Tag Archives: Advertising and Marketing

May 18, 2015 · 10:05 am

Predicting The Unpredictable

You might be starting your work week pondering what new opportunities will present themselves. Then again, you might just as likely be sitting at your desk dreading those very same opportunities. For many folks, seeing and being ready for what’s just over the horizon is absolutely the hardest, most gut-wrenching part of their jobs. It certainly was for me and remains so as I work with clients on their behalf.

Part of what we probably ought to be doing is not thinking so much about what the next hot new platform is going to be and spending a lot more time on controlling the things we can.  Your immediate response might be “sure, all two of them” but there actually is quite a lot which can help mitigate the unpredictability of business these days. All we’re really trying to do is to change “predict” to “anticipate.”

We can anticipate a good customer’s birthday (assuming we’ve taken the time to gather that data) just as easily as we can anticipate them appearing in our place of business based on past behavior.  We can use that knowledge to send them a coupon or tweet birthday wishes to them.  I’m still surprised how few businesses listen to all of the social streams and attempt to cull knowledge from what they’re hearing.  The old-school megaphone mentality is still pervasive.  Most of us in marketing need to listen more, speak less, and react more quickly to what we’re hearing.  This isn’t so much predicting as it is reacting but unless you’ve taken the time to set up the processes and people required to be proactive (thereby predicting the need!), you’ll fail.

Here is my prediction.  The pace of change is going to continue to accelerate.  We see disruption in once unthinkable ways (the impending changes in the TV landscape, for one and the huge shift to mobile from the desktop for another).  Many of us will have meetings about the future and write “long-range” plans as we do our budgets.  Much of that is unnecessary.  Business has become more like driving a foggy road – you can only see so far out.    Pay attention to what’s visible with your past experience telling you what’s still hidden in the fog.  it will become clear eventually as long as you stay on the road.

 

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May 15, 2015 · 9:34 am

Tweetza!

Our Foodie Friday Fun ventures into pizza today. You might have read or heard that Dominos has made it possible to order a pizza via Twitter. That’s right – no more picking up the phone and dialing. Now it’s just pick up the phone and tweet out an order. If you’re a regular, all you might have to do is send out a pizza emoji. According to this piece in USA Today, Domino’s Twitter ordering system will make it the “first major player in the restaurant industry to use Twitter, on an ongoing basis, to place and complete an order.”

Русский: Коробки для пиццы.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You can laugh or shrug your shoulders, but this is important.  First, Domino’s focus is squarely on convenience for their customers.  One hears the word “frictionless” a lot when technology is being described and this is the epitome of making it easy for your customers to buy your product.  This isn’t new for Domino’s either. The company has invested tens of millions of dollars in technology and now employs more than 250 IT staff. A big part of what they do: trying to make it easier for consumers to order pizza.  It’s not just Twitter – they have ordering capabilities for a bunch of devices, including smart televisions and smart watches.

It may also be a seminal moment in social commerce.  Twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms have been trying to figure out inoffensive and profitable ways to integrate commerce into social media.  While it’s not happening yet, one can easily see Twitter demanding a slice of the pie (see what I did there?)  from each order placed via their platform.

Most of what I like about this is that Domino’s is making the technology work for them and for their customers.  They’re not threatened by disruption – they’re embracing it.  No more Yellow Pages for listings?  No Blockbuster to partner with for dinner and a movie?  Move on.  As the USA Today article concludes:

Doyle says that Domino’s will continue to look at platforms “where people are spending time” such as Facebook and Instagram. “This certainly will not be our last platform.”

That’s their (smart) approach.  What’s yours?

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May 13, 2015 · 9:52 am

Your Own Deflategate

I’ll say right at the top I’m not a New England Patriots fan.  Being a loyal fan of the Michigan Wolverines, however, puts me into a state of cognitive dissonance over the Tom Brady “deflategate” issue.  I’m writing his bad behavior off to being immersed in a bad environment – he didn’t learn this stuff in Ann Arbor.  By the way – I’m amazed how some folks think he was suspended for conspiring to deflate the footballs.  As I understand it the issue is his lack of cooperation with the investigation and not his guilt or innocence with respect to the rules violations.

New England Patriots at Washington Redskins 08...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You might wonder why I’m bringing this up on a business blog.  I suspect there are many folks in the digital marketing business who are shaking their heads at what went on with the footballs.  Maybe there is a sense that cheating your way to a win diminishes both the win and the game itself.  Most of these folks would say they’d never do something like that and yet I’m willing to bet many do on a regular basis.

All of us in the digital media business are aware of fraud.  There are publishers who buy traffic which they know is not human traffic and which they turn around and sell on the ad exchanges in a form of arbitrage.  They might make a couple of hundredths of a cent on an impression but do it a million times a day and suddenly real money is involved.  It’s easy to spot anywhere in the media chain – the publisher sees it, the exchanges see it, I suspect the ad agencies see it and perhaps even the clients see it.  How?  Analytics.  When lots of your users are running a 10-year-old version of flash and a 5-year-old version of a browser (doesn’t happen in the real world, kids), someone is cheating.  If you’re buying really cheap traffic from someplace, you can assume it’s not human.  Yet no one is putting their hand in the air saying “I’m not going to take the money because I know it’s wrong.”  Like the Patriots, they just want to win.

The rage now is “viewability.” The problem is that the folks who are making money off of ad fraud – and the marketers who knowingly support it – will come up with a way to defeat the tactics to measure real ad views.  You don’t think any real marketer would do that?  Who is putting their ads on the ad injectors – the thieves who steal traffic from websites and layer their own ads on top?

There is an old expression in sports: “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough.”  When the most penalized team in the NFL wins the Super Bowl (the Seahawks a year ago), what does that say about pushing the limits, which is what the Patriots were doing?  More importantly to your business, you need to think about how far you’re willing to go and to what degree you are willing to push the limits to win.  Personally I like to be able to look at myself in the mirror without shame.  You?

 

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