Dilution in the Name of Innovation

I seem to be writing a lot about fast food lately.

Anyway, have you noticed what Burger King and McDonald's have in common with their latest "new" products?

Both have simply re-presented an existing product as something innovative, new, exciting, and promotion-worthy.

McDonald's has their "mac snack wrap" (notice the edgy lower-case 'm'? How 2.0!). It's a Big Mac in a wrap (but smaller).

Burger King is pushing their "BK Burger Shots". They're basic hamburgers - but smaller. Wow!












It's an interesting approach, and not as stupid as it might seem at first: the brands can offer a price incentive on popular items without actually affecting the pricepoint of their popular items.

Unfortunately, it's kind of boring.

As well, I wonder if these "new" products will simply dilute sales of the main menu items.

The Twitter Challenge

Twitter is obviously the sexy new thing in the world of communications. Nobody's quite sure where it's going, and that makes it even more exciting to watch.

But, there's a steadily growing resistance to Twitter. It, along with other so-called social media tools, has a serious problem with what some have dubbed an "echo chamber" effect: people tweet about Twitter, or blog about tweeting on Facebook, or create meetup groups on Facebook for bloggers to meet in person (and then tweet live from the event)...

A small sampling of the backlash:
There's this article.
Or this video.
Or this article (and comic).

I seriously think that Twitter can be a very useful tool, and that it will evolve into a fairly standard mode of communication. Whether it quietly finds a place in the background, like RSS, or merges with instant messaging tools, or dramatically replaces our e-mail remains to be seen. Trouble is, if it continues to be weighed down by people who's main topic of conversation is Twitter itself, it will have real difficulty becoming "mainstream" in any form.

So here's the challenge for Twitter users who want it to be treated seriously:

For the next week, don't use any of the following words in your tweets:
- Twitter
- social media
- Web 2.0
- any cutesy "tweet speak" like tweeple or twiterrati or twits

Also, remove from your bio any references to being a "guru" or "expert" or "ninja" for any of the above topics. Yes, even in those rare cases when it's true. Tell us something else about yourself.

And finally, do not link to more than a couple of articles, blogs, videos, photos, cartoons, or other media where Twitter is discussed, criticized, or otherwise the focus.


So, who's in?
Are you willing to give it a shot?
Think you can do it?

I challenge you. And if you're following anyone who could stand to cut back on self-referential Twitter-centric posts, send them here.

Four Levels

There are really only four classifications for any experience:

- Unacceptable
- Barely Acceptable
- Good
- Great

Levels of "unacceptable" aren't important to an outsider. It doesn't matter if something is absolutely terrible or slightly icky; either way, the experience wasn't good enough and shouldn't be repeated.

Barely acceptable is, unfortunately, pretty standard. This is where most businesses and individuals end up the majority of the time. This is survival. Short-term thinking at its finest.

Good is what most brands strive for, and most are able to achieve it occasionally. Big, successful organizations tend to fall in this category.

Great is rare. Unfortunately, most don't even try to get there. Or, they delude themselves to think that their level of "Good" is actually "Great".


Of course, these are all relative. And the only real definition of any of these terms is whatever the audience says it is.


Thinking about these four level of "okay-ness", what's the difference? What makes any experience fit within one rather than another?

I think it comes down to four things.
- Capability (obviously). What tools, experience, and assistance can a brand or person call upon?
- Attention to detail. Are they aware of the little things, and are they at least trying to address them?
- Caring. For those presenting the experience, is it a chore, a burden, a pleasure, or a calling?
- Time perspective. Is the focus on short term "let's just get through this" thinking or long term "where are we going with this?" thinking?

The Pizza Paradox

One thing that I try to avoid when ordering from a restaurant is getting items that I could easily make myself. Why pay $15 or $20 for a plate of simple pasta, or $8 for a basic sandwich, if there are alternatives on the menu?

Generally, I also have no interest in fast food. Even if it's cheap, there's really no reason to buy a slab of chewy meat slapped between a couple of tasteless buns.

I will, however, indulge in a fancy version of standard fare. If a restaurant uses unique ingredients and/or a special cooking technique to create a new take on a basic item, I'm all for it.

Pizza is weird, though. I'd rather order from a cheap, lowbrow, fast food pizza place than have a shmancy pizza at a higher-end restaurant. I think this goes back to the first point above: I can easily create a shmancy pizza at home. Flat crust is simple to make... Special ingredients like sun-dried tomato, shrimp, or fancy cheeses can be readily bought at the supermarket. On the other hand, it's time-consuming to make a fluffy, thick crust, and a strange indulgence to pile basic mozzarella and chopped veggies on a pizza.

Right now you're probably thinking "Who on earth analyzes his fast food buying decisions like this?" I know. It's bizarre, but these are the sort of things I think about.

Anyway, I'm strangely fascinated by this conundrum.
Why does pizza break the rules like this? Or, rather, why do two contradictory rules both apply (and both not apply)?

Sometimes the low-end product isn't necessarily the worst choice, I guess.

Google's Behavioral Targeting Experiment

Another digital marketing post...

Google is now starting to get into the Behavioral space, according to this article.

As usual, there's a potential clash between privacy and targetability.
Google's being careful and very transparent about this, so it will be great to see how this works out. If they can show consumers that non-personally identifiable tracking is actually a good thing, then that opens the doors for advertising through other publishers and networks to be more readily accepted by users.

Of course there are always people like the one quoted in the article who say "If they asked people, 'Do you really want to be followed around and served ads,' most people would say no. Most of us don't really value advertising in any solid way."

Maybe Google needs to start charging for their services for those consumers who are concerned about privacy. No cookies (other than those necessary for basic login purposes), no sharing with third parties, virtually no advertising... but you have to pay, say, $5 a month for access to Gmail, YouTube, Google Docs, advanced search tools like Calculator, and the rest of Google's suite. If they don't value the advertising, at least maybe they'll start to value the things that it normally pays for.

Anyway, that's beside the point.
I'll definitely be trying out Google's BT capabilities (as an advertiser and as a consumer) when I get the chance.

Digital Advertising's Economics

An interesting article in Adweek entitled "The Surprising Economics of Digital Advertising" got my attention on Twitter today.

It discusses a report published by the AAAA -- "A Marketer's Guide to Understanding the Economics of Digital Compared to Traditional Advertising and Media Services". You can download the full report here.

As always, I have mixed feelings.
The insights in this document are generally good. I'm not sure exactly where the "surprising" part is, though. Digital is different that traditional. Not a big leap there.

One thing I find interesting, though, is that it's really not a matter of "digital" versus non-digital channels. It's about good, well-planned, long-term, targeted, and careful marketing versus sloppy marketing.

Here's what I mean, for each of four primary drivers that the report states contribute to the (seemingly) higher costs of Digital advertising services:

1. "Growth in labor intensity, driven by an increasing volume of assets, technologies required and complexity of the process from creation through measurement and continuous engagement.

This is really only because we demand so much of digital advertising. When we treat it like a traditional campaign on a new medium (and many advertisers do), we simply create a small number of ad variations, run a very straightforward media campaign, avoid unique sponsorships or other custom opportunities, not bother with much tracking and optimization, and report very high-level numbers at the end of each flight.

Because it's possible to do so much more than this, though, the standard is to give much more care and attention to digital campaigns. They're inherently accountable.

One day (soon I hope), clients will demand the "digital" level of care and attention for all campaigns, regardless of medium used. When this happens, digital campaigns will no longer seem so relatively expensive.


2. "Shift from external third-party production resources to in-house agency resources".

Okay, I just don't get this one. Why would digital activities require in-house resources more than traditional ones do? Yes, it sometimes makes a lot of sense to do digital production in-house, but it's hardly a requirement. I would think that this actually makes digital more cost-effective, since an agency can decide ad-hoc whether to use internal or external resources for a particular project or client.


3. "Blurring the lines between media, production and agency services"

As with #1 above, isn't this just a sign of "good" marketing? Some of the best campaigns I've ever worked on, regardless of medium, have come from teams where media, design, production, account planning, branding, copywriting, technology, etc. etc. etc. have worked closely together and where some team members wear multiple hats.

And, as with #2 above, digital campaigns don't require that the lines be blurred, but generally most effective when this happens.


4. "Establishment of new job functions and new organizational structures within agencies and client organizations, with related supply & demand cost ramifications"

(Holy cow. And I thought I tend to be wordy)

This is essentially just re-phrasing the three prior factors and saying "agencies need to change their structure to do digital stuff".

Once again: sort of. It's not a necessity that agencies do this, or that all digital campaigns be managed in a complex, labour-intensive way. But it's great when they do. BUT, they should ideally be doing this for projects in every medium.

The report uses the example that "a traditional 'traffic' function is usually insufficient for managing complex Digital projects."
No offense intended to the traditional traffic people that I've met, but this is only true because the traditional 'traffic' function is so simplistic. It's not because digital projects are complex that this function is insufficient, it's because traditional traffic function has been more closely related to accounting than marketing strategy.


I guess what I'm getting at is:
Agencies, advertisers, and everybody else in the advertising world need to do things in a better way. Digital channels are pushing much of this change, but are not alone in benefiting from it.


Accountability.
Flexibility.
Responsiveness.
Targeting.
Long-term thinking.

These are all great ideas. Take them or leave. Online or offline.

Bigger Isn't Always The Answer

Haven't we been through this before?

According to AdWeek, it appears that members of the Online Publishers Association have decided to start offering large new ad units later this year in an attempt to combat a decline (or potential decline) in ad sales.

I have mixed feelings about this move.

In general, I like the idea of having more flexibility and additional options when planning a campaign. And the spirit of the additions is good: reduce clutter (as long as these new units replace a couple of old ones each, rather than just being added to the page), and create more of a "sponsorship" style of placement.

But, I'm concerned that this move largely misses the point of online advertising. The idea is to reach the right people in the right place at the right time with the right message... Not just hit them over the head with a bigger message.

If the publishers really want to combat a decrease in demand for their products, or the commoditization of online advertising, how about...
- Improving targeting capabilities?
One of the reasons that I personally like using ad networks is their robust Behavioural Targeting and similar options. But beyond this (as I've mentioned on this blog before), incredibly, a large number of publishers still don't make it easy to target by geography, domain, OS, time-of-day, etc.

- Decreasing minimum spend requirements?
Not everybody wants to give tens of thousands of dollars to one publisher for each short campaign.

- Segmenting site placements to a more granular level?
Let buyers place ads on more specific pages or sections. Sometimes I don't want to just buy, for example, broad topics like "business" or "news" or "technology", but would rather see my ads displayed with only "international trade" or "community news" or "wireless devices" content. Even if there are only a small number of impression on each of these, they're the right impressions.

- Cleaning up page layout and content?
Hiding an ad at the bottom of a page, or artificially driving more impressions by breaking an article into multiple pages, or filling every page with graphics and navigation items, etc. etc. are not just bad usability practices, but they also hurt the effectiveness of ad campaigns. I might advertise with you once because you have a low price or large number of targeted ad impressions or some other value, but if it doesn't translate into strong results, I'm unlikely to give you my clients' money again soon. A huge number of media sites are in desperate need of a redesign.

- Recognizing that sometimes online advertising actually is a bit of a commodity?
Web display advertising often works best as one component of a larger campaign. Reaching qualified consumers at several different points with a consistent message is a standard, and proven, advertising approach. While I don't generally like the "let's just buy a bunch of cheap inventory and reach a huge portion of the population a bunch of times each" approach, sometimes a slightly-refined version of this is all that's needed. When publishers charge a buyer 10 to 20 times higher CPMs than they would pay through an ad network it eliminates much of the extra value that comes from using high-quality placements.


Of course, I'm not talking about every publisher in the above examples, but there are certainly more than a few members of the OPA that could do a much better job of helping advertisers reach the right people in the right way. Without resorting to ad unit changes.


Although the publishers may be well-meaning, trying to build better relationships with advertisers in the hopes of displaying more meaningful, branding-focused campaigns, I suspect that a large number of advertisers and publishers will simply think of larger units as a way to make a bigger splash. "If a half page ad is good, a full page ad for less than double the price is great!" is the traditional thinking that occurs.

Look at pop-ups or page takeovers, and other experimental large format ad units of the past... They've largely died off because they were not used very well. Advertisers implemented them in order to yell louder at users.

I like experimentation, though, and I can't wait to see how the new ad units are used, how they're priced, and how consumers will react. Let's hope that well-planned and well-implemented campaigns are the rule rather than the exception.

Maximums

Limits are important. I get that.
But here are two examples of dumb limitations:

1. A pizza chain's flyer arrived in my mailbox last week. One of their featured offers is the "triple decker": three pizzas, three toppings each, three dipping sauces... for a certain price per pizza depending on the size. The kicker? It very clearly states "maximum three pizzas".

So, if I want to buy five or six? Too bad. I have to pay the basic, non-volume-discounted, per pizza price for the additional.

Why would they discourage me from ordering as many as I want at the lower price?


2. I tried to return some empty bottles to the local (government-run) liquor store today. We haven't returned any for several months, so there was quite a few. But, they're all the same type, boxed in their original cases, etc. -- so pretty easy to return.

As I'm lifting the boxes onto the counter to make the return, the staff member informs me that there's a limit on the number of cases that they can accept per person per day. I was about three cases over the limit and had to take the extras back to return another time.

Alright, fine. I understand the need for a limit. They don't want some homeless guy bringing in a week's worth of collections. Or a soccer team returning an entire bottle drive into the store, tying up staff, filling the stock room, and clearing out all their cash.

But c'mon... Make an exception for the handful of extras. It probably took the clerk longer to explain the limits than it would have taken for him to just ring them through.

Besides the general annoyance at his strict adherence to a silly rule, I'm bothered by the rule itself. Shouldn't they be encouraging as much recycling as people are willing to engage in (especially since they're a government-run operation)? And not only that, since I've already paid a deposit on each of these bottles, isn't it really my own money that they're returning to me? Seems pretty cheeky of them to make it extra-difficult for me to get my money back.


I really don't understand the logic or the lack of flexibility in either of the above.