It's not shocking to say this, but once again Bart Cleveland is right on point.

Ad Professionals Should Spend Less Time Remembering When
We Work in a Change Industry, so Start Acting Like It
By: Bart Cleveland Published: March 10, 2011

From AdAge.com. Original article and comments here.

Our industry is all about change. At least, we say we are. We say we believe in creating the next great wave of advertising. If that is so, we should take a look at the evidence.

Do we take risks and inspire?
Maybe not. There's a lot of the same ol', same ol' still being offered as fresh thinking. Perhaps because we are too afraid of losing what we have left to risk it all for something better. Regardless of whether it's from a lack of belief -- or apathy or laziness -- we are squandering a great opportunity to lead. If we believe we are the agents of change, we must change ourselves as well. Like Gen. George Patton, we need to attack without worrying about our flanks. We're moving forward too fast for the enemy to catch us. By the time they realize what we're up to, we're kicking them in the backside.

Are our recommendations relevant to our client's objectives?
A better question might be, do we know our client's business objectives? How deep are you delving into your client's world, both internally and externally? The more an agency understands the business goals of a client and the obstacles keeping them from success, the better marketing principles can be applied to removing obstacles and achieving those goals. You will also become much more important in the eyes of your clients, not to mention trustworthy.

Organize the toolbox. Get rid of the gimmicks.
Today the marketing landscape is more confusing for advertisers than ever. The toolbox is filled with new gadgets that are being misused. There's a lot of snake oil being peddled and we agencies should be showing the right way for our clients to go. That necessitates knowing the way.

Innovate integration.Perhaps a lack of conviction is why clients are showing less loyalty than ever. Integration is the new buzzword, but its implementation is a contradiction in most cases. My agency refers to it as the "jungle." A tangled mess of tactics that in most cases, work against one another to create a consistent brand story. Integration is an evolving method. There's room for innovation in how to use it to get the best results. Those that do so early are going to lead our industry for the foreseeable future.

A little over-the-horizon looking should come as second nature to an industry that prides itself on having the pulse of "what's next." Instead, we seem to cling to "remember when." Take a look at what you're offering your clients. Is it advertising? For your sake, I hope not.

We were attracted to this because - like everyone - we're interested to see what our good ol' cartoons look like in today's super HD world, but as we watched, it seemed apparent to us that maybe these cartoons are deeper than we originally thought.

With that, we give you Wile E. Coyote in the role that we face every day ... trying to catch the ever-more elusive consumer.

Yes, yes, and yes. Squared.

From Clickz (see original article here)

In Analytics, the Price of Light Is Less Than the Cost of Darkness
Neil Mason  |  April 26, 2011   

A while back I heard that sophisticated marketing companies such as the world’s leading brands spent about 10 percent of their marketing budget on research and measurement. Irrespective whether the number is accurate or not, it’s a good benchmark I think – 10 percent feels about right. These leading companies have been marketing brands for over 100 years and during that time they have come to understand the importance and relevance to their business in understanding the effectiveness of their activities.

I wonder what the equivalent proportion is for leading online businesses? How much do online businesses invest in measuring and tracking the effectiveness of their online activities? I suspect the answer to that is generally “too little, too late.” We all know companies that have a reputation for using analytics as part of their strategic armoury and have invested heavily in analytical technologies and have built up formidable analytic teams. These are the companies that people travel to see and hear from at events like eMetrics and Exchange. However, these companies are the exception rather than the norm.

My consulting activities with clients and prospects often trigger ideas for this column. For instance, I visited a company last week that had recently appointed a user experience manager who is responsible for Web analytics and site optimization. The client had been busy over the past six months implementing a solid and robust Web measurement tracking program. This had involved completely reimplementing their Web analytics tool, hiring a Web analyst, revisiting all the business requirements, and producing new reports and dashboards. He had also hired someone to specifically focus on site optimization and to run their testing and experimentation program. They had been busy laying the foundations, and investments had been made in people, processes, and technology. I could see how quickly they would begin to reap the rewards.

At the other end of scale, I’ve also been working with a client who is developing a brand new site. New sites don’t come cheaply, but senior stakeholders in the business are reluctant to invest in the appropriate measurement and analytics. The new site is close to launch and we’re now trying to shoe horn in analytics requirements into the tail end of the development process. They use a free tool that can cope with most of their needs but not all of them. And despite the significant investment in the new site, getting a modest budget to develop the data collection specification and the reporting configuration has been difficult.

These two experiences highlight the difference between companies that “get it” and those that don’t.

For the companies that struggle to recognize the value of investing in decent measurement and analytics, I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes from A.C. Nielsen. Arthur Nielsen used to say that “The price of light is less than the cost of darkness.” The point is elegantly made – it’s not a question of whether you can afford to invest in measurement, it’s a question of whether you can afford not to. The point of measurement and analytics is to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of decision making and to reduce the risk of failure. It also leads to better accountability, which is possibly why sometimes it’s not welcomed with open arms.

Determining or justifying the return on investment in analytics can be hard. In some cases, like multivariate testing, the return on investment can be very explicit and indeed that’s how the technologies are often sold. However, working out the ROI on an analytics team and general analytics technologies can be harder, particularly in non-transactional environments. But there is always “a cost of darkness,” and the trick is to try and work out what that cost might be. For transactional environments it might be not knowing how to improve the conversion ratio, for media environments it might be around not understanding how to monetize the traffic more effectively, and for service environments it might be about not understanding which content is helping to deflect calls from the contact center.

Although hard to prove, I believe that even small investments in measurement and analytics can return a significant ROI, particularly in the early days of adoption. Perhaps “The price of light is less than the cost of darkness” should be in the footer in every business case for investment funds for measurement and analytics.

Thanks to our client Pat French at Quality Carriers for hooking us up with this one. Truth be told, we've wondered how much track it would take to reach the parking deck out of our 10th floor window, so this kind of hits home very closely.

HOT WHEELS TO ATTEMPT WORLD'S LONGEST JUMP AT INDY 500 (May 29)
by Jeremy Korzeniewski on Apr 12th 2011 at 7:25PM
Autoblog.com 

We all did it as kids – grabbing one end of an impossibly long stretch of plastic track, heaving it up and attaching one end to the highest object we could find (usually a door) and creating a ramp at the other end with a carefully planned trajectory to score the longest possible airborne distance, then finally setting our favorite Hot Wheels car on a journey of no return.

Team Hot Wheels, a newly created group of stuntmen and extreme sports addicts, are setting out to recreate those childhood memories in the real world. To get there, the group is assembling a 100-foot-tall starting ramp in the shape of a door that leads to – you guessed it – a giant jump. The resulting flight has a goal of reaching 302 feet, which would be a new world record distance.

We don't know who's piloting the machine just yet (we suspect we'll find out for sure if it's an official record). In any case, it's the actual off-road truck, which features rear fins reminiscent of a '59 Cadillac, and the giant Hot Wheels V-Drop replica track that are the real stars here.

Are you asking yourself why Hot Wheels is going to all this trouble to promote kids toys? Well, therein lies the issue. These don't have to be just toys for kids – Hot Wheels is hoping to attract the attention of adults (males mostly, as you'd imagine) that grew up with these little cars and have fond memories of them. Collectors, take note.

In a world overflowing with data and analysis, it's easy to get carried away. Here's one of the few - but important - arguments for not being blindly data driven.

We're bummed that Matt doesn't keep up his blog that much any more, because this kind of thing is fantastic.

Abstract:

With the meteoric rise of social media experts, emerging technology gurus and new data adventists, there has to be a push against the growing thought that good (and successful) marketing can be produced through the use of data and technology only.

That might seem (I hope) like a strange concept to some folks: that technology is advancing at such a pace that traditional creative expertise is becoming obsolete. But unfortunately, it’s quickly becoming a rallying point for so-called data and tech gurus. 

Full article here.