I recently came across the following quote from Carla Hendra, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather North America: “CMOs are under increasing pressure to deliver business results and to demonstrate the contribution that marketing makes to their organization. The days of guess work and soft metrics are over — Math Marketing is the future.”
A couple of reactions to the quote:
First, not everything is measurable. Love isn’t, apathy isn’t – just to name two.
Second, trends can’t always be predicted, and needs can’t always be anticipated, based upon what currently exists and is measureable.
I have no issue with being accountable. But I do have an issue with fear (in the guise of accountability) killing creativity. That would be a little like agency creatives only developing ads to beat the norms in copy testing; this has only ever produced average or slightly above average ads. I’m convinced that the original Apple “1984″ ad would not have tested well to norms.
I would really dislike seeing CMOs turn into “CFOs in new clothes.” I do understand the digital environment affords marketers more avenues for reaching micro-targets, and I think it and its arsenal of new tools is a wonderful thing. My primary concern is that the more CMOs are into the numbers, the greater the risk they won’t see the complexity of the people they’re trying to reach.
Early in my career, while working at Foote, Cone & Belding, I was called to jury duty in downtown Los Angeles. The case took several days and I got to know some of my fellow jurors. One – I can still see him to this day – was an African American man, about 60 years of age, who very tall and thin, and had spent his working career as a highway-sign laminator (and eventually supervisor) for the state. He had six grown children, all of whom he’d put through college; he himself hadn’t finished high school. To this day, he remains one of the wisest men I’ve ever met. Demographically, he was easy to categorize: older, less-well educated, African American male. Yet, even at 24, I knew that I had learned a life-long lesson from him: if I’d only seen him demographically, from my ivory tower, I would have missed the richness of his life and what I could learn from him.
Ultimately, what we learn when in relationships (yes, even with customers), makes for stronger relationships. My hope is that Math Marketing doesn’t leave the consumer too far removed from the equation.
Your thoughts?
I’m a marketing researcher. So why this article from me? I’m also a native Angeleno, who has lived with pollution stories all my life. And I’m quite conscious of how much energy and other resources I use, always looking for ways to cut back further. My only question is about why this new cement might take five years to come to market: we can get drugs to market faster than that. Are we doing all we can to support innovative companies such as these, particularly during these tougher economic times?
The urban jungle just got a bit greener and with nary the presence of a tree, thanks to UK-based start-up Novacem. The company has developed a “carbon-negative” cement that absorbs more greenhouse gases over its life cycle than it emits. If adopted on a wide scale, this innovation could have a huge impact on the overall health of the environment, given that the annual production of conventional Portland cement is responsible for an estimated five percent of global CO2 emissions, more than the airline industry.
From psfk (http://tinyurl.com/lezz75) and Scientific American (http://tinyurl.com/mdwnr8)
Before Malcolm Gladwell, there was, among others, John Naisbett. Naisbett’s Megatrends was a must read. My favorite was the “High Tech/High Touch” trend. His theory was that the more technology impacted our lives, the more we would strive to find balance with human interaction. We are social creatures, after all.
High tech/high touch has been going on with humans since the advent of technology. My view is that this is a three-step adoption/integration process.
Take the wheel. Great new technology. Took awhile to figure out how to use it (Mastery). First used it for work (Utility). When it became easier to make wheels (and more “cost effective”), someone probably thought “let’s hook up a mule and go visit some friends” (Social Usage).
Or the pen, after paper became plentiful (costs had come down). Mastery again came first (practice for legibility), utility came second (use for business or lessons), and social usage came third (write a letter to a friend). High tech to high touch.
Social usage is often linked to lowered costs and a distribution system or infrastructure that’s in place. Take the telephone. Initially, it could only be mastered by a few as distribution was more limited. When the infrastructure was built, bringing phones into homes, costs were still high, and usage was more local and limited – but business usage soared. Over time, and as people moved further apart, the telephone allowed people to “visit” without making a trip; they could do so more often and without the time and expense of a real trip. High tech to high touch.
Name your technology and it follows this basic mastery-utility-social usage adoption process, if the infrastructure is in place.
Video games: learn the rules –> a fun way to spend free time –> play with others online
iPod: learn how to use it –> build library –> share tunes with others
So social media networks are the logical manifestation of becoming comfortable with the Internet and cell phones and the other technologies of today. We’re comfortable now, so we’re socializing them. Facebook makes it visual. Twitter makes it fast.
I wonder what’s next!
We all know that ad spending is down this year. A recent study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers said advertising expenditures worldwide would total $467 billion by 2013. Sounds like a big number, but it’s actually about 2.5% lower than 2008’s $479.3 billion. Alone, this could change the ad market.
And there’s a shift in where those ad dollars are being spent. We’ve been hearing for a long time about the demise of the newspaper industry as people shift to getting their news from other sources. But there’s also the shift from ads in broadcast TV to cable TV, from radio to online, etc. The table below highlights those projected spending changes.
But for me, the biggest impact on the TV ad will come with the increased usage of DVRs. Some facts from “Advertising in the DVR Age” by DVR Research Institute:
- 83% of marketers surveyed said that over the next three years DVRs will negatively impact the effectiveness of TV advertising
- 77% of agency executives see DVR usage as the greatest challenge to the current ad model
- DVR penetration stands at 26%, up from 17% two years ago
- Ad skipping currently is only 5-6%, but is forecast to jump to 16-18% in two years; in primetime, this may be as high as 25-33%
Things to watch for:
- More product placement in programming (Coke in American Idol, SoyJoy in The Closer)
- More cause marketing (brands, like Nike, supporting individuals and their causes, like Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong)
- Changing the length of ad pods (shorter commercial breaks, such as “Fringe will be back in 60 seconds”)
- More program-related content embedded in advertising pods (interviews with stars regarding their role in program; e.g., the “Inside Look” and “Behind the Scenes” segment embeds in BBC America’s Mistresses’ commercial pods)
