[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades."EVIL PLANS".]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades."EVIL PLANS".]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades."EVIL PLANS".]
[Cartoon inspired by this blog post.]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.#evilplans.]
"How Thingamy will revolutionize Enterprise Software."
[N.B. I'm a shareholder in Thingamy.]
[Backstory: About Hugh. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades. Hughtrain. #evilplans.]
Though I don't start the Texas road trip for at least another month, I've already started working on the second book, EVIL PLANS.
If you click on the link above, you'll see that I'm pretty much writing it the same way I wrote IGNORE EVERYBODY i.e. I'm just cutting and pasting random thoughts, old writings and cartoons together, trying to get it all to fit somehow. Sure, it'll take a while to gel, but hey, there's no rush.
Besides, it's quite fun, to push the unfinished idea "out there", and watch it evolve over time. Is it the best way to go about writing a book? Probably not.
[Backstory: About Hugh. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades. Hughtrain.]
Somebody recently asked me what was the secret to "Marketing 2.0" i.e. using Web 2.0 tools like blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc to market one's product or service. My response was only nine words long:
Treat it like an adventure. An adventure worth sharing.My next adventure, my next "Evil Plan" is to take to the road, driving around Texas, marketing and selling Stormhoek. The idea is to actually live up to those aforementioned nine words.
Which might explain why my second book, which I intend to mostly write while on the road, has the working title, "Evil Plans".
It is my hope that EVIL PLANS will end up being to Marketing, what the first book, IGNORE EVERYBODY was to "Creativity".
"Seth Godin meets Jack Kerouac". Or something.
Wish me luck. As of right now, I have no idea where these EVIL PLANS are taking me. I just know I have to go there.
[P.S. It's pronounced "Storm-hook", just so you know....]
If it doesn't feel that way to you, you're doing something wrong. I don't care old you are, or how many responsibilities you have. Life is not baseball. God only gave us one inning.
The Hunger to do something creative.
The Hunger to do something amazing.
The Hunger to change the world.
The Hunger to make a difference.
The Hunger to enjoy one's work.
The Hunger to be able to look back and say, Yeah, cool, I did that.
The Hunger to make the most of this utterly brief blip of time Creation has given us.
The Hunger to dream the good dreams.
The Hunger to have amazing people in our lives.
The Hunger to have the synapses continually fired up on overdrive.
The Hunger to experience beauty.
The Hunger to tell the truth.
The Hunger to be part of something bigger than yourself.
The Hunger to have good stories to tell.
The Hunger to stay the course, despite of the odds.
The Hunger to feel passion.
The Hunger to know and express Love.
The Hunger to know and express Joy.
The Hunger to channel The Divine.
The Hunger to actually feel alive.
The Hunger will give you everything. And it will take from you, everything. It will cost you your life, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
But knowing this, of course, is what ultimately sets you free.
"THE MARKET FOR SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN IS INFINITE" [First published on this blog, 2004].We are here to find meaning. We are here to help other people do the same. Everything else is secondary.
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 process as well.
People are not just getting more demanding as consumers, they are getting more demanding as spiritual entities. Branding becomes a spiritual exercise.
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.
Benefit is secondary. Benefit is a product of conviction, not vice versa.
Whatever you manufacture, somebody can make it better, faster and cheaper than you.
You do not own the molecules. They are stardust. They belong to God. What you do own is your soul. Nobody can take that away from you. And it is your soul that informs the brand.
It is your soul, and the purpose and beliefs that embodies, that people will buy into.
Ergo, great branding is a spiritual exercise.
Why is your brand great? Why does your brand matter? Seriously. If you don't know, then nobody else can- no advertiser, no buyer, and certainly no customer.
It's not about merit. It's about faith. Belief. Conviction. Courage.
It's about why you're on this planet. To make a dent in the universe.
I don't want to know why your brand is good, or very good, or even great. I want to know why your brand is totally frickin' amazing.
Once you tell me, I can the world.
And then they will know.
There's a wonderful metaphor in the Bible [Revelation 2:17] about "a white pebble".
17 Let the one who has an ear hear what the spirit says to the congregations: To him that conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white pebble, and upon the pebble a new name written which no one knows except the one receiving it.The metaphor was once explained to me by a Catholic monk. To paraphrase:
"You have three selves: The person that you think you are, the person that other people think you are, and the person that God thinks you are. The white pebble represents the latter. And of the three, it is by far the most important."
He then gave me some good advice, something I've always kept with me:
"When life gets really tough, just remember the white pebble. Just remember who you really are. Just remember the person that only God can see."
Whatever your thoughts on God or Religion may be, positive or negative, the white pebble is a very simple metaphor that audaciously asks the question: "Who are you, really?"
Yes, why are you here, exactly? Who are you here for? Yourself? Other people? God? Or maybe some other cause? You tell me...
It's one of those questions that never gets old. Unlike the poor body that houses us.
For the greater part of the last decade, I have been using the internet to build what I'm fond of calling, "The Global Microbrand".
A small, tiny brand, that "sells" all over the world.The Global Microbrand is nothing new; they've existed for a while, long before the internet was invented. Imagine a well-known author or painter, selling his work all over the world. Or a small whisky distillery in Scotland. Or a small cheese maker in rural France, whose produce is exported to Paris, London, Tokyo etc. Ditto with a violin maker in Italy. A classical guitar maker in Spain. Or a small English firm making $50,000 shotguns.
Here are some thoughts:
i. I think in many ways, the artist is the ultimate global microbrand. She just does her thing from wherever; if she's any good and fortune favors her work, her stuff is suddenly being seen, read or heard all around the world, without her having to leave her studio too much. Nice work if you can get it.
ii. The good news is, so far it's gone extremely well for me. The bad news is, it has taken me forever to this point. Better late than never, I suppose.
iii. I've had the most success helping to build Global Microbrands for other people, most notably, English Cut and Stormhoek. The idea that I should start applying what I know about this world to my own, commercial products, didn't really kick in till earlier this year. Though business has been busy enough so far [and getting busier by the day], it's still a strange feeling for me. Seems like it's easier to promote other people's stuff than one's own stuff. You don't take it so personally, somehow.
iv. Being an artist has three main components- 1. Making the actual work 2. Running the business and 3. Promoting the business. It's REALLY hard to do all three at the same time. It's EQUALLY hard to find people who can take over some of the duties and responsibilities of 2 and 3. Good people who actually know what they're doing are rare and expensive.
v. I made my best work when I was relatively cold, hungry and desperate. This kind of experience tends to make one very unapologetic, years later, when the "success" eventually arrives.
vi. Having a global microbrand is not about being "famous". It's about having a serious, almost tribe-like connection with a number of people who want to buy into what you're doing. If you're selling $5000, hand-made suits like Thomas Mahon, that number only needs to be a hundred or so. If you're selling $20 books or music CDs, that number needs to be much larger. I'm somewhere in the middle, because my work has a lot of price points- from the $16.29 price tag of my upcoming book, to the x-hundred-dollar prints I'm working on, to the five-figures I plan to sell my large paintings for [Yes, I've already been offered that for "DesertManhattan", even though it's still far from completion]. Somewhere early on I decided 10,000 people for me was the magic number. I may be wrong on that, though...
vii. I don't believe in overnight success [mainly because it has yet to happen to me, or anyone I know]. I believe on building my "tribe", one person at a time. I also think that having a definite number in mind re. how large you want your tribe to be, is extremely helpful.
viii. Results may vary depending on who you are and what you're selling, but I have always found it easier to find one tribe member willing you give you $1000, than it is to find 1000 tribe members willing to give you one dollar. The downside to that is, the more expensive and exclusive your product, the harder it is to scale further. Somewhere in there lies the sweet spot. If you find it, let me know.
ix. You see this a lot, in the blogosphere particularly: People with great products but no tribe to speak of [Daniel Edlen of VinylArt fame springs immediately to mind], and people with large tribes, but no real compelling product to speak of. Again, it's all about finding the sweet spot.
x. I didn't really start building my tribe till I was well into my thirties, when blogs and Web 2.0 came along. It was a medium "I just got" right away. Man, how I wish the internet came along twenty years sooner; it would've made my life a lot easier in those early days.
xi. Though I didn't have the term for it back then, back in college I always knew a "Global Microbrand" was what I wanted eventually. I always knew I was never cut out to be the corporate, office-worker kinda guy. I gave the latter an honest try, and it was a complete disaster. Like I said, better late than never.
xii. If your Global Microbrand succeeds, it's not because of the brand's functionality per se, it's because what you're doing gives the end user something to believe in. To me, that's always been pretty obvious, some folk still find it a difficult idea to process.
If people like buying your product, it's because its story helps fill in the narrative gaps in their own lives.
Human beings need to tell stories. Historically, it's the quickest way we have for transmitting useful information to other members of our species. Stories are not just nice things to have, they are essential survival tools.
And yes, the stories we tell ourselves are just as important than the stories we tell other people.
Ergo, marketing is not about selling. Marketing is figuring out where your product stands in relation to personal narrative.
So where does your product fit into other people's narrative? How does telling your story become a survival tool for other people? If you don't know, you have a marketing problem.
Narrative gaps. It's all about the narrative gaps.
It's funny how you can have two guys sitting next to each other in an office, both doing the same job. Both using the same computers and phones. Both with the same academic qualifications. Both with a similar IQ. Both working the same amount of hours. But why does one guy take home five times more sales commission than the other guy? What's going on? Is it luck? Skill? Justice? Injustice?
The question of what separates success from failure, is something I've always liked to ponder on. Suddenly this week, out of nowhere, the following line hit me:
"Success is more complex than Failure."
Think about it. Being a failure is a no-brainer. All you have to do is sleep till noon, get out of bed, scratch your balls, have your morning visit to the bathroom, turn on the Star Trek re-runs, help yourself to some breakfast [Leftover pizza and a bottle of Jack Daniels, Hurrah!], light up your first joint of they day, download some porn, and already you're well on your way. Sure, a few inconvenient variables may enter the picture here and there, to complicate an otherwise perfect day of FAIL, e.g. what you're going have to say to your brother in order to convince him to lend you that $300, so you can pay off the telephone bill, that kinda thing. But for the most part, the day-to-day modus operandi of your "Average Total Failure" is quite straightforward.
Being successful, however, is a whole different ball game. Breakfast meetings at 7.00am. Conference calls at midnight. Visiting twelve cities in five days. Fielding question from a swarm of hostile journalists. Dealing successfully with an enraged, multi-million dollar customer who's screaming bloody murder over something rather trivial in the grand scheme of things. Dealing successfully with an enraged, multi-million dollar investor who's screaming bloody murder over something rather trivial in the grand scheme of things. Making sure there's enough money in the account to meet the payroll of all your legions of highly-paid, highly-effective, highly-talented employees. All these hundreds of unrelenting issues to deal with, all day, every day. You get the picture.
And as always, what's invariably true of people is also invariably true for businesses. So when I see a small but insanely-successful business suddenly implode overnight [it seems to happen quite a lot in Silicon Valley], I'm guessing chances are it wasn't inability to manage growth per se that destroyed the business [a favorite reason cited by those writing business obituaries], but the inability for the business to manage complexity. Complexity increases exponentially with growth, most small companies can culturally only handle incremental increases in complexity. As I'm fond of saying, "Human beings don't scale".
Which is why walking around the hallways of large, successful companies can often seem so oppressive to somebody new to it. All that cultural regimentation is there for one reason only: To fight "The Complexity War". Sure, it might feel a bit ghastly to the more idealist and free-spirited among us, but until somebody can come up with a better way to win this Complexity War at a Fortune-500 level, I don't see it ever going away.
[TO BE CONTINUED....]
If this doesn't make a good good "cube grenade", I don't know what will...
A while ago, I announced that we'd be making smaller prints available, based on the cartoons found in IGNORE EVERYBODY.
On June 11th, the same day the book came out, we announced our first efforts: The "Ignore Everybody" Portfolio Series Number One.
Four silkscreens, 11"x14", limited edition of 100, signed and numbered, $320 for the set.
I'm delighted to report, that we've just made the "Quality" print available for purchase individually. $100, plus S&H. Here's the blurb on the gallery website:
A couple of decades ago, Ford had a tagline for its car commercials: "Quality is Job One".I hope you'll check it out. Thanks!Well, that may be fine if you're a big, old car company, but it never quite grabbed my imagination. I figured if you're a young, small company, or a person wanting to make a difference on a tiny shoestring budget (like I was), stronger words might be more appropriate. Events proved me right- this ended up being one of my favorite cartoons of my blog readers.
[etc: About Hugh. Interview. Newsletter. Book. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades. Hughtrain.]
I drew this cartoon earlier this evening.
It's conveys the state I found myself in, back in New York a decade ago, when I was doing what I consider to be my best, or at least, my most formative work.
No artist wants their best work behind them. No human being wants their best days behind them. Yet my my Inner Doubting Thomas keeps telling me, I'll never be that young again; I'll never have my work be that fresh & new again. Nor, sadly, will the world, at least to me.
To Hell with it. I'll carry on, regardless.
And of course, so will you, at whatever insanely impractical path you chose for yourself. We knew what we were doing, when we signed up for this tour of duty.
We still have a few tricks up our sleeves, don't we?
Doubting Thomas can go fuck himself...
[etc: About Hugh. Interview. Newsletter. Book. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades. Hughtrain.]
I'm taking to the road. Here are some notes:
1. Now that IGNORE EVERYBODY is done and in the book stores, it's time to do something else. In the last couple of days, I've gotten several emails from people that they saw the book selling in airport bookshops. Wow. It doesn't get any more "mainstream" that that, I'm happy to report. At least I can't accuse it of being "undiscovered". And for me, as a blogger, it's nice to be able to break out of the Web 2.0 echo chamber. Exactly.
2. So I was having a drink with a friend the other day, and he asked me what my next plan was. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that "I'm going to go on the road, and stay on the road, until Stormhoek is the best selling South African wine in Texas."
3. I'm bringing my computer along. I'll be blogging my adventures en route. Hoping to be posting travel-diary videos on YouTube as well.
4. I'll be limiting my travels to the State of Texas. Luckily it's a big State and there's plenty to discover.
5. I'm bringing my computer along. I'll be working on my second book while I'm traveling. I have a vague idea what it's about...
6. I'm bringing my computer along. I hoping to meet other Texan bloggers and Twitters on my travels.
7. Hoping to draw a lot of new cartoons en route as well. Hoping that some new prints will come out of it.
8. I don't really have a plan. But I am leaving as soon as I can get organized. You'll be able to follow my adventure on Twitter easily enough.
9. This idea will probably fail. "Futile Marketing" etc. Rock on.
10. [Update:] Just Twittered this blog post: "@gapingvoid is proud to present: THE WORST MARKETING IDEA EVER!!!!!" Yep. That's about right...
[etc: About Hugh. Interview. Newsletter. Book. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades. Hughtrain.]
[This quote was an excerpt from my last CDF Newsletter.]
[etc: About Hugh. Book. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades. Hughtrain.]
With all the activity over IGNORE EVERYBODY and the prints these last few months, I was getting frustrated that I wasn't spending more time on the Stormhoek project.
It's hard to do everything....
The wine is selling well here in Alpine, Texas. It's a small town of six thousand, word is easy to spread if you're doing something interesting. But I have my eyes set on bigger horizons.
Like I said before, I'm just going to focus the marketing efforts on the State of Texas. Doing the whole country is just WAY too complicated, not to mention expensive.
I've asked our distributors to send me a list of all the stores, bars and restaurants that they cover in Texas. I'm thinking of going on a road trip. I'm thinking of visiting some of these places. I'm thinking of bringing a video camera along. I'm thinking of asking Jeffro to come with me, at least for part of it.
I'm just thinking...
[etc: About Hugh. Interview. Newsletter. Book. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades. Hughtrain.]
An excerpt from my latest Crazy Deranged Fools Newsletter, which I sent out earlier today:
“Here’s the reality: The Creative Bug will give you everything, and it will take from you, everything. It will cost you your life, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.Feel free to sign up, Thanks!But knowing this, of course, is what ultimately sets you free.”
One of my Twitter followers sent me this photo.
He had just started working at a new job, was walking around the office to get familiar with his new home, and saw this...
One of his colleagues had used my cartoons to make a big ol' cube grenade, about blogging and social media.
Now if I can only get these people to start buying the real thing... Heh.
Well, Day Six into becoming a "published author", and according to Google, a lot of people are already talking about my book. Here are some of my favorite reviews so far:
Seth Godin: "Should Hugh swear so much?" This post re-visits a conversation Seth and I had a year ago, when I was first wondering whether or not to keep the "potty mouth" cartoons out of the book.Well, that's enough SHAMELESS book-pimping for now. I'm going back to SHAMELESSLY PIMPING my latest batch of Cube Grenades. Rock on.David Armano: "The title says it all. You have to decide if what you believe in is good enough to fight for, to pursue, to risk everything for. Only you can decide this."
Rick Segal: "Hugh’s advice and commentary should be required reading for everybody doing a start-up, coming up with a earth changing idea or dreaming of the day they punch out of that Dilbert-like cubicle."
Sex On The Beach: "Hugh's not coming from some lofty ivory tower, but from a real process of hard work and grit. He's not preachy; he's simply sharing what he has learned along his path."
The CRM Blog- One of my longest (and best) interviews ever:
CRM magazine: Do you think creativity is a kind of currency now?Jerimiah Owyang: "You see, his book Ignore Everybody, really isn’t a book. Instead, you should think of it as as that friend in high school who never followed the rules, but achieved his goals took you out for a beer 20 years later and shakes your shoulders and wakes you up."Hugh MacLeod: It’s always been a currency, more so right now because if you’re creating a lot of stuff that’s interesting, valuable, meaningful, that’s a lot safer to me than just pushing paper around a desk all day. Those kinds of jobs are being replaced by computers every day.
We want to be creative. We want to be more useful and tap into something deeper and more meaningful. We don’t want to sit around and be a schmuck our whole lives; what I’m hoping the book will do is get people to start a dialogue with themselves and with other people. It’s an interesting dialogue because [creativity] is such a primal need.
A few months ago I posed ten questions to David Brain, CEO of Edelman Europe, which he kindly answered. To mark the launch of my book, IGNORE EVERYBODY, he asked me ten questions back. Here they are:
1. In a nutshell, why should someone read the book?
Like it says in the very beginning of the book, "So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years." I don't claim to have any special insight in the nature of creativity. However, it's something I put a lot of thought and effort into over the last few decades, so I have my opinions. I'm just sharing what I know, for what it's worth.
2. You say, “The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you”. How do people who work for organisations and companies deal with this?
The same way any one else does. Patience, tenacity and good timing.
3. Does the “ignoring everybody” lead to loneliness?
Yes. It's the price you WILL pay. Only you can decide if it's worth it.
4. Is the book your social object?
I consider my cartoons my social object. The book, however, allowed me to present them to the world in way I found compelling.
5. By coincidence, I am reading David Ogilvy’s Confessions of an Advertising Man, and your style is somewhat reminiscent of that book which became a kind of handbook to running an ad agency. Is Ignore Everybody a handbook and if so, for who?
I love that book. The introduction where he wrote about working in that high-end restaurant in Paris in the 1930s is probably one of my favorite pieces of writing, ever.
I didn't have a demographic or a "function" in mind when I wrote the book. But I did think that there were a lot of people out there who, like me, aspired to do something more "creative" with their lives, than what was expected of them. And I thought there'd be no harm in sharing with them what I had learned the hard way, over the years. The premise was really no more complicated than that.
6. What was the motive behind writing the book? I mean I know how little money these things make, but do you want it to help other people better their lives or is it just another evil plan?
I certainly didn't expect to make any real money from it, and how much it would "help" other people is pretty debatable. But sometimes in your life you have these defining moments, where you draw a line in the sand and declare to the world, "This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what's important to me." I think we all need these moments at some point, to make us better understand who we really are. Writing a book is a good way to force these moments to the surface. That was really the key driver, here.
7. You name some obviously creative people in the book like Picasso and Bob Dylan but in the hard commercial world where you spend part of your life, who are the people who have managed to stay creative that have most impressed you?
I've always been most inspired by small businesses that could have been a lot bigger, but the owners decided to say small, because they didn't want to commodify something that was very dear and special to them. Thomas Mahon over at English Cut, or Amy's Ice Cream in Austin. But that's certainly not my only criteria. Doing what you love AND getting paid for it at the same time is actually a really, really hard trick to pull off. Most people can't do it, but if you can, yeah, you will have earned my respect.
8. You seem to have a love/hate relationship with advertising and advertising thinking (as do I). What’s with that?
The trouble with working in advertising is that you're basically paid to perform miracles, by people who actually don't believe in miracles. And the fact that most of the stuff being produced is boring, noisy and obnoxious doesn't help, either. That being said, when it works, it works REALLY well, and creates a lot of value in a very short period of time. Like all advertising and marketing folk, I just wish the latter happened more often.
9. Creativity and technology have in the past been seen as different worlds but you seem in this and in other work to really enjoy the combination? Why?
It's not really about the tech per se, it's about the people. Like yourself, I like smart, driven, passionate people. The tech industry seems to be a place where these people often congregate. So it's an relatively easy place to hang out in, an easy place to meet interesting folk with interesting ideas.
10. So what are your plans for the book and what next?
I'm toying with the idea of writing a second book, albeit with some trepidation. When asked why she never wrote a second book after "To Kill A Mockingbird", Harper Lee answered, "Because after that, there was nowhere to go but down". I can certainly relate!
Being a book author is not important to me. Neither is being a blogger or a marketing guy. Drawing cartoons is important to me. I know that if I keep on drawing the cartoons, interesting things will come out of it eventually, so my plan is to to just keep focusing on that.
[P.S. This was cross-posted on David's blog here.]