"Advertise, or go under"

The notion that price, distribution, and product don't matter anymore is simply ridiculous

Coty taps the "5Cs" of marketing 9 October 2014 NEW YORK: Coty, the beauty group, believes that basing its marketing strategy on the "5Cs" of content, convenience, community, curation and connection could prove to be a formula for success in the digital age.

via www.warc.com

While some of what Kristen D'Arcy says here has merit--not much of it,however--the notion that price, distribution, and product have become irrelevant is simply preposterous.

This sort of digital chest-puffing is simply another example of how lots of empty vocabulary has infiltrated the marketing dialog, using empty words like "curation" (can we please stop using that word) to stand for ideas with no depth.

It is certainly attention-getting to pronounce an established idea "dead," but it's of little use when it is so apparently wrong.

Think about it: two of the most successful business models emerging from the digital revolution--airbnb and Uber--are based on distribution (and low price).

I'm not sure what world Ms. D'Arcy is occupying.

Why do we mistrust hard data while embracing hunches with little foundation?

Sam Wang's projected electoral college map as of 11/3/12

As Election Day approaches, there's been an interesting dust-up surrounding some of the predictions being made by various analysts, especially the ones who specialize in poll aggregtion and statistical modeling. Nate Silver and Sam Wang are two of the best known, but there are many others.

Silver has particularly been the target of commentators and pundits, mostly on the conservative side (though not entirely) who don't seem too happy that the NY Times blogger is forecasting an 80% chance of an Obama win on November 6. National polls indeed show a race that is tied, but, as any 8th grade civics class knows, we don't elect our presidents through a national popular vote. State polls show Obama has a small but consistent lead in electoral votes, a lead which appears to be increasing in the last few days, not receding.

It's interesting to look at what these commentators are saying about Silver and other analysts who forecast a Democratic win. They say the stranges things. Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic discussed this in a recent post that was headlined,"It just 'feels' like your numbers are wrong."

Yes, some commentators actually get as silly as to say things like, "it just feels like it's tied in Ohio." 

The history of Nate Silver's blog hints at the future of new media

During 2008, a nerdy baseball statistician by the name of Nate Silver became a sensation in the world of political analysis because of the success of his blog, www.fivethirtyeight. com. (The name was derived from the total number of electoral votes in the United States.)  By the time of the 2008 election, the blog was pulling hundreds of thousands of visitors, rivaling the websites of large metropolitan newspapers in terms of traffic. 

Silver was in high demand during the frenzied coverage of the election, appearing frequently on many cable news shows. His reputation was cemented when his model predicted the outcome of the election to within 0.1% point in the popular vote; plus, he called 49 of 50 states correctly. 

With the election behind us, the blog has continued with its special breed of predictive modeling, now applied to the upcoming midterm elections. 

But the evolution of the blog is what is really interesting.

Comparing the Obama health care strategy to the opposition's: an interesting lesson in real-time branding

Politics is an unusual marketing battleground. Elections are like one-day close-out sales and are pure winner-take-all. 

Governing is a bit different. True, votes come down to a "yes" or a "no," but there is a lot of give and take in between. Still, very often, one side wins and the other loses. This is certainly what has just happened in the health care battle. Barack Obama won and his opponents lost. 

Both sides employed sophisticated, data-driven strategies.  Why did Obama win and the opposition lose?

I think the answer comes down to this:  Obama approached this as a political battle and his opponents approached it as a branding battle. I make my living in branding, but branding only succeeds when it serves a higher mission. I'm not suggesting that opponents of health care reform lacked a higher purpose; they had strong principles guiding them just as the president did. But they relied too much on rhetorical techniques and framing strategies while ignoring some hard realities. 

Here are a few points to consider:

The "daily briefing" is the new channel for industry knowledge

No matter what industry you work in--it could be advertising or the chemical business or life insurance--there is now a steady stream of "daily briefings" that you can receive electronically to stay in touch with your professional world. 

This is one of those subtle but very powerful trends that is having dramatic impact. In this case, the implications for how business-to-business marketers reach their targets is what it's all about. But it's also indicative of a major realignment in media delivery. 

Thoughts at the close of a troubling decade

My philosophy of planning is that it is an uncertain business but one that requires decisiveness and clarity at all times. There is an innate conflict within that viewpoint, and reconciling it is what the actual practice of planning is all about.

As another decade--one that never acquired a name--comes to a close, it's appropriate to look back on some of the things we have learned. A key lesson for me is that uncertainty truly does rule our existence, but that does not prevent us from trying to understand how things hold together and drawing insight from that understanding.

So here are some things that I learned these last 10 years, some that surprised me, some that confused me, and some that validated what I long suspected.

Television in perspective: Nielsen data reveals an interesting truth (but look out for Roku)

Nielsen's latest "Third Screen Report," produced by its Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement initiative, confirms what the networks have been emphasizing in recent months: Viewers aren't unplugging from the tube.

Nielsen reported that 99% of video viewing in the U.S. during the third quarter was still done via traditional TV.

That's not to say the revolution isn't brewing. The study also reported that online video usage is up 35% vs. a year ago, while DVR playback has jumped 21%.

According to the report, the average consumer watched 31 hours of TV per week -- 31 minutes of which they caught in playback mode on a DVR. That consumer also watched 22 minutes of online video and three minutes of mobile video and spent four hours on the Internet.

"The American consumer is spending more and more time with his/her technology, especially with the three screens of television, Internet and mobile devices," the report said.

Adults 45-54 actually spend more time per week on the Web (nearly seven hours) than any other age group -- with kids and teens on it the least. Adults 18-24 rep the only group that watches more online video than they do DVR'ed fare.

via www.variety.com

When I look at data like this, I wonder how much things have really changed.

People watch 31 hours of TV per week (31 minutes replayed on a DVR), and 22 minutes of online video.  Any advertiser who is moving television out of their mix is probably committing marketing suicide.

Good Data and Flawed Conclusions - WSJ.com

Excerpt from an informative piece in today's WSJ by Cari Tuna

So how can the overall unemployment rate be lower today but higher among each group? The anomaly is an example of Simpson's Paradox -- a common but misleading statistical phenomenon rooted in the differing sizes of subgroups. Put simply, Simpson's Paradox reveals that aggregated data can appear to reverse important trends in the numbers being combined.

The jobless rates for each educational subgroup are higher today, but the overall rate is lower because workers are more educated. There are more college graduates, who have the lowest unemployment rate. And there are fewer high-school dropouts, who have the highest unemployment rate.

"It's the magic of weighted averages," says Princeton University economics professor Henry Farber. "We have more skilled workers than we had before, and more-skilled workers are less susceptible to unemployment." Still, he adds, compared with a similarly educated worker in 1983, "the worker today has higher unemployment at every education level."

via online.wsj.com

In planning, one of our most important functions is to interpret data dispassionately and with insight. Of course, when you make your living in the advertising business, this can sometimes be a challenge.

This is a very nice piece that looks at an important aspect of interpreting hard data, namely, why it is essential to look at weighted averages when you're looking at aggregated data. It's a reminder that what you see on the surface doesn't always tell you the truth.

There is a corollary to this problem, as well. Much of the data we get in planning is from secondary sources. We read a report here, a study there, but how often do we really know how sound the methodology was behind any of it? It's useful to keep in mind that reports like this are written by journalists with little background in understanding the fine points of methodology. They're looking for a story--a headline that telegraphs their own discovery of insight.

Planners can't fall into that trap. Insight is only insight if it's true, not because we get up on stage and claim that it is.

Holman Jenkins: The Economics of Jay Leno - WSJ.com

Set-top data, when married with demographic information and purchasing histories, has long been touted as the foundation of a new kind and a better kind of advertising—personalized, less annoying, capable of commanding higher rates from marketers who lament that half their ad budgets are wasted (i.e., selling cat food to dog lovers), but they don't know which half.

via online.wsj.com

In the WSJ, Jenkins maps out a scenario in which the dynamics of television change dramatically--perhaps much more far-reaching than the TiVO/DVR revolution.

The pretext is the pending GE/Comcast deal for NBC Universal. The reference to the cable companies as a "dumb pipe" is choice.

If that's what they are, they are in as much trouble as the music industry was a few years ago. What the industry needs, however, is an innovator to realign the variables, in the way Apple did in music.

It's bound to come from somewhere.

From the railroads to the information economy

The American railroad produced the nation's original corporate capitalists—the ones we call tycoons, moguls, or robber barons. The first and greatest was "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who amassed the New York Central system between New York and Chicago in the 1860s and '70s. This week's purchase of Burlington Northern by Warren Buffett seems to make Mr. Buffett a worthy successor.

via online.wsj.com

Some time ago, I had the good fortune to work on a branding strategy for a major affiliate of the railroad industry. Trains are such interesting things--partly because of their iconic status, and partly because of their vital role in the creation of our modern world. Plus, it's an industry that gave us model trains--which I still think are totally cool.