Search and Find Bias

Target Acquired

On the radar today: how search engines may be the next frontier of political chicanery, because it turns out that (a) search engines are a strong source in helping undecided and young voters make a decision, and (b) if you read search results, your first reaction isn't "Gee, I bet these have been skewed to show the candidate in a favorable light." The results are seen as impartial.

This is not, of course, very surprising news; all you need to do is check on how enterprising pranksters have hijacked Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's last name. (Do not do this at work, assuming you work in a routine office.) But it does give one pause, if only because of the following points:

1) Someone still has faith in a source of information in 2015, especially when that source of information is a for-profit business? I'm all verklempt here. It's like hearing how your nephew still believes in the Tooth Fairy. Seriously, magical creatures sneak into your room and take something that used to be in your head. Sweet dreams, kids! But I digress.

It's easy to be jaded, to feel like we live in a cynical age, where everyone always thinks the worst of everyone. But then you hear how search engine results are swaying the opinions of undecided voters, because some just trust these entities so implicitly. We will look back on these days fondly, we will.

2) Just how soon will it be until some enterprising candidate, with a need to fill the news hole with something they don't have to pay for, comes out as Anti Google? (I know, I know, Google's popular and Doesn't Do Evil. Doesn't matter; they still have scads of money, are from easy to bash California, and have some nefarious agenda to deny votes to Candidate X. It'll play.)

Finally, this. Just in time for this to finally reach a level of visibility, it's time for the world to change, with lightning speed, really, from a display method (desktop and laptop) that worked for deep search results and high keystrokes, for one that, well, doesn't. So keep in mind when you see this story hit the mainstream, how it has already jumped the shark. Especially among the young'uns who 

But on the plus side, Google will have plenty of practice in working out the bugs in that Right To Be Forgotten rigamarole...

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Please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at the top right. We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from you soon.

The Art Of The Sandbag

Scottish Sandbag

From an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (S6, E4, "Relics")…

Scotty: Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Yeah, well, I told the Captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour.

Scotty: How long will it really take?

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: An hour!

Scotty: Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would *really* take, did ya?

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Well, of course I did.

Scotty: Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.

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I own a 2011 hybrid as my routine ride, which, like most modern cars, gives you all kinds of alerts and reminders when you run into maintenance milestones. I’m OCDish about dashboard reminders, so when the oil change at 15% warning came up, I took the car into the dealership the next morning. It helped that summer Fridays at my gig are work from home, and the wi-fi at the dealership is good. Besides, oil changes are free, since I bought the car there.

When I checked in, there was a strong line for service – obviously, summer Fridays are a busy time – and my schedule was also up for a transmission fluid change. I gave the green light for the service, got a 60-minute or less time quote for the work, and set myself up in a quiet corner of the waiting room to work.

Now, I did not need to get out of there after 60 minutes. Realistically, I could have been there most of the day without any real issue, since I had everything I needed to work. But I had been quoted 60 minutes, and when that time came and gone, my antennae went up.

Had something gone wrong? Was the repair not properly booked, and was something more dire and expensive being done? Was the cellular service not working, and my phone not firing, which would keep the call that the car was ready from getting through? If that was the case, was I also missing other calls, maybe from co-workers?

All of those points seemed unlikely, but still, it has been more than the time quoted. Just sitting still and continuing to work was not working; a distraction was brewing. After 15 minutes of sub-optimal performance on the task I was trying to complete, I shut down my screens, packed up my gear, and walked back over to the repair bay.

Once I got there, I saw my car being worked on as the technician was just finishing up. Nothing more untoward than that. I waited at the counter for another 10 to 15 minutes, handed over my credit card for payment as soon as the keys were back with the desk, and was back at the home office with no incident.

A day later, the usual customer survey came in my email.

Now, I had received fine service. The facility was flawless on the wifi, and downright comfortable. I was fine with the price paid for the service. I will be back the next time, and I am likely to make my next purchase from this dealership as well. We’ve been going there routinely for over five years now.

But they didn’t get the full high marks, simply because they quoted me 60 minutes, when it took 90. If they had quoted 120 – totally understandable, given the amount of traffic they were dealing with, and the mild trickiness involved in getting into the transmission on a hybrid – and cleared it in 90, I’d have given them the 10 without a second thought.

Bringing this back to marketing and advertising, which is the point of the column.

It’s a fine art, managing client expectations. If you always beat your metrics and deadlines, you run the risk of having these estimates disregarded, and being trampled as having too much air in every estimate. But if you are always behind, that’s even worse from a job satisfaction standpoint.

My personal way around this is, whenever possible, to give two estimates – the best-case and the median, or maybe even the worst, if the task is particularly tricky. Especially when it comes to fast-turn needs for live campaigns, you might need to drop everything and deal with a fire drill, at which point any sand in the bags is just going to cost the company money.

Not everything can be a fire drill, but not every job can turn on the slowest move. And the best customer service is not a best-case scenario quote, especially if it's not likely to come true.

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Please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at the top right, We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from you soon.

The Right Not To Forget, And JonVoyage

Exit, Stage Tears

Two very disparate things in my brain tonight, somehow connecting. Indulge, if you will.

In Europe right now, there's a growing movement behind establishing a new human right. The idea is that if you have made a mistake in your life, and you have taken steps to correct it, you should have the ability to have it eventually purged from the system, particularly if the system, in this case, is Google.

Sounds like a nice thing. It's not as if we all don't have something we'd like to go down the memory hole (and no, I'm not going to make the tactical mistake of admitting mine). But there's what is nice to have and the foundations that our nation was built on, and here's a case where, well, the rights of the individual do not now, and never will, trump the needs of the many. And the needs of the many are for a free press, and a free press requires the ability to tell the truth, even (especially?) when it does harm to an individual, over the course of years. The marketplace of ideas wins out. Life is not now, and never has been, fair.

And with that basic and inalienable point made, I'm going to pivot, without much in the way of grace or transition, to Jon Stewart's exit from The Daily Show, which was broadcast as I was finishing this post.

There are many ways to discuss this. True fans might note the many heartfelt feelings expressed, the wealth of alumni who came back to say their goodbyes, or maybe even Bruce Springsteen providing the soundtrack to play the show out. People who don't share Stewart's politics will say good riddance, maybe while noting the show's comparatively low gross ratings. Business types will wonder what happens to the show now, and what happens next to the diaspora of late night television options.

For me, I wanted to note two points.

1) When I was growing up, there was a wealth of great newspaper comic strips. Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury, The Far Side, Bloom County, Peanuts, Dilbert -- there was strong anticipation before the Sunday newspaper in my house, and it was something that we never missed. It seemed like there would always be newspapers, and there would always be great comic strips in those newspapers.

Well, no offense to the people who still make comic strips, or newspapers, but that era has passed, and will not return. Larry Wilmore does a fine job with the Nightly Show, but I don't know anyone who thinks it's a better product than the Colbert Report. Trevor Noah will have a great staff that will, in all likelihood, have a massive amount of fodder in the upcoming Presidential election, and incredible motivation to prove that the Daily Show can thrive in transition. There's no reason to think that, in the long term, he'll be better at the gig than Stewart, who was, in the words of Stephen Colbert, infuriatingly good at his job. Change is inevitable, but it's not always positive.

2) I know I'm not wired like most people, and especially not like show people, but seriously. If you are great at a job, and you are making serious bank at this job, and so many people appreciate what you do, how do you ever get to the point when you willingly leave it?

I get athletes wanting to go out on top. I get wanting to do other things in your life, or be more present for your family. I get not feeling as if you are still capable of excellence, and needing time away, or maybe managing your time commitment.

But to totally shut it down and give it up, with the very open question, seemingly, of what you are going to do next? Would never, ever, happen. They'd have to pry the job away from my cold, dead hands.

And this, in a nutshell, is the difference between Art and Craft, and why Marketing and Advertising is so much more of the latter. Our work in this realm has metrics that tell us when something is working, and the constant question of whether or not you can beat a control. Chasing the number doesn't make for questions about when you should hang it up. And there's never been a marketer who didn't think that their best campaign was yet to come.

So while I'll miss Stewart, I'm also more than a little annoyed with him for going. More was needed, more would have been delivered, and on some level, I would have liked Bill Watrerson more if he kept drawing Calvin and Hobbes.

While, well, never having anyone else telling us what we have to forget.

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Please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from you soon.