I remember reading one of Tom Peter’s books about five years ago, when this sentence popped right out at me:
“Make appealing to women your Marketing No. 1 priority.”
It seemed like a very bold statement to me at the time, though Tom’s rationale was rock-solid. Not only do women account for over half of the nation’s GDP, their power over what is spent in the household is vastly greater than their menfolk’s.
Sure, it’s a no-brainer. Did I pay any attention at the time? Of course not. I’m a Man. And men are stupid.
Fast-forward half a decade and slowly I’m wising up, for three main reasons:
1. My women print customers skew just under 50%.
2. Though the remaining small majority of my print customers are male, before they buy from me, it seems 90% have to get their wives’ or girlfriends’ permission first. Especially for the large, more expensive prints to be hung in the home.
3. The online conversation I’m having- in the blog comments, Twitter, Facebook etc, is skewing increasingly female, especially on Facebook. I’d say 60% overall, maybe more.
In short, women are now calling the shots on gapingvoid. All in all, I think it’s a VERY positive development. What about your gig?
Not surprised – there’s a bunch of us women who love smart, moving, funny, irreverent stuff about changing the world while making money, that’s romantic-yet-realistic.
And the thing is, we women talk. We connect. We nurture relationships. We are awesome at social media b/c it is extension of what we natural do IRL.
Yes, Elizabeth, and those are EXACTLY the kinds of customers I want and need. Like I said, it’s a no-brainer. Rock on.
I’m interested in how art affects “The Real World”- the workplace, the world of work, the world of business. That’s what the Cube Grenade idea is all about.
My advertising buddy, Vinny Warren, grew up in a Roman Catholic household in Ireland. He was telling me that his parents would always have a few religious icons hanging on the wall somewhere. Pictures of Saints, Mary & Baby Jesus, that kind of thing.
Why? Says Vinny, “To remind us who we were.”
My work has never been about getting the approval of the New York art gallery mafia. My work has always been about “What Really Matters” to people, especially to my peers.
Art that reminds you who you are. Exactly. What applies in Catholic households also applies in places of business. Shared Meaning. Shared Purpose. Exactly. Social Objects. Exactly.
Secondly, I think there’s an insatiable hunger for it. Not to lose ourselves in the hopeless muddle we call Life, but instead, doing something that matters, making a difference, creating good in the world, creating value. Remembering what’s really important, remembering who we are.
This is not just about Art and cartoons, this is about EVERYTHING we do.
I’ve been saying this to my clients for years- to have a successful brand, personal or otherwise, it can’t just be about you, or even your customers, it has to be about something HIGHER than all of us. A “Purpose-Idea” .
gapingvoid is no exception; neither is your work.
“Remember who you are.” I’ll try to live up to it; I hope TO GOD that you will, too. Amen.
Within 1 week of meeting this person you realize that not only have you found your soulmate, but you’ve found your soulmate who likes to have sex 4 times a day in the bed, on the dining table, on the kitchen floor, in the changing rooms at Bloomingdale’s etc.
Within 2 weeks you’re already talking about moving in together.
Within 3 weeks you’re talking about having babies together.
Within 4 weeks you realize this person is a complete psychopath.
Within 5 weeks this person also thinks you’re a complete psychopath.
Within 6 weeks you’re sitting at a restaurant with an old friend who is giving you the “How come you only call me when you’re single” speech.
[Originally published in 2001. You can go see it and more of my early personal faves on my "About" page here...]
It’s been a while since I last wrote about blogging to any great length, but here are some random thoughts, in no particular order:
1. Blogs work SUPERBLY if you have great content. It’s when they don’t that people bitch & moan about the medium. That was true ten years ago, when I started blogging, and it’s still true today.
2. Great content is really, really hard to make. That’s why so few blogs have it, but that’s not the medium’s fault. The same is true for any other media.
3. It’s OK to sell something on your blog. We’ve all got a living to make. Besides that, your blog is your own personal property. If people don’t like your content- whether it’s selling something or not- there’s no law saying they have to read it. They can go somewhere else. When people complain about my own blog’s long-running commercial agenda, I just think, “Dude, you’re about a decade too late. That ship sailed A LONG time ago.” Besides, I LIKE selling stuff via the blog. Sure beats making cold-calls.
4. No, I’m not keeping up with your blog. Like a good friend said to me a couple of years ago, “Man, I don’t even have time to read the blogs of my good friends anymore.” Ditto with me. Heck, it’s hard enough keeping up with my good friends’ Twitter streams.
5. Time to quote Shirky again: “So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this — the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.” -CLAY SHIRKY in 2004.
6. Facebook? Twitter? Who cares? The latter two are easy. Like I implied earlier, blogging is hard. Writing is hard. Getting other people to read it is the hardest bit of all. “It’s the content, Stupid.”
7. My faith in the power of blogging is still as strong as ever. That doesn’t mean I find it any easier.
8. Focus and Continuity are key. I had so many projects going on these last years, I always found it hard to focus. What was gapingvoid really about? Cartoons? Marketing? Self-promotion? Self-expression? It seemed to change on a daily basis. Now that, besides writing books, my business is pretty much focused on two things i.e. making art and selling it, I feel more calm about it all. And gapingvoid’s new unofficial tagline, “Remember Who You Are”, helps keep me focused on the kind of work I want to be making long-term, and why.
9. No, it’s not too late to start blogging.“But the Blogosphere is so crowded now, it’s too late to get first-mover advantage”, I hear you say. Perhaps. But it’s only crowded in the middle and the bottom. There’s always plenty of room at the top. People’s need to be informed and inspired by the good stuff is insatiable. But, as I implied, it has to be good, it has to be more than good in order to get there. Nobody has time for mediocre drek. The world is just too interesting and competitive now.
10. I don’t intend to quit blogging any time soon. It’s become a central part to what I do, that’s just reality. I’ve pretty much always done my own thing on gapingvoid, making it up as I go along. Some stuff gets traction, some gets ignored, that’s just the nature of the beast. The only big change I’ve made to my shtick recently is that I no longer post new cartoons on the blog, just old ones. You can find out why here.
There are 100 million blogs out there already, so a big Thank-You for reading this one. Seriously. Rock on.
Today, Bantam Live, is launching the commercial version of its social CRM workspace and is rolling out premium features of its product. Bantam Live provides an online workspace for business teams that has “social CRM” features, which include a real-time dashboard stream of messaging and workflow activity along with a native CRM application. Members can share information, track activity, and manage contact and company relationships both inside and outside the organization via a real-time activity stream.
For today’s lauch, they commissioned me to do this “Cube Grenade” for the front of their homepage. As they said on their blog:
The background of our relationship with Hugh goes like this… Bantam Live launched its public-beta last summer onstage at TechCrunch’s Real-time Stream Crunchup at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City, Michael Arrington auctioned off copy #1 of “dream big. techcrunch 2009″ serigraph by artist Hugh MacLeod. I won the auction. I figured it was a good cause (to the Electronic Frontier Foundation), would give us a promotional bump, and would commemorate for the team an achievement of sorts to have launched in beta as a selected startup from the stage on that day. As Hugh explains, the serigraph was a “social object.” It hangs in our loft today.
Thanks to John Rourke (Founder and CEO) for being such an awesome client. Rock on.
The unofficial tag-line for the gaping Gallery is “Remember Who You Are”. We’ve been using it internally for a while now. It goes back to what I said on the Cube Grenade page:
I’m interested in how art affects what some people call “The Real World”- the workplace, the world of work, the world of business. That’s what the Cube Grenade idea is all about.
My advertising buddy, Vinny Warren, grew up in a Roman Catholic household in Ireland. He was telling me that his parents would always have a few religious icons hanging on the wall somewhere. Pictures of Saints, Mary & Baby Jesus, that kind of thing.
Why? Says Vinny, “To remind us who we are.”
Art that reminds you who you are. Exactly. What applies in Catholic households also applies in places of business. Shared Meaning. Exactly. Social Objects. Exactly.
My work has never been about getting the approval of the New York art gallery mafia. My work has always been about “What Really Matters” to people, especially to my peers.
Which is is why I’ve not minded sending out schamaltzy, cutey-pie “Love” themed cartoons on my email list this last week.
Valentine’s Day might be corny, it might be crassly commercial, it might be vastly overdone…
But Romantic Love is important. It matters. And by taking the trouble to send your loved one a Valentine’s card or whatever, you’re reminding both yourself and the other person that yes, you haven’t forgotten that it matters.
Hence why it fits in nicely with “Remember who you are”.
Once Valentine’s Day is over I’ll return to my usual heartless, cynical shtick, of course. Just in case y’all were worried…
[Bonus Link:]“When life gets really tough, just remember the white pebble. Just remember who you really are. Just remember the person that only God can see.”
[P.S. Big Props to Vinny for helping to move my thinking forward. Dinner is on me next time, Buddy!]
These eight smart, kind, great people, some more well-known than others, are masters at what I call “Selling by Giving”.
They put stuff out there, as gifts. Great content, great ideas, great insights, great personal connection. By giving so much of themselves, for free, every day, they build up huge surpluses of goodwill, so when you’re finally in the market for something they’re selling (and they’re ALL selling something, trust me), they’re first on your list.
I do it, too, just not as well as these guys. I’ve published thousands of cartoons on this blog over the years, and that’s gotten me a lot of business. And not just fine art prints, either. It’s gotten me consulting gigs, full-time salary jobs, book deals, paid speaking gigs, marketing jobs, I could go on…
Selling by giving. Anybody who’s been watching any of these guys for a long time will know exactly what I’m talking about.
But here’s what’s interesting to me: I can remember not that long ago, say 5 years, when this type of marketing seemed pretty freaky to most people. Now it’s considered normal, at least to smart marketers. FIVE years. That’s all.
I could see that in another five years, ANYONE who wants to market ANYTHING successfully- be they small mom n’ pop shops to large companies, will have to be fluent in Gift Economics, to a level that seemed COMPLETELY alien only a few years ago.
With Valentine’s Day coming up, we thought we’d do a series of prints for all you love junkies out there.
Voila! The ‘Love’ Series. Order them now and get them in plenty of time before February 14th. Exactly!
You did the chocolate and flowers thing last year, anyway…
This cartoon series first came out of the Stormhoek “Love Tour” three years ago, when I was doing some Valentine’s promo for wine at Tesco’s, the large British supermarket chain. That was a very crazy two weeks; watch the video if you don’t believe me.
And Ladies, please always remember The Golden Rule: Men Are Stupid. So if you want your man to get you one of these beauties for Valentine’s Day, do not assume he and his walnut-sized brain will be smart enough to figure it out on their own. Best to drop him a hint. Maybe kick him in the shins. Or something.
I’ll be sending these cartoons out on my “Hugh’s Daily Cartoon” mailing list for the next week or two, then the plan is to do something less “cute and cuddly” after that. Rock on.
I remember reading one of Tom Peter’s books about five years ago, when this sentence popped right out at me:
This image to the left you should be seeing a lot of from now on, scattered around the gapingvoid empire. It’s now our official logo.
