Color of the Year

"Society is a troop of thinkers, and the best heads among them take the best places."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

After Pantone each December announces its "color of the year," you'll see that color throughout every piece of marketing collateral you run into for the next 12 months.

"Thought leadership" is 2016's color of the year.

B2B marketers who've donned the color aren't fooling anyone, according to a new study by Hill+Knowlton and The Economist Group.

"The very idea of what it means to be a thought leader—once limited to an elite group of businesses that truly developed proprietary knowledge—is increasingly seen as an overused and self-serving tactic, one that is contributing to the noise rather than cutting through it," says Jeff Pundyk, a coauthor of the study.

Nearly 1,650 executives were asked their opinions of the "thought leadership content" they encounter:

• Three in five say they're confused and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of that content. Ironically, eight in ten marketers plan to produce more in the coming 12 months.

• Seventy-five percent say they've become more selective about the thought leadership content they consume.

• Executives are compelled by thought leadership content only when it's “innovative,” “big picture,” “credible,” and “transformative;" they're turned off by content that's “superficial,” “sales driven,” and “biased.”

"Executives continue to rely on credible, fact-based content; in fact, they are consuming more of it but from fewer sources," Pundyk says.

"Today’s business executives are no longer looking for thought leaders; they are looking for authentic thought partners."

If You Have to Ask, You Can't Afford It

A new study from Cornell's Center for Hospitality Research shows restaurants will soon start charging diners for reservations.

"This is a logical extension of the revenue management principle of pricing a service to match demand," says Sheryl Kimes, co-author of the study.

Some app providers already charge a premium for hard-to-get reservations at trendy spots; and some auction off those reservations.

Demand, surge and dynamic pricing in fact surrounds us (think of your electricity company, local toll roads and summer rental properties), even though—as Uber recently learned—it's considered inhospitable.

Only restaurateurs and economists—who insist it boosts supply—would say demand pricing isn't just plain, old-fashioned price gouging.

What would you say?

Bye Bye Love

ToutApp CEO "TK" Towhead Kader, who prides himself on "operational ruthlessness," is through with events; or, at least, with other people's events (OPE).

"If you’re attending any of the sales conferences this year, you may notice a distinct absence of a ToutApp booth," he says.

OPE have proven a heart-breaker. "As we looked back at our marketing spend in the past year, we couldn’t help but notice how paid speaking arrangements, booths, and sponsorships accounted for a lot of our spend but not a lot of attribution to closed business or real pipeline," TK says.

The CEO is diverting his company's spend on OPE "to things that have worked 10x better."

What are those things? Proprietary events (PE).

"We’ll invest in our own events in association with people we love," TK says.

"With all the money we save, we’ll spend that money to invest back into our product, pay our employees at competitive rates, and net-net, be an operationally ruthless company."

Event Sponsorship: On the Trash Heap?

"Event sponsorship does not belong to the 2010s," says Julius Solaris on Event Manager Blog.

If you produce events and your notion of sponsorship amounts to little more than "brand exposure," your notion's due for a check-up.

Indeed, past due.

"Sponsorships featuring logos, eyeballs and impressions don’t carry the same value they once did," says Velvet Chainsaw's Wendy Holliday.

Sponsorships that don't pluck heartstrings, produce leads, and persist beyond the event belong on the trash heap. (Two sure signs your sponsorships are outdated, according to Velvet Chainsaw: 35% or more go unsold; 75% or more aren't renewed.)

The $64,000 question you must tackle: Why should any company buy your sponsorship, when it can stage its own event? How can you compete against that?

Solaris provides the answer: A proprietary event is inherently lopsided. No matter how you shake it, the private event is biased—and yours isn't.

If you have a genuine reputation for authority, you have an insurmountable advantage.

"Some events are born because they are the expression of a community," Solaris says. "They are a movement. 

"These events are built from the bottom up, their main objective is to get together, be entertained, network and learn. 

"Sponsors should fight with each other to sponsor such events."

The Ad Tech Monster

Ad tech is destroying the web, says a new report from Kalkis Research.

Media firms, desperate for readers, are turning to ad tech providers to deliver them.

But the providers' algorithms—unintentionally—are driving readers instead through a loop of shady websites.

The fraudsters who own these websites have one goal: to nab the ad dollars of big brands like Walmart and Nike.

The scheme is complex:

• First, the fraudsters run ads that drive readers to "shell" websites, stuffed with stale, stolen and stupid content.

• But readers of high value to ad tech providers—readers with the right demographics—are then redirected through a loop of other shell sites; redirected against their will via automatic pop-ups, pop-unders, and new browser tabs.

• The automatic looping improves the "audience quality" of the the shell sites. Once that quality has been established, the fraudsters sign lucrative contracts with big brands to display their ads on their shell sites.

"Traffic laundering is thriving," the researchers say. "Bad guys have become experts at gaming ad tech metrics and monetizing fake or unwilling visitors."

The fraud is fast turning the web into "a clickbait jungle."

The researchers blame ad agencies, which have so far failed to detect the scheme.

HAT TIP: Ann Ramsey pointed me to the new research.