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luni, 9 noiembrie 2015

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Seth's Blog : Advertising's hidden design and its impact on our culture

Advertising's hidden design and its impact on our culture

Media changes everything. Media drives our expectations, our conversations and our culture.

And what drives the media? Ads.

Two kinds, it turns out: Brand ads and direct ads. Brand ads are the unmeasurable, widely seen ads you generally think of when you think of an ad. A billboard, a TV commercial, an imprinted mug. Direct ads, on the other hand, are action-oriented and measurable. Infomercials, mail order catalogs and many sorts of digital media are considered direct marketing.

It takes guts to be a brand marketer.

What's the return on a $75,000 investment of a full-page ad in the New Yorker?

What's the yield on a three-million dollar Super Bowl commercial?

We have no idea. Brand marketers don't do math. They pay attention to the culture instead.

On the other hand, it takes math to be a direct marketer.

What's the yield on this classified ad? How many people used that discount code? How many clicks did we get?

The challenge of new media is this: Media companies can't figure out if they're selling brand ads or direct ads. And many who want to buy these ads can't decide either.

At the beginning of most sorts of media, it's the brand marketers who go first. The first to buy banner ads, or podcast ads or Facebook ads were brands with a budget to spend on new media that was esteemed by early adopters. MailChimp gets a huge benefit by sponsoring podcasts, but they can't measure those ads. And that's fine with them.

The next wave that hits new forms of media, almost always, is the seduction of the direct marketer. That's because direct marketers always have plenty of money to invest in ads that pay for themselves. The thing is, though, that direct marketers don't care about the medium, they care about the response. As a result, there's a huge gulf, a tension between what the medium wants (a great podcast, a website with authority, a social network with character) and what the direct marketer wants (measurable clicks).

Consider this: The best direct marketing advertising media is permission based. Ads where the ads are the point. Ads where the ads are not only measurable but the focus of the experience. Classified ads. Craigslist. Catalogs. The coupons in the Sunday paper. The Yellow Pages. Google AdWords. These are all forms of advertising we might miss if they were gone, and they are all forms of measurable direct marketing.

The best brand media, on the other hand, is media that informs and entertains despite the ads, not because of them. These podcasts, newscasts, blogs and magazines often run ads as their business model, but the ads don't drive the product, it's the other way around.

The actionable steps:

a. If you're a media company that one day wants to be respected enough to attract brand marketers, refuse to maximize the clicks. The direct marketers will push you to develop the equivalent of classified ads, of Google Adwords--ads we want to see merely because they're ads. These are the most effective forms of direct marketing, because the people who look at them want to look at them. It's a form of Permission Marketing, and it works. But a short term focus on yield doesn't lead to a great podcast, and too many clickable popunders has been the demise of many a trusted website.

b. If you're considering buying ads, be super clear about what the ads are for. Just because you can measure clicks doesn't mean you should. It's that middle ground, the netherland between direct and brand, that leads to disappoint, both for you and the media company.

The challenge:

a. If you're a media company (particularly a website or a podcast, but possibly a conference or a magazine) and you're hungry for advertising, you'll soon end up hearing from direct marketers who want you to sacrifice your long-term standing with readers and attendees in order to make their clicks go up, who want more coupons redeemed and more short-term results. Try to remember that these advertisers aren't sponsors who care about your status or long-term prospects, they are direct marketers who will switch to a better yield the moment they can. That's the direct marketer's job.

b. If you're a direct marketer, your peers are going to push you to make ads that are more palatable to a brand marketer's sensibility. The problem with this, of course, is that you'll end up neither here nor there. You won't be culturally embraced the way an actual brand marketer can be, and you won't generate the yield you were looking for.

I've been a direct marketer for a long time, and it's entirely possible that I'll get kicked out of the hall of fame for saying this, but the fact is that the media that shapes our culture was not invented for or by direct marketers.

Now that digital media is becoming a significant driver of our culture, I'm concerned that more and more media companies are hoping to get paid by direct marketers. That's never been a good match.

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duminică, 8 noiembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Rupture in Spain: Catalan Parliament to Vote for Independence

Posted: 08 Nov 2015 08:28 PM PST

A major showdown with Madrid is in the works as the Catalan Parliament to Vote on Independence from Spain.

The Catalan independence campaign heads for a potentially perilous new phase on Monday, as the regional parliament prepares to vote on a resolution to "disconnect" from the rest of Spain and renounce all rulings from the country's constitutional court.

The resolution commits the recently elected parliament to the "creation of the independent state of Catalonia, in the form of a republic".

It also calls for the passing of new legislation to set up an independent tax authority and social security system within 30 days.

Most controversially, perhaps, it states that the Catalan parliament is no longer bound by the decision of Spanish institutions and, in particular, the constitutional court, the highest tribunal in Spain.

The resolution is the first fruit of the uneasy alliance between the two main pro-independence groups, Junts pel Si and the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP). The two groups won a majority of seats in the Catalan parliament in September, but are divided on key issues of strategy and policy.

The CUP, a radical leftwing party that opposes Nato and EU membership, has so far refused to back Artur Mas for another term as president of Catalonia. Mr Mas, a senior figure in Junts pel Si, hails from a moderately nationalist, business-friendly political background. But he has steadily moved towards a more hardline pro-independence stance.

What's Next?

If the vote is for independence, what will Spain do? Call out the army?

What will president Obama say?

Is it acceptable for the US to back Egyptians demanding a government overthrow, and orchestrate a coup in Ukraine, while denouncing the right of self-determination to Catalans?

No, it's not acceptable, and it is hypocritical, but it's exactly what one should expect.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Anti-Austerity Socialists Topple Portugal's Two-Week Old Government; Modern Day Brezhnev Doctrine Review

Posted: 08 Nov 2015 09:22 AM PST

The recent Portuguese election on October 4th were "inconclusive". The center-right scored the most votes but could not muster a coalition majority.

A coalition of leftist parties could form a government, but the president of Portugal (a largely symbolic position except in cases like these) refused to appoint a leftist prime minister on the grounds that they represent anti-European forces. Instead the president allowed the pro-EU Prime Minister to stay in place.

That government will fall this week, but first let's recap what Nigel Farage said about yet another Eurozone puppet government.

Modern Day Brezhnev Doctrine Review

Please consider Nigel Farage Speaks Out on the Situation in Portugal.

As this migrant crisis begins to overwhelm the European Union, and yes it is an existential crisis, perhaps we should ask ourselves what really is the true nature of this project? Because I've heard a lot today about rights, well what about democratic rights? Because I think what we are seeing is an increasingly authoritarian European Union that crushes democratic rights and then actually crows about it.

Every single time there is a crisis, it is national democracy that loses. We saw back in 2011 the Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi sounding Eurosceptic, removed and replaced by a puppet Prime Minister. We saw exactly the same happen in Greece in 2011, Mr Papandreou threatened a referendum on Euro membership, there was a coup against him, he was replaced by a puppet. In this migrant crisis we've seen four countries, led by the strongest Hungary, making it clear they want no part of EU migrant quotas, only to find themselves crushed through EU trickery and made to accept the very thing they said no to.

And I never forget seeing the Greek Prime Minister Mr Tspiras sitting just over there having won a General Election and then come to this House to be told that the manifesto was unacceptable and it must be ditched. Well I think all of this has reached a new low this week with Portugal. Virtually unremarked upon by the media and yet for those who don't know there is now, following a General Election, a left wing majority with a socialist plan for Portugal, and yet the President of Portugal, Mr Silva, is refusing them office on the grounds that they represent anti-European forces and is allowing the minority Conservative pro-EU Prime Minister to stay in place.

This is the modern day implementation of the Brezhnev doctrine. This is exactly what happened to states living inside the USSR.

What is been made clear here with Greece and indeed with Portugal is that a country only has democratic rights if it's in favour of the project. If not those votes are taken away and perhaps none of this should surprise us, as Mr Juncker has told us before, "there can be no democratic choice against the European treaties", and the German finance minister Mr Schauble has said, "elections change nothing. There are rules". ...

Anti-Austerity Socialists Topple Portugal's Two-Week Old Government

Today, the Financial Times says Leftwing Alliance Set to Topple Portugal's Government.

An unprecedented alliance between Portugal's opposition Socialists (PS) and the far left is poised to bring down the country's two-week-old centre-right government this week and replace it with an "anti-austerity" administration.

The fall of the minority government led by Pedro Passos Coelho, the prime minister, became almost certain over the weekend when the PS sealed a pact with the radical Left Bloc (BE) and Communist party (PCP) on providing majority support for a Socialist-led alternative administration.

António Costa, the PS leader who has bridged 40 years of ideological schisms to forge a new leftwing alliance, is expected to become the next prime minister, shifting Portugal's alignment in the EU from a defence of tough fiscal discipline to support for easing austerity.

The programme supported by the left calls for public sector wage cuts made during Portugal's international bailout to be restored within a year, as well as increasing social benefits and cutting taxes. Opponents say such fiscally expansive measures could place Lisbon on a collision course with the European Commission.

Mr Passos Coelho's minority government, which took office on October 30, is almost certain to be defeated in parliament on Tuesday by a rejection motion tabled by the left-of-centre majority following a two-day debate on its programme. Losing the vote implies the government's resignation and the appointment of a new prime minister by President Aníbal Cavaco Silva.

The president has issued strongly worded warnings against the prospect of a government supported by parties such as the BE and the PCP, which favour unilateral debt restructuring, oppose the EU's fiscal compact on deficit reduction and disapprove of Portugal's Nato membership.

But the conclusion by the PS this weekend of three separate agreements with the BE, the PCP and the small pro-Communist Greens on supporting a PS-led government leaves Mr Cavaco Silva with little alternative but to swear in Mr Costa as the next prime minister should Mr Passos Coelho lose Tuesday's vote.

Costa says he is committed to keeping the country in the eurozone and will respect the three percent budget deficit rules.

However, I highly doubt he can raise wages and benefits for public workers and simultaneously keep that fiscal promise.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Seth's Blog : The simple way to get better at business writing

The simple way to get better at business writing

Don't do business writing.

Have you ever met someone in industry who talks like he writes? You visit a store and the person says, "effective January 1, 2015, we have ceased operations at this location. For further information, correspondence should be addressed to our headquarters." Of course not. That would be awkward.

Write like you talk instead.

"We closed this store last year. Sorry for the hassle, please call us if you have any questions."

With effort and practice, it's possible to speak with respect, precision and energy. After you speak that way, write down what you said.

That's effective business writing.

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sâmbătă, 7 noiembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Robots Will Change World Beyond Recognition Says BoA; Automation Will Change Jobs More Than Kill Them Says McKinsey

Posted: 07 Nov 2015 06:47 PM PST

Robot Theory

The battle of robot theory is on. Bank of America paints one picture and McKinsey another.

Let's investigate both theories.

Automation Will Change Jobs More Than Kill Them

As reported by the New York Times, McKinsey says Automation Will Change Jobs More Than Kill Them

The report, published on Friday and written by two members of the McKinsey Global Institute, the consulting firm's research arm, and another McKinsey employee, adds a twist to the debate over the likely nature and pace of automation in the workplace.

Today's automation fears essentially rest on two assumptions. First, the speed of advances in digital software and hardware is faster than in previous waves of technological change. And second, clever software and machines are increasingly able to automate cognitive tasks, not just physical ones. Artificial intelligence, it seems, poses a new kind of threat to jobs — not so much replacing muscle but brains.

Looking at the trends in artificial intelligence, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, researchers at Oxford University, estimated in a paper published two years ago that 47 percent of American jobs were at risk from automation.

The McKinsey research suggests a different kind of impact, at least over the next three to five years, which is the time span of its analysis. The McKinsey study found that less than 5 percent of jobs can be entirely automated using "currently demonstrated technologies," which it describes as technologies that are either in the marketplace or in research labs.

The work ripe for automation is not just routine tasks in lower-paying jobs. "Most high-wage, high-skill jobs have a significant amount of activity that can be automated," said Michael Chui, a principal at the McKinsey Global Institute, and a co-author of the report.

Jobs where some portion of activities could be automated include physicians, financial managers and senior corporate executives. At the apex of the corporate job ladder, chief executives, more than 20 percent of the work could be automated, McKinsey estimates. The C.E.O. chores that could be automated with machine-learning software include analyzing reports and data to make operating decisions, preparing staff assignments and reviewing status reports.

The McKinsey authors emphasized the potential for automation to enrich work, liberating people to focus on more creative tasks. Apparently there is a lot of room for improvement on that front. According to one calculation in the report, "just 4 percent of the work activities across the U.S. economy require creativity at median human level of performance."

McKinsey Report

Inquiring minds may be interested in the actual report. If so please consider the Four Fundamentals of Workplace Automation in the McKinsey Quarterly.

Compare and contrast that viewpoint with that of Bank of America.

Robots Will Change World Beyond Recognition Says BoA

The Telegraph comments on the viewpoint of Bank of America in Robots May Shatter the Global Economic Order Within a Decade.

Robots will take over 45pc of all jobs in manufacturing and shave $9 trillion off labour costs within a decade, leaving great swathes of the global society on the historical scrap heap.

In a sweeping 300-page report, Bank of America predicts that robots and other forms of artificial intelligence will transform the world beyond recognition as soon as 2025, shattering old business models in a whirlwind of "creative disruption", with transformation effects ultimately amounting to $30 trillion or more each year.

"The pace of disruptive technological innovation has gone from linear to parabolic," it said. Any country that fails to embrace the robot revolution will slip rapidly down the rankings of competiveness, and will be left behind.

Manufacturing wages in China have jumped ninefold since 2000, and the country's workforce is shrinking. China is already the world's biggest buyer of robots, making up a quarter of the global market.

The costs of robots, "care-bots" for the elderly, "agribots" to plants seeds or pick fruit, commercial drones and artificial intelligence have, on average, dropped by 27pc over the past 10 years, and are expected to fall a further 22pc by 2005.

The price of an advance robotic welder fell from $182,000 in 2005 to $133,000 last year, and its sophistication is increasing all the time. The standard Baxter collaborative "cobot" that works side by side with people on the factory floor – fixing bolts on a conveyor belt, for example – costs just $22,000.

We are coming close to the crucial "inflexion point" when it is 15pc cheaper to use a robot than to employ a human worker.

This threshold has already been crossed in the American, European and Japanese car industries, where it costs $8 an hour to employ a robot for spot welding, compared to $25 for a worker. Hence the eerie post-human feel of the most up-to-date car plants. "We are facing a paradigm shift, which will change the way we live and work," said the report's author, Beijia Ma.

The social effect is to squeeze out those at the bottom of the employment ladder, rendering them almost unemployable without re-education. Bank of America describes this as the "displacement of human labour", estimating that almost half of US jobs could be at risk.

Productivity will soar but wages will not rise at the same pace, if at all. The owners of capital will take an even bigger slice of global income, pushing inequality to yet greater extremes. Labour's share of the pie peaked at 65pc in 1975 in the rich countries and has already dropped to 58pc.

The workforce will split yet further into the "haves" at the top of education scale and the "have-nots" with just high school qualifications, not to mention the 800m illiterates in the world. It is easy to imagine the explosive political consequences if governments fail to take action to mitigate the effects, yet this may be almost impossible in a borderless, globalised world.

Nor are the middle classes invulnerable. Bank of America said "robo-advisors" using algorithm-based systems will "disrupt" 25m workers in financial and legal services. The Millennial generation – now 18-34 years old – will be the first to switch en masse to these post-human services. This rising cohort already holds $7 trillion of liquid assets and is likely to inherit another $30-$40 trillion from Baby Boom parents.

There is nowhere to go. Labour-saving devices are sweeping everything, everywhere. A single professor can teach a course to 150,000 students through digital technology.

We may achieve the dream of prosperity without toil as robots take over, but find ourselves living in a jobless dystopia.

Deflationary Force

Regardless of which viewpoint you think more likely, it should be perfectly clear that robots are a huge deflationary force.

The Fed's (central bank's in general), that the global economy needs 2% inflation is 100% absurd in the face of such forces.

Attempts by the Fed, by unions, by Obama, and by those screaming for a $15 "living wage" are totally counterproductive.

The higher the wage inflation, the greater the incentive to replace workers with robots.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Seth's Blog : Variations on stupid

Variations on stupid

We throw the word stupid around a lot, labeling people (perhaps forever). In fact, there are tons of ways to be stupid, and we ought to think about that before we shut someone (including ourselves) down... Stupid is something we do, not the way we are.

Bad analysis is the classic sort of stupid. This is not the stupid of, "if you knew then what you know now," but the simpler question: "Given what was clear at the time, why did you make such a bad decision?"

Willfully ignorant is the stupidity of not seeking out the information that would have been worth knowing before you spoke up, made a decision or pulled the trigger.

Lack of cultural understanding is often mistaken for stupid. This is what happens when we put our foot in our mouth. Often, it seems particularly stupid when we're willfully ignorant about something we should have known.

Inability to read people isn't a form of stupidity, but it can often look like it. Some people are just unable to do this, but mostly it's a lack of effort and empathy that leads us to not see people in a way others think we should.

Distracted is the best excuse for making a stupid call. After all, when the stupidity happens, it's probably because we didn't think the decision was important, and with all the incoming. Okay, it's not a good excuse, but it's a common one.

Self-destructive is a particularly widespread form of stupidity among people who have privilege and opportunity that they're not sure they deserve.

Emotionally overwrought stupidity happens because we're tempted to amplify and maintain the drama going on in our heads, which distracts us from seeing or processing what we see.

Fear, of course, is at the heart of a lot of our bad judgment.

Unwilling to be right is a form of fear. If you do stupid things, you don't have to take advantage of the change that would have happened if you had been right.

Slow is not stupid, not at all. It's just not going to win you many prizes on a game show.

Short-term selfish behavior is what we see all the time from people who should know better. And yet they come back to this trap again and again, because it's a habit. Day trading, anyone?

Rush to judgment is a particularly challenging variation. Our unwillingness to sit with ambiguity causes us to decide before we should.

Stupidity doesn't have to be incurable.

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luni, 9 noiembrie 2015

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Seth's Blog : Advertising's hidden design and its impact on our culture

Advertising's hidden design and its impact on our culture

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duminică, 8 noiembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Seth's Blog : The simple way to get better at business writing

The simple way to get better at business writing

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sâmbătă, 7 noiembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Seth's Blog : Variations on stupid

Variations on stupid

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