Thoughts We Hate

Washington, DC's Metro this week removed transit ads placed by Milo Yiannopoulos for his new book, Dangerous.

Riders complained via Twitter the ads from the former editor of Breitbart News had no place in public.

The transit agency defended its action by claiming the ads violated its advertising guidelines.

“Advertisements that are intended to influence public policy are prohibited,” Metro said, although it decorates trains and stations endlessly with public-policy ads.

In a statement, Yiannopoulos asked Metro officials, "Is my face a hate crime?"

Until last month, a Constitutional lawyer (I'm not one) might argue, "Yes."

But the Supreme Court says differently.

In June, it unanimously ruled disparagement of minorities— Yiannopoulos' stock in trade—is protected under the First Amendment.

Justice Samuel Alito, in Matal v. Tam, wrote that government restrictions on speech expressing offensive ideas "strikes at the heart of the First Amendment.

"Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express 'the thought that we hate.'”

A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Educate

I love the poorly educated!

— Donald Trump

A new national survey by Pew Research shows a majority of Republicans (58%) believe colleges and universities are wrecking America.

That attitude is new.

Only two years ago, 54% said colleges and universities were good for the country.

On the other hand, that attitude is old—as old as the nation.

I still remember from high school the tough-love lessons of historian Richard Hofstadter's book (new at the time), Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.

Hofstadter equated intellectualism with Cartesian doubt.

Intellectualism, he said, "is sensitive to nuances and sees things in degrees. It is essentially relativist and skeptical, but at the same time circumspect and humane."

Its opposite—anti-intellectualism—is fundamentalist intransigence.

And that kind of pig-headedness, according to Hofstadter, underpins the "egalitarian sentiments of this country."

Anti-intellectualism gave America Joseph McCarthy, Billy Sunday, Charles Coughlin, George Lincoln Rockwell, Jenny McCarthy and scores of other snake-oil peddlers—blowhards celebrated for being commanding and intransigent.

And, yes, anti-intellectualism gave us Donald Trump.

Tackling the Stack

Events may at long last have the CMO's attention—deservedly so, since they consume up to 60% of the marketing budget at most B2B companies.

That's because event tech is transforming the analog meeting into a full-scale "digital production."

So much so, CMOs now face a formidable "event tech stack," a digital gauntlet comprising CRM systems; email delivery platforms; event websites; online communities; registration systems; event personalization platforms; onsite networks; session scanning and survey tools; audience engagement, second-screen, and polling systems; beacons and sensors; games; event apps; lead retrieval systems; learning management systems; social media suites; analytic suites; and vendor sourcing and travel management systems.

That's a ton of tech to choose from and "B2B marketers sometimes need 12 different tools to run an event," says Alon Alroy, CMO of Bizzabo.

A new conference launches this month to help marketers tackle the stack.

Transform USA promises to help attendees develop a "coherent data and digital strategy," according to its founder, Denzil Rankine.

Geared to event producers, Transform USA offers "practical takeaways for their strategies for their organizations, and for the partnerships that they should be operating," Rankine recently told Convene.

Transforming a meeting into a digital production sounds really sexy. And the big-data metrics, personalization and amplification event tech can provide are long overdue. 

But without a strong business-first philosophy—asking of every piece, "How does this serve our marketing goals?"—a CMO could easily find herself overpowered by the event tech stack.

HAT TIP: Gary Slack inspired this post.

Logistics

We are not in the coffee business serving people, but
in the people business serving coffee.

— Howard Schultz

For four crazy years I ran mid-market antiques shows.

It was often tempting to think the business was about logistics, because planning and executing a successful move-in and move-out consumed so much attention.

Collectors—the attendees—could have cared less; but dealers—the exhibitors—considered logistical snafus, even tiny ones, world-shattering.

Until the doors opened.

In that moment, the business's raison d'etre crystallized: the business supplied fixes to people addicted to fine gewgaws.

Don't be lured by language into believing you work the "wheelhouse" of some vast sorting machine.

Your raison d'etre is people—the ones you sell to, the ones you buy from, and the ones in between.

No one has relationships with brands.

Everyone has relationships with people.

This is No Ordinary Job

This is no ordinary job. This is your #dreamjob.

— Salesforce

Human happiness never remains long in the same place.

                                                                                     — Herodotus

With the success of socially conscious companies like Apple, Google, Whole Foods and Salesforce, Millennials' expectations of finding a dream job have risen.

A recent Harris Poll, in fact, shows 8 of 10 Millennials think they can find one.

I was hired for my first dream job under false pretenses.

The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf hired me as its publications clerk in the belief I wore hearing aids when, in reality, I wore band-aids.

It was 1974, the year of gargantuan eye wear, thanks to Sir Elton John, and my fashionably oversized specs were so heavy they irritated my auricles, making it necessary to wear band aids for relief. But to the association's HR folks, they looked like hearing aids.

The job was a dream job because, after a long series of outdoor gigs, it was my first experience working in an air-conditioned office. Washington, DC, is sultry much of the year; the Alexander Graham Bell Association was a 65-degree nirvana.

I was lucky, because, as the Harris Poll indicates, most Boomers, unlike their Millennial counterparts, don't expect to find a dream job (the same holds true for Gen Xers). They're dubious. Millennials, by comparison, are like overeducated Don Quixotes, rejecting home and hearth and questing instead for the perfect job.

The Harris Poll also indicates how workers define a dream job. Among those who hold one:

• 91% say they know what's expected of them
• 83% say their work matters
• 73% say the job is rewarding and
• 70% say the job taps their greatest strengths.

While many considerations—from compensation, security and opportunity, to mission, culture and location—help define a dream job, it's noteworthy that defined outcomes—the key to sustained organizational growth, according to Gallup—tops the list.

Perhaps no other job in history had more carefully defined outcomes than that of "Keeper of the Royal Rectum," the consultant on colonic matters to the Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt.

The Greek historian Herodotus said the Ancient Egyptians were obsessed with purging themselves "by means of emetics and clysters, which is done out of a regard for their health, since they have a persuasion that every disease to which men are liable is occasioned by the substances whereon they feed."

And if that job lacked for advancement opportunities, there was also the "Groom of the Stool" in King Henry VIII's court—another dream job.

Unless you hate paperwork.