I like this Quality Cliff model from Animalz.

A baseline of quality is needed for any piece of content to “work.” But at some point you’re polishing for the sake of procrastination or perfection, not performance.

Of course, there is no universal benchmark or threshold.

Consistently undervaluing the need for quality risks dismal results; pursuing quality at all costs winds up expensive and over-engineered. You need to evaluate every topic and campaign on a case-by-case basis.

Just like Steve Pratt says about creative bravery:

It is relative to every brand. There’s no universal scale of creative bravery.

What’s creatively brave for you could be a way of thinking about it.

Most of it is thinking about who the end consumer of the content is—whether it’s a podcast or a video or an email newsletter—is this something that they’re actually going to look forward to and appreciate. Is this going to create value for them. Is this something that is coming from you but not about you.

What is a gift we can give that can only come from us that is intended and designed for the people you’re trying to reach?

Stated even clearer:

Is this brave enough to get into the attention fortress?

Using video as an example. There is a minimum viable quality if you want your video to “work.”

TikTok and the rise of “authentic content” has dropped this bar, but it still exists. Lighting, angle, story, and speed are probably the core 4 to hit the minimum.

• Can we see the subject of the video?
• Can we figure out what it is?
• Can we figure out why you made the video? What are you trying to tell us about the subject?
• Is it slow enough that we can keep up but fast enough that we don’t lose interest?

But there’s a lot of ground to cover between that minimum and the maximum of a Super Bowl commercial or branded blockbuster film.

The decision you need to make is: do you need a top 5 Super Bowl commercial this year? Or do you just need a short-form vertical video that will get people to pay attention and maybe engage a bit?

And be clear about why you need what you decide. Whether it’s vanity, cachet, or KPIs. (Or Deb in accounting.)

Minimum viable (for the performance you want) is usually the better choice than maximum available.

Be brave. Or be ignored.

Be weird.

Ad frequency is a common consideration for advertisers (this being the number of times a person is shown the same exact ad).

We know it takes more than one interaction, but how many is too many?

The paper Battle of the Brand: Brand Attachment Inoculates Against the Negative Effects of Ad Repetition has some interesting findings.

The Toleration Range

2-5 ad exposures seems to be the sweet spot before it becomes annoying and negatively impacts brand perception. (At least for traditional media, digital is a different ballgame.)

Brand fans can tolerate a higher frequency.

stronger personal brand attachment slows ad wearout

Identity Threat

The study found that people sometimes perceive repeated ad exposure as a threat to their identity.

Everyone experiences in negative thoughts about a brand as frequency increases. BUT people with strong brand attraction generate more positive thoughts about the brand in response.

Basically an identity protection response by the brain. “I’m a Starbucks person so I can’t be too annoyed by this Starbucks ad.”

The antidote to ad wearout is personal connection.

Are you going to get out of the way and stop making things that are about you and instead start making things that are from you, that people are looking forward to and value?

A question from Steve Pratt that more companies need to ask themselves about their marketing.

Especially owned channel / content marketing.

People don’t just want to know what you make. They want to know what you’re made of.

At Blue Ion, we’re big into help brands uncover, articulate, and share their mission, vision, and purpose. Which means we’re always collecting compelling thoughts about these ideas.

I like these from Dr. Michael Gervais

Vision

Vision is like this compelling future that I see, I imagine, and it is so compelling and beautiful and electric to me that I want to work towards that future state.

Purpose

Purpose is the deep why that you’re here.

To get deeper, ask another why.

Is SEO for AI all about vectors?

Instead of relying on exact keyword matches, search engines now use vector embeddings – a technique that maps words, phrases, and even images into multi-dimensional space based on their meaning and relationships.

3 strategies mentioned:

• Add semantic topic modeling to your keyword research mix
• Focus on where topic meets intent over keywords
• Make good content (which means make it for humans, not bots)

Of course, the best way to find out what AI might think about your content is to use AI to tell you.

As a follow up to my post about Alexa+, this is the inflection moment for voice assistants.

Adding “true” AI capabilities will either expand their use cases and, therefore, adoption. Or it will prove that they’ll merely be an extension of other tech and not a new platform of sorts.

GenAI as customer lock in

Alexa Plus is $19.99 per month on its own or free for Amazon Prime members — a better deal, considering Prime costs just $14.99 per month or $139 per year.

Prime is the digital version of Costco or Sam’s Club. People pay a membership fee with the expectation of receiving more value through savings. Then a bunch of secondary benefits sweeten the deal.

By paying a fee, members are more likely to spend money to justify the initial fee to themselves.

Amazon’s primary retail customer is Prime. Everything else funnels there.

via The Verge

Promotions and sales are a lever. But if pulled too often they become your brand. (See: JCPenny)

discounting and promotions in general is a place where retailers all too frequently get caught up in the short-term goal of juicing sales, get caught up in the short-term goal of taking advantage of promotional environments by using promotions as a lever, again, to drive conversion and the short-term.

what gets very dangerous there is that you can really erode the value of your brand.

Competing on price is hard.

Compete on something that makes you unique and use sales and promos as sprinkles.