The Media We Deserve

The News Process

Going off the reservation today, and working outside of marketing and advertising. We'll get back to it next week, I promise.

So in the past week or so, the following items have hit the news.

> There is a strong possibility of blue skies and water frozen under the surface of Pluto, of all places. If there's heat being generated under the surface, which seems likely... well, um, possibility of life? Seems unlikely, but no more than water, really.

> The Hubble Telescope is pointing at a cluster of highly unlikely matter just at the edge of the Milky Way, which is either a combination of wildly improbable geographic events... or maybe, just maybe, a massive planned structure befitting an advanced alien civilization.

> The most rigorous test of quantum theory ever carried out confirms that objects can manipulate others at a distance, which means that monumentally fantastic stuff like loopholes and teleportation just might actually be possible. No, seriously.

> There's a massive asteroid that's just going to miss the planet in less than two weeks. Ye gads.

Did you miss these stories? More likely than not.

Now, did you miss the "news" that a movie from the '80s that involved time travel hit an anniversary? Or did you miss the "news" that there is a new movie coming out that dates back to the same era, and has excited lots of people who like to dress up in costume outside of Halloween?

No, no, no, you did not.

The potential for life, and another place in the solar system that might one day be a useful way station in our eventual migration to other worlds, should be an astounding deal. I would, personally, love to hear what major religious figures would say about what this would mean for the various books. (I'm thinking that other worlds are just for practice.) Wormholes could make the game-ending distances between worlds less, well, game endish. An alien civilization would simply be the biggest news event in human history, and create a massive consideration of whether or not contact would be worth the risk. Our own history of interaction with life that has lower forms of technology is not particularly encouraging on this front. And a big damned rock entering the atmosphere would be the biggest weather story ever.

But by all means, folks... let's talk about a movie or two some more. Since those have sponsors.

There's an old saying in political science circles; people get the government they deserve.

I guess the same goes for media now as well.

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Please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Blood Money

Bail Or Bleed

There's a story in the New York Times today that's just amazing in its awfulness, but wait for it; there's marketing and advertising later. But first, the story.

In a rural town in Alabama, there's a circuit judge who has decided, in his infinite wisdom, to present poor offenders with the following choice: donate blood or wear handcuffs.

No, seriously.

This isn't a case where you've got a judge who has just gone off the reservation with his own cleverness. He pretty much refused to talk to the NYT's journalist, which isn't what you do when you are in love with your own brain. No, what we've got here is abuse of the underclass, done by people who are acting as if the poor are just a free resource to be exploited. It will likely stop with sunlight, and there's few source of light to equal the Times.

But while I suspect the terrible judge that did this is well on his way to a post-professional career as a cable news pundit, simply removing the egregious problem is far from good enough. The bail system, along with the prison-industrial complex, is just one of those hidden horrors of American life. Feel free to go view the John Oliver clips for more detail on that. And in the extremely unlikely event that you are not getting why it's awful that poor defendants are being given the opportunity to contribute to a blood drive with the promise of a reduction in sentence, well... legal precedent, folks. In that it's not like you need both of your kidneys, either. Or eyes. So long as you are treating the most vulnerable in a society as if they were not worthy of humane treatment, no half measures.

Which brings us to the promised marketing and advertising bridge. Just like our backwater judge, the Web experience without ad blockers has been this forced bargain for users, who have been treated as if they had no palatable choice in the matter. Most have just shrugged and rolled up their sleeve to take the pinch, but once you have an out, you're going to take it. You might have even been inclined to donate before, but being forced to took all of the goodwill out of the equation.

Finally, this is a value exchange that seems antiquated, just because it has been in place for a very long time. That doesn't mean it will continue, of course. But when a poor exchange gets a spotlight, it's usually not long to stay.

With any luck at all, really.

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Please like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Words, Numbers, And Bill James

Credit Where Due

Sometimes, I run into people in a professional context, and when they get the gist of what I do, they don't understand how it came to be. Most people have a clear concept of who and what a copywriter is -- someone who sweats over words as if people still read, or ever really liked to do that. That person is supposed to have a massive amount of books in their life, a seeming disregard for designers, and their head in the clouds as they think about Big Ideas and how words can bring them home. Close your eyes and picture this person, and you've probably got patches on the elbows, paper everywhere, and all kinds of things to spur creativity in the work space. Or whatever cliche of writer works for you.

Now, analysis. Very different person, right? Lives in spreadsheets, dreams of automating the copy with machine intelligence, would have gone into accounting but needed just a hair more excitement in their life. If they gamble, it's poker, and it's with a disturbing ability to calculate odds, to the point of making sure the game is no fun at all. The work environment is austere and severe, they are efficient to the point of obsessiveness, and so on. You might trust them to run your stock portfolio or pick your fantasy sports team, but consult on your creative? Never!

How can you get both of these people at once?

Well, more importantly, how can you not?

Creatives who don't look at the numbers -- any numbers, so long as they have statistical significance -- are flying blind, and doing that without even owning the plane. Analytics people who don't look at the art are missing the chance to diagnose the work and solve problems in ways that clients can truly appreciate, because the lessons learned are rarely something that doesn't have legs outside of the immediate project. Combine both, and you get a learning engine, and learning engines are the only way, in my opinion, that you can hope to keep getting better at your gig. (And staffing for both roles just means conflict and complication, and in the start ups where I've usually worked, isn't realistic.)

As for how you get this way... well, beyond the sheer usefulness of it all, I credit Bill James.

James, for those of you who are not afflicted with the sports problem, is a wildly influential writer and analyst who set out to learn the intricacies of baseball. Rather than just accept conventional wisdom about what kinds of players were best, James dug into the numbers, discovered all kinds of actionable learning points, and was eventually proven right, over and over again, with the sport more or less taking his work and amplifying it. If you've seen "Moneyball", you've seen the impact of James.

To me, James was just a voice in a book that told me it was OK to think about sports, rather than just watch and react to them. That in thinking about these things, it was also possible to learn things that others did not know, and that in writing about them, to bring the art back in. (James is, at his best, a flat out terrific writer, and some of his stuff has stayed with me for decades.)

Thinking about stuff that others do not can be time consuming and debilitating, but it can also be very lucrative. I recommend it.

To my fellow writers... stop being afraid of analysis, and analysts. They are here to help, and if your copy doesn't need help, you are a very, very special unicorn. To my analytical brethren, dabbling in creative is more fun than you might think, and if you can develop the knack of giving actionable feedback to creatives, they will love you forever. And invite you to wildly better parties than you would get to on your own.

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Please 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. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.