Explaining Magic

Step Back, I'm Going To Try Magic

I'm pressed for time this week -- more traveling, this time for family rather than business -- so you'll have to forgive me for the lack of a fanciful set-up to the column. Bluntly, there were three article in my feed this week that prompted this take, and they are:

1) As part of a snarky listicle, the sentiment "data is the residue of possibility" (not an exact quote, but you get the gist), as part of a putdown of adtech and/or analytics. The idea being that great brand marketers just, well, know, and don't let the data drive when it comes to Having Big Ideas.

2) A rundown of how the FAANG Five (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) have driven a disproportionate amount of the growth in the U.S. in the past decade, and how traders are starting to get worried about valuations, but are compromised from acting on that fear, because that's where the money is.

3) A story of how services that let people rent out their cars during unused portions of the day has mostly run aground, even while similarly disruptive plays for lodging and ride sharing have worked like gangbusters.

For many of the past 15 years, I've been at workplaces where we weren't just the pipe that provided service to clients, but also got to analyze what flowed through it. That vantage point, along with a middling ability to write, present and gin up concepts and theories, has kept a roof over my family's head, but it's also given me some clues about what works and what doesn't.

Spoiler alert: it's focus and effort.

In general, people get Big Ideas from a massive collection of little ones, measuring differences, sacrificing any sacred cows and moving on. That all takes work, especially if you don't have the best tools to use, but even if you don't, you still have to do it. The FAANG companies may have Big Ideas at their core, but for the most part, those ideas weren't unique; each one has competitors that they ruthlessly stomped with better execution and iteration.

That's why they are so highly valued. The market isn't in love with social media, cool consumer entertainment tech, e-commerce, streaming content and search. They are in love with companies that are constantly improving on the things that make money today, and using what they learn to make money tomorrow. Cutting values on companies that do these things is just superstition, and while there's money to be made from understanding when the public is going to move in that direction, it's a much harder buck. There's no reason to sell FAANG right now, other than the reason to sell, well, everything.

Which is why the folks who are trying to me-too on the AirBNB and Uber/Lyft paradigm of crowdsourcing of underused resources something of a non-starter, beyond the sheer logistics of trusting your car to not just a stranger, but that stranger's driving ability and care for other people's possessions... they don't have the same magic. Maybe they'll demonstrate it later, but until they do, look elsewhere.

That's because showing up for work and not just doing the job, but also figuring out how you are going to be better than you were the day before?

Doesn't just happen with a snap of the fingers...

* * * * *

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 Treacherous Servant In Your Hand

Job Killer

Our family's current dog is a collie mix who is best behaved when he has a job to do. Which has the not inconsiderable problem that he invents jobs when he doesn't get them. So to take some of his energy out of that search, and to also vary up my running routine, I'd take him for walks that would generally go for a couple of miles. Which meant a lot of walking at night, and a lot of collecting his leavings when there wasn't a lot of ambient light.

Since I have a smartphone, and said phone has access to apps, I did the simple move of downloading a flashlight app that controlled the phone's onboard camera flash. Presto, a flashlight just when I need it, on the same device I was already holding, and as simple as can be in terms of use. For free, even. The app is still on my phone. I don't use it very often, especially now that I'm living apart from the pooch, but it's there.

Oh, and there's also this: I'm likely never buying another flashlight again in my life. The phone does that now.

In addition to dog walking, I noodle around on guitar. I play an acoustic, an electric, and am trying to get into some small measure of shape on a mandolin. That last one is an absolute bear when it comes to callouses, but the instrument that I own was a lovely gift from my wife, and the nice thing about mandolin is that there is a whole lot less people in the world who can make you feel inadequate about your skills on it. This is all a holdover from my musician days of decades past, and I keep mulling over trying to do something musical again, because it makes me happy.

There is, of course, a remarkably handy app for my phone that lets me tune my guitars, and even the mandolin. For free, even. I've downloaded that. Presto, a tuner just when I need it, on the same device I was already holding, and so on, and so on.

I've probably bought a half dozen tuners in my life, as I've never quite gotten the knack of tuning by ear, and tuners tend to disappear from kit bags and/or have unfortunate things happen to them, since they are, well, gear. I'm also likely to never buy another one again in my life, because while I'm sure the app isn't as good as the real thing, I'm also sure that my ears can't tell the difference.

Lots of people are employed in the good and honorable work of making flashlights, and guitar tuners, and cameras, and so many other things that have been disrupted by the servant in your pocket. Cab drivers, hotel chains, gas station owners, any number of retail stores that are closing en masse. More every day, it seems.

That phone is going to come for bigger targets on the food chain. Brand awareness advertising that can't prove out a benefit on a spreadsheet. The 9 to 5 workday, with its inefficent traffic patterns and it's 24/7/365 tether to the office. Premium seating at live events, starting with ticket selling, then moving to AR/VR that lets you "be" on the field or stage. The cable TV bundle, the non-intelligent home that wastes heating and cooling, the notion that someone at your local store might be able to walk you over to the item you need, rather than just seeing a line on the floor that doesn't exist for anyone but you.

All of which will be wonderful, all of which you will use without a second thought, all of which you will soon not be able to live without.

And all of which is going to force great numbers of your fellow citizens to find another means of employment.

Because the biggest enemy of employment isn't another country, or work ethic, or regulation, or any of the other bogeymen that people like to trot out whenever conversations turn from earners to takers, from "entitlements" to taxes, and so on.

It's technology. Technology that can certainly create some jobs, wonderful ones even, where the workers are fulfilled and well compensated and using tools that make them incredibly productive.

But for every single good to great job? An untold number of meh to good ones, crushed under the steel wheels of history.

Those wheels seem to be gaining speed, too.

Sure your own gig is safe from them?

* * * * *

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.

Privacy, Schmivacy

Spambot with actual spam

The column this week starts with replacing a dishwasher. But you are going to have to take a big long walk to get there with me.

In some of the news that I monitor this week, there was talk of white hat hackers taking advantage of security holes in the background browsers of Internet-connected televisions, with Nefarious Potential to follow. (Your appliance may already be a spambot!)

The TVs now come with cameras and microphones as part of their rigging, so the set can (a) save energy by dimming or turning off when you leave or fall asleep, or (b) monitor your attention for marketing and advertising purposes, because offline and online is eventually all going to be one.

But let's not get sidetracked. Remember, we're going to the dishwasher.

As most Internet of Things (IoT) devices tend towards economically friendly browsers like open source and Linux, hacks are easy and updates are intermittent. The entire situation has the potential to scuttle the industry before it really gets off the ground, especially if media and/or litigation decides to make a lunch of it, and, well, that's certainly possible. If for no other reason than there is a lot of venture capital / deep pockets in the IoT space.

Which all sounds a lot more dire than I'd like to make it, if only for the following factors.

1) Privacy skews at a demographic level. People who have grown up with connected everything have also grown up with cynicism, incessant trolling and social media that has always acted as a race to the most shared. These are also the folks who are going to buy the new stuff. Privacy enhancement isn't going to move gear, at least not in comparison to price and features, and as long as the IoT gear does things that the consumer finds to be of value, they'll trade off privacy in a heartbeat. They have for, well, decades.

2) Legislation isn't likely to happen. We live in an era where consumer-unfriendly measures like an end to net neutrality are going to provide all kinds of air cover to the IoT, as if much will get done in the polarized and charged environment that seems to be the new normal in the U.S. For something as esoteric as the privacy settings on niche gadgets, this will be a golden era of being able to hide in plain sight.

3) When there's big money on the table, *always* bet against crime. A few years ago, I was extremely concerned about fraud in the display ad business, since the work could be done anywhere in the world, and all of the solutions to the problem seemed to require an unrealistic amount of human bandwidth. (My livelihood was also tied up entirely in display.)

What has happened since is that the problem, while still a major concern, has likely crested and started to recede, because Facebook and Google threw a lot of resources at it, and the rest of the industry followed the leaders. Most estimates have the majority of fraud done by a few high volume actors, which means, in all likelihood, that the net is closing in on those folks.

There's still an unacceptable number of bad actors out there, and the situation needs to get better, but it's already on the way. IoT hackers are going to have a lot of talented people trying to take them out of the game, and more will come every day. Oh, and the very best hackers will also switch over from black to white hat coding, since you can do the same work but turn it into a stable career, rather than worry about, well, prison.

At the start of a new industry, the value proposition will always seem small, and maybe even a little ridiculous. Why would anyone want their refrigerator to be connected to the Internet, especially if it adds to the cost of the unit and contributes to a security issue? But when the connectivity creates a device that self-repairs based on remote monitoring, informs (or auto-replenishes) a shopping list in ways that makes life easier, alerts the user to when produce is about to spoil, or self-corrects energy expenditure when the unit isn't being used as much, all of which saves the user money?

Well, all of that is going to be something you won't want to do without, once you have it. There will be bumps in the road, and those who choose to do without. Kind of like every tech advancement ever, or (hey! we got here after all!) kind of like when dishwashers started turning up in kitchens.

The new ones do all kinds of stuff the old ones don't do. They are dramatically better than the one we got rid of, for less money than the old one cost. The tech that's inside the unit has all kinds of sensors and gadgetry, and we have become (damn near instantly) used to the new level of service.

Oh, and in the store where we got this, they put the dishwashers next to the fridges. Which had models with digital whiteboards and browsers, next to the models that didn't.

Guess which ones got all of the foot traffic?

* * * * *

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 AdTech Two Step

Step One: Honey, Not Those Shoes

This week in Adtech saw two sequential stories that followed a pattern that goes back, well, decades. Let's do the dance.

Step 1 -- An adtech company finds an issue that affects customers (in this case, billing). Said company reports the issue, offers a correction, and tries to get ahead of any possible PR blowback by being, well, proactive about the whole thing.

Step 2 -- Media begrudgingly admits that adtech company did the right thing in reporting the error and fixing the problem, but that Steps Must Be Taken to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again, because without some third party being around to protect clients, they are At Risk.

This time, it was Facebook with an ad impression correction. Clients were overcharged by a fraction of a percent, because the error was only on a limited series of platform and browsers. Since the whole thing was (a) not really a big deal on the numbers, (b) happening during an era where you can't go a single hour, let alone day, without some new attraction in the So Many Rings U.S. Political Circus distracting everyone, and (c) not really enough of a reason to step away from a dominant provider, it slipped by without much notice. (And yes, last month something similar happened with Google and YouTube. You get the point.)

But for me, it sticks in the craw... because it's part of what seems to be an eternal double standard when it comes to online advertising. To wit: has anyone ever called television ads that are skipped, muted by remote control, in close proximity to controversial content, or just ignored by the viewer... unviewable or worthless?

Because that what online ads that aren't seen by the viewer, no matter the reason why, are called.

Outdoor ads are placed in venue where a known number of cars will pass by, and priced accordingly. No one knows how many of those ads are seen now, especially with an ever-increasing amount of in-car options, but as an advertiser, you'll pay for those cars just the same. Radio, print, podcasts.. all of those ads, paid for on an impression count that's optimal and theoretical.

Only digital, with its relentless ability to quantify so many things that the non-quantifiable benefit is usually disregarded, tells you how much isn't optimal. For this, it's punished, in a process that promises to go away as the world matures and the market gradually takes over for other mediums, but in the interim, we're still doing this dance.

What isn't accepted, either then or now, is that you *can* add to your branding online, because those ads aren't worthless. (Which we can tell, naturally, with metrics, because nerds, we never stop trying). It's slow and arduous, and no one wants to do it without offline air cover, but brand awareness does rise for folks who see your work online. Especially if it's well-targeted, clever, with strong offers and good execution.

You know, the same way it works offline. Because the customer and prospect base is increasingly the same in both places.

So since we know how this dance ends -- more and more marketers using data to make more and more decisions, from an ever-rising level of accountability because digital doesn't really take steps backward...

Well, can't we just skip some steps? Maybe admit that digital has impact that isn't measured, that analog is subject to all kinds of issues that has always been more or less baked into the price, and that the world is more complex than an either/or answer?

Because, well, this dance is getting old. And it's pretty clear that the music's not stopping, and that, for the most part? We're calling the tune.

* * * * *

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.

Cord, Cut

You'll Rarely Miss It

I've been traveling on business for the past few weeks, as part of a long-term relocation project. For the next 2 to 14 months, I'll be living by myself, away from family, while situations shake out and we figure out the next place for all of us to be.

This also means that for the first time in my life, I'm completely without a television... and, also, access to all of the entertainment options that cable television brings.

What I wasn't prepared for was just how little I'd miss it. (By the way, this is a huge part of why AirBNB can be viable now. All you need to host now is fast and reliable Wifi; the one place that I've stayed in the past two weeks that had cable, it was unwatchable due to pixilation. But I digress.)

With the exception of NBA playoff games -- which I've picked up at various sports bars and gyms, aided by the West Coast time shift -- I haven't looked at anything outside of my Netflix queue for weeks now, and probably won't for the next few months. I've picked up topical stuff from online sources, but for the most part, I've just been watching less and less, and getting more done. (There's also a new gig that's pretty all-consuming right now, and promises to continue to be that way.)

I am long past the event horizon of people who should be cord-cutting, and if the NBA playoffs had been more compelling up to this point, maybe I'd be more annoyed by the loss of access. But the fact of the matter is that you can find most of the content that you are looking for via the Web now, and there isn't so much that demands a full screen, immersing experience to be enjoyable.

Eventually, my living conditions will change, and I'll have more than my own entertainment needs to consider. Perhaps I'll break down and go back to a bundled package or satellite system, especially if I'm entertaining others, or my football laundry has a particularly compelling year. Maybe once my Netflix queue stops being quite so compelling (new "Master of None"! new "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt!"), this will also feel more like deprivation.

But, still? Something I've had for decades and decades just went away, and I'm not missing it -- at all. If you run a cable company, or a broadcast network, and that doesn't put a little fear into you, I'm not sure what will. (Also, um, if your livelihood depends on 30 second spots that feed such things.)

* * * * *

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.

Five Quick Points From A Changing America

Road Trip!

This week's column was written near the end of a very long road trip. Eleven years ago, I drove cross-country from the Bay Area to New York for work. This week, I'm making the reverse trip for a new gig. Here's the differences from the country, as they relate to marketing and advertising.

> FedEx, FedEx everywhere. The offline retail apocalypse that's happening in malls across America isn't temporary. It's in all of those FedEx trucks, filled to the brim with online orders, that are all over the highways. I've been passing them every few minutes, honestly.

> America got casinos. It used to be that casinos were just a Nevada thing, but now there's racetrack outfits and slot machine hook ups in most states. They don't have the prime Interstate locations that go to food, lodging and fuel, but you'll still see them easily enough.

> You can drive faster now, but you won't. Speed limits are up to 80, but we need infrastructure something bad. Single lane highways and hundreds of miles of repairs are common, especially in Western states that look like they've seen hard times. Even in times of high employment, you'd have to think that this would be a bipartisan win to get the roads fixed. No one likes potholes. (Also, you'll pass people now just doing the speed limit, because, well, the roads. Also, I suspect, people wanting to avoid speeding tickets, because enforcement is at the same levels as before.)

> Radio has changed. In my scans, I've found less religious and talk radio than a decade ago, and more demographically targeted music -- mostly Spanish and middle-aged, which is to say, the people who haven't completely migrated to online yet. I'd also bet that it's gotten less lucrative, because the ads are less plentiful, and for much more in the way of local brands. But there's something to be said for classic hip-hop that's brought to you by incontinence medications...

> Online aps aren't done changing the place. I've stayed at three locations during this trip; two AirBNBs, and one traditional hotel. The AirBNBs were far more comfortable, offered much more in the way of space and amenities, and were also better deals for the money. I really see myself using that site more than hotels moving forward, especially for solo business trips. And as for those convenience stores... there's an app on my phone that tells me gas prices now, as part of a crowd sourced community. Which has led me to drive right past the big beautiful store right on the Interstate, and to patronize the slightly dusty one a half mile away, where the gas was a lot cheaper. The lesson, as always: connectivity changes everything. Even places that don't look like they'll ever change.

* * * * *

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.

Be Very Very Quiet, I'm Selling FUD

Our Hero

In some of my past gigs, I've led creative efforts for low brands -- lead generation white labels that transferred the prospects to a third party -- in various fields. With nothing unique to pitch and no differentiating positive traits, these campaigns were an interesting creative challenge, especially when you had no real brand marketing concerns to address.

Fortunately in these roles, I had access to great data, an in-house and vendor creative team that were very skilled and quick at their jobs, and analytic insights that gave us what we needed to iterate for future turns. We made a lot of money on these projects, but that's kind of besides the point. Instead, what I want to discuss today is something that we referred to internally as FUD -- fear, uncertainty, and doubt -- and what we learned from executing these campaigns.

FUD campaigns can work when (a) the campaign is in a consumer category where the consequence of a poor choice was substantial, and (b) you had a prospect list that, well, responded to fear without just associating your brand with the negative stimulus. But keep in mind these five points. .

1) You have a very small window of time to sell the fear. Visually, your piece has to communicate the value proposition in a glimpse, preferably with a headline that doesn't waste a single character. Copy can (and should) go long after that glimpse, but if the ad looks like work, and negative work at that, it's not going to perform well. (Pro tip: when you are doing FUD work, make sure to have just text versions in your creative mix. They work more often than you might think.)

2) It burns out creative personnel. As a manager, I had to be careful not to give too many of these approaches to the same copy and design teams, or risk turnover. Creative pros don't always need the piece to go into a lead position in their portfolio, but too much of this mechanical work can make even the most productive teams lag and look elsewhere.

3) Innovative players in a space can move the ground out from under you -- especially if consumer satisfaction from presumed premium brands isn't that high to begin with. Consider how an ever-growing number of consumers are willing to accept rides and lodging from strangers, albeit ones with qualified feedback and presumed vetting from the innovators in the space. So we have two major pillars of the travel sector that are under attack at all levels of price, because the FUD of a poor ride or lacking stay just isn't all that much higher than, well, the FUD of the same thing from a brand.

4) Brands that go for FUD usually don't have anything else going for them. There's a reason why most of the FUD work we did was for our own white labels, with the small aside for comedic executions that target other players.

5) Winning campaigns will get duplicated by shrewd competitors. After all, there's no barrier to entry here.

As a creative pro, I hope you don't have too much FUD in your professional life. Or, for that matter, your personal one.

* * * * *

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 Worst Hours

Sing It, Zoidberg

This is going to be brief and perhaps a little too combative for some, but I've had this happen often enough to risk offending someone. And, well, it should never happen. So here goes.

If you are interviewing for a job position, and decide that, for whatever reason, you are going to spend your time with a candidate to deepen your knowledge about optimal practices, while never really considering them for the role...

You are, basically, stealing time and money, and you deserve all of the misery and suffering that a karmic universe will (hopefully) bestow upon you. Especially if the person you are interviewing is between gigs, and could be spending their time and energies trying to chase down a real opportunity, rather than the cruel tease you are offering.

(And yes, this happened to me recently. An hour on the phone, ninety minutes in the office, then the "interviewer" not even acknowledging follow ups. I guess I've met worse people in my life, but I can't think of any right now.)

I get why you might be tempted to do this, honestly, I do. A good hour with a consultant might help to jump start your creative efforts, answer some vexing questions in a field where you don't have experience, or keep you from making a bad mistake.

But what it really shows is a crippling lack of integrity that your own people will eventually recognize and use as fuel to move along in their own careers. After all, using these vulnerable people in this way shows your true (single-minded, machiavellian, ruthless, abusive) nature, and that nature isn't conducive to sustainable businesses.

Turnover will rise, along with theft, and a drop in morale...

And you will own all of it, and deserve it, because you are a terrible human being.

What would be better?

Honesty with the consultant. An honorarium for the time spent. A pitch for a consultant relationship. Or just end the interview before it gets abusive, and steer out of the ethical skid.

End the unpaid consultant hour!

* * * * *

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 United Debacle: Winners, Not Volunteers

Seems Like An Easy Choice

By now, if you haven't heard of the PR nightmare that hit United this last week, you are probably making a concerted effort to avoid broadcast news and social media. From the initial burst of the story, to the next stage of disastrous CEO non-apology, to the truly detestable blaming the victim background work done to the passenger by his hometown media, we've all become experts in public relations, social media and airline ticketing policies. Along with having a new corporate villain to boycott, we've been soaking in this for quite some time, and the fact that it made international coverage means it's probably got a second life overseas, too.

But I want to take it back to the actual moment of the negotiation between the crew and the passengers, and show how the failure started a long time before four crew members for another plane had to displace passengers from a full cabin. Remember, the crew originally offers one price for those willing to give up their seat, then a second price, before going to the forced removal.

Which leads to the following groups of unhappy people, and it doesn't take a genius to see how, well, everyone in the cabin winds up fairly unhappy at the close of the exercise. And that's even if it goes well.

1) Those who take offer 1, and feel bad about not holding out for offer 2. These folks will, in all likelihood, never take offer 1 again.

2) Those who take offer 2, and feel good about not taking offer 1, but also wonder if there would be offer 3. They are also never taking offer 1 again.

3) Those who took neither offer, and now have heard that the allotment has gone up. Again, no one here is taking offer 1. And many of them are going to have to have a significant cost savings or other enticement to risk flying United again. (Keep in mind that from the airline's point of view, what you really want is a near-immediate acceptance of offer 1, so you can stay as close to on time as possible.)

So instead of all that, let's imagine how this looks and feels if, at that moment of negotiation, there had been some planning, not towards creating a real-time unwelcome reverse auction, but towards the fast and easy resolution of the problem. Beyond an inhuman level of personal economics that doesn't take into account, well, how humans treat risk and reward.

Imagine the flight attendants pulling out a sweepstakes style wheel, and then playing a game of Big Seat Winner. They spin a wheel with every seat location; if your seat comes up, you get a replacement ticket and ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. In cash, in hundreds, paid out with happy counting. The next winner gets 2 grand, 4 grand, and so on. Honestly, once you start peeling off hundred dollar bills, the amounts are manageable. Instead of some nebulous check amount later.

And yes, I know, there's some tiresome income tax and security and sweepstake issues that you have to deal with, but you have everyone's address from the flight manifest, and you are a massive corporation. You can work out a lockbox in the cockpit with hundreds and a legal team sending a tax statement later.

Now, we've taken the entire chance of feeling bad about making the wrong auction choice out of the equation. We also go to a game show style interaction that has been proven to work for the better part of a century, and create winners, where we previously had volunteers to a corporation's profit margin. We also create a viral video moment of (maybe) someone celebrating their big payday, and the fun image of the fan of hundred dollar bills. At the very least, if someone is still bent out of shape about having to leave the plane, we make it more about their ingratitude, and less about the thuggery of the security force.

You could also give this real production values, the way that some airlines do with their pre-flight instructions. You could make it a part of every flight and turn your airline into the one where, every time out, whether there are displacements or not, someone's walking out with cash. And how much would United like to be known, today, as the Win Cash Airline, as opposed to You May Get Hurt Air?

The problem, as I see it, isn't that a single passenger got beaten, as hateful as that is. The bigger issue is that an entire industry has become so oblivious to anything but a spreadsheet that no one seems to be thinking about things from the perspective of the customer. Which led to dehumanization, and, well, beatings.

You really shouldn't have to have terrible things happen to adjust your mindset. But now that the crisis has happened, it's even worse if it goes to waste.

* * * * *

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 Triumph Of The Niche

Ubiquity

Running late between clients last week, I ducked into a fast food franchise, more to use the restroom than for any desire for food, honestly. Acting on my sense of personal integrity over actual hunger, I ordered a small burger from my childhood, rather than use the facilities without being a patron, and consumed it without too much thought.

It tasted like, well, what it has always tasted like; more cheese than beef, more bread than both, with the ketchup and pickles and dried onion overpowering any of that. In a half dozen bites and a couple of minutes it was gone, and the best that I have to say about it is that it didn't seem to do any real damage later (if you catch my unseemly drift), it was cheap, and I didn't regret the choice.

Doesn't sound like much of a business model, does it?

I don't mean to deman an American colossus, honestly. I'm far from the target demographic for any quick service restaurant, I'm not influencing the choices of others, and I don't patronize either this business, or its competitors, very often. They know their business far better than I do, or ever will. But I do know this...

From what I read in my monitoring of newsletters, they aren't in the growth area of the market. That's for niche quality players with names that have only cropped up in the last decade or so. Those players also make food that translates to social media imagery much, much better than what I've just posted above. (By the way, side note about food porn? It describes much of what we refer to as classical art from past centuries; the fact that lots of people photogragh their food probably says more about how imaging is now ubiquitous, rather than anything about the person doing the photographing. But let's get back to the burger.)

The merits of the mass market burger are obvious. Economics, consistency, speed. You can order one from just about any location, anywhere, and get pretty much the same thing...

But does any of that sound like something you can put in an ad?

The same phenomenon -- tried and true business model, supplemented by a more esoterically appealing niche play -- goes beyond burgers. Consider the recent change in market conditions for such staples as the circus, the hundreds of streaming programming options fracturing the collective consciousness, and in all likelihood, your very favorite comedian, musician, writer and so on.

And, more darkly, possibly your religious or political beliefs.

Continuing the thread into still more negative tones, and you might be led to believe that we are ungovernable, not really a nation so much as a collection of strangers, that we all need everything our own way. That cities are unlike suburbs, suburbs unlike rural, with nothing to stitch us together again.

Or, more positively, that we are no longer willing to settle for comfort, that the system of capitalism and innovation is working to provide more options and improve lives and experiences, and that your story about this depends on, well, you.

Who is, of course, the ultimate in niche audiences.

* * * * *

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.

Math Vs Snow

Market Opportunity

My local area had a late season snow storm recently, which did what it always does to cash-strapped towns; crippled them for days until the snow more or less went away on its own, because there are too many side streets, untended sidewalks and poor drainage areas, and not enough human bandwidth and money to clear it all away. Even when the main roads are clear, the side roads aren't, which makes all traffic slower, and yeah, I miss living in California, where you get to visit the snow at altitude, like elephants at a zoo. But let's move on.

What leads this into a marketing and advertising discussion is what happened next. Residents who normally walk or ride bicycles requested transport from ride sharing apps. So did those who were unwilling or unable to free their car from the ice and drifts. Many people who drive for these services chose not to, because driving in snow is dangerous and slow. And the apps did what they always do; adjusted on price to match the change in market conditions.

Which meant spikes in price of up to 600%. Leading to a subsequent hue and outcry in print and social media and among some consumers, and the usual shrugging non-apologies from the ride sharing companies themselves.

Now, it's possible that this is all just growing pains for a market that, for all of the exploding market cap and countless PR and cultural mentions, is still relatively new to much of the country and market base. It's also likely that spikes like this will ease in the future, especially if the ride sharing companies are able to convince more people to drive for them. But what struck me in reading the coverage, and which isn't a given because we're dealing with humans, is how quickly narrative was attached to algorithms.

Some consumers talked about the greed of the companies. Others railed against those who complained as looking for some kind of government handout, or unworthy of using the service because they weren't smart or hard working enough to afford it. Still others stood up for existing cab services, with an equal or better number stating that the status quo created the competition through past abuses. You could find still more voices defending bus service, or tele-commuting, or the need for more flexibility in scheduling from schools or employers, and so on, and so on.

What few seemed to do, at least publicly, was to note that the system worked exactly as a free market intended, with a resource getting real-time pricing in a de facto auction environment. Or that now that this toothpaste is out of the tube, it's never going back in.

Ride sharing apps aren't alone in having a narrative spring into existence from data, of course. Every A/B test with a significant deviation from the median creates an opportunity for a story, and so does interactions with a client who is resistant to change, or extremely demanding about small matters.

That's because in a universe that boils down to two kinds of events (facts, and the stories that we tell about these facts)... we treat our stories as factual, and always will.

Even when it's just math.

Keeping this in mind might help you keep your sanity the next time you have a difficult client, feel tempted to overstate the findings from a test, or find yourself irritated about the speed of a cycle, or any number of outcomes, really.

But if you are standing in snow, waiting for a ride that costs six times what it might have cost a day ago?

You're likely to tell a story about it.

Probably not a very nice one, either.

* * * * *

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.

Tips For Young Marketers

Like This But Not

I met a college senior this week who was just finishing up her marketing degree, and she asked me what advice I might have for someone who is just starting in the field. (You have to love when new folks actually *ask* you to pontificate, honestly.) So here's what I know now, that I wish I knew then...

1) Your network is everything -- even if you stay at the same place.

Everyone in marketing knows, on some level, that job security is a poor joke at best... but when you get into the day to day of a gig, it's easy to forget that, especially if management lulls you into a false sense of security. Even if you are blessed enough to stay with the same employer for a good and profitable arc, your peer group probably won't be, so don't shirk on that work. LinkedIn, Facebook, face to face; you put yourself at risk when you don't do it.

2) Be ruthless about the work that you do.

I've known any number of pros who don't particularly enjoy coding, analytics, traffic management, legal compliance, crafting PR releases or working phones to drum up coverage, but do it anyway, because, well, someone had to. The trouble with that kind of team spirit is that it's real easy to have it define you, and for many years of your working life to be something that you don't really enjoy... and when you do work that you don't enjoy, that's a very good way to have your career go sideways.

3) First reads can be very, very wrong.

Especially at the start of your career, you can feel that some of your colleagues aren't going to continue in the field, and that you might not need to give them your best service or time. The trouble with that mindset is that people will change dramatically over the course of a career, and even if they don't actually get much better at what they do... well, to be blunt about it, good fortune at meeting people with life-changing money can overwhelm, at least in the short term. so just give everyone your best, because...

4) You don't know who is watching you.

I've had job opportunities come up from people who, to be blunt, remembered me better than I remembered them... and lobbied for me accordingly. So resist the temptation to go for office gossip and/or talking about someone behind their back, because that kind of thing also resonates.

5) Keep your eyes open for dying channels... and clients, and categories.

When I went to college, there was nothing that I wanted more than to work for a daily newspaper. The day-in day-out of having to make deadline, the job security of my heroes who were synonymous with their papers, the quasi-celebrity nature of being recognized for your byline... all of that was what I wanted, even if the salaries weren't good. Lucky for me in the long term, if not the short, was that my graduation coincided with a recession that was pre-Web, which has been, of course, replicated by many subsequent downturns. But by then, I was well clear of the field, having pivoted to marketing.

During my career, I've seen Flash ads go from dominant to non-existent, throwing any number of coding and design pros into fever states to learn the next new thing. Something similar may be happening to SEO, given that much of the field seems to be something you can do with automation. DRTV might have serious problems if and when programmatic goes offline, and print ads in many consumer categories are also, at best, stasis.

Your loyalties, as a marketer, need to be to what works to solve the problem, not what's in your personal comfort zone. Making sure you aren't continuing to sell horseshoes while cars make in-roads isn't exactly a new career challenge, but with tech's growing influence, it's also one that comes with far greater speed.

6) School is eternal, and everything changes.

Getting a degree from a quality institution, and the connections that you make with your classmates and teachers, is merely the first step in a lifelong education. What's really happening there is that you are learning how to learn, and how to question what you are being taught. (And oh, by the way? Asking questions of senior marketers, rather than thinking that just because someone didn't grow up with an iPhone on their pocket, they can't really understand the way the world works now? A good way to continue your education.)

* * * * *

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.

What You Do, Not Why You Do It

I'm Glad You Read A Book

One of my favorite comedians, Patton Oswalt, has a great and profane bit about religious beliefs (warning: really NSFW), and the relative impossibility of respecting them equally.

Which has led me, in my own small way, to a significant point about day to day marketing and advertising tasks.

I've worked at places where engineering gave marketing everything they ever wanted... not because anyone on staff had a particular proficiency or taste for that work, but simply because management made it a priority. I've also been at places where you pretty much had to make do with whatever was already in place, because the priorities or human bandwidth just were not what you'd hope for, and patience is one of those things you are taught over the course of a career. Whether you want the lesson or not.

The same goes for sales pros. Some would give you all of the feedback you could ever want on how prospects were reacting to materials. Others wouldn't, because they just didn't see the merits of spending their time that way, when they could be, well, selling. Even to the point of grousing at the length or frequency of mandatory company-wide meetings, even when those meetings served important functions. Because, well, when a third of your income and your continued employment depends on making the numbers, time spent talking to co-workers is time spent not selling.

Similar experience with account management, AKA the key to client retention and growth. I've always found that good pros in these roles were worth their weight in gold, because they drove as much new business as the sales pros, but with the added benefit of generating case studies and evangelists for your business. Many would steer clear of marketing if given their preference, since that was, similar to sales, time spent not talking to clients... but you needed their feedback to make sure that your messaging and branding wasn't turning any existing business off.

The point of all of this, just like with Oswalt appreciating the good work, if not the beliefs, of someone who was convinced that vengeful aliens would commit acts of violence on those who did not behave virtuously... is that your reasons for doing anything in this world are, well, just that.

Yours.

If the reason why I provide excellent service to my clients is out of love for what I do, that's lovely and life-affirming... but if I also do it out of nothing more than a desire to provide for my family, and for those of my associates, it's pretty much the same thing to a client.

My reasons are my own. Ever-changing, unknowable because even I don't think about them very much, and irrelevant to the task.

The flip side of that is, well, the same thing goes for excuses.

Clients don't need to know why you do the work. They also don't need to know why you didn't.

What they need is for you to do it.

And those who don't get it done... needs to change that fact ASAP, or get out of the way for someone who will.

For reasons that should be obvious to everyone...

* * * * *

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.

Mad Structure

Perfection

As it's Selection Sunday as I write this, and I'm a very lapsed college basketball fan but a very strong professional one, I'm struck by the annual urge to dive into the tournament anyway.

Mostly because it's a teachable marketing moment.

Why? The absolutely perfect structure of the enterprise.

For all but the diehards, college basketball really isn't something you need to pay too much attention to before the actual tournament starts. Unlike the 82-game NBA regular season, the college game seems extremely skippable, since it's overlapped by other sports during its run time, and doesn't really matter beyond the highly transitory "who got snubbed" arguments. Sure, if you root for a school in a power conference and they win that title, it's nice, but it's forgotten as soon as the Madness begins.

A word about the timing. It's usually perfectly coinciding with spring celebrations like St Patrick's Day and some spring breaks. It's deep enough into the year that taking a couple days off for a 4-day orgy of bracket obsession is within reach of many workers. The highlight footage of dunks, last second shots, favorites asserting themselves, and so on translates to every platform in our digital age. There hasn't been a tournament yet that lacked for drama, because many of the games are coin flips, and a 40-minute basketball game falls into the small data sample that says anything can happen, and just might. The NBA more or less goes on mute during that initial blast, with networks switching over to the tournament. Football doesn't compete. Baseball is playing games that don't matter. It's a nearly extinct rarity in American media; a ceded time slot with a lack of competition.

The only actual problem is... the product.

Purists talk about how collegians care more and try harder on defense; this is not true, it's just that they are comparing playoff games in the tournament to not equal moments in the NBA. (Try to find lapsed defense in a Game 7, which is, in effect, what all NCAA tournament games are.) Others talk about how into it the crowds are, and sure, but again, Game 7s. The only real difference between the tournament and the NBA playoffs is the structure, which rewards luck far more than the meat grinder nature of the pro game.

Beyond the structure, there's no comparison. The NBA attracts talent from six continents at the height of their physical skills, puts them in the presence of the finest coaches in the world, then pits them against each other in a Darwinian endurance test to qualify for the post-season and acquire home court advantage. Next, it throws the same opponents together for a minimum of 192 minutes of court time to see who is best.

The coaches only coach; there is no recruiting. The players only play; there is no pretense at education, and if they choose to spend the whole of their lives at their craft, their teams will not suffer sanctions. The officiating is at a higher standard, and so is the sports medicine, scouting, practice time, strategies, and so on. It's just a better game.

And yet... that perfect structure. The bands, the crowds, the sense that if you aren't picking a bracket you are just denying yourself joy. Even though brackets almost never end in joy. The nostalgia, if you went to a school that's participating, for times gone by.

From a marketing and advertising perspective, we spend our lives seeking for similar business models and experiences. Structures that write themselves, creatives that play into such advantages, locked and loaded concepts that never fail.

We almost never find them, and even when we do, they don't endure like the NCAA tournament does.

Structure.

Find a perfect one, and everything else falls in its sway.

* * * * *

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.

Are You Engaging In IST?

Sing It, Sir

No, not Indian Standard Time, or Information Systems Technology, or any of the other 400+ uses I've found for this acronym in a quick Web search.

My use of IST here is a little more idiosyncratic, and you'll have to let me walk you around for a little while. I promise it'll be worth it.

I'm a podcast fan, because they make me seem smarter than I actually am. Along with decades of working for start ups that had data insights that you could tie to learning optimal creative practices, which is why people bring me on board to help with their work. Sorry for the humblebrag.

This week, my habit led me to a replay of a Freakonomics Radio podcast that shows the popular belief that there is an average human body temperature (98.6, right? Not so much) is a misnomer. It turns out that the study that established this wasn't properly done, with a faulty thermometer at play, and other factors. Humans have their temperatures go up and down all the time, either through exercise, menstrual cycles, time of day, and so on. So this number that we all know isn't true, and the common practice of ascribing small changes in temperature to the body fighting off infectious diseases is, in the words of the analyst that dug into the matter, inappropriately simplistic thinking.

What a wonderful phrase. Who says that scientists have to be poor communicators? But as it is a whole lot of syllables, let's just call it IST, since that also makes a snide little comment about political exclusions.

I'm very anti-IST. You should be too.

One of the realities of existence as a marketing and advertising consultant is that you are usually there to fix a problem, and have to prove your bona fides right away. Usually with clients that have highly defined pain points. So if the reason why you are in the room is a poor metric, you need to fix that ASAP.

That's fine; it's fair and well understood. But what isn't so fair or understood is what happens next. That's because IST isn't just a poor way to live your life, it's also an extremely efficient way to tank your marketing.

So let's take this out of theoretical. The client has poor conversion on the landing page. What's the first step? Well, there are plenty of rules of thumb about how to improve the rate, which have been proven from a wide range of tests and consumer practices. You can try to limit scroll, cut down on leak points, make sure that all data entry is mission critical, confirm load times on various platforms, code responsively in the strong likelihood of high mobile usage, and so so. Apply these tactics to a client that was not previously aware about them, and your rate will likely rise.

Voila. Problem solved. Cut us a check. Sound the trumpets. All hail the wise and helpful consultant! Also the designer, and the coder, and the copywriter, and whoever else is on the team, and maybe even the client for the presumed flexibility in moving off the old page.

Except that, well...

Now it turns out that our SEO may be off a touch, because all of that copy that was causing the scroll was helping. Also, sales isn't as happy as you might think, because the "new" leads that are coming through the pipe are not converting as well as the old ones. The old ones, after all, were really proving their level of interest by fighting through the poor execution.

Oh, and pretty soon? The new rate bump may start to flatten out, especially if the business served by the landing page has seasonality issues, or the company's selling proposition is made less competitive by competitor actions, or the means that drive traffic to the landing page are failing.

IST would tell you that optimizing landing pages is a clear and simple, before and after practice. But the Web is not now, and never has been, a set and forget experience. And your landing page changes can and should lead to rethinking your display ads, or your emails, especially as those have a lot more meat on the bone in terms of testing ability from bigger sample sizes.

I don't mean to discourage you from trying to clear tasks and fix problems. Metrics can and should improve, especially when you work with people who know what they are doing. Fixing today's problem is how you keep it from becoming tomorrow's problem, and when today's problem becomes tomorrow's problem, that's intolerable.

But tomorrow?

There's going to be another problem.

Which also isn't going to solve quickly or easily if you are engaging in IST...

* * * * *

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.

Reality On Reality's Terms

A Concerning Sign

There's a school of thought in many corporate situations right now, and it goes something like this.

People have short attention spans and very little time to get what you are trying to do.

So you need to get to the point as soon as possible.

(In fact, faster than that. Say ASAP instead.)

So if you are answering a question or trying to solve a problem, you have to keep it simple.

Which is fine for many situations, but others? Not so much.

Let's take email, a subject that has been the full-time occupation for me at several different start ups. It's also a marketing channel that has undergone more changes in the last two years than the last two decades. Which means many of the rules have changed. (Why? Smartphones. But I digress.)

If you are running an email campaign, there are three basic metrics that your client always wants you to raise. Those would be inboxing/deliverability, open and click.

There are plenty of ways to increase all of these metrics... in the short term. Many of which are, if not full on black hat coding, at least gray, and far from a good moment for your branding. These practices can include using images instead of live text to thwart filtering on words that would activate spam triggers, salacious or misleading subject lines or sender names, highly aggressive creative practices to inspire click responses, and so on.

You can, of course, do all of this stuff: it's a free Internet, none of it is going to send you to jail, and plenty of consumer categories recognize these practices as, if not completely legitimate, at least expected. In some campaigns where the entire enterprise is a little shaky, running without these aids would more or less identify you as painfully naive. (Which categories in particular? Well, let's just say that one of my past gigs included work for a for-profit online education enterprise that you've probably heard of, especially in relation to the fact that it settled out of court on a fraud charge in the midst of the election campaign last year. Let's just say it's a piece in my portfolio that I don't always show to new prospects.)

But if your brands are, well, built for the long haul, you know not to propose anything in this vein, because it would be wrong for the client. And if you are skilled in the way of the work, you also know that secondary email performance metrics (unsubscribe rate, spam complaints by readers, multiple use, attributable sales, forwards and so on), and deviations from normal rates, can tell you a lot more than just a brute and simple number.

By the way, if you are blessed enough to work for a client or employer that gets all of that, or allows you to explain the complexity...

Who also understands that the occasional poorly performing campaign, so long as they drive lessons that you can use to improve in the future, are more valuable than just universal high rates...

And this is actually the way the world works, and just saying More Open / More Click / More Inbox isn't the best way to get any of that?

Well, treasure them. Honestly. Thank your maker or your stars or your manager or your board of directors for being smart enough to deal with reality on reality's terms.

And if not?

Find your next gig before that one goes away. Because people who do not live in reality are capable of, well, anything...

* * * * *

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.

Don't Hug Me I'm Genius

Green Is Not A Creative Color

This last week, I was told about a dark and brilliant piece of subversive UK film via a social media message from a respected friend in the business of creative work. It was about the web series "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" (aka, DHMIS). You can see (and should!) the six episodes on YouTube in less than half an hour. Here's the link to do that.

I also highly recommend the Film Theory recap and possible explanation of all of the hidden messages in the work, which are just legion, really. The makers of the show have axes to grind on some social issues, and a tireless skill in doing just that. with Easter eggs all over the place.

But as this is a marketing and advertising column, let's keep it to the subject at hand, rather than a free ad for something cool.

For reasons best understood by people who have watched the clips and/or the explanation, DHMIS can only really exist on the Internet, AKA a popularly distributed medium with no central owner... or room or role for a direct and controlling commercial sponsor. Not only is the subject matter and treatment just not something that would ever lend itself to, say, cereal ads in between the clips, it's also something that works best as a one to one recommendation for viewing, since it's not something where you can say, "If you like X, you'll like Y..." because, honestly, there's nothing like this, at least not in my experience or memory.

It's also something that needed the Internet in its current incarnation, where crowdfunding through Kickstarter isn't just known, but accepted and encouraged. With no real owner except the fans, DHMIS can keep this as weird and uncompromising as they like, without fear of notes, standards and practices or focus groups tamping down the vision. And for something like this, keeping the vision of the makers with no compromises is the entire game, really.

So in the final analysis we have a runaway viral hit, with tens of millions of views. It's also a financial slam dunk, and something that can't really be exploited for further monetization because, well, it's already achieved everything it needed to, from a creative and distribution standpoint. The famed "Butterfly Effect" of '90s cause theories was always accurate; it just needed an online boost to truly make the phenomenon real.

And with that, I encourage you all to go watch this and see if there's anything I'm missing, and to also try not to think too hard about great content operating outside of traditional media channels, which is to say, the meat and potatoes of what we do on a daily basis.

Because if great stuff is increasingly outside of advertiser influence, doesn't that say something terrible about the impact that marketing and advertising is having on the creative process?

* * * * *

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.

LEGO Batman, Or Product Placement To Art

Capes Are Impractical

Last Saturday morning, fulfilling a six-month promise to my youngest daughter (age 11), we went to the LEGO Batman Movie... and man alive, is this one *spectacular* piece of marketing. Wrapped in 104 minutes of in-jokes for comic book nerds, cultural references that span five decades, and a great voice acting performance by lead Will Arnett (full disclosure: I am a complete Arnett mark, going back to his work in "Arrested Development", but also "Bojack Horseman"), there's one overwhelming and fairly unrelenting message.

Buy your kids some LEGO.

Or, at the very least, some LEGO video games.

Hell, take them to LEGOland, too. There's probably some cool stuff there. (Confession: I've done this. A long time ago, but it was done. And there is cool stuff there. But let's move on from the free ad.)

Now, this isn't exactly news or surprising, given that the name of the toy is right in the title of the film. The sheer brazenness of the pitch made me completely OK with it, as a marketer, and even as a parent. My 11-year-old isn't quite immune to these pitches, but she's certainly very aware of them, and hasn't asked for more or less Lego in her life than what was there before.

However, just because the toothpaste is out of the tube, but it's good toothpaste and the counter was clean, doesn't exactly make this a wonderful development.

It's not exactly news that the movies are a very compromised art form, with a well-worn mix of casting in four key demographics to pack the house. There's also foreign sensibilities that have to come into play to make back the development and advertising costs, which tends to push things down into the non-verbal stage. With costs in the nine figure range, sequels and transfers from other art forms are rife. If you want to watch something truly ground-breaking or innovative, you are much better off with something on a streaming service or cable provider, where the story telling has more time to establish itself, and there's no need to please more than a niche audience.

The trouble is that just because LEGO does this well, directly and fairly above board, that doesn't mean that every one else in the kid movie market will behave the same, or will do so for work that is of excellent quality. There's something more than a little unseemly about how a movie for kids *has* to have jokes for the parents now, because when you make work for all audiences, you are compromising your effectivenes to some degree, and also your art.

Which seems to not be a big deal when you are dealing with something like an animated movie, and it doesn't all have to be Shakespeare, yes.

But the plain and simple is that there are only so many movies that I'm going to be able to take the kid to, and only so many moments in her childhood that you get to share. And while we had a great time today, I'm not sure how much long-term impact this movie is going to have on her.

Unlike, well, some animated movies that I've taken my kids to. Like "Spirited Away", a legitimately amazing piece of art, or "Iron Giant", or "Up", or "Inside Out"...

All of which, I think, would stay in the mind of the viewer a lot longer than "LEGO Batman."

And probably not make as much money, and certainly won't inspire sequels.

* * * * *

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 Ad Costs

Clad In Rights Fees

Tonight in the Super Bowl, we had the first game that ever went to overtime, and the biggest comeback in the history of the sport. Lady Gaga performed to good reviews in the halftime show. Social media was alive with stuck helmets, amazing catches, inadvertently aired profanities, the post-game reaction of the Boston fan base against the league's commissioner, and many other game-related events.

Which means that... well... a very questionable marketing and advertising decision became ever more questionable, really.

I get why national advertisers are loathe to give up the Super addiction, honestly, I do. It's *hard* to spend five million, in a way that will get noticed, in a world with hundreds of channels and millions of feeds, and all of that was true *before* we had a 24/7 news machine in the White House. (Oh, by the way? He rooted openly for one team, but turned off the game before the big comeback, so that's going to be its own news story in the aftermath, too.) On some level, it feels like the game is the only television show that matters any more, rather than just the biggest.

But here's the thing; unless you are somehow able to get your ad noticed for the merits of the creative or your product -- unlikely at best, especially when the game is compelling -- you are pretty much playing the same game as 60-other odd candidates. Entertain with some kind of joke or visual payoff, hope that borrowed celebrity interest will make yours cut through the clutter, and "win" the news cycle of the next week, when any number of marketing and advertising writers pass out grades. If that news cycle even exists.

News flash: the grades don't translate into sales for your client. They might translate into awards for agencies, and I suppose that might create business down the line, but I've always thought the best way to make sure you've got business to do is directly, through increasing sales and awareness. Which isn't really what most big game ads do.

What could you do with the five million bucks that you need to pony up for a 30-second spot? In the case of small market awareness clients like Alfa Romeo, an inexplicable presence in this year's game, probably celebrity visits to individual buyers in key markets, because honestly, there just aren't that many people who've got the scratch and interest in supercars.

You could probably own a social media platform for the better part of a week for people who are actually targeted and attuned to your goods or services. Perhaps a few million unavoidable 30-second audio spots on streaming music services or podcasts, targeted spots that users can't skip or leave the room for on YouTube, goodies in direct mail, spots in theaters where people are pretty much a captive audience, outdoor and print spots that might actually help build your brand and make your other channels more effective, or just to be blunt, targeted discounts to a prospect list... or some very healthy combination of all of the above. That you could measure, learn from, and improve moving into the future, because you'd have a control, testing data, and all of that other really unsexy stuff. I've had this gig for other companies; we've done pretty far-reaching programs, with outreach in a dozen channels, for a fraction of that thirty second moon shot.

You know, an actual plan, rather than just a one-off approach that will be forgotten about in a week, or, in the event of a really compelling game like last night's, as soon as the spot ends.

But I'm sure it'll all be better next year, when the costs are higher and the audience is lower, because the NFL isn't doing quite so good of a job as you might like in attracting younger audiences. (It's also not as likely to have the same number as it did this year, since overtime hadn't happened in the previous 50-odd games.)

Honestly, how many years do we have to see that the emperor has no clothes before we stop buying spots in the fashion program?

* * * * *

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.