Carolyn Hansen

on April 21, 2010

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

5 ideas for customer targeting

Human beings love categorizing. It must be our survival instinct. You see something and you need to know: Friend or foe? Predator or prey? (My dogs get confused on these issues quite a bit. Thank goodness they don’t live in the wild.)

Human beings hate being categorized. When you put people in a box based on age, gender or skin color you’re going to annoy them – at the very least.

That’s the fun of database marketing. It’s a politically correct way to put people in boxes.

Some marketers still don’t realize how powerful this can be. We have an ideal in our heads about sending out one-to-one marketing messages – but that would be impossibly expensive and time-consuming. In reality, we pick out similar people in our database and send a message to the group.

What are good groupings for targeted messages?

1. New customers. People love you most when they first come across your wonderful product. Now’s the time to ask them to refer their friends to you.
2. Customers who’ve bought from you in the past 30-90 days. For most consumer products (except annual subscriptions or very expensive purchases), the longer it has been since purchase, the less likely that customer will ever buy from you again.
3. Customers who spend a lot with you. They deserve special treatment. Make sure you know who’s in this group.
4. Customers who bought product A and, because of that, are likely to buy product B. Retailers are often brilliant at cross-selling. Look at Amazon – they have it down to a science.
5. Prospects going through a life change. Marriage, births, divorce, moving to a new city – these are spending triggers for many, many products.

These are the broadest of categories. Depending on the size of your database and complexity of your product offering, there can be thousands of ways to slice up the data and achieve significant results.

It’s really up to your imagination to see the interesting ways your customers fall into patterns.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on March 26, 2010

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Measurement isn't everything

If someone in this blog says “measurement isn’t everything,” you may be expecting the next phrase to be “it’s the only thing.” Or maybe that’s just me. I grew up in Wisconsin, where Vince Lombardi’s famous quotes were tattooed inside our eyelids.

I mean it. Measuring your campaigns isn’t everything. But it’s the way you’ll know whether everything else is done right. If you run track or swim, a stopwatch won’t make you better at what you do. It just tells you whether you’re doing better or worse than in the past. The data you get from your stopwatch can tell you whether your coach is giving you helpful advice – if , of course, you’re following the advice.

Lots of people in marketing and advertising dislike being measured.

• They say it impinges on their creativity.
• They say measurement is single-dimensional and branding is so much more than just selling things.
• They say measurement stifles risk-taking.

There is some truth in each of those statements.

When you have a particular goal in mind, to be successful, you need to become fairly single-minded about reaching that goal. For example, if you want to lose weight, you can’t be as “creative” in your eating habits as you might want to be. If you want a promotion, your goal stifles your ability to be as lackadaisical at work as you might want to be. So, yes, goals and measurement may have an impact on your freedom.

Yes, branding is about more than just selling. But selling the product is the single biggest brand impact possible. No matter how many lovely commercials you may see about a Lexus, owning a Lexus will have the highest impact on your brand perception.

And measurement may indeed stifle risk-taking. Marketers who measure results are more likely to slip into the tried-and-true than those who value creativity above all else. On the other hand, success brings more possibility for experimentation than failure. Too many failures and you’re out of time and budget. If you know what works and do it, you live to try again another day.

So, measurement isn’t everything in marketing. But it sure influences a lot of things.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on February 10, 2010

category: miscellaneous

Vice President/Marketing

Agency RFP questions to ponder

We’re just finishing up a HUGE round of year-end/first-quarter agency RFP requests and apparently we’re not alone, according to this semi-rant in Ad Age.

As the person in our company who drafts the initial round for RFI information – the just-the-fact-ma’am part – I’d love it if we could just post answers to those pretty-much-all-the-same questions online somewhere. An RFI FAQ, if you will.

But that will never do. When you look at those questions, even if they’re identically worded, you can’t answer them the exact same way for each potential client. Those questions come with a context. When Client A asks about your approach to branding vs. Client B vs. Client C, they really are asking three different questions. One wants to know how carefully you will follow their brand book, since they’ve invested so much in being consistent. Another one wants to know how you would build their brand from scratch, since they don’t really have a recognized brand. A third wants to know whether you consider a brand position as vitally important.

One size never fits all – especially when your own brand is about flexibility!

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on December 2, 2009

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Is advertising effective? Does it work on you?

Here’s a great way to NOT prove the effectiveness of advertising: Ask people if they think it works on them.

An Adweek Media/Harris poll discovered that very few people admit that advertising sways them.

You could have knocked me down with a feather.  (That was sarcasm!)

Seriously. Mumble-something years ago, when I was an advertising major in college, they taught us that people never confess to being swayed by advertising. If someone disses the profession, they said, ask them what toothpaste they use – and then ask how they found out about its wonderfulness.

This is the kind of survey that discovers that 95% of all adults consider themselves better-than-average drivers.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on September 16, 2009

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

What do you think of Facebook Lite?

I stumbled across an article called “Business Implications of Facebook Lite” that gave me pause. 

I’ve taken a peek at the “lite” version – and found that I kind of enjoy the only somewhat more cluttered look. You get the usual ad on your news feed, but on your profile there’s only one ad, where you’d normally get three. Here’s what the author thinks:

While users may consider this an advantage, the advertisers will now have more competition for fewer appearances. Depending on how many users are on Lite, this may make advertising rates increase on Facebook.

I wonder if advertisers might not also find this advantageous. After all, isn’t clutter also a problem? Normally, buying your way out of clutter would be ridiculously expensive – or impossible. You could sponsor a full TV show and eliminate the competition, but that’s awfully pricey. Anything less than full sponsorship would be logistically difficult. A direct marketer can’t prevent other email or direct mail from coming into a prospect’s inbox.

I hope that it works out for Facebook – and gets adopted by other media, as well. It’s not that I don’t like advertising. I just think it could be more effective in smaller doses.

What do you think?

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on September 11, 2009

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Is our fate written in the stars?

Nobody likes to be labeled, but everyone loves putting labels on other people. Baby boomers, Gen X, Millenials. You can’t avoid the label. You can only say, "Wait a minute. I’m not like that."

Here’s a commentary on MediaPost that tells us about the motivations and feelings of people based on their age.

This makes me a little crazy. I share a birthday with my husband. Same day. Same year. We do not necessarily share the same outlook on spending, saving, investing, the future or anything else.

I’m not saying we’re at odds about these things. I’m just saying our birthday doesn’t make us identical. Others in our circle are different from us -- even though they’re close in age.

This is the equivalent of astrology in my book. Complete bunk. Does anybody buy this, besides the people making it up? They do these interviews . . . and they find patterns. But it’s all subjective.

Then you end up with conclusions about Gen Xers that sound odd: "Their orientation -- about everything -- is defensive." That’s just not a believable conclusion. Unless you’ve never met anyone born in the ’60s or ’70s, except maybe to interview them.

Maybe I sound defensive. But I shouldn’t be, because I’m not an Xer. I’m one of those "resilient" boomers.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on August 24, 2009

category: creative

Vice President/Marketing

“Enough about me. Let’s talk about you. So, what do you think about me?”

That’s my favorite line from the movie Beaches. I honestly don’t remember much else about it.

This line encapsulates why good marketing is so hard to create. We know so much about the product. And the process we use to make the product. And the brand personality we want the product to embody. And on and on and on.

It all goes in the creative brief – along with the supporting documentation, the previous ads, all the competitors’ ads, etc. We pull it all together. Give it to an Art Director and Copywriter. And they may come up with something brilliant.

Then we all get a little nervous. This brilliance may not have enough hard information to get someone to buy. Oops – we forgot to mention one of the features. Oh dear – the logo may not be big enough. Is the copy truly “compelling?” (That word used in a critique is always a creativity-stopper, in my experience.)

It’s very hard to remember that our ad shouldn’t be about our product. It should be about our target and what she is interested in. She shouldn’t have to work to figure out why this is for her. That’s what we mean by relevant advertising.

It helps to be able to take a step back and get some perspective.

If an ad is all about the product, we need enough of a sense of humor to realize we’re asking the target to tell us what she thinks about us, rather than saying, “Let’s talk about you.”

 

Comments:

8/28/2009 at 11:12 a.m.
Demographics and brand marketing
I haven't seen the research you mention -- but it sounds fascinating. Do Boomers and GenY purchase fewer branded products in comparison? (I'm guessing 90% of what I buy is branded almost by default.) Off the top of my head, as a direct marketer, I'd say it's usually best not to focus on a group that's less likely to buy your product. A person's age is less important than that person's propensity to buy your product. So, if Boomers are buyers and GenY isn't, aim your messaging at the Boomers. If that isn't practical -- if your product is something only a college student would buy -- I'd recommend testing a variety of creative approaches to see what works. If there's any way to get your product in their hands -- so they can appreciate those high production values (sampling? money-back guarantee? first month free?), I'd test that kind of idea first.
>>Carolyn, Seattle 8/28/2009 at 02:00 a.m.
Big differences across demos, too.
I agree, Carolyn, that as marketers we really do tend to talk about our clients' products as though our audience can be defined by the brands they choose and the products they buy. I would just add that the rejection of this mindset is greater among the younger cohorts: GenY is more resistant to materialism than GenX, which is more cynical than Boomers. One paradox runs through the research I've read, though: while GenY really hates product-centered advertising, they are very conscious of production values and tend to buy brands: 90% of their purchases are of branded products. Any ideas on how to approach GenY audiences more effectively with those conflicting issues in mind?
>>Owen Richard Kindig, Seattle WA

Carolyn Hansen

on August 18, 2009

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Mobile marketing and segmentation

Read a helpful Marketing Sherpa article on mobile marketing that interviews Jeff Hasen, CMO of HipCricket.

My favorite bit is this:

Strategy #4. Segment audience by behavior, not by phone

When building campaigns, Hasen and his team focus more on an audience’s mobile habits than the types of phones it is using.

"The reason why our campaigns have great results is because they’re tapping into the activities and interests of the masses, as opposed to asking people to do something they’ve never done before."

Yay! Finally, someone who doesn’t pick the easy way, but the right way. Certainly, it takes a lot less effort to put all BlackBerry users in one bucket and all iPhone users in another. It uses a lot less mental energy to stereotype based on age or skin color, too – but it’s not a terribly helpful way to go through life.

Basing your campaigns on what people do with their mobile devices means keeping track of a lot more data – but it makes sense and will be much more successful.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on June 19, 2009

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

It's a candy mint AND a breath mint.

Just read another article about the poor, beleaguered banner ad in Mediaweek.

The Online Publisher’s Association and comScore want us to know that banners are about more than clicks. This follows efforts by the IAB and Microsoft to do the same thing.

True, these guys are a little biased. But, even though I’m a direct marketer and all about the click, I can’t help but hope they win.

I want the banner ad to survive – and I want it to be more than just an annoying flashing dealio that I have alter my screen size to hide. I’m not able to read with these things blinking at me!

Not everything is about an instant response. Banners could, in theory, do an excellent job of brand building. (Just remember . . . some of us will boycott ads that flash like disco lights.) They can also sell right now. This has always been true of, for example, newspaper ads – some of them extol the virtues of a product and some of them have coupons. Heck, the classified section couldn’t be more direct. It’s true of television commercials. We have branded ones and direct spots.

Both have a place. Both are important. The issue seems to be definitions and goals. Mixed or fuzzy goals lead to disappointment.

So let’s click our Certs and end the argument.

 

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on June 1, 2009

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Counting clicks.

Isn’t it odd that, whenever you have firsthand knowledge about something you read in a newspaper, you realize the article is full of inaccuracies? I say this as someone whose college major was Journalism (about 500 years ago) – so I sympathize with news writers. It’s never easy to pull together every stakeholder’s perspective and have a coherent outcome.

I was still surprised, and a little appalled, at yesterday’s New York Times article called “Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise.”

The premise was that – suddenly – advertising could be measured. Ads could be objectively compared. Marketers – as never before – would know what worked.

I realize I’m in the direct marketing biz, so I have a better idea than most that this is not revolutionary news. That, in fact, this has been going on for about 100 years (literally) – and the Internet has only made measuring results both easier and more complicated. But this article is in the Media & Advertising section. Shouldn’t the editor of this page be a little better informed?
How about the people they quote? Shouldn’t they have a clue? Here’s what the featured spokesperson of this new era says:

“It’s putting numbers to an industry that never had numbers before,” says Mr. [Darren] Herman, 27, who started and sold three media and technology companies before founding Varick last summer. “It’s nice to be able to tell your brand manager or the chief marketing officer which audience is interacting with the unit, what time of day, what day of the week, and what the response is on certain types of offers. Before, nobody could really tell you that.”

Seriously? Never had numbers before?  I’ve been measuring the results of advertising since before Mr. Herman could ride a bike. (Yes. I’ve already admitted that I’m very old.) Others have been doing it for even longer.

It’s true that back then I didn’t know what time of day my responders wrote their checks or filled out their BRCs. But I certainly knew what the response was to different offers. I wasn’t doing TV commercials 27 years ago – but even back in those days, DRTV professionals knew what time of day and what day of the week was most effective to advertise.

To read in the Times that big agency holding companies are just now ”starting data practices, hoping to latch onto what is expected to be the fastest-growing category of online advertising in the next five years,” makes me shake my head. Many agencies – most of them from direct marketing – already have sophisticated data practices. We don’t need to hire laid-off spreadsheet readers from Citigroup or Bank of America. We have really smart data analysts on the team.

One more NYT quote:

Getting advertising agency employees to rely on data is difficult, agencies say. And as people trained on Wall Street migrate to Madison Avenue, executives anticipate battles between creative types and wonks.

I’d like to suggest that the follow-up article can be about those battles between creatives and . . . let’s call them the “suits”! That’s something we’ve never seen before on Madison Avenue. (Back off. Old people get to be sarcastic, too.)

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on April 6, 2009

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Don't fail in new media.

If you’re getting started in new and emerging media, I’m going to recommend checking out Brian Gilbert’s new audio conference on April 22, sponsored by The Competitive Advantage.

Brian is our VP of Integrated Marketing, as well as a contributing writer for The Competitive Advantage. Of course, you can also get insight into his expertise by reading his contributions on this blog.

I hope you’ll attend!

 

Comments:

5/5/2009 at 10:50 a.m.
Update: webinar canceled
Brian's webinar had to be canceled. Stay tuned. We hope it will be offered in the future.
>>Carolyn, Seattle WA

Carolyn Hansen

on March 2, 2009

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Shifting marketing budgets from offline to online.

It’s easy to use this forum to poke at what others do. Making fun is fun -- and I indulge that guilty pleasure here often enough.

So, please note: I just read a recent interview that made me want to stand up and cheer. And I am telling you about it here, hoping this kinder, gentler post will provide contrast to those meaner, snarkier ones I usually write.

Beverly Thorne, SVP at Century 21, was interviewed by eMarketer about why and how she shifted budget from TV to digital.

It took some time and patience, but she and her team were able to measure her advertising’s ROI. She says:

We used both internal metrics and tools and external third-party measures. We made media investments in 2008, and each week and each month we measured what came from them in terms of leads generated. The most important metric we have is an internal proprietary tool which tells us what kind of leads are being generated.

This sounds like a lot of work, including building proprietary tools and waiting week after week for the analysis to be done. But here’s the payoff:

From December 2007 to December 2008, we improved the efficiency of our lead generation by reducing our cost per lead over 60%. At the same time, we multiplied our number of leads by over 235%.

I congratulate Ms. Thorne for pulling it off.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on February 11, 2009

category: miscellaneous

Vice President/Marketing

Three kinds of lies.

Few things (marketing-related) raise my blood pressure like the waste of money and energy involved in getting a third party involved in taking a so-called survey on behalf of your pet cause that purports to prove . . . something.

Disraeli said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

I think of that quote every time I look at a PR puff piece that tells me how some survey just came up with surprising data supporting the organization that paid for the survey.

Here it is in Brandweek in "Event Marketing’s Importance Increasing." That’s a provocative title. Promoting events is getting harder and harder to do when budgets are being cut. Many of the shows I’m aware of are struggling to fill seats. I’d love to hear that events are somehow more important than before.

Then I saw the big clue. One of the survey’s sponsors is the Event Marketing Institute.

Hey, all you "Institutes" out there! Please don’t waste my time with this stuff. I know you can get statistics to say whatever you want. For example:

More than a quarter (26 percent) of those surveyed said event marketing is the discipline that drives the greatest return-on-investment.

That leaves about three-quarters of those surveyed disagreeing with that statement. I’m guessing 100% of those surveyed would have been hard-pressed to call event marketing a "discipline" without that word being put in their mouths.

But that’s my bias. I hate fake surveys. They give real surveys a bad name.

 

Comments:

2/19/2009 at 2:14 p.m.
Three Other Kinds of Lies
Lies can be statements of false facts (e.g., Obama lost the 2008 presidential election); lies can be incomplete statements of true facts (e.g., over a quarter of respondents said event marketing drives the greatest ROI); and lies can take the form of an omission of some relevant truth (e.g., not mentioning to a brand audience that event marketing is most effective for local businesses like retail boutiques and restaurants rather than say a Coca-Cola soda pop festival or conference for soda pop drinkers). Robert A. Heinlein came up with this taxonomy of lies. Or his character Lazarus Long did - maybe Heinlein just wrote it down...
>>Steve, San Francisco, CA 2/13/2009 at 5:50 p.m.
List bias
Yes! It's not just asking leading questions, it's asking the wrong people that makes a survey biased. Designing proper surveys is a difficult discipline. I have great respect for those who do it well.
>>Carolyn,  2/13/2009 at 5:30 p.m.

Here, here! I completely agree, Carolyn. It drives me nuts when web-hosting firms (I've been searching for one) trumpet that on the site you can build with their help, you can have SURVEYS! I don't see the point in having a survey that asks how many of my patients have indigestion . . . they should be telling me that in the consulting room, not on a public site! Unless I begin seeing thousands of patients a day (not likely in my current office), I won't be using the results to trumpet "Forty percent of my patients have indigestion at some point every day!" Thanks for your blog!
>>Laraine Crampton, Santa Monica CA

Carolyn Hansen

on January 29, 2009

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Identifying new audiences for your product.

Targeting, segmenting, media planning . . . all those things are tailor-made for spreadsheet junkies, right?

We’re so darned rational in the marketing world. At least when we’re explaining what we do to clients. We do all this research, you see. Qualitative, quantitative, all of it. We mine your customer database and overlay somebody else’s database and see what shakes out.

We know your audience’s age, income, height, weight and eye color. They index high for left-handedness, have 1.14 children and prefer cats to dogs.

The client has to be pleased when we’re so familiar with their target . . . but where do we find more people like this?

It’s tempting, in a new era that punishes wastefulness, to paint ourselves into a corner with our targeting. Let me suggest that carefully testing into new ideas may be appropriate right now. Let’s have a little less "rationality" and a little more creativity -- because we should be looking for customers wherever we can find them.

Why not invite a group of smart marketers who may be less familiar with your product and your target into a room and have a little brainstorm.

• Who might be interested that we’re missing right now?
• What halo around the target might be ripe for picking, partly because they haven’t seen our marketing over and over?
• Look farther afield, as well. What else might your product be used for that has resonance with a completely out-of-target audience?

Human beings are prone to stereotyping and, for the most part, it works well as a survival mechanism. It allows us to think about the more likely threats before the unlikely ones. But there’s a time when our stereotypes hold us back from thinking bigger.

When everyone else is thinking small, try thinking big.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on January 23, 2009

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

What's worth measuring.

Yet another survey of marketers has shown that they are unable or unwilling to measure marketing return on investment. This time the information comes from The Conference Board in a report called Managing and Measuring Return on Marketing Investment.

I don’t doubt that technical and other issues seriously inhibit measurement. But it doesn’t mean you can’t make a start. Here’s the kicker from this report:

Leadership commitment (63 percent) is the most important driver of marketing ROI. An additional 37 percent said that executive sponsorship in particular is an important driver, supporting findings that identify senior leadership as the most important component of the business environment for the advancement of an ROI-driven marketing effort.

If I’m understanding what this says and my math skills are up to par -- 63 plus 37 . . . carry the 1 -- 100% of the marketers surveyed who aren’t able to measure ROI think it’s because their boss won’t let them. I must be misreading this.

The real issue looks like something else. Another quote:

Although the inputs and expenses associated with marketing can easily be measured on a monthly or quarterly basis, the results of a successful marketing effort — enhanced brand recognition and reputation, customer loyalty, improved market penetration, expanded networks and cross-selling opportunities — may not be realized in the form of increased revenue within a specific timeframe and may be difficult to forecast,

Some of these things are either nearly impossible to measure or else really not important.

Brand recognition is not necessarily worth measuring. You should have an idea if your brand isn’t well known. If it isn’t well known generally, you may also have a pretty good idea if it’s known within your target market. When you talk to potential customers, have they heard of your company or product? If not, brand recognition may be an issue for you. Measuring it isn’t as important as fixing it -- because (as noted) it can’t really be attributed to a single effort anyway.

Reputation is rarely impacted by advertising. Perhaps this metric can be foisted on the PR people.

Customer loyalty can be measured, and relatively easily, if you have a customer database. If you don’t have one, you need to figure out whether it makes sense strategically to build one. If it doesn’t make sense, maybe all you need to measure is revenue growth.

Market penetration is something like brand recognition. It may not be an important metric. And wouldn’t revenue growth (again) be an easy substitute, until the time comes when you’re able to determine market penetration? If it’s that big a deal, can you hire a research firm? Outsourcing is a possibility for measuring many of these things.

Expanded networks. Umm . . . what does that mean in this context?

Cross-selling opportunities? If you have customers and you know who they are, e.g., have a database so you know what they bought or have a retail store so they’re standing in front of you when they’re buying, you have cross-selling opportunities. Since these are both one-to-one examples, you should probably be able to get some measurement in place. If your boss lets you.

So much depends on what you’re selling and how you sell it that my generalizations sound as fatuous as the results of this 73-person survey. So, seriously, before you rant and rave about how hard it is to measure results, remember that it’s okay to decide that some results aren’t worth measuring.
 

 

 

Comments:

2/3/2009 at 12:35 a.m.
Thanks!
Thanks for the suggestions, Dave. We're having a meeting about how we can improve this blog on Monday . . . and I'm forwarding your comments to the rest of the team. (I make no promises about when you'll see changes, however!)
>>Carolyn Hansen,  2/2/2009 at 7:20 p.m.
Measurements
I like your blog, your team is obviously focused on creating great content. I have a couple of recommendations. 1.) Use Blog software that will allow a commenter a link back to his website. That will create more comments, which inturn creates better ranking and thereby more sales. 2.) Supply a trackback link so that if someone wants to talk up your great post on measurement they can give you credit. That will create more links, which creates better ranking, and you guessed it more sales. Blogging is marketing and you guys have infrastructure and talent depth to rock at it. Positively, Dave Pavlu Measurement Freak http://www.AdsUpNow.com
>>Dave Pavlu, Snohomish  WA

Carolyn Hansen

on January 6, 2009

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Marketing smarter, not harder

We’re all being a lot more careful with our budgets in 2009 -- consumers and businesses alike.

"Do more with less" is back in style with CFOs everywhere. Argh.

I have a proposal for you: Use some of your marketing budget for split testing -- even if that budget is smaller this year. In fact, do it especially if your budget has shrunk.

Multivariate testing is an inexpensive and fast way to learn what your target audience responds to. Try all your brilliant ideas -- creative, media outlets, offers, etc. -- all at the same time and see what happens. Then you can stretch the rest of your budget much further by spending only on what works and dropping the losing ideas.

You don’t need millions of dollars to do it . . . and the learning is priceless.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on December 11, 2008

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

What green means.

I started talking about the Good and Green Conference in yesterday’s post. You might wonder why I went.

Hacker Group launched an internal green initiative a year and a half ago and we started the Green Marketing Coalition this past spring. The Coalition looks at marketing practices to see how we can make them more environmentally friendly. This is not as glamorous as being the marketer for a flashy green product, but we felt that, since our industry uses a lot of natural resources, it was important to do our part to reduce our environmental impact.

One of the most interesting conclusions I heard at the conference last week was that the idea of "green-ness" is often a negative to consumers. They assume a green product is worse than the regular version. If it’s a cleaning product, it doesn’t clean as well. If it’s a light bulb, it costs a lot of money, turns on slowly and casts an eerie shade of . . . well, green on the room.

The challenge given to the group was to make better products. Make the green product the "cool" one. As the happy owner of a four-year-old Prius, I confess that idea works for me. I made no sacrifices when I got that car.

The good news for my company is that’s what we did with our own green initiative. We offered our clients something we called internally "green in a box." We did the research and the legwork. We found the vendors and sought out the recycled paper. We already had the tightest list processing and most sophisticated marketing database systems in the business -- so that kind of waste has never been an issue for us.

And to get our clients on board, we absorbed some of the costs. So the result for the client was a more environmentally friendly way to market their products and services, without making a sacrifice.

Eventually, it’s not "green marketing" anymore. It’s marketing.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on December 10, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Better and Greener

I attended the Good and Green Conference last week. I’d love to sum up what I got out of it . . . but I haven’t quite reached a pithy conclusion yet.

One thing was confirmed to me about marketers that I hesitate to discuss in this post -- because it’s negative and I met such lovely people in Chicago. But I’ve made this knock so many times already in this very space that I hope that (if any of them ever stumble across this) they’ll take it in the spirit I intend it.

Marketers care way too much about generic surveys of consumer attitudes.

Everyone is trying to divide all of us into three or five or nine or 167 convenient shades of green. I’m too pragmatic for that approach. If attitudes predicted behavior, I’d be a much better person than I am. Hypocrisy is the human condition.

My contention is that behaviors are more measurable and more meaningful than attitudes.

I got a terrific book, Strategies for the Green Economy, by one of the conference’s keynote speakers, Joel Makower. He sums up the frustration with all the segmentation that doesn’t really work this way.

For the record, here’s my own unscientific market segmentation, based on nothing but intuition, common sense, and 20 years of observing the green marketplace. Like the other segmenters, I divide the world into five kinds of green consumers:

• Committed -- knows what to do and does it often
• Conflicted -- knows what to do but often doesn’t bother
• Concerned -- wants to know what to do but doesn’t yet
• Confused -- doesn’t know what to do or how to make a difference
• Cynical -- doesn’t know and doesn’t care

Of course, any one of us, depending on the day, our mood, and what we’re buying, can be any one of these five consumers or even a little bit of each.

I love this conclusion, because it rings true and it’s actionable. You can use this list as a filter for your creative work to be sure it speaks to all, except perhaps the cynical.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on October 21, 2008

category: miscellaneous

Vice President/Marketing

When CMOs despise their agencies.

Ow! Got a little burned by the acid in the CMO comments in an Ad Age article today.

Agencies are getting "in the way" of advertisers, rather than smoothing the path with online media companies. Advertisers have to do their own strategic briefings with the online ad networks. Advertisers are laying down the law and calling in representatives from 20 ad networks . . . and the law "included no reselling, serving ads only on sites that have a direct relationship with the publisher and full transparency, and the ability to audit every site where its banner ads appear."

Tough stuff.

When you have a client who is ready to deal personally with 20 vendor relationships to that level of detail, rather than work through your agency, it’s clear you’re in trouble.

One of the comments from agencies on this article indicated that the solution is to make sure you add value, come up with new ideas and be sure you stay a few steps ahead of your client.

The tone I got from the article is that the clients wish their agencies were on top of things they should be doing. The clients weren’t asking for new ideas. They wanted competence.

Another commenter threw up his or her hands and wondered why we should bother, because clients are never happy.

I can’t bring myself to agree with that either. With so many hungry agencies out there, why would we see any long term client/agency relationships?  And there are many of those.

Clients are rational and they can be pleased.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on October 9, 2008

category: miscellaneous

Vice President/Marketing

Is behavioral targeting evil?

Lots of behavioral targeting start-ups are going away or slowing down, according to Online Media Daily until "Congress sorts through the rulings."

Part of the problem is fear -- privacy issues haven’t been completely addressed -- and part is that BT hasn’t proven its worth to advertisers.

One proposed solution is a bit bizarre if you’re trying to prove you’re legitimate (and I quote):

Traveling to the United Kingdom to offer the service might be one option for companies offering ad targeting. A source requesting anonymity says Adzilla plans to pull up stakes in the U.S., move to the U.K., and use whatever capital they have left to refocus the technology on a more conventional business model.

Leave the country?  Even if you "refocus" on a "more conventional" proposition, you’ll look like you’re trying to avoid the new rules. I think most advertisers would not want to be associated with that.

Beyond the privacy issues -- even if the whole world opted in -- as we’ve discussed in this blog many times before, behavioral targeting is not ready for prime time. The behaviors being measured have to be associated with the behaviors marketers want.  You can try to sell a neat little what-if scenario that assumes people behave the way we hope they will. (Take a look at my July 22, 2008 post.) In the real world, things often work out differently.  This is the scientific way to approach marketing.

I honestly don’t believe behavioral targeting is, by definition, evil. In fact, as a tool, its power could be used for good -- for marketers and consumers.  But for now, we have to wait and see whether anyone will be allowed to practice BT and, if they do, whether they can find the key to making it work.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on October 7, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Communicating credibly in a crisis.

At a certain point, people stop believing your messages. For banks, that day has arrived. For political candidates . . . well, I have to think their time for "setting the record straight" may have come and gone. The hysteria has reached a fever pitch and cynicism is everywhere. No one believes anything that doesn’t match their pre-conceived ideas about the candidates.

If you’re going through a troubling time, it’s tempting to pull yourself into a fetal position and wait till the storm is over. Unfortunately, that only makes things worse.

I’m not an expert in crisis management. But I do know something about communicating, as well as building -- and keeping -- trust through your marketing efforts.

If your company has something important to communicate in difficult times, you want to keep what you’ve learned from the marketing department in mind.  If you’re a politician, you should know a thing (or twelve) about communication. 

First, think about all your market segments. A company has its employees, customers, stockholders and the general public (or potential customers) to consider. If it were me, I’d take care of those audiences in that order -- unless, of course, you have a public health crisis on your hands. Talk to employees first. They deserve your honesty. Don’t hide from your customers. They’re your lifeblood. Explain things to your shareholders. And deal with your advertising or PR campaign last of all.

I have a friend who goes online to check her bank account every day. I won’t name names, but its initials are WaMu. The bank hasn’t talked to her as a customer about what’s going on . . . but each day as she signs in, a new tagline greets her. That’s not reassuring. That just makes her a little more nervous. She’ll be moving her money to a credit union soon because the advertising department has gotten ahead of itself and hasn’t talked to customers directly.

After you determine your target segments, where will you find your audience? How can you reach them with the least amount of waste? That’s your media plan.

Then consider the action you want those groups to take. Put the message and offer together that will drive that action.

And, finally, follow through with what you promised. That’s really the only way to build trust or build a brand.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on August 21, 2008

category: miscellaneous

Vice President/Marketing

How's everyone doing?

Nothing seems to have been posted here in a while.  I can testify that it’s because our agency is in the middle of one of those high-pressure crunch periods.  We seem to have several campaigns that need to drop by October 1 to impact fourth quarter numbers.  Yoiks!

So I feel particularly out of touch when skimming through Ad Age and seeing "agency execs mired in malaise."

Oh, those measurable goals.  It may not be a great time for the economy in general, but it’s a good time to be a direct marketer.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on July 22, 2008

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

More light reading about behavioral targeting.

The continuing off-target discussion about behavioral targeting is a real frustration to me. 

In MediaPost’s Behavioral Insider, there’s an interview with comScore’s vice president of product management, Steve Dennen.  He’s touting a new product that purports to help advertisers better target their audiences online.

How is this done?  By segmenting groups based on how much content they consume online.  He says:

We have taken our 120+ content categories we report on — news, sports, health, finance, etc. — and segmented the audience into heavy, medium and light users.

Dennen says we should "think about it as site-level behavioral targeting."

As Charlie Brown might say . . . Ack!

Sure, I guess that’s a behavior.  But why is it worth targeting?  It’s like saying I’m a better target for a particular product if I’m a "heavy user" of Oprah reruns rather than someone who catches an episode once a month.

Back when I was a girl, heavy users meant people who bought a lot of the thing you were selling . . . pickles or brandy or sunglasses or whatever.  Not people who were addicted to the latest sports scores -- which means next to nothing in terms of what they might be likely to buy, except maybe baseball tickets.

Let me quote Dennen again: 

If you think about an electronics manufacturer or camera manufacturer, they would use the heavy and light segments differently. Let’s say they have a pretty high-end camera coming out and need to target that online. They can look at the photography category and the heavy viewers of that and base their planning decisions on using that segment. Whereas maybe they conversely are coming out with a lower end or family fun camera. That is going to be more of the casual camera audience. And in that case they would look at light photography content consumers.

I can think of all sorts of ways that example doesn’t work.  The professional photographer and the casual photographer easily could both be light users of online photography content.  The month before my husband’s birthday, I might be a heavy content viewer of photography sites looking for the right "family fun camera" for him.  The pro might know just what she wants and need only half an hour to confirm her opinions and another few minutes of price shopping.  More than the amount of time, it’s the content of the content we look at that would differentiate us.  You don’t need the heavy/medium/light distinction to figure that out.  And that’s why, online, Google is so hard to beat.

 

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on July 8, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

The future of precision targeting.

I have hope that one day general advertisers and direct marketers will speak the same language.  That day is not yet here—but we're getting closer.  In a July 7 article in Ad Age about the changing consumer market, Peter Francese said:

In the past, target marketing focused mostly on what TV shows people in a segment watched or what radio formats they preferred or what periodicals they read.

Good to see someone in Advertising Age use the words ''target marketing'' like that. 

However, in the past, target marketing didn't really focus on TV all that much.  Advertising did.  It's great that advertisers are trying to target now.  I give them a lot of credit for that.  Francese goes on:

To some extent, that type of targeting can still work. But precision targeting in the future will rely more heavily on ethnographic research into the culture, beliefs and activities of target consumer groups, as well as their media preferences.

That makes the skeptic in me pause.  Precision targeting in the future (as now) will not be about mind-reading—so why the ethnographic research into culture and beliefs? 

I have to admit, I wasn't completely certain I knew what ethnographic research was.  So I looked it up on Wikipedia and found this amusing nugget near the end of the article:

Where focus groups fail to inform marketers about what people really do, ethnography links what people say to what they actually do—avoiding the pitfalls that come from relying only on self-reported, focus-group data.

Consumer activities (we call them behaviors) and media preferences are extremely important to know.  They're also observable and measurable.  It doesn't really matter -- to marketers -- what people say, only what they do.  Ethnography, while fascinating, can easily be left to the anthropologists.

 

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on June 26, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Marketing strategy.

Generating ideas on the creative side of an agency is almost always a team sport.  Copywriters and art directors get together and brainstorm.  Often creative directors and designers are invited to join the fun.  (It really is fun . . . the laughter from those conference rooms can get pretty annoying to the rest of us.)  On big assignments, multiple teams will be given the same challenge.

It's a little harder to get a whole team together for ideas on the account side.  Our Account Managers are expected to be solely responsible for the marketing strategy for their client.

Over the years, we've developed a way to spread this responsibility -- although not the final accountability.  As our agency has grown, we've added an Account Director level to the organizational chart.  The Director provides feedback on the AM's plans before they are presented to the client -- and is especially involved in developing strategy for new clients. 

We also keep all of our senior executives involved in our twice-a-week Strategy Council meetings where we review plans or brainstorm new strategies when new challenges come up.  We intentionally cross-pollinate these meetings with Account Managers who have worked through similar challenges.

And every week our Account Managers, Account Executives and Business Development team meets.  At almost every meeting, an AM will present a case study or the equivalent of a quarterly client presentation, to spread the word about what's working now throughout the company.

Making sure that knowledge is retained, that good strategy is used and new ideas are generated by an expert team is one of the great benefits of using an agency.  Otherwise you'd be sitting alone in your office bouncing ideas off the ceiling instead of collaborating with your off-site agency team.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on May 27, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Happy summer!

I hope your Memorial Day celebration was full of fun and kicked off summer with just the right amount of verve.

I read in last week's New York Times that tourism marketers are nervous about getting your travel dollars and are changing tactics to be a little more hard-hitting.

Hacker Group's early roots are in travel and tourism.  Little things like calls to action and urgency drivers are not news to us.  We've been using them for twenty-plus years.  It's kind of a kick to see What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas morph into Do Vegas right now! 

Panama City Beach, Florida, is throwing a “Summer white sale.”  Orlando has added Say yes to special values to its Say yes to Orlando campaign.

One of the lessons my Mom taught me (and one that's served me well as a direct marketer) is that it never hurts to ask.  It looks like some tourism marketers are starting to ask.  I'll bet they're also starting to get better results.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on May 19, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Sweat equity.

If a commercial gives you goosebumps, are you more likely to buy the product?  If your palms sweat, does it mean you're going to reach for your wallet?

Disney thinks so -- and I'll bet they're right, if they're talking about entertainment advertising.  Nothing is worse than going to a movie that doesn't arouse your emotions.  Most of us figure that if the trailer doesn't do anything for us, the movie certainly won't.

And other products?  What about a considered purchase, like a computer printer?  Or an impulse buy, like a Diet Coke at the local mini-mart?  How about something somewhere in between, like shoes?

The International Herald Tribune says Disney will be doing research on the biometric responses (heart rate and skin conductivity, i.e., how much they sweat) of people watching commercials.  This is important because TV is not a rational medium, it's an emotional medium, according to Duane Varan, the head of this new laboratory. We can get to a deeper layer of what's motivating people by seeing how they behave, observing them in experimental settings and seeing how their body reacts.

Apparently NBC did similar experiments several months ago, according to The New York Times.  It's not all that new.  I heard about these kinds of experiments back in the '80s, when I was taking advertising classes in college.

Varan's premise is very interesting to me.  Is TV really any more emotional than radio or search engine marketing?  People aren't either rational OR emotional.  It's hard to believe that media can be one or the other. 

Marketers often use TV in an emotional way -- and much of that has to do with the limitations of the 30-second spot.  Emotions are definitely communicated much more quickly than reasons.
They're working awfully hard at Disney to get to some pretty esoteric information.  It'll be interesting to see if this new lab gets any more helpful data than all the other experimenters before them.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on May 15, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Outcomes

A nice article in Strategy + Business, a Booz Allen Hamilton publication, lays out the recent history of marketing measurement in a straightforward, unbiased way.  I admit to being very biased toward metrics that are about outcomes rather than inputs.

Christopher Vollmer, the article's author, says marketers are demanding outcome metrics -- and I say, yay!

Every time I see something about a new way to get at people's demographics, I get a little more frustrated.  It's not about how many 25-44 year-old women will see your ad.  It's mostly about how much you spend on your ad and how much money you make from it. 

If you spent $10 to send a certified letter to the right buyer and they spent $10,000 to buy something it cost you $1,000 to make, you wouldn't care if the target was male or female -- as long as you knew they were predisposed to buy your product.

Knowing which person to send your $10 letter to or which group of people are most likely to become one of your buyers may involve demographics -- pregnancy tests are sold to women of childbearing years -- but not always.  And not always as a first cut of who might be most interested.

Inputs are meaningful, of course, but the first focus must be on how you will measure results.  If you don't start with the outcomes, you'll never know what worked.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on April 24, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

You can observe a lot by watching.

Just read an interesting Ad Age CMO Strategy piece on "Why Consumers May Never Be the Same" after the recession.

The author, Eric Spahr, talks about how to figure out consumers. And he suggests observation, rather than focus groups. Here's what he said:

Consumers are notoriously bad at predicting or remembering their behavior, so don't rely on what they say in focus groups or one-on-one interviews. Instead, watch what they do. Last year, people were ready to trade in their SUVs for hybrids at the thought of $3-per-gallon gas. Today, those same SUVs are swerving across three lanes of traffic for the opportunity to fill up for gas that cheap.

That made me smile. It's true, isn't it? What was unthinkable a short while ago becomes business as usual soon enough.

Yogi Berra, the great 20th century baseball zen master had it right. You can observe a lot by watching

Spahr's proposition also reminded me of a focus group I observed many, many years ago. The client was a non-profit organization. They wanted to know why some people wouldn't respond to our most successful direct mail package. It had been the best idea we could come up with . . . but there were still some folks who wouldn't give, even though they'd received it several times.

The group was selected based on the criteria that they had given to this organization in the past and they had received this direct mail piece at least twice, but hadn't responded.

They were gathered in the room behind to one-way glass. They were loosened up with some small talk. Then the real meeting began. Each person was handed a sample of the mailing and asked what they thought.

The consensus? It was brilliant! If they got something like this in the mail, of course they would respond. Nothing could stop them from writing a check.

That didn't answer our question about how we could improve our mailing. But it did give us valuable information. We concluded, as did Eric Spahr, "consumers are notoriously bad at predicting or remembering their behavior."

Don't ask. Merely watch. You'll observe more.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on April 9, 2008

category: miscellaneous

Vice President/Marketing

Would you rather be smart or lucky?

Smart people tend to depend on their smartness and don't necessarily think about luck. Since none of us is perfectly smart all the time, a little good luck is a wonderful thing. Being smart can't always help you with things like timing.

No one is lucky all the time either. In that case, having brains can pull you out of some scary-bad situations.

And intuition is something else altogether. But if you read Blink, you know that some intuition may be based on having a lot of experience.

One of ways I'm lucky is that I work with smart people -- people who catch my mistakes before it's too late. (That's one of the wacky things about posting to this blog. I don't have any proofreaders or editors looking over my shoulder and I feel like I'm working without a net!)

So . . . smart and lucky may be related. Some will tell you that persistence is another part of what looks like luck.

When it comes to marketing, you can look at your competitors, heave a sigh and consider them lucky if they're getting all the business you want. Or you can focus on the parts of the lucky-smart equation that you have control of -- consistent, persistent selling . . . surrounding yourself with smart advisors . . . continually learning so you hone your instincts. And by doing that, you may be able to create some of your own marketing luck, regardless of how smart you are.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on March 26, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Do you love a bargain?

I do a lot of traveling and I've finally come to terms with haggling with street vendors. I used to just say "Okay!" (universal language) when I heard the price of something I wanted. I'd hand over the lira or pesos or whatever and be done with it. My husband took the opposite approach. He'd start out offering half the asked-for price. It was muy dificil for me to keep a poker face during these transactions. It just seemed rude.

Now people are negotiating price right in the middle of Best Buy and Ralph Lauren stores, according to The New York Times.

On the plus side, experts say, this gives stores a better chance of retaining customer loyalty. When you "empower the customer," they'll like you more and return to your store.

On the other hand, according to Priya Raghubir, a marketing professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley . . .

Rather than retaining customers, the rise in haggling is making shoppers highly price-conscious and loyal ultimately to the least expensive offer, not to a brand or a retailer.

On the third hand, one could argue that, in a recession, we're already price conscious.

I got over my problem with haggling with street vendors when I realized many of them really do want me to name my price. If I agree too quickly, these vendors feel the price they gave me must have been too low and they've left money on the table. If we both work toward an agreement, they know they've probably gotten as much as they could get from me.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on March 19, 2008

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Addressing age issues online

Burst Media published survey results saying that "few respondents 55 years and older say Internet content is primarily focused on people their age."

We probably don't need a survey to tell us that. After all, except for financial planning services and long-term care insurance, little in this life seems specifically aimed at people over 55. (I exaggerate. But only a little.)

What bugs me, as someone who . . . has acquaintances . . . friends . . . even siblings . . . in that particular age group, is that very few sites seemed designed to be friendly to an older audience. (Okay. I confess I'm getting closer to that age every year. So are you, if you're lucky.)

I don't have the data, but I'm pretty sure there aren't that many Web designers over age 55. You don't have to be 55 to need reading glasses. I've had LASIK surgery, and I still find that some sites should offer a magnifying glass.

If your product or service is something someone over 50 would be interested in buying, design your ads and your Web site to appeal to them. Don't hide the information they're looking for.

So much Internet content is "ageless," in that it appeals to people across all demographic lines. That only a handful of people over 55 think this content is aimed at them is -- in my opinion -- more about how Web sites generally look than it is about the content.

 

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Carolyn Hansen

on February 27, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Our new favorite color.

Did you know Hacker Group has a green initiative that involves all of our clients?

We started working on it last year. We've come up with several ways to reduce our clients' impact on the environment without a huge hit to their budgets. We call it our green best practices.

Our goal is to compensate for our own office's carbon footprint through all the green practices we implement on behalf of our clients.
 

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Carolyn Hansen

on February 12, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Age before beauty.

Ad Age recently published a survey about marketing to Baby Boomers.

...The results found that marketers overgeneralize, misrepresent and sometimes ignore the generation, lumping them together and, in the process, alienating them.

Apparently those wacky Boomers don't like the generalizations made about them any more than Gen Xers or Millennials do. Nobody knew this before, because Boomers don't whine about that kind of stuff. They just roll over anyone dumb enough not to pay attention.

Here's a fascinating tidbit.

An overwhelming majority of survey respondents felt misrepresented and neglected by the advertising industry...

Why would that be? Advertisers focus on demographics like age and gender. How could they neglect such a huge group?

One answer is that advertisers like the idea of appealing to a younger demographic. They may believe the older audience is already either loyal to them or the competition, so they're not worth fighting for. And they'd better make sure to get the kids on board with the brand as soon as possible. They may also believe that for many products, Boomers follow the lead of the youth target in order to stay as young and hip as possible. I certainly know people like that.

Of course, direct marketers look at the concept of "target audience" through an entirely different lens from general advertising agencies. Age isn't important. Interests and behavior are the critical data points.

No one needs a survey to find out whether cat owners ... or people who travel ... or gourmet cooks feel neglected by advertisers.
 

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Carolyn Hansen

on February 8, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

No such thing as bad publicity?

The New York Times just announced that Salesgenie.com is pulling an ad it ran on the Super Bowl — the one with the animated pandas with the awful fake Chinese accents.

People found it offensive. I have to admit, it struck me as going a little too far when I saw it during the game.

The guy who wrote the commercial, Vinod Gupta, owns the company. He's a direct marketer who knows what he's doing. My guess is that orchestrated the whole thing. I've never met the man and it's probably wrong for me to guess what his motives were. But, he made the New York Times, for heaven's sake!

Direct marketers know that anything that's agitating enough to get a big negative reaction is probably going to get you a lot of positive response as well. You rarely can soothe someone into buying something.

What's great about knowing this is that you can dial up or down the agitation to match your goals. Gupta doesn't care about the long-term impact of his bizarre commercial. He's not hoping to build a brand in the same sense most of our clients do. He wants a quick sales boost.

Most of us have longer term strategies. And direct marketing is only one tool in the CMO's box. All branding, sales and marketing goals need to mesh. That's part of the challenge and part of the fun.
 

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Carolyn Hansen

on January 30, 2008

category: a look into agency life

Vice President/Marketing

I laughed till coffee came out of my nose.

This may be one of those "you had to be there" moments, but I'll share it anyway. Call it the danger of teleconferencing.

We were having an internal creative review meeting where the full team looks over everything the creative team put together — before it gets presented to the client. The Account Manager had to be out of town that day, so she phoned in.

We were all arranged around the table, with Suzanne (our AM) represented by the speakerphone equipment sitting in the middle.

Paul launched in on a description of the concept . . . then suddenly stopped mid-sentence, glared sternly at the speaker phone and said, "Suzanne! What are you looking at?" Long pause. Suzanne timidly asked, "What?"

Paul just wanted to know if she was viewing our work on a computer screen or if she'd been sent printed samples. Suzanne thought she had been caught on some (non-existent) web cam looking out the window instead of paying attention.

I wept, I laughed so hard.

Rule Number 27 of teleconferencing: Pretend you're being watched even if you aren't.
 

Comments:

1/16/2009 at 6:01 p.m.
Oh, how I miss you guys!
As someone who's seen Ms. Hansen actually laugh coffee through her nose, this was a true trip down memory lane. I'm so glad to know that despite your stellar success, The Hacker Group is still The Hacker Group I knew and loved.
>>Martha Wharton, Seattle WA

Carolyn Hansen

on January 16, 2008

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Now we're cookin'.

I've recently taken up cooking as a way to relax on the weekend. My husband is the family chef, so the pressure is off. This has been an enjoyable way to spend Sunday afternoons. I take about half an hour to sort through recipes and find what looks appealing. I check our pantry and then go to the market for everything we don't already have on hand. I come home, pour myself a glass of wine, and start chopping, slicing and dicing.

Most of the time, this has culminated in a really terrific meal — if I do say so myself. But this Sunday was a disappointment. The great salmon fillet I started with ended up tasting pretty awful. What went wrong? Did I make a mistake? Were the ingredients wrong or in the wrong proportion?

I retraced my steps. I had followed directions exactly. The marinade ingredients were just what had been called for. I had to conclude that this particular recipe was terrible.

When we analyze our direct marketing programs, we also ask questions. What made this program successful (or not)? Did we choose the right media? Did the segmentation strategy precisely target the correct audience? Was it an irresistible offer? Was the creative work brilliant?

My a-ha moment with the fish got me to thinking. Like my ruined meal, sometimes it's just one overriding issue — not a dash of this and a tablespoon of that — that makes or breaks a program. My new rule of thumb is this: When everything goes right, you can spread the credit fairly evenly. When something goes wrong, there's often one major factor — often just one wrong strategic assumption — to blame.
 

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Carolyn Hansen

on January 9, 2008

category: a look into agency life

Vice President/Marketing

Post-holiday rush.

A new year is like the grown-up version of going back to school. I don't think I'm the only one finding it difficult to get back into the routine after taking time off during the holidays. (Tell me again . . . what is it that I do for a living?)

Just like the first week of classes, I've discovered I'm already behind -- and it's only January 9. I have reading to catch up on, assignments coming due, and pop quizzes in meetings where I thought I was just there to listen to the lecture.

Fortunately, I'm studying what I enjoy. And all the busy-ness means business is good.

Hey! I'd better get back to work!
 

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Carolyn Hansen

on January 2, 2008

category: miscellaneous

Vice President/Marketing

Work resolutions

Do you make work-related resolutions for the New Year? I asked my co-workers about theirs and Maria responded with an article quoting a survey that says 55 percent of professionals never make a career-focused New Year's resolution and 85 percent said they did not make one last year.

Does that surprise you as much as it does me? I don't think I'm career-obsessed and I know I'm no workaholic, but I spend about a third of my life at work and I'm proud of what I do here. I always want to improve. Early last year I read Getting Things Done, by David Allen and it made an enormous difference for me — and my formerly haphazard (okay, nonexistent) filing system.

Continuous improvement is something of a mantra around here, so I'm not surprised that lots of us have work-related resolutions. Some are more serious than others. And some that aren't precisely work-related come from the most dedicated folks. In no particular order, here's what people were willing to go public with...

"More kick ass creative." (Kimberly Cobban, Designer)

"To try and stay caught up!!" (Debbie Stockham, Accounts Payable)

"Take up yoga, as a stress reliever as well as exercise." (Susan Wall, Account Manager)

"To finally write that one great Hacker blog post which will gain me literary immortality." (Maria Niskishyna, Project Manager in Training)

"I definitely want to create a Hacker MSA (Marketing Services Agreement) to replace the T&C’s added to each contract." (Dick Summerhays, VP/Chief Financial Officer)

"Get organized.
Purge my old files and junk ancient papers, magazines, samples.
Network with colleagues.
Keep my desk clean.
Manage my email inbox better.
Hit all my deadlines.
Maybe best summarized by DO IT NOW!" (Brian Gilbert, VP/Integrated Marketing)

"Dan says it should be 'stay current on eTime,' but I say that’s unrealistic. So let’s go with 'kick ass all year long.'" (Tara Scot, Web Developer)

"Develop managers into leaders. And, using the Team Approach, craft the most competitive employment value proposition for our candidates." (David Nova, Director of Human Resources)

"To finally defeat the unrelenting and fierce Dust Bunnies, which have plagued my home away from home for far too long. I shall end this battle once and for all using my secret weapon, which can’t be named (so as to avoid tipping off my enemies, and thus, possibly continuing this battle even longer)." (Paul Jenulis, Proofreader)

"To master...........timing." (Donna Tschantz, Project Manager)

"Get more done in fewer hours spent." (Jürgen Stephan, Executive Director/New Business Development)

"Keep track of the number of miles I walk per day at the office." (Ben van Avermaete, Traffic Coordinator)

"Ensure management is engaged and prepared." (Tom Reid, Account Director)

"Finally visit the gym in our building." (Matt Witter, Executive Director/Account Management)

"To take it to the next level." (Michelle Schmoelzer, Account Manager)

Does any of this strike a chord with you? Let us know.
 

Comments:

1/2/2008 at 10:01 p.m.
Resolutions
It's great to see others thinking about this, as I set out my goals! Web coach James Ray says "Energy flows where attention goes," so it just makes sense to pay attention to some resolutions/goals. Love the dustbunny one . . . ya gotta have whole life goals.
>>Laraine Crampton, Santa Monica CA

Carolyn Hansen

on December 11, 2007

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Emotion-phobia

Do you have an irrational fear of fear? Your phobia may be making you a less effective marketer, pulling down your response rates and impacting the profitability of your campaigns.

Many, many years ago, I worked for a software company as a marketing copywriter. The vast majority of people there were software engineers. The business owner was, too. She's a brilliant woman and I learned a lot from her — including that it's harder to break software than you might think. She would insist that I play with every part of the systems they were developing, so that I could describe everything the software did. No feature was too minor to mention.

The other thing I learned in my brief-ish tenure there is engineers have emotions just like the rest of us. They just have a harder time admitting it.

Engineers want to believe they base all decisions on a rational set of pros and cons. As long as I'm generalizing, I'll go on and presume this is true of a majority of intelligent, highly educated folks — like marketers and CMOs. We'd feel a little weird saying, "It just looked so cool I had to have it."

It would be even harder to say, "I thought there was a chance I'd (look like an idiot/lose my job/lose my nest egg) if I didn't buy it."

All of us are motivated emotionally. One of the biggest emotional drivers is fear. That surge of adrenaline you get when you realize you've forgotten something important comes from fear. It can physically lift you out of your seat without you being conscious of getting up.

Emotional motivation is a powerful marketing tool. Greed can make us work hard, but fear of loss is an even stronger motivator than want of gain.

As protectors of our clients' brands, we don't want to appear to pander to people's darkest emotions. On the other hand, if you believe your product is helpful to people, putting the full picture in front of them — including the potential negative consequences of ignoring your message — is of benefit to them. If it strikes an emotional chord, they'll feel good about your brand.

Go ahead and raise the emotional temperature of your marketing materials. If you don't, you'll leave money on the table.
 

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Carolyn Hansen

on November 20, 2007

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

We are women. Hear us bleat.

I just read an article announcing a new advertising agency. It's called "Womankind." According to Adweek, they "will use a network of women to conceptualize and execute ads designed to appeal to females."

They say their "premise is that 85 percent of brand purchases are made by women." And yet the agency's founders claim women are "often not influenced by traditional brand messages . . . Most brands fail to meaningfully connect with a powerful buying force."

Huh?

Does this mean that the old accusation that "half my advertising is wasted" is actually an underestimation?

It gets under my old-fashioned-feminist, came-of-age-in-the-80s skin when the "premise" is that 85 percent of brand purchases are made by women, and the conclusion is women must be the victims here.

Because I can do a little math, it looks to me like men's connection to traditional brand advertising is the problem. Do I have it wrong? What am I missing?
 

Comments:

11/20/2007 at 5:16 p.m.
Traditional brand advertising and bad research
I agree that a more traditional branding approach is used in most advertising targeting women, but I also believe there is a lack of research. Here's a little bit of what I've come across in regards to advertising aimed at women. http://benvanavermaete.blogspot.com/2007/09/female-ads-i-guess-arent-working.html
>>Ben van Avermaete, Seattle WA

Carolyn Hansen

on October 30, 2007

category: direct marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Is 1:1 marketing going to get boring?

Do direct marketers love targeting too much? One advertising person recently mentioned that she was a little nervous about the idea of a time when only dog-owners would see dog food commercials.

That may sound a bit bizarre to those of us who hate advertising waste. But I think I have an inkling of what she was worried about.

If at some point we’re living in marketing utopia and I’m only getting commercial messages aimed at what I've already done or expressed interest in, how will I find out about cool new stuff? How will I figure out if I’m living the best possible life for me, if what I learn about has been determined for me based on my previous choices? A lot of us, particularly in this business, have a bad case of FMS – Fear of Missing Something.

No worries. Marketers will always need to expand the circle to include people who may not have thought about their product before. My old boss, Bob Hacker, would call focusing in on smaller and smaller target groups as Foobird Marketing — explaining that a Foobird flies in tighter and tighter circles until it flies up its own butt. Vulgar, but there's truth in it for you.

And, because of that, I promise that even in marketing heaven you'll occasionally see a dog food commercial – even if you don’t have a dog.
 

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Carolyn Hansen

on October 9, 2007

category: integrated marketing

Vice President/Marketing

Do you google yourself?

Of course you do. You learn such interesting things. For example, I'm a real estate agent in Minnesota. I'm also a lawyer in the state of New York. Best of all, I teach Spanish at the University of South Carolina. I vacation in Mexico quite a bit, but I had no idea I was so fluent in the language. These fascinating search results come from having a relatively common name.

Hacker is not a common name. I googled our company the other day. Lo and behold, another direct marketer had bought Hacker Group as a key word! A competitor, I guess. Frankly, I hadn't heard of his organization. You'd think we'd be near the end of any long tail of direct marketing terms. I looked up a few of our competitors -- ones I recognize -- and no one seems to have done the same to them.

It's an interesting idea. A little dangerous, I suppose, if you're paying for clicks and someone from the company notices. (This one got at least two clicks from me -- I had to check him out, after all.)

Since most of the other references on Google's first page of results have the adjective "notorious" in front of hacker group, I’ve decided to take this as a gesture of respect and a sincere form of flattery.
 

Comments:

10/11/2007 at 5:13 p.m.
Cool job you've got there, Dave!
Or should I say, "Woof!" You know, there's something very entertaining about the search experience. You juxtapose two things, the Dave Fisher we know here at Hacker and someone who writes about dogs all day and it makes us smile. But it also subtly points out the dangers of "contextual" advertising online, when the advertiser doesn't control the context. Maybe that's a subject for another blog post!
>>Carolyn Hansen, Seattle WA10/11/2007 at 1:47 p.m.
Googled myself
Very interesting blog Carolyn, I had no idea there was another Hacker Group. I could come up with some crazy Superman theory about the bizzaro world and them being exact but opposite copies of all of us, but I'll spare you and just share my most interesting Google twin. Apparently Dave Fisher is a field writer for Beagles Unlimited Magazine. I had no idea I was so prominent in such a ... specific field.
>>Dave Fisher, Bellevue WA