Digital Damage

Digital ads could be alienating B2B buyers, says Julie Ogilvie, senior research director at Sirius.

Because the ad units are tiny and compete in cluttered environments, B2B marketers are resorting to intrusive techniques that may be damaging their brands.

Ogilvie cites three:

Retargeting. "The idea behind retargeting is solid," she says. "However, in execution it can become annoying if the ads are popping up for months on end or are appearing in inappropriate environments."

Clickbait. Digital ads sporting sensational headlines "almost always disappoint in terms of what is delivered." The disappointment is reinforced when retargeting is used.

Native ads. Digital ads dressed as editorial content can also annoy and disappoint. Although buyers will respond, "many people still end up feeling deceived by messages that appear to be one thing but turn out to be another."

"In all these examples, people have come to feel that they are being tricked or harassed by advertisers," Ogilvie says.

Techniques like retargeting, clickbait and native advertising generate impressive response rates, she admits.

"But response rates do not always equal conversion rates—or revenue. And there is still the question of short-term vs. long-term gain. Brands are about building relationships and trust with our audiences."

You need not worry overmuch you're alienating your whole audience.

While you may be angering Boomer and Gen X buyers, the majority of Millennial buyers have installed ad blockers.

The Past isn't Dead. It isn't Even Past.

Ideas that Germans call Schnapsideen are those so stupid, you must have been drunk when you conceived them.

What kind of schnapps-idea is this? a German might ask. 

Urban Outfitters' Vintage Kent State University Sweatshirt is an example.

Whether a real offering or a PR ploy, the product was a Schnapsidee.

In 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired on anti-war student protesters at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine.

When Urban Outfitters released its product, the members of the Twitterverse into Vergangenheitsbewältigung—the struggle to overcome the past—went ballistic.

The company quickly fired off a retraction:

Urban Outfitters sincerely apologizes for any offense our Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt may have caused. It was never our intention to allude to the tragic events that took place at Kent State in 1970 and we are extremely saddened that this item was perceived as such. The one-of-a-kind item was purchased as part of our sun-faded vintage collection. There is no blood on this shirt nor has this item been altered in any way. The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray. Again, we deeply regret that this item was perceived negatively and we have removed it immediately from our website to avoid further upset.

The lesson for marketers? 

Those who forget the past are condemned to recall.

Poser = Loser

Authenticity isn't a strategy, says "hippie marketer" Tad Hargrave, so "stop trying to be so authentic."

Authenticity isn't a target or a tagline or a tone; and you can't get it by posing.

"There’s the old story of the archer who misses his shot because his eye is on the trophy he wants to win and not the bullseye," Hargrave says.

Forget authenticity. Aim, instead, for transparency.

If your organization is sales driven, be salesy. If it's tech focused, be geeky. If it's bureaucratic, be stately.

To win customers' trust, first trust yourself.

By playing a game of bait and switch, posers wind up losers.

Customers aren't gullible.

As Mad Man David Ogilvy said, "The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”

Chipotle Serves Up Nonsense

"I have a bluntness problem," says a character in Mozart in the Jungle.

I wish Chipotle had.

Fresh from rehab, the chain tells us it's cured, in a January 19 news release:

Chipotle’s enhanced food safety program is the product of a comprehensive reassessment of its food safety practices conducted with industry leading experts that included a farm-to-fork assessment of each ingredient Chipotle uses with an eye toward establishing the highest standards for safety.

Chipotle may now wash dirt off its tomatoes.

But it obviously won't scrub its announcements of corporatese.

Jargon destroys credibility, as journalist Phil Simon says.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein called quaggy statements like Chipotle's nonsense.

And as he insisted, there is no such thing as deep and important nonsense.

There is only one kind of nonsense, and it's fundamentally suspect.

PS: To be blunt, I would've advised Chipotle to say, We asked food-safety experts to help us improve both our own and our suppliers' procedures.

Glitch or Kitsch?

In their relentless pursuit of authenticity, marketers are embracing "glitch art," Guy Merrill, senior art director at Getty Images, tells Chief Content Officer.

Marketers are posting crooked photos with arbitrary compositions and shaky videos that look like outtakes.

The errors featured (such as oversaturated colors, lens flares, overexposure and pixelation) are made intentionally or added in post-production.

Marketers like glitch because, by displaying realism, it eradicates the difference between user- and influencer-generated content.

Kitsch, on the other hand, eschews realism.

Well-known examples include those paintings of dogs playing poker; paintings of Elvis on velvet; and everything painted by Thomas Kinkade.

From the German word for garbage, kitsch "appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality," according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.

Can you tell the difference?

Trust versus Trustiness

Word derivations say a lot.

The English word trust comes from the German word Trost, which means "comfort."

It's no secret marketers face a comfort deficit of Biblical proportions, as betrayal feels like the new normal.

Without warranties from their friends—and even with them—customers aren't comfortable doing business with us any more.

How, as a marketer, do you narrow the trust deficit? How do you build a comfort zone where customer engagement and conversation can begin?

Not by erecting a facade, a put-on Seth Godin calls trustiness. 

Four years ago, Godin said, "Building trust is expensive. You can call it an expense or an investment, or merely cut corners and work on trustiness instead."

Marketers who labor at building trustiness go for the cheap fix. Trust, on the other hand, takes time and money.

"Trust is built when no one is looking, when you think you have the option of cutting corners and when you find a loophole," Godin says. "Trustiness is what happens when you use trust as a PR tool."

While a minority, the Real McCoys are patently obvious, Godin says. They are "the people and institutions that will do what they say and say what they mean."

Godin points to the "perverse irony" in masquerading as trustworthy: "The more you work on your trustiness, the harder you fall once people discover that they were tricked."

What are you working on?

You Must Remember This

In a prized scene in Casablanca, the crooked cop Louis orders the patrons to leave Rick's Café Américain.

"How can you close me up? On what grounds?" Rick demands.

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" Louis replies, and pockets his winnings without missing a beat.

Hey, Louis, would you be shocked to find that 96% of customers think marketers lack integrity? Only 4% think otherwise, according to the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

It's little wonder, when every ad, email, brochure or news release—like Louis—wants to "round up the usual suspects:"

Acme, the industry-leading provider of unique, customizable, feature-rich software, is proud to announce its dynamic new end-to-end solution designed for exceptional performance and total scalability for massive worldwide deployments with maximum flexibility in meeting today's most urgent business needs.

Marketers, take note: When your claims are more enticing than the customer experience, you jeopardize your integrity.

Why not stick with the facts?

You must remember this: a kiss is just a kiss.

Come as You Are

In the 1970s, hirsute posers—there were many—who showed up at sit-ins, rallies and music festivals were labeled "plastic hippies."

They'd take time off from their jobs, let down their hair, don their best tie-dye, pack a bong or a bottle of Boone's Farm, and make the scene.

People today are spared the need to package themselves in order to infiltrate happenings.

Brands are another matter.

To rate with Millennials, brands have to protest against global warming, epidemics, racism, homophobia, fat-shaming and unequal pay—or at least pretend to.

Henk Campher, San Francisco-based publicist and author of Creating a Sustainable Brand, calls the pretenders the "quick and dirty"—campers on the bottom steps of a "sustainable-brand pyramid" populated by:

• Snake oil sellers—hypocrites (Volkswagen, for example);

• Blah brands—big talkers (Apple); and 

• Offset brands—penitents (Starbucks).

Not surprisingly, 99.9% of companies, according to Campher, lack any sustainability gene.

But at least they're honest about it.

My advice to plastic hippies: Come to the party, but come as you are. The rest of us—your customers, employees and investors—prefer the real you.

Beware Influencers for Sale

The Federal Trade Commission isn't keen about marketers who truck with shady social media influencers, as two recent cases illustrate.

In November, it slammed ad agency Deutsch for misleading consumers after a rabid junior account exec persuaded fellow employees to use their personal Twitter accounts to broadcast ringing endorsements of Sony's PlayStation Vita game console.

The employees failed to disclose they worked for Deutsch or that Sony was a client, and the FTC ruled their tweets could reasonably be understood as the genuine opinions of consumers.

This month, the FTC charged online network Machinima with consumer deception because it paid two influencers $45,000 to post videos on YouTube that endorsed Microsoft’s Xbox One. Like Deutsch's employees, the two influencers failed to disclose that their seemingly authentic opinions were anything but.

Machinima had guaranteed Microsoft 19 million views of the videos.

Unfortunately, one originated within the FTC.