What Drives You

Not A Problem

Occasionally in pitch sessions or interviews, I'm asked about how I've accumulated the work experience that I've pulled off. I'm happy to tell the story, of course, because you can't really do this gig unless you're able to tell a story... but the one that I share with clients isn't entirely the full ride. If I can beg your indulgence for a few hundred words, I'll give you that, and also what's really driving this train.

Six months before I proposed to my wife, she suggested that we do a seminar together. It was the kind of thing that I would never have done on my own, and never did again... but what I got out of it was substantial and lasting, and I still use aspects of what I learned to this day. With the change in both of us, I proposed on Christmas Eve, and we set the date for mid-May.

Our wedding, you will probably not be very surprised to learn, was a festival of marketing, and great humor. We're not formal people, we had a great deal of similar friends and family, and so we had lots of touches like business reply postcards for the invites, logo merchandise, and a themed URL (Wedding Fun Now, Dot Com. No, seriously.) We actually turned a profit on that, and saved the money for a down payment on a house.

Three months after the wedding, we had found a house a few miles away from where I worked. My job was secure, for a business that had been around for half a century... but I got a job offer to join the dot-com economy on the West Coast. My wife gave me the green light to not just put off a home purchase and move, but also drove out with me in a rented U-Haul with our pets and possessions, despite having her own contracting gig that required her to fly back East after the trip. Our lives got even more interesting when, after the flight back, she learned that she was pregnant with our first child. Whom she carried for the first two trimesters, alone, before we were able to reunite.

Six years, three rentals, three start ups and two kids later, she had a fresh network for her business, a deep fondness for the Bay Area... and a husband who had limited prospects for ever affording a house anywhere closer than several hours away from anyone we knew. So she green-lit another big dramatic move, this one landing us halfway between Philadelphia and New York. That was ten years and four start ups ago now, along with the start of my consulting business. (We now own a house, and one of these days, it might even be worth more than we owe on it.)

So what I've become, over the course of my adult life, is a consultant who has been able to learn a ferocious amount from too many start ups in too many consumer categories... because I've had the base and support that's made it all possible. In all of those jobs, I've been able to bring high focus to the work, not just because that's how I'm wired, but because my wife has given me the freedom to do that. Along with the confidence to always know she had my back, and that she trusted me to do what was right, in the long-term, for the family.

It's her birthday today, and what I really wanted to do for her was get her a new car that we've been researching and planning since the start of the year. That plan was compromised by forces beyond our control, a tax bill from several years ago, that exists due to a mistake from an old employer, unrelated to my consulting work. It will likely resolve in our favor, but in case it doesn't, we have to put off the purchase. It's just, honestly, the worst.

Just like 15+ years ago, when we postponed home ownership, she will support a decision that requires faith in her spouse.

And just like then, she'll make me understand, in ways that are simple and profound, why she's the best thing that has ever happened to me.

So, if you want to know how I've managed to keep moving forward, and to always be in a position where I'm learning something new, and striving to be better?

It's because I've got someone who brings that out of me.

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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.

Thinking About Cell Phone Guns

Reach Out And Touch Someone

By now, social media has had weeks to deal with the land rush business involved in the gun that looks like a cell phone, seen at the top of this piece.

As a marketing and advertising consultant who has worked on a sizable number of client concerns that went against my own personal beliefs, I'm not going to get into how I feel about this. As a pro, you have to take the mindset of an attorney, argue the best case in the court of the marketplace, and trust in the verdict of the public. Doing anything less limits not just your billings, but also your opportunities to learn for future clients. I've learned some truly breakthrough points from clients that I rarely discuss. It's just the way of the work.

So what's really telling here isn't the existence of a weapon that looks like something else... but that it's the first of its kind. As the market demand shows, there's a strong desire for many enthusiasts to carry a firearm without anyone knowing they have one. We've also established that due to effective lobbying, restricting the hobby is rarely a legislative possibility.

So the question isn't whether or not there will be cell phone guns. More, it's a question of when the piece will be both, and much more concealable.

But let's go further, really. Why should things that a user wants to conceal look like, well, what you'd expect them to look like? Putting the same phone tech into something that looks like a compact mirror would seem to be easy, and a natural for a younger demographic, especially in a school setting. Make it more like a tape measure with a slide out screen for hard hat types, and yes, that's another seemingly simple transformation to firearm. I'd be surprised if an adult toy that allowed for a more discrete pass through an airport security checkpoint would be a tough product to sell.

Oh, and if you can combine all of these capabilities into one device?

I want to make ads for that product.

And have equity in the company that makes 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.

Lurching Towards Progress

It's easy to see how the Internet has had a coarsening effect on modern culture. Just looking at the comments section, or a walk through social media, could convince you that we've never been less thoughtful as a species. But for every trollish moment and churlish experience, other points towards enlightenment come to the fore. I thought I'd share a few with you here, just to encourage.

1) The end of gratuitous laddie embellishment.

I used to work in marketing for music instrument retail, and there was no more embarrassing part of the business than the periodic photo shoots and "booth babe" use. While it was defensible on a pure mercantile and demographic level, it also seemed incredibly limiting, since the only way the field was going to grow would be to, well, become more welcoming to the very people who were likely turned off by the practice.

This is more or less what's happened, since the Web makes the use of models pointless... just like in "Playboy." This week saw the news that two of the larger surviving guitar magazines had done away with the practice. With those sort of models available to all whenever they want them, adding them to guitar shots has become passe, and amen to that. Oh, and as a further aside? Walk into an MI store now, and you'll find a much more welcoming environment towards women, and a great deal of different sized gear for different sized people.

2) An inexorable force towards, well, freedom.

While the Web has done no end of ill for professional journalism due to the considerable issues involved in monetizing content, it's also a clear factor in the uprising against repressive regimes across the world. From the Arab Spring to the Panama Papers, from Wikileaks to (perhaps) small campaign donors mitigating the impact of dark money PACs in the U.S., the Web has been the key leveling factor in systems that were previously thought infallible.

3) Activism can be done 24/7/365, and from nearly anywhere.

Fifty years ago, if you had an issue with something that was happening elsewhere in the world, your ability to do anything about it required extraordinary commitment, as well as personal flexibility in one's professional life. Now, social media makes action, even if it doesn't seem terribly sincere or effective, something you can do at any moment you've got a connection. It's not a coincidence that an expansion of personal rights, social boycotts, and buy-one give-one businesses have all exploded in the past decade.

4) Data has never been better, and it's always getting better.

This falls right into the wheelhouse of marketing and advertising, but for me, one of the great parts about working in adtech is that the data is always getting more exact and more telling. From greater verification to more esoteric calculations and ways of thinking about the numbers, there's clear inspiration from analytic-driven fields like sports and financial markets... and, honestly, more creativity than you might imagine. That kind of thing is only going to keep growing with the IoT and mobile-first use, of course.

5) Building your personal brand, and crowd-sourcing, has never been easier.

Mostly because staying in touch with friends and colleagues is something we all just do now, because it's really no trouble at all. And as a personal aside, some readers might remember a column where my niece did a personal piece of marketing to crowdsource her expenses in fighting off thyroid cancer. This week saw the return of a clear prognosis, and the transition to far more appropriate points of concern for an 18-year-old, such as college and the prom. Progress 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.