7 Reasons Why You Should Read This List of 7 Reasons

Reason #1) It’s A List

We can tell that people like lists because we see them all over LinkedIn, the blogosphere, late-night television, and every marketing website ever created. When I was a kid, I had a roll of “Book of Sports Lists” toilet paper. I owned the book, too, incidentally.

Reason #2) Organization

A list must stay at least somewhat organized, by its very nature. Paragraphs can ramble. Sentences can run on. With a list, the author had to at least consider in what order he or she would make his or her points.

Reason #3) Reason #4

Even if reason #3 is terrible (as this one is), It’s only one point of several. You can easily move on to the next one.

Reason #4) Minimum knowledge

If a person writes an article, you can’t be sure they know a darn thing until you’ve read a bit of it. A 12-item list, though, implies the creator certainly knows a minimum of a dozen things about the topic (in this case, lists).

Reason #5) The Count

We Americans all watched Sesame Street. The show's mathematically inclined vampire taught us to love counting things. Admit it, you can hear Count Von Count’s Transylvanian accent in your head whenever you read a list, saying “Five! Five Reasons to Include Yik Yak in Your Content Marketing Mix!  Hahahahaha!”

Reason #6) The Cute Photo

Reason number 6 includes a picture of an adorable child wearing a shirt advertising one of my projects.  Generally speaking, at least one entry per list has some image, animated gif, or infographic embedded in it. Look! Pretty colors!

This young film enthusiast has I Am Douglass on her list of must-see movies

Reason #7) It’s Finite

When you read an article, it can drag. You find yourself scrolling down to see if you have a chance of making it to the end of the prose before your children are grown. Even with a stupid list like this one, you at least know it will come to an end once it has reached its appointed number. Listmakers seem to have a really good track record for honesty. If they say their list will have ten reasons, you can feel pretty darn certain it won’t have eleven, or twenty-six, or a hundred-forty-seven. When it’s over, it’s over. As this list thankfully is.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

It’s Just Deflating

In some shocking news from Melbourne this morning, authorities disclosed that Andy Murray was under investigation for tampering with the tennis balls used in his Australian Open semi-final. Seeking to negate Thomas Berdych’s power, Murray apparently surreptitiously replaced the regular lively Wilson-supplied balls with dead practice balls. ⁽¹⁾

The report comes on the heels of a similar scandal in another major sport. In an effort to slow down the high-scoring Golden State Warriors, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich supposedly snuck in partially deflated basketballs for the teams’ most recent meeting in San Antonio. As Popovich rested some of his tricenarian stars, the coach reportedly felt balls capable of bouncing only to the Warriors’ kneecaps would help his D-Leaguers compete. The ploy did not succeed to the degree Popovich may have hoped, as Golden State prevailed 23-21 in overtime. ⁽²⁾

After the Detroit Red Wings' use of a germanium-powered syringe to hollow out pucks, the Yankees de-cored baseball incident, and the North Korean badminton team's lighter-than-air shuttlecock fiasco, the sports world has now lost complete trust in the integrity of its spheroids, cylinders, and those rocks with the handle on top.

So why did I just make up all of the preceding malarkey? Because it occurred to me just how difficult it is to futz with the balls in any professional sport besides American Football. In pretty much every other pro sport, some neutral official selects and monitors the game balls to a greater degree than football. Baseball umpires even rub them with mud. Home field may confer many advantages, but the ball won’t be one of them.

In pro football, however, the team selects the balls, breaks them in during the week, and supplies them for their team’s offense to use during the game. Theoretically, this practice should improve offensive performance, since players should perform better using a ball with which they have a comfort level. The officials do check the balls, but the New England Patriots have allegedly found a way to circumvent the inspection.⁽³⁾

So how to deal with the problem (if, in fact, the Patriots are guilty, which is not certain⁽⁴⁾)? Several solutions present themselves :

·      Make the Pats forfeit their next game if they are guilty. Unfortunately, a bunch of people planned parties around said game and Katy Perry probably moved tour dates to be there, so you may have to do something else.

·      You could punish the offending team and its personnel by taking away a first-round draft pick and fining them $750,000. That’s a pretty stiff penalty that would almost certainly serve as a deterrent to cheating, as it did the last time the NFL imposed it, on the 2007 New Engl . . . oh, never mind.

·      Another deterrent : let the opposition choose the footballs the Patriots use next season. At least a chocolate football would taste good.⁽⁵⁾

·      Use only Nerf footballs.

·      Have the league supply all the balls and the quarterbacks and receivers will tough it out. The only drawback : paying for an extra bag of checked luggage when the officials fly the balls to the game. Non-profits like the NFL can find it tough to pull extra petty cash for such an unbudgeted item.

·      Get rid of the rule altogether. Play with the ball however you want it. If a team thinks it can gain a competitive advantage by pounding it flat as a frisbee, do it. If your receivers can’t catch anyway, freeze it solid and avoid interceptions.

Of course, other sports do have plenty of cheaters. It’s just tough for them to do it through the ball itself (with Baseball Hall-of-Famer Gaylord Perry a notable exception). The best solution to all of those problems comes through sportsmanship. Teach children cheating is wrong and they won’t grow up to believe it’s okay to win through violating the rules.

The latter solution faces exceedingly long odds against succeeding, and that proposition is what’s truly deflating.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

⁽¹⁾ Made-up story – no footnote

⁽²⁾ IBID.

⁽³⁾ Jeff Pini, “A Lot of Hot Air? Here Are The Facts About Deflategate,” boston.com. http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/2015/01/31/lot-hot-air-here-are-the-facts-about-deflategate/Ae6bx4CTvqk5rj3kgSvDCK/story.html  (Accessed February 1, 2015)

⁽⁴⁾ Ian Rapoport “More details on the investigation of Patriots' deflated footballs,” NFL.com. http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000466783/article/more-details-on-the-investigation-of-patriots-deflated-footballs (accessed February 1, 2015)

 ⁽⁵⁾ “Chocolate Football,” Phillips Chocolates.

http://www.phillipschocolate.com/prodinfo.asp?number=CHFB (Accessed February 1, 2015)

Pop Culture Impacts Issues

You may think it wonderful that LeBron James wore an "I Can't Breathe" t-shirt on the court before he played a basketball game.⁽¹⁾ You may think he did the wrong thing. Or you may have agreed with his sentiment but found the garment unfashionable.

Whatever you thought qualitatively of James' gesture, one thing you couldn't do was not think about it.

The Cavaliers forward's brand offers more than just standout athletic abilities. His commercials, gold medals, O'Brien Trophies, and, yes, talent-taking-to-South-Beach have given him notoriety that stretches beyond his primary profession.

James and other NBA players wore their shirts to bring attention to an issue. This one specifically involved an incident of allegedly improper policing practices. Some St. Louis Rams players made their own controversial gestures referencing a similar situation. ⁽²⁾

As content marketing plays go, these initiatives don't involve substantial creativity. They do, however, demonstrate that pop culture can drive discussion of an issue.

News coverage may initially alert one to a controversy. Once aware, a consumer can turn to his or her preferred online or traditional media sources to gather further information. However, not everyone is a news geek (and I use that term affectionately - some of my best friends are news geeks, at least judging from their Facebook posts). To truly keep an issue top-of-mind with a broader cross-section of the population, it helps to have push from entertainers, whether they be athletes, movie stars, musicians, or whatever we classify Jon Stewart as.

Today's interconnected world lends itself to widely distributed discussion. You can get your co-workers' perspectives at the office coffee pot. You can talk about it with your father on a drive to the airport, which is how I got the idea for this blog post. Or you can discuss it online with Facebook friends, or Bono's fan club, or some other dude who commented on the news story you Googled after you saw LeBron's pre-game wardrobe.

Did John Lennon's bed-ins for peace meaningfully impact the anti-Vietnam War campaign? Did Rambo: First Blood Part II call attention to POW-MIA issues? Did Shaq's performance in Kazaam help convince Los Angeles officials to use eminent domain to clear space for a new basketball arena?⁽³⁾

One cannot precisely measure Q-score-to-issue-advocacy correlation. The actions of those with the power to effect such decisions suggest they see some cause-and-effect, however. When the Benghazi incident happened, officials initially assigned a generous portion of the blame to a motion picture.⁽⁴⁾ The CIA smuggled Russian-language versions of Dr. Zhivago into the Soviet Union.⁽⁵⁾ A recent Electronic Frontier Foundation anti-surveillance campaign featured like-minded celebrities appearing on video to encourage the public to take political action.⁽⁶⁾

This last example leads me to my reason for creating this blog post. There is no doubt that pop culture can, at the very least, create debate about an issue. Its capabilities may even include substantially influencing that debate. Sometimes the issue pays pop culture back, too. The Lennon estate still sells lots of Give Peace A Chance gobbledygook, I bet. Maybe POW advocates still watch Stallone movies as well.

I've got a movie in development called I Am Douglass. Its plot revolves around the same surveillance issues the EFF campaign addresses. Could the film be the next vehicle for fomenting discussion, no matter what side of the issue you occupy? The evidence says that's a real possibility.

I Am Douglass online sites :

Website

http://iamdouglass.com

Facebook

http://Facebook.com/iamdouglass

Twitter

http://Twitter.com/iamdouglass

Google Plus

https://google.com/+Iamdouglassmovie

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/user/IAmDouglass.

Zazzle

http://Zazzle.com/iamdouglass

Rush Olson has spent two decades making movie-like creative products for companies, sports teams, broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

⁽¹⁾ Nolan Feeney, “LeBron James Wears ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Shirt During Warm-Ups,” Time. http://time.com/3624684/lebron-james-i-cant-breathe-eric-garner/ (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽²⁾ Chris Strauss, “Five St. Louis Rams players took a stand for something bigger than Ferguson,” USA Today. http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/12/st-louis-rams-ferguson-tavon-austin-hands-up-dont-shoot (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽³⁾ Tibby Rothman, “Los Angeles Corporate Welfare: Ritz-Carlton and AEG ,” LA Weekly. http://www.laweekly.com/2009-10-08/news/los-angeles-corporate-welfare-ritz-carlton-and-aeg/ (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁴⁾ “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 9/14/2012 ,” White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/14/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-9142012 (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁵⁾ Luke Harding, “How MI6 helped CIA to bring Doctor Zhivago in from cold for Russians,” The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/10/mi6-cia-doctor-zhivago-banned-boris-pasternak (accessed 12/11/14)

⁽⁶⁾ Steven Nelson, “Actor John Cusack Says 'Democracy Itself Is Dead' With NSA Surveillance,” USA Today. http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/10/23/john-cusack-nsa-surveillance-democracy-itself-is-dead?s_cid=rss%3Awashington-whispers%3Ajohn-cusack-nsa-surveillance-democracy-itself-is-dead (accessed 12/11/14)

If Facebook Doesn't Do It, Users Will

Facebook friends, I admit it. I am guilty. The big F in the sky has now decided to punish me for my transgressions and I will accept its decision. Actually, I don't really have much choice.

What did I do wrong? I told you to buy a t-shirt.

I perpetrated the offense on a commercial page I manage for the movie project I Am Douglass. The film-in-development has a Zazzle store, so I would occasionally post about one of the offerings with a suggestion to purchase it. Folks who had “liked” the I Am Douglass Facebook page might have seen the post pop up in their news feeds, along with our script quotes and behind-the-scenes photos. They may never see the shirts again, and not because the garments shrink after they’re washed.

This week, Facebook’s blog informed us that company page posts that "solely push people to buy a product”⁽¹⁾ will be filtered from likers’ news feeds. Accordingly, “pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time.”⁽²⁾ So they apparently don’t like my t-shirt solicitations (although, admittedly, their blog post did not cite my efforts specifically).

Some may view the change as a Facebook money grab designed to “force” advertisers to buy more paid placements.⁽³⁾ The FB statement claims “this change is about giving people the best Facebook experience possible.”⁽⁴⁾ While I am always willing to embrace a good conspiracy theory (note the I Am Douglass thriller above), I believe the Zuckerbergians on this one.

The ads Facebook does sell depend on eyeballs seeing them (and, ideally, fingers pushing mouse buttons or touch screens to click on them). Overly salesy ads that are a lot less interesting than what Justin Bieber just posted on Twitter drive people away from the platform. It’s always worked that way on every platform that mixed advertising with content. When I worked for TV stations, we used to joke that the programming was there to fill the time between the commercials. We knew, however, that we needed to balance our ad-to-content ratio or viewers would tune out. In addition, when creating our own advertisements for programming, we knew we had to make them interesting because people don’t pay attention to boring spots.

Will Facebook unravel my future t-shirt posts? I do try to make them interesting. Surely slogans like “Surveillance State Running Team” or “The NSA is Reading This Shirt” entice viewers more than, say, “Download this app to get a vague idea of your credit score.” 

Whatever Menlo Park decides, though, I am ok with it. Content marketing is, and always has been, about engaging content. Facebook knows that, and its research has revealed what kinds of posts cause its users to make their yuck faces. If I provide crummy posts, readers will ignore them anyway, the same way they do terrible TV spots. In this case, their platform is just saving them the trouble.

So, come to think of it, I don't just accept Facebook's new policy. I embrace it. I run my own creative shop. As a professional content creator, I'd like to think that my putting in just a little more time will result in non-salesy posts that will skate by FB's algorithms or proofreaders.

The rest of the world will just have to hire someone who can do that. Come to think of it, they could hire me. Oh, wait, did that last sentence doom me to the Facebook sin bin, despite coming at the end of an otherwise academically rigorous post? Well, if it did, tell your friends they can find this post on my LinkedIn profile, hosted by a more business-oriented social media network.

And they can follow some links to buy a shirt while they're there.

Dang, I did it again. Please don’t hold it against me, Facebook.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports. He is also spearheading an ambitious film project called “I Am Douglass.”

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

⁽¹⁾ “News Feed FYI: Reducing Overly Promotional Page Posts in News Feed,” facebook.com. http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/11/news-feed-fyi-reducing-overly-promotional-page-posts-in-news-feed/ (accessed November 15, 2014)

⁽²⁾ IBID.

⁽³⁾ Kelly Fiveash, “Zuck: Yo, admen! You wanna flog your brands on Facebook? PAY UP or LEAVE,” The Register.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/15/facebook_news_feed_promotional_page_posts/ (Accessed November 15, 2014)

⁽⁴⁾ “News Feed FYI: Reducing Overly Promotional Page Posts in News Feed,” facebook.com. http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/11/news-feed-fyi-reducing-overly-promotional-page-posts-in-news-feed/ (accessed November 15, 2014)