The Serious Business Of Real Fun

Bring The Fun

For about 10 to 15 minutes a day at my current gig, the people in my office get, well, there's no other word to describe it.

Goofy. We get seriously goofy.

We pull out Nerf guns and blaze away at each other -- having made significant personal investments of time and money in the gear we use to peg each other. A growing percentage of the office play on the foosball table, with increasingly over the top trash talk adding to the festivities. (My go-to phrase when trying to coax the ball away from an opponent, because I am of that age: "Come to Butthead.") On summer Friday afternoons when we close up shop a few hours early, I've pulled out a putter and putting green and tried to make shots from 100 feet of long hallway carpet away. This week, there's going to be a Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament, and I'm leaving out other details, because, well, this isn't a laundry list. There is, in fact, an entire committee based around Fun. It's also a continuing scandal to my children that I am a part of that group.

By Silicon Valley standards, none of this is particularly startling or over the top. We have no gaming consoles, don't use office computers for serious timewaste, and even in the most raucous of moments, you can always pop in headphones and grind away to your heart's content. Even the most distractable among us seems to be desk-bound for the vast majority of our day, and the foolishness is contained to more or less break or meal times.

But by the standards of the more traditional industry that we inhabit, all of this is kind of a big deal, and the occasional reactions that I get from people who work elsewhere tell me this isn't very common. I've also worked at a number of martech companies where this level of seeming frivolity was matched or surpasssed, but actually, not quite, because the underlying current of the place weren't, well, in any way fun.

Fun in the office is, at its core, something that comes from the top, spread by an actual fondness among groups and people, and something you just can't fake. When your CEO is speeding along to a meeting on a scooter, that might seem fun... but when they are going fast as a matter of showy athleticism or efficiency to get somewhere quicker, that kind of kills the purpose. When there's an after-work happy hour where people aren't talking about work, that's fun. When it's a frat-level test of tolerance to see who can pitch ideas while sloshed, it's not.

This all seems like something that should be obvious at an HR or leadership level, but the nature of business is that you are not always going to have the right people in those positions, or a company that's going to work out in the long run. If your top people are insecure about their role or the direction of the company, fun becomes just another way to show those problems. When they believe in the direction and are comfortable in their skin, you get heartfelt compliments on your foosball game from the execs, without a moment of snark over how much time you may have wasted in your life to get those skills. (To be honest, many, many hours. And as an aside, any marketing pro that wants to get something out of their engineering team should learn to play foosball, at least to a level of tolerable. It pays off in spades.)

So the question really isn't whether or not your company has fun at the office. Because every company claims that now, because every company knows that fun in the office is critical to reducing turnover and keeping morale up.

More accurately, it's this: how many people are faking it?

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Harry Potter And The Too Fast Payday

I've Got A Golden Cash Cow

This weekend, my wife, a very strong Harry Potter fan, went to the local book store to get an immediate copy of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child." This is, of course, the first new entry in the JK Rowling series that was one of the first great signs that Young Adult literature was going to be publishing's most lucrative segment when it launched, nearly twenty years ago. For the first time in ten years, fans of the series have a new full-length release to dig into, and my youngest grabbed it and stole off to her room for hours of reading. That's all to the good.

Based on pre-order sales, "Child" is on pace to be the top selling book of the year on the big sites that sell books in physical and digital formats. Rowling claims that this will mark the end of Potter's specific adventures, but that leaves the very large out of just continuing the series with new characters that are introduced in the book... and, well, not to quibble too much here, but Rowling didn't really write this one, either. Instead, she collaborated with playwrights Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, with the book an actual screenplay for the stage production that's currently running in London.

As a screenplay, "Child" is a quick read, without the usual heft of previous Potter works... and to be honest, I found it unsatisfying. I've defended Rowling's work as something of a modern-day Charles Dickens, who was also a massive commercial success in his day. There are entire chapters late in the series that I believe are genuinely touching and meaningful. While much of her work would have benefitted from strong editing, once the series moved away from the early bankable concept of tweens learning magic in a secret world that was analogous and parallel to the modern, universal human truths and motivations were given great insight. It's difficult to judge such things in one's lifetime, but I think the Potter books will be taught in academia as the definitive works of their time period.

"Child", on the other hand, reads like fan fiction, with past characters re-worked to generate wish fulfillment from the audience, and plot twists and holes that seem beneath the previous level of the series. It also seems like, well, a missed opportunity.

From a marketing and advertising standpoint, there's no denying that Potter fans are extremely underserved, with very little new content from Rowling for characters that the audience is clearly unwilling to let go. By showing her inclination to let others add to the canon, there are, simply, better avenues to monetize and produce than a single story. (I'm also ignoring, for the moment, the other new piece that's coming down the pike this fall, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", with new characters from the same world, but in an earlier time period. If it's the same level as "Child", we're dealing with a diminished brand.)

What Potter fans really want is the certainty of more, and depth, rather than one-off stunts. Imagine if Rowling gave the green light to a long-form series (say, on Netflix or HBO), and hired a top-flight showrunner. You could easily have a multi-tiered audience approach, with a more youth-oriented approach for a new generation of students, or in a different home country, and something more dark and adult for the generation that's now 20 years past Young Adult themes. If you are concerned about the cost in re special effects, explore animation, or just move more effects off screen. Potter fans want more from these characters, rather than the latest in CGI.

It seems amazing to think that one of the world's most successful book and movie properties is being underserved, or making the wrong choices in long-term brand building. And I could easily be wrong about this, especially if "Child" has deeper sales penetration than just the existing audience. But having read through it, I have my doubts that it's going to stay in the spotlight for more than a couple of weeks. Or that it will force too many changes in the Potter theme parks.

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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.

Surviving The Election

Walking The Walk

Since it is the season for such things, a brief political aside, but one that isn't particularly partisan or about marketing.

In a past presidential election, I was particularly interested in the US Presidential election, and fortunate enough to have personal time accrued and a relatively stable job. So I went all-in on the campaign. Wound up writing a book about the experiences, spent thousands of hours phone banking and walking the streets in a swing state, donated the personal maximum and was a loyal foot soldier in the front lines of a Get Out The Vote campaign. By the time I was done, I had probably talked to a few thousand people, and had experiences that will stay with me for a very long time.

It wasn't a universally great experience. I ran into unforeseen expenses from my car getting broken into, which led to a dead battery, which led to a lost weekend and serious expense in getting home again, then getting the car fixed while remote. I was interviewed for local television, but since I didn't go along with their preset narrative of Angry People From Other States, the interview did not get aired, which did not exactly fill me with good feelings about the press. There were many hot and sweaty days spending my time in not very efficient ways, talking to people who were tired of the entire process, or trying to overcome the fatigue, cynicism and go-it-alone tendencies of my fellow canvassers. It cost money, gave me sore feet, and at the end of the process, the disappointment was acute.

But what I also got out of it was a much deeper understanding and charity for my fellow citizens. Undecided voters in particular became time-stressed people with much harder burdens in life than I, hopefully, will ever have to bear. Local organizers and politicans who got support from the national campaign become additional points in the way, and I felt good when they won, even when the bigger contest went the other way. People in my social circles thanked me, strongly for my work and choices. I made friends and contacts, and as always when you get out of your comfort zone, grew as a person.

It was also oddly akin to my past career as an original musician... in that when we played a free or unannounced gig, or one with a very small cover charge, people were much more likely to be critical. But when the crowd had to pay to see us, had heard something about us from a reviewer, or even just caught the news that we weren't local (in that we would travel and play cities outside of our home area), those crowds were always much more positive, much faster to cheer us on. The act of paying made people invested in our music, and much more willing to go along with what we were trying to do.

The same, of course, goes with candidates. People who I didn't feel very strongly about supporting in the primaries got better service from me, as a canvasser and advocate, in the general election. Even though they were not my first choice. Part of this was clearly the urgency of the event, or the strong preference that I had to avoid the ascension of their opponent, but that wasn't the total appeal. Buying in made me connect, even when I didn't want to.

So if you find yourself just wishing the process was over, or getting through the campaign as if you were on an uninspiring diet or weight loss regimen, I've got one contradictory and difficult piece of advice for you: commit more. Lean in. Not so much for your dislike of one particular candidate, but for your strong love of country, and your desire to see a better path in the future. Stand up for a candidate in real life, and away from the empty rhetoric of your own social media circle or like-minded peer group.

It's not easy work, something you can declare on your taxes, or even something that will result in gratification for, well, roughly half of the audience. But you will gain a much better understanding of why things are the way they are... and you'll be forever changed about the way you think about candidates, and the people who support them.

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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.