Your Expected Contribution

Help Me, Piggy

This past week saw two interesting and seemingly unrelated events in my life that are merging in my mind.

The first was an interesting exercise with my teams and HR department at the day job, with the promise and actual delivery of personal insights as to how we are all seen by co-workers, in terms of the kinds of energy, strategies and modes of working.

My natural way of thinking for this kind of thing is to compare it to horoscopes (why yes -- I am perceptive! That's so interesting and unique to the sub-set of people born in this month of the year!), and to disregard what is told as nothing I didn't already know... but when you get under the hood and really consider what is said, there was real value in the process and exercise. (There's also the relatively tender matter of how much of this you will want to share, and with who. Knowledge is power, after all. Not always nicely used power...)

What was intriguing to me wasn't the specific points, but how it jibes with what the day job expects. It's a different role than what I bring to consulting, or parenting, or being a husband. Limiting my energy to my known role may limit how I'm seen, and make it seem like I'm holding something back, and not delivering the full contribution.

Which leads me to Saturday's activity, which was taking my eldest daughter, a high school junior, to her fifth different college visit. (No need to specify which one, as I'm not sure it's going to be in her final consideration set, but it was a fine presentation and pitch.)

What was especially valuable in this session was the publicization of a calculator Web site that estimates your EFC -- expected family contribution -- for when your child gets accepted to a school. This number takes your tax return, assets and current financial situation to bear to determine the student's level of aid, .

It is, as you might imagine, a daunting and sobering number, no matter how long you have kept this goal in mind. Making this number isn't going to be easy, and might require some significant need to leave my comfort zone -- either through pushing the consulting billing to higher levels, doing more to step up monetization of content, cutting expenses in ways we haven't been willing to do, or maybe even just adding formal second and third jobs. Setting our child up for a lesser educational experience than what my wife and I were able to achieve is just a non-starter, and expecting our kid to just achieve all goals through aid packages or exceptional debt acceptance is similarly unacceptable.

For the moment, we've got time to make some moves, but not nearly as much as we used to. We know we're not alone in this concern, as it's kind of the signature worry of the age. Maybe political change might make the situation better, too, but again, not something you can count on.

Your expected contribution.

I had no idea that phrase could seem so loaded, really...

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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.

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.

Four Indispensable Strategies to Increase E-mail Open Rates

Let's Get Open

(Wrote this one for the day gig, folks. You can see it live in the corporate wild here.)

Raising your open rates is a constant concern for many marketing managers in pharma and a prime focus of what we do at MNG Direct. Here are four abiding strategies that help us deliver results.

1) To go three steps forward, you might need to take one step back.

 Here’s a quick hypothetical scenario. You are running a simple A/B creative test for an e-mail campaign, which means you are splitting the list in half and making a single change so you can measure the impact of that decision. Rank the three outcomes below in order of preference.

a) Creative A performs 8% better than average, Creative B performs 4% worse

b) Creative A performs 28% worse than average, Creative B performs 15% better

c) Creative A performs 22% better than average, and Creative B performs 21% better

The answer is (drumroll please!)…B, then A, and then C.

That may seem counterintuitive, because we all want winners, and we’re leaving the two biggest ones on the sideline…but the problem with the results from Group C is that there’s no variation in the performance that you can use to inform future creative. When your work all performs the same, or is within a range where confidence from statistical significance is low, you do not have the information you need to make optimal choices for the next execution.

So, to sum up – when testing, go for bold single changes in test cells, made without fear. Learn from every test, and test whenever possible. It’s vital.

2) Counterpunch the clock with data.

 One of the most common questions in this industry is, when is the optimal time and day of the week to send e-mail? The problem is the question does not have a simple answer, because your e-mail does not hit the in-box in a vacuum.

Let’s imagine that you get a concrete answer – Monday at 8:30 am – and that it actually is the best time to send. This finding most likely came from data or a test and will become known by other e-mail professionals. Keep in mind that your healthcare professionals (HCPs) probably also subscribe to content newsletters, get notification e-mails from e-commerce vendors, and likely sift through dozens, if not hundreds, of e-mails in a day. So how many of these communications will wind up showing up in their in-boxes on Monday at 8:30 am? Probably too many for yours to really stand out.

At MNG Direct, we’ve seen consistent wins from dayparting in a more varied and granular approach, by category, click-through destination, frequency, and so on. This lets us generate a personalized plan for our flights and creates an atmosphere where we are continually learning. As a bonus, it also means that we are never overly dependent on a single time and day slot.

3) Mobile is more of a mindset than a platform. It’s also dominant.

 Many design professionals go for responsive coding in their e-mails to ensure smooth deployment in mobile handsets, and then they consider the job done. This leaves a lot of engagement on the table.

When an HCP is viewing your e-mail on a handset, it’s more than just a smaller screen that you have to worry about, more scrolling than on a desktop or laptop, or a different direction in panning. Dayparting is also a major consideration, since many HCPs are smartphone users who extend their accessibility beyond traditional business hours, and they may also not be willing or able to spend mobile bandwidth on high data transfers. With up to three out of every four people filtering for later or accessing e-mail content directly through mobile, your mindset needs to be mobile first, not mobile friendly. (As a final point on this, you also should be looking at your work on a variety of screens and monitoring how that display mix changes over time.)

4) Prioritize your testing levers.

 In every e-mail campaign, there are a number of variable choices that can have an impact on open rates. Sender names, subject lines, dayparting, preheaders, and preview pane creative elements are all in play, and that’s independent of more technical aspects like in-boxing to avoid the junk folder, hard and soft bounces, list hygiene, ISP white-listing, avoiding spam “honeypots,” and so on. Stay in the space long enough and you’ll wind up with winning and losing practices in all of the above, along with a sense of optimal practices, hopefully through test cell data.

But while all of these tactics have the ability to spike engagement metrics in different ways, they don’t have the same impact. Subject lines and sender names appear to all users, and dayparting also has universal impact. Getting deeper, preheaders and preview pane elements only have impact to the subset of users that are in a consideration path, but they can make all of the difference in the right placement, especially if you are looking to optimize beyond opens. As always, the data should drive your decision-making process.

Next Steps

While open rates may be the primary point of concern for most e-mail professionals, at MNG Direct, we take a more nuanced view, and we monitor a host of other metrics. That’s because any single e-mail metric, even one as important as open rate, will not give you the full indication of a campaign’s performance.

For instance…if your campaign has high opens but poor deliverability and high unsubscribes, that’s not a successful campaign. Similarly, a high click rate e-mail might sound great, but not if the opens are low, or if there are very few conversions on a landing page. Seasonality will also have an impact, and seeing how all of these metrics perform in relation to each other, over multiple flights, is also important.

Increasing your open rate is a laudable goal. But it shouldn’t be your only goal.

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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.

Making Money In Politics

Probably Not In Loose Bills

Like many people who do topical content, I'm really tired of feeling compelled to write about politics, especially Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President... but, well, when things that have never happened before happen, it's pretty much impossible to not have it sneak into your work and thoughts. Especially as it relates to marketing and advertising.

The hype du jour comes from a seeming ad lib in which the candidate either implied about the assassination of his opponent, or was alluding to the political power of Second Amendment enthusiasts. And for the purpose of this column, it doesn't really matter about our opinion of the tactic, since it achieved the goal of "earned" media -- which is to say, a carrying of the news cycle.

The fact that this doesn't seem to be translating into votes -- at least, according to the various polls and trending analysis -- doesn't seem to be having that much impact on the candidate's fund raising, which pulled in $51 million in June, and $80 million in July... but with almost none of that cash going to TV ads. According to Business Insider, the Trump campaign has even been outspent by third-party candidates Gary Johnson (Libertarian) and Jill Stein (Green).

Which leads me to wonder... well, what is the campaign spending the money on, since the single biggest expense of a presidential campaign is typically television ads?

As I write this, there are 91 days, or 13 weeks, left until the voters put this thing out of our collective misery. Historically in America, elections reach another level of hype and awareness to casual voters after Labor Day, but as you might have guessed by now, this isn't a typical election, if for no other reason that both major party principals have been very well-known public figures for decades. Minds are being made in the here and now, and media buying being what it is, it seems increasingly likely that the Trump campaign just isn't terribly concerned with reaching ad parity, at least not on television, or against the benefit of keeping campaign costs down.

This isn't without some minor and recent historical precedent. In 2004, John Kerry kept eight figures of revenue in reserve past Election Day for a legal challenge that never came, as the campaign said they were worried about a repeat of the Florida hanging chad experience. (A claim that, frankly, didn't pass the smell test, since it's not as if donors wouldn't have been energized by that news.)

But that campaign followed a typical media buying pattern, including extensive advertising in the primaries. Trump's approach has been to dominate programming, either with call-in interviews or created controversies.

And so long as we all play along -- which makes me really worry about what's coming down the pike to count as more noteworthy than what we've already seen -- it seems the candidate is content to let the Democrats control the paid air channel.

Partisan advocates note the increasing ineffectiveness of paid media, or how much social is driving the conversation now. Trump has also been highly active in banner , but I have a slightly different question to ask.

What if the entire exercise is just, well, to collect contributions... that the candidate is under no obligation to spend? Or return?

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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 Serious Business Of Real Fun

Bring The Fun

For about 10 to 15 minutes a day at my current gig, the people in my office get, well, there's no other word to describe it.

Goofy. We get seriously goofy.

We pull out Nerf guns and blaze away at each other -- having made significant personal investments of time and money in the gear we use to peg each other. A growing percentage of the office play on the foosball table, with increasingly over the top trash talk adding to the festivities. (My go-to phrase when trying to coax the ball away from an opponent, because I am of that age: "Come to Butthead.") On summer Friday afternoons when we close up shop a few hours early, I've pulled out a putter and putting green and tried to make shots from 100 feet of long hallway carpet away. This week, there's going to be a Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament, and I'm leaving out other details, because, well, this isn't a laundry list. There is, in fact, an entire committee based around Fun. It's also a continuing scandal to my children that I am a part of that group.

By Silicon Valley standards, none of this is particularly startling or over the top. We have no gaming consoles, don't use office computers for serious timewaste, and even in the most raucous of moments, you can always pop in headphones and grind away to your heart's content. Even the most distractable among us seems to be desk-bound for the vast majority of our day, and the foolishness is contained to more or less break or meal times.

But by the standards of the more traditional industry that we inhabit, all of this is kind of a big deal, and the occasional reactions that I get from people who work elsewhere tell me this isn't very common. I've also worked at a number of martech companies where this level of seeming frivolity was matched or surpasssed, but actually, not quite, because the underlying current of the place weren't, well, in any way fun.

Fun in the office is, at its core, something that comes from the top, spread by an actual fondness among groups and people, and something you just can't fake. When your CEO is speeding along to a meeting on a scooter, that might seem fun... but when they are going fast as a matter of showy athleticism or efficiency to get somewhere quicker, that kind of kills the purpose. When there's an after-work happy hour where people aren't talking about work, that's fun. When it's a frat-level test of tolerance to see who can pitch ideas while sloshed, it's not.

This all seems like something that should be obvious at an HR or leadership level, but the nature of business is that you are not always going to have the right people in those positions, or a company that's going to work out in the long run. If your top people are insecure about their role or the direction of the company, fun becomes just another way to show those problems. When they believe in the direction and are comfortable in their skin, you get heartfelt compliments on your foosball game from the execs, without a moment of snark over how much time you may have wasted in your life to get those skills. (To be honest, many, many hours. And as an aside, any marketing pro that wants to get something out of their engineering team should learn to play foosball, at least to a level of tolerable. It pays off in spades.)

So the question really isn't whether or not your company has fun at the office. Because every company claims that now, because every company knows that fun in the office is critical to reducing turnover and keeping morale up.

More accurately, it's this: how many people are faking it?

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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.

Harry Potter And The Too Fast Payday

I've Got A Golden Cash Cow

This weekend, my wife, a very strong Harry Potter fan, went to the local book store to get an immediate copy of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child." This is, of course, the first new entry in the JK Rowling series that was one of the first great signs that Young Adult literature was going to be publishing's most lucrative segment when it launched, nearly twenty years ago. For the first time in ten years, fans of the series have a new full-length release to dig into, and my youngest grabbed it and stole off to her room for hours of reading. That's all to the good.

Based on pre-order sales, "Child" is on pace to be the top selling book of the year on the big sites that sell books in physical and digital formats. Rowling claims that this will mark the end of Potter's specific adventures, but that leaves the very large out of just continuing the series with new characters that are introduced in the book... and, well, not to quibble too much here, but Rowling didn't really write this one, either. Instead, she collaborated with playwrights Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, with the book an actual screenplay for the stage production that's currently running in London.

As a screenplay, "Child" is a quick read, without the usual heft of previous Potter works... and to be honest, I found it unsatisfying. I've defended Rowling's work as something of a modern-day Charles Dickens, who was also a massive commercial success in his day. There are entire chapters late in the series that I believe are genuinely touching and meaningful. While much of her work would have benefitted from strong editing, once the series moved away from the early bankable concept of tweens learning magic in a secret world that was analogous and parallel to the modern, universal human truths and motivations were given great insight. It's difficult to judge such things in one's lifetime, but I think the Potter books will be taught in academia as the definitive works of their time period.

"Child", on the other hand, reads like fan fiction, with past characters re-worked to generate wish fulfillment from the audience, and plot twists and holes that seem beneath the previous level of the series. It also seems like, well, a missed opportunity.

From a marketing and advertising standpoint, there's no denying that Potter fans are extremely underserved, with very little new content from Rowling for characters that the audience is clearly unwilling to let go. By showing her inclination to let others add to the canon, there are, simply, better avenues to monetize and produce than a single story. (I'm also ignoring, for the moment, the other new piece that's coming down the pike this fall, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", with new characters from the same world, but in an earlier time period. If it's the same level as "Child", we're dealing with a diminished brand.)

What Potter fans really want is the certainty of more, and depth, rather than one-off stunts. Imagine if Rowling gave the green light to a long-form series (say, on Netflix or HBO), and hired a top-flight showrunner. You could easily have a multi-tiered audience approach, with a more youth-oriented approach for a new generation of students, or in a different home country, and something more dark and adult for the generation that's now 20 years past Young Adult themes. If you are concerned about the cost in re special effects, explore animation, or just move more effects off screen. Potter fans want more from these characters, rather than the latest in CGI.

It seems amazing to think that one of the world's most successful book and movie properties is being underserved, or making the wrong choices in long-term brand building. And I could easily be wrong about this, especially if "Child" has deeper sales penetration than just the existing audience. But having read through it, I have my doubts that it's going to stay in the spotlight for more than a couple of weeks. Or that it will force too many changes in the Potter theme parks.

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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.

Surviving The Election

Walking The Walk

Since it is the season for such things, a brief political aside, but one that isn't particularly partisan or about marketing.

In a past presidential election, I was particularly interested in the US Presidential election, and fortunate enough to have personal time accrued and a relatively stable job. So I went all-in on the campaign. Wound up writing a book about the experiences, spent thousands of hours phone banking and walking the streets in a swing state, donated the personal maximum and was a loyal foot soldier in the front lines of a Get Out The Vote campaign. By the time I was done, I had probably talked to a few thousand people, and had experiences that will stay with me for a very long time.

It wasn't a universally great experience. I ran into unforeseen expenses from my car getting broken into, which led to a dead battery, which led to a lost weekend and serious expense in getting home again, then getting the car fixed while remote. I was interviewed for local television, but since I didn't go along with their preset narrative of Angry People From Other States, the interview did not get aired, which did not exactly fill me with good feelings about the press. There were many hot and sweaty days spending my time in not very efficient ways, talking to people who were tired of the entire process, or trying to overcome the fatigue, cynicism and go-it-alone tendencies of my fellow canvassers. It cost money, gave me sore feet, and at the end of the process, the disappointment was acute.

But what I also got out of it was a much deeper understanding and charity for my fellow citizens. Undecided voters in particular became time-stressed people with much harder burdens in life than I, hopefully, will ever have to bear. Local organizers and politicans who got support from the national campaign become additional points in the way, and I felt good when they won, even when the bigger contest went the other way. People in my social circles thanked me, strongly for my work and choices. I made friends and contacts, and as always when you get out of your comfort zone, grew as a person.

It was also oddly akin to my past career as an original musician... in that when we played a free or unannounced gig, or one with a very small cover charge, people were much more likely to be critical. But when the crowd had to pay to see us, had heard something about us from a reviewer, or even just caught the news that we weren't local (in that we would travel and play cities outside of our home area), those crowds were always much more positive, much faster to cheer us on. The act of paying made people invested in our music, and much more willing to go along with what we were trying to do.

The same, of course, goes with candidates. People who I didn't feel very strongly about supporting in the primaries got better service from me, as a canvasser and advocate, in the general election. Even though they were not my first choice. Part of this was clearly the urgency of the event, or the strong preference that I had to avoid the ascension of their opponent, but that wasn't the total appeal. Buying in made me connect, even when I didn't want to.

So if you find yourself just wishing the process was over, or getting through the campaign as if you were on an uninspiring diet or weight loss regimen, I've got one contradictory and difficult piece of advice for you: commit more. Lean in. Not so much for your dislike of one particular candidate, but for your strong love of country, and your desire to see a better path in the future. Stand up for a candidate in real life, and away from the empty rhetoric of your own social media circle or like-minded peer group.

It's not easy work, something you can declare on your taxes, or even something that will result in gratification for, well, roughly half of the audience. But you will gain a much better understanding of why things are the way they are... and you'll be forever changed about the way you think about candidates, and the people who support them.

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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 Art Of The Sell

Or Clinton

Confession time: I watch political conventions, because, well, it's possibly the most naked sales pitch you will ever see this side of buying a used car. And if you don't have a fondness for an artful sales job, and by extension, artful sales people, you really shouldn't be in marketing and advertising. It's kind of like being a coach or an athletic trainer and hating sports. So I've been watching a lot of the Democratic National Convention this week, after catching a fair amount of the Republican National Convention last week. Sort of like how ad people always watch the Super Bowl ads.

The RNC, as you might have heard, was a very different experience than usual, with unconventional celebrity choices, notable moments of dissension and controversy, and a culmination in an unusually long and varied speech from the nominee. Judging from the immediate polling afterward, it provided a small but significant boost to the campaign, surprising a fair number of observers who, it seems, have run into no end of surprises in this cycle.

So far, the DNC has been much more in a traditional vein, albeit with the speed bump of placating the runner-up's supporters more than usual. Tonight's approach was particularly telling, because the sales job fell to a former president, Bill Clinton.

In a season of unprecedented experiences and moments, this was one of the more gentle ones. The former President gave a speech that would have been traditional from a female spouse with no political past, centering around their relationship and meet cute moments, or points along the way of their journey as parents... and if you weren't familiar with him before this evening, you might not even realize he was the leader of the free world for eight years while married to the candidate. To a nation that has known this political pair for over a generation, it was a fairly new approach while still following traditional patterns.

And while as a marketing and advertising professional, I admired the originality and craft, I also had the opportunity to see how it played to an entirely new demographic. My youngest daughter, recently 11, has become almost oddly interested in the campaign, showing exceptional attention to the coverage, even to the point of opting out of her usual games and distractions, and sitting still for longer than, well, she sits still for anything. With no real prompting or urging from me, because, well, I basically don't want to jinx it.

Bill Clinton's speech worked for her, not as much as Michelle Obama's, but still, she made it through the whole thing. She's very excited to hear what Chelsea Clinton says next, because she relates hard to the idea of family talking about their mom, and the idea that a mom and a grandma could be President clearly energizes her. The soft sell, predicated around the relatable human moments of buying a home, asking a girl many times to marry you, and taking your child to college -- that got her, hook, line and sinker.

And sure, she's unsophisticated, and can't vote, and might be swayed by some other pitch, because she's a kid. But on the other side of things, she's smart, understands that she's being sold, and keeps asking about what the other side might say to what she is being told. (That last part, I have to admit, makes me very proud of her.)

My gut tells me the positive and evocative pitch is a better pitch, and that you attract more flies with honey than vinegar, especially in a cycle where both candidates have big challenges to overcome. But the proof is always in the data, and we won't see that for over 100 days, when most people will have forgotten all about these two weeks.

But maybe not.

Because that's the nature of really good sales pitches. They tend to stick with you.

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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 Wrong Questions

The coffee is tired, too

As a marketing and advertising consultant with access to proprietary data and analytics, I get asked any number of questions by our clients on optimal creative practices. I'm always happy to help, and always do what I can to answer the question directly... but the answers rarely close the matter. I'd like to take some time to discuss why, and how to get to a place where the questions are likely to drive to a better conclusion.

The simplest stumbling block is when a client becomes fixated on the answer to questions that only have, at best, temporary answers. These include points like optimal dayparting, mobile formatting, subject line conventions, call to action language, and so on. Even when you actually have a good answer to one of these fishing expeditions, it rarely satisfies, especially since a perceptive client will understand that you are answering the point with something like frustration.

But it goes beyond the understanding that tactics will need to be checked, or might evolve over time. Moreover, it's the stratification of winners or losers, as if the march of a campaign is always a smooth ramp upward.

Because, well, it never works that way.

What happens instead is a matter of stops and starts, with gains punctuated by drops, based around seasonality, the rise and fall of certain practices, and how other, outside influences might impact your marketing channel.

There are optimal practices, and winning tactics... but there are no golden calfs, no rules that can never be broken, no tests that are definitive and closed. Even the most basic points, such as making sure there is a call to action or fast access in a scan or preview mode, might become losers later. But there are orders of priority in regards to testing, and moves that are unlikely to be your best or most pressing point to test.

That's where the comprehensive nature of data and analysis kicks in and becomes meaningful. Typical marketing and ad pros usually have visibility into just how their individual handful of campaigns did in the real world, and even in the best and most rigorous of cases, they tend to tap out after a dozen or so cells in a calendar year. After all, you are in the business to provoke better engagement, rather than run a response lab as a social experiment.

But if you are at the wheel of an adtech provider that serves multiple clients, hopefully with a wide number of sub-brands?Well, that's when the visibility becomes incredibly useful, and if you are very fortunate, inspirational on a cross-category basis. (I've been fortunate enough to be in that position for over 15 years now, at four different gigs, and it never fails to make me seem, well, far smarter than I actually am.)

So the right question isn't what specific creative practice is optimal, at this time and in this execution. Rather, it's what's new to the field in the last two to four business quarters, even if it's not 100% germane to what you are trying to promote right now.... because that can, and will, inspire the next breakthrough. Preferably in a clean test cell, which will hopefully convince some future client to test something

And if we wind up with a client that wants to just do what they do, regardless of our recommendations?

Well, that is valuable as well, if only to continue to give us a control against the likely better idea...

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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.

Intentional Disasters, Or The New Way To Market

More Free Media

I really tried, honestly, to avoid writing about the Republican National Convention this week.

You see, as a consultant, it does me no good at all to get into the red versus blue nature of American politics right now. We've done work for all kinds of concerns, and for people on both sides of the aisle, and will continue to do that in the future.

But when you have something like what happened last night -- where Republican nominee Donald Trump's wife was caught plagiarizing a far from coincidental amount of speech from Michelle Obama during the Democratic convention eight years ago -- and you have to start wondering. Or, at least, I do. (Don't worry, this all comes back to marketing and advertising later.)

I can't quite square my mind around the idea that this was a simple mistake, sabotage on the part of a spurned speechwriter, or anything but, as unlikely as it sounds, intentional. Because the plain and simple fact of the matter is that Trump's branding efforts are so unrelenting, so much about dominating every news cycle whether for good reason or bad, that I can't quite discount the idea that this was the political equivalent of an Easter egg, or a news media cheat code.

In an era where political conventions are naked infomercials, and the public has an untold number of other entertainment options, making a spectacle of yourself might be defensible. Especially when, if you are Trump or one of his advisors, some part of you know that free media has been the key to your success all along, and the efficiency of paid spots has been under serious doubt for the entire cycle.

So why not sprinkle in a plagiarism minute? It's not as if it's going to shake your supporters, given that the candidate has said literally hundreds of other things that have stopped the media cold in the past year. Ginning up a controversy seems like second nature to the campaign, and the media seems incapable of not jumping into it with full force. If this sort of thing is damaging Trump's chances of winning the election, I'd wonder what has changed in the past 24 hours, as opposed to the past 12 months.

And if this pays off in the long run, and our field winds up covering the events of this campaign as the first and most brilliant example of a ju jitsu style of reverse marketing?

Well, the field would get a lot more, um, creative. Yeah, I guess creative is the most diplomatic word...

(Oh, and if you want to think about how that might look, consider the long-running Domino's ad campaign, where the chain denigrated its past efforts at food. And did that for years, to considerable free social media exposure.)

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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.

Coup D'Tweet

Coup Or No, Cats Don't Care

We live in amazing and ridiculous times.

This showed itself again over the weekend, where a failed military coup in Turkey hit home in a major way for me. A good friend and her son were trapped in the airport in Istanbul, with her husband (and one of my best friends) was posting updates on their condition while in the U.S.

The drama played out, both on networks and our various personal feeds, in real-time. There was chaos, F-14 fighters spreading sonic booms over populated areas, taking cover during crossfire, calming walking through people chanting for hangings while trying not to betray soul-shattering fear, bridges taken and flights canceled, and finally, Turkey's embattled president taking to a social media channel that he's frequently tried to shut down, rallying his supporters to counter the action, effectively. There are even some who doubt whether this was indeed a real coup, given the immediate and effective counter strikes by the government, who has instituted mass arrests and punitive measures that are still unfolding as I write this.

While my friend and her son are safe now, they were in no way safe during the proceedings, and the final death toll is likely to astound. They are witnesses to history many times over, and while I want to wish them well and a homeland they can safely visit again, that might not be likely again in our lifetimes. Turkey is just too fragmented between the secular cities and the religious in-country, and the fact that we all have our own channels to view during this is unprecedented in human experience, and a likely continuing unsettling element.

It's been on my mind a lot. How are nations supposed to continue to exist when the media isn't only polarized and fragmented, but increasingly incapable of maintaining a sense of continuity and unity... because everyone knows they are corrupt, and would rather view their own feed? Why should Scotland stay with Great Britain when they would rather be in the EU, or London with the same reasoning, when borders are more or less meaningless from international interactions? Why should our own Red vs. Blue United States remain, well, United, given that we clearly want different things, and don't even believe common facts?

To overthrow a government used to be a relatively simple thing, to the point where the Wikipedia page for Turkey's coups now has six entries. Simply enough, you just needed to have enough people in the military become convinced that the political class had gone too far, then roll a few tanks down the main roads, round up the leaders and reboot. Turkey has been unique in its status as a relatively stable and prosperous nation that also had fairly routine takeovers, but it's not as if they were alone in their process of living through coups.

Now? There's no playbook, no sense of what happens next, what's real and what's stagecraft. And I'm not just talking about Turkey, of course; all of this applies to the UK, and maybe the EU, and all kinds of countries in Turkey's neck of the woods, and maybe further. Social media is something like a contagion. And there's no telling how it will spread next, and what the final result of every one being their own media network, will be.

So from a marketing and advertising standpoint... you know where this is going, right? Away from broadcast, away from broad blasts, and into the micro and niche and dynamic. It's where the people are, and will be.

For good and ill...

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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 World Changed This Week, Thanks To A Game For Children

Push Media

I'm sorry if I'm going to exhaust your tolerance for augmented reality this week, but the plain and simple fact is that when something goes from nothing to a ridiculous level of market penetration with this kind of speed, there's more going on than a summer fad.

Also, well, summer fads rarely monetize this well. Nintendo is rolling out ad-supported hotspots next, because why on Earth wouldn't they? Any business that benefits from walk-in traffic (which is to say, damn near every quick serve restaurant, convenience store and so on) should probably consider this, especially if they are in a part of the world with enough foot traffic, or if they are in a walkable neighborhood. (Frankly, I suspect that the game makers could also collect protection money from homeowners or associations who want their peace and quiet, but that probably says more about my sense of humor than the business model.)

Locally to me this summer, a transit agency had to take a third of its cars offline due to repair issues, in the height of a busy convention season. People are going in to work an hour early or late, enduring packed cars in heat, and so on. And if you gave that agency an ability to delight those in queue, they'd be crazy not to take it. (And yes, I know that the scale of game play hasn't quite extended that far yet, but give it a little more time, and a host of other games that use the same tech, but appeal to different demographics.)

You'd add in the game content at a managerial level, if only to lessen employee turnover from dealing with customers who are inconvenienced. We've been conditioned as digital consumers to search for Easter eggs in digital media for decades, and now the eggs are out in the world. This has all been a series of dominoes that have been set up over the past 15 to 20 years, and now that they are all in motion, the change in our society will be breathtaking.

It's not all a panacea, of course. The news has been filled with the unintended consequences of the game's impact this week, from small-time crime to the end of shaky romantic relationships, and a host of ill-considered attempts to cheat the system. Getting to a place where people are paying even more attention to their phones hardly seems like a positive development, especially when you add in the likelihood of distracted pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers.

But all of that is beyond the point now. The game changer to end all game changers in mobile has come, and it's only the first of many applications to take advantage of the platform and technology. We're not going to stop feeling the ramifications of this for a very long time.

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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.

Augmented 2.0, Or After Pokemon Go

I Am The Trainer Who Pokes

On a daily basis, I walk my dog through my neighborhood for a couple of miles. It's almost always a solitary experience, which is fine; we can both use the exercise, and I do some of my best writing (well, pre-writing) at the other end of his leash.

But tonight, we had company... my two kids, locked into their phones from the most viral video game of their lifetimes, and having a grand old time while getting covert exercise.

As the miles passed and my kids utterly failed to notice sore feet, darkness that usually spooks them a bit, and the sudden and mildly dangerous phenomenon of other kids playing the game, but on bicycles, I thought about what happens next for this relentlessly viral hit. Over 1 out of every 20 Droid phones have the game now, in just a week of release, each one a conscious download, and it's hard to imagine that this is going to be the last manifestation of mobile phone with augmented reality. I can easily imagine, say, a zombie apocalypse game with similar movement needs, maybe a player vs. player first person shooter, hopefully with more comedic aspects than gore. The toothpaste is out of this tube, and all that's left is to see how many bogus "news" stories will spawn from it, or how long the fad will run. (My guess for this game? At least until Labor Day. After that, all bets are off.)

There's something cheery about the community here, though. Mobile technology has helped to stunt social skills, in my opinion, with people retreating to text their emotions in virtual safe spaces, rather than learning real-life conflict resolution. Now, at least, perfect strangers are interacting around a simple shared interest, making virtuous trades, maybe even making new friends. I'm told that peer versus peer gaming is soon on the horizon, which will likely spur more interactions, if not more friendships.

I suppose that, on some level, this is the kind of VR we should have expected. No special gear, no over-the-top age-inappropriate graphics or restrictions, and with faint whiffs of digital hoarding; it's as American as you can get, despite not being American at all. But just because this is first, and it might be the biggest one for a very long while... that doesn't mean it will be the last. Or that the concept won't soon infest every airport, waiting room, doctor's office, DMV and pharmacy where making people wait without getting annoyed about the waiting is well worth the cost of wifi.

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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.

Selfie Drone Magic

Five Hundred Bucks And Falling

If you follow my Twitter or Facebook social media streams (sorry, LinkedIn, I don't hit you with everything), you saw a link to the UK selfie drone story, where there is a kickstarter with six to seven figures of funding and plenty of pre-orders. Fits in the palm of your hand, flies ten feet or so away from the user, controlled via a smartphone.

Sure, this might seem silly and frivolous... but as the selfie stick shows, and the Kickstarter confirms, there's money in it. And if there's money in the v1, how does the v2 manifest?

Well, I think it gets an avatar so it can be personalized. Also, perhaps more capable than just taking selfies. Imagine search and retrieval capabilities, or holographic projection. Sound in the unit could also help to produce intriguing possibilities, and having more than one might make for more interesting footage.

So imagine where it goes in a few steps, or when people who truly want to self-document to a disturbing degree wind up with clouds of selfie drones. Perhaps they'll be part of routine athletic training, used to monitor and improve on traffic conditions. There's a pretty clear use case for security enhancement, a step up from the dash cam footage. Give me a selfie drone that folds and puts away laundry, or loads and unloads the dishwasher, and you've made my waking hours a lot less compulsive.

But I'd like to get beyond the tactical and into the fanciful, if you'll indulge me for a moment. In the young adult trilogy series "His Dark Materials", the conceit is that the world in which it begins is like Earth, but with visible and tactile manifestations of a soul or spirit animal. Also, let's consider the rise of support animals for those who need them, and how a technological manifestation might be, well, less problematic. And how much a smartphone on some level functions as, well, a support animal.

All tech manifests as magic, if you can step back from it long enough to see how it might be perceived to folks with less experience with such things. Whether or not that magic is benevolent or malicious...

Well, you might see a company of angels at your beck and call, and the end to all sorts of bothersome activities. Others might see a hellish swarm of techno flies, turning every moment of the day into one that has active surveillance.

The story is left to the individual.

But the tech? That may be inevitable.

And if you can advertise on them?

One more vote for hellish flies...

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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.

Show Don't Tell

Even If It Doesn't Score High

Here's something they don't tell you in Consulting School (um, there's no such thing as Consulting School, which is part of the problem)...

How do you go about convincing a prospect that you know what you are doing and make a real difference to their project... without, well, sharing all of you insider secrets that would let them just do it without you?

I'll save myself and you some time: you can't. If you've committed enough to pitching for the business, you've also put enough time and research into believing in the integrity of your potential client. (Or, less positively, you just really need the booking. we're not saints here.) In for a penny, in for a pound; don't hold back.

But here's the real key to getting the gig. Put yourself in the position where you can tell the lead everything you know on that day, because in a week, you'll know more and they won't. But in a way that seems, well, not smug.

So don't be coy, if you've got some secret sauce, don't guard the recipe, because none of that stuff stays secret for more than six months, anyway. Optimal practices are a process, not a terminus.

And with that, I'm off to work on something along those lines for the day gig, which is asking me to generate strategies around increasing open rates in marketing and advertising emails for pharma. Something we've got more than just a little experience and insight into, given the sheer numbers of stuff that goes through our pipe, and how much data we've collected and analyzed. (And yeah, I'll link to it when it's up and ready, but that probably won't be for a couple of weeks. And if you want a hint in advance... follow the clocks. Because the clocks lead to money.)

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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.

Room At The Top: Kevin Durant's Marketing Message

Dub Step

Back when I was in college, I had a beloved constitutional law professor, because one of my undergraduate passions was political science. At the end of the semester, with all course matter taught and an hour left in the presence of a strong intellect, he opened it up for questions of all matters, regardless of merit to the course matter. One of my classmates, who was following the usual progression of political science to pre-law, asked for advice on setting themself up for lucrative employment after college; whether it would be better to intern, clerk, etc. Rather than speak to the specific merits of a particular plan, the professor said something far more important, something that I've kept for decades.

"There's always room at the top."

And then spoke to the student's acumen, which he had noticed over the course of the semester. Also, to the value of the education that had been acquired, and the connections that could be made in this room. But the money quote -- room at the top -- was really the core of the response. Instead of shooting for the minimum to just get a foot in the door, dream bigger. Aim higher. Take bigger chances, and bet on yourself. 

Which brings me to the curious employment decision of one Kevin Durant, the NBA's biggest free agent signing since LeBron James took his talents to South Beach. (Don't worry, we'll get to marketing and advertising soon enough.)

By choosing to exercise his rights as a free agent to leave Oklahoma City for Golden State, Durant joins a team that was a few points away from completing one of the greatest seasons in NBA history. And while many observers are disappointed that Durant didn't return to the Thunder and try again to defeat a club they were up 3-1 on in the Western Conference Finals, from where I sit, he's just choosing to spend his prime years in the presence of an organization that gives him the best chance to have championships on his Hall of Fame resume. Calling someone a heel or an opportunist is the knee-jerk reaction, but if Durant is holding up the trophy next June, that criticism will ring hollow at best. And while others wonder about the ratings problems inherent in a league where it seems like just a few teams have a legitimate shot at the title, I'm not ready to call off the reason next year and just cede the crown to Durant, Stephem Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and company. They've still got to stay healthy, integrate all of those stars, figure out last shot pecking orders, and so on. For every superteam that delivers on their promise, there are many others that fall by the wayside.

Now, back to the marketing and advertising.

Pitching your client's value proposition to the lowest common denominator -- price, usually, but sometimes speed to delivery, or some other very hard and fast metric -- will always have a certain direct marketing appeal, because it cuts right to the quick and has the sense of news and fact. It's also completely defensible if your margins allow it, or you are in a consumer category where there is no other wiggle room.

But conditions like that are, honestly, few and far between. Most of us work on brands and offers that have a mix of strengths and weaknesses that cover a range, and we balance the desire to communicate that complexity with the need to cut through the clutter with a brief message. And in that push/pull, something is lost... and that's usually quality. Especially if it seems like it might cost money.

That's a mistake.

Especially in an era of fragmented attention, sharing premium experiences to a peer group, and time being more important to many people than money, simply stating why your product or service is superior might be enough to separate. If nothing else, it's worth a test cell.

And sure, humor might go viral, and pretty might get you an award or do something for your portfolio... but premium might actually let you sell a a decent margin, and protect the brand for future opportunities.

Room at the top. 

But you've got to be a little brave.

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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.

Independence From Commerce Day

Does Not Actually Work

Here's a quick fact on what might be the most blown-off day of work in marketing and advertising in 2016: using July 4 iconography in the pursuit of e-commerce is a sub-optimal practice.

And sure, that's very category specific, with people who sell fireworks strongly in the positive camp, and others with summer seasonal gear probably also doing well... but the plain and simple fact is that the flag isn't a universal panacea, and another sign of how Blue and Red State America are, well, two very different places. It's not as if you are advertising an intolerance for multi-culturalism by waving the Red, White and Blue in front of your home or on your car -- that job is much more done by the Confederate Battle Flag, which is such a charged symbol that it's used by white supremacist groups in Europe, who can't get their hands on the Nazi flag any more -- but it's still rarely seen in affluent areas.

And on some level, this is just profoundly sad. There shouldn't be anything divisive about this holiday, given that it combines food, explosions (both amateur and professional), time off work, and booze. That really shouldn't be something that's more or less popular, well, anywhere.

But maybe I'm just looking at the beer bottle half empty. Perhaps the way to look at the lower spends and engagement is that, as Americans, we care more about fellowship and family, and celebrating the holiday properly, than we do about, well, e-commerce. If there was ever a time of the year when getting out of the house and into air conditioning that someone else is paying for was a win, it's also July 4.

That, or maybe the act of blowing stuff up just makes us want to buy fewer things.

Have a safe and happy Fourth, and we'll catch up after the break!

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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.