The Serious Business Of Fun

Yes. Yes, We Are.

Recently, I was asked for a single word that related to my idea of fun. Which, as any routine reader of my content will attest, is an absolutely impossible request to fill. I'm barely able to answer, in one words, yes or no questions. An occupational hazard. But anyhoo...

After thinking way too long and way too hard for anyone who actually knows what fun is, I finally have an answer. (Don't worry, there's a practical marketing and advertising application for all of this later.)

Fun is Focus.

You've probably rolled your eyes at this point and are about to go find anything else to spend your time on than more time with a workaholic, but hear me out.

Name anything that you find to be truly fun -- for me, that's water slides, poker, golf, playing Frisbee with my dog, playing my guitar, making my kids laugh, watching a good game, and other less public activities (there's a particular Michael Palin skit from Monty Python that works here)... and there's a common theme running through all of it.

It's the only thing that I am doing at the time.

You are almost never having fun when you are doing two things at once. Fun is utterly ruined by distraction. It's destroyed as soon as you look past it to the next thing, even if the next thing is also Fun. Fun is relaxed, monomaniacal, and childish... because children are the only people who rarely have two or more things going on in their heads at once, and who are totally present to the moment.

Fun does not involve clocks, unless having to fit into a set span of time is part of the Fun. The fact that Fun can end at any moment is, perversely, part of the Fun, because that's what makes you so present to it. It's not usually found on mobile devices, because every mobile device is absolutely ready to distract you with something else (perhaps something very Not Fun) at any moment.

Want more? Anticipating an event is often more Fun than the actual event, because the actual event has to be enough Fun to prevent distraction, whereas the anticipation has no such bar to clear. People who are having fun are almost always attractive on some level, because others want to be more like them.

Finally, this. Fun is a choice. I've had great times cleaning my house, just because. There have been aha moments in analytics that can make me giddy. Catching the scene of an optimal tactic, then tracking it down to its workable essence? Downright joyous.

And if you're in a situation where you are not having fun at work, and you used to? Ask yourself whether your manager isn't keeping enough distractions away from you, so you can go back to having the fun. (Oh, and this is also a reason why consultants... seem to be having all the fun.)

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When Marketing Gets Personal

Wall Crusher

This evening, as I checked my social feed for news from friends and family, I saw a GoFundMe for someone near and dear. It's to help pay for the medical bills for my niece and goddaughter, a high school senior who is undergoing an operation to take out thyroid cancer. You can see it for yourself here, and by all means, feel free to add to the fund or share it.

It's a simple page, for what we all are hoping is a simple procedure, because while life is rarely fair, it's more than a little obscene to have to deal with any form of cancer at age 17. Especially when you have always played by the rules and taken advantage of your opportunities, through diligent schoolwork, athletics, activities and more.

As scary as something like this is, I have every confidence in my niece, and on some level, I'm not surprised to see her take this step to deal with the situation head on. In any equation where there is a wall between this kid and a goal, it's a bad day to be the wall. You are, on every level, putting your money on a winner with this campaign.

I knew about the surgery, of course. The GoFundMe is another matter. My family tends to be pretty private folks, and incredibly hard-working. But where this goes beyond just using my platform to publicize a good cause is to note how, once more, technology is changing the world in a million small and powerful ways.

There is, honestly, nothing to stop anyone in the world with Web access from directly impacting someone's life in a small but potent way, through acts like funding a medical procedure. We spend so much time noting the horrible moments of the Web -- shameful comments and behavior, timewaste content and addiction enablement, social media use by evil actors, malware and fraud and so on -- that it's really easy to forget how much good can be done.

That's the nature of communication without filters, and peer to peer conversation. A power that can be used for great good.

Oh, and one final point? I didn't coach her on anything involved with this. Seems to be entirely her idea, and her execution, and as a consultant, I think she nailed it. Pitch is short, sweet, and to the point -- and keeps everything in its proper perspective and tone.

Nice work, Em. Now, go kick cancer's ass.

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

Five Steps To Effective Ad Creative

Step 3

In my capacity as a marketing and advertising consultant, I'm frequently put into the position of advocating creative changes that, to be blunt, serious design pros resist. I do this for one very simple reason. My loyalties are not to the finished piece in someone's portfolio. They are to the performance metrics that the piece will generate.

This doesn't have to be an either/or proposition, and it rarely is. But to a time-stressed and/or inflexible designer, it can sure seem that way, especially if the changes are coming from outside of their chain of command. Advocating for effectiveness can put you into a position of stepping on the toes of personnel that got the piece through a committee to approve, and challenging the wisdom of their professional judgment.

Do this without a degree of finesse or experience, and you can set yourself up to fail by by appearing out of your element. Force the changes through with pure stick and carrot (or the designer realizing that you only have those tools in your bag), and you work without their emotional buy in. The most you can hope for in that situation is inefficient and under-effective execution. The least will be sabotage, personal drama, and other side effects of failure.

So.. how do you side-step all of that?

Step 1 - Forget the why.

Why a designer is opposing change, especially if they are not on a comfort level to honestly communicate, is an endless rabbit hole that you do not want to explore. Maybe your designer is insecure about their position. Maybe they secretly wish they were back in art school. Maybe they are trying to win awards so they can get out of their current gig. Maybe they feel that you are trying to turn them into a hack. See what I mean? Endless maybes, and all of this is not getting your job done.

Avoid the temptation to psychoanalyze, and focus on the most effective uses of everyone's time and talent. You do that by...

Step 2 - Replacing emotion with data.

In direct marketing creative, this can be done through putting metrics to practices, and ideally, by showing analagous test results that support your changes. A ghost button may be very forward-thinking and spot-on for many consumer classes, and will look sharp in a portfolio... but if the audience doesn't skew to a younger and more affluent demo, it might just be the wrong message for the brand's price point. Serving the audience gets easier when it's not your taste, but your numbers.  

Step 3 - Use the NS10s.

A small aside: in a previous professional life, I fronted a rock and roll band. We made multiple albums, in studios that had some of the best sound equipment money could buy. But when you got down to final mix for what a consumer might hear in their sound system, you had to -- absolutely and without question -- run the work through consumer-level audio.

The speakers that every pro back then used were Yamaha NS-10S. They were the industry standard that every sound engineer utterly hated, because they were flat and dry and lost many a nuance and small point that you worked like mad to achieve. But they were an absolute godsend as a sanity check.

The same concept applies in design. Working up materials that look fantastic on full screens and oversized monitors, but don't work in a mobile-first environment, can easily sink your project's effectiveness. And just saying that the piece is responsive and will render to fit a screen doesn't mean you've done all you can. Knowing how your audience will see your materials should be the start, not the end, of the process.

Step 4 - Design to individual people, not demographics.

Everyone is prone, on some level, to the Naturalistic Fallacy. (That's a philosophical construct, best simplified this way: "What is true for me is true for all.") Even if the prospect is dramatically different from the team, creative pros will choose their pet fonts, colors and favorite tactics when possible, because no one thinks they have terrible taste, or starts a project with the goal of ugging it up for the dumbos.

But when you do a fairly simple exercise in naming your prospect, you get past uncharitable work for, say, 55-year-old homeowners that skew 80/20 male, and have disposable income for lawn equipment. Instead, you start making something for a guy with progressive lenses, financial worries from kids that are in college and retirement not too far off, who uses the Web to try to keep up with new music so he's got something to talk about with his kids. (See how we're sneaking in sympathy for the prospect? See how your designer is feeling better about moving away from that cutting-edge and hard to read font, and giving you an easy call to action, because the prospect has so much more o worry about in their life than finding the buy button?)

Step 5 - Be grateful.

If you are able to get a design pro to show real flexibility, don't take it for granted. That minimizes the contribution they've made to the process, and also keeps you from having a stronger relationship in the future. Instead, find ways to bring back some of the earlier prestige points if possible, and show that you are open to collaboration. A little listening can go a long way here.

Besides, if the ad can be both effective and a portfolio piece? Then everyone's happy. For a very long time, and maybe so happy that they'll find you other gigs later.

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