Interesting times. We’ve got a “media democracy” happening today, where the content we consume is no longer defined by a select group of publishers and no single form of media captures all of our attention. Like breakfast cereals, there are plenty of media choices available to consumers.

The 4th screen is mobile. Don't leave home without it.

Clearly, because of the speed and breadth of technology innovation, our content consumption preferences are changing. But what are we doing, as marketers and advertisers (yes, I’m talking to both the buy and sell sides), to take advantage of that shift? As Jonathan Mendez pointed out in a blog post, “…understanding the way people consume media is paramount to optimizing it for revenue generation.”

Well said, Jonathan, “Crusader for Relevance” that you are. Today more than ever, it’s imperative that we take the time to figure out where the consumers are, what they’re talking about and in what format we should deliver the content they’re consuming if we want to maximize the opportunity to interact (and transact) with them.

There's a content consumption profile for everyone. What's yours?

The great thing about working in digital is that we don’t have to guess about any of this. We have incredibly rich stores of real-time data we can pull from, turning a wait-and-see historical approach into a just-in-time, highly proactive approach. And because today’s technology is so damn effective and in the case of Google Analytics, free, we can and should be measuring everything because as we’ve all found out (or will at some point), you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

When you couple the ad networks and exchanges, with their automated processes of buying and selling ad inventory, to this ability to precisely measure consumers’ content consumption preferences, you’ve got the power to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time in the right place. Of course, we’ll all need to get a lot better at the math, but we’re talking near real-time execution down to the site level. And if it ain’t working the way we planned, we can change it – in real-time. Jeepers!

Yes, my friends. It’s time to really hunker down and work to understand the changing content consumption preferences of the consumers whose attention (and interaction) we so desperately want. The days of putting an advert on 3 networks to reach 80% of the female population in America are gone. It’s a highly fragmented media free-for-all out there and the consumer, wherever she’s consuming her content, is in charge.

Listen up.

I was with a group of savvy bankers sometime back discussing the Web and social media, among other things. Another group of smart business people expressing the same frustrations and questions regarding wrapping their heads around digital marketing and how they can use digital channels to effectively reach consumers.

We got to the social media part of the discussion and I heard the typical comments, like “…none of my friends are on Twitter.” This may be true, but one thing that’s important to consider is that there’s a good chance that our friends don’t fit into any of our target audience segments.

Considerations for Target Audience Research

To ensure that your marketing efforts are relevant and optimized for specific target audiences, there are a several things you need to carefully consider:

Demographics – this is a term often used to group members of your audience together into a ‘segment’. Very often, these segments relate to age, gender, and income levels. Careful research here can help you align the demographics of your target market segments with specific marketing channels and help maximize ad spend.

Psychographics – consumer attitudes and tendencies may not always align with demographic data. For example, my neighbor’s 11 year-old son is a Harley Davidson enthusiast and has some great Harley accessories, but he’s not buying a Harley anytime soon. Harley enthusiasts could be 16 or 60. The more you know about the lifestyles of your target audience, the more you can tailor your marketing message.

Content Consumption Preferences – our loyalty is to the content, not the delivery mechanism. Important factors to consider here include: What are their favorite sources of info? What influences them? What’s the best single source of info they can tap? This will help you when considering strategic partners, tools, and channels. How about the target audience’s attitude toward the competitor’s content (they’re only a click away)?

Content Creation Preferences – what kind of content is your target audience creating…right now? What photo sites do they use to upload their pix? What kind of blogs do they create? Are they already engaged in blogs about your product category, your brand, or those of your competitors? Monitoring conversations out there about your brand (and your competitor’s brand, too) is an important part of your strategy. Here’s a list of tools to get you started.

Channels – based on your research above, you then choose the right channels to reach your audience. It’s critical to do the research first, then choose the channel(s). If you put the cart before the horse here, you risk spending money on a channel that may not resonate with or be used by your target audience.

Measurement – while not something needed for developing your target audience metrics, I wanted to include measurement here because it’s so important. When considering the measurement of marketing effectiveness, there are numerous factors involved, and it’s difficult to pinpoint what metrics a company should be using to define and track ROI. However, starting with a strong set of quantifiable goals makes it easier to develop KPIs for measuring results. For example, saying you want more visitors to your website isn’t the same as setting a goal to increase unique visitors by 30% over a 3 month period.

What are you doing to figure out who your target audience is and the best way to reach them? I’d love to hear from you.

There’s a post over on Chris Brogan’s blog about “How Frameworks Improve Your Business Thinking.” Food for thought, for sure, and the money quote (as my buddy Drew Harteveld would say) takes the form of a couple of important questions Chris asks: “What are the parameters of what you’re doing? How do you align them with the business goals of the company?”

I’ve been involved in some really exciting projects over the years and the thing that made the raging successes just that (besides great people!) was time spent defining business requirements – exactly what the business needed the project to deliver. On the other hand, the projects I’ve been called on to rescue have also shared a common thread; a lack of clearly defined business drivers, poor business processes and a very weak project framework.

Developing a project framework shouldn’t take a lot of time or generate pain and overhead, if the team members involved have a good understanding of the business and the desired outcomes of the proposed initiative. Further, a solid project framework provides a way for teams to work efficiently and effectively, both individually and collectively.

Where do you start when developing a project framework for your initiatives? There’s no cookie-cutter approach, since most initiatives are handled as innovations. However, I’ve come up with a basic formula that’s worked for me:

1. Needs analysis. You really need to take some time and figure out exactly what the business (and the people it serves) really want to carry out through the initiative. As Chris says in his post, “What are the parameters of what you’re doing? How do you align them with the business goals of the company?” Involve stakeholders and anyone else you think can help you develop a road map for success on a particular project. And don’t forget to ask “Why?” quite a bit when defining these parameters.
2. Capabilities assessment. Now that you know what the initiative is trying to do and “Why?”, you need to figure out what the organization (and the people it serves) is actually organizationally, socially and technically (if applicable) capable of. It’s an informal gap analysis, focused on organizational capabilities.
3. Balance needs against capabilities. It’s really an art to ride the crest of change and even more of an art to teach others to ride the crest with you. But this is where your experience and business sense come into play (and face it, this is why you get the big bucks, dammit.) Helping the organization figure out what they can do internally and what they’ll need to do to get external help to fill any gaps is almost as important as the needs analysis itself.

As Chris says, “…this seems simple, and yet, it’s part of what many of us forget to do.” By no means is the approach above the only way to develop a meaningful, useful framework for your own initiatives, but it’s definitely a good start. Modify the formula as you see fit so it works for your initiative.

Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear about your approach to building a useful project framework.

Patents can be an expensive undertaking, but depending on your business, technology and market, it could be a brilliant business strategy.

A recent article in The Next Web talked about Microsoft‘s strategy of “turning up the screws” on its competition using patent protection as a business weapon of choice.

At the rate that HTC is rumored to pay the company (between five and ten dollars per shipped unit), Microsoft is almost certainly profiting more off of the success of Android than it is from its own mobile line, Windows Phone 7. – The Next Web, June 27, 2011

In fact, based on other articles out there, it would seem that Microsoft is generating five times more revenue from Android than from Windows phone.

Does your business plan include some thinking around patent protection [and patent revenue generation]? If not, step back and check your IP carefully. Maybe it’s time to have a nice lunch with your attorney.

For those who’d prefer the DIY route, your first stop should be the US Patent and Trademark Office. You can also check into services like LegalZoom.com and reference resources like Nolo.com.

A sampling of interesting links from my feeds this week.

A sampling of interesting links from my feeds this week.

Human-computer interaction is the stuff of science fiction novels. Here are some cool ideas that eliminate the fiction by way of some really kick-ass science and innovative thinking.

From headsets that read your brainwaves and respond to your facial expressions and emotional experiences to instant access to relevant information that can “…help us make optimal decisions about what to do next and what actions to take” to cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands to tangible interface music cubes, where the musician controls the system by manipulating tangible objects.

Man. I love this stuff.

Tan Le: A Headset That Reads Your Brainwaves

“Up until now, our communication with machines has always been limited to conscious and direct forms. Whether it’s something simple like turning on the lights with a switch, or even as complex as programming robotics, we have always had to give a command to a machine, or even a series of commands, in order for it to do something for us.” – Tan Le

Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry: SixthSense

“I’ve been intrigued by this question of whether we could evolve or develop a sixth sense — a sense that would give us seamless access and easy access to meta-information or information that may exist somewhere that may be relevant to help us make the right decision about whatever it is that we’re coming across.” – Patti Maes

David Merrill: Siftables

“…what if when we used a computer, instead of having this one mouse cursor that was a like a digital fingertip moving around a flat desktop, what if we could reach in with both hands and grasp information physically, arranging it the way we wanted?” – David Merrill

Reactable

The Reactable was conceived and developed since 2003 by a research team at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Günter Geiger and Marcos Alonso presented their creation for the first time in a public concert at the International Computer Music Conference 2005 in Barcelona.

Oh – and BTW, if anyone’s thinking about getting me a gift for Christmas, Reactable Live would be perfect!

Interesting article in MediaPost today titled, “The New 5% Solution: Tech Projects Vs. Media Campaigns” that talks about how advertisers and agencies should be investing in innovation in the form of new media ideas.

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” – Steve Jobs, Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998

The client side carries it’s own set of challenges, but on the agency side, it looks like most are just struggling to keep up and stay alive ["what the hell is all this 'digital' fuss about?"]. There’s no time for innovation or invention because of an unceasing focus to generate revenue above all else. That’s a dangerous mindset – and stupid.

In the past week, I’ve had several conversations with execs working for large brands who tell me their agency sucks. Why? No new ideas, no innovation – same old, same old. Some believe that the investment and change needed to spur innovation can only come through new business revenue; Get new business coming in, then beg for some money from management to make the real magic happen.

Even Fred Flintstone would see that as prehistoric thinking. How can this even begin to make sense in an industry where innovation is the word of the day and creativity and doing cool stuff have been the driving force of agency [and client] success for years?

“…the practice of selling promises has taken a back seat to a new core philosophy based on the idea of delivering experiences.” – Conor Brady, Chief Creative Officer at Organic [Omnicom], AdvertisingAge, May 2010

According to dozens of people I’ve polled on the topic, I’m not alone in my POV. The peeps I’ve talked with on both sides of the industry fence say this represents a serious lapse in forward thinking. Reactionary, not proactive business thinking. I agree and I think the concept put forth in the MediaPost article is right on.

…advertisers and agencies should set aside a minimum of 5% of their budget to invest in incubating new media ideas, especially ones with emerging technology developers.

Clients need to demand more of their agencies and agencies need to, well, get right with themselves. The creative space is all about innovation and experimentation. And a commitment to innovation [and creating competitive advantage] takes some balls, smart thinking, smart people [in the right roles], time, and money.

What’s your experience/opinion on this? I’d love to hear from you.

A sampling of interesting links from this past week.

The past six to eight months have brought an influx of contacts from executive recruiters from many touch points, including LinkedIn and Twitter. Recently, a friend at a New York ad agency pointed Tony Stanol from Global Recruiters of Calabasas my way.

Tony and I chatted for a bit and subsequent to our call, Tony visited my blog and left a comment on one of the posts ["The Digital Marketing and Advertising Job Market is Heating Up"]:

As an executive recruiter who has seen a lot of new recruiting assignments recently, I can tell you with certainty that the digital sector is hot. This is promising for talented professional candidates. There are three categories of advertising people emerging in today’s job market:

1. The Digital Savvy/Digital Native who has spent the majority of his or her professional hours working on interactive and digital activities in the past several years
2. The 360° Integrated Pro with a “T” shape, i.e., a deep understanding of a number of functions from digital to traditional to direct and experiential, but deep in any one of them, and
3. The Dinosaur who has little or no digital experience.

Looking at Tony’s list, I’d certainly classify myself as a digital native as well as a 360 Integrated Pro. I’ve been at the forefront of the digital wave since the 80′s including creating a commercial social network for electronic musicians, “thinking” digital signage ala Minority Report, and a next-generation SMS mobile marketing platform that offered users the features, flexibility, and usability that are only now starting to show up in smartphone applications. I’m also proud to have co-authored “Strategic Networking” with Paul David Henry, a 528-page whopper of a book that detailed the use of computer networks [like the Internet] as tools for communication, learning, and eCommerce.

The one thing that’s been a constant for me over the past 25 years of “being digital” is change. My colleague at Mullen, Edward Boches, says:

When you consider that YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are all barely five years old; that social media remains in its infancy; and that mobile, LBS and smartphones are an even greater novelty, there are only two things we can be sure of. Faster change is inevitable. And we have no idea what’s really going to happen. Still, we have to prepare.

Edward is right on. Despite the rate at which the advertising business [and the world!] is changing and the uncertainty of where its all headed, we have to prepare. Part of that prep work for you and I is to gain a solid understanding of who we are and where we fit in the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem. Once we have a handle on that, we can chart a course for the future, with the understanding that our road map to success will need to be constantly updated as we ride the crest of change.

Where do you fit in the list of advertising people emerging in today’s job market that Tony describes above? Leave a comment.