Sunday, November 29, 2015

Single Metric Madness

Takes Control
Maybe you've seen this pithy little moment of nonsense in your travels around the Net: that you are more likely to be approved to gain admittance to Harvard than to click on a banner ad. Since no one loves ads other than the people who get paid to make them, it's big chuckle time at those foolish people who make ads, or those that use them.

Beyond the silliness of the comparison -- after all, only really bright kids bother to apply to Harvard in the first place, it costs money to do it, it's not as if they get millions of people trying to get in every year, regardless of life situation, and it's not as if you've thought about that rate any other time in your life -- there's also this.

If banners really were such a bad idea, why do so many smart brands run them, and why is such a significant amount of coin spent on them?

The reason is simple; the click is not the true metric of success. What is the true metric of success is the amount of business that's being done, and the banner buy is just part of a balanced marketing and advertising plan. Removing it doesn't make sense, so it stays.

Even from the dubious notion that brand impressions in a banner have no value (which would be unique to advertising) pure direct marketing standpoint, banner click rates are a tip of the iceberg metric. If a user opens up another tab, the banner clearly caused the awareness, but doesn't get credit for the click. If search engine traffic spikes following the display of a banner, it's also pretty obvious it had an impact. But it's not seen in a click rate. Where it is seen is in an A/B test, where a portion of the audience doesn't get the banners, and is measured against the viewed group.

A similar point happens around click rates in email (again, you aren't getting the full value of the impression from increased use of other channels, direct dials from direct mail letters, response rates on business reply post cards, and so on. And even if these single metrics are good, they don't tell the full story, or ensure success. If you run your North American banner in China, you could easily achieve a 10X click rate boost, but if none of that traffic converts, it's pointless.

That's because marketing is more complicated than a single metric. It's a lot of moving pieces on many chessboards, with impacts beyond the known, the easy, the simple. Measuring the simple stuff is good. Knowing the context is harder, and requires more analytics.

Or, failing that, a little faith that there are reasons why smart brands do what they do...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the top right RFP fields. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

True Thanks

The easiest column fodder in the book for people who publish routinely (and, well, this is Post 101, so that's me) is to look to the calendar and grind. The Thanksgiving thanks list, provided it's on your category, is a lay up.

This one, however, is going to be a little bit different, in that I'm going to be a little more candid, and a little less, well, seasonal.

This year, I'm thankful that...

> I no longer rely on online banners to pay the bills.

What a year for digital, honestly. Starting with the slow-moving avalanche that was the end of Flash, going to the growing horror that was maladvertising, and ending with the increasing mainstream nature of ad blocking, and you just had a year unlike any other in the two decades that this has been, well, a thing. I still believe in the medium, if only because there's too much money in it, and I believe that tech will solve many of the problems that it's caused. But for the time being, it's nice -- really nice -- to not have to defend all of the issues of the medium.

> I have no equity in my last gig.

This seems odd, but honestly, I am thankful my options were underwater and pointless to exercise, and the entire sum and substance of the past gig is now something I can brush off my shoulder. There's a value in being able to speak openly about an experience, and to not have to, in any way, "root" for the enterprise. Clean break and move on and no, um, you know, given.

> My network has never been better.

From the designers that we've worked with at M&AD, to the old friends and contacts that I've caught up with, 2015 has been a great year for conversations and renovation. There's no such thing, when you work in the Wild West of digital marketing and advertising, as true job security, but an active and engaged personal network makes that ugly reality a little easier to take. And honestly, some of the people in my world are just game changers. (By the way, if you are looking for people, ping me. Got

> Health, and the health of loved ones.

It's not something you get to just take for granted, honestly. The time commitment to maintaining such things is not an easy thing to carve out, given the other parts of my day. You also get to the point of reading obits for people in your demographic. It's not something anyone gives thanks for, until it's entirely too important. Be grateful.

> The current gig.

It's in a challenging category with great opportunities, in a medium that has exceptional advantages, for a management team that's supportive and respectful, without any dead weight co-workers. The work-life balance is dramatically better, and while there are aspects to it that I'd change, no problems look like they are just going to be the same for, well, years. And I'm learning new stuff. If I can't be thankful for that, I'm doing it wrong.

What are you thankful for this year?

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the top right RFP fields. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Give Thanks, Not Hours

12% approval, 62% disapproval
It may seem like retailers have to be open on Thanks- giving now, the same way that it seems like they have to outsource work to lower-paying countries, limit employment to avoid paying full-time benefits, and cut pay rates by any legal measure. Looking at the dozens of stores that are jumping in on the trend, the tone of what's open is striking: price-first retailers like Walmart, Target, Family Dollar, Kmart, Sears, Dollar General and Big Lots, for the most part. More upscale retailers like Costco, REI and Nordstrom's have done well with PR about how they aren't making the move. Particularly when there's just an online way to shop for those who just have to get their shop on.

A small point: Thanksgiving isn't an expensive holiday. Turkey's pretty cheap, the side dishes don't have to be over the top, and you can honestly feed a lot of people for not very much. There's no reason to bring gifts, spend on accouterments, or do anything more economically difficult than travel, which isn't even universal. It has been, in a country with an increasing amount of sensitivity about such things, a class-free holiday.

In my opinion, it's cruel to remind the disadvantaged of their issues on this day. Putting them in front of others who feel like they have to shop to stretch their dollars on this day is just doubling down on the sadness. What used to be a quiet day before the storm of Q4 is now just another part of Q4, and discourages

It is not my place, as a marketing and advertising consultant, to convince my clients about matters of business ethics. But what I can tell you is that a significant percentage of the audience finds this deplorable, and it's not the portion of the audience that you want to alienate.

Being open during non-traditional hours does not go anything beneficial for your brand. It does not make you seem more inclusive, excited to serve the public, or the place to be for the hottest sales and best options. Instead, it make you look desperate, bottom dollar, unable to make your numbers in any other way, and abusive to your workers. Or unable to hire and retain anyone with any better options.

If your sales are flat with expanded hours, that's not a moment to breathe a sigh of relief, and be thankful that you didn't lose anything to your more aggressive competitors. Instead, it's actually a disaster. Your expenses are up, your turnover for anything but the bottom percentage of your work force will rise, and you've conditioned the buyers to expect even lower prices later.

That's what a race to the bottom looks like, and why it's not something you can win.

Or want to enter.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the top right RFP fields. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Being Different People For Fun And Profit

So there was an article in my social feed this week of how B2B leads are much further along in the sales funnel than people generally think. (Hat tip, Demandbase.) Sot when they reach a company to signal interest, the last thing that a sales pro should do is treat them like someone who needs to be sold. Instead, the theory goes, sales needs to think and act more like marketers, and look to solve problems, rather than just close.

My reaction to that was that it, well, seems fairly insulting to sales. In my experience, the best sales guys that I've ever worked with were always about solving problems, rather than just pushing a prospect over the line. That way may help you make a short term goal, but it dooms companies and destroys networks in the long term, because you become known for not taking care of your people. You also fill your funnel with clients that aren't going to be happy.

But more than that, it struck me how the approach that was suggested... is more along the lines of doing business as a creative, even more so than a marketer. Becoming a different person, to some extent, is just the right way to start a creative, especially when you are running a shop that handles a high amount of throughput.

Demographically, we knew who we are reaching in various consumer categories, so changing the pitch to suit -- with varying font and color choices, with language that suited the profile, with selling points that were either emphasized or disregarded -- is just good business. Combine this with moments of charity, otherwise known as never crafting work that is patronizing, but always sympathetic to the lead and their needs, and you can do work that has heart, rather than just technique.

This is, on some level, why clients hire you; because when you just have to work on your own account, you tend to make ads that appeal to the shareholders, rather than the target. It's also why diversity in your team isn't just a winning moment for your HR numbers or company photo, but also something that helps you make better work.

On some level, this aspect of the gig has always seemed to me to have aspects of being a defense attorney, or being able to argue both sides of a case in a mock trial exercise in pre-law or political science courses. (Full disclosure: my second major at college.) It's not a case of being showy and schizophrenic, or clumsily role-playing a different consumer class. Instead, it's trying to understand what's important to the pitched profile and why, then tailoring the work to that person.

It's an exercise in hearing the other side, in valuing the experience and needs of others as if they were your own, and it becomes something that informs and approves your whole life. As a parent, I am more effective if I can understand why my children act the way they do, and come at that from a better starting point. Same goes as a spouse, or to other members of my teams at work, or our clients. No one is acting in bad faith; all have some degree of validity to their point, and need to be accommodated or coached up. Hell, it even makes me better as a friend, since this means I can have people who don't agree with me, at all, politically.

When I am effective, it's because I've remembered that I don't have all the answers, but I can listen and learn and research to get them. And when I don't remember that, because that's part of being human as well... well, I can get back to the more open mindset quickly. It's habit. A really good one, actually.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the top right RFP fields. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

What would a superphone mean to you and your business?

That's A Phone?
While speaking in Singapore at a conference on innovation, the president of strategy marketing at a giant Chinese tech company spoke of the coming "superphone", which is said to arrive in 2020, and bridge the confluence of multiple trends. The device is imagined as the culmination of digital intelligence working with human perceptions, with a side order of big data, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things.

Which all seems like a double size serving of word salad, until you start thinking it over. Five years is an eternity in phone tech, and with the speed of implementation in the IoT with beacons, not to mention the money involved here -- since obsolescence in phones seems to be a 2 to 3 year window at the top end -- there's just an absurd number of reasons why a better phone isn't a theoretical, but a given.

So let's imagine what it might mean. I'm already on record as expecting projection technology to break us out of the small screen, but the other aspect of that could mean a smaller overall unit. I don't know about you, but I miss being able to put a phone in a pocket, and a folding model also meant that butt dialing just didn't happen. It wouldn't shock me to see continued options, rather than just the same size and UI. There's really no reason why a phone should look like a phone. It could be a wearable device, tech that rides in the body, and so on.

I'd also dream of re-powering the unit as a solar event. Voice recognition should be dramatically better by then, along with coverage. Having the unit learn about me from my day to day, so that I don't tell the unit what to do on a routine basis, but just have it know and work from that schedule. Motion sensors that allow for changing UI, better auto-correct, hologram tech, having the screen "take over" any other screen so that display is more shareable... all of that seems like it should be on a 5 years or better road map.

But let's go beyond the clear path from what we can do currently, and more into theoretical. Imagine interacting with your screen without voice or hand command, with tracking to the eye level, and what that might mean to handicapped access. Rather than scrolling or manipulating with your hands, things just happen from a concentrated look, or maybe even a bio-feedback thought. Such things are possible with prosthetics now, and being able to think your PIN, or answer security questions without words or visible action, would have to be a security and UI benefit. (Along with identity checks as biometric feedback, or maybe just a retina scan. Which would also be the ideal moment to prevent unit theft, really. For your eyes only becomes very real.)

And the dreaming can go beyond that. A phone that works with self-driving cars becomes a secure device that allows for mobility without driver's license, or even a human operator for companies like Uber or Lyft. Biometric security allows for vending machine access without cash or credit card. Paying a restaurant bill can become a voice-activated command with retina scan. Any number of devices cease to exist as their own device -- flashlights, GPS, hotel key cards, car key fobs, wallets, cameras, iPods -- because it all gets rolled into the phone. Maybe even gaming consoles, monitors, and so on.

From an advertising and marketing standpoint, it stops being mobile-friendly or mobile-first. It's just, well, everything, because the phone is the gateway to all of the interaction that you ever get with your consumer, and if the data is truly two-way within reason, maybe we finally get to the day when the only ads you ever see are relevant to your interests... and in your active consideration set, rather than something you've already completed.

Oh, and just to make sure I'm not seen as only imagining the good? Massive issues involving consumer privacy and safety, as hacks of the units get you to untapped potential for criminals. An increasing polarization between economic elites and everyone else. A nightmare for teachers of all stripes. An HMO situation where the phone pushes users through the system, maybe even at a remote-only level, or with proactive prescriptions referrals. Unit or system failures that cause out and out panic. A race to a job-free economy, since so much capability has the potential to just remove jobs. (Consider, if you will, what happened to cameras, film, and film development in your lifetime.)

The superphone is, in all likelihood, just something that will happen, for good or ill, forcing change in its wake. Being able to proactively work towards that potential isn't just something good marketing and ad pros do. It's also what will save your clients, as well as continue your billing. Act accordingly.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the top right RFP fields. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Working Through Terrible

It's mid-November in the mid-Atlantic area that I call home, which means it's leaf gathering time. My house has a significant amount of yard and trees, so I wound up just bundling up and going at it today with the rake and bags. By the time everything was done, I had been working for about four hours, or just about longer than I'll ever be awake and away from any kind of screen. It gives you time to think, not the least of which is how little fun raking is. (I do own a leaf blower, but it doesn't seem to make the job any faster, and I can use the exercise. So the rake it is.)

As I started the process, I was thinking about the events in Paris, the footage, the likely next steps, and just getting more and more depressed. So cyclical, so pointless, so limiting to what we should be able to achieve as a species. So much of what we do as marketers is about finding the positive story and telling it to the right people, so we can put our brands in the best position to succeed. And in so doing, feed their families, expand their businesses, fund their research, and so on, and so on. This news makes all of that seem as pointless as, well, raking up leaves. There are still leaves on some of the trees, after all. I'll be doing this job again in a few weeks, and then again in a year, and the year after that. Just as terrible people will be making terrible choices that cause terrible tragedies, with the power of tools that make those tragedies increasingly large, and impossible to keep from reaching their audience. There will be no end of oxygen for this fire.

And then I saw the gravestone. A couple of years ago, in a terrible accident, the family's beloved dog passed away suddenly. He's buried at the edge of my yard, with a stone, and it's always something of a challenge to do work back there, especially while alone, and not think of that day. I usually get back to equilibrium, eventually, by making myself remember him for better things, because he was a great dog, and his memory deserves better than my sadness. But it requires discipline. That's the nature of grief. It's always there for you, whenever you want to visit.

To get through my task, I had to put blinders on mentally, think of something else, and get back to work. There's no other option. The world is a terrible place every day, provided you keep your mind in those places.

Which brings us back to the attacks, and the proper response from a marketing and advertising perspective. I'm not sure, honestly, that there is one, at least not in a one size fits all fashion. Plenty of brands will express sympathy and solidarity with the victims, but without a charitable aspect, this can seem rote or hollow... and it's not as if there's a go-to charity for donations in the wake of a terrorist act. Perhaps something that the criminals would particularly dislike, like women's equality in disadvantaged nations, or support for some other at-risk segment, but that also puts you in some danger of alienating a portion of your customer base. Similarly, saying nothing can seem like your brand is cold or uncaring, and that's not an acceptable option for youth markets or those doing significant business with the French.

If it's my client, I make my stand quietly, without a sizable PR or social media effort. Make it something that my customers have to come to my site or store to find out about, rather than something that seems ostentatious. As with all such moves, I'd make the action something that customers can join or activate, not for a viral standpoint, but just to not seem stand-offish. Finally, I wouldn't go very long with the move, unless it becomes part of your social structure or culture.

What happened in Paris will be seen by many as a fresh reason for war, as an escalation of a culture clash, or as the start of a new and dark era of conflict. That's a matter for the politics of the day, public debate, and the effectiveness of the world community at turning back the tide of extremism and hate. But it's not likely to be the reason why someone does or does not patronize a brand. It's better for your business if it's seen, and handled, as a crime against humanity, and the perpetrators as garden variety thugs, rather than the vanguard of a new religious or culture war. If, for no other reason, than this fails to give them what they wanted from the attack in the first place.

On a personal level, the choice to find something that is not terrible to think about will come a little easier with the passage of time, as it always does. On a global level, Paris will recover, criminals will be made responsible for their actions, and the world will move forward and away from such revulsion. In both cases, the only sane choice will be taken.

Because, really, there is no other choice.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or visit the site. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Oh, Canada

Usually done with checks
I try not go get into politics in my content marketing, because as a marketer, you have to be something like an attorney: able to argue the merits of any case, and comfortable in the space of delivering excellence to any client, even if you might not be in love with their value proposition. But as the continuing parade of corruption that is the American presidential primaries moves on (and on, and on), with the actual voting still so far away, I've been struck by the difference between America and Canada, and wondering why we can't have a much saner situation.

To review, Canada's entire election this year, in which Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party took power over Stephen Harper's Conservative Party, took all of 78 days.

No, seriously, 78 days. Less than three months from soup to nuts. Without dozens of candidates, wildly overpopulated stages, an unconscionable amount of money, and the denigration of the process by more or less equating the choice as if it were a reality television show.

So why are we saddled with this process? Well, the oldest, truest and saddest axiom in political science is that people get the government they deserve... and if you want to get well and truly mean about it, you can go the extra mile with H.L. Mencken's quote that they will get it good and hard. My own view is that this is a media issue.

A political debate is nearly as DVR-proof as a football game, which means live ratings in a time when such events are worth their weight in gold. So long as these events pull in the biggest numbers of the year for cable channels, and the massive boost in advertising spends for local and national campaigns, we've got an environment of total corruption and compromise.

People of all political stripes ascribe bias to the media, and that's absolutely correct... but the bias is towards spectacle, horse race, scandal and clickbait. Close elections create more spends, greater donations from supporters, and higher ratings from all concerned parties. Along with a greater spirit of desperation, since only two Presidents in the last 60+ years have failed to win a second term, and none in the past 25 years.

So the question isn't why American presidential elections are so long, expensive, and superficial. The bigger question is why they are ever allowed to end. Or how the toothpaste is ever going back in the tube.

Anyone else feeling very jealous of Canada?

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Satellite Of Brand

Just Add Money
I remember the first time I was shown an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000." It was on a VHS tape, in a friend's college dorm room, and I had never heard of the show before. The person showing me the episode was downright evangelistic about it, and within five minutes, I completely got why. There was nothing this smart, this clever, or just so on my comic sensibilities. I wasn't a complete fanatic about it, and there were plenty of episodes where the movie that was being riffed was just too terrible to redeem, no matter how quick the comedians were. But when they hit, my heavens. It hurt, you'd laugh so much.

I became a fan, in a time when sharing such things required work. VHS tapes were fantastic technology compared to the great nothing that were before them, and you could honestly have a party -- ok, a fairly nerdy party, but still, a party -- over who had the cool tapes that no one else had.

There was more to the VHS approach, of course. Small bits of animation from the Spike and Mike festival, odd moments from Japan, redubbed weirdness and sports moments, and some more infamous stuff that we don't need to get into here. Before YouTube, you had to have connections and be proactive about such things. Circulating the tape was social currency, and there was no more valuable token MST3K tapes.

The show ran for many iterations, and moved from network to network, eventually ending in 1999. DVDs of past episodes have been intermittent, due to rights and licensing fees. Both sets of personnel from the show's main run have continued to do the basic gig, under different new brand names. And now Joel Hodgson, the original creator of the show, has worked out a deal with Shout! Factory to buy the rights and make (be still our hearts) new episodes. There's a Kickstarter that, as I right this, is more than 40% of the way to its minimum $2 million goal with a month to go, and given MST3Ks hard-core nerd audience , it's hard to imagine how the target won't be met. If the full $5.5 million target is met, Hodgson hopes to make 12 future-length episodes with the funding.

Personally, I'm a little surprised that this isn't a Netflix experience already, or Hulu, or Amazon Prime. It's not like this is a new brand that needs a great amount of PR; it will generate its own. But maybe this isn't something that needs to be on any channel, especially because every old fan (and the show started nearly 30 years ago; we're all old fans) is going to share this in their social media feed.

That's the power of a real brand. It never quite goes away, and makes the people who identify with that brand root for them. And evangelize.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Monday, November 9, 2015

The Speed Of Change

Only Getting Faster
The other night, I was driving back after a gym and grocery run with my youngest in the car. I had tried to do too much too quickly (yes, this is common), and we were going to be about 5 minutes late to pick up my eldest from her gymnastics session. So I dialed up my wife to try to arrange a pick up, as she was closer, while also trying to figure out if I could do everything I needed to do without stopping for gas. All in a neighborhood that I didn't know too well.

One dial, voice mail. Second dial, voice mail. Map application, not working. Now I'm going to be ten minutes late, because I've made the wrong turn. The low gas light is glaring at me, and my stress level is rising. Why can't the tech just work? My phone keeps having calls that don't go through, messages that aren't answered, routine dead spots in my day to day. How much do I have to pay each month for a phone that actually works when I really need it to?

Five minutes later, the mini-crisis was over, with my wife calling me back, having always assumed she was going to pick up the eldest. As my blood pressure went back to normal and the map application kicked in, with the ability to stop and get gas opening up, a few things became clear.

First, that all of that drama was self-inflicted, which was obvious even when it was happening. Just trying to do too much, and expecting to be able to get through a grocery store checkout too quickly. You'd think that I would be smart enough to give myself some leeway, but, well, I'm not.

Second, that this sort of experience was impossible not so very long ago, but that as soon as you get used to the tech working for you... it's intolerable when it does not. Even if you are old enough to remember a time before mobile phones.

Third, it's going to seem charmingly quaint in a very short period of time. Connection maps will improve, the Internet of Things will allow me to know where, say, my wife's car was (i.e., if moving towards the pick up for the eldest, no need to call), the map application won't fail, and even the older model of car that I was driving will have an exact calculation for the remaining gas.

Finally, that as savvy as I may think I am about my capabilities and how the world works, there's still really no hard and fast rule as to when it will all change. If you had asked me if I was going to have this experience an hour before I had it, I would have laughed. No chance! I had this!

How this all relates to marketing and advertising is a bit of a stretch... but there are parallels. The day job now is email, and the way that people interact with that has changed a lot recently, and will just keep changing. The call to action for a great deal of our work is to get the list to view videos, and that's been changing a lot as well. My field is prosperous, but also under a lot of scrutiny, and could change dramatically in the next couple of years. The shifting tech might change as much as the politics, really.

We are living in amazing, and very transitory, times. That's likely to be true for a really long while. What about your world is going to change soon?

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Friday, November 6, 2015

Five Tips To Avoid Blog Writer's Block

More wall than block
This week, several people in my network commented on the prolific nature of my writing... and the funny thing is, some of them don't know the half of it, in that I also write a blog about sports, to go with this one about marketing and advertising. As I am on target to post over 100 times in 2015 on both sites, in addition to holding down a day gig that also involves writing, and have been doing this for the better part of a decade, I know how to keep the fires burning. Here are five tips for getting yourself out of a sticking point.

5) Cheat with numbers.

I've talked about how a learning engine of analytics driving creative is an edge. It also works for writing. Your blog posts that get more traffic, retweets, likes and comments are all good for inspiring more thoughts. Or, darkly, less.

4) Don't give a block power.

Writer's block is like any other form of self-created drama; it requires fuel to burn, and that fuel is your own mind telling you that you are blocked. You can, and will, get unstuck any moment now, because you have every other time you've stopped writing. This isn't a matter of blind self-confidence; it's a matter of looking at past track record, and assessing the situation from an emotional distance. The next sentence will come, and more after that one. So write it already.

3) Be open to many sources of inspiration.

I've written about everything from my leisure activities (golf and poker), entertainment choices (Bridgett Everett, the Daily Show succession), dog (the rise of high-end services for pet owners), technology (the IoT), current events (Volkswagen and others) and war stories from my past gigs. I don't view everything in my life through an advertising and marketing filter, but the nice part of the subject matter is that it travels across a wide swath of experiences.

2) Fill the frame.

The late great Frank Zappa once described art as the stuff that's inside the frame, because without the frame, it's an open question as to who left that mess on the wall. (I am not quoting exactly, because Frank was wonderfully rude, and didn't say mess. You get the gist.)

Blog posts follow a template, and a rhythm, that is fairly consistent. It's not like we're cranking out rivets in a factory, or blind to quality or flights of fancy, but let's be realistic about this. I'm writing three posts a week, I'm turning in the post after so much time writing it, and killing myself with over-editing and perfectionism is just a way to waste time, and not get to the next item on my to-do list. Fill the frame, then move on.

1) Live your story.

All of us have any number of other things we can do with our time. I could pull out my guitar, work on my stand up comedy, clean the house, play golf or poker, run some miles, toss the frisbee for my dog, watch a game, and so on, and so on.

But the story that I tell of my life is that I am, more than any other hobby or avocation, a writer. Writers have deadlines, and need to meet them, or they are not writers. (Yes, I know, there are other kinds of writers, and you can be a great one without a deadline... but this is my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

So my story is never that I need time off, or that I'm sick, or over-committed, or can't function unless a certain amount of sleep happens at a certain time of day. The saving grace of all of this is that writing has strong elements of craft to it, and you get better at craft the more you do it. (Also, thank heavens, faster.) I am infinitely happier when I am being true to the story of my life; most people are, really. So I write.

What's the story of your life, and are you living it?

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Reputations For Sale

Your Money Or Your Stars
Ratings are an increasingly important aspect of the way people use the Web, not just for products, but also for people. From Peeple's horrible model and PR disaster to Uber's get ratings or don't get work, not to mention AirBnB's approach, traditional management of project employees is getting outsourced to the wisdom of the crowds. This isn't even all that new, given the relative maturity of eBay in the marketplace, and the presence of power buyers and sellers on that site. But it is becoming more pronounced, and noticeable on a greater amount of buying decisions.

At first blush, this just seems inevitable, because it's just something that's under the hood of a disruptive technology. But just because something is inevitable does not mean that it's desirable, especially for the people without leverage, which would be the contractors. Rankings don't just put the power in the hands of the customer, they also create the potential for abuse that would be illegal in a traditional workplace, without the potential for counter-measures like unions or collective bargaining. And it's not as if you, as the provider, get more work or a better rate from glowing reviews. All you get is to stay in consideration.

As a consumer, the power of prior ratings is undeniable, to the point where low marks will more or less eliminate a product or provider from consideration for the vast majority of us. But as a provider, on a personal level, the change is very worrisome. I've spent decades going the extra mile for clients and co-workers, all to make sure that my network -- the only aspect of an individual career that can give you any degree of real job security, especially in careers in start-ups and other high turnover fields -- is large and eager to work with me again. But no advertising and marketing pro hits all the time. I'm sure that I've been on the wrong side of enough people to ensure that if my profession was rankings dependent, I could be a risk to not get future gigs, just from the actions of a handful of people. And sure, we're just at 1.0 in terms of this technology, let alone how people use it, but sometimes, v1 is all you get. I could easily see de facto blackmail from buyers who become aware of the power of a one star review.

So what happens next in a situation like this? Well, in other aspects of too much power being in a single metric, to put it bluntly, fraud. Advertising contracts that are purely cost per click inevitably led to black hat coding that produced fraudulent clicks. Five-star ratings and glowing reviews for products are already something you can buy from compromised people, with Amazon even going so far as to sue to try to maintain the integrity of their system. It's going to be even harder to police that sort of thing when it comes to a services provider, but just as fraud is inevitable, so are policing measures.

As consumers, what's going to happen is that ratings aren't going to be enough to make an informed decision. We're also going to have to become detectives and skeptical hiring managers, reading reviews with an eye for veracity, questioning a ranking if it has a suspicious amount of positive rankings for the amount of probable business, and maybe even doing a second pass through a more rigorous approach, like maybe checking references on LinkedIn, or looking at someone's Facebook or Twitter before giving power to their review. This will also be a time management problem, since some purchases are more important than others. Just taking the shortcut of lots of stars equal automatic purchase won't cut it.

That's the thing about disruptive technology. It disrupts more than just a single market. We haven't seen all of the ripples and impact from this wave yet.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

A Recession-Proof Consumer Category?

Selfie X2
This weekend was very busy around the house. (Don't worry, we'll get to the marketing and advertising soon.) I had my poker game on Friday night, and my eldest was holding a Halloween event the next day. My wife wound up working on both weekend days, and my youngest had an illness. Into that mix, enter a dog, seen above.

Minion, our 18-month-old collie mix, needs a lot of exercise, then peace and quiet, to be at his best. If there a lot of people around, it tends to activate his herding instincts and makes him antsy, but he's great around other dogs, because it lets him engage in brief and intense exercise. He's the kind of pooch that wants to play for about 10 minutes every 90, which doesn't always make him the best of choice for a busy family, but it works out well enough.

He's also a great companion, and borderline spoiled in that way that dogs after kids get spoiled, because a family member that doesn't need a college fund or driver's license, and doesn't engage in the usual teen drama, just has appeal for miles.

So instead of having him around when he wasn't going to get enough attention and just have issues, we chose to board him for a couple of days. We put him up at a local dog kennel and exercise facility that we've used before. He had a good time (the business has web cams), and when I picked him up this morning, he was in perfect health and happiness.

Now, to the marketing and advertising.

True wages for most American households have been stagnant or worse for decades now, but what hasn't been stagnant is the amount that we spend on our pets. Instead of just selling on price, pet food makers have continually upped the seeming quality and marketing, going for more organic materials and specialized products. In the past five years, there's also been an explosion of pet bakeries to go with the food, and now, dog spa treatment.

There are cheaper kennels (many, honestly) than the one we use. I won't get into the specifics on what was spent here, but I have no doubt that the facility is a profitable business, even on the customers that don't spring for the full services. Stuff like spa days for dogs are, of course, not a necessity, or something the dog requests. Instead, it's a matter of making the owner feel good, and doing something special for a companion. The market segment just keeps rising, with seemingly no end in sight, especially with more affluent households going for pet ownership.

I am, personally, a dog guy. I have had them for nearly my entire adult life, from purebreds to strays, and never the same breed twice. I've also lived with all kinds of other pets (gerbils, rabbits, cats, lizards, birds, fish). I like taking care of them, think that the benefits outweigh the costs, and get many of my ideas for business and creative while taking Min on his daily walk.

But throwing undue money at them is silly, in ways that seem prone for backlash at some point. My guess is that there will be some kind of pushback as comedians and social commenters call specific points of insanity out at some point, but there hasn't been up to now, and there's no reason why there should be a sudden change of priorities. Frankly, we love our pets a lot more than we do our fellow citizens.

Maybe smartphones, which seem to have the same level of affection for many of their owners, will start to gate the purchasing. But those same devices are used so often to share pictures of our companions, and maybe even publicize the services via social media.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.