adMISSIONs

Tuning back to the future

If you can't do a wrong thing right, is it possible to do a right thing wrong? For listeners of Lonestar 92.5 in Dallas, it doesn't much matter. The station recently booted ad clusters off the station and in their place offer single advertiser sponsors. Clients get category exclusivity and two minutes per sponsored hour. Listeners get programming free of format clock restraint.

Was it poor sales that gave birth to the idea? Low ratings? Was this a hail Mary move? It doesn't matter because it's real, they're doing it authentically, and how can that be wrong? You listen and tell me.

Fakin' it ain't makin' it anymore

Cheat, cheat, never beat. Didn't we all learn that lesson long ago? Apparently, it's a lesson lost on a CBS news producer who got caught with fingers in the creative cookie jar and paid with their job.

Katie Couric's Notebook is a regular feature on the CBS Evening News where the anchor comments on a topic of her choice. Her recent commentary on the growing obsolescence of libraries, it turns out, wasn't just bad journalism--it was plagiarism. Theft. Worst of it, it wasn't even Katie's dirty work; a producer allegedly lifted the essay nearly verbatim from the Wall Street Journal.

Okay, it's bad. Very bad. It's a career-ending Imus-like blunder. But, what's worse is the greater point made in uncovering the theft: Katie Couric doesn't even write her own blog--but acts like she does. 

The only thing worse than larceny is lying. Blogging has become a trendy accessory in media circles. Some are good, most aren't. But, Katie's is not only a forged effort, but a brand-damaging one: counterfeited authenticity. How do you come back from this kind of blunder?

"Gee, we're sorry you caught us faking it and we promise not to do it again."

As SpongeBob would say, "uhhh, good luck with that." 

Transparency is at the heart of blogging: you're getting the unvarnished thoughts of the author. Either Katie's too busy or CBS doesn't have faith in her ability to pen a daily dispatch. Either way, it's a case where doing nothing would have been better for the producer, Katie and CBS News.

Location. Location. Location.

That old real estate maxim applies to the location of your ads within a cluster of ads, or pods.

For years media buyers have maintained the first position in a commercial pod is best. Now, Magna Global proves it: the first minute in a broadcast commercial network television commercial pod is  about 3 percent higher rated than the overall pod, and for cable, it was 6 percent higher.

This research break out from Nielsen's numbers gives new importance of auditing media invoices. It's not just the program, nor the block, but your place in the block.

Age compression

That's not how it was when I was a kid...

The first time those words slip out of your mouth, you realize time has slipped you into your parents' shoes. Time compression is not a phenomenon reserved for grown-ups. "The emotional and psychological distance between childhood and the teen years is far shorter than ever," reports USA TODAY.

To establish relationship, you first have to attract. To attract you have to speak a common language. Today, kids are speaking a language of age compression, or as the story calls it, "KGOY--Kids Getting Older Younger."

You can scream and stamp your foot at the injustice of kids denied the innocence of the growing years, or just realize this is how this age group is experiencing it. Once you make that leap, you will have slipped into their shoes; your first step in attraction marketing.

Buyers grow on trees

December is a busy month for retailers and the slowest time of the year for real estate.

How do you beat seasonality? Attract customers by being where they are. An Indianapolis home builder did so by marketing to homeowners at local Christmas tree farms; family, festivities, homes... Relatable. Salient.

Learn how being where customers are delivered increased visits, 3% ROI and no complaints--because it tapped genuine connection between place, people and product.

100,000,000 and counting

We should all have this kind of success. Apple sold it's 100-millionth iPod. How many did they sell because of discount sales? Did detailed ads explaining the many features and functions put them over the top?

Five-and-a-half years of iPodding demonstrates the effectiveness of attraction marketing. Teathered in our ears, iPods deliver choice in our hands; extreme intimate connection--personalized.

Choice is proof you've become transparent to consumers;  turning over the reins of control. It's actually more a case of admitting control has been taken. iPods don't come pre-loaded. They're individual expressions of their owner. (The only condition is digital rights management (DRM), a condition imposed by the music industry likely to pass into history soon.)

iPods are all about salience: choice of song without obligation to an album, choice of genres, sequence, etc. They're examples to all of us what's possible by truly understanding customer desire and helping satisfy it. Do that and they'll say thank you 100-million times.

Words matter

A bullet doesn't discriminate; it goes where it's sent and does what it was made to do. Choosing words are like loading the right bullets; choose the right ones and they'll deliver regardless of where you aim them.

Good web copy is good radio copy is good tv copy. Words are agnostic beasts, carrying their meanings without regard to placement. When you string the right ones together, the result is killer creative that punches through no matter how or where you aim it.

Testing creative to determine optimal click-through, VideoInsider reports an advertiser discovered that repurposed broadcast spots out performed web-only video by 25%. Similarly, they reported standard JPEG and GIF ads outperformed rich media placement.

It's not the media, it's the message. Messaging is everything. Delivering salient, relatable meaning  attracts attention; attention leads to action.

Supermarket Hostages

Being handcuffed to a shopping cart isn't the best way to build trust. But, that's how customers feel about so-called supermarket loyal shopper cards. That's because the premise of the cards violates a basic principal of attraction marketing.

Two-thirds of a typical supermarket's business is done by 20% of its customers, according to the Food Marketing Institute. In the years since loyalty cards first premiered in 1979, that ratio has stayed about the same. Retailers' intention of building more volume from more customers has resulted in just getting roughly the same volume from the same customers at a discount--to the retailer.

Last year the Hartman Group surveyed 989 shoppers nationwide and found that while 85% of shoppers owned at least one of these cards, about a quarter had three or more. I have four. How about you?

Reward me with special deals because I'm a loyal shopper. Sounds like a good deal. And, it would be if that's how they were executed. Instead, these cards are just another leash yanking at the customer for the self-interest of the retailer. In the good old days of Attention Marketing, that might have worked--for a while.

Knowing what I want and helping me find it forges relationship, opening the door to loyalty. What if a scan of your card upon arrival produced a guide to where things you want are located (since they seem to keep moving; another retailer self-interest trick) and maybe offer discount advisories on similar or allied products. Or, what if the card produced a report each month of purchases summarized by sodium levels, fat grams, etc. Helping means understanding; understanding happens when interests are aligned.

Attraction Marketing is about connecting, not directing. Attraction works on an emotional level where trust stands guard with its finger on the button; cross it once, and you're toast.  Loyalty is a two-way street. An authentic connection with customers built on mutual interest will attract long-term commerce. Deep discounting violates this principal; learn why after the skip.

Stronger than dirt

Cresting the peak of Mt. Madison, part of New Hampshire's Presidential Range, I discovered a timeless truth: climbing one mountain reveals  the next one. This truth applies equally to web development: mastering one technology reveals the next to be learned.

Ajax is the next mountain in web development. Remember the internet before Flash? Quicktime? Ajax promises another leap forward, delivering a more dynamic web experience. When that promise is fulfilled, what we see today will seem as clunky as your first 300 baud modem.

Just as vegetation becoming shorter and sparse indicates your ascent is nearing treeline, there are indications the days of Ajax are coming closer. Nielsen/NetRatings plans to publish a whole new metric starting with its June report: "Total time spent." This shift is tacit recognition of Page View's fading relevance in the new world of Ajax.

When Ajax loads a page, it's more like downloading an application than loading a page.  As an example, Daylife's highlights page loads once using Ajax. Since flipping pages doesn't cause another page load, traditional metrics would read this as a single page view. GoogleMaps is another example. Once loaded, you can click and drag around the map without need of a page load.

Enhanced visitor experience makes Ajax an obvious next step in your continuing journey of developing a persuasive web presence. It's also another example of a timeless truth: every summit reveals another.

Wider Web Watching

My 13 year-old son burst from boy's sizes to men's in one summer. In the blink of an eye he sprout like  prize-winning produce at the county fair. Online video consumption experienced that kind of growth spurt in the last year. The kind of video being consumed is provides a clue on how you can tap the power in this trend.

Eighty-four percent of consumers surveyed recently by Advertising.com said their viewing of online video in the last year either increased or stayed the same. The survey reported the most viewed category was news clips (49%) followed by music videos (47%) and movie trailers (33%). TV programming and user-generated video accounted for 26% and 21% respectively.

Before you can influence consumers, you have to get their attention. Attracting that attention boils down to saying something interesting to THEM. News clips were the top viewed category because we feel connected to news. Meanwhile, network television programs ported to the web only edged out user-generated video by 5%.

Get the point?

Your customers want it real and it better really relate to them. Lucky for you, getting video online is easier than ever. With a meager investment, you can establish relationship with customers face-to-face.
Yes, production values are a factor--but not the most important factor.

Good now beats perfect later.

Foundational Truths

"But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff,
became beautiful and more precious."     —John Steinbeck

If you and I are going to build a relationship, you should know where I'm coming from. We all have guiding principals, foundational truths. These are mine:

Before you can influence, you have to attract. To attract you have to offer something of genuine value to the recipient. Continued attraction is a measure of value-transfer. Value-transfer happens when your message gives the recipient something relevant, prompting them to ask:

Can I use this?
Does this seem genuine? Real?
Can I do it? Have it? Be it?

Yesses make deposits in the first bank of TRUST. Trust diminishes resistance. Influencing behavior has less to do with persuasion than overcoming an innate resistance to taking action. Action leads to conversion.

These truths are the foundation of MogerMedia's creative messaging philosophy. I don't need to work hard looking for examples of these principals at work; they pop up unprompted often enough. I focus instead on understanding application of these principles and bridging the gap between you and the consumer.