Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman's Blog About Surprise

What I Learned This Week--When Your Title is You

Last Tuesday, I was introduced to a young man who will be working for me this summer as our advertising and promotional coordinator at Just For Laughs.  He was introduced as “The New Theo.”  That introduction was a massive compliment, to him, but especially to Theo.

For the record, “Theo” is Theo Lepage-Richer, a stylish (very) young man who worked for us over the three summers since I’ve been back.  Theo’s job was to harmonize the daily flow of advertising and promo material, put out in two languages, from the start of our promotional rush (early May) until the end of the event (last week of July). 

Said job is a relatively thankless job one requires a lot of patience, mind-reading (“I think I know what he meant by that grunt”), organization, scheduling, cajoling and deal-making.   And it’s actually worse than it sounds, because it requires working with stressed-out creative people, producers and executives; with print, radio, TV, web, outdoor and other assorted media forms; getting various levels of approvals and sign-offs; all while adhering to (and extending) deadlines and commitments.  And doing so on a daily basis amongst dozens of changes, indecision, disregard for timelines and procedure.

Sadly for us, gladly for him, Theo has taken on a full-time position at the Sid Lee agency, but his reputation and spirit still lingers.

And is the inspiration for the lesson of the week, which is:

When your job

becomes your name,

you’ve done something right.

No offence to the gentleman who’s taken Theo’s place (I don’t even recall his name, but will find out by the end of this blog post), but he’s stepping into big shoes.  At Just For Laughs, we all know what a “Theo” is, but I’d venture to bet that nobody ever knew his official title or job description.

In fact, getting to this pinnacle of respect almost negates the need for either one of those two traditional forms of classification.  When your job becomes your name, you go way beyond the realm of your task list and even further beyond your designation on any org chart.

An old health adage you may remember is “You are what you eat”; in the office, you know you’ve made it when “You are what you do.”  I’ve talked before about the value of making yourself indispensible, but there’s no greater compliment, no better mark of organizational value, no stronger personal and professional endorsement than when your name is synonymous with not just what you have to do, but what you actually do.

So, a shout out to “The New Theo”: it ain’t gonna be easy this summer, but keep up the fight and help get us through.

Who knows?  Play your cards right and maybe next year, the job will be called “Dominic.”

What I Learned This Week--If Your Past Is Your Future, You're History

As a rule, I usually dread corporate strategy meetings for a number of reasons, including but not limited to:

• They are clichéd
• To the loudest go the spoils
• There are few concrete results
• If perchance something concrete is resolved, it is forgotten within a week

So imagine my surprise at the recent productive two-day session we had at Just For Laughs.  The jury’s still out over the long-term effectiveness, as we need further meetings to build on the foundation…but at least we came out with some sort of a foundation, one that was built on respectful (!), reflective (!) and intelligent (!) debate.

One such debate focused on the exploitation of the vast Just For Laughs catalog.  A content company with over three decades of TV history, we’ve been mining our vaults for gold for years now. One of our projects—the Just For Laughs Gags channel on YouTube—is perhaps the company’s most successful and profitable, culling hundreds of hours of content and more than four million unique visits per day into one of YouTube’s top 100 worldwide destinations.

On the surface, this is good, if not great, news.  But a little scratch reveals a chink in the armor sparked one of the meeting’s best debates, namely the one that arose when I said:

“If your future

is based on your past,

you’re screwed.”

(To be honest, I used a term a little stronger than “screwed,” but why be profane?)

The euphoria of continually going back to the well and finding it full is, in my mind, short-lived and dangerous.  And this isn’t just relevant to those producing “content.”   No matter what your business, if your dreamy current sales projections are based predominantly—or entirely—on what you’ve produced before, you are in for a rude awakening.

One can argue (and some at the meeting did) that if you are actually in the business of selling the past, my premise is invalidated.

No it’s not.

Even if you’re dealing in antiques (be it the guy down the street or the Gold family on TruTv’s Hardcore Pawn), history (like my friends at Alexander Autographs), family trees (like geni.com or familysearch.org) or non-comedic forms of previously broadcast filmed entertainment (everything from ESPN Classic to Turner Classic Movies), your future doesn’t necessarily have to be mired by your past. 

Different methods of packaging, of distribution, of presentation, or of editing can breathe new life into the past, and do so in a manner that’s so effective and fresh...

...it’s as if the past

is making its debut. 

Case in point—the new iPad app chronicling the history and career of The Doors, a passion project of former Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman that just about reinvents the music biography.  Or the one by my buddy, Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis, that doesn’t merely aggregate a bunch of his previously-published newspaper strips, but through animation, audio and video commentary and original corresponding content, gives them a new relevance…not to mention a new hope for the survival of the comic strip genre as a whole.

Selling the past can be easy, but you’re ascending a slippery slope that you’ll eventually slide down…and fast.  Re-making the past is more difficult; it’s a different story that requires a different skill set.  Yet it’s the only way if you don’t want to get caught up in the past/future conundrum shouted out in bold red above.

Perhaps the best way to summarize this week’s lesson is not just to re-use the words of philosopher  George Santayana, who said “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it,” but to paraphrase and re-make them into:

“Those who (merely)

repeat the past are

condemned to be forgotten.”

What I Learned This Week--Chewing On Perspectively Modified Organisms

When is a food not a food?

To legions of concerned and vocal do-gooders, its when "Big Agri" steps in and toys with Mother Nature to produce Genetically Modified Organisms, aka GMOs.

But to people in the marketing biz, it's when “Big Brother” steps in and toys with definitions and behavior change to produce Perspectively Modified Organisms, aka (well, as of this sentence) PMOs.

Now this may sound somewhat ominous, but in the end, depending on the behavior being adjusted, PMOs can please both the boardroom and do-gooders alike. 

The modern PMO trend started in 2004, when Kraft (more specifically, its Nabisco division) responded to the vilification of its less-than-healthy products by shifting attention away from the foodstuff itself and onto the repackaging of it with the introduction of "100-Calorie Packs."  Instead of gorging on handfuls Chips Ahoy! cookies or Ritz Crackers with Peanut Butter, consumers could now daintily pick through wallet-sized, predetermined portions of the same.  

That was one small step for a man (or woman), but a giant leap for snack-food marketers, as they changed consumer perspective from chomping "snacks" to expending a small portion of their daily caloric intake instead; a win-win that simultaneously reduced public guilt and increased corporate bottom lines (the idea was a huge win, and because of the massive margins it delivered, was quickly adapted by other companies). 

The latest such

Perspective Modification

has not yet been put

into everyday practice...

but should be.  

And, I suspect, will be.

Right now, in an effort at consumer education for best health practices, many restaurants are providing calorie counts info on their menus. Despite some mind-numbing figures (I remember a colleague almost falling off his chair upon learning that the "healthy" Cobb Salad he would regularly wolf down at Ted's Montana Grill in New York was a 1,232-calorie fat-bomb), the end result is that people still aren't ordering fewer calories...in fact, some order an extra glass of wine to help them forget just how many they are consuming. 

However, a study released two weeks ago by researchers at Texas Christian University suggests that what would be way more powerful and persuasive than mere calorie data would be listing the exercise needed in order to burn off the food eaten.

In a nutshell, the study took 300 young adults, aged 18 to 30, and separated them into three groups.  While their food selection was the same (a standard American fare of burgers, fries, chicken sandwiches, salads, etc.), their menus were different:

• One group’s had calorie labels and food listings
• One group’s was food listings only
• And one group’s had labels of minutes of brisk walking required to burn off the calories in the food items (i.e. two hours of brisk walking to burn off a cheeseburger)

Suddenly, to one group, food wasn't food anymore.  And the results were...well, what you'd expect:  those given the "exercise" menus consumed way fewer calories than the people with or without the calorie count.

This shouldn't come as a major shock, because no matter how many calories you add up, people just don't understand the notion of them.  To most, a calorie is ephemeral intangible; what people DO understand is hard, sweat-inducing exercise...which, to many, is a fate worse than death. 

I'm an exercise fanatic and just this morning, I did a lung-busting 30 minute power-ride on an expresso.com networked stationary bike.  For all my huffing, puffing and thigh-burning, I disposed of 360 calories, which is about a slice of an all-dressed pan pizza from Domino’s, or a five-ounce petite filet from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. That’s not an equation tipped in my favor.  When food becomes work, I’ll think twice about what goes in my mouth.

Bang! 

Perception Modified.

It’s not just about food, either.  Last week, I had a meeting with two friends of mine who run a foundation that provides art to hospitals and other institutions of healing or convalescence.  They asked me how they could raise more money for their operation.

It’s a hard sell three ways:

• Medical people face bigger problems and are severely time and budgetarily challenged
• Art people may be off-put by the venue
• The general public doesn’t understand or necessarily care about art

Ouch.

My advice was to PMO their raison d’etre.  Like changing snacks into calorie counts, I suggested they change art into medicine by referring to what they deliver as “Visual Meds” or “Visual Tranquilizers.”

No guarantee of a win, but at least it’s a way towards a new start of a new way to think.

So what was this week’s big lesson?  In essence...

How things are seen

is way more important

than how things actually are. 

 

And the best way

to change people

is to change their perspectives

on how they see things.

Anyway, after all this writing, I’m starved.  I think I’ll go eat a TRX workout and wash it down with two-thirds of my hockey game tonight. 

What I Learned This Week--Let Go The Line

Consider this post a corollary, a sequel or at least a fairly close relative to last week’s dissertation.

However, instead of focusing on walls, fences and other so-called “barriers to entry,” this week’s post puts the spotlight on a different business contrivance that gives a similar false sense of security: The Trend Line. 

What sparked this all was a discussion I had with a colleague a few weeks ago about taking on a new partner and taking a big leap in a new direction, to which he made this point:

“Business has been good.  We’re making about $2 million dollars net profit.  We’re growing steadily every year and the trend line shows that we can grow this to about $6 million in four, five years.  Why should I take a risk, give up a half my profit when things are going so well?”

Here’s what I said:

“Your trend line is a lie.  It’s a pacifier.  It’s an optical illusion.  It’s like those legal disclaimers on financial offerings, the ones that go: ‘The information regarding the historical development of the funds is provided for informational purposes only. Historical data does not guarantee future performance.’ The past is irrelevant and the future is a prayer.”

Then I calmed down, and he called off the intervention.

Data points plotted on a graph and connected in a line tell a great story of how you got to where you are.  But in no way can they tell you where you are going.

Because the competition doesn’t listen to your trend line. 

Consumers don’t listen to your trend line.

In fact, even trends don’t

listen to your trend line; they

disrupt, even destroy, them. 

I just read an article about Moishes, a legendary steak house in Montreal that just celebrated its 75^th anniversary.  Rock solid, right?  Invulnerable!  Sure…until some new study comes out showing the beef is toxic…or perhaps vegetarianism becomes a rampant rage, or…

Okay, an improbable scenario, but life is full of ‘em.  I lived through countless seismic shifts, and continue to on a daily basis. 

At Airborne Mobile in the early 2000s, we were pioneers in content delivered to cellphones.  After a major “hockey stick” jump, our revenue trend line was a gorgeous 25-degree angle up.  Bliss!

And then, Apple released the iPhone.

Almost immediately, our sales plummeted. Our trend line, lemming-like, took a suicidal leap off a cliff, never to fully recover.

Now no company plans for its revenue trend line hitting a wall and plummeting like an anvil in a Road Runner cartoon.  Imagine trying to present something like this before a board: 

“Sales will increase 7.3% per month until July, upon which it will take a death spiral swan dive to the depths of hell because of a new product released by one of our competitors, we just don’t know which one.”

Yet it happens, and happens often. 

A case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts, a trend line is way less relevant than the individual data points that make it up.  Being able to understand success—or failure—and react quickly to either will result in further positive data points.  This will result in a nice historical memento to look back upon, but is in no means a tool to use to predict the future. 

At Just For Laughs, we trend ticket sales, and project pathways to profitability.  But this fragile line can be ravaged by the devastating effect of a bad review and the ensuing word of mouth (or, in a better-case scenario, be sent stratospheric if the show becomes a mega hit).  But we live by the moment.  No matter what the performers, the director, or the show itself did in the past has no bearing.  Everything depends on the now. 

So going back to my colleague, I urged him to take the shot.  Who knows, he may not have to give up 50% of his $2 million…or even his $6 million; he may be sharing $47.6 million.  Or he may go bankrupt, either with the new partner, or by retaining his current status quo. 

As I said, who knows?

What I do know with certainty though is that we can’t predict the future. 

If we did, we wouldn’t go to work; we’d buy a winning lottery ticket.

But the trend line can’t predict the future either.

Depending on it to do so is as sound a business strategy as playing the lotto.

-------------------------

P.S.  After all that heavy-handed craziness, enjoy this:

 

What I Learned This Week--There Are No More Barriers To Entry

Historians officially record November 9, 1989 as the beginning of the end—the tearing down of the infamous Berlin Wall.

I don’t know what day they will set for this landmark event, but it’s one that’s already upon us…for The Business Wall has fallen some time ago.  

I remember when my partner Garner Bornstein and myself started our pioneering mobile media firm Airborne Entertainment back in 2000, one of the questions potential investors always asked us was: “What are the barriers to entry?”  In other words, what makes it difficult for other competitive entities to enter the field?

Back then, our answers were:

• “Our proprietary technology.”
• “Our deep wireless carrier and media brand relationships.”
• “Our experienced management team.”
• “The cost of set-up and development.”

We had others, as well. 

We were cocky and confident. 

For we were entrenched behind, and protected by, The Business Wall.

Today there would only be one answer to the question:

“So sorry, but there

are NO barriers to entry!”

That's the cold, cruel lesson of the week...although it's probably many months late.

Today, anybody can do anything. 

And they can do it any time they want, usually for way cheaper than it was done before.

Easily-available software, net-based social media tools, guts, and a healthy ignorance of “how it should be” have now made every musician a producer, every producer a label, every craftsman an international marketer…and every current international marketer scared as hell.

Desktop 3D printers have become factories. 

Ballsy corporations, not governments, are sending citizens into space.  Instead of merely buying cool cars, brilliant, rich entrepreneurs like Elon Musk of Tesla Motors are making them (ironically, just like their predecessors at the turn of the 20^th century). 

College kids are creating companies, products, games and apps with the same speed and reckless abandon they used to expend partying (better still, they’re finding time to do both).

In my current field at Just For Laughs, young comedians don’t need the comedy club stage, or the TV show break anymore.  By knowing how to “use” YouTube, they create their own platforms, their own audiences, their own shows…and their own breaks.  And if they have any weight, like Louis C.K., or Marc Maron, or Chris "The Nerdist" Hardwick, they create their own worlds.

In fact, my greatest fear for Just For Laughs and its festivals is not death by our current competition.  It’s not being rendered irrelevant by some of our well-financed, heavily resourced peers.  It’s being accidentally conquered by two well-meaning young fans in a suburban basement who don’t know what can’t be done and certainly ain’t playing by any established set of rules. 

Call it “Inadvertent Demise.”

Depending on where you sit, this can either be exhilarating or frightening.  If you feel one of these two emotions, you’re in a good place, because you’re either being driven by it, or being driven crazy by it.

But if you’re not thrilled or you’re not nervous, if you think you’re still being shielded by some sort of barricade…then you’re in trouble.  Big trouble.

Because the walls have already fallen.  And even though the dust has not finished settling, your conquerors have already entered running.

And it’s only a matter of time before they come for you.