Why Work in Advertising?

My mother taught me the importance of advertising.

Her early childhood was in post-war Europe at a time when food was scarce.  She was lucky to have a boring breakfast of bread.

She sailed into New York harbor when she was 10 years old, but she doesn’t remember the Statue of Liberty making a big impression on her.  What did make an impression: her first real American breakfast.  It was Sugar Smacks, and it was wonderful.

In one spoonful of cereal, she realized she had been lied to back in Europe.  Millions of children in post-war Europe had been taught there were no ideas to discuss about breakfast.  You eat a hard roll of bread for breakfast because food is just a commodity.  Meanwhile, millions of children in the West had an abundance of multi-colored and flavored breakfast options to choose from.  Food in open economies isn’t a commodity, it is an entire category of choices supported through the communication of compelling ideas (yes, advertising).

The difference between having choices and not-having-choices is labeled as, “freedom.”  We often wrap freedom up in parades, but the essence of freedom is actually in our ability to discuss and debate ideas. 

And advertising is a critical voice in the debate of ideas.  Without advertising, everything we consume would be a bland commodity.  Advertising promotes new ideas and creates demand.  It sparks new innovations and it is the engine of free economies.

I work in advertising because it is the industry of ideas, and ideas are powerful enough to change lives for the better.

Trends in Shopper Media

Technology and changing shopper behaviors have made the traditional purchase funnel into an out-dated model.  The new model is an infinite loop of behaviors with the purchase firmly in the middle (nicely described by Ken Madden here).  To the left of the purchase are behaviors in which consumers are asked to participate with brands through discovery and invitations.  To the right of the purchase, consumers are asked to pass-on their brand affinity through consumption and advocacy.

This presentation (hosted at Prezi.com) is a quick tour of the shopper media trends impacting this new purchase model.

Trends in Omni-Channel Shopping

 

Display Advertising 101: You’ve Been Ordering Anchovy Pizzas

This article first appeared on The Quantum Shopper.

Imagine attending a Super Bowl party with no food except anchovy pizzas.  A few people would be thrilled, but most of us would be disappointed.  That’s why large groups order several kinds of pizzas, so everyone will find a slice they can enjoy.

Planning your creative messages for a digital ad campaign is a lot like ordering pizzas for a large group:  multiple options will improve satisfaction.  When we only build one or two creative variations, we’re assuming that one or two pizza toppings will appeal to everyone.*

Building multiple creative units allows you to optimize performance by testing formats, headlines, images, call to actions, or other elements.  It sounds like common sense, but it is amazing how many campaigns are still executed with only one creative option.

Cynics might think we’re just selling more creative services when we insist on more creative units.  But we are not talking about testing entirely different campaign concepts.  Instead, we only need slight variations to see performance metrics go up.  For example, if you’re considering four different headlines, then produce all four in the same banner layout.  The media campaign will quickly optimize more impressions towards whichever is most effective.

Minor Change, Major Results

We ran a small banner campaign which demonstrates the impact of a minor creative variation.  The banners ran on the same media schedule and had the same message and offer.  The only difference was that the banner image featured one of four different recipes:

The ad server clearly reallocated banner impressions according to the action rate performance.  What would have happened if we had chosen to only create the caramel apple recipe?  Here you can see the results, using the same total amount of impressions:

The difference shows that the optimized campaign was 23% better than if all of the impressions had run against only the worst-performing recipe.  On a larger scale, this substantial lift from optimization could be the difference between the success or failure of a campaign.

Dynamic Creative Optimization

Changing one variable is easy enough for small campaigns, but large campaigns may need to optimize across two or three variables.  Rich media servers allow us to automate the creation and serving of banners with several variables through dynamic creative optimization.

With dynamic creative optimization, the agency produces multiple assets and the ad server builds and sends the best combinations on-demand.  These campaigns need careful collaboration upfront, but allow the client to test and learn across several elements without the full cost of building hundreds of creative units from scratch.  The keys to success are having a clearly defined success metric, a sufficient volume of impressions, and a schedule of when each new variable will be introduced.  The end result is that a much greater percentage of shoppers see more relevant messages.

Creative Development

Because of creative optimization, online display ad development is more about building one good question than one good answer.  Which of these product images would drive the most search traffic?  Which of these headlines would make people watch the video?  Which of these offers will drive contest registrations?

Our job is to ask good questions and develop a menu of possible answers.  The marketplace will tell us which answer was the best.

Online campaigns are on the forefront of optimized messaging, but we have to build the assets to take advantage of this capability.  Make it a habit of budgeting time and resources upfront so that your campaign message can be optimized.  Otherwise, you’re hoping that everyone at your big party likes the exact same kind of pizza.

Key Takeaways

1. Executing multiple online display units increases campaign performance by optimizing impressions towards the best-performing creative.  Allocate time for multiple executions on every project.
2. The entire client and agency team should be aligned towards one key performance indicator (visits, video views, “likes”, registrations, searches, etc.).  The primary KPI is what the media schedule will be optimized towards.
3. The amount of creative versions needed is directly related to the media schedule and goals.  Consult with the media team about the optimal amount of versions to create for the size of your campaign.  Dynamic creative optimization may be an option for larger schedules.

* Senior executives should substitute the pedestrian pizza-topping analogy with this comparison:  Building only one creative unit is as risky as investing in just one asset class, like commodities or real estate.  Building multiple creative options allows the ad server to function like your managed portfolio which constantly reinvests across numerous financial categories to reduce risk and maximize returns.  Also, remember to ask your assistant to order more pizza options for staff meetings.

30 Questions for Digital Shopper Marketers

Good strategies evolve from asking good questions.  Sometime you don’t even need an answer.  The question itself can guide you in a better direction.  Here are 30 questions that everyone in the field of shopper marketing should ask themselves and their partners:

• Campaign Goals:  Are the objectives realistic?  How will success be measured?
• Shopper Relevancy:  What are the real needs of the shopper and how can we solve them?  Where else would the shopper go to solve this problem?  How is our solution unique?
• Brand and Retail Relevancy:  How does this drive retail traffic?  How can we leverage the retailer’s digital resources? How can we leverage the brand’s digital resources?
• Content:  Are we delivering enough value to expect interaction?  What is the shelf life of the content?  When is user-generated content appropriate?  Is there an easier way to create excellent content?
• Touch-points:  At what point(s) in the path to purchase does the solution belong (pre store, in-store, at shelf, post-trip)?
• User Interface:  Are we on-target with how shoppers interact with media and devices?  Is the solution easy to use?  How can actions be done in fewer clicks?  Do interactions result in what the user expected?
• Development: Which platforms would create the best experience?  If needed, which third-parties are the best options to consider?
• Optimization:  Can we build-in A/B testing to improve performance?  Have we budgeted enough to test variations of the solution and the messaging?  How will we integrate performance feedback from the media schedule?
• Promotion:  How will shoppers know about the solution?  Can they easily share it with friends?  Have we integrated our shopper insights into the media plan?  Are there pre-existing communities we should partner with? 
• Search:  Will shoppers find our solution on search engines?   What keywords will drive their searches?  Are they more likely to search on mobile devices or at a desktop?

Yes, I know there are only 29 questions shown above.  Here is the last one:  What questions would you add to this list?

Beware of Zombie Marketing

Some marketing tactics appear to be alive, but are actually dead.  These zombies are dangerous and it is the job of brave marketers to kill these hideous un-dead monsters.  Use this guide to spot Zombie Marketing.

APPEARANCE:  From a distance, Zombie Marketing looks like regular advertising, promotions, or sales tactics.  Upon closer examination, you will notice a lifeless hue.  Headlines will include clichés and images will look like cheap imitations of real marketing.  It will move with predictable patterns in a hopeless effort to simulate life. 

FUNCTION:  Zombie Marketing can be defined by its lack of function or purpose.  It exists only to feed itself and to continue its existence for eternity. 

HABITAT:  It lurks in darkness until it needs to feed.  Watch for tactical rationale that include the words “continued from last year”, “the competition is doing it”, or “season tickets included.”

DIET:  Consumes budgets, sometimes with a voracious appetite, and sometimes with a slow but prolonged sucking.

SOCIAL LIFE:  None.  Zombie Marketing has no friends.  It hangs out on dull corporate Facebook pages, lifeless branded Twitter accounts, and abandoned YouTube channels.

REPRODUCTION:  Zombie Marketing has several methods for replication including reactionary decisions, automatic renewal clauses, corporate politics, sacred cows, rushed timelines, fear, and tradition.

WEAKNESS:  The bright light of critical analysis will kill Zombie Marketing.  Bold marketers must be willing to question legacy programs and challenge assumptions.  Note:  Not all zombies are as strong as they appear.  Some may even be brought back into the world of the living with just a little attention and accountability.

The 3 Redemptive Roles of Advertising

Clive Thompson has a problem with advertising. 

In the September issue of Wired (“The Problem with Advertising” issue 19.09), he suggests more online services and publishers should charge fees to eliminate the need for advertising.  Thompson argues that paid models will, “Save the Internet from… the bloodless logic of advertising.” 

Bloodless logic?  Harsh words, Clive. 

We all have problems, and we all need redemption.  Therefore, in the interest of mercy, I suggest Thompson consider these three redeeming qualities of advertising:

1. Advertising Subsidizes Innovation: 

Thompson calls advertising, “one of the most corrosive forces affecting [the Internet]… this inevitably produces horrid, cynical designs that work against what the people want.”   

Yes, there have been horrid designs to create clicks, but they often backfire over time as viewers abandon the site.  Digital advertising is very democratic: every click is a vote up or down.  Google’s homepage is proof that good design and advertising can co-exist.  It is an ode to white space – pure and functional – and it exists to generate advertising.

Advertising builds much more than it corrodes.  Advertising created much of what we take for granted online.  For decades, the Internet existed only as a connection between various non-profit institutions.  The World Wide Web and browsers made the Internet accessible to everyone, and those ugly banner ads paid for the massive build-out.  Thousands of innovations at Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft have been funded by advertising.

2. Advertising Creates Diverse Choices: 

Thompson believes the advertising model was partially justified in the early Internet years because micropayment options didn’t exist.  I agree that Amazon and iTunes accounts are convenient to pay for content.  However, people use micropayments for services and content they are already familiar with like music, movies, e-books, and news.  Micropayments favor the establishment. 

Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief at Wired, calls the Internet a “long tail” of content.  Can we really expect people to pay for every bit of online content?  It would be difficult to discover new opinions, new events, and new services if every idea had to live under a micropayment.  Advertising keeps the long tail of diverse ideas available to everyone. 

3. Advertising Protects Freedom and Jobs: 

Would the Arab Spring have occurred if Twitter and Facebook were paid services?  Free content, subsidized by advertising, is what has informed and entertained us for over a hundred years.  News, events, opinions, and new ways of thinking have been spread by free and independent media.  Paywalls and micropayments would only create a wider digital divide.

And in a weak economy, we need to keep the wheels of commerce spinning.  Nothing gets done until somebody sells something, so let the humble banners and text ads do their work of selling.

Yes, advertising has problems.  But the problems are a small price for the innovation, selection, and information we gain.  Limit paywalls and micropayments to the large publishers and established services.

Full disclosure:  Yes, of course I work in advertising.

“Print is the New Vinyl” (Better than Extinction)

The newspaper industry was buzzing yesterday when a conference speaker said, “print is the new viynl.”  Poynter.org followed with a roundup of reactions (see below).  Overall, being compared to viynl is a big step up from the “print is extinct” exclamations.

[View the story “‘Print is the new vinyl'” on Storify]

4 Ways Social TV Will Benefit Advertisers

Social TV is the offspring of social media and traditional TV.  This evolution will impact the viewing experience, but it will also impact advertising.  I wrote about 4 big benefits to advertisers over at MarketandMain.com.  Here is an excerpt:

Consumers are already making a habit of sharing their media habits online.  Social TV will just make it easier.

Here are the benefits for advertisers and networks:

Higher product integration value

Conversation leads to greater engagement.  If I’m engaged in a program, then I’m less likely to miss details.  Product integration becomes more valuable as friends discuss the outfits, the cars, and the music in the program.

Less channel surfing

Social TV makes it painful to change the channel if my friends are watching the same show.  This returns value back to traditional commercial pods.  It also gives networks an incentive to create buzz-worthy programs to keep friends watching together.

Less time-shifting

 The DVR takes a back seat during real-time viewing.  With social TV, any ordinary program can become a must-see appointment.  If it becomes a habit with my friends to solve the murder together during CSI: Miami, then I will miss-out if I’m not watching in real time.  This makes the DVR less of a threat to commercial ratings.

More brand chatter 

 The conversation doesn’t stop during commercial breaks.  Expect users to comment and review every spot the same way that Super Bowl parties produce chatter about commercials.  Marketers have an opportunity to identify brand enthusiasts and extend the conversation.

Leadership According to Sam Walton – Part 3

Part 3:  The Square Shooter

In my last post about Sam Walton, we heard an audio clip of Walton’s biographer Vance Trimble saying that Walton’s success was becoming addictive.  He wouldn’t stop opening new locations, even after friends told him he was in over his head.

Why would people follow a risk-taker?  How did he get associates to catch his vision?

They trusted his character.

The audio clip below has Trimble’s complete answer.  At first, it sounds like simple economics: people followed Walton because he paid them.  But the salaries are more than a payday.  They are the outward expression of Walton’s character.  He wanted hard-working employees to share in his success.  In turn, his employees felt they were treated fairly, and they followed his demanding and risky adventure in retailing.  As Trimble says, people knew Walton was “a square shooter.”  He could be trusted. 

Do your friends and associates trust you?  Do your outward actions demonstrate that you are a square-shooter?

Here is the audio from my mid-90’s interview with Trimble:

Question 3:  What was it about Walton that made people buy into his vision for Walmart?

3 Activities to Combat Agency Disintermediation

Media publishers are bypassing agencies to work directly with brands.  This disintermediation threat has been well summarized in a recent post by Tim Williams of Ignition Consulting Group (“Ad Agencies and the Decline of the Agent“).  Williams suggests that agencies embrace their new role as “curator.”

But marketers need more than just curation.  Media planners, strategists, and buyers perform critical roles that cannot be replicated by publishers.  These roles include “advocate,” “analyst,” and “auditor.” 

Advocate:  Publishers have a vested interested.  The most common example is when publishers bundle premium ad placements with remnant inventory.  Clients without a third-party advocate will not discern the true value of packaged elements.  Agencies can discern value and negotiate from a position of strength because they have experience working across multiple brands and publishers.  Marketers need this kind of independent advocacy.

Analyst:  Marketers need media analysts to plan and optimize campaign performance across multiple publishers.  Media campaigns generate lots of data, and most marketers don’t have in-house resources to react to these inputs.  It is no longer enough to approve a concept and sign a contract.  Campaigns must be monitored and adjusted in real time.  Brands need the independent analysis and optimization of an agency media team. 

Auditor:  Did the campaign deliver what the publishers promised?  This isn’t as easy to answer as you would think.  Marketers lack the expertise to monitor delivery and justify makegoods.  Agencies have resources and experience to ensure accurate delivery and hold publishers accountable.

Media publishers have every right to seek deeper direct-to-client relationships with marketers.  Agencies shouldn’t be an obstacle to good ideas.    Instead, agencies need to leverage their strengths to add value to these important partnerships.