Mike, Author at MK.com - Page 11 of 13

Introduction to Campaign Assignment and Objectives An advertiser had just missed a 7 am flight — one that he woke up at 4:30 to make it to the airport, in fact — and was not in a very happy mood. Another advertiser who had shared the same fate steamed past me in a flurry of after shave and four-letter utterances describing the ticket agent’s resemblance to an unattractive, female canine pet. As the advertiser gathered his belongings, he looked up and noticed a pool of potential users who could be relevant to his target audience. Upon further inspection, he noticed one individual that would later be defined as the target audience of the campaign. This realization spawned the assignment: drive a lead form sign up conversion by the target audience. The objective of this assignment was to acquire contact information necessary to contact the target at a later date with the offer to meet for an alcoholic beverage. This story details the planning, buying and optimization of this campaign. Planning After conducting first-party market research** (**source: MJK, Inc.), the advertiser determined that his target audience was comprised entirely of the following: Female Age 25 – 34 Avid shopper, as demonstrated by her sparkling gold Tom’s slip-on-shoes and trendy knee-length skirt Affinity for air travel Continued first-person research uncovered an insight that would eventually become the key strategic centerpiece for this campaign: hyper relevant geo-targeted messaging. “So, looks like you missed this flight too?” I asked. “Yeah … ” (shrug and sign combination) “I’m flying on a family friends buddy pass and didn’t get on the flight,” she finished. Vendor Selection Due to the fact that the advertiser knew very little about this target audience, he recommended the use of a DR-focused learning platform to assist in creating a profile of this target audience in the attempt to drive a conversion. Executing the buy under the umbrella of a learning platform would help the advertiser develop a 3rd party validated profile of the target audience that would include demographic, psychographic and behavioral information. Secure the inventory “You look a little bit lost,” the advertiser began. “If you’re still trying to get to Minneapolis, you can follow me to the next gate and we’ll check on the flight status of the 8 am?” The target smiled and picked up her bag, signaling written agreement on the initial terms of the promotional offer. “That sounds great to me,” she confirmed. As I was away from my fax machine, I made an Evernote task reminder to send along the written terms of the agreement in order to confirm the campaign: Flight: 9/2/11 – Forever Cost: $5 CPD (cost per drink) with no annual cap Targeting: hyper relevant keyword targeting delivered via verbal communication known as a “conversation” Geographic considerations: Zip code targeted to 98100 Trafficking Upon confirmation of the buy details and securing the inventory, it was time to traffic the assets. In line with IAB advertising standards, assets were trafficked to the proper location (empty table near the Seattle’s Best Coffee) five minutes in advance of campaign launch. Campaign Launch “Hi, I’m Samantha,” the target smiled as she introduced herself after asset trafficking concluded. “Nice to meet you. I’m Mike,” the advertiser responded. As basic questions were asked, the advertiser began dropping cookies on the target audiences responses to build out the profile: Where are you from? Do you like cookies? If yes, do you prefer chocolate chip or 3rd party verified? Have you purchased a camera in the last 6 months? if so, what brand? First campaign measurement takes place As the advertiser continued to cookie the conversation responses of the target audience, he began to notice a few trends: Target audiences was single Lived in the Seattle DMA Earth-shattering smile The “conversation” began to die down, which brought the advertiser to his first optimization opportunity. Optimization The first optimization that took place was a change in environment: The placement of the advertisers message was not complimentary to the conversion path that he was trying to lead the target through. “I know it’s only 8 am, but you realized we just missed the 8 am flight. Want to grab a bloody mary?” he asked. As the advertiser measured the targets response, he noticed a behavioral attitude and cookied it immediately: a smile. “Sure, that sounds great,” the target responded. Second optimization After the placement of the advertisers message was moved to a booth in the Backdoor Bar & Grill the advertiser executed a second optimization to help liven the mood. “A whiskey coke for myself and a bloody mary for the lady [i.e. the target]”, he politely told the waitress. Third optimization As “conversation” performance improved, the advertiser uncovered an additional insight that would continue to deliver an increase in campaign performance. “So, I have a sweet little jack russell terrier mix …” the target began to explain. The advertiser immediately delivered a hyper-relevant contextual creative execution in the form of an iPhone picture of his own puppy. “Awwwwwww he’s soooo cute!” the target exclaimed. Yes he is, the advertiser thought. Yes. He. Is. Mid campaign performance recap Per the terms and conditions of the assignment, the advertiser needed to provide himself with a mid campaign recap of the events of the campaign planning, buying & performance of said campaign. They included: Key insight was geographic targeting that connected advertiser...

Just Do It

By Mike on Jun 23, 2011 | 0 comments

Recently, I became friends with Tatango founder Derek Johnson … As we talked over lunch, I asked him about the difference between running a start up and working for a corporation. His response was simple: “My roommate has been analyzing a large account at work for the past 6 months; hasn’t even made a recommendation on what they should do yet,” Johnson says “One day, we realized that Tatango needed SEO work done to drive organic search traffic, so I began meeting with every SEO expert in the Seattle area and just started doing it.” Tatango immediately began to make progress on their SEO initiative because they followed a Learn / Execute / Measure / Optimize / Repeat model. That model being was focused on a Larry the Cable Guy-esque “Git ‘r Dunnn” attitude. That model was comprised of … Learn: Take the time to educate yourself on the in’s and out’s of your desired subject matter. Immerse yourself in reading materials — blogs are my favorite and generally most current — and take every single expert in that field out to coffee until you can no longer slurp down another Grande Vanilla Latte. Show up with questions to guide the conversation. Take notes of the resident experts answers. Don’t forget to pick up the tab (c’mon, it’s a $4 cup of coffee …) Execute: All those great questions you asked and took notes on? Yeah, put them into action immediately. The longer you wait, the more time you have waisted in trimming down the advice you’ve been given to build the most efficient and effective plan of attack. Measure: Learn to develop KPI’s for your business; key performance indicators. Without these, all the executing in the world won’t matter because you won’t know if you’ve made progress or not. Don’t waste your time with vanity metrics; Yeah, it’s great to hear that time on site is up 12%, but how does that help your bottom line? Select “hard metrics” that you can turn into monetary goals. Goals like cost per acquisition, cost per lead and average cost per conversion. Make the metrics come to life! Optimize: What’s working? More importantly, what’s not working? Eliminate whatever is holding you back and invest all your energy and resources into tactics that are paying off (literally). Let the business-minded metrics do all the decision making for you. Repeat: What, you thought you’d learn everything there is to know about topic XYZ in one go around? No! Continue to educate yourself. Try new things. Measure their success / failure. Pick out the top performers and start all over...

The Point Where Failure, Risk & Creativity Collide

By Mike on Jun 7, 2011 | 0 comments

Usually, I only flip through a few pages of the hard copy edition Ad Age sends me via snail mail because I’ve already read a chunk of the articles as they arrive in to my GMail on a daily basis. Then, I read through “The Creativity 50” Much as it sounds, “The Creativity 50” is a run down of the top 50 most creative individuals, regardless of profession, in the world. Three members of this list had comments that struck me as awe-inspiring and / or amazing (usually both). So without further ado … “Dan Wieden said that we’re no use to him unless we’ve failed three times.” – Eric Quennoy // Executive Creative Director @ Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam Love this quote because it brings to light the fact that you should not be scared to fail. As a basketball player, failing 60% of the time from 3-point range gets you known as a sharp shooter. In baseball, failing 70% of the time at the plate leads to a Hall of Fame career. In display media buying, failing 99.8% of the time results in a stellar banner campaign. You should not be scared to fail – You should be scared not to try. Failure is our our most effective teacher. Anytime I fail I remember the missteps I made so when I repeat that task I can correct myself and avoid making the same mistake twice. “Being forgettable is risky” – David Droga, Founder of Droga5 This statement is true on so many different levels, some of the principal ones being: People don’t remember average. If you’re average, that means people aren’t remembering you. If you’re too “vanilla”, you may tend to get overlooked. Don’t be afraid to stand out! “Macho Man” Randy Savage wasn’t all that bright of a guy, but how could you ever forget someone who dressed like this Don’t do anything that would tarnish your image in the eyes of those who are important to you. Once you do so, ensuing missteps will make it easy for you to drift slowly out of their realm of concern … In my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes you can make it your personal / professional life is to walk out of a room and be instantly forgotten. If people have to ask, “Who was that guy, again?” then you obviously didn’t do enough to make an impression. “Age is the biggest creativity killer” – Brian Wong, founder of Kiip I founded The Anti Resume on a concept similar to this (that age shouldn’t be the sole determining factor in employee potential) and Brian took it to a whole ‘nother level. And I love it. It’s brash, honest and cocky as hell. And the older I get, the more I agree that it becomes harder and harder to think creatively. Who knew that all I needed was a 20-year old CEO to remind me of this fact to get me thinking creatively again! — A link to the full “Creativity 50” can be found...

Why You Should Never Victimize Your Clients

By Mike on Apr 26, 2011 | 2 comments

Just got off the phone with a client of mine … Our conversation was very candid – we spoke of things that each of us did well on a recent promotional effort and, more importantly, things that we both frankly could have done (much) better. What I found out from the client was that he completely understood the volume of work I had done for him and he commended me for taking that on. He truly appreciated (and again, understood) the amount of blood, sweat and tears I put in on his behalf. That being said, he also thought that I could have done better. How would I have known that? Well, if I had taken the time out of my busy week to hop on a quick 15 minute phone call and ASK HIM what he thought of the promotions I was delivering on his behalf. Now, don’t get this confused. The client believed that I could have done more for him – not that I had left him/her hanging or “screwed him/her over” in any way — but simply that I could have done better. Now, I could have easily brushed this individuals comments off as “Well, he/she doesn’t know any better. That’s why they hire ME – I’m the expert!” But when I took some time to reflect upon our conversation in more detail, I realized he was completely right. Think of the client in terms of a victim (an over exaggeration, yes i know). Nobody knows they have hurt somebody until a victim shows up and lets them know that whatever they did was wrong and hurtful. The VICTIM is the wounded party. The victim could potentially be YOUR CLIENT. If you felt victimized in any way, shape or form during a business transaction, would you recommend your vendors services to anybody else you know? Would you put your reputation on the line to tell your friends and colleagues, “Go with MJK, LCC, that guy REALLY knows how to not deliver on his promises and leave you in a jam. Whattta guy!” No way in hell. If you want to grow your own business based on referrals (which I have found are the easiest way to land new biz), then you have to leave your clients with a good taste in their mouth. Even if you don’t deliver the greatest product around, there are many considerations to take into account: Insufficient time to deliver a premium product Your price model was perfect for what they needed done Etc etc etc etc If you continuously communicate with your client, you’ll know about all these extraneous circumstances beforehand and will know that they are: a) okay with it, or b) think they’ll never work with you again Either way, you will know what it is that your client is thinking and be able to prepare yourself accordingly to end the relationship on a high note. But if you leave a client with a shitty taste in their mouth, they will only stick around long enough to find someone else to replace your services. Let’s circle back to our original point: Do yourself a favor and talk to your client(s) on a regular basis. It doesn’t even have to be very specific. If you approached your client with a simple, open ended question like “How do you think this is going?” or “What is this missing”, any issues that your client has with your work would come up in an organic and positive way. They would HELP YOU DO YOUR JOB BETTER by telling you WHAT THEY WANT. Avoid victimizing your clients in any way, shape or form. Trust me: You’ll be glad you didn’t in the long...

Time: Your Most Valuable Resource

By Mike on Feb 26, 2011 | 2 comments

It’s taken me 23 years to find out what the most valuable resource in the whole entire world is: TIME! Look at some of the more valuable resources known to mankind: Oil: I get it — Prices of oil are rising and the natural supply that this planet offers continues to dwindle. Problem? Well, yes …. But there is a solution that is rising in popularity (*ahem* — stage right) that operates on other energy sources. Money:Money comes and goes — just ask those geniuses from Enron who were embezzling so much cash they literally ran out of mattresses to hide it under. Power: This example could not be any more relevant at this point in time; commanding power is not a permanent resource and can be taken from the oppressor. This was first seen in 2006 with the execution of Saddam Hussein. Four years later, organized masses are leading revolutions across the globe, toppling dictators from Egypt to Dijibouti. THERE IS NO WORKAROUND FOR GATHERING TIME! You can drive a hybrid car to avoid using gas — eat cheaper food to conserve money — or lead a revolution to forcibly take over a nation. But there is no way to recuperate your time. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. There is no way to make up for it, use a workaround to avoid using it or generate additional sources of it. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Maybe it’s time to sit down and consider exactly how you are using your time. It’s your most valuable resource: You CAN’T AFFORD NOT TO take a look at how you spend your...