Westcopy

What Watson can't do

2011-02-25T11:09:00.000-08:00

People are still talking about how IBM's Watson supercomputer destroyed two Jeopardy champions over a recent three-day contest.

Watson was impressive in its ability to understand complex, nuanced statements, and then search text databases to assemble the correct questions. Even the silly mistakes it made, like naming Toronto in a question about U.S. cities, seemed somehow charming.

It made me think about how many tasks computers have replaced over the last 20 years or so. The best chess players are made of silicon. Assembly line workers are now Walmart greeters, their jobs replaced by manufacturing robots. Photo retouching was once a craft and fine art, practiced by a select few using "air brushes"; now photo retouching is what our kids do to a photo before they post it on Facebook. Kindles and iPads may replace books before long. I've been reading that Watson may soon appear in hospitals, helping to diagnose patients.

And does anybody have just a phone anymore?

Yet fortunately for writers such as myself, there is one thing that computers are not much better at than they were 20 years ago, and that is writing. I believe that is because writing is an extension of thought itself, and for all their marvelous powers, computers cannot think. At all.

Watson, like its close kins Google and Bing, has an uncanny ability to find relevant results. But it is still a GIGO device (garbage in, garbage out). For thinking about a problem, identifying what needs to be discovered, and phrasing the right search query, human thinking is still required. And thinking is exactly what is required of writers, as well as marketers, product managers, sales directors, and all the other very human endeavors of business.

I take comfort in knowing that, despite IBM's supercomputer technology, years of research and teams of AI experts, Watson still cannot come close to doing what most of us do every single day. Write a simple letter, in plain English.

I can see Ken Olsen in the Cloud

2010-12-08T11:35:00.000-08:00

The other day, I drove by the old, abandoned headquarters of Digital Equipment Corporation, that one-time technology giant since swallowed up and dismantled by rivals. I started my career there as a writer, just as the company was on the ascendancy, and later I worked for the ad agency that handled the account. I wrote the first Vax ad, and probably the last one too.

It's been three decades and more since Ken Olsen and Digital revolutionized computers by making access both interactive and distributed. Ironically, he couldn’t see that personal computers were going to take over the desktop, even though, in some ways, they were an extension of his own idea.

But PCs were also very different from Mr. Olsen's vision. PCs distributed more than access. They distributed the computer power itself, the processing and the applications. As a result, over the years, we the users have accumulated an enormous overhead and duplication of local computer power and cost.

That's why the Cloud is on the horizon. Built on the Internet, the Cloud will allow us to decouple our information access from our information technology. Our storage and applications can all float in the Cloud, and we can focus on what we really want to do--communicate and use information.

Mr. Olsen disagreed with PCs on one important point. He didn't think people needed computer power as such, they just needed the access. And on that point, it turns out he may have been right.

Learn more about my writing and editing services at www.westcopy.com.

Brand New

2010-11-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

By now everyone knows about the Gap branding fiasco.

For some reason, the company decided it was time for a new logo. The public revolted against the mediocre design, and after attempting to "crowdsource" a new logo on Facebook, the company gave up and scrapped the whole thing.

Something similar is reported to have taken place at General Motors this summer, though nobody outside the company has seemed to notice. According to online articles, the Chevrolet division was trying to drop the name "Chevy." Henceforth, only the complete name "Chevrolet" would be used. One article reported that employees had to put a dollar in a jar every time they used the name Chevy.

The day after reading these articles, I watched a Chevy commercial on TV. Yes, a Chevy commercial, about Chevy trucks. For more information, visit www.chevy.com.

Luckily for GM, the Chevy brand is so strong, not even the worst marketing decisions can kill it. It's in our culture for pete's sake ("Drove my Chevy to the levy"). Chevy is living the dream of every company trying to build a brand. So why in the world would they want to change it?

Most brands aren't Gap or Chevy, of course, instantly recognizable around the world.

On the other hand, every company has managed to make its name in the marketplace with whatever name and logo it happens to own. Every ad, press release, pdf and business card has been quietly building a brand that people know and remember. That's a sizable investment no matter how you look at it, and the cost of changing it can be enormous--in dollars, distractions and possibly public embarrassment.

Even when brands are suffering--high fructose corn syrup or BP, for instance--they can't easily get away with a name change in today's instant media world.

The moral of all this, I believe, is that a brand is not just a design or a word that you can change because of this year's marketing numbers. It's who you are.

More often than not, brand old is better than brand new.

Stop the presses

2010-02-18T07:11:00.000-08:00

A funny thing has happened to marketing in the last few years. The cost of production has almost disappeared.

Today, marketers routinely post their brochures as PDF files on their websites, to entice visitors to download information and perhaps fill out a form to do so. There often is no plan to print the collateral at all, except for occasional on-demand printing in low quantities for trade shows and sales calls.

And with the economy still floundering, email, pay-per-click and other online media seem a lot more attractive than printed direct mail. Webinars instead of seminars. Twitters instead of newsletters.

Suddenly everything is free.

As a result, the value of traditional marketing services has been plunging across the board. Remember when you had to pay hundreds for typesetting, before type became free thanks to computers? Now the same trend is happening everywhere. Why pay thousands to have a brochure designed, if you're not going to spend thousands more printing it? Why pay for custom photo shoots that eat up half your budget for the year? Ink and paper are disappearing from marketing, or at least becoming far less important. It's the same phenomenon that's happening to newspapers and magazines. And to CDs and probably books before long.

The local Blockbuster video store in my town just closed up shop. A few weeks earlier, the FYE store down the street went under. Design firms that built their business on deep expertise in ink and printing are struggling or disappearing.

Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message." Not anymore. The medium is disappearing. Now the message is the message.

In a virtual world, content isn't just king. It's the only thing.

Learn more about my writing and editing services at www.westcopy.com.

Also visit my other sites: www.headlines-to-go.com and www.thecontentman.com.

If you want leads, make an offer.

2010-02-03T05:54:00.000-08:00

In politics, it's a timeless truth: "If you want people to vote for you, ask for their vote."

The same principle applies to website lead generation, quite literally. In asking people to take any kind of action at your site, especially contacting you or making a purchase, you are asking for their vote of confidence, not to mention their time and money.

The best way to get them to cast that vote is to offer something of value. Much has changed in direct marketing since the Internet, but this has not. People will take notice if they can get something they want. What kind of offer has value? That depends on your customers, your marketplace and your competitors. In many business and technology markets, a white paper will generate good quality leads. In a more consumer market, don't underestimate the power of a free T-shirt.

You should follow a few rules when making an offer on your website:

Highlight your offer on the home page. Why not?
Make sure the offer is appropriate for your brand. Never offer anything that is "beneath" the image you want for your company. You can trade up, but never trade down.
Make the offer relevant to your business. The closer your offer is associated with what you do, the better. For instance, a light bulb company can offer a white paper about energy reduction. A paper company can offer a beautiful print of a striking image. A web development company can offer "10 Rules for a Great Web Site."
Ask for a LITTLE information. When they click on the offer, you can use this opportunity to gather information about your prospect. Ask for their name, email and company. Get their phone number if you can. The better your offer, the more you can ask. But don't get greedy and ask for too much or they'll click away.
Connect the offer to a sales visit if possible. If your object is to get in the door, this is your chance. Get them while they're hot. Many companies follow up leads within a week or two with phone calls. Hiring a telesales firm to do this for you may be a good idea.
Have a long-term follow up plan. Use an automatic customer contact system or assign someone inside to do it, but make sure you stay in touch with the people who contact you, through a vehicle such as a regular e-newsletter.

You have to invest a little bit to make good offers on your home page. But by following these steps, that investment should pay off in site performance and, better yet, in sales.

Direct marketing isn't what it used to be

2009-09-22T06:09:00.000-07:00

A little over ten years ago, I was writing direct response letters to business executives, convincing them to show up on a rainy Tuesday in Cleveland for a seminar about business intelligence software--an entire morning or afternoon, mind you. And the seminars would be full. Fifteen to twenty execs would show up for the sales pitch.

Good luck pulling that off today, unless Warren Buffet is speaking. Now we're in the age of the webinar. Nobody goes anywhere, anymore.

And it's not that hard to set up webinars; you can outsource the whole thing through many firms. Then, you can post your collection of webinars on your website, which people can access just by logging in and answering a few questions, like email, firm and phone.

Ironically, this hasn't made direct marketing any easier. In some ways, it's become much harder. Just a few years ago, you could control your prospect contacts completely, doling out the information you wanted to, using offers of white papers to be sent in the mail, in return for talking on the phone. Again, try that today.

All this has changed one of the fundamental pillars of direct marketing, the old adage, "The more you tell, the more you sell." The modern version would be, "The more information you make available, through websites and viral marketing and social marketing and mass media and in-store, the more you sell. Your initial direct marketing contact doesn't have to tell much at all, as long as it gives a URL."

Here's the catch, however. Eventually, you do have to sell. Your audience responds to the initial email blast...they visit your landing page...they view the flash demo. And then what? Well, then they continue through your site if you're lucky, at which point you have to be selling effectively on every page they land on. Or, they don't come back, because the content wasn't good enough.

And that's the same way direct marketing has always worked. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Learn more about my writing and editing services at www.westcopy.com.

Also visit my other sites: www.headlines-to-go.com and www.thecontentman.com.

Thoughts on Disposable Marketing

2009-09-14T06:08:00.000-07:00

I was talking with a client the other day about how the marketing business has changed so much. Hardly anyone worries about printing anymore. Just slap up a web page or crank out a PDF sales sheet.

This marketer--a VP at a technology company--was complaining that people no longer even worry about spelling or grammar. She said she routinely sees misspellings in proposals, web sites, everywhere.

Then it hit me: marketing has reached the status of paper plates. It's now disposable. Don't like yesterday's message? No problem, make up something else today. The email blast didn't work? No worries, just blast out another one. It's all virtually free anyway, isn't it?

But in fact, there is a high cost to ineffective communications. Time goes by. Competitors make headway and seize market share. Customers buy from you…or they buy elsewhere.

The challenge for marketers today is to rise above the fray of Disposable Marketing and find a way to make a lasting imprint on the marketplace. To do that you need a messaging/creative template. This is much like a design template, only it works at the message level. The template is built on a marketing strategy, provides a theme and creative directions, and gives flexible guidelines for creating any kind of advertising or other promotion.

Some might call this branding, but in my experience, branding is too often an ivory-tower exercise in pop psychology, with a tagline thrown in. A message template needs to be very practical; so practical that every marketing project can make easy use of it.

In any case, the bottom line is pretty clear: the more marketing becomes a throw-away commodity, the more you need a message platform that stays with people.

Learn more about my writing and editing services at www.westcopy.com.

Thoughts on SEO Writing

2009-09-09T05:45:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization is one of those 'duh' decisions. Of course you do it. By using the right keywords in headers, links and copy, you rank high on google and your site gets more hits.

All well and good. But SEO will only get people to your site. It won't keep them there, or move them closer to a purchase. For that, you need Content Optimization, or CO.

CO is about what marketing and sales have always been about. What's your message? Is it clear--and will people care? How do you present it? How much do you tell? In what order?

The beauty of the internet is, you can answer these questions in dynamic ways that weren't possible even a few years ago. Here are 3 things I recommend to optimize content:

More links across more pages is better than everything on one page. Make every page dynamic and deep. Create as many pages as needed to organize each part of your story and give visitors the freedom they need to feel satisfied and in control.
On home pages, rotate different types of messages and track results. You may find that some messages make your site more sticky than others.
Rotate in new customer stories to highlight on your home page on a regular basis. Updates help your site rank higher, and people always want to hear from other customers. (Make sure it's an interesting story, not a technical manual!)

In other words, your home page, and all your other pages, need to sell like crazy (CO)--while using your keywords in headers, links and copy (SEO).

Learn more about my writing and editing services at www.westcopy.com.