Part 1: 5 Reasons why Clients Are So Dysfunctional (From Mashable)

This is a very insightful article worth sharing. Pardon to my readers who are doing their best to help with the relief efforts related to typhoon Ondoy. This is not meant to divert focus on the more important things we are facing in the Philippines.

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5 reasons why clients are so dysfunctional

By Sean X Cummings

September 29, 2009

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ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

• The agency side rewards talent, the client side rewards safety
• Client-side entrenched mediocrity feeds on itself
• The way most people rise up on the client side is by being adverse to risk

Next in Media Planning & Buying

I have been a vocal critic of the way most agencies are structured. However, many of the structural problems agencies face are a direct result of clients. Agencies have struggled for years to change the agency/client dynamic. They have actively experimented with ways to bring the client what they need, while still producing work that serves a higher purpose.

Chiat/Day and Crispin Porter + Bogusky have been changing the agency landscape structure for years by innovating, experimenting, tinkering, and attempting to produce the best work in a flawed environment. Unfortunately, most agencies are not that bold, and many of those ideas and structural changes have failed. This failure isn't because they weren't innovative, but like the nimbleness of an oil tanker, the clients' inability to change -- or the glacial pace at which they do change -- has forced many agencies to survive in a structure that produces neither the best work nor the most profit.

Such is the issue with service-based industries; they are only as good as who they service. In the end, it is the clients' fault. Here's why. There is a fundamental, structural, endemic issue that clients have that creates a system that prohibits change, how employees are rewarded, and how they are valued.

It is a system that serves to entrench mediocrity.

What most ad agencies do not realize -- because they routinely promote talent over personality and politics -- is that the way most people rise up on the client side is by being adverse to risk. Now, some clients reading this will protest, but I have watched and personally experienced this fact. The client is the equivalent of a scared 10-year-old boy who is worried that no one likes him. Don't dare make fun of that child, don't pick on that child, and whatever you do, do not question that child. Debate must happen in a "child safe" environment organized by the company.

For the client, from a myopic perspective, this keeps the company safe, and in a world of investors and public companies, safety and predictability rule over nimbleness and experimentation. However, there has been a profound societal shift over the last 10 years. The financial markets didn't understand that shift and it nearly destroyed them, and the old rules of organizational structure -- valid for decades -- have broken down.

I would posit -- and a number of economists would support it -- that the internet was one of the key fundamental shifts that changed the corporate model. True globalization was enabled by technology, accelerated by it, and created the system whereby those old structural models could be put to their fullest test. The result? It shattered them.

Look at the financial industry. The strongest people still standing are the technologists, the algorithm makers, the electronic automated trade creators, with multimillion dollar salaries. The game now is technology.

The company and client structure, which served the previous model so well for close to a century, no longer applies. But like that oil tanker, how do you turn it around? Very, very slowly. In fact, most companies would benefit from a whole-scale dismantling and reassembling.

I was amazingly dismayed that we did not allow General Motors to perish under its own weight. It is a model that cannot survive in the new structure. I would have been giddy to see GM implode completely. The amount of innovation that its collapse would have spawned would have ushered in a new era of transportation. But alas, we did not have the fortitude to do it.

In the end, there are five fundamental employee archetypes, and the interplay among them dictates the structure and function of a company -- and the way that agencies are forced to interact with clients. Org charts just provide a framework for structure, but it's the way that any given corporate culture responds to the various archetypes that dictates how a company really works. All five archetypes are needed for a company to be dynamic and grow, but unfortunately, two of these major archetypes are eviscerated by most corporate structures on the client side -- to their detriment.

• The Leader
• The Acquiescer
• The Follower
• The Saboteur
• The Control Problem

Watch out for the next installment of this interesting article...

Part 2: 5 Client Archetypes (from iMedia)

Here's the 2nd installment from the previous article. Read on.

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5 reasons why clients are so dysfunctional (part 2)

By Sean X Cummings

September 25, 2009

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The Leader is the person whom employees follow. This is not "the boss" (although this often can be the case), but rather it's the person whom individuals rally behind. It's the person who holds the compass for the individual, who gives that employee something to believe in.

Unfortunately, many people are leaderless. In the lack of such leadership, a large number of employees view their "leader" in an entirely different light: their paycheck. In larger client structures, that attitude is often tolerated. Those employees become The Acquiescers. The acquiescer will just go along with whatever someone wants because their heart is not in it. They are leaderless, because they don't really care who their leader is. Their job is their job, and not much more. They are the shy kid who often lights up when you invite them out to lunch. They are just happy to be included in the group. They don't care where you are going to eat. They don't really care about the project they are working on, either. They are just happy to have a project. It doesn't matter if they don't believe in it, they'll just do it. It's either all about the money, or about being included. You know them in your company.

But remember, your company needs them. Like worker bees, you get to point them in a direction and tell them "go," and then tell them "go" again, and again, and again. The problem is that you have to know where to point them and constantly monitor and correct them. They are a time-suck and do not produce great work, but they eventually get stuff done.

On the agency side, fewer people willingly work the crazy hours, cope with the insane work pressure, or put up with the abuse they get constantly without believing in someone they are following. Those who do survive the furnace of agency work are usually The Followers. The follower is actively engaged in the leader's direction, helps support their goals, helps reign in other employees, and moves the company forward. This is one of the reasons why agencies churn through new people who have this "idea" of what it's like to work in advertising: glamourous and fun. They quickly become disillusioned and drop out of the system. But the follower sticks with it. In this way, the agency system is vastly superior to that of the client. Agencies keep the top talent, and the detritus gets discarded. But it also means that there is a high turnover required to keep the ship moving. The disillusioned acquiescers need to constantly be replaced. Thank god for interns.

The client has an entirely different issue. On the client side, many of the systems are designed to support the employee, keep the employee, understand their concerns, help them grow. That's all nice and good, but when the employee views their leader as just the source of a paycheck, all the company is doing is keeping dead weight, and many companies over the years have been so stripped of actual talent that they are left with employees who are still there simply because they can't get a job at another company. On the client side, the follower is a more dangerous type, the "yes-man." The danger with "yes-man" followers is that they will often follow blindly.

The first three archetypes, Leader, Acquiescer, and Follower are easy to deal with. They are predictable, and clients love predictable. The client tends to tolerate the acquiescer, and promote the "yes-man" followers, while not fully understanding the interpersonal dynamics of their true leaders. What happens in that system is that the company becomes entrenched in "group-think" behavior. The reason for this is the evisceration of the other two archetypes.

The Saboteur attempts to co-opt the leader's position and take their followers in a new direction -- but change is often seen as a violent process within companies. If the saboteur is successful, he/she become the leader, but it is often this type of conflict that pushes companies to adapt to a new paradigm. The leader's ego is threatened, and the ego is a very powerful force that will do anything to ensure its own survival. Hence, saboteurs are usually the most vilified and celebrated people in the business world -- who often rescue companies from the brink. But if understood correctly, your saboteurs are also those who provide your safety net. They prevent waste and inefficiency from driving you down the wrong path for too long. Unfortunately, the saboteur is seen as a disruptive influence and dangerous in the workplace.

And then there is The Control Problem. The control problem is one of your most valuable assets, but clients rarely understand how to utilize them correctly. The agency world is filled with control problems -- those individuals who are not afraid to speak their mind. In truth, what they are actually doing -- and often don't realize it -- is they are speaking the thing that is on the top of everyone else's mind, but that others do not have the courage to voice. Most clients do not understand this, and they view their control problems as malcontents or rogue agents. But they are the people who point out the elephant in the room that everyone can see. They look at it, look at the group, look at the elephant again, and are confused as to why no one is saying anything.

The control problem is your ideation source. Sometimes their ideation makes them believe that all the ideas are theirs, and it feeds their ego. But if you can work with the control problems, and find a home for them, they become your barometer for good work, good business, and good deals. The control problems are those who envisioned the internet and left corporate America for start-ups because the system wasn't structured to handle them.

The control problem rarely gets promoted at the client side for one simple reason: negativity during reviews. And hence, this is why the promotion process on the client side is at the core of the issue.

Let me explain why.

Your control problem has often had several successful projects, and a few problematic ones, as well. Or they have issues that "upset" some people. When managers and directors get together during reviews, and they put forward a promotion for an employee, most employees believe they get the promotion for all the great work they did. What actually transpires is that unless someone in the meeting has an objection, the promotion goes through. Some of your best and brightest on the client side get sidelined due to a manager's personal ego. So what happens is that the "yes-man" followers -- who are not as bright or as skilled -- rise up through the corporate ranks. This is client politics at its finest. It is not about the positive aspects of someone's work, just the lack of anything negative. Thus, client-side entrenched mediocrity feeds on itself.

On the agency side, it is often the employee who develops the best ideas and creates the most value, regardless of how much of a colossal pain in the ass they are to deal with. And those of us who have worked on both the client and agency side understand the scope of that difference.

So that's the structural problem of why your client is broken and not able to adapt to the new mode of business that agencies are trying to push forward. The agency side rewards talent, the client-side rewards safety. So for the clients out there who believe they would love to work on the agency side, just ask yourselves: "When was the last time I was willing to risk losing my job to fix something that was wrong?"

That's OK, the world needs "yes-men" too. But try and give your agencies a break. The reason they push back is not because they don't respect you, but because the agency world is filled with control problems who are honestly only trying to create the best work they can for you.

Sean X Cummings runs his own marketing consultancy, sxc marketing.

This Worth Knowing: "Did You Know?" v. 4.0 2009

The Youtube posting writes:

Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman have launched a "Do you know" series of videos visualizing data on YouTube since 2007.

They launched the latest version of " Do you know" on September 14th. The video was created together with Xplane and The Economist for their Media Convergence forum in October 2009 and it illustrates the changing media landscape, from the decline in traditional media to the continuous rise of social media and mobile. After some days, the video has become a YouTube Hit with more than 130,000 views.

Now you know. :)

You think you know how to do search optimization?

If you think you know much about search optimization, then stop reading. But if your admit you're still learning, then read on. We'll all learn a thing or two from Brian:

How to optimize your entire search funnel

By Brian Eberman

September 15, 2009

In search, optimization starts at the time a user sees your ad, and sometimes it doesn't end until months after they leave your site. The most effective advertisers are able to view this entire funnel and optimize each piece of it, thereby balancing engine optimization and profit optimization along the way.

Engine optimization
As competition in your category increases, identifying unique, quality keywords becomes increasingly difficult. While basic keyword research and expansion continues to be important, search engine marketing professionals need to find other tools to gain a competitive advantage. Web marketers need to be skilled at selecting keywords that will not only drive traffic, but also drive conversions in a cost-effective manner. Engine optimization focuses mostly on two elements and the interactions that occur between them: keywords and ad copy.

Keyword optimization has multiple elements and is constantly progressing. The initial piece deals with the keyword list in and of itself -- choosing the right keywords for your campaigns. The "right keywords" are different at each stage of your campaign.

At launch, the "right keywords" generally consist of keywords that will produce high quality scores in the engines and will effectively "burn-in" your account. Generally speaking, these are keywords that will produce a high volume of data in a short period of time so both you and the engine can make a quick decision about how well the keyword performs.

However, avoid keywords that are too broad or too competitive. Broad terms are difficult to target in a granular enough fashion to produce high click-through rates, and super competitive terms are generally overpriced and difficult to achieve high position on at launch. Higher volume, mid-tail terms (three- to four-word terms) that are relevant to your site are generally best for initial quality score.

When deciding quality score, engines are mostly looking at one element: click-through rate. High click-through rates both indicate a high expression of user interest and optimize engine profit -- making it the most dominant variable contributing to quality score. That being said, when launching a campaign, it's in the advertiser's best interest to make ads particularly imploring, oftentimes more aggressive than you would run long term.

It is important that the ad showing properly matches with the keyword query being searched. This requires a granularly organized account structure set up for proper ad serving. Experiments have shown that the most optimal account structure is based on semantic groupings versus random groupings or keywords grouped by quality score. When deciding if a keyword or a group of keywords require their own ad group, ask yourself, "Could the user intent of these keywords be any different? Is there any different messaging I would want to serve to make the ad more relevant?" If so, break it out separately.

Once keywords have established a sufficient click history and ad text is delivering high quality scores, a positive account history has been created. Now you can begin expansion. During this process, you can add longer-tail keywords to the account, as well as highly competitive terms. You can also begin to optimize the account toward profit goals through bidding and keyword value refinement

Profit optimization
Profit optimization mainly occurs through bidding and refining the granularity and accuracy of those bids. Bidding looks at two major variables -- the keywords themselves and the conversion data attributed to them. Because of broad match and lack of conversion visibility, bid value predictions are often inaccurate and do not maximize profit.

To help combat broad match diluting bid values, you must get as granular in your keyword list as there is data to support. This means analyzing query data to find search queries representing keywords not currently in your account but with enough data to justify your decision. Keywords with positive conversion history should be added and bid separately. Keywords that cannot be profitable should be added as negatives.

Another way to bid more pricelessly on keywords with sufficient volume is to bid each match type separately. By cloning your campaigns and bidding each to a separate match type, you can take advantage of optimizing to the different conversion rates that result from each. In general, exact match terms produce the highest conversion rates and thus can be bid higher. Phrase match follows after that, and broad match is usually the lowest, as it is the least targeted.

The same process goes for geo-targeting. Analyze your conversion data by state to determine if any conversion rate differences exist. If so, break them out as geo-targeted campaigns with a national campaign overlaid to prevent losing users due to IP issues. Bid the keywords to their separate values.

Often, advertisers will lack the conversion data needed to make accurate decisions, and the above actions become difficult. In this case, it is best to try and find other informative data points or goals that exist within the funnel to use -- for example, a lead rather than a sale, time spent on site, pages visited. Many different metrics found by using analytics, placing pixels, or having actions users can trigger can serve as proxies for an end value conversion.

Ultimately, good bidders should understand their willingness to pay at each point in the conversion process. It is often advisable to use multiple variables to determine bid values, weighting the variable that correlates most with the probability of an end conversion the highest. As data become more plentiful, optimization can get closer to the final conversion point without sacrificing lack of data and transparency for value along the way.

Data can drive your bottom line
In summary, make your data work for you. Knowledge is power -- don't throw it away. The more data you have, the smarter and more effective you can be. A keyword or phrase specific to your industry or business category isn't always the optimal fit for your PPC campaign. Opinions don't matter. The numbers don't lie. It's the math that counts most. Invest in a database and spend some time understanding the numbers. It'll be well worth your time and make you a more efficient marketer.

Brian Eberman is CEO of Avenue100 Media Solutions.

Voice Chat on Facebook: The next evolution

By Daniel Terdiman

(CNET) -- Look out, Facebook users: Here comes voice chat. Sometime in the next few weeks, the social network's tens of millions of users will begin to be able to have high-quality voice conversations, even as its third-party developers are able to start including voice in their applications.

Vivox plans to offer free dial-in numbers that will allow anyone to call into an existing conversation.

The new technology is not being offered by Facebook itself, however. Instead, it's from Vivox, a Boston-based company that provides the integrated voice service for virtual worlds like Second Life and EVE Online, and which already has more than 15 million users worldwide.

The service, which is currently in closed beta, will allow Facebook users to have high-fidelity conversations with anyone on their friends list. Each user, however, will have to download Vivox's plug-in. But once installed, the service works almost seamlessly with Facebook, and is intended for everything from one-to-one chat to large group discussions.

Further, even non-Facebook users will be able to participate, as Vivox plans to offer free dial-in numbers that will allow anyone to call into an existing conversation, much as is possible today with call-in phone conferences.

Perhaps more importantly, according to Vivox co-founder Monty Sharma, the company is making its technology available to any third-party Facebook application developer, meaning that almost any app, from games to utilities, can have a voice component.

For now, it's not clear how many of Facebook's users will choose to adopt Vivox's technology, and for the time being, at least, Facebook is not involved in any way in promoting the new service. But while some people may decide that they don't want to use a tool that requires a plug-in, many others may well find that it's worth the trouble in order to be able to easily start a conversation that rivals, or even betters, phone call quality.

One person who may be an early adopter is Charlene Li, a well-known social media consultant, and the co-author of the book Groundswell.

"I would (use voice service on Facebook)," Li said, "because I see it as a continuum of communications with the people I want to stay in touch with."

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Another social media expert, Gnomedex organizer Chris Pirillo, was even more effusive about the potential for a full-fledged Facebook voice chart system.

"It is about time," Pirillo said. "I guarantee you this is going to bite into Skype."

For Pirillo, the Vivox system will provide a valuable incentive for Facebook users to streamline their friends lists since it's likely that they won't want to be getting voice chat invites from people they've friended but might know only peripherally.

"When these tools come about," Pirillo said, "it becomes less valuable (to have too many friends) and actually promotes a cleaner ecosystem."

Great for retailers To Li, giving third-party Facebook developers the ability to integrate voice chat into their applications may mean a big victory for retailers. She pointed out that a company like Overstock.com may find it extremely valuable to put out a Facebook app with voice built-in--without having to build the voice system themselves--because it would give people a way to quickly and easily chat with their friends about products they see.

"Retailers don't have to put in chat themselves," Li said. "They can just put in Facebook chat. That's where it starts getting very interesting."

And to Pirillo, the ability for Facebook friends to have a voice chat during, say, a game of Scrabble, is a very "smart" innovation that means users can streamline the number of different tools they're running simultaneously.

To be sure, Vivox's offering is not the first to make voice possible for Facebook users, though it may well be the most seamless.

Other options have included Equals' Party Line, which offers group chat for up to five people, and, of course, a work-around like Skype.

Vivox argues that its technology rises above anything else available today because of its scope and scalability. For one, the Vivox system has been proven on services like Second Life and EVE Online -- and is about to be built into a series of online Electronic Arts games, beginning with Command & Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight -- and has been shown to support thousands of simultaneous users on a single channel.

Further, the company said that because it already has more than 15 million users, it doesn't anticipate any problems handling the flood of new users that could come when the Facebook system is rolled out.

But while experts like Li and Pirillo think that voice chat is a natural extension for Facebook, there are some who feel that the technology make take some time to catch on in certain segments of the Facebook ecosystem, particularly one of the most popular, social games.

There are millions of people who play social games from developers like Zynga, Playfish, and others, and together the segment makes up one of the largest on the social network. But because social gaming is largely asynchronous--meaning users don't have to be online at the same time to enjoy playing games against each other--voice chat may not present as much utility.

"For social games, I don't see a strong need for (voice chat) yet," said Siqi Chen, the CEO of Social Business, a leading Facebook social games developer. "I do see a shift for more synchronous game play over time, but it hasn't really been happening for most games."

In part, Chen said, that's because among friends who like to play games together, it's fairly uncommon to be online at the same time. In addition, social games are built around short play sessions.

But he allowed that over time, as people spend more and more time on Facebook, there may well be an opportunity for social game developers to launch more engaging games that are built around longer session times, and which might work well with voice chat.

At Vivox, no one is expecting that tens of millions of users will immediately start using its voice chat technology. But the company is aware that it will likely see a significant spike in usage, and is ready to handle it when it comes, said co-founder Sharma.

And Sharma suggested that while it may be too early to know exactly how the company will monetize its Facebook integration, there are some obvious opportunities in microtransactions and audio ads that users would hear before being put into a voice channel.

For now, it's also too early to tell just how much of a game-changer any new voice chat system will be. But based on Vivox's track record, it is certainly one of the few companies well-positioned to jump headlong into a community as large as that of Facebook.

And to Pirillo, adding a seamless voice chat system is a natural, and just one step on the path toward where we may well be going in the near future: fully functional video chatting across the entire social network.

"Is it revolutionary? No," Pirillo said of Vivox's offering. "Is it evolutionary? Absolutely."

Ogilvy offers Metrics for Social Media

Introducing Conversation Impact - Social Media Measurement for Marketers

by Irfan Kamal
Category: Digital Influence, Measurement, Research & Insights

Earlier today John Bell and I formally introduced the Conversation Impact(TM) measurement model at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Audience Measurement 4.0. Here’s a brief overview of the model, its goals and planned evolution.

The model was developed by our team to provide brands with a comprehensive, recognizable framework for tracking social media campaigns. We relied heavily on our experience with a range of social media campaigns for both B2B and B2C clients, and considered the types of questions and reporting requests we receive with every new project or request for information.

We focus on simplicity and comparability across media - the latter, to help guide marketers with media allocation. We categorize our metrics into 3 areas, corresponding roughly to objectives and “marketing funnel” stages; each is shown below, with representative metrics (the metrics are selected based on unique client needs). Included are both familiar and new metrics.

Image courtesy of Crimson Hexagon

Reach and Positioning

• Unique monthly visits
• Time on site
• Overall volume
• Share of voice within category or brand family
• Search visibility

Preference

• Sentiment index (% positive - % negative) in social media
• Share of positive voice in social media, within category
• Relative Net Promoter Score, absolute or within category

Action

• Registrations
• Sales
• Advocacy

Some of these metrics we measure using software such as Crimson Hexagon,Radian6 or TruCast; other metrics we measure with more traditional panel or intercept survey-based instruments.

We invite discussion - this is the first phase of what will be an iterative process to arrive at a simple, effective way to help marketing and communications executives make better decisions on social media spend allocation and scaling.

Great storytelling in a TV ad -- a must see!

I just love the musical scoring and great storytelling of this Thai ad for Pantene. It's the August Rush story told in 4 minutes:

And I love how the product takes a backseat, yet totally connects at the end. You know they inserted all those hair flinging shots towards the end for the product, but you just don't care because of a story well-told. And it doesn't matter if it's in Thai because it's subtitled anyway because of the sign language; and it's the musical scoring that drives the story. Perfect.

I think this is the direction TV commercials should evolve: Longer video formats that can become viral online, while telling great stories.