Author: Jeff Larche

With a background that includes direct marketing and customer relationship management (CRM), Jeff Larche brings an unusual approach to his work. What these other two disciplines have in common is database marketing, and they continue to strongly influence his work as marketing technology leader.
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Ads with prancing cowboys may annoy, but they sure do work

Not all online marketers can make this claim, but if you peered into my soul (or some would say analyze my circuitry), you’d see a direct marketer. I’m proud of it. And I feel vindicated when I read articles like today’s in the Advertising section of the NY Times. It’s about LowerMyBills.com and how they’ve annoyed millions with their silly online ads. And made a fortune. Here’s an excerpt:

The company, one of the Internet’s biggest advertisers, routinely festoons Web sites large and small with its ads, spending $74.6 million on them in the first 11 months of 2006, according to TNS Media Intelligence. The surprising success of the ads led LowerMyBills to a significant payday: the credit agency Experian bought the eight-year-old company for $400 million in 2005.

Example from the NT Times article of a LowerMyBills adBut on the path to prosperity, LowerMyBills has run into a lot of people who say the undulating characters in the ads are highly distracting and have so little to do with low-interest loans that they border on the surreal.

The most memorable LowerMyBills banners feature silhouetted dancers like the prancing cowboys, or the couple doing a jig on their roof under a full moon.

As a direct marketer, I know that the only way you can tell if an ad is working is by testing. And there is little logic to what works and what doesn’t.

My background as a direct marketer makes me passionate about the opportunity that the web provides to test many creative concepts and refocus spending on the best of those, in a matter of hours instead of weeks (as is the case with direct mail). This same background makes me quite boring. When I client says, “Should we do it?” — whatever it is — nine times out of ten I have to tell them, “Let’s test!”

Congratulations, by the way, to James Gardner, whose online “hobby,” Adverlicio.us, got him some ink in the article. He’s a great guy and deserves all of the attention this article is sending his way.

 

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The collaboration technology of choice varies by marketing discipline

Today I had lunch with my friend Don Buck of Buck Marketing. He owns a list brokerage. I was explaining why I had not yet installed the program he swears by, Trillian by Cerulean Studios. It’s a way to aggregate all of your instant messaging (IM) identities into one account. That way, regardless of which system someone wants to reach you in — AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Google (Jabber) or a less popular IM account — you can receive and send through one account.

Pretty clever. But it was a solution to a problem that I don’t have.

I only have Google IM, and that’s primarily to communicate with my team members. Few people beyond my coworkers are in my Google buddy list, and I have no need for other accounts. Don said, “That’s interesting but not surprising. I find that my contacts in the email marketing industry use IM to do their work, but those in direct mail use email.”

I have a theory why. Direct mail takes weeks to plan and execute, as do most other marketing projects nowadays. Passing information via email is sufficient to meet those types of deadlines.

Email projects are usually more immediate — at least when you are in the execution stage. We’re talking lag times of days instead of weeks. IM may be the only collaboration technology immediate enough to keep things on track and still keep a record of what’s discussed (otherwise you can just pick up the phone).

Or perhaps it’s something else that turns email marketers away from their lingua franca. Perhaps those who send emails for a living can’t bear to lean heavily on that medium to manage the projects. Sort of like the guy who makes donuts every morning never wanting to sample his own work.

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As long as you’re stuck in traffic, can we talk?

Actor, comic and screenwriter Steve Martin wrote the character of God — or at least an omniscient sage — into his 1991 romantic comedy L.A. Story. This is car-centric Los Angeles he’s talking about, so the voice of God wasn’t in the form of a burning bush or an intervening angel, but was the flashing lettering of a freeway sign. Instead of the sign reporting the typical warnings of delays, it gave the lead character personal advice and admonishments. Our star eventually heeds these digital messages, and his own personal heavy traffic magically lifts for a happy Hollywood ending.

Digital BillboardI was reminded of this when I pulled to a stop at a notoriously busy intersection near my home. There, in the muted half-daylight of dusk, was a glowing billboard so rich in color and crisp in detail that it almost seemed to open my door and climb in beside me. I was riveted.

This was a new digital billboard by Lamar Advertising. Both Lamar and competitor Clear Channel Outdoor have posted these LCD boards in my city, along with many others. Over coffee this past Sunday, a friend of mine mentioned the sighting of one of them. They are noteworthy enough that their arrival gets people talking.

It also got me thinking.

LCD billboards grab attention by their picture quality and brightness, and also by the fact that they can rotate ads as frequently as every six seconds. These boards have helped fuel incredible growth in this ad category, called out-of-home advertising. The category is second only to Internet ads in terms of its growth. These boards have also fueled traffic safety concerns, as reported in this recent New York Times article:

“There’s a perception in the advertising industry that you have to up the ante,” said David Zald, assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. “We see so much information coming at us that for it to actually leap out and capture our attention, one has to go at a more salient level than you used to.”

But, he added, “there’s a trade-off between the advertiser’s need to grab our attention and the actual safety implications of that attention capture.”

It’s a real concern, especially when the signs are new to a particular roadside. But the danger caused by their novelty will fade. Perhaps their introduction can even be made less jarring by slowing the rotation time — less to gawk at, and thus, more time to think about driving.

What really got me thinking was how a formerly analog medium can work harder when it goes digital. I’d like you to consider for a moment a digital billboard that’s smart enough to anticipate traffic speeds and potential dangers. There are a couple of methods being tested now using things like anonymized cell phone signals to better understand in real time the traffic speeds and conditions of pinpointed stretches of road. Using this sort of information, the signs could respond. When traffic speeds up, rotation could be throttled back.

Now take that traffic-sensitive capability a step farther. Remember, these digital billboards have essentially taken a two-dimensional ad medium and added the third dimension of time. Driven by a computer, anything can be served up on a board, and changed at any time (sometimes the computers fail, with comical results).

What if, when traffic slowed to a crawl, a message was flashed that drivers could respond to immediately, with their cell phones. When you’re bumper-to-bumper, it’s easier to manage a phone conversation and still remain safe. This slowly passing line of drivers would be flashed direct response offers that they have the capability — and free time — to respond to immediately.

Anything that eases their frustration with the wait would drive interest and action. As a public service, and as an added incentive to make the call, the end of the recorded message that consumers would hear would be specific information about the cause of the slow-down — an accident, stalled car or construction — along with verbal instructions on what might be done to ease the slowdown.

Is this smart? Dumb? I’d like to know. What do you think? One thing I’m quite sure of. This idea absolutely cries out to be tested.

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iPhone changes several games at once

iPhone and Steve JobsYesterday Steve Jobs showed off Apple’s long-rumored mobile phone. The iPhone combines cell calling with a widescreen video iPod and WiFi-driven Internet communicator. It will change many games.

It will certainly improve the growth of mobile marketing. Apple truly understands how to provide pleasing user experiences, so I suspect that the iPhone’s broad, 3.5 inch color screen will make viewing video and web-based email not only easier, but fun. And the ability to browse your voice mails the same way you do emails will certainly add to the calling experience. Other cell phones would have to struggle to catch up if this interface resonates with users.

But another game-changer will be in movies on demand. David Denby wrote in this week’s New Yorker about how the tiny screen is changing the big screen. Hollywood is scrambling to adjust to a new type of movie viewer, one who is “platform agnostic,” and really doesn’t care if a film is projected in a theater, played from a DVD or downloaded in some form. This person is still in the minority, however. Denby explained that the tiny hand-held video players are fine for movies about talking heads, but the blockbuster, action/adventure films look sad and flimsy. They also strain the arm of the user, as you work to support a tiny player in your hand. Or you have to loom close to it as it rests on something, placing your body into some rather uncomfortable contortions.

The iPhone won’t change this film-viewing limitation, or reduce the crick in your neck. But it will add a new reward to the early adopter — a cool, hand-held analogy to the ever-growing home theater flat screen TVs. It will be perceived as the biggest little screen in town, and will make hand-held screen size an important bragging point.

Denby ends his analysis by speculating that dreary, uncomfortable multi-plexes will have to respond to this tiny threat in a way that can benefit every type of movie-goer. They may have to reinvent themselves, offering amenities and settings that once again make watching a movie in a theater a pleasure . If this comes to pass, no small part of the reason for these innovations will be from the iPhone and its nascent imitators. Many theaters, according to Denby, will even have ushers, to personally remind audiences to turn off their game-changers before the lights dim and the feature begins.

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The 5 Things You Don’t Know About Me Meme, plus the importance of memes

I’ve been tagged “it” by Kevin Hillstrom, author of the MineThatData! blog. As part of the 17th generation of recipients of this playful meme*, I’ve been challenged to tell you a few, fun personal details and then pass on the challenge to five others. Although this has become a much larger year-end Internet phenomenon, you can thank (or blame) Jeff Pulver for this particular game of tag.

I’ve learned a lot about my fellow bloggers, and gotten a good chuckle in the process. Probably the best list I’ve read so far (and mind you, my RSS reader is tuned exclusively to business- and technology-related blogs — no puffery to speak of) is from a blogger who will remain nameless, who confessed, “Every winter in college, I ran naked through the library giving out donuts.”

Here is my list, refreshingly free of nudity and donuts:

  1. At the age of 11, like a lot of pre-teen boys, I developed a passion for performing magic tricks. This could have made me a social pariah, but I was quickly “discovered” by Dick Oslund, a talented professional magician who was born in my same home town. Along with studying how to do tricks, my first mentor had me reading books on showmanship and selling. In high school, while my classmates were earning a few dollars with paper routes and odd jobs, I was building a surprising bank account by performing at children’s birthday parties. Dick taught me to offer the curious mothers a choice of three different shows, with varying prices: good, better and best. I never had to decide exactly what to do for two of those, because the mothers would always book the mid-priced show. In this and other ways, I learned lessons I’m still applying. But don’t ask me to do a trick. I’m way too rusty!
  2. I lived for a time, shortly after college, in Venice, CA, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my marketing education. Two blocks from the Pacific Ocean, I was helping a friend convert a factory building into apartments, living in the construction site. One day, working in the Beverly Glen area as a plumber’s assistant for some extra cash, I was nearly electrocuted in the crawlspace under the house of Tom Bosley, of Happy Days fame. The culprit was a poorly grounded sump pump. Perhaps it was the jolt of electricity, but shortly after that I was on a less hazardous career track.
  3. It’s hard for me to think of a professional accomplishment that wasn’t actually the work of a team of inspired and talented people. Therefore, I won’t single out any one of them here. Instead, I’ll tell you that I did some solo work as a volunteer, years ago, for the Wisconsin chapter of the American Cancer Society. On the basis of my analysis and by merely changing what donors were contacted, they increased renewal donations by 23% over the prior year. All without spending additional fundraising dollars. This added over a million dollars to their bottom line. (I also donate blood regularly, but not to the organization.)
  4. Between high school and college I traveled with a circus. Yes, a real circus. I kid you not.
  5. My wife keeps hoping I’ll outgrow my love of loud, fast punk rock music — some by musicians young enough to be my kids. In my opinion, by far the best album from last year is by The Arctic Monkeys.

*So what’s a meme?

The term was coined 30 years ago by the Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. It refers to a unit of cultural information, such as this “five things” list, an urban legend or even a catch-phrase, transferred “virally” from one mind to another. Like a virus, it needs a conveyance method and a hospitable host. In the case of this meme, the conveyance method from blogger to blogger is something called a “ping.” The bloggers I mention below will be automatically informed of my challenge to them. As for the hospitable environment? Hey, who doesn’t want to divulge a few facts about themselves?

Anyone who wants their brand to spread online — and offline — would do well to understand memes and how they can be leveraged.

Here is my challenge to the next five bloggers. Do tell!