marginally subversive

so... what exactly do you do?

Answering that question has become far more difficult.

I used to say - when I was a media planner/buyer - that "I work in advertising - you know, those ads you see at night on TV?  We buy the space in behalf of our clients."  At least that's how I would answer my mom and her friends whenever I get asked "What exactly do you do?"

Now it's a little bit more complicated since I have moved to "accountability and measurements".

Even some of my colleagues in the office are not too sure what I do.  So here's my stab at what I think I should be doing:

1. I am tasked to motivate my team and my colleagues to ask themselves the questions,

"What campaigns are working and what campaigns are not working?" - which for all intents and purposes is a very basic question.  But I am tasked to get people to go beyond price, cost-per-thousand exposures, savings, discounts, and "creativity-surprising-media-executions" and start asking "Did that campaign make an impact?  How do I know if that campaign indeed make an impact?"

"Why did that certain advertising and marketing communications campaign work - and why did that other one flop?"  There are many reasons why ad and marketing campaigns work - and don't work.  But my remit is to get the teams to start asking these questions.  There is danger - I know - in asking these questions, because "media" or "advertising" alone cannot explain the success nor the failure of a campaign.  But the first step is asking.

"What can we learn from our successes - and build on them?  What can we correct in the future?"  And these may not necessarily just be in the form of higher GRPs or higher investments or specific sponsorship activations.

It may very well be in the process of how the decisions were arrived at in the first place.

2. I am also tasked to help quantify the past effects of the hard work that the teams have been doing for their brands.

That could be through econometric or statistical modeling or through simple variance/disctinctions-identification.  It could very well be in the form of simple "visual inspection" of data. 

At the most basic, it's about ensuring that the data is there in the first place.

However, I will go further beyond quantifying: I will expand that and say my job entails identifying the why's and how's certain campaigns worked.  A lot of people think that my job will all be about equations, derivatives and slopes, sensitivity analysis, and ROIs.  But really.  It's about asking more and more questions.

3. I am also tasked to look into the future - and look at scenarios and possibilities - in view of limited resources.

This is where the job becomes exciting - and scary.  No one - as far as I know - has a 20/20 view of the future.  All we have are scenarios, possibilities, probabilities, likelihoods.  But the more important thing though is "Why it could work?"

Of course, it's based on the past - and the past 18 months have shown us that the past is not a very good predictor of the future.  But that's where another aspect of the job comes in: risk mitigation and management. 

Risk management - at its essence - is all about making decisions in the midst of uncertainty, with the hope that the returns of a certain decision outweigh the risks involved.

Numbers, equations, and stats help - but more importantly, collaboration with the business experts and stakeholders (i.e., clients and planning teams) will be at the core of this process.

I think that short summary somehow captures what I was tasked to do.

Now.

How do I explain that to my mom and my dad?

 

Why client-agency relationships fail…

I am sure there are lots of reasons – infinite, even.

But there is one thing that I learned from Ogilvy Manila that really stuck with me ever since.

 

 

I don’t know who wrote this – but he/she did nail it.

Word of Mouth, Social Media, and Marketing Planning

We are inundated by the supposed strengths of social networks and the emergence of web2.0 technologies that facilitate participatory and 2way conversations.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogservices, and the like have all emerged as leaders in the area of social media.  Windows Live is not too far off – and Google’s services (e.g., Youtube) in themselves have social-media characteristics.

But there is one thing that we are missing in all these discussions:  Social networks have always been around.  It is just that digital technology has emphasized its importance and has forced marketers and planners such as ourselves to acknowledge its significance.

We’ve also tried to measure “Word of Mouth” as if it were something similar to TV, radio, press, digital, and advertising in general.  But there is one key difference:  WOM is the voice of the consumer.  It is a response that is elicited from their holistic experiences of the brand – from a brand’s advertising messages, marketing communications, and up to its delivery of its supposed promise.

True, it is in itself a medium: If I tell you that Coke is the best soft-drink in the world and that I cannot live without a Coke (aside: I can J), I have turned myself into a medium.

But Coke can’t ‘control’ me – as it can control its advertising on TV, presses, and even digital media.  The decision to speak of Coke – positively or negatively – resides with me, the consumer.

My 2cents’: Social media facilitates word-of-mouth.  And so do other media that in aggregate, create a differentiated brand experience.  You can – perhaps – plan, control, manage, measure and deploy social media plans.  But WOM is something else. 

As one of my colleagues once mentioned: “WOM is a result…”

I would add that it is an interesting, important, and critical medium/channel – but we still have a lot to learn about it.  But the most critical thing to keep in mind is: It is the consumers’ voice, not ours.  And hence, we do not own it.

in memoriam

My grandmother, Reginalda Candido-Valloyas, passed away on Sunday night.

She was 95; she died peacefully in her sleep.  She was a great woman who in spite of the challenges of the Japanese occupation dealt on our family, made sure that the family was well-taken care of.  She helped build not only a clan that saw the rise of entrepreneurs, thinkers, and social servants - she also made sure that we knew each other and were there for each other.

She will be greatly missed, specially by me.

She raised me up and insisted on picking me up to school even if I were already in Grade 3 because "I want to make sure you're safe".  I remember her waiting patiently as I took my piano lessons up to 5 or 6 in the evening and how she would tell me to constantly pray because "God always knows better than you".  Or "smuggling" non-cafeteria food over the gates because I hated cafeteria food on Mondays.

She believed in me - and that made all the difference.

She believed - in spite of not having mastered the piano nor any other musical instrument - that I was destined to be a great musician and pianist. 

She would sit beside the piano on her favorite rocking chairwhilst I learn Moonlight Sonata, Fur Elise, and the Flight of the Bumblebee (that she said was "horrible; change it..." [I wasn't sure if she was referring to either me changing my style or the piece itself;I decided to drop it, haha.).  She was the first to hear all my compositions and my playfulness on the piano - my first 'judge', my first 'critic', the first to say 'I like that - play it again" until I myself would be too tired of my own work. 

(I never learned how to put them in notes... they are probably gone - but hopefully, not from her memories).

She pushed me to the limit - believing that limits are nothing but concepts and beliefs.  She constantly asked, "So what are you going to do about it?  You're better than you think you are - so go look for a
solution."

When I got into fights in school, she would be the first to rush to the principal's office to complain and face the parents of the bullies - even if sometimes, it was my fault.  And if it were my fault, I would never hear the end of it.

She never, ever raised her hand nor her voice.  She would speak to me gently and rationally - treating me like an adult in spite of being a rebellious teenager. 

When I left the province to pursue my university degree in Manila, I know that she cried but she didn't show it.  She just said, that day, "Take care - and pray.  Do your best.  But you don't have to always win against others.  Just do your best."

And in the same breath, she said "I just can't believe you grown so fast."

The last time I went home - and when she has not yet succumbed to Alzheimer's - she said, "Don't forget your Nanay (Mom) and Tatay (Dad) no matter where you get to.  Don't forget your sisters and your

nephews.  Don't forget me."  I said yes and I promised her that I wouldn't. 

Then she said, "If I die, I am going to miss you all."

Well, I guess she misses our family. 

And we miss her, too. 

I miss her.  And oh my, how I miss her.

She's a good woman.  A great grandmother.  My inspiration.  My pillar.  The wind beneath my wings.  The woman who contributed so much of herself that I can be what I can be - even when I myself doubted so much of me.

She will always be remembered.

And in my heart, her name will always be there.

"Agyamanak, Mamang.  Haan ka nga pabayaan.  Maturog kan.  Haan kayo ag-worry.  We're going to be fine."

Death is nothing at all.  It does not count. 
I have only slipped away into the next room. 
Nothing has happened.  Everything remains exactly as it was. 
I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.  Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. 
Call me by the old familiar name.  Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.  Put no difference in your tone.  Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.  Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.  Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.  Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. 
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. 
Life means all that it ever meant.  It is the same as it ever was.  There is absolute and unbroken continuity. 
What is this death but a negligent accident?  Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. 

All is well.

Henry Scott Holland

Uncovering the Drivers of the Singapore Media Industry's Growth

Not a lot seems to have been written about the effect of the slowdown of the economy of Singapore on the media industry and its allied professions.  (Either that or I have been quite late with the news.)

In any case, I have decided to take matters into my own hands and looked at the trends in the media marketplace.  What I did is looked at the past four years in terms of advertising spends for those which have been monitored by Nielsen Media Research.

Here is what I saw:

Looking at the above trends, we a generally upward, linear trend in the way advertisers are investing in the media marketplace - though several things caught my attention:

1. There appears to be some volatility in the data since 2005.  There is some seasonality - particularly in the middle of the year during the summer holidays and towards the last quarter, we see a general uptrend. 
   
   On the opposite trend, we see that post-Chinese New Year, we see that investments in the media marketplace declined dramatically.  This post-New Year could very well a "recovery phase" after having concentrated moneys in the fourth-quarter and the weeks leading to the festive season.
2. As soon as we entered 2009, we began to see a deviation from this 'average' upward trendline. 
   
   If you look at the last data point, you will see that there is a significant deviation from the linear expectation for January and February 2009.

This led me to the question:  So what is causing these deviations?

The deviations for the first two months of 2009 - and perhaps, even the second half of 2008 - could very well be explained by the onset of the financial crisis and the recession.  But then again, the inquisitive - and quantitative-orientated - mind asked: "Can that be quantified?  Can the effects of the global and local slowdown be quantified?"

Together with some members of the UM Singapore team, we looked at possible explanations.  Using good old Microsoft(R) Excel, we came up with several models incorporating different variables that could explain the variations of the marketplace in the market.

After reviewing more than 10'000 combinations of economic indicators - such as GDP growth, seasonality, consumer price index (which we assumed to be an indication of demand and supply of basic commodities), retail sales and catering indices, and others from SingStat, arrived at a model that was 'good enough' and has explanatory power.

The model above compares the actual (in blue) and the modelled values.  The adjusted R-squared - an indication of how much variance could our model explain - amounted to almost 90% (0.889, to be exact).  In addition to this high adjusted R-squared, other goodness-of-fit indicators were also significant. 

(Visually, it was able to explain the significant decline in January and February 2009 - which is the most problematic data point.  There was one outlier that we had to sacrifice: June 2007.  It appears that June 2007 saw a significant increase that our model couldn't explain.)

As with all models, we wanted to go beyond pure fits.  We wanted explanations.  And we broke down the effects of each of the different components of the model.

I cannot divulge the entire model and the equation, but here is a snapshot of the model's breakdowns:

Several things to note from the analysis of the past four-years' advertising media investments in Singapore:

1. There is a general uptrend - as I have noted above.  We call this the innate momentum of the marketplace.  This innate momentum is significantly strong to drive the media industry upwards in the future.  Our tests indicate that even in the rest of 2009, this innate momentum could potentially be the base on which the market will build on.  Whilst it is on an uptrend, it explains only about 40% of the total movements in the marketplace's investments in traditional meda.

2. There is seasonality in the marketplace with each month contributing significantly.  In fact, if you looked at the last two months in the data set - January-February 2009 - it was the seasonality factor that held the fort together with the innate momentum that we have uncovered.

2a.Special events (which would not be a secret to those with keen eyes) would drive some uplifts - in addition to seasonality. 

3. There are two economic factors that we have uncovered that affect the media landscape's investments - one (the green one) accounted for almost 40% as well of the movements in the investments in the past five years.  The green economic factor was quite strong that it had 'spillover' effects up to two months.

The other one - in purple - had very limited effects on thye changes in the media industry.  If you look closely however, the purple factor could hold the industry on its own.  See, for example, August-October 2007: the green economic factor was on the decline, but the purple economic factor was contributing a positive impact on the total media investments.

The next question...:  What's going to happen next?

A very good question, really.

The next step is to identify what's going to happen in the future.  But remember: our models were based on economic indicators and at least one economic indicator accounted for about 40% of the data's movements.  That makes predicting the future of the media industry's size in 2009 and 2010 even more difficult.

But my team and I may just have fuond a way.

That will be for another day.

The Usual Caveats

These are based on my personal estimates and are not necessarily reflective of the company and brands that I work for.  The models - whilst acceptable from a statistical and econometric POV - are just models: they cannot explain everything.  And as we learned from the financial crisis that is now gripping the world, the past is not necessarily a good predictor of the future and hindsight is always 20/20.

These are what I personally call "descriptive models" - they describe what have happened in the past with the hope that we learn something.

I used Nielsen Media Research data on this - thank you very much.  In addition, the econometric modeling was done using a combination of pure manipulation of numbers on Microsoft Excel and a proprietary tool of UM/Initiative.

 

getting through the door...

One of the things that I learned is that one - as a manager or a leader - can only create opportunities for her followers.  She can only go as far as pointing to the right opportunities - the right doors - the potential next steps - the possibilities.  She cannot take on the responsibility of opening the door and jumping right in.

I for one have been dubbed by my peers from my leadership training in 2005 as the "guy with the superhero complex - who believes that no one should ever be left behind, no matter what".  It took awhile for me to realize that.

Perhaps, in these challenging times, that's what we need: people who can point us the right way, "burn the boats", and get people to move.

And trust that the people will move.

I - for one - will have a hard time doing the last bit.  But I will have to.

I - too - have my own doors to open and potentials to realize.

Thanks to IrishFlyGuy on Flickr.Com for the photo.

blank slate and creativity

When I was a very small kid - perhaps, 3 or 4 years old - my mom would give me a piece of white paper and some crayons whenever she's busy.  In order for her to concentrate on her business, she would give me something to do - and keep me busy.  It worked - until I finished my masterpiece and I'd bug her to have a look at my work of art and get a compliment from her.

When I started school, my first teacher - Mrs. Reyes - would do the same thing.  Whenever she had to do something - perhaps, grade our 'exams' or make a summary of her lesson plan for the next week - she'd bring out white sheets of paper, lots of crayons, and a box of pencils.  The instruction was the same: "Just draw something".

These days, I rarely get the chance to have a clean sheet of paper to draw.  By the time I finish with work and well, readings for my other academic interests, all I want to do is turn off the lights and close my eyes.

Even at work, I rarely get the chance to have a clean slate - even with a move from one table to another or from one company to another, it is rarely a clean slate.  There are always what I call 'ghosts' - things that haunt you long after you've forgotten them (like a client asking for a report that has been submitted 1-2 years back... (: ).

Clean slates are hard to come by - but when they do, like last night when I spoke to our China CEO on a potential project, I grabbed on to it and developed something out of his questions.

And it felt great.

 

 

Thanks to OldOnliner on Flickr.Com

 

Seth Godin talks about two ways of managing talent in his entry, A Clean Sheet of Paper:

The first is you give someone a clean slate of paper, a vision, and some resources.  You let the person take responsibility, ownership, and leadership of the project.  You let them be.  This takes courage, however. 

Because the vision - however passionate you are about it, however clear it is in your mind - can be interpreted by another differently.  And because you have not given a set of guidelines or a framework, you really can't predict what the output is going to be.  

And the output could swing both ways: great (which means it is something mindblowing and totally aligned with what you have envisioned in your mind) or really bad (which means it missed the point entirely and is in complete opposition to how you envisioned the, hmm, vision).

The only problem with the first is, you can't argue reasonably well why something 'seems' wrong.  Endless discussions will probably ensue - and inefficiencies will appear.  But think about the possibility of greatness and the potential birth of a great idea.

Then again - the possibility of misalignment and inefficiencies would also need to be taken into account.

The second is you give someone a strictly-defined set of guidelines and directions, and spoonfeed someone with information and directions, pretty much like how IKEA does it with their very visual instruction manuals.

In this version, you get what you want - and perhaps, perfectly so.  You get what you expect - and you can't go wrong.  There is a way for you to argue with the other person why you believe he or she is 'wrong'.

The results - because they are as expected - are "within guidelines".  They can still be remarkable - so long as your guidelines were remarkable.  They can still be above-mediocrity - but the responsibility lies on you, the one who set the guidelines.

So which one way is the better way to manage talent?

The risks are quite greater on the first option - but the payout, the possibility of great work is also possible.

The second option is far more efficient - but it puts too much responsibility on a document or on a framework or a set of guidelines.  That if the guidelines were crappy, the results would also be crappy.  But "at least you get things done!"

I am not sure really of the answer.

I have a hunch though: 

Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness.  Efficiency is like using a ladder to jump over a wall; effectiveness is all about finding the right wall to jump over in the first place.

 

Thanks to Robert Couse-Baker on Flickr.Com for the Photo