CrapHammer

A pint down under

It's been very quiet around here of late.

That's because I've been insanely busy as I'm taking next week off to... get ready for it... go to Australia.  Now the crazy part is I will only be there for a week.  I catch a flight back on March 2nd.

So.  If you are IN Australia, PLEASE leave me a comment and I hope to get a chance to meet some of you over a pint.

My cab arrives in 5 minutes.  Signing off.

flickr source:  bitslice

Hope changes everything

[Link to embedded video above]

Obama has taken a rather unusual path.  One that has shunned corporate interests and demanded that he reach out to millions of individuals for their direct support.

His latest video shows he is not slowing down in his use of social media tools to accomplish this goal.

I'm brought back to the questions so many companies raise when we discuss these tools and this changing environment.  Without fail, they tend to revolve around how to manage it all. Even those who aren't focused on "controlling" the conversation are daunted by how to engage so many people in a conversation.

Reality is.  You can't.  You can't have a conversation with everyone.  And you won't do everything perfectly.

But as Obama has proven, you can reach and engage millions.

The question just needs to change.  It must become, "How can we change the world?"

Johnnie takes the Craphammer to the airwaves

Johnnie Moore interviews  Piers Fawkes and yours truly.  Piers, who started PSFK, took on the trend industry in a wonderfully written rant and I had gone to town on stakeholder research.  We all narrow in on how to engage with customers to create innovation in our respective industries.

You can check out the podcast here.

I must say, I really enjoyed the experience and very much hope to meet Piers and Johnny in person one day.  My mind has been spinning on the connection from inspiration to innovation since the call.

Johnnie breaks down the topics very nicely.

"0.00 Introductions

0 25 Piers summarises his recent post on the failings of the trendspotting industry. We're in an era of data-is-free and much of the industry ignores that, packaging up ancient information and selling it for large amounts of money. A lot of trends information is just opinion, and there is a lack of transparency in the business. There's an arrogance, a sense of "we know the secrets and you know nothing. We know who the cool kids are and you're in trouble." We shouldn't be scaring our clients.

4 25 Sean talks about his post about what's wrong with the way companies use stakeholder research to support change. Are we just optimising or are we innovating? Too many 400 page reports sitting on shelves. We can point the finger at clients too for their part in this.

5 10 Johnnie picks up on the theme of engagement. The old ways lay claim to secret insight from a black box. But there's a sense that it's fake and lacks real spirit. What might be better is a willingness to step into the unknown.

6 05 Sean and Piers talk about innovation: how do you get organisations to actually change in response to insight? Clients want to know: what do we actually do with all this information?

8 05 Sean talks about whether work is just to provide insight or can it inspire and can the way it's done support greater engagement within the organisation. Can we make the process of discovery more participatory?

8 45 Johnnie has another go at the notion of intermediaries and experts in favour of things like social networks with real world human conversation.

9 30 Piers: We need to move to more participation just because of the speed of change. There's not enough time for the study to be produced and then react. Need a system to keep organisation more in touch with the marketplace day-by-day. Maybe there's no more big ideas, but lots of good ideas.

10 10 Sean describes an experiment he's running for an organisation where people within an organisation use social networks to contribute their intelligence and ideas. They don't just input, they comment on other people's input. Allow the organisation to analyse itself.

11 20 Piers likes the sound of that. Johnnie digs for more information. Sean elaborates on the use of video gizmos to let people capture and share experience. Getting beyond text-based. Johnnie asks if this could this be Seesmic-like? I wish, says Sean... but even with 5 or 10% participation, we're getting triple the engagement we'd get from traditional stakeholder interviews.

13 40 Piers: we have some elements of participation in our work but maybe we can do more to use social networks in delivering ideas/inspiration to clients. Johnnie thinks that's a good idea, a way of providing more in-the-moment sensing of what's happening.

15 00 Sean on the gap between inspiration and innovation. Piers: the market still relies too much on the control of data, need to get beyond that.

15 50 We would think this, being bloggers, says Johnnie but data wants to be free; efforts to own/control it are going to suck the life and spirit out of a system.

16 15 Sean likes the bit in Piers' post about ad agencies being in the game of making ads. Do ad agencies really have their heart in a different approach?

17 00 Sean: ad agencies need to watch out for the design companies like IDEO who really get participatory design.

17 50 Parting thoughts from Piers, Sean and Johnnie."

Bleary eyed wisdom

It appears that I am susceptible to the process of time.  And with age, comes glasses.  The only consolation is that wisdom must be just around the corner now.  ;)

And here's a bit from a good friend and client which encapsulates to perfectly why I fear ever going client side.

In the beginning was the plan
And then came the assumptions
And the assumptions were without form
And the plan was completely without substance
And darkness was upon the faces of the workers
And they spake unto their marketing managers, saying "it is a pot of manure, and it stinketh"
And the marketing managers went unto the strategists and saith,
"It is a pile of dung, and none may abide the odor thereof".
And the strategists went unto the business managers and saith
"It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong and such that none may abide by it".
And the business managers went unto the director and saith,
"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength".
And the director went to the vice president and saith,
"It contains that which aids plant growth and it is very strong".
And the vice president went unto the senior vice president and saith,
"It promoteth growth, and it is powerful".
And the senior vice president went unto the president and saith,
"This powerful new plan will actively promote growth and efficiency of the company and the business in general".
And the president looked upon the plan and saw that it was good
And the plan became policy

And for those who made it through all that.  Here is me in my new glasses.

Obama, Yes we Can, the musical

I realize when I posted Obama's speech, it was a long read and likely took more time than most readers might have.

So I linked to the video, but that too takes just as long.

Well, dear time-crunched reader, now there is a music video.  And it's amazingly brilliant.  Enjoy.

[link to embedded video]

Thanks to Mike for the find.

If only we could get more brands to understand that standing for something larger is critical for achieving reach and engagement (cute chipmunks and singing kittens aside.)

How clients like it...

I feel dirty.  More so than normal as a person in marketing.

One of my friends was recently handed an 85 page website planning document.  There were objectives, findings, competitor reviews, architecture diagrams, process flows, schematics and all that jazz.  And on a normal day, he would have moved this project into build. Only, this time he chose to read the document differently.  He started with the appendix.

Yup. He began with that part of the document we avoid like the plague.  More specifically, he started with the notes from the stakeholder interviews.  Then he went back to the beginning and read through the recommendations for the site redesign.

They had worked with some of the brightest minds in the business.  Hell, they had even gone out of house for some additional perspective.  And yet, in his opinion, it was bunk.  That's not to say it wasn't a better website.  It was.  The problem was that there was next to nothing in the build recommendations that they wouldn't have recommended regardless of who they spoke to.

As I've been experimenting with different methods of engagement in the discovery and design phases, I thought this was a perfect time to ask myself "what is the role of the traditional stakeholder interview process?"

It didn't take long for me to start feeling dirty.  Let's face it, this particular process has become the method by which we cheat our clients into believing that there is unique value in our approach and engaging them in a "process".  But are they really engaged?  Do we really utilize what we learn?

So much of what we learn is about issues larger than the website. And sure, we are testing assumptions and ideas during this stage, but is this the best method to accomplish such?  And does anyone else on the team actually read the appendixes for all of the other stuff that arises?  I have to admit, I haven't prior to today.

I should qualify this by pointing a finger at not only ourselves and the industry but also at our clients. They yearn to be cheated in this way.  Hell, they often demand it.  Project owners want their organization to be "engaged" but in a "safe" and "controlled" way (read: un-empowered). 

My hands are dirty.  But I'm done with such things.  What about you, dear reader?

I'm curious as to how others come clean regarding the traditional practices they are using or may have used in the past.  And so, a meme is born.  I am tagging the following individuals and asking them to "come clean" as I'd love to hear their views as it relates to the "engagement" practices that dominate their industries:

Johnnie Moore

Mike Arauz

Kate Trgogac

Charles Frith'ster

Katie Chatfield

Gavin Heaton

Justin Kirby

See Paul Run

See Paul Run.

Hee Haw Marketing BS ad from paulmcenany on Vimeo.

"Ditto" to his excuses for not updating MY blog of late.

Okay, I know I've had my head in the sand for a while.  But how did I miss Google's announcement in 2006 for Click to Play video??