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.

The Worst Hours

Sing It, Zoidberg

This is going to be brief and perhaps a little too combative for some, but I've had this happen often enough to risk offending someone. And, well, it should never happen. So here goes.

If you are interviewing for a job position, and decide that, for whatever reason, you are going to spend your time with a candidate to deepen your knowledge about optimal practices, while never really considering them for the role...

You are, basically, stealing time and money, and you deserve all of the misery and suffering that a karmic universe will (hopefully) bestow upon you. Especially if the person you are interviewing is between gigs, and could be spending their time and energies trying to chase down a real opportunity, rather than the cruel tease you are offering.

(And yes, this happened to me recently. An hour on the phone, ninety minutes in the office, then the "interviewer" not even acknowledging follow ups. I guess I've met worse people in my life, but I can't think of any right now.)

I get why you might be tempted to do this, honestly, I do. A good hour with a consultant might help to jump start your creative efforts, answer some vexing questions in a field where you don't have experience, or keep you from making a bad mistake.

But what it really shows is a crippling lack of integrity that your own people will eventually recognize and use as fuel to move along in their own careers. After all, using these vulnerable people in this way shows your true (single-minded, machiavellian, ruthless, abusive) nature, and that nature isn't conducive to sustainable businesses.

Turnover will rise, along with theft, and a drop in morale...

And you will own all of it, and deserve it, because you are a terrible human being.

What would be better?

Honesty with the consultant. An honorarium for the time spent. A pitch for a consultant relationship. Or just end the interview before it gets abusive, and steer out of the ethical skid.

End the unpaid consultant hour!

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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.

The United Debacle: Winners, Not Volunteers

Seems Like An Easy Choice

By now, if you haven't heard of the PR nightmare that hit United this last week, you are probably making a concerted effort to avoid broadcast news and social media. From the initial burst of the story, to the next stage of disastrous CEO non-apology, to the truly detestable blaming the victim background work done to the passenger by his hometown media, we've all become experts in public relations, social media and airline ticketing policies. Along with having a new corporate villain to boycott, we've been soaking in this for quite some time, and the fact that it made international coverage means it's probably got a second life overseas, too.

But I want to take it back to the actual moment of the negotiation between the crew and the passengers, and show how the failure started a long time before four crew members for another plane had to displace passengers from a full cabin. Remember, the crew originally offers one price for those willing to give up their seat, then a second price, before going to the forced removal.

Which leads to the following groups of unhappy people, and it doesn't take a genius to see how, well, everyone in the cabin winds up fairly unhappy at the close of the exercise. And that's even if it goes well.

1) Those who take offer 1, and feel bad about not holding out for offer 2. These folks will, in all likelihood, never take offer 1 again.

2) Those who take offer 2, and feel good about not taking offer 1, but also wonder if there would be offer 3. They are also never taking offer 1 again.

3) Those who took neither offer, and now have heard that the allotment has gone up. Again, no one here is taking offer 1. And many of them are going to have to have a significant cost savings or other enticement to risk flying United again. (Keep in mind that from the airline's point of view, what you really want is a near-immediate acceptance of offer 1, so you can stay as close to on time as possible.)

So instead of all that, let's imagine how this looks and feels if, at that moment of negotiation, there had been some planning, not towards creating a real-time unwelcome reverse auction, but towards the fast and easy resolution of the problem. Beyond an inhuman level of personal economics that doesn't take into account, well, how humans treat risk and reward.

Imagine the flight attendants pulling out a sweepstakes style wheel, and then playing a game of Big Seat Winner. They spin a wheel with every seat location; if your seat comes up, you get a replacement ticket and ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. In cash, in hundreds, paid out with happy counting. The next winner gets 2 grand, 4 grand, and so on. Honestly, once you start peeling off hundred dollar bills, the amounts are manageable. Instead of some nebulous check amount later.

And yes, I know, there's some tiresome income tax and security and sweepstake issues that you have to deal with, but you have everyone's address from the flight manifest, and you are a massive corporation. You can work out a lockbox in the cockpit with hundreds and a legal team sending a tax statement later.

Now, we've taken the entire chance of feeling bad about making the wrong auction choice out of the equation. We also go to a game show style interaction that has been proven to work for the better part of a century, and create winners, where we previously had volunteers to a corporation's profit margin. We also create a viral video moment of (maybe) someone celebrating their big payday, and the fun image of the fan of hundred dollar bills. At the very least, if someone is still bent out of shape about having to leave the plane, we make it more about their ingratitude, and less about the thuggery of the security force.

You could also give this real production values, the way that some airlines do with their pre-flight instructions. You could make it a part of every flight and turn your airline into the one where, every time out, whether there are displacements or not, someone's walking out with cash. And how much would United like to be known, today, as the Win Cash Airline, as opposed to You May Get Hurt Air?

The problem, as I see it, isn't that a single passenger got beaten, as hateful as that is. The bigger issue is that an entire industry has become so oblivious to anything but a spreadsheet that no one seems to be thinking about things from the perspective of the customer. Which led to dehumanization, and, well, beatings.

You really shouldn't have to have terrible things happen to adjust your mindset. But now that the crisis has happened, it's even worse if it goes to waste.

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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.

The Triumph Of The Niche

Ubiquity

Running late between clients last week, I ducked into a fast food franchise, more to use the restroom than for any desire for food, honestly. Acting on my sense of personal integrity over actual hunger, I ordered a small burger from my childhood, rather than use the facilities without being a patron, and consumed it without too much thought.

It tasted like, well, what it has always tasted like; more cheese than beef, more bread than both, with the ketchup and pickles and dried onion overpowering any of that. In a half dozen bites and a couple of minutes it was gone, and the best that I have to say about it is that it didn't seem to do any real damage later (if you catch my unseemly drift), it was cheap, and I didn't regret the choice.

Doesn't sound like much of a business model, does it?

I don't mean to deman an American colossus, honestly. I'm far from the target demographic for any quick service restaurant, I'm not influencing the choices of others, and I don't patronize either this business, or its competitors, very often. They know their business far better than I do, or ever will. But I do know this...

From what I read in my monitoring of newsletters, they aren't in the growth area of the market. That's for niche quality players with names that have only cropped up in the last decade or so. Those players also make food that translates to social media imagery much, much better than what I've just posted above. (By the way, side note about food porn? It describes much of what we refer to as classical art from past centuries; the fact that lots of people photogragh their food probably says more about how imaging is now ubiquitous, rather than anything about the person doing the photographing. But let's get back to the burger.)

The merits of the mass market burger are obvious. Economics, consistency, speed. You can order one from just about any location, anywhere, and get pretty much the same thing...

But does any of that sound like something you can put in an ad?

The same phenomenon -- tried and true business model, supplemented by a more esoterically appealing niche play -- goes beyond burgers. Consider the recent change in market conditions for such staples as the circus, the hundreds of streaming programming options fracturing the collective consciousness, and in all likelihood, your very favorite comedian, musician, writer and so on.

And, more darkly, possibly your religious or political beliefs.

Continuing the thread into still more negative tones, and you might be led to believe that we are ungovernable, not really a nation so much as a collection of strangers, that we all need everything our own way. That cities are unlike suburbs, suburbs unlike rural, with nothing to stitch us together again.

Or, more positively, that we are no longer willing to settle for comfort, that the system of capitalism and innovation is working to provide more options and improve lives and experiences, and that your story about this depends on, well, you.

Who is, of course, the ultimate in niche audiences.

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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.

Math Vs Snow

Market Opportunity

My local area had a late season snow storm recently, which did what it always does to cash-strapped towns; crippled them for days until the snow more or less went away on its own, because there are too many side streets, untended sidewalks and poor drainage areas, and not enough human bandwidth and money to clear it all away. Even when the main roads are clear, the side roads aren't, which makes all traffic slower, and yeah, I miss living in California, where you get to visit the snow at altitude, like elephants at a zoo. But let's move on.

What leads this into a marketing and advertising discussion is what happened next. Residents who normally walk or ride bicycles requested transport from ride sharing apps. So did those who were unwilling or unable to free their car from the ice and drifts. Many people who drive for these services chose not to, because driving in snow is dangerous and slow. And the apps did what they always do; adjusted on price to match the change in market conditions.

Which meant spikes in price of up to 600%. Leading to a subsequent hue and outcry in print and social media and among some consumers, and the usual shrugging non-apologies from the ride sharing companies themselves.

Now, it's possible that this is all just growing pains for a market that, for all of the exploding market cap and countless PR and cultural mentions, is still relatively new to much of the country and market base. It's also likely that spikes like this will ease in the future, especially if the ride sharing companies are able to convince more people to drive for them. But what struck me in reading the coverage, and which isn't a given because we're dealing with humans, is how quickly narrative was attached to algorithms.

Some consumers talked about the greed of the companies. Others railed against those who complained as looking for some kind of government handout, or unworthy of using the service because they weren't smart or hard working enough to afford it. Still others stood up for existing cab services, with an equal or better number stating that the status quo created the competition through past abuses. You could find still more voices defending bus service, or tele-commuting, or the need for more flexibility in scheduling from schools or employers, and so on, and so on.

What few seemed to do, at least publicly, was to note that the system worked exactly as a free market intended, with a resource getting real-time pricing in a de facto auction environment. Or that now that this toothpaste is out of the tube, it's never going back in.

Ride sharing apps aren't alone in having a narrative spring into existence from data, of course. Every A/B test with a significant deviation from the median creates an opportunity for a story, and so does interactions with a client who is resistant to change, or extremely demanding about small matters.

That's because in a universe that boils down to two kinds of events (facts, and the stories that we tell about these facts)... we treat our stories as factual, and always will.

Even when it's just math.

Keeping this in mind might help you keep your sanity the next time you have a difficult client, feel tempted to overstate the findings from a test, or find yourself irritated about the speed of a cycle, or any number of outcomes, really.

But if you are standing in snow, waiting for a ride that costs six times what it might have cost a day ago?

You're likely to tell a story about it.

Probably not a very nice one, either.

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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.

Tips For Young Marketers

Like This But Not

I met a college senior this week who was just finishing up her marketing degree, and she asked me what advice I might have for someone who is just starting in the field. (You have to love when new folks actually *ask* you to pontificate, honestly.) So here's what I know now, that I wish I knew then...

1) Your network is everything -- even if you stay at the same place.

Everyone in marketing knows, on some level, that job security is a poor joke at best... but when you get into the day to day of a gig, it's easy to forget that, especially if management lulls you into a false sense of security. Even if you are blessed enough to stay with the same employer for a good and profitable arc, your peer group probably won't be, so don't shirk on that work. LinkedIn, Facebook, face to face; you put yourself at risk when you don't do it.

2) Be ruthless about the work that you do.

I've known any number of pros who don't particularly enjoy coding, analytics, traffic management, legal compliance, crafting PR releases or working phones to drum up coverage, but do it anyway, because, well, someone had to. The trouble with that kind of team spirit is that it's real easy to have it define you, and for many years of your working life to be something that you don't really enjoy... and when you do work that you don't enjoy, that's a very good way to have your career go sideways.

3) First reads can be very, very wrong.

Especially at the start of your career, you can feel that some of your colleagues aren't going to continue in the field, and that you might not need to give them your best service or time. The trouble with that mindset is that people will change dramatically over the course of a career, and even if they don't actually get much better at what they do... well, to be blunt about it, good fortune at meeting people with life-changing money can overwhelm, at least in the short term. so just give everyone your best, because...

4) You don't know who is watching you.

I've had job opportunities come up from people who, to be blunt, remembered me better than I remembered them... and lobbied for me accordingly. So resist the temptation to go for office gossip and/or talking about someone behind their back, because that kind of thing also resonates.

5) Keep your eyes open for dying channels... and clients, and categories.

When I went to college, there was nothing that I wanted more than to work for a daily newspaper. The day-in day-out of having to make deadline, the job security of my heroes who were synonymous with their papers, the quasi-celebrity nature of being recognized for your byline... all of that was what I wanted, even if the salaries weren't good. Lucky for me in the long term, if not the short, was that my graduation coincided with a recession that was pre-Web, which has been, of course, replicated by many subsequent downturns. But by then, I was well clear of the field, having pivoted to marketing.

During my career, I've seen Flash ads go from dominant to non-existent, throwing any number of coding and design pros into fever states to learn the next new thing. Something similar may be happening to SEO, given that much of the field seems to be something you can do with automation. DRTV might have serious problems if and when programmatic goes offline, and print ads in many consumer categories are also, at best, stasis.

Your loyalties, as a marketer, need to be to what works to solve the problem, not what's in your personal comfort zone. Making sure you aren't continuing to sell horseshoes while cars make in-roads isn't exactly a new career challenge, but with tech's growing influence, it's also one that comes with far greater speed.

6) School is eternal, and everything changes.

Getting a degree from a quality institution, and the connections that you make with your classmates and teachers, is merely the first step in a lifelong education. What's really happening there is that you are learning how to learn, and how to question what you are being taught. (And oh, by the way? Asking questions of senior marketers, rather than thinking that just because someone didn't grow up with an iPhone on their pocket, they can't really understand the way the world works now? A good way to continue your education.)

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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.

What You Do, Not Why You Do It

I'm Glad You Read A Book

One of my favorite comedians, Patton Oswalt, has a great and profane bit about religious beliefs (warning: really NSFW), and the relative impossibility of respecting them equally.

Which has led me, in my own small way, to a significant point about day to day marketing and advertising tasks.

I've worked at places where engineering gave marketing everything they ever wanted... not because anyone on staff had a particular proficiency or taste for that work, but simply because management made it a priority. I've also been at places where you pretty much had to make do with whatever was already in place, because the priorities or human bandwidth just were not what you'd hope for, and patience is one of those things you are taught over the course of a career. Whether you want the lesson or not.

The same goes for sales pros. Some would give you all of the feedback you could ever want on how prospects were reacting to materials. Others wouldn't, because they just didn't see the merits of spending their time that way, when they could be, well, selling. Even to the point of grousing at the length or frequency of mandatory company-wide meetings, even when those meetings served important functions. Because, well, when a third of your income and your continued employment depends on making the numbers, time spent talking to co-workers is time spent not selling.

Similar experience with account management, AKA the key to client retention and growth. I've always found that good pros in these roles were worth their weight in gold, because they drove as much new business as the sales pros, but with the added benefit of generating case studies and evangelists for your business. Many would steer clear of marketing if given their preference, since that was, similar to sales, time spent not talking to clients... but you needed their feedback to make sure that your messaging and branding wasn't turning any existing business off.

The point of all of this, just like with Oswalt appreciating the good work, if not the beliefs, of someone who was convinced that vengeful aliens would commit acts of violence on those who did not behave virtuously... is that your reasons for doing anything in this world are, well, just that.

Yours.

If the reason why I provide excellent service to my clients is out of love for what I do, that's lovely and life-affirming... but if I also do it out of nothing more than a desire to provide for my family, and for those of my associates, it's pretty much the same thing to a client.

My reasons are my own. Ever-changing, unknowable because even I don't think about them very much, and irrelevant to the task.

The flip side of that is, well, the same thing goes for excuses.

Clients don't need to know why you do the work. They also don't need to know why you didn't.

What they need is for you to do it.

And those who don't get it done... needs to change that fact ASAP, or get out of the way for someone who will.

For reasons that should be obvious to everyone...

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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.

Mad Structure

Perfection

As it's Selection Sunday as I write this, and I'm a very lapsed college basketball fan but a very strong professional one, I'm struck by the annual urge to dive into the tournament anyway.

Mostly because it's a teachable marketing moment.

Why? The absolutely perfect structure of the enterprise.

For all but the diehards, college basketball really isn't something you need to pay too much attention to before the actual tournament starts. Unlike the 82-game NBA regular season, the college game seems extremely skippable, since it's overlapped by other sports during its run time, and doesn't really matter beyond the highly transitory "who got snubbed" arguments. Sure, if you root for a school in a power conference and they win that title, it's nice, but it's forgotten as soon as the Madness begins.

A word about the timing. It's usually perfectly coinciding with spring celebrations like St Patrick's Day and some spring breaks. It's deep enough into the year that taking a couple days off for a 4-day orgy of bracket obsession is within reach of many workers. The highlight footage of dunks, last second shots, favorites asserting themselves, and so on translates to every platform in our digital age. There hasn't been a tournament yet that lacked for drama, because many of the games are coin flips, and a 40-minute basketball game falls into the small data sample that says anything can happen, and just might. The NBA more or less goes on mute during that initial blast, with networks switching over to the tournament. Football doesn't compete. Baseball is playing games that don't matter. It's a nearly extinct rarity in American media; a ceded time slot with a lack of competition.

The only actual problem is... the product.

Purists talk about how collegians care more and try harder on defense; this is not true, it's just that they are comparing playoff games in the tournament to not equal moments in the NBA. (Try to find lapsed defense in a Game 7, which is, in effect, what all NCAA tournament games are.) Others talk about how into it the crowds are, and sure, but again, Game 7s. The only real difference between the tournament and the NBA playoffs is the structure, which rewards luck far more than the meat grinder nature of the pro game.

Beyond the structure, there's no comparison. The NBA attracts talent from six continents at the height of their physical skills, puts them in the presence of the finest coaches in the world, then pits them against each other in a Darwinian endurance test to qualify for the post-season and acquire home court advantage. Next, it throws the same opponents together for a minimum of 192 minutes of court time to see who is best.

The coaches only coach; there is no recruiting. The players only play; there is no pretense at education, and if they choose to spend the whole of their lives at their craft, their teams will not suffer sanctions. The officiating is at a higher standard, and so is the sports medicine, scouting, practice time, strategies, and so on. It's just a better game.

And yet... that perfect structure. The bands, the crowds, the sense that if you aren't picking a bracket you are just denying yourself joy. Even though brackets almost never end in joy. The nostalgia, if you went to a school that's participating, for times gone by.

From a marketing and advertising perspective, we spend our lives seeking for similar business models and experiences. Structures that write themselves, creatives that play into such advantages, locked and loaded concepts that never fail.

We almost never find them, and even when we do, they don't endure like the NCAA tournament does.

Structure.

Find a perfect one, and everything else falls in its sway.

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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.

Are You Engaging In IST?

Sing It, Sir

No, not Indian Standard Time, or Information Systems Technology, or any of the other 400+ uses I've found for this acronym in a quick Web search.

My use of IST here is a little more idiosyncratic, and you'll have to let me walk you around for a little while. I promise it'll be worth it.

I'm a podcast fan, because they make me seem smarter than I actually am. Along with decades of working for start ups that had data insights that you could tie to learning optimal creative practices, which is why people bring me on board to help with their work. Sorry for the humblebrag.

This week, my habit led me to a replay of a Freakonomics Radio podcast that shows the popular belief that there is an average human body temperature (98.6, right? Not so much) is a misnomer. It turns out that the study that established this wasn't properly done, with a faulty thermometer at play, and other factors. Humans have their temperatures go up and down all the time, either through exercise, menstrual cycles, time of day, and so on. So this number that we all know isn't true, and the common practice of ascribing small changes in temperature to the body fighting off infectious diseases is, in the words of the analyst that dug into the matter, inappropriately simplistic thinking.

What a wonderful phrase. Who says that scientists have to be poor communicators? But as it is a whole lot of syllables, let's just call it IST, since that also makes a snide little comment about political exclusions.

I'm very anti-IST. You should be too.

One of the realities of existence as a marketing and advertising consultant is that you are usually there to fix a problem, and have to prove your bona fides right away. Usually with clients that have highly defined pain points. So if the reason why you are in the room is a poor metric, you need to fix that ASAP.

That's fine; it's fair and well understood. But what isn't so fair or understood is what happens next. That's because IST isn't just a poor way to live your life, it's also an extremely efficient way to tank your marketing.

So let's take this out of theoretical. The client has poor conversion on the landing page. What's the first step? Well, there are plenty of rules of thumb about how to improve the rate, which have been proven from a wide range of tests and consumer practices. You can try to limit scroll, cut down on leak points, make sure that all data entry is mission critical, confirm load times on various platforms, code responsively in the strong likelihood of high mobile usage, and so so. Apply these tactics to a client that was not previously aware about them, and your rate will likely rise.

Voila. Problem solved. Cut us a check. Sound the trumpets. All hail the wise and helpful consultant! Also the designer, and the coder, and the copywriter, and whoever else is on the team, and maybe even the client for the presumed flexibility in moving off the old page.

Except that, well...

Now it turns out that our SEO may be off a touch, because all of that copy that was causing the scroll was helping. Also, sales isn't as happy as you might think, because the "new" leads that are coming through the pipe are not converting as well as the old ones. The old ones, after all, were really proving their level of interest by fighting through the poor execution.

Oh, and pretty soon? The new rate bump may start to flatten out, especially if the business served by the landing page has seasonality issues, or the company's selling proposition is made less competitive by competitor actions, or the means that drive traffic to the landing page are failing.

IST would tell you that optimizing landing pages is a clear and simple, before and after practice. But the Web is not now, and never has been, a set and forget experience. And your landing page changes can and should lead to rethinking your display ads, or your emails, especially as those have a lot more meat on the bone in terms of testing ability from bigger sample sizes.

I don't mean to discourage you from trying to clear tasks and fix problems. Metrics can and should improve, especially when you work with people who know what they are doing. Fixing today's problem is how you keep it from becoming tomorrow's problem, and when today's problem becomes tomorrow's problem, that's intolerable.

But tomorrow?

There's going to be another problem.

Which also isn't going to solve quickly or easily if you are engaging in IST...

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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.

Reality On Reality's Terms

A Concerning Sign

There's a school of thought in many corporate situations right now, and it goes something like this.

People have short attention spans and very little time to get what you are trying to do.

So you need to get to the point as soon as possible.

(In fact, faster than that. Say ASAP instead.)

So if you are answering a question or trying to solve a problem, you have to keep it simple.

Which is fine for many situations, but others? Not so much.

Let's take email, a subject that has been the full-time occupation for me at several different start ups. It's also a marketing channel that has undergone more changes in the last two years than the last two decades. Which means many of the rules have changed. (Why? Smartphones. But I digress.)

If you are running an email campaign, there are three basic metrics that your client always wants you to raise. Those would be inboxing/deliverability, open and click.

There are plenty of ways to increase all of these metrics... in the short term. Many of which are, if not full on black hat coding, at least gray, and far from a good moment for your branding. These practices can include using images instead of live text to thwart filtering on words that would activate spam triggers, salacious or misleading subject lines or sender names, highly aggressive creative practices to inspire click responses, and so on.

You can, of course, do all of this stuff: it's a free Internet, none of it is going to send you to jail, and plenty of consumer categories recognize these practices as, if not completely legitimate, at least expected. In some campaigns where the entire enterprise is a little shaky, running without these aids would more or less identify you as painfully naive. (Which categories in particular? Well, let's just say that one of my past gigs included work for a for-profit online education enterprise that you've probably heard of, especially in relation to the fact that it settled out of court on a fraud charge in the midst of the election campaign last year. Let's just say it's a piece in my portfolio that I don't always show to new prospects.)

But if your brands are, well, built for the long haul, you know not to propose anything in this vein, because it would be wrong for the client. And if you are skilled in the way of the work, you also know that secondary email performance metrics (unsubscribe rate, spam complaints by readers, multiple use, attributable sales, forwards and so on), and deviations from normal rates, can tell you a lot more than just a brute and simple number.

By the way, if you are blessed enough to work for a client or employer that gets all of that, or allows you to explain the complexity...

Who also understands that the occasional poorly performing campaign, so long as they drive lessons that you can use to improve in the future, are more valuable than just universal high rates...

And this is actually the way the world works, and just saying More Open / More Click / More Inbox isn't the best way to get any of that?

Well, treasure them. Honestly. Thank your maker or your stars or your manager or your board of directors for being smart enough to deal with reality on reality's terms.

And if not?

Find your next gig before that one goes away. Because people who do not live in reality are capable of, well, anything...

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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.

Don't Hug Me I'm Genius

Green Is Not A Creative Color

This last week, I was told about a dark and brilliant piece of subversive UK film via a social media message from a respected friend in the business of creative work. It was about the web series "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" (aka, DHMIS). You can see (and should!) the six episodes on YouTube in less than half an hour. Here's the link to do that.

I also highly recommend the Film Theory recap and possible explanation of all of the hidden messages in the work, which are just legion, really. The makers of the show have axes to grind on some social issues, and a tireless skill in doing just that. with Easter eggs all over the place.

But as this is a marketing and advertising column, let's keep it to the subject at hand, rather than a free ad for something cool.

For reasons best understood by people who have watched the clips and/or the explanation, DHMIS can only really exist on the Internet, AKA a popularly distributed medium with no central owner... or room or role for a direct and controlling commercial sponsor. Not only is the subject matter and treatment just not something that would ever lend itself to, say, cereal ads in between the clips, it's also something that works best as a one to one recommendation for viewing, since it's not something where you can say, "If you like X, you'll like Y..." because, honestly, there's nothing like this, at least not in my experience or memory.

It's also something that needed the Internet in its current incarnation, where crowdfunding through Kickstarter isn't just known, but accepted and encouraged. With no real owner except the fans, DHMIS can keep this as weird and uncompromising as they like, without fear of notes, standards and practices or focus groups tamping down the vision. And for something like this, keeping the vision of the makers with no compromises is the entire game, really.

So in the final analysis we have a runaway viral hit, with tens of millions of views. It's also a financial slam dunk, and something that can't really be exploited for further monetization because, well, it's already achieved everything it needed to, from a creative and distribution standpoint. The famed "Butterfly Effect" of '90s cause theories was always accurate; it just needed an online boost to truly make the phenomenon real.

And with that, I encourage you all to go watch this and see if there's anything I'm missing, and to also try not to think too hard about great content operating outside of traditional media channels, which is to say, the meat and potatoes of what we do on a daily basis.

Because if great stuff is increasingly outside of advertiser influence, doesn't that say something terrible about the impact that marketing and advertising is having on the creative process?

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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.

LEGO Batman, Or Product Placement To Art

Capes Are Impractical

Last Saturday morning, fulfilling a six-month promise to my youngest daughter (age 11), we went to the LEGO Batman Movie... and man alive, is this one *spectacular* piece of marketing. Wrapped in 104 minutes of in-jokes for comic book nerds, cultural references that span five decades, and a great voice acting performance by lead Will Arnett (full disclosure: I am a complete Arnett mark, going back to his work in "Arrested Development", but also "Bojack Horseman"), there's one overwhelming and fairly unrelenting message.

Buy your kids some LEGO.

Or, at the very least, some LEGO video games.

Hell, take them to LEGOland, too. There's probably some cool stuff there. (Confession: I've done this. A long time ago, but it was done. And there is cool stuff there. But let's move on from the free ad.)

Now, this isn't exactly news or surprising, given that the name of the toy is right in the title of the film. The sheer brazenness of the pitch made me completely OK with it, as a marketer, and even as a parent. My 11-year-old isn't quite immune to these pitches, but she's certainly very aware of them, and hasn't asked for more or less Lego in her life than what was there before.

However, just because the toothpaste is out of the tube, but it's good toothpaste and the counter was clean, doesn't exactly make this a wonderful development.

It's not exactly news that the movies are a very compromised art form, with a well-worn mix of casting in four key demographics to pack the house. There's also foreign sensibilities that have to come into play to make back the development and advertising costs, which tends to push things down into the non-verbal stage. With costs in the nine figure range, sequels and transfers from other art forms are rife. If you want to watch something truly ground-breaking or innovative, you are much better off with something on a streaming service or cable provider, where the story telling has more time to establish itself, and there's no need to please more than a niche audience.

The trouble is that just because LEGO does this well, directly and fairly above board, that doesn't mean that every one else in the kid movie market will behave the same, or will do so for work that is of excellent quality. There's something more than a little unseemly about how a movie for kids *has* to have jokes for the parents now, because when you make work for all audiences, you are compromising your effectivenes to some degree, and also your art.

Which seems to not be a big deal when you are dealing with something like an animated movie, and it doesn't all have to be Shakespeare, yes.

But the plain and simple is that there are only so many movies that I'm going to be able to take the kid to, and only so many moments in her childhood that you get to share. And while we had a great time today, I'm not sure how much long-term impact this movie is going to have on her.

Unlike, well, some animated movies that I've taken my kids to. Like "Spirited Away", a legitimately amazing piece of art, or "Iron Giant", or "Up", or "Inside Out"...

All of which, I think, would stay in the mind of the viewer a lot longer than "LEGO Batman."

And probably not make as much money, and certainly won't inspire sequels.

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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.

The Emperor's Ad Costs

Clad In Rights Fees

Tonight in the Super Bowl, we had the first game that ever went to overtime, and the biggest comeback in the history of the sport. Lady Gaga performed to good reviews in the halftime show. Social media was alive with stuck helmets, amazing catches, inadvertently aired profanities, the post-game reaction of the Boston fan base against the league's commissioner, and many other game-related events.

Which means that... well... a very questionable marketing and advertising decision became ever more questionable, really.

I get why national advertisers are loathe to give up the Super addiction, honestly, I do. It's *hard* to spend five million, in a way that will get noticed, in a world with hundreds of channels and millions of feeds, and all of that was true *before* we had a 24/7 news machine in the White House. (Oh, by the way? He rooted openly for one team, but turned off the game before the big comeback, so that's going to be its own news story in the aftermath, too.) On some level, it feels like the game is the only television show that matters any more, rather than just the biggest.

But here's the thing; unless you are somehow able to get your ad noticed for the merits of the creative or your product -- unlikely at best, especially when the game is compelling -- you are pretty much playing the same game as 60-other odd candidates. Entertain with some kind of joke or visual payoff, hope that borrowed celebrity interest will make yours cut through the clutter, and "win" the news cycle of the next week, when any number of marketing and advertising writers pass out grades. If that news cycle even exists.

News flash: the grades don't translate into sales for your client. They might translate into awards for agencies, and I suppose that might create business down the line, but I've always thought the best way to make sure you've got business to do is directly, through increasing sales and awareness. Which isn't really what most big game ads do.

What could you do with the five million bucks that you need to pony up for a 30-second spot? In the case of small market awareness clients like Alfa Romeo, an inexplicable presence in this year's game, probably celebrity visits to individual buyers in key markets, because honestly, there just aren't that many people who've got the scratch and interest in supercars.

You could probably own a social media platform for the better part of a week for people who are actually targeted and attuned to your goods or services. Perhaps a few million unavoidable 30-second audio spots on streaming music services or podcasts, targeted spots that users can't skip or leave the room for on YouTube, goodies in direct mail, spots in theaters where people are pretty much a captive audience, outdoor and print spots that might actually help build your brand and make your other channels more effective, or just to be blunt, targeted discounts to a prospect list... or some very healthy combination of all of the above. That you could measure, learn from, and improve moving into the future, because you'd have a control, testing data, and all of that other really unsexy stuff. I've had this gig for other companies; we've done pretty far-reaching programs, with outreach in a dozen channels, for a fraction of that thirty second moon shot.

You know, an actual plan, rather than just a one-off approach that will be forgotten about in a week, or, in the event of a really compelling game like last night's, as soon as the spot ends.

But I'm sure it'll all be better next year, when the costs are higher and the audience is lower, because the NFL isn't doing quite so good of a job as you might like in attracting younger audiences. (It's also not as likely to have the same number as it did this year, since overtime hadn't happened in the previous 50-odd games.)

Honestly, how many years do we have to see that the emperor has no clothes before we stop buying spots in the fashion program?

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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.

Your Choices In Crisis

Small fingered fist

Late last week, my teen aged daughter was asking my wife and I for advice, as she was overbooked and overwhelmed between commitments. "I feel like I can't win," she said, in detailing her options, and I was able, in a minor miracle given her age and nature, to get a word in edgewise. "Well, actually, you can't *lose*," I said, and pointed out that the story of how her weekend could go also had the same ability to be spun in a positive manner. My pitch worked, her outlook changed, she got her work done, and we're that much closer to the (blessed, blessed) day she starts college.

If you read my columns routinely, this is where you might expect the pivot to marketing and advertising matters. Not yet. Hold on for a little while longer.

Many people in our industry, since our work tends toward urban areas and diverse staffs, have felt personally impacted by the regime change in the U.S. this month, and even more directly by this weekend's changes to immigration policy. Even if you haven't been personally impacted yet, it's easy to find people in your network who have, either from travel uncertainties to social pressures, concerns over health care, and so on.

Personally, I find myself increasingly irritated by the amount of distraction and stress created by all of this. The silver lining from one party in charge of all branches of government was supposed to be a better economy, thanks to job-creating deregulation, better trade deals, badly needed and wildly delayed investments in infrastructure, and so on. Instead, there's been comedic overreaches about things that shouldn't matter to anyone, a continuing move of the goalposts in regard to conflict of interest disclosure, and now, censorship and a piecemeal immigration ban that seems more about where the family of the Oval Office resident owns hotels, rather than any real improvement to our national security, either in the short or long term.

So instead of being able to just focus on the day to day of your, well, day to day, you get to navigate this mine field of social media firestorms, and the alarm of people in your network who have already been negatively affected. Which all seems like a race to the bottom of seeing which side can make the other break first, either through executive actions or effective protest, legal challenge, and so on. American elections are among the longest in the world, and now, we've got one that will seemingly never end. (And before anyone feels that this is just how the losing side won't get over it... note how Trump's infamous Twitter feed dismissed the immigration opinions of Senators Graham and McCain by noting that they are both failed presidential candidates, as if this invalidates their opinions whenever it disagrees with his.)

Still with me? Good. Here's that pivot that I promised you.

As marketers and advertisers, it seems like we can't win. If we choose a side in this circus, we cut our audience. If we don't, we risk looking complicit or irrelevant. And if we are somehow mentioned in the dreaded Twitter stream, our stock prices tank, and all of our efforts are put in the media spin cycle.

But what's also possible is that this is a situation where you can't lose. If your product or service delivers a good and simple benefit, it's going to seem downright refreshing in the current climate. Boring is the new safe, and safe is the new peace. Consumer loyalties are going to grow as more and more of our brain cells are taken up by the viral politic. If you are a new player to the field, there will never be a better time to engineer a viral message by picking a side. Opportunities are, frankly, rife for both leading brands and challengers.

Worried that no one is paying attention to your ads in a multi-channel age? It's my belief that if the current condition is the New Normal, any number of people will begin to opt out of the social media channels altogether, or at least, to limit their time, because you can only block so many people before the exercise just seems pointless. Yes, we may have finally found a way to increase television ratings, or to get print media numbers to stop shrinking.

A final personal aside. Last Friday night, I held my every 3 weeks poker game. With my regulars bringing in more and more new players, the game has never been more popular, and we had the most players ever in my space. I've also made things trickier on myself by switching to playing records for background music. So I'm up and down a lot, tending my turntable, playing my hands, keeping both rooms aware of the blinds and ante levels, and such. In the hustle and bustle, I lost track of my phone, and didn't have it back in my hands for a solid eight hours, until the last hands were dealt, and clean-up was completed.

So for all that time, I had no idea what the Administration had done, what my network thought about it, or any of the noise of the outside world. I just had my friends, and my poker game, and my music.

I didn't win money on Friday night. I was fortunate enough to break even.

It was also the most fun I've had in weeks... and I think I'm going to be smart enough to start losing my phone more often.

Because choosing not to engage in a crisis is also a choice, and an increasingly refreshing 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.

What Mobile Means To Email

Going Mobile

Email is one of my favorite channels to achieve goals in marketing and advertising, for the plain and simple reason that it works *and* has incredible advantages over other channels. (What advantages? Exceptionally undistracted awareness in a multi-channel age, very little of the issues that digital ads have with no skipping or blocking, cheap to make, easy to test, and in a better competitive state than they were in the past. I could go on, honestly, but I've addressed many of these points in past columns, so I'm going to leave that be for now.)

However, since emails aren't the focus of huge budgets and high fees to achieve distribution, and the metrics tend to stay consistent because there's usually a certain inertia to the metrics you expect to achieve, there's a certain... well, I don't want to say laziness or conservatism when it comes to email design, but it is what it is. Especially in tried and true consumer categories, or transactional pieces and automated work. There are aspects of email marketing and advertising that have not changed in decades, and likely won't for as long as the channel is viable. If you'll forgive one more aside... email's death has been predicted for over a decade now, with texting, apps, IMs and various ills that have hit the channel all said to be why it's gonna die. All that's happened is that more of it goes out. Moving on.

So, what's happening to change this sleepy little channel? Well, the device that's in your hand, if you are reading this on a smartphone. Which isn't news, except that it's still easy to forget that it is, well, news.

Depending on the consumer category, list and daypart, the vast majority of the emails that you send, as a marketing and advertising pro, will be seen first (not read or responded to, always, but seen) on the phone. Which means that open rates and unsubscribes have both taken turns for the worse, while also opening up the available calendar, away from just business hours.

Knowing that, why would you send your email outside of business hours, if mobile open rates and unsubscribes are both worse in that environment? Because email doesn't exist in a vacuum. Your message competes with potentially hundreds of others every day, and moving away from the crowd, especially if your piece is designed to do well in a mobile triage situation, or your audience are always-on professionals who will do evening laptop or desktop hours because they are just that way, could be your best move. As always with anything that has a direct marketing connection, let the data drive.

But you'll need to take more than dayparting into account for a more effective mobile campaign. You'll also need to think harder about subject lines, with an ever-greater importance on front-loading copy with benefits. Frequency is also a big key, especially if you are reaching a higher number of Ios9 (Apple iPhone) users, since those folks now see work with a much greater emphasis and ease to unsubscribe. Pre-header copy doesn't move the needle as much as subject lines, but it still matters, as do entry points that work for mobile use (not too small or close together, and with use without too much of a scroll). You should also code for responsive, run your HTML through an emulator to make sure you aren't running into issues with other mobile platforms and formats, and, well...

Consider the whole sea change as an opportunity, rather than a hassle.

Because in my experience, any execution that you do because you have to, rather than because you want to?

Becomes an execution that doesn't thrill you when it's done.

And if all of this seems like too much trouble, or that you are jumping into the deep end of a pool when you don't even know if the water is warm, or what's below the surface?

Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we, um, know some people that you can hire for help with that sort of thing...

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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.

High Resistance

Hello, Friends

A window into the kind of person that I am, and yes, this will have marketing and advertising overtones.

I've got an Excel spreadsheet that has the data from all of my workouts since 2013. I've kept it updated on a daily basis, when I started running as a way to keep eating badly, while still maintaining my weight and overall health. Before then, I did a mix of different things, from hockey to biking to racquetball to golf, but didn't keep it tracked so meticulously.

I thought that if I was active enough, I could counter a slowing metabolism, keep the blood pressure and cholesterol down, and stay on my goal of living without prescriptions and keeping up with my kids. All while throwing down as many sodas, cheese steaks, pizza, pretzels and carbs that I wanted, because this new step would clearly make up for the rest.

The first year, I set a goal of 1,000 miles, and made it. I then added another hundred miles for the next year. I also tried to make sure that I kept doing weight training as well. With each year, I've added another 100 miles. The increasing goal has made me re-train my stride to ease stress on the knees.

But that wasn't enough. So I changed my diet to add much more water and a daily multi-vitamin. Cut my sodium intake. Increased my fruit and probiotic consumption, and started to count and reduce calories...

And all of this has worked, but not to the extent that you might think. I've kept the same weight and dimensions, had overall good health, and get a lot done. But the running has never really gotten easy, and if I lapse for any reason whatsoever, I feel it, with a quickness. Plus, my blood pressure and cholesterol crept up a bit last year.

Truth be told, I am just not as efficient as I'd like to be. Too many of my miles are walked, rather than ran. (I get cramps and hamstring pulls.) The time commitment is annoying. But I'm getting better, and have ideas for how to improve. I'm certain that these plans will change later when I fall short of my goals, because that is just what happens, and everything can always improve.

Now, the pivot.

When you do marketing and advertising for a living, and have access to the data, you are frequently able to drive improvements to the status quo. Which is, after all, the reason why a client wants you around in the first place. But the same processes that led you to the first win should bring you to the second, and the third, and so on down the line, because that's the way it should work...

Except for, well, it doesn't.

Not always, in any rate. Just as age, a slowing metabolism and the demands of life can mitigate my efforts, so can environmental factors cut into the effectiveness of your work. From client needs that run contrary to optimal engagement practices, to lowering response rates from user fatigue and increasing competition from others in their competitive space, you are rarely, if ever, going to have everything on your side in your attempt to beat the control. Optimal practices change over time, without warning. Good creative wears out, and the plain and simple nature of digital advertising is that response and engagement is always eroding, because we're always getting a little bit more of it then we used to.

It's easy, especially as the calendar goes from the start of the New Year to the cold and misery of deep January, to stop going to the gym. But if you do, your life won't be better later, and catching up may be extremely difficult. Just as if you stop trying to top the control, or try to convince your client that the new performance metrics are all you can achieve...

Well, there's probably someone else in your field who has kept doing the work, and will seem more attractive to your client. And, well, is.

Because if you don't love the journey, you're in the wrong line of work.

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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.

The Best/Worst Mistake

Or with incomplete data

As a marketing and advertising consultant, I'm frequently asked for my opinion on spends by medium, or to put things in a less jargon-intensive way, how a client should best spend their money. (Independent of my fees, of course. That expense is always defensible. Moving on.)

This comes from a good place: the desire to spend every dime as if it were your own is a virtue that I applaud. Marketers and advertisers can and should always look for ways to optimize their spend, because the cash you save can help the business in any number of ways, some of which multiply quite nicely. So I'm in favor of the instinct... but sometimes, very leery of the approach.

The simple fact of the matter is that ad mediums are like tools. You may have one that you like more than others, but if you only ever use one, you probably aren't terribly crafty, or able to complete a number of different projects to optimal conclusions. What's even more telling and basic of a mistake is when a client wants to turn off a medium entirely, usually because they've got data that shows one approach is wildly more effective than others. "(Medium X) just doesn't work for us." Hmm.

The most common target in the current environment? Ad banners in the digital space. Especially when the client has been doing lowest cost work with programmatic approaches, and find themselves disappointed with low click rates. Or even worse, clicks that didn't translate to sales in e-commerce plays, where the client might feel that the traffic was fraudulent.

To be clear about this, banners have issues. Dynamic work with a retargeting component are historically your best bet for higher response, but those can easily get into issues of retraining your audience to abandon shopping carts for a better price. Banners that appear on questionable sites from run-of-network buys don't do much for your brand, and many marketing and ad pros aren't thrilled with bankrolling bad actors like click fraudsters, fake news sites. or dark web tricksters, which is a sizable percentage of digital advertising right now. With all of that in play, it's a hard sell to spend more, not less, on the channel, mostly by switching up to premium sites, and away from remnant inventory.

But here's the not so dirty and not so secret point that old-school marketers always knew, and new-school folks miss because they are being misled by incomplete data... very few consumers come to a purchase decision from a single channel. Even a customer that buys from a clear attribution stream can have that data polluted by offline messaging, or have their decision making impacted by ways that the data never catches. For instance, a reminder email that brings a customer back to the site after a banner got them there in the first place, or a click on a banner after search engine work for the previous visit. Just because a channel took the consumer for the last mile, does not mean that all of the previous miles were worthless.

In a time before digital, marketers knew that a diverse messaging plan was optimal. Consumers would see a television spot, a print media piece, hear a radio mention, and maybe even see a billboard, possibly all in the same buying cycle... and that buying cycle might last years. Since we had no data that claimed to isolate channel effectiveness, a diverse plan was protected, because you didn't "know" what didn't work. Even call center or direct mail data was inherently suspect, and you rarely, if ever, made a decision from a single set of data. (More often, you just used that data to try to negotiate a better price.)

But until we have true multi-channel attribution, possibly from technology that doesn't even exist yet or a consolidation to everyone using and consuming through a single device (best bet: smartphones, and even that seems unlikely for a good long while, given how problematic it is to make some purchases that way), what we have is the worst of both worlds. Uncertainty, with the illusion of certainty.

If you are the kind of person who can't tolerate that level of vagueness in your day to day, or just have a jones to kill channels with certainty in your heart, there is a way out. Pure old-school A/B testing, where you split your audience in separate but equal groups, then expose them to different advertising mixes. The trouble is that it's usually slow, not helpful unless you have enough data to achieve statistical significance (and if that comes back to relatively rare events like sales tracked by digital channel, that can be *really* slow), and still prone to cross-channel pollution, so your significance levels have to be quite high. You also have to have the discipline to leave short-term money on the table, since the less effective method will have to play out. If your managerial situation is more shoot the messenger than learn from deviations from the norm, all of this can be quite uncomfortable, in a social and professional sense.

Or you can do what I usually wind up recommending instead, and to consider the following point.

Think about the best in class advertising players of the age, or even the best players in your space, and ask yourself the following question.

Do they turn off entire channels of communication with consumers?

(Probably not.)

And if they don't, and have you outspent or outgunned in experience and exposure...

What do you know that they don't, and how confident are you in that knowledge?

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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.

Access Versus Experience

Grains of Experience

A very smart business leader said something in a meeting that I was privileged to attend a few months ago, and it stuck with me. His theory is that there is a paradigm shift going on in our world, away from possessions, and towards access. Streaming services for media, instead of cultivated libraries. Transportation companies (well, OK, ride share companies) that don't own cars. Cloud computing instead of concrete servers, selling platforms without inventory, and so on.

Everything through your smartphone that could realistically go through your smartphone, because that device has such an emotional resonance and always-on connection. Information and data that travel with you from place to place and provider to provider, because that's the way to exceptional customer service. Everyone with their own concierge, really. It made a lot of sense to me then, and still does now... but there's a hole in the theory that you can drive a truck through, and part of that is from what I did just before starting to write this column.

Here's what I did.

I got up from where I normally write and went to the back of the room, to a present that my wife got for me for Christmas. It's a possession; even more so, it's a machine. I opened the top of the device, and loaded it with a clearly antiquated and inconvenient technology, taking special care not to damage it, because it can be very easily damaged. Making sure not to do anything else at the time, because I haven't had this tech for so long as to make this second nature, I then placed the device into operation and adjusted to taste.

Every 20 minutes or so, I need to tend to the machine. I can't pause it, or send its output anywhere else. If I let it go untended, the machine will complete its intended task and keep going without reset, and potentially become damaged.

There are no software upgrades for this. It is, simply, a set and finite flaw.

We'll move past the pointless suspense here: it's a turntable. Actually, it's a retro combo turntable, which also plays CDs, cassettes, radio and even your Bluetooth-enabled device, because why not, really. Needless to say, the vast majority of the use has been the turntable.

More surprising is how young the market for the product is. According to MusicWatch, 54% of vinyl customers are 35 and under, and while it's clearly a niche product for the music industry, it's one where the revenue model still makes sense.

I won't get into the sound quality argument, because I can talk to both sides of it, knowing the science as well as the marketing. At a certain point, human discernment is just not generally capable of telling a difference between analog and digital files, mostly at higher sampling rates. I also don't have the best set of ears on the plane, which is actually a help, in that I'm not going to splurge for the over the top sound system and additional speakers that true audiophiles go for.

However, the sound quality argument is besides the point for me. The simple act of tending to the record, avoiding skips and rapid access to favorite tracks, and the sight of that mesmerizing spin -- all of that makes for a potent cocktail of psychoacoustics, or the listening equivalent of a placebo. It sounds better because it feels better, and I'm racking up moments in my growing collection where I just get chills from the record that I wasn't getting from other formats. For me, at least, and for now.

Another consequence of the medium is that I am suddenly willing to experiment on other formats to see if vinyl makes it better. The format in question? Jazz, which as a writer, has never attached very well to me. John Coltrane and Miles Davis are starting to work their magic, though. My guests, in that the turntable made its debut for my home poker game last weekend, were also far more tolerant about what they heard than usual.

Here's another point for analog over digital: there's an exceptional vinyl store that isn't too far from me, which I've started combing for used finds to high success. Rummaging through stacks in this crowded emporium is less convenient than simply shopping online. Amazon carries vinyl, because of course they do. But the sifting and thrill of a strike (Richard Thompson! And more than a few titles!) isn't just a cost savings over shipping. It's the primal aspect of the hunt, the rapid calculation of what I have to have versus what I can live without, and the math involved in keeping my consumerism responsible. All in real time, because the stores isn't open 24/7, and I can't just spend all day here.

Access is important. It scales, it's got exceptional advantages, and even the fussiest mind will take it ninety nine times out of a hundred. Even in music, digital can and should dominate: many of the newer vinyl albums come with a free digital download, and no one's giving up solid state for mobile use. If you want your music with you at the gym or the car, or in settings where you can't keep tending to it, you aren't going back to the old ways.

But access isn't everything, because we aren't entirely (or even very) logical creatures. We close doors and open windows.

And in that window lies opportunity, for any marketing and ad pro wise enough to use it.

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