October 17, 2012 · 11:07 am

The P.O.D.

When I go chat with prospective clients, one of the things they often ask about is my point of differentiation.  What makes me different from any of the other consultants with whom they’re speaking?  That’s a great question each of us needs to be able to answer whether we’re trying to sell consulting services, to get a new job, or to sell a product or service in our current jobs.  If you can’t answer the question, you might want to spend a few minutes and think about it.

In any event, among the things I believe make me different are the business experiences I’ve had over the years in both traditional and digital media.  There aren’t a lot of us who were senior management in the “old” world and transitioned into the “new” one.  We usually end up talking about a few other areas – intelligence  vision, style – but the one thing I like to emphasize is keeping a focus on the business and not on the tools.

I’ve written about it before as have others.  It’s still a surprise when that prospective clients asks “how do we get good at  (pick one – the web, Twitter, social media, SEO)?  The answer is always the same – you don’t, because that’s not what you’re trying to do in the first place.  Using those tools is just a means to an end.  What you’re trying to get good at is your business and to use those things to do so.  I guess that’s a real point of differentiation because many of them hadn’t really thought about it before and the other folks with whom they’re talking seem to have spent an awful lot of time on tactics and very little on goals and strategy.  Ready, Fire, Aim.

We need to stop confusing the end with the means.  “Likes” don’t equate to sales unless you’re structured to make them do so.  Does this make sense?

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October 16, 2012 · 10:02 am

Are Brands As Bad As Politicians?

There’s another presidential debate this evening so I’ve got politics on my mind.  While the debates are focal points, the entire campaign season (a way too long season IMHO) has been filled with charges of factual distortion or outright lying by one candidate or another.  There are numerous non-partisan fact-checking sites so getting at the truth (or nearer to it anyway) isn’t as hard as one might think.  What the entire process does call into question, however, is how willing most of the participants are to stretch the truth, to use selective data points while ignoring others that don’t help them, or to fabricate allegedly factual statements out of whole cloth.

The unfortunate reality is that politicians aren’t alone in this.  In fact, one could say that they’re no worse than many marketers.  There is an interesting column this morning in a marketing blog that asks if CMO’s know when they’re lying:

As consumers’ ability and interest in monitoring corporate behavior intensifies, major brands like McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, and Coca-Cola are clearly injecting corporate-social-responsibility messages into marketing platforms as never before.  Trouble is, telling the truth has never been a marketer’s strong suit. In fact, we are still shaking our heads at how distorted some of these hybridized half-pitches, half-aren’t-we-a-good-company messages are.

No one over the age of 10 thinks french fries or sugary drinks are good for you so selling them with a nutrition message is just wrong.  If you saw a message like that you’d scoff.  But  how many marketers knowingly tell half-truths that are less apparent to the consumer?  No, I don’t expect that any brand will state “this is an OK product that will probably fall apart in a year but what do you want for a third of what you’d pay for the best?”.  However, how many food products add “natural” to the label to imply that an otherwise non-nutritious box of cereal is wholesome?  How many bad home loans were written on terms the lender knew the buyer was unable to afford by making it seem as if they could?  I’m sure you could add a few examples here.

We’re quick to criticize politicians (you can tell he’s lying because his lips are moving).  It might not be a bad thing to think about glass houses while we do so.

Thoughts?

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October 15, 2012 · 10:26 am

What’s On Your TV Might Not Be TV

Some information I think is significant came out a couple of weeks ago and I made myself a note to share it.

English: A child watching TV.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sorry for the delay!  It has to do with yet another tipping point being reached and this one has to do with how we use the “cool fire” that’s the focal point of a room in many homes – the TV.  The folks at NPD Group put out a release that summarized the study:

According to The NPD Group,… over the past year, the number of consumers reporting that the TV is their primary screen for viewing paid and free video streamed from the Web has risen from 33 percent to 45 percent. During the same period, consumers who used a PC as the primary screen for viewing over-the-top (OTT) streamed-video content declined from 48 percent to 31 percent. This shift not only reflects a strong consumer preference for watching TV and movies on big screen TVs, but also coincides with the rapid adoption of Internet-connectible TVs.

In other words, people figured out how to shift the viewing for the desktop to the TV.  Why is this significant?  In my mind, it make Netflix a cable channel in consumers’ minds and not a streaming service.  That’s an example.  Of those viewing online video on the TV, 40 percent use their connected TVs to stream video via Netflix, 12 percent access HuluPlus, and 4 percent connect to Vudu.

Another reason it’s significant is pretty obvious – when the TV is being used to stream web content it’s not being used to watch “traditional” TV, at least not in “live” mode.  Of course, there is a ton of time-shifting going on and it’s a lot of what we think of as “TV” that’s being shifted and watched.  Still, one wonders how this affects what used to be the fundamental underpinning of the business: the ability to deliver ad impressions to marketers.

Unless you’re a live-sports addict (ahem…), cord cutting is rapidly becoming an option for a lot of people   While this might be another nail in the coffin of the traditional PC (hello tablets), I think it’s also something to which TV service providers need pay attention (which I know they are).  The TV is a screen, just like the PC, the tablet, or the mobile device.  It’s becoming just as content-provider agnostic as are those devices.

Do you watch web video on your TV?  How?  Apple TV?  XBox?  Own a web-enabled TV?  Have you cut the cord?  What’s that like?

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