marginally subversive

the leap from information and facts to insight

recently, i was asked to do a short session on 'insights'.  the session was supposed to impart any knowledge that i may have about converting information and facts into insights.  to be honest, i found it really hard to express myself.  (it didn't help that i was using somebody else's set of slides to do the presentation, but that's no excuse.)  the question that was in my mind was really simple: "how do you teach about transforming facts into insights?"

the difference between facts and insights is plain and simple, at least from my vantage point: a fact says something and informs; when presented with facts, one leaves a little bit more informed.  an insight is different: it informs - and transforms - that when one is presented with an insight, one is left wondering and clamoring for more.

but.

the question remains: how do you translate an information factoid into an insight?

and more importantly, in my case, how do i communicate that process to someone else?  how does one tell another 

how to see - and look
how to head hear - and listen
how to talk - and communicate
or to sense - and feel.

the deck says that an insight is 'contextual' - it is in 'response' to a problem.  but really, must it be set against a problem?  sometimes, the problem is not even defined for it to be a context.  and  sometimes, facts are enough to answer a problem.

oh well.

i went through to SlideShare.Net in search of an insight-creation deck.  But i kinda didn't find what i was looking for.  I found this however: a Nokia Presentation on "insight and innovation".  I am  not sure what the intent of the presentation was - but i think it captures the transformation of facts and information (from research) into real insights - and actions.

Insight & Innovation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design ethnography)

i also saw this presentation on "What is Design" - which had a little bit design-oriented. but i kinda thought whilst reading it that 'design' and 'insight' are closely-related concepts.  somehow, i have this nagging feeling that an insight is something that you can capture immediately, and simply, on a piece of paper - with doodles and rough sketches and boxes and stars and asterisks and curves.

What is Design

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design is)

so how was my presentation of the module on insights?  in the end, i think i kinda screwed it up.  but i hope i was inspiring enough to get people to see the difference between facts (which are typically percentages and numbers in our line of work) and insights (which are sorely lacking).

Marketing during a recession: Initial thoughts..

As I write these words, Yahoo! Finance is screaming with this headline:

Wall Street tumbled Monday, joining a selloff around the world as fears grew that the financial crisis will cascade through economies globally despite bailout efforts by the U.S. and other governments. The Dow Jones industrials skidded more than 400 points and fell below 10,000 for the first time in four years, while the credit markets remained under strain

This happens after the 700BUSD bailout - and amidst the fight for Wachovia between Citibank and Wells-Fargo.

Google is almost 50% of its 52week high - Microsoft has breached the 25USD level.  PG is relatively OK - although although early July, they were trading at around 62USD versus its current 70-72USD levels.  IPG is down - way down - to less than 7USD after a 52week high of 10.76USD.  OMC is also way off its 52week high of 53USD and is trading somewhere between 33-35USD.  WPPGY at the NASDAQ is trading at 36-37USD, way off its 52week high of 73USD.

(I am writing this at 0038h SG time, 7th October.)

Things are not looking good.

So what's a marketer to do?

I am sure that we're going to be dusting off the charts that say "advertising during a recession actually is good for your brand - as it will show resilience when the market comes up and it will help your business weather the challenges".

To a certain extent, I believe in that adage.  I have seen case studies and research that show that indeed, when brands advertise during recessions - and in spite of the financial difficulties that there may be in the market - they reap the returns.

But these are different times.

The last two crashes that I have witnessed were the 1997-1998 crash, which slowed down advertising significantly in the Southeast Asian region after the currency-devaluation crisis - and then there was SARS, which badly hit the markets of Hong Kong and Singapore (with Singapore's media adspends going down by as much as 15% - without taking into account inflation).

So what's a marketeer to do these days?

Cliche-ic as it may sound, but marketeers ought to get back to their consumers.

If companies are jitterry about the economic and business trends, more so are the consumers.  And with the recent trends that have been happening to the biggies - the institutions that stood the test of time, supposedly, crumbling before the world's eyes - it is natural for consumers to be fearful.

And this is where marketeers should come in:  Not so much to sell, but to placate, pacify, and empower.

If I were a marketeer, I would focus my efforts on those media channels that would help my brand remain in the lives of consumers - and play on a different role - that of an empowering catalyst.  I would probably use CRM more effectively, segment my current customers - identifying those which are about to lose faith in my brand and those who are staunch believers.  I'd probably recommend sending out different sets of messages - customized to their needs (yes, easier said than done - but doable and not impossible).  And watch the spending.

From a macro-perspective, I'd probably focus on markets that are least vulnerable to the upheavals in the market.  KInda difficult to do that now - considering that Asia is not without its own problems (cf. China's melamine problem).  But Asia - specifically Southeast Asia's 700Mln+ people - would probably hold some importance right now.  Relatively politically unstable, yes - but well, it's not "politics' per se that is the problem right now: it's businesses.

I don't who said it (I want to say David Ogilvy) - but I kinda recall someone saying "the media planner's secret weapon - when all else fails - is direct marketing". 

In this day and age, I would expand that and say "the media planner's and marketeers' secret weapon these days - when all else fails and financials are getting squeezed - is 1to1 communications, in whatever form that may be: CRM, digital, events, search..."

And precision-targeting advertising.

(Forget the whims of the chairman and the board of directors and their media habits and morning-driving routes: it's your consumers/customers that really matter now.)

Beyond social media buzzwords: It's your business that matters and how you think and what you believe that really matter...

This article from AttentionMax struck me.  Its premise is simple:  most agencies and media publishers still don't get social media right.  In terms of coming up with social-media solutions, most are found wanting - and too "buzz-wordy", rather than really actionable.

To be sure, there are a lot of promising attempts on both the media and agency sides. But most are short-sided. In fact, most seem disingenuous or uninformed, as evidenced by the advertising community’s excessive and ambiguous use of words and phrases like “conversation,” “viral,” “engage with your customers” and “let the community do the work for you.”

It seems that I am not the only one who is beginning to be frustrated by the buzz-wordy, ambiguous words and phrases that pepper most ad and media companies and publishers' presentations.

I believe that social media is important:  but how exactly do you manage it?

I believe that you can't manage something that you cannot control - and you cannot control what you cannot measure.  If we follow that line of reasoning even further, you cannot measure what you do not understand.  And you cannot understand unless you observe and organize.

But social media is chaotically organized.  It is perhaps one of the most glaring examples of "simplexity":  social media is simple - and its premise is simple.  However, because it involves complex 'variables' (people - lots of people!) it just becomes complex to be captured and organized in math formulas and even structures and MECE processes.

And yet, we know that social media needs to be considered because of its sheer power in influencing others.

How then?

Here are my suggestions:

1. Go beyond the marketing plan.  And yes, go beyond the media plan.  Go beyond these measures of "opportunities to be seen".
2. Use the marketing plan, the ad-messaging and media plan, and the PR plan, and the 'viral plan' as a means to achieve something bigger - the business' bottom-line/
3. Create a strategic plan centered on consumers and community of consumers.  The problem with most marketeers is, they want to get everyone and anyone to love their brand and contribute to their business.  C'mon: you can't please everyone!
4. In doing so, forget the buzzwords - unless we have a real understanding of how to operationalize them and get them to act and benefit a brand, forget about using "engagement", "connection", "involvement"... etc.
5. Viral videos aren't the end-all/be-all of a campaign - or word-of-mouth or facebook ads or widgets.  The end is getting new business in:  from existing community-revenue-sources, from communities that are not yet open - but could be open - to the business.
6. Tactics ain't going to cut it: the short-term is good, but the longer-term is what really matters.  Don't sacrifice the long-term goals and vision of the brand and the business for the sake of one sponsorship or one community.
7. Be prepared to invest:  Just because you have a database of people who wanted to be members and "friends" with your brand doesn't mean you've hit it big time.  Invest in them.  Listen to them.  (And I mean that in a very non-buzz-wordy way...) 
8. Bring out the data.  If you have a "loyalty program" (which is a misnomer, because these databases are most likely just gathering 'electronic dust' somewhere in your server's hard drive), check and let the data tell you what they've been doing with your brand.  If you are lucky, you'd find nuggets of information and knowledge about these individuals who have taken the time to get involved with your brand.  Get to know them.
9. Make marketing your 'integrative thinking department' - where sales, procurement, finance, operations, admin, customer service, supply management, frontlines converge. 
   In fact, get MORE out of your marketing department beyond checking ads, approving media plans, and berating your agencies as if they were less than human.  (And if your marketing director is one who is still involved in selecting what programs to buy into, fire her - she has bigger things to do - and bigger issues to solve - than looking at specific programming your brand is buying into.  She's wasting valuable company time - fire her and get someone in.)
10. Get everyone to understand what it's all about: the business and its sustainability.  From everyone internally to other external stakeholders.  It's not about the frigging Cannes awards or that left-right pagination on the main paper.  It's about the business and its sustainability.

OK.  No item in the list above mentions anything about social-media.  (And my English paper teacher would probably fail me...)  But that's the whole point:  the whole point about social-media is you can't fully engineer it - you can't fully engineer how people react to your brand and your business because, well, they are people - and people are complex.

The only way you can fully maximize and benefit from social-media is when the brands' companies are themselves organized and are firm believers of creating remarkable brands and businesses that would benefit and reward their consumers.

(And just because you're the biggest financial institution with the biggest number of credit cardholders doesn't mean you're the best and that everyone loves you - it just means you have the muscle.  But not everyone likes muscle guys [and girls].)

Engagement Mapping...

Lifting this up from Clickz:

Microsoft's Young-Bean Song began a speech at the MIXX conference in New York yesterday with a beer analogy: Consider a scenario, he said, in which Corona determined to put its whole ad spend toward whatever consumer contact point immediately preceded most of its sales. Its obvious move, according to Song, would be to "put all its marketing budget into neon signs at pubs."

Ridiculous idea, but Song, who is VP of analytics in Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions group, argues most digital marketers assign credit in just that fashion -- with search, affiliate marketing, and other sources of lower-funnel clicks grabbing more recognition than they rightly should.

Microsoft wants them to think more holistically. A new study based on advertisers' use of the company's Engagement Mapping product argues for a model where more credit goes to high-funnel channels like special interest sites and ad networks. The data, drawn from 500 advertisers that are using the fledgling tool, do indeed show that marketers given the choice to assign greater value to those channels do so.

Broken down by channel, Microsoft found that under its attribution regime, vertical content sites and ad networks gain credit for conversions. Meanwhile, the median search buy loses 7 percent credit for conversions among those using Engagement Mapping.

Furthermore, Microsoft research indicates navigational search is responsible for a large portion of click behavior. Sixty percent of total sponsored search clicks specify the precise name of a brand advertiser, or even an exact URL. And search clickers exposed to display advertising were 22 percent more likely to produce a sale than those who weren't exposed.

Engagement is one of those words that somehow get me going.  Not in a good way.  Really.

For some reason, the "word" just rubs me the wrong way.  It is so fuzzy a concept - and because the concept is fuzzy, it cannot be measured.  Not yet, at least.

I have seen presentations from clients directing their creative and media company-partners to "engage" the consumers, or create ads and plans that "engage" consumers.  But what does that really mean?  Does that mean "surprise" consumers?  "Delight" consumers?  "Amuse" consumers?  "Entertain" consumers?  "Transform" consumers into brand recallers - or brand ambassadors?

I have also seen presentations from media companies - both from the planning and the ad-space side - defining "engagement" in various ways.  Some see it as "time-spent" with a medium.  Some define it as "compo" - i.e., % rating against a target group divided by the % rating against the entire population (that's affinity to some).

Some have come up with more complicated ways. 

(Well, I did try coming up with one for magazines in Singapore a few years ago, when I included several variables - AIRs, time-spent per issue, average % of the issue read, average number of times re-read, response indication, and magazine-brand image associations - and rolled it into one score using some *secret sauce* I learned from IRT and psych-testing in the university; I was told that it was too complex.  But I am not giving up hope.  Was I measuring "engagement"?  Not sure.  The goal was to come up with a new currency - tick that box.  But did it get accepted?  Hmm.  Leave that tickbox blank.  Haha.)

So is Microsoft finally on to something with Engagement Mapping?  Its methodology is unclear to me just yet - here's what the article said about the Microsoft methodology:

It assigns more or less weight to different ad impressions based on factors like frequency, recency, and ad size. Larger ad units get more credit, as do video and rich media. More frequently and recently delivered ads are also given greater influence. Advertisers can also tweak the dials on Atlas's interface to assign greater influence to those Web publishers and ad formats it deems most powerful.

I think they may be on the right path - but if it is indeed Engagement, then there should be a component of a response, right?  It may be circular, I know - using 'behavior' as part of the engagement construct in order to predict behavior.  But that just might work.

Perhaps, if they added more variables: frequency, recency, ad quality (not just ad-size), ad version (say, is it more creative than the rest?), context and environment synergies, and historical response - it just might work.

But then again, the question remains: Exactly what is Engagement?  And as a media planner, or an advertiser, or a brand manager, what do I do with it?  Can I buy it and plan it?  Can I relate it with sales and put a dollar value on it?

Hmm.

I think Engagement will remain to be one of my most favorite, fuzzy words.

 

A Flickr Photo from Rubyran

Enough with the purchase funnel!

I have had it with the Purchase Funnel.  I don't want to see any Purchase Funnel ever again.

OK.  That's stretching it a bit.  But seriously, do people still use the purchase funnel?  I know it's one of the key metrics in CRM/DM.  But there must be a better way of presenting data - or a concept, for that matter - beyond the usual funnels and conversion rates.

There must be a better way.

It's all about the experience...

I stumbled upon this interesting slide show on content marketing - at least that's how it was labeled on SlideShow.Com.  However, I think that it does cover more than just content marketing as a discipline.  It covers a far bigger, far richer view of the consumers' experience-sphere - and how brands can make/unmake their positions within this circle.

It's all about enhancing consumers' experiences of brands - that's the raison d'etre of media, channel, and messaging experts.  It's not about buying a TV ad or a print ad or a banner ad in some number 1 portal somewhere.  It's not about buying search keywords and optimizing them to the hilt.

It's about enhancing consumers' experiences of brands.

And I honestly think that content marketing - what used to be called (or is it still called?) "branded content and sponsorships" (though I think it's far more than that) - is one pillar that is currently underutilized in the media planning industry.

A lot of clients that I have spoken to about this have just one reply: "We are not a publishing company".  To which I say, "... but the mere fact that you are creating ads, buying media to send those messages into the market, and getting PR people and CRM writers to create campaigns - contents, essentially - don't these make you a publishing company?"

 

Content Marketing = Brand New Marketing?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: media interactive)

Brands as Destinations

I was just thinking about 'destinations as Brands'.  The Hiltons and Conrad Hotels (which by the way are still tops on my list), Sheratons, and JW Marriotts.  Then started thinking about "countries as brands" - Singapore, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the Philippines, Malaysia.  And then the brands that take you there - Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Northwest, Emirates... - all of which are not entirely 'destinations' but surely are 'brands'.

Then my brain flipped:  How about thinking of it inversely - "brands as destinations"?  Does it hold?

Come to think of it:  some companies have called the 'retail space communications' as "the last mile that will make or break the deal between the brand and the consumer".  Some have thought of the "consumers' journey" or "path to a purchase".

From these, it seems then possible that "brands are destinations" in and of themselves, regardless of what categories they belong in.

But what would a brand as a destination be?

Hmmm.

For Coke: That sizzle, that 'bite' at the back of the throat that refreshes and gives me a break - however simple and short from the hassle of daily work.
For Kiehl's and Gillette 5Blade (whatever it is called) Shaver:  That smooth shave in the morning - with the minty, tingly feeling after.
For Mac:  That "can't wait any longer gotta be on my Mac" feeling every single night - in spite of being tired.
For my Sony PSP:  That "can't wait to advance to the next level and earn my black belt - even if it's only virtually" experience.
For the good old, H&L Milk in my fridge: That "please, I want to sleep now" feeling.

It seems possible.  And it could well be true.

Brands in themselves are destinations for consumers.  Brands are not just the tangible aspect of a 'product' - but also the emotional responses that a certain experience evokes out of and with the consumer.

Hmm.

Of presentations and PowerPoint(r)

One of the things that friends - and colleagues - do not know is my fear of speaking in a public space.  When I announced this as part of a 'getting-to-know-you' session with one of our clients (you know, the bit where you say "what's your deepest, darkest secret?" during a team-building seminar?), they seemed quite surprise.  The feedback I got was that "But you think authoritatively whenever you present something..." and "It seems effortless".

The truth is, it takes a lot of effort.

And the truth is, I am violating certain "rules" of presentations that I think everyone should take note of.  (Just ask my current boss!)

Below are two presentations from SlideShare that I thought was worth sharing.  Honestly, I am doing this for the readers of this blog - you know who you are! - and for my own self.  This interest in PowerPoint(r) presentations and crafting stories have long been in me - it's just that now, I am on the road back to re-mastering the basics.

If you have anything to share - a lousy presentation, a great presentation, a presentation you're truly proud of, or even tips - just go to the comments section and well, comment.

Meanwhile, enjoy the following slides:

Death by PowerPoint

View SlideShare presentation (tags: powerpoint ppt presentations presentation)

And still another one for your maximum enjoyment.  (I won't spill the beans on the presentations... Go through them!)

Brain Rules for Presenters

View SlideShare presentation (tags: reynolds garr zen presentation)

Wanted: Digital Planners who can think brand- and media-planning - and vice versa...

Having been re-immersed back into the world of communications planning and advisory, a realization - or a "re-realization" struck me.

Whilst we are in a world that is increasingly becoming more "digitized" and where certain media vehicles are becoming more and more a "concierge service" - i.e., a centralized service to stay in touch with all things - we are still lacking in real integrators.

Digital planners - who can think of the brand beyond the digital medium and its intricacies - I think, are still lacking.  Don't get me wrong: digital planners are a great bunch of people.  And by the innate nature of the web as being very measurable and accountable, digital planners hold a very critical role in any communications plan.

However, I have the belief that digital planners - who are specialists in their own right and could command great respect from the rest of the marketing planning community - needs to take into consideration that brands are not created overnight.

Just because click-through rates or CPCs or CPAs or keywords or widgets or RFIs are high relative to eyeballs doesn't necessarily mean a successful campaign.  These - IMHO - are measures of "efficiencies" rather than effectiveness:  How much dollars is a campaign generating versus the investments that are being poured into it.

There is still a need to look at brands - and these metrics that measure how consumers interact, experience, relate, and animate a brand cannot be captured by merely looking at CPCs and CPAs and other conversion measures.

True:  all businesses ought to be measured in terms of their revenue-generation capabilities.  And therefore all campaigns that support this businesses need to generate sales.  HOWEVER, a brand isn't built overnight - and the impact of so-called "branding campaigns" are not necessarily immediately felt or measurable.  Heck, if we can measure overnight the impact of a "branding campaign", I think that would be the ideal scenario.  However, sticking to our CPCs and CPAs and SEMs and SEOs and other measures an tactics as "mere campaign measures that matter because they are closer to the company's bottomline" could well be a myopic viewpoint.

Media planning as an industry has evolved - strategic planners from mainstream creative and agency-companies are now welcome in the world of "noughts and crosses" and are changing the way media planning is bein done.  These strategic planners do not necessarily use numbers - but they "adapt" their knowledge of how brands are created and how consumers encounter/experience brands not just through messaging strategies but also through the message's interaction/synergy with the medium that carries that message - regardless of what that medium is.

The same is true for digital specialists - they have to "adapt" their technical knowledge and expertise to include a deep understanding of how brands are created - online and offline.

This is not to say that the digital medium ought to be an after-thought, after all the traditional, offline media have been fulfilled and their budgets optimized.  What I am trying to say is digital specialists should also be able to talk about brands and brand-building - in the immediate and in the long-term - within their specialised field - and at the same time, outside the digital realm.

At the end of the day, we are aiming to provide better brand-consumer experiences that would transform target audiences into brand users (and revenue-sources) and into brand ambassadors.  Clicking an ad - in Google, in MSN Search, in Yahoo.Com, or in some other vertical - is one aspect of that experience.

But it is not the only aspect of brand-building.

Brands are created over time, across multiple experience-opportunities, with the end-user reinforcing her relationship with the brand at her own time, at her own choosing.  Revenues in the short-term are good and they are good for the bottomline of the company for this quarter or this month.  But businesses - the last time I checked - are in it for the long-haul.

Psychoanalysis, Metaphors, and Marketing: Going beyond the surface

I have always been interested in attitudes that people have about certain phenomena that they encounter everyday - and how these attitudes are formed, how these attitudes influence and shape their own behaviors - and those of others.

This is something that I picked up from the Harvard Business School's blogs - the use of psychoanalysis (and/or similar techniques) to get to the bottom of one's relationships with and perceptions of brands in general.  Unlike in ethnology where a researcher may be relegated as an observer and the 'subjects' and their interactions and their expressions observed from a distance, this technique developed by Jerry Zaltman, uses interviews that are founded on the psychoanalytic disciplines of psychology/psychiatry.  (Think Rorschach inkblots or word-associations or draw-a-tree/person test.)

 

Interesting approach.

Here's a link to the video.