Tag Archives: Advertising and Marketing

May 23, 2012 · 8:58 am

Bad Decks And Missing Logic

I saw something yesterday that made me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, it was something that was shown to me as part of a media proposal. It involved a social media campaign and the agency that had created the plan (which I was reviewing for another consultant) was going to use Facebook. Based on the client and their objectives, this was probably not the best place for the media placement but let’s put that aside.

Illustration of Facebook mobile interface

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What made me laugh was the projection of the number of impressions both paid and earned that the campaign would generate. It came out to such a ridiculously high number (as in reaching every person on Facebook hundreds of times each) that it called into question everything in the rest of the presentation as well as the agency’s overall competence.

As I thought about it, I became a little scared and then a lot offended.  It bothered me that an agency who has a pretty good list of clients had moved into social media and was treating it the same as broadcast media.  They should know a lot better.  It made me scared because this is the sort of irresponsible behavior we find all too often in digital.  People become digital or social media experts or SEOs overnight and sell an inferior grade of services to clients who will get lousy results.  How can they invest in this form of marketing going forward when the results weren’t there?

The point is this – whether it’s media plans or budgets or a report on manufacturing, we need to ask simple, logical questions.  Why are we using Facebook when our objective is more geared to the broader web and restrictions in Facebook’s policies will prevent us from activating properly?  Do the numbers they’re projecting make sense (and if we’re really going to reach the audience 300+ times each, maybe we’ve gone too far)?

There were a bunch of other issues in the deck and aside from the numbers my general response was “these guys just don’t get it.”  None of us should be offering off the shelf, cookie-cutter solutions to problems that get more complex every day.  The nature of media is changing – the nature of media planning need to change as well, along with the messages.  You’ve experienced it in your own media behavior – why are you thinking everyone else has remained the same?

You with me?

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May 18, 2012 · 9:37 am

The Farmer’s Market

It’s Friday and it’s the time of year when a lot of the Farmer’s Markets open up around here so I thought I’d use our Foodie Friday theme to talk about them a bit.

Farmers Market

(Photo credit: tamaradulva)

As a recent article explained, “farmers’ markets are hot business nowadays. The number of markets shot up 17 percent last year, and in a recent survey from Mintel market researchers, 52 percent of people said it’s more important to buy local produce than organic, which will likely drive the growth even more.”  There are a number of them in my town and the surrounding area, almost one each day of the week.   Most of the vendors are local farmers and the produce is generally pretty good.

There is, however, a dark side to many of these markets.  Some of the produce sold isn’t local even if it appears to be that way (there are no local tomatoes here in Connecticut in May, for example, unless they’re from a hot-house which means they’re less tasty).  There is loose labeling too – local, organic, pesticide-free, no-spray – many vague promises thrown around.  Which is the broader business point today.

We’re in the season of vague promises better known as an election year but we encounter lots of misleading or purposefully vague language from brands every day.  “Natural” or “Earth Friendly” or “Vegan” are meaningless because they’re not regulated, and companies are able to use these terms at will. It’s up to the consumer to differentiate marketing from reality and then to act by refusing to buy products that use misleading claims.

At the risk of stating the obvious, once a brand is outed as using misleading language, all sorts of bad things can and do happen, especially since the newer tools such a social media and the older tool known as a class-action lawsuit empower pissed off customers.  Frito-Lay was sued over the all-natural claims it has made for its Tostito and Sun Chips products.  Colgate had TV commercials for a Sanex bath gel banned for suggesting that it contains no man-made chemical ingredients.  The list gets longer every day.  Guess there’s no quota on stupidity.

We all know I’m big on reading the freaking label even though there aren’t any at the farmer’s market.  I ask a lot of questions instead.  But isn’t it a sad thing that we can’t really believe what we read even when labels are readily available?   What do you think?

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May 10, 2012 · 8:58 am

More News From The Digital Divide

Another week, another study on how marketers are trying to keep pace with the changes in consumer media behavior.  This one comes from PulsePoint, a digital ad tech company, and finds that the same issues others have discovered over the last few years remain unsolved for the most part.  You can download a copy of the study here.  I think this quote sums up the key finding:

According to PulsePoint CMO Rose Ann Haran, “Consumers are moving freely across channels and devices, interacting with brands and content in real-time.  The digital industry is not flowing as easily with this liquid audience. Channel-centric technologies and processes are causing a divide between our marketing capabilities and our ability to truly engage the consumer in a real-time interactive manner.”

In other words, consumers are “fluid” and “channel-agnostic,” while the current state of digital marketing practices designed to reach them can be best described as being too “channel-centric.” It goes on to cite “overwhelming complexity” and a “lack of unified measurement” as key challenges in preventing the industry from being properly aligned with the consumer, and those challenges make it difficult to track consumers across channels.

My first reaction was “oh, boo hoo.”  Yes, those pesky consumers keep changing their habits and the ongoing game of attention hide-and-seek can be really frustrating.  But look at the opportunities that game has fostered, both in terms of new businesses that have emerged as well as new ways to engage consumers.  What this is really about is marketers’ inability to change their own business methods and models as rapidly as required.  Planning and buying are “silo-ed” in the words of the study.  There is a whiff of turf wars throughout, in my opinion – departments within agencies, agencies vs. one another, creative v. media – you know the drill.  Maybe you even live it!

Then there’s this: “Other factors driving the divide include a misalignment of priorities the industry sees as important to improving their digital marketing practices.”  It’s nice that research such as this is conducted regularly.  It’s an excellent mirror to those of us who are charged with staying in touch with and engaging consumers.  Now, let’s commit to doing something about it so the divide between marketing and those it’s meant to reach closes a lot more rapidly.

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