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. 

—————

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.

—————

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!

“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.

—————

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.

—————

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.

—————

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. 

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.

—————

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.

—————-

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??

—————

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

“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.

What caught my attention were these two comments made by two of the other speakers:

“With so many un- and underbanked consumers out there, who have no access to a bank account, accepting alternative forms of payment is becoming very important to billers.”

“Among consumers with income less than $30k, who we typically refer to as the underbanked, smartphone penetration has reached nearly 30%.”

While a sample of two is hardly a representative sample, I think it’s a pretty good bet that these aren’t the only two individuals in this country who have some serious misconceptions about who the under-banked are.

According to he FDIC:

“Underbanked households are defined as those that have a checking or savings account but rely on alternative financial services. Specifically, underbanked households have used non-bank money orders, non-bank check-cashing services, payday loans, rent-to-own agreements, or pawn shops at least once or twice a year or refund anticipation loans at least once in the past five years.”

My take: It’s time to strike the term “Underbanked” from the lexicon.

The growth in the use of “alternative” financial services has shot up significantly in the past few years. So-called alternative products like prepaid debit cards are already — or fast becoming — mainstream (i.e., not alternative) financial products.

The reality of the financial services world is that many of the consumers who use check-cashing services or payday loans are not the underserved, disadvantaged, uneducated, preyed-upon-by-the-big-evil-banks consumers that consumer advocate groups often portray them as.

The FDIC says that the Underbanked:

“Have access to a bank account, but nevertheless rely on more costly financial service providers for a variety of reasons.”

There are two big problems with this statement:

1. Who says alternative products/providers are more costly? Monthly fees on a checking account could run $5/month. Banks want to (or wanted to) tack on fees for debit card use that would make those monthly fees even higher. Prepaid card fees are roughly similar with no additional fees for the use of the card. And have you seen overdraft fees? Reality is, depending on one’s behavior, the cost of a mainstream financial product could be way higher than an alternative product.

2. The “variety of reasons”  include reasons that no one has the right to argue with. Example: Assume my neighbor and I make the same amount of money. I choose to buy a low-cost Honda, he chooses to buy a high-cost Mercedes. Do we have a right to criticize him for buying a higher-cost product? Do we criticize Mercedes for selling a higher-cost product to someone who chooses — for whatever reasons — that higher cost product? Why is it any different in financial services? Please don’t give me the “because we have to bail out big banks when they fail” argument because we bailed out the auto makers, too. People have different reasons for choosing different products, and there’s simply no good reason (political reasons being bad reasons) for criticizing people for choosing a higher cost product if that’s what they want.

Bottom line: The use of the term Underbanked has loaded political connotations. But the connotations relate to a set of consumers that do not correspond to who the consumers in the segment actually are. 

There is only segment that matters in these discussions: The Unbanked –consumers without a checking account, savings account, or prepaid debit card account — who can’t afford to have one of these products.

Seriously, if you want to know what makes for good tweeting, re-read that first paragraph a few times.

According to a few researchers (translation: people with nothing better to do), just 36% of tweets are worth reading. Which means that, for some of you, your tweets must really suck, because I know that 100% of my tweets are worth reading.

How do I know? Well, our esteemed researchers discovered that the best tweets fell into four categories:

1. Random thoughts
2. Self-promotion
3. Questions to followers
4.  Information sharing

The worst tweets were in the following groups:

1. Opinion/complaint
2. Conversation
3. Presence maintenance
4. Me now

My take: What the research is basically saying is this:

• No one cares what problems you’re having. Stuck in the security line at the airport? Too fu*king bad. Tell it to the person next to you.
• No one cares what you have to say to other people. If the conversation doesn’t involve me, your conversational tweet bugs the crap out of me. And now I know that I’m not alone in that opinion.
• No one cares where you are, what you’re doing, or what you’re eating. If you’re thinking of tweeting one (or more) of those three things, do us all a favor and don’t.
• No one cares about you. Period.

Reading this article on the HBR site was a huge relief for me, because it confirmed what I had suspected all along: My tweets don’t suck.

In an interview on What CFOs Expect From Their CMOs, one CFO was quoted as saying:

“Being a numbers guy, I think everything can be measured. From my perspective—and I know this is an idealistic thought—you should be able to get everything down to a formula-driven type of ROI.”

The CFO’s comments are bullshit. CFOs routinely approve requests from IT for routers and servers without quantitative proof of ROI. When was the last time HR had to show the ROI of a training session?

Everyone knows that there is no ROI on a router or server or on an employee training session. But poor old Marketing has to show an ROI for every one of its expenditures.

My take: CMOs resent CFOs because they feel that marketing is held to a different or higher standard.

CFOs will read that and say “not true — it’s about accountability. We want more accountability from marketing.”

Nice try, beancounterboy, but your six-syllable word isn’t the issue. It’s a four-syllable word that’s at the root of the problem here. In-fra-struc-ture.

—————

It wasn’t always that IT got away without showing an ROI for stuff like servers and routers. But over time CIOs successfully demonstrated that there’s something called an IT infrastructure that’s required for a lot of things to happen. Nobody wants to spend more than they have to to create this infrastructure, but management came to realize this one very important fact:

There is no ROI on infrastructure. Infrastructure is an enabler. It enables other “things” to happen — and it’s those things that produce (or don’t) an ROI.

HR doesn’t talk explicitly about an employee infrastructure, but no one disputes the notion that employees need skills and knowledge to do their jobs, and that training programs ostensibly improve those skills and knowledge levels (arguing about the effectiveness of training programs is outside the scope of this post, and blog altogether).

—————

But there is no marketing infrastructure, is there? I don’t mean a marketing technology infrastructure, like CRM apps. I mean, more akin to concept of an employee infrastructure, that there is no explicit recognition of — or need for — a customer relationship infrastructure.

Here’s the premise:

There are “things” Marketing has to invest in, that in and of themselves produce no direct ROI, but are necessary for a successful customer relationship to develop.

What are these “things”?

1. Maybe advertising. According to Yahoo! Research:

“Estimating advertising cost-effectiveness is akin to measuring a relatively weak signal in a sea of noise.”

If that’s true, then, if there is an ROI to advertising, it’s pretty much impossible to measure, right?

But maybe the purpose of advertising, is not to produce an ROI. Maybe the purpose of advertising is to create awareness for your company, and to establish a positive image for your company in the minds of customers and prospects.

The actual ROI — the sale of the product or service — comes somewhere down the line, but couldn’t be done (or done as efficiently or effectively) without the customer relationship infrastructure (i.e., awareness and positive image) produced by the advertising.

2. Maybe social media. Maybe there is no ROI of Facebook or Twitter. Maybe having these “things” creates awareness and positive image. Maybe it creates a platform for customer and prospect engagement that enables something else — for example, a marketing campaign with specific offers and messages — to happen that actually produces the ROI. 

3. Maybe [you-fill-in-the-blank].

—————

So CMOs hate CFOs because the latter want quantitative proof of ROI for every expenditure, which the former can’t provide. So what do CMOs do? The make shit up. And that’s why CFOs hate CMOs.

This problem isn’t going to solve itself. CMOs need to create and hone a definition of what a customer relationship infrastructure is composed of, and what it requires. And then educate CEOs and CFOs — just like CIOs did — on this notion of a customer relationship infrastructure.

It’s a constant battle in IT over how much to invest in IT infrastructure, and it will be a challenge to determine the right amount of spend on customer relationship infrastructure. But that battle — over how much to spend — is different than fighting over the precision of, or accountability for, an ROI calculation.

Now that you know why I have never been, and could never be, a senior executive in a large organization, let’s move on to the more important point here: A senior exec in one function is usually loathe to admit publicly that a senior exec from anther function is a bozo.

So you won’t hear this publicly, but CFOs think CMOs are bozos.

Now, if you think that I don’t know that this is a generalization, and that it’s not true in every case, go back to reading your social media moron blogs. You don’t belong on this site.

There are probably a million reasons why CFOs think CMOs are bozos, but I can only come up with two (without exerting mental energy):

1. It’s true.
2. They have different sets of values.

CFOs are quantitative by nature, and they value quantitative precision. In the world of finance and accounting, things have to add up correctly. If you tell the world you did $1 million in sales this quarter, the transactions in your accounting system better add up to $1 million.

Quantitative precision is a foreign concept — or perhaps, an optional concept — for many CMOs, apparently.

At least that’s what I’m left to conclude based on a study reported in MarketingVox:

“A February 2012 survey of 329 marketing executives revealed that the majority had seen positive bottom line results from social media. Those executives whose companies had established an extensive social media presence reported a ROI nearly twice that reported by companies with a lesser engagement, of 7.7% vs. 3.9%.

The benefits were particularly strong in:

• Improved marketing/sales effectiveness
• Increased market share
• Improved product/service quality
• Improved brand/stock value

Almost 70% reported a spike in sales, from customers using social media to talk up the brands. This somewhat passive “brand advocate” approach fosters trust and credibility with prospective customers and consumers. Suppliers too act as brand advocates, and 67% of respondents agree that adds value to a brand. Finally, 54% believe that allowing employees to speak out attracts talent to the companies (consider the highly-visible Google and Microsoft blogs).

Still, the value is highly subjective and difficult to measure. Nearly half of those surveyed agree that an impediment to social media campaigns is the lack of standardized metrics for ROI. Facebook “likes” can be measured for quantity, but measuring brand lift from those likes is still elusive.”

My take: The lunacy of this is of epic proportions.

On one side of their mouths, bozo CMOs said that their organizations achieved 7.7% ROI from social media, and out of the other side of their mouths, admitted that “value is highly subjective and difficult to measure.”

Plain and simple, there’s no way that the ROI numbers reported here are accurate:

• Did the survey define time frames for the ROI calculation?
• Did the survey provide definitions for what costs to include and exclude for making the ROI calculation?
• How, exactly, did the survey define “marketing effectiveness”?
• How did the respondents define market share? Dollars? Volume? How was “market” defined?
• What CMOs actually measure product/service quality?

Plain and simple, the CMOs who responded to the survey made shit up.

And that’s why CFOs hate CMOs. CFOs get fired — and can even go to jail — when they make shit up. CFOs resent that CMOs not only make shit up, but that they then get asked to present their bullshit at conferences in Las Vegas and DisneyWorld.

My new company will be called Woyomi. Pronounced “woe-YAH-me”, the word is formed from “What’s On YOur MInd?”

Gratuitous picture of attractive female model wearing something that could possibly look like Woyomi.

The app-based technology that I intend to develop will utilize the NFC capabilities that will be available in all smartphones, cars, and toilets by September of this year to read brain waves that emanate from people (those that actually have a brain, that is — I’m not so foolish to think that I can get 100% market share with my innovation).

By reading brain waves, Woyomi will be able to ascertain what’s on your mind, then go ahead and do it. Think Kreskin-Meets-Siri.

As of today, the technology detects food preferences, monetary concerns, and sexual urges. 

1. So let’s say it’s 11:45AM, and it’s getting close to lunch time. Woyomi can — or should I say “will be able to” — detect that you want pizza, call in the order to your favorite pizza place, and pay for it with your mobile wallet. And the beauty is, it happens automatically without you even having to lift a finger. 

2. If you think to yourself “hmm, I wonder if I have enough money in my bank account to pay for those Jimmy Choo shoes in the window?” Woyomi will check your balance, and if there isn’t enough in the account, Woyomi will transfer money from where ever it can find the funds (because it can read minds, it can pick up on the account numbers/passwords of people who are located near your smartphone device, car, or toilet that you’re using). 

3. Let’s say you’re walking down the street and see some hot guy or chick. The retinal scan capability of your iPhone will identify him or her, locate his/her Facebook page and Twitter ID, and friend them/follow them. And you don’t have to lift a finger. 

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My business plan for Woyomi is simple:

1. Obtain 2012 Innovator of the Year accolades from Fast Company, TechCrunch, and American Banker.

2. Sell out to Apple, who will clearly be threatened by my innovation if I exclusively align with Android manufacturers.

—————

If you think step #1 in my business plan sounds unreasonable, you’re terribly, horribly wrong.

Why, just this week, Brett King, CEO of Movenbank, was named Innovator of the Year by American Banker. Movenbank has announced that it will rely on something it calls CRED to determine credit-worthiness, and product-worthiness among its customers.

And Simple (the Is-It-A-Bank-Or-Isn’t-It-A-Bank-Formerly-Called-BankSimple-Because-It’s-So-Simple-That-Even-I-Can’t-Figure-Out-What-It’s-About) won innovation accolades from Fast Company for its “innovations,” ignoring the small detail that there is no there there.   

Now, please don’t misunderstand me, because I am a big fan of the Movenbank concept, as I have written about in a blog post titled The Future Of Movenbank. 

But, apparently, this what business in 2012 is like. To be named Innovator of the Year, you don’t actually have to have innovated anything. You simply have to announce that you plan to innovate. 

So, I figured, why not get me some of that Innovation glory?

—————

As for the second part of my business plan, I know I’m doing the right thing. 

Have you heard? Revenue is dead. So 2005. [Please read @rags' Please don’t embarrass us by having a business model for your startup – VCs on the Iterative Path blog]

The key to today’s emerging business model is to be seen as an “innovation” that has the potential to be “disruptive.”

If you can’t see the disruptive potential in Woyomi, then you’re an effing moron. 

But Apple CEO Tim Cook is no moron. I’m sure he sees the threat Woyomi poses to his business. So that’s why I’d like to make this public and formal offer to Tim Cook:

I will sell you Woyomi for 1 million.

Columbian pesos, that is. Based on the current exchange rate, that works out to about US$568. To make it easy for you, Mr. Cook, just send me an iPad 3, and Woyomi is yours. 

But I’m keeping the Innovator of the Year awards.

“Gen Y members do not limit themselves to online and mobile banking — they’re more likely than any other age segment to visit a branch, drive up to an ATM or phone a call center.”

My take: This is not a cause for Branchaholic celebration.

Not to denigrate the Fiserv study, but this is hardly the first survey to find that — lo and behold! — Gen Yers go into bank and credit union branches.

Branchaholics — i.e., delusionary people in financial services who fail to admit to the reality that branches are dying out, and worse, want to invest tons of money to make bank branches look like something that would be featured in a Star Wars movie, or worse, look like Starbucks — take these data points, and say “See!? Branches aren’t dead.”

But what the Branchaholics aren’t acknowledging is what these studies (often) fail to ask: Why did Gen Yers use bank/credit union branches?

I don’t have research data to back up my assertion, but here it is anyway: 99% of the time, Gen Yers use branches because they can’t get their problem resolved in any other channel. Simply put, Gen Yers use branches not because they want to, but because they have to.

And it’s painful for them. I mean, really, have you seen this sub-species of human? They don’t know how to talk with their mouths. But they sure can type faster than Nicki Minaj can rap (or whatever you call that).

Bottom line: Don’t use Gen Y branch usage data as a sign that branches aren’t dead, or are coming back to life. It’s actually a sign that the other channels — the digital channels — aren’t doing a good enough job.