Intentional Disasters, Or The New Way To Market

More Free Media

I really tried, honestly, to avoid writing about the Republican National Convention this week.

You see, as a consultant, it does me no good at all to get into the red versus blue nature of American politics right now. We've done work for all kinds of concerns, and for people on both sides of the aisle, and will continue to do that in the future.

But when you have something like what happened last night -- where Republican nominee Donald Trump's wife was caught plagiarizing a far from coincidental amount of speech from Michelle Obama during the Democratic convention eight years ago -- and you have to start wondering. Or, at least, I do. (Don't worry, this all comes back to marketing and advertising later.)

I can't quite square my mind around the idea that this was a simple mistake, sabotage on the part of a spurned speechwriter, or anything but, as unlikely as it sounds, intentional. Because the plain and simple fact of the matter is that Trump's branding efforts are so unrelenting, so much about dominating every news cycle whether for good reason or bad, that I can't quite discount the idea that this was the political equivalent of an Easter egg, or a news media cheat code.

In an era where political conventions are naked infomercials, and the public has an untold number of other entertainment options, making a spectacle of yourself might be defensible. Especially when, if you are Trump or one of his advisors, some part of you know that free media has been the key to your success all along, and the efficiency of paid spots has been under serious doubt for the entire cycle.

So why not sprinkle in a plagiarism minute? It's not as if it's going to shake your supporters, given that the candidate has said literally hundreds of other things that have stopped the media cold in the past year. Ginning up a controversy seems like second nature to the campaign, and the media seems incapable of not jumping into it with full force. If this sort of thing is damaging Trump's chances of winning the election, I'd wonder what has changed in the past 24 hours, as opposed to the past 12 months.

And if this pays off in the long run, and our field winds up covering the events of this campaign as the first and most brilliant example of a ju jitsu style of reverse marketing?

Well, the field would get a lot more, um, creative. Yeah, I guess creative is the most diplomatic word...

(Oh, and if you want to think about how that might look, consider the long-running Domino's ad campaign, where the chain denigrated its past efforts at food. And did that for years, to considerable free social media exposure.)

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Coup D'Tweet

Coup Or No, Cats Don't Care

We live in amazing and ridiculous times.

This showed itself again over the weekend, where a failed military coup in Turkey hit home in a major way for me. A good friend and her son were trapped in the airport in Istanbul, with her husband (and one of my best friends) was posting updates on their condition while in the U.S.

The drama played out, both on networks and our various personal feeds, in real-time. There was chaos, F-14 fighters spreading sonic booms over populated areas, taking cover during crossfire, calming walking through people chanting for hangings while trying not to betray soul-shattering fear, bridges taken and flights canceled, and finally, Turkey's embattled president taking to a social media channel that he's frequently tried to shut down, rallying his supporters to counter the action, effectively. There are even some who doubt whether this was indeed a real coup, given the immediate and effective counter strikes by the government, who has instituted mass arrests and punitive measures that are still unfolding as I write this.

While my friend and her son are safe now, they were in no way safe during the proceedings, and the final death toll is likely to astound. They are witnesses to history many times over, and while I want to wish them well and a homeland they can safely visit again, that might not be likely again in our lifetimes. Turkey is just too fragmented between the secular cities and the religious in-country, and the fact that we all have our own channels to view during this is unprecedented in human experience, and a likely continuing unsettling element.

It's been on my mind a lot. How are nations supposed to continue to exist when the media isn't only polarized and fragmented, but increasingly incapable of maintaining a sense of continuity and unity... because everyone knows they are corrupt, and would rather view their own feed? Why should Scotland stay with Great Britain when they would rather be in the EU, or London with the same reasoning, when borders are more or less meaningless from international interactions? Why should our own Red vs. Blue United States remain, well, United, given that we clearly want different things, and don't even believe common facts?

To overthrow a government used to be a relatively simple thing, to the point where the Wikipedia page for Turkey's coups now has six entries. Simply enough, you just needed to have enough people in the military become convinced that the political class had gone too far, then roll a few tanks down the main roads, round up the leaders and reboot. Turkey has been unique in its status as a relatively stable and prosperous nation that also had fairly routine takeovers, but it's not as if they were alone in their process of living through coups.

Now? There's no playbook, no sense of what happens next, what's real and what's stagecraft. And I'm not just talking about Turkey, of course; all of this applies to the UK, and maybe the EU, and all kinds of countries in Turkey's neck of the woods, and maybe further. Social media is something like a contagion. And there's no telling how it will spread next, and what the final result of every one being their own media network, will be.

So from a marketing and advertising standpoint... you know where this is going, right? Away from broadcast, away from broad blasts, and into the micro and niche and dynamic. It's where the people are, and will be.

For good and ill...

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The World Changed This Week, Thanks To A Game For Children

Push Media

I'm sorry if I'm going to exhaust your tolerance for augmented reality this week, but the plain and simple fact is that when something goes from nothing to a ridiculous level of market penetration with this kind of speed, there's more going on than a summer fad.

Also, well, summer fads rarely monetize this well. Nintendo is rolling out ad-supported hotspots next, because why on Earth wouldn't they? Any business that benefits from walk-in traffic (which is to say, damn near every quick serve restaurant, convenience store and so on) should probably consider this, especially if they are in a part of the world with enough foot traffic, or if they are in a walkable neighborhood. (Frankly, I suspect that the game makers could also collect protection money from homeowners or associations who want their peace and quiet, but that probably says more about my sense of humor than the business model.)

Locally to me this summer, a transit agency had to take a third of its cars offline due to repair issues, in the height of a busy convention season. People are going in to work an hour early or late, enduring packed cars in heat, and so on. And if you gave that agency an ability to delight those in queue, they'd be crazy not to take it. (And yes, I know that the scale of game play hasn't quite extended that far yet, but give it a little more time, and a host of other games that use the same tech, but appeal to different demographics.)

You'd add in the game content at a managerial level, if only to lessen employee turnover from dealing with customers who are inconvenienced. We've been conditioned as digital consumers to search for Easter eggs in digital media for decades, and now the eggs are out in the world. This has all been a series of dominoes that have been set up over the past 15 to 20 years, and now that they are all in motion, the change in our society will be breathtaking.

It's not all a panacea, of course. The news has been filled with the unintended consequences of the game's impact this week, from small-time crime to the end of shaky romantic relationships, and a host of ill-considered attempts to cheat the system. Getting to a place where people are paying even more attention to their phones hardly seems like a positive development, especially when you add in the likelihood of distracted pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers.

But all of that is beyond the point now. The game changer to end all game changers in mobile has come, and it's only the first of many applications to take advantage of the platform and technology. We're not going to stop feeling the ramifications of this for a very long time.

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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.