GPS Sugar Beets: Tech Disruptions

Precision Food Inc

Here's something that I didn't know until recently... one of the hidden but potent benefits of global positioning systems involves doing a better job of feeding the planet. It turns out that the tech can be used for something called precision agriculture, where plants are optimally placed and watered, with exceptional control over the yield and livelihood of the crop. For items like sugar beets, which have exceptional fragility to go with delicate needs in terms of the mix of water, food and sunlight, the tech is wildly popular among farmers, because the return on investment is just a constant. All without any of the queasiness of genetically mutated organisms, scary chemicals, or anything else that would bring up moral issues.

Now, if you had seen ahead for this application of tech, you could have made some nice coin, either from starting a company that made the gear, or from providing venture capital at good rates to farmers that were looking to make the change, and so on. And that's how this all pivots back to marketing and advertising, which is what we discuss here.

No one, we can assume, makes mobile tech with the pure and unadulterated interest in impacting something as mundane as email... but, well, that's happened. In a big way. Responsive templates are now table stakes because you can't be sure what kind of platform and screen your lead will use to access your material. Subject lines are now subject to not just ISP filtering, but to truncation from smaller display screens. Geotargeting, once seen as creepy and ineffective because e-commerce plays for brick and mortar weren't going to match an office or home laptop to a shopping situation, is now increasingly necessary to close the last mile of a sale.

By the way? That pace of change is going to just keep growing. Smartphone use while commuting is going to go from text to voice, as laws and social prohibitions against distracted driving kick in hard. (Honestly, look for texting drivers to be treated like drunk drivers very, very soon.) Syncing email across devices and dayparts will be table stakes. Mobile sizes could easily change again, either through different sized screens (I still long for the error-free typing of a full qwerty keyboard and holstered phones, but I'm beyond the event horizon of prospects, I know), or through the inevitable introduction of holograms to more optimal screen sizes, or heads-up VR through appliances.

The point is this: change, even in something that seems mature, is inevitable. Thinking through such things, and keeping an eye out for trends that could impact your business, is just required.

After all, these sugar beets aren't going to grow themselves, Neither is your business.

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Death Or Glory

Our once (and future?) logo

One of my first and most potent lessons in sales and marketing happened before I was, well, in the field. I cut my teeth as a DIY indie musician, leading a rock band for much of a decade, with a few hundred gigs in a bunch of areas. (Above, you'll see our logo. Bitchin', no?)

While the band was unsuccessful commercially, I learned great life lessons from the experience, and made some truly lasting relationships. It's also been a big part of my professional life as a consultant, because at its core, stage time is stage time, and it's fairly impossible to be too nervous in a corporate setting. The latter isn't going to boo, clear the room, or throw beer at you. Well, not often.

We're now coming up on a meaningful anniversary for the band, which has led to a spark of interest from some of the alumni... and there's the quality of what Seth Godin refers to as an idea virus here. I'm finding myself looking back through old track lists, mulling over what covers might work with those songs now, asking friends and players for ideas on staffing the holes in the lineup, daydreaming about T-shirt designs and so on, and so on.

All for a business that failed financially before, and will most assuredly fail again, at least in terms of time and money spent versus any income brought in. There's no hue and cry from our fan base because, well, there wasn't really a fan base to make that hue and cry. Even bands with fan bases are incredibly challenged in the current market environment, since digital distribution of music has been a simple case of devaluing the income potential for the musicians. If we do this again, it's strictly a hobby for the "benefit" of friends and family, even if we were to somehow attract outside attention.

Which makes it Art, perhaps, or something a little more onanistic. My thoughts so far are to play gigs rarely if at all, put new songs up on a web site for voluntary payments, and in a flight of fancy, replace or supplement all of the old T-shirts. If time is made for this, it will be to just do the stuff that's fun, and none of the stuff that isn't.

What's not fun as an indie musician? Grubbing for gigs, begging radio stations to play you, journalists to review and cover your events, and doing everything you can to drum up a crowd with sweat equity. And that all happens before the gear moving, fights with sound personnel and gate keepers, and so on. Even all these years later, with the fading of memory, I've got no inclination at all to spend time schmoozing gatekeepers, or finding someone to do that for us.

And yet... I can't completely separate the urge to create from the urge to find a market, because both urges are, well, creative. Asking me to make without marketing is like asking me to write and not record, or rehearse without performing; a near impossible separation of what has always seemed like a paired process.

Besides, imagine if we were, well, so much better or more successful at the enterprise now that we're older and filled with the knowledge that we aren't going to ever make a living from music.

It's, well, keeping me up just thinking about it.

Just like in the old days.

Play me out, Joe Strummer...

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Trump Wins, And Attack Ads Lose

Attack Ad Proof?

Tonight in Indiana, the Republican presidential primary more or less ended, as Donald Trump's end game victory over Senator Ted Cruz led to a suspension of the Senator's campaign. While Trump won't acquire the delegates needed until the final states vote in less than a month to wrap things up, and Ohio governor John Kasich seems ready to soldier on in the hopes of an 11th hour reversal, it seems fairly academic now. A man who has never served in elective office is the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for the American Presidency.

There will be a great deal of Monday morning quarterbacking as to how this all happened. There were plenty of factors. Too many candidates that were too similar early, which helped to splinter the non-Trump vote. A media that could never say no to a Trump appearance, leading to earned promotional benefits that dwarfed all other coverage. Trump's willingness to avoid canned stump speeches and predictability, ensuring more attention. A built-in competency at media manipulation, and an ability to bring in untapped voters to a larger tent, particularly in states with open primaries. A never-ending side show of outrage, controversy, late night humor fodder and red meat for the base, all of which meant that the story was rarely, if ever, anything but Trump. Add it all up, and it lead to a narrative of inevitability, and a political season that will dominate future textbooks.

But you read me for marketing and advertising, and what this campaign has proven, more than anything else to me, is the growing ineffectiveness of traditional political spots.

In state after state, the stop Trump PACs trotted out an absurd number of ads that never seemed to slow the candidate's momentum. While they might have contributed to the candidate's overall unfavorable ratings, or kept Trump from reaching majorities until later in the campaign, they rarely got to a point of real effectiveness. When rivals attacked Trump directly, the damage always seemed to come in reverse.

Consider the states where Trump actually suffered setbacks. Wisconsin, where an infrastructure of talk radio and a very active electorate gave Cruz his last meaningful win. Iowa, where caucuses played to Cruz's ground game advantage. Texas and Ohio, where Cruz and Kasich kept home field advantage. A number of smaller states, particularly in the rural West, where politics tends to be a personal and retail experience.

In none of these places was an air game of attack ads effective in stopping the real estate mogul. Even ads that seemed effective, like a spot where women read seemingly damming quotes from the candidate's own mouth, and made Trump himself wince on the podium, had no effect.

Why? Well, it's fairly simple, and also plainly terrifying to media networks: no one really watches television commercials any more. Especially outside of live DVR-proof events like sports or, well, debates. We're all ready to click off to something else, or eschew live television entirely.

So what actually works now? Social media, which Trump's campaign took to like a duck to water. Word of mouth, which is especially effective when a campaign activates someone who normally doesn't engage in politics. Again, a strength for Trump over his rivals. Email marketing that seems new, and different, and novel... and since Trump didn't push for donations, that, again, qualified.

Will it work in the long run? The betting professionals don't think so, and you generally have to respect those folks, because of their track record. But few thought Trump would get this far, and no one has put a lasting hurt on him yet.

What I do know, however, is this: if Trump is finally stopped, and it isn't done through broadcast media spots, but through another marketing channel?

We will see very different campaigns in the future. Ones that the broadcast networks, or broadcast advertising pros, won't like nearly so much.

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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.