Seasonal Gifts For Your Creative Team

Santa Brings The Smokes

T'is the season... for uninspired office Secret Santa moments. These can be particularly troublesome when you draw the short straw and have to shop for a creative. Which is why I'm here to help! Without any moment of cynicism or sarcasm, no no. And with that, on to the ideas!

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Copywriter: Depending on the relative prosperity of your place of business, this can range anywhere from a pack of smokes to an ironic typewriter. You also can't go wrong with a threadbare peacoat, or a print of their favorite writer at work. But for my money, a signed copy of something from a dead famous author shows real thought and warmth, and also underscores the idea that they won't be recognized for their genius until after they are able to profit from it. Seasonal depression is a given for these folks, so you might as well make it poignant!

Real gift: Movie gift card. Every copywriter has a screenplay in the pipe, and hence, a dream of actual prosperity.

Designer: Since everyone lives and dies with computer stuff now, it's important to pretend otherwise, and give styluses, paints, exacto knives and so on. They are just dying to get back to that real feel, and the fact that they will never, ever have time in the day to do that doesn't mean anything when it comes to gifting.

Real gift: Craft store gift card. They'll go in for the paints, but leave with something they'll actually use. Like pipe cleaners! Can't ever have enough pipe cleaners.

Creative director: This is usually a designer that has been given the sorry task of herding other designers, which means the holidays are special for them just for the joy of getting away from these people for a few days. Your gift ideas are to help give this person the illusion or memory of being somewhere else, or the ability to reset their minds when the day has gotten away from them. I'd go with one of those little mini zen gardens with the cute little rakes, or maybe a bonsai tree to mangle.

Real gift: Booze. Good booze; they are directors, after all.

Traffic manager: Every single traffic person I have ever met, or you will ever meet, is unable to function without a delicate balance of caffeine and nicotine. Find out which delivery system is their preference -- this won't be hard, the evidence will be all over their cubicle -- and lay into a mighty supply. There's all kinds of coffee snob stuff out there, and chewables. Go nuts; they already are.

Real gift: If you want to be nice, a spa trip that they will either never use or re-gift. If you want to be appreciated, get 'em their drugs.

Developer / coder: What with the turmoil in these worlds between Flash, HTML5, mobile sizing, responsive design and more on the way, these folks have had the full Chinese curse of living in interesting times. Assuming this is still a job, and not just outsourced or destroyed by technology. You can try a gift certificate to a continuing education course, a gift card to a tech book store, or even some fun Think Geek swag for their desk, but where you should be going is...

Real gift: Booze. Lots of booze. And then more booze.


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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or visit the Web site. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Ads That Work... Too Well?

Quick one today, because I'm fighting off illness and over scheduled. (Also, no image, because various forces are messing with me hard, the way that always happens when you are fighting off a bug. Not appreciated.)

Does anyone else consider the timing of the American Medical Association's call for a ban on broadcast ads for over-the-counter (OTC) medications curious?

I'm probably overstating this on the simplicity, but I think it's a simple case of OTC ads taking up the place of daily fantasy sports sites on NFL ads.

You remember those, right? They were only on every 90 seconds for the better part of two months, so much so that public irritation with the businesses probably accelerated the legal action brought against them in many states. (Well, that and the fact that the sites are clearly gambling, and corrupt, and only were made legal through a lobbying loophole. But I digress.)

Ads on NFL games are many things. Wildly expensive. Shown to tens of millions of viewers. Not skippable, because interest in the game is real time only, for the most part. 30 to 60 seconds long, an eternity in an attention deficit age. The last bankable mass audience. And incredibly memorable, because they are just about the only ads that anyone sees and remembers now.

There's pros and cons of OTC ads. Some studies have shown that patients are better at sticking to a program when they are more bought in, and that the ads do that. Others believe that this is a consumer segment in dire need of legislation and change, with political figures making the industry a target. The ads themselves can seem off-putting, especially when you get into the side effects. And as we've already established, the ads are being viewed.

That's the nature of spotlights; everything is revealed, and there's nowhere to hide. I wouldn't be at all surprised if, like DFS before it, OTC pharma is making the right move in the short term, and the wrong for the long.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Single Metric Madness

Takes Control

Maybe you've seen this pithy little moment of nonsense in your travels around the Net: that you are more likely to be approved to gain admittance to Harvard than to click on a banner ad. Since no one loves ads other than the people who get paid to make them, it's big chuckle time at those foolish people who make ads, or those that use them.

Beyond the silliness of the comparison -- after all, only really bright kids bother to apply to Harvard in the first place, it costs money to do it, it's not as if they get millions of people trying to get in every year, regardless of life situation, and it's not as if you've thought about that rate any other time in your life -- there's also this.

If banners really were such a bad idea, why do so many smart brands run them, and why is such a significant amount of coin spent on them?

The reason is simple; the click is not the true metric of success. What is the true metric of success is the amount of business that's being done, and the banner buy is just part of a balanced marketing and advertising plan. Removing it doesn't make sense, so it stays.

Even from the dubious notion that brand impressions in a banner have no value (which would be unique to advertising) pure direct marketing standpoint, banner click rates are a tip of the iceberg metric. If a user opens up another tab, the banner clearly caused the awareness, but doesn't get credit for the click. If search engine traffic spikes following the display of a banner, it's also pretty obvious it had an impact. But it's not seen in a click rate. Where it is seen is in an A/B test, where a portion of the audience doesn't get the banners, and is measured against the viewed group.

A similar point happens around click rates in email (again, you aren't getting the full value of the impression from increased use of other channels, direct dials from direct mail letters, response rates on business reply post cards, and so on. And even if these single metrics are good, they don't tell the full story, or ensure success. If you run your North American banner in China, you could easily achieve a 10X click rate boost, but if none of that traffic converts, it's pointless.

That's because marketing is more complicated than a single metric. It's a lot of moving pieces on many chessboards, with impacts beyond the known, the easy, the simple. Measuring the simple stuff is good. Knowing the context is harder, and requires more analytics.

Or, failing that, a little faith that there are reasons why smart brands do what they do...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the top right RFP fields. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.