Your Choices In Crisis

Small fingered fist

Late last week, my teen aged daughter was asking my wife and I for advice, as she was overbooked and overwhelmed between commitments. "I feel like I can't win," she said, in detailing her options, and I was able, in a minor miracle given her age and nature, to get a word in edgewise. "Well, actually, you can't *lose*," I said, and pointed out that the story of how her weekend could go also had the same ability to be spun in a positive manner. My pitch worked, her outlook changed, she got her work done, and we're that much closer to the (blessed, blessed) day she starts college.

If you read my columns routinely, this is where you might expect the pivot to marketing and advertising matters. Not yet. Hold on for a little while longer.

Many people in our industry, since our work tends toward urban areas and diverse staffs, have felt personally impacted by the regime change in the U.S. this month, and even more directly by this weekend's changes to immigration policy. Even if you haven't been personally impacted yet, it's easy to find people in your network who have, either from travel uncertainties to social pressures, concerns over health care, and so on.

Personally, I find myself increasingly irritated by the amount of distraction and stress created by all of this. The silver lining from one party in charge of all branches of government was supposed to be a better economy, thanks to job-creating deregulation, better trade deals, badly needed and wildly delayed investments in infrastructure, and so on. Instead, there's been comedic overreaches about things that shouldn't matter to anyone, a continuing move of the goalposts in regard to conflict of interest disclosure, and now, censorship and a piecemeal immigration ban that seems more about where the family of the Oval Office resident owns hotels, rather than any real improvement to our national security, either in the short or long term.

So instead of being able to just focus on the day to day of your, well, day to day, you get to navigate this mine field of social media firestorms, and the alarm of people in your network who have already been negatively affected. Which all seems like a race to the bottom of seeing which side can make the other break first, either through executive actions or effective protest, legal challenge, and so on. American elections are among the longest in the world, and now, we've got one that will seemingly never end. (And before anyone feels that this is just how the losing side won't get over it... note how Trump's infamous Twitter feed dismissed the immigration opinions of Senators Graham and McCain by noting that they are both failed presidential candidates, as if this invalidates their opinions whenever it disagrees with his.)

Still with me? Good. Here's that pivot that I promised you.

As marketers and advertisers, it seems like we can't win. If we choose a side in this circus, we cut our audience. If we don't, we risk looking complicit or irrelevant. And if we are somehow mentioned in the dreaded Twitter stream, our stock prices tank, and all of our efforts are put in the media spin cycle.

But what's also possible is that this is a situation where you can't lose. If your product or service delivers a good and simple benefit, it's going to seem downright refreshing in the current climate. Boring is the new safe, and safe is the new peace. Consumer loyalties are going to grow as more and more of our brain cells are taken up by the viral politic. If you are a new player to the field, there will never be a better time to engineer a viral message by picking a side. Opportunities are, frankly, rife for both leading brands and challengers.

Worried that no one is paying attention to your ads in a multi-channel age? It's my belief that if the current condition is the New Normal, any number of people will begin to opt out of the social media channels altogether, or at least, to limit their time, because you can only block so many people before the exercise just seems pointless. Yes, we may have finally found a way to increase television ratings, or to get print media numbers to stop shrinking.

A final personal aside. Last Friday night, I held my every 3 weeks poker game. With my regulars bringing in more and more new players, the game has never been more popular, and we had the most players ever in my space. I've also made things trickier on myself by switching to playing records for background music. So I'm up and down a lot, tending my turntable, playing my hands, keeping both rooms aware of the blinds and ante levels, and such. In the hustle and bustle, I lost track of my phone, and didn't have it back in my hands for a solid eight hours, until the last hands were dealt, and clean-up was completed.

So for all that time, I had no idea what the Administration had done, what my network thought about it, or any of the noise of the outside world. I just had my friends, and my poker game, and my music.

I didn't win money on Friday night. I was fortunate enough to break even.

It was also the most fun I've had in weeks... and I think I'm going to be smart enough to start losing my phone more often.

Because choosing not to engage in a crisis is also a choice, and an increasingly refreshing one.

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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.

What Mobile Means To Email

Going Mobile

Email is one of my favorite channels to achieve goals in marketing and advertising, for the plain and simple reason that it works *and* has incredible advantages over other channels. (What advantages? Exceptionally undistracted awareness in a multi-channel age, very little of the issues that digital ads have with no skipping or blocking, cheap to make, easy to test, and in a better competitive state than they were in the past. I could go on, honestly, but I've addressed many of these points in past columns, so I'm going to leave that be for now.)

However, since emails aren't the focus of huge budgets and high fees to achieve distribution, and the metrics tend to stay consistent because there's usually a certain inertia to the metrics you expect to achieve, there's a certain... well, I don't want to say laziness or conservatism when it comes to email design, but it is what it is. Especially in tried and true consumer categories, or transactional pieces and automated work. There are aspects of email marketing and advertising that have not changed in decades, and likely won't for as long as the channel is viable. If you'll forgive one more aside... email's death has been predicted for over a decade now, with texting, apps, IMs and various ills that have hit the channel all said to be why it's gonna die. All that's happened is that more of it goes out. Moving on.

So, what's happening to change this sleepy little channel? Well, the device that's in your hand, if you are reading this on a smartphone. Which isn't news, except that it's still easy to forget that it is, well, news.

Depending on the consumer category, list and daypart, the vast majority of the emails that you send, as a marketing and advertising pro, will be seen first (not read or responded to, always, but seen) on the phone. Which means that open rates and unsubscribes have both taken turns for the worse, while also opening up the available calendar, away from just business hours.

Knowing that, why would you send your email outside of business hours, if mobile open rates and unsubscribes are both worse in that environment? Because email doesn't exist in a vacuum. Your message competes with potentially hundreds of others every day, and moving away from the crowd, especially if your piece is designed to do well in a mobile triage situation, or your audience are always-on professionals who will do evening laptop or desktop hours because they are just that way, could be your best move. As always with anything that has a direct marketing connection, let the data drive.

But you'll need to take more than dayparting into account for a more effective mobile campaign. You'll also need to think harder about subject lines, with an ever-greater importance on front-loading copy with benefits. Frequency is also a big key, especially if you are reaching a higher number of Ios9 (Apple iPhone) users, since those folks now see work with a much greater emphasis and ease to unsubscribe. Pre-header copy doesn't move the needle as much as subject lines, but it still matters, as do entry points that work for mobile use (not too small or close together, and with use without too much of a scroll). You should also code for responsive, run your HTML through an emulator to make sure you aren't running into issues with other mobile platforms and formats, and, well...

Consider the whole sea change as an opportunity, rather than a hassle.

Because in my experience, any execution that you do because you have to, rather than because you want to?

Becomes an execution that doesn't thrill you when it's done.

And if all of this seems like too much trouble, or that you are jumping into the deep end of a pool when you don't even know if the water is warm, or what's below the surface?

Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we, um, know some people that you can hire for help with that sort of thing...

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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.

High Resistance

Hello, Friends

A window into the kind of person that I am, and yes, this will have marketing and advertising overtones.

I've got an Excel spreadsheet that has the data from all of my workouts since 2013. I've kept it updated on a daily basis, when I started running as a way to keep eating badly, while still maintaining my weight and overall health. Before then, I did a mix of different things, from hockey to biking to racquetball to golf, but didn't keep it tracked so meticulously.

I thought that if I was active enough, I could counter a slowing metabolism, keep the blood pressure and cholesterol down, and stay on my goal of living without prescriptions and keeping up with my kids. All while throwing down as many sodas, cheese steaks, pizza, pretzels and carbs that I wanted, because this new step would clearly make up for the rest.

The first year, I set a goal of 1,000 miles, and made it. I then added another hundred miles for the next year. I also tried to make sure that I kept doing weight training as well. With each year, I've added another 100 miles. The increasing goal has made me re-train my stride to ease stress on the knees.

But that wasn't enough. So I changed my diet to add much more water and a daily multi-vitamin. Cut my sodium intake. Increased my fruit and probiotic consumption, and started to count and reduce calories...

And all of this has worked, but not to the extent that you might think. I've kept the same weight and dimensions, had overall good health, and get a lot done. But the running has never really gotten easy, and if I lapse for any reason whatsoever, I feel it, with a quickness. Plus, my blood pressure and cholesterol crept up a bit last year.

Truth be told, I am just not as efficient as I'd like to be. Too many of my miles are walked, rather than ran. (I get cramps and hamstring pulls.) The time commitment is annoying. But I'm getting better, and have ideas for how to improve. I'm certain that these plans will change later when I fall short of my goals, because that is just what happens, and everything can always improve.

Now, the pivot.

When you do marketing and advertising for a living, and have access to the data, you are frequently able to drive improvements to the status quo. Which is, after all, the reason why a client wants you around in the first place. But the same processes that led you to the first win should bring you to the second, and the third, and so on down the line, because that's the way it should work...

Except for, well, it doesn't.

Not always, in any rate. Just as age, a slowing metabolism and the demands of life can mitigate my efforts, so can environmental factors cut into the effectiveness of your work. From client needs that run contrary to optimal engagement practices, to lowering response rates from user fatigue and increasing competition from others in their competitive space, you are rarely, if ever, going to have everything on your side in your attempt to beat the control. Optimal practices change over time, without warning. Good creative wears out, and the plain and simple nature of digital advertising is that response and engagement is always eroding, because we're always getting a little bit more of it then we used to.

It's easy, especially as the calendar goes from the start of the New Year to the cold and misery of deep January, to stop going to the gym. But if you do, your life won't be better later, and catching up may be extremely difficult. Just as if you stop trying to top the control, or try to convince your client that the new performance metrics are all you can achieve...

Well, there's probably someone else in your field who has kept doing the work, and will seem more attractive to your client. And, well, is.

Because if you don't love the journey, you're in the wrong line of work.

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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.

The Best/Worst Mistake

Or with incomplete data

As a marketing and advertising consultant, I'm frequently asked for my opinion on spends by medium, or to put things in a less jargon-intensive way, how a client should best spend their money. (Independent of my fees, of course. That expense is always defensible. Moving on.)

This comes from a good place: the desire to spend every dime as if it were your own is a virtue that I applaud. Marketers and advertisers can and should always look for ways to optimize their spend, because the cash you save can help the business in any number of ways, some of which multiply quite nicely. So I'm in favor of the instinct... but sometimes, very leery of the approach.

The simple fact of the matter is that ad mediums are like tools. You may have one that you like more than others, but if you only ever use one, you probably aren't terribly crafty, or able to complete a number of different projects to optimal conclusions. What's even more telling and basic of a mistake is when a client wants to turn off a medium entirely, usually because they've got data that shows one approach is wildly more effective than others. "(Medium X) just doesn't work for us." Hmm.

The most common target in the current environment? Ad banners in the digital space. Especially when the client has been doing lowest cost work with programmatic approaches, and find themselves disappointed with low click rates. Or even worse, clicks that didn't translate to sales in e-commerce plays, where the client might feel that the traffic was fraudulent.

To be clear about this, banners have issues. Dynamic work with a retargeting component are historically your best bet for higher response, but those can easily get into issues of retraining your audience to abandon shopping carts for a better price. Banners that appear on questionable sites from run-of-network buys don't do much for your brand, and many marketing and ad pros aren't thrilled with bankrolling bad actors like click fraudsters, fake news sites. or dark web tricksters, which is a sizable percentage of digital advertising right now. With all of that in play, it's a hard sell to spend more, not less, on the channel, mostly by switching up to premium sites, and away from remnant inventory.

But here's the not so dirty and not so secret point that old-school marketers always knew, and new-school folks miss because they are being misled by incomplete data... very few consumers come to a purchase decision from a single channel. Even a customer that buys from a clear attribution stream can have that data polluted by offline messaging, or have their decision making impacted by ways that the data never catches. For instance, a reminder email that brings a customer back to the site after a banner got them there in the first place, or a click on a banner after search engine work for the previous visit. Just because a channel took the consumer for the last mile, does not mean that all of the previous miles were worthless.

In a time before digital, marketers knew that a diverse messaging plan was optimal. Consumers would see a television spot, a print media piece, hear a radio mention, and maybe even see a billboard, possibly all in the same buying cycle... and that buying cycle might last years. Since we had no data that claimed to isolate channel effectiveness, a diverse plan was protected, because you didn't "know" what didn't work. Even call center or direct mail data was inherently suspect, and you rarely, if ever, made a decision from a single set of data. (More often, you just used that data to try to negotiate a better price.)

But until we have true multi-channel attribution, possibly from technology that doesn't even exist yet or a consolidation to everyone using and consuming through a single device (best bet: smartphones, and even that seems unlikely for a good long while, given how problematic it is to make some purchases that way), what we have is the worst of both worlds. Uncertainty, with the illusion of certainty.

If you are the kind of person who can't tolerate that level of vagueness in your day to day, or just have a jones to kill channels with certainty in your heart, there is a way out. Pure old-school A/B testing, where you split your audience in separate but equal groups, then expose them to different advertising mixes. The trouble is that it's usually slow, not helpful unless you have enough data to achieve statistical significance (and if that comes back to relatively rare events like sales tracked by digital channel, that can be *really* slow), and still prone to cross-channel pollution, so your significance levels have to be quite high. You also have to have the discipline to leave short-term money on the table, since the less effective method will have to play out. If your managerial situation is more shoot the messenger than learn from deviations from the norm, all of this can be quite uncomfortable, in a social and professional sense.

Or you can do what I usually wind up recommending instead, and to consider the following point.

Think about the best in class advertising players of the age, or even the best players in your space, and ask yourself the following question.

Do they turn off entire channels of communication with consumers?

(Probably not.)

And if they don't, and have you outspent or outgunned in experience and exposure...

What do you know that they don't, and how confident are you in that knowledge?

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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.

Access Versus Experience

Grains of Experience

A very smart business leader said something in a meeting that I was privileged to attend a few months ago, and it stuck with me. His theory is that there is a paradigm shift going on in our world, away from possessions, and towards access. Streaming services for media, instead of cultivated libraries. Transportation companies (well, OK, ride share companies) that don't own cars. Cloud computing instead of concrete servers, selling platforms without inventory, and so on.

Everything through your smartphone that could realistically go through your smartphone, because that device has such an emotional resonance and always-on connection. Information and data that travel with you from place to place and provider to provider, because that's the way to exceptional customer service. Everyone with their own concierge, really. It made a lot of sense to me then, and still does now... but there's a hole in the theory that you can drive a truck through, and part of that is from what I did just before starting to write this column.

Here's what I did.

I got up from where I normally write and went to the back of the room, to a present that my wife got for me for Christmas. It's a possession; even more so, it's a machine. I opened the top of the device, and loaded it with a clearly antiquated and inconvenient technology, taking special care not to damage it, because it can be very easily damaged. Making sure not to do anything else at the time, because I haven't had this tech for so long as to make this second nature, I then placed the device into operation and adjusted to taste.

Every 20 minutes or so, I need to tend to the machine. I can't pause it, or send its output anywhere else. If I let it go untended, the machine will complete its intended task and keep going without reset, and potentially become damaged.

There are no software upgrades for this. It is, simply, a set and finite flaw.

We'll move past the pointless suspense here: it's a turntable. Actually, it's a retro combo turntable, which also plays CDs, cassettes, radio and even your Bluetooth-enabled device, because why not, really. Needless to say, the vast majority of the use has been the turntable.

More surprising is how young the market for the product is. According to MusicWatch, 54% of vinyl customers are 35 and under, and while it's clearly a niche product for the music industry, it's one where the revenue model still makes sense.

I won't get into the sound quality argument, because I can talk to both sides of it, knowing the science as well as the marketing. At a certain point, human discernment is just not generally capable of telling a difference between analog and digital files, mostly at higher sampling rates. I also don't have the best set of ears on the plane, which is actually a help, in that I'm not going to splurge for the over the top sound system and additional speakers that true audiophiles go for.

However, the sound quality argument is besides the point for me. The simple act of tending to the record, avoiding skips and rapid access to favorite tracks, and the sight of that mesmerizing spin -- all of that makes for a potent cocktail of psychoacoustics, or the listening equivalent of a placebo. It sounds better because it feels better, and I'm racking up moments in my growing collection where I just get chills from the record that I wasn't getting from other formats. For me, at least, and for now.

Another consequence of the medium is that I am suddenly willing to experiment on other formats to see if vinyl makes it better. The format in question? Jazz, which as a writer, has never attached very well to me. John Coltrane and Miles Davis are starting to work their magic, though. My guests, in that the turntable made its debut for my home poker game last weekend, were also far more tolerant about what they heard than usual.

Here's another point for analog over digital: there's an exceptional vinyl store that isn't too far from me, which I've started combing for used finds to high success. Rummaging through stacks in this crowded emporium is less convenient than simply shopping online. Amazon carries vinyl, because of course they do. But the sifting and thrill of a strike (Richard Thompson! And more than a few titles!) isn't just a cost savings over shipping. It's the primal aspect of the hunt, the rapid calculation of what I have to have versus what I can live without, and the math involved in keeping my consumerism responsible. All in real time, because the stores isn't open 24/7, and I can't just spend all day here.

Access is important. It scales, it's got exceptional advantages, and even the fussiest mind will take it ninety nine times out of a hundred. Even in music, digital can and should dominate: many of the newer vinyl albums come with a free digital download, and no one's giving up solid state for mobile use. If you want your music with you at the gym or the car, or in settings where you can't keep tending to it, you aren't going back to the old ways.

But access isn't everything, because we aren't entirely (or even very) logical creatures. We close doors and open windows.

And in that window lies opportunity, for any marketing and ad pro wise enough to use 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.