defending a-rod

alex rodriguez came clean yesterday on the allegations of steroid use. the right move for a bad decision. but does it matter? can he ever escape this? is his career tarnished forever?

i'll admit, when the mitchell report came out, or even before when bonds was under constant scrutiny for steroid use, i thought a-rod was exempt. i felt that he was one player who was above performance enhancing drugs. he's a pure talent, and still is. i guess jose canseco got it right a while back when he implicated rodriguez, but there was no evidence and no further scrutiny. i dismissed that as just more of canseco's wild accusations to cling to what little fame he had left. sorry i doubted you jose. you gave me no reason to, ever.

i'm in the camp to say that 3 years of performance enhancing drug use does not tarnish rodriguez's career. he is a natural talent. he was productive and a star before he took p.e.d.'s and was the same afterwards. look at his stats and he was just as productive prior to and after his steroid years. you could argue that without them he would have been just as effective. it's negligible. doesn't make it right that he took them, albeit under a cloud of non-policy by mlb, just that he shouldn't be forever villainized for his actions. if you want, when his career is done, wipe those 3 years from the record and he is still hall of fame worthy, and rightly considered one of the best ever.

the way rodriguez has played this out is that right way. he's admitting his actions, incurring the wrath, and seeking forgiveness from the court of public opinion. this is something no other player has done. not mcgwire, who refused to talk about it. not bonds, who says he never knowingly took them. not clemens or palmeiro who fervently deny it. he is trying to make it right. he's admitted fault, he's accepted his errors, and he will live with how he is going to be perceived. that shows a lot of strength of chracter. not just to come clean, but to have stopped using when he did.

i genuinely believe he is sorry for his actions and regrets them (some will say regret getting caught). he is human, and exercised poor judgement. rodriguez was sincere, and made himself accountable. he should be forgiven. if not forgiven, then not have his entire career diminished for it.

still there's three issues with all this which don't sit right with me.
1) not for public knowledge
the drug tests that led to this outing were supposed to be anonymous, sealed by court order. how did these test results get out, especially when the tests themselves and the players names were never supposed to be linked and lived in separate databases? i'm not trying to justify the actions of any of those 104 players, but they had a right to have this information protected.

the point is, steroid use was rampant and mlb was trying to stop it. the testing survey was done to gauge just how pervasive it is in order to establish rules and disciplinary actions. it was accepted practice and rodriguez, along with scores of others, were part of it because no rules were in place to govern it. good judgement and morality aside, that was the era these players were in and it was common practice. with all the influences (manager, trainers, owners, agents, etc) it was not hard to play the game.

the effect all this is having is to sling more shit at baseball and generally increase the ire around the sport. i don't think that's needed. mlb needs to reconcile with it's fans and people in general and this is a step backwards form that. i'm not saying brush it under the carpet, but the lessons have been learned, the course is correcting, let's move forward.

2) the faultless mlb
mlb has, and rightly so, only been praised for cleaning up the sport, while not being accountable or admonished for their role in the 'steroid era.' it was their inaction, non-policy, and general state of denial that led to an atmosphere where performance enhancing drugs were able to be as epidemic as they were. don't just tear the players down when you can't look in the mirror and accept your role in this situation, mlb. they too easily throw their players, their product mind you, under the bus while throwing their hands up and saying 'don't look at me.'

superbowl ads - fading away

is the superbowl still the cultural beacon for advertising anymore? i vote no.

because i live in canada, we don't get the privilege of seeing the real superbowl ads as they happen. i mean we broadcast the superbowl and try to parade our ads on it, but there isn't the fanfare, novelty and expense associated in doing so. thankfully the internet has made this cultural fascination more accessible. and therein lies why i don't think the superbowl is much more than the game itself anymore. we as marketers are losing the one day where advertising is elevated to a cultural phenomenon, spectacle and curiosity for all the masses to stand up and take notice of our great work. the day where everyday folk put aside their trite statements of "i don't pay attention to ads" and embrace the brandsell as entertainment.

so the day after the superbowl i mosey over to whatever site is making a big stink about the superbowl ads so that i can see for myself. but ever since the first media rumblings of the superbowl bubbled up in the media this year and last, it nagged at me that it's just not the same anymore. the game has changed.

not the destination it was
no longer do we accept content channels making destination viewing. a fixed time and channel for content doesn't hold the viewing audience hostage with the emergence of pvr's, torrents, online video and quicker to market dvd's. the new distribution systems make it so that we are not subject to someone else's schedule, network or otherwise.

we're not beholden to one day of the year anymore to see great work. it's out there, everywhere. brand produced or user generated. hours after the superbowl (or sooner), every ad was already circulating around the internet. by the following day, every media outlet and every joe with a recording device and the ability to encode it as online video has uploaded all the commercials and everyone else has watched them online.

so it doesn't need the big day. if advertisers created great ads and used non-broadcast distribution methods, the pickup is the same. with greater access it becomes less forced on the consumer and more in keeping with their preference to view as they choose. consumers can be more selective and an ad in the superbowl may not be that place anymore. advertisers lose the passive 'push' messaging, but in online get a more valuable engaged audience.

heightened expectations
even more of a factor than a populace consuming on their own terms is the content of the ads themselves. the superbowl used to be the meeting place where the best, funniest, most creative, wacky, random, highly entertaining and cool ads came to show off. that is a bygone time. television, even the superbowl, has been relegated to second fiddle in an internet video era where it is not only the channel of choice, but the new bastion of all that is great in video, ads or otherwise.

with access to the long tail of video content, consumer appetite has changed in what is truly breakthrough and salient with them. they still want the polish of it all, but have a very altered notion of what makes a great 30 second ad. they have been trained to want edgier, more interesting, more entertaining, more emotive, less branded and sell-y type ads. they have gravitated toward the subversive, where the brand is minimized, but the impact is amplified.

when we can take to the web and watch great work from every corner of the world, a tv spot faces greater obstacles to relevance and effect on the consumer. a place where broadcast standards don't apply and the risk/reward ratio is not as severe.

social currency
we still think of superbowl ads as something to be placed on a mantle and revered. truth is, they don't carry the same social currency as before. the ads within are brand messages, directed at viewers en masse, that through media investment, word of mouth can be engineered. the tectonic plates of consumer discussion have shifted though with the emergence of efficient and open distribution methods, and the democratization of content production. consumers are now in control of engineering what breaks through the din of all the brand messages in the media world.

only difference has been that somehow we equated a spot in the superbowl to mean it's going to be a great ad. that's lazy marketing because not all superbowl ads are great and not all superbowl viewers are your intended audience. these spots got attention because they were in the superbowl, not necessarily by virtue of their greatness. with the rise of alternative ways of viewing and a wider assortment of stuff to consume, truly great creative shines and becomes culturally significant because it's not being pushed on us, but because it talk worthy.

there is also how we share these ads and bring them into our own social fold. before we could only talk about them around a water cooler, having seen it just the one time. with the internet, we can go back to it, we can physically share it, we can comment on it, we can elevate it or diminish it in many places. it takes on a life of its own because it lives on, not dying after its lone airing.

the cost equation
every second of advertising in the superbowl costs $100,000. add to that the cost of making the ad, which often comes at a premium because of the special occasion and creative types pulling out the big guns. that's a lot to pay for something that has every chance to be a big success as it does to be a colossal failure. it also runs the risk of just being mediocre and lost in the shuffle. and quite often, that spot airs just the once, making it a pricey one-off.

compare that to online distribution methods. the likelihood of breaking out and having a real impact are just as strong and for 100% less the cost of a superbowl ad. i won't pretend that you can get it for $0, but technically you could. so for significantly less in cost you can put it in the consumer's hand, who always had the final say in just how far an ad proliferated the cultural consciousness.

the timing of it all
as i elaborated already on the distribution side of things, we are at a point where we don't need the big event anymore to debut a new spot. things move faster now and we can constantly innovate our approaches and iterate our creative faster. we can access our consumers quicker and take the great thing we built and release it to the world for accelerated return on our efforts. we can be more nimble in responding to successes and failures. the internet is as big a seeding ground for our efforts on an ongoing basis than any one day or game. the potential for groundswell and expansion on a continual basis is enormous.

of course this won't be the last year of a big commotion being made of the superbowl ads. but i think it will slowly erode and in the not too distant future almost cease to be a talking point anymore. it will be broadcast, it will have ads, but won't have the same fuss about it.

begrudging biz books

i've been on a bit of a business book binge (also thought leadership books, but that would ruin the alliteration) for the last little bit and one thing has become abundantly clear - they all drown themselves in case studies. so much so, i was able to power through the books at speed because i was just glossing over the painful articulation of one microcosm of an example.

i get why a case study can be good, i do. it's a real world example of one's premise or idea in action. it's there to lend credibility to what is being put forth. this is more about fewer case studies than getting rid of them altogether. then again, i wouldn't be mourning their altogether elimination.

you see, someone else's success story (or failure for that matter) is their own. each case study is comprised of a completely unique set of circumstances and personalities. there is only so much of that which lends itself to any of the reader's situation. it's great to hear about people applying the ideas postulated but copying it does not a success make. there's nothing to say that a similar application of the idea has bearing on any other situation. so where exactly is the value?

some will point to credibility. that the idea has needs to prove itself, right or wrong, to have validity. i don't totally buy that. the reason being because the idea gains its credibility by way of the author.

the book exists because of a singular, powerful, unique thought from a leader in the field who has a vision to share. they are being published because they are respected, their opinion carries weight and their notion is truly original, innovative or inspiring. shouldn't that be enough? are they so insecure with their premise that they need to find examples up the wazoo to verify it is correct or exists at all? is it publisher imposed? does the audience really clamor for them that much? is that their own insecurity in adopting an idea that they can't tread where others haven't forged a path already?

i say, if the idea is powerful, then put it out there and the world will decide. it seems ingenuine that someone will do something not because they believe what they are reading, but because someone else has done it. if it's right, or makes sense, or is logical then it should be pursued. right isn't someone else's version of right. making sense isn't how someone else made sense of the idea and brought it to life. and well, not everyone follows the same logic.

all said, the books are theories. they convey an abstract idea that isn't proved in any one way. the practical side of the equation is too unique for each acting upon it. as a marketer of beer, my reading a case study about a shoe marketer has little application to me. i'm glad they did well, but how they did it was of no value to me because i live in a different universe. (i'm not sure if that last part was a case study to prove my point thus making me a hypocrite. it's too meta to think about)

so authors, focus on writing your ideas and sharing them, not on showing they can be right. unless you get paid by the word, then i vote for putting the idea out there and saving some time (and precious trees) for people to actually take that idea and run with it.

when to not say yes to the vet

this weekend has been a tough one for us. one of our rabbits fell seriously ill with fluid in his chest and an abscess in his stomach. he's doing much better now (not quite out of the woods though) after some great care by 3 different vets. but it got me thinking about the dollars and cents of veterinary care.

we don't have pet insurance, virtually no one does. i read a stat that only 0.4% of all cats and dogs in the u.s. are insured by their owners. that is amazingly low. i thought it was maybe between 5% and 10%. compare that to human insurance in the u.s. which is around 82% (it's the only fair comparison given our universl health care in canada - the point being that if we didn't have socialized healthcare here, the percentages would likely be similar). so how much do we really love our pet companions? what is the price tag we have on them? apparently it's around $576 before euthanization becomes a much more viable option to further treatment according to caa.

pet insurance aside, what of company benefits. do any of them include pets? i seriously doubt it (mine doesn't), even though they are a part of the family and the rest of them get coverage. my pets wellbeing weighs on me as my people family would and that affects my work life and my financial life that the rest of my benefits are there to assuage in the event of health issues. 

why can't they be included? there's a lot of crap in benefit packages we don't ever use. $500 in massage that i'll never use i'd rather have available to put toward vet bills. i won't go through it line by line, but there's lot sof things i don't need or won't use that would easily make up for what i'd spend or use in pet insurance. not to take this post of track, but i'd love to see an openness and flexibility in benfit packages that a person could tailor to themselves and their situation, especially as it pertains to pets.

more than anything, i struggle with the dynamic people and their pets, especially when it comes down to medical care and the associated costs. on one side, i can see how there's a point where people can decide that the equaion doesn't balance and it doesn't make sense. it's a very real possibility some times. or that they simply don't have the money to give their pet that care. on the flip side, pets are just as much a part of people's lives and there is deep love people have for them. we wouldn't question it were a person on the operating table, so why do we for a pet?

i'll openly grant that it's easier to let a pet go than it is to do the same for a person. people are of a peer level and a love bond based on more levels than an animal is capable of. but that doesn't make them disposable. i hope not. that's a little shameful, though, isn't it? to think that we love animals less or in another way that somehow isn't equal. why are animals more replaceable than humans?

it's morality vs. economic. in the state of our world, we know that those two have a lot of difficulty co-existing in a positively genuine way. it's not easy.

did we consider euthanization? no, we didn't. he was still treatable and as long as that's the case, with a good outlook post-treatment, then i'm all for it. it's just money, right? so i have a little debt. so i work part time for 2-3 months to pay it off. it's worth it for me. he brings a lot of joy in my life and $3,000 is worth it for him to still be around for the rest of his life to live, be a happy rabbit and me to have his companionship.

i'm not  saying i'm a saint here. sure, i looked at the cost and had my brief doubts on whether it was worth it. i felt ashamed for doing so, but it happened. that's the dilemma with all this - why did i question it? i wasn't ready to say goodbye. there will be a time when i am more ready and feel that it is his time. when he won't be able to live a quality life, when he doesn't have a good chance of making it through, when he's lived for a long time, and when i can put my own selfishness of wanting him around aside for his own well being and stem any suffering. 

how easily we forgot about our own selfishness in this whole mater. and it's on both sides. selfishness for our money and the impact a drain will have on our lives. then selfishness of wanting to keep them around for ourselves. how do we resolve this?

i know i'm not being as clear as i'd like. it's hard to express such esoteric quandires where emotion is so heavily involved. i am having a hard time reconciling this all myself.

weighing in on the death of newspapers

in today's weekly blog reading catch-up, i perused numerous stories on the death of newspapers and thought i'd weigh-in myself as it's something i've been conceptualizing since college when i wrote a thesis paper on their death, or evolution as it really should be. i thought it was a good time to revisit it and update with some of the new information.

do i want newspapers to die? yes, in their current incarnation i do, but not entirely. why not entirely? well it's simple, journalism in that form still has a very important place in the fabric of society. citizen journalists (ie. bloggers) are one thing, but the world still needs, as atlantic magazine puts it:

... there’s no online substitute for institutions that can marshal years of well-developed sourcing and reporting experience—not to mention the resources to, say, send journalists leapfrogging between Mumbai and Islamabad to decode the complexities of the India-Pakistan conflict.

newspapers have arrived at this point solely by virtue of intense hubris in their value and business model, which hasn't changed in 100 years. while keeping their core printed versions status quo, they simply layered on website versions with little apparent thought to changing the costlier side of the business, that was really in danger.

to distill it down, the business model of newspapers is in disseminating information to the masses. what i'm about to say isn't new, but important to the discussion to elaborate later. the main problem with the printed business model is the old 24 hour news cycle which doesn't exist anymore. news is a constant stream now and expected to be by the viewing public. immediacy is key and that doesn't happen with a product that has to lock in their news the previous afternoon, get printed and shipped in the wee hours of the morning. newspaper people need to get over that, and should have a decade ago.

while immediacy is paramount in the news business, the quality of journalism is what should continue to be the hallmark and still has a place in society and media today. it's melding the two into a new product which better meets consumer needs that is their future.

so what did i posit in 2000 as a possible and viable solution? i needn't look much further than my geek side and star trek: the next generation. no, not phasers to wipe out the arrogant old guard newspaper barons, but the data padds (yes, i'm spelling it right).

i'm not saying this is a revolutionary thought, but back then i did think it was forward thinking, but now well outside of the dream phase.

already we have the amazon kindle and a host of other reading devices. some papers even have editions available for it like the new york times. it's a step, but why did they wait for someone else to do it? why did they make their content fit someone else's platform rather than creating their own? newspapers have always created the vehicle for their content delivery, right?

beyond the kindle, here's a couple other emerging technologies that are options as well. forbes took the leap with this new e-ink as a disposable version, so certainly there is a reusable option.


granted, it's easy in hindsight, with the benefit of seeing where technology took us, to see what newspapers could have done. but that's the point, right? these things didn't happen over night, and with a little foresight, could have been tapped into earlier. there are smarter people than myself and if it occurred to me nearly 10 years ago, surely it must have for someone else too.

we are just seeing this technology emerge now because scientists are developing it to find applications for it. had newspapers stepped in to lend some of their considerable resources (although greatly diminished as of late, but there was money years ago) for development with a specific purpose, it's quite likely that it would have come faster. they could already be in market with some derivation of this and we wouldn't be having all these conversations about their demise.

now it's 2009 and we have iphones, other smartphones, kindles, and other personal digital devices. it's infinitely more difficult now to break into the handheld space and it becomes harder to ask consumers to adopt yet another device. if they were leaders though, there wouldn't be this added hurdle. although, with a quality, low cost device, there is still plenty of room for consumer uptake.

what of cost? i would think it'd have to be free, but as this technology continues to come down in price, it becomes much more fiscally prudent. especially if you can lock people into subscriptions to pay the device costs over time. it works for cell phones.

then there's what makes the whole newspaper world go round, advertising. that's right editors, it's not the purity of news reporting, it's the dirty world of selling things. sorry. here lies a tremendous amount of opportunity for marketers to capitalize on that printed publicaitons fall on their face. how so? glad you asked:

1. interactivity - the ads in the space would no longer be static and thus more engaging
2. measurement - being able to directly and far more precisely understand the audience and actual readership
3. linkable - simply being able to click through to an advertiser is a huge boon
4. current - messages no longer have to be expensively developed and locked in far in advance
5. lower cost - newspapers are notoriously high in cost because the printing and distribution is passed on to the advertiser, not the reader, and this is a far less expensive delivery system

it probably sounds like i'm oversimplifying this, but it doesn't seem that far of a stretch to me. pretty logical, really. anything's better than death, right? for all their smarts in delivering a superior information product, they certainly are myopic of their own predicament.

i feel compelled to lastly address people's long standing adherence to the notion that the tactile nature of newspapers (and any printed medium) is of benefit to people and something they are willing to give up. i guess it's true so long as people like, cumbersome sized pages, low quality paper, rub-off ink and lower production quality imagery (ie. blurry or just b&w). this is just another old school belief. newspapers are failing because young people are not adopting due to their needs not being met by newspapers. that attitude doesn't resonate with them. they have more important things to worry about than feeling newsprint between their fingers.

update: here's an article that makes it pretty clear this model could succeed. 

the more commercial guitar hero

i picked up the guitar hero world tour set for our wii over the holidays. great addition to the series, but one that was clearly marked with it's commercial success. of course i'm talking about all the advertising that is very visible throughout.

the first instance is as soon as you open the case, a coupon from kfc.


then throughout the gameplay you're peppered with a number of other placements like the coke and kfc bucket below.


as someone in advertising, these efforts are all good in my book. video games have emerged as a mainstream vehicle, whose viability as a new medium is very clear. i say all this with one caveat of course, and that's relevance. there's a place for everything and marketers have to find the right ones or else it's wasted money and consumer dissonance.

the examples above are well suited, in my mind, to the environment you find them in. kudos to those companies, they did a good job. but then there's the flops. also featured in the game is a prominent sign for at&t (i wish i could get a picture to show you, but there's not a still frame to take something of quality). i don't see what place it has in a video game about rock and roll. there's a disconnect, and it's not integrated within the game or story as the others.

it's our responsibility as marketers and agencies to find appropriate venues for our products to be placed. just because it is a hot game, on an emerging platform doesn't mean we should get involved blindly because on paper i makes sense to form some, even loose association. sure there's eyeballs, but what's the quality of your implementation?

i see three main guardrails we all should adhere to so we don't ruin the space and make our efforts just more wallpaper.

1. relevance: does the product or service have a legitimate place within the theme or story of the game? does it fit environmentally?
   
2. value: does it enhance the the user's experience and give them something they might actually want?
3. integration: is the product or service inserted in a way that is thoughtful and not just slapped on?

there's so much opportunity in video games that has yet to be realized, but just jumping to it without thinking hard about how we do it isn't a recipe for success. it is a highly immersive and interactive medium and that is where success lies. by it's very nature, the audience is ripe, but only if it's handled with care because it's also very personal.

auto bailout bust

so the auto industry bailout didn't get through congress. finally a little restraint from washington. although $14 billion in restraint is really nothing compared to $700 billion in non-restraint. though i would have liked the bill to have failed on lacking fiscal responsibility, i know it was pro-union backers that caused it to fail. the message i wished this sent was letting everyone know that the government is not here for handouts and the populace is not the benefactors of troubled companies.

the one part of the auto bailout that i supported was in saving the hundreds of thousands of direct jobs (and million indirect jobs) from being lost because of a few irresponsible executives. much like the financial bailout, the part of that i supported was not putting people out because of questionable actions by senior management. the many should not have to suffer for the sins of the few and such en masse failings are problematic. i have no problem with people losing their mortgages or jobs in the normal course of things, but when it happens instantaneously in such large quantities, then that impact is more than a ripple in the ocean.

what would have been a better option is not putting money back into businesses with inferior products, faulty decision making and legacy systems/contracts/obligations rather set aside a fund for the employees when the big three eventual file for bankruptcy. in all likelihood, the big three will, in some form, live on post-bankruptcy and those jobs will be available again. the bailout should be to support those unfortunate folks put out by incompetent companies and not prop up those companies.

yes it's socialist and i wouldn't call myself as such, but it's more logical than giving it to bad companies who've shown little responsibility in a storm brewing for decades. the fund would be run by some kind of trust designed to support auto worker families, providing them a stable and reasonable income (ie. not to the excessive levels of union wages) until the company they worked for is back up and running. the key is that in this eventuality, there are guarantees and the companies work toward operations again with the same employees in mind.

i liken the whole situation to a junkie. a bailout is just enabling them further. junkies need to hit rock bottom and staving off death with free money doesn't allow you to hit rock bottom, it's just another hit. junkies won't change until there is no other option and detroit won't change either if they are allowed to continue with their ways.

to me, bankruptcy is the only option. a controlled, assured bankruptcy (if there is one) is the only future that will make real change. this will allow them to shed management who have led these companies to their current state, foster more innovation, collapse the crippling unions, and repair their ailing bank accounts. sure, i make it sound simple, and i know it's not. but drastic measures, that doesn't include the term bailout, is just realism.

will this rejection force the bankruptcy issue or will it spur on a diametric shift in their thinking to turn it around? i don't know, but it needs to be extreme.