Decorating for other holidays

Like This, But On My Lawn

Every year, around this time on the calendar, I become very wistful. A quick digression to explain.

When my wife and I had our first child, and much more free time, we had such grand plans. Not for the usual things that fall by the wayside -- the kid won't ever eat sugar, watch television, play video games, etc. -- but for other aspects. We both come from creative backgrounds, and also have idiosyncratic and highly active senses of humor. I listen to a ton of comedy podcasts in my spare time, have done stand up comedy a few times, devour specials on Netflix and go to the occasional show. I also write for comedy on other blogs, and really can't get through the day without exploring such tangents in my mind.

Not the least of which was the idea that decorating one's house for Halloween and Christmas, while fun and fine and dandy, really didn't go far enough. At least, not for the purposes of High Creativity.

To wit: why not President's Day? (But only the more obscure ones; giant heads of Martin van Buren and Millard Fillmore on top of the house, just to see what kind of comments we can generate.) I'd rather skip Valentine's Day because it just seems tacky, but some kind of vengeful leprechaun action might be interesting for St. Patrick's, or maybe just a great mass of snakes to symbolize what was being driven out of Ireland. Mother's Day should get as many mothers in the windows as possible (Mother Teresa, Ma Kettle, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention), and Flag Day could get the place looking as close to the UN as possible.

This doesn't even get us into the more obscure ones, of course. Big Bill Murray printouts for Groundhog Day, the never ending spree of numbers for Pi Day, all manners of madness for Leap Day (perhaps the most special of holidays, given the rareness)... there's opportunities on a daily basis to be the kind of people that the rest of the neighborhood either treasures or avoids. If your life is the story that you tell about it, I'm fond of the idea that the story should be big and memorable. Or, failing that, more than a little goofy. It's how I'm wired.

Of course, this isn't what happens in the day to day. Just staying ahead of the writing, the day job, the fitness goals and the other obligations is 3 or 4 jobs, and there isn't enough money, or time, for the things we should be setting aside money and time for (college, retirement, charity, sleep...), let alone hardcore foolishness and inexplicable public behavior.

But, still.

The temptation to construct a field of presidential busts in a "Hunger Games" style arena on the front lawn, just to make the President's Day weekend more than a little sinister and very, very memorable?

Well, if we ever manage to have a significant Wealth Event from one of our clients with equity, it's gonna happen.

And if it starts a movement?

As good of a marketing moment as anything I've ever done, honestly...

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Taxes On The Stupid

Pay Up

When I was a (had to be) remarkably painful to live with teenager, my mother would spend a few bucks on the lottery. As a single mother raising three kids on her own, it was likely one of life's few and good diversions for her, as a bartender who logged late hours to keep a roof over our head. She'd connect more than a few times on the three digit daily draw, and when that happened, she's share the wealth. Nothing too dire or difficult in that, right?

Well, of course not. But here's where I prove my stripes as a world-class pain in the posterior. Having always had a political bent for aspects involving class systems and how poor people stayed poor (yes, you guessed it, we were not particularly well to do), I had picked up what legislators called lotteries, in private.

"Taxes on the stupid."

Now, to be very clear about this: I'm not insulting my mother's intellect, either then or now. The same way I'm not insulting anyone who played and lost in the most recent spasm of activity. We are, at our core, nearly helpless to resist the momentary good feeling and day dreaming that hits when we've got a ticket in our hands, and the simple truths of the purchase are undeniable. Can't win if you don't play. It's only a trivial amount of money. It's fun to dream.

But what's not fun is paying off people who think you are stupid, and proving it with the payment.

So I made my mom a deal, all those years ago. I told her that the next time she hit the lottery, I wanted no part of the winnings... but that every time she played, I wanted her to give me a dollar. For whatever reason, she put up with this disrespect. And then I left those dollars in plain sight, in my room, near where she'd drop off laundry. (Why wasn't I doing my own laundry by the time I was a teenager? No idea, really. Probably because, as this whole story shows, Mom had the good wisdom to regard laundry as a welcome respite from putting up with me. Anyway...)

I was fortunate enough, as a kid, to have relatively steady employment. First as a paperboy, then as a gopher and counter person at a miniature golf course, and finally as a content provider at a pre-Internet telecommunications start up. So I didn't have to touch that pile of dollar bills that started piling up on my dresser. And when they hit a certain tipping point -- probably $50 or $60 -- my mom told me tht she wasn't playing the lottery any more, and I'd made my point. (She also refused to take back the pile.)

Since then, lotteries have only gotten bigger, with a spiraling amount of "news" coverage that just strikes me as downright unseemly. I pay my own taxes for being dumb, mostly through gambling with friends at a poker table or in fantasy leagues, or less often, in casinos. (It's still a tax on the stupid, but the difference is that I can feel like I've earned my luck in those games. It's a more fun illusion.) But I never got the lottery bug, because I've never lost the need to refuse payment of cynical political operatives. Or the knowledge that the only people who consistently get paid from this game are the ones working for the house.

Where this ties into the mission statement of marketing and advertising perspective is that we all, as professionals, make pitches to ourselves just to get through the day. Knowing why a pitch works allows you to counter it, use its power to subvert it, and maybe, in the long run, make better choices. Or, at least, better pitches.

Our world would be better without lotteries. Especially if we just donated to charities routinely, rather than believe the most over the top cynical political move of saying how a portion of the proceeds goes to a good cause, so losing in the lottery is just like charity.

And the trick to taking the juice out of this purchase, and keeping more people from succumbing to inertia the next time the pot gets big enough to make everyone forget the earlier losses?

Well, turning off the unpaid propaganda for it in the media would be a start. As would keeping in mind what the people who run the games think of the customers...

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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.

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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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.