Cambium Creative's Blog

Easter Eggs for the Holidays

2007-11-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

Christopher Walken has a fake blog where I found this clip he claims to have forged.

Beatbox in the subway. Watch the guy doing the crossword who keeps his back turned as if he'd rather disappear into the night. Phil Collins never sounded so good.

The Lindy Hop from 1941's Hellzapoppin':

I think they call this joie de vivre:

The Most Amazing Conspiracy Theory of All Time

2007-09-19T07:21:00.000-06:00

Here's one conspiracy theory we can all get on the tin foil train with:

And, leave Brittany alone, too.

Nucular Brilliance and Kangaroos and Armageddon or not

2007-09-10T12:43:00.000-06:00

This is apropos of nothing that's remotely business related, except perhaps as an example of the brilliant synergy of words and images playing well together.

Be warned, if your ears are virgins, do not click through--some of the language is a bit rude. I'm trusting most of you speak French, or have at least had it pardoned in your presence, and won't find yourself in need of heart massage. If not, I don't know where you can safely go in this world, but godspeed to you.

"But I am le tired," is perhaps the most perfect line, though I wouldn't fall on my sword for it.

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Bremner, Bird and Fortune--The Moral Blackmail of Modern Life?

2007-08-19T19:16:00.000-06:00

This is British humour at its finest. I just can't get over how fabulous this is on so many levels. Enjoy!

Cambium Creative Takes Pictures!

2007-08-19T14:52:00.000-06:00

Hot summer photos!

Steve Martin's King Tut

2007-08-02T21:57:00.001-06:00

King Tut

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User Generated Advertising and a $50,000 Payday

2007-07-21T05:21:00.000-06:00

I ran across this website (thank you Stumble) and knew right away that this isgoing to be hot.

They haven't launched yet, but Change Advertising Forever is an idea for which the world is ripe. The concept extends the success of the user-generated phenomenon in a fascinating new direction.

Change Advertising Forever will post advertising briefs from companies wanting a swank ad. All comers are invited to submit their own ads. Those chosen are paid $50,000. Cool, huh?

I'm curious to see what the ratio of neophytes to post-neophytes will be. But I'm really looking forward to seeing the work. I'm guessing edgier work. There are no constraints other than the client brief, so it's a very different cubicle of thought.

Ad agencies are an amazing amalgam of metrics, professional bonhomie and a creative product. Usually, these disparate people come together without coming to blows, but it's a sustained balancing act. There's an air of hiptitude that belies the fact that creative advertising is some of the hardest brain work there is. Madison Avenue and its less iconic brethren are seldom as free spirited as we'd like to be.

But in this scenario, it's a creative brief and a creative product, without any other pressures. The clip below tells the story:

Is this the wave of the future? Is that a good thing or not? Will elderly creatives be lunching on Alpo because of clever 16-year-olds?

Of course not. This concept is applicable to a thin stripe of the ad rainbow. Good advertising of a broad scope and lasting sort depends on relationships and expertise.

That said, I think it could be an incredible showcase for giving talented unknowns the chance to get noticed.

Personal DNA Personality Quiz

2007-07-14T09:26:00.000-06:00

I can't resist a personality quiz, and this was a good one:

According to this quiz, I'm a benevolent director. Doesn't that sound nice?

Mouse over the color bars for results.

It's a pretty good read on me. Want to take the test yourself? Check it out.

If you're into this sort of thing, some months ago I ran across this personality quiz that I thought was especially fun. You're asked to choose from a selection of images to define various characteristics and that's the raw data they turn into what they call your "visual DNA." Hooey? Maybe, but I liked it.

"I think I was always misunderstood," said the wind.

2007-07-08T14:05:00.000-06:00

Poetry, Unexpected

2007-06-25T12:44:00.000-06:00

There's a bard in my comment section. Here's what he (I'm assuming it's a he from the contents of the poem, but I could be wrong) wrote:

4 June 2007

After the storm, my mind cleared.

And a high wind arose and blew the tropics north.

running quartz crystals through a blender.

sand through your engines.

bubbles in your bays.

estuaries reaching out toward forbidden seas…

sand through your eyes.

5 June 2007

Calm as baby’s breath

as peaceful as the storm’s eye

Clouds spread and drawn with rough strokes of stratospheric winds

a warm and windy tropical day.

7 June 2007

Black water at dusk.

Lighting on the horizon.

Warm winds coming in across the darkening waters.

A flash of white wings as an egret takes flight.

And Thunder like God clearing his throat.

8 June 2007

Morning star in the still of the clear, dark waters.

a sky as clear eyed as a young girl.

bruised and tattered storm remnants limp off in the gathering light.

9 June 2007

Tickled her fancy.

giggling all the day long.

pretty good for a Saturday.

Clouds on the lake floating aimlessly by.

She smiled big–grinned really.

12 JUne 2007

A silver sky

ripe for the mirror.

you can not see yourself in this mirror

you can only see others

moreover, you can only see what others choose to expose.

Their houses, their boats, their sea-doos.

Birds skimming low over the water could

like as not

see them selves if they were to look down

as they skim low over the water

but they never do.

Rather they allow their reflections to chase them

quick and sharp over the still, glistening waters

while the bird’s mind remains ever fixed on

food, or other birds, or escaping those damn noisy humans.

A dense forest impenetrable as a gaze.

13 JUne 2007

Like angry bee’s eyes

the metal screen seen through the bamboo blinds.

A million insects dot the lake spreading micro ripples

14 June 2007

Of Fly Catchers and hidden lakes.

Of sleeping lizards and morning dew.

It is of birdsong and misty dawns

and fleeced clouds floating in a still pool.

The waters ripple awake in the gathering morn.

The first water birds head out for the far shore.

20 June 2007

A garden of elephant ears.

A lake of light.

A furrowed sky.

Warm air, tinged with the coolness of a passing shower.

A swath of short green swords with serrated edges.

22 JUne 2007

Of Stone Poets and shattered wooden quays.

Bolts of clay and carpets of mud.

Footholds on pyrrhic shores.

Fusillades of futilty and wars of choice.

23 June 2007

Wind and water.

Stone glass and stone poets.

Air plants and sudden acts of Feng Shui.

24 June 2007

Seaparate ponds like a string of pearls gleaming in the twilight.

The ages of man, the lovers of a lifetime

bright and shiny thoughts flickering like little fires banked against the great dark.

The toothy smiles of a pretty woman or two.

Events and ages the like of which will not be seen again.

Claim yourself, Poetry! Who you be?

Dylan, Beatles, Jose Feliciano--music to watch letters turn into illustrations by

2007-06-23T15:45:00.000-06:00

Typography becomes illustration while you watch. Great soundtracks, too. Don't miss this one.

This woman is incredibly flexible, probably double-jointed

2007-06-22T14:11:00.000-06:00

Perfect weirdness.

The networks' web conversion experience has a creepy side

2007-06-11T07:50:00.000-06:00

Cynthia Little has written quite the interesting article in last Friday's Variety, "Networks go on blitz for Web hits: CBS, Fox, NBC adopt online syndie strategies."

She runs down the ways the major networks have gone from hand wringing to high fiving the many compliments it's received from the great www. They've realized the sincerity of this particular form of flattery and have moved from litigating to monetizing.

I'm so happy for everyone. Happy. Happy. Happy. But then there was a bit about the depth of demographic information suddenly available to data miners. While I'm always happy for every bit of this kind of data when I'm developing a campaign, as a consumer, it creeped me out.

... CBS brass are as intrigued by how much the electronic connection of the Web will allow them to study their consumers in granular detail. Do "CSI" fans also tend to like Avril Lavigne? Do "America's Next Top Model" viewers spend more time on fashion-oriented Web sites? The marketing and sales potential of the kind of demographic and audience profile data that can be built on the back of every download is astounding, Smith says.

You may look at my chunks, but my grains are private.

High Concept Low Tech: Poetry in Stop Motion

2007-05-31T05:07:00.000-06:00

This piece is the visual equivalent of about three good pieces of Godiva chocolate. Not nutritious, but pure sensory joy for the time it takes to watch this bit of magic being made.

It's called "Minilogue: Hitchiker's Choice" by an artist cryptically named "kristoferstrom," via YouTube:

Homeland Security's Sandstone Spy Portal/Porthole

2007-05-19T04:31:00.000-06:00

But that's not all! From Roundrock Journal:

Stone Cold, Rock Hard, Hard Rock, Rock Garden

2007-05-19T04:18:00.000-06:00

The Times, They Are A'Changin'

2007-05-19T04:12:00.000-06:00

The Break Up
Uploaded by geertdesager

Bald Cypress

2007-05-10T05:48:00.000-06:00

The next two photos are of the same tree, likely planted for the World's Fair in 1904.

A regal bald cypress, this poor tree has an enormous carbunckle (I'm making things up now, but you know what I mean) at its base, probably three feet square. Like some of your better driftwood.

The next photo was just fine straight from the camera, but I used the Orton Effect in Photoshop. This technique is all over the Internets, it's basically a blurred multiplied layer atop a sharp layer that gives a wonderful glow.

Bald cypress are one of the few deciduous conifers. Like an aspen, its leaves turn a golden yellow and gently fall like so many soft feathers. A noble tree.

Spring Into Spring

2007-05-10T05:13:00.000-06:00

I ran Hebrew School carpool for Jonathan yesterday so he could hit a tight deadline. On the way home, I stopped by Forest Park with my new camera.

The shoreline of this little stream is lined with incredible stones, like the kind you see on Peuget Sound or maybe one of the Great Lakes. They're wonderfully round and richly colored. Lots of granite and quartz. I think I even found some very dirty amethyst.

Inklings of a Fine Mind: Walter Bureck

2007-04-15T07:01:00.000-06:00

Inklings, the Copywriter's Blog, Walter Bureck's ongoing exploration of the noble and naked truths of copywriting. His quotes from the greats are square meal deals in themselves. Just one a fine example is Bill Bernbach's famous letter, excerpted below:

In the past year I must have interviewed about 80 people – writers and artists. Many of them were from the so-called giants of the agency field. It was appalling to see how few of these people were genuinely creative. Sure, they had advertising know-how. Yes, they were up on advertising technique.

But look beneath the technique and what did you find? A sameness, a mental weariness, a mediocrity of ideas. But they could defend every ad on the basis that it obeyed the rules of advertising. It was like worshipping a ritual instead of the God.

Genuine creativity will never be a commodity. It's damned hard work to do it well, and it makes your brain ache. 90 percent of writing is the not-writing, brain bleeding foreplay. Another gem from Walter's site:

“Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”

- Gene Fowler

Well done. A new favorite.

Talking Tractors

2007-04-15T06:56:00.000-06:00

Business meeting chronicled for posterity. Michael and Jonathan thinking big. A good time was had by all.

Pimp My Ride? No Way. Mom My Ride.

2007-04-15T06:52:00.000-06:00

Brilliant viral from Zima: "Don't even think about it, she's a mom."

Cambium Creative's New Camera

2007-04-07T14:58:00.000-06:00

The Golden Age of Advertising

2007-04-02T13:19:00.000-06:00

Rube Goldberg 2.0

2007-03-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

Who thinks up this stuff? One brilliant contraption after another. Watch for the bullseye.

Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

Who are these people?

2007-03-10T21:38:00.000-07:00

The Fab Faux

2007-02-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

There are a few old saws out there that get swapped around with real authority. I've been told there are two kinds of people, Beatles people, and Elvis people. For the Beatle People, the Fab Faux.

This band formed of erstwhile and employed big time musician's-musicians in NYC. They faithfully reproduce Beatles music (kookookoochoo), live. Between their obvious scholarship, mastery, spookily-skilled voices, and that indefinable energy a live performance delivers, these guys brought it home big in a big way.

Mountain Dew Geriatric Mash Up

2007-01-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

Viral video stretching the category:

Oh, my Saddam--Steve Martin

2007-01-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ Huffington Post, written by that genius, Steve Martin.

Oh, my Saddam, how I loved your funny little ways. The way you held your teacup; the way you enjoyed those who coaxed a smile from you. I love that you found a way to exist in this mixed up world, how you thought, "why be mean when you can be nice?" Saddam, I will miss the way you would point to someone and then they would be dead, the way your puppy Pluto became a rug.

Your loyalty to family is rare in our times. When your half-brother was assassinated, Oh how we wept for you, thinking, what a terrible accident this assassination is. My Saddam, I wish we had more time with you, to find out what makes you tick, tick, tick. How your golden toilet seat will miss you!

You loved to laugh! Not many people know how to do that anymore. Real laughter doesn't come from sit-coms and comedians, real laughter comes when someone bows before you, accidentally stumbles, and then is beheaded. Especially on a staircase. Heads will roll, ha ha! Oh Saddam, if I had you back for just one moment, I would ask, if you could shoot just one person in the back of the head, who would it be? I wish it were me!

Who can deny your gifts? Your novel, so romantic and sweet. I'm sorry it was only published in Arabic and read by your friends. What a waste. And your glorious gesture for peace, the symbolic lighting of the Kuwaiti oil fields!

And now you are in heaven. How the trumpets must be sounding. A life, perhaps imperfect, but pure in motive! The world might have lost one affable curmudgeon, but heaven has received him. Saddam, enjoy the hosts of souls waiting to see you on the other side!

Pulp Fiction Christmas

2006-12-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

Thanks, BoingBoing.

Spike Jonz Unmakes and Embooldens Gap Brand

2006-12-09T18:01:00.000-07:00

Audacious. Incredible. Perfect. via ifilm, Spike Jonz remakes Gap in 1:30.

Turkey, like business, adheres to natural laws

2006-11-29T16:47:00.000-07:00

The key to a moist turkey is to cook within the rules of nature.

Dark meat has much fat, white has little. Dark will be moist when white is dry, unless you bring gravity into the equation.

Figure 20-22 minutes per pound, then start the roasting at 350 degrees with the breast downward. That way the juices above moisten the meat below. After 2/3 of the total time has elapsed,flip the turkey, and brown the breast side.

Another good thing is to stuff the cavity with onions, celery and carrots, cooking dressing on the side. Aromatics plus gravity equals lusciousness.

And that's all I'm gonna say.

Unless you want to make transcendent gravy. That will be another post.

How this pertains to business will be revealed.

Public Relations Now Officially Antique

2006-11-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

The press release turns 100, Media Culpa.

huzzah, right?

The Campaign for Dominance

2006-11-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

I recently heard a panel of three talking heads lamenting their loss in the recent election. There was one man who several times analyzed the situation by saying, "Our candidates didn't do enough to disqualify their opponents."

I beg to differ. That is exactly the thrust of too much political advertising this season. They beat on dead horses, intoning phrases so dead from over-exposure they became meaningless. Their fingers in the wind, they adjust their message to what they think will win their election.

What about candidates who say what they believe, and believe what they say, letting chips go wherever chips go? I've been involved with two such challengers in the last two years, both with that refreshing point of view. They both lost, coming within mere hairs from unseating their opponents, but they amazed even the most jaded political hacks with their emergence from anonymity into real players.

The first campaign was Jeff Smith's when he ran in a 10-way race for Dick Gephardt's congressional seat. He came within inches of defeating the Missouri brand-name, Russ Carnahan. Jeff is articulate and passionate, well-educated and insightful. He truly listens to people. I'm not surprised that he's now our state's Senator-elect. I expect great things.

The second was Jim Trout. His campaign for state house was waged on a shoestring, and the work of nearly 100 grassroots volunteers. He was adamant that there be no personal attacks. He stuck to his beliefs, and let his opponent's record tell the story. He was more focused on communicating his plans for Missouri.

Jim lost by 183 votes, just 1.1 percent. He nearly unseated an entrenched incumbent, even though his name recognition was likely less than zero. He worked hard, knocking on every door, showing up at every coffee, walking in every parade, and working his shoestrings until they finally snapped the morning after the election, when we finally heard of his loss.

Both these candidates ran on their convictions and made no ad hominem attacks. Neither stooped to intentionally misinterpreting their opponents.

That's the lesson. The big win isn't earned by speciously discrediting your opponent with half-truths and obfuscations, but by being a real person, with real convictions, and an out-of-the can demeanor.

Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?

2006-11-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

Last night I finally got to see Frank Popper's documentary about Jeff Smith's failed bid for Dick Gephardt's congressional seat. It was just stunning. Jeff surprised anyone who knew him when he decided to run. He was an adjunct professor at Wash U and St. Louis U, didn't even have health insurance. His parents thought he was a bit addlepated, his grandmother told a friend who'd gotten a letter asking for a donation that she ought to save her money. Someone described him as looking like he's 12-years-old, buying his clothes from Garanimals, and sounding like he's castrated.

Undeterred, he began knocking on doors, making calls, and assembling a staff of mostly former students who were absolutely brilliant and absolutely inexperienced, some as young as 20, to help manage his campaign.

Two years ago, I happened on his website. It was a Friday, and on Sunday I was giving a voter registration party. On a whim, I e-mailed him, suggesting he might want to come if he could. Shot in the dark. He came, late, after bowling with rapper Nellie earlier in the afternoon. Within five minutes, every one of us knew this 29-year-old was headed for greatness.

He's charming, funny, articulate, passionate and principled. He spent his childhood playing basketball on a team that was otherwise entirely black kids from the north side. To this day, they remain friends.

That experience was seminal. He majored in black American studies and political science. He worked for the city's school board, which opened his eyes to the entrenched deadwood that cripples the system. He started a charter school focusing on math and science for inner city kids, feeding them breakfast and keeping them two hours longer that anywhere else. He taught in universities.

So when he started the campaign, he knew what he was talking about, was passionate, a perpetual motion machine, and in the end, had amassed 350 volunteers and the reluctant admiration of the cognoscenti.

He came within a hair of upsetting the name-brand candidate, Russ Carnahan, a Casper Milquetoast if ever there was one.

What is most striking about this film is the power of passion in the face of apparent insurmountable obstacles. It puts the lie to most political strategies which hang on touching key phrases that "resonate" with voters, monumental media buys, and often, the most Machiavellian and pernicious schemes they deem palatable to voters.

Ultimately, this is the story of the authentic voice over the well-studied one. This, if you've been noticing, is near and dear to our hearts. It's our presiding principle, our "branding statement," if you will. But unlike many branding statements which seek to paint AnyCorp in its best light, we left that in our past where it belongs. It's a freeing thing, and empowering, too. Just ask Missouri Senator-Elect, Jeff Smith.

An award winning documentary chronicles Jeff Smith's first campaign, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?". It's won the people's choice award at the Silverdoc Festival, and is one of five finalists in the International Documentary Festival. It is in the nomination process for an Academy Award.

Frank Popper was the man behind responsible for every face of the film that wasn't Jeff's. I was blown away, and so proud of of them both. Here's the trailer.

"

How NOT to Celebrate a Merger--Warning, Highly Embarrassing Video

2006-11-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

I lurk at By Neddie Jingo from time to time, and find myself often richly rewarded. Tonight was no exception.

This is video from a company meeting, it somehow relates to car sales and MBNA being subsumed into Bank of America. A couple of clueless guys "worked up a little song." If they're not mortified with their lack of good taste, I'll be mortified for them. Absolutely stunning.

Election Day Dance of Relief

2006-11-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

It's November 7, 2006. We've been surrounded by hope on the one hand, and on the other, brutal ugliness that would have had my grandad looking for a switch.

Politicians, by nature, have abundant egos. They invest so much in these campaigns, and their everything (or so they think) rides on getting the most votes.

Their desperation means increasingly "creative" methods of slandering an opponent with ridiculous distortions, outright lies, selective and dubious "facts," and a kind of moral absolutism that is nothing but un-thinking. The worst deliberately appeal to the darkest, most ignorant, reptilian vestiges in the human brain. And, too often it works.

Still, voting is all we've got unless you're a lobbyist, and I'm sure you're not. It's the single most patriotic thing we can do. Flags, yellow ribbons, "God Bless America," and country songs are nothing but faint echoes of the real deal.

So, gentle readers, I know you've voted today, because you're that way. In case you know someone who might not bother, bother them till they do.

This might not restore your faith in humanity, but its beauty encouraged me.

The Boddisatva Dance of the Thousand Hands

Tractors, Advertising and Friends

2006-11-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

My status has risen exponentially with my nephew, Andrew. He loves him a good tractor and has an encyclopedic knowledge of all manner of farm implements.

This is apropos as Cambium Creative has recently added a good-sized tractor account to our portfolio, thanks to our old buddy, Michael Turley, another alumnus from Osborn & Barr. Michael is Montana Tractor's new Communications Director, which is our first indication of this company's innate good sense.

Michael's one account guy who's a creative team's dream. Unlike too many account people whose primary purpose is to quash any idea that's remotely interesting. Michael knows great creative when he sees it. That means work that will actually, well, work.

If you had to use one word to describe this company, it's authentic. Buy a tractor and get a thank-you note directly from the CEO. Folks actually answer their own phones. No voice mail. No filters. Real people doing good business.

In short, they're the kind of client worth putting your heart and soul into.

We know from tractors, but there's always the "unknown unknowns." We're not above the most complimentary kind of larceny, so consider yourself invited to tell us anything you might know about reaching the 5-acre tractor buyer.

And Andrew, consider yourself Cambium Creative's newest marketing consultant. Not everyone has a lifelong love of tractors, or an eight-year-old's passion. You're my ace in the hole, buddy.

"Note to Future Despairing Self" by Dr. Charles

2006-11-02T05:05:00.000-07:00

I have nothing to add except admiration and awe. The Examining Room of Dr. Charles.

You once looked under a microscope at the spindly cells of cancer, with their dark and jagged nuclei, and thought to yourself how poetic, these living things killed by their own quest for immortality.

You passed an entire day on a beach in the Caribbean. Your eyes couldn't quite capture the totality of the scene - the lush green mountains, the tropical forest swaying lazily with the sultry ocean breeze, the eight squid that rode the underwater current with you, their eyes behind tentacles, their bodies propelled by some translucent undulation. It was like floating with intelligence from another planet.

You lived many lifetimes within the one.

The boy that blackened your face, the woman that humiliated you as a doctor, they were but a squawking distraction.

The rain on the sheet metal roof. The brilliant stitch of a meteor in the dissolving night sky. The smell of jasmine on the streets of Sevilla or within the rising steam from a cup of tea. The warm dog licking your face. The minor notes of Chopin from the piano. A plate of cheese, onion, and saltines, with Light and Dark ale at McSorley's.

And above all these were the good people. The friends that danced like stones skipping on water, the family who loved you, who loved you, and the girl who promised to carry your heart (i carry it in my heart).

For along the way you learned that love is greatest.

It runs deeply, silently, as an underground spring whose waters are pure, nurturing, and ever present beneath our daily concerns. It is a tie stronger than life, proven by our own existence. We exist as living incarnations of a love which preceded us. We are sustained by that love. And when we share it with others we can perhaps feel the face of eternity shining down upon us.

So know just this - you did enjoy the world. You were carried by an army of cells, risen from the sea, and all who crossed your path were brothers and sisters.
You'll dissolve into that night sky, you'll rise fragrant from the petals of jasmine, Chopin will break through your very substance, and the Light and the Dark will pour you smoothly, bitterly, beautifully into the belly of creation.

Governmental Travesty in Missouri

2006-10-31T13:20:00.000-07:00

Jonathan and I have been deeply involved in a local campaign for state house rep. We're trying to unseat the current rep whose only successful legislation has been to name the chanterelle "Missouri's Official State Mushroom."

By all that is holy, how can that be? I've walked in the woods mushroom hunting since I was a kid, looking for this magical sight:

photo via pfly on flickr

Furthermore, I've lived in Missouri my entire life, majored in horticulture at one point, and still, I wouldn't know a chanterelle if it sliced itself up under a flashing neon grocery sign and sang "Blue Suede Shoes." But I've hiked for hours, with a cranky toddler, a migraine and a stone bruise, for a plate of morels.

I am not alone. From The Missourian:

… three mushroom-hunting legislators on the Tourism Committee questioned the proposal, which was expected to be noncontroversial. “To make this the state mushroom when everyone in this room has heard of the morel would be a travesty,” said Rep. J.C. Kuessner, D-Eminence. “I just can’t believe that we’d do something like that to our public citizens of the state of Missouri.”

It was a travesty, and I, too, can't believe what's been done to the public citizens of the state of Missouri. With life and times as they are, the travesty is that anyone had time for any of this nonsense.

Important things are at stake. Be sure to vote Tuesday.

The Cure to Unhappiness

2006-10-26T00:20:00.000-06:00

I know something about depression. I won't go into it, but it's been a companion often enough that I recognize its voice immediately. Dilbert cures all. Exercise, eat protein, drink water, be happy.

I wouldn't mind putting the pharmaceutical companies into Chapter 11 with such a simple cure for depresion.

Don't kill me softly, do it hard, or don't bother

2006-10-25T23:20:00.000-06:00

Two things that consistently kill creativity. Succinct, and oh so true. Fear is the enemy, and what Seth Godin calls a lack of imagination.

Imagination is part of who we are, and fear is, too. But we are too often stamped down, turned down, discouraged, and made fun of for imagination. It takes courage to use your imagination past the age of eight.

Using imagination has inherent risks. Sometimes you will go too far. Be what some call "inappropriate." Other times, you'll have the room in your palm. It's about having the courage to fail, because with that in hand, you can give yourself permission to take the risks that make for greatness.

It's been said elsewhere, but if a client isn't uncomfortable with the work they're seeing, they're not seeing good work. Work that will work.

One of the most courageous work I ever did was a jewel in my tiara. From somewhere, I got the guts to write a totally avant garde, stream of consciousness poem moonlighting as an ad. It was for an art fair program in one of St. Louis' toniest suburbs. But it was such a hit, that it ran two years. Ad folks either love it or hate it. That better than a sock drawer full of awards. Kathy Sierra will back me up on that.

To see it up close, click on the image you'll find here.

White people dancing

2006-10-25T21:32:00.000-06:00

that's how we do, originally uploaded by Word Maven.

This has nothing to do with anything other than I gave birth to the guy making the white-guy-dancing face. Couldn't be prouder. We're not a funky family, though we wish we were.

We're not stuck with what we've got-aha!

2006-10-24T09:54:00.000-06:00

Life coaches sounds so, well, phony. Then I ran across Life Coaches Blog. We all have things we'd like to change. We all want to help people effectively. We all want to be the best person we can be, and the hurdles on the way can be arduous. Check it out.

"Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved."
--Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Borat, from the interviewee's perspective

2006-10-24T00:27:00.000-06:00

Not all are as duped as they may appear. I have new hope and will manage to get up in the morning after all.

Borat Reveals Seamy Underside of Greatest Nation on Earth

2006-10-23T19:32:00.000-06:00

People are so, well, human.

Exhibit A: Borat. A character created by Sacha Baron Cohen, complete with awe-inspiring mustache, has gone from sea-to-shining-sea posing as a "journalist" from Kazakhstan. (He's got an HBO show titled after another character, Ali G, an English hip-hop doing the same schtick.)

Borat is unbelievably crude. An over-the-top anti-Semitic. Offensive to any civilized person. There's too good to be true, and then there's too bad to be true. But, Borat has traveled the U.S. talking to real Americans. People who took him seriously.

There was one bit with a couple good ol' boy wine tasters in the South. Cohen managed to get one of them to say out loud that he lamented the end of slavery. And then, there was a performance of "In My Country There Is Problem," a song so awful, so disgraceful, so stupid, that no one would . . . but they did. The whole bar sang the chorus of "throw the Jew down the well."

I mourn for my country. Dumb as a dirty box full of rocks.

Here are the first four minutes of his feature film, Borat. NSFW, be warned, but geez, it sums up a character no one would take seriously. The schtick is too thick, the irony palpable. They do, though. And not just here. The government of Kazakhstan has waged a complaint against Borat.

And so it goes. Gullibility is one thing, but joining in this kind of stuff doesn't come from nowhere. Mel Gibson?

Mediocrity Can Be Cured

2006-10-23T19:05:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since I've blogged about Kathy Sierra and her stellar blog, Creating Passionate Users, and it hasn't been because she's fallen off, not one little bit.

This piece explains how to achieve, or not achieve, according to discretion, mediocrity. Go away from this place and visit Kathy. To quote Dan Rather, "Courage."

Honesty in Advertising : an Oxymoron or Best Practices?

2006-10-20T03:32:00.000-06:00

WARNING: Especially long post, especially important, pack a lunch if need be.

Honesty is an alien concept to many. Just as good as I need to be is the motto. So this post on honesty (I come out for it), I'm heading with the most honestly weird photoshop montage I've ever done.

Here's the real deal. The best advertising technique is to tell the truth. The best business advantage goes to those who take ethics seriously. The best stories about people show them as they really are, warts and all. We all love a bit of a wart on an otherwise perfect person. Tell it. Make it real.

We've seen enough slimey practices in the seats of power to convince anyone that crime may pay quite well, it won't pay for much in the pen.

If you already know this, skip right to Shel Horowitz's inspiring and validating Business Ethics Pledge. Savor it, sign it and share it.

Your better revolutions have a generous supply of indisputable truth that gets superglued to your brain quite pleasantly, you feel a lot better about yourself, then you pull others along with the glue, who bring others still. It takes on a life of its own. And it begins to change the world. One good brain to another, an exponential spread, and Shel Horowitz may well take over the world one solemn vow of ethics and honor at a time. Huzzah, Shel.

Ethics certainly isn't only a concern to ad folks, this pledge is greatly needed in government, big business, manufacturing, making cars, lightbulbs and Twizzlers. Ethical business practices is a universally applicable concept, a universally successful practice and it applies to every job at every level.

I know the ad biz, and how easy it is to use some ill-fitting verbal vavoom to add pizzazz to a lackluster product. Just a bit of overstatement--that's not so bad. But like anything built on horse dung, it isn't going to work.

An honest, creative alternative might be to be absolutely up front with how boring your product is. It does a couple things, so that's all right. But it's wrapped in kraft paper with black ink. Antiquated hints for the garden a la Farmer's Almanac, cleaning tips by Miss Cleidofern, it's boringness becomes its beacon. The truth wins. It gains a bit of camp sachet along with it, sales explode. When the truth is the only thing people buy (more than once), it's the only thing you've got to sell.

The least-respected, best-paid form of advertising is direct marketing. That crowd has every semicolon down to a scientific variable that increases or decreases response. If you realized how much went into the stuff you throw away every day, you might move to Zanzibar without a forwarding address. It's easily the most manipulative subgenre of advertising there is. What they lack in elegance, they make up with hard, cold statistics.

The idea is that if you get them inside the envelope, then they'll read your killer copy and convert. I did a letter package that got enormous results (and an Arrow Award). It beguiled the reader with a million ways of saying money, i.e.,"wampum, greenbacks, filthy lucre, coin of the realm, legal tender," etc. The real money cardholders get? A paltry refund of the total money they'd charge every year. WhooHoo! $12.00 American, once a year--alert the media!

What do you do when the product you're asked to sell is dangerous to small children, kittens and Aunt Bee? You quit. Some things cannot be gotten around, and endangering humanity is at the top. I gave up my biggest client. In return, I slept better knowing I wasn't furthering the sale of a fatal poison. Now found in groundwater all over Southern Illinois (and pretty much all over), where crops are routinely sprayed with chemical cocktails of seven, ten, 14 different products, including atrazine. Atrazine lurks silently in every well, draining into every river, until Sister finds a lump, or Joe gets a brain tumor. It's legal. It's effective. It's where I drew the line. Hope you never have to. It hurt, but it hurt good, if you know what I mean.

Talking to clients? Tell the truth. If you don't, you will have to confess on Sunday, and you won't give the client the benefit of your years of experience (the only thing you have to sell, after all). And, they're not going to be as successful as if they'd taken your counsel. Clients may bristle, but handled gently, they can be brought around to your way of thinking, because it's based on experience hard won. That's why you're being paid. Don't cower before a client apologetically, mincing words, allowing the very soul of your work be deleted to assuage unknown fears. Tell her the difficult truth. If she's worthy of her job, she'll see the light and you'll become the agency that made her look fabulous. The truth is so rare, but it absolutely delivers the very best results.

Shel brings it home how broad a swath an ethical business MO could make across all kinds of concerns:

Businesses are more likely to succeed when they base themselves in ethics: honesty, integrity, and quality.

Businesses must look at the "triple bottom line": financial, environmental, and social impacts [emphasis mine] (and this will require major pressure: currently, US public corporations are required by law to focus only on the economic bottom line, to the exclusion of other objectives and stakeholders)

Amazing things can happen when all stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, neighborhood residents, even competitors) become your active champions-but that only happens if your business specifically empowers each of these groups and addresses their different needs and desires

Line employees, managers, and even CEOs need support to show that ethical principles will help their businesses succeed, and that they won't be penalized by the marketplace for taking an ethical stand

Here's Shel's goal:

Eventually, this movement will reach critical mass. And some crooked "entrepreneur" will come along and try to cheat employees and customers while leaving a big, expensive mess for the public to clean up. But that crooked business owner won't find the people who will carry out this dirty work. Instead, good people will stand up for what's right, for ethics, for justice, and for honoring the company's real mission, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because they understand that it works better.

Free advice: cultivate a few good honor stories. Tell 'em to your kids. They'll become family lore and their internal compass. I know, I had a few myself. I'll post some later, but now, I have the best sum-it-up quote I'm likely to find today:

My favorite Doc:

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. --Dr. Suess

Go HERE:

Shel Horowitz's inspiring and validating Business Ethics Pledge

Sign it today and send to as many as you think have ears to hear, probably the unindicted, but you be the judge.

Sex, Addiction, Satan, Congress. The World is Coming to an End

2006-10-09T06:56:00.000-06:00

My name is Jill and I'm an internet addict.

I am powerless over broadband and my life has become unmanageable.

I've never really been convinced of satanic power. Then I heard about this I beseech you, do not click that link.

If you do, your time as a productive member of society will come to an abrupt end, just as decidedly as if you took up heroin and meth simultaneously. The Timothy Leary behind this life-wasting altered state? Jonhs. I don't know if he can't spell John, or what, but he's a pusher.

Click and you'll be lost to the power of carefully crafted zeroes and ones, the digital age will finally have taken over society. Your babies will have persistent diaper rash from sodden Huggies. The refrigerator will turn into a sparse collection of oddly shaped mold. The trash will not get to the curb on Thursdays, your well-tended grass will become a prairie, and some, I've heard, have catheterized themselves so as not to miss a moment.

What pernicious force is at work?

It sounds so innocent. So beguiling. I'll watch just one.

That's how it starts. That link will take you to a list of movies you can watch for free, right there on your computer screen. FREE. Classics, B-movies, talkies, you name it. These are the movies you've always loved (okay, not all of them), but they're now in the public domain for God and everyone to see.

If you have the fortitude to resist such classics as The Wild Women of Wongo, then you must lead a sad and frigid life, an appallingly spartan existence, devoid of human pleasure, eating only generic dog food because you couldn't care less about anything pleasurable.

While I pity you, you'll be the only one taking over for the rest of us. Only the most bland and lifeless shell of a human organism could resist cinema classics with a story line like this:

On the tropical island of Wongo, a tribe of beautiful women discover that the other side of the island is inhabited by a tribe of handsome men. They also discover that a tribe of evil ape men live on the island, too, and the ape men are planning a raid on the tribe in order to capture mates.

It's got it all. Scantily clad buxom women in their sexual prime, muscle-bound men over-run with testosterone, and a marauding band of monkeys who want the women for themselves (sex and more sex, and maybe even a hint of sex with monkeys, just perfect for titillating the more salacious members of Congress).

Joho for Prezn't

2006-10-08T17:34:00.000-06:00

Joho the Blog, aka David Weinberger, boy genius. Thanks for the heads up, Jeneane.

My platform:

Let's lower our national expectations to something a little more reasonable.

Declare victory in Phase One of the war on terrorism (Operation Big Wounded Bear Swinging Its Arms) and begin Phase Two (Operation Being Smart About It).

End the current superstitious rituals at airport security that any fifteen year old could figure out how to get around. Instead, require every passenger to rub a lucky rabbit foot.

Pass SHANANA: Stop the Hilarious Absurdity: No Acronyms Naming Anything act.

Resuscitate humility.

Stop asking G-d to bless us after every speech. He doesn't like needy people.

Put the "pro-life" back into "nuclear non-proliferation" by unilaterally scrapping all of our nuclear weapons.

New high priority task for the Army Corps of Engineers: Build drive-in movies. Everyone loves drive-ins.

New policy about gays in the military: "Don't Ask, Don't Care. Be Fabulous."

Start a distributed Peace Corps. Step two: Figure out what that means.

All test drives of SUVs must contain a segment in which they drive under water. (Playing the taped message from Al Gore is optional.)

Tough new copyright law provides works with a full fifteen years of protection...one more than our Founding Parental Units intended.

Printed newspapers by law will have to backdate themselves one day.

Increase national curiosity.

Government offices will use open source software unless they're being punished.

I'm tired of tough justice. Let's get some tender-hearted judges on the bench.

Since we're not trying to turn out standard kids, why do we educate them to pass standardized tests? New option: To get a high school diploma, either pass a standardized test or be a wiseass in public.

I'd be wrong in public. A lot. I'm good at that!

Any senior government official who does not blog has "[bureaucrat]" appended to her title.

Marijuana would be as legal as alcohol, but only until you're 35. Frankly, after that it's time to grow up.

Lawrence Lessig gets to work out with Susan Crawford which one heads the FCC and which goes on the Supreme Court.

Secretary of the Internet becomes the first wiki-based cabinet post.

Dick Cheney goes to jail, even if we have to plant something on him.

I will never ever clear brush on vacation. That is my solemn pledge to you, my fellow Americans.

[Tags: politics humor]

Posted by D. Weinberger at October 6, 2006 10:54 AM

The Media and the Average American

2006-10-08T13:38:00.000-06:00

I heard something on, I'm not sure, probably NPR. that made sense. It didn't reassure me of our future, but it helped explain some of the more inexplicable American trends.

The story was about the process by which people make up their minds on political and social issues. Here's how it works:

Depending upon the opinions of those around them and what "serious" media stories they hear, they take a position.
They know that to really know if that position is backed up by the facts, they'd have to read at least ten related things.
They don't have the time, nor the inclination, so they don't really know how to back up their stance.
People who decide on serious issues in this manner hold onto them with a fierceness that people who are more research-oriented.

This makes so much sense to me, and gives me much more sympathy for so many people whose strong ideas are contraindicated by available documentation.

In a related story first published in The New Republic and excerpted in Science Blogs--Pure Pedantry (definitely worth a visit for insights you don't normally run across) is a concept related to my thesis:

Is there something intrinsically reductive or fatalistic in connecting political values to brain functioning? No more so than ascribing them to race or economic background, which we happily do without second thought. Isn't it more dehumanizing to attribute your beliefs to economic conditions outside your control? At least your brain is inalienably yours -- it's where the whole category ''you'' originates. No one denies that social conditions shape political values. But the link between the brain and the polis is still uncharted terrain. Prozac showed us that the slightest tinkering with brain chemistry could have transformative effects on a person's worldview. Who is to say those effects don't travel all the way to the voting booth?

This makes sense. We're hardwired for so many things, down to how many rings we like to wear that it seems entirely logical that our political inclinations would be hardwired too, regardless of the facts on the ground, or the airwaves.

Another post on the same blog supports the "political" brain:

Do liberals ''think'' with their limbic system more than conservatives do? As it happens, some early research suggests that Armey might have been on to something after all. As The Times reported not long ago, a team of U.C.L.A. researchers analyzed the neural activity of Republicans and Democrats as they viewed a series of images from campaign ads. And the early data suggested that the most salient predictor of a ''Democrat brain'' was amygdala activity responding to certain images of violence: either the Bush ads that featured shots of a smoldering ground zero or the famous ''Daisy'' ad from Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 campaign that ends with a mushroom cloud. Such brain activity indicates a kind of gut response, operating below the level of conscious control.

You can read the entire column in the New York Times.

If this knowledge were widespread, I wonder if we'd be gentler or harsher on those with whom we disagree. I wonder.

I wanted to be Nancy Drew when I grew up.

2006-09-28T15:58:00.000-06:00

I wanted to be Nancy Drew when I grew up., originally uploaded by Carla216.

Remember how those beigey pulp hardbacks from the school library used to smell? My nose was always in books, so it was a nice smell to have around.

Nancy Drew was the Katherine Hepburn of girl sleuths. A class act. Thanks to Carla216 on flickr for a great image.

Courage and Fear and Penzey's Spice

2006-09-28T05:35:00.000-06:00

In advertising, as in life, so many more possibilities present themselves when you're not being afraid all the ding-dang day. Courage, on the other hand, is what we all admire. It's what we respond to emotionally for better or worse.

Haven't we all managed to ignore the plain vanilla? Unless is Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla, then you've got Penzey's Spice. Ever gone in one of their stores? It's all wood and natural looking, but it's the smell. The smells. Each section assaults your senses. Never before have I been willing to spend so much money on spices. But Penzey's does something very interesting. It turns bottles of ground up plants into objects of desire. Spices strike a chord in the reptilian part of our brains. Just how many people set off into the great unknown in search of a Spice Route to the Far East? And why would they risk falling off the edge of earth but stuff like this:

Extra Fancy Vietnamese Cassia Cinnamon
The highest quality, strongest cinnamon available in America today. Extremely sweet and flavorful. Use 2 /3 what recipe calls for. Since the trade embargo with Vietnam has been lifted, this wonderful cassia has become available. Very high 6% grade. Ground, from Vietnam.

Penzey's is intent upon delighting its customers. For instance, they give away tasty recipes for nothing. Every big spice group has at least one free recipe.

Then there's their magazine-cum-catalog-cum-cookbook-cum-brilliantmarketing piece that's new each season. Delighting customers. That's the ticket.

Their people are good, too. Service, they've got down pat. No wonder, though, when their applications ask questions like, "What's your favorite spice or seasoning and how do you use it?" Which job that made the biggest impact on your life?

Think of the insightful, telling responses they get to this question in the "Education" secion:

Penzeys [sic] Spices is a growing company with an emphasis on comunications and visual arts. Tell us about your own background and experiences with the fine and performing arts.

Get outta town!

Here's another one:

Have you ever been convicted of a crime? (do not list minor traffic violations). If yes, please explain.

Here's a big ol' big business taking the risks involved to retain its humanity, actually presenting a willingness to listen to what really happened. Watched the news lately? They need a bit of the Gospel According to Penzey's.

Take the time to tell the truth. It's that truth that is the best thing you've got. Be bold and blunt. Show emotion, get personal, take risks. TAKE RISKS!

How else is anyone going to see your gorgeous self, let alone give you a chance at their business?

The thought process for clients is pretty predictable at this point. They freak out, and those little hairs on the back of their necks stands up, all the while they're bobbing their heads up and down in faux agreement.

Here's where everything clever gets cut. Like 500 units of Thorazine, right in the hip. It's been bought and paid for, but it's not doing its job.

Jim Asacker tells a story about the most common answer his favorite question, "What would you really like to do before you die." Skydiving. That's the most popular response. But how many people ever wind up skydiving? I call it Thorazine, he calls it awfulizing, but it's the same thing.

. . . Our brain thought about the skydiving scenario, awfulized the situation, made up the worst case scenario, believed it to be true, and then responded to what it believed to be true, as opposed to objective reality, which says that you probably won’t die as a result of skydiving. So the cost of what our brain made up, that we’d die, was greater than the benefit of feeling that incredibly free feeling of flying through the air, so therefore, we just decided not to do it, based purely on what our brain made up, as opposed to what was reality. So ask yourself this. What is the cost of changing? Remember to judge the cost of changing using objective reality, as opposed to what your brain is making up and awfulizing about the potential results of making this change. More often than not, when we take out all of the stuff our brain is making up, it’s much easier to see that the benefit of making the change far outweighs the cost.

So, what this really comes down to is people are weird. They don't always pay any attention at all to things like facts. We're emotional creatures. We are comforted by the status quo when that quo's bus has already left the station. As emotional creatures, though, we intuit great care, compassion and concern. We respond to authenticity, and that's what advertising should deliver.

The best worst ad ever

2006-08-11T21:54:00.000-06:00

The last year of the dot com boom was big for Madison Avenue. That year's Super Bowl had one creative standout, one of the most innovative and sweetly funny ads ever conceived. Everybody who saw it remembers it for its pure brilliance. Watch:

So why is this the best worst ad ever? It did nothing for sales. It was brilliant creatively, but the client is subsumed within its genius. It's a high-minded concept, the kind that wins the creme de la creme of the creative awards. But we're in the business of growing our client's business, not our own glory. On that count, this is an abject failure.

I still love to watch it, though.

Solla Solla Enna Perumai

2006-07-21T22:35:00.000-06:00

Bollywood's version of sex-drenched song-and-dance combines a combo-zetigest that's a bit of Annette Funicello with a Puckish lead singer who, at least from the filmmaker's pov, oozes raw sexual appeal. Truly weird and wonderful.

Another song and dance number with a cult following. Straight from Bollywood, hips-a-shaking and an animation not seen in our popular culture since Lawrence Welk.

The staff at Salon.com can recreate this entire scene flawlessly. Makes me with I were that young and dedicated to the pursuit of the out-there.

George Carlin on Religion

2006-07-21T17:00:00.000-06:00

Sacred cow for dinner, folks!

Poetry in Motion

2006-07-18T18:27:00.000-06:00

I can't get enough of this guy's lyrical dance juggling. Chris Bliss:

Brilliant Writing Puts Faces to Abstract Numbers

2006-07-18T14:15:00.000-06:00

From Altercation. Tore me up. What power the pen can wield in the right hands.

Mayada Salihi: Red hair, raised in Baghdad, divorced mother of two adorable kids, herself the daughter of a divorced Shia mother and Sunni father. A scrapper. A Baghdadi through and through. Not always factual, but usually a truthteller. Devout fan of cheesy 1980’s American music, particularly Air Supply. Mayada was my translator through much of last year. You knew her too, albeit indirectly. It was because of May, and through her, that we found the schools which you so generously supplied and supported last year. Those who sent donations usually received a letter and pictures from me of the deliveries. May is in some of those photos. She was my friend.
She was well traveled for an Iraqi, having visited Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan in her 20s, but after her children, and Iraq, there is nothing which May loved more than a country to which she had never been, America. Her father was a comfortable government functionary and in those days she lived a life of moderate privilege. She had seen much of the Arab world, but for whatever reason, call it cultural penetration or just internationalism, May grew up fascinated by and adoring America. She started teaching herself English through that most classic of methods, singing along with American albums. As I recall, she told me that it was the Foreigner 4 album at first, and only a little later did she discover the obscenely sugar-coated songs of Air Supply. Eventually, in college, she majored in English.
Story continues below ↓
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Life in a Middle Eastern nation being what it is, however, she had a lot of pressure to marry. Eventually she settled on the wrong guy. He cheated, a lot, and so in a quintessentially American move, so did she. That ended it. Cuckolding publicly reduced her husband and they divorced. She got the kids.
Then we invaded.
A month after the fall of Baghdad May was volunteering, working as a translator for a succession of US and Iraqi forces…too many it seems. Living in Baghdad she got one warning note, ignored it, and was gunned down and left for dead by masked men in the alley beside her house just two days later. That was in the Spring of 2004. But May would not die.
Whisked to a hospital where her identity as an American translator was revealed, she was declared dead back in her neighborhood for the safety of her family, while in reality she went into hiding. Ultimately she recovered in Jordan, but the recovery took months. She could have stayed in Jordan, but in the end, she found that her heart would not let her. The two nations she loved most were now fused in a death-love struggle, she could not leave them alone. Besides, working for us paid better than just about anything else a divorced woman could legally do in Baghdad, and that allowed her to support “H” (her son), “M” (her daughter) and her mother. So she came back.
Working for the same unit again, we kept her out of the city, doing good work elsewhere in Iraq. But the draw of motherhood, and her city, brought her back to Baghdad. It was at that time that we met, in April of last year.
Living now in another neighborhood, May thought she was safe. But as any New Yorker will tell you, even seven million people can make for a small town in some ways. By late summer they had found her again. A note at her home, I have a copy of it which she gave me, told her to stop working with the Americans or she would be killed. But May would not, and I now think perhaps could not, stop. A few nights later she slipped her mother and kids into the Green Zone, buying off another family who had themselves received an eviction notice from the Iraqi government.
In Iraq, as it is in many other countries, its all about who you know. May thought that she could work her personal connections…this person knows that person whose second cousin is a deputy minister of agriculture…to pull the right strings and keep the apartment, and her family, together. I had a hand in that, while I was there. It was a distraction from the work I was supposed to do, but in some ways you could say that it was also the work that needed to be done. I left in February. Apparently, not long after I left, she was evicted.
May couldn’t live outside the Green Zone anymore. To do so would be to invite risk to her kids and her mother. So the kids went to live with her Ex, and her mother went to her sister. May found a small place for herself, a single room apparently, inside the Green Zone.
Motherhood is a strong pull though. May would leave the Green Zone fairly often, alone in her car, to go see her children for a few precious hours.
At the end of the month of May, just after returning from my pre-wedding honeymoon, I found an e-mail in my inbox from one of my friends back in Baghdad. Nobody had wanted to tell me, at least initially, but now they felt they should. Two weeks earlier, while driving through the city to see her kids, May was intercepted and kidnapped by Ansar Al Sunna. Their standard tools are the AK-47, rape, and the power drill (with which they torture their captives, drilling holes through body parts until finishing them off with a drill-bit to the head). The day before the e-mail, the police found the husk of my friend’s body in downtown Baghdad. Ansar Al Sunna had taken full credit. Now I understand hate.
Mayada Salihi, 1970-2006. (Link) Please remember.

Crying yet?

The enormous implications of design, brilliantly told

2006-07-18T05:25:00.000-06:00

My new brain crush. While he's no Ze Frank, then, Ze Frank no him either. Similar brilliance, entirely different delivery, sui generis thought. Big words can be our friends too, now.

Enjoy.

It's a backwards world, friend

2006-07-18T03:54:00.000-06:00

From the mouths of babes and a portable camera. Did you know that China's putting the whole cha-cha-cha on us? I learned much watching this short film.

Ze Frank, Boy Genius Stuck in Grown Man's Body

2006-07-17T17:19:00.000-06:00

Sigh. What genius lurks behind those saffron eyes?

The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

2006-07-04T17:33:00.000-06:00

Two excerpts from Frederick Douglass's powerful Independence Day speech from 1852. Read the whole thing and long for the days when oration had real power.

From the website History is a Weapon, via a brilliant post on Metafilter.

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

and

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child's share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have "Abraham to our father," when they had long lost Abraham's faith and spirit. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham's great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchers of the righteous? Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout-"We have Washington to our father."-Alas! that it should be so; yet it is.
The evil, that men do, lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.

BTW, the House failed to reauthorize Voting Rights Act, and President Bush says he doesn't know a thing about it, while claiming, "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

History needs to kick us in the butt.

Rise Above the Snarking Snarkers Who Would Malign You For Sport

2006-07-04T01:41:00.000-06:00

Life makes some people cynical. Looking for the worst? You'll find it.

Some would have you believe their negativity and cynicism are actually hard-won wisdom, a kind of advanced degree in critical thinking. But in fact, cynicism and negativity do not add up to wisdom; rather, they add up to negative patterns of thought that can be habit-forming and destructive.

It takes minimal cleverness and maybe seven facial muscles to produce a smirk sufficiently smirkly to paralyze creativity. We've all had ideas, work, art, children, partners, etc., all victims of murder by smirk. It's an awful feeling. Even a non-lethal injection of scorn has the power to shut down many people once and for all.

Someone recently told me a significant percentage would rather be hit by a bus than speak in public. Imagine willing to risk such physical damage just to forgo public speaking, a very rewarding skill to develop with all sorts of fringe benefits. The fear of being publicly scorned is so deeply ingrained that we might not even figure out the core fear.

The smirk murderer gets a cheap (and fleeting) sense of superiority from their generous disdain. "Look how clever I am to have seen this thing for the drek that it is." Negativity is not a philosophy, it doesn't uplift anyone, it teaches nothing constructive, and it hurts people in more ways than we'll ever know.

One thing is for sure, a life spent avoiding the risk of falling prety to smirk murderers can become a kind of prison. Expecting the worst can attract it.

The reverse is true, too. When you face the world with honest expectations of basic human goodness, people respond in kind. There's a kindness and guilelessness people with optimistic expectations exude. People, young, old and in between, all respond to someone who's actively ready to believe the very best of them.

I've been running an experiment. I generally do expect goodness from people, but I've been making a concerted effort to make that more obvious.

I get a lot more smiles. I have chats with interesting sptrangers all over the city. It lifts us both up to a nicer place where we can begin to conceive of brotherly love.

Plus, I'm happier. Life feels less fearful, my relationships deepen, and my prospects become more abundant. Once in a while, I actually notice that I've had a long spell of being pleased, grateful and content.

Have I ever been fooled by expecting the best? You bet. I've got a couple of BeeEffDee stories on that subject. Have I been cheated? Once or twice. Has it been worth it? Absolutely.

Crossposted at the ,/a>. Here's the new location: 100 Bloggers

Target Audience: Crazy People

2006-07-03T10:24:00.000-06:00

This is just too weird. Coming from an old-school outfit like Folgers, I'm wondering about the long term effects of coffee consumption. See for yourself, it's practically hallucinatory:

Coudal Partners

2006-06-30T20:42:00.000-06:00

"Copy Goes Here" is a short film created for no good reason, serving no perceivable purpose, there's no morality play in the subtext. It's just useless and wonderful. This is the kind of weirdness one can expect when creative and energetic people are allowed to play in their spare time rather than look busy.

They got a nifty little absurd film that says really nice things about the corporate culture at Coudal Partners . They take risks, and there are people who won't like them for it. But they've given other people reason to like them quite a lot.

Great alternatives in brand development.

$50 for the first person who deciphers a link between post and picture.

Sex and violence? Not all that useful a tool after all.

2006-06-30T12:31:00.000-06:00

Cognitive Daily is one of life's sweet pleasures. It's like a themepark for the eclectic mind.

The brain is an interesting place to explore, one full of surprising revelations. Turns out, ads appearing in programming heavy on heaving bosoms and murder and mayhem don't perform as well as when appearing in more wholesome fare.

This ought to have huge implications for agencies, their clients and media buying decisions. We all love our sex and, well, sex. Some like violence--whatever--between consenting adults in the privacy of their own planet--just don't let me see it. I have tender sensibilities.

One thing is for sure, if anyone's agency is buying ads on those prurient dating shows, or during gore and guts shoot-em-ups, or the likes of Jerry Springer, it might be a good time to look for a new agency.

Here's the story:

[Published in the prestigious journal Psychological Science] . . . Bushman studied 336 adults in central Iowa by showing them violent, sexy, or neutral TV programming (some of the programs included 24 and Cops [violent], Sex in the City and Will and Grace [sexy], and America's Funniest Animals and Trading Spaces [neutral]). Each program contained the same 12 commercials. The commercials were chosen from a selection of products that were relatively unfamiliar to the study group: "Senokot Natural Vegetable Laxative," "Nutra Nails," and so on.
[snip]

Is that the sound of the world becoming less seduced by titilation? Naw. That was my stomach. Time for lunch.

Bushman sees some refreshing consequences if advertisers catch on to the failure of titilation and savagery:

. . . if advertisers would refuse to buy advertising on shows with sexual/violent content, they could help their own bottom lines because the ads on these shows don't sell as well. Society would be helped because violent/sexy shows would soon be removed from the air due to financial insolvency -- and violent programming is associated with aggressive behavior while sexually explicit shows can lead to anti-social sexual attitudes.

If this kind of programming is neutralized as a viable commercial vehicles, sex and violence might just return to their natural place in the human experience.

Seth Godin

2006-06-29T00:16:00.000-06:00

Nearly an hour of Godin goodness.

For all you graphics folks

2006-06-28T20:03:00.000-06:00

Why is it so hard to talk to each other?

2006-06-28T18:23:00.000-06:00

MMODERNISTA! Gets Cadillac: Pearls Before Swine?

2006-06-27T09:02:00.000-06:00

Photo by Porbem via Flickr.

After decades with Leo Burnett, GM is taking its Cadillac account to a brash upstart in Boston, the five-year-old ad agency, MODERNISTA!

Make no mistake about it. MODERNISTA! is not your father's ad agency. They seem painfully polished, and are as avant garde as can be and still touch filthy lucre.

Their grunge-ish website is stylish past the point of cool. Past James Dean, past the Sex Pistols and well into Lilith Crane territory. Not so much cool as frigid. Was there a heart there or did I just miss it?

But that's just me. I like rainbows and kittens and duckies and unicorns, taking walks in the rain and rootbeer floats. Their kind of cool generally is rare in St. Louis, but if you're in Boston, you might want to keep a cardigan handy. These guys are chill.

And Here's MODERNISTA!

Their graphics are stained, dirty-looking, reminiscent of the legendary $1 million idea on the back of a bar napkin, with an all-too-intentional non-chalance. They've got a sad-sack, heroin-addicted, weaving mascot reminiscent of Edward Gorley's pen and ink drawings, but without the wit. A witless Gorley is just beastly drawing and weird for weirdness' sake. Unless informed by a certain amount of self-awareness and cleverness, weirdness like this just wastes pixels.

But what do I know? GM is giving them the $22 million account, not Cambium Creative. But I think GM is making the same mistake it always does. Pyrotechnics are no substitute for insight into human character (and don't be fooled, that's the business), fake messiness doesn't make you creative, and just because you call it a big idea doesn't mean it's a big idea.

What Are Big Ideas?

I honked at this line, "At their best, big ideas tell you how to behave as a business--they're not simply an advertising tagline but a living, breathing business idea." Do these directional arrows have an ego issue? The hubris in that statement is kind of admirable, in its own deluded, twisted fashion. Even for advertising.

Big ideas don't tell people what to do. Really great Big Ideas tell something so true and compelling about who and what the company is at its core, that it's obvious. And not stupid obvious. But that brilliant kind of obvious that takes enormous insight to recognize and is hard to come up with because of its renegade elegance.

If a client of ours were looking for a tagline to be the basic behavioral instruction for the company, I would have to look hard at taking such a fool for a client. Now, if we get the Big Idea that succinctly describes the motivation, the ethic, the motor that keeps people passionate, then wonderful. But cart first. Then Big Idea.

Among Modernista!'s claims to fame has been their work for Hummer, a.k.a., the global warming 3-ton phalllus whose fading fortunes are tied topeak oil. The tv spot they showcase consists of a distorted shiny Hummer grill on a distorted dusty road to a driving techno beat. Copy reads: "Giddyap."

What a mild cleverness. In a world full of language so rich and descriptive, it's really empty. What does this so-called Big Idea really say? That you're a coyboy? You like to play? You can't wait your turn. Even though you're driving an $80,000 ozone depletion machine, you're just a little boy at heart. Giddyap puts no foie in my gras.

In truth, the Hummer brand relies on anything but boyish charm. It's bigger and meaner than anything on the road. Losers driving small cars would be decapitated if they rear-ended you--poor bastards. It's the testosteroni-cholestoral deep dish pizza of tank-cum-troop mover. It costs a fucking fortune, but you're rich enough not to care about anything but your immediate earthly pleasures. You might be Napoleonic in stature or might just be a small man, either way, but all those sweaty cowboy dreams make you hate queers. Your wife won't touch you, but your hemmoroid cream would turn into battery acid if you ever got the chance to nail the kids' sitter.

So you drive your ersatz-military phallus to display your masculinity. Like the little red sportscar of yesteryear, the Hummer is a big honkin' combover.

Meanwhile, it's kind of hard to feel sorry for Leo Burnett. With $225 million less in revenue, the cuts will be deep. And while there's not much sympathy for out-of-work advertising folks, I assure you, when cut, we bleed. (Although it doesn't show so much on the black clothes.)

What were they thinking with that pricey Super Bowl ad? Even with all those beautiful women, it wasn't even pleasant to behold. All black and white and hard people and cold metal. Whatever they were paid (airplane hangars and supermodels were involved), it was too much. Here's the the spot if you're so compelled.

It's almost as if the fine folks at Leo Burnett lost their way and when they should have been concepting, somehow managed to order gin and sushi . . . maybe some not-too-good hallucinogens--and cranked out this drivel.

MODERNISTA!, if they're smart, will build on Cadillac's truly golden, dusty rose image, which I'd argue still has incredible value to translate into new car sales. It would be time to put away the frightfully, dangerously cool bit, though. Getting down to the bones of a brand has nothing to do with cool and everything to do with feeling.

A good revival takes heart. I'd suggest a thoroughly contemporary approach at a retro-revival of the enduring meme that Cadillac is the best and most luxurious car money can buy. I think there's meat on them brand bones, but tarting it up, as I'm afraid they will do, to make an elegant lady shake her salt shaker like Brittany Spears in hopes a little hip will rub off? That would make as much sense as socks on a rooster. You wouldn't put Aunt Eugenie in a bustier and roller blades.

And just one more thing. I guess I'm on a bit of a rant, but these guys are just so emblematic of everything I was happy to leave behind at some of my worse big agency jobs that I am just going to indulge myself one last little bit.

That name, MODERNISTA!, with that exclamation point every damn time it's spelled, strikes me as that tortured ersatz fun found at boozeless office parties during which people laugh too loud, and merriment is mandatory. aIf you must CAP your NAME then INSIST on EXCITEMENT, isn't that pressing the point?

I'm being pretty rough on them, I know. It's hard to develop a site worthy of the exes and ohs that sacrifice their short digits for the greater good. But we ad folks need to learn something. Tell the truth, don't try spin gold out of straw. We never were any good at it anyway. All we got was a bunch of brassy sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I implore our entire industry. Let's once and for all get over being the cool kids. We're too old to be cool, and if we're not, we ought to be. There are many better things than cool. Cool has jumped the shark. Let's think of something else to aspire to. I'm leaning toward honest, warm, real and human.

A Musical Interlude

2006-06-24T23:47:00.000-06:00

Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street.

From an Indian nightclub

2006-06-24T19:49:00.000-06:00

Effective use of advertising.

Russian Life in 50s and 60s

2006-06-15T22:46:00.000-06:00

This collection of urban life in Soviet Russia during the 50s and 60s are brilliantly evocative.

via BoingBoing

Political Bloggers Are Pandered to Like Fat Cats

2006-06-12T11:56:00.000-06:00

Blogging has seriously come of age. DailyKos, a leading progressive blog, hosts a convention of bloggers--I think this is the third year. The article below is ample evidence that what once was considered self-serving emotional claptrap has now tipped to the point of significant influence. In fact, some say the power of progressive bloggers is equal to that of right-wing radio. And to think, we knew it when . . . . Thanks to Suburban Guerilla.

Warner was not the only potential presidential hopeful to glad-hand at YearlyKos. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a 2004 White House contender, threw an after-hours party Thursday night in a packed bar at the Hard Rock Hotel, though the open bar only included a limited supply of bottled beer and cheap red wine. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson showed up Friday morning with breakfast pastries, along with praise for the blogging community and his endorsement of Democrats becoming “the party of [outer] space.” Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack appeared for an education panel before meeting privately with a small pre-selected group of bloggers, without offering so much as a stick of gum.

But no one could compete with Warner, who chose to treat the emerging and ill-defined world of liberal blogging like a major union or corporate trade group. He brought nearly a dozen staffers, including his political action committee’s five-person “Internet team,” and a camera crew to follow his movements throughout the Riviera Hotel, for later online broadcast. When conventioneers checked in, they were given a goodie bag with a laminated invitation to the Warner party conspicuously swinging from the handle. At Saturday’s lunch, where Warner showed his standard slick biographical video and delivered his entrepreneur-turned-Virginia-governor stump speech, each attendee got a black T-shirt, emblazoned with Warner’s digitally enhanced mug and the words “YearlyKos,” as if he had sponsored the event.

“You know when I look around this room I have rarely seen such energy, such optimism, such hope in one place,” Warner told the crowd. “And I am not just talking about those of you I saw at the Blackjack table at the Stratosphere.” His stump speech was light on specific proposals, and heavy with applause lines about the divisiveness of the Bush administration and the need for Democrats to take back the country.

When he was done, about two-thirds of the audience gave him a standing ovation, many of them clearly impressed with his biography as a red state Democrat and high-tech executive. But dissension was also not far under the surface. Minutes after Warner stepped outside of the convention hall to answer questions from reporters and bloggers, Edward Anderson, a Connecticut blogger whose screen name is DeanFan84, confronted him with a broad-based concern. “Do you understand that a lot of us in the grass roots feel that the money could have been spent better?” Anderson asked the former governor, referring to the Friday night Warner party at the Stratosphere. “We don’t want to join the consultant class. I don’t want our guys getting used to shrimp and martinis.”

2006 Best-of-the-Best Marketing Sites

2006-05-30T08:12:00.000-06:00

KnowThis.com has compiled a valuable list of internet marketing sites. Many I knew about, but there are a few new gems there. Check it out.

The Crack Cocaine of Internet Surfing

2006-05-30T07:30:00.000-06:00

I have something to confess. A new addiction. YouTube, Google Video, PistolWimp, the list goes on and on. These streaming video sites are the crack cocaine of internet surfing.

Much of it is pure druck, but there's gold there, too.

For instance, last night I watched an incredible monologue "The History of Oil," by British satirist, Robert Newman. He explains how World War I was an invasion of Iraq, something I didn't know. Quality programming.

Then there are all the clips from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report--I'll never have to buy basic cable to see those titans of political humor again.

In fact, I don't have to leave the comfort of my desk to watch television, with sites like Peekvid, I caught up on Gray's Anatomy on my own schedule.

This has everything to do with marketing. With an expanding Internet, and independent, citizen-provided content, 30- and 60-second commercials are of dwindling efficacy. Ads in the sidebar may get some traffic, but I know I ignore them completely.

If ever there was a need for creativity and authenticity in marketing it's today. The competition is fiercer and getting more ferocious with every click.

Spring went to assertiveness training, can you tell?

2006-05-15T09:46:00.000-06:00

Green and Pink. Spring is Wet., originally uploaded by ancawonka.

photoshopping without a license

2006-04-05T20:22:00.000-06:00

cottage montage, originally uploaded by Wordswinker.

Noblesse Oblige

2006-03-30T00:09:00.000-07:00

The following is excerpted from What Would Jackie Do? An Inspired Guide to Distinctive Living, by Shelly Branch and Sue Callaway. Gotham Books, 2006. via http://blog.guykawasaki.com/.

Noblesse Oblige for Beginners: How to Be a Goodwill Ambassador to Strangers, Colleagues, Malcontents

Jackie preferred hailing taxis to get about in New York City. And in those yellow chariots, she would sometimes lean forward and do what so few ever bother to do: ask how the driver’s day was going. In one case, she beseeched the cabbie to quit his shift in order to get home safely in soggy weather. What good is it, after all, to be a cut above if you don’t let your own splendid qualities trickle down to others?

Coddle bit players. It’s terribly wicked not to give props to all of the people who make your path smoother in life. These include the doorman, the mailman—and if you’re so lucky—the cook and pilot. In Jackie’s case, the list also extended to all sorts of minor politicos. Go beyond tips and nods. As a campaign wife, Jackie was able to recall the names, unprompted, or umpteen mayors and convention delegates. And in the White House, she stunned her new staff by properly addressing members upon their first face-to-face meeting.

Don’t (publicly) criticize your enemies or opponents. Leave such base behavior to modern-day politicians and reality show contestants. Particularly resist the temptation to bad-mouth people by e-mail: There’s nothing worse than electronic slurs, which can be endlessly forwarded. Though surrounded by enemies (political) and jealous types (frumpy women), Jackie refused to get nasty. During the 1960 campaign, she declined to take potshots at Hubert Humphrey. And two decades later, when Nancy Reagan got swamped with negative publicity, Jackie waxed empathetic, going so far as to call her to offer advice on handling the press.

Tap higher powers to help the helpless. After you’ve maxed out your immediate resources, look to your left and right, above and below to harness those six degrees of separation between you and the solution to the problem at hand. Don’t be too proud to ask an influential friend to step in on behalf of someone you know—even if the two have never met. That’s what connections are really for.

In 1980 Jackie summoned medical philanthropist Mary Lasker to help an impoverished sick boy, the son of a manicurist, gain access to proper treatment. As a follow-up to the favor, Jackie wrote her friend Mary a heartfelt note: “Now they don’t feel that they are just a cipher because they are poor,” she scrawled on her Doubleday stationery. “Whatever happens, they know that someone with a noble heart made it possible for them to get the best care they could.”

Turn the other silken cheek. Sometimes you must show people what you are made of by staying elevated when you’d least like to—say, when someone zips into your primo parking space, or snatches the last pair of Loro Piana gloves on sale at Bergdorf’s. Like Jackie, you’d do well to let mild acts of ugliness pass without much fuss.

Traveling with Thomas Hoving, then-director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jackie was stunned—and frightened—by the French paparazzi who swarmed her at a low-key Left Bank restaurant. An infuriated Hoving returned to their hotel, the Plaza Athenee, and demanded that the doorman who disclosed their whereabouts be fired. Informing Jackie of the fait accompli, Hoving recalls, “She got mad at me.” She said: “You suffered a man’s livelihood because of that?”

Mute the call of mammon. The classiest cash is also the quietest. So if you’re fortunate enough to have an endless supply of crisp bills, just don’t crumple them under the noses of those with less. This doesn’t mean you should deprive yourself of fine things. Certainly our lady did not. But wealth does require you to be somewhat stealth about what you’ve got.

Don’t gab on about money, either—yours, your parents’, your boyfriend’s—or your over-the-top plans for it. When Jackie received a $26 million settlement from Aristotle Onassis’s estate, society types needled the widow about how she intended to spend the windfall. “You don’t talk about things like that,” was her stunned reply.

To be a cut above, don’t cut. Even if your social status or connections somehow permit it, resist any temptation to leapfrog over more common folks. This means no line-jumping at Disney World, no flashing that Burberry plaid to snare the next cab. In New York, Jackie waited in crowds like everybody else—or avoided them altogether—rather than nudge her way to the front of movie-house and museum queues.

It's been a salmon day today

2006-03-28T02:39:00.000-07:00

From my buddy Rob. It's wonderful to have friends with a nose for linguistic development. As usual, I pass my 411 on to you. A day without words and all that.

BLAMESTORMING : Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was
missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream
only to get screwed and die in the end.

SITCOMs : Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What Yuppies
turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home
with the kids.

STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and
whiny.

IRRITAINMENT : Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but
you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The J-Lo and Ben wedding (or
not) was a prime example; Michael Jackson, another.

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an
electronic device to get it to work again.

ADMINISPHERE : The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above
the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often
profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to
solve.

404 : Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error Message "404
Not Found," meaning that the requested site could not be located.

GENERICA : Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same
no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and
subdivisions.

OHNOSECOND : That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that
you've just made a BIG mistake. (Like after hitting send on an email by
mistake)

WOOFS : Well-Off Older Folks.

The wisdom of the fart joke

2006-03-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

Wisdom for the ages from Jason Santa Maria:

Before we get into the thick of it, consider one more thing: design is not about innovation. Design is about communication. Innovation in design is usually a wonderful byproduct or direct result of a particular need. Design that seeks to foremost be innovative will commonly fall apart under its own stylistic girth.

That's among the best creative advice I've ever read. We all want to be clever and smart. It feels so good, and the rewards are enormous. When your livelihood rests on the continuous flow of creativity, it's a pressure no one knows but them what knows.

That's why "design is not about innovation" is so important. The same can be said for writing. Writing is not about innovation. It's incredible, ethereal even, when writing becomes innovative. The writing levitates and gets you high. But the communication must come first. Levitation is a wonderful by-product. It's the O, but communication is the sex.

Lunaryuna, Flickr Goddess

2006-02-21T00:31:00.000-07:00

glimpse into my mind, originally uploaded by lunaryuna.

The Perils of Negative Expectations

2006-02-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

Empirical studies have reinforced one of my pet philosophies. From a great little discovery of a blog, BPS Research Digest, explains "Why it's best not to expect the worst."

The study they cite doesn't point to a correlation between expectations and success as much as the link between negative expectations and negative sense of self. In other words, if you expect to do poorly, and do, you see it as further evidence of a larger personal failure. If you expect to do well, but do poorly, you don't internalize the failure, but give it an emotional shrug.

I think it goes farther than that, though. Expectations influence not only your own motivation, but also the way the world approaches you. It's a matter of energy, to sound quite postmodern about it. Positive attracts positive, negative attracts the same.

Afterlife Telegrams--terminal volunteers deliver telegrams to loved ones on the "other side."

2006-01-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

Now here's a business concept in a growth market. For just $5 a word with a five word minimum, I can tell my late Aunt Lucy about my teapot collection's newest addition. It's the round one that's bright yellow, Aunt Lucy, in case you're surfing from the afterlife.

Afterlife Telegrams

With the help of terminally ill volunteers, our service is
sending telegrams to people who have passed away.

For a donation of $5.00 per word (5 word minimum), we can have telegrams delivered to people who have passed away. This is done with the help of terminally Ill volunteers who memorize the telegrams before passing away, and then deliver the telegrams after they have passed away. We call this an "afterlife telegram". The $5.00 per word fee, depending on the wishes of the messenger, it is either given to a relative, donated to a charity or used to pay for medical bills. The company does not keep any of the fees from the sale of the telegrams.

Since we can not guarantee delivery nor prove that a message has been delivered successfully, our customers do not pay for "deliveries". They pay for "delivery attempts". What we do guarantee is the following:
1) The messengers have memorized their telegrams before passing on.
2) The messengers have promised to do what can be done to deliver their telegrams to the addressees after passing.

Looking for goodness, and an end to murderous smirks

2006-01-07T05:54:00.000-07:00

Life makes some people cynical. Looking for the worst? You'll find it.

Some would have you believe their negativity and cynicism is actually hard-won wisdom, a kind of advanced degree in critical thinking. But in fact, cynicism and negativity do not add up to wisdom; rather, they add up to destructive patterns of thought that can be habit-forming.

It takes minimal cleverness and maybe seven facial muscles to produce a smirk sufficiently smirkly to paralyze creativity. We've all had ideas, work, art, children, partners, etc., all victims of murder by smirk. It's an awful feeling. Even a non-lethal injection of scorn has the power to shut down many people once and for all.

Someone recently told me that a significant percentage of us would rather be hit by a bus than speak in public. People will go to extraordinary lengths, and forgo all kinds of wonderful activities just to avoid that particular kind of dismissive disdain.

The smirk murderer gets a cheap (and fleeting) sense of superiority from the disdain they are so generous about. "Look how clever I am to have seen this thing for the drek that it is." Negativity is not a philosophy, it doesn't uplift anyone, it teaches nothing constructive, and it hurts people in more ways than we'll ever know.

One thing is for sure, a life spent avoiding smirk murders can become a kind of prison. Likewise, nothing is gained by automatically suspecting motives. Expecting the worst can attract it.

The reverse is just as true. When you face the world with an honest expectation of the goodness, the results are pretty remarkable. I've recently decided to actively look for goodness in every area of my life. I'm also consciously expecting the best from the people in my life. Results have been amazing.

I get a lot more smiles. I feel closer to people. I'm happier, much happier. Opportunities have been abundant. Life has been abundant. Energy formerly spent being fearful has been returned with dividends.

Have I ever been fooled? You bet. Have I been cheated? Once or twice. Has it been worth it? Absolutely.

Get real now or get real later, but sooner or later you must get real. Chris Locke, Jeneane Sessum, Blogging &tc.

2006-01-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

Since I started this blog (which I have shamelessly ignored recently), I've had to defend it from time to time. Sometimes I've had to defend it rather energetically. There was concern that someone might get, ahem, pissed off, by something they might read here and, well, they might not like me. And then this little enterprise might never achieve its potential riches.

Not that this hasn't occurred to me, but my vigorous defense has been that if anyone is weird about what is written here, it would likely not be a good match to begin with. The truth will out, as they say, and life is much too short to pretend to be something you're not. It's not like anyone stands a chance of anything else coming to pass in the long run, anyhow.

How long could I realistically keep anyone convinced that I am the second incarnation of Sphincter, The Corporate Uber-Goddess, unable to sleep on the Blogging Pea Mattress? (Rhetorical question.) Then there's the other possibility. Someone might like the tiniest bit of attitude in their written word. Someone might think what they read within these pixels is exactly what they want.

I am bolstered at this point by the fact that this has actually come to pass, thank you [your favorite deity here].

So, I was reading Jeneane, ALLIED by Jeneane Sessum: Speaking Our Language (thank you for the automatic linky-script, Blogger) who wrote about an interview with Chris Locke, a strange and wonderful man who was also a blog pioneer (along with Jeneane) and one of the authors of A Cluetrain Manifesto. It's too good to truncate, and makes the point better than I was going to anyway. Jeneane wrote::

Go now and read this interview by David Newberger with Chris Locke on blogging. If there were a license to blog, this, Cluetrain and Gonzo Marketing would be the learner's permits.

Of course there is no license--no MBA, CPA, or DDS required--not even good taste, thank God. Just some skin and flesh in the game, if you're man enough to make yourself vulnerable. Because starting all of this and keeping at it is no simple thing. Or maybe it is.

[pretend this paragraph is indented five spaces to indicate quotation] The challenges of writing will present themselves immediately. And the challenges are great. Are you a fool? Are you naive? Are you saying too much? Too little? Are you bold enough to say THAT in public? Are you stupid enough? All sorts of gremlins sit on your shoulder whispering in your ear. Some are encouragements. Some are seductions. Some groundless fears. Some dangerous delusions. How a writer responds to these whisperings will determine what kind of writer he or she will become. It’s a very personal thing. My own approach is to listen carefully, then ignore all of it.

Jill again. And there it is, the terror of the creative life, rolled into one paragraph. It's the process of facing down one gaping maw of insecurity after another. But just often enough, there's a magic gleam in your inner eye, that psychedelically, exponentially takes you from zero to ten centimeters and you've got that 'la petite mort' that's as addictive as some of your better opiate derivatives. Back to our regularly scheduled quote:

While we're at it, on the notion of 'blooks,' I'd argue that the first blook was Locke's The Bombast Transcripts, featuring "browser-free" content from EGR, published in January 2002.

More nuggets from the interview:

Well, if you mean influence as it’s usually measured, then the clear answer is the Top 100 hit magnets on Technorati. No one could say, and I wouldn’t suggest, that they’re not having a lot of influence on whomever is hitting their blogs. They must, right? And the more people who hit those sites, the more people will hit those sites. In this sense, we’ve replicated the mass media model. Which is inevitable in some sense. I mean, there will always be a top-10, a top-100, in anything you can measure. It’s like fashion. Beige is the new black. Chartreuse is the new black. Whatever.

Then there’s the very different phenomenon of going to x-random site and reading something, hearing something, seeing something that changes your mind, touches your heart. It could be someone you’ve never heard of. It could be someone whose voice is just emerging. His or her real voice. Real in the sense that it cuts through all the posturing and bullshit and reminds you what you are, what we are. That kind of influence can’t be measured the same way. And it’s possible that, by measuring things that can be easily measured, we miss entirely the things that can’t be measured at all.
Certainly.

"And it’s possible that, by measuring things that can be easily measured, we miss entirely the things that can’t be measured at all." How does he do that? An entire ecosystem of values contained within one elegantly succinct sentence. Certainly, indeed.

I am so embarrassed for these people

2005-11-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

Friends, this is bad. This is really and truly bad, bad, bad. The kind of bad that makes you wince in embarrassment because, a) they really are as into it as they seem, or b), they realize how hideously humilating this is and went ahead with it to please management.

This is like a five-minute Mento's commercial, advertising gone horribly, terribly wrong. The only question more compelling than who came up with this concept, is how they got all these people to go along with public displays of such mass dorkiness. Their jobs must have hung in the balance. That's the only explanation.

via monkeyfilter

Mandarin Design: Giving the Store Away Every Day

2005-11-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

Cambium Creative, Inc.

...Mandarin Design lets anyone cut and paste code for techniques like thisas the central tenent of their business plan!

Thanksgiving Ghosts and Macabre Sightings

2005-11-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. And while some people use the occasion to pull out all the culinary stops, I do the same thing every year. The same thing my grandmothers did. And their mothers. And on back. There is some evolution, of course, but like all evolution, it can't be observed by the naked eye.

My ancestors haunt me this time of year. It's a most pleasant haunting. As I cook the things my grandmothers cooked, I feel as much a beloved grandaughter as I ever have. I'm being nurtured as I'm nurturing, carrying on a tradition for which food is an emotional shorthand for so much more.

After the dressing is made, the cranberry relish dished into crystal, and the jello salad sparks the attention of the little ones, the family gets together for a relaxing day of feasting, grazing, chatting, walking in the woods.

This year, that Rockwellian scene took a macabre twist.

~ ~ ~

It was a brilliant sunny day with a nip in the air. After dinner, my 14-year old son, Jack, and my daughter's boyfriend, Seth, decided to get the lay of the land exploring the hundreds of acres of woods around my parents' home. They were gone for about an hour when we realized Jack, who's a Type 1 diabetic, hadn't had his shot for dinner.

Thank goodness for cell phones. We got a good idea where they were, and my husband, Daryl, went off to find them. He had Jack's insulin in his pocket and two long guns, one over each shoulder, for target practice.

A bit of backstory here. I hate guns. I'm a city girl, and to me, they serve no other purpose than to hurt people, usually innocents. I loathe violence and consider it much more obscene than even the most renegade wardrobe malfunction. But I married a small town boy. Daryl had grown up with guns as a way of life; something to be respected, surely, but certainly nothing to be feared or hated.

You can imagine which parent's philosophy has become dominant in my adolescent son. And the truth is, I'm not overly bothered by it because all they ever do is stalk the wily Coke can. He's very responsible about it and has learned enormous respect for firearms. He's not a hot dog about it in even the smallest way.

So when Jack flew into the house saying, "I shot a deer! I shot a deer!" my jaw dropped and I was suddenly inarticulate.

My sister has four kids and teaches kindergarten that has sharpened her presence of mind to the point that nothing stops her. "You realize it's not deer season, don't you? You don't have a license, Jack! That's against the law."

I regained my voice and said, "Jack, tell me exactly what happened. Every last detail. Leave out nothing.

Seth and Daryl stood at the edges, arms crossed, poker faced.

Jack pushed the hair out of eyes, relishing the attention of the entire party. "Seth and I came down the hill and we saw him. It was a beauty. Eight points, and just standing still. Seth went around one way, I went around the other, and we thought we'd corner him. We kept getting closer, and closer, and closer. The buck wouldn't move."

Then Seth broke in, "Someone had already killed it, gutted it, and had mounted its head and pelt on a tree trunk. It was all there except for its left front leg. I guess it was some kind of a decoy. There was a deer blind not far away."

Jack opened his camera phone. "Told you I shot a deer."

And sure enough, there was a grainy image of a beautiful eight-point buck in some kind of grotesque approximation of life. It was chilling to behold, but I was just grateful no one of mine had any part in it.

Good Enough Isn't Enough Anymore

2005-11-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

The old ways of thinking about a company's brand have changed radically. No longer can a mediocre player hire a fancy agency to pump out corporate identity, tag lines, et al, and expect it to fly. Anymore, that's as useless as socks on a rooster..

I believe this is true because we don't have room for mediocrity in our lives anymore. We don't need to put up with plain vanilla, because just down the street we can get all the savory sustenance we deserve. Our time is too valuable, our attention too distracted, our needs too urgent, to settle for anything less than authentic goodness. Isn't that great?

Depends who you are.

Products and services need to truly help people. There must be a commitment to excellence, to going the extra mile to delight your customers. That eliminates a lot of companies who have been coasting with the old paradigm for years, telling us what to believe, saying who they are rather than showing it, addicted to focus groups, where money often substitutes for forthrightness. As a people, we are demanding honesty, excellence and passion. Good for us.

So how do you communicate excellence and passion in ways that speak to the heart of the people who need what you do? (I refuse to use that old chestnut "target audience.") Snappy headlines and snazzy graphics are all sizzle and no steak without that backbone of excellence. You can fool people into a purchase, but you can't fool anyone into being a customer, let alone one who becomes your champion.

Everything you put out there has to have heart. It has to be real. It has to relay that this is not business as usual, this is humans being exceptional to one another. That doesn't mean it has to be sappy and sentimental, just the opposite, in fact. "Real" can be sober, touching, tongue-in-cheek, whimsical, or downright hilarious. It just has to be honest, excellent and passionate. That's all--just everything.

Big bucks brand advertising will not substitute for being true to your customers in every sense of the word.

So, think about this:

What makes what my company does different, and how can we be better?
How does we help people live better lives?
Do we have stories I can tell that communicate the real truth of the heart of my business?
Are we willing to be different from ourcompetition, not just to break through the clutter, but to deliver the best to our customers?
Are we willing to stand out from the crowd and take the risk of not being everything to everybody? (A losing proposition any way you cut it.)
Do we listen carefully to our customers/clients/users?
Are our communications worthy of the heart and soul we've put into the business?

These are all things we ask our clients to think about before we put pen to paper. That's because we've asked those things of ourselves, and to do justice and do well, we have to deliver excellence with passion. Can't do that without getting to know our clients' businesses, attitudes and realities through and through. I wonder why anyone would ever want to settle for anything less?

Which is more distracting, e-mail or pot?

2005-11-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

You know when you see a question like that, the answer has to be e-mail. Otherwise no one would ask the question. Read more on lifehacker.com.
There is something really seductive about that little "bing" signalling new e-mail that's hard to resist. What I've done is set my controls so I have to manually get my e-mail to download. That way, it doesn't interrupt my stream of consciousness, or take me on a digression that lasts the morning. Does that mean that it's okay for me to fire up a doobie? Yeah, right.

10 Things Clients Want

2005-10-29T16:41:00.000-06:00

From lifehacker.com:

With any business or type of work - you have to deal with customers directly or indirectly. Focusing on customer relationship and make sure your products and services are working for them goes long ways to keep your job around. Pat Matson Knapp has written an article on Joe Grant’s “Top 10 List of Client Wants”. All of them can apply to direct customer relationship, and some of them can apply when you indirectly dealing with customers:

Keep the Principal Involved
Communicate Effectively
Be Easy to Work With
Exceed Expectations
Keep Your Promises
Anticipate Their Needs
Build a Seasoned Team
Do Good Work
Hold Their Hand
Meet Their Goals

Information Overload

2005-10-24T08:14:00.000-06:00

From www.elearningpost.com, an insight belonging strictly to our information-soaked culture. Until quite recently, it would have been quite difficult to have too much information on a given subject just because of the effort involved getting it. Today, it's important to edit input--even if it's just for the amount of time it takes to digest the information and form ideas and opinions on it. Critical thinking can happen in input mode, but most often is richer when on the other side of it.

Gerry McGovern writes about the dangers of having too much information:

Human beings are much better at dealing with scarcity than with glut. This is particularly true when it comes to information. It has long been accepted wisdom that you can’t have too much information. You can… Your future career hinges on your ability to plan ahead. Resist becoming a news junkie. Resist churning out emails and web pages. Sit back and think hard. In an age of information overload, what you don’t read—what you don’t write—is just as important as what you do.

Don't Shave the Yak

2005-10-22T17:14:00.000-06:00

From Seth Godin, in its entirety, just cause it's too good to truncate:

Don't Shave That Yak!

The single best term I've learned this year.

Apparently turned into a computer term by the MIT media lab five years ago, yak shaving was recently referenced by my pal Joi Ito. (Link: Joi Ito's Web: Yak Shaving)

I want to give you the non-technical definition, and as is my wont, broaden it a bit.

Yak Shaving is the last step of a series of steps that occurs when you find something you need to do. "I want to wax the car today."

"Oops, the hose is still broken from the winter. I'll need to buy a new one at Home Depot."

"But Home Depot is on the other side of the Tappan Zee bridge and getting there without my EZPass is miserable because of the tolls."

"But, wait! I could borrow my neighbor's EZPass..."

"Bob won't lend me his EZPass until I return the mooshi pillow my son borrowed, though."

"And we haven't returned it because some of the stuffing fell out and we need to get some yak hair to restuff it."

And the next thing you know, you're at the zoo, shaving a yak, all so you can wax your car.

This yak shaving phenomenon tends to hit some people more than others, but what makes it particularly perverse is when groups of people get involved. It's bad enough when one person gets all up in arms yak shaving, but when you try to get a group of people together, you're just as likely to end up giving the yak a manicure.

Which is why solo entrepreneurs and small organizations are so much more likely to get stuff done. They have fewer yaks to shave.

So, what to do?

Don't go to Home Depot for the hose.

The minute you start walking down a path toward a yak shaving party, it's worth making a compromise. Doing it well now is much better than doing it perfectly later.

This is an apt observation in the "Getting Things Done" category that's become so pervasive. There's a fine line between "good enough isn't good enough" and "done is better than perfect." I've found myself arguing both cases with equal vigor. The important thing is to do it, though. Without the work, there's nothing, no matter how good the reasons may be.

The New Communications

2005-10-21T18:56:00.000-06:00

An interesting compilation of "new communications" articles.

What’s the Most Important Word In Marketing?

2005-10-15T22:42:00.000-06:00

Scott Ginsberg, of "Hello, My Name is Scott," fame has done a lovely job of deliniating the differences between traditional, old school marketing and new marketing by asking "What’s the Most Important Word In Marketing?"

Read his article on the subject.

Seth Godin's Free E-Book on Blogging

2005-10-11T18:01:00.000-06:00

Seth is fun to read to begin with, and what he has to say always has a twist for a bit of edge and flavor that's earned him and his bald head the fine reputation the two of them enjoy. He's written a dandy 48-page e-book about blogging and what it's all about, why it's important, and why you might oughtta to be blogging. He's a good thinker, and he's laid it out goodheartedly for the rest of us to download for F R E E ! ! !

Do yourself a favor and download Who's There? Seth Godin's Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web. It's a PDF, but worth the wait (or is that just my computer that's so dreadfully slow opening those honkers).

Spend some time at his blog, too, and find out why he bills himself as "author, agent of change."

Long time, no blog

2005-10-11T10:42:00.000-06:00

Has it really been so long since my last post? Blogs don't lie, or at least they shouldn't, so yes it has.

I have a really, really good excuse. My family has moved house from a typical suburban ranch to a funky, fun and smaller Victorian loaded with charm, not closets. There's nothing like moving and downsizing at the same time to come face-to-face with what's truly necessary. It's really a lot less than I used to think.

There's something so freeing about letting go of possessions. I still have the important things, the heirlooms from both sides of the family, the touchstones of a lifetime of complicated, wonderful living. I don't have so much stuff anymore, which means what I have is distilled to the essence. I could distill even more if I needed to. That's also a good thing to know.

Less really is more.

From Kottke.org

2005-09-20T13:26:00.000-06:00

As part of his review of the recent AIGA conference, Kottke offers up the following quoted bon mot:

As part of the conference within a conference for students, Michael Bierut listed 20 courses he did not take in design school (I think I got all of them):

Semiotics
Contemporary Performance Art
Traffic Engineering
The Changing Global Financial Marketplace
Urban planning
Sex Education
Early Childhood Development
Economics of Commerical Aviation
Biography as History
Introduction to Horticulture
Sports Marketing in Modern Media
Modern Architecture
The 1960s: Culture and Conflict
20th Century American Theater
Philanthropy and Social Progress
Fashion Merchandising
Studies in Popular Culture
Building Systems Engineering
Geopolitics, Military Conflict, and the Cultural Divide
Political Science: Electoral Politics and the Crisis of Democracy

His point was that design is just one part of the job. In order to do great work, you need to know what your client does. How do you design for new moms if you don't know anything about raising children? Not very well, that's how. When I was a designer, my approach was to treat the client's knowledge of their business as my biggest asset...the more I could get them to tell me about what their product or service did and the people it served (and then talk to those people, etc.), the better it was for the finished product. Clients who didn't have time to talk, weren't genuinely engaged in their company's business, or who I couldn't get to open up usually didn't get my best work.

Bierut's other main point is, wow, look at all this cool stuff you get to learn about as a designer. If you're a curious person, you could do worse than to choose design as a profession.

September's Website of the Month: Word Spy

2005-09-06T09:56:00.000-06:00

In our continuing effort to stay abreast of the latest in the ever-changing world of linguistics, please note our September Website of the Month, Word Spy.

This website is devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren't "stunt words" or "sniglets," but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources.

For those of us who love us some good words, The Word Spy is quite a find. Examples of language creation, intelligent design and evolution all peacefully coexist in a cyber world where terms like "stunt words" and "lexpionage" take up the same amount of space at the dinner table as their more established cousins. After all, when dressing for a fine word salad, a well-fitting cap of stylish expressions is the perfect finish for the sartorially-minded gentlewoman's lexicon.