Jaffe Juice

Do you speak conversation?

Just got pinged by Dieter (no, not THAT one) who works at one of the new media agencies responsible for We all Speak Football, which is essentially a mash-up of Real World takes on Social Media Revolution takes on GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAALLL.

More about the project here.

This looks like a really well crafted and nurtured effort. The balance between transparency and control seems to be comfortable and peaceful, as is evidenced by this entry from one of the "current pro" bloggers, Lyssa.

Some of those at Coke responsible for this project (I didn’t even know they had that many Global Directors and the like) dropped by today to take a look at the flat and talk to us. It was a really hot and sunny afternoon, everybody was casually dressed and quite relaxed. We were up on the rooftop admiring the great view when the Swedish guys staying at a hotel across the street (and partying all night) decided to put up the Swedish flag on the balcony.

Unfortunately one Swede wasn’t only rather heavyset with an unhealthy pasty complexion, he was also almost naked. His only piece of clothing was a tiny thong hardly visible underneath all that pale flesh. Welcome to Europe, Coke.

(And now I'm finally off to see what the Brazilians are wearing tonight.)

To me it works and the quip about the Global Directors is quite endearing, especially to us industry geezers.

I have only but one criticism...where are the podcasts???? Your cupboards are bare. Please fill them.

P.S. I'm proud of my client.

ATS #36 - The New Marketing Podcast with ATS listeners

The latest ATS is up and it's all about you this week...audio comments, sound bytes from the FIR/ATS Geek Dinner in NYC and of course Rant of the Week, Winners 'n Losers and more!

Download ala carte here and subscribe for free at iTunes here

Geeks Unite!

On Thursday night, we had an ATS/FIR "Geek" dinner at Isabella's in New York City.

We had about 11 people and it was just awesome.

Of course we did some podcast recording...and I proudly was the nerd with the microphone. Shel and Neville (to my right and left respectively in the first picture) had their cooler, sleeker iRivers on hand. Snippets from the night will be on next week's ATS (#36)

In the second picture, I'm with Brian Spelman and Bryan Person. Brian brought a copy of my book to sign and prepared an entire presentation which he shared with the table. Bryan on the other hand made the trip - get this - all the way via bus from Boston. He left on the 12.30am bus back to MA.

All I could say was WOW - I know I speak on behalf of Shel and Neville by saying we were and are humbled by people like you and clearly without you, we would be talking to ourselves at best and pretty damn lonely at worst! Rock on...

The problem with engagement

The subject of engagement is being discussed right now and it struck me - here's the problem with engagement (in context of all the efforts to understand, measure, quantify and even qualify):

Engagement has nothing to do with Exposure.

The industry has it all completely backwards in terms of its red herring/smokescreen about proving that TV ads were seen. This has nothing to do with enagement - it's about recall, message association i.e. awareness and it is at the very bottom of the food chain.

Exposure is a precursor to Engagement, but it is not the only ingredient; it certainly is not the main ingredient; AND it is not necessarily enough to lead to engagement

Without Interactivity, Exposure and Engagement cannot occur at the same time, with the same ad unit/format.

Thoughts?

Metrics, Measurenent and Max

Max Kalehoff (long time Jaffe Juice and Across the Sound reader/listener) and Bryan Eisenberg (had a great conversation with him) are talking about metrics et al.

Bryan talks about an example where his Mother searched for "Sony Plasma TV" and was taken to Sony's home page (where she was greeted with an elaborate laptop etc flash intro) Here's the catch...Sony doesn't make a plasma TV. Why? Because they believe that they have better technology to produce a better, more affordable product for their consumers.

So why didn't Sony take Bryan's mother to a site that explained all of this?

It comes down to the L-word (Laziness) or put a little softer, the problem with mass-mentality. I know this is probably very old to anyone reading this post...but it begs the question, not why don't we focus on composition (versus reach), but when are we going to start migrating the methodology (and possibly replacing the machinery)

Max offered one possible solution which is that the world doesn't function in direct response mode. I understand this perspective in light/context of 30,000 feet brand marketing (read: hard to measure and not very accountable), but I would argue that the opposite could be equally true...we're living in direct response hell: slave to Wall Street and short term/quarterly forecasts/results.

Sound bytes of sense

...marketers should be thinking beyond the "relevance" to the "openness" of the message. not exactly sure what that means, but sure sounds smart

...what gets measured gets manufactured (e.g. buzz) that came from brand autopsy's John Moore (as opposed to Johnnie Moore who is moderating the panel). This is a great point and demonstrates how marketers pounce and destroy that which is organic, authentic and credible.

Kevin Lee from Did-It made an interesting comment along the lines of...when you look at whose at the top of search results, they're either brilliant marketers or idiots. The problem is you can't tell which is which. Another pithy statement which is interesting. Part of the difficulty in discerning the wheat from the chaff is the inability to determine the ROI/objectives associated with the campaign, but....

...it brings up this very interesting idea about good versus bad advertising and what the bad advertising is doing to the good. Here's an analogy: if a small kid poops in a swimming pool, the entire pool has to be drained. Know what I mean?

Final thought was about evolution and revolution. When it comes to the changing face of marketing/advertising/branding, is it evolution or revolution? Some say both. I liked the interpretation from panelist, Diane Hessan, who is President & CEO of Communispace - she referred to an evolution of a revolution. As in: things have changed; they're never going to be the same again. Get used to it. And evolve (adapt...or die)

Blogging from the Marketing Innovation Conference

Just arrived at the Columbia Faculty House for Corante's Marketing Innovation Conference (note to self: never walk from 116th Street Subway to Faculty House again...it's too far and I'm too lazy)

Right now, listening to a panel on Models for Innovation. One comment which really resonated was about talking to consumers with respect to marketing/innovation. The point was to find the right consumers to talk to...i.e. "innovative" consumers versus the rest/non-innovative customers.

This has strong implications with respect to focus groups.

Think about it for a moment. We pull "typical" consumers into a room. Average Joes. People that represent the mass. But it isn't the mass or "median consumer" that ultimately will be responsible for our success...it's the innovators/innovative ones; the opinion leaders etc.

Those are the consumers we need to be talking to (and obviously not behind a one way mirror either); the ones that are leaders and the ones who are able (as best as possible) to articulate and comprehend the abstract and conceptual.

That said, I often say that if you want to get the right answers, you need to ask the right questions. Think about "articulated needs" versus "unarticulated solutions" - consumers don't know what they don't know (that's a given); the problem is that we (the marketers) are stuck between a rock and a hard place with respect to darting backward and forwards between two extremes: marketer as King (as in "we know better" or "we'll only hear what we want to hear") and consumer as King (as in giving the consumer too much latitude and leverage)

Product Placement in Second Life

So here I am with my new best friend (NBF), Gruff Goodman in Second Life (he's the dapper chap in the suit)

I'm chilling on the sofa (trying not to crease my newly acquired red and black striped poloneck)

I chose this picture for a couple of reasons:

1) The Bada Bing AKA Sopranos Neon signage

2) The Corona Extra Neon Signage

Product placement or not? You decide!

The New Creative Mind

Props to David Armano (a Creative Director at Digitas) and his blog, Logic + Emotion for this rendition of the new creative mind (literally) - there's a nice PDF as well for your cube walls - as well as for taking up the charge of the new creativity...

I won't completely rant now (I'll save it for ATS), but sufficed to say...the rhetoric and lip service given by media companies, agencies, marketers to creativity in general, as well as the evolving nature of creativity specifically, is shameful.

David has raised his hand as one of the few. JJ and Tugger are 2 more. Anyone else out there? Anyone...? Anyone....?

Headlines that leave you all warm and tingly on the inside

Such as "P&G Slashes TV Upfront Spending 10%" for example.

That's a keeper ladies and gents...stick it in your ppt sales or marketing presentations and rejoice as we usher in a new era.

Sensationalism aside (for a brief moment), the article above cites the Gillette acquisition as contributing (at least in part) to the reduction in spending. The reality is that "cost savings" i.e. the realization of media efficiencies is no doubt a factor, but what does this mean?

It means the following:

• The TV market has been artificially propped up with unacceptable levels of unnecessary and even harmful wastage (clutter) for too long. This is changing. Fast.
• The increased fragmentation and proliferation of choices and channels, combined with the ever-hardening of consumers to linear and predictable messaging has led to a double-barreled reducation in both efficiency and effectiveness
• In other words, marketers have no choice but to look elsewhere for new ideas, solutions, alternatives and approaches. Some of this alternatives include TV - call 'em fringe cable channels or pseudo derivatives like VOD or TiVo showcases...and then of course there's the 30-second spot online (that's like the old perv masquerading as a young teen in a chat room) And then of course, there's new marketing
• ...but really what this means is that TV has peaked and is now in the formative "late majority" phase of its life cycle. We've come off 2-odd years of flat to negligible growth in the Upfront season, and this year it will be down...and we may not see a return (ever) to the levels of yesteryear.
• The record amounts paid for 30-second spots like $1.3MM for the finale of American Idol are anomalies at best - band-aids in the hemorrhaging migration of dollars from analog to digital; from traditional to non-traditional; from old to new; from established to emerging; from controlled to democratized; from linear to non-linear; from communication to conversation; from one-to-many to many-to-many
• This is Robin Hood's day...except for one fact, it's a non zero-sum distribution which - when the dust settles - will leave a significant amount of money on the table.

About a year ago, I predicted that we'd be witnessing a future where media budgets decrease and marketing budgets increase. This is happening faster than anyone expected, and the implications are going to be profound on the ways budgets are requested, approved, allocated, implemented and rolled-over. It will also have commensurate impact and influence on compensation i.e. from "bang for buck" to "buck from bang"

Quality, purity, efficiency, singularity, focus, relevance, engagement, integrity, trust, creativity are all words you should be thinking about tattooing on your media foreheads, and while you're at it, start investigating laser-removal treatments for all those sagging words like reach, frequency, tonnage, GRP's, impressions, exposure, CPM's on your butts!

So feel free to cut and paste the Ad Age headline and if you like, you can even leave off the small print and pesky technicalities. There's more where that came from.