SCRIPT: “I’m a shrimp blogger. I’ve traveled the globe to find the perfect prawn. So when I found out Taco Bell had Pacific Shrimp Tacos, with six succulent marinated shrimp, I had to try one immediately.”

AND?!? What did he think of them? Don’t leave me hanging, Taco Bell!

After the economy took a nosedive, more and more of the inventory fell vacant. Each outdoor media company handled the situation a bit differently. In the next two posts, I will discuss the advantages and drawbacks of each approach and rate them on a Likert scale. A score of one will represent “strongly disapprove” (as in, “it sucks hard”) and five will be “strongly approve” (as in, “could be worse”). The bar is low, folks.

I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the included photographs. On a related note, I highly discourage anyone from trying to take pictures of things while driving down the interstate. Stay safe out there!

Blanked Out

This Space Intentionally Left Blank

This is as basic as it gets. The previous advertiser’s contract has ended, so why give away the space for free? It’s a clean look, and it preps the space for the next ad.

Good Use of Space: 2
Effective Message: N/A
Quality Design: N/A

Final Verdict: A boring, if inoffensive, waste of space. Disapprove.

For Lease

Again, not terribly exciting. But this is direct and to-the-point. You can rent this space by calling the number. Sometimes, these even tell you the name of the media company so you know who you’re calling.

Good Use of Space: 3
Effective Message: 3
Quality Design: 3

Final Verdict: Totally neutral. Neither approve nor disapprove.

Selling the Brand

What rural or small-town Texas business owner doesn’t like Texas? This is similar to a touring band shouting out the name of the city at the opening of the set. Unlike the previous billboard, this one focuses on the brand name of the outdoor advertising firm. But if you want the phone number, it’s there, too.

Good Use of Space: 4
Effective Message: 3
Quality of Design: 4

Final Verdict: It won’t win awards, but that’s fine. Approve.

Public Service Announcement

PSAs benefit the community at minimal (but not zero) cost to the leasing company. That’s awesome. But it’s a very indirect way to tell people that the billboard is available for lease. And I don’t know how well subtlety plays when it comes to outdoor advertising.

Good Use of Space: 5
Effective Message: 2
Quality of Design: 5

Final Verdict: Ad Council campaigns are great-looking. Approve.

SXSW volunteers stuff bags with swag in preparation for the conference.

Fifty hours of labor in exchange for a pass worth $700 works out to $14/hour. Volunteering at SXSW made sense, or so I thought. I signed up online and made plans to be in Austin for last weekend’s volunteer call, where I could arrange my committee assignments and create my schedule.

It didn’t work out that way. I was unsuitable in three key areas. Be like me, and you too can fail to volunteer.

Be Old

For our purposes, old means anyone who is beyond college age. The sweet spot for music crew volunteers is 21–22, which is old enough to get into the music venues and past TABC, but young enough to be on spring break during the festival. Which puts the age range of the conference volunteers at 16–20.

The 18-year-old in line in front of me at the volunteer call thought it was “unfair” that she couldn’t be on the photography crew (age 21+), since she had tons of experience and had been shooting “since middle school.” Her friend stated that no one else had her talent, but she didn’t really want to be there anyway with all the “old people,” did she? The girl concurred. No old people.

Be Slow

The volunteer call was spread over six hours on two days. But it’s more like college class registration in that you don’t stand a chance unless you’re ready and waiting the moment the window opens. So show up an hour after the start of the first day, like me, and expect over half the committees to be full up. I honestly should have known better.

Be Busy

This one I didn’t see coming. In the advance information given to volunteers, SXSW warns you that you absolutely must be available on March 10, the Wednesday before the conference starts. But once you’re there at the call creating your schedule, you’ll discover that all the committees also require you attend pre-event orientations. Many of these meetings were on February 28, but some weren’t yet finalized and would be “sometime the week before the conference.”

Again, it makes sense to have orientation sessions before the conference, but why they aren’t on March 10, and why the dates weren’t previously disclosed, I have no idea.

I’m frustrated that it didn’t work out for me to volunteer, but it wasn’t in the cards. I might try again next year, but if I do, it will be as an “out of town” volunteer. I suspect they make scheduling accommodations for anyone with travel arrangements. But more likely, I’ll be fully employed next March, and I’ll buy a badge like a normal person.

Love Changes Your Secret Santa

The obvious problem I have with this billboard is that it’s STILL UP. In January.

But the bigger problem is that I don’t understand it at all. Is there some kind of workplace romance going on where the guy spends way more than the $10 limit on a gift for the cute girl in accounting? Did one of the two of them switch names or otherwise rig the drawing? And why are they skiing?

Privacy

Google will use a cookie to keep track of 180 days of your search history, and it will then use the information it gleans to improve the quality of your results. Don’t like the idea of the information giant knowing what you’re looking for? You’ll need to actively disable the feature. You know what? I like this move, even though I dislike the need to make it opt-out. But I understand. The average user has no motivation to turn this feature ON, but the privacy-sensitive will definitely be motivated to turn it OFF. Google has decided to annoy a small group to improve the product for the whole user base.

Twitter

The incorporation of live micro-blogging posts in search seems gimmicky to me. Has it been included simply to keep up with Bing? Regardless, brand managers are nervous. Twitter noise previously remained on Twitter, and if you weren’t among the small minority of people involved on that site, you didn’t hear any of it. No more. Whatever is said about a brand on Twitter now appears on Google, where A LOT more people will read it. So get a-twittering, marketing folks, if you weren’t already!

SEO

There is an entire industry built around helping website owners increase the ranking of their sites on search engines. I imagine these business are a bit dazed right now. This isn’t a tweak to Google’s Page Rank algorithm, this is a land shift. But I don’t think it’s necessarily bad for them or their clients. Any site that employs “black hat” tactics to rank highly (including keyword stuffing, doorway pages, link farming, etc) will suffer. Because they focus on tricks rather than providing desirable content and establishing authority, they’ll find themselves soon shut out of most Google searches. But the sites that invest in “white hat” development (code and site optimization, content creation, conscientious link building) will be well rewarded.

I’m willing to say the good outweighs the bad.

Now, how often have you answered in the negative? I’d wager occasionally. I also maintain that by providing this opportunity for feeback, the cashier has an obligation to act on the response. Too often, my reply that no, I didn’t find something I needed is met with a look of mild surprise and a mumbled “Oh.” These cashiers then proceed to scan the items I did manage to locate.

When the cashier is responsive, it can be a very soothing thing. At various times, I’ve had managers summoned, free shipping vouchers procured, or other locations called. Even if the end result is the same (no item), I feel like the best has been done and that my disappointment has been recognized in a productive way. But when I get back blankness or disregard, I’m even more annoyed than when I started out.

So why would any cashier ask or be instructed to ask such a question if they aren’t impowered or motivated to be problem-solvers? It takes what could be a constructive and caring initiative and shows it to be nothing more than a hollow script. (I have a small confession to make about scripts: For three days in the mid-90s, I worked as a telemarketer for the symphony. I couldn’t stay on-script to save my life. At one point I sang a line of Der Hölle Rache for a lady, and it astonished me that she didn’t hang up then and there.)

OK, back to my point. Who likes being spoken to according to a script? That’s not to say companies shouldn’t work out basic responses for messaging consistency or work through scenarios to manage risk, but talking to someone with no autonomy to respond on a personal level is deeply aggravating.

This is all fine and good, as long as you know how likely the average person is to play the lottery daily or never buy organic. But this information was missing. Worse, the unfortunate title of the article asks readers to connect these facts to not just of a tiny proportion of Bud Light’s drinkers, but to all of them.

I think I’m angriest because this shabby treatment of advertising research (by an industry publication, no less) belies how useful it can be in exposing trends and generating insights. I’ll use data from a Slate article on baseball and birthdays to demonstrate the pitfalls and possibilities.

If you’re an American boy born in August, you are 55 percent more likely to become a Major League Baseball player than the average child. If this were Ad Age, I’d now develop the profile of the August baby. He is a baseball player.

But let’s flesh that out with more of the data. Of 4515 American-born players, 503 of them were born in August. So that means that the average August baby’s chances of joining such an elite group are near zero. It also means that August birthdays are not the norm among the MLB players, as only 11 percent of them share the month. So you can’t make predictions about the babies, and you can’t even make characterizations about the players.

So what can you do? You can use the data to search for further motivations and causalities. Rather than describing the customers, try to understand them.

The MLB data led researchers to believe that age cutoff dates for youth baseball leagues created the skew in birthdays among top players. The oldest boys on the team are usually bigger, therefore gaining a competitive advantage and increasing their (admittedly minuscule) chances of making the big leagues. If I were the MLB commissioner and wanted to increase the quality of the pool of players, I’d want this artificial advantage gone. Based on the insight derived from the research, I’d work to create multiple cutoff dates across the youth leagues.

What’s the takeaway for advertisers? Market research is a great tool to use, as long as we’re careful. But first and foremost, remember that data doesn’t equal insight.

Since this blog is new, I thought I’d post my responses. In fact, introductions all around! Post a comment and let me know who you are, too. Make up your own questions if you like.

Hometown: Houston, specifically the Braeswood neighborhood

Where you went to school: I’m a Rice alumna (History BA, Hanszen ‘01) and I picked up my MA in advertising from UT this past May.

My line of work is: I’m keen to get started on a career in account management. If you have or know of an opening, drop me a line on Twitter @jenfrazer. Before returning to school in 2007, I worked in constituent communications, newspaper consulting, and graphic design.

I got into my line of work because: Who doesn’t get a thrill when clients are deliriously happy? There’s no reason you can’t please the client and still satisfy yourself as long as you’re careful and open to ideas. Advertising seemed the logical intersection between business needs and creative urges.

My heroes/heroines include: I’m most impressed by everyday heroes who make hard choices and model excellence with no consideration for fame. I’ve been fortunate to know many.

What I wish I’d learned earlier and why: There’s so much I haven’t learned yet that I want to know right this very minute.

My favorite movies/books and why: A Hard Day’s Night simply makes me happy. It has a lighthearted script and an artistic execution that belies its pop provenance.

What I do in my free time: I sing! I’m a semi-professional mezzo-soprano. Most of my singing is with the Episcopal Church, but I’ve also performed with the Bach Choir and the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Houston.

The most unique thing about me is: I don’t have a middle name. It makes monograms tricky.

People who know me would say: “She’s just this girl, you know?” (Not really, but the impulse to reference HHGTTG was too strong.)

What I’m most proud of: I recently got myself into decent shape after decades of trying. I’ll be even more proud if I’m still fit five years from now.

What I like best/ least about Houston: I dislike the city’s strip-center appearance and the cheap construction and tear-down mentality that created it. But I also love the boom attitude, affordability, and diversity that doesn’t come with a slavish devotion to tradition and planning. It’s raucous fun.

I’ve also met some great people through the Houston Interactive Media Association and the Social Media Club Houston, the former at a conference and the latter at a book-signing. (Check out Shel Israel’s “Twitterville,” btw.)

Maybe I’m biased toward associations after working with Rice Alumni for three years. And as a freelancer, I worked with the Greater Houston Restaurant Association and the Houston Bar Association. But my personal experience with these groups was so rich, that I can’t help but think it’s in their nature to be awesome. My affiliation made me richer in the pocket and richer in acquaintances. I got job and client leads. Heck, I even met my boyfriend at a Rice Alumni event. (That alone was worth any membership fee, and Rice doesn’t even charge!)

So let me ask you: If you’re not active with your local professional association, why not? If you are, what are your stories?