Wintry Discontent

I get terrorists.  

But why does someone who's not politically minded relentlessly bully schoolmates, shoot up a theater, drive a speeding car into a crowd, or hike the price of a life-saving drug 5,500 percent?

Pessimism. A First World problem, if ever there was one.

In The Conquest of Happiness, philosopher Bertrand Russell devotes a chapter to pessimism, a feeling he has little patience for.

Pessimism, he says, "is born of a too easy satisfaction of natural needs."

When too much falls into your lap, struggle, "an essential ingredient of happiness," ends; and, with it, desire.

"The man who acquires easily things for which he feels only a very moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not bring happiness. 

"If he is of a philosophic disposition, he concludes that human life is essentially wretched, since the man who has all he wants is still unhappy. 

"He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."

Content is Kaput

Many content-crazy marketers have lost their zeal, according to the Content Marketing Institute's 2016 Content Marketing Budgets and Trends.

Institute founder Joe Pulizzi predicts, "Now is when we will witness the greatest content marketing failures of all time."

Their disaffection was predictable.

"Lots of companies bought into the hype and started what they thought was content marketing," Pulizzi says. 

But these companies "either didn't have a strategy or didn't execute it well… or both," and have already moved on, in search of another magic bullet.

Will they ever learn the difference between idea and execution?

In my brief time, I've been told in no uncertain terms that advertising was dead, direct marketing was dead, email marketing was dead, PR was dead, telemarketing was dead, and trade-show marketing was dead.

Now content marketing has joined the angels.

Rest in peace.

Disruption is for Idiots

Technology journalist Michelle Bruno's most recent article, "What Disruption Really Looks Like," prompted me to phone her. 

In the course of our conversation, she asked me why tech company executives—disruption's tireless cheerleaders—so often rest on their laurels.

In my answer, I fell back on one of my favorite words, hidebound.

Tech company execs who succeed, with few exceptions, turn hidebound; and their standpatism leaves their companies exposed.

Hidebound is often applied to larger-than-life figures of military history.

Major General Ambrose Burnside, a West Point-trained insider, was one.

In December 1862, he caused 13,000 casualties in one day, when he threw his troops against Robert E. Lee's entrenched Confederates in two assaults at Fredericksburg.

Burnside wasn't an idiot. He simply assumed he could use tactics that had worked for his century's greatest soldier, Napoleon. But Napoleon's soldiers faced smoothbore muskets, not rifles.

Too bad he wasn't an idiot.

Like all West Point insiders of his day, Burnside was blind to the effect of a disruptive change in technology.

Idiot comes from the Latin word idiota, an "outsider."

Disruption takes an idiot: an outsider unschooled in the assumptions, unversed in the tactics, and unacquainted with the rules, the business models, and even the names of the players.

The insiders are all hidebound.

Disclosure: The hero of Michelle Bruno's extraordinary story is my employer.

Do Long Engagements Lead to Marriage?

In the penultimate scene of When Harry Met Sally, Billy Crystal tells Meg Ryan, "When you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as quickly as possible."

As we know from chick flicks, long engagements don't usually lead to marriage.

Only in the Bizarro World of the web does anyone promise otherwise.

Advocates of long-form content insist long pieces lead to long engagements; long engagements, to sales.

How long? 

Their tests show 1,500 words are good; 2,000, better; 2,500, best.

But Kevin Delaney, editor-in-chief of the news blog Quartz, thinks differently.

As he told RetailDive, most long-form content is padded with uninteresting, B-grade matter.

“What people read online, when you look at the data, is shorter stuff that’s focused, creative and social with a really good headline. It doesn’t mean it’s unsubstantial. It just means it’s really clear about what’s interesting and focuses on that."

Long's fine, provided it's riveting; when it isn't, you want it to stop as quickly as possible.

As critic Roger Ebert once wrote, "No good movie is too long, just as no bad movie is short enough."

7 Required Reading Containers for Every Marketer

Need that perfect gift for the marketer in your life?

Try a reading container (book).

Here are my top seven picks for the year:

Daily Rituals. Mason Currey's little book delivers an enchanting look at the work-habits of nearly 200 composers, filmmakers, novelists, philosophers, playwrights, painters and poets.

Email Marketing Rules. Moses took four decades to write his laws. So we should be grateful it's taken only half that time for someone to codify the rules of email marketing. Chad White's encyclopedic treatment is a must-read.

The Content Code. Mark Schaefer makes all the other social media gurus look like chumps. Want to crack the code? Crack open this book! And if you want more social media marketing secrets, read Jeffrey Rohrs' Audience.

Communicate to Influence. Speech coach to the stars Ben Decker shares his secret method for swaying any audience. Learn why triads are the "perfect framework" for sales pitches, product launches, motivational talks and business briefings.

Trust Me, I'm Lying. Media manipulator Ryan Holiday's book does for the Internet what The Jungle did for meat packing. Trust me, you'll never read Business Insider, The Daily Beast, Drudge Report, BuzzFeed, Politico or Huffington Post with credulity again.

Writing Tools. Roy Peter Clark's advice to writers, simply put, is the best book of its kind. And if you want to really impress the marketer in your life, pair it with a copy of William Blundell's classic, The Art and Craft of Feature Writing.

Born to Blog. Blogs are foundational to social success, and Mark Schaefer's street-smart advice is priceless.