Hello Again, And Yes, We've Had The Worst Site Hosting Service Imaginable

Sharp-eyed readers of the blog will note two significant points in the publication of this here blog-like product. (Actually, not even sharp-eyed.)

Point one: The URL has changed. (My name plus blogspot.com, not M&AD. It was too long anyway, I guess.)

Point two: It was several months since the last update... because I've spent that long just trying to get the site back online at the old URL.

These are related.

Here's the story... as a person with decades in the space, I have a long history of buying URLs. I've never really thought too much about it. So I used Register.com back in the day, and have kept using them because inertia.

That web site isn't around anymore. They've sold it to web.com.

How good is web.com? Well, here's the link to the Yelp review. Just to prove it's not just me.

17 reviews, all of them a single star, most of them wishing for legal action.

It takes work, honestly, for not a single reviewer to give you more than the minimum. It also shows that you so don't give a damn about your reputation that you don't even file a fake review on your behalf.

I'd say more about this customer service experience, but honestly, I've wasted enough of my life on these people, and so have you from reading these words.

Anyway.

Blog's back up, thoughts later. Sorry we were away. Back in a bit. Lots of work being done and lessons being learned...

6/29 Update: And now we're back at the old URL. Moving on, folks...

Here We Go

 I want to tell you about one of my favorite things in the world.

I could do this very badly with numbers. Here, I'll show you.

2 - minutes

45 - miles per hour

73 - years old

78 - feet high

$1.5M - cost

Now, the better way.

The Phoenix is a wooden roller coaster at Knoebels, a century-old amusement park in the middle of Pennsylvania. It goes up and back, causes you to float out of the seats, seems impossibly faster at the end and once you ride it from the very front or the very back in your dozens of times in riding it, you'll never take the middle again.

OK, some more words of explanation. 

Knoebels is a family run place that's free to enter, free to park, and the lines are never really very long because for heaven's sake, you are in the middle of Pennsylvania. I think I've probably ridden this thing a few dozen times, in the day and night, in hot and cold, in drizzle (the best; it's even faster) and dry. 

It's a smile machine. Everyone is smiling on the ramp as they leave it. It's magic.

And no matter how many times you get dragged up that hill -- you know the drag, the chunka-chunka-chunka of the chain sounding like oh dear Lord this is the time that it's going to break, isn't it, and the nerves and the adrenalin kick in and you become the person that you were the first time you rode it, rather than the person you are now, if only for those two minutes...

You are present. You are aware. 

You are not thinking about lunch or dinner or the mortgage or your in box or your calendar or the healthcare check or the pets or the water heater or the government or anything, really, beyond the chunka-chunka-chunka.

There are very few things in the world better than the Phoenix. (Short list? The laughter of my wife and daughters. My dog when he's asleep or catching a frisbee. Joel Embiid. This list subject to change.) 

But in business, there is very much one thing that's better than the Phoenix.

And that's the feeling you get when the chunka-chunka-chunka stops, and the glide starts, and you look down the hill of knowing that everything is about to get very, very much faster.

We've had days of over 4 million vaccinations. The unemployment rate is dropping. Cash is rippling through the country from stimulus checks and pent-up demand. Airports are filling up, perhaps too soon for pandemic safety, but filling up just the same.

Enough people are getting vaccines, or more darkly have had the damn bug already and lived to produce their own antibodies, that the fear of a new wave is likely greater than the reality.

Personally, M&AD has had clients with urgent needs, all of them reading the tea leaves the same way we do. The sports laundry I root for both had home games today, both won, both in front of vocal but responsible crowds that made everything seem just a little bit more like the Before Times.

We're getting dragged up that hill, folks.

After 13 months of too long and too dumb and needless tragedy and I'm skipping the recap, we're in glide, in the last few seconds before Fun.

And no matter how many times you've ridden the ride, this moment is the best.

Hold on tight!

So Good You Can't Say

Ironic Meme Not Included

This month, one of my clients released something really great. It took them years to make, fulfills a need in the marketplace that was underserved, and flat out dunks on everyone else in the category. Their core group of customers and fans are spreading the word about it on social media, because it's in a category and demographic where word of mouth and an urgent buying cycle are both strong realities. 

So why am I telling you about them while not really telling you about them?

Well, because...their experience is striking, educational and if you look at it the wrong way, a little dispiriting. 

Here's why.

The product and service has a strong Reddit channel. If you don't know Reddit, Wikipedia defines it as a social news aggregator and discussion web site, where registered members submit content that is up or down voted by other members. 

Also, if you didn't know about Reddit... well, there is no point in being mean about it. You probably knew about Reddit. You are reading a marketing blog, for heaven's sake. It's Yelp for everything that Yelp isn't for, basically.

Anyway... as previously stated, the new product is great. Not my opinion; pretty much everyone's. So is the service that supports it. The market, which skews young, is really enthused about it. And not shy about singing its praises to the skies. 

Which means the posts get cynical admins casting aspersions as to gaming the system or writing fraudulent content, because we didn't just fall off the turnip truck here... you folks are scammers, right? Let's just assume scammer first and ask verification later.

Or competitor trolls doing what trolls do, because hey, trolls gonna troll.

This is likely just a temporary problem, and a pretty good one to have, really. Eventually the persistence and true organic nature of the positive commenting community will outweigh the haters. Competitors in the space will step up their game or perish. Competition and capitalism and the such will have its way.

But in the meantime?

We get to patiently explain to the most tiresome people on the planet why nice things can still exist in the world. (Without sounding like scammers or religious zealots.)

All while being profoundly grateful that we don't have to live in their world for very long...

Play me out, Modest Mouse!