Off Kilter.

Volume 001: Launch edition
The contrarian’s guide to the business of brand, marketing and design.

1. Shock, horror. The digital ads aren’t working.

Tl;dr: The economics of online advertising are horrible.

Jesse Frederick and Maurits Martijn decode the economics of online advertising, showing that marketers systematically mistake selection effects (purchases that would’ve been made anyway) for advertising effects (purchases that wouldn’t have been made without the ads).

Further reading: experts believe advertising effectiveness is in decline as short-termism isn’t working out all that well, and brand-building still matters.

2. Facebook goes all confusingly FACEBOOK.

Tl;dr: Google does brand better. Much better. Ignore FB, look at what Google are doing.

A shared hatred of Facebook is pretty much the only solidly bipartisan concept in America today, so it’s no surprise they finally addressed this as a corporate brand problem. Unfortunately their response is a case-study in what not to do. When reviewers are telling people not to buy good products just because they come from Facebook, I’d have expected a lot more.

Instead, their solution is strategically confused, and as far as I can tell, based on fantastical aspirations. Allied with a visual presentation that’s both anonymously generic AND confusing, it doesn’t bode well for the future.

Look out for a SuperBowl spot as nauseating as their previous ad about chairs touting the merits of the FACEBOOK family of apps bringing us all closer together, that does nothing to make us trust it more.

Almost certainly, brand weakness is hurting the most with talent right now. If ad-sales begin to slow (see the first post above), their challenges will undoubtedly expand, and things will continue to get tougher.

3. Singles day absolutely boggles my mind.

Tl;dr: Alibaba is a commerce juggernaut. But you knew that already.

Alibaba racked up over $38bn of sales on Singles Day, including $10bn in the first minute. 90% of these purchases were from smartphones and over 1m new products were listed for the occasion. These numbers are almost too large for me to comprehend, but for Jack Ma, they merely represented “missed expectations.”

Interestingly for these trade-war riven times, Apple and Nike were the biggest sellers as Chinese consumer culture motors on.

4. Forget Star Wars, the streaming wars are here.

Tl;dr: Who loses most, the streaming platforms or cable TV?

In a testament to the power of the Disney brand portfolio, the highly unimaginatively named Disney+ picked up 10m subscribers in its first day.

Netflix finances aren’t exactly the best, and some think they’re highly vulnerable to new competition. But debt aside, I’m bullish on the power of the Netflix brand, and there’s a real chance the losers in the streaming war won’t be the streaming apps at all, but the continued decline of cable TV.

As an aside, I look forward to seeing how Disney makes sense of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. Personally, I want them all in a single app.

Finally, on the subject of Disney, you can now take a Masterclass class on business leadership and brand with former Disney CEO Bob Iger. (FYI, I have no association whatsoever with either Masterclass or Bob)

Thank you for reading all the way through. If this email was forwarded to you and you like it, you can subscribe here.

If you’d like to talk about anything brand related, or even just to have a chat, that would be awesome. Please reach out. I particularly enjoy helping people solve tricky brand problems.

Cheers for now.

Paul
President, Invencion

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