Marketing Insights

The Long & Short of It – Binet & Field

In marketing and advertising the main question for business owners is always – will any of this stuff lead to sales or grow the brand?

It’s a fantastically mysterious question that still stalks the woodlands of business development today.

Many report that advertising is working really well, while at the same time, even more report that they’ve wasted thousands of dollars on ad campaigns that never moved the needle.

Meanwhile, the world’s biggest brands still run too-huge campaigns, and run the same ad campaigns and brand assets for decades, and invest in new mediums with seeming success; why would they continue to advertise and invest in marketing, if it doesn’t work?

And so we arrive at our departure point for this book report, Les Binet & Peter Field’s

“The Long and Short Of It; Building Short & Long-Term Marketing Strategies”

Published in 2013 by the IPA, The Long and Short Of It takes research and analysis of 996 marketing case studies from over 700 brands in 83 different categories, and looks at actual business outcomes based on short-term and long-term performance metrics, all pointing to one conclusion – brands that balance and harmonize short term sales activation with long term brand growth are better positioned for marketplace dominance.

The report is cut into three sections that demonstrate how balancing the long and short term in three key areas; Strategy, Channels, and Metrics, is essential to creating lasting brands and maximizing profits. I’ll provide a brief overview and thoughts on these sections, but really – you need to go pick this report up.

Balancing the Strategy

The most striking and simple conclusion that best encapsulates the whole vibe of this report is this short sentence – “Short-term metrics will not create long term brands.”

“The way in which long-term effects sales is different than short. Although long-term brand branding produces some short-term sales activation, short-term sales will never produce long-term success. Long-term growth is not a compounding collection of small, short-term effects.”

Sales increasing is obviously the main lifesource metric for marketing departments. But as you can see in the graph above, without a strong Brand Building aspect to your marketing strategy, overtime, Sales Activation campaigns will have a limited impact on Sales Uplift.

Binet & Field have also discovered that other measurements (Profit, Market Share, Penetration, Loyalty, Price Sensitivity) can be deeply influenced and impacted by strong Brand Building campaigns that are paired with a Sales Activation component.

Based on their data, Binet & Field believe that a marketing strategy that mixes 60% Brand & 40% Sales is a good place to start from.

This is not an either-or scenario, and this ‘balance’ is not a hard and fast rule.

Depending on competition and other factors, the blend may have to be aggressive on sales to quench overhead demands, but then again the brands that are favoring short over long have to realize at some point, that ain’t gonna get you to where you need to go.

Direct Response or Sales Activation advertising, no matter how great, will not build brand salience in the minds of consumers.

So what type of marketing activity qualifies as short-term Sales Activation or long-term Brand Building?

The main point of this section is to outline the differences between short and long, and how the true path forward is creating more marketing strategies and campaigns that consider a healthy balance between Sales Activation and Brand Building.

Balancing the Channels

Now that we appreciate the necessity of a marketing strategy that balances Sales and Brand; what do we do with all this?

The authors have given us a quick guide on choosing distribution channels for the messaging, based on the objective.

Brand Channels – TV, Press, Online Display, Outdoor, Radio, Cinema

Activation Channels – Online, Search, Classifieds, Direct Marketing

Once again, these are not prescriptive, just suggestions from people who have been providing the best research and analytical thought in advertising since 1917.

Formed from a well-balanced marketing strategy, the most successful advertising campaigns in the study mix the distinct advantages of each of Brand and Activation channels to reach their audience for the greatest impact.

The example provided in the study of a McDonald’s ad campaign in the UK is a great example of blending the short term and long term metrics and tactics;

This was a massively successful campaign because it blends Sales Activation and Brand Growth.

McDonald’s is focused on Sales by enticing customers to visit the store with a giveaway, (not a price reduction which is harmful) and to try new recipes for sandwiches.

And on the Brand Growth front, McDonald’s chose to focus the media buys on highlighting its ethical sourcing of it’s ingredients, and the dependability of its classic menu options.

This campaign works because it’s focused on broader and bigger effects, and thusly, aimed at a larger addressable audience. You’re not just speaking to loyalists in advertising, you’re trying to get everyone in the category to notice you.

Indeed, this is a massively important finding from this report; sales activation activities like advertising campaigns SHOULD NOT be targeted solely to existing customers. To grow your brand and find new customers, you have to target all buyers in the category with your messaging.

So the real genius is creating campaigns that speak to both existing customers and long-term prospects that may not be familiar with your brand.

The effectiveness of broad-reaching campaigns aimed at both new & existing customers is dramatically greater than those targeting either type of customer alone.

Balancing the Metrics

So the win-win situation according to this report are strategies that balance long and short term, but how does one measure long term performance metrics?

Binet & Field do not disappoint in this department. Along with Share Of Voice (market share plus industry benchmarks) and other insightful measurements like Price Elasticity (the ability to raise prices without losing customers) there are several ways to measure marketing performance other than just straight Sales and Profit.

And even more, there are the ways these metrics can play out over time, and how effective they can be in growing a brand. This scorecard for short term and long term effectiveness from the report has a collection of various data points that can guide strategy and planning and business development initiatives.

In Conclusion

Get the report. Dig into marketing strategies and ad campaigns that build brands AND activate sales, and know that this isn’t a one-size-fits-all world. Marketers need to build interesting brands with creative and awesome ads based on an awesomer understanding of the business problems we need to solve.

As marketers focus on making money, there should be a momentary pause to realize that we can and do make so much more than money.

So let’s make marketing strategies that kick ass, get noticed, and achieve business goals and build legacy brands. If not now, when?

Eat Your Greens – Wiemer Snijders

Once in a while, you read a book that forces you to question your existence.

Well, for anyone who has struggled marketing or advertising a company/product/service, the overflowing bounty of brilliant, evidence-based marketing essays in “Eat Your Greens” by APG London, edited by Wiemer Snijders, is such a book.

First, let’s talk about the problems marketing & advertising are facing….

Marketing and advertising are trapped in a paradox. Wanting to outpace competitors while growing a brand, but needing to keep the lights on, companies typically divert marketing resources away from long-term strategies, in favor of short-term results.

Also, from tactics to communication channels to tech-laden dashboards, there seems to be a million ways to employ, and seemingly measure, marketing & advertising for companies these days.

So, unattached to any actual strategy, complication, quick-hits, and ceaseless action are the guiding forces in advertising & marketing today.

“Eat Your Greens” explains that the quest for short-term gains through tactics, knee-caps any potential to grow and establish a brand. While smaller advertising campaigns create spikes in revenue, indeed they appear successful at the moment, brand building marketing activities, which can ensure the long term sales growth of the company, are completely ignored.

This ‘short-termism,’ which happens to be rampant across all industries, has been studied at length by the foremost minds in marketing. In their book “The Long & Short of It,” Binet & Field illustrate this concept, very simply, in the graph below…

So what’s the answer?

How do we get back to building brands through marketing? How do we get off our addiction to sugary short-termism? The answer is; EAT YOUR GREENS!

With the caveat that all essays in the book needed to be supported by evidence, editor Wiemer Snijders has cobbled together an amazing and inspirational chorus of voices, all dedicated to bringing healthful, brand-growing marketing advice to an industry that’s made itself sick from chasing clicks.

I’ll briefly share a few of my favorite moments from the book below, but suffice it to say, if you’ve been feeling like your marketing and advertising need to make a change, go on a diet, work out, get stronger – you owe it to yourself to “Eat Your Greens”

Ultra-Light Buyers

This concept blew my wig off, right at the beginning of the book.

According to research from Australia’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, of the thousands of variables that might affect buyer behavior, the two most importantfactors are 1) market penetration, and 2) average purchase frequency.

You might think that the key to owning a market on behalf of a brand is to focus on the heavy users, the loyalists, the fanatics. That must be the way to penetrate the market; get folks to buy in bulk, walk out with carts FULL of your stuff.

But, the real relationship between market penetration and heavy/light buyers, paints a far more interesting picture.

The above graphic depicts the purchase frequency of Dove Soap over a period of 1-5 years. The shaded “0” on the far-left states the number of people who buy soap, knew about the brand, but did not purchase Dove.

Next to that, we see that 87% of all Dove buyers only bought 1 bar of soap within that 1-5 year period.

That 20+ on the right, the “brand loyalist,” accounts for an extremely small percentage of overall buyers of Dove brand soap.

So, Dove continues to grow it’s brand through advertising, not to secure the fanatics, but to nudge as many category buyers into an Ultra-Light purchase relationship as possible.

People don’t trust a brand because a few people buy a bunch of their stuff – it’s because a steady stream of people buy it once in a while.

This finding is interesting to me, because it’s directly at odds with the “sticky” marketing mentality of apps and attention brokerages online, where creating addicts and fanatics is the main goal. That should raise a few flags….

Want to discover more?

I could tell you about Mark Ritson’s chapter laying into marketing conferences, Tess Alps advice on marketing in a “post-truth” world, or Faris Yakov’s inspirational side-by-side comparison of advertising and art.

I could walk you through Kate Richardson’s masterful destruction of “brand purpose.”

We could both laugh until the tears came, at my witty retelling of Ryan Wallman’s dress-down of the latest marketing fads and trends.

But really – if you are in marketing or advertising or run a business — you absolutely have to read this book. It’s the inspiring, healthful, beneficial, no bullshit marketing & advertising advice you’ve been looking for.

I’ll end with a quote from Wiemer Snijders that to me, best sums up the mission for marketers walking away from this book….

“If you’re a great brand, attracting the majority of buyers into your customer base requires a creative, single-minded approach to the task of maintaining your rightful place in their minds and on the shelf.”

marketing blog, content marketing, advertising, digital marketing, social media marketing

The E-Myth – Michael Gerber

The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber is a book that cannot be oversold on it’s benefits to anyone running, or thinking of running, a business. While American business culture is awash with gurupreneurs advocating for people to launch their own companies at hyperspeed, Gerber takes an honest, methodical, and forthright approach to advising business owners in E-Myth – most businesses fail because they end up subsuming their owners, rather than serving them.

“I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy.” – Joseph Heller

What’s the E-Myth?

The E-myth is that small businesses are chiefly started by entrepreneurs risking capital to make profit. That’s simply not true. Most businesses are founded by experts of technical skills, not experts of running businesses. This is what Gerber calls The Fatal Assumption – if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work.

The Fatal Assumption is the root cause of why most businesses fail.

The technical work of a business and a business that does that technical work are two totally different things! But the technician who starts a business fails to see this. Seized by a temporary bout of entrepreneurial blindness, the technician launches a business that is integrally dependent upon them.

The tragedy deepens as the technician realizes the business that was supposed to free them from the limitations of working for others has enslaved them.

They end up working in the business, and never ON the business.

Suddenly the job they knew how to do so well becomes one job they know how to do, plus a dozen others they don’t know how to do at all. The work that was once so special, is now just another task to get through so the overwhelmed business owner can handle the rest of the headaches. It’s an endless cycle that usually ends businesses.

Gerber believes that the key to overturning the Fatal Assumption and the E-Myth is to recognize the differing personality types within every business owner.

The Three Personalities in Every Business Owner

Gerbers most brilliant insight of the book comes in the recognition of three competing personalities inside every business owner – The Entrepreneur, The Technician, and The Manager. The successful management of a business depends on the balance and curation of these personality types within the owner – without recognizing this key component, failure is inevitable.

The Entrepreneur – Focused on the bleeding edge and dreams, The Entrepreneur personality within business owners drives innovation and risk, asks what’s possible, and is obsessed with the future.

The Technician – The Technician knows the nitty gritty of the tradecraft of the business. The Technician is focused on the work, is obsessed with the present, finding solutions to enhance the technical work of the business one step at time.

The Manager – The Manager is caught between the Technician and the Entrepreneur. Obsessed with pragmatism and predictability, The Manager is obsessed with the past, wishing for models and templates to guide the development of the business.

Gerber believes that every business owner is a blend of the Entrepreneur, Manager, and Technician personality types, but the balance is out of whack.

If the personalities were equally balanced, we’d be describing an incredibly competent individual. The Entrepreneur would be free to forge ahead in new areas of interest; The Manager would be solidifying the base of operations; and The Technician would be doing what they do best.

Unfortunately, experience shows that few people who go into business are blessed with the proper balance. Instead, the typical small business owner is only 10% Entrepreneur, 20% Manager, and 70% Technician.

Every business wants to grow past the Technician Phase. In order to grow, you have to change. To change you have to develop and Gerber lays out a development cycle for business owners that ultimately leads to a mature and successful business.

The Business Maturity Cycle

Infancy/Technician Stage – This is where the business and the owner are indistinguishable from one another. The business is the owner – if the owner wasn’t there, the business would disappear. You reach adolescence by realizing you need help to grow your business past the Technician Stage.

Adolescent Stage – You realize you need help. You reluctantly hire help but instead of delegating work, you abdicate responsibility. So, your business becomes a collection of processes you only half understand because you’re a Technician trying to run things from the inside.

Beyond the Comfort Zone – This is the painful part. If you’re a Technician running a business, you are actually running a job. To grow beyond the Technician Stage, you have to develop a business that can run without you. A Mature Business Model is one that can be worked on from the outside.

Maturity Stage – Successful businesses usually start from this phase. They know where they’ve come from and they know where they are headed. Mature Businesses mix two perspectives, the Entrepreneurial and the Technical, into what Gerber calls The Entrepreneurial Model.

Turn-Key Model – Thinking like a Franchise

Gerber believes that businesses need to operate more like franchises; turn-key business models with operational processes that can be easily learned by unsophisticated users, workflows that don’t rely on technical expertise to run properly. McDonald’s, basically.

McDonald’s delivers exactly what we expect, every single time. That’s what integrity is.

By developing a Franchise Prototype you can test assumptions, build experiments and optimize your business so that it is “systems-dependent,” not a “people-dependent business.”

Creating an Expert System

Most business owners hinge their success, or failure, on the quality of workers they get. Good help is hard to find, they say.

Gerber believes that if you own a business, you can’t depend on hiring brilliant workers. If you need ‘the best,’ you will continually be disappointed. Rather than pine for better quality workers, you need to create the very best system through which good, decent workers can be leveraged to produce exquisite results.

McDonald’s doesn’t look to hire French Fry Wizards, or only those with an MBA in Hamburger Development. Anyone can walk into a McDonald’s and follow the manual on how to create a burger, and produce the same exact results whether they are in Tulsa or Tibet.

That’s the extraordinary power of a Turn-Key Business Model. Once you fully understand and create systems that result in predictable service, you’re doing the extraordinary.

Want to learn more?

Buy the damn book! –> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000RO9VJK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

The Clock that Had No Hands – Herbert Kaufman

Hot takes.

Listicles.

Transformative Ted Talks.

Marketers today have thousands of options when it comes to inspirational advice on how to sell their brands. So the opening lines of Herbert Kaufman’s “The Clock That Had No Hands,” published in 1912, should sound eerily familiar to modern marketers.
“In these days of intense and vigilant commercial contest, a dealer who does not advertise is like a clock with no hands. He has no way of recording his movements, or letting the public know of his business.”

Herbert Kaufman lays out the case for turn-of-the-century newspaper advertising in “The Clock That Had No Hands,” through a collection of 19 essays. Though a bit floral in the wording, Kaufman’s century-old advice stands shoulder to shoulder with the latest Ted Talk.

Kaufman covers topics in 1912 that are still perplexing businesses over a hundred years later. Let’s take a look at a few essays that highlight Kaufman’s prescient advice.

The Canon that Modernized Japan

The Samurai culture of late-1800 Japan thought it was invincible and no one could compete with their weaponry and bravery. Until Western cannons blasted them to pieces. Once that happened, the Samurai realized the world was bigger than their realm and competition was well-armed and fierce.

Kaufman believes businesses that don’t advertise are like the Samurai, living in an insular world, unprepared for a stronger adversary to come along and blast them to bits. Advertising is the cannon.

There is a lesson in this essay about our modern problem of disruption. Across every industry, staid and trusted brands are being supplanted for newer, cheaper alternatives. The business that fails to hear the cannonballs approaching won’t last.

The Man Who Retreats Before Defeats

Advertising isn’t magic – it requires patience and honesty to be effective.

Advertising promises that won’t be kept is a recipe for failure. All advertising does is draw people in to investigate the claims you’ve made. “If you promise the Earth and deliver the moon, advertising will not pay you”

Another way to fail, is expecting more out of advertisements, than there is in it. “Advertising is a seed which a merchant plants in the confidence of the community” Ads must be given time to grow like trees and babies. If you don’t see results in a week, don’t be shocked. Stay the course and don’t retreat before you’re defeated.

The modern correlation to the above can easily be seen in click-bait headlines, fake news sites powered by ad fraud, and marketers chasing the latest tech solutions. We are far too eager to switch up creative and copy on ads, swap this audience out for that one, and change directions and messaging to follow trends.

The Perambulating Showcase

The newspaper is a huge shop window, carried about the city and available in every home. Ads in the paper are a perambulating showcase. BUT, this showcase displays ‘descriptions’ NOT ‘things.’ Enticing window trimmings and decorations are obvious when you see them. So it is with copywriting.

“An advertiser must know that he gets his results in accordance with the skill exercised in preparing his verbal displays. The copy has to stand out.”

“He must not only make a show of things that are attractive to the eye, but to the needs as well.”

“Just like the window trimmer realizes the showiest stocks aren’t always the best-selling, the advertiser must not make the mistake fo thinking the showiest words are the most clinching.”

And more. . .

There are so many gems in this book, lemme just provide a few quick hits before closing up – – –
“Regularity is JUST as important in advertising as copy. Persistence is the foundation of advertising success.”

TAKEAWAY = Hit them over the head with it. We are so leery of bothering people online that we give up on ad campaigns too fast.

“The simpler the language in an ad, the better. The skilled advertiser uses the smallest words possible. Newton’s Theory of Gravity is six pages long – “What goes up, must come down.” <- six words.”

TAKEAWAY = Simplifying language will always be in vogue, and is perennially solid advice. To me, the language in advertising today suffers more from being banal and bland. Filled with industry standard buzzwords and guided by “best practices,” most ads are beige, non-offensive, and appeal to the most general and wide-spread concerns. 100 years ago ad copy had to stand out, why is today different?

“Ad placement is massively important. It isn’t the number of copies printed, but the number of copies that reach the hands of buyers. It isn’t the number of readers but the number of readers with money to spend.”

TAKEAWAY = The main goal of ads are to get the word out about your brand. So most people go for big numbers – get in front of as many people as possible. This is PARTIALLY a great idea. We may reach 100,000 people, but if not a single person takes an action on behalf of our brand, we’re wasting our time. Such was the case over 100 years ago – and with digital advertising, the risks are exponentially tripled.

“The price of the gun never hits the bull
and the bang seldom rattles the bells
it’s the hand on the trigger that cuts the real figger
the aims what amounts – that’s what records count
are you hitting or just wasting shells? “

TAKEAWAY = Kaufman is speaking here about hiring the best people to write the language of your ads. The man who writes your copy, aims your policy. Are you investing in copywriting?

In Summary

For those marketing and advertising professionals who are looking for time-tested advice, Kaufman’s collection of essays are like finding a box of old WW1 love notes in an attic. The business concerns of our great-great grandparent’s are still our concerns – nothing has changed. And so, it’s refreshing and disheartening that the advice on advertising in a book over 100 years old can seem so relevant.

Every single human alive today has access to all of the best advice. Advice that guarantees us the best lives possible, successful businesses, great relationships, healthy bodies and minds. AND YET – people fall apart, businesses collapse, relationships crumble – why?

We are just as overwhelmed with good advice, lists, blogs, hot takes, as we’ve ever been. But the pace at which information inundates us individually, has increased to a dangerous degree. One theory, as to why we don’t take good advice, is that our core values are being smothered by the firehose of data we subject our brains to everyday.

Our core values shape what we want from the world on a foundational level, what we think is important, what we want for ourselves. Core values are like broccoli, a nutrient-rich food group, and the constant stream of advice and memes are more like sugar. When sugar is all we see, we shouldn’t be surprised that we skip over more foundational content for the quick hits. But after subsisting off of advice for a while, we lose the ability to connect and find nourishment for our core values, and just become a loose collection of positive vibes, memes, and quotes.

It seems to me that the advertising industry itself has become a clock with no hands. Advertising trends change so often, and with it, every advertiser. With every Google update we change our sites, with every new shiny platform we chase the audience, with every new viral craze we chase clicks and views.

With increasing digital ad fraud, fake influencers, surveillance capitalism in full swing, and the slow-cooked death of effective, traditional, mass-media advertising concepts, Kaufman’s work may have been more prescient than planned. Businesses that advertise today are like Kaufman’s clock with no hands – because they switch marketing strategies so often and forego defining their foundational core values, they have no way of recording their movements, and they make the same mistakes that have been happening for HUNDREDS of years. And with no hands on the clock of your business, the customer moves on, unable to spare the time.

GET THE BOOK –> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004TPZRW8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

The Choice Factory – Richard Shotton

Marketing and advertising professionals need to stop what they are doing and read this book.

I’m not kidding.

9 out of 10 of the top minds in the field of advertising and marketing have already read Richard Shotton’s “The Choice Factory,” and are now using the insights to catapult their brands from obscurity into revenue-saturated popularity. Do you want to be the one that misses out on this opportunity?

Cognitive Bias and Choice

In the age of infobesity, content shock, and choice paralysis – getting solid advice on any subject can be extremely difficult. Marketers today are obsessed with brand purpose, shiny-automated-dashboards, Big Data & artificial intelligence. Each business hoping to differentiate, to be the first to discover and use “the next big thing in marketing.”

Marketers and advertisers, like everyone picking out their next “self-help” book, are AWASH with options. But, if we reduce the complexity of choice down to a single element – cognitive bias – we can start to appreciate the genius behind Shotton’s book.

The author is careful to point out that there is not a GRAND THEORY of advertising and marketing. People make decisions for a variety of reasons – so why not focus in on that moment of decision; what forces compel us to CHOOSE one thing over another?

Shotton boils consumer behavior down to a collection of 25 cognitive biases that, for this book, makeup the bulk of decision making. Cognitive biases effect the way we make choices, the products we choose to buy, and more importantly, biases are the foundation for our beliefs about the world.

By incorporating real studies from the fields of psychology and sociology, and case studies of brands that have used these biases, or failed to use them, “The Choice Factory” is a useful, inspirational, well-crafted book that every self-respecting marketer and advertiser needs to read.

I’ll briefly share my favorite biases here – but if you want to a piece of this action, GO BUY THE BOOK.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Attributing actions to “fundamental” characteristics, rather than context.

EXAMPLE – Guy cuts you off in traffic, that guy is FOREVER a huge asshole, through and through. His mom was an asshole. I hope his family dies for the sake of the planet.

REALITY – He’s headed to the hospital from a job he just was fired from for excessive absences; his wife is sick with cancer and has hours to live.

This bias is HUGE and behind such hits as road rage, xenophobia, domestic abuse, racism – but also impacts the work being done in advertising meetings around the world.

How can marketing and advertising folk take advantage of this bias?

Consider the context in which someone will see your ad – don’t just focus on the content. Can they see the tiny copy on your billboard as they speed past? Does your display ad campaign take advantage of sites or pages with high dwell time?

Target the context your audience is in – not just the audience.

Distinctiveness

Most brands want to differentiate, they want to be unique – but, these same brands are obsessed with “best practices.” Best Practices is when you look at what everyone else is doing in your vertical, and then act accordingly.

Brands don’t want to take a chance, they want to review the case studies of someone who took a chance – they want to form a design committee – they want it to feel sure in the boardroom; but something that’s safe in the boardroom, is DEAD in the real world.

When it comes to the cognitive bias of “distinction,” Shotton reminds us that there is no “safety-in-numbers” in advertising. To stand out, you really do have to take chances.

SOLUTION – Find the rules, find the best practices and subvert them! –> When the world zigs, zag.

Claimed Data

Claimed data refers to info that has been collected from a survey – it’s what people claim is going on inside their heads. Problem is, most folks are completely unaware of what effects their decisions (hence the book) –

The rational mind thinks it’s the Oval Office, when in reality, it’s Office Depot. When we are asked a question, we answer it like we’re being interviewed for Heaven. We pad our history, forget our shortcomings, and see nothing but sunshine ahead of us.

EXAMPLE –
Don’t ask a guy, “Do you wash your hands before you leave the bathroom?”
Instead, ask – “What percentage of men your age wash their hands before they leave the bathroom?”

SOLUTION – When asking people a question, ask them how they think OTHERS in their own demographic would answer the question. This leads to a stronger truth. When answering a survey question personally, the participant’s reputation is on the line. So they’ll give you the answer society and biases have nudged them towards.

Primacy Effect

The order in which we receive information, effects how we interpret it.

EXAMPLE – People were given a brief description of someone they had never met, and then asked to provide their thoughts about this person, after the description. They were split into two groups, each given the same description, but the order of adjectives was reversed in one group.

Group A – This person is intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious.
Group B – This person is envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent.

Group A described the person in much more glowing terms than Group B, even though the description given to both groups had been essentially the same.

LESSON –
Pay attention to ad rotation. Be the first ad they see during commercial break.
Pay attention to first impressions and copywriting – start strong!

Wishful Seeing

We see what we want to see.

The hungrier we are, the more everything looks like food.

I like Transformers, so EVERYONE likes Transformers!

People love a zero-carbon, environmentally-conscious, locally sourced brand connected to a strong brand purpose – – –

But in reality – things are much different.

EXAMPLE – After reviewing a list of Forbes Top 50 companies, it may be easy to attribute success for a brand to any number of factors. In his book “Grow,” Jim Stengel attributed brand success to strong brand purpose. However, the data does not support the hypothesis.

Of the 50 brands chosen fro Stengel’s 2011 book, only 9 had stock evaluations that held up over time.

Brand purpose is really just a description – success can never be guaranteed by holding fast to some internal behavior or brand ideal.

Have a look at the definition for three of the brands:

Moët & Chandon ‘exists to transform occasions into celebrations’.
Mercedes-Benz ‘exists to epitomise a life of achievement’.
BlackBerry ‘exists to connect people with one another and the content that is most important in their lives, anytime, anywhere’.

If you switched the brand names above with any competitor, you would be hard pressed to tell which is the “best” –

Why are marketers so keen to adopt a brand purpose? Because it makes us feel better. Shotton believes that helping a company sell products may not be as rewarding – so we say our product saves dolphins and makes tomorrow’s rainbows, today. Feels better, right?

LESSON – Hit the pause button before you go all in on brand purpose. It’s not the secret sauce everyone thinks it is.

I could go on and on about the awesome book – but then I’d be rewriting the book YOU SHOULD BE BUYING RIGHT NOW –>

Is Hyper-Personalized Marketing Killing Social Culture?

Imagine living and interacting with technology and advertisements, in a world where EVERYTHING is personalized – it’s all about YOU!

Books, billboards, search engines, display ads, your thermostat, your home computer – all of them are constantly speaking about you, talking to you specifically – everything is about you, your choices, your purchases, your habits – it’s all about YOU!!

Now, imagine living in a world where technology and advertising is impersonal, a world where everything is NOT ABOUT YOU!

All of the content and advertisements you interact with are static – the messages and delivery of marketed communications happen to everyone around you equally at the same time. There is a general absorption level of content across a wide social spectrum. Society interacts with mass media, and that symbiotic relationship inspires both to change and evolve together.

Now – envision the psychological differences between citizens living in the first society, versus citizens living in the second society. . .

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Two Schools of Advertising

Of course I am being reductionist here, but I think advertising can be segmented into two schools of thought –

1) – Hyper-personalized ads – powered by Big Data amassed from customer surveillance – Ads are able to follow customers wherever they go; on their fridge, in their phones, in their car, on their desktops, on their kid’s faces, on all the billboards they pass.

2) – Mass media – powered by impressions, communicating through shared values on larger scales, interacting with and inspiring popular culture on a societal level. Advertising aims to get groups of people talking to one another about a common, shared experience. The public square – the big billboard – the SuperBowl Commercial – the water cooler.

Modern marketers use a mixture of both of these approaches when it comes to advertising, but more and more our culture and society is embracing the first school – hyper personalized experiences, big data science, surveillance.

Could hyper-personalization and heavy curation of advertising environments to the individual level, endanger our society, our culture, our idealogical mobility?

What happens to the individuals living in a society that depends economically on its citizens living in a hyper-personalized world? Does this reinforce our echo-chambers, our egos, our narcissism?

What are the psychological ramifications of living a commercial existence that is shaped and tailored to fit your every need, understand your desires, predict your behaviors?

As marketers, do we question what kind of society we are creating when we adopt the latest technology, advertising philosophies, or market research capabilities?

Do we recognize the important and powerful effect advertising has on shaping people, on shaping culture? What will we lose when we abandon thinking about advertising, marketing and business development on a social level?

What kind of consumers are we creating?

What world do you want to live in?

Is there a socially responsible way to market products and services, develop sound business strategies, and create valuable, meaningful advertisements – without having to monitor and collect everyone’s search engine history, credit card purchases, FitBit analytics, social media posts/reactions/shares, private messages, emails, voting records, chats, thermostat usage, medical history, media consumption, driving habits and bathroom usage?

What do you think?

POSMarketing Myth – The Democratization of Advertising

When I hear that advertising is being “democratized” by Facebook and Google, I cringe. Marketing and advertising thought leaders talk about it incessantly – Examples of this are here, here, and here.

However, what seems to be a “democracy” of advertising, is in realty a monopolization of advertising, and paired along with it, possibly, the destruction of actual democracy.

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Social media has been around for a while now, and a lot of industries, companies and even countries – have felt the power of social, both negative and positive.

From the revolutions in Egypt to the collapse of the newspaper industry, social media has been purported to be a tool of “democratization,” where the will and voice of the people are being heard. People are now in charge!

The local mom and pop shop can take control of their advertising on Instagram, do their own Google AdWords, and finally have access to their customers through the genius of Facebook. These new found abilities are what is being referred to as the “democratization” of advertising.

Last year, digital advertising raked in around $72 billion – 89% of that revenue went into just TWO companies – Google and Facebook.

So what was originally seen as a boon to the local advertiser, a means to connect them with their valuable customer, should really be seen as the continued support of just TWO companies. And these two companies have a goal to dominate every transaction on the Internet. So is this democracy in action?

What does the well-meaning marketer have to say to the recent reports that Facebook collected well over $100k in ad revenue from a Russian troll farm, which spewed out profile-targeted disinformation during the 2016 US Presidential Election? They denied this for months – and now, it turns out that they did profit off the propaganda. Not only that, Facebook also assisted the Russian efforts with their always expanding suite of top-shelf marketing technology.

Facebook provides advertising access to any user that creates an advert account. Doesn’t matter who you are, or what your intentions are, as long as the Credit Card runs. They’ve also collected a MASSIVE amount of user generated data, that can be parsed to identify psychographic profiles, which can be used in turn by advertisers, or other nefarious parties, to slowly adjust behaviors and even influence voting outcomes.

This “opinion manipulation” technology was harnessed to subvert campaign finance laws by Cambridge Analytica in such recent hits as Brexit, Trump in US, Marie Le Pen in France, and recently overturned elections in Kenya.

With evidence popping up that shows FB promises an advertising reach to many times more people on the planet than Census data shows exists, are the marketing gurus right to call this the “democratization” effect?

Tools like Google and Twitter actually increase our political divisions, because these sites run on hidden algorithms that select what should be shown to who, and when, and why. And no one knows how the algorithms work. Doesn’t sound democratic.

And lastly – Technology is Not A Great Equalizer!!

Access to all of the tools associated with the “democratization of advertising” are still dependent on economic and technological advantages that are unattainable by a large portion of the Earth’s population. The person/company with the most money, the fastest connectivity to broadband, and the most talented manipulation of big data sets (the lifeblood of social) will win the advertising game on social, every time. For people with no access to the internet, and a throttled utility-based market economy around telecom industry, the big money that lives on FB and Google is out of reach completely for a vast majority of us. This, to me, is the final nail in the coffin for the myth of democratized advertising.

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Marketers need to really start engaging on a tactile level with this issue, start discussing the ramifications of these metastasizing monopolies, and stop throwing around the word democracy. The expanding economic in-equality and rise of nationalism and political subterfuge across the world is directly tied to our love of these behemoth companies, and our blind belief that their inherent structures are supported by good causes and people. We need to open our eyes.

To blithely think that the “people” are in charge, as we pad the walled gardens of FB and Google with our advertising money, is stupid. The long-term survivability of civilization is at hand, and while marketers hail the new revolution of people-powered advertising networks – the entire fabric of trust and democracy is being ripped apart, boiled and bleached, and turned into money for two giant companies.

Isn’t it a great time to be a marketer!?!

Marketing to Vulnerable Populations & The POSMarketer

Emotions, Conversions.png Marketing – it’s everywhere! Advertisements and sales pitches surround us like birdsong in the forest. In general, people have come to ignore ads and some can’t even see them, becoming “ad-blind.”

So it’s no surprise that Waze has snappily announced the launch of special geo-targeted ads that will pop up inside it’s mobile-navigation app, as potential customers drive by determined locations. The possibility to convert users of the app is too good to pass up – What could possibly go wrong? marketing, advertising, social media marketing, emotional intelligence, POSMarketing, distracted driving, WAZE

Erika Lehmkhul is a Visual Designer with Waze, and she suggests that the success of an ad on their platform lies in its creativity, and the clarity of its design. Opting for the simplistic look of billboards, Waze suggests to advertisers that they keep it simple – “When you eliminate clutter and distracting elements, your ad can shine.”

What a load of dangerous bullshit.

US traffic deaths are on the rise for the second straight year, and along with high speeds, no seatbelts, and driver impairment, distracted driving is quickly becoming the main reason for accidents and fatalities on the road.

“It’s not just talking on the phone that’s a problem today,” said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. “You now have all these other apps that people can use on their phones.”

Surely, Waze knows that in a growing number of states, its illegal to use a handheld GPS device in a car.
Surely, they must also be aware that every year, about 421,000 people are injured in crashes that have involved a driver who was distracted, and the alarming increase in distracted driving fatalities in 2017 alone.
Surely, Waze is using it’s influence as one of the most downloaded navigation apps in a grand attempt to address the dangerous vulnerabilities of cellphone addiction, which is at epidemic levels amongst all drivers.
Surely they know that pop-up ads on a navigation app would be distracting. And surely they know that we are all vulnerable to the random notifications we get from our phones. And they have to know that distractions in a car usually end like this. . .

(Photo by Steve Nehf/The Denver Post)

Marketers traditionally take pause when advertising to kids, the elderly, or anyone not able to cognitively understand the underlying purpose of an ad. These populations are considered to be “vulnerable.” The audience behind the wheel of a car is certainly not able to cognitively engage with advertisements, and they should be classified as a vulnerable population.

According to “Marketing Ethics,” by George Brenkert, “Marketing directed towards vulnerable populations should be aimed at lessening or removing the vulnerabilities, not self-profits.”

Waze has yet to address its role in distracted driving and the accidents, near-misses and fatalities associated with this epidemic. Neither Waze, nor its parent company Google, have any initiatives or safety campaigns to educate the public on distracted driving or cellphone addiction. And, with a recent partnership with Spotify, which allows use of both the Waze and Spotify apps AT THE SAME TIME WHILE DRIVING, Waze demonstrates that generating ad-revenue from its 50 million-deep user-base is the only topic they consider valuable. And why not, that’s how you make money!

But imagine what they could do if they launched a nationwide campaign to end distracted driving, if they developed proprietary safety features that made using the app less dangerous, launched events to educate new drivers on the dangers of distraction, provided online resources on safety behind the wheel and partnered with National Highway Traffic Safety to engineer distraction proof roadways and intersections in towns across America. If they did that, what’s the worse that could happen?

Bottom line – Waze pushing distracting ads to cellphones inside a moving car is a blatant disregard for safety, its unethical, its a manipulative marketing move to grab cash out of eyeballs that might soon fly through a windshield, and its a classic example of some POSMarketing.

For more insights on ethics, marketing, and POS – Follow me on twitter – @POSMarketer

Emotions, Conversions, and the POSMarketer

Emotional Intelligence, the latest buzzword to fly through marketing’s living room, has all the promising language of a meaningful progress in the march towards moneymaking – and none of the ethical foresight, or foresmell, to realize the manipulative sh*tstorm it unleashes on the world.

The marketer-drones swarmed towards “emotional intelligence” during Advertising Week Europe at the beginning of April, and why not? Who wouldn’t want guaranteed conversions based on an unparalleled understanding of the hidden realms of customer intent? Who wouldn’t want to know how to use emotional channels to drive “user engagement,” sell more products, create desire for services, or to enhance a site’s “stickiness/addictiveness?”

Sensum’s CEO Gawain Morrison believes emotions drive every decision. He believes that brands are headed towards forging relationships with their consumers vs. simply selling a product. Sensum is an “emotions-based software company” that has founded it’s success with huge brands across the world, by measuring, reporting and driving ad campaigns all based on emotional intelligence.

Sensum believes that the core of a relationship between a brand and a customer is centered around emotion, so to understand the reasons behind purchase behavior, loyalty and even enjoyment with a brand, that business has to understand it’s consumers on an emotional level.

Imagine a world where immersive and responsive advertisements read your facial features and adapt to your apparent emotional state. Imagine a totally immersive horror movie attuned to your fears, drawing on an experimental emotional response database. Sensum has already been working on these concepts, and their work unlocks deep, impactful marketing insights and applications.

However, any marketing effort that’s based on triggering and gaining response on emotional levels, should be carefully monitored for any ethically questionable use outside of the marketplace. I wonder if Sensum is worried about this…

“The changing shape of the media landscape, from audience participation to the blurring of media lines and boundaries, offers up a wild range of opportunities to people and companies able to experiment in this space.” – SENSUMGiven the current state of media manipulation and mistrust, the proliferation of fake news, digital ad-fraud, the government-sanctioned sell-off of private user data by Internet Providers, and the hyper-targeted ability to covertly mine emotional data from social media to use in selective ad campaigns that can influence society and even swing election results – the above quote is a slap in the ethical testicles.

On a personal level – emotional intelligence is an important concept to cultivate. Building a comprehension of emotional signals & responses, and then using this to strengthen connections with another person seems psychologically-sound, empathetic, humane, real. However, we should be clear on one thing. When emotional manipulation is used on a personal level, against someone’s best interests or wishes, it can have extremely negative effects on a relationship and can damage trust irrevocably. Furthermore, emotional manipulation is not only deplorable, it is essentially against Article 22, 26, & 28 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

marketing, advertising, social media marketing, emotional intelligence, POSMarketing

Our Emotional Wheel of Sales Opportunities

So when a business chooses to collect emotional intelligence from a chosen group (usually covertly), and then analyzes this for patterns, and engineers information and ad campaigns designed to subconsciously effect and slightly nudge someone’s cognitive ability to make decisions in one direction or the other – how is this not viewed as emotional manipulation? How does the normal marketer, escape the feelings of being a POSMarketer?

I’m not here to throw sweaters on all the strippers inside the nightclubs of the free-marketplace, I’m just here to ask questions –

Can we learn about our customers, but ethically pursue research that isn’t covert and is understood clearly by the participants? Should we pursue ad campaigns that seek to remove emotional vulnerabilities, rather than prey on them? And can the value we provide to our customers or target audience be so abundantly clear, that we pull them in, rather than push ads out?

I’ll close out with some choice words from Tamsin Shaw, in her NYTimes review of a behavioral science book, “The Undoing Project” –

We are living in an age in which the behavioral sciences have become inescapable. The findings of social psychology and behavioral economics are being employed to determine the news we read, the products we buy, the cultural and intellectual spheres we inhabit, and the human networks, online and in real life, of which we are a part. Aspects of human societies that were formerly guided by habit and tradition, or spontaneity and whim, are now increasingly the intended or unintended consequences of decisions made on the basis of scientific theories of the human mind and human well-being.

The behavioral techniques that are being employed by governments and private corporations do not appeal to our reason; they do not seek to persuade us consciously with information and argument. Rather, these techniques change behavior by appealing to our nonrational motivations, our emotional triggers and unconscious biases. If psychologists could possess a systematic understanding of these nonrational motivations they would have the power to influence the smallest aspects of our lives and the largest aspects of our societies.

So what kind of marketer are you? An ethical marketer ready to take action on behalf of protecting our marketplace eco-systems – or are you a POS?

Advertising/Marketing Industries Have Civic Responsibility To Fight Fake News

When Interactive Advertising Bureau President & CEO Randall Rothenberg called for an industry-wide commitment to fight “Fake News” at an Annual Leadership Meeting in Hollywood, Florida in January of this year, the response from the audience was mixed.

Randall Rothenberg went on in his truly inspiring speech, to elaborate the important role advertisers and marketers now find themselves playing. He outlined the myriad ways algorithms, big-data, and the eco-systems that prop up digital advertising, are ruining the exchange relationships of information online. And he suggests to his audience, CMOS and ad agencies representing some of the top companies in the world, that they need to help bring the change, or suffer the consequences of an eroding trust in the digital landscape.

Looking back now, Rothenberg’s speech takes on a Nostradamic hue of prophecy.

Marketers and advertisers have unwittingly taken public discourse and the connected community of the Internet into a navel-gazing, filter-bubble filled, truth-destroying, civilization-shaking, death spiral. And to pull out of it, we have to realize our place in the cockpit, and understand how we got here.

Entertain me – what’s the worst that could happen?

A group of our marketing and advertising colleagues working with the Data and Marketing Association literally stood up and cheered as they were on hand to witness Congress, then the Senate, then the President, peel back Obama-era protections/regulations, allowing ISPs to access and distribute consumer data, browsing history, in-app messages, and emails, to third-party companies for profit, all without consumer consent?

The interested parties have struck a deal – people love relevant ads!

When the vote passed the Senate, on March 23, 2017, we heard this from Emmett O’Keefe, SVP of Advocacy at the Data and Marketing Association:

“Today’s vote in the Senate and expected approval in the House signal that our nation’s top policymakers recognize that our current system of responsible data use works.”

The trust was apparently so overflowing, and the data of the marketplace was handled so responsibly, that the same day, these US companies followed the lead of brands in the UK, and pulled entirely out of Google & Youtube digital display advertising agreements, resulting in a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for the digital ad giant….

AT&T
Beam Suntory Inc.
Dish Network
Enterprise
FX Networks
General Motors
GSK
Johnson & Johnson
Nestle
PepisCo
Starbucks
Verizon
Walmart

These companies, “unknowingly,” were buying programmatic ad-placements that were being paired up with hateful content on Google & YouTube – a Snickers pop-up under an ISIS beheading, or Nazi propaganda brought to you by Mercedes. Truth be told, digital ads have always been placed wherever they can be, and who cares where they go cos they are cheap as dirt! You got the impressions/clicks/views – digital advertising, accomplished. So we spend a few bucks on digital display ads – What’s the worst that could happen?

One of the Managing Directors at Edelman PR, Gavin Coombes, has a quote that sets us up perfectly for the next slippery slope we need to slide down – – –

“As Internet-based communication has become used more often and by more people, we have found ourselves in the paradoxical circumstance of more information arguably leading to less understanding. The “echo chamber” – identified in the latest Edelman Trust Barometer as a major factor in feeding fear and distrust of institutions – is a phenomenon that reached a tipping point in 2016 and with potentially epochal implications. And, seemingly, without warning.”

Coombes goes on to explain that social media operates more like tabloid media, vs traditional mass media – using content that entertains or connects emotionally, rather than content that empirically informs. Users prefer, and come to rely on, a steady diet of things that are happy, sad, funny or violent. This diet is typically filled with people like them and based on info they provide freely. So your social media stream is hand-selected by algorithms owned and operated by the social media ecosystems – always designed to keep the most engaging content in front of you, forever regenerating, endlessly attached to advertising revenue, open to marketers of all stripes.

In 2014, it was revealed that Facebook was able to manipulate users emotions depending on what posts a tailored algorithm allowed onto their “Wall.” Positive posts on a user’s wall were shown to illicit more positive posts in return, conversely, exposure to negativity promoted the sharing of negative material . Facebook performed it’s experiment without any user consent, and since the Terms and Conditions covered the unfettered access to user data, it was all above-the-board. Google and Yahoo both follow this same protocol – provide a seemingly “free” product, observe usage, get as much data as possible, get advertising content, and tweak the delivery to get the “relevant” info in front of the right people.

The reaction to Facebook’s experiment from the marketing and advertising community was shock and hidden joy. Here they had proof of a proper approach to gaming Facebook – emotions spread, and targeted, relevant emotions triggered at the right time can cause action. Proof that information, if properly placed at the right time, could affect change. Facebook’s algorithms keep it’s growing 1.7 billion user base glued to the platform – showing them whatever keeps them engaged, and not too pissed off – and all the while, user data is shared with anyone willing to pay for it.

So what? Marketers and advertisers get to sell soap to people they know like soap. We might use emotional triggers to get people to take action, but it’s with babies and puppies. It’s all good – What could possibly go wrong?

For those unfamiliar with the rising prominence of the newest and least experienced player to step on the field of international diplomacy on behalf of the United States, Jared Kushner – or how the former real-estate mogul turned dad-in-law-Trump’s campaign around by scaling existing marketing technology and “expertly” manipulated the filter-bubbles and emotional triggers of social and search….

For those unfamiliar with the technology he purchased through Cambridge Analytica, and how that company can provide it’s clients, through their OCEAN targeting, info on users political affiliation, race, gender, neuroticism, conscientiousness, openness and other psychological/emotional triggers……

For those unfamiliar with Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, which, since 1993, has made its name providing “psychological operations” for political campaigns around the world, marketing its services to militaries and state security agencies, providing impeccable, highly- targeted, and politically-weaponized disinformation campaigns to such countries as Pakistan, and Great Britain….

For those unaware of the role of mega-hedge-fund-lord Robert Mercer in funding Breitbart, Brexit, his huge investment in Cambridge Analytica both in the UK and US, his not-so-shadow-funding of pro-Trump media blitzes through the new non-profit media company “Making America Great Again,” and his insane amount of influence in the de-globalizing, anti-intellectual, climate-denying, xenophobic, media-exploding, war-mongering shit show we are currently living through…….

You should look into this stuff. What’s the worst that could happen?

This quote from Professor Jonathan Rust, director at Cambridge University’s Psychometric Centre, can help fit the final piece of our puzzle –

“The danger of not having regulation around the sort of data you can get from Facebook and elsewhere is clear. With this, a computer can actually do psychology, it can predict and potentially control human behaviour. It’s what the scientologists try to do but much more powerful. It’s how you brainwash someone. It’s incredibly dangerous.

“It’s no exaggeration to say that minds can be changed. Behaviour can be predicted and controlled. I find it incredibly scary. I really do. Because nobody has really followed through on the possible consequences of all this. People don’t know it’s happening to them. Their attitudes are being changed behind their backs.”

So what should/can marketers and advertisers do about this?

Looking at the above information, the marketer and the advertiser can see several opportunities. Opportunities for more user-generated data, enhanced abilities to track and deliver personalized ads on behalf of brands, nuanced insight into consumer behavior, ways to sneak our messages through emotional pathways, unlimited access to centralized audiences, and access to an ever-expanding marketplace.

Or are the opportunities aligned with a larger civic duty, not just towards our profit margins, but to our society, our fellow humans?

Could advertising, done the right way, save the world?
Can we open the conversation with our digital marketing companies about ways we can fight ad-fraud together?
Can we hold our marketing and advertising associations accountable for their Code of Ethics, and be active, ethical allies for conscientious consumers?
Can we work to protect the marketplaces and technology that enable ethically and mutually agreed-upon exchange relationships from “bad actors” or manipulative entities?
Can we not sell everyone’s private data up the damned river, just so we can send them “better ads?”

Whatever your stance on ethics and morality and marketplace logic and free-will, we have to realize that while we’ve been engineering the latest and greatest ways to sell stuff in our marketplaces, we’ve also greased the tracks for a whole host of nefarious players to enter into these spaces, use our marketing technology of demand-engineering, targeted behavior modification, and etc., and these sinister forces are inflicting serious harm to the information eco-systems so necessary to our livelihoods and the continuation of modern civilization.

I’ll leave you with a final quote from Rothenberg, and it’s a perfect ending for this rant of an article, because it’s how he ended his speech, mic drop style.

“. . . now I am asking you to reach higher, and deeper into your own better nature. The values we hold dear – diversity, freedom of speech and religion, freedom of enterprise – are under assault, and digital marketing, advertising, media, and technology companies bear some measure of responsibility. The route from self-interested “standards” to fraudulent ads to blind-eyed negligence to the financing of criminal activities to support for hatred is clear, and it is direct.

What we say here – and what we do here – makes a difference. Please leave this conference with this understanding: You have the power to move fast and fix things. You have the ability to repair our credibility. You have the power to rebuild the trust. Thank you.”

So are you a marketer that is willing to stand up and make the world a better, more trusting place? If you rise to the occasion and exhibit the best of what humanity has to offer, at least in a marketer, what’s the worst that could happen?