Brand Central Station

It’s the perpetual marketing question: “How do we know what we’re doing makes a difference?”  And it’s a question that’s only answered by the most ambigious phrase known to man …

“It depends.”

The inability to quantitatively answer the question and all it’s related derivations (e.g. “How do we know it will work?  What is going to work best? etc.) is the underlying cause for the continuous contraction and expansion of in-house marketing departments.  It’s also the driving force behind job changes for marketing people (average tenure is less than two years), the tendency for clients to look for new agencies every three years and the high dissatisfaction level with “Chief Marketing Officers” at major brands.

We live and work in an industry that is, by its very nature, creative and changing with the times.  As a result, it’s extremely hard to quantify.

And things that are hard to quantify are hard to measure.

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An article posted to BtoB Magazine’s web site a while back pointed out an interesting result from a recent Hearst survey: nearly 50% of all b-to-b marketing budgets are spent on online programs.  That spend covers everything from web site development/enhancements to online advertising to SEO to webcasts to Social Media … you get the idea.  The survey goes on to explain that trade shows account for 17% of marketing budgets, direct marketing (12%) and print (11%) account for most of the rest.

But like most media property-driven market research, it ignores a significant pool of resources that often go untapped by most b-to-b marketers and the media.  I understand why.  For a magazine or other media outlet to try and identify how much money and human resource is dedicated to internal communications, training and organizational behavior, they would have to step waaaaaay out of their comfort zone.

It’s kind of like asking an amateur astronomer to find Dark Matter in the universe using his existing, backyard telescope.  They may have an idea where to point the telescope, but they can’t really see what they’re looking at.

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There’s probably no consumer product that has done more to ruin the moral credibility of the advertising profession more than cigarettes.  After all, there aren’t any more credible arguments that can be made against the dire health warnings issued by doctors, governments and just about everyone else who DOESN’T SMOKE.  But people still do it.

There’s no denying that nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs out there – but it’s the advertising and the image created around the act of smoking that has drawn people in for generations.

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Web 2.0 marketing appeals on a number of levels to charities and non-profits.  It can be inexpensive.  It’s trendy.  It can appear to be very democratic – allowing all with an opinion to chime in on issues they feel are important.

The truth is, however, that what makes the social web such an intriguing tool for charities and non-profits faces many of the same obstacles those charities and non-profits faced in their pre-technology days.  Enthusiasm for a new medium can overcome some of those barriers initially; but in the long run, it’s the institutional thinking and long-established traditions and taboos that can doom a non-profit’s attempt to join the social web.

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If you subscribed to a Brand Central Station RSS feed over a year ago, read this …
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by Mike Bawden
President & CEO; Brand Central Station

It’s funny to me how we sometimes try to make a point in the virtual world and it winds up boomerranging back and hitting us in the face here in the real one.

A few days ago, I wrote a post about how young Americans don’t buy the “Buy American” argument just because doing so will keep US greenbacks in US bank accounts (a concept that, in itself, could be debated). Instead, I suggested that the “Buy American” argument would have more sway with young people if it was presented as an evironmentally-oriented message. Buy products made here because they have a smaller carbon footprint, so even if they cost more (dollars) they cost less (environmental impact).

An old college buddy I haven’t seen in 25 years – no kidding – but recently reconnected with (via Facebook) took a look at the article and gave me an interesting perspective. (more…)

There’s a tug-of-war going on between traditional marketers and those who consider themselves on the vanguard of the social web. This post by Mitch Joel, about the end of THE BIG IDEA, is indicative of this battle.

Some consider it “old school” to pitch THE BIG IDEA to a client when, in the age of the Internet, the individual is the thing and success is only, really attainable through the successful implementation of a succession of smaller, more highly targeted and customer-reponsive ideas. Big ideas are a thing of the past and should be relegated to Mad Men (or Bewitched, I suppose). It’s all about the small ideas that can make a difference.

On the PR side we see the same thing happening. Big media, newswires, mass audiences are breaking down (either as part of their own strategy or by circumstance) into smaller, more focused publications, distribution channels that often bypass reporters and editors and go straight to the people who have the need to know. It’s the triumph of small over big.

Or so it might seem.

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It seems like a little side article in this week’s Adweek, but it caught my attention.

Mark Dolliver reported on the findings of a “Buy American” study recently completed by AdweekMedia/Harris Research. The survey indicates that although there is an ever-present interest among US consumers for American-made products, there is a definite drop off as you get into the younger demographics. As Mark reports:

Younger consumers are less susceptible than their elders to a made-in-America sales pitch. Thirty-nine percent of the survey’s 18-34-year-olds said they’re more likely to buy a product when an ad emphasizes that it’s made in America, vs. 60 percent of the 35-44-year-olds, 68 percent of the 45-54s and 74 percent of those 55 and older.

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It started off inocently enough.  But Beth Brody from BrodyPR made a simple mistake.  She e-mailed the same pitch to a big list of contacts and included that contact list in the CC field which ignited a series of “Reply All” responses that, in tun, went to the same distribution list.

Over and over again.

It’s sort of like the media relations equivalent of being at a rock concert and the audience gets more caught up in keeping that damn beachball bouncing around in the crowd than they do in what’s going on onstage.  Then, the next thing you know, the grumpy musical purists start yelling for people to sit down and the kids start complaining that nobody ever lets them have any fun anymore …

Lucky for me (I guess) that I was at a client meeting while all this was going on and I just walked in on the carnage afterward.  Today there’s been a virtual pile-up on the social news media highway – and I’m viewing it as a first responder.

Maybe “pile up” isn’t nearly as accurate as “pile on” when you see how other PR professionals took advantage of Beth Brody’s lapse in judgement to cast dispersions, fluff up their own reputation and build blog traffic.

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Blackhawk Content announced the debut of their live-action, web-based sitcom series on the www.petcentric.com web site yesterday.  The site, supporting Nestle Purina’s PetCare division, is a content-rich environment for people who are crazy about their pets.

So, it makes sense that content for pet-crazy people should be fun and entertaining, right?

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Publishing your “great, American novel” just got easier.

Gone are the days of sitting in a little cottage overlooking a pond in the back yard.  Authors everywhere can now come out of seclusion (at least in a virtual sense) and get their work published much easier than ever before.  A press release from Fast Pencil (www.fastpencil.com) explains how the free service (for writers) now integrates social media into the mix.

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ReadWriteWeb had this great piece about how to improve your Facebook persona and author Richard MacManus boiled it down to five tips:

1. Update your status regularly.  I try to do it once a day, but Richard says even just once every few day is enough – just keep it up to date and interesting.
2. Use groups.  This is like inviting all your Facebook friends to a party and keeping the ones that know each other in the same rooms.  By grouping your friends, you can keep your focus on the conversations in each room rather than trying to hear one or another over the din of everyone else.
3. Add content from other sources.  But be careful how you do it. 
4. Brighten up your profile with pictures and videos.  Adding multimedia makes your Facebook profile interesting.

Search out the best Facebook applications.  Thousands of apps have been built over the last year and a half.  Searching through the app directory should help you identify apps you can add to your profile that helps keep your online persona focused and useful.

You can read the full text of Richard’s article here.

To read Richard’s article on how to make Facebook useful again (yes, truly useful), click here.