Tag Archives: Marketing and Advertising

January 20, 2016 · 11:26 am

Pew, Privacy, and You

I think we all know that Big Brother is watching.  Putting aside what the government may or may not be doing (no politics here!), most people are aware that every move of their digital lives is cataloged, analyzed, and might be sold to someone.  The Pew folks released a study about how we (Americans) feel about that.  In Pew’s words: 

While many Americans are willing to share personal information in exchange for tangible benefits, they are often cautious about disclosing their information and frequently unhappy about what happens to that information once companies have collected it… Many people expressed concerns about the safety and security of their personal data in light of numerous high-profile data breaches. They also regularly expressed anger about the barrage of unsolicited emails, phone calls, customized ads or other contacts that inevitably arises when they elect to share some information about themselves.

Let’s drill down a bit.  The phrase “context-specific and contingent” is a good one to guide us as we think about how to set up a mutually beneficial relationship with the consumer.  First, what benefit is the visitor deriving from giving me their information?  Is it content?  If so, is that content so unique and of such high-quality that they feel it’s an equal exchange or is it just commodity content, something reprinted from some other source?  That contextual decision isn’t yours, by the way: it’s the consumer’s.

Second, what happens to that data after the consumer surrenders it?  Do consumers feel you are a trustworthy repository for their information or are you selling it to anyone regardless of what that third party’s intentions are? The consumer’s initial value exchange with you might be fine, but the subsequent actions by someone else may render that satisfaction null and void. Even if you’re retaining the data, are you doing “creepy” things with it such as constantly remarketing to the consumer so they feel as if they have a stalker in their lives?

While people are used to the notion that privacy is a disappearing concept (for better or for worse), that fact doesn’t mean that they don’t care.  As Pew found, they do care.  I think there is always room for a company to gain an advantage by being transparent and respectful about how they are using the data consumers share with them.  You?

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January 14, 2016 · 9:53 am

Quite Content With Content

I think I may have misspoken.  Well, not misspoken, exactly, but perhaps I’ve conveyed the wrong idea about my feelings on content marketing.  The fact that you’re reading the screed today should tell you that I’m a fan of real content marketing: it’s native advertising disguised as “content” that pisses me off.  If I haven’t made the differences between the two clear, let’s use the next minute or so to rectify the issue. 

I’ve railed more than once about advertising masquerading as content.  Frankly, now that the FTC is watching this carefully, my displeasure is the least of anyone who is engaged in the activity’s worries.  It’s not hard to distinguish when you should or shouldn’t notify your readers if it’s “native” content: if some entity paid you to put the story up, or of they wrote it and bought the space where it’s running, it needs to be labelled as advertising.  Let’s leave it there for now.

True content marketing is what you’re reading.  I don’t think I’m letting you in on a secret when I tell you that part of the reason I write this blog is to show potential clients that I have a decent grasp of marketing, media, and digital.  Hopefully, as you read this every day (you DO read every day, don’t you?), you’re learning something or seeing something that makes you pause and think. I try to keep it informative and entertaining.  It’s one form of content marketing.

In addition to blogs, you might have given a company your email in return for a white paper on a topic of interest to you. Maybe you listen to a company’s podcast because it teaches you and informs.  Maybe you downloaded an e-book.  As the Content Marketing Institute defines it:

Content marketing is a strategic marketingapproach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

I am a huge fan of this sort of marketing.  It is something of value given away, generally for nothing more than an email address.  It works, too.  Research has shown content marketing to be 62% less expensive per lead than traditional outbound marketing. Unlike native, it’s transparent too. Don’t have the resources to generate this sort of material?  Call me – we’ll make it happen.  So what are you waiting for?

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January 13, 2016 · 10:33 am

Give It A Rest

Last week was CES, the big show that takes over Las Vegas.  140,000 or so folks descend to schmooze and to check out that latest technology.  I used to go every year but I can’t say as I’m disappointed not to have gone the last few.  It’s a mad house.  Mad as it may be, however, it generally gives us an indication about where technology might be heading over the next year or so.  This year, Virtual Reality was one of the biggest stories.  Cars were the other.

What’s that you ask?  I said it was a tech show, so why are cars the big thing?  Glad you asked.  You see, cars are becoming rather sophisticated computing platforms on wheels.  You might not be impressed by the 100,000+ lines of code in today’s car (Windows has tens of millions of line, for example), but that number will grow exponentially over the next couple of years as cars become more and more autonomous.  Most importantly, they will become totally connected devices.   After all, since you won’t be driving, you might want to catch up on Netflix, and not on your phone either.  Why not on the car’s screen?   In fact, since you really don’t even need to look out the windshield, why not make the window opaque and stream it there?

The notion of the car doing the driving doesn’t have me alarmed.  This does:

“Cars are essentially becoming the next must-have mobile device,” says Jason Harrison, global CEO of Gain Theory. Driverless cars open “an entirely new opportunity for advertisers. Assuming Wi-Fi-enabled cars would be targetable in the same way other devices are, they would offer high-quality targeted-audience opportunities, with an added contextual dimension such as parents and kids on the way to school, daily commutes and so on.”

I’m not sure what has me looking at this askance.  Maybe it’s the notion that everything has to be a receptacle for someone’s marketing message?  My car is not the subway.  While NYC Transit sells ads (in theory to help offset the costs of your ride), I’m not welcoming marketers into my vehicle.  Where is the attention/value exchange?  How does  the fact that marketers are paying the navigation system to come to the nearest Dunkin Donuts help me? How is yet another invasion of my privacy helpful? What other system preferences will be set based on an exchange of money that excluded me, the car buyer?

We need to learn when to give it a rest, folks.  No one wants to install an ad blocker in their car – isn’t that what the buttons on a radio are for?  Instead of rubbing our hands in anticipation of yet another trackable environment for marketing, maybe we ought to be thinking about what the benefit to the consumer will be for letting us into their daily drive?  Instead of thinking of cars as a “one-ton cookie” (as in the code dropped into your browser to track you), maybe we need to think if them as a place where we can reset our relationship to consumers and raise their expectations about the value of good marketing.  Thoughts?

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