Hugh MacLeod Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
Hugh MacLeod
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books.
gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
He’s a lot like me and Scoble, i.e. very much his own man, very much an individual.
I suppose that’s why we get along.
Above is a T-shirt design I’ve never showed Rob before– he’s seeing it for the first time here on the blog, the same as you and everyone else. He may like it, he may not.
That’s how Rob and I work together. Like I said in my last blog post, “he lets me just post stuff without getting pre-approval. We like doing that way because it lets him see the work for the first time in the wild, which keeps the thinking fresher, somehow.…”
The thing is, there’s a method to the madness. If the idea fails, hey, it’s just a wee cartoon on a blog post. We can quickly and easily try something else the same day. It’s not like we blew money on a Superbowl ad that ended up bombing…
But if the idea works, it works REALLY well. The idea gets emailed around, both inside and outside the company, to employees, shareholders, customers and non-customers alike. It suddenly takes on a life of its own, on its own merit.
In other words, it suddenly becomes a cultural object (i.e. a social object that articulates the company culture), as opposed to just a usual piece of commercial, “Here’s-why-you-should-give-us-your-money” messaging (You know, the kind that noboday actually cares about).
Rob and I never planned it this way, we just started talking and this is kinda how it evolved. That’s kinda how we both roll. Rock on.
I’ve started writing a book about gapingvoid’s experience working with Rackspace. Here are some initial thoughts, some more formed than others:
i. WE’VE LEARNED A TON IN THE PROCESS.
I thought I’d share what we’ve learned about Rackspace along the way, about how this small little web-hosting company from San Antonio, Texas turned their unique take on “just being social” into a billion-dollar business.
ii. CAN A BILLION-DOLLAR COMPANY ACTUALLY BE “SOCIAL”?
I know. Right?
We’ve all been bombarded with the Social Media catchphrases, we’ve all seen the hype spewing out of every Internet orifice out there, we’ve heard every cliché and platitude known to man, we’ve all rolled our eyeballs.
The number of people calling themselves “Social Media Gurus” on Twitter numbers over a hundred thousand. “Business is Social!” “Join the conversation!” “Don’t sell, engage!”
“Hire me!” “I’m available for consultation!” “Write me a big, fat check and I’ll solve all your Social Media problems!”
Like I said, we’ve all rolled our eyeballs.
And yet… what if it actually works?
iii. “DEATH BY COMMODITY”.
Rackspace basically sells a commodity i.e. web hosting and cloud services.
They basically sell a lot of ones and zeroes, that they move through a lot of pipes, back and forth between their customers and their servers.
Not sexy, and highly competitive. What’s more, they’re competing with a lot of blue chip companies A LOT Larger than them: Amazon, Microsoft, IBM etc
It’s an easy place to get your lunch eaten by the big boys.
It’s an easy environment to be killed in.
And yet, they thrive.
iv. THE SECRET WEAPON: “FANATICAL SUPPORT” THE CREATION MYTH.
Two young guys start a web-hosting company, with Graham Weston as an investor. Graham gets an email from an irate customers. “Guys, we have to offer our customers Fanatical Support or this isn’t going to work. An ethos is born…
v. SOME MORE IDEAS TO PLAY WITH:
“IF YOU LOVE YOUR CUSTOMERS ENOUGH, YOU WILL HAVE A GREAT PRODUCT, END OF STORY…”
“DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT R.O.I., TALK TO ME ABOUT HOW WHAT WE”RE DOING IS ACTUALLY BEING HELPFUL TO OUR CUSTOMERS.”
“LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT CREATING MEANING, NOT TELLING THEM WHAT TO DO”
“RACKSPACE HAS TO BECOME A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE’S HIGHEST NEEDS ARE MET, OR WE’RE WASTING OUR TIME.”
“IT’S WHAT RACKSPACE MUST BECOME THAT’S INTERESTING. IT’S WHAT ALL BUSINESS MUST BECOME THAT’S EVEN MORE INTERESTING.”
[To be continued…]
[UPDATE:] Rob La Gesse, the guy who hired me at Rackspace (and also hired Robert Scoble) left the following comment below:
I’ll be interested in seeing how this series progresses. Not sure everyone here knows this, but I don’t vet Hugh’s work — I see it when you see it. And that is pretty cool to me. I experience his work when you do. No preconceptions.
Yep. It’s what makes it fun– he lets me just post stuff without getting pre-approval. We like doing that way because it lets him see the work for the first time in the wild, which keeps the thinking fresher, somehow.…
This made me so happy: My friend, Robert Scoble sent me a photo of the big gapingvoid print they have up on the wall in the Rackspace customer briefing room. This is just one of twelve giant 6 foot canvases that adorn the walls.
Aside from being thrilled that they used our work, what is interesting to me is that they had the choice of using lots of different kinds of art. They could have used photos of happy Rackers, customers, data centers, etc. But they chose to broadcast their beliefs by using messages that speak to their beliefs.
This particular cartoon about one of the fundamental aspects of the business: “Fanatical support In all we do”. I tried to present it in a way that I hope is both memorable and refreshingly disarming. Hopefully it touches a nerve.
As time goes by, one of the things that I realize is that having well chosen messages on offices walls is really powerful. They speak to people every day of the year, and brodacast what you stand for.
That’s what we think about more and more around our office, anyway.
I drew this quick cartoon earlier today; I was thinking about how many of the companies we’ve worked with over the last year or two have serious interest in The Cloud, and its future: Rackspace, HP, Cisco, SAP etc etc.
Though we do a lot of work around startup culture (e.g. Techcrunch and Movenback) we also do a TON of work in the Enterprise space. Maybe that’s because some of our biggest fans are aslo in that space– Sigurd Rind, Dennis Howlett, James Governor etc.
Enterprise work can be fairly dry, we take pride in making it A LOT more fun than most. Rock on.
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.
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.
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?
There seems to be a conversation happening internally at my client, Rackspace. Spearheaded by people like Robert Scoble and the guy who hired him (and who also hired me), Rob La Gesse.
“Don’t be normal”.
Who wants a “normal” job, anyway?
Who wants a “normal” employer, anyway?
Who wants a “normal” life, anyway?
Exactly.
So why not say it, loud and proud?
So I drew some cartoons on the subject.
I’m thinking they’d make great recruiting posters…
[P.S. At the time of posting this, Rob hasn’t seen these cartoons yet. He lets me post my ideas “live”, without having to go through him first. THAT IS WHY I’m psyched to be working with Rob and Rackspace. Just so you know.]
““South-By” is almost upon us, and so here I am thinking up new SXSW Interactive ideas for my client, Rackspace, who will have a presence there.
We have a basic idea what we’ll be doing– I know Scoble is involved– but that’s all still under wraps.
Nonetheless, I drew the cartoon above.
As with my usual approach, the message is less about, “This is what we do and this is how much it costs”, and more about, “We hold these truths to be self-evident”.
Think about it: Rackspace is a fast-growing company. It needs to hire really good people. Lots of them.
And to do that, it has to convince a lot these really good people to relocate to their main campus in San Antonio, Texas.
Have you ever been to San Antonio? Exactly.
Now, don’t get me wrong, San Antonio is a perfectly lovely Texas town, hugely underrated compared to say, Austin, 80 miles to the North.
But still, it isn’t one of those towns where “Everybody” goes to, like New York, Chicago, Austin or San Francisco. It’s not a capital.
So in order to get some of the best brains in the country to move there, you have to offer them something else. Affordable housing, good schools, high quality of life, high standard of living etc. etc.
But you also have to offer them, as Rackspace Chairman, Graham Weston said in 2010, the chance to be on “on a winning team, on an inspiring mission.”
People don’t go to South-By in order to buy stuff, to buy Rackspace hosting. They go there to see their friends, to commune with their tribe, and yes, to look for opportunities that allow them to play on the aforementioned winning team.
THAT is how Rackspace needs to talk to people at South-By.
Doing something that matters. On a winning team. That’s why I wrote the cartoon the way I did.
[Alan Weinkranz- an old Texas connection of mine– and myself at CES last Saturday etc.]
“Intel Processors are smaller than a postage stamp. Intel has 80,000 employees. How do you fit so many people into an object so tiny? That’s what amazes me.”
I am writing this from home in Miami Beach, a day after returning from the Consumer Electronic Show in Vegas. Here are some notes:
2. Alan Weinkranz also made videos at CES. Here’s one he did of me. Excuse the sound quality etc:
3. My time at CES was spent pretty much exclusively at the Intel stand, signing prints. It was great. Just… great. I turned up in Vegas with over 500 of them. By day three we had run out. We took a lot of pictures– a couple of hundred of them. You can see them on Flickr here.
4. Intel was at CES, of course, to introduce their new 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor. It’s smaller than a postage stamp. Intel has 80,000 employees. How do you fit so many people into an object so tiny? That’s what amazes me. That’s what I kept thinking about the whole time I was there. We live in incredible times…
5. Yes, I’m exhausted. Yes, I’m a wreck. Yes, it was worth it. Intel was an fabulous client. A special thanks to Marcia Hansen for getting me involved.
So somehow or other you found yourself online in a big way.
Somehow or other you decided, like millions of other people, that if the future is online, it would be silly not to join in. So you decide to get with the program.
And so you get yourself hooked up with the usual stuff… a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and whatever Robert Scoble is using that week. And then wait for that aforementioned future thing to start happening.
While you’re waiting for that future thing to begin, you can’t help noticing that certain people in the same field as you– people far more successful and well-known than you, people who you aspire to be like one day– have fifty times the amount of Twitter followers as you do. Or whatever.
So you spend the next two years of your life trying to get as many Twitter followers as those people. Not only do you fail, meanwhile, your wife leaves you, your car is repossessed, and you have to move back in with your parents.
The futility of “Keeping up with the e-Joneses”. You’re better off spending that time and energy trying to have a “smarter conversation”. Of course you are.
[Bonus link:] Seth has a few thoughts on the subject, as well. Well worth a look.
A couple of days ago my buddy, Robert Scoble (himself a Rackspace employee) twittered the question, “How do do you amplify a start-up culture inside a big company?”
A damn good question, Robert. I thought it would make a good piece of art, hence the cartoon above. More specifically, I thought it would make a good image to go on the back of a Rackspace business card.
Rackspace is a big company (3,000 employees), but not big enough where they can no longer remember when they were a small company. So maybe it’s better to start a conversation (which is what handing out a business card does, ideally) with a pertinent question, rather than the usual “Here’s why you should buy our stuff” shpeel…
Disclosure: I’m currently doing a wee bit of consulting work for Rackspace. This cartoon was inspired after talking to La Gesse the other day. He tells me that with all their assets– and with over 3,000 employees, they have many– their culture is the thing that they’re collectively most proud of. Rock on.
One evening Father Steven, the elderly priest who baptized more than one of my nephews and nieces, came over to my mother’s house for dinner. I was there, too.
Father Steven is a lovely guy. Deeply spiritual and very smart. Very learned in theology and the history of the Roman Catholic Church, though not Catholic myself I always looked forward to discussing “The Big Stuff” with Father Steven for hours on end.
That evening over wine and cheese, I was telling Father Steven how during a particularly rough patch in my twenties, somehow I got into the habit of carrying a small Bible around with me everywhere in my day pack. Not quite sure why. Being the good former choirboy, I’ve always read the Bible in bits and bobs, here and there, all my life. I told Father Steven I thought it was rather odd, even though at the time the Bible accompanied me everywhere, I didn’t read it any more than I did in my non-day-pack days. I just liked having it around, as it were.
“Ah, that’s quite common,” said Father Steven. “People have always carried The Bible around as a talisman.”
From Wikipedia: A talisman (from Arabic طلاسم tilasm, ultimately from Greek telesma or from the Greek word “telein” which means “to initiate into the mysteries”) is an amulet or other object considered to possess supernatural or magical powers.
Basically, a talisman is an object that has been given meaning that far exceeds any actual function. A good luck charm. Or a crucifix. A St. Christopher’s medal. A Star of David. Or that friendship bracelet your girlfriend gave you when you took off to France without her for six months “in order to find yourself” or whatever. A reminder of an idea or an identity.
As is that $150 pair of sneakers that you think are going make your exercise more often, that too is a talisman; that too has totemic power. Or that $400 smartphone that’s going to get you more organized and focused about your career. Or the author’s signature inside the jacket of your favorite book. Or yes, that gapingvoid print that’s going to hang in your office and help you to stay upbeat and motivated when you’re having a blah day. Or getting “Linchpin” tattooed on your arm.
And this is no different than watching some well known tech blogger like Scoble walking out of an iStore, waving his latest Apple gizmo to the video phones and cheering crowd, after he spent three night waiting in line, in order to be fist in the store to buy one. Right then and there, the Apple gizmo has tremendous talismanic power.
And of course, so does your “Object-Idea”, if you’re fortunate enough to have one. Huge power.
Why do we seem to have this insatiable and irrational desire to surround ourselves with talismans, totems and Object-Ideas? Because they represent meaning to us. And like the the cartoon above says, we have an infinite need for that.
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…
[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!]
[This is a “Cube Grenade” I designed for myself earlier today, as a little thought experiment etc.]
My friend, Robert Scoble wrote an interesting blog post recently, about why he was working for Rackspace, the big San Antonio web hosting service.
“To Help Entrepreneurs”. Apparently Rackspace allows him a lot of leeway to do just that,
And I also remember Michael Arrington saying something similar on The Gillmor Gang about his business. Helping the entrepreneurial community is a big driving force behind Techcrunch.
Then I was thinking to myself, “To Help Entrepreneurs” is ALSO a big part why I like designing Cube Grenades, why the idea can function as a proper business.
How? Because they work as “Entrepreneurial Agitprop” (That’s a phrase I just coined earlier today).
“To Help Entrepreneurs”.“Entrepreneurial Agitprop” . Both those ideas are resonating with me right now. Expect to see more from me on them both in the near future. Thanks.
I was thinking back to “The Golden Age of Blogging”, whenever that was. Say, six or seven years ago… when it hit that sweet spot between still feeling like virgin territory, yet just on the verge of reaching critical mass.
Back then the Blogosphere was TINY. We blog nerds were a minority. We were cultural weirdos. But we knew we were on to something, even if the rest of the world didn’t see it yet.
And we were looking VERY HARD for business models to support our new, beloved medium…
I remember when a guy landing a well-paying job just on the merits of his blog, was considered big news.
I remember when a girl landing a book deal just from her blog, was considered big news.
I remember when Robert Scoble blogging on behalf of Microsoft was considered big news.
I remember when Gawker or Techcrunch making $10K a month on advertising, was considered big news.
A blogger making good money selling art– Well, that’s what I do now for a living- back then that would have been considered HUGE. Now we take that kind of thing for granted. Book deals, $10K monthly advertising revenues, dream jobs, celebrity Microsoft bloggers, nowadays that’s no big deal, either.
I remember when blogs first became “News”, when that Businessweek story hit in early 2005. It was a very exciting, validating, heady time for us early-adoptors.
Eventually the buzz and the hype died down, of course. Along came Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and whatever; the story moved on. “Blogging” got boring.…
But to paraphrase Clay Shirky, a technology doesn’t become truly useful until it becomes boring, until it’s no longer “News”.
We may miss those early days, when blogging was new, exciting and “Hot”.
But for me and a lot of my early-adoptor friends, our blogs are making us A LOT more money now, than they ever did then.
These eight smart, kind, great people, some more well-known than others, are masters at what I call “Selling by Giving”.
They put stuff out there, as gifts. Great content, great ideas, great insights, great personal connection. By giving so much of themselves, for free, every day, they build up huge surpluses of goodwill, so when you’re finally in the market for something they’re selling (and they’re ALL selling something, trust me), they’re first on your list.
I do it, too, just not as well as these guys. I’ve published thousands of cartoons on this blog over the years, and that’s gotten me a lot of business. And not just fine art prints, either. It’s gotten me consulting gigs, full-time salary jobs, book deals, paid speaking gigs, marketing jobs, I could go on…
Selling by giving. Anybody who’s been watching any of these guys for a long time will know exactly what I’m talking about.
But here’s what’s interesting to me: I can remember not that long ago, say 5 years, when this type of marketing seemed pretty freaky to most people. Now it’s considered normal, at least to smart marketers. FIVE years. That’s all.
I could see that in another five years, ANYONE who wants to market ANYTHING successfully– be they small mom n’ pop shops to large companies, will have to be fluent in Gift Economics, to a level that seemed COMPLETELY alien only a few years ago.
I have a feeling that I’m going to be asked the following question a lot in the next couple of years:
“How do I execute my EVIL PLAN within the limits of my current job at a big company?”
I’m probably the wrong person to ask– I’ve never fitted into corporate culture very well. But I did write few initial thoughts below, just to get the gears turning. Feel free to add your own in the comments. I’m going to be thinking about this for a while, Thanks.
1. An EVIL PLAN’S success is 90% the people around you. This so true whether we’re talking small business or large, salaried or freelance, boss or employee. So if you have smart, nice, dynamic, successful people around you– both colleagues and customers– I don’t see why you can’t execute it from anywhere. It all depends how aligned your EVIL PLAN with the people you work with and sell to.
2. If your EVIL PLAN is not aligned with what your company is doing, you have two choices. Quit and go do something else, or give up your EVIL PLAN.
3. Patience is a virtue. Things tend to happen more slowly at big companies, especially the more edgy stuff. A lot more time and effort is needed to corral your allies into critical mass. That’s just reality.
4. Risk. I always liked Robert Scoble’s line, “If what you’re doing doesn’t risk getting you fired, it probably isn’t that interesting.” People who are very risk averse don’t get to play in the EVIL PLANS sandbox. That, too is just reality, and no crazy-ass cartoonist’s blog post will change that.
5. Create your own luck. Create your own job description. None of the best jobs in large corporation are ever created by your boss. They’re created by you taking the initiative. And there’s a definite art to that.
6. Practice. Fail. Practice some more. Fail some more. Keep practicing and failing. Eventually you’ll get there.
[UPDATE:] Ian Wallace left a comment below. Samuel Beckett’s advice to anyone who dares to follow their own EVIL PLAN:
Shel Israel and I have known each other since 2005, when he interviewed me for his seminal book on blogging, “Naked Conversations”, that he co-authored with Robert Scoble. Since then he’s been running around, writing books and consulting with large companies on all things to do with social media. His second book, “Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods” is launching September 3rd. As he and I have the same publisher, they sent me an advance copy to read, which I was really impressed with. I asked him ten questions, and he kindly agreed to answer them below. TEN QUESTIONS FOR SHEL ISRAEL 1. Congrats on Twitterville coming out. Please tell us all about it.
In many ways, Twitterville is the de facto sequel to Naked Conversations. The older book gave the argument of why businesses should blog. Twitterville does the same thing, except it goes beyond business to include government, nonprofits and media.
Essentially, I tell the stories of people who use Twitter in interesting and useful ways. The hope is people will read the book and get ideas for using Twitter to help them in whatever it is they wish to do. 2. This book was actually a long time coming. After Naked Conversations, you had a wee bit of trouble getting your second book up and running. A symptom, I believe, not so much of your talents as an author, but of the inherent subject matter itself. A book takes about a good year and a half to write and produce, often far longer. Social Media changes overnight on a regular basis. Please elaborate.
There are two pieces of conventional wisdom for business books: A. Take one bone-dead simple idea and repeat it with some variations for 16 – 20 chapters such as The World is Flat. B. Write about a subject that will not change while you are writing it such as Thomas Edison and the marketing of electricity.
Obviously, I’m bad at following conventional wisdom. I take a different approach in that I like for something that is just taking off which can be enduring. I interview a ton of people and I look for stories that may maintain value for a few years even as they age.
Social media does change overnight, but people don’t and business rarely does. So I look for stories that deal with enduing issues such as profitability, the long slow death of traditional marketing ethics, access to information, making government more accountable and so on. 3. You wrote in your book about South By South West 2007, which has now become legend in social media circles. It was there and then that Twitter launched their website to the public, and everybody went crazy for it. I remember– I was there. The first thing that struck me about SXSW ’07 was that suddenly, unlike a lot of the Web 2.0 conferences I had been to before, the star of the show wasn’t some personality, web celeb, “A-Lister” etc… but an actual, non-living, non-breathing, digital website. At the time, I felt like a real shift in Web 2.0 was taking place. From hierarchical, personality-driven, to something else. You?
I think SXSW 07 is the classic story of a star is born overnight, except in this case the star was a flawed little social media platform originally designed to solve an internal problem.
I have always felt A-List focus was vastly over rated. When you look at luminary numbers and put them against the growth rate of Twitter every day, those who are prominent reach a smaller percentage of the entire Twitter universe every day. Each of them is in fact becoming influential to a smaller – not larger– share of the mainstream.
Twitter is decentralizing by its very nature. Of course there are dramatic stories from Twitterville– @JamesBuck arrested in Egypt; @jkrums taking a photo on the Hudson. But just the drama and luminary angle is much smaller than how Twitter serves everyday people, who just have a few followers, who just post a few times every day. Yet Twitter is changing their lives and their business, all the time. 4. Like yourself, I can totally see the value of Twitter (Very cheap, very fast and very easy– even compared to blogs or Facebook etc). Yet, like blogs before it, mainstream adaptation seems to be taking its own sweet time, yet again. As Ben Hammersley said about new media in general back at Reboot 2005, it’s not because the technology is hard to use (it isn’t), or that it’s intellectually hard to get one’s head around (it isn’t), but that to use it properly requires learning A NEW SET OF MANNERS, a new set of social codes. And getting people to do that is really, really hard. As a Web 2.0 consultant with corporate clients , getting these folks to “learn some new manners” must be the hardest part of your job, I’m guessing. Yes?
Ben has a point, but I would take issue with both of you on just how fast Twitter –and social media in general– is changing the world. If you sit on the equator, sipping a beverage with an umbrella in it, watching a coconut tree sway in a soft breeze, it feels motionless; like nothing is happening.
But as you sit there, you are spinning around the world at something like 2400 mph. You are orbiting the Sun at a speed much faster than that and you are hurtling through the universe at a speed humans cannot yet calculate.
Yet, sitting on that porch it may feel like not much is happening.
Those of us who are passionate about social media; who stand in front of rooms where some of the senior people have there arms crossed and there heads going from side to side, often vastly underrate the speed of change.
To understand that, I advise people to go speak to some young people. Watch their habits; watch how they get influenced on what to buy, watch, listen to; where to work. Watch young people going to the workplace and how they use social media as communications and information and productivity tools.
I maintain that we are at the very beginning of a fundamental global social revolution. And it is moving at a blindingly rapid speed. 5. Like Naked Conversations before it, Twitterville is rich in case studies. You talked to a LOT of people. As a fellow author, allow me to pick your brains. When an interesting story was breaking in the “Twittersphere”, one that might have made an interesting case study at some point, did you make a note, put it on file and save it for later? Or did you just rely on memory (and Google) when it came time to write the book?
Organizing for Twitterville was like taking a speed tour through Dante’s Inferno. I am a poor organizer to begin with. I created 17 Word documents on topic and kept dropping links into it. I had post its on my wall and in my reporter’s notebooks. Then something would break like Mumbai and that wouldn’t fit into any of my proposed chapters, but how could I not cover it. While pondering that, Gaza – Israel broke, so then I had to rewrite Tables of Contents.
The other thing that is a challenge is that I try to be more of a story teller, and most business books are not written that way. In the end, I followed the stories and built chapters around them and then restructured– and restructured the flow of the book to respect the people whose stories I told. 6. It’s the worst-kept secret in publishing: Books RARELY make a lot of money for their authors. That being said, since my book came out in June, the number of emails I get, asking about art commissions or other paid gigs has risen NOTICEABLY. I’m utterly swamped. As I’ve been saying forever, “Blogs are a good way to make things happen indirectly”. It turns out, the same is true with books. It’s all about “Leverage”. What’s been your experience?
You and I have discussed this before, but on the fame-fortune continuum, we are both much stronger so far on the fame side. I made much more money last time by advising companies and through speaking engagements.
With less than a week to go before Twitterville is available, I of course have dreams of being a #1 Best seller. It is far more likely that once again I’ll do better with speaking and business advising than from actual book sales.
When I first started, someone advised me that you write a book to get the speaking engagements. You use speaking engagements to set the stage for your next book. That’s what my strategy will be. 7. Your background is in Silicon Valley PR. With Naked Conversations, your focus morphed towards Social Media. What drove this personal evolution, do you think?
I am very curious by nature. For a long time I was simply amazed at the disruption and innovation that exploded from Silicon Valley. Now, the technology of the last 30 years has become part of everyday lives in the developed world.
My curiosity is very much focused on how this technology is changing the lives of the world’s people. If given the choice of following social media’s role in Iran’s election larceny, or the beta glitches in the iPhone battery, I’ll spend my time following Iran. 8. When Naked Conversations came out, blogging was new. Web 2.0 was new. Now it’s mainstream. I often get nostalgic for those early days, when the blogosphere was tiny, everybody knew each other, and a brave new world seemed to lie just a few pixels beyond the horizon. Now I find myself caring much less about “the future of media” or whatever, and finding I care a lot more about what I can do TODAY with social media, to help MY business. Has social media grown up? Has it become “like our parents”?
Every enduring technology has been introduced with an associated mania. The inventors are brilliant, the early adopters are passionate, and the media is excited because it’s all so new.
This was true probably of every innovation going back to the wheel. But then comes the longer, slower, steadier period of mass adoption, when people adopt these revolutionary concepts just to get their job done. There was a time when hearing a human voice on a telephone must have been mind-boggling. But, over time, the phone just became an everyday tool to let you use in your life and work.
Social Media, dramatic, explosive, disruptive period is now coming to an end, if you ask me. It is normalizing. It is changing more of the world, but is doing it in less dramatic ways.
We are probably starting to get to the stage of development that interests you and I the least. That’s where best practices get established, measurement systems become reliable, bean counters can estimate cost and value. Social media champions are no longer rebels ratting on the gates of large institutions. We have gotten past the barriers. We will soon start taking our rightful places on the org chart, with our own budget allocations.
This is good for business and the world. It’s just a little boring for disruptors like you and me. 9. As a former PR flack, you’ll obviously have more than your fair share of opinions about PR and how that world is changing, fueled on by social media. Anything you feel more strongly than most?
I think when I practiced PR I thought about ten percent of my peers were true professionals who understood that communications is not buzz; that listening is valuable; that customers need to be respected and that those who cover news need to not be on your side if they are to maintain credibility.
I think all of that is true today and the percentage as pretty much remained constant.
But those who practice PR and are skilled at social media – people like Shel Holtz, Brian Solis, Steve Rubel, Kami Huyse, Richard Binhammer, Scott Monty, Todd Defren [the list is long] have discovered that Conversational tools are far more valuable to communications professionals than the aging and inefficiency broadcast tools that I had to use when I was a PR practitioner.
I think this is a great time to be a Communications pro. You no longer need to be the nicely dressed nobody schlepping press kits and whispering into the ear of the official spokesperson. Now you can be the credible spokesperson yourself.
All you have to do is watch closely what the people I just named are doing, and learn from it. It sounds so easy, but I doubt more than 10 % of the communications profession will end up doing that. 10. So now you’ve got a nice little side-career there as a book author. I’m guessing a lot of bloggers reading this wouldn’t mind having the same, one day. What advice would you give to a blogger who one day hopes to get into the book publishing game?
All of it to me centers on the same issue: he ability to find a story and tell it simply and credibly. You do that with cartoons on the back of business cards, for example.
One other tip: writing a book is hard work. If you price it out in dollars per hour, you might do better in the restaurant service industry. I strongly advise you to love writing before you start. [Twitterville comes out September 3rd, 2009.] [The “Ten Questions” archive is here.]
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.
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?
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.…]
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Monday night I arrived back in Alpine, after one week and 3,200 miles on the road. I went from here in West Texas, to LA, to Berkeley, to Las Vegas, to Flagstaff, to Albuquerque, and back again. I stayed in cheap motels and lived on mostly American diner food and Diet Coke. Here are some random notes on the trip, in no particular order: A. Itinerary. Day One, Monday. Alpine, Texas-Blythe, California. 816 miles. The longest leg of the trip was on this first day, from West Texas to the the Arizona-California border, right on the banks of the Colorado River.
En route I was hoping to meet up with Pam Slim and other Twitters in Phoenix, but got into town too late. It was around 2am before I made it to my hotel.
Southern New Mexico is a stunning place, if you like bleak, tall, red desert, mountain country. I certainly do– when I’m there I feel I could go on driving forever. Day Two, Tuesday. Blythe, California-Hollywood, Los Angeles. 290 miles. Until you get to Palm Springs, I-10 seems little more than a dirt track going through the desert. Little small towns full of rusted-up mobile homes and billboards, offering food, gas and lodgings. Then you get to Palm Springs and the wind farms begin. Hundreds of wind turbines. Thousands. Beautiful and surreal. The the coastal mountains begin and the traffic gets insane, all the way to Los Angeles.
I had no reason to be in LA other than it’s en route to Berkeley. Luckily, one of my oldest friends, Dave Mackenzie is there at the moment, working on a movie. He let me crash at his pad in the Hollywood Hills for the night. Not much to report other than two old buddies catching up, eating dinner, drinking whisky [just like the old days back in Scotland], talking late into the night. Day Three, Wednesday, Hollywood– Berkeley California. 369 miles.
In the morning Dave and I headed for breakfast at The Griddle Cafe on Fairfax. After breakfast we hugged each other in the parking lot, said our goodbyes, Dave headed for a meeting with somebody in “The Industry”, and I headed North.
For such a massive city, Los Angeles is a fairly easy town to escape, once you’re on the freeway [so long as it isn’t rush hour, of course]. After an hour or two of driving through the mountains on I-5, Suddenly you find the mountains coming to an end, and below you is the vast, flat Central Californian plain.
There’s not much to say about it, except it’s vast, it’s flat, and it’s America’s largest produce-growing region. Just imagine mile after mile of huge fields, vineyards, orange groves and small towns. After a few hundred miles of this agri-industrial monotony the hills outside San Francisco begin– all covered with this almost mysterious, mustard-colored grassland. Then, like all big American cities, the highways end and the freeways begin. By this time I am so wired from the driving I don’t notice the traffic all around me. I’m in a trance. The crazy commuters don’t phase me– it’s like they’re not there.
I make it to Berkeley. A small college town in the Bay area– kinda reminds me of Austin. I’m there for a reason I can’t quite talk about. Something to do with business. All very hush-hush. Though I have some good friends across the bay in San Francisco, I don’t look anyone up. Too much to do. I’m only in town one night. I’m on a mission. I’ll see them next time. Day Four, Thursday. Berkeley, California to Las Vegas, Nevada.
I stay one night. In the morning I meet the person I’m in town to see for breakfast at the Brown Sugar Kitchen in Oakland. Great fried chicken, though I think they could’ve used less rosemary. The breakfast goes well. I happily hit the road, heading for Vegas.
A few hundred miles of re-tracing my drive along the Central Valley. About two thirds back to LA I turn off I-5 at Wasco and head West. Middle of bloody nowhere– enough to give anywhere in West Texas a run for its money. Farming towns, pickup trucks, and little else. Eventually the vast, agricultural plain ends and I’m driving up into the eastern Californian mountains. Spectacular. They too, end eventually and just as sunset kicks in I find myself driving through the Mojave desert. Colors so beautiful I almost want to cry.
I’m on Interstate 15 heading into Vegas from the South. It’s nighttime, it’s pitch black, save for the headlights of other cars. Then suddenly you see Vegas in the distance, a vast ball of colored lights. I find my hotel on the Strip– the MGM Grand, and check in.
Then the blur begins… like all blog conferences. Talk. Networking. Business. Alcohol. I’ve done it all before, many times. We’re professionals. We know the score. Day Five, Friday, Las Vegas.
Blur. Surreal. Vegas. Overwhelming. Day Six, Saturday, Las Vegas.
More blur. More surreal. Meet lots of people at Blogworld. Fun time had by all. Day Seven, Sunday. Las Vegas-Albuquerque, New Mexico. 585 miles.
The day starts with the usual “End of Conference” thing. I pack, I check out of my hotel, I hang with Loren and Michelle for a while, till they have to go grab a cab to the airport. I go grab my car and head east out of the city, hoping to make Albuquerque by midnight.
I make it to Albuquerque in good time, i spite of the two-hour traffic jam going over the Hoover Dam. I stop in Flagstaff, Arizona for dinner– a modest fare of Big Mac, fries and coke. I love this part of the world, if I wasn’t so damn busy, if I didn’t have this massive deadline hanging over my head, I would have taken a few more days to check out the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. I’ve been to both before, both spectacular place, but I decide to save them for next time. I almost didn’t.
I make it to my hotel in Albuquerque just after midnight. A nice Best Western, just off the freeway. I’m asleep within minutes of first entering my room. Day Eight, Monday, Albuquerque to Alpine, Texas. 486 miles.
The road between Albuquerque and El Paso isn’t much to talk about. I’ve been on similar drives in Texas, and I prefer them. By this time I’m starting to burn out on the road trip. I make it to Texas and keep on heading on till I reach Alpine. I slept 12 hours that night. B. Random Thoughts.
1. Besides all the geographical splendor this part of the world affords, the best part of a road trip like this, of course, is that is gives you all that time to think. And what di I think about? Short Answer: How the heck am I going to manage all the stuff I’ve currently got going on, AND find the time to draw cartoons. If you know the answer, please tell me.
2. I didn’t go to Vegas for the Blogworld conference. I went for the semi-annual Board of Advisors meeting for b5 Media. I am a board member, so are Stowe Boyd, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble and Renee Blodgett. We all hung out most of Friday with b5’s CEO, Jeremey Wright. Great meeting. My original plan was just to fly up to Vegas for a night or two then fly back, but the lure of the road got the better of me. Sure it added a couple of days to the equation, but hey, you only live once.
3. Being on the road taught me exactly how useful a Blackberry can be, especially one with GPS-enabled Googlemaps. Like the old advertising line says, don’t leave home without it.
4. I like being on the road. If I had to choose a blue-collar job it would be a truck driver. No question. Second choice: Dry wall builder. Third choice: Plumber.
5. Seems I’m well on target to drive 40,000 miles this year. All those trips to Austin, Marfa, Terlingua etc.
6. Part of me just wants to quit everything, live in the desert, and make & sell paintings. I know it’s more than feasible, it would be a gig most “creative” types would kill for, but I suffer from other yet unrealized ambitions.
7. It’s a good life. I think what keeps it good is the spirit of adventure. Hopefully we can hold onto that feeling for as long as we are alive. Otherwise, why bother? Rock on.
[Cartoon originally published December, 2007. It was dedicated to my friend, the dauntless Robert Scoble.]
As anyone who has been reading Techcrunch will know, the “Is Blogging Dead?” meme has reared its ugly head again.
Well, before we all get dressed up in our best funeral gear, let me say it one more time: The big story is not about blogging. It’s not about Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Friendfeed or whatever. And it certainly is not about Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, Jason Calacanis, Nick Denton or whatever so-called “A-Lister” you care you mention.
Yes, again, it’s all about what Clay Shirky said four years ago, in a wonderful interview he did for Gothamist:
“So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this — 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.”
I had coffee with Clay a couple of weeks ago. A totally great guy. We didn’t talk about blogs much. Nor did we talk much about Twitter or Facebook.
We talked about something conceptually far simpler: Cheap. Easy. Global. Media. CheapEasyGlobal is the big story. And it’s here now. It has arrived. And it’s permanent. And there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it, save for a nuclear holocaust.
Some people will do very well by it. Other people will prefer to stay on the sidelines instead, using the internet to yak yak yak endlessly on about what other people are up to, holding the “players” to far higher standards than they will ever attain themselves. These lovely armchair quarterbacks will be swiftly forgotten by history. Same as it ever was.
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.
It’s been a big week for TV 2.0.
First, I wrote a blog post about Microsoft’s intentions within this space:
Whatever TV becomes in the next century, Microsoft wants to own it. Or at least, own a huge chunk of it. And that battle will be fought and won [or lost] sometime in the next decade.
It’s all about pictures…
Pictures from your Flickr contacts…
High-def pics from professional photographers around the world…
Your family and business associates…
All ready for your new Mac Mini and high-def TV.
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