Scale doesn’t mean anything if your ad doesn’t work

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“Equity analyst Dan Salmon may have never gotten as much feedback on a research note as the one he wrote six weeks ago about native ads — the trendy, bespoke executions mimicking the form of the content around them. “It was agency people saying ‘This doesn’t work, it doesn’t scale,'” Mr. Salmon recalled at a panel on native advertising convened by Ad Age and IPG at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. They require too much work to be efficient, the agencies complained.” – Ad Age, 1/11/2013.

There’s beyond a cogent argument against using “scale” as the measurement of success in advertising models. Buzzfeed’s Jonathan Perelman says it really well in the video below, as does the head of sales for Tumblr, but I’ll summarize and simplify here.

Scale doesn’t mean anything if you’re not effective. Engagement and life of relevance are direct drivers of effectiveness. “Native” ads, content marketing, and other continuing change-ups on the same old-same old “online” ad are what will create engagement in the future, and what will live on past the fractional moment in which the eye tracks a banner.

My apologies for Ad Age’s Flash videos!

Programmatic

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I’ve been asked to explain programmatic buying.

So….remember when you, or someone on your team, would review (hopefully on a daily basis at least) your digital ad performance, and re-allocate the buys immediately to optimize your spend? Requiring six calls to one or more agencies and probably a few arguments along the way.

Most tasks like this are better when machines do ’em.

Programmatic buying is part of marketing automation. Set your parameters and you can optimize in real time.

You’ll still be reviewing constantly, but you’ll be far more efficient, and you’ll learn a lot from the patterns that emerge.

 

The longer stick: social media marketing isn’t digital marketing

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A third piece of this thought process here:

The same people who come to me asking about “digital marketing” without exception lump social media in there. In fact, many seem to think that social media is the sum total of digital marketing, or at least the most important part.

NO. No. No. Social isn’t digital at all. Social media is just technology enabling things people already like to do.

For a business or a brand, social media amplifies all the things you are already trying to get your customers to do: talk about you; solve any problems they may have with you; stay in interaction with your brand; share your offers, promotions, and content with others; remain loyal; recruit new customers.

If you can see social of all kinds as part of a natural continuum of the efforts you’re already making – if you can visualize using it the same way you’d use a longer broom to reach a far-away cobweb, or use a longer stick to fish something out of a puddle – you’ll find social media strategy and tactics much, much easier to implement.

Why are you afraid to be creative?

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Why are you afraid to be creative?

I hear from friends and colleagues all the time that they don’t feel supported in the world or in business as creative individuals.

Look around you. Creativity is exploding.

Tumblr is past SIXTEEN BILLION pageviews per month and growing. Tumblr is about nothing but creativity.

Instagram has eighty million users and over four billion photos shared.

DeviantArt has two and a half billion pageviews per month and is in or nearly in (depending on whom you go to for stats) the top 100 websites in the US. DeviantArt is definitively about sharing and accessing creative work.

Kickstarter is everywhere and is full of people supporting the highly creative passion projects of complete strangers.

Trust it. There’s something going on.

Audience?

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Remember “the audience is listening”? No longer applicable.

If you define an audience as a group of people who are only, or even primarily, watching and/or listening, then there’s no such thing as an audience anymore.

Photo by Pieter Musterd. Creative Commons.

How to understand social

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There is a perception that social media is an extension of digital marketing, and this makes it frightening new territory for people who don’t see themselves as digital.

But it’s not the same as learning code or even learning to troubleshoot your laptop or hook up a home system. There’s a reason it’s called social. It’s not digital.

Relax.

It’s technology catching up to human nature.

If you can be social, you can handle social media. Just do what comes naturally (really!). Don’t sell, just like you wouldn’t sell to friends.

Photo by Suzanne. Creative Commons.

Conversation

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Conversation around brands isn’t any different than conversation at a cocktail party. The most interesting one will have the most conversation and leave the greatest impression. (The trainwreck will leave an impression, too, but it’s not the one you’re looking for.) Would you talk to your mom with that mouth?

Photo by Mo Riza. Creative Commons.

don't start with tools, start with goals

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Today’s hot tools are tomorrow’s obvious must-haves and next week’s obsolete strategies.

I'm Serious About The Post-Its (Tweet)

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Someone who really wants to make a difference in the branding world could work on making giant Post-It’s stick to walls better…11:57 AM Apr 29th from TweetDeck