Managing for breakthrough insights

Finding your insight

In the current day gig, I got to do something that's almost always a hallmark of a winning position. I get to call my shots.

What does this mean in a marketing and advertising context? Well, I can't get into the very proprietary details, because you have to be one of our clients to benefit from what's being learned. But I can tell you my qualifying points on what I'm looking for in an insight.

1) Does it have a story?

Think of this as the analytics equivalent of an elevator pitch. To me, this means that what you are bringing to the table comes from work that you've done before. Also, that you can summarize it quickly. It's not that you need to dumb down the business, but you do need to be able to explain the insight at a 5,000 foot level, and not get lost in the weeds. People are busy, and they shouldn't have to live in your head space for a half an hour to get the benefit.

2) Does it have measurables?

Especially in creative executions, there's nothing like putting numbers to your new way of doing things. It takes everything away from who did what and whose role is being threatened, and into the realm of an optimal learning engine, where everyone has some skin in the game from better art.

3) Does it scale?

When it comes to analytics, you don't want one-off solutions that can't be used outside of a single execution or two. What you want is that classic old-school direct marketing gold, where you can replicate the win in other places.

A final point: there really isn't anything better, in this line of work, then having your goals in your own hands. Because when you've been a consultant for as long as I have, you know the speed in which you want to work, or the tangents where you are going to explore. Explaining every step of the way probably means you are going to skip steps, or never take the long way and learn something deeper.

So if you ever find yourself managing someone in my tribe? Don't just get their buy in. Get their all in, because when you do that, you'll get so much more than what you were asking for.

* * * * * 

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 at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

My Super Bowl Ad Dream

Buy Me By The Pound

So here's a fun moment from the feeds last week, says the consultant who was clearly responsible for the monster snow storm by having fun at the expense of people who freak out over snow storms...

 Advertisers who release their Super Bowl ad on social media before the big game get much more from their campaign than those that wait.

Which means, well, one great and very meta point: You don't really *need* to have your ad on the telecast to get a significant amount of the pop.

You just need people to *think* it will be there, and they will put it in the same list of ads.

You can also go for the super meta version of this, which is when you say your ad has been rejected due to a network's standards and practices as being Too Hot For TV. We call this the Go Daddy route, though even that business has gotten away from that, seeing how, well, no one ever remembered what Go Daddy did from their ads.

Anyway, now that we've cracked the code of the Emperor's New Ad Roll, a small but potent point that will eventually reach mainstream attention...

Why are some ads considered to be content, and only for a limited time, just because they have a large media buy?

A 30-second spot in this year's game is said to sell for $5 million, while the telecast itself will reach around 115 million viewers. So if the advertisers wanted to just reach people directly -- say, through the same YouTube channel that many people will use to view the ads before or after the game -- they could do say, and cut out the middleman with direct micro-payments. And since we all know, as advertising and marketing pros, that some of those households are far more valuable than others, particularly for the automotive buyers...

Well, let's put it this way. I'm considering a new car purchase in the next 90 to 120 days. I'm looking at a crossover SUV, as we're a family of four with a dog and significant storage needs, with the occasional vacation travel trip. I have a good credit rating, and I don't have a locked in brand type. I am willing to watch ads... but only for the right price. 

So hit me, Nation's Automotive Advertisers. Save on your TV spend and show me your 30-second spot for just, say, $5 per 30 seconds.

Heck, I'll even agree to watch 10 of them a day, or submit my information so you can check my credit ratings and my past new car purchases, so you can see my sterling reputation as the sweet spot in your demographic.

And all you have to do is get away from an antiquated and absurd media buying approach, and into a thoroughly modern absurd media buying approach. Can't wait to hear from you! And a dozen others just like you, so that we can be truly informed about our next new car. (Mostly, informed about how we can miss a few of the payments.) 

* * * * * 

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 at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

The Marketing Genius Of Snow

Tell my family... I'm bloated

As I write this from my comfortable cave in the greater Atlantic Seabaoard megalopolis, there's a forecast of snow for later in the week. It would be the first of the season in what has been a particularly warm winter, and as this part of the world averages a few feet of the white stuff per year, we're all taking it with the usual shrug and bear it cadence of tough East Coast people.

Oh, wait! Actually, people are losing their minds. Like always, really.

Perhaps I'm prejudiced by my upbringing. I spent my college years in one of the snow capitals of North America (Syracuse). There, everyone either didn't have a vehicle, or had one that they could handle in snow., because they pretty much had to, what with yards of the stuff coming down every year. We then lived in the Bay Area for several years, which meant that snow was something that you visited at altitude, rather than something you actually had happen to you, without a choice. But as we moved back here nearly a decade ago, we're back in the realm of SNOWPACALYPSE.

It starts with the warnings, each one slightly more dire than the last, about 4-5 days before the SNOW EVENT. Assuming that the forecast stays wet and white, we then get a constantly changing estimation of how much will stick, loving descriptions of various degrees of wind chill, and to the minute descriptions of what will happen and when. Which are almost never accurate, and which no one will call to task for inaccuracy later.

As we get closer to the Big Day, we move to media coverage of the increasing amount of near panic from local residents, which creates a Prisoner's Dilemma of grocery shopping around perishables. You might not drink milk or eat eggs or bread on a daily basis, but by the 24 to 36 hour mark before precipitation occurs, especially if it's during a traditional commuting hour, you will find yourself elbow to throat with people who will treat the acquisition of such items as a life and death moment.

During the actual Snow Event, you'll probably be... well, doing what you normally do on a quiet night at home. Watching some show or movie on your content provider of choice, or working from home if your gig allows it, because the plain and simple of precipitation is that most of us won't have our lives too dramatically inconvenienced by it. So long as the power doesn't go out, the most that is going to happen is that you won't get to do exactly what you want to do, assuming it's an activity that's outside of your home, for some small period of time. Maybe you'll also have to do a bunch of cold and wet yardwork when it's all over.

Oh, and if the whole thing turns out to be not such a big deal, and the weather prediction professional turns out to have entirely exaggerated the threat?

Well, there's always the next storm. Which generally shows up in less than a week, and everything resets, with no one retaining any memory of the past SNOWPACALYPE. While the rest of the nation quietly, or not so quietly, snickers at just how unable to deal with any kind of disruption everyone in the Megalopolis seems to be.

I've got to tell you folks, as a marketing and ad pro, I'm deeply envious of such professional opportunities. When in our lives do we get a captive audience of wildly present people, ready to take all of our content without a first thought? Or any kind of penalty for being wrong? We're in the wrong business.

(Oh, and if the coming storm turns out to be entirely worth the hype, and the Blizzard Of '16 causes fatalities, civic unrest and extraordinary expense? Well, then, at least you'll finally feel justified for hoarding all those groceries.)

Happy surviving!

* * * * *

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 site. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.