Biggest Problem Facing Digital Today

Calum Lennon (isn't that the coolest name in the world?) from Smart Business Show asked a Digital and Social marketing group in which I participate to begin a discussion by "explaining the biggest problem facing digital today in one word".  

Around the group we went

"Viral"
"ROI"
"Strategy"
"Privacy"
"Effectiveness"
"Trendy"

We were asked to explain why our words represented the challenges 

Viral - It is difficult to control how and where your communications or brand will appear and be
thought about.

ROI - Still difficult to understand true ROI and most campaigns and do it quickly enough to affect all of the outcomes

Strategy - Strategy seems to be getting thrown out because it can be measured

Privacy -  We have to understand the real concerns many people have about privacy and address them before they are legislated.

Effectiveness -  How do we know what is "effective", are we building brands or just selling products and everything is ephemeral?

Trendy -  Trendy was my word and while I general agree with much of what my colleagues said and those specific concerns. I'm mostly concerned with something more general; I'm concerned with our industry's raising Digital to it's new exalted position.  I feel that way not because I think Digital isn't an important channel but because I think it is... let me explain.

We in marketing/advertising get hypnotized by our own spin. You can't really blame us we are really good at spin but "Digital" is one of our new spin words along with "Big Data".

Remember Optimizers? Remember Cable versus Network and how nobody would watch network TV anymore? how about Econometric Modeling? 360 degree communications? Salience?  Those were the next big things and silver bullet to marketing at one point.

You can't read more than three agencies' websites without them mentioning they have "digital at their core" even if they are the most traditional agencies in the business.

Honestly I don't, and never have, understand the digital divide.  The more division the worse for everyone in our industry.

It used to be that "Digital" was pushed out of the conversation and relegated to a percentage, a very small percentage, of the media budget.

Now, it is the opposite. You can't have one conversation without everyone saying they are more "digital-focused" than the next guy and that Television is dead, et cetera and we need to add display, programmatic, search and so on and so on.

Channels have to be thought about holistically as they relate to the consumer

-- Television isn't dead. The way we receive it might be, but not the concept

-- Print isn't dead. The way we receive it might be, but not the concept

-- Radio isn't dead, The way we receive it might be, but not the concept

-- Direct isn't dead. The way we receive it might, but not the concept

-- CRM isn't dead, that way we receive it might be, but not the concept.

"Digital" is a delivery channel that's it. Yes, it is and will continue to change how we communicate. But, anyone who wants to be an asset to their clients' and their company needs has understand and master every communications channel and base their communications palette based on the consumer.

We need to get over thinking about communicating in digital channels and start thinking about how we communicate in a digital world.

It's kind of like standing in front of a machine gun and telling the guy next to you aren't going to get shot because you are wearing purple and he is wearing yellow.

You are both in front of the machine gun. The gunner doesn't care what color you are wearing. you are just in front of his gun and he is about to pull the trigger.

The biggest problem for digital today is that we call it DIGITAL.

Are Foreign News Media The Future of US News?

Nearly a year ago I was contacted not only by Crain's New York but also MediaPost to comment on the wisdom of the UK newspaper The Guardian opening an office and reporting news in the United States.  I suppose the reporters both ended up contacting me as I was an American who had worked in the UK and would know what The Guardian was and what it might mean for American news outlets.

I was asked if I thought The Guardian could survive, given that being a news owner and outlet in the US seems to be a losing proposition -- newspapers are down across the board, CNN will soon need triage and yet another makeover, MSNBC is growing, but only anemically, and even the hysterics and antics at Fox seemed to be wearing thin as their ratings have been lower in the past year.

My answer then was that it would depend on three things:  1) American's accepting an outside brand and 2) if news reporting was still valued by the Americans (which I believe there is an underserved subsegment of the population who do so check that one off)  3)  Reporting news that is local and is "American" i.e. of immediate value to US consumers.   

As if queued, The Guardian a few weeks later broke the news of the Edward Snowden leaks and secured the first interview with him.  This was a story that at one time one would have expected from NY Times or The Washington Post, but The Guardian not only broke the story but was far-and-away providing faster and better information than any other news organization

Another foreign reporting outlet Al Jazeera has done the same.  While I was skeptical of their arrival on American shores -- not because as many Americans believe that they are the mouthpiece of Al Queda or "Muslims" -- but because I was skeptical that they would report US and local news with any degree of proficiency.  I also believed that their brand name would hurt them in the US because of the association of the brand with the Middle East.

Al Jazeera has more than addressed my first skepticism.  There are prodigious news organization and they cover US news in a manner that seemed to be from a by-gone error of reporting from US news outlets, i.e. they actually have reporters where ever there is news.   As an example here are their headlines from their US reporting teams right now:

• As coal fades in West Virginia, drugs fill the void
• Rescuers comb debris in Washington:  More dead found and toll expected to increase
• Homeless in America: An in-depth special coverage
• Jimmy Carter urges continued forcefulness on Ukraine

Recently when a gas main broke and exploded in Harlem, Al Jazeera's coverage was more in-depth and succinct (AJ doesn't spend time showing the same pictures or footage with endless commentary about that one piece of content) than any of the American networks, newspapers and even New York's own 24 hour news channel NY1. 

It seems that anywhere there is news happening Al Jazeera is there, not only in the US but everywhere.  As an example, they have four journalists currently in prison in Iran for covering the elections there, they had a reporter at the March Madness games, and more recently they were the only news channel to have reporters physically on the planes that were searching for the wreckage of Flight 370.

As American news outlets have reduced their staff and turned more toward soft news and opinion or endless rounds of "experts" pontificating on and about the latest snippet of news. They have created a vacuum in the market for real factual news that is now being filled by foreign news outlets,.

So will they survive and thrive in the US?  The Guardian, yes.  

Al Jazeera? I'm not sure.   They undoubtedly have superior reporting to any television news organization and had they not been suffering under their brand name I think they would have largely changed the landscape in news media already.  Time will tell if enough people will switch the channel to make them more relevant.   Note to Al Jazeera if you are looking for help with your branding, just click "contact" on our site's header above, we already have some ideas.  :)

Whatever the case, both have the luxury of time and ability to focus on the news and not popular trends as they stand outside of the economic vice grip news outlets are in now: Al Jazeera is partially funded by the government of Qatar and The Guardian is closely held and largely funded by a trust, and as a formerly leftist newspaper, expectations of wealthy grandeur are not part of why one comes to work at The Guardian. 

The Americans have their work cut out for them.

CP, 26 March 2014

Let's Remember the Limits of Big Technology and Big Data

The always-smart Beth Comstock, the CMO of General Electric, has published an article today regarding the future of her companies business and business in general.  It can be read here.

Beth argues that the future for GE marketing and all marketing and indeed business are being reshaped by the connectivity and intellectual hiving and access to unprecedented intellectual capital and data on markets and consumers of the future.

Certainly this is the case, the very fact that this company, T Comms, can exist is via the almost instantaneous access to our disparate executives and partners and to broader best practice. While we are in agreement with everything said, it is concerning that marketeers continue to embrace the future of Technology and Big Data without, what we believe to be a healthy, skepticism.

Mathematics cannot circumscribe and predict all of human activity.  The emotional part of humans is irrational and has not and most likely will never be circumscribed by mathematics,.

We need look no further than our own somewhat recent economic history:  I

• In the 1920's brokerages let their clients borrow money to buy stocks because of course "Economists have figured the full working dynamics of the capital driven economy" and stocks would never go down. 
• In the 1980's companies were able to "leverage" purchases of other companies with high percentage bonds, based solely on the belief that capital assets would never be less than component pieces, i.e. worst-case-scenario," if we can't sell the purchased company to another leveraged buyer before the bonds are due, the purchased company can be broken up and sold-off.  
• And finally most recently, it was believed that the Algorithmists at the world's banks had figured out how to completely minimize risk by spreading it into small packages supported by what of course would be an ever-increasing real estate market. 

Every time we think we have "cornered the market" on markets, they show us that our data and math has missed something.  We would argue that is because data is by it's nature always backward looking.  Yes, having access to intellectual capital is Yes, we can model it and predict what might happen in the future and the more data points one has the better the models become.

But... humans are still unpredictable and emotional beings and don't operate on "models".  They wake up one day and decide to go a new way to work, or perhaps not go to work at all, or have just become tired of that color they have always loved.  We need be skeptical and know that marketing will always require a qualitative element.  

CP,  25 March 2014