Believe in Yourself Bing, Because No One Else Will

Much has been made of some comments made at this year's Web2.0 conference by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.  Especially an odd sort of back-handed pitch for his own search engine:

“Take any search you want and try it out on Bing, and try it out on Google... 70 percent of the time, you probably won’t care, 15 percent of the time you’ll probably like us better, and 15 percent of the time you’ll like the other guy better.”

So let me get this right:  Your argument is that people should switch from Google to Bing, because your product isn't specifically worse?  Steve, are you unfamiliar with the concept of 'damning with faint praise?'

This would be like my grandmother saying that I am not a bad looking kid.  Does that happen?  No, every grandmother thinks her grandkids are the most beautiful in the world, no matter how homely, and they should.  If the CEO of a company can't say that his product is the best, how is anyone who isn't biased supposed to think so?

Hell, if you are just going to make up numbers, which is clearly where the 70/15/15 came from, at least say that it is 70/20/10 in favor of Bing.  What, you can't even give your own people a 5% edge?  Hell, call it a margin of error, they are fake numbers anyhow!

This has to be one of the least inspirational plugs, and frankly, I wouldn't be thrilled if I actually worked at Bing.  You expect your boss, the public face of the work you do every day, to go out there and at least say that you are the best, even if behind closed doors he pushes you to be better.  There is nothing wrong with saying "we have work to do, we can always get better," but this feels like a defeatist attitude.

It's bad salesmanship, and it's bad leadership.  For shame, Steve Ballmer

Behavior of a Blog Reader

Ok guys, this is a straight-up request for feedback.  If you have a moment, either comment here, or respond on twitter @SEMiotic5, or shoot me an e-mail (since most of you know me).

I have been finding that if I post a new update in the afternoon and tweet a link, I get very little traffic compared to when I do the exact same thing around 10 am.  My rationalization for this is that people are most likely to be active on Twitter/blogs between 10-11, once they have had some coffee and checked their e-mail, but before the pressure of the end-of-day deadlines start getting to them.

Is this accurate?  I have a very small sample for this, so I can't be sure if you just don't happen to like the content that I have been posting in the afternoons, compared to the pieces that have gone up in the morning.  This could easily be random based on the amount of data that I have, but the beauty of having direct connections with your audience is that I don't have to wait for the sample to grow.

Also, if I am way off base feel free to let me know.  If the content is bad (or too long), I can't promise that it will improve, but it can't hurt for me to know about the problem.

Here is my grumpy kitten:

Google+ : What's Their Angle?

With Google+ finally rolled out to the general public and membership reaching 40 million users, the question becomes not whether it will be successful, but has it already peaked?  We know that brand profiles will be available soon, but beyond that what offerings are on the horizon to make this social network a daily destination, rather than a set-and-forget option in your Gmail account settings?  What is Google really after here?

Their search engine, the bread and butter of the Google empire, still holds around 60% of the market share, with the rest carved up between Yahoo and Bing, and to a lesser degree Ask.com and AOL.  You have to figure that if Google could get their social service to take a similar 30% bite out of Facebook, they would be absolutely thrilled.  Are they likely to do that though?  How many people do you know who have signed up for Google+ and stopped using Facebook?  Right now it seems more like a curiosity than a platform that people are going to move over to full time.

Normally to make a new market entrance like this really successful you want to have some integration in order to take the burden off of the user.  As of now, one of the main complaints that you will hear about Google+ isn’t that the features aren’t attractive, but simply that the initial set-up is work, and more importantly, work that the users have already done on Facebook.  Inertia is a powerful force, and people don’t like having to do the same thing twice.  If you could import your friend list, copy all of your “likes” as ”+1s,” and port your privacy settings over, it might be more attractive, but there is no way that this unholy marriage will ever be consummated.

Which brings us back to the question of, “what is Google’s” long-term strategy here?”  Are they simply looking to get users to spend time on another of their properties so that they will have space for a few display ads? 

In marketing, Facebook ads are certainly something that people are paying for, though the results have been mixed and there is still relatively little information provided in terms of on-site metrics.  Measuring the success of a FB buy is difficult, and the question of whether to direct users to a brand site versus a profile page remains unanswered, depending on the goal of the campaign and whether one platform or the other holds some sort of unique user experience like a contest or a promotional giveaway.  The advantage to Facebook ads is almost entirely in the demographic targeting that is available, which makes sense given how much personal information people include in their profiles.

Still, to make that attractive as a marketing feature, you need a certain critical mass both in terms of the number of users (since for any given company/product you are only targeting a narrow slice of the consumers), as well as the time that they spend on the network per day (since they won’t see many ads if they just log in and log out).  Google+ has nowhere near that volume yet, and won’t soon, as they are still below 10% of the membership that Facebook has.

The “hangout” real-time meeting function offers a bit more interest and utility, and is certainly an offer that is distinct from anything that Facebook does, but it is a very limited engagement option, and it isn’t a hub that people will spend hours logged into every day.  As a multimedia tool it is appealing, but not necessarily a draw to the casual social networking user.

Really, you have to figure that for Google the goal here is just to be able to collect more user data, and be able to connect it to the vast archive of data that they have already.  Imagine if you could marry the personal information that users put in their Facebook profile, to the detailed search logs that are created when those users look things up in Google.  The dossier that Google will be able to produce on 50-100 million users will be so detailed and in-depth that the retargeting (and regular targeting) options will be incredible.  Having not only demographic information to target your consumers with, but also an explicit search history will allow an even greater level of ad relevance than Facebook can offer now (which is why people wonder why they haven’t gotten into the search game yet).

Taking this one step further though, I wonder if what we are seeing won’t lead back to Google TV.  Remember that idea?  When your television was going to become your main point of contact with the internet as well?  I wonder if they are not setting themselves up for an incredible targeted TV buy application in the future. 

Think about it:  The real problem with television advertising has always been a lack of targeting capability.  You can show during certain times or on certain networks when you think your targeting audience will be watching, but other than that you are just blasting your message out into the world and hoping you hit something.  It is the shotgun approach to marketing, and not very efficient.

But imagine if your consumers have Google TV.  They are logged into their profile to see if they have any messages from friends (or maybe they just finished a “hangout” using the built in webcam, or a partnership with Microsoft and their Kinect hardware), then that runs in the background while they watch television. 

Suddenly, Mountain Dew wants to buy an ad, and Google can say to them, “we will show your TV spot only to males, aged 14-32, who have listed an interest in mountain biking, extreme sports, computer games, programming, soda, rock music, Doritos, or whatever else, based on their Google+ profiles.  You pay based on the available impressions that we can give you at whatever time, so if it is 8 pm. on a Thursday and there are 2.4 million people who fit the criteria that you set up, we will deliver you TV spot to all of them, and only them, for $XXXX.”

Think of the revolution in advertising that could take place if Google can just get people to be logged into the device that they watch TV on.  Suddenly, most of the inefficiency of TV buys disappears, and Google has a massive back-door entrance to a marketplace that they have only recently established a toe-hold in.  How this would need to be structured with the networks is another thing, but as more and more media is consumed on YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu even that problem becomes more manageable.

Google doesn’t have to fight Facebook, they just have to play in the space long enough to gather the user data that they need.  How does this not make sense?  If it isn’t Google’s plan, it should be.  More specific targeting is the trend in the advertising world, and this is a way to bring search-level relevance to the massive budget world of TV, with Google in prime position to lead the charge, if they can only put all of the pieces together.

This may only be a wild theory today, but check back in a few years.  I will take wagers.

History's Greatest Moments #1

For years I have been systematically scouring primary sources, collecting and writing notes/commentary on all of the most amazing historical moments and people, and how they represent the best traits that a man can hope to possess.  The best thing that I can do with them is share them out, because there are so many great stories that no one ever hears.  This feature of the blog will save you literally thousands of hours of reading to get at the finest gems history has to offer.

Luckily, there is even a business case here.  The qualities that make a great man also make a great business man.  Today’s lesson is about leading by example, not letting your title/position get in the way of work that needs to be done, and accepting responsibility once it is taken on.

The inaugural episode of this regular feature comes from the memoirs of Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcellin, Baron de Marbot.  A French soldier during the Napoleonic wars, he was one of the most astounding people that I have ever come across from any time period, and will certainly make a number of appearances here.  This story however, takes place when he was an officer on the staff of Marshal Lannes, at the Battle of Ratisbon in 1809.

With the Austrian forces inside the walled city, French attempts to storm the main gates had failed twice before artillery opened a breach in the wall.  However, the breach was high up, on the far side of a moat-like ditch, and was heavily defended.  Seizing the breach and gaining a foothold in the city fell to Lannes and his corps, but the first group of 50 volunteers was virtually annihilated in a hail of gunfire as soon as they left cover.  Another 50 volunteers came forward and took up the ladders to scale the wall, but met with the same fate.  Here I will turn you over to Marbot:

“Cooled by these two repulses, the troops made no response to the marshal’s third call for volunteers.  If he had ordered one or more companies to march, they would, no doubt, have obeyed; but he knew well what a difference there is in point of effect between obedience on the soldiers’ part and dash; and for the present danger volunteers were much better than troops obeying orders.

Vainly, however, did the marshal renew his appeal to the bravest of a brave division; vainly did he call upon them to observe that the eyes of the Emperor and all the Grand Army were on them.  A gloomy silence was the only reply, the men being convinced that to pass beyond the walls of the building into the enemy’s fire was certain death.  At length, Lannes exclaiming, ‘Well, I will let you see that I was a grenadier before I was a marshal, and still am one,’ seized a ladder, lifted it, and would have carried it towards the breach.  His aides-de-camp tried to stop him; he resisted, and got angry with us.  I ventured to say, ‘Monsieur le Marechal, you would not wish us to be disgraced, and that we should be if you were to receive the slightest wound in carrying that ladder to the ramparts as long as one of your aides-de-camp was left alive.’  Then, in spite of his efforts, I dragged the end of the ladder from him, and put it on my shoulder, while de Viry took the other end, and our comrades by pairs took up other ladders.

At the sight of a marshal disputing with his aides-de-camp for the lead of the assault, a shout of enthusiasm went up from the whole division.  Officers and soldiers wished to lead the column, and in their eagerness for this honour they pushed my comrades and me about, trying to get hold of the ladders.  If however we had given them up, we should seem to have been playing a comedy to stimulate the troops.  The wine had been drawn, and we had to drink it, bitter as it might be.  Understanding this, the marshal let us have our way, though fully expecting to see the greater part of his staff exterminated as they marched at the head of this perilous attack.”

Party System Has Outlived Its Usefulness

In sports, we are often taught that true fans root for (or against) the laundry, not the players.  A roster turns over, players get traded, retire, or leave through free agency.  It doesn’t matter who plays for the Red Sox, I am always going to want them to beat the Yankees.  I would be downright gleeful if they didn’t lose a game to New York for the next five years.  I have trouble understanding how Yankees fans date Red Sox fans, but I have seen it happen.

The problem is that this mentality has spilled over into politics.  You root for Democrats, or you root for Republicans, and the politicians themselves act as if the two parties were adversarial, rather than collaborative.  Imagine if your company’s divisions acted like this.  What if the Display team and the Search team couldn’t agree on how to divide the Digital budget for 2011, so they simply froze it so that neither side could get anything done.  Meanwhile, the client is stuck on the sidelines watching their products not being advertised.  That would last for about 10 seconds, until your agency were fired.

In theory, both parties belong to the same company, with the same goal: to ensure peace and prosperity for the citizens of the country.  The idea of a party isn’t strictly terrible, either.  A group of individual representatives coming together to achieve common goals and push forward a collective agenda makes sense, as long as it works.  Any organizational structure is the right one if it contributes to a functioning body, be it a government or a corporation.

The issue is that it isn’t working, and it has been slowly descending into paralysis for years as allegiance to parties became more important than individual contribution.  This is ultimately the crux of the biscuit, and what brings me to the most obvious solution:

Get rid of the useless categorization.

How about instead of choosing a team, voters actually elect individuals.  Vote for an official because you think he/she has integrity, or has good ideas, or is an able administrator.  Make every candidate run on their own merits, with their own funding.  Then, you will have a collection of bright, capable people whose views are actually somewhat representative of their constituents, and can work together unrestrained by party lines.

As it stands now, politicians have no choice but to adhere to party stricture, if they want to have a chance of winning/keeping their post.  You aren’t likely to replace an incumbent without the financial and PR backing of a party.  If you won’t toe a line, they will nominate someone who will.  The laundry is what matters in the election process, not the player.  If you put the party war chest and PR machine behind basically anyone, they become a viable candidate.

Ultimately though, this is a matter of practicality.  Would I love to live in a country where we just elected the best 100 individuals to be Senators, locked them in a room and said “solve some problems?”  Hell yes.  Do I think it will happen?  Of course not.  But what they are doing right now, isn’t working.

We live in a results-driven world.  When your job is to legislate, and set budget allocations so that the government can do its job, that’s what the people expect you to do.  If the current system isn’t working, it is completely unacceptable to stubbornly keep on doing the same old thing.  When things don’t work, you have to identify the problem, and then come up with a solution that involves doing something different.  In my industry, and I suspect most industries, “test & learn” is a phrase you hear a lot of.  If your results are satisfactory, develop a theory, and run with it.  If it doesn’t work you stop, but at least you a.) gained some valuable information about what doesn’t work, and b.) YOU DID SOMETHING. 

Doing nothing isn’t a solution, and neither party can sell the current service that they are providing to the “consumer” (in this case Americans) with any degree of honesty.  I would rather see our politicians try something to fix the economy and see if fail, than see them refuse to do anything because it’s either a potential liability for them if it fails, or a potential win for the other party if it succeeds.

You (I am shifting to speaking directly to the politicians, because it adds narrative force) aren’t doing your jobs right now, period, and a lot of people depend on you.  We as a people are sick of excuses, and finger-pointing, and empty rhetoric.  Just show us that you are even trying to help.  Pretend for a moment that you aren’t athletes playing in the big Republicans-Democrats rivalry game, and that you actually care about the people you supposedly govern for.  Make sacrifices, think outside of the box, don’t factor the 2012 elections into your decision making.

Can’t figure out how to compromise on budgets?  Here’s an idea:  Every Senator takes the 2011 budget and has to make a 1% change somewhere, in any program.  He writes it on a slip of paper anonymously, and hands it in.  That’s it.  If you personally hate Medicare, you can choose to take 1% away there.  If you feel that the Pentagon budget is too high, take 1% away there.  If you think that infrastructure is a pressing need, add your 1% to the Highway Department.  By making it anonymous, everyone will feel free to actually do what they think is best for the country, not their party.  By making it an aggregate, naturally, less popular programs will lose money and more popular ones will gain.  Chances are the final result won’t make everyone happy, but no one will be able to say they didn’t have a hand in it.  As Calvin & Hobbes taught us, “A good compromise leaves everyone unhappy.”

Is that idea unreasonable?  How about this:  TAKE TURNS.  We can learn from children on this one.  You don’t think the Democratic plan is a good one?  Fine, that’s an opinion you can have.  But let it pass, give it 6-12 months, and see what happens.  If it doesn’t work, do a post-mortem and try to figure out why, take some lessons from it, and then give the Republicans a shot.  Keep taking turns trying solutions until you hit on a fix, if you aren’t able to work together on one.

We recognize that this is a tough situation, and that you guys have an uphill battle in front of you, but give us a little credit.  We can forgive mistakes, and we can forgive failures, but inaction is unforgivable.

Steve Jobs: The Man and the Myth (1955-2011)

Steve Jobs died yesterday.   May he rest in Peace.

(Note: if you don’t have time to read this whole post, skip to the last 2-3 paragraphs)

Basically everyone on earth already knows about it.  I had the same shock as everyone else, and as someone who works (roughly) in the technology space, it has been a big deal in the circles that I run in.  However, I very quickly found myself surprised and a little dismayed at the direction public discourse went in mourning the man.

I got into a brief back-and-forth with the most prolific Twitter user in my industry, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, when he said “This is when you wish the US had knighthoods.  Perhaps a presidential or congressional recognition of Steve Jobs,” with a link to the list of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients.

Let me say now what I said then:  I have no desire to diminish the man’s abilities or accomplishments.  I was a fan of both his products (though I never owned a Mac or iPod), and even more his presentations and style as a CEO.  He was an innovative business leader, and committed to building a good product and marketing it effectively.

That said, I question the deification that is taking place here.  Great business man?  Yes.  Great individual?  Check.  Great contributor to humanity?  Not clear.  Bill Gates said “The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.”  He could have been talking about Winston Churchill, or Nelson Mandela, and I guess that’s what’s bothering me about all of this.  People who have actually given more to the world die with a fraction of the fanfare. 

I should mention, he obviously deserves no blame for this.  He didn’t write any of this, and he deserves to be mourned and respected just the same as anyone else who dies.  It’s the hero worship that I don’t get.  He wasn’t just an industrialist, he made high-end consumer electronics.   They are luxury items, no matter how much we love them.  I am thrilled that I can now watch YouTube videos on the subway, but I would argue that Google has contributed far the value to the world in making information more accessible.  However, since Larry Page (or Sergey Brin) isn’t the huge personality that Jobs was, the response to his eventual passing will be muted in comparison.

I need to keep interrupting myself here to make sure that people realize, I have no problem with saying nice things about a man who died.  It is appropriate, and I would hope that people will speak kindly of me when I am gone (though I don’t count on it). 

For all his strengths as a business man, he was conspicuously less involved with philanthropy than fellow billionaires like Branson, Buffett, and Gates.  He paid himself a salary of only $1 as head of Apple, but made about $8-9 billion in stock options and investments, which he paid very little in taxes on, and was not a supporter of the Buffett school of taxing wealth generation as regular income.  In fact, he was the subject of both a criminal investigation and a lawsuit from his own board members for securities fraud and costing the company money in a shady valuation of his stock compensation. 

Now, again, let me be clear.  He should not be condemned for any of this.  They are his opinions, and it was his money to do what he liked with.  However, generosity of spirit, belief in the civic value of giving back to the community and government fairly, and compassion for the many are exactly the traits that make Gates and Buffett figures that transcend their business personalities.  As far as screwing his own company, the criminal investigation went away, but the lawsuit didn’t.  I imagine that it will now, unless his estate is held liable for the $7 billion in damages that the board of directors was seeking.

I feel like this is still coming across as critical, and that isn’t my goal.  I am more than happy to raise a glass to the memory of a guy who by all accounts was a good man, a great CEO, a thought leader in his industry, and a beloved husband and father who died too young.  I mean that.  I am genuinely saddened by his passing, and in the loss of his spirit, zeal, and drive to be the best we have certainly lost something that will be difficult to replace in such a compelling package.

I’m just saying, let’s celebrate the man for what he was, rather than trip over ourselves in a competition to see who can best praise him for being something that he wasn’t.

Best Practices for Blogs

Ok, I am new at this, so it figures that I am going to stumble my way to competence.  All the great content in the world isn't going to make this blog visually stimulating.  People like pictures, and they are more likely to remember a point that is made with an image than just text.  Several kind people have tried desperately to teach me this lesson in my PowerPoint decks, and it is only now starting to sink in.

Images help recall, apparently.  If you hear some information, after 3 days you will remember 10% of it.  If you see it in conjunction with a picture, that number goes up to 65%

(source: Najjar, LJ (1998) Principles of educational multimedia user interface design (via Brain Rules by John Medina, 2008), via Scott Sorokin)

You know what else people like?  Cute kitten pictures.  I just so happen to have a very pretty cat:

This little darling is my research assistant, and she performs such valuable functions as chewing on books and papers, walking across the keyboard, and drinking from/knocking over my water glass.

What you have here is a straight-up cheap trick, but it is also a test.  I have a feeling that posts including pictures of a kitten will get more traffic than a carefully thought out argument, but I would really like to be proven wrong.  Either way, this should fulfill a promise I made to my sister in Boston to get a picture of my cat online.

Plus, it should help people recall this blog.  Remember, our slogan is SEMiotic5 = kittens!

Is Data a Big Deal in Advertising?

How does this still qualify as a question when it has been answered?  Enough to warrant a "big prediction" and a panel discussion?  Apparently, Omnicom thinks so.

The idea that it is going out on a limb to say that "everyone in the advertising industry will be 'partly a data scientist.'" is frustrating because it should be that way already, and should have been for years.

Obviously, I did most of my ranting on this a few posts back, but seeing it in print just gets my hackles up all over again.  When I got into this business, it was basically because I spent a lot of free time on sabermetrics and baseball, and I wanted to work in a field where data analytics was the job.  I honestly assumed that every SEM account team would have a dedicated stats person, rather than 2-3 analytics people for an entire office, if you are lucky. 

On one hand, I should be glad, because every single advertising person who hasn't completely embraced the statistical analysis side of the industry is making me look better in comparison.  As a search person, you would think that it would be a huge advantage over traditional media and thus cause money and favor to flow to my part of the business. 

The reality is though, while it seems like a no-brainer to some, the very fact that there is an article like this means that the boat is being missed as we speak.  If you saw a newspaper article in 1943 headlined "FDR Concerned that Hitler Might Cause Some Trouble," wouldn't you worry about what the heck FDR had been up to since 1936?

Is it worse to be stating the obvious, or stating the obvious years after it should have been obvious?

On the other hand, apparently we have a bright future to look forward to, with numbers and stuff.