Commentary
The Internet Vs. Al Ries
- by Stephen DiMarco , June 26, 2009
With math-bashing marketing hand grenades like this, it's not surprising that the column sparked a healthy response; readers are still submitting comments that wrestle with Ries' assertions.
What is surprising, frankly, is that "quantifiable marketing" is a topic that is up for debate. Are people really confused about whether marketing should be a primarily creative versus data-driven craft? More important, why does one have to occur at the expense of the other?
Effective marketers know better, and here's a good example from earlier this year. Eager to penetrate the consumer market, RIM conceived an integrated marketing campaign to support the launch of its new BlackBerry handsets. RIM had access to the right data in advance of the launches -- from research that pinpointed consumers' mobile shopping behavior to competitive data on the iPhone, T-Mobile G1 and Samsung Instinct -- to help plan its efforts. The resulting BlackBerry campaign was a well-coordinated palette of marketing activities that used: 1) TV to drive consumer awareness; 2) search marketing and landing pages to capitalize on this interest; and 3) an online purchase funnel that linked shoppers directly to retail partner sites to complete the sale.
The result: fast and sustained growth in BlackBerry interest and sales among consumers. According to Compete's data, more people shopped online for BlackBerry devices than any other smartphone in the first three months of the year. And, market share data from The NPD Group shows that BlackBerry claimed three of the top five sales slots for smartphones, with the Curve vaulting ahead of the iPhone as the best-selling consumer smartphone in Q1.
Rather than banking on intuition, RIM grounded its campaign planning in really good data. Rather than relying on conventional wisdom about online purchase funnels, RIM encouraged shoppers to complete their purchase on retail partner sites. And rather than waiting until the end of the quarter to measure its effectiveness, RIM could use consumers' search activities as a leading indicator of sales performance -- and adjust tactics throughout the quarter to optimize awareness, intent and conversion. All in all, a superb demonstration of intertwining mathematics and marketing.
So what can we learn from the BlackBerry experience? What does it imply for marketers looking to reconcile the data-versus-creativity debate? Here are the four main themes I see:
1. Extreme positions are provocative, but obfuscate our opportunity. The challenge is not whether data or creative should be at the forefront of marketing, the challenge is getting them to work together. Marketers are not creative directors, nor are we CFOs; our job quite simply is to introduce products and messages into the market that influence profitable sales outcomes.
2. Measurement drives creativity drives measurement. Creative directors will tell you that their best work most often comes from great creative briefs -- and the best creative briefs provide clear campaign objectives fueled by great market research. In the best examples, data interpretation and creative implementation occur continuously, making marketing agile.
3. If you can't quantify it, you'd better be really lucky. It's virtually impossible to achieve sales outcomes until you quantify the underlying marketing formula. Understanding how your marketing investments impact behavior-driven intermediary metrics like "cost per shopper" or "cost per branded query" is essential to charting and course-correcting within the lifecycle of the campaign. Using instinct alone is akin to gambling.
4. Math can help you engineer outcomes, not just measure performance. Using data simply to measure the ROI of an existing campaign is important, but it significantly undervalues the opportunity. And too often, the need to demonstrate ROI makes marketers focus on micro-metrics that confuse media and/or creative optimization with the long-term return on a marketing investment. The right approach uses data as a forward-looking input, yielding metrics-driven campaign playbooks that marketers can use to predict and engineer future outcomes, as well as look backward.
Nine years ago, in a book titled "The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding," Al Ries declared that "the Internet can be a business or a medium for your brand, but not both." (Note: be wary of coining immutable laws in an emerging market, especially when YouTube and MySpace don't exist yet). Smart marketers know that this is as nonsensical as saying there is no room for math in marketing.
Great column Stephen. I have to say that, if Al Ries is still a marketing guru, I don't think many are climbing the mountain for his wisdom any more.
I too would look at "themes" rather than "rules." You can't write a U.S. Constitution for a field that changes every 6 months.
Just over three years ago (4/14/06) I commented in Fortune on an article that Jack Trout had just published by saying that if I ever wrote things that were that silly to please force me to retire. That time has come for Jack Trout. Please join me in wishing him "bon voyage".
Not having access to Al's full article, I will say that based on the abstract I saw, I can see where he might be coming from.
Data, not insight, drive too many companies. Raw numbers with no understanding cause more resources to be wasted because too many "don't know what they don't know" and they elect to confuse activity with productivity - meaning they send resources off to chase down something that they're not sure exists and probably wouldn't recognize if they saw it.
That said, I completely agree with your points described above. We must work smarter because we have limited resources and limitless opportunities to invest those resources. Creativity is critical and sometimes you need to 'roll the dice' - just do it wisely so you don't bet the family fortune and risk total annihilation with less than 100% success.
I would strongly suggest that if you can't quantify it, rethink it. The current argument that social media can't be held to some level of ROI is lazy crap. You can measure awareness, perception and as Dell has proven on Twitter, sales. Use your creativity to identify a way to measure impact - or invest the resources elsewhere!
As for your last point, concerning engineering outcomes - brilliantly stated. I might borrow that!
Dear Stephen,
Great article btw...Nice job.
Al Ries was a big marketing influence on my pre-Internet advertising career. Though, now, he's showing his true colors by sticking to what he knows best. Just like all those old newspaper ad execs whom can't seem to fully adopt and understand the Internet.
You must evolve or you devolve...
The one thing that Al Ries can guarantee as an immutable law is that not measuring a digital campaign's ROI is easier than measuring it. That said, to honestly believe that any campaign hits the center of its marketing target on the first try is naive at best.
A good marketer may have insight into a campaign's potential success based on experience but that doesn't mean just because you believe something it will come true. By measuring the proper KPIs to determine campaign success, savvy marketers doesn't need to rely on intuition but can instead rely on metrics (providing they are measuring the right things) to take the guess work out of ways to make moderately successful campaign amazingly successful.
What Ries suggests strikes me as arrogant and shows a lack of willingness to believe that even those tenants that have been followed for decades can be improved upon. We already have too many examples that they can.
I, too, am stumped by Al's statement. But....
Maybe he's poking at us marketers relying way too much on data and metrics to help us make decisions (we want the data to make the decision FOR US rather than also putting our neck and judgment out there), and as a result inching along rather than standing for something with conviction and driving big growth. Remember that saying "nothing ventured, nothing gained"? If he's talking about the lack of venturing by all of us, he may be right after all.
The other related point I want to make is that, theoretically speaking, yes, math and creativity are both important. What you don't address in your article is how difficult it often is to get data people and creative people to rally together. Their brains (and often hearts) tend to be wired very differently, and fusing them together to climb a hill is easier said than done. Right now the data people are winning, no surprise given all that's going on. The sad thing is that we need a whole bunch of creativity and innovation to influence some of the change our country so desperately needs.
Stephen, excellent points, and I'm all for measurement, KPIs and ROI, but...
Just to add a pinch of reality: it's not always feasible to measure, and it's not always possible to set concrete KPIs. Not every company has the resources of RIM.
In today's multi-channel world a solid through-the-line (anybody still use that term?) campaign incorporates far more tools than TV and the Internet, research is hideously expensive, and moving quickly is sometimes more important than moving accurately. I'd be happy to give examples if anyone's interested.
Under the real-world conditions luck has a lot to do with success, but skill, experience and vision also help. Let's not forget about those...
It’s probably the last thing we need in marketing today – it being criticized for embracing the very basics of math. A very old debate that reminded me of CP Snow's Two Cultures : http://thedoublethink.com/2009/05/the-two-cultures/
Stephen,
There is no truth to the rumor that Al Ries is a big blowhard who has gotten himself more notice as a pundit than he ever did as the proprietor of an ad agency.
Having written a ton of advertising myself, and hung out with others who did too, I can say with confidence that one thing that turns creative types on is making cash registers ring. That's the way we know whether or not we have any value. Good creative people like being measured.
Measurement improves a creative person's job prospects. It often results in account moves. And, unfortunately, good measurement in the hands of the wrong people can create a big mess.
Measurement provides information, and good information is essential in creating effective advertising and putting it in places where prime prospects will see it. To say that 'measuring the ROI of a marketing plan has no value' is so silly I can't believe Ries wasn't just trying to get some ink for himself as he approaches his twilight years.
Sheeeesh!
Great Post Stephen. I agree with you and a lot of the other comments.Marketing is part art & part science. Yes you can still get by with your gut instinct, but without actionable insights you will never know what part of that well designed campaign was successful. In this day in age where the bean counters are in control you need to be able to back up your hunch with good data. Yes we have so much data that it's coming out our ears, but we need to know how to measure what matters. Coming from a web marketing background I am a bit bias, but good research is not as expensive as it used to be. With tools like Twitter we can get info on our competitors, links to reports & analysis, and feedback on your own brand. Finally with the improvements that Google is making to Google Analytics any Mom & Pop shop can get quality data from their online & offline marketing efforts.