Tips and Ideas for Landing Pages and Sites

The NFL vs. the Mob

You know what else is cool about what the NFL did with its Super Bowl ad contest? (If you're not familiar with it, read my previous post, here.) They were smart enough to know that they shouldn't be the only ones choosing the winner of the ad. The NFL fans were the ones pitching ideas. It should be the NFL fans who helped to choose the winner.

But they were also smart enough to not leave the final decision solely in the hands of the fans.

Fans helped vote to narrow down the entries. But of the finalists, winner Gino Bona's pitch was actually the second choice.

Why is this important? It highlights an ongoing discussion among web merchandisers that I like to call "The Merchant vs. the Mob."

Web merchants try numerous tricks to see what will help sell the most product. They offer cross-sell suggestions that they come up with themselves or with a program that derives the suggestions based upon a variety of factors (the "merchant"). Or, they offer suggestions based on what other consumers have bought or searched for (the "mob").

Unfortunately, neither of these approaches are fool-proof. Allowing the mob to choose preferences is like saying that everyone else's knowledge of your visitors is greater than your own knowledge. On the other hand, allowing only your own preferences to influence the way you merchandise (even when your own preferences are informed by data and statistics and research and expert opinions) is like saying that your own knowledge is greater than that of all visitors, combined. Neither, in fact, is true.

Every website, whether it's an ecommerce site, a publisher site, or something else altogether, needs to balance the wishes of the consumer with the knowledge of their own self (or staff).

Check out my post on The New York Times for more on this topic. Or, read this article titled The Merchant vs. the Machine.

Gino Bona and His NFL Ad Show Why Testing Is Vital

By now most people in the ad industry have heard of Gino Bona and his pitch that won the NFL Super Bowl ad contest that invited consumers to pitch their own idea for an NFL ad to be run during the Super Bowl.

Gino, who works with an ad agency in New Hampshire as a writer, will have the opportunity to see his pitch made into a commercial that will air during the Super Bowl. His pitch, which can be seen here, is brilliant. Of course, who knows how the actual ad will turn out, but based on the pitch, it will be a damn good one. And the NFL, unless it had had the foresight to seek ideas from its adoring public, would never have stumbled across that exact idea.

Interestingly, though, I've heard complaints from friends, and even those in the industry, that the ad contest shouldn't have been won by an ad guy.

"It should be banned to people in the industry," I've heard. "This is the chance for the public to make their own statement."

I disagree. In fact, I think this is a terrific illustration of something I've been talking about for a long time.

Here's what I mean: aside from the fact that the contest was a great marketing ploy, someone in the NFL's ad department had the foresight to realize that, in order to get the "best idea ever," it would be a good idea to let everyone try their hand at it. That meant not just internal departments, not just the ad agency, but everyone at all who has a stake in the NFL or cares about its teams - that is, the fans.

So Gino, just a regular guy, and obviously a football fan, had the opportunity to pitch his idea, along with thousands of others. The gang from the NFL, combined with the power of consumers voting online, decided that his was the best pitch out there.

The situation parallels what I have been saying about online testing for years.

Online testing can open the doors to all ideas. Marketing teams do not have to be limited by conference table testing. That is, they don't have to decide by sitting around a table, which idea they plan to run with. Instead, they can test any and every idea, becuase the cost and time concerned are negligible.

By doing so, their ideas don't have to be limited to the ideas of the department. Anyone can show their brilliance. Any idea can have validity, until it is tested. The guy in the mailroom, or the guy down the street, or the president of the company - all of their ideas are equally valid. Until proven otherwise.

Convergence - No More Ducks!

I just read David Berkowitz's post, A Reluctant Case for Convergence, in the MediaPost insider. As usual, I appreciate David's thoughtfulness and perspective. But I feel compelled to warn about ducks.

Think about a duck.  Mediocre swimmer.  Adequate flyer.  A duck is a convergence of flying and swimming technologies. But you would never train ducks for flying contests, and marlin, wahoo and barracuda are probably better emblems for swim teams (Oddly enough, there are Duck football and hockey teams, but that is a different story).

Combining useful technologies into a single packaging because you can is not useful.  Combining them because it enables a fundamental shift in usefulness for a third purpose is the goal.  How do we tell the difference?  The new function must create sufficient value to a specific type of buyer to compensate for rendering the component technologies inconsequential.

Put another way, when being a great duck is valuable enough that it can be a lousy swimmer or flyer.

To extend the metaphor: Light bulbs are a great technology in their own right. As is internal combustion.  And while it might not be the latest in engineering marvels, but a comfortable leather chair is still a worthy achievement.

But it would strain credulity to imagine the invention of the automobile as the "convergence" of headlights, engines and seats.  It is an automobile.  It is an elegant adaptation of technologies, and it is eminently useful for a commuter and others. 

A car is a car is a car.

Put a different way, the car is not a convergence of lighting and lifting technologies, it is a car. It is an adaptation of technological development to a totally new and useful application for a consumer with a specific desire.

The distinction between convergence and useful adaptation is not ambiguous. 

The iPod is the convergence of laptop computing technologies (hard drive, USB), video displays (mini-LCD), signal processing and compression.  It is transformational.  But it is a lousy way to watch a tv show and has not been embraced as a back up file server.  It is a good music listening thing for people who like music, and that is enough.

I am not naive enough to think that the urge to create Swiss Army knives full of technology isn't a major driver of consumer electronics.  Hope will spring eternal in the form of refrigerator-based web browsers and cell-phone-based puppy finders.  But I do know that if the duck can't thrive on his duck-ness alone, then no amount of clever marketing about the merging of flying and swimming is going to get him through the winter. 

New York Times and Social Media

Recently I was talking with a bunch of editors about their role in choosing editorial content. How much of a role should the editor have, and how much should the consumers of the media be allowed?

Near as I can tell from recent visits to NYtimes.com, the "Gray Lady" is humoring the mob, but is not impressed.

Editors, of course, know better than almost anyone else what their readers want to read. On the other hand, I would argue that there's always something to learn from the mob.

Take this example from The New York Times, for instance. The NYTimes.com includes a page that lists the terms that are searched for most often on the website (the voice of the mob).

 

Now look at the list of topics that NYTimes.com editors believe are of highest interest to readers (as evidenced by the Times Topics list):

Now compare the "Most Searched" list to the "Times Topics" (the list of People, Subjects, Organizations and Places that Times editors put together for easy searching by their readers). Interestingly, you'll find that the two lists barely overlap.

Not only that, but some of the keywords that people were searching for, such as "China," don't easily fit into one of the Times Topics categories: would you find China under the Places heading? Or would it make more sense to search for it under Subject?

In other words, it would seem - from looking at the Most Searched page and the Times Topics page - as though people are searching the Times in different ways than the way the Times editors assumed they would.

Don't get me wrong: I believe in the role of the editorial voice, and I believe that an editor is likely better than any other given individual at picking which content is most relevant to readers. However, I also believe that the editor is not better than every other individual.