Fraction, Friction, Fiction

How it feels right now

 So for the past few weeks, I've been in multiple conversations with multiple prospective clients that are starting to make me question their good faith. (And given the timing, whether it's something I'm encouraging.)

That's one of the drawbacks to consulting. You just don't have full visibility into what's going on. So when a client goes dark for a few days, the list of reasons why can get uncharitable with a quickness. Especially when you are pre-contract, the client is taking on junior staff, or the initiative is part of a bigger and oft-delayed rollout.

Some employers will speak to the idea that the new modern workplace is increasingly fractional, with people taking on projects that truly interest them, or where they have something unique to contribute. This is especially true with remote work, with report of people doing more than one job (badly, of course) without either employer being aware of the double dipping.

All of which would be fine if, well, these limited bursts of work carried the day for all of the time when you were on the bench, ready to go in. The reality is that with very limited exceptions, the work that you do in marketing and advertising isn't something that only you could do. Unless you have a lot of folks bidding for your fractions, the whole isn't going to add up.

Which leads you to take on junior work or side hustles... and, well, taking on RFPs and dealing with the kinds of clients that lead you to question their good faith. 

Being an erratically paid consultant is one thing. Being an entirely unpaid one is quite another.

And being grateful for the clients that trade integrity for integrity, show loyalty by giving you more than just 100% fit work, or expand their time with you in troublesome times?

Is the most important thing of all.

(At least, until all of the dominos fall at once and we have very different problems...)

Driving Your Business

10 and 2 FTW

Recently, a prospective client asked how other companies (i.e., some of the ones that we have worked for) executed in a particular marketing channel. They were basically looking for direct and concrete yes/no answers on tactics to help solve an immediate problem. So, pretty much bread and butter consulting work.

I did not give them a yes/no answer. 

Here’s why.

a) We were being put on the spot to answer the question without data. 

b) Nuance and Tradeoffs isn’t just a terrible name for a band, it’s how marketers make decisions that are more likely to work out in the long run. If you ask us to make decisions in the dark in a pitch meeting, you are asking us to be omniscient. And, well, no.

Unfortunately for me, my prospect is new to the channel they were asking about. So just telling them no, sorry, data or go pound sand did not seem to be a good way to close a deal. Or look anything like a friendly and non-evasive provider that they would want to work with.

So, I did what many of the folks who have worked with me in the past will recognize as a common move. 

I asked a question rather than answer one. 

Here’s the question: Assuming you drive, how do you do it?

There are plenty of ways to drive a car, after all. You can clean it up nice and make sure all of your glass and mirrors are perfect, obey every speed limit, drive defensively and more. You can choose the safest possible vehicle, regardless of mileage or comfort, to give you the best chance of getting to your destination without mishap. You can drive an electric-powered car powered by your own solar array, because you want to model good behavior around mitigating climate change. You can rev the engine, gun it at the traffic light, and maybe even run yellow to red lights when you think no one is looking because you need to go fast and just enjoy driving that way

But what you really should be doing is taking the context into consideration and making the best decision for your self and brand. Maybe drive a little differently depending on who is in the car, the time of day, whether there are speed traps or traffic cameras, whether the road is smooth or filled with potholes. Run that red light when the road is empty, and you are getting someone to an emergency room. Take the bigger car when you have more people and cargo. And so on. Drive the way that makes the most sense for your business.

Now, for the vast majority of people and businesses? They are going to drive in a consistent manner while devoting their conscious thought to other matters. Execution can easily become rote, and maybe an extra mile or two of fuel economy isn’t worth having to remember to hit the Fuel Economy Mode button. (My hybrid’s got one of these. Helpful.)

But if you find that your tactics are not reflective of your brand? Or that you keep getting traffic tickets, flat tires, or no one wanting you to drive them anywhere? Change your tactics.

And drive happy.

(Side note: I don’t know if the pitch worked, but I would be surprised if it did not – if only because the prospect used the same analogy back to me later in the conversation. We’ll see.)

How We Are Going To Solve Social Disengagement

Not A Role Model

A recent item from my news consumption: the idea that two years into a pandemic that has exhausted the patience of many, general bad behavior is just on the rise in lots of places. From unhinged ideas of legitimate political discourse to increasing rates of violent crime, more deaths and injuries from aggressive driving, and so on, and so on.

Hell in a handbasket, and it’s left to the reader why the Handbasket Industry has such a PR problem.

Meanwhile, more and more companies are also moving to remote workers and fractional employees, either because they have to (hard time to be a recruiter these days!), or because they want to (hey, look at all of the money we are saving from not having to pay for an office... plus, no one quit).

Depending on your situation and outlook, this either makes for the best of times (you’ll get me back in that traffic jam and cubicle over my cold, dead hands) or the worst (work for a half dozen bosses, get paid a living wage or health benefits by none of them, and spend every waking hour calculating how much you aren’t making from some hustle).

Is there any wonder why it’s a hard time to be a marketer?

Try to get someone to engage with your content, attend your live event, respond to your job posting, get excited by your latest creative release… and then watch those efforts get overwhelmed by geopolitical forces (NBC really might be questioning their Olympics commitment right about now), privacy concerns, Big Tech trying to change the rules of the road, and literally hundreds of daily demands crowding their attention. 

Also, more frequency from everyone, because you aren't getting the same amount of attention that you used to.

Luckily, as marketers, M&AD has the answer to such problems. It involves two concepts that, if you’ve been on a call with us before, you’ve likely heard.

Patience and data.

Any marketer that claims they have an immediate and perfect fix to any problem is someone you should probably walk away from, slowly, while avoiding eye contact and keeping a good awareness of your wallet. Learning comes from incremental steps, testing from statistically significant data sets, deviation from mean and a whole host of other not particularly sexy, grifty, or transformative concepts. T’was ever thus. You can – sometimes! – skip steps by using the knowledge that you gained from some other test or gig, but not always. Journey and work, not end point and magic. If you don't love what you do, please find another way to spend your time.

We will not recover from the shocks of the past few years all at once. We will not get the people who drive too fast, abuse their employees, shirk privacy concerns and shout their opinions while brandishing weapons to have a one-and-done Redemption (or Incarceration?) moment.

Rather, we will bring them back with patience, grace, humor, kindness and shared humanity. We will remind them, with varying degrees of patience and candor, that the email needs to be read and replied to, that other people share the physical and digital road with them, and that marketing and advertising that only cares about a single thing is, well, very bad marketing and advertising. Also management.

Creation takes time. Destruction is quick. You can see the evidence of the creation all around you, which is why the destruction is so upsetting. Don’t give in to destruction. Fight the good fight. Just like our best clients, colleagues and friends.