You Are What You Is

It's a way to learn French

(H/t to Frank Zappa, and a song  that you really can't quote in its entirety any more...)

In the past few months, I have taken on some bigger clients in consulting agreements, as part of a larger consortium. This has been very productive and even reasonably lucrative, and while I do not think that I am going to avoid full-time work for the rest of my career, the work has been interesting and I have learned a lot. I also definitely have added some things to my skill set.

What is even more intriguing about these experiences is how they inform past professional stops. Especially when you get a fresh perspective.

This is because when you are at a start up, it can be completely immersing in ways that warp your view. If your management communicates change every quarter - not unusual in a hot sector - you can definitely feel that things are different now than what they were before, and that the rest of your industry is either responding to your change, or soon will. You eat your own dog food, become a fan of the product as well as the people, and move with the times.

However, if your sales pitch is ineffective and you have whale clients that dictate the terms of your road map, you run the risk of being left out to dry on an initiative that is not really supported by reality.

The reason why is that just because the product changes or you are hearing new things in meetings and hallways, that does not mean the management, or the perspective that they bring to the problem, has truly become very different. Start-up culture in particular has a very high count of people who need to be the smartest people in the room, and if that translates to also feeling like you are smarter than your clients and know what they really should be doing...

Well, that mindset may be more meaningful than what is said in the pitch. That perspective can be very helpful for the people you talk to at your next engagement.

So if you are doing your due diligence on a start up, see if you can find an old deck. Talk to anyone in your network who they ran into a while ago. Go on the specialty sites and see the turnover rates, and how much their advertising copy has changed over the years. Find out if the benefits and offers are wildly different, and if their clients seem to have taken over the wheel and driven their development.

If all of this is true, you do not have to avoid working with that company. Especially if they are upfront about it. It may not even be a red flag that pitch and execution are going to be wildly different.

But if you are doing a deal with someone, you owe it your client and company to do the due diligence. Because when people show you what they are, you should believe them... but you may need to dig a little to find a true look.

The Next Passion Project

Kill It By Doing It, Maybe

So I want to tell you about the latest project, even though it's:

1) Not a revenue event now, and very likely not ever

2) Not anything remotely like anything I've ever done before, which is a hard and amazing thing to say after 20 years in marketing and advertising

3) Highly dependent on the product of others, who also haven't done this kind of thing before

4) Possibly never going to see the light of day if it doesn't achieve a certain degree of quality, and

5) Incredibly irresponsible, in that it's distracting me from actual revenue events at a time when that sort of thing is critical.

Needless to say, it's all I can think about, and the scope of it just seems to keep growing and growing in my mind, to the point where I can even imagine spin off lines from the base project, and grandiose dreams of What It Might All Become.

Which is all an absurd and ludicrous amount of teasing for something that might never happen, but isn't that the best kind of project, really? No matter what, I'm going to learn something from this experience, even if it's that I'm not suited for this kind of work and I need to have the courage or discipline to get back to my usual pursuits. (But the folks that I've shown the v1 work to... are dangerously excited. Enough to want to contribute.)

Of course, thinking about this sort of thing is dramatically easier than doing it, and the danger of success is also a potent issue. Success in this endeavor might mean a whole lot more of this kind of thing, without a clear revenue stream, and falling in love with the output so much that it also does damage. For fans of "The Marvelous Mrs Maisel", there's an episode in Season 2 where an artist has a piece of work that he keeps in a private room and never displays, and will never sell, because he knows this is the best thing that he will ever do. I feel the same way about a single chapter of a self-published novel I wrote 15 years ago, actually.

Putting your whole heart into anything -- whether it's art, a start up, a song or even the housework -- is a rare skill and indulgence. Most of the time, people get distracted by more pressing needs and easier things, and as my "Mrs Maisel" aside shows, I'm not immune to distractions.

But what you gain is this: the knowledge that you are capable of going all in and finding hills to die on.

Which is something your clients and co-workers tend to remember and appreciate.

More later on this. (Next Sunday being the later.)

I hope...

The Lost Art Of The Mid-Range (Retargeting) Game

Jerry West, AKA The Logo

Longtime readers of the blog may remember my fondness and long-term enthusiasm for the NBA. With this year's Finals nearly upon us, I started thinking a little about the game, and how one aspect of it relates to digital marketing.

In the past few years, professional basketball has seen a radical change in tactics, with teams getting better at and taking more long three point shots. With the area that teams have to defend extended, the other most efficient offensive tactic, high percentage two point shots from close in, gets easier to achieve.

So the goal is three pointers and dunks, and what has been steadily beaten out of the game is the long 2-point shot, known as the mid-range game. By the numbers, it's a losing proposition, since it goes in about as much as the three-pointer and is, of course, 50% less valuable. Take enough long twos, it's presumed, and you are most likely going to lose.

But if you watch the actual games, rather than just the statistics, what will you see deciding the outcome in close contests? More often than not, it's the unloved long two. Because it's the shot that you can take when everything else has been taken away, with the defense guarding the arc and the paint. And when the difference between teams is close, whether or not you make those shots may be the difference between winning and losing.

The corollary to the mid-range game in digital advertising is mid-term retargeting. For the most part, short term retargeting is settled law. You dynamically populate the item that was abandoned into your ad unit, maybe goose it with a sale price or shipping offer, and create the digital advertising equivalent of a post-it note to remind users to complete an action.

Long-term retargeting is less settled, but also usually a done deal. You shock the user with a previously unseen, presumably very aggressive, offer. Perhaps you give them ultimatum copy that tells them they are being opted out of offers. The difference in branding will be strong enough to provoke a reaction, and so long as you are taking seasonality and working from good data in terms of estimating the buying cycle, the tactic should work to re-start the weaker parts of your funnel. Or maybe you just send them your best acquisition ad, and consider the retargeting behavior no longer valid.

But what should you do with the leads that are no longer white hot, nor ice cold? Assuming your impression count and due diligence are up to the task of having mid-range ads in the first place, you generally use an expanded set of items, and maybe mix in search functionality, soft sell content, or a social media play to get the leads re-engaged.

But all of these suppositions are just that -- theories that marketers use to add meaning and rules of the road to a churning universe that can seem devoid of consistent best practices.

Mostly because many funnel strategies in retargeting make the assumption that the prospects have seen and thought about every step of the creative work to date, because the marketers themselves certainly have. (If you want to throw some philosophy at this, the Naturalistic Fallacy applies.)

So the best tactics to use in mid-term retargeting... usually start with making absolutely sure about viewability and list quality, to prove that this specific market exists in the first place. (Hint: it might not.)

Then, test a lot of the suppositions that you've been treating as settled law, and let the data drive.

And if you still need a coach?

Well, M&AD has watched an awful lot of games and seen an awful lot of data. Let's play.