on demand

On demand is moving

2007-12-23T06:17:00.000-08:00

My friends have advised me that On Demand needs a new home so now please head to http://robnorman.wordpress.com

2007-12-20T17:13:00.001-08:00

Shooting up at the ball game

2007-12-13T14:17:00.001-08:00

The Mitchell report condemns the players of Major League Baseball but the shame should be shared by the administrators, owners and managers. The scale of the wrongdoing is such that most involved were cheats, fools or collaborators.

There is no way the records can be wiped and history re-written. The answer is simple. From Opening Day 2008 MLB should publish its banned substance list, introduce frequent and random testing and punish transgressors with immediate life bans for the players and an extra game in the lost column for the teams.

Why is this the answer? Simple, it costs the cheats and their employers money.

For the record Mr Bonds stood at the plate just 8 times when Mr Clemens was on the mound. In the juiciest of contests Mr Bonds struck out twice, was walked five times and hit by a pitch once. It is unlikely that this record will need revising in the future.

Well that's nice

2007-12-11T11:18:00.000-08:00

One of our agencies was named Interactive Agency of the Year today and another as the runner-up. That's a good thing.

The question is why?

For the most part 'of the year' awards are a measure of momentum. A good run of new business and higher profile campaigns from September through Novmember helps a lot as it puts you front and center in the judging season. In fact those three months are probably worth double the identical performance in the quarter from January to March.

The most important thing to realise if you win is that expectations of your ability to deliver grow and it's really easy to slip from the top of the mountain. Also your staff become targets for your competitors so you have to do everything humanly possible to retain them.

In many ways being average is easier but if you were forced to choose.............

Britain annexes Alaska

2007-12-07T11:23:00.000-08:00

Mike Gravel. He's our guy. An online 'match your ideas with a candidate' servive reveals the Democratic Senator for Alaska as the number 1 choice for ever Brit I know that has taken part. Broadly speaking Gravel is green, pro choice, anti death penalty and anti-war.

This much we know...........Gravel has an Alaskan snowaballs chance in hell of getting elected and that Brits (or at least my friends) are by American standards the most blood soaked of bleeding heart liberals.

Go Mike.

Tears for Sears

2007-12-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

Before I go on I need to point out that my company used to be a supplier to Sears but was fired from its duties in the last year.

Yesterday, unconnected with the above, the company announced a 99% fall in earnings but more disturbingly an approximate fall of 5% in sales in stores that had been trading a year or more.

Sears is in an uncomfortable place. It means little to its customers, it lacks the price story of Wal Mart or the style story of Target. It means little to its staff beyond the check and appears to have lost any of the sense of pride in its endeavors that seem to characterize good businesses.

The truth of it is that restoring a retail business to health requires the right merchandise, the right sourcing and logistics, the right environment and the right attitude among all the people the customer faces.

You save money and create efficiencies through the prism of these needs as doing it any other way is merely akin to peeling a bad onion. By and large they don't get any better the more you peel.

Sears retail estate is in pretty poor shape and there are clearly limbs that need lopping from the tree and others that require nurturing in a somewhat intense fashion.

One problem maybe the ownership. Sears is controlled by people with heritage in hedge funds who, as a group, prefer the notion of 'strip and spruce' to that of planting seeds and encouraging growth. Sears like many iconic businesses before it will discover it has no inalienable right to exist. It does have the 'infrastructure impact' that demands airlines are saved nor the localized and massive economic impact of the auto business. It's said that many newer mall owners don't want Sears as an anchor and if that's true the writing may be on the wall.

To survive Sears needs to spend on its estate, its merchandising and its people first. Efficiencies only benefit businesses that actually exist.

The launch of the new IAB web site

2007-11-29T07:56:00.000-08:00

The IAB was kind enough to publish this today:

Despite the sweaty palms and the pacing up and down, it’s a pleasure to be here in the delivery room to witness the birth of the IAB’s new Web site. Randy will make for a wonderful father and we should look forward to buying him a cigar to celebrate. However wherever we encounter joy, fear is never far away. I rather wonder though if it is not being born into a difficult world, one in which it, like other non-commerce web sites might be increasingly seen as an anachronism in the wider world of interactive consumer communications.

It’s a mission thing. The IAB seeks to assist our craft, and historically at least its mission has been‘to organize the industry to set standards and guidelines that make interactive an easier medium for agencies and marketers to buy and capture value.’

The impending challenge arises from the very concept of seeking rules, standards and conventions in a world which only exists because smart folks called Berners-Lee (WWW GUI), Bezos (Amazon), Yang (Yahoo!), Whitman (EBay), Brin (Google), Newmark (Craigslist), Ferber (Ad.com), Friis (Joost) and Zuckerberg (Facebook) among many others showed a total disregard for rules, standards and conventions in creating the most powerful communications platforms of our generation. Their mission was in so many ways similar to the IAB’s but they chose to represent the needs of a very different constituency, they organized the channel to make interactive an easier medium for consumers , developers and sellers to use and capture value.

In doing this they proceeded without regard to our business models and took a bet on the possibility that revenue would accrue as a consequence of usage and that said revenue could come from our customers and their consumers in some unspecified way other than a general sense of convenience and usefulness.

The result has been a significant challenge to the hegemony of many of our businesses and why should we be surprised because it’s not just agencies and publishers that have felt the sting of the new. New businesses everywhere have been created by the Internet and its applications that share some key characteristics that their forebears have difficulty in replicating. It’s rather like asking someone for driving directions and getting the answer, “I wouldn’t start from here.”
The key characteristics are low cost bases allowed by minimal production and distribution infrastructure, the creation of non-physical goods and services and the propagation of advertising inventory at something approaching zero marginal cost. Contrast that with the organization of TV networks, newspaper publishers, ad agency networks, the phone companies and Yellow Pages and for that matter the United States Postal Service itself.

Part of our challenge is that we as a collective have tried to bend the interactive space to our will principally by attempting to apply familiar paradigms to a new and unfamiliar space. We have even tried hard to apply our language in ways that don’t recognize the real nature of the beast. Of all these references the most common and misplaced is our insistence on referring to the web as a medium (and by turn a line item on a media plan) when at the very least it is a channel and by any reasonable analysis it is, prosaically, a platform and, perhaps more colorfully, a parallel universe.

The notion of a parallel universe is easily explained when we try and think of any human activity beyond the strictly biological that cannot be replicated online through the facility of the Internet protocol. To save you pondering that for too long restrict it to the functions of marketing communications. All of advertising, direct marketing, sales, promotions, sponsorship, PR, cause marketing, event marketing and consumer research thrive in this environment which in itself warns against a mindset that seeks to find narrow and, therefore, controllable definitions that only fits the language of media planner and publisher.

Back to the role of the IAB. We did not and will not gain control of how many characters are allowable in a search listing, we won’t and can’t gain control of applications developed for the increasingly open platforms of Facebook and Myspace. Google and Joost will make their own minds up about ad formats for Youtube and IPTV. Even ABC developed its own ad model and format for its full episode player. For everything we know about ads do we really understand applications?

This implies a triumph of innovation over regulation and through hooded and trepidatious eye-lids a triumph of chaos over standards. It further implies, assuming an irreversible tide, that what we really need is a combination of imagination and production efficiency that allows marketers, their agencies and publishers to develop truly valuable (and thereby compelling) communication applications that create value through the dual ability to increase the potential of changing hearts and minds and simultaneously reducing the costs of goods sold.

In this last point lies what may be the future of the IAB. In the channel or universe suggested here the key challenge for marketers is developing the measures of effectiveness and the understanding of the formats and processes that drive that effect. To be clear this is the measure of marketing’s effect on metrics like awareness and attitudes rather than the internal measures of media like reach and frequency and ways of counting. It’s not that these don’t have importance rather that they are not in and off themselves a reason for being.

The IAB stands at the threshold of a tremendous opportunity and possibly of a new mission:
“To assist brand owners, their agencies, content owners and distributors in understanding and measuring the effect of communications delivered through addressable platforms and to monitor and report on user interaction with evolving communication models.”

We have the community to achieve this, yet so far it’s close but no cigar.

Teenage sex and mobile marketing; 1967 and all that

2007-11-29T05:25:00.000-08:00

The summer of love was the summer of liberation when it became commonplace to do what you had only talked about previously. 2008 just might be the year when the same is true of mobile marketing and advertising.

So far the category has been held back by the triple play of limited bandwidth, ludicrous data pricing and handsets that just were not up to the job. 2008 will see a continued decline in cost and , among other things, the arrival of the 3G I Phone.

This combination of events finally creates the context that makes markets. Critically the device means that messaging and content can evolve in such a way that stories can be told within compelling content wrappers and these stories can be enhanced by the unique place based interactions that mobility allows.

Naturally all this comes with a warning. Firstly, the best looking kids get laid first, not everything has the charm of the I Phone. Second, it behoves us to remember that just because we can does not mean we should and that a combination of abstinence and protection is never a bad idea.

Recession update

2007-11-27T04:22:00.000-08:00

My wife's uncle has many sage like qualities. He made a very good living for many years as a technical analyst and gave me the only piece of financial advice I can remember, a simple three point list:

Stocks go up

Not all stocks go up all the time

If you have to look at the prices every day you can't afford it

He offers the following grain of hope about the impending slump. "All previous bull markets have ended when almost everyone said they would last forever. This time everyone thinks it's all over so maybe they will be just as wrong this time."

Let's hope he is right. Whatever happens buy his new book from amazon.co.uk

Did Macy's own the Koons?

2007-11-24T08:48:00.000-08:00

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is a wonder. It's kitsch, populist, perfectly choreographed and open to all. 'All' includes a million or so New Yorkers, 50 million TV viewers and and floats and inflatables as diverse as Ronald McDonald, Dolly Parton (!) and a Jeff Koons silver bunny alongside the pink Energizer bunny. This is to say nothing of 'pa's' from the casts of Legally Blonde, Xanadu, Mary Poppins and Young Frankenstein.

This begs an interesting question. Given that Koons this month became the world's most expensive living artist (at $25 million) did Macy's have the foresight to acquire an ownership interest in the bunny?

The Golden Generation

2007-11-21T14:58:00.000-08:00

The ambitious soubriquet conferred on England's current crop of soccer players (Beckham et al) which once again proves that little that blusters is gold. For most teams Israel's unlikely conquest of Russia would have been a lifeline. For England merely a rope with which to hang themselves.

Tomorrow the tabloids will savage their erstwhile heroes with the same blithe venom that kings beheaded their fools 500 years ago. The hapless manager will be vilified eased only by the breathtaking golden parachute that rewards failure. Months will pass 'til the next poor sap takes the job based on the joint criteria of 'plausible enough to appoint, stupid enough to accept'.

English soccer is OK, the circus that surrounds it is quite disgusting. Football maybe going home, but not to England.

The only way is down

2007-11-18T14:37:00.000-08:00

This weekend four stories led the UK papers:

The depth of the sub-prime mortgage crisis
Hyper-inflation of web 2.0 valuations
'Insane' prices in a contemporary art market being driven through the roof by dealers buying the work of their own artists.
The celebration of Israel in the English press albeit only as a result of their soccer team doing England a favor.

It all adds up to a recession so it's time to get smart, seek out value over hype, and look for every opportunity to tidy the house for the ride. Good luck everyone

What is a Clomplier?

2007-11-14T01:43:00.000-08:00

Clomplier : noun

A company which in its various guises is a client (cl), competitor (omp), and supplier (lier) to another company.

Usage: Microsoft is a client of WPP as we perform services for them, they are a competitor as AvenueA / Razorfish buys media and creates communication, they are a supplier as we are a customer of Atlas.

Google Masseuse makes millions - is this the ultimate 'happy ending'?

2007-11-13T13:27:00.000-08:00

The NY Times ran a story about a newly retired house masseuse at Google who by virtue of her status as an early employee racked up multi millions in stock. God bless her. It's interesting however that the corporate world bifurcates into those companies that enrich employees and stockholders through capital appreciation and those that enrich shareholders through the payment of dividends.

Google remains a smallish player in the great scheme of corporate earnings and the time will come when it needs to reward a massively larger shareholder base with a small share of those earnings. It may be interesting to follow that transition.

The Language of Sports part 2, Boxing and Horse racing

2007-11-13T08:37:00.000-08:00

And in second and third place after baseball..... Boxing Below the belt	Horse racing Down the stretch
Blow by blow	Each way bet
Fight to the finish	Falling at the last or the first (fence)
Going the distance	First past the post
In your corner	Home stretch
Knock out	Hot favorite
Knock out punch	Long odds
Left / right hook	Long shot
Low blow	Neck and neck
On the canvas	Odds on
On the ropes	Photo finish
Out for the count	Rank outsider
Ring rusty	Slow out of the gates
Sucker punch	Trifecta
Throw in the towel	Two horse race
Uppercut Saved by the bell Toe to toe	Crack the whip Pipped at the post

The sport language list: Part 1 Baseball

2007-11-11T05:18:00.000-08:00

As predicted baseball seems to be our winner with 27 out 113 credible contributions.

Simple rules:

Add to the list
Argue for the entry to be moved to another sport or the general category

Here is the list:

Bottom of the ninth

Bush league

Curve ball

Designated hitter

Double header

Double play

Double switch

Ducks on the pond

Getting to 1st base (or second or third)

Grand Slam

Hit it out of the park

Home run

In the ballpark

Major league

Minor league

On deck

Out of left field

Pinch hitter

Play in the big leagues
Screwball

Setting the table

Squeeze play

Step up to the plate

Strike out

Three strikes and out

Touching base

Triple play

Way off base

That old Facebook thing again

2007-11-09T05:55:00.000-08:00

I have run into a number of Facebook execs since my last post. They remain convinced that their integrity is not challenged by the model and that previous life changers such as opening up beyond the college community and the development of mini feed looked threatening but ended up being embraced.

My own view remains that this is very very different and creating the social shill on the back of very personal data creates a benefit to Facebook ludicrously out of proportion to the benefit to the community.

Facebook Social Ads - Be careful what you wish for

2007-11-06T12:29:00.001-08:00

Unimpeachably brilliant; the application of social networking principles to advertising. Let brands make friends, let the friends make more friends. Let people share what they buy with their friends who will buy more. Target your advertising against the declared interests of members.

What could be better unless......

The clutter on everyone's home page becomes impenetrable
If people who gave up information for the use of their friends maybe don't like it being used by advertisers
If those who opt in to allow others to see their purchases of music, sneakers and cosmetics should just maybe slip up and buy a porn film that now everyone will know about

Once again we have a zero wastage in advertising headline, once again we have the death of traditional advertising obits ready to run. Not so fast, what we do have is a massive challenge in reputation management and just one more destination to deal with in terms of driving the traffic with messaging that shapes opinion.

There is no doubt that advertisers will rush into the space but there needs to be some really smart thinking about how to harvest the eggs without killing the Golden Goose.

Not everyone agrees, see the AdAge article here

Open Social - the new tipping point

2007-11-03T16:13:00.000-07:00

The Google / MySpace Open Social announcement means that applications designed for Facebook and distributed across its network will soon, with tweaks, work across almost all social networking applications.

For advertisers this is both intriguing and scary. Intriguing because you get to attach commercial messaging to stuff you can be almost certain is being used; scary because the demands on relevance go sky high.

I suspect this will be a truly disruptive event as it is possible that applications will somehow become a really major component of the digital experience and require a really significant adjustment for marketers.

It's the notes you leave out - The Police at MSG

2007-11-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

Halloween at the Garden. Very disappointing. About 30 years ago Buddy Rich the greatest jazz drummer of his time made a rock album. Soon after he was on a chat show with Ginger Baker, the greatest rock drummer of his (or any other?) generation.

Baker told Rich that the notes you leave out are as important as the ones you put in implying that rock and roll and over-elaboration don't mix.

The Police over-elaborated everything last night and in so doing killed the 'geordie reggae' meets rock' that made them what they were.

Less is more.

Future of Business Media Conference

2007-10-31T10:43:00.000-07:00

Having bored a few people witless at this event someone made a film......... click to view it

The sweet smell of the pitch

2007-10-31T06:22:00.000-07:00

Another day, another dollar. Pitch time in 40 minutes. I like this one because it connects the new and the old. This client has a multi-generation media franchise with a particular media segment which with the odd exception has abjectly failed in evolving in the digital world.

We are going to tell them how to make that happen and their prize will be clear leadership in the category achieved by shaping it to their will, to the benefit of the consumer, their media partners and themselves. How can that be a bad thing.

Guest contribution from Randy Rothenberg of the IAB

2007-10-30T18:27:00.000-07:00

Randy posted this excellent and as always insightful comment on my Facebook piece. Thanks so much!

I herewith support Rob's blog -- in word and deed! I want to throw in some wild cards, though. The analysis assumes all viewership of Facebook ads will be by Facebook members on Facebook. But two phenomena could upend this: syndication (the intentional placement of content, including advertising, in multiple venues); and "decontextualization" (the extraction of content from its primary venue into multiple venues). Syndication is primarily associated these days with networks, while decontextualization is associated with widgets.In other words, Facebook content (ads included) won't only be seen on Facebook (and the same with other content-hosting sites). If you accept that premise, you also have to accept a corollary: there will be different pricing schemes, based on context. On average, Rob's math may still work out -- although I'd be very cautious about extrapolating from today's CPM's to future pricing schemes, especially as consumers become habituated to some sites and those sites, in turn, are able to charge increasing environmental premiums.

Red Sox Nation

2007-10-29T05:22:00.000-07:00

Boston win the Series. It's a shame the Rockies did not show up and the contrast between the most exciting regular season ever and the damp squib of the Fall Classic could not be more acute. The last Series of equal torpor was the Sox 4-0 blow out of the Cardinals in 2004, but here's the thing. If you are a Boston fan 4-0 is EXACTLY what you want. All the tension of being a fan all your life is quite enough thanks.

Extraordinarily dumb

2007-10-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

The Giants played the Dolphins at Wembley today. It rained, the ball was wet, the grass was wet. It happens. At half time the experts opined that the relative shortness of the grass was a problem and offered the following insight.

"Over there they make the field for 165 pound soccer players like Beckham. These two teams have over 30 guys weighing more than 300 pounds."

Why didn't I think of that. For any who missed it the Giants won 13-10.