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

Theory 5--The Lubricant To Yes

Why do I love Surprise marketing so much?

Because it’s the lubricant to “Yes.”

There’s nothing more that marketers want to hear than that word. You can yammer along about customer retention, building community, unaided recall, blah, blah, effin’-blah all you want, but no other term really matters.

It’s the word with the most buzz—Yes.

But when it comes to getting you there, so many marketers do it so damn wrong. They drive you crazy, flash strobes at you, get in your face and spew spittle on you as they talk.  They pounce on you as you enter the store, and spam you for eternity once you leave.

In an article in The Economist late last year, Joe Staton, the head of JWT's Knowledge Center, summed it up best when he said:

“Selling people things has become more difficult than it has ever been.”

And for good reason.  The problem is simple, and deep-rooted:

People don’t want to be sold.

When I was at Just For Laughs, I would be deluged with hundreds of phone calls, emails, letters and packages every week by well-meaning-but-insanely-overbearing agents and managers, all trying to push their clients with bribes, threats, promises and oodles of dubious achievements like: “He’s the second hamburger in that hot new Wendy’s commercial!”

And I would tell them the same thing.

Over and over again:

Don’t try to sell me;
just make it easy
for me to buy.

Let me discover your product, service or offer.

Don’t make me feel that somehow, it was forced on me.

Don’t, not for a second, make me feel that the decision was yours, not mine.

Seth Godin (yes, here I go again) has laid down a great post about four levels of marketing effort, the last being the Zen-like approach of No (Apparent) Effort. It’s almost an "anti-marketing," one which sells you by not selling.

Such is the raison d’etre of Surprise: Delight first…they’ll buy later.

As I said at the start...

Surprise is the
lubricant to “Yes.”

That’s the ultimate marketing destination.  The place we all wanna get to.

So stop pushing. Instead, make it easy for me to pull.

 

World's Best Pick-Up Line

There are two types of dog owners.

1. Those who pick up after their dogs
2. Those who don't give a...well, you know what I mean

If you are the former, you don't need a sign to tell you what to do.  And if you're the latter, you'll ignore them no matter what they say.

Unless, of course, they're as clever as the ones put up by the District of North Vancouver.

   

Well done, people!  Now come here and lemme give you a little treat.

Something From Nothing

Can you believe it?  Two big surprise lessons from one fundraiser!

This time, inside the Garth Brooks NHL All-Star dinner, and a Chicago auctioneer is surrounded by some gleaming, high-powered and high-profile items up for bid. 

• Two new Dodge Nitro SUVs. 
• A custom NHL motorcycle made by the Teutul boys of Orange County Choppers. 
• An all-expenses paid trip to Garth Brooks' upcoming Las Vegas show and private dinner with the country legend.
• Signed original art

So guess which prize attracts the most feverish bidding?

Wouldya believe...

an empty envelope?

Yup, in a stroke of Surprise genius, the auctioneer held up an empty envelope, showed there was nothing in it, and started bidding at a couple hundred bucks.

For about five seconds, nothing happened.

Then the crowd, figuring there has to be a catch, started a bidding frenzy.   Hands popped up and waved all over the room, which now looked like some sort of fantasy-land forest.  The auctioneer, a seasoned pro, could hardly catch his breath keeping up with the rising total.

When it all died down, he had raised--if me memory serves me correctly--close to $2,000. 

For nothing.

Well, actually, not for nothing.  The winner took home a bunch of signed memorabilia; essentially leftovers from the silent auction mentioned below.

But it goes to prove the Pow!er of the unknown.  In Surprise marketing, we defy conventional wisdom and live by the adage

Two in the Bush
is Worth More
Than a Bird in the Hand

 

Sometimes, All Ya Gotta Do...

First the story, then the lesson--

Silent auction time outside the Garth Brooks Teammates For Kids fundraising dinner at the NHL All-Star Game in Dallas. I have a bid in on the game-worn All-Star jersey of goalie Marty Turco, one of my son Hayes' idols.  The bid is relatively low, so I don't mind when a guy named Hersh Borenstein takes it a bit higher. 

So I up him a bit.

And he ups me a bit.

And so on...until I'm near my threshold.  I figure maybe I better look elsewhere, and check out some of the other signed jerseys.

Well Hersh has the leading bid on EVERY one.

Now, I can do two things:

1. Walk away and chalk it up to experience
2. Blow my budget and my brains out in a war against Hersh

So I do neither.  I go back to the Turco sweater, and in a firm-but-tongue-in-cheekiness manner, write this next to my final bid:

"For Crissakes, Hersh! 
Give a Lanzman a break here and let me take home a sweater for my goalie kid!"

The end result?  Hersh backed off, Hayes' eyes popped out, and money was raised for Garth's foundation.

And the moral of this story is that to get what you want, sometimes, all ya gotta do is ask .  Don't let the fear of asking get in the way of setting off your next big Pow!...in marketing, or for your kid.

Life is full of Surprises, but often, they need to be prompted.

(And by the way, thanks Hersh.  You're a mensch.)

...and Howe!

Lots of Surprise in Dallas at the NHL All-Star Game (to be disseminated over the next few days), but nothing more Shocking and Awe-some than this lil' anecdote.

Was at the "Taste of the State Fair" pre-game party in the Hyatt Regency Ballroom with Airborne's V.P. Product, Ms. Kim Senn.  A wild fan of the fastest game on earth, she was speechless when none other than Mr. Hockey himself, Gordie Howe, ambled into the room.  "Let's get you a picture with him," I suggested.

Gordie kinda ignored my hovering but stopped when approached by my lithe, slender, blonde colleague.

Just as I was about to snap the shot of the two of them, he took his arm off Kim's shoulder and lumbered away.

"Oh Christ," I thought to myself.  "He's pissed off.  What I have I done? "

He walked towards me, leaned in, and in a deep voice, uttered the following three words, one by one, almost like a warning:

"Take.  Your.  Time!"

Snap This, Mofo!

If you haven't seen this incredible piece of video yet, it comes to you via Rick Spence.

Talk about Pow!  The only thing bigger than Kodak's balls for letting this internal motivational tool go public are the claims made within it.

Magna Surprise, especially for anyone who has ever snapped an Instamatic.

iBalls

Way way back, in this blog's first post, I said the following:

"I have always shouted that consumers don't know what they want.  Well, I lied.

They know what they want. 

They WANT to be led.
They WANT us to lead them.
They WANT to follow.
And they WANT to be surprised."

I've never been a big believer in focus groups.  I have found that people in 'em are more concerned with giving the right answer than actually coming up with something revolutionary, something that will break through the constraints of what they already know. (On the other hand, I believe whole-heartedly in observing the consumer in his/her natural habitat and learning from that, but that's a whole other ball of whacks.)

And it seems that I have a kindred spirit in Steve Jobs.  In last week's Time Magazine look at the iPhone, Lev Grossman says:

"Jobs' zeal for product development--and enforcing his personal vision--remains as relentless as ever.

I can't think of a comparable company that does no--zero--market research with its customers before launching a product."

One more time:  ZERO MARKET RESEARCH WITH ITS CUSTOMERS.

This goes against conventional marketing wisdom, of course, but designing consumer products can be likened to the weather--everyone complains, but few do anything about it.  Consumers can tell you what's wrong with their phones, what they hate about 'em, but ask for improvement ideas and you'll get minor adjustments, incremental band-aids. 

At the recent CES show in Las Vegas, every cellphone manufacturer--EVERY SINGLE ONE--announced some sort of new handset.  I guarantee each one went through a laborious process of consumer study, research, focus groups, hand-wringing and anal probes. 

Yet only one truly captured our attention, broke through the clutter, and set tongues a-wagging.

Bringing consumer products to reality ain't no YouTube.

It takes a real marketer to bust through and have the balls to lead consumers to the promised land.

To some, the best customer market research is done at the cash register.

Theory 4--Hot Enough For Me

I'm at the NHL All-Star Game  in Dallas, and enjoying great TexMex food every chance I get (even breakfast).   At lunch today, a colleague asked: "What makes great Mexican food?"

My answer: "It's the same as what makes great Indian food...

If it makes my nose run and my eyes tear,
and I don't die the next day...
it's great Mexican food."

Speak tomorrow.

I hope...

Anonymous Marketing

So on one hand you have the misguided matchmaking marketing I've dissected over the past two days, and then you have this...

The ubiquitous Mitch Joel writes gleefully:

"I show up to work and I have an envelope addressed to me. It's from Apple. No one person in specific - just the Apple logo. I open it up and it's a very nice card - nothing written on it - with a $50 iTunes gift card. Nothing else.

I'm talking about it - a lot because I don't know why they sent it to me, who sent it or anything. So, surprise! I'm creating word of mouth just because I have no idea why it was sent... good?"

No, not good.  As Tony The Tiger would say... 

G  R  R  R  E  A  T  !

Look, maybe I'm just reading too much into this (perhaps it was yet another expression of passion from one of Mitch's many secret admirers), but this is Surprise marketing at its core.  Giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, let's say that someone there did their homework, identified influential bloggers and/or digeterati, and sent along this token of acceleration.  Other than postage and printing, it's only cost is opportunity. 

Simple.  Powerful.  Valuable.  There was no:

"Hey Mitch, mention this in your blog, talk it up to friends, stand on one leg and sing Hatikvah in falsetto then send in two box-tops from your favorite organic cereal and we'll send you a gift certificate you can use...but only while crossing the international date line during leap years."

For reasons equally as mysterious, I once got one of these from Chapters.  $10 bucks worth of books and I spent hours trying to find out who sent it, and yammering to everyone in my radius about it.

Perhaps the future of marketing is anonymous...

Huffing and Puffing and Blowing (Part 2)

Following up on the blog-bugging marketing syndrome rant started yesterday...

I say "syndrome," because it's obviously part of a growing trend.  My darling Nikki's employer is a company called m80im, (pronounced em-eighty-im, or em-eighty-eye-em, or meighty-im as in medium, or...) which describes itself as a

"...unique Entertainment and Lifestyle Marketing company specializing in online grassroots marketing, online publicity and promotion, creative services, lifestyle and offline marketing, fanclub services, market research and consulting."

And all this before lunch.  (Note to self: does "specializing" in seven or eight different fields somewhat negate the meaning of the word?)  m80im must be doing something right though; its client list includes the likes of ESPN, Comedy Central, Urban Outfitters, Wal-Mart and a whole whack of record companies.  So where's the swag offers from those guys?  I could use some music and new clothes for my Kmart workout!

Then there's SponsoredReviews.com, in Beta stage at the moment, but it plans to "connect advertisers with bloggers willing to write honest reviews about their services and products."  All through a meet-and-greet online marketplace, a pseudo $-Date service.  It keeps going.  There's PayPerPost, FlogYourBlog and even WhoreYourselfOutLikeAnAgingBankokTransexual.

And all this blogosphere matchmaking ain't limited to insipid promo offers, either.  Also last week, in his MiddleZone Musings, Robert Hruzek mentions as a throwaway that he's "rounding second and heading for third" and is leapt upon by a group called MLB Bloggers looking "to bring Major League Baseball bloggers closer together."

Now, I'm no Marketing Snob.  I'm a major proponent of the Word-Of-Mouth/Consumer-led type (as the glowing reviews of the Sernovitz and McConnell/Huba books at left will attest), and believe strongly in companies seeding bloggers.  But the matchmaking in which Kmart, MLB Bloggers and I suspect so many others are now partaking in is akin to setting up a Colorado cowboy with a Chassidic Rabbi just because they both wear big, black hats.

As I have always said, particularly when I taught the subject at the college level a number of years ago: 

All marketing is merely courtship

Marketing's ultimate goal is the bonding of two individual parties into a mutually-beneficial (and hopefully long-lasting) relationship.  And to do that successfully, you need true communication and a real common ground.

In other words, if you want me to hop into bed with you, get to know me first.  Listen to what I have to say.  Show me you care.  Respect me.

Then shower me with gifts, bay-bah!

Huffing and Puffing and Blowing (Part 1)

In a roundabout "How To" post last Wednesday, I explained that one can create Surprise by playing with the context of a situation.

Well, the following kinda puts the "con" into "out of context," and shows what happens when you let software do a human being's job. 

Last week, I received an unsolicited, Surprise email from someone named "Nikki."  In it, she enthused:

"I was checking out your blog and I noticed that you wrote about cardio in your blog entry The Highlight Reel of Life..."

Nikki went on to link this most innocuous and inconsequential mention of the word "cardio" to the fact that she was

"...contacting you on behalf on Kmart & M80, because we think you and your readers might be interested in Kmart’s annual weight loss program and competition, 'New Day Your Way.' It’s a simple, fun and supportive program to help shed pounds and find a healthier, happier you."

Anyway, she then explained the program, offered up a bunch of e-promo pieces (web banners, videos, press releases) for me to use and, as compensation for doing so, dangled in front of me a

"...New Day Your Way prize pack of exercise and weight management essentials from Kmart* (Fitness DVD, Exercise/Yoga/Pilates Mat, and Kmart Gift Card) along with a chance to win a year membership to Bally’s Total Fitness!"

Be still my beating heart!

What a crock of crapola, the whole lot of this.  Some spiderbot cruises the blogosphere for keywords, and no matter their context, tries to match them with a lame-o, seemingly-related promo campaign. Is this what marketing is coming to? 

This pisses me off for a number of reasons.  First of all, if this were heartfelt and legit, the cooperation would be massive and majestic.  If someone actually took a few seconds out to understand the relevance of this blog, and so many others, they could actually perform wonders in generating relevant marketing buzz.  Hey, we all have other jobs (okay, most of us); we'd appreciate the help.  Instead, we are faced with this insult on our intelligence and passion.

Secondly, if I am going to get blog-bugged, when I think back on all the words and names published in Pow! for the past few months, there are many other promotional prostitution ploys I would rather be offered.  For example:

• "Jewelry"--where are you Cartier?
• "Keith Haring" and "Robert Crumb"--MoMA, there's still space on my walls
• "Levi's"--is my professed love for you not worth a pair of vintage 501s?
• "God"--a bit of guidance and afterlife guarantee, please!
• "Seth Godin"--same as God, I guess...
• "Spam"--some tinned neo-meat or at least two tickets to the musical
• "Beaver"--uh, okay, I think you get the point...

Thirdly, to add insult to injury, 12 minutes after her first email, Nikki (or her wonky software program) wrote back with a similarly-worded offer, with this as the lead sentence:

"I was cruising your cardio, and I think you might be interested in Kmart’s annual weight loss program and competition..."

Oh darling Nikki, no one on earth cruises my cardio like you do.  (Hey, I just mentioned the word "cruises."  How long before Carnival tracks me down?)

Phew!  Gotta catch my breath after a come-on like that.  Stay tuned.  To be continued tomorrow...

 

The Apple and The Tree

We may not be the only Father-Son Combo in the blogosphere, but we are undoubtedly the coolest.

Direct from his dorm room at the University of Toronto, in between homework, socializing and a part-time job at youth marketing consultancy D-Code, comes my eldest offspring Aidan's PoppedHip, which promises "something new and intriguing every day."

(Note: I understand about 75% of what he's talking about; what I don't, I immediately call Mitch Joel or Austin Hill or Sigmund Freud for explanation.  And Heart of Darkness and The Great Gatsby as his favorite books?  Where did I go right?)

So Aidan, where's today's post?  Or yesterday's for that matter?

Uh...this may explain it:

The picture below was just snapped from the live Webcam in his dorm. 

Read you later, my son!

No, I Won't Back Down (Again!)

One of the drawbacks of being the worldwide spokesperson for Surprise is being confronted by all comers and asked to do sumpin' different all the time.  Like the toughest guy in the bar (a title I never remotely held, by the way), I find myself wielding all sorts of in-yo'-face challenges here at what should be my serene Surprise Central hideaway.

(Not that I am foreign to these expectations, mind you. As CEO of Just For Laughs, I was besieged constantly by seemingly well-meaning people asking me to tell them a joke.  "Did you hear the one about the pain-in-the-ass accosting the fed up executive?" I used to reply.  But once again...I digress.)

The latest "double-dog dare ya" comes from Robert Hruzek, owner, author and operator of the Middle Zone Musings blog and social lounge.  Robert is hosting a writing contest, one which features mercifully-brief six-word stories (something we both were enamored with after reading a bunch of 'em in the November Wired evidently), and closes relatively soon...this Sunday, to be exact.

Using the largesse Texans are renowned for, my Houston-based blogging buddy had tossed two gauntlets my way:

1. To actually write one of these six-worders
2. To be a "Surprise" judge and pick the story with the best Surprise ending

Well, the last guy to back down from a Lone Star State challenge ended up being President of the United States, and I can't do any worse than him, so pardon me as I bend down to pick up these gloves and throw them right back with two resounding Yups.

Robert, I guess I can judge the swarm of stories on my flight to your somewhat chilly state on Monday (I'm heading to Dallas for the NHL All-Star Game, Kemo Sabe Stetson in hand).  Avalanche me.

And as for my story, here goes:

"Why six?" smirked the contrarian.

Thank you.  You've been a wonderful audience.  WInners and details to come soon, I suppose.

 

The Westmount Drunk

So the other night, I'm backing out of my driveway to get to my weekly hockey game, and I notice a minor commotion in my rear-view mirror.

There, passed out in one of my neighbor's driveways, was a drunk.  His body was sprawled out like a Keith Haring character (making an obtuse snow angel in the fallen flakes), and over him hovered two of my 'hood's best Samaritans, scratching their heads as per what to do with this unseemly and uninvited guest.

What's this got to do with Surprise?  Well, the lesson I learned once on my way for the 45-minute drive to the rink that:

Surprise is created by placing things out of context.

We all have, unfortunately, had to step over an inebriated body or two in our time.  When they are in the vicinity of a city's downtown core, outside a club or in some alley, they are disturbing, but accepted as part of the landscape.  But when they are alone in a driveway of a tony, residential suburb like Westmount, miles away from any bar or liquor store, they indeed tune up the voltage on the shock meter.

While I don't advocate drinking until you're face down in the snow (particularly in the summer), the lesson of the Westmount drunk is that by taking things out of their natural habitats and placing them where they are out of context, the end result is what this blog is all about. 

This is not a major ordeal either; wearing a baseball cap with a tux or running shoes with a suit, playing classical music in the dressing room before the big game (what my son's hockey team does, which is quite unexpected amongst 16-to-18-year-old boys with rampant testosterone), anything that switches two norms into one abnorm is an easy Surprise recipe.

Put it in your cookbook.

The Westmount Drunk (Artistically-enhanced version)

(Oh, and as for the Westmount drunk, the citizens called 911 and an ambulance came.  The siren aroused the man from his stupor, he got to his feet, refused the "official" ride, and since there was no harm done or need to press charges, he stumbled on his merry way along the lights of The Boulevard.  Now go to sleep, children...)    

Timing Is Everything Is Timing Is...

Creating Surprise is about coming up with a buncha new ideas to Pow! people, right?

Well, not always. 

Sometimes your best ideas are the ones you scrapped and abandoned for dead long ago. 

Ideas are a lot like wine, like art, like Microsoft operating systems (like me too, I would venture); sometimes, they need time to be fully developed, to reach their potential and to be properly appreciated.  Forcing them into service "before their time," so to speak, is like taking a smart high school kid and making her the CEO of a multi-national (hey, on second thought...).

I've read a handful of articles in the past few weeks about Valley VCs combing through boxes of five-year-old business plans; searching a slush pile of rejects looking for "the next big thing."  They're not desperate; in so many cases, it's not the idea itself that's bad, it's that the idea is bad for the time...or vice versa, I suppose.

Looking to Surprise? Then don't be afraid to scour your intellectual scrap heap. 

Yesterday's pffffttt may be today's Pow!

Kiaahhhhhhhhhhh...

Well, the folks at Kia--the Korean car company I kinda lambasted in an earlier post about not coming close to living up to their slogan of "The Power To Surprise"--have finally got their shock-and-awe stickshifts out of neutral.

Kia's most recent TV ad in Canada, for its Spectra model (that sweet, lil' unassuming thing to the right), has unleashed a good ol' fashioned brouhaha, bringing everyone from women's groups to police associations into the fray.

For those of you who haven't seen it (and Lord knows I searched YouTube high and low for it, 'cuz God forbid Kia would actually have it on its site!), it goes something like this:

• A couple is passionately making out in a car pulled over on the side of a highway. 
• You see the flashing red lights of a police car behind them. 
• The guy looks sheepish as his blonde lover pulls herself off him. 
• She makes her way over to the police car, tucks her hair under a police cap, gets into it, and drives away.

I've seen a lot worse in Catholic high school drama productions, but it has sure 'nuff touched a raw nerve up here.

"I saw the ad for the first time on Tuesday at my home, and I was a bit surprised," said Quebec Provincial Police Association President Jean-Guy Dagenais.  "Is it insulting?  Yes, a bit, if you are pulled over by a blonde, you will get a ticket, not a kiss."

Actually, if I were pulled over by a blonde in Quebec, I would get a heart attack.  The QPP officers I have "met" on the road are bad-ass, jodhpur-wearing bulldogs. But I digress. Dagenais goes on to say:

"It's in bad taste, and besides, more people will remember the woman than remember the brand of the car."

Uh, wrongo Mr. Dagenais.  For once, I hear a bitta buzz 'bout Korea's automotive pride-and-joy on these shores other than the reaming they get in the blogosphere (Oy, check 'em on Technorati and weep). 

Later this week, Mr. Dagenais will be meeting with his counterpart at the Montreal Police Brotherhood, Yves Francoeur, to decide whether to send a formal letter of complaint asking KIA to pull the ad from television.

If I were Kia, I'd be waiting for it with bated breath...and an action plan to launch immediately upon reception.

Fasten your seatbelts!  This could be a bumpy ride.

Waning Wonderfulness

Another one in a series of great Surprise quotes, this from the bright and equally amusing  Daniel Gilbert in his book "Stumbling On Happiness":

"Among life's cruelest truths is this one:
Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition. 

"Psychologists call this habituation, economists call this declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage."

Happy anniversary, Mr. Gilbert!

Sir Prize

Enough has been written about Steve Jobs and the iPhone to fill the blogosphere from here to eternity and back again twice over by a slow train, so please indulge Surprise Central's skewed take on it.

While the "so-hot-he's-molten" core of Apple has essentially changed all the rules about mobile telephony on these shores, he is faithfully following the rules of Surprise:

1) Despite the fact that everyone kinda knew Apple was coming out with a phone sooner or later, Jobs Gave 'Em What They Didn't Expect when it came to the product itself. 

2) The iPhone went way beyond even the most optimistic and futuristic predictions, Exceeding Expectations by Miles With Such a Quantum Leap in design and functionality it left other phone manufacturers (like Motorola, Samsung, LG and the like, all who introduced incremental changes to their handsets at CES in Vegas while Jobs was delivering nuclear Pow! in San Francisco) reeling.

3) What's more, if Surprise is defined as The Constant Expansion of the Boundaries of Extreme, then Jobs took the boundaries to the outer limits and punched a hole through infinity on Tuesday.

Unlike the U.K., North America doesn't "knight" its great artists and entrepreneurs, but because of the iPhone, on behalf of FOPs everywhere, this blog bestows Steve Jobs with the title of Sir Prize.

Now, all the damn thing has to do is work.  Let's talk in June.

iYawn

The beauty of Surprise:

One nation's Pow! is another one's So What?

The Truthiness About Discoverability

Last year, in its 16th annual vote, the American Dialect Society voted truthiness as its "Word of the Year," an impressive feat for a term coined by comic Stephen Colbert.

In the marketing world though, the less truthiness the better (just what we need; another corporate credibility scandal!).  Which is why I am happy to report that in its annual vote, Brandweek chose as its "Best Marketing Buzzword" one that is near and dear to those gathered at Surprise Central:

"Discoverability"

The magazine goes on to explain via this example:

"For a year or so, Reef has marketed sandals that have a bottle opener on the heel.  But the company never advertised it or noted it in the packaging, preferring to let users discover the attribute by themselves and tell others."

So lemme see if I got the process straight:

Start with Surprise, which leads to Pow!, which leads to people talking and doing your marketing for you.

Sounds like something readers of this blog discoverabled themselves a few months ago...

Good call, Brandweekers!

Over Usered

And while we're on the subject, Brandweek's "Worst Marketing Buzzword" of 2006 was the overused-to-death

"User-Generated Content"

...which (thankfully!)  gives credence to, and vindicates, my shout-outs in Marketing Magazine this week.

To B-Plan, Or Not To B-Plan

Young Ben Yoskovitz of Startup Spark blog fame has challenged his email list of entrepreneurs with this question:

Should an entrepreneur
write a business plan, or not?

My answer may come as somewhat of a--you guessed it--Surprise.

Ironically, just before the holiday, I was going through boxes of docs after a re-modeling of my basement when I stumbled upon the business plan that Garner and I had put together in 1999 for "The Funniest.com," our Internet humor portal concept (the one that followed Eyeball Glue and eventually morphed into Airborne Entertainment).

Oh.  My.  God.

What a ridiculous, naive collection of far-fetched business concepts, unbridled hype and hallucinatory financial projections!  It was a document stuffed with pie-eyed optimism, 3D Technicolor dreams and near-preposterous promises.  It brought back repressed memories of Garner and I trading thrice-daily (at least!) email revisions back-and-forth over cellphone modems from our respective ski hill getaways over the course of a (so-called) winter vacation.

And I wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world.

So my answer Ben is, Yes.

A big fat juicy Yes, in fact. 

While miles away from where we ended up (by the way, very serendipitous timing as per my Monday post), our business plan gave us a point from which to start.  It got Garner and I thinking about the future, put us on a similar wavelength, helped us learn how to deal with conflict and disagreement, and taught us how to work together.

As a destination, he business plan was a failure, but as the start of our journey, it was imperative and a majestic success.  It is not the end, it is a means to it, and an indispensable one at that.

Putting together our business plan was our first step.  It gave us the confidence to seek financing and strategic partnerships.  We knew we would have to adapt, but (uh-oh, here he goes again!) as I say in my How To Do The Impossible speech, directions are way easier to change when moving than when standing still.

One great business plan anecdote.  Garner and I were presenting our Airborne bizplan PowerPoint to Ivan Fecan, CEO of the Bell Globemedia conglomerate, and we got to the financial slides.  We had worked painstakingly on these five-year projections, trying to make sense of an industry that had yet to even exist on these shores.  These three slides were our crown jewels.

Fecan's taciturn response:

"Bullshit, next.  Bullshit, next.  Bullshit, next."

We were mortified, but he explained:

"Guys, I've been doing these projections my whole life.  I know that you can't predict where this business is going.  Nobody has a clue.  Nice shot, but I know you're faking it. 

"If anyone's going to invest in your company at this point, it's not about your numbers.  It's about your conviction."

So Ben, tell your entrepreneurs to demonstrate their conviction and get their thoughts in order on a business plan.  Many would-be moguls don't even have enough discipline to get through the arduous process of putting one together.   If nothing else, it's great training for the hardships, the euphoria, the misery, the uncertainty, the sweat and the cheers to come.

And one day, it will make cleaning out their basements a whole lot more fun as well. 

French Bred

A little follow-up to my French Deli post of last week.

As my wife Lynn and I were leaving Vail, she thought it would be nice to tell the owner of the forementioned restaurant that he was mentioned as a provider of Pow! at Surprise Central.

"Oy, leave it alone," I told her.  "I don't think he'll get it, or care.  And besides, he's closed."

But my wife, ever the sweet one, knowing that this individual is unlikely to ego-seek himself on Technorati, insisted.

So we walked up to the Deli's glass doors, and my wife knocked.

The owner, behind the counter tallying receipts from the day, shooed her away unceremoniously.

"No, no, I don't want something to eat!" she explained.  "My husband mentioned you in his blog!  Nice things! You're on the Internet!"

And with that, he ventured forth around the counter, approached the door...

...and pointed to the sign that shows that he closes at 4:01 p.m.

A bit of a 'tood I guess, but you gotta admire a guy who sticks to his convictions so adamantly and so stubbornly.

And at all costs, too.

Promise Me You'll Break This One

Well, welcome to the first "real" week of the year.  The week when we all make various promises to ourselves. 

Promises that, more often than not, we fail to keep.

And to that, I don't just say "So What..."  To that, I say:

Congratulations!

Here's why the celebration:  In the realm of business, promises--while noble and admirable--are the standard.  It's what you set out to do.  What's expected.

The Surprise, in most cases, is what happens along the way of trying to fulfill your promises.  As I've always said (jeez, I've said a lot of things for a long time...), real opportunity is the unkempt unexpected that comes along and messes up all your neat 'n' pretty plans.   Those venturing forth with blinders along an acutely defined roadmap may be missing the more exciting, more lucrative breaks brought by off-beaten paths and forks in the road.

What you start out to become ain't necessarily what you end up being.  For example, two of the digital economy's brightest shining stars began as something else--PayPal's initial incarnation was as a platform to beam money between PDAs, while an embryonic YouTube calling was for online auction buyers and sellers to share video. 

Remember when Google was a mere search engine?

Even Airborne Entertainment's original raison d'etre was light years away from where we ended up (a handful of family, friends and employees recall its birth as Eyeball Glue, a Web 1.0 content company).

So stop worrying if you're gonna live up to your resolutions--whatever they may be--personally, professionally or both. 

Instead, take on this year a little differently.  Open your arms to the unexpected, embrace the upcoming Surprises you can't even fathom at this early date in the year.

Then let's make a date to reunite in late December and look back on the achievements that far surpassed any promises you could've made back then...uh, now.

Carnivals and Monsters

Kudos to Nick Rice for organizing the year's first Marketing (r)Evolution Carnival, and for inviting me to be amongst a whole bunch of smart and outspoken Independent Internet Commentators (a slightly more elegant way to describe bloggers, n'est-ce pas?). Enter through this turnstile...

And if you're looking for some easy listening this weekend, then you may want to stay away from an interview with yours truly on the Monster.com podcast where I discuss my somewhat unique hiring methods at Airborne with Monster's Bryan Person.  Click here if you dare. (And once there, don't miss the words of wisdom of Fortune Magazine's back-pager Stanley Bing, one of my biz writing faves.)

And now, time to un-plug myself...

Is Big The New Small?

So, what happens when Intimacy Goes Big, which I intimated in the blog post of the same name?

Well, as a corollary I guess, Big Goes Intimate.

Or so I would believe after reading a piece in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal (dig the re-design big-time, by the way) about the new stadium being built for the Dallas Cowboys, an architectural behemoth of over 2.3 million square feet that will be able to seat about 100,000 when it opens in 2009.

One of the key selling points of the place is the 180-foot long video screens suspended over both sides of the playing surface, which will serve to--get this!--replicate the at-home experience.  As the article explains:

"Mr. Jones (Cowboys owner Jerry) believes that in the years ahead the Cowboys' biggest competition for fans will come from the increasingly sophisticated home-entertainment industry. 

"To counter home media, the 180-foot boards inside the stadium will...provide fans with the equivalent of watching the game on a 52-inch plasma screen from 12 feet away. 'You'll be able to see the sweat on their foreheads,' says Mr. Jones."

Ironic, ain't it?  Now if they could only change those clanky plastic stadium seats into couches...

Tossing Donald Trump (or Throwing Away Money)

I spent most of my non-snowboarding time in Vail doing two things--

• Ripping through Word-of-Mouth Marketing books
• Listening to Donald Trump rip into Rosie O’Donnell

The end result is this story, a most uncommon of mash-ups—a Surprise story about W.O.M. marketing starring The Donald himself. Well, kinda…

Here’s how it goes:

When Garner and I started Airborne Entertainment, our marketing budget was miniscule, and spent primarily at making a splash at the semi-annual CTIA Conference (Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association for all you non-moblies). At CTIAs past, to keep Airborne face-forward, we would produce some sort of take-away collateral or swag, each of which would cost us about five or six dollars.

Unfortunately, the R.O.I. on these standard items (t-shirts, glossy brochures, the usual suspects) was less than spectacular, and at the San Francisco conference in 2004, we were looking to spend less but get more bang for the buck…particularly since we were launching our mobile version of Donald Trump’s Real-Estate Tycoon game at the time.

The brainstorm was the following, which reduced our cost to a mere buck itself:

 

This was no photocopy or flimsy replica; we took 750 American singles and rubber stamped them with our message, which led interested parties to our show booth and a special website.

People flipped out.

First at Airborne.

“Aren’t we going to get arrested for that?” staff worried.

“I hope so,” I replied. “We can use the publicity!”

(Truth be told, we used a vegetable-based ink that would fade over time…hopefully before I’d get out of prison for defacing American currency.)

Then at CTIA.

On the first day, we sprinkled the money on the conference floor and had a blast watching different reactions to the free dollar bills. Some people discretely picked ‘em up and pocketed ‘em; some looked both ways for hidden cameras before stooping; some grabbed, read and laughed; some ignored them completely, adhering to the “If It’s Too Good To Be True…” theorem.

Cute, but no big bang.

That came the following afternoon, when I was speaking on a panel about mobile games. The ballroom was packed for two reasons—the subject matter was intriguing for the industry, and one of the panelists was the neo-celeb Trip Hawkins, one of the co-founders of gaming giant Electronic Arts. As a small company punching above its weight at the time, Airborne had to make a splash here. And I had five hundred friends left to help.

At one point in the panel, we were asked to talk about our most recent project. Bingo! As I started my shpiel, I surveyed the crowd. Seated in the corners of the room were four Airborne co-conspirators, each with $125 of the Trump bills in their hands; I had the other $125. The plan was as soon as I finished the sentence “…but we decided to promote this Donald’s way!” we would toss the bills into the air.

And toss we did. From my vantage point on the stage, it was a thing of beauty:

Poof!  Five little clouds of cash, each rising up like firework explosions before cascading to earth like giant snowflakes.

And then the real explosion began. Bedlam!

The gathered crowd bolted from their chairs and battled for fistfuls of dollars. Chairs flew, bodies dove, tables overturned. Decorum was shattered into dust. Hawkins was incredulous. “How do I follow that?” he said out loud.

Needless to say, the stunt was the talk of the rather staid conference. Here are two of the “reviews” from bloggers:

Over at the Moscone West Center it was down to Airborne's Andy Nulman to liven up the definitive panel on mobile entertainment. It's been a long time since I've seen a panel member throw dollar bills to the audience.
-- Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook

In one memorable moment, Andy Nulman flung about 100 singles in the air. Although each of these had an advertisement for the company's Donald Trump's Real Estate Tycoon printed on it, they were much sought after by a suddenly enlivened crowd. Several dozen mobile executives scrambling in response to Nulman's extension of largesse seemed an appropriate metaphor.
-- Gamespot

For two days, I couldn’t move without people either asking “Are you the guy who threw the money?” or, more often, asking for samples.  And to this day, five full conferences later, people still come up to me and inquire: “Are you throwing any more dollar bills this time?”

Of course not.

Been there, done that.  That's what you're expecting.

I’ve gotta find new ways to Surprise you!

Awe Shucking

This from David Mamet, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of ear-ringers like Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow, but taken from his most recent book, the ultra-provocative "The Wicked Son":

"Each human being has a certain amount of awe that must be discharged."

Words of wisdom from a man whose work over the past three-and-a-half decades discharged more than its fair share of awe. And shock, for that matter.  David continues to do so with his uniquely illustrated blog, found here.  Open your mind and enjoy.

May your 2007 be filled with many positive reasons to discharge awe!