marginally subversive

communicating meaning

I came across this slideshow on reception theory on SlideShare on Reception Theory.  And it was a very interesting, clear read.

 

Reception theory

View more presentations from Rob McMinn

 

As a media planner, I have been exposed to a number of 'frameworks' that tried to explain how audiences access, process, and relate with information that they encounter about brands.  The one that I found most interesting was this chart (which I think is overused but still relevant though in need of further improvements to take into account how audiences have evolved).

In essence, the above suggests that the communication effectiveness is at the middle - where the message is delivered by the right medium to the its intended target audiences whilst they are in the right mindset.

Imagine seen an ad about romantic getaways during the upcoming Valentine's Day on late-night TV whislt nurturing a broken heart.  Or seeing a news program with violent scenes from a road accident whilst enjoying dinner.

The idea behind this 'framework' - if you can call it that - is that the most effective communications happen when the three are in alignment.

Strategically, it makes sense.  Implementation-wise, it is difficult:  How exactly would you know when the audiences are in the "right" or "congruent" mindset that would facilitate the reception of the message? 

Some companies have resorted to "emotional/mood diaries".  But as the slideshow above suggests - and as anyone who's married or "partnered" would attest to - moods change.  And they change quite drastically.

The challenge therefore is continually 'checking' the 'mood' or the sentiment of the market - and responding to that sentiment in a relevant (or 'sentiment-changing') manner.

 

The bottom-line is:

Comunicating meaning - the intended meaning, which I believe to be at the core of effective communications - is a function of the message that we send our intended audience and the context - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual - that in turn defines her mood.  

Planning for Marketing? Think Finance - Think Lifetime Value

via www.youtube.com

Marketing has borrowed quite extensively from Finance in the last 10 years.

As marketeers, we've started talking about returns on investments - finding the "biggest bang for our buck".

Some (like my former team in a previous company) have started talking about risk management procedures - not just in managing contracts (and employing "options"-like buying techniques), but also in delivering gross impressions and shares.

All these are well and good.

Perhaps this is one way of the marketing department proving themselves to the finance department - an attempt to say that 'we are more than just an expense line on the balance sheet'.

But as marketeers and suport-teams of the marketing department, we have got to do more.

Employing evidence-based marketing, metrics-based objective-setting and results evaluation, real profitability analyses that take into account present and future value of marketing investments --- all these need to be more apparent in the marketing department's language and in the language of its partners in the advertising, media, promotions, PR, research, and digital space.

The Age of New Banking Is Upon Us...

I came across this video just today (a year old, really, so quite old by internet standards).  It is about banking and how consumesr are changing the face of banking.

What I really liked about what Brett King, an author, said in the opening of the video: 

Just because you are a bank and you have a banking licence doesn't mean you have an exclusive on banking.

And another one: 

If customers don't want to come to the branch..., we just serve them where they are.

 

"like us on facebook": the value of fans (and likers)

Almost all of the print and outdoor ads that I notice these days have got this icon, exhorting - imploring - anybody and anyone to

"Like us"

I know what it means - but how it is crafted sounds, mmm, pathetic.

"Why should I like you?  Just because I saw your ad on an outdoor poster?  Or because I want some more information about you?  What if I just search about you - if I were interested, then I'll do that.  Or ask my friends about you - that is if I were interested."

Maybe it's just me.

-------

Plastering "like us" on every and any ad may be generating some "likes" on social networks - and some following.  I am not sure of the success of such ads, really since I have not conducted any study about it.

(I've conducted a study however, that shows that traditional advertising - i.e., on TV, radio, press, magazines, and outdoor - has a significant impact on category-related keywords and conversion-rates from visits to actual, revenue-generating action.)

But what does "liking" a brand really do?

I'll quote Jeremy Owyang on one of his entries on this:

Don’t focus solely on fans and followers as a primary key performance indicator, instead focus on the business goals the fans and followers yield for you.

- Jeremy Owyang

 

Yields - revenue and profit yields - are what you ought to be looking for.  Not fans, not likes, not followers, not impressions, not loves/likes and hugs.

At the end of the day, your brands ought to build business for your company.

And likes, fans, loves, and hugs won't matter to the CFO unless there is a dollar value attached to them.

 

 

 

 

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on business objectives and returns on investments: QUANTIFY IT!

If business objectives are not quantified - it's nothing but a set of big, hairy audacious goals.

If RoI is not quantified - it's nothing but useless chest-thumping, "I-saved-the-company/world-all-by-myself" denial of what's real.

And oh - you can't set business objectives unless you know where you currently are - if your business sucks now, it doesn't help if you deny that it sucks or 'beautify' it with "yes, we suck but...".  No "but's" about sucking, dude.  

If you suck, you suck.  Period.  Admit it.  Move on.  Set new directions - real, realistic directions.

 

And yet another strategic planning framework...

I think that if we boiled down the mission of any media/communications planner in to one chart, it would probably be summarized in the above chart.

It's a rather simplistic, conceptual process - but I think it speaks a lot.

First, whatever media/communications planner do is essentially facilitating a shift in business results.  Without any well-defined business goals, I believe that a planner can't do much really.  Surely, there are other components of the marketing mix that are beyond the control of the planner.  But the goals are there to make sure that whatever plans are designed are aligned with the ultimate, measurable business goal of the brand.

Second, whatever state a business is in is a result of current behaviors of consumers towards the brand.  Similarly, a necessary shift in business will also necessitate a shift in behaviors of consumers towards the brand.  (I should add, ceteris paribus.)

Third, the behaviors of consumers are driven by or are founded on beliefs, perceptions, or attitudes that they have of the brand.  Beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, expectations - all these drive the behaviors of the brand.

Fourth, the goal of the planner is to identify what the current beliefs are - and how strong these beliefs are influencing their current action.  And then identify what should the new beliefs be that would result to new behaviors and new businesses.

This is highly debatable, I admit: In psychology, the gap between attitudes and action is not entirely clear-cut and direct.  Someone might say "I am definitely for eco-friendly products" and could vehemently describe themselves as ardent anti-climate-change.  It doesn't necessarily mean though that they would get out of their way to choose, say, eco-friendly cars over non-eco-friendly cars.

And some shampoo users might say "This is the only brand I will buy" - but may not necessarily be open to going out of their way (say, their shampoo brand is out of stock in their favorite neighborhood store) to look for that brand "I will only buy". 

In these cases, my view is that the attitudes or the beliefs therefore are not the real attitudes or beliefs that people have.  They may have other, stronger, underlying beliefs that supplant and supersede these "stated beliefs" (e.g., in the case of the car example, the belief of "I need a car with a higher resale value" may be far stronger than the belief of being eco-friendly; in the case of the shampoo buyer, "convenience is key" is stronger than the belief in the brand).

It is therefore very critical to identify and understand the real underlying beliefs amongst consumers that support their behaviors.  These can only be uncovered through a thorough questioning of research studies and data, and of consumers - something that will necessitate deep research into the minds and hearts of consumers.

 And  this is also where the fifth step comes in: identifying the barriers.  One can think of barriers as dimensions of the current beliefs.  "I am not really open to eco-friendly cars" could be an amalgam of different sub-beliefs - "Eco-friendly cars are expensive", "I don't know much about them", "My electricity bill is going to shoot up", "What if I lose power in the middle of nowhere?", and "My friends will tease me". 

By identifying the barriers, one just might be able to dissect further the current beliefs into manageable 'chunks', that when addressed will lead to a shift in beliefs.

It sounds simple and simplistic - but it is not.

Getting down to the real beliefs and the sub-beliefs supporting the behaviors can be a very taxing exercise.  It takes significant effort of integrating results from quantitative and qualitative research (tonnes of them!), from observations of the audiences, and from change influencers to determine these beliefs underneath behaviors.

Well, no one said that media/communications planning is easy.

It could, however, be rewarding - intellectually and financially (for the client, at the very least) - to know exactly what beliefs prop up current behaviors and what new beliefs can lead to new behaviors that will lead to profits.

so you're on Facebook - now what?

John Bell has a very interesting blog entry on what should come next after being present in Facebook.

He talks about the fast growth - and then slowdown - of Facebook adoption in the US, a trend that most people (including techwatchers and stock/financial market analysts interested in the Facebook IPO) thought was the beginning of the end of Facebook (and its billion-dollar valuation).

Bell differs - and I agree with him: something cannot keep on growing forever, specially if there is a 'built-in braking system' in its growth trajectory.  Sooner or later, everyone is going to have one Facebook account - until we reach that point where there's no one else to recruit into the Facebook population.  

Instead of questioning whether this is the end of Facebook, the question marketeers and communication strategists need to answer is "now what?"

Bell offers several thoughts:

1. Integrating Facebook as part of an overall customer/fan relationship management solution
2. Figuring out how to make social commerce work for the brand
3. More data about the brands' followers and fans (as soon as Facebook unlocks the data-vaults)
4. Creating new ways to engage and entertain and delight audiences and brand fans and loyalists through Facebook's unique platform (and other social media's)
5. Integration of Facebook into CRM legacy systems

I will add a few more to Mr. Bell's thoughts:

1. Having a clear role for Facebook and other social-media platforms, both digital and non-digital, in the marketing communications mix and in the customer engagement strategy of a firm

2. Identifying the real returns in financial value of activities in Facebook, other digital social-media platforms, and other "traditional, non-digital" social-media platforms, using metrics and currencies that are comparable to how we measure returns for TV, press, magazines, outdoor, and radio

3. Going beyond using Facebook and other digital social media platforms as "crisis portenders" or "PR-nightmare forerunners" - but using these and other non-digital platforms as "sources of brand/product and communication innovations".  

 

What do you think?  How else can Facebook be used in building your brands and your brands' businesses?  How can it be a part of a profit improvement program for a company? 

Thought for the Day

"In war a dull success is always better than a brilliant one."

- Paul Hoffman, "The Left Hand of God"

*****

These days, marketing and brand wars are no longer won through strategies learned from the past. The battleground has shifted - it has changed. The rules of engagement of eras gone no longer hold. And they continue to be redefined each day by forces that are interrelated and are multiplicative - social, technological, environmental, economic, political, the power of the individual.

masking ineptitude with arrogance... and smokes and mirrors

I have always been astounded, amazed, surprise, awed (ok... enough...) by how much people would push the envelope to get ahead in the corporate race.

Seth Godin writes about arrogance masking reality in the corporate world.  And I couldn't agree more.  

He writes:

Somewhere along the way, we confused the signals with the work. Now there are people who start with the bad behavior and the affectations, hoping that it will be seen as a sign of insight and talent. And they often get away with it. "Who's that?" we wonder... "I don't know, but they must be good at what they do, because why else would we put up with them?" It's a great plan when it works, but I don't think it's a strategy to be counted on.

Call it confirmation bias.  Or some other form of cognitive bias.  

Or simply attribute it to our humanity that seeks to find the good in people and forgo their shortcomings and ineptitude.

From my vantage point, however, it's all about smokes and mirrors, low signal-to-noise ratios, creation and maintenance of illusory skills and achievements even when faced by threats of being found wanting.

Godin writes further:

The key to getting a reputation for being brilliant is actually being brilliant, not just acting like you are.

If only it were that easy.

Sometimes, the reputation of being brilliant is not enough particularly in a corporate scenario where low signal-to-noise ratios and smokes-and-mirrors are upheld, rather than good, remarkable, and excellent work.

I think in spite of the changes that have occurred or occurring in the corporate world - and the demand for people to be linchpins and to be investors in "emotional work" rather than simply "showing up for time and the attendance sheet", there will always be companies - regardless of how much they extol the virtues of innovation and "challenge the status quo" - that are deeply mired in smokes-and-mirrors.