Tag Archives: Consulting

December 15, 2015 · 10:08 am

A Gift For Whom?

I received an email yesterday from a golf-related company with which I’ve done business as a consumer. I’m not going to name names, but I’ll bet you’ve had a similar experience as the one I’m about to describe, and you can feel free to hit up the comments, ratting out similar offenders. The note came with the subject line A Genius Gift For You. The body of the mail left me wondering exactly for whom the gift was intended.

English: Santa Claus with a little girl Espera...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Enclosed in the mail was the following offer:

Tell us how (name of their product) helped to make your 2015 golf season great and be entered to win a $200 Amazon Gift Card.

So you’d like me to write you a love letter (which I assume will also require me to give you use of whatever I write in promotional materials) praising your product in return for a chance – and only a chance – to win something? How is that a gift, exactly? When your Aunt Sally comes in with a holiday gift, she doesn’t say “Hey, stroke me out a recommendation for promotion I can give to my boss and just maybe you can be entered in a lottery with all your cousins to win a nice sweater,” does she?

This isn’t bad advertising.  It’s not the equivalent of those horrible Michael Bolton in the snow ads from a couple of years back that never seemed to go away nor some of the random Santa appearances you see in an attempt to holiday up an otherwise bad campaign.  No, this  more Scrooge-like.  Do you want to give me a golf related holiday gift?  Maybe find 10 fantastic game improvement golf videos on Youtube, build a branded playlist, and send me the link?  Improve your game this Christmas!  Don’t like that?  How about a real sweepstakes then, one that doesn’t require me to spend even a second conjuring up what just might be  false praise? Enter me automatically and maybe even offer multiple prizes?

A gift or a present is an item given to someone without the expectation of payment, according to the dictionary.  This isn’t a gift.  Me sending along this free consulting advice to the marketing contact in the email – that’s a gift!  You want in?

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November 30, 2015 · 11:32 am

A Better Ad Model

What does it say to you when people go out of their way to avoid your product?  Nothing good, probably.  That’s exactly what consumers are doing with digital advertising, and while it’s not good, it might actually be a blessing in disguise.  How so?  Source : comScore

I’ve been in digital media for 20 years, and during that time the question of “how do we pay for this” (monetization, in a word) has been asked constantly.  The obvious answer was to employ the ad-supported model of “old” media since adapting the subscription model to the digital age has proven incredibly difficult.  The problem is that with almost unlimited inventory, price pressures keep pushing down the revenue per ad and publishers just kept adding more “stuff” to keep revenues growing.  That’s not the case with traditional media, although TV has fallen victim to the same problem. Enter the ad blockers, which are a giant call to action to rethink the business model again. Well, maybe not the model but certainly the execution.

Some folks are already doing that with decent success.  Let me give you an example.  To unwind, I will often take short breaks to play a game on my phone.  While I don’t have an ad blocker installed on my phone, I have uninstalled a few games that popped up ads or placed the banners in places where it was likely that my fingers would accidentally click them.

One game I’ve been playing does something differently which I think is a very effective way to promote ad viewing.  Before I begin a level, a little box asks me if I want to watch a video and get rewarded with something I can use immediately in the game – a bonus life, a booster box, etc.  Saying “yes” brings up a full-screen ad of no more than 30 seconds – most are shorter.  The ads are almost always for another mobile game of some sort, and to get my reward I need to let the video finish.

This is a better way to market because it gives value to the user as well as to the marketer.  I almost look forward to the ad prompts since I gain something.  When was the last time you said that about an ad?  This sort of innovative thinking turned around the “avoid it at all costs” mentality, at least with this consumer.  It costs the publisher (the game I’m playing) nothing and brings value to all parties.

The business model hasn’t changed.  What has changed is that users are going to mobile, and within mobile they are hiding out inside apps. Rethinking how ads interface within those apps is how the business moves forward.  Showing ads that provide value to all parties – which includes the user – is the key.  You agree?

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August 20, 2015 · 12:08 pm

Coleridge And Your Data

Someone probably made you read Samuel Coleridge‘s Rime Of The Ancient Mariner along your educational way. It contains a couplet that got me thinking about data:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

We spend so much time collecting and attempting to analyze data and yet it seems difficult to “drink” from the overwhelming amount we have.  I wonder if we keep an eye on the reasons why we gather data in the first place.  In my mind, there are  two main reasons to collect data:

    • To form actionable business questions
    • To measure how where we are today is different from where we were yesterday

Let me take a second to discuss them.  When we gather information from a customer or potential customer, we should always have a reason for doing so.  Otherwise we’re just filling up our data storage with bits we’ve got no need to store.  A recent IDG Connect study found that the biggest hurdles facing companies in terms of data were poor data quality and excessive data, so we need to think before we gather.  Some of the information they will give you (name, email, maybe a physical address); other information you’ll take yourself (usage patterns on the web and/or mobile, information our of social profiles, etc).

We ought to be using some of that data to educate our fans about our brand and industry.  That falls under the “actionable” category.  What results do we want from them?  How can we tell if we’re moving the needle?  One big day of traffic might be an aberration but trends tend not to lie over time.  I like this quote from the report:

The true value of Big Data is in the ability to leverage it for development of an informed strategy. Organizations need to move beyond a focus on just managing data to extracting trends and insights that will drive business outcomes.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information you have, you probably have too much.  It’s probably not properly focused.  We need to collect as little data as possible – it’s much easier to drink a glass of water than an ocean.  It should be just enough to generate insight and not enough to foster confusion.  Which are you doing?

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