May 12, 2008
mark earls and the "purpose-idea"
When I'm talking with clients about marketing, it's very hard for me to go more than a few minutes without mentioning the term, "Purpose-Idea".
The "P.I." is not a term I coined myself. That credit goes to my friend, marketing hero and frequent podcast partner, Mark Earls. He wrote about the P.I. in his seminal marketing book, "Welcome To The Creative Age".
Marks begins his thesis by saying that actually, when you think about it, talking about "The Brand" is pretty meaningless. Imagine lots of meetings crammed full of suits yakking on about "Core Brand Values", "Living The Brand" and all that marketing waffle, and you kinda get the idea. I've been in those meetings and they suck.
What's far more interesting, Mark says, is the reason we all get out of bed in the morning. The thing that drives us as individuals, as a company. Ask yourself, what is our company for? Is all our professional life about just selling aluminum widgets for 16.7% margin, or is there some sort of higher meaning involved? What are we trying to change? To improve upon? To disrupt?
Why are we here?
Mark then goes on to say how much more fun, interesting and profitable it is for a company when what it does has a sense of shared purpose, an idea it can believe in. This is the "P.I."
The Blue Monster i.e. "Change The World Or Go Home" is a P.I., the Microsoft tagline, "Your Potential, Our Passion" is not.
Why not? Because that's not how people talk in real life. Sure, the word, "passion" may be in the line, but it burns with about as much passion as a wet Kleenex. Which is why it comes off being contrived and phony at worse, boring and uninspired at best.
I'm not trying to go after Microsoft, here. They're still buddies of mine, I continue to like, admire and respect them. But there's so much real, genuine passion under the hood of that car, I just WISH they could do a better job of letting the rest of us see it more often. I find their tagline a sorely missed opportunity.
I would guess that the cheapest and easiest way to better articulate this passion, My Friends in Redmond, is to spend more time thinking about what your Purpose-Idea ACTUALLY IS, as opposed to what you think people outside the company might want to hear. I'd recommend any Microsoft employee who knows me, to go read Mark's book. Rock on.
[Disclosure: I consider myself a friend of Microsoft. They've been clients of mine in the past, they'll hopefully be clients of mine in the future, they are not not clients of mine at the moment. It's all good.]
hugh & the rabbi, episode 4
Rabbi Pinny, Johnnie, Euan Semple and myself recorded a new podcast a couple of weeks ago. Johnnie wrote the show notes and originally posted them over on his blog. It was a lot of fun.
Podcast RSS feed for Hugh and the Rabbi podcasts
SHOW NOTES:
0.00 Intros, Hugh forgets who "the Scottish guy is" and isn't sure what Euan does but settles for rock star.1.00 Hugh sets up the idea of love, recalling a talk about this by Euan at Reboot.
1.45 Euan talks about the L word, and people's reactions to it. It's about people's basic desire to connect to each other, caring about things, getting passionate about things. So much of the business world sanitises passion out of things.
3.15 Pinny wonders about how companies show love. References Lovemarks. In relationships, if you don't go to the nth degree, everything else doesn't count. Talks about how mistakes by Facebook and Apple get pounced on by the blogosphere.
4.40 Lovemarks proves a red rag to Johnnie's bull. Love means different things to different people. Johnnie wary of the fanatical idea of love, the pursuit of perfection. It's more about being human, fallible.
5.50 Euan chimes in against fixation on the romantic idea of love. Instead favours "the passion that grows out of day-to-day stuff".
6.45 Hugh asks Euan about his World Service experience at the BBC.
7.30 Euan: Roughly 47 different language services in the same building. Lots of characters, different cultures. "If you were climbing ladders, they were all against different walls." - so less ego and tribalism than in the rest of the BBC. You had to get on quickly with people, the ability to engage and connect, and move ideas round the building was a formative experience.
9.00 Product of World Service is ideas but also the kind of intimacy you can create on radio.
9.50 Hugh talks about the purpose idea - what are we here for, why are we doing this. Trying to get a sense of purpose going.
10.30 Euan: purpose is good, so is obliqueness. Says what he likes about podcasts is that they are not like broadcasts. Meandering semi-conversations that get under skin in a different way than stuff projected at you in broadcasts. Conventional radio output sounds increasingly patronising.
12.20 Euan on how he pays each month to support Leo Laporte's podcasts, more than half he pays in the BBC licence fee. "That's me doing that to an individual because I really don't want him to stop podcasting." People will pay for stuff that's passionate and accessible.
13.00 Hugh contrasts Euan's story with a UK show, Newsnight Review and its affiliation with the Notting Hill cultural elite. New media is a threat, not so much to cash as to old media privilege.
14.30 Euan recalls David Weinberger saying conversations can only take place between equals.
15.00 Hugh on fanboys.
15.20 Hugh asks Pinny a question "as the only guy here with a real job": does this podcast affect your business.
16.10 Pinny: it's not affecting the business... what it affected is how people view him. Discusses impact on his employees with Hugh.
18.45 Hugh on podcasts as disruptors. Euan says disruption is a word with all sorts of baggage but we get involved in this stuff because it makes a difference. How can governance cope with these changes? It's going to change power dynamics and who is successful and why.
21.10 Pinny returns to the theme of love, inspired by his nephew's wedding where a Rabbi talked about what happens when you aren't in love with love, but with the other. Companies need to own up to mistakes.
23.00 Hugh: gosh, act like a human being, not a robot. Johnnie: intimacy an important word in Euan's story. There's something about "ordinary smallness", the ability to have a real conversation; how meetings that strive to be effective often fail. The need to feel each other as human beings.
24.30 Hugh on how small town, West Texas experience has affected him. How it's safe to have a guy walking round with a ten inch knife, because everyone knows who he is and what the knife is for. Euan reminisces about Glasgow and Pinny, Israel.
27.20 Euan: the danger of homogenisation of success. Quote Doc Searls about things being valuable without being important.
28.00 Johnnie on spending Sunday morning with the papers and someone else, where you don't talk but there's a feeling of companionship. You can't put that on a spreadsheet.
29.15 Johnnie on a twitter-related experience of finding work in a very accidental way. If fell out of a conversation where he wasn't trying to make something happen.
30.30 Pinny: the unplanned as the eureka moments of our lives. Getting beyond ego.
32.10 Pinny on the online course Oprah is doing with Eckhart Tolle. This is why the web was created: to spread goodwill.
33.00 Hugh: a lot of people are trying to use the web to do business the way it's usually been done, which misses the point.
34.00 Euan wonders about how these changes connect to our spirituality. Hugh recalls a Catholic priest who influenced him. God as a metaphor rather than a bearded sky fairy.
35.40 Pinny the web is teaching religion to say it's about human beings, not about God. It's teaching companies it's about what the customer wants to pull, not what the company wants to push. Strip away the disease of entitlement and learn humility. Connects to the rise of Barack Obama.
37.20 Johnnie on the difference between Clinton and Obama. Clinton's positioning as the leader, Obama's emphasis on us.
38.20 Euan: authority used to mean authority as conferred; now it means having a compelling argument or idea.
39.00 Johnnie on authority as being the authors of our own experience. You don't take authority from the BBC any more, you participate.
40.00 Hugh wraps by asking what advice we'd give corporate man in light of all this. Euan: be brave. Pinny: don't be stupid ("Be brave but have a day job") Empty your mid once a day for opportunity to happen. Hugh: be compassionate to those above you. Johnnie: you already know what to do.
44.35 Ends
May 10, 2008
"fred 43": work in progress- day one
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Like they say, when you fall off your horse, the first thing to do is get right back on it.
After Fred 42 died earlier today, I got right back to work. Behold "Fred 43". Ink & pencil on paper. 23 x 30 inches. It's been a busy morning, to say the least.
I'm already liking this one. We'll see where it goes...
By the way, to answer a frequently-asked question. I consider these large pieces "cartoons", I do not consider them "fine art". I consider myself a cartoonist, not an "artist".
So there!
r.i.p "fred 42"
I'm sad to report the premature death of my good friend, "Fred 42".
This happened earlier today, when my pen exploded.
It happens.
All is not lost. I already have a New Evil Plan. Hurrah! I'll let you see it when it's ready.
I spent about twenty minutes being really bummed, then said, "To Hell with it. "Fred 43" will be EVEN BETTER."
It's all good...
May 9, 2008
cut the art crap
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Cranked out this one quickly today. "Cut The Art Crap", May, 2008. 24x24 inches, pencil on wooden Ampersand Gessobord, varnished with spray acrylic. I might sell this one... thinking it would go well in somebody's New York apartment. We'll see what happens etc.
"fred 42": work in progress- day six
[Close-up of "Fred 42". Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Yesterday [Day Five] I hardly touched Fred 42. Maybe ten minutes, tops. My brain was all wrapped up with all the Blue Monster stuff.
Like I told somebody the other day, if I just tried to be a full-time cartoonist, I would fail. If I just tried to be a full-time marketer, I would fail.
Somehow it's managing to balance BOTH spheres that keeps it interesting for me... and ipso facto, interesting for the people that pay my bills. And all this, of course, feeds back into The Sex & Cash Theory, from Chapter Seven of "How To Be Creative":
"The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended."Today I don't want to think about marketing. I'm just going to draw...
May 8, 2008
"the blue monster is the future of marketing"
I haven't talked about The Blue Monster for a while.
The Blue Monster, as you will remember, is a cartoon-based "Social Object" that me and my Microsoft buddy, Steve Clayton, unleashed on the good but unsuspecting folk at Microsoft. For those unfamiliar with it, you can find the backstory here on Google.
One of the reasons I haven't talked about it much lately, is simply because there is no longer the need. To paraphrase Steve, "It's already out there, it's already working its magic. It has a life of its own and it no longer needs us."
Exactly. And as my friend, Tara Hunt so rightly pointed out, to push it too hard, especially with Microsoft management giving it a big thumbs-up, would somehow defeat the purpose. If overused, "Subversion as a marketing tool" can be counterproductive, especially if it comes from above.
In 2007, the conversation was all about "THE" Blue Monster. But in 2008, a new conversation seems to be emerging: "A" Blue Monster.
Let me explain:
I've been talking to some companies recently, talking about doing some new business with them. Without any doubt, the question I get asked the most is, "Can you make a Blue Monster for us?"
Obviously, when they're talking about "A" Blue Monster, they're not talking about a wee blue cartoon character with pointy horns, that hails from Redmond, Washington.
What they're talking about, of course, is a "Social Object", not necessarily a cartoon, designed to create what I loosely describe as "Marketing Disruption".
It's not unlike when you're talking about Seth Godin. When you say, "THE" Purple Cow, you're talking about his wonderful and seminal marketing book from a few years ago. But when you talk about "A" Purple Cow, you're just talking a about a product, any product, which from a marketing standpoint has been designed so well, it does not need any traditional marketing per se. It's so "remarkable" for what it is, people can't help but talk about it. And so the word spreads, almost by magic. Seth actually gives a really good example of exactly that here.
So what's the difference between a Purple Cow and a Blue Monster? Well, we could split hairs on that one forever, but for me, the main difference is Purple Cows have their "remarkability" baked into the product. Blue Monsters are more about the "Social", the interesting bit is the interactions that happen AROUND the product. That's what gave our little wine company the edge when marketing Stormhoek. The VAST majority of our conversation was not about the wine in the bottle. The conversation WAS ALL ABOUT the people drinking it. As we were fond of saying, "Wine is the ultimate social object. It's only interesting AFTER the cork is pulled."
So in conclusion, yes, something has recently evolved in my thinking. Though my relationship with Microsoft remains as strong as ever, "Blue Monster" now means something far bigger to me than just cartoons, gapingvoid, Microsoft, Redmond etc. The Blue Monster is all about the Social Object.
I have often said, I believe Social Objects are the future of marketing.
Let me modify that slightly: I believe the Blue Monster is the future of marketing.
[UPDATE:] Steve Clayton sent me the following message on Twitter:
[Afterthought:] Understanding the Blue Monster means understanding the need to be "bigger than yourself". Exactly.
May 7, 2008
"fred 42": work in progress- day four
["Fred 42". Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[Close-up shot.]
Yesterday I wrote, "When I do large pieces, I rarely do the long, 18-hour obsessive stints that so many artists are known for. I prefer to whittle away at it in brief spurts over time- a little bit there, a little bit there, that kind of thing."
Hmmm... That does not explain the 8-10 hours I put into the drawing yesterday. What the hell, I guess I was on a roll.
In the last decade or so, I always had a job to hold down, or a business to run. I always had a thousand different things to do BESIDES making drawings. My drawing time was always "stolen" from the other stuff going on.
But now here in uber-laid-back West Texas, suddenly I have more time on my hands.
Or so it felt, yesterday.
"fred 42": work in progress- day three
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Yesterday (Day 2) I hardly touched the drawing. I was busy doing other things.
Today I fooled around with it for a couple of hours in the morning. Quite pleased with the results, so far.
When I do large pieces, I rarely do the long, 18-hour obsessive stints that so many artists are known for. I prefer to whittle away at it in brief spurts over time- a little bit there, a little bit there, that kind of thing.
I'm guessing "Fred 42" will be done by month's end, if all goes well. Rock on.
May 5, 2008
"fred 42": work in progress- day one
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[Close-up: Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Today, once I had finished with work for the day, I decided to start on a a new drawing. 18 x 24 inches. Pencil and pen & ink on paper. Working Title: "Fred 42" [I'll explain the title at a later date].
So far I'm having a blast. We'll see where this all takes me. I have no idea how long it'll take me to complete, but I'll let you know when it happens. Rock on.
ian murdock: sun keynote
[UPDATE: You can watch the video here- See Chapter One.]
[UPDATE: You can see photos from the event here.]
[Click on images to enlarge etc.]
Last week I was in Austin. One of the reasons I was there was to help design some slides for Ian Murdock's keynote, "Innovate. Collaborate. Integrate", which he gave today.
Above are the slides. They start off as a giant, black, haystack-shaped software monolith, then evolved outwards into "Open Source", and finally, to the Sun logo. The sixth cartoon is just a humorous drawing projected behind the other panel members who were sharing the stage with Ian.
I'm told the screen was fifty feet wide, so I'm guesing they would've looked rather spiffy. These were all drawn in pencil on 3.5-inch card [Business-card size, obviously]. The actual drawings didn't take that long to execute; though getting them to work cohesively and conceptually took a long time, a lot of collaboration was involved.
It was a cool gig; I hope to do more like it. Thanks to the very groovy Sarah Dornsife for making it happen. Rock on.
May 4, 2008
moleskine 42
[Overview: Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[Close-up view]
"Moleskine 42". A wee sketch I did over the weekend in my Moleskine notebook. Approx 5x7 inches.
