Professional mantra: make everyone around you look good
A friend and I were discussing this concept over the weekend. His boss had passed along this piece of advice to him, explaining that if those around you look good, then inevitably you also look good. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this, but for some reason, it struck a chord this time. As someone who is extremely attentive to detail to the point of being slightly anal, it’s much easier for me to find fault and criticize others’ work when I feel the product hasn’t reached its full potential. While it’s okay to have high expectations, it’s absolutely vital to be able to find positive aspects in your colleagues’ ideas and their work product. Finding the bright spots and exuding confidence in those around you is the single-best way to inspire and motivate. Ultimately, if those around you are inspired and motivated, they are more likely to do their best and this is the most powerful ingredient to achieving success as a team.
Classic quote from Boris Vian…
I stumbled upon this priceless quote from the preface of L’ecume des Jours, written by 1940s/50s Parisian literary figure, Boris Vian, and felt it worth sharing:
There are only two things: love in all its forms with pretty girls and the music of New Orleans and Duke Ellington, it’s the same. The rest should disappear, for the rest is ugly, and the brief demonstration that follows gathers all its energy from the fact that the story is entirely true, because I imagined it from one end to the other.
“Hey, I found the perfect girl for you….”
Someone recently launched a powerful avatar campaign called Your Perfect Girl where you stumble upon a beautiful woman who knows your name, adores your imperfections and shares all your favorite interests. She even takes you to bed with her and raves about it the next morning!! What else could anybody wish for? Best of all, you can share it with your friends and it’s, quite naturally, intensely viral. Similar to the hugely popular Monk-e-mail campaign that Oddcast did for Career Builder, people are just beginning to realize the power of avatars in communicating and interacting with customers and constituents. If anybody figures out who is behind this one, please let me know.
The battle for Iconistan heats up
In cased you missed the news, there is a battle going on over a land called Iconistan. This isn’t any normal place, rather it’s a virtual one that lives and breathes on millions of web browsers every day. It typically resides near an article subtitle or byline and is filled with icons representing various tools and features that are competing to be the web’s next new new thing. The term received press recently on Wired and also by the man who allegedly coined the phrase, Tony Conrad, CEO of Sphere. Some examples of this evolving landscape include NY Times recent redesign of their Iconistan giving power to newcomers such as Newsvine and Facebook (this one surprised me) and taking it away from established heavyweight, del.icio.us. GigaOm has the most unique Iconistan, giving prominence to virtually every contender fighting for a piece of the pie, including several I had never seen. I think the tools that provide the most user value will end up winning this war and so the websites that include these tools will share in the victory. The Web (1.0 and 2.0) is about the user and if you give the user what they want, they will reward you handsomely.
To all marketing professionals - “Get creative or find new work”
One of the areas of business affected most profoundly by Web2.0 and new technologies is the world of marketing. No longer is just a catchy message delivered by an actor during the commercial break sufficient to woo customers. Advertising today must be creative, cool and most of all, entertaining. The old "I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV" approach, guilting your audience into a purchase, may do more harm for a companies image as the result of negative customer backlash than good in today’s environment. Marketers have been embracing MySpace and YouTube for a a year or so, but recently advertisements in the form of entertaining videos with every-so subtle messages from their sponsor have achieved phenomenal success at reaching their audience. Stride Gum launched what is perhaps the most successful of these new-form campaigns recently with their video Where the Hell is Matt? As you can see from the video below, this is first and foremost an entertaining video. Second, its a short and subtle spot for Stride Gum, but only after the viewer has been fully drawn in by the video do we realize this.
This video has received over four million views on YouTube….a huge viewership for any marketing campaign, particularly one as low budget as this, granted Stride probably has $10,000 invested in airfare alone. In true Web2.0 fashion, we launched a response with Where in Israel is Jacob? (yes, mixing in a Zionist subtext to keep things interesting). This video has 6,000 views in the first week, which we’re also excited about.
The Significance of The New Year
2007 has arrived. I don’t know what the new year has in store for me, but I hope it to be at least as exciting and full of growth as 2006. After a few drinks last night, I was waxing philosophic (because that’s what I do) about the significance of New Years and why everyone gets so excited about it. After a few drinks, I came up with the following hypothesis:
Throughout the year, we all celebrate our individual birthdays which signify another year of life having passed. On New Years Eve, we celebrate reaching another year of life together, therefore it represents our collective and shared birthday. As I pondered the funny SMS messages I received from friends on my phone last night, I scripted the following words which became my 2007 New Years message:
New Years is the birthday we all share, the birthday of humanity. Happy birthday my friend!!