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.  

#analytics practitioners need personal integrity, too

I guess nobody's perfect: analytics professionals need to have a sense of integrity as they search for answers for their clients' businesses. after all, their results could lead to misspent dollars - or worse, lives and jobs of people.

Analytics professionals need to understand the responsibility that rests on their shoulders.

 

Created by: Clinical Psychology

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.

 

on #analytics: data availability is no longer the problem

Data availability is no longer the problem.  Accessibility is no longer the issue.  The cost of acquiring data has gone down dramatically.

Neither is the technology behind data collation the problem.  There are a myriad of options that one can collect, store, discover, collate, systematize, analyze, and use data.

The real problem is people's apathy and/or antipathy to data and data analyses.

It's all about changing the mindsets of business managers - specifically of marketing managers who think that their jobs encompass merely looking after advertising and media technologies.

David Campbell, as interviewed by Alex Howard (at Oreilly Radar) has this advice to clients about using their data:

From the data side, we've lived in what we'd call a world of scarcity. We thought that data was expensive to store, so we had to get rid of it as soon as possible. You don't want it unless you have a good use for it. Now we think about data from a perspective of abundance.

Part of the challenge, 10 or 15 years years ago, was where do I go get the data? Where do I tap in? But in today's world, everything is so interconnected. It's just a matter of teeing into it. The phrase I've used instead of big data is "ambient data." It's just out there and available.

The recommendation would be to stop and think about the latent value in all that data that's there to be collected and that's fairly easy to store now. That's the challenge and the opportunity for all of us.

(Emphases mine; from http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/12/david-campbell.html)

Here's the video of the interview:

 

 

how do you build business?

I had an interesting conversation with a former client.  We were talking about building businesses for his clients.  And one thing he told me stuck with me: "You don't have to change behaviors in order to build business.  Besides, advertising cannot change behaviors."

I went "What?"

But since he was not paying me for strategic advice but merely to create and design his much-loved slides and translate his English into something his clients would understand, I didn't argue. 

However, above is my free advice to him.

And if advertising is not supposed to change behaviors, then why are we here for?  Awards?  Kudos?  Pats on the back?

B******s.

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.

how digital is shifting the world of media buying

The world of media buying has shifted dramatically due to changes in the consumer landscape as digital media became a significant part of the lives of consumers.

Through a friend on Facebook, I saw this video from PSFK.Com on the 'Secrets of a Killer Media Buyer: Future Success'.

There are three things that I got from the video:

1. Media buying is still about value-creation.  At the end of the day, it is about creating value for clients and generating the best deal.

2. However, the definition of value has changed: Value is no longer merely dollars-saved or the "best deal that you could negotiate and seal with all the bells and whistles for the clients for the lowest price possible".  Value is now about

(a) utility to clients - what's in it for them, they who are investing the money
(b) utility to consumers and audiences - what's in it for consumers

3. To achieve the best deal and realize the ultimate value for clients, you need data.  Because technology has paved the way for consumers to be entertained in terms of quantity and quality, we need data.

(a) The usual lines between 'traditional media' and 'non-traditional media' have been blurred by technology. 
"Video" no longer is just about TV - it now encompasses online videos (and the ad platforms supported by it), mobile videos, game consoles, handhelds, and even outdoor/in-store. 
"Radio" is no longer just what one hears on a radio set or on the car - but also in-mobile, on-the-web, on-demand, on-the-palm...  And press and magazines.

(b) To navigate through these choices, you will need data - how do consumers shift from one medium to another and why? 
[The "why" bit is almost-always missing - and is always a point of contention between me and most of the media planners-buyers that I work with.  But that's another story.]

(c) The kind of data that we need no longer will center on "how many people are exposed" - the usual impression-based metrics and currencies.  The kind of data that we need will need to encompass audience motivations, mindsets, and response. 

Here's the video:

 

 

Secrets Of A Killer Media Buyer: Future Success from Piers Fawkes on Vimeo.

What is strategic planning?

Every now and then, I would be asked what strategic planning is all about.  It never was an easy question to answer, to be honest. I always found it easier whenever there was a handy napkin and a pen around to explain what strategic planning is all about. 

So I thought I'd take a stab at crafting an integrated visualization of what strategic planning is all about. 

Having seen a lot of planning processes in my career - and having lived to see the rollout of at least five rolled-out, championed, and mandated processes in one company, I believe it all boils down to this one chart.

 

The drawback with this visualization is that it is static - whereas strategic planning, in the real world, is dynamic.  Because the issues that strategic planners tackle are also dynamic and changing. 

Until I find a way to dynamically visualize this diagram above, I will have to use words to come up with a description of the diagram above:

Strategic planning is the science (because it needs hard evidence and information) and the art (because the information and the evidences need to be processed in an integrative manner by a human being who has an opposable mind) of understanding the complex dynamics between brands, consumers, messages, and media platforms set against the constantly-changing social world (which is not just the digital-powered sites and services, but the real social world) and the constantly-shifting, risk- and opportunity-brimmed business environment.  The purpose of strategic planning is ultimately to effect a shift in the business of the brand.

It is still is a mouthful, really.  

And complicated.

Because it really is.

The output may be simple and elegant.  It could be captured in a 1pager or in a 5-slide deck or in a 15minute presentation.  But the process leading to the output is not so simple as the output.

I will try to elaborate more in the next few blog entries the dynamics of the diagram.

Stay tuned!