Seven Cows
Next week marks a staple in the performance marketing calendar, Affiliate Summit. Last year, at least three thousand, if not more, descended upon and experienced the often hot, generally humid, NYC summer. Given the show’s popularity and the institution upon which it has become, there is no reason to suspect anything but equal if not greater attendance. It is also about this time, that we produce a calendar of our own sorts, the party schedule. We wouldn’t want to ask, “What would a conference be without parties?” but the gatherings have become almost a tradition. Each year, it seems that companies go to great lengths to confuse attendees about where to go. With party after amazing party, most overlapping, the certainties of Affiliate Summit include feeling terrible the next day and drinkers remorse about not having been everyplace you wanted.
In compiling our party list, we took a look at one of the key sources, the list posted by Shawn on the Affiliate Summit website. If you compare the 2010 list to the 2009 list, you will see a very different landscape. You will still wake up feeling terrible the next day, but this year, you stand a much better chance of not missing out. The reason, as one reader and presumed party goer writes in the comments, “Party list is looking thin this year. Last year there seem to be like 4 to 5 a night.” We haven’t received as many invites, and there are a greater percentage of those that are having events who have kept the information quite guarded.
Thinking about why the party list is not as great, we can come up with the usual suspects – it’s New York, i.e., not cheap. Or, we can go ahead and say the unspoken. There’s no acai. It’s not gone, but it’s not at the levels it was this time last year. And, with the pressure many networks have faced during the correction in the nutraceutical continuity market, they don’t feel a need to say, “Look at us.” Fortunately, as attendance at the show will prove, this says nothing about the overall health of the industry. The quandary around the quantities of publicly known parties, does, however, take us back to our roots, in so far as the naming of the publication is concerned.
It’s no secret but it certainly isn’t publicly mentioned that the “DM” in DMConfidential does not stand for “direct marketing” or “digital marketing” or any other relevant grouping of advertising phrases using d and m. Instead, it stands for “Digital Moses,” a perplexing name that sort of makes sense when you think about starting a boutique ad firm in 2001 when people didn’t understand the landscape. Instead of parting the sea, the digital Moses would help lead advertisers in a sea of bytes. Regardless, a great number of readers have been raised in a Judeo-Christian environment with some basic biblical knowledge. There was something about the party list which made us think back to a biblical story.
After doing some research, aka asking someone else, we found what we were looking for, Genesis. Not a band and not the car, this Genesis is of course the first book of the bible, and beginning around section 41, we learn of the story of Joseph. Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, had reported dreams that he could not interpret. One of Pharaoh’s people told him about a particular servant, Joseph, who was summoned. “Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘In my dream I was standing on the bank of the Nile, when out of the river there came up seven cows, fat and sleek, and they grazed among the reeds. After them, seven other cows came up—scrawny and very ugly and lean. I had never seen such ugly cows in all the land of Egypt. The lean, ugly cows ate up the seven fat cows that came up first. But even after they ate them, no one could tell that they had done so; they looked just as ugly as before…In my dreams I also saw seven heads of grain, full and good, growing on a single stalk. After them, seven other heads sprouted—withered and thin and scorched by the east wind. The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven good heads.’”
Pharaoh “told this to the magicians, but none could explain it” to him. “Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, ‘The dreams of Pharaoh are one and the same. God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good heads of grain are seven years; it is one and the same dream. The seven lean, ugly cows that came up afterward are seven years, and so are the seven worthless heads of grain scorched by the east wind: They are seven years of famine. Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance. They should collect all the food of these good years that are coming and store up the grain under the authority of Pharaoh, to be kept in the cities for food. This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine.’” According to the Bible, that is exactly what happened. Egypt had prepared and weathered the storm.
Ours is very much a feast or famine sector. The famines aren’t as dire, but they are markedly different from the feast periods. Many companies have had to weather not just periods of slowdown but negative growth. That’s a real challenge for many businesses who currently operate at thin enough margins. Any bad debt or other fluctuation would be easily felt. It doesn’t take a biblical reference to suggest the almost necessity of storing some profits and building a buffer. It’s what we all should do, especially in a business sector like ours where there aren’t always built in or residual revenues. We aren’t an insurance company nor are we necessarily Microsoft who can count on a certain percentage of people upgrading to the latest version. Storing some grain doesn’t make you a pessimist, just as choosing slow and steady growth over more volatile segments doesn’t correlate to one’s overall level of success. If anything, if you feel pressured to hurry up and take advantage of something, it’s a sign that it won’t last.
