Blood Money

Bail Or Bleed

There's a story in the New York Times today that's just amazing in its awfulness, but wait for it; there's marketing and advertising later. But first, the story.

In a rural town in Alabama, there's a circuit judge who has decided, in his infinite wisdom, to present poor offenders with the following choice: donate blood or wear handcuffs.

No, seriously.

This isn't a case where you've got a judge who has just gone off the reservation with his own cleverness. He pretty much refused to talk to the NYT's journalist, which isn't what you do when you are in love with your own brain. No, what we've got here is abuse of the underclass, done by people who are acting as if the poor are just a free resource to be exploited. It will likely stop with sunlight, and there's few source of light to equal the Times.

But while I suspect the terrible judge that did this is well on his way to a post-professional career as a cable news pundit, simply removing the egregious problem is far from good enough. The bail system, along with the prison-industrial complex, is just one of those hidden horrors of American life. Feel free to go view the John Oliver clips for more detail on that. And in the extremely unlikely event that you are not getting why it's awful that poor defendants are being given the opportunity to contribute to a blood drive with the promise of a reduction in sentence, well... legal precedent, folks. In that it's not like you need both of your kidneys, either. Or eyes. So long as you are treating the most vulnerable in a society as if they were not worthy of humane treatment, no half measures.

Which brings us to the promised marketing and advertising bridge. Just like our backwater judge, the Web experience without ad blockers has been this forced bargain for users, who have been treated as if they had no palatable choice in the matter. Most have just shrugged and rolled up their sleeve to take the pinch, but once you have an out, you're going to take it. You might have even been inclined to donate before, but being forced to took all of the goodwill out of the equation.

Finally, this is a value exchange that seems antiquated, just because it has been in place for a very long time. That doesn't mean it will continue, of course. But when a poor exchange gets a spotlight, it's usually not long to stay.

With any luck at all, really.

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Words, Numbers, And Bill James

Credit Where Due

Sometimes, I run into people in a professional context, and when they get the gist of what I do, they don't understand how it came to be. Most people have a clear concept of who and what a copywriter is -- someone who sweats over words as if people still read, or ever really liked to do that. That person is supposed to have a massive amount of books in their life, a seeming disregard for designers, and their head in the clouds as they think about Big Ideas and how words can bring them home. Close your eyes and picture this person, and you've probably got patches on the elbows, paper everywhere, and all kinds of things to spur creativity in the work space. Or whatever cliche of writer works for you.

Now, analysis. Very different person, right? Lives in spreadsheets, dreams of automating the copy with machine intelligence, would have gone into accounting but needed just a hair more excitement in their life. If they gamble, it's poker, and it's with a disturbing ability to calculate odds, to the point of making sure the game is no fun at all. The work environment is austere and severe, they are efficient to the point of obsessiveness, and so on. You might trust them to run your stock portfolio or pick your fantasy sports team, but consult on your creative? Never!

How can you get both of these people at once?

Well, more importantly, how can you not?

Creatives who don't look at the numbers -- any numbers, so long as they have statistical significance -- are flying blind, and doing that without even owning the plane. Analytics people who don't look at the art are missing the chance to diagnose the work and solve problems in ways that clients can truly appreciate, because the lessons learned are rarely something that doesn't have legs outside of the immediate project. Combine both, and you get a learning engine, and learning engines are the only way, in my opinion, that you can hope to keep getting better at your gig. (And staffing for both roles just means conflict and complication, and in the start ups where I've usually worked, isn't realistic.)

As for how you get this way... well, beyond the sheer usefulness of it all, I credit Bill James.

James, for those of you who are not afflicted with the sports problem, is a wildly influential writer and analyst who set out to learn the intricacies of baseball. Rather than just accept conventional wisdom about what kinds of players were best, James dug into the numbers, discovered all kinds of actionable learning points, and was eventually proven right, over and over again, with the sport more or less taking his work and amplifying it. If you've seen "Moneyball", you've seen the impact of James.

To me, James was just a voice in a book that told me it was OK to think about sports, rather than just watch and react to them. That in thinking about these things, it was also possible to learn things that others did not know, and that in writing about them, to bring the art back in. (James is, at his best, a flat out terrific writer, and some of his stuff has stayed with me for decades.)

Thinking about stuff that others do not can be time consuming and debilitating, but it can also be very lucrative. I recommend it.

To my fellow writers... stop being afraid of analysis, and analysts. They are here to help, and if your copy doesn't need help, you are a very, very special unicorn. To my analytical brethren, dabbling in creative is more fun than you might think, and if you can develop the knack of giving actionable feedback to creatives, they will love you forever. And invite you to wildly better parties than you would get to on your own.

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Please 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. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

I, For One, Welcome Our RoboHon Overlord

Japan Is A Confusing Country

Meet RoboHon, soon to hit store shelves in Japan, and a gadget that's going to save the world for marketing and advertising professionals.

No, really.

You see, this cute little 7-inch robot does all the things your smartphone does -- with WiFi and LTE and a tiny little screen on his back -- but also with cameras for eyes, facial and voice recognition software and -- the game changer! -- a projector.

So the fact that it can walk, talk, sit down and dance is all kinds of adorable. It's also pretty great that a phone doesn't have to look like a phone, because, well, that just seems inevitable, really, especially in a society where customizing items to your taste seems like a Constitutional right. And while I, personally, can't imagine ever being anything but socially mortified to use him (her? Seems more like a him to me) as my always-on-me digital device, I do love this: having the ability to project mobile display, because in that single and glorious moment, I am no longer wedded to a mobile Web experience that is so frustratingly small.

Imagine, if you will, your smartphone being able to give you the same screen as your desktop monitor, whenever you wanted it, by just pushing out to a screen or wall. At some point, the wall would be replaced by holograms. And hey presto, I've gotten away from responsive design, sites that are borderline unreadable without ad blockers, and maybe more, really. I've also probably, once we've got full interconnectivity with the Internet of Things, phones that can just broadcast to any available screen with a takeover.

We are, of course, years away from all of that. But the first step is likely to seem as left field as a phone that doesn't conform to any of the usual rules of phone.

And if you can make anything, really, into a phone?

Well, I can think of plenty of other objects that could be made more intriguing with a phone, and with projection hardware hard-wired...

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Please 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.