The Right Not To Forget, And JonVoyage

Exit, Stage Tears

Two very disparate things in my brain tonight, somehow connecting. Indulge, if you will.

In Europe right now, there's a growing movement behind establishing a new human right. The idea is that if you have made a mistake in your life, and you have taken steps to correct it, you should have the ability to have it eventually purged from the system, particularly if the system, in this case, is Google.

Sounds like a nice thing. It's not as if we all don't have something we'd like to go down the memory hole (and no, I'm not going to make the tactical mistake of admitting mine). But there's what is nice to have and the foundations that our nation was built on, and here's a case where, well, the rights of the individual do not now, and never will, trump the needs of the many. And the needs of the many are for a free press, and a free press requires the ability to tell the truth, even (especially?) when it does harm to an individual, over the course of years. The marketplace of ideas wins out. Life is not now, and never has been, fair.

And with that basic and inalienable point made, I'm going to pivot, without much in the way of grace or transition, to Jon Stewart's exit from The Daily Show, which was broadcast as I was finishing this post.

There are many ways to discuss this. True fans might note the many heartfelt feelings expressed, the wealth of alumni who came back to say their goodbyes, or maybe even Bruce Springsteen providing the soundtrack to play the show out. People who don't share Stewart's politics will say good riddance, maybe while noting the show's comparatively low gross ratings. Business types will wonder what happens to the show now, and what happens next to the diaspora of late night television options.

For me, I wanted to note two points.

1) When I was growing up, there was a wealth of great newspaper comic strips. Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury, The Far Side, Bloom County, Peanuts, Dilbert -- there was strong anticipation before the Sunday newspaper in my house, and it was something that we never missed. It seemed like there would always be newspapers, and there would always be great comic strips in those newspapers.

Well, no offense to the people who still make comic strips, or newspapers, but that era has passed, and will not return. Larry Wilmore does a fine job with the Nightly Show, but I don't know anyone who thinks it's a better product than the Colbert Report. Trevor Noah will have a great staff that will, in all likelihood, have a massive amount of fodder in the upcoming Presidential election, and incredible motivation to prove that the Daily Show can thrive in transition. There's no reason to think that, in the long term, he'll be better at the gig than Stewart, who was, in the words of Stephen Colbert, infuriatingly good at his job. Change is inevitable, but it's not always positive.

2) I know I'm not wired like most people, and especially not like show people, but seriously. If you are great at a job, and you are making serious bank at this job, and so many people appreciate what you do, how do you ever get to the point when you willingly leave it?

I get athletes wanting to go out on top. I get wanting to do other things in your life, or be more present for your family. I get not feeling as if you are still capable of excellence, and needing time away, or maybe managing your time commitment.

But to totally shut it down and give it up, with the very open question, seemingly, of what you are going to do next? Would never, ever, happen. They'd have to pry the job away from my cold, dead hands.

And this, in a nutshell, is the difference between Art and Craft, and why Marketing and Advertising is so much more of the latter. Our work in this realm has metrics that tell us when something is working, and the constant question of whether or not you can beat a control. Chasing the number doesn't make for questions about when you should hang it up. And there's never been a marketer who didn't think that their best campaign was yet to come.

So while I'll miss Stewart, I'm also more than a little annoyed with him for going. More was needed, more would have been delivered, and on some level, I would have liked Bill Watrerson more if he kept drawing Calvin and Hobbes.

While, well, never having anyone else telling us what we have to forget.

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A Brief And Pointless Rant About The Use Of GIFs and Emojis

I Haz No Idea

Today in the New York Times, there was a trend piece about how The Kids Today are using GIFs (shocking!) in their smartphones, and how some companies are making fine bank from this.

Now, I personally don't have any great problem with this, or even the chuckle-worthy news aspect of a less than fresh trend; the Times is here to set history, more than be the first to act. Most digital conversation is, by its very nature, ephemeral and transitory, and the use of some looping image to describe your reaction is fine, honestly. If it starts creeping into communications that seem to be out of touch with its standing, well, that is what happens with new forms of technology. It takes a while for these things to shake out.

I'm also fine with, in all likelihood, being beyond the event horizon for the trend. I'm not a huge fan of everything that smartphones have done to the world in the first place, but railing against the tides is pointless, and the pros outweigh the cons. I've also made my peace, or at least I thought I had, with the ongoing devaluation of the writing skill and the reading muscle. The future is visual, and the age when the Internet was a word-driven medium is leaving, and fast.

But what goes beyond the pale? These pull quotes.

“I’m able to express these really complex emotions in the span of two seconds."

This, from the act of pulling a mass-produced GIF, one that in all likelihood, has been seen and used by the recipient.

Really complex emotions? No, no, a million times, no. Really complex emotions require the use of words that express these thoughts. Really complex emotions require really complex thoughts in the first place. You don't get to claim emotional depth from picking a freaking emoji or GIF. You just don't.

Annoyed enough yet? I wasn't. Adding fuel to the fire...

“I’m not that great with words. But if I find the perfect GIF, it nails it.”

Nails it. A five second loop of the Seinfeld cast dancing spastically was cited in the NYT story as being one of those GIFs that nails it.

Now, perhaps I'm being less than kind. Perhaps the unexamined life is best left, well, unexamined. Perhaps people who have made the choice not to spend their days and nights trying to bend words into phrases should not be mocked for finding some other way to get through the day.

And then again, well, no.

Use your spine-friendly imagery all you want. Take over the world with them. There's no point in pushing back against the ocean.

But please, for the love of your own humanity, and the sanity of my fellow word monkeys?

Do not claim the freaking high ground over your lack.

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Can Anything Stop Fantasy Football?

Mainstream / Manning Endorsed

Consider, for a moment, the overwhelming marketing success that is the long-term performance of fantasy football. The entire notion of fantasy sports is a matter of debate in terms of who does it first, but it only becomes prominent in the public eye in the 1980s in baseball. For a long time after that, baseball is much higher in performance, because the day-in, day-out nature of the game leads itself to people who are very comfortable with numbers and statistics, unlike football. But eventually, football works out due to the head to head nature of most casual games, with an ever-growing number of players.

There really has not been a seminal moment in development. No single event occurs to legitimize the practice, assuming, of course, that you consider the practice legitimate. On some level, it's a lot like poker, in that we have made gambling (most fantasy games involve some amount of money, even if it's not very much) palatable by changing the event from a direct win and lose experience, and into more of a long-form tournament. I'm sure there is a corollary where, over a period of decades, an activity becomes just a little more popular every year, to the point now where it's almost harder to find an NFL fan who doesn't have a fantasy team, as opposed to one who does.

As you might guess from any long-term activity, more potent strains are now catching on. Big money leagues draft in casinos, who provide a setting that's more akin to the real-world NFL draft. Daily fantasy leagues, where players are not locked into the players they draft and more or less go off matchups regardless of exclusivity, are so popular that they run mainstream marketing and advertising placements, and have developed high level sponsorships. Wildly complicated variations that take into account real-world salaries, esoteric calculations on statistical performance, and so on, are increasingly common.

Which makes me wonder, given how I run my own league (don't worry, I won't bore you with the details)... how high can this tide rise?

The short answer is, well, despite the sense of fatigue that might be present for people who have done this for years and maybe haven't won very much... we are not anywhere close to done yet. The growing acceptance of the NFL in foreign markets, where casual gaming and gambling is far more established and accepted, will bring new players to market for years. The use of mobile phones to manage teams helps to ensure that younger demographics aren't getting left out at a hardware level. The continuing growth of mainstream reporting and acceptance, with the NFL Network devoting entire programming chunks to fantasy specific copy, will continue to make the hobby more and more mainstream. There's no reason for this to believe that we're done yet, really.

Any risk factors? Well, gambling is still gambling, even if you do it at a low level with remarkably low numbers of public complaints. A class action approach, or a stigma against players for being degenerates or nerds, just does not seem to have legs. The money involved is too varied and split to imagine collusion or conspiracy among players. Maybe a desperate coach or two makes a poor choice to goose someone's numbers, but given the career trajectory and long-term arc in play for those personnel, it seems very far-fetched to get to conspiracy. The same goes for referees.

So the only real gating effect on fantasy football is the same elements at work to potentially gate actual football. Injuries to players getting to the point of public condemnation or distaste. A public backlash on the de facto subsidization of the NFL by non-fans, in the area of public funding of stadiums, and the price fixe nature of cable programming that causes non-sports viewers to pay ESPN over $60 a year. Other sports or interests coming to the fore, or the audience getting aged or priced out, maybe from something as short-sighted as the league trying to copyright statistics, or to try to litigate every player into using their site, instead of the high number of players currently in the field (Yahoo, ESPN, CBS and others).

A mature market with growing acceptance and interest. An audience that seems more and more willing to pay for programming, who also skew to the same attractive demographics that sports benefits from. And the next 2 to 5 weeks of coverage that more or less translates into an advertisement to join or start your own league.

Amazing marketing and advertising success, right?

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Please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. We offer copywriting, direction and strategy, along with design, illustration, photography, coding and hosting. The RFPs are always free. Hope to hear from you soon.