Research – The TellAllmarketing Blog

Drinking In The New Neon Wilderness

Posted on September 3, 2018September 12, 2018 by The TellAllmarketing Blog

By Ray Schultz

Poor Nelson Algren. A new bar, the Neon Wilderness, has opened in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. But it can’t be like the ones Algren hung out in when he lived there, nor can it reflect the ethos behind the name.

The Neon Wilderness is the title of Algren’s 1947 short story collection. His third book, it mostly focused on the desperate lives of the people who inhabited the area around Milwaukee Ave. and Division.

Among its 24 stories was “The Captain has bad dreams, or who put the sodium amytal in the hill & hill?”, a harrowing yet often funny account of a police lineup. This scene prefigured a similar one in The Man with the Golden Arm, Algren’s 1949 novel, which won the first National Book Award and was the basis of the movie starring Frank Sinatra (that Algren hated).

Algren turned another story in the volume, “The Face on the Barroom Floor,” into the climactic episode of A Walk On the Wild Side, his 1956 novel and the seed of yet another bad movie. And one of the earlier pieces in the collection, “A Bottle Of Milk for Mother,” was the foundation of Never Come Morning, Algren’s 1942 novel that sold over one million copies in paperback.

Perhaps the best story is “Design For Departure,” a novella unto itself, which described how a damaged woman lived in that era before gentrification—“in one of those great city caverns which are halfway between a rooming house and a cheap hotel. Every door has a number; and no one knows anyone else and nobody keeps the hallway clean because nobody rents the hall.

“The beds are rented by week or by night. They are rented along with the air and the hours. There is just so much warmth, just so much air…” (But where would she live now?)

Algren, who died in 1981, never saw much money from any of this, and what little he did see he lost at the track; His world view can perhaps be summed up by this line from Chicago: City On The Make, his 1951 prose poem: “Every day is D-day under the El.”

Coming Up Empty

Posted on May 2, 2016May 27, 2016 by The TellAllmarketing Blog

By Ray Schultz

ABM. Sounds like an anti-ballistic missile, doesn’t it?

In B2B, though, ABM means account-based marketing. And too few firms are ready for it, according to a new survey by Avention.

Of the 100 companies polled, 75% “can’t find the right contacts at companies matching target profile,” Aveniton writes. And “50% have limited or no ability to gather real-time intelligence on target accounts.”

That’s bad news, whether you call your marketing program ABM or not. And here’s another depressing finding: That only 24% have access to the right data for marketing.

Granted, there are ways around it. We’ll get to them. But

First let’s remember that Avention is selling something here: ABM. Here’s the definition, from SiriusDecisions:

“Account-based marketing is the strategic approach marketers use to support a defined universe of accounts. It includes support for the post-sale customer lifecycle using marketing’s toolkit to contribute to the overall customer experience.

Avention adds that ABM “helps to evolve the role of marketing to reflect a stronger alignment with sales objectives and customer needs to deliver better execution and revenue outcomes.”

Don’t be daunted: You may already be doing some of that, but not calling it ABM.

That said, here are some additional stats from the survey. Of the companies polled:

38% have at least one ABM program in play
15% are piloting an ABM program
21% are planning one within the next 6-12 months
26% no/not applicable

Their biggest hurdle in pursuing ABM? Lack of data. In fact, most firms are “building” their data capability: they’re not there yet. The proof is in these survey findings:

76% are building toward having the right data for marketing
69% are building toward having the right data for sales
24% have access to the right data for remarking
31% have access to the right data for sales

Here’s one more insight, the top indicators used to define best customers

Annual spends–62%
Length of relationship—52%
Estimated lifetime value—23%
Frequency of purchase—21%
Frequency of engagement—20%
Produces held 11%
Expanding/hiring—5%
Location—5%
Creditworthiness—4%

Given all that, how to you achieve ABM? Avention suggests the following. I quote:

Build a deep understanding of target accounts and the market in which they operate so that you have data as deep, rich and current as possible.
Identify relevant contacts and create an account map.
Craft compelling messages, offers and content specific to each account or contact.
Time message delivery well based on real-time insights and activity triggers.
In addition to surveying 100 companies, Avention conducted interviews with marketing practitioners.

41 Shades of Gray

Posted on July 31, 2014September 5, 2016 by The TellAllmarketing Blog

By Ray Schultz

Another hot shot writer is in trouble for alleged serial plagiarizing. Benny Johnson was fired by BuzzFeed last Friday after readers found “41 instances of sentences or phrases copied word for word from other sites,” as editor Ben Smith put it in a blog post, according to Mashable.

There’s no reason for gloating, although I suspect some grizzled reporters are doing just that. I can hear them asking if Johnson, BuzzFeed’s viral politics editor, ignored the ethical training given out in J-school.

But it’s the wrong question, given the nature of BuzzFeed and Johnson’s alleged offense. Maybe Johnson didn’t even go to J-school.

He seemed to specialize in what are now called “listicles” – trashy, specious lists, as in: “7 Signs That Your Dog Is Having an Affair.” Like the best content curators, he borrowed liberally from others, but without crediting his sources, Smith admitted.

Yikes. It’s bad enough to plagiarize renowned works of fiction or history. But listicles?

Yet “curation” apparently is the basis of BuzzFeed’s business model. Adrian Chen wrote on Gawker in 2012 that BuzzFeed has “built a lucrative business on organizing the internet’s confusing spectacle into listicles easily comprehended by even the most numbed office workers.” Chen added, though, that “many are highly derivative rip-offs from other sites, cleaned up and reproduced without crediting their sources.”

Has it changed since then? Maybe. “Go to BuzzFeed.com and click on any one of its lists. In very fine print, buried below each photo, there will be a link to another site — usually Reddit,” Dylan Byers sneers on politico.com.

Byers also offers this explanation for how Johnson went wrong:

“When BuzzFeed reporters wrote, they were subject to the same rules as everyone else. Sure you could draw facts from elsewhere — everyone does — but you had to write it in your own language.

“At some point, Johnson probably got lazy and started inserting text into his posts the same way he had been inserting photographs — by pressing Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. His mistake was that he forgot to put quote marks around it and add “according to.”

That seems right, although it’s all part of a viral content system designed for people with short attention spans.

And let’s not forget Johnson’s worst alleged offense:plagiarizing Wikipedia.

I used to joke that I’d fire any reporter who used Wikipedia as a source. There are too many small factual errors (and probably many big ones). It’s a slipshod practice.

But if you do sneak it in, at least have the courage to admit it. I’d hate to be the editor who had run an apology for ripping off Wikipedia.

Don’t think this is limited to listickle writers—book authors and academics also quote Wikipedia, which in fairness doesn’t purport to be a primary source. When did everyone get so lazy?

Here’s some free advice. If BuzzFeed is indeed focused on curation, it should source everything—it’s as simple as that. There’s nothing wrong with compiling a content sampler if you attribute pickups and include links.

For their part, writers should follow Robert Caro’s rule and source every single quote or paraphrase. Don’t worry if it bogs the copy down.

And Benny Johnson? One can guess that he enjoyed his moment in the sun. Or maybe he didn’t—it had to be stressful. Either way, what’s his future?

Fallen journalists rarely make it back—there are too few jobs even for good reporters. But that may be changing, along with other things in publishing. A clever person with a good business head could start his own site, or find another one to hire him. And like other nine-day wonders on the Internet, he may find that he is forgiven as long as he drives traffic and dollars. So much for ethics.