Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Worst stock photo of the week.
The Yankees of the Bronx.
The temperature dropped about 25 degrees from yesterday to today, from about 70 degrees to 45 degrees. In other words, the weather (now that it is mid-October) is finally seasonable.
I remember when I was a kid when the weather started turning chilly around the start of the school year, my old lady bought me and my brother a light nylon windbreaker at Korvettes with the word "Yankees" in Yankee-script emblazoned in white across its Navy-blue front.
My mother tossed nickels around like manhole covers and rather than buying each of us a jacket, my brother and I, separated by just one grade and only a couple of inches, were meant to share the garment. Fred would get it on even days, me on odd.
These were the fading days of the Yankees' greatness, when they still had immortals on their squad, like Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra and, of course, the most-immortalest of all Mickey Mantle.
My brother and I were sure that this jacket had magical properties, that somehow it would gird us with super-human Mickey-Mantle-like strength and ability. We were certain this jacket would, on our day to wear it, turn mere boys into Yankees.
The jacket was perfect for temperatures in the low-60s or high-50s, but one day, I prevailed upon my mother to let me wear my prized Yankee jacket into November. All was fine as I ran to school kicking a can or a rock the whole way. But while I was in school, dark clouds rolled in and the temperatures dropped like a stone. I ran home, freezing in my light windbreaker, with the temperatures in the low 30s.
What bothered me as I ran home from school shivering wasn't that I was cold--what bothered me was that my mother had been right, and I knew that the Yankee jacket would be put away for some months, until Persephone's pomegranate seeds bloomed again and golden-fingered Spring was upon us.
Last night, as if the world had not turned Macbethian and topsy-turvy with foul fair and fair foul, the Yankees played in the Bronx, near the stadium of my youth--the one called "The House that Ruth Built." Now, that stadium destroyed, the Yankees play in "The House the Taxpayers Built that only the Rich can Afford."
But still, I'm sure, little boys are careening through their tilted little neighborhoods, running to school, and wearing Yankee jackets against the cold, dreaming of being Didi Gregorius or Aaron Judge, Mickey Mantle, like so much else, disappeared deep into memory.
I remember when I was a kid when the weather started turning chilly around the start of the school year, my old lady bought me and my brother a light nylon windbreaker at Korvettes with the word "Yankees" in Yankee-script emblazoned in white across its Navy-blue front.
My mother tossed nickels around like manhole covers and rather than buying each of us a jacket, my brother and I, separated by just one grade and only a couple of inches, were meant to share the garment. Fred would get it on even days, me on odd.
These were the fading days of the Yankees' greatness, when they still had immortals on their squad, like Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra and, of course, the most-immortalest of all Mickey Mantle.
My brother and I were sure that this jacket had magical properties, that somehow it would gird us with super-human Mickey-Mantle-like strength and ability. We were certain this jacket would, on our day to wear it, turn mere boys into Yankees.
The jacket was perfect for temperatures in the low-60s or high-50s, but one day, I prevailed upon my mother to let me wear my prized Yankee jacket into November. All was fine as I ran to school kicking a can or a rock the whole way. But while I was in school, dark clouds rolled in and the temperatures dropped like a stone. I ran home, freezing in my light windbreaker, with the temperatures in the low 30s.
What bothered me as I ran home from school shivering wasn't that I was cold--what bothered me was that my mother had been right, and I knew that the Yankee jacket would be put away for some months, until Persephone's pomegranate seeds bloomed again and golden-fingered Spring was upon us.
Last night, as if the world had not turned Macbethian and topsy-turvy with foul fair and fair foul, the Yankees played in the Bronx, near the stadium of my youth--the one called "The House that Ruth Built." Now, that stadium destroyed, the Yankees play in "The House the Taxpayers Built that only the Rich can Afford."
But still, I'm sure, little boys are careening through their tilted little neighborhoods, running to school, and wearing Yankee jackets against the cold, dreaming of being Didi Gregorius or Aaron Judge, Mickey Mantle, like so much else, disappeared deep into memory.
The Battle Begins
A few weeks ago, in a blog post entitled "The Battle Of The Century, " I wrote about the lobbying battle that is brewing over the EU's proposed ePrivacy Regulation.
If adopted the ePrivacy Regulation, along with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) will make it much harder for online marketers and media in the European Union to collect personal private information about users without prior consent. In other words, it will make it hard for them to track us all over the web and collect, exploit, and sell the information they are harvesting without our explicit consent or knowledge.
Last week, another shot in this battle was fired. A consortium of advertising, marketing and media companies sent a misleading and disingenuous letter to the members of the European Parliament attacking one of the core points of the ePrivacy Regulation. I have posted the letter here if you'd like to read it. The lead sentence of the letter reads...
"ePrivacy Regulation threatens data-driven advertising business model of European press publishers and other online media and services."
Before we talk about what's wrong with this assertion, let's talk about what the letter gets right. The letter claims that most of the stuff we like about the web, including news, is made possible by the revenue publishers get from advertising.
This is true. Publishers could not exist solely on the payments they get from users. They also need income from advertisers. However, the letter then goes on to put forward two deceptive arguments.
First they imply that without "data-driven" advertising the revenue to publishers will dry up. This is nonsense. First of all, all advertising is "data-driven." Advertisers have used data for decades to make media decisions about TV, radio, print and every other advertising medium. If this regulation is enacted they will still use data to make decisions about online advertising.
It is not "data" that will be regulated, it is the means by which certain data is collected - involuntary tracking, or spyware. What they won't be able to do is track us without our permission and use data derived from spying on us.
The second assertion has to do with a publisher's right to block users who won't agree to be tracked. The ePrivacy Regulation states that a publisher is prohibited...
"...from denying access to their advertising-funded offerings if users do not consent to data collection needed for data-driven advertising."In other words, publishers will not be allowed to block you from reading the content of their website if you refuse to be tracked. The letter claims...
"...the ePrivacy Regulation puts into question the ability of publishers and other online services to continue offering a value exchange that affords Europeans access to content and services at little or no cost supported by advertising revenue."This may not be true at all. As far as I have been able to determine, publishers can still block people who block ads, as they can do now. But they will not be able to block people who refuse to be tracked. The difference is enormous.
Publishers are entitled to some value for their work and efforts. None of us works for nothing, why should publishers? I believe it is a fair exchange for publishers to require users to allow ads in exchange for access to the content or news they publish. It doesn't mean we have to pay attention to the advertising, but we ought to allow it on the page.
When we agree to be exposed to advertising we know what we are agreeing to. But if we are forced to agree to be tracked we do not know what we are agreeing to. We don't know what personal private information is being collected, how it is going to be used, who is going to have access to it, who it may be sold to, or how it will be protected, if at all.
Agreeing to receiving advertising is impersonal. Agreeing to be tracked is wholly personal.
I want to repeat that I am not certain that the ePrivacy Regulation will allow publishers to block people who block ads. But I think it should.
Having to agree to be tracked, however, creates an unfair value exchange in which the publisher knows exactly what he is getting but the consumer has no idea what he is giving up.
In summary, for us to get what we enjoy from from the web we must understand that a great deal of the value is supported by advertising. But the advertising industry must understand that their desire to monetize data about us does not supersede our right to privacy.
The online advertising industry does not need to spy on us in order to thrive. Every other advertising medium has done quite well, thank you, without trampling on democratic principles of privacy and security.
Tracking, surveillance marketing, and the current model of ad tech are affronts to the values of free societies. The ePrivacy Regulation is a sound and reasonable reaction to our industry's inability to exercise a mature degree of restraint or self-control.
Monday, October 16, 2017
Nobody asked me but....baseball playoffs edition.
Nobody asked me but….is my occasional tribute to the great New York sportswriter, and all-around raconteur, Jimmy Cannon, who, when he had nothing to write about on the sporting scene, would pen one of these.
Nobody asked me but….
…you’re better off not buying your next bottle of wine from a shop called “Grape Expectations.”
…you should follow the advice of Nelson Algren, who wrote, "Never play cards with a man called Doc.”
…or “eat at a place called Mom's.”
…Finally, “Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."
…I don’t know much about Nelson Algren, but those rules are good enough for me.
…Anyone who takes an online quiz—especially one on Facebook—has too much time on their hands.
…People were swimming at the beach yesterday.
…As if you need more proof for global warming.
…The major league baseball season as it is currently configured with three-rounds of playoffs is 30 games too long.
….That said, I’ll miss baseball when the season is over.
…I think the baseball season should start around tax day and end the first week of October.
…Does it ever occur to football fans that they’re cheering as the players get brain-damaged?
….I haven’t watched a single professional football down this year.
…Though I did listen to the last twenty minutes of Columbia’s overtime victory over Penn.
…Columbia has won more games this season than they did the entire time I was in college and grad school.
…If you read anything today, make it Charles Blow’s “Trump, Chieftain of Spite.”
….I may or may not be a workaholic, but I certainly hope Robert Mueller is one.
….I also hope he has a mean-streak a mile-wide.
….Those rotating ads behind home-plate during the ball game are disgusting.
…Advertising will perform better when we learn to give people space.
…You can say that about most relationships.
...Astros over the Yanks, in six. Dodgers over the Cubs, in five. Dodgers over Houston in the World Series in seven.
Friday, October 13, 2017
Friday rant-day.
It's probably apocryphal, and like so many apocryphal statements it's often attributed to Winston Churchill, that "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
That statement pretty much sums up how I feel about traditional advertising. That it is the worst form of marketing communications except for all the others.
As such, and because for nearly 30 years it's been a ripe and fat target for corollary marketers seeking to win client-share-of-wallet, traditional marketing is frequently and vehemently assailed.
"No one:
watches TV anymore.
hasn't cut their cords.
doesn't skip over commercials.
likes interruptions.
believes traditional marketing.
reads print media.
reads.
cares."
The problem with these attacks is simple. What's the alternative?
I have more ad-blockers on my computers and phone than Carter has little liver pills, and, frankly, I have yet to organically get a social tile (much less be compelled by one) and only see banner ads when I write them, or when I go to my "other" browser--the one I use when I want to see ads.
As for Facebook ads and Linked In ads, well, let's just say I am (like so many others of my ilk) privacy-obsessed. Not only do my ad blockers help here, I also refuse to use location services and other tracking devices of the evil "do no evil-ers."
The same holds true for "experiential" conclaves. Jesus, I live in one of the world's great cities. And if I'm faced with a choice of seeing a great musician perform, or an opera as opposed to a late-night rave for Wells Fargo bank where I'll walk home with a cheap plastic lei in brand colors and a flimsy frisbee, well, I am not that interested in "branded entertainment." (Branded entertainment might be one of the great oxymorons of our age.)
What's more, when I do go the opera, or like last weekend to The New Yorker Festival, the logos that festoon the venues only piss me off. I paid $99 a seat to see Andy Borowitz last Saturday...what did sponsor Mastercard do except assault me with their Venn diagram?
I suppose this is essentially a long-winded way of saying there is a large-class of people (and affluent at that) who are almost wholly unreachable. Except when, like last night they can't sleep and turn on the ballgame to see the Cubbies beat the Nats, 9-8 in a late-night nail-biter.
You can file this under, "George Preserving his Job," but it seems to me that the only way to reach the unreachable is to do work that is good, important and interesting enough to be viewable.
I suppose if I got a tissue ad the moment I was about to sneeze, I'd believe in data and targeting, but I've yet to see that promise pay out. Most of the direct marketing I get is for Viking River Cruises, which I will never go on, hair-loss remedies, and meet Olga and other Russian brides.
The targeting that gets to me is so transparent as to be offensively "stalky," so not only do I ignore it, I'm pissed off at the brand that sent it.
Long ago, David Ogilvy said something like "the consumer isn't a moron, she is your wife." (Forget the gender-bias there, and think of the sentiment.)
And the great Bob Levenson of DDB renown, who wrote more great Vokswagen ads than just about anyone else said this about writing copy: "Start off with 'Dear Charlie,' then say 'this is what I want to tell you about. Make believe that the person you're talking to is a perfectly intelligent friend who knows less about the product than you do. Then, when you've finished writing the copy, just cross out 'Dear Charlie'."
In other words, if you want people to like your advertising, treat them with respect, and offer them something of value, information or otherwise.
Oh.
And stop calling them "targets." Who wants to be a target?
-->
That statement pretty much sums up how I feel about traditional advertising. That it is the worst form of marketing communications except for all the others.
As such, and because for nearly 30 years it's been a ripe and fat target for corollary marketers seeking to win client-share-of-wallet, traditional marketing is frequently and vehemently assailed.
"No one:
watches TV anymore.
hasn't cut their cords.
doesn't skip over commercials.
likes interruptions.
believes traditional marketing.
reads print media.
reads.
cares."
The problem with these attacks is simple. What's the alternative?
I have more ad-blockers on my computers and phone than Carter has little liver pills, and, frankly, I have yet to organically get a social tile (much less be compelled by one) and only see banner ads when I write them, or when I go to my "other" browser--the one I use when I want to see ads.
As for Facebook ads and Linked In ads, well, let's just say I am (like so many others of my ilk) privacy-obsessed. Not only do my ad blockers help here, I also refuse to use location services and other tracking devices of the evil "do no evil-ers."
The same holds true for "experiential" conclaves. Jesus, I live in one of the world's great cities. And if I'm faced with a choice of seeing a great musician perform, or an opera as opposed to a late-night rave for Wells Fargo bank where I'll walk home with a cheap plastic lei in brand colors and a flimsy frisbee, well, I am not that interested in "branded entertainment." (Branded entertainment might be one of the great oxymorons of our age.)
What's more, when I do go the opera, or like last weekend to The New Yorker Festival, the logos that festoon the venues only piss me off. I paid $99 a seat to see Andy Borowitz last Saturday...what did sponsor Mastercard do except assault me with their Venn diagram?
I suppose this is essentially a long-winded way of saying there is a large-class of people (and affluent at that) who are almost wholly unreachable. Except when, like last night they can't sleep and turn on the ballgame to see the Cubbies beat the Nats, 9-8 in a late-night nail-biter.
You can file this under, "George Preserving his Job," but it seems to me that the only way to reach the unreachable is to do work that is good, important and interesting enough to be viewable.
I suppose if I got a tissue ad the moment I was about to sneeze, I'd believe in data and targeting, but I've yet to see that promise pay out. Most of the direct marketing I get is for Viking River Cruises, which I will never go on, hair-loss remedies, and meet Olga and other Russian brides.
The targeting that gets to me is so transparent as to be offensively "stalky," so not only do I ignore it, I'm pissed off at the brand that sent it.
Long ago, David Ogilvy said something like "the consumer isn't a moron, she is your wife." (Forget the gender-bias there, and think of the sentiment.)
And the great Bob Levenson of DDB renown, who wrote more great Vokswagen ads than just about anyone else said this about writing copy: "Start off with 'Dear Charlie,' then say 'this is what I want to tell you about. Make believe that the person you're talking to is a perfectly intelligent friend who knows less about the product than you do. Then, when you've finished writing the copy, just cross out 'Dear Charlie'."
In other words, if you want people to like your advertising, treat them with respect, and offer them something of value, information or otherwise.
Oh.
And stop calling them "targets." Who wants to be a target?
-->
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Today's "Incomprehensible of the Week."
From an agency that positions itself as a "transformation partner designed to help companies reimagine their business through radical customer-centricity."
“With more than 12,000 employees and 70 offices around the globe, our capabilities span growth and business model strategy, new product and service innovation, customer experience, enterprise digital transformation, IT modernization, omni-channel commerce, precision marketing, change management, digital operations, digital innovation, data strategy and advanced analytics.”
