Evidence of Autumn
My new favorite blog is Logic+Emotion by David Armano of Digitas; it’s funny, articulate, timely and at times just plain brilliant. A recent browse through L+E brought me to two other points of jealousy: pilot/writer Matthew Stibbe’s Bad Language and Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen, a great resource for anyone who wants to deliver effective visual communication.
Armano also points to this interesting article concerning the end of advertising. Jared Spool feels that the day is coming when client organizations will simply stop paying for solutions whose results cannot be measured. In fact, he feels the very premise of modern advertising is flawed by antiquated thinking:
Since the first days of newspaper advertising, it’s been accepted by everyone that advertising is non-accountable. Advertising works, based on faith in the premise that if you put an ad in front of enough people enough times, they spend money. But everyone knows accepting the premise is hard. In fact, if you talk to anyone in the advertising business, they can recite the joke often attributed to Philadelphia merchant John Wannamaker: “I know half my advertising budget is wasted. The trouble is I don’t know which half.”
This is on my mind because I’m in the middle of an extensive website redesign, one whose success will be evaluated under some exciting and challenging benchmarks. As I’ve written before, my human factors training has provided me with the following dictum: the best value is that which is measurable, especially when it comes to the digital user experience. Frank Gruber of iMediaConnection reports the following in his notes from a recent ad:tech panel discussion:
Kathy Beymer, experience planning director at Arc Worldwide, explained the usage of experimental designs to promote a brand experience. She emphasized finding the value exchange for your audience by determining (1) why someone is coming to your site and (2) what you are offering in return. Kathy advocated balancing usability and innovation, which will require adequate budget and innovation to create a compelling site for a user. She noted that it may also require taking some calculated risks. Finally, Kathy emphasized the importance of tackling measurement from the full story: from web stats to the impact on brand perception.