The Virtue Of An Indirect Path

The Scenic Route

As a quasi-soft science, marketing and advertising attracts a fair number of people who come to the discipline later in their career. This isn't a field where you get a certificate to practice, or have to endure a residency or apprenticeship. It is something that many just learn by doing, with the caveat that bad marketing is frequently better than no marketing.

This means that there is, well, a lot of bad marketing out there, but also no shortage of different ideas. From a direct marketing standpoint, that's all to the good; the worst result in any test is no difference between creatives. The challenge is to fold the merits from these other backgrounds into the field.

Which is where I get to defend my own peculiar career path.

As a teenager, I was utterly convinced that I was going to be a journalist, and in particular, a sports writer. It was what I thought about all the time, from reading histories of various leagues to delving deep into statistical nerdery. Sports are how I got through math classes, because my brain well and truly hated most math classes, which might come as something of a shock to lots of people in my network. I developed the ability to prepare for the questions that I needed to ask, never lacked for the courage to ask said questions, and have a single-task focus that helped my subjects to open up, more often than not, and give me workable quotes.

So I went to a school (Syracuse) that was known for journalism, and focused on the field -- newspapers -- that held the most appeal to me. (The broadcast guys and girls were always a little too pretty for comfort, frankly.) As a hedge because there's something a little off-putting about old men asking young athletes questions about playing games, and because Syracuse insists that you try a lot of classes before you lock into your major, I developed an interest in political science, because that meant I could go from sports to politics later in life. That turned into a second major, because of good circumstances, and a desire to make my resume more impressive. I raced through school fast, doubled up on degrees, and then cast my resume to the winds, ready to work anywhere in America that needed a fresh sports writer.

Luckily, this didn't work. At all. Partly due to poor timing, partly due to poor networking, but mostly because starting salaries in journalism wouldn't have been high enough to pay for my student loans, let alone for the transportation that I'd need to do the job in the first place.

So instead of a direct path into that field, I did a lot of temp jobs. Used my speed typing and detail skills to work in law offices, which paid better than journalism and let me use public transportation, bicycles and feet. Stayed active in journalism by doing free-lance work for music magazines. Got the music bug and recorded my own stuff, then helped a friend start a trade conference, which finally led to a job in marketing for one of the event's sponsors... six years after getting my degree.

My first job in marketing taught me more than any job in the field that I've had before or since, and I owe that employer a ton... but they received terrific value as well. Political science meant that I was skilled at boiling down decisions to the legal minimums, and to hear the other side before making a case for either option. Journalism meant that I'd dig into details that others missed, and not just take things at face value. And my sports nerdery made me able to dig into numbers that other marketers would run away from, and invent my own derivatives from those, because that's kind of what sports nerds do.

Had I just gone to business school instead of journalism, maybe I have a similar or more lucrative career... but honestly, I don't think the choice would have prepared me better. By coming in through a different door, I bring other aspects to the table, and that perspective helps to create a personal brand.

Because at the end of the day, there's no single path to a career in marketing and advertising, and maybe not even a preferred one. You can learn the basics in a class or in the field, but since the nature of the work isn't set and forget, where you start is far from where you finish.

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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.

Muhammad Ali: The End Of Fear

Preach

A quick few words about the passing of one of the most important people of the past one hundred years. Not just for marketers and advertisers!

When I was a kid, not to put too fine a point on it... Muhammad Ali was widely loathed, especially in my social circle. I won't repeat the words used to describe him, but Uppity might have been the least charged among them, with all kinds of other indignities hurled his way.

The only thing that kept the haters at bay was the fact that (a) Ali kept winning, and (b) the only guys to beat him, even in his failing years, were also African-Americans. Rooting for the likes of George Foreman, Leon Spinks or Larry Holmes was all just rooting for anyone on the Not Ali ticket.

So, what was it that people hated about the guy?

It really wasn't his stand against the war in Vietnam. Working classes of every race hated that war early and often, since only their sons got chosen to serve, and the long-term "vision" of a curtailed political system was rarely a big deal. Nor was it the points for which Ali could be pilloried; his cruelty in the ring to outmatched opponents in his peak days, his occasional political missteps, his general tendency towards outrage, his defense of a sport that gave him riches, but also helped to rob him of his intellect.

Rather, this.

Before Ali, there were controversial black athletes. Sonny Liston, the man he beat to be champion the first time, was a figure of considerable distaste for White America. Besides, every pioneer tends to wind up with arrows on their back and stomach.

Ali took that controversy to an entirely different level, because he didn't believe in false humility about his opinion of his opponent's competence. So instead of keeping his head down and reciting cliches, he took public discourse into realms that were not seen before. By doing this, Ali gave the biggest possible green light to competent African-Americans of all stripes that always following someone else's rules, regardless of the merit of these rules, was for rubes.

Because of one guy, being himself, refusing to be afraid.

This, to me, is the legacy of Ali, and why he was important.

Without Ali, maybe we don't get Mandela, Prince, Obama, and so many others.

Greatness isn't just what you do. It's what you inspire.

And very few people have ever inspired more greatness than Muhammad Ali.

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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.

Tech Vs. Ethics

Let's Shake

One of my recurring concerns is how technology seems to be outpacing personal ethics. Mapping the human genome is amazing, but it could easily lead to the creation of eugenics-driven conformities. Genetic modifications of food could lead to massive benefit to humanity, or unforeseen miseries. Transplants and medical developments are amazing, but if decisions are driven purely by economics, abuse seems like it would be rife. In our lifetimes, we've seen tech end employment in any number of fields, and communications breakthroughs speed a "race to the bottom" in billables for previously lucrative trades. And so on.

There's no doubt that we live in amazing and challenging times. And where that relates to marketing and advertising comes around to something that rarely seems like an area of innovation, but still is: list segmentation. Specifically, redlining, and how the last mile of connectivity is going to make some amazing and troubling things possible.

First, a mild history lesson. Redlining was a racist practice in which minority borrowers were prevented from moving into communities through the denial of loans... but while it's obvious that decisions based on skin color are wrong, decisions based on income, assets and credit records happen all the time. And how that relates in the digital age is something that's eventually going to hit the public eye. But let's take it from the theoretical and make it easier to understand.

On a personal level, I've contributed to political campaigns before, and I've also recently been in the market for a new car. Both of these activities are in my online cookie record, and also have offline assets, through the use of a credit card and providing offline contact information. In both cases, I've been the subject of remarketing and retargeing campaigns, and had my info sold and rented for lead generation and dunning efforts. Absolutely ordinary stuff. I'm guessing you've had the same experience.

But let's dig deeper. For the car shopping, I arranged for test drives for my wife of a half dozen different models. If one of those car companies had been exceptionally aggressive in their pursuit of our business, they could have bought out all available advertising inventory, to the point where the only automotive ads were from one advertiser. It's a simple matter of overbidding in an real-time bidding environment. So far, the advertising environment has been too varied, and the adtech too much about scale to make this too obvious... but this kind of lockout work gets easier in a Google / Facebook centric ad environment, which has been where the market has been moving for the past few years, anyway.

Now, imagine how my advertising mix might look when it's personalized not just on my laptop, smartphone and tabled, but also on 30-second spots on broadcast and cable. (For the record, Adobe already claims to sell this capability.) Lockout gets easier here, and starts to end the idea of guaranteed reach and openings for competing brands. Only the big money brands would ever be willing and able to go the extra cost mile for their leads, and while this seems a little odd, it's not unprecedented, especially when you compare it to paid search listings.

So in this scenario, I'm only seeing ads for a single car brand, rather than the half dozen that were in my consideration set. And while that might seem a little Orwellian, but it's still just a purchase, and I can still make a different purchase based on follow-up emails or our own memory from the test drives. But I'm less likely to go that way, because advertising is effective. And so is the lack thereof.

Now, let's go beyond a purchase, and into something that might matter more for the republic. The tools for a political campaign are the same ones you'd use in e-commerce. There's also no reason why the organizations that agree with my views wouldn't want to control my ad mix. Perhaps I'd be less apt to donate my time and money in a setting where the only ads I ever see are for the opponent, and everything starts to seem like a fait accompli. Or I'm less likely to donate again, assuming that I haven't hit my limit yet, because there's no evidence that my candidate is making any ad spends at all with my money.

Perhaps all of this isn't as potent as it used to be, with social media taking over so much of our media mix, and personal technology seeming less prone to lockout. But again, ads in a dominant social media mix are even easier to fix.

I don't mean to cast this all in an ominous light. As a marketing and advertising pro, nothing makes my job easier than being able to tailor my creative and messaging to a highly relevant audience, and calling out benefits that matter more to an "expert" list has been my sweet spot as a pro for a very long time.

But just because the tools are powerful, doesn't mean they have to be used for, well, good. Or evil.

Amazing and challenging 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.