March Madness Viewing Is a Team Sport

Key points:

1. NCAA tournament viewership data revealed (for the first time in stark measurable terms) what we instinctively knew already: A significant share of viewers take in the games outside the home.

2. This 20 percent figure may hold true for other events—sports for sure, but also award shows, contests, and other real (not “reality”) dramas.

3. We must think differently about the situational behaviors of viewers in communal environments versus the home—they might not respond the same way to messaging.

I happened to be in San Diego during the beginning of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. And I was there with someone very emotionally invested in the fate of the Ohio team.

Like with every trade show, the hotel bar was packed with impromptu business meetings, booth workers burning off steam, and vacationers wondering what the heck we were all doing there. But every television was tuned to a different Division I game—and there were a lot of onlookers.

I later found out, we were not alone.

AdWeek reported this week that Arbitron data showed “out-of-home” viewing boosted the overall March Madness numbers by 20 percent. What’s better: Those increases hit the all-important 18–49 male demographic.

Out-of-home viewing includes hotels and bars (like the Hilton in San Diego), as well as all manner of restaurants and other common areas. I won’t bore you with the details of how the data are collected, but it’s reasonably complicated and error prone, although getting better. Advertisers have always known intuitively that large sports events are communal draws, but they finally have the data to back it up.

What does that mean in dollars? CBS took in $613.8 million during the tournament for a reach of 10.2 million viewers, making each viewer worth just over $60. Put another way, out-of-home viewing accounted for over $122 million of the take.

Those are solid numbers. A few years ago, I wrote about Nielsen On Location media, which was the first major effort to pin down the market for viewership at hotels, restaurants, restrooms, and gas stations. At the time, this was a $1.3 billion market, with advertisers putting money into the media without really having decent measurables. Now we do, and the market for this media type is taking off. (Geolocation advertising enabled by the growth of smart phones certainly has helped.)

The March Madness figures finally provide a way to quantify a behavior that the advertising community always knew was true: Human beings are social animals. We want to experience media with other people—in this case, 20 percent of the time.

But I think we can be even more specific.

Advertisers would really like to know what types of programming are likely to draw the most out-of-home viewing. And if we know that, where are they and how do we better target them with relevant products and services?

I’ll take a stab at this one. March Madness was able to grab a 20 percent share outside the home because it is, fundamentally, a shared experience. With the proliferation of instant media updates, if I can’t watch the game, I can keep up with the score and the highlights. But that misses the experiential nature of the game—I don’t see the inherent drama, the missed shots, the flow of the game. Those are all things we don’t want to time-shift: Once you know the final score, some of the magic is gone.

We want to experience it while it’s happening. And ideally, many of us want to experience it in the company of others. Major sporting events are an obvious draw (the measurable success of pay-per-view boxing is another example of this concept), but I think we can expand it beyond sports. Any programming event where knowing the outcome in advance completely ruins the drama falls into this category—awards shows, contests like American Idol, etc. Even the last episode of Seinfeld. Anything that becomes an “event.” Not a “psuedo-event”—i.e., the season finale of CSI Miami, or “reality” TV—but real, unscripted drama.

If the 20 percent share holds for these types of events, we need to rethink that sub-component of our audience. Let’s say the audience for a PPV boxing event is primarily male, college educated, 25–45. What might be different about the 1/5 of that audience viewing communally? For one, if I were advertising a product or service they might want (but might be ashamed to admit it—male enhancement, anyone?), you can write off 20 percent of the audience who might not associate a certain level of embarrassment with your product. You could also envision the opposite scenario, where 20 percent of your audience might be more attune to a new microbrew. In fact, they might be inclined to ask for it on the spot! Talk about measurability.

These numbers reveal a new layer to examine during the media buying process—situation-specific media consumption—in which a significant portion of your target audience might behave (or not behave) like you expect.

It seems like the more data we get, the more complex a picture emerges. Good luck to us all.

Related links:
AdWeek Exclusive: Bar, Hotel Viewing Lifts March Madness Numbers 20%
Your Hotel Television Is Watching . . . You

HealthPartners, Virtuwell, and Hypercompetition

Key points:

1. With a decent amount of marketing hoopla, HealthPartners launched Virtuwell.

2. The effort could be seen as an example of “hypercompetition.”

3. HealthPartners has a long way to go to clarify its menu of health care options.

Sunny Minnesota spring day. Two boys playing outside. The younger one comes in screaming in pain. The older one screaming, “I didn’t do anything.” Ah, another joy of raising boys.

Turns out it really wasn’t my older one’s fault. Over the winter, our new retaining wall went through one too many freeze/thaw cycles. A chunk of six blocks gave way, hitting my younger son’s toe on the way down. Ouch.

While my wife found the ice pack, I hit the HealthPartners Web site. Boy, had things changed since I’d last visited. In addition to hospitals, specialty clinics, and urgent care, I had a new choice: Virtuwell, an online diagnosis tool.

Virtuwell seems like the perfect option for things like sore throats, flu, lice, and pink eye. But no “bricks hit foot” option. Darn.

While waiting at St. Paul’s urgent care clinic, I had time to give this some thought.

What does Virtuwell mean for HealthPartners? Isn’t an online option sapping business away from its clinics and ER? How is this an alternative to Minute Clinic and Target Clinic? Is this an example of so-called “hypercompetition”? That’s a strategy scenario—usually reserved for technology companies—in which the dominant player in a market innovates its own replacement products and services before a competitor does it for them.

In one sense, I think that’s what’s happening. The traditional health care service model is beset on all sides with formidable opponents. You’ve got insurers putting downward pressure on fees, an uncertain regulatory environment, anger over system abuse and increased premiums, and the Targets and CVS’s of the world getting into the easy-care business (and some of HealthPartners’ profits).

It comes down to this: Health care providers must find the best delivery model, at the lowest cost, that provides the best measurable outcomes. The one that can innovate the fastest wins.

We can also understand the health care delivery model based on the engagement need of the patient. Everyone going to a hospital emergency room for minor ailments is a tremendously expensive way to deliver care—just ask HCMC. So hypercompetition could be in play here, but it’s more likely that we’re seeing technology finally enable a complete delivery model.

The chart below summarizes the different options by engagement level.

Through Virtuwell, HealthPartners is using technology to fill in the far end of the engagement chain: common conditions, easy diagnoses, and typical prescriptions.

On the other end of the spectrum are high-engagement options: specialty care and hospice. Next to them are the hospital systems. Then the clinics. Then the urgent care centers. Then a missing option: in-retail clinics. Then Virtuwell.

From a cost and delivery perspective, it’s an impressive model. But from a branding perspective, it is clear health care consumers really don’t yet understand how to choose.

What incentive do consumers with insurance have to choose the cheapest option? They’ll choose the most convenient. Uninsured consumers wait until they have an emergency, or they’ll choose the retail clinics with easy-to-understand price menus. The common denominator is confusion. As consumers, we’ve complained about health care costs and services, but we are loath to engage with our options more fully.

Virtuwell is a good start from a delivery model perspective—and it makes sense in terms of hypercompetition. But in the short term, it adds another layer of confusion to a crowded set of options.

To get the return on investment it needs, HealthPartners must to do a better job helping us understand how to choose from its menu of care options. It will be hard work, but unless that’s clear, I’m not sure it will be successful.

(As a parting note, the younger boy turned out fine. Nothing broken. Whew.)

I Don’t Enjoy the NY Times that Much

Key points:

 

1. The New York Times' paywall is another sad attempt at providing a new online revenue stream.

 

2. The NYT is stuck in its old subscription model. In the new media landscape, cable companies run the show.

 

3. Newspapers would be better off providing simple access packages to several publications that people would probably be happy to pay for.

 

 

The New York Times is on my Firefox bookmark toolbar.

 

It’s up there with the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Strib, Gmail, Indexed (one of the most clever blogs ever), AdWeek, AbleNet (my company), and Basecamp (our cloud-based project management system).

 

I’d guess the NYT holds a similar position on millions of browsers. But I’m still not going to pay for it.

 

Before you lecture on how “capitalism works,” that there’s no “free lunch,” and that online advertising models cannot pay the bills, let me clarify: I’m not opposed to exchanging greenbacks for something I value—but I expect those who want my money to follow the old axiom: To sell more, make it easier to buy.

 

And the NYT paywall—no matter the intricacies or the 20-article limited access—is not “easy.” Neither are any of the other paywall concepts newspapers have tried to install in their online incarnations. If each of the online publications I read regularly installed a paywall (like the WSJ’s), I would need to log in six times to scan the news.

 

I think it’s one of the key reasons paywalls have had trouble sticking. Perhaps the WSJ can get away with it. The demographics are right. Maybe even the NYT. But second-tier publications (including our own Strib) don’t stand a chance.

 

It’s more about buyer behavior than newspaper economics. I understand the complexity of the issue (I’m completing my thesis work on this topic—there are no easy answers), but paywalls aren’t hard to understand. Their lynchpin is habitual behavior.

 

Look at it this way: What if you bought cable television stations like you bought online newspaper subscriptions? Instead of the 200-300 channels you get now, you’d pick the handful you liked. Many people would say yes to paying only for what they like to watch. But most would opt for the easier “package.” Most of us don't have the time, energy, or patience to sift through hundreds of options.

 

By banding together, providers can be assured of a certain level of continued revenue. Without it, larger stations (ESPN, Disney, Discovery, etc.) could make it, but the economics don’t work for smaller channels. Your cable or satellite bill is disproportionately skewed toward ESPN even if you don't watch it, but without it, the Science Channel wouldn’t exist.

 

Bottom line: Packages are easier to buy, and no one believes cable television should be free.

 

I can hear you through the interwebness—what about the Netflix model? Can’t I simply stream only the shows I want to watch along with my DVD-by-mail arrangement? Really, it’s the same idea. You are subsidizing certain programming you don’t watch while others do the same for you. Most subscribers are happy to pay for it.

 

Instituting a system like this might be akin to herding cats, but the industry’s outright hostility toward the idea baffles me.

 

Case in point: Apple’s new subscription service. If you want access to your subscribers using an Apple app (and access to its millions of iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users), you need to give Apple its 30 percent cut. Seem a bit steep? Maybe, but Google is doing the same sort of thing with Android platform apps. You could’ve heard the grinding and gnashing of teeth from the media biz.

 

I think what they’re really mad about is that they no longer control the channel, but they’re still trying to act as though they do. Comcast now controls it, as does DirecTV and Netflix. And now Apple, Google, and Facebook. Even the venerable NYT is simply another provider of content.

 

That’s the new media landscape. The quicker media figures that out, the better.

 

Related links:
The NYT Paywall Is, Well, Weird 

Regulators’ Credibility and Marketing Gap

Key points:

 

1. Seven infant strangulation deaths are the latest reminder of government agencies’ failure to keep on top of product safety issues.

 

2. They are hamstrung by tiny budgets and producer-friendly regulations, but they could communicate what they know more effectively.

Seven babies and toddlers are dead.

 

They are the victims of strangulation from cords from video baby monitors sold by Summer Infant. The Rhode Island company sold the monitors nationwide since 2004, and last week issued a voluntary recall of 1.7 million products from store shelves.

 

The recall made national news, but you’d be forgiven for missing it with the round-the-clock coverage from Egypt, or drama at the Minnesota state capitol. Perhaps you culled it out from the dozens of similarly opaque recall notices at your local Babies-R-Us. Or Walmart, or Target. If you were extraordinarily savvy, you subscribed to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) RSS feed.

 

Most likely, you didn’t hear about it. Nor do you hear about the weekly barrage of recalls and warnings from the CPSC, the FDA, and about a dozen other government agencies.

 

To get this out of the way: I believe the power of these agencies (and the requisite funding) to demand recalls of unsafe consumer products is unconscionable. Notice the juxtaposition between my first two statements in this article: On one hand, babies have been killed. On the other, a voluntary recall after over six years on the market. That the CPSC needs to wait for a company (in all but the most egregious of cases) to decide to recall is an unworkable situation.

 

That said, I can’t see an easy or clear fix. It would take an act of Congress, and I’m suspicious whether either chamber would take up potentially “anti-business” regulation at this point.

 

What I can get my head around is a better way to communicate.

 

What you need to realize first, especially in regard to consumer electronics, is how short a shelf life most products have. Let’s take a cell phone for an example: Unless there’s an apple on the back or you’re the owner of a popular Razr phone, it's likely the device you hold in your hand is the only production run they’ll do on that particular model. In other words, the company will make, say, 250,000 of a particular model and ship them worldwide. And unless the phone blows away sales projections, they’re on to the next thing. Our taste in consumer electronics is fickle—we won’t buy the same thing twice. Product life cycles are measured in weeks and months, not years.

 

As consumer electronics go, so does the rest of the market. If you’re lucky enough to find the same toy on the shelf six months after you see the first, it’s likely that toy has undergone at least one hardware or software revision.

 

From a safety regulator’s perspective, that makes the task of ensuring product safety daunting. By the time they get to a new product, it’s probably obsolete. The warning they might issue applies to a product that no longer exists. That’s one of the reasons the manufacturer doesn’t want them to do it. They’re always behind.

 

If it’s tough for a professional, it’s nearly impossible for the average consumer—much less the average parent.

 

Even when my wife and I were active consumers of infant products, the sheer number of notices and recalls was daunting. With as many as several per week, there was no way to keep up.

 

Add to that the short window of time parents have while their children move through development stages. What might have been critically important four weeks ago (i.e., supporting the head) is completely superseded by some new milestone—and with it, a new cadre of products.

 

Ugh.

 

It boils down to this: Recall information must be centralized, timely, and relevant.

 

First, centralized: Information from a dozen government agencies cannot mean checking a dozen Web sites. It’s too much—you’ll miss something. Second, timely: Information must move into the public’s hands faster. If Consumer Reports can figure this out on a shoestring budget, so can the CPSC and the FDA. Finally, and most importantly, relevance: I need to hear about only the products that matter to me—the one I purchased. Retailers, hear me when I say this: You collect and use tremendous analytics on our buying patterns. You know how to mine the data to get us to buy the next thing. That power must be used to let us know when something we bought—a toy, a phone, or a pound of hamburger—could kill us. We don't need to know the rest.

 

I am sick of the excuses. I am sick of the delays. It is time to get creative. It is time for public-private partnerships. But most of all, it is time to act—right now.

Related links:

FDA: MedWatch Safety Alerts for Human Medical Products
FDA: Recalls, Market Withdrawals, and Safety Alerts
CPSC RSS Feeds
CNN: 1.7 Million Baby Monitors Recalled After Two Infants Strangled by Cords

How to Make Cigarettes Sexy Again

Key points:

 

1. Proposed FDA guidelines for cigarette packaging and advertising ramp up the shock value by using graphic images of the effects of smoking.

 

2. It’s easy to see where they got the idea: Past anti-smoking campaigns have been effective by using a similar approach.

 

3. But today, the image of cigarettes has shifted. They are a “dangerous” brand, and adding shock value will actually increase their appeal.

 

If you weren’t listening when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told you smoking was harmful, now they intend to show you.

 

Earlier this month, the FDA issued a new proposed rule, ratcheting up the rhetorical shock value for cigarette packaging and advertising. Instead of the now-pedestrian written warnings currently gracing your Marlboro pack, by summer of next year, you also could be staring at a corpse.

 

The proposal (open to public comment through January 11) includes graphic images of the effects of smoking—death, cancer, birth defects, etc.—alongside the written warning on each package, carton, and print advertisement.

 

I’ll show you one here. You can visit the FDA site for the rest.

 

 

Before we move on, let’s agree to avoid the “government has no right to regulate a legal product” argument. The Supreme Court says yes, so that discussion is over. As the authorized regulator of tobacco products as a drug, the FDA is simply attempting to complete its mission: Reduce the number of people smoking.

 

I’d prefer to discuss the efficacy of the approach—I don't think it will work. Why? Because apparently, no one at the FDA was ever 14 years old.

 

Back before cigarette ads were banned from television, cigarettes on the whole had a glamorous appeal. Cigarettes were a part of every movie and television show. Lucy and Ricky hawked cigarettes. So did the Flintstones. If you wanted sex appeal, you smoked. (It was no marketing accident that the default activity following “adult encounters” was having a smoke.)

 

In marketing language, smoking had a “lover” brand archetype. Certain brands played around the edges (Marlboro, most successfully), but they appealed to the desire for sophistication, belonging, and attractiveness.

 

Take a look at a few classic television spots. In the second, you can hear Fred Flintstone utter the classic Winston tagline: “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.”

 

 

 

 

 

To counter that “lover” image, in the 1980s and 1990s anti-smoking campaigns went for the shock value. They (successfully) tore down the glamour image of the cigarette, transforming it into an easy path to premature death. The “Truth” campaign ads are a great example.

 

 

In fact, campaigns like these were so successful that they changed the core of the brand archetype for cigarettes as a whole. They are now an outlaw brand—dangerous and rebellious.

 

And that’s why going for additional shock value is unlikely to continue working. The shock-and-awe well is dry. Consumers already know the product is dangerous. In fact, that’s why some continue to buy them. What’s worse, by ratcheting up the danger appeal of cigarettes (and make no mistake, images are far more powerful than words alone), they are even more likely to appeal to a new generation of smokers.

 

These are young teens and pre-teens, already searching for an act of rebellion. These are the people most likely to not put the message in context, not look ahead 20 years, and not listen to an authority figure. These are also the young people most likely to become addicted, most likely to struggle to break the habit, and most likely to die a painful, premature death.

 

It’s profoundly sad that it’s come to this. I wish I knew the answer. All I know is that the FDA’s approach isn’t it.

 

Related links:

 

FDA: Proposed Cigarette Product Warning Labels

Branding: When Gluten-Free Is Suddenly Relevant

Key points:

1. Like most people with a wheat allergy, we were completely unaware until the diagnosis.

2. This became an interesting case study in how new customers rebuild brand preferences when their lives change.

3. What surprised me was the lack of coherent strategy on the part of major food manufacturers—they are missing a major opportunity with a potential market comprising 50 million people.

My son has a wheat allergy.

On the surface, to many of you, this may not seem like a big deal. Lots of people are allergic to lots of things. Pollens and molds are common culprits, and many of us don’t tolerate dairy, or shellfish, or tree nuts.

But wheat is different. As our family discovered, it's in just about everything. It’s obviously in most bread products. It's also in cereal, the Eggo waffles my son still craves—even ice cream. Hundreds of common foods.

The good news is that he’ll likely grow out of it. And what he has is very different than the dangerous reactions to wheat and gluten for persons with celiac disease. But the effect has been nonetheless dramatic. We struggled to figure out (for years) why his stomach was constantly upset, or why he couldn’t shake persistent atopic dermatitis (also known as eczema). As we begin to remove wheat from his diet, he is finally healing.

Since we received the diagnosis, one of the most fascinating parts of the journey has been the shopping experience.

We needed information about wheat allergies—what to buy and where to buy it. We needed it fast. So the broader question was this: Where do we get critical information when it suddenly becomes important? Put another way, we instantly became new customers for all things gluten- and wheat-free. How do manufacturers of those products welcome us into the fold? With absolutely no brand preferences, how do we establish new ones?

After some quick research, I discovered that there was no one dominant brand. The market space for wheat- and gluten-free products is a classic immature market. Several competitors, contradictory information, and wildly ranging pricing.

I also quickly learned that they don’t call Whole Foods “whole paycheck” for nothing. I think we spent more than $50 on seven items. I discovered Trader Joe’s seems to have the gluten/wheat issue (and prices) under control, sending a staff person with us on a tour of the store, sampling products as we went.

But here’s the net-net: In the marketplace for these products, “gluten- and wheat-free” equals “organic and natural.”

That may make sense to the segment of the population that already has jumped on the organic bandwagon, but it made little sense to me. I am careful regarding my health, but I am not a strict organic buyer, nor do I plan to be. What seems to be missing for buyers like me is the assumption that gluten/wheat-free need not equal a complete switch in brand preference. Why would I abandon brands I’ve known and trusted since childhood if I didn’t feel I needed to?

With a bit more digging, and careful observation on my weekend trip to Target, I came to discover some of those main brands did in fact offer several gluten-free alternatives. Cake mixes, breads, cereals, pancake mixes—more than I would have imagined.

It struck me that these brands had missed the opportunity to reach me first. Instead of the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s of the world coming to my rescue, why not General Mills?

Some market dynamics might help us tease apart the factors.

Recent estimates claim that 14 percent of the U.S. population is wheat intolerant, and a smaller slice of that number, like my son, is wheat allergic. Street math: 50 million people. Of that number, a much smaller percentage has celiac disease (the most serious gluten allergy, attacking the intestinal tract)—about 0.5 percent. Those same studies put the number actively avoiding wheat at 3.2 million.

So, what does the data tell us? First, over 90 percent of the population with a wheat intolerance (adverse reactions ranging from mild upset stomach to persistent skin rash to pancreatic problems) are not aware of it. Count my family in that group until recently. The wheat-avoiding group (3.2 million) certainly includes many people with gluten intolerance, but also many without it who are avoiding wheat as part of a healthy lifestyle choice. I think it is that mix of people that makes marketing to this group very difficult.

Follow me for a moment. A 46.8-million-person market is no niche. General Mills and Post viscously fight over much, much less on your local store shelf. Major brands should be all over this market, but largely, they’re not. At least not out in front. Reaching those people is extraordinarily hard; like my family, we would hardly pay attention to a commercial from General Mills touting Chex Mix as gluten free (it is, by the way). They’d get a better lift in sales focusing on party mix recipes. For those 3.2 million people avoiding wheat, such a large percentage already consider themselves in the organic/natural group that mainline brands have little credibility. They are the domain of Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and dozens of other niche brands.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but if I were a brand manager for a major food brand, I’d be thinking of creative ways—right now—to work with the clinical community to identify wheat intolerance in the population. And then I would be ready with products—and more importantly, information—right when they need it.

I wouldn’t have let me discover it all on my own.

Related links:
Wheat allergy and intolerance information
Celiac disease information
Livestrong: wheat and gluten allergy information
General Mills: live gluten freely
Trader Joe's gluten-free products

Flu Fighters

Key points:

 

1. Last year, fears surrounding the swine flu, shortages of vaccine, and conspiracy theories made convincing people to get their seasonal flu vaccination tricky.

 

2. This year, the problem could be even worse due to simple apathy. The seasonal flu kills more than 30,000 people per year, but it isn't high drama.

 

3. Bagozzi’s Theory of Trying can help us peel apart the communication challenges the pros face in getting you in front of a needle.

 

What a difference a year makes.

 

Last year at this time, you could hardly turn on the television, pick up a newspaper (who does that anymore?), turn on talk radio, or read the news online without a story about the dreaded swine flu.

 

From a numbers perspective, the hoopla was largely unjustified. It seemed to strike a different population of people than garden-variety flu—adults in their prime versus the very young and the very old—hearkening back to the deadly 1918 pandemic that claimed the lives of tens of millions worldwide.

 

H1N1? Not as bad.

 

Last year, health communicators faced odd circumstances. On one hand, they faced an increasingly nervous public and limited swine flu vaccine supply. On the other hand, they faced the usual push back on vaccines—along with conspiracy-theory nut jobs who “suggested” the government had engineered the swine flu panic in order to poison people with a vaccine.

 

Let’s just say I wouldn’t have liked to be working in the communications department at the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at that time.

 

But this year, you could say the problem is almost worse: apathy.

 

And that’s strange, because the raw statistics haven’t really changed. According to the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the seasonal flu kills roughly 30,000 Americans each year. People should take vaccination and prevention strategies seriously. They largely don’t. Why?

 

A handy tool from psychology research can help us dissect how health communicators try to attack the apathy problem. It’s called, unceremoniously, the “Theory of Trying,” and it goes something like this:

 

The psychological forces at work when you decide to get your seasonal flu vaccination are interpreted as the “action” in this model—the actual “trying.” That means getting to your appointment at your doctor’s office or getting the shot at your local Byerly’s flu shot clinic. If we back up from there, the action of trying is influenced by our intention to try. In other words, how important is it that you get a flu shot? What motivates you? These intentions, researchers have discovered, are influenced by many factors, but they seem to fall into three main groups:

 

 

 

1. Your attitude toward success:
Do you expect that by taking action (getting to your appointment, etc), you will succeed in getting your flu shot? And by that action, will you avoid the flu? Communication efforts here focus on ensuring people do not feel as though the actual shot will give them the flu. Folks at the CDC and NIH also help publish and promote studies that, for example, link seasonal flu shots to a reduction in heart disease. These all boost your expectation of the success of your eventual action.

 

2. Your attitude toward failure:
By not taking the action, will you still get the flu? In other words, will you “fail”? What’s your confidence level that the shot will actually prevent the flu? Expectations of success focus on the positive. Expectations of failure focus on the negatives. Health communicators here try hard to paint a scientifically rosy picture regarding the rates of flu among those who do and those who do not receive the vaccination. For vaccines generally, this is a vexing issue—if you do not get the vaccine, yet you do not get the flu, did you still “succeed”? Or, did your failure not matter? You can still avoid disease if most of the people around you have been vaccinated from the flu, because there will be no one to spread it to you. And to make matters more complex, how big of a deal would it really be if you did get the flu? Would you be one of the 30,000 dead?

 

3. Your attitude toward the process of trying:
This is really all about logistics. How easy do you think it is to get the vaccination? Is it cheap enough? Health communicators go out of their way to make it easy for you with convenient flu clinics. They are working to remove any mental barriers regarding the process of getting the shot. (Introducing a “flu mist” option for those who hate needles—especially kids—is another example.)

 

Of course, your attitude toward the flu shot also is influenced by subjective norms—your expectation of what others think is appropriate. That’s why people are so concerned about overly negative (and in many cases, unfounded) publicity regarding vaccine side effects.

 

Researchers and campaign evaluators tease out statistical correlations between variables, working to determine which of the three major factors is the most relevant for different groups of people so their efforts can be most effective in the shortest time and at the least cost.

 

But you don’t need to crunch numbers to see the value here. Using this handy mental tool, it’s easy to dissect the messages you’re hearing and how professional health communicators are working to persuade you.

 

That said, it’s time to get in the car. I have an appointment for my flu shot at the HealthPartners clinic in about 20 minutes.

 

Related links:
CDC Flu Information Center

Will Apple Do for (to) TV What it Did for (to) Music?

Key points:

1. Purchasing television shows through existing services—iTunes, Sony, or Hulu—is a clunky process, ripe for re-engineering.

2. Apple and Disney are in the process of doing just that—“selling” television episodes for 48 hours of viewing for the magical price of 99 cents.

3. This arrangement has the potential to provide television content providers a reliable source of revenue in a new media environment.

My sons enjoy watching television.

I really wish they didn’t. And I kick them out of the house into the summer air at every opportunity. But the television is an insidious beast. I don’t want to come off as a Luddite, but my sons find new and creative ways to thwart my efforts.

The latest trick is downloadable television. My oldest son is a PSP kid, onto which he downloads episodes of standard pre-teen fare. My younger son is an Apple kid who uses iTunes to download episodes of the gratingly irritating (and sometimes oddly funny) Spongebob Squarepants. In either case, the shows ran what I consider to be a stupidly high $9.99 per episode. Some are cheaper, but considering they rerun constantly on cable, I cannot see the value.

To this point, purchasing television shows through whatever network—PlayStation or Apple—has been akin to buying or renting a DVD. That business-model paradigm permeates. The logic is simple: If you can pick up episodes of your favorite shows at Target or Wal-Mart for $14.99, paying $9.99 (or less) for a download, sans the packaging, makes it a bargain for everyone.

But network or syndicated television really isn’t comparable to the DVD market, and (aside from my children) it seems that the whole business model has been sluggish.

On the other side of the value spectrum is the equally bone-headed Hulu approach. Newsflash: When you give away your valuable programming for nothing, don’t expect to be able to charge for it later. Even worse, Hulu has damaged the value of programs as they enter syndication. Smooth move.

So, neither model really works. That’s why the announcement of an “imminent” deal between Apple and Disney is so interesting.

According to reports from those familiar with the negotiations, the two media giants are close to inking a deal to move Disney episodic programming through the iTunes store for $0.99 per show for 48 hours. Basically, if you want to catch the latest episode of The Wizards of Waverly Place, you download it to your mobile device or computer for 99 cents. You then have 48 hours to watch it.

Certainly, there’s the issue of ownership regarding your 99 cent purchase. For all intents and purposes, you own your music track, but you won’t own your television program. That might seem a bit off-putting, but it makes sense. If you really wanted to keep a particular episode, you’d be able to buy the season later. Most people simply want to watch their show once.

You could also make the case this supports Apple’s rumored successor to Apple TV coming in time for the holidays. It’s been called a game-changer for the cable/satellite industry—a clearly disruptive innovation. If you could divorce yourself from paying $15 of every cable bill for ESPN (yes, sadly, you do) and a hundred other channels and thousands of shows you’ll never watch, would you? Would you prefer to create your own TV playlist where you pay only for the programs you want to see, when you want to see them? Would you simply supplement the occasional live-television or sporting event? Apple thinks so. And if it’s correct, I’d sell my stock in DirecTV.

But as significant as that is, I think Apple and Disney are really making a play for the monetization of the television product in the digital age.

As recently as five years ago, the business model of television hadn’t materially changed since the introduction of the paid cable subscription. For better or worse, that model survived largely intact until video content found its way—free—online. So, no cable subscription fees and a dramatic reduction in advertising revenue (Internet advertising revenues for content producers don’t even come close to broadcast advertising revenues).

Even though the average American adult, according to Nielsen, watches almost six hours of television per day (Millennials, surprisingly watch nearly five hours per day), the networks are struggling to continue to produce expensive content without a reliable revenue stream.

Disney, for its part, seems to want to be on the front end of this rather than on the begging end in about two years. Probably smart.

It’s hard to say how all this will shake out, but if iTunes has taught us anything, it’s that it has found a way to reinvent the media marketplace. Saving the music industry was first. Democratizing software was second. How we read books is changing as we speak. How we watch television, I think, is next.

Related links:
WSJ: Apple Close to Deal With Disney to Rent ABC Shows Via iTunes

The Value of Silver

Key points:

1. Silver-ion infused products are gaining popularity, but their growth has been stunted by reluctance to pay more in recession-plagued (or is it post-recession?) 2010.

2. Silver products are lagging behind their potential because it’s difficult to demonstrate how they work in a U.S. chemical market with entrenched, mature competitors and years of consumer education campaigns.

3. While the green trend could help, the price argument could be the better motivator as consumers see the value in reducing their household expenses.

My wife drank the Sleep Number Kool-Aid.

No, we don’t have a bed yet. And we don’t know our sleep numbers, but believe me, that’s coming for the holidays this year. Despite that, we must have spent $1,000 on pillows, sheet sets, and the like over the past six months.

What’s of particular interest to my wife are the silver-infused products. We own silver pillow covers and are buying a silver mattress pad shortly. The reason is pretty simple—if you’ve ever taken the pillowcase off an old pillow and taken a good, long whiff.

They stink.

Oils from your scalp, along with a healthy dose of dead skin, make their way through even the best pillowcases and embed themselves in your pillow. Unless your neighborhood dry cleaner goes to work on them every month, they begin to get funky.

But with the silver barrier, there's no hint of any odor. Silver ions are a natural antimicrobial, and they make great, natural odor protectors.

That’s why my wife was so disappointed when Sleep Number decided to discontinue its silver-infused comforter. Being nosy (love you, dear), she asked why they would do that. The answer was pretty simple: Most people don’t see the value. For them, the price premium—anywhere from 10 percent to 30 percent—is too much for what they consider a luxury item at best, and a gimmick at worst.

It might be a bit frustrating to those who do see the value, but the product manager in me sees the problem. And it’s a tough one. Actually, two tough problems.

But let’s start with the obvious red herring: the price argument.

Consumers pay premium prices for all sorts of things, many of which have much more dubious value than silver ions. In the bedding industry, see the thread count bonanza. Certainly, it’s easy to tell the difference between a 50-thread count sheet and a 200-count, but the numbers are misleading for a couple of reasons. First, the “count” ignores the quality and type of the thread itself. Mix a little silk (or soft poly) material in with a base cotton, and a low count sheet can feel like a much higher-quality one. Check the materials list for yourself. Second, after a certain number, it’s hard to make any distinction at all. But there is a striking linear relationship between price point and thread count, and consumers happily pay it—largely on perceived quality.

As silly as I think the thread count issue is, it does raise the first intractable issue for silver-infused products: demonstrate-ability.

In other words, there is no way for you to see the product working. It’s not like the old Scrubbing Bubbles advertising that showed the little bubble guys scouring away bathroom grime and soap scum. Silver-ion materials simply prevent bacteria from growing in the first place. Of course, one could imagine a television spot showing the silver-infused cloth with little germ characters frustratingly bouncing off, but I’m not sure that will happen.

And it’s because of the second intractable problem—the entrenched market for household chemicals.

Big players like Proctor and Gamble and smaller ones such as SC Johnson sell roughly $5 billion in household chemicals every year. That includes everything from bathroom cleanser to furniture polish, but it doesn’t include laundry detergent and toiletries, which occupy an even bigger market. They have built a market convincing you that ordinary soap and water is bad, and that the only way to be truly clean, germ-free, or to protect your table’s valuable finish is to purchase and use one of the many chemical wonders on your grocery store shelf. The market is so mature and so entrenched that companies fight over the tiniest of market-share movement using all manners of real and perceived innovations.

Silver-infused sheets, towels, clothing, and rags are a supremely disruptive innovation.

Please understand: I am not accusing the chemical manufacturers of some vast conspiracy to hold more effective products back from the market for fear of ruining a multi-billion-dollar scam. But I am saying that they have little incentive to promote a product that could eliminate the need—or severely disrupt the purchase cycle—for huge swaths of their product lines. I’m not sure I would.

Given those two inherent problems—lack of easily demonstrable function and an entrenched market that has spent years educating its customers—I don’t see a bright future for silver-infused products.

My only caveat might be the growing movement of removing (or drastically reducing) the number of household chemicals. This isn’t big yet, but an increasing number of households are convinced that the promise of household cleaners is a bunch of hooey, and they may even be causing harm.

Yes, you could see that as an offshoot of the green movement—because it is—but what happens when middle America decides it’s had enough of spending hundreds of dollars per year on average in home chemicals and could reduce that number by 60, 70, or 80 percent?

That seems like a pretty good value proposition to me.

Related links:

WSJ: This War Against Germs Has a Silver Lining (from 2006!)

No More Bing Bling

Key points:

1. After less than a year, Microsoft decided to discontinue its cash rebate incentive system that paid Bing users if they used the search engine to find and buy products.

2. Commentators barked that the system was clunky, complicated, and cheap—a waste of time and a laughable idea.

3. I disagree. A rebate system is a powerful strategic wedge in online search behavior related to the shopping process. Microsoft quit when it should have retooled.

Not many people knew about it.

About a year ago, Microsoft quietly launched an ambitious program with its whiz-bang new Web browser, Bing.

Basically, it worked like this: If you signed up for an account and agreed to use the Bing search engine on your way to your favorite shopping sites, Bing would give you a percentage of your purchase back as a cash rebate (from 2 percent to 15 percent). Of course, it wasn't necessarily instant gratification, but cash is cash.

And it wasn't just second-tier retailers (although there were a lot of those too), but big names including Barnes and Noble, Macy’s, eBay, and Foot Locker.

Needless to say, most people might (might!) remember the Bing media blitz happening at the same time and would certainly remember Microsoft’s final dance with Yahoo! It’s understandable if some smaller aspect of the marketing mix got overlooked.

But I think Microsoft may have taken the wrong lesson from the low attention level and pulled the plug too early on the rebate program.

Let’s think through the situation.

First off, some snarky Web commentators likened Microsoft to a technology “john,” basically telling people that if it couldn’t get traffic to its browser on its merits, it would be willing to pay for it.

Frankly, that’s just plain silly. Rebates are nothing new in the tech world, and slicing some piece of the marketing budget off to account for direct payments is a proven strategy. I think the opinion has a lot more to do with Microsoft’s overall positioning problem: It’s not as “good” as Google, and it’s not as “innovative” as Apple. It’s perceived, in popular culture although not in B2B, as a struggling giant who has lost its way.

I think the market share question is much more telling.

The graph above shows what everybody already knows: Google is the dominant player in search. The word "google" has become a verb. Bing? Not so much. Certainly, Bing was growing, but at the expense of Yahoo! market share, not Google, which wasn't really a big help if they were going to be on the same team.

So the situation was clear: Microsoft needed dramatic action to reverse a decade or so of ingrained behavior and provide a wedge against its formidable competitor.

And in true Microsoft fashion, it biffed the implementation.

Issues abounded. First, you needed an account, and the sign-up process was a bit intrusive. I am not sure how much I buy that: If they are going to give away cash, it stands to reason people would put up with a little start-up time invested, but I’ll defer.

Second, the vendor list—although significant—was limited. In other words, online retailers needed to be part of the program or it wouldn’t pay out. So if you had loyalty to a particular online retailer, Bing would be asking not only a change in search behavior, but also a change in buying behavior. I can see that—a more inclusive list of retailers (or one that didn’t require the retailer to sign up) could have worked better.

Third, users claimed the shopping experience wasn’t as good as Google. Really? The shopping experience with Google is good? That seems squishy. I think that had more to do with resistance to change than it did actual user experience.

Finally, the delayed gratification of the rebate check was not worth a paltry 2 percent. In other words, the incentive just wasn’t big enough. I’m ignoring for a moment the dozens of blog commenters who wrote they saved hundreds of dollars using the system over its deployment period. I can see where—to the average online shopper—it seems like a lot of work for a little reward.

I am sure these arguments and more were on the table when Microsoft execs pulled the plug. But I think they were wrong.

Google is not invincible, it is simply exceptionally good at the yellow pages function—getting you to what you want online. But getting you to the online buying experience is a different animal altogether and a perfect strategic opening for Microsoft.

To be fair, Microsoft said they’d be back with something better, but I’m suspicious. If they thought it was that good of an idea, they could have simply rolled out the new incentive to replace the old one without downtime.

I am not sure Bing will have another, better shot at Google.

Related links:

Microsoft Stops Paying Us to Use Bing

Bing Shopping Sites