Archive for 2010
December 28, 2010
6 Comments
Another new cartoon for the Rackspace series.…
Basically, I took the old “George” idea and re-jigged it, adding the trademark Rackspace red & black.
And hey, it worked.
I see this cartoon going in the slide deck of Rackspace’s recruiters.
We’re not a ‘normal’ company etc. It’s OK not to be ‘normal’ etc. ‘Normal’ is boring etc.
It’s easy for a small company to have a distinct personality. Much harder when the company has grown a lot, like Rackspace has done in the last few years.
Much harder to NOT be normal…
[Commission your own cartoon from gapingvoid etc.]
December 27, 2010
3 Comments
[Download printable version here etc.]
This is my latest cartoon from the series I’m doing for Rackspace.
One thing that Rackspace is very proud of is their customer base. Both in terms of quality and quantity. Not only do they have some really wicked customers, they have lots of them.
And no, I’m not just being nice because they’re my client. Some of them ARE awesome. A lot of amazing companies that you’ve heard of and admire.
So… what’s wrong with wanting more where that came from?
What is wrong with wanting THE BEST customer base in the world, and adjusting your business plan accordingly?
And what is wrong with declaring that to the frickin’ world?
To be honest, I don’t just see this cartoon as an internal motivational poster whatsit. I also see it as a full blown advertisement– one that could easily go into magazines like Wired or Inc.
What’s wrong with declaring to the world, “Here’s what we’re going after with a vengeance”, rather than the usual “Here’s why should buy our wonderful product” drivel?
And the cartoon character: why not make him stressed out and antsy– like real entrepreneurs are– rather than the usual happy-happy-joy-joy that most advertisements run with?
Why not talk to people about the ACTUAL world we live in, rather than the irritating fantasy world that Madison Ave created?
Why the hell not?
We’re all going to be dead in 100 years. In the meantime, why not try to rip the face off the dragon?
Exactly.
December 20, 2010
24 Comments
[A different angle on the Angel Gabriel etc. You can get the print here etc.]
This is why I love the internet…
In the old, pre-internet days, if you were a cartoonist like me and wanted to be successful, you pretty much had to be famous.
Not hugely famous necessarily, but somebody with a pretty major publishing gig. Like Peanuts, Doonesbury, Dilbert, Garfield or Bloom County, or some of The New Yorker heavyweights like Steinberg or Ronald Searle.
And those gigs were hard to come by. You needed a big time publication syndicate or media company to back you. And then the newspapers, the advertisers and the media landscape in general had to be on board as well.
And of course, all this required a VERY large audience. Millions of people, literally. Just so you could make an OK living.
As we all know, the more people you need to keep happy, the less likely that’s going to happen, or at least, the less you can control. Mass audiences are a fickle, unpredictable bunch. And they have a nasty habit of ignoring people like you completely, and going for people like Justin Bieber or Paris Hilton instead.
Which is why I never took this route. Too many variables I couldn’t control. And my work was never mainstream enough, anyway.
Thank God the internet came along and changed everything. Suddenly I found myself making a damn good living, without having all those mainstream hoops to jump through first. Just by doodling wee, non-mainstream cartoons all day, to what by old mainstream standards would be a TINY audience that I reach via this blog, Twitter and my newsletter.
This is made possible because the web, as we all know, is a SUPERB way to sell relatively high-end products. In my case, private, client-based commissions are worth THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of times more than the advertising eyeballs that ultimately pay for the newspaper cartoonist’s mortgage. Of course they are. Not to mention, the commissions are fun and intellectually interesting to work on.
Which is why my advice for anyone trying to succeed on the web is, make the highest-end product you can, and then target the tiny handful of people– the microaudience- who are likely to buy it. Forget the masses. Targeting the latter is too much like trying to win the lottery– though great when it happens (however unlikely), there are just too many damn variables outside your control.
Any questions?
December 19, 2010
5 Comments
[“Hugged”, which went out earlier this year in the newsletter. You can buy the print here etc.]
I love the backstory to the “Hug” cartoon above:
My mother, in her day, was a very successful education software consultant. “Have you hugged your client today?” was her line, not mine.
She always had about 6 – 10 Blue Chip clients on board at one time. Companies like Shell, Exxon, Coco-Cola etc.
And no matter what kind of day she was having, EVERY DAY she would make some kind of effort to demonstrate to each and every client that… she cared, that this stuff mattered, that she was willing to go the extra mile.
And it worked. It certainly paid for me and my sister’s education.
“Hugging clients” is really a no-brainer.
Unless you don’t really like your clients. Unless you’re just in it it for the money.
Then it just feels sleazy and wrong.
There’s nothing wrong with insisting on good chemistry, before you commit fully to working with someone.
Sure, we all need money. But I think we need chemistry more.
[P.S. Speaking of chemistry, I’m really grokking the work I’m doing with Rackspace at the moment. Thank CHRIST for people like Rob La Gesse etc.]
December 15, 2010
1 Comment
[“I traded boredom for stress. And it was so worth it.” Great interview of @soniasimone, on becoming an entrepreneur etc.]
December 10, 2010
4 Comments
December 8, 2010
5 Comments
Over at Things I Wish My Phone Did, I’ve started accepting other people’s idea submissions for new cartoons.
The first one I used was from David Herrold, pictured above. Thanks, David!
Sure, Things I Wish My Phone Did started life out as a small side project on behalf of my client, Line2, bit something tells me that it could be something much bigger, something much more interactive. There are a lot of people out there with strong ideas and opinions about “What a phone could be”.
All new ideas– both for new cartoons and ideas for where take the website– gratefully received. Just ping me on Twitter, preferably using the #ThingsIWishMyPhoneDid hashtag. This could be huge. Thanks!
December 1, 2010
3 Comments
A “cube grenade” commission I just completed for Thoughtworks, the global IT consulting company.
Thoughtworks has this term, “Watermelon”, to describe a project that goes terribly wrong, that looks all well and good on the outside (green), but as the project comes to an end, turns out to be a huge ol’ expensive mess on the inside (red). I just took the idea and ran with it.
We’re going to turn this design into a 100 large framed prints, as Christmas presents for their clients. A fun little “conversation starter” to hang on their walls… which of course, is what the the whole cube grenade idea is all about. “Art With Purpose” etc.
Fun!
[Commission your own cube grenade here etc.]
November 27, 2010
6 Comments
[“It’s Complicated”. You can buy the print here etc.]
So somehow or other you found yourself online in a big way.
Somehow or other you decided, like millions of other people, that if the future is online, it would be silly not to join in. So you decide to get with the program.
And so you get yourself hooked up with the usual stuff… a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and whatever Robert Scoble is using that week. And then wait for that aforementioned future thing to start happening.
While you’re waiting for that future thing to begin, you can’t help noticing that certain people in the same field as you– people far more successful and well-known than you, people who you aspire to be like one day– have fifty times the amount of Twitter followers as you do. Or whatever.
So you spend the next two years of your life trying to get as many Twitter followers as those people. Not only do you fail, meanwhile, your wife leaves you, your car is repossessed, and you have to move back in with your parents.
The futility of “Keeping up with the e-Joneses”. You’re better off spending that time and energy trying to have a “smarter conversation”. Of course you are.
[Bonus link:] Seth has a few thoughts on the subject, as well. Well worth a look.
November 25, 2010
7 Comments
[One of the cube grenades I did for Rackspace etc.]
Here’s something to think about this Thanksgiving:
A year and a half ago I coined the term, “Cube Grenade”, and since then, we’ve tried to build a business around it.
Art that you hang in your cubicle, in order to affect change, in order to start a conversation. Art that you “toss” into the work/corporate environment, that hopefully causes a small “explosion”. Hence the term, Cube Grenade.
“Art with purpose. Work with purpose”.
Exactly.
Thanks to the Internet, the nature of work is changing in so many amazing ways, and we’re all so damn lucky to be caught right in the middle of it.
As a cartoonist, my work is totally inspired and informed by this– this is exactly why the work took the direction it did.
And your work, whatever it may be, should also be affected in the same way. I can’t think of a better time to be alive; I really can’t.
So besides friends and family, what better reason is there to celebrate Thanksgiving? Seriously…
November 18, 2010
1 Comment
[Welcome to my worldview etc…]
3 Comments
This cartoon was sent out today in the newsletter. The idea was inspired by the book by my friend, Seth Godin.
Read Seth’s original 2005 blog post on the subject. It’s considered a classic.
We live in HUGELY exciting times. You do know that, right?
5 Comments
[download the printable version here etc.]
This is the latest cube grenade I just did for Rackspace.
It’s one of my favorites I’ve done so far. [More Rackspace work is here.]
I hope you like it, but it’s OK if you don’t. Here’s why I’m partial:
- I like the elegance of the drawing.
- I like the way it’s talking about something specific to the business (i.e. the cloud), not just some vague, “Go Team!” cultural platitude.
- I like the direct honesty of it. “We live or die by the cloud” etc. is basically the God’s honest truth; it doesn’t matter if one agrees with it or not. That IS Rackspace’s business strategy, in black and white.
- It just works. Straight and to the point. It does everything a good cartoon ought to do.
I am enjoying my gig with Rackspace. Even if it’s still early days, they’re letting me play around with a new, HUGE idea. Yes, I am stoked.
November 10, 2010
10 Comments
So this is my latest #EvilPlan for my client, HNI Insurance.
I drew the cartoon above.
What I’m going to do is recommend to the CEO, Mike Natalizio to get it made up into a stack of signed, limited edition prints. Say, 30 or 50 of them.
Then get them framed.
Then send them off as gifts to the the 30 or 50 most influential people in the trucking business. As a conversation starter.
“Let’s talk about the issues, People.”
The trucking business is full of messy issues [e.g. people dying in road accidents every day, which HNI is in the front line of], so why not address them more openly, more forthrightly?
Like it says in “Tribes”, by Seth Godin, the way to succeed is to be a leader.
HNI hired gapingvoid because they wanted to be more successful.
And I’m saying right back, OK, if you want to be more successful, you have to take a leadership position on something that matters.
Which means having a “smarter conversation”.
And these prints would be their opening salvo.
None of this is rocket science, all that’s required is that a decision be made.
A decision to be a leader. A decision to have a smarter conversation.
Not rocket science.
Easy.
[PS: We’ll see what Mike says. At time of posting this, Mike hasn’t seen the cartoon yet. I’m surprising him! Heh.]
[The Smarter Conversation archive is here.]
November 7, 2010
2 Comments
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water: Another cartoon for hackthephonecompany.com.
Something deliciously wrong about hipsters who get overly attached to their iPhones– or to any Apple product in general. A rich vein for any cartoonist etc.
[The #hackthephonecompany cartoon archive is here etc.]
3 Comments
I just did this cube grenade for Fizz, the well-known Word-Of-Mouth marketing agency [They did all that ground-breaking stuff for Pabst Blue Ribbon etc.].
This idea is so simple… do I really have to explain it? Exactly.
[Commission your own cube grenade here etc.]
1 Comment
[download the printable version here etc.]
Another cube grenade I just did for my client, Rackspace.
They were a small company not that long ago. They no longer are. Figure it out.
[Rackspace cartoon archive.]
November 5, 2010
1 Comment
The latest cartoon. The latest campaign from gapingvoid.
hackthephonecompany.com
AT&T’s monopoly was broken apart in 1984, when the company was split into seven parts.
But for iPhone users, AT&T is pretty much a monopoly again, with their exclusive deal with Apple.
AT&T, Verizon, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodaphone, it really doesn’t matter. They’re generally expensive, they’re restrictive, often the service sucks, so you’re always trying to bypass what they have on offer– trying to hack your way around it.
Line2 with their VoIP service, is trying to do the same.
We all are.
Click on the link (or click here) and see what we’ve done. There’s just a fun cartoon right now–
It’s a start. We’re hoping to make this the start of something bigger. Much bigger. We want to “hack” the phone company. So do you. So does everybody else.
[PS: Here’s a link to what NYT Tech writer, David Pogue, has to say about Line2.]
No Comments
A cube grenade I just did for our ciient, HNI Insurance.
A lot of HNI’s trucking clients operate with profit margins of around 2%. Ouch.
I like the cartoon just because it’s brutally in-your-face and to the point. No messing around.
Of course, the easiest way for their clients to increase their margin, is to lower their risk. Which is where HNI comes in. Ker-chiing.
[More HNI cartoons here etc.]
October 30, 2010
No Comments
2 Comments
[You can buy the print here etc.]
Friday [yesterday] marked the 200th cartoon we sent out on the newsletter. We sent out the cartoon above. Very cool.
Thanks to everybody for supporting it. It’s been quite an adventure so far. Not to mention, a lot of fun. Rock on.
October 29, 2010
2 Comments
[Moleskine drawing from 2009: “Tried Meaningful”. You can see the enlarged image here. See more like this over at the Moleskine archive etc.]
“Ideas that do not risk offense, aren’t.”
And yes, your business is an idea. Your product is an idea. The conversation you’re trying to have with your market is also an idea.
Hey, I didn’t say any of this stuff was easy…
[#smarterconversations]
8 Comments
[I drew this cartoon back in New York, 1998. Backstory here.]
Mark Earls, one of the greatest marketing minds on the planet, is bored of social media. Or at least, the conversation about social media.
So let’s try to get at least this thing really straight:
Social networks are not channels for advertisers or for the adverts/memes you, your clients or any of your so-called “influentials” create, social networks are for all of the people who participate in the network.
Being a social creature means you spend your life in social networks; being part of a social network gives each individual a number of benefits — shared protection, shared resources and most importantly shared learning. Our ability to learn from each other (the appropriately-named Social Learning) is one of our all-too-mutual species’ most characteristic capabilties and the engine by which stuff gets pulled through populations (from technologies to health habits).
In other words, social media (and the brands that want to be part of it) are at their most powerful when they offer two things:
Shared learning.
Shared teaching.
Great art teaches. Great artists teach. What do you teach? What does your business teach? What is actually learned, imparted? Not just the practical stuff, but the deep, messy stuff about ourselves?
Just thought I’d ask…
[UPDATE] Darren left a great comment:
I frequently talk to people and companies who are looking to take their first stab at social media presence specifically for the purpose of advertising their product or service. No! No! No! Its about engaging your audience in meaningful conversation. Inevitably, they push forward, create a Facebook page and Twitter account, post for a few weeks. They have almost no fans or followers and wonder why their 27 posts with 10% coupon codes brought no increase in revenue!
Because their 27 posts and 10% coupon code played no part in shared learning or shared teaching, that’s why.
[#smarterconversations]
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So I just did this cartoon for my client, HNI.
Basically, the truckers that are most profitable for any trucking company are generally the most hard to insure. The ones who score highest on safety make less make less money for the company… and then you’ve got these Feds coming in with “CSA 2010″, making it even more complicated. Lucky truckers…
The cartoon by itself, is not that interesting.
The fact that HNI are the only people in the insurance industry willing to talk about it in the open, are willing to have a “Smarter Conversation” about it, is interesting.
At least to me…
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October 27, 2010
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Our client, Line 2, is a small VoIP start-up, aiming to take some business from Goliaths like AT&T.
So Line 2, like David in The Bible, has to choose its own weapons i.e. like the cartoon above. Heh.
[PS: The “Don’t let Goliath choose the weapons” line is an idea I shamelessly stole from my old buddy, Sigurd. Hence the quotation marks etc.]
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1 Comment
[Download the printable version here.]
I did this print a few months back– I thought the sentiment would also make a good cube grenade for our client, Rackspace. Et Voila…
[Bonus link] From Euan Semple, 2006:
Maybe love does have a place in business after all. Maybe more and more of us will start to have the courage to begin to talk about what really matters to us about work and our relationships with each other and to push back the sterile language of business that we have been trained to accept. Maybe we will realise that accepting love into the workplace reminds us of the original purpose of work – not to maximise shareholder value but to come together to do good things, to help each other and hopefully to make the world a better place.
Maybe …. Oh and by the way if the above is too new age and namby pamby for you I reckon social computing is capable of talking 25% out of the running costs of most businesses – so there!
[@euan]
October 18, 2010
3 Comments
[Download the printable version here.]
A couple of days ago my buddy, Robert Scoble (himself a Rackspace employee) twittered the question, “How do do you amplify a start-up culture inside a big company?”
A damn good question, Robert. I thought it would make a good piece of art, hence the cartoon above. More specifically, I thought it would make a good image to go on the back of a Rackspace business card.
Rackspace is a big company (3,000 employees), but not big enough where they can no longer remember when they were a small company. So maybe it’s better to start a conversation (which is what handing out a business card does, ideally) with a pertinent question, rather than the usual “Here’s why you should buy our stuff” shpeel…
October 16, 2010
7 Comments
THE HUGHTRAIN MkII
1. The market for something to believe in is infinite. We are here to find meaning. We are here to help other people do the same. Everything else is secondary. We humans want to believe in our own species. And we want people, companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so. That is human nature.
2. The most important word in marketing is “complicity”. It’s not enough for the customer to love your product. They have to love your process as well.
3. Your customers are becoming smarter about your market a lot faster than you are. Thanks to the internet, your customers are able to talk to each other. They are able to find better information about your product than you are able of willing to give them, much quicker than you are capable of giving them. The conversation will happen with or without you, you’re better off joining in.
4. The primary job of an advertiser is not to communicate benefit, but to communicate conviction. It’s not about what you have; it’s about why it matters.
5. A company’s primary role is to function as an “idea amplifier”. A company’s primary role is not to make or do stuff. Making and doing are mere subsets.
6. The future of advertising is internal. The hardest part of a CEO’s job is sharing his enthusiasm with his colleagues, especially when a lot of them are making one-fiftieth of what he is. Selling the company to the general public is a piece of cake compared to selling it to the actual people who work for it.
7. Your job is no longer about selling. Your job is about firing off as many synapses in your customer’s brain as possible. The more synapses that are fired off, the more dopamines are released. Dopamines are seriously addictive. The more dopamines you release, the more the customer will come back for more. Your customer thinks he is coming back to you for sane, rational, value-driven reasons. He is wrong. He is coming back to feed.
8. Good-bye, Messages. Hello, Social Gesture. A well-executed marketing campaign is an act of love.
9. Control the conversation by improving the conversation. Choosing to have a “smarter conversation” with the market is not a marketing decision; it’s a moral decision.
10. The more porous the membrane that separates your business from your market, the easier it is for both parties to be in alignment. And the more porous the membrane, the easier it is to fix non-alignment.
[Originally published November, 2006]
October 14, 2010
7 Comments
[“Adventure”. Buy the print here etc.]
Are you a beacon?
A beacon is a navigation signal that tells you where you are when you’re lost at sea.
We spend a lot of our careers being lost at sea.… paddling away, not quite sure where we are, hoping to God that a big wave won’t come along and swamp our little boat.
And we look for beacons to guide us, to give us hope, to tell us where we are, to show us where the standard is, to show us the way forward. Beacons can be people, products, businesses or even ideas.
“Life might suck right now, but one day I’ll land a kick-ass job as Creative Director for Crispin Porter!”
“Life might suck right now, but one day I’ll write as good a novel as Jonathan Franzen!”
“Life might suck right now, but one day our product will be better than SAP or Oracle!”
These are beacons…
Obviously, if you or your product is a beacon to other people in your own industry, you have a considerable advantage going for you. Not to mention, a really good reason to get up in the morning.
So in my typical way, I’ll ask you, are you beacon? If not, don’t you think you should be?
To be honest, I wasn’t really thinking about you when I sat down to write this, sorry. I was actually thinking about my client, Rackspace. Are they a beacon? I know they’re certainly capable of it.
I’m just thinking outloud, here…
October 12, 2010
6 Comments
Tens of thousands of people now get the Daily Cartoon Newsletter. The list grows and grows, and every day we get lots and lots of mail from people showing the love.
But the NUMBER ONE benefit to subscribe is that each day, for 24 hours, the cartoon de jour– the print– is available at around 30– 60% off the usual price. Just the day it’s initially published and after that, it goes to full price. So, all the hardcore print junkies are buying them on the issue day, and after that, they and everyone else pays retail.
There is a secret offer code on the bottom of each email, that reveals the discount of the day. Just use it when you go to checkout.
Start the day with an ass-kicking cartoon and maybe save some money as well etc.
Sign up here, and join the club. Rock on.
October 6, 2010
1 Comment
[Download the printable version here etc.]
Rackspace likes to describe their customer support as “Fanatical” [It’s right there on their homepage. Go see.].
Which got me thinking, what does being “fanatical” actually mean? What are its real-world implications?
So I drew a cartoon with my take on it…
[#SmarterConversations]
October 5, 2010
6 Comments
[Download the printable version here.]
I find something rather amusing about the idea of people at Rackspace printing out this cube grenade, and hanging it up everywhere in their San Antonio office. It would sure send a message to the newbies…
HR may not be able to say things like this, but hell, I’m a cartoonist…
[#SmarterConversations]
October 3, 2010
10 Comments
[Last Friday I was signing prints– 175 of these puppies. SAP, the large, German enterprise tech company put in a very large order, to give out to certain key people within the organization. Trying to have a Smarter Conversation. Exactly.]
“Don’t be the best in the world at what you do; be the only one in the world who does what you do.”
That quote is me paraphrasing Jerry Garcia, lead guitar of The Grateful Dead. The thought always resonated with me.
If people like what you’re doing, and you’re the only one who’s doing it, you win.
Which is why I like doing Cube Grenades. Compared to what most people are selling out there, they’re fairly unique.
It’s also what makes blogs so powerful a marketing device. People can just see your own unique shtick evolving right there on the page, over time. They’ll either get it eventually or they won’t. No sales pitch needed. No need to compare yourself to somebody else. No need to fit into some pre-existing model, if you don’t want to.
It has never been a better time to be unlike anyone else. I hope you’re already taking full advantage…
September 29, 2010
1 Comment
A cube grenade I drew for Rob La Gesse, Scoble’s boss over at Rackspace. [UPDATE: Rob blogs about it here as well.]
[Feel free to download the high-res version here.]
Disclosure: I’m currently doing a wee bit of consulting work for Rackspace. This cartoon was inspired after talking to La Gesse the other day. He tells me that with all their assets– and with over 3,000 employees, they have many– their culture is the thing that they’re collectively most proud of. Rock on.
[#SmarterConversations]
1 Comment
I just designed this cube grenade for one of my clients, the insurance broker HNI.
As always, it’s basically something to be downloaded [from here], printed out and hung up round the office. A “conversation starter” etc.
Most insurance companies want to sell you a lot of insurance, the more the merrier. One part of HNI’s shtick is, well, “More” is not always the most helpful thing for the client etc.
The guy in the cartoon looks so unhappy simply because the very thought of actually “Doing” something actually frightens a lot of people. Which is why the world is filled with so many clock-watchers.
Though this was designed for HNI, if the message has any value to your business, feel free to print it out as well, thanks.
September 28, 2010
4 Comments
[NB: This post was written by my business partner, Jason Korman. Expect to hear more of him round here in future etc. –Hugh]
Back in the Spring, we were approached by Troy Janisch, Digital Marketing Manager at American Family Insurance about creating a Cube Grenade that encouraged their 8,000+ employees to participate in their social media program.
Troy said that they wanted their 3,800+ agents to build stronger ties with their communities and also engage other employees who the company want to have a voice and share in the new vision for the business.
AmFam has a very particular market: Local communities in eighteen states in the West and Midwest, selling home and life policies to middle income families. For their local insurance agents, community is everything and the stronger their ties, the better their business– it’s that simple.
With this in mind, the goal was to have 50% of all agents online, using at least Facebook, but hopefully some other tools by year’s end.
If you think about it, its hard to imagine a more elegant use of tools like Facebook for building business.
On our side, Hugh’s goal was to create a ‘conversation starter’ – something that would, on the face of it, explain to the digitally uninitiated (a) why they should make developing online connections, a top priority, and b) remind the reps what building THEIR business is really all about. The solution ultimately was two drawings: “Business is Connectivity” above, and “We’re not in the insurance business, We’re in the Connection Business”, below.
A few weeks ago, I checked back in with Troy to see how things were going. For Troy, he wanted to nudge along a Smarter Conversation on a number of fronts and had a plan that not only called for the organic spread of the Cube Grenades through the business, but also, one that was an overt, front and center challenge to the culture of the business. As Troy said, his goal was to ‘Nudge the culture Forward’ i.e. “To Change the culture from Sales Orientation to one of Customer Orientation,”
After commissioning the Cube Grenade, AmFam, put up an exhibit of about a dozen of Hugh’s more inspiring works. They included: Intoxicated, X,Y,Z and the clean version of “Quality”. The exhibition was put up in a “bold location” in their headquarters in Madison, where it would be seen by all the employees over the period it was up.
While the spread of the Cube Grenades is happening. People are printing them out, and putting them on their email signatures, the art exhibition really got people’s attention, and not in the way that was originally planned.
A lot of attention was focused on the “Quality” image, one of Hugh’s most popular cartoons, and one that was redrawn in a Safe for Work mode for software giant, SAP, earlier this year. It seems that in Madison, Wisconsin, “Fricking”, is not yet quite Safe for Work, so it provoked a lot of ‘discussion’ about the appropriateness of the piece. However, this was the opening that Troy wanted. He turned the conversation into what the idea of “Frickin’ Amazing” means to a company like American Family, and ultimately, he had is objective in the crosshairs: “Customer Service”.
As Troy says “ Nobody starts the day thinking that they will give bad customer service, but it’s the culture that makes the difference as to whether it gets delivered,” he continued, “Everyone says that they have Customer Service, and many do, but Customer Service is not simply top down, it is how everyone actually acts, as opposed to aspires to act.”
And therein lied the rub, and the notion of having a “Smarter Conversation” internally about Customer Service, what’s wrong with it, and how to make it “Totally Frickin’ Amaxing”, and more importantly, how do you create a culture that supports people taking the risks necessary to deliver ‘Totally Fricking Amazing Service”. Creating that internal dialogue is not something that happens by itself, but if the goal is to nudge along the culture of an 8,000 person business, disruption is the order of the day.
We’ll be checking back in with Troy to see how things are progressing. But as Troy says, “The Connectivity Cube Grenade is about reminding people at HQ that the business is out in small communities, which is the heart of their business’ and whether the folks are on the front line, or in the call center in Madison, every voice is part of the brand, and everyone makes a difference.”
September 25, 2010
No Comments
Things I wish my phone did. Dot com. It’s a website we’re building for our client, Line2.
It should be up in a wee bit… we’re hoping to have a lot of fun with it– an “Idea Amplifier”, as it were.
Re. The cartoon above: No matter how much you love your new state-of-the-art phone, it can’t love you back [For now, that is].
[Food for thought] From Seth Godin, May, 2007:
Now, of course, most blogs are one-person operations. Which means that successful blogs are often run by restless, outward-bound people in a hurry. And a lot of bloggers either have day jobs or passionate sidelines. I think that’s a good thing, even when they fail. It’s frustrating for me to hear, “stick to your blogging,” when people criticize a project created by a blogger – because it’s part of the blogging, part of the learning, part of what’s unfolding. I’d rather read a book that’s informed by the activities (not the reporting) of the writer, and I’d rather read a blog that’s based on the successes (and failures) of the blogger.
Which brings us to Hugh MacLeod and his work for Microsoft. Some critics think he’s selling out. I don’t. I think he’s having a huge impact on an organization –from the outside– at the same time that he demonstrates how just about any large organization can rethink its role in the world. And he’s doing it in front of all of us, without a net.
September 19, 2010
6 Comments
On Friday I was talking to Peter Sisson, gapingvoid’s new client, the guy behind Toktumi and Line2.
We were talking about “The Cocktail Party Rule”- what’s true at cocktail parties is also true in marketing i.e. If you want to be boring, talk about yourself. If you want to be interesting, talk about something else.
Luckily, Peter concurs…
The way I see it, a product is an “Idea Amplifier”. You have an idea about something– phones or whatever– and you build a product as an expression of that idea.
For example, Zappos’ central idea is not really about shoes per se, it’s about company culture and customer service– “Delivering Happiness”, as its CEO, Tony Hsieh calls it.
Similarly, with Line2 the central idea is not about an iPhone app, it’s about, and I’m quoting Peter here, “What phones could be”.
And what can a phone be? I’m curious to find out. I think we all are.
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