Mark Kolier’s Blog

Marketers talk it every day – ‘It’s all about the data’. Everyone nods their collective heads in agreement and the quest to gather even more data continues. There’s so much data available that marketing agencies and their clients are having a difficult time figuring out what’s significant and useful and what is not.

The data deluge is not slowing down, it’s actually speeding up. I believe that the practice of marketers sifting through the gobs of data in order to pull out worthwhile actionable information is precipitating paralysis by analysis. There are some companies (like Amazon and Netflix) that have managed to successfully filter their own customer and prospect data in order to offer real-time marketing suggestions to customers. Yet there are countless other companies that have been collecting masses of data but have no idea as to what to do with that data.

Are we over-measuring? It’s possible. In the context of companies spending so much time and effort organizing and stacking data they often fail to act, or when they do are conflicted as to what the data is telling them they ought to do. Look, I’m a big believer in data collection and its ability to assist companies in making better marketing and media decisions. Yet in the rush to measure EVERYTHING it’s only natural to then draw lines of connection borne from the data itself that does not necessarily have any correlation to good marketing instincts. What does one do when collected customer data suggests one approach which is at the same time contradicted by what is known to be a sound marketing practice?

Don’t read me wrong. I particularly enjoy challenging my own assumptions and I have on many occasions found the marketing data to be completely opposite of what I would have thought would be the case in terms of customer response or affinity. When that happens it’s our practice to test again to learn if our instincts were incorrect. Sometimes they are, but sometimes they aren’t.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you are testing an email campaign with an offer. You see results that show people prefer content over a sweepstakes. At the outset of the campaign you expected based on experience that a sweepstakes would outperform non-sweepstakes. Yet in the subject line of the email you note ‘Win…’ and really what may have happened is that spam filters sent that email to spam purgatory and recipients saw far fewer of those emails than they did for the offer of content. Drawing the conclusion that providing content is the way to go in the future may not be the right decision.

My point is not to stop testing or stop collecting data but to not blindly make decisions on the basis of the data alone. In the meantime we marketers will continue to swim in data and hopefully keep our head above water.

Are you drowning in data?

Various articles regarding this week’s television upfront buying have highlighted rising ad rates. The Wall Street Journal http://on.wsj.com/JAMUAg noted that this week’s annual ‘upfronts’ are kicking into high gear. David Carr in the New York Times http://nyti.ms/JJWaAJ wrote about the peripatetic nature of television watching in his house (and mine) – he who controls the remote, controls viewing of live television. But no surprise to anyone, increasingly more people (nearly 50% of the population has a DVR) are watching shows recorded on their DVR.

The upfront television ad-buying market seems to me to be a high-stakes poker game in an expensive casino. Networks, both broadcast and cable, promote their new (and old) shows to advertisers in an effort to get maximum rates for their programming. Successful programs like CBS’ 2 Broke Girls would constitute a ‘win’ in the casino whereas the NBC show Playboy Club that flamed out in less than a month last fall would be a losing bet.

As Mr. Carr puts it:

‘Part of what keeps legacy television in the game is that it is the last refuge of mass and reach. For retailers who want to flag a sale or an entertainment company with a weekend movie opening, a commercial on a broadcast network or a highly rated cable station can still hammer a message into a lot of noggins. In this targeted age, it’s breathtakingly inefficient — you pay to reach everyone, even the millions not in the desired age group — but making a big television buy is a kind of comfort food, easy and familiar.”

I suspect that the days of upfront television buying are nearing an end. This is not a hope or desire of mine, more of an observation that increasing numbers of advertisers will just say no to the Monte Carlo aspect of outbidding one another in order to spend money on any particular show or shows.

But for the present with the CW network booking $9 billion in advertising revenue and the big four up 2 to 4 percent over 2011 the end is seemingly far from near. Cable networks which now surpass broadcast networks in ads booked during upfront anticipate nearly $10 billion in buys for the new season. There will be winners and losers – both in the creators of the shows themselves as well as the advertisers that were unlucky enough to back the wrong ‘horse’. The whole thing just seems archaic to me.

The stock market is seen by many as a giant casino. Do you think the television upfront market is really any different?

Maybe I’ve seen something like it before and cannot remember but the intense ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ6N-4p1kLc in which type flashes quickly throughout the 0:30 television spot is highly unusual and highly engaging. I found it haunting and very memorable.

For starters there’s zero dialog. The ‘music’ marries so well with the images and I consider this a great job of editing. The pace of the spot is almost dizzying even if you are not a fan of basketball or the NBA.

In the ad business it’s so easy to offer criticism and by that I don’t mean constructive criticism. When a client gives an agency a directive to produce advertising to promote an event (and the brand) it rarely starts off as a blank sheet of paper. This NBA playoff spot strikes me as being the brainchild of the agency – I wish I knew which agency it was so I could offer my kudos to them.

What do you think of the ad and is it groundbreaking? Do you have any other examples of provocative and effective recent television ads?

I’ve said for a long time that Foursquare’s location based platform originally based on user check-in’s, is one of the most interesting social media applications around. An article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal http://on.wsj.com/IT3IVJ did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm. There’s also a video featuring Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley on what’s next for the platform which can be clicked on from the article.

Foursquare has indicated it is planning to allow merchants to buy special placement for promotions or personalized local offers as of July. This is in keeping with the delivery of value-based promotions once a user ‘checks-in’ that Foursquare users like me have been enjoying for more than a year. I still get a kick out of obtaining a discount (free drink, appetizer, or other benefit) after I’ve already decided to go to a certain place and then check-in once I arrive. That’s real customer value. It will keep customers coming back and checking in and the special placement plans will only continue along that theme.

There are still issues – with check-ins due to the imprecise nature of GPS on smartphones. For instance I have upon more than one occasion forgotten to check in at a place I visited but did so after the fact – that is after I had left the location and had gone someplace else. While I cannot check-in to a place that’s ten miles away it seems I can check-in at a place I am going to before I get there, after I’ve left or most concerning – a place I did not go to at all.

What I am highlighting is that there has to be a general mistrust of check-in locations until the supposedly soon-to-be forthcoming (maybe July with the launch of the personalized local offers?)
improved GPS integration with Foursquare’s platform is launched. Until that time Foursquare user behavior (frequency and proximity) data will be suspect and its veracity compromised. Mr. Crowley’s point that “We are building software that’s able to drive new customers and repeat visitors to local businesses” sounds great but unless local businesses can be confident a user is actually in or within 100 feet of their business I believe merchants will be reluctant to participate.

My friends tend to snicker about my continued use of Foursquare. There are occasions when I get ‘badges’ for visiting my 10th coffee shop or 5th wine bar. What those friends fail to realize is that I am getting value far beyond the public display of a check-in which can easily be seen as self-aggrandizing.
It’s decidedly not self-aggrandizing to take advantage of discounts for places I’d visit anyway right? What Foursquare hopes is that the next level is getting me (and therefore delivering real marketing value to local merchants) to go try a new place because I’ve received an offer for a discount to a place I might never have really considered visiting.

As Garry Trudeau once had Mike offer in his wonderful strip Doonesbury so many years ago – ‘I prefer not to think of it as selling out – I prefer to think of it as buying in’.

Are you ready to buy in?

Over the weekend I came into the office to catch up on a couple of hours of work. On the way to the office I had been listening (on the car radio) to my beloved New York Mets’ – http://newyork.mets.mlb.com – attempt to win the rubber game of a three game series with the Arizona Diamondbacks – http://arizona.diamondbacks.mlb.com. I went to the MLB website and like I have done many times in the past (or thought I had) tried to get the live feed of the game which is carried locally on WFAN 660 radio in the New York DMA. It took me a few minutes to figure out that without registering and paying the fee of $19.95 for the year, I could not stream the radiocast of the game (I knew I would not be able to get the video feed without paying).

As a marketing agency I am well aware of the desire and need to leverage and monetize assets whenever and wherever possible. I did not count on getting an ad-free radio broadcast and that’s fine. I don’t know about you, but not being able to listen to a radio broadcast in real time without paying what is a fee (nominal though it may be if looked at over the course of a 162 game season) still struck me as usurious. I understand that there are always complicated licensing arrangements when it comes to broadcasts and re-broadcasts on the web. But surely there are a number of other ways for MLB to derive revenue without insisting on my paying $19.95 to listen to 4 innings of one game. I might never have had occasion to listen to another game all season!

The MLB smartphone application for iPhone, Android, or Blackberry (while it lasts) is really good and a good value proposition, and in fact I’ve subscribed for the past two years but did not this year (I just had not yet gotten around to it and now probably won’t). In the past I would be able to listen to the live feed of the game on my phone (the app is somewhere around $15) and watch highlights of any game as soon as they are posted. However I had no idea that if I wanted to listen to a game outside of a terrestrial (that is non-satellite) radio station, I would have to sign up and pay the proverbial piper.

Baseball is known as America’s pastime. Maybe it should be renamed America’s revenue opportunity. Forget for a moment that to attend a game at Citi Field requires a family of four to consider which meals they will not eat for the week (parking is $20 and even inexpensive tickets (if bought as part of a plan) can be $12/game although you would need buy 81 games to achieve that price). Imagine if the Mets actually had a chance to make the playoffs.

I feel that offering the opportunity to listen to a game for free (with ads and promotions and I’d even sign up if they required it so MLB could market to me) would be good for baseball and the promotion of the game. It seems to me that the next likely step for MLB.com is to move terrestrial baseball coverage to satellite radio (which I still won’t pay for). Then only paid subscribers will be able to listen to the game.

What do you think?