Help Wanted

© http://fredschiller.blogspot.ca

I've seen ads looking for Digital Copywriters and I'm trying to figure out just what a Digital Copywriter is and how is he different from a regular copywriter? Do they possess specialized skills that a regular Copywriter do not?  When did this distinction arise and why it was necessary?  There must be an important reason why we need Digital Copywriters and not just regular copywriters, just like there would be a need for actors who specialize in walking with a bum left leg.

Reading these ads further, I discovered why.  It seems that Digital Copywriters are experts at generating Content.  Their words engage, increase awareness and open a dialogue between a brand and its customers—concepts that regular copywriters can never understand (or actually believe).  So powerful is the Digital Copywriter's Content it turns regular people into rabid brand ambassadors for life.   

I guess this makes them much different than regular copywriters because the only thing regular Copywriters know what to do is sell stuff.  You know, make money for the client.  Because they only know how to write for old media, being able to create pixelated copy that produces no measureable benefit to the client is more important than actually moving product or re-enforcing a brand distinctiveness.  Guess I should get some help figuring out how to be a Digital Copywriter.

Civility in the Age of Freelance

To expand my list of contracts, I've gone through the standard steps of registering with the creative recruiters, meeting with them and getting an idea of the things they look for.  I am at the point, however, where these companies are a liability.  I've never really had anything worthwhile from these shops; a few have done nothing. Nothing, that is, except to have me come in and meet my old contact's replacement and fill out the same old forms again (this will happen at least twice a year as these companies have a staff turnover rate higher a Denny's restaurant.)  But their negligence is starting to cost me.  Two incidents in two weeks has forced me to swear off associating with these companies. 

First, I got an email from one asking if I was interested in a short-term contract (3-6 months).  It was to start mid-Feb and she would put my name to the client.  That was the last I heard, until I emailed last week wondering about the status.  "Oh, I forgot to tell you," she said, "the client went with another candidate :("  I guess if I hadn't contacted her I still wouldn't know the status. 

My favourite example of hackitude happened last Tuesday. I got a call from a creative recruiter and she said that there was a short notice gig for a DM writer on Thursday and Friday writing automotive copy and would I be interested.  I said yes and she told me that I would be briefed over the phone by the agency—I didn't need to go in—and I was given sixteen hours to do the job.  

That was the last time I heard from her and I never heard from the agency.  

I booked the time and cleared the deck for a rush job that never came.  But I guess in this time when a barely noticeable head nod counts as an acknowledgement, I shouldn't expect more than an emoticon.

Beau Knows (nothing 'cuz he's just a baby)

Humanity dodged the big one on December 21, when the Mayan Apocalypse failed to appear— world-ending predictions aren't like they used to be.  And, just when the latest generations pulled back from the brink of oblivion, the next generation arrived.  Meet Beau, my first grandchild, born  minutes after the Earth was supposed to explode or do whatever the apocaholics* said was supposed to happen.  It was also the shortest day of the year, tho' I'm sure my daughter would disagree after enduring about 12 hours of labour. 

So Beau is here, and now I'm wait on my eldest daughter to deliver Penny (babies come pre-named these days) to show up around the beginning of March.  So, by spring I'll have two grand kids to spoil... and two young pliable minds to corrupt.
  
* a delightful term coined by Gary Alexander that accurately describes the hordes of Doomsayers found mainly in the environmental movement

Mysteries in Advertising

I have no idea how this concept developed but I imagine the client at Corn Pops provided the agency account team with this brief:

Objective:  My 4 year-old son likes cats with laser eyes.  Get it on the box somehow

Much Ado About Nothing and Face Palms

Marketing Magazine’s latest issue (Nov 30) just arrived and it is all about Social Media.

Make them stop!!!

Filled with pronouncements, prognostications and punditry, the issue shines a shaft of gold upon the field of Social Media.  Among the self congratulatory, hipster-filled, and jargon-riddled pages (B.J. Mendleson's rant against social networks excepted), two articles stood out. 

 A short column by Bryan Pearson, President of Air Miles (one of the more engaging and entertaining speakers I have ever seen) presents an executive summary of an Air Mile’s Social Media study. In a nutshell (from what I got from the column and case study) between February 2009 and May 2011, researchers watched member activity in three Air Miles promotions (an earlier article by one of the study’s authors said there were four contests).  The study group was made up of members who had previously signed up to the Air Miles Community page and were invited to take part in these contests via email: 

• The “Cruise Contest—members answer a weekly question for six weeks for a chance to win a luxury travel package 

• The Block Party Contest—members write about what Air Miles means to them for a chance to win 2,500 reward miles

• The Winter Event—members earn 10 bonus reward miles by posting an answer to the question what they want to redeem for that winter

Research showed that those participants in these contests increased their purchases at Air Miles partners from between 15% and 30% compared to non-participants during the 10-week study period. 

While the study sounds promising, I believe it overstates the obvious and is way, way too overconfident with the more speculative aspects.  By this, I mean that there may be an initial bias within the study because its participants had shown a willingness to interact with the company and other members when they signed up to the company’s Community page well beforehand—ergo, they were prime candidates to enter the three contests that involve writing about their Air Miles experiences and desires. 

The study had (I assume) 25,326 participants, which is one-quarter of one percent of all Air Miles members (is this a large enough sample?), and the participants were divided into two segments: high users (50+ reward miles earned two weeks before the start of the contests) and Medium/Low users (49 reward miles or less).  It is unknown whether this breakdown resembles the entire Air Miles user spectrum (as with any brand, there will likely be very few high users, slightly more medium users, and about 80% low/infrequent users) but that is understandable as it is proprietary information. 

It is also not known if the study group was over-weighted with hardcore high users, those keeners who know how to “play the game” and leverage every opportunity and contest to obtain the maximum number of reward miles; the “Extreme Couponers” of loyalty.  Plus, without a breakdown of the Medium and Low users, it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of the initiative. 

To understand the success of this Social Media effort and put its results in perspective with other communications tactics, here are just a few of the things I’d like to know:

• How many emails were sent and how many were opened?

• How many recipients acted on the click-prompt to go to the Community page in the email—of this group how many actually contributed to that page and what was transaction activity compared to before the contests began?

• Was only one email sent out for each contest participant or were there subsequent ones?  If so, what was their content?

• Were there any incentives or special bonus air miles events (e.g. 20x Bonus Air Miles) promoted during the contest periods?

• The study used a two-week period before the contests start to establish a baseline for transaction activity.  Is two weeks long enough?  What would the results be if one month was used?  Two months?

Social Media Data Massaging Techniques

 

Without more information, this study looks like it resembles one of the quirks of quantum theory that states that the very act of observing phenomenon changes the observed reality (behavior) of that phenomenon (suck on that, philosophy majors!).  Now, if its Social Media campaign had shown a statistically significant lift and penetration with the light/low users, the group that holds the most potential in growing Air Miles sales and profitability, that would be news. 

Then there was jewel in the crown, the face-palming, head-slapping stupidity from some of Social Media industry’s spokesidiots.  It’s a piece on how social media has moved marketers from impressions to feelings.  Feelings, wo-o-o feelings...  

The Father of Social Media Sentiment Analysis

Here’s Renny Monaghan, “Today your brand isn’t about the number of impressions anymore—it’s the sum of the conversations about your brand.”  Rennie, old chap, you’re an idiot.  A plain and simple idiot. 

Then there’s David Bradfield of SapientNitro who says that, for example a funeral home could position itself more favourably by understanding the language people planning funeral arrangements use.  “If people have negative sentiments about the words like ‘death’ and ‘dead’ this gives the funeral home the reality check needed to align with how customers are talking and make the necessary changes… If consumers are using the ‘d’ word, neither should the funeral home.”  Fuck, I almost died when I read that utter and complete bullshit.  David, I assume you’re a descent person, even though your moustache reminds me of a ‘70s disco group, but you haven’t a clue.  Not. One. Fucking. Clue.

To show how important “social sentiment” is, the article provides two examples of how this brainstrust dug into peoples’ feeling to save the day.  Dave “In the Navy” Bradfield cites a Canadian food product that cratered after launch.  With their superhero Feelings Capes on, Bradfield and his team used their magic social sentiment analysis to “identify how people who bought the products talked about them, the language they used, the experience they conveyed, which recipes they were talking about and which associations were materializing so the agency could use them to reshape the position of the brand” because it sucked at the time.

First off, I’d like to know who the asshat CMO was that created the original market feasability report that said the product was a good idea and then developed initial positioning strategy in the first place.  Second, does he or she still have a job? Third, was that person forced to eat his or her own weight in the product—if no, why not?

In the end, SapientNitro discovered that, after listening to customers, no one liked the product.  And its brilliant solution?  Call it a niche product and shove it in a tiny category  What the hell was this product anyway, almond encrusted cat turds? If that’s the case, it's a niche market snack for dogs in the "This Tastes Like Ass" category.

The other case study comes from Scot Wheeler (I thought there were two Ts in Scott—unless he's trying not to be confused with Irish Wheeler)  of Critical Mass.  Scot used sentiment analysis on behalf of a US medical imaging company that markets radiological dye and injection systems. The company wanted to know what emotions people experienced in radiological treatments.  (Hmm... I wonder how people feel when they start cancer treatment... ) The emotions chosen by Wheeler ranged from “anxiety to dread to appreciation and resolution.”

Surprisingly, among the groups Wheeler looked at, he found that nurses were worried about safety and being stuck by tainted needles.  And administrators were, shockingly, worried about costs and if other cost effective alternatives were coming so they wouldn’t have to lock-in to long-term service contracts.  The solution? Answer their concerns.  Whaaa?

Just wondering, Mr. U.S. maker of radiological treatment stuff, why you thought the opinions/emotions/fears of these nurses and administrators using your product would differ from nurses and administrators using other similar products in radiological/cancer treatments and therapies that involve bodily fluids?

It staggers me that the manufacturer didn’t consider these “feelings” or hear about them from their field reps before wanting to know what conversations their end users were having.  This is where I see Scot as being the smartest one in the article.  After all, he found a company—or better yet, it found him—that didn’t listen to its sales staff and field reps and paid him a lot of money to learn about their customers’ feelings.  Nice score, Scot old bean.  Git it while you can ‘cuz it ain’t gonna last. 

Mewing Nuns, Disappearing Dongs, and Socialmania

 

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

Charles McKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)

It’s a human trait that whenever we start gathering in groups, we tend to act like idiots or believe in the absurd.  The behaviour of soccer fans or the success of Bernie Madoff stand as examples. 

Delusions usually start off when one person acts out of the ordinary.  OK, way out of the ordinary. For instance, during the Middle Ages at a convent in France, a nun began to mew like a cat.  And she mewed to two nuns, and they mewed to two nuns and so on and so on and so on… Pretty soon all the nuns were mewing.  And everyday they gathered at the same time and mewed for several hours together. Now, during the Middle Ages cats were considered to be BFFs of Satan and when the all the sisters in the nunnery started sounding like cats, the local citizenry sort of freaked out and called the cops.  These kitty koncerts continued until the fuzz arrived and told the nuns that soldiers were coming to block the entrance to the convent and would use their wooden rods to beat the tar out of any nun who mewed until they promised not to mew anymore.  This may be where the expression “cat got your tongue” originated because the mewing stopped shortly afterward.  (Heckler, J.F.C. Epidemics of the Middle Ages (1844):117 4n)

Then there is the case of the disappearing dongs.  In 1990, years before Nigerians figured out how to use the Internet to con gullible Westerners out of their money, the men of the country were losing their dongs.  It all started, apparently, when a man accidentally bumped into a stranger in public, and moments afterwards the victim supposedly had a strange feeling in his scrotum and had to grab his junk to make sure it was intact.  He believed it had disappeared.  This caused him to chase after the stranger and accuse him in public of being a genital thief, which, of course, would attract a crowd—who in their right mind wouldn’t want to see where that was going to end? 

The growing mob demanded proof that the pecker had been purloined and forced the victim to drop his pants.  Of course the victim, now standing half naked in the street, fell back on the Monty Python “She turned into a newt” defense. He claimed that while there was, indeed, a penis where his penis was supposed to be (he got better), it was, however, a lot smaller than before, or it was a “ghost” penis—really, what man wouldn't say that?  The poor accused would then be subsequently beaten until the penis was restored to it’s original size.  There were a few cases of some being beaten to death—the accused that is.   

 Whoomp! There It Isn't

The mania spread quickly and believers became so convinced that genital thieves lurked everywhere that the streets in Lagos looked like a Michael and Janet Jackson video because men clutched their crotches, or kept their hands in their pockets to maintain a good hold of their block and tackle.  Women even got into the act by gripping their mommy bags or crossing their arms over their chests whenever they were in public.  A lack of vigilance and weak willpower, it was believed, led to the stealing of the weenies.  (Ilechukwu, S.T.C. 1992. Magical penis loss in Nigeria: Report of a recent epidemic of a koro-like syndrome. Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review 29:91-108.)

There are hundreds of other examples—single tulip bulbs worth a year’s salary, flying saucers (a purely 20^th Century delusion), and the mid-'70s, early-'80s El Chupacabra, the rat faced, kangaroo-legged, blood-licking, sulphur emitting goatsucker of Puerto Rico.  Today’s delusions and episodes of crowd madness usually involve money.  Lots of money.  Think of the biggest chain letter in history and multiply it by a hundred million.  

Whether it is about climate change, running your car on your own urine, or phenomenal returns on investment, when someone says that he’s an expert and he knows that X is happening right now or will likely happen in the future, and that other experts like him agree, grip your wallet like a Nigerian.  Anyone who has a grounding in Critical Thinking recognizes two logical fallacies in play here.  One is the basing of an argument on the knowledge of experts (argumentum ad verecundiam).  Just because a group has a reputation does not mean it is right.  (Thomas Sowell has a great line about experts:  “Intellectuals are the last people to realize their own vast sea of ignorance surrounding the small island of their knowledge. That is why they are so dangerous.”)  And, face it, experts know shit. When measured over time, experts are only slightly better than random guessing—chimps throwing darts at a stock page kind of random.  And it doesn’t matter what field they are in—stocks, technology, marketing—experts are no better at predicting the future than the guy on the street.  Don’t take my word for it, though, have a read through these: Wrong: Why the experts keep failing us and how to know when not to trust them, The Management Myth:  Why experts keep getting it wrong, and Everything is obvious: *Once you know the answer. 

The Opinion of Experts Matter

 

The other logical error, that other similar experts agree, is the Consensus or Head Count fallacy (argumentum ad populum).  The flaw is that just because we are told that a group say X will happen is not evidence that others say in X will happen, that they even believe in X, or that they even believe X is true.  The existence of consensus cannot tell us whether X is true or false. 

The Consensus Says We Should Hang Him. Now.

All this brings me to the socialmania that’s swept like a prairie fire through the advertising and marketing industry, through boardrooms and the minds of CMOs (there is no one more gullible). Social media, the experts tell us, means the death of traditional advertising, television, marketing, whatever.  And because all the experts agree that social media will change the landscape for good, you need to change your foolish ways, change if you want survive in the new future of social marketing.  How does one change, you ask?  Well, paying the experts handsomely to tell you what you need to know is a start.  Then develop programs that introduce social marketing into your media mix—plans that can never be measured in any meaningful way. 

Well, eventually nuns stop mewing, wieners suddenly grow back, and chickens start coming home to roost.  It seems that some people have broken free from the herd and are starting to see things for what they actually are.  One is Todd Wasserman of Mashable Business who on Tuesday 28 November, wrote: “The social media marketing backlash has begun. Blame the unlikely team of The Onion and IBM. The former dropped a pitch-perfect take-down of socmedia “experts” right before Thanksgiving. Then Big Blue released data that showed Facebook had almost zero effect on Black Friday sales, and Twitter actually had zero.”

If you haven’t seen The Onion Video, have a look.  It is brilliant:

The IBM study Todd mentions declared that its own study found that shoppers from social networks , such as Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, generated 0.34% of online sales on Black Friday—down 35% from 2011.  Twitter?  Effectively 0%.  These figures are not even close to rounding errors.   

I foresee the Socialmaniacs being held to account and measured against their wild and unfounded predictions soon (I won’t say when).  I imagine, tho’, they’ll behave like most experts and come up with more excuses than “Joliet” Jake  Blues.

Velocitize Me

 A Pet Project

In the current issue of Marketing Magazine is an article titled, Around and Around We Go that is about shopper marketing in Canada.  The piece discusses all the tools that we marketers have at our disposal to push consumers along the path to purchase.  But now, with the rise of digital and mobile media, that path has transformed from a classic funnel model to a loop.  A Loyalty Loop.  To build that loopy thingy you need to:

·      Collect names, addresses, and email addresses with permissions

·      Push messaging of products and activities with texts and social media

·      Monitor social feeds like Twitter Facebook et al

·      Share consumer feedback of positive experiences and referrals

One proposed method to use positive consumer feedback is to create microsites populated with all those glowing reviews.  After all, according to Nielson in its study of the blatantly obvious, it found that 92% consumers trust recommendations from the friends and family over opinions expressed in advertising.

To Mike Farrell of Conversion Marketing Communications, these kinds of microsites are important because they are about humans communicating with humans.  Now I’m sure Mike is a nice affable chap, that he’s kind to children, old people, and dogs, but I have to call him out on this.  First off, humans communicating with humans, as opposed to what, the Dead? (a Ouija board already has that covered), animals? (see Doc Dolittle), Gaia? (peyote and LSD can do that for you).  He then goes on to say that if you can get someone to say something positive about a deal or new product and drop that onto your Facebook page, you’re velocitizing your communications.  *Sigh*

I don’t think it’s a good idea to get someone to say something nice, AKA paid endorsements, if you’re planning on keeping it authentic. How about just letting it just happen. Then again, using people’s comments has it problems. Take Nick Bergus, for example.  Nick spotted something unusual on Amazon:  a 55-gallon drum of personal lubricant—how or why he found it I don’t want to know.  According to the NYT, Nick saw it as an object deserving of ridicule, so he shared that link on Facebook and added the pithy comment: For Valentine’s Day.  And every day.  For the rest of your life.  Well… things, uh, sort of slid, um, downhill from there: Within days, friends of Mr. Bergus started seeing his post among the ads on Facebook pages, with his name and smiling mug shot. Facebook — or rather, one of its algorithms — had seen his post as an endorsement and transformed it into an advertisement, paid for by Amazon.  

Oh bugger! Better call the lawyers.

The Marketing Mag article goes on to say that mobile has a lot of promise, especially for sending alerts about discounts and special offers that can drive people into stores because, according to Rico DiGiovanni of Spider Marketing, bricks and mortar is where it’s at.  This is the first sensible and empirically proven point to appear in the article.  People prefer to see, touch, and feel things before buying them, especially big-ticket items.

Unfortunately, this moment of clarity was fleeting as next came a description of a possible scenario that shows the increasing potential and power of mobile.  In it, a customer comes into a store looking for a particular TV; he then proceeds to use his phone to read blogs about the item and do a price comparison with other vendors, all while in-store.  If he finds a better deal from, say eBay or Amazon, he’ll buy it that way and will leave the store before the sales staff has a chance to talk with him.  Really?  What kind of knob would actually stand there, chewing up his data plan, to do this?

It seems to me that anyone using mobile to check out a product is pretty damn close to buying it, probably within hours—it’s only a question of which store.  He did all the reading of blogs, product reviews, and price comparisons days or weeks earlier from home on a desktop.

Anyway, I know that all these new technology toys present an irresistible chance to flood people with messages, but geeks, brand managers, and CMOs, please understand this key truth:  People don’t care.  People don’t want a relationship with a brand, they don’t care about interactions or conversations with a brand, and, acting like the drunk on the all-night bus who keeps trying to strike-up a conversation, forcing the issue usually results in the intended target ignoring you or getting off a stop or two early.

Stolen from:  Sellsell.co.uk

People go online to look for discounts, to buy things, and get information about things they want to buy.  In that order.  Which is almost the inverse to what businesses believe the reasons are for why people go online.

If this keeps up, we will become like the stream of door-knocking itinerant duct cleaning peddlers, the students flogging chocolate almonds, cheap light bulbs and shitty garbage bags, or those devoted humanitarians who want me to sponsor them for some charity run/walk-a-thon/hand-holding Affirmation Circle of Life event—but want me to pay upfront.  Bombarded consumers are going to tell us, Get the fuck off my front porch and don’t come back. 

Pretty soon, some twenty-year old will develop a killer app that sends a screw off message to technology-obsessed marketers each time they try to clog up our inbox and mobile with conversations.  I can see it being be named after a breed of dog spelled with more consonants than vowels, with a couple of umlauts thrown in, and is best pronounced with a heavy German accent.