program, even if it’s only a quarter of the audience? If you’re the content provider, how do you grow the 22 percent? Binge viewing is another concept pretty much unheard of until recently.  What has this done to overnight or even weekly ratings and do they tell even half of the true audience story?

The media companies have learned to survive on smaller segments aggregated into massive audiences.  Those audiences are spread out over time and across multiple platforms.  I’d say it’s been a pretty nice demonstration of how to change to follow your audience’s tastes, which is something at which they’ve always been good.  What are your thoughts?

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June 19, 2014 · 10:30 am

Decision making

How do you make decisions?  We make many of them every day.  Some are as simple as what to wear or what to have for supper; others involve far more complex thinking and input from many sources.  The folks over at The Economist Intelligence Unit released a study on decision-making and I thought you might find some of what they discovered of interest.  You can read the entire thing here – it’s a 15 page document.

Let’s start with the conclusion:

Data are a highly prized commodity when it comes to making decisions. As The Economist Intelligence Unit’s survey shows, more senior managers consider themselves to be “data-driven” decision-makers than any other available option. And when asked what would improve decision-making, most choose “better ability to analyze data”…Intuition is also valued highly, even among decision-makers who consider themselves data-driven. Evidently both intuition and analysis contribute to effective decision-making, in business as in life. Rather than a weakness that must be avoided, intuition should instead be seen as a skill that is appropriate in the right circumstances.

I find that fascinating since many of the folks with whom I’ve worked over the years have gone out of their way to avoid “I think” in favor of “the data shows.”  There is a term in aviation – spatial disorientation – that refers to when a pilot’s perception of direction does not agree with reality.  They must use the aircraft’s instruments or risk flying themselves into trouble (as in “the ground”).  That’s an instance where intuition is a really bad idea – you must rely on the data.  The same is true as we fly our businesses.

There are business circumstances where data-driven decisions have to rule.  We as human business people don’t seem to like that:

“When making a decision, if the available data contradicted your gut feeling, what would you do?” By far the most popular response, with 57% of the sample, is “Re-analyze the data”. This is followed by “Collect more data”, chosen by 30%.

Who are you going to believe – me or your lying numbers, to paraphrase the old joke.  Maybe this is the art/science debate.  Parts of marketing should revolve around data (science) and some decisions must be based on your gut – art, in my mind.  While finance may be data-driven, designers need solid intuition.  Sometimes we don’t have the data we need or want.  Sometimes what we have overwhelms us or conflicts with itself.

I think the best outcomes are decisions made by people with vast experience who have seen reams of data over the years and understand when it’s relevant, even if it conflicts with their feelings.  I agree with the conclusion that intuition is a useful skill.  What do you think?

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June 17, 2014 · 8:49 am

Anthems

The World Cup is my favorite sporting event and one of the more interesting parts of it relates directly to our TunesDay theme.

Español: Equipos de Paraguay e Italia en el mo...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every match is preceded by the national anthems of the teams involved and those are our topic today.  Why I think this event is so great is, in part, due to the national fervor it stimulates.  Here in the U.S., I think it’s doubly so for those who are following it.  After all, in addition to rooting for team USA, nearly all of us are from somewhere – we’re a nation of immigrants, right? – so there are at least a couple of teams we’re following.  For those of us who love the game, we pay attention to the best teams in the world as well – Spain, Germany – actually, I won’t miss watching ANY game if I can help it. We hear a lot of anthems – more so than at the Olympics where we only hear those of the gold medalists.

Putting on our marketing hats for a second, national anthems are a form of audio branding.  In commercial terms, audio branding is supposed to unify an identity (think NBC’s chimes, Intel’s audio tags, McDonald’s jingles, etc.) as well as bring certain brand attributes to mind.  I think the better anthems do that as well.

One of the best is that of France – La Marseillaise.  Its lyrics evoke revolution, conflict, taking up arms against tyranny, preparing for a fight – pretty good in a sports context – set to one of the world’s great tunes.  By contrast, the Spanish anthem is a march that has no words and which isn’t in my mind particularly Spanish-sounding.  Some – like Germany’s – were songs written by famous composers (Haydn) to which nationalistic lyrics were later added.  Others (like the USA) were poems first that were sung to popular songs (“To Anacreon in Heaven” in this case, a popular British song).

There are songs about the monarch, the countryside, the strong will of the people and yes, even about a flag.  The business point today is that obviously an anthem – audio branding of a people – can relate to almost anything.  It’s meant to be a signature and perhaps to inspire.  So ask yourself this:  what’s my business anthem?  What does my brand sound like?  As my team lined up before a crucial meeting, what song would we write or use to represent us?  What message would it send out to those standing (it is an anthem, after all) and listening?  Give that some thought as you get ready for the next match.

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