tagged: quotes

October 11, 2011

Where does your tone come from?

It frustrates me when people get seduced by shiny new stuff and ignore the important things. One of the biggest dangers in the digital age is the allure of perpetual novelty. There will never be another day when you can’t do something new. That’s exciting but also distracting.

This thought is captured nicely in a couple of quotes in Rework by the 37 Signals guys. This first one concerns companies’ unhealthy interest in change:

The things that don’t change are people and their motivations; feelings and spirit. Although I’ve never labelled myself such, I’ve always considered myself a ‘brand strategist’ of sorts — Sorry if you hate the word brand — A brand strategist in the sense that I’m interested primarily in finding a company’s soul and then living out its values in whichever forms feel appropriate.

Which is why I enjoyed this other quote from the book:

You can use all the fancy technology you want. But your tone needs to come from you. Technology won’t find your tone or your company’s soul. It might play some important roles in expressing and realising it, but the tone is in your fingers.

3 comments tagged: lessons, quotes, ramblings

March 23, 2011

Systems within systems

This is the best thing I’ve read that explains why you can’t predict the results of your marketing campaign or ‘branded utility’:

“You cannot even reliably predict the next move in a chess game. Why? Because the ‘system’ involves more than the rules of the game.”

Your campaign is a tight, finite system (involving motivations, interactions, ‘channels’ etc) but it overlaps with many other systems (mechanical and social). Your little ‘chess game’ does not describe the edges of the playing field. All you can do is create a game compelling enough to feed into – and from – greater, more meaningful systems and relationships.

Amplified superficiality

I’m reading Alone Together. Mainly because I saw Russell was reading it. And anything that feeds his mighty brain must be worth a squizz. (Is that creepy?)

Anyway, I’m half way through, and squizz-worthy it is. My favourite bit so far is the below. The two quotes are describing teenagers’ usage of social networks. But it perfectly describes how brands are dealing with the social space too. Have a read and think about your brand or company. In fact, I’ll even bastardise the words to help:

“These young people [companies] are among the first to grow up with an expectation of continuous connection: always on, and always on them. [...] They nurture friendships on social-networking sites and then wonder if they are among friends. They are connected all day but are not sure if they have communicated.”

It gets better:

“Their digitized friendships—so often predicated on rapid response rather than reflection—may prepare them, at times through nothing more than their superficiality, for relationships that could bring superficiality to a higher power.”

Boom. ‘Bring superficiality to a higher power’. Let that be a warning. A superficial approach to engagement does not become less superficial just because it lives in a potentially more intimate environment. ‘Connection’ does not equate to meaningful affiliation. Which also means more data does not (necessarily) equate to more meaningful measurement.

Wow, I blogged. Maybe it’s not dead just yet ;)

1 comment tagged: interesting, lessons, quotes

January 17, 2011

Ballard on change

I really like this sentence from J. G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun:

“It was not that war changed everything – in fact, Jim thrived on change – but that it left things the same in odd and unsettling ways.”

We tend to think of change as something that pivots on the present rather than the past. That it concerns newness and yesterday’s inability to keep up. Seeing it as a kind of wounded version of the past gives it a more intimate quality. I fucking love words.

Update: Wow, that was drivel wasn’t it. That’ll teach me to read Ballard and then assume I can write something equally insightful. If you’re as disappointed as I am, re-read the quote above and just ignore me.

leave a comment tagged: miscellaneous, quotes

November 5, 2010

Actors and businessmen

You might know that I think ‘changing perspectives is sexy’. I quite enjoyed Jesse Eisenberg‘s defence of Mark Zuckerberg in this Guardian article.

“I really view him as an artist. And if you view it in that way, a lot of what he does is not only defensible but necessary. As an actor, if I show up late somewhere or I say something that’s eccentric, it’s totally acceptable – not only that, it’s lauded in some perverse way. Because Mark is a businessman, we don’t give him the same leeway.”

1 comment tagged: quotes

March 31, 2010

situations

One of my beefs with marketing and communications is that everything has to be ‘the answer’. The big idea, the next thing, the one-stop solution. We talk as though our job is a giant game of air-hockey and we just have to bat the puck back with the answer that kills it outright.

Part of the issue is the language we use to start the conversation. We promise ‘the answer’ because the brief sets up a ‘problem’.

I was thinking about that this morning and remembered a Woody Allen movie quote. I forget the details, but his character was caught in a bit of a pickle and he said: “We have a situation here.” In typical Allen style, he didn’t elaborate on what kind of situation it was; just that ‘something was happening’. It’s since become a fairly common expression. [I haven't fact-checked this, but my brain insists it's correct]

Maybe if we talked more about ‘situations’ than ‘problems’, we’d notice good responses that aren’t necessarily the ‘answer’.

3 comments tagged: industry, quotes, ramblings

March 30, 2010

deepities

The awesome Daniel Dennett gets deep:

don’t get caught monologuing

Time for some more Pixar life lessons. (There are many!)

Sometimes, blogging feels like another word for ‘not doing’. I find myself wallowing in intellectual ideas that are a far cry from real, tangible action. It can also feel (particularly when very few people comment) like a solitary – and therefore doubly detached – experience.

Of course the good things about blogging outweigh the bad, but the last thing anyone should want to do is disappear into their own rhetoric while the real world needs their pragmatic attention.

In The Incredibles, there is a running joke about baddies ‘monologuing’. This self-indulgent rambling is often their downfall:

Just a little reminder to myself not to get caught monologuing.

4 comments tagged: quotes, ramblings

November 5, 2009

always let the audience sting themselves with bees

Good advice from Jonathan Harris’ fourth grade teacher, Baz:

“I was trying to impress the audience with smart answers to life’s big questions,” he said. “It was all hype. But then I realized I didn’t have the answers to life’s big questions, and instead of writing plays that pretended to, I had to write plays that simply asked the right questions. I had to bring the audience up on stage with me, include them in the answering.”

Not a million miles away from Russell’s bee-keeping advice:

“Always push the bees the way they want to go”

The rest of Harris’ vignettes are worth a read too.

series vs serials

As well as Tim Wright’s Kidmapper, I also enjoyed Duncan Gough‘s talk at Playful.

He did too, apparently:

Jolly good.

His words were intended (presumably) to be considered in a game-context, but I think a lot of it was very relevant to ‘experiences’ as a whole.

Duncan compared TV ‘series’ with TV ‘serials’. The main difference being that in a series, each episode is self-contained. No matter what happens, the next week, things could be back to normal. Like the Simpsons. Serials on the other hand, do carry the responsibility of consequence. What happens in one episode impacts the story as it is picked up in the following one. Like The Wire. And also like life.

It didn’t take a genius (I know, because I am that non-genius) to connect this thought to attitudes to brand communications.

Most brand comms is played out like a series; a series of mini campaigns, each of which is quickly forgotten. Long term value is ignored in favour of short term results. Even “big ideas” are ditched for a new “big idea” very quickly. The reasons for doing this are clear. I’m more interested in the reasons for not doing it.

While it may suit some brands/companies to operate in this snacky way, many would be well advised to think in terms of serials, not series. That is, if genuine ‘meaning’ is more important than simply treading water. Just ask yourself, would you rather people flicked over to your brand like they do with the Simpsons, or would you rather they mourned your absence, like the Wire?

3 comments tagged: lessons, postulations, quotes