Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 330

Ads Worth Spreading

People hate advertising.

How often have you heard that line? Do you believe it to be true? I don't (no shock there). I prefer to turn the phrase a little bit: people don't hate advertising... people hate bad advertising. It's a pervasive sentiment throughout the marketing world. Think about privacy: people want their privacy? If people don't want brands to know what they're doing why do they give out their personal information for a couple of coupons (is that all that it's worth?)? If people were truly concerned about their online privacy, why would they sign up for Facebook and not only post very personal pictures of them and their family, but also publish (to the world, no less) information that they would commonly label as "personal and private"?

We're an interesting species.

At this year's TED conference they announced the winners of TED's ads worth spreading contest/initiative. In looking at the many winners that were chosen by the judges, I could not help but sit back, enjoy the ads, smile and think to myself: "advertising is worth it." The big challenge comes from getting brands, media companies and the advertising agencies to elevate the industry so that we all, collectively, believe it - and, more importantly, practice it. We're struggling. We often don't really know what works and what connects when it comes to creating advertising and marketing messages, so we pander to the lowest common denominator and create an ad that simply screams... instead of an ad that will tell a story.

How did we get so lost?

Is there any data, proof or business case to validate that screaming your product in an annoying and repetitive fashion actually gets (and keeps) attention? Below, are some of the ads that touched my heart. The truth is that I'm going to remember these ads forever. The truth is that I'm either going to become a customer or think about these brands the next time that I require their products and services.

That's the point of advertising: to make a brand an idea worth spreading.

Tags:

ad

ads worth spreading

advertising

advertising agency

brand

facebook

marketing

media company

online privacy

personal information

privacy

publishing

ted

ted conference

To Be Of Service

It's not about you.

Anecdotally, I've heard many stories over the years of people who are surprised after meeting me in person. Maybe it's the moody picture at the top of top of Blog or maybe it's because I don't write (much) about my personal life, but people tend to be surprised at how friendly and helpful I am when we meet in person. Is it bad for a marketing professional to admit that they may have a personal branding issue? We tend to project our feelings on to a situation: particularly one that can't give us any immediate feedback. We read Blogs, follow people on Twitter, like them on Facebook, watch a couple of their videos on YouTube and then make our own judgment calls about them. We think we know them. We don't really know them at all. If someone has any semblance of a following, we're quick to judge that they would never have the time for us or that they have changed because of it.

It's not about you.

Every year around this time, I treat myself. I'm privileged to attend the TED conference and I take the week to not only soak in the many fascinating people (both on stage and in attendance), but I use those few days to be extremely selfish (a direct result of this is my lighter than usual Blog posting schedule). I use those days to not only listen for new ideas and to think deeply about how we're all connected (and what we can do to make our world a better place), but I also spend the time to align myself back to why I do what I do in the first place.

It's not about you.

"You can't have a strong business without a strong community." It may be gauche, but I'm quoting myself. I said this over a decade ago. Long before we had any semblance of success at Twist Image. I spent my time giving a lot of my time away to both community and industry groups with the deep belief that if we can create a strong community, creating a strong business would be the easy part. I didn't have much money or much time back then, but I still did my best to make our community a better place. I live by a very simple belief system and it can be summed up in four words: to be of service.

It's not about you.

As an owner of a marketing agency, our business model is much more simple than how it is described on many other agency websites. You can talk about your services, about the awards that you win or how brilliant you are at thinking up new things, but the job remains the same: to be of service to the client. At Twist Image we act as an extension of a brand's marketing team (in some instances, we act as the entire marketing team). We are there to serve. And while it may seem cliché, if we're not taking care of our clients, someone else will. The thing is, that when you shout this declaration of service aloud, there are individuals who don't embrace the sanctity of it. They may make incredulous asks that are self-serving and selfish, thinking that if a response isn't given, then they can cry wolf ("see, Mitch didn't give me any free advice... he's so selfish!"). Silly, isn't it? Being of service is not about turning marketing tricks for anyone and everyone that asks. When you are truly working in service of others, it is a very deep, powerful and subtle two-way street.

It's not about you.

How are you of service? I'm not being judgmental here or looking for you to fill the comment section below with your resume of community service and good deeds. I'm asking you to take some time (like I did this week) to realign how you interact with the world around you. Yes, there are times when I'm selfish, mean-spirited and a little too self-involved, but I have the humility to know when I'm acting this way (and - more often than not - I'm not all that impressed with that version of me). TED is always a highlight of the year for me. It's got little to do with the speakers and even less to do about being in a room with some very wealthy, famous and brilliant individuals, but it's got everything with do with me and a moment of selfishness that allows me to give pause, think deeply and dream about new ways to be of service to you. And, in case you were wondering, you don't need to attend TED to feel and think about this. You can get up (right now) from your computer, grab a Moleskine and your favorite pen and go to a library or museum. Look around for an hour or two and then find a quiet corner to start dreaming. Dream beyond you, your next promotion or the next quarter of business and start dreaming about what your community needs to grow and flourish (today and tomorrow). Grapple with the concepts and push yourself.

Remember, it's not about you. It's about us.

Tags:

advertising award

blog

business

business model

community

facebook

marketing

marketing agency

marketing industry

marketing professional

moleskine

personal branding

personal life

ted

ted conference

ted talks

to be of service

twist image

twitter

write

youtube

The Face Of Facebook

Is Facebook making us all the same?

We have our unique friends and interests meshed with our families, with a dash of our professional lives put in there for good measure. But, is Facebook really the place that highlights our originality? In the early days of the Internet (pre-Social Media), there was some worry that portals like Yahoo and AOL were delivering a very generic and sanitized media experience (much like broadcast television with limited and fixed choices). As publishing tools became more readily available and individuals began to harness the power of Web design, we became inundated with new, quirky and interesting types of media. This expanded further when images, audio and video became as easy to publish online as text. Social Media completely changed this direction again, enabling and empowering individuals to not only self-publish but to collaborate and share.

It's a Facebook world, and we're all just living in it.

Research Brief published the news item, Face To Face With Ubiquity, on Monday citing some fairly staggering data points about Facebook:

Facebook.com captures one in every eleven Internet visits in the US.

1 in every 5 page views occurs on Facebook.com.

The average visit time on Facebook.com is 20 minutes.

Facebook.com users are highly loyal to the website; 96% of visitors to Facebook.com were returning visitors in January 2012.

Facebook.com's largest footprint is in Canada, capturing almost 12% of all visits in that market.

There's the Internet... and there's the Facebook Internet.

This begs the question: what does Facebook look like? Based on this type of data, the answer has suddenly become staggeringly simple: Facebook is us. While individual pages may be as unique as our individual fingerprints, we must realize that this type of ubiquity is great to find common ground but very difficult to have powerful moments of serendipity. Years ago, I made the argument that we need more than our own RSS feeds for information, because if all we're doing is looking at what we like, this (probably) would make our perspectives that much more myopic. It's something important to think about: if all we're ever doing on Facebook is looking at our own profiles (and those of people we know), it could well be disconnecting us from amazing and different opportunities that are right over the horizon.

I love Facebook.

It's an amazing channel to connect and share. That being said, I'm also very leery of any one, individual, place that commands that much attention. So long as there is diversity and not homogeny, it is powerful.

Let's keep it powerful.

Tags:

aol

broadcast television

facebook

media experience

mediapost

publishing

research brief

rss

self publish

social media

web design

yahoo

It's Time To Defy Convention

How many days have you sat around, stomach twisted, waiting to hear if you had won a new piece of business that you pitched for?

It's a terrible feeling and the only thing that can alleviate it is getting the proverbial thumb's up from the prospective client. The sad truth is that it doesn't always work out in your favor. "You win some, you lose some," is the common lament you'll overhear business development professionals bellowing at the bar, while they nurse an extra dry martini. Pitching, selling and winning more business is one of the most complex pieces of the business puzzle. Why is it that some businesses seem to win every pitch, while others duke it out to only win some scraps and leftovers?

The issue of winning new business is the heart and soul of the marketing, advertising and communications industry.

As an agency owner, we duke it out weekly with our competitors for the opportunity to work with a brand and handle all of their digital marketing initiatives. It is, ultimately, a creative product that we deliver and this complicates the business development process because - as with anything creative - the reason we frequently win business (and sometimes lose) is very subjective. One client will think our pitch cleared the clouds and made cherry blossoms bloom; while another will think that we lack the basic skills necessarily to deliver on their business. No one knows these sides of the business better that Peter Coughter. For over twenty years, Coughter was President of Siddall, Matus & Coughter Inc., one of the most respected advertising and communications agencies in the Southeast. His agency won industry awards and recognition from places like the American Marketing Association, One Show, Clios, Communications Arts, and many others. Today, he is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's Brandcenter, and to support his teaching habit, he spends a lot of time on the road working with organizations - from all walks of life - helping them to learn how to sell their ideas better. Most recently, he released his first business book, The Art of the Pitch - Persuasion and Presentation Skills That Win Business (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). In The Art of the Pitch, Coughter deconstructs some of the most commonly held beliefs about how business is won, and what the book uncovers is both enlightening, entertaining and full of lessons no business leader should be without.

It's not uncommon in the advertising world to hear an agency complain that the client killed their idea.

Coughter takes this perspective and turns it on its head in his book. It's not that great ideas got killed by the client... it's that agencies killed their own great ideas by not presenting them well. "People pitching ideas think they're doing it in a way that the client wants to see it. It's simply not true," said Coughter via Skype last week. "The truth of the matter is that you have to have the guts to do it the right way... which is the way that you really and truly believe that the idea must be delivered. After five minutes of watching some of my client first present to me, I often stop them and ask if they would have enjoyed sitting through what just happened? They invariably say, 'no.' What we have to do is understand that the clients don't really know our business. They make the shoes, we make the ads. So, let's help them sell shoes by making terrific ads. We need to sell the idea of it before we sell whatever it is that we're selling. I call it framing. We need to frame the conversation so that we eliminate all of the possible solutions, until the only solution possible is ours. When a business learns how to do this, they will markedly increase their win rate."

Conventional wisdom will garner conventional results.

This is the bane of most business presentations and the presenters who give them. They don't treat the pitch as a unique moment in time to make the potential client give pause. Pushing it further, they rarely take that opportunity to help the prospect fall back in love with the business that they're in. "What I suggest is that we defy convention and try to create the exceptional," continues Coughter. "The reason we are in the room is to win the business. We're not there to sell a campaign or have people from within our organization demonstrate how intelligent they are. We observe convention and plug people into holes to fill the room and look big. There was one instance, early in my career, where we defied convention. We decided that I, alone, would present to the client. That's what we did. I did an hour and a half alone with just some videos and creative to show. I left the stage after my pitch, looked out into the seats and saw that people were crying. When you can make them cry, you win," he laughs.

The challenge is that most presentations make people cry, but for an entirely different reason (hint: boredom).

We all pitch business. We all want to win more business. Take a moment and think about your business.

Is your pitch pandering to convention or have you truly turned it into an art form and a sight to behold?

The above post is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

Montreal Gazette - Defy convention to create 'the exceptional' .

Vancouver Sun - not yet published.

Tags:

advertising

advertising agency

american marketing association

business column

business development

business leader

business presentation

clios

communications

communications agency

communications arts

creativity

digital marketing

framing

marketing

marketing agency

montreal gazette

new business

newspaper column

one show

palgrave macmillan

persuasion skills

peter coughter

pitching business

postmedia

presentation skills

siddall matus coughter inc

skype

the art of the pitch

vancouver sun

virginia commonwealth university brandcenter

The Marketing Agency Blueprint

Episode #294 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

What does it take to create and nurture a modern marketing agency in this day and age? The answer is not as obvious as it used to be. From choosing the right services to offer and finding the proper pricing structure, to being able to clearly identify your services to your clients and potential clients, it's a complex business to build and (sometimes) an even harder business offering to sell to clients. Paul Roetzer grapples with this - each and every day - as he builds his own marketing agency, PR 20/20, by trying to use a very different model. The Cleveland-based marketing professional has a deep affinity for inbound marketing and new pricing models, which he shares in his first business book, The Marketing Agency Blueprint - The handbook for building hybrid, PR, SEO, Content, Advertising, and Web firms. We dig deep into some of the tougher questions, and as you will hear, it doesn't always end with a definite answer, but with more questions and more experimentation (in the great tradition of entrepreneurship). Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #294.

Tags:

ad age

advertising

blog

blogging

cast of dads

cc chapman

chris brogan

christopher s penn

david usher

digital dads

digital marketing

facebook

facebook group

hugh mcguire

in over your head

inbound marketing

itunes

julien smith

librivox

managing the gray

marketing

marketing over coffee

media hacks

new marketing labs

online social network

paul roetzer

podcast

podcasting

pr 2020

pressbooks

social media 101

social media marketing

strategy

the marketing agency blueprint

trust agents

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #88

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Objects Come to Life With Photographer's "Bent" Sense of Humor - Wired . "Nothing grim or pithy here; just some great pictures. Digital photography is really helping us be creative at scale." (Alistair for Hugh).

iPass away - do my digital downloads die with me? - Which Conversation . "Streaming content and click-to-buy music is awfully convenient. But there's a wrinkle we should probably think about: because we're buying a license, not a tangible good, we can't pass it on to others. You can't inherit a content license (in fact, it's explicitly written that way)." (Alistair for Mitch).

Research, no motion: How the BlackBerry CEOs lost an empire - The Verge . "I picked this story in part for the brilliant title. I'm also interested by the format - a long-form web article structured with a table of contents. But the content is great too: an exhaustive look at the rise and fall of a once-dominant tech giant." (Hugh for Alistair).

Meet the Yahoo Boys: Nigeria's email scammers exposed - NewScientist . "Nigeria generates a large percentage of those email scams - you know: 'My Dearest, I am the daughter of the Vice President of the International Bank of Commerce, who has been wrongfully imprisoned, resulting in $18 million in a bank account for which I need the help of a foreign national to access it.'  Here is a look at the lives of the people behind those scam/spam emails out of Nigeria. (A sidenote: my father used to get *letters* from Nigeria offering vast sums of money for some financial help now... exactly the same as our current crop of email scams)." (Hugh for Mitch). 

Lessons I Learned Reading Over 200 Books - In Over Your Head . "While Julien Smith is a close friend (and co-host on Media Hacks ), he puts so much effort into his Blog posts in the past short while that he deserves the attention (I'll do my best to put nepotism aside here). In this post (and trust me, I'm honored that my book, Six Pixels of Separation , made the list) he looks at a personal self-development program that he has been working on for the past five years straight. He reads a book every week. Yes, 52 books a year. In this retrospective Blog post, he looks back on what he took away from each and every one of them. Not only is this list exhausting, it makes me realize that as much as I read, there is still so much more to learn. While that may scare some people or intimidate them to not even try, it actually fuels my thirst for self-education. With this link, I hope it inspires you to grab a book (or 50) from Julien's list that you may have not read. Beyond that, what does it say about us when we can't even get through a Blog post this long, but Julien spent the time to actually read each and every book. It is a (somewhat) sad indictment on our 140-character society." (Mitch for Alistair).

Who the Hell Is Bob Lefsetz? - Wired . "I spent over a decade in the music industry and I wish that when I was there, there was someone like Bob Lefsetz around. He's become an icon by simply raging against the music industry and pushing new thinking out there. He's not an industry insider. He is not a music label executive. He's not even a musician. He's a fan. That's it. A fan with an opinion. His frequently issued Lefsetz Letter is passed around like a 16-year old body surfing at an All Time Low concert. This feature looks at who he is and what, exactly, gives him the right to have an opinion that is admired by everyone in the music industry? It's an opinion that tends to piss off everyone from Gene Simmons to Kid Rock. I love this guy and I'm open to adopting him... even though I think he may be old enough to be my dad." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

all time low

bitcurrent

blackberry

bob lefsetz

complete web monitoring

digital photography

gene simmons

gigaom

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

in over your head

julien smith

kid rock

lefsetz letter

librivox

link exchange

linkbait

managing bandwidth

media hacks

music industry

new scientist

pressbooks

rim

story

the book over

the verge

wired

year one labs

8 Ways To Score That Elusive Entry Level Marketing Position

It's probably the most frequently asked question that people looking for work ask.

The ultimate truth to winning a job is not about resume, experience or how you did in the interview sessions (sorry). The true answer is that it is a very subjective process, which is why it is extremely frustrating to so many. What one recruiter sees as a star, another sees as a dud. Scoring that elusive entry level marketing position has much more to do with the chemistry in the room and how you present your facts on an 8x10 sheet of white paper - all of which can also be very subjective from one person to another. That all being said, there are a ton of ways to put yourself in the best position possible to win the gig.

8 Ways to score that elusive entry level marketing position:

Understand the process. Too many people think that gaining an entry level position is about jumping through the right hoops: sending in a resume will jump forward to an interview, which will jump forward to a second interview, which will jump you through to an offer, which will jump you through to the job. This is the wrong process to take. The process is that you have to win the job from the second your name comes across the desk of the recruiter. Every other phase is also about one line of focus: getting the job. Don't let it go to a scorecard and don't try to just check-box your way to the next stage. You have to reframe your thinking and ask yourself, how do I win that job from the second they see my name (I never said it was an easy process).

Present better. Learn how to present better. Selling yourself is never easy. There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance. There is a fine line between having an education and presenting it as experience. Learning how to present will not only be your most valuable asset when looking for a job, it is a skill set that will, literally, propel you to the c-suite. The individuals we regard as the best of the best in the marketing industry all have one trait in common: they know how to present well... and with grace. Do everything you can to improve your presentation skills.

Be ready before you submit a resume. Social Media is king here. Be it Twitter, a Blog, a Podcast or even a Facebook page, you have the ability to publish your thoughts (who you are and how you think) in text, images, audio and video, instantly and for free to the world. If you really want to be working in this industry and you have a passion for it, you have the ability to express it. Even if it's just by sharing links you find interesting, this three-dimensional perspective will provide recruiters with a better idea about your personality and your thinking. And yes, this includes who you are connected to and how you interact with them. Whether or not it's "fair play" for a recruiter to be looking at Social Media is not the point, this information is in the public domain, so shine the best light possible on yourself. And trust me, they're googling you.

Don't lie. I've heard some scary stories from recruiters. I've heard upwards of seventy percent of all resumes have either lies or large embellishments in them. Don't lie. It's not worth it. Tell the truth and let that truth come out in your resume, online presence and in that first interview (should it be granted).

Know the industry. There's no excuse to not know everything from the company, to the clients, to the management, to the competitors, to the marketplace, to the industry as a whole. It used to be that you had to subscribe (and pay big money) to get that kind of information via the industry trade publications. Now, thanks to the the Internet and Social Media the majority of this information is online and free for you to access. It's incumbent on you to know the industry inside out. It's also important to express your constant education of the industry in everything from your initial note of contact down to the interview. You are not expected to be an expert (how could you be one?), but it's a shame when people come in to meet our agency and they really don't know the landscape of the work that we do. It's even worse when they say things like, "but I'm eager to learn!" If you're eager to learn, why haven't you been learning already?

Read and write. Look, I didn't do well in school at all, but I didn't let my schooling get in the way of my education. If you don't have a passion for reading and writing, get one. Your success in life (forget the interview) is dependant on it. There are no excuses. You need to know how to construct a letter without basic spelling and grammar mistakes. Sad that I have to write that, isn't it? But it's true. You would be shocked at some of the emails and letters for work that we receive that are littered with basic mistakes. A job in marketing is all about communications, so you need to be great at that skill. Reading is also important. You may not have that much experience, but there's no reason to not be knowledgeable. Business books, self-help books and more are a great place to start. Turn off the TV, put down the video games and read. If you're not sure where to start, this may help you: Lessons I Learned Reading Over 200 Books.

Be you. For years, I spent my life trying to be the person that I thought everyone expected me to be in this industry. If anything was holding me back... it was that. This doesn't mean to be a freak (unless that's the type of position you're applying for). It does mean that you really need to spend some serious time figuring out who you are and what you represent (I'm getting a little sour on the term "personal brand," but this is what you need to be thinking about). Oscar Wilde said it best: "be you, because others are already taken."

Networking. Get out there. Go to both free and paid events. Connect to online events. Don't be slimy on LinkedIn because it's a great place to network (when done right). Don't be desperate. Go there to learn, connect and share. Don't go there looking for a job. I know it's very difficult when you're just out of school or transitioning into a new career, but network for the sake of networking. If you're not sure how to network, pick up a copy of Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. There is no better business book on how to create real, tangible and valuable relationships.

We're hiring!

In case you missed it, my agency, Twist Image, is hiring (all of the details are right here: Digital Leaders Seeking Digital Leaders). This Blog post was inspired by a comment that was left on that post by Devin Jeffrey (thanks for the inspiration!). If you think you have what it takes (or know someone who does), please share and share alike.

What other skills do you think are important to scoring that elusive entry level marketing position?

Tags:

blog

business book

communications

devin jeffrey

digital leader

education

entry level marketing job

entry level marketing position

facebook

hr

human resources

industry trade publication

job interview

keith ferrazzi

linkedin

marketing

marketing industry

marketing job

marketing position

networking

never eat alone

online networking

online presence

oscar wilde

personal brand

podcast

presentation

presentation skills

publishing

reading

recruiter

relationships

resume

self help book

selling yourself

social media

tv

twist image

twist image hiring

twitter

video game

work experience

writing

Where The Boys (And Girls) Are

In schizophrenic times, there's a good chance you'll see some schizophrenic thinking.

It takes a couple of years as a Blogger to come to the realization that you will, eventually, write a Blog post that completely contradicts what you may have blogged about earlier on in your process. Some might see that as a complete corruption of being credible, I would argue that a lot of what happens in Blogging becomes a learning experience. Some Bloggers learn and change their perspective from how the comments unfold, while others learn from gaining more practical work experience, reflecting on an issue and then doing more critical thinking on a subject. Does this remove credibility from the Blogger? Hardly. There's a reason that I'm Blogging about this theme tonight, because what I'm about to Blog about may run in complete opposition to a Blog post I published... yesterday (see: Fear And Loathing In Advertising). Yes, some thoughts and perspectives change overnight.

Mobile is small.

Yes... you are reading that right. And yes, that makes me sad to write, but it may be true. What we (and, when I write "we," I mean "me") want to have happen in this new media world and how we would like consumers to be interacting with all things digital may take some time. According to Business Insider and their chart of the day today, Microsoft's Windows Compared To iOS And Android, the number one operating system (by a massive landslide) is still Microsoft Windows... desktop edition.

What do these numbers look like (as of December 2011)?

Windows (desktop): 77.89%

Mac (desktop): 13.15%

ios: 4.91%

Android: 2.65%

Other: 1.32%

We're not all that untethered... yet.

The Business Insider Chart of the Day goes on to say: "While Windows remains dominant, it's becoming less important. Over the last six months, it lost a few percentage points to iOS... Stepping back further, six years ago it controlled 90% of the market. And there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe Windows is going to reverse the trend anytime soon."

What we know vs. what we believe.

I call this moment in time "media purgatory" - we're not quite in heaven and it's definitely not hell. The numbers are trending in the right direction, but we have to able to recognize that the new conversation and discourse should not really be about PC versus Mac. The real shift that we're going to see is from desktop versus mobile. What we know (and what I believe) is that this shift will not be slow and linear. It's going to be a fast and exponential shift (and yes, I realize that this statement flies in the face of some of the biggest research companies out there). What we learned from yesterday's Blog post is that consumers are spending much more time with their mobile than other media channels. What we didn't learn yesterday (that we're learning right now by seeing this Business Insider chart) is that desktop (both PC and Mac) make up over ninety percent when it comes to share of platforms driving traffic to websites in the U.S. Sure, these numbers may not be one hundred percent accurate (and the article even says so), but that cumulative number still tells a story.

Some raw facts.

This moment of purgatory is the exact reason why Marketers struggle. This is why they're putting more dollars into television advertising even though consumers are spending less time there. This is also why they're not putting a lot of dollars into mobile, even though consumers are spending more time there. It's this moment of purgatory... this moment of uncertainty. That all being said, the trend is not towards the desktop PC... much in the same way that the trend in media consumption is with mobile (more than other, traditional, media channels). So, Marketers are going to have to place some bets. The good news is that these bets have some data and trends that come along with them (a couple of aces up the old sleeve, to go along with that gambling analogy). Ultimately, this Blog post may not be contradicting anything I Blogged about yesterday. What we actually see beyond a "snapshot in time" of data is, still, a massive and untapped opportunity.

Who's up for some big bets?

Tags:

advertising

android

apple

blog

blog comment

blogger

blogging

business insider

comscore

credibility

critical thinking

desktop

digital marketing

digital media

google

ios

mac

marketer

marketing

media channel

media consumption

media purgatory

microsoft

mobile

mobile advertising

mobile marketing

new media

operating system

pc

platform

reserach company

television advertising

website traffic

windows

Fear And Loathing In Advertising

What a long, strange trip it's been.

There are many who think that advertising as we have known it to date is going to rapidly change in our new media world. There are days when I feel this way (and you've read about it here), but there are days when I think to myself that if advertisers get it right, the opportunity going forward is bigger, better and more opportunistic than ever before. The only way to capture that opportunity is to be ready for it. The challenge with that is that marketers are woefully bad at grabbing these new opportunities and really running with them. For an industry that is littered with creativity driven by being culturally relevant, it's (somewhat) shocking to see how long, hard and slow it is to move the proverbial needle. It's no longer even about being ready for it, consumers are fundamentally ahead of the marketers and the brands that they represent, so while it would be nice to have some advertising agencies at the bleeding edge, it would be nice to have just a few more at the leading edge to get our noses just a bit further ahead of those hyper-connected and highly untethered consumers.

So many more channels, platforms and places.

TV, radio, print and even out-of-home advertising was never an easy business, but it was very simple in its architecture. If you wanted your advertising to be seen by as many people as possible, you stuffed your messages where the people were (primetime TV, the Sunday paper, the morning drive, etc...). With just a handful of strategically placed ads, you could plaster the market, rinse and repeat. It's a model that worked for decades. Today, there are many more platforms, many more channels and many more places. Fragmentation is often a word that seems trite by description in today's marketing vernacular, but it's still a massive shock to the advertising system that has yet to be reconciled.

The proof is in the spending.

My good friend, Avinash Kaushik (best-selling business book author of Web Analytics - An Hour A Day and Web Analytics 2.0 - along with being the Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google), posted to his Google+ page a graph that was taken from a February 20th, 2012 news item on The Next Web titled, Advertisers are spending way too much on print, too little on mobile. The main frustration that he expressed (and I'll happily echo) is that there is a massive mismatch between where advertisers are spending their money and where consumers are spending their time. It's such a basic equation and yet it is completely upside down when you look at the data.

Will this shock you?

From The Next Web news item: "...money continues to be poured into traditional mediums like print, radio and TV, despite the fact that Web and mobile platforms appear to be far more engaging with highly trackable and measurable results... the most valuable demographic behind the emerging potential of mobile advertising. The study shows that men and women between the ages of 18 and 34 are predictably most desired by advertisers. More specifically, women between the ages of 25 and 34 with an income of $60-80k are the most valuable of all." In a nutshell, the people are there, the time spent is there and advertisers are still fumbling around, finger's crossed, that this is all just some bad nightmare. That the Web is a fad, that Social Media won't maintain itself as a viable channel and that mobile is simply too nascent.

It's not too late... but it's not too early.

We can debate back and forth as to whether or not digital advertising can deliver at the same level that television can. It's a debate and discourse that takes place on every channel (online or otherwise), but that's not really the big issue or the big challenge (in fact, I'd love to take part in a debate that discusses if television advertising today can deliver at the same level that television did prior to the Internet). What this news item highlights (and it's something that I've been banging the Blog drum about for close to a decade) is that the advertising money isn't moving fast enough over into the channels where consumers are spending their actual time. And, because of fragmentation, even capturing those moments in time are becoming increasingly more difficult to do. So, while it's not too late to get moving in the right direction, it's also abundantly clear that it's not too early either. The trick (as is always the case) is in doing right. And, until brands cowboy up and agencies up their game in terms of competency, it will be a game of dragging feet, finger pointing and general malaise when it comes to the marketing results of the bigger organizations. It's a tragedy that can be easily averted if (and when) brands and the agencies that serve them, wake up and realize where their consumers truly are and the types of interactions they're genuinely looking for (think marketing not advertising).

Treating Digital Marketing like a second-class and ghettoized citizen just isn't going to cut it anymore... is it?

Tags:

advertiser

advertising

advertising agency

avinash kaushik

blog

brand

business

business book

creativity

culture

data

digital advertising

digital marketing

digital marketing evangelist

google

google plus

marketer

marketing

marketing metrics

marketing results

media fragmentation

mobile

mobile advertising

new media

out of home

print

radio

social media

the next web

tv

utilitarianism marketing

web analytics 20

web analytics an hour a day

Digital Leaders Seeking Digital Leaders

Twist Image is hiring.

While I do my best to not use this space to self-promote, the Digital Marketing agency that I own (with my three other business partners), Twist Image, continues to experience explosive growth. We have offices in both Toronto and Montreal and employ over one-hundred full-time Digital Marketing professionals. We've had a great few years of record growth (with lots of great new client wins too) and this requires more people (hopefully, like you) to join our team. Because of how connected you are, I'm hopeful that either you or somebody you know may be a good fit for us. Over the decade-plus that we've been in business, we've had people join us from all walks of life... from all over the planet, so if you're considering a future in digital marketing, I hope you will consider taking a look at some of the positions we are looking to fill immediately:

We're looking for...

Art Director based in Montreal.

Art Director based in Toronto.

Senior .NET Developer based in Toronto.

Front-End Developer based in Toronto.

QA Analyst based in either Montreal or Toronto.

Strategist with media skills based in Toronto.

Project Manager based in Toronto.

Project Manager (entry level) based in Montreal.

Project Resource Manager (entry level) based in Montreal.

Account Director based in Toronto.

Account Supervisor based in Toronto.

Account Manager based in Toronto.

What we're not looking for...

We want people who love this space. We want people who are not looking for a job but rather the work that they were meant to do. Our agency touches everything from strategy and design to technology and advertising as a full-service Digital Marketing agency. We work with some of the top brands in the world, so we're looking for people who are up for the challenge and fun that comes from all of this new media thinking. Clockwatchers and people looking to keep their noses in and their hands out need not apply.

What you should know...

All of the descriptions and information is available right here: Twist Image Careers. You should also know that I have nothing to do with HR in our company at this point. So, please ask all questions and send all inquiries through the email address that is given on our careers page. I can't answer questions about experience, salary, where your resume went, etc... in the comment section here. What I can do is tell you that we're looking for talented people and should you fit the bill, trust me, our HR people will reach out to you.

We're looking for Digital Leaders... are you up for the challenge?

Tags:

brand

business

digital leader

digital marketing agency

digital marketing professional

hr

human resources

marketing job montreal

marketing job toronto

montreal

toronto

twist image

twist image careers