Snake on a Plane

The stunning lies and Orwellian distortions that dribble from our president's mouth bother me less than his illogic.

The former are signs of a scheming mind; the latter, of an idiotic one.

This week, aboard Air Force One, a reporter asked Trump to recall the way in which he questioned Putin about Russian meddling in our November election during last week's G20 Summit.Trump replied, "Somebody said later to me, which was interesting. Said, let me tell you, if they were involved, you wouldn't have found out about it. Okay, which is a very interesting point."

More clearly said, "The Russians are so effective at clandestine interference, you cannot detect them. We have detected interference. Therefore, they could not have interfered in our election."

Philosophers call this kind of argument "proof against disproof."

Because Russian interference can never be detected, there is no possible basis for determining whether Trump's conjecture is either true or false.

Sigmund Freud drove philosophers nuts in the last century by using similar reasoning to defend his famous theory of the unconscious.

Your choice of a spouse, Freud said, shows you secretly wish to marry your mother or father. That is a fact you can neither confirm nor dispute. Why? Because any confirmation or dispute would be conscious, while the choice is unconscious.

The Russians didn't interfere in our election. That is a fact you can neither confirm nor dispute. Why? Because we have detected interference, and you cannot detect Russian interference.

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.