Stealing Ideas

1,000 is the new 1,000,000 (preface)

Preface to the preface: Several months ago I read Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 true fans post and loved the concept.  I’ve also taken the time recently to actually read The Long Tail, as opposed to reading about it and what everyone else has to say about it for the last 3-4 years.  So it’s been that which I’ve most recently immersed myself in which lead me to the idea of this multi-part post focused on how large media companies should think about relatively small and nascent technologies like Twitter/Seesmic/FriendFeed/Apps/etc.

Background:For a large media company the name of the game has always been massive distribution + original content =  massive audience.  And massive audience = ad revenue.  But when the computer, the Internet, Moore’s Law and affordable high-speed connections all contributed and combined to form the perfect networking storm, the 1 + 1 = 2 equation got screwed with.  Only most media companies today are still ignoring it.  Or ignorant to it.

When all of the stuff above jumbled together and formed what we have today, an always-on, hyper-connected social landscape the new currency that matters most is that of the social kind.  Social currency is that stuff that gets you noticed (in a good way) and draws people to you.  It’s the joke at the party, it’s the tidbit of information that everyone nods at and says, “interesting…”, it’s the mundane, everyday, tiny interactions that can add up to one massive bank roll.  And media companies are nearly bankrupt.

Why?  Because they’re focus is still on the millions, not the thousand.  Today, even more so tomorrow, it’s the thousand that matter.

In the following days or weeks I’m going to focus on re-learning the following three areas which media companies need to more fully understand in order to make it in the social economy:

content, connections, conscience

Note: Please, feel free to contribute.  By no means is this meant to be a Brittanical essay, chime in, call me out, change my assumptions… it’s an open forum on a focused issue.  Treat it as such.

My (Smoked) Beef with Marketing Research

Jonathan Salem Baskin of dimbulb has a great post ripping JC Penney’s Dork Dodge game.  Shame on JC Penney’s for stealing this absurd idea… yet their marketing dept and agency likely will keep their jobs because there’s data and research galore for them to back themselves showing that women are the #1 online gamers.  So when their boss and boss’s boss starting asking why they did this despite lagging sales trusty marketing research will have their backs. 

Which brings me to the point of this post and something I haven’t gotten off my chest yet:

“Marketing research” exists not to uncover actionable insight, but to…

1. Reinforce false beliefs or the already known facts
2. Act as an insurance policy if a campaign, re-positioning, new packaging, expanded distribution, strategic partnership, etc. idea fails

Research should be a catalyst, but is more often than not a smoke screen shielding agencies and brand stewards from the consequences of uninspired, lazy work. 

The Currency of Ideas is Monopoly Money

Ideas hold no value.  Only ideas acted upon.  The person who sees something and says to you disappointed, arrogantly, “That was myidea!”  Is the same person who walks through MoMA and scoffs, “I could do that.”

My response to those people, and indeed I am one of them:

Why didn’t you?

There is no use for idea people in a web-based society where real trade skills are no longer needed, market research can be done in real-time, and cost of entry is close to Chris Anderson’s free.  There is use only for people who do.  For people who bring ideas to reality.

The problem with most of our ideas is that we’ve never realized one of them. 

Have You Earned the Right to be Heard?

Seth Godin - who at times can be long on inspiration short on application – has a short and stark reminder to media professionals today on his blog, “The tragic mistake of demographics and media planning is that they overlook the single most important issue: is the person you’re talking to ready to listen?”

Which is good reminder and at the same time, it isn’t. 

 
Good…

…if you have a response-based objective.  When you’re trying to get VC backing, or in terms of digital media objectives, get registrants, coupons downloaded, quotes requested, a car priced, etc.  This should be the aim of all of your partners, placements, ad types, and creative strategy – is it all working together to effectively and efficiently reach the people that are ready to listen?

Isn’t…

…because it assumes that people are ready, or will one day be ready, to listen.  But in most instances, they’re not.  And if you’re soliciting someone who’s not ready to listen then you may as well tell them their mother’s ugly, their wife’s a whore, and their child’s a brat.

The reality is only a handful of people are ready to listen at any given moment, a few more people will one day listen, and most will never be ready to listen.

The job of the media professional, the publisher (who should intimately know their audience and know who’s ready, who’s not, and how to engage the two), and the brand marketer is to distinctly and simultaneously speak to those that are ready to listen and earn the right to be heard from those that are not.

• The role of the media professional is to develop a communication architecture that reaches both groups of people while maintaining an authentic and singular brand voice.
• The role of the publisher is to intimately know their audience and know who’s ready to listen, who’s not, and how to best leverage their influence to engage the two on behalf of the brand.
• The role of the brand marketer is to demand that both communication efforts being going on and ongoing.

So I’m going to add to Seth’s declaration the result of which is this:

The tragic mistake of demographics and media planning is that they assume the person you’re talking to is ready to listen while ignoring their obligation to earn the right to be heard.

If you’re not earning the right to be heard – no one will ever be ready to listen.

Like Vacation Days, Digital Creative Strategy Doesn't Carry Over

“It’s as simple as this. You don’t put a logo in

first frame of TV so you shouldn’t in online.”

This was a comment @schmogel heard from someone likely grinding up next to her on the packed, hot elevator ride up to the 32^nd floor at one of the nation’s largest, most reputable ad agencies.  It was Twittered almost immediately after she heard it with a sarcastic note before it saying, “Wow.  Logic overheard in the elevator.”

I read her Tweet as I was stepping onto the Red Line from the Belmont platform and half-smiled while letting out one of those laughs where all you really do is blow air out of your nose.  What do you call those?  A smirk, maybe? 

Anyway, it got me thinking about all of the bad logic that’s been carried over from the traditional staples of advertising.  The stuff that has ridden the coattails of traditional marketing, brand strategy, and advertising into the digital space.  The stuff that makes brands look so incredibly clueless in the digital realm, to savvy and not so savvy people each and every day. 

I quickly came up with these two examples – what I think are the most prevalent offences – of flawed, carry over advertising logic:

PowerPoint Ads.   You know – those display ads that use all of the 15 seconds allowed them by most online publishers to slowly, rotate through 189 characters of copy, and finally revealing the call-to-action (and brand logo) at the very… very… end.  And then use all 3 loops.

In a world like TV where people are theoretically sitting there letting ads wash over them like waves every 15 to 30 seconds, this makes sense.  In print, where people are theoretically taking a break and reading, they might also read through all of your boring, self-righteous copy. 

But “in online” (gag) where a recent study suggested 17% of web pages receive 4 seconds or less of users’ attention and most users will read at most 28% of the words on any given page on the web… the “it’s simple, we do this in TV/Print/Radio…” logic is flawed to the point of failure.  Unless you don’t care about wasting 17%+ of your client’s budget, you better figure out how to get your point across in 4 seconds or less (so a logo on the first frame might not be a bad idea).  Or get to know the user behavior metrics on the sites and site placements the ads will be running on and tailor the messaging and sequencing of the ad appropriately (maybe you’ll get 6 seconds).

Video is video.  Let’s just repurpose our TV spots online.

I hate this one.  It makes me mad to type these words even.  Would you repurpose your print insertion on TV?  Would you repurpose your online ad in print?!??  Nope.  Well at least I hope not.  So what on God’s green earth makes people do this online? 

The medium is fundamentally different, the user mindset is different, the user expectation is different, almost everything that should inform your media and creative strategy is different in the digital space from what it is in TV – and yet budgets, laziness, and pride have collaborated to ruin one of the most beautifully misunderstood ad opportunities of the 21^st century – online/interactive video.

If I sat around for a while and thought about it, I’m sure I could come up with a dozen more examples of carry over logic that is ruining brands in the digital space.  But what’s the fun in that?  Tell me in the comments what carry over logic annoys you most “in online.”

Home Run Swing

I’m sitting here in my room about to go to a Rockies game watching the Cubs/Astros on ESPN.  Mark DeRosa is at bat against Brian Moller and swinging so hard that he can’t even stand in the  batter’s box, his follow-through carries his entire body across the plate as he stumbles to catch his balance so he doesn’t fall over.  DeRosa isn’t a known long-ball hitter, but I swear every time the guy is up to bat he’s swinging so hard that he falls over.

Then there’s Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire, Prince Fielder, guys who strike out like crazy because they take the same DeRosa approach with the exception that they actually do hit home runs with relative frequency.

And finally there are the Berkman’s or Fukudomes who don’t try to hit home runs, who are cold and calculated with each swing and just want to put the ball in play.  And don’t hit home runs but get on base.

Now bad baseball analogies aside, the point is the mental approach we take to our ideas will define our success and ultimately our legacy.  Most idea people are like DeRosa, they try to hit everything out of the park and rarely hit anything out of the the infield.  Rather they hit into a lot of double plays and generally just look foolish because they have an unrealistic value of their ability. 

Which leaves us with Fukudome vs. Sosa who both know their ability, both have a realistic value of it, both know their roles and have set appropriate goals based on those factors… but who have very different approaches.  And I’m not sure which approach is better.  Any thoughts?