sutton017

To the naive mind collecting data sounds like science. It is not. A datum is the result of an instance of observation. But observations do not become science until they are made sense of. People observed the movements of planets for thousands of years. They kept intricate charts. But for all those years no one could explain the seemingly incomprehensible movement of those planets. And then Copernicus came along and in one simple theory explained what for millennia seemed beyond comprehension. The planets moved the way they did because they were circling the sun, not the earth. That's what science does. It takes data and makes sense out of it. Today the advertising industry has unimaginable quantities of data and hardly an ounce of science. Ask any advertising person for data about the Google or Facebook buy they made and you will get reams of papers and stacks of charts and tons of reports. You will get a festival of data. Then ask that person to name one - just one - major consume...

It's very simple. Facebook is way too powerful to be run by a jerk like Mark Zuckerberg. While Zuckerberg has shown himself to be capable of creating a financial juggernaut, he has simultaneously shown himself to be utterly inadequate to handle the responsibilities of managing an organization with the power and influence of Facebook. Or even understanding what the responsibilities are. The ease with which Russian operatives manipulated the Facebook platform has only two possible explanations. Facebook was either negligent or stupid. In light of the stakes, either of these is sufficient grounds for Zuckerberg's removal. If we had a sensible government they would be looking into Zuckerberg's role in the Russian exploitation of Facebook. What did he know and when did he know it? What did he do about it? - The indictments handed down by the Justice Department give us substantial reasons to believe that crimes were committed on the "buy" side. The question is, were c...

Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer for Procter & Gamble, made a big splash last year when he stood up before the annual IAB conference and lambasted the online ad industry. Pritchard said the industry was “ murky at best and fraudulent at worst” and "It's time to grow up. It's time for action... the days of giving digital a pass are over." According to Ad Age, P&G, "vowed to no longer pay for any digital media, ad tech companies, agencies or other suppliers for services that don't comply with its new rules."  Recently, however, Pritchard has been far more gentle -- one might even say strangely sympathetic -- in his statements about the online ad industry. According to AdAge, Pritchard recently said he has "little reason to make good" on his threats of last year. He said... "...I’m encouraged by the progress made over the past year to clean up the digital media supply chain, driven by the entire industry stepping up to take ac...

This is gonna be fun. I'm about to enter a contest called "The Q Award" sponsored by Ad Age and Quantcast (they do media hocus pocus with AI) that could win me a trip to Cannes and some kind of Grand Prize. I am compelled to enter this thing because it would allow me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sip putrid rosé with everyone in the world I've ever insulted. The contest goes like this... "The Q Award Details We are looking for people who challenge the status quo, question everything and strive to break conventional wisdom. The winning team will have discovered new insights and implemented a new strategy, campaign or product that ultimately resulted in increased brand awareness, growth and sales." Am I crazy, or is BadMen a slam dunk to win this fucking thing? Just one little hurdle: Somewhere along the line I've probably called everyone on the judging panel a dickhead or an imbecile.

Last week I was interviewed by BBC World Services . The topic of the interview was Trump and Twitter. One of the questions they asked was whether the fascination with Trump's tweets would be the new normal for politicians. My answer was no. Historically, large social media successes have mostly been one-offs and have not been repeatable. Here are a few social media phenomena that were supposed to change everything and changed absolutely nothing. First was The Blair Witch Project . It was a super-low budget film that became a smash hit through clever use of social media. It was hailed as the turning point for movie marketing, and was "proof" that movies would no longer need expensive TV advertising. Tune in to the Super Bowl to see how wrong this turned out to be. Next is Zappos . They built a very successful online shoe retailing company (eventually bought by Amazon) on the back of Twitter. This was supposed to disrupt retailing forever as clever marketers would use Twitt...

A few years ago we entered what might be termed the “technological” era of advertising. In this era, machines and software took a lot of the tasks that used to be done by people and started to do them quicker, and in some cases better. Recently, we have thought of ad technology mostly in terms of media. But technology has influenced the advertising business in many other ways including film production, computer design, data collection and analysis, etc. Technology, in fact, has influenced all aspects of the advertising business. In many instances for the better, in some, for the worse. The problem we have yet to come to terms with is that there is a difference between technology and science. We view our modern technological tools as giving us a scientific way of doing advertising. Before technology we were mostly guessing at what was working and what wasn’t. Today we believe that technology gives us a much truer picture of advertising reality. I am not convinced. The essence of science...

A few days ago, a fine fellow named Matt Bergman was kind enough to say some very nice things about me on LinkedIn . Matt did a juxtaposition of excerpts from two different pieces about "branding." One was from WPP (the largest agency holding company on the planet) and one was from me. Being the nice guy that he is, Matt said that both pieces came from completely different planets but each had something to offer. Being the asshole that I am, I think the WPP piece is utter garbage. It is absolutely one hundred percent undiluted horseshit. Some sentences seem to be just random clichés strung together willy-nilly by imbeciles. Now, to be fair, the excerpts are just that, excerpts. You can take pretty much anything and cut it apart and make it look silly. But this thing wasn't edited for that purpose. It was edited for the opposite purpose by someone looking for value. In my opinion, it's a perfect example of the unspeakable jargon and hideous double-talk that the adverti...