EmSense – Common Sense or Nonsense?

February 24, 2008 By Leave a Comment

EmSense Glasses

This is a headset which is being developed by EmSense, a Monterey, California based company that is pioneering physiological neuro-scientific sensing for business decision making. Their patent-pending device has embedded sensors that combine EEG technology used to measure brain-wave activity and other biometrics like eye motion, breathing, cardio activity, body temperature in an individual viewer. Another company, Sands Research, also is helping firms conduct market research by measuring physiological data. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Advertising, B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Behavioral Marketing, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, Marketing, Net-Centric Marketing, Public Relations, Sales Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Downturns, Data, and a Dare

February 23, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Last week in the February 18, 2008 issue of Advertising Age, the headline article by Bradley Johnson was entitled “Media Work Force Sinks to 15-Year Low.” So jobs were bad in the last recession of the early 1990s and they’re bad again. OK…

Advertisiing Age Logo

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Media Woes Graph from Advertising Age

The article’s graph clearly shows media jobs peaking during the dotcom bubble, rapidly shrinking, but finally leveling off for the past few years and then most recently a sharper slope in the wrong direction. Part of the reason, the article states, is because of the bad times that have befallen the newspaper industry. The other is that there are other choices for marketers “beyond paid media.”

That last reason could be analyzed further. More choices mean determining relative values in order to make the best choice. The relative value of any decision then needs to be measured and in marketing, that means ROI. The greater the ROI, the greater the likelihood of be being selected. I cannot tell it any simpler.

The good news is while the net number is down, especially due to the decrease in in newspaper, TV broadcasting, cable, radio and direct mail jobs in the past year, there are categories where job growth is up: in advertising and marketing services including digital graphic design, and internet media.

Note to CMOs: “push” media companies = job loss… net-centric media companies = job gain.

Agencies pay attention; there will always be creative needed for the “art” of marketing; but there will be more jobs for the “science” of marketing as C4ISR marketing demands analytical and statistical finesse for web analytics, campaign management, data mining, business intelligence, and mangaing digital asset management (DAM), CRM, EMM or MRM platforms.

The Marketing Consigliere dares anyone to prove him incorrect.

Filed Under: Advertising, Agencies, Business Intelligence, C4ISR Marketing, Campaign Management, CRM, Data Mining, Digital Asset Management, EMM, Metrics & Measurement, MRM, Net-Centric Marketing Tagged With: ,

Media Rules!

February 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Media Rules! - Mastering Today’s Technology to Connect With and Keep Your AudienceThe Marketing Consigliere recently attended a luncheon hosted by the DC Ad Club.  The two speakers, Brian Reich and Dan Solomon, were presenting their new book, Media Rules! – Mastering Today’s Technology to Connect With and Keep Your Audience. He bought the book, had the authors autograph inside the cover, and proceeded to read it. Here are his thoughts:

The byline “Mastering Today’s Technology…” raised his hopes but it is not the technical book he was expecting. However, it’s a good book and here’s why: In a world of fast-paced events and innovations making the press everyday, there are still technology-illiterate people in leadership positions in business. You can call them “Luddites,” “Technology Leave-Behinds” or something else that can crack a smile on any digerati, but the ugly truth is that there are more of them than most net-centric marketing professionals want to admit.

Therefore, many of these decision makers need hand holding, and Mssrs. Reich and Solomon have done just that.  The Marketing Consigliere doubts that the appropriate audience for this book is reading this blog, but those who do read this blog should buy the book and anonymously leave it on the desk of one of those Web 2.0-challenged bosses.

As for reading it yourself, you’re free to do so; but his caveat is that it does not to any extent truly cover Net-Centric marketing and all the wonderful things he likes to blog about like predictive analysis, site optimization, web analytics, EMM, MRM, and all the other tools that would actually help “Media” to “Rule.”

The most disappointing thing to him was that Chapter 17, “Be Measurable,” was only four pages long. Measuring is what marketing should be all about.  He read the chapter in no time and at the end it said, “With that, we invite you to log on to www.themediarules.com and read the remainder of this chapter and join us for a conversation about media rules!”

He went – there was no “remainder” of the chapter and nothing to join save for a .gif of the book cover linking to an email prompt to contact Dan Solomon. Dan, The Marketing Consigliere hopes you will quickly remedy this and create a site that allows you to gather, store, analyze, share, and act upon data that can grow your business and sell more books.

Filed Under: Advertising, Agencies, Book Review, Leadership, Marketing, Net-Centric Marketing, Public Relations Tagged With: , , , ,

Hitting on Web Analytics

February 6, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The Marketing Consigliere has come across several start-up companies in his path that plan on depending on advertising for their revenue model. Having been in publishing, he tries to give them ideas how to make that work for them. But they definitely should look at publishers closer – many of them are struggling. While one may argue that much of that struggle is due to the inclusion of the need to run a print product also, he would reply, yes, but many publishers who have had their brand on the web for several years still don’t know what to do with all of their analytics. So startups, take heed..

Especially since he heard one entreprenuer talk about “hits” to a page. He has taken it for granted that marketers now refer to “unique visitors,” “page views,” and a score of more clinical phrases to describe online visitor behavior. In a net-centric marketing world, he encourages those on the entrepreneurship path to get a better understanding of the pivotal data which will influence content decisions and advertising sales decisions.

Semphonic Logo“Where the Buys Are: Ads Live On Pages,” a timely blog in Metrics Insider by Josh Chasin, Chief Research Officer of comScore, spells out the basics very well. But to go deeper and obtain a more comprehensive understanding of analytics for your company, an analytics consulting firm such as Semphonic should be engaged for an objective assessment of your firm’s needs.

The challenge of creating reports that allow executives, marketers, and content creators to appreciate critical analytic complexities and make sound decisions can be facilitated by a neutral third party such as Semphonic. Phil Kemelor, Semphonic’s Vice President of Strategic Consulting Services, also has a blog that should be reviewed on a routine basis.

Filed Under: Advertising, B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Behavioral Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Metrics & Measurement, Net-Centric Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Superbowl Ads and Branding – What’s Under the Hood?

February 4, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Last year, Super Bowl XLI was interesting in that the Doritos commercial was made from user-generated content and this year for Super Bowl XLII they promoted their brand with user-generated music. Regarding advertising, there were the “usual suspects” who provided acceptable, entertaining commercials that were spoken about at the water cooler the following week; but from a social networking or technological view this Super Bowl was a bit of a dud. Not much else to talk about from a C4ISR Marketing perspective.

Super Bowl XLII Logo

Marketers squandered an amazing opportunity to stress test their MRM, EMM, Campaign Management, and Web Analytics tools. With millions viewing, this would have been a great chance to gather business intelligence, conduct real-time site optimization with multivariate testing, bolster CRM data, do data mining, and raise B2B brand awareness.

You can read more of The Marketing Consigliere’s “humble opinion” at another great marketing site – he is fortunate that Scott White of the Brand Identity Guru Blog allowed him to be a guest blogger there.  Scott has a good irreverent style that rightly slaps brand management professionals marketers in the face, so The Marketing Consigliere hopes you’ll read more of that blog.

The Brand Identity Guru Blog Screenshot

Filed Under: Advertising, Agencies, B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Brand Management, Business Intelligence, C4ISR Marketing, Campaign Management, CRM, Data Mining, EMM, Marketing, Metrics & Measurement, MRM, Net-Centric Marketing, Social Networking, User Generated Content Tagged With: , ,