I was wondering when the Scalia clone would be nominated. Didn't take very long after Miers got yanked.
A good deal of the feedback concerning my post on hypothetical conversation departments seems to indicate that the Conversation Department shouldn't report to marketing. I just listened to Rubel and Jaffe talk about the post a bit, and there it was again - an advancement of the notion that Consumer Conversation shouldn't be a marketing function.
Why not?
Honestly, I really don't care one way or the other. But it seems that some folks are arguing that a "Chief Conversation Officer" should report directly to a CEO and that the function shouldn't be a marketing function. I happen to think that this argument is the result of a belief that anything remotely associated with marketing is lame, lame, lame.
I need something a little bit more substantial than that to make a case, though.
Remember that marketing's function within a company is (ostensibly) to find and develop markets for a product or service. And if you believe that markets are conversations, doesn't it logically follow that conversations fall into marketing's area of responsibility? I mean, I can understand that Cluetrainers are fighting the traditional tenets of marketing, but if you change the nature of marketing altogether, what could possibly be the objection to using marketing people to get the job done? Is it the assumption that an old dog can't learn new tricks?
For some new companies, it might be less painful to absorb the responsibility for participating in conversations into marketing, rather than create an entirely new department with a CCO (Chief Conversation Officer) reporting directly to the CEO. If we'd rather do it the second way instead of the first way, we need an argument a LOT more compelling than "Marketing Sucks."
I'm just sayin' is all.
Jaffe and Rubel mention me and my comments a couple times in the latest edition of "Across the Sound."
Libby is going down. My personal theory is that Rove is squirming under the heat lamps for a bit longer, at least until he gives up the big fish.
It will be interesting to see whether or not these guys do the right thing or whether they'll fall on their swords like good little Republicans.
Off to view the press conference...
Got my first snail mail communication from Sprint, post-merger. Damn.
Stanley Power Tools called. They want their brand look and feel back.
How can the CEO of the second-largest marketing company claim that there are major changes taking place in media due to emerging media like the Internet, "and we don't understand the speed and scale at which they're taking place."?
It's not like all of this happened overnight. Sir Martin, you've had a dozen years' worth of warning shots. How can you claim to not have a clue what to expect?
You've certainly known for years that new media was eroding television, print and radio consumption. (Incidentally, television didn't need the Internet to continue its yearly ritual of charging more for less. The Internet just accelerated that trend.)
You might have sighed with relief when the Internet bubble burst, but we all knew (and warned the world) that the medium wasn't going away. And it didn't. And you've had a few years since the bubble to reflect on this.
So quit pretending this snuck up on you overnight.
Yes, it IS possible to live in an echo chamber when you depend on blogs for your information. Diversity of sources is key.
Case in point, many of the conservative blogs are reporting that $150K of Oil For Food money has been found in George Galloway's wife's bank account. What do we find on liberal blogs? A refutation? A contrary opinion?
How about not a damned thing? That's right. Such a thing is completely absent from the liberal blogs I read. Which is why it's important to realize the bias inherent in one's sources and try to balance it out with some contrary opinions and biases. From the marketplace of ideas will rise the truth, but only if the marketplace is a true marketplace.
There's a whole other angle to this week's Spin. Check out the responses on the Spin Board. (Registration required)
If you're a marketer like me, think about all the complaints you've heard from clients about customer loyalty, price sensitivity and churn. Heck, I know of several businesses where churn is the marketing guy's number one concern. And many businesses would have a much better business if they were able to hang on to customers for any significant length of time.
Take the automotive category, for instance. Lots of older folks I know are loyal to a particular brand of automobile, and are often loyal to a specific dealership, to the point where they'll tell their friends something to the effect of, "Go to George at Riverhead Dodge and he'll hook you up" when a friend is looking to buy a new car.
But for many, especially younger folks, that loyalty doesn't exist. All research for a new car purchase is done online, and the dealer that can offer the lowest price gets the business. This price sensitivity is putting pressure on many categories of consumer goods, particularly considered purchases like travel, consumer electronics, computers, and much, much more.
But would price be the determining factor in a purchase if companies actually listened?
Personally, I'm willing to pay a few hundred dollars extra on a car purchase if I know the dealership isn't going to jerk me around with regard to service or follow-up. If dialogue helps me get more familiar with a particular personality at a dealership, or if it puts me more at ease, I'm more likely to pay a premium for dealing with someone I know and trust.
So can meaningful participation in dialogue be the differentiator that helps markets from becoming commodities? Can customer loyalty make a comeback? What say you?
And if you thought this could happen any other way, you're kidding yourself. Bush would never have withdrawn her name, and it never would have come to a vote.
You know, faking things always gets you in more trouble. It's rarely worth it.
I've been a TotalFarker for quite a while. It's been tempting to use that for commercial gain, considering it's feasible I could bring a client's web server to its knees by posting a thread there and hyping it. But it's asinine to think you won't get caught. Farkers have very finely-tuned bullshit detectors.
And when the whole thing does come crashing down, what does that mean for a brand? (Please refrain from commenting if you're from the "any publicity is good publicity" school. I've heard it all before and I STILL think it's bullshit.)
People get wiggy when they think they're being targeted with advertising. Even if they're not.
This paranoia wouldn't be a factor if the companies doing the actual ad targeting would level with folks every once in a while. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Going out of your way to tell people how you're delivering messages that are more relevant to them is critical. Otherwise, people are going to assume the worst about you and think you're tracking their every movement across the Internet.
Yes, I know there are bigger problems here. But as long as companies insist on firing messages AT people instead of conversing WITH them, the least we can do is take steps to ensure people aren't freaked out by it.
Steve Rubel shows how he demonstrates the opportunity to clients and illustrates what he calls the "conversation gap."
Since fear is often the one thing that gets some of these big corporations to move their butts, I think Steve's approach of showing the level of conversations and how that breaks out in a sort of 'share of voice' way makes sense. Nothing like seeing how the competition is faring to get corporations to jump on board.
People who know me well know that I'm a slobbering Van Halen fan. And yes, my collection of MP3s does have a large number of Roth solo tunes. So I dig the guy. But as a replacement for Howard Stern?
Roth's schtick is tired. He's no longer an "entertainer." At best, he could be a Vegas nostalgia act. He can't keep folks engaged on radio. Look for him to fall flat on his face.
Or did you forget about this?
Roth also taped a weird promo video titled David Lee Roth's No Holds Bar-B-Que, which featured him dressed up like a sailor and doing karate moves during a luau that featured pirates, dwarves and real martial artists. The video was supposedly Roth's bid to get TV executives to award him his own Osbourne-esque reality show.Needless to say, no network bit.
He's batshit crazy.
I received word yesterday that a friend of mine was just called up from IRR (Individual Ready Reserve) for 4-6 months of training, followed by a yearlong tour, most likely in Iraq. The friend in question is 38 years old, a valued executive at an online research company, and hasn't worn a uniform in a dozen years.
My thoughts and prayers are with this friend as he is confronted with something he never thought could happen and now gets ready to ship out. God protect him.
I find it almost unbelievable that this has happened. Given all the buzz about setting a deadline and getting our troops out of Iraq, you'd think that activating someone after 12 years would be, at worst, highly unlikely. But here we see it in action. Yes, it has gotten that bad.
Getting some good reactions to this week's Spin. Check out the reaction on the Spin Board.
There's something so nice about knowing that someone is forwarding your article to a colleague or taking it to a meeting.
A lot of these comments tend to pile up in short order. I'll probably drop in there later in the day and address whatever comes up.
Mike Taht asks the following over at Doc's place...
I love the idea of a "conversation department", however, how do you retrain or retask the marketroids that haven't a clue as to how to have a conversation in the first place?
Why do we need to retrain folks? Why do they need to be retasked? Let the clueless "marketroids" keep swinging the broadcast hammer if that's what they want to do.
You'll find the folks that are going to staff a Conversation Department coming from the ranks of the people who understand online communications platforms intuitively. Much like the first online agencies recruited heavily from forward-thinking colleges and universities, your Conversation Department is more likely to find the people it needs among the people who have been raised on computers, the Internet and online communities. In short, look to recruit them from universities with strong communications programs.
So I think we're looking at training folks to be consumer advocates long before they learn habits that they'll need to unlearn.
I was trying to write my Spin column after a long week of moving the office and an abbreviated weekend. Sometimes, something will just stick in your mind when you're trying to think about column topics. And it won't get unstuck until you write about it.
This week, my brain got stuck on this meeting I had before starting Underscore. It was with a marketing person from a company that will remain nameless. She told me that she wanted to actively avoid ongoing retention-based online programs. And it was because she would rather have customers forget about them once they signed up for a program that involved a recurring fee. Those customers who actually made use of the services offered - who actually remembered they were signed up for this thing - ended up costing the company money. Thus, they would prefer to attract the kind of customer who would rather fork over the monthly fee without uttering a sound or trying to interact with the company.
Yeah, they're out of business today. But that thinking still persists in our industry today. And that sucks.
I mean, how fucked up do you have to be to view engaged customers as something other than A Good Thing? How twisted does your thinking have to be to view conversation as a thing to be stifled instead of encouraged?
A while back, I wrote a Spin column reacting to the first chapter of AdAge editor Scott Donaton’s book, Madison & Vine. It was called “Why Resist Consumer Dialogue?” and it morphed into this neat conversation that spanned across a few blogs, most notably Steve Hall’s AdRants.
In the above-linked post on AdRants, Steve suggested the creation of something along the lines of a “Consumer Conversation Department.” I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit lately.
I’ve written a few Spin columns, as well as a few posts here about the old DigiTech GSP-2101 list. (See this post for background.) In my marketing experience, the GSP-2101 list was the only example I could point to of a company that mass-produces a product actually engaging in meaningful conversation with the folks who buy and use the product. The more I think about it, the more I’m coming to the realization that the only reason that DigiTech was able to do this was because they’re small and they gave their marketing director the freedom to do so. After all, we’re talking about a niche product here, not something that everyone and their grandmother buys. Had it been something like Coca-Cola or McDonald’s, a marketing director would be quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume.
I’m a realist. And as much as The Cluetrain Manifesto is revolutionary, I don’t expect the move toward the principles outlined in it to be revolutionary in the sense of a violent, overnight shift. I think that it will happen gradually, just like getting brand marketers to not laugh when you suggest spending more than 5 percent of their marketing budget online has taken a dozen years or so.
But I think we can agree that comparatively few companies have made any sort of investment in opening and continuing meaningful dialogue with their customers online. We’ve got the broadcast model to thank for that. As you know, when you’re holding a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. When folks are out there praising or panning a product or brand, corporations tend to look at the problem as a mass marketing problem. In reality, most of the panning can be dealt with effectively by empowering somebody to join the conversation, actually listen, and take the feedback to the company for incorporation. Most of the praise can be greatly amplified in the same way.
But how does a company, especially a large one, empower individuals to do this? I see the big barriers as:
It’s that last question I’d like to address. Problem is, since no one I know has ever done this at scale, how the heck do you make any sort of assertions about what a corporation needs in order to create a Conversation Department? Hopefully, this will get picked up by some folks and the blogging community will jump in and provide some suggestions.
So let me toss something out there to get things started. Then all you Hespos.com readers (all 18 of you) can jump in and shoot my assumptions to hell.
First off, I think a company needs a director-level person to head up the department. Such a person would report either to the VP of Marketing or to the CEO, depending on how a corporation handles its marketing discipline. A director would be charged with:
From there, you probably need a supervisor-level person or two (or three, depending on how many conversations are going on). A supervisor needs to:
You need a bunch of folks to work under the supervisor, who we’ll call “Ambassadors” until someone comes up with a better name:
This looks like it might be a decent structure for a hypothetical department. At least it can scale. If the workload gets too overwhelming, you add more Ambassadors and Supervisors to supervise them.
It would be awfully nice if the folks who actually work on the products could fulfill this function, but I don’t see that as being realistic. Representing a company in distributed conversations across the blogosphere and community media is likely a full-time job, and I don’t know what a product development team could expect to accomplish if they spend as much time as this function demands participating in online discussions. (They’d likely never get a product out.)
Again, I think most of this happens in a series of incremental changes, rather than in some bloody overnight revolution. And nothing would make me happier than to see Corporate America start marching down the path toward meaningful participation in distributed conversations. I think the first step has already happened – blogs and citizen publishing are already on the radar screens of corporations that engage in mass marketing. Most of them see it as a nail to mass marketing’s hammer, but that may change with all the work folks are doing in this space to make sure corporations see these emerging media through the lens of the “markets are conversations” model.
So let’s hear it, folks. Would it work? If not, what would you do to improve it? If so, who would be the first to adopt this model and move forward with it?
I've been getting calls from a company called The World Trade Group about something they're calling the Global Marketing Executive Summit. It's another one of those shows where you pay a shitload of money to have power meetings with marketing executives.
I'm not kidding when I tell you they've called me no less than six times. The first few times, I politely declined. At call #4, I asked them to take me off their list. This morning, when I got call #6, I went ballistic.
They always ask why I'm not interested and I tell them that there's no way I'll pay thousands of dollars for meetings when I can get them for free during Ad Tech, OMMA, the iMedia Summits and the other conferences we participate in. They offer to work with me on the price. I tell them that unless it's free, I'm not interested.
But the calls keep coming. If I get call #7, I think it will be time for another grass-roots SEO effort, if you catch my drift.
BTW, in call #1, these people explained to me that they haven't put on a marketing show before, but feel qualified to do so because of the dozens of other shows they've put on in other industries. Can you say "Johnny-Come-Lately?" I knew you could.
If you work for an ad agency, you know how difficult it is to gather detailed case studies that you can show off to the industry and to potential clients who come knocking. In particular, SEO case studies are tough because clients don't want to share ANY data from their search marketing efforts, lest some competitor see it and swipe the strategy/tactics.
But that doesn't stop potential clients from asking for SEO case studies with numbers attached to them. So I was thinking the other day...why wouldn't we use the latest grass-roots effort with the contractor dispute post as a case study?
Thankfully, Sean Bohan told me he took a screenshot of the search results just prior to our starting the effort. So I've asked him to e-mail that to me. I'll do a quick write-up on the objectives and the results and it will probably be a nice one-sheeter.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade (and all that happy crap...)
The new chairman of the MPA wants to end rate base guarantees.
Interesting. Especially since the ad industry is moving toward more accountability and not less.
Every time a magazine fails to make rate base, they come into my office claiming that their audience hasn't declined, citing higher Reader Per Copy numbers. Ninety percent of the time, that argument is total bullcrap, and 100% of the time, we're demanding makegoods.
So am I to take it that magazines should move completely to audience-based measurement, so that there's even LESS accountability in the mix than there currently is? Nice try.
Doc Searls has some terrific Online Spin-related feedback for me in a post on his blog.
First off, let me make the usual caveats. I'm just a contributing writer for Mediapost, so I have a bit less control over how the message is presented than I might like. That said, The Online Spin and the Spin Board are both things that me and the Mediaposters came up with several years back, so I do bear a bit of responsibility here.
Doc suggests a couple things:
First, get the Powers That Be at MediaPost to take down the annoying registration wall.
Preaching to the choir, Doc. And that registration wall has caused a good number of problems for folks who read my columns as they get passed around via e-mail and want to respond on the Spin Board. They can't do that without registering. And that probably stifles discussion, to say nothing of how it affects search results and the ability of interested folks to find us. I'll lob a suggestion at some of the Mediaposters and see what they say about it.
Second, syndicate the newsletters on the Web and not just via email. I see no RSS feature for OnlineSPIN.
This isn't the first time Mediapost has been accused of failing to practice what it preaches. It's a bit frustrating sometimes to give advice to marketing professionals in columns and it appears as if I'm not even following my own advice. We've had people post to the Spin Board, saying things like 'isn't it ironic that you wrote a column telling me not to do this, but then you turn around and do it yourself...'
I haven't suggested a feed (much less a series of feeds) to Mediapost, but then again, I'm just a contributing writer. But Mediapost needs to turn around and realize that most of their competitors are offering their columns, content categories and other information via RSS. I get information from iMediaConnection, MarketingVox, AdRants and many other marketing/advertising-related publishers this way.
So again, I'll lob the suggestion up to Ken Fadner and the rest of the Mediaposters and hopefully, they'll implement that feature.
Third (this is old advice, but it bears repeating), drop the old-media jargon: "consumers", "consuming" and "content", for example.
Yep. I'm trying to wean myself off the consumer-speak. The difficulty is that The Online Spin reaches tens of thousands of people in the online marketing and advertising industries and that's the language they speak. But I hear ya loud and clear.
Thanks for the constructive criticism, Doc. You're a guy I respect and admire, so thanks for the shout out.
Over a Chinese food lunch, I solved all of the Digital Rights Management woes of all online research companies who release information online (eMarketer, Jupiter, Forrester, etc.). Here's the gist of it:
1) Completely fabricate 50% of your releases. ("Mobile Devices Reach 15.7% of U.S. Adult Population," "Google Unknown Brand to 74% of Internet-Connected Men," etc.)
2) Release all reports to the Internet-At-Large
3) Announce that a certain percentage of reports on your site have been pulled out of your ass.
4) Simultaneously announce that a subscription entitles you to know which reports are real and which are fake.
You'll note that this takes care of the problem of what levels of detail need to be released to potential customers in order to give them enough of a "flavor" to actually PURCHASE the research. You can give them the whole thing! Except that they don't know whether it's fake or not...
This strategy also has the added benefit of creating situations in which freeloading agencies and marketers will base entire presentations and marketing plans on erroneous intelligence, which will result in funny stories for industry insiders to mull over at the bar after work. ("Did you hear Burger King executed a mobile campaign against seniors?" or "I heard OMD lost the McDonald's business after recommending a CRM program for Filet-O-Fish enthusiasts...")
Getting around is a pain, with subway/train delays and not a single cab to be found. And it doesn't help that I'm getting glares from certain people regarding my choice in umbrellas.
Here's the dealy-o. Several years ago, I went on a cruise with About.com to Halifax and back. While in Halifax, Denise Siedner, Coleen Kuehn and I got caught in the rain, so we ran into this gift shop. The only umbrellas they had were red and white and had Canadian maple leafs on them. So we bought them. Later, I chucked this umbrella in my car and it served as my emergency umbrella for when I'd leave the house without one.
Sure enough, years later, I needed this umbrella and ended up bringing it into the city with me. And it's totally weird how some people think that carrying a Canada-branded umbrella is some sort of political statement. If looks could kill... Let's just say I was reminded of this post from a while back.
On top of all the difficulties getting around, Eric is in flood hell. His basement got flooded and his sump pump quit. So he was out of the office for a few hours yesterday while he tracked down a new pump. This morning, his hot water heater started acting up.
At any moment, we're expecting that huge "Day After Tomorrow" tidal wave to overwhelm us.
We may need a few additional inbound links and Trackbacks for this post. Please be sure to use "John Crovello" and "Long Island Custom Builders" a couple times in the language you use to link to it. It will help greatly.
Currently, we're #1 on both Yahoo! and Google if you search either of the terms above in quotes. However, we're #4 on Yahoo for searches under "Long Island Custom Builders" without the quotes, just below the contractor's website. We don't even show up on the first PAGE for the same search on Google. (However, neither does he.)
Hook a brother up! This is the best way to get my opinion out there, and I'd certainly appreciate the favor. If you have a blog or site that can spot me some Google Juice, please do so now.
Thanks.
JTA thinks the non-credible "credible threat" might have been a Weapon of Mass Distraction. Meanwhile, I'm having conniptions over here because anytime anybody sneezes or farts near Penn Station, the damned thing gets shut down and I can't get home.
Did someone take "Code Red" a bit too seriously?
Link.
Great. Now everything is upended here in NYC thanks to yet another "credible terrorist threat."
Which means, of course, that I'm going to a bar to get loaded after work instead of frustrating myself trying to get home via Penn Station at 6:30.
JTA, a family friend, is now blogging over at theblogsplitter.blogspot.com.. I like what I see so far.
In addition to being a terrific blogger, JTA also is one heck of a designer, so if you're looking for someone to do some freelance work or you need to hire a creative, shoot him an e-mail from his blog.
Given that my blog enjoys rather nice treatment from Google and many of the other search engines, I figured I'd post a PSA.
Those who know me well know that I'm currently in contractor hell. I don't want to get into the details here, given that I don't want to weaken my legal position. However, I will say the following:
It is my personal opinion that, should you be approached by someone named John Crovello from a company called Long Island Custom Builders to do any sort of work on your residence, you would be better off running away screaming than hiring him.
I'll say that again, for the benefit of y'all (and for the benefit of greater relevance to key search terms): It is my opinion that hiring John Crovello or a company called Long Island Custom Builders is a bad idea.
In summary, should you ask me, I would recommend emphatically against hiring John Crovello and/or Long Island Custom Builders.
Thank you. This has been a public service announcement.
p.s. - I would not recommend hiring John Crovello or Long Island Custom Builders.
p.p.s. - If you choose not to believe me regarding whether or not to hire John Crovello or Long Island Custom Builders, I recommend you visit the following links:
Suffolk County Department of Consumer Affairs List of 10 Worst Unlicensed Businesses
p.p.p.s. - If you feel so inclined, I would appreciate any inbound links or Trackbacks on this post. Thanks much.
Honestly, I think I can make the claim that liberals have lucked out. When it first became apparent that Shrub would have to fill two SCOTUS vacancies and not one, I feared the ramming through of two Scalia-like Huns. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that didn't happen.
I'm not entirely happy about Roberts, but I don't think he's the anti-Christ either. I'm reserving judgment on Meirs until I get more facts.
Don't take this to mean I'm not wary or fearful. I'm VERY concerned about what could happen to Roe vs. Wade and the separation of church and state. Those are my two biggest issues likely to be confronted by the court in the short- to medium-term.
What I am saying, though, is that it could have been a lot worse.
I am curious, however. It's obvious that both Roberts and Miers are Bush loyalists. (Miers seems to think GW is the most intelligent person she's ever met. Quite scary.) It will be interesting to see how their loyalty pans out once Bush is out of office.
I did have a good deal of work to do this weekend, but I needed some time to relax. Saturday was spent doing some minor chores around the house and then experiencing the Zen of car stereo installation. Last week, I opted to cash in some of the Membership Rewards points on our American Express account and I got a Sony CD player that was waaaaaaaay more expensive than anything I would buy with cold, hard cash. So I spent Saturday morning putting it in.
Most of the time was spent trying to figure out how to get the factory radio out of the dash. No one seemed to have any info on this online, save for this site. I ended up paying $3.95 just to figure out how to get the dash off my truck. It was totally worth it, though... I was looking for bolts that didn't exist, and it would have taken me forever to figure out that most of the dash is held together with clips that need to be popped off. Once the factory radio was out, the job was easy, particularly after I went to Best Buy and bought an installation kit and wiring harness.
The new stereo sounds really, really nice. One other thing I did was to run a line to the Aux inputs on the back of the deck, so that I could plug my iPod into it directly. That's right - goodbye iTrip. Perhaps next weekend if I have time I'll upgrade the factory speakers, but for right now they sound fine.
Saturday night I went to a party at Craig and Jen's, but I was home by 9 PM and went to bed early. (I was tired.)
Sunday, most of the day was spent taking care of some minor things around the house, plus trying to figure out where Town of Riverhead residents can take construction debris now that there's no landfill to haul junk off to. I also took Dan out in Coram so he could walk door-to-door and talk to some of his constituents.
I procrastinated a bit, but then made some headway on a media strategy that's a couple days overdue for one of my clients. All in all, the weekend was way too short.