Competitive analysis is important. However, because it’s done so early in the process it often anchors thinking and confines innovation.

- Greg

- James
James Hvezda´s last [type] ..It’s about time…

- Greg

On websites, when I encounter a flash intro (or other irrelevant bell-and-whistle animation or graphics), the first thing I look for is the ‘skip intro’ option.
I don’t surf; when I go to a website, I’m there for a reason and want to find what I’m looking for as effortlessly as possible. With rare exception, ease of use is way more important than appearance. My own site is being renovated to be a better example of practicing what I preach: simplicity can be a beautiful thing.
Always enjoy your posts, Greg.

Lots of good points. Although I would have to disagree about the Hermes site. It doesn’t really matter who your target audience is, if they can’t get to information, then you’re just wasting their time.

Thanks for your comment and have a great New Year!

- Greg

I would like to tag on to your comments by stating that the true digital marketing professional must let the channel drive the message to the right audience.

That being said – the channel should influence the buying audience to exceed the campaigns goals of the company. A campaign goal could be simply to increase sales of existing products.

Know your audience – are these consumers who purchase based on messaging and impulse? Or are they b2b purchasers with a budget and a quarterly purchasing schedule? Goes back to knowing your audience before you build. What is the most influential combination of channel messaging that will persuade and engage the right person to complete the conversion for your company?

For the Hermes site, I would be interested to know who is buying their products on line and what they care about. Are these consumers off the street or a select group of purchasers – do they get messaged to in mail, email, mobile and web for special offers or promotions? The flash site is somewhat hitting the mark for showcasing a high end retailer, but in my head misses it for how to get consumer traffic to your site and even brand awareness. HTML 5 is a good alternative.
Thanks for letting me rant… Look forward to future posts.
Scott

I think you nailed the ‘issue’ on the head in your reply to me. I was going to mention that (and should have) the crux is in the definition.

Even though the term correlation is often associated with statistics, it is often used in other disciplines as well like Physiology, Sociology, etc. In some it means a linear relationship, in some it implies a reciprocal relationship, and in some an interdependence etc.

Anyway, this is why I was going to say that your statement about no correlation might be seen as too “strong” of a statement by many . Mathematically you are correct, but colloquially many use it more to mean a relationship or dependence..

Thanks for the clarification.

Regards,
Ned

Good to see you again, I always enjoy your comments.

A lot of people are pointing out the SEO problems associated with flash (I think that HTML 5 will be probably easier to make visible, but that’s just a guess). It’s a very valid point, but I was trying to make a different one.

The biggest problem with new media is that we’re not very good at it. It’s not like TV or print production which we have been doing for decades and have lots of standards and points of interface. Unfortunately, marketers who want to be innovative try to integrate the newest and coolest tech, when they should be using basic tools that work well.

- Greg

Thanks. I’m glad you liked it.

I’ve gotten a lot of comments about this and I guess I didn’t express what I meant very well. I guess it comes down to how you define “correlation,” which you can do in two ways, colloquially or mathematically.

Colloquial definition: A general relation ship between two different things

Mathematical definition: A specific relationship between two different things where a change in one variable translates into a change in the other expressed as a percentage.

If you are talking about the first definition, then I agree completely. However, the problem is that people confuse the two and actually apply the mathematical definition in excel without knowing that this is calculating a linear relationship. While the relation ship might basically hold for a very small range (a small portion of a curve is almost indistinguishable from a line), it has no predictive value.

There is, of course, a third way, which is to “fit” a model. Then you can derive a relationship that is not linear and get an r-squared value that looks a lot like correlation (correlation is r, but again – only for linear models). So it’s easy to get confused.

Anyway, you are absolutely right, whatever you call it, there is definitely a measurable relationship between advertising and sales, and I regret that a lot of people took my statement to mean that I was arguing against one.

Thanks again for your comment.

- Greg