Hey everyone, here we go. . . . . .
IN OUR WORLD
This week I had the honor of taking the Repeatable Successful Acts platform to Cleveland. Yes, it was cold, but both groups I had the opportunity to share ideas with were fantastic!
As I was on the road my calendar exploded with a number of requests for speaking engagements, project launches and a couple of design ideas. The most volatile part of my business is my calendar. It is a huge challenge to manage all the people wanting various dates.
The process often involves dates on “HOLD”. A client can call and put a date on “hold” while they develop the project. This gives that client the “right of first refusal”. If another client wants the date on hold, the client who has held the date gets the right to make it a firm committed date. Though this idea makes sense and I have used it for years, the challenge of having to get a hold of a HOLD client can prove challenging. In the past three days I have had three clients ask for the same dates! I am always amazed that out of 365 days in a year that three people want the exact same date!
Next week I am off to my favorite city in American – San Francisco!
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THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW
Hey, you should be paying attention to what’s going on in marketing, especially digital marketing. You see, in the digital marketing world they have become experts at “response”. The unique ability to shift and change ideas with a moments notice.
The experts in teaching this unique and often gut wrenching perspective can be found at the Swedish school/company – Hyper Island (http://www.hyperisland.se/). They produce the most coveted digital talent in the advertising industry. Here are a few of their ideas:
- Story Building: They distinguish this from Storytelling by being in charge of constructing the brands story. As a builder of the story this allows them to respond in real time to an unpredictable audience.
- Use-vertising: This means that you must think more like a product developer than like an entertainer in the mind set of an ad campaign.
- Be Incremental: Old ad campaigns were completed before they were presented, but the new digital ideas are delivered in pieces. They are experimental and continually optimized. They say our ideas are in “perpetual beta state” never finished, always adapting.
What can you use from these new ways of looking at the advertising world?
1. Your Story: Spend some time on your story. Start by having a meeting with your team and ask them this simple question; “what do we do”? Record the various ways your team answers and you have the beginning of the Story Building process.
2. Constantly Visit: When a new idea is in play, constantly visit the progress and impact it is creating. Don’t be afraid to change the idea. One of my clients recently reminded me of this idea. He said; the original synergies of this project were very strong, but some of them didn’t work, while during the project new ones were discovered.
Think about how you can find the right pace of adaptation, the right way to leverage change and you will have the beginning formula that will shift the way you discover a constantly changing sea of opportunity.
ENTERTAINMENT
MOVIES: Nothing really out there to draw me to the movies this weekend. This always happens in the post award time.
NetFlix Fans: Takers: Kind of a combination bank heist and con man movie.
TV: I really dig most of the USA network programs. I liked their new (if somewhat USA formulaic) show Fairly Legal. It’s on Thursday nights.
BOOKS: Being Strategic – Anderson: This is a business book that uses a fable type storytelling format to get its message across. Being strategic has as much to about the people you choose as the way you think!
MUSIC: I often get on a “song” kick when I want to learn how to play a different version of a classic song. Lately its been Light My Fire by the Doors. I discovered this guy covering the Jose Feliciano nylon string kind of jazzy thing. This guy is recording this in his freakin kitchen!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOcwRYudFSw
WEB SITES: During a recent presentation I quoted the late great astronomer and scientist Carl Saga. I quoted from his epic essay and book; The Pale Blue Dot. I was surprised at the number of people who waited around to talk to me after the presentation and many wanted to know who Carl Sagan was and where they could get a copy of The Pale Blue Dot. Below are two links, one to the site set up by Carl before his untimely death and the other is a link to a version of The Pale Blue Dot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g
SOUTH OF NORMAL
A couple of my recent favorite South on Normal pieces:
- A North Michigan woman decided to use her artistic talents and re-create DaVinci’s Last Supper. Nothing unusual about that, heck, its been done many times. But Laura Bell decided to do it in laundry lint. Yep, that fuzzy stuff that accumulates on the dryer screen. Took her 800 hours to collect the right colored lint and then 200 hours to do her recreation. Don’t believe me?
- A student at the University of Colorado decided to show how absurdly high his tuition payment was so he delivered it to the office in $1 bills, two quarters and a penny. The amount was $14,309.51. Took them more than 3 hours to count it all. Great South of Normal gesture of defiance!
Drop me a note with your comments at steve@creativeventures.com
Thanks for stopping by and until next time, Adios and Aloha.
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