What The Hell Are They Teaching? Best of 2012

Our next "Best of 2012" is from October. It was about marketing professors and the Pepsi Refresh project.

There was a piece in Ad Age last week featuring the astoundingly clueless opinions of marketing and business professors on the subject of the Pepsi Refresh project.

The amazing thing is that these people weren't from Southwest Arkansas State. These guys were from Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn and Notre Dame.

It makes it clear why so many young people in advertising are confused about what they're supposed to be doing. And just how out of touch these experts are.

Before we take a look at their opinions, let's review the facts:

• In 2010, Pepsi diverted scores of millions of dollars from traditional advertising (including their Super Bowl sponsorship and their traditional TV advertising) into a massive social media project.

• After one year of this, they had lost 5% of their business.

• Their sales dropped by an estimated half a billion dollars.

• They fell from their traditional 2nd place in the soft drink category to 3rd place.

• Their sales erosion increased widely compared to the previous year

• Their beverage ceo was so upset he said he was going to "blow up the place."

• To this day, they are still suffering from this debacle

• Many of the key players are now gone from Pepsi

• After burning astronomical amounts of money on this, Pepsi finally killed it in March.

If that doesn't describe a complete marketing disaster, I don't know what does. So what do the academics have to say about Refresh?

"...we don't know whether it was effective or not." 

What?! We DON'T KNOW??? Maybe you need a few research assistants to do a thesis for you, then you'll know. What has to happen to convince you that it bombed? Do lab rats have to grow two heads?

"I have read that the project had over 60 million folks involved. That is a pretty impressive accomplishment."

No, the "pretty impressive" part was how they got hundreds of millions of people to buy 5% less Pepsi. Now that's impressive.

"...it has helped further the conversation about the role of purpose in brand marketing."

Oh, the f/ing conversation! That old thing still alive on campus? Here on planet Earth, professor, we buried that putrid monkey about 2 years ago. How about this -- the "role of purpose" is to sell shit. Any further questions?

"It shows the power of making a big commitment to these causes. People really responded and said Pepsi is a good company."

Yeah, everywhere I go people can't stop talking about what a good company Pepsi is. I can hardly get a conversation going about the election or football.

"It's something that will be more and more relevant and more mainstream."

Bullshit.

First of all, no company will ever again be stupid enough to listen to the delusional blather of "social media marketing experts" and do what Pepsi did.

Second, the "mainstream" doesn't need lessons from corporate America in good citizenship. We don't need lectures from white collar windbags who hide every dollar of profit they can from the tax system. We don't need holier-than-thou pronouncements from sugar-water peddlers about their high-minded principles. We don't need exhortations from overfed sharpies about our responsibilities as citizens.

You want to sell us stuff? Fine. Tell us what you got and why we need it.

Otherwise, we can do very well without your cynical gimmicks and corporate chest-pounding disguised as social virtue.

The Facebook Monster: Best of 2012

We continue our final week of "Best of 2012" posts with this one from September.

Once upon a time, there was a thing called traditional advertising. The purpose of traditional advertising was to create demand for things.

People did this with funny television and radio commercials and pretty newspaper and magazine ads and billboards and blimps and butt danglers and hooter wobblers.

Sometimes it was darn effective. And hundreds and hundreds of brands of soda pop and toys and toothpaste and cookies and cars and beer and paper towels and cake mixes and computers and sneakers and candy bars and... well, anyway, it grew and it grew.

Traditional advertising had a funny little cousin. It was called the Yellow Pages. The Yellow Pages was different. Its purpose was not to create demand. Its purpose was to fulfill demand.

So when Timmy had already decided he wanted a pair of sneakers, he went to the Yellow Pages to find out where to buy them.

It was a handy system -- traditional advertising to create demand, and its funny little cousin to fulfill demand.

And then one day the internet came along. Advertisers, who are very, very smart at understanding what used to be true, thought that the internet would be like traditional advertising. And they used it the same way. They used it to try to create demand. They put pretty ads just about everywhere you could put one.

On this kind of site and that kind of site.

In between things and on top of things.

Before things and after things. 

But there was a problem. After 15 years of doing this, not one of these online advertisers had created a single major brand of anything. No soda pop or toys or toothpaste or cookies or cars or beer or paper towels or cake mixes or computers or sneakers or candy bars or...

Then, one day, there came along a really smart monster. The really smart monster had a silly name -- Google. This monster realized that the internet wasn't really like traditional advertising. It was more like the funny little cousin. The monster thought that the internet wouldn't be so good for creating demand, but it would be really good for fulfilling demand.

So the monster built itself a home that was very much like the funny little cousin's -- where people could go to find things they already wanted. And the monster was right. And it grew and it grew and it grew.

Now the story gets spine-tingling. One day, another monster came along. Its name was Facebook. And everybody loved this new monster. He was way more fun and friendly than the Google monster.

Now there were two advertising monsters. And they were fighting. The winner would get lots and lots of money. The loser would get lots and lots of money, too. But not as much as the winner.

Each monster had a different weapon. The Google monster's weapon was fulfilling demand. The Facebook monster's weapon was... uh-oh, you guessed it... creating demand.

So even though everybody loved the Facebook monster, it turned out that the Google monster's weapon was 25 times more powerful!

Now here's the fun part. The people who spend lots and lots of money for advertising were so fucking stupid darn silly, that after 15 years they still didn't understand this. They still thought the internet was like television and radio and newspapers and magazines and billboards and blimps and butt danglers and hooter wobblers. They thought it was really good for creating demand. And they kept spending money trying to do this. Silly guys!

Well, believe it or not, this little misunderstanding gave the Facebook monster (known to everyone on his block as "that creepy Zuckerberg kid") the idea that maybe his weapon really was powerful after all, and that if he could just find a way to redesign it so it worked really well in a new carry-around container he could win.

But, uh-oh, the problem was not where the monster's weapon was used. The problem was, the monster had the wrong weapon.

But there's a happy ending. Even though the Facebook monster had the wrong weapon, advertising people were so fucking stupid kind and generous that he still made more money than you could ever imagine.

My Social Media Paradox - A Best of 2012

For my next "Best of 2012" selection, I chose this one called "My Social Media Paradox."

Back in August, I was invited to speak at a social media conference. The hen was in the fox house. My presentation was billed as a "fireside chat" between the organizer of the event (a guy I like and respect, Jason Falls) and myself.

The first question Jason asked me went something like this...

"You have been critical of the social media marketing world from the get-go, yet you use it… quite well I might say. What's your point of contention and how can you reconcile that with your prolific use of the medium?"

I thought it was a great question.

And I thought the answer would be worthy of a blog post. I don’t remember my exact words. And since then I have had further thoughts. So here’s a combination of how I think I answered the question and what my subsequent thoughts have been. 

Let's start with why you invited me here to address this conference. There are thousands of advertising and marketing people who are skeptical of social media marketing. I am not alone. But for some reason you chose me. Why? Let’s answer this question in marketing terms.

I would suggest that the reason you chose me is that I have created a pretty successful brand called The Ad Contrarian. The Ad Contrarian brand is clearly differentiated. When you needed a “product" in my category (someone to add controversy) you knew what brand to "buy."

In the small and silly world of advertising and marketing commentary, The Ad Contrarian is probably among the top brands. It was recently named one of the awesomest ad blogs in the universe or something by the Business Insider. When I went to bed last night my two books, The Ad Contrarian and 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising were both in Amazon's top five eBooks about advertising. I'm not saying this to brag, but to make a point.

The interesting thing, as you mentioned, is that whatever success I have had in building this brand has been done solely through the use of social media. Why then am I so vocal in my criticism of the social media industry?

The first part of the answer is that having accomplished the most difficult of marketing tasks – creating a successful brand – using social media as my medium, I know how difficult it is. I know how hard I have worked at it. And knowing this, I am outraged when I have to listen to or read the idiotic nonsense of fakers. Until they have created a successful brand using social media, they have no credibility with me.

Social media is very hard work. Very few social media programs break through. Virtually every company in the country now has some kind of social media program in place. A miniscule proportion of them are having significant impact. So when I hear social media "experts" promising the moon, I get infuriated.

For example, all the nonsense I read about “content” makes me sick. I know how difficult it is to create "content" that anyone gives a shit about. I have spent every day of my life for the past 5 years creating content. I know first hand how difficult it is to break through the billions (literally) of web pages and get anyone to pay attention to your content. When I hear idiots pop-off with their facile clichés about creating “compelling content” I know they have no idea what they’re talking about

I also know how many moribund blogs, and Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds, and YouTube videos there are out there in the digi-dumpster. I know how many millions of pages of “content” are lying around like a lox.

The idea that consumers want to interact with advertising is the grand delusion of the banner advertising crowd. The idea that consumers want to interact with content is the grand delusion of the social media set.

I do not come at this (as my critics contend) as some doddering old fool who does not understand social media and consequently does not believe in it. I come at it as someone who has had far more success at it than most of my "expert" critics. I have used it successfully and have accomplished more with it than most of them will ever accomplish. I have used social media to create a brand. The only thing most of these “experts” have created is a powerpoint presentation.

The second part to my answer is this. In addition to being a reasonably successful social media “entrepreneur,” I also have this little $100 million ad agency which I run.

I don’t think there are too many social media entrepreneurs who also run an ad agency. I don’t think there are too many agency CEOs who are also social media entrepreneurs. Consequently, I think it is fair to say that I have a reasonably unique perspective.

So when I hear digital hustlers and social media phonies shooting their mouths off about how advertising is dead, and television is dead, and marketing is dead, and everything else that isn’t online or social is dead, I want to expose them. That is, after I strangle them.

They are clowns and charlatans. They are undermining the credibility of the social media industry and they are causing damage to you and to their clients.

My experience has proven to me that social media can be a valuable marketing tool. But it is not magic, it is not a miracle, and it cannot and will not replace everything that came before it.

The people who are out there making outrageous and preposterous claims, who are deploying unreliable and misleading research, who use anecdotes to masquerade as facts, whose insularity renders them devoid of perspective, and who are disrespectful toward and ignorant of the power of traditional advertising, are undermining your credibility and are giving credence to those who refer to you as the snake oil salesmen of the marketing world.

So, yes, you are right. Despite the fact that I have used social media very successfully, and although I know there are lot of talented and hard-working people in social media, I have a healthy amount of disrespect for a certain element of the social media industry.

For your own good, you and the other responsible people in your industry need, once and for all, to shut these fools and con men up.


By the way, you can find a video of my talk with Jason online at his website here.