Muhammad Ali: The End Of Fear

Preach

A quick few words about the passing of one of the most important people of the past one hundred years. Not just for marketers and advertisers!

When I was a kid, not to put too fine a point on it... Muhammad Ali was widely loathed, especially in my social circle. I won't repeat the words used to describe him, but Uppity might have been the least charged among them, with all kinds of other indignities hurled his way.

The only thing that kept the haters at bay was the fact that (a) Ali kept winning, and (b) the only guys to beat him, even in his failing years, were also African-Americans. Rooting for the likes of George Foreman, Leon Spinks or Larry Holmes was all just rooting for anyone on the Not Ali ticket.

So, what was it that people hated about the guy?

It really wasn't his stand against the war in Vietnam. Working classes of every race hated that war early and often, since only their sons got chosen to serve, and the long-term "vision" of a curtailed political system was rarely a big deal. Nor was it the points for which Ali could be pilloried; his cruelty in the ring to outmatched opponents in his peak days, his occasional political missteps, his general tendency towards outrage, his defense of a sport that gave him riches, but also helped to rob him of his intellect.

Rather, this.

Before Ali, there were controversial black athletes. Sonny Liston, the man he beat to be champion the first time, was a figure of considerable distaste for White America. Besides, every pioneer tends to wind up with arrows on their back and stomach.

Ali took that controversy to an entirely different level, because he didn't believe in false humility about his opinion of his opponent's competence. So instead of keeping his head down and reciting cliches, he took public discourse into realms that were not seen before. By doing this, Ali gave the biggest possible green light to competent African-Americans of all stripes that always following someone else's rules, regardless of the merit of these rules, was for rubes.

Because of one guy, being himself, refusing to be afraid.

This, to me, is the legacy of Ali, and why he was important.

Without Ali, maybe we don't get Mandela, Prince, Obama, and so many others.

Greatness isn't just what you do. It's what you inspire.

And very few people have ever inspired more greatness than Muhammad Ali.

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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.

Tech Vs. Ethics

Let's Shake

One of my recurring concerns is how technology seems to be outpacing personal ethics. Mapping the human genome is amazing, but it could easily lead to the creation of eugenics-driven conformities. Genetic modifications of food could lead to massive benefit to humanity, or unforeseen miseries. Transplants and medical developments are amazing, but if decisions are driven purely by economics, abuse seems like it would be rife. In our lifetimes, we've seen tech end employment in any number of fields, and communications breakthroughs speed a "race to the bottom" in billables for previously lucrative trades. And so on.

There's no doubt that we live in amazing and challenging times. And where that relates to marketing and advertising comes around to something that rarely seems like an area of innovation, but still is: list segmentation. Specifically, redlining, and how the last mile of connectivity is going to make some amazing and troubling things possible.

First, a mild history lesson. Redlining was a racist practice in which minority borrowers were prevented from moving into communities through the denial of loans... but while it's obvious that decisions based on skin color are wrong, decisions based on income, assets and credit records happen all the time. And how that relates in the digital age is something that's eventually going to hit the public eye. But let's take it from the theoretical and make it easier to understand.

On a personal level, I've contributed to political campaigns before, and I've also recently been in the market for a new car. Both of these activities are in my online cookie record, and also have offline assets, through the use of a credit card and providing offline contact information. In both cases, I've been the subject of remarketing and retargeing campaigns, and had my info sold and rented for lead generation and dunning efforts. Absolutely ordinary stuff. I'm guessing you've had the same experience.

But let's dig deeper. For the car shopping, I arranged for test drives for my wife of a half dozen different models. If one of those car companies had been exceptionally aggressive in their pursuit of our business, they could have bought out all available advertising inventory, to the point where the only automotive ads were from one advertiser. It's a simple matter of overbidding in an real-time bidding environment. So far, the advertising environment has been too varied, and the adtech too much about scale to make this too obvious... but this kind of lockout work gets easier in a Google / Facebook centric ad environment, which has been where the market has been moving for the past few years, anyway.

Now, imagine how my advertising mix might look when it's personalized not just on my laptop, smartphone and tabled, but also on 30-second spots on broadcast and cable. (For the record, Adobe already claims to sell this capability.) Lockout gets easier here, and starts to end the idea of guaranteed reach and openings for competing brands. Only the big money brands would ever be willing and able to go the extra cost mile for their leads, and while this seems a little odd, it's not unprecedented, especially when you compare it to paid search listings.

So in this scenario, I'm only seeing ads for a single car brand, rather than the half dozen that were in my consideration set. And while that might seem a little Orwellian, but it's still just a purchase, and I can still make a different purchase based on follow-up emails or our own memory from the test drives. But I'm less likely to go that way, because advertising is effective. And so is the lack thereof.

Now, let's go beyond a purchase, and into something that might matter more for the republic. The tools for a political campaign are the same ones you'd use in e-commerce. There's also no reason why the organizations that agree with my views wouldn't want to control my ad mix. Perhaps I'd be less apt to donate my time and money in a setting where the only ads I ever see are for the opponent, and everything starts to seem like a fait accompli. Or I'm less likely to donate again, assuming that I haven't hit my limit yet, because there's no evidence that my candidate is making any ad spends at all with my money.

Perhaps all of this isn't as potent as it used to be, with social media taking over so much of our media mix, and personal technology seeming less prone to lockout. But again, ads in a dominant social media mix are even easier to fix.

I don't mean to cast this all in an ominous light. As a marketing and advertising pro, nothing makes my job easier than being able to tailor my creative and messaging to a highly relevant audience, and calling out benefits that matter more to an "expert" list has been my sweet spot as a pro for a very long time.

But just because the tools are powerful, doesn't mean they have to be used for, well, good. Or evil.

Amazing and challenging times, indeed.

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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.

Five Ways To Lead... Without Title

Pay It Forward

In my current gig, I don't have direct reports. (Not a complaint; just where we are as a company.) No one has to do what I tell them, and most folks that I work with have much more experience in the field. And yet, I feel like I have a great deal of sway in my role, and can make a real impact in a wide range of factors.

At the risk of this sounding like a humble brag, how does this happen?

1) Positioning. By bringing in experience from outside of the field, I've been able to predict which campaigns are going to work, and which ones are going to tank... not through my ability to See The Future, but by being able to extrapolate from the relevant past.

2) Timing. If life in an office is somewhat analogous to a game of poker, then my contributions are more like the player who doesn't play that many hands, but does bet big when the cards are running in my favor. I choose my battles more, instead of having to contest every pot. It also makes for a far more effective outcome on the decisions that I feel more strongly about, since I'm collecting favors for future payoff.

3) Standing. I try to ground my opinions in precedent and optimal practice. The only way you get those points is to do the homework of looking through data for clues, and read a great deal of outside work to keep inspiring the new findings. (There may be a method to this whole "no direct reports" thing, in other words.)

4) Deflection. The numbers that I run could generate all kinds of self-aggrandizing points like what happens when the subject line is something I wrote, what the campaigns were generating before my hire date, and how other aspects of what we do drive more engagement and value. But that's not how I do my business, because it would be, well, unseemly. I'd rather teach my colleagues and clients my practices and techniques than be "magic"... because that sort of thing just isolates you, and makes it clear in the long term that you care more about your career than your employer. Take care of the latter, and the former will take care of itself.

5) Perspective. We cut our trending work all the way down to 24 yearly periods (i.e., every 15 days), and it's easy to try and make bigger deals out of outliers and possible trends, or to try to take the short cut with game-changing "big" moves. But that's not how the world works, or at least, how it's worked for the past three decades in the space, at the places where I've worked. Instead, you do better by building your case for optimal practices, brick by brick, flight by flight, case by case. Especially with anything that has elements of direct marketing, moonshot development moments are rare, and should be given exceptional scrutiny for mitigating circumstances.

That's because true growth isn't generally found in single shot moments of transcendent wisdom, but in the 90% of life that is just showing up. And having the right habits to help ensure that you aren't getting in the way of growth.

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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.