This bus stop advertisement, tho'

I bet it costs a ton to pay for one of these JCDecaux outdoor, or "out of home" (OOH) displays. I guess I'm wired to wonder about the ROI on this car seat safety message at the bus stop. At the bus stop. Bus. ∎

...more of this post

What is Content?

Content, Technically Speaking

By today's definition, content is any purposeful online communication, in any format, intended to reach people, convey your message, spark interest, or coax some kind of response from your audience, such as a click, a share, or a purchase. Content rules the lives of professionals at digital agencies and company marketing departments. These are tech-savvy creatives & creative data scientists. Marketers craft strategic campaigns aimed at one or more audience segments. To support a variety of digital campaigns, marketers generate and curate a massive amount of written and multimedia content (video, infographics, etc), which they deploy via websites and blogs, emails and texts, social sharing and more. It's actually pretty amazing.  

Read More>>>

...more of this post

#Throwback Thursday: 2008

Ten years ago this week! Seems like only a hundred years ago this week. (I'm so tired).

...click to read more...

...more of this post

#ThrowbackThursday (Blogcast: April 10, 2018)

Here is one of my "Blogcast" posts from earlier in the year. Regular followers will know that I made an attempt to convert my blog to an audio-only format...no edits! But it didn't work. Because that was a truly terrible idea. And I am sure I'll try it again anyway, because I never learn, do I? This Blogcast, titled "We Got The President We Deserve," is about how digital marketers have been utilizing the data we all put online, that it was never a secret, how all of you opted into participating, and I give some examples in the retail world, and then I show how the same principles apply to CAMPAIGN MARKETING, which in the case of Election 2016 included Russian manipulation of public sentiment against Clinton. Because of the "no edit" rule I foolishly made, I ramble. I'm way better in printed material, guys.

I recorded this Blogcast while Mark Zuckerberg was testifying before Congress on April 10th, right after I heard some old fart politician ask Zuck a question and pronounce "content" as "conTENT," proving once again that these old farts have zero idea what they're even talking about because they're analog thinkers in a digital world, y'all. 
They don't get it. They gotta go, man.

  Listen as SuperLowBudge explains how some of this shit works.  If you don't know what you're doing, just get offline and go do something else.  Otherwise, you in danger, y'all.

...more of this post

One Wolf

@MJMcKean

...more of this post

#HireAWriter

"I was a rocket ship filled with untapped potential. 

With Year Up, now the sky is the limit."

Dear Marketer,

Your transit marketing campaign

forces awkward metaphor and leans on tired, old cliche.

You probably spent a lot of money on this shit.

It should be better.

Hire a writer, fer fuck's sake.

Yours,

SuperLowBudge

...more of this post

I *need to tweet Hal Sparks that this shit really happened today

"Small black coffee, please."

"We don't have small, we only have medium."

"...that's impossible."

(blank stare)

I tried again, "What's the smallest size?

"We just have the one size."

"What is happening right now?" For a good three seconds I thought I was on a reality show. Like Hal Sparks was going to come out from the back and give one of his comedy lectures. Hal wrote this material years ago. Here's the thing. Gen X has had just about enough of this shit. #AllOuttaBubblegum.

Trust Me, I'm A Writer

I'll detail what you did wrong. I'll do it for free. Usually people pay me. But I feel I can help you improve your Customer Experience (CX). What should have happened is this:

"Small black coffee, please."

(Holds up the only cup to show me) "This is the only size we have, but I could just fill it up part way if you'd like?"

But let me tell you why.

Because Customer Experience Matters

You guys, no matter what your job, it's egregious to start any transaction on a negative. In this simple "a writer's morning coffee" example, it's not just for me but for the greater good of society. You see, if the first thing out of your mouth is a negative ("we don't...), you're souring the customer's entire feeling about your store. Straight off, there's a problem. Guys, we freelancers got enough problems. Bitches be broke.

The least that you could do as a small business in America is train your staff to make sure every transaction, especially coffee, should go smooth like Snoop Dog. Why give me this gatekeeper puzzle. I'm going to buy a coffee here today. Your goal is to make me want to buy a coffee here tomorrow, too, and then pick this place when it's my turn to lead writer's group next week. You should want me feeling warm fuzzies about the day's first accomplishment: coffee. What you're doing is sending me out the door perturbed, and then the first rando Masshole that tells me to smile is in real danger of getting that one-size coffee in his fuckin' face. So you see, your Customer Experience (CX) Fail is going to get a jerk some black coffee burns, and get me arrested for FuckThisShit. Do better. It's for America.

Say we disagree on what "Medium" means, in a place that sells "Medium" and "Large." Fine, please refer to Hal Sparks. But...THIS coffee place only sells the one size. Why say "We don't have small" and start right off confusing me?  
Me no coffee. Right now I'm like a baby when you shine a light in its eyes. And you're holding hostage my coffee while you make me play you in a game of 20 Questions that I don't understand.

Retail Marketing 101: Turning a Problem Into a Promotion

Just in case you are hearing "stock more size cups," let me be clear: don't. It's fine. What I am saying is, do not make your store logistics into a problem for the customer. Sell the "one size" coffee but why not use the "we only have one size" thing as a marketing tool. It will cost you nothing to stick the cup on a funky little display with a pleasant-looking sign (write it ON THE CUP) saying "One Size!" and make a joke about it. Something like "One size fits most! But you tell us when to say when!" People love stupid old-skool shit like that.

Are you guys saying that modern day "Medium" is re-defined as being anywhere between ten ounces and fourteen ounces? Well I don't love it. But. If we're refining the language, then somebody put it in Urban Dictionary or something. We re-purpose words all the time, but don't just assume that the wordsmiths among us (hi!) won't pick a fight over the technicality that you cannot have a Medium unless you also have one size smaller, and one size larger, to bracket that shit. Fer fuck's sake. ∎
*I will never actually tweet that. 

"The only way that glass of iced tea 

is a Medium 

is if it can talk to the dead." 

- Hal Sparks

By the way, Medium has a real purpose in the beverage industry. We NEED Medium so we can feel like we are treating ourselves by ordering the not-smallest size. Everything else is so lean, money is so tight that we never get to do anything indulgent. So we should be ordering the small but we can go big today and get Medium. We can also feel righteous about not being a tubby little piggy and getting the LARGE when we haven't earned it.

...more of this post

THE PICKLE: Volume 1, Issue 3

The first fifty days of the new administration have ushered in an emotionally supercharged period in modern America. People in red states and blue states are in states of confusion, state experts state. 

"This is a highly unusual situation," says Dr. Harry Chopin Savage. Savage is an industry leader in applied data science. Dr. Savage is the author of "Big Data and Urban Civilization," currently touring colleges and universities giving talks on the long term effects of relentless mental stress on people living in medium-to-large cities. "This is not how any of this is supposed to work. Studies show that people just feel like giving up even trying to have a normal conversation, because every conversation eventually turns to what is essentially the biggest modern national embarrassment we, as a people, can remember."

Experts Warn:"Lucid Zombie State" Looms in Nation's Future

The stress of navigating 2017 America is beginning to take its toll. The concern is that a prolonged existence in a world in which provable lies are taken as gospel will lead to a kind of nationwide mental fugue, a "lucid zombie state." Dr. Savage and other experts warn that the massive effort required to act as though everything is normal is an incredible strain on the psyche,"both as individuals and as a society," says Savage. 

"Basically, basic human decency is at risk. Basically. The emotional toll for keeping a civil tongue anymore is quite high. On the surface things seem fine. But things are not fine. This ague state may not be the end of the actual world, but this is a big enough catastrophe that America as we know it won't be the same ever again."

Geezer Politics Are Going To Get Us All Killed

Dr. Savage suggests considering the ongoing effects of a doddering generation raised to lunge beneath their school desks as children, on the premise that would "save them" from a bomb that would vaporize a whole city. "Those people," suggests Savage, "were never quite right in the head, but who could blame them? The great American tragedy is that they think nothing of this terrorizing of our citizens. These geezer politicians are now risking the mental well being of yet another generation. We are all in permanent ready mode, like feral animals tensed for fight or flight, only there's nowhere to go. There is no desk."

There Is No Desk 

A Facebook poll reveals that 2 out of 3 Americans think that even the conversations with those who share their beliefs are stressful to have, even online, so for the most part people just stop having them. This emerging mode of alt-communication has effects on the data science used to measure public sentiment. Social media analytics, used for everything from marketing to other kinds of marketing, are in a sort of twilight quickening. Studies reveal that most studies reveal no useful data whatsoever.

"I'd buy stock in image tracking tech now," says an inside source. "People are so worn out that they just try to avoid talking anymore so they are using Stickies and Gifs. Along with that, we face unprecedented levels of sarcasm in the 25 to 65 demographic. We already skew for sarcasm correction in the 18 to 24 group, but this is a whole new ball game."

"How do you discern what somebody means by a posting a Gif of a dog taking a shit. Do they mean 'that's a relief?' Or do they mean 'I just can't hold this in anymore' or do they mean 'What you said just now is dog shit?' We're just not there yet with the image sentiment data science."

Figuring out what the hell anyone means anymore as the world spins crazily off its axis is the job of next-generation, advanced Big Data. Stalwart Halfrunt, team leader at Deepthought Global, explains the problem. "It is question of contextual speech analytics -- that is knowing your sentiment, not just tracking key words you write on the Facebook, on the blogs. Before, you could tweet out "Great job, Kansas!" and we count you in as a big supporter of all decisions Kansas. Now we can tell if you sassing, but remaining to integrate and very very very difficult as source of truth are up-votes, likes and shares for "Great job, Kansas!" How to figure out who peoples are agreeing with words, and who peoples are liking joke? I mean, Kansas is terrible dump. Given Kansas, the Dorothy would like better to stay I think Oz."

One Nation Under Duress

Any casual conversation online can escalate quickly into a knock-down, drag-out brawl between people that, in theory, are supposed to like each other. We are one nation, under duress, violently divided.

Harvard Community Affairs Consultant Dr. Sandy Vajaynaya agrees. "You want to have a normal conversation with an old friend, but then you find out her single issue with Hillary Clinton was that the candidate advocated for nine month abortions," Vajaynaya says. "I mean, if you're a single issue voter, shouldn't you at least bother to make sure the "issue" is a real thing?" Incredibly, this is a verified account. Randolph resident Jolee McGuffen, 48, did cast her vote for the Republican candidate based on the October 2016 debate, during which Mrs. Clinton's opponent did make such an accusation. "Hillary can say that that's OK, but it's not OK with me," McGuffen bragged.

"But," marvels Dr. Vajaynaya, "it's a complete lie. I mean it's not a matter of opinion. It literally never happened. That idiot voted us into this disaster based on a thing that never happened."

"If allowed to go on at this pace and intensity, the mental stress will virtually eat your brain," says Harry Chopin Savage. "Nobody knows what's true and what's a blatent lie anymore. I mean, the guy openly mocked a disabled person on national TV, the video got shared around to millions of people all over the world, yet his supporters persist in saying it never happened." Savage points out that the November 2016 incident, during which the Republican party leader contorted his right hand into a crumbled fist locked against his chest in imitation of New York Times journalist Serge Kovaleski who suffers from a joint condition, would have meant the end of the presidential race for literally any other candidate.

"Goddamned Mother Theresa wouldn't have gotten away with that," Savage says. "The Republicans have constructed a seemingly impenetrable panopticon of alt-facts, a toxic bubble inside of which truth fizzles, while the lies, repeated by the leadership and parroted by millions of followers, become the new reality."💩

...more of this post

You Guys, I Met Peter Sagal

[Peter Sagal, Boston MA]

I was recently at a marketing conference here in Boston, and to my utter delight I found out that Mr. Peter Sagal was going to deliver the final keynote. Peter has been hosting NPR's "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" for about fifteen years or so. Every week the NPR listener-ship tunes in to this news-based radio gem with its rotating panel of players, call-in listener challenges and celebrity guests. Me 'n Joey never miss it.

He opened with a joke about jargon and farts. That's about right. “I have no idea what you do,” Peter quipped amiably to the ballroom packed with marketers, analysts, SEOs, and a lot of people whose job titles seem made-up. "But I'd like to fit in here, so..." He said that for today's audience, he decided he'd sum up his role in broadcast as “disrupting the traditional paradigm in the fart joke sector.”

Slaying the Jargon Beast with fresh, direct writing is about 87% of what I do for marketers and their clients. For example, they tell me their business goals, I convert those into words that normal people can understand. I make website copy convert from "we are the only platform that provides the capabilities to innovate at scale" into something else that conveys actual ideas, and then they give me money. Sometimes I leave my home office and meet Peter Sagal! He is such a pro, moving about the stage comfortably, interacting, getting genuine laughs. He didn’t have a slide deck, but he played audio snippets to demonstrate real-life jokes that were written one way, but once told, took on a whole new, unexpected life of their own. He said that the real art of joke-telling is...no way, if I tell it wouldn't be fair to Peter. Okay, I'll tell you if you ask me next time we meet, but only if you donate a dollar to NPR and tell me in the comments below. ∎

Related: 

• NPR: The "Crapped a Pineapple" One

• NPR: The "Clippy" One 

...more of this post

International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)

Spotted in the grocery store, Red Rose tea bags with the IFAW emblem.

They are wonderful people who rescue animals and protect wildlife populations.
They were a client of mine in previous years, now I just follow and support.
I love the Red Rose campaign.
Please Support IFAW!

...more of this post

I Love My Job

I haven't said anything so far, for the delightfully childlike reason that I didn't want to jinx it. But being this happy requires sharing, especially after 2014. All year long into the beginning of 2015 these entries were filled with my dreary slog through the minefield of depression and anxiety. You all supported me and helped to bring me back.

You know what else helped to bring me back? My job. I love my new job.

...more of this post