Prisoners of Progress

For all the badmouthing I do about gross materialism, I am simply apeshit about all of the amazing crap we humans have made via the Industrial Revolution!

— Nick Offerman

An antique engraving graces our family-room. It's one of my favorite possessions.

The engraving depicts the birthplace of George Stephenson, the English engineer who, according to the engraving's caption, "devoted his powerful mind to the construction of the locomotive." A Victorian family gathers in front of the lowly cottage, there to celebrate "the commencement and development of the mighty railway system."

Stephenson was a hero to the Victorians, an innovator akin to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs today. His 1813 invention "induced the most wonderful effects, not only for this country, but for the world," the engraving says.

Railroads made it possible in the 19th century for people, products and raw materials to move overland great distances, and to do so cheaply and rapidly. 

We're so callous in our time, we complain when Amazon's free delivery service runs a day late. How absurd is that?

'Tis the season for mass consumption: for mornings, noons and nights at the mall; towers of empty boxes at the curbside; trashcans overstuffed with trees and wreathes and plastic packaging; trips to southern beaches; gifts for people you don't even like.

Can this way of life possibly be sustainable?

Whether it is or isn't, one thing's for sure: we're all prisoners of progress.

By that I mean to say what the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger said so well in his 1954 essay, "The Question Concerning Technology."

Heidegger believed the Industrial Revolution marked a radically new age for the human race: a time in history when nature has come to mean resources; and to be to mean to be consumable.

The absolute power of technology, Heidegger said, swamps the human being, because technology reveals all existence—the universe—to be no more than "raw material." 

Everything is inventory, stuff, crap. Crap to be extracted; crap to be requisitioned; crap to be assembled, packaged, shipped, opened, exchanged, consumed; crap to be discarded.

Technology "attacks everything that is," Heidegger said, "nature, history, humans, and divinities.”

And just as the railroad shrinks distance, technology shrinks mankind. 

It boxes us in and makes us pygmies, constricting our experiences to "brand experiences" and denying us connections to things as they once seemed: sources of wonder.

Today, we no longer wonder. We only want and want and want.

What a paltry fate.

Note: You can read more about Heidegger's thoughts on technology in my essay here. I also recommend Nick Offerman's fun new book, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play.

Above: The Birth-Place of the Locomotive. Published 1862 by Henry Graves & Co., Publishers to the Queen, London.

Fluff

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

— Mark Twain

Verbose writing is frilly, flowery, frivolous and fluff-brained. A thing, at all costs, to avoid.

But some fluff is tasty.

Take, for example, the kind used to make a Fluffernutter.

The Fluffernutter was invented in by one Emma Curtis, who with her brother began making and marketing Snowflake Marshmallow Crème in 1913 in their home-state of Massachusetts.

The great-great-great-granddaughter of Paul Revere, Emma knew to keep watch on her competitors, of which there were scores.

To outdo them, she published brochures packed with recipes for marshmallow-crème treats, and advertised the brochures in newspapers and on radio. 

One, published in the middle of World War I, contained Emma's short recipe for the Liberty, a marshmallow crème and peanut butter sandwich.

The Liberty became her all-time hit.

But, sadly, Emma was not to reap all its rewards.

A local competitor, Durkee-Mower, trumped Emma, not by running ads, but by sponsoring an entire radio show. 

Named The Flufferettes, it aired in the half-hour spot before The Jack Benny Show and featured comedy, music, and recipes—including the recipe for the Liberty.

In 1960, Durkee-Mower's ad agency renamed Emma's sandwich The Fluffernutter, and rest, as we say, is history.

Thanks, Mom!

Necessity is the mother of invention.

— Plato

What better day than today to celebrate Necessity?

Wartime shortages of chocolate in 1938 prompted Italian pastry maker Pietro Ferrero to find a substitute. 

After months of trial and error, Pietro hit upon the winning recipe: mix one part coconut butter with five parts hazelnut oil and five parts molasses; add a smidgen of cocoa.

Pietro's brother Giovanni was so impressed, he formed a company to sell Pietro's "Super Cream" throughout Italy, Germany, Austria, France and Belgium.

Today we call Super Cream by another name. 

Nutella.

According to Plato, Necessity was the goddess of fortune.

She rules the cosmos by wielding a giant spindle that her three daughters, The Fates, perpetually rotate.

Picture the planets and stars orbiting Earth and you get the idea.

Not only do they spin heavenly bodies, The Fates also weave destinies.

When you die, you appear before Necessity's throne and request of the Fates your next incarnation. 

You can return as a king, a courtier, a commoner, a peasant, or even a pet or wild animal. 

Myself, I hope to return as a Kardashian.

So while the Fates are in charge of every individual's destiny, Necessity is in charge of the whole shebang.

Which is why we should celebrate her today.

Late Friday, the FDA approved an antigen test invented by Quidel Corporation. It detects in only minutes whether you're infected by Covid-19.

The new test gives the nation's healthcare workers the tool they've so desperately needed.

Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

Thanks, Mom!

Published Mother's Day 2020.

Fond Memories of a Forgotten Industry

If you want to know where the future goes to be seen, look here.

― Charles Pappas

Charles Pappas, reporter for Exhibitor, has compiled a lighthearted treasury of trade show tales titled Flying Cars, Zombie Dogs, and Robot Overlords: How World's Fairs and Trade Expos Changed the World. 

It's a whimsical wayback machine that whirls you through a century and a half of gadgets and the shows that made them famous.

Pappas' goal isn't to spotlight the stars, but the stage. 

Although worth about $100 billion today, trade shows are a forgotten industry, he says, "as invisible as the oxygen in the air around us."

And that's ironic because shows are much more than "product platforms," Pappas says: they help launch social movements.

You'll find tons of delightful trivia inside his 250 pages.

Among my favorite:

• We owe our obsession with dinosaurs to an 1851 London show
  
  
• We eat bananas because an 1876 Philadelphia show popularized them
  
  
• The seed money for the Statue of Liberty came from shows in Paris and Philadelphia
  
  
• Aunt Jemima owes her fame to an 1893 Chicago show
  
  
• The electric vibrator premiered at a 1900 Paris show (where else?)
  
  
• The Patriotic Food Show promoted eating roadkill to help ration food in 1918
  
  
• Space travel launched at a 1927 show in Moscow (30 years before Sputnik)
  
  
• Picasso's "Guernica" began life as a trade show mural
  
  
• The run on Nylon stockings began at the 1939 New York show
  
  
• The term "Con" (as in Comic-Con) was coined by the same promoter who coined "Sci-Fi"

Pappas' book suffers from the author's overuse of puns, but they're easily overlooked amid the fascinating stories he tells. 

Don't miss Flying Cars, Zombie Dogs, and Robot Overlords. It's a lot of fun.

On Labor and Genius

A map of the world that does not include Utopia
is not worth even glancing at.

— Oscar Wilde

Not only will it drive innovation and equality, a universal basic income will spark genius. Or so thought Oscar Wilde.

In his 1891 essay, "The Soul of Man under Socialism," Wilde envisioned a world where automation relieves everyone from work; and a guaranteed income, from competition, "that sordid necessity of living for others."

Spared work and competition, everyone is free "to realize the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world."

In a world without work and competition, everyone "is perfectly and absolutely himself"—free to be, Wilde says, an ingenious individual. Poet or scientist, student or shepherd, playwright or theologian, fisherman or child, "it does not matter what he is," Wilde says, "as long as he realizes the perfection of the soul that is within him."

We'd call it authenticity.

Wilde also thought accumulated wealth to be a "nuisance," because its possession "involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother."

Accumulated wealth drags down the wealthy, because "the true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is," Wilde says.

"In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it."

Stirred, Not Shaken

An angel investor and a tradeshow producer, Marco Giberti and Jay Weintraub, have pooled their considerable talents to write the 185-page book The Face of Digital, a look-see into the turbulent tradeshow industry and the changes that will be wrought by technology in the coming five years―a time they agree "will redefine the way we think of digital media in connection with live events."

Tradeshows, "the original social networks," can stand a stirring, the authors insist. Exhibitors, who foot the bills, cannot calculate ROI; and attendees, shows' raisons d'etre, can barely navigate them.

But the improvements wrought by tech will be gentle, the authors say.

"The events industry is not ripe for a disruption, in the mold of Uber or Airbnb," they write. "Instead, it's more likely that hundreds, even thousands, of small players will emerge to solve individual problems."

Among the problems solved by digital technology:

• No attendee will ever again stand in a line to get in; apps will let them buy their badges weeks in advance, in seconds.

• No attendee will ever again feel lost in a crowd; apps will signal when friends are nearby.

• No one will waste time scrutinizing inscrutable signs; apps will recommend the best path to the next booth you want to visit.

• No attendee will ever miss a speaker's session; livestreaming will let her watch it on demand.

• No attendee will ever go home empty-handed; matchmaking apps will connect her to other attendees and exhibitors even after the show.

• Exhibitors will no longer pay a penny for drayage; products will be demonstrated in virtual reality.

• Follow-up will no longer be dismal; CRM systems will automate and personalize the activity.

• Exhibitors will no longer grouse about foot-traffic; beacons will smooth crowd-flows.

• Rainforests will no longer fear tradeshows; digital will replace paper exchanges 100%.

The solutions to these problems aren't imaginary, the authors point out: they exist now. 

Tradeshow producers just don't know it―or care much.

"Like the newspaper industry," they write, "the events industry is still very much in transition between the predigital age and an era in which digital integration will become commonplace in every aspect of our lives and businesses."

But competition against digital marketing for exhibitors' dollars will wake complacent producers up, just in time for "the Cambrian explosion of digital tools for events."

Giberti and Weintraub's book is a must-read for every tradeshow producer and exhibitor, as well as anyone whose livelihood is derived from face-to-face. Their viewpoints are sensible and admirably realistic.

My own is that the changes ahead will be less incremental; that the tradeshow business is less like the newspaper business and more like the apartment-rental one; and that an Airbnd-ish "disruptor" lurks just over the horizon.

Yes, tradeshow producers have a lock on things for the moment.

But, as James Bond might say, the industry's about to be "shaken, not stirred."

At the Zoo

Are mammoth trade shows dropping like flies?

That's what AmEx predicts in its new 84-page report, 2017 Global Meetings and Events Forecast.

Companies' event marketing spend won't change next year, but where that money's spent will, according to the report.

Event marketers' spend will increase by 1% in 2017, while their participation in big North American trade shows will decrease by 20% (the average event marketer will participate in 8 of those shows next year, down from 10).

Event marketers will spend the money they would have spent on those big events on small, content-rich ones, instead.

Presaging next year's downturn, four flagship shows recently shuttered: ASAE's Springtime, CTIA's Super Mobility Week, FMI's Connect, and NCTA's INTX.

Which big fossils will be next to sing a swan song?

Event-industry journalist Michael Hart recently observed that, right now, tortoise-like associations are exceedingly vulnerable to their hare-like counterparts, the for-profit organizers, as more money chases fewer events.

While associations dither, "Nimble players can swoop in and launch a competing 'pop-up,' worrying little about legacy issues and more about profits," Hart wrote.

It's time for associations to give up the ostrich-act and take the bull by the horns. There's simply no time to monkey around.

Learn to ape your for-profit competitors!

Resistance

When you're through changing, you're through.

— Bruce Barton

Resistance to change.

A psychologist would say fear of loss is behind it.

A Neoplatonist would say the devil is.

An inner voice advises you: Beware. Go slow. Back off. Give in. You're swamped. Next week. Next month. Next quarter. Next year.

What—or who—do you blame?

Boots

Here's to the bootstrappers, those entrepreneurs who make do on a shoestring. They sustain the American Dream.

Here's to the bootleggers, the copycats who ride the backs of first-movers and make them look good.

And here's to the bootlickers, without whose undying service there'd be no room for bootstrapping or bootlegging.

It doesn't much matter which pair you wear, but only that others will ask, "Who'll fill her boots when she's gone?"

Due to Lack of Interest, the Future Has Been Canceled

Almost a score of years before the Allies were deadlocked on the western front, a Polish banker foresaw with uncanny accuracy the coming of trench fighting. But the war offices and the general staffs paid no attention to his predictions. As always, they were preparing for the last war.

The Washington Post, November 1936

Are there grim signposts among all the green shoots?

Just days before its doors were to open, Future of Events, a first-time trade show slated for late August in Amsterdam, was canceled due to lack of interest. The organizer has filed for bankruptcy.

Grim predictions of irrelevancy surround the producers of large trade shows, but most—like the war offices and general staffs—pay no heed. They're too busy preparing for the last war.

The new war is being waged to win over GenXers and Millennials.

Boomers' tactics won’t work.

Entering Adjacencies and Bringing It All Back Home

"Entering adjacencies has become the growth strategy du jour," Ken Favaro says in Strategy+Business.

Some companies aren't good at it (remember Harley-Davidson's Men's Colognes or United' Airlines' TED?); others excel (Apple's iPhone and Disney's Cruise Line are examples).

The danger in entering adjacencies is “averaging down,” Favoro says. You may subsist in two markets, but you won't be exceptional in either.

Do people face the same danger when they stray from their core competence?

"We often stop surprising ourselves (and the market) not because we're no good anymore, but because we are good," Seth Godin says. "So good that we avoid opportunities that bring possibility."

Opening yourself to possibility may very well court danger:

• The New York Times lambasted an exhibit of Bob Dylan's paintings."The color is muddy, the brushwork scratchily dutiful, the images static and postcard-ish. The work is dead on the wall."
  

• In its review of Jon Stewart's feature film Rosewater, NPR said, "Stewart shows no signs that he can handle such tonally complex material."
  

• Paul Simon's Broadway musical The Capeman opened to universally poor reviews and ran for less two months. The New York Times said, "The show registers as one solemn, hopelessly confused drone."
  

• Hans von Bülow called one of Friedrich Nietzsche's musical compositions “the most undelightful and the most antimusical draft on musical paper that I have faced in a long time.”

Compared to the artists' other work, these missteps fairly stink (a lot like Harley-Davidson Cologne). But they prove the artists aren't afraid to change, take risks, or be a bit incompetent.

"Competent people have a predictable, reliable process for solving a particular set of problems," Godin says. "They solve a problem the same way, every time. That's what makes them reliable. That's what makes them competent."

But competent people hate change—even though change opens possibilities of fresh perspectives, disruptions and breakthroughs—because it threatens their reputations.

For people, entering adjacencies—opening to possibility and taking a flyer—is a lot like foreign travel. 

It may very well bring you back home to what you do, not just competently, but masterfully.

A case in point: Before he directed the drama Interiors, Woody Allen spent a decade mastering popular low-comedy films like Take the Money and Run and Sleepers. While loathed by critics (The New Yorker called it an "achievement of suffocating emptiness"), Interiors was immediately followed by 38 years of award-winning comedies.

Bye Bye Love

ToutApp CEO "TK" Towhead Kader, who prides himself on "operational ruthlessness," is through with events; or, at least, with other people's events (OPE).

"If you’re attending any of the sales conferences this year, you may notice a distinct absence of a ToutApp booth," he says.

OPE have proven a heart-breaker. "As we looked back at our marketing spend in the past year, we couldn’t help but notice how paid speaking arrangements, booths, and sponsorships accounted for a lot of our spend but not a lot of attribution to closed business or real pipeline," TK says.

The CEO is diverting his company's spend on OPE "to things that have worked 10x better."

What are those things? Proprietary events (PE).

"We’ll invest in our own events in association with people we love," TK says.

"With all the money we save, we’ll spend that money to invest back into our product, pay our employees at competitive rates, and net-net, be an operationally ruthless company."

Innovation's in Our Bones

Whenever I despair of our species, I remember that innovation is in our bones and such a marvelous thing, as two case studies illustrate.

Case Study No. 1

For the past 15 years, UPS drivers have been forbidden to turn left.

That's because company engineers discovered in 2001 that left-hand turns were inefficient, as a UPS spokesman told Fortune.

Left-hand turns wasted time and money.

So the engineers used GPS software to re-route drivers, eliminating left-hand turns.

The move—annually—shaved 20 million miles off drivers' routes; increased deliveries by 350,000 packages; saved 10 million gallons of gas; and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20,000 metric tons.

Case Study No. 2

In 1940, film comedian W.C. Fields built an exercise room in his Hollywood home. 

He equipped the room with a stationary bike, a rowing machine and a steam cabinet, and hired a personal trainer to help him get buff.

Fields followed the trainer's instructions faithfully, but added touches of his own.

As directed, Fields dressed in sweats and mounted the stationary bike for long rides; but also drank several martinis en route.

He would work out in the rowing machine, but drink gin and sing sea chanteys while at it.

And he'd sit in the steam cabinet for an hour, sipping highballs the whole time.

"This is wonderful—these workouts are going to increase my liquor consumption two or three hundred percent!" Fields told the trainer.

Flight to Safety

A stock sell-off/bond buy-up by jittery investors is known on Wall Street as a "flight to safety."

A different kind of flight to safety takes place every hour on every street, at every workplace, in every town in America.

A colleague told me yesterday he was leaving a good company because his marketing ideas—which produced considerable results—don't "fit the culture."

A Cornell study reveals that company leaders often reject new ideas not because the ideas don’t have potential, but because the leaders themselves lack the guts to face risk and uncertainty.

It gets worse. 

When cautious leaders quash new ideas, the study says, they do so unconsciously. 

Their fear actually blinds them to the ideas.

No wonder 7 of 10 workers aren't engaged.

As adman Leo Burnett said, "To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas."

5 Big Tips for Better Mobile Marketing

Sophorn Chhay contributed today's post. He is the inbound marketer at Trumpia, a mobile content delivery service that lets users customize their one-to-one marketing.

Sure, you might have a mobile marketing plan. But is it innovative?

In 2016, run-of-the-mill approaches won't take you very far; and, although most mobile marketers follow year-long plans, the fact is effective mobile marketing requires constant innovation.

If you want to stay ahead, check out the following tips, guaranteed to boost your results.

Tip One: Get Tight with Video Ads

Today, 80 percent of Internet users carry smartphones, and buyers are responding to video ads at alarming rates. You can benefit massively from video advertising.

Tip Two: Get Automated with SMS

Did you know you can automate your own SMS campaigns? Better yet, you can segment your audience and shoot out customized text messages. To get automated with SMS, contact a trustworthy provider. Textpedite, among others, streamlines the process.

Tip Three: Distribute an App

Americans currently spend more time using mobile apps than they do watching television. By incorporating an app into your plans, you'll give your brand greater meaning. Marketers are already reworking their entire strategies around apps (airlines, for example, are offering “nearby eatery” apps to frequent flyers). But make your app count, if you want to see it used.

Tip Four: Gain Data from SMS Surveys

Feedback means a lot to customers, and it's easy to conduct business when you know your customers' wants, needs and buying habits. SMS surveys procure a wealth of data and can garner otherwise unobtainable feedback.

Tip Five: Create a Social Campaign

In today’s mobile world, antisocial companies drop like flies, while companies like Starbucks win big. The brand’s “Race Together” and “Create Jobs for the USA” campaigns proved that promoting altruistic causes works. Sure, goodwill is a byproduct of powerful business practices; but it’s also a byproduct of social outreach.

Random Fandom

Random fandom—the trait philosopher Bertrand Russell quaintly labels "zest"—is the sign of the happy camper.

You can be a fan of almost anything—foods, wines, games, cameras, books, birds, rocks, plants, people, countries, cultures—and it will light your fire, Russell says in The Conquest of Happiness.

The more, the merrier.

"The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities for happiness he has and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another," Russell says.

"Life is too short to be interested in everything, but it is good to be interested in as many things as are necessary to fill our days."

Newspaperman George Allen said, "Have a variety of interests. These interests relax the mind and lessen tension on the nervous system. People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest."

2 Monkeys Wrote 50 Headlines: See Which Worked Best

When it comes to novel ideas, less isn't more, Adam Grant says in Originals.

"Many people fail to achieve originality because they generate a few ideas and then obsess about refining them to perfection," Grant says.

But originality take tonnage.

"Quantity is the most predictable path to quality," Grants says.

He cites the case of two copywriters employed by Upwworthy.

Each wrote headlines for a video depicting monkeys receiving food as a reward.

Some were good. One was gold.

The headline "Remember Planet of the Apes? It's Closer than Your Think," for example, drew 8,000 viewers.

The headline "2 Monkeys Were Paid Unequally: See What Happens Next" drew 500,000.

Upworthy in fact has a house rule: You must write 25 headlines.

You need to unearth tons of debris to discover a diamond.

"It's only after we've ruled out the obvious that we have the greatest freedom to consider the more remote possibilities," Grant says.

The first twenty-four headlines may be lousy, but the twenty-fifth "will be a gift from the headline gods."

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

The Ocean State's marketing captain has been fired by the governor for sinking 10% of the state's $4.5 million budget into a new logo.

Betsy Wall paid famed designer Milton Glaser $400,000 for his work. She poured another $150,000 into logo pre-tests.

Glaser's tab included the tagline Rhode Island: Cooler & Warmer, which the governor has also deep-sixed.

Glaser, the power behind the Dylan Poster and I Love New York, seemed the right man for the job—until media scrutiny took the wind out of his client's sails.

Wall's spending spree hit the front page of The Providence Journal and put the governor on treacherous seas.

"It is unacceptable how many mistakes were made in this roll-out, and we need to hold people accountable because Rhode Islanders deserve better," the governor told the paper.

The day before she was fired, Wall told Adweek she wanted to make a splash with Glaser.

"The Milton Glaser art, that is not your typical state logo," Wall told Adweek. "If you look at what other states have on their websites, it isn't usually true art like that, it isn't usually so thought provoking and inspiring. I can't think of another state, besides obviously New York, that would think to bring in somebody like Milton Glaser."

The storm's just politics, in my book.

In the early 1980s, I spent $450,000 for my employer's new logo.

No one lost her job.

Decades later, a version is still in use.

Welcome to Indenture

Employers who recruit a lot of recent grads are luring them with a new perk: student loan repayment.

Bloomberg reports that investment and consulting firms like Nataxis and   PricewaterhouseCoopers will pony up as much as $250 a month toward a candidate's college debt.

McKinsey, Bain Capital and Accenture will also pay down employees' student debt, according to The Wall Street Journal.

If you're willing to provide seed money, we can jump on the bandwagon and start up our own firm to compete with Accenture.

Indenture.

A pillar of colonial America, indenture (a version of "enforced servitude") underwrote the tobacco economy in the Chesapeake region.

Under the system, an Englishman who sought a clean start in America signed a contract that promised he'd repay his master for ship fare, clothing, and room and board by laboring for seven years. 

Women also signed the contracts.

The word indenture refers to an indentation made on each contract. When it was drawn, two copies were made. One copy was then placed over the other and an edge indented.

As a result, master and servant could always spot whether a copy might be forged (often the end-date would be changed by one or the other party.)

On a serious note: Burdensome debt is no laughing matter. It drives in part the popularity of Bernie Sanders among Millennials. As one Boomer told a group of college students, “Your generation’s debt is our generation’s draft."

Over. Not Over.

Why buy sunglasses at Walmart when there's Warby Parker?

Metrosexuals' buying habits mean retail giants are “overstored,” says The Washington Post.

Retail space, which mushroomed before the Great Recession, is growing at a pace slower than that of the US population, while retailers like Macy's and Jos. A. Bank shutter stores left and right.

But closing stores isn't the same as closing shop:

• Walmart, for example, will close 269 stores this year; but it will also open 300 new stores; and spend billions on a new e-commerce operation. 

• Williams-Sonoma and other specialty chains will aim for a "sweet spot" of around 250 stores, while drawing more sales from e-com. 

• Chains like Burlington Coat Factory will chop not the number, but the size, of their stores, packing "the entire assortment in a smaller box." 

• Staples will repurpose its real estate by adding shared office spaces to stores. 

• Sears will sublet space to Nordstrom Rack and Dick’s Sporting Goods. 

As retail giants abandon shopping centers, nontraditional tenants like restaurants, gyms and health clinics will fill the space, according to analysts. 

European retailers will also begin to appear on the scene in large numbers.

HAT TIP: Michael Hatch led me to the Post article.