The mouse that roared: Smartphones take on bigger screens – and they’re winning.

August 5, 2015August 5, 2015 Phillip Nones Business, Direct Marketing, Media, Media Consumption E-Commerce, Internet, Ken Burke, MarketLive, Small Screens, Smartphones, Tablets, Web

The key takeaway message from MarketLive’s latest e-commerce statistics is that smartphones are where the go-go action is in e-commerce.

If there’s any lingering doubt that smartphones are really on the march when it comes to e-commerce activity, the latest user stats are erasing all vestiges of it.

MarketLive’s 2nd Quarter e-commerce stats for 2015 reveal that mass-market consumers purchased ~335% more items via their smartphones than they did during the comparable quarter last year.

MarketLive’s report covers the buying activity of millions of online consumers. And the uptick it’s showing is actually more like a flood of increased activity. That’s plain to see in these year-over-year 2nd Quarter comparative figures for smartphones:

Catalog merchandise: +374%
Merchandise sold by brick-and-mortar establishments’ online stores: +207%
Furnishings and houseware items: +163%

The critical mass that’s finally been reached is most likely attributable to these factors:

The growing number of “responsive-design” websites that display and work equally well on any size device
One-click purchasing functionality that simplify and ease e-commerce procedures

Interestingly, the dramatic growth in smartphone usage for online shopping appears to be skipping over tablets. Smartphones now account for more than twice the share of online traffic compared to tablets (~30% versus ~13%).

Total e-commerce dollar sales on tablets have also fallen behind smartphones for the first time ever.

Evidently, some people are now gravitating from desktops or laptops straight to smartphones, with nary a passing glance at tablets.

Another interesting data point among the MarketLive stats is the fact that traffic emanating from search (paid as well as organic), is actually on the decline. By contrast, growth in traffic from e-mail marketing continues on its merry way, increasing ~18% over the same quarter last year.

One aspect remains a challenge in online commerce, however: The cart abandonment rate actually ticked up between 2014 and 2015. And conversion rates aren’t improving, either.

For the bottom line on what these new findings mean, I think Ken Burke, CEO of MarketLive, has it correct when he contends:

“Shoppers are seeking out their favorite brick-and-mortar brands online and expecting their websites to work on any device. We’re calling this trend ‘Commerce Anywhere the Customer Wants It.’ The more agile retailers and category leaders are outpacing their competitors by constantly adapting to – and embracing – a retail landscape where technology, consumers and markets are evolving at breakneck speed.”

Details on MarketLive’s statistics can be accessed here.

“Harbingers of Failure”: When Early Adopters Spell Doom Rather than Boon for a New Product

July 29, 2015August 3, 2015 Phillip Nones Branding, Business, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Sales AMA, American Marketing Association, Catherine Tucker, Duncan Simester, Early Adopters, Eric Anderson, Harbingers of Failure, Journal of Marketing Research, MIT, New Product Introduction, Northwestern University, Product Development, Purchasing Behavior, Song Lin

There’s an interesting new perspective about certain early adopters of new products: Rather than being a predictor of success, they could well be a harbinger of failure.

Four researchers – Eric Anderson of Northwestern University along with Duncan Simester, Song Lin and Catherine Tucker from MIT – have come to this conclusion after analyzing actual purchase transaction data collected from consumers.

Their findings were published in the January 2015 edition of the American Marketing Association’s Journal of Marketing Research.

Specifically, the researchers mined a comprehensive dataset of purchase transaction information collected by a large retail chain that sells consumer packaged goods.

What the four researchers discovered was that there are certain customers whose decisions to adopt a new product are a signal that the product will likely fail rather than succeed.

Moreover, their analysis revealed that because these early adopters have preferences that aren’t representative of other consumers in the market, these adoption patterns can be isolated from those of other customers, enabling a company to predict the propensity of a new product to succeed or fail.

These “harbingers of failure,” as the researchers dub them, are consumers who fall into two categories:

They purchase products that are “flops” – the ones that end up failing and being removed from the market.
They purchase products that, while remaining available in the market, are “niche” offerings that few other customers buy.

Either way, the consumers exhibit purchase behaviors that are an “unrepresentative” subset of purchasers.

The study suggests caution when looking at aggregate positive sales figures in product test markets. Instead of considering sales figures in the aggregate, companies should drill down and study the characteristics of the buyers – whether they are ones who typically back winners or losers.

The report draws ties to several “historical” brand introductions in which purchasers of the Swiffer^® mop correlated with Arizona Iced Tea^® – both winning product introductions – as compared to purchasers of Diet Crystal Pepsi^® and Frito-Lay^TM Lemonade – both of which bombed.

According to the researchers, the success of the second product (Arizona Iced Tea) could have been foretold by analyzing the sales behavior of the first (Swiffer).

Similarly, the failure of Frito Lay Lemonade could have been foretold by looking at the disappointing sales behavior of the first (Diet Crystal Pepsi).

Because of the extensive database of transactions tied to individuals that is available today thanks to bar-code scanning, loyalty programs and the like, many large consumer product firms have access to a wealth of granular data. The study contends that more people should use these data to improve their share of product introduction successes.

The full report, including research methodology and statistical analysis, can be viewed here.

State of the States: CNBC’s take on the best ones for business.

July 26, 2015 Phillip Nones Business, Demographics, Economics, Education, Employment, Government, Manufacturing, Social Commentary Best States for Business, Business, Business Climate, Business Competitiveness, CNBC, Hawaii, Minnesota, State Rankings

In CNBC’s recently published scorecard, don’t look to the Northeast or California to find the states that are best ones for business.

CNBC State Rankings for Business — *L’Etoile du nord:* Just as in its state motto “Star of the North,” Minnesota is the stellar performer in CNBC’s 2015 state ranking of business competitiveness. *(Click on the map for a larger view.)*

State and city rankings are a source of fascination for many people. Of course, there are many ways to fashion them to place nearly any state or city you like at the top of the heap. Some of the lists use criteria that are so convoluted, it stretches credulity.

Since when is Baltimore the best city in America for single men? Since it was ranked #1 in this evaluation, evidently. Many of us who know the city’s innards really well would disagree heartily, of course.

But I think the CNBC 2015 scorecard on state business climates, published earlier this month, is based on a more solid set of criteria.

CNBC created it by scoring all 50 states on approximately 60 separate measures of competitiveness – a list that was developed with input from an array of business and policy experts, official government sources, and CNBC’s own Global CFO Council, and that uses government-generated data.

CNBC then grouped these measures into ten broader categories, weighting the results based on how often each is used as “selling point” in state economic development marketing and promotional efforts. This was done in order to rank the states based on the criteria they themselves use to showcase their attractiveness to businesses considering expansion or relocation.

Here are the ten broad categories in the CNBC evaluation, and which states ranked first and last within them:

Access to capital: #1 North Carolina … #50 Wyoming
Business friendliness: #1 North Dakota … #50 California
Cost of doing business: #1 Indiana … #50 Hawaii
Cost of living: #1 Mississippi … #50 Hawaii
Economy: #1 Utah … #50 Mississippi
Education: #1 Massachusetts … #50 Nevada
Infrastructure: #1 Texas … #50 Rhode Island
Quality of life: #1 Hawaii … #50 Tennessee
Technology/innovation: #1 Washington … #50 West Virginia
Workforce: #1 North Dakota … #50 Maine

Do we see any surprises here? To my mind, the high and low rankings look pretty well-aligned with the anecdotal information we hear all the time.

Perhaps we might consider several other states besides Nevada to be “bottoms” in education. And personally, I am pretty shocked to see Tennessee ranked last in quality of life. Having lived there during my college years at Vanderbilt University, I never considered the state to be substandard when it came to that attribute.

But It’s when CNBC amalgamates all of the rankings to come up with its overall state ranking that a few surprises emerge.

Such as … Minnesota notches first place overall. I’m sure some people are genuinely surprised to see that.

For the record, here is CNBC’s list of the Top 10 states for business in 2015:

#1 – Minnesota
#2 – Texas
#3 – Utah
#4 – Colorado
#5 – Georgia
#6 – North Dakota
#7 – Nebraska
#8 – Washington
#9 – North Carolina
#10 – Iowa

We see that four of the ten top states are in the Midwest … three are in the South … three are in the West … but none are in the Northeast.

CNBC study on business competitiveness — The center holds: According to CNBC, most of the most competitive states for business are in the Mid-Continent region.

By contrast, for the most part the Bottom 10 states are clustered in other areas of the country … including four Northeastern states plus Alaska and Hawaii, two states that clearly have unique locational circumstances:

Hawaii lacks business competitiveness — Not so sunny: Hawaii’s bad business climate.

#40 – Pennsylvania
#41 – Alabama
#42 – Vermont
#43 – Mississippi
#44 – Maine
#45 – Nevada
#46 – Louisiana
#47 – Alaska
#48 – Rhode Island
#49 – West Virginia
#50 – Hawaii

CNBC has issued a raft of charts and maps providing details behind how their ratings were formulated, and the results for each of the major categories. You can view the data here.

Speaking for yourselves, in what ways would you challenge the rankings? What strikes you here as different from your own personal experience in doing business in various states? Please share your perspectives with other readers.

What’s happening with the Apple Watch these days?

July 22, 2015 Phillip Nones Branding, Business, Manufacturing, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Sales, Social Commentary Apple, Apple Watch, Business, Gene Mars, Google Glass, Mobile Devices, Product Development, Product Introductions, Slice Intelligence

Not all that much, it turns out.

When is the last time you heard about a product introduction where initial sales were off by 90% barely three months after coming on the market?

If you’re thinking the Blackberry 10 … you’re wrong.

It’s the Apple Watch. Its introduction in April was made with a big amount of fanfare, promoted before and after the launch by PR, TV and online advertising, and even outdoor billboards.

But the hard truth is that aside from the tech community, few people are buying the Apple Watch.

According to Slide Intelligence, weekly Apple Watch sales have plummeted from around 200,000 per day at launch to fewer than 20,000 per day now. Moreover, most sales have been of the least expensive Sport model ($349).

Even worse, of those who have purchased an Apple Watch, fewer than four in ten would recommend the device to others.

You know there’s a problem when a new product engenders ridicule such as this brief, highly dismissive video review.

It may be too soon to write off the Apple Watch introduction as an abject failure. But I know one thing: The market’s (lack of) receptivity so far can’t be what Apple execs were hoping for.

It must be quite a comedown for a company that experienced the dizzying popularity of the iPod, iPhone and iPad right out of the box — and where those product sales continued to climb at an increasing rate for months or years after their debut.

Some people are comparing the Apple Watch introduction to what happened to Google Glass – likewise the victim of tepid sales to the point where Google quietly removed the product from the market after making a go of it for about two years.

Actually, I’m not quite sure the comparison is completely apt.

For starters, Google Glass didn’t come on the market backed by a ginormous PR and advertising campaign. In fact, it wasn’t really presented as a full-blown product – but more like a project with a beta test component.

Also, it was never made available in wide release; some people I know who wanted to “kick the tires” with Google Glass had difficulty finding out how they could do so.

But besides the very different rollout strategies, another factor might explain a more fundamental difference – and which has hugely negative potential impact on the Apple Watch.

Whereas Google Glass offered its wearers some truly new functionality, what does the Apple Watch deliver besides being merely a miniature version of an iPhone?

When something is less user-friendly (too miniature for many) … doesn’t offer any new functionality over alternative products … and is pretty expensive to boot, is it any wonder that the Apple Watch’s debut has had all the pizzazz of a cold mashed potato sandwich?

Speaking personally, I don’t consider a multipurpose device about an inch square in size as a “must-have” gadget, and I’m pretty sure others would agree with me.

Technology writer and CRM specialist Gene Marks cautions that the Apple Watch’s future isn’t likely to be much brighter than its less-than-impressive performance to date because of this fundamental liability: “The Apple Watch is not making people or companies quicker, better or wiser,” he contends.

In the world of technology and gadgets, that’s not recipe for success. Just ask Blackberry.

Now … let’s hear from Apple Watch users. What’s your take?

Uber über alles? Ride-hailing services are coming on stronger than ever.

July 19, 2015July 19, 2015 Phillip Nones Business, Economics, Social Commentary Business, Business Travel, Certify, Expense Management, Ground Transportation, Lyft, Ride-Hailing, Ride-Hailing Services, Taxi, taxi services, Taxicab, Transportation Services, Uber

Business travelers have spoken with their wallets.

It looks as if a major milestone has been reached in the battle between “old world taxis” and “new world Uber.” An expense report study covering the second quarter of 2015 is showing that Uber and other ride-hailing services have overtaken the use of taxis – at least when it comes to business travelers.

The quarterly report was released by Certify, an expense management system provider. It reveals that Uber accounted for ~55% of ground transportation receipts, whereas taxi services accounted for only ~43% of receipts.

That’s a big jump from previous quarters; taxi services long dominated, staying well above 50% as recently as the first quarter of this year.

And this report isn’t based on some small data set, either. Certify’s stats are derived from millions of trip receipts submitted by its North American client base – nearly 30 million receipts over the course of a single year.

Clearly, Uber and other services that connect travelers through smartphone apps have succeeded beyond many people’s expectations.

But not everyone is pleased – beginning with taxicab services and their political allies. Understandably, they’re frightened by the prospects of seeing the most fundamental tenets of their “business protection plan” melt away before their very eyes.

Depending on how people come down on the issue, opinions can be particularly passionate. Consider these responses prompted by a recent AP article on the topic published by ABC News:

Pro-Taxi Reader: Uber is breaking laws and evading taxes and municipal dues on a mass scale. How do you “adapt” to that? How to adapt to this unfairness and criminality? I personally suggest stop paying taxes, or start a strike like they did in Paris. It seems that in [the] U.S., Uber’s lobbyists and endless BS-PR campaigns control the country.

Pro-Uber Reader: Is it really “fair” for a city to charge one million dollars to have a taxi license (New York City)? Most of the taxi BS is from mafia-run business[es] who have fought for the last 70 years to keep competition out.

Another Pro-Uber Reader: The current system of licensing taxis should be reconsidered. This system smacks of monopolies, with barriers to entry that are impossible. There is no free market when you can’t get a license to operate.

Certain national politicians are even getting into the game, finding fodder for campaign rhetoric aimed at constituents who are frightened by the implications of the new work paradigm.

Here’s an excerpt from a speech by Hillary Clinton:

“Many Americans are making extra money renting out a small room, designing websites, selling products they design themselves at home, or even driving their own car. … This on-demand, or so-called ‘gig economy,’ is creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation. But it’s also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.”

These are good points to raise, and it’s certainly fine to weigh the pros and cons of the so-called “new economy.”

At the same time, it’s pretty ironic to see how people supporting a candidate who questions ride-hailing services are so “onboard” with Uber – at least in practice if not in their rhetoric.

To illustrate, take a look at these Federal Election Commission filings from the Ready PAC (the pro-Clinton SuperPAC formerly known as Ready for Hillary PAC) here and here and here. There’s a “whole lotta Uber” going on!

Getting back to the real world of business travel, in nearly every city, Uber is offering better pricing than taxi services – at least when it comes to services like UberX which typically involve transport in smaller cars like a Honda Civic or Toyota Camry.

SUVs and limo cars are pricier, of course, and may not represent a major cost improvement. And Uber’s prices charged also rise during periods of “surge” usage.

But considering the comparative cost as well as the quality of service, in some markets Uber beats out taxis by a city mile.

How else to explain results in the most recent quarter where ~60% of rides in Dallas expensed through Certify were for Uber vehicles rather than taxis. In San Francisco, Uber’s share was even higher: nearly 80%.

No wonder taxi services are running off to local elected officials, boards and commissioners to try to shore up their faltering business model.

It’s worth noting that some employers harbor reservations about ride-hailing services — particularly concerns about lack of regulation, safety and liability. But even in non-regulated locations, protections exist. Uber as well as Lyft, another industry participant, provide driver insurance during paid rides, and they require drivers to carry their own personal auto insurance as well.

It would be interesting to hear the views of people who have used Uber or other ride-hailing services. Do you see them as the wave of the future? Or are there drawbacks? Please share your experiences and observations with other readers here.

Copywriting by computer: Wave of the future? … or wild-ass pipe dream?

July 8, 2015 Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Publishing, Sales A/B Testing, Algorithmic Copywriting, Bob Bly, Business, Copywriting, E-Mail Marketing, Marcomm, marketing, marketing communications, Persado, Vratskides

In recent years, computers have upended many a job category. And they include quite a few positions involving “language” – from foreign language translators to medical transcriptionists.

And now, it looks like copywriting itself may be the next domino to fall.

Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal published a story about Persado, a company which has developed a software algorithm that enables it to write copy without the human element.

David Atlas, the company’s chief marketing officer, refers to it as “algorithmic copywriting.” The process creates sentences with a maximum length of 600 characters that are used for e-mail subject lines and other short persuasive copy.

Persado builds the copy by sending thousands of different e-mail subject lines to the e-databases of its clients, which include large retailers and financial services firms such as Overstock.com, AMEX and Neiman Marcus. Response rates are measured and used to refine the subject lines to narrow them down to just the most effective.

Company PR spokesperson Kirsten McKenna explains the Persado edge further:

“Typical A/B testing will send out only a few messages – then go with the one that gives the best response. Persado can send out thousands of permutations of the same message to determine which would be the most successful.”

Comparing Persado’s machine-generated results with traditional copywriting, “We have never lost to a human,” Alex Vratskides, the company’s president, claimed to The Wall Street Journal.

Those results would suggest that Persado is doing things right. And here’s another positive indicator of success: The company raised over $20 million in venture capital earlier this year.

The bigger question is whether Persado will be able to scale its simple and short-sentence copywriting into persuasive copy for longer-form marketing materials such as sales letters and brochures – which would make it an even bigger threat and seriously threaten to upend the traditional copywriting field.

For the answer to that question, I’d never want to take issue with the views of veteran copywriter Bob Bly, whose perspectives I respect a great deal. In writing on this topic, he states:

“I do think that either already or very soon, software will equal or surpass the performance of human writers in both simple content and short copy. We have to prepare for the eventuality that computers may someday beat human direct response copywriters in long-form copy, just as Deep Blue beat Kasparov in chess and Watson clobbered Ken Jennings in Jeopardy. Ouch.”

What do you think? Is computer copywriting the wave of the future? Let’s hear your own perspectives.

What’s driving innovation in consumer packaged goods these days?

July 5, 2015July 6, 2015 Phillip Nones Branding, Business, Marketing, Sales Business, Consumer Marketing, Consumer Packaged Goods, Consumer Trends, Consumers, CPG, marketing, Product Development

With the steady rise in the number (and variety) of consumer packaged goods offerings, one might wonder if the factors that drive CPG innovation are the same today as they’ve been in the past.

There’s no dearth of research to help give us clues to the answer. In the first half of this year alone, major CPG research results have been published by the likes of Accenture, Deloitte, Forrester, IRI and Kantar – and that just covers the first half of the alphabet!

The broad takeaway from these reports is that there are six major trends driving innovation in the industry. Three of them are just as important as they’ve ever been, and three additional ones are becoming more significant as time goes on.

The three “classic” trends that drive CPG innovation as much as ever are convenience, value, and specialization.

They’re fundamental, they’re significant, and they haven’t lost their importance based on what’s happening in the larger marketplace or the economy:

Convenience is a major driver because consumers are always looking to get what they need faster and with less effort than before. If a product saves time and delivers multi-benefit solutions, consumers will respond.

Value is always perennially important. When the perceived value of a product goes down because of price pressures or a lack of differentiating benefits, brand loyalty is adversely affected.

Specialization – Product formulation and packaging can affect the way consumers feel about products. The more that can be provided in the way of a “just-for-me” solution as opposed to “one-size-fits all,” the better.

If they concentrate on these three trends, most CPG brands do pretty well. But there are three additional trends that appear to be gaining momentum. Add them to the repertoire, and an additional competitive edge can be established:

Portability – As consumers’ lives have become more mobile than ever, a premium is placed on brand that can deliver on-the-go offerings.

Environmental Impact – It’s been a long time coming, but this trend finally appears to be reaching some semblance of critical mass. More consumers are considering environmental factors — not just as attributes for products that are “nice to possess,” but actually necessary for making a responsible choice. It’s more than the product itself; it’s also sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and disposal.

Health Impact – The days of CPG products being big on convenience but bad on health are numbered. Thanks to better education and more out-of-pocket medical-related cost responsibilities, health awareness among consumers has never been higher. It may not be translating yet into improved health metrics like lower obesity rates, but there’s pretty clear evidence that more people understand health risks and are taking more responsibility for their own personal health and that of their family members. Products that can credibly claim to “healthy” benefits stand to gain in the competitive landscape.

Do you feel that there are other trends besides these six that that are influencing the development of consumer packaged goods today? Perhaps ones associated with cultural diversity … or something else? If so, please share your thoughts with other readers here.

Which brands are America’s most “patriotic”?

July 2, 2015July 2, 2015 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Commentary American brands, Brand Keys, Brand Values, Branding, Brands, Business, Corporate Image, Jeep, marketing, Patriotic Brands, Patriotism, robert Passikoff

With the 4^th of July holiday nearly upon us, sharing the results of a recent brand study seems particularly apropos.

Since 2013, Brand Keys, a branding consulting firm, has conducted an annual evaluation of famous American brands to determine which ones are considered by consumers to be the most “patriotic.”

In order to discover those attitudes, Brand Keys surveyed nearly 5,500 consumers between the ages of 16 and 65, asking them to evaluate American brands on a collection of 35 cross-category values – one of which was “patriotism.” (The number of brands included in the evaluation has varied somewhat from year to year, ranging between 195 and 225.)

Of course “patriotism” is a hyper-qualitative measure that’s based as much on emotion and each individual person’s own point of reference as on anything else.

Brand familiarity and longstanding engagement in the marketplace helps, too.

So it’s not surprising that the American brands scoring highest on the patriotism meter are some of the best-known, iconic names.

For the record, listed below are the “Top 10” most patriotic American brands based on Brand Keys’ most recent survey – the ones that scored 91% or higher on the patriotism scale (out of a possible 100 percentage points):

Jeep (98%)

Coca-Cola (97%)

Disney (96%)

Ralph Lauren (95%)

Levi Strauss (94%)

Ford Motor (93%)

Jack Daniels (93%)

Harley Davidson (92%)

Gillette (92%)

Apple (91%)

Coors (91%)

The next highest group of ten patriotic brands scored between 85% and 90% on the survey:

American Express (90%)

Wrigley’s (90%)

Gatorade (89%)

Zippo (89%)

Amazon (88%)

Hershey’s (87%)

Walmart (87%)

Colgate (86%)

Coach (85%)

New Balance (85%)

[As an aside … the only entity to score a perfect patriotism rating of 100% was the U.S. Armed Services.]

To be sure, “rational” aspects like being an American-based company whose products are actually made in the United States affect the patriotism rating of individual brands.

But other attributes — such as nationally directed customer-service activities and highly publicized involvement in sponsorships and causes that tie to the American experience — are attributes that add to a general image of being patriotic.

Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys’ president, expanded on the idea, stating,

“Today, when it comes to engaging consumers, waving an American flag and actually having an authentic foundation for being able to wave the flag are two entirely different things — and the consumer knows it.

“If you want to differentiate via brand values – especially one this emotional – if there is believability, good marketing just gets better.”

This is the third annual report issued by Brand Keys that’s been focused on brand patriotism – one of 35 brand values comparatively surveyed. Over the three years, there’s been some change in the patriotism rankings, with Colgate, Wrigley’s and Zippo falling out of the Top Ten and being replaced by Jack Daniels, Gillette, Apple and Coors in 2015.

What I find intriguing about the findings is that there isn’t a very strong correlation between the perceived patriotism of specific American brands and whether or not most of their products are made in the United States versus offshore. Of course, foreign production is more the norm than ever in the global economy. What’s important is how the consumer reacts to that reality.

With that point in mind … what about Jeep? Now that it is part of the global Fiat organization, should Jeep no longer be considered an American brand? Whether it is or not, the brand has the distinction of achieving the highest patriotism score outside of the U.S. Armed Services.

The bottom line is this: Brands, what they “mean” and what they stand for are based on the emotional as well as the rational – with the emotional aspect being the trump card with consumers.

Jeep, with all of its associations with winning wartime campaigns (particularly World War II), likely will always be a beloved “patriotic” U.S. brand, regardless of its recent Italian parent company ownership.

Are there brands not listed above that you would consider to be “highly patriotic”? If so, please share your thoughts with other readers here.

Are young marketers now the “smartest people in the room”?

June 29, 2015June 29, 2015 Phillip Nones Business, Marketing, Marketing Communications Baby Boomer Generation, Baby Boomers, Boomers, Business, Corporate Marketing, Deanie Elsner, marketing, Marketing Strategy, marketing technology, Millennials, Tapad, Unify Tech

Recently I read about some interesting remarks made by Deanie Elsner, who is the former executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Kraft Foods.

Ms. Elsner made them as the keynote speaker at the Tapad Unify Tech 2015 cross-screen technology conference held in mid-June. The gist of her argument was that senior-level marketers and heads of companies are most often the ones who are the “ball and chain” in a company when it comes to following effective marketing practices.

The way Elsner sees it, too few of these officials understand digital marketing as an integrated program that commingles data with a coordinated brand strategy:

“When you ask marketers to define digital strategy, they will give you ‘random acts of digital’ rather than an holistic strategy informed by data, with KPSs and data points that prove success.”

It doesn’t help that most upper-level managers are part of the Baby Boomer generation or just slightly younger, whereas most of the big developments in marketing technology and the communications landscape are being driven by Millennials.

[An aside: recently we learned that Millennials, at 87 million strong, are now this country’s largest age cohort — ~14% larger than Baby Boomers. And they’ll only grow more important in the coming decade or two as the Boomer generation passes into retirement and then into history.]

In Elsner’s view, Millennial employees understand something that their older counterparts generally don’t see, which is that the “one-way communications” perspective on advertising and promotion is no longer so important — or even relevant.

I can see her point. Consumers today are the ones determining the conversation and the agenda. It’s up to marketers to figure out the best ways to follow that agenda and to use the best tools to make it happen.

But then Elsner makes this bold statement that I’m not sure is totally accurate:

“Your smartest person is your most junior talent. The most dangerous, potentially, is the current CEO, because what they know doesn’t exist anymore.”

I don’t disagree that junior talent “gets” the modern communications environment more inherently than older employees. However … younger talent is prone to the opposite extreme: making assumptions based the latest trends for the youngest audiences.

When that happens, people can misread how industry changes affect consumers of all age levels, other demographics and psychographics.

In fact, in my work with numerous corporate clients, often the “smartest person in the room” is the one who’s over the age of 65. And why not? The reality is that irrespective of the seismic changes in marketing, there’s a lot to be said for 20 or 30 years of life experience to truly understand what makes human beings “tick” … why people are often so different … and what makes them choose to do the things that they do.

So the bottom line is actually this: Both younger and older marketers are important and can bring a lot to the table, and there’s more than enough respect to go around.

Amazon turns the page on yet another publishing maxim.

June 24, 2015June 24, 2015 Phillip Nones Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Economics, Media, Media Consumption, Publishing Amazon, Amazon Prime, Book Publishing, Business, e-Books, KDP Select, Kindle, Kindle Lending Library, Kindle Owners Lending Library, Kindle Unlimited, Pay per Pages Read, Publishing

The publishing industry’s “primary disruptor” will start paying authors based on pages read, not e-books purchased.

Beginning next month, Amazon is ushering in its next big change in the world of publishing … and it’s a pretty fundamental shift.

Instead of paying royalties to authors based on how many e-books have been sold, Amazon will start paying authors based on how many pages of their books consumers have read.

For now, the program applies just to self-published authors who are on Amazon’s KDP Select Program — but you can bet that if the experiment plays out well, it’ll likely expand.

Currently, Amazon remunerates its native authors on a monthly bases based on the number of times their e-books are accessed through two Kindle service programs:

Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s monthly $9.99 subscription service
Kindle Owners Lending Library, part of Amazon Prime membership benefits

The new change will shift away from paying authors based on each book accessed, and instead pay based on each page that readers access (and that remains on the screen long enough to be parsed).

Who will be the winners and losers in this new approach to compensation? Certainly, some people have criticized the current payment scheme for benefiting authors of smaller books more than those who write longer tomes. The change may improve matters for the latter because of the additional pages that make up their e-books.

But is that really the case? Many large volumes are reference-oriented book or fall into other non-fiction categories, such that a reader may be interested in accessing only a few pages within the books in any case.

But on the fiction side, authors may find themselves attracted to writing the kind of “cliffhanger” story lines that keep readers turning the pages.

However it shakes out, one thing seems destined to change. The old saw that “it doesn’t matter how many people read a book — only how many purchase it” may well be on the way out.

What are your thoughts about Amazon’s new remuneration policy? On balance, is it good for authors — or for the world of books in general? Feel free to share your comments with other readers.