Attribution, Competition and Military Tactics in Digital MarketingScott Sunderland

www.scottsunderland.net

Is it possible to build an accurate Attribution model?

I’ve looked around the literatureSethi Model (1983) - includes effectiveness of advertising

Effectiveness of

Advertising Factor

Word of Mouth Factor

Duopoly ExtensionSorger (1989)

i = brand

mi(t) = market share

ρi= ad effectiveness

ui = the ad spending level of brand i that depends on both own and competitor’s shares (i.e., ui(m1, m2))

Notice the competitor spend and

market share factors

N-brand Oligopoly MarketsNaik, Prasad, Sethi (2007)

The main point here is that marketing awareness is explained by a combination of your actions, your competitors actions and

random variation

Attribution is massively in

demand

But as an industry ( and our academic friends agree) we know how complicated it is to assign credit to various marketing channels. I wanted to investigate this idea of competition

Can lessons from military tactics be applied to digital marketing? Answer = Yes

An overview of military strategy literatureTwo classic military strategists really dominate the

literature:Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz.

Most modern military doctrine is based on their ideas.

In modern times we’ve had technological advancements and ‘new ideas’ from the likes of Donald Rumsfeld (more on that later)

Sun Tzu● Born 544 BC● Evan Spiegel forced his staff

to read “Art of War” after Mark Zuckerberg tried to buy Snapchat

Mission or "the Way". Gain the respect and trust of your army (organisation). Also the importance of communication.

Gather as much information as you can on yourself, your competitors and the environment you operate in. "Know yourself and Know your enemy and you will never lose"

Choose when and where to engage, don’t have this chosen for you. <- first mover advantage

Carl von Clausewitz

● Born 1780● Wrote the famous “On War”● Famous quote: “War is the

continuation of politics by other means”

WAR IS A FASCINATING TRINITY:

Primordial violence / blind natural force; (irrational)

Chance and probability (non-rational)

Policy and reason. (rational)

War cannot be quantified or reduced to mapwork, geometry, and graphs.

Donald Rumsfeld● Born 1932● Former US Secretary of

Defence● Advocated for the war in Iraq

Well - let’s just watch the video shall we...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiPe1OiKQuk

But there’s another...Psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Žižek came up with a fourth

category, the unknown known.

He criticised Rumsfeld saying “the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers lie in the "unknown knowns"—the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about.”

Digital Marketing Industry - perhaps?

Another description of these unknown knowns is: the things you think you knew, but in fact that you did not.

Why is this important?Well if it’s not totally obvious - in war and life (and definitely digital

attribution!) there are a whole host of unknown unknowns

Point being, we are always going to have to accept a certain amount of (sometimes total) uncertainty when dealing with complicated systems and decisions.

Hence we need to act accordingly

Modern Military Issues / Concerns

Micromanagement: Generals are now able to micro-manage engagements from the other side of the world. But they only see what camera sees.

Old Fashioned Management: Military leaders are learning (re-learning) how to delegate properly.

Keep it Simple: George C. Marshall - simple so every lieutenant understands

Machine Learning: Real-Time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision Making systems

MILITARY TACTICS IN DIGITAL MARKETING

Summary of what’s importantResearching some of the famous military tacticians - this is what I found important in terms of Digital Marketing:

1.Get trust and respect from your team.

2.Know yourself and your enemies

3.Use Combined Arms

4.Good Team Structure/Communication

5.Decision Making

TRUST

1.Get trust and respect from your team.

a. Is everyone in your organisation facing the same way, for the right reasons?

b. Sun Tzu says respect is gained by genuinely caring for your staff, but also being very disciplined and strict when you need to be, including on yourself.

KNOW

1.Know yourself and your enemies

a. Take the proper time to:

b. Research your market

c. Profile your audience

i. Follow your best customers (eg Twitter). See what channels they are on.

d. Profile your competitors

e. Have a system in place to monitor these ongoing.

f. Be diligent.

COMBINED ARMS

1.Combined Arms

a. Artillery, Infantry and cavalry all have their strengths and weaknesses. They work much better together.

b. Therefore being on one marketing channel is borderline suicidal.

c. “Guerrilla Marketing” says this should be at least 20 channels!

TEAM STRUCTURE

1.Team Structure/Communication

a. Everything needs to be integrated.

b. Working in Silos = NO.

c. PR especially, but all channels really - have to work extremely closely with all campaigns.

d. If a small team keep the messaging more simple. Larger teams can be more complex

DECISION MAKING

1.Decision Making

a. Von Clausewitz said simple models do not work and war is far too complex to model this way.

b. Instead always factor in random error to your judgements.

c. Accept that you have emotional biases of your own - and that others do too.

d. Be humble.

A point on smaller v larger companiesThroughout history armies much smaller than larger armies have prevailed. This was nearly always achieved with a combination of the below:

1.Leadership

a. Xenophon leading 10,000 Greek Hoplites on a long march through Persia and back to Europe the whole time being pursued by a larger force

2.Geography

a. 300 Spartans standing at the choke point of Thermopylae.

3.Technology

a. Mongol compound bow. Note: Technological advantage only lasts until the technology becomes widely adopted.

A point on smaller companies cont’d4.Strategy/Tactics

a. Alexander used a cavalry feint to the right and then cut back into the opposing center. Since the center is where the opposing king was, this caused surprise and chaos and cut off the head of the opposing force

5.Discipline

a. The classic Roman legion would routinely beat larger barbarian forces by simply being disciplined.

b. It is the same as practice and drilling of basic digital marketing and business skills.

Invest in building a great digital marketing team - as opposed to a great attribution model.

ConclusionThere are many parallels that can be drawn between war, digital marketing and business in general. Humans haven’t changed in 7,000 years - even if our technology has.The best armies are disciplined, strategically aware, use the latest technology and have great leadership.

Next Steps?I want to expand this analysis to define in more detail optimal digital marketing team structures and alternate ways of measuring success.

ANY QUESTIONS?