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I Hate SlideShare

I hate SlideShare.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the company or the site. In fact, I think the site does a pretty good job of what it does, and I certainly don’t begrudge the company’s right to make an honest, ethical business out of what it does. 

But as a self-professed psuedopsycho presentation snob, I hate that people find value in slide decks. 

So maybe that’s really it: I don’t hate SlideShare itself, I hate the fact that there’s demand for something like SlideShare. 

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I give a lot of presentations at conferences, webinars, and at clients. And I’m usually happy to share my slides with anybody who wants them — after the presentation, that is.

That’s because, as far as I’m concerned, the slide deck itself is useless.

The value of the presentation is what I say and how I say it. The deck is nothing but a prop.

But, as evidenced by the popularity of SlideShare, apparently there are a lot of people who don’t share my philosophy. It kills me when I see SlideShare users fawn over some deck that consists of little more than a bunch of slides showing high-resolution pictures of stuff with a pithy sentence plastered somewhere on the picture strung together.

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There are three components to a great presentation:

1. Quality of the content.

2. Quality of the delivery.

3. Quality of the material.

If I had to weight the three components, I’d say 60/30/10. Great content can compensate for a less-than-great delivery. And great delivery can compensate for butt ugly slides.

SlideShare captures #3. Which means — according to my book — it captures 10% of the value of a presentation. 

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Another reason I hate SlideShare: I posted a presentation I did a while back to SlideShare just to see how many people would download it. Here’s the sobering reality: More people downloaded that deck than will read this blog post. 

So, not only do people place higher emphasis on the least valuable part of the presentation (the deck), it’s become clear to me that one reason for SlideShare’s popularity is that a lot of people are just too damn lazy to read. 

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The irony is that I’m preaching to the choir. By reading this, you’re proving that you’re not one of the lazy-ass heathen ruining the business world with crappy-ass presentations filled with nothing but stupid-ass pictures. 

What’s that? I sound mad? Can’t imagine why.

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I would ask you to tweet the link to this blog post so that others may partake of this presentation wisdom. But the reality is that they won’t read this because it requires too much mental energy. 

If I had half a brain, I’d take this blog post, split it out over 30 slides, paste it on top of a bunch of high-res pictures, and post it on SlideShare. 

UPDATE: Big thanks to @jameswester who created a deck of this post and put it up on SlideShare. Thanks, James!

(Mis)Understanding The New ROI Of Marketing

In the Forbes’ FORBESWOMAN column, an article titled Understanding The New ROI Of Marketing states:

“No longer does ROI stand only for return on investment. Today, ROI also stands for return on impression, which encompasses two primary values — a hard metric and a soft metric. Together, those two values are far more powerful for measuring marketing performance than the single dollar value provided by return on investment metrics. Traditional ROI analysis is just the tip of the iceberg. The really interesting part of the story is what happens beneath the surface of the water. The hard metrics related to return on investment barely touch the surface.”

If you do click over to the article, skip reading the article itself, and go straight to the comments. There you will find the voices of rational, sane, and intelligent people.

Bob London writes:

“Sorry but in my opinion this smacks of a desperate attempt to cover up marketing’s tenuous or fictional link to real business metrics.”

My Twitter buddy Jeff Marsico (@jeffmarsico) writes:

“I don’t agree with many of the metrics mentioned because they are too soft. It feeds the notion that somehow marketing folks have their head in the clouds.”

Bob and Jeff are nice, polite guys who know how to disagree with someone in a civil manner.

Sadly, I lack that skill.

My take: The Forbes article is a shameful display of stupidity. And it has nothing to do with women. Why was this sad excuse for an article published in the FORBESWOMAN column?

Talking about “traditional ROI analysis” is like talking about the “traditional definition of left and right.” It’s senseless. ROI is ROI. There is only one way to calculate it: Revenue minus costs divided by costs. The only consideration that’s left to “redefinition” is the timeframe in which those revenues and costs are calculated.

I’m not saying, however, that marketers shouldn’t define new metrics if they add value to our understanding and measurement of marketing activities.

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Marketers (and perhaps Forbes columnists) should realize that there are three types of metrics: 1) Input; 2) Output; and 3) Impact.

Input metrics capture how much of something you put in the investment. It could be things like hours per week, dollars spent per customer, raw materials used by item.

Output metrics capture what you get out from that input. Units produced per week, page hits per day, etc. Measures like those proposed in the Forbes article — like Return on Impression – are output metrics. In and of themselves, they have no financial return.

Impact metrics are those with financial return. They capture the amount or increase in sales per some unit of measurement, or they capture the reduction in cost of doing something per some unit of measurement.

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Input and output metrics do not replace impact metrics. The problem we have with marketing measurement is that it’s hard to quantitatively tie input and output metrics to impact metrics like ROI.

Smart marketers understand that there is a return on investment chain. You put things in, you get things out, and there is an impact — or maybe not, and possibly it takes a combination of the things that come out to achieve an impact.

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The Forbes article clearly demonstrates one other sad fact about today’s business world. Once-top-quality publications like Forbes must be so hard up for content that they’ll publish anything. 

Quantipulation: Financial Advisors’ Use Of LinkedIn

LinkedIn recently published an infographic depicting financial advisors’ use of social media. Advisors’ use of LI exceeded their use of other networks like Facebook and Twitter. As Gomer Pyle would say, “Soo-prise, soo-prise!”

But seriously, LI’s findings on advisors’ prefered networks are consistent with my research. What caught my eye, though, was the following stat:

Advisors who prospected on LinkedIn achieved a 62% success rate.

My take: Quantipulation at its finest.

To refresh your memory, quantipulation is:

The art and act of using unverifiable math and statistics to convince people of what you believe to be true.

What exactly does 62% success rate mean?  Succeeded at what? Is it implying that 62% of the time that advisors used LinkedIn they “succeeded”? Does it mean that 62% of the prospects they found on LI became clients?

My guess is that it means that 62% of advisors said that they had success with LinkedIn, not that they had a 62% success rate.

If that’s the case, it’s hardly a remarkable finding. Advisors — and all marketers — generally find some success with every marketing channel they use.

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The infographic also says that, of the advisors who had success with LI,  32% gained $1m in new assets.

Oh really? Was that $1m in assets from just the LI prospects, or $1m in new assets overall? How much in new assets did the other 68% generate? It’s entirely possible that those 68% grew their book of business more from other sources that the LI-successful group.

Here’s my contention: Advisors who are good at marketing use lots of different channels to prospect, and are more aggressive in prospecting than advisors who aren’t as good at marketing.

The channel doesn’t make the marketer, the marketer makes the channel.

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Another interesting data point states that 52% of investors would interact with advisors on LI, but that just 4% do.

Hey, LinkedIn: If you want advisors to be successful using your network, you have to answer these questions:

  • Why the gap?
  • Why don’t more investors interact with advisors on LI?
  • What’s the secret to engagement on LI??

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Bottom line: You can’t take statistics at face value. But you knew that already, right? RIGHT?

The Real Reasons Why Financial Services’ Mobile Ad Spending Increased 314%

ClickZ reported that Financial Mobile Ad Spend Up 314% in 2011. According to the article:

“According to Millennial Media, from 2010 to 2011, mobile ad spending in the finance vertical grew by 314% worldwide. The study suggested finance brands are putting more dollars into mobile because people who engage with financial content and ads via mobile devices tend to be young (between the ages of 18 and 34) and affluent, with 48% having an income of $75,000 or better. Of these users, 55% are male. They also are brand-loyal, saying they’re willing to pay more for a product they trust and stick to brands they like. When it comes to selecting a financial services company, [Millennial Media GM Marcuc] Startzel said, “These are purchase decisions we make in these early years, stick with the rest of our lives and only change rarely. We know this intuitively – and the data shows that, as well.”

My take: The logic and explanations for the increase in mobile ad spending doesn’t hold water. There are five points made in the article that just don’t hold up:

1. The age argument. If, as the MM GM states, “we make these decisions in early years” and “stick with the rest of our lives and only change rarely,” then advertising to someone in their early 30s is wasted, because the financial service provider decisions would have been made long ago.”

2. The “stick with” argument. Point #1 is moot because it’s simply not true that these decisions are made early and never change.  Ten percent of US consumers switched their primary bank last year. A quarter of them were Gen Xers (roughly 32-46 years old) and one in five were Boomers (roughly 47-66 years old). The “stick with” argument also doesn’t hold up because consumers have evolving financial product needs.

3. The “pay more for a product they trust” argument. Consumers within the demographic described — 18-34 years old,  making more than $75k — may very well pay more for products they trust. But necessarily for financial services products. In fact, the evidence from the study cited above would suggest the opposite of what the Millennial Media GM claims: That the increase in financial mobile ads is due to the fact that financial services products are generally utilitarian, high consideration products which lead consumers to research and find the lowest cost product for their needs.

4. The “55% are male” argument. Hello! Women make all the financial services decisions today! I bet that men shop for financial services products about as often as they shop for…well, let’s not go there.

5. The “data shows that” argument. There is no data that shows that.

Bottom line: The increase in mobile advertising from 2010 to 2011 isn’t because of the demographics of mobile financial content viewers. It’s a result of some combination of three factors:

  1. Financial services firms are looking to reduce ad costs in other channels and shifting dollars to the mobile channel;
  2. Financial services firms are experiencing good and/or better than expected results from their mobile advertising efforts, and therefore put more money into it. My recent post on The Importance Of Mobile Advertising To Banks demonstrates why the real reasons have little to do with the arguments given above. The best reason comes from a study from professors at INSEAD and the University of Pittsburgh who found that: ”Low-fidelity mobile advertising campaigns are effective when they are for products that trigger further thought and consideration, which includes campaigns for high (versus low) involvement products, and for products that are seen as more utilitarian (versus more hedonic).”
  3. It’s easier to achieve 314% growth when you start off spending $10k than when you spend $10m.