#always approximately 4 seconds from deciding to track down the party

[dailyloopdeloop]

DAY 7: i miss my wife bonbon

[lovebillyhargrove]

Wake me up when July is around

Chapter 6

Chapter 7/?

***

Remember the yellow camaro, a glimpse of which we got in the Halloween party episode? I do.

And, imo, Steven extremely frustrated, sexually.

Also, Max hasn't met El yet.

***

On Monday Billy puts the tray on the table where Andy's having lunch with his girlfriend, takes a seat and asks:

"Your car runs okay now?"

"Yeah, man. You did a great job. No more funny noises or anything."

Billy knows that, but he's just checking.

"When's the race then?"

"Uhm .. Thursday? .. Friday?"

On Thursday Billy's working at the garage, on Friday some Susan's relatives from a nearby town are coming for dinner, so Neil has made it very clear - no plans for Friday evening. Gotta stay home and pretend to be a perfect family.

"Busy. Saturday?"

Andy's looking at Tina for confirmation and she nods.

"Yeah, alright. Evening time?"

"Anything after 4."

They decide to make it at six thirty, perfect time in terms of light. The sun is not gonna be getting in the eyes, but the visibility is still gonna be great. They talk some more about the track. Tommy who's been sitting with Harrington the whole time changes tables and is joining in because of course he has to, how can preparation for a car race between Hawkins High students can happen without him taking active part in it. Billy notices King Steve does not like it when his jester wanders off.

He gets distracted for a split second because

The King's pout is an entertaining sight.

But he quickly regains his focus.

The three boys choose an approximately seven-mile-long stretch of the road, starting from the abandoned Brimborn steelworks factory till the bridge over the Fall Creek. The track is almost a straight line with four or five curves, which aren't too tricky. Boys wanna rev the engines, but it's not Formula 1, there is no need to make it too dangerous. They will need people at the start, and at the finish. The road is on the outskirts of Hawkins, and rarely used, so the chance of running into cops is very little. As well as the chance of risking having a car coming towards you. Also, the guys who are gonna be waiting at the bridge can stop any vehicle coming from the other side of it, apologize for the inconvenience and politely ask to wait till the race is finished. No-one wants to come face to face with two wild teenagers' cars speeding on both lanes in your direction.

The Fall Creek bridge is old and has only one lane. Two cars can't possibly fit in there. Whoever's on it first, wins.

They are racing for the win, but also, to make it more interesting, for a six-pack. Tommy says he'll let everyone who might be interested in watching a race know, and people are gonna bring beer, so that everyone can celebrate, and at that all major details have been settled.

***

Nothing really happens this week, Billy doesn't even bug Harrington during basketball practice that much. Can't explain it, just doesn't feel like it. Maybe making each other's noses bleed has helped him let some steam out. Or maybe thinking about Harrington when Vicky's mouth was literally on his dick means that Billy should ease off for a while, let himself cool down. Besides, he's got other stuff to worry about. Like the upcoming race, he has to make sure his baby is ready. He's working Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and at the weekend, so when Vicky asks him if he wants to go out sometime this week, he has to blow her off. Billy tries to make a sad face like he's really disappointed they can't spend time together and asks for a rain check, but in his defense his plate is full these days.

Max, surprisingly, has been on her best behaviour so far this week. Always on time. He's seen her talking to the same boys from the week before, so she is hanging out with them. It's fine. Until Neil sees the whole gang. Billy just hopes she's gonna be smart about it and not bring anyone home. He should also probably warn her against mentioning "guy friends" at this family dinner on Friday. Cause the question about school and new friends will definitely be asked. If Max says, yeah my best friends here are actually four boys, they are the coolest, and she doesn't even have to mention that one of them is black, Neil .. he is not gonna be happy. Billy's not sure what's going to happen, cause he's never seen dad go after Max, everything is always Billy's fault anyways, so things might just get more chaotic in the Hargrove-Mayfield household. Or Neil's going to make Billy Max's watch dog 24/7, which is gonna be nauseating. So far he's been her chauffeur. However, Max is growing and soon, Billy's afraid, Neil will find the way to make it his problem.

It's only a year. Less than a year. Eight or nine months to hold out.

So yeah, it kinda happens that Billy robs Harrington of his attention this week, but Harrington seems to be the one asking for it? The slicked-and-styled-hair preppy boy is getting under Billy's feet, and on his nerves, the whole time during the game. As if his bloody nose wasn't enough. As if he wants more. Harrington throws subtle glances at Hargrove in the showers and during classes. The fuck he's doing that for, can anyone explain it to Billy? He probably wants to say sorry for being such a bitch about the room at the party last Saturday. When he fucking walked in on Billy getting a blowjob from Vicky in his majesty's quarters.

This is my room, get out of my room! Mommy, mommy, they are in my room, tell them to go away!

What a whiny ass.

No-one needs your apologies, you dick. Go figure your shit out with your girl better. It’s becoming more and more depressing to look at those two. They are gonna break up soon, that's for sure. There's something in them being together that just doesn't sit right.

***

The family dinner is boring and ceremonious, as expected. Why are adults always so fucking pretentious, like do they really enjoy it, do they feel comfortable like that? Or, it's not about feeling comfortable, it's about painting a pretty picture, rubbing it in the faces of others, look what a nice family we have, how well behaved the children are, how hardworking and serious the husband is and how good the housewife is. Who fucking needs it?

It's suffocating.

Billy wants to get out for a smoke, to take a breath of evening air

But he can't do even that now. Would be disrespectful, and they have zero disrespect tolerance in this house.

Susan's cousin, Aunt Shirley and her husband Uncle Dean are the hickiest hicks possible. Thank god they didn't bring their kids, if they have any.

Billy behaves himself very well in his light blue button up, which he ironed yesterday. He always takes care if his clothes himself, Susan never touches his stuff. Helps Susan set the table while Neil entertains the guests in the living room. He can see that Max is suffering too.

When they were driving home from school earlier today Billy asked Max if she had made any friends who are girls. She looked at him as if he was thoroughly stupid and exclaimed a defiant "Yeaah!??"

"What is her name? Or names?"

"Why do you care??"

"Just trying to be a good brother, Maxine."

Max scoffs

"It's not your business."

"Just tell me your friend's name."

"Just leave me alone."

"Tell me the name, and I'll leave you alone."

"It's uh .. Jenny. Jenny is her name."

"Jenny?"

"Yeah! Jenny!" Max is hissing like a cat. "The hell is your problem today?"

Billy doesn't answer this pointless question.

***

When the table is set and Susan takes meatloaf from the oven, there's usual dinner chichat

"Here you go, Dean. Shirley ..?"

Aunt Shirley is tasting the food

"Mmm, Susan, the meatloaf is amazing! Where did you get the recipe?"

"It's actually Grandma Judy's recipe, do you remember how she used to cook it?"

"I do! It's perfect!"

When the food pleasantries have been expressed, Neil and Susan talk about life in San Diego a bit and how they decided to move to Indiana to be closer to Susan's family and also because Neil wanted a quieter life.

"How did the kids handle the move?"

"Well, they seem .. fine, right, honey?"

"Do you like your new school, Billy?"

Uncle Dean is mostly busy eating, but his wife seems to be very talkative

"Yes, ma'am."

"Have you already decided what to do after it?"

Get the fuck away from here, that's for sure

"Are you planning to study or start working?"

Aunt Shirley does like asking questions, huh

"I don't think he has any chance of getting into a university. With the lifestyle he's leading? Partying and what not. Right, son?" Neil is cutting in

"Dad, it's not only .."

"When I was your age I already had two part-time jobs, and although colleges were not an option for me, I pretty much supported myself and have decided on the future occupation."

A piece of meatloaf gets stuck in Billy's throat and he coughs lightly

"I actually have a job, dad."

"Oh? A job?" Shirley's asking

"Yes, I fix cars in the .."

"I really don't know who would hire you. Just look at the haircut. And the pierced ear? Kids are given too much freedom these days, I swear."

Billy holds back an eye roll

Dean stops chewing for a second

"That's true, I don't remember having a haircut like this when I was your age, kid."

"If I were the one to hire I'd tell you to go to the hairdresser first, son."

Dad, stop.

Billy's biting his lower lip.

Fucking stop.

Susan is sing-songing an obliging

"Dean, would you like more meatloaf?"

"Oh I sure would love to, cousin."

She's looking at Neil.

"Honey?"

"Please. It's delicious."

Well damn, Billy hasn't even said anything, but he already feels like he's been covered in shit from head to toe.

Can we please just fucking get to dessert, or better skip it, and then wave you a heartfelt goodbye?

Aunt Shirley decides to switch to Max.

"What about you, sweetie? Do you like your new school?"

"Yes, I really like it. I've joined AV club, it's really interesting."

"What's AV?"

"AV stands for audiovisual .. it's working with audio or video materials, recording something, editing it .. It's fun."

"Oh. Sounds more like a thing boys would be interested in?"

"Uhm ..there are boys and girls, it doesn't really matter.."

"Have you made friends at school already?"

Auntie sure is a nosy one.

"Well, yes .. they are from the club mostly."

"Who is your best friend, sweetie?"

"Uhm .."

Max is quickly glancing at Billy, but his eyes are cast down.

"Jenny. Jenny is my new friend here. She's nice."

Susan remarks politely

"You should absolutely invite Jenny for a visit sometime, sweetie. Right, Neil?"

Neil's nodding and chewing.

Susan adds

"We'd love to meet her."

"Of course, mom."

At least, the shitbird had enough brains not so say something wrong. Susan's gonna be asking her about this imaginary Jenny now, but it's a problem for another day.

The adults finally leave the kids alone, and Billy can eat some food although it all tastes bland now for some reason.

Billy's used to being belittled in front of others by his own father, but it stings every time like a knee skinned afresh.

After dinner when Neil, Susan and the guests have talked some more in the living room, it is finally time to say goodbye. Auntie and uncle want to get back to their Hicksville before the darkness falls.

Max helps clean up the table and is allowed to go to her room. Billy's in the kitchen washing up. Neil comes to the kitchen from the bathroom.

"I'm disappointed in you, son."

You're always disappointed in me. The fuck did I do this time?

Billy's circling the sponge on the same plate, over and over, until he stops.

"Were you not able to answer the questions and maintain a semblance of a decent conversation? Sitting there with a long face and mumbling? What will they think of you now? That I have an imbecile with a pierced ear for a son?"

Are you kidding me right now? You interrupted me every time I was actually saying something!

Billy doesn't know what answer is expected from him. He squeezes out a robotic

"I'm sorry, sir."

Is the safest bet in most cases. Not in one hundred percent of them though.

Susan who is drying and putting the dishes away decides to ease the tension a bit. Once every half a year she does that.

"Neil, honey, please.. it was such a nice evening."

"And it would've been even nicer if my son here had put more effort into making an impression like he really cares about your family's visit!"

Fuck, dad, whatever I do, you're never happy. What the fuck do you want from me? You know what? I don't even care what it is. Just leave me the fuck alone.

Billy just goes on washing the damn dishes. What else is there to do, huh. Like he can start smashing plates on the wall.

Susan is actually trying her best

"Shirley and Dean are waiting for our call next week to let them know if we're going to come for Thanksgiving."

Oh fucking shit no

"I would really love to go. A whole lot of my relatives are going to be there, would you like to go, honey?"

Neil is considering the idea

"I believe it would be nice, to get to know everyone. We'll talk about that when we're alone though. Can you get me a beer from the fridge? Gotta catch up on the evening news."

Susan is handing him a can of beer and dad's off to the living room to watch TV.

It seems that Billy's off the hook for now.

"I can finish here by myself, Susan. If you have something else to do."

"Oh, would you really? I'll go sort out the laundry then. Thank you, Billy."

Not the fucking trip to another bumfuck town for Thanksgiving. Fucking hell, please no.

The evening sucked, but all in all, honestly, it could've been worse.

When Billy's lying in bed he remembers how his mom used to praise him when he was little. Doesn't remember much, cause memories have faded with time, but he can still hear her soft voice

You're doing such a good job, baby.

Billy's trying to hold on to these crumbs of memories. They keep on fading away, time is doing its job of erasing them slowly, and sometimes Billy wonders if he even had a mother. The notion seems like from another lifetime.

Maybe he can still do something right one day. Maybe he's not a total screw up.

Or maybe his dad's right.

***

When Saturday comes Billy goes to work first thing in the morning. He again checks his car, everything runs smoothly. Billy's kinda excited for the evening. What are the chances of having two camaros, identical models, in the same little town? While the other camaro is the original Z28, Billy's car is a bit different cause back in San Diego after hauling it away from the scrapyard he had to come up with inventive decisions to bring it back to life. Guys from the garage helped him get the hood for his car from a sports coupe camaro. It's also missing a badge, and it's been repainted.

Billy loves his baby to pieces.

He kinda doesn't care if he wins or loses, there's no shame in losing to this yellow black striped beast. When Andy brought his car to Old Joe's garage, complaining about the noises, Hargrove personally went through every tiny part, fixed the problem and now the engine worked like a well-tuned clock. Both cars are basically the same on the inside, they are equals. It'll probably be a draw. Billy can live with that.

They meet at a quarter past six near the Brimborn steelworks plant. Roy, Danny, Mike and Tina, as well a couple of girls whose names Billy doesn't remember are there. As soon as the race starts they are gonna jump in their cars and catch up with everyone at the bridge. They are gonna miss the finale, but Tina insisted on waving the checked flag - god knows where they got it from - and she demanded company.

At six thirty sharp the flag is waved and two cars take off from the start line. A Camaro Z28 can reach its maximum speed of 120 mph in under twenty seconds, so it's gonna be fucking fast.

It's a sight, these two, blue and yellow with black stripes.

The cars are going hood to hood, light to light, engines roaring, rubber squealing.

A couple of turns are behind, there are two more ahead, and although sometimes one car seems to get ahead of the other, they are moving in sync.

It's gonna be a draw. They'll be getting to the finish line in no time.

"There they are!" Vicky is shouting in a shrill voice

Harrington is watching.

At first he didn't want to come cause

Asshole Hargrove and the fight

But Tommy roped him in anyways

"Oh come on man, it's not like we're having a goddamn race here every day!"

All the people who are waiting at the bridge are watching, holding their breath. They've parked their cars at a safe distance from the bridge in the field and some kids are leaning on them, some are just standing near, but all of their eyes are glued to the road.

Both camaros are like two flashes of lightning, coming towards the bridge at a breakneck speed.

Billy releases the gas pedal just a little, then floors it with all his force, and the blue Camaro pulls forward, but just a couple of inches, at most

They are flying towards the final goal, and the bridge is right there, right in front of them, they won't fit on it together, with two lanes merging into one.

Why is neither of them slowing down?

Good thing Tina stayed behind because she would have a heart attack

It's not even a matter of minutes now, it's a matter of seconds

It's either one of them lets the other overtake him, and not by an inch or two, or they are gonna crash. At this speed? They are going to fucking die.

Hit the brakes, dammit! Someone has to give in

Andy needs to understand that Hargrove is not gonna slow down. It's not about whose car is faster anymore because they are both fast. It's about who's crazier.

Holy fucking hell, they're gonna crash.

One of them has to brake.

He has to.

Steve's heart is jumping out of his chest. This is too intense. This is also hella beautiful, watching these two beauties speed down the road

But one of them fucking has to slow down and let the other one win!

In the blink of an eye the yellow camaro drops the speed abruptly and swerves to the side, and Billy has a fraction of a second to turn the steering wheel and not crash into the bridge railing.

The blue car flies on the bridge and over it, and the yellow one is left behind on the side of the road.

Andy is getting out of his car and Tommy and other guys run up to him

"Dude, that was insane!"

Andy's shaking his head, not quite processing that they were this close to crashing

"No that .. that guy is insane. He's got nerves of .. of fucking steel. I swear I was ready to brake any second cause it was .. clear it's a draw but .. he had no intention of slowing down at all."

He exhales loudly

"I need a cigarette. Where's Tina?"

"She's coming, man, they're coming."

Billy's camaro is standing on the road for a minute, engine running

The hell he's standing there?

In a minute it's turning around and driving back over the bridge to the gathering of teens.

Roy, Tina and all the starting point crew arrive at the finish.

Tina is getting out of a red ford escort and running to Andy

"Baby, did you win?"

He's shaking his head again, still not being able to believe what just happened

"Nah. I thought it would be a draw till the very last second. Hargrove won."

At last Billy arrives at the spot where everyone's standing and gets out of his car.

He comes up to Andy, stretches his hand out for a shake

"Great race, Goldman."

Andy shakes his hand and Tommy gives Hargrove an already lit cigarette

Billy accepts, his fingers are shaking, just a little

Andy looks at Hargrove

"You're crazy, man."

Billy's chuckling nervously

"Yeah. My fucking bad."

Tina opens the trunk of the ford and hands Andy a six-pack which he gives to Billy

"For the winner."

Billy puts it on the camaro's hood. He takes out another six-pack from his own car.

"I really thought it would be a draw, Goldman. Your car is a beast."

It is, and Billy truly did. He just changed his mind last second.

Two six-packs, and Roy whispers something to Tommy and they go to Harrington's BMW and come back with even more beer, and Billy takes a can and after shouting

"To all fast and beautiful things in the world!"

He's shotgunning it,

Tommy yells

"Fucking preach!"

And the guys are whooping and more cans are being opened, and the girls are laughing and the beer flows, and the evening is relatively warm, and the sun almost reaches the horizon painting the sky and the clouds a beautiful palette

Heartbeats get back to normal, more or less

Andy turns on some music in his car and opens the doors

They are young, and still carefree, and no-one crashed during the race which is a good enough reason to celebrate

When Tommy comes up to Billy a couple of minutes later, Hargrove already has Vicky on one arm and Jennifer on the other, and Vicky looks like she's ready for a cat fight

"Dude that's the craziest car race I've seen. I mean .. at the fucking end of it .. dude."

Tommy is looking at Hargrove in awe. He looks at him like he wants to kiss him on the mouth but is never gonna

He turns and kisses Carol instead who's hugging him from behind

Some couples are dancing, Andy and Tina are making out

Harrington is moping cause he's without his princess

Someone says it's gonna rain because the clouds are building up, but no-one gives a fuck

And when the rain does pour down, and they dance and drink some more under it, everyone finally gets in the cars, soaking wet, laughing, drunk and happy

And so so young.

***

***

When Steve gets home that night it's close to 10 pm already. His dad is up in the bedroom and mom's watching tv downstairs.

"Steve, is everything alright?"

"Of course, mom."

"Where have you been?"

"Just hanging out with guys."

"But it's pouring outside?"

"Yeah, just uh .. it's not a big deal."

"Oh .. Dad and I wanted to talk to you about.."

"I know, I know .. colleges and stuff. Not tonight though, right? It's late."

"No, of course not. Also, not just colleges, you need to keep in mind other options as well in case .."

"Mooom. It's late, 'm tired. And I really need to change, okay? Love you. Good night."

"Good night, honey."

Steve takes off his wet clothes, jumps in for a quick shower, brushes his teeth. He's still feeling excited, from watching the race, from sensing the danger. He's known Andy for years, and despite the fact that the dude's capable of doing something crazy, like climbing on the roof of the house drunk to proclaim his love for his girlfriend, or, case in point, racing, he is generally in his right mind.

Hargrove, on the other hand? He's a total nutcase. Risking his life like that? What for? Why? Is winning so important for him? Or is it not just about winning?

Harrington was among those who were at the finish line, sitting on the hood of his BMW, and he saw the finale.

It's like Hargrove almost doesn't care if he lives or dies.

A race is a race, but risking your life for that?

Maybe Steve should be careful playing that game that he wants to pursue. He might be playing with fire. He probably should call it off before anything even started. A smart thing to do would be to stay away from Hargrove.

Harrington's not so sure anymore what he's doing.

That motherfucker is batshit crazy

Does Steve find it attractive?

Hargrove has been so distant this week, minding his own business, it was strange. Wasn't that what Steve wanted? For Billy to leave him alone?

Yes. But also ..

Also what?

Steve shakes the towel wrapped around his waist down, throws it on a chair, finds a clean t-shirt to put on for the night. He gets under the blanket without any underwear and turns on the belly, shutting his eyes.

He hasn't come for five days already. Last time he jerked off in the shower on .. what was it, Sunday?

Steve starts humping the bed slowly, his cock painfully hard.

He's grinding against the mattress, lazily moving his hips and thinking about today.

The sounds of engines roaring, impatient, hotheaded.

Music booming in the open air and rain coming down from the sky

He's thinking about the party when Steve walked in on that couple about to fuck right here, in his room.

He's seen Hargrove's dick in the showers. Not that he looked. How would it feel to .. to touch it? To feel its weight? How would it feel to be standing on the knees in front of Billy, looking up at his face?

He was here, in Steve's room. With his dick out.

Does he have sex like this too, unhinged and hot to the point of burning down to ashes?

Harrington's pressing into the mattress and then releasing the pressure, and he can feel his orgasm building, building to the point of..

Suddenly Steve opens his eyes

Ugh, fucking stop. You have a girlfriend. Just .. stop, jesus fucking christ, enough. Think about her boobs for christ's sake.

Steve hasn't seen or felt Nancy's boobs in a while now. Is this what a serious relationship is, is this what marriage generally is like??

Boobs. Boobs. He has to think about boobs. He grabs a playboy from under the bed in frustration, opens it at a random page

There they are. Nice and full and so soft to the touch.

Steve is back at humping the bed. He really needs to cum, his balls have been feeling literally huge for the last couple of days

The moment Harrington closes his eyes again

A sensation of Hargrove's body grinding on his own during basketball comes to Steve's mind and he moans in frustration.

Boobs. Think about boobs, come on now.

Steve's touching Billy's sweaty pecs with his elbow trying to push him away

But the asshole's persistent

What happened this week? Why didn't Hargrove bother him? What's wrong?

His mind comes up with another image that flashes through Steve's fogged up brain, it's Hargrove's nipple's grazing on Steve's elbow,

He's increasing the tempo

Fuck.

He really needs to come. To hell with it.

Steve stops running away from all these images.

He stops and lets them take over.

He doesn't need much, he's already on the verge.

The nipple .. small and hard, sliding on Steve's skin

Another flash is Hargrove's broad shoulder blades, Steve pictures him swimming in his pool, blue lights all around and he looks like a magic creature, only he's not magic

He's real

Very real

Steve loses all the rhythm, humping the bed erratically

How would it feel to .. fucking .. touch ..

Steve cums panting in his pillow.

He almost falls asleep like that.

When he cracks one eye open, he thinks that

He should probably jerk off before taking a shower next time

Whatever

He wipes himself with the sheet, throws it on the floor, finds some boxers lying near the bed, they smell clean

Tomorrow he'll definitely tidy up his room, all this stuff lying around

And sleeps without a sheet cause looking for a new one and putting it on the bed seems like too much work now.

The last coherent thought that Steve's having tonight is

Okay, listen man, that's enough. That's the last time you let yourself think about Hargrove. Stop doing that when you're pleasuring yourself.

Steve's very disappointed with himself.

However, the orgasm felt great.

***

Chapter 8

[doc-pickles]

what are you doing new year’s eve?

So this final fic of 2020 is dedicated to @odd-birds-and-booksellers for multiple reasons. Firstly she’s been my first friend in the Jolex fandom and one of the reasons the group chat exists. Despite how much we make fun of each other she’s truly become one of my favorite people (she knew I was pregnant approximately 15 seconds after I peed on a stick and hours before anyone else) and I wouldn’t have stuck around here without her.

Secondly it’s dedicated to her because my final fic for the year is an ode to the reason I’m in this fandom in the first place and the series she keeps begging me to write for. That’s right y’all, I’m posting a piece for my “It’s Nothing Funny Just to Talk/Little Pieces of You” universe! (she thought I was gonna kill someone... hehehe)

I hope y’all enjoy this cute and fluffy one shot! Thank you all for reading, commenting, and encouraging me to write this year!

also one million anons asked me for a birth fic... well here it kinda is

xoxo Nina

Maybe it's much too early in the game

Oh, but I thought I'd ask you just the same

What are you doing New Year's, New Year's Eve?

Jo was fine, really she was. She blamed being two weeks from her due date for the state of discomfort she found herself in. She’d been experiencing Braxton Hicks for almost a month already (something Alex loved to point out that he could always see as it happened, much to Jo’s annoyance) so the tightening of her abdomen wasn’t a new feeling. What was new was the aching in her back and hips that had prompted her to take a long steamy shower in an attempt to ease a bit of the pain and discomfort she felt.

The water had helped a bit, but all Jo really wanted was for Alex to rub her back and hold her while she napped. He had asked before he left for work if she was alright, but Jo had assured him she was fine. New Year’s Eve was always a long night for him at work with an influx of teenagers hurt by firework accidents or drunken mishaps. She has reminded him that she wasn’t due for two weeks and she would make it through one night without him there. Now though, Jo was regretting her decision as she struggled to get comfortable on their couch, her back aching as she shifted back and forth. 

“Hoooooly shit,” Jo gripped the armrest of the couch tightly as she attempted to sit up, a roaring pain ripping through her stomach as she desperately tried to get air into her lungs. The feeling passed after a moment, letting her take a deep breath as she settled one hand onto her stomach. “I need you to calm down in there, please and thank you.” Her phone chose that moment to ding loudly, a text from Alex popping up as she reached for her phone.

Thursday 4:39 PM

How are my girls doing?

Thursday 4:41 PM

all good over here :)

Deciding not to mention her pain, Jo set her phone aside and went to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. Whenever her Braxton Hicks got bad Alex would always tell her it was because she was dehydrated. He was usually right, though she’d never admit it, but the water usually calmed down the sensations flowing through her body. 

Slowly making her way to the kitchen, Jo grabbed a glass and sipped on the water as she tried to even her breathing. Her mind was already racing, heart pounding as she tried to keep her composure. She’d only had one bad spout of pain, it could be a fluke or a pulled muscle for all she knew. 

The searing pain she’d felt only minutes before returned again, the glass in her hands slipping from her fingers as a pained groan left her. Watching the water and glass splatter across the counter top, Jo realized how serious her pain was. Her eyes flitted to the clock, noting it was just hitting 5 PM. Alex would be home at 11, she would hold out as long as she could until then. 

-

Thursday 6:32 PM

Want me to grab a late dinner for us? Figure you’ll still be up anyways. 

Alex stared down at the text he’d sent almost 20 minutes earlier as if his staring would prompt a response from his wife. Logically he knew she was probably sleeping, but he’d been worried about her all day. She’d barely slept the night before and her back had been hurting for almost two days now. He wasn’t stupid he’d done enough rounds on OB to know that Jo was probably getting close to going into labor, a thought that both excited and terrified him. Erring on the side of caution, he dialed Jo’s number and waited for her to answer. 

“Hi you’ve reached Josephine Karev! I’m probably teaching right now so leave a message after the beep!”

“Hey babe, call me back whenever you can. Love you.”

Hanging up the phone and grumbling to himself, Alex begrudgingly turned back to his patient files. He had a lot of work to do, but his mind was currently occupied worrying about his wife and their unborn daughter. 

-

“Oh shit… oh shit no no no,” Jo’s panicked cries echoed across the empty loft as another contraction made its way through her stomach, her body curling in on itself as she struggled to lean against the couch. A glance at the clock in the kitchen told her it was only 7:19 meaning Alex wouldn’t be home for a few more hours. 

She knew she couldn’t last that long, her contractions were steadily growing closer together and more painful. Reaching for her phone, Jo sent off a quick text before focusing her attention on breathing through the steady flow of contractions now racking her body. 

Thursday 7:21 PM

in labor, moving fast. need drugs and husband. 

-

It was nearing 8 PM and Alex still hadn’t heard from Jo for the last three hours. He’d called twice to no answer and his texts were sent but not read. He was ready to jump in the car and rush home to check on her when someone called out his name. 

“Alex!”

Jackson Avery was jogging towards him, dressed in a button up and slacks with a six month old Harriet on his hip. He’d been talking about his mom’s New Year’s Eve party all week, so Alex was shocked to see him there. 

“Hey man, you skipping out on the party,” Alex searched Jackson’s serious expression for a moment, reading his best friend's face easily and letting a sigh out. “Where is she?” 

“April took her up to L&D while I came to find you. She was screaming at me the whole drive here,” Jackson smirked at Alex as they walked down the halls. “I’m sure you’re in for a fun night.”

Thanking Jackson, Alex headed towards the maternity ward with a sense of urgency. He knew if Jo had been worried enough to call April that she was probably pretty far along in her labor. Spotting the red head down the hall, he picked up his pace and stopped in front of her. 

“They’re just checking her out now, her contractions have been coming every three and half minutes but I think they’re speeding up,” April gave Alex a small smile as she made to leave. “She’s been asking for you the whole time.”

“Thanks April.”

“It’s the least I could do. When I was in labor she sat with me while Jackson was in surgery despite the fact that she was throwing up every twenty minutes from her morning sickness,” April shrugged. “Besides if I didn’t go she probably would’ve given birth on your couch.”

Alex chuckled, his hand rubbing his neck nervously, “I’ll text you guys when she’s here, thanks again.”

April left then, Alex taking a breath before entering the room that April had just left. Jo was laid in bed, eyes closed and curled in on herself as she struggled through a contraction. Surging forward Alex placed one hand on Jo’s back as the other moved to run through her hair. She instantly relaxed at his touch, eyes popping open to meet his. 

“I was wondering why you weren’t answering my texts,” Alex leaned down to press a kiss against her forehead. “You need anything? Water, ice chips, hard drugs?” 

Jo shook her head, breathing through the end of her contraction before speaking again, “No they said I’m too far along for an epidural. I just have to suffer until she gets here. My water broke as soon as I walked into the hospital, I think she knew you were waiting.”

Eyeing the monitor tracking her contractions, Alex realized that she was nearing the end of her labor, “You should’ve called me, I could’ve come to get you.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m here now,” Jo leaned against Alex’s hand as she struggled to pull a breath in. “Ow ow ow ow, holy shit mother-”

Jo’s next words were silenced as she pressed her face against Alex’s chest, fists clenched against the bed rail as her body tensed once more. Keeping his eyes on her monitor, Alex kept his fingers running through Jo’s hair in an attempt to comfort her, “Breathe baby, it’s okay just breathe.”

Once she finally took a deep breath Jo relaxed in Alex’s hold, her voice alarmingly calm as she spoke, “I really need to push. Like right now.”

“Let me get the doctor, just hold on a minute babe,” Alex couldn’t help the wide grin he sported as he left Jo’s side to call down the hallway for her doctor. In just a little while they were going to be parents… 

-

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Happy New Year!”

The TV played softly in the background as fireworks lit up the dim hospital room but Alex and Jo weren’t paying attention to the celebration of the new year. Both had their eyes firmly locked on the sleeping bundle in Jo’s arms, light curls peeking out of the pink hat on her head as her lips pursed in her sleep. 

“You do that when you’re sleeping,” Alex pointed out as he ran his finger down his daughter’s cheek. “You look like a fish, it’s kinda funny that she’s already doing it.” “She’s not even three hours old and you’re comparing her to a fish,” Jo chuckled as she looked from her daughter to her husband. “She needs a name still.”

“How about Goldie,” Alex’s suggestion earned him a slap on the arm from Jo, a laugh escaping him as she did so. “I was kidding! What about the one you really liked?” Eyeing her daughter as if testing out the name she’d brought up so many months ago, a grin settled on Jo’s face, “I like it. Annabeth Brooke Karev.”

“Glad we finally decided on that, I thought you were never going to choose,” Alex pressed a kiss to Jo’s lips, then another to the top of Annie’s head. “Happy New Year Annie.”

Wonder whose arms will hold you good and tight

When it's exactly 12 o'clock, midnight

Welcoming in the New Year, New Year's Eve

[gifted-burnout-archive]

Codename: Candy

Part Sixteen - The Battlefield Awaits

Word Count - 1943

Author’s Note: So! Dun, dun, dun!! I hope you guys are still enjoying reading this as much as I enjoy writing it! I did a little maths, and it looks like the whole series (25-30 parts) will be surpassing the 40,000 word mark, which is crazy! But, back to the story.

"So, you expect us to believe that you are still on our side? After discovering you a) are not Lieutenant Jones, b) have no evidence to back up your new story and c)... you married a fucking terrorist?!" Jack was beyond mad now, and after an hour or so of back and forth, his voice had dropped low, speaking in a soft way that just radiated disappointment. Between himself, her, and the CIA, he didn't quite know who to hate more.

"Jesus! I didn't marry a terrorist... I married a man I thought loved me only to find out he was a lying, backstabbing asshole and left him. Is he currently a terrorist? Yes!" She folded her arms, almost hyper defensive. Her ex-husband was a sore spot, most certainly, and after he had metaphorically and literally stabbed her in the back on multiple occasions, it was a sensitive topic to discuss.

"So, having spent a week and a half taking orders from us... Who is your actual direct supervisor?" Greer asked, and she shook her head, a smile on her face.

"I answer to you both... My postings are decided for me, and when I arrive, whoever is in charge there, whether it be an active duty officer, Head of T-FAD or the fucking janitor, I take orders from them... I receive additional orders from a classified source in the CIA, before any deployment or recon mission."

"So the Afghanistan mission?" Greer questioned again. He wasn't really sure what to feel, he had known Jones, that persona, when he met her in Afghanistan some nine years prior, just before Benghazi. She had been living the lie for close to fifteen years, and no-one had noticed.

"Direct orders to not open fire at all, and I followed them. Got shot for it, but I did my job." She said, her fingers moving to her shoulder.

"And what have you received from your anonymous boss about this job?" Jack spoke up, still deep in thought over the revelations.

"They told me to not reveal my actual identity, but we can see that order wasn't followed... And sent me an awful lot of information about the pair of you. Office workers, my ass..."

"And you telling us this is meant to make us trust you again?" Jack muttered, watching her stand up and walk towards the weapons boxes. Why did it bother him so much? Surely what mattered was the fact they had backup, and despite the lies and deceit, it was clear she was the best they could possibly have.

"If it makes you feel better, there are records... Jones may not exist, but some things aren't allowed to be removed from public record. And until we end the mission, whether it be you guys kicking me off, my death, or the world blowing up, I stick with the persona. Embassy thinks I'm Jones, it needs to stay that way. Candy was actually my own codename, if you aren't comfortable referring to me by tags. I mean, I'm not a fictionally deceased red-headed guy from Michigan." She told them, assembling one of the rifles and sitting on the seat beside her within a matter of moments. It was a second nature to her by now, and the men shared a look, silently agreeing that they couldn't and wouldn't be getting rid of her, no matter how uneasy the situation made them.

"Well, Candy... Jack. I'll check how long we have left..." Greer nodded to the woman, a sign of acceptance, of security of position, and she smiled back. To some extent, Greer understood. Their business was a strange one, but everything she said was too real to be a lie.

As the cockpit door closed, Jack shared a look with her. What was he meant to say? He knew the work, he had ruined relationships because of it: no-one can know what you do outside of work. It's just what was expected. The anger was still there though, and he realised why.

His attraction to her was based on falsities, and he didn't know where they stood. Before the bombs, he was working up the courage to kiss her. Was that part of the rouse? Was it real? He didn't have a clear path to follow.

She watched him think, and double checking the door, she began to talk as she loaded a pistol.

"Redwood High yearbook archives... Boulder City, Nevada, not the one in Iowa." She spoke softly, her voice barely audible, her eyes on the gun. She holstered the weapon, kneeling on the floor and taking a knife out next, slotting it into her ankle casing. "Most likely to stay in Boulder City. Boy did student council get that one wrong." Again, the nostalgic smile returned, and Jack knew it was truth. He nodded, not sure what to say, and the conversation ended there, Greer entering a few minutes later to inform them they were about to land.

—

The arrival in Egypt was to follow protocol fourteen, which wasn't very surprising. The country was fighting back against ISIS among others, and three Americans were the wrong people to be in the country. The pilot ran them through the procedure, a policy regardless of how familiar the team were with it, while they adorned Kevlar vests and stowed guns on their person.

"Lieutenant Jones will lead, armed and ready to shoot. Greer will follow, then Doctor Ryan. The car is on the tarmac, along with Cairo police escorts. Jones will only enter the car once both Greer and Ryan are safe in the vehicle. From there, you will have a uninterrupted drive to the Embassy. The Ambassador and CIA's chief of staff in Egypt will welcome you within the building, the approximate steps from the car to the front door of the Embassy is 17." The pilot informed, and Jack nodded in thanks.

"I always hate this part..." He muttered, grabbing his bag and Candy's, who was carrying enough ammo on her to kill a small army. The contrast of rifle and pant suit almost made Jack laugh, but he refrained. She moved past the pair of men, and the pilot opened the plane door.

It was quick, Jack and Greer breaking into a jog as Candy circled, searching for possible attackers in the early morning sun. Greer was first in the car, taking the bags from Jack to let him get in. And, once positive of a clear area, Candy nodded to the armed police on the back of their trailing escort, climbing into the front passenger seat, taking the radio and speaking in Arabic that Jack and Jim struggled to understand.

The cars suddenly sped off, the trio of cars joining the the Airport Road, near empty so early in the morning. Candy turned to look over at Jack and Greer, a smile on her face.

"The Police Captain assures is that the drive won't be more than 23 minutes, and there are officers stationed at multiple critical points on the route. The Embassy are tracking the cars, we should be all clear." With the task ahead, the idea of an unproblematic transport seemed like heaven, and it was. The car rolled into Cairo's city centre without a single disturbance, and as the 21st minute passed, they pulled into the US Embassy's compound. Candy was the first out, scanning the area before opening the door for Jack and Greer, who jogged up the Embassy steps two at a time, and straight through the doors into the lobby. Candy followed, turning to call to the Captain, who drove the first vehicle.

"Shukraan lak 'ayuha altyb! 'Atamanaa lak yawmaan saeidaan." She shouted as the escort heading out through the gate, quickly closing and bolting the doors. "I missed the heat." She commented as she turned to her team, unloading her rifle. While Jack had to agree to some degree with her, Greer glared, his shirt already bearing sweat patches.

"The VIPs have arrived! How do you look younger?" A man's voice called from the top of the staircase, shoes clicking on the polished floors as Mike November made his way down the stairs, surprising both Jack and Greer.

"Mike? What are you doing here?" Jack asked as the paired hugged. It had been about a year since Venezuela, if not longer, and Mike looked the same, from the wrinkled shirt to the scuffed shoes.

"Who knows... After Venezuela, they decided to post me here. Seems like civil revolting and the collapse of a nation was too mild, wanted to throw me into the deep end with terrorists on every border and militias on every corner." Mike sighed, catching attention of Candy and offering a hand. "Mike November."

"Oh, I know. Your work in Venezuela over the years was exemplary... Lieutenant Jones, but call me Candy." She shook his hand, and he smiled at the compliment.

"Need a tour? Or perhaps three hours of uninterrupted sleep?" Mike asked, and Greer laughed coldly.

"Where's my fucking room Mike?" He demanded, getting a laugh from the other three.

"Follow me." The group headed up the stairs, and ascended three flights before turning off to the left, following the corridor round into a communal seating area, doors leading off. Mike handed over keys to each. "The Ambassador has asked to sit in on the brief this morning, which will be at 10.30, so you have 4 hours. Use them." He instructed, bidding a quick goodbye. There was no point discussing anything until the briefing. Not the attack, not the possibility of nuclear terrorism, none of it. Mike has seen the news, he had got the memos.

Greer didn't even speak, walking straight into the room he was assigned with his bag, near slamming the door.

"So, I'll see you at the briefing then?" Jack asked Candy as they both headed to their rooms.

"Maybe... Depends on... Things..." The notion was implied, and Jack understood. Whatever her work orders were from the higher ups, they outweighed a meeting she wasn't needed at. With a quick nod, the pair entered their separate rooms, and Jack stood for a moment in the quiet, slowing his breathing, giving himself a chance to process the last 36 hours.

From major breakthroughs in the case to a party turned terror attack, and Candy's confessions... He needed a drink. Or a shower.

He settled on the latter, allowing himself to stand under the water until it turned cold, washing away the days and working the knots from his back. Slowly, he started to relax, and for the first time in weeks, he felt tired enough to sleep.

But first, he pulled his laptop out of his bag and connected to the WiFi, opening a private search.

Redwood High School, Boulder City, Nevada, yearbook.

He opened the school's website, their archive link only a few more clicks away. He took a few guesses at Candy's possible age, and after two dead ends, he found what he was looking for. A digitalised copy of an ugly looking year book, page by page photos of early 2000s haircuts and fashion. After scrolling through some truly terrible quotes, he landed on the Superlative Section.

Most Likely to be a Movie Star - Jessica Forrest ... Most Likely to join the NFL - Hunter Kilpatrick ... Most Likely to get married first - Amber Pope ... Most Likely to stay in Boulder City.

Three pages in, there sat the statement, accompanied by a grainy photo of someone who looked an awful lot like Candy, but with lighter hair, a rounder face and braces decorating their smile. And below the picture sat the name.

Amelia Telford.

[quarterfromcanon]

2019 Fic Writing Roundup

I was tagged by my lovely friend @catty-words.

Total 2019 Word Count: 58,159

Total 2019 Hits: Asdfghjkl; Oh gosh, it’s much harder to tell when the work is only on Tumblr!  I’ll tally up the notes from there to get the closest approximation I can. It looks like there are 174 total (a mix of likes and comments) on the pieces that I posted from this past year.

Other 2019 AO3 Stats: N/A, although I did finally join AO3 *this* year, so next time around there’ll actually be things to put here! :)

Total 2018 Word Count: Published? None. I think I might have tried writing a little bit of something for myself somewhere in there, but I didn’t get back to any kind of public fandom writing until 2019.

Total 2018 Hits: None. What a difference a year can make! I look forward to comparing 2019 to whatever’s yet to come in 2020!

Other 2018 AO3 Stats: N/A

links and titles to 2019 works

Oooh, this is actually a good opportunity to list them chronologically rather than in publication sequence. Let me see if I can get them sorted. (If, however, you’d prefer to read them in the order that they were published, you can click here and simply open the installments in reverse, since Tumblr displays things oldest-to-newest.) All of the following were written for the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fandom and feature Heather x Valencia as their central pairing.

1. Barrier  [1,385 words] - Following where we last saw them in 1.09, Josh and his friends continue their beach day now sans Rebecca’s presence. Consequently, Valencia’s critical eye falls on the only other woman in their company - Heather.

2. Unexpected [3,003 words] - The conclusion of 1.18 leaves Valencia with a lot of emotional baggage to unpack. As one of West Covina’s most frequented locales, Home Base is the first place that springs to mind where she might chase away her sorrows (or perhaps just air them out verbally while all other involved parties are away at Jayma’s wedding). Heather finds herself pulled into comfort and commiseration despite her efforts to avoid involvement.

3. Lost Control and Tumbled Overboard Gladly [3,265 words] - Heather goes to her parents’ home for the first holiday visit since moving out on her own. She has her new friend Valencia in tow. Sincere conversation and the rare allowance of vulnerability break down Heather’s walls with an ease that takes her by surprise.

4. Such Sweet Nothing [1,362 words] - Valencia and Heather return to V’s apartment after their Labor Day afternoon of story-swapping and quality time together. Valencia revels in the joyful acquirement of the second gal pal of her adult life. Heather contends with the dawning realization that her interest in Valencia may not be purely for friendship.

5. There’s A Reason Not to Want This (But I Forgot) [2,418 words] - Internet sleuthing with Rebecca pulls Valencia right back into a Josh fixation spiral. Heather must also face some unresolved feelings: namely, a crush now so intense it can no longer be denied.

6. Habits [3,599 words] - The desire to protect Valencia’s heart overrides the instinct to shield her own, and so Heather ends the self-imposed avoidance of her company. She arrives on V’s doorstep with a helpful cover story and some unfortunate news that needs to be broken gently.

7. I Want Not to Want Anything [1,314 words] - Heather Davis gets Santa Ana Winded.

8. Breathless [3,673 words] - A talk with Heather about Rebecca’s impending marriage to Josh leads Valencia to reassess what matters to her. A rosé-fueled jaunt to a local green space gives rise to the persistent inkling that what - or rather who - she really wants may be a lot closer to her than she’s ready to admit.

9. No One’s Really Got It Figured Out Just Yet [3,289 words] - Valencia throws the bachelorette party for Rebecca. Gurl Group antics and H+V flirting tactics set to hits from the mid ’90s and 2000s ensue. 

10. Evading [2,207 words] - In the wake of events from 3.05 and 3.06, Heather and Valencia have a much needed heart-to-heart. They put some important truths into words while treading lightly around a few unspoken facts so delicate they’re best left in the margins.

11. How Long Do You Plan to Keep Me at the Back of Your Mind? [2,442 words] - An evening welcoming Valencia’s girlfriend Beth to be an honorary member of the Gurl Group doesn’t go quite as smoothly as planned when Heather has a difficult time harnessing her lingering feelings.

12. You and Me, Always Between the Lines [1,828 words] - Now that she has spoken with all of her immediate family members and closest friends, Valencia is prepared to announce her first romantic relationship with a woman on social media. In Beth’s absence, she seeks the moral support of her best friend. Heather is readily by her side for this next big step in Valencia’s coming out journey.

13. Gradation [2,503 words] - Valencia’s time with Beth is at an end and, in her hour of heartbreak, she returns to the same place for comfort as the previous occasion when she found herself suddenly single: across the bar from Heather.

14. Rough Draft [2,625 words] - Valencia and Heather FINALLY get together. Valencia experiences her own “Oh My God, I Think I Like You” freak out.

15. Strategy [1,212 words] - Heather and Valencia have a stay-at-home date night featuring deliberately cringey pick up lines and tangled limbs on a couch in the dark.

16. Verity [3,834 words] - Heather temporarily resumes her role as Valencia’s assistant coordinator when they plan a vow renewal celebration for Paula and Scott. On this night, the recently remarried couple may not be the only two pouring out their hearts in a room full of loved ones...

17. Different and the Same [1,035 words] - Valencia and Heather just moved into their own place. They spend their first morning there together and make good use of the privacy and freedom this new residence affords.

18. Finishing Touches [1,157 words] - Heather and Valencia personalize the interior of their new living space. The situation soon devolves into paint-splattered hijinks.

19. Patterns in the Light [1,058 words] - Despite the fact that they are literally cohabitating and have professed their feelings for each other, Valencia remains a clumsily flirty nerd and I love her for it. Heather does, too.

20. Sage [1,324 words] - After being trapped in a car with someone she didn’t want to be trapped in a car with, Heather returns covered in a dead woman’s ashes. Valencia’s time as a ghost-beleaguered home energy cleanser has arrived at last. She is uniquely qualified to save the day.

21. Portage [1,707 words] - Heather has plans for a couple’s trip with Valencia. The only obstacle is keeping it a secret between the two of them.

22. The Courage and the Strength I Need [1,957 words] - Valencia struggles during Heather’s business trip because it is their first time apart since becoming a couple. They FaceTime to ease the pain of distance and talk about their future.

23. Wanna Be With You All Alone [1,237 words] - Heather comes back from the aforementioned work travel to find that Valencia has made special welcome home arrangements.

24. Midnight, Fright and Candlelight [1,426 words] - A quiet evening is interrupted by a power outage. Heather and Valencia find a surprisingly wholesome and G-rated way to pass the time. 

25. Next to You [1,550 words] - The big yearly Davis Family Reunion quickly approaches. Valencia prepares to accompany Heather to this event and be introduced to many members of her extended family.

26. Warm Whispers [1,683 words] - Heather and Valencia just want to be all cute and domestic and spend the morning fooling around. Their cats disrupt these pursuits in typical feline fashion.

27. “When We’re Together, Darling, Every Night Is Halloween.” [1,228 words] - Heather and Valencia get ready to attend a Gurl Group Halloween party. Their second annual couple’s costume? Gomez and Morticia Addams. 

28. #afewofmyfavoritethings [2,838 words] - Nathaniel, Rebecca, Valencia, Heather, Paula, Scott, and Tommy all rent a cabin for vacation. This piece follows them through a day of wintertime fun. Pure fluffiness here and I had the best time writing every second of it.

Favorite Fic: Probably #afewofmyfavoritethings. I packed it with elements I personally love and moments I was hoping my new friends in the fandom would like. Plus, it was honestly just so good for my soul to write these characters in a soft world where they could engage in classic snow day activities and enjoy each other’s company.

Hardest Fic: I knew there were a few installments of Femslash February where I wrote whole paragraphs or even pages I didn’t keep/decided to revise, but I was pretty sure I also remembered at least one where I wrote an entire separate piece. My sleep schedule was, shall we say, not advisable during February but it was also easily the most exhilarating month of my year. I tracked down the evidence of that rewrite and it turns out the incident I recalled was for Unusual Kiss (the prompt for Day 4 of FF). The original involved something to do with butterfly kisses because, evidently, my inclination to link Valencia to winged beings knows no bounds. I’ve got to admit that I’m still fond of the concept of Valencia giving Heather a subtle “kiss” during a hug in that painfully frightening time before Beth when she was afraid to outright kiss a woman in any way that couldn’t be dismissed as platonic. There’s a good chance an interaction of that nature could appear somewhere in the full story. I am notoriously drawn to that angst period of undisclosed pining so the temptation is quite strong. Still, I’m glad I used the version I actually posted and saved elements of the first draft for later. Fragments of their conversation from the original will probably make it into the final tale, but I think I prefer to sprinkle them across several exchanges instead of divulging them all at once.

Do You Plan to Take Prompts in 2020? Sort of yes and sort of no. I am participating in the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Valentine Exchange, which involves a prompt-esque note from the participant each of us were assigned as our guide to spark inspiration for the gift. It’s also possible that there’ll be some writing prompt list posted somewhere along the way just like Femslash February was last year, and I’ll end up wanting to join the fun. Other than that, though, I’ll mainly stick to the one writing project in an effort to hone my focus.

What was the best thing about 2019? I’d definitely say the bonding and interactions with other members of the fandom. The encouragement and support I received from them remains the primary motivation for me to keep writing and chasing after the ongoing goals I set for myself.

What was the worst thing about 2019? The most honest answer that my mind immediately supplied is death of a close relative. While that isn’t the sole reason for the dip in my creative output (especially since there were multiple months between my last published fic and the passing in question), I know it could certainly be counted among the contributing factors to an overarching writing problem I had. Even before my family’s loss, there was a shift in my thought process that only got worse once there was more on my plate in my personal life. There were many times I sat down wanting to write again but it felt too difficult and intimidating to commit words to the page. I couldn’t seem to transfer them from my mind to the keyboard and I’d invariably switch to doing something else. I developed this terrible internal conviction that insisted the larger fic I wanted to write wouldn’t work as well as the shorter installments. That gnawing insecurity would have me believe one month’s worth of well-received efforts was already such a marvel that anything beyond that point was somehow pushing my luck. Where did the mental voice originate and why couldn’t I shake it? It’s difficult to parse out but what I do know is that I’ve firmly decided 2020 is going to be a year I put it on silent. I know what it’ll mean to me for everything that’s been floating in my head to finally be told in one cohesive format, and to have the satisfaction of giving my favorite characters the ending my heart says they deserve. It’s a sense of closure that’s worth the pursuit.

Any last thoughts for 2019? The bad parts of the last twelve months made me want to essentially say “good riddance” to the year, but the good parts were far too treasured to wish all of 2019 away. I am so grateful for the new people I met and friendships that solidified during that time. I especially owe my most heartfelt appreciation to @catty-words, @notbang, and @monaiargancoconutsoy. Thank you for everything. <3

Goals for 2020

Finish. The. Fic.

I believe everyone I know who writes fanfic has already been tagged but, if you haven’t gotten the chance to look back over your writing year, by all means, use these questions to give it a go! :)

[theaspiringwanderess]

Maligne Pass Trail

(my amazing sister)

The Maligne Pass Trail is a well known, now partially decommissioned trail, located in the world renowned Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. It is a highly sought after hike, known for its alpine meadows full of amazing wild flowers and spectacular scenery. In 2018 I had the privilege experiencing this amazing and historic trail not only with my sister, but also an impressive group of female backpackers. In total we spent a full 3 day weekend hiking; one day hiking the Potokan Creek Trail to Avalanche Campground where we setup camp, a second day of day-hiking further up the pass, and day 3 hiking back to civilization. 

A Little History Blurb 

There is a significant story nestled in Canadian history about a woman explorer named Mary Schaffer that makes the Maligne Pass Trail just a little bit more magical. You may have never heard of her but, you could almost say little Miss Mary could be credited in large part for the later development of Jasper National Park, literally a Canadian jewel. In Pennsylvania, 1861, then Mary Townsend Sharples was born into a time when it was considered improper for woman to be on expeditions, much less leading them. In 1889, shortly after being introduced to her then future husband, Dr. Charles Schaffer, the two married and began the first of many trips together through the Canadian Rockies. They collaborated on a labour of love, a joint book of regional wildflowers, aptly named ‘Alpine Flora of the Canadian Rockies’ which would eventually be published in 1907 (a historic version can be found online via open Chung Collection of UBC). After Charles’ passing in 1903, Mary set about to complete the guide book in his honour. In her endeavour to do so, she forged relationships, and friendships, with local Nakota tribesman whom assisted in guiding and helping her through her travels, most notably Sampson Beaver and his family. As a result of these expeditions, Mary is considered equally as famous for the “discovery” of Maligne Lake and for being (likely) the first Caucasian person, albiet female none the less, to chart a path to it, as she is for the completion of the botanical guidebook. Her additional, and possibly most famous publication, Old Indian Trails of the Canadian Rockies, recounts her expeditions between 1907-1908 and is credited not only as leading to the protection of the Maligne Lake area, but as being a key, first hand account of social standards of the era. In 1911, a 49 year old Mary was approached by the Geographical Survey of Canada to survey and document the lake area and in doing so name the lake, mountains, peaks and other geographical features for her guides, family, friends and sponsors. You can read more about these details, and Mary, including some fascinating quotes and other points of interest here.  

About the Trail

Our party of 10 tenacious women parked in a parking lot located on the western side of the bridge over the Poboktan creek. We suited up, grabbed our packs and walked over the bridge to the Poboktan Creek Trail Head and began our adventure. The trail primarily tracks alongside the Poboktan until you reach its confluence with Poligne Creek where you will shift direction to head northwesterly along Poligne until you reach Avalanche Campground. Although only an approximate 11 km to our destination at Avalanche, the elevation climbed from about 1540 meters at the trailhead to approximately 2037 meters at the campground itself; it is important to note that the elevation continues to climb as you continue further down the trail past the campsite. The best advice is pack light, the terrain was very firm, I was thankful I had bought some good quality, hiking grade insoles for my Lowa’s, but my feet still came away pretty sore. It took us most of the day at a steady pace (roughly 6 or so hours, not rushing and accounting for brief breaks and lunch riverside) to reach Avalanche. Both black flies and mosquitos are plentiful residents here, so be sure to pack, and liberally apply, a broad spectrum insect repellent (unless maybe you like bitey friends!). 

The creeks provide clean and plentiful water sources all the way to Avalanche, though water tabs are always recommended. In total we passed few other hikers along the way, most closest to the trailhead, including a young couple with a new baby (brave, admirable... Park lifestyle, who knows!); but for the most part, as we ventured into more remote areas, we were on our own and very secluded, passing only two or three other parties the remainder of the weekend. The trail was fairly clear and easy to see, though some of the bridges were not in good shape. Although we were still able to cross at the expected spots, being a partially decommissioned hiking trail means the Park is no longer doing formal maintenance on the trail; bridges may not be upkept or repaired and fallen debris may not be cleared, so be prepared, if necessary, to find safer routes if required. A special reservation must also be made through Parks Canada to stay at the Avalanche Campsite. Only single party reservations for specific time frames will be allowed at a time with a limited number allowed each year. 

(map courtesy Parks Canada)

Wildlife and Plantlife

Oddly enough we actually did not encounter much wildlife on our trek. If you’re like me, wildlife and photography are a huge part of what I enjoy about hiking, so this was a bit unfortunate. I believe this may have had to do most likely with our party size. However the area is very well known for elk, moose, bears (both black and grizzly), cougars, pikas (at higher elevations), ground squirrels and many other amazing creatures. We also spotted some amazing wildflowers including wild columbine, willow, lilies, and much, much more! Even with the lack of animal appearances, trust me, there is no shortage of stunning scenery and photographic opportunities - beauty is literally everywhere.

However, I think its worth mentioning, even if you don’t come across much in the realm of animals, it doesn’t mean they aren’t still around. It is important to ALWAYS remember and exercise bear safety. Ensure you have the proper equipment, this includes bear bells and other noise makers to alert wildlife to your presence, and keeping readily accessible bear spray. Travelling in groups is always recommended, there is safety in numbers and no cell service for emergencies. Do not leave your garbage on the trail and do not bring food or scented items into your tent, this can attract animals of all kinds, including bears, that you may not appreciate sharing your supplies with, or cuddling next to, at night. One of the ladies in our party shared a tale of the time they left their bike helmets outside to dry overnight, only to awaken the next morning to find raccoons eating the salt soaked foam padding (I couldn’t help but imagine it must not have been a comfy wear after that - lol) ... mice, skunks and racoons are also common campground scavengers and have been known to get into even the best hung bear bags. 

(small animal tracks)

Why Decommission Trails? 

This is something I was curious about when I read up on the Maligne Pass Trail. Why suddenly decommission a popular trail with so much history? In short its because of its popularity and the rare and unique wildlife and fauna put at risk by the people traversing through. I learned that it takes years (6+) for the tundra to recoup from a single misplaced step! Obviously this area is special, and because of this Jasper National Park has decided now to make it accessible only to the most well versed and savvy backpackers in hopes that it will remain protected and safe for years to come. This means removing it from common maps and advertising it significantly less. Please be cognoscente of the purpose behind this as you pass through and remember to keep your impact on the area to a minimum. Pack your garbage back with you, burn fires only in provided pits, do not feed or approach the wildlife, and... beware of where you step ;) . 

Avalanche Campsite 

Avalanche Campsite was beyond amazing... I was so saddened to realize I didn’t actually get a good shot of it, so this magical photo of the path into it will just have to do (sorry!). Perched atop a hillside overlooking a bend in the creek, this amazing spot snuck right up on us. There were about 4-5 tent-ready pads. A couple picnic tables and 2 fire pits. There were 2 bear bag hanging areas further to the left of the site (as you face the tent pads) with stainless steel cord and fixing carabineers. There was also a surprisingly nice toilet facility located above and slightly to the right of the tent pads, well concealed in the forest. One of the articles I read prior to the hike describe the facilities as ‘having the best skylight you’d ever seen...” took us a bit to clue in, but rest assured the view is definitely boundless (lol). There was also a pretty sturdy fallen tree across the river that one of the braver ladies turned into an impromptu yoga study... just be sure if you give it a try that your balance is spot on because the water is brisk!

Beyond Avalanche 

After setting up camp, having a hearty meal and crashing for the night, day two was a welcome adventure into the great beyond of The Pass. Ensure you have ample water setting out on your trek as further along the trail you stray away from the creek supply. You will eventually come across some fresh springs and small pothole lakes as you enter the higher altitude, valley-like area just above the tree line. The path leaving the campsite was a bit tricker to find for the first while and winds through some scrub brush and light coniferous forest. Eventually we made our way past this and the path opens up into a small valley-like plain, congratulations, you have set eyes on something few will now see, The Maligne Pass! With peaks on either side and a well trodden, dirt path which passes by a chain of tiny little lakes (almost more the size of large ponds) the wild flowers are stunning and the view is breathtaking. Here you will be treated to an array of various colours of Indian Paint Brush, willows, Alpine Heather, Alpine Aster, Western Pasqueflower, numerous awe inspiring fungi, and I was told by a biologist in our group, a very rare beauty she was literally mind blown to find, known as Teal Gentian, amongst much, much more. 

 We passed much of the day away climbing the nearby mountain peaks, making snow angels and looking down on the stunning view of Maligne Lake which was visible in the distance. We even enjoyed a brief dip in the tiny lake, brief being the operative word since it was also freezing! Having throughly explored The Pass, as the day came to a close we turned around and headed back to base camp. On our way back we came across a young solo German hiker making his way through the valley and continuing along the pass trail. This was worth a mention as we briefly spoke with him and he inquired about safe places (or rather the lack there of at this point) to make a camp and bear proof your supplies. What trees there were, were spindly and not high enough to adequately hang or keep safe a food bag. If you intend on continuing through the trail do keep this in mind as you will need to have enough time to make adequate arrangements to keep you and your supplies safe for the night.

Noteworthy Points

The majority of the women in my party had camel backs (If you’re not familiar, these are large refillable water bottles able to be stored inside your pack). I used two large Nalgine water bottles which were very sufficient but not as easy to access on the fly. After returning I did some research and invested in a Platypus collapsable hydration pack; it just seems so much easier on the move and these babies weigh literally nothing empty (which is a major objective for me!).

Pack sunscreen and be prepared to reapply it mid-day. Although I’d applied ample sunscreen, I found out the hard way that skin burns faster at higher altitudes due to the thinner atmosphere. I was teased by friends the rest of the summer for my awesome half-tanned legs (courtesy of my gaiters).

If you plan on making a base camp as we did at Avalanche and doing some day hiking, consider packing a lightweight, compact daypack or camelback pack.  

While the days were hot (+25/27 celsius), the nights were much colder than I expected. I have a Marmot Womens’ Trestles mummy bag (which I ADORE! it just wish I’d brought the warmer one!) rated for +5 celsius and a charcoal bag liner, and even with layers on (tee shirt, sweat pants, socks, merino wool sweater and leggings) I was STILL cold (much to my surprise and dismay). The mountains can be deceiving, pack warm and consider the temperatures drops significantly at night.

Final Thoughts

I consider this as one of my most favourite hiking experiences to date and I only wish we could’ve spent a bit more time and extended our stay to explore the full trail. The scenery was spectacular and was only made better by the great company. 

You can find more of my photography from the Maligne Pass Trail and more on my website at KatrynaJones.com 

[bites-kms]

Southwest Roadtrip - Episode 1: Viva las Vegas

When it comes to discovering the US, Johnny Cash kept it simple and straight to the point: 

“I've been everywhere, man. Crossed the desert's bare, man. I've breathed the mountain air, man. Of travel I've had my share, man. I've been everywhere.“

And what a journey it was! Who knew a failed attempt to fly to Hawaii would result in such a fun adventure? We packed our stuff and jumped on a plane, destination Southwest of America. Starting by Vegas, passing through Arizona, stopping by Utah, resting in Colorado. Only my friend Belu would be as kamikaze to propose such thing and found in me such a blind partner-in-crime. It was September 4th, and we were rushing in a taxi from Hoboken to Newark to board our first flight during a global sanitary emergency, looking like Darth Vader’s close cousins with our masks and face shields. 

After an approximately 6-hour flight, we landed in the middle of literally nowhere. We were able to see the pyramid and some other iconic architecture which I currently do not remember because it was about only for 5 seconds before landing. On arrival, on a mostly empty airport, we were surprised by the amount of slot machines that were there, welcoming everyone to place their bets. For sure, ours was to have fun and contrary to common belief, the house didn't win this one: we had a blast!

Followed by a surprise “SIN CITY, WOOO HOOO!” shout from someone who obviously has been living inside a thermos for the last past months, we cracked up and went to fetch a car. This very nice gentleman took us to the Bellagio (yeap, we went full on cliche mode, with what was originally a non-existent promo) while DJ Dani blasted her best records to kick off this adventure with the right feet: Viva Las Vegas by Elvis Presley and Just a Gigolo by Louis Prima Success. 

DAY 1: 

First things first: check in and adventure. Hotel, amenities and surroundings. Vegas spins around two main areas: the famous Strip, 6.8kms of the brightest place on earth seen from outer space full of hotels, restaurants, shops and of course, casinos. Pretty much Disneyworld for adults. The Bellagio is the iconic hotel which hosts some of the greatest restaurants and also the famous dancing fountains. Also, is one that is pretty centrally located, in between Caesars Palace (Roman Empire themed), The Cosmopolitan (which imitates boheme life from France) Aria and Park MGM Las Vegas (New York City represent!), Excalibur (Middle Ages) Luxor (Cleopatra’s Egypt) and The Venetian (of course, Venice). Everything is within walking distance but beware of the heat: a normal day in the desert is around 42C (107F), if not more, with a melting down thermal sensation of 1000 in any scale. This is why is also a city that is enjoyable during night time. So, do not feel bad about sleeping in a bit: you can always chill by the pool in the morning, have a little something for lunch and sleep (or remove the hangover) during the afternoon when the sun is unbearable. OR, the casino is always open so that could be an option. We chose to walk around a bit (big mistake) but luckily once you enter to the casinos, they are all connected with escalators, shade and AC, so we were mesmerized by this grown up themed park, where is so easy to lose track of time. 

After an Italian lunch on a french bistro in a corner of Paris (? yes.. I know..) we went back and rest by the pool. Once the sun was already getting ready to bet some chips at night, we did too: we changed into our most shinny and glamorous outfit and won exactly 27 dollars! We checked out Venice, and some of the night shows that were happening on the streets (like naked promoters, the massive PM lines, and the crazy long-ass “juice” towers flowing around the more energetic covid-prone crowds) right before we headed up to Yellowtail, the Japanese and Michelin Starred restaurant at the Bellagio. We had their famous tuna pizza (it sounds terrible but it is more of a tostada or sashimi-style like) and got disappointed that they run out of the short ribs, but instead had some amazing sushi rolls and some tempura bites. When we found out about the beautiful, sigh-seeing windows that displayed all the fountain show we left our high-end attires aside and run to the windows, interrupting some other people’s dinner while leaving the waiters behind. We decided to go for dessert somewhere else and went to the piano bar located at the reception for a delicious espresso and a chocolate diamond cake. We did some neon-gazing and loved the fountain show to the beat of Believe by Cher, while being overwhelmed by a surreal feeling of actually being there, having so much fun and appreciating our friendship (and of course, avoided a high/drunk fellow who tried to take our pics and phone with them - she didnt know we were from New York and from Rio de la Plata, so the scam was on her!) 

DAY 2

Repeat. (and pretty much that’s all we did). We kicked it off with a fake breakfast by the pool, and some piñas coladas in between facemasks. We also had a light lunch by the pool (a greek salad with some much needed water) and then, around 6:15 we took a cab to the Neon Museum - yeap, for those who think there is only light fun in Vegas, nope, think again, there are worthy museums, too! ( I even made a joke here! damn I’m inspired!). The Neon Museum is a scrap dealer cemetery, where all the old and somehow “broken” -even thou most of them have been repaired and are currently working!- neon signs from Old time Vegas rest. It is very fun to see old hotels, random letters, icons and logos being laid there, creating a wonderful mess in the middle of, again, you guess right, the desert. It was very fun and beautiful to be honest. 

Another short taxi drive later (I was too naif thinking we could walk in short heels under the killer heat more than a block!) we drove thru what is known as “Old Vegas” or “Downtown Vegas”. This used to be the place where the magic happened before the creation of the Strip, but nowadays it only hosts what lingers of once a glamorous and kitschy past. The center of this action can be found throughout Freemont Street, a pedestrian long avenue that gathers classic neon signs, all-time Vegas characters (we still missed out on Elvis, so watch out impersonator, we will be back just for you!), stripers, street sellers, all you can eat venues, dodgy bars, and more and more neons.  According to Las Vegas Tourism Board>> “Fun people, crazy people, partying, gambling, drinking, street performers, free music and light shows, zip lining and just having a good time... that's what you expect at Freemont.”

We had some pizza, talked to this Montana guy who for a second thought he was able to have a threesome with us on his dirty van, were voluntary abused by these hot, ripped stripers who made us laugh with their pick up line: “You can leave your face mask here, right by your underwear too, please.” The guys were a “sample” - since the show is canceled due to the pandemic- of Chippendales, something a fine woman needs to experience once in their lifetime. Belu felt in love with her boy, but given the current times and protocols, this love couldn't prosper as we all wished it had. No worries amiga, next time!

But the most striking part of this decadent place was witnessing this surreal restaurant called Heart Attack Grill, where people who weight more than 350lbs (almost 160kgs) eat for free. The biggest burger consist on 8 patties, and as an FYI, only the 4 patty burger is marked on the Guinness World Records Book as the “Quadruple Bypass Burger” with almost 10.000 calories, all the beverages consists on massive soft drinks, milkshakes, beers and wine, (full bottles, of course, served from an IV drip bag) and it is not allowed to share food. The place is cash only, you gotta weight yourself before entering, each patty is made of half pound each, everybody must wear hospital gowns and if you dare not to finish your meal, you get three spanks by the horny yet not so sexy waitress dressed as nurses. As a nice little detail, on the biggest burger you can pump it up with 40 slices of bacon by only $7.99 more!  And, to wrap up this majestic hospital parlor, I recently researched that the legal owner of Heart Attack Grill is hilarious – Diet Center LLC. The founder is Jon Basso, who strives to provide “nutritional pornography” in his food. For a better comprehension (for a lack of a better word) of this place, you can check out this recap of Showtime’s series: Deadly Sins. 

So, we were mesmerized, we were educated, we bet, we ate, we drunk and we touched some sweaty strippers, so there was only one thing left to do: crush a weeding. So there we went. There were multiple chapels around the area, but I dont know whether it was the time (it was around, 9, 9 and coins) so it may have been a little bit too late or due to COVID, but no weddings were in place. We finally arrived to the Little White Chapel, the original, unique one that has the Elvis sign, the drive-thru and the proud sign that states how Michael Jordan and Joan Collins got married there. We were so bummed to found only a very young, very dull couple getting married (she was wearing black, hence, that is all you need to know) and there was not a very jolly, merry spirit. Still, we managed to hang out with the best men and got a picture of two to remember this fail attempt to crush this very much lame wedding. Up we went to the Bellagio, checking out what was missing from Sin City: the Wynn Hotel, Route 515, 51 and the Famous Welcome to Las Vegas Sign. 

We wrapped this unique experience witnessing an amazing, full moon in the middle of the desert, with a massive and delicious full on breakfast at Sadelle’s, a little piece of home in our far-away-from home hotel.  Till next time, Vegas! You were great fun! 

[rachelratesmusic]

folklore

folklore: Taylor Swift’s first album to be labelled Alternative, her second genre change since country to pop, this time from pop to alternative, or folk, but we definitely still have that country story-telling flare that Taylor has always capitalised from over her approximately 14 year career.

And her second album to not be capitalised, after reputation. 

Track 1: the 1

First line of the album? “I’m doing good, I'm on some new shit.” Couldn’t think of a better lyric to start. New genre. New producer (Aaron Dessner of The National). New album. New Taylor. She’s doing good! Let’s go! 

Track 2: cardigan

The ~delicate~ piano and Dessner production continues from track 1 to track 2, but this time, sonically, there’s an eerie-ness that emphasizes this sadness in the song, which is set from the perspective of someone who has been heartbroken, which Taylor herself has described a teenage love triangle, who’s story is told this track, track 8 august, and track 14 betty. The metaphors in the lyrics tell the story so maturely and beautifully, kind of like this teenage girl is far beyond her years... Maybe someone fairly recently turned 30 and had a lot of life experience…? Maybe Taylor’s most beautifully written lead single ever… Actually not maybe - definitely.

Track 3: the last great american dynasty

Another piano intro… ok… this is definitely sonically cohesive so far.

Oh! An 808 beat now. I’m head nodding! Oh… and she’s still storytelling… nice, that’s why it is called folklore. We take a slight turn here in terms of the mood instrumentally, but not really in terms of the lyrics, or this album's case, the stories being told. The mostly staccato piano chords contrasting the legato guitar slide fills along with the 808 electronic drum beat create a sort of light, bouncy, exhilaration, but what cleverly stops this exhilaration is the word painting where a minor chord is used on top of the second last word of the chorus, which is the word “ruining”, as well as a string section rising in volume to introduce us to the bridge, which is the climax of the story and the highlight of the song. Because in the bridge Taylor does what Taylor does best, which is the contribution of her own story through the lyrics, and that’s a part of the reason why we’re all devoted listeners.

Track 4: exile (featuring Bon Iver)

tbh... I’d never heard any Bon Iver music before this... I know, I know, I’m sorry. So on first listen I was ~low key~ startled at his hella low voice. But this song has grown on me. It can easily be compared to The Last Time on Taylor’s Red from 2012 where she duets with Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol but I prefer exile. What makes this song imo is when Bon Iver sings the word “CRyin’” around the 2 minute and 20 second mark, which again like the last track, the bridge of this song is what you’re waiting for as a listener to take you to new heights, where both vocalists deliver here, with Bon Iver ~nearly~ belting and Taylor being the opposite responder at more of a soft, tender volume, they both deliver the two different sides of the story in two different captivating ways.

Track 5: my tears ricochet

Look… I’ll be honest again… This is... MY FAVOURITE TRACK.

The standout part of this song is it’s whole buildup and the lyrics. ---(come on, we’re talking about a Taylor Swift track 5 here, historically we know it’s going to be a standout in the lyric department and Taylor herself has described every track 5 of each of her albums to be her saddest songs) Also historically, Taylor fans know that this section of her albums are where the best lyrics are kept. 

First track on this album to be produced by long time collaborator of Swift, Jack Antonoff, the track begins with vocal ‘ohs’ reminiscent for me, of Imogen Heap, where now I feel I have to mention when Taylor collaborated with her on Taylor’s standout track “Clean” on 1989 from 2014. While Heap’s work may be littered with vocoders and electronics, my tears ricochet is natural, and surrounds the listeners ears with panning and reverb like they’re in a room surrounded by echoing Taylors. Then she makes you feel like you have betrayed her with how far she lets in, both with her detailed lyrics and how she is singing with the pacing of the melody, stopping and starting.

The build up is really noticeable as the bridge starts and the thundering drums hammer home the idea that Taylor can’t go home and after all this building, she lets go on the words “stolen lullabies”, where you feel this sense of freedom when the backing vocals of the intro return before the last chorus and again, the outro of those surrounding vocals we know so well.

With lyrics like “and if I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake?” and “you wear the same jewels that I gave you, as you bury me.” my tears ricochet easily triggers chills. (literal chills)

Track 6: mirrorball

And now… we have stepped into the past. The tone and picking of the electric guitar in the intro and first verse take me right back to the 70s… when I wasn’t alive…

Anyway, it’s another song about her personal struggles around fame and trying to “fit in” and stand out, which she encompasses so elegantly in the metaphor of being a shiny, shimmery disco mirrorball. 

And sorry, as much as I do love it… it is the one song I would skip if I had to… and sometimes it’s skipped by choice, which tells you it’s the weakest track on the album in my opinion, but not easy to live up to the previous track that is so intense, so it is nice to have a more chill take in music and lyrics, although the lyrics can be really thought provoking if you want them to be.

Side note: where are the drums in this song? To hear the kick drum I have to focus really hard, which can be a good thing if you’re looking for a chill song, like I said I was after my tears ricochet, but it’s not a good thing either...

Track 7: seven

Every single little detail of this song is so elegant. Aaron Dessner’s light touches on the piano and guitar as well as the accompanying string section are just guides for the vocals telling the story of the love shared between friends throughout childhood and how that love lasts, so long which Taylor describes so eloquently in my favourite lyric of the entire album, “passed down like folk songs, our love lasts so long.”

The slightly higher pitch and slightly hushed tone Taylor sings in as the song begins, is unlike anything she has sung before. It reminds me of her previous tracks “Sad Beautiful Tragic” from her fourth album Red from 2012 or “Safe and Sound'' from the The Hunger Games soundtrack, but those songs were hushed and low pitched. 

Where she sings like this is labelled as the first verse by Genius, where everyone gets the lyrics to songs nowadays, but how the two contrasting melodies are sung, to me the first section or melody seemed like the chorus the first few times I listened, but the second section or melody is also the closing melody and it would make the most sense the end on a chorus. While this may be confusing, at least it is a bit to me, I’m glad that Taylor has strayed away from the traditional pop structure in this track which is another reason why seven really stands out to me. 

Track 8: august

The third song to be produced by Antonoff, August is what I’m going to describe as a getaway song - and by that I mean there’s a certain urgency to the pacing because something wild is happening! Whether it’s robbing someone or something in “Getaway Car” from reputation (2017) or crying in the back of the car in Lover’s “Cruel Summer”, also both co-written and produced by Antonoff, August joins this exclusive club.

The chorus melody is pretty and bright - while it feels mature, at the same time it feels like I am hearing this story from a love struck teenager, which you’re supposed to as it’s a part of the teenager love triangle story Taylor has going through the album, with this being the point of view of the third person in the relationship.

August’s bridge is it’s invitation to my made up Getaway Song party, which is a very exclusive and elitist party. The urgency in the pacing to pump up the climax of the story she’s telling, is very much becoming a TS trademark, I’ll be very happy in the future to give out more invitations to the Getaway Song party.

Track 9: this is me trying

Not gonna lie… this is simply one of my favorites because I feel it! This is me trying dammit! At least I’m trying! But this is what Taylor Swift does best, when you have the same feelings or emotions as her, and she decides to express those emotions in song, you can feel like you’re not alone for a moment which can be freeing.

While not outstanding production wise, I feel I can let it pass, because I love Taylor’s storytelling and ability to depict the craving for wanting better of yourself and trying...

Track 10: illicit affairs

Where were these pre-pop Taylor acoustic guitars before on an album called folklore?! Taylor is a guitar girl and I need my pre-pop Taylor acoustic guitar instrumentals!

While the title clearly indicates the story’s substance, this track feels like it’s over in the blink of an eye, while yet again, the highlight of the track is the bridge. Personally, it’s my favourite of the album beating “my tears ricochet” and “august”. There’s just something about it’s steady beating progression and particularly the way she emphasises the words “kid” and “baby”. It draws you in to feel the pain of the story’s protagonist, as well as it makes you want to shout the lyrics to help the protagonist get some sort of justice.

Track 11: invisible string

The acoustic guitar continues, and I am overjoyed, but this time it’s different, where a muting technique is employed, with an accent on the highest pitch string, which isn’t muted to create a sort of release. While writing this description of the guitar, despite having already listened to the song a million times, I thought, the song is called Invisible String, a guitar has strings, and the muted are muted, or made to sound invisible? Nice word painting Taylor. It took me a second. (If it was even done on purpose.)

More on the actual “invisible string”, I love the metaphor of it which seems to be based on Chinese mythology’s “Red Thread of Fate”. Which you get a loose description of through the songs lyrics. Along with the previous track, “the 1”, “invisible string” sounds the most pop-like to me out of the entire album so far. This is because there is a clear difference between verse, chorus and bridge, where the chord pattern actually changes between each of the three. All of these things combined makes for one of my favourite tracks on the album. And lastly, how can I not mention the mentioning of her own song “Bad Blood” in the second verse? 

Track 12: mad woman

I can’t help but think this is the grown up version of The Man. In saying that however, I don’t mean at all that The Man is not good - it brings up serious issues in a very dignified way. 

But “mad woman” is a song all on her own with beautiful, but at the same time, dark instrumentation and lyrics that really make you think about what she's talking about, which is something slightly different to “The Man”. Whether it’s her core shaking lower register or her first use of an F bomb ever, it’s sure to catch your attention before she opens to the lyric “you made her like that”, and then the bridge, where I have probably mentioned before in this review, Taylor really opens up the story, while plainly stating, “you took everything from me.”

The sonic cohesion continues with the guitar in the back of chorus, very similar to TLGAD, which is peaking out as being a signature of Aaron production.

Track 13: epiphany

“Epiphany” stands out. In the best way, and if you’re a Taylor fan you’d expect it to, as track 13s have traditionally throughout her discography, being her lucky number. 

I’m not going to lie, this is the hardest song to describe and rate. Because it is so different, and honestly, that is why I really love it. Strung out vocals in the verse, contrasted with more staccato vocals in the chorus, the wide, elongated instrumentation, behind those vocals, it’s easy to depict some sort of battlefield scene in your head. Which actually links to it’s one thing in common with the other tracks in this album.

And what is the one thing in common with the other tracks in this album? It’s storytelling. And this story’s substance really makes you think, continuing the tradition from “mad woman”, but with a completely different storyline focusing on and drawing together the harsh events of 2020 and a past war where Swift has stated that the track was also inspired by her serving grandfather. 

Track 14: betty

“Betty” concludes the teenage love triangle trilogy of songs and stands out as one of the more pop-ier songs on the album. Like Bon Iver’s voice was a surprise on “exile”, the harmonica was a welcomed surprise on “betty”. 

There are two components to this song that make it a great one, those being it’s clear instrumentation, and it's clear story. Let’s start with story, where I already said that this is the final chapter to the teenage love triangle story, I believe this song doesn’t need an explanation, because, and this is the last time I speak about storytelling, this one song is like a good book and tells the story (one side of it, that’s where the other songs come in) from beginning to end. 

And then the instrumentation, which is just vocals and harmonica on top of a marvelous sea of all sorts of guitars, with the strumming acoustic keeping the beat, and electric swells. With this track being the only one that joins both Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff as producers, it’s not hard to imagine they’ve both just picked up guitars and added to Taylor’s charming story. 

In the ending where we see a key change and slight change from the chorus lyrics to tie up the happy ending to the story, “betty” cannot not be compared to Taylor’s 2008 hit “Love Story” where in the ending the lyrics are changed to sum up and fit the joy of a happy ending.

Track 15: peace

This track begins with a pulse, which Dessner has described as Bon Iver inspired. This pulse then flutters away and leads into more guitar, and by this stage you should know it’s what I’m waiting for - but it’s a bass guitar taking the lead ostinato or riff this time. Even better, because it’s unexpected, a punch in the guts, they say, like a harmonica on a post country Taylor Swift album? I need to stop going on about the harmonica, this album is called folklore.

While this track illustrates the love shared with that one person, it is no “Lover” (the song) or “Love Story”. It’s like this is the real life side, or the grown up side to real love, with statements like, “sit with you in the trenches” and that one question, “would it be enough if I could never give you peace?” I think it really demonstrates how far she’s come, along with that pulse soundscape , bass guitar and piano towards the end makes for an uncomplicated lead to Taylor’s most thought provoking lyrics in a romantic based song ever as well as being probably her most sophisticated song ever.

The devil really is in the details with Taylor’s music, which is both super comforting and complicated at the same time, with references to past songs, and I’m not even going to start to explain how Taylor is obsessed with leaving her fans easter eggs, but it’s kind of funny how this album had pretty much zero easter eggs in the lead up to it. Now I’m feeling comforted again. 

Track 16: hoax

Speaking of feeling comfortable - shh. I’m listening to “hoax”, sitting next to the fire burning in my fireplace, wrapped in a blanket, with snow falling ever so softly out my window. Nope, that’s just the image in my head I get from listening to “hoax”, I live in Australia where it doesn’t snow much. 

“hoax” is slightly lackluster dynamically for an album closer in Taylor’s discography, compared to Daylight from Lover or Clean from 1989 with New Years Day from reputation being the exception, which I also feel is slightly lackluster. Based on it’s soft sound, I’d prefer it wasn’t the album closer, even though it is lovely to feel so cozy as the album does close out. 

But besides that, it is a cozy sounding song with some not so cozy lyrics. Closing out softly, it’s another case of Taylor leaving possibly her best and most beautiful words for last, with lyrics such as, “Stood on the cliffside screaming give me a reason, your faithless love’s the only hoax I believe in.”

3 Facts:

1. This is the first time ever that Taylor has had an explicit rated album and songs. So exciting.

2. Her first collaboration with Jack Antonoff was in 2013 when they created the song “Sweeter Than Fiction” for the film One Chance, and Taylor has since used Antonoff as a producer on every one of her albums.

3. Nobody knows for sure who William Bowery is. Who is William Bowery you ask? William Bowery is a co-writer of “exile” and “betty”. There is speculation… But no one knows...

To tie things up, Taylor delivered, this album is what a lot of people wanted, including myself. And what we wanted was a warm, acoustic, story focused album, which we got. But for me there is one thing missing, and I’m not exactly sure whether it is possible that it would fit on a flok-y warm album, but I miss Taylor’s pop catchy melody songwriting that we’ve all grown used to, where a hook would get stuck in your head for days. Not exactly folk-y, I know, but I miss it from Taylor. Not to take away from the fact at all that this is a very strong, solid album in her discography and a completely different weapon up her sleeve compared to her pop and country past.

My favourite tracks: my tears ricochet, seven, peace, this is me trying, illicit affairs, invisible string, epiphany

4.7/5 - it’s not perfect, but is it Taylor’s closest album to perfection? Possibly…

[jeffreyhowardz]

Best Walk Behind Lawn Mowers – Buyers Guide 2019

A good, landscaped backyard is a great bonus for a home. Imagine having weekend parties for families or you might want to spend a nightcap outdoors. But trimming and maintaining the lawn could be troublesome. And for this, you need a very reliable partner to keep the greens at a desirable height. The following are among the best walk behind lawn mowers you can have.

Your lawn is a big part of the aesthetics and ambiance of your home. It needs proper maintenance to ensure that its aesthetics remain. One of the major tasks of lawn maintenance is mowing the grass. To complete this task properly, you need the right kind of lawnmower. As there are many lawn mowing products available in the market, this post sets out to help you understand your choices when deciding to purchase a new lawnmower.

Important things to Remember when Buying a Lawn Mower

The following are important factors you need to consider when choosing a lawnmower for your home.

What is the Size of your Lawn? The size of your lawn directly relates to the size and type of lawnmower you will buy. You will find mowers for small, medium, as well as large lawns. For small lawns, a push reel, electric or cordless mower would be sufficient. For medium sized lawns, push mowers or self-propelled walk behind mowers are good choices. For large lawns, large sized gas operated lawn mowers such as zero turns and riding mowers are almost always the best option. Experts recommend anything over a half acre use some form of a riding mower.

What Kind of Cut Quality do you require? Do you want the grass to be cut short, have a neat finish, or do you want the grass to have a decent height? Do you want to mulch your clippings, discharge them, or bag them? Does your yard have large slopes?  Depending on this, you must look for a lawnmower with certain features such as:

Sharp, long-lasting blades to provide that clean-cut finish

Adjustable decks to ensure a different height, depending on your desired grass height.

A package that includes the bagging apparatus and side discharge chute without having to buy those accessories extra.

Features such as mower wheel width and all-wheel drive to help if slope is an issue

What Type of Lawn Mower do you want to Buy? There are various types of lawn mowers you can consider:

Manual reel lawn mowers: The first standard lawnmower used mostly in residential homes. No gas or electric makes for an efficient, eco-friendly unit.

Push mowers: These can come in gas or electric models. Gas powered uses combustion to turn the blades but the operator to propel the machine forward. Electric models include corded and rechargeable battery powered mowers. An economical option but the cord can be a hassle when mowing even a small lawn.

Self-propelled walk behind lawn mowers: Perhaps the most popular and most used mower, this type utilizes gasoline and internal combustion to provide the power to turn the blades and propel the machine. Ideal for medium-sized yards.

Riding Mowers: Also, known as lawn tractors, these mowers are divided between the front engine and rear engine. They are both ideals for large sized yards but can be used for medium sized yards as well. Front engine mount offers a better cut while rear mount offers space savings.

Zero Turn Mowers: These are similar to riding tractors, however, zero-turn mowers utilize motion control levers for steering. They are mainly used to process tall grass, and long tracks. These mowers are quick and efficient at mowing large yards.

What type of Wheels does the Lawn Mower Have? Our area of expertise, this is one aspect that most people don’t think about but is still important. The type of wheel used with the lawnmower can influence its movement, speed, smoothness, and thus, the amount of effort the user or machine must put in to get the work done. The best wheels to consider for walk behind applications are tread cap wheels. These wheels are non-pneumatic, meaning they do not require air and are inexpensive to replace. The best wheels to consider for riding applications are pneumatic wheels or a combo of no flat and pneumatic tires. Most riding mowers are going to come standard with pneumatics while many zero turns will offer pneumatics in the rear and a semi-pneumatic or polyurethane foam tire on the front.  The size of the wheels will depend on the size of the mower.

What Accessories are you getting along with the Lawn Mower? Is the seller providing you accessories like grass collection bags, battery charging kits, lubricants, protective wear, etc.? Always check with the seller what accessories you can get along with the lawn mower. These can be a big added advantage and a reason to choose one manufacturer over another.

What is the Price Range? This is perhaps the biggest deciding factor and where many decide to start their research.  There is an abundance of options available and many that will ultimately do the job.  Find out which type of lawnmower is within your budget and begin to narrow the search from there.  You may find that some features and benefits that save you time and money in the long run, will be worth going over the budget in the short term.

By taking these points into consideration, you will be able to find a lawnmower of the right size, function, and performance for your home. Take the time to research different types of lawnmowers, and understand all their features, specifications, and benefits. Look at customer reviews online before you decide as well as research the manufacturer’s websites for added insight.

Best Walk Behind Lawn Mowers

Husqvarna 5521P

Powered by Briggs and Stratton 5-1/2-torque – 140-cc engine, you can be sure it will work hard. It has a wide, 21-inch cutting tool with 8-Inch front wheels and 12-inch rear wheels for easy maneuver among taller grasses. It features 3 in 1 cutting type capabilities with its side discharge, mulch, and rear bag. It’s also very efficient with its 4-point, 5 position cutting height adjustment for varying lawn conditions that would suit your requirements. It is CARB-compliant that comes with 2-year limited consumer warranty for your peace of mind.

Lawn-Boy 10732

This is a rear wheel drive system which means it can provide better traction and control even on hilly terrain. It comes with large, an easy empty bag which makes emptying the trash easier and hassle-free. It has 2-Point Height-of-Cut System which allows for quick adjustments depending on the cutting heights you require which elevates its versatility. It is powered by Kohler engines for long-term worry-free operation. And you don’t have to worry about hard starting either with its 3-year Tru-Start Commitment which ensures that the engine will run after 1 or 2 pulls, if not Lawn-Boy will fix your unit free of charge.

GreenWorks 25302 Twin Force G-MAX

If you wanted a quieter option, this will suit your needs. This walk behind lawn mower sports G-MAX 40V Li-Ion Battery System, a system which can power multiple GreenWorks tools to complete your yard work system. Included with the purchase are 2 batteries and charger. The best thing about this system is its automatic battery switchover which pulls power from the second battery when the first one runs out of juice. This eliminates downtime while you are it. It features 20-Inch cutting deck which offers a great balance of maneuverability and cutting capacity making it ideal for mid-sized lawns. It as well has innovative Smart Cut technology which adjusts power or runtime depending on the thickness of your grass it encounters. Its dual blades offer better cut quality, superior mulching and bagging capabilities overall.

WORX WG782

This is yet another electric powered option. You don’t have to worry though as this has the cordless technology. It comes with adjustable mowing height from 1.8 to 3.3 inches with 14-inch cutting width. It has IntelliCut mowing technology which multiplies torque when you’re cutting tougher grass than usual. Its special mulching blade chops up clippings better than average blades available in the market. And if your worry about charging time, don’t be like this mower can cut clean up to 10,000 square feet on a single charge with approximately 40 minutes of runtime.

Black & Decker MTE912

If you have smaller lawns, this is a good choice for you. It comes with 12” blades for easy corner maneuver.  It has automatic feed system to ensure continual work without bumping or having to stop. It sports Gear Drive transmission which prevents bogging down. It is driven by its 6.5 amp motor which provides ample power each time. Although it needs power cord during operation, which by the way is not included, it won’t take up much space when you store it. It’s light, it’s small, it’s nimble, and it’s perfect for small lawns.

Our Pick for Best Walk Behind Lawn Mower

Greenworks 25022 20-Inch 12 Amp Electric Lawn Mower

Greenworks may not have a brand that is as popular as some other lawn mower manufacturers, but based on our Greenworks 25022 20-Inch 12 Amp Electric Lawn Mower Review, they managed to produce one of the best walk behind lawn mower models in the market.

The power provided by the electric motor, the environment-friendly, zero footprint design, 4-year product warranty, excellent bagging and mulching features and the general ease of use make this product stand apart from most (if not all) competitors.

The ability to easily mow your lawn without dealing with the hassles of a gas powered unit, without polluting the air and breaking your back (even older ladies report that they can easily mow their lawn with the 25022) is an opportunity that we believe no homeowner should ignore. Add to that the rather convenient price tag, and we clearly have a winner in the electric mower category.

Features

The 25022 provides excellent maneuverability with its’ 8 inch rear tires. Although the tires may look big at first glance (and in fact, they are bigger than most other models), they actually provide a very nice ride, definitely decreasing the load on your back when turning the mower. It also makes it easier to mow the lawn with fewer passes thanks to its’ 20-inch size. The general industry standard is 18 inches, and the extra width provided by Greenworks allow you to mow a wider space with each pass, ultimately reducing the time you would spend mowing. The cord lock is also another nice feature that makes cord management easier by securely locking the cord in place and preventing any disconnections. Once you determine the route you are using to mow your lawn and place the cord accordingly (so that it will stay behind the mower at all times), you won’t encounter the problems most people seem to have with their electric lawn mowers’ cords. The height adjustment lever that provides 7 different height options is also another nice feature to have as it gives you ultimate freedom in determining the height of your grass. If you mow frequently, leave the grass taller, if not cut them shorter, etc.

Greenworks 25022 20-Inch 12 Amp Electric Lawn Mower Pros and Cons

Pros: Greenworks 25022 is designed for ease of use with its’ strong motor, sturdy construction and flexible operation. Easy maneuverability and mowing without too much effort make 25022 suitable even for the elderly or those who have back problems, etc. The material used in its’ construction is metal as opposed to the plastic used in many other models, and this feature alone speaks volumes in terms of production quality and most importantly product durability.

The metal construction also allowed the unit to be a lot thinner than it’s’ competitors. The bagging, mulching, and side discharge options are also cleverly implemented and none of these modes have any operational problems. They all perform their intended duties without any glitches. The blades are also of high quality and provide very clean cuts. The 7 position height adjuster is also another nice touch with which you can set the height of your grass as precisely as you’d like. And changing the height is as simple as moving the height control switch a notch up or down as you prefer.

And last but not least, this product is completely environment-friendly. As Greenworks themselves state, homeowners in the US consume an incredible amount of gas for their gas lawn mowers every year, polluting the atmosphere in the process. As an electric model, 25022 not only eliminates this incredible waste of natural sources, it also provides peace of mind as it does not require any kind of maintenance at all.

Cons: Quite frankly, perhaps the only cons we can talk about when it comes to GW 25022 is that it has a slightly higher price than some competitors and it can be considered a bit loud by some. However, we actually believe that the product more than deserves the price difference with its’ superior quality and also that those who would consider the product loud should listen to a gas mower.

To sum up our Greenworks 25022 20-Inch 12 Amp Electric Lawn Mower Review is that the 25022 is one of the best products when it comes to walk behind lawn mowers and you should definitely check it out if you are looking for a very nicely built, durable and quality lawn mower. Do yourself a favor and do not let the relative unpopularity of the brand stop you from considering this outstanding product. Click here to purchase this product on Amazon.

The post Best Walk Behind Lawn Mowers – Buyers Guide 2019 appeared first on Kravelv.

Best Walk Behind Lawn Mowers – Buyers Guide 2019 published first on https://wallsgshop.tumblr.com/

[webanalytics]

4 Mistakes I Learned About Marketing and Data While Working at a Fortune 50 Company

For the past nearly 3 years, I’ve been in charge of Audience Development for one of the largest media companies in the US.

I learned a LOT during that time. Even more important, I learned a lot about what NOT to do.

Not all of these things were personal ‘mistakes’ per se. Some were top down decisions that were influenced by lack of foresight, knowledge or budget. Others were due to an industry that is undergoing rapid change.

As John Powell said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

To that end, here are the top 4 mistakes I learned during my tenure. I hope sharing these and their learnings will spark some good discussion – either internally or in the comments below.

1. Not Investing in Building User Data

This one definitely took me by surprise.

When I arrived, I had big plans to leverage CRM data to build remarketing pools, lookalike audiences, email campaigns, etc.

But there was no CRM database.

One thing not often considered about media companies is the fact the consumer data is controlled by the cable provider. The cable company collects the payment and therefore have all the associated consumer data:

Name

Address

Phone

Email

Credit Card Info

Purchase history

Login Username/Password

Etc.

In it’s simplest form, the media company simply provides the content the cable provider sells to the consumer. For the longest period of time, the value of collecting this data had been overlooked.

Plan of Action:

To access ‘free’ content within an app from the likes of NBC, CBS, Fox and others, you must go through an authentication process. This is done using the same credentials you would login to pay your cable bill.

In one of these apps, you’ve likely come across a login page that looks like this:

This poses two challenges:

Many consumers don’t know or remember this login. As a result, a lot of potential video consumption is lost.

As mentioned above, this is an interstitial page that drives to the cable provider as they own the username and password information.

In collaboration with the product team, a strategy was developed to implement a ‘free trial’ in exchange for the user’s email address. This would allow the user to forego the authentication requirement.

This was the minimal piece of information required for us to begin building a CRM and the beginning of a customer match marketing program across Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It also provided us with the initial piece of consumer data that we could subsequently build on with supplemental offers in exchange for profile completion.

The overarching lesson here is – invest in CRM. Even if you have to start with just a database of email addresses. Start somewhere.

2. Not Understanding the Nuances of Mobile Tracking

As you might imagine, much of our marketing strategy and budget focused on the mobile space. Interestingly enough, this is also a space where ad-blockers are not working.

That said, with mobile advertising comes tracking nuances that I was initially unaware of.

When I joined the team, we were full-steam into launching the first ever marketing campaign. In our haste to launch, we did not take the time to fully understand the impact of not solidifying our mobile tracking solution.

Our primary mobile advertising consisted of:

Desktop & Mobile Banner and Social Ads:

The standard process for attribution is based on the use of cookies.

When a user visits a website via their desktop or mobile device, your banner displays and a cookie is dropped on the visitor’s computers  – regardless of whether or not they click through to your website.

Depending on the ad-server being used, this cookie can remain active for up to 2 years.

Eventually, if the user performs the desired action, that same cookie fires sending the proper attribution for your campaign. All is well in the world.

Apple’s Safari browser blocks 3rd party cookies by default which makes this ‘standard’ tracking more complicated. Among other things, this means your app cannot read the cookie data stored by Mobile Safari.

This presents a challenge to advertisers as Safari’s market share is around 33% globally.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our brand websites):

I’m sure you’ve noticed when you open a link in an app, it doesn’t open a new browser window. Rather, it opens an “in-app browser”.

This makes perfect sense for UX as it allows you to quickly return to the app.

The issue lies in the cookie drop on your phone. This naturally occurs with the click, however, it only drops a cookie for the in-app browser session. Unless the conversion happens immediately within that session, the attribution is lost.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our apps):

Quite simply, cookies are not used ‘in-app’. This left us with zero attribution or cross-device tracking.

The lack of attention to these details was quickly evident. At the end of the campaign, we were left pointing to engagement metrics like impressions, CTR and social shares as a measure of success.

Not at all what a consumer acquisition campaign should be reporting.

Plan of Action:

The quickest change to a leaky attribution bucket that we could make was to tackle the Safari issue. We simply updated our social and display targeting to remove Safari browsers.

While Google struggles with mobile and socially-driven demographic/interest targeting, Facebook provides the ability to target (or exclude) users by Web browser.

While not foolproof, for the likes of Twitter and Google, we targeted only older operating systems in an effort to capture users who were still using legacy browsers.

Considering our audience was US based, we estimated that we would only be missing out on approximately 15-18% of the overall market.

The other two challenges were a bit more complicated and required a mobile attribution solution that established the match between the user’s advertising ID and the publisher.

While there are many companies available for this, after evaluation, we landed on Kochava as our solution provider.

Pro tip: if you’re on a budget, Branch.io is a completely free solution that provides many of the same features.

3. Focusing on Sexy vs. Efficient

The programmatic display and mobile space is filled with shiny new tools, ad placements, and even ad units.

Combine that with the traditional types of advertising done by media companies (think big billboards, bus sides, etc) and these quickly become distractions from tactics that are proven to work.

I think it’s fair to say we spread our tactics far too wide in the early years in hopes of capitalizing on that sexy new ad-unit or the hot new ad targeting. This was, unfortunately, at the expense of tried and true tactics like traditional paid search.

A smarter approach would have been to test into these tactics rather than build a comprehensive media plan that included them.

Plan of Action:

I’m a huge fan of Steve Jobs. And Apple in general. One of my favorite quotes from him is:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

With more data and proper attribution in place, we were more empowered to direct the media plans across the brands.

We focused on tried and true channels that significantly outperformed the “shiny objects” that had resulted in wasted spend and higher costs for creative development.

This paid off in a big way:

Total impressions declined significantly, however, clicks increased just as dramatically

Average click costs also declined

Cost per app install decreased nearly 200%

Cost per video start decreased 230%

Sometimes the ‘simple’ things just work better.

Ultimately, after seeing the data, I took away a few lessons that can be applied to almost any campaign:

Programmatic display isn’t the end all, be all. It’s an industry buzzword. I could even say ‘buzztactic’. It’s rife with click fraud and vendors with non-transparent ‘private networks’. It’s susceptible to ad blockers and comes with many privacy issues.

Don’t get me wrong. It can work.

But, test into programmatic options ONLY after you’ve exhausted the below tactics.

Focus on channels where a consumer is actively searching for you. They’re already self-qualified based on their actions. The most applicable here is paid search across Bing or Google.

Remarket your way to lower cost per acquisitions. You’ve already paid the premium CPC or CPM to get that user to your website. Typically, remarketing campaigns come with much lower costs. Why not re-engage a warm lead for less?

Image Source

#Hashtags are inherently social, but leave them out of social ad copy. Through our trimming of tactics, we also trimmed areas where consumers might be tempted to leave the topic at hand.

In this case, we removed any hashtag mentions in our ad copy so consumers would focus instead on the ‘install’. Our conversion rates improved as a result.

When pushing mobile installs, leverage a device in your creative. When you think about it, of course. It makes sense. But we proved it out via testing. Showing consumers an image of their device in the creative they’re being served improved conversion rates.

4. Not Leveraging an Always on Strategy

Consumers, myself included, are always on. Always plugged in. It’s a bad, addicting habit.

But, that also means running a campaign for a TV show only when that show is in-season leaves opportunity on the table.

There are a few challenges with being able to do this:

First, media companies are selling off the rights to their shows to the likes of Netflix and Hulu. In some cases, the ability to create a show is solely dependent on the revenue coming from these transactions.

This means an always on strategy will never be an option once the rights are sold.

Second, when we first launched our campaigns, we were spending large portions of our budget on fancy creative and higher cost CPMs trying to capture the next big thing.

This left us without budget pacing that would allow for an always on strategy.

Plan of Action:

We tackled the second issue as part of our streamlining of tactics. This enabled our budgets to stretch farther and for longer periods of time both pre-premier and post-finale.

The matter of rights was more complicated and is probably worth a completely separate post. That said, as a test, we decided to focus on a core set of shows where the rights had been retained for several years.

The hope was, if we could show a series with multiple seasons resulted in larger average views per user, we could start to build a case for investing in the rights for the more popular shows.

It worked.

We found not only were the average views per user up, but these campaigns were far outperforming pilot shows and series with limited rights.

This resulted in overall efficiencies for the campaign.

Wrapping Up

There’s no question the digital space can provide lots of opportunity for growth and learning. I have certainly learned a ton.

Hopefully sharing some of these insights will help you better streamline your digital marketing efforts, focus on what works, get your tracking in order and ultimately drive increased performance.

About the Author: Jon Clark is the founder of Fuze SEO, a boutique digital marketing company in New York. He writes regularly on SEO tactics, analytics and social media best practices. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter. When not working or writing, Jon enjoys documenting his travels on Instagram.

from Search Results for “analytics” – The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2wYmkQq #Digital #Analytics #Website

[samiam03x]

4 Mistakes I Learned About Marketing and Data While Working at a Fortune 50 Company

For the past nearly 3 years, I’ve been in charge of Audience Development for one of the largest media companies in the US.

I learned a LOT during that time. Even more important, I learned a lot about what NOT to do.

Not all of these things were personal ‘mistakes’ per se. Some were top down decisions that were influenced by lack of foresight, knowledge or budget. Others were due to an industry that is undergoing rapid change.

As John Powell said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

To that end, here are the top 4 mistakes I learned during my tenure. I hope sharing these and their learnings will spark some good discussion – either internally or in the comments below.

1. Not Investing in Building User Data

This one definitely took me by surprise.

When I arrived, I had big plans to leverage CRM data to build remarketing pools, lookalike audiences, email campaigns, etc.

But there was no CRM database.

One thing not often considered about media companies is the fact the consumer data is controlled by the cable provider. The cable company collects the payment and therefore have all the associated consumer data:

Name

Address

Phone

Email

Credit Card Info

Purchase history

Login Username/Password

Etc.

In it’s simplest form, the media company simply provides the content the cable provider sells to the consumer. For the longest period of time, the value of collecting this data had been overlooked.

Plan of Action:

To access ‘free’ content within an app from the likes of NBC, CBS, Fox and others, you must go through an authentication process. This is done using the same credentials you would login to pay your cable bill.

In one of these apps, you’ve likely come across a login page that looks like this:

This poses two challenges:

Many consumers don’t know or remember this login. As a result, a lot of potential video consumption is lost.

As mentioned above, this is an interstitial page that drives to the cable provider as they own the username and password information.

In collaboration with the product team, a strategy was developed to implement a ‘free trial’ in exchange for the user’s email address. This would allow the user to forego the authentication requirement.

This was the minimal piece of information required for us to begin building a CRM and the beginning of a customer match marketing program across Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It also provided us with the initial piece of consumer data that we could subsequently build on with supplemental offers in exchange for profile completion.

The overarching lesson here is – invest in CRM. Even if you have to start with just a database of email addresses. Start somewhere.

2. Not Understanding the Nuances of Mobile Tracking

As you might imagine, much of our marketing strategy and budget focused on the mobile space. Interestingly enough, this is also a space where ad-blockers are not working.

That said, with mobile advertising comes tracking nuances that I was initially unaware of.

When I joined the team, we were full-steam into launching the first ever marketing campaign. In our haste to launch, we did not take the time to fully understand the impact of not solidifying our mobile tracking solution.

Our primary mobile advertising consisted of:

Desktop & Mobile Banner and Social Ads:

The standard process for attribution is based on the use of cookies.

When a user visits a website via their desktop or mobile device, your banner displays and a cookie is dropped on the visitor’s computers  – regardless of whether or not they click through to your website.

Depending on the ad-server being used, this cookie can remain active for up to 2 years.

Eventually, if the user performs the desired action, that same cookie fires sending the proper attribution for your campaign. All is well in the world.

Apple’s Safari browser blocks 3rd party cookies by default which makes this ‘standard’ tracking more complicated. Among other things, this means your app cannot read the cookie data stored by Mobile Safari.

This presents a challenge to advertisers as Safari’s market share is around 33% globally.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our brand websites):

I’m sure you’ve noticed when you open a link in an app, it doesn’t open a new browser window. Rather, it opens an “in-app browser”.

This makes perfect sense for UX as it allows you to quickly return to the app.

The issue lies in the cookie drop on your phone. This naturally occurs with the click, however, it only drops a cookie for the in-app browser session. Unless the conversion happens immediately within that session, the attribution is lost.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our apps):

Quite simply, cookies are not used ‘in-app’. This left us with zero attribution or cross-device tracking.

The lack of attention to these details was quickly evident. At the end of the campaign, we were left pointing to engagement metrics like impressions, CTR and social shares as a measure of success.

Not at all what a consumer acquisition campaign should be reporting.

Plan of Action:

The quickest change to a leaky attribution bucket that we could make was to tackle the Safari issue. We simply updated our social and display targeting to remove Safari browsers.

While Google struggles with mobile and socially-driven demographic/interest targeting, Facebook provides the ability to target (or exclude) users by Web browser.

While not foolproof, for the likes of Twitter and Google, we targeted only older operating systems in an effort to capture users who were still using legacy browsers.

Considering our audience was US based, we estimated that we would only be missing out on approximately 15-18% of the overall market.

The other two challenges were a bit more complicated and required a mobile attribution solution that established the match between the user’s advertising ID and the publisher.

While there are many companies available for this, after evaluation, we landed on Kochava as our solution provider.

Pro tip: if you’re on a budget, Branch.io is a completely free solution that provides many of the same features.

3. Focusing on Sexy vs. Efficient

The programmatic display and mobile space is filled with shiny new tools, ad placements, and even ad units.

Combine that with the traditional types of advertising done by media companies (think big billboards, bus sides, etc) and these quickly become distractions from tactics that are proven to work.

I think it’s fair to say we spread our tactics far too wide in the early years in hopes of capitalizing on that sexy new ad-unit or the hot new ad targeting. This was, unfortunately, at the expense of tried and true tactics like traditional paid search.

A smarter approach would have been to test into these tactics rather than build a comprehensive media plan that included them.

Plan of Action:

I’m a huge fan of Steve Jobs. And Apple in general. One of my favorite quotes from him is:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

With more data and proper attribution in place, we were more empowered to direct the media plans across the brands.

We focused on tried and true channels that significantly outperformed the “shiny objects” that had resulted in wasted spend and higher costs for creative development.

This paid off in a big way:

Total impressions declined significantly, however, clicks increased just as dramatically

Average click costs also declined

Cost per app install decreased nearly 200%

Cost per video start decreased 230%

Sometimes the ‘simple’ things just work better.

Ultimately, after seeing the data, I took away a few lessons that can be applied to almost any campaign:

Programmatic display isn’t the end all, be all. It’s an industry buzzword. I could even say ‘buzztactic’. It’s rife with click fraud and vendors with non-transparent ‘private networks’. It’s susceptible to ad blockers and comes with many privacy issues.

Don’t get me wrong. It can work.

But, test into programmatic options ONLY after you’ve exhausted the below tactics.

Focus on channels where a consumer is actively searching for you. They’re already self-qualified based on their actions. The most applicable here is paid search across Bing or Google.

Remarket your way to lower cost per acquisitions. You’ve already paid the premium CPC or CPM to get that user to your website. Typically, remarketing campaigns come with much lower costs. Why not re-engage a warm lead for less?

Image Source

#Hashtags are inherently social, but leave them out of social ad copy. Through our trimming of tactics, we also trimmed areas where consumers might be tempted to leave the topic at hand.

In this case, we removed any hashtag mentions in our ad copy so consumers would focus instead on the ‘install’. Our conversion rates improved as a result.

When pushing mobile installs, leverage a device in your creative. When you think about it, of course. It makes sense. But we proved it out via testing. Showing consumers an image of their device in the creative they’re being served improved conversion rates.

4. Not Leveraging an Always on Strategy

Consumers, myself included, are always on. Always plugged in. It’s a bad, addicting habit.

But, that also means running a campaign for a TV show only when that show is in-season leaves opportunity on the table.

There are a few challenges with being able to do this:

First, media companies are selling off the rights to their shows to the likes of Netflix and Hulu. In some cases, the ability to create a show is solely dependent on the revenue coming from these transactions.

This means an always on strategy will never be an option once the rights are sold.

Second, when we first launched our campaigns, we were spending large portions of our budget on fancy creative and higher cost CPMs trying to capture the next big thing.

This left us without budget pacing that would allow for an always on strategy.

Plan of Action:

We tackled the second issue as part of our streamlining of tactics. This enabled our budgets to stretch farther and for longer periods of time both pre-premier and post-finale.

The matter of rights was more complicated and is probably worth a completely separate post. That said, as a test, we decided to focus on a core set of shows where the rights had been retained for several years.

The hope was, if we could show a series with multiple seasons resulted in larger average views per user, we could start to build a case for investing in the rights for the more popular shows.

It worked.

We found not only were the average views per user up, but these campaigns were far outperforming pilot shows and series with limited rights.

This resulted in overall efficiencies for the campaign.

Wrapping Up

There’s no question the digital space can provide lots of opportunity for growth and learning. I have certainly learned a ton.

Hopefully sharing some of these insights will help you better streamline your digital marketing efforts, focus on what works, get your tracking in order and ultimately drive increased performance.

About the Author: Jon Clark is the founder of Fuze SEO, a boutique digital marketing company in New York. He writes regularly on SEO tactics, analytics and social media best practices. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter. When not working or writing, Jon enjoys documenting his travels on Instagram.

http://ift.tt/2v9TvhT from MarketingRSS http://ift.tt/2vLPUdc via Youtube

[marie85marketing]

4 Mistakes I Learned About Marketing and Data While Working at a Fortune 50 Company

For the past nearly 3 years, I’ve been in charge of Audience Development for one of the largest media companies in the US.

I learned a LOT during that time. Even more important, I learned a lot about what NOT to do.

Not all of these things were personal ‘mistakes’ per se. Some were top down decisions that were influenced by lack of foresight, knowledge or budget. Others were due to an industry that is undergoing rapid change.

As John Powell said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

To that end, here are the top 4 mistakes I learned during my tenure. I hope sharing these and their learnings will spark some good discussion – either internally or in the comments below.

1. Not Investing in Building User Data

This one definitely took me by surprise.

When I arrived, I had big plans to leverage CRM data to build remarketing pools, lookalike audiences, email campaigns, etc.

But there was no CRM database.

One thing not often considered about media companies is the fact the consumer data is controlled by the cable provider. The cable company collects the payment and therefore have all the associated consumer data:

Name

Address

Phone

Email

Credit Card Info

Purchase history

Login Username/Password

Etc.

In it’s simplest form, the media company simply provides the content the cable provider sells to the consumer. For the longest period of time, the value of collecting this data had been overlooked.

Plan of Action:

To access ‘free’ content within an app from the likes of NBC, CBS, Fox and others, you must go through an authentication process. This is done using the same credentials you would login to pay your cable bill.

In one of these apps, you’ve likely come across a login page that looks like this:

This poses two challenges:

Many consumers don’t know or remember this login. As a result, a lot of potential video consumption is lost.

As mentioned above, this is an interstitial page that drives to the cable provider as they own the username and password information.

In collaboration with the product team, a strategy was developed to implement a ‘free trial’ in exchange for the user’s email address. This would allow the user to forego the authentication requirement.

This was the minimal piece of information required for us to begin building a CRM and the beginning of a customer match marketing program across Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It also provided us with the initial piece of consumer data that we could subsequently build on with supplemental offers in exchange for profile completion.

The overarching lesson here is – invest in CRM. Even if you have to start with just a database of email addresses. Start somewhere.

2. Not Understanding the Nuances of Mobile Tracking

As you might imagine, much of our marketing strategy and budget focused on the mobile space. Interestingly enough, this is also a space where ad-blockers are not working.

That said, with mobile advertising comes tracking nuances that I was initially unaware of.

When I joined the team, we were full-steam into launching the first ever marketing campaign. In our haste to launch, we did not take the time to fully understand the impact of not solidifying our mobile tracking solution.

Our primary mobile advertising consisted of:

Desktop & Mobile Banner and Social Ads:

The standard process for attribution is based on the use of cookies.

When a user visits a website via their desktop or mobile device, your banner displays and a cookie is dropped on the visitor’s computers  – regardless of whether or not they click through to your website.

Depending on the ad-server being used, this cookie can remain active for up to 2 years.

Eventually, if the user performs the desired action, that same cookie fires sending the proper attribution for your campaign. All is well in the world.

Apple’s Safari browser blocks 3rd party cookies by default which makes this ‘standard’ tracking more complicated. Among other things, this means your app cannot read the cookie data stored by Mobile Safari.

This presents a challenge to advertisers as Safari’s market share is around 33% globally.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our brand websites):

I’m sure you’ve noticed when you open a link in an app, it doesn’t open a new browser window. Rather, it opens an “in-app browser”.

This makes perfect sense for UX as it allows you to quickly return to the app.

The issue lies in the cookie drop on your phone. This naturally occurs with the click, however, it only drops a cookie for the in-app browser session. Unless the conversion happens immediately within that session, the attribution is lost.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our apps):

Quite simply, cookies are not used ‘in-app’. This left us with zero attribution or cross-device tracking.

The lack of attention to these details was quickly evident. At the end of the campaign, we were left pointing to engagement metrics like impressions, CTR and social shares as a measure of success.

Not at all what a consumer acquisition campaign should be reporting.

Plan of Action:

The quickest change to a leaky attribution bucket that we could make was to tackle the Safari issue. We simply updated our social and display targeting to remove Safari browsers.

While Google struggles with mobile and socially-driven demographic/interest targeting, Facebook provides the ability to target (or exclude) users by Web browser.

While not foolproof, for the likes of Twitter and Google, we targeted only older operating systems in an effort to capture users who were still using legacy browsers.

Considering our audience was US based, we estimated that we would only be missing out on approximately 15-18% of the overall market.

The other two challenges were a bit more complicated and required a mobile attribution solution that established the match between the user’s advertising ID and the publisher.

While there are many companies available for this, after evaluation, we landed on Kochava as our solution provider.

Pro tip: if you’re on a budget, Branch.io is a completely free solution that provides many of the same features.

3. Focusing on Sexy vs. Efficient

The programmatic display and mobile space is filled with shiny new tools, ad placements, and even ad units.

Combine that with the traditional types of advertising done by media companies (think big billboards, bus sides, etc) and these quickly become distractions from tactics that are proven to work.

I think it’s fair to say we spread our tactics far too wide in the early years in hopes of capitalizing on that sexy new ad-unit or the hot new ad targeting. This was, unfortunately, at the expense of tried and true tactics like traditional paid search.

A smarter approach would have been to test into these tactics rather than build a comprehensive media plan that included them.

Plan of Action:

I’m a huge fan of Steve Jobs. And Apple in general. One of my favorite quotes from him is:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

With more data and proper attribution in place, we were more empowered to direct the media plans across the brands.

We focused on tried and true channels that significantly outperformed the “shiny objects” that had resulted in wasted spend and higher costs for creative development.

This paid off in a big way:

Total impressions declined significantly, however, clicks increased just as dramatically

Average click costs also declined

Cost per app install decreased nearly 200%

Cost per video start decreased 230%

Sometimes the ‘simple’ things just work better.

Ultimately, after seeing the data, I took away a few lessons that can be applied to almost any campaign:

Programmatic display isn’t the end all, be all. It’s an industry buzzword. I could even say ‘buzztactic’. It’s rife with click fraud and vendors with non-transparent ‘private networks’. It’s susceptible to ad blockers and comes with many privacy issues.

Don’t get me wrong. It can work.

But, test into programmatic options ONLY after you’ve exhausted the below tactics.

Focus on channels where a consumer is actively searching for you. They’re already self-qualified based on their actions. The most applicable here is paid search across Bing or Google.

Remarket your way to lower cost per acquisitions. You’ve already paid the premium CPC or CPM to get that user to your website. Typically, remarketing campaigns come with much lower costs. Why not re-engage a warm lead for less?

Image Source

#Hashtags are inherently social, but leave them out of social ad copy. Through our trimming of tactics, we also trimmed areas where consumers might be tempted to leave the topic at hand.

In this case, we removed any hashtag mentions in our ad copy so consumers would focus instead on the ‘install’. Our conversion rates improved as a result.

When pushing mobile installs, leverage a device in your creative. When you think about it, of course. It makes sense. But we proved it out via testing. Showing consumers an image of their device in the creative they’re being served improved conversion rates.

4. Not Leveraging an Always on Strategy

Consumers, myself included, are always on. Always plugged in. It’s a bad, addicting habit.

But, that also means running a campaign for a TV show only when that show is in-season leaves opportunity on the table.

There are a few challenges with being able to do this:

First, media companies are selling off the rights to their shows to the likes of Netflix and Hulu. In some cases, the ability to create a show is solely dependent on the revenue coming from these transactions.

This means an always on strategy will never be an option once the rights are sold.

Second, when we first launched our campaigns, we were spending large portions of our budget on fancy creative and higher cost CPMs trying to capture the next big thing.

This left us without budget pacing that would allow for an always on strategy.

Plan of Action:

We tackled the second issue as part of our streamlining of tactics. This enabled our budgets to stretch farther and for longer periods of time both pre-premier and post-finale.

The matter of rights was more complicated and is probably worth a completely separate post. That said, as a test, we decided to focus on a core set of shows where the rights had been retained for several years.

The hope was, if we could show a series with multiple seasons resulted in larger average views per user, we could start to build a case for investing in the rights for the more popular shows.

It worked.

We found not only were the average views per user up, but these campaigns were far outperforming pilot shows and series with limited rights.

This resulted in overall efficiencies for the campaign.

Wrapping Up

There’s no question the digital space can provide lots of opportunity for growth and learning. I have certainly learned a ton.

Hopefully sharing some of these insights will help you better streamline your digital marketing efforts, focus on what works, get your tracking in order and ultimately drive increased performance.

About the Author: Jon Clark is the founder of Fuze SEO, a boutique digital marketing company in New York. He writes regularly on SEO tactics, analytics and social media best practices. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter. When not working or writing, Jon enjoys documenting his travels on Instagram.

[alissaselezneva]

4 Mistakes I Learned About Marketing and Data While Working at a Fortune 50 Company

For the past nearly 3 years, I’ve been in charge of Audience Development for one of the largest media companies in the US.

I learned a LOT during that time. Even more important, I learned a lot about what NOT to do.

Not all of these things were personal ‘mistakes’ per se. Some were top down decisions that were influenced by lack of foresight, knowledge or budget. Others were due to an industry that is undergoing rapid change.

As John Powell said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

To that end, here are the top 4 mistakes I learned during my tenure. I hope sharing these and their learnings will spark some good discussion – either internally or in the comments below.

1. Not Investing in Building User Data

This one definitely took me by surprise.

When I arrived, I had big plans to leverage CRM data to build remarketing pools, lookalike audiences, email campaigns, etc.

But there was no CRM database.

One thing not often considered about media companies is the fact the consumer data is controlled by the cable provider. The cable company collects the payment and therefore have all the associated consumer data:

Name

Address

Phone

Email

Credit Card Info

Purchase history

Login Username/Password

Etc.

In it’s simplest form, the media company simply provides the content the cable provider sells to the consumer. For the longest period of time, the value of collecting this data had been overlooked.

Plan of Action:

To access ‘free’ content within an app from the likes of NBC, CBS, Fox and others, you must go through an authentication process. This is done using the same credentials you would login to pay your cable bill.

In one of these apps, you’ve likely come across a login page that looks like this:

This poses two challenges:

Many consumers don’t know or remember this login. As a result, a lot of potential video consumption is lost.

As mentioned above, this is an interstitial page that drives to the cable provider as they own the username and password information.

In collaboration with the product team, a strategy was developed to implement a ‘free trial’ in exchange for the user’s email address. This would allow the user to forego the authentication requirement.

This was the minimal piece of information required for us to begin building a CRM and the beginning of a customer match marketing program across Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It also provided us with the initial piece of consumer data that we could subsequently build on with supplemental offers in exchange for profile completion.

The overarching lesson here is – invest in CRM. Even if you have to start with just a database of email addresses. Start somewhere.

2. Not Understanding the Nuances of Mobile Tracking

As you might imagine, much of our marketing strategy and budget focused on the mobile space. Interestingly enough, this is also a space where ad-blockers are not working.

That said, with mobile advertising comes tracking nuances that I was initially unaware of.

When I joined the team, we were full-steam into launching the first ever marketing campaign. In our haste to launch, we did not take the time to fully understand the impact of not solidifying our mobile tracking solution.

Our primary mobile advertising consisted of:

Desktop & Mobile Banner and Social Ads:

The standard process for attribution is based on the use of cookies.

When a user visits a website via their desktop or mobile device, your banner displays and a cookie is dropped on the visitor’s computers  – regardless of whether or not they click through to your website.

Depending on the ad-server being used, this cookie can remain active for up to 2 years.

Eventually, if the user performs the desired action, that same cookie fires sending the proper attribution for your campaign. All is well in the world.

Apple’s Safari browser blocks 3rd party cookies by default which makes this ‘standard’ tracking more complicated. Among other things, this means your app cannot read the cookie data stored by Mobile Safari.

This presents a challenge to advertisers as Safari’s market share is around 33% globally.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our brand websites):

I’m sure you’ve noticed when you open a link in an app, it doesn’t open a new browser window. Rather, it opens an “in-app browser”.

This makes perfect sense for UX as it allows you to quickly return to the app.

The issue lies in the cookie drop on your phone. This naturally occurs with the click, however, it only drops a cookie for the in-app browser session. Unless the conversion happens immediately within that session, the attribution is lost.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our apps):

Quite simply, cookies are not used ‘in-app’. This left us with zero attribution or cross-device tracking.

The lack of attention to these details was quickly evident. At the end of the campaign, we were left pointing to engagement metrics like impressions, CTR and social shares as a measure of success.

Not at all what a consumer acquisition campaign should be reporting.

Plan of Action:

The quickest change to a leaky attribution bucket that we could make was to tackle the Safari issue. We simply updated our social and display targeting to remove Safari browsers.

While Google struggles with mobile and socially-driven demographic/interest targeting, Facebook provides the ability to target (or exclude) users by Web browser.

While not foolproof, for the likes of Twitter and Google, we targeted only older operating systems in an effort to capture users who were still using legacy browsers.

Considering our audience was US based, we estimated that we would only be missing out on approximately 15-18% of the overall market.

The other two challenges were a bit more complicated and required a mobile attribution solution that established the match between the user’s advertising ID and the publisher.

While there are many companies available for this, after evaluation, we landed on Kochava as our solution provider.

Pro tip: if you’re on a budget, Branch.io is a completely free solution that provides many of the same features.

3. Focusing on Sexy vs. Efficient

The programmatic display and mobile space is filled with shiny new tools, ad placements, and even ad units.

Combine that with the traditional types of advertising done by media companies (think big billboards, bus sides, etc) and these quickly become distractions from tactics that are proven to work.

I think it’s fair to say we spread our tactics far too wide in the early years in hopes of capitalizing on that sexy new ad-unit or the hot new ad targeting. This was, unfortunately, at the expense of tried and true tactics like traditional paid search.

A smarter approach would have been to test into these tactics rather than build a comprehensive media plan that included them.

Plan of Action:

I’m a huge fan of Steve Jobs. And Apple in general. One of my favorite quotes from him is:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

With more data and proper attribution in place, we were more empowered to direct the media plans across the brands.

We focused on tried and true channels that significantly outperformed the “shiny objects” that had resulted in wasted spend and higher costs for creative development.

This paid off in a big way:

Total impressions declined significantly, however, clicks increased just as dramatically

Average click costs also declined

Cost per app install decreased nearly 200%

Cost per video start decreased 230%

Sometimes the ‘simple’ things just work better.

Ultimately, after seeing the data, I took away a few lessons that can be applied to almost any campaign:

Programmatic display isn’t the end all, be all. It’s an industry buzzword. I could even say ‘buzztactic’. It’s rife with click fraud and vendors with non-transparent ‘private networks’. It’s susceptible to ad blockers and comes with many privacy issues.

Don’t get me wrong. It can work.

But, test into programmatic options ONLY after you’ve exhausted the below tactics.

Focus on channels where a consumer is actively searching for you. They’re already self-qualified based on their actions. The most applicable here is paid search across Bing or Google.

Remarket your way to lower cost per acquisitions. You’ve already paid the premium CPC or CPM to get that user to your website. Typically, remarketing campaigns come with much lower costs. Why not re-engage a warm lead for less?

Image Source

#Hashtags are inherently social, but leave them out of social ad copy. Through our trimming of tactics, we also trimmed areas where consumers might be tempted to leave the topic at hand.

In this case, we removed any hashtag mentions in our ad copy so consumers would focus instead on the ‘install’. Our conversion rates improved as a result.

When pushing mobile installs, leverage a device in your creative. When you think about it, of course. It makes sense. But we proved it out via testing. Showing consumers an image of their device in the creative they’re being served improved conversion rates.

4. Not Leveraging an Always on Strategy

Consumers, myself included, are always on. Always plugged in. It’s a bad, addicting habit.

But, that also means running a campaign for a TV show only when that show is in-season leaves opportunity on the table.

There are a few challenges with being able to do this:

First, media companies are selling off the rights to their shows to the likes of Netflix and Hulu. In some cases, the ability to create a show is solely dependent on the revenue coming from these transactions.

This means an always on strategy will never be an option once the rights are sold.

Second, when we first launched our campaigns, we were spending large portions of our budget on fancy creative and higher cost CPMs trying to capture the next big thing.

This left us without budget pacing that would allow for an always on strategy.

Plan of Action:

We tackled the second issue as part of our streamlining of tactics. This enabled our budgets to stretch farther and for longer periods of time both pre-premier and post-finale.

The matter of rights was more complicated and is probably worth a completely separate post. That said, as a test, we decided to focus on a core set of shows where the rights had been retained for several years.

The hope was, if we could show a series with multiple seasons resulted in larger average views per user, we could start to build a case for investing in the rights for the more popular shows.

It worked.

We found not only were the average views per user up, but these campaigns were far outperforming pilot shows and series with limited rights.

This resulted in overall efficiencies for the campaign.

Wrapping Up

There’s no question the digital space can provide lots of opportunity for growth and learning. I have certainly learned a ton.

Hopefully sharing some of these insights will help you better streamline your digital marketing efforts, focus on what works, get your tracking in order and ultimately drive increased performance.

About the Author: Jon Clark is the founder of Fuze SEO, a boutique digital marketing company in New York. He writes regularly on SEO tactics, analytics and social media best practices. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter. When not working or writing, Jon enjoys documenting his travels on Instagram.

from WordPress https://reviewandbonuss.wordpress.com/2017/08/18/4-mistakes-i-learned-about-marketing-and-data-while-working-at-a-fortune-50-company/

[filipeteimuraz]

4 Mistakes I Learned About Marketing and Data While Working at a Fortune 50 Company

For the past nearly 3 years, I’ve been in charge of Audience Development for one of the largest media companies in the US.

I learned a LOT during that time. Even more important, I learned a lot about what NOT to do.

Not all of these things were personal ‘mistakes’ per se. Some were top down decisions that were influenced by lack of foresight, knowledge or budget. Others were due to an industry that is undergoing rapid change.

As John Powell said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

To that end, here are the top 4 mistakes I learned during my tenure. I hope sharing these and their learnings will spark some good discussion – either internally or in the comments below.

1. Not Investing in Building User Data

This one definitely took me by surprise.

When I arrived, I had big plans to leverage CRM data to build remarketing pools, lookalike audiences, email campaigns, etc.

But there was no CRM database.

One thing not often considered about media companies is the fact the consumer data is controlled by the cable provider. The cable company collects the payment and therefore have all the associated consumer data:

Name

Address

Phone

Email

Credit Card Info

Purchase history

Login Username/Password

Etc.

In it’s simplest form, the media company simply provides the content the cable provider sells to the consumer. For the longest period of time, the value of collecting this data had been overlooked.

Plan of Action:

To access ‘free’ content within an app from the likes of NBC, CBS, Fox and others, you must go through an authentication process. This is done using the same credentials you would login to pay your cable bill.

In one of these apps, you’ve likely come across a login page that looks like this:

This poses two challenges:

Many consumers don’t know or remember this login. As a result, a lot of potential video consumption is lost.

As mentioned above, this is an interstitial page that drives to the cable provider as they own the username and password information.

In collaboration with the product team, a strategy was developed to implement a ‘free trial’ in exchange for the user’s email address. This would allow the user to forego the authentication requirement.

This was the minimal piece of information required for us to begin building a CRM and the beginning of a customer match marketing program across Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It also provided us with the initial piece of consumer data that we could subsequently build on with supplemental offers in exchange for profile completion.

The overarching lesson here is – invest in CRM. Even if you have to start with just a database of email addresses. Start somewhere.

2. Not Understanding the Nuances of Mobile Tracking

As you might imagine, much of our marketing strategy and budget focused on the mobile space. Interestingly enough, this is also a space where ad-blockers are not working.

That said, with mobile advertising comes tracking nuances that I was initially unaware of.

When I joined the team, we were full-steam into launching the first ever marketing campaign. In our haste to launch, we did not take the time to fully understand the impact of not solidifying our mobile tracking solution.

Our primary mobile advertising consisted of:

Desktop & Mobile Banner and Social Ads:

The standard process for attribution is based on the use of cookies.

When a user visits a website via their desktop or mobile device, your banner displays and a cookie is dropped on the visitor’s computers  – regardless of whether or not they click through to your website.

Depending on the ad-server being used, this cookie can remain active for up to 2 years.

Eventually, if the user performs the desired action, that same cookie fires sending the proper attribution for your campaign. All is well in the world.

Apple’s Safari browser blocks 3rd party cookies by default which makes this ‘standard’ tracking more complicated. Among other things, this means your app cannot read the cookie data stored by Mobile Safari.

This presents a challenge to advertisers as Safari’s market share is around 33% globally.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our brand websites):

I’m sure you’ve noticed when you open a link in an app, it doesn’t open a new browser window. Rather, it opens an “in-app browser”.

This makes perfect sense for UX as it allows you to quickly return to the app.

The issue lies in the cookie drop on your phone. This naturally occurs with the click, however, it only drops a cookie for the in-app browser session. Unless the conversion happens immediately within that session, the attribution is lost.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our apps):

Quite simply, cookies are not used ‘in-app’. This left us with zero attribution or cross-device tracking.

The lack of attention to these details was quickly evident. At the end of the campaign, we were left pointing to engagement metrics like impressions, CTR and social shares as a measure of success.

Not at all what a consumer acquisition campaign should be reporting.

Plan of Action:

The quickest change to a leaky attribution bucket that we could make was to tackle the Safari issue. We simply updated our social and display targeting to remove Safari browsers.

While Google struggles with mobile and socially-driven demographic/interest targeting, Facebook provides the ability to target (or exclude) users by Web browser.

While not foolproof, for the likes of Twitter and Google, we targeted only older operating systems in an effort to capture users who were still using legacy browsers.

Considering our audience was US based, we estimated that we would only be missing out on approximately 15-18% of the overall market.

The other two challenges were a bit more complicated and required a mobile attribution solution that established the match between the user’s advertising ID and the publisher.

While there are many companies available for this, after evaluation, we landed on Kochava as our solution provider.

Pro tip: if you’re on a budget, Branch.io is a completely free solution that provides many of the same features.

3. Focusing on Sexy vs. Efficient

The programmatic display and mobile space is filled with shiny new tools, ad placements, and even ad units.

Combine that with the traditional types of advertising done by media companies (think big billboards, bus sides, etc) and these quickly become distractions from tactics that are proven to work.

I think it’s fair to say we spread our tactics far too wide in the early years in hopes of capitalizing on that sexy new ad-unit or the hot new ad targeting. This was, unfortunately, at the expense of tried and true tactics like traditional paid search.

A smarter approach would have been to test into these tactics rather than build a comprehensive media plan that included them.

Plan of Action:

I’m a huge fan of Steve Jobs. And Apple in general. One of my favorite quotes from him is:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

With more data and proper attribution in place, we were more empowered to direct the media plans across the brands.

We focused on tried and true channels that significantly outperformed the “shiny objects” that had resulted in wasted spend and higher costs for creative development.

This paid off in a big way:

Total impressions declined significantly, however, clicks increased just as dramatically

Average click costs also declined

Cost per app install decreased nearly 200%

Cost per video start decreased 230%

Sometimes the ‘simple’ things just work better.

Ultimately, after seeing the data, I took away a few lessons that can be applied to almost any campaign:

Programmatic display isn’t the end all, be all. It’s an industry buzzword. I could even say ‘buzztactic’. It’s rife with click fraud and vendors with non-transparent ‘private networks’. It’s susceptible to ad blockers and comes with many privacy issues.

Don’t get me wrong. It can work.

But, test into programmatic options ONLY after you’ve exhausted the below tactics.

Focus on channels where a consumer is actively searching for you. They’re already self-qualified based on their actions. The most applicable here is paid search across Bing or Google.

Remarket your way to lower cost per acquisitions. You’ve already paid the premium CPC or CPM to get that user to your website. Typically, remarketing campaigns come with much lower costs. Why not re-engage a warm lead for less?

Image Source

#Hashtags are inherently social, but leave them out of social ad copy. Through our trimming of tactics, we also trimmed areas where consumers might be tempted to leave the topic at hand.

In this case, we removed any hashtag mentions in our ad copy so consumers would focus instead on the ‘install’. Our conversion rates improved as a result.

When pushing mobile installs, leverage a device in your creative. When you think about it, of course. It makes sense. But we proved it out via testing. Showing consumers an image of their device in the creative they’re being served improved conversion rates.

4. Not Leveraging an Always on Strategy

Consumers, myself included, are always on. Always plugged in. It’s a bad, addicting habit.

But, that also means running a campaign for a TV show only when that show is in-season leaves opportunity on the table.

There are a few challenges with being able to do this:

First, media companies are selling off the rights to their shows to the likes of Netflix and Hulu. In some cases, the ability to create a show is solely dependent on the revenue coming from these transactions.

This means an always on strategy will never be an option once the rights are sold.

Second, when we first launched our campaigns, we were spending large portions of our budget on fancy creative and higher cost CPMs trying to capture the next big thing.

This left us without budget pacing that would allow for an always on strategy.

Plan of Action:

We tackled the second issue as part of our streamlining of tactics. This enabled our budgets to stretch farther and for longer periods of time both pre-premier and post-finale.

The matter of rights was more complicated and is probably worth a completely separate post. That said, as a test, we decided to focus on a core set of shows where the rights had been retained for several years.

The hope was, if we could show a series with multiple seasons resulted in larger average views per user, we could start to build a case for investing in the rights for the more popular shows.

It worked.

We found not only were the average views per user up, but these campaigns were far outperforming pilot shows and series with limited rights.

This resulted in overall efficiencies for the campaign.

Wrapping Up

There’s no question the digital space can provide lots of opportunity for growth and learning. I have certainly learned a ton.

Hopefully sharing some of these insights will help you better streamline your digital marketing efforts, focus on what works, get your tracking in order and ultimately drive increased performance.

About the Author: Jon Clark is the founder of Fuze SEO, a boutique digital marketing company in New York. He writes regularly on SEO tactics, analytics and social media best practices. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter. When not working or writing, Jon enjoys documenting his travels on Instagram.

Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2017/08/4-mistakes-i-learned-about-marketing.html

[seo78580]

4 Mistakes I Learned About Marketing and Data While Working at a Fortune 50 Company

For the past nearly 3 years, I’ve been in charge of Audience Development for one of the largest media companies in the US.

I learned a LOT during that time. Even more important, I learned a lot about what NOT to do.

Not all of these things were personal ‘mistakes’ per se. Some were top down decisions that were influenced by lack of foresight, knowledge or budget. Others were due to an industry that is undergoing rapid change.

As John Powell said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

To that end, here are the top 4 mistakes I learned during my tenure. I hope sharing these and their learnings will spark some good discussion – either internally or in the comments below.

1. Not Investing in Building User Data

This one definitely took me by surprise.

When I arrived, I had big plans to leverage CRM data to build remarketing pools, lookalike audiences, , etc.

But there was no CRM database.

One thing not often considered about media companies is the fact the consumer data is controlled by the cable provider. The cable company collects the payment and therefore have all the associated consumer data:

Name

Address

Phone

Email

Credit Card Info

Purchase history

Login Username/Password

Etc.

In it’s simplest form, the media company simply provides the content the cable provider sells to the consumer. For the longest period of time, the value of collecting this data had been overlooked.

Plan of Action:

To access ‘free’ content within an app from the likes of NBC, CBS, Fox and others, you must go through an authentication process. This is done using the same credentials you would login to pay your cable bill.

In one of these apps, you’ve likely come across a login page that looks like this:

This poses two challenges:

Many consumers don’t know or remember this login. As a result, a lot of potential video consumption is lost.

As mentioned above, this is an interstitial page that drives to the cable provider as they own the username and password information.

In collaboration with the product team, a strategy was developed to implement a ‘free trial’ in exchange for the user’s email address. This would allow the user to forego the authentication requirement.

This was the minimal piece of information required for us to begin building a CRM and the beginning of a customer match marketing program across Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It also provided us with the initial piece of consumer data that we could subsequently build on with supplemental offers in exchange for profile completion.

The overarching lesson here is – invest in CRM. Even if you have to start with just a database of email addresses. Start somewhere.

2. Not Understanding the Nuances of Mobile Tracking

As you might imagine, much of our marketing strategy and budget focused on the mobile space. Interestingly enough, this is also a space where ad-blockers are not working.

That said, with mobile advertising comes tracking nuances that I was initially unaware of.

When I joined the team, we were full-steam into launching the first ever marketing campaign. In our haste to launch, we did not take the time to fully understand the impact of not solidifying our mobile tracking solution.

Our primary mobile advertising consisted of:

Desktop & Mobile Banner and Social Ads:

The standard process for attribution is based on the use of cookies.

When a user visits a website via their desktop or mobile device, your banner displays and a cookie is dropped on the visitor’s computers  – regardless of whether or not they click through to your website.

Depending on the ad-server being used, this cookie can remain active for up to 2 years.

Eventually, if the user performs the desired action, that same cookie fires sending the proper attribution for your campaign. All is well in the world.

Apple’s Safari browser blocks 3rd party cookies by default which makes this ‘standard’ tracking more complicated. Among other things, this means your app cannot read the cookie data stored by Mobile Safari.

This presents a challenge to advertisers as Safari’s market share is around 33% globally.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our brand websites):

I’m sure you’ve noticed when you open a link in an app, it doesn’t open a new browser window. Rather, it opens an “in-app browser”.

This makes perfect sense for UX as it allows you to quickly return to the app.

The issue lies in the cookie drop on your phone. This naturally occurs with the click, however, it only drops a cookie for the in-app browser session. Unless the conversion happens immediately within that session, the attribution is lost.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our apps):

Quite simply, cookies are not used ‘in-app’. This left us with zero attribution or cross-device tracking.

The lack of attention to these details was quickly evident. At the end of the campaign, we were left pointing to engagement metrics like impressions, CTR and social shares as a measure of success.

Not at all what a consumer acquisition campaign should be reporting.

Plan of Action:

The quickest change to a leaky attribution bucket that we could make was to tackle the Safari issue. We simply updated our social and display targeting to remove Safari browsers.

While Google struggles with mobile and socially-driven demographic/interest targeting, Facebook provides the ability to target (or exclude) users by Web browser.

While not foolproof, for the likes of Twitter and Google, we targeted only older operating systems in an effort to capture users who were still using legacy browsers.

Considering our audience was US based, we estimated that we would only be missing out on approximately 15-18% of the overall market.

The other two challenges were a bit more complicated and required a mobile attribution solution that established the match between the user’s advertising ID and the publisher.

While there are many companies available for this, after evaluation, we landed on Kochava as our solution provider.

Pro tip: if you’re on a budget, Branch.io is a completely free solution that provides many of the same features.

3. Focusing on Sexy vs. Efficient

The programmatic display and mobile space is filled with shiny new tools, ad placements, and even ad units.

Combine that with the traditional types of advertising done by media companies (think big billboards, bus sides, etc) and these quickly become distractions from tactics that are proven to work.

I think it’s fair to say we spread our tactics far too wide in the early years in hopes of capitalizing on that sexy new ad-unit or the hot new ad targeting. This was, unfortunately, at the expense of tried and true tactics like traditional paid search.

A smarter approach would have been to test into these tactics rather than build a comprehensive media plan that included them.

Plan of Action:

I’m a huge fan of Steve Jobs. And Apple in general. One of my favorite quotes from him is:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

With more data and proper attribution in place, we were more empowered to direct the media plans across the brands.

We focused on tried and true channels that significantly outperformed the “shiny objects” that had resulted in wasted spend and higher costs for creative development.

This paid off in a big way:

Total impressions declined significantly, however, clicks increased just as dramatically

Average click costs also declined

Cost per app install decreased nearly 200%

Cost per video start decreased 230%

Sometimes the ‘simple’ things just work better.

Ultimately, after seeing the data, I took away a few lessons that can be applied to almost any campaign:

Programmatic display isn’t the end all, be all. It’s an industry buzzword. I could even say ‘buzztactic’. It’s rife with click fraud and vendors with non-transparent ‘private networks’. It’s susceptible to ad blockers and comes with many privacy issues.

Don’t get me wrong. It can work.

But, test into programmatic options ONLY after you’ve exhausted the below tactics.

Focus on channels where a consumer is actively searching for you. They’re already self-qualified based on their actions. The most applicable here is paid search across Bing or Google.

Remarket your way to lower cost per acquisitions. You’ve already paid the premium CPC or CPM to get that user to your website. Typically, remarketing campaigns come with much lower costs. Why not re-engage a warm lead for less?

Image Source

#Hashtags are inherently social, but leave them out of social ad copy. Through our trimming of tactics, we also trimmed areas where consumers might be tempted to leave the topic at hand.

In this case, we removed any hashtag mentions in our ad copy so consumers would focus instead on the ‘install’. Our conversion rates improved as a result.

When pushing mobile installs, leverage a device in your creative. When you think about it, of course. It makes sense. But we proved it out via testing. Showing consumers an image of their device in the creative they’re being served improved conversion rates.

4. Not Leveraging an Always on Strategy

Consumers, myself included, are always on. Always plugged in. It’s a bad, addicting habit.

But, that also means running a campaign for a TV show only when that show is in-season leaves opportunity on the table.

There are a few challenges with being able to do this:

First, media companies are selling off the rights to their shows to the likes of Netflix and Hulu. In some cases, the ability to create a show is solely dependent on the revenue coming from these transactions.

This means an always on strategy will never be an option once the rights are sold.

Second, when we first launched our campaigns, we were spending large portions of our budget on fancy creative and higher cost CPMs trying to capture the next big thing.

This left us without budget pacing that would allow for an always on strategy.

Plan of Action:

We tackled the second issue as part of our streamlining of tactics. This enabled our budgets to stretch farther and for longer periods of time both pre-premier and post-finale.

The matter of rights was more complicated and is probably worth a completely separate post. That said, as a test, we decided to focus on a core set of shows where the rights had been retained for several years.

The hope was, if we could show a series with multiple seasons resulted in larger average views per user, we could start to build a case for investing in the rights for the more popular shows.

It worked.

We found not only were the average views per user up, but these campaigns were far outperforming pilot shows and series with limited rights.

This resulted in overall efficiencies for the campaign.

Wrapping Up

There’s no question the digital space can provide lots of opportunity for growth and learning. I have certainly learned a ton.

Hopefully sharing some of these insights will help you better streamline your digital marketing efforts, focus on what works, get your tracking in order and ultimately drive increased performance.

About the Author: Jon Clark is the founder of Fuze SEO, a boutique digital marketing company in New York. He writes regularly on SEO tactics, analytics and social media best practices. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter. When not working or writing, Jon enjoys documenting his travels on Instagram.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2wYmkQq

[ericsburden-blog]

4 Mistakes I Learned About Marketing and Data While Working at a Fortune 50 Company

For the past nearly 3 years, I’ve been in charge of Audience Development for one of the largest media companies in the US.

I learned a LOT during that time. Even more important, I learned a lot about what NOT to do.

Not all of these things were personal ‘mistakes’ per se. Some were top down decisions that were influenced by lack of foresight, knowledge or budget. Others were due to an industry that is undergoing rapid change.

As John Powell said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

To that end, here are the top 4 mistakes I learned during my tenure. I hope sharing these and their learnings will spark some good discussion – either internally or in the comments below.

1. Not Investing in Building User Data

This one definitely took me by surprise.

When I arrived, I had big plans to leverage CRM data to build remarketing pools, lookalike audiences, email campaigns, etc.

But there was no CRM database.

One thing not often considered about media companies is the fact the consumer data is controlled by the cable provider. The cable company collects the payment and therefore have all the associated consumer data:

Name

Address

Phone

Email

Credit Card Info

Purchase history

Login Username/Password

Etc.

In it’s simplest form, the media company simply provides the content the cable provider sells to the consumer. For the longest period of time, the value of collecting this data had been overlooked.

Plan of Action:

To access ‘free’ content within an app from the likes of NBC, CBS, Fox and others, you must go through an authentication process. This is done using the same credentials you would login to pay your cable bill.

In one of these apps, you’ve likely come across a login page that looks like this:

This poses two challenges:

Many consumers don’t know or remember this login. As a result, a lot of potential video consumption is lost.

As mentioned above, this is an interstitial page that drives to the cable provider as they own the username and password information.

In collaboration with the product team, a strategy was developed to implement a ‘free trial’ in exchange for the user’s email address. This would allow the user to forego the authentication requirement.

This was the minimal piece of information required for us to begin building a CRM and the beginning of a customer match marketing program across Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It also provided us with the initial piece of consumer data that we could subsequently build on with supplemental offers in exchange for profile completion.

The overarching lesson here is – invest in CRM. Even if you have to start with just a database of email addresses. Start somewhere.

2. Not Understanding the Nuances of Mobile Tracking

As you might imagine, much of our marketing strategy and budget focused on the mobile space. Interestingly enough, this is also a space where ad-blockers are not working.

That said, with mobile advertising comes tracking nuances that I was initially unaware of.

When I joined the team, we were full-steam into launching the first ever marketing campaign. In our haste to launch, we did not take the time to fully understand the impact of not solidifying our mobile tracking solution.

Our primary mobile advertising consisted of:

Desktop & Mobile Banner and Social Ads:

The standard process for attribution is based on the use of cookies.

When a user visits a website via their desktop or mobile device, your banner displays and a cookie is dropped on the visitor’s computers  – regardless of whether or not they click through to your website.

Depending on the ad-server being used, this cookie can remain active for up to 2 years.

Eventually, if the user performs the desired action, that same cookie fires sending the proper attribution for your campaign. All is well in the world.

Apple’s Safari browser blocks 3rd party cookies by default which makes this ‘standard’ tracking more complicated. Among other things, this means your app cannot read the cookie data stored by Mobile Safari.

This presents a challenge to advertisers as Safari’s market share is around 33% globally.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our brand websites):

I’m sure you’ve noticed when you open a link in an app, it doesn’t open a new browser window. Rather, it opens an “in-app browser”.

This makes perfect sense for UX as it allows you to quickly return to the app.

The issue lies in the cookie drop on your phone. This naturally occurs with the click, however, it only drops a cookie for the in-app browser session. Unless the conversion happens immediately within that session, the attribution is lost.

In-App Advertising (sending users to our apps):

Quite simply, cookies are not used ‘in-app’. This left us with zero attribution or cross-device tracking.

The lack of attention to these details was quickly evident. At the end of the campaign, we were left pointing to engagement metrics like impressions, CTR and social shares as a measure of success.

Not at all what a consumer acquisition campaign should be reporting.

Plan of Action:

The quickest change to a leaky attribution bucket that we could make was to tackle the Safari issue. We simply updated our social and display targeting to remove Safari browsers.

While Google struggles with mobile and socially-driven demographic/interest targeting, Facebook provides the ability to target (or exclude) users by Web browser.

While not foolproof, for the likes of Twitter and Google, we targeted only older operating systems in an effort to capture users who were still using legacy browsers.

Considering our audience was US based, we estimated that we would only be missing out on approximately 15-18% of the overall market.

The other two challenges were a bit more complicated and required a mobile attribution solution that established the match between the user’s advertising ID and the publisher.

While there are many companies available for this, after evaluation, we landed on Kochava as our solution provider.

Pro tip: if you’re on a budget, Branch.io is a completely free solution that provides many of the same features.

3. Focusing on Sexy vs. Efficient

The programmatic display and mobile space is filled with shiny new tools, ad placements, and even ad units.

Combine that with the traditional types of advertising done by media companies (think big billboards, bus sides, etc) and these quickly become distractions from tactics that are proven to work.

I think it’s fair to say we spread our tactics far too wide in the early years in hopes of capitalizing on that sexy new ad-unit or the hot new ad targeting. This was, unfortunately, at the expense of tried and true tactics like traditional paid search.

A smarter approach would have been to test into these tactics rather than build a comprehensive media plan that included them.

Plan of Action:

I’m a huge fan of Steve Jobs. And Apple in general. One of my favorite quotes from him is:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”

With more data and proper attribution in place, we were more empowered to direct the media plans across the brands.

We focused on tried and true channels that significantly outperformed the “shiny objects” that had resulted in wasted spend and higher costs for creative development.

This paid off in a big way:

Total impressions declined significantly, however, clicks increased just as dramatically

Average click costs also declined

Cost per app install decreased nearly 200%

Cost per video start decreased 230%

Sometimes the ‘simple’ things just work better.

Ultimately, after seeing the data, I took away a few lessons that can be applied to almost any campaign:

Programmatic display isn’t the end all, be all. It’s an industry buzzword. I could even say ‘buzztactic’. It’s rife with click fraud and vendors with non-transparent ‘private networks’. It’s susceptible to ad blockers and comes with many privacy issues.

Don’t get me wrong. It can work.

But, test into programmatic options ONLY after you’ve exhausted the below tactics.

Focus on channels where a consumer is actively searching for you. They’re already self-qualified based on their actions. The most applicable here is paid search across Bing or Google.

Remarket your way to lower cost per acquisitions. You’ve already paid the premium CPC or CPM to get that user to your website. Typically, remarketing campaigns come with much lower costs. Why not re-engage a warm lead for less?

Image Source

#Hashtags are inherently social, but leave them out of social ad copy. Through our trimming of tactics, we also trimmed areas where consumers might be tempted to leave the topic at hand.

In this case, we removed any hashtag mentions in our ad copy so consumers would focus instead on the ‘install’. Our conversion rates improved as a result.

When pushing mobile installs, leverage a device in your creative. When you think about it, of course. It makes sense. But we proved it out via testing. Showing consumers an image of their device in the creative they’re being served improved conversion rates.

4. Not Leveraging an Always on Strategy

Consumers, myself included, are always on. Always plugged in. It’s a bad, addicting habit.

But, that also means running a campaign for a TV show only when that show is in-season leaves opportunity on the table.

There are a few challenges with being able to do this:

First, media companies are selling off the rights to their shows to the likes of Netflix and Hulu. In some cases, the ability to create a show is solely dependent on the revenue coming from these transactions.

This means an always on strategy will never be an option once the rights are sold.

Second, when we first launched our campaigns, we were spending large portions of our budget on fancy creative and higher cost CPMs trying to capture the next big thing.

This left us without budget pacing that would allow for an always on strategy.

Plan of Action:

We tackled the second issue as part of our streamlining of tactics. This enabled our budgets to stretch farther and for longer periods of time both pre-premier and post-finale.

The matter of rights was more complicated and is probably worth a completely separate post. That said, as a test, we decided to focus on a core set of shows where the rights had been retained for several years.

The hope was, if we could show a series with multiple seasons resulted in larger average views per user, we could start to build a case for investing in the rights for the more popular shows.

It worked.

We found not only were the average views per user up, but these campaigns were far outperforming pilot shows and series with limited rights.

This resulted in overall efficiencies for the campaign.

Wrapping Up

There’s no question the digital space can provide lots of opportunity for growth and learning. I have certainly learned a ton.

Hopefully sharing some of these insights will help you better streamline your digital marketing efforts, focus on what works, get your tracking in order and ultimately drive increased performance.

About the Author: Jon Clark is the founder of Fuze SEO, a boutique digital marketing company in New York. He writes regularly on SEO tactics, analytics and social media best practices. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter. When not working or writing, Jon enjoys documenting his travels on Instagram.

4 Mistakes I Learned About Marketing and Data While Working at a Fortune 50 Company