You'd Have to Be Blind Not To See This

Wrote this over the weekend...

We're about to get some rain at my house. Some real, serious, hopefully very soaking rain. The radar map on my weather app is lit up with greens and yellows and more than a few reds. The west side of my house is a full 5 shades darker than the east: the clouds are rolling in and blocking out the rest of the sun. Doors and windows are creaking, settling back into place against the stirring wind.
My wife asked me to go to the back yard and pick up the toys left outside, so we could keep them dry in the garage. Outside, the ambient temperature is still Lingering Summer, but you feel the swirls of air from Parts North brushing the back of your neck. The gate to the yard slams shut behind me ahead of the wind, and a piece of trash finds occasional purchase on a leaf or a blade of grass as it's sent rearward. The sky has texture, a breathing so much more present than when it's that still, high-pressure-that's-never-gonna-move blue. You'd have to be blind not to see this.

You'd have to be blind not to see this.

Jesus replied, "Every plant not planted by my heavenly Father will be uprooted,  so ignore them. They are blind guides leading the blind, and if one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch." (Matthew 15:13, 14 NLT)

 When Jesus heard him, he stopped and ordered that the man be brought to him. As the man came near, Jesus asked him,  "What do you want me to do for you?"
"Lord," he said, "I want to see!" (Luke 18:40, 41 NLT)

Whatever You Ask

"If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you."

(John 15:7, 8, 16 NIV)

 

"You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you." (John 15:16 NIV)

 

There's passages all over the bible where Jesus says the Father will give us WHATEVER we ask. Really? Anything? I know too many beautiful people in terrible situations that are praying for rescue and yet to see it.

 

But I think the key is about this being to the Father's glory: I pray constantly for Him to take away the things that make me fall - the gaping holes in my spiritual walls that I know are there, yet I feel powerless to close. I think the point here is that God wants to help ME close those gaps, showing how he can transform a willing soul, rather than creating a spiritual automaton.  I know God sees the other side of our challenges when we can't, and sees His glory in there, somewhere.

 

Dear Father, give me a glimpse of the glory for You on the other side of my faults and failures, so I can be motivated to run the race laid out before me.

Sustainability: Your Next Buzzword for Social Media

This post will be used in RAPP's Cultura Newsletter, but I wanted to share with everyone else!

Dan Barber is an extremely successful chef – owner of several restaurants including Blue Hill in Manhattan, named the top chef in America by the James Beard Foundation, and listed on Time’s 100 most influential people of 2009.  He’s a master at creating good food, but his passion is in transforming what you and I call “good food.”  Dan is an outspoken voice in the journey to reinvent what we eat, by deeply examining the entire process from farm to plate.  If you have a moment, watch the talk he gave at TED 2010, intriguingly titled “How I Fell in Love With a Fish.”  For Dan, finding the best fish in the world is about how it was raised, and how that process can continue without negatively impacting its environment.  Dan isn’t impressed by the scalability of today’s agribusiness; he’s romanced by the sustainability of a new type of biologist farmer.

 

As our new world of social media has developed, we’ve experienced some oddly similar conflicts – not dealing with fish, of course, but wrestling with this balance between scalability and sustainability. 

 

Social media sites are all about scalability – and rightly so, because they rely on Metcalfe’s law.  Simply put, Metcalfe stated that networks become more valuable as they add more users, because of the network effect between those users.  Two users can make one connection to each other, but five can make 10 connections, and 12 can make 66 connections! With each of those connections meaning more server power and more network bandwidth required, even sites with just a few users can quickly consume an amazing amount of resources.  Facebook has even had to invent new database management systems for managing the traffic and maintaining service for everyone. 

 

Given enough power, ingenuity and money, technology is almost infinitely scalable.  People, however, are not.  You and I have only so much ability to focus, to communicate, or to share with others.  We’re bound by our own scarce time and effort, and none of us can be replicated (as much as we might appreciate a clone every now and then).  Think of it this way: what would one more email notification add to your life? What about another site to check every day?  How often would you like a text message about the weather forecast – every day? Twice a day? Every hour? Every minute?

 

Creating sustainable campaigns and platforms for our clients in the future will require us to put the burden where it belongs – to make the technology scale higher, further and faster so our consumers can stay engaged.  Google Buzz, for example, uses customized algorithms that “learn” your behaviors, so the most relevant content surfaces to the top.  This is the same tactic Facebook is using with their News Feed, by showing only the most active conversations of friends that you’re most likely to read. 

 

Think about our own marketing efforts: clients ask us to create platforms that carry messages to their consumers, past all the filters of technology and the clutter of the landscape.  And RAPP gets to bring a unique solution to these problems, because we’re all about the technology.  We have defined processes for surveying each brand’s Consumerscape, charting a consumer journey to navigate these waters, and unleashing co-creativity with the consumer to let them bring us into their time-starved lives.  Solutions like these are more than just one-off moments that end up burning relationships through a blunt numbers game.  Direct solutions like ours are something more, because the relevance makes them sustainable.

A Valentine's Profession, and a Confession

Valentine's Day this year is gonna be a little weird, and there's not much we can do about it. The year of our Lord 2010 brings a complete confluence of the craziness inherent with Parenthood. And I mean that with a capital P. Which rhymes with T. And that stands for Toddler.

Squid is almost 3, and has been sick with various nasties for about the last month. All the classic hits were there: RSV, Strep, Asthma bringing their entourage of Noze Gunk and Breathing Treatments and More Antibiotics. He's just now getting over it, but Mommy and Daddy are clawing our way back from a serious sleep deficit, nonetheless.

Add to THAT the fact that Mommy is currently carrying Squidette, our lovely next addition to the team, whose little finger will be where Daddy soon takes up residence. My wife has been so amazing these past few weeks that she's sick of being amazing, and I get it - it's one thing to be miraculously awesome for a day or two, and it's entirely another to keep it up for a month. We've been working on clearing out, cleaning up and setting up Squidette's new room, but it's slow going.

Add to THAT the fact that my work has been bizonkulous, and add to THAT the fact that inclement weather snowed us in for Thursday and Friday, when we were planning on getting that last-minute Valentine's shopping in.

It's a lot to deal with.

Next weekend, Squid is going to go hang out with his Mema and Grandad down in Houston, and we're going to celebrate Valentine's. There will be the obligatory visit to a nice hotel, and the even more obligatory gastronomic adventure that IS The Melting Pot. There will be more work on the Squidette Sanctum mixed in there, but a break will be well appreciated. But there's something that must be done today, on Valentine's Day. Even though we're officially celebrating later, I can't just let it slide.

My wife, my Valentine, is singlehandedly the greatest person in my life. She laughs at me, and knows when to ignore me. She's a mom, teacher, friend and CEO - all on top of everything she is to me. She's totally cute and beautiful, even if she doesn't feel that way right now. She's supernaturally strong, even if she doesn't feel that way when she's asked to be. She's irreplaceable, immeasurable, and thought of writing a Valentine's day blog post right before I did. (DUDE!)

I love you baby. Happy Valentine's Day!

How We Will Wave

Here's the question. I was watching this video:

... and I was captivated by the part where he says "this is probably only 3.5% of what Wave could do." The fact is the official Wave interface is just one front end to the engine - there are completely open APIs underneath Wave that we could all interface with in different ways - via blogs, IM, mobile, who knows. Think of how we used to use Twitter through web, and while many still do, others (like me) have taken off to advanced interfaces like TweetDeck or Seesmic.

So stretch your brain for a bit - the question might not be how are we gonna use Google Wave, but what will it enable?

• Collaborative online newspapers
• Student crowdsourced notes for a course
• The first collaborative comic book
• Owners' Manuals written by the owners, as they use the product
• Community based support by Wave, rather than by message board or email

And think even further - if they get the media managment systems worked out, we could be mixing music via wave (like http://www.indabamusic.com/), or designing art via wave, or testing a beta product through Wave (while it's in beta!). The mind boggles.

(Big nod to the latest episode of This Week in Google, which provided some of these ideas and further sparked this concept for me!)

Weed-Whacking

Trimming. Edging. Weed-whacking. Call it what you will - this has basically been the bane of my lawn-work existence ever since I got $20 from Dad for doing the yard on my own. Why is it that when it's time to evaluate whether you're ready to do the Youth Group fundraiser thing and mow someone else's lawn, the question is "can you edge with a weed-whacker?" Sure, it's tricky, but is this the ultimate measure of landscaping ability?

But I digress. My trusty instrument in the weed-whacking world is this one you see here - that's right, a GAS trimmer. And no, I don't mind it. In fact, I'll gladly trade the foibles of a two-stroke engine for having to lug around an extension cord capable of reaching Utah. Yes, it takes some work, and no, it doesn't always start immediately. But it's cordless, powerful, and ultimately reliable. But the agony starts near the business end of this thing: the ever popular "bump head" for advancing more weed-whacking line.

Now, I'm fairly good with things mechanical. I even understand how this bump head is supposed to work. I can wind the line on it properly, and I can get it to work... ONCE. I'm convinced this thing was invented mainly to increase the level of cursing on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, because it CERTAINLY wasn't a way to make the process of trimming more efficient or speedy. I've literally broken the handle on this thing slamming the head into the ground trying to get a millimeter of line to spit out. So if you're like me on this issue, you need to find what I have: the Fast Loader.

This thing is the God-send of landscaping. Instead of working with a whole spool of weed-whacking line, you're using individual 10" pieces. Push one into each cam-gripper system, and you're off to the races. Burn one up on a particularly stubborn flora? Pop it out, put another one in. Bullet-to-the-brain simple, and doesn't slow you down a bit.

Now the catch is how to get those individual pieces of trimming line. Sure, you can buy them - they sell little tubes of about 10-12 pieces each, but you pay for the pre-cut material. Just like a chicken breasts in a bag, you're paying a markup for not starting with the whole yourself. And while that may be a fine trade on your favorite poultry, don't bother here. Just buy a regular ol' line of weed-whacking line and a utility knife. Spend 5 minutes cutting your own 10-12 pieces of line before you start and you've saved yourself a lot of money. And it'll be smooth sailing through the rest of your yard, on your way to a beautifully manicured suburban masterpiece.

The 25 Random Things.

There are 25 things here. About me. Yes, I've taken the plunge, no matter what the NYT may say.

1. I've read your 25 things. Yes, even if you didn't tag me. You tagged enough of my friends that it popped right up on my "Home" feed, and what can I say, I'd like to know more about you.
2. That New York Times article makes it sound like doing this will give away the last vestiges of your privacy. But I don't see it that way - I live in this online world, and I even make a living from it. I'd much rather be a part of the conversation than sitting out because of fear. That being said, you can't have my SSN.
3. I love slippers. I wear them all the time when I'm home, and even quite a bit while I'm out - except for the hottest days of Summer. I choose very shoe-like slippers, so I can easily get away with wearing them outside. Can't stand it when my feet get cold.
4. I'm really behind on those LinkedIn recommendations people have asked of me. I'll get there, guys, I promise!
5. I think my wife and son are made of pure, liquid amazing.
6. I'm fascinated with the sociology of the mall Play Place, especially since I spend more time there these days. All of those kids manage to (mostly) play well together despite being different ages, races, upbringings, shapes and sizes. A lesson for us all.
7. I have immense respect for other religions. Even as a Protestant Christian, I think you'd have to be a fool not to see the beauty in others' faiths. I hope some day I can have the discipline of a Muslim, the mental clarity of a Zen Buddhist, and the understanding of God's grandeur like a Catholic.
8. I was up to 14 things before I had to restart my browser. Now I've gotta remember what those were, or come up with something better. Stink.
9. I don't know what's so bad about Target clothes. Sure, they're not the most expensive stuff in the world, but I think they do a fine job.
10. I often love bands and singers that have been around a long time, and I usually like their late-career work more than the original stuff. For example, you've gotta be insane if you can't love The Eagles' "Hell Freezes Over", or Fleetwood Mac's greatest hits album from when they got back together, or even some recent Kris Kristofferson.
11. I've recently rediscovered The New Yorker as an excellent source of some insightful reads. Originally started checking them out for Malcolm Gladwell's essays.
12. Speaking of Gladwell, I'm beginning to think the white guy 'fro might be coming back.
13. There are some movies in this world that, even though I know they're going to suck, I almost feel honor-bound to see.
14. I think we should all just stop the insanity and just call tomatoes a vegetable. I know they're not - strictly speaking, they're a fruit - but come ON. You're not gonna put tomatoes in your Fruit Salad, are you?
15. I told my mother-in-law that my brand new HDTV could not show anything playing from a VCR. Because it would cry in agony.
16. I'm not perfectly certain, but I think there might actually be TWO works of man inspired by God: The Bible and Dr Pepper.
17. I don't wanna be a superhero, I wanna be a JEDI. There's a difference.
18. My wife is totally addicted to anime and manga. Which I'm totally on board with, because those are MUCH better than soap operas and reality TV.
19. I'm a Sudoku addict. I usually have a puzzle I'm working on in my notebook I take to meetings at work. And yes, I must admit some times that I'm looking at the numbers more than the notes.
20. I think some parts of Texas are as gorgeous as anywhere else on Earth.
21. Polarizing foods I actually like: cilantro, bleu cheese, and lima beans. Never have liked green beans, though - ever since I was a baby.
22. I couldn't work at an office that didn't let me wear jeans whever I wanted to. I'm all about dressing nice for clients and interviews, and I dont' even wear jeans every day. I just want the option.
23. I'm not putting hyperlinks in these later tidbits because I'm getting lazy and I'm ready to finish this thing.
24. I'm a David Letterman/Craig Ferguson kinda guy. And I LOVED Craig Killborn.
25. I think 25 is the new 10.
    

ESSAY: Meme Marketing

Just finished the piece below - not for any writing contest this time, just wanted to write this up. Let me know if you enjoy it or show it to others! -E

MEME MARKETING

The Marketer is caught in a unique paradox: we want to give our clients the benefit of our years of experience; countless research studies; blood-with-sweat late-night wordsmithing; messages honed with scalpel-fine sharpness. We want our clients to tangibly feel the incredible effects of our work as near as a heart palpitation with a Memorex-like impact. We want them to squeeze every positive adjective (even the made-up ones) into that glowing email to us the day after the campaign launches - we want them to believe that we are capable of nothing less than MAGIC.

Just one problem: we don't want them to see the Man Behind The Curtain. Marketers NEED that level of mystery in their work, because it's the element that keeps Clients coming back time and time again. We don't always want to show them how to fish, we just want to keep them happy with lots of halibut and looking to us for more. And somewhere between the Words and the Wizardry, we came up with this new spell that would keep the Client enraptured for the new Millennium: Viral Marketing.

It all started when somewhere between a YouTube video and a PowerPoint slide we saw something happening. Something we'd never seen before. Consumers - our audience - were taking our commercials, our ideas, our concepts and passing them around in these new "social networks." It was almost unfair. Here we had just produced a :30 special effects product placement explosion, or had just gotten our client on the most watched morning show in the country, and now some person named DrPepperLvr156 was passing out our Moment in an "unauthorized" channel. Friends and acquaintances and cool-mongers were commenting by the hundreds, all without us seeing a dime of commission or even a tiny trophy. Then the remixes and mash-ups started appearing, and our beautiful flower of a concept had officially left the walled garden we'd created for it: now it was fighting for its life in the social equivalent of the Amazon rainforest.

Some Marketers, seeing this disaster of diversity sought to game the system, to insert a seemingly “natural” or “amateur” idea into this ecosystem, hoping to entice unwitting consumers into passing on an idea that has a hidden trap door: a dotted-line connection back to a brand and back to a purchase. After all, if a low-budget film gets millions of views, the ROI is motivation enough - even if the purchase-to-conversion rate is microscopic. They thought these “great” ideas would be passed on almost involuntarily, with the same uncontrollable network effects of… a virus.

It worked the first few times – successfully, even. Network effects were leveraged, and marketers got to sample the intoxicating drug of media impressions that nobody paid for. But soon, these gifts from the Community came fewer and further between as the consumer evolved a new level of brand-detection skill. This formerly fertile soil had become effectively inoculated against our efforts, and would only let the “genuine article” take root and thrive. The spread and growth potential were still there, but it seemed like we’d lost the chance to do anything in this space that still met a Client’s bottom line. Marketers today really have to unpack what we thought was viral marketing to reach down to its true potential and see that self-sustaining campaign effect once again. Our first strategies for leveraging this concept were really based on the symptoms of the Idea Virus, crafted without understanding how it works – its true DNA.

Viruses (of any sort) are built with one goal in mind: to reproduce. When the virus is a cold, all we notice is how bad we feel and how the tissue boxes stack up. But for the virus, your misery is the result of successfully finding a fertile environment, gaining a foothold, and reproducing like crazy. Every marketing campaign designed to “go viral” has to do the same things as your favorite illness AND turn an ROI – connecting those people reached to a purchase. It’s not impossible, but it’s not near as accidental anymore. In fact, great work in this space isn’t just Viral Marketing. It’s Meme Marketing.

Memes are the ideas, symbols or practices that naturally spread throughout a culture. From the Greek word for “mimic,” these thoughts are the things that just seem to “catch on” – whether it’s coffee houses, doing “The Wave” at a sports event, or tightrolling your jeans back in the ‘80s. In a 2007 interview with Spike Jones, hip-hop sensation Kanye West said “What the hula hoop was to America, I want my music, my pieces of art to be that.” This is the new ground an idea competes on – whether a song, a toy, or a marketing campaign.

Memes that make it resonate for a specific audience. If the new currency of social media is recognition, your concept – metaphorically – needs to be money. Something that members of this Community you’re targeting will want to pass around, because it elevates their own status within that Community. When one member can unearth or create something that others within the Community want to copy, they’ve expanded their influence. If that idea belongs to your Client, then you’ve successfully meshed their brand with that Community.

Memes that make it create a connection. It’s not just about being the loudest car commercial on TV, or the most offensive idea imagined. These things can grab attention, but they’re ignored just as quickly. Great memes are noticeable, memorable, AND actionable. Some of the best solve a problem – whether practical or just a cognitive dissonance. The arch, for example, spread across the world as an engineering meme because it solved the problem of how to span long distances efficiently. But it was also something easy to see, remember, and put into practice when you got back home.

Memes that make it are easy to reproduce. YouTube isn’t the #1 source of streaming media because they’re technologically advanced. In fact, many other sites use a more advanced codec or provide more features. Their fulcrum is in that little box of code labeled “embed.” I can take a video clip and replicate the entire viewing experience on my blog or Facebook or MySpace. And in doing so, I’ve validated that meme, because the people watching it on my blog know ME. If they want to pass on the meme in the same way, all they have to do is copy-paste.

Meme marketing is an engineered idea infection. It’s difficult, rare, and powerful. But most importantly, it’s deliberate. The next generation of successful marketers will be able to craft these memes, seed them into a receptive Community, and they’ll watch them spread like… a virus.

Hyperactive Hyperlinking HyperBlogger

In the latest of a string of successes for my writings, my recent essay on Continuous Innovation has been posted to the RAPP Global Blog! This is directly at the "front door" for our agency worldwide, so it's a huge deal. Plus, I had the chance to work with some great people outside my regular circle here, which is just additional fun.

We wanted this version to be a little more readable and interactive than the original, so we came up with the idea of splattering it with links all over the place - making it the hyper hyperlinked remix version, if you will. Take a look at some of those links, they were half the fun in getting this done.

The Hottest Wallpapers I've Found So Far

Some people go for pictures of their kids as their computer wallpaper, but I think my little Squid is so cute that hiding behind my open browser windows doesn't do him justice. Besides, I like having something there that's utterly different and unique.

So here's a few of my current favorites, gathered from hither and yon. I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you to first go check out the STUNNING wallpapers from mandolux.com and desktopography.net. Now enjoy what I've got here while the bandwidth's available!

ESSAY: Continuous Innovation

Update: Received a wonderful comment from a user identifying themselves as the Chief Technologist for NASA at Langley, VA. Here's hoping I can help space exploration, if in some small way!

I guess I must be good at this essay thing. They had another writing contest here at work, and I decided to enter. I wasn't really looking to do anything special, just wanted to see for myself if it was a fluke: if it was possible that I could write that well again. I really figured I had no chance, because of course, they wouldn't let me win twice, right?

Well, they did.

This contest was supposed to be about "Innovation." Here's the full essay, along with the announcement email, from the same Global Strategy guy. Plus, some minor mentions from later in the year. Enjoy!

Continuous Innovation


You have two minutes to do something innnovative. 120 seconds. Go.


Can we all be honest with each other here? When you look at the results from your latest campaign and see a click-through rate of .05%, or an open rate of 1.14%, or an average time on site of 00:00:14 with a bounce rate of 85%, you're not excited. Even though these numbers may be well above standard for your client's industry, or average rates for the medium, you can't help but wonder about the majority. The ones that just didn't do what you wanted them to do.

So what happens? You get in the office the next day and flip through your Rolodex of optimization techniques, survey out a 30+ variable testing matrix that would confuse a rocket scientist, and set about to "move the needle." Brief, blow out, build and blast; you manage to make that K.P.I. look a little less S.O.L., and your client is happy to carry on doing the same thing with the same messages in a slightly better looking package. That needle's moved, but that majority? Still there.

So why doesn't this FEEL good? Why doesn't this inspire your work and infuse your day?

Why doesn't this feel Innovative?


90 seconds.


The fact is, a lot of the things we fill our day with are NOT innovative. And really, there's nothing wrong with that - great work relies completely on great execution. An excellent process or cutting-edge idea will be the inspirational equivalent of a blank sheet of paper if it isn't carried out with absolute attention to detail, timing, and budget. The world needs people that do this, and for at least some part of our lives, we all must be one of them.

The problem is we confuse Innovation with The Work. We can't block out 30 minutes on our calendar to just "Innovate." Innovation doesn't generate any discrete deliverable, follow any Visio flow chart process, or wrap itself up neatly into a revenue stream by the end of Q2. Innovation is like a rainbow: ephemeral, beautiful, and impossible to precisely predict.

But, you CAN create the right conditions for it.

Just like we all know that stormy-sunny mix that gives the best opportunity for a solar color gala, we all intrinsically know the circumstances that will foster innovation within our organizations. We know the value of those hallway conversations, the break room areas, the coffee machine (oh YES the coffee machine), the foosball table, the huge whiteboard, the iPod with noise-cancelling headphones. We know those things that don't have a direct return, the stuff that's expensed before the bottom line, the things that usually get axed when numbers need to add up.

We know what fosters innovation - we're just afraid of it.


60 seconds.


The core problem with innovation is that it is rooted in, and generated by the Unknown. We can fertilize and water the field all day long, but ultimately it is innovation that makes a seed become a plant. The fear is that you might throw all your might and resources into a singular project to foster innovative growth and... it doesn't happen. Or worse yet, you take your baby idea out of the incubator and try to introduce it to the real world and guess what? It fails.

You know what we call new ideas that succeed? Innovation.
You know what we call new ideas that don't? Failures.

Under this paradigm, it's easy to see why a project with unclear and uncertain returns would never get off the ground. It's understandable trying your hand at the tried-and-true before ever venturing off into the unknown. When the world is black and white, why would you ever want to put yourself in the red?

And that's your problem.

If you see every new venture, every weird idea, every novel concept as ultimately falling down the plinko machine into one of those two buckets, the risk is always 50-50. You're always that fixed distance away from perceived utter disaster, and you're always going to stay there.

Take a moment and think of the enormous gamut of problems you work with and attempt every day - from a way to remember to pick up the dry cleaning, to some method of resolving conflict with a co-worker, to influencing a new audience to buy your client's product.
The wrong thought is to rank these solutions the same way we would a coin flip - heads/tails, right/wrong, successful/not. We deal in a work that so tightly integrates with the human experience, that of communicating and carrying understanding of a client to groups of other humans. We play on emotion, on aspirations, on cognitive dissonance. So how can we call one idea absolutely innovative, or another absolutely a failure? How can we not appreciate the campaigns that "showed a small ROI" or "did sorta well" for what they are - learning opportunities.


30 seconds.


If asked about his greatness, Edison would tell you about the thousands of ways he discovered how NOT to make a lightbulb. Einstein would tell you about the 42 years of life BEFORE he won his Nobel Prize for Physics. Michael Jordan would tell you about the 26 times he was trusted to take the game-winning shot and MISSED. Greatness only germinates from the ashes of failure. Innovation will only spark after countless ideas are tried, tested, and most are found lacking. The world's Next Big Idea isn't sitting out on the sidewalk like a lost penny - it's hiding behind a veil of missteps, mistakes, and missed opportunities.

The clear fact is that in order to foster innovation in ourselves or in our organization, we need to create a mentality that ALLOWS for failure. We need to build into our campaign plans an aggressive process for correctly identifying results, then extracting every single bit of meaning or understanding from them - both "good" and "bad." This knowledge then needs to feed our future works. This knowledge must be immediately shared within our organization. This knowledge needs to be openly celebrated in front of our clients, to prove how we've positively built from failure and made our partners' money really worth something in the long run.

We need to innovate, or we will become irrelevant. Therefore, we need to fail, or we will never find success. And when we fail, we must intensely scrutinize the results in order to innovate.


Time's up. Did you innovate? Did you fail? How about both.

I am pleased to inform you that our writing contest winner is once again Eric Swayne. Yes, that's right. Eric Swayne. Again.



Well done Eric!



This contest focused on innovation. As direct marketers, innovation is a bit of a strange bedfellow. I mean, we typically focus on a linear approach of testing, learning and then optimizing. Innovation requires new, often lateral thinking, is often inefficient and as Eric rightly points out ...gasp...can actually require failing, maybe even repeatedly, before getting to the Promised Land. And yet now more than ever our ability to innovate as customer obsessed agents on behalf of our clients is the litmus test by which we are judged as true leaders in our space.



Traditional executions across traditional channels, nuanced by creative and offer are simply not working as well as they used to. Consumers demand more...more relevance, more experience, more inspiration, more opportunity to co-create across multiple touch points. Across channels heretofore not even considered media. To truly succeed for our clients we are going to need to be brave, pioneering and yes, perhaps even fail from time to time. Different than many the Rapp way, the way of data igniting creative experiences, of direct marketing sensibilities informing new applications across emerging channels, gives us an unfair advantage. It slides the odds of success to our favor. And I am happy to take any advantage I can get, fair or unfair, on behalf of our clients.



Take the time to read Eric's entry on risk taking, on having the courage of our convictions and on our mandate to innovate as a brand. It is inspiring. Please join me in congratulating Eric on what is quickly becoming the Swayne Writing Contest. (Actually, the entrants are presented to a panel of judges without name!) I encourage all of you to participate in the next iteration and help us crown a new champion. Not to mention win a bunch of money :-)

This next one came from the CEO of all RAPP itself. He CCed our Global President, and the President of North America:

This is really well done Eric. I’d like you, [name witheld] and [name witheld] to trim this down, add a couple of real Rapp examples of innovation and put this on the website blog. This is a very relevant topic.


Thanks Eric.

And here's the blog he was talking about: http://opinion.rapp.com/. I'm working with other amazing luminaries of the RAPP stratosphere to get this live, and I'll let you know here when it's up.

I'm still utterly amazed and honored to win this go-round. The money's nice (VERY nice), but the validation as a writer and strategic thinker is many, many times more valuable. It's mind-boggling and humbling to have a reputation throughout the world-wide stretch of RAPP. I hope I'm afforded many more chances to do this kind of free-form, blue-sky thinking.

So I Should Probably Let You Know...

You all remember this essay I posted earlier, mentioning that I entered it in a writing contest here at work. I'm glad to tell you that I WON!!!1!!! (LoLCat punctuation intended.) Yep, in addition to being an award winning web designer, I'm now an award winning writer!

The award (read: check in an envelope) was given me at an all-agency meeting on Monday. The Director of the entire freakin' office, the lady that can fire me if she just doesn't like my hair that day, asked me to read my essay for everyone. Normally, I'm very good speaking in front of crowds. I did a talk back in my LTC days for about 4,500 people no sweat. This time? My hands were shaking so hard I couldn't hold the paper in front of my face - I had to put it down on the podium to read it. People told me later I read fine, but WOW have I never been that nervous.

Later in the week, the Global Chief Strategy Officer (yeah, that's a big title) sent out the following email. I've redacted some parts here.

It is with great pleasure I announce the winner of our first RCW Writing Competition:

ERIC SWAYNE, Rapp Collins Worldwide, Dallas

Eric is an Interactive Project Manager who joined RCW about two months ago...and certainly has not wasted any time making a great impression! I urge you (or perhaps contextually it would be better if I “invited” you) to spend a few minutes reading through the entry. I find it to be a treasure trove of insights and provocative thought. Return on Interaction? Brands as parties? Brand Matchmaking? The birth of communication as anthropology and the end of hypnosis? Fantastic! As with everything we do at Rapp, I ask that you consider the points being made, debate them internally and with co-workers, enhance them, make them yours and then evangelize! This is how we grow organically and evolve our own brand.

We also want to thank everyone who participated. The responses and the writing are amazing and we recognize those who take the time to think and share the message.

Congratulations to all, and Eric, well done!

VIDEO: These Videos Have Nothing to Do With Each Other

Normally, I try to bring content with a theme, even if it's a niche one. Normally there's some common thread running through these snippets of web glory, but no such luck this time. This is just stuff that I find interesting or funny, and hope you will, too. Enjoy!

Synchronizing Metronomes

Interesting demo of a little physics here.

Virgin America's Safety Video

There's not much good in the category of Airline Safety Videos, but somehow Virgin makes me want to fly them even more with theirs.

Cat on a Treadmill

Seriously, do you need me to tell you why this is funny?

Darth Vader Feels Blue

Okay, hang with me here through the first few minutes. I promise it's worth it.

ESSAY: The New ROI

So the great place I work at recently had a writing competition about "reaching the new complex consumer." I was inspired to enter, because it's a fascinating topic - and the winner got a nice load of cash! I may not win, but I'm pretty proud of this little piece, so I wanted to share it here.

Remember: I'm writing this as a marketer, to other marketers. Some of the tone may get a tad fanatical for you, but when you're in the Advertising/Marketing industry, that's what it takes to get the attention of The Jaded.

Enjoy!

The New ROI: Collective Networking Between Brands and Consumers


There is no more "them," and it's all our fault.

For good or ill, we started as Marketers with our "magic bullet" messages and drilled all the way down to the "guerilla" level for the express purpose of reaching and changing the behavior of Them: The Consumers. We've poked, prodded, offered, discounted, promoted and printed everything we could to affect The Target Audience. Each new medium has just been a wider net for us to reach more numbers to get more prospects and yield more ROI. We've used all 360 degrees around The Demographic to find a new angle, but now They have done the unthinkable:

THEY have learned to ignore us.

You have felt it. That inward shut-off when you see the overly-idyllic lifestyle photo, or your hand reaching for the dial at each mention of "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!" You know the Marketer's bag of tricks and can provide textbook examples of each, probably with material just from your morning commute. You've reached the point where it's sub-conscious, and yet if you're a Marketer, you'll get to your desk and try to analyze the next email campaign for whether we can get more out of Them with the "buy-one-get-one" or the "half-off" offers.

And this is the point: You ARE one of Them.

Marketers can not live in a diatomic, "Us vs. Them" world anymore, because the world has fundamentally changed. Publication now inherently includes participation, and the same people using your product are now recommending your product, rating your product, ranking your product, or just ranting about your product. Every move a Marketer makes throws off ripples of conversation, and the successful organizations are the ones who can anticipate these fluid dynamics, strategically activating groups and memes that maximize their clients' potential.

Marketing isn't hypnosis anymore, it's anthropology.

Our new study is to understand the full experience of how consumers interact with products, and how consumers interact with each other. These interactions are the new "synapses" in our collective intelligence, and it is at these points of exchange that every brand finds its success or failure. As information flows through these points, nuance is gathered. Impressions are made. The Sneezers come out, and Tipping Points are neared. Everything that goes into forming an opinion, or deciding on a purchase, filters through this decentralized network.

Marketers can't be Brand Managers. They must be Brand Matchmakers.

In the status quo, brand management is about control. We control the ways and places our Brands interact with Consumers, and only let that interaction occur when it's in our Brand's best interest. "After all, if all a Consumer knows about our Brand is what we tell them, then that's all they can say about it, right?" Following this path, some Brands have taken the recursive path into effective silence, repeating only the boilerplate messages and ignoring the conversations around them. It's the Marketer's role to take this Brand into The Real World and introduce it to the Consumer, making every interaction genuinely positive for BOTH parties.

Marketers have to be done "telling." They must INVITE.

Every marketing campaign has to begin by identifying (or creating) a point of JOY between a Brand and a Consumer. Is it an amazing timesaver? A gift to the Environment? A security for the future? What interaction between one Brand and one Consumer will be so incredible that it can not be kept under Wraps? Your campaign is a personal invitation to participate in this moment; to experience the Brand at THIS point. It's no longer a question of gimmicks or tricks -- it's a moment of relationship.

Brands are parties, and the best ones have party favors.

Return On Investment is a fine metric when you're dealing with concrete assets. A bridge costs so much money and lasts so long, meaning a certain ROI. But can we reduce the social work we're doing to the level of asphalt? Marketing is about Return On INTERACTION; the mutual benefit gained by both the Consumer and the Brand from encountering each other. If the Consumer can take away an artifact, a benefit, a new mental benchmark (or even all three) from a positive interaction back to their social network, the Brand is the real winner.

Successful brands create a "Gold Rush Effect."

You would think the first person to find gold in the Klondike would keep their mouths shut about it. It's a finite resource of immense value, so shouldn't you keep it to yourself? Unfortunately, that person had to use what they found to get what they wanted -- gold exchanged for money or stuff. They HAD to interact with other people who wanted the same thing. It's in our nature as Consumers to share our experiences, and it's in our nature to want GREAT ones. Brands want their Consumers to walk away with the huge gold nugget, because they know that more will come looking for the same.

Welcome to the Consumerscape. Hope you brought business cards.

It's the equivalent of a political campaign, this concept of Brands "pressing the flesh" with Consumers. For some Brands, it's going to be hard to get out there and mingle with "real people." For others, they will have skilled Marketers to help them develop a form of charisma, a genuine personality that encourages Consumers to come closer. Some businesses will focus on earning a million dollars. Others will focus on winning a million friends. Which will be worth more?

VIDEO: You hafta be a Geek for this

I normally try to keep my content fairly "down the middle" and come with stuff that's not necessarily tied to one audience.

Unfortunately, I'm a geek.

And like all geeks, I consume web media voraciously. And yep, I'm susceptible to more geekish content out there. So yeah, your blog post today may be a little outside your natural demo, but let's give it a shot. Stretch a little and reach out to your Buddies of the Byte. Enjoy some web content from the wired guys.

Transformers Cosplay

Now, Transformers you know. Cosplay is literally a mash-up of "costume" and "play." Let's be clear: these costumes are cool. But these guys, well, let's hope there's more to them than meets the eye.

NOTE: You're gonna want to turn down your volume for this one, unless you love the 80's rock stylings of the original Transformers theme cranked up to 11.

New Math

Generally, geeks are good at math. I'm okay at it, but I'd be TERRIBLE if I had to do the New Math!

Time-Lapse Video of 40+ Hours in Adobe Illustrator

There's a special kind of geek that does Art. And when these guys do art, it's pixel-wrangling at its finest.

Science Machine from Chad Pugh on Vimeo.

Making Chocolat Moose with the Swedish Chef

Geeks love their retro Saturday TV fodder, and the Muppets are right up there in that category. Besides, how can you NOT love the Swedish Chef??

What Do You DO, Anyway?

I've been getting a lot of questions like this, since announcing that I'd become a full-time Interactive Project Manager, and when I get that blank stare I've always had this great quote from Sports Night running through my head (emphasis mine):

You guys know who Philo Farnsworth was? He invented television. I don't mean he invented television like Uncle Milty, I mean he invented the television. In a little house in Provo, Utah. At a time when the idea of transmitting moving pictures through the air would be like me saying I've figured out a way to beam us aboard the Starship Enterprise. He was a visionary and he died broke and without fanfare. The guy I really like though was his brother-in-law, Cliff Gardner. He said to Philo, "I know everyone thinks you're crazy, but I want to be a part of this. I don't have your head for science, so I'm not gonna be much help with the design and mechanics of the invention. But it sounds like, you're gonna need glass tubes. See Philo was inventing the cathode receptor, and even though Cliff didn't know what that meant or how it worked, he'd seen Philo's drawing and he knew he was gonna need glass tubes. And since television hadn't been invented yet, it's not like you could get 'em at the local TV repair shop."I want to be a part of this", Cliff said, "and I don't have your head for science. How would it be if I taught myself to be a glassblower? And I could set up a little shop in the backyard. And I could make all the tubes you'll need for testing." There oughta be Congressional medals for people like that. I've looked over the notes you've been giving over the last year or so, and I have to say that they exhibit an almost total lack of understanding of how to get the best from talented people. You said before that for whatever reason, I seem to be able to exert authority around here. I assure you, it's not 'cause they like me. It's because they knew two minutes after I walked in the door that I'm somebody who knows how to do something. I can help. I can make glass tubes. That's what they need.

By the way, if you've never seen Sports Night you oughta get that on your Netflix list right now. William H. Macy delivers that line, and boy does he sell it.

VIDEO: Holy CARP they can do that with a Wiimote??

I know, I know - two posts in one day. This one was just so cool and amazing that I couldn't wait to get it up.

Ever seen a Wii? Played one? Own one? Well, little did you know that your humble Wiimote can be used to create a whiteboard, virtual WACOM tablet, or even a 3-d room!

VIDEO: We all need a feel-good moment

I originally titled this one "stuff I can't believe I love", and I may still come back to that with music. (I mean, after all, I favorited a track by BRATZ.)  But lately, I've found a lot of things that are genuinely lovable on the Interwebs - stuff that gets a little cloying and sugary-sweet, but lovable nonetheless.

Best Little League Game Ever

This little gem comes to us from Improv Everywhere, a fascinating group that's a collision of "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" and "Candid Camera." For this event, they descended upon a Little League baseball game with the goal of making it as close to a real Major League game as possible - complete with fans, announcers, JumboTron and the Goodyear Blimp.




The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and he has pancreatic cancer. He reprises his "Last Lecture" here on Oprah. (Man, I can't believe I like something from Oprah!)




How MC Hammer got his grooves

WARNING: Early 90's hair, miniskirts, and club dancing are present in this video. And no, that's not supposed to be the feel-good part of it.

I just chuckle inside whenever I see the "Running Man." Especially done by more than one person.

The New Job

Well, since my wife basically called me out, I should probably get back here and blog about my new job and what's been keeping me so busy. This is a long post, but I want to tell you the whole story of what's gone on here, since there's been a lot of changes and a WHOLE lot of God working in our lives.

So as a lot of you know, I'd been working at Texas Instruments, as a contractor. And for the record, I liked it there! I liked what I was doing (because I'd basically carved out my own role), and I liked who I was working with. There were really only two things wrong with my situation: my salary was below market value, and the benefits package I was getting as a contractor wasn't near what I could get as an actual employee.

Sure, there were a lot of other factors that irked me about being a contractor. Sure, it was hard to be the Project Manager and Get People To Get Stuff Done when they were employees and I was a contractor (blue badges vs. red badges... and don't get me started on those yellow badges!). Sure, they instituted this weird policy where employees could work from home but contractors couldn't - even though we both had the same equipment and were (assumedly) both sets of trustworthy adults. One of my contractor friends and I started calling this the Chinese Water Torture - no one droplet freaks you out, but add these things up and it gets overbearing. I wasn't to that point, but I can't say it didn't factor in.

So I'd been looking, for a while. Job boards, emails, interviews - the whole bit. At one point, I got a pretty serious interview from a company offering WAY more than I was making. Only one catch: the business was right on the edge of my moral standards. A lot of other people might not have felt a moment's regret doing this kind of thing, but I did. I told them that I probably wasn't their ideal candidate. That was one of the first interviews I had in my looking process, and it really colored my experience through every other encounter with a company. Others got serious (and I even got an offer at one point), but they never were in that stratosphere. I was glad to get interviews and offers, but in the back of my mind, I was always wondering if my value was actually way up there, instead of somewhere below.

I prayed a lot about this, and my friends from my church small group know that I wrestled a lot with this. Christians, on the whole, aren't taught a lot about how to deal with Ambition. We're allowed to strive for spiritual perfection, we all know that, but what about the rest? Is it wrong for a Christian to want to succeed in their career because they believe they can? Is it wrong to use money as one of the ways you measure that success? Is it wrong for me to want my family to live more comfortably? This search for the Contentment that isn't Stagnation is still something I'm trying to figure out.

My search seemingly concluded with an offer from the startup internet company GodTube, and I was really pumped about it. After all, it's been one of my passions to investigate this realm where Christianity and Cyberspace collide, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. I accepted the offer, knowing that the benefits and vacation weren't at all as good as I wanted, but believing that God had led me here and would work that part out.

About halfway into my two-week notice in my job at TI (what one should do during that lame-duck time is probably a blog post in itself), a friend there asked me if I'd be interested in another job opportunity. He had a friend at Rapp Collins, a full-service marketing agency, and they were having a BEAR of a time finding someone to come in as an Interactive Project Manager. The pay range was higher than what I'd accepted at GodTube, and I knew from my previous jobs with Ad/Marketing agencies that their benefits were usually pretty nice, too. So after praying about it, talking about it with my wife, and getting the input of respected friends, I decided to go ahead and interview there. This was a clear example of letting God show you the way he's planned, because I knew there were some hurdles to get over to get me working somewhere else after I'd already accepted another company's offer.

The interivew at Rapp went very well, and they were completely understanding of my situation. After 24 of the more stressful hours I've ever had, they contacted me with an offer. The benefits were there, the hurdles were overcome, and the pay was even back in the range of that first job - the one that had been nagging me ever since. I accepted, and had to inform GodTube that I'd been "made an offer I couldn't refuse."

I've been at the new job for a couple of weeks now, and I'm starting to see what God had in mind when he put me here. There's a lot of chaos, and a lot of work flow processes that have been cobbled together and held by sheer manual human labor because "they've worked so far." My new boss is extremely open to automating and streamlining these things, and has given me the task of doing just that. It's like a blacksmith creating his own hammer and anvil before starting a job - you're in a better position to do a good job because you made the tools. The word is that we've got a job coming in to do a complete redesign of a local corporation's web site, and I'm gonna be the guy Getting Things Done on that.

It's been a long journey, but I'm rejuvenated by my new surroundings. I lost the opportunity to pursue this "God and The Web" passion directly, but I'm going to start a new side project on that soon - keep looking here for details. What's more, I'm getting new leads to do some freelance design work, so I'm still gonna have the chance to get my hands dirty with some code and Photoshop. God's led me a long way to get here, and I praise Him for what He's done. Here's to more blogging from a new work address.

VIDEO: Fun with kids

Now that I've got a kid, I finally have a real idea of how funny they can be! Here's some other kids being almost as entertaining.

3-year-old Explains Star Wars



via [ Wired's Geekdad Blog ]


Fight Dad vs. Kids

Note : no kids were harmed in the making of this film!

Product Testing with Kids

A little parody from Jimmy Kimmel.

Technorati Tags: kids, funny, video, youtube, jimmy, kimmel