Archive for the ‘Blue Monster’ Category
August 15, 2010
38 Comments
I’ve been working on a problem lately…
“Purpose Idea” plus “Social Object” equals…????
The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.
[Quoting Mark Earls:] Put really simply, the Purpose-Idea is the “What For?” of a business, or any kind of community. What exists to change (or protect) in the world, why employees get out of bed in the morning, what difference the business seeks to make on behalf of customers and employees and everyone else? BTW this is not “mission, vision, values” territory – it’s about real drives, passions and beliefs. The stuff that men in suits tend to get embarrassed about because it’s personal. But it’s the stuff that makes the difference between success and failure, because this kind of stuff brings folk together in all aspects of human life.
In his brilliant book, “Welcome to The Creative Age,” Mark Earls, then one of the top advertising planners in London, coined to term “Purpose-Idea”, as a more interesting, engaging and human term to replace the word, “Brand”. The latter he viewed as an outdated, overused and mostly meaningless concept.
Though I loved the book [“Purpose-Idea” is one of the most explosive “A-Ha!” moments I’ve had in my entire career], it soon became apparent to me that a Purpose-Idea doesn’t live in a vacuum. It needs to be articulated via a Social Object, so the idea can spread. Ideas spread not on their own steam, but as social objects. “Hey Gang, what do y’all think of this idea” etc etc. The Microsoft Blue Monster was a good example.
After the success of The Blue Monster, I wanted to create more of these…
i.e. “Social Objects that Articulate a Purpose-Idea” etc.
So I started drawing Cube Grenades with EXACTLY THAT in mind.
But in order to explain what I was talking about, it needed a name. Something more descriptive than say, “Blue Monster” or “Cube Grenade”, terms which are both utterly meaningless without a lot of backstory and context.
So recently I’ve been using the term, “Object-Idea”. A bit of a mouthful, maybe, but it works for now.
So what does this have to do with anything?
Well basically, I’ve been telling the ad agency world for while now, “Guys, you’re no longer in the Message business, you’re in the Social Object business.”
Yes, TV commercials can be social objects [“Dude, did you see that crazy new Progressive Insurance commercial? WTF??!!!”].
In fact, they must be, if the ad is to work. The “Whassuup” campaign for Budweiser [which was actually written by my old advertising buddy, Vinny Warren] didn’t work because the ad was THAT great artistically or convinced you of the beer’s quality.
It worked because suddenly millions of young adults the world over started saying ““Whassssuuuup” to each other. The advertising message, “Whassuup” had become a social object. An utterly massive one.
In the advertising & marketing world, successful social objects [Often called “virals”, especially when talking online] are a good thing. Every brand manger and his uncle dreams of one day creating the next Cadbury’s Gorilla.
But a social object on steroids i.e. an Object-Idea, is far more powerful.
Because it’s actually talking about stuff that actually matters to people. It’s not enough for people to like your product. For them to really LOVE it, somehow they’ve got to connect and empathize with the basic, primal human drives that compelled you create your product in the first place. The Purpose. The Idea. Otherwise you’re just one more piece of clutter to them.
The Object-Idea might catch on within the advertising & marketing world, it might not. It might need refining on my part– maybe a lot, maybe a little– we’ll see. But I sincerely believe that the people who really get it will have a considerable advantage over their peers who don’t.
The Object-Idea. You heard it here first, Folks. Rock on.
[N.B. “Social Objects” is a term I did not coin myself, but was turned onto by the anthropolgist and Jaiku founder, Jyri Engestrom.]
July 15, 2010
3 Comments
[A little Blue Monster “cube grenade” I designed for my old buddy over at Microsoft, Steve Clayton.]
As I’ve said many times before, the best thing about being a blogger is the people you get to meet.
Case in Point: White Box Edibles nominated themselves for the Cube Grenade competition I’ve currently got going on.
“A medical marijuana edibles company in sunny Boulder, Colorado”?
Whatever your views on marijuana (I’ve always been fairly indifferent to it), I kinda dig the sheer chutzpah of the enterprise, don’t you?
Or this one:
Little shop of happiness
This could make a movie.
Hungary, 2006. A retired teacher of French and Italian (Diane Keaton) and a retired ear-nose-and-throat specialist (Meryl Streep) open a pastry shop. They can’t afford the rent anywhere in the city, so they open it in a small town (Solymár), beside the highway.
It’s not your typical pastry shop, however…
People quit their jobs to start like crazy-ass businesses like these every day. Why? Sure, they want the independence and the feeling of control over their own destinies and all that, but…
I believe one of the biggest drives is:
They want to be able to tell a good story.
We all want to hear a good story about the world, that we can buy into. And we also want to create equally good stories of our own to tell. This capacity to create, absorb and share metaphors is what separates us from all the other animals.
And if we can’t do that; if we don’t have these stories that we can believe in [our own AND other people’s] something inside us starts feeling like it’s dying…
And dying, as you know, is no way to live.
[Submit your own cube grenade story here etc.]
April 4, 2009
1 Comment
Just stumbled across this photo from July, 2007. The Blue Monster made it to the SAP offices in Ra’anana, Israel. Rock on.
I’ve not been pushing The Blue Monster much in the last year. I’ve been busy with other things, and besides, like Microsoft’s Steve Clayton told me a while back, “It already has a life of its own, so there’s no need to…“
That being said, every now and then I’ll come across someone in the Microsoft ecosystem, either via email, Twitter or in person, who’ll tell me a funny story about it e.g. like how they were in somebody’s office on the other side of the planet, and there they saw it, hanging on the wall. Stuff like that makes my day. And it’s been happening quite a lot recently, for reasons unbeknownst to me. Which I suppose is why I’m writing about it now…
In retrospect, over two years since it made its debut, I’m quite relieved it never got officially sanctioned by the Microsoft marketing machine. “We’re Microsoft! We GET The Blue Monster! We’re cool!!!!” That would’ve gone down like a lead balloon.
My spies tell me that inside Microsoft, The Blue Monster is pretty divisive. Some people really resonate with it, a lot of people go, “Who the hell authorized this?!! This isn’t part of the branding!!!!” I consider them friends of mine, but I don’t work for Microsoft, nor are they currently clients of mine. So I’ll let them sort that one out for themselves. Heh.
I never envisioned it as part of “The Brand”. To me it was just a cartoon that articulated that demonic, creative passion, that sense of PURPOSE that ALL companies need to articulate, Microsoft or otherwise, software or otherwise, if they wish to remain interesting, if they wish to thrive long-term.
It’s not rocket science. Which is why it works.
[Link: The original Blue Monster blog post.]
February 4, 2009
11 Comments
A few people have pinged me about this story over the last couple of days, so I guess a blog post was in order.
A couple of years ago, I drew the Microsoft Blue Monster cartoon. It started taking on a life of its own inside Microsoft.
Then back in July I blogged about how one Microsoft employee, Dan Woodman, liked the idea so much, he went and got himself a Blue Monster Tattoo. As Dan said himself,
While I can never forget how much I love this company and all of the great things we do, I wanted a daily reminder of the fact that I, as a Microsoftie, need to change the world every single day. That is why, as part of MGX this year, I decided to fully embrace the Blue Monster and all it stands for. That is my very own Blue Monster tattoo (and yes, he is real!). He’s there to make sure I don’t forget why I am here and what it is that I am doing — changing the world.
The a couple of days ago the story breaks that Dan has just been laid off from Microsoft. The job is gone, the tattoo remains etc. As the song goes, “Isn’t it ironic”.
Dan talks about here:
One of the questions I have been hearing often involves my very first blog post on this site– “What about the Blue Monster?” The truth is, I haven’t regretted that tattoo since I got it and now is no exception. The Blue Monster is staying. 
Working at Microsoft has been the greatest experience of my life and I have no desire to forget about it. And even if I don’t get back into Microsoft right away (which is, by the way, my plan!), then I have a reminder that even outside of Microsoft, I need to do my best to change the world every single day.
So being the cartoonist who spawned the Blue Monster, how do I feel about it?
Well, I don’t know Dan personally, but at the time I considered it a great honor that he would regard my work highly enough to tattoo himself with it, even if I would never be totally comfortable with that kind of responsibility. But I guess that’s the price you pay for putting your work out there. It’s like being a songwriter, and then reading in the national media that some teenager in Iowa killed himself while listening to your album. That doesn’t make you an accessory to murder. Art has a life of its own.
And yeah, getting laid off is always a risk, with or without a company tattoo to call your own. Welcome to reality.
Secondly, just because Dan doesn’t work for Microsoft Corp any more, doesn’t mean he’s no longer part of the grander cause he signed up for, for the kind of change he wants to help make. Microsoft is a huge company, but it’s dwarfed in comparison by the size of their Partner Group ecosystem. I imagine Dan could easily end up somewhere in there, working away quite happily and productively for the same cause.
And why not? I have a friend who was laid off from Microsoft last year, and guess what? She still drives to the Redmond campus every day. Only this time she’s the employee of an outside contractor, not Microsoft, but the type of work that she’s doing, and the people she’s working with inside Microsoft, really hasn’t changed too much. The lines that separate “internal” and “external” are very blurry, compared to even half a generation ago.
Thirdly, the Blue Monster was never about Dan’s paycheck. It was about an idea. I’ve been saying this for years: All a product is, all a company is, is an an “Idea Amplifier”. Products don’t excite us. Human potential excites us.
i.e. “People matter. Objects don’t.“
Good luck to you, Dan. Good luck with your next adventure, and good luck with your new blog. Rock. On. And Thanks!
December 19, 2008
2 Comments
[Yeah, well, I was messing around with my Tablet PC today.…]
December 6, 2008
37 Comments
[This cartoon I drew this morning pretty much sums it up…]
For the last six months or so, I’ve been trying to get my head around Dell. Trying to see what they’re good at, what they’re not so good at, and seeing if there’s a way that maybe, just maybe, I could help them in some small way become a better company.
But it’s been a somewhat arduous process. Progress has been slow. Not because anyone’s done anything wrong– on their side or mine– it’s just a big nut I’m trying to crack here. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Today I had a bit of an EUREKA! moment.
I like Dell. They are good friends of mine. They’ve been good clients to me. Big Kudos all round. They have a lot of good qualities. For example:
They’re very good at being efficient.
They are very nice people, for the most part.
They have a very tenacious streak to them.
They seem to frown on what they consider to be needless extravagance. They’re frugal.
They’re very practically minded. They like numbers, they don’t like getting too excited about all this airy-fairy, new-age marketing pixie dust.
They are driven to constantly create great products.
They are driven to constantly create a better company and culture. They figure that if they don’t keep raising the bar, somebody else will do it for them.
Nothing I have seen there with my own two eyes would lead me to believe otherwise. All well and good.
But one word I’m going to keep of the list: “Creative”.
Of course Dell has tons of creative people working for them. Of course they’re always “creating” great stuff. Of course there’s huge reservoirs of creative capital, teeming away in those large glass building of theirs.
But if I randomly asked you to make a list of the world’s top ten most “Creative” companies, would Dell make it on to the list? I’m guessing, for most people reading this, they simply wouldn’t.
Yes. I happen think this is a SERIOUSLY huge problem.
What needs to happen for Dell to be a more “Creative” company? What would need to change in order to get Dell onto that Top Ten List? What EXACTLY is involved?
The good news is, this is a huge opportunity. For both Dell, myself, and anybody else who actually cares about this kind of stuff.
Man, I’m excited now. Rock on.
December 1, 2008
6 Comments
[Close-up of DesertManahattan. India Ink on Canvas… gorgeous. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Let me say it one more time: “Purpose-Ideas are articulated via Social Objects, not Messages.“
Click on the links in the above sentence to see what I’m talking about [especially Link Number Three].
Mark Earls says the future of advertising is not in messages. Which means if you’re currently in advertising, you’ll be asking yourself, what IS the post-message future? At the moment, you get paid to craft messages. So what will you craft in their place?
Short answer: Social Gestures.
As I’m fond of repeating, Social Gestures beget Social Objects.
Exactly.
November 24, 2008
18 Comments
[Cartoon inspired by Shel Israel’s recent post]
[UPDATE:] Brian Rethinks Dell
Brian Baily, who follows me on Twitter, emailed me the following re. my work with Dell. Got my attention, to say the least:
The thing I keep trying to figure out is why did a few 140-character comments by a guy I had never met have more impact on my view of Dell than anything else over the last 2 years. I used to love Dell and worked with them all the time in my former life. Over the last few years, I began to see them as a big, soulless company obsessed with only the product and its price (and especially the price of all the pieces that make the product). All of their advertising seems to be about the stuff and the specs and not about me, or my company, or the amazing things I can do with their it. Even if they want to emphasize their price advantage, which is important, tell me that how I can afford a better health plan for my employees because I’m not wasting money on overpriced hardware.
Your few tweets and posts about Dell have already made me think about Dell differently. I’ve heard a little about the determined, loyal people inside who want Dell to build the best products for the best price. I have a sense of the soul inside the machine, and their passion to do what they do better than anyone else, but also to do well by their customers. Dell seems like a company worth paying attention to again. Hell, I even looked up the Dell Mini — the first time I’ve been on a Dell product page in a long time (unfortunately their web stuff and product naming still sucks and is ridiculously complicated… “Dell Inspiron Mini 9″). As a Texan, I want Dell to thrive. I hope you can play a part in making that happen.
I’ve been saying this for years: Blogging [and all its social media cousins] is a good way to make things happen indirectly. Sure, it takes forever and it’s a bitch to measure, but when it works… Boy, it REALLY works.
November 21, 2008
12 Comments
Back in 2004, I came up with probably my favorite marketing-related insight ever:
“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.
It was a real EUREKA! moment for me. Meaning. A-HA! That’s what we are always going to be willing to pay for. And somehow, even in a small way, your product has to be aligned with your customer’s never-ending search to find meaning in his or her own life.
Why does most marketing fail, or at least, create unsatisfactory results? Because most marketing is oblivious to this real human drive to find meaning.
Instead, most marketing appeals to rather trivial aspects of human existence. Your bum will look smaller with this product. Your shoulders will look bigger with this product. Your friends will be impressed if they see you using our product. Your living room will smell nicer with this product. You’ll save $13.42 if you use our product, instead of their product. Yada, yada, yada…
But as we know, that’s not why we really buy most products. Like I said in 2006:
If people like buying your product, it’s because its story helps fill in the narrative gaps in their own lives.
Human beings need to tell stories. Historically, it’s the quickest way we have for transmitting useful information to other members of our species. Stories are not just nice things to have, they are essential survival tools.
And yes, the stories we tell ourselves are just as important than the stories we tell other people.
Ergo, marketing is not about selling. Marketing is figuring out where your product stands in relation to personal narrative.
So where does your product fit into other people’s narrative? How does telling your story become a survival tool for other people? If you don’t know, you have a marketing problem.
Narrative gaps. It’s all about the narrative gaps.
We find meaning, we fill in the narrative gaps, when we transform ourselves. When we transform from unemployed single mother to world’s richest woman [Like what happened to Harry Potter’s JK Rowling]. When we go from a size-12 dress to a size-6 dress. When we land our first real job promotion. When we go from single horny guy to happily married father of six. This need to constantly transform ourselves, from one state of being to another, never goes away. We are fluid creatures. We crave re-invention like we crave food or sex. And when we lose the capacity to transform ourselves, when we get stuck in a rut, is when life’s meaning starts to dry up.
Fine, I hear you say, that’s great if you’re selling “transformative” stuff like exercise equipment or Tony Robbins seminars, but what about more prosaic products, like snacks or toothpaste?
Simple: Then your product exists in context of a much bigger story– your custumer’s. Like being an extra in a much bigger movie. Or a single sentence in a much bigger book.
It’s OK to play a minor role. As social animals, we are happiest when we feel we belong to something much larger than ourselves. A faith. A movement. A tribe. A noble calling. A Purpose-Idea.
And what is true for people, is also true for products. They too are happiest when they belong to something much larger than themselves. A faith. A movement. A tribe. A noble calling. A Purpose-Idea.
The people who inspire us the most are the people who aim higher than the limitations imposed upon them. Triumph over adversity; it’s the oldest story in the world.
The products that inspire us the most are the ones that also aim higher than the limitations imposed upon them. Triumph over adversity; it’s the oldest story in the world.
So what’s your story going to be?
[Bonus Link:] Harold Jarche left a neat quote in the comments. From Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, page 414:
“So I looked with fascination at those people in their mobes [cars], and tried to fathom what it would be like. Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who’d made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day’s end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them.”
November 20, 2008
12 Comments
I loved the comment my friend, James Cherkoff left in my last Dell-related post.
Almost all commercial copy increasingly sounds like something from the 1950’s when compared to the bazaar of the live web. The example I use is one very close to my heart — Arseblog, the super-popular blog about Arsenal FC [London’s largest pro soccer team].
While Arseblog offers insightful, balanced football analysis his colourful language is very much of the terraces — not the boardroom. For instance, here’s a description of the morning-after his return to Dublin, following a long stay in Barcelona :
“My brain is discombobulated and I have had to send Blogette off to her new school wearing my runners which are at least 4 sizes too big for her because all of our stuff is in a box coming from Spain. I now have no shoes at all but I am wearing her fleecey red dressing gown. So all of you who might have a hangover today at least be thankful you have some shoes. I have no shoes. I am like a bag lady in a red dressing gown without any bags.”
You would be forgiven for thinking that such rhetoric wouldn’t ingratiate him with the club, a famously conservative organisation. In fact, the opposite is true and the Arsenal Chairman, an old-Etonian, and Amy Lawrence, a journalist at The Observer, are both regulars on the blog’s Arsecast podcast.
[N.B. “Arse” is English slang for “Ass”, “Butt”, “Rear End”, “Bum” etc. Fun bit of wordplay etc.]
I’ve been saying this for a while: Art is Language. Marketing is Language. Art evolves Language, Language evolves Art. Same with Marketing. Your marketing will evolve once your language evolves.
My three big marketing successes, English Cut, Stormhoek and The Microsoft Blue Monster didn’t work because I had some clever, rocket-science metric for them to play with. They succeeded simply because I convinced all three parties to talk to their markets in ways they simply hadn’t been talked to before.
English Cut is probably my most lucid example. My friend, Thomas Mahon is one of the top bespoke tailors in the world, certainly one of the top on London’s Savile Row. His handmade suits fetch upwards of $5,000 if, and only if you can get on his waiting list for an appointment.
Instead of the usual high-end, mahogany-paneled, men’s fashion blether [“Imagine yourself draped in the luxury only a privileged few can aspire to yak yak yak… The highest standards of quality, tradition and service maintained since 1852 yak yak yak…”], what did he do? He started praising his competition. And he used informative, helpful, friendly, straight-talking language in the process:
Kilgour’s (formerly Kilgour French & Stanbury). I have a very soft spot for this firm, as their old cutter, George Roden offered me a job when I was very young and just starting out in the trade. An excellent pedigree in classic tailoring (Carey Grant was a favourite customer), but even though they keep one foot firmly in the past, they’re not frightened to move forward. This is shown in the new contemporary facelift their shopfront just had. They also have an excellent ready-to-wear collection.
And it worked. Sales went from a steady trickle to through-the-roof in less than a year.
Whether we’re talking about a large company like Dell, or a small cottage industry like English Cut, the first marketing question to ask is not what tools and strategies we want to use– the first question to ask is, “How do we wish to talk to people differently, than how we were talking to them before?“
Once you can answer that, the tools and strategies will quickly and easily reveal themselves.
Language. It’s all about Language. You want me help you with your marketing, you have to be willing to talk to me about Language. Exactly.
[Disclosure: Dell are clients of mine.]
November 15, 2008
20 Comments
[“Edges 6″. Part of The Edges Series. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few days thinking about Dell Computers, a tech hardware company from Round Rock, Texas. Here are some notes:
1. When I developed The Blue Monster idea for Microsoft, a wee voice told me there was a business model in there somewhere. Some kind of post-advertising, Purpose-Idea, social-object, marketing-disruption kind of thing. Something that would scale, something one could turn into a little cottage industry, creating TONS of value for the fraction of the cost of the traditional advertising agency model. Dell liked the idea, and let me have a meeting with them. Since then I’ve been having this little back-and-forth with them, trying to get know the company better, trying to figure out an “Angle of Alignment” with them that would hopefully allow me to create something interesting.
2. So far it’s been a great experience. Working mostly with Richard and Lionel, they’ve been introducing me to tons of people, while I’ve been trying to get my head around the company– what they do and why they do it.
3.Though I find it a bit simplistic [nor do I agree with much of it], I love this article from Fake Steve Jobs, “Why Dell Won’t Bounce Back”
Bottom line is this: the only innovations worth making are the ones involving product ideas and product design. I mean, Duh. Right? It’s pretty obvious. What’s amazing to me is how few companies actually seem to realize it. To sustain an edge in any market you must make better products than your competitors, consistently, over and over and over again. Just making the same products as everyone else but taking a little friction out of the system can give you an advantage, but only a temporary one.
The article basically lines up all the most obvious challenges Dell faces. Like I said a while ago, I see Dell’s challenges fall into four main categories:
i. Evolution of customer service. Sure, they have a ways to go. Then again, don’t we all etc. They’ve certainly come a long way since Jeff Jarvis and the whole “Dell Hell” episode, which gives me reasons to be cheerful.
ii. Design. Ten years ago, I didn’t own a computer. I really didn’t. The company I worked for gave me one– a Mac desktop. The internet was still relatively still in its infancy back then, so besides using Word to do my job, sending emails, and surfing the net occasionally, I didn’t really have a lot of use for it. Now I can’t imagine life without my laptop.
To use a Real Estate allegory: When your company sets you up with a temporary accommodation in a new town, you don’t really mind too much that it’s Embassy Suites. It serves a function. But let’s say you’re looking for a new house for you and your spouse and young children to move into, your needs become A LOT more exacting. Not to mention, a lot more expensive in terms of both square footage and decor. There’s a reason why commercial real estate tends to be cheaper than residential etc.
More and more people are using their own computers to do their work. Their “Own Homes” for their data, as it were. Dell has long been been in the “Temporary Accommodation” business, for other people’s data. And now as the market changes, they’re having to make the move from building “Embassy Suites”, to building actual “Private Dwellings”. There’s a contextual headshift to work through. And it won’t happen overnight– it’s a big company.
iii. India & China. In 2007 for the first time, Dell made more money from outside the USA than from inside it. 50.2% vs 49.8%, I believe are the figures. The question is not about how one get more business from the West Coast, Mac-using hipster crowd. The big question is, how do you get technology into the hands of people who THIS SIMPLY WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN AN OPTION FOR, even a couple of years ago?
iv. Culture. To me this is the biggest issue of the four. You can’t thrill your customers until you thrill yourself first. Let’s face it, a big part of the Dell schtick is built around processes– sales, manufacturing, controlling costs and all that lovely, corporate back-office stuff. That’s fair enough, most big companies operate like this. I would very much like to know, what percentage of Dell employees feel “This is just a paycheck”, versus how many feel, “Dammit, we’re frickin’ changing the world here”…?
4. Somebody at Dell once described his employer as “Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” Though my granny always told me that it’s good to remain humble, and to a large extent, I do agree with that sentiment, I did scratch my head a wee bit at that one. Does Microsoft see themselves as “ordinary”? Does Apple? I doubt that they do.
5. Though it’s still early days, I think Michael Dell coming back from retirement to captain the company [like Steve Jobs did at Apple] is a big deal. I think the effects are only just beginning to show themselves. Personally, I’m glad to have him there.
6. Part of my motivation for working with Dell is simple patriotism. For 20 million Texans to prosper long-term, we need large, world-class creative powerhouses. Same as every other state in the Union, same with every other nation on Earth. We’ve done the efficiency thing for three hundred years, and have gotten quite good at it. Like I said in my talk at StartupEmpire the other day, the future of wealth is now all about “Creativity”. Embrace it, or die.
7. They’re called PCs, they’re not called BCs. They’re called personal computers, not business computers. That being said, the demands of an affluent, creative American are different from the needs of an IT manager in a large widget factory. As the lines that separate business and personal get ever more blurry, I see all major computer companies [including Gosh! Yes! Apple!] struggle to bridge the gap.
8. I asked somebody at Dell what she thought made the company so special, what separated it from the others. “Basically, we’re tenacious sons-of-bitches,” she said. Good answer! As I spoke to more and more Dell folk during my many visits to their Round Rock campus in the last 6 months, this “tenacity” started to become easier and easier to sense. I find that encouraging.
9. The Edges cartoon series came directly out of my talking with Dell. They spent the last 20 years “pushing the edges” of manufacturing, supply, distribution and pricing [and the world, frankly, would be a lot poorer had they not done so]. Where else can they push outwards? Design? Customer Service? I have no idea. Only they can answer that. [Note to Dell Employees: If you can shed any light on this question, I want to talk to you. Please feel free to ping me at gapingvoid@gmail.com, Thanks.]
10. “Live on the edges or not at all” are pretty empty words, unless you can actually live by them. Harder than it looks. Maybe “Live on The Edges” is the right choice of words to articulate Dell’s Purpose-Idea, maybe it isn’t. At the very least, it’ll start a conversation internally, maybe externally as well. I don’t really care at the moment. All I’m trying to do is get my head one step closer to understanding the collective drive of the company. And I don’t mind failing a few times in order to get there.
11. Trying to create a “Blue Monster” for any company, be it Microsoft, Dell, or whoever, is basically an act of futility. That’s what makes it interesting. That’s what makes it potentially powerful. That’s what makes me love doing it.
[Backstory: “Blue Monster: Why Social Objects Are The Future Of Marketing”]
[Written at Harry’s Tinaja, Alpine, Texas.]
November 9, 2008
28 Comments
As a marketing blogger, I get asked a lot, “What is the future of marketing?“
I always answer the same: “The Blue Monster”.
What’s The Blue Monster?
A Blue Monster is a Social Object that articulates a Purpose-Idea.
What’s a Social Object? What’s a Purpose-Idea?
Sit yourself down, pour yourself another glass of whisky. This might take a while to explain…
1. THE BLUE MONSTER BACKSTORY
In the late 1990’s I was living in New York, working as a mid-level copywriter at a mid-size advertising agency, when for whatever reason I started drawing cartoons exclusively on the back of business cards, just to give me something to do while sitting at the bar. Like I wrote on my blog:
All I had when I first got to Manhattan were 2 suitcases, a couple of cardboard boxes full of stuff, a reservation at the YMCA, and a 10-day freelance copywriting gig at a Midtown advertising agency.
My life for the next couple of weeks was going to work, walking around the city, and staggering back to the YMCA once the bars closed. Lots of alcohol and coffee shops. Lot of weird people. Being hit five times a day by this strange desire to laugh, sing and cry simultaneously. At times like these, there’s a lot to be said for an art form that fits easily inside your coat pocket.
The freelance gig turned into a permanent job. I stayed. The first month in New York for a newcomer has this certain amazing magic about it that is indescribable. Incandescent lucidity. However long you stay in New York, you pretty much spend the rest of your time there trying to recapture that feeling. Chasing Manhattan Dragon. I suppose the whole point of the cards initially was to somehow get that buzz onto paper.
I started my blog, gapingvoid.com in 2001. I was back living in the United Kingdom, where I grew up and where my mother and sister still lived.
By this time I had accumulated a couple of thousand business-card cartoons, and just started posting them on a semi-daily basis.
Fast Forward to 2006. By this time my blog is pretty well known– one of the largest in Europe-getting over a million unique visitors a month. My cartoons are all over the internet, it seems, especially around the tech blogger scene.
It’s around this time that I meet Steve Clayton, at one of the many “Geek Dinners” that have begun sprouting around the London tech scene.
Steve works for Microsoft, at the time he was running the UK Partner Group [I could tell you what that actually means, but that would take too long. Suffice to say, he’s one very clever and talented chappie].
Steve’s not the first “Microsoftie” I’d met before, but he was the first one I got on really well with. Over the next few months, we start seeing each other around a lot. He’s a really super nice guy, highly intelligent, and fun to hang out with. Good times all round.
Early on, he tells me something that really struck with me: “I could be making a lot more money, and taking a lot less social grief if I worked somewhere else. But I choose not to, simply because at Microsoft, you get to work on some REALLY cool stuff, sooner than anywhere else.”
Why was that so interesting to me? Because I had heard that very same reason cited to me by EVERY single Microsoft employee I had ever met up until that time. Secondly, like every other Microsoft employee I had ever met before, Steve was a really nice, open, fun guy. He did not typify the stereotype “Evil Borg Hive Member” that Microsoftees were often accused of being.
I pondered this for a while. Why did these folk work at Microsoft? It wasn’t the money, it wasn’t the social kudos. Something else was motivating them
So in October, 2006 I posted a cartoon on my blog that tried to express this drive, at least to myself. It went on to be called “The Blue Monster”:
[“The Blue Monster”. First blogged in October, 2006.]
I posted it in high-resolution, the idea being that people at Microsoft who liked the idea, could download it and print it out poster-style, if they wanted. Like I said on my blog:
I just designed this poster for my buddies over at Microsoft [you know who you are]. Feel free to download the high-res version by clicking on the image, and print it out onto — posters, t-shirts etc.
The headline works on a lot of different levels:
Microsoft telling its potential customers to change the world or go home.
Microsoft telling its employees to change the world or go home.
Microsoft employees telling their colleagues to change the world or go home.
Everybody else telling Microsoft to change the world or go home.
Everyone else telling their colleagues to change the world or go home.
And so forth.
Microsoft has seventy thousand-odd employees, a huge percentage them very determined to change the world, and often succeeding. And millions of customers with the same idea.
Basically, Microsoft is in the world-changing business. If they ever lose that, they might as well all go home.
I chose the monster image simply because I always thought there is something wonderfully demonic about wanting to change the world. It can be a force for the good, of course, if used wisely. It’s certainly a very loaded part of the human condition, but I suppose that’s what makes it compelling.
What happened next was quite extraordinary. Steve saw the cartoon, and really liked it. He immediately started using the image in his e-mail signature. He stared talking about the cartoon on his blog. Next thing you know, other folk inside Microsoft start doing the same. The “idea-virus” is unleashed.
Today, if you’re ever invited onto the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, if you walk around the offices, chances are you’ll see the Blue Monster poster, hanging on somebody’s wall. Or you might very well see someone with a Blue Monster sticker on their laptop, wearing a Blue Monster t-shirt, or handing you their business card with the Blue Monster on the back. Though the Blue Monster wasn’t created by Microsoft, for many people working there, it seems to articulate why they work there. It’s also been written about in the UK National Media, as well as countless tech blogs.
It’s not that everybody inside Microsoft “gets” The Blue Monster. It’s never been officially endorsed by them. But the ones who do get ito, REALLY get it. For them, it’s a cult object. It represents the conversation they INDIVIDUALLY wish to be having with the world about their company and technology in general, not what the corporate “Brand Police” upstairs want to be having with the world. They may be loyal employees of Microsoft, but they’re also individuals. Somehow The Blue Monster allows them to express both roles at the same time, allows them to navigate the blurry lines that separate the two.
I was just playing around with a cartoon idea at the time, not really expecting too much to come from it. I never expected the idea to get as big and well-known as it did. Life is full of surprises.
As the months went by and I started to see The Blue Monster story growing and growing, I had another insight: The Blue Monster wasn’t a one-off. The Blue Monster represented a fundamental shift in how marketing will be conducted in the future.
[One of the drawings I did for Seth Godin’s latest book, “The Dip”.]
[UPDATE:] In order to help me order my thoughts, I decided to put all my favorite social object posts onto a single blog page below. Enjoy.]
[From “KULA”: June 15th, 2007]
The Guardian’s Kevin Anderson [who also attended last night’s screening] has a nice synopsis of Jaiku Founder, Jyri Engstrom’s “Social Objects” idea.
Something about sites like Flickr that you will be using these sites for years to come.
The sites that work are built around social objects.
[…] MySpace. What is the real focal object? Music. Once they lose that focus, it is in trouble.
How does one build a useful service around social objects? Five key principles.
1. You should be able to define the social object your service is built around.
2. Define your verbs that your users perform on the objects. For instance, eBay has buy and sell buttons. It’s clear what the site is for.
3. How can people share the objects?
4. Turn invitations into gifts.
5. Charge the publishers, not the spectators. He learned this from Joi Ito. There will be a day when people don’t pay to download or consume music but the opportunity to publish their playlists online.
Besides being a web 2.0 entrepreneur, Jyri is an anthropologist. So at the London Jaiku geek dinner last Tuesday, I asked him about the connection between Social Objects and its correlation with Malinowski’s “Kula” [Malinowski was the father of modern Anthropology, by the way]. Jyri repsonded that this was very much the case. So much so, in fact, that one of his great friends and mentors, the aforementioned Joi Ito bought an island in Second Life and named it “Kula”.
Kula. Social Ojects. Objects of Sociability. Call it what you will, I think so much of what we’re trying to understand about the web, the future, and yes, MARKETING, stems from this very profound insight from Malinowski in the early 20th Century, that good folk like Jyri and Joi are now helping to shed new light on.
[Bonus Link:] Video of Jyri’s talk on Social Objects at the geek dinner. One of the best talks I’ve heard for a while.
[Starbuck’s Coffee Cup: June, 2007]
Somewhere along the line I figured out the easiest products to market are objects with “Sociability” baked-in. Products that allow people to have “conversations” with other folk. Seth Godin calls this quality “remarkablilty”.
For example: A street beggar holding out an ordinary paper cup cup won’t start a conversation. A street beggar holding out a Starbucks cup will. I know this to be true, because it happened to me and a friend the other day, as we were walking down the street and a guy asked us for some spare change. Afterwards, as we were commenting about the rather sad paradox of a homeless guy plying his trade with a “luxury” coffee cup, my friend said, “Starbucks should be paying that guy.“
Actually, my friend is wrong. Starbuck’s doesn’t need to be paying the homeless guy. Because Starbucks created a social object out of a paper cup, the homeless guy does their marketing for free, whether he knows it or not.
Although I suspect he does. I suspect somewhere along the line the poor chap figured out that holding out a Starbucks cup gets him more attention [and spare change] than an ordinary cup. And suddenly we’re seeing social reciprocity between a homeless person and a large corporation, without money ever changing hands. Whatever your views are on the plight of homeless people, this is “Indirect Marketing” at its finest.
[October, 2007:]Anyone who has heard me speak publicly lately will know that I’m currently very focused on the “Social Object” idea, which I was turned onto by Jaiku’s Jyri Engestrom. Here’s some more thoughts on the subject, in no particular order.
1. The term, “Social Object” can be a bit heady for some people. So often I’ll use the term, “Sharing Device” instead.
2. Social Networks are built around Social Objects, not vice versa. The latter act as “nodes”. The nodes appear before the network does.
3. Granted, the network is more powerful than the node. But the network needs the node, like flowers need sunlight.
4. My overall marketing thesis invariably asks the question, “If your product is not a Social Object, why are you in business?“
5. Yesterday at the Darden talk I explained why geeks have become so important to marketing. My definition of a geek is, “Somebody who socializes via objects.” When you think about it, we’re all geeks. Because we’re all enthusiastic about something outside ourselves. For me, it’s marketing and cartooning. for others, it could be cellphones or Scotch Whisky or Apple computers or NASCAR or the Boston Red Sox or Buddhism. All these act as Social Objects within a social network of people who care passionately about the stuff. Whatever industry you are in, there’s somebody who is geeked out about your product category. They are using your product [or a competitor’s product] as a Social Object. If you don’t understand how the geeks are socializing– connecting to other people– via your product, then you don’t actually have a marketing plan. Heck, you probably don’t have a viable business plan.
6. The Apple iPhone is the best example of Social Object I can think of. At least, it is when I’m trying to explain it to somebody unfamiliar with the concept.
7. The Social Object idea is not rocket science.
8. How do you turn a product into a Social Object? Answer: Social Gestures. And lots of them.
9. Products, and the ideas that spawn them, go viral when people can share them like gifts. Example: gmail invites in the early days.
10. Social Object can be abstract, digital, molecular etc.
11. The interesting thing about the Social Object is the not the object itself, but the conversations that happen around them. The Blue Monster is a good example of this. It’s not the cartoon that’s interesting, it’s the conversatuons that happen around it that’s interesting.
12. Ditto with a bottle of wine.
13. Once I get talking about marketing, it’s hard for me to go more than 3 minutes without saying the words, “Social Object”.
14. The most important word on the internet is not “Search”. The most important word on the internet is “Share”. Sharing is the driver. Sharing is the DNA. We use Social Objects to share ourselves with other people. We’re primates. we like to groom each other. It’s in our nature.
15. I believe Social Objects are the future of marketing.
[“Social Gestures beget Social Objects”: Novemeber, 2007]
Chris Schroeder riffs on my whole “Social Object” marketing schtick with this very salient thought:
If your company wants to succeed, it needs to have a social object marketing plan.
Amen to that. But note what Chris also says:
I don’t know about you, but when somebody walks by with an iPhone, I notice. If I see a kid stroll by me in some limited edition Nikes, that registers with me too.
Therein lies the rub. The Social Object idea is easy to get if your product is highly remarkable, highly sociable. An iPhone or the latest pair of Nike’s are both fine examples of this.
But I can already hear your inner MBA saying, “Yeah, but what if you don’t work for Nike or Apple? What if your product is boring home loans, auto insurance or… [the list of boring products is pretty long].
My standard answer to that is, “Social Gestures beget Social Objects.“
Which is another way of saying, maybe the way you relate to somebody as a human being plays a part in all this. Maybe describing the product as “boring” is just one more bullshit lie we tell ourselves in order to make the world seem less complicated and scary. Hey, my product is inherently dull and boring, therefore I get to be inherently dull and boring, too. Hooray!
Nowadays, thanks to folk like Nike, we think of sneakers as “non-boring” brands. This wasn’t true when I was a kid. Back then sneakers were those bloody awful $3 plimsolls we wore in Phys Ed. But it took companies like Nike and Adidas to come along and by shear force of will, raise the level of conversation in the sneaker department, before sneakers became bona fide global social objects, bona fide global powerhouse brands.
The decision to raise the level of conversation isn’t economic. Nor is it an intellectual decision. It’s a moral decision. But whether you have the stomach for it is up to you.
Like I told Thomas almost 3 years ago re. English bespoke tailoring, “Own the conversation by improving the conversation.” And hey, it worked. His sales went up 300% in 6 months.
It wasn’t the change in product that made Thomas’ suits Social Objects. It was changing the way he talked to people. The same applies to Stormhoek, which 3 years ago was an $8 bottle of South African wine nobody had ever heard of. Conversation. Matters.
So all you corporate MBAs out there, here’s a little tip. When you planning on how to embrace the brave new world of Web 2.0, the first question you ask yourself should not be “What tools do I use?“
Blogs, RSS, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook– it doesn’t matter.
The first question you should REALLY ask yourself is:
“How do I want to change the way I talk to people?“
And hopefully the rest should follow.
Think about it.
[Bonus Link: For a more academic take on social objects, check out this post from Anthropologist, Jyri Engestrom.]
[From “So What’s All This New Marketing Stuff, Anyway?”: December, 2007] Some people call it “The New Marketing”. Some people call it “Marketing 2.0″. Whatever name you care to give it, I get asked about it a lot. Here are some random thoughts, in no particular order.
1. “The New Marketing” came about because of two unstoppable forces: [A] The invention of the internet and [B] the beginning of the demise of what Seth Godin calls the “TV-Industrial Complex”. Thanks to the internet, as Clay Shirky famously stated in 2004, “the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.” While this was going on, large companies found out that people were starting to ignore their ads. We have too many choices, too many good choices, and we’ve gotten too good at ignoring messages.
2. Seth Godin is quite rightly the world’s most respected writer on marketing. That being said, a lot of people haven’t heard of Mark Earls yet. They’re both friends of mine, so I don’t want to compare them too much. Seth is a master of taking complicated ideas and presenting them in a way that any Average Joe can understand. Mark is more of a Marketing Geek’s geek. His stuff makes uncomfortable reading for anyone in marketing who hasn’t been stretching himself lately.
3. The most important asset in The New Marketing is “having something worth talking about”. This makes certain marketing people squeamish. A lot of us grew up in an era of flashy commercials for rather uninspiring products, and something in our DNA makes us believe that’s the proper way to go about things.
4. If I had one big insight from the last year, is how The New Marketing has everything to do with how your product or service acts as a “Social Object”. Kudos to Jyri Engestrom for turning me on to it.
5. My second big insight from this year was learning that, even with a fairly everyday product, you can create social objects simply by using your products to make social gestures. That’s what we did with Stormhoek. The message wasn’t, “Here’s why you should buy our wine”. The message was, “We think you’re kinda cool, and we like what you’re doing. We’d like to be part of it, somehow.” And much to everyone’s surprise, it worked rather well.
6. Blogs were the big story for 2005. YouTube for 2006. Facebook for 2007. What’s the big story for 2008? I have no idea. Nor do I think it matters. For the big story, really, is always going to be the same. Websites comes and go, but “Cheap, Easy, Global, Hyperlinked Media” will be with us forever, save for Nuclear Holocaust.
7. A lot of what fuels The New Marketing is quite simply, the most important word in the English Language: “Love”. It’s hard to get someone to read your website if you’re not passionate about your subject matter.
8. I’m trying to train myself to avoid “Microsmosis” i.e. mistaking of a microcosm for the entire cosmos. If you got all your news from blogs, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there are just two phone companies– Apple and Nokia. But Sony, Motorola, LG and Samsung sell a lot of phones, too. Just not to our friends.
9. My Definition of “Web 3.0″: Learning how to use the web properly without it taking over your life. I’m not holding my breath.
10. Why is it so hard to explain The New Marketing to large companies? Because the people who work there are simply not prepared to relinquish the idea of control. Live by metrics, die by metrics etc.
11. I find all this more interesting when I don’t take it too seriously. Like all things internet, it’s far too easy to get carried away.
[From “Social Objects For Beginners”: December, 2007] As y’all will know, I’m fond of talking about “Social Objects” and how they pertain to “Marketing 2.0″. Even so, some people still get confused by what a Social Object actually is. So I wrote the following to clarify some more:
The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.
Example A. You and your friend, Joe like to go bowling every Tuesday. The bowling is the Social Object.
Example B. You and your friend, Lee are huge Star Wars fans. Even though you never plan to do so, you two tend to geek out about Darth Vader and X-Wing fighters every time you meet. Star Wars is the Social Object.
Example C. You’ve popped into your local bar for a drink after work. At the bar there’s some random dude, sending a text on this neat-looking cellphone you’ve never seen before. So you go up to him and ask him about the phone. The random dude just LOVES his new phone, so has no trouble with telling a stranger about his new phone for hours on end. Next thing you know, you two are hitting it off and you offer to buy him a beer. You spend the rest of the next hour geeking out about the new phone, till it’s time for you to leave and go dine with your wife. The cellphone was the social object.
Example D. You’re a horny young guy at a party, in search of a mate. You see a hot young woman across the room. You go up and introduce yourself. You do not start the conversation by saying, “Here’s a list of all the girls I’ve gone to bed with, and some recent bank statements showing you how much money I make. Would you like to go to bed with me?” No, something more subtle happens. Basically, like all single men with an agenda, you ramble on like a yutz for ten minutes, making small talk. Until she mentions the name of her favorite author, Saul Bellow. Halleluiah! As it turns out, Saul Bellow happens to be YOUR FAVORITE AUTHOR as well [No, seriously. He really is. You’re not making it up just to look good.]. Next thing you know, you two are totally enveloped in this deep and meaningful conversation about Saul Bellow. “Seize The Day”, “Herzog”, “Him With His Foot In His Mouth” and “Humbolt’s Gift”, eat your heart out. And as you two share a late-night cab back to her place, you’re thinking about how Saul Bellow is the Social Object here.
Example E. You’re an attractive young woman, married to a very successful Hedge Fund Manager in New York’s Upper East Side. Because your husband does so well, you don’t actually have to hold down a job for a living. But you still earned a Cum Laude from Dartmouth, so you need to keep your brain occupied. So you and your other Hedge Fund Wife friends get together and organise this very swish Charity Ball at the Ritz Carleton. You’ve guessed it; the Charity Ball is the Social Object.
Example F. After a year of personal trauma, you decide that yes, indeed, Jesus Christ is your Personal Saviour. You’ve already joined a Bible reading class and started attending church every Sunday. Next thing you know, you’ve made a lot of new friends in your new congregation. Suddenly you are awash with a whole new pile of Social Objects. Jesus, Church, The Bible, the Church Picnics, the choir rehearsals, the Christmas fund drive, the cookies and coffee after the 11 o’clock service, yes, all of them are Social Objects for you and new friends to share.
Example G. You’ve been married for less than a year, and already your first child is born. In the last year, you and your spouse have acquired three beautiful new Social Objects: The marriage, the firstborn, and your own new family. It’s what life’s all about.
There. I’ve given you seven examples. But I could give THOUSANDS more. But there’s no need to. The thing to remember is, Human beings do not socialize in a completely random way. There’s a tangible reason for us being together, that ties us together. Again, that reason is called the Social Object. Social Networks form around Social Objects, not the other way around.
Another thing to remember is the world of Social Objects can have many layers. As with any complex creature, there can be more than one reason for us to be together. So anybody currently dating a cute girl who’s into not just Saul Bellow, but also into bowling and cellphones and Star Wars and swish Charity Balls as well, will know what I mean.
The final thing to remember is that, Social Objects by themselves don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Sure, it’s nice hanging out with Lee talking about Star Wars. But if Star Wars had never existed, you’d probably still enjoy each other’s company for other reasons, if they happened to present themselves. Human beings matter. Being with other human beings matter. And since the dawn of time until the end of time, we use whatever tools we have at hand to make it happen.
[Afterthought:] As I’m fond of saying, nothing about Social Objects is rocket science. Then again, there’s nothing about “Love” that is rocket science, either. That doesn’t mean it can’t mess with your head. Rock on.
[Link:] Mark Earls has some nice thoughts on this, as well. “Things change because of people interacting with other people, rather than technology or design really doing things to people.“
[N.B. “Social Objects” is a term I did not coin myself, but was turned onto by the anthropolgist and Jaiku founder, Jyri Engestrom.]
[From “Why The Social Object Is The Future Of Marketing”: January, 2008]From my previous post:
The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.
I’ve often gone on record with the statement, “Social Objects are the future of marketing”. This post will attempt to explain further why i believe that.
THE BAD OLD DAYS: MARKETING IN THE AGE OF HYPER-CLUTTER.
We have just come through a hundred-year long era, called the “Mass Era”.
Mass Media and Mass Production came of age at the same time. We try to separate the two, and we cannot.
A few decades ago, the local car dealers in town gave you a choice of four or five models. Now your choice is in the many dozens. There are well over a dozen varieties of Coca Cola. And thousands of different drink combos you can buy at any Starbucks on any given day.
I can sing you jingles for Nestle chocolate bars, from commercials I haven’t seen in over twenty years. That’s how cluttered my mind is. And yours is probably not that different.
Why would any sane person think that swimming in a polluted sea of commercial messages was fun for people? Messages are not information.
In this hyper-cluttered landscape the mediocre marketer will say, “I know! Let’s add another item of clutter to the cultural landfill! Lets increase the noise-to-signal ratio!!!”
And then he wonders why it doesn’t work.
It doesn’t work because we’re ignoring you now. You had our attention for a while, but as you know, it was more a cultural accident than anything you really had any true control over.
The world has moved on, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Your boss also suspects this may be the case, but thankfully for your career, he hasn’t brought it up in a meeting. Yet.
THEN ALONG CAME THE INTERNET…
I can’t help wondering if the internet coming along at the same time as the Hyper-Clutter Era reaching critical mass was a historical accident, or did the internet evolve as fast as it did in order to circumvent the Hyper-Clutter? I’m guessing the latter. If the purveyors of one-way conversations had offered something more sustainable and satisfying, maybe our need to “talk to real human beings” again would not have been so pronounced.
Now, when you buy something, you don’t phone up the company and order a brochure. You go onto Google and check out what other people– people like yourself– are saying about the product. In terms of communication, the company no longer has first-mover advantage. They don’t ask your company for the brochure until your product has already jumped through a series of hoops that SIMPLY WERE NOT there twenty years ago.
YOU NO LONGER CONTROL THE CONVERSATION. THEN AGAIN, MAYBE YOU NEVER DID.
Human beings are much better at recognizing the linear, rather than recognizing the random and exponential.
1 Oh No! There’s a sabre-tooth tiger heading my way!
2. Run!
That is linear. Our caveman ancestors found it a most useful quality.
We run an ad. Sales go up. So taking the Caveman cue, we frame it in a linear fashion to explain to ourselves the cause and effect.
“People liked our ad so much, they dropped what they were doing, sped down to Wal-Mart and bought our product!”
If only.
What happened was probably more random. You saw an ad for Brand X. A few days later you’re having coffee over at your friend, Pam’s house. She has Brand X on her kitchen counter.
“I saw that ad for it the other day,” you say. “Is the stuff any good?”
“Yeah,” she says. “It’s not bad.”
So the next time you’re in the supermarket, you see the product, and buy it. Ker-chiing.
The ad didn’t make the sale. Your friend made the sale, not the ad. The ad merely started a conversation.
This is what they call “Word-Of-Mouth”. When it works, it works very, very well. The main problem is, it rarely does. The marketer has little control of the outcome.
But the marketer’s boss doesn’t want to hear it. The marketer wants to tell his boss this, even less. So we construct mythologies to disguise the fear. Disguise the unknown. Disguise the random, in the world where UNCERTAINTY AND RANDOMNESS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO TAKE OVER THE MATRIX. EVER.
YOU AND PAM, HAVING COFFEE.
Pam just sold you a box of Brand X. Pam doesn’t work for Brand X, Pam gets no commission from Brand X, so why did she make the sale, inadvertently, or otherwise?
Go back to what I said in my last post about Social Objects:
The final thing to remember is that, Social Objects by themselves don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Sure, it’s nice hanging out with Lee talking about Star Wars. But if Star Wars had never existed, you’d probably still enjoy each other’s company for other reasons, if they happened to present themselves. Human beings matter. Being with other human beings matter. And since the dawn of time until the end of time, we use whatever tools we have at hand to make it happen.
When you and Pam met for coffee, you interacted with each other in the context of what anthropologists call “Object-Centerd Sociality”. In other words, you did not socialize in a vacuum, you socialized around objects, you socialized around things. You talked about the Cubs game last week. You talked about how Billy was doing in Third Grade. You talked about this great movie you just saw. You talked about great Pam’s coffee was. And yes, you talked, however briefly, about Brand X. All these things you talked about, an anthropologist would call “Social Objects”. And the thing is, you came over just to chew the fat with Pam. Talking about Billy or the movie or the Cubs game was not part of any pre-agenda. You could’ve talked about other things– books, records, home furnishings, it doesn’t matter– and you would’ve enjoyed your coffee with Pam just as much.
Yes, a lot of socializing is random. Ergo, yes, a lot of marketing is also random.
SO WHERE DOES SOCIAL OBJECTS FIT IN, FROM NOW ON?
From now on you won’t have the TV Commercials to rely on to start your conversations. People are ignoring you. Mass media has simply gotten too expensive. The only way your product is going to spread is by word of mouth. The only way it’s going to get word of mouth is if there is something in it for the person talking about it.
The person you want talking about is not doing it for the money. She’ll only talk about it if it serves as a Social Object. A “hook” to move the conversation along. A hook she can use it as a way to relate to her fellow human beings.
THE BAD NEWS IS, MOST PRODUCTS ARE BORING. THE GOOD NEWS IS, MOST WORD-OF-MOUTH IS BORING.
If you’re an average marketer, chances are that Alas! you don’t sell Mercedes’ or Apple iPods for a living. You probably sell some fairly prosaic, utilitarian product. Like Brand X.
Obviously, if your product is more conversation-worthy, like a Mercedes or an iPod, your job will be easier. Nice work if you can get it.
But let’s face it, average people are never going to sit down and have a deep and meaningful conversation about Brand X. But hey, maybe over coffee, a couple of little soon-forgotten sentences from somebody like Pam, is enough to make the sale.
I’m fond of saying, “If your product is not a Social Object, why are you in business?”
But of course, as Pam just proved, your product, Brand X, IS INDEED a social object. Just maybe your team needs to hone its thinking a little bit.
[Bonus Link from Jyri Engestrom:] “Why some social network services work and others don’t — Or: the case for object-centered sociality.“
[From “The Social Marker– The Social Object on Steroids etc.” January, 2008] You all will be familiar with my writings on Social Objects by now.
The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.
Increasingly I’ve been using a term, “Social Marker” to describe a certain type of Social Object. I’ve found it especially useful for explaining certain ideas to marketing folk.
When two people meet, the first thing they try to do is place each other in context. A social context. So they insert some hints into the conversation:
“I used to know your Uncle Bob.“
“I work at Saatchi & Saatchi’s.
“I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell for years.“
“I’m a member of Soho House.“
“I was reading Doc Searls’ blog the other day.“
“I was college roommates with your ex-girlfriend.“
“I was sampling some fine Islay single malts the other evening.“
“I bought some Versace shirts from Barney’s last week.“
“You’re a Red Sox fan too?“
“I think Andy Warhol is overrated.“
“I think Led Zeppelin is underrated.“
“I was having dinner with some guys from Goldman Sachs.“
“My wife thinks the Upper West Side is really good for schools.“
“San Tropez is too expensive in February.”
Let’s say, for sake of argument, that you never heard of me before, but I knew all about you. And let’s say, for example, you were also the world’s greatest Boston Red Sox fan. And let’s say I saw you in a coffee shop. And let’s say I went over to your table, like a stalker [You don’t know me from Adam, remember].
And let’s say the first thing out of mouth was a short list of five names:
“Carl Yastrzemski. Carlton Fisk. Rico Petrocelli. Fred Lynn. Dwight Evans.“
Yes, granted, that would be pretty strange behavior. That being said, because you knew every single factoid about the 1975 World Series there was to know, you would know exactly who and what I was talking about. Right away, you would know that we shared a context, even though I had only given you five names and nothing else. Which would make you more likely to invite me to sit down at your table and start a conversation.
Every ecosystem has its own, unique set of social markers– nouns that serve as social shorthand, stuff you use to let other people know ASAP that you know what you’re talking about, that you are a fellow “citizen” in a certain space.
When I visit San Francisco I am always surprised how often the name of my friend, Robert Scoble comes up in random conversation, unprompted by myself. Why is that? Why is he so well known? Is his blog REALLY that good? Is he REALLY that smart and interesting?
Well, I could give a whole stack of reasons to explain why I think Robert’s success is well-deserved. But one major reason that his blog’s traffic is so high, and his name so well-known, is that his personal brand has somehow managed to become a Social Marker inside the Silicon Valley ecosystem. The same could also be said for Mike Arrington, Loic Le Meur or Mark Zuckerberg. Dropping their names into random conversations allows people to quickly and efficiently contextualize themselves.
Something similar happened to me a couple of years ago. A artist friend of mine was hitting on a girl, another artist, in a bar in New York’s Lower East Side. For whatever reason, the subject of “Art and the Internet” came up. So my friend started telling the girl about this other friend of his, this guy living over in England, who drew these weird little cartoons on the back of business cards…
“That is SO unoriginal,” the girl interrupts, rolling her eyeballs. “Who does he think he is, Hugh MacLeod?“
Heh. Small world. Yes. She was using me as a Social Marker.
Social Markers are a prime form of social shorthand, that people use to STAKE OUT the ecosystem they’re occupying. So why do I find this such a useful term for marketers? Because obviously, if your product is a Social Marker in your industry ecosystem [the way the iPhone is in the mobile world, or Starbucks is in the coffee world, or Amazon is the book world, or Google is in the search world, or Whole Foods is in the supermarket world, or Virgin is in the airline world, or English Cut in the bespoke world etc etc] you will have an AMAZING competitive advantage to call your own.
And if the product your company makes is not a Social Marker, I guess the first question would be, “Why the hell not?” Quit your job and start over.
[Update:] Neal makes a really good point in the comments: Really interesting thought, Hugh, but bad products could also be a social marker — “ah, yes, I was ripped off by that building company too” or “oh — you’ll be disappointed by that mobile phone as well”. I’d suggest there’s also a variable here about positive v negative that you should think about before quitting that job
[Bonus Link] US News & World Report: “Selling in a Post-Meatball Era– The quest for ‘social objects’ that create their own Web buzz.” Seth Godin in a great interview to plug his new book, Meatball Sundae. “Social Object” given a small mention etc.
[From “Free Cartoons As Social Objects”: May, 2008] When I first started putting up cartoons onto gapingvoid in 2001, they were in a small, 400-pixel-wide format, just like the “Love Letter” cartoon you see above.
Then about 2 years ago, I started posting them in high-resolution, like the “Dinosaur” cartoon below [Click on the image and the high-res version will pop up].
This meant people could actually download the images and start using them for their own stuff. Like I said in my licensing terms,
Hey, if you want to put the work up on your website, blog, or stick it on paper, t-shirts, business cards, stickers, homemade greeting cards, Powerpoint slides, or whatever, as far as I’m concerned, as long as it’s just for your own personal use, as long as you’re not trying to make money off it directly, and you’re giving me due attribution, I’m totally cool with the idea.
As a “Social Object”, a cartoon that one can actually print out and hang on their cube wall, or put on a t-shirt, a business card etc is far more powerful and useful than say, YET ONE MORE IMAGE you can find on the internet and e-mail en masse to your friends.
i.e. The cartoon itself hasn’t changed, but the interaction between it and the “End User” is suddenly far more meaningful.
So of course, the next layman’s question is, “Yes, but… how do you monetize it?“
And of course, the answer is, “Indirectly”.
For example, in October, 2006 I post the Microsoft Blue Monster cartoon. Within a few months Microsoft is somehow paying me a lot of money to do other drawings for them. Without the former, the latter would never have happened. And without the latter, Sun Microsystems would never have approached me. Everything feeds into everything else. Exactly.
In other words, I don’t create the online cartoons as “products” to be sold. I create the cartoons as “Social Objects”, i.e. “Sharing Devices” that help me to build relationships with.
As with all things, the REAL value comes from the human relationships that are built AROUND the social object, not the object in itself.
I’ll quote my friend, Mark Earls one more time. This is from his second book, “Herd”:
“Cova is surely right to suggest that much of modern consumer behaviour is social in nature. We do it not just in a social context (tangible and immediately present or over distances) but for social reasons — that is the object or activity is the means for a group or tribe to form or interact. This also echoes a lot of what Douglas Atkin describes in his study of cult brands — brands which have developed a cult status (like Apple, and Ford’s bestselling pickup) seem to serve an underlying social need within each individual (just as religious cults do): a need to belong. The real draw is probably not the brand but… other people.”
And I’ll also ask my favorite question, one more time: If your product is not a “Social Object”, how on earth do you manage to stay in business?
(Cartoon taken from The Hughtrain etc.)
Like I said in my interview with Mark Earls, The Blue Monster is a “Purpose-Idea”. As Mark, the man who first coined the term explains it:
Put really simply, the Purpose-Idea is the “What For?” of a business, or any kind of community. What exists to change (or protect) in the world, why employees get out of bed in the morning, what difference the business seeks to make on behalf of customers and employees and everyone else? BTW this is not “mission, vision, values” territory — it’s about real drives, passions and beliefs. The stuff that men in suits tend to get embarrassed about because it’s personal. But it’s the stuff that makes the difference between success and failure, because this kind of stuff brings folk together in all aspects of human life.
Real drives, passions and beliefs. Exactly.
The Blue Monster line, “Change The World Or Go Home” is not rocket science or literary brilliance. It just articulates a simple belief, a simple passion, a simple drive THAT ALREADY EXISTED, long before The Blue Monster ever came on to the scene. That’s all it was ever meant to do.
[The Microsoft Blue Monster etc.]
Whether you agree or disagree with it doesn’t matter, the important bit is that people within Microsoft believe it. Unlike a conventional ad campaign, it’s not about you. It’s about them.
Why is something like this potentially valuable to a business? Simply put, if you believe something passionately enough, for long enough, articulate it well enough, and your actions are aligned, credible and consistent with your belief for long enough, it’s just a matter of time before other people start believing it, too. And next thing you know, you have an interesting conversation going on, both inside and outside the company. And as Doc Searls famously said, “Markets are conversations”. Ker-Chiing.
Again, none of this is rocket science. Talking to people never is.
When people ask me what exactly is a Blue Monster, I tell them, it’s not necessarily a cartoon. It’s simply a social object that allows one to more easily articulate the Purpose-Idea. No more, no less.
I’ve been asking myself for years, what comes after conventional, Madison-Avenue-style advertising, now that we live in a post-TV, post-advertising, post-message world? “Creating Blue Monsters” is the closest I’ve ever come to finding an actual answer.
Besides drawing the cartoons, helping other companies create Blue Monsters is how I intend to spend the remainder of my career.
Cartoons and Blue Monsters. I really do have the world’s greatest job. Rock on.
[To Be Continued.…]
November 3, 2008
9 Comments
When I lived in London last year, one of my best pals was David Brain, CEO of Edelman Europe [The largest private, global PR firm in the world]. Our schtick was to meet for breakfast about twice a month, and just talk about the crazy world happening around us. Sometimes we’d invite other friends along, like Steve Clayton or Lee Thomas. Other times we’d meet at The Groucho Club after work, drink some beers, and hatch new secret evil plans. It was fun times all round.
“Crowd Surfing”: 10 Questions for Edelman’s David Brain
1. Let’s cut to the chase. You just co-authored a book with Martin Thomas, “Crowd Surfing”. Please give us the schpiel.
Martin and I were interested in how companies and organisations were managing to deal with the new empowered consumer. There’s been a lot written about the crowd, but less about how the people inside big companies deal with it. As you know we have some experience of this with Edelman clients, so at the heart of the book is a series of interviews with some interesting people who have to juggle the often conflicting demands of the crowd and the company.
2. What made you want to write this particular book? You’re already busy enough, you’re already doing well enough professionally, so what was the motive? What was the conversation you wanted to start with people, that wasn’t happening already?
Well, someone once told me that a great way to start a conversation was to create a ‘social object’.…and to some degree this is my social object. There is something about publishing a book that allows you to have a different type of conversation with clients, colleagues and prospects, and that has proven to be the case. We are now talking to many clients for whom this stuff was in the ‘too difficult’ basket, and somehow talking about case studies from the book has made that easier. I also felt that the corporate side of the story has been underplayed. The heroes of this book are not bloggers or consumer activists but the people inside firms who have changed their companies (sometimes at significant career risk) to better serve the new consumer. People like Microsoft’s Steve Clayton and Dell’s Richard Binhammer.
3. It seems both the Microsoft Blue Monster and the folks I’m currently working with at Dell [Lionel, Richard, Bruce etc] feature heavily in the book. What was it about these stories that sparked your interest?
Sometimes it is easy for an entrepreneur or small business to be in tune with their customers or stakeholders, because their scale (or lack of it) means everyone is close to the customer (an obvious point I know, but size does sometimes matter). The bigger a firm gets the more difficult that becomes . Big companies need robust processes and structures to organise, to do what it is they do, and that can mean that the people inside can sometimes begin to focus on those processes and structures to the exclusion of the customer or the crowd. Dell and Microsoft have both worked really hard to find ways to bring the crowd inside the firm (at the cost of significant disruption) so that they don’t make that mistake. For me, where the crowd meets the organisation is where the real action is.
4. We’ve had this conversation many times before in private, allow me to take it public: You and I both believe that in this hyper-digital, post-Cluetrain world of ours, the PR industry has a huge opportunity, simply by taking huge chunks of business away from what was traditionally the domain of the large advertising agencies. I’m thinking the work Edelman did for Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty would be a good example of this. Care to elaborate on the business model?
Everything these days is work in progress. Customers and stakeholders know that about the companies and brands that are part of their life, and yet many of those companies still seem to over-use the mass communication vehicles of the industrial age, presenting a perfect ‘image’ or a ‘lifestyle’ and looking for aspiration or approval. So much advertising, direct marketing and promotion (and some PR to be fair) is a one-way street and that just does not fit the world I see around me. PR, or good PR at least, was always about things like relationship, influence and dialogue (in the old days focused more on the elite few maybe, but now with the many as well) and so PR now has an even more central role in helping companies align with stakeholders and customers by properly engaging with them. Thankfully many firms and brands are seeing this and many PR people (in agencies and in-house) are embracing this new mandate and the responsibility that comes with it. Every day the false certainties peddled by the old-school advertising agencies look more and more out of place and time.
5. You weren’t always in PR. You also have backgrounds in advertising and journalism. Like you once told me, “Anybody who’s any good at this business, usually ended up working in it by accident.” What’s your story? How did you end up in it?
You have a good memory. It was indeed a distress purchase. I was briefly in journalism but got turfed out by the recession of the mid 80s, and had to parlay my training into something to pay the bills. I have also been in advertising (in Asia in the 90’s) and client side, but have always come back to PR, which I guess shows a lack of imagination to some extent.
6. You’re not just a PR flack, you actually run a pretty sizable business. What’s the toughest part of your job as CEO?
Finding good people. At Edelman in Europe, Middle East and Africa we now have just under a 1,000 people across wholly owned offices in 14 countries, and we always have vacancies for talent. You have helped us find people in the past as you remember, and one of the best things for us about social media has been the ability to spot talent and people who ‘get it’ by what they say and do online.
7. When we think of PR, we think of the stereotypical smoothie in an Italian suit, schmoozing away at some fancy sponsored event [See “Pickaxe” cartoon above]. But as we both know, Global PR is actually a pretty sophisticated business. Again, back to a conversation we’ve had more than once, the big challenge for PR firms in the next decade is all about becoming more culturally and technically diverse, AWAY from the typical smoothie archetype, towards something more hardcore, valuable and interesting. How does Edelman Europe see the challenge? Do you see a “new breed” of PR practitioner emerging?
I do see a new breed. PR used to be based on the top-down principle of managing a few relationships with senior journalists or stakeholders. These respected authorities would say good things about your business or firm and the world would gratefully receive their view and act accordingly. Well as you know, that world got blown up and the new democratised world of the enfranchised consumer and the occasional angry crowd has forced businesses (and the PR people and firms that advise them) to open up. It used to be in this business that you could trade on who you know, and now it has swung much more to what you know as well. I can’t imagine hiring people these days who are not actively engaged in the conversation or community in some form . You can’t fake this stuff. And so that means we always look for technical skills, people with a wide set of interests and a passion for something (other than work). Richard Edelman calls this ‘Living in Colour.…the idea that if you only live for the office and home you become a little grey. And if you cut off from the world in that way, you are much less use to our clients, who are looking for insight and advice and connection.
8. Of all the global players, it seems to me that Edelman got seriously interested in the implications of Web 2.0 sooner than the other big guys. Hence Richard Edelman hiring Steve Rubel etc. What was it about 2.0 that initially got Edelman all excited, where did you see the opportunity for your business, and what was particularly unique about the company that allowed you to arrive there first?
It really was Richard Edelman. He was banging on about this stuff five years ago when I joined the firm, and I was probably the leading naysayer at the time (I may even have expressed the view that blogging was like CB radio). The Trust Study, the big survey we do each year, had given us some clues when it showed that a ‘person like me’ was becoming a credible source of information on companies and organisations. ‘A person like me’ is now globally the number one credible source of information on companies…the CEO is the seventh most credible! And once we got our heads around that and the seismic changes of which that was just one part, the rest was about putting our money where our mouth was. And Richard hired people who got it, like Steve Rubel, and we invested in research and we bought digital agencies for their technical and creative skills, and we adapted their ways into the mainstream of the firm and invited in people like you who addressed our teams and our clients. And of course training, training, training. But we did make some bloody big mistakes along the way as everybody knows, and boy, did we ever learn from them!
9. Edelman is privately-owned. All your big, main competitors [Weber Shandwick etc] are subsidiaries of the large, publicly-owned advertising conglomerates [Interpublic, WPP etc]. Pros? Cons?
Every shareholder is in the firm, and that means that what’s right for the clients, the people and the business is never diluted by Wall Street or some bully-boy advertising suit. When I worked at some of the advertising-company-dominated, publicly-owned firms you could never point out advertising’s limitations…you were muzzled. We can say precisely what we think is right for the client without worry– and no other PR firm of scale is in that position. On the money front, because we don’t have outside shareholders bleeding cash out of the firm, we can re-invest in intellectual property like research, and in new products and training. I really can’t think of any cons.
10. What advice would you give to a bright young thing wanting to break into the PR business? More specifically, what advice would you give today, that you wouldn’t have given say, a decade ago? In other words, for a young person just entering the trade, how has the world changed in the last ten years?
Be involved and have a voice. When I got into this business in the early Jurassic period those two things were much more difficult to do. But society has changed and it is easy to express opinions and debate and join with like-minded people to pursue your interests. It does not all have to be online, but obviously much of it is now. And we look for that. Someone who is interested and passionate about something and who contributes. I still expect new joiners to be passionate about news, culture and politics in the traditional senses too, but what you read through your aggregator and via your community is as important as what you can buy at the news stand (OK not the most original point, but you would be amazed how many people still come to interviews with no views on news and no understanding or participation in social media). One other thing that has struck me about people joining the business now, especially in the US and the UK, is that they are amazingly conservative about their careers. Many look to progress through the ranks in small linear steps, I guess because the business has become so big and so structured. One of the most difficult things is to find people who will take a risk and go live in the Middle East or Moscow or China and I find that so hard to understand having lived and worked outside my country for seven years … something which broadened my horizons significantly.
November 1, 2008
13 Comments
(Cartoon taken from The Hughtrain etc.)
Like I said in my interview with Mark Earls, The Blue Monster is a “Purpose-Idea”. As Mark, the man who first coined the term explains it:
Put really simply, the Purpose-Idea is the “What For?” of a business, or any kind of community. What exists to change (or protect) in the world, why employees get out of bed in the morning, what difference the business seeks to make on behalf of customers and employees and everyone else? BTW this is not “mission, vision, values” territory — it’s about real drives, passions and beliefs. The stuff that men in suits tend to get embarrassed about because it’s personal. But it’s the stuff that makes the difference between success and failure, because this kind of stuff brings folk together in all aspects of human life.
Real drives, passions and beliefs. Exactly.
The Blue Monster line, “Change The World Or Go Home” is not rocket science or literary brilliance. It just articulates a simple belief, a simple passion, a simple drive THAT ALREADY EXISTED, long before The Blue Monster ever came on to the scene. That’s all it was ever meant to do.
[The Microsoft Blue Monster etc.]
Whether you agree or disagree with it doesn’t matter, the important bit is that people within Microsoft believe it. Unlike a conventional ad campaign, it’s not about you. It’s about them.
Why is something like this potentially valuable to a business? Simply put, if you believe something passionately enough, for long enough, articulate it well enough, and your actions are aligned, credible and consistent with your belief for long enough, it’s just a matter of time before other people start believing it, too. And next thing you know, you have an interesting conversation going on, both inside and outside the company. And as Doc Searls famously said, “Markets are conversations”. Ker-Chiing.
Again, none of this is rocket science. Talking to people never is.
When people ask me what exactly is a Blue Monster, I tell them, it’s not necessarily a cartoon. It’s simply a social object that allows one to more easily articulate the Purpose-Idea. No more, no less.
I’ve been asking myself for years, what comes after conventional, Madison-Avenue-style advertising, now that we live in a post-TV, post-advertising, post-message world? “Creating Blue Monsters” is the closest I’ve ever come to finding an actual answer.
Besides drawing the cartoons, helping other companies create Blue Monsters is how I intend to spend the remainder of my career.
Cartoons and Blue Monsters. I really do have the world’s greatest job. Rock on.
[More Blue Monster background reading here.]
October 30, 2008
12 Comments
[Blue Monster PDC Edition– it’s colored azure for a reason.]
It was two years ago today that I first posted the Blue Monster on this blog. Thanks mainly to Microsoft’s Steve Clayton running with the idea [At great risk to his own career, I might add], it’s been quite an adventure for us both, to say the least.
Microsoft’s James Senior posted this two days ago:
About a year ago, my pal Steve Clayton (happy birthday buddy) unleashed a genius viral marketing ploy aimed at starting a conversation about Microsoft. It was really a call to arms challenging the company to reinvent itself. To innovate. To change the world.
Today we really did announce some stuff that will change the world, and it’s an amazingly exciting time to be at the company. Here’s the stuff that we announced today at PDC 2008.
* Windows 7 features
* Office Web Applications
* Office 14 features
* Live Framework
* Live Mesh Beta
* Live Mesh Dev Platform
* Live Mesh on the Mac
* Live Mesh on Win Mobile
* Visual Studio 2010 WPF
* Visual Studio Editor extensibility
* Windows Live ID and Open ID
* And more…
I think we’ve finally answered the call of the Blue Monster. We’re not going home, we’re going to change the world! Rock and Roll.
Here are some random notes on our little blue friend, in no particular order of importance:
1. I always liked what Dave Armano had to say about it:
Because everyone at Mix 08 who worked for Microsoft and handed me either a “Blue Monster” business card or had the sticker, seemed different. It was hard to put a finger on, but although they were believers in Microsoft, they also seemed to believe in an external vision that challenged Microsoft to make a meaningful impact in the world. It’s a non corporate honest opinion, and some at Microsoft embrace it publicly.
What’s to be learned? Blue Monster shows us that no matter how big or small the company that the world is a bigger place. And external influences can become internal influences. And it teaches us that if we are interested in the evolution of corporate culture, that symbols are important. If we don’t find our own — someone will find them for us.
2. There was a time, maybe a year ago, when I could have feasibly turned the Blue Monster schpiel into a full-time gig. A combination of random events and my equally random self somehow decided against it in the end. Probably just as well. It’s more interesting without it being tied to a private, commercial agenda.
3. So Microsoft wants to change the world. But as JP once reminded me, with the Blue Monster the converse is also true: the world wants Microsoft to change as well. Which is exactly how it should be.
4. When the Blue Monster first started getting traction, Sarah Blow and others warned me that there was a lot of talk amongst the geeks, about how aligning with Microsoft might damage my own personal brand… “Hugh embraces The Dark Side” etc. I was perfectly aware of the risk; and frankly I didn’t care. I liked the people from Microsoft I had met up until that point, I also had a point to prove about large companies and their internal cultures, about how the internet made it possible for large companies to talk to the world in new ways. The “Porous Membrane” etc. To hell with “Personal Brand” crap. Whatever.
5. There are a lot of gapingvoid readers who don’t much care for Microsoft, and don’t mind telling me so. Do I worry about it? Not really, hell, some of it I actually agree with. They’re entitled to their opinion. They may not care for the car, that’s fine by me, that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to amuse myself, checking under the hood.
6. I am not a techie, I am not a coder. I’m useless at that stuff. What interests me about Microsoft is the “Culture” bit i.e. keeping 70,000 people happy and productive, while making a profit by selling nothing more than ones and zeroes. The “Purpose-Idea” of the place etc. When you have a company that large, that interesting, that passionate and that powerful, it’s a goldmine of new material to write about.
7. I’ve not done much work with Microsoft this year, mainly because I moved to West Texas. In December that might be changing. Watch this space.
8. Props to Steve Clayton for everything. He’s a rare breed.
[UPDATE:] Steve Clayton talks about the two-year anniversary:
What a ride that has been. An interesting ride and at times a dangerous one for me personally. As James Senior said in a post earlier this week the PDC has been a Blue Monster week – for the second birthday we couldn’t have picked a better week. PDC has been full of world changing announcements. Maybe they’re just world changing from where I sit so please don’t think I’m suggesting we just cured cancer or something….but I continue to believe this company does world changing stuff. Stuff we should be proud of and that’s the kind of stuff we announced this week. For me, the coincidence of timing is amazing.
[Digg This Story Here.]
October 8, 2008
42 Comments
10 Questions For Seth Godin
My friend and mentor, Seth Godin has a new book out, “Tribes”. As has become a regular gapingvoid tradition, to celebrate the launch I e-mailed Seth 10 questions, which he kindly answered below. Rock on.
1. For the benefit of gapingvoid readers not yet familiar with your work [all 14 of them], let’s get the main schpiel over and done with: From your perspective, what is “Tribes” about?
It explains why top-down, buzz-driven media is the past, not the future.
The world has always been organized into tribes, groups of people who want to (need to) connect with each other, with a leader and with a movement. The products, services and ideas that are gaining currency faster than ever are ones that are built on a tribe.
Barack Obama has one, John McCain tried to co-opt one. Arianna Huffington has built the most popular blog in the world around one. Harley Davidson and Apple are titanic brands for the very same reason. They sell a chance to join a group that matters.
The punchline is that the only way to lead a tribe is to lead it. And that means that marketing is now about leadership, about challenging the status quo and about connecting people who can actually make a difference. If you can’t do that, don’t launch your site, your product, your non-profit or your career.
I’d argue that you understand how to tap into this need, Hugh. Lots of people don’t like your work – screw them, we don’t like them anyway. The people who do like, who find that it resonates… it’s likely that we’ll like each other. You lead us to a place we want to go.
2. Your seminal bestseller from a few years ago, “Purple Cow”, made the assertion that “Everyone is a Marketer”. Though this would now be considered pretty standard doctrine for marketing geeks Everywhere, at the time I remember it seeming a pretty radical, new, challenging thought. In Tribes, it seems to me you’ve upped the ante by asserting that “Everyone is a Leader”. Care to elaborate?
Sure. The idea that everyone is a marketer is still hard for a surprisingly large number of organizations. Non profits (most of them) don’t see the world that way. Neither do traditional factories or many other businesses. But it’s so clearly true, I don’t even have to outline here how the product is the marketing, how the service is the marketing, how every human being who touches something is doing marketing.
Well, if we go a giant step forward and realize that it is for and about the tribe, that tribes – connected, motivated groups of people – are the engines of growth, then it seems clear to me that what marketing means today is leadership. If you’re boring or staid, no one will follow you. Why would they?
3. Anyone who knows you would consider you a leader, in your own unique way. And the same could be said for a lot of the people you personally hang out with. But it seems to me that this book was not written for those type of folk, but for people who have yet to really consider themselves as leadership material. It seems to me that the main thrust of the book is about trying to get them to make the leap from “Follower” to “Leader”. Is there any truth in that?
Everyone isn’t going to be a leader. But everyone isn’t going to be successful, either.
Success is now the domain of people who lead. That doesn’t mean they’re in charge, it doesn’t mean they are the CEO, it merely means that for a group, even a small group, they show the way, they spread ideas, they make change. Those people are the only successful people we’ve got.
So the challenge is: your choice.
4. As you well know, I’m fascinated with marketing, both for myself and for my clients. Looking over my work from the last couple of years, I increasingly see marketing [by that I mean, GOOD marketing] as a function of LANGUAGE and NARRATIVE. In other words, the art of marketing is figuring out a way to talk to people in the market in a manner they SIMPLY HAVE NOT been talked to before. And then when I’m reading your book, I keep thinking that, SO MUCH of being a leader is simply providing people with a good narrative to explain their actions. In other words, it’s far easier to lead if [A] You’ve got a great story that’s easy for you to share and [B], more importantly, you have a good story that is EASY for other people to share.
So much traditional marketing is built around the idea of “Merit” i.e. good quality, good prices etc. But the older I get, I keep asking myself, “What’s the story here? What’s the REAL story that people are GENUINELY going to want to tell other people?” Do you see Storytelling as a form of Leadership? How about vice versa?
In All Marketers Are Liars, my point was that people buy stories, not stuff, and it’s stories that spread, not stuff. An iPod made by Garmin wouldn’t be an iPod, would it? It’s the story and the affect and the whole aura that makes it worth $200.
I think you’ve hit the issue on the head. Leaders tell stories. Gandhi or King or Che or yes, Rush Limbaugh. They tell stories. The stories matter and the words matter. Of course OF COURSE the product has to live up to the story, the service has to be there, the story has to be true. But no story, not idea, no marketing.
5. We all have different things that motivate us, that gets us out of bed in the morning. Some people want money, some people want power, some people want fame and applause. You seem very driven “To Affect Change”, both on an individual level, and collectively within companies. Where does that drive come from? Were you born with it, or has it just grown with you over the years? Is it something that is still constantly evolving? If so, how?
It used to be a curse, but now I’m getting used to it.
I’m pretty impatient with things that are as they are instead of as they could be. I’m impatient with people who grumble and settle and then get old and die. I’m energized by people who see things differently and make changes happen. We’re all so lucky, what a sin to waste it.
6. When I finished reading “Tribes” I was both stunned and delighted in equal measure to see my name cited in the Acknowledgements section as an influence in the creation of the book [Thanks!]:
“Years ago, Hugh MacLeod, the world’s most popular inspirational business cartoonist (who knew you could do that for a living?), drew a cartoon (his most popular one ever) with the caption, ‘The market for something to believe in is infinite’- as soon as I read it, I knew I wanted to write a book about that idea.”
Well, I certainly have some ideas about what that cartoon means to me, though I’d be curious to hear your individual take on it. What it says to you, personally. Thoughts?
That was the second title I had in mind for the book. And I was going to include the image itself, but then it showed up all over the web and so…
The point imho is this: You can’t drink any more bottled water than you already do. Or buy more wine. Or more tea. You can’t wear more than one pair of shoes at a time. You can’t get two massages at once…
So, what grows? What do marketers sell that scales?
I’ll tell you what: Belief. Belonging. Mattering. Making a difference. Tribes. We have an unlimited need for this.
7. Your books and blog posts seem to have one thing in common, they seem to be getting shorter and shorter with every passing year. I have no problem with that; I think people genuinely prefer short reads, over long ones. For people aspiring to publish their own books one day, what advice would you give them re. deciding on a book’s length?
Try to write a book or a blog post that can’t possibly be any shorter than it is.
8. I think aspiring writers have a lot of romantic illusions about “The life of an author”, which have little to do with the actual hard-nose reality of the publishing business. What do you think are the hardest lessons for a first-time author to learn?
Books are souvenirs that hold ideas. Ideas are free. If no one knows about your idea, you fail. If your idea doesn’t spread, you fail. If your idea spreads but no one wants to own the souvenir edition, you fail.
Book publishers don’t make authors successful (clarification: 175,000 new authors a year, 300 become successful because of publishers). Authors make themselves successful by earning the privilege of having a platform, by creating ideas that spread, and yes, by building a tribe. (Harry Potter anyone?)
9. You’re a busy guy. Besides writing books, you have paid speaking gigs, your blog to keep up, and your various start-ups and businesses to manage. When do you find time to write the actual books? Do you have a regular set time for working on it [first thing in the morning, say], or do you just somehow find the time whenever?
I don’t set out to write books. I don’t make time for them. They just force themselves on me. If I resist, the idea makes me miserable until I write it down.
I can go three or six months or longer with nothing, and then an entire book just sort of appears. If I have to grind it out, I’m not going to write it. That’s not true for everyone, but that’s what works for me.
10. You’ve been publishing your books for about a decade now. Obviously, in that time period there’s been a lot of changes in the world. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s narrow the field down a bit, to the “Purple Cow”, new-marketing world you’ve been happily residing in. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in this brave new world, since Purple Cow and IdeaVirus first hit the bookstores?
There’s no doubt that the biggest change is that most smart people now realize that the world has changed.
When I started, I was working in a status quo, static world, where the future was expected to be just like the past, but a little sleeker.
Now, chaos is the new normal. That makes it easier to sell an idea but a lot harder to sound like a crackpot.
August 28, 2008
14 Comments
[“Edges 3″. Part of “The Edges” Series. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Alpine, Texas. A lot of my friends in this town work in the construction business; a lot of former big-city people are moving into the area these days, mostly trying to get away from the urban sprawl. So that’s where a lot of the local well-paid jobs are. As a result, knowing what I know, a lot of my friends end up picking my brains for marketing advice, which I’m happy to give them.
What I usually do is start out by telling them about the local Alpine farmer’s market, which happens here every Saturday.
Our farmer’s market has one main problem: This isn’t farming country. This is high mountain desert. This is ranching country. People harvest cattle and oil round these parts; they don’t do so well with legumes.
The people selling the produce for the most part are local amateur gardeners, who primarily grow what they need for themselves, then sell on whatever surplus they have to folk like me, for a little extra cash.
What does this mean? It means you have to get there early, because the market opens at 8.30 in the morning and is COMPLETELY sold out within 45 minutes.
Whole Foods? Forget it. You really have to drive to Midland, 150 miles away to get anything closely resembling what you’re used to in the big cities. The local supermarkets do what they can, I’m told they’re a hell of a lot better than they used to be, but… there’s still a long way to go.
There’s something so interesting to me, that in this modern, over-supplied world, the supply for something most of us educated, blog-reading types take for granted– high quality food– falls so short of actual demand. There’s plenty of people in this town who’d gladly spend more money on quality food if some enterprising person would set them up, so why isn’t it happening?
I’m optimistic. I believe it’s just matter of time before the aforementioned enterprising person spots the glaringly obvious gap in the market, and actually does something about it. This is Texas, after all. Sitting on your ass doesn’t get you too far in these parts. Stuff tends to happen if there’s enough people willing to pay for it.
So I tell my construction friends, well, what’s true in the local food market is also true in the construction market. There’s a lot of people from the big cities moving in with a lot of money in their pockets, compared to what the locals are used to making. And they’re used to a certain level of service which a lot of the time, THEY ARE SIMPLY NOT GETTING. The construction person who can ACTUALLY understand and ACTUALLY cater to their ACTUAL needs will win. The construction person who still wants to do it same-old-same-old will have a much harder time of things.
Then knowing this, the only question that remains is, which construction person are you going to be? The Trailblazer, or the Same-Old-Same-Old? Only you can answer that.
August 18, 2008
19 Comments
I’m writing this from an outside table at Jo’s Cafe on South Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas.
I spent part of the morning having a good look at Digital Nomads, the new Dell blog. It seems Lionel Menchaka, one of my pals over at Dell is helping to run it. Also, I find to my delight that my old buddy, the uber-smart, uber-creative Phil Torrone, is also a contributor. So yeah, I’m hoping to see great things come out of the enterprise.
A “Digital Nomad” is roughly defined as someone who, thanks to the internet, can and does work anywhere he or she likes. Thanks to the internet, last February I was able to move from London, England to Alpine, Texas without changing jobs, so I guess it’s not surprising that this new Dell blog caught my attention. Here are some random thoughts, in no particular order:
1. Though the blog was created by Dell, it seems they don’t want the blog to be all “about” Dell. I think that’s a smart move. As I’m fond of saying, if you want to be boring, talk about yourself, if you want to be interesting, talk about something other than yourself. Of course, in the comments there were a few “This is just a cynical marketing ploy by Dell to sell more laptops” remarks. This is to be expected, I suppose. If Dell tries to have a conversation online, some bloggers are going to have a problem with it. If Dell says nothing, some of the very same bloggers are going to have a problem with it. I call this, “Having Your Cake And Eating It 2.0″. I find this phenomenon increasingly common in the blogosphere. Maybe it was always thus, maybe once I was better at not noticing it.
2. I remember when I had a god-awful office job I had to commute to every day, how appealing the idea of being “digitally nomadic” appealed to me. You mean I can hang out in cafes all day and still get paid? No more commuting? No more paying high, big-city rents? How cool is that?!! But being a digital nomad has a dark side. There’s something unhealthily addictive about being “Always on”, “Always online”, “Always connected”. Reading Clay Shirky, it seems than whenever Society takes huge cultural shifts, mass addiction sets in as a coping mechanism. Clay pointed out that in 19th Century England, the addiction of choice was drinking gin. In postwar United States, the addiction of choice was long hours vegged out in front of the TV. In today’s world, I’m guessing our new mass addiction of choice– the Internet– means not even being able to go to the bathroom without bringing along your laptop. They call it “Crackberry” for a reason.
3. Yes, the Digital Nomads blog is “marketing”. Then again, so is the sentence preceding this one.
4. The Digital Nomads blog is what I call “indirect marketing”. People aren’t supposed to read it and go, “My, what a lovely blog. I think I’ll go out and buy me a couple of brand new Dell laptops”. This is more of an “Alignment” play. In other words, by “aligning” themselves more with the digital-nomad crowd, they hope it’ll help them in time to create products that are more compelling and relevant to them. If you were in the computer business, you’d want to have the same alignment. “The Porous Membrane” etc. The good news is, Alignment plays can be extremely effective. The bad news is, they take FOREVER to gather momentum.
5. The blog is still in its early days. I can see it still struggling, like all new blogs do, to “find its voice” [Hey, if a blog can find its voice in under twelve months, I consider that good going]. Of course, it’s going to have the same problem that ALL corporate blogs do i.e the problem of balancing BOTH the needs of the perennially kvetchy, perennially skeptical, perennially dissatisfied blog-reading public, and the commercial interests of the company. Harder than it looks. The fact that they are giving it a go AT ALL I find encouraging.
6. As someone who has been lucky enough to actually become a professional digital nomad, not just dream about it just happening one day, I can honestly say that yeah, it’s a tremendous privilege. Big-city wages with small-town overheads is a damn good business model, and I simply could not do it without an internet connection. I also believe that yes, there’s a lot of people out there who are not really digital mavericks, though they would very much like to be some day. With these folk in mind, I guess my advice to Dell would be, forget about trying to get the digital mavericks to read your blog. If your stuff is any good, they will happily come of their own accord. Instead, ask yourselves what can YOU do to help MORE people become digital mavericks, themselves. If you play a tangible part in shaping this part of their lives, they will love you and your products forever. And recruit their friends to your cause. It’s all good. Rock on.
August 5, 2008
4 Comments
What the heck, I know I mentioned this in passing earlier today, but I liked this one so much I thought it worthy of its own blog post.
The uber-intelligent Lee Byant from Headshift left a great comment in my “Cloud Bottlenecks & Humanification post:
Hi Hugh,
I agree that the twin challenges of de-commoditisation and humanisation are part of the key to companies like this developing the kind of new relationships we all want to see.
You have tried the blue monster thing, which is a kind of internal advertising campaign, to galvanise people inside large companies. I think we need to complement this with a number of other techniques to humanise the organisation and take internal brand engagement to a new level if we are to move forward.
I wrote a longish post about this recently based on a talk I gave at Reboot: http://www.headshift.com/blog/2008/07/free-the-battery-humans.php
Thats the slide deck from Lee’s talk above. What a fabulous opening image. I wish I had been there to hear him speak:
What these three dimensions have in common is their dependence upon the people inside the business. By elevating the individuals in the organisation above systems, and by re-balancing the relationship between people and process, we can create a social fabric that lives and breathes the values that large companies are trying to instill in their organisations. We have the tools and the ideas to do this in ways that were not possible before, and we are in a position to finally move beyond Taylorism and the factory model to a new era of genuinely people-powered organisations and networks. We know how to create rich and purposeful social networks as vehicles for collaboration and co-operation. We know how to aggregate ideas and negotiate common language to create better forms of information organisation and retrieval. We know a lot more about what is possible when people trust each other by default; and we also know a lot more about how to engage in debate and deliberation with people who agree with us and people who do not.
Yeah, I agree with Lee. Affecting real change inside a large company requires more than just a mad, blogging cartoonist ranting away from somewhere out in deepest, darkest West Texas.
The fact is, this stuff is REALLY hard. Even if the company WANTS to change. But that’s what makes it so damn interesting. Rock on.
8 Comments
[Cartoon originally appeared in “The Hughtrain”.]
1. Sarah Blow left a nice note in the comments of yesterday’s “Cloud” post:
A cloud computing system is only as reliable as the hardware and software that it is built upon. I have a feeling people are going to get their fingers burnt a few times before the cloud becomes a permanent place of work.
It definitely has its uses though… Loving Evernote and a couple of other cloud systems. However most of them suck some what 
partially completed, little or no mobile interaction and no focus. They’ll learn one day.
[.…]
An interesting question for your readers… Where do they see the bottleneck in cloud computing…
Ummmm.… Bottlenecks. Anybody? Please leave a comment below, Thanks.
2. And a quasi-related story. This morning I received a kind letter from a PR guy who follows me on Twitter:
Hugh,
Saw your tweets about cloud computing. Thought you might be interested in the infrastructure side of the story. For there to be a dominant player(s), there has to be network infrastructure to support them. AT&T’s announcement this morning discusses that. Here is a link to a story today on Bloomberg about the announcement.
And, here is a link to the media kit on AT&T’s site.
And so forth.
An hour later I notice on Techmeme that the same story has already hit the mainstream press. It’s always interesting watching the PR machine in action in action.
Like I told my old PR buddy, Dave Parmet, I don’t mind PR flacks sending me stories, at least from the ones who aren’t clueless.
PR people are like advertising people: Everybody hates them, until they have a business that actually needs one [Note To Self: “People hate AT&T, until they need an iPhone.” Or something like that…].
3. I’m enjoying my new adventure with Dell. Like my schtick with Microsoft, I’m doing it for a reason, which I hinted at in a blog post I wrote last year:
4. You’ve already done “efficient”. We’re living in a post-efficiency world now. We already know how to make things better, cheaper and faster than the previous generation. We already know how to squeeze our suppliers till the pips squeak. We already know how to build systems that maximize profits at every stage of the production and selling process. We’re already outsourcing our stuff to China, and so is everyone else. Been there. Done that. So where does the growth need to come from? What needs to happen, in order to save your job?
THESIS:
5. The growth will come, I believe, not by yet more increased efficiencies, but by humanification. For example, take two well-known airlines. They both perform a useful service. They both deliver value. They both cost about the same to fly to New York or Hong Kong. Both have nice Boeings and Airbuses. Both serve peanuts and drinks. Both serve “airline food”. Both use the same airports. But one airline has friendly people working for them, the other airline has surly people working for them. One airline has a sense of fun and adventure about it, one has a tired, jaded business-commuter vibe about it. Guess which one takes the human dimension of their business more seriously than the other? Guess which one still will be around in twenty years? Guess which one will lose billions of dollars worth of shareholder value over the next twenty years? What parallels do you see in your own industry? In your own company?
It’s all about the “Humanification”, Folks.
How does a big company [like Dell, like Microsoft etc etc] “humanify” themselves? How do they “de-commodify” themselves? It’s a subject that never fails to fascinate me. That’s why I do what I do. Rock on.
[UPDATE:} The uber-intelligent Lee Byant from Headshift left a great comment below:
Hi Hugh,
I agree that the twin challenges of de-commoditisation and humanisation are part of the key to companies like this developing the kind of new relationships we all want to see.
You have tried the blue monster thing, which is a kind of internal advertising campaign, to galvanise people inside large companies. I think we need to complement this with a number of other techniques to humanise the organisation and take internal brand engagement to a new level if we are to move forward.
I wrote a longish post about this recently based on a talk I gave at Reboot: http://www.headshift.com/blog/2008/07/free-the-battery-humans.php
July 30, 2008
12 Comments
Dan Woodman, a Microsoft employee for the last two years, liked the Blue Monster so much, he went and got himself a REAL tattoo of it. He explains why here:
While I can never forget how much I love this company and all of the great things we do, I wanted a daily reminder of the fact that I, as a Microsoftie, need to change the world every single day. That is why, as part of MGX this year, I decided to fully embrace the Blue Monster and all it stands for. That is my very own Blue Monster tattoo (and yes, he is real!). He’s there to make sure I don’t forget why I am here and what it is that I am doing — changing the world.
Wow. Thanks, Dan. As a cartoonist, it doesn’t get any better than this. Like Pam Slim just told me, “Yikes, Hugh, that brings ‘Putting Skin into The Branding Game’ to a whole new level!“
[Hint to Marketers:] The fact that one of your colleagues is willing to get a company tattoo, AGAIN, demonstrates a strong sense of what Mark Earls calls “The Purpose-Idea”. Think about it. Seriously.
July 29, 2008
6 Comments
In my last post about Dell, Len left the following comment:
Hugh, I’m curious what exactly they want you to do? Their direction or lack there of baffles me.
Although a reinvention can be many things or have many meanings, setting the course of a company the size of Dell is a tall order. A tall order that a CEO and a board of directors are paid to envision and carry out.
Companies hire consultants all the time, that’s not a big deal, however it strikes me that if they don’t have an idea of what direction they need to go in, the management needs to change before anything meaningful can occur.
It would be a different story if they had an idea and needed expertise in getting there, but it’s completely another when they ask someone to tell them where they need to be. The old quote from Wayne Gretzky applies here. The reason for his success was that he didn’t chase the puck, he skated to where he thought the puck was going to be.
Clearly their present leadership is unable to do this, so unless you plan on taking up permanent residency at Dell, they’ll still have trouble long-term. That is unless they have a clear vision and just don’t know how to get there (enter Hugh), which takes me back to my opening line/question.
There’s lots of stuff to chew on here; so let’s make a list:
1. So far, the haven’t told me what they want me to do. I’ve not even been officially hired by them yet, though we are talking. We’ll see. I’m just kinda making it up as I go along. Microsoft never hired me to create The Blue Monster, either.
2. I think the “re-invention” will come from four angles:
i. Evolution of customer service. Sure, they have a ways to go. Then again, don’t we all etc. They’ve certainly come a long way since Jeff Jarvis and the whole “Dell Hell” episode, which gives me reasons to be cheerful.
ii. Design. Ten years ago, I didn’t own a computer. I really didn’t. The company I worked for gave me one– a Mac desktop. The internet was still relatively still in its infancy back then, so besides using Word to do my job, sending emails, and surfing the net occasionally, I didn’t really have a lot of use for it. Now I can’t imagine life without my laptop.
To use a Real Estate allegory: When your company sets you up with a temporary accommodation in a new town, you don’t really mind too much that it’s Embassy Suites. It serves a function. But let’s say you’re looking for a new house for you and your spouse and young children to move into, your needs become A LOT more exacting. Not to mention, a lot more expensive in terms of both square footage and decor. There’s a reason why commercial real estate tends to be cheaper than residential etc.
More and more people are using their own computers to do their work. Their “Own Homes” for their data, as it were. Dell has long been been in the “Temporary Accommodation” business, for other people’s data. And now as the market changes, they’re having to make the move from building “Embassy Suites”, to building actual “Private Dwellings”. There’s a contextual headshift to work through. And it won’t happen overnight– it’s a big company.
iii. India & China. In 2007 for the first time, Dell made more money from outside the USA than from inside it. 50.2% vs 49.8%, I believe are the figures. The question is not about how one get more business from the West Coast, Mac-using hipster crowd. The big question is, how do you get technology into the hands of people who THIS SIMPLY WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN AN OPTION FOR, even a couple of years ago?
iv. Culture. To me this is the biggest issue of the four. You can’t thrill your customers until you thrill yourself first. Let’s face it, a big part of the Dell schtick is built around processes– sales, manufacturing, controlling costs and all that lovely, corporate back-office stuff. That’s fair enough, most big companies operate like this. I would very much like to know, what percentage of Dell employees feel “This is just a paycheck”, versus how many feel, “Dammit, we’re frickin’ changing the world here”…?
The fact is, one can never underestimate the importance what the military call, “Esprit De Corps”. One can never underestimate the importance of what my friend, Mark Earls calls, “The Purpose-Idea”. If you work for Dell [or for any other company, really], I’d seriously recommend you go check out his “Bananas” book to find out more.
It’s not about “The Brand”, People. It’s about something far more important.
3. Though re-invention may be a favorite word of mine, I think it might be a bit strong in Dell’s case. Though Dell has plenty to keep itself busy over the next couple of years, it’s not exactly a dying company. It’s not exactly a company in crisis. But, as I’m fond of saying, it is entering a new, globalized, internet-enabled era. Things change. Contexts change. Adapt or die. Simple to understand, far harder to execute.
4. I think it’ll be tempting for a lot of people to say, “Dell sucks. F*ck off, Hugh”. Whatever. Any schmoe can have a opinion. What’s far more interesting [and far harder] is figuring out EXACTLY WHAT you’re going to do to solve a problem. The good news is; I don’t claim to have the answers; I’m just a fly on the wall. But I am genuinely curious what the answers might be. Hence this blog post. We live in amazing times, and this all seems to me like another good opportunity to prove it. Exactly.
[Bonus Link:] Dell’s Richard Binhammer points to some recent Michael Dell interviews in the mainstream media, which I found to be very interesting reading. Rock on.
[Bonus Link:] BoingBoing describes Dell’s latest product offering as “Small, gorgeous & cheap.” Cool.
[UPDATE:] Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie made a recent keynote: Here are his salient thoughts:
1. Constraints are empowering
2. Accept threats as resignations
3. Never follow; either leapfrog or stop
4. Diversity means survival
5. Don’t tolerate intolerance
6. Strategy and architecture are inseparable
7. Short and direct earns respect
8. Delaying the inevitable inevitably backfires
9. A re-org will never cure what ails you
10. You needn’t be an #%@hole to get things done
[From an excellent post on “Belief”, by James O’Neill.]
July 16, 2008
24 Comments
Four years ago in “The Hughtrain” I published the cartoon above, with the following thought beneath it:
: There’s only one thing harder than starting a new business: Re-inventing an old one.
Start-ups are fine and dandy, most people reading this will know all about them.
But what about Start-Agains? Are they an exercise in futility or a tremendous opportunity?
THOUGHT: The future of advertising is clients increasingly asking their agencies to help re-invent not just their brands, but their actual companies. The future is agencies being increasingly unable to deliver on this.
Out of this wreckage a new industry will emerge…
So how do companies, businesses, brands etc re-invent themselves?
Big, big question. Worth a fortune to know the answer.
Actually, the answer’s pretty simple: The same way humans re-invent themselves.
I know. It shouldn’t be that simple, but it is.
1. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I like the entry, though four years later, I’m not sure how comfortable I still am with the statement, “Actually, the answer’s pretty simple: The same way humans re-invent themselves. I know. It shouldn’t be that simple, but it is.“
Corporate re-invention may be in simple in retrospect, but when it’s happening in real time it’s a tough, nasty, brutal business [Ask IBM if you don’t believe me]. Not for the faint of heart. But that’s what makes it so damn interesting. And potentially lucrative.
2. In the early 2000’s I had gotten quite disillusioned with traditional, Madison Avenue advertising, the industry I had entered when I left college [Though let’s be honest, it had never thought that highly of me, either, but that’s a story for another day].
Thankfully, with the advent of The Cluetrain, blogs and what later went on to be called “Web 2.0″, it seemed a new world order was emerging. The Internet was changing things; just none of us knew exactly how. But it was damn exciting new reality to contemplate.
In 2004, I first started articulating a belief that I still hold true today– that good, well-executed communication via blogging can make a huge difference in the fortunes of a company, large or small [I went on to explain it as “The Porous Membrane”]. And this time, the emphasis would not be a one-way message, but in a two-way “Conversation”.
Of course, “Conversation” is just a metaphor. When was the last time you wanted to phone up Hershey’s and have a long, deep, stimulating conversation with one their employees about 75-cent candy bars? No, sometimes you just want to put your money on the counter of the convenience store and buy your kids a little treat. And. That. Is. Enough. Human beings don’t scale. Our capacity for deep-and-meaningful is limited. “Conversation” is just convenient shorthand to better explain how markets– suppliers and buyers– relate to each other as human beings, not just as numbers on the spreadsheet. But that’s all it is. That’s all it needs to be.
Since I’ve become aware of this new world of Web 2.0, I’ve always been interested in testing its limitations, especially when it comes to marketing. So I’ve always been on the lookout for new opportunities in this area of business.
3. Earlier this year I started a conversation with Dell. So far the conversation is still going on. Some folks inside the company had seen The Microsoft Blue Monster and wondered if there was anything in this kind of thinking that could help their company. I’m guessing the answer might be “No”. The Blue Monster came out of pretty unique, random circumstances. Which of course, is the whole point. Ergo, I’m not really interested in a cartooning gig with Dell per se. I am, however, interested in the company.
4. It seems to me that, like a lot of large tech companies of a certain age, Act One in the Dell drama has reached its end. The war to get computers onto the desktops of the developed world, cheaply and easily, has been largely fought and won by companies like Dell, Microsoft, HP and Apple.
Mission Accomplished.
But what happens in Act Two? How do large tech companies like Dell have to re-invent themselves in order to make the grade? To keep their ever-growing army of customers and shareholders relatively content? Seriously. I want to know.
5. What needs to happen in order for Dell to become a better company? What needs to change? What needs to remain the same? These are huge questions. Like I said, it’s worth a fortune to anybody who can come up with good answers.
6. What is “The Conversation” that needs to happen? You tell me.
Over the last few years, I’ve had a few ideas about marketing and the internet. English Cut, Stormhoek and The Blue Monster were opportunities for me to prove them. And for the most part, I succeeded. Dell might be another opportunity. I’m not sure yet.
June 25, 2008
8 Comments
[BACKSTORY: A year and a half ago, I created the Blue Monster cartoon, which with the help of Microsoft’s Steve Clayton, took on a life of its own inside the Microsoft Corp. It was fun, interesting, Steve and I were well pleased etc.]
A few weeks ago, I talked about “Blue Monster 2.0″. I alluded to a new direction I was taking; I thought I’d elaborate further:
Creating Blue Monsters, I believe, is a fine way for a marketing guy to spend his time. Especially as I’m fond of saying that Blue Monsters are “The Future of Marketing”.
[NB. In its simplest form, a Blue Monster is my pet name for a “Social Object” designed to bring about cultural change within an organization. It certainly worked well enough at Microsoft etc.]
Can another Blue Monster be created? Can lighting strike twice? Can lighting strike outside of Microsoft? I believe it can. Only, there has to be some ground rules. The client in question has to be ready for it, has to want it see it happen.
Ideas within companies are like people within companies. It doesn’t matter how good thy are, there has to be a cultural fit or else it’s a complete waste of time; you’re just fighting a losing battle.
I have an evil plan. Weighing options…
May 18, 2008
12 Comments
When I first started putting up cartoons onto gapingvoid in 2001, they were in a small, 400-pixel-wide format, just like the “Love Letter” cartoon you see above.
Then about 2 years ago, I started posting them in high-resolution, like the “Dinosaur” cartoon below [Click on the image and the high-res version will pop up].
This meant people could actually download the images and start using them for their own stuff. Like I said in my licensing terms,
Hey, if you want to put the work up on your website, blog, or stick it on paper, t-shirts, business cards, stickers, homemade greeting cards, Powerpoint slides, or whatever, as far as I’m concerned, as long as it’s just for your own personal use, as long as you’re not trying to make money off it directly, and you’re giving me due attribution, I’m totally cool with the idea.
As a “Social Object”, a cartoon that one can actually print out and hang on their cube wall, or put on a t-shirt, a business card etc is far more powerful and useful than say, YET ONE MORE IMAGE you can find on the internet and e-mail en masse to your friends.
i.e. The cartoon itself hasn’t changed, but the interaction between it and the “End User” is suddenly far more meaningful.
So of course, the next layman’s question is, “Yes, but… how do you monetize it?“
And of course, the answer is, “Indirectly”.
For example, in October, 2006 I post the Microsoft Blue Monster cartoon. Within a few months Microsoft is somehow paying me a lot of money to do other drawings for them. Without the former, the latter would never have happened. And without the latter, Sun Microsystems would never have approached me. Everything feeds into everything else. Exactly.
In other words, I don’t create the online cartoons as “products” to be sold. I create the cartoons as “Social Objects”, i.e. “Sharing Devices” that help me to build relationships with.
As with all things, the REAL value comes from the human relationships that are built AROUND the social object, not the object in itself.
I’ll quote my friend, Mark Earls one more time. This is from his second book, “Herd”:
“Cova is surely right to suggest that much of modern consumer behaviour is social in nature. We do it not just in a social context (tangible and immediately present or over distances) but for social reasons — that is the object or activity is the means for a group or tribe to form or interact. This also echoes a lot of what Douglas Atkin describes in his study of cult brands — brands which have developed a cult status (like Apple, and Ford’s bestselling pickup) seem to serve an underlying social need within each individual (just as religious cults do): a need to belong. The real draw is probably not the brand but… other people.”
And I’ll also ask my favorite question, one more time: If your product is not a “Social Object”, how on earth do you manage to stay in business?
May 8, 2008
11 Comments
I haven’t talked about The Blue Monster for a while.
The Blue Monster, as you will remember, is a cartoon-based “Social Object” that me and my Microsoft buddy, Steve Clayton, unleashed on the good but unsuspecting folk at Microsoft. For those unfamiliar with it, you can find the backstory here on Google.
One of the reasons I haven’t talked about it much lately, is simply because there is no longer the need. To paraphrase Steve, “It’s already out there, it’s already working its magic. It has a life of its own and it no longer needs us.“
Exactly. And as my friend, Tara Hunt so rightly pointed out, to push it too hard, especially with Microsoft management giving it a big thumbs-up, would somehow defeat the purpose. If overused, “Subversion as a marketing tool” can be counterproductive, especially if it comes from above.
In 2007, the conversation was all about “THE” Blue Monster. But in 2008, a new conversation seems to be emerging: “A” Blue Monster.
Let me explain:
I’ve been talking to some companies recently, talking about doing some new business with them. Without any doubt, the question I get asked the most is, “Can you make a Blue Monster for us?“
Obviously, when they’re talking about “A” Blue Monster, they’re not talking about a wee blue cartoon character with pointy horns, that hails from Redmond, Washington.
What they’re talking about, of course, is a “Social Object”, not necessarily a cartoon, designed to create what I loosely describe as “Marketing Disruption”.
It’s not unlike when you’re talking about Seth Godin. When you say, “THE” Purple Cow, you’re talking about his wonderful and seminal marketing book from a few years ago. But when you talk about “A” Purple Cow, you’re just talking a about a product, any product, which from a marketing standpoint has been designed so well, it does not need any traditional marketing per se. It’s so “remarkable” for what it is, people can’t help but talk about it. And so the word spreads, almost by magic. Seth actually gives a really good example of exactly that here.
So what’s the difference between a Purple Cow and a Blue Monster? Well, we could split hairs on that one forever, but for me, the main difference is Purple Cows have their “remarkability” baked into the product. Blue Monsters are more about the “Social”, the interesting bit is the interactions that happen AROUND the product. That’s what gave our little wine company the edge when marketing Stormhoek. The VAST majority of our conversation was not about the wine in the bottle. The conversation WAS ALL ABOUT the people drinking it. As we were fond of saying, “Wine is the ultimate social object. It’s only interesting AFTER the cork is pulled.“
So in conclusion, yes, something has recently evolved in my thinking. Though my relationship with Microsoft remains as strong as ever, “Blue Monster” now means something far bigger to me than just cartoons, gapingvoid, Microsoft, Redmond etc. The Blue Monster is all about the Social Object.
I have often said, I believe Social Objects are the future of marketing.
Let me modify that slightly: I believe the Blue Monster is the future of marketing.
[UPDATE:] Steve Clayton sent me the following message on Twitter:
I replied back:
[Afterthought:] Understanding the Blue Monster means understanding the need to be “bigger than yourself”. Exactly.
April 16, 2008
10 Comments
[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
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[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
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[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
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[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
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[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
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[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
April 8, 2008
49 Comments
On Page 122 of this month’s Wired Magazine, I’m given a brief mention in the first paragraph of an article, “Open Source Software Made Developers Cool; Now It Can Make Them Rich”, all to do with monetization of Open Source software. Here’s the online version.
Last spring, marketer and blogger Hugh MacLeod posted a question on his site: If open source is such a phenomenon, where are all the open source billionaires? His audience wasn’t amused. Open source software relies on a community of volunteer developers who tinker on, write for, or amend a program, then give it away free. MacLeod’s site filled up with complaints that even to look for billionaires violated the spirit of the open source movement. “There have to be rewards,” one commenter wrote, “but they don’t have to be financial.” Another simply recommended that MacLeod “shut the fuck up,” adding: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I would agree with this charming “shut the fuck up” fellow that I know very little about software. I have never claimed to be that interested in it. What gets me working for Microsoft is that I’ve always been very interested in something else, namely, how people make a living. This is true for large companies, small companies, billionaires and “humble tradesmen” alike. This is why I can work with a large software company like Microsoft, or a small tailoring firm like English Cut, and find them both utterly fascinating. Everybody needs to get paid; that is the great constant in business.
Last summer, at a dinner party in London, I had the great pleasure of meeting Simon Phipps, the Head of Open Source at Sun Microsystems. What a great guy. Insanely smart. Enjoyed his company immensely. A lot of the conversation was off the record, but one of my main take-outs was that Simon passionately believes that “The Future Is Open Source”.
Simon may be right, he may be wrong, he may be a little bit of both. The future always has a way of surprising us all. But for sake of argument, assuming that “The Future of Software is Open Source” is proved correct in time, perhaps this would be a good time for my client, Microsoft to ask the question: How does a software company make money, if all software is free?
The answer, of course, was hinted at in the aforementioned Wired article. With Open Source, people don’t pay for the software per se; but they DO pay for the peripherals.
How can you build a business by giving away the store? The money comes from selling add-ons, service contracts, and hardware to go with the software.
It took me a while to figure this out, but what applies to Open Source, also applies to Microsoft.
When you buy a Microsoft product, you’re not just getting ones and zeros. There’s also a form of “social contract” implicit in the commercial transaction. You gave them money, this entitles you to certain expectations.
A few weeks ago, I met a young developer who worked in an IT department of a large insurance company. I asked him what kind of software did he use. Answer: About 75% Microsoft, 25% Open Source. I asked him why did he not use more Open Source? I thought IT people loved Open Source?
“If something goes wrong with Microsoft, I can phone Microsoft up and have it fixed. With Open Source, I have to rely on the community.“
And the community, as much as we may love it, is unpredictable. It might care about your problem and want to fix it, then again, it may not. Anyone who has ever witnessed something online go “viral”, good or bad, will know what I’m talking about.
The reason Microsoft is able to charge the money it does IS NOT JUST BECAUSE OF THE SOFTWARE. Like Open Source, the social contract can often matter far more than the ones and zeros.
[UPDATE:] After reading the comments below, a friend of mine sent me the following e-mail:
OMG open source people are funny. Is it always that easy to make them dance?
What strikes me as particularly entertaining is that, if their
product/service offerings ARE comparable or better than Big Business
offerings, perhaps if they turned their passion outwards instead of just
ranting and gushing to each other and at you, more of the world might know
about it and they might get more market traction and be greater catalysts
for competition and change within their industries.
Dear Open Source Community: It would appear that you suck at marketing.
Which makes it positively comedy gold that you are bitching at Hugh MacLeod
about the challenges and misconceptions you face… due to sucking at marketing.
Love,
XXXXX
My friend’s snarky attitude notwithstanding, I’m wondering what marketing problems Open Source DOES have. I know techies like to consider themselves relatively immune to “All that marketing crap”, however…
March 16, 2008
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Mea Culpa. Something screwed up with the code, incorrectly linking to this page. If you’re looking for the Cartoon Archive, please go here, Thanks.
February 25, 2008
11 Comments
There’s a great little article on the Businessweek website about the power of doodling in the corporate world. Steve Clayton, The Blue Monster and myself all get a wee mention.
In the fall of 2006, a group of senior European executives at Microsoft entered a meeting expecting to see a PowerPoint presentation. Instead, Steve Clayton — then the chief technology officer for Microsoft’s U.K. Partner Group — showed them a hand-drawn image of an impish blue creature bearing gnarled fangs and sporting the provocative caption “Microsoft: Change the world or go home.” After a few initial gasps, recalls Clayton, the attendees engaged in a lively discussion around the current direction of the company and the brand. “People liked the way it changed the angle of conversation,” Clayton says.
Rock on.
February 6, 2008
6 Comments
[Me drawing cartoons at the ODC event. People hand me their business cards, I draw on them on an EMO overhead projector, so people see them being drawn live on a big projector screen, a few feet away. Very cool.]
1. I’m writing this from San Francisco. Microsoft has sponsored me to come over and draw some cartoons for them at the Office Developer’s Conference. I’ve had a blast so far.
I got the gig through Kris Fuehr, who hired me last year to come to Redmond, back when she was still working for Microsoft. She’s since left the company, and started up a new enterprise. Based in Seattle, she’s basically my Microsoft handler. So anyone from Microsoft who wants to hire me to draw cartoons should talk to her. Thanks.
I’m really open to the idea of doing more cartoon stuff with Microsoft, if they’ll let me. The more I get to know the company, the more interesting I find it. Maybe not so much from a technological perspective [I’m not really much of a techie, truth be told], but more from a cultural perspective. The culture is so vast and complex, as are their challenges, positive and negative, I find it all extremely stimulating. Besides that, I generally like the people meet there. Smart, nice and driven is a good combo, if you ask me. So if any Microsoftees are reading this, please feel free to spread the word.
2. I’m also available for cartoon commissions for other companies, as well. Again, talk to Kris.
3. I’m also available as a public speaker. Again, talk to Kris.
4. I’m also talking to other companies re. other consulting gigs, all to do with “Marketing 2.0″ and how “Social Object Theory” applies to their businesses. Again, talk to Kris.
5. “Have Laptop, Will Travel.“
6. Thanks Again.
February 5, 2008
9 Comments
This Saturday I’m putting on my traveler’s hat and heading for San Jose, California, for the Microsoft Office Developer’s Conference, 2008.
Here’s a page on the reasons people attend:
–Take a deep dive into the real world product and deployment experience and guidance about the Microsoft Office System products and technologies since Office 2007 came to market.
–Expand your thinking by learning about Office Business Applications and how Office as an application development platform is revolutionizing the software development landscape.
–Learn key software architecture patterns for designing and building Office Business Applications.
I’ve been commissioned by Microsoft to basically walk around the place, talk to people, and draw cartoons. The doodling equivalent to Gonzo Journalism, I guess you could say.
From a personal standpoint, I like hanging with the Microsoft people. Because [A] they’ve got so much going on all the time and [B] they’re very, very smart people, there’s a lot for me to learn. I’ve already done the “Art” thing in spades. I like the totally contrasting, somewhat naive foray into tech.
There are rumors I might get to meet Bill Gates. That would be interesting.
Then I’m off to Texas for a week or two to visit my father, who I’ve not seen for a while. Then I’m in Las Vegas for Mix ’08 in early March.
I’m really looking forward to being back on the road again, after a month or two off in Cumbria.
I seem to have two sides of my personality. One is the hyper-social side, where I get on a plane and meet and talk with lots of people, again and again.… then I burn out and head back to Cumbria, and play recluse for a while, and recharge my batteries.
James Joyce once said that a writer needs three things– Silence, Exile, and Cunning. I suppose my Cumbrian-Globetrotting mix is my way of achieving exactly that. Rock on.
January 31, 2008
8 Comments
[Click on image to enlarge]
Like I hinted in November, The Blue Monster has turned up in a video game. Ryan Anderson from Fuel Industries in Canada sent me the following update:
Just wanted to let you know that Microsoft Technet promotional game with the Blue Monster cameo appearance is now live at http://www.server-quest.com. He’s part of the second mini-game called “Packet Invaders.” You have to stop a security breach by blowing up the bad port requests and keeping the good ones. When the Blue Monster appears in the bottom right, you can click on him and he’ll chomp across the screen and destroy any of the dangerous ports.
We’ve created a video showing him in action.
There’s also a trailer for the game itself on MSN Video.
I hope you get a chance to play the rest of the game as well — there are a lot of hidden jokes and references throughout the levels. We had a lot of fun creating this, and I’m very happy that we were able to integrate the Blue Monster into it somehow. Hopefully next time, he’ll get a bigger role.
Rock on.
December 27, 2007
29 Comments
I first learned how to play chess when I was about eight years old. I remember feeling quite frustrated, after my Uncle Donald had taken every one of my pieces except for my King, how the latter, as the last remaining of my pieces on the board, surrounded by Uncle Donald’s rooks and knights closing in for the kill, seemed so utterly impotent in the face of impending doom. My King was able to move in any direction, yet he was so unable to save his poor self from the final kill. If the King was so important, why did he not have more compelling powers at his disposal? For a poor eight-year old, it all seemed terribly unfair.
Then about the three years ago I learned the history of chess pieces, and why they move the way they do. It answered a lot of my questions. I wrote a blog post about it.
5. The Queen. The Queen’s entourage was always looked after by a small, elite, highly trained bodyguard. The imperative to protect the women and children was very strong. If trouble was afoot it needed to get the hell out of Dodge very quickly. Ergo the bodyguard was very mobile and very deadly. It needed to be.
6. The King, though powerful and free to choose any direction he wanted, was heavily laden with the apparatus of State. The King could not just drop everything and flee; he had the court, the treasury and the ministers weighing him down. So his movements were fairly limited.
The King, being the Head Honcho, could move in any direction he pleased. But because he had so much accumulated baggage, he couldn’t move very far. Unlike my opponent’s gallant rooks and knights surrounding him.
I often see parallels between the King chess piece, and a company I have not only have worked for in the past, but also have a great deal of affection for i.e. Microsoft. A market cap worth tens of billions, annual sales of tens of billions, a vast army of employees needing paid, a vast army of shareholders needing dividends, and and vast, vast, vast LEGION of smart, capable and equally ruthless folk who would like nothing better than to see them permanently fall on their faces. And how do they mange to keep all these wolves from the door? By arranging groups of ones and zeros into a particular order, and getting other people to pay for them. The logistics are are off the scale.
People often question my motives for working with Microsoft, which any cynic would say is not really that surprising. Quips of me being “Assimilated by The Borg”, or me being a “Shameless Blog Whore” are often thrown my way. Of course, what these people don’t realize [not that they’ve ever asked], is that I make a lot more money with my far less controversial small business projects– The money I’ve made from Microsoft in the last year would account for less than 10% of my total income. I could make a lot more money without Microsoft, I just choose not to.
Why? Because perhaps, just perhaps, the question, “How does a lone King stay alive, let alone win the game, when surrounded by so many opponent’s bloodthirsty rooks and knights?” is a topic that I find fundamentally interesting. As would any sane person who has been operating in the real world for more than six months. This is partly what The Blue Monster is all about. Rock on.
December 23, 2007
16 Comments
For the last couple of years, I’ve been asking the question, “What’s Microsoft’s next big idea?“
What comes after Windows, Office and paid software? What comes after Open Source reaching critical mass?
Most of the answers I got, from both inside and outside the company, were pretty vague. The certainly didn’t feel all that convincing.
Then I went to Paris a few weeks ago and the pieces of the puzzle started to come together: “Madison Avenue, you work for Redmond Now.“
And then today I saw this article on CNET: “Microsoft quietly combines TV efforts.“
Suddenly I had a moment of clarity.
My geek friends and I spend a lot of time in front of our computers, sitting at our desks. So when we see the tech battles being fought, we see the desktop as the primary battlefield.
Suddenly it hits home. The next big tech war won’t be fought on the desktop, like it was back in the 1980s. It’ll be fought in the living room.
My guess is, whatever TV becomes in the next century, Microsoft wants to own it. Or at least, own a huge chunk of it. And that battle will be fought and won [or lost] sometime in the next decade.
Anybody got a better idea, let’s hear it.
[UPDATE:] Microsoft’s Steve Clayton just sent me a message on Twitter:
“@gapingvoid of course the fact that we began investing in the future of TV over 10 years ago will be lost on most”
Exactly.
December 21, 2007
14 Comments
There’s a Blue Monster bus driving bloggers from Silicon Valley to C.E.S. in Vegas on January 5th. I’ll be riding it, so will some other friends of mine. Robert Scoble has the skinny.
I wonder if, when Hugh Macleod started drawing little cartoons on the backs of business cards that he ever expected that one of them would be on the side of a bus? Can a bus be a “social object?” (That’s Hugh’s term for making something interesting enough to talk about. For instance, a bus? Not interesting. A blue monster express? Interesting!)
We’ll be driving this bus from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas on Saturday, January 5. We’ll have lots of streaming video and all that with tons of interesting bloggers and other people. Mogulus is helping Rocky and me produce a live video show from the bus too.
The bus will also be driving bloggers around CES during the show, especially between the main hall and the BlogHaus.
The bus was put together by Microsoft and the groovy cats at Podtech.
November 28, 2007
1 Comment
Steve Clayton and The Blue Monster make it onto MSFT’s Channel 10.
[UPDATE:] Attention Suit Geeks! One of my partners-in-crime, Savile Row tailor Thomas Mahon, has just set up his own Twitter page. Rock on.
November 7, 2007
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[Cartoon added to The Blue Monster Series.]
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[Click on image to enlarge]
The Blue Monster has been turned into a game. Ryan Anderson from Fuel Industries in Canada sent me the following e-mail:
Hi Hugh,
We’re just entering the early stages of the development of the game that will include the Blue Monster, and I just wanted to show you how he was being integrated. The idea of the whole promo is to take IT people through a game that shows them the benefits of Technet, which is one of their key IT support services. Right now, the Blue Monster shows up in one of the mini-games, where the hero IT guy has to destroy bad packet requests on the network, identified by port without destroying the real requests (I’m told it’s fun if you’re a geek).
He flashes on the screen and eats all the bad packet requests and leaves the good ones. There’s not much of an explanation of who the Monster is, other than that he’s on your side. I would like to integrate it into the dialogue of the quest game (think Leisure Suit Larry meets The IT Crowd) just as an acknowledgement of it. Mostly, it’s just meant to be a little nod to those who know it, and perhaps we can link to an explanation of what the Blue Monster is… that much is not decided.
I’d love to hear what you think about it, from “cool.” to “I think this is stupid.” Also, if you wouldn’t mind sending me an email that just states clearly that you’re okay with Microsoft using the image in a game in this context, I’d really appreciate it. As I’m sure you’re aware, MS has a lot of lawyers who need things like that, and apparently our exchange on Facebook isn’t enough for them.
I’ve attached a screen capture of the Blue Monster in action… though he moves quickly so I couldn’t get a shot with his mouth open. This is not a final screen design, but it gives you the idea.
Let me know if you have any questions / comments, etc., and I’ll let you know about any changes or additions we make with BM.
Cheers,
Ryan
I certainly don’t think it’s stupid. I think it’s wonderful. Totally. The only thing i would say is I’d love to see a few Stormhoek bottles in there somehow. But I would say that. Heh.
[Note to MSFT lawyers:] Yeah, I’m totally cool with the Blue Monster being used in a Microsoft game. Just in case you had any doubts etc.
Thanks, Ryan. Rock on!
[PS: Yes, this is indeed a Social Object etc.]
3 Comments
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here.]
Like the Good Book says, “All is Vanity”. From The Frontal Cortex:
The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was “agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded,” while the vin du table was “weak, short, light, flat and faulty”. Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.
The one thing that separates human beings from other mammals is our capacity for metaphor i.e. the capacity to tell stories. These forty-odd “wine experts” were telling themselves a wine story. The molecules in the bottle didn’t matter. What mattered was the narrative.
With hundreds and thousands of wine brands all telling the same story [“Our FAMILY has been making THIS kind of wine on THIS piece of LAND for THIS MANY generations yak ya yak…”] the only way we could get Stormhoek to rise above the clutter was to tell a different story altogether. Which in the end meant a rather unlikely cultural mash-up between a small South African vineyard and the US West Coast technology crowd, including Silicon Valley and Microsoft.
We’ve had some good results along the way, but the experiment is far from over yet…
[UPDATE] My Chicago friend, Vinny Warren left the following story in the comments below:
I worked in a bar in Ireland in my youth back in the 80s. There was a brewery sponsored inter-pub competition to see which bar could sell the most COLT 45 malt liquor which had just been introduced and was failing miserably. Malt Liquor in Ireland??
It was a very busy pub. So we switched the very popular Heineken taps over to the Colt 45 kegs towards closing time each night for a month.
We won the competition. The prize was a free trip to Spain.
And not a single punter ever complained about the taste of their Heineken!
November 6, 2007
1 Comment
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here.]
A couple for months ago at the Blue Monster Breakfast, I drew the cartoon above to illustrate Microsoft’s new “Software + Services” schtick.
For reasons that were not 100% apparent to me at the time, my friend, Microsoft Partner Group CTO Steve Clayton seemed pretty keen to get his mitts on it. So what the hell, I let him take the original away with him.
Finally, all was revealed today. Congrats on the new gig, Steve.
[Completely Unrelated] Recent Twitter Post: “The gapingvoid biz model is based not around the cartoons, but around the people who read them. Big difference.”
October 30, 2007
1 Comment
The Blue Monster just celebrated its one year anniversary. Microsoft’s Steve Clayton reports:
It changed me if not Microsoft. It defines Hugh’s Social Object concept. It defines much of how I think about Microsoft and has been the driving force in my desire to change perceptions that have built up over the years. Microsoft isn’t perfect, but we’re far from the evil that it’s become all to easy to portray. Microsoft is made up of smart, passionate, funny and genuine people. I think Blue Monster has done a pretty good job of helping expose that, amongst other things. One year on I feel very good about that.
Rock on, Clayton.
[Update:] James Moody talks about how the Blue Monster affects his business:
I, myself, carry Blue Monster business cards from Street Cards and that has led to some interesting conversations with clients and prospective clients. Having the conversation has definitely led to more project closings (the good kind of closing) for me than not. The little guy has led more of my meetings into a “what do you think about this” type, than the “here’s what I can do, this is how much it will cost” type, which lets me connect more on a personal level with prospective clients. Once most people see how passionate I am about the software I’m recommending, it changes perceptions of the “big bad bully” on the block.
October 27, 2007
11 Comments
For reasons unknown to me, suddenly in the last week the orders for Stormhoek Blue Monster Reserve have started flooding in, especially from Microsoftees in the USA. Rock on.
I’m getting on the case this week… if you’ve already contacted me about this, expect to be hearing from either me or my colleague, Tessa Soole in the next week or two. Thanks.
Some random thoughts:
1. I came up with the Blue Monster wine idea, as a exercise in creating a “Social Object”. What the heck, Theory is all very well, but actual real-life commercial execution is a lot more fun and interesting. I’m just lucky to have the groovy cats at Stormhoek who let me try out these crazy ideas.
[My friend, Alison with a Blue Monster lithograph in her office.]
2. Earlier this year I created another Blue Monster social object, namely, the limited edition lithographs. I only made a thousand of them, and they went fast. As I didn’t want to print more of them [that would’ve cheapened the first edition], I had to come up with something else, something that could scale beyond one thousand people. Since I’m in the wine business, and since I had already been making cartoon labels for Stormhoek wine, it wasn’t too much of a stretch.
3. The Blue Monster wine is also part of the “Smarter Wine” conversation. The main thesis is that it’s not the wine per se that is interesting, it’s the conversations that happen around the wine that is interesting. And that is true for all social objects. People matter. Objects don’t.
4. If the Blue Monster wine idea is interesting, it’s because of a most unlikely mash-up between a small, obscure winery in South Africa, and the world’s largest software company. But it’s this very unlikelihood, this very unlikely swapping of Cultural DNA between two very different companies, that gives it its mojo.
5. Importing different Cultural DNA into an organization is a real balancing act. Too much of it makes it impossible for the company to focus. Too little and the company withers on the vine.
6. BL Ochman has a really good summation of the BM wine story here.
What’s important is that a lone blogger with a good idea was able to get a huge company to listen to him and to adopt one of his fairly radical ideas. It shows that social media is a viable force for change, for marketing, and for the new media than a lot of big companies may now finally begin to take seriously.
7. When thinking about applying social media to companies, “What social media tools should we use” should not be the first question. “How do we wish to talk to people differently” should be the first question. If you don’t have an answer to this, quit your job and go find something else.
8. None of this stuff is rocket science. Most of it is glaringly obvious. And sadly for folks working in the social software industry, “The people who get it, don’t need us. And the people who need us, don’t get it.” Which is why being a “blog consultant” or whatever is a lot less lucrative and rewarding than people often think.
9. I recently received the following e-mail:
Hugh,
As much as I like the Blue Monster, does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? I mean, we both know that no matter how big the Blue Monster gets, Microsoft is still going to continue being “evil”, and its software is still going to continue to suck. And no blogging cartoonist is ever going to change that.
Any thoughts?
Dave
Well, Dave, your low opinion of Microsoft notwithstanding, I’m not looking at this from the executive level. I’m coming at this from the perspective of a small-time cartoonist with a blog and an internet connection. And from where I’m standing, it seems to me that in a big company like Microsoft, even a small thing like the Blue Monster can create a lot of value for a lot of people. Not getting too carried away in the Expectation Department is what will keep things interesting.
10. No, I have no idea of where all this is going. All I care about these days is drawing cartoons, doing interesting things with interesting people, paying my bills, and keeping my sorry ass out of the hospital, the mental asylum, the morgue etc.
October 24, 2007
49 Comments
Anyone who has heard me speak publicly lately will know that I’m currently very focused on the “Social Object” idea, which I was turned onto by Jaiku’s Jyri Engestrom. Here’s some more thoughts on the subject, in no particular order.
1. The term, “Social Object” can be a bit heady for some people. So often I’ll use the term, “Sharing Device” instead.
2. Social Networks are built around Social Objects, not vice versa. The latter act as “nodes”. The nodes appear before the network does.
3. Granted, the network is more powerful than the node. But the network needs the node, like flowers need sunlight.
4. My overall marketing thesis invariably asks the question, “If your product is not a Social Object, why are you in business?“
5. Yesterday at the Darden talk I explained why geeks have become so important to marketing. My definition of a geek is, “Somebody who socializes via objects.” When you think about it, we’re all geeks. Because we’re all enthusiastic about something outside ourselves. For me, it’s marketing and cartooning. for others, it could be cellphones or Scotch Whisky or Apple computers or NASCAR or the Boston Red Sox or Bhuddism. All these act as Social Objects within a social network of people who care passionately about the stuff. Whatever industry you are in, there’s somebody who is geeked out about your product category. They are using your product [or a competitor’s product] as a Social Object. If you don’t understand how the geeks are socializing– connecting to other people– via your product, then you don’t actually have a marketing plan. Heck, you probably don’t have a viable business plan.
6. The Apple iPhone is the best example of Social Object I can think of. At least, it is when I’m trying to explain it to somebody unfamiliar with the concept.
7. The Social Object idea is not rocket science.
8. How do you turn a product into a Social Object? Answer: Social Gestures. And lots of them.
9. Products, and the ideas that spawn them, go viral when people can share them like gifts. Example: gmail invites in the early days.
10. Social Object can be abstract, digital, molecular etc.
11. The interesting thing about the Social Object is the not the object itself, but the conversations that happen around them. The Blue Monster is a good example of this. It’s not the cartoon that’s interesting, it’s the conversatuons that happen around it that’s interesting.
12. Ditto with a bottle of wine.
13. Once I get talking about marketing, it’s hard for me to go more than 3 minutes without saying the words, “Social Object”.
14. The most important word on the internet is not “Search”. The most important word on the internet is “Share”. Sharing is the driver. Sharing is the DNA. We use Social Objects to share ourselves with other people. We’re primates. we like to groom each other. It’s in our nature.
15. I believe Social Objects are the future of marketing.
[Written in the departure lounge of Dulles International Airport]
October 17, 2007
9 Comments
[Microsoft billboard in India. The tagline reads, “Come work for Microsoft. Come change the world.” Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Thanks to Sunil for sending me this photo he took in India. As Sunil said in his e-mail:
I’d taken this picture a while ago, just got down to actually sending it to you. I suppose it’s a sanitized/watered-down version of the Blue Monster for Microsoft India. It’s a giant billboard right in the middle of Hyderabad (not there anymore, probably). Notice the Indian dude’s faint goatee, the blue shirt and the phrase ‘come change the world’. Pretty close, I’d think. Though the Blue Monster would have been way cooler.
So… is this Indian “Change the world” just a happy coincidence, or is the Blue Monster schtick actually starting to trickle inside official Microsoft culture? You tell me.
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