The Key To A Better New Year

 

One More Time With Feeling

A few weeks ago, a junior colleague came to me with a mental health concern. They were overwhelmed by the number of tasks in front of them, in both their personal and professional lives, and felt as if they were letting everyone down. 

I was able to give comfort and practical advice through an old productivity trick, which is to give myself five minutes to make a list of what I had to do, then five minutes to prioritize it. When the 10 minutes are up, I make myself do something -- anything -- from that list. This gives me the positive boost from getting something done, and puts me in a better place to keep moving on to other tasks, rather than getting stuck. 

I also tend to do things like schedule workouts and cleaning chores as a calendar event, which has the necessary element of knowing when such things will end, rather than putting me in a position of obsessing over a small point no one else will notice. But that's not the point of the post.

My list trick worked as a strategy, and the colleague thanked me later. But as a subsequent event shows, giving advice and acting on it are two different activities.

I was listening to an executive client talk about the amazing year their company had, the opportunities they saw moving forward, and in nearly the same breadth, being responsible to the mental health challenges of teammates. This was all happening in virtual space only, unlike what was planned previously, because of the Omicron outbreak, which the executive also noted.

This client also has previously negotiated on price (in 2021, during the seeming boom times) when M&AD did not have leverage to do much other than take the new reality. We've since diversified income with clients that are paying our preferred rate, which is always the right idea in the long term, but never fun in the short.

Hearing these points delivered by this client in this fashion generated heat in me personally, which... well, had to be overcome if we are going to continue in the relationship. (Spoiler alert: we will). Saying cognitively dissonant things in rapid succession is not evidence of hypocrisy or bad faith. Correlation is not causality, and taking things personally in business is rarely a great idea. 

But with my issues with my client and my junior colleague's concern, what was really needed is clear. Put on your own mental blinders, focus on the work and what you can do, and keep moving. Diversifying the income is hard enough. Doing it while hamstringing yourself is just good money after bad. (FYI in case you have needs: we are not at full bandwidth, so by all means, get in touch.)

Something to keep in mind as case counts mount, and as others lose focus around you.

Never let a crisis go to waste.

Our best to you and yours in what will be a Better New Year.

What It's Like To Work With Us

Here's a case study that was put together by the folks at Advisable. If you're curious as to what it's like to do a deep dive with us, it'll give you a good idea -- and about a lot more than just limited executions.

Having Fun At Work (With People Who Aren't Fun)

A few start ups ago, I had to work with a person that everyone in the building, to be blunt, dreaded. 

They were essential to the enterprise -- the way that everyone like this is. They knew way more about lots of things that other people didn't know. They didn't have people report to them directly, because of a number of reasons that everyone involved probably didn't want to admit, which may have contributed to their unprofessional attitude. And they dealt in 100% Candor and telling it like it is, and going into the details of how things worked, regardless of whether you had any interest in those details. 

Giving them feedback about how any of that came off was pointless. Either they accepted it with grace and then fell back into old habits, or they regarded the submission as a personal attack. To be fair, it's hard for adults, especially ones that have achieved some things in their lives, to change their ways. Especially when they have very good reasons to think they are right about something.

The overwhelming feeling that you got from working with them was, well, fatigue. Changing anything was going to be too hard, so what constitutional lawyers refer to as a cooling effect came into play. You either did as little as possible to limit your exposure to them, or you did new initiatives without their knowledge, and crossed your fingers that the land mine would stay buried. If you did have to interact with them, you did so with as much prep as possible, in the hope that they'd see your data or your work and just back off.

They have their reasons for being this way. Maybe even really good ones. I'm also sure that life was an unending slog of underperforming co-workers that aren't up to their standards. That also must suck. 

But if the only thing in life that is important is who gets to be right, and never ever doing the wrong thing... 

Well, you aren't going to learn very much. Or do very much, really.

 Or seem very happy about anything, because...

The human sensation of Fun comes from a twist in pattern recognition in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. If something seems like something you recognize but with a novel (but not threatening) variation, your hippocampus sends some dopamine along to the amygdala. Everyone loves that dopamine, and hey presto, Fun. For a little while.

If you find that you are having No Fun at work -- because no one is doing things your way, because your attempts at collaborating are either unsuccessful or unwanted, and everyone involved seems like they'd rather just do it themselves...

Well, there's a chance that you are becoming the problem co-worker for them.

And really may need need to try new things, or ways to work.

Because, well, changing yourself has a hell of a lot more chance to work than changing anyone else...

Hiring Red Flags, or why Kevin O'Leary of Shark Tank is a Likely Asshat

Beware the Omniscient

I saw this headline this morning.

"When Kevin O'Leary sees this resume red flag, 'I simply put it into the garbage'

What's the red flag for this bit of clickbait? 

When the applicant has held a number of jobs over the previous two years.

Ya see, ol' Kev is too smart to commit to People Like That. Companies that hire people are making Commitments, you see, and anyone who has a number of positions on their resume is simply a Job Hopper, devoid of personal loyalty, and just not A Good Person. Do Not Hire. Let 'em starve.

Leading to the following thought.

Hey, Kev, how long have you been omniscient?

Or, failing that, someone who practices in generalizations and avoids thought and due diligence?

If there is one thing that I've learned in 20+ years in marketing and advertising, at a number of start ups and for hundreds and hundreds of corporate and personal clients, it's this: 

There is (almost) never (just) one thing. In anything. 

Yes, I'm sure that many people with short stops on their resume were job hopping for reasons that a future employer might not love. Or an unwillingness to start a potential new position with a lack of integrity. 

Others had medical issues. Or family complications that required an exit. Or found themselves in a situation where their employer had a sudden downturn, or a particularly awful incident, that was in no way the responsibility of the applicant. 

There's going to be a lot of these people, what with the pandemic.

You know, the one you just summarily dismissed, rather than do any goddamned work. Or considered anything but the most negative possibility, because You're Too Busy or Smart or Picky or Whatever.

In my distant past, I took a job with an employer that I was super excited about. I did my due diligence to the best of my ability, won the role, and found myself in the CEO's office late on a Friday afternoon just a few weeks after I started.

Which is when he decided to close the door so that just the two of us could have a very serious and heartfelt conversation about Jesus. (Spoiler Alert! That role did not last long or end well.)

Leading to a situation where, in Kevin O'Leary's World Of Red Flags and Red Flags Only, I was a (sting music!) JOB HOPPER. Leper Outcast Unclean! 

(And yes, I should have done better research about this guy and that place, but show of hands -- who has ever had this happen to them as well?)

Oh, and it turns out that O'Leary has also bounced from gigs in his past life, and subscribes to political views that make him, shall we say, highly suspect in certain circles. 

So I can probably pull the Likely from the header of this post... but won't. 

Because, you see, I'm not omniscient. Or an asshat. (Hopefully.)

So if you have an applicant that you like with a number of positions on their resume, you *can* throw that in the garbage. It's a free country.

Or you could, I dunno, ASK THE APPLICANT ABOUT IT. See if they put your fears to rest. Consider the entirety of the candidate. 

Because in the new World of Work, where applicants have options and labor is tight?

You just might need to look past your Red Flag.

That might not even be a flag.

The Trends In Our Stars

I was reading a trends report (not going to say whose) the other day, and it triggered a few thoughts. In no particular order...

> Brands that never touch political issues are projecting fear and/or complicity. They also could easily lose out on marketing to young buyers who aren't purely focused on price (i.e., the buyers they want). The math for high growth is with the brave, folks.

Perhaps you think corporations that beat their chest about sustainability are just virtue signaling. Maybe you are skeptical about eco-first products as just different items in the landfill, or that privacy is a myth in the current era. But the reality is those views aren't going to help you with new to market in beauty, banking, or a host of other categories where younger consumers are forming buying trends that will last a lifetime. 

> High-growth brands stand for things. Consider the doom saying for Nike when they took on Colin Kaepernick; hasn't hurt the brand at all. (Massive understatement.) Or Patagonia and the North Face on opposing the climate policies of the previous administration. You'll likely see the same thing with vaccine mandates moving forward. Whether this relates to, say, a talent walkout at Tesla for moving to Texas despite (or because of?) the actions of the Texas Governor and Legislature, or people opting out of Florida travel, is a wait and see moment. But once again, safe decisions may not be, well, all that safe. Stand for nothing? Fall for anything.

> Diversity isn't optional. (Even in small teams.) I've worked at companies that failed on this mark, and, well, they weren't good places to work. It's becoming increasingly uncomfortable when a workspace is behind the times on this, and teams that aren't diverse are just more likely to miss points (or, maybe even worse, veer deeply into cautionary tactics and go too slow). 

> There's going to be math. More and more businesses are looking at creative with a need to know how they performed, which can be problematic for a host of reasons... but the core of the idea is sound, even if the execution isn't always nuanced enough. I can tell you from personal experience that when you used to talk stat sig with creative personnel, many of them looked at you as if you were scary and in the wrong room. Now, they are interested (and, well, still scared). Besides, once you take the math toothpaste out of the tube, it's not going back in.

> You probably should stop thinking about linear customer journeys. The idea that you can roll out a campaign by channel and "know" that such and such a piece is going to close the deal... well, I get that the Old World has its charms, but it's not coming back, folks. Your prospect is going to mix and match channels and platforms to their taste (some social, some search, some email, some will see display, broadcast, podcast, etc.), and that dumb thing you were doing with last-click gets all the credit... well, it's even dumber now. Measure everything, but know that nuance and brand development likely exist outside your spreadsheet.

> Marketing people are being forced to collaborate (whether they want to or not). This has been accelerated by remote work, which is lonely and harder to QA. 

Point of order: during the writing of this piece, I wound up having to drop everything for an hour to deal with laundry, pets, a cleaning project and food prep. No wonder the QA's harder, yes?

It's also harder to work this way, since you can't read body language to go softer or harder on decisions. This could also be a factor in the Great Resignation trends among junior levels. But the plain and simple is, as it's always been -- great, fast, cheap. Pick two, and collaborate accordingly. 

> It's all getting faster. I'd say more about this, but, well... is anyone really disagreeing?

Five Good Minutes

 The folks at Daily Ad Brief reached out to discuss the future of online advertising and such. Take a view (and see if you can find the Easter egg mistake).

Five Half Year Takeaways

Folks -- Thanks to terrible Web hosting service and three high volume clients, we haven't had much of a chance or ability to add to the blog recently. So consider this to be a six-month catchup of what we've learned by doing.

5) It's a 2 (Point Five?) -for-1 year.

From my spouse's harp work to email copywriting and event planning, the pent-up demand from 2020 is just causing a lot of asks in a short period of time. 

It's not that everything is fine and dandy now -- supply chains are still a mess, shortages and price spikes are giving pause, and the specter of a Covid backlash from the Delta variant and over a year of big fear is keeping some still on the sidelines -- but the thirst for doing is strong.

4) Email is going to have seismic shifts.

Open rates have been under siege for a while now, but with third-party cookie verification being put on a slow track to extinction, that metric is going to become pointless. Judging emails just by click rates is going to take some air out of channel, and creative personnel are not sitting on AR/VR assets and best practices to juice the CTR. Combine this with ever-shrinking use of the channel by younger and time-stressed users, and you've got bad times for an old reliable channel. (Short term, at least.)

3) For many, the pandemic is firmly in the rear-view mirror.

I was at a corporate event in late spring that was scheduled for an outdoor space to be Covid safe. During the event, persistent rain kept everyone inside... and they all packed together, talked loudly to each other (you had to), and more or less went back to 2019 in minutes.

Sure, maybe the event was already pre-populating with people who were vaccinated and confident, or just starved for IRL companionship. But this wasn't a small crowd, or a timid one. 

2) Antitrust is having a very large moment.

There are a number of bills in Congress right now that actually have bipartisan traction as both political parties have an axe to grind against (Very) Big Tech... and almost as if they were hoping to pull off one more big heist before retiring, Apple and Google and Facebook have all moved to control ad targeting (while shutting it down for others).

It's always safe to bet on inertia when Congress is involved. Until, well, it isn't.

1) Retargeting was math-smart and world-foolish, with pain to follow.

If you judge creatives strictly on last-click attribution (hint: do not do this), then you probably wound up approving art that looked a lot like Criteo for most of the last decade -- which is to say basic and utilitarian dynamic boxes with a creepy 30-day stalker window of a product that you almost bought but didn't.

By the math, you were smart to do this, because hey presto, more clicks for this, less for everything else. Good for you with your math skills.

But you also find yourself in 2021 with the public *hating* your ads and that targeting method, so much so that there is popular support for giving even more negotiating power to the richest companies in the world?

Well, um, maybe there's more than math to this. Maybe you should have looked at capping frequencies, or running second-best executions more often to limit burnout. Maybe you could have cut into that 30-day magic window and looked at tighter times (yes, 7 and 15-day for most consumer categories). 

I'm not sure what's the next move to make for this industry. Criteo's not going to go away without a fight, and people aren't going to lose their most effective creative by math without complaint. But if your way to do this goes away, or people expect it to go away and complain to their platforms... 

Well, once again, things that can't continue eventually don't.

* * * * *

If you'd like to talk to us more about any of the above, feel free to reach out. We've got bandwidth and even more tricks up our sleeves than before.

Best -- DMt

Hello Again, And Yes, We've Had The Worst Site Hosting Service Imaginable

Sharp-eyed readers of the blog will note two significant points in the publication of this here blog-like product. (Actually, not even sharp-eyed.)

Point one: The URL has changed. (My name plus blogspot.com, not M&AD. It was too long anyway, I guess.)

Point two: It was several months since the last update... because I've spent that long just trying to get the site back online at the old URL.

These are related.

Here's the story... as a person with decades in the space, I have a long history of buying URLs. I've never really thought too much about it. So I used Register.com back in the day, and have kept using them because inertia.

That web site isn't around anymore. They've sold it to web.com.

How good is web.com? Well, here's the link to the Yelp review. Just to prove it's not just me.

17 reviews, all of them a single star, most of them wishing for legal action.

It takes work, honestly, for not a single reviewer to give you more than the minimum. It also shows that you so don't give a damn about your reputation that you don't even file a fake review on your behalf.

I'd say more about this customer service experience, but honestly, I've wasted enough of my life on these people, and so have you from reading these words.

Anyway.

Blog's back up, thoughts later. Sorry we were away. Back in a bit. Lots of work being done and lessons being learned...

6/29 Update: And now we're back at the old URL. Moving on, folks...

Here We Go

 I want to tell you about one of my favorite things in the world.

I could do this very badly with numbers. Here, I'll show you.

2 - minutes

45 - miles per hour

73 - years old

78 - feet high

$1.5M - cost

Now, the better way.

The Phoenix is a wooden roller coaster at Knoebels, a century-old amusement park in the middle of Pennsylvania. It goes up and back, causes you to float out of the seats, seems impossibly faster at the end and once you ride it from the very front or the very back in your dozens of times in riding it, you'll never take the middle again.

OK, some more words of explanation. 

Knoebels is a family run place that's free to enter, free to park, and the lines are never really very long because for heaven's sake, you are in the middle of Pennsylvania. I think I've probably ridden this thing a few dozen times, in the day and night, in hot and cold, in drizzle (the best; it's even faster) and dry. 

It's a smile machine. Everyone is smiling on the ramp as they leave it. It's magic.

And no matter how many times you get dragged up that hill -- you know the drag, the chunka-chunka-chunka of the chain sounding like oh dear Lord this is the time that it's going to break, isn't it, and the nerves and the adrenalin kick in and you become the person that you were the first time you rode it, rather than the person you are now, if only for those two minutes...

You are present. You are aware. 

You are not thinking about lunch or dinner or the mortgage or your in box or your calendar or the healthcare check or the pets or the water heater or the government or anything, really, beyond the chunka-chunka-chunka.

There are very few things in the world better than the Phoenix. (Short list? The laughter of my wife and daughters. My dog when he's asleep or catching a frisbee. Joel Embiid. This list subject to change.) 

But in business, there is very much one thing that's better than the Phoenix.

And that's the feeling you get when the chunka-chunka-chunka stops, and the glide starts, and you look down the hill of knowing that everything is about to get very, very much faster.

We've had days of over 4 million vaccinations. The unemployment rate is dropping. Cash is rippling through the country from stimulus checks and pent-up demand. Airports are filling up, perhaps too soon for pandemic safety, but filling up just the same.

Enough people are getting vaccines, or more darkly have had the damn bug already and lived to produce their own antibodies, that the fear of a new wave is likely greater than the reality.

Personally, M&AD has had clients with urgent needs, all of them reading the tea leaves the same way we do. The sports laundry I root for both had home games today, both won, both in front of vocal but responsible crowds that made everything seem just a little bit more like the Before Times.

We're getting dragged up that hill, folks.

After 13 months of too long and too dumb and needless tragedy and I'm skipping the recap, we're in glide, in the last few seconds before Fun.

And no matter how many times you've ridden the ride, this moment is the best.

Hold on tight!

So Good You Can't Say

Ironic Meme Not Included

This month, one of my clients released something really great. It took them years to make, fulfills a need in the marketplace that was underserved, and flat out dunks on everyone else in the category. Their core group of customers and fans are spreading the word about it on social media, because it's in a category and demographic where word of mouth and an urgent buying cycle are both strong realities. 

So why am I telling you about them while not really telling you about them?

Well, because...their experience is striking, educational and if you look at it the wrong way, a little dispiriting. 

Here's why.

The product and service has a strong Reddit channel. If you don't know Reddit, Wikipedia defines it as a social news aggregator and discussion web site, where registered members submit content that is up or down voted by other members. 

Also, if you didn't know about Reddit... well, there is no point in being mean about it. You probably knew about Reddit. You are reading a marketing blog, for heaven's sake. It's Yelp for everything that Yelp isn't for, basically.

Anyway... as previously stated, the new product is great. Not my opinion; pretty much everyone's. So is the service that supports it. The market, which skews young, is really enthused about it. And not shy about singing its praises to the skies. 

Which means the posts get cynical admins casting aspersions as to gaming the system or writing fraudulent content, because we didn't just fall off the turnip truck here... you folks are scammers, right? Let's just assume scammer first and ask verification later.

Or competitor trolls doing what trolls do, because hey, trolls gonna troll.

This is likely just a temporary problem, and a pretty good one to have, really. Eventually the persistence and true organic nature of the positive commenting community will outweigh the haters. Competitors in the space will step up their game or perish. Competition and capitalism and the such will have its way.

But in the meantime?

We get to patiently explain to the most tiresome people on the planet why nice things can still exist in the world. (Without sounding like scammers or religious zealots.)

All while being profoundly grateful that we don't have to live in their world for very long...

Play me out, Modest Mouse!

I Only Care About One (Wrong) Thing

Sometimes as a consultant, you get a client who is monumentally frustrated by a single metric. It's resisted previous efforts at optimization, it's deteriorated in a way that's threatening employment, and it's all anyone can talk about.

In a moment like this, you have to *very* careful and stick to your integrity... because to be honest, there are a *wealth* of black and gray hat tactics that will "solve" the problem for any single metric. And if your client keeps hammering away on a fix, you might even be tempted to use them. But they only create, well, much bigger problems.

Open rates in email an issue? Change your sender name to something salacious, or tweak the subject line to oversell a benefit or personalization. Sure, you may lose in-boxing, get booted by your provider, and unsubscribe and bounce rates will spike, which are all way much worse problem to have, but hey... you only wanted to fix the open rate, right?

Let's go further down the funnel, then -- clicks are tried, true, and never high enough to make everyone completely thrilled. OK, dumb everything down to a single entry point (for old-time fans of the blog, the Jolly Candy-Like Button), make the call to action pop to the point of obnoxiousness, and prevent anyone involved from analyzing site behavior or caring about click quality. Bonus: show the ad in a new geographic area for the consumer category, even if it's impossible for them to make a purchase. Voila, CTR is spiking! Not conversions, though. Definitely not conversions.

Well, fine, Mr. Black Hat Consultant... let's only measure for conversions, then. That'll fraud-proof it! Except that in making this move, you've likely made testing impossible due to the rare event issue, made everything dependent on a conversion funnel that is likely independent from lead generation, and given everyone involved a massive incentive to sell on an irresponsible price point and forget about return on investment or lifetime consumer value. If you are only measuring on conversion, well, converting on a loss leader isn't really that much of a trick. (I'd get into SEO here, but the black hat work there is so prevalent, it's honestly hard to sell honest services.)

The point is this: life (and marketing) is often *complicated* and a complex problem to solve. Trade offs are inevitable. There are very few things where you only want to know one metric, and are ready to toss all others out the window. If the only thing you care about is how fast you are going when you drive, you're going to run out of gas. Or fail to heed the check engine light. Or drive through a red light while you stare at that speedometer.

Marketing and advertising is the same way. A long-term marketing professional wants to see as much actionable data as possible -- because they give us clues for how to make things better. Find out what site behavior says about click quality. Work out what platform someone is viewing your offer on, and how they index demographically. Grind away on small but free levers like dayparting, frequency, segmentation and so on, and so on. And when you measure for impact, look at more than one point in the funnel, if only to check that your gain in one place isn't being wiped out by a loss somewhere else.

Any marketing and advertising consulting agency should be able to help you solve your most pressing problem. But if they do so without making sure they aren't creating others, that's not good or sustainable service. 

Strong, Not Optimal

Occasionally when you talk to a client, they give you clues as to how the relationship is going to go later. But only if you know what to listen for. 

One of the most telling, in my experience, is whether the terms they use show the right amount of intellectual curiosity and complexity... or whether they are hoping to keep things as simple as possible, even if this leads to a drop in performance due to a lack of rigor.

Words, in short, matter.

Which leads to the curious quest for Optimal Creative practices... 

That, well, do not exist. At least, not eternally.

Now, does this mean that there aren't strong and weak tactics? Of course not. You may be using many strong practices already, from calls to action to front loaded subject lines, from easily parsed body copy to entry points above the fold and a clear offer hierarchy and so on. 

I could go on, but there's a lot of channels, a lot of strong and weak practices, and that's not the point of this little exercise.

But no creative practice -- not even the ones that I would be truly shocked to see fail, mostly because I've seen them win in thousands of executions -- is optimal. 

That's because they can't be. 

Optimal implies perfection, unchanging, unquestioned. Can't be improved. And that's just not what occurs in creative testing. Everything can eventually fail, go stale, become overused by competitors or frequency, to the point where it's absence could be a better idea than it's presence. And everything can improve, see a boost from better execution or timing, or relative rarity in the market.

There are no optimal practices. There are simply strong ones and weaker ones, points you are more likely to see a benefit from testing and ones that are (probably much) lower priority to test.

There is no Magic Formula or Holy Grail or Perfect Ad. And if there were, it would cease to be with a quickness, because it would be duplicated and driven into the ground by everyone in a similar market.

And if your client doesn't get this, uses the terms optimal and strong interchangeably, or doesn't seem to want to get into the nuance, or live in a world where testing and data drives, instead of simplistic opinions that reinforce their own sense of being a Marketing Super Genius?

Then you don't have an optimal client.

Or a strong one.

And, if past precedent is any indication, a long term one...

And... we're back!

(Nope, not a political post. Thanks for asking!)

It's never good when a content blog goes quiet for a long time, but since we've last put words to electrons, M&AD has...

> Worked on several start ups with NDAs (but I can say that we now know *way* more about medicinal cannabis and personal protection equipment than we used to)

> Completed a long-term contract with Creative Circle working for Google (and yes, that was also Highly Educational), and

> Executed exploratory calls on several new exciting initiatives in new consumer categories for us (and honestly, after 20+ years in the game, when something is new to us it's Downright Exciting)

All of which would be very, very cool if it made for more short-term billing, which it has (at least so far) not.

So... ping us! Bandwidth available, at least for a limited time. 

With fewer exclamation points in person.

Talk to you soon...