Mind-boggingly Stupid

1 Oct

The following YouTube video is the reason this blog was created. To root out mind-boggingly stupid marketing ideas, make fun of them, then join hands and pray that they will go away. I’m somewhat hesitant to ask you to waste six minutes of your life watching it.

I do have to give credit to the woman in the video for being able to throw 25 buzzwords into this short 6 minute clip. The point of the clip is to define a new way of calculating ROI — return on influence, not return on investment.

Never mind the fact that she doesn’t define the term influence. She also fails to understand that the concept of “return on something” implies measuring the output produced, or caused by, an input.

There’s not a lot more to say about it (other than to reiterate how mind-boggingly stupid it is), and I certainly can’t add to the brilliant smackdown that Anna O’Brien delivered on her blog (which you absolutely should read).

Thanks to Jim Novo for pointing out Anna’s blog post to me.

11 Responses to “Mind-boggingly Stupid”

  1. Adelino de Almeida October 1, 2009 at 3:47 pm #

    Actually this has a very strong statistical support: the law of large numbers applies here quite nicely. In this case if we measure an endless collection of metrics, we are bound to bump on one that is actually relevant.
    The lesson to learn from this video is that only chance can save the inane.

    Reply
  2. Jordan Cohen October 1, 2009 at 4:43 pm #

    I don’t know what your problem is Ron. Amy is very thought provoking.

    Reply
    • Ron Shevlin October 1, 2009 at 4:50 pm #

      Thought provoking? I don’t dispute that.

      As I watched the clip, I thought: “I wonder where she got that t-shirt.”

      Reply
  3. Jeffry Pilcher October 1, 2009 at 5:48 pm #

    Great ad for Spider Man t-shirts.

    Reply
  4. Jordan Cohen October 1, 2009 at 6:45 pm #

    Amy has more than 1 million followers on Twitter. And I don’t blame them.

    Reply
    • Ron Shevlin October 1, 2009 at 8:07 pm #

      So does Ashton Kutcher. See the trend here?

      Reply
  5. Jim Novo October 2, 2009 at 6:50 pm #

    Ron, I think what she’s trying to say is “if you throw enough sh** against the wall, some will stick”.

    And I believe that.

    But I don’t know why you’d need to do a video on it…

    Reply
  6. Gavin Heaton October 3, 2009 at 12:31 am #

    “As I watched the clip, I thought: “I wonder where she got that t-shirt.” That’s gold, Ron!

    Reply
    • Ron Shevlin October 3, 2009 at 8:29 am #

      Thanks, Gavin. I didn’t think that was important enough to include in the post (although, interestingly, Anna does bring up the subject of the t-shirt in her post). But the t-shirt is about the only “thought-provoking” part of the video.

      Reply

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