ChaosScenario

Beware of Zombies

2009-10-20T08:21:31-05:00

Facing a deadline for my contribution to the Click Here blog, I finally settled down on a subject. However, it was a bit different from the one I previously said I'd write about. John Keehler asked to see it before I posted it, so I took the opportunity to tell him that I had changed subjects, but -- not to worry -- he'd love it.

"Is it about zombies," he asked.

And I thought about it.

No, it really wasn't, but it with a tweak here and an insertion there -- it very well could be. Or at least I could use them as an analogy to make the point.

Home pages have historically been a hotbed of contentious debate. Because of this, they are what Steve Krug called “The First Casualty of War.”

Why are they so controversial?

Because everyone wants a piece of the action. Because organizations typically work in silos, different departments feel slighted if their discipline isn’t “adequately” represented on the home page. One would think by all the name-calling and weepy eyes that the home page is kind of a big deal.

And they’re right. The home page is – kind of – a big deal. But not for the reasons people tend to get worked up about. After all, typically, only 40% of traffic to a website comes through the home page.

But as a consequence of their inability to set boundaries and priorities, they compromise the very purpose of the page. Every piece of real estate is up for grabs. The result of all the haggling may actually, as Krug suggests, kill the home page. But unlike a typical dead thing, it doesn’t go away. Like a zombie, it is reanimated into an unrecognizable abomination of its formal self.

Read the rest of Your Home Page is a Zombie at the Click Here blog. - Cam Beck

The Lesson of Flight 93: Hope and Responsibility

2009-09-11T12:49:12-05:00

Like most of us, the events of September 11, 2001 affected me profoundly. I can still recall -- to the point of almost reliving it -- the shock, grief and disbelief that followed the most heinous attack on U.S. soil that cost about 3,000 lives in a day. Though we are still actively engaged in the global struggle against those who still wish us harm, it is wholly fit and proper to mark the anniversary by reflecting on the bravery and nobility of all of those who strive to protect us from harm. Perhaps no act of sacrifice and fortitude deserves more attention and appreciation than that of our true first responders: The passengers and crew of Flight 93.

Whether by chance or fate, these passengers found themselves in an untenable position. Their plane had been hijacked, and the hijackers led the passengers to believe that they would be held for ransom -- which had been a fairly common practice of pirates and terrorists for centuries. There was sufficient precedent to believe that would be their fate.

However, when they discovered that other terrorists had flown into the World Trade Center in New York City, while everyone else was scrambling around trying to figure out what was happening, the passengers of Flight 93 detected the intent of their abductors and made a crucial, defiant decision.

Here we stand or here we fall. We know not what others will do, but as for us, we will not let that happen.

Self-preservation can be a powerful ally or a deceptive mistress. It would have been very tempting to assume, in spite of their knowledge of what was happening elsewhere, that somehow their situation was different -- that those other flights were the warnings, and their aircraft was meant to be the bargaining chip.

I'm constantly humbled and will forever be grateful for their example.

Though I pray I never find myself in a similar situation, I remind myself that life is made of a bunch of choices -- both big and small. We may fight or wait. Struggle or malinger. Speak up or sit down.

Our responsibility as a human beings, as citizens, is to take whatever circumstances that come to us -- big and small -- and to apply the example of our heroes from Flight 93 as best we can.

As demonstrated by those who murdered thousands on that day, there is surely evil in this world. But the very fact that those passengers -- of different backgrounds and motivations -- could set aside whatever their differences were, recognize their responsibility to unite as one to fight injustice where it stood -- and do it -- gives us hope for humanity.

The police, firefighters and military members who responded on that day and since to nobly take up arms in defense of justice did so willingly and ably, and they deserve our respect and gratitude.

But we must also recognize the limitations of any system that strives to protect liberty. These people take precautions and set up barriers against those who would do us harm (or against us, if our actions may be harmful to others), but too many times they cannot act until after the fact. They cannot always be there at the point of need, at the time of need.

Therefore it is upon us, in times both dire and seemingly trivial (such as in the course of our everyday jobs as marketers, designers, etc.), to follow in the footsteps of the passengers and crew of Flight 93. To stare injustice in the face, no matter what is happening around us and say, "Here we stand."

Then, unified by our common understanding of justice, speak in one voice:

"Let's roll."

A Case for Moral Selfishness

2009-08-13T08:25:42-05:00

"[H]aving lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment of others." - Benjamin Franklin

I am a skeptic.

To an outside observer, my skepticism may look a lot like cynicism. I don't just believe people and companies are motivated by self-interest, I've seen it with my own eyes.

A person doesn't simply buy a book from Amazon because they believe it will help Amazon make money or employ more people. They buy it because they want or need the book for themselves -- either to inform, improve, or entertain. This is most often true when people realize that they're spending their own resources - they tend to spend it in a way that benefits them, not others.

If they're spending other people's money, they tend to be less careful with it.

This doesn't make everyone manifestly selfish, necessarily, because self-interest can indeed be naturally reconciled with service to others, without requiring one person to pick another's pocket to do so.

For instance, recently I bought and read A Project Guide to UX Design because I believed it would make me better at my job. Continuous personal improvement improves my marketability (self-interest), but only if my improvement leads me to help others get what they want (service to others).

I also get a lot of joy (self-interest) by making a tangible and substantial contribution to the financial success of other companies (service to others), their employees (service to others) and the satisfaction of their customers (service to others).

It's remarkable how often those things go hand-in-hand, when you work in a service industry, when regulations do not unnecessarily restrict your abillity to operate freely.

Once you realize that no one is more important to individuals than themselves, you tend to require stronger evidence that supports others' claims of all the great things you'll get if you just follow their lead.

A personality or "brand" may persuade you to be either less or more stringent with your requirements for evidence, which is just another way of saying that you trust those people and companies who have previously delivered on their promises, to the best of your knowledge.

However, healthy sketpicism, in light of moral self-interest, will allow the evidence to lead you wherever it may, even if it contradicts what you previously believed.

As a skeptic, I'll be the first to admit that the process is sometimes uncomfortable, but it also allows you to be less judgmental of other people's errors in thought and deed (which are intertwined), because you will realize that, in pursuit of your self-interest, you've managed a few whoppers yourself.

However, if there is a self-interest that should transcend all others, it should be the pursuit of the truth, which requires being capable of contradicting yourself when you find your thoughts and deeds to be erroneous. Do not let love or hate of either personalities or brands to stand in the way of your dedication to think critically. - Cam Beck

The Palmer Brothers Save Your Bladder at the Movies

2009-08-10T17:30:00-05:00

This is too long for a tweet and too good a nugget to neglect.

Here's a short snippet from Peter King of Sports Illustrated.

I think one of the things you may learn from the new season of Hard Knocks, beginning Wednesday on HBO and featuring the Bengals this year, is how open the network presents the normally reclusive Mike Brown, the club owner. And you may see a different side of Carson Palmer, who is bonding with brother Jordan, the backup quarterback, by developing iPhone applications in their down time. I'm praying for the network to use the story about runpee.com, which the Palmers developed to tell moviegoers when the best time would be to take a bathroom break. When you return, the iPhone could be programmed to tell you what you missed.

Little Wallet. Big World.

2009-07-28T12:37:16-05:00

The prevailing social climate suggests that the word "Big," put in front of everything, is arguably bad. Let's take a look at some of the bogeymen that pervade our popular lexicon:

Big Business
Big Tobacco
Big Banking
Big Media
Big Government

Opponents of such things derogatorily use the term when they're trying to incite public opinion against others. Typically (but not always), those who rail against what they describe in the first three groups are the same folks who are in or advocate the third and fourth.

Of the five groups, I've always tended to be more ambivalent to the first three than I have been to the last two, simply because they have the fewest opportunities to compel me to do anything.

Wal-Mart may be a big business, but I am not forced to shop there.
Phillip Morris may have a huge tobacco empire, and tobacco may be harmful to my health, but I'm not forced to smoke or to be around people who do, if I found the practice obnoxious.
Bank of America may have one of the world's largest banks, but I have plenty of options at my disposal if I did not care to use their services.

Freedom to Act
In each of these cases, I have meaningful choices. Collectively we determine the success of these enterprises, but someone else's choices, if he were to make different decisions, do not compel me to behave in the same manner as he.

By contrast, big government can compel both business and individuals to do any number of things. All they require is the full force of the law, the power to compel others, and either the willful compliance or apathetic acquiescence of the body of the people to get away with it.

In U.S. society, the durable power to compel is established through the Constitution of the various governments, and the particular powers and laws established under them represent the generational interests of society. However, the powers and laws of each generation have increasingly been created and enforced without respect to the durable law of the people.

Foxes and Hens: Natural Enemies
"That's democracy," you say.

But two foxes and a hen sitting around a dinner table voting on what's for dinner is not a durable basis for justice. A well heeled hen may be able to buy off the foxes for a while, but eventually all foxes reveal their true nature.

The Responsibility to Make a Profit
One would think that big businesses would recoil at the prospect of sharing a dinner table with those who can crush and are likely to eat them, but we've seen instead that they are more inclined to lie in bed with the foxes than try to fight them off.

In the short run, it's far less expensive to cope with unjust regulations than it is to fight them. Both turning public opinion and litigation are costly matters, especially when one of your opponents controls the lion's share of the media and the other can coerce even the unwilling to pay for investigations (no matter how rigged) and lawyers.

But large businesses have another motivation: The more regulations government passes, the more expensive it is to comply. The more expensive it is to comply, the better insulated larger businesses are against smaller competitors.

In other words, big businesses just stay big, or get bigger -- until at last the regulations by which they are bound strangle them out of existence, and government either lets them fail or "rescues" them with taxpayer money, with big business CEOs' willing hands extended, claiming they are "too big to fail," frightening just enough people to assent to the handout.

Just as Ayn Rand Predicted.
In this way, big business becomes virtually indistinguishable from big government in that, instead of relying on liberty-based market forces to determine their success or failure, they are able to manipulate the money right out of taxpayer hands, without respect to each person's individual choices to buy or not buy the products they make.

Everything has a cost, and sometimes we have to admit to ourselves that we can't afford it. The world is just too big to pay for everything for everybody.

We can mask the costs through layers of bureaucracy, but we cannot eliminate them. When we allow individual freedom to choose winners and losers in commerce, we can identify success and failure by the market's reaction to the collective personal choices each person willingly expresses for himself through his pattern of consumption.

Or we can take the position of the foxes sitting at the dinner table -- eager to take from others something that by right does not belong to us -- all the while claiming moral superiority behind a specious ruse of "democracy."

You can call that a lot of things, but it isn't liberty. - Cam Beck

Your Brand is Not My Friend: SXSW Extended Content

2009-07-09T09:20:01-05:00

Awhile back I nominated Alan Wolk's seminal work on branding through social media for a panel at South by Southwest in Austin, TX. They selected his topic for inclusion into their extended content.

The panel is moderated by AdWeek's Brian Morrissey.

Panelists, besides Alan, are Ian Schafer, Noah Brier, and Michael Lebowitz.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to embed the video directly, so I'm just providing a link to it from here. It's less than 20 minutes, long, but well worth the time.

Check out the SXSW Panel Discussion (Extended Content): Your Brand Is Not My Friend. - Cam Beck

Branding is Character. What Does Your Character Show?

2009-06-30T08:14:41-05:00

Stuff happens.

So does branding. This is true whether you call it "branding" or not. As it turns out, branding has less to do with cutesy creative and clever themes than it has to do with your ability to consistently keep promises of your company -- to build your company's reputation as a firm of good character.

Not all promises are created equal, and all people do not assign equal value to all promises. This is why it is so difficult -- and increasingly useless -- to build a brand that pleases all people, all of the time.

Before all else, know who you are and what you stand for. Only then can you focus on making extraordinary promises to an audience that places a high value on those promises -- and then over-deliver. - Cam Beck

Keep it simple

2009-06-11T09:07:15-05:00

The transition from traditional media to digital media is a lot like going from a desert to a rain forest. Although there are quite a few ways to measure traditional media, many times it's not cost effective to pay firms to get the data. It's all a bit suspect too because you're forced to use sample groups that may or may not be representative of the rest of the population.

Online media is infinitely measurable. Geography, activity, technology and in some cases even behavior before and after the click is measured in a way that floods an analyst with data. Those of us who have built our careers within the digital space love to pour over the data and talk about all types of information. The problem is that not all of it is relevant.

I love this recent article from Mark Walsh from the OMMA conference on Avoid 'Data Diarrhea'. Although I wasn't at the conference, I can relate to what must have been said:

"Data is useless unless it becomes currency for making a decision," he said. To make sure online measurement is on track, he advised advertisers and analytics professionals to be sure they are asking the right questions, have the right expertise and the right mindset"

It's important to begin with the end in mind. Understanding what metrics are important should be done at the beginning. Dash boards for digital marketing should resemble car dashboards, not the dash board for the Space Shuttle.

An important reminder.

- Paul Herring

Marketing in a recession

2009-06-04T09:11:05-05:00

Inside corporate America, marketing is often seen as just a sub set of sales or worse, as a bunch of liars. The Dilbert comic strip has expressed the feelings that a lot of people have toward marketing departments. Given this perception, it's no wonder that I know so many great colleges who have been laid off, much more so than in other business disciplines.

The perception of marketing as just necessary when sales are booming or as a support function for sales misses the point. Marketing is about building brand, establishing a company's reputation and driving sales. It's not just a support for sales people but a strategic approach to guide customers through the purchasing funnel and deliver the right message through the right media at the right time.

The companies today that are cutting back their marketing budget are short sighted. There is tremendous opportunity to gain market share during a recession. Some of the greatest brands around, including Apple, we're built during recessions not too different from what we're experiencing now. Instead of just cost cutting across the board, companies that want to take advantage of the opportunity will look to make their marketing investments more efficient with a focus on market share. They'll also see the opportunity to snatch up some great talent that may not have been available to them during boom times.

Most companies however just cut across the board because they're too lazy to really develop a strategy and get into the detail of how they'll respond in these times. Look for new brands to be established and for companies and brands that are willing to go beyond just arbitrary cutting to rise above. Once the storm has passed, I'm looking forward to seeing which ones saw the opportunity.

- Paul Herring

Reason: The impotent antidote for the arbitrary whims of powerful and selfish people

2009-05-28T17:29:13-05:00

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." - Ronald Reagan

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you knew somebody you love was going to experience some major calamity, but you were unable to warn him or her about it, no matter how much you wanted to or how much you tried?

Usually it starts off innocuously enough, with only a minor sense that something is wrong. But as the dream progresses, your heart rate elevates as the events unfold, and by the end you're yelling and screaming but unable to touch or convince your loved one that they're in danger. You wake up, breathing heavily for a few minutes before your heart and breathing calm down, grateful that the dream is over, and go back to sleep.

I feel like I've been living that dream for the past decade or so. Only recently have I gotten to the part of the dream where my heart rate begins to elevate.

The problem has been two types of events that we should have predicted:

Past events with consequences we should have seen coming
Current events with consequences we should see coming

What's got me so worried? Let's take a look at some recent stories.

IRS Revenue Down 34%

The U.S. gets a good portion of its revenue by taxing a percentage of income and wealth. When income and wealth decrease, there is less to take. Therefore, tax revenues decrease.

x% of y-1 < x% of y, where x and y are real numbers.

In order for government to be able to collect revenue, it must have wealth and income to tax. The way to increase wealth is only to invest it. If they have less to invest, they cannot increase wealth. If they cannot increase wealth, the government has less to take.

x% of y+1 > x% of y

When people or companies have money to invest, they typically, in some form or fashion, transfer it to another, in the hopes (but not the promise) that they will be better off for what they get in return. They are free to succeed and they are free to fail.

They will have decreased, on their own accord, how much money they have at any given moment, and someone else will have taken possession of it.

With safeguards against fraud and the protection of private property, that process increases wealth, generates jobs, and is completely consistent with the free choices of the entities who earned it.

Rather than encouraging this sort of behavior that tends to increase wealth, our government has deemed it necessary to use a different equation. Instead of increasing wealth, they are working toward a mechanism to increase the percentage of the income they take from the people who are increasing it through a form of national sales tax called a VAT on TOP of all other sources of revenue.

The thinking goes that this will increase tax receipts.

x+2% of y > x% of y

However, this fails to account for the fact that people will have less to invest on their own, thereby hampering their ability to generate wealth. Initially, tax receipts will increase, but at the expense of the system's efficiency.

x+2% of y-1 ~ x% of y

The government gives very little consideration to the idea that they should spend less during these times, in spite of massive debt they accrue, which increases the interest their posterity will need to account for in the future, as demonstrated by its recent bailout of just-about-everything, including the U.S. automobile industry, which has been languishing for decades because of problems the government helped to create.

Government Will Now Own 72.5% of 'New GM'

Back in December 2008, GM's president Fritz Henderson claimed that GM was too big to be allowed to fail. Showing a remarkable amount of chutzpa, Henderson went as far to say that bankruptcy was not an option and that the government had a moral imperative to inject GM with a ton of taxpayer money to keep it from filing bankruptcy.

What could he possibly have meant by that? Because now it looks like bankruptcy is indeed on the table.

Constitutional issues aside (and there are many of them), the problem with nationalization of enterprise is that it creates a monopoly, drags down innovation borne of market necessity, does not rely on profits or losses to determine its fate (see the Post Office vs UPS or FedEx for an example), which further decreases the efficiency of the system.

(Though I'm not addressing the constitutional issues here, that is not to suggest they are less important than the economic ones. In fact, the two are so intertwined that it's very difficult to leave one aside to talk about the other.)

What's more, since the government doesn't have the money to make the purchase, it must either borrow or print the money to do it. An excess of either tends to cause inflation, which requires the government collect more revenue to both:

Service the increased debt
Buy products and services

Even still, if the increased debt lowers the country's credit rating, it increases the interest rate the taxpayers must pay on that increased debt.

Faber: Inflation to 'Approach Zimbabwe Level'

Inflation under these conditions is unavoidable. Whether we will reach hyperinflation seems likely, but I don't know if investor Mark Faber is correct when he says it is a 100% certainty (If you don't know what hyperinflation is, or if you need a reminder, click the link above, but only if you don't mind that it will scare the Hell out of you). I hope he's wrong, but I'm not smart enough to know for certain.

In either event, inflation decreases the value of money generally. It destroys wealth, which decreases the amount that individuals are able to freely invest on their own accord.

As we've already shown, when wealth decreases, so does the value of what the the government is able to collect, even further exacerbating the problem.

This is true whether we get hyperinflation, garden-variety inflation, or something in between. One of them is certain.

What is the consequence of all of this? And what does it have to do with marketing?

With a growing appetite and fewer resources to satisfy it, there is little that is out of our government's reach. Rather than curbing its diet, to satisfy this appetite, the it takes more from you and your clients.

This means you have less work.
This means you collect less revenue.
This leads to being able to hire fewer people.
This leads to higher unemployment rates.
This leads to diminishing tax receipts and, in the current environment, more government spending.

If you think a government can control everything and you can remain free, I'd like to know what you're smoking.

We've already seen that, with respect to the functional nationalization of the auto industry, the government can now determine who is allowed to run the company, how much they're allowed to pay their executive employees, and how much they're allowed to advertise.

If you're a marketer -- if you're human -- showing how this applies to you is as easy as drawing a short, straight line between A and B.

And unless we act, the worst is still ahead.

"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." - Ronald Reagan

What do you do when you see that a building is on fire? Do you sit back and watch it happen? Do you call 911? Or do you rush in to save anyone who might be trapped inside?

If you're stuck inside a burning building, do you resent the one who comes in to rescue you? The one who shouts from the ground to warn you to get out?

Nothing would please me more than to not feel this way, to go about my life as if nothing is wrong.

But the fire is burning. The effects are as predictable as the sunrise. And before I accept this fate as inevitable, I feel a growing sense of responsibility to at least say something. To convince one person.

Powerful and selfish people will tell you differently, and many people will believe them because either they have something to gain from what they say being true (after all, the consequent sure does seem painful) or they're just easily influenced by powerful people. No amount of logic or reasoning will dissuade them. They resent the bell ringer who warns them that their building is on fire.

But the fire does not depend on one's belief. It either is or it isn't.

Let's just keep our eyes open and not be afraid to see what we see. As long as we do, assuming we catch it early enough, we can correct the problem.

But first we have to be willing. - Cam Beck