Five Ways To Lead... Without Title

Pay It Forward

In my current gig, I don't have direct reports. (Not a complaint; just where we are as a company.) No one has to do what I tell them, and most folks that I work with have much more experience in the field. And yet, I feel like I have a great deal of sway in my role, and can make a real impact in a wide range of factors.

At the risk of this sounding like a humble brag, how does this happen?

1) Positioning. By bringing in experience from outside of the field, I've been able to predict which campaigns are going to work, and which ones are going to tank... not through my ability to See The Future, but by being able to extrapolate from the relevant past.

2) Timing. If life in an office is somewhat analogous to a game of poker, then my contributions are more like the player who doesn't play that many hands, but does bet big when the cards are running in my favor. I choose my battles more, instead of having to contest every pot. It also makes for a far more effective outcome on the decisions that I feel more strongly about, since I'm collecting favors for future payoff.

3) Standing. I try to ground my opinions in precedent and optimal practice. The only way you get those points is to do the homework of looking through data for clues, and read a great deal of outside work to keep inspiring the new findings. (There may be a method to this whole "no direct reports" thing, in other words.)

4) Deflection. The numbers that I run could generate all kinds of self-aggrandizing points like what happens when the subject line is something I wrote, what the campaigns were generating before my hire date, and how other aspects of what we do drive more engagement and value. But that's not how I do my business, because it would be, well, unseemly. I'd rather teach my colleagues and clients my practices and techniques than be "magic"... because that sort of thing just isolates you, and makes it clear in the long term that you care more about your career than your employer. Take care of the latter, and the former will take care of itself.

5) Perspective. We cut our trending work all the way down to 24 yearly periods (i.e., every 15 days), and it's easy to try and make bigger deals out of outliers and possible trends, or to try to take the short cut with game-changing "big" moves. But that's not how the world works, or at least, how it's worked for the past three decades in the space, at the places where I've worked. Instead, you do better by building your case for optimal practices, brick by brick, flight by flight, case by case. Especially with anything that has elements of direct marketing, moonshot development moments are rare, and should be given exceptional scrutiny for mitigating circumstances.

That's because true growth isn't generally found in single shot moments of transcendent wisdom, but in the 90% of life that is just showing up. And having the right habits to help ensure that you aren't getting in the way of growth.

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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.

When Live Sports Fail

Not Excited

Tonight as I settled in to watch my sporting jones of choice -- NBA playoff basketball -- I was hoping for a close game. Instead, for the second straight game in the Western Conference Finals, in a matchup that I've been anticipating all year, I got a boring blowout, and in all likelihood, the end of all drama in that series. Which comes on the heels of earlier best of seven series that only lasted five and six games, and also didn't deliver much in the way of drama. True, the Eastern Conference has had a few Game Sevens, and also looks like it might provide more excitement now that the Finals has become surprisingly competitive, but I'm not going to mince words. The thing that I've been looking forward to the most looks like a dud. (Note to Oklahoma City Thunder fans: I don't have a problem with your club, and I'm sure you are over the moon right now with their performance. I just want games that aren't blowouts. If your laundry wasn't involved, you'd want the same.)

Of course, the NBA playoffs have been cherries and cream compared to the tragedy that happened at the middle jewel in horse racing's Triple Crown last weekend, where a horse had to be euthanized on the track in a preliminary race, and ye gads, I'm not sure how you go on after something that sad. Which also comes on the heels of an extremely dull Super Bowl, with a lack of scoring or fourth quarter interest, beyond the fevered prayers of people with various bets. Oh, and if you want to continue the tale of woe, the myriad miseries befalling Brazil these days are really not casting a positive light for the upcoming Olympics.

Let's roll this back into marketing and advertising now.

If sports were like other forms of entertainment media that was advertising or directly supported -- say, a run of anticipated TV shows, a string of tentpole / franchise movies, or concert festivals from big name recording artists -- that had a similar run of failure, there would be autopsies. Diminished upfront sessions. Tortured moratoriums into What's Wrong With X These Days, and how Kids These Days just had no eye for quality, or put up with substandard product because they knew no better. There would be savage teardowns of the talent, networks, media companies, hype machines, with much sniffing over how it's all going to Hell In A Handbasket (the official conveyance to Hell for lo these many years, which always seems odd to me, since travel by handbasket is never discussed in any other context)...

But sports? Bullet proof. If the Western Conference Finals in the NBA are a snooze and Thunder walk, well, wow, the Finals are must-see, either to determine if they are going to fall apart or continue their run. Horse racing will continue with the Belmont, since death at the track hasn't stopped racing for centuries, and aren't going to stop now. There will be a Super Bowl in February unless an asteroid ends all life on Earth, and an Olympics in four years no matter how badly the Rio Games go. Dull games, one can argue, are necessary, otherwise we'd not celebrate the exciting ones so much; if there were all exciting, none would be.

Which is why the cost drivers for sports placements and sponsorships are so alien to the rest of your media buying plan, and why so much of our media (hello, tightening political races! Surely the media companies' incredibly vested interest in a close race for maximum bidding for ad spots would never compromise the nature of coverage!) seems to be Nothing But Sports now.

It's bullet -- and boredom -- proof.

And probably rollback-proof, too.

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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.

Giving In To Creepy

Stalk Me

It's been nearly 15 years since "Minority Report", a dystopian sci-fi movie (is there any other kind?) that showed what personalized ads might look like on a biometric and personalized level. Well, if there were no boundaries to personal privacy, frequency control, and advertising was tied into a police state, rather than something that was tied to efficiency. Of course, you might already think we're in that dystopia, depending on your mood, and how often you wear tin foil on your head. But I digress.

As someone who has worked in adtech for most of my adult life, I can't tell you how much head shaking meh that movie has generated. Every time that automated technology has taken a tentative step forward -- adding first person names to email, dynamic elements in banners for e-commerce retargeting, swapping out ads in real-time bidding for more relevant work, upping the ante on offers to reactivate lapsed leads, and so on, and so on -- someone has inevitably brought up "Minority Report." Because adtech workers are still also consumers, and acutely aware of marketing in their own lives.

But the weird part of personalized adtech is how much we give a pass to other aspects of technology that are, well, far creepier than a more relevant banner. Every time you use a transponder in your car rather than interact with a person in a highway toll booth -- and the latter option is becoming nearly impossible, even if you'd like to take more time out of your day to be in the tourists only line -- you are giving up your exact location to an outside agency. The smartphone in your pocket could honestly double as an electronic ankle bracelet for people on parole. Depending on the age of your car, that's more tracking, and frequently it activates to alert you about service.

We have the tech to ensure that cars can't start unless the user can prove they are not inebriated, and if that tech becomes cheap enough, maybe it will be mandatory. That technology is racing the arrival of automated driving, which, given the public safety issues, might eventually lead to actually driving as a prohibited offense. (On the plus side, now everyone who wants to drink can. And we've also got a dramatically better world for the handicapped.) Something similar can be said about the transfer from analog to digital in medical records. And if you'd like to think negatively about any of that, to a world where everyone has to obey the speed limit at all times, has their medical information or credit history used against them in a linked buyer's profile, or has their food intake controlled (too many cheeseburgers this week, you're cut off), you can. The tech isn't good or bad; it just is.

The difference, of course, it that seeing the benefits of invasive tech advertising requires you to, well, work in advertising. Cut down on my time and costs at toll booths, and I'll let you monitor me. Smartphones are so useful, people get panicky if they are deprived of them for even a few minutes. No one wants to be misdiagnosed, or for their doctor to lack information. But no one believes that advertising has a similar benefit, or that the system would break if they somehow got their content without it.

But here's the thing... advertising actually *does* make your world better. It enables the production of expensive and beloved content, from high-end journalism to exceptional television, and if you want to live in a world where citizen journalists and user generated content take your media consumption from "Better Call Saul" and the New York Times to YouTube "stars" and whoever wants to write for free for the Huffington Post...

well, I'm sorry, but I'm not with you on the swap.

Because that's what at risk if cord-cutting and ad blockers achieve critical mass. An expansive and expensive increase on the audiences that remain, with a dramatically worse user experience.

So... who else is willing to put up with a little creepy?

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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.