Driving Your Business

10 and 2 FTW

Recently, a prospective client asked how other companies (i.e., some of the ones that we have worked for) executed in a particular marketing channel. They were basically looking for direct and concrete yes/no answers on tactics to help solve an immediate problem. So, pretty much bread and butter consulting work.

I did not give them a yes/no answer. 

Here’s why.

a) We were being put on the spot to answer the question without data. 

b) Nuance and Tradeoffs isn’t just a terrible name for a band, it’s how marketers make decisions that are more likely to work out in the long run. If you ask us to make decisions in the dark in a pitch meeting, you are asking us to be omniscient. And, well, no.

Unfortunately for me, my prospect is new to the channel they were asking about. So just telling them no, sorry, data or go pound sand did not seem to be a good way to close a deal. Or look anything like a friendly and non-evasive provider that they would want to work with.

So, I did what many of the folks who have worked with me in the past will recognize as a common move. 

I asked a question rather than answer one. 

Here’s the question: Assuming you drive, how do you do it?

There are plenty of ways to drive a car, after all. You can clean it up nice and make sure all of your glass and mirrors are perfect, obey every speed limit, drive defensively and more. You can choose the safest possible vehicle, regardless of mileage or comfort, to give you the best chance of getting to your destination without mishap. You can drive an electric-powered car powered by your own solar array, because you want to model good behavior around mitigating climate change. You can rev the engine, gun it at the traffic light, and maybe even run yellow to red lights when you think no one is looking because you need to go fast and just enjoy driving that way

But what you really should be doing is taking the context into consideration and making the best decision for your self and brand. Maybe drive a little differently depending on who is in the car, the time of day, whether there are speed traps or traffic cameras, whether the road is smooth or filled with potholes. Run that red light when the road is empty, and you are getting someone to an emergency room. Take the bigger car when you have more people and cargo. And so on. Drive the way that makes the most sense for your business.

Now, for the vast majority of people and businesses? They are going to drive in a consistent manner while devoting their conscious thought to other matters. Execution can easily become rote, and maybe an extra mile or two of fuel economy isn’t worth having to remember to hit the Fuel Economy Mode button. (My hybrid’s got one of these. Helpful.)

But if you find that your tactics are not reflective of your brand? Or that you keep getting traffic tickets, flat tires, or no one wanting you to drive them anywhere? Change your tactics.

And drive happy.

(Side note: I don’t know if the pitch worked, but I would be surprised if it did not – if only because the prospect used the same analogy back to me later in the conversation. We’ll see.)

How We Are Going To Solve Social Disengagement

Not A Role Model

A recent item from my news consumption: the idea that two years into a pandemic that has exhausted the patience of many, general bad behavior is just on the rise in lots of places. From unhinged ideas of legitimate political discourse to increasing rates of violent crime, more deaths and injuries from aggressive driving, and so on, and so on.

Hell in a handbasket, and it’s left to the reader why the Handbasket Industry has such a PR problem.

Meanwhile, more and more companies are also moving to remote workers and fractional employees, either because they have to (hard time to be a recruiter these days!), or because they want to (hey, look at all of the money we are saving from not having to pay for an office... plus, no one quit).

Depending on your situation and outlook, this either makes for the best of times (you’ll get me back in that traffic jam and cubicle over my cold, dead hands) or the worst (work for a half dozen bosses, get paid a living wage or health benefits by none of them, and spend every waking hour calculating how much you aren’t making from some hustle).

Is there any wonder why it’s a hard time to be a marketer?

Try to get someone to engage with your content, attend your live event, respond to your job posting, get excited by your latest creative release… and then watch those efforts get overwhelmed by geopolitical forces (NBC really might be questioning their Olympics commitment right about now), privacy concerns, Big Tech trying to change the rules of the road, and literally hundreds of daily demands crowding their attention. 

Also, more frequency from everyone, because you aren't getting the same amount of attention that you used to.

Luckily, as marketers, M&AD has the answer to such problems. It involves two concepts that, if you’ve been on a call with us before, you’ve likely heard.

Patience and data.

Any marketer that claims they have an immediate and perfect fix to any problem is someone you should probably walk away from, slowly, while avoiding eye contact and keeping a good awareness of your wallet. Learning comes from incremental steps, testing from statistically significant data sets, deviation from mean and a whole host of other not particularly sexy, grifty, or transformative concepts. T’was ever thus. You can – sometimes! – skip steps by using the knowledge that you gained from some other test or gig, but not always. Journey and work, not end point and magic. If you don't love what you do, please find another way to spend your time.

We will not recover from the shocks of the past few years all at once. We will not get the people who drive too fast, abuse their employees, shirk privacy concerns and shout their opinions while brandishing weapons to have a one-and-done Redemption (or Incarceration?) moment.

Rather, we will bring them back with patience, grace, humor, kindness and shared humanity. We will remind them, with varying degrees of patience and candor, that the email needs to be read and replied to, that other people share the physical and digital road with them, and that marketing and advertising that only cares about a single thing is, well, very bad marketing and advertising. Also management.

Creation takes time. Destruction is quick. You can see the evidence of the creation all around you, which is why the destruction is so upsetting. Don’t give in to destruction. Fight the good fight. Just like our best clients, colleagues and friends.

Eight Ways Marketing and Advertising Will Improve... Soon

Also an underrated Prince song (Everybody Batdance!)

Recently, we've been fortunate enough to have conversations with some media and podcasting types. This seems to be on the rise, because we have a bit of the grizzle to us, and have been at places where we get insights on The Future, which is already in progress. 

Which led to the following listicle. Enjoy, argue, like, share, subscribe, tithe, carve this into cryptic rubrics or into hard to follow bad poetry. You know, the usual.

8) Last click is last century.

The idea that one marketing channel (usually SEO, but sometimes email) is your favorite child and none of the other kids ever pull their weight isn't just bad for the brand, it's not even true once you start to look at synergies and the funnel. 

7) Single KPI marketers RIP.

Similar to last click, but a little different. If you think the only problem that, say, your display ads need to solve is More Click, just go show them to some robots. Hint: robots tend not be such great shoppers. Any marketer that only cares about one metric, no matter what that metric is, has a fool for a client. And foolish clients eventually stop being foolish, or clients. Or in business.

6) Your devices talk to each other, and you do not notice, because it's not creepy.

Let's say you are the kind of person who is never going to buy a truck, go to a movie theater to watch a cape film, purchase or discuss pharmaceutical products for others, or donate to a political organization that is diametrically opposed to your views.

Now, let's imagine that you never see an ad for any of these products ever again.

Would you find that creepy, or would you just go through your day with less distraction, annoyance, ire, etc.?

This is where the technology can go with cross-device technology and information sharing. It really, really does not need 30 days of e-commerce stalking to ruin things for every legitimate use.

5) Creative testing will stop sucking.

I get why creative testing is, 99 times out of 100, a pointless chore. It can go sideways in a hurry when the highest paid person in the room weighs in with their Almighty Gut (the one that has all of the feeling answers), or when everyone has the good faith / scared subordinate desire to not be seen as the champion of the ad that failed.

But, um, folks? That's not how science works, or progress, or math. 

We learn when things deviate from the mean. We learn from explosive failure or success. Then we iterate, shine, enhance. 

If you are walking on eggshells, rolling over for everything from Gut Exec, and not committing enough to a campaign to test, you are doing it wrong. If your tech or media plan does the same thing, well, same thing. 

You are also working in a bad situation. Eventually, you'll stop. We have faith. (Also, well, math and tech that is dragging us there.)

4) Social media will improve or die.

Do you spend as much time as you used to on Facebook? No, of course not, the numbers and stock evaluations are proving that, and if you claim to be excited about the Metaverse, well... welcome to the blog, Meta Employee. The rest of us are watching Second Life Part Duh, but with headsets. Yay, headsets! Way better than phones, except, well, not.

The reasons why you are spending less time on social aren't hard to fathom. Personally, I find curating memories of dead pets more sad that I want to deal with routinely, along with ducking the obvious trolling clickbait pieces or oversharing. (Yes, I get it. You play Wordle. Now please tell me something more interesting about yourself. Toenail length, at this point.)

What needs to happen to get these increasingly run-down stores to provide something more than a dutiful check in for mentions and work? Hell if I know, but Stein's Law, people. You may or may not like TikTok, but at least it's different.

3) Bad faith actors are purged.

See item 3, then apply it to publishers that make their sites unworkable due to over-advertising, exchanges that provide traffic that never gets to the mid-funnel, marketers that make short-term single KPI moves, and so on. New technology always favors the grifter (side note to the folks that want us to work on their NFT or crypto concerns; um, nope), but that edge does not last. Providing actual value is still necessary, and the only thing that endures.

2) Direct mail will survive and thrive.

Ready for our most radical suggestion for 2022? Engage in direct mail. Especially if you have work from home targets, especially if your lists are good, especially if you have novel ideas for creative execution in this channel. Now that the USPS is getting back on its feet (speaking of bad faith actors being purged...), there's never been a better time to make your mark with a physical piece in an increasingly digital world. So send!

1) Your inbox has always been a competitive separation. It's going to become more of one.

How do you personally feel about people who ghost you, who don't read or reply to emails, who require multi-channel follow up, and who react as if you need to be on call for them, but not vice versa?

Yup. Us too. Perhaps understandable, but also not printable and no one that would be on the top of your list to recommend working with.

As more and more employers move to remote and fractional work while trying to execute clawbacks on benefits and job security, personal loyalties will move more towards colleagues and less toward firms. Which means you are going to gravitate towards the people in your life that inspire better work, and less for those you would rather avoid.

(Well, most people. Full disclosure: we're OCD about zero inbox. Besides, we *love* all of our clients...)

A Message I Never Expected

 At one of my full-time gigs, I had issues with a co-worker. They presented as terse at best and unpleasant at worst (their words, not mine -- more on that later), and we butted heads often. 

I also had to collaborate with them on a routine basis in a small team, so there was no getting around it. I made the best of what I could, added value where possible, and kept telling myself the only thing you can tell yourself -- that it is not your fault or problem, and that problems like this are not eternal.

What I also told myself was that management at the gig was not capable or willing to fix the issue, and that it was not something I could solve myself. So just live with it. They were paying me, after all.

My co-worker and I had some ups and downs. Mostly downs. When the gig ended with a loss of funding and waves of people taking their stuff to their cars in boxes (start ups are like that sometimes), I took the troublesome co-worker off my first party LinkedIn list and thought, well, that’s a small benefit from an unfortunate ending.

I did not have to associate with them anymore. If I thought about them, I could and should stop. And when I did think of them, it was not with an abundance of kindness. They share a name with a local road, so I have thought of them more often than I wanted to.

A week ago, I was running an errand for a colleague and waiting for them to come back to the car. LinkedIn pops up with a message – and it’s from the old co-worker. They had moved on to a healthier work environment, and the change in settings had led them to do some soul-searching and reach out to me over the past difficulties. It was not an over-the-top apology, but it really did not have to be.

They did not have to do this. All of that water was under the bridge many years ago. We are not likely to meet again, nor work at the same company. I do not intend to use them as a reference, nor they with me. It was just something that was eating at them, so they had the courage to reach out and own the behavior. When they did, I realized it was eating at me, too.

I can not tell you how much better this email has made the last week.

When you work in a place with poor management, it really can seep in and do real damage to your confidence and performance -- and to your colleagues. Demeaning, undermining, quibbling and belittling is contagious. It can also often create work that is in the “turtle” position, and that is not work you are going to be proud of later. Overcoming the feelings of dread at work, or proactively pulling your punches because you are just walking on eggshells, is no way to work or live.

Neither is having omniscience as to why someone is not getting along with you, or that the situation will never go to a better place later.

You have to have hope. 

Thanks to my new friend’s courage and conscience, I can now look at any coworker, past, present or future, and think it might be just like this situation later.

What a gift, really!