Too Slow Tech

Faster, Please

As I was scraping the ice off my car the other day -- it's been a mild winter, but it's still completely fine by me if it ends soon -- I was left to think, as always, about technology. How nice a remote starter would have been, so my car could have begun the job without me. How close that tech is, really. And lo and behold, when I got to my desk and checked my social feed, there it was: the app to not just remote start your Tesla from your Apple Watch (well, OK, missing both of those things), but to have it open your garage and come on down the driveway to meet you. Next, of course, will be when the car drives me to work, and lets me get more sleep, because hey, more sleep. And it's not as if driving is that much of a pleasure. I'd happily take another half hour nap. Naps are great. (I'm kidding, I'd probably just use the time to do more work. It's a sickness.)

Now, all of that tech is pretty much at our fingertips, and if it was our top priority as a nation, it would probably be legal in months. But it's not, and if I had to bet the over/under on when it would actually happen in my MidAtlantic part of the world, I'd want at least a decade. That will be a decade of unnecessary deaths from driver error and fatigue, preventable fatalities where the car could have taken over for someone who was intoxicated or suddenly ill, increased greenhouse gases from the inefficient use of transportation, and, dammit, a decade of naps that I could clearly use.

It's not just the driverless car that's going to come slower than you might want. Wearable technology has a clear use in remote monitoring in healthcare, but it will probably take a really long time, because, well, inertia and billing and the medical establishment's lack of regard for patient competence, or tech they don't own and operate. We've mapped the human genome years ago, but the clear and present advantages of such a breakthrough don't seem to be very apparent.

Want to go beyond the health sciences? There's traces of water on Mars, and the ability to draw replenishable power from solar panels, and... no timeline for when we're going to have more than probes up there. There's an increasing amount of water on moons in our solar system, which means that there might even be alien life within reach, but once more, no clear timeline on when we might move than from conjecture to proof. 3-D printers and the Internet of Things and all of these next level businesses that you read about in the Gartner Group or see valued in the markets, all of it tantalizing close, but slow, slow, slow. We were supposed to have flying cars and robot laundry and so much more by now, right?

Why? Well, we're spoiled. The tech that's in our hands every day -- phones and screens and the like -- has gotten so much better, so quickly, that we're lost all perspective on how fast things actually happen, and how it all has to be backwards compatible with the existing infrastructure. Also, how many parts of our world are *not* like the Internet, or able to take down years of venture capital before it can exist without clear profit.

Sometimes, the pace of change and technology all seems to be going so bewilderingly fast, especially when it runs against ethics or employment or the environment. But in reality, it's not going fast enough, and we will, someday, wonder how we managed to put up with life as we knew it.

Tomorrow comes fast. With another forecast for snow to clear off my car.

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Past The NFL Event Horizon

Showing Its Age?

I'm a father of daughters, and while I'm a big sports fan and blogger, I've never really insisted on my kids liking what I like, or watching what I watch. That's even extended to past Super Bowls. But with the game this year featuring musical acts they've heard of during the halftime show, I extended the invite to my man cave, then took notes of the neophyte reactions. There's possibly some telling stuff here for the future marketing of the biggest show in America, but one that's going to need to grow to replace aging demographics fairly soon. So instead of providing yet another ranking of the ads that cost $5 million to show during the telecast and next to nothing online, let's get into the diary...

> Pre-Game

The news that people bet on how long the national anthem will go was utterly fascinating to the kids. They immediately whipped out their phones to time it, giggled like mad when it became apparent that Lady Gaga was milking it, and we were off to a rollicking start to the evening of snark.

My youngest then asks, "Dad, why did the airplanes fly over the stadium?" Can't say I've got a good answer for that one. Also, having been in stadiums where that happened? Not pleasant!

The amount of preparation and pretense around the flipping of a coin also strikes the crowd as kind of crazy. Looking at it objectively, I can't say they're wrong. Why a coin? Why do we need to explain that the coin has a heads and a tails, as if that's not kind of how coins work? Why not Rock/Paper/Scissors (Nothing beats rock! Good old rock!), or just have the ubiquitous Microsoft Surface tablet computers on the sidelines spit out a random generation? Well, Because Tradition. Moving on.

> First Quarter

Willem Dafoe replaces Marilyn Monroe for the latest Snickers ad, and it just causes bewilderment. "Who's that guy?" Then, after the reveal, with maximum sarcasm, "I love the transpobia." Cheap advertiser humor might not be a great move in another decade or two.

Oh, and the ultrasound Doritos ad, and Puppy Monkey Baby for Mountain Dew? Jaw-dropping astonishment, but no interest in, say, having some of the product. (Both were in my cave, actually.) I suppose that's what they were going for. In less explosive news, as they've heard and loved Flight of the Conchords and Key and Peele, they were good with the Marmot and Squarespace ads. Though not, of course, actual customers.

Second Quarter

Carolina scores, but running back Jonathan Stewart does not hold to the team's season-long pattern of giving the ball to a kid. (They know about this because, well, I've told them.) This gets a lot of side eye from the new audience, and more or less kills off any rooting interest for either team.

As for Peyton Manning, who you would think would be on everyone's mind after being in a billion ads? Not on their radar. They don't do ads outside of this game, really. They do kind of laugh at him when he stumbles on defensive pressure, then tries to throw an underhand pass forward that ends in sloppiness.

By the end of the second quarter, the party is entirely on their phones trying to Snapchat each other with the most embarrassing possible exposure, and are clearly just killing time before halftime.

Halftime!

At the two hour mark, people are lapsing into food comas, but the appearance of Coldplay gets them back online. They sing along without too much enthusiasm because they know the songs, then express concern for the innocence of the youngest when Beyonce and Bruno Mars enter the arena.

Good times are had as we all kind of Mystery Science Theater the experience, and when the telecast moves to a retrospective of the past 50 halftime shows, complete with video of multiple performers who are no longer with us, they're more or less blissfully unaware of all of the recent deaths. As soon as the music's over, so are the teens.

Third Quarter

My youngest is in the game just long enough for her to be the only person in the room for the PSA on domestic abuse. Kind of happy she was tuned out at that point, honestly. My wife and I send her off to bed, and that's it for the next generation for the rest of the night. In terms of good snark, my wife contributes "Is he still alive?" as a reaction to the Christopher Walken Kia ad, but otherwise, well, not much to note.

So, final tally?

My good TV screen holds no sway over their personal phones. A game that you don't get into by a certain age won't hold much sway. Telling someone how much an ad costs won't make them care about it, other than to wonder just how messed up adults are. (Can't argue with them on that one.) It's still football, and no matter how much you dress up a dull game, dull games are dull games.

By the end of the third quarter, I was pretty much the only way paying attention, even to the ads. When I checked in with everyone afterward, they were glad they watched and had the time together, but mostly just because it was family time, and no one asked me who won. I suppose they'll watch it again next year, but I can't say for certain. You've got some work to do, NFL...

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

The Emperor's New Super

When my kids were younger, I'd read to them before bedtime, mostly because it would spark conversations, and there's nothing better in my world as a father than the conversations.

One of which has occurred often enough so that the kids know the answer before they even asked the question. "Daddy, what's your favorite fairy tale?" My answer, always, is "The Emperor's New Clothes", the classic point of how peer pressure to see something that isn't there doesn't, well, create it's own reality. I give it my own special spin by noting how much I love the tailors in this story, who get paid for, well, nothing. (When I tell the story, they get away clean and live happily ever after. A better ending, really.)

So it's the days before the final pro football game of the season, which is also the 50th of its kind. It's also the week where the media persists in the shared public delusion that ads with a $5 million 30-second price tag are culturally relevant. Also, that we should watch them with the same attention that we might, well, watch the game, despite the fact that they will all be online now or later, and they are, well, ads. Many of which will be beaten into the ground for anyone who watches sports within a week.

It's also, well, right in my wheelhouse, in that I blog about sports as well as marketing and advertising. So why resist the easy content, right? I should just kick my feet back and let the blog write itself, maybe with a piece about old vs new (one of the team's quarterbacks has been on every ad campaign in the past 15 years, while the other has a young guy that's likely to be on every one in the next 10 years), or serious vs. fun players, or...

Well, no. I just can't do it. Because while I enjoy that advertisers have a gold ring to shoot for -- it's not like there are many creatives that get the chance to talk to nine figures of people at once -- the plain and simple is that this was an irresponsible marketing decision decades ago, and it's a more irresponsible one now.

But it's not really the reach that's driving this, because getting to nine figures of people isn't really a good move for anyone outside of maybe a laundry detergent manufacturer, and maybe not even them. There's just not that many consumer segments where the prospect list goes that deep.

It's just the spectacle of how much the placement costs, and the knowledge that every 30 second spot is another $5 million down the memory hole.

As for the idea that the ads are content now, well, no. They are ads. And while content has gone down in value a lot in the past few years, with user-generated work and fan fiction and cosplay and all sorts of weak tea getting a foothold in the mainstream, um, no. They are ads. Even the "best" native work isn't content, because They. Are. Ads. Moving on.)

Paying attention to these campaigns just because of the price tag is like going to a 5-star restaurant to drink the tap water. It's like making a new car purchase decision based entirely on the paint job. It's like refusing to consider clothes in a shopping trip if they are on sale.

It is, basically, insane.

And the fact that the insanity happens every year, and only seems to get more insane?

Well, that doesn't make the emperor any less naked, does it?

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