Recent “One Degree interviewee”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2006/03/03/5-questions-for-robert-scoble, Robert Scoble is often seen as an “edge case”:http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/01/27/more-on-edge-cases/ (although he “hates being called that”:http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/01/26/scoble-im-not-an-edge-case/). I think Robert sees himself more as “canary in a coalmine” – out ahead of us but doing what will one day become common practice. The term edge case implies a way of using things that will _never_ be seen as normal.
In any case, whether Robert is an edge case or not, I’m starting to think that he is a “bright-liner”. You might not know that word, so let me digress for a moment to explain what it is before saying why Scoble might be one and why it might impact your brand.
Month: March 2006
_As President of Wiest & Associates Inc. – “The Customer Acquisition and Retention Company”:http://www.wiest.ca/ (r) – Daniel G. Wiest has long been considered one of Canada’s leading direct marketers, and now one of Internet marketing’s innovators._
*One Degree:* “What skills or techniques from the direct marketing world do you think are most lacking in Internet marketing and what do we lose by not having them in our online tool kits?”
*Dan Wiest:* I apologize in advance if this response rubs a few readers the wrong way, but please scan my entire answer before deciding how loudly to cheer or jeer. In return, I promise not to sound too much like my grandfather’s “when I was your age…” ramblings in the process.
One big shortcoming I see too frequently is the absence of leveraging that core knowledge we’ve already gained from offline testing. I’m not saying that pure Internet marketers don’t generate rich information and insights. Quite the opposite. In fact, I think we’re kicking the pants off of the traditional media holdouts with the wealth of actionable data we’re able to produce. And we’ve become the masters (sometimes…) at turning that information around to produce even more relevant communications and offerings.
But the preceding decades have rewarded us with vast resources of test results, analytics and careful study of the factors that motivate people. Somehow these historical treasures seem to have gotten pushed aside in the excitement surrounding all of the new tools and techniques.
Forget about the new tools for a moment, and consider this: I don’t imagine for one second that human needs and wants were somehow genetically altered by the arrival of the Internet. Yes, the techniques and media options for matching and delivering solutions those human needs may have changed dramatically. But human behaviour itself hasn’t. So why not begin with the knowledge of what consumers have already been proven to respond to?
How are big advertisers doing at moving people from TV to the web? What better way than to use a global “must see” event like the “Academy Awards”:http://www.oscar.com/ to take a look at who’s pointing people to the web and who’s missing their big opportunity.
Of the 69 spots shown during 12 breaks (some shown multiple times), 36 had URLs. That means that almost 50% of the spots didn’t even try to move people to the web to continue talking to them. Seems like a real waste.
Here is a full list of all the ads and links to all the sites that were mentioned. I think if you review this you’ll find a few very interesting things – eBay doesn’t put URLs on TV ads? WTF?