Monday, June 26, 2017

GLOWing with quality

Wrestling is the new awesome
This weekend, I binge-watched the new Netflix comedy/drama "GLOW", which stars Alison Brie and Marc Maron. It's a fictionalized version of the creation of an '80s television show for a women's wrestling promotion, and, well, it's great. The writer and director who worked on it honed their craft on the acclaimed "Orange Is The New Black", it hits all of the period notes just right, it does a wonderful job of stretching out and telling the stories over over a dozen people in its ensemble cast, and I hope they make many more seasons of it. Full stars.

But as delighted as I was by watching this, and as much as I'd recommend it to friends, that's not the most striking thing about watching this. What "GLOW" does is prove, not exactly for the first time but in a way that just deepens the conversation while adding more precedent, is provide the viewer with something they hadn't seen before. By doing that, it's just one more moment of long-form/small-audience entertainment that is just so much better than anything you might see in a movie theater. "GLOW" doesn't have to follow the set rules of big-budget stuff, which means it can be, well, so much better than what it might otherwise have been.

This way, you don't need to check the demographic boxes of people who will pay and leave their homes to see a project, and shoehorn in elements that don't really fit. Nor do you have to put the needs of multi-lingual audiences first with big special effects and less than full verbal acceptance. You can avoid having to sand off the very rough edges of your main characters in the goal of making them conventionally likable or attractive. You can also go to deeper and darker places with your plot twists, and not have to worry about de facto censoring from corporate interests and co-promotional tie-ins.

You can, in short, just make art for art's sake, and do so over a far more optimal amount of time. (In GLOW's case, 10 episodes, or the much better part of one day / evening's viewing.)

This is, of course, a dramatic and disruptive change in our world, where movies go from not just cultural hegemony and economic dominance to a much more blunt and narrow place. It also creates the conditions for economic upheaval, since I suspect shows like "GLOW" are going to be part of a retail apocalypse-like meltdown of movie screens, the same way that North America will eventually lose a third of its retail stores from the shift to online and economic leveling.

For everyone who thinks the U.S. is just going to keep growing, I've got a heaping helping of skepticism from the sheer passing of the Baby Boomers from areas of impact. There will be exceptions at the individual company level, of course, but it's not going to be a rising tide for all boats. Which all translates to rough time for the most treasured placement in brand advertising, the 30-second broadcast spot. Now that I'm cord-cut and the NBA Finals are over, I haven't seen one of those in over a week, and probably won't again until the NFL season starts. I can't imagine I'm alone in that group, really.

But all of that, of course, is Not Your Problem as the individual consumer. For us, there are simply great and memorable viewing experiences that stick in your brain for a long time to come, an unprecedented array of choice and convenience, and the desire to share that better way of living with friends and family. Hopefully for many more seasons to come.

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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, June 18, 2017

Pen and Paper

Literacy, Literally
This week, I was privileged enough to go on-site with a new client, in a conference room with nearly a dozen people. I had my laptop in a bag, as did everyone, and wasn't presenting; this was more of a support role, for, well, everyone in the room. It's kind of where my role lives.

Anyway, I pulled out my bound notebook and pen, and the laptop never left my bag. Everyone else in the room either had a screen open, or computer plus notepad, and I'll be honest with you... it made me self-conscious. For a while. And then I got to the task of filling my notebook, and fully engaging with everyone in the room, because I had pulled the old-school trick of basically putting blinders on myself.

Was I completely focused? No; the meeting went for over three hours, and I still had my phone on me, and not checking your phone for over three hours when its buzzing is something akin to torture, especially when you are, like myself, three thousand miles away from your family. But by the time the meeting was over, the client was satisfied, we had action points to work on, and my notebook had four pages of notes. And I write small.

Which I then took back to my desk, transcribed and edited, and used for two follow-up meetings and an email to the client. It's probably overkill, but when it comes to servicing a client, overkill is the side you should error on. Also, kind of, my brand? But back to the paper.

There's nothing magic about taking notes on paper. I can type faster than I write, the file translates easier with a cut and paste, and there's nothing wrong with people who do all of their stuff on screen. You can get distracted with a pen in your hand, especially if you have doodling skills. (I have none.)

But what a page does is prevent you from seeing all of the other things that you can do with your screen. It makes you more present to your audience, and less likely to be distracted. It adds a certain bit of gravitas to the proceedings, and triggers my memory of the event better later.

It also, likely, shows my age, and my training, because the start of my working life was as a journalist with a clipboard, with no mobile computers. Hence the self-consciousness, especially in marketing and advertising, where the people who are my age are not, shall we say, common. Or growing.

Which seems to be a bit of a shame... because my notes? Pretty good, honestly.

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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.

Friday, June 9, 2017

Explaining Magic

Step Back, I'm Going To Try Magic
I'm pressed for time this week -- more traveling, this time for family rather than business -- so you'll have to forgive me for the lack of a fanciful set-up to the column. Bluntly, there were three article in my feed this week that prompted this take, and they are:

1) As part of a snarky listicle, the sentiment "data is the residue of possibility" (not an exact quote, but you get the gist), as part of a putdown of adtech and/or analytics. The idea being that great brand marketers just, well, know, and don't let the data drive when it comes to Having Big Ideas.

2) A rundown of how the FAANG Five (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) have driven a disproportionate amount of the growth in the U.S. in the past decade, and how traders are starting to get worried about valuations, but are compromised from acting on that fear, because that's where the money is.

3) A story of how services that let people rent out their cars during unused portions of the day has mostly run aground, even while similarly disruptive plays for lodging and ride sharing have worked like gangbusters.

For many of the past 15 years, I've been at workplaces where we weren't just the pipe that provided service to clients, but also got to analyze what flowed through it. That vantage point, along with a middling ability to write, present and gin up concepts and theories, has kept a roof over my family's head, but it's also given me some clues about what works and what doesn't.

Spoiler alert: it's focus and effort.

In general, people get Big Ideas from a massive collection of little ones, measuring differences, sacrificing any sacred cows and moving on. That all takes work, especially if you don't have the best tools to use, but even if you don't, you still have to do it. The FAANG companies may have Big Ideas at their core, but for the most part, those ideas weren't unique; each one has competitors that they ruthlessly stomped with better execution and iteration.

That's why they are so highly valued. The market isn't in love with social media, cool consumer entertainment tech, e-commerce, streaming content and search. They are in love with companies that are constantly improving on the things that make money today, and using what they learn to make money tomorrow. Cutting values on companies that do these things is just superstition, and while there's money to be made from understanding when the public is going to move in that direction, it's a much harder buck. There's no reason to sell FAANG right now, other than the reason to sell, well, everything.

Which is why the folks who are trying to me-too on the AirBNB and Uber/Lyft paradigm of crowdsourcing of underused resources something of a non-starter, beyond the sheer logistics of trusting your car to not just a stranger, but that stranger's driving ability and care for other people's possessions... they don't have the same magic. Maybe they'll demonstrate it later, but until they do, look elsewhere.

That's because showing up for work and not just doing the job, but also figuring out how you are going to be better than you were the day before?

Doesn't just happen with a snap of the fingers...

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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.

Monday, June 5, 2017

The Treacherous Servant In Your Hand

Job Killer
Our family's current dog is a collie mix who is best behaved when he has a job to do. Which has the not inconsiderable problem that he invents jobs when he doesn't get them. So to take some of his energy out of that search, and to also vary up my running routine, I'd take him for walks that would generally go for a couple of miles. Which meant a lot of walking at night, and a lot of collecting his leavings when there wasn't a lot of ambient light.

Since I have a smartphone, and said phone has access to apps, I did the simple move of downloading a flashlight app that controlled the phone's onboard camera flash. Presto, a flashlight just when I need it, on the same device I was already holding, and as simple as can be in terms of use. For free, even. The app is still on my phone. I don't use it very often, especially now that I'm living apart from the pooch, but it's there.

Oh, and there's also this: I'm likely never buying another flashlight again in my life. The phone does that now.

In addition to dog walking, I noodle around on guitar. I play an acoustic, an electric, and am trying to get into some small measure of shape on a mandolin. That last one is an absolute bear when it comes to callouses, but the instrument that I own was a lovely gift from my wife, and the nice thing about mandolin is that there is a whole lot less people in the world who can make you feel inadequate about your skills on it. This is all a holdover from my musician days of decades past, and I keep mulling over trying to do something musical again, because it makes me happy.

There is, of course, a remarkably handy app for my phone that lets me tune my guitars, and even the mandolin. For free, even. I've downloaded that. Presto, a tuner just when I need it, on the same device I was already holding, and so on, and so on.

I've probably bought a half dozen tuners in my life, as I've never quite gotten the knack of tuning by ear, and tuners tend to disappear from kit bags and/or have unfortunate things happen to them, since they are, well, gear. I'm also likely to never buy another one again in my life, because while I'm sure the app isn't as good as the real thing, I'm also sure that my ears can't tell the difference.

Lots of people are employed in the good and honorable work of making flashlights, and guitar tuners, and cameras, and so many other things that have been disrupted by the servant in your pocket. Cab drivers, hotel chains, gas station owners, any number of retail stores that are closing en masse. More every day, it seems.

That phone is going to come for bigger targets on the food chain. Brand awareness advertising that can't prove out a benefit on a spreadsheet. The 9 to 5 workday, with its inefficent traffic patterns and it's 24/7/365 tether to the office. Premium seating at live events, starting with ticket selling, then moving to AR/VR that lets you "be" on the field or stage. The cable TV bundle, the non-intelligent home that wastes heating and cooling, the notion that someone at your local store might be able to walk you over to the item you need, rather than just seeing a line on the floor that doesn't exist for anyone but you.

All of which will be wonderful, all of which you will use without a second thought, all of which you will soon not be able to live without.

And all of which is going to force great numbers of your fellow citizens to find another means of employment.

Because the biggest enemy of employment isn't another country, or work ethic, or regulation, or any of the other bogeymen that people like to trot out whenever conversations turn from earners to takers, from "entitlements" to taxes, and so on.

It's technology. Technology that can certainly create some jobs, wonderful ones even, where the workers are fulfilled and well compensated and using tools that make them incredibly productive.

But for every single good to great job? An untold number of meh to good ones, crushed under the steel wheels of history.

Those wheels seem to be gaining speed, too.

Sure your own gig is safe from them?

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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.