Skip to main content

Necktie Piracy


    "Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
    - U2, The Fly

Steal. Yes, I am advocating it. Steal with fervor.

When you hear an artist say, "It was inspired by..." what he really means is, "I tried to emulate the techniques, format, or functionality of...." Of course, in creative circles, people have come to uncomfortably accept such practices as compliments.

It can be interpreted the same way in the rest of the world, too. Use the best practices of others. Allow them to sharply hone and refine their systems and ideas, then guiltlessly seize them and make them your own. Assuming nothing proprietary (and thus illegal) is being displaced, most of these best practices are leadership skills - ways to teach success.

Find successes and leaders you admire, learn their stories and their ways, and then use them. Adaptation will follow, and before you know it, someone will be stealing your best practices.


Popular posts from this blog

List Of Convenient Excuses To Avoid Change

1. "That will never work." 2. "That said, the labor laws make it difficult for us to do a lot of the suggestions you put out. And we do live in a lawsuit oriented society." 3. "Can you show me some research that demonstrates that this will work?" 4. "Well, if you had some real-world experience, then you would understand." 5. "I don't think our customers will go for that, and without them we'd never be able to afford to try this." 6. "It's fantastic, but the salesforce won't like it." 7. "The salesforce is willing to give it a try, but [insert major retailer/corporation/partner here] won't stock it." 8. "There are government regulations and this won't be permitted." 9. "Well, this might work for other people, but I think we'll stick with what we've got." 10. "Our team doesn't have the technical chops to do this." 11. "Maybe in the next b...
Read more

Le Tour De France

In one of the single, greatest, individual efforts in all of sports, Floyd Landis overcame what should have been an insurmountable deficit to pull himself into third place in this year's Tour de France. He failed miserably the day before and then made up for it through willpower and determination. He will probably win. But that is not the story. The story is that Americans had no idea. While it made front page headlines across Europe, Australia, and Africa, it was on page thirteen of the sports section in the local, metropolitan newspaper. While bicycle racing is one of the less popular sports here in the States, the Tour de France is consistently one of the top two sporting events in the world each year. This year, its attendance and viewership were eclipsed only by the dramatic World Cup . Take a chance to recognize greatness, even if it is outside the boundaries of daily life. Floyd Landis' legendary effort has already been forgotten by the mainstream, even though it ...
Read more

Environmentally Conscious Graffiti

What are all the hip kids doing these days? Marketing their products on the streets, generating word of mouth , of course! Using pressure washers and urban soot, there has been a trend to "clean up" dirty city walls and sidewalks by adding advertising artwork. The most infamous are Vision Media's campaign (top right) for the 2006 Lotus Awards and O&M/London's Ultimate Fuel promotion (bottom right) for BP . As with most art, even etching commercial messages into dirt had its origins somewhere. This trend is usually linked with British graffiti artist Moose and his chemically etched Smirnoff reverse stencils (for which he was promptly disparaged and fined , mind you). It is brilliant that people are finding ways to gain attention while still bringing to light an issue of social consciousness. Those city bits are pretty filthy. Hopefully, local governments and homeowners associations will find cleanliness to be a higher virtue than homogenicity.
Read more