Cord, Cut

You'll Rarely Miss It

I've been traveling on business for the past few weeks, as part of a long-term relocation project. For the next 2 to 14 months, I'll be living by myself, away from family, while situations shake out and we figure out the next place for all of us to be.

This also means that for the first time in my life, I'm completely without a television... and, also, access to all of the entertainment options that cable television brings.

What I wasn't prepared for was just how little I'd miss it. (By the way, this is a huge part of why AirBNB can be viable now. All you need to host now is fast and reliable Wifi; the one place that I've stayed in the past two weeks that had cable, it was unwatchable due to pixilation. But I digress.)

With the exception of NBA playoff games -- which I've picked up at various sports bars and gyms, aided by the West Coast time shift -- I haven't looked at anything outside of my Netflix queue for weeks now, and probably won't for the next few months. I've picked up topical stuff from online sources, but for the most part, I've just been watching less and less, and getting more done. (There's also a new gig that's pretty all-consuming right now, and promises to continue to be that way.)

I am long past the event horizon of people who should be cord-cutting, and if the NBA playoffs had been more compelling up to this point, maybe I'd be more annoyed by the loss of access. But the fact of the matter is that you can find most of the content that you are looking for via the Web now, and there isn't so much that demands a full screen, immersing experience to be enjoyable.

Eventually, my living conditions will change, and I'll have more than my own entertainment needs to consider. Perhaps I'll break down and go back to a bundled package or satellite system, especially if I'm entertaining others, or my football laundry has a particularly compelling year. Maybe once my Netflix queue stops being quite so compelling (new "Master of None"! new "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt!"), this will also feel more like deprivation.

But, still? Something I've had for decades and decades just went away, and I'm not missing it -- at all. If you run a cable company, or a broadcast network, and that doesn't put a little fear into you, I'm not sure what will. (Also, um, if your livelihood depends on 30 second spots that feed such things.)

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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 Quick Points From A Changing America

Road Trip!

This week's column was written near the end of a very long road trip. Eleven years ago, I drove cross-country from the Bay Area to New York for work. This week, I'm making the reverse trip for a new gig. Here's the differences from the country, as they relate to marketing and advertising.

> FedEx, FedEx everywhere. The offline retail apocalypse that's happening in malls across America isn't temporary. It's in all of those FedEx trucks, filled to the brim with online orders, that are all over the highways. I've been passing them every few minutes, honestly.

> America got casinos. It used to be that casinos were just a Nevada thing, but now there's racetrack outfits and slot machine hook ups in most states. They don't have the prime Interstate locations that go to food, lodging and fuel, but you'll still see them easily enough.

> You can drive faster now, but you won't. Speed limits are up to 80, but we need infrastructure something bad. Single lane highways and hundreds of miles of repairs are common, especially in Western states that look like they've seen hard times. Even in times of high employment, you'd have to think that this would be a bipartisan win to get the roads fixed. No one likes potholes. (Also, you'll pass people now just doing the speed limit, because, well, the roads. Also, I suspect, people wanting to avoid speeding tickets, because enforcement is at the same levels as before.)

> Radio has changed. In my scans, I've found less religious and talk radio than a decade ago, and more demographically targeted music -- mostly Spanish and middle-aged, which is to say, the people who haven't completely migrated to online yet. I'd also bet that it's gotten less lucrative, because the ads are less plentiful, and for much more in the way of local brands. But there's something to be said for classic hip-hop that's brought to you by incontinence medications...

> Online aps aren't done changing the place. I've stayed at three locations during this trip; two AirBNBs, and one traditional hotel. The AirBNBs were far more comfortable, offered much more in the way of space and amenities, and were also better deals for the money. I really see myself using that site more than hotels moving forward, especially for solo business trips. And as for those convenience stores... there's an app on my phone that tells me gas prices now, as part of a crowd sourced community. Which has led me to drive right past the big beautiful store right on the Interstate, and to patronize the slightly dusty one a half mile away, where the gas was a lot cheaper. The lesson, as always: connectivity changes everything. Even places that don't look like they'll ever change.

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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.

Be Very Very Quiet, I'm Selling FUD

Our Hero

In some of my past gigs, I've led creative efforts for low brands -- lead generation white labels that transferred the prospects to a third party -- in various fields. With nothing unique to pitch and no differentiating positive traits, these campaigns were an interesting creative challenge, especially when you had no real brand marketing concerns to address.

Fortunately in these roles, I had access to great data, an in-house and vendor creative team that were very skilled and quick at their jobs, and analytic insights that gave us what we needed to iterate for future turns. We made a lot of money on these projects, but that's kind of besides the point. Instead, what I want to discuss today is something that we referred to internally as FUD -- fear, uncertainty, and doubt -- and what we learned from executing these campaigns.

FUD campaigns can work when (a) the campaign is in a consumer category where the consequence of a poor choice was substantial, and (b) you had a prospect list that, well, responded to fear without just associating your brand with the negative stimulus. But keep in mind these five points. .

1) You have a very small window of time to sell the fear. Visually, your piece has to communicate the value proposition in a glimpse, preferably with a headline that doesn't waste a single character. Copy can (and should) go long after that glimpse, but if the ad looks like work, and negative work at that, it's not going to perform well. (Pro tip: when you are doing FUD work, make sure to have just text versions in your creative mix. They work more often than you might think.)

2) It burns out creative personnel. As a manager, I had to be careful not to give too many of these approaches to the same copy and design teams, or risk turnover. Creative pros don't always need the piece to go into a lead position in their portfolio, but too much of this mechanical work can make even the most productive teams lag and look elsewhere.

3) Innovative players in a space can move the ground out from under you -- especially if consumer satisfaction from presumed premium brands isn't that high to begin with. Consider how an ever-growing number of consumers are willing to accept rides and lodging from strangers, albeit ones with qualified feedback and presumed vetting from the innovators in the space. So we have two major pillars of the travel sector that are under attack at all levels of price, because the FUD of a poor ride or lacking stay just isn't all that much higher than, well, the FUD of the same thing from a brand.

4) Brands that go for FUD usually don't have anything else going for them. There's a reason why most of the FUD work we did was for our own white labels, with the small aside for comedic executions that target other players.

5) Winning campaigns will get duplicated by shrewd competitors. After all, there's no barrier to entry here.

As a creative pro, I hope you don't have too much FUD in your professional life. Or, for that matter, your personal one.

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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.