Buddhist Marketer

It’s not evil for Citi to hand out bonuses

Quickly, as I have a call in a few:

1. On Morning Joe this morning, the yokels who run that show were kvetching about additional bonuses given to top performers instead of the President’s Award annual trip to a sunny locale
2. To yokel-paraphrase, “Why reward the top performers?  Where are they going to go?  Lehman?”
3. Implicit assumption: people who work at banks are only qualified to work at banks.
4. Every single star performer I met during my time working at or with Citi went on to work for a company not equal to a bank
5. If you let your top talent go elsewhere, do you think that will increase or decrease your chances of getting out of a troubling situation?  Do you think that top performers or the average-of-the-average are more likely to be able to put government dollars to good use?

Of course, I’ll also note that none of the top performers in my mind were ever invited to the President’s Award trip to a sunny locale.  There was one woman who I liked and didn’t entirely suck who went, but on the flip side, one of the most perplexingly mediocre people with whom I’ve ever worked was also invited.

Look, the organizational culture at Citi is already one that encourages yes’m'ing and discourages declarations that the shivering, nude emperor is, in fact, naked as a jaybird.  Frankly, I wish they’d flown the top peeps to that sunny locale instead of handing out loot.  At least in warm weather it’s not so wacky to be tromping around in the buff.  Maybe in that pants-optional environment, someone would feel more comfortable stating the obvious.

(Situational) condescension is a moral obligation

The bubble might not have gotten so big in the first place if corporate cultures didn’t discourage the public denouncement of bad ideas

I don’t place a premium on blowing sunshine up people’s hindparts.

At my high school, a math/science magnet, you came strong or not at all, an intellectual style that suits me, but generally pisses most people off. Even some circles at Yale felt the dismissive, condescending tone that my skewering of poorly-considered arguments generally took was inappropriate for the cashmere-sweater and pearl-necklace set. Whatevs. I was trained in a school of thought that assumes we’re all intelligent people, and none of us are going to cry to our mommies if someone rips our moronic ideas a new orifice. Au contraire: we’ll become stronger people for having endured the thrashing. (Cue Nietzsche.)

This is not an approach that lubricates one’s path to a corner office at a large corporation. (Cue Kafka.) Playing nice with others is paramount, is more than half of your annual evaluation come bonus-time. As someone put it this weekend, “Do you want to show the other person that they’re wrong and you’re right, or do you want to persuade them?” In corporate America you need to persuade 25/8/366; it’s more difficult to do this when your emails are laced with vitriol and your presentations rife with eye-rolling.

The Bell curve makes it clear that the vast majority of humans are, well, average. It follows from this that the insights of the vast majority of humans will also be average, and the length of time that it will take them to appreciate the brilliance of your insights will be longer than it took you to architect them. So, in opposition to that which is generally celebrated in the places I feel most at home (think: a room full of people who prefer quad-ruled paper), in corporate America you must place a high premium on making others feel good about themselves. Or, at the very least, you must be considerate of how what you’re saying and doing might make other people feel like idiots. (Whether they are, in fact, idiots is not relevant. Remember: do you want to be right, or do you want to persuade?)

Now, let’s think about this: yes, I oftentimes “skewer” other marketers’ fumbles. I’m not trying to shame anyone (anymore) but at the same time, as I informed a waiter at a restaurant in Santa Monica last month, “I’m allergic to mediocre food.” If you know me, you know this about me. As one of my dear friends Chris Sandeman, the CEO of Sandeman’s New Europe, has put it, “Anittah’s only draw-back is the occasional allergic reaction to stupidity and mediocrity in co-workers.”

I’m not happy when I find out that someone has taken deep offense at me taking the red laser pointer to their public boo-boos. I mean, I’m not out to hurt anyone’s feelings. If you know me, you know this too. But certainly the language I speak is often at odds with the language spoken by the dominant status quo — and by definition, the middle chunk of the Bell curve is the dominant status quo. And the dominant language is one that makes others feel good about themselves, gently persuades them to agree that 1+1=2, and blows sunshine up their grade-inflated, “Hooray For Everything”, if-it-weren’t-for-Spanx-it-would-occupy-four-zip-codes backsides.

Feel-good group-think. A Ponzi scheme of back-patting. A lemmingistic, no-whistle-blowing, now-is-the-perfect-time-to-buy we-are-all-bobblehead-dolls chorus of conformity. I mean, how could the clowns be anything but wise when wisdom is, definitionally, whatever the clown-crowd comes up with?!

It isn’t too far from this line of thinking to suppose that the mandate of playing nice and being nice if you want your bonus is an incentive to not announce, “The Emperor has no clothes!” It isn’t too far from supposing that throughout organizations across the world, there were individuals who smelled what the securitizing of debts was cookin’, but knew better than to circulate memos to this effect. It isn’t a huge stretch to imagine that maybe if there were a diversity of workstyles — which is to say, well-socialized people who go to work for a fashion show alongside poorly-socialized people who stockpile notebooks of graph paper — incented in corporate America, rather than the simple celebration of the uncritical, perhaps the amplitude of the markets would be dampened.

All of this is to say that even on my most Buddhist of days, I’m still likely going to be perceived as a jerk amongst those who take analysis of their work product personally. It’s not like I’m trying to personally attack the people who slap together shoddy PowerPoints; they, too, have a right to intake oxygen (just, perhaps, at a reduced paygrade ;). But if we’re going to

• Elevate the level of discourse about marketing
• Discourage a culture of conformity within the world of generally-unrepentant capitalists
• Minimize the incentive to simply nod our heads and do what our boss or policy dictates simply because it pays the mortgage

then suit-wearing punks like myself practically have a moral obligation to audibly slap their foreheads when a marketer engages in the mediocre.

I mean, if I sat here and simply accepted a continuous stream of poorly designed emails and abhorrently executed social media campaigns, wouldn’t my silence practically make me an accomplice? (Cue Zizek.)

Benevolent evil-doing on marketing’s landscape is evil-doing just the same. It’s an assault on excellence. I can’t take it. I won’t stomach it. It gives me hives.

Maybe I’m being a complete Adhole, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask to require that marketing — and marketers — do a bit of thinking.  And so, this blog exists to inject the thinking back into marketing.

–

Not sure if you have a moral obligation to condescend?  Here’s a handy chart!

* Either in the form of lowering the bar of others (who will think that misplaced apostrophes and its ilk are okay) or not discouraging continued sup-optimal-ness on the part of the actor)?

–

This blog post was created for Adholes.com, the largest and oldest ad-industry social network. Adholes.com members and Thinking Marketing newsletter subscribers enjoy VIP access to my morally obligated Thinking Marketing blog posts.  I think you deserve VIP status, don’t you?

• Join Adholes.com or
• Add your your email address to my Thinking Marketing mailing list

On the financial decision-making prowess of human beings

I just had the pleasure of having coffee with Dr. Emily Haisley, who is quoted in “Sweet Dreams in Hard Times Add to Lottery Sales“, a cover article of today’s New York Times:

“When people view themselves as doing worse financially, then that motivates them to purchase lottery tickets,” said Emily Haisley, a postdoctoral associate at the Yale School of Management who in July published a research paper on lotteries in The Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. “People look to the lottery to get back to where they were financially.”

I have a total nerd-crush on Emily’s larger body of work, which basically states:

• Humans are not rational actors
• We know what choices rational actors would make
• Let’s structure the playing field to help humans act more rationally

I am so there.

Reframing marketing expenditures

There were many aspects of my position at Citigroup that I enjoyed deeply, but one initiative in particular stands out: my collaborative efforts to encourage folks to think about the firm’s bottom line rather than hitting their own monthly numbers. Granted, when you’re trying to evangellize this kind of thinking without consistent support throughout the organization, it can be pretty dispiriting. Nonetheless, being a champion for reframing business decisions with ultimate net present value in mind was something I felt pretty good about, and still do.

Thug calculus, after all, makes me sweaty.

This is probably why I greatly enjoyed reading “A Point of View on Marketing Accountability: Connecting Marketing Investments, Marketing Metrics and Financial Outcomes”, an August 2007 white paper by Peter McNally of (r)evolution partners. Some snips:

The organization dialogue today is framed in short-term results, with a strong bias towards efficiency, using marketing metrics that are rarely connected to financial outcomes.

Amen to that. There’s more:

We believe that for CMOs to be truly effective advocates for marketing investments, they must be the driving force in their organization to connect marketing investments to outcomes that drive firm value.

There’s some great charts and graphs in the document as well as an intriguing hypothesis regarding firms’ asset value composition over time (short math: intangible assets such as brand now occupy a larger and larger piece of the pie, which is why marketing tactics of yore are disconnected from value creation).

I can’t find the .pdf online (it was sent to me) but perhaps if you ping the author (see link above) and make nice you can get a copy.

How publicly traded companies are like teenage delinquents

I have worked for and/or with a number of Fortune 100 companies, and there’s a commonality across all of them: the incentive structures for the employees. I don’t mean discount gym memberships or on-site child care; I mean the way in which different kinds of thinking and approaches to doing business are rewarded. There are significantly fewer rewards for corporate employees to act in a manner that is in the best interest of the corporation’s long-term value versus acting in a manner that’s good for this month’s numbers.

I know the street and its analysts like to think that they plug and chug long-term growth considerations into their equity valuations. Sure. I won’t dispute that this is the attempt and won’t even argue whether this pans out. But on the ground floor of a corporation, even enlightened companies who pretend to make decisions with some proxy for net present value as a factor will, when push comes to shove, make the decision to hit their raw numbers in terms of units sold, ad impressions bought, prescriptions written, whatever.

“Wait, but if we invest $1,000 of your $5,000 budget on strategically planning your marketing spend, the budget you have next quarter will be that much more intelligently deployed.”

“Nope. Don’t care. Just throw it all at media.”

Ah, how very responsible you are to … now. And how very irresponsible you are to tomorrow.

And this is how publicly traded companies behave a bit like teenage delinquents: the calculus operating in the minds of most corporate bees is, “I need to hit my numbers this month!” not “I need to maximize NPV over a five year period.” When one is optimizing over a timeline the length of one’s arm, they’ll tend to make very different decisions than if they are optimizing over a timeline the length of their ken (notable exceptions being someone who is visually impaired, but I’m hoping you get my drift here).

Similarly, teenage delinquents could really care less if stealing that old lady’s handbag is going to hurt their chances at getting into college. Applying to college is three years away; $20 and a crusty tube of lip balm is three seconds away: “I need to get some cash right now!” not “I need to maximize lifetime earning potential.” The timeframe over which mental calculus is conducted is significantly shorter for the teenage delinquent and their behaviors and actions crescendo accordingly.

In some ways, corporate bees are stealing old ladies’ handbags every day, if the old lady is the future and the handbag contains the incremental monies that the firm could have earned if a smarter, more strategic decision had been made at t=0. In the corporate world, when surrounded by other like-minded thugs whose decks, motivational posters, quarterly town halls and paintball-games-if-you-hit-your-numbers, act, in the aggregate, not unlike teenage hoodlums conspiring in the park (”There! There’s an old lady! She got nice shoes so I bet she has loot!”), it can be hard to make the difficult decision to choose long-term value or short-term gain (”Oh, wow, snap, you’re not gonna do it? What, you think you’re better than us?”)

Most of us don’t make the difficult decision. Most of roam corridors of softly-padded cubicle walls stealing old ladies’ handbags.

“Hey, team! We hit our numbers this month. Let’s go get some drinks!”

People at Skechers are stupid too

I’m on a roll now, and you people have the feminine hygiene products I bought today at Walgreen’s to thank.

So, a few days ago I get an email from Affiliate Traction, the company that manages Skechers’ affiliate program. Apparently at Skechers.com, there’s some sale going on. Except, the email states that affiliates aren’t allowed to talk about said sale in any affiliate marketing material. Can’t say it in their PPC search arb campaigns. Can’t say it in their product aggregator sites. Mums the word.

Naturally I thought this was prime Affiliate Marketing Circa 1998, but I’m not active with my Affiliate Marketing Moxie just now, so I deleted the email and went on packing my luggage for Biz_Trip_Miami.com.

But I guess a few affiliate marketing managers were pizz-issed-off, because I just read a follow up email from Affiliate Traction:

We are aware of the concerns that have been raised as a result of the announcement made yesterday to Skechers’ Performics affiliates. We apologize for the confusion and would like to take this opportunity to clear up any misconceptions as well as explain a little bit about the existing situation.

We have been informed by Skechers that due to existing contractual stipulations between Skechers online and their offline retail distributors, certain sales, discounts and coupon codes must be limited in promotion. As such, no online resource or site may directly advertise this current sale. However, utilizing existing or custom creatives to promote approved specials is acceptable. We are always available to assist you in whatever way we can.

We are working very hard with Skechers to create something special for everyone affected by this unfortunate matter. We value our affiliates and the work that each and every one does to promote this program.

We hope to have further information for you soon.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us directly.

Now this is just some stupid-a$$ “We Don’t Know How To Optimize Our Distribution Channels And Thus Sign Contracts Without Considering Firm-Wide Ramifications” $hit. Guarantee you’ve got some general counsel bozo talking to some old guard “Everything I Know About Pushing Product I Learned In 1985 From Car Dealerships” general manager clown redlining the contract without doing some basic cross-channel optimization analysis to figure out how to best structure deals for each channel in order to maximize profit for the channels in aggregate.

The mediocrity! The horror!

The headache I have!

Damn you, Garmin!

I’m blowing the dust off my ANP for God campaign. You want an angry, punishing God, people? You’ve got it, for 3-5 days approximately every 25 days. DONE.

Ad industry decline

Hal Riney opines on the decline of the advertising industry in the January 8, 2007 issue of Adweek:

It is appalling what has happened to the industry in general. Ad people have no faith in the long-term effects of brand image, so the human element is lacking in the work… Advertising has been relegated to middle management…

This is a business built on ability and imagination. You need a magnificent group of creative people and remarkable clients who want to have fun and not just do the same thing.

I’ve given some thought to this over the past few years. And I know that what I’m about to say might be politically incorrect …

… but I can’t help it.

When I worked at Digitas as a menial grunt working sixty-plus hour weeks for ten grand less than the job before it (whimper), I admired the work of Steve Olderman, a fellow Yale grad who, despite not attending a traditional arts school (he received his Bachelor’s in Engineering in 1963), was then the Chief Creative Officer.

How was it, I thought, that he was able to fashion his career in such a way?

I guarantee you that a Stephen Olderman circa 2007 n’existe pas. The path to becoming a creative director these days is through the halls of SVA, RISD, Pratt, and the like. Or, perhaps you crossover from a different role within an agency — a role like media planning or copywriting.

Except. Well. It’s really hard to get into an agency these days. They require degrees in marketing or advertising. They expect that you know how to operate the metaphorical machinery of the advertising engine. Which is good and fine for executional grunt work. But what about the big picture?

Yale University does not offer a “marketing” or “advertising” degree. It’s a liberal arts institution. It, and places like it, teach you how to think. So that when you encounter a problem — e.g., “How can I shift the brand consciousness in the minds of consumers for this bar of whale fat?” — you understand how to tackle it. These are the kinds of minds that the advertising industry needs, to inject the “human element” of which Hal Riney speaks, to guide clients to consider greatness, to prevent this kind of creative exploration from being “relegated to middle management”.

The problem is that institutionally, it’s nearly impossible for these budding potential great minds, these Stephen Oldermans circa 2007, to get in to the industry. If someone with an engineering degree walked into HR at an agency and said they wanted to be a creative, they’d get laughed at.

But if they do get into one (I was an account person — not exactly the rockstars of an agency, of course), they find themselves surrounded by attendees of what have essentially become vocational schools. Look, I don’t look down my nose on those who learned how to use Comscore or Nielsen Netratings to build a media plan during their undergraduate days. I believe that an honest day’s work is an honest day’s work, and learning a trade to eke yourself to a higher tax bracket is an honorable thing.

But it’s just that. A trade. Learning to build a media plan in your pursuit of an advertising degree is akin to learning to make a widget. It has nothing to do with learning how to think, how to tackle and approach problems in an original and expansive way. Anyone can make a widget. Anyone can build a media plan. Anyone can puke out most of the advertising units rolling in front of our eyeballs these days.

And so the industry, I think, begins to look a bit like it does today. Rife with art school grads who can certainly make something look pretty but lack the ability to inject meaning and substance into the smoke and mirrors. Laden with voc school grads who can pull some placements for women 18-35, single, no children but can’t consider the implications for a psychographic shift or a product positioning tilt. But lacking just the kind of flexible, intellectually-curious, hungry minds that could tackle huge problems and deliver an elegant, unique solution with a depth of consideration and historical relevance that will also positively impact the bottom line.

So I think that Hal Riney’s right in his observations about the ad industry. And I don’t disagree that the obeisance to shareholder value or commodification of everything don’t play important roles. But I also feel that the places from which the industry sources its talent and the ways in which the industry’s recruiters and human resources professionals populate the entry level cubicles also play a very important role.

Just my opinion. And again, not trying to hate on state school grads who majored in advertising. A place for everyone and all. They all make more than me anyway, I’m sure.