March 22, 2013
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This is how I see it. And it isn’t rocket science:
1. If you want to change your business, you also have to change your culture. If you want to change your culture, you also have to change your art.
2. And that’s where gapingvoid comes in– creating art and ideas that express, reflect, articulate what the clients’ business needs to become.
3. You can call it “Internal Advertising” if you want; I prefer the term “Culture Hacking”- changing your company’s fortunes NOT by trying to directly change what the general public thinks of you, but by trying to change what YOU think of you.
SO WHAT COMES AFTER ADVERTISING?
The Golden Age of advertising– the “Mad Men” era– started about 50 years ago, with people like David Ogilvy, George Lois, Bill Bernbach leading the way, and shops like Weiden & Kennedy, BBH, Fallon, BMP, GGT, CDP and Goodby following in their wake.
This golden age came to an abrupt end, when our friend the Internet came along, with a lot of people on Madison Avenue suddenly starting to fear for their jobs.
So if traditional advertising is “dead”, what comes after it? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself for the last ten years, ever since I launched gapingvoid back in 2001.
Though I wasn’t paying too much attention at the time, the answer kinda-sorta came to me back in 2004, in a line I wrote in The Hughtrain:
: The hardest part of a CEO’s job is sharing his enthusiasm with his colleagues, especially when a lot of them are making one-fiftieth of what he is. Selling the company to the general public is a piece of cake compared to selling it to the actual people who work for it. The future of advertising is internal.
You can call it “Internal Advertising” if you want; I prefer the term “Culture Hacking”- changing your company’s fortunes NOT by trying to directly change what the general public thinks of you, but by trying to change what YOU think of you.
Improving the company by improving the culture, by subverting the culture via counterintuitive means. Exactly.
[Photo courtesy of Adbusters.]
And yes, Culture Hacking is also what drove the Occupy Wall Street movement and AdBusters. Same idea, different aims (And if you read Greil Marcus’ “Lipstick Traces”, you’ll learn that the same riff goes back to 1970s punk rock, 1950s French Situationism, early 20th-Century Dadaism, even back to the Middle Ages…].
The new business model will be the intersection of the three following things: Purpose, Company Culture and Media.
1. Purpose: It’s the “Why” of what you do, it is not the product, it is the Purpose-Idea, as expressed by Mark Earls, or “The Why” as expressed by Simon Sinek.
2. Company Culture is informed by “Purpose”, it is that actions that a business takes each and every day to remind people of their purpose. Purpose is a set of beliefs, and Culture is the expression of those beliefs in business (Action).
3. Media: Advertising, PR, earned media, paid media, call it what you will. Once you have a “Purpose” and a company “Culture”, those two things inform all of your advertising, PR, communication, social interaction and points of contact with the outside world. From your logo, to your ads, Social Media, How your planes and trucks are painted, etc. It all informs, reinforces and feeds each other.
Culture Hacking is why “Delivering Happiness” became an international best seller. Culture Hacking is why people flock to Nevada in droves to take the Zappos tour. Culture Hacking is why people will one day pay Jenn Lim and Tony Hsieh millions of dollars for the services of the “Delivering Happiness” company.
This is also why Rackspace and Babson College hired gapingvoid to draw cartoons for them. This is why we produce Cube Grenades. This is why big PR firms like Weber Shandwick or Edelman, if they get it right, will steal millions of dollars’ worth of business AWAY from traditional Madison Avenue agencies.
Culture Hacking is all about creating social objects. Exactly.
[One more time:] Stop wasting your life in the traditional advertising-era quicksand. There’s a new game in town. Culture Hacking is a multi-billion dollar industry, still in its infancy. Get in early if you can…
[Further Reading: The Cluetrain Manifesto, Delivering Happiness, Creative Age, Tribes, The Hughtrain and Lipstick Traces. All must-reads to better understand this brave new world of ours. Plus my friends at Laughing Squid and PSFK always seem to have their fingers on the pulse…]
Tags: Cultural Transformation, Culture Hacking, Internal Advertising, Mark Earls, Purpose Idea, Simon Sinek, social Objects, The Hughtrain, Transform Office Art, transforming the business place
Posted in Office Art, Social Objects, Transform Office Art | Comments OffMarch 22nd, 2013
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March 21, 2013
2 Comments
[“The processor is an expression of human potential.” One of the art pieces we did for Intel, loved by the CEO, now hanging in their boardroom etc.]
1. In terms of government spending, Rome’s first Emperor, Caesar Augustus pretty much had the biggest art budget in history. Even more than the Medicis. Way, way more than modern moguls like John Paul Getty or JP Morgan.
Augustus spent so much money because he knew what people in power have always known, that of all the ways of spreading ideas, Art is probably the fastest and most effective way of making it happen.
As Seth Godin famously said, “The ideas that win are the ideas that spread”. Ergo, Augustus was very keen to spread the “Augustus is awesome” meme all around the Empire. He started spending big-time, in all the major Roman cities, on art that glorifed his name. He pretty much created a widespread cult of Augustus.
“I turned Rome from a city of bricks, to a city of marble,” he famously quipped.
Of course, he was operating in a time before mass media, mass literacy, printing press, televison and radio etc etc. Back then “Art” had a virtual monopoly on spreading big ideas.
Later emperors– Hadrian, Caracalla, Dilocletian, etc– learned from his example to promote their personalEmperor-cult brand . And even before the Goths sacked Rome in 479 A.D., the Christian Bishops were doing the same, albeit for a different deity.
2. Art is a GREAT way to spread ideas, period. It doesn’t matter if we are talking Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans, or The gapingvoid Blue Monster, art has a magic quality that makes people want to share. And in today’s hyper-connected world, that is magic.
Emperor Augustus got me thinking how funny it is that, in today’s business, it’s the “external idea spreaders” (advertising, PR etc) that get all the glory. TV commercials and PR campaigns are sexy, expensive and glamorous.
Far less sexy is what they call “Internal Communications”, or “Internal Comms” for short. People pretty much associate that with corporate memos and newsletters full of dry language, stock photography and uninspiring graphic design. Ugh.
But why is that?
Seriously. It SHOULD be sexy, and it isn’t.
It’s such an important part of leadership! Leaders cannot lead unless their ideas first spread inside their company.
This should be a much bigger deal than it is. It certainly was a big deal to Augustus.
3. So how exactly does a powerful CEO with offices in London, Hong Kong, Dubai, New York, Chicago, Sao Paulo, Nairobi etc etc tell his 5,000 or 50,000 employees what he or she REALLY cares about?
In such a way that people actually want to talk about it in an interesting an meaningful way?
Send a memo? Will it be read? Will it be shared? Will it matter? Exactly.
Commission an traditonal advertising campaign? If you have A LOT of money and A LOT of time… Do you really have that? And even if you do, will it actually work? Exactly.
4. With the value of leadership at an all-time high, the “Internal Spreading of Ideas” is an area that businesses and organizations need to be more creative about.
I think art can really help with this, big-time. That’s why I got in the business in the first place.
With that in mind, I’m currently looking for interesting examples of this “art in business” thing. Not for mere decoration, but for reasons of the aforementioned internal communicationa. Be it my art or anybody else’s art, it’s something I really want to riff on. If you know something in this department, I’d be happy to talk to you. Email: hughATgapingvoid.com
Thank you.
Tags: Andy Warhol, Blue Monster, Cesar Augustus, Internal Communications, Seth Godin, Spreading Ideas, The Medicis
Posted in Advertising, Intel | 2 Comments »March 21st, 2013
March 19, 2013
2 Comments
[Originally sent out in the newsletter. Subscribe here etc.]
This is a cartoon from the early 1990’s.
When I was doing my most formative work back then, I was working all the time. ALL the time.
I’d have my advertising job by day, then I’d hit my regular watering hole/cafe, pull up a stool at the bar, and get drawing.
And that’s kinda what I did for many years. While many of my peers were “getting a life”, doing all that normal stuff: Watching Monday night football, getting married, shopping in malls, mowing the lawns on the weekend. Not me. I was just working ALL the time. day and night, either at the office, or the cafe. I didn’t hang out at home much, except to sleep.
And I got asked humorously, “Don’t you have a life?” all the time by the people who saw me around– the waiters, the bartenders, the other barflies. ALL the time.
I kinda felt embarrassed when I had to say, “Not really”. But it was the truth.
Two decades later, it seems to have paid off, for the reasons expressed in the cartoon. I’m glad time proved me right. Imagine if it hadn’t… Ouch.
Tags: Cartoonist Hugh Macleod, Hugh MacLeod, Hugh's Work
Posted in Cartoons | 2 Comments »March 19th, 2013
March 19, 2013
1 Comment
Yesterday’s newsletter was all about the transient nature of the universe, here’s more proof.
This is a little doodle I made back in the day, popular “Web 2.0″ names, businesses and buzzwords from around late 2005 or so.
How many of them are still front of mind, collectively? Not many.
No Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Foursquare. Imagine.
Stuff like reminds us of JUST how quickly the world is changing.
My advice?
Become Antifragile. And stay that way.
Tags: Antifragile, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, Cartoon Newsletter, Facebook, Instagram, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Twi, twitter, Web 2.0
Posted in Social Media, Tech | 1 Comment »March 19th, 2013
March 12, 2013
3 Comments
This is our latest business card design. Very cool.
Again, I’ll point to what I said in The Hughtrain, way back in in 2004:
“The hardest part of a CEO’s job is sharing his enthusiasm with his colleagues, especially when a lot of them are making one-fiftieth of what he is. Selling the company to the general public is a piece of cake compared to selling it to the actual people who work for it. The future of advertising is internal.”
Of course, nine years later I’d change the line to, “The future of marketing is internal”…
In retrospect, the problem I always had when I worked back in advertising, was the client invariably wanted to change consumer bahavior far more than they wanted to change their own company’s behavior… like they somehow weren’t related.
But of course, they were. Real change comes from within etc.
So it’s really not surprising that gapingvoid is doing a ton of “internal” work for clients these days. In terms of finding meaning and purpose, that’s where we think the action is.
I really hope you like the new card. If you want to find out more about our client work, feel free to e-mail, thanks: hughATgapingvoid.com.
Tags: Cartoons on the back of business cards, Gapingvoid Business Cards, The Hughtrain
Posted in Business Cards | 3 Comments »March 12th, 2013
March 11, 2013
4 Comments
Back in the early blogging days of 2004, I wrote a little online rant called “The Hughtrain Manifesto”, influenced by all the stuff I was reading at the time: Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Mark Earls, The Cluetrain Manifesto etc.
The question I was asking then was, “What comes after advertising?” If this new Internet thingy meant all old-media bets were off, what would become of the Industry that drove 90% of the latter?
My answer (at least to myself) came in Part Four:
“The hardest part of a CEO’s job is sharing his enthusiasm with his colleagues, especially when a lot of them are making one-fiftieth of what he is. Selling the company to the general public is a piece of cake compared to selling it to the actual people who work for it. The future of advertising is internal.”
In other words, internal communication designed to create real cultural change. Articulating Mark Earls’ “Purpose-Idea”. All that positive disruption for pennies on the dollar… compared to what you get from conventional ad campaigns.
The logic being that, if you can change your own culture, then you can change the culture of others around you. And if you can do that, you would have a huge competitive advantage over the other guys.
Culture matters. Cultural change is big business, and getting bigger by the day. It’s a huge opportunity for advertising folk; let’s hope some of them actually take it.
Tags: Advertising, Cluetrain, cultural change, Culture
Posted in hughtrain, Manifestos | 4 Comments »March 11th, 2013
March 11, 2013
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[Thanks to @bombtune for sending me this photo of one of my Rackspace cartoons, spotted in the wild at SXSW Interactive.]
Tags: Rackspace, Startups, SXSW Interactive
Posted in Rackspace, Startups, SXSW | Comments OffMarch 11th, 2013
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March 7, 2013
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[One of the e-stickers…]
[Download Path 3.0 app here.]
The big news for us this week was, we were part of the Path 3.0 launch that just happened at SXSW.
Basically, we designed a bunch of e-stickers for the new store they built inside the app. It was a fun gig that will hopefully get our work in a different, new context. From The Next Web link above:
The stickers have been put together in collections called ‘packs’ that run $1.99 and contain a dozen or more stickers. Two packs are free with the latest update and Path says that it has worked with artists like David Lanham, Hugh Macleod and Richard Perez to make more packs that you can snag via the shop.
Very cool. Jason and I visted the their offices in San Francisco last week for the first time, just before the launch.
What struck me was how the dining tables were the most architecturally dominant part of the space. By far the largest room in the office.
There’s a reason why families have always eaten together, down the ages (and you could call a startup a ‘family’, of sorts). Sharing food is one of most important and inclusive rituals.
The “friends gathered round” idea seems to be an apt metaphor for Path itself…
Congrats to the Path team for the new launch, very exciting!
[P.S. Dave Morin, the founder and CEO of Path is also a good friend and long-time customer of gapingvoid, he’s bought a ton of art from us over the years. We also met for the first time last year at Techcrunch Disrupt. Thanks for bringing us in, Dave!]
Tags: Dave Morin, David Lanhan, e-stickers, Hugh MacLeod, Path 3.0 app, Richard Perez, SXSW
Posted in SXSW, Tech | Comments OffMarch 7th, 2013
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February 25, 2013
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We Need To Talk!
This print is currently up for auction on eBay.
Originally drawn in 1998, this is one of Hugh’s most popular images. Currently the 24″ x 36″ is in our gallery for $2,975. The piece that is in the auction is an 18″ x 24″ image size, which Hugh will sign and personalize for the buyer. The bidding opened at $99.
Hugh first drew this image in 1998, reportedly as a result of an argument with a girl. Regardless of it’s genesis, we think it has resonated so well for so long because it expresses something we have all thought about, but rarely have the gumption to say aloud. Instead we can say it with this print.
We think it is actually an awesome image for the bosses office, or maybe a different thinking therapist or HR director. Cool, right?
It’s the same image that is owned by the London based celebrity agent Carol Hayes, and appeared on Channel 4’s “Secret Millionaire,” television show.
You can CLICK HERE to visit the eBay Auction for the print.
After that you need to shut up. ;-)
[“We Need To Talk” eBay Auction]
Tags: art, Auction, eBay, Secret Millionaire
Posted in Cartoons, Fine Art | Comments OffFebruary 25th, 2013
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February 25, 2013
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[NOT EXACTLY the Jiro ethos etc.]
[Watch the film clip here.]
Everybody knows I’m a HUGE fan of the documentary, Jiro Deams Of Sushi, and why: Because I never saw anyone before this do a better job of commmunicating the importance and value of “Mastery”, both material and spiritual. At least, not with film.
Jiro beautifully and succinctly explained his philiosphy in this film clip on You Tube, about 29 minutes into the actual movie. Even if you never intend on renting this superb documentary, this little nuggest I’m sharing I think is insanely valuable in its own right, for anyone who has the smarts to take it fully on board. I hope it helps.
TRANSCRIPT:
Shokunin try to get the highest quality fish and apply their techniques to it.
We don’t care about money.
All I want to do is make better sushi.
I do the same thing over and over, bit by bit.
There is always a yearning to achieve more.
I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is.
Even at my age, after decades of work, I don’t think I’ve achieved perfection.
But I feel ecstatic all day… I love making sushi.
That’s the spirit of the shokunin.
When to quit? The job you’ve worked so hard for?
I’ve never once hated this job.
I fell in love with my work and gave my life to it.
Even though I’m 85 years old, I don’t feel like retiring.
That’s how I feel.
You can see my orignial riff on Jiro and Mastery here (one of my most important blog posts of the last year, incidentally); I’ve also now included it in Chapter 9 of “The Art Of Not Sucking” e-book. Hope it helps.
Also, for anyone who cares, the music in the clip is Max Ricter’s ‘infra 5″. Rock on.
Tags: E-book, Jiro dreams Of Sushi, Max Ricter's Infra 5, The Art Of Not Sucking
Posted in Cartoons, The Art Of Not Sucking | Comments OffFebruary 25th, 2013
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