The Jet Blue Way

Jet Blue HQ

This past weekend, I flew cross-country on a red-eye, spent the better part of a day getting a venue to its proper state, and was genuinely touched by my community. In some respects, it was an ordinary experience, because I've done all of these things before. In other ways, it made me feel validated that the project that I've taken on is on the side of the angels... because it feels like more of the same.

Let's get into it chronologically. I've never flown JetBlue before because it just hasn't been an option from a logistics or expense standpoint. This time around, the overnight flight from Oakland was in the market on the budget, the pre-dawn arrival at JFK was OK from a pickup standpoint since my ride out was too early for morning rush hour traffic, and my late August flight dates didn't put me into holiday surge pricing.

There's nothing *particularly* magical about JetBlue, and I'm not sure it's a better experience than Virgin (now Alaska)... but it's close. The wifi works and it's free, the leg room is just better than others, the flight attendants don't seem beaten down by the gig, and the whole experience just seems a little better. Not so much in ways that are going to make me pay more all the time, and I still wish that they had more mid-Atlantic ports of call because JFK is just not a great place for me. But they are preferred now, and I wasn't sure that there was enough of a difference in airlines to bother with before. (Frontier and Spirit, on the other hand, seem like they are actively trying to punish you for saving money.)

I flew back to New Jersey this weekend to run a poker game for my regulars, then conduct a fantasy football draft. The poker game has been going on since I left for the Bay Area in May, with the regulars keeping the flame alive... but the guys just don't have my same attention to detail and fiddly personality, so the venue just wasn't as clean as it should be, the snacks just weren't up to the same level, the vinyl records weren't spinning, and so on, and so on. There's no specific single thing that I do that makes people more into the game, but the cumulative impact of all of the little extras just gives the players more of a premium feel and helps them get more enthusiasm for the game. They reciprocated with an unprecedented expression of generosity, and I honestly teared up a little when I told my wife about it the next morning. It's not just nice to be appreciated for what you do. It's life-affirming.

Finally, Saturday was the fantasy football auction, which was more involved than past years given the depth of the draft, and another moment where my community picked me up when my own performance was lacking. I got the number of bench slots wrong on the prep materials, a basic oversight that I've never made before, and a mistake that could have had a real impact on the outcome for the players involved... but everyone just rolled with the mistake and picked me up. I have a history with both of these groups, and I know that I've given them value over the years. We retain our players in both the poker and fantasy leagues. Jet Blue retains their customers. The word of mouth from people who play in my leagues, or my poker game, draw new players because people like to tell the story of good service. (Not as much as they do bad service, but there's nothing you can do about that.) The same goes for Jet Blue.

There's always the temptation, especially when you can put dollars to decisions through data, to cut corners. Jet Blue probably loses a few fares every flight for the leg room decision and puts themselves at risk of not seeming as serious about making a profit as their competitors. I put myself at a little more financial risk, especially if my players don't tip at the poker game, or make my role difficult as a fantasy league commissioner. I also could have turned the time that I spent working on the venue into cash, or just not flown back for the events in the first place. There's also the love and tolerance shown by my family, who don't see me very often during this period and then shared my time and attention with my friends this weekend.

As a consultant and a marketing and advertising pro, I've known for a long time that you make your own luck.

To me, the best way to do that is to make your clients love your service.

Besides, you feel better about yourself that way.

And it seems to be working for Jet Blue, now in its 20th year of operation...

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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.

Five Lessons From A Fantasy League Commissioner

Actually, It Is

Twice in the next week, I'll participate in fantasy football drafts; once in the office, the other in a basement that's 3,000 miles away from where I currently live. When these drafts happen, I will act as Commissioner, because this is a thing that I do, and herd the cats who are in the leagues to all come together and do a transparently dumb thing as a single group. I've performed this role for (gulp) over thirty years, in a wide range of leagues, ranging from dear friends and relatives to near total strangers.

Here's what I've learned, over the many years and situations, that have helped to inform the person that I am when working as a marketing and advertising pro. You might find it helpful. (But not as helpful as when to draft Tennessee Titans RB Derrick Henry, perhaps the best handcuff in the league this year. That's clearly a state secret.)

1) Your worst client will always take up the majority of your time.

Whether it's someone who can't get their protections on time, struggles with the tech, needs an inordinate amount of follow-up requests to pay the dues, takes way more time to make their picks than everyone else, or just finds some other way to throw a wrench in the works... well, this has made for *wonderful* training on dealing with particular clients. Keeping your composure when all you really want to do is spit fire at someone for making things difficult is an incredibly valuable life skill, but it's also kind of like getting to the gym every day for maintenance work. You might need to figure out ways to self-motivate.

2) People are going to make fun of you for the very reasons why you have the gig.

In the league that I run out of the basement, there will be giant labels, several kinds of Sharpies, clipboards and pens and assigned seating, and an inordinate amount of getting things Just So. Owners are appreciative, but they also will make jokes about this, re-arrange things just to see if they can get my goat, and so on.

The point is that if you are a good commish, you have to sweat the details, and sweating the details is just an irresistible softball in the search for humor. I (honestly) don't really mind, because this is just how I'm wired. Making fun of me for this stuff is kind of like making fun of my height or hair color; have at it. I didn't choose it, so I'll probably join in.

3) Bad ideas are like weeds, or zombies; they always return.

If you have an owner or two that wants to change a rule, and it gets voted down or rejected, rest assured that it will return at some point, with as much force and vigor as previous. There is a strong intersection of math, engineering and problem solving in the mindset of fantasy sports, and people like to think they are right about things, otherwise they wouldn't say it.

So the owner in your league that hates kickers, and wants to ban them... will always hate kickers, and will always want to ban them. They might even be right. And they'll ask until they get their way, or the sun burns out. Best to just shrug and move on.

4) Balancing the interests of the league against the interests of your team is tough.

Running my basement league, for me, is a mix of conducting an auction while also trying to make picks for my own club, which leads to mistakes for both sides. It's also my built-in excuse for not having a particularly good team, but what's more likely is that I just don't do as well in football as other leagues. Finally, if you are in a league with especially competitive people, rule changes or innovations that you propose will be regarded with suspicion, because they'll seem like they are in the interest of your team first, and the league second. The only way to overcome this is by building up goodwill and precedent as an honorable dealer. There are no shortcuts to that status.

5) This is all part of your personal brand.

I've had job interviews where the conversation went to personal habits, and I've always felt that this was a competitive advantage for me, because my hobbies... well, speak to my professional attributes. It's one thing to say that I sweat the details; it's quite another to rattle off the particulars of my various leagues. People like to hire folks with good references, because retaining clients is a critical skill in business. I have clients in these leagues that have spent the majority of their lives with me. Innovating in small spaces, learning from outside sources, caring about the happiness of your partners, self-awareness and self-deprecation for when you are nerding out with abandon...

Well, I'm putting data and precedent to these claims, rather than just saying them.

Good luck with your drafts!

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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 Generalization Trap

Twain Me

The prevailing story this week in adtech was the continuing discussion about the memo that got James Damore, an engineer at Google, fired for the views expressed in the piece.

There's been a lot of back and forth about this in my feed. Some feel that terminating an employee for their views is tantamount to censorship, and just aren't down with that. Others believe that Google also missed an opportunity to retrain the asset, and defuse the controversy. More people have contributed what it's like to be female in tech, and the sheer fatigue encountered from having to continually overcome stereotypes. There was also a strong piece from NPR that showed how enrollment in colleges for tech courses changed dramaticaly, on the diversity level, with just a few minor tweaks to how the course was marketed. (Note: no content changes, just titles.) Finally, there was talk about the strategies involved, the ensuing lawsuits, the media coverage, and so on.

What I've found to be the silver lining in the experience is that tech, unlike too many other parts of our world, is actually learning from the experience, and adding more information. That is, after all, what tech types do; challenge assumptions, gather more data, go where the math takes you. Rather than simply point at a problem and declare the other side to be unrealistic and/or malevolent, we default to the science.

Which makes me wonder why so many people who are willing to defend some of the points in the memo are, well, missing the forest for the trees. And here's that forest: when you generalize about a group, and you aren't a stand up comedian trying for easy laughs... you are pretty much setting yourself up for catastrophic failure.

I get why people *want* to make these generalizations, of course. It's shorthand for thinking, and thinking all the time is absolutely exhausting. Our minds want to rest from time to time, and maybe even more than that, and a generalization can put you at ease, and make the world seem simpler. Run into trouble on the roads? Generalize about the demographic of the person who offended you, rather than how you might be bringing your own problems to the table. Annoyed about your economic status compared to some other profession? Generalize about their moral or ethical culpability. Don't like your working environment because it pushes you out of your comfort zone? Generalize about hiring practices, class structures, and so on.

It's lazy thinking, if it's even thinking at all. And it's a mistake. Always, and especially in a professional or business environment.

Which makes my closing statement on the matter curious, because it's going to sound like I'm stepping in the same hole.

What people really hate, even more than generalizations?

Being told they are wrong.

5 Tips For Tumbleweed Season

Not Seen: Co-Workers

If you've worked in adtech for any length of time, you know what an August calendar means: vacation time. Either for you, the people you are working with, or the people that need to sign off on anything of major consequence.

As someone who has worked almost exclusively at start ups for the past couple of decades -- and at some start ups that have gone away with varying degrees of warning -- I've also had the experience of not having much in the way of time accrued at a new gig to take off when everyone else does. Here's what I've learned about Tumbleweed Season, under the hope that it proves helpful to you.

1) Collaboration is going to be really unpredictable. I've frequently come in to the office during slow times and expected quiet sessions where independent study and long-term thinking was going to rule the day, only to find a stray exec or senior sales personnel with very urgent needs. Don't assume that your day will be uneventful.

2) Commuting can be a joy. The comedian Bill Burr has a highly misanthropic but accurate routine in which he talks about how much nicer the world would be, if there were only a lot less people in it. Just in the last week in the Bay Area, my usual time in the car for the morning drive has dropped 15-20%, with no major crushes or delays. It can't and won't last, of course, but I'm going to enjoy it while I can. (Sadly for my friends who still work in NYC, this season isn't providing the same benefit.)

3) Travel makes for interesting dayparts. The nature of work in the connected age means that your contact who is spending time in Europe, Asia or the Pacific is still likely to monitor their communication channels, but maybe with less frequency or urgency. If you are prone to checking your device at all hours, you really need to break that habit before it destroys your health... but in the meantime, consider time-shifting your email sends to hit the in-box at a more sane hour.

4) Deadlines may be just as urgent, but for different reasons. Vacation schedules can make for an effective bit of leverage, in that many clients will want to clear the decks of projects before leaving. That can give you the impetus you need to push things forward, but only if you keep things simple. Deep complications aren't your friend in Tumbleweed Time.

5) T'is the season. At many of my gigs, Q4 has been an all-hands experience, with any number of seasonal creative needs crushing the team from mid-October to mid-December. Working ahead for your top clients in the summer months, especially for perennial tasks that can't look too much like last year's, but not too much different either, is best done when you've got some time and space to think -- and can keep you from truly insane weeks later.

Besides, looking at icicles and snowflakes in your marketing and advertising projects is a very good way to take your mind off summer heat...

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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.

Disrupting Disruption

How Adobe Is Makng Me Feel

You hear a lot of idioms when you work in adech. Fail fast. Long tail thinking. And perhaps the most powerful, disrupt everything.

This call to innovate has led to the engine that is driving the U.S. economy. A small number of tech companies are the biggest reason why the stock market as a whole has performed so well in the past six months, and there's no end of folks who want to be just like them. And for the most part, this is a great and good thing, especially if you are a fan of getting the U.S. off fossil fuel use.

I've made a living from innovation for decades, and at my current gig, continue in this vein. So what I'm about to discuss isn't an easy thing to denigrate. But here goes.

There are no panaceas in life, and nothing that comes without consequences. Sustainable energy infrastructure has an impact on the environment, albeit one that's remarkably lower than fossil fuel use. I may delight in my phone taking pictures or serving as a flashlight or guitar tuner, but there are untold numbers of people who, thanks to these apps, no longer have employment. Consequences.

Which leads me to news from Adobe, demoed on stage and covered recently in business publications, of Voco. Basically, Photoshop for audio, which gives the operator of the software the ability to create thoroughly realistic scripts that were never said by the speaker. All you need is 20 to 40 minutes of data to work from, and you can make anyone say anything, in a fake that's nearly undetectable to anyone who isn't looking at the actual code.

No, seriously.

And while the stated use case for the software is clear and useful for a limited number of professionals -- sound engineers on media that get to skip laborious recovery sessions -- the far greater negative impact on humanity seems clear, yes?

If fake news is the scourge by which elections and social media has been more or less permanently corrupted, how much worse does it get when you add these tools to the mix?

If governance is becoming an ever-growing toxic mix of tribalism, what happens when you give by any means warriors these weapons?

And if we've gotten into this mess due to a corrupting narrative of how you can't trust the media or your government...

Well, what amount of damage kicks in when sight and hearing are also suspect?

There are some tools that, at the risk of infuriating extreme libertarians, are widely regarded as not suitable to be in the hands of private actors, due to the risk of misuse. Tanks. Lethal gases. Nuclear weapons. And so on.

If Adobe about to make the coding equivalent... well, let me put it this way.

We're going to have bigger problems then, say, consumers no longer thinking that a celebrity is really endorsing your goods or services...

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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.

Can, Could, Won't: Managing Risk

Additional risk: eye pokery

At one of the earlier stops in my career, I was fortunate enough to work with a top-notch legal compliance officer. Not only was this person quick and skilled, they were also exceptionally patient and understanding. That was all very necessary, since it was their poor task to proof all of my copy for not just the usual editing maladies, but also for anything that could put our employer in legal jeopardy.

What probably made the work (slightly) more tolerable for them was that I had some background in law in the first place. A political science degree, some secertarial work for law professors and lawyers at various temp jobs, and other roles prior to that gig made me think that I knew some stuff. And, well, I did; just enough to be dangerous. Because my skill set was nothing compared to what this employer wanted to instill, and even less than what many of our clients wanted to enforce. That's why the compliance role was there in the first place.

After a few years of high throughput copywriting and creative direction, I just didn't go down paths that led to issues. Can was just automatically changed to could, claims were softened with puffery or avoided, dates were omitted because the nature of our delivery channel (email) led to way too big of a chance of a bait and switch accusal. Sweepstakes were swapped out for less problematic premiums, and sensitive discussions were taken out of email, putting us light years ahead of, sadly, people who get major political party nominations to be the leader of the Free World. I've pretty much worked in a legally compliant way ever since, and have even served as the de facto legal expert for several employers afterward that just didn't have the budget or interest to have true counsel.

It wasn't as if anything I wanted to try before I got all of that training was irresponsible. None of my clients ever ran into legal issues due to creative before or since, and while some of my stops have run into fireworks for poor practices, none of that was related to practices in my part of the business. But once you get trained to go in a certain direction, that's where you go creatively. Especially since the other directions don't seem to gain you much more than added risk.

Which leads me to the risk that's on the other side of the ledger. While there are plenty of consumer categories that play in arenas where true and correct fear lives in the heart's of your clients, the real shame of it all is that those are the categories that are most ready for innovation. (That's the reason why so many job listings in restrictive fields come with a heavy requirement for relevant experience; it's a safeguard for things that can never, ever happen.) Class action suits are just the end for many a buisness, if not for the obvious legal damages, but also from the turnover they inspire. Doing anything new or novel in these categories takes unusual courage from your client, and presentation skill from the agency.

The trouble with being too aware of risk is that it breeds a degree of sameness and safety to all of your finished work, and in that sameness, you can't innovate, learn from outliers, push the envelope... or feel truly alive in the gig.

Because at the end of the day, there's legal risk in getting out of bed. It's just a little more pronounced and obvious than the risk you get from weak creative.

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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.

3D Dragon Haircut Research

Sorry, Not 3D Enough

I'm going to confess to a prejudice here. When it comes to getting a haircut, I like the barber to have a few years on me. (Yes, I know, doesn't seem to go with the picture or the column's focus, which is marketing and advertising. We'll get there. Trust me.)

I'm sure that there are plenty of people who cut hair for a living who are masterful at the work at an early age. My needs aren't particularly esoteric, either. But once you've gotten used to the fine points of the job (a quality straight razor, a sense of how short I like it without needing to interrogate or break out measuring tape)... well, going with someone new to the field just seems like too much risk for not enough reward.

Besides, you also miss out on a chance to do market research. Which is kind of a big deal, given my profession, and how, if you really want to sell something in the U.S., you better be able to convince the people with money. That'd be (shh!) older people. Moving on.

This last week, I caught a skeptical column in my media feed that downplayed the coming impact of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. The columnist pointed out how 3D in television, cable, and even movie theaters has been limited, with cable providers in the UK giving it away for free, rather than going for an upcharge. So with that as a precedent, why get excited about something new that's likely to run into the same resistant consumer inertia?

It's a reasonable point, honestly. Betting on failure is rarely sexy, but breakthroughs are relatively rare, which is why they are so memorable. Gartner calls this stage in the Hype Cycle the "Trough of Disillusionment", and for every tech that powers through to the "Slope of Enlightenment" and eventual "Plateau of Productivity", there are an untold number that fall by the wayside. I also work for a cutting-edge tech company, so I'm biased by nature.

Which led me to the barber's chair this last weekend, and small talk as Ray (good name for a barber, right? One syllable, can't mispronounce it) got to work on my desire to retain less sweat during the summer. He asked me what I do. I gave him my company's quick pitch, and my role in it. Given that I now work in the Bay Area and everyone dreams of knowing about the next great tech IPO, he asked about that aspect of the business. I pivoted, because honestly, it's just not that interesting to me; if the company does great over the next few years, I'm sure a rising tide will raise all boats, but that kind of long-term dreaming can just get really distracting.

Instead, I pivoted back to what could be done with the tech, and what problems it solves. Which didn't interest him as much, because honestly, why should it? He's a barber. But then I drew it out further, and talked about the last mile aspects. How his phone could give him an AR path to the products he wants the next time he's in a warehouse store, rather than have to track down staff. How he could get offers and coupons without having to hunt for them. How the products and services that he wants to buy could be made cheaper, simply because the marketing and advertising expense would go down with increased efficiency. (Also, more darkly, the probable headcount at that location, because tech is frequently shorthand for Employment Winter Is Coming.) How some companies might choose to pass those savings on to the consumer, all while keeping their margins in check, in an attempt to grow their market share.

He got it then. He also got how, once anything like that was on his phone, how quick he'd be to use it all the time, and how soon it would just become table stakes for anyone that sells stuff.

Because that's the difference between 3D, VR and AR. There's no clear problem that 3D tech serves. Take a look at my screen shot image at the start of this column, and you'll see a character from "Game of Thrones" getting so up close and personal to an angry dragon that her hair is blown back.

No one who ever watched that show turned it off because the effects weren't 3D enough.

But plenty of people didn't buy something in a store because they couldn't find it, forgot their coupon, or thought it was too much money in the first place...

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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.

Persistence, Biology and Business

Sing It, Fellow Monkey

This week at my gig, I found myself going over presentation decks for a couple of absolutely critical pitch meetings, and obsessing over... how to make the fonts and spacing more consistent, and delving into the extremely fidgety points over exactly how large the bullets should be.

Widow and orphan copy protection, column widths, trying to avoid to start a line with symbols over text, checking back and forth to see what was the more consistent usage, and so on. It's the kind of work that always takes longer than you think it should because any interruption that you get in your life will take precedence over this. At its core, this level of document control is stuff that your brain is just *trying* to be distracted from, no matter how many times you've done it.

There are tricks around editing and QA, of course, which you learn from painful trial and error and experience. First, to remind yourself of just how important the meetings are; that has a way to sharpen the attention. A second is to edit backward, so your mind doesn't fill in blanks that aren't there. A third is read all of the copy out loud, which is an old broadcast journalism tactic that's great for self-editors. I also like to do my rounds at different speeds, so that my double and triple check doesn't feel like I'm just going through the motions.

Sometimes when I'm doing this, my mind wanders as to why the edit is necessary in the first place. Persistence and attention to detail seems like something anyone can do, after all. But keeping a sharp point during what others might consider drudgery is a talent, and I work at a start-up; people are incredibly busy and need to move to other projects with speed. Having the eye to find these points seems like it's in shorter and shorter supply, especially as we get more and more used to machine learning that lulls us into thinking everything is OK..

Which leads the skeptical reader to wonder just how much value is being added through this level of due diligence, and the answer is, well, no one knows. When a prospect doesn't convert to a client, they'll never tell you that they aren't going to sign because of tiny errors that made them lose confidence in your brand. But just because they don't recognize these things at a conscious level doesn't mean that it didn't happen. What we're trying to do at my current gig is hard; it requires our clients to disrupt their current way of doing things, and to challenge assumptions that they've been living with for, in some cases, many years. Having everything just so is almost like, well, insurance.

Believe it or not, such things even have a basis in biology.

I've been fortunate enough to run into a few interviews recently from a Stanford professor, Richard Sapolsky, who will gladly give you way too much to think about. After a lifetime of study, the professor believes that free will is simply the biology that we haven't learned yet, and so much of the stuff that we think is a conscious choice is, well, anything but. Sapolsky cites the mathematical woes faced by prisoners trying to gain parole with hearings just before lunch (dramatically lower than any other time, but never, of course, in front of judges that would admit that they were too cranky before feeding to feel much in the way of mercy). He also talks about the historical culture of blame that society would give to epileptics, people with scurvy, dyslexia, and so on. All of these classes were blamed for their afflictions until the world knew more about what caused them, and then they weren't.

Sapolsky also notes, with the evidence of people answering questions while hooked up to various scanning technology, that we make decisions almost instantaneously, and then spend much of our time and gray matter justifying those decisions. How people of different political persuasions, or those with better backgrounds with parents who had lower amounts of stress, react and manage complex conditions, or more darkly, racial relations and class differences. It's all simultaneously depressing and empowering, as it points to how little we should feel good about ourselves and our accomplishments, and how seemingly intractable problems might have solutions, if only we can get past the conditions that are causing near hard-wired dismissal.

Which is all very far away from a presentation deck, until we get back to decisions made by individuals in micro-seconds, on near unconscious levels. On criteria that will never be stated out loud.

Persistence is in my biology. It might also be in our 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.