Bad Grown-Ups Say Hallelujah

“I’m too hot.

Hot damn.

Girls hit your hallelujah.

Cause I’m going to funkngiveittoya.”

The ladies’ gasps were audible.

While he danced and sang like nobody was watching (ahhh, the delicious irony), the other mothers stood fast and united behind their little ticket-peddling card tables.  With their dropped jaws and Restaylned lips, you could see the word bubbles forming over their heads as they looked at 3.0 (my youngest nephew) in abject horror:

“YOUR GROWN-UP IS BAD.  She is a terrible, horrible, no good, VERY bad grown-up.”

Apparently, none of them have heard the Bruno Mars Uptown Funk that plays NONFLIPPINGSTOP on the radio and/or can extrapolate the fact that most 3 year olds aren’t the best enunciators and it was FUNK with an –n, not with a –c.

That’s what happens, you know.

When a wee one does something, er, unfavorable, all empathy goes out the window and the adults in the room immediately look around to see who the tiny human’s grown-up is so they can be immediately (and permanently) labeled:

BAD GROWN-UP.

Very often I’m THAT grown-up.

The bad one.

…The one who is so busy fiddling around with the parking meter that she has to chase the mighty minion into a SEX SHOP because he reads the word “toys” off the sandwich board in front of it.  (I’ll spare you the details of what happened when the little sociopath yelled “this doesn’t look like much fun” while holding up a very large, er, device!)

…The one who spends $11.89 on a single cup of yogurt at one of those choose-your-own-toppings places. (The shop was suspiciously out of small cups.  Plus, there was far too much time spent keeping grubby lil’ paws out of the Rolos and gummi sharks, and the whipped cream from being squirted directly into a frothing mouth.)

…The one who knocked over an entire aisle, yes aisle, of bikes at Toys R Us because she thought it’d be ok to let the mini-monster test-drive the little Jeep and missed that it was TIED DOWN.  (Why put a battery in something that’s bolted to the wall? I mean really.)

…The one who goes back into the children’s restaurant for the 3rd time to score a free balloon because she can’t properly tie a balloon to a wrist. Yes, the same one that also had to bribe the balloon-animal-guy to make extras because she inadvertently decapitates 1 out of every 3 animals in either the door or lockdown (aka the carseat.)

The thing is that (a) what other people think of me is really none of my business and (b) I don’t particularly give a flying funk anyway.

My motto: Keep your eyes on your own paper. (And yes, I’m aware of the incongruity of that particular statement considering I appear to be incapable of watching a 3 year old but WHATEVER.)

What on earth does any of this have to do with web/mobile marketing?

Glad you asked.

I was at a conference recently and session-after-session of speakers touting individual case studies reminded me how DANGEROUS it is to look at someone else’s test results and think you know anything about their success… their business…. the test results in general…

I get it.  As a consultant, it looks super sexy to present that you executed X test for your client and it had 3476% lift.  If you tell the story right, it looks like you found a cure for cancer, solved the AIDS epidemic, guaranteed net neutrality for life and figured out once-and-for-all whether orange is better than green in just one test.  (Incidentally, testing button color ad nauseam?  Lock those suckers up in the broom closet for LIFE!)

Regarding one test as the be-all-end-all of civilization – with one set of test “results” (word used very loosely) – when you don’t really know how it was executed or tracked?  ABSOLUTELY FLIPPING INSANE.  Keep in mind that I see thousands of tests a year and the MAJORITY of folks call the results too early and don’t ever back-test against the control.  Nor do most folks separate their customers – especially their email customers – when looking at the results, which depending on the business can have a huge impact.  In other words, I review way more invalid tests than valid ones.

Right now, the web-world is like it was in the mid-90s.  Mobile has arrived but it’s not really in full-force yet – it’s way more pre-tween than teen.  Search is changing – voice and visual are both on the horizon of good use/adoption — but it’s not really there either.  Text messaging, especially triggered texts, are in their infancy.  More sophisticated versions of chats are being tested but they have a ways to go.  I could go on but you get the drill…  There’s a lot to do – many, many things to do and test.

So, while it’s fun to choose Version B over Version A on the latest and greatest test at one of the many sites that rate your intelligence (cough, cough, choke) as a marketer….

….and it can certainly be good to get fresh, new ideas of what to test from an entertaining speaker…

In the end, you’re the one who knows what’s right (and what’s wrong) for your business… and your uptown funkin’ kid.