by Doug Weaver on September 1, 2010 at 12:59PM
At the risk of making The Drift seem like the Digerati version of Oprah’s Book Club, I need to add a recently consumed– although not new — book to my strongly recommended list of “must reads.” Blue Ocean Strategy. I’m already into my second reading, with an eye on mapping the “Blue Ocean” concept to the world of online advertising and marketing.
First things first. The master premise is that in formulating strategies, companies spend far too much time benchmarking the moves of their competitors; defining exactly who is in the competitive set, what they do, how well, and how to do it better or cheaper. Because of this, most companies end up competing in “Red Oceans” for tiny margins through incremental improvements in performance or reductions in price. These are called “Red Oceans” because they’re crowded with other fish and the water is quite bloody. In our business it’s almost impossible to miss this phenomenon playing itself out across ad networks, digital agencies, technology players, data providers and sales organizations. Massive human capital, creativity and energy is burned away in a dispiriting ‘race to the bottom’ that’s inherent in a Red Ocean World.
Many breakaway successes, on the other hand, employ “Blue Ocean” strategies in which they create whole new market spaces for themselves, spaces where “…competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set.” There are a handful of core principles and strategic moves explored in the book — “Value Innovation,” looking across market boundaries, and creating a ‘New Value Curve’ — and it’s far more detailed in its tactics and examples than just about anything else out there.
And it’s hard to argue with the examples of successful strategies here: Cirque du Soleil, Southwest Airlines, [yellow tail] Australian wine, Bloomberg, NetJets and even the NYPD all employed Blue Ocean strategies and achieved magnificent results. The best part? A Blue Ocean Strategy doesn’t rely on a massive influx of funding or new resources: one of its strengths is that it helps you manage resource tradeoffs to maximize your customer value and zag while all of your former competitors are still zigging.
Think quickly of the three most dominant names in the digital media and entertainment world today and arguably you’ll come up with the same list I do: Apple, Google, Facebook. None of them achieved market dominance through benchmarking and iteration, and all created — and dominated — their own Blue Oceans. I’ve got more work to do but I’m convinced these principles can help many other talented companies break out of the Red Oceans that are sapping their value and burning out their best people.
If you’ve got your own thoughts on “Blue Ocean Strategy” please add your comments below. If you’d like to explore the concept together, drop me a line.
Comments (12)
Category: Online Marketing, Online Media, Online Sales Strategy | Tags: Bloomberg, Blue Ocean Strategy, Cirque du Soleil, NetJets, New Value Curve, NYPD, Southwest Airlines, Value Innovation, Yellow Tail
by Doug Weaver on August 30, 2010 at 10:00AM
Those who’ve read my paper and subsequent posts on “The Oreo Doctrine” will recall that it breaks the digital advertising and marketing business down into two distinct paths: Transaction and Marketecture. I got a lot of great comments from both sellers and agency professionals who told me the concept made a big difference in their careers.
Then along came Gene DeLibero, who took it to a new level. If you look on Gene’s card, he appears to be the first one to actually claim the title “Marketect.” Love it, love it, love it!
by Doug Weaver on August 26, 2010 at 1:35PM
The Web as we know it is over….time to throw away your browser and calmly evacuate via the nearest lighted exit. There’s a new game in town and you don’t want to be the last clueless executive betting on the web as an advertising and marketing medium. So sayeth Wired Magazine….in 1997.
Did you think I was talking about current Wired Editor Chris (“The Long Tail”) Anderson’s pronouncement last week about the demise of the Web? No, the original “Web is Dead” story happened way back in March 1997 in issue 5.03. The cover story celebrated “Push” and featured the sub-headline “Kiss Your Browser Goodbye: the Radical Future of Media Beyond the Web.” This radical future would be ushered in by — “broader and deeper new interfaces for electronic media: BackWeb and PointCast.” Or maybe not so much.
Big sweeping pronouncements make for great magazine covers (and in Chris Anderson’s case a veritable cottage industry of book deals and sweet public appearance fees), but they’re just terrible planning tools. In the latest Wired obituary, applications are the hot young widow in the black dress dabbing her eyes beside web’s coffin. Anderson and Wired seem entirely smitten with a future dominated by the iPad and other highly-controlled (and largely paid) channels and devices that live outside the formal boundaries of the web. But while this heavy breathing may be good for Wired and the content publishing business model, to the rest of us it’s a somewhat distracting tulip craze.
For me, the true future of digital media and marketing is far less sensational, but far more promising. The future is all about “and.” We’ll be navigating and building on a world that’s filled with web pages and apps and social media communities and video and….. Wired (for whom I worked in 1994-95) is tossing us a red herring in saying that all the meaningful financial action will shift into applications and closed environments. It’s a false choice.
When I look at the future role of the ad agency and the media sales organization, I see a focus on integration of widely disparate and channels. It’s going to be messy and impressionistic. It’s not going to fit into a pretty little box. Even if that box has an Apple logo on it.
Think I’ve got it wrong? Have a POV of your own. Add your comments below.
by Doug Weaver on August 19, 2010 at 10:12AM
I’m on the coast of Maine this week recharging and getting ready for the fall. As always, I’m toting several books, both paper and electronic, to keep the brain in shape. I’m also thinking back on some business classics that I’ve brought on previous trips. Whether you’re thinking big industry thoughts or just looking for a few new tactical sales moves, you may find something on the summer reading list worth downloading.
The Shallows (Nicholas Carr) explores the effect of all this internet searching and skimming on the structure and process of our brains. Our very ability to consume and process large amounts of information all at once has been compromised. And the kicker is, it’s not a generational thing: even if you’re over 50, your cumulative internet usage has changed the way you process. They’re not fully formed for me yet, but there are lessons here for everything from product marketing to web page design to e-mail.
The Go-Giver (Bob Burg and John David Mann) was recently suggested by a new friend in the industry, and I’m very grateful for that recommendation. Told as a dialogue-intensive ‘fable,’ the book will take you all of about two hours to finish, but the sales – and life — wisdom is so significant that you’ll want to read it again immediately. What happens when you base your personal strategy on generosity instead of the zero-sum thinking that drives most sales behavior.
Six Pixels of Separation (Mitch Joel). I picked this one up for two reasons. First, because Mitch was coming to speak at a local gathering in Burlington, Vermont, where I live; second because I felt I really needed to check my assumptions and trajectory where it comes to the social media future of my business. If you’re living on the periphery of social media, as I am, there’s a ton of great tactical insights and some good reality checks on your strategy and motivation. Favorite quote so far: “Social media isn’t about getting known; it’s about being ‘knowable.’”
The Comanche Empire (Pekka Hamalainen). Those who know me well know that I’m a major history geek. This book won the 2009 Bancroft Prize (the Pulitzer of American History) and offers a fresh revisionist look at this remarkable international power. Any connection to the internet or media? Not really, except for this: The story that’s always been told about Native American History has been one of inevitable conquest and perpetual, incremental retreat. But the real story is far richer. What happens at the borders of these civilizations is where the really significant stuff happens. When I read this passage, I immediately thought about the “clash” between digital and traditional media and the “inevitable” advance of digital. The really significant stuff is happening at the borders where we engage one another.
Make What You Say Pay and Metaphorically Selling (Anne Miller). Anne is the consummate pro who’s spent decades studying our sales language and how to make it pack more of a punch. “Make What You Say Pay” is her most recent book, but “Metaphorically Selling” is also very much worth having close by whenever you’re writing to a customer. In my line of work, I see far too much time spent on e-mails and other correspondence that simply has no effect with the client. If you fear you might have this particular disease, Anne is your Jonas Salk.
The One Thing You Need to Know (Marcus Buckingham). The single best and most useful management and leadership book I’ve read. I quote from it constantly, often to myself as I struggle to manage my own business.
Engaged Leadership (Clint Swindall). Great follow up read to “The One Thing…” Written as a series of parables, it gives the sales manager some good tactical guidance on cultivating employee engagement, which is the soil in which success and excellence grow.
I’d love some more recommendations, so please add yours below in comments. Whether you’re on the train or on the beach, have a great week.
by Doug Weaver on August 11, 2010 at 10:32AM
The consumer privacy series run by The Wall Street Journal last week is still pumping current into a third-rail social and political issue that will fry just about anyone who touches it. Last week in this space I challenged both the motivation and wisdom of the starstruck industry execs who fed the story. Now its time to look at the reaction from “our side,” both official and unofficial. And I’m afraid it’s about as effective and authoritative as Deputy Barney Fife at his most menacing.
I love so much about what Randall Rothenberg and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have done recently, but his opinion piece in yesterday’s USA TODAY left a lot to be desired. The IAB CEO sought to disarm the Journal’s wacky conspiracy theory by layering on one of his own. According to Rothenberg, the whole controversy is driven by “activists who want to obstruct essential Internet technologies and return the U.S. to a world of limited consumer choice in news, entertainment, products and services.” So if you’re concerned about being tracked with cookies and beacons you are the Taliban. Nice.
Also in the response is a nod to the town-hall meeting in which we have a “real American” stand up to demonstrate the problem. “Regulating (online ad technology tools) unwisely,” says Rothenberg, “puts at risk people such as Tim Carter, a former Cincinnati home contractor who now makes a living with his ad-supported site AsktheBuilder.com, and James and Susan Martin, who work full time and care for their kids from their Montross, Va., home, thanks to their site, Ikeafans.com.” So if you regulate online tracking Tim Carter goes back to hanging drywall and the poor Martin children become latchkey kids in a house full of elegantly simple Swedish furniture.
Finally Rothenberg leans on “the Dorothy principle.” Like Glinda the good witch of the North, he tells consumers, “Why, you’ve had the power all along!” You can go dump your cookies, shut them off and navigate the web without them. As Randy knows and the consumer now believes thanks to the Journal, it’s a lot more complicated than that. And a consumer who goes to the IAB website and sees names like Audience Science, Crowd Science, Data Xu, Exact Target and BackChannel Media isn’t going going to think it’s much of a fair fight.
This isn’t the first time I’ve written on this issue (see “The Vast Luddite Conspiracy Theory” from March 2nd) and it won’t be the last. I agree with Randall Rothenberg and the IAB on many of the facts. But the battlefield here is not about facts, it’s all about image, and on that front we’re getting our asses kicked. Dismissing privacy advocates as marginal extremists is not a long term strategy. (Today’s extremist issue is tomorrow’s dominant trend.) I think a sustainable privacy strategy begins with acknowledgment of the problem that exists. Facts is facts: the “Targetocracy” in our business is big, wildly overcapitalized and a little bit out of control. What I think consumers want to hear from Randy and the IAB is “we take the issues raised by the Journal very seriously. The issues and the technology are quite complicated, but we remain committed to rooting out the bad guys and maintaining an environment that’s rich, free and privacy focused.”
As one of the IAB’s earliest board members and one who’s contributed a great deal of time and effort toward its mission over the years, I believe it’s time for the group to act less like the Chamber of Commerce and more like the Internal Affairs Department. There are both rogues and careless polluters in our industry and their actions poison the environment for everyone. Not everyone wants regulation, but the consumer wants to know someone’s in charge. Who’s that going to be?
by Doug Weaver on August 6, 2010 at 11:50AM
Representatives Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) together expressed outrage about this week’s Wall Street Journal ‘expose’ on cookies and privacy. Just for grins, I went to the websites of both congressmen to see if either of them would drop a cookie on me. For those keeping your own demagoguery score card at home, the tally is: Barton 1, Markey 0. I’ll be sending a note to Rep. Barton asking him what he intends to do with my data 
by Doug Weaver on August 4, 2010 at 2:28PM
I wanted to let the dust settle a bit before commenting on the beat-down administered to online targeting by the Wall Street Journal last week. In case you missed it, the Journal does for cookies, tags and beacons what the Washington Post did for outsourced spying and Wikileaks did for the Afghan war effort. (OK, so we’ll deduct a few points for lack of journalistic ambition.)
Most of the blowback from the online ad industry has been predictable, falling into one of two categories: “They’re being so unfair to us!” or “My company’s privacy solution is better than that!” Roll it all up and the digital marketing world’s response can be summed up in four words: We’re missing the point.
First off, every PR firm or company publicist who arranged interviews for their CEOs for this story should be fired. If the Journal had done video interviews I’m sure they’d look a lot like those done by The Daily Show several times each week: earnest looking reporter quietly mocking the interview subject by editing out all but the most incendiary quotes. (“We can segment it all the way down to one person” ….“Who knows how far we’d take it?”) Have your PR guys ever read the journal? For like ten years its technology expert Walt Mossberg was the Inspector Javert of cookies. They’ve always been itching to turn over the digital targeting apple cart. Did you really think they were going to celebrate your technological prowess?
Truth is, the Journal did what a news organization does: they took the point of view of the consumer and drastically simplified a complex scenario for them. Say what you will about the conclusions they drew, but Journal reporters were rigorous, focused and prepared. I wish the same could be said for the subjects of their story.
I said in a speech last May that the average consumer would probably be mortified to hear us talk about targeting and data. And now they have. The Journal article may repel consumers and draw the righteous indignation of Congress, but above all it showed a targeting and data “industry” that was not ready for prime time. Sites being unaware of how many third-party cookies were being dropped on their consumers (159, in the case of Dictionary.com); Comcast’s vendor saying it was “a mistake” to deploy 55 flash cookies on the site….really? In the immortal words of Richard Pryor, “Who’s in charge here?”
Read carefully: This is not an anti-technology, anti-data or anti-targeting rant. It’s an anti-not-having-your-shit-together rant. Truth be told, a lot of sites and networks are just rushing the process, forming alliances without deeply considering the implications. We’re trading care for speed while also largely ignoring the most important question: What’s in all this for the consumer? As I said in that same set of remarks in May, all that talk about targeting creating a better ad experience or targeted ads underwriting the content experience is pretty weak.
Is this article fatal to online targeting. No. But it represents one more missed opportunity to positively define the role of technology and personalization in the online ecosystem. We may not get many more.
Disagree with me? Want to continue the conversation? Check in below.
by Doug Weaver on July 27, 2010 at 8:00AM
As I did a few weeks ago when John Wooden passed away, I’m writing a very personal post today to mark the death of someone very special. Daniel Schorr died last Friday. And if this blog about media and marketing in the digital age seems an odd place to commemorate a 93 year old newsman who started his career on radio in post World War II Europe, just stay with me.
Schorr was a fixture on Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News when I was a kid, but his news career went much further back. He was one of Edward R. Murrow’s “Boys” and came to prominence by conducting a no-holds-barred interview with Nikita Kruschev in 1957. Above all he believed in getting the story and in speaking truth to power. He famously found himself on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,” an inclusion he discovered as he was reading the list aloud to his viewers. Over the past dozen years he was a part of my Saturday morning ritual, offering a startlingly cogent and honest weekly news analysis on National Public Radio….which he did virtually until the day he died.
I’m not taking the time here to eulogize Daniel Schorr for his journalism or his morality. Here I want to celebrate his sense of reinvention. He was born before the existence of commercial radio, did some of his earliest reporting in newspapers and covered both foreign and domestic affairs for the premier news organization of its time. When his reporting got a little too honest for CBS he walked away. But rather than fade into the sunset as a man of 60 might have at the time, he reinvented himself by becoming the first Washington presence on fledgling CNN. A half dozen years later, he moved to NPR, which would provide his fourth (radio) and fifth (web) reporting vehicles. Oh, and he sang with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention at one point. Above all, he brought a relevant and powerful point of view to the news business, a viewpoint that transcended media forms and technology.
Looking at that life, what strikes me is how many of us are already digging in our heels, convinced that we’ve got things all figured out. How conservative and self-satisfied we’ve become in a medium that’s less than 20 years old, a medium that was invented when Daniel Schorr was 75.
If you’ve read this far, maybe you have at least some passing familiarity with the man. If this post helps pass on even a spark of his insatiable energy and curiosity, then I’m well pleased. As I think he’d be as well.
by Doug Weaver on July 22, 2010 at 8:00AM
I know this is going to sound like one of those “when I was young things were different” rants. But stay with me. Up until probably the middle years of the Nixon administration, the common descriptor for the TV in your living room wasn’t ‘plasma’ or ‘hi-def’ but simply “color.” As in, “Hey, the Schneiders just got a new color TV!” or “Mom, I’m sleeping over at Eddie’s house so we can watch Batman on his color TV.”
Ultimately, of course, the presence of color became so ubiquitous that we lost all need for the modifier. From that point forward it was just “TV.” I’m starting to think it will be this way with Social Media. It seems to me that we can easily project and imagine the day when all media is social. Look around and you can already see the signs. Thumbs up “like” symbols, rating systems, forwarding, feedback tools, comment boxes….they’ve quickly become part of everything we read or do online, a trend I think only accelerates at a dizzying point from here on out.
I don’t think it stops with when we walk away from the browser either. “Event TV” — the Oscars, the Super Bowl, the MTV Video Music Awards — is already a shared social experience thanks to message boards, Twitter, Facebook and who knows how many other players. As TV becomes more and more “connected,” the social sharing aspect of viewing escalates dramatically. Heck, “group viewing” (“grooving?”) may even be the ultimate answer to time shifting: you now have a reason to watch “30 Rock” at airtime rather than on TiVo, because that’s when your friends will be watching it and it will be a shared social experience. Digital saves the financial base of television. Oh, the irony!
To their credit, Facebook understood the basic truth of this idea very early. “Social Media” to too big and powerful of a phenomenon to be confined to a single place, even a place as big as Facebook.com. So they’ve rolled out Facebook Connect in an effort to become the social connective tissue of the entire web, if not of all electronic media. Whether they are the ones to achieve that end or not, the end itself is preordained.
So you won’t catch me using social media much longer. I’ll just be consuming media…..socially.
by Doug Weaver on July 15, 2010 at 7:00AM
In 1992, Jerry and George famously pitched “a show about nothing” to executives at NBC, hoping that a thinly-veiled, narcissistic rewrite of their own shallow lives would bring sitcom riches. (That the formula had already worked in real life is just beautifully ironic.) Today far too many of us are still having “Seinfeld Meetings” — gatherings, sales calls and presentations about nothing — and they’re certainly not making us richer in any sense of the word.
What’s a Seinfeld Meeting? How is it possible that a meeting can be about nothing? They happen (or maybe don’t happen) constantly, and they could be afflicting you or your team members. Some examples:
The General Presentation: Ah, the centerpiece of so many sales marketing efforts. But call up a customer and ask “How would you like to see our general presentation?…you know, the exact same thing we’d show to just about anybody?” If a presentation is truly general, you’re making absolutely no traction, leaving no lasting memory, filling time. Seinfeld meeting.
The Lunch and Learn: The lunch and learn lets the agency media group project an illusory sense of fairness and inclusion while also making the sales rep feel as if she’s getting her day in court. But, alas, she’s trotting out the general pitch and it’s unlikely there’s anyone in the room with the seniority and sway to really commit to anything. Worse yet, a big check mark goes next to the site’s name on the agency blackboard. “Why would we see you again? You were just here.”
The ‘Get to Know You’ Meeting: “I’ll ask what kept you awake last night….you rattle off some canned objectives and stats…..I’ll then launch into some version of my general pitch…..and we’ll both walk away from the encounter with absolutely no lasting connection.
In each of these cases, the seller is confusing activity with progress. If you want to stop having Seinfeld Meetings then start putting a sharp point on everything you do. Bring a strong point-of-view into the meeting that the customer can react to. Set an agenda based on client business needs, not on your need to “tell your story.” Come in prepared to make a difference in the customer’s business. And if you’re lucky enough to get face time with a real customer, don’t assume you’ll get a second meeting to come back with your proposal, because you won’t.
Ask yourself “What exactly is this meeting going to be about anyway?” Because that’s just what the customer is asking as well.
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