Hugh MacLeod
Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books. gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
We also have a daily cartoon newsletter that makes a lot of people happy.
If you just want to say ‘Hello’, feel free to email me, anytime.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
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October 31, 2004
Some rough scans, just to prove I’ve not been neglecting the drawing.
The “Happy Exile” one I drew on the plane between UK and Paris. I drew it with pencil because obviously, ink pens leak at high altitude.
The other three I drew last night. And there’s plenty others, as well…
Ah, the joys of living out of a suitcase!
October 30, 2004
One thing I notice– when you can’t understand or speak a foreign language very well, suddenly you start paying WAY more attention to body language, facial expression and gesture.
And you listen a lot more, of course…
Ther first line in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer is “I am living in The Villa Borghese.“
The Villa Borghese is about 2 minute’s walk from where I now live, about 3 minutes from the cybercafe from where I’m writing this.
The neighborhood is called Montparnasse. It’s on The Left Bank. Here’s a nice wee photo.
Everybody asks me about George Bush. You’d think I knew the guy personally. As an American friend living in Paris recently said to me, “When I talk to a French guy for the first time, I don’t immediately start asking him all about Chirac.“
[RANDOM:] I have about 12 items on my list of things I want to do or see before I die. Just scratched one off the list. I find it almost hard to believe it actually happened. Hint: I lived in Boston as a boy in 1975. What happened in Beantown (and Cincinnatti) that year scarred me emotionally “for life”. Suddenly I find myself rather unexpectedly healed.
October 29, 2004
I arrived in Paris safely last night after an uneventful trip. Found my usual hotel in Montparnasse, slept for nine hours, had my morning cafe-creme and all is good.
I’ll write more later…
October 27, 2004
1. Today is my last full day in the UK before moving to Paris. Catching a plane out tomorrow lunchtime. I have no idea how long I
Claus Dahl has kindly started translating “How To Be Creative” into Danish.
Now how cool is that?
Thanks, Claus!
[UPDATE:] Dominik just offered to translate it into German! Thanks, Dominik!
[UPDATE:] The “How To Be Creative” PDF has just reached Number 4 “Most Talked About” on ChangeThis. I guess word is spreading. Hurrah! Thanks to everyone who helped me out. Seriously.
October 26, 2004
“Everything is a brand” is just two-bit rationale to explain the professional marketer’s shitty job/life/karma. And yes, feel free to quote me.
–From a recent e-mail to Doc Searls.
[HELP!] My RSS Reader seems to be buggered. According to it, this is the last post it has read. Is it just my computer, or is anyone else having the same problem? If you could check for me, I’d appreciate it. Thanks. [UPDATE:] The problem seems to have fixed itself. Thanks for the help, Everybody.
October 25, 2004
Less than 72 hours from now I’ll be in Paris.
Too busy thinking about the move to really think properly about this weird new business idea I’ve been playing with. Hard to do everything.
I won’t be posting new drawings for a while– just reposting old ones, and doing the writing thing. Got to get set up in my new home first. Buy a new scanner etc. I have zero idea how long everything will take.
I hope you understand etc.
[TRIVIA:] You may have noticed I kind of adopted the wee fellow with the wings as my unofficial gapingvoid logo.
The guy can fly, but he’s still pissed off. Not a bad allegory for the human condition, perhaps.
Barry, who lives in the same constituency that Boris Johnson represents as an MP in the UK Parliament, writes about my recent post about Boris starting a blog.
Hugh it’s all very well Boris jumping on the blogging bandwagon, but until he starts addressing issues pertaining to the area he is supposed to represent the blog is nothing more than publicity and you believed it.
I posted a comment, but it wouldn’t load. So I’m posting it here:
Barry, I disagree. To be fair to Boris, Barry, the folks in Henley knew full well that Boris “had a life” before they elected him. They also know he was unlikely to give it all up just to be a journeyman backbencher. And they voted him in, knowing this.
“Dear Mrs Jones, Thank you for your letter on the 16th of April regarding your leaky roof yak yak yak…“
I don’t think so.
If Henley want an MP that bends over backwards for them like how I think you’re suggesting, they should pick some fear-ridden party hack who’s desperate not to lose his job at the next bi-election. You know, somebody who nobobody listens to at Westminster. And then he and Mrs Jones can meet at his surgery every month and commiserate about leaky roofs till some Lib-Dem comes along and turfs him out in 2005.
Or am I just playing Devil’s Advocate here…?
Tom Watson, the Labour MP has an excellent blog, I have to say.
This is my thousandth blog entry on this Movable Type platform.
I started it last January (2004) sometime, so it averages about a hundred blog entries per month.
Gapingvoid started off in May, 2001 as just a cartoon website; the blogging started slowly about 18 months later.
Roughly half of the entries are just new cartoons; the other half are written pieces, usually decorated with a previously published cartoon.
Sometimes I’m more into the cartooning; sometimes the writing dominates. It varies.
At latest count there were 2122 comments. Not bad at all. Anything over 1000 I would consider very good. As the blog gets more established I enjoy the “interactive” side of it more and more.
One thing I really like are comments and e-mails from people who live very far away from me. Something really cool about getting a message from somebody in China, Estonia, Argentina etc.
I first started publishing cartoons back in college when I lived in Texas during the late ‘80s. For the life of me I couldn’t get printed beyond the ‘local’ alternative markets– Austin, Houston, San Antonio etc. Muscians often have this problem– they get “big” in their local market– Seattle, Texas, whatever– but can’t seem to take it further, in spite of their best efforts.
Getting stuck in the ‘local scene’ is something I can painfully relate to. I suppose it’s one of the main reasons I like the internet so much.
The cartoon above is entitiled “Vanished”. I guess it’s probably my favorite. Seems an appropriate choice for the occasion.
(PS: For those of you new to the site, there’s a big collection of my favorites in the “About” section.)
October 24, 2004
This cartoon was posted about a week ago. It got deleted by accident, so I’m reposting etc.
3 full days left in the UK, then Thursday lunchtime I’m off to live in Paris. Can’t wait.
Doc Searls: “Blanding”.
Doc responds to the “Branding is alive and well and engaged in meaningful conversation about iPods” crowd:
We can try all we like to nice-up and otherwise modernize (conversatonalize?) the word “brand”; but its origins will always be with us. And there was nothing conversational about those.
Also from Doc, “The Brand Bubble is Bursting.“
Yes, the Net changed the world completely. It was an asteroid administered to dinosaurs. But rather than take advantage of the new conditions created by the Net, VCs and their beneficiaries decided to emulate one of the least viable dinosaur conditions: size anddominance.
Besides, it’s really hard to modernize a word that has no meaning.
I coined the term “Positive-Disruption Technology” yesterday, while I was getting my daily fix of praising Robert Scoble to the skies (Yeah, I know, he’s been getting a lot of gapingaction recently, whatever).
Sorry, but Man, I just LOVE that term. Sure, it could apply to blogs, but there are other possible applications.
I don’t know if somebody had coined the term already or not (so far it doesn’t appear on Google), but it really describes what I’m currently trying to create-invent-make-manufacture-build-evangelize-promote-pimp-market-sell etc.
It’s all about killing EgoFriction. Rock on.
Conversations welcome. Please feel free to e-mail or leave a comment. Thanks.
Good news! My “How To Be Creative” PDF just cracked the Top 10 most downloaded on ChangeThis.com. Hooray! That means it gets onto Page One of “Most Popular”.
It’s still Number 11 on “most e-mailed” i.e. still on Page Two (but hopefully not for long). If you fancy doing me an act of great kindness, please go here and e-mail it to a friend. Thanks.
I just got a nice letter from Jesse:
Loved your
October 23, 2004
Robert Scoble disagrees with Doc and I that branding is dead.
I basically agree with everything Robert said in this article. Which makes me even more convinced that he’s wrong.
Still, the last bit was spot on:
So, why does blogging matter in the branding game?
One, watching blogs gives you an indication of what the greater society is doing and talking about (if you read enough of them and they are randomly enough selected — I’m not there yet, but I’m getting close).
Two, blogs can feed the conversation and amplify it. Look at all the talk about Audiovox cell phones in the past five days. Did you notice that AT&T is sold out? I did.
Three, blogs can reduce negatives. Is something bugging your customers? Well, they’ll yell about it and yell about it until you listen to them and start having a conversation. Chuq is right on this count. Microsoft has made a corporate decision to change its public face — I and the other more than 1,000 bloggers at Microsoft are stark evidence of that.
Good stuff, as usual, from my main man in Redmond.
He kindly points to Terry Heaton, who makes some very good points:
“Brand management” is an oxymoron, because it assumes a brand is determined from the top-down. It isn’t. In that sense, branding is not only dead; it was never alive.
Ah-ha! So we’re getting closer now.
What’s interesting to me as a “branding professional” is seeing this argument rage these last few days in the blogosphere. The same argument that has been raging with the pros for the last 10 years or so.
Saatchi’s, the famous ad agency, got so sick of the debate they decided to throw out the word “brand” altogether and replace it with something equally unsatisfying.
[AFTERTHOUGHT:] “Branding is Dead” i.e. improving one’s cartography skills does not improve the actual landscape etc.
[AFTERTHOUGHT: I wrote somewhere a long time ago (can’t find the link, sadly), that the purpose of advertising was not to sell the product, “but to express and articulate the entrepreneurial drive that informs the purpose and the idea of the product.” I believe the new post-brand (AAAAAAGH!!!! I HATE THAT TERM!!!!) buzzword is “purpose-idea”.
My blogging buddy, John Zagula just kindly mentioned me on his blog, Marketing Playbook, and then an hour later also kindly bought a blogad on gapingvoid. Thanks, John!
(I couldn’t help noticing he borrowed one of my cartoons for the visual in the ad. Heh. Nice one.)
We’ve been having some great e-mail exchanges recently. He’s an interesting guy. He and his colleague Richard have just come out with the book version of his blog, also called “Marketing Playbook”.
I’ve been following his blog for a while. The making of the book is as much of the story as the actual marketing ideas expressed, so it’s been fun watching the whole thing come together in the hopeful-but-haphazard way most books do. Here’s the schpiel on Amazon:
Every company needs to figure out the best way to beat the competition. What do you do if the other guy is already dominating the market? Should you challenge them head on or lie low for a while? Should you offer customers high-end features or a low-end price? Or both?
During their years at Microsoft, John Zagula and Richard Tong answered such questions so effectively that they helped Microsoft Office and Windows grow from a 10 percent to 90 percent market share. As venture capitalists, Zagula and Tong have continued to test and perfect their system with hundreds of companies of all sizes and at all stages.
Now they
My favorite British politician, Boris Johnson is blogging.
For all you non-Brits, Boris is a journalist for The Telegraph, editor of The Spectator and now Conservative MP for Henley. He recently had a widely-publicised spot of bother with the good people of Liverpool.
I went to his blog and left the following comment:
Boris, not only do I recommend you become honorary MP for the British bloggers (if your Henley folk allow you), I’d also recommend you brush up on the seminal Cluetrain Manifesto (www.cluetrain.com)…
There are two big ideas in The Cluetrain:
1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets are now becoming smarter, faster than the companies that service said markets. A good example is what happend with the dear old Kryptonite lock earlier this month (As a bicycle rider, you must have heard about this scandal? Ask any clued-up blogger and he or she will tell you).
What is true for markets is also becoming true for Governments, as well.
And the changes will be profound.
To get a better idea, the person to read is a chap in New York, named Jeff Jarvis. His blog is www.buzzmachine.com.
Boris’ assistant left a message in my comments this morning– I was dead pleased.
If there’s something interesting happening with blogs, Jeff usually writes about it within hours, so I thought that would be a good starting point.
Other people I would check out if I were him would be:
Doc Searls, one of the authors of The Cluetrain.
Loic Lemeur, the young French entrepreneur behind blogging software in Europe. His man in London is Alistair Shrimpton. I would talk to them both about getting the Conservative party blogging, both internally and externally, using their software.
Joi Ito, the Japanese venture capitalist and blog visionary. Friend and business partner of Loic. Nice guy. Besides all his technology businesses, he is particularly well known for his ideas about the effects of “wired networks” on 1. “emergent democracy” and 2. culture in general. As Boris is the Conservative Shadow Spokesman for Art & Culture, he should find him REALLY interesting.
Neil McIntosh, who is probably the most clued-up, Cluetrain-savvy journalist in the UK. Works for The Guardian.
Ben Hammersley, freelance journalist and uber-smart techie anarcho crypto whacko nice guy all round. Knows more about this sphere than just about anyone I know. Smarter than just about anyone I know.
Robert Scoble, the best-known of the Microsoft bloggers. Always has an interesting angle on things. He has particularly good insights into positive-disruption technology within large corporations and burocracies.
Suw Charman, the uber-smart blogging chick in Dorset. She “gets it” better than most.
James Cox, British blog wunderkind and Tory activist. The blogging equivalent of the young William Haig. He knows his stuff. He’s probably after Boris’ job already.
Lastly, I would find out what RSS is, and start taking it seriously. In tandem with that I would get my blog linked up with Technorati.
There are plenty of other people worth noting, but as a jumping-off point, this will do for now.
It would be interesting if we could get the Tories to blog. Tony Blair’s New Labour will try to beat them to it, I reckon, but I bet they’ll shoot themselves in the foot, with all their control-freak-on-message trolls leaping out of the woodwork etc the minute anybody starts doing anything actually worth talking about.
The Blogosphere is not the Millennium Dome. The Blogosphere is not the Scottish Parliament Building. The Blogosphere is not “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. You have been warned.
Got two very thought-provoking emails from J.D. yesterday (posted with his consent):
1.
In general, people in companies are into ass-covering– it’s the predominant corporate culture. Almost all of the crufty bureacratic nonsense seems to stem from that. Culture change, at least on a corporate level, is only part of the problem. Really, it’s systemic. People are scared. Technology just puts a spotlight on some of people’s biggest fears about themselves, about work, about life. (Aside: I sometimes wonder if companies– like Walmart, for instance– aren’t destroying themselves in their endless hunger for efficiency. Guess we’ll find out…)
I’ve got some ideas as far as useability, too– in particular, SAP could learn a lesson or two from Apple. Design, esthetics and useability are more important than most people seem to believe. The problem is, all of those things are hard/expensive on top of the already hard/expensive problem of just getting the systems in. But putting a system in is hard/expensive in large part because companies (people in, and so forth) resist change. So perhaps the solution lies in some recursive synthesis of the two– if change is sexier/more useable/better, then maybe it’ll meet less resistance. Or, rather, instead of ERP implementations focusing on functionality first and people second, it should be the other way around. A first step could be coming up with human(e) use cases. Or maybe companies should just fire everybody and start over from scratch every time. In any case, we have to stop treating each other as a machines that serve machines (for money). Maybe that’s too idealistic of me–
Anyways, pardon my ramblings.
Cheers.
J.D.
2.
Culture change is difficult because (all) corporate culture, at this point, is dependent on hierarchical command and control (and everything that comes with it– egos, leadership cults, rigidity, ass-covering, etc). Information technology disrupts hierarchy (this has been much talked about on the internet)- or, rather, it subverts hierarchy. The question is, how does one exploit this “feature?“
One potential jumping off point is Blitzkrieg
Implementation in modern business (beyond metaphorical Blitzkrieg) is the trick.
Regards,
J.D.
This is all to do with my two current obsessions: Egofriction and the logistics of making technological implementation less culturally disruptive.
What has all this got to do with “Branding Is Dead”, I hear you ask?
Tons.
: Bonus Link: A Blog-Traffic Pyramid Scheme. I tell ya, there’s nothing like the use of stock photography for giving your company that real blogosphere-resonating individualistic touch. Too funny.
October 22, 2004
Just added The Kryptonite Factor to The Hughtrain.
The Hughtrain is beginning to get quite long. Still, it’s only about a third as long as How To Be Creative.
Right now it’s little more than just a long, rambling list. One of these days I’m going to have to tighten it into a more cohesive whole. Or maybe its uncohesive nature is part of the charm. Who knows?
Ha! The Kryptonite Factor goes techie. From Smallworks.
DAY ONE:
VIVATO: Our Wi-Fi basestations are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your phased array technique is very strong.
DAY TWO:
VIVATO: Our Wi-Fi basestations are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your Wi-Fi basestations are still the best.
DAY THREE:
VIVATO: Changing the physics of W-Fi!
THE MARKET: Ummm… yeah I’m sure you are, but what’s all this about interference levels, and I’ve heard that 802.11’s CSMA/CA means that your Wi-Fi basestation has to “share the air” with every AP or client card in the field of view, reducing usable capacity to a small fraction of an ordinary AP.
Branding is dead (see above cartoon). Toting your new iPod proudly through “the streeets where the action is” like a metrosexual wannabe film director is just Extinction Management.
Today is Friday. I’m going to Paris next Thursday, the 28th. Six days. Good. That means I’m not pissed off any more.
Why am I going? Well, I found a room, I found some work, I need a change.
I’m working on a book and I need to get away from it all to allow me room to think.
I have some new business ideas and I want to play around with them for a bit, before I nail their colors to the mast. A Parisian cybercaf
I just got an e-mail from JS Westmoreland:
I sell advertising but I’d rather just write copy. Any advice?
I have very little advice at the moment. I think the ad biz is changing too fast for anybody to really have a clue. Y’know, “Branding is dead” and all that.
I wrote this list called “How To Be A Copywriter” a few months ago. Don’t know if it’s good advice or not.
I suppose if I was starting out from scratch, I’d just start writing as many ideas as I could, build myself a blog then start posting my ideas online. If they were any good it would be seen eventually. Besides, it’s much easier to ask a Creative Director to “Please click on this link” than “Please can I come round to your office and show you my work?“
Basically, the art of getting a job in advertising is:
1. Writing tons of ads on spec. Good ones.
2. Showing them to as many informed people as possible– the higher up the foodchain, the better.
3. Getting lots of feedback and then acting on it.
No, I have no definition of “good” to give you. If you’ve got any talent you already have your own definition of what “good” is, you don’t need mine.
But it’s not just about quality…
Say Tom and Jack are two young recent college grads, both quite talented, both having spent most of the last year trying to land their first professional gig.
And let’s say Tom just found a job in the last week, and Jack didn’t.
I would be willing to bet hard, cold cash that Tom had written far more ads in the last year– some good, some not so good– than Jack. By a factor of at least five to one.
Where kids get stuck is that they write 6 ads, get their uncle to get them an interview downtown, turn up wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, show the Creative Director their 6 and only ads, and then wonder why they didn’t get the job in the end.
Then they give up and go get their real estate license.
The more you churn, the more you learn.
Any advertising folk here have anything to add? Andreas?
Here’s some good news: My “How To Be Creative” PDF on ChangeThis is now its No. 16 most downloaded PDF file. Since it’s only been up since early this week that’s not bad going, especially when you consider there’s some FANTASTIC writers on ChangeThis… Tom Peters, Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, Jerry Colonna, Cory Doctorow etc.
It is kinda neat, when you’re a blogger, seeing your work get out there with a different medium. And it’s nice when people write you a “Hey, just read your PDF” e-mail. Means the pollen is spreading in new directions. I dunno. We’ll see what happens.
Anyway, if you haven’t dowloaded it yet, I hope you will. Thanks.
Ah, so Apple does have some bloggers. Not that it needs them, what with Bono thinking they’re cool and everything.
Doc (and others) seem to feel that you have to be an “Apple Blogger”, whatever that is. What Apple has are bloggers who work for Apple. We don’t pretend to speak for the company, we don’t represent Apple, and we don’t particularly want to. I’m not an Apple blogger, either. I’m a blogger who works for Apple. Big difference.
And I find that question particularly amusing given the context, where Doc riffs off on Hugh [that’s me] claiming that Branding Is Dead. For such a clueful person, Doc has an interesting blind spot.
According to Chuqui here Branding is not dead. Branding is in fact alive and well. All my advertising friends can now sleep easy etc.
To be fair to Apple, there’s no reason why they should have to embrace “blogging culture”, the way Microsoft has. Apple’s main way of expressing itself is visually. Different schtick altogether from expressing oneself conversationally.
If Apple has anything interesting to say, 90% of the time it doesn’t need to be put into words. The occasional pep talk from Steve Jobs is all well and good, but what the fans really want is… grape-colored IMacs, black iPods or whatever.
I think Bono is the perfect spokesman for Apple. He’s a rock star. He’s all about being on the stage, all the lights on him, with the common folk standing in the dark in their thousands, paying good money for the privelege of being near him.
It’s showbiz, it’s theater, it’s “Personality Feudalism” etc.
Apple is not that different.
October 20, 2004
This “thriving in markets” cartoon above is one of my favorites. Hence why I repost it far too often. Hence why it has a permanent spot in The Hughtrain.
Sure, the line sounds good in a meeting. And yes, the client will invariably ask, “Can you give me a good example of what you mean, exactly?“
Luckily we all now have such an example: I call it “The Kryptonite Factor.“
Robert Scoble mentioned it only a day or two ago. I first came across it reading Rick Bruner’s blog (Bruner is one very smart cookie, by the way. I’d recommend paying attention to what’s on his radar screen).
Here’s how the drama unfolded:
DAY ONE:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are the best.
DAY TWO:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are still the best.
DAY THREE:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Ummm… yeah I’m sure they are, but what’s all this about some recent video on the net that’s supposed to show how you can crack your locks in 10 seconds using a simple Bic ballpoint pen?
DAY FOUR:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just saw that video on a friend’s website. And I’m kinda ticked off because I just paid $60 for one of your new locks 3 weeks ago, and I’m wondering if a Bic pen can crack my lock or not… does the pen crack all Kryptonite locks or just one or two models?
DAY FIVE:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just visited your website and saw no mention of the Bic pens. What the hell are you doing about it? Are you going to fix the locks? Are you going to give me a refund?
DAY SIX:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: No, they’re not. You guys are assholes.
So what was the final outcome? How did Kryptonite address the problem? Did they fix the lock in the end? I have no idea. I’m just assuming their locks continue to suck. I suppose I could go visit the company website for more info, but… Eh. I can’t be bothered. I’m just assuming it’ll have the usual bullshit PR when I get there. Life is short.
One decent, smart, young, credible part-time blogger on $500 a month, writing from the front lines on their behalf could have saved Kryptonite millions of dollars. Not to mention decades of slowly-and-painfully built brand equity.
Without warning, Kyptonite’s market got smarter and faster than they did. And it only took a couple of days to unleash the full wrath. Boom!
You have been warned.
[UPDATE:] Just added this post to The Hughtrain. Rock on.
More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:
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.
The minute you become ready is the the minute you stop dreaming. Suddenly it’s no longer about “becoming”. Suddenly it’s about “doing”.
You don’t get the dream job because you walk into the editor’s office for the first time and go, “Hi, I would really love to be a sports writer one day, please.“
You get the job because you walk into the editor’s office and go, “Hi, I’m the best frickin’ sports writer on the planet.” And somehow the editor can tell you aren’t lying, either.
You didn’t go in there, asking the editor to give you power. You went in there and politely informed the editor that you already have the power. That’s what being “ready” means. That’s what “taking power” means.
Not needing anything from another person in order to be the best in the world.
REGARDING A SPECIFIC, WORK-RELATED PROBLEM I’M CURRENTLY HAVING:
Dear Mr Brand Manager,
You’ve been talking to me this last while, going “The Brand this, The Brand that, yak yak yak yak…” And I’ve been pretending to pay attention because hey, I like money.
We need to start over.
Instead of talking about “The Brand” in terms of metaphor micro-tweaking (“The Essential Dog Food Experience! No, the TOTAL Essential Dog Food Experience!”), can we not talk about who is talking about your product, what they are saying about your product and how often they’re having the conversation?
Can we not just try to improve the quality, quantity and frequency of the conversation? 3 little things? Would that not raise your sales curve?
Would it not be easier to put your product on a beermat and get people in bars yakking about your product? Would they not be surprised to see your product on a beermat? Would it not throw a few people for a loop? Can we not put a few young, smart types in the field and get them observing people’s behavior around the beermats?
The answer is not in what you think you are. The answer is in what people are saying, how often, and why.
[UPDATE:] Adpulp [Caveat: cites this website *Ahem!*] makes the UTTERLY BRILLIANT point that when advertising goes from an “EGO-logy” model to an “ECO-logy” model, it turns from a mainly VISUAL medium into a mainly VERBAL medium. Wonderful!
Doc Searls and I were talking last night:
Ever notice that the companies that tolerate, and even encourage, blogging… also suck at branding? I mean, they succeed as companies. Meaning, they market well, in their own special ways. But their advertising has never been award-winning stuff. They don’t hire expensive agencies and employ Professionals who Manage The Brand. Companies that rock at branding (by which I mean, they do really good, award-winning advertising).… Apple… Sony… Coke… Anheuser-Busch… Nike… Gap… aren’t known for their bloggers.
That’s easy enough to explain. Blogging is all about ECO-logy. Branding is all about EGO-logy. The two are not compatible. Which is why brand-wimpy Microsoft has hundreds of bloggers [a well-known fact], and why you can get fired for blogging at uber-brand Apple [so I’ve been told].
Apple like the conversation they’re currently having. They don’t want it to change, internally or externally. They want to control the means of conversation.
I’ve seen branding work. I’ve seen blogging work. My conclusion?
Branding is dead.
Holy Shit.
Branding. Is. Dead.
We thought just marketing and advertising were dead. Nope. Branding kicked the bucket, too.
Dead, dead, and dead.
Holy shit.
(Yeah, that “cheap plastic toys” cartoon is up there for a reason. Heh)
Johnnie Moore, having read my Beermat post, makes an excellent point:
This resonates with my own agency experience, and is part of the huge downside to the “Big Idea” culture. Agencies persuade themselves that everything is about the big idea. The bigness of which is objectively determined by… the biggest ego in the building, usually. Or (just as bad) by a string of sleep-inducing focus groups around the country. In a networked world, it’s much, much smarter to let the market determine the great ideas by starting lots of conversations instead of rigging up a giant 60 second propaganda dump.
“Start lots of conversations.” Somebody tell me, what’s so hard about that? How come people don’t get it? Seriously, I want to know.
“Are you afraid to blog?” Great, great post by one of my favorite bloggers, Microsoft’s Robert Scoble, about the power of corporate blogging. One of the best articles I’ve read in months.
“OK, what are the reasons I should let my employees blog?“
Here’s my observations:
1) People don’t trust corporations. Especially big and successful ones like, um, Microsoft. Come on, be honest, none of you really trust us to do the right thing, do you? So, how do we show you that we’re trustworthy? We need to invite you deep inside our corporate structures and talk to you like human beings. It’s exactly why Channel 9 resonates with so many of you.
2) People don’t like talking to corporations. Again, be honest, if you saw a press release from a big company asking for you to provide feedback on something, would you? Hey, Microsoft has had “mswish@microsoft.com” for a long time. Even when I was a customer of Microsoft’s, I’d never send anything to that address. Why? I never thought anyone was listening. Do any of you feel any differently? Yet I get so much email now giving Microsoft feedback about our products that I can’t keep up (I’m four days behind).
3) That old “markets are conversations” thing. If you haven’t read the Cluetrain Manifesto, why not…?
If you don’t “get it” after reading it, you never will. Sorry.
October 19, 2004
More thoughts on “How To Be Creative”:
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.
About 15 years ago I was hanging out in the offices of Punch, the famous London humor magazine. I was just a kid at the time, for some reason the cartoon editor (who was a famous cartoonist in his own right) was tolerating having me around that day.
I was asking him questions about the biz. He was answering them as best he could while he sorted through a large stack of mail.
“Take a look at this, Sunshine,” he said, handing a piece of paper over to me.
I gave it a look. Some cartoonist whose name I recognised had written him a rather sad and desperate letter, begging to be published.
“Another whiney letter from another whiney cartoonist who used to be famous 20 years ago,” he said, rolling his eyeballs. “I get at least fifty of them a week from other whiney formerly-famous cartoonists.“
He paused. Then he smiled an wicked grin.
“How not to get published,” he said. “Write me a frickin’ letter like that one.”
Just bought my plane ticket. Returning to Paris 28th October. Will be staying in the Montparnasse area. Hooray!
Not sure how long I’m staying. A while. Got stuff to do. Will let you know etc.
If somebody could let me know the details of the next Paris blog meet-up, I would appreciate it. I would very much like to attend. Merci beaucoup.
In a recent e-mail to me, the unmatchable Evelyn Rodriguez wrote:
Well, I do know a lot about making tech implementations less culturally disruptive — but it cuts both ways — sometimes the business people disrupt the technologists too — they live in their own little bubble. The gurus call this “Business-I.T. Alignment.” I’ve worked in the engineering/product dev side of the house much LONGER than I’ve worked on the biz/prod mgmt/marketing side. Yes, each side loathes the other. I had to go to a new company to start working for the dark side my first marketing role, that is) I’ll write about this one day, but one reason for the increase in outsourcing I.T. is that this way the business people can OUTSOURCE their conflict as far away and as out of sight as possible. They don’t have to actually see those pesky I.T. folks much any more — just throw it over the firewall to India,Russia, Argentina, China, etc. I’m not being facetious.
Maybe your company doesn’t have a tech problem. Maybe it has a cultural problem. Think about it.
October 18, 2004
“How To Be Creative” is now available in PDF format.
Free download is here.
Thanks to to Amit Gupta, Seth Godin and all the groovy cats at ChangeThis for putting it together.
The trouble corporations have with blogging is that it’s easy. People who work in large companies are used to making everything as complicated and unknowable as possible, in order to protect the perceived value of what they do. Doing something that is cheap, easy and effective is culturally counter-intuitive.
Here’s a good example of what I mean; what I call “The Beermat Story”:
I worked for a large ad agency a while ago. The ad agency had a large beer account. Me and 40 other creatives spent 6 months writing beer campaign after beer campaign, trying to come up with “The Superbowl Ad”. Something we could sell for millions of dollars to the folks in Milwaukee. And we would need to– our hourly billings must have been worth almost that alone.
I won’t even tell you what we sold them in the end. It was appalling. Campaign got killed soon after. Heads rolled.
Whatever. During the campaign writing I had this thought:
If the idea doesn’t work on a beermat, it’s not going to work on a 60-second Superbowl spot. So maybe get the beermat campaign working BEFORE the Superbowl ad, not vice versa.
Instead of spending milions of dollars on “The Superbowl Ad”, why not spend that money cranking out beermat campaigns, till you find one that really works? Using beermats in small, test markets, you could easily create 50, 100 (500? Who knows?) campaigns for one tenth the price of one decent Superbowl/TV commercial. It would be a simple, cheap and quick way of working out the necessary language to resonate with the beer-drinking public.
Of course, nobody was interested in the idea. From the agency’s point of view, there was more money in selling Superbowl ads that didn’t work than selling beermat ideas that did work.
So the beermat story taught me this painful lesson about big business: an expensive solution will always look better politically than the cheap solution, because the former allows the client to justify his large salary.
It’s not about solving your brand’s problem. It’s about buying access to private schools and country clubs for people who don’t give a damn about you or your business. That’s where your money goes when you embrace the ordinary. You have been warned.
[UPDATE:] John Moore from Brand Autopsy sums it up nicely in the comments:
It forces you to focus your marketing message and if the idea manages to break through the clutter in a bar then it might just break through the clutter on the air.
He says he’s going to have to “borrow” the idea one day. Hmmm… I may have to “borrow” that sentence one day. Heh.
[UPDATE: 19th October:] Robert McCabe in the comment also makes the following interesting point:
Beermats are the number one marketing tool for micro breweries, but they have to be functional, with a clear easy to read message.
A good, FUNCTIONAL (ie absorbs spills!) beermat will stay on a table for more than one customer and influence the next person who sits down (the “I’ll try one of these.” effect) and get you far more brand recognition in the bar than posters and neon lights.
A good beermat is also well liked by the bar staff, which makes sure that your beermat gets used over less functional ones (I’ve seen thin, non-absorbent paper beermats that looked great but never got used).
They’re used by microbreweries because they’re small, cheap, tactile, and easy to find out if they’re working or not. If they work, the bars order more. If they don’t, then it’s just back to the ol’ drawing board. No big deal. No big loss. No big army of ad agency salaries to shell out for before finding out their campaign they charged big money for actually sucks.
I’m a big fan of tactile advertising. Heh.
: This recent “Egofriction” post has generated a huge amout of e-mails. Thanks, Guys. On the same subject, I recently updated my schtick on my About Page:
I’m Creative Director for a new brand consultancy that’s currently implementing some pretty powerful, ahead-of-the-curve ideas to do with making technological implementation less culturally disruptive. I’m looking for both US and European clients, partners and allies.
Making tech implementation less culturally disruptive. Exactly. It’s a HUGE subject. Expect to see me write a lot about it over the next while. And feel free to write me if you have any thoughts on the subject you want to bounce around: hugh at gapingvoid etc.
: David Sifry On Corporate Blogging:
Even though some of the largest technology companies are represented in this graph, to me this shows that we are still at the relative start of accepted use of blogging as a part of corporate policy — and that there is still a tremendous opportunity for forward-thinking companies and management to have a significant positive impact on their public perception by encouraging an enlightened blogging policy, encouraging openness both within and outside of the organization.
The trouble corporations have with blogging is that it’s easy. People who work in large companies are used to making everything as complicated and unknowable as possible, in order to protect the perceived value of what they do. Doing something that is cheap, easy and effective is culturally counter-intuitive.
October 17, 2004
Earlier I wrote:
My current pet Egofriction gripe: the inability for
A week ago, last Saturday, was my last full day in Paris. I caught the train out of there (from Gare du Nord) the morning after.
I’m still not in Paris and it still pisses me off. I know I’m back there in a couple of weeks but it doesn’t matter, the thought of not being in Paris highly irritates me.
My last night in Paris was colored somewhat by this drunk, old musician with no money who was determined to (a) be my friend (b) win the affections of the girl I was with © get me to pay his bar tab and (d) talk nonstop to anybody, and I do mean anybody who would listen. He was actually a damn fine musician, but methinks he had spent too many years relying on his his on-stage talent far too much off-stage, if you know what I mean.
Ten years ago I would have said, “Cool, I can turn his sorry ass into a character for the literary masterpiece I’m writing”. Now I’m more likely to say “What an asshole”.
The Romantic Life is a brutal one…
