Archive for July, 2004
July 31, 2004
19 Comments
More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:
1. Ignore everybody.
The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the biz card format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn’t I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?
You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us.
And asking close friends never works quite as well as you hope, either. It’s not that they deliberately want to be unhelpful. It’s just they don’t know your world one millionth as well as you know your world, no matter how hard they try, no matter how hard you try to explain.
Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they don’t want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They like things the way they are, that’s how they love you– the way you are, not the way you may become.
Ergo, they have no incentive to see you change. And they will be resistant to anything that catalyzes it. That’s human nature. And you would do the same, if the shoe was on the other foot.
With business colleagues it’s even worse. They’re used to dealing with you in a certain way. They’re used to having a certain level of control over the relationship. And they want whatever makes them more prosperous. Sure, they might prefer it if you prosper as well, but that’s not their top priority.
If your idea is so good that it changes your dynamic enough to where you need them less, or God forbid, THE MARKET needs them less, then they’re going to resist your idea every chance they can.
Again, that’s human nature.
GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.
Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it.
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More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:
8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.
Since the modern, scientifically-conceived corporation was invented in the early half of the Twentieth Century, creativity has been sacrificed in favor of forwarding the interests of the “Team Player”.
Fair enough. There was more money in doing it that way; that’s why they did it.
There’s only one problem. Team Players are not very good at creating value on their own. They are not autonomous; they need a team in order to exist.
So now corporations are awash with non-autonomous thinkers.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
And so on.
Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewarded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed. And that’s exactly what’s been happening. So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western World, making love to their Powerpoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.
What happens to an ecology, when the parasite level reaches critical mass?
The ecology dies.
If you’re creative, if you can think independantly, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did. And now your company can no longer afford to pretend that isn’t the case.
So dust off your horn and start tooting it. Exactly.
However if you’re not paricularly creative, then you’re in real trouble. And there’s no buzzword or “new paradigm” that can help you. They may not have mentioned this in business school, but… people like watching dinosaurs die.
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Just added Number Twelve to “How To Be Creative”:
12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
The pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it’s going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it’s worth it. Even if you don’t end up pulling it off, you’ll learn many incredible, magical, valuable things. It’s NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the opportunity– that hurts FAR more than any failure.
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More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:
10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY surprise me.
Abraham Lincoln wrote The Gettysberg Address on the back of his paper lunch bag, sitting on a park bench.
James Joyce wrote with a simple pencil and notebook. Somebody else did the typing.
Van Gough never started a painting with more than six colors on his palette.
I draw on the back of wee biz cards. Whatever.
There’s no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.
Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more successful, his number of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expending mental energy on stuff wastes time. He’s a man on a mission. He’s got a deadline. He’s got some rich client breathing down his neck. The last thing he wants is to spend 3 weeks learning how to use a router drill if he doesn’t need to.
A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind.
Which is why there are so many second-rate art directors with state-of-the-art Macinotsh computers.
Which is why there are so many hack writers with state-of-the-art laptops.
Which is why there are so many crappy photographers with state-of-the-art digital cameras.
Which is why there are so many unremarkable painters with expensive studios in trendy neighborhoods.
Hiding behind pillars, all of them.
Pillars do not help; they hinder. The more mighty the pillar, the more you end up relying on it psychologically, the more it gets in your way.
And this applies to business, as well.
Which is why there are so many failing businesses with fancy offices.
Which is why there’s so many failing businessmen spending a fortune on fancy suits and expensive yacht club memberships.
Again, hiding behind pillars.
Successful people, artists and non-artists alike, are very good at spotting pillars. They’re very good at doing without them. Even more importantly, once they’ve spotted a pillar, they’re very good at quickly getting rid of it.
Good pillar management is one of the most valuable talents you can have on the planet. If you have it, I envy you. If you don’t, I pity you.
But nobody’s perfect. We all have our pillars. We seem to need them. You are never going to live a pillar-free existence. Neither am I.
All we can do is keep asking the question, “Is this a pillar” about every aspect of our business, our craft, our reason for being alive etc and go from there. The more we ask, the better we get at spotting pillars, the more quickly the pillars vanish.
Ask. Keep asking. And then ask again. Stop asking and you’re dead.
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More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:
11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.
I’ve seen it so many times. Call him Ted. A young kid in the big city, just off the bus, wanting to be a famous something: artist, writer, musician, film director, whatever. He’s full of fire, full of passion, full of ideas. And you meet Ted again five or ten years later, and he’s still tending bar at the same restaurant. He’s not a kid anymore. But he’s still no closer to his dream.
His voice is still as defiant as ever, certainly, but there’s an emptiness to his words that wasn’t there before.
Yeah, well, Ted probably chose a very well-trodden path. Write novel, be discovered, publish bestseller, sell movie rights, retire rich in 5 years. Or whatever.
No worries that there’s probably 3 million other novelists/actors/musicians/painters etc with the same plan. But you see, Ted’s special. His fortune will defy the odds eventually. Exactly. That’s what he keeps telling you as he refills your glass.
Is your plan of a similar ilk? If it is, then I’d be concerned.
When I started the business card cartoons I was lucky; at the time I had a pretty well-paid corporate job in New York that I liked. The idea of quitting it in order to join the ranks of Bohemia didn’t even occur to me. What, leave Manhattan for Brooklyn? Ha. Not bloody likely. I was just doing it to amuse myself in the evenings, to give me something to do at the bar while I waited for my date to show up or whatever.
There was no commerical incentive or larger agenda governing my actions. If I wanted to draw on the back of a business card instead of a “proper” medium, I could. If I wanted to use a four letter word, I could. If I wanted to ditch the standard figurative format and draw psychotic abstractions instead, I could. There was no flashy media or publishing executive to keep happy. And even better, there was no artist-lifestyle archetype to conform to.
It gave me a lot of freedom. That freedom paid off in spades later.
Question how much freedom your path affords you. Be utterly ruthless about it.
It’s your freedom that will get you to where you want to go. Blind faith in an over-subscribed, vainglorious myth will only hinder you.
Is you plan unique? Is there nobody else doing it? Then I’d be excited. A little scared, maybe, but excited.
July 29, 2004
4 Comments
31 Comments
More thoughts on “How to be Creative”:
9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.
This metaphorical Mount Everest doesn’t have to manifest itself as “Art”. For some people, yes, it might be a novel or a painting. But Art is just one path up the mountain, one of many. With others the path may be something more prosaic. Making a million dollars, raising a family, owning the most Burger King franchises in the Tri-State area, building some crazy oversized model airplane, the list has no end.
Whatever. Let’s talk about you now. Your mountain. Your private Mount Everest. Yes, that one. Exactly.
Let’s say you never climb it. Do you have a problem witb that? Can you just say to yourself, “Never mind, I never really wanted it anyway” and take up stamp collecting instead?
Well, you could try. But I wouldn’t believe you. I think it’s not OK for you never to try to climb it. And I think you agree with me. Otherwise you wouldn’t have read this far.
So it looks like you’re going to have to climb the frickin’ mountain. Deal with it.
My advice? You don’t need my advice. You really don’t. The biggest piece of advice I could give anyone would be this:
“Admit that your own private Mount Everest exists. That is half the battle.”
And you’ve already done that. You really have. Otherwise, again, you wouldn’t have read this far.
Rock on.
July 27, 2004
1 Comment
Suw Charman, probably the smartest, most Cluetrain–savvy British blogger (seriously), now has her own blog on Corante. You have to be pretty damn smart to blog for Corante. Wow. That’s serious Big-Time. Yay, Suw!
Laren, the definitive New York Badass Blog Chick is now food-blogging for Gothamist.
David Sifry, CEO of Technorati is now reporting for CNN on the blogging scene at the Democratic Convention.
July 25, 2004
193 Comments
[BIG NEWS: “How To Be Creative” will be coming out as a hardcover book in June, 2009. Titled “Ignore Everybody”, you can find out more details here.]
So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years:
1. Ignore everybody.
The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you. When I first started with the biz card format, people thought I was nuts. Why wasn’t I trying to do something more easy for markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?
(more…)
2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to change the world.
The two are not the same thing.
(more…)
3. Put the hours in.
Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort and stamina.
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4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.
Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.
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5. You are responsible for your own experience.
Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.
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6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, “I�d like my crayons back, please.”
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7. Keep your day job.
I�m not just saying that for the usual reason i.e. because I think your idea will fail. I�m saying it because to suddenly quit one�s job in a big ol’ creative drama-queen moment is always, always, always in direct conflict with what I call �The Sex & Cash Theory�.
8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.
(more…)
9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.
(more…)
10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY surprise me.
(more…)
11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.
(more…)
12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
The pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it’s going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it’s worth it. Even if you don’t end up pulling it off, you’ll learn many incredible, magical, valuable things. It’s NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the opportunity– that hurts FAR more than any failure.
(more…)
13. Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.
The more you practice your craft, the less you confuse worldly rewards with spiritual rewards, and vice versa. Even if your path never makes any money or furthers your career, that’s still worth a TON.
(more…)
14. Dying young is overrated.
I’ve seen so many young people take the “Gotta do the drugs and booze thing to make me a better artist” route over the years. A choice that was neither effective, healthy, smart, original or ended happily.
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15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.
(more…)
16. The world is changing.
Some people are hip to it, others are not. If you want to be able to afford groceries in 5 years, I’d recommend listening closely to the former and avoiding the latter. Just my two cents.
(more…)
17. Merit can be bought. Passion can’t.
The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.
(more…)
18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.
They�re a well-meaning bunch, but they get in the way eventually.
(more…)
19. Sing in your own voice.
Piccasso was a terrible colorist. Turner couldn’t paint human beings worth a damn. Saul Steinberg’s formal drafting skills were appalling. TS Eliot had a full-time day job. Henry Miller was a wildly uneven writer. Bob Dylan can’t sing or play guitar.
(more…)
20. The choice of media is irrelevant.
Every media’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Every form of media is a set of fundematal compromises, one is not “higher” than the other. A painting doesn’t do much, it just sits there on a wall. That’s the best and worst thing thing about it. Film combines sound, photography, music, acting. That’s the best and worst thing thing about it. Prose just uses words arranged in linear form to get its point across. That’s the best and worst thing thing about it etc.
(more…)
21. Selling out is harder than it looks.
Diluting your product to make it more “commercial” will just make people like it less.
Many years ago, barely out of college, I started schlepping around the ad agencies, looking for my first job.
(more…)
22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
Everybody is too busy with their own lives to give a damn about your book, painting, screenplay etc, especially if you haven’t sold it yet. And the ones that aren’t, you don’t want in your life anyway.
(more…)
23. Worrying about “Commercial vs. Artistic” is a complete waste of time.
You can argue about “the shameful state of American Letters” till the cows come home. They were kvetching about it in 1950, they’ll be kvetching about it in 2050.
It’s a path well-trodden, and not a place where one is going to come up with many new, earth-shattering insights.
(more…)
24. Don�t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.
Inspiration precedes the desire to create, not the other way around.
(more…)
25. You have to find your own schtick.
A Picasso always looks like Piccasso painted it. Hemingway always sounds like Hemingway. A Beethoven Symphony always sounds like a Beethoven’s Syynphony. Part of being a master is learning how to sing in nobody else’s voice but your own.
(more…)
26. Write from the heart.
There is no silver bullet. There is only the love God gave you.
(more…)
27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.
This is equally true in art and business. And love. And sex. And just about everything else worth having.
(more…)
28. Power is never given. Power is taken.
People who are “ready” give off a different vibe than people who aren’t. Animals can smell fear; maybe that’s it.
(more…)
29. Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.
Selling out to Hollywood comes with a price. So does not selling out. Either way, you pay in full, and yes, it invariably hurts like hell.
(more…)
30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.
If you have the creative urge, it isn’t going to go away. But sometimes it takes a while before you accept the fact.
(more…)
3 Comments
Check out my newly-revised “About Gapingvoid” page. Click the link here or use the link on the homepage sidebar, top-right etc.
Just spent an hour re-working it. Besides the rewrites, I combined it with my old “Fave Cartoons” page, which has now been removed.
One less link for newbies to click on, y’know?
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We’ve seen the internet profoundly change all sorts of communication professions: writers, journalists, filmmakers, advertising & marketing etc.
But I wouldn’t say cartoonists are at the vanguard of post-Cluetrain thought.
I keep seeing internet cartoons formatted for newspaper. In other words, “I would rather have these cartoons in a newspaper, however until my ship comes in, I am putting them online as a kind of stop-gap.”
This is strange to me. Newspaper syndication has been a dead medium for years. I really don’t know of any still-working cartoonists who are (a) using the mainstream newspaper route as their central distribution channel (b) doing work that is fresh and interesting and © making a lot of money.
Sure, magazines may have have more leeway in the creativity department than newspapers, but the money is pathetic.
Whatever, it’s their choice. The thing I like about gapingvoid is it has allowed me to do my thing (for fun and yes, profit) without having to marry myself to somebody else’s business model. Especially somebody else’s LOUSY business model, which traditional publishing basically is.
The older I get, the less I like other people’s business models. I prefer my own business models, thank you very much.
This is what the internet is really about– this is what causes the excitement. It’s all about giving more people control over their own business models, not relying on third parties to supply them. This is true in publishing, retail, advertising, the law, you name it.
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(Matchbook doodle laminated onto business card. New York, 1998)
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July 24, 2004
2 Comments
1 Comment
From David Sifry: “Technorati will be providing real-time analysis of the political blogosphere for CNN at next week’s Democratic National Convention.”
This is quite Big-League, Methinks.
(CNN talks about it here)
(Technorati homepage here)
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According to Henry Copeland, a major movie studio has started using Blogads to promote a film. This is a first, apparently.
Of course, I’m going to take full credit for beating them to it by a few months, when I shamelessly promoted my friend Dave’s film, Young Adam, starring Ewan McGregor etc etc etc.
(Here’s my earlier article from last March: “10 Tips For Professional Movie Blogging”, if anybody’s interested in this kinda stuff)
Nice to see Blogads working (I always said they would, Heh). The only drawback for me is it’s made advertising on Adrants awfully expensive. Oh, well…
A blogad on Adrants is now $200/mo. That’s TEN TIMES what it was a year or two ago. I’m delighted for Steve Hall, I have to say.
July 23, 2004
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July 22, 2004
1 Comment
(Cartoon dedicated to Laren. Heh.)
Jeff Jarvis posts a wonderful list of blogs (with links included) designed for people in the media just starting out in this whole blogging thing. I would REALLY recommend y’all taking a peek.
I get a quick mention. Thanks Jeff =)
Here’s a sample:
MEDIA:
* PaidContent.org covers the business of online content. By an aggressive one-man band, Rafat Ali, who is making a go of it with advertising. He also has a job
blog that is good for business intelligence.
* I Want Media by Patrick Phillips is an alternative to Romenesko.
* Corante has a number of very good blogs about the social impact of technology as well as media and the law. Among them, The Importance by attorney Ernie Miller, Copyfight by Donna Wentworth and others, Loose Democracy by David Weinberger (coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto), and Many to Many by Clay Shirky and others.
* Lost Remote is a good blog about TV by two TV producers, Cory Bergman and Steve Safran.
* CableNewser follows cable news like a hound dog and it is written by an 18-year-old college student.
* Ad Rants by Steve Hall is beloved by trendwatchers, as it finds what’s new in advertising.
* NYU’s Jay Rosen writes a very well-respected (if long) blog about journalism here.
* The Media Drop is a new blog by Tom Biro.
* The World Editors Forum started a blog here.
4 Comments
(One of the very early laminated ones. New York, 1998)
July 20, 2004
2 Comments
July 19, 2004
1 Comment
2 Comments
Every time a new toy arrives on the scene (internet, new media, blogs etc etc), people get really excited.
“This new toy will really let us TALK to our target market yak yak yak…”
“This new toy will really let us INTERACT with our target market yak yak yak…”
“If we become REAL EXPERTS in this new toy our jobs will no longer suck and we won’t have to hit the bars so often yak yak yak…”
Everyone knows the maxim, “A bad carpenter blames his tools.”
There should be another maxim: “A bad carpenter thinks his shiny, new tools are going to save his sorry ass from oblivion.”
(PS: Just added the above to “The Hughtrain Manifesto”)
AFTERTHOUGHT: From Fred Wilson: “Jonathan Schwartz, President, Sun Microsystems, said that Sun has allowed blogging for 100% of the workforce. 32,000 Sun employees can now
July 17, 2004
3 Comments
Jeff Jarvis had a birthday the other day. So I drew him this card.
Happy 50th, Jeff.
Meanwhile, Fred Wilson attended a panel in Aspen re. the future of advertising.
Opinions of the panelists were aligned with what industry they belonged to, of course.
Media, ad agencies, internet companies, brand consultants… all under tremendous pressure to provide ever-increasing value to their clients, with wafer-thin profit margins to boot. What fun.
The game has moved on. The game is elsewhere. I’ll be talking about that in future posts.
July 15, 2004
2 Comments
July 13, 2004
13 Comments
I work in Newcastle. It
July 12, 2004
1 Comment
July 11, 2004
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2 Comments
Granted, “Smarter Conversations” has more benefits than just better products.
Better relationships, better companies, better societies, better planets etc etc.
But we already knew that.
(Technorati homepage here)
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: Cluetrain is basically a wildly uneven, insane rant that makes little sense. Nor does all of it stand up to intellectual scrutiny. But since when has marketing been sane and rational? Since when have people’s purchasing habits been sane and rational? If people weren’t inherently psychotic, my day job would be a whole lot easier. We need an insane book because insanity is much closer to the truth. (PS: just added this last paragraph to The Hughtrain)
: Apparently me linking to “Badass New York Food Blogger Chick” Laren (my words, not hers) last week drove a lot of traffic to her site. So I’m doing it again.
: I suppose I should do the same for Cynthia Rockwell as well. Smart, funny academic/film chick in Boston.
: Since we’re on the subject of smart, funny women, Gia is an American living in London. She writes a lot about the media and the BBC. I met her in London a few weeks ago. Really great to talk to.
: Imajes has taken it upon himself to do some clever things with Technorati.
: Speaking of Technorati, gapingvoid is now #1 Google Search for “Smarter Conversations”.
: Robert Paterson has a good post about how the Magic Number is one hundred and fifty (150) i.e. that’s how big a group (online or offline) can get and still operate as a meaningful, cohesive human whole, before turning into a faceless crowd of nobodies.
: Not gotten a lot of feedback so far on the American launch of the fine art prints (Same product, much lower shipping charges to the USA than before). It’s OK, my mind has mostly been on other things recently, so I’ve not been chasing it up. What sayest thou?
: The emphasis of my cartoons seems to be moving away from getting drunk/getting laid and heading more towards getting the man to get his frickin’ checkbook out. A sign of maturity, I suppose. Damn.
July 10, 2004
1 Comment
3 Comments
Just added the following thoughts to The Hughtrain Manifesto:
: Great advertising has far more to do with how great your company is than which ad agency you hire.
: Doc Searls once incisively stated, “There is no market for messages.” Agreed. Which is why TV networks had to create TV programs. So you’d watch them. Otherwise they’d just air the commericals.
: The Cube Dweller’s job is to convince the client that it’s 1990. Middle Management’s job is to convince the client that that it’s 1970. Senior Management’s job is to convince the client that it’s 1950.
: The word “Brand” has so many meanings now, some more whacked-out than others, that using it has ceased to be useful.
: Ad agencies market themselves as lions; in reality they’re more closely related to the hyena.
: The quickest way to lose that corner office is to come up with an original idea.
: Watching the big Madison Avenue agencies trying to get with the program is a bit like watching a middle-aged married man hitting on a co-ed in a bar.
: As long as your marketing remains the domain of your typical suit-wearing marketing jackoff (“Let’s call a meeting at 7.30am and talk about nothing for 3 hours!”), your marketing will be jacked-off accordingly.
: The Customer is a human being. The Consumer is a metaphor.
: The “advertising is an art form” schpiel makes for dreary conversation.
Hughtrain is coming along nicely. The plan is to eventually use it as the basis of a book I want to publish. The thesis of the book is still a secret. No, it’s not just some kind of Cluetrain-inspired book for the ad biz.
I’ve got a much bigger idea than that. Heh.
1 Comment
UPDATE: Doc Searls, one of the co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto (i.e. the most important book about communication written in the last 30 years) just posted the above cartoon on his blog. Thanks, Doc =)
Yeah, I know, I’m writing a lot about Cluetrain these days. It’s because it’s currently feeding directly into my day job. Rock on.
July 7, 2004
8 Comments
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Technorati passed the 3 million blog mark today. To go from 2 to 3 million took them 3 months. To go from 1 to 2 million took them 6 months. Ergo the frequency of people starting blogs has doubled in the last 3 months.
Jarvis writes about it well:
Technorati, as many will report today, just passed 3 million blogs tracked (our equivalent of 300 million burgers served) at a rate of 15,000 new blogs per day. Technorati founder Dave Sifry reports that of these, 1.65 million are updated actively, though Mary Hodder emphasizes that that doesn’t mean the rest are abandoned; blogs are used for many reasons (for example, for the once-a-year conference) and they still have information and value. At any rate, the conversations keep growing: Technorati is seeing more than 275,000 posts every day; three blogs are updated every second. The people are talking and the volume is growing.
I’m still musing on their whole “Smarter Conversations” schtick I’m working on with them.
It’s all tied in to The Hughtrain Manifesto: “It’s about thriving in markets which are smarter and faster than you are” etc etc.
: Thinking back to the late ‘nineties: Dotcom was not a failure of the internet. Dotcom happened because a lot of dinosaurs tried to do a massive land-grab on an area they weren’t fit to inhabit. Though it didn’t get a lot of media attention at the time, many of us freaks had a lot of fun watching it all go pear-shaped.
July 6, 2004
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The prints are back! Signed, limited edition, framed, same size as the originals etc.
This time, US shipping is dirt cheap, only $15 anywhere in the Lower 48. So it’s $150 total for a gapingvoid fine art print. Hurrah!
It’s a quality product. Proper frames, mounts, paper and ink. Yeah, I could’ve made it cheaper. I could’ve made it crap as well. Rock on.
USA: Order here.
UK, Europe and Rest Of World: Order here.
July 5, 2004
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July 4, 2004
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Just added the following line to The Hughtrain Manifesto:
: Understanding “all products are conversations” is a bit like understanding that every time your 10-year-old burns down the house, the first thing you say to your spouse isn’t “let’s buy a bigger fire hose this time.”
July 3, 2004
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I have four blogads currently running on my site, including the one for Blogcards. All four are there because telling people about the sponsors is very much part of my agenda.
I am totally taking advantage of my audience. And I assume you are returning the favor by using whatever you can grab from my site to further your own needs. Mutual exploitation etc.
No, I do not believe the stuff I am advertising on my site is “crap”. You might think, “Yes, you do but you’re surpressing the truth in order to make a buck etc”, but that would be foolish.
People don’t begrudge advertising as long as the ad-to-content ratio remains reasonable (e.g. British newspapers). It’s when one starts abusing one’s position (e.g. American network TV) that advertising and media start losing the plot.
This complete lack of respect for their audience, this complete belief that one can be as obnoxious and invasive as one wants without consequences, this is what is driving the Big Media out of business, not the actual content.
And Big Media is blind to it. They think they’re going down the tubes because of “market changes” or whatever. It never occurs to them that maybe, just maybe their own bad manners could have something to do with their own demise.
PS: Just added the last paragraph to “The Hughtrain Manifesto”
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Some of the blogs that have been on my radar screen recently:
Steve Halls’ Adrants, the best advertising blog there is, has gone from strength to strength. His traffic has really gone up, which is great for him, but it’s raised the cost of a single blogad to $150 a month (I advertise there all the time; my first blogad was $20). Ouch. Still worth it, though.
Rick Bruner is still going strong. He writes here exclusively about business blogging. As a business consultant, he uses the blog to “scatter pollen” in order to meet potential clients, which is the smartest use of a blog, in my opinion.
Lockhart Steele’s Curbed is wonderful. It’s like Gawker, except it’s about New York real estate instead of New York gossip. I’ve started submitting cartoons to Curbed… my way of interacting with Manhattan without having to live there. It’s such a good site, I’m told a lot of people assumed Nick Denton was behind it. Though I’m a big fan of Nick, it’s good to see somebody else occupying the space as well. It’s harder than it looks.
Laren has found her niche as a food blogger.
Jeff Jarvis’ commenters are growing more numerous as the US Presidential election gets closer and nastier.
Loic has the best blog in Europe, bar none. Heiko, who works for him, is close behind. Suw isn’t too shabby, either.
Doc Searls, one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto (and therefore one the coolest guys on the planet), plugged me recently. I was so happy.
Brad Feld has one of the better VC blogs out there. Always has something interesting to say. I discovered him via Fred Wilson. Also Fred turned me on to Jerry Colonna, who was a VC, but seems to have moved on to other things, namely, writing about the heartfelt. Certainly one of the more emotional blogs among the circles I travel in.
AFTERTHOUGHTS:
Steve Hall is still looking for a job in the NY/Boston area. But with his blogads now commanding $150 a pop, does it really matter if he finds one? Heh.
: Blog Geekiness: My Google Pagerank is now 7 out of 10. Based on my previously stated criteria, this is very cool indeed.
: Loic graciously replies to my assertion that his is the best blog in Europe, bar none:
Thanks, Hugh, but really I am not sure I deserve that much, there are so many great blogs in Europe, I think about Tom Coates for example and so many other bloggers.
Well, I do agree Tom Coates has one of the best blogs out there. However I judge blogs not only by the quality of the content (which I also agree, there are so many excellent sites out there), but more and more by the direction the content actually points towards. A good blog is like a map– it points you to all sorts of wonderfully horizon-expanding places, even if it doesn’t always go there itself. By that measure, Loic’s is unbeatable.
: “Quit Envying The Dead”. Heh. Words to live by. Indeed.
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