Disrupting Disruption

How Adobe Is Makng Me Feel

You hear a lot of idioms when you work in adech. Fail fast. Long tail thinking. And perhaps the most powerful, disrupt everything.

This call to innovate has led to the engine that is driving the U.S. economy. A small number of tech companies are the biggest reason why the stock market as a whole has performed so well in the past six months, and there's no end of folks who want to be just like them. And for the most part, this is a great and good thing, especially if you are a fan of getting the U.S. off fossil fuel use.

I've made a living from innovation for decades, and at my current gig, continue in this vein. So what I'm about to discuss isn't an easy thing to denigrate. But here goes.

There are no panaceas in life, and nothing that comes without consequences. Sustainable energy infrastructure has an impact on the environment, albeit one that's remarkably lower than fossil fuel use. I may delight in my phone taking pictures or serving as a flashlight or guitar tuner, but there are untold numbers of people who, thanks to these apps, no longer have employment. Consequences.

Which leads me to news from Adobe, demoed on stage and covered recently in business publications, of Voco. Basically, Photoshop for audio, which gives the operator of the software the ability to create thoroughly realistic scripts that were never said by the speaker. All you need is 20 to 40 minutes of data to work from, and you can make anyone say anything, in a fake that's nearly undetectable to anyone who isn't looking at the actual code.

No, seriously.

And while the stated use case for the software is clear and useful for a limited number of professionals -- sound engineers on media that get to skip laborious recovery sessions -- the far greater negative impact on humanity seems clear, yes?

If fake news is the scourge by which elections and social media has been more or less permanently corrupted, how much worse does it get when you add these tools to the mix?

If governance is becoming an ever-growing toxic mix of tribalism, what happens when you give by any means warriors these weapons?

And if we've gotten into this mess due to a corrupting narrative of how you can't trust the media or your government...

Well, what amount of damage kicks in when sight and hearing are also suspect?

There are some tools that, at the risk of infuriating extreme libertarians, are widely regarded as not suitable to be in the hands of private actors, due to the risk of misuse. Tanks. Lethal gases. Nuclear weapons. And so on.

If Adobe about to make the coding equivalent... well, let me put it this way.

We're going to have bigger problems then, say, consumers no longer thinking that a celebrity is really endorsing your goods or services...

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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.

Can, Could, Won't: Managing Risk

Additional risk: eye pokery

At one of the earlier stops in my career, I was fortunate enough to work with a top-notch legal compliance officer. Not only was this person quick and skilled, they were also exceptionally patient and understanding. That was all very necessary, since it was their poor task to proof all of my copy for not just the usual editing maladies, but also for anything that could put our employer in legal jeopardy.

What probably made the work (slightly) more tolerable for them was that I had some background in law in the first place. A political science degree, some secertarial work for law professors and lawyers at various temp jobs, and other roles prior to that gig made me think that I knew some stuff. And, well, I did; just enough to be dangerous. Because my skill set was nothing compared to what this employer wanted to instill, and even less than what many of our clients wanted to enforce. That's why the compliance role was there in the first place.

After a few years of high throughput copywriting and creative direction, I just didn't go down paths that led to issues. Can was just automatically changed to could, claims were softened with puffery or avoided, dates were omitted because the nature of our delivery channel (email) led to way too big of a chance of a bait and switch accusal. Sweepstakes were swapped out for less problematic premiums, and sensitive discussions were taken out of email, putting us light years ahead of, sadly, people who get major political party nominations to be the leader of the Free World. I've pretty much worked in a legally compliant way ever since, and have even served as the de facto legal expert for several employers afterward that just didn't have the budget or interest to have true counsel.

It wasn't as if anything I wanted to try before I got all of that training was irresponsible. None of my clients ever ran into legal issues due to creative before or since, and while some of my stops have run into fireworks for poor practices, none of that was related to practices in my part of the business. But once you get trained to go in a certain direction, that's where you go creatively. Especially since the other directions don't seem to gain you much more than added risk.

Which leads me to the risk that's on the other side of the ledger. While there are plenty of consumer categories that play in arenas where true and correct fear lives in the heart's of your clients, the real shame of it all is that those are the categories that are most ready for innovation. (That's the reason why so many job listings in restrictive fields come with a heavy requirement for relevant experience; it's a safeguard for things that can never, ever happen.) Class action suits are just the end for many a buisness, if not for the obvious legal damages, but also from the turnover they inspire. Doing anything new or novel in these categories takes unusual courage from your client, and presentation skill from the agency.

The trouble with being too aware of risk is that it breeds a degree of sameness and safety to all of your finished work, and in that sameness, you can't innovate, learn from outliers, push the envelope... or feel truly alive in the gig.

Because at the end of the day, there's legal risk in getting out of bed. It's just a little more pronounced and obvious than the risk you get from weak creative.

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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.

3D Dragon Haircut Research

Sorry, Not 3D Enough

I'm going to confess to a prejudice here. When it comes to getting a haircut, I like the barber to have a few years on me. (Yes, I know, doesn't seem to go with the picture or the column's focus, which is marketing and advertising. We'll get there. Trust me.)

I'm sure that there are plenty of people who cut hair for a living who are masterful at the work at an early age. My needs aren't particularly esoteric, either. But once you've gotten used to the fine points of the job (a quality straight razor, a sense of how short I like it without needing to interrogate or break out measuring tape)... well, going with someone new to the field just seems like too much risk for not enough reward.

Besides, you also miss out on a chance to do market research. Which is kind of a big deal, given my profession, and how, if you really want to sell something in the U.S., you better be able to convince the people with money. That'd be (shh!) older people. Moving on.

This last week, I caught a skeptical column in my media feed that downplayed the coming impact of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. The columnist pointed out how 3D in television, cable, and even movie theaters has been limited, with cable providers in the UK giving it away for free, rather than going for an upcharge. So with that as a precedent, why get excited about something new that's likely to run into the same resistant consumer inertia?

It's a reasonable point, honestly. Betting on failure is rarely sexy, but breakthroughs are relatively rare, which is why they are so memorable. Gartner calls this stage in the Hype Cycle the "Trough of Disillusionment", and for every tech that powers through to the "Slope of Enlightenment" and eventual "Plateau of Productivity", there are an untold number that fall by the wayside. I also work for a cutting-edge tech company, so I'm biased by nature.

Which led me to the barber's chair this last weekend, and small talk as Ray (good name for a barber, right? One syllable, can't mispronounce it) got to work on my desire to retain less sweat during the summer. He asked me what I do. I gave him my company's quick pitch, and my role in it. Given that I now work in the Bay Area and everyone dreams of knowing about the next great tech IPO, he asked about that aspect of the business. I pivoted, because honestly, it's just not that interesting to me; if the company does great over the next few years, I'm sure a rising tide will raise all boats, but that kind of long-term dreaming can just get really distracting.

Instead, I pivoted back to what could be done with the tech, and what problems it solves. Which didn't interest him as much, because honestly, why should it? He's a barber. But then I drew it out further, and talked about the last mile aspects. How his phone could give him an AR path to the products he wants the next time he's in a warehouse store, rather than have to track down staff. How he could get offers and coupons without having to hunt for them. How the products and services that he wants to buy could be made cheaper, simply because the marketing and advertising expense would go down with increased efficiency. (Also, more darkly, the probable headcount at that location, because tech is frequently shorthand for Employment Winter Is Coming.) How some companies might choose to pass those savings on to the consumer, all while keeping their margins in check, in an attempt to grow their market share.

He got it then. He also got how, once anything like that was on his phone, how quick he'd be to use it all the time, and how soon it would just become table stakes for anyone that sells stuff.

Because that's the difference between 3D, VR and AR. There's no clear problem that 3D tech serves. Take a look at my screen shot image at the start of this column, and you'll see a character from "Game of Thrones" getting so up close and personal to an angry dragon that her hair is blown back.

No one who ever watched that show turned it off because the effects weren't 3D enough.

But plenty of people didn't buy something in a store because they couldn't find it, forgot their coupon, or thought it was too much money in the first place...

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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.