The End Of Agencies?

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Much noise this week in my social media feed about how agencies are endangered by the coming changes in marketing and advertising. The theory is that the current way of doing things for the big ticket items in media -- interruptive ads for mass-market brands, with standardized creative -- is going to go away when the last mile of connectivity gets, well, connected.

Let's back to that down out of the jargon, and put it in terms eveyone can understand. Instead of, say, 30-second spots for tires, a family movie, and an expensive sedan to appear in the middle of my preferred TV content, data would allow for the swap out of advertisers that are more relevant to my current purchasing cycles. Say, auto insurance in the weeks before my next six-month auto premium is due, beer that's in my range of past preferences, and a mobile gaming app, because people in my household are into that category. Eventually, this leads to no untargeted mass-market campaigns, or at the very least, a whole lot less of them.

And, well, sure... but only if you are in market for something more lucrative than those less targeted branding approaches. Currently, we don't have enough data to make exceptionally accurate determinations on how much each of these advertising opportunities are truly worth. Direct marketing plays, or online approaches where the branding impact isn't thought to be strong enough to bill, are a different story.

What I think is the more likely end game is a mix of placements. While we currently have local and national campaigns in, say, a basic cable run of broadcast ads. Having the ability to swap in some branding spots triggered by retargeting bids is just the logical next step. More importantly, it's hard to see how those kinds of ads would just be so much more lucrative as to overwhelm the brand spots. But the market will drive.

Where the monkey wrench hits the gears is when more devices come online, and more consumer categories join the mix. Consider wearable technology, where connected items might have, say, the ability to monitor your blood pressure and heart rate for exercise. If it's also able to monitor for spikes, we have the ability to do more cost-efficient and effective healthcare. We also have the ability to advertise over the counter pharmaceuticals to that same targeted audience.

This raises privacy concerns, of course, but the nature of privacy discussions online has been a simple one. Consumers don't care very much, so long as they see any kind of benefit for the exchange of information, and you are upfront and not very excited about the ask for the data. Also, the younger you are, the less offended you seem to be by the approach.

Realistically, there just isn't going to be enough ROI for hyper-targeted broadcast ads for anything but the most over-the-top high margin consumer categories. Which means that the traditional agency still gets to make all of the same ads that they are making right now, and many of the same buys. Hopefully, those ads will just get shown to fewer people, because they will only be going to the folks who are in the right consumer category and lifecycle moment.

That doesn't strike me as the end of agencies. It does, however, strike me as the end of dumb ones. But those folks were always going to go away, right?

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Something else that isn't ending: me asking you to connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP box at top right. .

In addition to copywriting, direction and strategy, we also provide design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. Tell us what you need done, and your budget, and we'll work out an RFP.

In Defense of Remarketing

Well, that's constructive

Seen tonight in my feed: a "Green Eggs and Ham" style illustration sequence, from a UK content provider, of how everyone hates remarketing.

Sigh. Well, once more into the fray, dear friends.

First off, the linguist in me hates the laziness. If you make universal generalizations about people in any grouping, you are on the express train to Idiot Town, and that train is making no stops. Doing the same thing with a business practice is no better. Be more exact in your ranting.

Secondly, the sentiment it fails on the metrics. If people hated remarketing more than untargeted advertising, it would not be a business, let alone a multiplier on performance metrics. Feel free to slip in the old adage of the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. Higher performance is not consistent with hate, especially in a maturing market.

Next, the statement assumes that all remarketing is executed the same, or that the practice is such a universal commodity that it can be summed up without any kind of qualifier in regards to creative execution, publisher mix, dynamic recs, and so on. I would argue that if you are remarketing the same for 0 to 3 day as you might 3 to 7, 7 to 14, 14 to 30 and 30+... well, that's remarketing that everyone should hate. Because no one should like to see money left on the table, let alone a sledgehammer approach to brand and offer awareness. (Small aside: why is it OK to see a million replays of the same ad offline, but not online? Ah, right, branding.) If you can honor where your prospect is in the buying cycle, you should. Any competent remarketer should let you do that.

And finally... well, this is something of a good news moment, because it avoids a problem that has been plaguing display ads, especially in RTB platforms, but to hate remarketing, you have to see it. Which means the ads are not appearing below the fold, on bot sites, or to hacked machines where it all adds up to Not Seen By A Human Traffic.

Nevertheless, let us take away the core of the complaint, and edit it to something that is more accurate. Many people are annoyed by remarketing. That's something we can all agree on, right? Well, actually, not me, because it falls back into the status quo issue. To wit... no one is bothered by untargeted ads with weak frequency, because no one notices those ads in the first place. And we're back to that indifference moment.

Remarketing ads, when they are noticed, work because they are graphically relevant to the user. If the advertiser is executing beyond a static and sad level (i.e., no variation on recency), they can easily deliver different offers and dynamic products, and potentially delight a user that was on the fence, or now finding a better deal. When they do not work, it is because the user is out of cycle for the advertiser, but the remarketing / RTB buyer does not know enough to turn off the frequency. (Also, that the industry has not done enough to publicize how Ghostery watermarks work to turn off a campaign. Top right logo mark, folks. Takes two clicks and five seconds. Compare that to getting off someone's telemarketing or direct mail list. Even an unsub from an email list is slow in comparison.)

Sure, there are issues. Having items show on shared screens, or in sensitive categories, can be inconvenient and embarrassing. There is a threat to profit margins for vendors when we teach price-shopper consumers to always abandon the cart and look for the remarketing ads with a discount. All of these concerns are valid and legitimate, and will eventually shake out as companies that are more efficient consolidate the industry. We are not in the final flower of remarketing, just as we are not in the final flower of online advertising.

Remarketing is progress from what marketers could do before. It is a step up in revenue for publishers. It is a step up in relevance for consumers. Progress is almost never smooth and perfect, but it is, well, an overall good thing.

And hating progress is, well, hateful.

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Speaking of progress, I'd like you to move forward and connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the quote box at top right.

In addition to copywriting, direction and strategy, we also provide design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. Tell us what you need done, and your budget, and we'll work out an RFP.

3 Common Lead Generation Tactics That Never Work

Big Whammy

As a direct marketing pro, I love tests. Settling for a control is just a missed opportunity, and so long as you are making sure the analysis has statistical significance and you are measuring for the right outcomes (hint: not just clicks!), we are golden. Sometimes, literally.

Some tests are better than others, of course, in that they lead to a next stage that is more actionable. But in my time in email, static banners and dynamic ad units, over thousands of campaigns and tens of thousands of individual pieces of creative, there have been a few consistent stone cold losers, so much so that I cannot, in good conscience, even encourage the use of a test cell on them.

So, steer away from…

1) Better Business Bureau style seals of approval.

First off, many consumers do not know what these logos mean, and the logos usually do not minimize well, so it is difficult to get legibility without devoting a significant number of pixels to them.

Secondly, the approval seal tends to fall into the realm of false positive – which is to say, overcoming an objection to buy that might not have even been in the prospect’s mind in the first place. In overcoming the objection, the negative is brought up, and overwhelms the benefit.

Finally, there are the results – consistent losers of up to 20% or more in multiple consumer categories and metrics, at varying levels of importance.

I understand why you might be proud of an endorsement, or work in a consumer category where reassurance seems like it might be a lead generation practice, or competitive separation. But I’ve never seen it work, and I’m not really counting the days until it does.

2) Showing how to pay.

When it comes to e-commerce on lead gen, devoting significant real estate to credit card logos and wallet approaches is a tacit admission that you have two problems. The first is that you need the familiarity of a well-known logo to make your brand look legitimate, and the second is that you are hoping for an immediate, impulse-level purchase to carry the day. Neither is a very powerful statement to make in lead generation, and dulls the impact of your pitch.

Lead generation is rarely also lead fulfillment for paid ventures. Trying to close the deal on first communication is putting the cart before the horse. When it has been tried, it’s usually by brands who are lacking in other things to sell. In my experience, you are better off with selling copy, images, or even just more white space or a smaller piece.

3) Removing the call to action.

Sometimes you get a brand marketing play, or high e-commerce campaign, that wants to protect the brand to the point of not having anything so gauche as a button or click point. After all, everyone knows how to respond, and your audience is advanced enough that you can spend pixels in a better way, right?

Well, no.

It is possible that your distribution is poor enough that performance does not go down too much by removing the lack of a call to action element. (Which would make me wonder, well, why you are working with a network that cannot get you better distribution. Moving on. ) You may also see similar performance from a more subtle element, different language, or even icons instead of copy. This point is not meant to argue for oversized buttons regardless of offer, brand, or prospect demographic.

However, I have never seen performance improve, and do not really expect it to, for pure branding pieces that seem above response. Since it more or less flies into the face of direct marketing experience, dating back to the early days of the industry, either offline or digital. You need to ask, if you want the prospect to do something. The platform does not change that.

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Speaking of asking, mine is that you connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP box at the top right of this page.

In addition to copywriting, direction and strategy, we also provide design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. Tell us what you need done, and your budget, and we'll work out an RFP.