Tom Peters on ads

The management guru on advertising:

Advertising is a sick business. And it isn't just for the oft-mentioned reason that "consumers are using so many more media outlets—the Internet, hundreds of
TV stations, thousands of publications."

It is because people just don't buy this way anymore. Customers—your customers—are scrutinizing, savvy, discerning, and self-reliant. They look beyond your promises, and consider every interaction with your company as a chance to evaluate you.

Ouch.

Smoke & mirrors from adland

"Pre-Click Ad Influence" - creativity clearly isn't dead!

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3624442

Thanks to Gartner's media blog for highlighting this tosh.

“British journalism is sloppy and morally bankrupt”

Allegedly…

I listened to Nick Davies, the author of Flat Earth News on Radio 4 a few days ago. He was defending his view that, because media outlets have moved into the ownership of huge corporations, their primary interest is in profit rather than journalism. It’s highly listenable stuff:

“The logic of journalism has been overwhelmed by logic of commercialism…”

“Journalists no longer have time or resources to do their jobs properly as active new gatherers. They’ve become passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material. This makes them enormously vulnerable to manipulation.”

Davies also claims that journalists are incorporating criminality into their work. Driven by scoops, and a lack of time and resources, they cut corners. It’s common practice, says Davies, to hire private investigators to trawl through the trash. They can source bank statements, phone bills, tax records, even health records.

Of particular note to this blog is Davies’s claim that, “The role of the PR industry has become fascinatingly powerful.” He cites research conducted by Cardiff university, which found that of 2000 stories in the quality UK press, "54% of stories were wholly or mainly constructed out of PR product." So more than half of the stories we read are largely influenced by those serving an interest.

I’m not personally a fan of PR firms. Having been an analyst for 12 years, I found that most just got in the way. And now looking at broad ecosystems of influence, I see the dispersion of influence away from traditional journalists, which means that PR is less important to firms than it used to be.

Or so I thought. If Mr Davies is right, perhaps we should all hurry back to our PR friends with peace offerings and humble pie.

Or maybe he’s reporting the further and final erosion of journalists as real influencers.


…

(There’s a good review of Flat Earth News at The Economist, for those who subscribe. For those who don’t - tssk.)

(The full Cardfiff Uni report is here)

Hugh and friends discuss influence

Hugh McLeod does a regular podcast with Rabbi Pinny Gniwisch, Johnnie Moore and Mark Earls. This week they talked about influence.

Well, they did for about 10 minutes – for the next 30 it was mainly about success in marketing and creativity. Interesting, nevertheless.

Listening to these intelligent chaps solidified my view that influence is grossly being misunderstood and/or misrepresented. As Johnnie Moore said, there are two views. One is to think of “cool people” that tell the rest of us what to do. Find those influencers and success will follow. The other view is that life is more complex (duh) and success is often just down to luck, or random acts of traction (as Hugh puts it). (Echoes of The Wisdom of Crowds and Fooled by Randomness here.)

This is being played out on the blogs as Malcolm Gladwell versus Duncan Watts.

I think neither of these views is right – this polarisation masks the real complexity of influence, which is that it’s damned hard to pin down in what it is and how it works.

I can’t criticise these guys for saying it how they see it. In fact, I think the biggest culprits are consumer-facing WOM agencies that claim to be able to identify influential consumers or, worse, to position celebrities as influencers.

The podcast does actually acknowledge that influencers do exist, though these may be the people that “show up.” In other words, anyone can be an influencer if they are committed and diligent enough. I think that this is true in large parts.

A couple of their comments jarred with me:

“The Influential model is most often touted by people who would like to be seen as Influentials, or at least, friends of Influentials.” Ouch. In fact, I “tout” Influencer50's approach because I see it working with clients. Some influential people don’t even know that they influence the market, and are surprised on being told such.

The idea that once you find influencers it’s a simple task of pulling the levers and success follows. My experience is that although identifying accurately is complex, it’s actually the easy part in the process. Engaging with influencers is much harder.

It’s also cemented my view that influence in the B2B world is different from B2C, in that B2B lacks a strong sense of peer-to-peer communication. Business people don’t talk to others outside their organisation because of the lack of opportunity, or due to competitive sensitivities. Influencers act as proxies here, acting as go-betweens for firms. This role is critical, and underpins the entire consulting and industry analysis business models.

In B2C, sure, there are influential consumers. But I’ll bet that no agency can identify which fellow consumers are influencing me on my (ongoing) new PC decision. But they could identify which web sites, retailers and magazines I might consult. Fixating on consumers as B2C influencers is missing the primary sources of influence: the supply chain and value-adding influencers.

It’s clear to me that most firms looking for influencers amongst consumers are looking in the wrong place.

Influence, independence and impact

Good post from Jon on the influence, independence and impact of analysts. It comes spookily hot on the heels of Alan PS's note on the independence of analysts. That this issue still pops up decades after it was first raised undermines the credibility of the analyst industry. When I was at Ovum, we declined to take money from vendors for white papers, but changed our minds several times during my time there (1995-2004). At IDC (2004-2006) we happily and regularly took money from vendors for white papers. At both organisations we claimed independence.

At Influencer50 we are, not surprisingly, focused on influence. But it's always important to say what we mean when we try to identify and measure it. We think independence and impact are constituents of influence. A lack of independence erodes influence, but doesn't eliminated it. There are plenty of folks working at vendor firms that are themselves influential, but you wouldn't expect them to be independent. Vested interest, as long as it's declared, is the key issue.

The main issue is, then, transparency. So, come on analysts. Why not declare the extent of revenue from vendors. Name your clients and the proportion of revenues they contribute.

Perhaps the IIAR could define (or rate?) analyst firms on their independence...

I've seen the future...

... and it doesn't have ads in it.

Witness this advert (noting the irony) I snapped on the Tube for Sky Movies promising whole films with no interuptions.

I admit that, for me, ad-allergic as I am, this is compelling.

Influencing standards

Standards organisations can be significant influencers in markets. It seems that there is a steady increase in the amount of standardisation these days, and it covers technology, telecommunications, food standards, pharmaceuticals and so on.

I recently had a client whose primary influencer organisation was the standards body, with no fewer than five representatives in the community of top 50 influential individuals. What does a firm do to influence a standards organisation?

Standards organisations are usually interested in:

• Increasing adoption of their standards amongst vendors, end-users/consumers and legislators
• Increasing the reach and scope of standards
• Increasing influence abroad, including influencing (or contributing in entirety) standards adopted by international agencies (the European Commission is a good example).

The natural assumption, therefore, is to craft messages to standards representatives that focus on one or more of these interests. These are positive messages to take to standards groups, but in practice there is a paradoxical driving force behind them. It is that if the applicability and appeal of a standard is to widen, the easiest way to achieve this is to loosen the terms of that standard. The largest pressure on standards bodies often comes from those that would adopt a less stringent regime.

There are interesting examples of this. In Gilmore and Pine’s excellent Authenticity, the authors cite the US Department of Agriculture loosening the standards for organic foods in the US, allowing 39 synthetic ingredients into items labelled (officially) organic. This accounts for the rapid growth in the industry and the entrance of the major food manufacturers (Kraft, General Mills, etc) into the field, accompanied by derision from purists.

This same issue is currently being debated in the UK. With the import of organic foods from overseas, consumers are being presented with products labelled organic with a higher carbon footprint than locally-produced non-organic foods. A dilemma of conscience ensues…

The point of all this to identify the winners and losers of relaxed (or loose) standards. Low standards create low barriers for entry. This allows more and often larger players to move in and dominate a market. Greater competition is the result, more supply, and reduced prices. This then favours larger producers that have economies of scale.

That’s not to say that lower standards favour big companies. Rather, it is that standards favour incumbent companies, because they have sunk cost in meeting those standards.

Our default recommendation to clients is to lobby for increase standards. These raise the barriers to entry and create room for early mover competitive advantage and differentiation. At a minimum any firm in a standards-driven market should campaign for standards not to be slackened, to protect investment in processes and skills.

Seth offers Ford as a good (that is, bad but illustrative) example of this here. In fact, it’s arguable that a new entrant to a market should aim to set the barrier as high as possible, to shift the agenda and to gain from its lack of legacy.

What about those that promote the free market and claim standards as protectionism mechanisms? I’m all for the free market. But standards exist for a reason – to protect consumers. Standards raise quality and trust in the market. It’s doubtful that some markets would exist at all without standards.