Stop the Insanity!

I’m given to rail against the state of the world in terms of the overreaction in favor of online marketing methods over print advertising. As with any sea change in the sales end of our industry, there are multiple players (publishers, clients, ad agencies) and plenty of blame to go around. A frequent target for publishers is ad agencies. Part of this is historical, as an agency can stand between the publisher and his/her client. And part of it is structural. Clients squeeze ad agencies, who have to run leaner and often assign inexperienced media buyers to select media.

Today, there are two beefs we have with ad agencies: one is the “RFP due by the end of the day.” The other is “we’re only buying online.” Clearly, there is pressure from clients on both fronts, but the hope is that the ad agencies—who are supposed to be guiding the client’s marketing efforts—would make a greater effort to help stop the insanity.

But I’ve discovered hope recently in the form of two of the most influential high-tech ad agencies, Just Media and Mindshare.

Just Media, in Berkeley, California, has a whole pile of accounts including EMC, the red-hot VMware, Quest, Fujitsu, McAfee, and others. Recently, CEO Dick Reed told me of the battles they are pitching to get these clients to truly embrace integrated marketing—with the print part of the equation being the biggest challenge. It was Dick that told me about ROMO—"Return on Marketing Objective"—and how his agency is using it to convince clients to use print in the mix. Dick also told me about having lunch with Pat McGovern this summer and railing on him about shutting down InfoWorld. A far cry from a 23-year-old media planner plunking numbers into a spreadsheet, this is the kind of involved, opinionated and non-isolationist ad agency we need.

Another agency that gets it is Mindshare, working with IBM. Experienced associate media director Larry Meisel is out on the front lines with publishers, pushing, cajoling and preaching about what IBM needs in print. And he is almost single-handedly keeping the IT newsweeklies alive. (A quick hand-count of 12/17 issues reveals: Computerworld, 21.5 ad pages, 4 from IBM; Network World, 19.5 pages, 6 from IBM; eWeek, 37.5 ad pages, 9 from IBM.)

They are out there. Find those ad agencies that get it. And let’s get them more business.

'ROMO': Better ROI for Marketers

Several days ago I wrote about the desire for marketers to distill their art down to a science in the crucible of online marketing metrics. In it, I suggested publishers ask questions and flesh out whether your client is really doing the work to analyze the effectiveness of their online marketing or whether they were just using online because it could Cover Their Ass ("CTA") if called upon to prove ROI.

So, now what?

Suggest that there are other metrics beyond ROI that they should consider using. The term I heard a few weeks ago was ROMO, or, Return on Marketing Objective. This has broader application than ROI but it both encourages measurement as well as the idea that strict return on investment may not have to be the ONLY thing one should evaluate. So you can begin to discuss what other sort of marketing objectives one might have and how to measure them. For example, brand awareness and buyer preference–those mysterious forces that make someone click on your Adwords ad instead of a lesser-known company’s.

Why not suggest print (oh there I go again) to raise awareness and preference using a pre-campaign and post-campaign study to measure the improvement? And then analyze changes in click-thrus, click-through rates and conversion rates of online efforts during the campaign (across the same audience–it’s called integrated marketing). Who says you cannot measure this?

We had an account that ran regular e-newsletter sponsorships. In the middle of that two-year run of online advertising, they ran some print: full and half pages, 17 times across a 22-issue span (we are 24 a year). The marketing objective was to try and increase awareness five percentage points. While they were running the print ads, they averaged 155 online leads. During the period before and after the print, they averaged 61 leads. The increase lowered the cost per lead even after factoring in the entire cost of the print advertising. That means the nine point increase in awareness they achieved over the period was in effect free. They achieved both a ROMO and ROI.

That is obviously a showcase example and your mileage may vary. But to summarize, don’t get put off by ROI. Suggest ROMO as an equally valuable metric. And then figure out how to measure that ROMO, with awareness and brand preference studies. You’ll like the ROI.

(Note: My source for the term “ROMO” told me he had heard it from Tech Target–kudos are due to TT, or whoever invented it.)

Do Marketers Want ROI or Just CYA?

This entry is for PWLA (people who like acronyms). Many marketers (at least in tech, when I am) chant "R-O-I, R-O-I, R-O-I" whenever a salesperson is present. And woe to the salesperson that wants to talk about PRINT! They claim to need Return On Investment, and of course the only way to provide that is with online marketing (measuring clicks, click-thru percentage and lead generation). Marketers want a Silver Bullet–something that turns their art into a science. They think they’ve found it. Until you start asking questions.

Remember good-ole Bingo cards? Oh, I meant “Reader Service Cards." How did we handle claims that another magazine outpulled ours? You broke them down with questions. What is the quality of the leads? How closely do they track results? If someone calls in six months later, do they link that back to the Bingo lead? In 90 percent of the cases, the marketers did not track leads adequately.

Same is true today with online marketing–at least with smaller or medium-sized companies. They don’t track whether the clicks became leads. Or later, sales. Their salespeople only follow-up on a lead once. The leads don’t get followed up on at all. Nowadays, many marketers simply have a number of leads they must generate per quarter. Period. If those leads don’t turn into sales, well, that’s the sales team’s fault. So, many times, when they tell you they want ROI all they really want you is CYA (Cover Your Ass). You should call them on it. And when you do, you can introduce another acronym to them that will also open the door for you to sell them badly needed print advertising. It’s ROMO, and we’ll talk more about that in the next post.

Magazine Metrics: Make the Punishment Fit the Crime

I just returned from a sales trip on the West Coast. I am always looking for ways to keep fighting the wacky perception that print is dead, as is regularly reported in print media-Doh! One of the problems was typified by a large client who said he wants to measure the success of a marketing effort on the very next day, and since you could not do that with print, he was only using online media.

Now there are many things one can respond to here, but I want to focus on the metrics. It is very difficult to measure the results of a print ad campaign in a trade publication on a daily basis. It's not how they work. You don't measure the speed of a glacier moving in miles per hour. You measure glaciers in inches per year. Similarly, you have to measure print campaign benefits in longer-term metrics like "increase in awareness over six months, change in brand perception or brand preference" over a longer period of time.

If you are not offering the kind of research that measures these kinds of metrics right now, you need to be. Print cannot be measured with clicks but it doesn't produce that type of impulsive result. That doesn't mean that what we do produce-awareness, brand preference and sales-cannot be measured. They can be, quite easily with pre-and post-campaign studies. There are many quick-and-dirty online research sites out there (www.surveymonkey.com is one) where you can do a study for less than $20.

You should also be using Harvey, Readex or Starch to independently measure the perception of an advertiser's creative as well as the creative of every other advertiser in the issue. This sort of research- common in print for years-is very rare in the online world. When I mention the breadth and depth of these studies to the new online buyers they are amazed.

Don't give in to demands for online metrics that don't make sense for print. There are ways to measure print's effectiveness. Educate your customers and use them.

The New York Times’ (and Your) Secret Weapon

I looked at NYTimes.com briefly this morning before leaving for work. Nothing interesting. Some bishops.

Then I got to the Cold Spring Harbor Deli and glanced at the physical print edition of the Times and was surprised to see the headlines on Iran’s nuclear program screaming out at me. READ ME, it said. This is IMPORTANT!

And I did read it. And it was important. If I only read the Times online, it would have just flown right by. Print is really good at providing context. The Internet is not.

If you are selling print, you need to pay attention to these examples as they come up and use them to hammer home the unique benefits of print.

I’m not against online – we sell tons of online products. I just feel the jump to online marketing has gone overboard and there are few voices reminding us why and how print still works.

Maybe Branding Isn’t Dead

In the wake of all the noise about everything going digital, everything being measurable on the Internet and demands for accountable ROI comes this story via the Wall Street Journal: "Starbucks Posts Decline in U.S. Store Traffic, Plans Ad Campaign."

An ad campaign. To increase awareness. How retro! They're going to use TV ads-you know, mass market, branding, all that. Sheesh, why aren't they grinding out interstitial EyeBlaster BrainBurst SoulSucker pop-up ads on all the kewl internet video sites?

Isn't that what everyone is supposed to do? Apparently not.

Maybe we're ready to move beyond the "Revenge of the Sock Puppet" phase of anti-branding. You remember the sock puppet mascot for pets.com? The lesson absorbed by VCs and CFOs everywhere in 2001 was, "Don't do anything even resembling branding, look what followed in the wake of the Super Bowl advertising for pets.com." Of course, it had nothing to do with their business model or the recession. Lots of targeted branding efforts were just thrown out with the bathwater. Branding somehow meant "Super Bowl ads." For years afterwards I met with marketers who said either the venture capitalists or their CFO said, "Yes you can spend millions of dollars, but don't you dare advertise for awareness or brand-building." I wonder if the marketers would ever turn around and say to the CFO, "you can run A/P and A/R but don't you dare use a spreadsheet!"

In this case, it appears as if Starbucks CEO Jim Donald is letting the marketers do what they were hired to do: marketing. As quoted in the Journal, Donald says Starbucks is getting into television advertising because "as we grow our stores, we're trying to reach out to this broader audience that maybe [has] not had a chance to experience Starbucks." I call that building awareness. The old-fashioned way.

Mary Berner

Nice article in October Folio: on Mary Berner, new CEO of Reader's Digest. Among the sacred cows she has slain is a ban on back cover advertising on Reader's Digest itself (I wouldn't know, tending to read about the latest celebrity suicide/20 pounds gained/bad haircut/breakup/hookup/20 pounds lost/new baby news in People when standing at the checkout line).

Reader's Digest with no back cover ad??? What WERE they thinking. Mary Berner had the reader's surveyed - predictably, they could care less. That's gotta be $2 million/year easy.

And come to think of it, what about all those midwestern Reiman publications with NO ads in them! Would the readers mind if a few ads for cranberry sauce or Jolly Green Giant peas were tossed in there. By golly, no!!

What do you think?? $50-75 million in two years?

What sacred cows do YOU have in your company? My favorite I hear these days is "we don't use print!" (Hah, you wondered how long it would take me to get onto THIS subject!).

as John Cleese says to the pet store owner in The Dead Parrot Sketch

"WHAT KIND OF TALK IS THAT?!!"

Why don't you use print?

Did it suddenly stop working?

Did someone tell you awareness and brand preference and demand don't matter anymore???

More (lot's more) on this later

But meanwhile, on Reader's Digest:

Way to go Mary Berner!

The US Open and Media

Ok Ok so I know what you're asking: what does the last post have to do with anything beyond the fact that Ted is an avid tennis player/fan? Here's the point:

Brands get all the breaks.

Federer, by far the world's biggest and most imposing tennis-playing "Brand," is said to win some matches in the locker room - meaning, the opponent concludes before even walking out on the court that they have no chance. Or when faced with the prospect of beating Federer, one chokes. Federer gets the break.

For years, McGraw-Hill got the break. Then Cahners. Then it was Ziff-Davis, IDG and CMP. People defer to brands and icons. Faced with the terrifying choice between an icon like Dr. Dobbs and the merely 7-year old SD Times, some buyers just buy the more well-known entity.

Which means we have to be better - much better - than well-known companies like CMP, Z-D and IDG. Got a long way to go, but each year we get a few more breaks (like how about those Puerto Rico Industrial Relations Board ads.....).

IMS figures just came out. August SD Times ad pages were up 16 over last year. Dobb's was flat.

this was a bit more ramble-y than it started out to be.

US Open Final Notes

"Choke-ovich"

Yes I made that up probably with about 500 other people independently.

Poor Novak was cruising with the confidence of a 20 year-old who knew no fear. But then when he was up 40-0 with three set points the Fed Factor crept in. Filled with the enormity of the situation and steady play by Federer (note to Tennis Week: please limit your description of him as "the Swiss stylist" to once per article) and he wilted.

And that's why we watch. While they play the game at a higher level.....they're just like us

Farms and Non-farms

Item in the WSJ today (pushed to me by e-mail, btw):


WSJ NEWS ALERT: Nonfarm Payrolls Surge by 180,000 in March; Jobless Rate Falls

"U.S. payrolls surged by 180,000 jobs in March, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.4%, increasing the chance of consumer-driven ecomnomic growth and lowering the likelihood of any near-term cut in interest rates. Outside of manufacturing, payroll gains were broadly based, with construction and services posting healthy increases. Previous months' employment increases, meanwhile, were revised up."


This is a number to watch - at conference for trade show CEOs I attended last month an economist with an impressive 20-year track record compared leading indicators and this one - along with availablity of credit - is one of the most relaible for projecting the strength of the economy over the next 6 months - a forward indicator

So, the economy looks good for next 6 months! (But, couldn't we kinda feel that anyway?)


Snarky comment:

Now....aren't virtually all payrolls "nonfarm" these days? If non-farm is meant to remove seasonality I wonder if they also remove "non-retail" in December, when temp payrolls surge.

Farms.

Snort.

The Process of Mulling

I like to mull things over. There are the urgent things which must be done right away or "today." Or this week, at least. Then there are The Important. These are things that are really important (hence the name) but since they are not urgent, they often never get done. When they do get done, typically you have to sweep all the urgent things off the desk and go into a cone of silence to focus on the Important Task. On my Important list is learning how to make cooler powerpoint presentations - has been for years.

There is another even more important category of things to do and these I call Background Tasks and I mull them over. These are things like what next market to attack, or, should we renew our lease, or should I commit to playing the guitar again. Broadly, this is a category of directional impulses and things I might want to do later (thus moving onto a list) or...might not. I'm mulling them over.

The process of mental cud-chewing is greatly aided by reading print magazines and newspapers. They expose me to things that are not urgent, and maybe not even important - YET.

This morning I was reading Inc. Magazine and read an article on expanding globally - what to do and what not to do when opening a global office. I ripped it out and brought it to work and put it in a file. We have no intention of opening offices overseas today and have barely discussed it. BUT someday we may. And if so I will go find that article.

Now, Joel Sposky would say that when deciding to open an office in Bangalore I can just google for info at that point. And I am sure I would. BUT, what reading that article gave me was an idea - the article told of 6 different ways to open an office internationally - maybe it's not that hard after all....something to think about....to mull.

I would never ever have gotten this idea from the Internet. Never ever. I wouldn't look for it. So, I wouldn't find it. Internet is for "search. Print is for "find"

All us old-timers are realizing the discovery-power of print and are talking about it. I wonder when the younger generation will figure that out?