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Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Alfidi Capital Attends SMX West 2017
I am a known regular at every major digital marketing event in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Search Marketing Expo 2017 down in San Jose. I attended this year's SMX West Conference to hear what Microsoft Bing and Google had to say about their search capabilities, but there were other goodies on hand.
My free Expo badge got me into the main events from the major sponsors, plus all the free candy I could grab during booth pitches. The badge selfie notes the Landy Awards from Search Engine Land which I was not invited to attend. Someday, these folks will have me hosting their award ceremonies. Mark my words, because my badge selfies are prophetic. The only other photo I took was of some wild equation someone displayed on a pitch slide illustrating online ad spending; it did not come out nearly as well as my badge selfie.
The keynote address pitching Google Assistant was the latest roadshow chapter in Google's plan to take over the world, one household at a time. Google Assistant integrates with Google Home and probably enables other parts of the IoT ecosystem, like Nest. Before you know it, your thermostat will be searching Google for neighborhood microclimate forecasts. I suppose Google's in-home devices and apps will interface with Google's APIs by passing basic data on identity, payments, and geolocations back and forth. Doing this with users' permission requires users to become a lot more cognizant of security. The UI is always the weakest point in security chains. Good luck, Google; you're better off pitching automated security and letting the smartest users post helpful bug fixes online. Actions on Google gives developers hints on how to build for Google Assistant.
The Bing people talked up their ad programs' quality score metrics. I prefer that they raise the quality of their search algorithm if they ever hope to have a shot at taking market share from Google Search. I did like their tip on landing page optimization, where the "root word" of a word with many synonyms avoids a search engine penalty for keyword stuffing.
One big benefit for yours truly was to hear SEO legend Bruce Clay speak at SMX West. The guy has been doing search marketing since the earliest days of the discipline. The FTC has plenty of guidelines impacting search marketing, and everyone advertising in the search sector must comply. I did a Google Search of some combos of "FTC PPC SEO" to see the latest developments. Mr. Clay mentioned WebPagetest as one way to identify fixes that will raise a page's search rank, in addition to Google's long-standing webmaster guidelines. I asked Mr. Clay about how emerging industry guidelines on making Web pages accessible to people with disabilities will affect SEO. He generously answered that ADA Rule 508 (supported by treaty in many countries) enables audible readers for alt-tags of images, and a company can incur huge fines if a US federal government employee uses a website that's not ADA compliant. Lawyers are lining up behind the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) to pursue liabilities for websites whose images do not have matching alt-tags. The FCC is tracking CVAA regulation updates. Thanks again for the heads-up, Mr. Clay, because Web entrepreneurs like me need to stay out of trouble. Mr. Clay's tips were endless, telling us to mitigate referer spam and UTM injection, and cautioning against malware installation into plug-ins that cause negative SEO results.
The Google free talks were the day after the Bing talks. I scored multiple handfuls of free snacks from both sponsors, in addition to some cool marketing insights. There's tons of online commentary for Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) as an ad performance metric, including calculation methods. Marketers should use ROAS together with CVR, CPA, and CPC in a dashboard format, with conversions traced as "attributions" to each spending metric. I used to hear a lot about remarketing to prospects who fell out of a marketing funnel, and now it's accepted as a given with "dynamic remarketing" as a variant. The ultimate purpose of using data-driven ad buys is to raise CVR while lowering CPA, and the Google people made it clear that this is their ad platform's approach. I don't use Google Merchant Center, because I don't sell any products or run ads, but it's the future for online retailers of any size.
I picked up quite a few other specialized tips from the Expo that probably aren't applicable to my general readership, but they are definitely of interest to me. I have realized lately that sharing too much about my business strategy can be counterproductive. I took a bit longer writing this article about the Expo because I wanted to ensure I had time to update my own SEO techniques. SMX West 2017 was a winner for Alfidi Capital.
 |
| Alfidi Capital displays Expo badge at SMX West 2017. |
My free Expo badge got me into the main events from the major sponsors, plus all the free candy I could grab during booth pitches. The badge selfie notes the Landy Awards from Search Engine Land which I was not invited to attend. Someday, these folks will have me hosting their award ceremonies. Mark my words, because my badge selfies are prophetic. The only other photo I took was of some wild equation someone displayed on a pitch slide illustrating online ad spending; it did not come out nearly as well as my badge selfie.
The keynote address pitching Google Assistant was the latest roadshow chapter in Google's plan to take over the world, one household at a time. Google Assistant integrates with Google Home and probably enables other parts of the IoT ecosystem, like Nest. Before you know it, your thermostat will be searching Google for neighborhood microclimate forecasts. I suppose Google's in-home devices and apps will interface with Google's APIs by passing basic data on identity, payments, and geolocations back and forth. Doing this with users' permission requires users to become a lot more cognizant of security. The UI is always the weakest point in security chains. Good luck, Google; you're better off pitching automated security and letting the smartest users post helpful bug fixes online. Actions on Google gives developers hints on how to build for Google Assistant.
The Bing people talked up their ad programs' quality score metrics. I prefer that they raise the quality of their search algorithm if they ever hope to have a shot at taking market share from Google Search. I did like their tip on landing page optimization, where the "root word" of a word with many synonyms avoids a search engine penalty for keyword stuffing.
One big benefit for yours truly was to hear SEO legend Bruce Clay speak at SMX West. The guy has been doing search marketing since the earliest days of the discipline. The FTC has plenty of guidelines impacting search marketing, and everyone advertising in the search sector must comply. I did a Google Search of some combos of "FTC PPC SEO" to see the latest developments. Mr. Clay mentioned WebPagetest as one way to identify fixes that will raise a page's search rank, in addition to Google's long-standing webmaster guidelines. I asked Mr. Clay about how emerging industry guidelines on making Web pages accessible to people with disabilities will affect SEO. He generously answered that ADA Rule 508 (supported by treaty in many countries) enables audible readers for alt-tags of images, and a company can incur huge fines if a US federal government employee uses a website that's not ADA compliant. Lawyers are lining up behind the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) to pursue liabilities for websites whose images do not have matching alt-tags. The FCC is tracking CVAA regulation updates. Thanks again for the heads-up, Mr. Clay, because Web entrepreneurs like me need to stay out of trouble. Mr. Clay's tips were endless, telling us to mitigate referer spam and UTM injection, and cautioning against malware installation into plug-ins that cause negative SEO results.
The Google free talks were the day after the Bing talks. I scored multiple handfuls of free snacks from both sponsors, in addition to some cool marketing insights. There's tons of online commentary for Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) as an ad performance metric, including calculation methods. Marketers should use ROAS together with CVR, CPA, and CPC in a dashboard format, with conversions traced as "attributions" to each spending metric. I used to hear a lot about remarketing to prospects who fell out of a marketing funnel, and now it's accepted as a given with "dynamic remarketing" as a variant. The ultimate purpose of using data-driven ad buys is to raise CVR while lowering CPA, and the Google people made it clear that this is their ad platform's approach. I don't use Google Merchant Center, because I don't sell any products or run ads, but it's the future for online retailers of any size.
I picked up quite a few other specialized tips from the Expo that probably aren't applicable to my general readership, but they are definitely of interest to me. I have realized lately that sharing too much about my business strategy can be counterproductive. I took a bit longer writing this article about the Expo because I wanted to ensure I had time to update my own SEO techniques. SMX West 2017 was a winner for Alfidi Capital.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
One Pathological Email Spammer
One particular email spammer keeps popping up in my inbox every couple of months. Asking this entity to remove me from their contact database was a waste, even though they promised to do so. Sending a very strongly worded response the next time they spammed me also obviously has not worked. Marking their endless pitches as junk email had better work, or else I need better email filters. Tech isn't the problem here. Human pathology finds end runs around tech barriers.
I have to wonder about the mental stability of spammy marketers. I grok the entrepreneur's desire to strain the limits of social tolerance in getting a message out. I have pushed my own luck with blog comments, link building requests, and social media blasts. The small number of times that my marketing got me banned from a media outlet were instructive. I pulled back where appropriate and changed my approach to channels that remain perpetually open. I am different from pathological spammers because I quickly learn when some channels are closed.
Enough is enough. If shunning, yelling, and banning don't work on this particular spammer then it's time for a complaint to some regulatory body. Maybe the FTC or FCC will care about a greedy, unscrupulous San Francisco area spammer who just won't leave me alone. Hearing this entity's titular head speak in public was bad enough when the misrepresentations just flowed from his mouth like a raging torrent. I need appropriate and effective means to turn that torrent off. The FTC Complaint Assistant is my starting point for fighting the good fight. Yeah, mister non-funder of people's nonsensical dream projects, I'm talking about you. Here comes the wrath of Alfidi Capital.
I have to wonder about the mental stability of spammy marketers. I grok the entrepreneur's desire to strain the limits of social tolerance in getting a message out. I have pushed my own luck with blog comments, link building requests, and social media blasts. The small number of times that my marketing got me banned from a media outlet were instructive. I pulled back where appropriate and changed my approach to channels that remain perpetually open. I am different from pathological spammers because I quickly learn when some channels are closed.
Enough is enough. If shunning, yelling, and banning don't work on this particular spammer then it's time for a complaint to some regulatory body. Maybe the FTC or FCC will care about a greedy, unscrupulous San Francisco area spammer who just won't leave me alone. Hearing this entity's titular head speak in public was bad enough when the misrepresentations just flowed from his mouth like a raging torrent. I need appropriate and effective means to turn that torrent off. The FTC Complaint Assistant is my starting point for fighting the good fight. Yeah, mister non-funder of people's nonsensical dream projects, I'm talking about you. Here comes the wrath of Alfidi Capital.
Friday, June 19, 2015
Friday, March 27, 2015
Saturday, March 07, 2015
Alfidi Capital Checks Out SMX West 2015
I attended SMX West 2015 this week, aka Search Marketing Expo. I got a free Expo Plus pass, which means I got to attend all of the major sponsored talks and score free snacks throughout the day. I am all over free deals, folks. My original genius is in bold text because that is how I add value after these conferences.
Yahoo's Ad Lab kept me occupied on the first morning. The Yahoo presenters and staffers all wore some purple clothing item and the free pens they handed out had purple ink. Yahoo is all about purple. I use Yahoo Finance a lot and their top menu bar is purple. Maybe these people wear purple underwear too. Yahoo no longer has a personals section but I used it briefly in 2004, and I don't recall seeing any purple people there. Anyway, the common theme among the Yahoo presentations was the importance of storytelling in advertising. The channels in online marketing are obvious; everyone differentiates between native and search.
Yahoo's research revealed some curious things. Using trademark designations for a brand enhances an ad's click-through rate (CTR). Some people must like the simplest possible stimuli. Constructing a "power of three" language rhythm means telling a story of how "this, this, and then THIS" describes a brand. I saw that rhythm when I worked at UBS a decade ago, when their internal communications people put out some really confusing nonsense about the corporate logo. The people at UBS were stupid in 2005-06.
People remember ads that connect emotionally. Yahoo advocates connecting in three realms: consumer, product, and copy. Connecting with the consumer means placing the brand logo in the upper right corner of an online ad's image. There's more to it than that, but that was a big take-away. Using less than 20% text overlay in an image is how the ad copy connects without distracting from the image.
I have never worked in marketing so I will oversimplify the obvious winning formula for an effective ad campaign. The marketing pros first need to tie CTR to conversion rates to see whether their ads are driving behavior. The ad campaign's spend divided by the number of unique conversions is the customer acquisition cost (CAC). Comparing the CAC to the net income generated from the observed conversions reveals whether the campaign was worthwhile. See folks, this marketing stuff is really simple.
I caught a couple of expo theater talks before the afternoon's headliners. Disguised pitches are sometimes a chore but usually fun. Presenters don't always grok that their talk should be mostly actionable practices and only just enough brand mention to establish a value proposition. The few tips I picked up on the first day are coming at you right now. Google's advanced search can reveal reading comprehension levels, and one presenter claimed the insurance industry is required to write documents with reading levels no higher than 10th grade. I have not found confirmation of that anywhere, so naturally I am skeptical. Online ads are mainly images and short text phrases, so writing something for the Gunning fog index or Flesch-Kincaid test would just be a waste of time.
Another theater talk mentioned the "digital marketing funnel" concept. Link building is a marketing tactic now in decline but one presenter mentioned it as a brand awareness tactic at the top of the funnel. Content generation, tactics, formats, channels, and metrics are different for each level of the funnel. You can satisfy all of your funnel urges with the Content Marketing Institute's articles.
Google's constant algorithm changes have not deterred dedicated link builders from pitching their services. I don't think it's dawned on many link builders that they can use Help A Reporter Out (HARO) to pitch journalists. Doing media outreach the old-fashioned way takes a lot more time and gets more rejections than a response to a HARO query. I asked these link builders afterwards about the effectiveness of link building by making comments on blogs and forums. The lead dude said moderators have gotten a lot savvier in the last three years about deleting blatant link promoters and enabling a no-follow for web domain links. He said it still works if the comment and link posted are relevant to the blog or forum. I'm pretty sure link building as a third-party marketing service has almost reached the end of its useful life in the digital economy.
Another presenter had tips about building content that would resonate with search results. There's an audience out there for everything and keywords show us want they want. Experts in every vertical watch content their peers distribute. Think through high-traffic keywords that work well as anchor text so potential back-linkers will like it. Any amount of ad spend will drive some traffic but only quality content will make people stick around. I am not a fan of any paid social media presence because it has the potential for abuse if marketers pay for artificial likes and follows. The major social media channels now encourage marketers to think hard about spending on pay par click (PPC) campaigns after listening to complaints about its shortcomings.
The first day's cocktail reception is one of those conference traditions that has survived into the digital age. The cocktail with soda, Hennessy cognac, and Grand Marnier cognac liqueur fueled my survey of the hot babes wandering around the expo floor. Some of these gals had amazing hips, thighs, and calves, so they must get lots of exercise taking the stairs wherever they work. The #WeaselPecker photo meme was also working its way around the expo floor but I did not let it distract me from my search for hot babes. The concentration of woman in digital media seems to be higher than in other tech fields. We need stats to confirm this phenomenon.
I attended all of Google's sponsored talks the next day. Their big glass enclosure had all kinds of free candy and notepads. I swear I should have started my career with tech startups in Silicon Valley. The tech culture does free stuff right. The Google people showed us how return on ad spend (ROAS) measures "lift." Pure content people like bloggers may be able to ignore ROAS in favor of eCPC if their business model does not rely upon conversions, unless of course they have proof that ad spending to publicize a blog will drive their own ad revenue. I practice what I just preached by not spending a penny on ads. Google had plenty of cool things to say that I don't need to repeat because Google Best Practices has it all. They even figured out multiscreen optimization. Once you Learn With Google, you are welcome to Think With Google. I would rather eat and drink with Google, which is precisely what I did at the reception they hosted for those of us who attended their talks. All of the Google team leads who presented looked like they're in their late 20s or early 30s. It's no company for older people.
I had little time for the second day's theater talks. One of them really turned me off by playing very loud introductory music and disregarding the published topic. Dude, if you're going to pull a half-dozen stunts in twenty minutes while dressed in a running outfit, please go find another job. I couldn't find the dude on the expo floor to complain even after he said he would be in his booth. Good riddance.
The disparities between the search engines sponsoring most of these talks are growing. I think Yahoo and Bing will have trouble creating analytics suites to match Google no matter how good they make their algos. Google simply has way more data to aggregate because it dominate search. Mobile is turning into the same story. App aggregation captures more traffic than search on mobile. The dominant app stores will have the data for analytics. Apple and Google lead the app store presence. They will own the in-app advertising channels forever. The network effects are simply too large to overcome.
Bill Tancer gave the keynote talk recapping his research from several books on consumer behavior. I like the guy's "1/9/90 rule," where 1% of an online population generates content, another 9% interact with it, and the final 90% passively consume it. Like everything else in human history, a tiny fraction of a population drives civilization forward and everyone else is just along for the ride. I am going to try out the "People Hate Us On Yelp" meme and use negativity to drive more Web traffic to Alfidi Capital. Bill predicts a disruptive entrepreneurial opportunity in searches for "perspective" on consumer review sites because different age groups and demographics will perceive the same service quality differently. IMHO solving this opportunity simply means review sites can sort review listings by preferences for speed, cost, and quality. The DevOps people at the biggest sites can solve it within a few weeks.
I have never purchased advertising so I can't use some of material at this conference. Google Analytics and other services increasingly cater to ad agencies and other large media buyers who can generate multiple sales packages. SMX was still worth my time for the many free tips I got on SEO sources.
Yahoo's Ad Lab kept me occupied on the first morning. The Yahoo presenters and staffers all wore some purple clothing item and the free pens they handed out had purple ink. Yahoo is all about purple. I use Yahoo Finance a lot and their top menu bar is purple. Maybe these people wear purple underwear too. Yahoo no longer has a personals section but I used it briefly in 2004, and I don't recall seeing any purple people there. Anyway, the common theme among the Yahoo presentations was the importance of storytelling in advertising. The channels in online marketing are obvious; everyone differentiates between native and search.
Yahoo's research revealed some curious things. Using trademark designations for a brand enhances an ad's click-through rate (CTR). Some people must like the simplest possible stimuli. Constructing a "power of three" language rhythm means telling a story of how "this, this, and then THIS" describes a brand. I saw that rhythm when I worked at UBS a decade ago, when their internal communications people put out some really confusing nonsense about the corporate logo. The people at UBS were stupid in 2005-06.
People remember ads that connect emotionally. Yahoo advocates connecting in three realms: consumer, product, and copy. Connecting with the consumer means placing the brand logo in the upper right corner of an online ad's image. There's more to it than that, but that was a big take-away. Using less than 20% text overlay in an image is how the ad copy connects without distracting from the image.
I have never worked in marketing so I will oversimplify the obvious winning formula for an effective ad campaign. The marketing pros first need to tie CTR to conversion rates to see whether their ads are driving behavior. The ad campaign's spend divided by the number of unique conversions is the customer acquisition cost (CAC). Comparing the CAC to the net income generated from the observed conversions reveals whether the campaign was worthwhile. See folks, this marketing stuff is really simple.
I caught a couple of expo theater talks before the afternoon's headliners. Disguised pitches are sometimes a chore but usually fun. Presenters don't always grok that their talk should be mostly actionable practices and only just enough brand mention to establish a value proposition. The few tips I picked up on the first day are coming at you right now. Google's advanced search can reveal reading comprehension levels, and one presenter claimed the insurance industry is required to write documents with reading levels no higher than 10th grade. I have not found confirmation of that anywhere, so naturally I am skeptical. Online ads are mainly images and short text phrases, so writing something for the Gunning fog index or Flesch-Kincaid test would just be a waste of time.
Another theater talk mentioned the "digital marketing funnel" concept. Link building is a marketing tactic now in decline but one presenter mentioned it as a brand awareness tactic at the top of the funnel. Content generation, tactics, formats, channels, and metrics are different for each level of the funnel. You can satisfy all of your funnel urges with the Content Marketing Institute's articles.
Google's constant algorithm changes have not deterred dedicated link builders from pitching their services. I don't think it's dawned on many link builders that they can use Help A Reporter Out (HARO) to pitch journalists. Doing media outreach the old-fashioned way takes a lot more time and gets more rejections than a response to a HARO query. I asked these link builders afterwards about the effectiveness of link building by making comments on blogs and forums. The lead dude said moderators have gotten a lot savvier in the last three years about deleting blatant link promoters and enabling a no-follow for web domain links. He said it still works if the comment and link posted are relevant to the blog or forum. I'm pretty sure link building as a third-party marketing service has almost reached the end of its useful life in the digital economy.
Another presenter had tips about building content that would resonate with search results. There's an audience out there for everything and keywords show us want they want. Experts in every vertical watch content their peers distribute. Think through high-traffic keywords that work well as anchor text so potential back-linkers will like it. Any amount of ad spend will drive some traffic but only quality content will make people stick around. I am not a fan of any paid social media presence because it has the potential for abuse if marketers pay for artificial likes and follows. The major social media channels now encourage marketers to think hard about spending on pay par click (PPC) campaigns after listening to complaints about its shortcomings.
The first day's cocktail reception is one of those conference traditions that has survived into the digital age. The cocktail with soda, Hennessy cognac, and Grand Marnier cognac liqueur fueled my survey of the hot babes wandering around the expo floor. Some of these gals had amazing hips, thighs, and calves, so they must get lots of exercise taking the stairs wherever they work. The #WeaselPecker photo meme was also working its way around the expo floor but I did not let it distract me from my search for hot babes. The concentration of woman in digital media seems to be higher than in other tech fields. We need stats to confirm this phenomenon.
I attended all of Google's sponsored talks the next day. Their big glass enclosure had all kinds of free candy and notepads. I swear I should have started my career with tech startups in Silicon Valley. The tech culture does free stuff right. The Google people showed us how return on ad spend (ROAS) measures "lift." Pure content people like bloggers may be able to ignore ROAS in favor of eCPC if their business model does not rely upon conversions, unless of course they have proof that ad spending to publicize a blog will drive their own ad revenue. I practice what I just preached by not spending a penny on ads. Google had plenty of cool things to say that I don't need to repeat because Google Best Practices has it all. They even figured out multiscreen optimization. Once you Learn With Google, you are welcome to Think With Google. I would rather eat and drink with Google, which is precisely what I did at the reception they hosted for those of us who attended their talks. All of the Google team leads who presented looked like they're in their late 20s or early 30s. It's no company for older people.
I had little time for the second day's theater talks. One of them really turned me off by playing very loud introductory music and disregarding the published topic. Dude, if you're going to pull a half-dozen stunts in twenty minutes while dressed in a running outfit, please go find another job. I couldn't find the dude on the expo floor to complain even after he said he would be in his booth. Good riddance.
The disparities between the search engines sponsoring most of these talks are growing. I think Yahoo and Bing will have trouble creating analytics suites to match Google no matter how good they make their algos. Google simply has way more data to aggregate because it dominate search. Mobile is turning into the same story. App aggregation captures more traffic than search on mobile. The dominant app stores will have the data for analytics. Apple and Google lead the app store presence. They will own the in-app advertising channels forever. The network effects are simply too large to overcome.
Bill Tancer gave the keynote talk recapping his research from several books on consumer behavior. I like the guy's "1/9/90 rule," where 1% of an online population generates content, another 9% interact with it, and the final 90% passively consume it. Like everything else in human history, a tiny fraction of a population drives civilization forward and everyone else is just along for the ride. I am going to try out the "People Hate Us On Yelp" meme and use negativity to drive more Web traffic to Alfidi Capital. Bill predicts a disruptive entrepreneurial opportunity in searches for "perspective" on consumer review sites because different age groups and demographics will perceive the same service quality differently. IMHO solving this opportunity simply means review sites can sort review listings by preferences for speed, cost, and quality. The DevOps people at the biggest sites can solve it within a few weeks.
I have never purchased advertising so I can't use some of material at this conference. Google Analytics and other services increasingly cater to ad agencies and other large media buyers who can generate multiple sales packages. SMX was still worth my time for the many free tips I got on SEO sources.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Viral Marketing Lessons From The BuzzFeed Video For ACA 2015 Enrollment
The latest BuzzFeed video touting enrollment in ACA-compliant health insurance plans is a winner. Plenty of social media addicts grokked its significance immediately, and plenty more people shared it enthusiastically. Millions of people clicked on Healthcare.gov as expected. I must admit I could not make hide nor hare of it when I first watched it. There must be a generational divide at work.
Effective advertising normally requires some build-up to a call to action. In this video, the call to action "sign up for health care" is buried in the middle at 0:50-1:00 with no context other than the star making funny faces. The ad could have ended right there to make its point, but later wanders into the #thanks meme that diminishes the ad's message. Mentioning the meme calls attention to Healthcare.gov's critics without addressing their criticisms. That's why this doesn't work as a traditional ad. Compare it to the most beloved Super Bowl ads of any year. The typical blockbuster ad manages to be cool by associating cool images (people and/or animals having fun) with a call to action at the end: drink our beer, test drive our car. The product is also displayed visually somehow (the car in motion) with the brand superimposed. This is so even the most ADHD-afflicted viewers can't miss it. Compare that very effective messaging to this BuzzFeed video, which depends on tech-savvy people who are already cued in to the message to explain it through social media shares. Again, this would not be effective messaging in a passive medium like a TV commercial.
Viral sharing among Millennials turns traditional advertising inside out. I shared this video via Facebook and saw the generation gap firsthand. My slightly older friends at the high end of Generation X thought it was pointless. My younger Millennial friends loved it for the main star and the disguised message. They didn't even notice the non sequitur text explanation under the video of how a selfie stick somehow leads to a desire to sign up for health insurance. The mere display of a link to something is enough of a call to action for Millennials.
The video is phenomenal for its innovative take on the #thanks meme. The original #thanks propagators were critics of the health care mandate who saw their premiums increase or had serious problems logging on to enroll. In a capitalist economy, any corporation that saw its brand name dragged through the mud by millions of customer complaints would immediately rectify the situation with some combo of lower prices, better service, and a marketing campaign to explain their progress. The BuzzFeed video mocking the #thanks complainers turns that customer service philosophy on its head. Complaints about health care services are meaningless when a mandate compels compliance.
It wouldn't have mattered if the star of this video were a notable human or Grumpy Cat. Social media addicts only need to recognize two things: a celebrity appears, and there's a link to be clicked. YouTube has trained humans to click embedded links that appear in fun videos with the expectation that another fun spectacle awaits. Facebook has trained humans to click the Like button after watching something funny. Clicking ahead to a government compliance site is exactly what a trained audience is supposed to do. No critical thinking is required.
America is not a monarchy, despite the pretensions of our hereditary elite. Our leaders endear themselves to us by exhibiting self-deprecating humor. President Nixon showed us how to have fun when he said "Sock it to me?" on Laugh-In. America loves to be entertained. Mandatory health insurance can be entertaining, mostly for those who watch the payments roll in. A spoonful of sugar from a viral ad helps the medicine go down.
Effective advertising normally requires some build-up to a call to action. In this video, the call to action "sign up for health care" is buried in the middle at 0:50-1:00 with no context other than the star making funny faces. The ad could have ended right there to make its point, but later wanders into the #thanks meme that diminishes the ad's message. Mentioning the meme calls attention to Healthcare.gov's critics without addressing their criticisms. That's why this doesn't work as a traditional ad. Compare it to the most beloved Super Bowl ads of any year. The typical blockbuster ad manages to be cool by associating cool images (people and/or animals having fun) with a call to action at the end: drink our beer, test drive our car. The product is also displayed visually somehow (the car in motion) with the brand superimposed. This is so even the most ADHD-afflicted viewers can't miss it. Compare that very effective messaging to this BuzzFeed video, which depends on tech-savvy people who are already cued in to the message to explain it through social media shares. Again, this would not be effective messaging in a passive medium like a TV commercial.
Viral sharing among Millennials turns traditional advertising inside out. I shared this video via Facebook and saw the generation gap firsthand. My slightly older friends at the high end of Generation X thought it was pointless. My younger Millennial friends loved it for the main star and the disguised message. They didn't even notice the non sequitur text explanation under the video of how a selfie stick somehow leads to a desire to sign up for health insurance. The mere display of a link to something is enough of a call to action for Millennials.
The video is phenomenal for its innovative take on the #thanks meme. The original #thanks propagators were critics of the health care mandate who saw their premiums increase or had serious problems logging on to enroll. In a capitalist economy, any corporation that saw its brand name dragged through the mud by millions of customer complaints would immediately rectify the situation with some combo of lower prices, better service, and a marketing campaign to explain their progress. The BuzzFeed video mocking the #thanks complainers turns that customer service philosophy on its head. Complaints about health care services are meaningless when a mandate compels compliance.
It wouldn't have mattered if the star of this video were a notable human or Grumpy Cat. Social media addicts only need to recognize two things: a celebrity appears, and there's a link to be clicked. YouTube has trained humans to click embedded links that appear in fun videos with the expectation that another fun spectacle awaits. Facebook has trained humans to click the Like button after watching something funny. Clicking ahead to a government compliance site is exactly what a trained audience is supposed to do. No critical thinking is required.
America is not a monarchy, despite the pretensions of our hereditary elite. Our leaders endear themselves to us by exhibiting self-deprecating humor. President Nixon showed us how to have fun when he said "Sock it to me?" on Laugh-In. America loves to be entertained. Mandatory health insurance can be entertaining, mostly for those who watch the payments roll in. A spoonful of sugar from a viral ad helps the medicine go down.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Climate on the Brain is Powering Innovation to Create Climate Wealth
Three recent Commonwealth Club events on how our brains understand climate change, how to promote sustainable innovation in the energy sector, and how to create wealth from climate change prompted me to think about how they all tie together. Notice how I strung the titles of those talks together to make the title of my own blog article. Good artists borrow, and great artists steal, so yeah I'm taking a page out of old William Shakespeare's playbook.
George Marshall's Don't Even Think About It is heir to a long tradition in psychology that describes how the human brain has difficulty comprehending abstractions. Emotion-based arguments usually overcome cognitive barriers in the majority of humans. Appeals to authority also help. This is why faith-based organizations like Alliance of Religions and Conservation and Catholic Climate Covenant will play a key role in winning conservatives over for the climate change argument. Bernays' techniques matter in selling climate change to low-information, high-emotion masses with large cognitive deficiencies. A "master narratives" study of how tribes communicate in the climate change debate would reveal much. The human evolutionary bias to underappreciate risks for abstract things like climate change probably has much in common with behavioral finance's understanding of poor investor behavior.
Climate change is like any innovative concept, where early adopters form a beachhead that proves a viable market exists. Social psychology and persuasive technology can produce enough compelling stories to reach the late adopter market in climate change. The Citizens Climate Lobby should be an excellent channel for storytelling targeting late adopters. Human interest stories matter more than narratives using facts or fear. Talented national politicians have dropped names of average schmucks into their major speeches during the Internet Age. Average people can see themselves in those average stories.
Once the narrative frames consumers for adoption, industry must have a minimum viable product ready for purchase. Industry's problem is that it has offered few tangible moneymaking products addressing climate change. Utilities invest in carbon capture because raw carbon is a viable feedstock in automobile tires, advanced fuels, and construction materials. Scaling problems have hindered the promise of carbon capture. Commercializing carbon ideas from government laboratories would be more successful if the tech developers follow the NSF I-Corps model.
Government research is more effective in powering energy innovation than government loans, as we all saw with the Solyndra debacle. Some in government and the energy sector learned nothing from that failure. BrightSource Energy got a $1.6B DOE loan guarantee for a solar thermal project that lowers the cost of capital for NRG Energy and Google. What a sweet deal. NRG also benefits from this $1.2B DOE loan guarantee for a solar PV project. These loan guarantees are a central-planning approach to funding energy innovation. The capital markets now have a better way to fund energy with the "yield co" publicly traded structures.
Large projects do not suffer from lack of funding with Google, Warren Buffett, and George Soros throwing money around. Smaller projects still need a push from entrepreneurs seeking wealth. Too much conflicting information on the risks and rewards of sustainable business models poses a problem for entrepreneurs. Advocates of social entrepreneurship ignore the higher costs of capital and higher risks inherent in many community-based business models that will never scale up to address large markets. NREL published several guides to community solar as good foundation references, available by searching DOE's OSTI archives.
Cleantech entrepreneurs need many baseline references because too many self-serving pontificators on both sides of the climate change debate have muddied the water. I have heard "experts" claim at the Commonwealth Club that China and India value US carbon capture technology because they are still building coal plants. I have also heard the Club's invited experts claim that China's prospects of "Peal Coal" and India's poor quality coal mean they will need expensive coal imports. These positions are reconcilable if developing countries' energy plans balance increased generation capacity with increased resource exploration. Give engineers and economists in those countries the credit they deserve.
The key to wisdom is understanding where each side in a debate gets their basic data. Utilities constantly iterate their supply adjustments to meet demand, using real-time data and decades of modeling experience. If coal and gas power plants cannot spin up turbines individually in sufficient time to smooth out "duck curve" evening demand in the US, then it makes sense for utilities to invest in transmission lines across time zones. A true national grid would not allow gaps between the eastern and western parts of the US to limit supply flexibility. Closing the gap is a matter of time, and in the meantime utilities buy energy futures contracts to hedge their demand forecasts. Utilities also have a strong interest in grid storage, smart grids, and predictive analytics that together make smoothing the duck curve more efficient. Anyone who shorts utility stocks in the face of the sector's incoming tidal wave of innovation has been reading too much gloom and doom literature.
I have argued before that hedging civilization's bets on climate change is much like Pascal's Wager. The worst outcome of preparation is a more efficient use of limited natural resources, even if climate change proves to be groundless. The best outcome is the preservation of the only known biosphere in this corner of the galaxy. I trust our elites to get the programming correct so Spaceship Earth stays on the right course.
George Marshall's Don't Even Think About It is heir to a long tradition in psychology that describes how the human brain has difficulty comprehending abstractions. Emotion-based arguments usually overcome cognitive barriers in the majority of humans. Appeals to authority also help. This is why faith-based organizations like Alliance of Religions and Conservation and Catholic Climate Covenant will play a key role in winning conservatives over for the climate change argument. Bernays' techniques matter in selling climate change to low-information, high-emotion masses with large cognitive deficiencies. A "master narratives" study of how tribes communicate in the climate change debate would reveal much. The human evolutionary bias to underappreciate risks for abstract things like climate change probably has much in common with behavioral finance's understanding of poor investor behavior.
Climate change is like any innovative concept, where early adopters form a beachhead that proves a viable market exists. Social psychology and persuasive technology can produce enough compelling stories to reach the late adopter market in climate change. The Citizens Climate Lobby should be an excellent channel for storytelling targeting late adopters. Human interest stories matter more than narratives using facts or fear. Talented national politicians have dropped names of average schmucks into their major speeches during the Internet Age. Average people can see themselves in those average stories.
Once the narrative frames consumers for adoption, industry must have a minimum viable product ready for purchase. Industry's problem is that it has offered few tangible moneymaking products addressing climate change. Utilities invest in carbon capture because raw carbon is a viable feedstock in automobile tires, advanced fuels, and construction materials. Scaling problems have hindered the promise of carbon capture. Commercializing carbon ideas from government laboratories would be more successful if the tech developers follow the NSF I-Corps model.
Government research is more effective in powering energy innovation than government loans, as we all saw with the Solyndra debacle. Some in government and the energy sector learned nothing from that failure. BrightSource Energy got a $1.6B DOE loan guarantee for a solar thermal project that lowers the cost of capital for NRG Energy and Google. What a sweet deal. NRG also benefits from this $1.2B DOE loan guarantee for a solar PV project. These loan guarantees are a central-planning approach to funding energy innovation. The capital markets now have a better way to fund energy with the "yield co" publicly traded structures.
Large projects do not suffer from lack of funding with Google, Warren Buffett, and George Soros throwing money around. Smaller projects still need a push from entrepreneurs seeking wealth. Too much conflicting information on the risks and rewards of sustainable business models poses a problem for entrepreneurs. Advocates of social entrepreneurship ignore the higher costs of capital and higher risks inherent in many community-based business models that will never scale up to address large markets. NREL published several guides to community solar as good foundation references, available by searching DOE's OSTI archives.
Cleantech entrepreneurs need many baseline references because too many self-serving pontificators on both sides of the climate change debate have muddied the water. I have heard "experts" claim at the Commonwealth Club that China and India value US carbon capture technology because they are still building coal plants. I have also heard the Club's invited experts claim that China's prospects of "Peal Coal" and India's poor quality coal mean they will need expensive coal imports. These positions are reconcilable if developing countries' energy plans balance increased generation capacity with increased resource exploration. Give engineers and economists in those countries the credit they deserve.
The key to wisdom is understanding where each side in a debate gets their basic data. Utilities constantly iterate their supply adjustments to meet demand, using real-time data and decades of modeling experience. If coal and gas power plants cannot spin up turbines individually in sufficient time to smooth out "duck curve" evening demand in the US, then it makes sense for utilities to invest in transmission lines across time zones. A true national grid would not allow gaps between the eastern and western parts of the US to limit supply flexibility. Closing the gap is a matter of time, and in the meantime utilities buy energy futures contracts to hedge their demand forecasts. Utilities also have a strong interest in grid storage, smart grids, and predictive analytics that together make smoothing the duck curve more efficient. Anyone who shorts utility stocks in the face of the sector's incoming tidal wave of innovation has been reading too much gloom and doom literature.
I have argued before that hedging civilization's bets on climate change is much like Pascal's Wager. The worst outcome of preparation is a more efficient use of limited natural resources, even if climate change proves to be groundless. The best outcome is the preservation of the only known biosphere in this corner of the galaxy. I trust our elites to get the programming correct so Spaceship Earth stays on the right course.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
FTC Report On Data Brokers Heralds End of Privacy
Everything we've heard about the US government's electronic surveillance of everyone is now irrelevant. All of those programs, classified or otherwise, are a drop in the bucket compared to the private sector's Big Data collection. The FTC's May 2014 report on data brokers shows how marketing companies have broken down every living American's personal habits into detailed profiles. All of this data is available for a price.
I had speculated months ago about how to assign an accounting value to stored data. Its marketability clearly makes it a tangible asset. The formalization of data brokerage categories gives us hints as to how much some data categories are worth. The most valuable data probably has the densest connectivity to other data. In other words, consumers with extensive credit histories are very lucrative data nodes to track. If you spend a lot on food, clothes, entertainment and travel, your data profile is worth a lot. The poorest of the poor in rural areas probably aren't worth much at all. The funniest category in that FTC report has got to be "Rural Everlasting," a euphemism for the country bumpkins who think social media is when you yell over your neighbor's fence.
Forget about laws and regulations prohibiting personal identification links to these data brokers' stacks. Regulatory capture is a fact of life for every federal agency and the FTC is no different. Any FTC senior manager skilled in assembling knowledge taxonomies would make a prize recruit for a data brokerage. There is no way they will implement a regulation that would materially harm a future employer. It works the same way as SEC attorneys angling for a Wall Street career. No prosecutions? No problems.
The FTC has tons of privacy policy guidance for businesses. They subject personal data to commercial controls provided enterprises take minimalist precautions. Data is now too important to the economy to keep it completely private. The highest bids always win. The winning bid means privacy loses. The developed world enters the third phase of the Industrial Revolution with the antiquated notion of personal privacy rapidly fading in its rear view mirror.
I had speculated months ago about how to assign an accounting value to stored data. Its marketability clearly makes it a tangible asset. The formalization of data brokerage categories gives us hints as to how much some data categories are worth. The most valuable data probably has the densest connectivity to other data. In other words, consumers with extensive credit histories are very lucrative data nodes to track. If you spend a lot on food, clothes, entertainment and travel, your data profile is worth a lot. The poorest of the poor in rural areas probably aren't worth much at all. The funniest category in that FTC report has got to be "Rural Everlasting," a euphemism for the country bumpkins who think social media is when you yell over your neighbor's fence.
Forget about laws and regulations prohibiting personal identification links to these data brokers' stacks. Regulatory capture is a fact of life for every federal agency and the FTC is no different. Any FTC senior manager skilled in assembling knowledge taxonomies would make a prize recruit for a data brokerage. There is no way they will implement a regulation that would materially harm a future employer. It works the same way as SEC attorneys angling for a Wall Street career. No prosecutions? No problems.
The FTC has tons of privacy policy guidance for businesses. They subject personal data to commercial controls provided enterprises take minimalist precautions. Data is now too important to the economy to keep it completely private. The highest bids always win. The winning bid means privacy loses. The developed world enters the third phase of the Industrial Revolution with the antiquated notion of personal privacy rapidly fading in its rear view mirror.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Make Digital Marketing Trustworthy
I attended another Meetup last night - "Trust and Native Advertising." My name appears on that page as a registered attendee in case you don't believe me. I go where cool stuff happens and no one can stop me. The wisdom of an accomplished journalist, an experienced marketing practitioner, a pioneering tech media publisher, and two social media entrepreneurs all reflected the importance of trust in building relationships. Silicon Valley Watcher knows that building trust takes a lot more time and work than riding a trend. My own interactions with the crowd of entrepreneurial wanna-bes who attended showed me that hardly anyone is ready to be trusted.
There's a lot of common sense in building trust into marketing. The seminar's marketing expert implied that trust starts internally when startups take their marketing function as seriously as anything else. Trusting your outside marketer to be a sanity check that's integrated into your team is essential. I trust that wisdom from experience with similar relationships that failed when outside advisers weren't integrated well. The panelists noted a natural divide between digital natives and digital immigrants but I don't think that's a big problem. Each evolution in tech brings us more intuitive devices. Even babies can use an iPad, so figuring out messaging and profile management can't be that hard.
One of the presenters shared a good tactic for pushing content into social media channels. Versioning the same content in multiple ways for a few channels is more efficient than blasting the same content to many channels. It also avoids wasting time from repeatedly customizing content for multiple channels. I also liked hearing about how well-known bloggers and journalists are influencers who can magnify a brand story. I think reaching out to influencers is harder than the panelists made it sound. Popular bloggers must get inundated with requests for guest posts and backlinks. Some kind of drip campaign targeting a handful of key bloggers would probably work if it demonstrated how a brand's content was evolving.
I mentioned at the top my disappointment that a lot of the people attracted to these types of Meetups aren't ready to be trusted. Their conversations with me, and their statements during Q&A, reveal a profound misunderstanding of what constitutes trustworthy behavior. Some of the people running their mouths acted like they've never seen a microphone before, never spoken in public, and never left home for the big wide world. I've blogged before about the problems people cause in San Francisco to demonstrate that I am the solution. I see this kind of behavior at the Commonwealth Club and I used to think it was confined to elderly shut-ins who retired from careers in government cubicles. Now I see that it also permeates today's techno-augmented youngsters. People, if you want my trust, do your homework on the presented subject matter and ask intelligent questions.
My peeves with untrustworthy humans extend past the aspirants who populate Meetup audiences. Web 2.0 startups that "succeed" through hype instead of earnings do so partly by ignoring the need to build trust. Here come some stunning examples. Facebook and Twitter will eventually face serious problems because clients who pay for targeted ads can't trust whether their audiences are real. Both of those companies' user engagement systems are easily manipulated by paid "likes" and "follows" from phony contractors running hundreds of fake profiles out of Internet cafes in developing countries. Yelp has a similar problem with false reviews from competitors and an algorithm that mysteriously hides valid reviews. The obvious solution is for these companies is to hire an independent auditor who can verify the extent of fake user profiles in their systems. The Nielsen Company figured out how to do this with audience ratings for TV and radio broadcasts decades ago and advertisers trust their methodologies.
Trust matters. It takes a long time to build. Its foundation is integrity in disclosing facts, processing data, and representing operations. The Meetup panelists understood this and valued the relationships they built with influencers. Those influencers built their reputations with integrity. This very simple lesson in personal character went right over the heads of the majority of attendees. That's why those people are a long way from ever building world-class companies.
My peeves with untrustworthy humans extend past the aspirants who populate Meetup audiences. Web 2.0 startups that "succeed" through hype instead of earnings do so partly by ignoring the need to build trust. Here come some stunning examples. Facebook and Twitter will eventually face serious problems because clients who pay for targeted ads can't trust whether their audiences are real. Both of those companies' user engagement systems are easily manipulated by paid "likes" and "follows" from phony contractors running hundreds of fake profiles out of Internet cafes in developing countries. Yelp has a similar problem with false reviews from competitors and an algorithm that mysteriously hides valid reviews. The obvious solution is for these companies is to hire an independent auditor who can verify the extent of fake user profiles in their systems. The Nielsen Company figured out how to do this with audience ratings for TV and radio broadcasts decades ago and advertisers trust their methodologies.
Trust matters. It takes a long time to build. Its foundation is integrity in disclosing facts, processing data, and representing operations. The Meetup panelists understood this and valued the relationships they built with influencers. Those influencers built their reputations with integrity. This very simple lesson in personal character went right over the heads of the majority of attendees. That's why those people are a long way from ever building world-class companies.
Sunday, December 08, 2013
Mobile App Marketing at APPNATION V 2013
I've got app fever after scoring a full conference pass to last week's APPNATION V Conference at Moscone West in San Francisco. The rapid adoption of mobile devices is spurring a whole new subset of marketing campaign marketplaces, metrics, and agencies. This ecosystem is going to completely replace traditional marketing in less than a decade. I had to get my fill.
The opening keynote with Facebook introduced the build / discover / monetize paradigm for apps. Getting 5% of app users to pay is considered the threshold for success but high customer acquisition costs defeat monetization. There seem to be two broad categories for app adoption: viral growth apps (with a large installed base monetized through ads) and utility apps built to be sold. The Facebook rep pushed their Parse feature to build an app's back-end infrastructure and their Login feature for tracking and sharing data on users. Okay, I think I get the difference; Parse is for hosting and Login is for app management. Facebook's research shows that the typical app users has maybe 40 of the things and uses each between one and ten times. Most users don't enable push notification but Facebook's autofill button must be enabled for apps to use its functions. Hear that, developers. Enable your one-click adoption functions early in the app's development cycle.
The state of the "app nation" according to Flurry is that 2.3T app events occur each month, and not just downloads. Smartphones and tablets are really the first wearables because everyone keeps them on hand constantly. I was astounded to see the figure that apps represent 87% of people's online time on their mobile devices and traditional web browsing is the other 13%. Apps are thus the intermediary in the typical mobile user's online experience. The browser wars are over, and the browsers lost. I learned a new KPI: monthly active users (MAU), which doesn't just pertain to games. App marketers should know that what Nielsen is to broadcast media, comScore is to software and apps. Some apps now have more subscribers than telecom carriers and are deploying virtual storefronts. This is why Flurry and other players are counting on in-app messaging to be a dominant communication channel and promotional channel for goods. They also think that the app communication sector will separate into distinct channels for messaging, visual media sharing, and news feeds. I take that to mean that an all-in-one app just won't appeal to users. I'd like to see how the mobile sector handles a mature market like South Korea now that it has reached saturation with devices.
I actually learned something from Bloomberg's talk with the dude from Hotel Tonight even though I don't follow the travel and leisure sector. Holiday periods provide different use cases on shopping and the effectiveness of promotions. I think Hotel Tonight's heavily manual method for vetting hotels is not as scalable as it could be if they would automate their process. I think that's why they'll have a tough time competing against Priceline. I'm getting the impression that how developers stack their ecosystem with incentives determines who participates. Gamification incentives like star ratings and free channel exposure incentivize hotels to use this particular app. I don't use Google Wallet or PayPal but their ability to store credit card data reduces friction in online transactions. I'll bet hotels like that when they participate in an app marketplace. Here's one more trick I'd like app developers to try. Apps need geolocation tools to optimize omnichannel promotions. Heat maps will reveal heavy users' geographic regions and Big Data can correlate usage instances with travel patterns to see if heavy users are frequent travelers.
LifeStreet Media took more than their allotted ten minutes to make their case for in-app advertising. Freemium distribution plus in-app ads equals revenue for app developers who don't have paid subscription models. Real-time bidding (RTB) ad servers allow advertisers to bid on individual impressions rather than a certain demographic's content adjacency. Advertisers can combine RTB servers with mediators who optimize ad inventory to experiment with different campaigns. A mediation layer monitors different ads' monetization.
I caught enough of Mojiva's monetization workshop to see how a second tier of ad networks can increase fill rates. Do a Google search of "mobile ad network" to see these things proliferate. I'd like to know how advertisers segment their ad inventory. Is it by geography? Or by some other user demographic? I guess the seasonality use cases the Hotel Tonight guy mentioned are a factor.
The "Candace and Vijay Show" featured two mobile PR legends imparting wisdom on building a PR campaign. They defied the conventional wisdom I've heard about journalists by saying app developers should appeal directly to reporters in their verticals for coverage. Uh, ooookaaaay, but a lot of these developers in attendance are building apps just for the sake of building apps. They'll be disappointed to find the "app beat" isn't covered by many journalists. The PR gurus also recommended getting traction on app blogs first before going to mainstream media. I had sticker shock when they threw down the cost of professional PR representation. PR agencies run from $10-15K/month and limited-run consultants cost maybe $5K/month. There's no way even VC-backed app startups should have to pay out that kind of dough! The best PR is free. The one best thing I got out of their well-attended show was that getting a journalist to agree to do a story involves iterative negotiations. The process starts with an initial pitch of a PR statement in an email that's six sentences or less, with a time window for response setting a preemptive close. Keep dripping those journalists for a feature, because the major app stores won't risk embarrassment by featuring an app that has zero traction from other media.
I didn't have time to watch the MEF trade association present their policy initiatives in a separate seminar. Their white papers and market surveys look like good background research for app developers just beginning to craft their go-to-market strategies. MEF's free App Privacy tool is a privacy policy generator that creates code for developers to embed in an app. Filling out a short form has never been so easy.
Google Analytics' power session was a revelation. Every app download can trigger tracking information thanks to conversion tags from Google Tag Manager. See folks, that's why that embedded privacy policy from MEF's generator will be so important if you want to get full benefit from metrics with no legal problems. Analytics and Tag Manager can track an app user across the entire Google experience to see how they found the app. See folks, there's no privacy left for any of us anyway. Going online means everyone can see everything you do. I am very impressed that Tag Manager allows developers to store conversion-based rule sets and triage app bugs. That's a cloud-enabled business rule engine in decision management. Google Analytics Academy is a MOOC blessing for developers (and also us bloggers) who want max benefits from the platform. I need to read up on the Google Analytics Blog to see the tips I've been missing.
I got one big thing from the "masters of monetization" panel. If your app drives installation of other apps you can capture 80% of the ad dollars spent across those apps. This is why WeChat and LINE are so effective. They enable app ecosystem replication. Their other points also made sense as effective tools. App developers who can show use case data to advertisers will justify higher eCPM but I think they'll have to adapt the formats they use to present it if RTB is the marketplace norm. App developers prove their worth with data on click-through rates, targeted user segments, and geographic data on adoption. The ability to segment a user base is IMHO an underestimated advantage if business users don't like seeing ads in their apps. Optimization eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns. Advertisers use frequency caps to avoid oversaturating a target demographic.
A real live VC from Signia Venture Partners was among the panelists who spoke on getting an app discovered. This panel was almost a counterpart to the "Candace and Vijay Show" because they mentioned the utility of getting validation from thought leaders before getting you app into an app store. VC-backed developers have a special advantage because their VCs can asked the major app stores to feature the app. Candace and Vijay would call that "hacking your pedigree." I cannot overemphasize the importance of showing KPIs like LTV and CPA to VCs! Those VCs review broad averages for app LTV and CPA to determine whether app companies can be profitably acquired. The wide availability of good user acquisition (UA) tools and ad tools means app developers can use video ads, promoted tweets, and other integrated attribution layers that will help avoid duplicative ad buys. I just don't think having someone wear an orange elephant suit on the trade show floor will accelerate discovery but that's what one exhibitor did. I didn't stop by their booth to find out if it was working.
There was a brief unscheduled session on getting an app funded that featured Sergey Brin's brother. The dude is in some startup but I didn't hear a whole lot that isn't already widely known about raising capital. He did speak highly about getting on the top crowdfunding platforms, which I track for my own private use. He said AngelList and Y Combinator matter to VCs, so the traditional VC reluctance to endorse new ways of funding and training startups is totally breaking down. Brin the Younger pretty much endorsed the marketing mix 4Ps without explicitly saying so. Everything old is new again.
Wing Venture Capital was present for the panel on mobile platform wars. It's clear to me that platform-agnostic technology and HTML5 compliance will have clear enterprise adoption advantages. Startups should take note of that before starting. They echoed things I heard at mobile conferences two months ago when they said CIOs can easily accept apps that comply with BYOD policies. Hybridizing business and personal use of tech makes enterprise adoption easier. I learned a new word combo: "Stackable / glanceable" means tech that describes anticipatory content pushed to users.
Mobile Monday Silicon Valley offered up a master class on app marketing strategies from 148Apps. The apps with the most successful conversion rates solve problems unique to mobile, such as combining geolocation with micro-tasking. Automatic sharing and friend referrals are an underutilized but worthwhile app marketing feature, worth building into an app at the start. Public events like this trade show also work in getting attention. The panelists liked BuzzFeed's viral creation ability but I have no experience with that platform. They also endorsed A/B testing of app icons and buttons, and I've heard others say that Twitter is a good way to do this with a large enough follower base. They hinted that a red button is the best conversion-generating color. Lots of analytics tools are best and Google, Flurry, and others have stuff we can all use for free. The panel likes the concept of a video showing a user interacting with the app if it concludes with a strong call to action. The panel shared one very disquieting insight; they noted that LTV is approaching CPA across the mobile app universe. This implies the aggregate of apps will soon be unprofitable and app developers will have serious difficulty succeeding with apps as stand-alone business models.
One unannounced panel on transforming an app into a full startup was a good segue from that last panel, and noted attorney Roger Royse served as moderator. Someone mentioned a local social event series but I'm not sure whether they meant Startup Monthly or Startup Socials SF. Well, you can never have too many networks. The typical formula of product/market fit and entrepreneurial passion apply to this kind of transformation. I say it also takes a scalable model that evolves into a Buffett-style durable competitive advantage. That means a combo of market leadership (in a market of any size), high barriers to entry, and high switching costs. One panelist mentioned BJ Fogg's habit-forming design work as worth a look, so I'll have to read up on his Fogg Method. I was pleased that the panel admonished entrepreneurs to compare the ROI of their startup to the ROI of their present occupation and the opportunity cost of not working. They drove home once again the importance of the LTV/CPA comparison. That is so crucial that many of the experts here mentioned it.
I missed the morning sessions on the second day due to a previous commitment. Chartboost's session on day two was all about a good user experience. Here come their top tricks. Upgrades that add clicks, increase hurdles, or degrade the user experience will ruin your app store rating from users. Do A/B testing by changing the title of the app's listing in the store. Measure your retention numbers and get your sector's benchmarks. Only launch a 100% complete app. Users won't tolerate an app that's 80% functional. Don't think you can iterate such a partially completed app because you'll never get adoption.
Roger Royse returned to moderate another monetization session. I should not have been surprised to learn that most apps use standardized design patterns, but I'd sure like to see some knowledge center where these common patterns are categorized. Maybe the Fogg Method will shed some light there. The panelists didn't come right out and finger IoT but they did see a big opportunity for apps that can talk to remote devices. Oh yeah, graphics and photos make an app look good even with a simple layout. All I can say about that is that humans are so visually oriented that playing to the lowest common denominator of perception always works.
One roundtable on disruptors who transform enterprises revealed the perils of in-house apps. Many apps contain rich content that can impede server performance, and the enterprise IT architecture must account for how fast apps will load without a full download for each use. IMHO that just means enterprises need to move at least their densest apps to a public cloud, but I'm not a CIO. I don't yet buy the roundtable's argument that mobile will be the dominant platform in enterprises. Maybe those enterprises whose workforce is highly mobile, with lots of field service reps heading out to remote sites, will need it to be dominant. A lot of people are still going to be chained to desktops for a while.
Google's AdMob reps came out to give their session on how their platform will master localization. They define internationalization quite differently from localization. "Internationalization" is a code base designed to be adaptable to many markets. "Localization" are language and details configured for a specific market. They also gave us a hint as to why LTV is converging toward CPA and making the app sector unprofitable. It's the 85% of in-app user spending for things other than the app's features and services that degrades the LTV of those users. The placement of ads matters. Users don't mind in-app ads as long as they disrupt the user experience. That means ads should go in between instances of use (like game levels) that don't interfere with content. I can't believe that so many app developers don't design in their monetization strategy from the get-go, but some people at this conference needed the reminder. Google's Cloud Platform is ready and waiting for developers to jump in.
The final session of the conference from Fiksu covered marketing campaign planning. Fiksu presented data showing clear seasonal patterns for app store adoption regardless of sales volume. The cost to acquire loyal users (multi/serial downloaders) rises during holidays and drops off in January. Fiksu's Indexes, ebooks, and other resources cover this phenomenon in more detail. They left us with three conclusions for planning a campaign. First, plan ahead for seasonal ad spending around holidays and sports seasons. Second, link the ad campaign's goal to strategic KPIs: increase total users, decrease CPA, etc. BTW, the app's rank in a store is a poor goal because it's too volatile over the short term. Finally, choose a strategy of either volume or value. Volume means driving large numbers of downloads. Value means a high LTV for repeat users. Either strategy requires placing a dollar value on customer acquisition costs. Fiksu thinks January and February are the cheapest months to buy ads, and that app developers must time their app submissions around the "freezes" when the app store's display is unchanged.
Allow me to wrap this up by linking those two Fiksu campaign strategies back to Facebook's opening description of two product types. The positioning of your app and its product/market fit will IMHO determine the campaign strategy you select. Viral growth apps for a large base are monetized with ads; these demand a strategy of volume to drive large numbers of downloads. Utility apps built to be sold are monetized with paid subscriptions, paid upgrades, paid unlockable features, and the like. These demand a value strategy seeking high LTV customers. Alfidi Capital has thus spoken and rendered profound wisdom.
Wow, that was an action-packed conference. They said up front that it was oriented for a business audience over a technical one and they weren't kidding. There are enough links to free resources to equip an entire academic major in marketing. App developers need to take campaign design, ad spending, and analytics very seriously. Those who don't are just playing in a sandbox and throwing away VC money. Like Donald Trump says, it's just business.
The opening keynote with Facebook introduced the build / discover / monetize paradigm for apps. Getting 5% of app users to pay is considered the threshold for success but high customer acquisition costs defeat monetization. There seem to be two broad categories for app adoption: viral growth apps (with a large installed base monetized through ads) and utility apps built to be sold. The Facebook rep pushed their Parse feature to build an app's back-end infrastructure and their Login feature for tracking and sharing data on users. Okay, I think I get the difference; Parse is for hosting and Login is for app management. Facebook's research shows that the typical app users has maybe 40 of the things and uses each between one and ten times. Most users don't enable push notification but Facebook's autofill button must be enabled for apps to use its functions. Hear that, developers. Enable your one-click adoption functions early in the app's development cycle.
The state of the "app nation" according to Flurry is that 2.3T app events occur each month, and not just downloads. Smartphones and tablets are really the first wearables because everyone keeps them on hand constantly. I was astounded to see the figure that apps represent 87% of people's online time on their mobile devices and traditional web browsing is the other 13%. Apps are thus the intermediary in the typical mobile user's online experience. The browser wars are over, and the browsers lost. I learned a new KPI: monthly active users (MAU), which doesn't just pertain to games. App marketers should know that what Nielsen is to broadcast media, comScore is to software and apps. Some apps now have more subscribers than telecom carriers and are deploying virtual storefronts. This is why Flurry and other players are counting on in-app messaging to be a dominant communication channel and promotional channel for goods. They also think that the app communication sector will separate into distinct channels for messaging, visual media sharing, and news feeds. I take that to mean that an all-in-one app just won't appeal to users. I'd like to see how the mobile sector handles a mature market like South Korea now that it has reached saturation with devices.
I actually learned something from Bloomberg's talk with the dude from Hotel Tonight even though I don't follow the travel and leisure sector. Holiday periods provide different use cases on shopping and the effectiveness of promotions. I think Hotel Tonight's heavily manual method for vetting hotels is not as scalable as it could be if they would automate their process. I think that's why they'll have a tough time competing against Priceline. I'm getting the impression that how developers stack their ecosystem with incentives determines who participates. Gamification incentives like star ratings and free channel exposure incentivize hotels to use this particular app. I don't use Google Wallet or PayPal but their ability to store credit card data reduces friction in online transactions. I'll bet hotels like that when they participate in an app marketplace. Here's one more trick I'd like app developers to try. Apps need geolocation tools to optimize omnichannel promotions. Heat maps will reveal heavy users' geographic regions and Big Data can correlate usage instances with travel patterns to see if heavy users are frequent travelers.
LifeStreet Media took more than their allotted ten minutes to make their case for in-app advertising. Freemium distribution plus in-app ads equals revenue for app developers who don't have paid subscription models. Real-time bidding (RTB) ad servers allow advertisers to bid on individual impressions rather than a certain demographic's content adjacency. Advertisers can combine RTB servers with mediators who optimize ad inventory to experiment with different campaigns. A mediation layer monitors different ads' monetization.
I caught enough of Mojiva's monetization workshop to see how a second tier of ad networks can increase fill rates. Do a Google search of "mobile ad network" to see these things proliferate. I'd like to know how advertisers segment their ad inventory. Is it by geography? Or by some other user demographic? I guess the seasonality use cases the Hotel Tonight guy mentioned are a factor.
The "Candace and Vijay Show" featured two mobile PR legends imparting wisdom on building a PR campaign. They defied the conventional wisdom I've heard about journalists by saying app developers should appeal directly to reporters in their verticals for coverage. Uh, ooookaaaay, but a lot of these developers in attendance are building apps just for the sake of building apps. They'll be disappointed to find the "app beat" isn't covered by many journalists. The PR gurus also recommended getting traction on app blogs first before going to mainstream media. I had sticker shock when they threw down the cost of professional PR representation. PR agencies run from $10-15K/month and limited-run consultants cost maybe $5K/month. There's no way even VC-backed app startups should have to pay out that kind of dough! The best PR is free. The one best thing I got out of their well-attended show was that getting a journalist to agree to do a story involves iterative negotiations. The process starts with an initial pitch of a PR statement in an email that's six sentences or less, with a time window for response setting a preemptive close. Keep dripping those journalists for a feature, because the major app stores won't risk embarrassment by featuring an app that has zero traction from other media.
I didn't have time to watch the MEF trade association present their policy initiatives in a separate seminar. Their white papers and market surveys look like good background research for app developers just beginning to craft their go-to-market strategies. MEF's free App Privacy tool is a privacy policy generator that creates code for developers to embed in an app. Filling out a short form has never been so easy.
Google Analytics' power session was a revelation. Every app download can trigger tracking information thanks to conversion tags from Google Tag Manager. See folks, that's why that embedded privacy policy from MEF's generator will be so important if you want to get full benefit from metrics with no legal problems. Analytics and Tag Manager can track an app user across the entire Google experience to see how they found the app. See folks, there's no privacy left for any of us anyway. Going online means everyone can see everything you do. I am very impressed that Tag Manager allows developers to store conversion-based rule sets and triage app bugs. That's a cloud-enabled business rule engine in decision management. Google Analytics Academy is a MOOC blessing for developers (and also us bloggers) who want max benefits from the platform. I need to read up on the Google Analytics Blog to see the tips I've been missing.
I got one big thing from the "masters of monetization" panel. If your app drives installation of other apps you can capture 80% of the ad dollars spent across those apps. This is why WeChat and LINE are so effective. They enable app ecosystem replication. Their other points also made sense as effective tools. App developers who can show use case data to advertisers will justify higher eCPM but I think they'll have to adapt the formats they use to present it if RTB is the marketplace norm. App developers prove their worth with data on click-through rates, targeted user segments, and geographic data on adoption. The ability to segment a user base is IMHO an underestimated advantage if business users don't like seeing ads in their apps. Optimization eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns. Advertisers use frequency caps to avoid oversaturating a target demographic.
A real live VC from Signia Venture Partners was among the panelists who spoke on getting an app discovered. This panel was almost a counterpart to the "Candace and Vijay Show" because they mentioned the utility of getting validation from thought leaders before getting you app into an app store. VC-backed developers have a special advantage because their VCs can asked the major app stores to feature the app. Candace and Vijay would call that "hacking your pedigree." I cannot overemphasize the importance of showing KPIs like LTV and CPA to VCs! Those VCs review broad averages for app LTV and CPA to determine whether app companies can be profitably acquired. The wide availability of good user acquisition (UA) tools and ad tools means app developers can use video ads, promoted tweets, and other integrated attribution layers that will help avoid duplicative ad buys. I just don't think having someone wear an orange elephant suit on the trade show floor will accelerate discovery but that's what one exhibitor did. I didn't stop by their booth to find out if it was working.
There was a brief unscheduled session on getting an app funded that featured Sergey Brin's brother. The dude is in some startup but I didn't hear a whole lot that isn't already widely known about raising capital. He did speak highly about getting on the top crowdfunding platforms, which I track for my own private use. He said AngelList and Y Combinator matter to VCs, so the traditional VC reluctance to endorse new ways of funding and training startups is totally breaking down. Brin the Younger pretty much endorsed the marketing mix 4Ps without explicitly saying so. Everything old is new again.
Wing Venture Capital was present for the panel on mobile platform wars. It's clear to me that platform-agnostic technology and HTML5 compliance will have clear enterprise adoption advantages. Startups should take note of that before starting. They echoed things I heard at mobile conferences two months ago when they said CIOs can easily accept apps that comply with BYOD policies. Hybridizing business and personal use of tech makes enterprise adoption easier. I learned a new word combo: "Stackable / glanceable" means tech that describes anticipatory content pushed to users.
Mobile Monday Silicon Valley offered up a master class on app marketing strategies from 148Apps. The apps with the most successful conversion rates solve problems unique to mobile, such as combining geolocation with micro-tasking. Automatic sharing and friend referrals are an underutilized but worthwhile app marketing feature, worth building into an app at the start. Public events like this trade show also work in getting attention. The panelists liked BuzzFeed's viral creation ability but I have no experience with that platform. They also endorsed A/B testing of app icons and buttons, and I've heard others say that Twitter is a good way to do this with a large enough follower base. They hinted that a red button is the best conversion-generating color. Lots of analytics tools are best and Google, Flurry, and others have stuff we can all use for free. The panel likes the concept of a video showing a user interacting with the app if it concludes with a strong call to action. The panel shared one very disquieting insight; they noted that LTV is approaching CPA across the mobile app universe. This implies the aggregate of apps will soon be unprofitable and app developers will have serious difficulty succeeding with apps as stand-alone business models.
One unannounced panel on transforming an app into a full startup was a good segue from that last panel, and noted attorney Roger Royse served as moderator. Someone mentioned a local social event series but I'm not sure whether they meant Startup Monthly or Startup Socials SF. Well, you can never have too many networks. The typical formula of product/market fit and entrepreneurial passion apply to this kind of transformation. I say it also takes a scalable model that evolves into a Buffett-style durable competitive advantage. That means a combo of market leadership (in a market of any size), high barriers to entry, and high switching costs. One panelist mentioned BJ Fogg's habit-forming design work as worth a look, so I'll have to read up on his Fogg Method. I was pleased that the panel admonished entrepreneurs to compare the ROI of their startup to the ROI of their present occupation and the opportunity cost of not working. They drove home once again the importance of the LTV/CPA comparison. That is so crucial that many of the experts here mentioned it.
I missed the morning sessions on the second day due to a previous commitment. Chartboost's session on day two was all about a good user experience. Here come their top tricks. Upgrades that add clicks, increase hurdles, or degrade the user experience will ruin your app store rating from users. Do A/B testing by changing the title of the app's listing in the store. Measure your retention numbers and get your sector's benchmarks. Only launch a 100% complete app. Users won't tolerate an app that's 80% functional. Don't think you can iterate such a partially completed app because you'll never get adoption.
Roger Royse returned to moderate another monetization session. I should not have been surprised to learn that most apps use standardized design patterns, but I'd sure like to see some knowledge center where these common patterns are categorized. Maybe the Fogg Method will shed some light there. The panelists didn't come right out and finger IoT but they did see a big opportunity for apps that can talk to remote devices. Oh yeah, graphics and photos make an app look good even with a simple layout. All I can say about that is that humans are so visually oriented that playing to the lowest common denominator of perception always works.
One roundtable on disruptors who transform enterprises revealed the perils of in-house apps. Many apps contain rich content that can impede server performance, and the enterprise IT architecture must account for how fast apps will load without a full download for each use. IMHO that just means enterprises need to move at least their densest apps to a public cloud, but I'm not a CIO. I don't yet buy the roundtable's argument that mobile will be the dominant platform in enterprises. Maybe those enterprises whose workforce is highly mobile, with lots of field service reps heading out to remote sites, will need it to be dominant. A lot of people are still going to be chained to desktops for a while.
Google's AdMob reps came out to give their session on how their platform will master localization. They define internationalization quite differently from localization. "Internationalization" is a code base designed to be adaptable to many markets. "Localization" are language and details configured for a specific market. They also gave us a hint as to why LTV is converging toward CPA and making the app sector unprofitable. It's the 85% of in-app user spending for things other than the app's features and services that degrades the LTV of those users. The placement of ads matters. Users don't mind in-app ads as long as they disrupt the user experience. That means ads should go in between instances of use (like game levels) that don't interfere with content. I can't believe that so many app developers don't design in their monetization strategy from the get-go, but some people at this conference needed the reminder. Google's Cloud Platform is ready and waiting for developers to jump in.
The final session of the conference from Fiksu covered marketing campaign planning. Fiksu presented data showing clear seasonal patterns for app store adoption regardless of sales volume. The cost to acquire loyal users (multi/serial downloaders) rises during holidays and drops off in January. Fiksu's Indexes, ebooks, and other resources cover this phenomenon in more detail. They left us with three conclusions for planning a campaign. First, plan ahead for seasonal ad spending around holidays and sports seasons. Second, link the ad campaign's goal to strategic KPIs: increase total users, decrease CPA, etc. BTW, the app's rank in a store is a poor goal because it's too volatile over the short term. Finally, choose a strategy of either volume or value. Volume means driving large numbers of downloads. Value means a high LTV for repeat users. Either strategy requires placing a dollar value on customer acquisition costs. Fiksu thinks January and February are the cheapest months to buy ads, and that app developers must time their app submissions around the "freezes" when the app store's display is unchanged.
Allow me to wrap this up by linking those two Fiksu campaign strategies back to Facebook's opening description of two product types. The positioning of your app and its product/market fit will IMHO determine the campaign strategy you select. Viral growth apps for a large base are monetized with ads; these demand a strategy of volume to drive large numbers of downloads. Utility apps built to be sold are monetized with paid subscriptions, paid upgrades, paid unlockable features, and the like. These demand a value strategy seeking high LTV customers. Alfidi Capital has thus spoken and rendered profound wisdom.
Wow, that was an action-packed conference. They said up front that it was oriented for a business audience over a technical one and they weren't kidding. There are enough links to free resources to equip an entire academic major in marketing. App developers need to take campaign design, ad spending, and analytics very seriously. Those who don't are just playing in a sandbox and throwing away VC money. Like Donald Trump says, it's just business.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Could FedEx Really Be This Clueless On Coupons?
The only vendor I have ever used for business cards is FedEx. They aren't the cheapest in town compared to some locally-owned print shops but they are fast, reliable, and convenient. I've never had a problem with their products. Their promotions, however, leave me wondering.
I picked up some new business cards today. They look quite snazzy with the minimalist layout I designed myself, thank you very much. The courteous FedEx employees behind the counter were so grateful for my business at the FedEx Office store on Sloat Blvd. in San Francisco that they handed me a coupon. They are efficient and they have always been helpful to me. I checked out the coupon when I got home because I'm one of those guys who always reads the fine print. I'd like to share my discovery with all of you.
The first picture above is from the left side of this coupon. Note the "order by" date of 12/31/2013 on the bottom.
The second picture above shows what puzzled me about two thirds of the way down the fine print. The expiration dates says "11/31/2013" to my surprise. I don't know about you folks, but I've never lived in a calendar year when November had a 31st day. Even if they meant to print that final expiration date as "11/30/2013," that would make the expiration today. Oh BTW, it conflicts with the "order by" date of 12/31/2013 in the first photo.
I don't get it, FedEx. You want me to cough up another order on the nonexistent day of a month when the offer expires even though you tease me by saying I have until until the end of next month to place the order.
The four P's of the marketing mix have always been product, price, place (or placement), and promotion. Like I said at the top, FedEx has all the product I ever need in the right place even if the price is a little extra. This particular promotion just makes me LOL. Thanks to FedEx for supporting my small business, Alfidi Capital, on this fine Saturday.
I picked up some new business cards today. They look quite snazzy with the minimalist layout I designed myself, thank you very much. The courteous FedEx employees behind the counter were so grateful for my business at the FedEx Office store on Sloat Blvd. in San Francisco that they handed me a coupon. They are efficient and they have always been helpful to me. I checked out the coupon when I got home because I'm one of those guys who always reads the fine print. I'd like to share my discovery with all of you.
The first picture above is from the left side of this coupon. Note the "order by" date of 12/31/2013 on the bottom.
The second picture above shows what puzzled me about two thirds of the way down the fine print. The expiration dates says "11/31/2013" to my surprise. I don't know about you folks, but I've never lived in a calendar year when November had a 31st day. Even if they meant to print that final expiration date as "11/30/2013," that would make the expiration today. Oh BTW, it conflicts with the "order by" date of 12/31/2013 in the first photo.
I don't get it, FedEx. You want me to cough up another order on the nonexistent day of a month when the offer expires even though you tease me by saying I have until until the end of next month to place the order.
The four P's of the marketing mix have always been product, price, place (or placement), and promotion. Like I said at the top, FedEx has all the product I ever need in the right place even if the price is a little extra. This particular promotion just makes me LOL. Thanks to FedEx for supporting my small business, Alfidi Capital, on this fine Saturday.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
Tina Sharkey Pursues Her Joy At Umpqua Bank
Umpqua Bank celebrates their brand spanking new presence at 450 Sansome Street in San Francisco by hosting luminaries for "Catalyst Series" talks. My excuse for sitting in was a chance to score a free TCHO chocolate sampler, locally made and pretty darn good. The speaker for October 24 was Tina Sharkey, serial turnaround exec and marketing evangelist for multiple brands. Tina's theme is seeing everything through the filter of "pursuing joy" even within business metrics. I'll run down her most important observations and show you, dear reader, how they apply to finance.
Her career in marketing included stints at QVC, iVillage, Sesame Street, and AOL. I didn't know the QVC producers coaches the on-air hosts in real time to address their live callers' needs until Tina revealed that TV tidbit. Her observation that Sesame Street was a "multimedia alphabet" at its core applied her lifelong understanding of using marketing to boil complex ideas down to one sentence. I despised Sesame Street when I was a child because it insulted my intelligence but I can see how it appeals to busy parents as a substitute nanny. Tina's early insights into the emergence of social media in the late 1990s reflected her enthusiasm for connecting people in communities. She shared something on branding: "A brand is about what a friend tells a friend, not what it says about itself." I think that's great for brands that care about their identities as thoughtful service providers. The Alfidi Capital brand reflects my obnoxious, brash, know-it-all personality and I couldn't care less what people say I am as long as they make my articles go viral.
Tina disclosed that multiple studies of brain chemistry reveal the effects that our experiences have on the production of oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, and dopamine. Those are the natural chemicals that make us feel happy and drive our emotional responses to stimuli. I learned all too well when I was in sales that seemingly intelligent people make very important life decisions based purely on emotions and then rationalize them afterwards. I rationalize first and then act, which makes me a genetic freak. It also makes me unfit for employment because not a single human on this planet cares for anything I produce unless they can steal it.
Here come Tina's five joy factors . . .
1) Art of the Narrative: Have a core thing to say when telling your story.
2) Living the Four-Star Life: Let the crowd's wisdom on how they feel about some service inform your lifestyle decisions.
3) You Really Like Me: People use social media's retweets and Like buttons to share validation of things they like.
4) Surprise and Delight: People like nice surprises from their service providers.
5) How Can I Be of Service to You Today: Always be ready for service with a smile (or something like that, because I don't quite grok this one as a perpetually sarcastic social critic).
Tina also gave us four helpful design factors in branding . . .
1) Focus on reception, not conception. A user's feelings matter when they engage a brand.
2) Unlock emotional benefits, not just functional benefits.
3) Design for validation. Audience will tell your story if they like it. They need to evangelize you.
4) Always design for usefulness and smiles.
I can definitely apply those five joy factors to Alfidi Capital. Check this out.
1) My core narrative in my financial commentary is my contempt for human stupidity. Everything I write about finance demonstrates how much I despise Wall Street's corruption and the loser investors who tolerate it.
2) My four-star life comes from being a cheapskate and doing the opposite of what the crowd's wisdom indicates is wise. I couldn't care less for mass opinion at all.
3) I've always known that people really don't like me one stinking bit. I stopped trying to make them like me a long time ago. I don't like people either. My schtick is to provoke them into hating me enough to retweet and reblog what I say.
4) I try to surprise people by thinking of rude and sarcastic things on a daily basis. That brings me delight. Oh yeah.
5) I am not at all going to be of service to anyone today, or any other day.
Those of you who've never read my blog before might be wondering how I can get away with turning these joy principles upside down. It's simple. I make money from pure Web traffic. I provoke people into noticing me and my more controversial writings have been the most widely read things I've published. I can't afford to play nice and get along with people because the people I've worked with in life all prefer that I die. Yes, I'm serious. Human beings really are randomly malicious. I designed the Alfidi Capital brand to insult the world, and that is what brings me joy.
I am not ever going to redesign my brand with any of those four helpfulness factors in mind because that will not help me at all. I made the mistake earlier in my career of trying to be as helpful to everyone as I could and I was repaid with insults, ignorance, threats, and utter rejection. Never again will I ever try to please anyone but myself. Alfidi Capital is my raised middle finger to the profession of finance.
Tina's wisdom is definitely helpful to more conventional business models even if it can't help mine. She thoughtfully answered questions afterwards and advised us to do social good so our success is significant, and that the most successful businesses create moments of joy for their customers. Those are generous thoughts but they really only apply to people who are sufficiently connected and pedigreed to make their own significance notable. Read Tina's Wikipedia bio to see her roots. Her mother ran a large corporation while she was in high school, so of course Tina would be tapped for great things like lobbying early on. It could never be otherwise. I knew students during my undergrad days at the University of Notre Dame who could lobby at will because their parents were CEOs or politicians. The plutocracy that now has America firmly in its grip is choking the life out of the Horatio Alger myth of upward mobility that once made our country so attractive to immigrants.
Tina offered a lot of brand examples during her talk but the majority of her citations looked like luxury brands to me. The examples that stuck out in my mind were Uber and Lululemon. Those brands offer Tina's transformational joy only to well-off consumers whose high six-figure salaries enable them to sustain conspicuous consumption patterns. I am absolutely certain that the lumpen proletariat in flyover country has no idea what those brands are about. Blue collar laborers don't take Uber to Wal-Mart in Fayetteville, Arkansas; they drive a fifteen-year old pickup truck. They don't exercise in Lululemon's transparent tights because they can't afford to replace their old sweatpants. I track enough economic statistics to know that inflation-adjusted personal income for most of the American workforce has not risen in decades. The Pew Research Center has documented the American middle class's destruction. The Wall Street Journal found a consensus among economists that American living standards will continue to decline. I think Tina and other marketing gurus need to realize that the definition of joy for all of the socioeconomic classes below their own will be permanently redefined downward.
I noticed that the audience for this seminar was quite well-dressed and well-coiffed. I didn't introduce myself to anyone because I'm certain they would have objected to my origin in a lower social caste. I get that a lot in San Francisco. I used to introduce myself habitually at every social event I attended in The City. I don't do that anymore because it's a waste of time. One-percenters and their progeny object to my existence once they ask very probing questions about my family's pedigree and my own net worth, and my answers have never measured up to their expectations. The folks in the crowd for Tina's talk really identified with the upscale brands she mentioned. This must be how an ancien regime appears before a society crosses one of history's inflection points.
Here's my final bloviation on the whole "joy" concept. Elitists in San Francisco experience joy when they dismiss me out of hand at social events and discourage me from pursuing a career. This isn't just projection on my part. I've seen the smirks on their faces and the glints in their eyes when they've told me I don't deserve to make money. I know this because they've told me so, especially when they've remarked about my military service. My Yelp reviews of my academic experiences at ND and USF are my permanent record. The only joy I generate for myself is the knowledge that I can survive until the inevitable market crash resets the net worth of countless snobs from the penthouse to society's basement. The hyperinflation that will likely follow will put them on the streets. I salivate over this coming role reversal and I have positioned my own affairs to benefit accordingly. My dopamines and such will flow in a mad rush when I stand over the broken lives of my former social betters. I will even thank Tina Sharkey for showing me the way to joy. Umpqua Bank should have me give the next talk in their Catalyst Series, and they should read my LinkedIn bio to start their due diligence. I will definitely catalyze action and share my joy.
Her career in marketing included stints at QVC, iVillage, Sesame Street, and AOL. I didn't know the QVC producers coaches the on-air hosts in real time to address their live callers' needs until Tina revealed that TV tidbit. Her observation that Sesame Street was a "multimedia alphabet" at its core applied her lifelong understanding of using marketing to boil complex ideas down to one sentence. I despised Sesame Street when I was a child because it insulted my intelligence but I can see how it appeals to busy parents as a substitute nanny. Tina's early insights into the emergence of social media in the late 1990s reflected her enthusiasm for connecting people in communities. She shared something on branding: "A brand is about what a friend tells a friend, not what it says about itself." I think that's great for brands that care about their identities as thoughtful service providers. The Alfidi Capital brand reflects my obnoxious, brash, know-it-all personality and I couldn't care less what people say I am as long as they make my articles go viral.
Tina disclosed that multiple studies of brain chemistry reveal the effects that our experiences have on the production of oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, and dopamine. Those are the natural chemicals that make us feel happy and drive our emotional responses to stimuli. I learned all too well when I was in sales that seemingly intelligent people make very important life decisions based purely on emotions and then rationalize them afterwards. I rationalize first and then act, which makes me a genetic freak. It also makes me unfit for employment because not a single human on this planet cares for anything I produce unless they can steal it.
Here come Tina's five joy factors . . .
1) Art of the Narrative: Have a core thing to say when telling your story.
2) Living the Four-Star Life: Let the crowd's wisdom on how they feel about some service inform your lifestyle decisions.
3) You Really Like Me: People use social media's retweets and Like buttons to share validation of things they like.
4) Surprise and Delight: People like nice surprises from their service providers.
5) How Can I Be of Service to You Today: Always be ready for service with a smile (or something like that, because I don't quite grok this one as a perpetually sarcastic social critic).
Tina also gave us four helpful design factors in branding . . .
1) Focus on reception, not conception. A user's feelings matter when they engage a brand.
2) Unlock emotional benefits, not just functional benefits.
3) Design for validation. Audience will tell your story if they like it. They need to evangelize you.
4) Always design for usefulness and smiles.
I can definitely apply those five joy factors to Alfidi Capital. Check this out.
1) My core narrative in my financial commentary is my contempt for human stupidity. Everything I write about finance demonstrates how much I despise Wall Street's corruption and the loser investors who tolerate it.
2) My four-star life comes from being a cheapskate and doing the opposite of what the crowd's wisdom indicates is wise. I couldn't care less for mass opinion at all.
3) I've always known that people really don't like me one stinking bit. I stopped trying to make them like me a long time ago. I don't like people either. My schtick is to provoke them into hating me enough to retweet and reblog what I say.
4) I try to surprise people by thinking of rude and sarcastic things on a daily basis. That brings me delight. Oh yeah.
5) I am not at all going to be of service to anyone today, or any other day.
Those of you who've never read my blog before might be wondering how I can get away with turning these joy principles upside down. It's simple. I make money from pure Web traffic. I provoke people into noticing me and my more controversial writings have been the most widely read things I've published. I can't afford to play nice and get along with people because the people I've worked with in life all prefer that I die. Yes, I'm serious. Human beings really are randomly malicious. I designed the Alfidi Capital brand to insult the world, and that is what brings me joy.
I am not ever going to redesign my brand with any of those four helpfulness factors in mind because that will not help me at all. I made the mistake earlier in my career of trying to be as helpful to everyone as I could and I was repaid with insults, ignorance, threats, and utter rejection. Never again will I ever try to please anyone but myself. Alfidi Capital is my raised middle finger to the profession of finance.
Tina's wisdom is definitely helpful to more conventional business models even if it can't help mine. She thoughtfully answered questions afterwards and advised us to do social good so our success is significant, and that the most successful businesses create moments of joy for their customers. Those are generous thoughts but they really only apply to people who are sufficiently connected and pedigreed to make their own significance notable. Read Tina's Wikipedia bio to see her roots. Her mother ran a large corporation while she was in high school, so of course Tina would be tapped for great things like lobbying early on. It could never be otherwise. I knew students during my undergrad days at the University of Notre Dame who could lobby at will because their parents were CEOs or politicians. The plutocracy that now has America firmly in its grip is choking the life out of the Horatio Alger myth of upward mobility that once made our country so attractive to immigrants.
Tina offered a lot of brand examples during her talk but the majority of her citations looked like luxury brands to me. The examples that stuck out in my mind were Uber and Lululemon. Those brands offer Tina's transformational joy only to well-off consumers whose high six-figure salaries enable them to sustain conspicuous consumption patterns. I am absolutely certain that the lumpen proletariat in flyover country has no idea what those brands are about. Blue collar laborers don't take Uber to Wal-Mart in Fayetteville, Arkansas; they drive a fifteen-year old pickup truck. They don't exercise in Lululemon's transparent tights because they can't afford to replace their old sweatpants. I track enough economic statistics to know that inflation-adjusted personal income for most of the American workforce has not risen in decades. The Pew Research Center has documented the American middle class's destruction. The Wall Street Journal found a consensus among economists that American living standards will continue to decline. I think Tina and other marketing gurus need to realize that the definition of joy for all of the socioeconomic classes below their own will be permanently redefined downward.
I noticed that the audience for this seminar was quite well-dressed and well-coiffed. I didn't introduce myself to anyone because I'm certain they would have objected to my origin in a lower social caste. I get that a lot in San Francisco. I used to introduce myself habitually at every social event I attended in The City. I don't do that anymore because it's a waste of time. One-percenters and their progeny object to my existence once they ask very probing questions about my family's pedigree and my own net worth, and my answers have never measured up to their expectations. The folks in the crowd for Tina's talk really identified with the upscale brands she mentioned. This must be how an ancien regime appears before a society crosses one of history's inflection points.
Here's my final bloviation on the whole "joy" concept. Elitists in San Francisco experience joy when they dismiss me out of hand at social events and discourage me from pursuing a career. This isn't just projection on my part. I've seen the smirks on their faces and the glints in their eyes when they've told me I don't deserve to make money. I know this because they've told me so, especially when they've remarked about my military service. My Yelp reviews of my academic experiences at ND and USF are my permanent record. The only joy I generate for myself is the knowledge that I can survive until the inevitable market crash resets the net worth of countless snobs from the penthouse to society's basement. The hyperinflation that will likely follow will put them on the streets. I salivate over this coming role reversal and I have positioned my own affairs to benefit accordingly. My dopamines and such will flow in a mad rush when I stand over the broken lives of my former social betters. I will even thank Tina Sharkey for showing me the way to joy. Umpqua Bank should have me give the next talk in their Catalyst Series, and they should read my LinkedIn bio to start their due diligence. I will definitely catalyze action and share my joy.
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Super Bowl Economics and Sarcasm
I'm not watching Super Bowl XLVII today even though I'd like to see the San Francisco 49ers win. I'm a casual fan of my hometown sports teams because they make The City look good. Anyway, instead of watching the big game, I'd rather blog about its economic effects.
Consider the impact on the city that hosts the game. One economist uses very odd reasoning to argue that the host city suffers economically from a Super Bowl. Common sense tells me he's wrong, and hard evidence shows local businesses reaping windfall profits after months of preparation. The Super Bowl crowds out conventions? Yes, but all of the hotels are filled with people who came to see the Super Bowl! Locals don't come downtown because it's crowded? Yes, but all those huge pressing crowds are spending money in bars and restaurants! I think some economists just don't like big success stories. They'd prefer we all downsize to medieval hamlets. They're free to do so while the rest of us enjoy economies of scale.
TV ad spending is another big financial story with this super sports event. You can get a 30-second spot for about $3.75M. The buyers are almost all consumer products makers or downscale automotive brands. Seeing Mercedes-Benz is a surprise, so I guess they're going for the aspirational demographic. The record numbers of women who now watch the game pay more attention to the ads than men do. Ladies, if you want to understand men, you need to at least try to follow the game. Super Bowl ad spending has a demonstrated ability to drive increases in web traffic. The best ads generate high Ace Scores for effectively connecting consumers with a brand. The ultimate purpose of ads is to drive top-line revenue. Surveying consumers on their predictions of Super Bowl ad impact is less useful than actual sales. Companies probably keep their real tracking data private, so it's worth revisiting the next quarter's income statements of Super Bowl advertisers to see whether their sales increased.
What about the game's players? Do Super Bowl athletes get a payoff from more lucrative team contracts or endorsement deals? The players get a nice five-figure bonus whether they win or lose. If the winner's payout in 2013 is $83,000, it amounts to 4.4% of the average NFL salary of $1.9M. That average is skewed much higher than the $770K median because the superstar player salaries are huge outliers, like quarterbacks making eight figures. The big winners from post-Bowl endorsement deals seem to be the few players who went into the game with existing superstar status, and the NFL is the big winner from ticket sales and television broadcast rights.
The people who benefit financially from the Super Bowl are the shareholders of the most effective advertisers, the world's largest ad agencies, the superstar athletes, the League and its franchise owners, and many local concessionaires. Have fun watching the game.
Consider the impact on the city that hosts the game. One economist uses very odd reasoning to argue that the host city suffers economically from a Super Bowl. Common sense tells me he's wrong, and hard evidence shows local businesses reaping windfall profits after months of preparation. The Super Bowl crowds out conventions? Yes, but all of the hotels are filled with people who came to see the Super Bowl! Locals don't come downtown because it's crowded? Yes, but all those huge pressing crowds are spending money in bars and restaurants! I think some economists just don't like big success stories. They'd prefer we all downsize to medieval hamlets. They're free to do so while the rest of us enjoy economies of scale.
TV ad spending is another big financial story with this super sports event. You can get a 30-second spot for about $3.75M. The buyers are almost all consumer products makers or downscale automotive brands. Seeing Mercedes-Benz is a surprise, so I guess they're going for the aspirational demographic. The record numbers of women who now watch the game pay more attention to the ads than men do. Ladies, if you want to understand men, you need to at least try to follow the game. Super Bowl ad spending has a demonstrated ability to drive increases in web traffic. The best ads generate high Ace Scores for effectively connecting consumers with a brand. The ultimate purpose of ads is to drive top-line revenue. Surveying consumers on their predictions of Super Bowl ad impact is less useful than actual sales. Companies probably keep their real tracking data private, so it's worth revisiting the next quarter's income statements of Super Bowl advertisers to see whether their sales increased.
What about the game's players? Do Super Bowl athletes get a payoff from more lucrative team contracts or endorsement deals? The players get a nice five-figure bonus whether they win or lose. If the winner's payout in 2013 is $83,000, it amounts to 4.4% of the average NFL salary of $1.9M. That average is skewed much higher than the $770K median because the superstar player salaries are huge outliers, like quarterbacks making eight figures. The big winners from post-Bowl endorsement deals seem to be the few players who went into the game with existing superstar status, and the NFL is the big winner from ticket sales and television broadcast rights.
The people who benefit financially from the Super Bowl are the shareholders of the most effective advertisers, the world's largest ad agencies, the superstar athletes, the League and its franchise owners, and many local concessionaires. Have fun watching the game.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
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