phil gillman: February 2008 Archives

A article in yesterdays NY Times did a great job of illustrating to me the ingrained flaws in the way ad agencies and the people that run them think. Never mind that the article starts out with: "DECADES ago, brewers determined that television commercials were just about the best way to sell beer..." Decades ago? and that should be relevant still now why? But the thing that really pissed me off was at the end of the article:

Even so, Mr. Haven [Jim Haven, co-founder & creative director @ Creature] is demonstrating a fondness for kicking it old school. From all the film shot in Mexico for the online videos, “we cut a couple spots” in 30-second lengths, Mr. Haven said, that could become TV commercials.

“And the music is licensed for air,” he added hopefully.

WHAT??? The agency wasted the client's money by not only licensing the music for broadcast but also cutting 30 second spots? Now I understand that licensing is cheaper when done in batch negotiations, and that adding the extra versions probably didn't add substantial cost either, but the fact remains that both were done for the egos of the agency folks. There appears to be absolutely no reason to have produced TV spots besides the fact that the CD wanted to hope for both splashy TV and an "integrated" campaign to submit to the awards shows. This in my opinion is the kind of mind set that should get agencies fired by clients. It's one thing if the data shows that not only is TV and appropriate medium for reach but also that the audience pays attention and gives a damn about your TV presence. Generally, this is no longer true. But, TV ads keep being produced even when not appropriate at least in part because agencies like making them and the awards shows glamorize them. Don't even get me started on the media component of things...
The article in full can be read here >>

There's finally starting to be a lot of talk in agencies, media companies and marketing consultancies about leveraging data in optimizing campaign effectiveness. Adweek's recent article about the concept reminded me of a concept I've been thinking about on and off for some time now.

What if we not only started leveraging campaign and interaction data to optimize, update and inform creative, but also started leveraging real time market data as well? By this I'm saying -- take the Wall Street model that Adweek references, and incorporate not just the methodology but the data as well. What if your marketing analytics dashboard not only gave you insight into not just what your potential customers were doing within various media, but what related and competitive firms/products were doing in the market? Furthermore, what if you could cross compare online and offline buzz & media trends in regard to your industry/product/consumer mood with which media units were being engaged with? Seems to me like you have a hell of a lot more insight into where you and your company/product/service fit into the current and trending conversation.

Sounds like it could be one heck of a tool to build and make relevant, and probably far more complex than any agency or marketing consultancy would be willing to invest in at this point. But the one that is willing to will leap far ahead of the others. This kind of tool is much like the kinds of quant & trends tools that hedge funds have used to become the trading powerhouses that they are, and could play the same role in remaking the marketing services landscape.

I guess this brings me back to my title - what is your plan for leveraging data? As a corporate marketer, are you talking to the folks in the financials and information services side of your organization to build better dashboards that look at the bigger picture? As a marketing services firm, are you asking your clients to partner with you on the development of such dashboards? Are you willing to test not just 10s but 1000s of pieces of creative and let them auto-optimize? Are you willing to take the investment and financial risks to make this kind of change happen? And are you willing to let realtime quant systems make your least favorite creative run everywhere and your most favorite creative end in the dustbin?

I personally look forward to the growth of these kinds of systems, and hope to be part of building one and putting it to use for clients. Anyone want to help me build it?

now that i've installed and converted to mt4, i need to implement a template. which requires a bit of design i suppose. not that the minimalism of this template bothers me as i enjoy minimalist design, but it in fact seems a bit cluttered still for my taste. so clean it up i shall, and likely will play w/ mt4's new features in the process.

update: if anything appears broken or screwed up, that's likely because it is, as i'm messing with the code over the next few days.

American Express™ has launched an interesting travel promo wherein they sell a set of “dream trips” a day for a week. The thing that makes it interesting is that the price goes down every twenty minutes until the trips are gone. These are all high end trips that fit right in with the AMEX brand experience, and the general experience on the site is right in line with the idea that AMEX can provide members with access to experiences that they wouldn’t otherwise have. I’m still intrigued by the aspect of the decreasing price, and trying to figure out what that does besides drive traffic and interest. Would I have been as interested in the site without it? I highly doubt it. Does it play into the AMEX brand properly? I’m starting to think that it does, given that it rewards “risk within reason”. By this I mean that it since customers that are willing to risk waiting and having all trips purchased increase their savings, the entrepreneurial spirit is rewarded… to a point. AMEX doesn’t want to encourage or associate with wanton risk, but measured risk. At least, that’s the way I see it. Or it could just be a marketing gimmick.

Check it out yourself: http://goingonce.amexnetwork.com/