In one of his recent posts, Steve Blakeman has launched a bombshell: the practice of web targeting as we know it could be doomed! The reason for this is the new privacy settings the recent generation of web browsers has. People were quick to dub them the 'porn mode' and they could be found in IE8, F/Fox 3 and Chrome; Safari has, apparently, had them since 2005.
The implications of this could be huge, yet most of the marketing community, particularly the online one, seems oblivious to this.
What does the 'porn mode' do? In a nutshell, it 'hides' a user from most of the usual ways of tracking. Our surfing history, downloads, cache - all of that could now be hidden, presenting a raft of new problems for behavioural targeting. At the moment, I haven't seen a single view on what real potential threts are, what to do about it and will this change our charging models as well - both for serving the ads and reporting the results.
Being caught unawares is not new to our industry, with the PEC opt-in rules introduced in November 2003 being the biggest example so far. It took enlightened clients to kick our *** before agencies started to adopt the new paradigm (with tables now turned, as it is mostly clients that don't get it). It would be sad if we allow the same to happen again.
So, we should lead the way in explaining to our clients how we are going to track their customers in the new 'porn mode' marketing world; what are the complexities and what we are going to do about it. Media agencies are particularly well-placed to do this.
I'm really looking forward to a lively industry debate on this.
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Information architects and usability experts can help customer service systems and reduce customer aggravation.
There is nothing more ‘web 2.0’ than customer service: it is a 2-way communication, it is usually connected to a specific customer problem which, if solved, is a chance to quickly build the customer’s goodwill, it is a great source of market intelligence and could even reduce the relative comparative disadvantage of a more expensive product.
Call-routing functionalities, integration of telephone, email and web, self-help sections on the company (or brand) websites – all of this was supposed to raise the levels of customer service and customer satisfaction. And yet, customer service is mostly complained about.
One of the most common reasons for this is the general reduction in numbers of customer service representatives and the quality of their training, as well as the very infrastructure that supports them. If direct human contact is replaced by a raft of mediated routes - the notorious call option menus being an all too frequent example - we are entering the territory of interface design; and if that is the case, information architecture and usability should be primary skills for designing successful customer service experiences. The problem with customer service as we know it is that it is still too ‘analog’.
Where the web experience could help here? First of all, by devising the proper, intuitive information architecture of the customer needs. Again, listening is important: what are people calling the most for, what part of the current system are they complaining the most about, what words they use to describe their problems and needs? Trying to avoid too many menu options, companies often disregard meaningful ‘information scents’ to help customers pick the right trail. The right info scents could also reduce problems with slightly longer decision trees, as people usually don’t mind a slightly longer journey, as long as they are sure that the journey is the right one.
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iTV as a digital marketing channel is in dolldrums. There is a simple solution for revolutionising it.
There was an interesting piece of statistics in one of the recent issues of a digital trade magazine: the market for the interactive TV advertising is worth a pitiful £20 million in the UK.
What a letdown! When the red buton got its advertising purpose, the predictions were over the moon; the new era of the digital marketing seem to have arrived and the biggest shift of all - from PCs to the good old TV set - seem to have begun.
Not anymore. iTV was a big flop and, in hindsight, there seem to be several reasons for it.
For the start, platform owners (e.g. Sky) made it too complex for advertisers. It took Sky years to stop insisting that only its developers could produce 'dedicated advertising locations' for its clients.
Technology was clunky and even when the platforms openned up, it was still too complex and too expensive to advertise in the iTV way.
However, one particular thing has proven to be the insurmountable barrier: the very paradigm of how TV is used as a medium. The 'lean back' nature of it could not be changed into the 'lean forward' paradigm of the PC, due to the lack of a simple inputting device. Usability brought the iTV down.
All optimistic notions about TV banking, TV travel booking or the car brochure ordering disintegrated when faced with the very thing that succesfully liberated the 'old' TV: the remote controller.
Made for only a few of the simplest operations, the remote was just to cumbersome and tedious for anything more than that. People just couldn't use it to type in text with it, or - even worse - emails. Sky cheekily tried to capitalise on it by charging £20 for the special keyboard, but it was a step too far.
So, what is the future of iTV? I don't think it's the green button, the new attempt by the industry to push advertising content to our PVRs and + boxes.
The future is the iPod equivalent of the remote control. A device that is easy to use and input text with and easy to connect with a set top box. And we have such a device in our pockets already. There is no reason why our mobile phones couldn't be that. It only needs a bit of collaboration between phone manufacturers and TV networks (and their set top box manufacturers).
I'm waiting for a day when mobiles will have a TV control 'mode'. When that happens, and it will, inevitably, iTV will come of age and the good old TV will be free again, in the way that early pioneers of interactive television have always dreamt about.
Whether we will be watching TV at home and on TV sets by that time is another question.
Here's my neck on a chopping board: I think that widgest are going to be for online marketing what SMS was for mobile - a distruptive technology that will change the way we do things, quite unexpectedly.
I believe that widgets will replace email as a marketing tool. In 5 years time.
The reason: widgets are about doing. Email is about telling. It's like in a good book, or a film, or a theatre piece: showing, not telling is a more powerful form of expression.
The smarter the widgets, the more things that we could do through them. If those things are done on a regular basis this may even reduce our visits to a brand's website. So, eventually, widgets could start cannibalising that channel as well. Put them on a mobile phone and the story widens. No wonder Japan is lagging behind many other countries when web is concerned: everybody over there does things through thousands applications available for their mobiles.
To win, widgets need to start becoming useful to broader audiences, not just kids and teenagers.
When that happens, email will start feeling the pressure.
Let me know what you think.
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If a 'conversation' is the new marketing paradigm - as the supporters of the Web 2.0 world claim - then there are several meanings of the word that brands need to be aware of.
It is difficult to find a marketer these days that doesn't talk about the need to 'engage' with customers, mainly through some sort of 'conversation'.
However, when you look at what they actually mean by it, it turns out that there are two main schools. One is the old brand notion that brands just talk 'to' consumers, in a sort of a glorified advertising monologue. A lot of merketers seem to agree that this approach is nowadays as dead as Latin.
The other school of conversation is the customer service one. Here, the existence of the return path is recognised and encouraged, customers are part of the 'conversation'.
What both schools of thought have in common is the notion that 'conversation' could be controlled. That is is ultimately down to the brand to set and twidle the control knobs and if the customer has an opportunity to play with it a bit to get the illusion of participation, even better.
The world of digital has introduced two new types of conversations. One is the conversation between consumers 'about' the brand. The other one is the customer conversation 'through' the brand.
An example of the former is an independent forum, or a blog. There, people can discuss pros and cons of various brands without the brand being present. So, no control. Smart brands have learned that two ways to deal with this are to monitor what is happening with their 'reputation' in such places and to be quick to act on it.
The latter type of new conversation is a proper user participation in a brand. Examples of it are user generated content and various brand-generated communities (or blogs). So, a brand is here still the initiator, by providing the 'lawn' for customers to gather on, and maybe some tools, and then allowing people to engage in a conversation 'through' a brand.
Cynics may say that the 'through' conversation is only a more sophisticated way to exercise control and that only the 'about' conversation is the genuine one. Which, basically, excludes brands from claiming any right to engage in a conversation with their customers.
Yet, if you ask customers, their major grief with brands is that they are not listening. Customer service is still one of the main pain points for almost any brand. So, a conversation matters and brands not just have the right to do it, they must do it. The more, the better for them.
Otherwise, the 'about' conversation will come knocking on the door with a huge bill in its hands.
So far, brands mostly needed big mouth to build themselves. From now on, they will need a big pair of ears.
One of the quickest ways to sum up the changes that digital brought to the world of brand building is this: we are moving from the paradigm of 'telling the brand' to 'agreeing the brand'.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion, at least if judged by the spirit of the industry news in recent times. 'The loss of brand control', 'the need for conversations', 'social networks optimisation' - all seem to be an irresistibly growing trend in how we manage our brands. Even the word 'manage', to many, doesn't apply any more, as the process is increasingly becoming a two-way street.
We can argue that 'old' brand-building model was based on 'telling' the world what your brand is all about. This had its media expression in the broadcast model of advertising. The new age seems to bring another approach. A brand now needs to be 'agreed' between all stakeholders, of which customers, traditionally, tend to be the most important.
So, a brand needs to listen, big time. A big pair of ears is the most important brand management tool. 'Listening' could be anything: market research, web fora, online panels, user generated content. Even better, lets grade listening, from more passive, to more active methods. Market research is more passive, user generated content is more active way to do it.
It will be interesting to see how the two paradigms will play against each other in the years to come. What seems certain, though, is that smart brands are already practising their listening skills. They are evening learning how to stay quiet sometimes.
It must be difficult.
The best way to check who is focussing on substance and who on spin.
Read last year's trade press. Exactly the same time last year: day, week and month. Flick through the old issues of Marketing Week, NMA or Revolution.
You are likely to come across a lot of boasting, product launches that promised to kill off the competition, or rebranding campaigns that claimed the category is just about to be turned on its head.
It is always interesting to see how many of them actually achieved what they set out to do. Why is that important for the rest of us, particularly agency people?
Because, from time to time, we tend to fall into that trap ourselves and start believing that the proverbial sizzle is more important than the proverbial sausage (to borrow Dave Taylor's metaphor). Reading the last year's trade press for a day is a good antidote for self-deception. It focuses one's mind on real, crucial strategic issues that our clients need to resolve, not on providing yet another physical extension of a 'bullshit bingo' ticket. Frankly, there is a lot of it around already.
Digital world has a particular form of the 'sizzle': technology. So, far we have been pushing it hard. The time has come to focus on the 'sausage' as well: tangible, measurable business benefits. If it comes with a nice 'sizzle' even better.
But don't take your eyes off the 'sausage.
I've noticed what seems to be a trend: more and more clients are accepting a new - and dangerous - definition of testing marketing campaigns. We have to stop it, or we could lose a powerful tool. The scenario looks like this: you think something needs to be tested. You assume that the test is to learn something which both you and the client don't know is certain yet but may have a hypothesis about.Then the client tells you that he or she expects the test to have a positive ROI. You ask, 'but wait a minute, this is just a test, we don't know if it'sgoing to work or not.' The client replies; 'Sorry, no guarantee, no test.'This is bad practice that should be addressed head on. Pressed with an ongoing requirement to justify every penny, coupled with the general cultureof fear that seems to be a modus operandi in so many companies, clients eems to be ever more sensitive to risk.All testing is a bit of a risky exercise but its aim is to produce insight and not immediate sales. Insight, that will be priceless in the long term and will help clients avoid wasting their advertising budgets.While I was working on Tesco.com's email programme years ago we tested 14 different subject lines alone! No wonder that they understand so well what works and what doesn't for their customers.I wish more clients out there realised the value of testing lies in the insight it provides and not immediate ROI.
A recent reference to a piece of music research by Dweezil Zappa - the son of legendary Frank - made me think that a similar principle maybe applies to digital marketing as well.
The reesearch refers to people's ability to recognise how well a piece of music is played. An average person - most of the head-nodding iPoders on the train, who enjoy music but know very little about the technical aspect of playing it - are quite capable to distiguish between a novice and a competent musician.
So, on a scale of 1-10, they can spot the difference between 1 and 5. Past 5, though, most of the quality-defining nuances, the phrasing, treatment of time - all the small, quirky subtleties that distinguish between good musicians and great musicians are lost on them. They are 'tone deaf' to things between 5 and 10, particularly to smaller incremental differences between the levels.
It makes me think that this is exactly what is happening with many of our clients now when it comes to digital. Having discovered digital marketing relatively recently, they behave like someone who has discovered a new genre of music: the enjoyment is on the generic side, focused on the middle ground, through the recognition of the most obvious manifestations of it: the conventions of the category.
They are still deaf to subtleties of the genre, its most sophisticated heights drowned in the noise of 'what everyone alse is doing'.
Yes, there are sophisticated 'listeners' out there, but still rare. As in any other endeavour. The sad thruth is that digital marketing is now a fairly mature discipline, with various 'flavours' of virtuosity that could be appealing to different brands. The problem is that clients responsible for digital marketing - often new to it - are not always adept to recognise them. So, they end in the same head-nodding spot as everyone else.
The hope is that the 'long tail' paradigm will soon find its application in the agency-client world as well - offering plethora of choice of different flavours of virtuosity - and appropriate matchings to specific products and services. Or brand personalities. For that, we will need more clients able to distinguish between 6 and 8. Not just to crank things up to 11.
Been asked recently about relentless rise of email and a possibility of it to cannibalise traditional DM. I think this is an interesting qestion that requires a bit of nuancing.
If the question is 'is email going to totally replace DM in the future' my answer is no. The old marketing adage is 'easy in, easy out', meaning that in many instances prospects and customers that came through email are the most likely to churn. And it still doesn't work for cold charity recruitment. Believe it or not, but higher CPA is sometimes actually a more desirable objective.If the question is 'is email going to replace DM for certain purposes' the answer is yes, particularly for (e)CRM, as it is easier and cheaper to personalize through email. In other words, email works very well for customer service and loyalty comms.I see DM and email as two complementary tools that together punch much better than if used separately. It's in the interest of email effectiveness to preserve DM.
Despite all the banter about web 2.0 universe, evidence shows that web 2.0 works like a cloud: it needs core condensation particles around which a drop of rain is formed. Otherwise, it’s just fog.
In our jargon: a company that wants to tap into the Web 2.0 space needs to start offering meaningful messages, connections and reasons for people to jump on it (or to push a thing themselves) and start self-organising in a focused way. Without it, it’s just a ramble.
All of the successful web 2.0 initiatives so far had a clear leadership established in the beginning somewhere, one way or another, either by a grass-roots geezer who took an opportunity to push what (s)he believes in, or by a clever organization that sent right messages out, through right tools. Things usually don’t just ‘happen’ in social networks.
Being 'out there' all the times, with an ear to the ground, and gently prodding and giving reasons to act is what smart companies are doing to benefit from social networking used as a marketing tool. Otherwise, it's just a 'plug & pray' school of marketing, relying on luck and chance to get the return, simply because this is what everybody else does.
Two examples of how nano-sized businesses exploit cost-efficiencies of difital media
I've recently redecorated my house and one of the jobs was to paint the front door. One of my friends is doing spray-painting and he kindly accepted to help me. His company is small, in fact there's only 3 people in it. But, they are more than busy, having to sometimes turn people down for jobs.
It was quite surprising to me (despite the familiar madness with DIY every spring). The secret is, he explained, in Google AdWords. They place them every month and it works - they get a constant stream of prospects.
What really stunned me, though, was the size of their budget: only £30 per month. So, for the price of a main course in a better London restaurant, he keeps his business thriving using the utterly democratised digital technology. His business area is not very contested, so the bids are a total bargain. He pays per click so the flow of prospects is enough to ensure a healthy conversion.
And that's it. No fancy advertising, no DM, not even flyers. Just a tiny boxed ad placed in a relevant place at the relevant time. And Bob is your uncle.
The other example comes from Ireland, where I recently went on (wet) holiday. We decided to do some seal watching and booked the tour with a small company in Kenmare. The owner was a marketing man's delight! He did everything right.
His commentary (pre-recorded) was fantastically informative and funny, giving the feeling of really understanding seals and their habbits; he served coffee and cookies on board; he had clean blankets to protect the passengers from high winds; he told great jokes.
But even more, he made the whole purchasing and consuming process a treat. When we called to book, he asked where did we hear about them; he tried to upsell accomodation immediately, but without pushing us; he asked us to sign the visitor's book; he asked, politely, for the email address as well, promising only one email during the season, with seal puppy photos; he also asked us to add our message to the appeal to protect the bay from speedboats and to restirct unplanned building of houses around the bay. Most of us did whatever he asked us to do, purely because he did it in such a charming and geunine way.
So, his email database is growing and we can't wait to receive our seal puppy photos. A perfect example of a great 'request marketing', if there ever was one. If only our bigger companies can learn this lesson.
... or, another angle on traditional web display ad formats.
I deliberately didn't say 'banners' because even that is misleading. Why on earth we need to have a banner format in the first place? How did they come about?
I met a friend a few weeks ago and he told me that one of his friends refers to the traditional banner format as 'fish fingers'. He is sick of them. That just about sums it up. They are reviled as an advertising format. They don't work. Many think they are dead (together with most of web display ads).
The story of traditional banners reminds me of the story about the 35mm film. I'd heard it a few years ago in Holywood, while visiting the Kodak theatre where the Oscar ceremony takes place. A very jovial guide explained to me - when I asked why 35mm for the film format in the first place - that when Thomas Edison asked George Eastman to supply film for his new camera, Eastman asked him if he had any particular size in mind. Allegedly, Edison replied: "Just about this", using his thumb and a forefigner to show the width of the film. Eastman, being a precise person, measured the distance between two fingers and it was exactly 35 millimeters. That's how the format was born.
I have a feeling that something similar has happened with banners as well. Somebody somewhere at HotWired thought about how to use the web page for advertising, couldn't comprehend any other model apart from display ads and then decided that top of the page, 468 x 60 pixels would be OK, probably because it fitted well with HotWired's masthead (HotWired being credited for running the first banner ad ever, although that is disputed by a whole year). How else would anyone arrive at 468 pixels exactly as a good width for a web ad!?
I am also proud to say that by some accounts the first ad had a Serbian word in it (being for Coors's 'Zima' drink - Zima in Serbian means 'winter' and the drink is named after it - really), but this is inconsequential to this story. Other sources claim that the first ad was for AT&T, also not relevant here.
What is relevant is that traditional online display advertising is in an undisputed decline, with paid-for search and more bold 'rich media' ads on the rise. 'Fish fingers' are dying out. Good or bad? Your call.
We are stuck for too long on the official definition of e-marketing permission. Just the fact that someone is not unsubscribing doesn't mean they like receiving our emails and could still be considered as 'warm', let alone 'hot', prospects.
So, whatever email marketing database you have, cut the third of it out. Feel free to think about that third as 'silent unsubscribes', people who simply can't be arsed to go and unsubscribe from your lovingly crafted emails.
That could explain a lot of response figures and could bring the real picture about what is happening with email today closer to the surface. Namely, that it is losing even more of its initial power than we thought.
How to find out who the 'silent unsubscribes' are? Ask them. Do a survey among your subscribers and you will find out, give or take a few percents. Do an in-depth, face-to-face interview and you will find out that even those that told you in the survey they are 'OK' to receive your emails actually don't read them.
Maybe it is time for us to change the definition of permission and to start grading it: 'basic permission' (only a legal minimum), 'active permission' (i.e. people who really read your emails) and 'request-level permission' (people who would actively go and ask you to send them the email again in case they've missed the last issue). How many of each do you have in your database, do you know? Any strategies to migrate your recipients through the tiers?
I know you have permission to talk to them, but think again.
Consumer electronics companies seem not to be able to get their heads around user experience. If the machine is good, the interface sucks, and vice versa. It's intellectual laziness and a missed chance for winning new customers.
I bought a new Panasonic HDD/DVD recorder the other day, a device that is new to the market, an improved model over the old - already coveted - machine and with lots of good reviews. It has everything, including a very decent 1080p upscaling (sorry, I'll explain another time). I was happy. Until I've accessed it's menu.
It is mild to say that it is drab. It's a total and utter letdown. It looks like something designed on Spectrum, to be used on early Teletext. It is such a dissapointment to my eye accustomed to slick interface designs of the type that TomToms, or modern PC operating software have. Even my Sony TV has a very decent one. But not Pana. Uh-huh.
It's a shame. Apart from manuals (the most neglected marketing form of the modern era), user interfaces of consumer electronic devices are the place (and the time) to excel in branding of the type that a good website would provide. In other words: information architecture + interface design + usability. It is often a starting point for using the device, a difference between great and lousy customer experience.
To develop a decent set of menus today shouldn't (and it doesn't) cost the Earth. It just requires marketing thinking instead of leaving this to techies. In the same way that most successful websites of today are run by marketing guys, not the labcoats. Even where labcoats are still running the show (e.g. Google), they are ex-labcoats-turned-marketing-men.
The modern consumer electronic devices are so complex today that using them is simply more than just a product exercise. It is a service proposition as well and that proposition is most obvious in manuals and device menus. DVD players (in all variants), set-top boxes, mobile phones, cameras and sat-nav systems - even TVs - are essentially computers, are becoming even more so every day and there is no reason whatsoever why they shouldn't be treated as ones. Which means logical, intuitive, well-named and explained menu options, all wrapped up in good and inspiring design.
Do it well, and advocacy follows (provided that the product is good, of course). Do it badly, and it's an opportunity for a dissapointed moan. It could be that tiny difference between a successful and the less successful product.
It's something that so many companies still don't get, and that Apple understands so well.
Lazar Dzamic
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Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 30 Jun 2009
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