All content has moved to http://www.approachingtheta.com

Edit:// Just a note, we are officially up at http://www.approachingtheta.com. This/these posts will stay up for some time, just as a matter of continuity. I’ll eventually migrate them all over to the new server though. Cheers.

Well this little experiment seems to be growing a little larger than I had originally anticipated. Over the next few days I’ll be switching everything over to another server, which will allow me to have more control over some of the features and functionality I’d like to implement over the next little while.

Further, you’ll be able to access the site using either of the following 2 urls:

http://www.approachingtheta.com
http://www.apptheta.com

Whether or not you want to pronounce that “Approaching the T.A.” is entirely up to you.

More on theme, there’s a great post over on The Social Capitalist by Karl Long entitled “The Medium of Business is Behaviour” that explores the relationship between Design and Business and how both have the ability to influence behaviour (through power and empathy). Purely speaking, companies use a blend of business and design to accomplish this. It’s caused me to think about the response that both of these entities evoke from the public at large. Consumers have just as much ability (if not more) to influence the behaviour of business, though this manifests itself almost purely through [purchasing] power. Consumers don’t really have to put a whole lot of effort into empathic decision making when they’re engaged in a transaction.

It’s a good read. Hop on over and take a look.

But wait,… there’s more!

A very familiar face has been in the news recently, though I’d be willing to bet few people actually know his name. In fact, I’d bet that even after mentioning Vince Schlomi, most people would still be at a loss to figure out exactly where he was from. That is, until you see a picture of him.

Vince Shlomi. aka: The ShamWow Guy

Vince Shlomi, aka: The ShamWow Guy was arrested recently and is alleged to have assaulted a prostitute. You can read all about the sordid details here: at the Smoking Gun website. As this made the rounds on the internet, it got me thinking about infomercials themselves. You wouldn’t have much trouble getting consensus over the fact that the vast majority of them are absolute train-wrecks. Formulaic, half-baked scenarios encrusted with bad acting, with a nice thick syrupy coating of dubious promises and happy days ahead.

And this is also probably why they work. Little known, but omnipresent companies like Thane Direct and Interwood Direct Marketing are the companies responsible for the vast majority of infomercials that flood the airwaves when any sane individual should just be drifting off to sleep. They’re also responsible for raking in a LOT of money (it’s hard to track down actual numbers for these giants, but it doesn’t take an accountant to take a guess at profits for either behemoth.)

I guess the question is, why is it that we give infomercials so much leeway for being so utterly horrible? Why do we glue our eyes to the screen to watch these pitchmen try to sell us miracles of modern technology that amount to no more than your average chamois, blender, or reasonably sharp knife? There’s got to be a reason why we expect a different calibre of advertisement from a car company or a even a shampoo manufacturer, than we do from Vince or his colleagues.

HI! I'M BILLY MAYS!

I actually don’t think we have to look very far to find a workable theory. The problem is that it suggests a schizoid break between the way we’d like to perceive ourselves, and the way that we actually behave. It’s something that marketers have known for years.

We all want to be sold to.

But, we also hate salesmen, no? The very mention of the term instantly triggers visions of a fedora topped gentleman in a bad suit knocking on your door, trying to sell you a vacuum in the middle of Vietnam (true story, a friend of mine actually does this for a living). But at the same time, perhaps there’s some sliver of psychological need hidden in Maslow’s pyramid that we haven’t yet discovered. You know, if you uhm… subscribe to that particular theory anyways. There’s got to be a reason why someone with a particular cadence in their voice and a flair for the dramatic can capture your attention and dazzle you as they make a waffle in 15 seconds. Maybe it’s the sense of a challenge. We’re all reasonably intelligent individuals. “Alright sure, if you think you can woo me with some fancy talk and an hassle-free payment plan, then be my guest.” Or, perhaps the same part of the brain that’s responsible for the food dehydrator you have hidden away in the back of your cupboard with your sense of shame and defeat, is also the one that feeds your pleasure center. Your guilty pleasure center that is.

Looks a little ... underwhelming when you get it home, doesn't it?

Whatever the reason might be, the future seems bleak for those of us convinced that humanity has, or ever will evolve beyond the need for some degree of state-fair pageantry in advertising. It seems there will always be a provider for that coveted 3am – 5am time slot, now home to Mr. T, Jack Lalaine, and … that girl that was Chrissy’s cousin on Three’s Company.is

Communication and the Signal-to-Noise Ratio

The stream of consciousness that led to the writing of this post was interesting, if not a little chaotic. I was responding to some instant messages from within Gmail when another one popped up on Windows Live Messenger. I started thinking about how many instant messaging/sharing services/social networks and platforms there are out there and how that diversity affects the way that we communicate with each other. Copying and pasting links into email/ims used to be the predominant way to show someone something of interest online. Today however, you’d be hard pressed to find any application or web-based product that didn’t have some sort of sharing/messaging component attached to it. Granted, many of the major players have worked in some form of interoperability. But there does seem to be a constant battle between merging forms of communication and yet remaining as distinct as possible. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of social bookmarking. The need for this separation is obvious, if you consider that each method of communication represents the voice of a brand that’s trying to be as loud as possible in order to remain competitive. Enter aggregate sharing services like Share This, Add This, and the Sociable plugin for WordPress, which attempt to inject some order into the chaos.

Click the image to enlarge.

So what does this mean in terms of how we communicate online? What does this mean to marketers?

Well, there are a couple of things worth noting here. The tools that are germane to both of the communication pathways I mentioned will continue to get released. As they do, people will continue to have a myriad of options for spreading viral content. I think the key will be having an understanding of the longevity of the message that underlies that content. Viral videos for example, have a relatively short window to get people interested enough to execute a call to action and visit a website or submit an email address. If those destination websites are interesting in and of themselves, you might be lucky enough to score a conversion and/or get people to return. That being understood, the viral content that got them interested in the first place might be spread through focused bursts via”smaller” channels; IM, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. But if those users find a compelling reason to act afterward, that’s when they might choose to increase the size of the audience for that content and make use of the aggregate sharing services. It’s almost as if the focused pathways allow for a type of proving ground among smaller peer groups in order to decide if the content has the appropriate “A-ha” factor before it proliferates throughout the Cloud.

Finally, I completely appreciate the fact that as of right now there is no easy way to spread the content of this post anywhere. That will change as I adapt to a theme that allows for extra widgets. :)

Welcome to Approaching Theta

I figure the first post on this blog should explain the name, which in turn should give readers a sense of what it’s all about. In the 1998 film Pi written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, protagonist Max Cohen is seen sitting in a cafe explaining to onlooker Lenny Myer that when you divide each successive number in the Fibonacci sequence into one another, the result “approaches Theta.” He then explains that Theta is a Greek symbol representing one of the key numbers in mathematics linked to The Golden Ratio, a mysterious and profound concept that manifests itself across several aspects of our Universe.

What’s interesting is that (like many ideas derived from the movies) this is only partially true. In actuality, the symbol Phi is more closely linked to this concept than Theta. But unless you’re either versed in mathematics or take the interest to research it further (the latter applies to me), you’d be among those confidently distributing “the Theta hypothesis” at your next dinner party.

What I’ve realized is that there are a lot of similarities to this albeit unintended deception in the world of Digital Marketing, a world that I’ve been a part of for the last several years. At some point, we’ve all met a Max Cohen who attempts to explain a concept like Online Segmentation or CPM ad campaigns, but fails to do so because of errors in communication or what have you. We’ve all been in Lenny’s shoes, blindly adopting the explanation and treating it as gospel. In fact as far as the world of Digital Marketing is concerned, I’d wager that there are thousands of Theta hypotheses out there, influencing corporate decisions and consumer behavior.

The important question doesn’t really have to do with the perceived “wrongness” of such hypotheses though. I think there’s a lot more value in examining the responses that are generated as a result. Let’s look at the recent atmosphere surrounding two social networking darlings. Facebook has been receiving seriously negative feedback in light of its new layout, whereas Twitter is positioning itself to be the next emerging giant in the marketplace. Should Facebook focus on figuring out “what went wrong”, in order to self-correct? Should they primarily try to understand what Twitter is doing correctly that’s driving their success? Or is there more value in evaluating the landscape for what it is; constantly in flux. It could be that by the time they’ve re-evaluated their Theta hypothesis and executed a new strategy, consumers will have moved on, even beyond Twitter, to the next greatest thing.

The over-arching theme for this blog involves looking at Digital Marketing from that perspective. Rather than wrestling with the semantic innards of concepts like Social Networks, Microsite Campaigns, Mobile Subscriber Turnover and the like, I’ll be discussing how those concepts drive responses and stimulate change (if any) in an industry that refuses to remain static and easily understood.

There’s also the fact that “Approaching Phi” was a rather unwieldy blog name. But I digress.

Enjoy.