May 16, 2005

Accountability...Always a Challenge

Prospects and clients inevitably ask, "How will we know how effective our advertising is?" And, of course, - unless they're operating in a vacuum with no other communications, no product changes, no competitive landscape changes, and no consumer habit changes - the answer is they won't know...for sure.

Web activity, on the other hand, IS measurable. And, as Jay pointed out to me today, many companies are now spending big bucks analyzing their websites. Jupiter Research reports that spending on what is called "web analytics" will top $500 million by 2006. Some large companies already spend more than $50,000/year measuring site activity, including number of unique visitors, length of stay on a given page and the links a user clicks on.

What this enables you to do is tweak some aspect of your website marketing (such as home page info and navigation, order of pages, product offerings, prices, shipping fees, etc.) and see what generates the best response.

We Know that Kids are Too Fat, but How Fat are Their Wallets?

I've spent a lot of time today reading about marketing to kids, especially the pros and cons of marketing certain less nutritious foods and beverages to a generation that has an ever-increasing incidence of obesity.

The facts are not always clear or consistent. For example, the Center for Science in the Public Interest says that "children 4-12 spend and directly control at least $24 billion in purchases...and influence another $500 billion in spending by their families and others."

The New York Times says that "children under 12 will spend $35 billion of their own money and influence $200 billion in household spending."

Oh well, what's $300 billion one way or another.

Either way, the kids are doing pretty well.

What Beats Curiosity?

I've always thought that "curiousity" was about the best trait you could find in a child. Reading all this stuff about marketing to kids has concerned me, because so many special interest groups and well-intentioned legislators come to the conclusion that we should choose "a priori" the cable TV channels we want in our home and pay only for them. They call this "a la carte" cable. I call it a curiosity killer.

Don't you just love clicking through the channels and discovering something you had no idea was on...or that you had no idea might interest you? It can be substantive, or it can be just blissful escapism. (Nothing wrong with that.) And - at least for me - it's often on a channel that I have never thought about and probably would never order, were each channel sold separately.

It's like going to the library to get a book...but, on the way down the stacks you see several other books that interest you, and your curiosity is piqued. This is exactly why the book stores still exist, even though Amazon can get us books quicker and cheaper than most of the stores themselves. People like to browse. People are curious. Thank goodness.

"A la carte" is not only a curiosity killer, it's a cable programming killer. The economics are simple. Cable TV companies can give us such a breadth of good channels because we're taking them all, and they therefore can use the revenues from the most popular ones to help support those that appeal to more narrow segments of the audience.

The special interest groups are shouting loud, and we champions of curiosity need to get into this fray.