Here’s the latest: a tee shirt I designed for Babson College.

A well-known motif, the fist raised in defiance. Yes, all good entrepreneurship begins as some sort of defiant act. Exactly.

I’m also thinking of the idea that getting one’s degree from Babson as an act of defiance as well (as opposed to say, Harvard or Wharton).

Entrepreneurship is, of course, something inside you. If you are a budding entrepreneur, the issue isn’t whether you have that quality to begin with –you do. The question is how do you unleash it. Where do you begin?

And yes, the “Fist of Defiance” is a social object. “Cool, you feel that way too? So do I!”

Exactly.

[Essential backstory: The Social Object landing page]

[Buy the print here etc.]

With my recent post, “Reclaim Blogging: Why I’m giving up Twitter and Facebook” making all that fuss all around the Web, obviously I’ve been reflecting a lot on blogging in general.

What is blogging for?

More specifically, what is gapingvoid.com for?

Even more specifically, what is gapingvoid.com actually ABOUT?

Blogging is the same as careers: Every now and then it helps to take some time off, to reflect, to regroup and refocus. Which is EXACTLY what I’ve been doing these last couple of days.

Having a big ol’ think.…

My conclusion?

Besides drawing and posting cartoons, which I’ve always done and will always do until I die, I believe the focus of gapingvoid should be something it’s riffed on nonstop for the last half-decade.

i.e. Social Objects.

i.e. Why Social Objects are, I believe, the future of marketing.

And why are they the future of marketing, exactly?

Because unless businesses and brands get their head around the Social Object concept, their marketing will fail, end of story.

And Marketing is too important to fail, not just for businesses, but for society in general.

This is a conversation that HAS to happen, end of story. And where better to start this conversation than on gapingvoid? Exactly.

And yes, I expect some REALLY COOL art to be made in the process…

Rock on.

Ken called it a “Sign of Super Intelligence and Creativity Inside Intel”. Thanks, Ken!

A cartoon all by itself changes nothing. A “Social Object”, however, can move mountains.

As I’m fond of saying, if your marketing fails to create Social Objects, your marketing will fail.

Think about it some more then get back to me…

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.

For as long as I’ve been involved with the Internet, I’ve seen the SAME OLD DISCONNECT appear again and again AND AGAIN i.e. the disconnect between how the Internet ACTUALLY works and how the social media marketing dorks like to PRETEND how it works.

Case in point: From Steve Jones’ blog:

Today I received an e-mail that said “Like us on Facebook and win”. Later in the day I walked into a store and on the door was a sign that said “Like us on Facebook”.

That’s like Billy Joel asking me to buy his album. It is like walking into a party and having someone say “Be my friend and I’ll buy you a drink”. In a word, it is pathetic.

Damn right it’s pathetic.

Note to Social Media Marketing Dorks: The hard currency of the Internet is not Facebook “Likes” or Twitter “Retweets”, as flavor-of-the-month as they might be. By themselves, they’re worthless.

The hard currency of the Internet is “Social Objects”.

i.e. Social Objects for people to SHARE MEANINGFULLY with other people.

You’re either creating them or you’re not. And if you’re not, you will fail, end of story.

[Continue Reading…]

[One of my more successful “Social Objects” of late: The SXSW t-shirt I did for my client, Rackspace. We printed 3,200 of them, and they all went REALLY quickly. The just FLEW off the table. It was stunning to watch…]

I’ve been talking about Social Objects for a while now. And using cartoons to create social objects i.e. “Cube Grenades” is the main way I make a living.

Whatever your social media strategy is, it needs the object. It needs that thing that people socialize around.

Because people socialize around objects–  a product, an idea, a movement, a person– people don’t socialize in a vacuum.

Creating cartoons is my way of creating social objects, but of course, there are other ways.

gapingvoid is basically  a little Social Object factory.…

[The Cube Grenade I did for Shit Creek Consulting etc.]

Traditional advertising doesn’t work very well.

Sure, it tries, and tries hard, but most of the time, it fails.

It fails far worse now than it ever did during the golden era of TV or print. Those days are gone. We live in The Internet Era now.

Old, traditional advertising was all about creating messages for the media, not about creating social objects for the people using the media.

“Social Objects” is what makes the Internet work, what makes the Internet possible.

Without the social objects, there would simply be no World Wide Web.

Social objects are part of the Web’s very  DNA.

In The Internet Era, an ad that isn’t first and foremost a social object, is useless waste of money. Even if we’re not talking about the Internet, per se.

Which is why I invented Cube Grenades: social objects in cartoon form, designed to star real conversations between people.

To me, Cube Grenades aren’t just about cartoons. Cube Grenades are  about something far more important– they’re about doing something that creates real change between people, that creates something that actually matters to people.

Social Objects: I use cartoons. What do you use? Serious question.

[Originally posted November,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.]

One evening Father Steven, the elderly priest who baptized more than one of my nephews and nieces, came over to my mother’s house for dinner. I was there, too.

Father Steven is a lovely guy. Deeply spiritual and very smart. Very learned in theology and the history of the Roman Catholic Church, though not Catholic myself I always looked forward to discussing “The Big Stuff” with Father Steven for hours on end.

That evening over wine and cheese, I was telling Father Steven how during a particularly rough patch in my twenties, somehow I got into the habit of carrying a small Bible around with me everywhere in my day pack. Not quite sure why. Being the good former choirboy, I’ve always read the Bible in bits and bobs, here and there, all my life. I told Father Steven I thought it was rather odd, even though at the time the Bible accompanied me everywhere, I didn’t read it any more than I did in my non-day-pack days. I just liked having it around, as it were.

“Ah, that’s quite common,” said Father Steven. “People have always carried The Bible around as a talisman.”

From Wikipedia: A talisman (from Arabic طلاسم tilasm, ultimately from Greek telesma or from the Greek word “telein” which means “to initiate into the mysteries”) is an amulet or other object considered to possess supernatural or magical powers.

Basically, a talisman is an object that has been given meaning that far exceeds any actual function. A good luck charm. Or a crucifix. A St. Christopher’s medal. A Star of David. Or that friendship bracelet your girlfriend gave you when you took off to France without her for six months “in order to find yourself” or whatever. A reminder of an idea or an identity.

As is that $150 pair of sneakers that you think are going make your exercise more often, that too is a talisman; that too has totemic power. Or that $400 smartphone that’s going to get you more organized and focused about your career. Or the author’s signature inside the jacket of your favorite book. Or yes, that gapingvoid print that’s going to hang in your office and help you to stay upbeat and motivated when you’re having a blah day. Or getting “Linchpin” tattooed on your arm.

And this is no different than watching some well known tech blogger like Scoble walking out of an iStore, waving his latest Apple gizmo to the video phones and cheering crowd, after he spent three night waiting in line, in order to be fist in the store to buy one. Right then and there, the Apple gizmo has tremendous talismanic power.

And of course, so does your “Object-Idea”, if you’re fortunate enough to have one. Huge power.

Why do we seem to have this insatiable and irrational desire to surround ourselves with talismans, totems and Object-Ideas? Because they represent meaning to us. And like the the cartoon above says, we have an infinite need for that.

[The Object-Idea archive is here.]

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.]

[“Wings”, which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can get the print here etc.]

[Originally published November, 2005:]

I was having a long conversation with a friend last night about “Business Porn”:

Business Porn is just like Ordinary Porn or Real Estate Porn, except instead of it being about the women we wished we could sleep with, or the houses we wish we owned, it’s about all those cool, lucrative, exciting jobs and businesses that we wish we had, instead of the normal, tedious, schleppy crap most of us end up doing to pay the bills.

Does your blog suffer from low traffic? It’s probably because there’s not enough porn on it. Sex Porn, Real Estate Porn, Wine Porn, Biz Porn, Emotional Porn, it doesn’t matter.

Porn = Traffic.
Porn = Marketing.
Porn = Sales.

With Porn, all things are possible.

So now you know.

EUREKA! I had my EVIL PLANS road trip idea, but it was lacking the social object it needed to really work.
Sure, driving around Texas with a video camera and an idea about “Dream Big” was all very well, but it needed something to work as a totem for the Stormhoek wine.
IDEA: Hand-painted wine bottles.
I’ve drawn on Stormhoek wine bottles before, using painting sticks. They looked kinda cool. While I travel around Texas, I’ll be making them to hand out to people who went to all the trouble to support this enterprise. See image above to get a rough idea what it might look like…
This is exciting. The road trip idea is suddenly A LOT More interesting, all of a sudden. Rock on.

[Update: Just added this blog post to EVIL PLANS.]

[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.]