Monthly Archives: April 2010

Is Resonance the Grail?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

My first encounter with metrics was when a friend at Ogilvy Direct (now OgilvyOne) explained how Vanguard Funds tracked ads to resulting investments.  Each ad had a unique code that found its way through the process and when money was deposited it generated an advertising-to-sales ratio. Ad creative, size, media could all be calculated.  This approach is why direct marketing, nee direct response, nee direct mail agencies were the digital agencies of the day in the 70s and 80s.

In the 90s banner ads were the haps.  They were new and measurable and web advertising was ready to kill traditional. But as click-through rates diminished sales people told you banner were awareness builders. Display ads started to get bigger and richer and CTRs increased again. Then search became the new “new” and SEM/SEO shops multiplied like rabbits.  Search though, is a half nasty business — with a good deal of practitioners hacking their way to the top. (Are these the people who always talk about authenticity?)

Resonance.

Today social media is the haps. And social companies are finally taking monetization seriously.  Twitter’s resonance concept is a great start. Twitter’s Promoted Tweets measure nine factors to determine resonance, which is used to determine whether an ad stays or goes and what to charge. According to the New York Times, three of those factors are “number of people who saw the post, the number of people who replied to it or passed it on to their followers, and the number of people who clicked on links.” Some say social media is not about selling, it’s about engagement. That’s like saying you go to a singles bar to make friends. It’s only a 5% true. Resonance tied to sales is coming. Who ever cracks that code will be the David Ogilvy of the decade.  Peace it up!

Free One Hour “Idea Audit.”

By
Steve Poppe
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0

                                              

I’ve been ranting for years about companies large and small that don’t have a brand idea. They think they have a brand (logo) and an idea (tagline) but were you to look at the body of marketing work, you would see lots of stuff – no idea.  An ad campaign is not a brand idea. A typeface and style guide are not brand ideas. A web engagement…nope. 

Often the most powerful brand idea a company has is its name.  It may be a “we’re here” idea but it’s an idea.  Bed Bath & Beyond is one such example. The name conveys what they do – so it works.  If you don’t define what your brand means, consumers will. And they are not that good at it; they’re busy.  Without branding context, consumers default to product (taste, utility, reliability), price, and convenience.

A number of years ago, Brendan Ryan president of FCB NY taught me a valuable lesson. Rather than getting up to speed on a client by asking for a full-on brand review with pie charts and competitive matrixes he suggested pinning all the work up on the wall. His goal? “What’s the idea?” If the work didn’t convey an idea, more work needed to be done.  

One Hour Promotion

I’m putting together a promotion to help companies identify their idea.  My plan is to offer up a 1 hour “idea audit” whereby I go into a company conference room and just as Jack Bauer might, sixty minutes later walk out the door with a “yea,” “nay” or “fruit cocktail” (Google whatstheidea+fruit cocktail).

Here’s what I propose: Put me in a room with all current marketing material: brochures, ads, last 3 promotional emails, newsletters, top 10 search terms, press stories, etc.  Let me speak to your human resources person (5 minutes), senior marketing person (10) minutes, and best sales person (5 minutes.)  Then provide me with your URL and sign me in to your Google Analytics page, if you have one. In one hour I will tell you if you have an idea, many ideas or, worst case, no idea. Then I go home. But I’ll leave my business card.

(Before I create this offer and promote it I’d like to hear readers’ thoughts. Please post here or email me at steve@whatstheidea.com) Thanks and peace!

Twitter’s New Ad Plan.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

It sounds as if Twitter’s new advertising program has been well thought out.  Sponsored 140 character Tweets, called Promoted Posts, will appear atop the results of key word searches.  If you search for Tacos, you might see a Chipotle tweet above all others.  Small type will let you know it’s a sponsored ad. And should you cursor over it the ad turns yellow. Twitter is stealing a page from Google by keeping only ads deemed relevant, i.e., that are clicked on, retweeted or direct messaged in reasonable numbers.  

Twitter will charge advertisers on a CPM (cost per thousand basis), the way TV and print media are priced. (Read more about social media monetization here.) I suspect that in a while CPMs will be one price and clicks another, but we’ll see.  

 Next Phase of Twitter Ad Plan.

Down the road ads are expected to appear in the midst of tweet streams surrounding conversations. The ads won’t result from searches but from the content within posts.  So if there are discussions about tacos Chipotle might buy its way into the conversation.  Whether these purchased posts appear in the stream or along side a la Google is still to be determined.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are so many other ways to monetize Twitter which we’ll all be reading about in the coming months and years.  I’m happy with the current approach – it is America after all – and I am happy that Twitter has tabled the in-stream advertising effort for a while. One bite at the apple at a time.  Peace!   

The Real “Situation.”

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Before SI meant Sports Illustrated it meant Situationist International, a European movement intended to create social change through loud, startling political events.  Anyone familiar with the punk movement knows Malcolm McLaren (RIP).  Mr. McLaren sired the Sex Pistols, practiced SI and was a huge music and cultural catalyst.  In the 50-70s the Situationists were angry and focused on political change. When Mr. McLaren introduced punk to the world and NYC in the 70s he was angry but he was a lot more.

Just as Greenwich Village called to America’s gay and lesbian communities back in the day, punk placed a call to the country’s disaffected youth in search of their own Woodstock… and they came to downtown NYC in droves.  It was an interesting time, with lots of layered social texture. Mr. McLaren was a big part of this movement.

Marketing Situation.

A handful of marketing companies today attempt to acculturate products into our lives. Strawberry Frog, for one, is very vocal about creating “cultural movements.”  Experiential marketing companies such as Momentum look to jump-start change in new and unique product-centric ways thought events and promotions.  As the internet, mobile and geo-location grow in marketing stature we will begin to have more and more fun using these tools to drive sales — but let us remember Mr. McLaren: All tool and no movement can make for a soft, smarmy effort. Peace!

Important! Brand Names.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

What’s in a name?  Everything.  Would Tiger Woods have attracted the same attention (hmm, hmm) had his name been Frederick?  Would McDonald’s have enticed as many coffee drinkers had they named it McCoffee?  Would the iPhone had the same penetration with the name Nexus?  Hee hee. 

Your brand name is your package…without the package.  A good brand name is critical.  I love my brand “What’s the Idea”? It’s active. It challenges thought. Has a bit of a NY edge. As a brand planner, it defines what I do: Find the business building brand idea. 

Zude vs. Mashpan

If brands are empty vessels into which marketers pour meaning, then colorful descriptive vessels have a head start.  I worked for a very cool web property called Zude.  The CTO used to say “dude” a lot and no one owned the Zs so that’s what we went with. Doh. Zude was the world’s first drag-and-drop, free form social computing property.  I used to say “If you can drag and drop and type, you can have a website.” There were very few objects on the web you couldn’t drag onto your Zude page.  I lobbied for the name Mashpan.  “Mash” being shorthand for mash-up and “Pan” meaning everyone, everywhere, everything. (Mashpan also sounds like a home brewer’s tool…and I like beer.)  Zude vs. Mashpan may have been a billion dollar decision.

Hey start-ups, sweat the name. And for those of you thinking about changing your name? Should you have a nice pour in your vessel already, think twice. Peace!

Digital Black Eye.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Last week a VP of human resources was telling me about a “digital strategist” position he was trying to fill. His was a digital shop whose roots were in SEO and SEM.  The client roster was a veritable Who’s Who and they were growing like a dookie but wanted to expand in the direction of web and application development and better compete against the likes of Razorfish, Big Spaceship, and R/GA.

Again, the job was “digital strategist.” Listen to what he had to say and I paraphrase: “Our digital strategists are hybrids and kind of hard to find.  They are part account manager, part technologist, ideation generator, account planner and handler of analytics.” Pause for effect.

First of all, this person doesn’t exist except maybe at the highest level of a company.  Good shops need 5 departments to do all this well. These disciplines are so different my head is spinning.  Here’s a technology word for this shop “scalability.”  And here’s a prediction: There won’t be any Cannes Cyber Lions or 4As Jay Chiat Awards in this shop’s reception area any time soon.  Worse, this approach will give digital shops a black eye. You might be able to search for these keywords online, but not on street.  OMG. Peace!

Meaningful Memorable Context.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Product placement is a funny thing; more often than not when you see a brand in a movie or a TV reality show it’s been placed there at a price.  Most of the time, those placements are heavy-handed and disruptive — not a good thing.  If a viewer feels the product has been curated into a story it suspends belief.  Kind of like bad acting.

When discussing commercial social media I often refer to the need for the brand poster – the person posting on behalf of the brand — to create a persona, complete with a tangible, obvious motivation.  For Zude.com, for instance, “Tip-Z” was created as a roving help person.  She assisted people with the drag and drop application, but she did so as a bit of a tippler. Hic.  So some of her help came out a bit garbled, goofy and funny.  Personality flaws aside, it made Tip-Z real.

Product placement on TV that doesn’t fit or social media personalities that lack personality underachieve. Content may be king but context is key.  One way around what Steve Rubel calls “The Attention Crash” is to create muscle memory for brands.  While others are out there shamelessly hawking product and services one on top of the other, smart brands are standing out because they create memorable context. Meaningful, memorable context. Peace!

How to Charge for Social Media.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I was chatting with a friend at JWT the other day about how agencies can’t make money in today’s social media entranced marketplace  — and I may have solved the problem.  Here goes:

Say you come up a with a big engagement idea. It’s for a new product launch and you have created a fun video demonstration of the product.  A couple of graduate students from NYU did the production at a cost of $4,500.  You work at Publicis and know you can post the video for free and the mark-up won’t pay for the pastry at the presentation meeting.  How do you price it? Staff it? Measure it? Is it done under a retainer? Oy.

The answer is simple: You price it based on delivered reach, with a smidgen of frequency.  If the video is viewed 0-24,999 times (uniques) you charge $2,500.  If seen 25,000 to 75,000 times $4,500….and so on.

If the video is linked to another site, Publicis earns a bonus based on other site’s traffic plus the additional views. If the video gets played on TV or a big portal, another bonus plus those views. Think of the model as part SAG/AFTRA, part pay-per-view, part Nielsen Ratings.

Now that wasn’t that hard, was it? Piece. I mean Peace!

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