More Games And Less NFL Draft, Please

Read Name, Lift Shirt, Repeat

Tonight, the NFL Draft started -- the first of a 3-day festival of Not Games that, in my lifetime, has somehow shed its original No One Really Watches This into untold hours of highly watched, well, content.

And while there is a certain Reality Show vibe to the proceedings that must appeal to people who are not me, especially when a highly touted player sees their standing slip, and stews about it on camera in a waiting room... you have to be way too into the proceedings to consider this exceptionally, well, entertaining. And I say this as a world-class football and sports nerd.

Still, well, the market has spoken, and with two networks covering it breathlessly, the goal of every other league is to replicate this success. But what I think the draft really shows isn't the broadcast potential for a long and delayed reading of names, but just how underserved the market is for professional football.

Thirty five years ago, the USFL generated ratings that were higher than MLB or NBA... despite being a brand-new league with no established rivalries, and relatively limited star power. Minor leagues with players that are not at the NFL level (aka, the Canadian Football League and the Arena Football variant) are stable and long-standing, which speaks to, well, profitability. There's even a women's league now, and immense interest at the college and high school level. If this was any other industry and any other market, more inventory from rival companies would flood the market. We are nowhere near satiety, as a nation, in our hunger for football.

But since the NFL is a protected monopoly, and the public buys into the idea that these other leagues -- particularly college -- has to exist, since they always have. As if the business of running a football team has much to do with the business of running a college. But what's really going on here is an unnaturally cautious business and an underserved market.

Imagine, if you will, two or three NFL tiers and separate leagues, with overlapping seasons. Not a minor league, and with teams that are not affiliated with each other, but with a clear tier situation (possibly by contract size) that passes champions up into higher tiers, and sends the worst teams down. Kind of like how most other nations (the English with soccer being the best example) handle wildly popular sports.

So instead of a draft, football fans would have, well, games to watch. Just about every week, with all of the games mattering, played under the same rules, in all kinds of cities, both "major" and minor.  With players that, eventually, even casual fans would have heard of, or maybe followed for a longer period of their lives. The average NFL career is only about four years, mostly because there are hundreds of younger and cheaper players trying to take the jobs of older players every year. Also, well, injuries.

We'd have fantasy leagues all year long. Much more in the way of gambling and live stadium action and commerce. An impetus to get colleges out of the business of football. A significant amount of jobs created, and a strong corrective market force to teams that try to move away for sweeter stadium deals. More live content with prime advertising opportunities, and programs with ratings that will likely outperform other live sporting events. A much more fluid situation that would lead to teams in non-U.S. markets. In other words, a correct market, with all of the good that our capitalistic hearts yearn for.

Instead, we've got artificial scarcity. Cities like St. Louis losing teams, with Oakland and San Diego likely to follow, with no idea if or when they'll ever be replaced. Advertising opportunities that only exist in one season. De facto subsidies of basic cable channels by the entire populace, instead of just the people that, well, want to watch football.

And people spending half a week of their lives to watch a very slow reading of a list of names.

So. Honestly. To anyone who is really into the draft, one simple question:

Wouldn't you rather be watching football?

And if the answer to that is yes, why aren't you asking the NFL to stop being such communists and expand?

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

5 Ways That Offices Matter

Respect My Space

In the MidAtlantic region where I live and work, the change in seasons has come, as it usually does, with a surge in thunderstorm activity in the afternoon. My company is also in the process of upgrading our office space, so we can turn three locations into one, and become more integrated across teams. It's going to be a really great moment for the company, in ways that I'm not sure many of our people even realize, because many of my co-workers, frankly, haven't gone through this kind of thing before.

I've been at companies that have moved locations, and it's much like moving on a personal level. There's always a reason to go, and you always get enthused about it, because change is always better to take on the rise. Finally, and this is kind of an odd coincidence, the old building inevitably fails you in some way, usually just before you leave. (We'll be in our new location in a few more weeks.)

Anyway, long set-up complete. Today, the power went out after a thunderstorm, and everyone got to (well, had to) go home early. We've also had issues with the wifi, the AC (well, maybe that's just me, I seem to be under a vent), leaking windows that have gotten to a mold situation, security issues in the parking lot, and so on. So while I was driving home today and thinking about if I would do better to log in tonight to clear the last bit or just come in early the next day, it struck me... my office is, honestly, just in my bag, and has been for decades now. I've also worked out of my home for decades as a consultant, or on the road at various locations. So what are the common factors in the offices that have helped me work better, and those that held me back?

1) Enough space, and make sure there's a mix.

One of my start ups in Silicon Valley, another in Manhattan, and an old-school place in the greater Philadelphia region, put people way too close to each other as a deliberate act, either due to high real estate costs or mistaken ideas about collaboration. It can provoke an intense camaraderie and occasional big wins from unavoidable eavesdropping on telephone calls, but in the long run, it's just disastrous, especially around any excuse to get out of the torture chamber for meals. Too little space makes for people just wandering off to get work done, and a room that people just don't want to be in. Especially if some of these roles are more vocal than others.

2) Many commuting options.

If an office is in a commuting choke point, and there's only one way to get there, with no public transportation option, what you have is an office that's at routine risk for an unpleasant commute... and that's just deadly in the long run, because it just creates a reason for turnover that's persistent and invisible in the actual venue, and contributes to an overall negative tone.

If your office isn't blessed with walkability, public transit options or alternate highway support, what I *strongly* recommend is flex time to avoid traffic. When I worked in the Bay Area, doing a 10 to 7-ish shift meant that I'd get back a full hour of my day, every day... and since the commute was car only, that hour of traffic avoidance just meant that I didn't spend five hours a week thinking about finding a different gig.

3) Don't neglect, or overdose on, the start-up areas and touches.

If you work in a traditional office setting, you tend to look wistfully, or skeptically, at the clubhouse touches of start-up offices. These would be the Foosball tables, game consoles, lounge areas, and so on, and I've been at places where getting my work done was downright difficult due to the buzzing of hobby drone blimps and first person shooter games.

When these touches work, it's because they inspire teams to spend more time with each other outside of work, and to make bonds that limit turnover. (As an aside, if I have one piece of advice for any marketer that needs support from engineers... develop a Foosball game. Mine has done me no end of good over the years.) You can always curtail the fun and games to certain hours, or move on from the hire that has the best Halo skills, later.

4) Health makes wealth. 

When you set aside a quiet room for nursing mothers, a variety of snack and beverages options, flexibility in desks with standing points or beyond the law handicapped accessibility, push for a better health care plan, matching 401K, etc... well, yes, this all costs money, and limit choices that you might make in terms of bonuses, competitive compensation, increased staffing, and so on.

But you also create a situation where distractions to cover these needs just go away, and an undistracted work force makes for efficiencies and less turnover. You also create, and this is a big plus, a company where your people recruit and assist your hiring.

5) The biggest gain from a good office is in recruiting.

Especially if you've been suffering with a weak office, interviewing in a good one just puts stars in your eyes. It speaks to success, to stability, to a progressive and inspiring future, rather than one where you get caught in the weeds of commuting, parking, and so on.

Offices matter, even if you've got a distributed work force, and heavy road miles. If you are only making the decision at a bottom line basis, you probably aren't making your best decision.

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

5 Client Retention Lessons from Frank Underwood

He's Hard On Housekeepers

This weekend, in between other chores and my inevitable NBA playoff watching, I caught up to the latest season of "House of Cards", the Netflix political drama / soap opera that's won awards and no small amount of attention over its first four seasons. (Don't worry: I'll avoid any spoilers.) The life and times of Frank Underwood, the show's central character and MacBeth-esque figure, have done Kevin Spacey a world of good, and the show has already been picked up for additional seasons.

That's all to the good. But while I'm still a pretty big fan of the show, and probably will remain so for as long as Spacey and Robin Wright are around to chew the very expensive scenery, I can't help but think that the show has passed its peak... if only because my binge-watching was entirely sane this time around, and obvious drama turns and episodic arcs became, well, a little more predictable. (Don't worry, this will all come around to marketing and advertising soon enough.)

This isn't fatal or even all that surprising. There's 50-odd episodes of HoC in the can now, and at this point, we all know what we're going to get when we fire it up. But it struck me, on some level, as indicative of where you get as a consultant, especially when your client relationship gets more and more seasoned. How do you keep the relationship fresh when there's a world of other people with ideas and experiences that would just love to take your spot, or clients that would never turn down an opportunity to cut down their expenses?

1) Develop new tricks.

One of my issues with Season 4 is that Underwood kept going to the well of direct violence against the women in his life... and while that's entirely correct for the character, it also undermines the core hook of the show. Like Walter White in "Breaking Bad", viewers get pulled into rooting for the protagonist through his occasional virtues (in White's case, righting past wrongs, and in Underwood's, competence in getting his goals accomplished)... but when he uses the same methods, that competence is undermined, and we're just left watching to see what happens, rather than being more emotionally invested.

As a consultant, if you are all about one method -- analytics, creative, copy writing, design, list management, etc. -- you are going to eventually seem limited. Good craftspeople have more tools in the belt, and make sure that the task matches the means.

2) Don't play the game everyone else plays.

The best moments in HoC come when Underwood or his associates use creativity or a greater vision to out-maneuver their adversaries, because being in the presence of people who are good at what they do is, well, captivating.

In marketing and advertising, if everyone else is selling impressions on prestige and branding, consider a paid acquisition model -- because if those numbers work for you, you've moved from an idiosyncratic choice to one that's a business imperative. If your client insists on sticking with a practice that you know is a loser, think about steering into the skid to truly show the extent of the mistake (assuming, of course, that you are also able to run a test cell with a less ruinous message, to limit the damage and ensure the learning). Move away from single metric measures of success or failure, because life is rarely that simple, and it will give you more ways to achieve. And so on. While choosing the lesser of two evils is sometimes necessary as adults, it's also not the way to run a business.

3) Candor can devastate. Use it carefully.

The "showiest" aspect of HoC is when Underwood breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly about his inner motivations, in moments that none of the other characters hear, or react to. It's part of what leads to the whole MacBeth aspect of the show, along with Underwood's ambition and single-minded need for power, but what it also does is makes the audience complicit, an insider, someone with extraordinary insight. Only Underwood gets this power, even though there are plenty of scenes where he's not on screen, and these moments rarely disappoint.

Candor can intoxicate, and the right client can make you feel like you can fully "level" about what's going to happen in the business, or why something is going down the way it is... but it can also unsettle, since it can show that you only see one outcome. Especially if that outcome doesn't come to pass, at which point even the most impressed client has to wonder about your skills. My advice, learned from a long time in the trenches: be candid when you are completely sure of something. And try not be completely sure too often.

4) Control the pace.

In the current season, Underwood is undermined by the calendar of events in a political campaign, and has to take more drastic actions to put the odds back into his favor. As consultants, we usually have to deliver by certain deadlines, show results in time for Q4, and so on. But that type of thinking can leave opportunities on the table, and prevent more lucrative and successful initiatives, especially when you are trying to change what a brand means to the end user.

My experience says that if you can be direct and upfront about the desire to go beyond your limitations, you can often win more business and a longer rope. And even if you aren't able to get what you want right away, you lay the groundwork for winning it later.

5) Think from other perspectives... but never assume that such thinking will be airtight.

In the season finale, Underwood has to adjust when a risky ploy goes sideways, and the reason why is highly instructive. Since they know the background of the person they are dealing with doesn't quite jibe with his current situation, a leverage play is used to get him to do what they need... but the pull of the new position is stronger than what could be reached through realpolitick. While the outcome wasn't entirely shocking, and on further reflection seemed like a weak moment of plotting to my eyes, it's still instructive.

One of the easiest mistakes to make in marketing and advertising is falling for the Naturalistic Fallacy, simply known as "what is true for me is true for all." It's fine to put yourself in the shoes of a client or prospect, and work to find a solution from a different starting point. Just be aware that this is an easy way to make howling mistakes. So make sure to get "sanity checks" from outside perspectives, especially from people who are unafraid to tell you uncomfortable truths. It could save your business.

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