Tag Archives: Marketing and Advertising

April 13, 2012 · 7:15 am

Strange Brew

“Strange brew, killin’ what’s inside of you”.  That’s the refrain of Cream’s 1967 song and our Foodie Friday theme today.  I got to thinking about this as the “pink slime” debate raged.  For anyone uninitiated, that’s a food additive that meat processors use and many of us unwittingly consume.  Suffice it to say it’s gross.  There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about it last week.  That piece got picked up in a post by Media Post about the controversy.  Not the best of things to read around meal time.  I don’t care to have ammonia in my food.  In fact, I definitely don’t want anything in my food that I would not be expecting and if there is something unusual in there it needs to be identified so I can make a decision about how brave I’m feeling.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JANUARY 31: Fresh ground ...

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Every so often I think it’s good to remind ourselves that these types of products don’t make themselves and that food isn’t the only business that produces products that aren’t fully transparent with respect to how they operate.  Tracking pixels anyone?  As marketers, there’s really no upside in being nefarious.  In a connected world, we end up getting caught more often than not.  As people from Nixon to Clinton can tell you, the cover-up is way worse than the crime.

Let’s think about this from MSNBC.com:

Food adulteration is more than just your neighborhood fish counter selling you farm-raised salmon and telling you it’s line caught. It’s ingredients that can go in ingredients to make products sold by your reputable local grocer or restaurant.

New research shows that the most common food fraud ingredients are olive oil, milk, honey, saffron, orange juice, coffee and apple juice.

I find myself shopping more often at places that display clear labels about food origins and buying products with ingredient lists and nutritional information that go beyond what’s mandated by law.  Hopefully they’re being honest.  But why should I have to think about that?  Who makes the decision to lie?  What’s the situation in your industry?

Thoughts?

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April 12, 2012 · 6:16 am

Getting Engaged

I’ve been married a very long time (33 years and counting, thank you) but I still remember getting engaged.  I have no clue what it’s like today, but it used to be a big deal and there was a ritual to be followed (I still thank my lucky stars that her father was way easier on me than he should have been…).  I spend a fair amount of time these days talking about getting engaged except it’s not with my daughters (statement of fact, not a complaint!).  Instead, clients and I talk about “getting engaged” with their consumers.  The thought struck me that it’s not all that dissimilar.

Three stone engagement ring - in yellow gold -...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An engagement is a commitment in either sense of the word (marriage or otherwise).  The only way one partner can figure out if the other is worth spending a lot of time with is to engage one another in dialog.  You know –  appropriate questions, thoughtful, honest answers – a dialog.  Obviously, you can’t spend your time telling your prospective partner how great you are.  Things go a lot more smoothly if you spend a fair amount of time telling them how great THEY are.  While it’s important to keep your own goals in mind, you can’t be a crazed egomaniac if an engagement is your objective.

The hard part is listening.  As marketers and content producers, we tend to put out a lot about ourselves and don’t take in enough about our potential customers.  As an aside, we do the same as managers in a lot of cases – “jobs” are often known as “engagements” after all.

We need to woo our customers, our users, our clients  – whatever you want to call those who pay the bills – as we would a potential spouse.  That’s the only way to get engaged.  Hey – who says romance is dead!

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April 5, 2012 · 8:10 am

If An Ad Falls In The Forest…

comScore published the results of a study they did with a number of major advertisers on the subject of ad delivery.  While the study came out last week, it feels as if there is a bit of a drumbeat starting to happen and I thought I’d join the band (hey – we’re always out front here at the screed).  There is an excellent summary of the study on Exchange Wire and if you care to read the entire thing you can download it by clicking through here.  In brief, to get a better handle on the issues associated with display ad delivery and validation as well as to test-drive  comScore’s method for this validation called vCE, twelve leading marketers participated in a U.S.-based charter study, called the vCE Charter Study.

Image representing comScore as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

The biggest point to come from the study, which seems to be the headline on the growing number of blog posts that reference it, is that 31% of ads delivered were never seen by a consumer.  It also called out that 72 percent of the campaigns studied had some ads running beside “unsafe” content as determined by the advertiser and that a small percentage (4%) of ads targeted to the US ran outside the country.

For a medium that touts itself as highly measurable and targeted, these aren’t great results.  Then again, none of the articles I’ve found put these numbers into any sort of context.  How does this compare to print, for example? As we’ve said before, stats by themselves are pretty meaningless unless you have something with which to compare them.  There is also an interesting nugget that surfaces about ads running lower on pages, or “below the fold.”  There is a common misperception that ads delivered “above-the-fold” are seen, while ads delivered “below-the-fold” are not.  Surprisingly, the findings demonstrate that some ads delivered “above-the-fold” were not seen because users quickly scrolled past them before the ad had a chance to load, and many ads placed “below-the-fold” delivered a high opportunity to be seen.  This might mean that inventory “below-the-fold” can be priced as premium as long as the publisher can prove it was viewed.

To me this all screams out for some human intervention.  Digital ad buying has become a mechanized world as one ad platform talks to another and humans stay out of the mix for the most part.  Buyers need to examine sites for more than their audiences.  Sellers need to pay attention to the analytics that show more than traffic but also “heat maps” of usage.  Both sides need to do a better job of quality control.  One can question comScore’s motives a bit since they’re also selling a delivery validation tool that will allow for both sides of the digital media equation to get more accurate numbers.  Commendable, I guess, but I wish there was some way to redo the numbers based on more human involvement as well as to compare the results with TV and print “opportunities to view.”

What are your thoughts?

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