Talking, Walking, Thinking
August 21, 2009
I love the movie Hustle and Flow. It’s definitely R-rated, and therefore not for everyone, but it’s all about overcoming your circumstances to grab at something better. And of course it’s about music.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when the ambitious young pimp-wanna-be-rapper D-Jay (played excellently by Terrence Howard) is trying to persuade his old high school friend Key (who is by comparison highly respectable, played by Anthony Anderson) to help him cut a hiphop record. Key’s response:
There are two types of people: those that talk the talk and those that walk the walk. People who walk the walk sometimes talk the talk but most times they don’t talk at all, ’cause they walkin’. Now, people who talk the talk, when it comes time for them to walk the walk, you know what they do? They talk people like me into walkin’ for them.
The movie from then on out hinges on D-Jay’s ability to talk and Key’s ability to walk, and I won’t ruin how it ends up – but I recommend this movie if you haven’t seen it.
The reason this quote resonates with me is because I think it’s a lens through which you can look at your own life. Yes, I’m probably the only guy that watches Hustle and Flow and gets introspective, but bear with me.
How much of you is talk? How much of you is walk? I like to throw in a third category -”thinking” – because it’s something I personally love to do and it can sometimes keep me from walking or talking.
I think part of being good professionally (and probably personally) is balancing those activities. We’ve all met people who are “all talk” with little thought or follow-through, we’ve met the impestuous people who are “all action” seemingly without thought or communication, and we’ve met the “analysis paralysis” people who think all the time but don’t seem to say or do much. The key, in my mind, is not to try not to fall into one of those categories – being thought, communication, and action in equal or appropriate parts.
So if you don’t hear from me on this blog, talking it up, I’m probably too busy walkin’ (or thinking up my next post). Because as the theme song from Hustle and Flow says, it’s hard out there for a pimp.
Feeling what the artist felt . . .
May 12, 2009
Never heard it expressed so succinctly and accurately. This is what art is all about. (via Buzzfeed)
Your brand: The bridge to community
January 19, 2009
This post is cross-posted over on The Engaged Consumer, Powered’s company blog.
My colleagues Aaron Strout and Bill Fanning have gotten a great conversation started around the difficulty of connecting community with a brand that seems not quite as “community ready,” starting with a recent post titled “Would you join a Toothpaste Community?“
This is a question we get all the time in initial sales calls with savvy brand marketers. They get social marketing, but can’t quite see how people could ever get excited about their product – that is, excited enough to engage at a deeper level within a branded community. Aaron suggested a nice approach where you categorize your offering and look to commonly effective strategies. I’ll add to that by suggesting an additional approach that is a little more zen.
Alright, clear your mind. Let’s imagine that you are in a room with your ad agency and you are trying to brainstorm a new ad campaign. They will likely put you through a series of exercises designed to explore what you want your brand to mean to consumers. What are you really selling? Where is the point at which your product or service connects with something your potential buyer really cares about? Answering these questions allows your agency to produce a 30-second spot or a print campaign that more powerfully engages your target audience.
You might offer auto insurance, but you’re really selling safety and comfort. You might serve coffee, but you’re really selling opportunity and energy. You might be a toothpaste manufacturer, but you’re really selling health and good looks.
Before someone ever considers buying your insurance, coffee, or toothpaste, they have to be in the mode of being safer, being opportunity-driven, feeling healthy. That’s why TV commercials never start with the product that’s being sold, they start with images that evoke those feelings and then end with product. What I would suggest is that while these lifestyle elements are the secret to effective ad campaigns, they are also your bridge to an effective, high-return social marketing strategy.
What about a social marketing program centered on how to make your family safer: in your home, on the road, on the Internet? What about a program about how be more productive, more organized, more energetic? What about a program centered around total health, personal appearance, effective presentation? These are passion points for people, and it’s where you already get them to care about you. So why not deepen and broaden that brand-relevant interaction with online community? Bring in experts, engage celebrities, turn your compelling 30-second spot into a compelling conversation.
As in many things, the secrets to success here aren’t necessarily in some new playbook. They are hidden in what you already know. Why do people care about what you’re selling?
Photo Credit: Originally Uploaded by Carolyn from Lucky Planet Photography
How to restore a lost iTunes library
January 4, 2009
Too often a hard drive crash or some unforeseen circumstance causes us to lose our library of tunes. This recently happened to my wife Megan, so I had a little project this morning to do what I could to restore it. I thought I’d take a second and share what I found and did. Of course, this assumes that you have no back-up (either a back-up drive or physical media such as CDs). Actually, after a little research it turns out it’s pretty easy.
1. Transfer what you can from your iPod to your new instance of iTunes.
A. Enable your iPod for “manual management of music.” You can do this by installing iTunes and then connecting your iPod. When it asks you, DO NOT tell it to erase and sync your iPod. Hit cancel, then simply click the manual management box when your iPod comes up in iTunes.
B. Download Ephpod. This is a free little utility that allows you to copy music from your iPod to iTunes (iTunes doesn’t allow this itself). Ephpod will ask you to select your iPod hard drive when you fire it up. If you can’t see your iPod hard drive in the list then you need to go back to step A. Now select all of your music displayed in Ephpod and go to File > Copy to Directory. Copy everything into your My Documents > My Music > iTunes directory.
C. Go into iTunes and select File > Import Folder. Then import all of the music you just moved over. You should be good to go. In the case where you have AAC files bought from the iTunes store, you will need to make sure you authorized the new computer to play them.
2. Still not everything? Well, you can send Apple an email and it’s been reported that they will allow you to download all your purchases made through them – but only once.
I did all of this this morning, and I’m still waiting to hear back from Apple. I’ll let you know if that last step works as advertised.
Update: My wife did hear back from Apple the same day that I sent the request, and when she didn’t respond immediately the nice woman from Apple reached out to her again. We were able to download our purchases again, as reported elsewhere. Another great customer experience with Apple. Libary restored. Thank you Apple!
Update 2 (11/16/2009): This continues to be a very popular post, it really seems to be a problem that lots of people have. It looks like since my original post Apple has changed their website and removed the support form I used to reference in Step 2 above when I say “sending an email.” However, now you can arrange a call with an expert by going here, which admittedly is better than submitting a form and waiting for a response. In general, if you find any of my instructions above can be improved or are outdated please make a comment on how to fix the issue faster – around 50 people read these instructions every day so you would really be helping a lot of people.
Meme-Tags and Vintage Photos
January 3, 2009
Mr. Aaron Strout, who recently joined Powered as our CMO, just meme-tagged me! When the message came over via Twitter that I had been tagged, I have to admit that had no idea what it meant. Meme-tagged, me?
But after reading Aaron’s blog post, it became clear that a game of meme-tag is really a more fun version of those “20 questions about you” email chain letters that used to go out. In fact, I have seen these little games perpetuating not only through Twitter but through Facebook. Last month my Facebook friends and I had fun with the “open the nearest book and type in the 7th sentence on the 53rd page” game. Some of the quotes were pretty funny taken out of context, but the more interesting thing was to see what people had on their bookshelves. These are a great way to feel connected to the folks in your extended network.
The other, somewhat-related trend I’ve seen in Facebook over the past few months is that several unrelated people in my network are starting to upload really old photos – soccer team pictures, second grade pictures, prom pictures. Another small way to feel connected, or to reconnect, with old friends through the sharing of a small piece of media. And Facebook continues to cement its position as the truly de facto social network.
But back to Aaron – his challenge is to upload and display the sixth photo on the six page of your Flickr photostream in your blog. Here’s the embarrassing thing: I am barely a Flickr user. I checked and I only have 23 pictures in my account. So as a stand-in I am going to upload the 66th photo in my iPhone camera roll . . . it’s a picture I took at the Seattle wedding of friends Becky and Amit this past summer (friends from business school).
And who will I tag to do the same? Let’s tag Josh Wills (@dukethug), Rebecca Frasier (@bexmix), Amy Mendel (@atmendel), Shwen (@shwen), Brianna Barnes (@briannab), and Ryan Joy (@atxryan). You’re it.
Olympics’ Opening Ceremony reflects opposing ideals
August 12, 2008
Today my friend Avi posted a link to a New York Times article about how the little girl who sang China’s national anthem in the Beijing Summer Games was lip-synching the voice of another girl who wasn’t cherubic enough to be the face of China.
This set my mind in motion about the whole nature of communism and it’s necessary deconstruction of the individual in order to support the communist collective – the U.S. and China are so different culturally in this basic way. It’s completely fine to have more than one little girl contribute to the idyllic image of China from the Chinese perspective, while in the U.S. we get concerned about the impact on her self-esteem and her ability to feel strong and independent as a result of being deemed “not pretty enough.” Of course, being an Atlas-Shrugged kind of guy myself, it gets me riled up. But nevertheless there is something to be said for a culture that can put themselves completely aside and rejoice in selflessness.
Also, an interesting contrast from elsewhere in the ceremonies – the impressive synchronization of thousands of Chinese drummers and dancers against the individual Chinese athlete who rises by himself, suspended hundreds of feet in the air, to light the Olympic torch. Which image do you think is more impressive to the Chinese, which to Americans?
For me the takeaway – without getting too political – is that we have much to learn about and from each other, and that both feats, the selfless and the selfish, have their places in the world.
Photo Credit: Left, Agence France-Presse; Right, Zhou Liang/Xinhua (via the New York Times)
Addicted to a better world?
May 7, 2008
Back in the late 90′s I worked for a small start-up software company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was my first job out of undergrad college, and I loved it because I worked with a bunch of other fresh-outta-college people in a 30-person company where we dreamed big.
Around this time, one of the first (and probably the first that gained really wide popularity among people who weren’t traditional “gamers”) massively multi-player online role-playing games came out – named Everquest. A MMORPG (yes, that really is the acronym) is a game where you can go online, log in, and play as a character in a completely immersive 3D virtual fantasy world. The world is populated by other virtual characters controlled by other gamers doing the same things you are. It’s fantasy gaming with a social element. The most popular MMORPG now is World of Warcraft which is reported to have 62% of the market, which means they have approximately 10 million monthly subscribers.
A few folks at work tried it and got into it a little bit, but there was one guy who REALLY got into it. After awhile, his door at work would remain closed as he spent hours upon hours (and lots of company time) playing Everquest. His workplace gaming started to cut into the real work he was supposed to be doing, and worsened until the inevitable happened and he was laid off. It was a shame, and it left the rest of us searching for an explanation.
I myself have had unnatural urges to play everything from Starcraft to Minesweeper (yes, Minesweeper) – but nothing that ever interfered materially with my ability to hold down a job, be in a relationship, or eat regularly. Yet my friend from that job isn’t alone. A couple of weeks ago at the South by Southwest Film Festival I got to see the debut of Second Skin, a documentary film which followed a couple stories where people destroyed their lives playing online games. One guy lost his job and his family, not minding “as long as he could keep the lights on and the internet connected.” Games can be horribly addictive. But why?
I’d never heard any really good structured reasons explaining why people can get as addicted to games as they can to drugs or gambling – until I heard another talk at South by Southwest Interactive from game designer Jane McGonigal, who offered some fascinating insight.
Jane observed that these games are increasingly designed to mimic the real interactions between people (people get married and have funerals in these worlds), but they seek to separate themselves from the real world environmentally (dragons and trolls and damsels in distress). The goal is clear – to create a world that is more interesting, more fulfilling than the real world by keeping the meaningful pieces and throwing out the rest. And because the economic purpose of game design is to get you to play more, designers have gotten exceptionally good at understanding the triggers within people that generate that interest and fulfillment.
As a game designer with a philosophical streak, Ms. McGonigal has spent a great deal of time thinking about what those triggers might be in a universal sense. She shared with the audience why she believes people get addicted to games, particularly the immersive role-playing variety. What is unexpected is that these reasons have nothing to do with cool graphics and sound, imaginative monsters, or compelling plotlines. They have to do with the satisfaction of more basic human needs, and there are four of them :
1. There is satisfying work to do (accomplishment).
2. There is an opportunity to be part of something bigger (significance).
3. There is a chance to be good at something (expertise).
4. You get to spend time with people you like (relationships).
The best (most fulfilling) games are very clear about how you can do the things above (instructions), have better features for allowing interaction (community), and give frequent, quality feedback (milestones).
The implication is that people who become addicted to games are finding much more satisfaction in the dimensions above than they are in their real lives.
So have game designers become the new experts in the psychology and sociology of human fulfillment? I find the theory fascinating – and I believe it holds water. Psychologists and sociologists are already studying gaming environments and learning important things from them.
If we spend more time capturing what we learn from game worlds, and applying what we already know, we might just be able to use those lessons to restructure the real world to be more fulfilling. To be more like a game. Wouldn’t you love it if your real life, especially the part of it you spend at work, could be something you could get addicted to?
UPDATE: My friend Josh aptly messages: “those 4 things also describe working at Google.” One of the many reasons why they are probably on the Fortune 100 list of best places to work. Jobs at Google.
Wicksite: Other writings from across the web
March 28, 2008
I realized recently that I had just passed the one-year anniversary of my first blog post, a day that will go down in history I tell you! That first post was for my previous company closerlook, on their Work + Play blog. I enjoyed it enough that a few months later, I started this one.
Most of the time I’m writing for other blogs along with wicksite, most of them associated with my current or past employers. Alas, the hazards of working for someone else for a living. Here is where else you can find me, and a comprehensive list of posts from other sources up until now. This is a big dump of links, going forward I’ll try to cross-post or link out as I write them.
The Engaged Consumer (Powered’s corporate blog) - We just recently started this blog, and so far, so good.
Five lessons from social marketing disasters (March 12, 2008)
Social networking vs. social commerce (February 22, 2008)
Outspend or outteach? (February 15, 2008)
The new focus groups: social networks (February 1, 2008)
The two voices of social commerce (December 14, 2007)
Work + Play (closerlook’s corporate blog) - We started the blog in March of 2007, and I left in September to move to Austin. It’s a great blog at a great company!
It’s no fun to be alone! (August 7, 2007)
Gmail goes viral with “behind-the-scenes” video (August 3, 2007)
Firing a customer? Are you crazy? (July 12, 2007)
Keeping the questions golden (July 3, 2007)
Paying something for nothing (June 22, 2007)
Viral campaign freaking my mind (May 30, 2007)
Seth Godin and The Dip (May 22, 2007)
The strategy disconnect (April 28, 2007)
Now I finally know what Kurt Cobain was singing (April 26, 2007)
Saying “I do” to your customers (April 11, 2007)
Gimme some IMAX (April 7, 2007)
The trap of “what clients want” (April 6, 2007)
A song heard round the world (April 2, 2007)
Starbucks speaks its own language (March 30, 2007)
Why oh why CGI?
December 18, 2007
Last night I went to the movie theater behind my apartment complex here in Austin and saw the new Will Smith movie, I am Legend. In it, Will lives alone with his dog in a post-apocalyptic New York where almost everyone has died of a super-virus. The reason I write “almost everyone” is because those who didn’t die from it (other than Big Will) have been transformed into a slavering mob of half-vampire half-zombie meanies who’d like nothing more than to have a Big Will buffet.
Now this sounds like it is right down my alley, and as the movie started it was. The opening images of Will prowling a empty, overgrown Mid-town Manhattan – hunting for food and researching a cure for the super-virus in the day, and closing heavy steel plate doors over his windows at night – really captivated me. The beautiful, solitary city scene, enhanced by CGI (computer-generated imagery), the forboding sense of “something’s not right here,” and the human themes of solitude and faith were compelling.
Then the bad guys starting appearing. A note from Entertainment Weekly via Wikipedia:
A week into filming, Francis Lawrence felt the infected, who were being portrayed with actors wearing prosthetics, were not convincing. His decision to use computer-generated imagery meant post-production had to be extended and the budget increased. Lawrence explained, “They needed to have an abandon in their performance that you just can’t get out of people in the middle of the night when they’re barefoot. And their metabolisms are really spiked, so they’re constantly hyperventilating, which you can’t really get actors to do for a long time or they pass out.”
And thus a movie that started out very promising and came close to being much more than just a holiday-season popcorn genre flick, was dragged down by its own technology. If the live actors wearing prosthetics were not compelling, these computer-generated bad guys are worse. The anxiety you feel when you hear them moving around in the dark, hear Will’s dog barking, and watch Will get more and more terrified, is totally dispelled when they emerge into the light.
I had a similar experience when I went to see the recently released Beowulf. They took an all-star cast of Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, and Crispin Glover, a very well-written script and some much better monster effects – and at some point decided to have all the human characters developed in CGI as well, turning them into highly paid voices that inhabit lifeless animated husks.
Numerous other movies I’ve seen in the CGI era that feature a supernatural element ruin it to some extent with a weak CGI payoff at the climax of the movie. Off the top of my head The Haunting, The Grudge, The Ring, and The Mummy all come to mind. I’m sure if I spent some time the list could go on and on. Seriously scary movies like 28 Days Later, Aliens, The Shining, The Exorcist, The Thing, Psycho – not a stitch or very limited (tasteful) use of CGI.
I hope that directors will eventually start to take their cues from these movies – sometimes what you don’t see is scarier than what you do. And when you do see it, sometimes all you need is a little red dye and a latex mask to make it work.
wicksite turns 1 month old
July 11, 2007
Early on in any relationship you tend to celebrate the small anniversaries. My relationship with this blog just turned 1 month old! Pop the champagne!
Why did I start the blog? And why am I going to keep it going? No, it’s not out of sheer, unbridled vanity. It’s because I like to write, and the reason I like to write is that I like to share. I’ve always experienced that sharing a lot, perhaps more than you are comfortable with, has far more positive consequences than negative.
So thank you to everyone who has visited, and especially to those who have taken the leap of faith and subscribed to wicksite. It’s nice to know that people are reading.
So here’s my call for you, dear reader. As you no doubt have seen, in the first month I’ve experimented with a lot of topics and styles. So what was your favorite post or posts? And why? Let me know via comments below or just email me.
Also, in the next month, or the next year, if you like a post forward it to at least one person and tell them to check the blog out. The more the merrier.
Some stats: 20 posts, 12 comments, 326 total views
[Photo Credit: Jana L'Esperance]
