Marketing By The Numbers

Negotiations

He say seven, I say eight. He say eight, I say nine. I got plenty numbers left. Huh! When I start, I no stop-a for nothing. I bid 'em up. I go higher, higher, higher, all the time is go higher.

Chico Marx in “Cocoanuts”, the first Marx Brothers movie, showing Essential Marketing Wisdom

In Start Up Land, it’s very important to be able to pivot for changing market currents. Especially in Ad Tech, what makes money this year might not make money next year, and when it comes to making quarterly projections, you need to be able to adjust on the fly.

Ad Tech also tends to create new and very interesting numbers, because that is the nature of Big Data. Cross-traffic analysis, lifetime value on a channel basis, performance lifts over the control. All of it seems very exciting and Web 3.0-ish, and helps point the way to a better world of targeted buying and lead generation.

That is the good part of the business. The bad is when you hit numbers that do not matter, because, well, they help to distract people from what is going on at higher levels.

This can really come into play at a lead quality level, when you get tasks like the direction of so many followers in social media, so many new addresses for the house list, and so on, and so on. What matters, from a measurable standard, can and should get granular, especially when you have a complicated and substantial marketing program in place.

However, the core of what matters has not changed with technology, because business is not like that. Number and cost per lead, conversion percentages, and lifetime value of said leads, all of which boils down to Return On Investment, or ROI.

At far too many start ups, middle management likes to get into the weeds of measurement… and it manifests mostly as a way to cover themselves in the case of a down cycle. Sure, the company revenue might be stagnant or in retreat, but look at how many times we rang a bell, fixed a problem, made some multiple of some past quarter, or hit the turn on a dev cycle.

Except that the bell ringing might have been for trivial contracts, the problems may have been internal and never affected revenue or turnover. Or that the multiples over quarter did not matter because, well, they did not track to revenue, and the dev work was, once again, not tied to revenue.

If you find yourself in the presence of management who likes to cite these additional numbers in the case of a weak quarter, or as a way to distract or tell the story of how the quarter was mixed instead of down…

Well, you are in the presence of people who are covering a real agenda.

They might be doing it for the best of reasons. Maybe they are trying to alleviate employee turnover or panic, to keep the stock price buoyant for a merger or additional funding, to create a more positive environment so that the venture capital does not turn tail and run.

Or maybe, and somewhat more realistically, they are lying for less noble reasons.

In any event… if and when this passes the smell test, you will get more of it. Then, it will perpetuate, and maybe even spawn additional pointless metrics.

Bovine Stuff tends to create more Bovine Stuff.

It does not, however, usually create a stable, profitable, and long-running business.

Or a place you will really want, or get to, spend too much of your career at…

* * * * *

If you found this interesting, please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes top right. We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from you soon.

If We Treated Offline Ads The Way We Treat Online...

Stop Hitting Yourself, Stop Hitting...

Imagine, just for a moment, what the world of offline marketing and advertising would look like, if we treated it the same as we do online.

(These are the kinds of things that online advertising and marketing pros dream about, especially on summer Fridays, when Problem Clients call at 4:45pm to tell you, at length, why they are unhappy and why you should be unhappy, too. Good times! But I digress.)

So...

Outdoor billboards: A portion of the placements only get to charge for the percentage of drivers that view the art. The others only get to charge for the number of people who directly respond, probably via a special phone number or URL. No one cares if these results come from a sign that's on a busy road, or one that's only seen on Google Earth. Oh, and any billboard that's particularly attuned to the needs and wants of the driver causes many journalists to mount a piece of furniture, pull up their petticoats, and shriek about privacy.

Television ads -- Viewers need to be stationary and in the room for broadcast to begin. For a percentage of the campaign, payment only occurs if the consumer takes an action following the ad. Finally, the ads all need to comply to outdated production standards of small file size, and a portion of the flight has to be in analog film, because a number of channels refuse to invest in infrastructure to get to newer standards.

Direct mail -- Not charged for postage unless received by the consumer and opened, so anything that goes straight into the recycling can is free to the person who rents the list. Since this medium has been around longer than others, anyone that works in the field is scorned by other producers, despite the solid ROI.

Radio -- Again, only charged for direct and attributable action from the consumer, so the content is constantly surrounded by a thick covering of constant advertising. Since there is no branding advantage accepted, a tragedy of the commons impacts all but the most highly rated programs.

Event sponsorship -- Thanks to our perfect reporting of those who directly engage with the brand, event sponsors only pay for the subset of attendees who can recall, in a post-event survey, the association.

Anyway... you get the point, right? The idea that offline ads are the only way to establish brand, and online can not have branding impact because we can measure response so well... it's been this bubble point that everyone who works on one side of the desk knows has to end one day, while the other side just keeps on insisting that things continue the way they are. Because there's more inventory than opportunity, and the technology allows advertising to match the personal profile instead of the demography of a particular site, branding benefits in online have always been a non-starter.

Will anything ever pop the unreality? Well, maybe. I'm a big believer in data and analytics eventually winning the day, and when we add in the Internet of Things to give us additional distribution and data collection moments, maybe the targeting gets so good that we have to accept the de facto branding. If the fragmentation of mass media continues, maybe that accelerates the market correction as well.

But man alive, some of us have been taking the myth of no billable impact for online brand awareness for decades now. When do we get to stop hitting ourselves with data?

* * * * *

If you found this interesting, please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes top right. We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from you soon.

Women In Comedy, Or The Everett Question

A Force Of Nature

Last weekend, Comedy Central did something fairly interesting as part of their ramp-up to the release of Amy Schumer's movie "Trainwreck." They premiered an hour special from one of Schumer's favorite acts, a cabaret-style performer named Bridgett Everett, in between showings of one of Schumer's stand-up performances. (Yes, I'm aware that I write about marketing and advertising. We'll get there.)

If you haven't had the Everett experience... well, there really is no one to compare her to in popular media. She's a cabaret singer who performs in character, and the character is over the top in every way. She uses fairly unique physicality (Everett is, well, a large person) and unrelenting energy to create subversive comedy that provokes jaw-dropping astonishment. Her act takes exceptional editing to make it fit for broadcast, both for language and for visuals, and the devotion that she inspires from her audience is also remarkable.

Everett's voice is, like everything else about her, formidable. Like Schumer, she's utterly fearless in terms of selling out for the laugh. There is a courage here that's exceptional, and I have no doubt that in today's fragmented media marketplace, there's a place for her as one of a growing number of prominent and increasingly successful female comedians... though to call Everett a comedian is really a loss of accuracy, given how much of what she does is more musical theater than traditional stand up. Fans include Chris Rock, Peter Dinklage, Sarah Jessica Parker, Fred Armisen, Patti LuPone and more. Everett will perform on the Oddball Fest, a major comedy tour headlined by Schumer and Aziz Ansari.

So where does the marketing hook kick in? Because we are at the start of what is looking to be a long-overdue correction in stand-up comedy, where another art form and profession becomes more open to a wider swath of demographics. As a comedy nerd (and very occasional performer), I approve, because with each new approach, what's possible becomes a little wider, and a little more creative.

But what Everett does is so different from everyone else who is working today, so this also kind of counts as a litmus test to see what's possible, and in a lesser fashion, whether Schumer will be able to bring others with her on her rise to mainstream acceptance.

If Everett succeeds on a mass-market level, it speaks to a more diverse set of entertainment and casting options. Maybe more acceptance of bigger people and fashion options, or art forms (cabaret, in particular) that have been marginalized to certain groups and areas. (Oh, and maybe some *very* daring sponsorship opportunities.)

She's clearly not for everyone. But Comedy Central has put her in a position to be seen by a lot of people who have never heard of her before. Will it catch fire, or just stay in its own world? I have no idea, but anyone who can get a crowd of strangers to sing these songs, with these lyrics, out loud... is not somehow you want to bet against.

* * * * *

If you found this interesting, please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the quote boxes at top right of the page. We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from you soon.