Zen Garden Fertilizer

No single raindrop believes it is responsible for the flood.

Corporate Wisdom

Special thanks to Dr. E.L. Kersten and his insightful tome, The Art of Demotivation", published by his crack team of corporate shills at Despair.com

Overselling The Package

You can't sell the value meal until you've sold the burger, and you can't sell the package of goods until you've sold the primary component.

Find the one thing that has the best shot at being bought by your potential clients. Sell it and then let it work. If it works for the client (and why would it not?), then you have already accomplished the majority of your marketing.

Rebel Without A Carpool Lane

Have you ever been driving on a highway when a police officer works his way into your little pod of traffic? Everyone slows down, afraid that they will be nabbed for doing exactly what they were doing when the officer was out of their eye sight (but not radar range, mind you).

Does the same thing happen when your boss walks into a meeting?

Both the officer and your boss are omnipresent. They both know you are repressing your instincts because of their presence. And most importantly, they both have the ability to hand you a little pink slip of paper that could cost you a lot of money.

Civil disobedience is a right, so bend (or break) a law or two under the watchful eye of the man. James Dean would do it.

How Many Wireless Routers Do You Have?

My dad does not have one, at all. He loves the fact that he "borrows" the neighbor's wireless signal.

My best friend has one. It sits next to his cable modem and zings along with his high-speed internet connection.

I have three. One for the voice-over-IP phone system and one on each end of the house so I can wander around in my underwear, with my laptop in tow, typing entries for this blog.

What does it all mean? Who knows, but there is probably some connection for your product or service in measuring things like this. Non-standard demographic, personality, or habitual data can mean a lot... if only you can find the right, strange, little niche and align it with your purpose.

"I'm A Bit Of A Whiz With These Things"

From TalentZoo.com...

Of all the things in the advertising business, nothing irks me more than having an ad or a piece of copy sent back to me by the client, re-written. Because inevitably, the result is a half-assed, watered-down, cliche-ridden mess.

I don’t mean asking for changes such as modifying an odd word or sentence, adding appropriate technical info, or moving some paragraphs around. On the whole, those are OK. I’m talking about instances when the client looked at what I wrote, opened up a new Word document, and began re-typing.

Clearly, it’s the one bugaboo that writers have to put up with more than art directors. Because clients can often ask for idiotic suggestions in designs or layouts, but they can’t whip out Quark or Photoshop and make it happen. Everyone, however, knows how to use a word processor.

Is the world moving toward more half-assed technological dexterity or are professionals going to look that much better in the face of increasing amateur incompetence?

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Boston Guerrilla Marketing Thing

Because it is ridiculous on so many levels and has to be mentioned, read about it here.

Did You Know That...

... materials engineers design and fabricate different types of textiles and elastics for use in socks based on the friction coefficients of the usual amount hair present on an average leg?

No, you had no idea. And your customers could not care less about why their socks stay up, either, as long as they do - especially if they are warm and comfortable while they are staying there.

Stones And A Butterfly

Iron Butterfly released their first album in 1967. Not many people noticed. In 1968, however, their album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida became the first platinum album in music history, in large part due to the unconventional and revolutionary format of its eponymous single. By the end of 1970, they had released two more albums, neither of which achieved any level of commercial or critical success. That was the end of Iron Butterfly.

The Rolling Stones released their first album in 1964. Over the course of several more albums spanning the next four decades, they became one of the seminal bands in music history. Their latest album was released in September, 2006 and inaugurated with a concert in Boston, attended by a sold out crowd of 44,000 enthusiastic fans.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but reinvention is the mother of longevity.

Amen

From AdRANTs...

"... go and rent a copy of 'The Hucksters' and check out the scene where Sydney Greenstreet as 'The Soap Baron' spits up a huge gob of phlegm on the boardroom table to show agency guy Clark Gable how you go about catching the consumers attention...." Read on...

What You See (Part 2)

A Caribbean legend tells of the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

The legend says that the indians on the island where Columbus landed could not see his ships approaching. They saw the ripples in the sea, far away, and were struck with wonder at why such disturbances were occurring in the water. After two or three days of these disturbances moving closer to shore, a shaman was finally able to see the ships. The shaman then went back to his people, described what he saw, and from then on, all of the indians on the island could see the ships.

No one could see the enormous Spanish clippers at first, the legend continues, because they had never seen such things before. They recognized the ripples in the sea because they knew and understood the water, but they had no way to conceptualize what was creating the disturbances because they had no previous associations of such things in their minds.

Once the indians had been told about the approaching ships by their shaman, and had the idea set into their minds, they could finally see the ships and would always recognize them as such.

What You See (Part 1)

When a camera takes in an image, it is objective and records what comes through its lens, without bias, not giving preference to one piece of information over another. The brown book sitting on the shelf is as important to the camera as the red fingernail raised toward the sky.

When the brain takes in an image, it receives 400,000,000,000 bits of information each second, but only processes 2,000 of those bits because the brain has a network of neurons that has been trained to use associations, both of objections and of familiarity, to sort information into quickly usable portions of fuel for decision making.

When watching a movie, is the focus on the streetlight in the background or the exploding truck in the foreground? The camera makes no separation between one bit of light and another, but the brain does.

Authentic Fake Picassos

A friend of Pablo Picasso recounts this story...

I was staying with Picasso in his studio. Every day, dealers would come by to authenticate paintings they were trying to sell. They would ask Picasso if the painting was real or a fake.

A dealer came by one day with a painting, Picasso glanced at it, and without hesitating said, "fake." Later that day, two more were identified as fakes.

The next day, a different dealer came by. Picasso hardly looked up. "Fake!" he bellowed.

After the dealer left, I couldn't help myself. "Picasso, why did you say that painting was a fake? I was here, in this studio, last year when I saw you paint it."

Picasso didn't hesitate. He turned to me and said, "I often paint fakes."

Always A New Way

A reader writes:

I signed up for the 14 day trial of rhapsody.com ... As I'm enjoying Roxanne by Sting I hear Feliz Navidad playing over the track. I instantly assume that something is wrong with the stream and try to replay the song. It happens again. I then go back to the song list page trying to figure out what the heck is doing that. Then I realize it. It's the Cingular Banner at the top of the page!!! How horrible. I was enjoying rhapsody.com. Now I'm done.

Interrupt. Annoy. Lose.

Immediate Results Or Years Of Struggle?

"Focus on that which is beyond what your eyes can see."
- Albrecht Durer

Visionaries are never right in the short term.

Tell Me What It Costs

There are two ways to sell tickets. The first way is to set a price, charge that price to customers, and then pay all the interested parties (performer, venue, ticket seller, etc.) their share. The second way is to set a price for the performance and then tack on fees for the venue, ticket seller, etc.

The first way is clean, fully operational, and easy to understand. Tickets are $40. OK. Here is $40. Thank you for the ticket. Tickets show up or are printed out and you stick them up on the refrigerator or bulletin board, eying them in anticipation for weeks. See you at the show. Everyone understands what the ticket is worth. Everyone understands that all the details are included.

The second way is overtly capitalistic. Tickets are $23. Facility fee is $6.75. Ticket seller "convenience" fee is $5.25. Shipping is $3.00. Printing the tickets directly, right now, is $5.00. Greed, confusion, and miscommunication are included - free. What other charges are going to come up by the time the show starts?

Selling tickets the first way shows thought and foresight. The second tactic demonstrates that a line has been drawn between creating a customer-centered experience and creating an easy to manage ledger for the promoter.

When in doubt, easier is easier.

You Have Two Choices Every Day

1. Invent the future, be remarkable, and change the world.

2. Be a used tire in the landfill of history, wasting away over a century, eventually becoming an unrecognizable part of the landscape.

Keeping Track

While no one will argue that measuring your efforts or maintaining a diary are good ideas, the story of Robert Shields from Dayton, Washington is truly remarkable.

For the last twenty years of his life, he meticulously chronicled every single thing he did and thought. He recounts everything he ate, every piece of junk mail he received, the weather, including temperature and humidity, inside and out, medications, prayers, bodily functions, and even the time spent typing his diary.

Believed to be the world's longest diary, it also includes such curiosities as samples of nose hair taped to the pages, as well as price stickers from meat purchased at the supermarket, and accounts of how he never slept more than two hours at a time so he would be able to remember, and thus record, his dreams.

A transcript of a radio interview and a sample page from his diary are both fascinating.

The Great Firewall Of China

When considering how important it is to preserve the neutrality of the internet, chew on these observations about what China and Iran are already doing. Communism and capitalism are coming increasingly close together when it comes to regulating content that should otherwise be free and freely accessible. What would it have been like if you had to pay for certain, designated books at the library when you were growing up? Try to imagine Ted Turner in one of Kim Jong-Il's jumpsuits....

Personal Branding

You (hopefully) are memorable. Keep in mind that you are always in the process of creating a brand image of yourself. People are always forming or reinforcing opinions of who you are to them. Did you catch that... "to them"?

Cornelius Huxtabull vs. Mark Jones. How many Cornelius's have you met in your lifetime?

Mohawk vs. Shaved Head. Not always appropriate, but memorable, none the less.

Voluptuous vs. Matronly or Patronly vs. Brotherly. This one goes frequently unspoken.

Evil Prick vs. Passive-Aggressive Doormat. Nice does not equal successful. Then again, memorable does not always equal positive.

tony@megacorp.com vs. tjohnson@megacorp.com. Most people have no idea what your last name is but are happy to know you by your first.

Every interaction builds on a relationship - with coworkers, clients, baristas, doormen.... It is perfectly acceptable to bring yourself to your work. Take every opportunity to set yourself apart with your personality.

There's Something Funny About Zombies

They are even funnier when they are arrested for being terrorists. Try not to think too loudly when in Minneapolis.

Value Creation In A Startup

You Ain't Gonna Learn What You Don't Want To Know offers up some great insights on the differences between corporate and start-up thinking.

"I Just Don't Know What's Good Anymore"

Commerce whacks art in the back of the kneecaps, once again...

Barneys Obsessions - Warhol Soup Cans.

Out Of Rehab And In Denial

George Carlin's great (and funny) example of why 85% of the words that come out of a person's mouth, especially at a meeting where someone is trying to sell something, mean nothing at all. You have no idea what he is talking about or what it means, but it sounds really impressive, even though it is completely contradictory and meaningless.

People are always trying to use more words, probably because they want to be sure they never miss any topics - like a shotgun wounding innocent bystanders. If someone is uninterested in the main thrust of what you came to say, what does it matter if they miss some of the side notes?

Looks Like A Drug Rep

Doctors and their staffs can see (maybe even smell) pharmaceutical sales people from several hundred yards away. Drug reps look the same. Women wear tailored, black, wool business suits with white blouses. Men show up in black gabardine slacks and blue shirts, usually with apathetically chosen neckties.

Receptionists apply their prejudices as soon as a drug rep walks through the door he or she just held open for woman pushing a stroller. And those prejudices, good or bad, control the drug rep's upcoming experience. Perhaps there is a set of office rules governing which ones or how many the doctor will bear to see in any given day, but mostly, it is the first impression of the person guarding the door that will determine the success or failure of the predestined sales rep.

So why do they all look the same? Because same is comfortable and familiar. If they do things the same as all the others they will be accepted into offices, they will deliver predictable results, and they will keep their job. When they look like everyone else, they know there are no mistakes being made. Except, of course, the most gigantic mistake of all - the absence of an original idea.

Would a woman in a red suit or a man in carefully selected tie really shake up the status quo? No. But someone dressed up like an average patient or another medical professional might. At least it would provide a fighting change to overcome the prejudices leveraged against them, forged by the uninventive masses which came before.

Looking and sounding like your competitors has been proven to fail. Being original, on the other hand, only fails some of the time.

The Truth Hurts, But Keep It To Yourself

The folks at Four Paws Design sound like they are constantly annoyed and wrote their company policies late at night after a long day of tolerating customers. They sound like life would be easier for them without the constant pestering of having to deal with orders. Eventually, it will be.

Contention and righteousness are no way to solve a problem. Everyone involved becomes indignant and upset and nothing is resolved, especially in the long term. In contrast, the folks at Woot! actually use sarcasm, apathy, and indignation to their advantage.

Do Something Fun As A Professional

Two robbers disguised in president masks hold up an adult video store in Austin, Texas. They back a pick-up truck through the front door. They tie up the three employees with fur-lined handcuffs and latex stockings. They steal $230 in cash, some body piercing jewelry, and an employee's car.

Not a huge loot, but what a great caper. It made the national news and will be talked about for a while because it is a ridiculous and unique story. Even though it was described by the police as "well executed", not many self-respecting criminals would have ever tried to pull it off.

While adult video store robbery may not be the best way to go, why not do something wacky or unpredictable in your professional career? Something unproductive and ridiculous, but well-executed and memorable. It never hurt to leave a legacy.

Check out the example being set by Simply Usability as they work for free for one year.

How To Destroy The World With A Smile

"Unfortunately, I find that I am taken less seriously when I wear happiness on my face."
- Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso

"There are only three occasions on which you should ever smile - those involving marriage, the birth of your child, or when you are being honored. But never in business."
- Donald Trump

"The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone else he can blame it on."
- Robert Bloch

Despite the cynicism, smile like you mean it.

Ban E-Mail

What would happen if you stopped using e-mail as a method of interpersonal communication? What if you called everyone or wrote them a note? Would it build better relationships? Try it for a week and see how it goes.

Note To Self

Books are much less effective than experiences at imparting learning through osmosis.