Manhattan Marketing Maven

Facebook's Advertising Squeeze Play

Facebook spouting the rhetoric of community, friendship and changing the world, has systematically built its platform to extrude cash from advertisers. And though we haven’t yet seen an overt expression of naked greed from Zuckerberg & Company, we are beginning to feel the effects of the advertising squeeze play they’ve constructed. 

Understand the back-story. Facebook offers fan pages for brands. Facebook encourages brands to accumulate fans and to spend money on apps, promotions, games and other forms of engagement. Just as brands begin to master this new medium, they change the definitions, swap out fans for likes and generally mess with our heads. 

Like new addicts, brands adjust on the fly, redirect their efforts, redouble the labor assigned to post, monitor and measure Facebook activity and again begin to master the new Facebook universe. Spouting the engagement mantra, brands expand their offerings; begin spending to advertise on Facebook to existing or prospective fans and experiment with Facebook’s ways to optimize access to fan Newsfeeds. 

To incent added advertising spending, Facebook institutes a filter on wall posts, called the EdgeRank Algorithm that, by design or default, significantly reduces the number of brand massages reaching brand fans. At first they encouraged a reach and frequency/engagement play. Then they unilaterally manipulated the platform to reduce free reach thereby creating demand for more new paid ads. Sponsored Stories ads essentially sell brands the access they thought they were getting organically by creating compelling brand posts. 

It must be great to own the end-to-end system so that you can diabolically adjust the variables and run the rats through the maze. Facebook got us hooked on free reach, scolded us into paid engagement and now is subtlety but regularly tightening the apeture on brand access to fans’ walls and by extension to the huge reach multiplier represented by friends of fans in order to force us to buy more ads to get what we were getting in an early iteration of the platform. It’s a classic squeeze play; one that Twitter and others will soon try to emulate. Google has already drawn fire for its attempts to unfairly weight its own travel properties in the search algorithm. 

Savvy brands will resist the tightening of the screws by developing metrics to measure the business impact and monetary value of fan interactions. These calculations should guide the level of future investment. Remember that there is a widespread hunch that Facebook fans are deal-seekers and light rather than heavy customers. Facebook clearly is a game worth playing, but it’s not the only game in town nor is it yet a critical “must have” success factor for brands.  Don’t be surprised to see prominent brands diversify their social media spending, reduce the intensity of Facebook activity or even dump Facebook campaigns in the New Year.  

 

Why iAds Bombed

The initial failure of iAds is a tale of Apple’s attitude and arrogance. The introduction of this new ad medium was heavy-handed. 

Three fashionably dressed hotties showed up at our offices, whipped open their MacBooks and laid out the take-it or leave-it value proposition  --- pay us a minimum of a million bucks, create what we tell you to create within a very constrained technology environment and then shut up and be grateful. 

Does it surprise anyone that brands and their agencies didn’t rally to this? 

Apple’s reps asserted that iPad users were smarter, richer, more likely to share and buy than the average Joe. That brands could micro-target using rich data from the iTunes app store. They suggested that those who didn’t get in early on this amazing deal like Target, Unilever and Geico did, or you’d be left in the dust. 

Of course, there was no data to support or document these claims other than the hockey stick sales curve for iPads. There was also a clear suggestion that since Apple invented the platform and since Apple ran the famous “1984” ad, they knew much better than brands or agencies who to talk to, what to say and how to express it on the new tablet landscape. 

A year later, many brands have tried it. Revenues are way off projections. And brands are under-impressed with both the creative canvass, the targeting options and customer response. Marketers have also figured out that iAd creative is one-system only requiring additional, costly creative and technical resources where the cost/return ratio is out of whack. 

Couple that with emerging customer usage patterns that suggest iPads are primarily entertainment vehicles supporting TV and movie watching, games and social media. These are  behaviors and attitudinal inflection points only open to a finite number of brands and campaigns and virtually force advertisers to intrude on customers and prospects.. The promised creative bonanza has not materialized and while rep visits to agencies has increased, interest in iAds hasn’t. 

Apple isn’t the first Internet giant to break into the market with a bull-in-a-china-shop profile. But it could be the first to eat some humble pie, re-tool, re-think and re-stage their approach to the advertising and marketing community.

 

 

 

10 Things That Won't Happen in 2012

As the year winds down, allow me exercise my older, crankier, opinionated and contrarian side in looking at the year ahead. Here are 10 things that won’t happen in 2012 in no particular order. 

Mobile Ads Will Explode.  Consumers still either resent them or can’t exactly figure out how to use them. Brands can’t efficiently buy them or measure ROI or engagement value. Look for the bulk of ads to remain embedded in games and in apps. 

Facebook Will Grow Exponentially. The focus will shift from 800+ million users to the quality of the experience and the virility of sharing. Brands will figure out how to get more of their messages through the EdgeRank filter and how to prompt brand advocates posting original brand-oriented messages and/or passing along posts crafted by brands. What is said, by whom and to whom, will replace the fan count as a measure of brand page success. 

QR Codes Will Blossom.  Too many different or not enough code readers, no technical standards, low consumer penetration and poor customer experience will doom this technology. Magazines and others will continue to use them as a badge or signal that they are tech forward, but few consumers will buy that act. Even if you build it; they will not come. 

Groupon Copycat Competitors Will Succeed. The bloom is off this rose both in terms of local merchant satisfaction and the inability to scale and customize the product or the deal for national brands. The business model was set up for onesies at the local level. It cannot easily accommodate brands with thousands of stores or franchisees. 

Retailers resent the 50/50 revenue share. And they aren’t seeing enough upsell to justify the steep price cut used as a buying lure. Plus, they doubt whether coupon redeemers will become repeat or regular customers.  Gross volume will drop. There will be a shakeout among the me-too and also-ran players. Social networks, payment vendors like PayPal and major online merchants like Amazon and eBay will emerge as Groupon killers. 

Appetites for Apps Will Grow. With 1 million available apps and more than 100 million downloads from iTunes alone, nobody needs any more apps. The number of apps downloaded and used once or less is ridiculous. Consumers will edit their apps into two buckets; useful time savers and entertaining time wasters. Anything else will go by the wayside. New variations and new competitors will emerge. Some will gear content and user experience to reflect different expectations and behaviors for geared specific devices like iPhone, Android, iPad or other tablet formats. But if an app doesn’t help or doesn’t distract it’s a goner. 

Banners Will Die. In spite of being widely ignored, brands will continue to pump dollars into banners primarily because they can. Banners, like billboards, are a media format every marketer understands and one that media agencies love to buy. And even though the metrics prove that banner blindness is endemic and that there is no positive ROI for using banners to build awareness, marketers will spend against them to demonstrate their commitment (to their bosses) to the digital medium. 

Mobile Payments Will Reach 50 Million Subscribers. In spite of the incredible utility of mobile payments, the lack of technical standards, limits on smart phone penetration, competing technical and processing systems and tentative uptake by consumers and retailers will retard the growth of this channel. Mobile payments will not take off with a hockey stick curve like Google+ did. Instead we will witness a fog of uncertainty and doubt as the competing interests fight it out, make confusing claims and build daisy chains of retailers and allies. When the battle is settled and a single standard approaches, mobile payments will generally replace credit cards, wallets and checking/debit accounts. 

Email Saturation Will Occur. Everyone uses it. Most of us opt-in. Retailers rely on it. Email is the ubiquitous reliable retail channel that consistently delivers personalized offers. Email will become even more segmented, more targeted, more tied to expressed preferences and purchase histories and more integrated into social networks, search and loyalty channels. SPAM has pretty much been controlled. The email workhorse will continue to perform as expected and measured. 

TV Budgets Will Migrate to Digital. Not! TV remains the only way to simultaneously accumulate mass audiences and quickly tap into the mainstream culture. Digital channels complement, enhance and supplement TV. In some segments, TV viewing takes place on digital devices and is tweeted or posted in real-time.  But marketers aren’t seriously reallocating media dollars anytime soon because they are committed to both the reach and the content that TV provides. 

Zuckerberg will Give Up Social Engineering. The debut of Timelines is proof positive that Zuck & Company have a vision, an agenda, a platform and the willingness to impose their perspective about how we should think about and share our lives. Maybe he thinks that since he invented Facebook and convinced us all to use it, that he has the right to shape the form and content of how we express ourselves. Don’t expect user-centric design or functionality from Facebook. Expect them to re-design and impose their vision whenever they like and present it as innovation and improvement. If things run true to form, each new iteration will provoke considerable user push back and privacy concerns. 

 

4 More Ways to Be a Good Manager

Being an effective manager requires day-to-day attention to detail, the ability to anticipate and plan for dynamic situations and a bit of luck. You are your team’s pilot and navigator; plotting the course, arranging the schedules, tasking the players and making mid-course corrections to produce deliverables on-time and on-budget.

To a large extent the classic “Kindergarten Rules” apply to being a frontline supervisor. Smile. Share. Play nice. Say please and thank you. Here are 4 other tips to make the job easier. 

Walk Around. Managing by walking around. Let your guys see you. Engage them. Let them know you want to be with them, see them and work together. Don’t hide in your cube or behind texts or e-mail. Tell them what you’re working on and thinking about so they feel connected to you both as a leader and as a person. Catch people doing things right. Don’t be stingy with praise. A kind word or a “thank you” go much farther than you can imagine. 

Talk with Your People.  Nobody wants to work for a robot. People perform for people they like. Be likable. Talk to your people about things they care about; work stuff and personal stuff. Be real. Be candid. Be careful. Set limits. Share selected things about yourself. Be goofy if the situation is appropriate. Notice things like new shoes, cool earrings or a new haircut. Ask about family, pets, weekend plans. Show that you understand that each person has a life beyond work and that you’re interested in as much of that life as they are willing to share. 

Offer Context and Perspective.  Everybody wants to know how he or she fits in and how their work product contributes to the overall objective. Tell them. Explain the sequence of events, the division of labor, the dependencies and contingencies, the internal politics and all the project management and timeline details. Trust your guys to keep secrets and to be discrete until they prove otherwise. 

Visualize those transit maps that read “You are here.” Provide that service for your team. When people understand where they fit and how their work adds up to the total whole, they are happier, more focused and more productive. Most people want to do good and meaningful work. Your job is to show them how their day-to-day routine or reality adds up and contributes to something more, better and bigger. You have the right to goad them on, offer suggestions or corrections and then to offer thanks and praise as projects come to a close. 

Help. You are the supervisor because you know what has to be done and how to do it. Share this knowledge and help anyone who needs help. Each individual has different skills and a different attitude. If someone is swamped re-direct some of the workload or jump in yourself. As you parse the work, you also encourage or discourage your players. Be a resource to them. Don’t stand on the sidelines or above the fray. You are a player-coach and if you can do it better, faster, easier or smarter; show your guys what you know or how to it. 

 

7 Tips for New Managers

The hardest but most rewarding career transition is from individual contributor to first time manager. The first step on the ladder is the steepest because it is the most ego challenging and because it forces each individual to think and act differently. 

In most organizations the path to fame and fortune requires you to manage and succeed through the efforts of other people. In many cases the people you will manage aren’t as fast, smart, well intentioned or skilled as you are. So, from the get-go, you have to get over yourself and focus on them. 

Here are 7 tips to get started: 

Think Like a Coach. You are no longer just a star player. You are a coach. Your success is directly dependent on how other people act. So your task changes from doing the job well to helping others do the job well. This requires a quantum leap in your ability to be patient. Coaches devise the plays and assign the players. You have to figure out what needs to get done and who’s going to do it. This means you have to get a clear read on who does what best and who can be relied on most in each situation. 

Focus on Individuals. Each person is motivated differently. You have to get to know the people you manage. You have t learn to read their moods, their minds and their body language. You have to suspend judgment. You have to figure out how to speak with each person and how to get across what you want, why you want it and when it’s due. 

Factor in Negative Examples. Bad managers have managed us all. Think about the things they did to piss you off. Don’t do them. Think about how you can structure your relationships to insure you don’t repeat their crimes. 

Aim for Clear Navigation. Most managers fail at setting down clear expectations, timetables and goals. Staff members crave clear, simple directions. Work as hard as you can to simplify, clarify, give advance notice, create milestones and schedules and help everyone understand what, why, how and when. 

Share Your Tools. Be sure your people you know all the right accounts, portals, passwords and tools you’ve come to rely on, where to find things and who to go to. You are their sherpa through your organization. Somebody showed you the ropes, now it’s your turn. You can’t expect anyone to perform at peak performance if they aren’t cued into the formal and informal tools. 

Give Them Space. Nobody likes to be micro-managed. Most people get the job done their own way. Respect this. Avoid extra meetings, reports, check-ins or paperwork. Manage by walking around and talking to people. Don’t worry if your people don’t do it the way you do. Worry about the end product. Your job is to give clear feedback and to help people succeed. Rarely do people strive for success if they feel their manager is looking for opportunities to criticize or bust them. You don’t have to be a cheerleader, but you have to set a positive tone and a well-defined direction. 

Be Real.  Many first time managers take on a boss persona. Don’t! Be yourself. If you are a jerk; be somebody else. Be straight, funny, compassionate, relaxed, and focused. Position yourself as a player-coach and as a resource rather than as a judge. People want to like their bosses. Give them a personality to relate to and like.

 

Becoming a manager isn’t easy. But it can be fun and ultimately rewarding if you are conscious about your own actions and attitudes and conscientious about the mission – developing a great team.

 

Is Marketing Research All Wrong?

Marketing research as always relied on psychological concepts, theoretical constructs and interview and survey techniques widely considered as surrogates for reality. Billions in ad campaigns have been committed on the basis of the results unearthed. Yet, in his forthcoming book Consumer.ology: The Market Research Myth, Philip Graves, a consumer behavior consultant, trashes long-standing marketing research techniques and offers four alternative ways to better understand and predict consumer behavior.

His central argument is that we are measuring the wrong thing, at the wrong time with the wrong people. He insists that awareness, desire, preference and choice are functions of the unconscious mind rather than a rational process. For Graves branding is about emotional imprinting and logical short-cuts. “Our reliance on brands … is a pragmatic system of packaging up product associations into an unconsciously identifiable device that removes the need to make complex, long-winded conscious evaluations of alternatives every time we purchase something.”

He doesn’t think consumers know what they want and clearly believes that they can’t articulate what they want or why they want it. He suggests we stop asking because the output is useless. “If human beings were routinely capable of such accurate introspection, psychoanalysts could be replaced by a two line computer program.”

He indicts market researchers for asking questions out of context, for talking to the wrong audiences, for ignoring behavior in favor of opinion and for generally missing the mark. “Our unconscious minds have vast amounts of data that we regularly rely on to make decisions, but we have no direct conscious access to those processes, “ he argues.

Graves argument boils down to several key points ….

• Decision-making is unconscious and we can’t really get inside consumer’s heads.
• Anything consumers tell us is a post-action rationalization or re-interpretation of events they themselves cannot fully understand or explain
• Just asking the questions, changes the answers
• Buying is done emotionally, in-the-moment and we don’t have the tools to simulate or even understand the mechanics
• This moment is affected by a wide range of variables (e.g. people present, environment, stimuli) which make tracking it or generalizing about it almost impossible

 So like a direct marketer, he believes that observed behavior yields a more potent insight that the full range of current marketing research techniques. “When market research wanders into the realm of the future, it is inherently reckless.”

He takes a strong obligatory shot at focus groups concluding that “if accurate consumer insights is the objective, and then by far the simplest ‘solution’ is to avoid focus groups altogether.”

Graves’ solution to understanding consumers better is four-fold.

1. Mount “cost effective yet meaningful live tests”
2. Give up market research as a CYA risk or blame mitigation tool
3. Go with your gut
4. Measure any consumer research or insights against 5 criteria expressed as the acronym – AFECT.

Analysis of consumer behavior; hard data.

Frame of mind; context.

Environment; the range of potential stimuli

Covert study; disguise the real topic when engaging consumers

Timeframe; recognizing the snap judgment ala Gladwell’s blink hypothesis

This is an annoying, eye-opening, thoroughly researched and tightly argued book. It will alarm some, enrage others and state the obvious for many. The outstanding question is; will it prompt change?

________________________________________________

Full disclosure: I got a free review copy from the publisher.

Want it? Be the first to ping me.

Targeting Ads to Individual Brains

Advertising is about awareness and resonance leading to engagement, desire and purchase. Savvy ad guys are constantly trying to improve our ability to understand, target and get inside the heads of target customers to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of the memes and means of communication. 

Traditionally the tools for calibrating images, messages concepts and media choices were multiple forms of qualitative and quantitative market research and media usage ratings filtered through creative gut instinct. Behavioral data and neuroscience are new tools for hedging our bets and for cueing creatives. But old habits are hard to break. 

New approaches and new research raise the prospect of identifying the ways we think, process, understand and choose content, which should inform how ads are made and where ads are placed. This is the Holy Grail that art directors, copywriters, strategic planners and user interface designers are perennially chasing. 

Underlying these approaches are an array of assumptions worth articulating: 

• Different people think and process in different ways
• Thinking styles are hard-wired from birth
• Much of our thinking process is subconscious
• How we think determines our behavioral choices
• There are identifiable brain processing styles
• We are overwhelmed with inputs and stimuli
• A lot of our thinking is dedicated to sorting and filtering
• The Internet has changed the way we read and process; maybe how we think
• If you know how we think, you can figure out better ways to communicate
• If you can tag people by how they think, you can persuade them better or faster

The obvious conclusion is to create a segmentation scheme that accurately reflects differences among target audiences then craft messages that appeal directly to each segment delivered according to stated or inferred customer preferences. 

Sounds like a piece of cake doesn’t it? 

There are countless personality survey instruments that type and segment people along some variation of the Myers-Briggs axes. They range from sophisticated tools to simple magazine-like quizzes. Each purports to help understand what kind of person you are and by understanding personality types and/or matching it with demographic data, marketers can infer likes, dislikes and media preferences. 

In the direct and database world marketers have become extremely sophisticated at using behavioral data and purchase history to model segments and predict likely behaviors. Yet having mastered serial regressions techniques these guys can tell you who is likely to buy with very good accuracy. But they don’t know why.    

How and why researchers slice and dice the audience seems to make all the difference. The battle to determine the best, the most accurate research methodology has been going on since the first ad was written. 

Among the classic arguments used to promote or to discredit various technical approaches are 

• The people who make the ads; aren’t the same as those who receive them
• The sample isn’t statistically significant, representative or project able
• The data doesn’t control for environmental or cultural factors
• The data only shows what they do; not why they do it
• The segments are fancifully named; but you can’t actually find these customers
• The segments align with sellers’ desires; not buyers’ needs 

Into this on-going debate comes Xyte Technologies, a start-up behavioral research firm in Madison, WI, led by Linda McIsaac, a psychologist. 

Xyte starts with a personality profile and layers on different data in seven steps to create a funnel-like filtration process that supposedly can predict who will like and respond to specific creative stimuli. In working with clients like CBS TV Networks and Pepsi they conduct additional product/service-centric surveys that probe for buying habits, leisure activities and media usage. 

The filtration process begins with a 16 cell segmentation scheme, called “Xying Insights” which promises in 28 questions to “identify different ways people absorb, process and delineate information” as well as “understand how the mind functions.”  The cells are pretty discrete. The biggest cell “Organize” is just 16% of the population and the smallest “Operate” is just 3%, five times smaller. These segments have been tested and validated by overlaying them on panels representative of the US population operated by Knowledge Networks and StartSampling 

These serious claims, tested in military, corrections, youth development and HR markets, seem to border on the efficacy of the Vulcan mind-meld. But don’t take my word for it. Take the personality test and make your own assessment.

Ping support@xyte.com for a personal password to the survey. 

Layered on top of the 16 behavioral profiles are four sets of “dichotomies” that separate consumers by how their minds work, where they get their energy from, what makes them comfortable and their dominant decision-making  time frame. Tacked on to these results are the intimatelycorrelated variables of income and education and some consideration for environment, genetics and personal experiences. 

Mind function is divided between “weavers” who weave data together and see interruptions as opportunities for intellectual riffs versus “drivers” who are precise step-by-step linear thinkers.  Energy is either passive and inward facing and protective or outward facing and aggressively proactive. Comfort is a function of either rational and logical thinking or people-oriented feelings as the dominant approach for assessing information. And decision-making focuses on whether you are a short-term in-the- moment thinker or a future-focused abstract thinker. 

When the four dichotomies are overlaid on the 16 personality types they yield four decision-making constructs. 

MIND. People who solve problems and think visually or in abstractions. They rely on instinct to make decisions and have a wry sense of humor. 

WORD. Stories, words and people matter most. Puns, plays on words, rhythms and cadences resonate with them. Most of the creative community falls in this bucket. 

BODY. These customers learn by touching and feeling. Tangibility and experience influences their choices. They like what they know and are resistant to change. 

HAND.  They hold it and know it. Short-term focused, hardly engaged these consumers are mavericks who don’t respond to emotional appeals. 

By addressing these constructs directly advertisers avoid talking to themselves and instead appeal to the way each segment perceives their reality. On the basis of this worldview, Xyte argues that since WORD people only represent 18.5% of the population, the copy, visuals and channels that turn them on don’t work for the other 81.5% of us. This disparity in job function explains why so many ads fall flat; we’re talking to ourselves not our target audiences. Moreover they argue the clients who approve creative work share the word propensity and therefore compound the error. 

The yield for creatives from this complex series of overlays and calculations is a formula to make ads resonate and stick better with their intended audiences. By using this matrix of data, writers, designers and producers can identify and map content, input sense, receptivity, wiord choice, visuals, comfort, humor, music and media channel to better engage, incite and motivate target audiences. The promise is that marketers can speak each individual’s “brain language.” 

It’s weird and big-brotherish that what we think of as personal, idiosyncratic and complex can be known and studied. Nobody likes feeling that exposed. The idea that our innate preferences and subconscious bio-mechanical systems can be explored and exploited by marketers is uncomfortably intrusive Yet maybe neuro-behavioral science can make us better at what we do. Even if this creeps you out, it’s worth looking at seriously.

Optimizing the 4th Screen

In the last quarter of 2009, 237 million Americans 18+ were exposed to video out of home. Basically half of the country caught some or all of a video message in a movie theater, a restaurant or bar, a hotel, an elevator, a health club or at the self-service gas pump. And that doesn’t count those of us exposed in doctor’s offices or airports.  Out of home video is almost everywhere and it’s  reach is significant.

 

Now the number crunchers at Nielsen have collected, compared and normalized data from these networks to produce a “Fourth Screen Network Audience Report” that not only puts out-of-home video on the map but creates a metric for media buyers to compare it with video delivered by broadcast, cable, mobile device or Internet.

 

For example, you can compare viewers at the movies (84 million in Q4 2009) with the average audience for a primetime broadcast network TV spot (3 million in October 2009) and figure out that it would take 20 primetime ads to achieve the same reach as a month-long campaign in movies. These new metrics enable planners to translate the data and essentially compare apples-to-oranges. Comparing data should help build demand since these OOH media are much cheaper than other video delivery formats.

 

The size of the audiences gets me thinking about the media in strategy and creative ways to craft messages and influence people in the course of their lifestyle flow. The big numbers imply that consumers expect to see video almost everywhere. OOH video is no longer an annoyance, an interstitial or ignored. Out-of-home digital video can be a reach extender and can play an increasingly diverse or flexible role in integrated advertising campaigns.

 

Consider the properties of the individual place-based media:

 

Elevators. The average exposure time is probably 60 to 90 seconds. Everybody looks at the screen though only a small percentage pays serious attention. It’s a great way to reinforce a brand name or logo or add frequency to a slogan or an offer. Nobody will write anything down so the creative burden is to grab 10 seconds of attention and implant a memorable idea. Seems like a perfect place to add frequency to a launch campaign or to burn in a competitive offer or claim. I can imagine coordinating it with a coupon drop or a promotion game (e.g. McDonald’s “Monoploy”).

 

Hotels. These are a mixed bag of convention-oriented channels, local and cable re-distribution and dedicated hotel channels. Everybody flips through this stuff. Very few people pay close attention. Time spent with this media is probably measured in seconds. This feels like an image play solely to support event or convention activity or a pure low cost frequency extender.

 

Bars & Restaurants. Often at or behind the bar, only a small portion of the overall audience sees or even notices the video. And while some clubs use re-distributed video or tune to select video channels to create ambiance or to set the mood, the amount of attention available for commercial messages is slim. The biggest value here is to present images of food or beverages available at the point of sale. It’s an opportunity to influence market share at the point of consumption and/or to target or reinforce lifestyle images with constituent audiences.

 

Movie Theaters. Consumers are a captive audience. They have nothing to do but watch the screen in the semi-dark theater for at least five minutes before the previews roll as people jockey for seats or load up on popcorn and soda. Coke, with a huge vested interest in fountain share, has used this medium to great affect. Frequency and category exclusivity allow people to remember offers, 800 numbers and URLs. Local merchants have used this slides and static images to make walk-in, discount and ticket stub redemption offers.

 

The simplest use, often adopted by TV networks, is to run the TV or cable tune-in promo in the theater. It’s a cheap reach and frequency extender and can be demographically targeted by movie. Similarly I can imagine creating a longer spot (2 minutes) to flesh out product details, attributes or benefits in coordination with regional or national TV, Cable or Internet buy. I’d try integrating mobile and movie delivery of the same spot to drive traffic for local businesses or to drive tune-in or voting for reality TV shows. 

 

Health Clubs. You’re on the bike, the Stairmaster or the treadmill watching the screen. You’re not going anywhere. And you are open to almost anything to distract you from growing muscle fatigue or that first faint pain. Nobody really knows how present you are or how much attention you are paying, but your eyes are focused on the screen and you might have the option to write something down.  

 

Some clubs hijack the commercial and programming space to hock classes, trainers and products. Others re-distribute cable fare with their own avails. Health, fitness, grooming, food, entertainment, personal technology and apparel are the no-brainer categories. This is an upscale crowd ripe for campaign experimentation.

 

Gas Stations. You’ve got a small screen and a 5 minute window. Ambient light and noise plus the scent of gas and the general griminess of the stations complicate consumer experience and bleed away attention spans. The audience is focused on accomplishing 3 distinct tasks; getting the pump started, pumping the desired amount of gas, getting the credit authorized.

 

The window of persuasive opportunity is small. Many offer added services or deals on a car wash. Unless you can produce a 2 minute sight and sound extravaganza that self-triggers once the gas is flowing and is impervious to the environment, it’s a post-activity reminder, offer or coupon/loyalty medium.  

 

Americans are getting used to the idea of being surrounded by video wherever they go. Each venue and distribution point has its own advantages and disadvantages. This new data allows media people to include these heretofore marginal media in broader campaign planning. And it allows creative leaders and marketing strategists to think about more, different ways to extend the customer conversation or to interact more intimately with customer lifestyles.

Lessons for Advertisers from Gaming

Humans love games. Games give us valuable clues about how customers think, act, solve problems, process data and assess value. 

Games are a fingerprint and a barometer of our culture. Marketers will increasingly need to draw upon the principles of gaming in order to understand, enable and communicate with a population that has integrated gaming conventions into their consciousness and consuming behavior. 

Games are a vital component of learning in our culture.  From the military, to UPS to big business, games are used extensively for training, orientation and skill improvement. Almost everyone plays some form of online games. Gaming is the number one online activity regardless of demographic. 

Gaming culture has a keen influence on customer segments and our popular aesthetic. Consider these how gaming conventions suggest insights into consumer wants and needs. 

Persona Selection. Many games require players to create or select a persona or build an avatar. These doppelgangers project hopes, dreams and self-images of the people who choose them. Some reflect their current state of mind or self-assessment, others project fantasies and still others are random idiosyncratic choices. All give us clues about how to engage them. 

Level Setting. Players decide which level to start the game; in effect which level of skill or competence they feel. They are telling us where they are at and how they want to be engaged. 

Constant Choice. Consumers expect the freedom to pause, restart, and find alternative paths to the same goal. Self-directed activity is the norm everywhere except for traditional advertising where we still try to force-feed messages to audiences by interrupting consumers while they are doing something they like. Giving consumers choices increases rather than decreases attention to and engagement with commercial messages. 

Rewards. Players are motivated by rewards and rankings. At each stage, games reward performance, congratulate players and incent them to keep playing. Small incentives recognize individual achievements. Leader boards publicly display successful outcomes and set expectations for what it takes to win. Public recognition motivates a healthy segment of the market and establishes widely accepted norms. 

The challenge for advertisers and marketers is to find a way, without masquerading, to play along. Gamers need the flexibility to attack the problem their way. This has profound UI-UX implications and it validates the need to create a smorgasbord of commercial content that consumers can access according to their personal preferences and timetables.

Talking to Recession Survivors

The recession traumatized Americans. Forced to roll with the punches and devise coping strategies to counter complex economic forces beyond our control, consumers figured it out by trial-and-error. Now that there’s a glimmer of hope and a few data points to suggest the beginnings of recovery, we see the world through different eyes. 

Eyes skeptical of government and financial institutions. Eyes looking inward. Eyes that stared down economic ruin and made crucial trade-offs to survive. Eyes with “a renewed sense in their own resourcefulness and priorities” according to Eyes Wide Shut, an insightful and eye-opening qualitative study of 1200 consumers and a quantitative survey of 700 consumers conducted by Ogilvy& Mather in Chicago and Communispace.   

Consumers made conscious choices either to re-trench by shifting spending patterns to preserve their lifestyles or by re-imagining new ways to work, live or operate. It wasn’t fun but “consumers made very interesting trade-offs across seemingly unrelated categories in order to get their lives in balance while still feeling like they are treating themselves to those things that make them feel normal and well taken care of.” 

We coped. Often by eating in, gorging ourselves on junk or comfort food and booze, popping happy pills and zoning out playing games or finding friends online or in front of the TV. 

Now we’re thinking and acting differently than before… at least for now. And we think we’re re-setting our behaviors and our perceptual filters. Consider these four implications for crafting post-recession consumer advertising messages: 

Everyone’s from Missouri. Hype be damned. Consumers want unvarnished facts and figures, stats, odds and data without the spin.  They Google everything and check you out on Angie’s List, Zagat or Facebook. They ask around online and off and carefully weigh every purchase. Each purchase is a careful choice, often a trade-off, so it has to deliver both intrinsic and psychological value. 

We Want What We Want. Purchase decisions are “deliberate and intentional” and may include complex personal trade-offs and calculations to justify or fund purchases. You can’t psyche out millions of consumers inside their heads. Instead make the value proposition clear and help them do the math. “Personal context and attitudes change daily” as we buy things to make ourselves feel better, feel safer and to put distance between us and our recent memories of deprivation. 

Everyone’s a Survivor. Americans coped one-by-one. As a result there’s not a great reservoir of trust in the system. Instead consumers believe “if its going to be; it’s up to me.”  So messages have to help individuals sort themselves into your product or service offering by emphasizing, utility, value and convenience. We are weirdly optimistic and empowered. 

The Game has Changed.  The recession changed the ground rules and assumptions behind the America Dream for many. We hit the ceiling, lost our jobs and our savings and our homes. We faced the kind of physical threats our grandparents lived through and warned us about. As a result we are re-booting our relationship with money, work and property.  

We’ve readjusted our sites downward. We’re more appreciative of what our parents had and we shifted the target from having it all to keeping it together as best as we can.  For the moment, we’re talking about family, stuff we actually like or can do and direct. And we have a new appreciation for our own resourcefulness inner resolve and strength. 

Brands who don’t get it risk being dealt out. You don’t have to serve each individual variation but you have to speak to the mindset. You need to be where consumers are and intercept them doing the things they’ve carefully decided to do. Brands, who focus strictly on deals, will be jettisoned once we’re feeling a little better about things and seek to forget the recent hardships. 

The actual state of the economy has nothing to do with consumers’ mindset. We’re done with the recession. Been there. Done that. We coped and we’re moving on. Brands need to accompany us.