I got some great feedback on my last blog post, “Why Advertising is Irrelevant.” It has spurred some great discussions with people I admire and who’s opinion I respect. I have to admit I wanted to be provocative because of the tired old approach of blanketing the earth with ad copy to get my attention, or worse, reading about work that puts gold statues on agency shelves but doesn’t help the client.

That said, I think I need to decamp for a moment. Everything in the marketing mix has it’s time and place. A TV ad still is probably the best choice for quickly gaining general awareness for some consumer audiences. My point is that we’ve got to start thinking differently.

Our goals as marketers should be to come up with great creative work, but it needs to be more driven by consumer input than ever before….and I don’t mean the kind of input that chooses the ending of Hollywood movies. I am talking using a measurement-driven marketing model to make the appropriate choices at the appropriate times by using input gathered from your customers.

This is easy to write about in a blog, but much more difficult to implement. This is hard stuff for most companies. Even most consultants who are talking about measurement-driven marketing, only get a piece of the puzzle (the left brain or the right) but can’t put the entire picture together in their own consulting company, let alone with the clients. You know as well as I do that internal silos, management structures and lack of clear directives are keeping measurement practices from gaining ground in most companies.

We’ve been thinking a lot about this problem and have been developing some alliances around this involving management consultant, analytics tools and design and development practices that are helping companies gain customer insight through metrics to improve marketing effectiveness. To steal a phrase from Mike Ackmann, one of our favorite consultants, the goal is “Data, not Drama.”

To meet this goal, we’ve crafted a different approach:

1) Strategy Integration
Develop integrated strategies involving key stakeholders across all disciplines in the company. Involving Marketing, Operations, HR, Finance, Technology and Sales.

2) Profitability Practice
Develop processes and practices to integrate customer interaction data into actionable business intelligence across the organization. We translate what is happening out there in the marketplace to what it means for your business.

3) Practical Application
Start simple. Measure what you can today and begin to develop a measurement/profitability practice within your organization. This applies to technology we choose as well. We look for the simplest, most cost-effective tools and technology to get the job done. Learn more about getting started ……

With some friends of mine recently returning from Vegas, it got me thinking of bright, eye-catching, cool, elaborate and over-the-top means to get a message across.

In the world of interactive, sometimes the use of widgets, Flash, or other “bright, flashing things” can interfere with the more important messages or tactics that a site is attempting to execute on. It reminds me of the traditional marketing/advertising star burst. In that case, what was (or god help us still currently is) intended or used as support or enhancement to the message simply became a distraction. That same sort of issue is now translating itself to the interactive space.

To be clear, Flash, widgets and the like aren’t necessarily a bad thing (unlike their traditional counterpart, star bursts). In fact, a majority of the time they can be a very well-used and effective tool. However, as more people and companies learn the ropes of the interactive space I just hope that we’ll avoid the use of Flash, for the sake of using Flash, but rather use it in a useful and supporting manner to progress the larger objectives and goals of the brand or company.

The problem is, too much Flash may help a site look cool and be eye-catching, but when it comes time to actually USE the site or get information what is that technology platform doing to the user’s interaction? How is the Flash interrupting a smart, clean and strategic navigation structure or information architecture? How is too much Flash causing longer load times and a slower site? How is a site made of entirely Flash hurting our online visibility in search engines? How are you hurting yourself with a primarily Flash site, when a part of your audience doesn’t have the latest versions of Flash or even have it all?

Without the intent of bashing anyone or any particular site, I’ve included some examples where they might consider those types of questions to provide a more usable product for their customers:

-www.rmgconnect.com
-www.innerstrengthstudio.com
-www.tampax.com (this isn’t flash, but I just can’t believe they have sideways navigation…did I miss something?)
-Just about any car company website

The traditional process for putting together marketing or advertising initiatives involves a creative team coming up with the BIG idea, the thing that gets you and the creative team noticed. It is packaged and delivered through multiple channels to build awareness for your company, your new product, or anything else you want to get attention for.

It is a black box process that is driven by the agency trying to look its most creative and a client that wants attention. The over-arching idea is aimed at the broadest audience possible, blasted out through as many channels as you can afford. If done well, it delights, entertains, and gets attention. Done poorly, it annoys or worse, disturbs our space. Well, at least it disturbs mine.
:: continue reading this ocean post ::

As more marketers and advertisers are drawn to the allure of click->buy, is there a new paradigm being created that pits the show-me-the-results-today mentality against an organization’s traditional sales cycle?

Much has transpired over the last few years to fuel the “right now” attitude of the current digital era, and this movement has slowly but surely seeped into the commercial marketplace as well. Companies are expanding and shifting advertising budgets to the digital medium because the promise of an instant audience (that’s where people are migrating) with instant revenue (and those people are spending money) is too tempting to ignore.

But even though more people are spending more time online, does this automatically equate to more dollars spent or more purchases made?

Not necessarily. Remember the shopping mall? 10-20 years ago it was as much of a place of business as it was a place to hang out. People would socialize and gather - to talk with friends, see a movie, or do some window shopping. Today, destinations like MySpace, services like text messaging, media outlets like YouTube, and shopping experiences like eBay are taking the place of what historically have been offline activities.

And just like the tire-kickers of yesteryear, people regularly visit these sites without the intent to purchase something or engage in a transaction.

Online has become the new offline. Activities that were once terrestrial commonplace are now happening digitally at an increasingly growing rate. Everything has gone digital - music, watching TV or a movie, communicating (voice or text) - even grocery shopping.

Clearly those organizations with a significant portion of their revenue coming from online channels expect to see positive returns on digital initiatives. But, if online is the major or only path to market or customer engagement it makes sense for a direct correlation to exist between advertising dollars and revenue.

Too frequently, however, do companies succumb to the allure of digital marketing and advertising without a clear sense of expectations. The positive hype around online advertising is often loud enough to drown out the fact that even though more people are spending more time online, it doesn’t necessarily translate into instant revenue or positive return.

Though many sectors have figured out how to sell online profitably there are still those who, in terms of direct revenue generated from digital initiatives, have yet to see a clear picture of any type of return. This is not to say that search marketing, banner and rich media ads, or other types of digital advertising aren’t worth the investment. But it does mean that if those types of strategies are employed then there must be clear expectations of what to expect, and when to expect it.

For many companies real sales still take time. If a pay-per-click advertising campaign is put online one day, chances are it may not generate direct revenue the next. However, if the offline or historical sales cycle is 3 months long a benchmark for performance and expectations is  already in place, providing structure and context around the effectiveness of that campaign.

Speculation came to a halt today as the Internet rumor mill reports Google is officially buying FeedBurner.  Sources close to the deal say that Google will pay $100 million for the RSS feed management service.

This is the latest acquisition in a recent buying spree for the search engine giant.  With their recent acquisitions of YouTube and DoubleClick (and they already have Blogger in their treasure chest),  this is yet another signal that Google is positioning themselves to have an advertising presence in both established and emerging web channels, even if the emerging channels have yet to garner the attention of the general Internet population at large.

$100 Million Payday For FeedBurner via [TechCrunch]