Google’s deal with Clear Channel and EchoStar to auction remnant inventory will be interesting and will be watched by many.  Basically, no one wants their business to be made a commodity, letting supply and demand determine value and price.   Think of how many people make a living selling the value of their ads.  Change will be slow, which is why the focus is on remnant inventory.  If TV networks and video providers  were serious about the auction model, they would put up their entire inventory, not just the remnants that are likely to go unsold up for auction.  It is change, it is unknown. 

If eBay, the undisputed leader in auction, could not succeed, what will Google do differently?  Ironically, radio and cable providers will get a view of their inventory that does not exist today. 

I have read several articles about cable being dead because of the emergence of broadband internet and entertainment, making cable and satellite’s future unclear.  Time Warner is even going to consider selling off its cable division and analysts expect the Cox family to sell Cox Communications.  Cable is Time Warner’s biggest division with 2006 revenues of $11.8 million, even bigger than its AOL , film entertainment and cable networks.

With sites like YouTube, I understand the concern.  The cable companies do not want to be relegated to being just the pipe.Read More »

Ann, the CMO of The Mighties, and her marketing team will be taking some personal time after month-end to recover from the overwhelming bombardment of Excel spreadsheets required to generate the post-mortem presentation for all marketing channels. Read More »

Meet Edward, the Mighty IT deparment head. Gain an understanding of his business role, biggest frustrations, success factors, biggest fears, information consumption habits and hobbies.

Read More »

Meet Ann, the Mighty CMO. Gain an understanding of her business role, biggest frustrations, success factors, biggest fears, information consumption habits and hobbies.

Read More »

Meet the Mighties
Follow the corporate drama of the Mighties as they navigate a corporate marketing culture that looks a lot like yours. 

In an effort to deal with marketing and marketing intelligence perspectives, I have created The Mighties.   Each mighty person represents a persona in an organization; personas I will use to expose different challenges and opportunities organizations face when dealing with new media, marketing and marketing intelligence. 

Bottom line, I am really doing it to make blogging more interesting not just for me but for my readers.  

A response curve has two purposes, forecasting responses and evaluating a campaign’s performance while the campaign is active, referred to as Projection Model or Project to Final. 

Forecasting

As the diagram illustrates below, a response curve is a critical element in forecasting because it derives when responses come in over the life-cycle of a campaign given the expected responses. 

Using a granular forecast (by day), a business is able to plan and staff to meet demand.  Forecasting helps a company optimize operations by helping answering the following questions:

• How much staff does a call center need on hand?
• How many calls will a call center get on day X?
• How many widgets d ... Read More »
  Comments (0)

We maintain a great deal of data and have cool charting capabilities, giving Upper Quadrant the ability to create numerous dashboard charts and elements.   But, we have learned that less is sometimes better. 

A good marketing dashboard is not measured by the number of charts or cool usability; it is measured by the insight provided.  A good marketing dashboard should provide a timely and accurate snapshot that answers four critical questions:

1. What is broken?
2. How am I doing?
3. What are the best and worst performers?
4. Where am I heading?

By answering these questions, everyone from marketing operations to executive management can impact marketing performance and shift attention from data gathering and analysis to focusing on the big issues that will drive value for their company or client. 

I ... Read More »

This posting is a comment I added to Eric Kintz’s Marketing Excellence blog posting, Is process a bad word in marketing? 

As marketing starts to use more of the left-side of the brain, process is a critical component and gives you the power to be more creative.  A lot of times, creative concepts are squashed in a conference room because people say they are too creative or risqué, but if you ... Read More »

"54% of voters think the idea proposed by Wal-mart and other marketers to build an eBay-based system for auctioning some non-upfront TV inventory is a good one.  But 46% say they believe such a system would have a negative effect of the market." - AdAge, May 22, 2006.