Good Enough Isn't Enough Anymore

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?

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

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:

1. Keep the Principal Involved
2. Communicate Effectively
3. Be Easy to Work With
4. Exceed Expectations
5. Keep Your Promises
6. Anticipate Their Needs
7. Build a Seasoned Team
8. Do Good Work
9. Hold Their Hand
10. Meet Their Goals

1. 
   

Information Overload

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

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

An interesting compilation of "new communications" articles.

What’s the Most Important Word In Marketing?

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

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

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

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

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.

Creativity

Being creative is hard. It's very hard. Not just because you're continually forging new pathways in the brain, although that's part of it. It's the risk you take when you put your creativity out there for the world to judge. And, oh, does the world ever judge. Our world pays a lot of lip service to creativity while dashing it with disdain as often as not. We are such creatures of habit that when something new hits us, we have a tendency to reject it out of hand. Or at least that's my working theory. It's also a hell of a lot easier to tear something down than build something up.

Will we ever know how a flippant remark might diminish someone else's creative impulses? Fear of disdain is huge. So huge that swarms of humanity give up trying to be creativity because of it.

I remember the first time I ever had to present ad concepts. I was terrified. I felt like I was parading around naked. It's still that way, although I've become much more adept at weathering the inevitable criticism.
The following article discusses the inherent difficulties in the creative life with such acumen I'm exerpting it in full. "What makes me creative" by Bruce DeBoer.

"My 8 year old son is so creative he's going to be an artist." How many times have you heard that? Naïve art – young children are natural at it. It's the first rain in the desert, new run-off paths are spontaneously created; the water forges streams where there were none. An 8 year old discovers crayons uninhibited by life experience, ego, and deadlines. Nearly every connection is a new one. She hasn't yet learned how not to be creative.

When we say that art is immature, what do we mean? We don't necessarily mean that the artist lacks originality; more likely, we mean that its originality is born by an artist who doesn't yet know enough to be interesting, or deliver emotion in a compelling way. The moment a child realizes their art is immature, the crayons stand a good chance of being surrendered.

Information and experience are like food for the creative process. It's raw substance. Information needs to be digested to brain-fat so it can re-immerge as mature creative energy. It's as if it needs to be inculcated into our souls before we are free to randomize it into original creative expression. If we don't digest it, a creative product – art, innovation, music, etc. – is sure to be more derivative that original. Creativity is using our unique inner selves to rearrange the raw material.

Society teaches the creativity out of our students. If X, then Y is easy to teach. If X, then Y gets results. It generates tangible and immediate ROI. Do this and get that result. Take an alternative path and risk failure or – even worse – ridicule. Research creative history and learn what got rewarded and what was ignored. Teach high craft and call it high art. Creativity is too soft and round; there is nothing to grab onto. There are often no clean results to judge. Creativity is messy but we all crave the rewards.

When do we begin to fear our own creativity? I believe it is the point at which we began to market ourselves. True creativity is deeply personal because we have to create new streams – new run-off paths in our souls. Risking creative rejection is terrifying. It's rejection that cuts so deep it's worse than a High School crush laughing when you finally get the nerve to ask her to the movies (I digress, forgive me). Creativity takes courage. Being vulnerable takes guts. Needed is a willingness to be rejected for what is among the most personal of expressions. The stakes are high.

Taking a less risky path is more about fine craft than innovation. I'm reminded of advice from an emerging professional as I left college: he told me, "On the outside, there is no room for 'b" quality work." In other words: it is the end of experimentation without consequences. Experiment all you want on your own, but come to work with your "A" game: bring what you know will meet approval.

Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void fame uses the Sex and Cash theory to explain how creativity and business relate. Re: Sex and Cash, "This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended." Creativity is sexy. The more you get paid for your creativity, the less sexy it is. I believe there are laws governing sex and cash, are there not? Do we dare go counter culture?

The occasional and often publicized young creative genius can lull us into the false impression that creativity is only for the immensely and naturally talented. "I can't do that, I've never been creative." The truth is creativity is hard work. Creative people are talented because they put in the hours. There is a passion for the doing; they can't not-do, and the results are secondary to the act but no less important than their original idea. Does this confuse you?

Whether you're an artistic temperament seeking structure or a rational temperament seeking imagination, creativity is constructive only when related to others. If you've heard improvisational abstract Jazz you know what I mean. An artist's passion can be intensely creative but the results can fail to inspire others – it's self indulgent.

Ever try to talk through your raw creative ideas with another? Sounded dim, didn't it? People often reject another's raw creativity; it's simply too intimate until it takes a form prone to mutual acceptance. Raw creative ideas aren't ready for prime time – they need at least minimal crafting. Like a beautifully written song sung out of key – poor craft masks the emotion or defeats the function.

For those of you in need of concrete illustration, this should keep you busy:

Creativity x Craft x Emotion = Art
Creativity x Craft x Function = Innovation

[This should help with the test at the end, so pay attention.]

However flawed you may find these equations; my point is that emotion and function are the human relational elements to art and innovation. Without emotion, art appears dry and mechanical. Without function, innovation is pure Rube Goldberg. Craft is the vehicle of creativity. Crafting the creativity allows the emotion and function to "sing".

The good news: Creativity is portable. The bad news: fine Craftsmanship is not. When people say I'm a great photographer, most are telling me that I've honed the craft of photography beyond the ordinary. I can't move my honed skills from photography to writing, to music, to business, but I can take my creativity with me. It's fluid that way. We begin to recognize talent when an accomplishment tipping point is reached in the three elements of our creativity equation.

Talent doesn't need a creative process per se. Talent finds formulaic process stifling: a canvas and a deadline, however, is a different story. Talent will surface no matter what; it won't be denied. Talent doesn't need the best camera to make great imagery. Just as money can't buy contentment, the best guitar, camera, or paints can't aid creativity, only help polish the craft.

Process helps companies hide their poor creative talent. "We have a great creative process" that we use to get our accountants to think "out of the box". Ugh! Isn't that what Enron boasted? Remember what I said about putting in the hours? Either a company hires those with creative passion and nurtures it with a catalytic culture or it doesn't. Usually it doesn't. Reflecting on the process undermines the ability, it takes us back to "if X then Y" and the crayons stay in the box.

Watching creativity is like watching a cow lactate – all day long nothing is witnessed, then, WHAM, milk. Once you have your milk, only then should you send it through the process. Make sure it solves the problem. Make sure the Function and the Craft in the Innovation equation is honed to a fine edge. Bad milk? Keep moving.

Somewhere around puberty we accumulate enough junk in our minds that we need to organize it: make it linear. Random thought is no longer an efficient way to make it through the day and stay sane. Most of us lay down our crayons. Those who don't surrender, usually become artists, musicians, fashion designers or advertising art directors who wander through the desert waiting for rain.

Thinking Like a Genius

It's been so long between posts because Blogger lost me for a while. They just found me again. I enjoyed this article about alternative thoughtways. Read the entire article here.

Thinking like a Genius

The first and last thing demanded of genius is the love of truth Goethe

"Even if you're not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness the power of your creative mind and better manage your future." The following eight strategies encourage you to think productively, rather than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to problems. "These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history." 1. Look at problems in many different ways, and find new perspectives that no one else has taken (or no one else has publicized!) Leonardo da Vinci believed that, to gain knowledge about the form of a problem, you begin by learning how to restructure it in many different ways. He felt that the first way he looked at a problem was too biased. Often, the problem itself is reconstructed and becomes a new one.

A Feast of Words

I do love me some good words.

Now that summer is here, it's time for all good logophiles (word lovers) and logomaniacs (word lunatics) to show off their buff vocabularies.

Are your verbal muscles a tad flaccid? Feeling a bit oligophrenic (mentally deficient)? Not to worry. I'm a personal grandiloquence trainer, and I'm going to pump you up. So grab your bottle of Evian (did you know that's naive spelled backward?) and follow me on a power-word walk through the world of current events.

From Boston.com.

Here's an interesting phenomenon. Cities and states are sponsoring citizen bloggers to extoll their glorious Chamber-of-Commerce F&B to the blogosphere.

Last month, Pennsylvania's tourism site, http://visitpa.com, launched six blogs written by "real people" taking road trips across the state. Accompanied by digital photos and videos, the diaries cover such diverse pursuits as antique shopping, mountain biking and attending a NASCAR event. The authors -- a family of four, a history buff and a Harley-Davidson rider among them -- receive $1,000 for each of three journeys they'll write about this summer.

I'd do that. Sounds like fun. Bum around all summer long, blog a bit, cash checks. Works for me. Nu?

Go to MIT Without Leaving Town

MIT has always been famous for attracting some of the best and brightest. They load their students with a stellar education, then turn them loose to become some of our more interesting people.

Now the riff raff (we know who we are), can audit MIT courses for free. I heard about this a while back, and promptly forgot all about it until running across a link on del.icio.us (which, in case you haven't discovered it for yourself, is a remarkable social bookmarking site that for me, has triggered interests I never knew I had).

MIT OpenCourseWare offers an incredible array of online courses well suited to the lifelong learner. Subjects that caught my eye included:

• Anthropology
• Architecture
• Grain and Cognitive Sciences
• Comparative Media Studies
• Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Studies
• Economics
• Foreign Languages and Literatures
• History
• Linguistics and Philosophy
• Literature
• Media Arts and Sciences
• Ocean Engineering
• Political Science
• Science, Technology and Society
• Urban Studies and Planning
• Women's Studies

Funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and who knows how many individual donors, (one alum, Jon Gruber, gave a cool million), MIT has published 1100 courses as a gift to the world.

So what, you might ask, does this have to do with advertising and marketing? Beats me, but I intend to find out.

More David Sedaris

According to my late Uncle Ron, three makes a collection. This makes my third post of a New Yorker article by David Sedaris, thus making it an official collection. Enjoy. I know I did.

A bit of visual relief.

Appealing to Human Potential as a Marketing Principle

Hugh MacLeod at gapingvoid.com delves deep into the human psyche and applies it to branding.

We humans want to believe in our own species. And we want people, companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so. That is human nature.

Product benefit doesn't excite us. Belief in humanity and human potential excites us.

Think less about what your product does, and think more about human potential.

What statement about humanity does your product make?

The bigger the statement, the bigger the idea, the bigger your brand will become.

It’s no longer just enough for people to believe that your product does what it says on the label. They want to believe in you and what you do. And they’ll go elsewhere if they don’t.

It’s not enough for the customer to love your product. They have to love your proccess as well.

People are not just getting more demanding as consumers, they are getting more demanding as spiritual entities. Branding is a spiritual exercise. These are The New Realities, this is the Spiritual Republic we now live in.

The soul cannot be outsourced. Either get with the program or hire a consultant in Extinction Management. No vision, no business. Your life from now on pivots squarely on your vision of human potential.

I just love Hugh's insistence that spiritual transcendence should become a functioning marketing principle. How wonderful would it be if every time someone tried to get us to buy something, they appealed to our higher selves? What if the Enrons and Tycos of our recent history became distant object lessons, replaced by corporations full of transparent integrity and commitment to the higher good?

Of course, your better people have always done this. The more spiritually evolved naturally work from a place of integrity and apply it to every aspect of their lives. These people are also highly attractive because they appeal to what is whole and wholesome within.

That said, I don't think transcendence will be a universally demanding marketing principle for quite some time. That's because people are so very human: often self-centered, shallow, materialistic, greedy and opportunistic.

In fact, the Pareto Law is probably at work here as in everything else. That's the 80/20 rule, where 20 percent of any given group delivers 80 percent of the goods.

For the sake of argument, let's say that 20 percent of marketing folks will be responsible for 80 percent of the vision, at least for the time being. What happens to the other 80 percent? Will they go the way of the dodo as Hugh suggests? Or will they continue to ply their trade, seduced by human nature into shining big honking spotlights on the good stuff and burying the nasty side effects in six point type because that tends to work pretty well?

Or will they learn to manipulate things so they appear to have passion, integrity and wisdom? I don't know the answer, but it's an interesting question.

I think Hugh MacLeod is on the growing tip. His advice is quite good, even if most of of the world has some serious evolving to do to catch up. Appealing to what is whole, wholesome and genuine is not only a much more resonant way to have conversations with the people you hope will buy the very good thing you are selling, but it is a much more satisfying way to make a living.

Do we then become something other than a slave? Or are we just chained to a higher master?

"Your Name Here" Conquers Space, Trains Pets, Makes Friends, Reshapes Economy, Enhances Romance and Delivers a Smoother Shave

I've done my share of spec work, but it never occured to me to create a turnkey piece of work that would bring a stop to all that nonsense of coming up with new ideas for every last company and every last product.

But "Your Name Here" is the first and last word in one-size-fits-all spec work. Created in 1960, this industrial film short was designed to be a bang up sales film for virtually any product. All it needs is just a wee bit of editing to make it a whiz bang sales tool for "Your Product."

The producers promise "you are about to witness history in the making." That's a big promise, but I think they deliver.

First things first, of course. Nothing is sold unless there is, if not a real need, at least a perceived need, right? Since this was made without any specific product in mind, the producers of "Your Name Here" take us back to prehistory to make the case that the need has always been great!

A uniquely costumed trip through time ensues, beginning with a cave dweller, followed by a Greek, a Viking (I think--the costuming is a bit uncertain) and on to a debonair swashbuckler from the Romantic Age, complete with a ostrich-plumed hat. This is the windup that establishes that throughout time, all of humanity has been missing an elusive something. "Your Product"!

Cut to John and Mary, our modern malcontents, complaining they have drifted apart because they don't have that "one thing" they need for a better life.

Poor John and Mary, the very picture of ennui in twin beds.

But, wait! There is hope. The dedicated scientists from "Your Name Here" have discovered the secret that has "baffled man for ages."

That's right. "Your Product ," made by "Your Name Here," is transforming the lives of millions by, no kidding:

• reshaping the economy
• breaking the boundaries of time
• conquering space itself
• helping people enjoy recreation
• making pets more obedient
• helping people make friends
• making travel more enjoyable
• growing bigger crops
• giving greater smoking satisfaction
• strengthening our national defense
• keeping romance from "fading away"
• helping men enjoy a smoother shave

"Your Product" has "bettered humanity for all time and will never be forgotten." Just like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, (use Robert E. Lee if desired), Franklin Delano Roosevelt and (use Dwight D. Eisenhower if desired). "Your Name Here's" president's image follows as part of a logical sequence, a parade of unparalleled humanitarian greatness.

Cut back to our friends, John and Mary. John bursts through the door, unhinged with glee. He beams as he announces to dear Mary, that he's not a lowly shipping clerk anymore. Thanks to "Your Product," he's been promoted to Chairman of the Board! Boy howdy, that must be some good stuff.

Happiness reigns. "Your Name Here" is now "the living symbol of our national heritage." Final image? An American flag, flying proudly in a hearty wind.

After you've wiped a tear and cleared the lump in your throat, click through to "Your Name Here," to sample a host of tender morsels. I especially recommend the scene between two coonskin capped frontiersman. It explains so much about the rugged determination and stick-to-it-tive-ness that has made us the America we are today.

[Note: check out this film's mothersite, Prelinger Archives. It's an incredible library of streaming videos from every era.]

Attack of the 50 ft. PR woman

Attack of the 50 ft. PR woman, originally uploaded by Jill.y.

Time for a bit of illustration.

More on Corporate Blogging

I ran across a white paper full of good advice about business blogging. click here for the PDF file. This is a subject that is not going to go away. Via Jeneane Sessum at Allied, a great blog to spend time with. She got it from Content Factor, her employer, as it turns out. Think maybe she wrote it? She's certainly got the stripes.

Blogs Will Change Your Business

This article on Business Week's website is a comprehensive look at blogs and their potential to impact business in powerful ways. For instance,

. . . 40 new [blogs are created] every day that could be talking about your business, engaging your employees, or leaking those merger discussions you thought were hush-hush.

Give the paranoids their due. The overwhelming majority of the information the world spews out every day is digital -- photos from camera phones, PowerPoint presentations, government filings, billions and billions of e-mails, even digital phone messages. With a couple of clicks, every one of these items can be broadcast into the blogosphere by anyone with an Internet hookup -- or even a cell phone. If it's scandalous, a poisonous e-mail from a CEO, for example, or torture pictures from a prison camp, others link to it in a flash. And here's the killer: Blog posts linger on the Web forever.

Yet not all the news is scary. Ideas circulate as fast as scandal. Potential customers are out there, sniffing around for deals and partners. While you may be putting it off, you can bet that your competitors are exploring ways to harvest new ideas from blogs, sprinkle ads into them, and yes, find out what you and other competitors are up to.

This is a must-read for anyone doubting the impact and importance of the blogosphere on business.

Addicted to Learning

One of my favorite sites is Creating Passionate Users. There are several contributors, but Kathy Sierra is particularly insightful and inspiring. Her latest post, is all about the fun of mastering something new.

Remember, learning is like a drug to the brain (actually, it is a drug). The best user experiences--combined with a clear path to greater expertise and the promise of more time in flow--are like a healthier, happier form of crack.

She reminded me why I love what I do so much. As a writer, I am constantly learning. Doing this within the discipline of strategic thinking and creative execution adds another dimension that keeps my work constantly challenging.

As a college student, I was addicted to learning. A good liberal arts education prepares you for a lifetime of learning because it trains you to make connections (the core skill behind the conceptual process). For me, it really was a "healthier, happier form of crack."

Becoming a writer was a natural extension of the academic experience. I can lose myself in researching and integrating vast amounts of new information. The work of interpreting that knowledge into effective, engaging communication is often pure joy for me.

If, as Hugh MacLeod says, creativity is when work and play are the same thing, then combining creativity with the total immersion of mastering new information has to be the most rewarding way to make a living.

Hello to Bello

Anyone with a computer is faced with the delightful task of choosing fonts for word processing, correspondence and the like. Those of us in the creative business understand the importance of typography to effective communication as well as aesthetics.

For instance, have you ever noticed that many direct mail letters use a typewriter font despite the fact that letters haven't been typewritten in ages? It's because through years of testing, direct marketers know that the Courier font has an authority quotient that's entirely independent of the content. Font choice can be driven by much more than good looks alone.

That said, Bello is good looking. Bello is a heavy looking new script font created by a European type foundry named Underware that recently won a best new ''display font'' award from the Type Directors Club. As the name suggests, display fonts look best when used in headlines rather than body copy.

Reminiscent of the lettering in old hand-painted signs, Bello has a fun retro look that takes full advantage of its digital origins. Unlike the old days, when fonts were created on metal plates, digital fonts have advantages that actually make them closer in look to calligraphy. The New York Times explains:

One tricky thing about script fonts is that in actual handwriting, the form of one letter might be affected by the letter next to it. Interestingly, Bello uses a digital format called OpenType, which, among other things, makes just such adjustments. As you type the word ''Bello,'' for example, the second ''l'' looks different from the first. Helmling suggests this may be exactly what people find attractive about Bello and other script fonts. It's not just the appeal of ''handwritten flavor,'' as he puts it, in a digital age. It's the way that technology allows users to harness those comforting imperfections perfectly.

Anxious to see what all the fuss is about? Until it gets archived, you can read the The New York Times Magazine article about Bello here.

Cliches, Weasel Words and Management-Speak

Newsweek has an online exclusive, "Attack of the Weasel Words," a review of Death Sentences: How Clichés, Weasel Words and Management-Speak are Strangling Public Language, by Australian author, Don Watson.

As a writer, one of my jobs is to scour any document until it is entirely free of what Watson calls weasel words. I think the people who use this jargon believe they're sounding smart. The fact is, they're sounding unintelligible and needlessly obtuse. An example from Watsons book is a fine example"

Just as the skill and processes are not compartmentalized in the creation process, the evaluation of outcomes will occur against a background of understanding that separation of outcomes into discrete components is subordinate to the evaluation of the total process as a comprehensive outcome.”

Is there anyone on the planet who knows what that paragraph means? If someone does, they need not call me, but should consider calling the nearest linquistic therapist for an urgent appointment.

CBS Blog

CBS may have missed the cable bandwagon, but they're making sure they catch the blog train.

[CBS announces] . . . "Public Eye," a new blog that will create a candid and robust dialogue between CBS News journalists and the public -- a move unprecedented among CBS's peers in broadcast and cable television journalism. "Public Eye" will be edited by veteran reporter and media writer Vaughn Ververs, most recently editor of The Hotline, a daily Web briefing on politics published by the National Journal. Ververs will serve as the conduit between the public and CBS News to take viewers and users inside the news gathering, production and decision-making process via the use of original video and outtakes, interviews with correspondents and producers, and input from independent experts, among other methods. "Public Eye" will debut by late summer.

Looks like a great way to start a conversation. How long before the others follow suit?

Language is a virus

Language is a virus is a new way to play with words that's clean fun for the whole family.

My bad

From yesterday's post:

But what if a company's truth isn't their best story? There are some famous failures in the headlines lately whose truth, let's just say, didn't so much set them free as set them up.

Robert Scoble or Shel Israel (I'm not sure which) left a comment pointing out that it sounds like I'm recommending a well-crafted lie if the truth doesn't make you look so hot. Well. Hot damn. Sure does look that way, doesn't it. Is it too late to take it back? Honest, that's not what I meant to say.

Here's what I meant to say, which unfortunately, stayed locked in my head in my urgency to get a belated post published. Companies like Adelphia and Enron were the quintessential truth-isn't-their-best-story companies. Their truth set them free, alright. Free to go to a fiery afterlife. But that was only after the truth was finally pried from their cold and greedy, wizened claws. Their truth brought down entire corporations and countless innocents along with them. Their dishonesty was so deep that no blog was going to cure what ailed them.

It was a throw-off line that could have been a marvelous opportunity to discuss the importance of telling the truth especially when it's not pretty. An opportunity I'll take now because blogging is the ideal vehicle for proactively (I just hate that word, but it works here) dealing with problems in a disarmingly public way by owning up to your company's shortcomings in front of God and everybody.

This is counter-intuitive to old-style business models. In fact, one of the traditional functions of pr is to make bad things go away with minimum damage.

But cast your mind into the misty future to contemplate a world where a company screws up and says so on its tell-the-truth blog. How much more would you trust that company than one who avoids confronting mistakes until forced to, or responds with a traditional public relations damage control campaign?

Don't you kind of like them already?

The truth. What a radical idea.

Thanks, Robert or Shel at Naked Conversations. You saved me from myself and gave me a story to tell on myself . . . thankfully before anyone could tell it on me.

Blog or die?

Cover your eyes if you don't want to read yet another post about how the world of advertising is changing once and evermore.

The world of advertising is changing once and evermore. Buying up acres of print or hours of airtime isn't your ticket to the top anymore. Print and broadcast will still have their place, but they're not the finish line anymore.

More and more companies are clued in to this and are launching blogs because they are simply the smartest way to reach the folks who might buy what you have to offer. If the content is compelling, if the tone is individual, if there's a willingness to tell the truth, blogging is the easiest, cheapest way to develop a relationship with the folks who are, or who might become, your customers.

Robert Scoble and Shel Israel over at Naked Conversations, a seminal blog about "how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers," don't mince words. Blog or Die. They got some flack for using hyperbole and in the version I've linked to, they've qualified that statement, but not by much.

In a nutshell:

I believe, blogging will fundamentally change communications from what it is today to something less controlled and more credible. It has already begun to do so, at a phenomenal rate, and at a time when many industries are dealing with broken business models. For example, traditional publishing--newspapers, magazines and books are all dealing with issues of reduced profitability. Blogging didn't break their models--the Internet contributed by fragmenting news distribution and by siphoning off ad revenues. . . .

(snip)

. . . businesses who ignore blogging will go the way of the blacksmith who ignored the automobile. A century ago, some blacksmiths reinvented themselves to become auto dealers. Others started promoting horseback riding as recreation sports, founded boarding stables or pioneered early race tracks. Others just kept on doing what they were doing and slowly, steadily, and in the end, silently died.

This will be a hard transition for a lot of companies to make because they're accustomed to 100 percent control. Blogging isn't about control. It's about having faith that the truth is the best story you have to tell.

But what if a company's truth isn't their best story? There are some famous failures in the headlines lately whose truth, let's just say, didn't so much set them free as set them up. Blogging can tell your truth, make a company human, engage in conversation, invite feedback, do everything a press release does, but with a human voice.

It's planning season for a lot of industries. Ahem.