Welcome – Stay awhile

Transporters, AI Engagement, & the Future

A while back I was talking with a friend. He said that it would be really cool if we actually developed working transporters, like in Star Trek where we could beam from one place to another instantly.

I thought about it for a bit, and the more I thought about it the more that I realized that might solve the traffic jams on the freeway, but we’d be more harried than ever. You actually say stuff like, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. I have another meeting in 7 seconds.”

We’d be constantly watching the clock. Sure, you might get in more meetings each day, but you’d be more transactional than ever…less human.

Let’s face it, all these communication tools haven’t gotten us closer together at all, they’ve trained us like lab rats to treat each other as NPCs in our game of business.

I mean, I bet right now if I looked at your email inbox I’d see a large number of unopened emails. Now before you think I’m attacking you, I deal with that too. Or maybe you’ve achieved that magical Zero inbox…ah, the stuff of legend. But if you have, that means that you’ve deleted thousands of “do you have a quick 15 minutes” emails…or Unsubscribed to countless things that you never subscribed to in the first place.

So, congratulations everyone (and once again, I point the finger at me too), we’ve all absolutely ruined this great communication medium. Why, because we abandoned just treating people like we would want to be treated.

And now, we’re doing it with AI too. I’m not against AI at all, but I have to laugh as LinkedIn feels less and less personal as it fills up with more and more AI engagement bots asking ridiculously over-involved questions to people that we don’t care about, in order to expand our reach.

The future will belong to those who use AI, yes. But maybe not in the way we think. Maybe, just maybe in the middle of things moving in data streams at lightspeed, we can all slow down and treat each other like we all matter, even if that person isn’t the next big contract.

The Range Rover Sport, a lesson in how marketing should work

I don’t live in the UK, but I would venture to bet that there are many car commercials, and many of them might be astoundingly forgettable. Even though you’ve seen them a hundred times, you still can’t remember the car they advertise or even anything remarkable about them.

I recently tried to interact with a LinkedIn post about a commercial for the Range Rove Sport (henceforth, RRS) that plays a lot in the UK.

I say “tried,” because like often happens, I will write a lengthy response, then someone will call me, I’ll switch tabs, and then LinkedIn will decide that all my work is for naught, and I’ll never even find the original post again. It’s frustrating.

But, since the thoughts were significant (in my opinion) to marketing, I will try to recreate them here.

Before going further, if you haven’t watched the ad in question…you totally should. Watch it twice, even.

Although the ad doesn’t play here in America, it is played a lot in the UK, apparently. Commenters were not shy about all of the things in this ad that’s a bit non sequitur. There are

Alpacas that the driver winks at
A giant chessboard
A woman riding a horse
Another woman watching it all with a telescope
An overly large mansion
And a big dog

What was amazing about all of this to me as I read it (and before I’d seen this commercial) was how meticulously all the commenters could pick apart this commercial. It was universally declared a dismal failure by the commenters.

The initial poster had decried it and wondered what the original pitch was that got this thing green-lit. I’ll return to this momentarily.

First, please understand a general principle of marketing.

It’s totally fundamental, but it’s one that people very often miss completely.

The way the human brain works is like a giant filing cabinet. Anytime you encounter something, it builds a file folder on that thing.

Picture this: You go to the beach and you see the sand, the waves, maybe even a bright red crab walking sideways into the water. Your brain builds a file folder on that, called “beach.”

Now imagine: You walk into your living room and you see a couch, a chair, a tv. Everything is in its place. Your brain builds a folder, this time called “Living Room.”

If tomorrow, you go into your living room and you see a bright red crab walking sideways, across the floor, and behind your TV, you would do a double-take.

It’s not that the sight of a bright red crab is something new to you, but it’s out of place. It isn’t what’s in the file folder. Your brain says, “This is new. Pay attention.”

That is the heart of good marketing. It makes you pay attention.

And yet, people remember ever single detail of that commercial, and the Range Rover Sport that it advertises.

So, you ask about the pitch. Here’s how it might have gone:

“I have an idea for an ad. It’s weird. It’s very much NOT a standard car commercial. People won’t get it. They’ll laugh about it’s absurdity. But they’ll take notice. They’ll post about it on social media. They’ll remember tiny details. They’ll mock, but they will remember that it’s an ad for the Range Rover Sport.”

And that, my friends, is pretty good marketing.

Prediction & How to Defeat Scammers

Here’s a prediction, with a little bit of futurism…and a then a guide to dealing with the increasing AI slimy-ness of scammers.

Lived Experience

Something has been bugging me for a while about a phrase that I keep hearing. People keep using the phrase,

Lived experience

I don’t understand that at all.”

AI Experiment #2 – Text Edition

The first thing that you get to experience with AI is just text-based. It kind of reminds me of the early days of computers, working with DOS (wow-I’m old).

Those in academia know that we’re in an arms race. Students want to use AI to get good grades. I guess we’ve completely abandoned the idea of learning.

Teachers/Professors are trying to make sure that students are actually doing their own writing, and not just coming up with good prompts for AI generators.

So, I thought that it was a fun little test to see which AI’s were the best at making an admittedly dry topic come to life, and at the same time, fool a commonly-used and respected AI checker.

AI Experiment (Infographic Edition)

Everyone is talking about AI. Is it going to make society into some Star Trek style utopia, or will we have to send Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to save the world. I dunno. I’m kind of agnostic about it all. What I do know, is that I need to be able to use it as a tool as effectively as possible.

I’ve been spending much of my spare time learning about it and experimenting. I’ve taken online classes and created lots of things. Last weekend, I used AI tools to create some songs that I thought turned out really amazing. You tell me. I’m curious what you think.

Leaving Paradise

A life-long friend called me the other day and spoke about his family’s decision to leave the state of Washington, where they’d called home for over 2 decades. It seems they’d had enough. They’ve had enough of policies that make it harder for honest people to live and provide for their families, enough of political vitriol that separates neighbors and families while creating boogey-men out of anyone with a different opinion, and for them enough with new policies forcing them to make decisions about their children’s health. I totally understand. I’ve been in similar situations myself, as have countless people. Two thousand six was the moment for me. I’d had enough of California and moved to Dallas-Ft Worth Texas, where I’ve been ever since. So, I know about moving to a state far away first hand.

Stealing the Sunrise

In my first year of college, I pulled a lot of all-nighters—and not the wimpy ones where you go to sleep at 3 AM and then get a good 6 hours rack-time before going to class. No, I mean staying up until the sun rose and then going to class without having slept at all. I did this because as a Political Science major, I had a lot of reading to do. I have always been a good reader but a bit of a slow one, so that meant spending a lot of late hours reading and chewing ice to stay awake.

I remember one night I finished my homework around 4:30 AM. My morning class was at 9, and I knew that 3 ½ hours sleep would end up only being worse than if I hadn’t slept at all. The chances of oversleeping my alarm was also just too great. So, I made the decision to walk somewhere off campus and watch the sunrise. In my young man’s mind this was a good idea and I don’t know if I’d experienced a sunrise on my own before.