Bulls---!

I was in a client meeting in which they briefed us about a new project and a term came up which irked me to no end. It wasn’t the first time, and I think that’s why I cringed at its utterance. Client X described the project target by saying, “we’re going after a target of 18-54 year olds, with a bullseye target of 21-34”.

As you read that, are you noticing what I’m noticing, or have you become immune to the inanity of this definition? It would be understandable. I hadn’t heard this “bullseye” idea until a couple of years ago and now I’m hearing it more and more. My problems with the bullseye notion are plenty, but let’s use the above example as our case study.

Point 1: 18-54 year olds is not a target definition, it is a massive cross-section of the general population. I have railed against using demography to outline consumers previously (check that here), and aside from the arguments made there, which basically state how we are products of our thoughts, actions, interests, and geographies more than our birth certificates, what irks me here is the notion that with this broad age range, zero nuance is taken into consideration. Essentially, Client X is telling me, “we imagine our product will be relevant for every adult north of high school and south of early retirement.” No. Way. I think we can all agree that a) in an ideal world, we’d have products that appealed to that kind of an age range and b) it has to be understood that by pinpointing a target (based on whatever factors you choose, but hopefully choosing something more to do with their reaction to a receding hairline and less about the year they began losing it), you will undoubtedly reach people you weren’t expecting to reach.

When Axe shows the guy picking up the girl in the convenience store, it is clearly aimed at (in bland demographic terms) 18-24 year old men. BUT, I think we can assume that somewhere out there, a mid-30’s guy, or a woman, or even a spry septuagenarian, might see that same commercial and feel it captures something about them too. No communication ever only reaches the “target” it always stretches beyond, even to a remarkable few.

My point simply being that you don’t need the big fat range of every adult in the Western Hemisphere. We get it. You’re hoping to reach a lot of people. Which brings us to

Point 2: Please help us rid the world of jargon. The last thing advertisers and marketing departments need is another buzzword. Catchphrases sadly sell books and draw attention, but they also push consumers further away from products and corroborate the notion that this is an industry of snake oil salesmen and sinister doubletalkers. Skip the new parlance, trust that simple, specific language will communicate everything you hoped and more, and get to who you really want to focus on. Just tell us.

Bullseye targeting is a lazy way to seem like you’re thinking deeper than you really are. I think it’s a trick someone came up with to make it appear as though they were working much harder than they were. That there was great understanding of consumer truth, when really it’s just saying “we looked at everyone and now we want to focus on this smaller group”. Which is what you’re doing if you just skip the “bulls---“ and get to the point.

if a tree Twitters in the woods…

The combination of a great discussion the other day and my multiple explanations to creatives and clients alike to led me back to the question “why Twitter”?

Let the record show from the outset that when it comes to twittering, I’m all for it. I’ll tweet everything from my whereabouts to the inane to the cryptic. You can follow me here. But why? To what end?

I’ve been describing to the uninitiated (or semi-familiar) that Twitter is the best of the 4 worlds of: SMS (for the purpose of conversation), blogging (for the provision of intriguing content), social networking (for the inclusion of community), and most importantly, IM (for the immediacy). Without any one of these, Twitter would not be as important or impactful. Add in the constraint of messaging in 140 words or less, and you’ve got yourself a fun little gaming in the mix as well.

In my conversation with Ray, I asked, “if the idea is just to tell a close group of friends what you’re up to, why not send out an email? Isn’t the group communication function already covered?” What we realized is that there is an important element of voyeurism to Twitter that may be secondary, but is critical. There is a sense that somebody might hear my words, or might respond, or might (gulp) follow me. But then that last part is nullified by vast number of Twitterers who, like a teen newly exploring MySpace, is more interested in collecting people than actually listening to them. Which is valid, I suppose. I try not judge, although for the record, I don’t understand the practice. It seems pointless. (But, this is coming from the guy who stood in line for 12 hours when Tim Burton’s Batman opened, wearing a Joker T-shirt and getting upset that it had been spilled on. So my credibility rating on why teens do what they do is probably zero.)

The point is this: there is a part of the act of twittering that is a bit desperate, isn’t there? The kind of “somebody pay attention to me!” whining or “know it all-ness/my opinion matters” that nobody liked when we were kids. Which isn’t to say many comments aren’t interesting, but if I was to step back from it, I’m not really convinced that anybody really cares that my kids are still awake, or that I’m sitting in an aisle seat today, or that KEXP’s live streaming is piss poor. So there’s absolutely a part of me that uses Twitter for the hope of acceptance. That one of the tastemakers might single out one of my tweets and choose to comment back with an “@mrgingold blah blah blah me too blah blah blah good one, dude blah blah blah”.

Which brings us to another social ramification of Twitter that I find fascinating. Supposedly, in the not-to-long-ago, we went through a big social trend of Curator-ism. You know what I’m talking about, it was the Oprah phenomenon. The phenomenon that we hold people up in our society and look to them to help us choose what products, services, and people we should be purchasing, using, or supporting. But the Millennium was supposedly an end of that time, a welcoming of self-selection. The “iEra” in which I would pick for myself what, when, who, where, and how.

But Twittering is revealing itself to be more of the same Curator-ism, in a digital medium. We have our @PSFKs, @armano’s, @heyitsnoah’s that we follow and look to. These are the people we hope will notice our own tweets and comment or reply. They are the social media Oprahs. We look for their acceptance and are tickled at their recognition. Maybe this is just me. Maybe what I’ve done is revealed my own insecurities and shortcomings. My own small, sad need to be heard or singled out or told “that was what I was thinking too” by the people whose opinions I respect. If that’s the case, and I’m alone in this, I may have to reassess why I Twitter and blog. But I think there may be a handful of you out there who have a similar hope. Different “@_____” perhaps, but the same endgame.

And that is the beauty of Twitter. While I could never in a million years get Oprah to hear my voice, it’s possible to speak directly to anybody who Twitters. The medium is being used the way it’s meant to be used – as a great democratizer of opinions and thoughts. Nobody might care to reply, but when you put your 140 words or less out there, there’s the distinct possibility that somebody somewhere might connect with what you have to say.

And so I leave you with the thought: "now's a good time for coffee and caloric pastries". Care to reply?

once more unto the breach, dear friends

once more.

i've decided to give the hogwash one more go. i'm feeling a little like my blogging experiment has mostly been just for me and can't decide if it's self-indulgent, self-delusional, self-serving, or just undiscovered.

whatever it's been, i've admittedly been three kinds of sucky when it comes to consistency. and so, as i approach my bloggiversary, i'm going to give it one more try for some healthy blog activity.

if you've been reading, i appreciate it. wish me luck. feel free to comment openly.

in search of authentic

Aki Spicer wrote a great bit on his musings from ROFLCon that really got me thinking. The last bit of his entry asks the reader to consider the future of "authentic". In my estimation, the word has, ostensibly, lost its meaning (much as has "green", "savvy", and "integrated").

Wanting to press a bit more on the topic, I looked up the word (using my MacBook dashboard). I was intrigued, as the first offering reads: "of undisputed origin". That's powerful stuff. Undisputed. Meaning, there can be no mistake about it. However, the watering down and adverspanking of this word is more in line with the second entry: "made or done in the traditional or original way, or in a way that faithfully resembles an original.” Sad, really. You can see, this is authenticity’s downfall. Essentially, this second definiton strikes the power of the first one useless. It says “faithfully resembles an original”. Meaning: “yeah, it’s close enough.”

With brands, we’re all telling our clients to “be authentic.” I can even recall telling a brand that one of their core “pillars” should be (you guessed it): Authenticity. In reality, every company should have authenticity at its core. And they all do. Except when they don’t. As company’s grow, expand, or look too much at what, where, and how the competition is doing their thing, brands lose touch with what they’re about. Or, why they were started in the first place. The role Authenticity plays is in what makes them (and this is where you’re BAM SMACK on it, Aki), human. It is the humanness of a brand that makes it an undisputed original.

It’s kind of flawed to suggest a brand should be more human, isn’t it? It’s a bit unfair. What is it that makes (or could make) a brand more human? As planners, our job is to uncover that very truth. We’re not always successful. The more we approach the work with an open and humble sense of curiosity, driving us to discover the answer to that question, the better the result. Open. Humble. Fallible. It’s what makes a planner human. And thus, relatable. And authentic. And successful. (NOTE: if all it took for a planner to be seen as successful were humbleness and fallibility, we’d all be long unemployed. I merely postulate that in addition to a hopefully insightful, trend-fueled, innovative mind, it would only be helpful for a planner to approach each project with a certain willingness to not know the answers and to reduce the abundance of high-falutin’, all-knowing platitudes and condescension that have plagued and tainted the role of the planner – at least in the US.)

So in the end, I think yes, the word authenticity, in its current “close enough to the original” state, is worthless. But, true authenticity is not something that needs to be learned by a brand, it is something that needs to be preserved.

you've been pownced

Had a good conversation with friends today. We were discussing the role of connections via social networking sites. The sheer number of networks that have come and gone, or come and don't get used or come and get used and get lost... it's insane. I had postulated that although I "belong" to a number of these networks, when it comes down to it, I only use three.

One is for networking. I build as many connections as I can, I welcome all who find me there.

One is for connecting. I get in touch with old acquaintances, stay in touch with friends, and am careful who I invite within that domain.

One is for dialogue. Spontaneous thoughts, insights, and delights.

And yet, I, like many, am a marked man. Discovered by a friend of a friend of my friend and now they want nothing more than to be connected. But to what end? To take an extra space in a list of names? To have a profile picture collecting virtual dust on my personal page? My hang up with MySpace (for me) was that it was all about numbers. So concerned with how many. It felt entirely pointless. Not everyone approaches it that way, but it feels embedded in the MySpace culture. So, when, say... Ed Cramley, who graduated high school 3 years after I did finds me and wants to be pals, I draw a line. Which is rude, isn't it? What harm would it be to have Ed listed amongst my friends? Well it feels entirely insincere to have Ed's picture listed amongst my "friends". I didn't know him a decade ago, I don't know him today... people aren't for collecting. So I ignore the invitation. Repeatedly, if necessary. Which, again, doesn't do much as far as building karma points.

So we came up with a plan today. A widget or app needs to be built (I'm nominating Phil) that acts as both a personal firewall and a social re-router. It needs to look at the spam-friends (those like Ed Cramley who serve no real purpose in my life at all) and filter them out, rather than rudely, to one of the other dozen social networks that I joined when I was trying them all on for size, and invites Ed Cramley to be my friend over there.

It's a kind of gentle breakup instead of a harsh "no thanks". A kind of deprioritization of social networks. I don't want you near my facebook account, so I'll re-route you to be "friends" with me over on Plaxo Pulse. Everyone happy? Perfect.

Hang on, I just got a reply from someone I haven't been in touch with from undergrad...sonuvabitch...I've just been Y!Mashed.

a method to the madness

As a kid growing up in Syracuse, NY, University sports were everything. Our family had season tickets to basketball and football, and we were even known to cheer for the lacrosse team, despite the fact that we all sucked at the sport.

But something happened on the way to adulthood. My beloved Tufts University Jumbos took the spirit and tradition of raging championship-at-all-costs mentality away and replaced it with a joyful love of collegiate a cappella music and a respect for literature. The shame. The horror. I know.

Back then, the idea of filling out a bracket was a no-brainer. Through high school I was a king of useless data about how a Big East team would do against an ACC squad and had a distinct logic as to why certain teams couldn't be beat and knew the assists per game of the starting point guard from each Cinderella squad psyched to be slotted in "the Dance" as a 15 seed.

Fast forward to last week. At the ad agency where I work, one of the creatives sent around an email (which wound up in my junk mail folder) the day before brackets were due and for $5, I agreed to fill one out and be part of the office pool. Now, I know it's been a crazy tourney for many people, but never have I spent such little time filling out a bracket, never have I entered a pool with such little information about the teams at play (Davidson?!?!? seriously???), and, most importantly, never had I had so little invested in the outcome. Which begs the question: why do it? Why play? Why waste the $5 that could have gone toward an afternoon's triple tall americano from Vivace?

Here's why. It's quite beautiful really. March Madness and the bracketology that ensues is one of the last bastions of true camaraderie. People who don't know each other are talking about picks, predictions, shared disappointments, and fantastic finishes. We find ourselves purposely and overtly eavesdropping on conversations held in lines at banks, bus stops, and grocery stores. We want to be a part of the discussion. There's a primitive social aspect to March Madness. It has equal impact both nationally and locally. So I played to be a part of the conversation. I threw my money down the drain (G'town, Duke, UConn, Clemson) and did it with a smile on my face knowing that I wasn't putting money down to win, I was putting money down to participate.

And that's the experiential ingredient missing from much of life's newer events. The idea that we, as citizens, crave being active participants in something, in anything. We need to be a part of something. It's been argued before that as our world has become more digitized, so too have we seen an increase in the desire and need to collect real experiences. The NCAA tournament is a great example of yes, a great shared, collective participatory event. But also, of a social need that transcends the event itself. A reminder that even if you don't know the difference between a Cardinal from Louisville (bird) or Stanford (color), you can still be a part of something special, still be a part of the Madness.

Jill Bolte Taylor at TED

Just watch below...and choose to go right.

You'll see.