I'm a Marketer

MAN do I have a problem with people who THINK they are marketers just because the WORK at a marketing company. This really hit home the other day. I was sitting in a meeting with some high-level research guys who do focus groups, and they were discussing some of the techniques and terms and I realized that I had no idea what value I could bring to the discussion. Here's the kicker - for the most part I kept my mouth shut. I didn't regale them with lame marketing truisms and "my thoughts" on the subject. You see, just because I work with these guys doesn't mean I have the faintest hope of telling them anything they don't already know. The BEST I can hope to do is keep from exposing my stupidity on the subject - and here silence is my friend.

I sit in meetings a lot with mixed groups from different marketing perspectives. Generally there is one really experienced marketing person in the meeting, a couple of new marketers (AE's) and a couple of technical people. Without exception I get to hear the thoughts of the technical folks on switch testing or on demographics or some others area of expertise in which they have no knowledge. This drives me nuts. When I want to know how to most efficiently perform a great circle calculation or truly randomize a result, I'll ring your friggin bell. Note - I'M a technical guy - I started in the business as a coder. The difference with me is that I've spent years putting together marketing plans, many that have failed, some that have succeeded. Often I used my own money, or had to personally address the failures with the client. I'm always reading a new book on marketing or attending a conference. I eat, drink, breathe, etc marketing. I truly LOVE marketing. This is what makes me a marketer.

We're not just talking about technical people here though. This applies to anybody who joins a marketing company with no experience in marketing - and I mean real marketing. Please, for all of our benefits, just listen for a couple of years. Then put your ass on the line a couple of times and feel the burn, THEN let's have your thoughts on our project.

Don't get me wrong, it's great to hear the thoughts of everyone on some things. Often folks who are not long-time marketers will have ideas that are great. I just take issue with statements such as "Never use Red in a design" and "if it takes more than 2 clicks to get there..", etc. I mean, do you have some DATA to back this up?

I guess what I'm saying is...there was a wize old owl who lived in an oak..

More Like Reagan

Man, how many times have I heard this on talk radio in the last 6 months. "We need a candidate more like Reagan", "We need to be more like Reagan", "Reagan Conservative", etc. I happen to agree that Reagan was a GREAT conservative - I didn't agree with everything he did - but he was a great man. One thing Reagan had going for him was that he was no mitigator. He was often pushed to tone down his language, but he stood for a few things that he did NOT budge on.
Now - during one of the most critical elections for the conservative movement, most conservatives are saying - "Pick the best Hillary alternative". This is not AT ALL like Reagan. Look guys - it's easy to say "Be like Reagan" - it's a lot harder to ACTUALLY be like Reagan. To do this we'd have to say No, we WON'T settle for the easiest Hillary alternative - we DEMAND a real conservative for our party. This is what Reagan would do.

Why do I feel like we're gonna get Rudy regardless? Not that I have an axe to grind with Rudy, I just don't like feeling like I'm being sold on this guy. I mean we're already being pre-tenderized with the "Who's gonna pick the best judges" talk. Yeah, picking judges is important, but so is prosecuting wars - and I don't mean the kind of prosecuting we've been hearing about from the left - mean really running a war. Are any of the Better-Than-Hillary's TRULY the man you want at the helm during war time?

eGADS I'd love to see a ballsey conservative who's not nuts come forward and really run on conservatism.

Splash Pages - Don't Make Me Kill You

OK, we now have 10 years of hate-pages devoted to these "splash pages" with the "Click here to skip" buttons, but I STILL see these abominable things out there.

Let me ask you this: Why, oh why, would you EVER have something on your web page that would NEED a button that says "click here to skip"? Extending the question - "Why, oh Lord WHY would you put such an atrocity on your HOME PAGE??".

Look at this from a brick-and-mortar perspective. Your website homepage is the entrance to your website. How would you feel if you stepped into your local WalMart and just as you approached the door a 10X10 video screen dropped down in your way and you had to click a "click here to actually go into the store" button? You would hate it. Well my friend, this is no different than a splash page. Your visitor is walking into your site, he has a problem and hopes your site can solve it. He's not interested IN THE LEAST in a series of fading vignettes depicting products, happy customers, or "compelling" UVP derivatives, he wants to land on a homepage and see a possible solution to his problem. This narcissism is all part of what I call "me creep" and it happens to most websites eventually. I'll cover that in another post.

Now, since your homepage is the default page to your website. It's the defacto standard method by which folks come to your website. So we have established that visitors expect this page to be your one-stop-shop for links into the rest of the site, let's give that to them.

Who's been monkeying with the Doomsday Clock?

Around my house we have a simple policy - if you move the clock up or back for some pointless mind-game to help everyone be more punctual - tell everyone so they can do the internal calculations necessary to be 5 minutes late for every event we attend. You never, I repeat NEVER monkey around with the clock without alerting those who's lives are metered by the tick tick tick of those clocks.

A noble policy to be sure. And one that not only should apply to regular old house clocks, but it should apply to Big Ben, that guy you call to get the time then have to hear a low budget ad then the weather, and say, a metaphorical clock predicting how close we actually are to impending global annihilation .

Imagine my surprise when I stopped over to my favorite location for determining the acceptable green-ness of my next batch of bananas and I see that Global Warming® is now a consideration for the Doomsday Clock. Please, can somebody tell me how in the world the Doomsday clock came to incorporate global warming® in it's simple though prescient machinations? I mean, it IS maintained by the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. I mean, what about global warming is ATOMIC?? All my life, I've had one overriding, simple yet crystal fear - an apocalyptic fiery nuclear death. I knew that no matter how nice things got for me I could always count on a gloomy circa 1983 tv movie post-apocalyptic vision to kick me down a notch.

Well here come the global warming® folks to rain all over my parade, and real rain, not the drifting, fluffy nuclear kind. How in the world did a bunch of scientists allow this bit of political nonsense into their pure vision of global termination?

I guess I just wish someone had at least called me to see what I thought - I mean, I've been with the Doomsday clock as long as anybody and I thought we had something.

I guess nothing is forever (except nuclear fallout - ah, yesterday).