Deactivating Twitter

So that happened today, for both the sports and business blogs. It was surprisingly easy, honestly, but I never really loved the site in the first place.

A few things:

> I have no idea how much this business was worth before Musk decided to have a nervous breakdown in public and light more money on fire than anyone has ever lit before, but you have to assume it was more than nothing. Which is what it's worth now.

> There's really no reason to think that social media as a business model, which wasn't exactly swimming in profit before this insanity, should survive this dumpster fire. Sure, some of the smarter people from Twitter are going to land on their feet, but you just had a brand that was known worldwide cease to exist. There's reasons for that beyond the bad ideas of a delusional maniac. 

> Anyone who is still working at Twitter should be presumed a grifter. There's no way that the 25% that are left are there for any reason other than to take the money Musk has got left. One presumes that there is some.

> I'm not certain that if I drove a Tesla, I'd feel good about it now. I get that they are great cars, but you are driving something that used to be known as a premium brand and forward thinking, and is now a source of ridicule. Can't be good for the resale value. And they were always expensive to fix.

> If this gets us to a better world of less snark and international influence on the decisions of nations from outside actors, I'm OK with losing out on the joke room pitch fest that was my feed. If it just means a world with less bad ideas of fun, also a thing.

> If you want to draw a similarity here between Musk and Alex Jones, or Musk and the content apocalypse going on with HBO Max / TNT Et Al... well, I'll see your supposition and raise with the following. There's been too much content for anything approaching economic sustainability, and we're probably going to a place where everyone is going to be presumably entertained a little less. Or just differently. Emphasis dark.

> If you'd like to imagine a dystopia where everyone stares at a TikTok feed of AI-driven quick twitch junk food for the intellect, yeah, that too. I'll be listening to podcasts instead, but I'm also not delusional; most folks are going to do the easy thing. You don't have to be like them, and if you've read this far, you probably aren't. Feel good about that.

What You Learn From Bad Clients

Folks, the life of a consultant may be lucrative. 

But it isn't easy.

Something that happens when you open your shingle to the world is that, well, the world isn't all great people. You run into folks who traffic in bad faith, deal in all or nothing thinking, behave emotionally, and your reward for all of this is, well, the paycheck. And nothing but the paycheck, because the value you add will feel like a bad exchange later. 

During the engagement, you make yourself believe in the client, because not believing in the client is, at least for me, impossible. Once we commit to a job, we're doing the job, but this is all at-will work where the role was available. It's often available for a reason the client won't admit. That's the fun of dealing with people who deal in bad faith.

In the past couple of years, we've had clients who:

> Ranted and raved about colleagues as if they were, well, children (in need of medication)

> Scheduled entire days of meetings, then never showed up on time for any of them, fostering an environment where time waste was endemic

> Forced goals on junior personnel that were ridiculously higher than the historical production rate of past teams as a bad faith exercise in office politics

> Engaged in "I got mine" leadership of more or less washing their hands on controlling the excesses of executives

> Preached values for public consumption that they utterly failed to uphold on a personal level

> Committed the naturalistic fallacy (what is true for me is true for all) as if self-doubt or self-reflection was a virus

> Treated Covid precautions as a sign of weakness and/or mockery

> Assumed the worst of everyone for everything (well, game recognizes game)

> All while claiming that said excesses were made up for by some other virtue (loose hiring, flexible hours, lavish lunches, etc.)

It's sobering. 

Discouraging. 

And in the long run, always, always, always a plus to get away from.

So what have we learned?

> Bank and save, so you can take on fewer red flag clients

> Practice gratitude, so that you don't turn into the bad client

> Trust your gut. Especially on things like using your own credit card for reimbursed expenses.

> Know that even if the bad client seems to thrive from their bad behavior in the short term, they won't be able to escape who they are. Character is destiny, and time wounds all heels.

> Live well. It's the best revenge.

Forward!

What We've Learned (So Far) This Year

Also, that Simpsons Memes = You Are Old

M&AD's business is, as I write this, up over 20% at this time from 2021. (Go us!) We've also got a pivot movement happening right now, as an old major client offboards for business reasons, and a new significant player hops on. So I thought I'd take a moment, as we've got time enough to write and share, to explain what we've been working on, and more of what we've learned.

> Sustainability is the new hotness.

Our pivot involves consulting and SEO work for folks in this space, which just makes all the sense in the world, really. It's a perfect marriage of channel and purpose, and what's encouraging here is that the prospect base aren't just skim and click folks. You have to write for brains as well as thumbs. Just a better place to be when it comes to the work.

This sector was always highly interesting to us from our historic position as a resource for first movers (prior: augmented reality, cannabis, remote learning), but it has special urgency with +$5 gasoline, not to mention the fresh incentive to not buy fossil fuels from terrible people. More of this, please -- and not just for M&AD.

> B2C tactics continue to work on niche audiences.

Some clients in special and highly regulated markets seem surprised when tactics from outside of their industry bear fruit, but the plain and simple of it is that marketing is about offer, list and creative... and the same eyes that looked at that e-commerce play five minutes ago are looking at this B2B one now. We don't magically ratchet up our attention spans, lose our preference for headlines that snap, or put our brain's desire to look at pictures over text away just because it's Business Time. Execute accordingly, while protecting brand.

> Small universal big levers still work and hold their value.

Consider the humble Sender Name in a commercial email. It rarely gets testing focus, and it's a hard thing to test very often for branding reasons -- but when you can if/then test to a winning one? You dine at the +10-15% table for a really long time after that. (Similar bonus point: waterfalling ads by placement to increase fill rates.) Some in this industry scoff at incremental improvements, but at M&AD, it's against our religious business faith to leave money on the table. Especially money from weak execution.

> People see through bells and whistles, even in a recovery.

A recent client was enamored of animation in their decks, all while missing the blocking and tackling required to make a major account feel secure in a commitment. This has been proven over and over again in our 20+ years in the business, but sizzle is a powerful spice. Use rarely and with great care, or risk arousing (justified!) suspicion from your prospect. If every slide is animated, no slide is.

> New holiday, who dis?

Twice in the past 14 months, Wal-Mart got resoundingly slapped down on social media for trying to monetize Juneteenth in a remarkably tone-deaf fashion. We are reasonably certain that at some point in our lifetime, the newest federal holiday will safely and positively celebrate Black Excellence (and, well, capitalism) in a way that won't induce cringing and social media disdain. This is America, after all.

We're also very certain that the movement will not be led via a special ice cream flavor or cookout section at a big box store. (And yes, I'm leaving some things unsaid in this note, and yes, you can ask me about it offline...)