You're Good Enough For Radio

People complimenting my performance with The BeanCast will often say something like, "We'll hear you on NPR yet," or, "You'll be on radio one day."

The reason this makes me feel good is the same reason people offer it as a compliment: If you have an audio program, radio means legitimacy. I haven't necessarily thought about it in those terms, but certainly I've half-heartedly pursued getting the show on-air in the past. So obviously I agree. But now I'm wondering if maybe I shouldn't be thinking like this. Maybe I'm positioned exactly where I need to be.

Late Night Lessons

In the wake of the recent late-night battle over at NBC, I made a comment on Twitter about Conan needing to take his show online. Sure, he could take the train over to FOX, but then he faces the very risky proposition of justifying his salary against a head-to-head competition with Leno and Letterman that he is sure to lose — at least in the short term.

But online, he could be king of the hill. He could be a first-mover and thumb his nose at the network stupidity of old-school media. He doesn't even need big numbers to be a success. All he needs are backers that believe in him. And Google is the perfect partner.

The company that was ready to give Yelp half a billion dollars and is still looking for ways to make YouTube profitable might offer Conan's best chance at continued relevance. Google might be very willing to pay Conan to make his show a daily, ad-supported event on YouTube. And they have the patience to wait out the network decline. At least more patience then NBC had to establish his new Tonight Show. It sounds like the perfect strategy to me. Even Ian Schafer over at Deep Focus kind of agrees, independently arriving at a similar conclusion just yesterday.

If we really believe that digital delivery of entertainment is the future, we need to start proving it with actions.

My Online Play

So with all this floating in my head, I once again received a, "You should be on radio," compliment yesterday. And for the first time I actively thought, "No. I shouldn't."

Yes, the money is better in radio. (Which is a sad comment in itself, but we won't dwell on the compensation levels for the bottom of the entertainment industry.) Certainly the audience is significantly better in radio, because of the bottleneck radio creates for those wanting to be heard. But all this is the narrow thinking that I always rail against. Just because it works today, doesn't mean it will work forever. And first-movers in whatever the future holds will be best positioned to be dominant players in that future.

Would I take an opportunity in radio right now, today? You betcha. All promotion is good promotion and radio is still a good audience builder. But would I do it at the expense of being online with a made-for-online-only podcast? No way.

I firmly believe that online delivery of content will become the dominant media source in the next decade. It won't be egalitarian as some have predicted and there will still be network-run bottlenecks, but the playing field will be dramatically changed, with first-mover online networks ruling the roost. I want to be a part of that. And any advertiser, marketer, producer or media executive who isn't whole-heartedly embracing and promoting this, is trading away their future in the business for a comfortable lifestyle today.

So today I'm not saying, "I'm with CoCo." Instead I'm asking, "Is CoCo with me?"

The Content Path To Credibility

I was recently asked by the good folks over at MarketingProfs to offer my thoughts on the subject of leveraging a content strategy for marketing. Obviously I'm very interested in this subject, considering I've based my entire self-promotion efforts on the approach. So I was only too happy to contribute.

They took my thoughts and put together an awesome interview piece, which you can read here. But in the meantime, I thought I'd share the entirety of the email I provided them in case BeanCast listeners can benefit from these expanded thoughts.

The Dilemma of The Start-Up

One of the disadvantages any startup finds itself saddled with is lack of a track record. Sure, you can point to your past experience elsewhere or even the past experiences of your employees, but essentially you are an unknown quantity.

In starting up The Cool Beans Group, I faced this dilemma. I needed instant credibility for this fledgling marketing consultancy. I needed to establish that I knew what I was talking about. I needed to somehow distinguish the name, without having completed any projects.

Tall order, right?

A Route of Engagement

Now, I could have easily filled my website with photos of my past projects and taken full credit for these efforts created with my past agency-employers. But I hated that option. I did it with a couple projects admittedly, but I'd spent too much time being critical in the past of others who adopted the practice. Plus, I've always been of the mind that an agency's past work tells a client nothing about who they are and what they can do today. It's like reading a history book and calling it cutting edge thinking.

So I took a different route. Instead of looking at the past, I decided that my brand would always be looking at the future. That meant not resting on the laurels of past achievement, and instead filling my brand with a constant stream of new and fresh content. For me that included the start of The BeanCast, a weekly marketing podcast that brings together the smartest minds in marketing to discuss the issues facing the industry. I also started an accompanying blog that focused on best practices for marketers, created short audio clips expressing my opinions on marketing subjects, a best-of show to give people a sampling of the deeper content and even made some video clips to augment the conversations on the blog.

I also went where the marketers were hanging out. I posted on the blogs of others and on the professional magazine web sites. I became a Twitter user and started a Facebook group for the show. I participated in online forums. There's even a Wikipedia page for The BeanCast. And everything is optimized for certain relevant marketing keywords.

The Benefits

The point of all this was three-fold:

First, it established me among the experts. Notice I didn't say "made me an expert." By being seen with the experts in online debate and through my show, I establish that I am an equal with these people. I make them look good and they make me look good in return. And thus I am among the experts and share in their credibility.

Second, it provides context for clients. My content depth has now been built to such a level that there is rarely a discussion or new business pitch conversation that doesn't involve me referencing a particular show or posting. This showcases a depth of thinking and credibility that no past work could prove. It's an amazing tool that over time continues to add value to my business.

Third, it makes me better at my job. Part of credibility is living up to the promise. By constantly engaging in debate on marketing subjects in all these different venues, I avoid stagnating. I am always engaged with the latest best practices, which in turn offers obvious benefits to my clients. The value of this cannot be overstated.

I know not all businesses are alike and copying my strategy exactly won't yield the same results for every organization. But I'd be hard-pressed to name a business that couldn't benefit from a portion of the strategies I'm applying. Having your customers engage with a growing body of content is one of the surest ways to raise the perception that you are expert in your given field, as well as create a path toward ongoing loyalty and advocacy with your brand.

The Emotional Connection To Cars

Over the last year I made an important choice that had repercussions far beyond what I anticipated. It was an experience that taught me something about a product that mere involvement with that product could never have taught.

Early in 2009 my car gave up the ghost. I mean seriously gave up the ghost. As in the price to fix it was more than the blue book value and even charities wouldn't come and take it from driveway. We're talking seriously big-piece-of-garbage dead.

Thus, a choice was brought before me. I work from home and for some time Mrs. Bean and I had been debating on whether we even needed two cars. We knew it would be hard to negotiate a schedule and share rides, but the idea of buying a new car that would sit in the driveway for days on end made very little sense.

Living Carless

So we made the decision to live with one car. Good for our wallets. Good for the environment. Good as an example to others. We were practically saints in our own minds.

Really, it wasn't that hard to manage the schedule either. I didn't leave the house all that much. And when I traveled it was usually by air, so a quick trip to the airport was easy to arrange.

But over time I started becoming increasingly irritable about the situation. It wasn't that I needed the car. Sure, there were conflicts over who would get the car on certain days, but most of the time I just didn't need it. It wasn't even the discomfort of walking places in 90 degree heat or having to take my wife in to work. This was something bigger. I was beginning to feeltrapped. It wasn't that I needed to go somewhere on a whim. It was that I couldn't go somehwere on a whim.

I began to realize that I had always had a car I could call my own since I was 16 years old. It was a freedom that I couldn't put into words. Even the crappy cars I owned had a special place in my heart. Good Lord! I even wrote an Ode to a Car for a POS that I hated worse than people who abuse animals or troll dolls.

Powerful and Untapped Emotions

It strikes me now that I have NEVER seen this depth of emotional attachment for a car expressed in a car commercial. (One comes close, but we'll get to that in a second.) Certainly there have been lame attempts to communicate "freedom" and "empowerment." There have been stunts like a man licking a car handle to mark his choice at the dealer or people washing their car roof with near sexual glee. But never once have I seen the level of devotion that I feel for the act of driving seriously communicated in a car ad.

Maybe it's because guys can't communicate emotions well and men are largely tasked with writing car ads. Maybe it's because this insight is not product focused enough for an industry obsessed with leather seats and center consoles. Maybe it's too hard to put into words. Maybe there aren't enough breasts in this idea. But I think the biggest disconnect comes from the fact that few of us have ever had to live without a means of transportation, so we just don't remember how important our cars have become to our identity.

To put it another way, with most products an ad team would immerse themselves in the experience of using and understanding what they would be promoting. But with cars, they have become such a staple of life that we forget what a powerfully motivating factor "car freedom" can be.

Show A Little Understanding

Detroit remains in turmoil. GM is emerging from bankruptcy, but struggling to communicate its value. Chrysler has one foot out the door and has still not found its voice. Ford, despite its successes of late, is still tied to the fate of the others through is supply chain needs. With such uncertainty, maybe it's time to regroup and not push lifestyle (I Jeep? Please!) and feature messages (Just shut up already, Howie!) and start speaking to the heart again.

It's ironic that Ford would be leading the way on this, considering it was Henry Ford's simple message of freedom for the average man that first positioned the car to the masses. I mentioned that one campaign comes close to what I'm speaking of and their latest ads do a passingly good job of capturing the emotions I described. A car is my space, as valuable as any room in my house. And it's intrinsically tied to my identity. These ads capture a bit of the sense of identity people find in their cars, while still talking features.

But let's not stop here. Let's move the needle on emotion and tie into the need to buy a car. This isn't an option. This is a necessity. Let's see more communication of what freedom really means and a little less of insufferably beautiful people with wind in their hair. This is life or death people. After all, if you avoid buying that next car you could end up like Bob, sitting at home, bumming rides from people. And that would be a terrible fate. (Feel free to use that in your next commercial, guys. I need cash to buy a new car anyway.)

Is It The Creative Or The Promotion

Have you seen the horrors that comprise the Boost Mobile ad campaign?

People eating sandwiches off of dead people. A woman with long armpit hair. Pigs eating pork. These are some pretty darn disgusting ads that 180LA is churning out. And targeting aside (yes, we know you have to be all "edgy" for the young'uns) they do nothing to attract people to the brand. They shock. End of story.

Yet customers are flocking to the product. According to Adweek, they added 1 million new customers in 2009 and now Boost is planning their first Super Bowl spot. Oh, happy day!

Here's the rub, though. Boost offers something pretty unusual in terms of mobile plans. They have a $50 all-you-can-eat promotion going, when the other carriers charge a minimum of $99 for similar offerings. Which begs the questions: What is really driving the customer acquisition rate -- the promotion or the ads?

Obviously Boost and their agency would politically say that it's a combination of the two. But who are we fooling? There's no brand-building going on here. There's no identity management or core beliefs being communicated. They are shocking you to pay attention to an offer. It's all about the promotion.

In fact, I would suggest that if you had put the late Billy Mays up there and had him shout about the all-you-can-eat plant for 60 seconds, you would get the same results and maybe even do a little better. Hey wait! What am I saying?!? This is a Boost commercial. We should just put the real dead Billy Mays up there rotting away to stay in keeping with the theme they've created.

I want to be clear that I am not necessarily recommending this tactic of doing a direct spot with a pitchman, alive or dead. Certainly I believe it could pull better than what they're doing now and might even avoid offending people along the way. But I bring it up to highlight another example of how advertisers and their agencies often will credit their creative for what their promotion is achieving.

In this case, the creative is only used to shock people into paying attention. In my mind, while this is effective for direct marketing (think loud, shouting guy that shocks you out of complacency), it makes for a lousy brand impression. It builds nothing in terms of long-term value or over-all customer relationship. So in the end, it's a missed opportunity. They are achieving the results of their promotion at the expense of their brand value. This is a premise that's unsustainable and at some point, as their market penetration matures, they'll most likely find themselves with heavy attrition and low advocacy -- unless, of course, they're spinning webs of gold in terms of customer service.

I won't be so bold as to suggest a better course of action creatively. But I will say that wild ideas designed only to shock don't live long in a promotional vacuum. The best ideas offer a sustainable path toward growth and brand equity. And clearly neither are offered in this work.

The Painful Road

I ended 2009 with a catastrophic hard drive failure.

Literally on the morning of the last day of the second crappiest year of my life, that sight all Mac users fear appeared on my screen: 

The Question Mark Folder

. What a cap to the year, huh? It epitomized the feeling of failure that was so pervasive in the ad industry during 2009. Crash. Lose everything. Reboot. Start over. Erik Proulx even made a movie about it called Lemonade.

Which kind of brings me to the point of writing about this. Erik was on the show this week, and after discussing his movie and the new transparent turnaround effort from Domino's (along with all the hell I went through rebuilding my computer) I had an epiphany: As painful as admission and acceptance of our shortcomings can be, it's sometimes exactly the path we need to walk for a better future.

You Can't Be What You're Not

Now don't mistake all this for sentimentalism. This isn't some kind of Zen statement of balance to the universe. This is a practical truth for all marketers. When it comes to turnarounds or rebranding efforts, too many times I see examples of brands that simply ignore who they are in the eyes of their customers in an effort to create something new.

In theory, there's nothing wrong with this. WalMart was a big blue box with a happy face. Now they're a big blue box with a disclosure mark. Done and done. We all feel better with WalMart looking a little less like a cheap dime store. And yet, there's a part of me that remains reluctant to go there because their brand is so intrinsically tied to being the cheapest of the cheap. They can tell me "Save money. Live better." (a great tag that hearkens to their roots), but all I wonder is, "What do they know about living better?"

What Domino's is doing is different. As painful as it was to admit, their brand was synonymous with "pizza that tastes like cardboard." But instead of just burying the past and launching fresh with a new recipe, they embraced the truth.

Why is this great? Two reasons.

Proof That You Understand

No matter what your brand stands for, it's still your brand. And ignoring what your brand is to your market is tantamount to saying you don't understand your market. Even if that brand is rife with negatives, pretending those negatives don't exist doesn't make them go away. A large portion of your audience will always remember.

But more importantly, a change without an admission of failing doesn't really say you understand where you went wrong in the first place. How can you establish a new trajectory for operations when people aren't sure where you're coming from in the first place? No matter how right you get the turnaround, a part of your market will grudgingly hold onto the perception that you're bound to fall back into how you did things before.

Leave No Customer Behind

The other thing that can't be understated is that leading with your weakness acknowledge 

all

 of your market, rather than just focusing on the part of your market willing to believe in you. You're bringing along everyone for the ride -- naysayers and advocates alike. Certainly there will always be those who remain reticent (

our very own George Parker, for one

), but every sales person knows you acknowledge the pain before you go for the sell. It's the surest way to establish affinity and relationship, as well as position yourself as a problem solver. And we all know the best customer is one who gets a problem solved, not the ones who never had a problem or never had their problem even acknowledged.

God knows if all this will work out for Domino's in the end. For one thing, all the best strategy advice in the world can't fix bad dough or sauce tasting like ketchup. But if all the forces align and they hold to their guns, and people actually like their new product, the marketing portion of things is some solid thinking. And just like with my own hard drive fiasco, they should wind up with a more functional and nimble system of operations (and back-ups) that they should have had in place all along. It's a bitch admitting you were wrong. Kudos to them for having the guts to do it.

Making Radio Work

Since I'm starting to offer some ad space on the show, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what makes a "radio" spot work.

For those who don't know, radio is how I got my start in this business. Way back in the day, marketing podcast host and consultant, Bob Knorpp, was commission-sales, low-on-the-totem-pole sales grunt. I was a inconsequential radio sales guy, trying to scrape by enough accounts so that I could write and produce spots. It was low-budget and a terrible mess to be sure, but it was real-world experience and I loved it.

Slowly, though, I realized it was the absolute bottom of the entertainment industry (you'll hear my story about that on the upcoming outtake show), and I needed to be a producer of content, rather than a seller of it. But I never forgot my roots in radio and I've spent two decades as a closet fan of the medium. So I thought I'd share just a few of my personal insights about what makes for good radio advertising:

Offer Testing

For God's sake! Don't run a radio ad without an offer and don't assume the spot doesn't work because your offer didn't attract people. THAT'S how important offer is in radio.

Low production costs and easy insertions, make radio a great medium for testing new strategies for increasing response. So don't be afraid to test different offers on different stations or adjust an offer that doesn't work. And even if your goal is to just brand a product (like a beer ad), there's no reason not to push a person to some kind of response. Downloading an app or visiting a site will make the branding that much more effective.

Simple Call-To-Actions

Speaking of response, let's be reasonable about what we can achieve here. Asking someone to stop off at your store on main street or download your app from the 

iTunes

 store is completely reasonable. Providing instructions for reaching your obscure location or repeatedly shouting your phone number is just a waste of time.

We live in a digital/mobile age. Not only has spitting out phone numbers always been a bad practice of radio, now it's nearly irrelevant. No one wants to call you. But texting "[insert store name]" for an offer code or searching "[insert search string]" on Google are practical ways to get people to respond. And all radio stations (and podcasts, for that matter) have websites. Don't be afraid to make their site your destination and provide a link from there. But whatever you do, make it easy and memorable. That's what works best.

Live Reads Are Best...

There's a reason Paul Harvey and Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh command such high dollar figures for live read spots. It's because they work. And not just work. They kill!

Talk show hosts command a lot of respect with their audience. And when they talk about something, even when it's clearly mentioned as an ad, it becomes a personal recommendation in the minds of the audience. That's why many hosts (including myself) are choosy about what ads they accept for live reads.

Yes, they are more expensive. Yes, you have to jump through hoops to convince a host to do it sometimes. But if you can get it, go for it. It's the epitome of radio advertising at this point.

...But Only In The Right Hands

Let me point out, though, that not all live reads are worth your time. Someone like Leo Laporte on TWiT is a master of the live read, incorporating the ad into playful banter with other guests and oozing sincerity. Your average disc jockey can't pull out of the radio voice long enough to deliver these kind of results.

Choose your live readers carefully. And don't look for audience size as much as audience loyalty. You want someone who already commands respect with their listeners. Because even a small audience of loyal followers will deliver phenomenal results if there is sincerity and trust. That's why I've been recently calling radio the original social media.

Concept Spots Must Features Benefits

Now I realize that not everyone can do a live read, so when it comes to produced material make sure your ad incorporates benefits into the entertainment.

I've heard lots of funny advertisements on radio that had me rolling on the floor. And most of them I can't remember the product they were advertising — at least not in any clear way. This is because radio ads are notorious for being entertainment plays for 50 seconds and ads for the last 10 seconds.

The best ads on radio are entertainments that are created around the benefit being promoted. That's because even though you mostly have a captive audience (caught at work or in the car) it's a distracted audience performing other tasks. The entertainments will end up blending together with the rest of the entertainments, unless the memory of what was funny or interesting involved your product or service. So don't forget the basics of advertising. Go back to the brief and make sure the spot is communicating your core strategy.

Hope this little primer helps. I still love audio mediums (which should be obvious, I guess) and I'd love to see more of you benefit from the advantages this type of advertising can bring.

Permission Or Submission

Since when did a hotel stay become permission to bombard me with several emails a week?

I'm not talking hotel chain, either. Those can be over-the-top excessive in frequency as well. I'm talking about going to a specific hotel and getting drowned in spam.

I stayed one time at the Las Vegas Hilton. (They get no link in protest.) Three unimpressed days in a so-so room at the home of the Barry Manilow live show. What's more, this being the nearest hotel to the convention center, I stayed there not for its amenities, but rather for its walking distance.

I could NOT be more disconnected from this place. It was like the Shoney's of Las Vegas hotels. I did the breakfast bar, so believe me, the comparison is fair.

Further, this 2008 stay was only the second time I'd been to Vegas, the first being back in 1991. Seriously, folks. And, I've never played a single real gambling game anywhere, at any time. In my life. Not even for pennies.

And yet, in the mind of some computerized logic, my stay has made me a prime candidate for every imaginable weekend getaway, dancing-girl extravaganza and spa treatment that this fine establishment has to offer.

It just reminds me that in the email game, ease and lack of expense are not justifications for ignoring the basic like the RFM model of response marketing. Recency, Frequency and Monetary — account for when was the last time I spent money with you, how often I spent money with you and how much money I spent money with you, when segmenting your list.

This simple model has its detractors and certainly it's much more important to mail where every package sent adds additional cost, but it still matters to relevancy. Because if we are embracing a more relationship focused and social approach to our marketing, marketing out of context can be worse than ineffective. In fact by contrast, a marketing program that totally ignores who I am repeatedly serves to completely annoy me, a consumer has come to expect more, and actively sets my ire against the brand.

Who knows? An email program like this might even annoy a recipient so much, he might write a blog post specifically naming the Las Vegas Hilton and recommending that you never stay there. Ever. It could happen.

EDIT: Corrected the dates of my stays. Had erroneously listed my last stay as 1998 and my previous stay as 1981. I believe I was in junior high in 1981 and definitely not traveling to Vegas.

Ads From The Gamer's Perspective

As you know if you listen to The BeanCast, I'm a huge advocate for in-game advertising and promotions. The numbers clearly show that acceptance is high and that gamers actually appreciate relevant placements as adding realism to some game experience. But I still think we haven't scratched the surface of what's possible in the medium, instead relying on what works for films and TV shows.

From the 

commercials that ran during load screens

 for Wipeout HD, to the 

ads next to a urinal

 you use to slam a guy's head into during a torture sequence in the forthcoming Splinter Cell, we aren't so much exploring opportunities to extend brand engagement as running in-game ad vehicles. This is fine and the data shows it's effective, (there's even heat-map data) but often it leaves gamers puzzled.

Case in point, this recent post from the video game blog, Kotaku. The blogger (Stephen Totilo) has been covering in-game advertising for some time, so I respect his insights. But his comments, while accepting, highlight that there is a vast world of difference between an ads effectiveness and whether it makes sense. From his post (which I suggest every media buyer should read in its entirety for perspective):

==
Our Ubisoft man explains how the Splinter Cell team has generated heat maps to determine where players look in a level, and ensured that ad-placement locations are situated in those lines of sight — which might sound potentially irritating, but he's the one talking about making advertising in games as innovative as gameplay. And he's the one talking about selling deodorant to players as they make a bad guy tumble into a urinal.

Or was that part a joke?
==

I'm not here to say what is being offered isn't great. I'm just saying the Kotaku post makes clear that game companies are catering to the ignorance of the media buyers they are trying to impress. And that means coming up with ideas that media buyer understand, rather than pushing boundaries into even better thinking.

They're talking placements and heat maps and acceptance numbers and stuff that media guys salivate over. But in the end it's all about reducing the brand to fit the numbers, rather than finding smart and exciting integration into gameplay or experiential enhancements that create favorable impressions of the brand.

The point is, we can think of an in-game ad as an impression or we can think of it as an engagement. And clearly the only way we can move toward the latter is by taking away the confusion and making gamers like Totilo excited by the advertisers involvement, rather than perplexed by how we think this could work.

Our Reticence To Seek Perspective

David Burn wrote a piece over at AdPulp yesterday, where he featured a conversation we had earlier in the week. He was eloquent in dealing with the subject of why we are so reluctant to outwardly promote our consulting businesses in our respective mediums. I recommend you read it if you're struggling to prospect for new leads as an independent.

But for me, this also highlights a problem that all agencies and independent ad-types seem to face. We're all eager to push a client into creating the perfect balance between identity and promotion, but in our own prospecting efforts we show reticence for best practices. We either bludgeon people to death with "asks" or play it too soft. We're like the living example of that latest series of Bud Light ads.

And you know what all this reveals to me? It shows me why every business (even agencies) NEED to work with an outside consultant or agency on their marketing.

The Little, Extra Push

I know, I know — it's rather disingenuous of me, a consultant, saying that every brand should work with a consultant. But let's be realistic about doing things yourself. The best of us find self-promotion the most difficult of tasks. Even companies with so-called "internal" agencies, usually end up making those groups separate entities that pitch to their "clients."

Why?

It's just common sense. It comes down to focus and perspective. We're too close to the efforts. We're too close to the day to day of the operation of the business. So when we go to promote ourselves, we find ourselves unable to see what the customer sees. And so we endlessly debate and self-doubt direction.

The main value of a good agency or consultant relationship goes beyond the ideas and gets into energy and enthusiasm. The consultant doesn't have to deal with the warts of the day to day. They just have to deal with what "rocks" about your company. There's something to be said for that. That's one of the reasons I do The BeanCast in the first place. It's all about getting me out of the feedback loop and engaging with new perspectives that motivate me forward as a business. (I guess I just take you all along for the ride. ;)

Never Underestimate Outside Perspective

And speaking of perspective, that's another important reason to go outside the organization for marketing help.

From best practices within your industry vertical to market perceptions to just plain common sense, a good consultant or agency will help you see the true value that hides within your brand and promotions. I know this first hand on my own brand. One of the first things I did was hire 93 Octane when the show started growing in popularity. It's not because I'm not a capable marketer who can create an awesome brand identity and sell the heck out of it. It's because I know better than to drink my own bath water.

What they gave me was insight and perspective that I can't see being so close to my business. And frankly I'd hire them again to market me now if I could afford it. (Hey, this podcast thing isn't exactly a cash cow.) Because they would remind me that my site has no strong call-to-actions for my business and is not leading people effectively from the content to my consultancy.

Like I said, it happens to the best of us. We all need a little perspective.

Remember, Your "Picker" Is Broken

Finally, and probably most important, I get back to something I've talked about before. It's the fact that our collective "picker" is broken.

Picking the right promotion or creative idea is far too susceptible to subjective predilections. Think about the last promotion you picked from a line-up of creative work. Did you go back to the brief and measure the work against the strategy? A good consultant is there to make sure that happens. Because all of us are predisposed to choose the work that makes us feel the best or that we appreciate the most, regardless of whether it makes sense to our market. That's why I had that conversation with David in the first place this week. I wanted to know what I was doing wrong with prospecting. And with his perspective (and my perspective to him) we were able to ask the right questions and focus each of our efforts a little better. We were able to make better choices because we weren't locked into self-talk.

So a word to the wise to all businesses, whether corporate monoliths, big dumb agencies or small independents: Don't discount the value of a little outside help when it comes to your marketing. Because perspective is everything in this business.

Test With Your Brain

I've been on this harp recently regarding brands that have tested down to a white envelope. But I thought it might be appropriate for me to explain this a little better, since not everyone is familiar with the basics of testing in response advertising. And forgive me if this gets a little basic at first. I've just learned over time that I can't assume everyone knows how this stuff works. But it gets better. I promise.

How We Test

With any response ad we have at least one Control and at least one Test. The Control can be an ad or package, or it can be a group of people held aside who receive no marketing. But essentially they are the group that provides contrast. Their level of response or purchase represents the number that we need to beat with a Test program.

Now the Test group represents something new. It could be a new offer. It might be a new headline. It may be a different background color. But it introduces a new variable of some sort. And in a perfect world, the change introduced is isolated. Meaning, we don't test a new message, a new subject line and a new headline all in one email. After all, how do we know from a test of so many variables why the customer is actually responding better? (Or, how do we know what is suppressing response?) That's why we split the receiving audience and try to isolate their ad exposures to distinct variables, so we can add incremental improvements to the Control.

Now in evaluating the success of a change, we can look at all kinds of data, but at the core we are interested in the response number, the cost number and the sales number. Or in plain English, we want to know which effort is drawing the most measurable response and how much net profit after production/mailing/offer costs is the effort generating. Balancing these three figures tells us which effort offers the best return on our investment. That's why you don't see a lot of really cool box mailings with lots of goodies enclosed. We know that high-production values increase response astronomically, but when balanced against production costs and sales we see that the return on investment is usually far below the simpler effort.

So that's how it works in a nutshell. We introduce small changes. We we find what generates the most profits. We make the winning effort the new control. Rinse. Repeat.

Here's my problem with the system: It's so numbers-based that it can completely check common-sense at the door.

Brilliantly Stupid

On the surface it's brilliant. Whether we do simple A/B testing, like I describe above, or something more complicated, we get quantifiable marketing-by-the-numbers. You put money in. You take more money out. You can prove what works and what doesn't. Awesome!

But like any system that reduces marketing to the purely quantifiable, people push it for all its worth. And that can lead to decisions that make perfect sense to profitability, but overlook long-term consequences that can't be measured at the program level. Which brings me back to my harp on the white envelope.

Again and again we see it. We test and test and test and test, slowly eliminating variables and improving the ROI until we end up at the perfect balance of message and offer...in the cheapest form possible. We find that sweet spot where production costs are as close to zero as we can get them, the offer is as inexpensive as it can be and the response rate is acceptable enough to deliver a maximum profitability rate. And we communicate that We're the cheapest bastards you can find for the product/service you need.

When I say response is actively working against the brand, this is what I'm talking about. There's a level of success in marketing where we are actually diminishing our long-term value. And this is where it happens. Because we succeed here at the expense of our overall identity. To achieve the perfect ROI balance by-the-numbers, we almost always commoditize who we are to the customer.

Looking Beyond The Quantifiable

Over time I've come to look past the very appealing rhetoric of response marketing purists to see that the success of our program always needs to be looked at in context of our brand value.

Look at your most successful marketing program and ask yourself, "What does this say about me and my brand?" And really think about this. Because every touch point with a customer is building on an overarching mountain of impressions. How does this program fit into the mix?

When we strip away identity in an effort to bolster ROI, it becomes the classic case of borrowing against our future. We are stripping away all the lasting impact of advocacy for a cascading series of consequences. Now our CRM programs have no building blocks to work with and have to start loyalty efforts based purely on the fact we were cheapest. Now our customer experience with our brand in many cases works directly against the brand image trying to be created, since one is showcasing relationship and the other is saying only we were 1/2% less expensive. Now our future direct solicitations have no affinity to build on to increase the likelihood of acceptance, since the customer may not even remember our name.

We need to start taking a more holistic look at our marketing. Just because we reduce ROI by spending a little more on identity elements in the piece, doesn't make it money down the drain. We can't simply evaluate the effectiveness of a campaign on the numbers alone. We need to start using our heads and think about what the bigger trends are saying as well. Falling response doesn't always have to do with variable elements in the mailer. Sometimes our response is falling because we look like our competition. We've lost what makes us unique. And our uniquness is every bit as important as adding another .5 basis points in interest reduction to the offer.