So I spent much of my weekend building a new design for the blog. I’m pretty pleased with how things look right now. Let me know if there are any features you’d like to see added.
Stepping back for a moment, I’m amazed at the impact of open-source-software (such as Wordpress) on modern marketing. An effort which previously might have consumed months, and tens of thousands of dollars, is reduced to a weekend cooped up in my home office. When I get stuck, I have access to a worldwide network of freelance, volunteer developers eager to provide input. And courtesy of google, I have access to a huge collection of common knowledge amassed through discussion boards, wikis and other blogs. And it all costs me nothing but my time and effort.
Wow, what a great time to DIY. Which open source app’s have you taken a look at, and how have they impacted your business?
So you’re ready to make the big presentation… for a new product, a new campaign, a new venture. Maybe you’re seeking feedback, or maybe it’s just a status report. The natural instinct is to make things look as ‘good’ and as ‘finished’ as possible. But it may actually be in your interest to back off, and even manage expectations a little lower.
This very clever, and somewhat counterintuitive insight comes from a post today at Creating Passionate Users called “Don’t Make the Demo Look Done”. The post discusses this in the context of doing software demos, but it occurred to me that the concept also extends to many of the presentations we make in marketing and sales.
In short… the level of ‘completeness’ of the presented item can impact the level at which people direct their comments. The more ‘done’ it looks, the narrower and more specific the comments will tend to be. If you’re looking for input at a very broad level (ie. “Should we launch a new print ad campaign?”), it doesn’t help if the feedback is too narrow (ie. “I think the ad should have more reds and fewer blues.”).
Check out the linked post, it’s thought provoking.
Bad web design irritates the heck out of me. And by design, I don’t mean ‘prettiness’. Conflating ‘design’ with ‘appearance’ is probably the biggest cause of bad design in the first place.
Hey, guys, we’re going to design a web site!…
Let’s bring in the artsy web designer guy. Never mind whether he knows anything about our business, or how to market our business, or anything about business in general.
Let’s have him design a super-duper attractive site. What’s the hot buzzword this week? CSS? Sure, we need lots of CSS. And how about frames? Oh, frames are out? Then give me some Flash.
Let’s sit back and collect the million$.
The thing that got me going on this theme was a post I read on Seth’s Blog about Empathica. He commented that basically, it’s a nice looking site, but he clicked around for a few minutes and couldn’t be sure what they do. Touche. I took a look, and I have no idea what this company does. Try it out–
You enter on a landing page. I think they sell coffee? Click through…
A nice relaxing home page. Absolutely no clue as to what they do. Maybe they are a coffee shop? Or a bookstore? Click through to ‘What is Empathica?’, as this will surely point the way…
Now there are words, but unfortunately, it’s not english, it’s consultant mumbo jumbo. It’s some kind of system? It’s software? It’s consulting? It’s confusing.
I would generally suggest that the less well known your company, the more you need to grab people as quickly as possible and get your point across. Because most people aren’t going to go 3 clicks deep into your website trying to figure out what you do, no matter how cool your homepage.
The homepage should either explicitly or implicitly make 3 points: 1) Here’s where you are. 2) Here’s what we do. 3) Here’s why you should care enough to click further. The less well known you are (ie. the greater the percentage of visitors who will be hearing of you for the first time), the more explicit you should be.
Let’s take a different case… a little known startup called Dell. Homepage: Bang– computer stuff. No coffee cups, no zen imagery, just right to the point. I suppose if they ever get big enough, they can hire a designer to implement some nice trendy splash pages.
For more on the web design topic, I recommend Web Pages That Suck, where they tear apart a different site every day.
And before anyone points out the obvious, which is that my blog is in its own Bland Template Hell… yes I know. Working on a design, but that takes a while, and I wanted to start spouting off on marketing.
I think of this as a great example of annoyance advertising, which I will henceforth refer to as annoyvertising. I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about Head On’s ad, and this ad seemed to be presented as a failure because it was annoying. I’m not so sure that’s really the basis for judgement… isn’t it possible for an annoying ad to be a success? Huge piles of telephone books adorned with ads from ambulance-chasing lawyers seem to say yes.
Advertising is tricky. Just because you like the ad doesn’t mean you will like (and buy!) the product. So the reverse must be true as well.
So how can you evaluate an ad’s effectiveness, after eliminating the subjective criteria such as ‘makes me laugh’? How about comparing the Head On ad against a few criteria for success:
Ad calls attention to itself. Check. Annoying sure gets your attention.
Ad is memorable. Check. See it once, you’ll never forget it.
Ad calls attention to the product. Check. Not too hard to deduce that they’re selling something called ‘Head On’.
Ad tells you what product is for. Here, we start to get a little iffy. I mean, the ad tells me what to do with the product (apply directly to forehead), but isn’t so clear on why or when I need to do that. Personally, I didn’t have trouble understanding from the first time I saw the ad that this was for headaches. But experience has shown that some people need things to be stated more explicitly (maybe the same people that the ‘don’t use hair dryer in bathtub‘ stickers are intended for). There’d be a tendency to assume that there was some focus group testing of the ad to examine this point, but on the other hand, if you’re going to film a 15 second ad on a budget of perhaps $27.50, you probably aren’t going to spring for a focus group.
Ad makes you want to buy the product. Now here’s the real moment of truth. The ad either drives revenue, or it doesn’t. Without the benefit of some focus group testing, this is the leap of faith for the advertiser… I know the product by name, but maybe I hate the ad so much I refuse to buy it. On the other hand, that’s just me. With this exact same factor applicable, millions of people still tune in to watch reality TV and talk shows week after week. Many of these seem to draw audiences specifically because the shows are annoying. Jerry Springer and Geraldo Rivera, for example.
With these thoughts in mind, I searched around a bit, and found a great article on the ad. Apparently, the company did actually do some focus testing, and found that the repetition was extremely effective. The company also claims to have allotted tens of millions of dollars to broadcasting the ad, so if they have any clue what they are doing, we can assume it must be paying off for them. I’d love to meet these people. I picture Rodney Dangerfield’s character from ‘Back To School’.
Bottom line: annoyvertising works. It just goes to show that every golden business rule can be broken to great effect, if done right. If everyone zigs, you should think about zagging. In this case, ‘don’t tick off the people you’re trying to sell to’, is turned on it’s head: ‘tick them off, and they’ll remember you’. It might not work for GM or Microsoft, but for an unknown company with a tiny ad budget, it seems to be a great way to leverage the dollars for maximum effect.
By the way, if you are interested, there is more on the Head On phenomena here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn I particularly like the bit noting that the product is mostly wax. Ah, the power of marketing.
