Working Through Terrible

It's mid-November in the mid-Atlantic area that I call home, which means it's leaf gathering time. My house has a significant amount of yard and trees, so I wound up just bundling up and going at it today with the rake and bags. By the time everything was done, I had been working for about four hours, or just about longer than I'll ever be awake and away from any kind of screen. It gives you time to think, not the least of which is how little fun raking is. (I do own a leaf blower, but it doesn't seem to make the job any faster, and I can use the exercise. So the rake it is.)

As I started the process, I was thinking about the events in Paris, the footage, the likely next steps, and just getting more and more depressed. So cyclical, so pointless, so limiting to what we should be able to achieve as a species. So much of what we do as marketers is about finding the positive story and telling it to the right people, so we can put our brands in the best position to succeed. And in so doing, feed their families, expand their businesses, fund their research, and so on, and so on. This news makes all of that seem as pointless as, well, raking up leaves. There are still leaves on some of the trees, after all. I'll be doing this job again in a few weeks, and then again in a year, and the year after that. Just as terrible people will be making terrible choices that cause terrible tragedies, with the power of tools that make those tragedies increasingly large, and impossible to keep from reaching their audience. There will be no end of oxygen for this fire.

And then I saw the gravestone. A couple of years ago, in a terrible accident, the family's beloved dog passed away suddenly. He's buried at the edge of my yard, with a stone, and it's always something of a challenge to do work back there, especially while alone, and not think of that day. I usually get back to equilibrium, eventually, by making myself remember him for better things, because he was a great dog, and his memory deserves better than my sadness. But it requires discipline. That's the nature of grief. It's always there for you, whenever you want to visit.

To get through my task, I had to put blinders on mentally, think of something else, and get back to work. There's no other option. The world is a terrible place every day, provided you keep your mind in those places.

Which brings us back to the attacks, and the proper response from a marketing and advertising perspective. I'm not sure, honestly, that there is one, at least not in a one size fits all fashion. Plenty of brands will express sympathy and solidarity with the victims, but without a charitable aspect, this can seem rote or hollow... and it's not as if there's a go-to charity for donations in the wake of a terrorist act. Perhaps something that the criminals would particularly dislike, like women's equality in disadvantaged nations, or support for some other at-risk segment, but that also puts you in some danger of alienating a portion of your customer base. Similarly, saying nothing can seem like your brand is cold or uncaring, and that's not an acceptable option for youth markets or those doing significant business with the French.

If it's my client, I make my stand quietly, without a sizable PR or social media effort. Make it something that my customers have to come to my site or store to find out about, rather than something that seems ostentatious. As with all such moves, I'd make the action something that customers can join or activate, not for a viral standpoint, but just to not seem stand-offish. Finally, I wouldn't go very long with the move, unless it becomes part of your social structure or culture.

What happened in Paris will be seen by many as a fresh reason for war, as an escalation of a culture clash, or as the start of a new and dark era of conflict. That's a matter for the politics of the day, public debate, and the effectiveness of the world community at turning back the tide of extremism and hate. But it's not likely to be the reason why someone does or does not patronize a brand. It's better for your business if it's seen, and handled, as a crime against humanity, and the perpetrators as garden variety thugs, rather than the vanguard of a new religious or culture war. If, for no other reason, than this fails to give them what they wanted from the attack in the first place.

On a personal level, the choice to find something that is not terrible to think about will come a little easier with the passage of time, as it always does. On a global level, Paris will recover, criminals will be made responsible for their actions, and the world will move forward and away from such revulsion. In both cases, the only sane choice will be taken.

Because, really, there is no other choice.

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Oh, Canada

Usually done with checks

I try not go get into politics in my content marketing, because as a marketer, you have to be something like an attorney: able to argue the merits of any case, and comfortable in the space of delivering excellence to any client, even if you might not be in love with their value proposition. But as the continuing parade of corruption that is the American presidential primaries moves on (and on, and on), with the actual voting still so far away, I've been struck by the difference between America and Canada, and wondering why we can't have a much saner situation.

To review, Canada's entire election this year, in which Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party took power over Stephen Harper's Conservative Party, took all of 78 days.

No, seriously, 78 days. Less than three months from soup to nuts. Without dozens of candidates, wildly overpopulated stages, an unconscionable amount of money, and the denigration of the process by more or less equating the choice as if it were a reality television show.

So why are we saddled with this process? Well, the oldest, truest and saddest axiom in political science is that people get the government they deserve... and if you want to get well and truly mean about it, you can go the extra mile with H.L. Mencken's quote that they will get it good and hard. My own view is that this is a media issue.

A political debate is nearly as DVR-proof as a football game, which means live ratings in a time when such events are worth their weight in gold. So long as these events pull in the biggest numbers of the year for cable channels, and the massive boost in advertising spends for local and national campaigns, we've got an environment of total corruption and compromise.

People of all political stripes ascribe bias to the media, and that's absolutely correct... but the bias is towards spectacle, horse race, scandal and clickbait. Close elections create more spends, greater donations from supporters, and higher ratings from all concerned parties. Along with a greater spirit of desperation, since only two Presidents in the last 60+ years have failed to win a second term, and none in the past 25 years.

So the question isn't why American presidential elections are so long, expensive, and superficial. The bigger question is why they are ever allowed to end. Or how the toothpaste is ever going back in the tube.

Anyone else feeling very jealous of Canada?

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Satellite Of Brand

Just Add Money

I remember the first time I was shown an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000." It was on a VHS tape, in a friend's college dorm room, and I had never heard of the show before. The person showing me the episode was downright evangelistic about it, and within five minutes, I completely got why. There was nothing this smart, this clever, or just so on my comic sensibilities. I wasn't a complete fanatic about it, and there were plenty of episodes where the movie that was being riffed was just too terrible to redeem, no matter how quick the comedians were. But when they hit, my heavens. It hurt, you'd laugh so much.

I became a fan, in a time when sharing such things required work. VHS tapes were fantastic technology compared to the great nothing that were before them, and you could honestly have a party -- ok, a fairly nerdy party, but still, a party -- over who had the cool tapes that no one else had.

There was more to the VHS approach, of course. Small bits of animation from the Spike and Mike festival, odd moments from Japan, redubbed weirdness and sports moments, and some more infamous stuff that we don't need to get into here. Before YouTube, you had to have connections and be proactive about such things. Circulating the tape was social currency, and there was no more valuable token MST3K tapes.

The show ran for many iterations, and moved from network to network, eventually ending in 1999. DVDs of past episodes have been intermittent, due to rights and licensing fees. Both sets of personnel from the show's main run have continued to do the basic gig, under different new brand names. And now Joel Hodgson, the original creator of the show, has worked out a deal with Shout! Factory to buy the rights and make (be still our hearts) new episodes. There's a Kickstarter that, as I right this, is more than 40% of the way to its minimum $2 million goal with a month to go, and given MST3Ks hard-core nerd audience , it's hard to imagine how the target won't be met. If the full $5.5 million target is met, Hodgson hopes to make 12 future-length episodes with the funding.

Personally, I'm a little surprised that this isn't a Netflix experience already, or Hulu, or Amazon Prime. It's not like this is a new brand that needs a great amount of PR; it will generate its own. But maybe this isn't something that needs to be on any channel, especially because every old fan (and the show started nearly 30 years ago; we're all old fans) is going to share this in their social media feed.

That's the power of a real brand. It never quite goes away, and makes the people who identify with that brand root for them. And evangelize.

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