Moneyball - not read it, just blogs about it.

Recently, 3 of the bloggers I read have all referenced Moneyball.

Dave Trott
TAC
ITIABTWC
Ben Gaines

What struck me is
a) Herd mentality is everywhere, not just baseball, not just advertising - just look at the causes of the recent financial problems
b) Getting the "right" numbers to measure your key activity is hard, but that should not stop you thinking about it. The important thing is to make your the mechanisms/numbers you pick are better than everyone elses over the period you're interested in.

Dave Trott suggested its easier to analyse baseball than advertising as 'you win the game".

I'd go further. I'd say for all regular purposes, something like advertising & marketing are the outcome of a zero-sum game.

You may persuade better.

You may influence more.

But you cant "win" at advertising (but you can lose).

The same is true of marketing, running companies, buying stocks and shares, relationships, whatever.

You have three states you can be in:
1) better than previous
2) worse than previous
3) unable to take part

but you can never "win".

Teams clearly went for "big money" players - that was a strategy, the teams weighed up how much they could afford vs. what they thought the return would be.

What I assume "Moneyball" explains is a way a given team applied a strategy to beat their competition who were largely following the "big money" strategy for that period of time.

As a reference, "Moneyball" can now be used by everyone else to define their own version of that strategy.

Now in order to beat Moneyball, teams need another strategy.

But what is that? You can take "Moneyball" and derive some new metrics, you can apply some new calculations, you can try and squeeze the last drop of insight out of those numbers but I think these increases will have diminishing returns. At some point, someone else will have a different idea and it will be as revolutionary to "Moneyball" as it was to "big money".

I'm more interested in finding what this next big idea is.

I dont think its the "Big money" of facebook or social media, I don't think its the variations of "Moneyball" that the web analytics vendors are pushing with their various tools with their various numbers.

I dont think its about finding a new number to measure stuff by.

I think the next big thing will be working out how to combine "numbers" with information about the environment or competition and coming up with heuristics that will lead to being in a better position than you were previously based on combinations of factors of customers, environment and time.

There will be no set heuristics, but a library to pick from as environment will dictate which approach will may be better at any one time. Just like chess, there will be no single approach but there will be recognised approaches that a business "grand master" can skill fully wield.

I think it is defining these business "heuristics" that will be the next big thing for me and if it isn't then it will be something else and I aim to find it and write my own "Moneyball" and find myself "better than previous".

Trying not to complicate advertising and its analytics...

Got a great list of "breifs" from the ad aged blog

I like its simplicity.

I was looking at the list and wondering where analytics really fits into this process. I note that in some situations the best you can hope do is "Qualitative" research, which in many commercial situations really equates to saying "we're not sure what this all means but here's some numbers that might indirectly guide you a better understanding of your customer base".


Problem 1: Nobody knows who we are.
Brief: Create advertising that tells people who we are.
Analytics: Decide how to reach the most people. Measure "reach".

Problem 2: Nobody knows what we sell.
Brief: Create advertising that explains what we sell and how it helps.
Analytics: Survey target audience before and after (Qualitative)

Problem 3: We are being vastly outspent by much larger competitors.
Brief: Create advertising that gets at least as much attention as said much larger competitors.
Analytics: Identify and target audience with campaigns

Problem 4: We sell, essentially, a parity product. A product with no point of difference.
Brief: Create advertising that differentiates the company as superior.
Analytics: Target audience better than competitors

Problem 5: We are in a low-interest category.
Brief: Do something interesting.
Analytics: Nothing. Analytics wont tell you what's interesting. I'm sure you got try a survey or two (Qualitative)

Problem 6: Nobody knows how to use what we make or what it's for.
Brief: Create advertising that demonstrates the products.
Analytics: Survey (Qualitative)

Problem 7: My product is hard to get, so people don't try it.
Brief: Create advertising that makes the product easier to get.
Analytics: Survey (Qualitative)

With all of these I could have said "Analytics: measure if market share goes up" or "Analytics: measure if sales goes up". That's not analytics in my mind, that's just accounting and hoping that you can somehow connect any ups-and-downs with what you've been doing and not casually tying activity with success.

For me, this list suggests only half advertising can be directly influenced by good analytics. Often I find people sitting in one of the two camps, there's those that believe creativity & ideas drive everything and those that blindly believe only in the power of numbers.

I say its always ideas that drive things, numbers that optimise them and that we should use optimisation for inspiration, not for control.