Wrong With Confidence

Two moments from my week that struck a chord with life in advertising and marketing.

> On a podcast dealing with the rise of alt-right political views, and how some in that movement pule over distinctions over pride in their heritage not equating to white supremacy, the following telling point from an activist: how this side is so confident in their views and beliefs, despite the long march of history noting how they've been wrong so often.

Slavery, apartheid, colonialism, Jim Crow, intolerance towards LGBTQ... it's just a long line of, well, white guys acting with complete certainty that what they believe is correct, only to find out later, well, no. (Let's exclude the very real possibility that so much of this was done just for the money, just because that's not the track I'd like to follow here.)

And yes, everyone always thinks they are right about what they are saying, because if you think you are wrong and say it anyway, you're a sociopath. Tangent, moving on.

> One of the people I met while doing ride sharing, who while conceding the fact that climate change is real, told me that's he's not going along with the idea that it's done by humans. Might just be something the Earth just does, since we've had Ice Ages before. When  I noted that he was confusing geologic history (eons) versus modern (at most, decades), his counter was that there's just no way to solve the problem without an untold number of people just ceasing to exist. (You get all kinds doing ride sharing, by the way.)

Not seeing how these relate to the effectiveness of your ad campaign? Hold on, we're getting there.

The worst experiences of my life all share a common thread: a lack of information that led to the wrong conclusion, and actions that were predicated on that conclusion. In my personal life, this manifests as various people who were important to me having severe issues that were beyond my power to assist, or their ability to change. In my professional career, that certain lists or channels were the products of faulty data, that management or venture capital didn't have the same goals as the rank and file, that promises weren't going to be kept, and so on. (By the way, to be perfectly clear -- I have no regrets. You work in this field, and with the kind of start-ups that give you front-line knowledge of the way the world works as it changes in real time, and you have to accept that the road isn't always going to be smooth.)

This lack of information translates to macro levels as well. If we had a clear cost to the environment for various energy choices, plane travel might come with a 5X price addition for a carbon offset, new phones may be 2X cost for the requirement to re-use rare elements, gas might be a boutique items for hobby cars as electrics powered by mandatory solar roofs dominated the roads, and so on, and so on. Instead, we all act on incomplete information -- the gallon of gas or plane fare just reflects the cost to the consumer, not the cost it creates when consumed -- and do the best we can.

Because, and this is the hard part...

If you wait to have complete confidence in all of your decisions, you will never make any, because complete confidence is impossible. Even for something as cut and dried as a digital marketing campaign.

So, to sum up.

1) If you are utterly and totally sure of something -- anything -- that's more about your faith in your story, rather than the merits of the decision.

2) If you never go back and test the stuff that you know is right, you are at significant risk of acting on wrong information.

3) A little humility and flexibility is more than warranted, especially in the face of all of the times we've been wrong before. Even if it's not matched, say, in public discourse, or by "strong" leaders.

Making wrong decisions isn't an indictment of your career, or the value you bring to a client or organization.

Failing to learn from them is.

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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.

Showing Up, or Five Lessons from Ride Sharing

Bodies in seats

Full disclousre: to make ends meet these days, because the Bay Area is crazy expensive and life hasn't quite worked out the way I'd like, I do ride share on nights and weekends. It basically boils down to minimum wage employment, but with the flexibility and non-compete that fits in with my career. Here's what I've learned from the experience.

> There are ways to make the gig more lucrative on an hourly basis -- work at odd hours, put up with drunk people, turn the app on and off to position yourself in more lucrative areas -- but for the most part, you just have to put in the hours. Even base rate rides can work out if they are long enough, or drop you in a position that sets up for chain work later. As the old saying goes, 90% of life is just showing up. I pretty much do this every day now, mostly so I don't have to do full days of it.

> I give my riders amenities that most other drivers do not -- water, mints, cough drops -- and a choice of in-flight entertainment options (music, NPR, conversation), because I treat passengers the way I'd like to be treated as a rider. Most just defer and ride without a lot of interaction, but the ones that don't make the gig kind of fun at times. More importantly, they tip, and those tips save me hours every week. I've even made some professional connections from it.

> The vast majority of riders pass without incident or comment, and don't make for very entertaining stories. But the ones that go beyond, either due to their position in life (I've picked up people from outside the bail bonds office, and others that work for extraordinarily wealthy individuals) or their eagerness to be very candid with a total stranger that they aren't very likely to ever meet again, make for the far better stories. I've got about a half dozen that are slowly but surely getting honed for use in stand-up comedy, because that's something else that I do. (Don't worry, riders, no names are used to protect the guilty.)

> While technology is always improving, it's far from foolproof, and when it fails you, it's utterly maddening. Network outages stop all revenue, mapping fails cause extraordinary frustration for all parties, and there are moments when the app sends you to chase passengers that are far too far away to be feasible for anyone. Cellular coverage isn't total, either. Things seem to be getting better, but I have to wonder if these issues are part of the reason why so many drivers don't make it past their first few months at the gig.

> It's really not for everyone. The hours are very erratic, since the driver doesn't know the passneger's final destination before they are in the car. It gets lonely, especially if your crop of passnegers aren't engaging, and you have to be pretty tolerant of a wide range of personalities. But the biggest problem with the gig is the difficulty of getting a true profit perspective, since you have to take into account the depreciation and advanced repair needs of your vehicle, along with higher insurance and gas costs. As with any business, gross and net are very different things, and if you don't do the math, you can get the wrong idea about how it's going.

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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.

Get Out Of Town

Tough Town!

Several decades ago, when I fronted a rock band, we'd gig at whatever venue would have us. The work made rehearsals more productive, because they gave us deadlines, and even the most ill-scheduled gig was, for the most part, better than not having it. This led to several hundred gigs, all told, in a wide range of settings and locations.

Where this is relevant to your life as a marketing and advertising pro is this simple piece of human psychology; if the band was from far away, the crowd was inevitably more interested in what they were doing. There's an ego-flattering point to this, in that if you know about bands from outside your area, it must make you a more discerning fan of music. It's also a tiny acid test for the band, in that audiences think you have more on the ball if you are from somewhere else, since the assumption is that it's your full time job, as opposed to a hobby.

Here's another data point that proves the practice. When my wife was pregnant with our first child, she had a standing gig at Caesar's Palace in Atlantic City, as she's a harpist. (Weddings, corporate events, hospice work, bookstores, specialty events. Book her early and often; you can reach her through me. End of product placement.) When patrons asked her where she was from and she replied trutthfully, there was a feeling of disappointment and a quicker end to the conversation. So she started adopting an Irish accent instead, created a small back story to match her persona, and watched her tips triple.

This is, of course, silly on its face. But the same thing occurs in business, honestly. Now that I live and work in the Bay Area, the people I run into during my day to day are inevitably more interested when I mention where I'm from (Philadelphia, originally), as opposed to where I work (a start up that most people haven't heard of yet, on the peninsula between San Jose and San Francisco).

There's no sign that this trend is slowing, even in the age of remote work and easy plane bookings. Travel broadens the mind -- and not just the mind of the traveler.

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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.