Category Archives: Personal

A collection of personal thoughts and stories

Today, Spend Some Time in Quadrant Two

First published April 17, 2014 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I ranted, and it was therapeutic — for me, at least. Some of you agreed that the social media landscape was littered with meaningless crap. Others urged me to “loosen up and take a chill pill,” intimating that I had slipped across the threshold of “grumpy old man-itis.” Guilty, I guess, but there was a point to my rant. We need to spend more time with important stuff, and less time with content that may be popular but trivial.

Hey, I’m the first to admit that I can be tempted into wasting gobs of time with a tweet like: “Prom season sizzles with KFC chicken corsages.” This is courtesy of Guy Kawasaki. Guy’s Twitter feed is a fire hose of enticing trivia. And the man (with the team that supports him) does have a knack of writing tweets with irresistible hooks. Come on. Who could resist checking out a fried chicken corsage?

But here’s the problem. Online is littered with fried chicken corsages. No matter where we turn, we’re bombarded by these tasty little tidbits of brain candy. Publishers have grown quite adept at stringing these together, leading us from trivial link to trivial link. Personally, I’m a sucker for Top Ten lists. But after succumbing to the temptation for “just a second” I find myself, 20 minutes later, having accomplished nothing other than learning what the 10 Biggest Reality Show Blunders were, or where the 10 Most Extravagant Homes in the U.S. happen to be.

Entertaining? Absolutely.

Useful? Doubtful.

Important?  Not a chance.

merrillcoveymatrixWe need to set aside time for important stuff. A few decades ago, I happened to read Stephen Covey’s “First Things First,” which introduced a concept I still try to live by to this day. Covey called it the Urgent/Important matrix. It’s a simple two-by-two matrix with four quadrants:

1 – Urgent and Important – for example, a fire in your kitchen.

2 – Not Urgent but Important – long-term planning.

3 – Urgent but Not Important – interruptions.

4 – Not Important and Not Urgent – time-wasters.

Covey’s Advice? Better balance your time in these quadrants. Quadrant One takes care of itself. We can’t ignore these types of crises. But we should try to minimize the distractions that fall into Quadrant Three and cut down the time we spend in Quadrant Four. Then, we should move as much of this freed-up time as possible into Quadrant Two.

Covey’s Quadrants are more applicable than ever to the online world.  I suspect most of us spend the majority of time in the online equivalents of Quadrant Three (responding to emails or other instant forms of messaging that aren’t really important) or Quadrant Four (online time wasters). We probably don’t spend much time in Quadrant Two (which I’ll abbreviate it to Q2). In fact, in writing this column, I tried to find a quick guide to finding important stuff online. I have a few places I like to go, which I’ll share in a moment, but despite the vast potential of online as a Q2 resource, it doesn’t seem that anyone is it making it easy to filter for “importance.” As I said in my last column, we have filters for popularity and recency, but I couldn’t find anything helping me track down Q2 candidates.

So, here is my contribution to helping you set aside more quality Q2 time:

Amazon Kindle and DevonThink: Reading thought-provoking books is my favorite Q2 activity.  I try to set aside at least an hour a day to read. Anytime someone suggests a book or I find one referenced, I download immediately it from Kindle and add it to the queue. Then, as I read, I use Kindle’s highlight feature to create a summary of the important ideas. After, I copy my highlighted notes into DevonThink, a tool that helps track and archive notes and resources for future reference.

Scientific American & Science Daily: I’m a science geek. I love learning about the latest advances — in particular, new discoveries in the areas of psychology and neuroscience. When I find an interesting article, I again save it to DevonThink.

Google Scholar and Questia: Every so often, I dive into the world of academia to find research done in a particular area, usually related to a blog post or column idea. Google Scholar usually unearths a number of publicly available papers on most topics. And, if you share my predilection for academic research, a subscription to Questia is worth considering.

Big Think, weforum.org and TED: Looking for big ideas — world-changing stuff? These three sites are the place to find them.

HBR, Wired, The Atlantic and The Economist: Another favorite topic of mine is corporate strategy — particularly how organizations have to adapt to a rapidly evolving environment. I find sites like these great for giving me a sense of what’s happening in the world of business.

Hey, it may not be a fried chicken corsage, but these aren’t bad ways to spend an hour or two a day.

 

#Meaningless #Crap

First published April 10, 2014 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

hashtagEverybody should have a voice – I get that. Thank goodness that the web and social media have democratized publication. Because of that, the power to say what’s on our mind is just a click away. From this power, great things have and will continue to come – the overthrow of tyrants, the quest for truth, freedom from oppression. I’m pretty sure those are all good things. Important things.

But I’m also pretty sure the signal to noise ratio in social media content is infinitesimal – verging on undetectable. For every post that moves humanity incrementally forward, there are thousands that drive us over the brink into mind numbing mediocrity.

For example, Justin Bieber has 51 million followers, and has tweeted 26,508 times. That, in case you’re wondering, has produced 1.35 trillion “Bieberisms,” or 193 little Bieber-tweets for every man, woman and child on planet Earth. Here’s one of his finest: “Put your heart into everything you do”. Perhaps the Biebs would be better served by using his head a little bit too. But no matter, he tweets on, sharing his special brand of wisdom. No wonder over 70% of all tweets never get read.

And, for God’s sake – stop hashtagging everything! First of all, it only belongs on Twitter and Instagram. It’s not a universal punctuation mark. And it doesn’t belong in front of every word of your post! If you’re writing about something that falls under a topic category that people actually care about – then by all means slip a hashtag in there. For example:

“Witnessing special forces retaking capital building in Kiev – #ukrainecrisis”

Or:

“Just discovered key gene in early detection of Alzheimer’s – #alzheimerresearch”

See how it works? You’re adding key content to a topic that people care about and may actually be searching for on Twitter. This is how not to use hashtags:

“Off to a funeral #selfie #zebra #sunglasses #bling #hairdown #polo #countrygirl #aero #dodge #ram #cute”

All I can say is #shoot #me.

The other problem is that with this diarrheic explosion of content flooding online, it becomes impossible to sift through all of it to find things that are truly important. Generally, most content filters use one of two criteria – recency or popularity. Recency is fine if you’re looking for breaking news. It’s a clearly understood parameter. Popularity, however, has some issues. The theory here is that the wisdom of crowds can be relied on to push the best content to the top. But that’s not really how the wisdom of crowds works. Just because something is popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. And it certainly doesn’t mean it’s important. All too often, it just means that it panders to the lowest common denominator. Do we really want that to be our filtering criteria? Should Kanye West and Keeping Up with the Kardashians mark our cultural high water mark?

One last rant. “Epic” is not the right adjective to apply to concert tickets, Saturday nights at the club, bowls of chili or, when incorrectly combined with the verb “fail”, your company’s Christmas party. According to this post,

“the word epic should only be used to describe two or three things, ever. In fact, here’s a comprehensive list of all things epic: 1. Oceans 2. Lengthy Narratives 3. The Cosmos.”

That’s it.

Feel free to retweet if you wish. Or not. No one will read it anyway.

Who Owns Your Data (and Who Should?)

First published January 23, 2104 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Lock backgroundLast week, I talked about a backlash to wearable technology. Simon Jones, in his comment, pointed to a recent post where he raised the very pertinent point – your personal data has value. Today, I’d like to explore this further.

I think we’re all on the same page when we say there is a tidal wave of data that will be created in the coming decade. We use apps – which create data. We use/wear various connected personal devices – which create data. We go to online destinations – which create data. We interact with an ever-increasing number of wired “things” – which create data. We interact socially through digital channels – which create data.  We entertain ourselves with online content – which creates data. We visit a doctor and have some tests done – which creates data. We buy things, both online and off, and these actions also create data. Pretty much anything we do now, wherever we do it, leaves a data trail. And some of that data, indeed, much of it, can be intensely personal.

As I said some weeks ago, all this data is creating a eco-system that is rapidly multiplying and, in its current state, is incredibly fractured and chaotic. But, as Simon Jones rightly points out, there is significant value in that data. Marketers will pay handsomely to have access to it.

But what, or whom, will bring order to this chaotic and emerging market? The value of the data compounds quickly when it’s aggregated, filtered, cross-tabulated for correlations and then analyzed. As I said before, the captured data is its fragmented state is akin to a natural resource. To get to a more usable end state, you need to add a value layer on top of it. This value layer will provide the required additional steps to extract the full worth of that data.

So, to retrace my logic, data has value, even in it’s raw state. Data also has significant privacy implications. And right now, it’s not really clear who owns what data. To move forward into a data market that we can live with, I think we need to set some basic ground rules.

First of all, most of us who are generating data have implicitly agreed to a quid pro quo arrangement – we’ll let you collect data from us if we get an acceptable exchange of something we value. This could be functionality, monetary compensation (usually in the form of discounts and rewards), social connections or entertainment. But here’s the thing about that arrangement – up to now, we really haven’t quantified the value of our personal data. And I think it’s time we did that. We may be trading away too much for much too little.

To this point we haven’t worried much about what we traded off and to whom because any data trails we left have been so fragmented and specific to one context, But, as that data gains more depth and, more importantly, as it combines with other fragments to provide much more information about who we are, what we do, where we go, who we connect with, what we value and how we think, it becomes more and more valuable. It represents an asset for those marketers who want to persuade us, but more critically, that data -our digital DNA – becomes vitally important to us. In it lays the quantifiable footprint of our lives and, like all data, it can yield insights we may never gain elsewhere. In the right hands, it could pinpoint critical weaknesses in our behavioral patterns, red flags in our lifestyle that could develop into future health crises, financial opportunities and traps and ways to allocate time and resources more efficiently. As the digitally connected world becomes denser, deeper and more functional, that data profile will act as our key to it. All the potential of a new fully wired world will rely on our data.

There are millions of corporations that are more than happy to warehouse their respective data profiles of you and sell it back to you on demand as you need it to access their services or tools.  They will also be happy to sell it to anyone else who may need it for their own purposes. Privacy issues aside (at this point, data is commonly aggregated and anonymized) a more fundamental question remains – whose data is this? Whose data should it be? Is this the reward they reap for harvesting the data? Or because this represents you, should it remain your property, with you deciding who uses it and for what?

This represents a slippery slope we may already be starting down.  And, if you believe this is your data and should remain so, it also marks a significant change from what’s currently happening. Remember, the value is not really in the fragments. It’s in bringing it together to create a picture of who you are. And we should be asking the question – who should have the right to create that picture of you – you – or a corporate data marketplace that exists beyond your control ?

What a Social Media “Like” Should Really Mean

Originally posted in Mediapost’s Search Insider on October 3, 2013

Italy’s Agriturismo program has been a success by any measure you might want to use. Since the initial legislation was passed in 1985, thousands of small farms through Italy, teetering on the edge of extinction, have been thrown a financial lifeline by letting operators supplement their income  welcoming tourists to “stay on the farm.” The program includes one-time renovation grants and an ongoing marketing program. Today, there are almost 3,500 agriturismos throughout Italy. Many of these have sprung up just in the past decade. The program brings the market directly to the farm, allowing onsite sales of products to guests and showcasing the homegrown produce in the agriturismo’s restaurant.

The program’s success, however, has superheated the competition for tourism among the operators. In Tuscany, where I stayed at one such farm, there are 1,000 agriturismos, almost one third of the total number in Italy. You literally can’t throw a Tuscan stone without hitting some type of tourist-targeted operation. This competitive environment is made even more fervent when you consider that almost every restaurant in Italy is also an independent operation. There are no big chains. All these businesses are literally mom and pop (sorry, Momma and Poppa) operations. They run on a shoestring. There is little to no money for advertising. If ever there was a test bed for guerilla marketing, this is it.

Here, online ratings are the currency of choice. A top spot in an online directory is the difference between life and death for these businesses. In this almost perfect but unflinchingly brutal adaptive environment, if you’re terrible, you die quickly. If you’re mediocre, you die slowly. If you’re good, you stumble along. And for a very few exceptions, if you’re excellent, you may do OK and even prosper, relatively speaking. I would put Fausto and Susanna in this last category. They run a small agriturismo just outside San Gimignano.

When it comes to the directories that matter, one towers above the rest. TripAdvisor wields the same power in this market that Google wields in our world of search. It is the ultimate arbitrator of life and death. And the smartest of the operators have taken this to heart. They “get” social media at a level that is humbling to this particular North American online marketing “expert.” It’s not just asking for a “like” or a good review. They know that the best way to get a glowing review is to utterly, undeniably, completely deserve it.  There’s no faint praise here; you have to blow your customer’s socks off.

It’s this intimate, person-to-person exchange that makes this the most efficient market possible. No money or marketing efforts are wasted on inefficient channels.  There are no middlemen. It all takes place directly between the host and the guest. It’s completely genuine. How many marketing campaigns can you say that about? They give you the experience of a lifetime, and you say a heartfelt thank you. TripAdvisor (and Facebook, and Yelp, etc.) is just there to make sure the world hears about it.

If Fausto and Susanna have understood the power of social media, Marina Pasquino is teaching a master’s class in it. In all my years of staying in hotels and consulting to businesses, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a better-run business than Signora Pasquino’s small hotel on the Adriatic coast. My jaw dropped during check-in, and didn’t manage to snap back into place until we left seven awestruck days later.

The Hotel Belvedere, a tiny hotel in Riccione with less than 50 rooms, has blown TripAdvisor’s review algorithm to smithereens. It doesn’t just top the ratings for hotels in its area – it’s TripAdvisor’s number-one hotel in all of Italy, and one of the top 25 hotels in the world! Of the over 800 reviews it’s collected, 97% of them are effusive over-the-top odes to the hotel, its staff and the complete Belvedere experience.  The feedback is so overwhelming positive, posts sometimes get flagged for manual review to ensure they’re not fraudulent. They’re not, by the way. I mean, how many hotel staff actually hug you when you check in? Seriously.

Business is almost completely generated by word of mouth (both traditionally and digitally). Guests come back every single year. And they bring their friends. During our week, several groups (many from Canada, where I’m from) were at the hotel. And all this is fueled by a warm contact through social media after you leave. With the Belvedere, when you talk about friending and liking, you don’t have to put quotes around the words. In this case, those labels match your intention.

I’ve talked before about how rugged adaptive environments drive the evolution of new breeds of marketers. I can’t think of any environment more rugged than the tourism industry in today’s Italy. And here, the Faustos, the Susannas and the Marinas are showing that if you work your ass off to be amazing, we’ll return the favor by letting people know. I’m not sure what you would call this particular species, but I hope it prospers. We could certainly use more of them in the world.

What is this “Online” You Speak Of?

First published September 12, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider.

I was in an airport yesterday, and I was eavesdropping. That’s what I do in airports. It’s much more entertaining than watching the monitors. In this particular case, I was listening to a conversation between a well-dressed elderly gentleman, probably in his late ’80s, and what appeared to be his son. They were waiting for pre-boarding. The son was making that awkward small talk — you know, the conversation you have when you don’t really know your parent well enough anymore to be able to talk about what they’re really interested in, but you still feel the need to fill the silence. In this case, the son was talking to his dad about a magazine: “I used to get a copy every time I flew to London,” he said. “But they don’t publish it anymore. It’s all done online.”

The father, who had the look and appearance of a retired university professor, looked at his son quizzically for a few minutes. It’s as if the son had suddenly switched from English to Swahili midstream in his conversation.

“What’s ‘online’?”

“Online — on the Internet. It’s published electronically. There’s no print version anymore?”

The father grappled with the impact of this statement, then shook his head slowly and sadly. “That’s very sad. I suppose the mail service’s days are numbered too.”

The son replied, “Oh yes, I’m sure. No one mails things anymore.”

“But what will I do? I still buy things from catalogs.” It was as if the entire weight of the last two-and-a-half decades had suddenly settled on the frail gentleman’s shoulders.

At first, I couldn’t believe that anyone still alive didn’t know what “online” was. Isn’t that pretty much equivalent to oxygen or gravity now? Hasn’t it reached the point of ubiquity at which we all just take it for granted, no longer needing to think about it?

But then, because in the big countdown of life, I’m also on the downhill slope, closer to the end than to the beginning, I started thinking about how wrenching technological change has become. If you don’t keep up, the world you know is swept away, to be replaced with a world where your mail carrier’s days are numbered, the catalogs you depend on are within a few years of disappearing, and everything seems to be headed for the mysterious destination known as “online.”

As luck would have it, my seat on the airplane was close enough to this gentleman’s that I was able to continue my eavesdropping (if you see me at an airport, I advise you to move well out of earshot). You might have thought, as I first did, that he was in danger of losing his marbles. I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth. For over four hours, he carried on intelligent, informed conversations on multiple topics, made some amazing sketches in pencil, and generally showed every sign of being the man I hope to be when I’m approaching 90. This was not a man who had lost touch with reality; this was a man who is continually surprised (and, I would assume, somewhat frustrated) to find that reality seems to be a moving target.

We, the innovatively smug, may currently feel secure in our own technophilia, but our ability to keep up with the times may slip a little in the coming years. It’s human to feel secure with the world we grew up and functioned in. Our evolutionary environment was substantially more stable than the one we know today. As we step back from the hectic pace, don’t be surprised if we lose a little ground. Someday, when our children speak to us of the realities of their world, don’t be surprised if some of the terms they use sound a little foreign to our ears.

Maybe We Need More Skin in the Game

First published August 15, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I think our world, — or, more specifically, our marketplace — is a little too abstract. We — and by we, I mean the marketers, the suppliers to the market — live too far removed from the market itself: the consumers of the supplied goods.

It’s a point touched on by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his most recent book, “Antifragile.” Marketers and manufacturers, he suggests, don’t have enough skin in the game to keep them honest. They’re too far removed from accountability. There are too many protective buffers between them and the consequences of their actions.

The law is supposed to provide the accountability — but let’s face it, when it comes to enforcing accountability in the marketplace, we’re a long way from the Code of Hammurabi (one of the first legal codes known), where sloppy workmanship enacted a pretty definite penalty: If a builder has built a house for a man, and has not made his work sound, and the house he built has fallen, and caused the death of its owner, that builder shall be put to death.

Or, consider if the actions of the captain of the Exxon Valdez would have been different if he would have been answerable to a law like this: If a man has hired a boat and boatman, and loaded it with corn, wool, oil, or dates, or whatever it be, and the boatman has been careless, and sunk the boat, or lost what is in it, the boatman shall restore the boat which he sank, and whatever he lost that was in it.

The world was a smaller and more intimate place back then. You couldn’t hide behind corporate lawyers, malpractice insurance and legal loopholes. If you screwed up, chances are you’d lose an eye, a hand or even your life. If you built a bridge that collapsed, you might as well have been under the bridge, because your fate would be the same.

Now, I’m not sure we’re ready to return to the brutal simplicity of an “eye for an eye” legal code, but it does bring up a rather thorny issue: If there are little to no consequences for shoddy or unethical work, what keeps us honest? There’s nothing like skin in the game to provide some pretty compelling motivation for ethical business practices. And there’s nothing like a consequence-free pass to encourage fast and loose corporate behavior.

The good news, I suppose, is that technology is once again making the world a little more intimate. McLuhan’s Global Village is coming to pass, and the unethical of the world are increasingly being held accountable for their actions. In fact, the speed at which this is happening is confounding the legal systems of many a nation, as vigilantism and frontier justice are increasingly springing up, unchecked by due process and judicial oversight.

I avoid trying to predict the future, but fairness and accountability are hardwired into us, so I suspect that as technology allows us to identify those responsible in the most egregious cases, we will be moved to demand action. We will force the market to have more skin in the game, as our opinions and beliefs, in aggregate, will define that market.

Comparing and Contrasting the Classes of ’79 and ’13

First published July 2, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

My youngest daughter just graduated from high school. I graduated from my high school a third of a century ago. The things you read about every day here at MediaPost have made the world a much different place for her than it was for me.

Or have they?

I was actually struck these past few months with how her grad experience didn’t seem all that much different than mine. The biggest difference, it seemed, was in how she connected with her friends. But the “why” – the topics of those connections – seems very familiar.

She is graduating from a small school, with a grad class of just over 50. I graduated from a small-town high school in Alberta in a class of 70. Like me, she has gone to school with most of her class from kindergarten right through to grade 12 – so the social dynamics in both cases were fairly tightly woven.

Both classes, the class of ‘13 and the class of ’79, were under the temporary euphoria of youthful confidence. All things seem possible when you’re 18. The world is not a grinding gristmill of monthly mortgage payments, day-to-day job-related drudgery, vague yet persistent aches and pains and innumerable other nagging details that suck the life out of you. It’s a lion waiting to be tamed, a journey begging to be taken or an adventure still to be had. Is there any more optimistic time in your life than graduation? I wish that it could last forever, but I know better.

Both classes had their inevitable run-ins with authority that seemed unreasonable and inflexible. In both cases, said “run-ins” arose from social “traditions” that ran afoul of scheduled class time. Both times, the phrases “can’t condone” and “set a precedent” was used a lot by the school administration. Of course, such nuances don’t mean much to you when you’re 18. “Party” is a word with much more meaning.

Speaking of parties, both classes had their share. The biggest difference between ’79 and ’13 was in how word of these parties propagated through the grad social network. In 1979, “viral” meant hanging out at the main intersection of town (I told you I grew up in a small town) waiting for familiar trucks (I told you I grew up in Alberta) to go by, so you could ask where the party was. Today’s approach seems much more efficient.

Style also played a major role in both events. In many cases, it’s our first experience with formal wear, which means a lot of time is devoted to dress and/or suit shopping. My daughter has been wearing high heels in the house for the past week, hoping to master the trick of locomotion without severe injury. Of course, in my case it was a very stylish dark brown velvet tuxedo with matching bowtie. Hey, it was ’79, and my fashion influences were “The Love Boat” and Jack Tripper from “Three’s Company.” Cut me some slack! There were people who went in blue jeans (remember – rural Alberta).

Another major theme was, and is, “Who’s going with who (sic)” to graduation. For those of us who were less precocious in our experience with the opposite sex, a lot of pressure came with graduation. We had to get a date, or be labeled as “the guy who went stag.” This meant you had a lot of socially inept teenagers going through the trauma of a first date at the same time, in the same place. All the technology in the world can’t improve person-to-person communication in this scenario.

It seems to me that though the way the class of ’13 negotiated through their grad experience may have changed since 1979, the actual things that make up that experience seem remarkably familiar. It’s still about transition: whether it be in relationships, opportunities, routines or responsibility.  It’s that awesome experience of sitting on the cusp, when all things seem possible. It’s believing that you own the world – and that  the world is an essentially good place. Whether you express that on Facebook, Instagram or while leaning on the side of a Chevy pick-up at the “Four Corners” in Sundre, Alberta — the “how” may have changed, but the “why” has remained the same.

The Open and Shut Mind

First published June 13, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

A few years ago I was invited to a conference on advertising at a major university. The attendees were a fairly illustrious group of advertising professionals, including several senior executives from major agencies. There was also a healthy sprinkling of academics with impeccable credentials. I was in privileged company.

The organizer of the conference asked me to come up with a “dinner topic.” She explained that she wanted to generate a lively discussion at the various tables as we dug in and broke bread. It was okay if it was a “little” controversial. I must have ignored the qualifier, because my suggestion was, “Is advertising evil?” I have never been one for half measures.

As the ad illuminati settled at their tables, I set the stage by providing two opposing points of view:

First, the positive side of advertising. It can be a way to touch the very core of what makes us human, sometimes moving us to greatness. It can unify communities, create bonds and motivate us en masse. Not only can it be a social “lubricant” but, at its best, advertising can be a powerful change agent as well.

Now, the “evil” side: Does advertising take all this power and fritter it away to drive pure avarice?  Does it short-circuit our Darwinian behavioral wiring, chaining us to a hedonistic treadmill where we constantly want something we don’t have? Regular readers will detect a theme here.

It wasn’t difficult to read the mood of the room as I was wrapping up. My dad has a saying that, despite its off-color nature, sums up the atmosphere of this particular gathering better than anything else I can think of: “It went over like a fart in the house of worship.” I cautiously headed back to my table to take part in the planned “lively discussion.”

My tablemates didn’t know where to start. It seemed that it had never crossed their mind that advertising could be anything but the highest of callings. To have a debate, you need to at least have an abstract understanding of the opposing viewpoint, even if you don’t agree with it. At my table the most common question was, “What do you mean, ‘Is advertising evil?’” I had apparently introduced an entirely foreign concept.

I swallowed and forged ahead, sketching out the basis of my hypothesis. I tried to stay in the abstract, hoping to generate a philosophical debate and avoid getting caught in an emotional catfight. It seemed, though, that I had not only hit a hot button, but had taken a sledgehammer and smashed it to smithereens. Advertisers, at least based on this particular sample, seemed unwilling to discuss the philosophical pros and cons (or at least the cons) of their profession. I just wanted the whole evening to end as soon as possible.

My purpose here is not to reopen the debate. I use this story to illustrate an unfortunate human tendency. We live in a world of grays, but we like to think in black and white. I doubt that advertising is totally evil, but I also doubt that advertising is totally good. The truth lies between the two extremes; advertising is most likely a rather dirty gray.  If we’re willing to consider alternatives to our beliefs, perhaps it will move us a little closer to reality. I think advertising would do nothing but benefit from a deeper evaluation of its moral standing.

But we often forego a search for the truth, content to stick with our beliefs, which often bear little resemblance to reality. If those beliefs are attacked, we defend them vociferously, turning a deaf ear to counter-arguments. We don’t listen, because open minds require the burning of a lot of energy.

In a simpler evolutionary environment, beliefs were a heuristic shortcut for survival.  But today, they often polarize us at either end of a moral spectrum, with no middle ground left for discussion. Case in point, the current American political landscape.

I have spent most of my adult life trying to fight this natural tendency. I have tried to keep an open mind and not let my beliefs blind me to an opposing viewpoint — at least, not when it comes to those things I believe to be truly important. Morality, religion and politics are just three arenas where open minds are much harder to find than staunchly held beliefs.

And, apparently, you can add advertising to that list as well.

Meet My Underwood No. 5

First published May 30 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I collect typewriters. I don’t know why — I just do.

As I write this on a Bluetooth keyboard connected to an Apple Macbook, where the words I type appear on a screen through some magic of integrated circuitry and electrochemistry, I can’t help but cast envious glances at the 1923 Underwood No 5. Typewriter that sits on my credenza.

Now that is a piece of technology. It’s jam-packed with mechanical linkages and doodads that hint at wondrous functionality. It’s a machine built to do serious stuff. If I threw my Macbook through a window, there’s a 50/50 chance that no one would notice. It might not even break the glass. There’s a greater chance that no one would care. But if I throw that Underwood through a window, I’d be making a statement.

If you clicked on the link above, you’ll see that the Underwood didn’t want to hide its underbelly. Side windows and plenty of cutaways allow users to fully appreciate the almost 30 pounds of metallic integration that drove this particular typewriter. Nothing was hidden under the hood; it was all out there for everyone to see.  When you hit the carriage return, you unleashed a string of mechanical causes and effects that reminded you of a Rube Goldberg machine — like playing Mousetrap when you were a kid. There was no nuance about the Underwood. It was full-on industrial cleverness.

There was also no obsolescence built into this machine.  The heart of the mechanical workings came from a design introduced in 1896 that defined what typewriters would look like and how they would work for the next six decades, until the introduction of the IBM Selectric in the ‘60s.

Can you imagine introducing a new product today that would enjoy a 60-year run? Most of us would be happy with a 60-month run.  By the way, my typewriter, which has just turned 90, still works like a charm, thank you.  As far as I know, my typewriter and Betty White are the only two things that are still working at that age.

As I write this column on my more modern keyboard, the only outward sign that I’m working on anything is the muted “Apple-tick” of the keyboard, a discreet repetitive sound that falls somewhere between a quiet thud and a click.  It’s certainly nothing that would annoy the person in the next cubicle. Even with an office full of them, it sounds more like a gentle pattering of rain on a rooftop.

But fire up a steno pool full of Underwoods and you have a cacophony that literally screams productivity.  Typing a century ago was not for the faint of heart. It was a full-on sensory experience that you had to warm up for.  I, for one, remember typing class where the proper technique had to be drilled into you, preparing you for the sheer physicality required to effectively operate one of these machines. It was more basic training than user experience.

Why do I love typewriters? It’s certainly no practical reason. It’s pretty hard to file an online column written on an Underwood. I think, rather, that I love them because they remind me of a different time — a time when we were more muscular in our approach to technology. We were brasher, cockier and strived for permanence. We wanted to leaver a footprint that would last for decades, rather than cash out our startup in five years. We were not afraid to sweat a little bit to get ahead.

Or maybe it’s because it’s the only thing in my office older than I am.

The Momentum of Marketing

First published May 23, 2013 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

After becoming a parent, I discovered that there are no shortcuts to being a Dad. Contrary to popular belief, there’s no such thing as “quality time” with kids… there’s just time. You have to be there, as much as you can be, because you never know when those moments will occur that will cement your relationship with your children. You keep trying, you keep putting in the time, you keep doing the things you have to do to be a parent. Think of it as relationship “momentum.”

The same is true, I believe, in all worthwhile endeavors. Activity breeds success. And that includes marketing. If you take your foot off the gas, you lose momentum.

I’ve found that myself in the last few years. The marketing strategy of our company was all about activity. We conducted research, we published whitepapers, we blogged, we spoke at conferences, we held webinars — we never missed an opportunity to generate awareness. It was a lot of activity, aimed at maintaining our marketing momentum. And it worked. We had a profile in the industry that was probably out of proportion to our actual share of business. When it came to maintaining a profile, I think we punched above our weight.

I was the producer of much of this activity, so as our company profile rose, so did my own personal one. I was constantly fielding requests to speak, comment, participate or write.

But for various reasons, I’ve taken my foot off the gas recently. I’m not nearly as active in the industry as I was previously. My assumption was that the momentum would carry me for some period of time. I was wrong. The minute the activity decreased, so did the opportunities.

Now, this was partly by design. I knew that my previous industry profile would start to slip and so I didn’t panic. But still, I was surprised at how quickly it happened. And because of that, I suspect there’s a cautionary tale here for marketers. If you produce content or generate thought leadership, a hiatus can be costly. That lost momentum can take several months to build again. In fact, you might never get it back.

For myself, I’m now entering a new phase of my career, so my activity will change over the coming months. I still intend to be active — perhaps more so than ever — but it will be aimed in a new direction. I do have the advantage of past experience. I know it can work, because it has worked in the past.

So I leave you with these words of advice — be active in your marketing efforts. Always be producing new content, generating awareness, and raising your profile. I believe busy parents are generally good parents — and the same is true, I suspect, for marketers.