New Wave Marketing 101: Overpaying, Over Doing and Over Estimating the Value of Social Media

If you saw the recent article about The State Department paying over $600K to raise its likes from 60,000 to 2,000,000 you should have laughed and then paused to reflect.

Here’s the takeaway: Most companies are over doing social media, over paying for the results and over estimating the value.

Here it is… short and sweet:

1. SM is a given for the vast majority of companies, but the simple basics are all that most need… because it’s expected – like a listing in the Yellow Pages was expected by consumers, even though no one saw results commensurate with cost.
2. CEOs and internal marketing departments in B2C and B2B are enamored of SM and frightened to be left behind, so they let any pretty face come in and sell them on likes and Google+ and tweets and you name it. Like taking candy from a baby… fools chasing numbers that don’t translate into sales.
3. Results are so poor that in any other media we would all run screaming from the field. But Google has us convinced that .75% is a pretty darn good return. I was a magazine editor/publisher for 20 years. If I had to sell that number to advertisers I would have been laughed out of the room.
4. Only two types of products/companies really benefit from the all out SM campaign: small, disruptive companies/products and huge multinationals. That’s it. Why these two?
• The big, big and maybe only significant effect SM has had on marketing is that for the first time consumers are finding you (78% find companies/products, not the other way around) and when they do, they’ve already developed an idea of who you are. You need to affect these preconceptions and this has traditionally been the realm of advertising; and if you can afford it, big ads with frequency still beat SM.
  
  But if you don’t have the bucks, SM allows you to disrupt markets, attack big market leaders and build status and belief with ‘minimal’ cost. This idea works with both B2B companies and consumer products trying to break through or disrupt an established market.
  
  But once you've hit mid-sized, SM is a minor necessity. You’re not disruptive, you have some media budget, you only need a basic presence.

• Then, there are a few, just a few, huge companies that need to present a human face: Wal-Mart, General Electric, GM, etc. -- companies that most people see as cold and faceless. Intelligent SM works well for them as branding, not sales. 

But most companies are not this big and do not need to be humanized. I don't expect Big O tires to show me their human side -- I do expect or at least appreciate a bit of humanity from Blue Cross Blue Shield or Shell Oil, etc.

If you’re not in one of these two categories, then SM is a small part of your marketing efforts these days. The blush is off the rose. For you to expect big results (and for you to pay big bucks to the plethora of SM pundits and overblown, egotistical coders and SEO ‘liars’) from minuscule return rates is just silly.

Look, say hello and thanks to your customers, explain what you do, offer a sale, improve your customer service, attract good people to hire, then get the hell out of SM.

The rest is plain nuts!

NewWave Marketing 101: Nothing can change the shape of things to come

Wow… hadn’t thought of that song since the 60s. And honestly, neither the song nor the movie (Wild in the Streets) was any good. But like it or not, the sentiments of a generation and 1968 American culture were plainly, if not naively, expressed.

In many ways it’s 1968 all over again for marketing and advertising: things are changing in ways no one can control and few can imagine. What we’re left with at the current moment is a very poor mix of old and new… the old is obvious nonsense to everyone, except for the agencies who continue to peddle it because they’ve nothing else… and, of course, direct response which is so silly that it’s camp. (Do you LOVE the ear wax commercial where the guy sticks the Q-tip in his ear up to his eye socket and then jumps? Jerry Lewis would be proud.)

The so-called ‘new’ hasn’t arrived… instead we get an almost dada-like attempt at trying to be cutting edge and cool. Just another form of nonsense -- but at least these people are trying to find ‘the new’ and aren’t peddling old ideas with the bromide that, “things haven’t changed very much… marketing is coming back to the basics.” No, it isn’t.

Where it’s going, who knows? Have you noticed how much humor is being used these days in TV adverts? As if to say, “we know you don’t believe any of this, so let’s all pretend we’re in on the joke.”

Of course, fact-based ads are almost the sole province of drug companies. They’ve all developed this concept of nice, happy images rolling by, while they’re talking about side effects such as nausea, heart attack, sudden death, hives, swollen throat and tongue, blurred vision, etc.

Since I have a musician’s gallows humor, I actually find these drug commercials more comical and absurd than the ads that are meant to be funny.

Speaking of which, here’s an apocryphal story related to music… but I think it demonstrates what level of change lies ahead for advertising and marketing.

A very good friend and first rate guitarist (whom I’ve known since those on-the-road years in the late 70s) told me about a collaboration he had completed. If you stop to think about how revolutionary this is, you’ll see the implications.

Danny has produced a few home videos where he plays along with basic jam tracks… just for fun and to keep his chops up. He posts them on youtube and a cool sight called Fandalism.com. Well, he gets an email from someone in Italy (Danny is in Atlanta) who has written a song, put down most of the tracks but needs a guitarist. He sends the files to Danny… who adds his tracks and voila… an international collaboration that’s online to the world.

Here’s the part to consider. Even 10 years ago, if I had a band in, say, Cleveland and we were all in our 20s, we would have never considered auditioning a player in his late 50s. Never... much less a 55 year old guy from Mexico City or Bordeaux.

Ten years later, age doesn’t matter nor does distance… what matters is talent and creativity. That’s it.

I have no idea the age of the Italian guy -- he could be 16 or 60… who cares?

This idea of long distance joint musical ventures between countries and cultures and ages is amazing… and beyond anyone’s comprehension even a decade ago.

Marketing and advertising are in the midst of similar radical change to the very essence of the industry… change that no one anticipated… change that agencies are dismissing as foolish (like now defunct record companies did).

I for one -- even at my late age -- can’t wait to see the new burst of creativity we’re soon to experience… and I will be vindictive enough to laugh out loud as so-called marketing experts and agency consultants are left clinging to a couple of clients and biding their time until the good old days of blowhard marketing return.

Like maybe… never… if there’s a God.

What’s wrong with advertising and agencies? Go Daddy spot says it all

Now that the dust has settled from a mediocre game with very mediocre advertising, and we’ve been inundated with analysis of both, maybe we can see things for what they are.

Simply put: the Go Daddy spot and the analysis that followed, given by ‘advertising and marketing experts,’ together highlight the absurdity of advertising and agencies. Advertising is meant to be part art and part science... isn’t that what we tell ourselves and our clients? These past few days we’ve seen the man behind the curtain and he ain’t pretty or smart.

A few very clear observations we all should have made:

1. The Go Daddy kissing spot was weak by any measure: not very creative, not well done, average at best. Here’s one way you know this -- all the hype the agency put out about the ad prior to the game tells you that they knew it was ho-hum. They built up the ‘45 minutes of kissing’ with a supermodel in hopes of getting the audience to ‘understand’ the coolness of the concept.
 Even more telling, a spokesperson for Go Daddy reported the highest level of phone calls ever during the 24-hours after the ad ran. But s/he wouldn't release any numbers (telling those of us in the industry that this is a little white PR lie).

2. The audacity of some ‘experts’ to claim that, “since we’re still talking about the ad it was successful” is damn nonsense. This is the excuse that advertising losers use to keep their jobs and validate their salaries. If, as an industry, we can’t universally ‘condemn’ the ad for being boring, trite and unimaginative (or better yet, a waste of money) -- then we have no standards by which to judge our work. Rather, we are shysters hiding behind a concept of ‘creativity’ that’s as simplistic as saying, “anything that stands out is good.” If that’s the case, then any 10-year-old can be an ad executive or run an agency.


3. Look, it’s essential to stand out, but that alone is nothing more than being a carnival barker. And for any agency to claim success based on this lowest common denominator is ludicrous. You know, you can ‘stand out’ for being exceptionally stupid or exceptionally crass or exceptionally uninformed. In claiming the lowest ground you are as special as another well-endowed pole dancer in Las Vegas.


4. We either have standards or we’re hacks. Either Picasso is a great artist or his work is no better than any first grader. Either “The Sun Also Rises” is great literature or Barbara Cartland and Ernest Hemingway are just two more pulp fiction writers.


5. Anyone who plays devil’s advocate and claims that “the ad might not have been to your taste but it was successful because we’re still talking about it,” is a fool.

C’mon -- successful executives will tell you that in any meeting you should do something to make your presence known. You don’t want to be anonymous in a room. How, then, to accomplish this? Well, one way would be to prepare for the meeting and ask an intelligent question. Fine. You’ve been remembered. Or you could stand on the table and pull down your pants. That would be very unforgettable. And you’d be a Go Daddy advertising jackass or a partner in Deutsch New York. (The agency is still tap dancing about the ad... rule #1 of PR, never admit you might be wrong.)

NOTE: On one agency site (PPBH) I found this sentence about the Go Daddy ad: “This is the commercial that we all love to hate, but of course can’t help but talk about.” On another site, one ad executive asked if the ad was meant to be 'purposely bad,' and a paradigm of a new style of advertising with built in errors to engage the public.

Do you see what's wrong with agencies?

Digital Catch-22 Has Stolen Marketing… Right from Under Our Noses

Let’s be honest -- marketing as most of us know it no longer exists.

There are several reasons for this and many of them lie at the feet of marketers themselves: poorly conceived campaigns, slow delivery of the creative, the attitude that we are ‘ar-teests,’ the derivative nature of most of our work these past two decades and agency billing procedures that are a micrometer short of highway robbery.

Marketers have been replaced by IT and software guys who have redefined our art/craft so that they can claim to be marketing experts. They define the job so they are the job. And that job is numbers, numbers, numbers.

Better still, here’s the new marketing task in a nutshell:

Trick consumers into seeing ads for products they don’t want and don’t believe in.

Sure, larger, more sophisticated companies still understand the need for marketing in the sense of defining a market, positioning a product and telling an emotional narrative that drives sales. Please look at the Samsung Galaxy III spot… the story it tells, the images it uses and how it’s positioned Samsung as superior to the iPhone. That’s marketing.

But most medium to smaller companies have been convinced by the plethora of Internet/SEO/automated sales people that they have no need for this type of marketing and storytelling. Instead they willingly spend on software and analytics and email lists and multiple landing pages. Numbers, numbers, metric, metrics.

Here’s the cool part: the metrics are meaningless. They were created by digital guys to match the capabilities of the software. It’s a shell game: we measure those measurements that we can measure. Catch-22 if there ever was one.

Do these metrics equate to sales or profits? Rarely, if ever. But by God they can show their clients digitally-generated numbers, so they must be true.

They toss a bone to ‘content,’ but don’t care, really. Had Google not mentioned that new algorithms would be driven by content, these Net people wouldn’t give marketing narratives the time of day.

You know that old line about ‘sell the sizzle not the steak’? These guys sell neither.

Again, they have one goal: To trick consumers into seeing ads for products that consumers don’t want and don’t believe in.

That’s Marketing 101 in 2013. Live with it.

Amazingly, these guys preach the need for a personalized message but then send unwanted and totally impersonal junk to any name they can get their hands on. Personalized? They can’t spell it.

Now here’s the real Catch-22. Because these automated mavens have the numbers and count the numbers, they never fail.(Remember what Stalin said about elections? He didn’t care who voted as long as he got to count the votes.) If a product doesn’t sell it’s because of a weak story -- fire the $20 an hour copywriter. But, if the product does sell, it’s all in the software and programming.

And gullible CEOs are lining up for the privilege.

Did I just read that 83% of company execs think that marketing has ZERO effect on sales and/or profits? Ask these same men and women about the value of automated, integrated, digital, analytic programs and they’ll virtually wet their pants with glee.

At a time when smart marketing is desperately needed, it’s been co-opted, vilified, scorned and ignored in favor of software, metrics and meaningless numbers.

Bad Direct Response Advertising Is Telling You the Truth... If You Listen

We’ve discussed this several times: how it’s best to show what you mean rather than come out and say it. Remember? “If I say I’m cool, I’m not cool; if others say I’m cool, then I am.”

Understanding this simple difference is essential to telling a good story or writing a good ad.

If we’ll listen closely to most DR ads (because most are poorly written these days), we can find out the REAL truth of a product… this idea is Human Nature 101… we intensify and over-compensate for what we fear.

Recall poor Richard Nixon. During the height of the Watergate scandal he went on TV and proclaimed, “I am not a crook!” Surveys showed that a large number of Americans thought he said, “I am a crook.” In fact, that’s what he REALLY said if you listen. His proclamation to the contrary reinforced the very idea he was trying to eliminate.

Here’s what I mean. Recently, I saw a new DR spot for yet another blond, perky, California trainer with a weight loss and exercise plan. Here are a few sentences from the spot.

“This is not like any other program on the market.” They just told you the truth: this IS like every other plan. They’re afraid you’ll see that, so they shout a disclaimer up-front to appear honest and proactive.

“Mary isn’t your average trainer, she’s Hollywood’s most sought after celebrity fitness expert.” The truth? She has no way to standout from the crowd… she knows it; you know it. Again, a bit of preemptive puffery by the writer is thought to be the solution.

“The music behind her program is a new combination of salsa and hip hop that gets you moving.” The truth? You couldn’t tell one of her exercise songs from any number of Zumba-like programs and she knows it.

You see, these DR spots are telling you the truth… just listen. Every time they claim they’re different (rather than showing the difference), you get the TRUTH that they’re very, very afraid of.

“New Wave DR is unlike any agency you’ve ever seen.”

“Our ads are unique and truly creative.”

“Our service is second to none.”

Blah, blah, blah. Read the above as, “average agency, a bit creative with reluctant customer service.”
 

Facebook’s New Ad: Why 99% of Companies and Agencies Would Have Said ‘NO’

If you haven’t yet seen Facebook’s ad ‘about’ its one billionth user you should. Pure genius. (Go to http://bit.ly/PZPh3d)

Once you’ve seen it, ask yourself these questions: Would your company have gone with such an approach? Would your agency have suggested the idea? Would any of your clients have accepted such an ad?

I’m cynical for sure, but I guess that 99% of the time the answers would be NO, NO, NO.

How can you have an ad that doesn’t mention the one billion mark? Doesn’t say how great Facebook is?

The new ad is 100% emotional… no mention of Facebook’s server power or its world class customer service. There’s no mention of a breakthrough technology… no pictures of Zuckerberg saying, “we care.”

The message is not about FB at all, so it’s even more powerfully about FB. (Please revisit an earlier post “If I Say I’m Cool… I’m Not Cool” http://bit.ly/PZQffM)

Yet… 99% of agencies and clients would have passed on the ad, preferring, instead, some sort of derivative piece with messaging like this: strong, forceful, macho… you get it… dig me.

THEME: One Billion People Can’t Be Wrong

VOICEOVER: When we started Facebook, we knew it was a communications breakthrough … but even we didn’t envision that it would revolutionize the way people get connected and stay connected.

Today, we’re one billion strong… and let’s face it, that many people can’t be wrong.

From Timbuktu to Toronto, Beijing to Boston, San Francisco to Sydney, our growing infrastructure brings friends together, lets us share our feelings and makes any business instantly international.

Join the Facebook family album and find out what you’ve been missing.

The world is waiting to hear from you… don’t be left out.

There it is – the ‘perfect’ ad for the 99%. It’s strong. It tells the world who we are.  It brings a little fear to the consumer. And this ad will pass muster with the Board, the CEO, the SEO guys. Lots of keywords (Facebook, communications, connected, breakthrough, billion, users, international, business) and text chunks we can tweet, too.

Before anyone suggests that the new ‘humble’ ad is OK for Facebook but not for other companies, let me remind you: FB is no longer the darling it once was. Check the stock price. It is beginning to look old, feel old. Billions of users or not, the bloom is off the rose. After seeing the new ad, I had a feeling that FB was somehow ‘redefined.’ I was reminded of what I loved about it years ago. (I use it less these days because it seems too business-oriented and thus kinda cold.) This ad made me think about what FB was once and could be again.

Simply put – as direct response this ad works because people like me, and I am everyman, will be moved to start thinking about FB again… start using FB more frequently and with renewed enthusiasm. More numbers=more sales=more money for FB and that’s the bottom line for any marketing piece.

Still, I can hear the marketing department's reservations: “Shouldn’t we at least mention one billion in the headline?"

(At this moment I finally understand why my wife won't let me have a gun in the house.)