Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

September 10, 2015 · 9:25 am

CPT

Making sense of data is really hard, and making sense of data from multiple sources which report in different ways is damn near impossible. Once again, we in the world of marketing are our own worst enemies, I guess. We could learn from our friends in finance.

Pick up any financial report and you’ll see the same statistics, generally reported in the same manner. That manner is GAAP – Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. While CFO’s and analysts have a little leeway within those principles, usually when you look at a piece of data for one company, something labeled the same way for another company means the same thing.

Not so in marketing. I mean, we do try. CPM has always been a measure of efficiency in media. The problem is that there are lots of ways to get to that number, especially in digital. Number of banners displayed? Number of viewable banners displayed? Should it just default to the impressions for which I’m being billed or do I want to factor in things such as actions taken (clicks, etc.)?

I think we need something like a Cost Per Touch metric. This would something standardized and would factor in the number of touch points across all media. An engagement on social media is counted just as is a video watched (you can decide the relative values of each). Actually, I don’t care what we call it but we need something akin to GAAP in the world of marketing data – something that can align web analytics, SEM numbers, social touch points, customer service, etc. Something that can help us to make sense of all of those disparate sources of big data.  Once we’ve standardized all of these things, all the other activities which depend on them become more efficient and productive.  Of course, it also means that there isn’t anyplace to hide since we can’t manipulate the numbers past a certain point.

Your thoughts?

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September 4, 2015 · 8:45 am

Meatheads

It’s the last Foodie Friday of Summer.  Well, officially, at least.  Most of us will be grilling in the warmth for at least another month and then we’ll move the party indoors.  I don’t know what you’re grilling this weekend, but here at Rancho Deluxe some sort of meat will be involved.  While we have vegans and vegetarians in our household, some of us are unabashedly carnivorous.  I thought this might be a good time to put forth a few of the absolute truisms we all know about cooking meat.  There’s a business point too.

Beef and Corn on a Charcoal BBQ grill

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let me just list a bunch.  These come from the website amazingribs.com which is focused on all meats, not just ribs and is well worth a few moments of your time:

Searing seals in juices. Pink pork is undercooked. If there is red in chicken it is undercooked. If you’re lookin’ you ain’t cookin’. Cooking time depends on the weight of the meat. The bone adds flavor. Oil the grates before putting food on them. Flip burgers only once. The Stall (note: – this is a BBQ term and is the point at which cooking seems to stop for a while) is collagen melting. High heat is the best heat. Whole chicken tastes better than chicken cut into parts. Beer can chicken is the best chicken. Melting fat penetrates the meat. Grilling causes cancer. Grill marks are important. Medium and medium rare are the same thing. Stainless steel grills are better. Cast iron grates are the best. You can rely on your grill’s built in thermometer. Ground beef is the riskiest food for pathogens. Barbecue sauce is always red. Marinades add a lot of moisture to meat.

I’m sure you’ve heard or said one of more of the above.  Here is the thing – none of them are true.  I know – it’s like I just told you the Easter Bunny is made up.  Sorry, but just because you believe it to be true doesn’t make it so.  When food scientists looked into these “truths” and others, they found the facts to be something quite different.  Which is the business point, of course.

We hear “truth” all the time in business.  I wonder how often we actually take the time to look into whether we’re just subscribing to a shared myth.  I think it’s incumbent on each of us to do so.  My guess is that we’ll find, more often than not, that the truth isn’t exactly as it’s been presented.  A word of caution.  You can expect people to react badly when you give them proof that their facts and THE facts aren’t the same.  Be judicious and tactful or do so wearing running shoes.

Enjoy the weekend and use a digital thermometer.  You really can’t tell how done something is my touch, you know…

 

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August 27, 2015 · 12:21 pm

What’s Up?

You might have heard about the latest information from the Pew Research Center about how most of us seem to get our news these days.  If the study is accurate, you might even have heard about it on Twitter or found it in your Facebook news feed.  You see, according to the study, clear majorities of Twitter (63%) and Facebook users (63%) now say each platform serves as a source for news about events and issues outside the realm of friends and family. That share has increased substantially from 2013, when about half of users (52% of Twitter users, 47% of Facebook users) said they got news from the social platforms.  

What makes me a little nervous is what the Pew folks go on to say:

As more social networking sites recognize and adapt to their role in the news environment, each will offer unique features for news users, and these features may foster shifts in news use. Those different uses around news features have implications for how Americans learn about the world and their communities, and for how they take part in the democratic process.

Having worked with professional reporters and journalists, I can tell you that they don’t just report what they see since sometimes appearances can be deceiving.  The problem, both in journalism and in business, is that instant analysis is often wrong – who can forget CNN, The Boston Globe, and others having to retract reports around the Boston Marathon bombing?  When the reportage is immediate from many people who are untrained in evaluating information (what’s the source, how reliable, etc.), the chances of something being way off base increase dramatically.  Couple that with the built-in selectivity, in the case of Facebook, of algorithms which filter what you see unless you dig a little and one can see how “news” found on social media can easily be “rumor.”

I think social media can play a valuable role in surfacing breaking stories.  Twitter is soon set to unveil its long-rumored news feature, “Project Lightning.” The feature will allow anyone, whether they are a Twitter user or not, to view a feed of tweets, images and videos about live events as they happen, curated by a bevy of new employees with “newsroom experience.”  This is a good thing, in my opinion.  What’s not is accepting what we see there as gospel until there are multiple, professionally trained sources weighing in.  Yes, sometimes they’re wrong (see above), but when they don’t try to compete with the instantaneous stuff found in non-professional sources, they generally get it right.  What do you think?

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