GSS Blog Has Moved

The new address is http://goldsmithstrategicservices.com/blog/

The RSS Feed is:  http://goldsmithstrategicservices.com/blog/?feed=rss2

Thank you!

Memory, Age and Learning

I recently saw a really great article in More magazine.  Judy Jones interviewed John Medina, PhD, director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning at Seattle Pacific University.

To me, the most interesting part of the article was the description of the four-step learning process:

1. Encoding, where information enters the brain through the senses
2. Storage, what we do with the encoded information
3. Retrieval, being able to get information “out” when it’s needed
4. Forgetting, which is often overlooked, he says, but critical to learning:

“Human learning is primarily subtractive.  It’s controlled forgetting, learning how to forget in a smart enough way so that you can focus on what’s left in your cognitive landscape…[The brain has to figure] out what’s relevant and irrelevant, and then subtract the irrelevant…[this is] some of the most important work the human brain can do at any age.”

Medina goes on to say that as we get older, what we actually lose is our “filtering ability.”  What’s happening is that so much information is going into the brain and we can’t “turn down the noise” – so we forget why we went into a room or where we left the keys, for example.  We can retrieve information, but filtering is harder.

The findings suggest that, in our personal lives, exercise is most helpful in keeping our “filter” intact.  (Just one more reason to get that 30 minutes in three times a week!)

From a marketing perspective, I wonder how we can use this information to break-through the competitive clutter.  This is particularly critical in communication strategy, where the use of verbal and non-verbal cues, coupled with relevant associations, might create a more impactful execution.

What do you think?  If your target audience is older, how can you envision using this new finding?

Math Marketing

I recently came across the following quote from Carla Hendra, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather North America: “CMOs are under increasing pressure to deliver business results and to demonstrate the contribution that marketing makes to their organization. The days of guess work and soft metrics are over — Math Marketing is the future.”

A couple of reactions to the quote:

First, not everything is measurable. Love isn’t, apathy isn’t – just to name two.

Second, trends can’t always be predicted, and needs can’t always be anticipated, based upon what currently exists and is measureable.

I have no issue with being accountable.  But I do have an issue with fear (in the guise of accountability) killing creativity.  That would be a little like agency creatives only developing ads to beat the norms in copy testing; this has only ever produced average or slightly above average ads.  I’m convinced that the original Apple “1984″ ad would not have tested well to norms.

I would really dislike seeing CMOs turn into “CFOs in new clothes.”  I do understand the digital environment affords marketers more avenues for reaching micro-targets, and I think it and its arsenal of new tools is a wonderful thing.  My primary concern is that the more CMOs are into the numbers, the greater the risk they won’t see the complexity of the people they’re trying to reach.

Early in my career, while working at Foote, Cone & Belding, I was called to jury duty in downtown Los Angeles.  The case took several days and I got to know some of my fellow jurors.  One – I can still see him to this day – was an African American man, about 60 years of age, who very tall and thin, and had spent his working career as a highway-sign laminator (and eventually supervisor) for the state.  He had six grown children, all of whom he’d put through college; he himself hadn’t finished high school.  To this day, he remains one of the wisest men I’ve ever met.  Demographically, he was easy to categorize:  older, less-well educated, African American male.  Yet, even at 24, I knew that I had learned a life-long lesson from him:  if I’d only seen him demographically, from my ivory tower, I would have missed the richness of his life and what I could learn from him.

Ultimately, what we learn when in relationships (yes, even with customers), makes for stronger relationships.  My hope is that Math Marketing doesn’t leave the consumer too far removed from the equation.

Your thoughts?

Carbon-Negative Cement

I’m a marketing researcher.  So why this article from me?  I’m also a native Angeleno, who has lived with pollution stories all my life.  And I’m quite conscious of how much energy and other resources I use, always looking for ways to cut back further.  My only question is about why this new cement might take five years to come to market:  we can get drugs to market faster than that.  Are we doing all we can to support innovative companies such as these, particularly during these tougher economic times?

The urban jungle just got a bit greener and with nary the presence of a tree, thanks to UK-based start-up Novacem. The company has developed a “carbon-negative” cement that absorbs more greenhouse gases over its life cycle than it emits. If adopted on a wide scale, this innovation could  have a huge impact on the overall health of the environment, given that the annual production of conventional Portland cement is responsible for an estimated five percent of global CO2 emissions, more than the airline industry.

From psfk (http://tinyurl.com/lezz75) and Scientific American (http://tinyurl.com/mdwnr8)

“High Tech/High Touch” Revisited

Before Malcolm Gladwell, there was, among others, John Naisbett.  Naisbett’s Megatrends was a must read.  My favorite was the “High Tech/High Touch” trend.  His theory was that the more technology impacted our lives, the more we would strive to find balance with human interaction.  We are social creatures, after all.

High tech/high touch has been going on with humans since the advent of technology.  My view is that this is a three-step adoption/integration process.

Take the wheel.  Great new technology.  Took awhile to figure out how to use it (Mastery).  First used it for work (Utility).  When it became easier to make wheels (and more “cost effective”), someone probably thought “let’s hook up a mule and go visit some friends”  (Social Usage).

Or the pen, after paper became plentiful (costs had come down).   Mastery again came first (practice for legibility), utility came second (use for business or lessons), and social usage came third (write a letter to a friend).  High tech to high touch.

Social usage is often linked to lowered costs and a distribution system or infrastructure that’s in place.  Take the telephone.  Initially, it could only be mastered by a few as distribution was more limited.  When the infrastructure was built, bringing phones into homes, costs were still high, and usage was more local and limited – but business usage soared.  Over time, and as people moved further apart,  the telephone allowed people to “visit” without making a trip; they could do so more often and without the time and expense of a real trip.  High tech to high touch.

Name your technology and it follows this basic  mastery-utility-social usage adoption process, if the infrastructure is in place.

Video games:  learn the rules –> a fun way to spend free time –> play with others online

iPod:  learn how to use it –> build library –> share tunes with others

So social media networks are the logical manifestation of becoming comfortable with the Internet and cell phones and the other technologies of today.  We’re comfortable now, so we’re socializing them.  Facebook makes it visual.  Twitter makes it fast.

I wonder what’s next!

The Future of the TV Ad

We all know that ad spending is down this year.  A recent study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers said advertising expenditures worldwide would total $467 billion by 2013.  Sounds like a big number, but it’s actually about 2.5% lower than 2008’s $479.3 billion.  Alone, this could change the ad market.

And there’s a shift in where those ad dollars are being spent.  We’ve been hearing for a long time about the demise of the newspaper industry as people shift to getting their news from other sources.  But there’s also the shift from ads in broadcast TV to cable TV, from radio to online, etc.  The table below highlights those projected spending changes.

But for me, the biggest impact on the TV ad will come with the increased usage of DVRs.  Some facts from “Advertising in the DVR Age” by DVR Research Institute:

• 83% of marketers surveyed said that over the next three years DVRs will negatively impact the effectiveness of TV advertising
• 77% of agency executives see DVR usage as the greatest challenge to the current ad model
• DVR penetration stands at 26%, up from 17% two years ago
• Ad skipping currently is only 5-6%, but is forecast to jump to 16-18% in two years; in primetime, this may be as high as 25-33%

Things to watch for:

• More product placement in programming (Coke in American Idol, SoyJoy in The Closer)
• More cause marketing (brands, like Nike, supporting individuals and their causes, like Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong)
• Changing the length of ad pods (shorter commercial breaks, such as “Fringe will be back in 60 seconds”)
• More program-related content embedded in advertising pods (interviews with stars regarding their role in program; e.g.,  the “Inside Look” and “Behind the Scenes” segment embeds in BBC America’s Mistresses’ commercial pods)

Paradigm Shift: Trends in Market Research

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS BLOG POST HAS MOVED FROM WORDPRESS.COM TO GOLDSMITHSTRATEGICSERVICES.COM/BLOG (JULY ARCHIVE).  THANK YOU!

I’m a consumer advocate.  To advocate for them – to give them voice in the business decision-making process – I must know the best ways to learn from them.

As new techniques are developed, I can embrace them, refine them, reject them, or even create something else that will work better for my clients.  I want a large arsenal of effective tools.  And, when needed, I want to be able to combine approaches to address the client’s objectives in the best way possible.

The current trends in marketing research highlight four rather distinct quadrants in which work is conducted.  A simplified overview is shown below.

Historically, most marketing research has fallen into what I’m calling the Sociologic quadrant – participants know they’re in a test environment and they often interact with an interviewer/moderator + other participants; additionally, verbal skills often have a prominent role.

Physiologic testing has been around for years.  It measures a physical response to test stimulus, such as  eye tracking when conducting a copy test or website evaluation.

Ethnographic (or observational) research, with its roots in anthropology, has become quite popular in recent years.  In its purist form, participants don’t know they’re being observed and less emphasis is placed on verbal responses.

Discourse Analysis is the newest approach, and is currently the hottest topic in marketing circles.  These methods analyze social media, such as postings on Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs, by studying the language used.

In the coming weeks, I’ll take a closer look at each quadrant in more detail.  In the meantime, I’d enjoy hearing your initial thoughts about this concept and how it might be used to help clients understand why different methods are being recommended.

Cause Marketing and Your Brand

Last month, Brian Powell blogged in Ad Age about cause marketing.  This isn’t a field I’m familiar with, but we’ve all heard the news that charitable giving is down due to the recession and I thought there might be some interesting innovations coming from this discipline.

Brian’s main point was that “cause marketing should be ideas with business and social impact.”  He believes this discipline is so important it will eventually be fully integrated into a company’s overall marketing efforts.

Just a couple of days ago, I looked into the SocialVibe widget that’s available on many of the social networking sites, such as Facebook.  It’s simple:  pick a charity from their list, pick a sponsor (aka advertiser), place the “badge” on your social network or blog site, and earn charitable donation points.  In other words, if I can drive traffic to one of my sites, and people click on my badge, my charity gets a donation.  The catch?  Every visitor who clicks the badge sees a short ad or request by the sponsor (e.g., rate an ad, pick a baseball card, etc.).

Interactive cause marketing?  A radical new twist on the old customer brand loyalty programs?  Whatever it’s called, I like it.  People can “do good” with the assistance of brands, while brands get attentive watchers of their messages.   In this day of people skipping commercials due to DVR recordings and with print publication readership down, this is really quite inventive.

How is your brand helping customers to “do good”?

Viral Marketing: Ideas That Make Sense

I just finished listening to a webcast entitled “From Brainstorm to Firestorm:  Creating an Environment for Viral Marketing Success” hosted by SmartBrief and moderated by one of my favorites, Guy Kawasaki.

In Guy’s opening take, he stated the obvious:  you get more followers with any social media tool by being more interesting; and you’re more interesting by providing interesting links and information.  The three tools he uses are Objective Marketer (for email campaigns), TwitterFeed, and TwitterHawk.  Another tool, TweetMeme, he felt to be the single most powerful way to get followers.

Andy Sernovitz had a slightly different perspective.  He felt that allowing people to participate and share however was best for them was the key.  Rather than TweetMeme, he would go the ShareThis approach where people could “share the love” for you/your brand in whichever they wanted.

Stacey Kane of California Tortilla (voted best burrito in D.C.) said they leveraged their TacoTalk email newsletter into effective Twitter campaigns to drive store traffic.  One example:  providing a “secret password” on Twitter for a free taco in-unit; conversion rates were much higher than when the same thing was done via newsletter.

Brendan Hart with National Geographic talked about the importance of connecting with the brand.  For instance, on Twitter, they’ve invited people to solve a puzzle of Mount Everest at their website; as someone improves upon the time, NatGeo posts that result on Twitter, keeping it fun and interactive.  On their website, people can post photos they’ve taken and a couple are selected for inclusion in each issue of the print magazine.  Involvement on all fronts.

Stephanie Miller of ReturnPath summarized things this way: Use Twitter when brevity over clarity is desirable, email when content is king, and Facebook when a brand wants to be more engaging.  She gave an example of Oreo, which has 1.3 million fans on Facebook and where nothing has been posted since early March vs. Coca Cola, with 3.4 million fans, who seem to be so engaged that every few minutes one of its fans is posting something.  Do people love Coke more than Oreo?  I’m not sure.  But what’s clear is that Facebook is more important to Coke and its fans know that.  In short, she said whatever social media we use, we must commit the time and resources.

As with any form of marketing, no matter the way in which we connect with our consumers, we must be channel appropriate and engaging.

Your thoughts?

The Art of Storytelling – Part I

For a week now, many of us have been keeping up on what we now know will be the closing chapter of the Michael Jackson saga.  Like millions, I’ve kept up on the news.  One might argue that this really isn’t “news” (battles in Afghanistan, anyone?), but no one can argue about whether this is a “story.”

As humans, we’re programmed to listen to and tell stories.  Books, movies, and television (especially soap operas) all tell stories in one way or another.  Facebook and Twitter might very well be tied to the desire to tell our own stories.  The more easily we can relate to a story, the more likely we are to follow it or to become involved with it.

In marketing, we know that a sale can’t take place unless there is some connection between a consumer and the brand.  Consumers are connected to “Brand Michael” and so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that his record sales are way up.  Brands typically don’t have a story they tell to consumers, but they can (e.g., the launch of Saturn).  Companies do have stories to tell (their history) and those stories often are the foundation for corporate culture – the way employees know how to act within the story.

In marketing research and account planning, storytelling is a critical skill.  It’s the stories we tell (aka research analysis and consumer insights) about target audiences which inform new product development, operations, and advertising, to name just a few.  Our job as consumer advocates requires we tell their story, objectively and with passion, so they have a voice when decisions are being made.

More in a future post on what makes for great marketing research/account planning storytelling.

Technorati:  tgbu7q94he