The Sixth Sense Revolution continues…

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/08/google.goggles/index.html

“It is our goal to be able to identify any image,” he said. “It represents our earliest efforts in the field of computer vision. You can take a picture of an item, use that picture of whatever you take as the query.” – Vic Gundotra of Google

Wow. Just think of the possibilities with:

• FACIAL IMAGE search…imagine being able to quickly identify everyone based on a quick snapshot…there goes anonymity
• Imagine being able to identify someone’s face and quickly checking their background criminal records, their friend connections, their finances, and even health history.
• Imagine being able to quickly identify someone’s PREFERENCES by seeing their TWITTER/FACEBOOK updates just by seeing their face!
• ..alright this is huge!
  

The Sixth Sense Revolution Continues with Pranav Mistry

• Many times, brand proponents make the implicit assumption that a brand in itself helps a establish a sustainable competitive advantage or a “moat” as Warren Buffet calls it. ?Buffet uses Coca Cola as an example where you can’t beat their brand is so strong. I disagree. They have massive distribution and distribution relationships. ?However, if someone offered their distributors a better deal that they could back up, why wouldn’t they switch?
• I truly believe many people overestimate how loyal consumers are. Consumers are fickle. They will switch if you have a better offer, you can justify the switching costs, and you make it easy.
• However, a credible reputation, a cousin of branding, is far more important than branding.
• To me, a great reputation includes characteristics such as integrity, politeness, speed, leadership, quality, aggressiveness, fairness, knowledge, honesty, and reliability.

Even if you’re extremely well known through massive branding, consumers will select your competitors based on either indirect or direct reputations, which you can establish in mere seconds.

How do you establish a fantastic reputation? The following are some examples:

1. Do what you say you will; be on time and early
2. Go above and beyond
3. Create fantastic communication
4. Draft agreements with integrity; don’t screw people over
5. Be more transparent
6. Find a win-win and don’t be greedy. Think about the other person’s interests.

“Most People Lose Money When They Advertise.”

Where’s the empirical evidence? Brand advertisers. Ideally, I’d provide empirical evidence, but I’ll use the following shortcut instead:

I estimate more than 95% of ad campaigns lose money by beginners. For experienced marketers, over 50% of campaigns still lose money. It’s not even a 50/50 bet.

If you’re new to advertising, you will lose your shirt unless you do the following:

1. Generate a strategy with measurable revenue per acquired lead
2. Hire the best designers that understand direct response. Never hire a team of “creative” designers who focus primarily on aesthetics instead of sales process, although they are not mutually exclusive
3. Make sure you have a solid sales process so you don’t have cash leakages (eg. unclear forms/hard to navigate)
4. Create a scientifically significant test using a statistically significant sample using your desired confidence interval
5. Analyze the test
6. Keep tweaking the process until your revenues exceed costs
7. Roll-out slowly.
8. Monitor
9. Roll-out more and so on…

It’s amazing that big companies like car manufacturers spend millions on testing vehicles and try to get “lucky” the first time with their ad campaigns, with little to no testing involved.

Respectfully, I don’t care how much money you’ve made, who you are or whether you’re Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates. Branding advertising is a waste of time.

Lastly, I agree there are exceptions to all rules. Still, generally brand advertising is abused and not used cost effectively.

Summary: Comparatively, brand advertising is like gambling as a business strategy whereas performance marketing involves measurable, scientific strategy to achieve a return on investment.

Viral marketing is another inferior strategy and it’s also like gambling as a business strategy.  If you had a limited budget of $50,000, for example, would you put it on a hit or miss viral marketing campaign?

Why would companies spend ridiculous sums of money on non proven campaigns?  Viral marketing and brand advertising are siblings.  In my opinion, they both involve an assumption that spending money on non proven factors will benefit the company.  In reality, and to be blunt, they may only impress your boss or be funny.  Funny doesn’t necessarily translate into bottom line results.

To be fair and balanced, I didn’t state that branding is completely a waste of time. A brand, as you know, is similar to a reputation.

Important Discovery Based on Empirical Data: People are not nearly as brand loyal as many brand advertisers would have you believe.  I commonly hear this human misjudgement that if you creating a popular brand, humans will stay loyal to it. On average, I’ve found consumers extremely fickle and interested in trying new things.  Similarly, I believe measuring “share of mind” is unproductive.  Who cares what a consumer has in their head at any given point?

Regardless of what even some of the brightest minds state, people will try new soft drinks outside Coca Cola.  People will try new fast food restaurants outside McDonald’s. People enjoy variety and trying new things.