By James Cherkoff from Collaborate Marketing.

With the mind-boggling degree of innovation occurring in digital technology and networked media, it’s very easy to forget that, in commercial terms, we are still only talking about markets. And markets are still just made up of people. The other commercial task that hasn’t changed is the need to deploy resources to work within the marketplace to realise specific aims effectively. Such as building sales and keeping shareholders content. What is changing, as every marketeer worth his Cluetrain now knows, is the nature of that marketplace. However, these changes are still yet to be fully reflected in the marketing industry because the most important cog of the business - media finance - continues to lag the trends driving networked markets.

Big marketing shekels remain driven by two words – reach and frequency. An approach akin to asking as many people as possible out on a date until one or more of them falls for the smooth new chat-up line. And this view of the world is all about size. Bigger. Louder. Harder. The problem is that in the new marketplace this approach doesn’t build relationships - it wrecks them. Of course, awareness is absolutely vital for any brand, particularly a new one. And there’s always going to be a need to get out the big guns out and fire away at the marketplace to remind the world that a brand still means business. But consumers (aka people) are fed up with brands only offering them a one-night stand, time after time.

Just think about the financial services industry where enticing offers are sprayed around, only for the love to be slowly withdrawn once the deal is done. The bank’s rate of interest gets lower and lower until it just fizzles away and the corporate desire for new accounts on the bedpost grows. Which leaves consumers more cynical and determined to stay footloose. Or to become ‘rate tarts’ as they are tellingly known by the industry.

For brands to break this Tiger Woods lifestyle, they have to change not only their ways but also, crucially, their means. And that means a very serious redistribution of their cash. For if a corporate or brand is only in town occasionally for a night out on the campaigning tiles its long-term reputation suffers. These days consumers see reliable brands as being there for them 24×7 - when they need the help and support. And how can a brand do that if it spends its marketing wad on the first night?

It’s not easy changing long-standing behaviour. But unless brands spread their love, attention and cash throughout the year, and are able to hold some back to respond to people’s demands, no one will believe their clever words and lovely promises. In the world of marketing and brands, the size of your wad still counts. But in marketplaces driven by networked media, people are more interested than ever before in how you use it.

Bob Garfield is confirmed to speak and participate in a panel on The Chaos Scenario at the SXSW conference in Austin, TX in March.

He’ll be preaching to the choir, we realize, but the SXSW crowd may find The Chaos Scenario an ideal apologetic for the message they’ve been trying to share with others for years.

We are also excited to see what impact such a forward-thinking audience has on social media buzz about the book.

Are you going? Will you be attending Bob’s talk?  We’d like to know.  Tell us your plans in the comments section.  Bob looks forward to meeting you at the conference.  GS

By James Cherkoff of Collaborate Marketing.

At the end of last year my Independent Financial Adviser rang and suggested I moved my pension plan.  Why?  Because I was now ‘eligible’ for a new scheme at a fancy-pants City stockbroker – Brewin Dolphin.  Now I sort of trust this IFA guy.  I do think he knows what he’s talking about.  But, you know, I don’t always think he’s putting my interests at the very top of his daily to-do list.  Also, I’ve had a terrible experience with pension plans. Let’s just say, ‘Equitable Life’ - and leave it at that.

So I went to see said fancy-pants brokers at their mega-offices in London’s Spitalfields and listened to the offer.  It was what I expected.  Highly credible?  Oh yes.  Largely unintelligible?  Absolutely.  What to do?  Well of course, some research.  After all, the outcome of my pension is pretty important.  If possible, I’d like to avoid the ‘food or power’ choice in the cruel winter of 2040.

Into Google went the Brewin Dolphin name.  What came back was just pages and pages of corporate information.  Mostly unhelpful verbiage such as:

‘We recognise that building a strong working relationship with you is key to providing an excellent service. This personal approach is mirrored in the way we will approach investing on your client’s behalf. Our focus is on providing investment management that is as unique as each client’s needs. We have worked for generations, providing tailored solutions that help your clients to create and preserve wealth.’

Mmmm, no real insights there.

I then typed in ‘Brewin Dolphin’ plus ‘customer review’.  And the top result…

(more…)

Is “The Chaos Scenario” a best seller? Well, yes.

OK, it is no “Going Rogue,” that pack of lies offered up by noted ignoramus Sarah Palin. Truth be told, it’s also no “Outliers.” But since its publication it has been a top business book on Amazon.com in each of the advertising, marketing and media categories. It’s been especially strong as a Kindle edition, where at any given time it is in the top 1000, 3000, or 5000 Kindle selections — this out of a pool of about a half million titles.  At this writing, we’re at 2,869.

It’s hard to know our overall sales to actual book buyers, because we can’t track sales at retail in brick-and-mortar stores; we can only extrapolate from sales to stores.

Our best guess is that more than 5,000 actual books are in actual readers hands, increasing each month by about 750 copies. Not bad for a book published by a tiny little start-up without a penny spent in advertising.

Granted, 5,000 seems like a kind of pitiful total, until you consider this: the average U.S. book sells only 250 copies a year and less than 3000 in its lifetime. This according “Ten Awful Truths About Book Publishing” by Steve Piersanti, president of Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Bob Garfield is presenting The Chaos Scenario for WNYC and On The Media to a sold out crowd Tuesday night December 8th at 7pm from the The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, 44 Charlton Street New York, NY 10014. NPR’s Brooke Gladstone will moderate the discussion.

Gawker reports that in the last 12 months, 86,000 print-publishing employees have lost their jobs.

Unlike the victims of the recession and the larger unemployment trend, they have no chance of regaining their old livelihoods.

Hello, Chaotics

I’ve tried not to bother you much. I know you’re busy filling sandbags and stacking canned goods and hoarding ammo in the face of gathering Chaos. But here’s the deal: the holidays are upon us. It’s gift time. It’s gift BOOK time, and a very important moment in the evangelism of Chaos. This is our time to spread the word, to share the message, to give the gift of understanding to friends, colleagues and relatives you want to scare the bejeebers out of.

This is about momentum, not about filling my personal Christmas stocking. In fact, through December 31, Stielstra Publishing will donate to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital $5 for every copy of The Chaos Scenario purchased at thechaosscenario.net.

Please help put the CHaos in CHristmas and CHanuka!

Thanks and happy holidays,

Bob

Hello, Chaotics

I know you’re busy filling sandbags and stacking canned goods and hoarding ammo in the face of gathering Chaos. But here’s the deal: the holidays are upon us. It’s gift time. It’s gift BOOK time, and a very important moment in the evangelism of Chaos. This is our time to spread the word, to share the message, to give the gift of understanding to friends, colleagues and relatives you want to scare the bejeebers out of.

This is about momentum, not about filling my personal Christmas stocking. In fact, through December 31, Stielstra Publishing will donate to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital $5 for every copy of The Chaos Scenario purchased at thechaosscenario.net.

Please help put the CHaos in CHristmas and CHanuka by telling your friends, colleagues, and clients about the book and our donation.

Bob Garfield

Buy the Book

By James Cherkoff

A Grand Fromage from a big agency network broke the advertising omerta with me over coffee the other day.

‘Of course, we’ve never really been able to link campaigns to sales or ROI’.

Let me tell you, I nearly choked on my almond croissant.

It’s the unwritten law among GF advertising executives that no one mentions how random the effect of brand advertising is.  When under scrutiny from client procurement executives the Big Ad industry has ensured success by rounding the wagons and sticking to the BARB-Nielsen script, or pointing to the latest Thinkbox research.

However, just as I was getting over this blatant breach of the rules another industry GF breaks the code!  Writing on his blog Steve Henry blurts out that:

‘I’m getting sick of saying this, but 90% of advertising goes out there and does nothing at all. (I heard a figure the other day for what the average ROI is for marketing in this country. I can’t tell you the figure because I’ve been sworn to secrecy for now - but it’s diabolically low)’.

What’s going on?  Maybe it’s just a case of a few loose tongues.  They’ll probably disappear next week as the Farm St lawyers hand out the super-injunctions. 

However, maybe, just maybe, it’s because a few brave souls have noticed that technology is slowly making the mass marketing argument impossible to maintain.  For forever and a day, any ad executive worth their salt could deliver - with feeling - some variation on: ‘Maximum reach-and-frequency is the only way to build brand awareness thus creating equity that drives sales.’ Which paved the way for vast media spends that in turn justified chunky production budgets and maybe even an exotic location or two.

However, as all media, including TV, is slowly sucked onto one IP platform or another, thereby becoming highly measurable, the black box that the marketing industry used to keep its metrics in has been exposed to the digital sunlight.  The battering ram of reach-and-frequency is being replaced by granular laser targeting.

First there was Google and its ‘database of intentions’ where only people who were searching for something were targeted with related commercial messages.  Then came the rise of applications where people could choose content to run on their social networks, iPhones, iTouches and now Droids.  More recently, we’ve had Facebook and its ‘people not pages’ approach, where advertisers can target individuals who have expressed a particular interest through their profile.  Even the impregnable metrics maze that has driven TV’s vast global revenues has begun to open up.  Social networks make it all too easy to see what people are actually watching – and what they are not.  And finally, the promise of behavioural advertising looms large, where commercial messages are targeted according to the digital data trails that people leave behind them – not thrown over the nation like a blanket.  Now these developments do of course bring their own Big Brother issues.  But that can all all wait.

The Grand Fromage of advertising are finally taking notes.  And a few are talking outside of the old school too…