Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 329

The Art Of The Pitch

Episode #296 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

I picked up the business book, The Art of the Pitch - Persuasion and Presentation Skills That Win Business, by Peter Coughter and could not put it down. My agency, Twist Image, was in the midst of a massive new business pitch and the book happened to fall into my lap at the perfect time. I devoured and loved the book. I learned a ton about the new business pitch process, and Coughter does a fantastic job of reframing what, exactly, needs to happen when a company pitches. The good news is that we won the business. The better news is that Coughter agreed to have a chat with me about his book and how to win new business. For over twenty years, Coughter was President of Siddall, Matus & Coughter Inc., one of the most respected advertising and communications agencies in the Southeast. His agency won industry awards and recognition from places like the American Marketing Association, One Show, Clios, Communications Arts, and many others. Today, he is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's Brandcenter, and to support his teaching habit, he spends a lot of time on the road working with organizations - from all walks of life - helping them to learn how to sell their ideas better. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #296.

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ad age

advertising

american marketing association

blog

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brandcenter

cast of dads

cc chapman

chris brogan

christopher s penn

clios

communications arts

david usher

digital dads

digital marketing

facebook

facebook group

hugh mcguire

in over your head

itunes

julien smith

librivox

managing the gray

marketing

marketing over coffee

media hacks

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one show

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peter coughter

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social media 101

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trust agents

virginia commonwealth university

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #90

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Three Little Pigs - The Guardian . "The digital-first newspaper pushes the envelope on many fronts, from its data journalism to its interactive reporting. This ad takes a familiar fairy tale, and pastes it atop the lurid, often controversial, and always inflammatory surface of today's media world. Brilliant." (Alistair for Hugh).

L'Odyssée de Cartier . "I'm going to suggest two commercials this week. The first, from Cartier , shows just how far we've come in filmmaking. Better than most big-budget trailers, this is a fantastical journey through wild, glamorous landscapes. The best branding I've encountered in a long time, it speaks volumes without saying a word." (Alistair for Mitch).

Warner Bros. Embarrasses Self, Everyone, With New "Disc-to-Digital" Program - Public Knowledge . "We digital denizens complain a lot about about the slow embrace of the realities of pixels from mainstream media, but here is a case of a media company really forging ahead into the future. Warner Brothers has a new way to help you get your DVDs into digital format! Just bring your DVD to WB-approved store, who will take your disc, and charge you a small fee to convert it to a digital format ... which you can load onto your digital devices. Brilliant!" (Hugh for Alistair).

How Print Design is the Future of Interaction - Mike Kruzeniski . "Title says it all, and I think this is an important innovation: as books get more webby, the web and digital is going to get more booky." (Hugh for Mitch).

I'm Being Followed: How Google--and 104 Other Companies--Are Tracking Me on the Web - The Atlantic . "I've been very vocal this week about online advertising and how our Internet and mobile usage is being tracked - by more sources than most people realize (you can read that here: The Do Not Track Button and here: The Paradox Of Choice And Advertising ). It's a problem... a big problem, that we have to start dealing with immediately. We've said for decades that there is gold in the data, but now that we're finally mining it, it seems like the public is in an uproar. My challenge would be that an uproar is both fine and needed, but both sides need to come to the table to better understand exactly what is being tracked and why. Until that happens, we're confusing tracking with a breach of privacy. While that may sound like a salacious statement, I would argue that consumers would prefer relevant ads instead of mindless ones and the only way to deliver that is by tracking. There's also a world of difference between tracking usage and tracking an identifiable human being." (Mitch for Alistair).

Taking the long view - The Economist . "I'm a massive fan of both Amazon and Jeff Bezos. There are few entrepreneurs I respect as much as Bezos. So much so, that I had the chance to sit next to him at the TED conference last week and I found myself acting like a moron fanboy (it happens). This beautiful piece looks at Bezos and how he doesn't pander to Wall Street and quarterly results, but instead focuses on the long view. Say what you will, it has worked out magnificently well for the company. They've come a long way from selling books online." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

amazon

bitcurrent

cartier

complete web monitoring

gigaom

google

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

jeff bezos

librivox

link exchange

linkbait

managing bandwidth

media hacks

mike kruzeniski

newspaper

pressbooks

print design

public knowledge

story

ted conference

the atlantic

the book over

the economist

the guardian

warner brothers music

year one labs

youtube

Seven Minutes To Viral Video Success

Who would know better how to make an online video go viral than the person who is being paid to watch for trends on YouTube?

That's the job of Kevin Allocca. He is YouTube's trends manager and he sees what goes up (and what never makes it...or stays down). Is there a formula for viral success? In short, no. Are there trends that you can see when something does go viral? Absolutely. In this TED Talk, Allocca spends a little over seven minutes walking us all through the fascinating world of YouTube, viral videos and the longevity of a meme. Tell me you don't have seven minutes of free time?

Here's why videos go viral...

What do you think? Is Allocca on to something?

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memes

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A Social Media Master Class

If you have not seen the Kony 2012 video, you may be living under a rock.

It is, without question, the hottest viral video sensation the Internet has seen in a long time. Looking beyond the forty million-plus views that this thirty-minute documentary/movement has achieved in a couple of days (if you haven't watched it, you owe it to yourself to do so below), this admirable non-profit movement is giving a free master class in Social Media marketing to both non-profit and for-profit organizations. The group is called, Invisible Children, and they have been working for nearly a decade to end Africa's longest-running armed conflict. The video is a touching and moving story about children, war and a part of the world that is all too often neglected. The ultimate goal of the organization is to make Joseph Kony (head of the rebel group, The Lord's Resistance, and the world's worst war criminals) "famous." According to the Invisible Children website: "Not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice. In this case, notoriety translates to public support. If people know about the crimes that Kony has been committing for 26 years, they will unite to stop him. Secondly, we want Kony to be famous so that when he is stopped, he will be a visible, concrete example of international justice. Then other war criminals will know that their mass atrocities will not go unnoticed or unpunished."

Lessons from a Social Media master class.

It doesn't have to cost a fortune. The website is simple and clean (and it's one page). The idea is to watch the video or tweet about it, not to spend all of your time navigating a big and clunky website.

The video works. It's a mini documentary (almost 30 minutes long), but it's shot well, edited well and - most importantly - it tells a personal story that all of us can relate to. Because they're using both YouTube and Vimeo, they make it extremely easy for people to watch, share and discuss it.

Twitter spam. Because they want to get Kony taken out of commission by the end of this year, they create a sense of urgency. Part of the campaign is to Twitter spam twenty celebrities and twelve policy makers (20 and 12 - very smart). The tweet is generated once you choose who you want to tweet and it reads, "Help us end #LRA violence. Visit kony2012.com to find out why and how. @billgates Join us for #KONY2012." The are encouraging people to "call out" these celebrities and are hoping that by inundating their Twitter feeds, they will take action, speak up and share the story. This was a super-risky move, but extremely creative. Others have tried this, but Invisible Children pulled it off.

Social Media backlash. There are many aspects and angles to the problems in Africa. Not everyone agrees with Invisible Children and what they're doing. They experienced a PR crisis because some organizations questions their intent (see here: Fast Company - Invisible Children Responds To The Kony 2012 Viral Video Controversy). Invisible Children wasted no time in explaining their positions here: Critiques. If you do nothing else, please read how they responded. Whether or not you agree with this organization, they responded quickly and they're speaking in a very human and real voice. It's inspiring.

Calls to action. They're taken this initiative well beyond the digital realm and encourage people to get a kit to help spread the story. They've also chosen a specific day in the year for people to take to the streets and spread Kony's picture everywhere to make him "famous." The calls to action are both easy to do and act as an emotional battlecry for the cause. It's something anyone and everyone can do.

Honest. Direct. Powerful.

Too many brands can't wrap their heads around Social Media because they're over-thinking it. Invisible Children leveraged a couple of well-known strategies, re-invented them, pulled them together and had a real story to tell. Most campaigns fall down because the story doesn't grab attention. This one does (which is more than half of the battle). Beyond the great story, they kept it simple and drive people to either watch the video or tweet spam and it all comes together very well.

Kudos to Invisible Children. Not for the for forty-million plus YouTube views, but because of how it all comes together. It's worth talking about... and worth sharing.

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joseph kony

kony 2012

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lra

non profit marketing

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pr

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social media marketing

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the lords resistance

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twitter

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website

youtube

The Paradox Of Choice And Advertising

You can't have it both ways.

Someone is going to have to break the bad news to the consumers. You can't have it both (and every) way. Sorry. Yesterday, I Blogged about the "do not track" button that would stop media companies from tracking an individual's online usage (you can read more about it here: The Do Not Track Button). Consumers are up in arms about having their every online move tracked and monitored, so that more relevant advertising can be thrust upon them. Yes, there is a fine line between knowing what someone is doing online and knowing who, exactly, is doing it and, if we give those marketers that inch, they may take it the whole mile and that's the Pandora's Box of problems that few want to open up.

But what do consumers really (really) want?

In yesterday's Research Brief by MediaPost there was a news item titled, Too Much Advertising Is Digital Suicide. Marketers are being told in a new research report titled, 2012 Digital Advertising Attitudes Report, that: "UK adults and U.S. adults aged 18+, show that 27% of British, and 20% of American consumers online would stop using a product or service, such as the social networking site, if they were subjected to too much advertising. This, as 66% each of British and American online consumers already claim they feel subjected to excessive digital advertising and promotions." What they're saying is: "yes, we know it's free but if there's too many ads, we're gone... we don't care."

So, what do these consumers really (really) want?

Are you ready for this? Sit down and take a deep breath. Here's what the news item says: "to make the US user more likely to respond positively to the marketing, the advertising must be:

Tailored to the consumer's personal interests (26%)

Contextually relevant to what they are doing (21%)

Specific to their location (19%)"

Go back and re-read those three key bullet-points.

The only way that advertising will be acceptable and work, according to the consumers, is to know their personal interests, make it relevant to what they're doing and be specific to their location. Sorry, kids but that can't happen if you click that "do not track" button. To me, this type of research and these types of insights reminds me of Steve Jobs' infamous line: "because customers don't know what they want until we've shown them." Ultimately, if consumers don't want to be tracked but do want the kind of advertising that can only be delivered when they are being tracked, perhaps it's incumbent on us - as a marketing industry - to spend a lot more time in the advertising lab and in conference debating, hacking and inventing new and informative ways to build a strong advertising world. It's clear to me, that this massive paradox that the consumer's are presenting is not going to help us get anywhere. I too would like to become a millionaire without doing any work, but alas that's simply not the way to make money. Comparatively, consumers will never get that kind of advertising delivered unless marketers can know what their interests are, where they're going and where they are located. Or am I missing something?

Yes, it's frustrating, but these are the consumers and we're the ones who will have to figure this out. Any ideas?

Tags:

2012 digital advertising attitudes report

advertising

blog

consumer

contextual advertising

digital advertising

digital suicide

do not track button

location based services

marketer

marketing industry

marketing research

media company

mediapost

online social networking

online tracking

online usage

research brief

steve jobs

The Do Not Track Button

What kind of experience do you want?

Marketers have abused the anonymity of IP addresses for too long and now consumers (and journalists) are fighting back... and they're fighting mad. Everything you say and do online can and is being used against you in the online world. Think that Gmail is free? No, it is not. And, while Google is not "reading" your email, it is scanning the content and delivering relevant advertising to you based on that. Don't like it? Gmail is free... go and get yourself your own email server and hosting and you won't miss a beat (except you're going to have to pay for it). Want more features and functionality on Facebook? What are you willing to pay? Nothing? Do you think that Facebook is a public service or a business? In case you're not sure, take a peek at what the Facebook IPO looks like. What do you think all of these investors are buying into (hint: it's your data and information).

You are being followed.

As part of the TED conference last week, Mozilla's, Atul Varma, introduced a new platform called Collusion that helps individuals using the Firefox web browser to track the trackers. The initiative was created after Varma tracked who was following his young child online. After a couple of hours, it was hundreds of companies. What do all of these trackers want? Ultimately, these trackers are trying to put an advertisement in front of you that will make you take an action.

What does this look like? 

Here's a scenario: the other day I was looking some different styles of shoes on Zappos, but didn't buy anything. A few days later, I started noticing banner ads featuring the shoe I was looking at and some other styles. A couple of days later, another ad, but with a call to action for free shipping. In its mildest form, this is what tracking looks like. The marketers will call this behavioral targeting. The idea is simple: if you know someone is looking at something, why not show them a relevant ad instead of a random one? It's not only a smart marketing strategy, it's a better user experience as well. People often lament advertising, but what they really don't like is untargeted messaging (because it lacks relevance).

You win some... you lose some.

The trick is in finding the balance. How do you deliver relevant and contextual advertising (or even content) while not freaking out consumers that every click and type is being tracked and monitored so that their web experience can be personally optimized? Google (and other search engines) now serve up relevant search results ahead of the organic search results. In fact, many search engine optimization experts will tell you that there is no longer any true, organic natural search result: my search results are not your search results, and everyone gets their own, personalized, set of returns from a search query. In a world where all of this personalization lives and breathes, how will the two worlds of creepy tracking and ideal experience blend and come together?

What do you want?

Odds are that you want personalization, but you also want to maintain your privacy. Let's face it, we tell things to a search engine that we don't even tell our spouses or families. You're kidding yourself if you think this information (positive, negative or neutral) is not being tracked and stored. Then again, who wants unrelated advertising flashing and bleeping across our screens? In the world of tracking, I'd much prefer that the Web is capturing everything I'm doing to deliver more relevant content to me, I just want to be rest assured that this information can't be tracked back to me as an individual, right? If all you have is my habits but none of my personal information, please track away. But, if you're combining my usage with who I am, personally... then shame on you (unless you have my explicit and implicit permission). If the world needs a "do not track" button, we're already poised at the top of a very slippery (and stupid) slope.

It's all over.

This is a magnificent time to be a marketing professional. Between Web, mobile, touch, Social Media and how this all integrates into traditional marketing and communications, there could not be a more fascinating time to be in Marketing. But, if we botch this, lose the trust of consumers and do stupid things like track people down to their personal information, we're not only going to screw this all up, but it's going to be a deep, dark and evil place that we - as a marketing industry - may not be able to be recovered from. If consumers need protection from the marketers with the help of government, you know we've already stepped over the line... again.

Are we going to mess this up? What's your take?

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zappos

Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop In

Is your head buried in your lap?

After attending the TED 2012 conference in Long Beach, California last week, I could not help but think about how pervasive technology and media is in our lives. Surprisingly, I have not been thinking about it in the best possible light. If you could be in a room with over one thousand of the world's most interesting business leaders, thinkers, scientists and artists, would you spend every free moment sitting in the corner alone thumbing your smartphone or would you immerse yourself in the live experience and do your best to "press the flesh," as the saying goes?

There's something about the here and now.

Prior to the many sessions at TED 2012, the hosts would remind people to turn off their mobiles. It's become a ceremony at almost each and every conference, but in this instance, they took it further by pleading for everyone's attention and allowing those we were seated next to that same accord. The hosts didn't just ask us to set our phasers to vibrate, they demanded that we put them away and forget about them to truly benefit from the event. Our kids are texting, our heads are buried in our laps and we can hardly hold a conversation for more than five minutes without a ringing, vibration or desire to look at our smartphones to see if someone has emailed, tweeted, texted or pinged us.

Is this what connections are really about?

Multiple speakers at TED questioned our connection to technology. Sherry Turkle (author of Alone Together - Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other) questioned whether we're living in the now or living to create an impression to others of how we would like to perceived, while Thomas P. Campell (director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art) questioned how digital media can be compared with spending real time in a museum. It didn't stop there. A theme of anti-Web sentiment (or a digital connectedness unplugging) was pervasive. Even Chip Kidd (famed book cover designer) pleaded for a return to the admiration of books in their dead tree format. While we embrace technology and race forward with it, it seems like the past two decades have now culminated in what can only be described as a backlash to our connectivity.

It's not a zero sum game.

I fell in love with Turkle's message. I made a personal promise to spend more time in museums after Campbell's plea. I do love and appreciate the beauty of a great book cover (but I'm just more in love with the portability of my digital book collection to go back to paper, sorry Chip). And yes, it's true that we probably do spend too much time with technology and not enough time having a meaningful conversation with others while looking at them, directly in the eyes. That being said, it's not an all or nothing proposition, either. I've heard many stories of troubled teens using platforms like Facebook to ask someone out or even ask for help because it allows them to feel more confident. I've heard stories of kids with disabilities leveraging Social Media to connect and then finding their school experience that much better because those they had connected with online felt some kind of closer connection. Personally, some of my best friends are people who I first met in the digital sense and because of shared values, we created much more powerful connections after either meeting in person or staying connected in a more personal way online.

It's you... it's not technology.

It's easy to win in the battle against technology. You have to control your technology and you have to be very aware if you're letting it control you. How can you get started? Turn off your notifications. All of them. You decide when you're going to look at your smartphone and not have your smartphone ping, beep or blink to lure you in. Next, if you find yourself reaching for your smartphone while you're spending time with family and friends, stop yourself and don't do it. Acknowledge the moment, and tell yourself that you will check your messages when no loved ones are in the near vicinity (this doesn't mean you should sneak off and check in the bathroom... it means to wait until your personal time is over). Download the application called Freedom. Freedom locks you out of the Internet, so you can actually get some work done instead of checking emails, playing with Twitter or watching videos on YouTube. Imagine that, modern technology to block you out from using modern technology.

Don't kid yourself.

Technology is very seductive. We love our iPhones (I love my iPhone). For many people, it's the last thing we stroke before we go to bed and the first thing we touch when we wake up in the morning. You may not like it, but this is who we have become. Next time you're in a public space, study the people around you. Notice how they flirt and caress their smartphones. It's bordering on sexual, isn't it? This isn't about getting rid of technology. This is about being conscience of our experiences. Rich experiences don't happen via text messaging. Rich experiences happen when we're face to face, listening, sharing and truly growing. Text messaging can be a great bridge between these very human experiences, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that anything on your smartphone screen is as important as what's in front of your face.

You don't have to unplug to become more human, you just have to make a choice.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post called, Media Hacker . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

The Huffington Post - Freedom From the Web? There's an App for That!

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Make A Mobile Marketing Impact

Episode #295 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

While many companies were still lamenting a basic website back in the nineties, Gary Schwartz was already imagining how content, voice and mobility would change how we connect to one another... and the brands that serve us. For over a decade, Gary has been a leader in the mobile industry. He is CEO of Impact Mobile (offices in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, etc...), is Chair of the Mobile Entertainment Forum and Chair Emeritus of the Mobile Committee for the Internet Advertising Bureau. Recently, he published his first book, The Impulse Economy - Understanding mobile shoppers and what makes them buy. He brings a plethora of experience and insights from the mobile landscape to our marketing world, and it's a true privilege to have him as a guest on the show this week. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #295.

Tags:

ad age

advertising

blog

blogging

cast of dads

cc chapman

chris brogan

christopher s penn

david usher

digital dads

digital marketing

facebook

facebook group

gary schwartz

hugh mcguire

impact mobile

in over your head

internet advertising bureau

itunes

julien smith

librivox

managing the gray

marketing

marketing over coffee

media hacks

mobile entertainment forum

mobile industry

mobile marketing

new marketing labs

online social network

podcast

podcasting

pressbooks

social media 101

social media marketing

strategy

the impulse economy

trust agents

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #89

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

4,114 Stoplights in Los Angeles and the Intricate Network that Keeps Traffic Moving - Forbes . "This week, I had the pleasure to hang out with Jon Bruner of Forbes as we ran a conference on business and Big Data. He finds fascinating stories in the nooks and crannies of the otherwise mundane, and this is a good example: an inside glimpse at the LA traffic light system." (Alistair for Hugh).

Paint By Numbers - This American Life . "Since I'm in a numbers mood this week, here's one more. Last night, I talked with Hal Varian , Google 's Chief Economist, about a bunch of things. He wondered whether someone will one day deliver an entirely machine-generated slide deck at a geek event like the one I'm at, since we have so much data on what audiences like. So, here's a blast from the past, on This American Life , over a decade ago. A polling firm tries to produce the best art--and worst song--based on survey results. What do we hate the most? Bagpipes, children singing, lyrics about holidays and religion, wild volume and tempo changes." (Alistair for Mitch).

Key Techdirt SOPA/PIPA Post Censored By Bogus DMCA Takedown Notice - TechDirt . "Here's why laws like SOPA and PIPA are bad. They are supposed to be about fighting piracy, but the 'side-effects' effectively enable the shut-down of free speech, which is the foundation upon which democracy rests. This particular instance happened *without* SOPA, but it's instructive about how these laws can and will be used and abused. TechDirt is a well-known tech blog, and they posted a popular and exhaustive story explaining why SOPA and PIPA are a bad idea. But some company didn't like that story. What did they do? They filed a copyright complaint which resulted in the story being removed from Google's search index - meaning that the story 'disappeared' from much of the Internet. Under current laws: Company A can file a copyright complaint with Google about an article by Company B. Google responds by taking that article out of its search index. Company A is not required to prove any copyright infringement. Company B is not even informed that their article has been removed from Google's Index. You can see the problem here, and SOPA and PIPA (and similar laws) make these things even worse." (Hugh for Alistair).

Graphic: Will James Cameron beat Richard Branson to the bottom of the Mariana Trench? - National Post . "Do you like submarines? Check out this jaw-dropping infographic depicting the deepest ocean trench in the world, and the lowest spot on our planet. Film-maker James Cameron and multi-zillionaire Richard Branson are in a race to see who can get to the bottom first." (Hugh for Mitch).

Risk and Riches in User Data for Facebook - The New York Times . "The problem with Facebook is coming to a head. As it becomes an Internet unto itself (see this for more: The Face of Facebook ) and more and more people start to realize just what, exactly, they are posting online (the age of media awareness?), Facebook's most valuable commodity (the data) is also it's most controversial component. How will Facebook continue to grow in terms of money (big data)? How can Facebook suddenly see its massive community disappear (how it uses and leverages said data)? As the company goes public, more and more eyes (from government to individuals) will be wanting to know more about what, exactly, Facebook wants to do with all of this data and, we'll vote with our silence, should it not be exactly what the masses want. Does anyone else find it ironic that it's most valuable commodity can also be the exact thing that does them in?" (Mitch for Alistair).

Who decides what gets sold in the bookstore? - The Domino Project . " Seth Godin wrote and published another book this week (he's making the rest of us look bad with all of this book writing and publishing). It turns out that if your ebook has links to Amazon in it (let's say as a reference to other books), Apple 's iBook store won't accept it or sell it. Bookstores used to make decisions as to what they put on their shelves based on instinct and the author's track record. While that was arbitrary, imagine what's going on here. It's another key indicator that the rules of publishing are going to get a little weird... and probably a whole lot weirder as the playing field gets more established. In the meantime, you can get Seth's latest book, Stop Stealing Dreams, for free. by clicking on the link." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

amazon

apple

big data

bitcurrent

book publishing

complete web monitoring

facebook

forbes

gigaom

google

hal varian

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

ibook

james cameron

jon bruner

librivox

link exchange

linkbait

managing bandwidth

media hacks

national post

pipa

pressbooks

richard branson

seth godin

sopa

stop stealing dreams

story

techdirt

the book over

the domino project

the new york times

this american life

year one labs

The Creative Process

What do you think of when you think of creative people?

Slackers? The people in the office who often wear jeans, but rarely wear socks? The ones bouncing the rubber balls off of the walls or the ones with the desks that are littered with action figures and video game stickers? How is it fair that these people get to play all day, while the rest of us have to deal with the hard work of number crunching or calling on clients and sitting in meetings? It's amazing how much our world has changed. Granted, we don't want creative accounting, but then again, we kind of do (in the purest sense of the words and not in the perverted ways that caused an Enron). It seems like creativity and commerce are now one. The most impressive companies are the creative ones. The most inspirational companies are the creative ones. The companies that we're banking on in the future are the creative ones.

How are we supposed to get any work done if we leave it up to the creatives?

There's a dirty little secret of the creative class (that few really know and understand): creative work takes a massive amount of time, energy and practice. The most affective creative people don't spend their days wandering around bumming smokes and drinking cappuccinos. The most affective creative people spend their days in the long, hard throes of their craft. This was one of the main themes that stands up and demands attention from the book, Spark - How Creativity Works by Julie Burstein. And, in reading this amazing book on how creative people work (and, by the way, I had the pleasure of interviewing Julie at the TED conference, so look for that conversation in an upcoming episode of Six Pixels of Separation), you start to see a very similar pattern from creative success to creative success: a ton of work in the "office."

From circular to linear.

For years, I would describe the creative process as being either circular or squiggly. It wasn't linear (like going to work from nine to five and taking lunch at noon). I used to embrace the saying, "creativity does not keep office hours," because who knows when inspiration may strike? And that kind of thinking was my downfall. There is no doubt that inspiration can happen anywhere (shower, middle of the night, on a subway ride, etc...), but turning that inspiration into something functional (be it a book, performance, presentation or Blog post) is a process. And, for many of the most creative people that I know, that process is actually quite linear. Meaning: they have rituals, a place they prefer to work, a way to deconstruct the inspiration to turn it into something tangible, a set time to make it happen. It's a topic that Steven Pressfield talks about so passionately in the book, The War Of Art (more on that here: SPOS #251 - Do The Work With Steven Pressfield). The most creative people are the ones who apply a blue-collar work ethic to their assignments. They wake up, eat their breakfast, take a shower and get to to work. The different between the creative class and everyone else is that the majority of the creative class also love what they do (which makes it both easier to do and enables them to work at it for hours, days, weeks and months on end).

We could learn a lot from the creative process.

If you're interested in how the worlds of creativity and commerce collide, you may be interested in attending C2-MTL (full disclosure: they are a client of Twist Image).

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