Atomic Direct, LTD

Here we are. Just two weeks short of 1 year since I received Flatland. And what finally shows up? Flatland 2.

Have to admit that the full blown wide-eyed amazement has worn off. Because this is “merely” an upgrade and no longer a step into an entirely new world.

Or is it? First, I love it. Faster, Thinner, Better Cover… and those eyes. Pools of pure technological wonder. (Of course, with one on each side it’s a bit hard to get romantic. It’s perhaps like a very thin fish with eyes pointing two directions – only one of which works at a time.)

But let me get back to “better cover”. At the risk of making a positive mountain out of a reaonable molehill, I LOVE this new case, form factor. It’s simply…well…it hurts me to do this…but it is actually kind of magical.

What did I buy? iPad 2 with 3G (AT&T) and 64 GB. Upgraded memory – not because I every came close to using up my 32 on Flatland 1. Rather, I believe in buying the higher end for resale and because software starts expanding to use more memory.

The case came today – one day later. I bought Apple’s red leather version. (Not because of the (Red) connection. I just like the color.)

My initial experience. Absolutely what you want. I took it out of the box & plugged it into my computer. It downloaded new software and restored my entire Flatland world from backup. And, I was off and running. Took about 20 minutes total.

Initial Thoughts. It is great. And here are specifics:

- Internet is clearly faster and stronger. Pages load more quickly, switch more quickly.

- I find less restarting of applications when I re-open them. That means the multi-tasking is working better. May be the result of better iPad 2 design. It might also be an advantage of the 64Gb size. But even Angry Birds, which I’ve rarely had work well under multi-tasking, was staying in its same state when I navigate away and back.

- The camera’s just seem, well, natural. I have an iPhone 4 so they’re not a surprise. But, it’s pretty cool to add. And, these will let me Skype and FaceTime from the road. Very nice.

Did I Mention The Case? For something you handle all the time this is important. Ever notice how many people kept their iPhone 4′s without a case for way too long? That’s because they loved the product and didn’t want to cover it up. Yes, they were risking damage. But I regret that my iPhone 4 has to live in a case.

So, too, with the iPad. For the iPad 1, I bought Apple’s case then started to search. Bought a case that was a portfolio and traveled a bit with it. Not very helpful, made it really bulky, lacked precision for standing it up, and it was a pain to remove my iPad to work in the keyboard dock. Then, I bought a second case – it was so bad I never really tried to use it.

My year with Flatland 1 was spent with Apple’s case. And, it really was superb – no vendor could compete.

This time I decided Apple probably had a great idea. And they do. This one is is outstanding. The screen needs protection and this case protects it. Otherwise, it’s just me and Flatland 2 – the case stays out of the way. And, when it’s rolled for support – it seems stronger than Apples case for the iPad 1.

In other words, I really get to enjoy the slim wonder that is the iPad 2.

Final Words? App Developers are the Tablet Weak Point. My lingering disappointment in Flatland isn’t with Apple. It’s with the App developers.

Fundamentally, App developers are proving to be a pretty thick headed group. The Apps (a) refuse to use the advantages of the pad and/or (b) abuse the screen by wasting it on “white space” when it should be used productively.

- Why is it that Huffingtonpost’s iPad app is worthless? (They’re iPhone app is good.)
- Why can’t WordPress get a good app? One year later, it remains buggy, tricky to use in some cases, and seems to have been left to fall apart on the sidelines.
- Why don’t Apps like CBS Sports, Bloomberg, and many more have indicators to tell you when you’ve selected something? This is a user interface basic! Very fundamental.

I could go on and on. It’s possible that these are Android weaknesses and that these developers are making things for lowest common denominator (Android). The Apps feel like they’ve been build with the hamfisted approach of many PC applications.

If so, they are making a mistake. The apps which really utilize the tablet are the ones that get bought most often – unless you have no choice.

And So… I head into the new world, powered by a more powerful Flatland. The only question is…what adventures lie ahead?

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Here we are. Just two weeks short of 1 year since I received Flatland. And what finally shows up? Flatland 2.

Have to admit that the full blown wide-eyed amazement has worn off. Because this is “merely” an upgrade and no longer a step into an entirely new world.

Or is it? First, I love it. Faster, Thinner, Better Cover… and those eyes. Pools of pure technological wonder. (Of course, with one on each side it’s a bit hard to get romantic. It’s perhaps like a very thin fish with eyes pointing two directions – only one of which works at a time.)

But let me get back to “better cover”. At the risk of making a positive mountain out of a reaonable molehill, I LOVE this new case, form factor. It’s simply…well…it hurts me to do this…but it is actually kind of magical.

What did I buy? iPad 2 with 3G (AT&T) and 64 GB. Upgraded memory – not because I every came close to using up my 32 on Flatland 1. Rather, I believe in buying the higher end for resale and because software starts expanding to use more memory.

The case came today – one day later. I bought Apple’s red leather version. (Not because of the (Red) connection. I just like the color.)

My initial experience. Absolutely what you want. I took it out of the box & plugged it into my computer. It downloaded new software and restored my entire Flatland world from backup. And, I was off and running. Took about 20 minutes total.

Initial Thoughts. It is great. And here are specifics:

- Internet is clearly faster and stronger. Pages load more quickly, switch more quickly.

- I find less restarting of applications when I re-open them. That means the multi-tasking is working better. May be the result of better iPad 2 design. It might also be an advantage of the 64Gb size. But even Angry Birds, which I’ve rarely had work well under multi-tasking, was staying in its same state when I navigate away and back.

- The camera’s just seem, well, natural. I have an iPhone 4 so they’re not a surprise. But, it’s pretty cool to add. And, these will let me Skype and FaceTime from the road. Very nice.

Did I Mention The Case? For something you handle all the time this is important. Ever notice how many people kept their iPhone 4′s without a case for way too long? That’s because they loved the product and didn’t want to cover it up. Yes, they were risking damage. But I regret that my iPhone 4 has to live in a case.

So, too, with the iPad. For the iPad 1, I bought Apple’s case then started to search. Bought a case that was a portfolio and traveled a bit with it. Not very helpful, made it really bulky, lacked precision for standing it up, and it was a pain to remove my iPad to work in the keyboard dock. Then, I bought a second case – it was so bad I never really tried to use it.

My year with Flatland 1 was spent with Apple’s case. And, it really was superb – no vendor could compete.

This time I decided Apple probably had a great idea. And they do. This one is is outstanding. The screen needs protection and this case protects it. Otherwise, it’s just me and Flatland 2 – the case stays out of the way. And, when it’s rolled for support – it seems stronger than Apples case for the iPad 1.

In other words, I really get to enjoy the slim wonder that is the iPad 2.

Final Words? App Developers are the Tablet Weak Point. My lingering disappointment in Flatland isn’t with Apple. It’s with the App developers.

Fundamentally, App developers are proving to be a pretty thick headed group. The Apps (a) refuse to use the advantages of the pad and/or (b) abuse the screen by wasting it on “white space” when it should be used productively.

- Why is it that Huffingtonpost’s iPad app is worthless? (They’re iPhone app is good.)
- Why can’t WordPress get a good app? One year later, it remains buggy, tricky to use in some cases, and seems to have been left to fall apart on the sidelines.
- Why don’t Apps like CBS Sports, Bloomberg, and many more have indicators to tell you when you’ve selected something? This is a user interface basic! Very fundamental.

I could go on and on. It’s possible that these are Android weaknesses and that these developers are making things for lowest common denominator (Android). The Apps feel like they’ve been build with the hamfisted approach of many PC applications.

If so, they are making a mistake. The apps which really utilize the tablet are the ones that get bought most often – unless you have no choice.

And So… I head into the new world, powered by a more powerful Flatland. The only question is…what adventures lie ahead?

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Just one year ago I took possession of Flatland, my iPad 3g. And just this week I’ve received Flatland 2 – my new iPad2 (64GB, 3g, black with Red case).

A laptop free year. After getting Flatland, it took a while for it to dawn on me that I had immediately started living Laptop-Free. In fact, in the past year, I carried a laptop only once (when I had to do a Skype presentation from Des Moines to an audience in Czecklosovakia).

This is quite significant. I travel about twice a month on business. And that travel extensively covers the US – from Florida to California to Boston to Oregon and points between. On these trips I leverage the iPad extensively. I create spreadsheets, Word docs, & presentations, show presentations on projectors, play back video, stay in touch, write blog posts, write scripts, review our TV work in progress, and do a whole range of other work. Flatland has been fully sufficient – even much better than my previous laptop.

It’s also interesting that around Portland I never carried a laptop much. But I take my iPad all the time and regularly get things done at the coffee shop, lunch, or waiting at my son’s swimming lesson.

Apple, great job! I might even have to bite the bullet and use the word “magical” (tho’ I despise it’s use in marketing anything but Disneyland).

App Developers? I Sure Hope You Get it Together…and SOON! After my year-long experience, App developer weaknesses are my one lingering disappointment in Flatland.

Seems that App developers must be a pretty thick headed group. The Apps they create (a) refuse to take advantage of the pad’s strengths and/or (b) abuse the screen by wasting it on “white space” that abuses my screen space productivity.

A small handful of examples:

- Why is it that Huffingtonpost’s iPad app is so weak? (I’m not alone. Many other iPad owners complain about it. (It’s weird, because they’re iPhone app is good.)
- Why can’t WordPress get a good app? One year later, it remains buggy, tricky to use in some cases, and seems to have been left to fall apart on the sidelines.
- Why don’t Apps like CBS Sports, Bloomberg, and many more have the most basic interface fundamentals – like indicators to tell you when you’ve selected something? This is a user interface basic!
- There is no single App that does what I need to do with Office documents. There are 3 that each have strengths. But each has a major weakness. And none of them work well with MS/Word tables.

App after App simply doesn’t live up to the potential it SHOULD bring to the iPad. Obvioiusly, I’m getting by quite well. But it remains disappointing that every App I download shows up one or two significant weaknesses in major areas. My guess is that these weaknesses result from a few things.

App developers learned their skills with phones but haven’t grown up to tablets. This is too bad. Survival will require that they figure it out. Phone users are more forgiving – tablet users aren’t at all. With a tablet, size is everything and I want apps that use the screen size to become more effective – not just to show off how cool they can be. That doesn’t mean to avoid white space. It means that if you use white space, use it to deliver a better app – not just meaningless space or cool hype.

Developers Don’t Charge Enough. So many apps are cheap – really cheap. Clearly, they are too cheap to be well crafted. Maybe this is driven by the mythology of the companies who build little gimmicks for no investment then sell millions of them at $1.99 each. But I’m pretty well past those cheesy cheap apps. It’s time for real ones that we pay more to buy. How much? Clearly I’d not hesitate to pay over $20 for the right high quality app.

Android’s strength may lead developers to make apps that are lowest common quality (Android). My students describe Android as “the Windows of mobile operating systems”. And that’s not far off. So I’m guessing at this leads to Android “dumbing down” because the Apps feel like they’ve been built with the same hamfisted approach we find in many PC applications.

Of course, history suggests that developers will probably blame Apple (lack of tools, communication, kickbacks, so forth). So I’m ready for it. But I doubt it (having worked briefly at a developer and watched the developer battles since the early 1990′s). In fact, my first software development project was in 1982. And I’ve watched software progress with tremendous interest since. The mistakes I’m seeing are mistakes of an immature industry.

App Developers Need to Catch Up to Apple. The way I see what Apple has achieved in the past 10 years is that they turned technology quality into consumer quality. Nowhere will consumers put up with the fundamentally poor finished quality that is delivered in electronics – except in electronics because they haven’t had a choice.

But in the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Apple has delivered fully consumerized electronics products. Despite Apple’s figuring this out, the rest of the tech manufacturers really haven’t. They’re still delivering products with the same fundamental messiness that they were delivering in 1995. (The specifics may have changed, but the overall experience remains the same.)

Other than game developers, App Developers haven’t figured it out either. Many of the game developers already consumerized their software – but they had to because their “under 10 year old” audience required it.

Apart from the big games, I wouldn’t say that there are many Apps of exceptional consumer quality. Yes, I can get things done. And, yes, the Apple business apps are the best ones (although they still have some unusual failings).

App developers, help us all out. Set a higher standard for yourselves. Set a standard that your apps have to deliver dramatic value and exceptional satisfaction among the mass audience (and not just the tinkering digi-rati).

And I’ll bet that the first one who does will dominate the world within a very short time. Because those of us who live in our own Flatlands will become your fast friends.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

There are a lot of people running around right now with utopian theories of advertising that suggest it’s most effective when it doesn’t ask consumers to do anything.These theories are especially prominent in social media circles.

In reality, this is really just the further development of creative trends that started in the 1980s – trends that outlived the big hair. The result of those trends is an advertising business in 2011 that is pretty cynical. Many agency execs bring in large salaries while resenting anything so low brow as the idea their work needs to “sell”. The idea of asking a consumer to purchase a product seems crass (so it doesn’t happen). And there seems to be, among agency execs, a serious dis-like of the real business purpose of “advertising” (which you can detect by what’s omitted from their discussion – like any understanding of business).

What they’re really saying is “advertising is most effective when it’s least effective.” Right. (Oops. I forgot that every advertising sin is excused by the agency with the idea that it will at least build brand. And when will that brand turn into cash for the company? It has to at some point.)

Sadly, this trend’s added influence due to new media is quite dangerous. Because highly effective advertising is fundamentally very human and is fundamentally quite valuable to our social fabric.

Consumerism is as old as mankind itself. In fact, consumerism started when the first hunters found they could shop for rock types and find rocks that were more effective. Or when one animal skin was preferred over another for any number of reasons. I think brand also shows up quite early – like when weapon makers repetitively selected specific types of rock (e.g. flint) because they knew it made better weapons. In other words: exercising choice for the things that support us and surround us is a fundamental human activity.

Advertising helps consumers. Through advertising, they find products that enliven and enrich their lives – products they wouldn’t otherwise know about. For bigger decisions, advertising can help consumers choose between brands – more quickly and with more confidence than they could otherwise. For smaller decisions, brand established through advertising reduces their shopping challenge. Consider. A typical trip to the grocery store might involve looking at 500 items to choose 100. Using brand, we reduce those choices dramatically and make our lives more manageable.

Advertising creates jobs. We rely on the consumer economy to drive jobs. But if consumers don’t know a product exists, don’t know what advantages it brings them, or don’t know the ways it out-performs the competition, then they aren’t likely to buy that product. So strong advertising campaigns create strong companies – which means jobs at all levels of the company, jobs at retail, and jobs in all the suppliers who help manufacture the products.

Advertising creates economic stability. When companies have a potent method for driving their sales engine, then those companies become more stable. And stable companies create stable economies. Yes, technology enthusiasts spend a lot of time today preaching something like “chaos is good”. I disagree. Chaos happens. Out of chaos, good can come. But, economically we need long periods of stability while brief episodes of chaos reveal new things and keep us from becoming complacent. Advertising is critical to creating that stability.

Advertising lifts marketing out of the nasty, ugly world of the Dollar Store. Consider the Dollar Store. Without advertising, all retail would decay to the level of the dollar store – where every brand & product is manufactured solely to reduce cost. Is that what consumers want? Not at all. Is that what manufacturers want? Not at all. Advertising is one of the key economic factors that keep companies from ending up in the sinkhole of discounts.

What stands in the way of getting these benefits? Mostly, the advertising business. Let me mention a couple of ways the ad business is its own worst enemy.

First, consider the issue of “consumer interruption”. Ad agencies make a big deal about the idea that advertising interrupts consumers – then tell us they just care about consumers. That’s funny. Because the facts suggest that consumers don’t really care passionately about this topic. Ad effectiveness has increased in TV since DVR’s appeared (so obviously they’re not “skipping all ads”). And while newspapers are struggling to get ad dollars, that’s not because readers are revolting against advertising – they’re shifting to get similar content for free over the internet. And print is in a similar situation.

So why does the advertising biz talk so much about interruptions? Because it pays to. Truth is that ad agencies stand to make millions from offering dramatic changes in advertising – whether consumers want them or not (remember that agencies aren’t usually held to a sales goal anyway so what does it matter?). And new media entrepreneurs and venture investors stand to make billions if these agencies can convince clients to abandon old media and put their money in new.

Let’s look at another issue. For fun sometime, hang around an agency creative meeting then point to an idea and say “but that won’t sell anything”. Watch the fireworks as the creative team insists that selling isn’t their job and they refuse to work on any campaign where sales are measured.

Truth is that the ad business has become exceptionally skilled at convincing clients not to expect results from their work. In fact, as J-schools, then art schools & portfolio schools, and, now, agency schools have come to dominate advertising training, advertising has turned from commercial endeavor into a curated art exhibit. As a result, meaningful consumer messages have become nearly non-existent. That bugs consumers. If they are asked to put up with advertising, they’d rather have the ads be useful.

The Problem Isn’t Advertising Interruption, But Advertising That Delivers No Meaning. What advertisers need to focus on is useful consumer meaning: Why should a consumer buy this product? What is exciting, but hidden? What does it bring to a consumer life? What context shows the product value? What makes it better than the competition? What important truth wouldn’t someone learn at the store?

Why these kinds of truth? Because when you deliver meaning well you also deliver the full range of advertising’s human value.

Copyright 2010 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

I suppose you might read the title of this post and expect an altruistic discussion. Or expect to find ramblings about how account planners should dig into sociological meanings to develop connections with consumers (have you noticed how esoteric account planning has become?).

But I want to discuss something very different — something the ad business seems to forget — effective advertising’s truly human value and the society-wide value this builds.

I turn to this topic today because advertising in 2011 is a pretty cynical business where many agency execs bring in large salaries while resenting anything so low brow as connecting “advertising” with sales. The idea of ever asking a consumer to purchase a product seems crass. In fact, read carefully what agencies say about themselves and you’ll find a serious dis-like of “advertising” in general (usually detected by what’s omitted from their discussion – like any understanding of business).

It’s too bad. Because good advertising is quite fundamentally human and is quite valuable to society.

Consumerism is as old as mankind itself. In fact, consumerism started when the first hunters found they could shop for rock types and find rocks that were more effective. Or when one animal skin was preferred over another for any number of reasons. I think brand also shows up quite early – like when weapon makers repetitively selected specific types of rock (e.g. flint) because they knew it made better weapons. In other words: exercising choice for the things that support us and surround us is a fundamental human activity.

Advertising helps consumers. Through advertising, they find products that enliven and enrich their lives – products they wouldn’t otherwise know about. For bigger decisions, advertising can help consumers choose between brands – more quickly and with more confidence than they could otherwise. For smaller decisions, brand established through advertising reduces their shopping challenge. Consider. A typical trip to the grocery store might involve looking at 500 items to choose 100. Using brand, we reduce those choices dramatically and make our lives more manageable.

Advertising creates jobs. We rely on the consumer economy to drive jobs. But if consumers don’t know a product exists, don’t know what advantages it brings them, or don’t know the ways it out-performs the competition, then they aren’t likely to buy that product. So strong advertising campaigns create strong companies – which means jobs at all levels of the company, jobs at retail, and jobs in all the suppliers who help manufacture the products.

Advertising creates economic stability. When companies have a potent method for driving their sales engine, then those companies become more stable. And stable companies create stable economies. Yes, technology enthusiasts spend a lot of time today preaching something like “chaos is good”. I disagree. Chaos happens. Out of chaos, good can come. But, economically we need long periods of stability while brief episodes of chaos reveal new things and keep us from becoming complacent. Advertising is critical to creating that stability.

Advertising lifts marketing out of the nasty, ugly world of the Dollar Store. Consider the Dollar Store. Without advertising, all retail would decay to the level of the dollar store – where every brand & product is manufactured solely to reduce cost. Is that what consumers want? Not at all. Is that what manufacturers want? Not at all. Advertising is one of the key economic factors that keep companies from ending up in the sinkhole of discounts.

What stands in the way of getting these benefits? Mostly, the advertising business. Let me mention a couple of ways the ad business is its own worst enemy.

First, consider the issue of “consumer interruption”. Ad agencies make a big deal about the idea that advertising interrupts consumers – then tell us they just care about consumers. That’s funny. Because the facts suggest that consumers don’t really care passionately about this topic. Ad effectiveness has increased in TV since DVR’s appeared (so obviously they’re not “skipping all ads”). And while newspapers are struggling to get ad dollars, that’s not because readers are revolting against advertising – they’re shifting to get similar content for free over the internet. And print is in a similar situation.

So why does the advertising biz talk so much about interruptions? Because it pays to. Truth is that ad agencies stand to make millions from offering dramatic changes in advertising – whether consumers want them or not (remember that agencies aren’t usually held to a sales goal anyway so what does it matter?). And new media entrepreneurs and venture investors stand to make billions if these agencies can convince clients to abandon old media and put their money in new.

Let’s look at another issue. For fun sometime, hang around an agency creative meeting then point to an idea and say “but that won’t sell anything”. Watch the fireworks as the creative team insists that selling isn’t their job and they refuse to work on any campaign where sales are measured.

Truth is that the ad business has become exceptionally skilled at convincing clients not to expect results from their work. In fact, as J-schools, then art schools & portfolio schools, and, now, agency schools have come to dominate advertising training, advertising has turned from commercial endeavor into a curated art exhibit. As a result, meaningful consumer messages have become nearly non-existent. That bugs consumers. If they are asked to put up with advertising, they’d rather have the ads be useful.

The Problem Isn’t Advertising Interruption, But Advertising That Delivers No Meaning. What advertisers need to focus on is useful consumer meaning: Why should a consumer buy this product? What is exciting, but hidden? What does it bring to a consumer life? What context shows the product value? What makes it better than the competition? What important truth wouldn’t someone learn at the store?

Why these kinds of truth? Because when you deliver meaning well you also deliver the full range of advertising’s human value.

Copyright 2010 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

I wrote recently about the advertising business’s mis-understanding of the idea of “likability”. I think we have a similar problem with the idea of “entertainment”.

Listen to many agencies and you’ll think that the only things that entertain are movies, concerts, comedy shows, and video games. That’s quite scary because movies, concerts, comedy shows, and video games FAIL TO ENTERTAIN far more than they succeed.

So the good news for the ad business is that people are more interesting than Hollywood thinks.

Does Advertising Need to Be Entertaining? Of course it does. But agencies need to stop looking at what’s called the “entertainment business” and start looking for a more robustly human sense of entertainment.

There are many things that people find entertaining – learning things, training pets, browsing the web, reading a book, watching a documentary, playing poker, shooting the breeze with friends, working out, running, hiking, fishing, sewing, woodworking, fixing stuff, writing blogs, …. The list is endless and varied. Heck, there are people who think it’s entertaining to lock themselves into a tiny capsule tied to a balloon then risk their lives floating around the world 10 miles above the earth (this one doesn’t make my list).

To see this wide ranging sense of entertainment consider infomercials (yup – the 30 minute type). Infomercials work because it is inherently entertaining for people to learn about products they buy for areas where they are passionate. What do they learn? How products work, what other people think about them, how they might apply to their lives. Because of this, the infomercial business is extraordinarily successful and has nearly universal influence (every TV viewer is influenced by them even if they don’t call to buy).

Intelligent infomercials succeed – like our half hour for the Drill Doctor drill bit sharpener which spent 30 minutes talking about drill bits and drove sales of 3 million units. Entertaining? You bet. This show received 1 ratings (not share) in local markets on early weekend mornings. Why? Because it’s entertaining to learn about tools.

Sadly, some infomercial practitioners insult viewer intelligence by using the same techniques on TV that they use on the Atlantic boardwalk. But infomercials aren’t the worst…

The Worst Insulters of Consumer Intelligence are Traditional Advertisers. Advertising agencies insult consumer intelligence constantly by assuming that (1) consumers don’t want to know anything or (2) saying something significant makes creative “boring” or (3) saying something directly is offensive. Consumers really want all of this – it’s the agencies who don’t.

In part, I find many agencies believe they are honoring consumer intelligence by keeping meaningful content OUT OF their work. Instead, the creative approach is “highly intelligent”. Except… Consumers aren’t artists and creative intelligence is primarily lost on the vast majority of people. There is only one truly universal thing that consumers DO care about: making smart purchase decisions with their limited resources.

The Agency Selection Process Helps Cause This Reality. When shopping agencies, clients view advertising in a portfolio or on a reel as if they were a theater audience. That means entertainment industry-style values play a huge role in agency selection.

But, consumers catch advertising as part of their everyday lives. Caught from the corner of their eye while cooking, glanced at while paging through a magazine with the TV on, or briefly considered while their 2 year-old pulls on their hair. If advertising is to be valuable to them, then, they need it to say something clear and direct that makes pretty immediate sense.

And notice what happens: Theatrical impact requires the creative cleverness to avoid saying things clearly, directly, and in ways that make immediate sense. Consumer impact usually requires clear and direct communication. It takes a brave agency to create advertising that moves consumers – because in so doing they are risking their ability to get that next job.

The Result: A One Dimensional Theory of Entertainment. Heart pumping, eye-catching, sexy, funny, outrageous – these are the terms agencies like to apply to their advertising. But how restrictive of the human animal. Yes, I know PT Barnum talks about how easy it is to foist things on the public. Perhaps that only matters when your primary product is Barnum’s taxidermically altered animalia shown at the county fair.

Fortunately, most advertising doesn’t involve that kind of junk. So why don’t we sell it intelligently – to the whole person, to the entirety of the human beast?

Respect Consumers As Fully Human, Fully Alive. Do this by telling them the things that have meaning to them. And tell them these things in ways that are understandable. Respecting consumers makes your advertising watched more often and successful more often.

Speaking of success, let’s revisit that “entertainment industry” model. The ad biz’s fascination with entertainment considers only the exciting potential while ignoring the dark side. In the entertainment business, failure happens at a massive rate.

Love that sitcom? They spent 5 years developing it and 100 others failed to be effective along the way. Can you spend 5 years developing your ad campaign and risk failing 99 out of 100 times?

Didn’t think you could. The really beautiful thing about considering the entire human animal: you can create advertising that is successful almost every time. But only after you reject the one dimensional view of how your advertising should entertain humanity.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

For some time, marketing has been dominated by the theory that the way to success is getting your most loyal consumers to buy more. As a result, it’s become popular for marketing “guru”s to declare the end of mass marketing.

There’s just one problem: it’s not true. The best discussion of this reality that I’ve seen recently is found in Byron Sharp’s book “How Brands Grow” (2010, Oxford). Let me share a few of the realities I found in this excellent, and challenging, read.

Remember the “80/20″ Rule? It’s Wrong. In the 1930′s an Italian economist named Pareto suggested that 80% of a country’s wealth come from 20% of its citizens. Since then, this suggestion has been applied where it shouldn’t and been turned into a “rule”. (One such rule might be that “80% of manufacturing errors come from 20% of the process” – something that is sometimes true.)

In marketing, the 80/20 rule has come to claim that 80% of a company’s sales come from 20% of its consumers. Marketers use this to claim that the fastest way to increase profit is to convince the 20% to buy more – an idea that glorifies niche marketing and loyalty programs.

There Are Fundamental Problems With the 80/20 Rule.

Sharp analyzed this rule with hard marketing numbers from a large number of client campaigns. Let me note three findings:

The most loyal 20% of consumers drive only 50% of purchases – not 80.

The top 20% are the most expensive (in marketing dollars) way to increase sales. I’ve found they are often fully satisfied and don’t want/need more from your brand.

Today’s loyal are tomorrow’s disloyal. Sharp documents the human animal’s polygamous brand tendencies – making purchases from a wide range of brands. One result of brand polygamy is that a very large number of today’s loyal customers will be less loyal in the future.

Net out: Loyalists may just be the worst place to invest a large portion of your communication dollars.

So How Do Big Brands Succeed? Sharp suggests part of the answer is in the Double Jeopardy Law:

“Small brands have far fewer customers and those customers buy slightly less often.”

So brands that grow big do so by reaching out and expanding their base of consumers. For a taste of what Sharp has to say, see his presentation in this Ted video.

Sharp points to Apple as an example. Tech competitors blame Apple success on fanboys. But Apple has become big because my neighbors have iPods, iPhones and now iMacs. (Just look at the vast amount of Apple hardware on airplanes owned by people you’d never expect to buy Apple.)

This is true of brands like Nike and even, I suspect a brand who makes loyalty the centerpiece of their marketing like Nordstrom. In a category close to my heart, it’s true for DeWalt drills. Yes, a lot of contractors buy them. But contractor sales don’t make DeWalt huge. DeWalt is huge because suburban garages are filled with DeWalt drills.

Doesn’t Social Media Show Niche Marketing is More Powerful? Not when you analyze the total communication picture around social media.

“New media success stories” are mostly mass media success stories given additional legs in social media. How so? In most cases, new media’s role is to create enough awareness to get mass media outlets to deliver coverage in TV, print, newspaper, radio, etc… Then, and only then, does the big impact start.

For two examples look at Susan Boyle’s record sales or Lady Gaga’s massive YouTube numbers – both are the result of traditional media exposure. (Just notice how much print space Gaga gets.)

And the recent Old Spice campaign generated untold millions of social media interactions – but only after a massive TV campaign that probably spent over $10m..

It’s time for agencies to return mass marketing to it’s appropriate place. Byron Sharp’s analysis makes it clear that the one thing your brand cannot thrive without is Mass Marketing. And mass marketing is the one thing you can never do with the web or other new media.

So where does that lead us? Back to marketing mixes where mass media build the foundation and where niche media (like new media) just sweeten the deal in a smaller role.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

A recent report looks at all Internet bandwidth (upstream and downstream) and concludes that Netflix is now the single biggest consumer of bandwidth. (Report here.)

And so it begins.

What begins? That’s the big question. Fundamentally, the Internet universe we have come to know and love is threatened by the onslaught of movies online.

For example, in my neighborhood we can tell when our neighbors start watching movies – because our bandwidth slows down dramatically. And, talking with folks, it’s a pretty universal experience to lose Internet speed on Friday afternoon/evenings as well as weekend evenings.

Does this mean an apocalyptic Internet disaster? Probably not. But it looks like Netflix has stolen the internet eggs that we’d like to use for other things. And, from what I can see, the consumer, the movie business and the Internet business are all unprepared for the havoc Netflix is wreaking.

Netflix’s Loophole. I’m told that Netflix dominance is made possible in large part by a short term loophole. Right now, high speed Internet relies heavily on past investment in infrastructure that contributed to the dot com crash, then was bought for a song and expanded in the past decade. My guess is that this means that the current equation (you get all the movies you want to watch for under $10) isn’t likely to last.

So Netflix is using a type of bait and switch tactic: hook us with low prices and it sure looks like they’ll have to switch to high fees later. All this made possible because they don’t have to pay for the bandwidth they’re using today. The result will be that we end up paying more for Internet delivered entertainment than we ever have for cable.

There is an alternative outcome. Comcast (and other cable operators) seem to be the Timex watches of the entertainment business. Nothing exciting. Nothing particularly motivating. But they take a licking and keep on ticking. So in truth, Comcast may dominate and Netflix could be forced out of the picture.

I never believe companies who claim they have suspended fundamental economic truths. And Netflix’s statements about bandwidth lack economic truth. Fortunately we were reminded recently that economic laws can’t be broken when Blippy had to return to a sane business model.

So let’s hope that sanity comes back to the discussion of TV over Internet. Because right now it’s stuck in an imaginary economic universe where bandwidth performance is free.

And lets hope some of those angry birds get their eggs back so we don’t move back in time and end up with the neighborhood equivalent of dial-up because the Hawg stole the bandwidth.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

My family upgraded to a beautiful new 55″ flatscreen, moved over our Comcast and TiVO, then added an AppleTV and upgraded our sound system. And, so, in one grand swoop, we became a modern TV family.

How is this new world? No longer needing to go to the video store for old movies is quite nice. But prepare yourself for four types of chaos.

Content Chaos

You’d think that a monthly Netflix subscription would deliver everything we need. But Netflix streaming has massive content holes. Even worse, there’s no way to predict whether the content you want will be available or not. Besides, Netflix only has old stuff. Old movies. Old reruns. And Disney isn’t on Netflix – at all.

So how about Hulu? The Blazer’s playoff game bumped 30 Rock. Of course, this season isn’t on Netflix. I find it on Hulu – the paid version (cha ching). We have a monthly now, but we really don’t need Hulu. Our cable/DVR combo is much better except for those few times there’s a problem with the cable feed.

Ah, but what about new movies? They are not available on Netflix. That means we have to either seek them at Redbox, TiVO them from the HBO feed, or pay through Comcast OnDemand or AppleTV. Hmmm, $4 a pop.

So we thought we’d figured a lot out. But then the Bin Laden raid pre-empted The Amazing Race. But who wants to miss that episode. So, we dashed off into Digital TV. Where to look? Netflix? Nope. AppleTV? Nope. Hulu? Nope. CBS’ website? Not on my iPad. Ah, its on the website if we choose to access it with my wife’s laptop. And as long as we wait some period of time after it was supposed to have aired.

Format Chaos

Before content chaos we confronted format chaos. These devices bombarded us with format options. HDMi or RGB? Svideo or RCA? 720p or 1070p? HD or SD? And each device (except AppleTV) has a huge range of input or output settings. Which one’s work well together? My former network manager wife shook her head as we tried to sort out the alphabet soup.

Remote Chaos

After basic setup, we entered “The Remote Zone”. Our TV is surrounded by 5 devices – each with it’s own unique remote. Then, I remembered a programmable universal remote I’d been given. About 3 days of tinkering later and one remote carried the whole system. Whew.

Reliability Chaos

So we get this all cobbled together… And then there’s an unreliable signal. With Netflix at least once or twice per movie or rerun we lose lip synch and have to restart. At other times Netflix stops in its tracks and pops us out. This didn’t happen wtih – what’s do you call that not so old way – cable?

Not Ready For Consumers

This world is far, far from a consumer quality world. Why?

Too complicated. You REALLY have to want to watch something to figure it out. (And, no, this won’t be fixed by making it 100′s of times more complicated with Google searching on the web.)

It is waaay too expensive. 10 monthly bucks here and there. Then little bits of $4 to get one movie at a time. So right now we are probably paying $30 to $40 per month over our cable bill. But Cable offers more and is easier to use.

With all this in place, we still mostly watch Cable using our DVR – a simple system that is cheaper and delivers the vast majority of what we want.

My kids watch the most on these digital gizmos. It seems to fit their developmental stage interest in watching the same basic program over and over.

And yet, have the digerati claimed about all this digital so-called freedom? That it’s simple and less expensive. NOT IN MY EXPERIENCE!!!

A Call To Action: Fix It

It’s true – none of this was possible 6 years ago. But that’s not the point.

Right now Netflix is real, but Hulu and most of the other options are toys. For them to move beyond this stage, they must rise to mass consumer quality. Consumers won’t pay extra monthly fees without getting far more in a far easier format.

The way things are going I expect we are entering a period with 5 years of bankruptcies, sales, mergers, and acquisitions. Then, maybe someone will bring it together under one roof.

Who might that be? Love ‘em or hate ‘em, my guess is that it’s the cable providers (e.g. Comcast) who are going to create a unified system. And given their track record for making easy-to-use technology, that should probably concern us all.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

The advertising and marketing industry has let the term “Brand Advertising” come to mean “the only advertising that builds brand”.

This is VERY wrong. All advertising will build brand just as all marketing efforts need to build brand. Even worse, depending on your business needs, the emotional advertising specifically called “brand advertising” may be exactly the worst type of advertising to use.

So how do you determine if its right for you? One good starting point is the way brand advertising works financially.

Key Truth About Brand Advertising. The profit from today’s investment in brand advertising returns to you over a 5 to 10 year period. For massive multi-nationals, this may be just fine and brand advertising is often a smart choice. But most advertising clients can’t afford to spend millions today then wait for the profit years later.

Advertising Clients Should Be Classified According To Their ROI Horizon. Tonight in my Advertising Campaigns class I suggested we look at companies according to the point in time when they need profit from their advertising. Here are the three categories I gave them:

Short-term: Those companies who need advertising to pay for itself the first year. (These are often companies with less than $200M in annual revenue.)

Mid-Term: Those companies who need advertising to pay for itself within two to four years.

Long-Term: Those who can invest today without breaking even for 5 to 10 years.

Each Classification of Client Needs a Different Type of Advertising. I suppose there are some who would claim that if the client can’t wait 5 years, they shouldn’t be advertising. But that isn’t true and my agency has a bevy of case studies to prove it.

What was exciting tonight was that after laying out these categories, my undergraduate students had very clear ideas about how they would change advertising content if they were working for a short-term ROI client. Four stood out:

They needed the strategic goals to change to reflect this ROI horizon. (Strategic thinking that made this part-time professor happy.)

They suggested that the advertising required a stronger call-to-action – reflecting the truth that when you ask consumers to take action, they will.

They would create more product-oriented advertising – because product drives immediate action better than broad brand promises.

And they suggested that shorter term ROI clients would benefit from choosing media that is more promotional in nature.

And all this came up in a 15 minute discussion. Imagine the insights we’d get if the advertising business turned its full brilliance to this challenge.

ROI Horizon Should Start All Advertising Discussions. I’m sure I’ll get a few comments saying “it’s always in the brief”. But I don’t agree. Briefs often describe goals with words that, when you drill down, say little more than “do good things”.

Every advertising campaign should start with serious discussion of client needs, how they will measure ROI, and how much risk they can take before learning that the ROI will materialize. Unfortunately, it’s an exceptionally rare agency that knows how analyze a client situation this way then execute an advertising campaign that returns the right business result.

Education is a big part of the problem. Our Portland State advertising program is, fortunately, part of the Business School. But in today’s agency world, too many people (whether AE’s from J-school or creative’s from portfolio school) have essentially art or social science educations and are intimidated by business analysis. (In fact, some agencies reject applicants just because they have business training.)

Regardless, let me suggest that the next time your agency defaults to “brand advertising”, it should be your job to ask if that’s a good idea. And then open that discussion to all ranges of advertising and the business results each delivers.

All advertising builds brand. The key is to create advertising that delivers the business results you need while building brand.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved