Consensus Learning Model

My question about whether you learned anything at or not didn’t get much reaction.  I suspect the answers were polarized, with half the people thinking not really I go there for other reasons” and the other half thinking of course I did Answers to that question might have been helpful What I’m really questioning is this: How do people in the web space learn what they learn There are also some serious implications for Web Marketing adoption by the broader Marketing community buried in the above.  To me this is not unlike the  Problem where for years people confused the Technology solution with the Marketing potential which set  back a decade.

Repeating the Past

I’ve been trying to get a few things straight in my head about the way people Learn Online Marketing.The Online Marketing world seems to repeat the same mistakes over and over; it’s almost like every new generation of technology is a clean slate and somehow people expect an approach that was flawed in a previous generation won’t be flawed this time.Sure, technology changes, but the fundamentals of human behavior are much more difficult to change.  So you would expect there to be some constants For example, putting a high value on quantity of activity (remember Hits?) when every past generation  has found that quality ends up as a more important metric.

Sherlock Holmes Problem

I think this is probably the last Learning and Teaching issue in Online Marketing (series starts here) before attempting to evaluate and summarize the challenge.  I would like to receive comments from you on the Sherlock Holmes Problem.There are two types of minds  the mathematical and what might be called the intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the dive.In his post How the Skills of a Night Auditor Translate into Web Analytics, Christopher Berry explores a notion we have wrestled with a lot while developing the  Certified Web Analyst Test – can you teach someone to be curious in a business analytics way  Or are people just born with  socialized into this skill set  How do you measure and test someone for analytical curiosity We have referred to these issues internally on the Education Committee as the “Sherlock Holmes” problem.  The issue is not the ability to read and interpret reports, or write up findings, or anything like that.  It’s the ability to see coincidences or oddities in the data, to conceptualize linkage or relationships others don’t see, to follow the data trail  right down to Root Cause.

Conclusion

I’ve spent a long time thinking about how to define the “correct model” for online Marketing comprehensively, and found it’s a deep hole I can’t travel down further than I already have at this time.  I think readers of this blog probably know which direction I am leaning on this model.  Perhaps we can do that together at a later date (feel free to leave your Comments on the correct model).  I do know what doesn’t work, though, and am surprised we keep repeating that model.For now, here’s a prediction: The first social network to:1.  Drive “vertical”, highly segmented participation, which drives context for Display Ads, and 2.  Becomes transparent to web-wide Search or uses Search really well internally to expose rich contextual spaces will be the first social network to make money

Dumb Money

Buyout money or stupid money coming from Advertisers – is in many ways just the enabler of the Wrong Model problem.  It allows these innovators to stop thinking about what they are doing, to really create something different as far as Advertising  Marketing goes.It’s just too easy to say make sure we leave space for Display Ads and leave it at that, instead of building in the plumbing to give the advertising proper context.  I’m not going to go deeper into the fundamental problems of Display Advertising on the Web here as I covered these issues in the Online Brand-ing series.

Advertising do better than Advertising we already have

This concept is extremely important because if you can get to this place, then you have leverage, then you have the ability to draw more money into online Marketing Analysis – because it is different. When everything you come up with replicates the off line model but doesn’t work as well – take Display Advertising, for example, which is the business model most every “new” idea uses – then how would you expect to get any Marketing respect budget Seriously, this approach looks ridiculous from outside the small world (budget-wise) of Online.  Think about it.  What other medium relentlessly pursues a failed business model so persistently, hoping something will change

Budget for Online Marketing

As long as online looks and acts like some kind of ongoing experiment, it’s going to get that kind of attention and budget.  Seriously.  And the ongoing, repeated failures of the same ideas over and over does not help with this issue very much, know what I mean?  I know, I know, you think each generation is a new idea because it’s new technology.But these are not new ideas to Management, and they’re not ideas to Marketing.  They’re the same ideas with new technology, and each fails in the same way the others did.  So, why do we keep repeating these cycles  What is wrong with the transition from brilliant software development to sustainable business models

Wrong Model, Dumb Money

I am not a technophobic Marketeer, an old “resistant to change” type.  In fact, I’m just the opposite, and that’s why I can’t understand why Online continues to Repeat Past Marketing Failures.I was one of those kids that built crystal radio sets and messed around with ham radio.  My favorite place to hang out was Radio Shack, back when they were an electronic parts house.  I built all kinds of circuit board stuff with a soldering iron, mostly bugs and tel co hacks.  I was a geek when they were called nerds. In 1977 I learned the BASIC language and was writing simple programs for the mainframe at college.  In 1978, I was part of a small group of students who worked on the Syn clavier the first large scale truly digital music synthesizer.  I started working with PC’s in 1987, and had a home computer by 1991.  I was one of those people who dialed up to the CompuServe Forums at 300 baud, primarily talking about computers and music, figuring out how to rewrite .bat and .in i files to get the computer keyboard interfaces working properly. And at the same time, making lots of  ”online friends”So I have to tell you, the following is not coming from someone who is against or afraid of technology or experimentation.  What I am against is the illogical squandering of resources, and people who are inflexible in their thinking.I understand perfectly well why coders get excited about developing new ideas for new platforms, solving problems and providing new functionality.  Let’s build something for Facebook!  Get tired of that?  Let’s build something for i Phone!  Etc.  On and on, over and over.  Nothing wrong with that.Here is what I don’t understand about this “innovation” on the web.  The magic bullet for monetizing all the free platforms and applications so pervasive on the web is Advertising.  But the platforms and applications are rarely developed, it seems, with a clear vision of creating value for the Advertiser.  Surprisingly, this part of the job is not well thought out and often bolted on later The problem with this approach should be obvious – ultimately, the application fails to pay for itself, the business model collapses, and that generation of work disappears with another “lesson learned”.   Except, this lesson is often the same lesson learned in the previous generation, from an Advertising perspective.Here is something we have now learned about 20,000 times on the web:  Advertising lacking proper Context generates little value for Advertisers.  As is the case off line by the way.That’s what makes a prediction like My Space will be Tripod all over again from an Advertising perspective so easy to make.  It doesn’t matter what the platform or application is.  If it lacks the key contextual elements to support successful Advertising, it will fail from an Advertising perspective

No Requirements Doc for Online Marketing

Trying to figure out why Online Marketing and the Technology that supports it keeps Repeating Past mistakes, I arrived at the conclusion Technology and Marketing shared the blame by using the Wrong Model and spending Dumb Money, respectively. But I was not satisfied with that conclusion either, still seemed not to be Root Cause – I still had to ask, why?Why, with all the smart people around the industry, all the brilliant technology innovation, do we have the Wrong Model / Dumb Money problem?  Why does Online continue to mimic an inferior Offline model, instead of creating a new one, unique to itself?Then it hits me.  No requirements doc.  So simple.Marketing never told Tech what they needed to really get on board.Not requirements for a platform or application mind you, but for the Industry.  The Requirements needed for major Marketing investment in Online Marketing / Analytics.  Requirements that would attract attention from people like these folks.What is needed is an Intervention by Marketing on the Tech / VC side, or the Tech side to say, OK Marketing, what do you want?  A meeting in the middle.  Something like a translation of the ClueTrain Manifesto into tangible Requirements.  So that the brilliant technology innovators can start turning out products and systems Marketers can enthusiastically use.  As opposed to (for example) the tech folks hosting tons of conferences on social media to FUD Marketing into using products and platforms Marketing knows won’t deliver.Really, when will Tech get over the answer to every innovation pushback from Marketing being “Oh, we don’t know what the future will bring, better get on board now That’s ridiculous, from a Marketing perspective.After all, we now have 10 years of Web Analytics we did not have access to in 1999.  Maybe the Web Analysts should do the requirements doc, since they have “both brains in the game” already!What do you thinkIs this Online Marketing Requirements Doc idea too nuts?  How else would you explain each new technology wave repeating the Marketing failures of the past, instead of bringing  anything new or useful in terms of Marketing or Advertising

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