Stepping In The Same River

Deep

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

- Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher (544 B.C., so let's forgive the pronouns)

For roughly my entire career as a marketing and advertising professional, especially one who has been on the inside at places that have held the data, there has been one consistent inquiry.

"How do we get our (insert metric) up?"

Typically this is clicks, but it's also been opens (see email roles). Sometimes it's view based, other times its conversions, your best bet is probably a hybrid measurement that's mid funnel, and there's even been downloads or user time. You name the success metric or KPI, show me some creative, and I can probably tell you a half dozen things that could positively impact success.

In seconds, without research. It's something of a party trick that comes from decades in the space.

But the question also betrays a fundamental misread of the mission.

Short term wins over your control, especially if they are from something as transitory as a design only refresh, gives you a diet of popcorn -- and a very finite amount of popcorn at that. Especially in a typical marketing and advertising mix of multi-channel touch and communication, or with (and here comes the river) a fluctuating supply of impressions.

(You remember the river, right? It's important. Sorry it took me a while to get back to it.)

Especially in broad campaigns and programmatic plays, the quality of traffic can vary wildly, even among people who aren't scouring the Web for low CPMs. Online publishers are under constant pressure to keep the lights on, and that can lead to unfortunate decisions on frequency. There's also the very real spectre of outright fraud, which is slowly getting beaten down due to better tech, but, well, not all at once.

So what's needed is testing. Constant, disciplined, with an emphasis on reporting, preferably with your analysts having a strong dose in significant confidence levels. With a plan that attacks structural differences (i.e., offers) as well as surface changes, and KPIs that don't change with the weather.

Oh, and when you think you've determined, for once and for all, a stronger practice?

Well, that's when you have to run a back test... because the river has changed.

And if you need help navigating those waters, I'm happy to guide your boat.

There and Back Again

Yes, The Author Is A Short Fellow

Last Thursday (3/21/19), RevJet ended my role as part of a force reduction. It wasn't for cause, I don't bear them any ill will, and a wide range of senior personnel have reached out to express their condolences and willingness to help. There's even a chance that I'll work with them again, once they get past their current issues, and in some ways, I feel more valued now than I did when I worked there.

I believe in their application and value proposition, and the future of digital advertising is going to look a lot like what they do. As to whether it will be their name when the dust settles... honestly, I have no idea. There are a lot of good competitors in the space, and as last week shows, they don't have the deepest pockets.

Which brings me to, well, why the blog wasn't getting a lot of updates.

RevJet is many things: a boon to marketing and creative personnel, a way for ad ops people to get their lives back and do more interesting things with their time, a DAM and an ad server and a test machine and a dessert topping and a floor wax.

On a personal level, I learned a lot -- about strong practices in creative, about durable learnings in dayparting, about animation cycles and creative heat maps and reporting and a ton of far more technical ad ops stuff than I had ever been exposed to before.

It also wasn't, well, lucrative.

I took their first offer and drove to California as fast as I could to work for that company. I lived in a 200 square foot hut (that cost over 40% of my mortgage back in New Jersey). I spent the past two years away from friends and family, doing everything I could to ensure optimal service for clients. At the end of every day there, no matter how much stuff we had to do, I left with a clean in-box, set agendas for the next day, completed documentation and a sense of accomplishment.

And then I'd work 5-7 hours as a rideshare driver to cover the shortfall, and 12-14 on weekends, and served M&AD clients.

It was an interesting ride and a great learning experience, and more proof that when I believe in something, I go all-in. (See also past gigs, my time leading a rock band, putting mysef through college, and such.)

It's also made me dramatically more useful to, well, the next employer. (If that's you, please get in touch. Papa needs a new pair of health benefits.)

More about what I've learned later, and thanks for reading.

The Myth of the Indispensable Genius

And, presumably, women

This week, I've been struck by the downfall of Louis CK, the prominent comedian who has been brought low by a long history of sexual abuse against women in his field.

It's similar, in some respects, to the Bill Cosby situation, in which a giant of his industry suddenly and irrevocably has been more or less erased from the culture. Sure, some people still go to Cosby shows, but he's more or less shunned in decent society. And while there are significant differences between the men, it's similar enough to draw parallels, and, well, lessons.

If you've worked long enough in any industry, you've probably run into difficult people. Maybe you've even had periods of difficulty of your own. At its core, the CK issue is one of abuse in the workplace -- his victims were fellow comedians and personnel on shows where he worked and held power or influence -- and you don't need to go to criminal extremes to fall in the same continuum.

There's a tendency to look the other way at such things when the work is, well, good enough. And CK's stand up is phenomenal, both in its cultural impact and sheer dollars. (Personally, I have a station of comedians in my own Pandora mix, and it's called Louis CK Radio. Which really needs an edit now, and perhaps Pandora can stop emailing me reminders that it's been a long time since I came back to listen to it. Anyway, moving on.)

But here's the thing about the difficult genius: it's a complete myth and trap.

For most people, the workplace is a collaboration, and toxic people prevent that from occurring, or simply drive other people away. Life's too short for that, frankly, and while genius is always missed, there's always someone else -- or, in the case of CK, many people -- who will thrive in the absence. In every case where I've had to work with an indispensable but difficult person, in the long run, the former just wasn't true.

A final small point about this, because this is one of those areas where being a cis white male makes me way too self-conscious for comfort... if you are in a position of privilege and you are absolutely certain, beyond any realm of doubt, that this isn't your problem, you are wrong. Because even in the event that you don't fall into traps of power abuse, that doesn't mean your entire team is immune to it, or that you aren't more or less condoning its existence by not seeing it, or at the very least, not considering the possibility that it exists.

At its core, the CK situation seems to be an abuse of power. Every organization has that, and every person who wields it has the potential to do so in a less than optimal manner.

And if you really have a problem with the idea that you've got to walk on eggshells about that...

Well, I'd start to wonder if you really don't have a problem after all.

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