B2B Playbook for Finding Toilet Paper

When times get tough, you may find it easier to think 'unlike' a consumer. Our family made multiple trips to our local supermarket, pharmacy and other retail locations in search of the most sought after staple. While essential businesses continued to function, there was one paper products aisle that remained barren. Memories of supply and demand graphs danced in my head as I thought of how to preserve our last two rolls of this most precious commodity. It was by no means a crisis, compared with the sacrifices of others, but small things do need to be addressed. It was time to find a new approach to our residential inventory management and it wasn't happening with Walmart or Amazon.

I needed a couple of high-volume laser printer cartridges for the office, so it was perfect timing to bundle a few add-ons. Here's the good news and successful outcome I wanted to share.

In less than 48 hours, our home office and residential restrooms were stocked with plenty of toner and toilet paper. In addition to that, we were graciously 'upsold' on 100 pair of disposable gloves for preparing sandwiches safely for Dorothy Day House in Danbury, CT. And, I must say that the conversation with my customer support representative at W.B. Mason was one of the best I've ever had. She was fantastic.

So we have re-engineered our spindles for commercial TP access at home, but that's far better than the alternative -- we choose to not speak about that.

So, our recommendation is to follow the President's guidelines to protect others, stay safe and call W.B. Mason for the rest.

AntiBotic Digital Marketing?

Have you ever launched a digital ad campaign and gotten more clicks reported from your DSP in the first 24 hours than for the following week? Have you ever run a B2B prospect email campaign that reported a click-through rate that was higher than the open rate?

There is no need to be concerned, becuase most of these automated actions are approval and verification processes intended to protect publishers and audiences. Nevertheless, there are plenty of other 'Bots' or non-human traffic (NHT) that can and will artificially inflate digital marketing campaign results. There are tools available to help advertisers detect fraud, but the most efficient way for most of us to handle it is to rely on our marketing technology and marketing services providers.

Programmatic B2B relies on our DSP partners to do this for us, and while there are still some 'good bots' being reported, we are able to accurately report campaign performance net of testing and supply-side approvals. But this alone falls short for direct response marketers who really want to know who their messages are 'talking to'. For this reason, we propose that the first step is always to start with real people. A great example of this is how one of our partners (video below) leverages massive epostal and mobile databases to construct audiences for cross-channel and cross-device targeting.

An opt-in database of real people is the best immune system and a powerfull asset for 'AntiBotic' Digital Marketing. When performance is measured against control and sales are matched at the individual level, it's much easier to validate real engagement and digital marketing efficacy.

Will This Supersede Data-Driven Marketing?

There are five problems with data-driven marketing as it exists today. They may be obvious, but consumers are still adversely affected. Take a couple minutes to think like a consumer and not like a marketer, then consider how wonderful the world would be if we truly embrace the concept of consumer-guided advertising.

Whether or not you agree, the following hypothesis has been tested seven times by multiple Fortune 100 brands:

Hypothesis: ROAS improves when consumers guide the advertising process.

The testing is over, at least for one of the largest global brands. After multiple campaign applications, the results are clear. While a hypothesis by definition can never be 'proven', this one is yet to be disproven. Every time it was tested, the outcome was a significant savings from increased return on ad spend (ROAS). Equally important were the positive implications for brand and customer loyalty.

The future of advertising is bright and consumers need not have a target on their backs. Will consumer-guided advertising supersede data-driven marketing as it exists today? Well, it already has for leading global brands -- and the reality is that big data will only make it peform better.

Twenty-Ten is putting consumers first in the advertising process and that's a very good thing.