Wenda Harris Millard is leaving Yahoo. That’s as good as an excuse as any to talk about what it means to sell advertising to big advertisers.
Sooner or later, just about every media plan (especially those online) includes the line, "and we’ll sell advertising." More often than not, this is a pipe dream. Here’s why:
There are two kinds of advertising and this leads to two kinds of ad sales.
The first kind is the rational kind. Yellow Page ads, direct mail and Google AdWords fit into this category. This is advertising that works, if ‘works’ is defined as, "pay $3 and make $4." With measurable direct advertising, you can count on profit-minded small organizations to give it a try (small buys) and if it obviously makes money, to buy some more. While it helps to have a salesforce, it’s not essential (if the ads are really and truly money makers). Most media companies end up with this sort of advertising, and most of them fail, because the advertising just isn’t effective enough to be this obviously profitable.
[Most advertising takes skill to turn a profit, and most advertisers don’t have any. So, there are people who make a profit with AdWords or with Squidoo offers, but not everyone. It’s just too hard to build a medium so effective and so well-priced that anyone with a typewriter can turn a profit.The challenge is to have enough people make money that others are drawn to the medium and invest the energy to actually get good at it.]
The second kind of advertising is the glamorous kind, the kind that people think of when they think of the Super Bowl or Time magazine or of profitable ads that are worth selling. These are the ads that built Yahoo, the ads that built NBC and the ads that so many entrepreneurs and media moguls are counting on. These ads don’t sell because they work. They sell because they are sold.
Let me be fair: they work if we define ‘working’ as: pleasing the client, pleasing the agency, increasing brand goodwill, and building, over time, a groundswell of awareness and brand respect that ultimately leads to profits. A Chevrolet ad on the Super Bowl doesn’t generate 2 million dollars in profit. No way. But, perhaps, over time, $100 million worth of Chevy ads turns into a billion dollars of profit. It’s vague, it’s tricky and it’s political.
Jerry, who I used to work with, and Wenda and others understood the investment, patience, malarkey and magic that goes into selling an irrational, expensive item to people who pretend to measure but really don’t. I never really figured that out, and my guess is that most people with that line in their business plan haven’t figured it out either.
June 25, 2007
Most organizations need a good reason to do something new.
All they need is a flimsy excuse to not do something for the first time.
And they often need a lawsuit to stop doing something they’re used to.
June 24, 2007
Today, I visited a Gap store for the first time in a while. We all know that they’ve been having trouble, and it was interesting to see how they’re responding.
They’re closing about 50 stores net this year, trying to make their business match the market. At the same time, it was pretty obvious from my visit that they’re working hard to save money on sales staff, store designers and other expenses. It took me twenty minutes to check out. In the old days, it would have been two minutes. My reading of the Dip is that nickel and diming is a dumb strategy.
They should close 200 or even 500 stores and keep the very best people from each store, redeploying them to their best stores. They should invest in those great stores, invest in design, in targeted marketing. In other words, instead of shrinking themselves back to greatness, they ought to avoid the nickel and diming and go back to what made them great in the first place.
When your current strategy isn’t working, doing the same thing, but just a little less of it, doesn’t make a lot of sense, imo.
June 23, 2007
Freaknomics points us to the greatest fast food promotion in memory. Beat the cashier in a game of rock paper scissors and save a buck.
What I absolutely love about this idea, other than its obvious remarkability, is the way it humanizes the previously automatonized front line worker. Instead of making them invisible, it makes them part of the deal. "Tell your Starbucks barrista a really funny joke, get a free biscotti (knock knock jokes not valid in some states.)"
Why not do this with your accounts payable people? Or give the customer service people the ability to give a prize to the nicest person who calls in each day? What’s the worst that could happen–they might use a little judgment, might enjoy the day a bit more, might even start to care.
If you let them.
June 22, 2007
Lawyers do pro bono work fairly often. Some firms hire lawyers to do nothing but free legal work for those in need. Turns out that it’s not just an obligation, it also makes you a better lawyer.
Aaron needs your help doing the same thing with branding, design and marketing.
June 21, 2007
A lot of people have blogs. But most people don’t.
I think you should. Even if you only have one post in you.
Having a blog is pretty daunting, especially if you don’t like blank paper and are the sort of person that hates falling behind. I can imagine that the idea of posting 50 or 300 times a year is a little bit nuts for many people.
But what if there’s just one thing you need to say, but you can say it clearly and well and in a way that hasn’t been said before? What if you’ve got one great blog post inside of you, and, even better, you’re willing to update that post as you learn more and gain more insight?
An entire post about a certain kind of fossil. Or the misuse of a certain word. Or about a key difference between two kinds of bluetooth…
Why not?
Most of us do customer service in one way or another. And most of us believe that customer service represents an investment and a commitment. The more you spend, the more you get. Companies that do lousy customer service are short-sighted or just plain cheap. So we say.
I don’t think it’s that simple, though.
Consider this screen shot. Possibly the single worst online customer service I have ever experienced. AT&T has online tech support (yay) in real time (super) that is totally and completely broken. Not because they’re not spending the money, but because the committee that designed it is a few cards short of a full deck.
This is a simultaneous chat room, which means that each person in the room sees everyone else’s questions getting answered (not useful.) Which means that it’s unthreaded, so it’s in no particular order (less useful). Worse, there’s a 10 minute wait time after you type in your question before it gets answered. And the reps spend a lot of time waiting for people to respond, and only answer one question at a time.
The result is a traffic jam that satisfies no one.
For less money, in less time, with less software hassle, they could have used any of a number of free or nearly free systems that would be fast, pleasant and efficient. You and I could fix this system in an afternoon.
Before we jump all over AT&T, here’s the real question: what’s broken about the architecture of your customer service? What could you change that would leverage the effort you’re already putting into it?
June 20, 2007
Megan and I just got back from eBay Live. Our goal as an exhibitor was to get the 10,000 attendees talking about Squidoo. And my guess is that your goal as a trade show exhibitor is to do the same thing (no, not to talk about Squidoo, to talk about you, of course).
Here’s what we did: we printed 600 t-shirts with a long, hand-written letter on the front, explaining how Squidoo helps eBayers. And we gave the shirt away to anyone willing to wear it. The incentive? Each day, Megan picked someone who was wearing the shirt and gave that person $9,000 worth of ads on Squidoo.
Within an hour, you saw orange t-shirts on the show floor. By the second day, every single t-shirt was taken and more than 5% of all the people there were wearing the shirts.
Total cost: $3,000. (plus the ads).
This obviously doesn’t work at every trade show. You need both an audience that’s into playful promotion and a suitable and appropriate prize to reward the t-shirt wearer. Since this was self-referential (Having people build Squidoo pages about you is a lot like getting them to wear a t-shirt about you) it was easy for us to do, but it occurs to me that there are much broader applications of this technique. Hey, it even worked for radio stations all the years I was growing up. Stations used to offer a cash prize if they found your car and you had the bumper sticker. And no, the station never did pick our car…
A gimmick? Of course. But a relevant one. The spreading of the idea was not just our tactic, it was the entire point. Too often, trade show exhibits seem focused on either getting rid of the people who stop by or getting their badge scanned. What a waste. The real win is to generate true buzz… people talking about you and what you do, not about your tactics. So, a magician in your booth might be fun, but if all I talk about is the magician, you’ve wasted your money.
PS The shirts were so popular that our booth was marauded. People took our sample shirts, they even took the shirt off the mannequin we brought. If you took a shirt you can part with, drop me a line. I’ll be happy to buy it from you!
[Speaking of spreading the word, here’s an SEO related interview you might enjoy. Plus a phoner I’ll be doing soon (actually, there’s two). And here’s a summer intern-type gig you might want to mention to a stranded teenager in your house.]
Most successful organizations are driven by something. Figuring that out isn’t always easy, and is often misunderstood:
MARKET DRIVEN: Lots of people claim this one, but few achieve it. Creating what the market wants. I’ll put JetBlue in this category.
MARKETING DRIVEN: Much more common. This involves creating what the marketing department wants. Like American Express.
FASHION DRIVEN: This involves changing the market to have it want what you just made. Armani, certainly, but also an art dealer at Basel.
FOUNDER DRIVEN: Idiosyncratic activity, usually by the person who’s name is on the door. I’d put Virgin in this category.
SKU DRIVEN: More titles = more success, even if it’s not true. Publishers live this model.
SUBSCRIPTION DRIVEN: How do we transform a stranger into someone who uses what we do, all the time. Intuit, certainly.
PAYCHECK DRIVEN: This is what happened to Home Depot under Bob Nardelli.
TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN: When you launch products because you can, not because they’re particularly useful. HP did this for a while.
LITIGATION DRIVEN: Lawyers with an open checkbook to bill for letters sent and actions brought. The RIAA, or any of a thousand law firms representing estates by sending out reams of mail.
COMMUNITY DRIVEN: Making decisions based on what’s best for the community you serve. Room to Read makes my list.
TROLL DRIVEN: Growth by enragement. Engage others, say annoying things that aren’t true and bask in the attention. No examples will be given, which is the best way to deal with trolls.
MONOPOLY DRIVEN: Create a system and a standard and charge increasing tolls to travel on your roads. iTunes.
EGO DRIVEN: Just be sure you spell my name right.
REVIEW DRIVEN: Don’t worry about the public. Worry about people with a pen. Broadway certainly qualifies.
IDEA DRIVEN: This includes the Segway.
PHILANTHROPICALLY DRIVEN: Paul Newman is well into giving away a few hundred million dollars so far.
Hat tip: George Meyfarth, who told me about ‘marketing driven’ in 1983. Been waiting this long to figure out the rest…
[I forgot:
SALES DRIVEN: In which the salesforce runs the operation. Car dealers.
ASSEMBLY LINE DRIVEN: Keep the line moving, at all costs. Detroit, alas.]
June 19, 2007
Tom shares a powerful story about where buzz begins: The Messaging Times :: Blog.
