DailyLit
As I look back on all the books I intended to read in 2011 and didn’t, it feels very frustrating that I didn’t make more progress. Enter DailyLit, a site I had heard of a while back, but didn’t take seriously.
The basic idea is very simple: you subscribe to a book either by email or RSS and it’s sent to you as installments. You can set it up to deliver daily, every other day, etc. And it’s free.
I don’t think it works well for Fiction since Fiction has a flow and momentum you lose if read too sporadically, but I think it might work well for Non-Fiction.
I’ve decided to test it out with The 50th Law, by 50 Cent and Robert Greene (before you laugh, Greene in an incredible researcher and writer and the reviews are excellent), which is broken up into 85 installments, so I’ll finish the book in less than 3 months (at my current setting of one installment per day).
DailyLit isn’t going to be my only source for Literature – I’ll keep reading books the traditional way, but I think it could be a nice supplement to encourage myself to read more.
What The Wealth Gap Means For U.S. Latinos
DISCLOSURE: This post was originally published September 20th. See the original + follow up comments on the Casanova Pendrill blog.
A recently released study from the Pew Research Center says that the median wealth of white households in the U.S is 18 times greater than the wealth of Latino households.
Why?
1. The bursting of the housing market bubble in 2006
“Sixty-six percent of their [Latinos] net worth* derives from home equity,” Kochhar says. “And they are concentrated geographically in parts of the country such as California, Arizona, Florida and Nevada, where the housing downturn was most severe.”
Consequently, the average Hispanic family lost two-thirds of its wealth between 2005 and 2009.
Even though the recession officially ended in mid-2009 and the stock market has rebounded, Latinos have not benefited since such a small percentage are invested in stocks, mutual funds and retirement accounts. Meanwhile, the housing market has yet to recover.
2. The recession that followed from late 2007 to mid-2009
Hispanics are more likely to be unemployed due to the recession, forcing them to dig into assets (like savings or pensions funds) or increasing their debt load (through credit cards, education loans, etc.).
As a result, about 1/3 of Hispanic households had zero or negative net worth at the end of the recession in 2009 — twice the level of white families.
What does this mean for brands?
The news can be disheartening to brands as consumers reevaluate purchases and disposable income, however, there’s still some positive news:
- Household wealth, which, in the case of Latinos, is mainly derived from home equity, has no direct effect on spending power. Although it can be psychologically and emotionally damaging, the loss of home equity does not also mean a reduction in income.
- Simmons data (Winter 2011 NHCS Adult Survey 12-month) shows us that compared to the Total Population, Latinos are optimistic about an economic recovery and their ability to make purchases:
- Economic Outlook – Next 12 months: Significantly Better Off (Index 117)
- Economic Outlook – Next 12 months: Significantly Better Off (Index 165)
- Buy Big Ticket Items - Last 30 Days: (Index 130)
- Household Essentials – Expect to Spend: A Lot Less (Index 121), but we also see A Lot More (Index 126)
- I Go Shopping Frequently: (Index 120)
- Hard To Resists Kids Requests for Non-Essentials: (Index 140)
- Movie Attendance – How Often Last 30 Days: 3-4 (Index 133) and 5+ (Index 186)
It’s true – many Latinos are struggling financially. We’re seeing it in the data and we’re seeing it first-hand in ethnographies across the country.
Even so, Latinos will continue to spend and it’s important for brands to understand how to make their products relevant to this growing consumer base — that’s a topic for future posts 
###
* Household wealth is the accumulated sum of assets (houses, cars, savings and checking accounts, stocks and mutual funds, retirement accounts, etc.) minus the sum of debt (mortgages, auto loans, credit card debt, etc.). It is different from household income, which measures the annual inflow of wages, interest, profits and other sources of earning. Wealth gaps between whites, blacks and Hispanics have always been much greater than income gaps.
Source: “Study Shows Racial Wealth Gap Grows Wider“ – NPR
Source: “Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics” – Pew Research Center
READ THE FULL REPORT HERE:
Who Do Millenial Men Consider Role Models Today? Not Who You Think.
DISCLOSURE: This post was originally published August 19th. See the original + follow up comments on the Casanova Pendrill blog.
A recent AdAge article talks about a study conducted by AskMen.com regarding men and role models. The results are somewhat surprising:
1. There’s been a shift where Gen Pop men consider entrepreneurs as their most ideal models, before athletes and entertainers.
“Today’s men want to succeed in their careers and they don’t see that happening in any traditional way. They understand that, perhaps now more than ever, success requires that entrepreneurial combination of vision and invention. There is no career ladder to the position of a Steve Jobs or a Mark Zuckerberg.”
Whereas the last generation focused on getting “good” jobs as doctors, lawyers and accountants, today’s man has realized that following this “career ladder” with a predetermined destination doesn’t necessarily equate happiness. The result is an urge to become self-made, even if that means straying from the more conventional path (I think the other part of it is a desire for guys to make stuff – look at the interest in DIY culture).
2. A desire for more financial freedom
“According to the 2010 survey of Millennials by Euro RSCG, men are six times as likely as women (12% vs. 2%) to choose “money” as the thing that best describes happiness. But these out-sized ambitions have as much to do with freedom as with wealth. When answering the same question — “What best describes happiness to you?” — 22% of men vs. 13% of women chose “freedom” as the No. 1 factor. Perhaps what men find most attractive about entrepreneurship is exactly that: the freedom to be the master of your own destiny. “
Money will always be a motivational driver, even if it’s just for the bare necessities. Many guys today, however, appear to be more interested in using their hard-earned dollars to explore other channels for happiness (Ex: travel, dining out, shopping, learning a new skill, etc.), instead of sitting back and admiring their growing bank accounts.
3. Men are buying higher quality items, like Apple products, because these men are confident in their future success and think it’s important to invest in themselves.
This is an important point to keep in mind — look at the declining sales of “throw-away” fashion retailers like H&M and Zara. Or the back to basics positioning and emphasis on craftsmanship in the Levi’s “Made and Crafted” line. Or Chrysler’s “Made In Detroit” Super Bowl spot:
Recent research has shown us that there’s a greater desire, for both young males AND females, regardless of race or ethnicity, to carve out their own path to success.
I wonder how Latino men would respond: Who are their role models? What do you think are their greatest motivations and ambitions?
Please leave your thoughts in the comments!!
What does “American Psycho” Have To Do With Yelp?
DISCLOSURE: This post was originally published June 21st. See the original + follow up comments on the Casanova Pendrill blog.
“Patterns of media consumption have been profoundly altered by new media technologies that enable us to archive, annotate, appropriate and recirculate media content.” — Joshua Green & Henry Jenkins, “The Moral Economy of Web 2.0″
Just wanted to share a quick observation from something I saw on Twitter the other day.
Someone had tweeted about how Dorsia in NYC wasn’t a cool restaurant to go to anymore. Fans of author Bret Easton Ellis or “American Psycho” — either the book of the movie with Christian Bale, may remember that this was one of the main character’s hangouts.
But here’s where it gets interesting:
There was a link to Dorsia’s Yelp page and there were tons of reviews about the restaurant.
Keep in mind, Dorsia is a fictional restaurant – IT DOESN’T EXIST. As an interesting aside, the majority of the interviews were just quoting comments the main character made in either the movie or the book; it’s pretty funny if you’re a fan like me
So now you’re like, “OK — so what?”
Well here’s my Planner analysis:
A fan of “American Psycho” took it upon himself (or herself) to create a Yelp page with fake reviews. Other fans latched onto the idea and followed suit. Bud Caddell has written some clever stuff before about Fan-dom and I think this is just another example or people taking a brand – in this case the AP book/film and making it their own.
On the flip side, we have BP who tried to PREVENT the creation of online content about their brand.
Last year during the oil spill fiasco, someone took it upon himself to create a fake Twitter account – @BPGlobalPR – to poke fun and spread news about the company. BP tried to shut the account down, was unable to and the end result was that it just drew more attention to the Twitter account and more followers.
I remember the same thing happened when the film version of “The Davinci Code” came out – the Catholic church protested the movie’s release and told people not to see the movie. So what happened? People went to see the movie (doesn’t the church know about reverse psychology?).
I know that many big brands/clients can feel a great deal of anxiety when people do stuff like this – repurpose your brand in a way that you did not anticipate, but it CAN be a way to grow your brand in positive ways you never imagined.
Less Optimism for Today’s Young People
DISCLOSURE: This post was originally published May 6th. See the original + follow up comments on the Casanova Pendrill blog.
A recent article from The New York Times points to a Gallup survey that says, “…for the first time on record, most Americans said they did not believe today’s young would have better lives than their parents…”
As Keanu Reeves so astutely proclaimed in The Matrix, “WHOA.”
This is big news.
It’s big because people generally talk about the U.S. as the land of opportunity. If you can “make it” anywhere in the world, this is the place. It’s the reason both my parents emigrated to the United States and the reason many foreigners continue to do so today.
But things are changing.
People used to believe that a middle class family who worked hard and saved money could afford a house, an education and a comfortable life.
Well, now, maybe not so much. We need to keep in mind some of the challenges we face as a society:
- We’re still dealing with the effects of the housing bubble, and now it looks like an education bubble is on the horizon
- Gas prices are still on the rise (and cutting into retail sales)
- Obesity continues to climb with no end in sight
Oh, and the economy still needs a little work too — “Fully 80 percent of people say the economy is in A Mission Not Yet Accomplished”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
So what does this mean for Latinos, especially those still in other countries, like Mexico, who are considering moving north?
How does this affect their perceptions – do they think of the U.S. as the BEST option or just a BETTER option for themselves and their families?
These are big questions and the answers may reveal themselves over time. The most recent Census data tells us that 1 in 6 Americans, roughly 50.5 million, are Latino. This accounts for more than half (56%) the national growth since 2000. And even though the larger share of our growth is coming from births instead of immigration, Latino newcomers are still a substantial portion of the market.
It will be interesting to see if growth over the next 10 years matches projections or if immigration will start to decline.
What do you think? Is the American dream still alive and well? And what impact does this have on people who are considering the U.S. as their future home?
On another note, I highly suggest reading this NYTimes article, “The Experience Economy,” as a companion to this post. It’s a good observation of the past century’s shift in values.
TEDx Goldstar and TED 2011: Day 2
DISCLOSURE: This post was originally published March 8th. See the original + follow up comments on the Casanova Pendrill blog.
If you could spend a week with the most interesting people in the world, who would you choose?
That’s basically the premise behind the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference held annually in Long Beach. I was fortunate to attend a live simulcast of Day 2 of this year’s conference through TEDxGoldstar on March 2nd at the Downtown Independent Center, a day filled with musical performances and engaging presenters from the worlds of science, film and even graffiti.
Instead of recapping the entire day I’m going to focus on three of this year’s presenters:
Salman Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, a non-profit that provides students in teachers with online videos covering an array of topics from algebra to venture capital. One of the most fascinating parts of Khan’s story is how Khan Academy was born.
Khan had created and uploaded videos to YouTube as a way to help his cousin in school, never imagining that other people would find these videos interesting. But they did. People posted tons of comments, offering positive feedback and questions, which led Khan to realize that his idea could be something much bigger. For a more thorough examination of Khan Academy’s impact on education I highly recommend this GOOD article: “Big Ideas from TED 2011: Letting Students Drive Their Education.”
Indra Nooyi is the current CEO of Pepsi. In 2010 she was named #1 on Fortune’s list of the “50 Most Powerful Women” and #6 on Forbes‘ list of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women”. Every marketer in the world has heard of the successful Pepsi Refresh project, but what really got my attention was Nooyi’s announcement of the Refresh University, which will help provide 1,000 Pepsi Refresh grantees with the tools necessary for succession planning. It would have been very easy for Pepsi to discontinue the Refresh project, so I was impressed by Nooyi’s commitment to continue building on the project’s success.
Last, but not least, was French street artist JR, undoubtedly the day’s crowd favorite and this year’s TED Prize winner. The TED Prize is “…awarded annually to an exceptional individual who receives $100,000 and, much more important, “One Wish to Change the World.” Designed to leverage the TED community’s exceptional array of talent and resources, the Prize leads to collaborative initiatives with far-reaching impact.”
It was during his presentation that JR announced his TED wish, a large-scale participatory art project. Check out http://www.insideoutproject.net/ for all the details.
RECAP:
This is the 2nd TEDx event I’ve attended. Going to an event vs. watching TED videos on your computer are like night and day. What makes TED really special is the vibrant community of people – everyone from presenters, to organizers to guests.
Thanks to @ktischhy at talkTECH Communications for inviting me to join the exclusive group of 150 attendees at this year’s event produced by Goldstar.
Gift bags for all attendees
Watching the live simulcast in Long Beach!
TEDxGoldstar agenda and featured beverages
Bill Gates introducing the next presenter
Complimentary ice cream sandwiches provided by @Coolhaus
Above photo credit: Daniella De Varney Photography.
Lunch on rooftop of Downtown Independent Center
Banner for OUR "Ideas Worth Spreading"
Also thanks to Rosie Nguyen for sharing the last two pics.
LINKS:
For a more comprehensive look at TED Day 2, check out TED 2011 The Rediscovery of Wonder, Day Two on the Brain Pickings blog.
Also, there are lots of great links, pics and articles being shared on Twitter through the #TEDxGoldstar hashtag.
LA Weekly – JR’s Wish and Four Other TED Talks We Loved
Ambitious Technology Charts How Babytalk Evolves Into Language – PSFK. This is an article about one of the day’s TED presenters, Deb Roy.
Learn more about Michigan-based company Boxed Water Is Better
Here’s a Flickr Photoset I created for the event: TEDxGoldstar 2011
Are Latinos Struggling With Depression?
Image credit here
DISCLOSURE: This post was originally published Feb. 17th. See the original + follow up comments on the Casanova Pendrill blog.
A recent article on HuffingtonPost.com about depression in Latinos really surprised me, since the data I’ve seen generally describes Latinos as positive or optimistic. Some other findings were:
- Mental illness, such as depression, often carries a stigma in the Hispanic community because of cultural and socioeconomic factors – “Even more so than American culture as a whole, Latino culture values self-reliance, which can discourage people from talking about their problems…”
- There’s a major shortage of Spanish-speaking health professionals
- Cultural barriers - “Many physicians, psychiatrists, therapists are well-trained…but they aren’t trained in understanding culture and how they’re impacting someone’s world.”
- 16 million Latinos – about 1 in 3, are presently uninsured in the U.S.
Maybe marketers need to take a second look. I don’t really have any answers, but I do have a lot of questions:
How many U.S. Latinos are currently battling depression?
How does depression vary based on level of acculturation?
Does country of origin play a role?
Parents, teens, recent arrivals adjusting to life in the U.S. — how are they coping?
Is this article an accurate depiction or just a catchy headline?
Has anyone else seen data that supports or contradicts this article? I’d love to know.
Do Any Chewing Gums With Teeth Whiteners Really Work?
No.
“The way whitening works is that the bleach is in contact with your tooth and it removes stains by oxidation. Chewing gum doesn’t contact the outside of your tooth. It stimulates salivary flow, which will remove staining bacteria off of the chewing surfaces of your teeth and some food particles. If you want to brighten your smile, you need to use a whitening agent that stays on the outside of your teeth for a length of time. I recommend Crest Whitestrips.” – from Men’s Health
I’ve always been skeptical about these kinds of gum. Oh well – I’ll stick with sugar-free.
How Do You Design for Creativity – Bud Caddell
Sitting at home tonight trying to refine some ideas for No Right Brain Left Behind. Using Bud’s deck for inspiration:
Super Bowl Wrap Up
My favorite ad of the game was Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” spot. Everything from the narration, to the music, to Eminem as a pitchman was solid (Credit to W+K).
Even so, it seems like everyone is so in love with the ad that they’re forgetting what got the Detroit automakers into this mess in the first place:
“…the car companies discouraged diversification of the city’s economy, and city residents will tell you that the Big Three pretty much just stood by as the unemployment rate soared, the school system went sour, violence reached epidemic proportions, and city government became a piggy bank for the friends and family of city officials.” SOURCE: “Super Bowl Ad Stories: Chrysler, Eminem Break an Awkward Silence in Detroit” – Fast Company
The ad is positive and empowering, but the city has a long way to go and I’m a little skeptical how much advertising alone can influence the kinds of changes the Motor City needs. There are serious issues that need to be addressed (employment, crime, education, etc.), so let’s hope “Imported from Detroit” serves as the symbolic step the city needs to show that the close-minded automakers of yesterday are serious about bringing back innovation and craftsmanship. Real change will happen with committed reform – not just advertising.
My other favorite:
Doritos – Pug Attack
Building a Creative Environment
Everyone knows about Google’s 20% Time, but it wasn’t until I read this interview with Big Spaceship founder Michael Lebovitz that I found out that they had a similar policy in place:
We did a thing this summer called I.P. (intellectual property) Fridays. You take the traditional corporate summer Friday where everybody’s supposed to be allowed to leave at 2 p.m., but everybody has to work anyway so they can’t and they just feel miffed. So we get a big lunch for everybody and at 2 p.m. on Friday, we close to client work and spend from 2 to 7 working on our own internal projects. And the ideas for those come from anywhere in the company.
We have a little form with a few simple questions on our internal blog, and then a few of us vet the ideas. We want them to be simple, because we want small things that we can act on quickly. So we’ve got all this stuff out in the world that we created for ourselves, and people get excited about that.
This is exciting news, since I already knew agencies like Anomaly and BBH are devoting time to develop I.P. of their own. I’d like to see more companies — not just ad agencies, integrate this kind of approach into their business models.
LINKS:
“Hey, Rock Stars: Take Your Show Someplace Else” – NYTimes.com
3M’s 15% Program – via PSFK
Book Review: Liar’s Poker
I was already impressed with Michael Lewis after reading “Moneyball,” but “Liar’s Poker” is even better. Lewis is a masterful storyteller, and this book provides an excellent first-hand account of what it was like to be an Investment Banker on Wall Street in the 1970s and ’80s while taking us behind the scenes of the events leading up to Black Monday.
I. Some choice quotes
“I have this theory,” says Andy Stone, seated in his office at Prudential-Bache securities. “Wall Street makes its best producers into managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often neurotic and paranoid. You turn those people into managers, and they go after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that producing gave them. They usually aren’t well-suited to be managers. Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get muscled out because of politics. The guys left behind are just the most ruthless of the bunch. That’s why there are cycles on Wall Street — why Salomon Brothers is getting crunched now — because the ruthless people are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure.” — pg.141
“No one ever cried on the trading floor. No one ever showed weakness or vulnerability or need for human kindness. Early on Alexander taught me the importance of a strong exterior. “I learned a while ago that there was no point to showing weakness,” he said. “When you arrive at six-thirty A.M., having had no sleep the night before, and having lost your best friend in a car accident and some Big Swinging Dick walks over to your desk, slaps you on the back, and says, ‘How the hell are you?’ you don’t say, ‘I’m really tired and really upset.’ You say, ‘I’m great, how the hell are you?’ ” pg.237
II. Key Takeaways
This book reminded me that when reading non-fiction, you don’t need to spend too much time focusing on the finer details. There are many parts of “Liar’s Poker” that get into the minutiae of economics and finance. Some of it I understood, while other parts were over my head.
That’s OK.
The most important thing, to me, is understanding the key themes and points. How did these people think? What were their motivations? How did their involvement in Wall Street during this time period foreshadow the recent economic turmoil in the U.S. and worldwide?
“Liar’s Poker” is about a lot of things: greed, ego, money, corruption, extravagance, management, opportunism, etc. These themes overlap throughout the book. As I read, I couldn’t help but think of the many ways it paralleled my experience in the mortgage industry just a few years ago.
“Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see but only a few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.” — Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
III. Should You Read It?
Absolutely. Liar’s Poker is excellent: Lewis is an incredible writer and it will help you understand 1) what goes on behind closed doors on Wall Street and 2) how the U.S. got into it’s current economic mess.
Buy it on Amazon.com Liar’s Poker
Ouigi Theodore on Fashion + Racial Identity
Choice quote from up-and-coming fashion designer Ouigi Theodore a.k.a. “The Bearded Man”:
“Urban always had a style to it, a swagger,” Mr. Theodore said. But it came with baggage, too — “overuse of the ‘N’ word, the pants sagging,” he said. “It just created this stigma. When I travel overseas, people see the way we dress and say: ‘You guys don’t listen to hip-hop. You’re not urban.’ Yes, we are.”
Further reading:
Ouigi Theodore’s New Image for Urban America – The New York Times
The Advertising Formula
Advertising has gotten so formulaic that it’s easy to make fun of it – just look at the examples I’ve gathered over the last few weeks. Let’s hope for bigger and better things in 2011.
1. An Open Letter to All of Advertising and Marketing
2. Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising
Pink Ponies: A Case Study
Truth in Advertising
Case Study #241: The Sistine Chapel
Business Guys on Business Trips on Tumblr
ClickOnero, the Latin American Groupon
DISCLOSURE: This was originally posted Feb. 1st, 2011 on the Casanova Pendrill blog.
Groupon, the group discount coupon website, was one of the biggest web stories of 2010, and it’s no surprise that a flurry of imitators have popped up (even Google is throwing their hat in the ring after failing to acquire Groupon for $6B).
A recent example that caught my eye is ClickOnero, a Latin American version of the Groupon business model that has sites in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia; it will most likely be a huge success.
Daily deal sites like ClickOnero can offer great deals for online shoppers, but what about the businesses on the other end of the transaction? While these sites are doing a very good job of creating publicity and attracting new customers, what about long-term implications, specifically, teaching your customers to buy your products/services at deep discounts?
When you can get a $30 meal for $15, how likely are you ever going to be to pay full price? Cheaper isn’t necessarily better.
Share your thoughts in the comments!
LINK:
“Meet The Fastest Growing Company Ever” – Forbes
PSFK – “Future of Mobile Tagging” Report
DISCLOSURE: This was originally posted Jan. 24th, 2011 on the Casanova Pendrill blog.
PSFK recently released their “Future of Mobile Tagging” Report.
What’s Mobile Tagging?
“Mobile tags offer a unique opportunity for brands and their agencies to interact with potential and existing customers. These two dimensional barcodes can be applied to almost any surface and the information contained within them can be leveraged to create incentives and drivers that lead consumers along the purchase path. By bridging the online-offline divide with a click of a mobile phone button, mobile tags can drive a brand or product’s awareness.”
Confused?
Here’s a real-life example of how mobile tagging can be done:
It can be attached to virtually any product you can think of: a wine bottle, a pair of jeans, a newspaper, etc. Using your mobile phone, this code will import data into your phone and give you more information about the product.
What’s this mean for Hispanic marketers?
Study after study has shown the increasing number of Latinos using cell phones. A recent report from Terra said that 40% of Latinos currently use mobile phones to get coupons/special offers online. Mobile tagging lets brands provide non-intrusive data that can help influence purchase decisions and it ends up being win-win for both parties
Access the full report on SlideShare:
Lefsetz on Houdini
“Harry Houdini was a tireless self-promoter. A self-created person who needed to make it, for the fame, the money and the adulation. Isn’t it interesting that our entertainment heroes always come from the lower classes, when failure is not an option, you put all your effort into succeeding. You invent a past and a future. Because you’ve got nothing to stand on, and you’re sick of being broke in the ditch by the side of the highway.”
Houdini – Lefsetz Letter
James Franco and productivity
Over the weekend I read an inspiring and fascinating article in NYMag profiling actor James Franco’s intense schedule, full of various projects, including movies, a TV show, a book of short stories and FOUR graduate programs he’s attending simultaneously:
“The new critique you’re gonna start hearing about James Franco,” says James Franco, “is ‘He’s spreading himself too thin.’ ”
I tell him I’ve already heard that critique many times.
“But what does that even mean?” he asks. He seems impatient, genuinely baffled. “Spreading himself too thin?”
Well, I say, isn’t it a reasonable concern? How many targets can one person’s brain realistically hit with any kind of accuracy?
“If the work is good,” Franco says, “what does it matter? I’m doing it because I love it. Why not do as many things I love as I can? As long as the work is good.”
The James Franco Project in NYMag
UPDATE:
I saw Franco in “127 Hours” over the weekend. Good movie + solid performance from Franco, who will unquestionably join the A-list with this film.
Where Good Ideas Come From – TED
DISCLOSURE: This was originally posted on the Casanova Pendrill blog on Jan. 13th.
“A brain is a society of very small, simple modules that cannot be said to be thinking, that are not smart in themselves. But when you have a network of them together, out of that arises a kind of smartness.” -Kevin Kelly
Where do your best ideas come from? Probably not where you think.
In this TED Talk, author Steven Johnson talks about the environments where unusually high levels of creativity are able to flourish. His two key hypothesis are:
1) “An idea is a network on the most elemental level.” In other words, ideas don’t come from a single source — they’re the result of multiple stimuli. Whether you’re collaborating with a group of coworkers or make travel a big part of your life, the stimuli coming from these situations increase the potential for creativity.
Drawing comparisons between the taverns of a few hundred years ago and the coffee shops of today, we can see that these places (and the open floor plan at Casanova) foster a more consistent level of creativity; what Johnson calls a “liquid network.”
2) Ideas also tend to be the result of a “slow hunch” — a prolonged incubation period where ideas tend to marinate until we’re fully able to grasp them. What we may interpret as an “epiphany” is really just the end result of constantly molding different sources of inspiration over time. In Darwin’s case, he thought he just came up with his theory of natural selection on a whim, but we know by looking at his notes that he had already formulated his theory way before he “discovered” it — he just hadn’t realized it yet.
Johnson makes a compelling argument on both points and the increased hyper connectivity we’re experiencing on the web has been fertile ground for cross-pollination of ideas (the proliferation of crowdsourcing comes to mind).
Watch the whole video here:
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
The four minute version:
What do you think is the most conducive creative environment?
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
Buy the book on Amazon
Will Smith on Success
Damn – Will Smith channeling his inner Tony Robbins:
2010: A Look Back
Some people have been busy making predictions for next year, but before we get ahead of ourselves, take a look at the links I’ve gathered below.
The 10th Annual Year in Ideas is a really cool interactive site by The New York Times.
Mobile Future: Mobile Year in Review 2010 Video. Lots of good stats, like Foursquare’s explosive growth, going from 200,ooo users in 2009 to 5 Million this year.
Google Zeitgeist 2010: Year in Review. Great video with the distinctive Google feel.
The Top 10 of Everything 2010 is a huge, extensive list by TIME. Worth a look.
Chrome for a Cause
Earlier today I found out about a really cool fundraising campaign – Chrome for a Cause.
How It Works:
The chrome for a cause extension will count your tabs while you browse the web. At the end of the day, you’ll be asked to choose a charity to receive your tabs. Every day between December 15 and 19 presents the chance to contribute your tabs, so you can choose to support the same charity or pick a different one each day.
Even better, there are some great non-profits participating, including Charity: Water and one of my favorite charities, Room to Read.
Most Contagious 2010
The Contagious report is a summary of the biggest trends of 2010. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, but it should make for some good holiday reading:
Is “MOvember” Real Activism?
Disclosure: This post was originally published on the Casanova Pendrill blog, on Nov. 23, 2010.
If you’ve noticed a strange increase in guys with mustaches everywhere you go, it’s not a new fashion statement (although I have my fingers crossed for the day they’re back in style — no joke). It’s Movember, a global campaign that’s raising awareness and donations for cancers that affect men. Earlier this month, many of my manly colleagues at Casanova joined forces (and varying levels of facial hair) to support this important cause.
But is this real activism or just another form of slacktivism masquerading as real social change? That’s the question posed by Malcolm Gladwell in his recent New Yorker piece “Twitter, Facebook and social activism: Why The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.”
In this article, “Gladwell argues that online social networks aren’t suited for “real” social activism, so all the Utopian predictions about Twitter and Iran, or Facebook and Obama, will never come to pass. This is because, Gladwell says, online networks are all about weak ties — a weak tie is a friend of a friend, or a casual acquaintance — whereas real activism (he uses the example of the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King) depends on strong ties, or those people you know and trust:
There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances — not our friends — are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvelous efficiency. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.” SOURCE: Jonah Lehrer, “Weak Ties, Twitter and Revolution,” Wired Science
Maria Popova (@brainpicker) says “Malcolm Gladwell is #Wrong.” Her post is a thorough refutation of Gladwell’s stance, point by point, and argues that:
“We need a definition of what activism is, not what it is not, before we can argue for or against its existence. As far as I’m concerned, activism is any action or set of actions, be it organized, grassroots or self-initiated, that aims to resolve a problem that diminishes the quality of life of individuals, communities or society.”
The negative connotation associated with slacktivism implies that there is very little expenditure of energy/effort. Possibly. But to say that activism is any less effective because of the level involvement is looking at the situation from the wrong lens.
My father tends to think that a hard day’s work = manual labor. Using your hands, working outside, getting dirty, etc. This is old-school thinking. It’s focusing on the input instead of the output and at the end of the day, what’s truly meaningful is whether or not your actions are generating satisfactory results.
So how has Movember performed?
In 2009, the movement was able to raise $42 Million globally. Although the majority of participants may not be hard-core activists, it’s still a significant figure. It may even have a side-benefit: inspiring first-time fundraisers to get involved in other social causes.
Book Review: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World
“Leaving Microsoft To Change the World” by John Wood, founder of Room To Read, is easily the most inspirational book I’ve read all year. I found it fast-paced and very readable. It’s the story of a Microsoft employee who decides to leave his position as a technology executive to help under-resourced Third World children gain access to education through libraries, schools and books.
I’m going to share a passage about the madrassa schools in Afghanistan (these schools are also present in neighboring countries like Pakistan). I never heard about this story until I read this book. It’s a strong argument for supporting education, especially abroad:
“Afghanistan has been invaded by the Soviet Union in 1979. The United States, fearful of a further expansion of Soviet influence, provided weapons and large amounts of cash to the Afghan resistance fighters. After tens of thousands of deaths and years of warfare, the Soviets realized that they were not going to win control of this fiercely independent country. It marked the end of eight decades of Soviet expansion, and the beginning of the implosion of an empire that had reached to far and stretched itself to thin.
The United States watched the withdrawal and decided that with the Soviets vanquished, America’s job was done. The U.S. could pull out immediately and leave the Afghani people, amongst the poorest in the world, to live amongst their piles of bombed rubble. The American government did not so much as buy them some brooms to help start the cleaning.
This was such a major strategic error on the part of our government. Because guess what came next? There was the need to rebuild the destroyed buildings, including the hospitals and the schools. The Soviets has been merciless in their attempts to intimidate the Afghani people by bombing them back to the Stone Age. The U.S. did not stick around long enough to help in the rebuilding, because our reason for there was not pro-Afghani, but rather Anti-Soviet. So the Afghan government needed help in rebuilding, and the Iranians and the Saudis were only to eager to help.
Both countries, neighbors to Afghanistan, wanted to fill the vacuum that had been left by the departure of the two superpowers. They each made a big commitment to constructing schools. The only problem is that these were not secular schools. They were madrassas, or religious schools, that taught a very hate-filled version of Islam (NOTE: not every madrassa has a political, religious or radical affiliation). The Saudi schools taught their own anti-Western Wahhabi version, while the Iranians built schools that taught their students to curse ‘the Great Satan’ of America. The only difference between the Saudi schools and the Iranian ones was the degree of anti-Westernism in their curriculum.
The CIA estimates that between them, the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia sponsored the opening of over ten thousand madrassas in Afghanistan. And you know the rest of the story, because we’ve been living it for the last two weeks. A large percentage of the terrorists at large today were trained in these schools. Can you imagine how different the world would look today if those students had been more focused on one-two-threes and ABCs instead of being taught to chant ‘Death to America?’ We lost our opportunity to rebuild those schools, and we will be paying the price for decades to come.”
I’ve spent a number of years looking for a cause I can support. Take one look at CharityNavigator.org and the options are both limitless and overwhelming. “Leaving Microsoft…” has made the choice much easier.
The challenge many would-be donors face is knowing where their money is going. One of the main things that makes Room to Read stand out is that they do a good job of being transparent and providing tangible results: X dollars builds Y schools/libraries, etc. I encourage everyone to visit the Room To Read website (and read the book) to get involved and learn more about this great organization.
BUY IT ON AMAZON Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children
The Problem(s) With Big Business
If you haven’t seen “The Corporation,” you should. This documentary does a great job of highlighting a lot of the problems caused by big business in America.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying I’m against big corporations, capitalism or making a profit. The problem is that a lot of companies ( Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, etc.) focus on profit so single-mindedly that they act with complete disregard for how their actions impact society. This is both a difficult and highly complicated situation – can a company focus on creating shareholder value AND consumer value simultaneously?
So it was a real coincidence that I came across this interview on Influx Insights with Account Planner Ashley Alsup and this quote:
“I think corporate America is much more broken than it realizes. Not because it’s so behind on ideas, because it’s not. The ideas are there, they just can’t get made. Mostly because American corporations are not structured around creating great products and bringing them to marker in a speedy, transparent way. They’re structured around a story told for Wall St. The sheer number of business units, layers and competing roles prohibits real leadership, the ability to make decisions and get things done. But it gives the impression of a mighty ship.
As a result, privately-owned companies are the engines of innovation and ideas because that’s where the purity of purpose is. They tend to produce superior products that come from a personal mission, love and insight. They have a closer relationship with their consumers and tend to tell the truth more often and behave in a transparent and responsible way. If we want to change the larger corporate culture, we have work on both ends of the market. We have to help smaller companies become the biggest threats they can be. And we have to help corporate clients regain the purity of purpose, make good decisions, agree to behave differently. But you can’t have one without the other. Because people rarely change unless they are incentivized to. We have to work together to alter the incentive.”
The key takeaway is that there’s a lot large organizations can learn from smaller ones. The challenge is figuring out how to incorporate small biz behavior within a a large company’s business model.
LINKS:
Read the full interview: “Meet the Makers – Speaker Interview – Ashley Alsup“
Ashley Alsup on Twitter
The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption and the Control of Our Food Supply on Fast Company
Stefan Sagermeister: The Power of Time Off
Here’s another TED Talk worth checking out.
Once every seven years, Sagermeister will close down his design studio so he can take a one year sabbatical. During this time he’ll reflect on his business & life, pursue other interests, plan for the future, etc. Obviously, taking a year off isn’t for everyone, but I like the idea of taking time off (in smaller increments) for self-improvement.
My favorite quote:
“…we spend the first 25 years of our lives learning. Then there is another 40 years that’s really reserved for working. And then tacked on at the end of it are about 15 years for retirement. And I thought it might be helpful to basically cut off five of those retirement years and intersperse them in between those working years.”
Chipotle + Jaime Oliver
I walked into Chipotle yesterday and found a stack of these small fliers at the cashier:
What an excellent, yet simple idea!! Dress up as “a horrifying processed food product” for Halloween and get basically any menu item for $2. It’s a nice tie-in with Halloween plus it benefits both the consumer and Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Great way to raise money and awareness for an important cause.
LINK — Chipotle: Boorito
Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution!
In this TED Talk, Robinson offers some nice observations about what’s wrong with the current education model and what can be done to change it. Here were the highlights for me (you can also watch the full video below).
Quotes:
“Every education system in the world is being reformed at the moment. And it’s not enough. Reform is no use anymore, because that’s simply improving a broken model. What we need — and the word’s been used many times during the course of the past few days — is not evolution, but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed into something else.”
“…human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability.“
Two of the main problems with current education system:
1) Idea of linearity — “life is not linear, it’s organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us.”
2) Perception of college as the pinnacle of our education — “I think we are obsessed with getting people to college, certain sorts of college. I don’t mean you shouldn’t go to college, but not everybody needs to go, and not everybody needs to go now. Maybe they go later, not right away.”
Conclusion:
“We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development; all you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”
LINK: Article about the video on HuffingtonPost.com
Book Review: Moneyball
I love Moneyball. It was listed on “The 100 Best Business Books of All Time” and totally deserved its spot. Wikipedia says, “Its focus is the team’s modernized, analytical, sabermetric approach to assembling a competitive baseball team, despite Oakland’s disadvantaged revenue situation. The central premise of Moneyball is that the collected wisdom of baseball insiders (including players, managers, coaches, scouts, and the front office) over the past century is subjective and often flawed.”
On a large scale, Moneyball is about Old thinking vs. New thinking. It’s about mass egos, herd mentality and the flat out rejection of new ideas. And everything comes unhinged when one person asks the simple question “Why?” There’s lots of parallels I can draw to other industries:
- music
- advertising
- auto
- newspapers + publishing
- and of course, the government
Major league baseball is apparently run by a bunch of idiots. These people have been using the same antiquated methods to analyze baseball players for years and never seem to try to find a better way to recruit and evaluate ballplayers. They’re stubborn and close-minded. What’s worse is that when presented with fresh ideas they don’t want to hear it. Most of the league, from the Managers to the Owners to the Sportscasters are completely clueless. Lewis, a talented storyteller, has created a book about baseball statistics that is an engaging page-turner. It’s not just for baseball fans – I also think it’s a great read for Planners. Lewis knows how to craft a compelling story with mundane data while the story shows what can happen when you question strongly-held beliefs.
On the 3 outs rule: “Analyzing baseball yields many numbers of interest and value. Yet far and away — far, far and away — the most critical number in all of baseball is 3: the three outs that define an inning. Until the third out, anything is possible; after it, nothing is. Anything that increases the offense’s chances of making an out is bad; anything that decreases it is good. And what is on-base percentage? Simply yet exactly put, it is the probability that the batter will not make an out. When we state it that way, it becomes, or should become, crystal clear that the most important isolated (one-dimensional) offensive statistic is the on-base percentage. It measures the probability that the batter will not be another step toward the end of the inning.” pg. 58
On errors: “The manner in which baseball people evaluate players’ fielding performance — adding up their errors, and applauding the guy with the fewest — struck him as an outrage. ‘What is an error?’ he asked. ‘It is, without exception, the only major statistic in sports which is a record of what an observer thinks should have been accomplished. It’s a moral judgment, really, in the peculiar quasi-morality of the locker room….But the fact of a baseball error is that no play has been made but that the scorer thinks it should have. It is, uniquely, a record of opinions.” pg.66
On stats: “The problem,”‘ wrote James, “is that baseball statistics are not pure accomplishments of men against other men, which is what we are in the habit of seeing them as. They are accomplishments of men in combination with their circumstances.” pg.71
Further reading:
More “Moneyball” quotes
The Ad Contrarian – “Not Following The Herd“
If This Is a Blog Then What’s Christmas? – “What Can ‘Moneyball’ Teach Advertising?“
Finally Joining the Revolution by Bill Simmons on ESPN.com
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Buy it on Amazon Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Do People Line Up For Your Brand?
Apple Store in NYC
One of the things that’s really sunk in in my first few months as a Planner is that the answers you get aren’t that important if you’re not already asking the right questions.
So here’s a question to keep in mind:
Do you have a product or service people will wait in line for? If not, why? What can we do, as Planners, to change behavior and give people a reason to give us some of their precious time?
I got the idea for this post this past weekend when I decided to try Kogi BBQ. Kogi is notorious for long lines; I’ve heard of people waiting as long as two hours for their food!!
Great food, bad pic
Anyway, the following video gives us two main reasons people wait in line:
1) People over-estimate the value of something when it’s free
2) People want to be 1st to see or do something that’s is considered cool
Well, Kogi and lots of other products aren’t free, but the second reason is a little more relevant.
Going a step further, I think one of the main reasons people will wait in line when they don’t really have to is for the story (of course, herd mentality and fanboy-ism can also be at play). And a story is greater than any product or service because it can last way beyond the point of sale.
In a product life cycle, the purchase is a short, fleeting moment. The anticipation, the excitement and everything else leading up to that moment are what create lasting memories for people. So much so that I’m still talking about a lunch I had at Kogi two days ago and not the breakfast I had at home this morning.
You can see lines like this just about any day at In-N-Out Burger, as well as in midtown NYC at Shake Shack, but the real challenge isn’t what happens when people form a line for you — it’s what they do when the line is gone.
Further reading/viewing:
Apple’s iPhone 4 Hits Stores Thursday
Crowds Queue Up Around U.S. For iPhone 4
How Long Would You Wait In Line for Food?
Book Review: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
A few good quotes & passages that I wanted to share:
On classifying people: “Cliches and stereotypes such as ‘beatnik’ or ‘hippie’ have been invented for the antitechnologists, the antisystem people, and will continue to be. But one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term.” (emphasis mine) Pg.16
On over-analyzing: “When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts. Mark Twain’s experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts — something is always created too. And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it’s important also to see what’s created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is.” (emphasis mine) Pgs.70-71
On systems: “To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as ‘the system’ is to speak correctly, since these organizations are founded upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a motorcycle. They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no ‘mean guy’ who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it’s meaningless.
But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible (emphasis mine). The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.” Pgs.87-88
Wow – this book came out in 1974 but that last passage could have been written this year. General Motors, Microsoft and most recently BP are all good examples of institutions that will fail to change until they integrate new people with fresh ideas.
Innovation always has to come from the top and it doesn’t matter how smart, creative or talented a company’s employees are if they’re in an environment that stifles change.
BUY IT ON AMAZON Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (P.S.)
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Speaking of poor corporate culture, “Light Touch Key to Product Innovation” on WARC points to a Nielsen study that “…found that greater involvement among senior managers in the ideation and creation processes generally leads to launches that enjoy lower success rates.” Nice.
On the flip side, here’s Ed Cotton’s post on Amazon’s acquisition of Zappos, a company that champions culture: “Zappos and the Power of Soft Intangibles“
TED X Hollywood: June 5th
This weekend I was fortunate to be one of the lucky people in attendance at TEDxHollywood, “a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.”
The event was held at the LA office of TBWA/CHIAT/DAY, which is basically the kind of cool, funky, creative environment where every ad guy and girl dreams of working.
An office park...literally
The event was organized by Creative Director Tito Melega, who said during his introduction (I’m paraphrasing) on the evening’s theme, Creativity In The New World: “Instead of creating stories people want to hear, we create stories people want to tell.”
The event moved forward with the first guest speaker, photographer Jay Mark Johnson, who creates stunning visuals through the use of what he calls “Space-time Photography.”
Next up was Rob Schwartz, Chief Creative Officer at TBWA/CHIAT/DAY who talked about some of the work that went into the Pepsi Refresh Project, an excellent case study for brands who want to behave as a tool for positive social change. What was really inspiring is the number of incredible ideas people submitted to the campaign: “There’s so much creative potential in this country coming from regular people.”
I loved when Rob showed us a messenger bag created from a billboard that was used doing the Refresh project. It was a great example of a brand using their marketing to literally create something in line with the campaign message. He closed with this Behance-esque quote.
IDEAS WORTH SHARING —> IDEAS WORTH DOING
Mark was followed by singer/songwriter Elizaveta, who pretty much left everyone floored during her performance with her amazing voice. You can download four free tracks here.
The last presenter of the night was Tears For Fears co-founder Curt Smith, who talked about how social media has changed both the music industry and how he behaves as a musician. The key takeaway for me was when Curt said, “I don’t HAVE to record an ALBUM.” He’s realized that the album format is inefficient and outdated, something Bob Lefsetz has been saying for some time now: people nowadays prefer cherry-picking their favorite tracks over buying albums.
Looking back, I’m incredibly grateful to have been a part of this experience. I met some terrific people and I think that it’s great Tito was able to gather such a colorful group of presenters to educate, entertain and inspire us for a short evening — pretty much everything I could ask for in a TED event.
LINKS:
Check out my full Flickr set here
Book Review: “Into Thin Air” – Post #2
Image Mount Everest Climbing Photos
I wrote about “Into Thin Air” last month and finally got around to finishing it the other day. There’s a few things I learned that I wanted to share:
1) It’s cold as hell
The summit of Everest is 29, 028 feet. To give you an idea how high that is, most commercial planes fly around 30,000-40,000 feet (the air is thinner, therefore, more fuel efficient).
“…searched for a protected place to escape the wind, but there was nowhere to hide. Everyone’s oxygen had long since run out, making the group more vulnerable to the windchill, which exceeded a hundred below zero.”
100 degrees below zero!! Unreal. I felt -7 one time in Boston and I couldn’t imagine being outside when it’s an extra 100 degrees colder.
2) You climb at night
I never thought of this before, but time is a major issue. Your body needs to get acclimated to the different altitude levels and it needs to do so periodically but quickly. If you stay at a high altitude for too long, your body can’t handle it, kind of like deep sea diving but on a massive mountain.
These mountaineers climb at night with headlamps (with severe storms your visibility can be reduced to just a few feet) in order to keep moving.
3) Getting to the summit is the easy part
“Reaching the top of Everest is supposed to trigger a surge of intense elation; against all odds, after all, I had just attained a goal I’d coveted since childhood. But the summit was really only the halfway point. Any impulse I might have felt toward self-congratulation was extinguished by overwhelming apprehension about the long, dangerous descent that lay ahead.”
I know this may sound obvious, but before reading this book I thought of climbing to the top of the mountain as the end goal — it’s not. Getting back down is even more difficult: you’re incredibly fatigued, you run the risk of running out of oxygen in your tank (most people carry oxygen tanks because it’s so hard to breathe in the high altitude) and the cold temperature creates all sorts of problems. Once you get to the top it’s basically a race against time.
Mountaineering, in some ways reminds me of martial arts. It’s a small club of people and it’s hard to explain to outsiders exactly why you do it; why you put yourself through the physical pain time and time again.
Krakauer’s got a nice take on it:
“I’d always known that climbing mountains was a high-risk pursuit. I accepted that danger was an essential component of the game — without it, climbing would be little different from a hundred other trifling diversions. It was titillating to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier. Climbing was a magnificent activity, I firmly believed, not in spite of the inherent perils, but precisely because of them.”
I’ll say it again: this is a great adventure book. Totally worth your time.
UPDATE: 4/23/10
LINKS: HistoryShots Conquest of Mount Everest
BUY IT ON AMAZON Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
You Know Nothing About Marshall McLuhan
H/t to The Ad Contrarian for this gem:
I wish there was a version of this video for self-appointed Social Media Experts.
What Can You Buy to Be Happy? Experiences.
Just found an article that came out a year ago over on Science Daily that said “Buying Experiences, Not Possessions, Leads to Greater Happiness.” I’ve written before about “What Makes Us Happy?” in an extensive Harvard study led by Dr. Vaillant.
Apparently , this “…study demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality — a feeling of being alive.”
Makes sense. Most people are social by nature, so it seems logical that if forced to choose one or another, we’d rather be doing things with people than by ourselves, despite our accumulation of material possessions.
In other words, no matter how bad-ass this new Porsche 918 Spyder is, it’d be a lot more fun with some company.
Porsche 918 Spyder
Image “Porsche 918 Spyder concept is the most beautiful hybrid we’ve ever seen“
L.A. – One of the safest cities?
Even though I’m not going to be living in L.A. (I’ll be an hour South, in Orange County), I’ll probably be spending some time there. Luckily, I have a much lower chance of getting killed there than in a number of smaller U.S. cities:
“Not since the Beach Boys were in peach fuzz and crew cuts has it been so safe to live and play in the City of Angels. Believe it: you are more likely to be murdered in Columbus, Ohio, or Tulsa, Okla., than in the nation’s second most populous city.” — via Marginal Revolution “Los Angeles Fact of the Day“
So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.
Luckily for me, I’ll be driving through Columbus, OH; Tulsa, OK; and even sunny St. Louis when I move. Better keep the windows rolled up just in case:
Happyness
Image here
At last.
I’ve had a long job search — a really long job search. But I have great news.
Today I accepted an offer to join Casanova Pendrill, a Hispanic Advertising agency in Orange County, CA, as a Strategic Planner.
There’s a scene towards the end of the Will Smith movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” after he’s just been offered a job, walks outside the office and claps his hands together as he walks through a crowd of people, elated about his accomplishment. It’s not just the fact that he was able to find a job. It’s that he was able to overcome all the adversity he faced through perseverance. Incredible perseverance and an ability to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
That’s how I’m feeling right now.
In early 2008, I made the decision to leave my company and carve out another path for myself. It’s taken two years to get here. And it took a lot in between — soul searching, going back to school, working here and there – to get to this point.
I’ve thought about that scene a lot of times in the past 24 months or so.
It’s a tough thing to switch careers. It’s even tougher as you get older.
Why?
Because of all the excuses you give yourself. And none of them hold any water. These are limiting beliefs.
This is where most people quit. It’s what Seth Godin calls “The Dip” and it’s your mind giving up on you.
Image Seth’s Blog
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I know there are lots of people out of work right now, and if you’re one of them, you need to get the negativity out of your head. Stop blaming the economy, or the market, or anything else. In the end, it’s all up to you.
And in the end…there’s “Happyness.”
Christopher Gardner: Hey. Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something. Not even me. All right?
Christopher: All right.
Christopher Gardner: You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.
Book Review: “Into Thin Air”
Image 1x.com
I started reading Jon Krakauer’s book “Into Thin Air” on my flight to LA last week. Apparently there was a TV movie made about this story back in 1997, but I don’t remember ever seeing it.
I’m about halfway through the book now. It’s just a really, really good story. I like how Krakauer starts off each chapter with a quote from another book on mountaineering. Here’s one from Chapter 7:
“But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction. Usually they are not experts; their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men might have. Determination and faith are their strongest weapons. At best such men are regarded as eccentric; at worst, mad…
Everest has attracted its share of men like these. Their mountaineering experience varied from none at all to very slight — certainly none of them had the kind of experience which would make an ascent of Everest a reasonable goal. Three things they all had in common: faith in themselves, great determination, and endurance.” —Walt Unsworth, Everest
“Into Thin Air” has a lot of elements that make it a great adventure story. For me, it’s about the strength of the human spirit and persistence; moving forward one step at a time as you get incrementally closer to your goal.
BUY IT ON AMAZON
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
Craigslist’s Business Model
I’m just going to share a couple passages from this month’s WIRED article about Craigslist and its founder, Craig Newmark, but you should really read the whole thing:
“Though the company is privately held and does not respond to questions about its finances, it is evident that craigslist earns stupendous amounts of cash. One recent report, from a consulting firm that counted the paid ads, estimates that revenue could top $100 million in 2009. Should craigslist ever be sold, the price likely would run into the billions. Newmark, by these lights, is a very rich man. When anybody reminds him of this, the craigslist founder says there is nothing he would care to do with that much money, should it ever come into his hands. He already has a parking space, a hummingbird feeder, a small home with a view, and a shower with strong water pressure. What else is he supposed to want?”
It gets better:
“Newmark’s claim of almost total disinterest in wealth dovetails with the way craigslist does business. Besides offering nearly all of its features for free, it scorns advertising, refuses investment, ignores design, and does not innovate. Ordinarily, a company that showed such complete disdain for the normal rules of business would be vulnerable to competition, but craigslist has no serious rivals. The glory of the site is its size and its price. But seen from another angle, craigslist is one of the strangest monopolies in history, where customers are locked in by fees set at zero and where the ambiance of neglect is not a way to extract more profit but the expression of a worldview.
The axioms of this worldview are easy to state. “People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day,” Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.”
I’m always interested in reading about business models and their perceived strengths/weaknesses. No matter how I look at it, I always come back to the same conclusion: businesses that succeed today are successful because they provide their customers value.
LA for the day
Image: hyde or die
I flew out to LA on Thursday for an interview, but I’ll keep the details confidential for now.
Anyway, SoCal has been great this week. I spent a little time in El Segundo on Thursday afternoon and I’ve been down in Orange County since Thursday night. I’ve never been in OC so it’s completely foreign to me. It reminds me of South Florida in some ways, but at the same time it’s very different.
One example would be that LA has a large Asian (especially Vietnamese) and Mexican population, which you just don’t see in South Florida (it’s predominantly Hispanic – Cuban, Colombian, Venezuelan and Argentinean).
Another example that’s immediately striking is the topography: lots of hills as opposed to South FL’s complete flatness.
I spent a little time on Newport last night. I was half expecting it to look like what I’ve seen on “The O.C., ” but like any place you see on TV you find that what’s been shown if often exaggerated or distorted in some way.
I’m heading up towards L.A. in a few minutes to see some friends around Redondo Beach, but I’m going to take my time driving up the coast. I’m especially interested in exploring Huntington Beach since it wouldn’t be to0 far from the office if I move out to Cali.
Time to head out to breakfast. I’m going to check out the Costa Mesa Omelette Parlor, which has a lot of good reviews on Yelp. I went to Rooster Cafe yesterday (another Yelp recommendation) and the Huevos Rancheros were really good.
New Kanye West: “Coldest Winter”
This is great – Kanye’s still got it:
Top Links of The Week: Week Ending Feb. 21, 2010
Image Ironic1.com
Best Online Planning Tools Redux – 25 lttrs n th alphbt. Awesome — best collection of Planning links I’ve found anywhere.
Trans Siberian Railway – A virtual journey on Google Maps. It’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen that brings the travel experience to your computer.
Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality apps at TED. This is an incredible presentation that shows one example of how far technology has come in the past few years.
Living Stories – Google’s newest experiment in presenting online news. I especially like the timeline feature.
Great article from Esquire: Roger Ebert Cancer Battle
Top 10 Free Ways to Discover New Music Online
“The sociology of drinking” – Malcolm Gladwell’s newest piece for The New Yorker.
The greatest movie scene ever? – Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus!
Chiddy Bang ‘Opposite of Adults’
I’ve been digging this song from hip-hop group Chiddy Bang since I discovered it this past week. If you’re into Kanye West and Kid Cudi, you’ll probably like these guys too.
Enjoy.
LINKS:
If you want to find out a little more about Chiddy Bang, here’s the Behind The Scenes video (sorry, WordPress is giving me a hard time with embedding Vimeo).
Chiddy Bang is the Coolest Thing Since the Cool Kids – Pretty Much Amazing (review + 5 tracks)
Top Links: Week Ending Feb. 14, 2010
Firestarters (5 reasons why employing people who blog is more important than ever) - Neil Perkin
Is It Possible to Opt-Out of Social Networking? – Not The User’s Fault
Want to Spread News on Twitter? It’s Who You Know, Not How Many – Fast Company
Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week – Servant of Chaos
Bacon Cheese Turtleburgers – This Is Why You’re Fat
How to Get Your First Job/Placement in Planning by Life Moves Pretty Fast
Who Says the Future Needs an Advertising Agency? by Bud Caddell
IfWeRanTheWorld- Interesting social experiment
Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food
Top Links of The Week Ending Feb. 7, 2010
My favorites from last week, in no specific order.
The Case for Local Investing – GOOD
In The World of Facebook – The New York Review of Books
Japanese Shoppers Freaked Out by Singing, Dancing, Shirtless Staff at Tokyo Abercrombie New York Magazine
6 (or so) questions an ad agency should ask a prospective client before pitching – Welcome to Optimism
Weighing in on Amazon/Macmillan Pricing Debate – Pakman’s Blog
How Young People Are Changing The World – Marian Salzman
Pepsi Invites The Public To Do Good – The New York Times
3 New Ways to Measure the Social Web – Mashable
Why My Mom’s Next Computer Is Going To Be An iPad – Techcrunch
How To Become a Strategic ‘Pretty Picture’ Person – Mark Pollard
The Good to Great Manifesto – Umair Haque
The 80 Best Guerrilla Marketing Ideas I’ve Ever Seen – Francesco Mugnai
TED TALKS: Life Lessons From An Ad Man
I watched a funny, fast-paced presentation from Ogilvy Planner Rory Sutherland today. From the TED site:
Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value — and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life.
The best part is if you jump to about 12:30 of the video, where he talks about the “repositioning” of Diamond Shreddies.
He ends his talk with a nice quote, “Poetry is when you make new things familiar and familiar things new,” which is a nice way of summing of what we do in the Ad industry.
On a side note, I just finished reading the marketing classic “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (How To Be Seen And Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace),” by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It’s somewhat outdated at this point (it was written about 20 years ago), but I think it has some good points on things like Line Extensions and Brand Naming. Personally, I would recommend one of their other books, “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” instead.
Armchair Activism
Some food for thought courtesy of various quotes I’ve found on the web this week, which all pretty much have the same idea:
Now, in 2010, we have more resources at our disposal than at any other time in history to create positive changes culturally, economically, politically, etc. The internet has become a sounding board for people to voice their opinions. Occasionally, it has been used as a tool to gather individuals for local, all the way up to global causes, but we’re still at the early stages of harnessing the collective strength of online communities.
Here’s a MLK quote I found on Tumblr via The Consumerologist
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
A quote from the blog Stuff White People Like in a post about the recent Conan O’Brien hoopla:
“But no, white people will solve this problem the way that they solved the election crisis in Iran – through Facebook and Twitter status updates. In 2009, millions of white people took 35 seconds to turn their twitter profiles green, and consequently sent a very powerful message to the leaders of Iran. Their message was that they wanted their friends to know that they would stop at nothing to ensure freedom and democracy for the Iranian people. Thanks in large part to that effort Iran is now completely democratic. With that issue settled, white people are launching a similar campaign for Conan that is sure to have similar results…
For you see, while white people will fiercely support Conan O’Brien in any public forum, they always fail to support him in the only way that actually helps – by watching his show.”
That above quote, of course, is meant to be funny (it is), but it’s also very true. My point isn’t to say that people changing their avatars, status updates and retweeting are useless (these activities generate a great deal of awareness). My point is that we need to do more.
3rd quote, from Umair Haque (emphasis mine):
“By design. 20th Century organizations were built to have strategic intent. The point of a strategic intent is merely to best rivals. That’s the opposite of an ambition: it’s just combat. Yesterday’s organizations were missing the burning desire to improve on yesterday in their very DNA. That’s what reduced them to passionless machines — and it’s what ultimately made our lives smaller, our economies less vibrant, and our societies poorer.”
Last quote, from superamit on Tumblr:
“Do something compelling. There’s a trillion people writing blogs that need something to write about. There are magazines hungry for content. There are hundreds of thousands of people bored on the internet wanting something to look at or do. For the most part, people have exceedingly low standards on the internet. But, I think people are hungry for better. Make something better. People will notice.”
| — | Frank Chimero |
How David Blaine Held His Breath Underwater for 17 Minutes
I just discovered an excellent new TEDTalk featuring illusionist David Blaine. There’s an important lesson here as Blaine explains:
1) The process of trial and error
2) How much research went into these stunts
When I was at MAS Chris Owens (The Richards Group) said that “the Planner has to be the most confident person in the room.”
Confidence comes from preparation, and preparation comes from making mistakes and doing your research — often going above and beyond what other people are willing to do.
He ends his presentation with this:
“As a magician I try to show things to people that seem impossible, and I think magic, whether I’m holding my breath or holding a deck of cards, is pretty simple: It’s practicing, it’s training and experimenting while pushing through the pain to be the best I can be…and that’s what magic is to me.”
Quote of the Day
From Jonah Lehrer’s post about young Norwegian chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen:
“When we practice properly – and this means engaging in deliberate practice – we aren’t just accumulating factual knowledge. Instead, we’re embedding our experience into our unconscious, so that even insanely complicated calculations – and Carlsen can regularly plan twenty chess moves in advance – become mostly automatic.”
As a newbie trying to teach myself Japanese, this reaffirms the adage “Perfect practice makes perfect” — not “Practice makes perfect,” which is incorrect.
Bonus quote:
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” – Neils Bohr
LINK:
The Frontal Cortex – Chess Intuition
Goals for Q1, 2010
Image via koka_sexton
I haven’t made a New Year’s resolution in years. It just doesn’t make sense to me: despite our best intentions they usually fail to materialize because they’re too ambiguous, too general and lack deadlines.
With that said, I’m focusing on a few specific, achievable goals in the next 3 months:
1. Make the leap from freelance to full-time
Freelance work has been a great experience, and it’s time to move on. Feel free to contact me through any of the links I’ve provided on this blog if you know of any openings in Planning, Strategy, Consumer Insights or New Media. Commenting on this post would probably be the fastest and easiest way to get a hold of me.
Goal: Find a position in the U.S. before April 2010.
Strategy: I’ve been doing all the right things (networking online and off, informational interviews, etc). I just think it’s a matter of doing these kinds of things consistently so I can be in the right place at the right time.
2. Start learning Japanese
I’ve wanted to learn Japanese for a while now, so I’m taking the plunge. I’m dying to visit Japan, too, so I’m setting a tentative deadline for the end of 2011.
Goal: Japanese has four alphabets. My goal is to learn Hiragana and Katakana inside out (which will help me learn Romaji in the process). Once I have those under my belt, I’ll shift my focus to Kanji.
Strategy: I’m primarily going to be using TextFugu.com‘s guide, along with the following links. They’ve done a great job of laying down all the steps and explaining everything thoroughly. I’ve already been doing daily one hour study sessions for the past two weeks.
More links:
- Master Hiragana on Smart.fm
- Hiragana Trace Sheet (to learn proper stroke order)
- Hiragana Drag-N-Drop
- Hiragana on RealKana.com
- NihongoUp game
3. Become an early riser
I’ve always had a hard time getting up early, and I know that it’s mainly because I’m a night owl.
Goal: Start getting up daily at 7am.
Strategy: Follow Definitive Guide to Becoming an Early Riser from Stronglifts.com
4. Blog more consistently
I think there’s a direct correlation between information absorbed and information processed, so I’m going to try to cut down on my blog reading so I can shift my focus to blog writing.
Goal: Write at least one new post a week.
Strategy: Allocate 2-3 time blocks per week to focus on generating new posts.
5. Drop below 10% bodyfat
2009 was a good year for me fitness-wise. Among other things, I:
- increased my max squat by about 100 lbs (max 215lbs for 5 reps)
- increased my max bench press by about 50 lbs (max 210lbs for 5 reps)
- went from zero chinups and pullups to weighted reps
I was able to do all this in less than 5 months.
Goal: My current goal is to get my bodyfat down to 8% (I’m around 10-10.5% right now). I figure it’ll take me about 4-8 weeks (cut .5% minimum each week), depending on my consistency. Once I achieve this, my next goal will probably be to get my max squat, deadlift and bench press over 250lbs for 5 reps.
Strategy: Full-body dumbbell/bodyweight circuit workout twice a week. Cardio 3-6x a week for 25-45 minutes.
6. Read at least one book every two weeks
I go through phases where I read a lot and then I don’t read at all. Last year I read about a dozen books total.
Goal: Read at least one book bi-weekly — that comes out to 26 books a year — more than double what I read in 2009.
Strategy: Set aside one hour a day for reading.
LINKS:
How To Easily Achieve Your Goals In 2010 via Stronglifts.com
Support Disaster Relief in Haiti
Google has set up a disaster relief site that lists various ways you can donate or help the earthquake victims.
You can visit http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/ for more information.
One of the simplest and most immediate ways you can help is to SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts.
Back in Business!
Image via angusf
After a brief break, I’m back. This blog is almost a year and a half old now, and I’m excited about 2010.
Stay tuned.
The Only 12.5 Writing Rules You’ll Ever Need
Reading//Writing
I was just turned onto Ben Casnocha‘s blog a couple weeks ago through another blogger, Colin Post. Ben recently mentioned a post by writer Justine Musk titled “To Develop Your Writer’s Intuition, You Must First Read Like A Maniac.”
The first thing that caught my eye was this quote: “Reading is the inhale, writing is the exhale.”
You should really read the entire post. It’s full of great, passionate writing like this:
“Reading is the ‘learning’. You can never learn enough. The more I read, the more experienced I become in just what other writers do to achieve a powerful level of storytelling. As a reader, I enjoy myself, and as a writer, I file those examples away deep in my undermind where they join up with other examples and play around and cross-fertilize and wait for the moment when they’re needed. They become the river of knowledge, influence and inspiration that I can draw from and the more I read, the deeper and wider that river gets.”
I think Musk’s observations encapsulate a lot of the reasons why Planners should read (and write) a obsessively.
Read to learn more about the world.
Write to get a better understanding of what you just learned.
Best of the Web – Week Ending Sept. 25th
A collection of the most interesting things I’ve found this week. Lots of great stuff for Planners and Strategists.
h/t Faris Yakob on Tumblr
87 Cool Things from Google at Adweek 2009
Google Internet Stats – Nice resource for Planners and Strategists.
YouTube: Fast.Forward – Google and The Wharton School have partnered to gather and provide quick perspective on managing the change in the marketing landscape.
How To Be A Better Brand Planner via BrandTwist
Planner Reads – Project by Bud Caddell aggregating the most shared content from Planners and Strategists. Sign up here – the more, the merrier.
Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted on Twitter via Fast Company
Nice collection of downloadable articles on AccountPlanning.net, mostly written by John Griffiths, who writes the furtherandfaster blog
Download the first edition of Dsplaced magazine, “an experiment in collective storytelling” by two Strategists, Jinal Shah and Mansi Trivedi
Open Book Test for Planners: The interview questions I ask and why by Scott Karambis on the Please Feed The Animals blog
One of my favorite videos this week. It’s an ad for Allan Gray investing that explores what would have happened if James Dean didn’t die so young:
Food Industry Feeding the Healthcare Issue
via altemark
Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” writes in this week’s New York Times:
“No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.
That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry.“
I’ve known of Michael Pollan since earlier this year but I just started reading his articles last month. I really like what he has to say, but I think we can dig even deeper into what the real issue is here.
One of the main reasons people have nutritional issues (which later become health problems) is lack of education on what constitutes healthy eating. So I would argue that before the government tackles the food industry, it needs to support education. If people can make informed, healthy decisions about their food choices, the food industry will have to respond by producing more healthy food and less of the bad stuff.
*** If you decide to read any of the links I’ve provided, at the very least read “Unhappy Meals.” It’s a long piece, but it’s fantastic and well worth your time.
LINKS:
Big Food vs. Big Insurance by Michael Pollan
New Salvo in City’s Way on Sugary Drinks – New NYC anti-soda campaign
Unhappy Meals by Michael Pollan
Out of the Kitchen, Onto The Couch by Michael Pollan
The Wisdom of Crowds (or not)
PsyBlog has new post titled “Why Groups Fail to Share Information Effectively.” According to the article:
“They found that people trying to make decisions in groups spend most of their time telling each other things that everyone already knows. In comparison people are unlikely to bring up new information known only to themselves. The result: poor decisions.“
This can have huge ramifications, like in a court case where jurors are faced with delivering a verdict.
I think most people would protest and say, “No, not me. I’m not influenced by other people and I can make my own decisions.” — but this just isn’t the case.
Most people are followers and the study found 3 main reasons why people basically repeat the same info instead of adding something new to the discussion:
1) Memory- Shared information is more memorable + the more people that know this information the greater chance it will be remembered by someone.
2) Pre-judgements- To an extent, people have already made up their minds prior to entering a discussion and will use shared information to back-up their thoughts and biases.
3) Anxiety- Most people would rather be liked than be right. By offering a different opinion or information, people make themselves easy targets for the group to chastise. The anxiety this creates makes then want to conform.
How Can People Be Encouraged to Share Ideas?
Basically, give them more time to discuss, find out who the knowledgeable people are in the group and create a diverse group to begin with who will be more likely to share instead of withhold information.
This is important stuff for marketers, especially to get a good handle on how ideas spread.
Read the rest of the article here.
LINKS:
Simple Strategy
everythingnewisdangerous on Flickr
I read an old Russell Davies post today, “My Schtick” that somehow missed my radar up until now, and I thought he said something really profound which I wanted to share:
“What people actually want is stuff with some complexity, some meat, some richness. Stuff that has depth, humour, tension, drama etc etc. Not stuff that’s distilled to a simple essence or refined to a single compelling truth. No-one ever came out of a movie and said “I really liked that. It was really clear.” Clarity is important to our research methodologies, not to our consumers.”
THE BIG IDEA
One of the first things we learned at Ad school was how to write a creative brief and how to whittle our research down to a Simple Most Important Idea (SMPI). This SMPI was meant to serve as a springboard for our creative team to develop their executions.
But Davies’ post and some things I’ve been reading in Stephen King’s “A Master Class in Brand Planning” are beginning to shift my thinking to a strategic approach that uses a patchwork of ideas to inspire creative thinking.
I don’t mean to say that we should throw a huge information dump at our creatives – part of our expertise as Strategists is digging through research to find what’s especially inspiring, interesting and most of all, relevant. It does, however, seem that the current Planning process being used, in it’s endeavor to simplify things and keep them nice and neat, is 1) stifling Planners’ creativity 2) causing Planners to work with blinders on and possibly missing some things in the process that can be useful for brand building. Rory Sutherland writes in “A Master Class…” :
“At one level, it matters to me as a creative person because, in maintaining the pretence that our business works through a rational and sequential process, I feel we are perpetrating a minor fraud. And the victim of this fraud is creativity itself. Because in suggesting in our case studies that we arrived at success through process, we are falsely paying to logic a debt that we really owe to magic. The magic of imagination, or insight. And, as a result, we are causing the left-brain to be overvalued at the expense of the right.”
STORYTELLING
This makes me think about storytelling as it pertains to Planning. The word “story” has multiple definitions, but I especially like this one:
– the plot or succession of incidents of a novel, poem, drama, etc. –
Therefore, by definition, a story is not singular in nature. A story is layered and complex and this is what draws in an audience, among other things.
Take a look at this recent campaign from Stella, a classic example of brands telling engaging stories:
The marketing campaign for “The Dark Knight” is another example, I think, of taking a much more multi-layered approach to brand building.
A brand can be an ongoing narrative, but I feel like many Ad campaigns are treated as finite events. If anything, they have infinite potential. This is why Hollywood pumps out so many sequels. It continues the narrative. We’re brought back to a story that’s familiar and curiosity, more than anything, makes us want to continue the story and see where it goes.
Rick Webb, co-founder of The Barbarian Group, seems to share my sentiment in a recent AdAge article titled “Agencies Need to Think Like Software Companies“:
“ What they should have been taking away all of this time — and have increasingly begun to — are the concepts of the constant beta and agile development,” he says. “Marketers need to abandon the time-limited campaign online and start to think of it as a constant application of a rigorous discipline. They should think of their marketing the same way that Facebook puts out a new feature every two weeks, tweaks it, changes it, and re-releases it. It’s not a coincidence that’s brought Facebook 400 million users and Twitter 40 million. We’ve been applying them to Kashi.com for three years now and have seen results beyond anything that a single campaign could do on its own.”
PEELING THE ONION
There’s another problem I see with using a method of finding a single truth:
If everyone has access to the same basic data, and strips that data down to the barest idea, we’ve all basically arrived at the same point – this is one reason so many ads look the same.
One of the strengths of a Planner is our ability to interpret relevant data in a way that will inspire and focus our creative teams, but I think we need a happy medium here: Too much information is useless and makes us act as pure researchers — too little and we may be missing opportunities to develop an ongoing story and build better brands.
I’d love to hear some thoughts in the comments!!
Focus and Distraction
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor Frankl in “Man’s Search for Meaning“
Jonah Lehrer has a terrific science blog, “The Frontal Cortex” which covers lots of interesting stuff on how the human mind works. The other day he talked about a woman who is a top ultra-runner.
The captivating part of her story is that she’s missing her right temporal lobe in her brain. This actually helps her endurance because she can easily lose track of time.
You know that feeling you get when you’re on the treadmill and know you’ve only got about 2 minutes left? She doesn’t have it because when she’s engaged in an activity (in her case running), she doesn’t have the feeling you get of relief (or agony) as she approaches the finish line. In other words, she’s in constant flow.
Here’s the takeaway and it completely parallels what I learned in my martial arts training:
The runner’s story is a perfect example of mind over matter. Sure, it’s important to have a healthy body, but when you’re completely focused on something, how you interpret what your body is going through is actually more important than what’s happening to you.
This philosophy is a major concept in Stoicism and a theme I’m reading about now in Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
LINKS:
Brain Surgery Frees Runner, but Raises Barriers via NYTimes.com
The Difficulty of Creating Influence When You’re In a New Group
PsyBlog has a new post called “How Newcomers Can Influence Established Groups” but I think the title of my post may have been more appropriate, since PsyBlog basically says that newcomers are going to have a hard time getting their input recognized.
In one study, 187 health professionals were split into one group of participants that thought they were being critiqued by a newcomer who had only been there 3 weeks while the other group believed they were being critiqued by an 18 yr veteran:
“In each case the criticisms were presented to participants were identical, the only difference was their apparent source.
The results were clear. Compared with old-timers, the health professionals:
- thought newcomers provided less constructive criticism,
- agreed less with newcomers’ suggestions,
- were more negative about their criticisms.“
So what can a newcomer do to improve receptiveness?
Another study showed that they could improve their standing in a group by distancing themselves from their old group.
Thinking back on some of my previous jobs when I was vocal (or not), it makes sense that as someone who’s new in an organization it would be wise to hold back initially, but NOT because you’ve been a part of the group for such a short period of time.
Instead, I think what it really comes down to is trust. When you build trust, your peers will be more receptive to your thoughts. Yes, it does take time, but the way you act (offering intelligent opinions, helping others, listening intently, etc.) can really alter and reduce the amount of time that it will take for the rest of the group to believe in you.
Why General Motors Will Continue to Struggle
The NYTimes shed some light today on the G.M. situation. Perhaps the greatest obstacle G.M. faces in the near future is its narrow-minded culture. Here’s an example:
“…whenever a top G.M. executive was called to appear before lawmakers in Washington, staff members would prepare a briefing binder as thick as a Manhattan phonebook and hold multiple meetings to strategize over five minutes of testimony…”
Here’s another:
“In a famous memo that circulated in Detroit during the late 1980s, Mr. Johnson complained that the company was hampered by its inability to execute.
“Teamwork has been replaced by Balkanization,” he wrote. “Our culture discourages open, frank debate among G.M. executives in the pursuit of problem resolution.”
Through the years, outsiders and even company insiders have complained about the months of study required for simple decisions, like making design changes to a bumper or headlights. “
I think one of the best moves made so far is bringing in new blood with a new CEO (Fritz Henderson) and new chairman (Edward E. Whitacre, who was previously at AT&T). Whitacre even admits he has no prior auto industry experience, but I think this is an advantage, instead of a hindrance.
The new executives at G.M. will (hopefully) have a fresh perspective. New products and technologies (cars, cell phones, etc.) can be learned, but true leadership skills are much more difficult to cultivate.
Business is still business, and I believe two things G.M. can do to ensure future success are:
1) improve execution(get things done in a fast, efficient manner)
2) understanding people (teamwork, inspiration, getting the most out of your employees, etc.).
What Makes Us Happy?
This article from The Atlantic, “What Makes Us Happy?“, came out a couple months ago. It was an exhaustive 72 year study by Harvard Researchers (its most famous male participant was JFK) led by Dr. George Vaillant. It’s a long article, so I wanted to highlight a few excerpts that stood out.
“What allows people to work, and love, as they grow old? By the time the Grant Study men had entered retirement, Vaillant, who had then been following them for a quarter century, had identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically.
Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well” and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors.“
It’s no surprise (to me, at least) that depression has major negative implications.
“The study has yielded some additional subtle surprises…And depression turned out to be a major drain on physical health: of the men who were diagnosed with depression by age 50, more than 70 percent had died or were chronically ill by 63. More broadly, pessimists seemed to suffer physically in comparison with optimists, perhaps because they’re less likely to connect with others or care for themselves.“
Furthermore,
“Vaillant’s other main interest is the power of relationships. “It is social aptitude,” he writes, “not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging.” Warm connections are necessary—and if not found in a mother or father, they can come from siblings, uncles, friends, mentors.
In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked, “What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant’s response: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”“
Friday Link Love: Week Ending 5/22/2009
This is a list of the links I’ve bookmarked or f0und most interesting for the week.
The Paradox of Planning
35+ Examples of Corporate Social Media in Action
A 60 Inch Screen in Your Pocket
twtBizCard :: your twitter business card
quotes/citations – a set on Flickr
TED Blog: Dan Ariely: 2008 was a good year for behavioral economics
Unconsumption PB Wiki
MEDIA ARTS MONDAYS: Periodicals Worth Paying For
Japanese Vending Machines Are A Recession Hit
Lens – Photojournalism Blog from NYTimes.com
LeftRightLeftRightLeft – download the new Coldplay album
50 Great Photographers You Should Know (with portfolios)
Ten Lessons In Bootstrapping from the Founders of UrbanSpoon
What Makes Us Happy? via The Atlantic
Friday Link Love: Week Ending 5/15/09
This is a list of some of the links I’ve bookmarked or found especially interesting. I’m thinking of making this a weekly list I post every Friday.
The New York Times envisions version 2.0 of the newspaper
Keep track of what you wanna do, share stories about your life experiences (your “diddits”), and meet people like you.
40 Useful and Creative Infographics
Find small actions you can do for Energy, Happiness, Waste and Water.
Media Arts Mondays: Data Visualization Tools
Sell your Tweets on Twitshirt
Growing network of design sites
McDonald’s Is Winning More Than The Value Wars via Advertising Age
Newspapers and Thinking The Unthinkable by Clay Shirky
How David Beats Goliath – When Underdogs Break The Rules by Malcolm Gladwell
In this article, we are going to take a little tour through the history of information – or more specifically where to focus efforts if you want get in touch with other people.
Dub is your mobile business card. The goal driving DubMeNow is developing better ways to communicate, network, and exchange contact information – all from your mobile phone!
The Psychology of Attention 7 Part Series via PsyBlog
Halting Russia’s Population Collapse via BBC News
Music and Memory
Salvador Dali - The Persistence of Memory
Read an interesting article on the NYTimes.com today, The Songs They Can’t Forget, which talks about how music can reach people with Alzheimer’s disease. From the article:
“Music has the power to bypass the mind and wash through us, triggering strong feelings and cuing the body to synchronize with its rhythm.
Researchers and clinicians are finding that when all other means of communication have shut down, people remember and respond to music. Familiar songs can help people with dementia relate to others, move more easily and experience joy.
Music memory is preserved better than verbal memory, according to Ms. Clair, because music, unlike language, is not seated in a specific area of the brain but processed across many parts.
Patients with a wide range of ailments — from children with disabilities to burn victims to people with Parkinson’s disease and stroke — have experienced the ability of MT to speed healing, improve mood and increase mobility.“
The healing/therapeutic aspect reminds me of the Patch Adams story, but with a musical twist.
Great Examples of Brazilian Street Art
I’ve been noticing some really interesting street art coming out of one of the BRIC countries recently: Brazil. Brazil’s rising creative and cultural strength and identity is resulting in some exceptional artwork and graffiti.
One of the things I learned at the recent PSFK Conference NYC from the Wooster Collective is that every piece of art has a story, so even thought the following pieces are upfront visually engaging, there’s deeper reasons and meanings behind their creation.
Here’s a brief collection of Brazilian street art I’ve found over the past several months:
via PicoCool (see more pics at sola e a comedia da vida seca )
PSFK also had a recent post on Pixação graffiti in Brazil:
“The angular style that seems to cover the city of Sao Paulo was first used in the early 80s and was inspired by heavy metal typography which in turn was inspired by viking type-style.”
The Big Picture is a photo blog that also has some great pics of the favelas in Brazil that are covered with giant pics of women that have suffered from among others things, drug trafficking and violence. This art display was created by a photographer named JR who has also recently launched his “Women Are Heroes” campaign.
The Big Picture: Scenes from Rio Janeiro
I also learned of some colorful street art by Titi Freak, a Brazilian artist with Japanese ancestry that I really like. Check out these lovely Koi fish:
As Planners, if we’re really going to “think outside the box,” we need to think outside the lines of geography and physical limitations. There’s interesting changes going on outside our own borders and the unique urban artistry that’s evolved from societal, political and economic events should be recognized and understood. Sometimes thinking outside the box means going outside our normal boundaries and figuring out how we can find ideas and inspiration in other sources, and making them relevant to what’s in front of us.
PSFK Conference NYC (Part 7): City As Canvas
On April 2nd I attended the PSFK Conference NYC. I’m using this multi-post series to share some of the highlights.
TALK: City As Canvas featuring Marc & Sara Schiller (Wooster Collective)
This was my favorite talk of the day. It hit on all the points of a great presentation:
1) It was interesting
2) It told a story
3) It left you wanting more
They began the talk by asking a question: What Is It About Street Art That Makes It So Infectious?
- Site specific
- Adds context and meaning
- Personal and intimate
- Reaction to the proliferation of Advertising
- Street art has impermanence — Advertising has a purpose
The Schillers went on to show examples of numerous street artists:
- Banksy
- Beehives
- Invader – spaceinvader Flickr set – spaceinvader site
- Mark Jenkins
- Darius & Downey – Darius & Downey Flickr set
- Dan Witz
- Roadsworth – Roadsworth on Flickr
- Brad Downey
- Laura Keebler
- JLove
- The Bubble Project – on Wooster Collective
- Decapitator – the decapitator’s Photostream on Flickr
- Dr. Gecko
- Sputnik – check out “Nike The Ripper“
- JR – his recent project in Kenya
- Filippo Minelli
- John Fekner
- Armsrock – on Wooster Collective – Armsrock’s blog
- Jan Vormann
- Ben Bostock
- The Bund
- Crateman – Crate Art in Melbourne (via Wooster Collective), The Return of Crateman (via Wooster Collective)
- Revs
- Jake Bronstein – on Wooster Collective
- Guerilla Knitters
- mosstika
- Ulrika Erdes
SUMMARY: There are a lot of incredible street artists out there doing amazing things. Their work isn’t just visually interesting – it’s often insightful and inspiring. There’s always a story behind each piece; great art will force you to think and look at the world differently, and maybe even question your own beliefs.
Looking back, I really enjoyed the PSFK Conference it was my 1st time). My only suggestion to improve the event was that there were so many terrific, interesting people and a limited amount of time to meet them. For the next conference I’d love PSFK to facilitate some kind of icebreaker so that we could get to know more of the attendees.
LINKS:
Constant Beta – Highlights from the PSFK Conference 2009
iamtheweather.com – PSFK Conference 09
Photos From PSFK Conference NYC
Gareth Kay – Looking Back at PSFK New York
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to comment or re-tweet it. Oh, and if you’re looking for a Junior Planner/Strategist in NYC (or know someone who is) -email me at DennisDemori [at] Gmail [dot] com.
PSFK Conference NYC (Part 6): New Idea Agencies
On April 2nd I attended the PSFK Conference NYC. I’m using this multi-post series to share some of the highlights.
PANEL: New Idea Agencies featuring Bart Haney (Fuse Project), Carl Johnson (Anomaly), Ben Malbon (BBH Labs), Robbie Vitrano (Trumpet)
This panel discussed Intellectual Property (IP) and it’s the one I was most excited about. They touched on the need to reassess the current agency business and compensation models.
Moderator Question: What Are The Current Challenges?
Carl: “The Ad industry is broken because it values crap ideas the same as good ideas.”
Moderator Question: How important is branding, when traditionally, it’s what an agency’s best at?
Carl: “You have to not care if you execute. The purpose is to make a business.”
“You have to understand media more than anything else.”
“You have to embrace collaboration.”
“You’re much more commercially aware…the retail environment is crucial.”
Robbie: “The ultimate integrity of the business (is most important).”
“The purest form of marketing is in product development.”
Moderator Question: How Do You Get Funding? What Are The Exit Strategies?
Robbie: We don’t want to own 100% – this ruins collaboration. “We’d rather own 10% of a big success than 100% of a failure.”
BREAK: Rethinking Recession
Sites to check out:
- MakerFaire.com
- NYCGarbage.com
- KrystalPersaud.wordpress.com
- Sylvia Earle’s TED Prize wish to protect our oceans | Video on TED.com.
LINKS:
Constant Beta – Highlights from the PSFK Conference 2009
iamtheweather.com – PSFK Conference NYC
Photos From PSFK Conference NYC 09
Gareth Kay – Looking Back at PSFK New York
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to comment or re-tweet it. Oh, and if you’re looking for a Junior Planner/Strategist in NYC (or know someone who is) -email me at DennisDemori [at] Gmail [dot] com.
PSFK Conference NYC (Part 5): Reconnect
On April 2nd I attended the PSFK Conference NYC. I’m using this multi-post series to share some of the highlights.
PANEL: Reconnect featuring Sarah Beatty (Green Depot), Simon Collins (Parsons), Ryan Jacoby (IDEO), Matthew Lush (Hecho Inc.)
Moderator Question: What does sustainability mean now?
Simon: It’s a journey, not a destination. It’s about buying intelligently. Blue jeans are a perfect example of sustainable design – they actually get better with age as you wash them (What if we could translate this concept to every product?)
Sarah: High-quality. The challenge is to offer something better.
Dave: There’s a perception that sustainability means less…but this isn’t true.
Moderator Question: What will the world be like in 20-30 years?
Sarah: “It’s great that we can connect with people around the world, but how will we connect with people next door?“
Moderator Question: Who are the leaders in sustainability?
Ryan: Method, Amazon.com, Wal-mart
Sarah: Recyclebank – They encourage homeowners to recycle
Summary: Sustainability is really about reversing the trend of over- and hyper-consumption that has been a big part of this generation’s habits. This panel reminded me of something Thomas L. Friedman said on TV the other day about the Green movement.
He was asked when we would know that going Green has been successful.
His answer was that there will be no more “green” cars, “green” houses, or “green anything. A car will be a car and a house will just be a house. We won’t know the difference anymore when there’s nothing to differentiate against.
LINKS:
iamtheweather.com – PSFK Conference NYC
Constant Beta Highlights From the PSFK Conference 2009
Photos from PSFK Conference NYC 09
Gareth Kay – Looking Back at PSFK New York
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to comment or re-tweet it. Oh, and if you’re looking for a Junior Planner/Strategist in NYC (or know someone who is) -email me at DennisDemori [at] Gmail [dot] com.
PSFK Conference NYC (Part 4): This Platform Called Everyday Life
On April 2nd I attended the PSFK Conference NYC. I’m using this multi-post series to share some of the highlights.
TALK: This Platform Called Everyday Life featuring Kevin Slavin (Area/Code)
This was one of the best talks of the day. Kevin says that we’re heading towards a world where objects have online and offline entities. The lines are blurred.
He uses the cell phone as an example. Traditionally, phones were used for PEOPLE to call other people. Nowadays, the phone is still connecting us with the rest of the world, but, more importantly, the other rest of the world.
Here’s a few examples of using the online world to improve what’s going on in the offline world.
- Nike + “You are in an active communication relationship with your sneakers.”
- Kogi Taco Truck This Korean BBQ on wheels is famous for updating patrons on its location using Twitter
- Sharkrunners combines an online game with real life GPS tracked sharks. Events unfold in real time. You get an email or a text when you have reached an actual shark!
- Citysense.com
- Path Intelligence
Kevin gave a few more examples of how we can expect mobile technology to control environments, such as Project Blinkenlights:
The above pic is of Allianz Arena in Munich. The stadium can change colors depending on which teams are playing (think of a pro baseball and football team sharing the same field).
513-381-JERK is another example that represents the idea of using a phone not to talk, but to communicate with a thing to remove a person. A little crazy when you think about it.
SUMMARY: The idea of “Treating objects like people; regarding people as objects” was really interesting, and a great analysis of the future potential of mobile technology.
LINKS:
Constant Beta: Highlights From The PSFK Conference 2009
iamtheweather.com – PSFK Conference NYC
Photos from PSFK Conference NYC 09
Gareth Kay – Looking Back at PSFK New York
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to comment or re-tweet it. Oh, and if you’re looking for a Junior Planner/Strategist in NYC (or know someone who is) -email me at DennisDemori [at] Gmail [dot] com.
PSFK Conference NYC (Part 3): Ghost in the Machine – Digital Multiculture
On April 2nd I attended the PSFK Conference NYC. This is a multi-post series where I share some of the highlights.
TALK: Ghost In The Machine – Digital Multiculture featuring Celestine Arnold
Celestine was a terrific speaker, but there was so much info on her slides it was difficult to take adequate notes (I hope she will eventually post her slides online). She said that this was a talk about race & representation – NOT about racism (important distinction).
She went on to talk about the cultural/ethnic misrepresentation and exclusion of minorities from video games & virtual worlds. Gaming is mirrored by white culture when it’s in fact minorities that dominate the gaming market.
Various racial stereotypes also dominate the gaming landscape (white = good, black = evil, arab = terrorists, etc.).
SUMMARY: Celestine points out that embracing the multicultural demographic provides a highly untapped market for marketers.
BREAK: Death of Ownership
One of the predominant themes of the PSFK Conference has to do with consumerism and consumption. There’s a trend of people not just decreasing their purchases, but actually OWNING less stuff. Take a look at the following examples:
- Pandora (free music – no need for CDs)
- Netflix (renting movies – no need for DVDs)
- SmartBike DC – (renting bikes – no need to own transportation)
We’ re moving from a society that is used to accumulating things to a society that’s rejecting over-consumption and embracing simplicity:
“You buy furniture. You tell yourself this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple of years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.”
— Fight Club
As I write this I’m thinking about another movie I saw the other night that represents these ideas perfectly, “Into The Wild.” Check it out.
LINKS:
iamtheweather.com- PSFK Conference NYC
Constant Beta – Highlights from the PSFK Conference 2009
Photos from PSFK Conference NYC 09
Gareth Kay – Looking Back at PSFK New York
PSFK Conference NYC (Part 2): Building Healthy Brands With Heart
On April 2nd I attended the PSFK Conference NYC. This is a multi-post series where I share some of the highlights.
PANEL: Building Healthy Brands With Heart featuring Richard Fine (Help Remedies), Sean Khozin & Jay Parkinson (Hello Health)
There’s a number of flaws with the current Healthcare model. According to iamweather.com,
“Both Help Remedies and HelloHealth have identified the shortcomings of a medical system that has placed the continued success of the medical business machine ahead of the care of patients. Medications are developed to satisfy marketing departments and product schedules and don’t have any connection to actually making you feel better.”
- One of the 1st statistics the panel pointed out was that we’ve doubled our life expectancy since 1900, but its flattened over the past several years.It costs $10,000 to treat asthma, but $3,000 to cure it
- The current customers of Doctors aren’t the patients – it’s the Insurance companies that pay Doctors
- The Insurance companies end up increasing the Doctors’ overhead (and raising our costs)
HELP REMEDIES:
- Richard said he launched Help Remedies to simplify medication from ingredients to packaging.
- He also said that we need to get innovation around the Doctor/Patient relationship instead of around who can sell the cheapest insurance
- Rich said we should check out the Yellow Tail wine case study to get a better idea of how Help Remedies has structured their marketing and their business (Yellow Tail took a category that was confusing to most people – wine – and simplified it in a way that made people comfortable purchasing it).
Jinal Shah has some interesting thoughts on her Constant Beta blog about Re-inventing Healthcare.
HELLO HEALTH
- Jay gave us a great Clay Shirky quote: “When we change the way we communicate, we change society.”
- The Hello Health guys went on to talk about how they wanted to make simplify Healthcare the way companies like Etsy, Amazon, and ZipCar have simplified their industries.
- Hello Health helps you connect w/ your doctor online: Doctors have online profiles to humanize them.
- Any Dr. in the US can sign up.
- You can use videochat w/ your Doctor and the chat functions like a blog post so you can keep track of your discussions (be honest – do you remember everything your Doctor tells you?)
- Hello Health also acts as a social network for Doctors – it’s a platform just like Facebook (they’re going to open up API) – it’s about removing the middleman
- Sean added that “(technology) should not be a barrier between patient and Doctor.”
LINK: Jay on Tumblr - Jay Parkinson + MD + MPH
SUMMARY: The main idea here is that the Healthcare industry (along with music, newspaper, auto, etc.) has been operating on an outdated business model for far too long. It’s time to get back to basics. Life is complicated enough – healthcare should be simple.
BREAK: Open Source Education
We were introduced to some interesting things going on in the world of education, including:
LINKS:
iamtheweather.com- PSFK Conference NYC
Constant Beta – Highlights from the PSFK Conference 2009
The Barbarian Group – Interactive Advertising and Media Placement Companies Don’t Mix
The Barbarian Group – Hello Health Marketing Campaign
Photos from PSFK Conference NYC 09
Gareth Kay – Looking Back at PSFK New York
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to comment or re-tweet it. Oh, and if you’re looking for a Junior Planner/Strategist in NYC (or know someone who is) -email me at DennisDemori [at] Gmail [dot] com.
PSFK Conference NYC (Part 1): When Ideas Create Good
On April 2nd I attended the PSFK Conference NYC. This is a multi-post series where I share some of the highlights.
TALK: When Ideas Create Good presented by Graham Hill (Treehugger) – Twitter: @ghill
Graham used the Pecha Kucha method of presenting to cover 3 topics:
1) People – A couple ecologically-forward people Graham highlighted were:
- Colin Beaven – Writes the No Impact Man blog
- Willie Smits – A biologist who has found a way to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo (video below)
2) Stuff
- Referred to Ponoko.com , where you can shop for individualized goods in the greenest way possible
- Recommended the NatureMill Automatic Indoor Composter
3) Concepts
- One of the things Graham emphasized was bringing back repairability. We live in a society that has, for several years now, bought and purged. It looks like the new trend is Unconsumption. Dave Armano just had an interesting post on Marketing in A Post-Consumer Era.
- “Small is sexy” – this applies to everything from cars, houses, and products. Generally, the bigger something is, the larger its footprint
- From ZipCars to Heliostats, there are a number of products out there that can make us all more eco-friendly
- Green Power is one of the quickest ways to reduce your carbon footprint
BREAK: Informed Choices
The 1st talk was followed by a break that pointed us to some useful websites:
The main idea we can take from this panel is that there’s a lot of things people are doing in the world to move the green movement forward without forcing us to somehow lower our standard of living. People can effectively embrace technology and commonsense living to improve their lives and the environment.
LINKS:
Highlights From The PSFK Conference 2009 by Jinal Shah
PSFK Conference NYC on iamtheweather.com
Photos from PSFK Conference NYC 09
Gareth Kay – Looking Back at PSFK New York
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to comment or re-tweet it. Oh yeah, and if you’re looking for a Junior Planner or Strategist in NYC (or know someone who is) – email me at DennisDemori [at] Gmail [dot] com.
Nine Inch Nails Builds Brand with New iPhone App
Nine Inch Nails has released an iPhone app that does a great job of showing brands how they’ve created an integrated and carefully structured brand experience. This is also a great plug for the iPhone and its myriad of capabilities.
“It does a very good job of mobilizing the web experience and allowing users to access all the content, but it also has a pretty cool messaging feature that allows fans to discover the location of fellow messengers. In addition, the application also allows for fans to participate and engage in conversations around the band. For example, when a concert is happening, outsiders can get a glimpse of what’s going on by accessing messages and photos in real time.”
via Influx Insights
UPDATE (April 9th, 2009)
In other music/iPhone news, Coachella has released a really cool iPhone app. From the PSFK site:
“The massive Coachella festival is coming up next week, featuring an extensive line-up of musicians playing over the course of three days. For attendees daunted by the task of trying to figure out who’s playing where – and when, the Coachella organization has developed an iPhone application that will tell you the exact times and locations of all performances. Interactive maps of the festival will show the best possible routes to pack in as much as possible, and live updates can keep you informed of any delays or changes.”
The Death of Voicemail
Image via PSFK
Interesting post from PSFK this week about the demise of phone messages. I started to drastically cut down on voicemails – both listening to and leaving them – over a year ago. It just doesn’t really make sense anymore with its inherent lack of efficiency.
Whoever I’ve just called can see the missed call, and if I do leave a message, I always end up re-capping it anyway. I’ve changed my voicemail message to say that the fastest way to reach me is via email or text (I’m tempted to add a 3rd option – Twitter).
One of the biggest problems with any audio format is that is takes considerably longer to hear the information than it does to read it – this is one of the reasons I don’t like audio books.
Another issue I have is that companies like Jott will provide you with audio recordings of all your RSS feeds as one of their features. So, for example, let’s say it is going to “read me” a recent post from noahbrier.com. Initially, I thought this feature sounded great (pun not intended), but I’m not able to:
1) share the with anyone if I like it
2) take notes
3) comment
4) bookmark it to Delicious (or Read It Later on Firefox) if I want it as a reference
5) check the links in the post
A service that I was testing out last year, YouMail, offered transcribed voicemails, which help me navigate and scan through my messages more quickly, but unfortunately, the quality of the transcrptions was very poor and I wasn’t willing to pay for better transcriptions.
My biggest problem today isn’t getting messages (I have everything practically synced up to go through my email and/or my phone), it’s knowing WHERE to contact people.
Seriously, it used to be not that long ago that if you wanted to get a hold of someone you would just call them (and leave a voicemail) or email them. Now, I don’t always know whether I should call the cell, Skype call, Skype video chat, IM (AOL, GChat, Facebook, Skype), text, Blackberry Messenger, email, email through Facebook, Tweet, etc.
The future of communication isn’t have enough opportunities to connect with people, it’s knowing WHERE to connect with them. As some point, I suspect we’ll have a centralized source (like Google Voice), but for now, this also poses the obvious challenge for marketers to understand their targets’ communications habits.
Further info:
PSFK.com: Death of Voicemail
NYTimes.com: You’ve Got Voicemail, but Do You Care?
Miami Ad Schools: Agency Tours (Part 2)
Continuing the theme of the last post, we spent the week after graduation (March 24th-27th) visiting agencies all over NYC. As I listened to various senior level Planners talk about their company philosophies/cultures, their work, their approach to planning, etc., I began to notice some major themes:
1) The shift from AUDIENCE —> PARTICIPANTS. Agencies are starting to realize that they need to get people INVOLVED if they want them to buy into the brands they are building.
2) The shift from DIALOGUE —> MONOLOGUE. Agencies have come to understand that the days of shouting at people has passed; we need to encourage a conversation.
3) The shift away from TV spots as the central hub of communication. R/GA said that, “The digital periphery is now the core.” I don’t completely agree with this, but I do think that the days of building every communications campaign around a :30 second spot are over.
In my opinion, the future of advertising doesn’t have a centralized soapbox to promote your product/service. Instead, we’ll have a series of super-targeted communications spread out amongst various channels to build a “brand story” that will engage consumers.
4) The shift from Advertising solutions —> creative Business solutions. When I used to work in the lending business, Mortgage Brokers would rarely tell their customers they could get a better deal from their local bank. Direct lenders, on the other hand, would rarely recommend a Mortgage Broker. Why? Because each side was trying to preserve their own self-interests instead of focusing on what was best for the customer.
It’s the same thing with Advertising: if you go to an Ad agency with a problem – surprise! surprise! – an Ad campaign will be the solution 10 times out of 10.
While some companies have begun to make this transition, others, like Naked, have built their business on this media-neutral method of prescribing business solutions.
5) The shift from logical/rational decision-making to emotionally-based choices. I’ve been noticing more and more Planners talk about the importance of understanding peoples’ emotions and behavioral economics, suggesting books like Dan Ariely’s “Predictably Irrational” as Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “The Black Swan“.
When I worked in sales, I learned that “selling is the transference of emotion.” The same is true in the Advertising world. If you want to get people to act a certain way, you’re not going to get very far by trying to logic them to death. You just can’t underestimate the power of influencing people through emotion to guide their actions.
To anyone who’s been reading the Advertising/Marketing/Planning blogs, none of these themes are new news. If you’re new to these concepts, however, it’s important to familiarize yourself with them because this is the future of the business. Not only that, you should know WHY the industry is going through these shifts, since “past is prologue.”
Miami Ad School: Agency Tours (Part 1)
The week after graduation from Miami Ad School we had the option to visit a dozen agencies in NYC.
BBH
AKQA
Wieden + Kennedy
Euro RSCG
R/GA
JWT
Y&R
TBWA/Chiat/Day
Digitas
Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners
Anomaly
Naked
Deutsch (#13 – we set this visit up ourselves)
I can’t stress enough how valuable it was to have the option to visit so many well-known agencies AND meet with so many Planners in such a short period of time.
I’m going to provide some of the highlights of our visits, and the next post is going to round up some overall themes I noticed.
BBH – “Where is an audience without a brand?” The idea that communities already exist – it’s up to brands to harness them.
AKQA – “Planning is creating a story with a series of communications.”
W+K – When building your book/in interviews, “Show perspective of your ideas, your strategic insights, and POV of every project you work on.” Also, memorize your best case study.
R/GA – You never want to have a dead end – if you have enough (or keep uncovering) data you can continue to build on a campaign.
JWT – “Don’t interrupt what people are interested in. BE what people are interested in. Time is the new currency.”
Y&R – “Resist the usual.”
Digitas – “The biology of decision-making is always the same, so don’t discount emotion.”
Anomaly – “It makes no sense to develop theory and pass it on to someone else. If you can create…CREATE.”
“Every piece of communication you have is media.”
“Conviction is standing up for your authenticity when it matters most.”
Naked – “Unsexy is the new sexy.”
The Rise of Netbooks
I was reading a NYTimes.com article this morning, “Light and Cheap, Netbooks Are Poised to Reshape PC Industry,” and I think netbooks have a huge opportunity to strike a largely untapped market. They’re still in the early stages, but I can’t help but think this is a perfect product for people like my parents, who primarily use the Internet and don’t have any need for the bells and whistles most laptops provide.
Aside from the low cost (under $100), the article says that, “By the end of the year, consumers are likely to see laptops the size of thin paperback books that can run all day on a single charge and are equipped with touch screens or slide-out keyboards.”
Furthermore, sales are “…predicted to double this year, even as overall PC sales fall 12 percent, according to the research firm Gartner. By the end of 2009, netbooks could account for close to 10 percent of the PC market, an astonishing rise in a short span.”
I think that the potential for netbooks is especially interesting if you consider the fact that mobile phones (with internet access) are outselling computers in many parts of the world, such as Africa and China.
PSFK Conference
Heading to the PSFK Conference in NYC tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the interesting attendees and checking out the panels. Haven’t decided yet if I’m going to live tweet it, but I’ll definitely post about it at some point this weekend.
From the website:
The Role of Business Schools in the Financial Crisis
Just read an interesting article on the NYTimes.com, “Is It Time To Retrain Business Schools?” that analyzes how much of a role the teaching at B-schools may have had to do with the current economic collapse.
“Critics of business education have many complaints. Some say the schools have become too scientific, too detached from real-world issues. Others say students are taught to come up with hasty solutions to complicated problems. Another group contends that schools give students a limited and distorted view of their role — that they graduate with a focus on maximizing shareholder value and only a limited understanding of ethical and social considerations essential to business leadership.“
Something that really caught my eye was that: “A study of cheating among graduate students, published in 2006 in the journal Academy of Management Learning & Education, found that 56 percent of all M.B.A. students cheated regularly — more than in any other discipline. The authors attributed that to “perceived peer behavior” — in other words, students believed everyone else was doing it.”
And yet another survey found that b-school students actually felt LESS confident in solving workplace ethical issues during their time in school.
“The challenge for a lot of business schools is how to develop leaders and not managers,” said James Tran, a candidate for an M.B.A. and a master’s in public administration at Harvard.
I never went to business school, so I can’t really say anything negative about it from personal experience, but it’s always been my belief that no matter how much theory you learn in school there isn’t any substitute for real world experience. I’m not saying that one is better than the other, but I do think that overemphasis on one type of learning can really skew your thinking.
Miami Ad School: Weeks 9 & 10 Planning Review
FYI – I already graduated from Miami Ad School’s Account Planning program on March 19th, so the classes I’m writing about in these posts actually took place a few weeks ago.
I’m going to combine Weeks 9 & 10 in this post since I really want to move on to writing about Agency Tours in NYC the week after graduation and some other things.
Anyway, our Planning instructor for Week 9 was Neal Arthur from Wieden + Kennedy NYC. Neal started us off with a great quote,
“Don’t give then what they want. Give them what they never believed was possible.” — Orson Welles
A couple key things that Neal said that resonated with me were:
1) New business pitches are the best, biggest and most grueling opportunities that a Planner can have
2) Work with as many new business pitches as possible
3) When you get a new business call, it’s because something’s broken with the client
Our instructor for Week 10 was Liam from Hall & Partners, which is now primarily a brand and communications research agency. Nice quote:
“Clients often use research the same way a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support instead of illumination.” — David Ogilvy
A few things that stood out this weekend:
- Just because it’s quant doesn’t mean it can’t tell a story
- Focus groups should not be boring – they should be fun!
There are certain challenges when working with clients:
- Inertia – We’ve always done it this way
- The paradox of choice – too many ideas, with no clear way to prioritize
- Lack of resources – not enough money; not enough manpower
- Impatience – lack of willingness to take the long view & invest in the future
- Culture – heirarchy and procedure take precedence over experimentation and entrepreneurialism
Lastly, Liam pointed out that Planners are thought partners with researchers. It’s important to create a culture that truly believes good ideas can come from anywhere and prizes openness.
Miami Ad School: Week 8 Planning Review
FYI – I already graduated from Miami Ad School on March 19th. I wanted to be a lot more timely in posting about MAS each week, but especially at the end of the program it got really difficult, so some of the upcoming posts about MAS were originally drafted a few weeks ago.
We had two terrific speakers for this week (end).
Cliff Courtney from Zimmerman Advertising
Domenico Vitale from PI&C
They were both very generous in sharing information, so I’m just going to sum up some nuggets of wisdom they shared with us.
Cliff:
- Clients care about 2 things: 1) Cash flow 2) Shareholder value. As much as art, design and creativity have a place in this industry, we need to remember that it’s a business
- When you walk into a room you need to know the most about trends, both macro and micro
- In our strategies, we’ll be speaking with moms quite a bit since they control the majority of purchases
- We’re in the business of behavior modification
- As a Planner, start thinking about your language and how you use it; what is your personal brand?
- The opposite of love is not hate – it’s apathy
- “There are no facts – only interpretations.”
- As a Planner, always question everything
- in Qualitative research, don’t interview people with a clipboard – it creates a barrier to the truth. Be personable instead.
- “Brief creatives in the contextual moment.”
- “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
- What makes a great Planner? Three things: 1) Creativity 2) Courage 3) Curiosity
Domenico:
One of the best things we got out of Domenico was that it’s ridiculous to think that Planners can’t be creative and Creatives can’t be strategic. Ideas can come from anywhere and it’s important to draw them from everyone on the team, regardless of title or department.
Schmap Miami Guide
Just found out this morning one of my Flickr pics was selected for the 7th Annual Schmap Miami Guide. Check it out:
Schmap Miami Guide: Coral Gables
Scarcity Creates Impact
via rick
I’ve been toying with an idea for the past few weeks, but up until now it’s really just been the headline of this post. Then I read the excellent SAMBA blog and found they put into words what I had been struggling to say.
When something is scarce, it increases in value. If it’s not easily accessible, then it will be flooded with interest once it is available – basic supply and demand.
And so is the case with the internet – it completely throws the concept of supply and demand into a state of disequilibrium.
The internet is always in HIGH supply, regardless of demand. The SAMBA team goes on to point out that:
“Sometimes you get to decide how scarce something is. By creating scarcity you can increase the value.”
What can brands learn from this?
In a world where accessibility is so widespread, the answer isn’t always to make yourself available 24/7 – it’s to make yourself scarce. As Erin recently pointed out, brands should create enough engaging content to make consumers seek them out. It’s the Push vs. Pull idea.
Digging a little deeper
This talk of scarcity got me thinking about the last MAS assignment I worked on for the NYTimes.com. This post on The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics of Free had a great analogy of the recording industry using the concept of infinite vs. scarce.
I’m going to trying to use the same idea for the NYTimes.com (my focus is on the website – not the newspaper).
1. Redefine the market: The benefit is high-quality journalism.
2. Break the benefits down: Vetted news sources, bestseller lists, visualization charts, videos, etc.
3. Set the infinite components free: Post the news on social networks, open up the archives completely, stop asking people to register on the site, make the news as accessible as possible while promoting the journalists (not the brand) who create this content.
4. Charge for the scare components: Access to journalists, access to the newsroom, access to the creation of the content, merchandise, charge other news sources for access to these journalists.
“The end result really is a much bigger market with much greater benefit by expanding the market by using infinite goods to make the scarce goods more valuable…It’s very much about showing the key trends that are impacting all infinite goods — and pointing out a clear path to benefiting from it (while making life more difficult on those who refuse to give up their old business models).”
Not sure if I’m onto something here, or way off. The newspaper industry is a special case – it faces numerous challenges and there’s no easy answer. Even so, maybe this approach is a step in the right direction.
Thoughts?
Twitter Mosaic visualization
Pretty cool visualization of my Twitter friends I created using Twitter Mosaic:
Found out about this through @misentropy
To follow me on Twitter click here or search @DennisDemori
Week 7 Planning Review
I’m going to keep this post really brief since I was juggling about 5 different things when I wrote this post between assignments, preparing my book and job hunting.
We didn’t have any Planning classes for Week 6, so we ended up doubling up for Week 7. We had two instructors:
Shari Allison with Northstar Research Partners
Scott Tegethoff with Universal McCann
Shari discussed quantitative research. Quantitative is basically the numbers side of research where you analyze all sorts of metrics, like % of people currently using your product. It’s the tangible, scientific side of Planning. If you’ve ever prepared a survey then you have done quantitative research.
Scott’s topic for the weekend was “The Changing Media Landscape.” We did some group workshops together where we were given a short amount of time (less than a couple hours) to analyze a business problem and develop a strategy.
This is a very realistic situation since you may be in a position as a Planner where faster turnaround times are often needed and even expected.
That’s it. I told you this would be a really brief post, didn’t I?
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh at SXSW 2009
“Chase the vision – not the money”
- Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh recently spoke at the SXSW festival in Austin and I just wanted to highlight a few things that really resonated with me.
Most people think of shoes when they think of Zappos.com but the company also sells clothing, cosmetics, electronics an even housewares. Even with the myriad of product offerings, however, their focus isn’t on promoting all these products – it’s on customer service, since they noticed that 75% of their business comes from repeat customers. Their philosophy is:
“Take most of the money that we would have spent on marketing – on paid marketing, and instead, put that into the customer experience and then the repeat customers and word-of-mouth become our true form of marketing.”
What is customer service?
It begins with policies. Most companies make it very difficult to find contact information. Zappos.com goes the opposite route – they promote their phone number because they WANT to talk to their customers. They believe the phone is their best branding method.
Call centers at Zappos are treated unconventionally. If a Zappos item is out of stock, a Zappos employee will actually look up that item on a minimum of 3 competitors’ websites to help the customer find the item that they’re looking for – this really blew me away.
Why does Zappos do this? Because they’re not trying to maximize profit on every potential transaction – they’re trying to build a relationship with customers for a lifetime.
Zappos also does surprise upgrades to repeat customers and provides overnight shipping at no extra cost. This is a perfect example of “under promise, over deliver.”
At a certain point, Zappos discussed their brand ethos, and what they wanted to be about. It wasn’t shoes (the product), it was about customer service (broader purpose – highest calling they can aspire towards).
Zappos’ number 1 priority is company culture. Hsieh says that if you build a great company culture, then everything else (like customer service and building an enduring brand) will happen naturally.
How do they create a strong culture?
1) Hiring: The company doesn’t hire people that aren’t a good cultural fit even if they have relevant technical skills and work experience.
2) Training: Everyone goes through the exact same customer focused call center training regardless of their position. Zappos also offers all employees full compensation for their training plus $2,000 if they choose to LEAVE the company at any point until the end of the training. By doing this, they feel that they only keep employees who are a true cultural fit and believe in the company’s long-term vision.
3) Zappos Culture Book: This is an UNEDITED Zappos book the company puts out that asks employees to write their thoughts about the company culture, which is then given to potential employees to let them decide if the culture is the right fit for them. The high level of transparency I find here is really refreshing.
4) Twitter: Zappos has actually encouraged employees to participate on Twitter and even holds Twitter classes during new hire orientation, with over 400 current users. As Hsieh says,
“It’s been a great way for Zappos employees to meet up outside the office (and that builds company culture) and then when they’re inside the office there’s just a higher level of trust and communication. They see each other as people, not just as coworkers.”
Zappos believes that culture and brand are really the same thing. Hsieh says Zappos used to be about shoes, but they made a conscious decision to be about something more meaningful – customer service. I think that’s the key word – “meaningful.” By doing something you are passionate about, that has nothing to do with making money, you can then indirectly achieve all your business objectives. What Zappos found was that when they gave their employees a higher purpose to work for, they became more engaged and committed.
This was the first time I’ve heard Hsieh speak and I think it’s great that he’s having such success pursuing a vision that I think most other CEOs would say is idealistic and ineffective. I couldn’t help thinking of the book “Raving Fans” as I was writing this post – it’s a fast read and I highly recommend it if you’re interested in learning more about remarkable customer service.
I’ll leave you with this last Hsieh quote:
“I think there’s a big difference between motivation and inspiration. You can accomplish stuff by motivating employees, but I think you could accomplish a lot more by inspiring them to a bigger vision that has meaning to them and that you’re passionate about.” Yes, indeed.
Here’s the videos of Hsieh speaking:
SXSW 2009 – Opening Remarks: Tony Hsieh Part 1
SXSW 2009 – Opening Remarks: Tony Hsieh Part 2
Further info:
Follow Tony Hsieh on Twitter
School of Visual Arts’ Think Campaign
I try to avoid reposting or writing “me too” posts on this blog, but I really liked this campaign I found out about from PSFK:
“Infiltrating the places where people often like to reflect, i.e. – the bathroom, diner, coffee shop, etc, KNARF replaced toilet paper, napkins, sugar packets and tray liners with lined notebook paper in an attempt to foster new ideas. Those who discover the branded adverts are encouraged to think and jot down their ideas on the college-ruled loose leaf style paper.”
I think this campaign is great for supporting creativity and especially for those times when you have an idea and can’t think of anywhere to write it down.
What We Can Learn From The New Skittles “Site”
Some random thoughts about the new Skittles.com and how this is significant for brands.
I know the new Skittles.com isn’t original(Modernista has worked with this idea before)-BUT I think it shows brands need to exist ACROSS web – not just one site.
Brands have traditionally built their web sites like their brick & mortar locations-one central location for its customers. In the medium offered by the internet, and web 2.0, however, the Skittles site got me to thinking that the current method 99.9% of brands use isn’t an optimal use of the web.
The new web model doesn’t need a singular web presence.
The web is intangible, and because of the abstract nature of the web, maybe we’re going to see more brands go the Skittles route. If the definition of a brand is the psychological/emotional perception that people have BEYOND your company or product, then maybe companies need to focus more on what that brand means OUTSIDE their walls, because that’s where the true discussion of a brand’s identity lies.
The thing with the internet is that there really aren’t any walls, though. For the most part, information can flow freely. Many marketers have pointed this out before – brands need to join the discussions that consumers are having about them – so it only makes sense to me that the new Skittles site spread across Twitter, Wikipedia, Facebook, etc. is a manifestation of that idea.
Thoughts?
The Growing Role of User Communities in Building Brands
I was just watching the recent TED Talk by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. In the video he talks about how the explosive growth of Twitter has mainly come from unexpected uses by the Twitter community.
This reminds me of the Pabst Blue Ribbon story. PBR has always been a low-key, blue-collar brand. Back in the 1970′s, it was really popular, but with the explosive growth of huge brands like Budweiser and the birth of the microbrew industry, it lost a lot of its appeal.
As Douglas Atkin pointed out in “The Culting of Brands,” by the middle of 2002 the company was experiencing a completely unplanned turnaround:
“Pabst Blue Ribbon had miraculously become the fastest growing brand of all domestic beers, achieving double digit growth within a declining industry.
What happened to spark such a turnaround? A thriving community had adopted PBR as a brand that espoused their ideals. They liked how they had never seen advertisements for it, and that it was a throwback to America’s heartland and blue-collar ideals. It was a beer that wasn’t about image.
Ironically, this embrace quickly gave PBR an image. Impressively, PBR’s marketing team has resisted the temptation to jump on the hipster bandwagon and try to market to this cynical demographic. They realize that they are popular because they haven’t been trying to woo anyone. PBR wisely realizes that it needs to completely let go if they want to continue to enjoy their resurrection within the hispter community.”
Brands exist for the benefit of people. There’s really no other way to look at it. I think that today brands need to be malleable – people need to have the ability to mold them as they see fit. By doing so, people feel a sense of ownership for a brand, and therefore become more loyal.
Just look at Wikipedia. Most people didn’t think it would work, and what most of us underestimated is that users would be so committed to building the brand. All Wikipedia had to do was provide the skeleton – its users would do the job of fleshing it out.
Anyway, here’s Evan Williams at TED. It’s a short video – only about 8 minutes.
3 Blogs Every Planner Should Read
via Time.com
When I worked in the mortgage business, I would always look outside of my industry to see what other people were doing to be successful. Then I would figure out how I could adapt those key methods and apply them to my business.
It’s the same thing when you’re reading blogs: there’s some great ones out there that are specific to Planning but I think we can learn a lot from blogs that focus on other topics.
Here’s some non-Planning sites that I think can be really beneficial to Planners looking for outside ideas, information or inspiration.
I love this blog. It’s a combination of technology and productivity that “recommends downloads, web sites and shortcuts that help you work smarter and save time.” Although it can be a little techie for me sometimes, I think the site is great for the non-tech types that want to learn how to take advantage of all the great tools on (and often off) the web.
One of the most effective skills a Planner can develop is presenting. According to one of my recent Planning instructors, being a great presenter is the main thing that will move you past being a Junior Planner to a more senior role. There’s so much great information on this site; I think it’s absolutely essential for anyone who wants to learn how to become a better presenter and storyteller.
The Big Picture is a photo blog for the Boston Globe that takes a simple concept – posting very large AP-style photos – and creating something really special I haven’t found anywhere else on the web.
“The Big Picture is intended to highlight high-quality, amazing imagery – with a focus on current events, lesser-known stories and, well, just about anything that comes across the wire that looks really interesting.“
It’s photojournalism at its best. As cliche as it sounds, the photos really do tell stories. They show us what’s going on in the world, and I think they help connect us to cultural events (like the Presidential inauguration, Mumbai attacks, etc.) in a way that one can only do visually.
I hoped you liked the list! What are three of your favorite non-Planning blogs?
What Is An RSS Feed?
The most recent information that I’ve been able to find says that about 30% of American internet users read blogs. Although many Planners are tech savvy and write blogs themselves, I think there’s still lots of Planners out there who don’t know how to use certain tools on the web.
What is an RSS feed?
I’m going to skip the technical definition and explain it as simply as I can. RSS feeds are a faster, more simpler way of getting the information you want from websites and blogs. Instead of going to your favorite sites to check when they update, you can just use a simple tool called an RSS feed so that THEY send the info to YOU. Awesome, right?
via SearchEngineLand
Let’s say you have 10 websites you check every day, like Talent Imitates, Genius Steals. Now, instead of checking TIGS every day to see if Faris has updated his blog, you can just “subscribe” to his blog, so that whenever he posts something new, you’ll know through your RSS Reader. Think of it like a magazine subscription.
Why would you subscribe to someone’s blog instead of just going to the site and checking it every day? Quite simply, it saves tons of time. I read about 50 different blogs on a consistent basis, so by using an RSS Reader I get my “feeds” sent to me in a central location. It’s super convenient and especially for a Planner who needs to scan through lots of information every day it’s a huge help.
How To Subscribe
There’s a bunch of different RSS Readers out there – I use Google Reader. GReader is great because it’s simple to use and you can scan the headlines of all your feeds quickly.
There’s basically two main ways to subscribe to a site’s feeds.
1) If you look at the TIGS blog you’ll see a little orange icon (like the one at the top of this blog post) where it says “Subscribe to my feed.” If you click on the link it’ll take you to this page, where it gives you the option of which RSS Reader you want to use. If you choose Google, just select “Subscribe Now.”
You will now be taken to another page that lets you add this feed to your Google Reader with one click. That’s it.
2) The other way to subscribe is to copy the site’s link: http://farisyakob.typepad.com/ and entering it where it says “Add A Subscription” in Google Reader.
So that’s it. Depending on whether you use a Mac or PC, Firefox, Internet Explorer (or some other browser) you may want to use a different RSS Reader, but GReader is a great place to start. The video below from Common Craft also has an explanation for RSS feeds.
To subscribe to MY blog, just follow the steps above.
PEDESTRIART
I was in Midtown Miami today and I took a few minutes to check out the PEDESTRIART urban art project on display on the lawn across from the shops. It’s in kind of an odd location – no one that I know of walks across the area, nevertheless, it’s cool and different.
According to the artist it is,
“…a public art installation of a series of street signs utilizing the artist’s own iconography.”
I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s an interesting collection of common street signs with assorted graphics on them.
Check out my Flickr set for “PEDESTRIART” for more pics.
The videos below have more info and an interview with Cuban artist Leonel Matheu
The 6 Myths of Creativity
via ffffound!
I recently read a Fast Company article from a couple years ago titled “The 6 Myths of Creativity.” Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, has been studying creativity for nearly 30 years. Her research found 6 “myths” that help us understand the thought processes that lead to creative breakthroughs.
1) Creativity comes from creative types
“The fact is, almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. Intrinsic motivation — people who are turned on by their work often work creatively — is especially critical.”
One of the things we’ve been told at MAS is that everyone can contribute creative ideas. It’s not just Creative teams that come up with ideas – Planners should be unafraid to make suggestions. In my experience with creative teams, they appreciate ideas from their Planners. It makes for a more collaborative effort where everyone contributes and participates.
2) Money is a creativity motivator
“Bonuses and pay-for-performance plans can even be problematic when people believe that every move they make is going to affect their compensation. In those situations, people tend to get risk averse. Of course, people need to feel that they’re being compensated fairly. But our research shows that people put far more value on a work environment where creativity is supported, valued, and recognized. People want the opportunity to deeply engage in their work and make real progress. So it’s critical for leaders to match people to projects not only on the basis of their experience but also in terms of where their interests lie.“
3) Time pressure fuels creativity
“Time pressure stifles creativity because people can’t deeply engage with the problem. Creativity requires an incubation period; people need time to soak in a problem and let the ideas bubble up.”
In my MAS experience, one of the biggest challenges we have on a weekly basis is ongoing multiple projects. Although getting things done is a whole other subject in and of itself, it mainly comes down to focusing on what’s most important. From that thought you can develop priorities, agendas, task lists, etc.
4) Fear forces breakthroughs
“…creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear, and anxiety…One day’s happiness often predicts the next day’s creativity.”
5) Competition beats collaboration
“In our surveys, we found that creativity takes a hit when people in a work group compete instead of collaborate. The most creative teams are those that have the confidence to share and debate ideas. But when people compete for recognition, they stop sharing information. And that’s destructive because nobody in an organization has all of the information required to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.”
I find the environment at MAS the perfect example. Although I wouldn’t share my actual strategy with another team, I don’t see anything wrong with sharing my ideas or information.
Why? Because everyone interprets information differently; whether it’s a client brief, a quote you found online, or an Annual Report, people will make different observations.
As Thomas Edison said,
“Your idea needs to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are currently working on.”
As Planners, especially with the ubiquitous nature of the web, we really do have access to a lot of the same information. It’s in how we interpret that information – our insights – that we are able to come up with unique recipes even though they’re based on a lot of the same ingredients.
6) A streamlined organization is a creative organization
“Of course, the opposite is true: Creativity suffers greatly during a downsizing…Anticipation of the downsizing was even worse than the downsizing itself — people’s fear of the unknown led them to basically disengage from the work. More troubling was the fact that even five months after the downsizing, creativity was still down significantly.”
Shout out to my Planner buddy Jody Taylor on this post!
Miami Ad School: Richard Monturo on BRIC POP on Vimeo
Last night we spent an incredible lecture session with Richard Montura, a Strategic Planner from La Comunidad in Miami. He didn’t come to us to specifically talk about Planning, but to discuss his observations from traveling all over the world for two years.
His story was fun, inspiring and entertaining. To paraphrase one of my Planner friends, “I thought I knew a lot about this stuff, but he made me feel like a child all over again.”
From the author’s website:
“Nearly 10 years into the 21st century, a new creative world is forming.
Very soon, a lot of the world’s best art, fashion, music, entertainment, media, design, and style will be coming to you from Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The BRICs have been tipped by Goldman Sachs (who coined the acronym) to become four of the six largest economies in the world by 2050. But it isn’t just about the money.
BRIC Pop reveals another side to these four countries: their rising creative and cultural power. It’s just as significant as their economic story, and has major implications for entertainment, media, creative and marketing industries in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Plus, it’s fun.
I spent two years traveling to 42 cities, from Ahmedabad to Yekaterinburg, discovering first-hand how the BRICs have shifted from exporters of products, services, and commodities to arbiters of pop cultural ‘cool’.”
Visit the BRIC POP site
Experiences Make Us Happier Than Possessions
via sciondriver
Interesting study from San Francisco State University says that,
“An experience may generate positive memories that outlast the allure of a new material possession. That’s in part because the initial joy of acquiring a new object, such as a new car, fades over time as people become accustomed to seeing it every day, experts said. Experiences, on the other hand, continue to provide happiness through memories long after the event occurred.”
What does this mean for brands? Although I believe the word “experience” is being tossed around a lot these days in strategy sessions, I think this study is further proof that brands can expand beyond products attributes to engage their consumers.
“What’s the brand’s highest calling?” is something we had discussed in the first couple weeks at MAS. It’s the difference between Pepsi being about soda and Pepsi being a brand that “refreshes everything.”
Article via current.com
Art + Design Night in Miami’s Design District
This weekend some of the Planners got together for the Miami Design District’s Art + Design Night, a monthly event that takes place on the second Saturday of every month. The Design District’s website says,
“Visit the Design District and experience a gallery walk featuring inspiring art, design, music, cocktails, dining and shopping.”
It’s one of the cooler and better cultural events in Miami. Basically, you get to walk around participating art galleries and trendy furniture stores to check out their goods. Some of the venues provide free food, drinks and even music.
The art featured is predominantly from local artists and you even get the opportunity to meet many of the artists themselves.
Click the link below to check out my photos.
Dennis Demori’s Flickr Set – Art + Design Night in Miami’s Design District
Miami Ad School: Monday Night Lecture
via ky_olsen
Every Monday night at MAS we have a new guest speaker(s) from the industry. Some speakers tend to focus on the work their agency has done, while others spend more time talking about ad careers, develop skills and/or current industry trends.
My favorite presentation so far was this past Wednesday night. The speakers were:
Mat Zucker, VP, Executive Creative Director at Agency.com
Bryan Fuhr, Director of Strategy at AKQA
The main topic of the evening was listening, and how it is so essential for effective communication. I used to be terrible at this – I would constantly talk over people because I was more interested in telling them what I knew than paying attention to what they knew. What I’ve realized over the past few years and what Mat and Bryan discussed Monday night is that some of the best communicators also listen very intently.
I think when two people speak at the same time it’s like two cars driving towards each other on the same side of the road. One eventually HAS to step aside otherwise you arrive at an impasse where neither will arrive at the desired destination.
It’s the same with conversations. There needs to be a constant and healthy rapport back and forth.
When I worked in sales I learned that it’s actually the person that ASKS the questions that has control of the conversation and the sale, NOT the person speaking. I used the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, so I would only speak and ask questions for about 20% of the conversation. The rest of the time I was listening to uncover my client’s needs and understand the situation.
In “Perfect Pitch,” author Jon Steel says that the most important lesson he learned making new business presentations and in life in general was this:
“…successful communication and persuasion is not, as most people think, about being good at talking, having the gift of the gab. No, the best communicators, the best persuaders, are the best at what they do because invariably they are good listeners.”
Moving on, here’s the slides from Monday night’s lectures. Thanks to Bryan Fuhr for allowing me to share these.
Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com
A lot of people say that this is their favorite Ted Talk, and I really enjoyed it too. I just watched it for my first time today. A few quotes from the presentation:
“Kids will take a chance – they’re not frightened of being wrong…If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
“Picasso once said all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. We don’t grow into creativity..we grow out of it.”
“If you think of it the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued or it was actually stigmatized.”
“We know 3 things about intelligence: 1) It’s diverse 2)It’s dynamic 3) It’s distinct”
It’s interesting how right on Sir Ken Robinson is during this talk. He basically says the educational system – not just in the U.S., but everywhere in the world, is fundamentally flawed, because it mirrors itself after its educators. Professors, he says, “Live in their heads.” They’re focused on Mathematics, Literature and Science, and the Arts are always placed at the bottom of the educational hierarchy. As a result, students who excel at the Arts and creativity aren’t celebrated – they’re perceived as inadequate. This thinking stifles our creativity instead of nurturing it.
Miami Ad School: Week Five Day-By-Day Breakdown
via koka_sexton
The Planners have a pretty full schedule at MAS between classes, lectures and group meetings. Here’s what it looks like for Week 5. It varies a little bit each week, but this should give you a good idea of what it’s like.
Our week basically ends on Wednesday nights and starts on Thursdays. Wednesday nights we have presentations and we showcase our fully executed strategic and creative campaigns.
Thursday: I worked all day on this week’s assignment for Campbell Soup. I probably spent about 10 hours doing research at home, reading everything from Campbell Soup’s Annual Report to Wikipedia. My Planning partner did her own research. We spoke around 3pm for an hour to discuss our research up to that point and discuss what we wanted our strategy to be for the client. Around 9pm we emailed each other our own version of the Creative Brief, then I combined both versions and revised them again, taking out redundancies, rewording the brief, reducing it to the most essential info, and reviewing our strategy again to make sure we were on the same page. Our day ended around 11pm.
Friday:
- 11:30am – Meet w/ Planning partner
- Noon – Meet w/ Creative Team
- 4pm – Planning lecture
I met with my Planning partner at 11:30am to review our Creative Briefs again and talk about how we wanted to brief our Creative team. Our meeting began at Noon and took about an hour. Then we spoke for another half hour about our final project for the quarter.
I was a little nervous about meeting with our Creatives because we had all been in different groups for the 1st four weeks. One of the biggest challenges people have at MAS is working in teams. If you’re lucky, like I’ve been, you get a solid team where everyone contributes, gets along, presents well and has great ideas. If you’re not so lucky, you need to figure out how to make it work because when you work in an agency you’re not going to be able to choose who you work with either.
This is a fact of life: sometimes you’re forced to work with people you don’t get along with and you need to do your best to make sure the job gets done.
Then me and my Planning partner headed over to the local supermarket to check out the store display for Campbell Soup to get a better idea of how things work at the point of sale. We wanted to see the variety of products but also understand what the prices were for all the kinds of soups they sell.
I stopped at my apartment for a little bit but I had to be back at MAS at 4pm for our Planning lecture (which is basically every Friday night). Our Planning instructor this week is Beth Knight with Tracey Locke in NYC. She provided an overview of what we were going to do over the weekend and discussed Qualitative analysis.
Saturday:
- 9:30am – Class at focus group facility
- Afternoon (around 2-4pm) – Go to Vitamin Shoppe to conduct Qualitative research
- Evening – Prepare brief for Sunday morning
Usually we have class on Saturday mornings from 10am-1pm, but this weekend was different. We met at a focus group facility at 9:30am. We were given an assignment the night before, and we received further instructions in the morning. The new client was Vitamin Shoppe, and our task was to create a strategy to increase female customers. Before leaving the facility, we also participated in mock focus group interviews to get a better understand of how the process works.
We wrapped up around Noon, and my group decided to grab lunch before working on our assignment. To help us develop our strategy, all the groups were assigned various Vitamin Shoppe locations to visit as part of our market research; our location was in South Miami. We walked around the store and took pics, interviewed staff members and store patrons. I was happy to put my new Flip Ultra Camcorder to use and I ended up using it as a voice recorder with one of the staff members.
We spent the rest of the afternoon developing our strategies and our creative briefs. I also did a little work on our current Campbell Soup assignment, and the day ended around 11pm.
Sunday:
- 9:30am – Class
- 1pm – Meeting w/ creatives
My day began with class at 9:30am when we presented our findings and our creative briefs for Vitamin Shoppe. We received feedback from our Planning instructor Beth, and finished with a little Planning Q&A session. Class was over at Noon, and then I was recruited by some of the creatives to help them model for an assignment. It was fun but I think I should keep my Planning job (when I get one).
At 1pm I had a meeting with my Planning partner and Creative team to review our progress on the Campbell Soup campaign. We discussed our key insight and executional ideas. We also discussed our NYTimes assignment briefly. Our meeting took about 45 min and we parted ways around 1:45pm.
Soccer is really popular on Sundays, and the faculty encourages everyone to play. I really needed a break so I’ll confess to skipping it to take a nap at home and recharge my batteries.
On the agenda for the rest of Sunday:
- get some reading done
- work on blog posts
- finish assembling supporting info for Campbell Soup insight
- keep researching Vitamin Shoppe assignment if I still have time at the end of the day
Monday:
- 12pm: Special Planning class with Marco from Concept Cafe Advertising. Should last about 2 hours
- After class meet with Planning partner to work on Campbell Soup presentation. Should last about 2 hours.
- 5pm: Monday Night Lecture with guest speaker. Should last about an hour.
- Quick meeting with Creatives to monitor progress on executions.
Tuesday:
- 12pm: Meeting with Creatives
- 7pm-9pm: Planning class to work on our book
- Spent all morning and afternoon outside of meetings and class working on the PowerPoint presentation for Campbell Soup.
Wednesday:
- 5pm – Meet w/ Planning partner to review/rehearse presentation
- Presentation class at 6:30pm
Wed. morning I spoke with my Planning partner. I sent her the PowerPoint presentation for review, and started making revisions when I received her comments. My revisions basically took all afternoon.
I got to school around 5pm to review our slides and rehearse for our presentation. Around 6pm our Creatives joined us for a final review.
Everyone is presenting Wednesday night. It’s about 10 teams, and unfortunately our turn wasn’t until about 10pm. I’ll save the discussion about Wednesday’s presentation night for another time; that’s a blog post of its own.
So that’s it. A week as an Acount Planner at MAS. I never found a detailed breakdown like this when I was considering the Account Planning program, so I hope this helps anyone who is thinking of attending the Boot Camp.
If you have any questions, you can ask them in the comments or follow me on Twitter.
Elizabeth Gilbert on genius | Video on TED.com
One of the key insights author Elizabeth Gilbert has goes back to the times of Ancient Rome and Greece. In those days, people believed “genius” came from a divine source. This theory evolved from having genius to being a genius. She says that this tremendous pressure to live up to the expectations of being a genius puts an unnatural burden and expectation on creative people, which inevitably leads to their burnout or early demise.
She says,”I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the past 500 years.”Although I don’t wholeheartedly agree with her argument, I think it is important for people to distance themselves at times from their actions and behaviors to gain perspective. NOT to shun responsibility or accountability when things don’t go well, but to understand that WHAT you do will vary in success despite your greatest efforts. Creative people are often defined by their creative output (or lack of) and I think the key takeaway here is by putting less pressure on themselves they can rebound more easily and dive back into the creative process.
What do you think?
17 Career Lessons from IDEO’s David Kelley
via frozenchipmunk
Fast Company recently asked former students, co-workers and friends to share their favorite life lessons from IDEO‘s founder. Here’s my favorites:
- “Success tends to focus your efforts, failure assures me that you try something different and eventually better.” — from Perry Kleban, CEO, Timbuk2
- “You’re the best version of yourself when you manage to have fun doing your work.” — from Chris Flink, IDEO
- “You can’t think your way through every problem. Trying things and engaging people helps you get unstuck.” — from George Kembel, executive director, Stanford d.school
- “Make the human element as important as the technical and business elements.” — GK
- “Your failures interest me far more than your success.” — PK
- “David helped me realize that it’s not what you work on, but whom you work with that makes all the difference. This, ironically, resonates even at a company that tackles some of the most exciting creative challenges in the world.” — CF
- “Think with your hands, build something or try something, then talk about it, NOT the reverse.” — PK
Here’s the rest of the career lessons.
Further info:
Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship Corner: David Kelley
The Art of Innovation: Lessons In Creativity From IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm
What’s On My Nightstand
via stephmcg
I read constantly. If I was to sum up why in three words, I’d say:
- Information
- Inspiration
- Ideas
I’ve gotten a lot more studious about my reading over the last couple years. I make diligent use of my highlighter and write notes in the margins, and flag useful pages so I can reference them quickly. I’ve also been writing summaries for each book to make sure I have a thorough understanding of the subject – this is a great tool to find certain concepts and quotes that I may want to locate later on. Plus everything is saved online so I always have access to my notes.
As structured as I am with my reading, I still tend to get backed up here and there. As of today, I’ve got about 356 articles bookmarked on Delicious that I haven’t been able to get to yet. I also read about 50 different blogs.
In the meantime I’ve been accumulating a number of unread books on my nightstand. Here’s what next in my literary queue:
The ones I’ve got next to my bed are basically a mix of evolutionary biology/psychology, sports and marketing.
You can’t see the name on the really skinny one on top – it’s called “Zig Ziglar’s Little Book of Big Quotes.” I usually carry it in my book bag. It has lots of inspirational, pithy quotes like,
“Positive thinking won’t let you do anything but it will you do everything better than negative thinking will”
and
“The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now.”
Right now I’m finishing up “Bringing Down The House” (which is what the movie “21″ was based on) and getting started on “Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business” by Jon Steel. I try to alternate what I read since I believe there’s a lot we can learn from other industries, subjects and even fiction.
Thanks Libby Ander ( @libbyander ) for the original idea for this post.
What’s on your nightstand? Share some pics!
Further reading:
Ryan Holiday – Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your “Level”
How I’ve Been Using Twitter
via jmilles
I’m just going to dive right in and assume you know what Twitter is. If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, view the links at the bottom of this post.
My first Tweet was back on Sept. 10th, 2008. It took a few months to really start getting a hang of it. If you’re not following (and being followed) by at least a couple dozen people I think it’s hard to wrap your head around it.
Originally I used Twhirl for a couple weeks but then I switched to TweetDeck and I couldn’t be happier. I also use TwitterBerry occasionally on my Blackberry. The interface on TweetDeck is terrific and it makes it MUCH easier to segment people and track certain conversations. Right now I’ve set up two special groups – in one group I only follow Planners (to network and keep abreast of what’s going on in the Planning community) and in the other I follow non-Planners.
The majority of people I follow are Account Planners, work at Ad agencies, or are involved in Branding, Marketing and/or Social Media. I also follow a few companies like Evernote and Drop.io to stay aware of product updates.
So here’s the main ways I’m using Twitter right now:
- First and foremost, I try to focus on creating value for others. I think karma will somehow work its way back to me.
- As a second RSS Feed: There’s a lots of conversations and links being passed around Twitter. This is a great way for me to stay current on news, industry trends, etc. I think of Twitter as a chat room on steroids. When I find something of value, I often share it by retweeting, emailing or posting on other sites and/or bookmarking it on Delicious for future reference.
- To share items I find interesting: articles, pics, news, stories, etc.
- To take polls/surveys: This is something I started doing recently and I think it’s a great way to do a quick “focus group.”
- I use search.twitter.com when I want to find out about specific topics. I’m in school right now, and Twitter has been useful when I want to get some consumer opinions on clients I’m working on, like Red Mango or Mtn Dew.
- Building my network: I occassionally use Twitter to direct people to my other online locations, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning and my blog.
- Originally I was a spectator on the sidelines, but over the past few months I’ve started to join the conversation.
What I don’t do:
- I don’t follow everyone just because they follow me. I’m sorry. There’s just NO way I could possibly follow thousands of people. I don’t have the time or the interest. Twitter’s just another social networking tool – it’s not my life. There’s certain topics/industries that I’m just not interested in either. In fairness to time – mine and yours – I can’t follow everyone. I prefer to keep my focus on who I follow because I want to build stronger relationships within those circles.
- I rarely talk about day-to-day activities. You won’t know what time I woke up or that I’m bored/tired/sleepy/hungry. Again, I think the best way to use Twitter is by constantly adding value.
Even though we can get caught up in the technology aspect, I think at the core of Twitter or any other social site is information sharing and relationship building. The people who take advantage of these two principles will be able to get the most out of the site.
You can follow me here on Twitter.
For further info, check out Jeremiah Owyang’s excellent blog post: Web Strategy, What The Web Strategist Should Know About Twitter
Beginner’s Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh
Chris Brogan: Newbies Guide to Twitter
Chris Brogan: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business
UPDATE – FEB. 15th, 2009
Excellent new post from Brian Solis: Finding The Tweet Spot, Top Tips For Building Twitter Relationships
Miami Ad School: Week Four Planning Review
via kevindooley
I’m just going to give a super quick review of Week Four, since I want to post about some other things and I’ve been playing catch up on these Week in Review posts.
Our 5th Planner instructor kicks off with a lecture tonight and I’m really excited to hear what he/she has to say. We’re also visiting a focus group facility tomorrow (Sat) morning so I’m looking forward to that too.
Anyway, looking back, our Planning instructor for Week Four was Michael Fanuele with Euro RSCG. Michael’s class structure and style was a lot looser than the other instructors. The best thing about him was he was brutally honest and didn’t sugarcoat anything. He helped us get a better understanding of office politics, the interview process, what we should put in our books, and what Planning was all about.
A few things that stood out:
- Two of the most important Planner skills are: 1) Clarity 2) Separating creative ideas from executional ideas
- The best Planners are the best students
- When looking for an agency to work for: 1) find a mentor who will spend time with you 2) look for the opportunity to work on pitch after pitch after pitch so you can hone your skills
I’ll probably update this post later but that’s all I’m going to say for now.
Miami Ad School: Week Three Planning Review
Our Planning instructor for Week Three was Mick McCabe with Deutsch NYC. Looking over my notes, I realized that Mick’s classes were FULL of great quotes, comments, opinions, etc. Here’s a quick summary:
- Good briefs are emblematic of what you need to be a good Planner
- The Creative Brief is the bridge between the Client Brief and the Creative Execution
- Empathy is an important skill for Planners (primarily for Creatives)
- You need to think in headline thoughts and catchphrases. Write the idea down first (even if written poorly) and improve it again and again
- When you write a brief, clients should say, “We never would have thought of that!”
- There’s an increasing focus in the industry on behavioral results: It’s not just about changing perceptions – are people going to DO something?
- The best Planners are those who really understand people and what they’re like
- Planners need to understand and be involved in Media
Telling a Good Story for Your Presentations:
- It should build to the key strategic idea
- It should be blatantly obvious and make sense when you arrive at that point
Three terrific and very different Planning instructors in three weeks. It’s been a really great progression so far, and each week we’re learning and gathering more tools to put to use.
Miami Ad School: Week Two Planning Review
In Week Two our Planning Instructor for the weekend was Eliza Esquivel, Planning Director with TBWAChiatDay in NYC. Eliza started off with a great quote from Sun Tzu:
If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can come out of hundreds of battles without danger.
How does this relate to Planning? I think the emphasis hear is on research. As a Planner, you need to know your client inside out. You need to know your client’s competitors too. Find out what people are saying on Twitter, the history of the brand, read annual reports, and know more about the brand than the client’s Marketing Department know themselves. When you’ve done your research, you can speak confidently and with conviction.
This is one of the things me and my Planning partner have discussed multiple times. Speak with conviction. If you don’t believe strongly in your strategy, then why should your client? As Chris Owens told us in Week One, “The Planner needs to be the most confident person in the room.”
Eliza also talked about a few Planning Principles. Here they are:
- Walk in stupid every day: Be humble. Be flexible with theideas you’ve inherited.
- The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.
- “Be cautious of worshiping the tea pot, rather than drinking the tea.”
- Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident. That’s Latin for “If you can see far it’s because you’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Lastly, one of the main concepts Eliza drilled into us was the Disruption methodology. I’m not going to go into the details right now, so I’ll just say read the book.
Disruption: Overcoming Conventions and Shaking Up the Marketplace by Jean-Marie Dru.
Eliza was a terrific Planning instructor for Week Two. She gave us LOTS of feedback, and one thing that still stands out in my mind was that I watched her taking studious notes during our presentations. She really cared about helping us improve and I’m thankful for her help.
Video: Lost Generation
Clever little video that was a finalist in AARP U@50 contest. I love the simplicity of it.
UPDATE: Feb. 3rd
I should point out that another video by Argentinean agency TBWA/Savaglio created this concept first. It won the silver lion in the Cannes Lions Contest in 2006, which was about a year before “Lost Generation” came out.
Video: Her Morning Elegance
Terrific stop-motion video:
MAS Assignment: Alphabet Soup
Our recent “mini” assignment this past week was to take photos and look for 15 letters in those photos. In other words, you might take a picture of an arch that looks like an “M” or a crack in a sidewalk that looks like a “Y.” It’s a great exercise to help you look at things differently, which is an important skill as a Planner.
I decided to take pictures of shadows around my neighborhood. I used a sidewalk, a bicycle’s spokes and a gate at my apartment. Then I cropped the photos so you can see the letter a little crisper.
Miami Ad School: Week One Planning Review
We had a lot of information thrown at us in Week One: guest lecture, brainstorming techniques, two assignments and our class schedules for the quarter.
I also met my fellow group of Planners, who are a diverse group from all over the globe, including Russia, Lithuania, Romania, Venezuela. It’s very exciting and I love the cultural mix.
Friday through Sunday (yes, we have classes on the weekends too) was Planning Overview with Chris Owens from The Richards Group. This was also when we received our 2nd assignment.
Chris Owens was absolutely terrific, and we all felt very fortunate to have him as our first instructor. It’s obvious he’s very passionate about Planning and he offered a wealth of information.
A brief summary of what we covered:
- What is Account Planning?
- Tools Every Planner Should Use
- Brand Model
- Developing The Creative Brief
One of the highlights for me was the clarification of what it means to be a Planner. Planners are not:
- the “voice of the consumer” (suggests we are a passive conduit)
- just researchers
Planners are:
- Brand & creative strategists
- Storytellers
- Trend trackers
- Idea champions
- Guides
This really only scratches the surface – I just summarized about 11 hours of in and out of class discussions. Up until MAS, most of my knowledge of Planning was through books and the web. MAS tries to create an environment that is very close to what you would experience in a real agency, and overall I think it succeeds. The opportunity to work in a team, bounce ideas off of one another and actually work on a campaign from idea to execution are invaluable.
Aquarium Phone Booth
Really clever combination of something left practically unused because of advances in technology and telecommunications and, well….fish in a big tank of water:
More pics at thepirata.com .
New Pepsi Ads
Some pics of the recent ads around Miami from the Refresh Everything campaign:
Banner on Miami Herald building
From a design perspective, I like the ads and the website. They’re simple and eye-catching, although I don’t think they’re very original (placing the round logo in place of the “O”).
Let’s dig a little deeper: The website is great, and takes a simple idea (people can post videos on the Pepsi YouTube Channel and address them to the President — best ones will be shown on the Pepsi website) to get people involved and create buzz. The reaction seems to be mixed, however, and Pepsi is treading a thin line by giving the site and the ads a political feel. There’s some positive feedback from “The New Advertising” blog that touches on Pepsi’s desire to target the Optimistic Millennials, where it says,
“They’re the generation that, whenever we do research with them, expresses an enormous longing for the optimism of the sixties.They envy the generation’s protest, music, dress, sexual mores and so much more. They believe they missed a critical period in relatively recent history.”
In the meantime, 24ahead.com points out that the numbers don’t look good (the number of videos being viewed is really low), while other right-wing blogs are calling for an outright boycott of all Pepsi products.
Here’s the recent Pepsi New Year’s Eve video that launched the campaign.
What do you think?
UPDATE – FEB. 1st
Here’s “Refresh Anthem” which aired during the Super Bowl:
Under Construction
Image Courtesy of Jasoon
This blog is under heavy duty construction at this time. Be back real soon.
Random Thoughts on Increasing Voter Participation
I went online the other day to verify that I was registered to vote. A couple things I didn’t realize:
Image courtesy of joebeone
- You need to re-register if you’ve moved
- You can’t register online. Sure, you can do the preliminary stuff, but you still need to print out a form and mail it. Yeah, the old school way.
Submitted My Ad School Application
Image courtesy of alex.ch
MAS Application Almost Done
Image courtesy of Ultimadrago
- Read blogs about Planning, Advertising and Marketing
- Read books about the same topics
Brief History of the Internet
New Microsoft Ad: “I’m A PC”
I like this new Microsoft commercial. It’s hip–which is really pushing the envelope for Microsoft, but I think it’s an important step for them to reframe their brand. It almost feels like a soft drink ad, and that’s the key word: feel.
Post It Note Experiments
This video is awesome. Why can’t more be like this?
EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.
Thanks to Iain Tait for sharing on Crackunit.
Google Chrome Available for Download
I’ve been playing around with the new Google Chrome web browser tonight and I think it’s awesome (I’m using it right now).
- the ability to go back and forth between tabs/websites quickly and easily
- thumbnails of my most visited sites
- being able to enter both web address and searches in the same field
What If Starbucks Couldn’t Sell Coffee?
I was watching “American Originals: Budweiser” on CNBC tonight, and one of the most interesting things they pointed out was that Anheuser-Busch was unable to produce beer for about 14 years during Prohibition. They survived by diversifying and producing other products, including ice cream, ginger ale and refrigerated cabinets.
What would happen if other companies were unable to produce their flagship product?
What if Starbucks couldn’t sell coffee?
What if Harley-Davidson couldn’t sell motorcycles?
How would these and other similar companies survive?
Apple was originally known for the Mac. It revolutionized the idea of a personal computer, however, nowadays, when consumers think of Apple, they don’t just think of Macs—they think of itunes, ipods, and iphones. They’ve not only dramatically changed the computer industry, they’ve also become brand leaders in music distribution and cell phones.
They didn’t invent these things; they took something familiar and made some distinct changes to make them into something new. These innovations helped them cross the chasm of early adopters into the mainstream market.
Why do so many companies put their eggs into one basket?
Mad Men De-Twittered
AMC has lost a significant opportunity this week by not allowing fans of the show to continue posting on Twitter under the characters’ names. What they should have done was follow the lead of companies like Timberland and Pabst Blue Ribbon, who understood that sometimes the best way to grow your brand is to just..let..go.
In “The Culting of Brands,” by Douglas Atkin, the author says, “Occassionally, gifts fall into the lap of unsuspecting brand managers. Sometimes communities will adopt a brand that the brand isn’t trying to engage. If it does, don’t mess with it. Resist your inclination to control events and let the community become the brand manager.”
Case #1: Timberland is most notably recognized for their rugged hiking boots and outdoorsy ethos, however, the hip-hop community has embraced their flagship product. There’s even a famous hip-hop star, Timbaland, who has adopted the company’s moniker as his stage name.
Case #2: Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) was really popular back in the 70′s before light beers (Bud Light), imports (Heineken), and microbrews (Sam Adams) dominated the market and PBR sales slumped.
Writes Atkin, “But by mid-2002 something had changed drastically. Pabst Blue Ribbon had miraculously become the fastest growing brand of all domestic beers, achieving double digit growth within a declining industry.
What happened to spark such a turnaround? A thriving community had adopted PBR as a brand that espoused their ideals. They liked how they had never seen advertisements for it, and that it was a throwback to America’s heartland and blue-collar ideals. It was a beer that wasn’t about image.
Irononically, this embrace quickly gave PBR an image. Impressively, PBR’s marketing team has resisted the temptation to jump on the hipster bandwagon and try to market to this cynical demographic. They realize that they are popular because they haven’t been trying to woo anyone. PBR wisely realizes that it completely needs to let go if they want to continue to enjoy their resurrection within the hipster community.”
Everyone was shocked to see AMC using Twitter to promote the show, and instantly catapulted the network’s “cool” factor. AMC should have let the fans grow the fan base on the site organically–they were doing a great job, especially with the 60′s era dialogue. Either way, AMC put the kabosh on this and we won’t know where it may have lead. Really ironic, as Gawker pointed out, that a show about advertising doesn’t know how to advertise itself.
Book Review: The Culting of Brands
I’m currently reading a great book on Branding called, “The Culting of Brands: When Customers Become True Believers” by Douglas Atkin.
Atkin provides evidence and case studies that illustrate how religious cults and brands are very similar, and outlines the strategies marketers can use to build cult-like followings for their brands.
Most of us, when we think of the word “cult,” envision obsessive, socially inept and desperate people with serious psychological problems.
Atkin argues that the reality of cult members is actually quite the opposite: they are intelligent and educated social-connectors. He also says that, “..people become addicted to ‘cult brands’ like jetBlue, Apple, eBay or Mary Kay for more or less the same reasons that people become committed to cults like the Hare Krishna.”
According to Atkin, “A cult is normally a group that embraces new or fundamentally different ideas. Its ideology departs significantly from the prevailing beliefs of the surrounding culture. It is therefore progressive.”
A few key points:
- “People in significant numbers are not going to join an organization populated by social failures. They will be drawn to a religion such as the Mormon church, and a brand such as Saturn, through word of mouth. That mouth has to belong to someone whom potential recruiters will trust and respect.”
- Most of the public think people join cults to conform. They actually join to become more individual. Atkin interviewed a writer and Mac user who said, ” ‘..a Mac made me creative. No, actually, I was creative to begin with, and in some ways, they made me more creative.’ It had taken that part of his identity that he considers his most defining characteristic, his creativity, and accelerated it. That’s a pretty important role he has ascribed to a mere brand.”
- Cults/brands must exist outside of social norms in order to be embraced by their target audience. In other words, you can’t be all things to all people. For marketers, this is a perfect example of the importance of niche marketing. By separating yourself from the mainstream, you appeal to the alienated group who will become loyal advocates of your brand. Harley-Davidson is a great case study: they have a repeat purchase rate of 95%!
Overall, this book provides an interesting viewpoint on how brands are built. I felt it was a little repetitive and could have been about 50 pages shorter, but I found the sections on jetBlue and Saturn especially interesting.
There are so many products and services out there with little to differentiate them in the eyes of the consumer. The most important concept a marketer needs to understand is that consumers are looking for an emotional connection in “cult” or “brand” communities, and the individual’s need to become a part of these puzzles gives marketers an excellent hot-button to push.
BUY IT ON AMAZON The Culting of Brands : When Customers Become True Believers
