Marketing and Advertising In Interesting Times

Let's... Go... Fast...

Here's a fun fact: the wildly common belief that "may you live in interesting times" is a Chinese curse? Apocryphal. No equivalent expression exists in China. But that's all beside the point. Everyone knows the sentiment, and more importantly, few would disagree with the idea that we are, well, living in those times right now.

Lesser known, but still generally well-accepted, is the belief that works of art, literature, music and more also improve in times of turmoil. The sense of immediacy created by political events that inspire, for good and ill, is good for the creative process. It generates a focus, a primal need to create, that just can't be replicated in times where people are comfortable and content.

Which leads me to how my family and I spent our Sunday night, at the movies, to see the well-regarded animated movie "Zootopia." I won't get too far into the plot of this, because it really is a movie that shouldn't be spoiled, but I'm not ruining anything by saying that it definitely seems to be a creation that mirrors our times. That it does so with a deft stroke, some genuine cleverness, and real craft in the artwork and voice acting is all a bonus. (I'd also consider it surprising, from such a  mainstream movie studio as Disney.) But I don't think it's overstating the case that the era in which we live in makes the movie even more effective than it might otherwise be. (Oh, and special kudos to the filmmakers for naming two of their characters Walter and Jesse. That made my inner Vince Gilligan fan wildly happy.)

This is, of course, a common experience. Television shows got dramatically better once we left an era of limited distribution and competition, and into a realm of more diversity in popular awareness. American pop music had rebirths in the latter half of the '60s and early '70s, matching some of the most turbulent times in the nation's history. British punk music is born during extremely difficult times in the late '70s, and might have had its fullest flower in America 25 years later, during the backlash to the G.W. Bush presidency. And so on.

Where this leaves us, as professionals, is a time where middle ground work isn't going to do as well, and where incremental steps are going to seem, well, pedestrian. It's a time where adtech is giving us opportunities to do things that seem particularly aggressive, both from a distribution and a creative standpoint. Hard "R" content and tough talk seems to speak to more leeway in pitches, and in final execution. And the fact that everything happens at a greater speed is, on some level, it's own push towards redder meat.

No one really knows, of course, how our world is going to change in the next 6 to 12 months, and every presidential cycle comes with its own prediction of "most important in our lifetime." But we do know that with distributed communications technology, social media, and a profit-driven 24/7/365 news engine that is chasing ratings from the sensational, having our messages cut through the clutter, while still protecting brand, has never been more challenging. Just doing what you've done before, or taking very small steps toward optimization, might not be enough.

And on the plus side?

That means you've never had more freedom to experiment.

Interesting times, indeed.

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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 Invisible Ad Campaign

Stalkery

I've been in digital advertising for a long time, and one of the more amusing repeated patterns has been the deep and abiding faith in self-regulation. Just let us take care of things, and don't strangle the baby in the crib with the rope of government interference, and everything will be skittles and beer. Perhaps even beer-flavored skittles. It's hard to see how that would be a good thing, but hey, deregulation is almost always seen as necessary, especially in the concept stage. Maybe you could drunk on those skittles. Probably would sell well in college towns.

What happens next is, of course, the other word you call a deregulated market: lawless. Consumer privacy gets trampled, the first mover advantage tends to go to those that cut corners to get there, and soon enough, you get cries for regulation, usually from wronged consumers, or people who weren't quick enough to make their fortune from the gold rush. T'was ever thus, and why lawyers love, love, love new business models.

The latest manifestation of this is the AdChoices logo, that little i arrow that very few people, really, know is the indication of a behaviorally targeted banner advertisement. That icon appears over a trillion times a month on banners across the Web, and I'm only mildly overstating the case when I tell you, that, well, no one has ever clicked on it. (Well, OK, almost no one. Especially consumers. Adtech people click on that thing all the time while doing QA.)

What happens when you do click on that? Well, assuming you are exact enough with your clickery -- which is to say, you aren't on a mobile device -- you go to a landing page where you are told who served you the ad in question. You also get the option to opt-out of getting those ads any more. This allows you to get rid of those pesky retargeting ads that stalk you around the Web, and sounds like world's most useful secret of Web usability... but keep in mind that retargeters tend to overlap, especially for very aggressive retailers. So you might find yourself with a brand new hobby, because folks just have lots of free time to click on parts of a banner that they might not have even seen.

The industry will tell you that AdChoices landing pages are viewed so many times, and have been in place for the better part of a decade now. Or that the next campaign will build on the success of the last one, or how much traffic the landing pages are starting to see from mobile.

I don't normally cast aspersions on the motives of strangers, because, well, no one really knows what lies in the hearts of others. But I do know that the idea that the industry really wants to educate consumers, or have a vast and active audience opting out of ads that are targeted, and hence far more lucrative than non-targeted...

Well, I'm pretty sure you could grow a fine crop from that grade of manure.

What advertisers want from their banners is revenue. What publishers want from their banners is, also, revenue. If consumers complain about those ads less, or feel better about how they are seeing more relevant ads, that only really matters if it, well, backs out to revenue.

That logo is there as cover only, a kind story to tell legislators to prevent them from making their lives more onerous... but if the only thing that's keeping the industry afloat is this low bar of privacy protection?

Well, that really doesn't say much for the business model of something that's been around for a while, 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.

The Emotional Contract

Hard To Repair

Like many people, I've been struck by the controversy involving Apple and the FBI, and increasingly skeptical about how an incredibly common product could resist all of the world's criminals and cyber-security hackers. Also, how a company could not just be willing to take privacy to the point of providing aid and comfort to the individual over their government, even if that individual was a terrorist, criminal or murderer. I'm not sure how that jibes with supporting your local police or military, but that line just doesn't translate to the FBI. Anyway.

But no matter where you are on this issue, one aspect is absolutely clear. That's how Apple's brand has, to this point, taken no damage at all, really. To its users, the company has stood tall against public and law enforcement pressures to protect their individual interests and privacy. The emotional contract between the users and the brand remains perfect. Even with some prominent public figures calling for a boycott of the company.

And that, now that I've thought longer (and different?), is the best reason why Apple is going to fight this to, well, legality and beyond. The security issue is something that will eventually go away, because no platform ever stays completely secure, especially with this much scrutiny. But Apple's brand will endure, even if a side hack happens. So long as the company stays on message of their users coming first, and isn't revealed to capitulate in an underhanded manner, they'll suffer no real damage from this.

Now, let's consider Volkswagen. (Interestingly, not Audi or Porsche, who are part of the same corporate family, but haven't been painted with the same brush.) That company pitched itself as eco-conscious without a subsequent lapse of performance, through the use of diesel technology that passed all emissions standards. Until it was revealed that this was all a lie, thanks to the use of fraudulent software that only kicked in during testing. The cover up was elaborate, the benefit obvious, and the hubris involved in believing that the misdeed would never be found out was, frankly, well, stunning.

Overnight, VW owners lost value in their investments, because their cars were no longer attractive to, well, the kind of drivers that bought VW in the first place. Since the disclosure, VW has apologized, changed a great deal of personnel, swapped out marketing messages, and worked to fix the emissions issues before class-action and government watchdogs forced their hand. But whether or not this ever fixes the damage to the emotional contract, and helps the brand get back to their prior valuation, is a whole other matter entirely.

Thinking back on my own career and clients, I've had any number of wins and losses, with strong educational moments along the way in both directions... but I've never gotten a client back once an emotional contract had been broken.

No matter who broke it, really.

So it's not a phone, or even a great number of phones, or an operating system that Apple's trying to protect.

Rather, it's their idea of why their brand is valued the way that it is.

And how that's probably only got one direction to go.

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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.