Consulting With Teeth

Words To Consult By

My wife is many things; a mom, an instructor, and an unstoppable force. But what fuels all of that is curiosity. She wants to know how things work, how they could work better, and isn't afraid to ask. She also plays a harp, and has done so for decades.

(Don't worry, this is all leading to marketing and advertising later. Stay with me.)

So this weekend, with her main harp starting to act up with some minor aches and pains -- buzzing on a couple of strings, minor cosmetic issues, and some concerns over recent string breakage due to a faulty tuner -- we needed to bring it in for some TLC. Which put us in close contact with an extremely specialized consulting experience, which is the world of a harp regulator.

There probably aren't more than a few dozen people who are qualified to do this work in the entirety of the United States, honestly. The person we met and contracted to do the work on my wife's harp is a classically-trained musician who found herself in the field due to a chance encounter with the master craftsman who made harps for the most famous company in the field. She then received extensive training with the instrument, all the way down to a full deconstruction and re-assembly of an instrument that costs more than many cars on the road. A full-sized harp can have literally hundreds of distinct parts and pieces, and has strong mechanical pressure on it. It's far from a simple machine, and to find someone with the ear to know what they are doing, plus the patience to get the tech right, is a very rare combination.

Since my wife is also technically inclined, and finds how harps work to be fascinating, she then asked a question that I'm very familiar with, from my time as a marketing and advertising consultant. "Do you think I could learn how to do this myself?"

The question wasn't meant meant in malice, or to diminish the professionalism of the technician, or her skill set. It was just a question without an agenda. We also weren't trying to negotiate for price, or considering anything other than using the tech; her payday was in no jeopardy. But she answered it with the best and only possible answer, and it made me smile in the moment, and for hours afterward. (She also said it with a smile, which helped.)

"Well, yes, but it's not easy to get really good at it."

Which is the entire gist of experience, really, and always in the back of my mind when I help a client with copywriting, creative direction, design concepts and the like. Also, I suspect, in the back of the minds of the designers and coding techs that are part of the M&AD family. Sure, we could teach you how to do this work. But we can't teach you how to be, well, us. That takes experience, insight, access to data analytics, and maybe even talent. (Maybe.)

We can, and do, tell clients optimal practices. It's part of the gig in consulting, and especially with new prospects, you need to establish your bona fides. I'm also certain that we've been used for fishing expeditions where a prospect wasn't quite up front in their motivations for taking the call, and weren't ever going to use us for more than surface insights. It's an occupational hazard.

But if you want to do the same level of work that we do, with the same efficiency, turn time, etc.?

You pretty much have to be us.

Which is not easy. Not easy at all.

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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 Emperor's New Phone Jack

So fine it's like it's not there

I am a much better marketing and advertising professional for having the experience of being a father.

One of my favorite aspects of that role has been reading to my kids at night, which started, of course, with fairy tales.

My kids like magic. Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, and before that, Zagazoo and The BFG. I always tried not to read the same books over and over again, but some times, you have to. There's only a few things that get to the status of all-time favorite.

If you were to ask either of my daughters what their father's favorite story is, they'd be able to tell you in a heartbeat.

"The Emperor's New Clothes."

Not just because it's funny, easily understood, and that it might also be the only one in the classic canon that relates to my professional role. More so, because it teaches an incredibly important lesson for kids (and maybe girls especially), and also to anyone in a corporate setting -- the importance of being able to go against the prevailing wishes of a crowd and hold to, well, what should be common sense.

Or, at least, what might matter to people outside of the room.

You know. Like your actual customers.

Which leads me to pivot to the new iPhone's move to eliminate the headphone jack from the handset, with users now either having to go to wireless earbuds, or to a corded unit that splits off the power dongle. (A dongle that is also, well, easily lost. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

The money quote from this is that Apple considers themselves to be courageous for making the move, in an exceptionally tone-deaf PR moment. But independent of that, we need to just speak to the obvious point which is that ear buds should never cost something like the $159 that the "airBuds" are said to cost... because, well, just about everyone has lost a pair of ear buds or ten over the course of their lives, and that's the only thing that's going through the minds of the people I've talked to about this.

Sure, something has to give to get more power, longer battery life, faster speeds, and the other obvious gains from the new handset. But the plain and simple of the new model is that if the unit came in two flavors -- with and without analog jack -- the vast majority of younger (and most churning) consumers, who operate their units with buds all the time, wouldn't give it up.

They've learned to live with the current speed and battery life. They aren't buying what you are selling as anything more than a price hike, and one that's not exactly, well, courageous.

Especially for a company with growing PR nightmares of tax fraud, child labor, and slowing innovation. Who are sitting on more cash than just about anyone in the world.

A more outward-thinking group, especially one that understands that competitors in the space are ravenous, would get closer to VR, holograms, more customization in voice recognition, etc. Even the simple act of pitching more secure over the ear exercise bud options, or a locator app for lost hardware, would have helped.

Instead, Apple just strips away the headphone jack and tells the world that they are courageous for going naked.

Well, I suppose. The marketplace, as always, will decide. Maybe there's just so many people in the iPhone Empire that naked will be just fine.

But what they call courage?

Might not be quite so echoed by the more direct in the audience.

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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.

Leave of Absence

Vegasy

If writing is a muscle -- and, well, it is -- it's something of an understatement to say that I am pretty well developed.

This blog now has over 200 posts to its credit. My music blog (what, you didn't know I have a music blog? It's about my old rock band, which just might play again one of these days) has another 30 posts, just in the past few months. The sports blog has another (gulp) 5,825 in the past decade, and counting

Before I made those blogs, I've written four books, wrote for dozens of clients and start-ups, and have pretty much paid the bills with words for my adult life. There's also four different social media feeds.

Way too many words, really.

Writing isn't just what I do for a living. It's how I define myself. The process is how I unwind at the end of most days, how I share and remember what I've learned, and how I give meaning to it all.

And, well, I've got to give it up.

Not all of it, of course. You might not even notice the drop in output, or might even be happy for less. But personal circumstances (an injury to my spouse that is going to require surgery and several months of rehab. a sudden outbreak of a summer cold that's completely knocked me sideways), combined with professional and personal commitments, are going to make certain sacrifices in terms of time served inevitable.

Besides, the clients (always) come first. And if you are really in the market for more of my words, you are more than welcome to go read more of them. They just won't all be about marketing and advertising.

Back in a bit!

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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.