Messaging: Trump Dominates

~ Mr. Rantastic

According to the press, the professional Republican political class is bemoaning the fact that Donald Trump has not started spending a bunch of money on political ads. (Some of these folks might be the indirect beneficiaries of such spending, but I am SURE that fact plays no role in their opinions). But why should he spend any money? He is not having any problem whatsoever in getting his message out.

Trump is just dominating. Go to any news website, and 80% of the time the top political headline will begin with “Trump . . . “. From his perspective, it does not matter if the story is favorable or not as long as he is in the press.

The top political headline almost never begins with “Clinton . . .”, in fact there is hardly any Clinton news at all unless it is about her e-mail or some other negative. Clinton has a successful rally or says something about policy? You will never see it because no one will click on it. And clicks are what matters.

Trump has so completely mastered the press that Clinton’s only way to get any message out is to spend on advertising. The money that Trump’s campaign is collecting? Well, a lot of it will probably be spent on hefty consulting fees to his kids and close associates. And offsetting the cost of his plane. And helicopter. And boat. And . . .

Indigo Matters

~ Mr. Rantastic

flag

The rainbow flag is meant to be inclusive, right?

All of the colors are represented.

Not.

As anyone that has taken a science class knows, the mnemonic for the colors of the rainbow is Roy G Biv.
Biv = Blue       Indigo      Violet

But none of the rainbow flags I have ever seen show indigo. They only show six colors.

Which brings up the question: Who does indigo represent and why are they excluded?

Trump’s Fraud Factor

~ Mr. Rantastic

It has been three weeks since the conventions and despite numerous ‘gaffes’ by Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton is less than 10 points ahead of him in the polls. He and his party have done such a good job of painting her as Crooked Hillary that she really has no chance of pulling his supporters over to her side. Her best hope is that they stay home on election day.

The best way for that happen is to make Trump’s supporters disillusioned. Make them think that he is a fraud and not really representing their interests. And it cannot be the Democrats with this message – it has to be a third party, preferably a Trump supporter or expected Trump supporter or a Wikileaks.

How to show that Trump is a fraud? Demonstrating that he does not pay taxes like you and me is one way. But Trump will not release his tax returns, so that will be difficult. Maybe Hillary can ask Russia to hack Trump’s accounting firm to get his tax returns – no, I don’t think that will work.

How else? Well, Hillary’s team will have to study up on con artists and see what works against them. Conald Trump is appealing to the gut, Hillary is appealing to the mind. If she wants to make Trump supporters disillusioned her team will have to work on his fraud factor and find something that punches his supporters in the gut.

Is It Supposed To Work This Way?

~ Mr. Rantastic

The chair of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, was biased against Donald Trump in the primaries. He failed in his bias and Donald Trump won the nomination. Nevertheless, Reince Priebus still has his job as head of the Republican National Committee.

The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was biased for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. She succeeded in her bias and Hillary Clinton won the nomination. Debbie Wasserman Schultz no longer has her job as head of the Democratic National Committee.

 

GOP Convention Chaos

~ Mr. Rantastic

Newsflash – lots of chaos at the GOP convention. It is not turning out to be a scripted affair after all.

Duh oh

Donald Trump is riding a winning horse – why would he want to change it?

A huge part of his appeal is that he is unscripted. It works. It gets him tons of free media coverage. It lets regular folks identify with him. He is the guy with FU money that can say whatever he wants whenever he wants. The guy we all wish we were, if only we didn’t have to hold down two jobs to pay the rent/mortgage and have enough left over for a few weeks a year in Florida.

Can you imagine a scripted Donald Trump? One where the media has to manufacture controversy? It is almost impossible – as it should be.

Donald Trump will never win the presidency by playing the sedate statesman. His turf is chaos and spontaneity. And since it is his nomination, that is what the Republican convention and the rest of his campaign will show America.

AR: From ‘How To’ to ‘Can Do’

~ Mr. Rantastic

As anyone who has ever tried to figure something out knows, YouTube is the go-to place for ‘how to’. Want to fix a computer? Scramble eggs? Wire a house? Shoot a ‘how to’ video? You can find instructions on YouTube. They won’t all be very good, but they’ll be there.

What’s next? Once augmented reality (AR) goes mainstream, the whole thing could change massively. Instead of browsing through five videos to find the trick to changing the belt on your vacuum cleaner, you will be able to choose from five people to guide you in real time from ‘how to’ to ‘can do’.

They won’t even have to be in your half of the world. They just have to speak your language well enough for you to understand them.

And how will you find these ‘can do’ consultants? Well, that is where it gets interesting. Consider that:

  • Google owns YouTube, the far away leader in ‘how-to’ videos
  • The leader in the (nascent) AR field right now is Microsoft with its HoloLens product
  • The leader of Microsoft sees the cloud as his company’s future

Why would Microsoft help jump start a can do community, only to send that community over to arch competitor Google? Wouldn’t it be better to start its own cloud-based service integrated with its HoloLens product? And since the can-do consultants would want to charge something for their help, there would also be a natural integration with a cloud based payments system. Microsoft set up “Microsoft Payments” last year.

AR is going to be a major disruptor. More to come.

 

The Office Tech Paradox

~ Mr. Rantastic

Anyone that has worked in an office environment knows that there are one or two people that everyone turns to if they need technology help. You may be one of those people. If you are, you must also know that it is a crap job.

This is one of those situations where the rewards for being smart and helpful are perversely negative. Perhaps someone in the office needed assistance with a function in Word, Excel, Salesforce, etc.and you, being a helpful newb, volunteered the answer. So instead of trying to find the answer by themselves next time, they just ask you from the get go.

And heaven help you if you fix a jam in the printer. From that day forward, every time something goes wrong you are the first call. Even if the damn thing is simply out of paper. FFS, can’t you gits do anything by yourselves?

So as soon as you change jobs or offices, you resolve to be as unhelpful as possible and not let anyone know that you are computer and equipment savvy. For you, that works out well. For office productivity – not so much.

It is kind of a corollary to the Peter Principle. Let’s call it the Rantastic Rudiment. At least in terms of office tech, the more experienced people are, the less helpful they become. In other words, when it come to office tech, you only get help from your least experienced colleagues.