Approach routine tasks from a different angle

I have a pre-defined route for my 45-minute commute to and from my office in downtown Cleveland.  Because of traffic patterns, in the morning I exit the highway quite far from my parking lot and drive through city streets to get there.  But in the evening, because traffic flow is a lot different and I'm usually leaving the office late, I hop on the highway ramp that's closest to my lot.  I've found it's quickest to follow that pattern.

This morning I tried something different.  Today when coming into work, I passed up my normal exit and got off at the place I normally enter the highway in the evening.  Both common sense and my knowledge of the traffic patterns around downtown tell me that this morning's unusual route would take longer...and sure enough, it did take a little longer.

But when I gained was quite interesting.  Since I'm used to driving that road when I leave work every day, I figured everything would seem the same -- since I was on the same road, just going in a different direction than usual.  But I was wrong.  I can't even begin to tell you how many new things I saw this morning.  It's a short drive -- probably only a mile -- but while driving westbound on this road I saw at least a half dozen buildings, signs and businesses that I've never seen in my normal evening eastbound commute on the same street.  It was a completely different experience.  And I learned some things I didn't know before.

I guess all I'm trying to say is this:  Try doing some of your routine tasks a little differently today.  Come at them with fresh eyes, from a different angle, looking for different things.  Don't treat them as normal.  They might take you a little longer -- like my drive this morning took a little longer than it could have -- but I'll bet you'll get a whole new perspective on them.  And who knows, maybe you'll discover a new way to do things, a process improvement, or maybe you'll gain a new appreciation for those routine tasks.

Why you DON'T want your advertising to stand out

A great quote about online advertising from Noah Brier on AdAge.com:

Banner blindness is a well-documented phenomenon, but little has been written about why people ignore the ads. My suspicion is that it's in large part due to the fact that they look like they don't belong on the page. When there's a big orange ad amongst the black and white content of the New York Times it's kind of like wearing a big sign that says, "Don't pay attention to me!"

This is absolutely true.  I see it all the time.  The advertisers who think about their ads -- who it's going to, where it's going on a page, what it should look like -- and design their creative around those parameters are way more successful.

For a campaign that ran for three-month periods the past couple years, one of my colleagues had the opportunity to design the ad creative.  It was a custom program, and the advertiser trusted us enough to assemble the right messaging and look for the leaderboards, rectangles and skyscrapers.  Since my colleague knew exactly where on the site the ad would run, plus knowing all the hot topics that get our site's audience excited, he selected a creative approach that meshed well with the location and audience desires.  The reward was an incredibly high 2.0% click through rate on the rectangle creative (that's for a static GIF, not any type of rich media!).

If advertisers and agencies spent the extra time to do serious creative planning for a campaign, they'd be able to boost the campaign's performance immediately.  That's why often you don't want to make your advertising stand out.  Integrate the message and content closely with the site, and you'll see a big payoff.

New research on marketing during a recession

Throughout 2009 I've seen plenty of articles and white papers about the benefits of keeping your marketing and advertising spends steady during a recession -- or even better, increasing them.  Some of these pop up every time we see an economic slowdown (I remember seeing one particular piece on advertising during a recession back in 2001-2002, and of course it has reappeared with the recent economy).

Here's a brand new piece of research published by Real Results Marketing and Al Dente Marketing, that examines the marketing of 188 companies (download PDF here).  The majority of these marketers (61%) are in B2B.  Although the sample size isn't huge and this study seems to skew toward smaller companies, it still has some interesting takeaways.  While it's of course too early to see how well these companies fare in terms of market share, revenue growth, etc. as the economy improves, many of the numbers and associated comments are quite interesting.  The companies that are cutting marketing are doing so by 35%, while the companies that are increasing their marketing are spending 26% more.  That's a huge disparity -- and it's easy to see how the companies that are investing now could end up seeing a huge payback in the coming years.

Not surprising, you'll see that many of these companies are trying more social media tactics, as well as increasing effort on their marketing programs.  Webinars were also an area cited by many as being in their growth plans.