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What I Read

I've gotten a number of requests lately (in a very strange coincidence) asking what i read regularly. It's a fairly eclectic list, i guess. Some of these have been in my list forever, some are recent adds.

I generally start the daily consumption with headlines from a couple of core sites. These are my daily early morning reads. Cyclingnews.com is my first stop, where i get the latest news on the professional cycling community and my favorite sport. I also read the headlines and a story or two from Techmeme.com, where you'll get the freshest headlines. I'll also check out the headlines on CNN.com, NYT.com, and Wall Street Journal.com.

I've been really closely watching the rapidly changing editorial/news world. So, about every other day, i'll check out a couple leading content sites for headlines, functionality changes, interface chances, etc. I'm a fan of TheDailybeast.com, Huffingtonpost.com, AOL.com, gawker.com, theawl.com and, for the latest headlines, i read www.mediagazer.com. I've also started reading xojane.com, because i'm a secret fan of Jane Pratt. Forbes, Fast Company  and the Atlantic Wire are really, really great and i should read them more frequently than i do.

I'm a music fan, so i'm almost always listening to Pandora.com throughout the day. NPR.org and Minnesota Public Radio are both dynamite sources for music fans. And, i'll check out www.pitchfork.com or Rollingstone.com occasionally. I also like The SixtyOne because of the awesome/unique interface and the music discovery.

I try to stay up to date on the advertising industry, so i read a couple sites pretty regularly. Advertising Age is the go to. But, Adweek has gotten much better with its recent relaunch. Both are pretty much every other day reads for me. There are a handful of blogs i read pretty regularly where, on average, the writing is much more valuable to me than the industry gossip and puff pieces. Two that are pretty much essential reading are Paul Isaakson and Faris Jacob. And, there are a couple agencies that are doing a great job sharing their knowledge, for example Zeus Jones and the BBH labs team. There are lots more, but that's a pretty good list. 

I spend the most time reading up on internet culture and emerging thinking about how the net is changing everything. There are dozens of regular sites i go to every month, so i wont list them all, but a couple of ones that everyone could learn from include: Clay Shirky (smartest writer on the web), Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine, and Doc Searls.

Other tech news- I read Techcrunch.com and Mashable.com pretty much everyday. Techcrunch.com and Techmeme.com a couple times a day. I like to check out the headlines a couple times a week at Hacker news and Ars Technica.com.

I also read a bunch of OG bloggers, folks who have been blogging since they were called Weblogs. I've learned so, so much from these folks, including most of of what i know about digital culture. I still think the best blogs (not tumbleblogs, though) are the best of what the web has to offer in a lot of ways. If you want to understand what blogging is all about, the give/take, thoughtful analysis, and the interesting stream of smart links, you should read Jason Kottke's Kottke.org, Andy Baio (Waxy.org), and Anil Dash (www.dashes.com). You could also learn a lot from Matt Haughey, Heather Armstrong, Paul Ford, and John Battelle. There are hundreds more, but that's a good list.

There are some general cycling culture sites i check out pretty regularly: Lance Armstrong's twitter feed, Chris Carmichael's twitter feed, Fat Cyclist, and Bikesnob NYC.

And, because i'm in the food business, i look at a lot of food blogs. Dozens. I won't list them all, but here are a couple great sites that are representative of the ones i love: SeriousEats.com, one of the very best multi-author blogs out there, Tastespotting.com, Foodgawker.com, our own Tablespoon.com (Go Erin!), MPLS' Heavytable.com,101cookbooks.com.

Finally, the timewasters i love: the Onion, Buzzfeed, Facebook, twitter, and, the ultimate in web uselessness, AbeVigoda.com, 

The Digital Brand Advertising Maturity Model: Phase 1 -"TV on the Internet"

A lot of big brands are still trying to figure out digital marketing. They are taking a hodge-podge approach to their efforts, with a little bit here (SEM), and little bit there (their website) and maybe a little excitement dashed in (their facebook presence/twitter stream). But, before big, mass market brands can truly wrap their heads around the concept of being "modern brands", they should get comfortable with what they are doing with basic web display advertising. That is, "TV on the Internet".

TV on the Internet

Big, slow, classic mass-market brands have built their whole marketing model around TV. Their planning calendar is driven by their TV buying and TV production cycles, delivering "campaigns" that are like carpet bombs of 30 second tv spots. Their research tools, processes, and partners are designed to deliver the one true "insight" that will make a great TV spot. The creative messaging is driven and shaped by all the tools they use to conceptualize, vet, test and create their TV spots. The marketers and researchers there have built - literally- whole careers on being great at managing and guiding these processes, blending, when it's done well, the science of marketing and the art of advertising together to create breakthrough work that infiltrates our culture. Via TV.

It's a big, well oiled machine that we all take for granted, and we assume, because the machine has always worked so well, that it will also output great digital marketing. But it can't create great digital marketing. Because it was designed.for.creating.TV. That doesn't means the digital marketing that comes out of this systems is bad. It's just not what digital marketing could be.

Before brands shoot for "great", it's worth understanding what "good" looks like. Here are the characteristics of digital campaigns that are "TV on the Internet":

• A single, broad target - Typically, defined by demographics, like "Moms with kids in the house, 30-55".
• Key Objective: Awareness - These campaigns are really very much like TV, in that they are  designed to deliver an impression. And that's pretty much it. All the cool interactive stuff that you can do online? Clicks, conversions, online ad driven actions don't really matter in these campaigns.
• Creative: Persuasion - The goal of the creative is to persuade and change attitudes, not drive action.
• Campaigns: The campaigns tend to flow at the same rhythm as TV; run for a couple months, and then go dark.
• Media: "Set it and Forget it" - These campaigns don't get optimized when they run. They are planned and run and aren't really optimized that much over the course of the campaign. 
• Media: Focus on Reach - Like TV, the main objective of the media buy is almost always to maximize the number of people reached by the message. The placement - where the creative runs - is important, but generally, reach is favored over relevance.
• Measurement: Offline impact - These campaigns don't measure impact by what happens online.  Like all ad efforts, the most value is placed on what happens offline. Cash register rings. Sales in the big box, or the market, or the retail outlet. 
• Learning Cycles - The learning cycles of "TV on the Internet" campaigns, as far as i've seen, tend to be like an annual cycle. The iteration and learning cycles tend to be six to eight (or up to 12 months). 

 But, while digital marketers might scoff at these campaigns, they work for marketers for a couple important reasons:

• They are relatively easy to manage - Agencies and marketers can work and execute these campaigns pretty easily, assuming the marketers don't try to over-work the banners.
• They work - A lot marketers are finding that banners work well. At the very least, they drive brand metrics. But, they also drive sales offline, too. 
• They are predictable - Brands can these campaigns pretty easily, and they are getting more and more predictable in their ability to drive results. 

These aren't the sexiest digital campaigns. You'll never see these on the front cover of AdAge. But, these campaigns can form the foundation of great brand-building efforts. They can drive regular results, can be pretty predictable, and can provide marketers with "ground cover" to do more, innovative, and more interesting things.

But, "Modern Brands" should be providing more than advertising, more than their own message. That's the next phase in the maturity of digital brand marketers. 

Next up: PHase 2- Data Driven Brand Marketers

 

 

Wanted: A Turnkey Solution to test display ads (Fast, Iterative Learning w/Real Dollars)

I realize this post may open the floodgates of email from the gajillions of readers of this blog, but the "lazyweb" could solve a  problem i've been wondering about. (And note, this is my personal page, and it in no way reflects the opinions or positions of my employer and is not a solicitation of a proposal) 

The Setup:

A lot of the brands i come into contact with are classic, big, mass-market brands. They focus mostly on TV or some sort of instore promotion as a way to grow their top-line sales. As a result, they put tremendous amounts of time and energy into getting their advertising message perfect. This creates a planning cycle that often starts 18 months or so before the :30 second spot airs. 

As these brands move to online advertising, their planning cycles aren't really changing that much. Digital gets planned along with the tv, the creative is often linked explicitly to the tv in the name of "integration", and therefore the digital creative is often planned at least 8-10 months before it "runs". And, a similiar amount of energy/time/planning goes into getting the digital message (the words, the visuals, the consumer "target", the tone, the call-to-action) perfect before they launch. Its' like we're planning our banners like we plan our TV spots. 

Note: It's going to seem counterintuitive to many of us, but the majority of these campaigns focus only on awareness. That is, they aren't concerned about a click, or any sort of action. These are mass-reach, impression driving campaigns, not CPA/CPC, response based campaigns. 

The Challenge: 

We should be able to plan and execute our digital display ads so much faster and cheaper. The growth of exchanges and the proliferation of ad networks has created a flood of cheap, not-quite-free banner space (see: Mediamath, contextweb.com or, for better, higher quality contextual placement Brand.net). There are amazing tools out there that make it easy to do data-driven targeting of the creative unit. There are crazy powerful tools that make it easy to dynamically create, in real-time, creative units from a library of images, messages, and other creative elements (see: Teracent, X+1). And, there's a growing supply of providers who can match up in display impressions w/back office sales data (at least for the industry i work in).

With all this data, all this display space, all this measurement, why isn't there a product that brands can buy that enables them to do the following: 

• Have a known period of "testing" (like two months)
• Put a known amount of working dollars into the market (not much money, mind you)
• Have a set of two to four consumer "targets" to test
• Have a set of two to four different creative messages to test
• Have a known result to test against (in this case, cash register rings in the store, not clicks, necessarily)

The goal: Come out of a 1 to 2 month test, with a higher degree of confidence that they've got an advertising message that will drive instore sales with a specific consumer segment. And, all this by putting a significantly smaller proportion of the annual marketing budget (like a fraction) to work, before the bulk of it is committed.

The desired outcome: Risk management for the main campaign; a higher confidence in the combination of message, media placement and consumer target. And, do this in a way where the brand doesn't have to work that hard at it, where it's NOT a big production, and where the brand can learn fast. 

The need: 

This has got to be productized, like something a brand could (almost) buy with a few clicks. This should be something that a brand could buy, a) in a turnkey way b) for a known amount of money c) with a known amount of "working" dollars required. This would be delivered as a service, with some support from the vendor in designing, producing and executing the program. It would be delivered in a standardized window (e.g. 1 month of planning, 1-2 months of testing, 1 month of analysis) with known/consistent deliverables (that would enable cross test comparisons)

There's got to be a productized version of this out there somewhere.

No brand would be interested in:

• Some technology that the internal/external IT group or agency group can use
• Smarter ways to buy media
• Buying media directly from exchanges and or networks
• Brands won't want to hear about your dynamic, real-time, multivariate testing capability. they'll want this to work automagically
• Dynamic optimization
• Your agency creative, strategy or production services
• Campaign management tools
• CPC tools or SEM mgmt tools
• Any sort of customized project from some agency

They'd be looking for a turnkey solution that can be bought off the shelf. There's got to be something like this out there....But i've looked, and i can't find it. 

Lazyweb, any ideas? 

 

 

From Buzz to Something Real: The Peril of "Earned Media"

Like most marketers, we're trying to figure out just how real the promise of "earned media" is. Truly earned, positive exposure for your brand is almost unicorn-esque: it takes a fantastic product, a clearly articulated brand story, and a lot of elbow grease to get it started.But more and more, we're talking to brands about how "earned media" can be a powerful benefit from great marketing.

But, we're nowhere near close to being able to answer the legitimate questions we'll be getting from smart marketers about how to equate the value of earned media to the stuff we're hoping to displace. So, when marketers ask "what's the value of earned media", we don't have the tools to really answer that question.

We know, generally, that exposure for the brand that we don't have to actually pay for is good. But, can you put a media value on the amount of blog posts, tweets, mentions, comments, etc? How do we go from vague "buzz", to real, legitimate "media value" from the conversation?

(Yes, i know the whole question is kind of crass. But, it's still legitimate. More importantly, as paid media gets less effective/efficient, we'll need to understand how to prioritize our efforts in the social space. Which brings us back to how to value the conversations... )

Here's the nut that needs to be cracked:

* the promise of "earned" media is that it could, theoretically, replace "paid" media, if we could get our arms around it.

* to get our arms around it, we need to be able to track the activity over time and see real trends emerging from the data and, eventually, make connections in the data, leading to legitimate insights

* to track it, we need a consistent definition of "earned media", and a clear, consistent categorization of the forms that earned media takes, from blog posts, tweets, comments, "likes" etc.

* To measure it, we need to see the differences over time, and equate some sort of value to each of the instances we see it. Even if that value is relative (*this* is better than *that*) and not financially quantifiable. Ideally, we'd be able to identify some causal relationship between "earned" media and cash register rings. But, until then, we'll need some sort of objective way to rank/force rank the desirability of the forms earned media takes.

* all we have - right now - is an "impression" as the common media unit. We have to be able to do better than that.

So, what I guess I'm looking for is a tool that will help us track and categorize the "earned" media we're getting like we track our paid media. I've got all sorts of tools that show me activity, some that can show me sentiment, and one or two that can give me semantic insights in the deluge of text. But, how do i know how much it's worth? It's the unicorn tool, i'm afraid.

Examples of Connection Plans?

I've been running into the phrase "Connection Plans" or "Touchpoint Plan" more frequently lately. Makes me scratch my head a bit. As i learn more about the ad business (it's dying) and try to apply what i know about the web world (things are going well there, thanks), i realize its the Ad biz's way of doing what web folks know as experience planning. Or, at least that's what i think right now.

There's conferences, cool job descriptions, and even some theorizing. I'd love to see some examples of the deliverables that get described as "connections plan". Anyone care to share?

Service is Marketing, Marketing is Service

Link: [ paul isakson ]: The Future of Marketing + Advertising.

For a number of reasons having to do with my job, i've been thinking a lot about this concept lately:

• The best advertising is true service
• [insert noun here] that delivers truly valuable service, something that is helpful, delightful, authentic
• The brand is embodied by the full breadth of the delivery experience:
  • Tone
  • Content
  • Results
  • Timing
  • Aesthetics
  • etc. etc. etc.
• The job of marketers is to ensure consistent delivery of consistently good service
• True for product manufacturers just as much as for service businesses. Products have service wrapped around them, whether you like it or not. It's called consumer experience.

Paul does a nicer job getting it across than i could. See also:

• Zeus Jones *
• Peter Merholz / Adaptive Path - Experience is the Product

* (yes, i know they've been getting a lot of link love from me)

The Future of Software Development (and business planning?)

Lot's to think about in this article on, of all things, the emergence of agile development methods. I've been thinking a lot lately about how to apply some of these ideas - build process to embrace change, refactoring - to business planning. No great breakthroughs yet, but i do believe there's a germ in here somewhere. The strategy and planning model we're following now - essentially the waterfall method: plan for 8 months, execute for 12, start over again - is broken. The institutional reasons for planning like this - tv production cycles, product development cycles, budgeting, - have all gotten faster and more iterative, so why hasn't our business planning cycles? Gotta keep thinking about this and looking for alternatives to the waterfall method. Anyone out there have better ideas?

Link: The Future of Software Development.