The fascination with Facebook has always boggled my mind. Lately, I’ve become ultra sensitive to the CTA’s on ads from brands and the amount of ones that drive to their Facebook fan page vs. their OWN website. I shake my head thinking, “There’s another advertiser that spent $100,000 to give free advertising to Facebook.”

I won’t ask the question, “What happens when Facebook is no more,” because too many brands are focused on short term vs. long term goals, especially when creating advertisements.

As non-sensical as it is, I think I finally have the answer to why marketers do this. It’s simple really. Are you ready? Wait for it… It’s because so many brand marketers, the ones making the advertisements, don’t have control over their own websites! The websites are run by the “eCommerce” or IT team while most Brand Marketers sit in a completely different area, most of them not having any online experience whatsoever. While the eCommerce team drives direct revenue, the branding team drives, well, branding.

Unable to speak the language of the eCommerce team, it’s difficult to effect real change on the website, let alone have a landing page created that is a sensible transition from the CTA on the advertisement. With their hands tied, there’s nothing else to do but drive to Facebook where they can effect change.

It’s a sad day when departments within a single brand can’t even talk and support each other for a better long term goal. The age-old question becomes, how do you break down internal silos?

I wrote about the perils of QR Codes before. More frequently I see QR Codes popping up on magazine ads, direct mail pieces and store windows.

Sadly, few marketers are getting them right. Arik Hanson does a fabulous job sharing his QR experiment in Mall of America during Black Friday. No insights into what’s behind the code, codes that lead to error messages or lame content / non-optimized sites makes me want to smack my head against the wall.

The question is, will marketers shape up before they ruin QR Codes forever?

While in San Diego, I walked by a very strange looking billboard during the day. An advertisement for Newcastle, the billboard had a tagline and then a ton of what looked like randomly placed bottle caps. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what shape or pattern these bottle caps made. After a few moments, we shrugged our shoulders and kept walking.

Luckily, we passed the billboard again at night. This time, the experience was different. This time, the bottle caps helped to create the shadow of a man reaching for the pint of Newcastle. Very cool. This time, we also noticed a small plaque below the billboard. On the plaque were directions to view the billboard at night. In addition, it contained a QR code to learn more about the making of the billboard, etc.

While the campaign was cool, there were two issues. First, both myself and friend never noticed this plaque during the day. It’s also too small to notice unless you were walking directly by the billboard vs. the other side of the street or driving. But, the worst offender? The QR code. While in theory, great. However, it wasn’t scannable!?!?! I’m not sure if it was because it was too far away (the plaque was offset from the sidewalk behind a fence), if my scanner just wasn’t working or if it really didn’t scan. Luckily, the plaque also contained a URL to (what I assume) was the same content behind the QR code.

The other piece? Besides me, in the fifteen minutes we hung out and watched people stop to check out the billboard, not a single person pulled out their phone to scan the QR code. Maybe they didn’t notice it. Maybe it was a hassle. Or maybe they just didn’t care. Either way, the piece was a great execution in Out-of-Home advertising, but fell a tad short in the digital arena.

In the last three years, specifically with the rise of social media and its discussions around measurement, I’ve seen more and more arguments around the measurement of online media as a whole.

Last Click is Dead! It’s all about engagement! No wait, it’s all about brand awareness!

In a recent iMedia article, 10 Reasons to Hate the Click, reason #7 sums up the “whining” of Interactive Marketers:

Reason 7: Clicks are contrary to every other media effort
Expecting advertisers to click on a banner ad is like expecting an magazine reader to turn to a page and suddenly get up and run out to buy a burger. TV ads interrupt the flow of a program, but they don’t expect an immediate response. Why is online held to a different model?

The question, “Why is online held to a different model” is the question that irks me. Online is held to a different model because that’s how we, as marketers, sold it originally. Think back to the very first time you pitched online advertising to your C-level executives. To get them on board, you most likely touted the ability to measure not only sales but down to a granular level of who was clicking and what they were clicking on.

We dug our own hole. We ingrained these concepts into not only ourselves, but our teams and our leaders.

Yes, it was the right sales pitch at the right time. It may still be the right sales pitch for your company, especially if the bulk of your sales are online. However, for the majority, it’s time to change our sales pitch. Instead of whining, marketers need to work harder to “do.” They need to work harder at crafting a new sales pitch for not only display advertising but also for integrated efforts of online media as a whole.

With all our advancements in technology, companies focusing on the bright and shiny objects and mantras that say, “Email is dead. Facebook > Company Websites,” marketers lack of smart, targeted advertising is upsetting.

While companies are in a Gold Rush state to innovate, we often forget the simple things. We forget the data that is right at our fingertips. We forget the 101′s of CRM.

I’ve gotten the same emails from several companies for months, but I’m finally annoyed enough to blog about it

I’m a big fan of Godiva chocolate. I’m an even bigger fan of their loyalty program. It provides real value – a free piece of chocolate every month! But, I’ve never been a fan of their advertising. To me, their “deals” aren’t deals. But, I digress. Back to their loyalty program. They have tons of great data about me. They know what types of chocolate I buy each month and they know whether or not I’ve redeemed my free piece for the month.

I redeemed my free piece of chocolate for the month of June. Yet, weeks later I got the below email. Why?

The same goes for Southwest. It’s one of the airlines I frequent most, despite their new, horrific loyalty program. Because I flew it so much, I also signed up for their credit card. I have their credit card. I use their credit card. My credit card information is saved in their system for easier bookings. So why on earth do I get at least one email AND direct mail piece a month asking me to sign up? For me, the direct mail piece is the icing on the cake. Did you really just spend print and postage costs to make me feel like you don’t know me at all?

Marketers, before putting all your eggs into Google+ or whatever bright, shiny object has your attention, look at the channels that are your current moneymakers and do a better job of utilizing them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about silos lately. In my new role as a consultant / agency person, I get a clear outsider’s view of the silos in a company. It’s amazing and mind boggling to me. Half the time, my “clients” have never interacted with departments outside of their marketing realm let alone know the leaders of those departments.

To me, it’s eye opening. It also makes me realize how truly lucky I was to work at the places and with the people that I did. While it took time, the organizations I worked for had few, if any silos. The call center supervisor who had the graveyard shift knew my name and I knew hers. She also knew what to route to me and I knew what to route to her. In my naivety, I thought that was a standard practice. Low and behold, most brand marketers haven’t even met the person that runs corporate internal communications (yikes!?).

It’s part of why I love to watch companies embrace social media. If they’re doing it the right way, then brand marketers discover that they need to break down a whole lot of silos to be successful. Ultimately, it’s helping to make stronger marketers. It’s also helping to make others better at their jobs.

The piece that I’m even more grateful for is my experience with embracing and including other departments. Mention PR or IT to a marketer and the reaction garnered is more often than not a groan and a face twisted in dread. These three departments are usually battling each other. In fact, when I tweeted at a conference that IT should be a key stakeholder in a successful test and learn culture, I started a mini revolt. All too frequently, we’re fighting internal battles vs. coming together to fight and solve for external ones.

While we’d like to think so, we as marketers aren’t experts at everything. We haven’t been in the IT or PR day-to-day trenches for 10+ years. We don’t nor do we have the experience (yet) to see the world through their eyes. It’s why I think it’s integral to have them at the marketing roundtable from the get go.

Today, I came across this article and the below chart. Coming from a direct response, data laden organization, I’ve been touting some of the metrics on the left (and more similar to those) for over three years. Why? Because I’ve worked at companies where IT, PR, Database/CRM and Marketing all had seats at the same table. Over the years, they’ve taught me to start seeing the world the way they do and vice versa. Together, it’s made us all stronger in our own areas and as a whole, it’s allowed the company to excel well past its competitors. I think if we all did more sharing and including of other departments we’d come to the conclusion of charts like the below a whole lot faster than we’re doing today.

There’s nothing that I don’t love about this initiative from Tesco. This is an example of what I wish all marketing could be like this. By understanding the local market, Tesco was able to fundamentally change how consumers not only interacted with the brand but also how they viewed it. Without adding any stores, Tesco became #2 in the market and grew their online sales by 130%.

This idea by a UK band, the Kaiser Chiefs, is genius. In a world of unique content creation and curation as well as more “illegal” music downloads, this is a brillant idea to help drive sales.

They are inviting fans to participate in — and profit from — the distribution of their new album by creating customized versions. Visitors to the site are invited to select 10 songs out of 20 recorded by the band for the new release, design the cover, and pay £7.50 to download the album. For those fans that want to profit from their unique version of the album, the site offers unique landing pages where album creators can subsequently earn £1 for each copy they sell. Not only is the idea radical, but it provides increased fan engagement, a much larger and stronger distribution network and a better understanding of the types of songs fans want to buy. And, the website is fun as hell to play with Personally, I had no idea who the Kaiser Chiefs were. But, I spent a good 30+ minutes listening to their music and designing my own personal album.

Google’s +1 button arrived almost 90 days ago to lots of fanfare and speculative blog posts. I sat and I waited and I watched. I read the opinions. I watched Google search results evolve. And I clicked a few +1 buttons on articles I liked. Oddly enough, in all the opinions I’ve read, my take hasn’t appeared and thus I wonder if I’m off kilter. Nevertheless, here it goes…

Google’s +1 cannot succeed without the support of the mainstream sites. Think Yahoo, Yahoo News, MSN, USA Today, etc. If I must, I’ll add Facebook too, but this is really about “traditional” mainstream sites. In my mind, the mainstream sites are never going to integrate a +1 button into their articles. Why? Because they all have alliances with other search providers (ahem, Bing, Yahoo Search, AOL).

In a very broad perspective, and taking out all the deal sites and cute kittens, the articles that are most commonly shared on the web are from news sites – New York Times, HuffingtonPost, CNN, etc. In addition, if you’re not on the bleeding edge nor is your homepage Google, then it’s probably Yahoo, MSN or AOL. In those articles, while there may be a “Like” and “Tweet this” button and even a “Share,” there is certainly no +1.

Sure, you can +1 anything within Google’s search results, but you can’t +1 them on the actual site. How many are +1′ing things based on a snippet of text or finding something they want to +1 via Google search results? I have a feeling it’s a small majority.

Unless Share This integrates a +1 option into their offerings AND the mainstream sites don’t notice nor remove the option, then I have a hard time envisioning sites larger than personal blogs hoping for an SEO leg up integrating +1 into their site offerings.

What do you think? Is their +1 functionality that I’m missing? Is their an incentive for the mainstream sites to ever add a +1?