Sep 07 0 comments
Marketing Science

The Attention Economy and the Canadian Film and Television Industry

I had a great conversation with a producer of Canadian film and television.

Over the course of our discussion, which focused on the lack of money for the Canadian Film and Television Industry, I came to realize that there was a fundamental problem in monetization and a pretty hefty gap in motivators.

Success for a director or an artist is if a large audience sees their art and appreciates it. They don’t want commercialism to get in the way of their art – for instance – the mere notion that perhaps the protagonist could be drinking a Diet Doctor Pepper causes the blood to boil. Naturally, history is littered with studio and network executives actively messing with the creative arc of a series. Citizen Kane wouldn’t be 1/10th as good as it is if Orson didn’t keep the execs at bay. So, I can appreciate the fear.

Success for a broadcaster is the show making money. The show makes money if advertisers pay a lot money per ad unit. An advertiser makes money if the ads placed during that show generate high GRP / TRP AND the demand curve shifts to the right.

In film, anybody from Alliance Atlantis will tell you it’s about asses in theater seats and disks in home theaters. Again, more or less, it comes down to attention share.

Producers of Canadian content complain that networks don’t put any dollars behind getting eyeballs, and as a result, GRP / TRP from the advertisers is never forthcoming. Canadian networks complain that Canadian content doesn’t attract Canadian eyeballs. Without Canadian eyeballs, networks can’t make money.

And without proven advertiser dollars and track records – banks and private lenders won’t invest in Canadian productions.

Canadian productions are expensive. It costs around 300k to produce a single 44 minute episode of programming (easily), and economies of scale are fleeting. The very cheapest one could do a short 10 minute piece is around 56k, and that’s pushing the extreme lower limit. I’m talking about quality here – not webcam quality.

Where are all the Canadian Eyeballs at?

Enter the Attention Economy.

Producers are in a full scale war for attention. We consume more media than ever before, but it’s increasingly fragmented across multiple channels and screens. It’s harder to get a concentrated slice of a target market in a single medium. These days – you gotta go longitudinal: a mental shift that only the very young marketers are actively embracing.

Our conversation came to a head when the Producer said: “How do I get the content out there without commercial interference?” and I replied, “You’re competing with commercial interference for attention – and you can’t possibly outspend them.” In fact – commercial interests are wildly tearing at each to grab a slice of a fragmenting attention. The conversation, like any good Canadian conversation, resorts to regulation and citation of previous policy.

The back-stop is of course CanCon. CanCon is a regulation by the CRTC that mandates a minimum percentage of all broadcast content be Canadian. The common complaint, in Canadian Film and Television circles, is that the CRTC defines news and current affairs programming as being included under CanCon – something that is harder to get away with in broadcast radio.

The example in public policy they cite is the success of CanCon in developing the Canadian musical talent industry. Most local stations wouldn’t and couldn’t crowd their airwaves with Canadian ‘news talk’, and as a result, a plethora of great Canadian talent became supported and launched. The policy has been hailed as a wild success.

The common complaint is that Global and CTV count their 2 hour 5-7pm news broadcast as being Canadian content, along with the 11pm news broadcast, the 3 hours in the morning show news broadcast, and two current affairs programs at one hour a piece (W5 and 16 by something). They proceed to produce such shows as “Train 48″, “Da Kink”, “DeGrassi” and “Flashpoint”, and put them out to die at 8pm on Saturdays – reserving the best of prime time for American shows. Put simply, they’re incented to engage in that kind of behavior because when push comes to shove, Canadian eyeballs just aren’t on Canadian content.

The state of Canadian film is no better. Theater operators are fighting for attention too: and they need asses in seats – and the draw that goes along with it.

The problem is three-fold in my view.

The first is the classic blame game. Broadcasters blame Canadian content producers for not producing content that can compete directly with American content. And let’s face it – that is exactly what Canadian producers are up against. It’s hard to see how CanCon can be modified to avoid this un-escapable fact. To a certain extent, I invite the ultra-pro-market-anti-regulation people to advocate consistently on their position of no government interference. Taking that argument to the extreme would mean denying Canadian broadcasters exclusive re-broadcast rights as mandated by the CRTC. Trust me – it’s not something a network executive wants you to be advocating.

I believe that most network executives are good people who would absolutely love to have 80 hours of Canadian produced TV dramas and comedies broadcasting all the time. It would have to be every bit as good as what’s on the American networks, and frankly, how can Canadian producers compete with that?

Enter the next element of the blame game. Producers blame broadcasters for not getting behind them.

The first big problem is that everybody believes that they’re a victim of one sort or another. And when you’re a victim, you’re absolved of all responsibility for solving the problem.

Canadian expectations are the second problem. Canadians, and let’s really be honest here, have a massive element of “it’s not good enough for us” attitude with respect to Canadian produced content. It’s not surprising – they’ve been trained to think that way. Consider that the United States produces hundreds of pilots just looking for winners. In Canada, we hardly have the money to produce a handful of pilots. Less experimentation means lower actual quality, and those expectations have really become locked-in over the past forty years. Of course the material is mediocre by comparison. Canadian producers don’t have as much margin for error and as a result – commit loads of error. That error adds up into expectations of mediocrity.

The third is a lack of baseline innovation. 95% of the Canadian Film and Television Industry, I dare say, is just plain happy to complain about the lack of network and government support. 5% seem to be happy to try to innovate around the problem of economies of scale. I think that that’s sad.

Canadian producers continue to lose because they continue to lose attention market share. They can’t rely on the government or private enterprise to really solve their problems. CanCon won’t be modified because it benefits too many established groups. Broadcasters can’t step up to the plate because they’re subject to enhancing shareholder value. Producers  have to recognize who they’re competing against and adjust against it. They must take it on, head on, to have any chance.

The Attention Economy is ruthless.

You can edit this ad by going editing the index.php file or opening /images/exampleAd.gif
Sep 01 1 comments
Analytics, Marketing Science

Of Personas and Market Segments: A reply to Hamel

David Hamel wrote:

The issue behind it all is that the web isn’t static, it is constently changing.  Ever heard of AOL?  Of course you have.  Know anyone still using it? Probably not.  What about MySpace?  Also there is the inevitable the march of time.  Your persona for Bob has his age at 52.   In five years time, will Bob still be useful?  Probably the difference between 52 and 57 isn’t that large.  But what if your target demographic is 22?  There is a much larger difference between the interestes of a 22 year old and a 27 year old…In conclusion, use personas but don’t let them get stagnate, your personas represent people and people change.

Hamel rightly points out that personas come into being and are sometimes printed out on huge boards and laid out in the office. And then they’re taken down after the redesign and we forget about them. They don’t evolve. They don’t breathe.

I’d argue that the typical market segment, “male, 56-65, rural” is incredibly bland and not adequate at all. I think somewhere along the line, perhaps over the decades, we forgot why market segments are supposed to be powerful: like people talk and they are self-referential. This was demonstrated with the original Word of Mouth marketing studies focused on seed distribution. Word of mouth is critical. No company can possibly afford to pay for every conversion.

The segment should describe, instead, where rural older males are talking and how do you get them to refer you along. A person is so much more than just an age, gender, income bracket, number of kids and general DMA. Quantitative marketing science is capable of real contributions and advancement in that field.

If personas impart empathy in design, then segments should impart empathy in marketing.

And directly to Hamel’s point: they should be periodically revisited.

That might not sit well with the common “rip’em down and reinvent them from scratch” mentality that dominates the world – but I’m very comfortable with the notion of optimizing segments and personas over time as a program of ‘learning’.

I’d like to see more of that.

Aug 31 0 comments
Social Analytics

Social Analytics and Sentiment Analysis

There are major problems with the way that sentiment and intent is presently being measured and reported: you need only scratch the surface a little bit to uncover the grim truth.

The business problem that sentiment analysis solves is informing a manager, at a glance, not of only of the tone and vibe that his own employees are sending out there, but also how the public is responding to the policies and practices of the company in question.

Can’t you do this qualitatively? Well sure – if you didn’t have the anchor-and-adjust function in your head, it would be just fine. And ‘normally’ functioning humans all suffer from the curse of anchor-and-adjust.

The second business problem that effective sentiment analysis solves is the measurement-optimization problem in social analytics. The Coles Notes goes like this: “how can you possibly optimize if your measuring stick isn’t consistently accurate (or consistently inaccurate?)”. Because of anchor-and-adjust and normal human bias, how can human coding ‘correct’ anything consistently? Of course, it isn’t a business problem that anybody is really aware of – even to this day, most web analysts are unaware that a shifting cookie retention curve is messing with their KPI’s.

Anyway, there are real business problems to be solved there.

Aug 26 0 comments
Marketing Science

Of Personas and Market Segments

The purpose of personas (or Personae in the sarcastic English) is to impart empathy in design.

The purpose of market segments vary depending on who you’re talking to. If you’re talking to a marketing science analyst, they should tell you that the purpose of a market segment is to use variations in self-referential communities to adjust the marketing message (positioning)  so that it is more relevant to a particular audience, ultimately resulting in higher profits for the business.

Put another way, a market segment should, ideally, impart empathy in quantitative marketing design.

Personas are traditionally the product of qualitative insights.

Market segments are traditionally the product of quantitative insights.

Institutionally, neither side really wants to listen to each other. (In fact, it’s hard enough to get Data Miners to even come out to Web Analytics Wednesdays – and Web Analysts are quants!). Culture and jargon matters.

I don’t believe that Market Segments, as they’re being done today by most of the major companies, are really imparting any empathy in marketing design. They produce 120 cells of variations and walk away – what is a copywriter supposed to do with that? But they could be upgraded and improved to do so.

I believe that Personas are sometimes effective at producing empathy in design. I’ve sat in enough Creative meetings to know that it’s effective. Humans being humans though, Personas don’t always work: I’ve read case studies where the ultimate design had nothing to do with the personas.

What’s ultimately needed is a third type of product: a hybrid of personas and market segments. Of course, that’s blasphemy to both sides of the community. Quals and IA’s would rightly freak out. Quants and Data Miners would rightly freak out. Sure, there are differences in the techniques and purposes of both – but I see more overlap between the two having sat on both sides of the fence.

Aug 20 0 comments
Analytics, Marketing Science

Why yes, it is summer event today

It’s summer event today at CM Toronto.

It’s normally a very good day. As with anything, the 80/20 rule applies to it.

We have a town hall, where a member of the executive comes and presents. It’s actually really good. When I started out as an analyst, the only time I was ever really fully brought up to speed (I felt) was during these presentations. Things have long since changed for Marketing Science folk.

Then there’s some component of field trip or activity fun. Those are always fun.

And then there’s an evening of more fun – typically featuring Captain Morgan.

What I value most is getting to really talk to people from the other offices. So often, they’re voices on the phone, and very often, you’re not exactly meeting under nice circumstances (they’re calling for a reason, and typically there’s distress involved). In sum, it’s nice to see people in person and listen to what pains them. And then fun to have fun.

Aug 19 0 comments
Marketing Science

The Technology Adoption Lifecycle

You might recognize the chart below as the Technology Adoption Lifecycle – and it’s just great.

TechLifecycle

The essential fact is that who you market to, over time, and how you market it, changes over time. I have many friends who are true “innovators” and I know a few people who are impostors. (They really don’t have a business problem to solve, but they would like to see a desired solution set be imposed on people, even if it doesn’t produce any value.) Innovators believe everything should be free, and rightfully so, since they’re working on improving the product. Many of my friends in this category behave more like actuarial industry insiders than anything else. There’s such a brutal rate of survival that’s involved here.

Early adopters are dreamers with moneybags. They want to push the technology to realize some sort of massive breakthrough. They’re good people with rational intentions. But they’re impossible to satisfy in the long run.

Then there’s the Chasm.

I affectionately refer to certain group behaviors as being ’sheeple’. It applies in marketing. The overriding goal is to get a majority of some small herd to go your way. Once that critical majority is on board, you can move into other markets and gain a majority. Hot majority on majority action leads to getting into the Early Majority. It’s typically during the Early Majority that imitators catch on and start competing for market share (though, sometimes that does happen as one is crossing the Chasm), and the prices start to come down. The social technology around the product becomes better and more effecient, firms compete on price, inputs become commoditized, and finally the Late Majority comes on in. Laggards lag, and in general, we don’t talk much about them.

I only bring this up because I’m living through one chasms right now and in a few short months I’ll be entering another one. On my left are only a very small subset of innovators who can relate, in some small way, to what it’s like. On my right are wait-and-see pragmatists. There are so few people who have actually crossed the chasm successfully. Success is so vanishingly rare.

It’s the true test, isn’t?

At this point I’m happy for the opportunity and assuming success.

Aug 18 1 comments
Complexity Analytics, Simplicity Analytics

Simplicity versus Complexity

Malcolm Bastien was nice enough to lend me a book: The Laws of Simplictity by John Maeda.

The Coles notes of that compact volume is:

“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful”.

Wonderful.

Thanks Malcolm!

Aug 14 0 comments
Social Analytics

Anatomy of a Clusterf**k V

Clusterfucks will happen, and nobody ever really walks away from one a winner.

A clusterfuck can be turned around by either boosting trust, hitting ‘reset’ when it comes to definitions, deliberately seeking out extra understanding, or, if there’s a hollow core of authority – electing a leviathan to run the group.

Clusterfuck avoidance is going to be a major social technology as knowledge worker teams become increasingly interdisciplinary. More problems are bound to happen because the complexity in terms of communication and the specifics of professional norms scales. Just as an example, if a chemist tells the engineer that temperatures from the mix could trough at -200 c, and asks the engineer if the structure could be designed to handle that – the engineer could choose take the question badly. The engineer could take the question as a professional afront: of course she’d check the temperature as part of the normal procedure of being an engineer, and resents the implication that they’re incompetent. Or, the engineer might appreciate the question, the -200 c might raise important points, and the engineer might use the opportunity to ask more questions about the nature of the resulting liquid.

The engineer has the choice to respond in a positive way and to propogate good will and further trust, or, the engineer has the choice to hold a grudge and start clamming up.

We can architect teams and tailor our cultural norms to avoid clusterfucks, and it would be well worth the effort.

Next week I’ll move onto another topic series.

Aug 13 0 comments
Social Analytics

Anatomy of a Clusterf**k IV

Another key reason why clusterfucks appear is because somebody with the authority wants them to appear.

Stalin is said to have purposely given his cabinet conflicting portfolios to paralyze them: essentially giving him a free hand to denounce them and go about doing what we wanted to anyway. We have all observed similar situations where very brilliant people will purposely ask a team of people, none of whom have the authority to make any lasting decisions, to execute some task. Even if communication is good and trust exists among the participants, the very nature of the power vacuum is bound to cause a clusterfuck unless the team anoints an interim leviathan. It’s exceedingly rare.

It is entirely possible that some people don’t know that they go about creating such power vaccuums, but it’s hard to believe that they continue going through life without picking up on why they can’t get anything done.

Aug 12 0 comments
Social Analytics

Anatomy of a Clusterf**k III

Sometimes even when people trust each other, information can still get garbled through faults in communication.

Very frequently, professionals in a given field will begin using a very specific jargon. For instance, the term “unique” means something very different to a web analyst than it does to a fashion designer. These shortcuts in language serve a really important purpose within a profession, and the specificity and unity on that jargon is a key feature of any given culture.

When two professions need to work together, in an inter-disciplenary way, it is very easy to miscommunicate important findings, purely through mistakes in language. Sometimes, something as simple as messing up the difference between ‘pageviews’, ‘visits’, ‘visitors’ and ‘unique visitors’ can have massive impacts on perceptions.

At the root of many clusterfucks is not the unwillingness to communicate, but rather, the relative diffuculty that is involved in communicating.

A good general practice, when presenting anything, is to take the time to ensure that people understand what you’re about to say and why it’s important.