This Week in Strategy: I used to have a Russian friend who was a sound technician. And a Czech one too. A Czech one too.
Hi Strat Pack,
First some housekeeping. There's a 50/50 chance I'm going to take next week off from publishing. I'm burnt out and exhausted and really deserve a break. But I also have a lot of articles about burnout and working remote, and some smart thinking from HBR, McKinsey, et al. that I'd like to share with you. So we'll see how I'm feeling. Maybe I publish a full issue, maybe I do a small, 'special report', maybe I don't publish. Only time will tell!
Friends of the newsletter know I'm a big fan of space. Love it. Can't get enough of it. I was so excited when I came across this photo of the moon on Reddit: I zoomed it. It was really really cool.
Onto the important stuff...Zoom Escaper lets you sabotage your own meetings with audio problems, crying babies, and more Does anyone know if this can get adapted to other platforms? Say......Bluejeans (cough cough). Created by artist Sam Lavigne, Zoom Escaper is fantastically simple to use. All you need do is download a free bit of audio software called VB-Audio that routes your audio through the website, then change your audio input in Zoom from your microphone to VB-Audio, and play with the effects. Love it. This is exactly what I need as we enter the busy Easter/Passover season of family video calls.
Do we hate this or do we love this? Heinz Introduces Wasabioli, Hanch and Tarchup Mashup Sauces. "The sauces make it easy to enjoy the combinations without having to mix them up together and worry about the right ratio." Something I can't say I've had a problem with in the past... OK. Wassabioli looks good. I must admit that. But Hanch sounds like what you'd call sound the subway makes when the emergency brakes activate and if you asked me to describe "tarchup" without showing me the article, I'd say it was the feeling you get in your mouth after taking a shot of warm, bottom-shelf tequila from at a bar of ill-repute. But hey, I'll take wasabioli.
Before we jump in, there's been a lot of conversation this week about the surge in anti-Asian attacks. I would like to have a conversation with you, too.
These hate crimes are, I don't know how to describe it other than disgusting. And as usual, America is showing our true colors by downplaying the actual racism. I'm still floored by what that Georgia cop said about the spa shooter, seemingly justifying it by saying 'he had a bad day'. What the actual fuck. I'm not even paraphrasing. Here's the actual quote: "And he was pretty much fed up and had been, kind of, at the end of his rope. And yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did," Baker said. Could you imagine a universe where the police would say that about anything to do with a person of color? Literally a year plus of *certain people* saying these horribly offensive things like the China Flu or Kung Flu. Of course this was going to have an effect. Words have consequences.
What can we do? I honestly don't know. I don't know if anything makes it through the Fox News firewall. But we must keep calling out racism when we see it. We must be anti-racist. And if you can, consider donating to a mutual aid society or other charitable organization. Here's a handy reference guide from New York Magazine: 61 Ways to Donate in Support of Asian Communities. If you're able to donate--time, money, whatever--thank you.
OK. Let's jump in.
The one thing to read this week
1) The Lives Of Others. To Find A Way In, We Must Find The Way Out Of Our Own [Martin Weigel - Canalside View]
Guys. Guys. This article is probably a 15 minute read. It's so good. It's got citations at the bottom. It's got a chart and uses the word 'monoculture.' It's great. Here's a small excerpt to wet your whistle:
I fucking hate insight. It’s an excuse for the po-faced beard-scratching recycling of the fucking obvious. The uncritical parading of clickbait platitudes. Or the summoning of the kind of half-baked psychological insight that wouldn’t be out of place in a late night dorm room bong hit marathon. We worship at insight’s altar and in the hallowed darkened backroom of the focus group, convinced that if we can summon its holy transfixing, revelatory spirit we’ll finally access the Kingdom of Relevance. Our fervour blinds us to the more ancient and still potent magic of execution and idea. And to the essential truth that one can be relevant as hell and still be boring as fuck. Insight. Give me a break.
And yet.
“A piece of information which is both obvious, but unknown”
“A fresh observation that unlocks creativity”
“Something that you didn’t know before"
“An astonishing disclosure about real people, the brands they use or the world they live in.”
“A fresh, potent and energizing truth.”
“Something that gives you a new way of looking at a situation. And it has to be something that your brand can have a role in addressing.”
“Like a refrigerator… the moment you look into it, a light comes on”.
"A new understanding, probably of human behaviour or attitude, as a result of which action may be taken and an enterprise more efficiently conducted."
“Seeing something which is only obvious after you have seen it!”
“A fresh and thought-provoking perception (about the consumer, the category, the brand and so on) that can be applied to improve a business solution, to challenge a marketing strategy, stimulate a different communication idea.”
“Communications of great economy achieved through the use of unexpected associations between contrasting or disparate words or ideas.”
Etc.
Round and round we go. Oh how we like to talk about what an insight is. And is not. Round and round and round.
When I compare my strategic thinking and output with these definitions and demands I can only conclude that I have consistently failed to deliver as a planner. Never mind that there seem to be rather more definitions of what an insight is than there are compelling real-world examples that delivered real economic value for a client organisation.
2) Marco Bertozzi: Digital advertising – should we return to simpler days? [New Digital Age]
[ED Note: I started in digital advertising right at the tail end of the world Marco's describing. It's interesting to look back on it. I think that programmatic display is rife with fraud. There's so much money to be made, how could it not be. And years of research shows that targeting and retargeting isn't all it's cracked up to be. We've drank our own kool-ade of digital effectiveness. Time for a reset.]
This latest Google news has really got the advertising community talking. There are a plethora of articles that paint a very dark picture of where the death of third-party cookies on the Google landscape will take us. There is a lot of money at stake and it’s serious topic for many, but for now, I want to reminisce a little.
I started working in digital in 2000. I worked alongside some wonderful people Martin Kelly, Andy Cocker, Damian Burns, Damian Blackden, many have gone on to amazing careers in advertising. We worked for Zenith Interactive Solutions (you can tell its old with Interactive in the title).
If you worked in digital back then you will know that actually the digital landscape was very close to print advertising. We used to pull together schedules based on target audiences that would reflect what we thought the audience would enjoy. If you wanted to reach a 35+ ABC1 man then roll out the golf websites, automotive websites, maybe some finance one and we tried to squeeze in gardening as it was also one of our clients (Greenfingers.com).
Our KPIs were clicks and click throughs, the schedules ran into double pages, sometimes 40/50 lines deep. At the start there was no third-party tracking. We did not have audience segments, retargeting was rare, even the scourge of the internet, ad networks had not taken off.
For the younger readers there was also no Google, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Twitter, or TikTok and algorithms were still a NASA-based concept. No, back then we did one very simple thing, we worked out what our target audiences liked and consumed and we put ads in front of them. When we wanted scale we had a Yahoo home page takeover, that was as crazy as it got!
Trouble was, print was not cool, and there were so many sites that we found it all a little inefficient and so we started down the road of tracking, adserving and ad networks to make things a little easier. The rest as they say is history, digital advertising was born and we have been on a 20-year journey of excitement about data and adtech to get us to become the dominant advertising channel and deliver a brave new world.
Or have we?
When you look back, when you really ask yourself now whether things were better or worse, it is hard to say. Yes, that sounds like some old bloke reminiscing and I am, perhaps stretching things, but is everyone happy with what we have?
Can we all hand on heart say that the terrible targeting around the web, the uncomfortable arrival in your feeds of things you had spoken about days before, the repetitive ads for the same product for weeks, one perhaps you had already bought, can we really say things are better?
Still today you are hard pushed to find loads of data proving that audience segments really outperform their cost, indeed the most common discussion is that data segments don’t pay back for performance. I think there is a reason for that, they are just not that good. They are built out of shonky data with little transparency and the tough situation we face now is that a few giant companies have the good data, they are the biggest and they dominate.
But maybe we were on to something back in the day. When Damian Burns walked in each morning with his massive coffee, when Simon Halstead took a bite into his bacon sandwich and Andy Cocker took out his calculator to negotiate his next deal, we all had one goal.
How to reach audiences so that advertisers could place ads in front of them based on context and content.
We wanted to show products and services to the right people and publishers were where we went. Even the portals were all about channels – Auto, Finance etc.
Perhaps we have an opportunity to reset and start to think about how we support publishers and quality content and start to spend where audiences are because they are properly engaging with content, not because they just liked their cousin’s photo.
Advertisers need to prioritise quality over quantity so let’s use the death of the cookie as a chance to return to a simpler mission, one less driven by adtech making money and more for publishers to make money.
3) 3 Marketing Cliches (and What Old-School Sales Letters Teach You About Modern Marketing) [Gunning Marketing]
I came across this article from 2016, and I think it's very interesting. Marketers work in a bubble. We know that. But it's nice to be reminded of that every once in a while. Get back to fundamentals, etc…
It’s become a modern cliche – our attention spans are so short that there’s no point writing anything more than 500 words.
(It’s not true, by the way. Research from Medium found that 7-minute posts capture the most reading time, on average. Buffer puts the ideal word count at 1,600.)
And here’s another modern cliche – direct mail is dead in the age of digital marketing.
(Also not true. A direct mail specialist I worked with put it nicely – it’s the only channel that forces you to engage for more than a couple seconds, because you have to pick it up and walk from the door to the bin.)
Finally, here’s modern cliche number 3. We have such high expectations of marketing, that everything needs to look super polished and highly designed.
(You guessed it – also not true. A/B email testing has repeatedly shown that plain text outperforms image-laden HTML – here’s a test from HubSpot as an example. Even historical greats like David Ogilvy and Drayton Bird had similar results.)
This sales letter landed on my doorstep last week, and it’s a perfect case in point.
This letter successfully ignores all 3 of those marketing cliches.
The font is courier, the bane of graphic designers but proven consistently to outperform other fonts. It’s 2 pages long, taking the time to say what it needs to say to get the sales message across. It doesn’t waste space with the words ‘Order Form’ – it ticks the box for you so the decision feels partially made already.
And there are classic copywriting techniques at work:
It flatters the reader
I have a confession – I don’t collect coins. But even so, I’m chuffed to be selected. Rationally, I know this mailing went to everyone on my street, but I feel special because the Product Allocation Department has authorised me to receive the offer.
(Note: The major failing? There’s no address or salutation, and this lets down the copy. How can they have selected me specially if they have no idea who I am?)
It uses storytelling
Storytelling is one of 2016’s marketing buzzwords, but the fact remains that humans are psychologically programmed to respond to stories. p2 starts with the story of the Royal Wedding, and makes me remember where I was on that bonus Bank Holiday.
It uses scarcity to inspire action
Only very limited quantities are available. This strike is almost sold out. I only have 10 days to claim mine or the set allocated to me will automatically go to someone on the B list.
I feel like I’m getting a deal
Not only is this limited edition collector’s item available at an immense discount (£39.55 off), but I get a bonus free watch!
This letter looks like an anachronism to people with 21st century marketing goggles on. But I’d bet a William & Kate commemorative strike (and bonus watch) that it delivered a return on investment to make most ‘modern’ marketers green with envy.
4) Department of Great Work
New ad The Hiring Chain shows the wider benefits of inclusive hiring [Creative Review] Released ahead of World Down Syndrome Day, and set to a soundtrack by Sting, the ad shows how inclusive hiring can set off a chain of new opportunities. The film aims to raise awareness of the barriers and prejudices that people with Down syndrome can face in the workplace, which include a lack of opportunities, low expectations, and stereotypical attitudes. It also demonstrates the positive impact that overcoming these misconceptions can have on the individual employees as well as the wider companies and community. It's really really nice. From NYC-based agency Small for CoorDown
Intel hires Justin Long to mock Macs in throwback to 2000s “I’m a Mac” ads [Ars Technica] I waffled for a while on whether I wanted to include this. Here's my take. It's a great PR move. Got a lot of headlines, was trending on Twitter. Redolent of Sprint repurposing the Paul the Verizon guy. But IMO the spots themselves waste Justin Long. To paraphrase the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, the spots were not great, not terrible.. And here's the other thing, yeah Sprint got Paul to do their ads. But we still call him The Verizon Guy.
Small Dogs Are 'Hero-Ish' in Comic Campaign From Pedigree [Muse by Clio] Pedigree celebrates the indomitable spirit of small dogs in "Hero-Ish," fresh work from BBDO New York that features furry Instagram influencers Coco and Cici the Maltese, Bertie the Pomeranian, Maya the Mini Dachshund and Ducky the Yorkie. "Anyone who has met a small dog knows that their personalities are not proportionate to their size," says Craig Neely, vp of marketing at Pedigree parent Mars Petcare. "Whether they think they're rescuing their human from the 'evil' mailman or hypnotizing them with their puppy-dog eyes, all small dogs have this superhero complex." The work is really really cute.
IKEA’s New Cookbook Puts Kitchen Scraps to Good Use With 50 Recipes From Top Chefs [Little Black Book] Utilizing the less-loved parts of produce or cheese, the SCRAPSBOOK curates 50 recipes for kitchen scraps that would otherwise be thrown away. Featuring renowned chefs like Adrian Forte, Craig Wong, and Trevor Bird, the IKEA ScrapsBook represents a diverse range of cuisines and cultures, each with a commitment to sustainable cooking practices. Each chef has contributed five recipes to the cookbook that is free to download online at IKEA.ca/Scrapcooking. From agency Rethink
The Toughest Athletes: Nike's new film on motherhood celebrates female strength [Creative Boom] 'The Toughest Atheletes' captures the power and strength of women during one of the most transformative stages of their lives: pregnancy and early motherhood. Created with Wieden+Kennedy London, the spot takes a closer look at the correlation of sport and motherhood through the lens of more than 20 mothers across various stages of their pregnancy and postpartum journeys. The short film was compiled from more than 22 hours of intimate footage shot by the mothers featured and their friends and families.
T.O. burger shop renames menu items after office supplies [Toronto Sun] Perhaps this burger joint should rename itself “Staples?” Good Fortune Burger has refreshed its menu, giving an incentive to those working from home to expense their lunches by renaming food items as various office supplies. They’re calling it #RECEATS, asking customers to “Expense this. Eat this.” For example, the restaurant’s Fortune Burger has been rebranded as “basic steel stapler,” the diamond chicken burger is now the “mini dry erase board,” classic fries are now “braided HDMI cord” and even a bottle of Coke can be called “non-slip rubber mouse pad.” (I don't get the hashtag but the idea is clever as hell!)
5) Platform Update
Facebook is working on a version of Instagram for kids under 13 [The Verge] Cool this seems like a good idea. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri confirms that a version of the popular photo sharing app for children under 13 is in the works, BuzzFeed News reports. The Facebook-owned company knows a lot of kids want to use Instagram, Mosseri said, but there isn’t a “detailed plan yet,” according to BuzzFeed News.
Twitter begins testing a way to watch YouTube videos from the home timeline on iOS [TechCrunch] Shortly after Twitter announced it would begin testing a better way to display images on its app, it’s now doing the same for YouTube videos. According to a new post on Twitter’s Support account, the company will today start testing a way to watch YouTube videos directly from your home timeline within the Twitter iOS app. That means you’ll be able to click and play a video without having to leave the conversation you’re currently viewing.
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