Media Musing

Are media agencies on the way out? Again?

2016-10-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

15 years ago Campaign ran an article entitled DEATH OF THE MEDIA AGENCY (Aug 17 2001). The article mooted the potential demise of media agencies due to consolidation of buying points and falling margins. It concluded that we’d have to reinvent ourselves and offer a broader range of added-value services to offer a point of difference and ensure ongoing good health.

Well, we did, and we’re (mostly) still here. Let’s pause for a moment and remember the fallen…

Media agencies have spent the last 15 years wrestling with each other, occasionally taking lumps out of each other’s billings then getting them back elsewhere. We’ve all sort of established a bit of an equilibrium where change in dominance is glacial.

The next earthquake

But every now and then there is a seismic event that rattles the media industry. Each time we adjust, refocus and carry purposefully on with a revised trajectory. The latest earthquake is all to do with data – or more specifically with data owners - and the question has re-emerged.

Different pressures this time and potentially even more potent. Access to massive data sets creates both an opportunity and a threat. It changes things.

The current environment poses a major threat to Media Agencies. Big data owners are engaging with other big data owners directly, circumnavigating media agencies. Clients and media owners can unite and, if clients take on a decent media team they can set themselves up to deal with media owners themselves: especially if they can access a self-serve media optimisation platform.

It’s time to change again: either that or see our services become less relevant and stolen by nimble, purpose-built media agencies. Media agencies have to offer something different to prevent this becoming the norm.

So how do we change?

1) Decide what we want to be

Media agencies should decide whether or not they are going to try and be a tech company or remain a pure media planning and buying company and what this means long term. Do we partner with tech and developer resources or have our own? We should decide what the longer term business strategy is too. Do we want to follow the stock market example and end up with banks of planners optimising clients’ budgets across all channels behind screens like stockbrokers? A pure optimisation outfit maybe? Or do we expand our revenue stream to be brokers of our own / clients’ data? Or maybe focus on generating creative media solutions using data as insight and taking a longer-term view of client success? Or maybe use data to expand the scope of what we offer to provide a truly end-to-end offering, optimising web conversion, managing post purchase dialogue across traditional CRM and eCRM channels as well as acquisition channels? Or even perhaps we develop specialist divisions/brands that deliver all of this, coordinated by a central planning function?

2) Get the skills

Dealing with mega-data requires new skills, new tech, tech support structures, programmers, coders, data architects as well as people who can extract insight out of data. Much more than your everyday planning and buying resource. New team make-up, new cost models, new services are all important.

3) Get some data

Fundamentally any and all agency groups need to create their own data-set – or at the very least, partner with companies that already have one.

It’s the Wild West at the moment, with everyone scrabbling to have the best and most comprehensive data set: Salesforce just bought Krux for $700m; AT&T bought Time Warner, who’d just bought VIANT; Sky’s doors are open for business now, as are Facebook’s etc. Media agencies need to get involved and get / build their own before everything has been sewn up

4) Differentiate through application

It’s not solely about WHAT we have, it’s about HOW we make use of it. The point of differentiation really doesn’t lie in us all getting a big data set with predominantly common data partners supplemented with a few of our own. YAWWWNNN. No clients get turned on by that.

No, the point of differentiation comes from what we do with it. Just look at Blackwood 7. It’s a good story. They do something different with data: the same data we all have access to. I’m not endorsing it here, just making the point that doing different things with data is the thing that makes the difference and clients are seduced by it.

Whatever we decide, the media agency of the near future will look quite different. It will certainly be driven by data. What is certain is that change is imperative and it will be disruptive, a little painful, but nevertheless it will be an exciting journey. The death knell for media agencies hasn’t tolled yet – bring on the next round of reinvention.

EU Privacy Legislation:Saviour or destroyer?

2012-05-02T12:26:00.002-07:00

So, there’s a huge kerfuffle about an announcement on 26^th May that is causing tremors right across the communication industry in Europe. We’re all up in arms about how EU legislators who know very little about the advertising industry are preparing to proclaim on something that could have enormous ramifications.

Cookies are great aren’t they?

What’s all the fuss about? What is a cookie anyway and why is it causing such a stir? A cookie is in effect a monitoring device put on your computer by websites/advertisers/networks. They record your behaviour online including such things as which website you visited (and when); what you looked at; what ad messages you were exposed to; or interacted with and whether or not you went on to buy something. Advertisers and content providers love this. It means they can ensure that they point their messages/content with almost surgical precision. It means they can serve you up an ad reminding you about those gorgeous shoes that you spent ages deliberating over last time you were on their website. It means that, when you go that news-site that you always go to, you are presented with content that you normally view. I like cricket and always read about the latest news on how England have fared on their latest tour. So when I go back to my fave news site I’m greeted like a puppy wagging its tail furiously after it’s brought a stick back to me with some cricket content. Clever boy. Well done. Have a treat.

So that’s a good thing isn’t it? We’re living in a busy, materialist world where people define themselves by the stuff that they own and measure their worth by the relative levels of stuff that they have. We are exposed to inordinate amounts of advertising messages every day. We’re all distracted by new ways of interacting with technology, keeping in touch with our friends and news almost constantly. We don’t want to be harassed by loads of irrelevant content and advertising messages do we? Cookies are great then, they help advertisers target their audience with pinpoint accuracy, and make sure that consumers see what is relevant to them. It’s almost like a dating agency.

EU Privacy Legislation

This EU legislation promises to ruin this burgeoning love story. Essentially they are working up to a point of view on how to make advertisers tell consumers that they are being tracked, and whether to make their complicity in that an opt out or opt in thing. Disaster! The whole language of “monitoring” and “tracking” sounds insidious. George Orwell’s view of The Party viewing everyone’s behaviour and manipulating their lives is something that consumers, when exposed to this, could rebel against. Who would actively opt-in to that? And if we make it compulsory to be overtly offering consumers to opt-out then, given that sort of language, who wouldn’t opt-out? Cookie pools will drop like a stone. Advertising efficiencies will fall too.

All that money, sweat and effort that DSPs have invested to make the best use of cookie information and to provide a point of difference vs their competitors right down the drain. Overnight. Could be disastrous. We’re throwing our arms in the air and squealing about the injustice of it all. But of course, we’re biased aren’t we? What about what’s right for society? Or what’s right for individuals? That’s where the EU are coming from. They are challenged to consider whether it is in the general public’s best interests to have their behaviour monitored, and whether it breaches their basic rights to privacy. Just because it makes sense from an advertising perspective doesn’t make it right.

It’s like fox hunters making a fuss about the injustice of banning fox hunts because it would destroy that industry. Never mind the other point of view that an industry built around chasing a terrified animal with a pack of hounds and then letting it rip the fox to pieces shouldn’t really exist at all...

All this monitoring serves a really useful purpose. Having some curate the content for us, serving us what we want when we want it is surely a value to the regular consumer. Isn’t it?

I wonder.

Where does it all end?

What’s the ultimate end-point of having our internet content curated for us in this way? What do we lose out on by allowing ourselves to be spoon-fed what the nanny thinks is right for us?

What makes us human is our quest for enlightenment, our thirst for discovery and understanding. If all we are exposed to is some the same thing wrapped up in different forms (a bit like Mexican food) then where does this enlightenment come from? Where do we get to revel in new experiences, new thought constructs or alternative points of view? This road leads to bigotry, narrow mindedness, ghettoism and tedium.

I want to see stuff I haven’t seen before. I want to expand my horizons by being exposed to another point of view, another culture, another activity. Just because I looked at that website with the new flatscreen TV doesn’t mean that I’m a tech-crazed brown goods fanatic who only ever wants to see the latest gadgets. Sometimes I quite like a bit of retro. I’d quite like a phone with a rotating dial rather than a cordless. But I like the iphone too. I am not one person with one static, immutable behaviour type. I’m a whole bundle of people all wrapped up in one body.

Just because I read that report by Gordon Brown doesn’t mean I’m inherently Red, or anti Blue. Or even into politics. Or economics.

Anders Breivik (Utoya mass murderer) focussed all of his internet consumption reaffirming his extreme view that Norway and The West are being invaded by Islam. Any community needs to be kept fresh with new bloodlines. If you don’t refresh a bloodline you get deformities. Check out the Royal family...See what a difference Princess Di made!

I’d rather not have something predefined for me. Let me find out some stuff myself. Let me be shocked, surprised, intrigued, disgusted, excited by what I find, not resigned, bored and underwhelmed.

The spice of life comes from variety. I want to discover things when I’m online. PPC is there for me to hunt out specific content. Don’t presume that you know what I want. Don’t manipulate me into your funnel. I’ll find my own way there, and when I’m there, if I like the product, I’ll be more likely to buy it.

So will the EU legislation be a good thing or a bad thing? Will it destroy an industry and be the saviour of a rich, free-minded society? Or perhaps will it save the advertising industry from imminent disaster and lead to pools of narrow minded automatons? Time will tell.Or rather the EU Privacy Directive will tell.

Or we could just leave well alone and let people turn their cookies off if they don’t like the idea of them.

Battling Google with Game Theory?

2012-04-03T02:07:00.000-07:00

Anyone remember the film “Beautiful Minds”? The plot was ultimately based on a true figure who developed the idea of Game Theory; John Nash.

This is a fascinating construct that has so many applications for our industry and has my mind racing. The principle at a simplified level is disarmingly simple, yet wonderfully complex at the same time. In short, the concept is an equilibrium rooted in social cooperation. If two parties work together then they mutually benefit; if one decides to work alone then that party alone benefits but with lower rewards and the other party gains nothing. If they both decide the less risky option, then they both benefit with limited reward.

The best explanation of this is the stag hunt example, which goes like this. Two hunters have the choice of hunting a stag or a hare. If (and only if) they work together, they’ll catch a stag and both will dine royally. If one decides to hunt a hare then they can’t catch a stag, and the rewards for the hare hunter are lower whilst the stag hunter would go hungry. If they both hunt a hare, both get a poor meal.

I love this as a construct that could explain how we work within teams, or how group companies work together to mutual benefit; how we reward our staff or even how we deploy value across our client base.

Suppose we are a group with two co-existing brands. Suppose that we had two choices re: corporate development:-

- Work together to drive through a radical restructure which can only be delivered if we were to share resources and development expense to realise the enormous future revenues (the stag)

- Work separately to chase smaller, short term profits (the hare)

You can imagine, can’t you, that MDs (and management teams) of each company might be competing against each other however discretely, enjoying their own success and smiling inwardly at the misfortune of the other. Each management team is rewarded personally according to the profitability of their slice of the pie, especially when compared to performance of the other companies. Any poorer performance can be blamed on market conditions, or some other factors beyond our control. Both do relatively poorly – but individuals within each company are rewarded for hitting targets or personal objectives.

But with cooperation and shared resource and vision, the picture is so different. A media group that embraces this spirit of cooperation will be much more likely to develop than one with competing brands. Some form of shared resource will fan the flames of growth, especially if the groups agree on the nature and focus of that resource.

This theory of Nash’s also has implications for how we could combat Google’s inexorable growth. Google Adwords is an auction model. Some say it’s the perfect model since it allows advertisers to determine the maximum that they are prepared to pay for a sale. An auction requires each party to compete against each other; the total antithesis of a Nash Equilibrium. This drives the price up and allows each advertiser to identify the minimum margin that they are prepared to accept. Flip this thinking a little and we could maximise the margin that we could generate instead purely through wholesale collaboration. Imagine if we all worked collectively to combat Google’s model. In this instance the stag and hare might be:

- Continue fighting each other for top spot to maximise volume (albeit at diminishing margins) – the hare

- Work collectively to lower the price to minimum levels and maintain volume but at higher margins – the stag

Maintaining an equilibrium might be challenging if we all collectively worked together to hunt the stag in this case because it would only take one to rush off and hunt the hare, to the detriment of all parties. But if we could manufacture an agreement then everyone would benefit. Search is demand led. The price we pay has no impact on demand, so demand would not be compromised for any particular ranking. And everyone would benefit from maintained volumes but at drastically reduced pricing. Wildly optimistic of course especially where there are hundreds of players in the market, but where there is a tightly defined market , or dominant players with dominant budgets one could imagine that this might be feasible. A truly collaborative process would share out the time spent in position 1,2,3,4,5 etc. to give everyone a crack at the whip. Maybe there could be a negotiation around who gets the most time at position 1; could even be part of a negotiation between advertisers. It would certainly give Google a kick in the nuts. Or a small tap anyway.

This sort of thing is not unheard of in marketing either although it took legislation to stimulate the stag hunt. The ban on cigarette advertising in the UK did nothing to quell demand for cigarettes. Neither did it impact particularly on market shares of any brands in the market. The only real impact was to increase the profits of the cigarette companies.

I wonder whether the car insurance aggregators could apply this thinking. Their margins are quite slim and they’re embroiled in a” Mexican stand-off” as the Marketing Director of one of these companies recently describe it to me. £80m plus per year ensures that they are running to stand still. Well, sprinting to stand still really. If they worked collaboratively they could all save tens of millions of pounds and stick it right on their bottom line with no compromise in volumes or share. Simples.

Mexican Standoff in Aggregator market

So maybe it’s a utopian thought, maybe an impractical one, but you know, if we all worked together it’s something that might just work. In theory anyway.

A Whole Lotta Yotta

2012-03-22T14:51:00.000-07:00

This season’s buzz is all about Big Data and why perhaps it’s all a little too much for us all. There was a quote (allegedly from Bill Gates) when the floppy disk was created along the lines of 64k is enough for anyone. Well you can’t get everything right can you...? We’ve moved from kilobytes, to gigabytes, to terabytes; scorched past petabytes and now are looking at Yottabytes. It makes you sweat trying to picture that amount of data. If you put the data that Google have on us end to end then it would extend further than the Starship Enterprise did in all 6 series. Approximately.

Whilst we’re imagining marketing campaigns that deliver personalised messages and real-time dialogue with individuals on an immense scale, we’re wrestling with the basic challenges of working out whether display actually does anything positive. Just on that for a second...does anyone have actual definitive evidence that display works? I’m not convinced. Post-click evidence always says it’s rubbish. Post-impression analyses generally say it does (although that depends on cookie window lengths). The truth is somewhere in the middle. Probably. Don’t get me started on attribution “modelling”. Lwet’s not get sidetracked into a rant on how utterly useless that is. Another time.

Anyway, Big Data. What to do with this rich seam of marketing gold? We’ve got trading exchanges collating behavioural data that should be enable us to define countless behavioural segments and describe them in terms that can be applied to other areas of the communication mix – like creative messaging; or proposition development. We’ve got performance data that should give us a detailed picture of the most cost effective intervention pathways at a forensically granular level that should hack the waste out of our marketing investment.

In truth we would potentially never need to do any market research ever again. Who needs market research using samples of 500 people when you’ve got the actual behaviour in infinite detail on virtually the entire universe? Maybe some qualitative research – perhaps to help understand the “why” rather than the “what”. But even then you could argue that as long as you know all of the possible outcomes of all of the possible combinations, then you don’t actually need to know why. You just need to know what.

It seems perhaps that our imagination is outstripping either our capabilities (mental and technical) or our finances. Sure, it would be nice to know the answer to life, the universe and everything but we just don’t seem to be able to get there. Most times that I’ve scratched beneath the surface of a system that claims to be able to optimise in real time there is either an element of manual over-ride that goes on; or it is so complicated to explain that nobody really knows how it works. Or if it does. This complexity is similar to what happened in the banking crisis. As the banking infrastructure and inter-lending became more and more complex, so fewer and fewer people really understood how it all worked. By the time the house of cards collapsed only a handful of people had a grip of the complex algorithms that underpinned the banking world. And their voices were either outshouted by the politicians who trampled over their views, or they were simply too scared to blow the whistle. Check the Google algorithm. Another mystery that gets daily more complex. There are a few Techno Gods who tinker with our meek little media planning lives changing the algorithm as soon as anyone gets close letting out huge guffaws as they do so. I’m convinced they play a game of “Algorithm chicken” – seeing how long they can leave it and how close people get to cracking it before they change a core rule and put people back to square 1.

Our world is awash with charlatans selling the elixir of life; attribution specialists, networks that claim to be able to add real time insight that feeds directly into optimisations; SEO specialists that claim to have cracked the Google algorithm (almost); trading exchanges with grandiose claims of fully automated real time optimisation with loads of behavioural insight as an output. Not seen any. Not yet.

So how are we going to get to grips with this data and actually make it work for us?

Here’s @MediAmuses 6 step guide to data success

1) Baby steps

Let’s not try to boil the ocean here. As they say, the longest journey starts with a simple step. Let’s focus on some of the more manageable areas and get some proper learning and approaches sorted. First off, let’s introduce an outcome focussed culture. Let’s get our planners asking two simple questions of every plan: Did the interventions work; and how did the interventions work. We tend not even to do that currently. Let’s build an emphasis on understanding cause and effect – not just from a numbers perspective, but from a consumer motivations perspective too.

Attribution analysis will be even more central to media planning in the future and we need to get to grips with that. This means we should not just make up weighting factors that allow us to (generally arbitrarily) allocate “importance” to each of the stages along the journey, but working out the impact that each stage has on the next. Quantifying the number of hits at each stage in the journey really isn’t enough on its own. And let’s extend it beyond display and ppc/seo. I reckon the agency that gets this bit right will be the one best placed to in the new world of media planning that is rapidly engulfing us.

Let’s use the data available to drive customer journey insight. With such a wealth of data we should be able to build really valuable and actionable segments that define people according to their journeys. Understanding these journeys and the motivations that nudge people along the journey is incredibly valuable information for media planners.

2) Recruitment

Our industry needs a new sort of individual; one who can really draw insight out of numbers and merge that with behavioural and communication planning thinking. There will doubtless always be a role for creative strategists, but they mustn’t hold dominance over big-data literate planners. Perhaps this starts at University. We need to make sure that the courses teaching Media Studies embrace this skill set as a matter of urgency. Perhaps also we recruit from other areas – maybe computer programming courses, or companies that build computer games where complexity and creativity combine. Let’s get these people in and bring them to the heart of our organisations at all levels.

Senior people in our industry have all flourished as media eroded creative agencies’ hold on strategy and consumer insight. These people tend to have well developed right side of the brain, but a little fuzzy on the extremes of the logical left side. We need more senior left brainers.

3) Structure

The geeks may well inherit the media earth from the creative chaps. Media planning is an increasingly scientific enterprise. This doesn’t mean it needs to be a sterile one. Creativity can certainly be generated from numbers – and often is. Creativity rooted in scientific proof is in my opinion more valuable than some gut instinct. I know people will rail against that thought and throw countless ideas of whacky creativity driven by gut feel and qualitative insight. For me there’s probably a place for that – but not exclusively, and not a place at the top table. We can test our way into the validity of those creative hunches with more certainty than ever before. Not using pretesting, or Brainjuicing techniques but with real evidence.

Us numerate types need a voice at the very heart of media planning. Let’s create planning processes that have this scientific thread running through them rather than each agency recreating the same basic process but with different names (driven usually by strategists who are slightly intimidated by Big Data and its implications). One agency’s Media Pitstop is another’s Aperture or Window. And these planning processes will necessarily demand new structures to deal with this more scientific approach. Perhaps we could forget all about performance teams, strategy teams, operations teams, insight teams, optimisation teams and the like and just have a Customer Journey team.

This customer journey team’s raison d’etre would be to define, quantify, and above all understand customer journeys and how they can be impacted upon by interventions of all sorts – social, digital, offline. In my opinion this lies at the heart of a progressive media plan. To be able to work out which customer journey is the most profitable and how to seduce people along that journey must ultimately be our aim. Let’s make structures that enable this. Agencies are building data management platforms to enable them to manage the data that they generate, but without a team of specialists the data will lie fallow. It’s like building a car but not training anyone to drive it.

4) Ownership

..of the data. Data is the oxygen of media planning life. Who owns the oxygen owns media planning. Media owners? Clients? Agencies? Media owners stand a fair chance of being the fulcrum in all of this especially ones with feet in all camps – like Google. And with that they could easily start to cultivate a CPA culture and even cut out media agencies. Especially ones that haven’t evolved. Google will quickly become (even more) all powerful, especially when IPTV takes a firm hold and their mobile platform starts to fly. Google could easily end up being able to take a client budget and plan it themselves to pure CPA deals, blending investment across their entire inventory to ensure that they maximise yield from as little of their inventory as possible whilst delivering acceptable and pre-agreed CPAs to clients. And when they’ve developed a creative offering then they really will have advertisers by the short and danglies. Who needs media agencies then?

Media agencies need a strategy to be able to deal with this. Perhaps agencies with Customer Journey teams could take feeds of this data (maybe for a fee, or negotiated against media investment) and add value to the media owners – helping them maximise the value of their inventory, rather than just helping clients sell more product. Agencies become the media owner’s maid rather than vice versa.

5) Education and Honesty

No overclaims. We’re all learning on the job. Clients and agencies alike. So let’s not claim we know everything. Let’s not do what we do with econometrics and claim that we’ve worked out a model that explains how advertising works – because nobody seems to have got wildly rich from econometric learning that’s for sure. A performance culture allows us to feel our way together into this new and complex world. Let’s shift the language we use to one of collaborative evolution.

6) Evaluation techniques

We have to sort this one out. Rigorous evaluation principles should be adhered to – significance testing, robustness, test and control cells etc. etc. And please please let’s move on from econometrics; sort out attribution analyses approaches with causal components that provide actionable insight and embrace diffusion modelling methodologies.

Some big questions facing us here. Whatever happens, whether these 6 steps are steps to media heaven or not, media agencies need to change, and really need to get data and data planning into the centre of our approach.

Death Knell for Direct Marketing?

2012-03-09T14:04:00.000-08:00

I’ve just read this interesting tweet from Michael Brenner (@B2BMKTGInsider, bit.ly/w4IchX) that discusses how social exposure influences TV ratings. The evidence is that people are more likely to watch a TV program that gets good coverage on the social platforms. Now that’s interesting. And it’s a fantastic example of how Direct Marketing is becoming perhaps more about Indirect Marketing than it is about Direct Marketing. Just another example of how we need to blend our comms across multiple channels and to ensure that they are working together in perfect and mutually beneficial harmony. I think it also demonstrates how laterally we need to think about the inter-relationships between various clubs in our bag. Typically you’d expect a good program to drive some great social coverage. Perhaps a less obvious relationship is the inverse. Once you think about it it makes total sense ‘though.

Indirect marketing is a real skill, and particularly tricky to get to grips with. I’m not sure any of us have really wrestled with the complexity here. The more you think about this complexity the dizzier you become. It’s like trying to imagine the universe – something only Stephen Hawking seems to have achieved with a degree of lucidity. There’s a seemingly never ending number of inter-relationships. It raises the stakes in terms of how we think about building acquisition plans; in terms of how we measure their success; and especially in terms of the requisite IQ that an acquisition planner needs. If we are even going to scratch the surface of this enormous conundrum then we’re going to have to breed planners with brains the size of planets. Either that or we all end up with sparks coming out of our ears and suffering catastrophic melt-downs as we try and process it all. What this suggests to me is that the art of direct marketing is fast becoming subsumed into a much greater – and infinitely more challenging/interesting world.

As for the slightly upside-down view outlined in Michael’s link well that just adds another layer of fun. TV’s just a demand driver isn’t it? Seemingly not... This little snippet opens up a whole range of opportunities that we need to be manipulating in our planning. Perhaps we boost the ratings of shows that we see as being effective drivers of cost effective leads by supporting them in a social environment. Perhaps we pre-empt our spots by tweeting about the programs – drumming up ratings.

Zeebox: Second Screen TV for Social TV experience

Zeebox will only magnify this relationship. I can’t wait for this to be commercialised from an acquisition perspective. As tweets filter through to zeebox, and as people become increasingly influenced by this we can draw them into our web and funnel them in to our arms through sponsored zeetags, t-commerce and a whole bundle of interactive content around the program. One neat little feature on zeebox is to be able to follow celebs and see what they’re watching in real time. If we get them to tweet about the program, then you’ll have an endorsement which will hugely drive this relationship. Or perhaps we check out which programs are trending well with positive sentiment on buzz monitors and make sure we’re all over that from a spot buying perspective. This symbiotic relationship between social and TV really will be a central pillar of acquisition activity in the near future. Social drives SEO, whether it be via likes or content – with savings on PPC that would naturally follow. Links to YouTube, or webpages, or just to other content will all be grist to the SEO mill. That’s a relatively modern thing and one that we’re using to our advantage now. But Social driving TV too. That could drive program demand that in turn makes our TV budget go further and, with zeebox, our ads more responsive. Zeetags and tcommerce opportunities will make this sale easier to convert AND drive social noise to spread the word about our purchase to our network. Everybody wins.

What is clear ‘though is that the optimal plan won’t be a simple one stager. The old world of Direct Marketing is sucking in its last breaths, but only to be replaced by a new and thrilling challenge of Indirect Marketing.

Or will it...? let's not forget mobile. Perhaps this will be the saviour of DM with NFC, AR and the odd person trying out QR. Check out the latest note from @BBCClick that shows how capacitive coupling allows you to use your own body as the conductive link between a surface (say a poster) and your phone which could be in your pocket. Simply by touching your hand to the ad you'll be able to download content, register your interest in a product etc. Doesn't get much more immediate than that. And you'll be able to transfer that content by touching your mate. Genius.

Capacitive Coupling and mobile phones

And think about how much buzz there will be about something like that. More social. More SEO benefit. Cheaper PPC etc. etc.

So maybe Direct Marketing is here for the long haul after all...

Nostalgic for some raspberry pi?

2012-03-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

Remember the good old days? The days when media planners surrounded media plans with media science rather than supposition and fluff? When we rooted our weighting and flighting in sound hypotheses of what impact the investment would have on clients’ business? Before that headlong rush to creative-types with flowery shirts, those square glasses and their searing insights. Crazy guys. Crazy days.

The launch of the Raspberry Pi has made me all nostalgic for when it wasn’t all so complicated. This product seems like a step back in time to the days of the Spectrum with its heat sensitive print roll, and the ability to program your own computer to do what you wanted. Or the days when we played Pong on the TV and thought the future had arrived. In those days, media planning used to be based on a certain degree of integrity – on an “honest” view of what contribution we were going to make for our clients. We spoke with the language of conviction rather than the vagaries of planner speak that we all trot out these days. It was all about fact. Admittedly the “fact” was sometimes a little dubious, and perhaps slanted in our favour to some degree, but it was a fact nevertheless. Nowadays it’s about opinion. And the bloke with the most eloquently argued point of view and loudest voice can impose his thinking on the rest of the team. Never mind if the point of view is purely an invention in his creatively driven mind.

So why is that? We are in an unprecedented era of data, where decision should be rooted in fact; when they can be rooted in fact. We are more likely to be able to prove effect these days than ever before, yet paradoxically are less likely to do so. Maybe we’ve lost the capability. Perhaps it’s been bred out of the modern day planner. Planners these days all aspire to be the loquacious guy with the cord jacket rather than the bloke in the grey suit with furrowed brow trying to work out the “truth”. We divest responsibility for the scientific element of planning to statisticians who don’t really understand media planning.

Or perhaps we’re all following the advice of one Homer Simpson who once said “son, if something’s too hard to do, it’s not worth doing”. It bloody hard nowadays to draw out some insight from data that can inform our plans. As I’ve mooted before, it’s not about econometrics (certainly not in isolation). Some people defer to Exposure to Conversion analyses. But these are all nonsense really. There are so many models. But really they’re like Mexican food – all the same just folded up in a different way. The one thing they totally miss is any sense of the impact that each step in the journey has on the next step. Or for that matter explain what the triggers are at each stage in the journey. Moreover, these journey analyses only focus on a subset of exposures (display and ppc mainly). What about the impact of things like offline media (remember that?) or product trial; or word of mouth (social or face to face).

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen a client burn money on an E2C report only to find out that the findings are either so obvious as to be worthless, or impossible to actively influence. For example, can you really make sure that the second exposure that someone receives is from a display ad, and the next one is a generic keyword. It’s not practical insight. One recent report I read suggested that we should stop spending money on terms that drove no sales. No Sh*t Sherlock. Too many nodding dogs in this game who sit there slightly baffled by the numbers and frown enigmatically whenever someone sticks up a chart that shows a summary of the (often two step) journey.

What to do? Should we go all retro and start actively trying to work out what’s happening? Should we build teams awash with data literate planners who love nothing more than to wrestle with data to derive real causative insight that can inform future plans. I think so. We should be accompanying every single campaign review with an attempt to glean real learning about which bits of what we’ve done have worked best. (Define “worked” – another post there I think, not for now). Instead we spend an hour slapping ourselves on our backs showing off about how well we’ve bought that campaign that we planned – ignoring questions like “was that the right plan to buy?”.

If data is so central to our media planning future then why oh why are we not rushing to recruit people who are confident and comfortable with analysis. Not just simple spreadsheet jockeys, I’m talking people who can really build a story from the numbers. We’re not because people in authority are intimidated by the enormity of the data challenge. The current crop of MDs in the UK media scene (and most of the board members too) are from an era where accountability is sadly lacking (despite what Peter Field and Les BInet suggest). It’s just not their skill set.

We may need to go back to the drawing board with our team structures and skill sets. Maybe we should give some school kids a half finished version of a media agency and let them build their own. Raspberry Pi anyone?

Who needs media brands?

2012-03-01T12:00:00.002-08:00

Picture a future with no media brands; one where individuals pull together whatever they want into one portal – whether it be video, digital print, games, social, pictures, audio. All a consumer would need is one central piece of software that could be programmed to suck in content from their favoured sources. Maybe even it could be fed with recommendations based on the content in their social network’s own portals. Or perhaps, in an Amazon-type way, new content could be recommended based on existing behaviour. No ITV; No News International; No global radio; no Sky. Just what you want ,when you want it.

Well we’re on the way to that. Flipboard allows us to build our own magazine and populate it with whatever we want. It’s free. No pay wall. You can link it to your favourite twitter feeds, youtube content or most anything with a regular feed. It’s updated in real time. When the feed updates, the magazine updates. No searching, no forgetting and missing. The portal becomes the brand. It would be a new version of a media brand. Media brand as a facilitator of content rather than a provider of content. Flipboard aren’t alone. At Vizeum we are creating “social magazines” that contain client branding. So advertisers become the facilitator of content. Advertisers become the media brand. Advertisers could enhance these portal with unique interfaces, offering all sorts of added value e.g. tie-ups with content providers where (early?) access is based on consumption of their products, or distribution of the brands assets via social media.

And more than this, as consumers define the content on their portals, so advertisers’ targeting challenges become more varied and more simple at the same time. The only real challenge will be to segment the myriad of combinations of content into sensible groups. That’s not beyond the wit of man ‘though. It’s what behavioural targeting has been all about for years. We’ll be able to target across format within one portal, following people across social, broadcast, digital print, radio, games, internet, searching etc. with appropriate and sequential messaging. We’ll be able to offer rich and highly relevant content dependent on their history of interaction with an advertiser in whatever space they are engaged with. A real dialogue in real time.

Taking this further, you could even imagine a world where people switch between portals based on their mood. Maybe there would be a chillout portal (facilitated by Cadburys caramel); or an irreverent one (created by Innocent) etc. So rather than the brand latching onto a media property, it’s the properties that would latch onto the brand. A topsy turvey world indeed, but one without media brands.

Future of the media agency...?

2012-03-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

GroupM launches Quisma in the UK – heralded as a”new generation performance agency”. Perhaps it is. But is it really the new dawn for the sector, or a me-too baby step towards where we really need to get to? Or further, could it be the thrashings of an industry trying to redefine its role in a rapidly changing communications environment? Are we/they just shifting deckchairs on the Costa Concordia?

Yes, it has impressive billings, and a smart data platform and all that, which will certainly give it an edge. But one could ask the question, “so what, does the media industry need performance agencies? Or rather does it need an all pervasive performance culture?”

And in any case, does the term “Performance agency” mean anything when the boundaries between brand advertising and modern-day direct are so blurred? In reality, what’s the difference between a brand advertiser trying to get people to “like” their brand and a direct advertiser trying to glean some details from a prospective customer? Take for example Mini launching a new model repositioning the product at the gadget-driven, speed-hungry bloke; all supported by viral activity, social activity, test drive requests, augmented reality interactions, links to the website etc. The campaign is clearly recruiting prospects into the brand and is optimised to deliver cost effective test drive delivery/web visits etc. But it is repositioning the brand too. Every touchpoint in the journey is an opportunity to say something new and exciting about a brand with a female persona. So, is that Performance or brand? Or just a communications plan? Performance agencies are an artificial classification. Skill sets needed for this modern take on Direct are critical to brand advertising campaigns too and shouldn’t be kept for specific advertisers.

Moreover, traditional skills needed for branding campaigns are needed for clients focussing on acquisition too. As consumers become increasingly demanding of advertisers, increasingly able to filter out advertising they don’t find relevant; as journeys become more individual and protracted so our need to understand the consumer and their motivations at each stage increases. Acquisition spend needs to consider consumer behaviour more than it ever has and nurture prospects along the journey to advocacy carefully. We’re neither interrupting, nor engaging. We’re encouraging, seducing, luring prospects.

And what’s this about thinking that Performance agency needs to lump digital together into one place and make do with that? Even if you do that you will still only be playing with half a pack of cards. A truly effective acquisition campaign draws together digital, offline, social, SEO into one overarching über strategy. It’s the ultimate fragile ecosystem. Change one thing and the effects could be a catastrophic as introducing the grey squirrel, or the harlequin ladybird to the UK. Take the simple thought that the main driver of SEO listings these days is Facebook “likes”. So, a social campaign driving likes will impact on SEO rankings, which will impact on your need/use of PPC. Alongside this is a TV campaign that also impacts on PPC strategies, but provides more content to sustain universal search/ blogger outreach/YouTube channel and support Facebook. More inter-channel impact here, on PPC, on display plans etc. etc.

A purely digital agency optimising investment across digital channels will miss out on the SEO impact, on the social strand, on the flighting and weighting implications on TV. We need to do much more than optimise across some standard digital channels. We need rabbit eyes. We need to see all around us. We need to plan with a firm control on the impact of each decision that we make on the other elements on the plan. Especially – but not exclusively – on acquisition briefs.

Can an agency really do that? Or does this fall on the client now? Perhaps clients should introduce a planning resource that is challenged with doing this coordination role, and leave the agencies to focus on the buying and intra media optimisation. Let clients take on the integrated planning and evaluation function, let them own the data, let them own the analysis and make agencies get off their high horses and back into the bitch seat. Might work. Analyses would be independent and objective, not self serving and predetermined; there would be one communications platform – not one from the PR agency, creative agency, media agency, digital agency etc. etc. Simple, clean, neat.

Tough gig for the client mind you...

So in my opinion Quisma answers a need for now, and doubtless will make a pretty penny for GroupM, but it’s still only a rabbit with one eye. Decent vision, but not 360. Media agencies need to reinvent themselves to address this need for 360 vision. We need a Performance Culture across all clients, not just ones focussed on acquisition. We need to develop the skills and broaden our planning and evaluation scope, or clients will take it on and do it for themselves. I would if I was a client.

Econometricians are modern day alchemists. And just as outdated.

2012-02-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

Econometrics is just a fudge. Bam! It's out there! What's that Mark Twain saying again...? "there's lies, damn lies and econometrics" or something like that anyway.

It's one of those fields that is practised by mystical people with pointy heads and thick glasses. With dandruff. They talk a different language to media planners - but christ does it sound impressive? R squared this, t-stat that, confidence interval that other. Mind bogglingly clever. And those charts. With a forecasting bit too. Awesome.

But get this. Try using one of those econometric models to forecast the impact of media spend on, say, web traffic, and watch how far out the forecasts become. It all looks good when they're comparing the data they used with their forecasts for that time period - but the second you project into the future it's miles out. But we ignore that most of the time because we've forked out £30k on something that shows us that TV drives PPC and web traffic.

Marketers use modelling to be proved correct. Modellers just want to produce a model that "works" statistically. Neither the modellers nor the marketers really understand each other. An econometricians nightmare is a client that understands econometrics because they ask questions like "can you explain how you've factored in the natural growth rate for this market sector...?". In truth, and econometrician will fiddle around with different variables until the model delivers a high r-squared. Or they may ask, " how have you calculated the memory factor for the TV spend?". Again - the Lord Percy-a-like alchemists make it up, turning a cauldron full of numbers into "green". When the model returns the right mix of t-stat and r-squared these estimates are then "accurate" and must not be questioned. They're right. They just are.

Also, econometrics is designed to understand the immediate relationship between two sets of data occuring at the same time- not long term impacts. Not really. That's where the fudge factor comes in. Can we really claim to be able to measure (and model) the long term impact of a commercial exposure across the next 3 years? How many times have we heard a propeller-head state with the confidence of Ali that the "TV will pay-back in three years". That's the sort of blind faith that David Koresh's unfortunate followers needed.

So do we ditch it then? and if we do, what then...?

Well two answers to those two questions.

No and Agent dynamics.

Firstly, econometrics does have a role to play - but we need to position it as a hypothesis builder not a tablet of stone that proves beyond a shadow of doubt that TV is 3.2 times more effective than Display at driving branded PPC. Let's just work together to build hypotheses using the estimates that feed into the model and the findings that are generated.

And then agent dynamics. Hmmm. The future of modelling perhaps? This methodology could be used to quantify diffusion of behaviour throughout a community. It relies on us being able to properly quantify customer journeys, and the various touchpoints along that journey; what their behaviour is at each stage and what interventions can trigger behaviour change. It allows us to models that reflect the rate of brand adoption, repeat purchase, word of mouth, and the like. It's a real evolution from econometrics. It can build on or replace econometrics. And it looks even more believable than those stats filled econometrics charts because it is dynamic, interactive and has moving pictures. More style over substance perhaps...time will tell. Undoubtedly there will be a GIGO issue - Garbage In, Garbage Out. But if we get this stuff right, it will offer much more than econometrics could alone.

That's my forecast for the the future anyway...

Can Google really see the future...? if so let's get rich quick.

2012-02-26T11:59:00.000-08:00

It's Oscar Time. Time to get out the espresso machine out and to sew the eyelids to my eyebrows so that we can see Meryl Streep pick up the best actress award, and count up the number of Oscars that The Artist gets (incredibly - for a dull film it seems to have got the ageing and predominantly male voting panel's juices flowing). But it needen't be dull. Google claims it's got the inside track (with a tongue in cheek look at trends vs previous Oscars) so let's put that analytical insight to good use stick some cash on it and make me some wedge.

If Google Insights give us a forecasting opportunity then maybe we could use that to get rich...? According to their latest blog Google reckons that the best film is one that has grown massively in the last four weeks and is biggest in New York. Makes sense.Well, that seems to be The Artist then. The bookies seem to agree - and put the Artist at 12 to 1 on. Hardly worth turning the PC on for that bet. But never mind, we have some rules to work with. Late chargers win...

But the rules for best actor are totally different. The winner is the bloke who chugs along in the middle of the pack. So George Clooney then...although Pretty boy Pitt seems to be miles ahead of the pack. Can't see a bundle of old boys voting for him 'though - unless they all leave it to their wives to vote for them. Which some do I hear... That said, the Bookies' fave is Jean Dujardin - a distant 3rd according to Google Insights.

So, it's either the one that's sprinting to the finish line, or the middle of the pack banker is it..?

Well no. Best actress is the one that was popular in December - so Rooney Mara then. Bookies put her in last place with a 66 to one shot. Viola Davis is the bookies' favourite for this one - and she's nowhere in the Google Insights for search chart.

What does this tell us media planners?

Google Insights isn't the panacea for insight - it tends to confirm the obvious rather than unearth searing insight. You mean...people search for holidays after Xmas...? no way....
It tells us that we need to be careful using GIFS to inform our planning / evaluation for one thing. Let's not assume that there is a literal and immediate link between what people are searching for and behaviour?
it tells us that we need to understand who our audience is and not assume that the people searching for our product / brand are necessarily the most fertile group to influence (Oscar searchers aren't the Oscar voters here...)
it tells us that we need to not only understand consumer journeys, but their motivations, triggers and barriers at each stage, and not assume that if they're searching them they're actively engaged right now

I don't think I'll be using GIFS to inform my bets. If I follow these Google rules then I will probably lose a good deal more than I'll win on the Oscars.