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.

Education Or Propaganda At Conferences

Anyone who uses social networks for business will tell you that you get a high percentage of conference posts in your feed. A high percentage.

You know what I'm talking about — the random, expert quotes from people attending sessions or panels. We get these pithy little comments posted on Twitter like, "Such and such just told us, If you're not participating in the social space, you're invisible." Or, "She's telling us now, If it's not driving business, don't do it." Or even, "Wow! People are eager to engage with your brand. They just need you to let them. He's rockin' it!"

Now admittedly, these are often just snapshot impressions and not truly representative of the entirety of the presentation being viewed. But overlaid with my own impressions from conferences, they do highlight three problems for me. First, that compressing complex topics into hour-long presentations often leads to misunderstanding of the subject or even places focus on the wrong things. Second, that far too many conference presentations are thinly veiled sales-pitches for a point of view or business offering. And third, that too many conference attendees are satisfied with the sound-bite quotes, despite the loss of context.

Let me explain.

The Trouble With Making It Accessible

Taking any marketing subject and dropping it into a conference program is rife with difficulty. Not only are you simplifying what is usually a pretty complex topic, but you're also taking it completely out of context. Add to this the need to be exciting or funny or entertaining in some way, and pretty soon we've boiled away the nutritional value and are left with just the sugary sweetness.

I know I shouldn't be the one pointing this out. Whereas most presenters do this maybe a dozen times a year, I'm guilty of it nearly every week with my show. Still, it bears mentioning that maybe we should stop treating these topic snap-shots as "education" and start emphasizing them as "explorations" of a subject.

When I give a presentation, I'm trying to get people interested enough in a subject to want to ask more. That's it. I can't educate people on how to use response metrics or how to craft their particular brand or how to use Twitter. All I can do is get them excited about it and want to seek out real consultation or education. And basically I've just describe the functions of propaganda. So if you listen to me, take note: Don't check your critical mind at the door. Keep asking questions.

Crossing the Sales Pitch Line

Now my next point is a bit grayer. Because the whole reason people speak at business conferences is to somehow expand their wallet. Whether they receive a speaker's fee or they do it for contacts, they are there to grow their business. So please understand that I am not knocking the ulterior motives of speakers. That's how the game is played. However, far too many presentations I've sat through completely place the focus on the company presenting or a proprietary method, rather than on ideas or best practices.

The trouble with sessions like this is that they not only don't educate, they actively skew the topic into philosophical rhetoric. The difference between sales and engagement can be razor thin. Sales is about making you believe. Engagement is about stimulating thought and conversation. And in the conference circuit, it's pretty darn easy to cross that line.

So again, be warned. As a participant at a conference you owe it to yourself to keep your guard up and remain skeptical. Ask those questions and challenge what you see, even if sounds good. The best presenter does not always equal the best solutions.

The Complacency Factor

Which brings me to my last point, that participants have to take responsibility for what they take away from a conference.

Those made-up, but all-too-real tweet examples I used above make obvious what we've know for years before the social networking craze. People gravitate toward the sexy sound-bite. It's easy to use these catchy phrases as a means of explaining the conference to others. It's a repeatable insight that can be used to help justify the expense of going to the conference in the first place. It may even help prove out a person's own business agenda. But it almost never informs a process of action.

Our willingness to accept platitudes before processes, makes for great memes, but lousy marketing. That's why we have so much enthusiasm for social media or digital marketing or the-topic-du-jour, but such lousy implementations and follow-through. It's because we hear the hype at a conference or on a blog post, but don't do the hard work of digging deeper and getting to best practices.

Frankly, if we take time we find that many of the things being said on some of the hottest marketing topics are actively contracting each other. In fact, sometimes a sound-bite taken out of context will even actively contradict what the speaker himself would advocate. (Like being quoted about how social drives business, but in practice knowing that it builds advocacy, which in turn can increase business.)

So for a third and final time I emphasize the need for critical thinking. Don't let star-power or an exciting presentation convince you that you're received an education at a conference. What you're really seeing is propaganda. Which can be valuable in identifying what you need to learn more about, but is no replacement for actual learning about a subject.

The Biggest Issue You Face Now

I recently was asked to sit on the Program Committee for the 2010 MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston. And as part of that honor, they've started to asked me questions and pick my brain for ideas. But one questions stands out above all the rest:

What is the biggest challenge facing B2B marketers right now?

In the past I would have said all kinds of things like brand identity, managing sales expectations, trade show marketing, etc. But this year the only thing that came to mind is, "Money."

Now admittedly, the economy has hit my business pretty hard, and I knew I was biased. So I didn't just answer that way. I started going around asking trusted people that I know. And guess what. They said the same thing. And it didn't matter if I was talking to an agency person or a client-side professional. The biggest issue marketers face right now (B2C and B2B) is budget.

Now we've talked on the show and the blog about why it's important to keep a steady stream of marketing messages even in tough times. But even I know that's pure rhetoric. It may be true rhetoric, but it faces the ugly reality of accounting. So let's take this from a different angle.

Never Underestimate A Moving Truck
Here's an analogy to wrap your heads around. Your marketing program is an 18-Wheeler. It's heavy and bloated. It has lots of potential horsepower, but it's not fast on the pick up. In fact, it downright sucks on pick up. The engine has to negotiate with the gas tank for adequate fuel, which then has to take time to channel into pistons where the spark is produced, then after that gains power and the engine is warmed up you need the driver to engage the engine into the gear and the whole thing has to move the gross weight of a Saudi Prince's yacht. It takes a LOT to get it off the line. But once it gets going, there ain't no stopping it. In fact, they build whole ramps of sand on descents from high mountain passes just to be able to try and stop these things if the breaks go out. Once they get moving, they could take out your entire house and keep going without a blink.

Tortured metaphor for sure, but accurate to a "T."

The word "momentum" often gets thrown around in marketing meetings. But I don't believe many of us really have a good picture of what that means. We don't consider that keeping momentum up on a marketing effort is not just about staying visible. Frankly, you can see a parked truck just as easily as a moving one if it's parked in the right place. The advantage of staying in motion is that you can react quicker.

Instead of the three to six months it takes to get a marketing program started, it takes only a few weeks to make an adjustment. Even a slow roll is better than inertia, because you are at least able to react to opportunities in a timely fashion. And God forbid there's a significant challenge to your marketing while you're not moving. You might as well turn around and let the competition paddle your behind.

So think about it. Is some of the hold up in your own organization just a simple matter of not considering all the vulnerabilities and timeline realities that inaction may be exposing you to? It's worth considering. And it's worth discussing (at least theoretically) with your own budgetary gate keepers.

Spinning Numbers

Marketers all spin numbers. That's what numbers are for. They're there to prove a point. So we try to make them prove our point however we can. But usually the goal is to at least make our interpretation of the numbers seem legitimate and unbiased. We try to create some measure of defensibility in our presentation. And that's just not the case in the latest Feed Report from Razorfish. Entitled, The Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report, 2009, the study attempts to look at how the face of the consumer has changed. And yes, it's spun. Go figure. My trouble with it, though, is they could not have been more blatantly obvious that they came up with their conclusions before they even launched the study.

Ben Kunz, over at Mediassociates and blogger at Thought Gadgets, first alerted me that there were problem with the report, so I took a look. And while I wasn't nearly as fired up as Ben got, I had to admit that everything from the graphic representations and headlines to the way the findings were presented were overtly misleading.

Here's how I put it in an email to David J. Deal, Vice President of Marketing at Razorfish:

==

Like I said in my tweet, I realize these reports are generated to gain business, so they're spun to prove points. That goes without saying and all's fair in love and war.

But I think you got off to the wrong start with this. One of the first elements is a propaganda graphic about the end of the 30-second TV spot, which is so laughably biased it immediately put me on guard. Then you immediately launch into a picture of "consumers" before you define that this is a "connected consumer," so again the report establishes bias ahead of facts. And throughout the rest of the piece the graphics over-hype the value of digital at the expense of other media.

Understand, I am not a TV/Brand-Ad guy. I actually believe in a digital future and actively work to engage my clients in all these areas. But even I was turned off by the bias. That's saying something.

All that aside, though, I'm not sure how you reached several of your conclusions. For instance, how did you conclude that the connected consumer is the new median? And I'm not talking web use here (because clearly most of the US is connected), but the "connected consumer" as you defined in the report. There's a big jump of logic there to say that the group you describe in the report is representative of a new median.

Case in point, we can say that much of America has a DVR. But concluding that all users will now skip ads because the most engaged users do so is clearly false. Most (70%) just sit through the spots. [NOTE: I was wrong here. The statistic is closer to half watch commercials. But my point is still valid.] With this in mind, I question your proposed median. The level of engagement for your study group may or may not be representative of the median. The data is unclear.

Also, saying that people want to engage brands online and using as proof discounts strategies is a bit disingenuous. This equally proves that people will buy newspapers or watch a TV commercial if they know they can get an offer. And really, it's not so much proof of engagement as using digital mediums as another push channel. Engagement is building advocacy, which has little to do with commodity tactics like couponing.

Let me stress that the reason I'm being so critical is that I think the spin has done the value of this report a disservice. I think the data you did present is extremely rich and useful. It proves a lot of things of note and will help me tremendously. But it's all wrapped in statements that are seemingly unsupported and are bound to make people question the report in its entirety.

==

And really, my last point is the most important. I expect a report like this to be spun, so I don't mind a little hubris. But that hubris has to be at least defensible by the data presented in the report. Most of the conclusions here are framed as being proven in conjuncture with other reports that are referenced, but not seen. For me, that's not compelling.

Further, while we can dismiss this report for bias, it's high profile nature serves to make all reports like it subject to additional skepticism. And that just sets us all back. As Ben said in an email to me on the side, "If you really believe something works, and have a plan for doing it, why not have the balls to just go do it without worrying that 97% of the world agrees with you?"

Thank you to David Deal for engaging me on these issues and listening to my complaints. My intent is not to bash Razorfish and they have proven themselves to be engaged listeners to my criticisms.

UPDATE: David Deal contacted me via email today with some insights on why the Razorfish FEED report was constructed as it was, as well as some clarifications about how they arrived at their conclusions. I asked if I could reprint his reply and he granted me his permission:

"...thank you for your thoughts . . . here are a few observations . . .

The FEED illustrations are meant to capture popular sentiments about consumer engagement and advertising. As you can see, we had a little fun with them. The caricatures and general tone of the graphics are meant to impart a bit of humor and are not meant to be taken literally. (In fact, we produced a TV ad for All detergent earlier this year, which we linked to an online promotion.) For instance, the illustration on Page 16 with the police officer is intended to provide a little levity amid all the attention paid to consumer feedback mechanisms like Yelp. However, I’m glad you told me about how they struck you – sorry that they got the report off on the wrong foot for you!

FEED asserts that connected consumers are becoming the new mainstream based on the research such as the Forrester data cited on Page 17 and the “digital fluency” data cited on pp. 18-21. Moreover, for our clients, connected consumers are indeed the new mainstream. This cohort spends money online and is quite active online . . . representing an important audience to marketers. That said, I think we can be more clear next time about what we mean by this observation, especially the part about this cohort becoming the new mainstream for marketers, per se.

The observations about offering deals on Twitter and Facebook are quite interesting. I think there is another point that emerges now that I’ve thought about FEED over the past few days: consumers will respond to brands that make them feel special, whether through an offer of exclusive deals or content tailored to their needs. A Facebook fan page that makes them feel special one way or another will engage them over a period of time because consumers will keep coming back for more content.

Certainly there is no perfect research report, and we are always looking for ways to improve – so thank you for taking time to share those observations so that we can articulate our conclusions more clearly!"

Crowdsourcing That's Actually Crowdsourcing

There's been a lot of stuff in the press recently about crowdsourcing. And much of it comes down to a new, cool way to position an RFP or a focus group. So imagine my surprise when I came across this little gem from BeanCast guest, Edward Boches.

The site is called The Next Great Generation and it's clearing marketed as a side venture that's not associated with Mullen, the agency where Edward is the CCO. According to Boston.com, who did an excellent write up on the project:

"...Next Generation is described as an 'online magazine' that 'is crowdsourcing content from a growing staff off writers (80 so far) willing to share its thoughts regarding life, work, brands, technology, environment, money, faith, sex, and love. The Next Great Generation will be an opportunity for Millennial writers to develop a voice and gather a following, along with a real chance for older generations to listen, learn, even ask questions.'"

Why is this effort so different and worthy of praise? Because it balances the equation.

Too many of us look at the "wisdom of the crowd" as a one-way street. It may or may not be intentional, but we marketers tend to see crowdsourcing as a great way to get the input and insight of a large, distributed audience without having to hire all these people. So we run contests or distribute measly payouts to entice individuals to give their insights essentially for free. There's nothing wrong with this model, per se. It's just not crowdsourcing.

But The Next Great Generation model is different because it offers huge benefits for participation for all involved. Obviously for the marketers behind it, it provides rich, well-considered insights into Millennial thinking, as well as the opportunity to interact with these writers in a group setting. But the writers also have incentive. The site gives them a chance to be heard by people who could influence their career, helps them develop their own brand and maybe even gather an audience of loyal followers without needing to set up yet another nameless blog in the wilderness.

This is what true crowdsourcing is all about. It's about give and take. It's about establishing venues where all can gain wisdom from the collective thinking. And it's about giving everyone a valuable reason to participate. I'm very excited to see where this project goes.

The Sentiment Factor

We marketers have always known that people respond to emotional appeals. We've known that if we can get beyond the rational benefits of an offer and deliver a deeper, emotional sentiment, the result is a more enthusiastic and memorable buying experience. We don't just deliver higher sales, we also deliver a connection that has the potential to turn into advocacy.

First of all, if you just read the above paragraph and it doesn't completely convince you that you always need to be investing in your brand, you've got your head in "a very dark place." Because while message and offer can deliver a sale, only your brand can deliver on this emotional factor that leads to true advocacy. It doesn't matter that you're selling ball bearings to a distributor. We always buy based on emotion.

We Always Buy By Emotion

In presentations to B2B marketers (who are notorious for saying brand doesn't matter), I put their customer's decision process like this:

1. Make a list of companies that offer what we need
2. Evaluate and contrast each of their feature/benefits sets
3. Narrow it down to a short list of those that best meet our needs
4. I like this sales person the best

This list highlights two things. One that, people try to remain rational in their decision making, but the final decision comes down to emotion. And two, the only brand you build with a weak-branded promotion is the brand of your sales representative (or retail outlet) — who, by the way, will be working for your competition next month and take the client with her.

Loyalty is always built on relationships. So if you aren't sacrificing a little of your ROI in each promotion to build that sentiment of affection for your brand, the customer will build that relationship somewhere else, usually with the rep they deal with or the store they buy from.

The Inspiration Of A Holiday

Now why am I on this kick today? Because Veteran's Day has reminded me of our never-ending appetite for the sentimental.

Unless you grew up in a military family, Veteran's Day probably held little beyond a symbolic importance for you. It's not that you didn't care or weren't patriotic. It's just that it didn't hold the glory of Memorial Day where we honor fallen soldiers. It just honored service. Important, yes, but still kind of routine.

But now, because of social networks, we in the US have discovered a vast national consciousness for the holiday. Those of us with real sentiment for it are tapping into the rest of our emotions with personal remembrances and stories, raising the brand of Veteran's Day to something approaching a civic duty.

Essentially, the power of sales has been placed in the hands of marketing. Veteran's Day no longer needs to depend on one-on-one relationships with vets to build it's appeal. Now personal sentiment can be shared broadly by multiple voice in a multitude of personal circles, expanding the perception of the day beyond the personal to the universal.

This is the power of a brand. It transcends personal experiences and affects our perceptions of right and wrong. And while it's an intangible in terms of ROI, it raises all boats. Just try to get away with saying Veteran's Day is an unimportant holiday now. You'd have a chorus of voices against you in seconds. So too with your marketing programs. Because when you promote with a strong brand, you go into a receptive relationship that's further down the decision-making process. You're already at the "I like this sales rep brand the best" stage. Your brand's name has become equal in importance (maybe even greater) than your representative's name. This, in turn, helps to solidify advocacy for your brand's selling points and ensure that there's a measure of loyalty to your company along side the personal relationships with your people.

So what's the sentiment your customers hold for your brand? It's a question worth asking.

The Virtual Economy

Edward Boches (Mullen's intrepid CCO) pointed out an interesting fact on TwitterSaturday night: Virtual goods will hit $1 billion in sales in 2009. Billion. With a "B."

The point provoked the usual reactions from me and others, including Jim Mitchemfrom Smash Communications. How could Facebook happy-face icons and pretend sweaters in PlayStation Home be making money? The "actual" retail stores are struggling and here we are are plopping down real cash for pretend items? What gives?

But then I stopped. Because really, what is virtual? What is a "virtual good?" I know what the articles covering this news are talking about with elitist disdain — Second Life outfits and the like. But what about music downloads? What about online movie rentals? What makes them so much more "tangible" than a musical greeting sent to your friend online? When you think about it, that figure is probably way too low. We just haven't accepted some basic truths of the virtual economy yet.

It's All In The Experience

As my grandparents aged and moved into a retirement home some years ago, they began asking us not to get them "things" for Christmas and birthday's anymore. "We've got enough things and we don't have any room for it anyway," they would say.

So as a family, our response was to get them gift cards to restaurants, tickets to events and the like. The object was to give them an experience, rather than another item to crowd their already cramped new apartment. The sentiment remained unchanged, but the gift itself became transitory.

This is the heart of the virtual economy that is emerging. With virtual goods, the value is not in the physical item that we own or give, but in the experience we share.

Think about all the money spent on greeting cards for the sole purpose of sharing a sentiment. For most of us, this is a disposable experience. We get a nice card with a personal note, it sits on our mantel for a few days and then it goes into a drawer or the trash can. So why shouldn't this activity go online? Sharing a sentiment is no less "real" in a virtual greeting card, right?

Same with virtual clothing or game items in online networks. These items enhance our experience and project a statement about who we are. They make us feel good. We can debate the value of it, but how can we judge a person's personal enjoyment in an experience? How is wearing a logo t-shirt any less a statement in a virtual community than it is in a real one?

My point is that most of us have always valued experiences more than things. We love our new car, but we treasure the memories of that trip to New York. We're a big fan of our game console, but we retell endlessly that time we took out 34 aliens with a single bomb in that game we were playing.

Which all, of course, brings up the next question: If a virtual good is an experience without a physical item, where do we draw the line on what is virtual?

Virtual Is Virtual

Something weird began happening over the last 10 years or so. Virtual experiences began to break their physical bounds. Movies became online rentals. Music became MP3s. Software became increasingly available in download-only formats.

So I ask again, what makes music today any more tangible than that smiley cactus you sent your friend on Facebook for her birthday?

Because of records and tapes, and then later CDs, we have been under the mis-impression for decades that music was physical. We could point to our collection of pressed discs and say, "Look, I own that." But the truth is we never owned anything. We were licensees experiencing a performance that happened elsewhere. The disc confused things for sure, but the truth is we never owned the music we thought we did.

Same with software. What's physical about a video game or even an operating system? Just because it came with a disc and a printed manual doesn't make the experience any less virtual.

So when we say that virtual goods will reach $1 billion in sales this year, we aren't so much touting the growth of an industry as much as pointing out our own ignorance of how much of the virtual economy we already engage in. $1 billion? Try maybe $1 trillion. Probably more.

It all comes down to a matter of degrees. We can say a downloaded recording of a Beethoven symphony is more valuable than a piece of virtual flair. But until we identify them both a virtual goods, we do ourselves a disservice by misunderstanding what people truly appreciate in what they buy.

We can talk about how the toaster auto-senses for a perfect piece of toast every time, but what people buy is the experience of eating a great piece of toast. We can tout a great computer, but what people buy is the experience of using the programs installed on it. We can tell people the cashmere is soft, but people buy and wear it for the luxurious feeling it gives them.

So the question isn't, "How can people waste their money on fake stuff?" The question is, "Why are we still not in touch with the fact that people buy things for the value of the experience it gives them?"

The Argument For Stronger Client-Side Marketers

This week's upcoming BeanCast guest, Ana Andjelic, is stirring the pot a bit in anAdAge.com post on Why Digital Agencies Aren't Ready To Lead. Her premise, in a nutshell, is that while digital shops have the creative chops, they don't have the discipline and experience to manage the complex brand relationship.

I've been having quite a spirited debate on this subject with Bill Green (Make The Logo Bigger) via email. Neither of us thinks it's that cut and dry. Because while I essentially agree with Ana's charges, at the same time I believe she is not so much pointing out the weakness of digital shops but rather the weakness of the lead-agency model as a whole.

The Agency's First Concern

I have personally managed the complex relationships between various agencies (PR, brand, web, direct) working on a single client's business. And let me tell you with complete candor, not a single one of us really had the client's best interest as our first concern. It was a warm and kind surface relationship where everyone always had an eye out for the others weaknesses, in search of a bigger share of the marketing spend and more control on the account. Of course we all wanted to do a good job and enhance the brand for the client. But if it came down to a choice between letting another agency take more share because they had a better plan and pushing for our own plan to make more money, all of us would have gladly chosen the latter.

Let's face facts here: Expecting your agency partners to always work together and push for your best interest is akin to putting a steak in a room with hungry dogs and expecting them to share equally or make sure that the smartest of of them gets an extra portion. It's never going to happen. What is going to happen is the biggest, strongest dog in the room is going to throw his weight around, take the biggest share and leave the scraps for the rest.

The Client Needs An Advocate

This is why for some time I've been an advocate for stronger, smarter client-side CMOs and brand managers. I might even go for a Chief Brand Officer who's sole job it is to make sure the communication stream stays on message while still delivering results. Better yet, an outside person who's only job is to manage the agencies for the client and direct their efforts not based on share of the business, but on what is best of the client's needs.

The point is that the right idea or approach can come from anywhere. But the only way clients will consistently ensure that they will be leading with the best approach is to take this decision out of the "lead" agency's hands. I'm not saying don't listen. Certainly the agency partners have a lot to offer. But ultimately the only way to get synergy across all your marketing efforts is to have smart, top-down leadership that doesn't have a vested interest in getting more budget.

The Right Person For The Job

Of course, I realize what I am asking here. Expecting that the CMO will not be influenced by the excitement of a TV production is Utopian at best. And finding someone to lead the charge who is well versed in all the disciplines of marketing is also wishful thinking. But it can be done. That's one of the reasons I left the agency realm, was to be more of this kind of advocate for the client's best interest. And I've met plenty of smart marketers and business leaders who understand this balance. And guess what — their brands are stronger because of it.

Agency of Record (or AOR) has come to mean, "We are in control." And at one time this would have made sense, seeing as media was concentrated in a few places and clients needed guidance. But with so many ways available now for reaching any given audience, I believe it's time for clients to rethink this model and start seeing their AOR partners as advisors, not defacto rulers. Until they do, I can guarantee that the work they get will always be driven by the needs of the agency first.