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Category: Digital
It's still just people
Brand building in a digital age: Old thinking for new times
A good question
Last year Admap set the marketing community a rather excellent essay question – 'How brands are built in the digital age'.
(Given that most of what follows is not my original thinking , contains content from previous posts, and is twice the designated word limit, I chose not to submit it).
It is a great question, not least because it refocuses our minds on brands. Guy Murphy has put it well: "I like this question. It rightly assumes that brands will remain important in future, and doesn't invite any silliness about them being a quaint marketing concept that can't survive the rise of technology. The question also raises the current industry debate up from 'communication engagement' to 'brand-building'."
However in truth it is really a question with two parts.
For it first demands a perspective on how brands have been hitherto built, before the offering of any opinion and hypothesis as to what (if anything) is different in our digital age.
The temptation with Admap's question is of course to concentrate on looking for differences what is different today. And indeed if we are not to stumble into the future walking backwards, then understanding what has changed and is changing is a necessary and important exercise.
But it cannot be the only one. For as Shane Parrish (of farnhamstreetblog.com fame) has recently written:
When we look at situations we're always looking for what's unique. We should, however, give more thought to similarities. This time is different could be the 4 most costly words ever spoken. It's not the words that are costly so much as the conclusions they encourage us to draw. We incorrectly think that differences are more valuable than seeing similarities. After all, anyone can see what's the same but it takes true insight to see what's different. We're all so busy trying to find the differences that we forget to pay attention to what's the same…. If you catch yourself reasoning based on "this time is different" remember that you are probably speculating. While you may be right, odds are, this time is not different. You just haven't looked for the similarities."
It seems perhaps only fair then, that I should get the caveat and the apology out of the way before you, dear reader, find yourself having wasted your time.
No great revelations are to be found in what follows. Nor will the reader find any grand universal theory of How Everything Changed. No predictions and diagnoses are made for seismic changes in the consumer landscape and the marketing industry. No obituaries for any discipline or practice are offered up. Nobody will come away feeling that they have been handed some golden key of new and privileged insight. And there will be not a whiff of currency, coolness, Zeitgiest or marketing avant-gard-ness about any of it.
For all these reasons, I hesitated to even write this this piece. We are afterall – and understandably perhaps – fixated as an industry on what's new.
Then I stumbled upon an old post from Helen Edwards. She writes:
The 'everything-has-changed brigade has garnered a cache of stories to bolster its cause.
They might point to the waiting lists achieved by Lancôme, which seeded its DreamTone serum with influential bloggers to foment "must-have" desire. Or to Ford, which loaned pre-launch Fiestas to 100 fashionable young drivers for six months, to earn the kind of buzz advertising can't. Or Kellogg, which has built a teen fanbase for its Krave cereal through a series of quirky videos from YouTube vloggers. At this point, doubters could be forgiven for capitulation: if even the straight-laced marketers from Battle Creek are embracing the trend, perhaps it's time to get on board.
Not so fast. When euphoria meets anecdote, that is precisely the moment when sane marketers need to hold their nerve and insist on answers to some very basic questions."
"When euphoria meets anecdote".
Helen's words convinced me that there is some worth to going back to basics. What follows is as much an effort to work out my own thoughts as anything else.
And there are surely few more basic questions than – what do we know about how brands brand built?
My answer and argument is simple. The fundamental processes that build and sustain brands have not changed.
It's just that everything else has.
A framework for inquiry
In his 1990 paper 'Brand Presence and the Perceptual Frame', marketing consultant and former adman William Moran provides us with pragmatic and commercially-attuned starting point for thinking about brands are built:
Moran's framework is in truth nothing more that a slightly more sophisticated rendering of the very familiar '3Ps' of marketing.
Except that (echoing the four Ps advocated by McCarthy back in 1960) to the familiar three Ps of Product, Price and Promotion, Moran added a third – Presence.
Wearingly familiar, isn't it?
Except that marketers of every hue are now on the receiving end of all kinds of misconceived advice. The kind of advice that suggests that 'growth hacking' means marketing is dead. Or that the existence of consumer reviews and sharing means that paid for publicity is done for.
Familiar it might be. But Moran's framework gives us a robust framework for evaluating marketing's outputs, and for thinking about how marketing has changed, is changing, and must change.
For Moran the two fundamental processes which can produce change in sales, are a change in perceived Value and a change in Presence.
Change in Value he argued, can come about from either of two subprocesses:
A change in perceived utilities (attributes) as the result of the brand's actions or those of a competitor."
A change in relative price, either briefly or longer."
Presence Moran defined as being "constituted by all marketing actions which produce changes in sales without any change in perceived value. Presence is the lubricator which simply facilitates sales by reducing the mental friction in the consumer's decision-making process."
Moran distinguished between physical and mental presence:
Distribution, shelf space, and displays can be termed physical presence because the physical product is a necessary part of the marketing action"
Mental presence is created by communications… Salience… is the degree to which a given brand comes to minds in the context of a particular purchase occasion or consumption occasion."
So for Moran, Value (utility + price) + Presence (physical + mental) = sustainable profit.
Which is after all, the whole point of branding.
As I said, all very wearingly familiar.
Thanks to the the work of Les Binet and Peter Field in analyzing the IPA's DataBank, we can add some other vital multiplying factors for successful branding.
Namely time, investment, emotion, and creativity.
The necessity of time
In The Long And The Short Of It: Balancing Short- And Long-Term Marketing Strategies, Les Binet and Peter Field report on their of analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Databank. The data held therein is the product of 30 years of the IPA effectiveness Awards – numbering some 996 campaigns, for 700 brands in over 80 categories.
Their analysis makes it clear that (contrast to our culture of immediacy) advertising's ability to create value is most keenly felt in the long-term:
The total number of business effects rises steadily as the campaign length increases… This is largely as one would expect: the longer a campaign runs, the more investment has been put behind it and the more time it has to generate effects."
This picture is replicated with the profit metric, though with a notably greater increase between 1 and 2-year campaigns."
Most profitable of all are campaigns that drive both volume and pricing… Their principle characteristic is that incremental volume is achieved whilst strengthening margin."
No 3-month campaigns report major pricing effects."
Volume effects are quick to achieve but pricing effects take much longer."
The creation of memory, brands, and business growth takes time. And as such it is, like it or not, at odds with one of the defining characteristics of our age – immediacy.
This is not to deny the value of brands being responsive in the here and now. Or the value of a brand demonstrating its currency, of surfing the ever-changing waves, fads and currents of popular culture. Or of providing short-term bursts of interest and fame.
Nor is this to suggest that there is no value in short-term activity. As Binet and Field comment:
The IPA data suggests that the optimum balance of brand and activation expenditure is on average around 60:40, though this may vary by category and is driven by how category expenditure divides (typically 60:40): the objective is to achieve equal share of voice within brand and activation."
Direct campaigns [campaigns that use immediate behavioral triggers] work most efficiently over short time frames… They are essential for short-term sales efficiency. But direct campaigns are not efficient drivers of long-term growth (over 3+ years)."
That said, simply delivering short-term activity does not lead to success in the long term. As Binet and Field observe:
The way in which long-term effects are generated is fundamentally different from how most short-term effects are produced. Although long-term effects always produce some short-term effects, the reverse is not true and long-term effects are not simply an accumulation of short-term effects."
So however much it may be the spirit (for better and for worse) of our times, we cannot allow our expectation of immediate delivery and satisfaction undermine our ability to deliver value. As Binet and Field put it:
Without brand building (measured as major brand equity shifts – awareness, image and so on) there are no price elasticity improvements. The correlation between improved price elasticity and enhanced brand standing is strikingly linear. No amount of short-term sales activity will produce the broad brand strengthening necessary to enable firmer pricing. Brand-building activity may be slow but it is essential for the optimum profitability of most brands."
The need for investment
The IPA 2009 report 'How share of voice wins market share: New findings from Nielsen and the IPA databank' contains two critical pieces of advice for those pursuing growth.
The critical metric that determines the level of a brand's market share growth is its excess share of voice (ESOV), defined as share of voice (SOV) minus share of market (SOM)."
In other words, if you want to grow your market share you need to over invest.
The second piece of advice it offers is this:
The corollary of this is that no agency or marketing client can guarantee to continue to deliver the same level of business performance for a brand is ESOV is falling as a result of underinvestment in media and marketing communications."
In other words if you are under-investing, you can expect your market share to decline.
The Nielsen analysis included two years' of media and sales data over the period ending August 2008, for 123 brands in 30 FMCG categories,
Nielsen investigated the impact of brands' SOV in the first year on sales over the two-year period and used 'base sales' to exclude the effects of distribution changes, price promotions, and other in-store activity.
The key findings from the Nielsen analysis were:
- The relationship between ESOV and share growth was confirmed.
- An average of 0.5% points of share growth can be expected per 10% points of ESOV. Thus, a brand with a market share of 20.5% and ESOV of 10% points would expect to grow over a year to 21%.
- The levels of growth achieved per point of ESOV vary according to brand size
Binet and Field conclude (this really is the last time I will quote them) thus:
It is often asserted that share of voice is irrelevant in the digital era: this is not true. The correlation of SOV with market share growth is getting stronger and the returns on investing in SOV are also increasing as the level of brand choice continues to grow and the internet becomes more crowded with commercial activity."
The power of creativity
So to some degree, market share can be bought.
However, the unfair advantage that any marketer can choose to leverage is the power of creativity.
In its report The link between creativity and effectiveness, the IPA has some fantastically valuable analysis of the relationship between creatively-awarded work and effectiveness.
The sample used for this study were the 257 IPA Effectiveness cases studies for which Gunn Report scores were all available.
As an aside, given that 257 represents less than 1% of UK advertisers, and around 1 in 7000 pick up the minimum major creative awards needed to be recorded in the Gunn Report each year, the fact that no fewer than 46 (18%) of the sample of IPA campaigns appear in the Gunn Report database already suggests that there is some kind of relationship between creativity and effectiveness.
Obviously this isn't proof and so this study examined whether this 18% of creatively-awarded campaigns outperformed the 82% of non-awarded campaigns in hard business terms.
The short answer, is yes.
The IPA's analysis reveals that that non-awarded campaigns, on average generate 0.5 points of share growth per 10 points of ESOV. Which is obviously very much in line with the findings from Nielsen's analysis.
In sharp contrast, creatively-awarded campaigns generate on average 5.7 points of share growth per 10 points of ESOV.
In other words creatively-awarded campaigns generate around 11 times (that's right, 11 times) more share growth per 10 points of ESOV than creatively-non-awarded campaigns.
The levers of brand building
So at the risk of sounding as if I think I've cracked the code and am delivering some grandiose universal theory of marketing, it is nevertheless possible to make some confident generalizations.
The levers of brand building have been:
And their multipliers have been:
Which brings us on the the second part of the essay question.
What, in this 'digital age', has changed?
Have the walls of marketing's Jericho come tumblin' down?
What do we seeing happening?
I should hasten to addd that what follows is intended merely a 'taster' – and certainly not as an exhaustive overview. That would be folly and arrogance beyond words. And I am sure that errors will be found that require calling out and correcting.
New forms of utility
'Utility' is a bit of an unhelpful moniker, as to many it might suggest only tangible, functional utility, when many of the satisfactions consumers seek (and which justify a price premium) are symbolic, emotional, and social in nature.
So let's be clear that by utility we mean both the tangible and intangible.
Nonetheless (and rather obviously), new technology allows for new forms of utility.
We are seeing the malleability of software allowing for marketers to evolve, iterate and improve the product experience in response to consumer interactions in the real world, not the laboratory.
In some markets we are seeing the emergence of new models of product ownership, in which access to goods and services is rented, rather than outright ownership of goods given over to consumers.
Services such as Peugeot's rental offering Mu and Zipcar provide urban consumers with access to personal transportation without having to incur the burden of ownership.
The direct links between customers and products and the ability to track their usage that all things 'digital' enable, means we are able to involve consumers involved in the development and day-to-day running of products and services.
Waze for example, has built up a databank of maps and traffic reports through crowdsourcing. By tracking the GPS coordinates of its users and monitoring their traffic reports, it is able to divert users away from congestion.
We are seeing utility being used as a vehicle for publicity and promotion. Whereas product development and publicity occupied very distinct silos, marketing is now being "baked into" products and services.
For example, by placing a 'Get free space button' on their front page and offering users an additional get 500 megabytes of free space for every friend they invited and got to sign up, Dropbox managed to dramatically sign ups and achieve the critical mass it had been missing. Today, 35% of Dropbox's customers still come to it via referral.
Of course more intangible utility has not gone away. We do not live in a world where our experience is limited to simply what we see. We all live and work – many of us skilfully and effortlessly – within two worlds; the world of objects and the world of meanings. And we need this imagined world to give our identities, lives and experiences depth, significance and meaning.
We are seeing "the power of reality" as Guy Murphy has put it, to build and sustain the meaning and emotional component of brands.
So we are seeing new forms of utility. And with it, new business models, new businesses, and new brands. It's a new and exciting frontier.
And perhaps this new world of utility is teaching the marketing world something. Perhaps it is teaching us to value the sausage as much as the sizzle. As Jim Carroll has written recently written:
Tech brands spend the vast majority of their time and energy in the pursuit of innovation; creating astounding products is their main obsession. There is always something new to say, whether it's a big breakthrough or a modest upgrade. Which is why their communications are so firmly rooted in product truth. This might be considered old-fashioned in a world of purpose-led brand building. But it provides a refreshing break from the pseudo-insights, hyperbole and overly-elaborate ideas which fill much of today's communications landscape."
So utility is very much alive and well.
Which serves only to underscore the rank stupidity (or shameless self-promoting) of anyone proclaiming marketing to be dead.
Perhaps they should read the words of Helen Edwards:
Look back at the classic definition of marketing, from the father of the discipline, Theodore Levitt. Its central tenet is that marketing must 'work back from consumer needs' Consumers don't really 'need' communications; it is a commercial, rather than a customer, imperative. What consumers need is better products, improved service, easier lives, a cleaner world, and more health and happiness. The proper job of marketers is to identify, or better still, anticipate, these needs, and imagine ways to fulfill them that might lead to sustainable returns."
New forms of availability
Byron Sharp has rightly underscored the importance of physical availability:
Physical availability means making a brand as easy to notice and buy as possible, for as many consumers as possible, across as wide a range of buying situations as possible… being easy to notice and buy is essential, because buyers do not have strong preferences even for the brands they are loyal to; they are happy to but alternatives from within their personal repertoires (and they regularly do)."
There was a time of course when – apart from service brands – physical shelf space and availability was all that mattered in the quest to make brands easy to buy.
Needless to say, digital connections and interactions mean that physical structures are not the only way to win in the battle for availability.
Today we are seeing digital availability being used to enhance physical availability, and we are seeing digital availability being used to replace or bypass physical availability.
We all know the story of Blockbuster. And Barnes & Noble.
(Though we should beware of overstating the case. Take the UK, for example. While online spending is growing year-on year, the vast majority – 90% – of retail sales still come from people doing their shopping in the physical world).
We are seeing – thanks to our new powers of surveillance – brands responding to and anticipating people's need or interest.
We are seeing brands connect directly with customers, rather than via third parties.
We are seeing brands exploiting the interconnectedness of all things digital to create shelf space and make it easy for people to buy.
Airbnb for example, expanded its digital shelf space by gaining free distribution on Craigslist.
Spotify expanded its shelf space by being integrated into Facebook.
We are of course seeing an explosion in the ways in which brands can create memory and meaning. Creativity is now properly unbounded, no longer constrained by media formats.
We are able to give consumers the opportunity to interact in all manner of ways from the undemanding and lightweight to the participative and immersive.
We are certainly seeing brands relentlessly stalk consumers as they travel across the internet
We are able to employ consumers as advocates, ambassadors, co-creators, publicists, and media channels.
And increasingly, we are able to customize the content, timing, and targeting of our content.
New modes of pricing
The economics of digital goods are allowing brands to offer consumers goods and services for free.
As Chris Anderson first wrote in Wired magazine:
It's now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned. Storage now joins bandwidth (YouTube: free) and processing power (Google: free) in the race to the bottom. Basic economics tells us that in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost. There's never been a more competitive market than the Internet, and every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to nothing."
We're seeing brands able to employ the minority of paying users to support the majority of non-paying users, because the cost of serving that majority is close enough to zero to call it nothing.
We're seeing brands employ 'freemium' pricing models in which they offer free version of their product or service as a vehicle for recruiting users, and charging for advanced features, functionality, virtual goods, or an ad-free experience.
Thus we see that in seven of the Apple App Store's 10 largest categories, the majority of revenue comes from in-app purchases in free apps.
We're seeing some brands test dynamic pricing. And (as Amazon did) in doing so, occasionally test the goodwill of their customers.
We're seeing brands such as ebay and Priceline allowing consumers to bid on items.
Mobile technology has of course liberated consumers from having their choice limited by what's in front of them on shelf. Consumers are now able to treat physical stories as showrooms in which they search for a cheaper option online.
With all that in mind, let's go back to Moran's model and 'traditional' levers of brand building.
Back to the future
Whatever pattern of changes, evolutions and disruptions we might trace, it's fairly clear that brand building still requires the delivery of value, and the creation of presence.
And it still benefits from the the multipliers of time, investment, and creativity.
So Moran's model serves to remind us of two things.
First, it reminds us that the fundamental brand building mechanics of value and presence, the subprocesses of utility, pricing, and the creation of physical and mental presence, together with the necessity of time, investment, and creativity have not evaporated.
Marketers struggling to keep up with and make sense of the blizzard of change, evolution, disruption, advice, and opinion need not despair.
It may not make for sexy headlines (or even win essay competitions), but the fact of the matter is that the old imperatives still hold.
Which exposes the hollow, self-serving, unevidenced, link-baiting, self-aggrandising rhetoric of 'marketing is dead' to be precisely what it is. Total and utter bullshit.
Yet while the fundamental outputs of marketing have not been rendered obsolete, how marketers deliver value and presence is most certainly being reworked.
Connectivity, interactivity, immediacy, sociability, transparency, collaboration, prediction, responsiveness, targeting, automation, disintermediation, customization, mobility… all of these phenomenon (and more) are fundamentally remaking how brands connect with consumers.
(That said, our choice of how is always contingent. On the nature of the task, the resources available, the competition, the audience, and the brand. Without that knowledge, it is impossible to legislate what is right and appropriate. Declaring it's the age of this or the age of that, makes for fun headlines. But it's a long way short of being sound, pragmatic business advice).
There is then, as much to unlearn as there is to relearn.
And as technology and code continue to remake our lives, there are inevitably, new skills to acquire and add to the old ones. For both the individual, and the corporation.
Blowing up the silos
Moran's model provides us with another useful reminder.
Marketing is not and has never been synonymous with advertising – its remit and output is far broader and more far-reaching than merely the development of communications.
So when publicity can be baked into the product…
When product design can be a means of meaning manufacture…
When distribution can be baked into the product…
When physical products are assuming a digital life…
When social channels are becoming means of delivering customer services…
When pricing models are being used as distribution mechanics…
When marketing content is no longer a dead end and is becoming just the beginning of a customer journey…
When the gap between publicity and purchase can be compressed…
When the consumer is a distribution channel…
When the consumer can no longer be held at arm's length…
Then it really is time to let go of the antiquated notion that marketing is synonymous with 'messaging'.
And it is high time that we blow up the mental and organisational silos that still bedevil us.
Perhaps if we all thought of ourselves in the business of creating connections, then we'd find ourselves better adapted to the new environments and possibilities of our age.
If we wish to be effective, we are about creating connections in the mind, we create connections between people, companies and brands, and we help create connections between people and other people.
I've said it before – in an age defined by its connectedness – people to people, people to things, and things to other things – that seems a far more accurate and useful perspective on what we all do.
So as digital continues blurs the old distinctions between product, publicity and distribution, marketers that insist on thinking in silos will fail to prosper.
Or simply fail.
As Laurence Green has recently written, "That our siloes, meanwhile, remain somehow untouched, integrated seamlessly behind a genuinely common agenda only by the brilliant or in times of crisis, is an ongoing source both of mystery and irritation."
With all this in in mind, it is worth revisiting words from twenty five years ago. From the father of account planning Stephen King. In his essay 'The anatomy of account planning', he posed a challenge to agencies and clients alike. Never have his words seemed to prescient:
Marketing companies today… recognize that rapid response in the marketplace needs to be matched with a clear strategic vision. The need for well-planned brand-building is very pressing. At the same time they see changes in ways of communicating with their more diverse audiences. They're increasingly experimenting with non-advertising methods. Some are uneasily aware that these different methods are being managed by different people in the organisation to different principles; they may well be presenting conflicting impressions of the company and its brands. It all needs to be pulled together. I think that an increasing number of them would like some outside help in tackling these problems, and some have already demonstrated that they're prepared to pay respectable sums for it. The job seems ideally suited to the strategic end of the best account planning skills. The question is whether these clients will want to get such help from an advertising agency.
What agencies, and the account planners in them, would have to do is above all, demonstrate that they have the breadth of vision and objectivity to do the job; apply 'how marketing communications work' thinking and R&D to a much wider area; probably bring in more outside talent, from marketing companies or other fields of communication; make more efforts to 'go to the top' in client contact (the one great advantage of the various specialists); and make sure that they get paid handsomely for the work. I very much hope that this can happen – I wouldn't like to think of the best strategic planners leaving for the other sorts of company or of agency planners shifting wholly to advert-tweaking."
The question is (still) whether clients want to get such help from an agency, and whether agencies for their part have the desire and ability to demonstrate that they have the breadth of vision and objectivity to do the job.
Old thinking for new times
If we want to live up to King's hope and vision, then we could do worse than not lose sight of some seriously good ol' fashioned Ps.
It's not cool, it's not radical, it doesn't make for great headlines, and it predates the internet.
But as a means of staying sane amidst the flux and uncertainty, of staying focused on what matters, and of assessing how to make best and most profitable use of all that is new, I think we could do a lot worse.
And if we were to think more often about all the Ps, we might just do a lot better.
Admap is essential reading. If you don't, I suggest you do – in bridging the gulf between academia and practitioners, it's pretty much required reading. I'm looking forward to reading the winning essays.
Chris Anderson, 'Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business'
Les Binet & Peter Field , 'Brand success in the digital age', Market Leader, Quarter 4, 2013
Les Binet & Peter Field, The Long and the Short of it: Balancing Short and Long-Term marketing Strategies
Jim Carroll, 'Talk like a tech brand'
Laurence Green, 'Precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true', Contagious. 28th January 2014
Helen Edwards, 'Too many marketers ignore their primary task'
Helen Edwards., 'Amid social media euphoria marketers ask basic questions'
IPA, The Link Between Creativity and Effectiveness: New Findings from the Gunn Report and the IPA Databank
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Stephen King – The Anatomy of Account Planning, 1989
'Freemium is the most profitable pricing strategy for apps', Mashable, December 20th 2013
Patricia McDonald, 'The winter of our discontent'
William T. Moran, 'Brand presence and the perceptual frame', Journal of Advertising Research, October/November 1990
Guy Murphy, 'Brands in the digital age: The opt-in age of brands', Admap, December 2013
Shane Parrish, 'This time is different'
Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow
Time to get out of the message business
If there is one thing guaranteed to relegate a marketing to both ineffectiveness and obsolescence, it is the belief that its primary form of influencing consumer behaviour is through messaging.
Messaging doesn't reflect how people consume advertising and make sense of brands.
We know that the brain is not some rigid filing system in which memories reside as fully formed recordings. It is something altogether more dynamic and malleable.
Indeed it's more accurate to think of memory as a process, not a thing. Our brain's networks of nerve cells or 'neurons' are not fixed entities, but rather, are dynamic and continuously modified by experience. What people experience results in new connections in the structure of our brains.
While parts of marketingland still believe we're in business of transmitting of information, of 'communicating' abstract, intellectual 'messages' or propositions, advertising doesn't work through filing verbal messages and propositions in people's mental filing systems.
Memory actually works through the creation of connections. A brand is simply a set of connections and associations in the brain. We form and access memories of brands by creating and activating these networks of associations.
So people don't consume and file away abstract ideas and propositions. They consume (as Robert Heath has shown, they often with fairly low levels of attention) all the visual, verbal, audible, tangible characteristics of our content – and these create new connections and in the brain.
Judith Williamson in her wonderful, essential, hostile and demanding book Decoding Advertising: Ideology and Meaning In Advertising demonstrates how advertising's real work lies in its aesthetic wholes, and how it operates larges silently, through its codes and signals, rather than messages:
What an advertisement 'says' is merely what it claims to say; it is part of the deceptive mythology of advertising to believe that an advertisement is simply a transparent vehicle for a 'message' behind it. Certainly a large part of any advertisement is this 'message': we are told something about a product, and asked to buy it. the information we are given is frequently untrue, and even when it is true, we are often being persuaded to buy products which are unnecessary… a criticism of advertising on these grounds is valid, and I would support it. However such a criticism is in many ways the greatest obstacle of all to a true understanding of the role of advertisements in our society, because it is based on the assumption that ads are merely the invisible conveyors of certain undesirable messages, and only sees meaning in the overt 'content' of the ad rather than it its 'form' – in other words, ignoring the 'content' of the 'form'."
So the consumption and decoding of marketing content is something altogether fuzzier than we often allow for. As Stephen King in JWT's Planning Guide noted back in 1974:
An advertisement as a stimulus is a combination of medium, words, pictures, movements, symbols, associations, tones of voice, etc. The stimulus is received as a totality; the receiver does not separate content and form. The individual elements of an advertisement have no meaning on their own. They can only be judged in combination."
Feldwick has similarly done much to remind us that advertising, like art does not work through reductionist concepts, but through the experience of aesthetic wholes.
So the What and How are inseparable. We exercise brand impressionism – rather than 'taking out messages', we are left with general impressions from what we're exposed to.
Treating creativity merely as a means of tricking or bribing the viewer into paying attention to the message within it profoundly undervalues and undermines the both the nature and the value of creativity.
Creativity isn't some kind of distraction tactic, bait or bribe. It isn't a wrapper or envelope for a message.
It IS the content.
But there is another pressing issue with the idea of messaging.
For aside from the fact that the marketing-as-message model of influencing consumer behaviour doesn't reflect how people consume communications, it's singularly ill-suited to adapting itself to people's digital interactions.
Searching, browsing, searching, tagging, uploading, downloading, sharing, linking, commenting, buying, playing, liking… To varying degrees of involvement and intensity, these are behaviors.
And messaging in an environment characterized by behaviours obviously struggles.
It either gatecrashes, misses out on vast opportunity, or is simply rendered impotent.
Small wonder then, that those charged with creating and leveraging digital behaviors should regard those who believe they are in the business of issuing messages with such bafflement or suspicion. And indeed vice versa.
The messaging school of marketing misunderstands the human mind, misunderstands the nature of creativity, and opens up a deeply unhelpful schism.
It really is time to let get out of the message business.
We need, to borrow the words of Jaron Lanier, a palette cleansing, a broadening of horizons.
Perhaps if we all thought of ourselves in the business of creating connections, then we'd find ourselves better adapted to the new environments and possibilities of our age.
And perhaps we'd begin to see how absurd are the solios that we've insisted on operating in.
For if we we wish to be effective, we are about creating connections.
Connections in the mind.
Connections between people, companies and brands.
And connections between people and other people.
In an age defined by its relentlessly blooming connectedness – people to people, people to things, and things to other things – that seems a far more accurate and useful perspective on what we all do.
"Only connect", as E.M. Forster wrote.
What is the future of cultural production? Discuss
Very few people can look a wholesale social, cultural and psychological transformation taking place on an unparalleled scale steadily in the eye…
McLuhan's point is that when it comes to the impact of new media on the human consciousness – both individual and collective – content is an irrelevance; we have to look not at what is on the screen, but how the screen is used. McLuhan saw in the early 1960s that all the brouhaha about what imagery was shown on television and what words were spoken was so much guff; the transformation from what he termed "the linear Gutenberg technology" to the "total field" one implied by the instantaneity of electricity was all that mattered, and this was a change in the human mind as well as the human hand. McLuhan's global village is indeed all about us now, and it already exhibits social, psychological and cultural behaviours that are entirely different from those implicit in the technologies of mass broadcast and individual, concentrated absorption…
For those who think that narrative art forms are in a state of crystalline stasis it's worth taking a slightly longer view: film is only just over a century old, the novel as we commonly understand it a mere two centuries old – the copyrights that protected them are about 150 years old. At the moment, the wholesale reconfiguration of art is only being retarded by demographics: the middle-aged possessors of Gutenberg minds remain in the majority in western societies, and so we struggle to impose our own linearity on a simultaneous medium to which it is quite alien. The young, who cannot read a text for more than a few minutes without texting, who rely on the web for both their love affairs and their memories of heartache, and who can sometimes find even cinema difficult to take unless it comes replete with electronic feedback loops, are not our future: we, the Gutenberg minds have no future, and our art forms and our criticism of those art forms will soon belong only to the academy and the museum."
How can we better help our clients (and indeed ourselves) look this transformation in the eye?
How can we help 'Gutenberg minds' make the transition?
What are we doing to trace and understand these new social, psychological and cultural behaviours?
And what will it mean to produce content for a 'post-Gutenberg' world?
Hacking the business with Stephen King
The need for more (and better) problems
When did creativity become a pseudonym for producing advertising? And when did strategy become a means to a message?
At a time when technology enables boundless creativity, when digital interactions are blurring the line between product, product experience, and marketing communications, and changing how people search, choose, and buy, we are all – clients and agencies alike – in danger of limiting the scope and potential of creativity. As Lawrence Green has put it:
The task of any imaginative agency, any creative company, is to understand and serve it client's business problems. Too often, our business has sliced and diced its tasks in the style of a sub-prime mortgage bundler. A corporate task set by the chief executive, reframed as a comms task by the marketing director, refined by the brand consultancy and reduced by the ad agency to the stuff advertising can do: Grow awareness, nurture engagement. Too many links, too indirect and weak a connection between commercial possibilities and creative resolution."
Elsewhere, away from adland, others have argued that we need to be 'growth hackers'. Josh Elman has described growth hacking as describing "a new process for acquiring and engaging users combining traditional marketing and analytical skills with product development skills." According to Elman:
In the past, marketing and product development departments were often at odds where marketing groups would be spending significant amounts of money to acquire users but couldn't get any development resources to build something as simple as new custom landing pages. And on the other side, product development teams would often build what they think users want and will attract users without deeply measuring and understanding the impact of their changes. This concept of "growth hacking" is a recognition that when you focus on understanding your users and how they discover and adopt your products, you can build features that help you acquire and retain more users, rather than just spending marketing dollars."
Of course what Elman is describing is not new at all. It is simply good marketing. It just probably doesn't happen as often as it should.
So all this begs some questions:
How can we look beyond what advertising can solve?
How exactly do we expand the scope and value of creativity?
How can we identify opportunities for growth?
How can marketing properly shape itself around the consumer?
How can marketing define itself by what it solves, rather than by what it makes?
How can product development and marketing be reunited once more?
In all of this, theory and rhetoric will not help us. We need something more practical.
I am no a fan of templates and processes. We create after all, bespoke solutions for the unique challenges faced by each client. But I am a fan of anything that gets us asking better questions. And it is at this point that we must step back to the future. For Stephen King gave us just the sort of questions we need. They are oddly neglected in the compendium of his best work – A Masterclass in Brand Planning, and are worth revisiting.
King's Consumer Buying System
King's model – the 'consumer buying system' – appeared in his Manual of Tools of the Trade for Advertising Planners that he developed for JWT in the late 1980s.
It is by no means a panacea. And it certainly cannot solve the systemic dysfunctions of both agencies and client organizations that prevent us from a broader application of creativity. Nonetheless, it can encourage the well-intentioned and the ambitious to ask new, and better questions.
King had developed his model principally as a means of shaping and guiding a communications plan. His focus was largely on both the role and the choice of communications channels.
However, in as much as his model was largely a means of understanding consumer behaviour, its application and value goes far beyond that. As King wrote in his introduction to the model:
The objective is to take your brand, examine the stages in the [Consumer Buying System] and ask, 'How can we move the consumer through the process?'"
I make no claim for uniqueness in any of what follows. There is many a good marketer who employs their own version of King's model.
(That said, and by way of a pedantic aside, King's model predates McKinsey's model by decades. Thus demonstrating that those who are unaware of history are doomed to repeat it).
The model
Below are the phases of the model, as described by King.
It is worth noting that King was a big opponent of the one-size-fits-all approach, and recognized that the path to purchase varied depending on the category. Buying a bar of chocolate is different from buying a Picasso, or breakfast cereal, or a pair of trainers, or a holiday, or a car.
And so, by way of a preface, it's worth bearing in mind, as he wrote:
The time frame for this process will vary enormously from category to category, for example, buying a car could take the consumer a year, whereas buying a box of cereal, from running out of the previous box to the next purchase, could take just hours. Thus some stages are less relevant to some categories, and not all consumers within one specific category may pass through all the stages. For example, when "buying" a new long-distance phone service, some consumers are simply stimulated to change their phone company by an advertised offer, whereas others will collect and evaluate information on long-distance providers to improve their comfort level with the company."
At each stage we should be asking – what exactly is happening?
New questions, new solutions
If we must, we can call it a framework for 'growth hacking'. Certainly the sort of thinking, questions, and the types of solutions that King's model encourages is instructive. As soon as we start unpacking people's behaviours, we start inventing all manner of stuff that isn't advertising:
If we in adland only ever see ad-shaped problems, we'll only create ad-shaped solutions. But if we see people, all manner of new and exciting stuff starts to happen. As ever in marketing, progress lies in asking better questions and more imaginatively examining the lives, habits, needs, wants, desires, frustrations and dissatisfactions in people's lives.
As King said of his model:
Since all marketing activities are aiming to reinforce or modify people's sequence of ideas and actions, the buying system really is the starting point for all marketing and planning activity."
That said, client organizations and their marketing departments too must assume their share of responsibility. Often, it seems, they are divorced from product development, isolated from IT, embroiled in turf war standoffs with other functions, unwilling or simply unable to provide agency partners with real business issues to solve, and more comfortable passing off ad requests and 'insight' babble as bona fide client briefs.
King, ever prescient, identified the need and opportunity for thinking more broadly about brand building:
Marketing companies today… recognize that rapid response in the marketplace needs to be matched with a clear strategic vision. The need for well-planned brand-building is very pressing. At the same time they see changes in ways of communicating with their more diverse audiences. They're increasingly experimenting with non-advertising methods. Some are uneasily aware that these different methods are being managed by different people in the organisation to different principles; they may well be presenting conflicting impressions of the company and its brands. It all needs to be pulled together. I think that an increasing number of them would like some outside help in tackling these problems, and some have already demonstrated that they're prepared to pay respectable sums for it. The job seems ideally suited to the strategic end of the best account planning skills. The question is whether these clients will want to get such help from an advertising agency. What agencies, and the account planners in them, would have to do is above all, demonstrate that they have the breadth of vision and objectivity to do the job"
If we can only grasp the necessity of beginning our thinking with real consumer issues and needs, rather than what type of creative product (social, viral, advertising, content, POS, etc., etc.) we will make, or what line of fashionable rhetoric we will subscribe to, then we might stand a better chance of unleashing the true potential of our collective creativity.
Indeed we might at last start actually living up to the theory, claims, and promise of marketing.
Judie Lannon & Merry Baskin, eds., A Masterclass in Brand Planning: The Timeless Works of Stephen King
Josh Elman, 'What Is "growth hacking" really?'
McKinsey & Company, The consumer decision journey


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How to Arrange for Convention Transportation
Posted - 11/17/2011
Conventions have always been the best way to bring together like minds for updates on important issues. Professional associations, fraternal organizations and similar groups come together to conduct business, receive educational updates and enjoy some fun activities during downtime. Successful conventions take much planning with officers or staff often contacting professional event planners to handle the logistics of such gatherings. This assures that the event will transpire in the smoothest way possible. Event planners help organizations reserve blocks of hotel rooms, work with caterers, and negotiate the best deals to keep conventions affordable, yet classy for attendees. One part of convention planning that is sometimes overlooked is transportation.
Those attending conventions may be provided a list of shuttles, taxis and other modes of transportation, but for a person who is new to a city, finding reliable transportation can be frustrating. It is important that individuals and organizations that plan conferences help attendees by arranging for clean, safe and reliable transportation. A professional limo service can meet this need. A professional limo service will pick up conference participants at airports, train stations, etc. and make sure they are transported to the convention venue as quickly as possible, in a clean, comfortable vehicle. Professional limo services hire courteous drivers with clean background checks. Don't allow just anyone to transport attendees to your convention. Contact a professional limo service and give convention attendees peace of mind and the satisfaction that comes with knowing that they will arrive safely and on time for all events.

subset: commoncrawl


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Gemini's CDJ-300 Professional Media Player gives you everything you need to get the party started. Control your tracks from CDs and USB memory devices with large 5" touch-sensitive jog wheels that let you Search, Scratch and Pitch Bend. You can also get creative with programmable Hot Cues, Loops, Brake, Reverse and Variable Pitch Control with Master Tempo. Anti-Shock buffer memory is included to ensure you never miss a beat. A fully loaded, compact, and portable media player makes the CDJ-300 a must have for all serious home, mobile and club Djs.
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Today's market demands superior hygiene levels, low production and maintenance costs and top quality conveyor belting products. Volta Positive drive flat homogenous belts are the newest generation in belting technology designed to solve the most crucial conveying problems in a variety of industrial and food applications.
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…and Drinking Your Face Off.
Face off you say! Nicolas Cage and John Travolta you slimy bastards – how dare you create an amazing movie and make my face-off references that much more meaningful. Not to mention make me want to watch the movie and secretly hope that one of them turns into the Hulk and just yells "FACE-OFF!!!!!" ripping off faces in a fit of rage when anyone lightly caresses his face with their fingertips. But I digress…
Ahhh being mugged. And don't get me wrong, I don't mean that in a relaxing or reassuring way. I was mother fucked MUGGED people! By some crazy kat who probably thought he was going to hit it big. It's a good thing I'm crazy too. Let me back it up and explain my boring story on what happened. I had just flown back from Boston to my new home San Francisco – I had all of luggage and precious cargo – my face, my buttocks, my hands, etc – and so I took the escalator out of the train station and headed for the streetz. OBSERVATION: there were 3 teenagers in front of me and two guys behind me. I saw that hailing a cab was proving difficult for the prostitutes on the street corner (FALSE – these were just people, going about their business), so I took it upon myself to utilize my shiny iPhone 5 that had a dope cover on it (bet you were expecting dope ass!). Well good luck trying to be a real person – because the minute I look at my phone I notice a man in front of me that I hadn't before. I took one look at him and while on the phone with a cab dispatcher, that mother fucker start sprinting at me like a goddamn gazelle in the middle of a lioness hunt.
Thoughts going through my head – dude, you have a horrible haircut, omg does he have a gun? wow that jacket he's wearing happens to be my favorite color, your eyes are like a pugs and are bulging out of your face – that's nasty, etc.
In this moment while those thoughts were flailing through my noggin (does anyone use that anymore? I'm bringing it BACK!) this man karate chops me in the face, I fall over my luggage and he proceeds to wrestle my phone out of my hand while I continually punch him in his [dumb] head. He then succeeds in taking my phone, and runs off with it like he's expecting me to throw a goddamn Olympic medal around his [dumb] neck. I scream "You fucking piece of shit!!!!!!!" and he gives me the finger. How humiliating.
So, while my pride, my faith in humanity and my disbelief in that man's gross eyeballs have left me at a loss for words – I decide to move on, and do what I do best. Quit my full time job and go to Blaine's Beauty School and cut hair!!!! Eh? Remember those killer commercials? Where they show you a picture of some girl's hair they just cut and the decide to throw in sparkles and streaks behind them for effect like old school photo backgrounds from the 80's?! I just had to take a deep breath – that was a lot of unexpected excitement for me. I am a product of the late 80's.
So I didn't actually quit my job…but I decided to take on a part-time job of DRINKING MY FACE-OFF. Ok ok, before you go being all judge-y and thinking that I in fact just publicly declared myself an alcoholic, I am actually referring to a specific week that I've been looking forward to for many moons.
BEER WEEK!!!!!! A week where all the hermits, hipsters, techies and self proclaimed bad-asses come together and appreciate some fine ass beer. (Disclaimer: Not actual ass beer, GROSS WHAT IS THAT, but beer that is as fine as a wonderful bottom).
So my first night of drinking consists of planning to go to 5 bars so my taste buds can have many tiny flavor orgasms while I play Big Game Hunter and shoot fake antelope and yet yell as if I am R.Kelly winning a Grammy – FINALLY people will start recognizing me outside of thinking my sheets smell like piss!!!!!!!! (they do). If you don't get that reference, FUCK YOU. No, I didn't mean that – watch Thrift Shop by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis or just Google R.Kelly or something. You idiot.
Ok soooooo, there are three favorite parts to my night – one was gaining up enough courage (and by courage I mean two 11% beers) to inform the awesome new people I was with that I had a knife on me and could wield it in the event of us being jumped. Later when we were walking in a straight line on the street, the guy in the back of our group yells "Don't worry, WMF* has a knife!!!!" I give a super enthusiastic thumbs up (as I now have the hiccups) and laughter ensues. Thank you to the clever SOB who came up with thumbs up. (and thank you to myself for something I will be utilizing Wikipedia for later…)
*Wolf Master Flex – that is my name damnit. My Mom is a Wolf and my Dad is a DJ. It's a long story.
Second part was me and my partner in crime T deciding that we were past the point of being modest. People began leaving their beers behind, some of which they took one sip of. Well when the bartender says "Sorry we JUST ran out of the beer you've been seeking out for a year" and someone leaves that full beer behind – not only will I drink it, I'll SHOWER in it. I yelled to T and hand him the other glass, we triumphantly cheers and finish their beers. Fast forward to 2 bars later – we are waiting for our sausages, yes sausages! Rosamunde sausage grill – T and I go to the area where they have water and pour ourselves a glass. After pounding some water we notice a lone beer sitting there, very cold and looks to be the limited edition beer they ran out of…without speaking we take turns pouring it little by little in each of our glasses. We cheers and pound the beer, super proud of ourselves for not letting a beer go to waste. You say homeless people tendencies, I say DELICIOUS.
Third favorite part just so happens to have taken place after I've eaten not one, but two sausages – one of which happens to be a Vegan sausage that I remember being angry at for just how spicy it was. Angry spicy food sweats – never pretty, unless of course you are Mila Kunis eating Indian food in a white and gold sari. Sari I'm not sari. HA!
Ok so there was this chick wearing a Tiger print robe that almost hit the floor, it was epic. So epic that I felt I had to inform everyone at the table that that chick is awesome and how do I get one of those. Of course, instincts and reason step in and T yells "Hey, come here!" to the lady in the coat. She comes over and proceeds to tell us about her coat, the fact that it's reversible and that you can wear it on your back, but not ON your back in case you start to overheat – you can just look like a poacher who murdered a Tiger, great for repelling muggers and perfect when blending into a family room with an epic fireplace. Epic used three times in a paragraph?! Who am I today? A Shakespearean Jesus?!
The last thing I remember from that night is singing at the top of my lungs with T and dancing around in his boxers while performing round house kicks in perfect rhythm to the song we were belting out.
Now if only I can remember how I got here in the first place…and for that Beer week, I thank you.


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Emergency Contact Sheet
It's cute that they say "have one by every phone" like phones have set locations anymore. But the idea of having a contact sheet still holds. I'd say have one on the fridge for the babysitter and enter all this into info into your smartphone.
Dawn Siff, Parenticity
Tags: KidsHealth babysitter babysitter info emergency emergency contact list emergency sheet first aid keeping kids safe kids parenting parents parent Parenticity dawn siff moms mom dad dads 911
Parenting is fun and rewarding, but it also comes with a lot of questions. We've got answers -- and a sense of humor about it all.
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In the offline world, have you ever been chased by retail staff because you opted not to buy something at their store?
You mean no one has ever blocked the exit and said something like, "Hey, I saw you put that bottle of wine in your cart, why didn't you buy it?"
It sounds funny until you realize that most online remarketing services offer to do exactly that to your website visitors. They'll pester them with e-mails, pop-ups, and phone calls should they have the bad fortune of visiting your site, adding something to your shopping cart, and then not buying it.
Why would otherwise sane e-tailers revert to such uncivil, gorilla-like tactics? Really bad assumptions about both human nature and the nature of online shopping. They simply haven't compared what they're doing to that kind of offline analogy. So here are the bad assumptions, along with a few suggestions on how to correct them and what to do instead:
Related assumptions: Everyone who puts something in your shopping cart has a full-blown intent to purchase that item, and it was just chance or a shopping cart flaw that caused them to "abandon" your cart. Cart abandonment is caused within the cart itself.
Related assumptions: sales that you recover from abusive or annoying tactics are easily tied to increased revenue and therefore are more important than the much-harder-to-measure ill will and annoyance created by those same techniques. That the successes are as cumulative as the ill will generated.
Related assumptions: that the mere form of a question /offer renders it impossible to offend visitors' sensibilities or violate their sense of privacy and online safety.
Absolutely not. Just let your offline sense of what's appropriate guide you in your applications of this online technology. Pushy sales clerks can kill brick and mortar sales just as easily as over-aggressive re-marketing techniques for the simple reason that human nature doesn't change just because a person goes online. In fact, I frequently recommend Why We Buy to Web optimization specialists and online copywriters for exactly this reason.
So to use that offline analogy, let's say you are looking at a more expensive bottle of wine and that the store owner sees you put it back on the shelf to grab a few other cheaper bottles.
Would it be ok for the clerk to approach you, mention that the bottle you were looking at is one of the best buys he has in the store, guarantee you'll love it, and offer to give you a discount to get you to try a bottle? Or for him to show you similar bottles closer to your price range?
As long as the clerk was respectful and took "no" for an answer, there's no problem with that at all, right? So how could you do it online?
All of these things work just as well online as their offline counterparts, which is far more than can be said for most "gorilla" (re)marketing tactics.
P.S. Before going through all this trouble to remarket, why not make sure you've fully optimized your checkout process to begin with? Bryan Eisenberg's initial and follow-up blog posts on this are a great place to start.
"Hey, I saw you put that bottle of wine in your cart that you ended up putting back. We're having a 25% off sale tomorrow on all wines if you're still interested."
I'd be sold.
Shock Marketer,
Useful information/offers that is provided in a non-confrontational and non-invasive format – similar to your message about a 25% off sale – probably would work online as well.
Translating that to an online experience, imagine a pop-up that occurs either at the moment that the item is deleted from your cart or the moment you proceed to check out, which advises the visitor of the sale.
That's quite a bit different than preventing me from leaving the site or contacting me through e-mail when I have not given the company permission to contact me.
Oh, and 25% sales are worth hearing about while most 5-15% sales really aren't (or at least not to most shoppers). Give 'em a real savings / discount / special offer, as opposed to a transparent excuse to pester them into buying.
As I said in the article, I think remarketing can be done well – I've just seen quite a bit of it done poorly.
- Jeff
I've never been approached about not purchasing a product at a retail store, but this type of Gorilla Marketing happens all the time at the local flea market, what a turn off!
Cheryl Beckham
I was contacted by one of these service recently. It was tastefully written and offered a 1st time customer discount of 10%, not enough to entice me to buy, but interesting anyway.
"find out a way to measure the offense or annoyance you're causing amongst the visitors who you don't convert through your remarketing efforts"
Any hints on how to do this?
You can start by measuring how many people are NOT converted by your remarketing techniques.
If you have their IP addresses, you can come up with a measure of how many these unconverted visitors don't come back to the site (over a 2-3 month timeline).
You can take that list of e-mail addresses and check them against your list of repeat customers / accounts and see how many of your formerly repeat customers drop out.
You can search your company / website name on twitter, FB, blogs, etc.
Will you arrive at super-accurate figures? No. But you'll end up with some rough percentages that you can work with. If only 5% of the remarketed people convert, and of the remaining 95% about half never come back to the site, and of that 42.5% about a fourth are (or were) repeat customers. You can at least crunch some rough numbers on whether the added sales are worth the erosion to your loyal customer base.
- Jeff
I'm a believer in the cart abandonment email when done right. Right means the right permission, a soft message, an offer and enough time lapse (not 30 minutes). Right also means not pushing a sale but rather reminding value. Just like Shock Marketer said.
Of course these emails can and should go further. Why not try asking consumers why they left with a simple survey. Those learning's could easily be translated to identify issues (like an account barrier, high shipping, etc…) and to help you tailor an offer for future, opt-in abandons.
Interesting assumptions. I can't understand why people would make them, though… But I'm glad to see a post that's to help correct, not simply bash these assumptive tactics.
Jeff, very funny image of gorilla, thanks for the laugh.
The thing about special offers (e.g. % off items deleted from the cart, etc.) is that you need to be careful not to train the consumer to expect those offers. Frequent shoppers (and friends) will quickly realize that the way to save money is to add and then delete things from the cart.
I love the comparison between the offline front store owner and the online shop.
[...] my last post, I made use of a brick and mortar analogy to the current online behavior of some e-commerce [...]
Thanks for covering this topic. I mentioned it in my own blog a few weeks ago in reference to poor usability practices (http://blog.juntopia.com/2009/04/amazing-disappearing-navigation-trick.html).
I like the way you really got your hands dirty analyzing the poor reasoning that goes into a marketer's decision to "block the exit" so to speak. To me it seems like common sense, and it astounds me that marketers think their buyers are so dumb/gullible/intimidated by these tactics.
I also like the way you humanized this by applying it to a brick and mortar store. Funny but poignant.
quoting from Cheryl Beckham:
"I've never been approached about not purchasing a product at a retail store, but this type of Gorilla Marketing happens all the time at the local flea market, what a turn off!"
Then the WorldWideWeb is like a giant flea market. even mega companies resort to this kind of tactic..
And it annoys me a lot.
Thanks for the good post… you make some very valid points.
One tactic that really turns me completely away from a marketer is the "Hey, wait a minute. What if we let you buy this right now for 50% off?"
That makes me feel like their original price was a rip-off and that therefore THEY are rip-off marketers.
I've even had some sites hit me with TWO markdowns when I try to leave.
Often, the only reason I went to the "buy" button was to find out the price – which should have been on the sales page.
Now, if there's no price on the sales page, I leave without satisfying my curiosity.
Really interesting topic. How would it be policed?
This is a really bad approach from the etailers. I still get emails in my junk mail from some stores. Do they really think I will go back and buy?
interesting Assumption
i have never had this idea
And i like the comparison between the offline front store owner and the online shop.
Gorilla marketing, I love it
a really interesting function i found when surfing an ecommerce site was – i had successfully added items to my basket and i left the website without checking out – 24 hours after abandoning the checkout i received an email to say if i went back to purchase the good the would offer me 10% off – so that was pretty cool
I love Gorilla picture above and agree with all assumption.
monkay!!! 55555
At first glance, an online store and brick and mortar store don't seem to have much in common. The way you offer comparisons with the above examples make me realize the buying experiences are more similar. It's just more difficult to see in an online environment.
I've never had an online store email me because I did not buy something that had been put in my shopping cart. If I ever had I can tell you for certain that site would be on my 'do not shop here' list forever. I can't imagine a more intrusive and obnoxious behavior from an online store.


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Morning coffee should always be as good as Cafe Grumpy. With their fairy lights around the door and the super cute benches outside. It's enough to make you want to stay there all day. And laptops aren't allowed! An added bonus for this lovely place on West 20th in Chelsea.
Coffee is a serious business here. So go and try some delicious blends and well chill out. Sitting outside on the weekend is a coveted spot.
They also have other 3 other cafes on the Lower East Side and Brooklyn.
Have fun! Love Ali x


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Your web-browser is very outdated, and as such, this website may not display properly. Please consider upgrading to a modern, faster and more secure browser. Click here to do so.
It is an excellent show. Follow the writers on twitter @ELEMENTARYstaff, they're awesome too.
OMG this is amazing, I can't love this show anymore and I HAVEN'T STARTED WATCHING YET.
Haha, Jonny's face… (top right of photo) Is Lucy's face blocked? Hahahahaha


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Justin Bieber is a pro-life poster child -- whether he likes it or not.
Justin Bieber's mom, Pattie Mallette, has revealed that when she got pregnant with the Biebs at the age of 17, she was encouraged and pressured by others to get an abortion.
Obviously, Pattie chose to keep the future superstar. Now she's taking her anti-abortion stance to the big screen. And word is, Justin might not be entirely supportive.
Mallette has signed on as executive producer of an anti-abortion short film called Crescendo. Proceeds from the film, which will play in theaters around the world starting February 28, will go to pregnancy centers.
In a statement, Mallette said she hopes the film will "encourage young women all over the world, just like me, to let them know that there is a place to go, people who will take care of you, and a safe home to live in if you are pregnant and think you have nowhere else to turn."
In her new memoir Nowhere But Up, Mallette says she was sexually abused starting at the age of 4 and turned to alcohol and drugs as a teenager to cope with the trauma. She lost her virginity at 15 and became pregnant at 17.
Although Mallette was pressured to have an abortion, "I just knew I couldn't," she says. "I just know I had to keep him. I didn't know how I was going to do it. But I just knew that I couldn't abort. I had to do my best, and I was determined to do whatever it took."
Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that a "longtime Justin associate" says the superstar isn't happy with his mom's public anti-abortion stance.
"Justin just is very uncomfortable about political issues -- especially ones like abortion that are very divisive," the insider is quoted as saying. "He's all about entertaining his fans with his music and not interested in pushing a political agenda. ... Furthermore, I don't believe he agrees with his mom on this issue."
This is a reversal of Justin's position just last year, when he was quoted in Rolling Stone as saying, "I really don't believe in abortion ... It's like killing a baby."
Justin got a lot of flak for this statement -- but his mom's story reveals a very personal history behind it. Today, though, it seems he's much more media-savvy and reluctant to get behind any issue that could cost him some of his female fan base.
Clearly, his mom doesn't feel the same way.
What do you think of this news? Should Justin Bieber's mom use her fame to draw attention to the controversial issue of abortion? Or should she keep quiet for the sake of her son's reputation?
Screen grab via YouTube
Good for her! And I highly doubt Justin is not ok with it, after all he very publicly came out against abortion as you pointed out in Rolling Stone.
Hi-ho Hitler's mother was also pressured to abort him. Or is that just an urban/cultural legend?
As long as abortion remains safe and legal, then I don't care who advocates for people to choose differently. Just don't take away their right to choose.
It is interesting to think that a full grown man with talents, interests, relationships, etc. was once a potentially aborted fetus. It makes you wonder who the other aborted fetuses might have turned out to be had they been carried to term.
People just need to leave women alone and let them choose whats right for them. I am pro-life but anti-abortion. why should women be forced to keep a baby because of some self-rightious idiot believes its wrong.


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Written by motorcyclists for motorcyclists, this enriching travel guide is the perfect companion for enthusiasts who understand that the destination is just a good excuse for planning another perfect journey.
The Ride Guide features more than 35 special trips spread across the United States, from Californias Big Sur Highway to the awesome Rocky Mountains through the Texas Hill Country and Virginias Shenandoah Valley to Maines rocky shoreline. These are favorite rides from popular motojournalists like Clement Salvadori, Greg Frazier, Bill Kresnak, Lance Oliver, Grant Parsons, Marty Berke, Dale Coyner, Neal Davis, and Bruce Hansen, all brought together in one book to be read for inspiration and referred to for trip planning details.
Each recommended route is brought to life with full-color photos of the attractions along the wayscenic vistas, oddities, and must-see places. Topographical maps show the highs and lows of each ride and easy-to-follow point-to-point directions project distances and keep you on track with just a glance. All of the trips are designed to accommodate various riding styles, from sightseeing two-up travelers to sport riders running the curves and polishing their skills.
Also included are some of the best travel articles from American Motorcyclist magazine. Tips on packing, touring, and riding well offer seasoned advice. And, a helpful resource directory of equipment suppliers lets you find quickly what you need to make your next trip complete and enjoyable. Life is short. Buy this book and get on the road to see the best of this wonderful country of ours.
AMA Ride Guide to America
Paperback: 288 pages
Format: 6 by 9 inches, color


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There is an amazing exhibit at the deYoung museum right now. The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk. If you haven't seen it yet, put it on your list of things to do this summer. It will be at the museum until August 19th. It's a crazy exhibit of Gaultier's provocative and beautiful haute couture from the mid-70's until 2010.
I have the privilege of being a member of one of the flower committees at the deYoung. Check out these photos of what we did in tribute to the Gaultier exhibit this month. From Gaultier's iconic blue and white striped shirt to the recurring cone bra theme seen so often in his design.
This is an exhibit not to be missed!
Recently I was in New York to take a floral photography class with Cal Crary of Flower School New York.
Flower School New York is a charming little school located in Mid-town Manahttan. I have been fortunate to take many classes there over the last few years with some of New York's premier florists.
As you can see, I still have much to learn about photography but hopefully you will see improvement as these blog posts go forward.
There's still space in our Luscious Succulents class, Thursday, May 24th at 10:00 am. This is our last class before summer. Come join us use these interesting plants to add subtle color and texture to an ordinary arrangement making it extraordinary. After your flowers have faded away you can replant it in a container or even your garden.


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When to use thin clients
Mobile strategies that build strong customer relationships aim to make the offline world a better place. Here are six ways businesses are doing that.
Malcolm Gladwell talks attitude, marketers address the importance of data quality and the Grammy Awards set guidelines for social media: The Data Mill reports.
Apple's privacy policy eased user privacy concerns and laid the groundwork for Apple Pay, Apple Watch and health data. Also in Searchlight: former Home Depot workers say the company settled for low-level security; and are 'thinkables' on the horizon?
Sysadmins need to ensure their Linux servers perform properly. Check out these tips for choosing the right tool for the job, preventing rootkit attacks and more.
There's a lot of hype about continuous deployment in DevOps circles, but it can be disastrous if the right culture and organization aren't in place.
GPUs offload the burden of demanding computational tasks from central processors. Integrate GPU into enterprise servers to manage intense computing.
The stadium Wi-Fi network that NFL coaches have been complaining about is based on Cisco wireless LAN infrastructure. The new network has been erratic, making coaches' Surface tablets useless at times.
Server virtualization offers network managers many advantages -- but those benefits come with some stiff challenges.
SN blogs: Enterprises are using third-party providers to handle their mobility management needs; why aren't companies protecting mobile data?
A new Ponemon survey shows that while enterprises may harbor concerns about BYOD security, business-wide use of personal mobile devices is growing rapidly.
Recent data shows that more than 50% of all networking devices are aging or obsolete and pose a security risk to the enterprise. Expert Kevin Beaver discusses how to factor device age into a security risk assessment.
The Bitcoin market is maturing but security issues, such as private key management, persist. The Bitcoin Foundation gives the good news and bad news regarding Bitcoin security.
What does context-driven testing mean, and how does it relate to Agile testing? Test professional Matt Heusser provides an answer.
Learn the latest Agile testing methods for converting multiple teams from a traditional process to Agile.
Transforming your organizational practices to Agile involves more than just changing your methodology.
NetApp expands its low-profile StorageGrid object storage with a Webscale version to go beyond its healthcare niche.
Learn why data protection practices common in traditional file storage environments aren't the best option for objects, and how metadata can help.
A3Cube Fortissimo Foundation software works with its Ronniee NICs to scale storage resources and boost the performance of I/O-intensive applications.


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The Woodstock (Ill.) City Council approved zoning variances that would allow gravel mining on a 240-acre parcel of land, clearing the way for more than 30 acres of land to be used for a new Frontier League ballpark slated to open in 2010.
The plan ties an unpopular gravel pit to a popular ballpark proposal, and the ballpark proposal won out. To be fair, the plan presented by Tom Merryman and his company, Merryman Aggregate Inc. was scaled back in response to community concerns and altered to minimize any damage to the environment. And the end result -- a new ballpark and free land for the McHenry County Fair -- was obviously deemed to be worth the tradeoff, according to city officials.
The approval clears the way for a 2010 ballpark opening. The ballpark will be privately financed by Equity One Sports Developmen; the tentative schedule calls for site prep work in the spring and a June groundbreaking. If a ballpark is not built on the 38-acre site, the land will revert to the county.
More from the Northwest Herald.
Like this story? Then subscribe to the weekly Ballpark Digest newsletter, where you'll see sneak previews of articles before they're posted to the site. You can sign up for a free subscription at the Newsletter Signup Page.
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Veritas highlights utility computing at GITEX 2003
The Middle East operations of storage software provider Veritas will highlight its latest capabilities in the utility computing arena at GITEX 2003, where the company will be exhibiting with its partner Dubai Internet City (DIC).
GITEX visitors will be among the first in the region to learn about Veritas' ability to provide server provisioning and application performance management solutions. Veritas' new utility computing strategy provides companies with access to data and applications, and enables IT departments to deliver technology infrastructure as a measurable, always-on service aligned with business goals and directions.
Returning to GITEX for the third year, Vertias will host members of its Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) senior management team with expertise in both business issues and technical challenges for one-on-one meetings with existing and potential customers from the region.
The company plans live demonstrations as well as daily seminars to share with end-users Veritas' vision for addressing operational challenges including storage management, data protection, high availability, application performance management, and disaster recovery.
With revenues of $1.5 billion in 2002, Veritas Software offers data protection, storage management, high availability and disaster recovery software to 86 percent of the Fortune 500. Veritas Software's corporate headquarters is located Mountain View, California, United States. — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
Top Headlines
- Veritas to launch channel and training initiatives at Gitex 2002
- VERITAS Partner Update Summit to be held in Bahrain
- VERITAS Software Corporation aims at using GITEX exhibition for increasing market reach
- Dubai's PRO TECHnology joins VERITAS partner program
- VERITAS Software Corporation to hold roadshow in five cities across the region


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Sarotech's T2 (not to be confused with that other James Cameron that made a billion dollars) is a PMP with some impressive power in a small frame. Specs include a 500MHz Sigma SMPS8653 CPU, 1080p HDMI output, H.264 and MKV codec support, a USB 2.0 port, 802.11n WiFi, and DTS and Dolby surround, all in a 4.5 x 3.75 x 0.85-inch package. It also functions as a NAS (Network Attached Storage), to round out the whole media experience.
The T2 is available now (in South Korea) for around $143.


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Black-Bottom Chocolate Cream Pie
Thick and rich is the most fitting description for this pie.
Yield: 1 (9") pie
More From Oxmoor House
- 1 1/2 (3-ounce) dark chocolate bars, melted (we tested with Ghirardelli; see Note below)
- 1 baked 9
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup cornstarch
- 3 tablespoons cocoa
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 4 egg yolks, lightly beaten
- 2 cups milk
- 1 cup half-and-half
- 2 tablespoons butter or margarine
- 1 (3-ounce) dark chocolate bar, finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon bourbon (optional)
- 1 cup whipping cream
- 1/4 cup sifted powdered sugar
- Garnish: chocolate shavings
- Pour melted chocolate into bottom of baked pastry shell, spreading evenly. Chill until chocolate hardens.
- Combine 2/3 cup sugar, cornstarch, cocoa, and salt in a heavy saucepan; stir well. Stir together egg yolks, milk, and half-and-half; gradually stir into sugar mixture. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Boil 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; stir in butter, chopped chocolate, vanilla, and, if desired, bourbon.
- Pour filling into a bowl; place plastic wrap directly over surface of filling, and cool 30 minutes. Pour filling into pastry shell; cover tightly with plastic wrap, and chill at least 6 hours.
- Beat whipping cream at medium speed with an electric mixer until foamy; gradually add powdered sugar, beating until soft peaks form. Spread whipped cream over pie. Chill. Garnish, if desired.
- Note: Find dark chocolate bars on the candy aisle at your local grocery store. Other types of chocolate used in this chapter can be found on the baking aisle.
My Notes
Only you will be able to view, print, and edit this note.Add Note
Black-Bottom Chocolate Cream Pie Recipe at a Glance
- COURSE: Desserts, Pies/Pastries
- MAIN INGREDIENT: Chocolate
- PUBLICATION: Oxmoor House
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text: Just 15 minutes up a winding road from famous and always-busy Lake Louise is Moraine Lake. There is a small summertime lodge at one end of the lake and a very pleasant walking trail that winds around to the other end, usual completely devoid of tourist activity. It's a delightful place to find solitude, as well as being a great place for a lake-side picnic on a warm day. An interesting fact about the lakes in the Rockies is that each lake has its own unique shade and intensity, varying from deep emerald green to bright turquoise blue. Depending on the geology and the source of the glacial meltwater, each of these lakes are fed with a varying amount of, fineness of, and type of rock powder which gives the water a distinct milky look and color.


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Awareness and Grace
Home About Feldenkrais About Carolyn Fleg Class Schedule Contact Blog
The Feldenkrais Method® improves physical and mental functioning by fostering awareness of what we are doing and how we are doing it. It is useful for anyone wanting to enhance the quality of his or her daily life and activities as well as for people who are recovering from various injuries and ailments.
The Feldenkrais Method® is a mind-body approach to movement and learning. It is a somatic practice, which means we believe our parts make up the whole of us and that one aspect of our human functioning has a direct effect on the others. In Feldenkrais® the way in or approach is through movement. Through awareness of what we do and how we do it, we learn about how we move and how we learn. Many people notice that the awareness and ease they discover in class often spreads to other areas of their lives.
What happens in a Functrional Integration® (FI) lesson?
How do I begin?
Please visit my blog for an ongoing discussion of the Feldenkrais Method®


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Important - Please read this before ordering a bike from us and again before assembling your new bicycle after it has been delivered.
In order to fit your bicycle into it's delivery box, the manufacturers will have had to do one or more of the following,
Reinstall Front Wheel
To do this ensure that the quick release skewer is in the wheel axle. Position the wheel squarely in the fork dropouts.
Hold one side of the quick release skewer, and turn the other end clockwise until finger tight.
Lock the skewer by pushing it up or down to secure the wheel (you should feel resistance when locking the skewer to the closed position).
Reinstall Pedals
Simply screw the pedals in by hand at first, and then tighten with a spanner.
Please ensure however that you screw the pedals in squarely, and not at an odd angle.
DO NOT FORCE THE PEDALS IN. If they are a bit stiff, apply a drop of grease.
Please note the right hand pedal screws in clockwise, and the left hand pedal screws in anti clock wise. The pedals are labelled L and R respectively on the end of the screw in thread,
Re-Adjust handlebar Stem to Correct Riding Position
Position the handlebars and forks to the correct riding position. Ensure that the forks are facing in the correct direction. If in doubt consult the picture of your bike on our website.
Reinstallation of A-head system: If on receipt of your cycle the handlebars and stem have been removed for packing, please take the following steps:
If your bike features a quill type stem, simply position the handlebars in the correct riding position, and tighten the bolt on the top of the stem
Please ensure that the brake and gear cables are running free, and are not wrapped awkwardly around the handlebars
Fit all the reflectors and the bell.
The clear reflector is designed for the front, and will usually clamp onto the handlebar or bolt behind the front brake.
The red reflector will usually clamp around the seat post or around the rear stay of the frame.
The bell will be designed to clamp onto the handlebar.
Wheel reflectors will normally be factory fitted,but if these are provided separately,the should be fixed into the spokes.Take care to ensure that the wheel spins safely.


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Pipelines and processing facility expansions in the southern Utica are on the way.
Ohio's top producing shale wells as of Sept. 2014.
Horizontal wells produced more gas in three months than all Ohio wells produced in 2012.
Eclipse Resources Corporation recently released production figures from two of the company's pad locations consisting of a total of seven Utica Shale wells.
As the oil and gas drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", proliferates, a new study on the contents of the fluids involved in the process raises concerns about several ingredients.
The applications for new Utica shale wells appear to have slowed in August, as only 38 permits were issued statewide by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
The case is gaining interest because the decision could impact landowners in Belmont, Carroll, Columbiana, Harrison, Jefferson, Mahoning, Monroe and Noble counties.
As of July 31, 2014, drilled and producing wells were located in 16 Ohio counties.
OEPA report claims fracking company delayed providing information after well fire. Halliburton's response: 'If they had asked earlier, we would have provided the information,'
Pennsylvania and West Virginia have seen numerous oil and gas companies with permits and wells. Read about Ohio Marcellus and Utica shale news: Marcellus and Utica shale: Production nearly doubles in Ohio View the infographic for Ohio's shale drillers here. View the infographic about the shale industry's history in Ohio and Pennsylvania here.
As of June 18, 2014, drilled and producing wells were located in 16 Ohio counties.
More drilling permits are being issued as oil and gas companies continue to explore the Marcellus and Utica shale plays.
Velocys, which focuses on smaller scale gas-to-liquids technology, announced the acquisition June 25 of Pinto Energy and the Ashtabula gas-to-liquids (GTL) project.
Funding to address housing needs comes from Marcellus Shale impact fees.
Being forced into unitization, may not be a bad thing for landowners wanting surface land protection.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Conventional oil and gas development in northern Pennsylvania altered bird communities, and the current massive build-out of shale-gas infrastructure may accelerate these changes, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. The commonwealth's Northern Tier — one of the largest blocks of Eastern deciduous forest in the entire Appalachian […]
Permits for horizontal drilling in the Utica shale are beginning to pinpoint where the sweet spot in the Utica shale may be located.
The common point of Hart Energy's 2014 Marcellus Utica Midstream conference was that it takes time, technology and the right completion design to get the most out of the Utica and Marcellus shale wells.
Consol Energy Consol Energy will begin drilling its 9,000-acre leasehold around the Pittsburgh airport in August. The company plans to drill 8,000 feet laterals on the wells and expects production to start flowing from the airport acreage in early 2015. It has also developed a partnership in the Marcellus shale with Noble Energy. The company […]
The Ohio Supreme Court is being asked to define how the Ohio Dormant Minerals Act from 1989 and 2006 interact.


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A fire closed Ogeechee Road at Stiles Avenue this morning. Firefighters arrived on scene at about 6:15 where they found a storage shed fully involved. It took nearly an hour to contain. Investigators are still on the scene.
1430 East Victory DriveSavannah, GA 31404
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