Agency on Record

Jay Wightman, head of digital experience at Manulife Investment Management, joins us to talk the data and product challenges of the company's digital transformation and how Maestro was a critical part of the solution. Mike and Jason want you to go to http://maestro.maark.com/.

In the holy trinity of story, vision, and style, style is often the one sacrificed. That can be true whether it's art, marketing, or digital experiences. Mike and Jason just want style to be in style.

There are many reasons to release a minimum viable product (MVP) in the software world--to hit a deadline, to test the concept on the market, to lower cost--and they're all probably wrong strategies. Mike and Jason just want you to knock off the M and V and focus on the P.

It sounds weird to say, but we've outlived Google Search's usefulness. It's full of ads, we never make it past page three of its results, it's hard to trust its objectivity, and the privacy concerns aren't going away. That means any other search engine is just as good, if not better. Mike and Jason just want to retrain the muscle memory that sends them to Google every time.

We pushed the bounds of science and bureaucracy to create a COVID vaccine in record time. But the simple online form for getting it is broken in every way despite big agencies and major companies building it. Even worse, this software fail is the state of the industry. Mike and Jason just don't want people to die from bad software.

It was fun to root for the Redditors, but the GameStop debacle shows yet again how software platforms are best at turning individuals into faceless mobs and forces of chaos. Sometimes it's good chaos, usually it's bad, but it's always mobs and chaos. Mike and Jason are just sore they didn't get in when they were trading shares for old Nintendo cartridges.

Social media forces us to be emotionally attached to everything due to the social pressure to make statements or the unending need to post content. But the rabid pursuit to be "in the conversation" is exhausting and fomentative. We need more emotional impartiality. Mike and Jason are working on the self-help book: Not Caring Yourself into a Better Life.

We welcome to the podcast Cassidy Shield, VP of Marketing at Narrative Science, a company dedicated to telling engaging stories through data. We go way back with Cassidy, maybe too far back, and we get to pick his brain about who in the company should own the product vision and what the heck that even means (TL;DL: It should be Marketing).

Do we want to look back at 2020? Of course we do. It was a strange year for everyone, a tragic year for some, and--from a digital industry perspective--an enlightening year. Mike and Jason just want to record this podcast in person again.

The digital world has increased both consumption and production of both art and content to crazy levels. But has that voracious cycle caused us to lose something important? Mike and Jason just want to rehash old college dorm arguments...in the digital world.

When the pandemic started, Zoom was one of its heroes. Now its brand seems to have shifted from one of positive collaboration to one of necessary evil. Mike and Jason just want their friends and colleagues to be larger than a computer screen.

Goodby and Silverstein are known for iconic ad campaigns like Got Milk?, and their MasterClass is great, both for what they say and what they don't say about the modern state of marketing and advertising. And what they don't say, well, Mike and Jason do in this discussion of both the MasterClass and GS&P. Mike and Jason just want people to not forget about the time ET was impressed by Comcast.

There's an attempt to institutionalize good in business today, both via pressure from new generations of employees and the ideas of tech leaders like Marc Benioff and his stakeholder capitalism. But can you put a sincere engine for charity in a vehicle of escalating commerce? And is there even a shared sense of the greater good today? Mike and Jason just want more humanity in humanity.

We're inundated by software in our personal and professional lives, and every single platform is a learning curve. Meanwhile, that software is in constant flux, adding features and capabilities that clutter its menus and overlap other platforms and impact the experience. Software makers may need to think about their products in the software continuum of the user's life. Mike and Jason just want to email you a Word document.

Agency awards are...icky. The money machine is blatant--scores of awards, half a dozen deadlines each, 4,000 categories, non-competitive judging, checkout upsales. The money and business flow, not to the winners, but to the award orgs, and these orgs don't know what a modern, relevant agency does. Mike and Jason won an award for this podcast and are ashamed to tell you about it.

The Customer Experience shouldn't be silo'd into sales, marketing, product, and customer service. It should all be unified within a continuum of digital experiences. It's time for marketing to stop taking orders and start serving the long term vision of the customer's experience at every touchpoint. Mike and Jason just want to press "0" for the operator.

We started a cross-education program at Maark, with subscriptions to Treehouse for employees to expand their skillsets and to MasterClass to stoke their personal curiosity. Continuing education is a no-brainer, but how well do these platforms work for it? Mike and Jason want all their teachers to fit in little boxes on screens.

Sure, we all love movie theaters. They're nostalgic. And a chance to leave our screens at home for a screen somewhere else. But now that they're closed, do we need them anymore? Or is VOD to our 4K TVs a more profitable model for movie studios and a good enough experience for most movie-lovers? Mike and Jason are just glad Bill and Ted 3 isn't getting pushed to 2021.

Technicolor is bankrupt, and a big part of its business was visual effects. Their client list is impressive, as is their work, and yet, the margins for VFX are thinner than old pants. Is it the software conundrum? That clients don’t understand the true cost of innovation? Mike and Jason think whichever digital artists created Godzilla: King of the Monsters should be millionaires.

Blockbuster Video went from 9,000 stores across the country to 1 store in a decade. Movies and video games couldn't be more relevant, so how did Blockbuster fall so hard and so fast? The answer isn't Netflix. It's a failure at digital transformation. Mike and Jason miss Friday nights under the blue and yellow lights.

We talk to a founding father of Maark, Johnny Boursiquot, to learn about Maark in its early days and why he believes it's important for developers to own product experience instead of just delivering it.

The worst sports team is still probably marketing better than you are. Whether it's escalating narratives, brand management, or content marketing, sports is the best school to learn from. Mike and Jason just wanted to give the XFL that second chance.

Alexandra Watkins is obsessed with brand naming. From her naming agency Eat My Words to her book, "Hello, My Name is Awesome," she believes in the commercial power of a great name and the horror of a bad. We talk about her process, how to make such a subjective task more objective, and why a good brand name is so important to success. Mike and Jason just want to rename everything now.

U.S. National Pride Falls to Record LowsThe American Story, Splintered, and Those Vying to Tell It  

We hear a lot about empathy in design, empathy on the socials, and it seems to be considered a universal good. But empathy might not be a real thing, and, worse, it might lead to bias and prejudice instead of guarding against it. Mike and Jason just want empathy to be strictly defined as a power only exhibited by one Deanna Troi.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/06/r-i-p-quartz-brief-the-innovative-mobile-news-app-maybe-chatting-with-the-news-isnt-something-most-people-really-want-to-do/

With everyone in quarantine, entertainers and media personalities who usually rely on highly produced video content to create their experiences have been forced into creating low-fi experiences that any schlub could create...and it's made culture a lot more interesting for the time being. Mike and Jason just want to see a "Cheers in Zoom" reunion.

Transforming the LEGO Group for the Digital Economy. An MIT Paper.

Our new state of emergency illustrates exactly why Twitter taken seriously is bad for society. It's full of misinformation and low-word-count opinions passed around at the speed of RTs, it taints and replaces legitimate journalism, and it tempts scientists and politicians to further their individual brands instead of the truth. Any information propelled by a like mechanism should be immediately suspect. Mike and Jason just want to Twitter to focus on what it's best at: drunk tweets.

We check in from our respective fortresses of solitude for some possibly too-candid thoughts about living and working through this pandemic, where health concerns are scary, the economy is scary, but the unknowns are probably the most mentally trying. Mike and Jason just want to visit their barbers.

The core craft of marketing is storytelling. And the way you figure out a story, and the way to practice that craft, is through writing. Is that arguable? We argue it in this episode. Mike and Jason just want to make storytelling cool again.

Conferences are being cancelled, nonessential travel is being curtailed, stocks are diving, industries are being hit--the coronavirus is really doing a number on the business world. In this episode, we discuss its impact and how Maark is dealing with it. Mike and Jason just wanted to go to Adobe Summit.

Brand New breaks down the rebrand.Fast Company likes that the new Godaddy logo gets out of the way.

The Iowa Caucus voting app debacle is the latest in a string of high-profile software failures that illustrate that there is still a widespread, fundamental misunderstanding of how software is built, how hard it is to build, what its risks are, and how to mitigate them. Mike and Jason just like how much fun it is to say "caucus" during a podcast.

Part two in our quest for quality software experiences finds us discussing whether or not the old "build vs. run" model applies in a world bent on constant innovation. We learn from Boeing's experience that cheap software has consequences. Mike and Jason just want jets that never leave the ground.

Good design has mostly been commoditized. And that's because great design is super-hard to execute on. And that falls on the front-end engineers, who are, in the end, responsible for the ultimate quality of an experience and whether it will be used or trashed. Mike and Jason just humans to be better at software.

The Edelman Trust Barometer...Itself.

Over the past year or so, we've seen the industry shift from modernizing their web stacks to pulling value out of those stack, and first on the list seems to be personalization. Yup. It's time for that topic. Mike and Jason just want to stop being chased around the Internet by the same ads because we looked at that lamp one time on Amazon.

Martin Scorsese's New York Times Op-Ed

What does it take to be a marketing leader? Executing on the CEO's priorities? Embracing your own vision for the company's story? Should there be friction between the CMO and the CEO? Is marketing about standing out internally as much as it is standing out on the market? Mike and Jason just want to play Game of Thrones with the C-suite.

You can't market technology without the word "innovation." And, yet, few organizations actually want it, fewer organizations still care to invest in it, and, quite possibly, it means nothing. So why is the word so important? Mike and Jason just want to stop being forced to use the word in messaging projects.

Failure is a slippery word in the industry. Few admit it. Expectations are lowered until it's irrelevant. Project outcomes are spun. Goal posts are moved. So what is failure? Even more important, what is success, both objectively for a project and subjectively for the person who takes pride in their work and wants the best product to go out there. Mike and Jason apparently know too much about failure.

Decision fatigue has always been an issue in business, but now it's an exponentially worse threat thanks to instant communication channels like Slack. Every one of those red dots is someone asking you a question...that you need answer instantly or break the flow of business. Mike and Jason just want to flip coins.

Forrester recently showed that brands are achieving no differentiation in the market due to the homogeneity of everyone's digital experiences, and suggested that to combat the trend, 20% of technology budgets should be sent to creative. This sounds good in theory, especially for creatives and brands, but it might actually mean that everybody's screwed. Mike and Jason just want, well, the same thing Forester wants, but know the reality of execution and delivery.

It's a classic debate in the marketing world: When do you build the team to tackle all the various elements of marketing and when do you outsource? Today, that debate is much more complicated thanks to how technology is rebuilding marketing's role in the business. Mike and Jason just want you to remember that Maark is available for outsourcing.

The marketing around (and inside of) Stranger Things Season 3 was wild and brazen and so far unabated and could be a portent for the future of marketing. But we mostly discussed what we liked/didn't like about Season 3. Mike and Jason still can't get the theme from The Neverending Story out of their heads.

AdAge article on the disappearing CMO. AdExchanger article on the disappearing CMO. CNBC article on the disappearing CMO.

The Havard Business Review article on solving brainstorming with brainwriting that kicked off this whole conversation.

What do you need to start designing a digital experience? The content? How much of it? An outline? Full text? Can it be placeholder? Or should design dictate content? The amount of it? The flow? Can't design make general containers to fill with content later? Actually, it's not a chicken or the egg question. It's also not as simple as "both." It's a strategy question. That's right. The dreaded "S" word. Mike and Jason just want designers and content owners to get along.

With digital, the focus has always been on creating elegant experiences, and the socials often reward the most polished presentations of our lives. But a new generation is growing up that sees that level of sophistication as corporate and inauthentic and is drawn to low-fidelity aesthetics that will impact design, marketing, and how we interact digitally. Mike and Jason just want to know how to connect with their kids.

Read this article about tiger teams on the Maark blog.