Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’
February 4, 2013
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This was a nice little gig: A large print for Bizspark Canada.
Three thoughts:
1. This is my first Microsoft gig for a while [Bizspark is part of their massive startup outreach program], so it felt good to be back in the ol’ saddle again.
2. This piece is a riff on a familiar theme of mine, that a nation is only as good as its startup culture etc. As we see all the economic crap happening in places like Spain and Greece (Unemployment between 25%-60%, depending on the age group!), it’s somethng we urgently need to teach our leaders, by any means necessary. And yes, gapingvoid likes having clients who agree with us.
3. Though I love doing my more highbrow, introspective fine art schtick, I also love the more extrovert stuff for the office wall. Especially offices that belong to interesting folk doing interesting stuff, like the Bizspark gang. This “tense duality” between the inner and outer parts of existence is where the action is. Too much of either one would be BEYOND tedious IMHO…
Thanks to Mark Gagne and the rest of the Bizspark Canada team for making it happen. Rock on.
July 26, 2011
5 Comments
[Buy the print!] [Subscribe]
This cartoon was originally a personal business card I designed for Microsoft’s Jeff Sandquist.
He wanted a card that he could hand out to both techies and “civilians”, both at business and social events.
It’s a common theme among most of my peers– we’re totally consumed by our careers, yet we still have the other parts of our lives to fit in somehow.
How do we do that? I have no idea. Does anybody?
April 3, 2011
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Jeff Sandquist, Robert Scoble’s old boss at Microsoft’s Channel Nine, commissioned me to design this business card for him.
He wanted a design that worked for both techies and non-techies alike. Something that made him appear both good at his job, but still a human being etc.
Fun! Thanks, Jeff!
[Commission your own Cube Grenade here…]
March 24, 2011
12 Comments
1. Silicon Valley was born in 1939, when Messieurs Hewlett & Packard started their company in a small garage in Paulo Alto.
2. In his book, “Delivering Happiness”, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh speaks of in great length about “The Loft”, a place where all his friends used to hang out and party, and how this sense of “meaningful gathering” went on to inform the core values of his now-famous shoe company.
3. A very dated-looking photograph from 1978. Eleven young, goofy-looking techies. They turn out to be the founding members of Microsoft, including Bill Gates.
4. Michael Dell founding his computer empire in his dorm room at the University of Texas.
5. Ben & Jerry’s started making ice cream in a converted gas station in Vermont.
6. The business guru, Tom Peters often writes about how his time as a young man serving in the US Navy helped evolve his now-famous worldview.
7. Rock star physicists, Brian Cox talks passionately about the Big Bang Theory.
8. How a despondent, burned-out, second-rate advertising copywriter FINALLY got his groove when he started drawing cartoons on the back of business cards.
9. The Beatles playing those early gigs at The Cavern Club in Liverpool.
10. The famous tech blogger, Robert Scoble talking about his job working in a discount camera store, back when he was a kid.
11. How a bunch of young, angry social misfits start a small nightclub, the Cabaret Voltaire, in 1916 Zurich [at the height of World War One] and in the process invent Dada, one of the 20th Century’s most influential art movements.
12. Abe Lincoln was born in a log cabin.
So… What do these all have in common?
They’re all Creation Myths. That’s right; just like The Garden of Eden.
We humans seem to need them, somehow. They manage to articulate who we really are, somehow. The help explain our core values, somehow.
And for whatever reason, REALLY successful people are even more likely to have them, even more likely to need them, somehow.
Does your schtick have a good creation myth? If not, maybe it needs one?
Think about it.
September 25, 2010
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Things I wish my phone did. Dot com. It’s a website we’re building for our client, Line2.
It should be up in a wee bit… we’re hoping to have a lot of fun with it– an “Idea Amplifier”, as it were.
Re. The cartoon above: No matter how much you love your new state-of-the-art phone, it can’t love you back [For now, that is].
[Food for thought] From Seth Godin, May, 2007:
Now, of course, most blogs are one-person operations. Which means that successful blogs are often run by restless, outward-bound people in a hurry. And a lot of bloggers either have day jobs or passionate sidelines. I think that’s a good thing, even when they fail. It’s frustrating for me to hear, “stick to your blogging,” when people criticize a project created by a blogger – because it’s part of the blogging, part of the learning, part of what’s unfolding. I’d rather read a book that’s informed by the activities (not the reporting) of the writer, and I’d rather read a blog that’s based on the successes (and failures) of the blogger.
Which brings us to Hugh MacLeod and his work for Microsoft. Some critics think he’s selling out. I don’t. I think he’s having a huge impact on an organization –from the outside– at the same time that he demonstrates how just about any large organization can rethink its role in the world. And he’s doing it in front of all of us, without a net.
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.]
June 21, 2010
3 Comments
Today’s “Daily Bizcard”, goes to my old blogging buddy, Robert Scoble.
Scoble was the pretty much the first celebrity blogger to be working at Microsoft. I thought what he did for the company then was tremendous– he really tried to shake the company culture up for the better, and he often succeeded. He now works for Rackspace, the big hosting company. There he pretty much does the same thing that he always has– talk to geeks and entrepreneurs, and try to be the first one on the block to get his hands on the latest bright & shiny object. Oh, and try to shake the company culture up while he’s at it.
I don’t think this cartoon really applies to Robert, but he has a sense of humor and I think he’ll get the joke. I can certainly see him handing it out at tech conferences, just for a giggle…
[Daily Bizcard archive]
[Commission a “Cube Grenade” from Hugh]
[Robert, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
June 10, 2010
17 Comments
[The Cube Grenade for Shit Creek Consulting ]
[UPDATE: We’ve changed the rules. You have to nominate a friend– you can’t nominate yourself. Details here.]
gapingvoid is giving away a free commissioned Cube Grenade to the business or organization with the most interesting idea.
I draw Cube Grenades for a living.
They’re quite expensive. Several thousand dollars a pop, sometimes ten grand or more.
Not everybody can afford one. Cash is tight. That being said, every month I get dozens of requests from start-ups, small businesses, and non-profits for commissions, asking for free or nearly free work.
Occasionally I’ll do a pro-bono one for the right cause, or a good friend, or because I just love what a business is doing, but 99% of the time, I just have to say no.
The truth is, there are a huge number of really cool start ups, small businesses and charities doing worthwhile work and fabulous people whose cause could be transformed by a CG, but just don’t have the cash it costs to have one.
What’s so special about these Cube Grenades?
Sure, they’re great social objects, but they have another purpose: They’re amazingly powerful tools for a company trying to engage in what many call “Cultural Transformation”.
[The one that started it all: “The Blue Monster”. Backstory here etc.]
You change markets in your favor by changing the culture– either your own company culture, or the culture of the industry you’re in. In my world, that’s where the REAL opportunity lies.
That’s the change I want to help affect. That’s where I think my cartoons can be the most useful and valuable.
So I decided, what the hell, I’ll do one for free for somebody, a small business, a worthy cause. Spread the love etc.
Who for?
I haven’t decided yet.
Tell you what. If you want me to draw a cube grenade for your business, write a blog post about it, leave a link to it below in the comments, and/or submit it to Tumblr at the same time. Then let us put your idea up on the Tumblr page we created specifically for this [Please keep it under 500 words, Thanks].
I’ll draw a free cube grenade for the person who has the most compelling cause.
I don’t care, it can be for your kid’s 6th grade class, your business or charity. Just as long as the idea is interesting,
This offer will expire Auguest 1st, and I’ll be talking about some of cooler posts here and/or our Tumblr page, so please get cracking.
This should be fun!
Thanks.
[UPDATE: We’ve changed the rules. You have to nominate a friend– you can’t nominate yourself. Details here.]
May 4, 2010
2 Comments
Today’s “Daily Bizcard” design, “I’m Not Dying”, goes to my favorite tech consultant, James Governor.
James and his partners have a small tech consultancy firm, Redmonk, which handles blue chip clients like Microsoft, SAP, Dell etc.
Redmonk have an interesting (and highly effective) way of marketing themselves. Because they come up with so many ideas, they can only realistically execute on 10% of them.
What do they do with the other 90%? Easy. The give them away for free on their blogs. Simple, but it works.
James probably knows more good consultant jokes than anyone I know. So I thought maybe he could use another one, hence the cartoon above. Exactly.
[The Daily Bizcard archive is here etc.]
[Commission Hugh]
[James, please send me an e-mail at gapingvoid@gmail.com with your shipping address and the details you want on the back of the bizcard, and I’ll send a free batch of 100 to you. Thanks!]
April 7, 2010
3 Comments
[The “Cube Grenade” I did for Shit Creek Consulting etc.]
So long after you leave college, you keep asking yourself the question, “What do I want to do when I grow up?”
And to help you answer the question, you try out a whole string of different things. Working in an office. Working outdoors. Going to law school. Starting your own coffee shop. Freelance. Consulting. Writing books…
And hopefully, after a few years (or decades) of trial and error, hopefully you end up with your answer.
I think I’m finally ready to answer my own question, “What do I want to do when I grow up?”
The answer is, of course, creating “Cube Grenades”.
Sure, they’re great social objects, but to me they have another purpose: They’re good tools for a company trying to engage in what’s called “Cultural Transformation”.
[The one that started it all: “The Blue Monster”. Backstory here etc.]
You change markets in your favor by changing the culture– either you own or the culture of the industry you’re in. In my world, that’s where the REAL opportunity lies.
That’s the change I want to help affect. That’s where I think my cartoons can be the most useful and valuable.
Always happy to talk further about it with people maybe wanting to do business. Feel free to ping me whenever. Thanks…
December 30, 2009
69 Comments
“DON’T WORRY IF YOU DON’T KNOW ‘ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING’ BEFORE STARTING OUT.”
That’s probably the last thing you need…
A lot of people massively postpone their EVIL PLANS, for the simple reason that they don’t have an answer for every possible contingency.
They don’t know enough about the industry. They don’t know enough people in the industry– especially the A-Listers. They don’t know enough about where the market is going to be in five years. They don’t know enough about what could possibly go wrong. They don’t know where EVERY SINGLE LAST POSSIBLE LANDMINE is buried.
So instead of getting on with it, they spend the next few years keeping their Nowheresville day job, whilst spending their evenings surfing the web, scouring the trade magazines, researching everything like crazy, trying to get a thorough, small-time Outsider’s view about what the big-time Insiders are currently up to.
And then they often compound this by also trying to get a handle on the even bigger stuff. What will happen to the American/Asian/European/Brazilian/Whatever economy in the next 2/5/10/25/Whatever years, and how will these BIG things affect their tiny, obscure niche.
They want to have ALL the answers, before ever risking getting their feet wet. Hell, before even getting their little toe wet…
Agreed, a wee bit of prudence and informed circumspection are lovely virtues to have, but overdoing it can be ultimately unproductive, for a variety of reasons. Here are my four favorite ones:
i. Being an Outsider with too much Insider Knowledge, makes it even more likely that you’ll make the same mistakes as everybody else.
When Google– the most successful advertising business in the history of the world– started their company, their founders knew practically nothing about the inside workings of Madison Avenue. Sergey Brin and Larry Page most likely had zero inside knowledge about famous advertising titans like Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, Lee Clowes, John Hegarty or Claude Hopkins. They were just a couple of twenty-something Stanford PhD students, who were far more interested in Internet search engines than they ever were in Nielsen Ratings, Proctor & Gamble or The Clio Awards. Which helps explain why, when the normal, mainstream, industry-obsessed kids of around the same age were just landing their first East Coast internships or junior executive positions at advertising blue-chips like McCann’s, Lintas, DDB or Saatchi’s, Sergey and Larry were already well on their way to becoming billionaires.
When I started my fine-art print business in late 2008, I didn’t wait for the acclaim of the big-city gallery scene, or a favorable review from the New York Times art critics before I took the plunge. [A] Those elite votes of approval were VERY unlikely to happen anyway, and [B] Even if did happen, it would have taken years and years. I just reckoned instead that [A] my blog readers already knew and liked my work, [B] a lot of them had disposable incomes and [C] a lot of them had a lot of wall space that needed filling. That was all the incentive I needed to get the ball rolling.
So I just put the idea out there on my blog to see if any fish would bite. And they did. A lot of them even liked the idea enough to put up money in advance, before I had spent a single penny. As a result, the business has been profitable since Day One, without me having to gain an encyclopedic knowledge of the big New York, London and Shanghai art galleries, the current career trajectories of all the artists they represent, or the recent auction prices at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Too much of that stuff would’ve just slowed me down, big time.
[Other, Far Better Examples Than My Own:] Before they launched their car companies, Henry Ford and Karl Benz didn’t decide to first spend a decade trying to win the approval of prominent horse breeders or railway magnates. Same goes for the Wright Brothers.
I love this story about Bill Gates: Some years ago, when the company he founded, Microsoft was at the height of its powers, he was giving a lecture to some college students. When the the Question & Answers came along, a keen undergraduate asked the question, “What advice would you give to a young person like me who wants to make a lot of money some day?”
Gates’ answer was as wonderful as it was short: “For Goodness’ sake, don’t do what I did. That money’s already been made by me.”
ii.“Events, Dear Boy, Events.” –Harold Macmillan, British Prime Minister 1957 – 1963, after being asked by a young journalist, what is the most likely single factor to blow any government off-course.
If it’s pretty much impossible for the smartest people in Washington, Wall Street and Silicon Valley to predict what the big, bad world is going to do next, what chance does a guy wanting to open a small, highly-specialized, hand-built EVIL PLAN bicycle operation have, from his small storefront in Brooklyn?
Trying to micromanage the Macro, from the comfort of your wee bike shop… Seriously, your time is better spent trying to manage what you CAN control. Like being nice to customers, keeping your word, staying cheerful, positive and focused, completing a task cheaper, faster and better than you had originally promised, working harder and smarter than the next guy, fighting hard to keep your ideas fresh i.e. all those good, small moves that Grandma told you about decades ago.
To get some very lucid, hardcore perspective on this, I recommend that you read Nassim Taleb’s excellent and highly readable “Fooled By Randomness” (W. W. Norton & Co., 2001). Nassim’s thesis is childishly simple: That the bigger the historical event, the more random and unpredictable the event was to begin with. Nobody saw 9/11, Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of JFK, Lincoln or Archduke Franz Ferdinand (and the subsequent outbreak of a four-year World War), the Atomic Bombs being dropped on Japan, the 1923 collapse of the German Deutchmark, the Barbarians sacking Rome in 410 A.D., The Bubonic Plague of the 1300’s, or Hitler’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union coming down the pike. Ditto with Detroit not seeing the threat of Japanese cars coming after 1945, or IBM not seeing the threat posed in the 1970s by Microsoft and Apple. Everything just happened when it did, everybody was shocked completely, and everybody just had to deal with the MASSIVE AND UNPREDICTABLE consequences afterward. Not too much fun at the time, but there was no other choice. Nassim makes a damn good case.
So if your EVIL PLAN is to open up a two-person internet software company, or a mom n’ pop fancy cheese shop in North Chicago, there’s little point in first waiting to see if, sometime in the next two decades, whether or not India and Pakistan decide to launch nuclear missiles against each other.
iii. Interesting destinies rarely come from just reading the instructions manual.
Yes, Louis Pasteur did say, “Fortune favors the prepared mind.” On one level, he was right. That being said, the stuff you learn beforehand will never be one-tenth as useful as the stuff you learn the hard way, on the job. All the former can do is help train you to deal with the reality of the latter. The real truth is always found in the moment, never in the future. Sadly, not everybody is cut out for thriving in the present tense. Life is unfair.
iv. “Sometimes Paranoia’s just having all the facts.” –William S. Burroughs.
I’ve been in a few businesses in my time: advertising, marketing, fine art prints, greeting cards, phone sales, animation, magazines, wine, corporate consulting, English tailoring, and now, book writing. Take it from me– if I had known ONE HALF about these businesses that I know now, I doubt I would’ve bothered in the first place. Instead, I would’ve just gotten an MBA or law degree somewhere and landed a mid-level position in a bank, law firm, corporation or whatever. Maybe joined the local country club while I was at it. Lucky Me.
[About Hugh. Cartoon Archive. Sign up for my “Daily Cartoon” Newsletter.]
May 13, 2009
42 Comments
[Update: Essential Reading– “Work With Hugh: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About “Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
Above is a photo that one of my friends on Twitter sent me. He basically downloaded one of my cartoons off my blog, printed it out, and stuck it outside his cube at work, for other people to see, hopefully to comment on, and hopefully, to start a conversation.
This, I believe, is where my cartoons work the best– “Cube Grenades”- small objects that you “throw” in there in order to cause some damage– to start a conversation, to spread an idea etc.
[The Blue Monster]
The Microsoft Blue Monster is probably my best-known Cube Grenade, which is why I made it into a limited edition print eventually.
Seth Godin first put his Purple Cow book into a purple milk carton for the same reason– he guessed [quite rightly, as it turned out] that people would see the carton on somebody’s desk, inquire about it, and a conversation about the marketing ideas contained in the book would be started.
[The Purple Cow print]
And the Purple Cow print was designed the same way. OK, it might be a bit big to display in a cube– you need a lot of wall space for this one– but the idea is the same– Conversations that happen around the object are more interesting than the actual object itself.
“Cube Grenades”. Exactly. Cartoons designed to affect change as “Social Objects”. Exactly.
[Check out some of my limited edition prints over at gapingvoidgallery.com.]
[Update:]
Since I posted this “Cube Grenades” idea yesterday, I’ve been giving it A LOT of thought. Here are some notes:
[More “Cube Grenades” in action. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
1. Like I said, my cartoons work best when they’re used as “Cube Grenades” i.e. small objects that you “throw” in there in order to cause some damage– to start a conversation, to spread an idea etc. But other social objects can be used as well– purple milk cartons, homemade cookies, funky mousepads, rubber toys, newspaper clippings etc. It’s the people that matter, not the object they socialize around. I don’t claim to have a monopoly.
2. Repeat After Me: Cube Grenades are Social Objects. Cube Grenades are Social Objects. Cube Grenades are Social Objects…
3. All big change in companies come from the people in the trenches, who do the actual day-to-day work. To change their behavior, you have to change the way they interact. People interact around social objects. Change the social objects, and you change the company.
4. My friend, Mark Earls once told me a story about a friend of his. The friend played a key role in the massively successful corporate turnaround recently undertaken by McDonald’s.
His friend told him, “We knew we were screwed, NOT when the nutrition and green issues started hitting the newspapers, but by the simple fact that our staff on the floor just weren’t cleaning the tables and the bathrooms like they used to. We knew THEN that our people had lost faith in our company.“
What social objects were people using, both during the company’s decline and during its turnaround? What cube grenades were being thrown about, both before and after? I bet you they weren’t the same.
5. Yes, I am fully aware that your customers are paying for the quality of the products and services your business provides, not for the quality of the cube grenades flying around your corporate headquarters. But they are all related. Everything of value that your business creates is the product of a already-existing social dynamic. Businesses are people, not machines. And people socialize around objects.
6. An Open Letter to Ad Agencies: Guys, you are NOT selling messages anymore. You are selling social objects. The work that you create will affect the cube grenades and social objects, that your clients and their customers use to interact with each other.
[More Cube Grenades. “I use them as covers for my binders strewn about my desk, to start conversations”, says the person who e-mailed me the photo. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
7. You see a guy walking out of an Apple store, looking all excited about his new Apple computer he’s carrying under his arm? Why is he so excited? Sure, he just got himself a nice-looking piece of kit, but what REALLY excites him is all of the COOL, DISRUPTIVE STUFF he’s going to MAKE with his new machine. Videos, music mixes, whatever. For his FRIENDS and his PEERS. Again, it’s the SOCIAL that makes it interesting. Apple makes cube grenades, just like the ad agencies. Just like you do.
8. People download my cartoons and stuck them on their walls by the THOUSANDS. A much smaller number spend money to buy the more expensive versions i.e. my prints. But the idea is the same i.e. a way for people to interact. As I’m fond of saying: The conversations AROUND the object are FAR more interesting than the object itself. And what is true for me is true of your product, as well. “People Matter. Objects don’t.” Exactly.
9. So when do I start charging? You can download my stuff for free, so why should you buy a print? Who says you should? I’m guessing that if one of my cartoons is meaningful enough to you, you’ll get tired of seeing it printed on the office laserprinter paper in low-resolution, getting all worn and torn, with the Scotch tape getting all yellow and crinkly. If you like the drawing enough, eventually you’ll want to upgrade. The same way, back in college, that I would upgrade to vinyl or CDs, once the cheap and nasty cassette tape of my favorite band started getting all fuzzy and worn out. The same way I gladly paid $20 to hear the band play live, rather than hear the same songs on the cassette. “Meaning Scales”. The more cube grenades I throw out there, the more meaningful interaction I create for other people, the more people will want to pay for it eventually. If I locked it all down as a cash-only transaction, it would all die a horrible death overnight.
[Privately-commissioned “Cube Grenades” i.e. limited edition, fine art prints that I did for my Brazilian client, agenciaclick. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
10. Probably the job I’m most proud of recently, is when I was hired by a Brazilian ad agency, agenciaclick to create a privately commissioned edition of cube grenades i.e. fine art prints. See photo above.
They didn’t want these prints for themselves; they wanted to give these out to their clients, as conversation starters.
“All brands are open brands? Huh? What does that mean? Do you agree with it? Why? What does “open” actually mean? What does “brand” actually mean…?” You get the picture. The same idea that made The Blue Monster so successful. Again, it wasn’t about the message, the object. It was all about the social.
11. My long-term goal is to make more privately-commissioned “Cube Grenades” for more clients like agenciaclick. It was a wonderful working experience for me, and I want to spend more time in that business. If you find this idea interesting, please feel free to e-mail me at gapingvoid@gmail.com. Thanks.
(more…)
April 16, 2009
1 Comment
My buddy over at Microsoft, Steve Clayton, demonstrates DeepZoomPix, using my cartoons. Details here. Thanks, Steve!
April 13, 2009
8 Comments
[From a recent post on Twitter.]
Now ain’t that the truth…?
I guess the argument still remains, what does “Changing The World” actually mean?
Does it have to be something huge, like Bill Gates starting Microsoft, The Beatles releasing Sgt. Pepper, or Nixon bombing Cambodia?
Or can it be something more modest, like opening up a really cool independent bookstore in a small town in Far West Texas that really could use one?
There’s no right answer.
It all depends on what you truly, truly love. “Meaning Scales”.
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
16 Comments
I just bought the URL, www.futilemarketing.com.
I’m not planning on turning it into another website, nor am I planing to launch a new business called “Futile Marketing”. It’s just a name I very much wanted to own.
Why? Because “Futility”, as a marketing strategy, is an idea that’s currently fascinating me.
Conventional Wisdom dictates, if you’re trying to market something, the last thing you want your marketing campaign to be is “An Act of Futility”.
But… are you REALLY sure about that?
I was thinking recently how most of the stuff I’m most proud of, started off as acts of futility.
–Drawing cartoons on the back of business cards started off as an act of futility.
–Getting an English tailor to blog in the hope of selling more $5,000 suits started off as an act of futility.
–Launching a national UK supermarket wine via the blogosphere started off as an act of futility.
–Getting Microsoft to re-think about who they are using nothing but a single cartoon started off as an act of futility.
–Choosing a highly irritating puppet to launch a major new French wine started off as an act of futility.
–Convincing one of the most respected publishers in the world to turn a blog post into a hardcover book started off as an act of futility.
–Getting West Texas cowboys to start drinking South African wine started off as an act of futility.
And if you think about it, the world is full of other, similar examples.
–Getting people to pay $4 for a cup of coffee started off as an act of futility.
–Getting people to give up their horses en masse in exchange for an internal combustion engine started off as an act of futility.
–Getting people to pay for software without any hardware attached to it started off as an act of futility.
–Building a multi-million dollar cottage industry using nothing but blog advertising started off as an act of futility.
–Writing a children’s book about wizards in an Edinburgh coffee shop started off as an act of futility.
–Trying to halt the Nazi invasion using nothing but Spitfires started off as an act of futility.
–Stopping the largest army the world had ever seen with just a small phalanx of 300 Spartans started off as an act of futility.
–Trying to blow up the Death Star using nothing but thirty X-Wing fighters started off as an act of futility.
–Convincing the USA to elect an African-American as their President started off as an act of futility.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking…?
December 19, 2008
2 Comments
[Yeah, well, I was messing around with my Tablet PC today.…]
December 4, 2008
10 Comments
1. Sometime in the next few weeks I shall be releasing my first big, proper edition of signed, fine-art lithographs.
2. These will not be sponsored “social objects” from Stormhoek, Microsoft or whatever. These will be for sale. Cash. Moolah. Via this blog. No galleries.
3. They will be high quality. Very high quality.
4. I plan on using color for the first one, maybe black and white in the future– though I haven’t really thought that far ahead yet.
5. It’ll be an edition of 85 prints. I’m not planning on selling them all. I want to hold on to some of them, for posterity’s sake.
6. They’ll all be signed and numbered by hand, by me.
7. I plan to be blogging a lot about the whole process in the next few weeks. As with any new adventure, a lot of stuff still needs to be figured out long-term– I hope by talking about it with everybody, it’ll help me make better artistic decisions.
8. Though my work covers a lot of different themes and emotional states, for this first one I’ll be focusing more on the business-culture, Hughtrain sensibility. I want the print to be the kind of thing you’d want to hang up in your office.
9. This is not some groovy little side project for me. This enterprise is going to be a major part of my life over the next few years. Just letting you know.
10. We’ll be printing them up in mid-January. If you want to get in early, I’m going to make 20 prints available; you can pre-order one before the printing date for $175. Just ping me an e-mail. After they are printed the price goes up, to around the $250 – 300 range.
11. Thanks Again.
[Update:] Just got back from dinner. Tired. So far I have 24 requests for the 20 pre-orders. Looks like I may have to disappoint 4 people. Long day. Going to bed. Will talk in the morning. Thanks, Everybody!
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 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.]
September 2, 2008
15 Comments
[“Edges 4″. Part of “The Edges” Series. Click on image to enlarge etc. Yes, I was thinking about Microsoft when I drew that etc etc.]
Out here in West Texas, we have a certain type of individual, who are affectionately referred to as “Desert Rats”.
Desert Rats are basically people who choose to live a spartan, alternative, self-sufficient existence out in the desert. Probably the most famous cluster of them around these parts can be found down in Terlingua Ghost Town, in the Chiquaqua Desert, about 100 miles South of where I live, close to Big Bend National Park and the Mexican border. Somebody just made documentary about them.
Terlingua Ghost Town used to be a small mercury mining town of about 2,000 people. Then in the 1940s the ore ran out, and the work dried up overnight. So people left. It became a ghost town, just like hundreds of other former mining towns here in the Southwest. A few decades later people looking to escape the rat-race in the most extreme way possible started moving down there. The utter harshness of the landscape somehow inspired them.
When talking about Terlingua, you never go very long without someone mentioning “The Porch”. They’d be talking about the porch of the Terlingua General Store, the place where people gather daily at sunset to drink beer, play guitar and tell stories. I’ve hung out there a few times. Got chatting to Doctor Doug, one of the local characters. Nice guy. He’s been living in a rusty, yellow, dilapidated school bus for 20 years or so [He gets a mention in the documentary, so click on the link above to see more].
But not all Desert Rats live just in Terlingua– they’re pretty much everywhere round these parts. I’ve met lots of them here in Alpine, for instance.
What you notice is that, their unconventional lifestyle notwithstanding, they’re quite different to the usual alternative Woodstock-college-student-hippie-drippie stereotype. They own guns and hunting knives, and will use them if they have to. Try trespassing on their land with bad intent one day, if you don’t believe me.
The other thing you notice is JUST HOW LITTLE MONEY some of them live on. Heck, I thought I was cutting back when I moved out here, but some of these people are off the scale. It’s not uncommon to see them living on $5 – 10 thousand per year. Lord knows how they do it; except that barter is a huge part of the equation.
Sure, by mainstream American standards you could argue the Desert Rats are an eccentric, “out there” bunch. But there’s something compelling about them, too. That great American ideal, “Rugged Individualism” is clear to see in their faces. Their lives somehow seem a lot closer to the 19th-Century Western pioneers, than to say, the present-day, Blackberry-addicted commuters of New York and San Francisco.
And you always ask yourself, Why? What makes them take this particular path?
Short Answer: Because they can. They wanted to do it, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. And so they did, for better or for worse. And yes, though parts of their lives seem incredibly rewarding– especially from a distance– they’ve also paid an equally incredibly high price for the privilege, which isn’t always so obvious at first glance . This incredibly high price is no different than anywhere else, whether we’re talking here in West Texas, or we’re talking a big tech company in Silicon Valley, a startup in Chicago, a Wall Street bank. “Living on The Edges” is invariably a damn expensive business.
August 21, 2008
3 Comments
[The lithograph I did for last month’s Techcrunch party in Menlo Park, sponsored by Stormhoek. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
I’m going to be hanging out my shingle more in the cartooning department. I think it’s time.
I’m looking at lots of ideas, but here are the four that currently interest me the most:
1. Lithograph Commissions. Like the lithograph I did for Techcrunch above, or the Blue Monster one I did for Microsoft, I’ll be taking on corporate commissions. If you have a company that you think could use a high-end “social object”, please feel free to send me an e-mail, thanks.
[This is a cartoon I designed for Jerry Colonna’s business card, about 2 years ago, which he still uses.]
2. Business Card Commissions. Sure, getting one of my cartoons onto your business card is easy enough via my Streetcards site, but if you fancy something a bit more personal, a it more unique, again, feel free to email me.
3. Cartoon Commissions. People want cartoons for all sorts of reasons. One of my favorite gigs this year was a series of cartoons I did for Sun Microsystems. I’m open to discussing all sorts of ideas here. Let me know.
4. Events. Every now and then people will sponsor me to come to their events, draw cartoons live and hand them out to attendees. Here’s a link to one I did a few months ago. I’m in the market to do more of these. Again, feel free to send me an e-mail.
My one caveat is: I’m not as inexpensive as I used to be. Basically, I charge corporate rates. Just letting you know…
Looking forward to seeing where this goes. I’ll keep you posted. Rock on.
August 15, 2008
17 Comments
I’ve worked with a lot of companies over the years, big and small.
I have found that even small companies are remarkably complex organisms. But of course, anywhere that ambition is allowed to focus usually is. Human beings are messy creatures.
It seems to me that in any company, large or small, you can divide the people into three broad categories.
1. The “Changers”. These are the people who use their work as a platform to “Change The World”. They go into a market and try to change it, in order to create something better, both for themselves and for the market at large. They can be the CEO or work in the mail room. Theirs is not a social position, it’s a psychological condition.
2. The “Contributors”. These are people who want to do their jobs, do it well, and get handsomely rewarded for it. They don’t necessarily see the need for “change” per se, they just want to see what works, and get it done. They want to find out who’s on the winning team, and get themselves a place on it.
3. The “Coasters”. They just want to turn up and get paid. Their lives and identities are outside their work– families, friends, hobbies etc– their job is just a means to an end; a way to pay for their “real lives” elsewhere.
None of the three is necessarily better or worse than the others– we all have different needs, different agendas, different temperaments. We’ve all made different decisions about what kind of life we want to lead, what kind of compromises we’re willing to make, what kind of adventures we want to have. All roads exact their own unique toll. All choices come with a price.
I suppose I’ve always ended up in the “Changer” camp, somehow. It was never deliberate. It was just about how I relate to the world. Sometimes it was a definite advantage. Other times it was career suicide.
So in the last couple of weeks I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people at Dell. The subject of the need to “Change Dell” has come up a bit. Actually, no. It has come up A LOT. A WHOLE LOT.
As a “Changer”, the word “Change” really doesn’t frighten me. To talk about “Change”, doesn’t necessarily imply that there’s anything abnormal or wrong going on. As I’m fond of saying, all business models are wrong. Whatever system you’ve got in place, it’s yesterday’s model. Whatever process you’ve got installed, the world has since moved on– all you can do is try to play catch-up, to greater or lesser degrees of success. Hence the cartoon posted above.
So in a meeting in Round Rock, I ask this one Dell person, “So why are you guys interested in talking to me? I’m no Peter Drucker, I’m just a cartoonist.” The person answers, “Because we like your very atypical point of view. We think it could perhaps be useful to us.” Fair enough. If I had been that person, I’d probably have said much the same.
So these last few weeks, I’ve been mulling over the word, “Change”, and how it applies to Dell. Or to put it more simply, what ACTUALLY needs to change? Sure, they’ve had their fair share of trials and tribulations over the last few years. But there’s a lot that they’ve gotten right, as well. Sure, you might prefer Apple over Dell for your personal choice of computer, but guess what? The consumer sector represents only 15% of their total business. In the other 85% of the business, B2B, they’ve not been doing too shabby. The company still makes a profit. Their biggest customers still return their phone calls. Sure, they have their issues, but hey, who doesn’t? As I’m fond of saying, this stuff is HARD. Get over yourselves.
i.e. “Change”. What does it REALLY mean for Dell? I’m just asking… Yes. I really, really want to know.
I’ve also been mulling over how this experience differs from the work I’ve done with Microsoft.
One thing I have noticed so far inside the company, is how often the word “Dell” is used interchangeably with “Michael”. Sometimes we’re talking about the man, sometimes the company. The lines seem very blurry. I don’t recall “Microsoft” and “Bill” being so interchangeable, I really don’t.
Michael Dell seems to cast a huge presence over the company, even more so than Bill Gates casts a presence over Microsoft. This is no bad thing. It just is what it is.
Actually, I find this quite an endearing aspect to the company. Michael is certainly no absentee landlord CEO, from what I can make out. Every day, I’m told he sends a lot of emails to people to lots of different levels in the company. He’s very hands-on, he doesn’t just hold court with the people reporting directly to him. Dell might be a Fortune 50 company, but there’s something about it that is STILL just this crazy college kid from Austin, building made-to-order computers in his dorm room for his friends. These humble roots still hold strong. Walk around the offices, and you can still smell them around you.
So one evening last week, after a long but interesting day over at the Round Rock offices, I’m having dinner with an old friend in South Austin. A nice little Mexican joint I’ve become very fond of. Avocado margaritas. Smoked pork tacos that melt in your mouth. It’s all good.
My friend asks me how I’m getting on with this new Dell project. I tell her, “Well, I’m finding it pretty darn interesting so far. But at the end of the day, if Michael Dell doesn’t grok it, there’s not much I can do. From what my gut tells me, it seems like it’s very much ‘his’ company, even more so than Bill Gates and Microsoft. I could be wrong, but there it is… Of course, if he does end up grokking it, then it’ll get pretty intense, pretty quickly. But in a good way.“
My friend and I are sitting there, enjoying the evening, talking about the good old days, back when we both attended university in Austin. Suddenly in the back of mind, I’m thinking about the “Changers” inside Dell. These, I decide, are the people I need to speak to. All roads ANYWHERE worthwhile begin with these good folk. The rest can look after themselves. The rest won’t quite understand me, and there’s simply no point pretending that they will.
It is true. I don’t know EXACTLY what I’m looking from them quite yet. It’s still early days. Then again, a jazz musician never knows EXACTLY what notes he’s going to play, before the gig actually starts…
We live in interesting times…
August 5, 2008
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
August 4, 2008
10 Comments
About a year ago, I was at a geek breakfast in London with Steve Clayton and some other folk, including a few people from Microsoft.
Steve and some other geeks were talking about “The Cloud”. At the time Steve was making the transition from working in the UK Partner Division, to working in the “Software & Services” division of Microsoft, which is how the conversation came up.
Right then and there I drew the cartoon above. Steve saw it, and right away asked me if he could use the picture for his business card, which he now does.
That was the first time I really started paying attention to the term, “The Cloud”.
I would by no means call myself an expert or an authority on the subject, but in the last couple of months I’ve been getting increasingly aware of “Cloud Thinking”. It’s seriously interesting to me.
As far as I can tell, all three of the big tech companies I know best, Microsoft, Sun and Dell, seem to be betting a lot of their future on The Cloud. It was even just announced recently that Dell was applying to trademark the term, “Cloud Computing”. Heck, even my friends over at Techcrunch are looking to get a piece of the action.
Even today, I learned that Microsoft is now seriously planning for the post-Windows era, and you guessed it, The Cloud features heavily. And Businessweek just ran a big article on it:
A Sea Change in Computing
Some analysts say cloud computing represents a sea change in the way computing is done in corporations. Merrill Lynch (MER) estimates that within the next five years, the annual global market for cloud computing will surge to $95 billion. In a May 2008 report, Merrill Lynch estimated that 12% of the worldwide software market would go to the cloud in that period.
Those vendors that can adjust their product lines to meet the needs of large cloud computing providers stand to profit. Companies like IBM, Dell (DELL), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), for instance, are moving aggressively in this direction. On Aug. 1, IBM said it would spend $360 million to build a cloud computing data center in Research Triangle Park, N.C., bringing to nine its total of cloud computing centers worldwide. Dell is also targeting this market. The computer marker supplies products to some of the largest cloud computing providers and Web 2.0 companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo (YHOO). “We created a whole new business just to build custom products for those customers,” Dell CEO Michael Dell says.
I was also recently really surprised and delighted about all the discussion my last post, “The Cloud’s Best-Kept Secret”, seemed to generate. Not just the amount of discussion, but the quality of it, from some of the smartest people I know on the planet. People like Tim O’Reilly, JP Rangaswami, Dennis Howlett, James Governor, all piping in. Rock on.
And of course, there’s the “Cloud Portraits” I’ve been drawing recently. Clouds, clouds, clouds… Clouds everywhere. Like West Texas in the rainy season etc.
What does this all mean? Frankly, I have no idea. I have no intention of becoming a “Cloud Blogger” or whatever, I’m just start to feel a connection here. Connections are my lifeblood. One of my favorite cartoons ever exists simply because I saw a connection between ego, emotion and typography. In 2005 I was the first person to see a connection between $5K English suits and the blogosphere [which back then, I can tell you, A LOT of people thought that was a bit of a stretch]. In 2006 I saw a similar connection between a small South African wine brand and the geek community of Silicon Valley.
This year I’m feeling the same sort of connection between all of the work I’ve been doing in the last year. It’s hard to explain– it’s visceral; it’s like you can just smell it, even if it remains so far invisible. It’s just there. A feeling, not quite yet a fact. And a wee voice keeps telling me that The Cloud is at the center of it somehow. Wait and see.
August 1, 2008
34 Comments
[“Possible Cloud Portrait”. Click here to enlarge/download/print etc.]
You hear a lot of talk about “The Cloud” nowadays.
The premise is simple. In the future, we won’t have or even need all our data or software programs on our own computers, they’ll be floating around somewhere on somebody else’s servers, accessible via the internet. A vast, interconnected “nebula” of other people’s data and servers, hence the word, “Cloud”.
Big players in this game so far include some familiar names like Sun, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc etc.
The way I’m seeing the future commonly talked about, is all this data and programs spread all over the networks of all these companies, relatively proportional to their current market caps. Some folk have their stuff with Sun, some with Amazon, etc.
But nobody seems to be talking about Power Laws. Nobody’s saying that one day a single company may possibly emerge to dominate The Cloud, the way Google came to dominate Search, the way Microsoft came to dominate Software.
Monopoly issues aside, could you imagine such a company? We wouldn’t be talking about a multi-billion dollar business like today’s Microsoft or Google. We’re talking about something that could feasibly dwarf them. We’re potentially talking about a multi-trillion dollar company. Possibly the largest company to have ever existed.
I imagine many of my friends who work for the aforementioned companies know all about this, and know how VAST the stakes are.
Windows vs Apple? Who cares? Kid’s stuff. There’s a much bigger game going on… And for some reason, its utter enormity seems to be a very well-kept secret, at least to non-combatants like myself.
[UPDATE:] My friend James Governor, who consults in this world, left the following comment below:
Totally agree Hugh. As I said on on my blog recently: “Customers always vote with their feet, and they tend vote for something somewhat proprietary — see Salesforce APEX and iPhone apps for example. Experience always comes before open. Even supposed open standards dorks these days are rushing headlong into the walled garden of gorgeousness we like to call Apple Computers.“
The players you mention will continue with The Great Game, but there is room for a new entrant (The Hun In The Sun).
[Bonus Link:] James also has a nice post on the subject, “Whose Cloud Is It, Anyway?”.
[UPDATE:] JP Rangaswami comments over on his blog, advocating Open Source as the antidote to Cloud Monopolies:
I have always had this sense that there is no longer any room for artificial monopolies, that the market will provide a self-correcting mechanism. But I have always been wrong on this. We can argue about why this is so, but not about the fact. Microsoft, Google and Apple are facts.
Open standards, open platforms and open source are ways to prevent this happening. Ways to guarantee that history won’t repeat itself. But this needs coherent communal action, something that is hard to achieve in emergent environments.
[PS: That “Power Laws” link is highly, highly, highly recommended reading. Just so you know.]
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 17, 2008
1 Comment
[UPDATE:] Thanks to Microsoft’s Steve Clayton for putting this little gapingvoid cartoon slideshow together. It was done using Popfly, and can be embedded on any webpage. Rock on.
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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc.]
For those of you who don’t work at Microsoft, I played around with this new “Blue Monster 2.0″ logo. Feel free to print it out or whatever. Rock on.
[P.S. Click on image to get the white background version etc.]
May 12, 2008
34 Comments
When I’m talking with clients about marketing, it’s very hard for me to go more than a few minutes without mentioning the term, “Purpose-Idea”.
The “P.I.” is not a term I coined myself. That credit goes to my friend, marketing hero and frequent podcast partner, Mark Earls. He wrote about the P.I. in his seminal marketing book, “Welcome To The Creative Age”.
Marks begins his thesis by saying that actually, when you think about it, talking about “The Brand” is pretty meaningless. Imagine lots of meetings crammed full of suits yakking on about “Core Brand Values”, “Living The Brand” and all that marketing waffle, and you kinda get the idea. I’ve been in those meetings and they suck.
What’s far more interesting, Mark says, is the reason we all get out of bed in the morning. The thing that drives us as individuals, as a company. Ask yourself, what is our company for? Is all our professional life about just selling aluminum widgets for 16.7% margin, or is there some sort of higher meaning involved? What are we trying to change? To improve upon? To disrupt?
Why are we here?
Mark then goes on to say how much more fun, interesting and profitable it is for a company when what it does has a sense of shared purpose, an idea it can believe in. This is the “P.I.“
The Blue Monster i.e. “Change The World Or Go Home” is a P.I., the Microsoft tagline, “Your Potential, Our Passion” is not.
Why not? Because that’s not how people talk in real life. Sure, the word, “passion” may be in the line, but it burns with about as much passion as a wet Kleenex. Which is why it comes off being contrived and phony at worse, boring and uninspired at best.
I’m not trying to go after Microsoft, here. They’re still buddies of mine, I continue to like, admire and respect them. But there’s so much real, genuine passion under the hood of that car, I just WISH they could do a better job of letting the rest of us see it more often. I find their tagline a sorely missed opportunity.
I would guess that the cheapest and easiest way to better articulate this passion, My Friends in Redmond, is to spend more time thinking about what your Purpose-Idea ACTUALLY IS, as opposed to what you think people outside the company might want to hear. I’d recommend any Microsoft employee who knows me, to go read Mark’s book. Rock on.
[Disclosure: I consider myself a friend of Microsoft. They’ve been clients of mine in the past, they’ll hopefully be clients of mine in the future, they are not not clients of mine at the moment. It’s all good.]
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
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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.]
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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…
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.
12 Comments
My old advertising buddy, Dave Everitt-Carlson, who started working at Leo Burnett in Chicago the very same day as me, countless years ago, just wrote a book about his expat adventures in Asia. One passage really got my attention:
During my time in Korea it was relayed to me that Burnett Chicago had a shot at the Microsoft advertising account. Having created icons for some of the most prominent brands in history, Marlborough, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s and the Keebler Brands to name a few, it seemed only natural that Burnett would desire the Microsoft name in their stables, not to mention the billings.
As the story goes, Bill Gates visited the agency and was treated to a pitch owing to the spirit of P.T. Barnum. Creative teams showed storyboards, sang songs and put on a show extraordinaire, in keeping with the finest Burnett traditions. After the pitch Mr. Gates was reportedly treated to the customary agency tour, replete with aisle upon aisle of pristine offices looking more like those of a Japanese bank than an American creative powerhouse.
At the end of his tour I was told he exclaimed, “Excellent presentation gentlemen, but as I see it, you don’t use computers and that would make it impossible for you to understand my business.”
I wasn’t at that presentation, nor can I testify to the veracity of what Mr. Gates said, but it would’ve been would’ve been early 1990s [My office still boasted a working IBM typewriter back then]. One world ending, a new world just beginning, and the people caught in the middle not liking either side of the deal, much.
And now many I’ve spoken to are wondering if Microsoft is having the same problem I saw Leo Burnett having all those years ago. As fond as I am of the groovy cats in Redmond, hey, I was also fond of Leo Burnett once, and still am. Apparently Burnett has done very well these last few years by finally understanding that their business, like their clients, was now global, not American Midwestern. Rock on.
It’s easy to say in a meeting, “The world is changing, and we need to change with it”. And just as easy to get everybody in the meeting to agree with it. What’s harder is what happens after everyone has left the room. When everyone has to worry about keeping their jobs.
Personally I am hoping Microsoft carries on happily for the next thirty years. Two things have to happen, as far as I can see:
1. Like the Blue Monster says, Microsoft has to get better at telling their story. In the grand scheme of things, that’s actually not difficult, once you’ve REALLY decided to do that.
2. Microsoft’s current schtick is, “Unless we can get 75% plus of the world’s computer users buying our product, we’re not interested.” I think if they could change their schtick to, “Unless we can get 75% of the world’s computer users LOVING our product, we’re not interested,” I think they will do just fine.
I know, I know, if the latter were easy…
This is why I’m watching the recent Microsoft offer to buy Yahoo with great interest. To me, this is not just about “Search” and “Taking on Google”. Like I told Dave Winer after reading his wonderful post on the subject, “The thing that might save MSFT long-term is a massive infusion of Silicon Valley DNA. That’s why I think they’re offering Yahoo the $40billion.“
All companies, no matter what the size, have a their own, unique cocktail of four different forms of capital– Financial, Intellectual, Technical and Cultural. Microsoft is relatively fine with the first three. But in the next few years, it’s with Number Four that the really BIG problems AND BIG opportunities will show themselves.
[Update:] Another Burnetter I knew back then just e-mailed me: “I wasn’t at the meeting either, but the story you reference is the story I heard.”]
[Disclosure: I consult occasionally for Microsoft, like I am for this upcoming Office Developer’s Conference next week.]
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.
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