Atomic Direct, LTD

The “cloud” has invaded computing, fortunately using a name that offers incredible marketing honesty. Because what is the reality of the cloud? Mostly that it makes hazy and unclear the costs we are signing up for and, as shown by many recent outages, delivers service as reliable as weather forecasting.

I’m no longer technologist enough to offer a thorough analysis of cloud foibles. These thoughts come, instead, from my experiences as a consumer of cloud based services.

A little here, a little there… As a parent, it infuriates me the way corporations leverage the vagueness of the cloud to drive up the costs of computer games for children. In one horrendous example, Lego charged over $30 for their Lego Universe game (which worked merely sporadically on the Mac) then required (yes – required) an additional monthly “cloud” charge ($10 if I remember correctly). In other words, for one game a full year of play was $150. (In the ultimate Lego hubris, the game was very similar to another already popular online kids game.)

And more here, and more there… As a head of household, I’m stunned by the constant trickle of fees for cloud based TV. A monthly fee for Netflix streaming. But since this has, oh, perhaps only one in 20 of the things we want to watch, we then trickle our $3.99 and $4.99 charges to Comcast on-demand and Apple for iTunes rentals. And then there would be a Hulu subscription (another $10 or more per month), traditional rentals, plus our cable bill – because traditional TV is the source of most of a family’s viewing despite all these clever additions.

And it can get much, much worse. What’s particularly scary is that these are the only places I’m willing to pay for the cloud. There’s thousands of other opportunities facing us where the monies can keep stacking up.

Economic Cloud Truth. Why worry about $4.99 movie charge? Because over time, these fees add up. And soon, a full-service cable bill of $150 for both cable and internet begins to look pretty cheap. Eventually, consumers will figure this out and their willingness to pay cloud fees will drop.

Is everything I described here really a cloud service? I can’t tell. As a consumer, all I know is the shift from selling me programs and hard services into soft services is driving up what I’m asked to spend. Besides, the truth about clouds is they aren’t well defined and have fuzzy edges.

(As an aside, my tech historian friends point out that the cloud is nothing new – just a new application of the mainframe computers we all started with.)

Buried in the economics of the cloud is a very critical lesson: cloud service providers find they have to keep their prices low. Why? Because they don’t deliver enough value to get anyone to pay more. And that suggests that the nickle and dime-ing won’t go on forever.

Aristophanes wrote “The Birds” about an idealized state called Cloud Cuckoo Land. Perhaps he gave us an accurate analogy for the place tech companies (and their very silly advertising) are taking us. Cloud hoo-ha these days sounds quite lost – high up in the ozone where birds think they own the universe (happy birds – not the angry ones).

But don’t give up hope. After all, the sun will come out – some time if not tomorrow. And once again we’ll be able to reliably predict outages AND what things cost – because the clouds will go away and reveal the full light of day.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett. All Rights Reserved

A recent AdAge article quotes Bernbach as saying “The more you research, the more you play it safe, and the more you waste money. Research inevitably leads to conformity.” (Link here.)

It’s sad that the creative community all too often comes to this conclusion – only to use the idea of non-conformity to justify all types of advertising sins.

Yet I understand what might lead Bernbach to take this position: too much research is born in mediocrity. Truth is that a great deal of advertising research is a bureaucratic ploy – designed to deliver bureaucratically controllable success.

This research becomes no longer about finding the keys to exceptional success. It’s cautionary research to help people keep their jobs and help executives develop “plausible deniability” for failures.

This research is no longer about weeding out bad ideas in order to put money to more productive use. It’s about killing ideas that might threaten the status quo. Or it’s about killing any fresh new understanding that might challenge the organization’s carefully crafted (but inadequate) theory about the consumer. (It’s my experience that every organization can discover new insight about consumers with exceptional research.)

Bureaucratic research is born in mediocrity & hides behind statistics. What’s most destructive about this research is it looks just fine and has all the bells & whistles. Beautiful reports are generated from (expensive) blue chip research firms. Statistical analysis claims to show exact margins of error and large staffs execute a bureaucratically perfect job.

But while statistical margins of error are extraordinarily important they mean very little. Hugely more important than margins of error is whether the survey participant answered the question we thought we asked. Because if they answered the wrong question, the research is 100% wrong – even if it claims a +/-3% margin of error.

This type of research may be needed within a corporation. But it leads to…nothing productive. It doesn’t find unexpected profitability. And it kills many good ideas just to find a few bad ones (that were probably already obviously bad). And it leads companies to eventually fail because it allows companies to stay within their safe zone.

YET, Creative Teams Err When They Echo Bernbach’s Quote. I seriously doubt if this quote reflects the depth of Bernbach’s true opinion – he’s much too savvy to have minimized research across the board. Still, I have heard exactly this thought parroted by creative teams across the world.

Partly, some creatives suffer a kind of research trauma – having had heard consumers questioned closely about things like the colors in the ad. (First rule of good research: Consumers are NOT creatives. Don’t ask them to critique creative choices.)

But that’s no justification to avoid research. I find that most often creative teams don’t really want to learn – they might find their work isn’t influencing consumers the way they thought it was.

Exceptional research is quite threatening and challenging – it reveals the unexpected. Embrace that truth and we find amazing power. But, its much more common for creative teams to circle up in the safety of non-conformity and write off all research.

Exceptional research is about learning. Research cannot, and will never, deliver the laser-like accuracy that too many executives hope for. But that doesn’t mean it’s a “failure”. Rather, research is about learning. Because if any creative team tells you they know all the answers you should fire them on the spot.

Let me try an analogy for research (from a reader of Western history).

Suppose it’s 1850 and you’re in Oregon wanting to go to Sacramento. There are no roads and there aren’t even established trails.

The successful strategy is to do research. Read everything you can on the territory and search out all the maps. Then talk to anybody who’s been over even part of the territory – guides, pioneers, Native Americans, and farmers. And then, build a strategy – a plan – based on everything you’ve learned – complete with alternative courses in case the plan has flaws.

Unfortunately, agencies too often just pick up a compass and head south only to starve in the wilderness, be killed by outlaws or be killed after encroaching on Native American lands.

And the most safety seeking corporations would prefer to sit and wait for 130 years hoping someone develops a camera to get a satellite image of the territory.

Marketing success takes the courage to look the truth in the eyes. Over the course of my career I’ve become more and more convinced that marketing courage is critical to success. But as any soldier will tell you, the courageous train and prepare themselves for action. And when the time comes, they act with little concern for their safety – because that’s what it takes to achieve their goal.

Unfortunately, I find the creative call to “non-conformity” is all too often the call to safety. What takes far more courage is sitting still and listening to consumers so you communicate with them in ways that get their attention better and lead to more action.

Do you use research courageously? If not, you’re leaving tremendous profit for your clients untapped.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved.

A recent AdAge article quotes Bernbach as saying “The more you research, the more you play it safe, and the more you waste money. Research inevitably leads to conformity.” (Link here.)

It’s sad that the creative community all too often comes to this conclusion – only to use the idea of non-conformity to justify all types of advertising sins.

Yet I understand what might lead Bernbach to take this position: too much research is born in mediocrity. Truth is that a great deal of advertising research is a bureaucratic ploy – designed to deliver bureaucratically controllable success.

This research becomes no longer about finding the keys to exceptional success. It’s cautionary research to help people keep their jobs and help executives develop “plausible deniability” for failures.

This research is no longer about weeding out bad ideas in order to put money to more productive use. It’s about killing ideas that might threaten the status quo. Or it’s about killing any fresh new understanding that might challenge the organization’s carefully crafted (but inadequate) theory about the consumer. (It’s my experience that every organization can discover new insight about consumers with exceptional research.)

Bureaucratic research is born in mediocrity & hides behind statistics. What’s most destructive about this research is it looks just fine and has all the bells & whistles. Beautiful reports are generated from (expensive) blue chip research firms. Statistical analysis claims to show exact margins of error and large staffs execute a bureaucratically perfect job.

But while statistical margins of error are extraordinarily important they mean very little. Hugely more important than margins of error is whether the survey participant answered the question we thought we asked. Because if they answered the wrong question, the research is 100% wrong – even if it claims a +/-3% margin of error.

This type of research may be needed within a corporation. But it leads to…nothing productive. It doesn’t find unexpected profitability. And it kills many good ideas just to find a few bad ones (that were probably already obviously bad). And it leads companies to eventually fail because it allows companies to stay within their safe zone.

YET, Creative Teams Err When They Echo Bernbach’s Quote. I seriously doubt if this quote reflects the depth of Bernbach’s true opinion – he’s much too savvy to have minimized research across the board. Still, I have heard exactly this thought parroted by creative teams across the world.

Partly, some creatives suffer a kind of research trauma – having heard consumers questioned closely about things like the colors in the ad. (First rule of good research: Consumers are NOT creatives. Don’t ask them to critique creative choices.)

But that’s no justification to avoid research. I find that most often creative teams don’t really want to learn – they might find their work isn’t influencing consumers the way they thought it was.

Exceptional research is quite threatening and challenging – it reveals the unexpected. Embrace that truth and we find amazing power. But, its much more common for creative teams to circle up in the safety of non-conformity and write off all research.

Exceptional research is about learning. Research cannot, and will never, deliver the laser-like accuracy that too many executives hope for. But that doesn’t mean it’s a “failure”. Rather, research is about learning. Because if any creative team tells you they know all the answers you should fire them on the spot.

Let me try an analogy for research from my reading of history in the American west.

Suppose it’s 1850 and you’re in Oregon wanting to go to Sacramento. There are no roads and there aren’t even established trails.

The successful strategy is to do research. Read everything you can on the territory and search out all the maps. Then talk to anybody who’s been over even part of the territory – guides, pioneers, Native Americans, and farmers. And then, build a strategy – a plan – based on everything you’ve learned – complete with alternative courses in case the plan has flaws. Then continue to re-investigate your plan as you proceed. And be brave, but savvy.

Unfortunately, agencies too often just pick up a compass and head south only to starve in the wilderness, be killed by outlaws or be killed after encroaching on Native American lands.

And the most safety seeking corporations would prefer to sit and wait for 130 years hoping someone develops a camera to get a satellite image of the territory.

Marketing success takes the courage to look the truth in the eyes. Over the course of my career I’ve become more and more convinced that marketing courage is critical to success. But as any soldier will tell you, the courageous train and prepare themselves for action. And when the time comes, they act with little concern for their safety – because that’s what it takes to achieve their goal.

Unfortunately, I find the creative call to “non-conformity” is all too often the call to safety. What takes far more courage is sitting still and listening to consumers so you communicate with them in ways that get their attention better and lead to more action.

Do you use research courageously? If not, you’re leaving tremendous profit for your clients untapped.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved.

Through the late 1990′s, the idea of “engaging” consumers became one holy grail of advertising. What agencies were seeking were ways to communicate with consumers as they “leaned forward” as opposed to “laying back” (e.g as couch potatoes).

And then, social media arrived. And the gentle idea of better engaging consumers with our advertising transformed into a movement seeking passionate consumer love affairs – and the emergence of Social Media’s claim to enable those affairs.

Is Online Brand Engagement a Myth?

Stop and look at that title. Because I just engaged in the same flavor of hyperbole that online advocates use to sell “engagement”. Because NO, I don’t think engagement is a “myth”. But “not a myth” is quite different from “passionate daily engagement”.

And that’s my point. It’s clearly a myth that consumers want nothing more than intensive, and continuous, online “engagement” with brands.

What’s Shocking is that Interpublic Just Claimed Brand Engagement is a Key Consumer Pastime in a Study Summation. Check out a study discussed in MediaPost. (Link here.)

According to MediaPost, the study concludes “Brand consideration has become a key pastime for over half of the population — 52% of our interviewees said they enjoy searching online for a wide range of brands and products.”

Every notice how often engagement claiming communication sneaks lies right past us? Look what they really said.

52% of interviewees said they enjoy searching online for brands and products.

In other words, SOMETIMES they search for brands and products online and when they do they enjoy it.

Which, obviously, means we can make a massive leap to brand consideration becoming a “key pastime” for these consumers. I don’t know about you, but a key pastime has to be quite a bit more interesting than wading through piles of online comments.

Did Interpublic Find Anything New? The first thing research should do is look to see if the behavior is new. But, this study draws broad conclusions without comparison with the old days – like 1999 or earlier.

For decades, purchase studies have shown that “recommendation from friends” was a key influence on around 40% of major purchases. And Consumer Reports used to make a neat non-profit profit doing nothing more than publish guides to help people make brand purchase choices.

Hmmm. That sounds like what people get from online. Is it possible (gasps of horror) that the web “merely” offers a new medium that better automates an activity we’ve always done? Of course it is. That’s what technology usually does.

And that leads to my final thought:

“This is Not the Engagement You’re Looking For”. Online advocates claim passionate love affairs with brands. But what the ad biz was seeking with “engagement” was merely the shift between passive viewing of advertising and active mental engagement with what’s being said and the impact it offers to the viewer. In other words, a realistic hope to have messages engage consumers more.

So let’s think about some typical consumer “engagement” activities. And ponder where they might fit on the brand passion meter while you’re at it:

Search for consumer or professional reviews of a product.
Compare a product with its competitors.
Watch the brand equivalent of dumb cat videos.
Go to a Facebook page for updates on a recall.
Check prices across multiple sites. (i.e. “shopping”)
Look for coupons.
Read brand content (if you’re really desperate).

I’m seeing a lot of interesting value to the consumer, but not a whole lot of passion creating activity here.

In Many Ways, SoMe Advocates Sound Quite Silly. Let me suggest a new variant on the old fortune cookie game. Anytime a SoMe advocate says “brand”, let’s substitute specific products or categories for “brand”.

Here are some samples from the study:

Furniture consideration have become a key pastime for over half of the population.
The more we can get consumers to participate with our soap in paid, earned and owned media, the more the suds will grow.
52% of our interviewees said they enjoy searching online for a wide range of nuts and bolts.

Seek to Engage Consumers – with Messages That Matter. Amidst all this, what’s really critical is that most messaging doesn’t matter to consumers. When is the last time your advertising said something important?

If you really want consumer to engage with you, there’s a sure solution: say something that matters.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved.

I’m usually committed to writing all new content on my blog – even if I’m discussing statistics or research from another source. But a recent blog post by Byron Sharp (link here) says a lot – and I recommend that you check it out yourself.

Sharp looks at an area where the marketing world has lost control of its language. Namely: “Emotion” – a powerful idea bandied about with language that’s far too loosely defined.

As Sharp notes, we tend to forget that there’s a wide range of emotions in the world. Yet when the word is used, hot blooded emotions are those that most often come to mind. But his research finds that far subtler emotions are the ones at work in advertising – the ones that create the biggest business profit for clients.

So I’ll say no more. Read Byron Sharp’s post with this link.

And then go out and get his book. His sane, human understanding of advertising and consumers moves far beyond the flakey enthusiasm of most modern advertising commentators.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved.

Salesmanship is, and always has been, a critical skill needed to drive advertising success. Sadly, it’s a skill that doesn’t come out of J-school or portfolio school. Perhaps that’s why a meme has developed telling us that “sales is dead” (so consumers must somehow osmose products into their lives).

The basis of this ridiculous claims seems to be that the internet puts consumers in control (and I’m sure that’s how they feel in this miserable economy). Even worse, we’re told that consumers flee to territory uncontaminated by commercial interests if anyone attempts to sell something to them. (For more on the mythology of the New Consumer check this link.)

Communication channels may change – but human nature doesn’t. The instincts to consumerism are as old as humanity itself. They may have begun with the first hunter who preferred one type of rock over another because it was more effective. Or with the primitive man or woman who rejected one fur in favor of another. Or perhaps with the family group that preferred a less functional cave over an exciting new one out of habit and comfort.

As people, we like choosing the things we surround ourselves with – it’s a fundamental truth of humanity. So a “New Consumer”? I don’t think so.

Salesmanship Is A Critical Advertising Skill. When communicating with Millenials, a dose of savvy salesmanship will dramatically increase your impact. After all, the best salesmen have never worn sharkskin suits or followed the stereotype of the polyester clad used car salesman. They are remarkably aware of their consumer’s needs and sell with skills that are in surprisingly short supply in advertising:

Interruption: The starting point of sales is knowing how to break into the consumer’s world and get their attention in a way that leaves them open to hear what you have to say. It’s quite a skill to master. And you can’t succeed without it.

Directness: “New Consumer” theorists seem to claim that you should first engage the consumer, then (very honorably) slip them a mickey in order to implant commercial messages in their subconcious. True salesmen & women know that it’s often most effective to simply and directly tell consumers what you offer and why they should care about it.

Listening: A great salesman is a great listener. Only when you listen well can you sell well.

Empathize with Your Consumer: Empathizing with the consumer’s situation, great salesmen are able to communicate so strongly with consumers that the consumer will take action and buy their product.

Know When to Shut Up: In my years selling supercomputers ($1,000,000 and up) I learned that knowing when not to talk is as important as knowing what to say when you talk. (Interestingly, success in new media seems to require constant chatter – like 13 year old boys talking about the details of a game they just discovered.)

While consumer utopianists tell us that selling is dead, the essential skills they recommend for succeeding online are mostly sales skills. Perhaps it’s mere ego that drives them to say silly things about salesmanship. Perhaps they don’t really know what selling involves. Or, perhaps anti-salesmanship is merely the hook they use to drive income – hypocritically hard selling the myth that selling doesn’t work.

Regardless, if you add smart sophisticated salesmanship to your advertising and communication efforts, you’ll sell far more and build a stronger brand.

Having said this, it’s time for me to sit back and collect the New Consumer Utopian allegations that I’m “out of touch”. That’s okay. We’re pretty busy right now with two national TV spot campaigns to finish – spots that drive tremendous retail action with my agency’s smart salesmanship approach.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved