LaughlinOutLoud

Dark thoughts started with e-mail from our executive producer in Chicago. He sent a link to a podcast called What’s Next for Advertising from National Public Radio (an ad free medium ironically).

Catching up after three days in the Chequamegon National Forest, this e-mail found me receptive to primal concerns. It was a slight adjustment from questions like, “Is that wolf poop?” to being in the right frame of mind to think about professional survival.

I just knew a show about the future of advertising had to have a Shakespearean plot to it. The final scene of Act III would end with the stage littered with bodies.

I listened and I wasn’t disappointed.

Mass media dies. The big agencies are next to go. After all, why would a consumer listen to an ad when a blogger can tell them what to buy? The podcast goes way beyond the killing of Madmen, too. It also predicts the end of mass marketing. Not even Proctor & Gamble comes out this story alive.

The argument goes that without mass media, mass-market brands can’t do the volume they require. Something about efficiencies getting lost. It’s hard to survive inefficiency. There is no known cure.

But then things get brighter. There are some Utopian speculations about how more “backyard” brands will pop-up and inherit the earth. I hear birds chirping and butterflies fluttering. As the media fragments, it gets more specialized, actually helping niche brands find niche markets.

For big brands life just gets a little more complicated. The challenge will be to partner with the media and create big audiences – more like the old days than the nowadays really.

What will remain a challenge for both large brands and small is to have ideas. They’ll need concepts around which to organize their marketing. They’ll need us.

Things aren’t as scary as they seem. Yes, it was wolf poop. Yes, my dog and I are still here.

A great tweet earlier this week from @davidwain re-focused me on just how much I take for granted.

This is insane – type in literally anything and hit return – watch what happens http://tinyurl.com/1c2 7:14 PM Aug 24th from Tweetie

And then I saw this video. Itʼs about the future of newspapers on your home computer. And itʼs absolutely surreal. There are ideas that are surprisingly right and so much that is really wrong. But it made me think. As we look out to the horizon, what inconceivable concepts (that need to be introduced with the words, “Imagine if you will…”) will we be taking for granted next?

A great Malcolm Gladwell article titled How David Beats Goliath references a study done by political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft. Toft studied 200 years of “asymmetric conflicts” on the battlefield. As a lifelong fan of the underdog, I
was curious about the numbers behind the “itʼs why they play the game” adage. It turned out David may just be the new Goliath. Three things jumped out:

Power is good, but itʼs no guarantee. Davidʼs odds werenʼt as bad as youʼd think. Of the 200 conflicts studied between 1800-2003, David won 28.5% of the time.

The times (and odds) are changing. Between 1800-49, the stronger side won 88% of the conflicts studied. That number dropped to 80% between 1850-99 and dropped (again) to 65% between 1900-49. Between 1950-99, it dropped, wait for it, to only 49%. Now, on average, the strong side possessed ten times the power – where “power” is measured in terms of armed forces and population – than their adversaries. And between the years 1950-99, they lost more than they won.

Itʼs about making your own rules. Why would you play by the rules that Goliath has already won on (see: Google)? When a David wins, it tends to do so by changing the rules. In his study, Toft found that by choosing an
unconventional strategy, the underdogʼs winning percentage went from 28.5% to 63.6%.

Whether you are a David or a Goliath, these are points worth noting.

In our ongoing pursuit of actionable insights, we track trends. Like the fact that in the last month, the 55+ crowd on Facebook increased by about 76%. That’s staggering for one month. It’s led to a tectonic shift. There are now more people over 35 on Facebook than under 24. Let’s hold on while all the college kids reading this immediately shut down their Facebook accounts. Okay, ready? Back to it.

Huge, big, cultural-shifting numbers are great. But the promise of tracking – particularly when it comes to social media – is that we can pinpoint… people.

So, headlines-be-damned, we can learn things like: There are 3,100 people in Portland, Maine who “like coffee” enough to make it a part of their Facebook profile. And that number jumps to 10,920 people for Portland, Oregon.

For a brand that understand where it’s going and how to get there, the possibilities – and opportunities – are endless.

Social media is great because it gets people talking. And talking is good. We want people to talk. We design our products and plan our events to encourage it. We make sure our website experience is pass-on-able and that our in-store experience is worthy of a recommendation. Anything to get those moms / tweens / boomers talking.

And while each of those is a valuable tool towards generating talk-value, there is a tactic that is often – surprisingly – overlooked.

A new study, co-authored by Ed Keller (who also wrote “The Influentials”) finds that 22% of word-of-mouth conversations were sparked directly by… advertising. Further, the study found an even higher proportion of online buzz – 30% – generated by ads. Important to note: those numbers may in reality be higher, as they do not account for
the indirect influence of advertising.

Of the potentially important implications to walk away with, the big one to me is this: The 22% of conversations sparked directly by advertising were “much more likely” to include brand recommendations than the remaining 78% of brand-related conversations.

So if you want to get people talking about you – in a good way – thereʼs an often overlooked tool you may want to consider. Itʼs called breakthrough advertising creative.

Statistics are good. No, statistics are great. The ability to quantify actions and reactions? Powerful stuff. Especially in the world of marketing. But as the amount of data at our disposal grows daily, understanding its context is becoming even more essential.

Our latest reminder comes from iProspect. Theyʼve been studying the relationship between display advertising and search engine marketing. Spoiler alert: When done well, they both work. But the statistic that caught my eye
was:

While 52% of consumers report actively responding to display advertising, only
31% do so by clicking on the ad itself.

Thatʼs 31%. Thirty. One. Percent.

What are the “other” actions taken? 27% reported searching for the product, brand or company using a search engine. Another 21% reported typing the web address into their browser and navigating to the site. There are many implications from this single graph. But letʼs start here.

We have often said that display advertising gets you more than click-through rates. Brand awareness, for starters. But, if these numbers are to be believed, click-through rates only tell about half the story. Or, more accurately, about a third.

Coined by Marshall McLuhan, the phrase was meant to suggest that there is a “symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.” A recent study suggest another possible meaning. Being “on air” – in paid or earned media – is a message in itself.

This morning, Emarketer, reported that 48% of Internet users who noticed a decline in ads from a bank believed the bank must be struggling. 12% believed it might not be in business much longer. Similar perceptions were identified when judging retailers – at 56% and 15%, respectively.

There is no doubt, times are tough. But doing nothing sends a message, too.

I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with the Wall Street Journal recently that focused on how employers handle employees’ personal data – contacts, pictures, music, etc. – when separation from an organization occurs.

Whether it is a matter of convenience, longer hours, travel for work or the rise of laptops in organizations, more employees are storing personal data on work computers.

As you’ll see in the article, we try very hard to be accommodating with regards to giving back personal data to employees as long as it is not sensitive information. There are checks and balances to this process but more often than not we are able to accommodate the employee so they don’t lose all their valuable information.

This policy is one of many we have in place to be an accommodating organization to our employees and I believe they recognize and appreciate those policies.

Laughlin Constable has been the proud recipient of a number of workplace awards, including: the 2008 Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility; MetroParent’s Family Friendly Workplace Award in 2006, 2007 and 2008; and numerous Best Places To Work and Beyond The Paycheck Awards 2000-2008.

We are proud of those recognitions and are constantly evaluating how we can make our organization better from a HR perspective.

I’m wondering though, are we in the minority? How do you handle your employees’ personal data?

You can read the article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124105119428271155.html

This year, more than ever, employees are asking their HR teams, “What can I do to improve my work performance?” I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re hearing this question around your office too. It appears to have replaced the “I hate performance evaluations” comments from years gone by. And it remains an important question, especially during these changing times.

Inside many companies, more and more employees are pro-actively seeking timely and meaningful feedback. They are looking for ways to improve their skill sets and level of knowledge. They are discussing their jobs, their careers and their futures with their co-workers, supervisors and HR teams.

Performance management is a topic that’s important to most of us. Kudos to all employees that come forth on their own and open the discussion! Now, more than ever, the quality of our people may determine our future. And we’re thankful the question is on the table.

If one thing is certain in this moment in history, Barack Obama won the branding battle.  When we see the now familiar new age patriotic symbol of a round blue circle enclosing an earth of red and white stripes, we immediately fill in a sense of hopefulness and change, a new political order.  Criticized for lacking specifics, Obama won the broader, more emotional war of themes.  He seemed on message all of the time forcing McCain to constantly react.  McCain’s message became of litany of don’t rather than do, of can’t rather than can, won’t rather than will.

There’s no question the financial market crisis that is unsparing in its carnage has put perhaps only one person into a better place.  Barack  Obama.  The economy has even turned Joe Biden into the “other Joe” in the campaign as Joe the Plumber has come to symbolize our rude awakening from the American Dream.  I hope this Alpha Joe has a good agent.

There’s no more powerful change agent than a bad economy, but that aside Obama’s ascension is a case study in the market dynamics of new brand versus old.  Positive versus negative.  Simple and direct versus detailed and pedantic.  Emotional versus rational.

Being new doesn’t hurt.  Many of today’s most familiar brands were unknown ten years ago.  Amazon, Prius, Yahoo, iPod, Starbucks, Ikea, Jet Blue, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Red Bull, Ultimate Fighting Championship, even Al Qaeda.  In spite of McCain’s try to make more, pardon the expression, liberal use of the word “change,” Brand Obama came to represent it.  The newer face has advantages here.  If Sarah Palin supporters are about to raise their hands in protest, let’s not ignore that new also represents risk.  That offsetting position was McCain’s advantage and biggest counterpoint.  Whatever he gained from choosing Palin as a running mate was certainly compromised in the lost opportunity to position Obama’s newness against him.

That being said, here are four things all brands should do in their message strategy, that Obama simply did better:

1. Avoid the past.   That’s where brands go to die.
2. Don’t be negative, be comparative.  There’s an art to pointing out the deficiencies in your opponent using tact rather than venom.  Think Mac versus PC here.
3. Take a position your opponent can’t.  Or, better yet out flank your opponent by taking their best position away from them.  Obama anticipated a historic weakness in the Democratic brand perception of tax and spend, so he got out in front of the issue early by offering the entire middle class a tax break.  McCain was trumped on his best issue.
4. Keep it simple.

It’s not likely that great brand strategies alone can make great presidents.  But they can make one brand win over the other.  Which can put the winner in a position to let all the other tests determine his or her greatness.