Get it off your chest

The Future of Planning

When Stanley Pollitt and Stephen King created the notion of "planning" back in the 1960's, they began the journey to what is now a very discombobulated discipline.

Let's have a look at the first description of account planning - "The account planner is that member of the agency's team who is the expert, through background, training, experience, and attitudes, at working with information and getting it used - not just marketing research but all the information available to help solve a client's advertising problems." - Stanley Pollitt

In the 1990's, Jay Chiat evolved the definition of planning to add a splash of creativity and flare, yet still remaining true to the discipline.

Fast forward to 2010. This is where I face a split opinion.

Many agencies are not familiar with the discipline of planning and try to create a role to fill an unfulfilled need. This role usually includes a planning title; created with little or no knowledge of what planning actually is. This direction dilutes the discipline of planning and builds confusion both internally and with the client. We now have client planning, creative planning, research planning, just plain planning, strategist, account planning strategist and most recently, digital planning or digital strategist. I'm sure I've left out a plethora of others.

On the other hand, It's my personal belief that a good account planner can be all of the above as long as the consumer is at the core root. It's all a matter of managing expectations with the employer/employee and client. Good planners have the ability to bridge together their understanding of the consumer and how they relate to the client's brand and visa versa. Because communication channels continuously multiply, it is crucial for planners to stay ahead of how consumers are engaging with brands.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Jennifer Morozowich

Group Think is the Result of Groupthink

Group think is the nemesis of qualitative research. The more senior you go in any organization, the more dismissive of focus groups managers become because of "group think." And, indeed, watching focus groups, as I have done innumerable times, it could appear that group think is impacting the dynamic.

Of course, one manager's group think is another manager's consensus. I mention this as an aside, but it is true that when 6 people in a group like the concept, this is a sign of a great concept. When six people in a group dislike the concept, it's clearly group think. Of course, if you hate the concept, then this works the other way around. Which leads to:

Bernstein's First Law of Group Think: The intensity of group think in any focus group is indirectly proportionate to the degree that the group reflects the observers innate bias.

But, I digress.

Group think is the inevitable result of recruiting homogenous groups of people. Why are we surprised that people who are in the same targeted age group, same target education level and use the same products with the same frequency, share the same opinions about the brand, product, category, and so on. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if there is no group think, then the recruiters have done a lousy job. And, perhaps even more controversially, the reason why professional respondents (i.e. those who attend many focus groups and don't absolutely fit the criteria) are generally more interesting than actual respondents (those who do fit the criteria and have little or no experience withfocus groups) -- they are, in fact, not the same as everybody else in the room and are therefor are more likely to have different opinions!

Think of it like this:

In her brilliant (must read for all marketers) book, The Art of Choosing, Sheena Iyengar points out three aspects of personhood that help clarify this issue:
1. People are more alike than they think
2. What people believe about themselves (or what people would want other people to believe about them) does not vary much from person to person
3. Each person is convinced that he or she is unique

So, if this applies to all people, imagine how much these lack of differences are magnified in a homogenous group. Group think is not group think in the sense of people following a leader in spite of their own personal opinions. Group think is simply group agreement.

So what?

Couple of things.
1. The next time a client complains of group think, stick your finger in your ears and hum loudly
2. Don't recruit homogenous groups to focus groups. Try recruiting different people, try mixing the cohorts -- mix frequent users with terminal rejecters; mix 35 to 49 with 18 to 29; mix males with females; mix high income with low income. In any case you are better off doing two groups of mixed A and B than one group of A and one group of B
3. Read "The Art of Choosing" and get back to me .

And, for your added enjoyment, check out our new web site.

Laurence Bernstein

This Bud is a Mercenary

Oh how the world has changed and not necessarily for the best.

Labatt's has awarded its Quebec Bud Light account to Publicis just after completing an agency review last summer according to the May 17 issue of Marketing. Good for Publicis. Lousy for the agencies that pitched and won and shameful for Labatt's.

Once viewed as one of Canada's most desirable accounts to work on Labatt's has truly adopted the view that agencies are commodities to be traded like all other commodities. Its culture was more civil when it was Canadian owned. Asking agencies for spec creative during a pitch, reimbursing them a paltry $5000 and then firing them in a year is shameful. Marketing Magazine says "Complaints are understandable, given the tens of thousands agencies invest in reviews. Ont he other hand, perhaps that's the price of entry if you want to access a beer account-the most Canadian of products that can define careers with "Bud Light Institute" moments, whatever they're worth".

To clarify the Bud Light Institute was created before the Brazilians bought Labatt's. No great campaign has been created since. The advertising/marketing communications business is changing at warp speed but not all changes are for the good as demonstrated how Labatt's continues to treat it's agencies.

Tony Altilia

Why It's Still Cool To Be a Marketer

As social media continues its assault onto the mainstream audience, one of the side-effects has been the emergence of the view that marketing isn't allowed in the space. Conversations on blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and elsewhere are vocal in the opinion that marketing is dead; we choose who we buy from and whose reputation we ruin; what gets our eyeballs and what doesn't. Simply put, old school is dead; long live the King (of new media school). And, to a degree, it's correct - old school is dead. But let's not get too carried away by our new best friend social media, either.

Any time a new marketing platform comes out means that the "old school" is dead as it was; but now you use it in conjunction with the new. The view that we (as consumers) have all the power and that brands now need to listen to us is nothing new. Sure, we have a soapbox on which we can stand now that allows us to share our likes, dislikes and outright hatred of a brand, product or service, and to a worldwide audience looking for the next fix of brand assassination on YouTube. But at the same time, is this really new? Haven't we always had the power over brands? It doesn't matter how great advertising, marketing or PR messages are -if we don't like something, we vote with our wallets. This has been happening since the dawn of the first trade agreement. Just because Coca-Cola runs a great Christmas advertising campaign doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly buy Coca-Cola. I don't like the stuff, so their marketing and advertising is lost on me.

The view that social media has allowed us to force marketers to think differently isn't completely true either. Good marketers have always planned with their audience in mind - it's one of the key tenets to marketing in the first place. We don't just come up with an idea and hope it works - like a duck on water, there's a lot more going on that you can't see, while the pretty stuff on public view looks effortless.

Additionally, good marketers have always known when a message is right, if the timing is there, and reacted as a campaign has progressed, using analytics and feedback. Kind of like Twitter does now, or blog posts - the main difference is now you have instantaneous feedback to work from, as opposed to waiting on figures coming in from print or TV/radio media.

There's no doubt that social media is one of the biggest changes in the marketing (and business in general) landscape when it comes to tracking, measurement and engagement prior to, and after, the launch of a product or service. But to say that it means marketing is no longer needed is missing the boat slightly. Like any sound business, the good marketing tactics will work and the lesser ones won't. But isn't that how it's always been?

Danny Brown

Our Own Worst Enemies

My wife recently had an interesting customer experience that, although she categorized as positive, I am sure the service provider would categorize as negative. My wife was trying to redeem points from a loyalty program toward an airfare. Her first stop was online where her options would have required eight times the number of points she had anticipated. Dissuaded by what she saw, she called the loyalty contact centre. By talking to an agent she was able to obtain an upgraded ticket at one-fifth the number of points as was required by the sel-serve option presented on the internet.

My wife was delighted with the service and results that she received from the contact centre, but as a contact centre guy myself, I was haunted by the unnecessary call that was driven into the contact centre. At the core of the issue for me was the inability for two customer-touching channels to harmonize their servicing strategy. The internet, a channel used to improve customer experiences and reduce costly calls to the contact centre, had in fact driven an additional call into the contact centre.

This experience is not unique to loyalty programs or an online contact centre strategy. We see this type of unintended end result frequently caused by organizations with multiple customer touch points. When you consider all the potential ways in which you touch a customer (inbound calls, outbound calls, marketing solicitations, statements and invoices, applications, letters and so on), its easy to understand how difficult it becomes to maintain consistency within a customer touch point communication strategy.

I have seen organizations where customers question that company’s price competitiveness not because of the outside competitive market, but rather because different channels are offering different rates for the same product suite. I have seen organizations where statement inserts have not been communicated to the contact centre and thus resulted in frustrating customer experiences and lower than anticipated take-up rates. All of theses types of issues, and many more similar ones, drive both customer dissatisfaction and increased cost.

The overriding issue seems to be that the larger an organization grows, the more touch points and channels it has to communicate with customers. As the number of customer touch points grow, the control over the consistency and sharing of information internally seems to weaken.

What is missing is a customer contact guru: an individual or a team who does not own a specific customer contact channel, but rather is empowered to ensure that all information sent or accessible to a customer is appropriately disseminated within the corporate organization. A group that is tasked for identifying and eliminating conflicting information between channels. Effectively, a group that makes sure that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. Until such time that we recognize that all of our touch points with our customers need to be zealously guarded, we will continue to be our own worst enemies.

Richard Litvack, Vice President, Operations, Citi Cards Canada Inc.
& member of CMA’s Contact Centre Council

Who Won the Superbowl?

Okay, I admit it. While you're reading this during the week at some point after the SuperBowl aired and know who won, I'm sitting here writing this blog entry on SuperBowl Sunday instead of watching the big game. And while I'll be interested to hear who won (Go Saints?), I, like you, will go online tomorrow to find out who advertised and which spot was the funniest or most outlandish. And then I'll go on with my day and probably never think about those spots ever again.

However, the Superbowl is the most watched televised event of the year with some 100 Million people expected to watch. According to a recently televised report, a 30 second spot on American TV during the Superbowl will go for between $2.5 and $2.8 Million. That's about $80,000 a second!

But the larger question being asked these days, especially by a lot of young people I know, is whether that money could be better spent. Especially with everything that's going on in the world right now.

Now after years of producing some of the most memorable Superbowl ads in history, PEPSI is asking the same question and has decided not to run an ad. Instead, they're going online with "The Pepsi Refresh Project". http://www.refresheverything.com/

According to their "refresh everything" site, they're looking for people, businesses, and non-profits with ideas that will have a positive impact. "Look around your community and think about how you want to change it." Submit your ideas and vote on your favourites. Those chosen will be awarded up to $250,000 in grants in categories ranging from Health, Arts & Culture, and Food & Shelter to the Planet, Neighbourhoods and Education.

And the so-called Pepsi Generation is eating it up. This is just one example of what's going on right now. We saw the impact the internet and social media had and is having post-Haiti. This is more of the same great trend. The NetGeneration is getting involved and looking for something more fulfilling than a gratuitous 30-second spot where the money spent to buy the media could eradicate so many issues affecting Haiti, Cambodia and the Congo to name a few -- and those affecting us right here at home. Pepsi is on to something and other brands ignore the trend at their peril.

Social Media Pollution

Consider the following scenario: Your plumber approaches you after completing a repair in your home. He seems like a nice enough guy, so you give him a chance when he begins speaking to you. He asks if you’d be interested in receiving his weekly newsletter. You are confused and a little bit uncomfortable. You decide to play along, though, and ask him what the aforementioned newsletter would touch on. He responds, “Oh, various items on plumbing and how you can get the best out of it. I have different tips on how to maximize the effectiveness of your toilet-water… I also review new fixtures and pipes that are hitting the market.”

At this point, you awkwardly decline, allow him to leave, and lock the door. Why did this happen? It’s simple; there is no need for an exterior relationship between the service (our weird, hypothetical plumber) and the consumer (you). When my water pipes are busted, I require the service. Beyond that, it’s not really part of my world – and I’m okay with that. So why do so many marketers try to force the same kind of irrelevant content down the public’s throat on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook? As these sites continue to grow in popularity and international reach, uninformed marketers are latching onto their coattails and, consequently, making a fool of themselves.

When done right, many brands have been quite successful utilizing this young medium. Clothing company H&M posts photos of their new seasonal collections and other interesting materials that their close to1.5 million fans on Facebook legitimately care about. As marketers, we are obligated to understand and properly take advantage of the trends that affect our consumers. There is no doubt that social media provides an opportunity for branding. However, that opportunity isn’t open to every business out there. You must have something unique to offer the consumer - beyond a price listing or link to your website. If there is no demand for additional material, don’t provide it. You’ll just be polluting an emerging media that consumers are still interested in.

So before you hop on the social media bandwagon, please take a minute to consider if anyone wants you going along for the ride. After all, it’s already pretty crowded out there.

Brook Johnston @marketingman.ca

Surprise

Not many things surprise me after so many years in this business, but I have to admit, this did:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Since starting my own creative consultancy two years ago, I've written many websites for clients who think that key words actually matter. So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in their web search ranking. Obviously this isn't as earth-shattering as learning that cigarettes are bad for you or that Balloon Boy was a hoax, but it does raise an eyebrow given that Google hasn't exactly advertised this news. Thoughts?

The Fallacy of Return on Investment in Marketing

Return on investment in marketing cannot be measured accurately. We are fooling ourselves if we think it can. The main reason ROI in marketing is virtually impossible to measure is that most actions from marketing are not instant and many actions from marketing are caused by a cummulation of impact over a period of time.

Do you buy a Nike shoes because it is on the billboard; because you saw the ad on television; because you saw the billboard; because you like the Just Do It slogan; or because the store clerk suggested them? Was it the ad this month or last? Or was it the ad you saw when you were 12? Or is it the recommendation of a friend who had been impacted by Nike marketing?

The answer is - you probably don't know exactly why you buy the shoes at the particular time that you do. It is a combination of all these factors that make up marketing that cause the consumer to take action.Most likely the purchase was made due to a combination of factors. That is why all marketers preach multiple medias and multiple frequencies. Marketing effect happens over time.

Marketing is the battle for perception. Good marketing can create the perception needed to cause purchasers to buy. It can also create the warm feeling towards the company or product that prompts the purchase.

The only type of product that can have an instant return on investment in marketing is something that is truly commoditized.

If you are selling water and there is no perception that your water is any different than anyone else's water, then if you do a marketing campaign or a promotion or a price reduction, you can shift share from a competitor. Most manufacturers should actually be spending their marketing dollars differentiating their product. It is much easier to sell "Clean Glacier" water over "bottled city" water if Clean Glacier can sell the refreshment and health benefits of their brand. Even water is not a commodity.

The only companies that should want to commoditize their markets are ones that are truly the lowest cost to produce (not to be confused with lowest price). To sell at the lowest price without the lowest cost is a recipe for failure.

Because of the difficulty in measuring ROI, some companies will just stop marketing. This is great news for those that keep marketing. In time share will shift to those that continue to invest.

Just because ROI in marketing is impossible to measure accurately does not mean marketing has no value. Just because we desperately want to know how to measure ROI in marketing does not mean it can be done. And just because the measurement is not accurate does not mean we should not try to measure it.

Enough! Please stop! No more! I can't stand it!

There are times when there is no possibility of being constructive when writing about the absurdities inflicted on an innocent world by others in our field. There are even times when, as honest proponents of our business, we have no choice but to call it like it is. And this, Ladies and Gentlemen, is one of those times. (By the way, stop me if you've heard this one!)

I am referring to the Province of Alberta rebranding project -- the one (I am not sure whether it is for tourism or just for the sake of doing it) which has as its tag line: "Alberta. Freedom to Create. Spirit to Achieve". Normally, as those who know me would expect, I would let a slogan as completely mysterious and meaningless and nonsensical as this pass with barely a snide comment. But this isn't normally.

Seems the marketers in Alberta (or whoever is responsible for this) took the "Freedom to Create" part literally, and "created" a beach and coastline for the province in order to make a point in an ad. Yes, I kid you not. They used a scene from a beach in Northumberland as the image in an advertisement. More than just the beach, they also used the image of two English girls romping on the beach.

Not surprisingly, they were caught out in the blogosphere, and this is where the fun really starts. It turns out that the image, over which the Alberta logo and the tag line appear written large, is not meant to depict Alberta -- it is meant to be a visual depiction of Albertans' concern for the future of the world (this according to Olga Guthrie of Alberta's public affairs bureau). It is likely that the intent of the campaign may be to counter the idea that Alberta's oil sands extraction process is an economic depiction of Albertans' lack of concern for the future of the world. If that is the case, then wouldn't the fact that they could not find a pristine example of concern-for-the-world in their own backyard, rather prove the critics right?

Apparently not. The Prime Minister's head of media relations (sorry, but what the hell is the Prime Minister involved in this for?), helpfully points out that, "There's no attempt to mislead here. The picture used just fitted the mood and tone of what we (we? we?) were trying to do." Obviously, whatever Alberta is trying to do, is something they can't do, if they can't find a picture to fit the mood and tone of whatever it is, in Alberta. Whatever happened to authenticity?

The little English girls, too, were not meant to deceive -- they are meant to be British girls because (implicitly) only English girls are suitable "symbols of the future." (Olga again).

If you don't believe me, here is a link to a PDF of the article in The Guardian Weekly.

Need I say more? Have we achieved absolutely nothing in the marketing world? Has everything we've been trying to do and say really been so tediously boring that it is totally ignored? I am desolate, disappointed and going to Mexico!

A Changed Vowel that is oh so Fowl….

Have you ever had one of those moments? You know, one of those brilliant moments where you come up with a campaign for a brand that is genius? You realize that perhaps your campaign idea may be fruitless because you don’t even work with the brand but because you love what you do, you can’t help yourself. Well this time I think I have done it, I really have. And this one should fly…

iTrade Canada, (formally E*Trade Canada) launched their rebranding campaign in early March with creative print executions, a new spot and host of other initiatives. All fine and dandy, but here is my big campaign idea: I propose that they re-launch the current campaign but instead of featuring a red Scotia power ball as seen here , the new executions should feature a common but highly underutilized animal, the chicken.

Beavers have been done (RIP Frank and Gordon) and thanks to TAXI’s long legged ingenuity, Telus has used just about every animal one can think of without it getting tired, BUT to my knowledge they haven’t used chickens yet. Come on Capital C, grab those chickens before TAXI does….

So where did this fowl campaign idea come from?

In July of 2008 Scotia Bank purchased E*Trade Canada for the tidy sum of $442 million U.S. dollars, immediately making them a legitimate player within the Canadian discount brokerage business, after years of trying. No offense to the anemic Scotia Direct or Trade Freedom brand, which are also owned by Scotia, intended here but E*Trade was the crown jewel.
The key for Scotia in this transaction was not the $4.7 billion in assets under management that came with E*Trade, but rather the undisclosed number of customer accounts that made up the $4.7 billion in AUM. Within the online brokerage business, the highest value customers are your heavy traders. Those select individuals who trade upwards of 50+ times a month are worth big bucks, and they are the hardest ones to get. Although it is not known just how many high volume trading accounts Scotia picked up from E*Trade, one can certainly guess that it was enough to justify the price tag. On an important side note, $442 million dollars presumably* also bought Scotia the rights to the once ubiquitous E*Trade Canada Brand.

Now this was a good brand, possibly even a great brand, especially when compared to the rest of stodgy category. It had a fun, cheeky personality; it was the anti bank (oh the irony of a bank purchasing the anti-bank and then axing it…). E*Trade Canada was the place with attitude that knew and understood the mindset of the self directed active trader. The recent US baby campaign is a fantastic demonstration of the brand’s DNA. E*Trade is also famous for starting the great Canadian price war. Thanks to them, lucky day traders are paying south of $10 bucks per trade today at their respective brokerages. But no matter, even though the singing baby is absolutely hilarious and the price has always been right at E*Trade, it is child’s play when compared to the chicken rebranding I propose…

When the news broke of Scotia acquiring E*Trade Canada, amongst the people for whom it really mattered, active traders and clients of E*Trade, the response seemed quite clear. Keep the brand intact, keep the trading platforms intact. Keep the E*Trade we love. Evidence of this sentiment is easily found on various sites – the comments and feedback from this CBC story are quite telling. Although it is only a small cross section of opinion, it would've certainly raised a red flag for me were I Scotia.

At every step of the rebrand from E to I, the signs must have been very clear to those involved...Some logical points that would have been raised are listed below:

"Maybe rebranding E*Trade Canada, a brand with more than 11 years of Canadian presence, a rich pedigree and brand recall scores that are through the roof, may not be the best idea."

"Perhaps the rationale of amalgamating our existing splintered trading platforms with E*Trade and eventually introducing a new trading platform, primarily to E*trade clients, because they now make up the bulk of our accounts, doesn’t make sense."

"None of these clients asked for a new brand or a new trading platform, they were happy with E*Trade."

Somehow the rationale listed above was addressed adequately - it must have been in order to proceed with the rebranding. No matter I say, chickens will fix it all!

And I say chickens because key people were too afraid to take a stand behind the E*Trade Canada brand. Perhaps they were afraid of the decision maker at the very top, the one who put the gauntlet down and said, “We are changing the vowel to “I” and that is final!”

Or maybe they were afraid because after doing all of the rebranding work, it finally dawned on them. A simple vowel change does not transfer the equity from one brand to another. “How can our red power ball compete with singing exchange trading babies?” They must have asked. Of course by the time they asked the latter question, too many red balls were in motion. Eating crow and reverting back to E*Trade was not an option.

Of course the competition is happy, probably even ecstatic. If the boys at Disnat and TD Waterhouse were consulted, they would’ve agreed with Scotia’s decision to scrap E*Trade Canada. “Why eat crow?” they would’ve said, “Chicken tastes much better and none of us have to worry about the anti-bank anymore. Trust us Scotia; you are doing a good thing by not listening to your new clients…”

* Scotia continued to operate under the E*Trade brand for several months, signing up new accounts until iTrade launched in March of this year.

Go Green or Go Frizzy… Why Make a Girl Choose?

It ain’t pretty to shop in the beauty aisle these days. That is, if you’re a green consumer intent on making environmentally responsible choices. Overpackaged beauty products, such as my bottle of frizz control serum, can literally make your hair stand on end, when you evaluate all the waste going into a relatively small amount of product.

Take, for example, my bathroom staple, Pantene Pro V Hair Serum in 50 ml glass bottle, with a plastic, unrecyclable pump top, non recyclable lid, wrapped in a non recyclable PVC insert, and inserted in a cardboard box. Compare that with the reduced package for the alternative Life Brand hair mist, which contains more than twice as much product, in a lightweight recyclable container (and is cheaper to boot!)

Why oh, why Pantene, must you make me choose between my hair and my planet?
You know I’ll choose my hair every time! Who wants to live on a planet of untamed ‘fro’s?

Now some would argue that the higher prestige Pantene needs the enhanced packaging to convey its quality and justify its price tag. But suppliers of luxury goods are proving that by being creative, it is possible to strike the balance between sustainability and high perceived value.

Take Mary Kay’s Affection Fragrance sets, which use a lightweight, more sustainable cardboard box. Produced by MWV, the gift set box features a paperboard package that provides the same look as a rigid set box but costs less to produce and maximizes efficiencies in the transportation process.

See…you can get the pretty without the pollution! I’m not saying beauty products have to wear Birkenstocks. But with a little creativity and research into new packaging options, the beauty industry can capitalize on consumer willingness to go green, and still appeal to sophisticated, fashion conscious tastes.

With all that environmental goodness and none of the nasty granola aftertaste; next year’s Earth Day may yet be a good hair day after all.

Authored by Adina Zaiontz, Trade Marketing Manager, Yahoo! Canada

CRTC Crashes While Looking Through the Rearview Window

“Hulu.ca”… Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

This particular post started out as a rant. It evolved. In the process I realized that, as a media consumer, I’m a temperamental 2-year old with ADD. I have no patience. I want my content the way I want it, and I want it now.

At Christmas I received some iTunes gift cards. I figured I’d be an honest consumer and go buy some content. After surfing the Canadian Apple Store site, I felt discouraged… Where were the commercial-free “Prison Break” episodes that I’d gone looking for? And why were they readily available on the American Apple Store site, where I couldn’t get them, alongside countless hours of other commercial-free entertainment.

A quick Google search brought up numerous ways to get those same episodes, but I was feeling lazy and wasn’t in the mood to forge my mailing address or buy a fresh US-based gift card on eBay. I simply wanted to redeem my existing Canadian-bought gift cards and be entertained.

Around the same time, I found that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was surprisingly relevant in how it brings new content to market. On the Canadian Apple Store site, I could buy and download “Hockey Night in Canada” games and episodes of “MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives”.

I could also watch streaming episodes of the Canadian “Dragon’s Den” on CBC.ca for the price of watching one or two quick Rogers commercials. Seemed fair.

However, I didn’t want to pay to download any commercial-free CBC content since the publicly funded broadcaster already gets my tax dollars to send me its signal and its programs for ‘free’.

Besides, where were my “Prison Break” episodes? I had money (the gift cards); I wanted to buy. Another quick Google search reveals how to shield your I.P. to watch those same episodes but I wanted to stay away from the grey-market of 21st century media consumption. Why was it so hard?

Everyone in this industry – content producers, distributors, advertisers, and consumers – is searching for a new world order. Canada’s commercial broadcast stations are in crisis (according to recent CRTC hearings), losing money and rapidly losing touch with the consumer. It is a daunting position for them to be in, especially when advertisers go looking for ways to connect with buyers.

Advertisements are heat-seeking missiles – they go where they find audiences. Ultimately, they are channel and media agnostic. Even in a recession. The recent downturn in ad revenue is as much to do with audience fragmentation as with anything else. For many, it simply seems harder to find today’s consumers.

The majority of 21st century audiences, target markets and consumers will pay for either downloads (without ads) or they will watch ads in return for ‘free’ content (streaming online video). Apple pioneered the online subscription-based download model for music although they may have a harder time dominating online video without the benefits of first mover advantage.

The CBC gets all of this, but CTV and GlobalTV seem to only support the online streaming version of things – most akin to the traditional broadcast model. And since Peer-to-Peer sharing isn’t popular with the Canadian ISPs, these are the only aboveboard models.

Even so, the real challenge facing the industry is not whether or not Canadian content makes it out to the world (or at least, to other Canadians) or whether commercial broadcasters and cable companies continue to make buckets of cash… rather, the real challenge is whether consumers will cease to exist.

The world is full of users now, not consumers. We use the media and we create content too. User-Generated-Content splits our attention (already short, as it is) away from consumer-focused content, adverts, and general entertainment alike.

Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Universal and a member of the Hulu.com board recently commented: “Advertisers have made it clear that they want a safe environment, unpolluted by videos of cats on skateboards”. It was a blatant and defensive knock at YouTube and all UGC, neither of which inherently support traditional advertising but both of which steal mind-share from Hulu.com and NBC Universal’s mass-produced content.

Meanwhile the Canadian government, in the form of the CRTC, is still attempting to make mass media serve various mandated, national goals. Mary Vipond noted in her historical research of “The Mass Media in Canada”, that too much foreign content threatens Canadians’ identity, filling our minds with foreign attitudes and images while crowding out our attempts to speak to each other.

That old Can-Con issue seems quite dated now as more and more Canadians are indeed “speaking to each other” through social media and UGC. Doesn’t that count for something?

Were the CRTC to turn its gaze from the rearview window toward the road ahead, it would be preparing for a future of even more user-generated content and on-demand consumption. The CBC could show them the way.

(NB: My skateboard-riding cat charges ACTRA rates).

Authored by Joy Boyson, Director, New Business for Technical Marketing, The Marketing Store

Writer's Block Cured by Twitter

They say that confession is good for the soul. So I’ll admit something. I’ve had writer’s block for a while. I just couldn’t think of something interesting to write. Until Twitter helped me. I’m sure you’ve heard all about Twitter as it’s the latest and greatest social media sensation. Oprah’s on it. Ashton Kutcher is on it. Even Borat is on it.

So recently I read a terrific article in the Toronto Star (full disclosure: my employer is owned by Torstar which also owns the Toronto Star) by Ellen Grossman. She wrote about a situation where Aeroplan charged the widow of an Aeroplan member to transfer his accumulated Aeroplan points to her account as she wanted to take her grandchildren to Disney World. You read correctly. They wanted to charge the widow almost $2k to transfer her deceased husband’s Aeroplan points to her account. When the Toronto Star asked Aeroplan about it they had no comment.

I was so stunned I tweeted (posted) about the article in Twitter. The next thing I knew my tweet (post) got re-tweeted (re-posted) by at least ten other people. All of them very smart and talented people. Some of whom I’ve never met before. In fact a few of them are respected journalists for the Globe & Mail and La Presse respectively. None of my previous Twitter meanderings generated such a ‘viral’ effect. I now had something interesting to write about for my next post. And so here we are.

I’m an Aeroplan fanboy and I’ll admit it. The credit cards I use are because of it. The gas I buy at Esso is because of it. I buy Tropica orange juice because of it. I fly on Air Canada because of it. I have friends who work at Aeroplan and at agencies who represent them. A couple of years ago my wife’s Aeroplan account was de-activated because she hadn’t used it within the required amount of time and she was at risk of losing thousands of points. She missed the deadline by a matter of days so I emailed the President of Aeroplan, Rupert Duchesne, and he graciously re-instated her points without penalty. So as you can see, I’ve had a good relationship with Aeroplan over the years.

Which is why I’m torn by the article by Ellen Grossman. It really bothered me and based on the re-tweeting it bothered many others as well. I just don’t get why such a respected brand would act that way. The optics in this situation look nothing short of ridiculous from a marketing or branding perspective. As Mathew Ingram succintly tweeted “Stay classy Aeroplan – soak those widowers for all you can get.”

So is the morale of the story that spouses should tell their partners their Aeroplan account information? So in the event of an untimely demise their spouse/partner can still book reward tickets otherwise they will have to pay penalties to re-acquire Aeroplan points? (Naturally I would never do or advise such a thing as that would be a contravention of Aeroplan’s rules that members must agree to when they sign-up.)

It just doesn’t seem right Aeroplan. Even to a fanboy like me. Even if you did help me cure my writer’s block.

Lessons of a Recovering ROI-aholic

I admit it. I used to think ROI was the be all and end all of analytics. If it couldn’t be measured, it wasn’t worth doing. I brushed off measures of awareness and “eyeballs” as relatively useless terms that were thrown out to prove the success of a campaign or initiative when nothing of substance really existed beyond the printed page or website. Then, something changed - the broader marketing industry became gripped in this cycle of having to prove everything and show ROI on all marketing activities. I expected to be happy when that day arrived, but I’ve realized that we created a monster. We are starting to get crippled by ROI paralysis. You can’t measure everything – or, better said – you are limited to the extent to which you can measure some things.

Take the ascendance of Social Media. There are now huge streams of data at our disposal but none of it can easily be tied to a sale, making it really hard to measure in terms of a return. My colleagues and I have argued over how to measure this thing, how to prove an ROI. Truth is, you can’t. Get an ROI that is.

Oops...did I say that out loud?

Even beyond whether you can calculate an ROI, the first question you should ask is, do I really need to? What other measures are good enough?

Every business has to engage in advertising, marketing, promotion, public relations and sales. They are all part of the mix, but only a few can be tied directly to a sale in a meaningful way. Does that mean you should stop advertising because all you can measure is GRPs or number of views or capture awareness through a research study? Of course not - unless staying in business isn’t one of your objectives. Awareness is the first step in closing a sale, so it has to be done.

Back to Social Media. Ultimately, it is a promotional and public relations tool as well as an engagement mechanism. At the moment, there is a lot of activity that can be measured around interest, buzz and the adherence to blogs and tweets. That’s a pretty good starting point to gauge interest and awareness of whether customers and prospects are circulating in your universe.

Once they are in your universe, then you can start to do some things that can prove an ROI. Increasingly, there are companies out there that are offering capabilities to deploy offers via Twitter using a Tinyurl. Companies that created Facebook pages are targeting offers with campaign codes attached so they can start to track and measure ROI out of this environment. Now that they have prospects and customers in their sphere of influence, they are using more traditional, measurable tools to generate provable ROI.

It may be time to wean-off from the ROI Kool-aid and consider a well rounded measurement plan that incorporates elements that are appropriate to the objective. ROI can be measured on many things, but trying to apply it to everything under the sun is folly.

In the meantime, I’ve got a few extra cases of Kool-aid in my basement if anyone wants them.