Notes from the Arms Race

One of the promises of interactive marketing was that it would make marketing more efficient by making it more relevant, interesting, and engaging for consumers. Instead of being bombarded by traditional advertising everywhere we turned, marketers could use technology to target the right people with the right messages and make those messages engaging and interesting.

Or not. As is often the case with the promise of better things to come, old thinking trumps new capabilities. Every now and then I come across interactive ads that are so mired in the ideas of "interruption marketing" that they make me stop and think, "Wow. These people really don't get it."

Banners and pop-ups are one of the great battlegrounds of interruption marketing. Banners started appearing on web sites. Consumers started ignoring them, or in the case of those who were more adamant in their dislike of them, blocking them with software.

Then came pop ups. You're not going to look at our ad? Well, then we'll just throw it up in front of the web page you're trying to look at! The silliness of this is mind-boggling - and of course, things escalated with pop-up blockers, now a standard feature of every web browser.

Like a dog after a bone in a dumpster, some advertisers haven't given up, and so we've seen all kinds of new formats come along to circumvent ad-blocking technology.

If you've been on the Wired site recently, you've probably seen one that's striking in its simple, clueless insistence on making you look at an ad you're probably not interested in. The advertiser is Blackberry, who are flogging their new Pearl model.

I went to Wired to read something (imagine that) and found myself on this screen:

The Blackberry ad is on the right. It's a rollover - move your mouse over it, and it expands. But note the position of the ad - it's right between where your mouse pointer is likely to be (if you've just clinked a link to get the Wired page) and the scroll bar.

So if you try to go use the scroll bar in your browser window, you can't help but roll over the ad, and get this:

That's what happened to me. Several times.

Here is what I learned from Blackberry's ad: Nothing on Wired is interesting enough to merit this annoyance, and I have a new reason to hate Blackberries.

You know, if you put an ad up that relates to something of interest to me with a compelling call to action, I'll click on it and look around and perhaps even buy something from you. If you annoy me while I'm trying to do something else, on the other hand, I'll finish the ad experience thinking "That company bugs the crap out of me."

Here's a good question to always ask yourself: if I have to jump through hoops to defeat someone's efforts to avoid my advertising, or trick them into looking at it, is the result going to be worthwhile?

Failing to ask that question is a key sign that you're trapped in 20th century interruption marketing thinking, the endless arms race of spending more to get in consumers' faces for an ever-declining payoff.

Better Than the Super Bowl!

It would happen every year... after the Super Bowl, someone (usually from sales) would come wandering over to my office and say, "Did you see that ad in the Super Bowl! That company - Pets.com! It was cool! We should do that!"

Because, I guess, if we did that then everyone would immediately start writing orders for our $100,000 software package designed for a niche business market!

It's true: if we advertised on the Super Bowl, chances are every potential customer would think that we were the biggest player in our little market. Of course, we'd have no money left for anything else.

Still, the power of Super Bowl ads to capture the imagination and destroy common sense seems boundless, and so I had to chuckle when I saw this headline in Advertising Age: Better ROI From YouTube Video Than Super Bowl Spot.

"Super Bowl" and "ROI" in the same sentence always makes me chuckle. Not that everyone advertising there is wasting their money; hardly. If you need to reach a mass audience and you want to make a big splash, it's a reasonable choice to make. Measuring actual ROI on it, however, means fooling yourself about what you were trying to accomplish.

The Ad Age story is about Dove's "Dove Evolution" spot, which has been buzzing all over the Internet since it appeared on YouTube. It's an impressive bit of viral marketing: the message is compelling, it's well-produced. And the distribution is more or less free, thanks to YouTube and news pickups.

So of course the ROI will be great; the I is small, so the R is relatively bigger. But comparing it to Super Bowl ads sells it short, I think; comparing it to a regular Dove TV commercial would be a more accurate (and even more impressive) way to put it into perspective.  

Strawberry Fields Forever: How Market Focus Works

John and I were just talking with a client about narrowing the market focus for a somewhat generic business application he's developing. He's a smart guy, and he really gets it. In fact, he came up with the perfect story for explaining exactly why and how focus works.

He told us that when his kids were small, he took them and their grandfather out to a farm to pick strawberries. Their grandfather sat in one place and picked a couple of gallons of strawberries. During the same amount of time, the kids ran around and each picked about a quart.

This is the singular best explanation of the importance of focus that I've ever heard.

More Blogs That Are "Flogs"

Fresh on the heels of the Wal-Mart/Edelman sponsored blog flap comes word that McDonald's hase been doing the same thing.

I think these things highlight the biggest challenge a lot of marketers face when dealing with social media like blogs and social networks: changing their thinking. Much as we all like to talk about markets as conversations and getting closer to our customers, it can be very hard to let go of old thinking: marketing as a way of pushing messages out to a passive audience.

Try as you might, you can't manufacture authenticity. It takes time and effort, and I expect we'll be running across more of these blogs with stealth editorial control.

The Price of Popularity

It seems like there's been a constant trickle of news about problems with Apple products, from iPods that carried Windows viruses to flaky MacBook laptops. Kind of a blow for a company whose reputation is that of the computer company whose stuff just works without all the headaches of Windows machines.

But as this Wired News article points out, this may not reflect any quality problem at Apple... it could just be a side effect of their rapid growth:

It's my impression that Apple's quality control is no better or worse than before -- we're just hearing about it more.

Consider that Apple is growing like crazy. The company shipped 1.6 million Macs and 8.8 million iPods last quarter. That's more computers and iPods than in any three months in the company's history, representing a 30 percent to 35 percent annual growth rate...

I think Apple's problems are the corollary of falling crime statistics in the 1990s, which had mostly to do with demographics. In Apple's case, it's effectively doubled its market share for portables, and all of a sudden there are double the number of customers complaining about problems.

Welcome to the mass market, Apple.

Apple's "it just works" positioning has always been a bit of a myth; its computers, like all computers, are complex beasts, and sometimes a bad part will get through. And even when the hardware is perfect, any operating system and software can interact in strange, unexpected ways that make users tear their hair out.

I'm a longtime user of both Mac and Windows machines, and have never seen a difference in quality; I can point to my old iBook that shipped with a defective motherboard, or my lovely flat-screen iMac that is the most cantankerous computer I've ever owned as evidence. So I think Apple's problem here is partly its newfound popularity, and partly the result of building a reputation around a claim that's not really sustainable.

But for anybody, more customers means more people to complain, and that's something you've got to be prepared to deal with.

Sincerely

I was listening just now to Fresh Air on WBUR, and the non-ad ad told me that one of the underwriters or sponsors or whatever they call their, well, advertisers, is Loomis Sayles, a money management firm in Boston. The mention of Loomis Sayles said that the company is "sincerely committed" to something or other - some public good. (Evidence, of course, is that they support NPR.) I have no problem with the word committed, but I wanted to check. So I went to the Loomis Sayles web site and apparently they do have a commitment to good works, with extensive community involvement, etc. But the word sincerely. Sincerely? Doesn't the use of the word sincerely - when you're attributing it to yourself - always kinda sorta cast some doubts on someone’s sincerity?

Isn’t it much better when someone else says that you’re sincerely sincere?

It’s things like this that, as marketers, we need to watch out for. Words like “sincerely,” which sounds phony. And “genuine”, which sounds fake.

I’m sure there are other examples, and I’ll make a sincerely genuine effort to think of them.

When Does It Become Okay?

Gawker.com notes that a bar in New York's Financial District has a sign in its window advertising its happy hour that reads, "The happiest Happy Hour south of Ground Zero." (There's a photo if you follow that link.)

Okay, I saw it and thought... ick. I expect a lot of people react that way. It's not what I'd stick in the window if I were the proprietor - hey, let's attract customers by reminding them of the most horrible day in the city's history!

But then, I'm not a New Yorker. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe New Yorkers have heard "Ground Zero" so many times that it's lost that power. Maybe it's just another place name ("turn left when you pass Ground Zero and you can't miss it!")

I honestly don't know (and maybe some reader in New York can venture an opinion). But it does occur to me that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mostly referred to these days as cities in Japan where people live and work, Dachau is a town in Bavaria, and Bull Run is a suburban area outside of Washington, not just the place where a bloody civil war began and thousands were killed and wounded.

When do these names and phrases become part of our general vocabulary, with their connotations of tragedy receding into the background? At what point can you describe your location as "south of Ground Zero" without offending people?