So we should test, test test. And yet…testing experience shows that far more things are tested than are found to conclusively help or hurt. Why? One quite common testing error is to “test whispers” – small changes that simply can’t have a large enough impact to drive measurable change.

I once watched Rubbermaid test whispers in focus groups where a series of 5 statements of brand differentiation were evaluated. But rather than vary the statements with ideas that were truly significant to consumers, the statements traded off tiny wording changes. (I found it ironically enjoyable to watch the focus group participants quite frankly explain that all the statements said the same thing.)

Focusing on testing important things is even more critical in retail markets. In part, a mature market is extraordinarily noisy. And changes in the retail world are never isolated enough to be perfectly separated from other actions – often actions we might not even be aware of like promotional choices made by a local retail store manager.

In part, the statistical variations in normal day-to-day activity are quite often far larger than the size of change we’re hoping to test. We hired a statistician to evaluate some results a decade ago or so for a tool client who sold through Sears. The size of change that retail merchandising efforts produced (e.g. appearing in the Sunday circulars) far outpaced any of the changes we’d see from advertising spending (which was a long-term & constant effort). The statistician identified impact from the advertising, but in order to damp out the impact of the merchandising efforts he could say no more than “there was impact” because he had lost all valid ability to quantify the size of the impact. (Reminded me of my qualitative vs. quantitative chemistry work in school…)

One might think testing becomes far different when we shift to direct response marketing. It doesn’t. Even in DR one has to be careful to test actions that are significant enough to generate a change you can measure with confidence.

So read on in my direct response television based article from this month’s Response Magazine. (Link here.)

Testing offers tremendous organizational advantage – especially responding to political attack with knowledge gained from testing. So embrace testing. And focus your testing efforts where you can successfully evaluate the test results.

Copyright 2013 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

So I’m going to pick on Walgreens here – not because they are the worst. But because I have recent Walgreens experiences that show how messed up this constant survey abuse is.

What Happened at Walgreens. At the time of my prior post, Skye Weadick sent me a photo of what she saw at one drive-up pharmacy window at a Walgreen’s…which I added to that post.

The desperation evident in that sign seemed bad enough. Really? Asking customers to come around, park, and walk in to the store to fill out a survey?

Except… I was at a Walgreen’s this week – a different one – and heard an amazing employee discussion with two people in line.

He gave them their receipt and pointed out the link to the survey printed on the bottom. Then…

…He carefully explained there is a scale of 1 (worst) to 9 (best) but that only the 9′s count.
…They asked for his name so he could get credit (nice customers).
…He observed his name didn’t matter because the survey results would rate the whole store.
…And he explained that his personal bonus depended on the store getting all 9′s.

It would be great if this was an aberration. Maybe it is for Walgreens. But I’ve been told fundamentally the same thing in quite a few stores and across a wide range of sales situations.

I do not condemn the employee – although what he did was quite bush-league. But we should save our rage for that portion of Walgreen’s management that created an environment this dysfunctional.

What Purpose Do these Survey’s Serve? My guess is that these surveys at Walgreens have morphed to the point where they are about making management happy – no longer about learning things that would make customers happy. And it shouldn’t need to be mentioned that ANY survey results from an environment like this should be thrown out – there is no truth in them.

If Walgreens cares about customer satisfaction (which I believe they do):

1. They will deliver better satisfaction if employees focus on DELIVERING customer service – not creating good survey responses.
2. They will deliver better satisfaction if employee morale is positive. But employee morale cannot be maintained if your staff is panicked about losing their bonuses due to poor survey responses.

This situation has enough dysfunction in it to write a PhD thesis. And the truth is that by creating this environment, they’ve already lost the short-term customer satisfaction battle.

Are Satisfaction Surveys the New “Office Space” Flair? In the movie “Office Space”, Jennifer Aniston’s character fights to wear enough “flair” to satisfy her manager & keep her job (video link here). Satisfaction surveys are becoming similarly pathetic attempts to impose service enthusiasm through bureaucratic rules.

That said, I love Walgreen’s because of their product – led by pharmacy, health, cosmetics, and photo then well supported by a smart merchandising. And they support this with a savvy combination of well chosen basics but keep the store fresh with rotating sets of seasonal goods.

It’s disappointing to encounter this broken machine in a store I really like. Just imagine how bad the brand impact from a situation like this would be at a store that didn’t offer Walgreens advantages.

Copyright 2013 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

You might assume these changes reflect agencies going in and out of business. That’s not usually the truth. There is a tendency in the agency business to chase name fads – a practice that leads to annual or biannual name changing as a matter of course (as in “this year the coolest agency names are based on…insects…so we’re changing our name to FleaBag”). In an amazing act of euphemism, I’ve heard this called “re-branding”.

Truth is, re-branding is the agency version of the announcement of the annual Pantone color of the year which tells us the color for 2013 is Pantone Emerald 17-5641 TCX (link here). I’ll bet if you watch closely this year some agency will use “Emerald” in their agency name and more agencies will add green to their logo’s (or convert all together). Then, keep a keen eye on it and you’ll see them flip to another color in a couple of years.

Except. We ask to become stewards of the world’s largest brands. Those brands need to evolve carefully according to shifts in the market so skirt chasing after fads is destructive. (It’s no accident that the brand names Claude Hopkins’ discussed as important his 1923 book “Scientific Advertising” generally still exist as top brands…and with their same names.)

The agency brands we build need to survive the fads – not flap in the wind with them.

Even International Conglomerate Agencies Make this Mistake. Consider Euro. Last fall Euro RCSG announced that they’re renaming themselves to various flavors of “Havas”. (Link here.)

Read the release and you might think this is pretty reasonable. But I’ve been following names at this global ad giant ever since they bought my former employer in January 2000. It’s been fascinating to watch the amazing, wandering brand…

Step 1 (Jan 2000): My former employer was Tyee. So when they were bought they were named “Euro RCSG Tyee”.

Step 2: After a couple years of operation, Euro bought a media buying company named MCM, combined them, and named the result “Euro RCSG Tyee MCM”. A mouthful, but a reasonable evolution.

Step 3: After a couple more years, they quite publicly announced they were “simplifying” this complex name and changed it to “Euro RCSG 4D DRTV”. Riiiight. Much simpler. Oh, and I couldn’t figure out the 4D part. But what else do bureaucracies do but print business cards?

Step 4: Given a couple more years, it was time for new letterhead again. So under the auspices of simplification they re-branded the operation “Euro RCSG Edge”. Ah, one less word.

Step 5 (Fall 2012): Another couple years have passed and clearly letterhead needs to be replaced. So now their operation will be named “Havas Edge”. Riiiiiiight. That’s really helpful.

Five different names in 12 years. And now a very dramatic change because truthfully they were always just known as “Euro” in the direct response television business. Shifting “Euro” to “Havas” will take years to be effective (I’ve lived through these kinds of name changes before and they’re not pretty).

Observing from a distance my guess is these names are chosen to keep global agency management happy and help accountants allocate expenses to the right pool. They certainly aren’t market focused brands.

Agencies Need to Better Manage Their Own Brands. There are times when a name change makes sense. Unfortunately, I find that agencies love to make radical jumps in naming rather than the brand evolution that is usually far more successful. And some agencies have a 2-year itch – needing a new name every 24 months.

And that leads me to a thought. Through all the agency RFP’s I’ve seen, agencies are never asked to discuss the strategy behind their own brand. This might be a very revealing query since it should be important to uncover inadequate brand management from a company who specializes in… well… brand management.

On the other hand, it would take a very savvy client to review the responses since managing an agency brand is strategically different than managing a CPG brand or a high tech brand. Clients would need to focus on the strategic thinking behind the brand – not seeking something that “looks just like what we want”.

Still, for a smart client, how an agency handles its own brand is critical. And after all, should you really put your billion dollar brand in the hands of a company that can’t keep its own simple brand house in order?

Copyright 2013 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Except, it isn’t true. And with billions of dollars of revenue on the line, it’s time advertisers got smarter. Because here’s the real brand truth:

1. All types of advertising build brand.

2. The type which is most effective changes – depending on your company, brand, consumer, profit structure and product or service situation.

3. Quite often a mix of types is most effective – a mix which may or may not include “brand advertising”.

The Brand Building Power of Product Advertising Given this truth, it’s sad that one particularly powerful tool is also one of the least understood by agencies & the ad biz — advertising which uses the product to build brand.

When I bring this up with colleagues I hear three objections:

Many protest claiming “product’s at the core of all we do”. But they usually aren’t being very honest with themselves – because the product is barely present.

Others suggest that communication that isn’t about brand can only be about product features. But feature lists aren’t what consumers want. Too bad the ad biz has an under-developed sense of the richness in how consumers relate to products.

I also repeatedly hear “there’s nothing to say about the product”. Sometimes that’s true. But far more often this comment reveals that the agency isn’t interested in the product or the fascinating consumer realities that surround it.

Truth is that much of today’s brand advertising treats the product as little more than a flavor while the front and center communication follows some theory about the brand that may or may not relate to the product.

Just check out the 2012 Audi and 2011 VW Superbowl ads. There are shots of the cars (yawn). But the primary product communication from Audi is that their $90,000 car has nice headlights. And the Volkswagon Vader ad, while brilliant emotionally, merely observes the car can be started remotely (an exceptionally dated feature common on American cars since before 2000). Product flavoring.

Yet, Product is At The Core of The Neural Reality of Brand. The brand reality that drives economic power resides in the brain among the neural connections and how they respond to stimuli like situations, problems, and emotions.

Byron Sharp has noted that advertising needs to help form these connections so that your brand rattles out of the consumer brain in ways and at times when that brand recall can lead to purchase. (My common sense interpretation of his far more sophisticated work.)

Sharp is absolutely right. And starting from Sharp I diverge from many of my agency based brand co-religionists – because I combine Sharp’s truth with experience as a salesman (that’s right, bag carrying, feet in the street selling).

What the school of hard knocks has taught me is that economically powerful brand neural connections must start with the product – because product is at the core of all brand. That makes communication which is driven by product oriented messages exceptionally powerful.

There are clearly times when there’s not much way to use the product (think Budweiser ads). And in this case more abstract brand messages which tap general emotions are the right choice. Unfortunately, creating this type of advertising is so fun and profitable for agencies that it has become their PRIMARY ad recommendation – to the detriment of their clients.

But no amount of brand storytelling can outpace the power of the two fundamental product experiences – purchasing a product and using it successfully. Nor can brand storytelling outpace the power of product based communication when the situation calls for it.

Apple is One Company that Understands Product advertising. Watch Apple ads. There’s no strange attempts to show that they “get us”. There’s no convoluted attempts to force humor into supporting their products. Instead, they feature the product and what it does for you. Unfortunately, since Steve Jobs’ death Apple’s ads have seemed to lose this product focus – and are becoming far less interesting and meaningful as a result.

The Edison award winning Kobalt Double Drive is a good example of advertising leveraging product to build brand.Click this link to view the product core of our :120 second spot. (It is broadcast as a direct response spot with both :60 and :120 second versions. Some internal commercial information has been edited out of this YouTube version.)

My Agency’s Work for the Kobalt Brand is Another Example. Starting in 2010, a series of highly innovative hand tools have been brought out under the Kobalt brand — the Lowe’s private label tool brand. We’ve been fortunate to be the agency developing advertising for these outstanding products.

The result has been outstanding product introductions combined with excellent brand growth for Kobalt which has even begun to appear on the Landor Associates study of emerging brands as a “brand to watch”. (Link here.)

A Quick Synopsis of Product Advertising’s Brand Building Value. If you have a product situation and embrace product advertising, it will bring to the brand building process a tremendous power.

Product Stories are Quickly Recalled at Critical Sales Points. The time brand matters is situational – at that point where it can motivate action that leads to a purchase. When someone knows where/when/why your product is outstanding, it’s far more likely that your brand will be the one that comes to mind when they need it or are searching for a solution (at the store or online).

Products Showcase Brand Value. Product is the strongest way to personify brand values. So when you are building a new brand or need to cause a dramatic shift in perception of your brand, you’ll create the largest change – fastest – when you bring products to the forefront to lead that charge.

Products Are Humanly Powerful. People are people. And they don’t buy visions – they buy products. Too much brand advertising offers a brand vision that never sinks into viewer consciousness because it’s delivered without evidence. But when you show how the product showcases the vision, then it’s easier to remember and easier to believe.

Product Builds Consumer Perception of Value More Than Brand Ever Can. Perceived brand value generally adds between 5% and 25% to the price of the product with a few instances as high as 50% (and some big luxury exceptions). By contrast, clearly articulated product value easily adds 100%, 200%, or more to this price. (And the highest perceived value comes when product value and brand are combined.)

Emotions Close to a Product Are Most Powerful. Account planning has led traditional advertising into a wilderness of obscure emotion. But in truth, it’s the emotions close to the product that drive purchase and drive brand power.

Products Establish Trust In Your Brand’s Promises. Brands build trust through a cycle of promise and delivery. Consumers who see product promises, buy the product, and see the value it delivers become more loyal than any who might buy a “hot brand product” without clear sense of expectations.

A Product’s Story Is Naturally Memorable. Brand ads work hard (often too hard) to make memorable statements. But messages centered on a product are easier for consumers to remember – making them the ones that drive consumer action.

Product Advertising Brands While You Sell. So far, I’ve focused on the issue of branding. But there’s an added power to product oriented advertising – it sells far more product while branding. This is critical in the early phases of brand building or in major brand re-orientation phases where the nuts and bolts of driving product out the retail door is so important.

Creating a Communication Mix Including Product Advertising. The “relationship” analogy is the most commonly used way to talk about brand communication. (It’s not that I believe brand relationships are as strong as life partnerships – Sharp reminds us consumers are polygamous when it comes to brands. But the analogy is interesting.)

Strong, meaningful life partnerships are filled with a range of experiences. They include fun flights of fancy and spontaneity. But they also need far more time building from daily living – working and solving life’s problems together.

Strikes me that brand advertising is really quite one dimensional – reflecting only those moments of spontaneity. These moments are important, but only a small portion of the total engagement that makes a strong brand relationship. By contrast, product based advertising relates to the rest of a relationship – the majority of the experiences.

As a starting point, if you can afford a broad mix, consider putting 20%-30% of your resources with brand advertising, 40-50% with product based advertising, and the remainder in hard working promotional, drive to store, in-store, online, or in digital display reminders. Certainly there will be situations where 60% should go to brand advertising. But as a starting point I have found this weighting to be smart.

Driving Advertising Power. Hopefully this post begins some conversations. I do not think all advertising should be what I’ve called product advertising – merely that the ad biz defaults to brand advertising while ignoring product advertising’s power.

And I don’t have vast piles of traditional statistical analysis to back up this discussion – just 20 years driving brand growth with product oriented advertising. So I know it works. And know that there’s more to do to better understand the conditions under which it flourishes or the specific trade-offs with brand advertising.

Still, far more companies need product oriented advertising than are using it today. So take the leap – separate from any drive to create the next work of “brand art”. And give product based advertising a look. You might be surprised how far you can take your brand…and how your consumers will thank you.

Copyright 2013 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Yet, despite major investement in solar, the past 4 years have been more difficult for the solar energy industry than I’d expect – high profile bankruptcies, accusation of product dumping by Chinese manufacturers, and a Republican lust to create a scandal from these failures. And, from what I can see, the consumer solar applications just aren’t moving like they should.

There is a tendency with emerging markets to suggest the problems are technological. But I disagree – at least in the standard way we think about technology. Right now, it looks like core technology advancement has outpaced solar demand – driven by innovations in savvy & low cost manufacture as well as increasing energy output. That suggests the problems are more subtle.

The Solar Contradiction. So it looks like, in the consumer market, we’ve arrived at the following situation:

1. There is tremendous potential demand. Consumers would LOVE inexpensive energy that lets them partially disconnect from the tyranny of monthly energy bills.

2. Supply far outpaces any actual market demand that this consumer interest generates. Solar company failures are generally blamed on lack of demand – there simply hasn’t been a big enough market for what can be produced. (This is indicated particularly by the accusations of dumping of Chinese product. With reasonable demand, dumping wouldn’t matter much.)

3. Net out: The tremendous broad interest doesn’t result in sufficient market demand.

Is Mass Market Communication the Problem? Faced with a situation like this, I usually start with a look at the communication with consumers – to see if there’s a critical communication missing. Quite often, subtle and savvy communication is needed for new markets to develop.

But in this case, I don’t think so. From what I can tell, consumers are reasonably well versed in the reality of their solar options and the options simply aren’t working for them.

An early adopter might buy this but it’s a real turn off to the rest of us…

My Guess at the Missing Innovation: Packaging & Integration. Truth is that a great number of actions are required to end up with a robust solar market. But at core the innovation the solar industry is missing is packaging & systems integration.

If you will, the solar industry needs it’s version of Steve Jobs – someone focused on the consumer level value of the technology. Instead, the industry (falling back on a sadly common technological practice) seems to be waiting for a magical technical advance that makes marketing unnecessary – the “killer app” if you will.

But the key to Apple success is the most advanced integration – not the most advanced technology. For years we’ve heard technologists complain that Apple products aren’t the most “advanced”. And for years, Apple products have flown out the door at much higher velocity than ANY others because consumers find “they just work” in their lives. In part, this is because Apple makes far smarter technology compromise choices than anyone in the business.

What might Packaging Solutions look like? I don’t think this is an easy problem to solve. Let me suggest four truths as a starting point – but it’s really only a starting point.

…Solar is a highly visible purchase, but it’s a visually ugly technology. Today, it takes a highly motivated early adopter to want to cover the roof of their home with panels (especially since angles to the sun mean those panels are almost never aligned with the house). Solar desperately needs massive investment in productizing this technology.

…There are only two levels of solar solutions: Massive or Tiny. Tiny solar solutions power lights along the walkway. Nice, but not a very impactful use of solar. But our other option is to cover our roof with panels to try to grab whole home power. Shouldn’t there be something in between? With something as radical as solar, consumers want to take it on with smaller steps.

…Solar has been pitched to the market as a “convert to” technology. What development can shift this for consumers so that it becomes an “assist to reduce more costly energy use”? (In reality, this is how technology tends to become adopted – just look at Hybrid cars which are bringing full electric to the fore as a possibility.) For example, could a simple “power your shop” system be built which mixes solar with a generator to provide a clever alternative for shops that are separated from other power? It wouldn’t need to power HVAC, but the tools used in a shop.

…Applications, applications, applications. It’s all about use. Too much solar is pitched as a “green” option. Of course it is. But market experience teaches us “green” is a secondary motivator for consumers. Application is the primary motivator.

Solar’s Challenge is a Typical Problem in Technological Businesses. We see a similar challenge everywhere: a great many engineers fall in love with the sophistication of technology & seek the “ultimate” engineering. And in the process, they quite often ignore market realities that might show them that the market doesn’t care about ultimate – in fact what usually works in the market ISN’T the ultimate – but the practical. (Note that there are exceptional engineers out there who bridge the gap with brilliant ability to deliver technology in superb consumer form. For many reasons, these are the minority.)

In reality, this challenge is a classic “crossing the chasm” challenge (see the interesting book by Moore of this title). Solar’s being purchased by dedicated green consumers and by governments & businesses where economy of scale or government incentive make it worth the change. In other words, it’s being purchased only by the earliest of adopters.

But my hunch is that crossing this chasm isn’t an easy problem to solve. In fact, it could take hundreds of millions or billions more in investment to crack the code.

The Way Forward. Don’t get me wrong. There is clearly need for remaining fundamental technological breakthroughs for solar energy to play the role it could for society. It’s just that I don’t think waiting for those breakthroughs will change anything. Because the more fundamental issue is this desperate need in the solar business to discover the application magic that Steve Jobs brought to the digital business.

And that suggests it’s time to start shifting solar technology investment – balancing the search for primary breakthroughs with searching for innovation in packaging and integration. Only then can solar technology fly off the shelf at a high enough rate to justify the vast output of the panel making factories.

Copyright 2013 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Pretty funny. But while I may love that crack, it looks like satisfaction survey teams at most major corporations have missed the point and have chosen dissatisfaction as their goal.

How? By pestering us with “satisfaction” surveys. How many more will I be asked to complete? I don’t care any more. Because that’s it. I’m done.

I PLEDGE TO IGNORE ALL SATISFACTION SURVEYS!!!!

This is a tough step for a strong advocate for consumer research. But can we just have done with satisfaction survey burn out?

AT&T Overload. I shopped at the AT&T store this week. Bought a screen protector (yup, a cheap film to cover an iPad screen). Total time required: 2 minutes. Next day, AT&T texts me twice for 2 different surveys. Would I please rate my experience on a scale of 1 to 10? And would I recommend AT&T to my friends?

From a 1950′s mentality we might consider that quaint (“Look, AT&T wants to know what we think.” “That’s nice, dear”). Except I’m bombarded with requests like this. Starbucks, Target, and Macy’s – too many retailers print a request for feedback at the bottom of each register receipt.

Sign at a drive-thru pharmacy inviting drivers to fill out a survey—inside the store!

Putting Obligation & Responsibility on Consumers to Do OUR Jobs. Okay, I’m not entirely done with surveys. I’ll fill out a few. Like, when we bought a new car recently and had an outstanding dealer experience (we should have – it wasn’t an inexpensive car). And at the end of the deal, our sales rep pleads that when we get the survey, please fill it out.

Why? THEIR SALARIES AND JOBS DEPEND ON IT. The truth at dealerships seems to be that they are extensively evaluated based on those survey in some overweening bureaucratic evaluation machine. So I filled out the survey because I’m sympathetic to a good salesman who spent 2 months working with us.

Cars I might understand a tiny bit. But when I went to Einstein’s Bagels this morning, the staff pleaded for me to fill out the survey with an urgency that suggests their jobs depend on my choosing to respond. Yikes.

Now I’m pissed. Because it appears to be the truth that if I don’t jump through hoops and fill out the damn survey, the guy selling me a BluRay player might get fired. Are you kidding me?

I BECOME A DISSATISFIED CUSTOMER. If you can’t figure out other ways to evaluate your employees or your store, don’t make me, your consumer, responsible. This is a way companies foist their personal responsibility back onto the consumer. (Avoiding responsibility is a deceptively common marketing disease – can you say “crowdsourcing”?)

At web sites survey overload gets worse. Seems like Huffington Post asks me to rate their site once a week – whether I rated them the prior week of not. New York Times, Sears.com, Zappos. They all have a hyperactive “consumer experience” gene that is driving me crazy.

These surveys also violate a truth we’ve found about consumer research.

The more meaningful the questions you ask, the more respondents will take the time to give you the good feedback that reveals insight.

And when you ask bureaucratic or financially self-serving questions that aren’t important to the consumer (e.g. “How likely are you to refer a friend?”) the quality of their answers drops and you should throw out the survey.

So this is the ultimate irony – as we conduct more and more satisfaction surveys, the accuracy of the results drops.

Return to Respectful Relationships. Survey burnout is a serious risk and a serious problem. Marketers can only obtain good market knowledge if consumers will take selective surveys. So we should all be concerned about the burnout risk.

It’s more frustrating to me because while this hyperactive satisfaction action may protect executive jobs, it doesn’t build business. As marketers, we have a job – to deliver what consumers need. It takes months and years to create that environment. If you make mistakes and customers are dissatisfied, sales will drop. And it will take months and years to change things. Evaluating your teams & their execution with minute by minute surveys is meaningless.

So don’t ask consumers to do your job for you – take responsibility. If you’re an executive, I expect your team already knows the truths and won’t find anything new through a survey. So stop this constant surveying and trust your team to take an honest look at your operation.

And don’t do away with the customer satisfaction survey – in moderation it’s a tremendous tool. But don’t let your teams drive down research quality by pestering consumers with constant contact – they don’t want it.

The surprising thing you’ll find is that your consumers will be happier with you.

(And please click this link for an outrageous Walgreen’s experience with satisfaction surveys.)

Copyright 2013 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

But the rest of us have to earn our money based on reality. And lately there have been some interesting truths to help anchor TVs future in reality.

TV Works Because of Subtle Market Benefits Hidden in the Economics of Cable. A recent Atlantic article (link here) discusses how the economics of TV work for advertisers because of casual station viewers.

Unfortunately, the author in the Atlantic is dismissive of the wide range of viewers. The situation is far more interesting with committed viewers (probably 20%), periodic viewers, casual viewers, and drive by viewers. Who will pay for an internet subscription? Only the first group. So with 80% fewer viewers, ad revenues go down by 80% (or so). That’s not going to pay for good content.

Internet Subscription Fees for TV Would Have to be Far Higher than Through Cable. HBO recently discussed the economic return they get from the cable ecosystem – economic return that allows them to offer $10 to $15 subscriptions.

Shift to the internet and each individual subscriber would have to pay those costs. That means HBO subscriptions so high that they believe people wouldn’t pay for it. Truth is that cable aggregation lowers consumer prices for the package of networks.

My prediction is that if cable disappears, the days of “only” $100 monthly cable bills would be gone. And we’d enter a world of $200 to $300 monthly bills – just to get the same stuff.

“There’s Nothing On” is Mostly Human Condition – Not a Solvable Problem. New TV providers are claiming that by shifting to the internet we’ll always find something on we want to watch. But we won’t.

In the mid 1990′s I did research for a provider who thought offering 200 channels would solve the “nothing to watch” problem. Guess what we found out? Consumers told us that the jump from 4 to 60 channels didn’t ensure there was something to watch. So they didn’t believe jumping to 200 would be any different. It was brilliant consumer honesty.

Periods of entertainment dissatisfaction are human – perhaps reflecting a fundamental ennui. So unless technology solves the existential human condition, we’ll alway fight the problem that nothing meets our expectations for viewing.

The Future of TV is…Television. I was reminded of this in a recent AdAge article (link here) by Thomas Morgan. Morgan should know given the wide range of future TV approaches he’s been involved with. His conclusion? “It’s the programming, stupid.“)

At this point in history, TV is more vital and alive than ever. And unless you embrace that reality —- what I call the circus of TV – your new TV approaches aren’t going to fly. There can be evolution. But, whatever happens, TV as it exists today is THE starting point.

Many New Media (esp. TV) Studies are Inherently Flawed. In a recent blog post (link here) I noted several ways people mis-interpret data. A major error that’s driving us crazy with new media is when writers fail to distinguish between “I once did this thing” and “I do this thing all the time, every day”.

Take Netflix. It replaces the video store (and always has). But dramatic headlines claim that huge numbers skip viewing TV to view something on Netflix. In reality, the numbers show that a lot of people every now and then view on Netflix instead of on TV. But that’s not new behavior.

I’m so old I can even remember the days before Netflix. And I can remember many evenings I watched something from the video store instead of watching TV. I even knew some people who disconnected from cable and decided to live off what they could rent at the video store.

Truth is, there’s no proof that these studies measure anything beyond the behavior we’ve known for decades. Nor is there proof that the behavior is happening in larger numbers. We need some clear research on Netflix, but certainly aren’t getting it yet.

A Cultural Elitism Drives Anti-TV Fervor. Can’t say I have a study or article to back this up. But I do have a pile and a half of comments about the future of TV – often in reply to ideas I contribute. Sorting through all that commentary there’s a clear cultural elitism at work. All too often we hear “I can’t wait until it’s all internet TV and we won’t have all the crass stuff that’s on TV”.

But let’s check out reality. Internet TV is nothing if not crass – horribly crass. In fact, the idea of “TV as cultural decline” has survived for decades. And its put forth by an elite who hate the circus that most people love. But has that elite taken a serious, clear-eyed look at the internet? Apparently not – it’s far easier to pick up the same old canard.

TV Will Change. But Beware the Snake Oil Salesmen. The productive future for TV (that is also productive for the internet) will maintain TV’s eco-system and deliver:

- Consumer satisfaction.
- Advertiser health (leading to GDP growth)
- Cost effective distribution
- Content developer financial success

Only then will the evolution keep TV’s interest and power while moving ahead.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Wave Goodbye to Branded Content Myths

So it was with tremendous awe, excitement and fun on Sunday that my family watched the TiVO playback of Discovery Channel coverage of the space jump – where Felix Baumgartner jumped from 128,000 feet, lost control in a tumble, fell at more than the speed of sound, then opened a parachute and landed on his feet. (And, tested a possible high altitude emergency escape for astronauts.)

This morning we find that apparently around 8 million YouTube viewers watched the event. (Link here.) (As always…we’re not really certain what a YouTube viewer means since I can count as 15 YouTube viewers given all the devices I use.)

True to form the online advertising enthusiasts are ready to jump on these numbers as “proof” of the power of branded content. Branded content? Articles I read today remind me that Red Bull sponsored the jumper (I’d forgotten already). So, enthusiasts are taking “sponsored” and deciding that it is clearly “branded content”. Whatever.

Anyway, when it comes to numbers we need to be more skeptical.

What the Space Jump Really Proves is That Traditional Media Remains the Best Driver of Demand. After all…

We wouldn’t have known about this happening if it hadn’t been covered so thoroughly in offline sources.

The amazing uniqueness of this jump drove tremendous coverage in the news as well as online. Think about it: a normal person’s stomach turns at the mere thought of being at 128,000 feet in a small capsule hooked to balloon. Then add the idea of opening the door to that capsule, stepping outside and letting go… Real life drama beyond belief.

That drama drove an amazing amount of news coverage. That coverage was amplified by the reality that they had to scrub the attempt once and delayed everything for nearly a week – during which media hype built even further.

So Let’s All Take a Deep Breath and Step Away from the Hyperbole. What marketers need are reliable methods for getting out messages that drive demand. Is branded content one of those?

This event and its high viewership are impressive – but not for reasons of sponsorship. Red Bull grabbed a one time opportunity consistent with other activities their brand already sponsored. Oh, and from what I can tell Red Bull didn’t cut back other promotional efforts to do this.

Does This Event Lead to a Reliable “Brand Content” Strategy? Can Cutex nail polish remover (for example) learn anything from this to identify an opportunity to change everything for an online event based strategy? It boggles the mind trying to imagine an event that would garner the full-force media attention of the Space Jump and that fits with their strategy. (Please, don’t suggest they should have asked Mr. Baumgartner to remove his nail polish on the way down.)

Could Cutex build their marketing around a “branded content” strategy? Certainly with hard work and a big investment they could do some things. But, to have a reliable solution for marketing, they would need to reach the masses and remind them on a regular basis to consider Cutex. In truth, nothing suggests that they could do this reliably enough to base their future revenue stream on it.

So let’s accept this jump for the exciting once in a lifetime event it was. (He broke records that haven’t even been challenged since the 1960′s).

At the same time let’s acknowledge the truth hidden in these online viewer numbers: the opportunity to drive high online viewership (even with the support of traditional media) is extraordinarily limited.

And then, let’s go back to work – delivering solid advertising strategies leveraging a combination of offline and online methodologies. And let’s deliver reliable revenue increase for clients year after year. That’s what really makes businesses thrive.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

As I wrote, it hit me – the iOS6 Maps fiasco and the Final Cut Pro debacle have eerie similarities…

- In both cases, Apple believed they were developing a dramatic innovation. (And in both cases, they might be – but who can tell given each product’s tremendous weaknesses?)

- In both cases, Apple was tinkering with application software – not systems software.

- In both cases, Apple ignored how dramatically software changes would impact their customer’s lives.

- In both cases, Apple replaced successful mission-critical software with software that can’t be relied on.

- In both cases, Apple hurt their brand trust among users who adopted their software and trusted that Apple would be smart enough not to screw up mission critical software.

- In both cases, Apple originally succeeded with professional quality software that was developed elsewhere. (I understand they inherited the FCP fundamentals and we all know Google delivered the original iPhone Maps.)

It May Be That Apple’s Innovation Skill Doesn’t Extend to Applications. Apple brings stunning innovation to integrated systems/products. But Apple’s successful clever applications generally work only for low demand users and products that aren’t mission critical – like iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Pages & Numbers. All are inadequate for professional users.

Even Keynote (probably best suited for professionals) has significant flaws for those of us who would like to rely on it for all our work in that format. For example, it only allows landscape mode. But sometimes we need to create presentation material in portrait mode. Also, the transfer from the desktop to the iPad is so poor that we have to re-edit every presentation we take to the iPad.

For a Decade, Final Cut Pro Delivered Quality. FCP was so good that by 2005 we had jettisoned all Avid system work for FCP. (Avid was the dominant editing system.) And FCP worked well – bringing power through flexibility.

Then Apple announced FCP-X – a remake of Final Cut Pro that looked surprisingly like iMovie and lacked the professional features demanded by the TV advertising we create. Was it innovative? Who could tell. A lot changed. But it was so ineffective for our work that we still (18 months later) can’t clearly identify the innovation.

So I wrote a letter to Cook last year and an Apple representative called me. They suggested that FCP-X was great (no matter what I thought) but that also Apple would continue to support the old Final Cut Pro.

Then over the past 18 months, each successive operating system upgrade has delivered new and mysterious crashes to the FCP setups we rely on while FCP-X remains severely hampered in basic features. In the past month, those crashes became so severe that we determined we would start no new projects on FCP. Our hand has been forced.

Which Apple Hubris Causes These Failures? Here’s my guess. Apple has relied on bravado, vision, discipline, and brilliance to deliver ground-breaking integrated products like the iMac, MacBook Air, iPhone, iPod, and iPad.

But when it comes to application software, it looks to me they kept the bravado – but forgot all those others.

Also, having designed software used by mechanical engineers in automotive and aerospace earlier in my career, I think it’s possible that Apple is mis-led by Jobs’ vaunted Zen aesthetic sense. The same simplicity that benefits novices can impede the success of experts. That means expert software often requires complexity that clutters that aesthetic beauty.

Why Did I Write Tim Cook? While our next step is clear to me, I believe companies should know the impact of their actions. And should internalize feedback from product users to make future work more effective.

With that in mind, I have a habit of informing companies of my dis-satisfaction – hoping they can use the feedback to grow and learn.

Will Apple change? Who knows. Their eventual response to the Maps fiasco will show us whether the size of that mistake will finally cause the organization to come to grips with its application software weakness.

Clearly Apple could change – god knows they have the cash reserves. But only time will tell if they will.

Note: Apple followed up my letter with a phone call. In this call, with admirable honesty, I learned that they don’t support dual versions of software and FCP-X is where they put their work. While I dislike the answer, it is encouraging that this year the call I received was honest. Now we will move to Premier without hesitation. And, hopefully we can continue to thrive on Apple systems – because this problem fortunately seems limited to Apple application software.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Was going to pass it along just for the humor. But as humor does, it got me thinking. Of two things…

How Often Do We Expect Too Much Impact From Too Little Advertising Investment? The idea of a lawn sign having this impact is pretty funny – as is the idea of a candidate convincing themselves that it has that impact. That makes it easy for us sophisticated national marketers to laugh with the article.

Expecting too much from too little?

But…how often do we make this mistake? An agency I used to work for chose to begin advertising their services – so they bought a single full page, back cover ad in an industry magazine. Yup. Once. What a waste of a hard earned $20K.

Once a smaller entrepreneurial company called me with a total budget of $100K (creative, production, media). They wanted to do television, had heard about the impact of direct response television and wanted an impact on their national distribution in WalMart. Yikes. The best use of that money might have been a really motivating party for the staff – not TV.

More recently, a major multinational called me with a total budget of $500K and distribution at all the big box stores. They were planning to spend half the budget on production to get a really cool ad. Even though I appreciate their seeking quality, why waste $250K creating an ad that, essentially, no one is going to see?

(My question to both companies: Are those test budgets? The Answer: No. Those were the sum total expected for the campaign…ever.)

Integrated Campaigns Too Often Lead to “Too Little” Situations. So far, the examples are easy to spot. It get’s tougher when we turn to “integrated marketing” where often budgets are spread across too many types of media.

Yes, there is value from appearing in different media…when you can afford it. But, shouldn’t we be in the business of delivering great things from reasonable budgets? Spreading a budget that’s too small across an integrated campaign causes it’s impact to diminish – not grow.

Yet, Let’s Not Get Cocky…Lowly Bits of Marketing Are Often Important The lawn sign is a lowly item. It’s not big. It’s not impressive. But it does have value and it delivers that value at a low cost. (Lawn sign value is a combination of name recognition and an active neighborly endorsement.)

Point of Purchase (POP) is another “lowly” place where it’s not always smart to bring cleverness. Many of the best POP executions are fundamentally quite simple in their execution.

Another lowly medium (at least among the snooty circles of advertising) are the Sunday circulars. Circulars drive amazing volume of store traffic and sales by attracting people with good products and good deals directly communicated.

JC Penney’s is the latest retailer to have forgotten this (they seem to have forgotten many fundamentals lately). Let’s compare the last ones I saw from Target and JC Penney’s. Both nicely designed. But Target filled theirs with deals & product. The Penney’s circular looked like a Nordstrom’s catalog – vast expanses of white space, skinny models, chic clothing and nothing about the product or the deal. Far too clever and a waste of money.

So Let’s Laugh with the Article. Then let’s develop the humility to look critically at what we’re doing and make the smart choices that deliver the most in everything we do.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

It gets more interesting in the “Brands to Watch” list. Leading the three “Brands to Watch” is Atomic client Kobalt Tools (followed by Foster Farms and Symantec/Norton).

Did That Really Say Kobalt Tools? That’s right. Hanging in there amongst these technology superstars and food brands is Lowe’s private label brand for tools. The Kobalt presence becomes even more interesting after we note a few specifics:

Kobalt Tools is the only private label brand in the bunch. And, aside from the Marine Corps, it’s the only non-tech and non-food brand in the bunch.

While the article discusses only Kobalt’s NASCAR connection, the Kobalt reality includes far more pieces than just that one element.

Supporting superb merchandising and other brand marketing work, Kobalt is being driven heavily by that lowly medium of Direct Response Television (DRTV).

Brand Progress Comes Through Many Parts. A tremendous number of things come together to create this kind of brand power. And we’re glad we’ve been able to do our part.

One very important reality that is missed far too often in the brand literature: A major part of this growth comes because Kobalt Brand products are of superb quality and they deliver excellent, meaningful innovations.

Kudo’s to the entire team at Lowe’s. This is impressive brand growth and it is the result of a lot of smart choices and hard work.

DRTV Deserves a Place at the Table. I’ve noted elsewhere that I think it’s time for DRTV to take it’s place at the brand table among other forms of advertising. (Of course I’m referring to brand DRTV – not the yell & sell stuff.)

Lets hope that honors like this can help make that happen — and wake up advertisers everywhere to the reality that DRTV can play a powerful role in building brand for those who use it well.

Note: Here’s some background on Landor’s process (taken from the link above): “Brand strength is determined using three years of consumer survey data from the BrandAsset® Valuator (BAV) U.S. database (we compared results from 2008 to 2011 for this study). Landor analyzed data for approximately 2,500 brands across industries, based on interviews with more than 15,000 consumers annually, evaluating against 48 different measures of brand health.”

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

A new study about TV shows nothing has changed and that “TV Ads Lift Online Sales Conversion” (Link here.) The study clearly showed an increase in both traffic and conversion that resulted from TV advertising. This is no surprise for those of us who work in TV. But it is confirming to find that there’s hard data to back up what we all experience.

Unfortunately, many online companies struggle to leverage TV. In my experience, this struggle starts with the problem of scale. The Web’s beauty is that it offers an inexpensive way to reach a small universe. That makes it extremely low risk to test things. But with low risk comes low revenue. So being unwilling to go beyond this comfortable low risk testing also means you won’t tap into the far greater profit that might be available for you.

The online companies look at the an offline opportunity like TV and begin to see a big potential in a big universe. Even better, they find that TV’s extraordinarily inexpensive per person to reach people. But, then the “get started” costs hit. There’s simply more risk required to get started (as is common with bigger business opportunities).

So an online marketer might be used to spending $500 to create a banner ad then spending $2,000 in media to test it. But to jump to TV, they’ll need to commit somewhere between $75K and $200K to testing (creative, production and media). (BTW… Those are conservative costs. Many ad agencies will charge $300K to $1M for creative and production and demand a $300K media budget to test. I don’t use those numbers because I don’t think those are smart first steps when you’re building your way up from the online budget size.)

Even at my low end of $75K, there’s risk involved that make many online marketers quite uncomfortable. But there are also huge revenue dollars that can’t be generated without offline marketing. And that means taking those risks is required if you’re to reach the opportunity found in your business.

One result worth considering more deeply: A top level review of these new results shows very low conversion of all search generated leads – and that the free search leads converted roughly the same as the paid search.

Now this research doesn’t compare click volumes – so we don’t entirely know what to do with these results. But they do suggest some caution when running paid search along with TV – you might be paying twice for a lead.

My advice to online marketers? Dig in. Look at the risk. Look at the offline media that’s critical to your business while knowing that there’s marketing power beyond what online work can deliver.

Then take the risk – and proceed wisely with partners who know how to deliver results. When it works you’ll rise to a level you had never imagined.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Showrooming Is…? In case this is new to you, showrooming happens when someone looks at a product in the retail show room then purchases online (most often with their smartphone). Amazon is rumored to thrive on showrooming and even released an app so that bookstore browsers could scan bar codes with their phones then have Amazon ship them the books.

A few retailers have seemed to provide substance to fears when they have blamed poor financial results on showrooming. All this is fed by articles from digerati that are desperate to claim they have destroyed retail.

And that gives us a classic case of FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt – about the impact of in-store mobile searches. But…the truth is stranger than FUD. So let’s start by turning the tables…

“THREAT ALERT…CAN AMAZON SURVIVE REVERSE SHOWROOMING?”. I reverse showroomed last weekend when I shopped printers at Amazon to evaluate options, then went to Best Buy and purchased the printer I wanted. In this case, I needed to check out options and focus my interest. But I wanted the printer RIGHT THEN to keep ahead of the curve getting things in place for my son’s freshman year of high school.

“THREAT ALERT…AMAZON STRUGGLES BECAUSE DEALS AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH!!!” Suppose I’m in Best Buy and the product I want is sitting on the shelf for $29.99. How much do I need to save through Amazon to put up with waiting several days for delivery? What about a $1,500 HDTV. How much do you need to save to have Amazon deliver it (without setup)?

The usual drips and drabs of online discounting aren’t enough (for me). So I buy online when there’s a reason – selection, dramatic discount, or pure simplicity of putting in an order while I’m at an airport.

Neither of these all-cap headlines really suggests an issue that threatens Amazon’s well being. But my point is that the world is far more complex than the one-dimensional thinking that has led to all cap headlines about showrooming. How did research mis-lead us here? Read on.

Showrooming And Research Errors. The article noted in my opening paragraph identifies two research mistakes that are quite common in today’s tech battles. Let me offer them in my own words:

1. We often confuse “have done behavior x” with “do behavior x all the time”. As in, confusing “I once saw something in a store then checked price on my phone” with “When I see something in the store I always check price on my phone then buy the absolute cheapest I can find even if it’s only a penny or two.” Big difference between those two.

2. We rely on questions that are asked of consumers that consumers can’t answer truthfully. Ask any criminal lawyer about how accurately people recall things and they’ll tell you recall of even important things is exceptionally poor. And recall on shopping habits? Horrific. Sadly some researchers don’t or won’t figure this out and ask anyway. (Shouldn’t we need “research licenses” before using Survey Monkey?)

How These Errors Feed Showrooming Fears. Showrooming fears have been driven astronomically out of proportion by these errors.

In the first error, industry decided showrooming is a serious issue based on finding that a lot of people “somewhere, sometime showroomed”. Except, as Mr. Rubinson notes in his post, that doesn’t mean scary trend. It only becomes a scary trend if people do it “a lot”.

And the factual truth he reports is that only 1-3% of iPhone users price compare on their phones an average of 1-2 times per month. In other words, 97%+ aren’t even doing this price comparison once a month.

In the second error, Mr. Rubinson notes that Media Post asked consumers to “predict the retail environment in 2020″. Huh? Retail experts can’t predict that – and they know about a lot of possibilities that consumers don’t. But consumers will ALWAYS answer whatever you ask so Media Post got answers and they said showrooming was a big problem. (Do people answer this way from years of training to “fill in the blank”? But, truth is that most research doesn’t even let us tell the truth with an “I don’t know” answer.)

The Consumer Market is Robust Enough for Both Online and Brick & Mortar. In reality, the market is robust enough for everybody. And while high profile retail closures are very noticeable (e.g. Borders Books), there are far, far more internet store closures than retail closures. Just consider how easily and quickly competitors can knock off an internet store.

I think the truth is that smartphones help the retailer – instantly. Having a mobile device in the store with me often means I spend MORE in the store on a given shopping trip. Why? Because I can answer my questions then and there – instead of having to come home to call friends or check the internet.

So shake off that showrooming sense of doom and dread and wake up to something far better. Like, what would happen if you really embraced the combination of retail and internet. Just this week Jerry Storch, chairmand and CEO of Toys-r-Us, observed that “The future belongs to brands that build best the consumer-facing network, incorporating stores, Internet, mobile, social and local components.” (Link Here.)

Now THAT’s a vision worthy of pursuit. And Amazon should fear retailers who crack that code. Because they’ll reap amazing sales power from the show room that Amazon can’t even touch.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

‘The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.

“Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time is that when people finally realize you were right, they’ll say it was obvious all along.” Alan Ashley-Pitt as quoted in “The Wonderful Crisis of Middle Age” by Eda LeShan

And so we find on Page 46 of 109 in the Apple-Samsung jury instructions this rather concerning issue: “Obviousness”. Specifically:

“A utility patent claim is invalid if the claimed invention would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the field at the time of invention”

Now I’m no expert in the specifics of this trial. But this fundamental idea concerns me. Because there’s a strange relationship between what’s obvious today and what would have been obvious before a product was released.

Copying Apple makes it far easier to introduce new phones and give them the appearance of “exciting”.

With Innovation, What Was Obscure Often Becomes “Obvious”. Insights and their resulting design choices must be articulated (verbally, visually or in product design) before they become innovations. And true innovation comes from discovering, then executing from, some powerfully unique insight. It also involves sorting through the thousands (millions?) of options that might derive from acting on that insight.

But then, quite often once innovation becomes entrenched in a product or advertisement it’s nearly impossible to ponder any other way it could have turned out.

Once more, Samsung avoids marketing cost and increases product introduction velocity leveraging Apple’s well defined visual language.

Monday Morning Quarterbacks. It’s disconcerting that when my team goes and does all the hard work to reveal those insights and drive an innovation, there are far too many Monday morning quarterbacks who respond merely: your answer is “obvious”.

Riiiiiight. It wasn’t obvious in the beginning or they would have done it.

But here’s the real irony: If your innovation is really powerful and perceptive, people who see the finished result will feel that the solution is “obvious”. And, in the contrary, if your innovation is overtly too complex, it’s probably not that great.

So Can a Jury Travel Back in Time to Envision The Obscurity of Something at a Previous Point in Time? I think this is the nearly impossible reality. In our market research we don’t show storyboards except in very rare circumstances. We don’t show early product drawings unless we have to.

Why? Because the average human being (the jury of our peers, so to speak) lacks the training and experience to project from that early work to know what something final might be.

Have you recently tried to imagine a time before cellular phones? Or before the telegraph? Or imagine physics before the Theory of Relativity (some fairly obvious theory…now)? You simply can’t do that with full truth.

So can a jury project themselves back in time and understand all this? It’s incredibly hard. It’s also the lawyer’s jobs on both sides to attempt to create that picture. Unfortunately, the job of Samsung’s lawyers (“of course it was obvious”) is far easier than the challenge Apple lawyers face (“come with me as I weave a story about time before the smartphone…”).

Update: Apparently Apple’s lawyers presented well. The jury has found for Apple in 6 of 7 claims.

Samsung has Received the Usual Benefit from Being Second to Market. Companies who are second to market are quite often far more successful than those who are first to market.

Microsoft is one superb example. They didn’t create word processing. But Microsoft was able to learn important lessons from the early innovators then create what has become THE word processor most people use.

I worked with a company who was similar in the fitness equipment market. They were miserable at creating their own dramatically new products. But they excelled at looking at what someone else had invented, then making it for far less and making it hit market expectations at that lower price. They made bucket loads of money this way.

What Were Samsung’s Advantages by Following Apple?

They were able to be far faster to market because Apple had answered the key questions and Samsung engineers could move forward on the shoulders of those (Apple) who had gone before.

They achieved success with fewer marketing dollars – because they used shapes that say “like the iPad”. That eliminates the cost of explaining what they have and creates a degree of instant trust that it delivers. (And, they got away with delivering dramatically substandard devices, but leaving the implication that it was an iPad.)

Apple did all the hard work of telling people what a smartphone was. They created the entire reason to exist for the tablet. Samsung merely had to say “yeah – like them, but cheaper”. (It’s worth noting that this is ALL the Droid advertising has ever done.)

How Will the Ruling Go? This is tremendously complex and I wouldn’t presume to suggest I know what, legally, the right answer is. Nor do I know what a jury would do.

But I know what I hope. I hope Apple has enough on their side that the ruling is favorable to Apple. And I hope that companies begin to be given far more useful ways to protect what’s really important.

Yes, I know the patent world is pretty screwed up. And, patent trolls are a horrid group that are, in reality, destroying the last vestiges of meaning for patents in technology.

But it’s self-evident that Samsung copied Apple and made bucket loads of money as a result. Was that legal? Who knows. But we should demand fairness in our society. And no matter the legal specifics or jury findings, it doesn’t seem to me to have been fair.

Update: The jury has found that Samsung violated Apple’s rights and has awarded damages exceeding $1B.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

And the truth is that there are tremendous downsides to web advertising – downsides that may explain the extraordinarily low CPC’s that can be charged online. (More on these costs later.)

The Myth of Lean Forward Media. In the 1990′s advertising agencies claimed that the web had a huge advantage because web surfers were “active and engaged” – that they were “leaning forward” instead of “leaning backward” like with TV. And an entire industry leapt to the fully irrational conclusion that if someone was leaning forward to, for example, read an article, they’d also be more active and engaged with an advertisement.

Fast forward to 2012 and it’s clear they were wrong. In fact, when you consider the way people work, the opposite is true. The more engaged I am with a news story or on the web video I’ve chosen to watch, the less I’m able to open my mind to take in what an advertisement offers.

It’s so bad that when we’re engaged with seeing/searching on the web, we may well be LEAST able to receive advertising messages of nearly any media.

Making the Web Worse: Fragmentation. The web weakness is made worse by the dramatic fragmentation of web audiences. TV aggregates audiences – brings people together so we can reach large numbers.

But the web – shatters them into minuscule pieces. That shattering fundamentally limits the web’s ability to deliver large power.

The New Myth: Targeting by Web Behavior. Still seeking an advantage that can make web valuable for mass campaigns (instead of it’s marginal value known today), websites everywhere and a wide range of venture funded advertising companies are now touting amazing advantages by pinpointing your audience.

Truth is, they’re wrong once again. It’s just as impossible to target on the web with laser-like focus as it is anywhere else. (Explaining this deserves an entire post I’ll get out in a few weeks.)

These Web Weaknesses Explain the CPC Contradiction. I’ve noted for quite some time that if the web theories about advertising were true, they’d be charging far more per click than other media types charge for equivalent action.

But the truth is the opposite: Even when you have a highly targeted audience on the web, you’ll pay far, far less per click than you would for action equivalent through other media.

A Tremendous TV advantage. By contrast, TV ads hit us when we’re relaxed and open – able to hear about new things that interest us. (We’ve heard this in research with consumers about when they’ve called in response to DRTV advertising.)

Even better, rather than fragment the audience, TV aggregates an audience so that advertising reaches far more people and reaches them at a time when they’re relatively open to new messages.

(I focus on TV because that’s the area I know best. Magazines offer similar opportunity to reach consumers when their minds are open as does radio, outdoor, and often newspaper.)

Plan Your Campaigns with a Clear Head. I’m a strong proponent of integrated campaigns and firmly believe the web is part of those campaigns. But it needs to be balanced with an accurate awareness of web weaknesses. And those weaknesses seem to shake out meaning that the web will only deliver a power of 10 where TV delivers the power of 100.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Both types of brand play important roles for the consumer. And the consumer market is so robust there’s plenty of room for all types of brands – if they deliver something meaningful to consumers.

What’s missing in the current discussion, though, is any coherent discussion of the reality that it takes outstanding communication to make both types of brands thrive.

How Consumers View Manufacturer Brands and Store Brands. MediaPost recently discussed a survey about store brands and manufacturer brands (link here). Reading the article got me thinking – that consumer interaction with manufacturer and store brands goes something like this:

Consumers start by seeking the product that is most meaningful them – regardless of brand type.

So when a manufacturer brand offers good reason to buy, consumers act. And when they buy a product based on value (whether store brand or manufacturer brand), they’re happy to pay a fair price without needing it to be “low price”.

But far too often they don’t know WHY a brand product offers any advantage because it’s not been made clear. Lacking communication that provides meaning, they fall back on price – and in that case the store brand wins a great deal of the time.

Since store brands usually have a bit of a price advantage (or at least no price dis-advantage), a manufacturer brand suffers most without communication.

The Desperate Need To Communicate. Companies understand what I’ve suggested and spend millions building meaningful difference into the products within the brand line.

But remember the old philosophical thought experiment? “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear does it make a sound?” There’s a marketing equivalent: “If you add value to your product but nobody hears about it, did you really add value?” Of course not.

The Need for Product Advertising. This is why product oriented advertising – that tells consumers meaningful things about products – is also most effective at building brand. Because there’s no better statement of your values than product. And when your advertising shows your value through product time, after time, after time – you build a strong brand and you build it quickly.

So there’s this ironic truth: Focusing your advertising on the idea of a brand is often the least effective way to build the brand.

It’s worse because the modern evolution of brand advertising rarely offers meaningful reasons to choose brand products. Instead, we’re regaled with absurdities that are supposed to get our attention and lead us to “love” that brand. Quite often merely cool production or “edgy” social media executions are claimed to increase “engagement”.

(If you want “engagement” to build your brand, shouldn’t you try to lead the consumer to buy & use the product? I can’t imagine more powerful engagement than that.)

Brands Thrive When They Tell Consumers The Value of Their Products. We’ve been doing brand DRTV advertising for Kobalt brand tools from Lowe’s for a couple of years now. What’s striking is how powerfully advertising drives product sales while building this store brand.

And that leads to the most fundamental truth: it doesn’t matter much whether you have a store brand or a manufacturer brand. Brand strength is built when you communicate the value and meaning of your products.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

So, as soon as someone saw the first retail store shopper pull their smart phone out, tech titans started taking credit for the destruction of retail. But, new Deloitte research (link here) suggests we might want to keep our retail outlets open after all.

Turns out that shoppers with smart phones are 14% more likely to purchase within the store than those without these devices. And while this has generated a few shock waves of dis-belief among the adherents of technological destruction, it makes sense – human sense.

What do YOU do with your smart phone in the store? Here’s my own short list (I’m sure many people do other productive things with their smart phones).

Make sure the price is “reasonable”.

Check the features of the product in front of me against others.

Browse a review or two.

See if a different variation is available at another location.

The end result? Instead of having to LEAVE the store to do my homework, I can make a decision quickly and at the point of purchase. In other words, my smart phone browsing makes me more likely to buy right now rather than postpone the decision.

And interestingly, “check for the absolutely lowest price on the thing in front of me” isn’t on my list very often – because it’s not that meaningful.

This is superb news for stores since the minute someone leaves the store, their likelihood of purchase drops dramatically. So we shouldn’t be surprised to learn, over time, that stores benefit more and more from smart phone usage. We also should begin looking at smarter ways to construct apps to assist consumers (not just bombard them with offers). Those apps can pay off with more consumers purchasing and more purchased each time.

Perhaps more importantly, it means that stores should not panic at rumors of show rooming. Instead, focus on two things. Deliver a value added for consumers who shop in your locations. And streamline the connection between your online store and your physical store. (It’s no longer reasonable to let online live in a silo.)

Tech Needs a Better Sense of Humanity. Seems to me that the tech titans skew off-track because they have difficulty handling anything more than a one-dimensional theory of humanity. One common way we see this is a suggestion that price is all that matters.

This price theory led to amazing GroupOn hype – for a useful service but not the broad industry game changer we were told it would be. It’s some nice automation of coupon shopping for those who are coupon shoppers.

The more human reality is that we live complicated lives. Sometimes price is critical & sometimes not. If I can find a $100 product $10 cheaper elsewhere, it probably isn’t worth the extra hour it’s going to take to get it. Or, the week I’ll have to wait to get it from an online source. Or hassling to remember the Groupon & to have it ready when its needed.

(As an aside, Apple seems to have the best sense of humanity in the tech biz. And that confuses their competitors when Apple products succeed where others have failed or with technology that’s not “bleeding edge”.)

This is old news. I’m also struck by how often tech titans tell us they are once again “destroying” something…only to learn the technology actually HELPS the thing they promised to destroy.

Remember the DVR? It was going to lead to complete TV ad ineffectiveness? Funny story. Turns out the DVR has INCREASED ad effectiveness. (More here.)

Anyway, the good news is that shoppers have retained their humanity despite tech’s attempt to turn us all into robotic price shoppers. And that means shoppers spend more in your store if they’re carrying a smart phone. Not a bad situation at all.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

In truth, all advertising is far too often driven by lore and anecdote – even when it comes to media spending. And DRTV is no different. So I’ve been fascinated by DRTV’s obsession with massive spending – especially when the product is at retail.

That made it refreshing to read Byron Sharp’s latest post “A Little Advertising Goes a Long Way” (link here). Sharp focuses on campaigns with huge media bursts and finds that far too often they’re tremendously inefficient.

If you recall, Prof. Sharp is the head of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute which studies advertising with really smart leveraging of statistics. And they develop their findings until they reveal truly scientific learnings.

Media Efficiency vs Media Spending. Sharp and his team focused their efforts on efficiency — contrasting bursts with a consistent & lower level of mass-reach media over a long period of time.

When compared with intense bursts, they found “…low weights of advertising on high reach media are very efficient. Generating a lot of sales per dollar.”

Hmmm. A lot of agencies aren’t going to like this. Agencies and clients, relying on lore and anecdote, have developed a dis-like for spending smaller budgets on mass reach media (e.g. TV). (The sad reality is that burst campaigns have the ego satisfying result of leading neighbors to say “I saw your campaign last night”. Too bad “neighbors” aren’t your dominant target!)

Why This Finding? Sharp’s team looked specifically at reminder campaigns – designed to build and keep fresh the memory pathways needed to bring the brand back to the forefront in order to drive purchase.

“The most memory refreshing dollar spent on advertising is your first. Decay in returns start immediately unless the 2nd dollar hits purely new people. And in the modern media environment the amount of pure additional reach you can get decays rapidly.”

DRTV/Retail Experience Agrees with This Finding. While Sharp was discussing reminder campaigns, I was thinking about our many 30-minute retail oriented direct response television campaigns – ones that drive long term sales and brand development while introducing new products to new markets.

These aren’t the types of campaigns Sharp studied. But consistent with his results, we often run our 1/2 hour infomercials at low levels for very long periods of time. And we find this approach develops massive retail and brand impact – in fact it’s usually the best use of the media dollar.

We’ve delivered these results for both the Kreg Jig and the Drill Doctor. Our Drill Doctor client eventually sold nearly 3 million drill bit sharpeners, at an average of around $100 each. And, in the meanwhile, developed a thoroughly recognized brand for themselves where it mattered – among dedicated tool users. Pretty powerful given their relatively low media investments.

While we’ve lacked Sharp’s statistics, we concluded this works for a couple of reasons:

1. The messages hit fresh new minds without wasting too much money repeating the message to those who have already bought or rejected the messages.

2. These fresh/unexpected messages are given time to sit before potential consumers see them again – giving new ideas time to gestate in the consumer mind. Then, when they hear the message again, the consumer hears it with new confidence or can find the new things that they want to know to decide if they’ll buy.

Media Bursts Aren’t Always Wrong. What this leaves open is the question of when bursts are right. Sharp’s post clearly leaves the door open (intentionally) for bursts.

Some new product introductions need to be executed in bursts – especially when DRTV supports some styles of retail introductions. We’ve done some very powerful 8 week campaigns for Kobalt brand tools from Lowe’s. In these cases, they had to be big & short to support the retail execution. And, they worked with exceptional power.

Some bursts are seasonal – driving sales volume at a time like the Holidays when a massive spike of shoppers are in the store and when those shoppers are buying larger volume. Or when a product has a specific seasonal cycle.

Bursts can also be strategically smart. Sometimes it’s an important strategy to influence your sales channel. So, for example, a heavy-up campaign that hits when new product reaches the retail floor can deliver the sales needed for manufacturers to become trusted suppliers.

Allocating Media Budget Takes Skill, Strategic Insight, and Experience. Far too often, the idea that integrated campaigns are more powerful causes companies to spread small marketing budgets across far too many media options. My sense (and I’d love to hear from Sharp’s team on this one) is that these campaigns lack the consistency in any one media to build true strength.

Of course only bottom line that matters is this: What is your situation and what allocation of media achieves your business result. But we should all take away from Sharp’s post a fundamental caution about the burst approach and add to it a caution about spreading too little money across too many media outlets.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

So it was refreshing to read Byron Sharp’s latest post “A Little Advertising Goes a Long Way” (link here). Sharp focuses on campaigns with huge media bursts and finds that far too often they’re tremendously inefficient.

If you recall, Prof. Sharp is the head of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute which studies advertising with really smart leveraging of statistics. And they develop their findings until they reveal truly scientific learnings.

Media Efficiency vs Media Spending. Sharp and his team focused their efforts on efficiency — contrasting bursts with a consistent & lower level of mass-reach media over a long period of time.

When compared with intense bursts, they found “…low weights of advertising on high reach media are very efficient. Generating a lot of sales per dollar.”

Hmmm. A lot of agencies aren’t going to like this. Agencies and clients, relying on lore and anecdote, have developed a dis-like for spending smaller budgets on mass reach media (e.g. TV). (The sad reality is that burst campaigns have the ego satisfying result of leading neighbors to say “I saw your campaign last night”. Too bad “neighbors” aren’t your dominant target!)

Why This Finding? Sharp’s team looked specifically at reminder campaigns – designed to build and keep fresh the memory pathways needed to bring the brand back to the forefront in order to drive purchase.

“The most memory refreshing dollar spent on advertising is your first. Decay in returns start immediately unless the 2nd dollar hits purely new people. And in the modern media environment the amount of pure additional reach you can get decays rapidly.”

DRTV/Retail Experience Agrees with This Finding. While Sharp was discussing reminder campaigns, I was thinking about our many 30-minute retail oriented direct response television campaigns – ones that drive long term sales and brand development while introducing new products to new markets.

These aren’t the types of campaigns Sharp studied. But consistent with his results, we often run our 1/2 hour infomercials at low levels for very long periods of time. And we find this approach develops massive retail and brand impact – in fact it’s usually the best use of the media dollar.

We’ve delivered these results for both the Kreg Jig and the Drill Doctor. Our Drill Doctor client eventually sold nearly 3 million drill bit sharpeners, at an average of around $100 each. And, in the meanwhile, developed a thoroughly recognized brand for themselves where it mattered – among dedicated tool users. Pretty powerful given their relatively low media investments.

While we’ve lacked Sharp’s statistics, we concluded this works for a couple of reasons:

1. The messages hit fresh new minds without wasting too much money repeating the message to those who have already bought or rejected the messages.

2. These fresh/unexpected messages are given time to sit before potential consumers see them again – giving new ideas time to gestate in the consumer mind. Then, when they hear the message again, the consumer hears it with new confidence or can find the new things that they want to know to decide if they’ll buy.

Media Bursts Aren’t Always Wrong. What this leaves open is the question of when bursts are right. Sharp’s post clearly leaves the door open (intentionally) for bursts.

Some new product introductions need to be executed in bursts – especially when DRTV supports some styles of retail introductions. We’ve done some very powerful 8 week campaigns for Kobalt brand tools from Lowe’s. In these cases, they had to be big & short to support the retail execution. And, they worked with exceptional power.

Some bursts are seasonal – driving sales volume at a time like the Holidays when a massive spike of shoppers are in the store and when those shoppers are buying larger volume. Or when a product has a specific seasonal cycle.

Bursts can also be strategically smart. Sometimes it’s an important strategy to influence your sales channel. So, for example, a heavy-up campaign that hits when new product reaches the retail floor can deliver the sales needed for manufacturers to become trusted suppliers.

But, You Might Say, Ads Become More Powerful When Seen a Lot (or Seen In Different Media). I think this argument starts with a fundamental logical flaw. If I spend $x to reach someone once and $3x to reach them 3 times, it’s unlikely that I’ll get 3x value out of reaching them that often. It simply isn’t reasonable unless you know you have a problem to solve where that repetition is make or break.

There are messages that need to gain the respectability power that comes from a single individual seeing them in multiple places or seeing them often. But you’d better be certain about that. Because if your message doesn’t NEED those additional consumer touches, then you’re wasting big media dollars because of the decreasing returns identified by Sharp.

Perhaps, also, this suggests why 1/2 hour infomercials do so well at constant low levels of media – a 1/2 hour message is so thorough it doesn’t benefit nearly as much from multiple viewings.

Allocating Media Budget Takes Skill, Strategic Insight, and Experience. Far too often, the idea that integrated campaigns are more powerful causes companies to spread small marketing budgets across far too many media options. My sense (and I’d love to hear from Sharp’s team on this one) is that these campaigns lack the consistency in any one media to build true strength.

Of course only bottom line that matters is this: What is your situation and what allocation of media achieves your business result. But we should all take away from Sharp’s post a fundamental caution about the burst approach and add to it a caution about spreading too little money across too many media outlets.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Of course, those wishing to become rich in a new digital world told us, once again, that this was the harbinger of the death of TV…just like newspaper is dead (which it isn’t) and magazines are dead (which they aren’t).

But truth is often quite complex. And today I came across this release (click here).

Guess what? CENSUS data shows that we’ve lost nearly 2 million (or more) households – real physical households – as a result of the recession. But Nielsen theoretical loss is only 1.57 million multi channel households.

Hmmm. So it’s entirely possible that the Nielsen cable numbers are mostly the result of demographic change due to the economy and NOT a sea change in TV consumption. And, there has clearly been a natural cost cutting in households due to the recession.

In other words, Nielsen may NOT have measured a drop in demand for cable, satellite and telephone service provider delivered TV. But just the recession – affecting the number of households and household budgets.

Oh well. I don’t expect reality from the VC powered digital TV lobby. So I don’t expect to hear about this from too many sources.

But these numbers should remind us all to be careful – even (or especially) with Nielsen research. And most certainly these numbers should tell advertisers to take care with any plans to shift away from TV.

Regardless of all this hoo-hah, here’s reality. Video distributed over the web produces minimal results compared with TV. And TV continues to drive business growth like nothing else.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved