Become a fan, see the video on NECN, read the article in the BBJ, ask me more, or just keep an eye out for what happens next. Thanks to everyone for your support.
About: Good Men Media Inc., is a part of The Good Men Project. The Foundation that owns all Good Men content has licensed its name to Good Men Media. Good Men Media, with independent ownership, will give a significant portion of its revenues back to the foundation in return. The Good Men Project remains the brand and all it stands for — the book, the DVD, the live events, the discussion. Good Men Media, Inc., is the for-profit media company that will run an online publication launching June, 1, 2010. And The Good Men Foundation remains the not-for-profit that helps men and boys at risk. Questions? please contact info@goodmenproject.org
Yesterday.I’m on Twitter. A Tweet leads me to a blog post written by Hugh MacLeod. On the blog – some great quotes about entrepreneurship. One in particular, strikes a chord: “People buy your product because it helps fill in the narrative gaps in their lives.”
I tweet that line. Someone doesn’t get what it means. I answer flippantly. But what I should have said was: “I can’t explain it in 140 characters.” Let me tell you a story.
Here it is. It’s actually five, short short stories of how brands have “filled in the narrative gaps” of my own life.
Hope this helps.
July, 2002 I am on a train, Zurich to Berlin. A giddy, giggling couple sits across from me. They are trying to conjugate the word “Google”, in French. “Je google, tu google, vous googlez.” The couple laughs. They kiss.I am fascinated. What other brand name do people say*while they are kissing*? I can’t think of one.
Google had been around for a while back then, but I hadn’t heard “Google” used as a verb before that moment. I get back to the US, excitedly exclaim to people: “Google has made it!” They stare at me quizzically.
Flash forward to 2010. Google’s Superbowl commercial. A perfect example of a brand demonstrating how they “fill in the narrative gaps in your life.” It is my story, told in different words.
September 2009Uh-oh. The convertible I had owned for ten years, 200,000 miles, drops dead in the middle of the highway. With the immediate prospect of two children in college looming; two tuition payments and a down economy, I swallow my pride and buy a used Honda Civic on CraigsList. My kids taunt me because it doesn’t even have power windows. I retort back that I am doing my “Civic duty”, saving on gas, saving money so they can go to the college of their choice. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. My kids stop laughing. I grow to love my new old car.
March 2009But what about pasta?” my fellow Twitterer asks. “Can pasta really fill in narrative gaps or just fill you?”I think about pasta. I think when my kids were young, telling them stories about – yes — pasta. “Strega Nona”, about a pot of spaghetti that bubbles over, consumes a town. I think of my Italian Grandmother, serving her wonderful manicotti to my then fiancé. He eats plate after plate, not knowing it’s only the appetizer. Turns green when she brings out the pot roast. We tell that story forever, even after we’re divorced. I think of how my kids, when stressed and having a horrible day, will instinctively ask me to make Macaroni and Cheese. “Whole wheat macaroni, please, mom”. I think about how they want to know HOW MUCH. HOW MUCH better is wheat than white pasta? HOW MUCH better would the environment be if the packaging didn’t have all that air in it. HOW MUCH would giving back a nickel per box help the world? “Tell me a story, mommy.” But this time, here is what matters.
November 2001The iPod has been out a year, I finally break down and buy one. It immediately and irrevocably changes my life. Songs – in any order I want – play for me – while I am doing housework. While I am at the gym. This is amazing. Chores that I used to feel, at best, ambivalent about, I now am excited over. It’s like I have won the lottery. Apple doesn’t talk about how their products will change your life, they just deliver one that does so. I am the one that tells the story. And when I talk about the iPod to my friends, I don’t say “hey, I just purchased a cool new product.” I say, “The iPod changed my life.”
March, 1999andFebruary 2010It’s a blustery day in March, and I’m in a drafty warehouse. A woman named Stacy Andrus is showing me her pita-chip making machine. Stacy used to own a sandwich cart in Downtown Boston. The lines at her cart grew long and people would get cranky waiting for their sandwiches. So she would roast some leftover pita bread, season it, and give free samples to people standing in line. And those people, now happy happy, would say “HEY. These pita chips are good. You should sell these.” So she did.
But at that moment in the warehouse, it’s noisy and chilly. Stacy invested everything she had into this new machine. And she had underestimated the problems with the bagging process. The seal has to be perfect. It has to be perfect. She’s going on her third year of only making $20,000 in salary with 100 hour workweeks. And she’s worried. Over the din, she shouts the words “It’s harder than people think, you know.” She wants help from me re-designing her bag, but she knows she can’t pay me. Heck, *I* know she can’t pay me. She offers to share with me business plan advice if I will give her packaging advice.
Stacy and I walk to her office, put the current bag on the table, stare at it. The words “Pita Chips” are in large letters. I tell her to reverse the hierarchy, make Stacy’s the biggest thing on the bag. Brand *Stacy* not the generic word “Pita Chips”. And I tell her to put the story, the story of how she started the company, on the bag. I will write that story for her, email it to her the next day. It’s the least I can do. Then I shrug my shoulders, walk out the door. I never see Stacy again.
In December of 2005, Stacy sells her company, Stacy’s Pita Chips, to Pepsico. Sales at the time are $60 million dollars.
Cut to two weeks ago. I’m sitting in my car – er, my Civic — with my daughter Allie. She’s eating from a bag of Stacy’s chips – cinnamon sugar. Suddenly she looks at the bag, shouts, “Hey, Mom, do you know the story of how Stacy’s was founded?” She pauses expectantly, a chip in one hand, the bag in the other. She’s 18 years old. She looks like the bite and smile portion of a television commercial.
“Why, yes, honey.” I reply. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
What do you think? Can you think of a single brand that is important to you that you can’t tell a story about?
I started blogging, tweeting and using other social networking/sharing/media sites not too long ago. The experience changed my life, in amazingly powerful ways, a comment that is still met with a great deal of skepticism almost everywhere I go.
But “Social Media” (a phrase that doesn’t even do what it’s really about justice, as most people equate the words “social media” with “getting on Facebook”) has given me the chance to meet brilliant, thoughtful people from all over the world, and talk to them as equals about things that are important to both of us. It’s helped me get involved in projects I never could have dreamed of on my own: producing a book and a movie, getting a cameo role in a movie; having crazy, impassioned conversations about the future of publishing, sexism, war, pornography; gave me a chance to help start not just one but three online publications; taught me how to shoot, edit and produce a hundred small videos; gotten me over my last final fears of technology.But most of all, I discovered the power in helping other people.
So why wouldn’t I want to blog about social media, if it brought about such profound and wonderful changes?
Because that would be like having a blog about email.
What I’d like to do here is to give you insights into the way technology is colliding with human interactions and communication, insights that will cause you to say “wow, I never saw the world that way.” And, at its best, will let you see the actions you can take next to create the profound changes I think we all can make.
I’m sure that sometimes I’ll slip up and talk about social media, because it still is such a passion of mine. But, on the whole, this blog is not a social media blog.
What is it instead?
It’s a “how the way we interact with each other affects the places we go together” blog.
It’s a “let’s think about creative ways to solve problems and then go out and solve them” blog.
It’s a “what if you didn’t think about technology and communication and marketing and friendship and business and art and change as separate things, but ONE thing” blog.
It’s a “where the heck is this all going to lead us 5, 10, 20, 100 years from now?” blog.
It’s a “wow, this is cool and here’s how it might translate into a business model” blog.
It’s a “Think. Do.” blog.
As always, comments are adored, opposing views are welcome, feedback isthoughtfully considered, and spammers are not tolerated.
Ad Headline: The Tsunami Killed 100 Times More People Than 9/11
Guest Post by Jim Mitchem
Last week DDB Brasil was publicly scrutinized for publishing a print ad and :30 television spot for the World Wildlife Foundation that caused quite a stir in the advertising community. There is some speculation as to whether WWF even knew about the campaign or whether DDB executives approved it. The ads were submitted in the 2009 Cannes Lions festival. Fingers will be pointed, people will lose jobs. But this post isn’t about the politics or egos. It’s about the creative development.
The print ad, which won a Cannes, shows a litany of passenger jets taking aim on Manhattan, ala September 11th. The headline talks to the number of deaths caused by an act of terrorism versus the number of deaths caused by natural disasters. The purpose of the ad is put the raw power of our planet into proper perspective. And it works. Kind of. Which is to say that you don’t tug on superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger. And you damn sure don’t use one of history’s worst spectacles of hate as the backdrop for promoting any company or organization.
My father always said, “It’s easier to run on a fly ball than to run back on one.” This is the one piece of advice from him that I utilize in my work every day. In fact, when I think through any communications problem I tend to run all around the periphery of first - to see how far logic extends in the brain. And frankly, if I were working on this project for WWF, I’d have come up with something similar to what they created. Only, I’d have written it down and shared it with my colleagues as a way to set the limits of periphery. Not as a realistic solution. Why? Because of the rules of cooth. Yes, we’re in advertising, but at some point we must draw the line. DDBs decision to publicly promote (in an advertising contest) this ad as a way to flex its conceptual muscle was proof to me that they lack cooth. The fact that this singular idea was produced beyond the napkin into a fully-flushed out print ad and television spot is shocking. Where is the cooth?
Jim Mitchem has his own provocative blog, Obsessed with Conformity. You can also find him on Twitter @smashadv
Gain 7 billionity followers! Make 80 trillionity by doing this!
We’re all concerned about being liked and being comfortable with money. These are two common insecurities that people prey on, especially much more so now in social media than ever. Thinking that way is the old wide fish-net push way of marketing. Here’s how Twitter can be maximized so you can get the most out of it, personally AND professionally.
Man in the mirror
Who do you want to surround yourself with in your life? How do you want to be viewed by others? These are questions that should be on your mind constantly, offline AND online.
The noise won’t stop
When you follow people on Twitter that don’t mean anything to your network (i.e. the other people you’ve connected with) what you end up with is a group of tweets that are disconnected. The conversation is almost schizophrenic. No one knows each other. Your stream is rushing past you like class 5 rapids.
Hey now you’re a ROCKSTAR get your game on go play
Maybe you CAN keep up with 80 thousand followers with your magical desktop sorting application, but I doubt it. The way you’re keeping up with them is not really getting to know them. Most likely what you’re doing is scanning for information, retweeting interesting information, replying to some random interesting tweets & monitoring your @ mentions and DMs for people talking to you.
Social media is about community. I dare you to tell me how the above situation represents community. What it feels more like is a old switchboard telephone operator. Maybe this works for you. Congratulations. This doesn’t work for me anymore.
Instead of just unfollowing people en masse I am unfollowing on a case by case basis according to pre-set guidelines I judge a twitter account to be suitable for connecting with. In laymens terms, if you suck you’re gone. I am also mostly following just those I’ve met offline first through my other social media friends. One RARE exception to that stipulation is if you follow me then engage me actively and I find your stream valuable. This is rare because most people don’t take the time to interact when they first add. This is the ‘hello my name is’ on Twitter.
Put me in coach I’m ready to play
Why am I telling you this? Not to showcase my follow numbers or ratio- because that alone doesn’t matter. Not to boast about unfollowing people because i’m so elite- because THAT is just ridiculous. No, it’s to show you insight into how you can get more out of your network.
Ever since I have started down this path I have seen more and more of my followers chatting with each other. Why? Most likely it could be because I go out to events that many of the same people frequent and we meet new people when they come to town thus growing our comm-unity. See that? Comm-unity, communication unity.
What’s the benefit of this? For one thing you get to see more than just broadcasted information from your friends. You get to see a whole other side of them when they speak to other people you know. This is when their personality truly comes out.
We all live in a yellow submarine
Twitter is for friends not fiends. I don’t want to be sold to, broadcasted at or have random irrelevant noise in my stream. My day and mind are noisy enough. I come online to be bolstered by community and friends when I can’t do so in my offline world. I also come online to further STRENGTHEN my offline relationships, as well as you should.
If you’re at this point, congratulations! Now you can take the next step by further tightening your network by going to your friends’ twitter pages and see who they are speaking to often that you aren’t following. Notice any repeating names. Follow them and introduce yourself by saying that you noticed they speak with X Y & Z and what you value about them. Talking about your common ground of friends does SO MUCH more for everyone- you, the person AND X Y & Z- than just saying that you’re looking forward to getting to know them. That’s trite and soulless.
I wanna hold your haaaaaaaaaand
Look at that. You’ve come to the end of the story. You can now start buying what your FRIENDS are selling. It’s much more fulfilling being able to help someone out that you care about then a random person you’re connected with. When you invest time and energy into someone you form a relationship. When this happens you create a ‘Trust Fund’ where both you and the other person either add or subtract trust from this mutual fund you have set up. Your Trust Fund grows so much more richer when you do business with those you trust greatly.
One last word, before I go..
Numbers DON’T matter, not because anti-numbers people say so. Numbers don’t matter because if there isn’t value and meaning behind them all they do is give a lovely facade of power that fools any fool. Any wise man knows that it’s the density not the breadth alone that counts. Water of the same volume spread out over a flat surface doesn’t have the same impact as water contained in a compact space. That being said, it’s not just quality, it’s also quantity of quality, so grow your real-ationships exponentially.
Cultivate your connections. Connect to people that mean something to you. Make those people mean much more to you. Introduce them into your circle to tighten relations more. Every person in my created @ChatPack and @MemeGirls groups do important things- or at least we think so. And that’s all that matters- that we do important things separately, connect and make great things together.
Perpetuate this ideal indefinitely. Your 20% will do and be your 80%. Nurture and grow your core group.
These are the people that will carry you to great heights.
I’ve been doing a lot of presentations lately, mostly speaking about Social Media and Branding. Here’s one I did for the Boston Ad Club. I’m sharing it because several people have asked for copies. I tried to make it as helpful as possible, and have included some (but not nearly all) of my commentary along with my slides.
One caveat: Everything I learn changes daily. This gets at some of my core thinking, but the rapid growth of new ideas in this field is astounding. Learn what you can from all this, but please, don’t hold me to anything. : )
Social Media and Branding, quite frankly, is one of my favorite things to talk about, so if you want to hear more, ping me and let’s connect. I’m always happy to have a call, an email, a tweet or, if physically possible a cup of coffee. Feel free to connect with me anywhere.
Thanks, and as always, comments are welcomed and encouraged.
There’s been lots of talk about the “death of advertising” and the increasing ineffectiveness of the media. There’s a tremendously well-researched, insightful and informative Bob Garfield post in Ad Age, with lots and lots of numbers supporting his version of “Apocalypse Now” for the ad industry. There’s no doubt that there’s agency layoffs, and client cutbacks and fear and uncertainty. So who am I to be the bearer of even an ounce of good news for the ad industry?
Okay, I won’t tell you this is good news. But I will tell you what I think is fascinating.
Throughout history, for every version of media, there has been an ad unit that is a miniature version of that very media. Advertising usually- in some form- mirrors the content of the media that surrounds it.
Ads in newspapers, for example, are rectangular shaped boxes that includes a “headline” and “copy”. Even the terminology is straight out of newspaper jargon. Pretty obvious, right? Television? The medium is 30 minute stories involving actors on a set. What are most TV commercials? 30 second stories involving actors on a set. With a little music thrown in, just like in the big boy shows. Radio? Started with dramas. The term ’soap opera’ was coined because soap manufacturers sponsored radio dramas in return for product plugs. Radio commercials thus become mini-dramas”; still at their best when they are theater of the mind for a brand story.
And then along came the Internet. Ahh, the Internet. I actually remember the day I first heard the term used. My friend Martha called me into her office. Told me I’d better sit down. Shut the door. My palms grew sweaty. She said, “Lisa, have you seen this thing called the Internet?” She called up a paragraph of html text on a screen. It was filled with hyperlinks and Martha showed me how to “click through” to layers of information. It was years later before the term “click-through” became ubiquitous for banner advertising ROI. But at the time I was in her office, there wasn’t a banner ad in sight.
So now we have a brave new medium – Social Media. And we’re all scratching our head, wondering what the ad unit is.
Do we stick little banner ads on social sites? Oh, please. Have you ever seen a TV “commercial” that is nothing more than a static photo and a logo? Trust me, it doesn’t work. Stick banner ads on social sites and you ruin both the media and the ROI. Best case scenario, the ads become invisible. Worst case, people run screaming from the media.
But then, what does an ad look like in social media? Is it merely conversations? Does all advertising become word of mouth among friends as Jeff Jarvis and others suggest?
Or…is the “ad” really a social ecosystem itself that a company sets up? The conversations with consumers that are now public combined with a fan page on Facebook and the photos on Flckr and the idea-sharing on Twitter and the YouTube videos. And is a new ad, perhaps, the way that the target audience shares content about a brand or company across complex and interrelated networks? A “display” ad is now a conversation that gets displayed in a public forum. Remember, just because you’re not screaming “buy this” with a sledgehammer doesn’t mean you’re not selling something. You’re selling the brand by engaging consumers across multiple touchpoints, just like the social web itself. It’s the online experience that engages the consumer and captures their imagination much the same way that television captured our collective imaginations back in its glory days.
Is the newest ad unit staring us in the face but we just don’t see it? Is it just a miniature version of the social web, the same way that past ad units were miniature versions of their own mediums?
Are we just afraid to call Social Media itself “Advertising” because we hold it so precious?
And for those who would argue that advertising is paid messaging, remember this. Social Media, or this new order of Social Advertising, or however we describe it, may appear to be free, but there is a cost to it all. There’s the time spent to do it right, to have individuals who actually hold conversations with the consumers. There’s the challenge of understanding how the brand story should be told across all the hundreds of touchpoints scattered across the web. There’s learning the new rules of etiquette – heck, there’s helping to *create* the new rules of etiquette. There’s building the network, or leveraging existing ones, and getting the people engaged in a way that’s genuine and authentic, and that comes from the very core of a brands values or a products benefits. And there’s a cost to understanding the potential of this medium, the cost to experiment, to make mistakes.
But on the flip side, the ROI could very well be survival for those who do it well and do it now. Get it right, and I truly believe you can re-invent a dying industry.
The best advertising has always been that which has captured the imagination of the public and becomes a part of the collective consciousness. What better time than now, what better media to do it with. Maybe advertising isn’t really dead at all. Maybe we simply don’t know what to call it.
I was eating supper with my daughter, Allie. We were discussing the future of advertising. Believe me, everything else I might have been discussing with a seventeen-year-old was off limits.
Me: “I think you have to look to YouTube for the future of TV commercials.”
Allie: “But really mom, who would go to YouTube to watch a commercial. I can’t imagine anyone would go seek out, say, a Honda commercial voluntarily.”
Me: “Hah! How about a commercial for a $375 blender?”
Allie: (shakes her head)
Mom: “A guy blended an iphone – an iphone – and got 6 million people to watch it on YouTube. It turned into smoke. It was pretty cool.”
Allie: “I want to see that.”
Me: “Precisely.”
Anyone who has ever tried to get the last word with a 17-year-old knows how hard that is. About as hard as getting 6 million people to *want* to watch your commercial.
{{special guest post for “the cause is the habit”}}
There’s a scene in The Wizard of Oz I can’t get out of my head. The flying monkeys have attacked; the Scarecrow has been torn apart. What’s left of the Scarecrow laments: “First they took my legs off and they threw them over there! Then they took my chest out and they threw it over there!”And the Tin Woodsman looks down and replies: “Well, that’s you all over!”
I’ve got to think that’s what it feels like to be a brand these days.
Back in the day, I wrote several “brand guideline” documents for clients. You know the ones that say, “The logo should be no smaller than 3/8” high and always have at least ½” of white space around it.” The effort was an attempt keep control over the brand – what it looked like, what it felt like, how it should be “presented” to the public. It always seemed a little silly at the time, now it seems downright laughable.
I mean, where does the logo even *go* anymore? Is there a place for branding “guidelines” in Social Media….
The title of the article is meant to invoke a sense of what is to come, not to just talk about companies but how they will relate to you in a more integrated way. In this article I’ll take a look at what I feel is coming down the pipeline for these areas. The future isn’t set in stone and neither are these predictions. Companies are already starting to track your habits. In the future it will just get more intuitive.
Extreme personalization
Companies will start utilizing your tracking data not only to target you at point of purchase but to craft full experiential life profiles for you. You will also offer up information that is more personal/emotional that can not be tracked, that exists inside you. Think of this as your Personal Purchasing Profile (3P), completely tailored to your every desire.
Imagine if you will a 3P that lists everything and anything you or anyone else would ever want to know about you. With the 3P there will not only be breadth but depth too. All nuances will be delved into as well as all areas you could ever want or know. Your 3P will be segmented into different areas with different permissions for them. Settings will be on a sliding scale of privacy with how much and what you want to share with who.
Hyper specific communications
Companies will be able to tell who, what, where, when and why you are. You heard me- WHY you are.
Geolocation technology is being popularized now, especially in mobile technoligies such as the iPhone. Mobile providers know where you are at all times even without this just by triangulating your position. All of these 5W’s will be cross checked with your 3P to accurately pinpoint what is going on with you at every single exact moment of your life. This integration of brands into your life will happen in a non-intrusive way that enhances your experiences.
Relevantly aggregated information
Information, regardless of sender, will be aggregated into relevant channels. Whatever criteria you preset as a favorite to watch out will be cross checked against infinite amounts of data. Priority will be given to companies who sponsor keywords to target you in the keyplaces and keytimes they’ve chosen.
Amount- speed and velocity
You will choose how much and how fast you receive sponsored results. This will be on a targeted grid that will form more of a web in 3-dimensional space rather than a sliding scale. Linear will be replaced with the multi-spacial for targeting and graphing, as the sheer amount of information will scoff in the face of two directions and two dimensions.
Easter eggs and planned obsolescence
Targeted ads will surprise you at specific locations as you pass them. They will also come seemingly out of nowhere when you must ‘act now’ because there is a limited amount of time to take advantage of the offer.
Multimedia convergence
Advertisements tend to be very linear depending on their channel of delivery. Print is print; video is video. Companies will begin to focus on the immersive experience where many different technologies and multimedia will come together to create a wholly enriched environment. Think all of your senses being as well as inner aspects of you being engaged fully.
Intuitive suggestion and prediction
Building on top of your wants, needs, desires and purchases will be a system for accurately predicting what you will want before you even know you want it. Suggesting of similar products will become more fine tuned to the nuances of categories so instead of someone offering you another type of thing from the category you will now be offered something exactly like the first thing PLUS something that builds on all the characteristics of what you covet. The prediction technology will take into account your patterns, trends occurring and the details of what you like to accurately tell you what you will like.
Choose your own adventure
There are so many companies out there now it can be confusing. You will see detailed lists of companies where you can opt-out of them or their specific service promotions for a set period of time. This will add to your 3P where you effectively choose certain products and companies over others. Companies will take advantage of this to purchase your favor.
Non-traditional synergies
Besides aligning with obvious partners, companies will start to partner with others who don’t normally fit their pattern of business interaction. Ranging from individuals and customer groups to completely out of the ballpark product categories, businesses will start to focus on values and emotions for a mutual engagement plan as opposed to focusing on benefits and features currently.
Automatic feed channels
You can already receive multimedia and news feeds by signing up for them. Multimedia and advertisements will come to a place where they will use your 3P to send things AUTOMATICALLY to you based on a variety of factors- time of day, location, who you are with, state of mind/emotions, weather, breaking news etc. Multimedia and companies will communicate with each other behind the scenes to make your automatic feed channel a smoother experience. Whatever synergies they can find in your life as well as between both of their content they will align them in your feed so you don’t have to.
Life sponsors
Mining information from your 3P, companies will hyper target situations in your life to more accurately serve you. They may even pay you to have the privilege to sponsor that moment of your life. It may range from an extremely important moment where you may want your favorite company involved to something fleeting where you may not care about companies being involved. It comes down to your outlook on certain companies and situations as well as what your 3P says about you. An Evangelist is more likely to have their favorite brand be a major part of a family function. A Casual Consumer is more likely to have a helpful brand around any random time that isn’t of any particular value to them.
These are just some of my thoughts where I see the future of how brands will fit into our lives. Information is coming harder and faster every day. Pretty soon the signal will turn to noise. Out of this noise you will see technologies emerge to turn the noise back to a highly focused clean signal. Things are getting better every day. Pay attention to the signs.
Do men cry? And talk about it? As a matter of fact, yes. ~ http://bit.ly/9nWBmc from @GoodMenProject magazine http://www.twitter.com/lisahickey
The Good Men Project Magazine has given birth today: to a new blog. Please drop by and visit. "Good Feed" ~ http://bit.ly/atb6un http://www.twitter.com/lisahickey
Interesting Infographic: Google's Acquisition Appetite ~ http://t.co/RCoCepH (thx @mitchjoel - Google as a 2nd exit strategy in the Valley) http://www.twitter.com/lisahickey
