PardonMyFrench

links for 2009-05-26

• MediaPost Publications Study Confirms Display Ads, Paid Search Work in Concert 05/11/2009
  Kind of already knew this thanks to the Yahoo Harrisdirect study from 2005
  (tags: search marketing)

Dear Google - I Still Have Two AdWords Pet Peeves

About two weeks ago we were involved in some primary races in PA which of course meant a heavy dose of using Google for marketing.  In fact, ALL down ballot races should run Google for marketing.  Anyway, we were supposed to map our Google ad buy to targeted areas in the state.  One of our selling points is that with Google you can target down to a zip code level so we could do an even better job of mapping the targeting strategy than the TV buy.  The sales pitch went this way...

• DM - of course you can target to individuals, but counties and zip codes are also used
• TV - you are usually buying at the MSA level
• Print - county for local levels and MSA for statewide races
• Search - anything right?

Well it wasn't as easy as you'd think.  Sure if the client gave me zip codes I could have loaded them up, but they didn't have them.  What they did have was County targets, but Google doesn't allow for county targeting.  You of course can hand draw for Congressional DIstrict targeting, but try doing that for more than one district. 

It took me about 8 hours to map the buy using the major cities in each county that they wanted to target.  It was a major pain in the seat, but I told the client we could do better targeting than TV.  Sure it was better targeting but without County targeting it took forever which is very un-Google like. 

I don't understand why Google doesn't supply County targeting?  For that matter, I don't understand why Google doesn't supply some population estimate when listing cities.  It would seem so matter of fact to include counties if Google is trying to grab a piece of the local marketing mix.

And, while I'm on my rant, I can't wait for Google to ad click to play video ads into the desktop AdWords Editor.  Once I set the targeting up for this buy, it would have been nice to copy and paste the ads into different ad groups. However, we had to manually load each click to play video ad, ad group by ad group.

Anyway, still a huge fan of Google of course.  AdWords is the best marketing tool available today and even the small marketer can act like a big advertiser with little to no money.  I just wish they'd make a few more targeting tweaks to really go after local targets.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Obama Car Jacks Consumer Choice

This post is dedicated to my good friend Chip B. whom I got into a big discussion about a month back on this very subject.

This is a picture of my brand new car.  We bought it in the middle of March and it is our third car,  The gas mileage on it sucks.  Right now we are averaging 19 miles to the gallon, but for all you tree huggers out there - we've only filled the tank up once. 

I love driving this car.  It is so much fun that I've never run so many errands in my life. In case you are wondering - it is a 4 seat, Toyota Solara Sports Convertible with an in your face bright red paint job.  Mary and I loved this car so much that we took a ride in March when it was 44 degrees outside - yes we had our winter coats on.

Anyway back to my post dedicated to Chip.  A month back late night at his house we got into a big discussion on fuel efficient cars.  My argument went like this...

• Only tree huggers want these small crappy fuel efficient cars; the vast majority of consumers don't want them.
• The car companies can't manufacturer these tree hugger match boxes efficiently
• Without Government intervention these cars are more expensive to buy when compared to similar match box crappy oil burners.
• The Government will have to use tax dollars to bring these cars down in price - again using the wealth distribution process.
• When the US Companies (exception is Ford) blew themselves up, the Obama Administration used this opportunity to swoop in and save these companies to put other tree hugging loons in control to build the cars that not enough people want unless you're in the Obama Administration or your last name is Pelosi.
• If car companies built powerful, beautifully designed cars that people wanted and they were fuel efficient  - that would be a win.  However, the only way today to get fuel efficient cars is to build them no bigger than a shopping cart.

Now on May 19th, Obama introduced new fuel efficiency standards.  As a goal I think they are good ones - I believe the timing is terrible. I also think standardizing them nationally is good too.  I don't agree with tax subsidizing them.  I don't agree with increasing costs of car manufacturing.  I don't agree with forcing consumers to buy crappy little cars because that's what the Government wants.  If car manufactures can build cars like my new one above and make it fuel efficient - than great but that ain't happening by 2016. 

For my friend Chip, here are links to Wall Street Journal articles backing up my argument.  This standard is nothing but bad news for consumers - unless you were planning on buying these crappy cars anyway...

Obama Says New Car-Fuel Rules Generate Certainty - A good summary of this leftist agenda item with this great line that proves my point about how the Obama Administration now controls these American Car companies so they can do their bidding "But the rules also will raise the cost of manufacturing new vehicles at a time when the auto industry is struggling, and Chrysler LLC is in bankruptcy, where it may soon be joined by General Motors Corp. Still, car makers have signaled support for the new standards,

Obama Would Support Auto Incentives for Consumers - This article includes a few tire busting nails like these all based on wealth distribution and ignoring true consumer needs:

1. We fought for the $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of advanced technology vehicles in the Recovery Act," the official said, and "our administration remains committed to policies to help bring the costs down" for consumers.
2. The administration estimates fuel-economy regulations will add $1,300 on average to the price of new cars by 2016, but President Barack Obama on Tuesday said fuel savings would offset those costs for the typical motorist in three years
3. If prices are $4 per gallon, I think the math is pretty straightforward for consumers," said Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a Washington-based trade group that participated in the negotiations that led to the fuel economy agreement. "If we don't have prices like that, government is going to have to provide more incentives to help overcome the upfront cost differential of this new technology

Obama's Official Remarks -  It includes of course well written lines that slip by the average voter like this one "If you buy a car, your investment in a more fuel-efficient vehicle as a result of this standard will pay off in just three years" - yeah?  At what price per gallon and how many miles driven?

Anyway these new guidelines are so filled with bad agenda items that you should have woken up and dug a little deeper before you voted this guy into office.  Sure, it sounded good cheering for change in the fall when he painted great pictures of fuel efficient SUVs and Sports Car, but that's not what you are getting here.  You are getting shopping carts with engines, more expensive cars, and wealth distribution so folks can purchase cars that nobody wants right now.  Thanks (yes I'm bitter in this post).

PardonMy "Low Carbon Footprint" French,

Eric

It's About Creating Jobs Not About Saving Jobs

*****BTW - NY Times has an article this morning on White House Forecasts NO Job Growth Until 2010*****

I'm still very upset about this saving jobs metric that President Obama based his entire trillion dollar budget/stimulus plan on.  This is my third post on this and I got fired up on the "save job" metric this morning when I read this article in USA Today called White House Defends 3.5M Job Forecast.  My first post was called AT&T Lessons for Obama on Saving Jobs and a second post called Are You Sure You Understand How Obama's Plan Will Save Jobs?  The USA Today article shows the smoke and mirrors that the Obama administration is using/used to sell the "save job" metric (my comments in bold):

• 3.5 million create or save job forecast is based on a relatively conservative rule of thumb (I'm sure the forecast mechanism is conservative, the create a job metric you are forecasting is a bogus metric)
• Many Republicans have criticized the administration's projections as untrustworthy and politically motivated.(They key is not to attack how they made the projections, but attack the actual type of number they are trying to forecast)
• The figure of 3.5 million jobs saved or created, the report says, is the difference between the projected number of jobs during the last three months of 2010 with the stimulus and the projected number of jobs without if there had been no stimulus plan (You see the create "job metric" is the variable derived from two forecasted numbers one of which you can't ever accurately measure)
• The report also offers a new measure of the stimulus law's economic effects: 6.8 million additional job-years between the signing of the legislation and the end of 2012. A job-year represents one job held for one year. (Obama adds a new number that sounds huge to confuse people and have idiots argue over a new number that is derived from another bad number - saved jobs)
• The administration's practice of discussing jobs saved as well as created is "a very clever device for providing future political cover," The 'jobs saved' part was a way for them to say, 'The economy is still shrinking, but it would have shrunk faster but for the good things that we did.' (What I've been writing all along).

I worked at AT&T for 10 years and 4 years in an internet measurement, analysis group that was part of Bell Labs for a while.   At AT&T the retention game was trying to estimate who was likely to leave (a saved job) in order to get retention funding.  Winback was easier to measure because you actually so the customer return to AT&T (a created job).  SAVED CUSTOMERS WERE DERIVED NUMBERS AND EVEN BELL LABS COULDN'T ACCURATELY FORECAST THAT.  WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT CAN FORECAST A SAVED JOB?

Obama can not forecast A SAVED JOB because you'll never know what would have happened if we didn't spend money to help the economy.  It is a completely derived, fictitious number that was undoubtedly created using proven statistical techniques, but at the end of the day, we will never know how many jobs we would have lost.

This is the only talking point that matters for Republicans.  This is the smoking gun for the Obama administration.  The news will continue to report actual job lost or actual job created (still losing jobs and the Federal Reserve said it may hit as high as 10% and remain high for years).  This is how we should market ourselves and attack the administration in 2010.  Actual jobs created or not, actual spending, and how the administration sold the created jobs number as a way of passing the stimulus plan. Any other talking points that don't involve jobs and unemployment will fall flat on the masses of people and doom Republicans in 2010.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Career Planning Lessons for AT&T Employees via Brett Favre

Like most sports fans I'm sick and tired of the Brett Favre stories.  I'm not sick and tired about whether he is going to play again; I'm more sick of the teary goodbyes when he announces his retirement (see this video when he starts breaking up around the 27 second mark). 

Anyway, I also started thinking, if Brett Favre wants to come back, why shouldn't he?  After all...

• His whole life revolves around football
• He's been playing professional football for 17 years and if you add in college that totals 21 years
• He is still productive even though he has slowed down, after all he is almost 40
• Has never missed a game in his 17 years
• Companies still want him around as do his customers

That started reminding me of my former AT&T associates especially the ones that are still there.  My old advice on this was that these employees should get out of that place because it is in a death spiral especially if you are located in NJ.  Friends of mine that got out of there are doing just fine proving that there is life after AT&T.  Some folks that left and took jobs with other NJ telecommunications companies (ex - Lucent) typecast themselves even more when they didn't learn new skills or a new industry.  I often felt bad for these telecom drones in addition to the NJ employees of AT&T.   Now I've had a little change of heart.

You see the old AT&T demanded a lot of your time, commitment, and most importantly loyalty.  Nearly all of these employees gave it and in return we built friendships that lasted forever, had good jobs, and great rewards.  A lot of people married co-workers ensuring AT&T talk and thoughts 24/7.  Some people built skills by taking different jobs within the company and they used these skills when they quit or were laid off.  Some folks still cling to their former cubicals.  BTW - my wife and I still remember my telephone number from Basking Ridge (908.221.7723) even though it hasn't worked in 9 years.

Anyway back to Brett Favre and the obvious link to AT&T.  Look if you like your job, you are still good at it, your customers and co-workers still want you, why shouldn't you stay there?  As long as you can still perform and someone wants to pay you, what's wrong with staying in the ONLY JOB YOU'VE EVER KNOWN?  Nothing. Nothing wrong at all.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Kate Kaye's Campaign '08 Book Fills In The Blanks for Me On What Happened

I'm nearly finished with Kate Kaye's book Campaign '08 A Turning Point for Digital Media and as one of the folks quoted within the book I found it very fascinating.  Why?  It fills in a lot of the blanks and lifts some of the fogs of war I was unable to see during the campaign season.  Plus it is a great resource to have at your finger tips if you'd like to get a quick view of the digital media tactics used during the 2008 season.

Kate grabbed a lot of quotes from people that were running or part of the digital strategies for each of the Presidential campaigns and she does a great job of putting them together in very relevant chapters.  She also pulled some quotes from my blog which was completely cool by me.  I actually got a kick out of some of the things I wrote over the past two years.

I learned quite a few things especially what the Obama campaign did with their digital campaign and it of course confirmed how ubiquitous I thought their marketing was.  The book also confirmed for me the lack of digital marketing that pretty much all of the other campaigns did during the season.

• Clinton Campaign - very little online advertising
• Ron Paul - a lot of out sourcing to their supporters who in turn did marvelous things with it
• Mitt Romney - a lot of advanced online advertising experimentation that I was jealous of, but in the end we won the Primary.

Once you read through the chapters you'll also confirm what I've been telling you for a while.  The McCain Campaign did a tremendous amount of digital work, more than every other Presidential Campaign before 2008 and during 2008 with the exception of the Obama campaign.  It is all there in Kate's book for you to read if you never believed what I wrote.  Sure we had money problems, President Bush, and a few other challenges but we accomplished a lot even though we fell short of our ultimate goal.

Kate covers a lot of topics including search marketing, social networking, mobile, online advertising, and other subjects.   Kate's book offers great perspective and insight on the tactics used; it is also a quick read and flows just like her informative ClickZ blogs. Between this book, Kate's ClickZ posts, my blog, and techPresident, you'll get an accurate picture of the digital tactics used during the race for the White House in 2008. 

BTW - Kate's book might inspire me to write my own book on my experiences working with the McCain campaign and Connell Donatelli.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric.