Michael Gale

In the film Six Degrees of Separation two desperate art dealers proudly show off a painting by Kandinsky which is two sided. Donald Sutherland’s character proudly holds the painting on a hinge and describes the first side as “chaos” and then rapidly rotates to the second side, contently saying “control.” This is repeated a number of occasions, faster and faster to illustrate the contradictions in the experience of the art. Pretty pretentious but it is a remarkably good metaphor for the world of social media.  Much like art can be seen at multiple levels social media has multiple levels too. To properly understand it we need to acknowledge the components we have to interact and play with.

Michael Gale

We always hear from clients that they need the simplest explanations to three basic problems for their (less-) informed colleagues. Look at the table below and you will see we measure average number of sales and/or marketing choices. We have measured upwards of 30+ each year, and while the number grows, it appears the average number of sources used is growing much faster. People want more.

Michael Gale

There is a Stevie Wonder song called As. The lyrics all roll together but the key line in the chorus is “you can rest your mind assure that I‘ll be loving you always.”   I cannot imagine a better start for a conversation about marketing cadence – how often and in what ways do we love on the targets?

Michael Gale

Pick sides here because I am going to really agitate some of you. In a world where the big four Goliaths or really the big two seem to be gobbling up the vast majority of market share in activities, it is tough to argue that they are not being far more successful than the David’s at integration. In other words, they must be getting bigger for a reason and right now WPP’s “360” mantra is the best or perhaps most simple definition of integration.  As marketers we will have to pick sides as we make increasingly complicated decisions about who we go with – big integrators or small integrators.

Michael Gale

“Best of breed” is nearly always at the top of product messaging hierarchies. Whether it is there because of ego or some researched view, customers across the globe rarely share that same messaging focus. “Best of breed” is implied to mean the best – period. However, it is often a shallow tagline for a range of messaging assets that might aggregate to feel like best in brand. What this tells us is that there are ways to handle this but not with the old language of the technology industry. The following examples show how targets view “best of breed” when given a simple trade-off exercise.  This is also true across many of the thousands of other analysis areas so please listen to these customers.

Michael Gale

Three of the hottest recent YouTube videos show you one simple truth about viral media. One is about a heart-wrenching reunion with a pet lion after many years apart. The second is about a dancing guy who reminds us of Waldo except he is not lost. The third one is slightly bizarre, but once you read the comments under the posting your heart goes out to these people whose only potential sense of self-worth is a mass involvement series of dance routines.

Michael Gale

Google’s recent earnings announcement might seem very rosy to a normal company. To online advertising analysts the slow down in Europe is an ominous sign of an impending recession. While recessions and advertising downturns are well established, cohabiting partners maybe we expected Google to be the Rock of Gibraltar.  The truth is Google has had a strangle-hold on the online advertising industry. Like moths to a light we flock there to have more and more of our advertising budgets consumed as we flutter around the light expecting miracles. Yes, this sounds cynical but we need to fight back against this moth-to-the-light model and actually outsmart Google.  The reason why you have far more control than you think is that no matter how well Google can track results it cannot do the following and the following matters:

Michael Gale

You may never have read Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities but this opening statement best illustrates the situation in which many print publishers find themselves. Just like the child’s game of fill-in-the-blank just replace print publishers and online media for the appropriate subjects in this paragraph:

"It was the best of times it was the worst of times, it was the age of reasons, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us."

Michael Gale

Words from a famous Fleetwood Mac song by the same name.  It easily encompasses the control that sales targets have during the sales cycle and after some potential sales contact. In the old world sales team follow-up was pretty clean – call, email or note, or even send them a white paper.  Cycled over a few weeks this was often seen as the most that could be done.  Many brands we see either shy away from a more orchestrated approach or over-do the direct communications choices and drown targets.

Michael Gale

Okay, maybe not so much a bump but a meeting of minds at an unplanned place can be a critical moment in a purchase decision. As brands we truly can never be there at the critical moments, those inflection points where an important interaction between say a CXO and the CIO occurs over a specific business problem - the moment when a choice (unconscious or conscious) is made. These are the interactions sales functions can only dream of marketing having a substantive effect on.  Experience shows us that marketing can have a very significant effect here using some horribly simple rules.