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

Tide On The Menu

Had lunch with Airborne's COO Andrew "The Z" Zeidel yesterday, and on the last bite of his salad, he dropped a brown glob of balsamic vinegar dressing on his crisp, blue shirt.

His immediate reaction was to jump for the napkin and water, but--knowing his extreme anal-retentive preparedness--I asked if he happened to have a Tide toGo pen on him.   

He had never heard of one, but after I explained how Tide toGo saved my life after I dripped rusty red tortilla soup on a never-before-worn Egyptian cotton shirt at the start of a day of crucial meetings in L.A.last month, he was intrigued.

So, hoping for an extreme Pow! moment, I asked Melanie, our waitress at The Shed, if the restaurant happened to have one on hand. 

Unfortunately for The Z, it was not meant to be.  Dry cleaners, here we come.

So here's the point of this ramble:

Tide toGo pens
should be
STANDARD EQUIPMENT
in ALL restaurants!

Just think about it for a second--where do most food-related spills occur?   Where there's food, of course.  And other than the kitchen, I can't think of a place with more food than restaurants (okay, there's farms and supermarkets, but you get my point).

Consider the incredible goodwill generated from a couple of rubs of Tide's magic wand at your table as you fret over the wine stain, the grease stain, or the mustard stain--increased tips for the wait staff and great word-of-mouth buzz (are you listening Andy Sernovitz?) for the restaurant.  Why, you may even have a story for the Tide toGo website!

So restaurant owners, add a few of these thingamajigs to your next supply order.

Or better still, perhaps A.G. Lafley of Tide's parent co. Procter and Gamble could expand his market and send restaurant owners a few hundred thousand samples.

Another valuable public service from Surprise Central--staining cherished clothes since 1959.

First Klaasen

So last night, I'm hosting a fundraiser for YES (Youth Employment Services; catchy acronym, ain't it?) and the headliner is a Montreal-based South African songstress named Lorraine Klaasen (that's her at left). The daughter of legendary singer Tandie Klaasen, Lorraine's paths and mine have crossed for years, but hadn't seen her perform in over a decade.

Big-time Pow! moment

Omigod, she was sensational! While her voice painted new soundscapes with some jazz and pop classics, it was a thing of marvel when singing in Swahili and Zulu (uh, I think that's what it was, as my fluency in those two tongues is kinda rusty these days).  Tighter-than-tight band.  Rhythmic dancers, too.  And her effervescent personality was irresistible.  World-class magic.

So hopefully, this blog post will serve two purposes:

1) To introduce you FOPS to Lorraine.  She is a world-class talent who deserves to be heard and seen--and booked--by a much wider audience. You won't be disappointed.  Check her out at www.lorraineklaasen.com.

2) To realize that sometimes, the greatest Surprises come not from the brand new, but from the brand you THOUGHT you knew.  Things and people change.  Keep your minds open and their slates clean.

Furniture of Dreams...Very WEIRD Dreams

The problem with furniture is that so much of it is the usual, the standard...and ultimately, the boring. 

My wife and I recently re-did our bedroom, and while we found the hippest of beds (an elevated canopy model handmade entirely of wood and twigs by the Pennsylvania Amish.  Seriously.), it was quite the Quixotic quest to find night-tables and other "storage pieces" of equivalent Pow! factor.

Should've found Judson Beaumont earlier, I guess.  This guy creates the type of stuff I once only dreamed of...AFTER reading a Dr. Seuss book, taking in the collective works of Salvador Dali and eating some very special mushrooms.

Judson's from Vancouver, and you know there's something special in the air out there.  If you can't find room in your home or your head for his pieces, he has put together a book of 'em, one that's as enlightening and eye-opening as The Secret...and way more entertaining

There's much more where this came from.  Check out straightlinedesigns.com for more twisted inspiration.

The "In" Crowd

An aging, but still rampant, retailing concept sees established brands opening up boutiques in popular department stores.  Taken to the next level, an established ad agency has just opened up in a popular boutique.  This from Marketing Magazine:

Bleu Blanc Rouge has opened a new agency in a downtown Montreal store, in an attempt to get the opinions of trendy youth straight from the horse’s mouth.

BW, which stands for Black and White, has its home on the retail floor of Off the Hook, a second-storey Ste. Catherine Street retailer that describes itself as an urban culture store and gallery selling specialized streetwear.

“We wanted to be in a location where the trendsetters are,” says Hubert Sacy, senior partner of Bleu Blanc Rouge. While it’s possible to understand youth from within an agency, Sacy notes “it’s much more easy to do it on the spot."

While this "eliminating the middleman" concept kinda reminds me of the old joke about the guy drinking beer at a urinal, it does make perfect sense.  Both my sons shop--and hang--at Off The Hook all the time, and nowadays, I don't even have to ask "Where'd you get that?" when I see them wearing something new and hip.  I call them "the world's smallest focus group," but even I have to wait until they get home to learn. 

Who knows, if this "embedded market research" catches on, agency sub-lets may become a new and important source of revenue for trendy restaurants, gyms, schoolyards, even your own basement...anywhere where people with opinions gather.  Like Lucy Van Pelt's Psychiatry Booth, ad agencies can now be pre-fab, portable and nomadic.

Don't laugh. 

It's why wildman Louis Prima sang "Closer to the bone/Sweeter is the meat." 

It's why Willie Sutton replied "'Cuz that's where the money is!" when asked why he robs banks. 

And it's why I tell the creative types at Airborne Entertainment to "Get off the floor and out the door" when coming up with new content and application ideas for mobile phones (they ain't gonna come from sessions in a boardroom, no matter what color our walls are painted).

Wanna REALLY know your market?  Don't be afraid to get into bed with it. 

Or at least share a lease with it.

 

Coming Up Clean

Off to New York for the weekend, so I'll leave you in the hands of a great FOP (that's "Friend of Pow!" for all you non-FOPs) Jean-Francois Garneau, who sends along this culture clash of cleanliness:

Hi Andy,
 
Ever since I read your "Words that don't travel" post on your blog, I have been quietly chuckling every time I thought of "Slutspurt". It stayed with me. I used the word in a few presentations since then. It breaks the ice nicely ! Even writing this, it makes me smile.

That's why when I saw this box of detergent powder (see left) I couldn't resist buying it ! This is definitely a brand that doesn't travel!

The detergent is available right here in Montreal at Marché Akhavan on Sherbrooke West.

Please note also the side of the box, which may not be readable on my photo, states :

"Barf will get your clothes amazingly clean.

To obtain best results of Barf, particularly on very dirty clothes, proceed as follows : soak the clothes in a solution of Barf for a few hours or preferably overnight and then wash as usual.

Use Barf for washing woolen polyester, cottons and fine fabrics. Barf is safe for all washable fabrics."

Can't make this stuff up.

Cheers,

J-F Garneau

p.s. Big fan of the blog.

So lemme see...toss in the whites and they come out brownish with chunks?  Uh, I'll stick with Tide and Bounce, thank you.

May be livebogging via the Berry over the weekend.  If not, speak to y'all Tuesday or so.

 

Brain Tidal Waves

Anand V. Chhatpar is a very bright guy. 

Taking James Surowiecki's concept of "the wisdom of crowds" one step further by refining his crowd to be North America's most creative college students, Anand has formed a company called BrainReactions, which brainstorms new ideas for Fortune 1000 companies.

He just launched a quarterly emagazine--which looks suspiciously like a blog, but I digress--entitled BrainWaves, described as "about coming up with good, actionable ideas, along with a bit of fun about ideation."  Took a quick look before heading out to a dinner last night and was quite impressed; a pretty decent and uplifting read.

Given his impressive past and his mega-melding of the minds, you know that Anand and co. ain't gonna be satisfied with the same old same old, so...

Go ahead Anand--Pow! us.

Words That Work

Like most of you, I'm sure, I hate when things screw up...particularly when Internet things screw up.

But even the worst of hassles are mitigated and smoothed when handled the way Technorati deals with a service blip:

For those of you with failing eyesight, the text reads:

D'oh! The Technorati Monster escaped again.
We're scouring the blogosphere attempting to find it. 
Back in a flash.

Incidentally, the message in the nav bar read: Technorati is borked right now.  Hysterical.  And soothing.  And utterly Surprising. 

Compare this to the much-despised Blue Screen of Death and you realize the power of the right words, the necessity to speak to people as human beings in a language that connects. 

Technorati have been doing this right since their inception, and while some may quibble with their rating formula, you can't beat the way they communicate.

I had an issue with the Technofolks a few months back, and not only did they respond in record time, but actually fixed the problem (I know those two SHOULD BE interconnected, but many times are mutually exclusive).

Things screw up.  That's a way of life.  How we deal with the screw ups is the opportunity to Surprise.  Both positively and negatively.   

Your choice.

(For more on this, see what Mark Goren has to say about the subject at his Transmission Marketing blog.)

Taxing Cabs

Wanna talk Surprise, folks?  Here's the Pow! moment of the month, perhaps the year: 

I am Surprised, shocked,
FLABBERGASTED
that more people
aren't KILLED in taxis.

I take cabs often. To and from airports. And other than L.A. where I rent a car to get around, cabs are my intra-city mode of travel while on the road.

Last week, to and from and within Toronto, my cab experiences solidified the calloused stereotypes that have formed within my ever-the-more-enraged psyche.

In less than 48 hours, I experienced...no, I ENDURED consistent tailgating, rapid crossing of double-white lines as if they were imaginary, all while being bathed in the ever-present glow of the "Repair Engine Now!" light. (Translation guys: "Repair Your Engine. Now!")

All this mayhem was made even more mayhemic thanks to the constant downpour of rain that accompanied each trip. Somehow, precipitation seems to bring out superpowers in cab drivers. Unlike most drivers who use such primitive tools as windshield wipers to see, like Superman, cabbies' X-Ray Vision can cut right through the opaque onslaught of water that coats their windows like Vaseline.  And when they actually activate the wipers, at my steadfast insistence, they do so on intermittent mode, and of course, on the longest delay between blade sweeps.

But the effect of mere rain alone paled when coupled with the fog that whitewashed windshields from the inside out. And when I asked "Don't you have a defogger?" all I got back, incredulously, was the single word answer "Yes."  (Ambiguity is indeed the Devil's volleyball; next time, I will rephrase my question as a sentence and demand it turned on.)

Perhaps cabbies are bred with better eyesight and reflexes than mere mortals. But despite my admiration for these impressive superhuman gifts, I truly believe that these guys should be closely observed by anonymous Road Marshalls, "secret shoppers" if you will, who will report any or all misdeeds to the Cab Company owners, the media, the government, and to Satan...who obviously made a lucrative collective bargain with these lunatics to keep them alive. 

If I make a call to Visa or Dell, it's monitored for security and customer service reasons. Well-intentioned, but overkill in most cases.  I say monitor less credit cards or computers and more menaces to society!  Bring the boys and girls home from Bangalore and set them loose in the back seats on the mean streets of Canada! 

If there is any consolation, it's that cabs are marked by an illuminated sign atop their roofs. Like a modern-day Scarlett Letter, these dome lights signal "Here Drives An Idiot!," allowing the more sane on the road to keep their distance or stay home.   The one piece of advice I gave my sons during Driver's Ed. was:

"There are three certainties in life:

Death, Taxes..and that the taxi driver
next to you on the road will do something stupid.

It's a given, not a maybe.

Know this, stay away from 'em and stay safe."

If pigeons are "rats with wings," then cab drivers are "pigeons with cars." 

From here on in, I wear a suit of clear plastic spikes.   

 

Theory 10--Balls vs. Brains

So, over the past few weeks, I've spoken at--and sat through--a few industry conferences, and spent the majority of travel time getting to-and-from 'em reading my usual assortment of biz books, marketing magazines and other things I can't think of an alliteration for. 

And during a panel session of some very high-powered execs, I had a Pow! epiphany.  Put ever-so-simply, it is the answer to the eternal battle of business:

BALLS
BEAT
BRAINS

Smart people, while incredibly valuable, won't change the world.  They will rule it and run it, but essentially, they will do so for the guy or girl with enough guts to do something they never would in a cajillion years. 

It seems to be standard operating procedure in business that eventually, a successful company grows out of the control of the entrepreneur who started it, and the call goes out for "Professional Management!" to save the day.  Not that this is bad, but without the (now) out-of-their-league visionary who started it, there would be no business to professionally manage.

Note that there are no "Professional Entrepreneurs."  Unlike management, it is not a "skill" that can be "learned"; it is a "calling" that must be heeded.  Again and again and again. 

All this to say that as I sat in a room, listening to three incredibly smart captains of industry, I was impressed with their knowledge but depressed with their lack of vision, ideas or leadership.  They were great at making excuses for what wasn't working, but offered no solutions for the future.

Contrast that to a couple of relatively unkempt, wide-eyed individuals who laid out blueprints for tomorrow a little earlier in the day.  Once they were done, you had to beg people to come back into the ballroom for the next panel because the line-up to sign up for the future had begun spontaneously and instantaneously.

Think about this the next time someone inspires  you.  Is it the smartest person in the room?  Or the most courageous? 

Einstein said that "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

And as smart as he was, he had even bigger balls.

 

Freebooks!

Today's a holiday in Canada and what better way to celebrate it than to give you guys a bunch of free books.  Yup, we're opening the vaults here at Surprise Central, and don't worry, these are all of the downloadable type, so no waits, no shipping charges and no taxes.  So, as the legendary Bob Barker useta say, "Whatta we have for them, Johnny?"

Well, first up is my Australian friend Adam Lawrence of Work.Play.Experience blog fame. An "experience designer" (note to self: find a way to use that superb title somewhere somehow),  Adam has written an ebook called 12 Showbusiness Tools for Your Business, which teaches how to bring some Hollywood (or the Aussie equivalent) flash to the exec suites.  You can get it by clicking here.

Next is Dan Ward, of Project Blue Lynx.  Dan is working on a book (and ain't we all?) called The Simplicity Cycle, and as a sneak preview, he sent me his Change This manifesto of the same name.  he asked me for my cents, so let's just say that I thought it more than good enough to pass along to y'all.  Enjoy it by clicking here.

And last, and certainly not least, is one I actually put my two cents into.  It's yet another do-good/feel-good project from Drew McLellan of Drew's Marketing Minute (he and Gavin Heaton are also about to release The Age Of Conversation, so stay tuned for more details on that collaborative effort).  Drew rounded up about a whack of us blogger types, and asked us for our advice for the planet's 2007 Graduating Class as they embark on "their first real job hunt."  The result is a free ebook kinda called A Fighting Chance.  Click once and get it here. 

Along with my diatribe, you'll read sage wisdom from the likes of:

Aaron Potts
Andy Brudtkuhl
Andy Wibbels
Ann Handley
Ann Michael
Anne Simons
Becky Carroll
Bob Glaza
C.B. Whittemore
Carolyn Manning
Chris Cree
Christine Brown
CK
Darren Barefoot
David Reich
Delaney Kirk
Derek Tutschulte
Designer Mike
Doug Karr
Doug Mitchell
Drew McLellan
Joan Schramm
Kevin Hillstrom
Lewis Green
Liz Strauss
Mario Sundar
Mark Goren
Mark True
Mary Schmidt
Nick Rice
Patrick Schaber
Paul McEnany
Phil Gerbyshak
Roberta Rosenberg
Roger von Oech
Rosa Say
Seth Godin
Sharon Sarmiento
Stephanie Weaver
Steve Miller
Steve Sisler
Terry Starbucker
Toby Bloomberg
Tony D. Clark
Valeria Maltoni

So there--a little link love and a lot of respect.  Enjoy 'em all!

And If Those Ain't Enough...

...here's one more thing for your reading pleasure (me hopes!)

It's an interview I did with Wellington Financial's Mark McQueen.  In it, he calls me a lot of strange things, like "interesting" and "vibrant."  He may have to get out more.

Well, if anything, I was open.  All the Q&As can be found clicking right here. 

Oh, by the way, you're mentioned in it.  All of you.  Seriously!

Enjoy.

MKTG 1.0

Holy Jeez!  Where was Thomson Higher Education when I was going to school?

In an inspired coup, these guys are planning to use a little marketing savvy to teach the discipline itself by trimming down the usual cornerstone-sized (and weighted), snooze-inciting textbooks into a 352-page, 8 x 10 softcover called MKTG. 

More like a magazine than the dull, backbreaking doorstoppers I had to lug around throughout college and university, MKTG's publishers describe it as a "brief paperback that includes a suite of learning aids to accommodate the busy and diverse lifestyles of today’s learners, like flash cards and downloads for audio, video and cell phones."  Thomson's Neil Marquardt sums it up succinctly by saying: "The idea was to re-evaluate where we were as a content provider, not just a textbook publisher."

The company backs it up with websites for those lucky enough to teach, and learn, from it.  You can see them all, as well as an impressive flash demo, by clicking here.

The book is ready for this year's summer courses.  And considering how poorly my goaltending has been these days, perhaps my Monday nights in July and August would be better spent with one of the above at McGill instead of on the ice in DDO.

Conference Lesson

I am at the Mobile Forum conference in Toronto, and tried to jot down a note with one of the promotional pens conf sponsor TXT.ca is giving away.

First one didn't work.
Second one didn't work.
Third one didn't work.

So then it became sport.

It took me eight (8!!!) tries to get one to write.

The lesson is, if you're gonna give away magnets, make sure they stick. If you're gonna give away keychains, make sure they open and close. And if you're gonna give away pens, for crissakes, make sure they write!

Call your supplier and get your money back, TXT.ca folks.

And make sure they use another pen to sign the refund cheque.

Mobile Inspiration. From HP?

As you read this today, I'm busy representing Airborne Entertainment at Playback's Annual Mobile Forum Conference in Toronto, trying to wake up the post-lunch crowd with a keynote about what's wrong with the burgeoning mobile industry and how to fix it.

I could go into great detail (and if it goes well, perhaps I will), but one of the three "starts-with-I" fixes (along with Integration and Integrity) I talk about is Inspiration; in other words, mobile media folks have to come up with content more inspired than the ringtones, wallpaper and handful of games that have been driving the industry so far.

One of the paradigm-expanding, eye-popping examples I'm using comes from a Surprising source, namely HP.  Yeah, you know them for printers and peripherals, but the company's Mscapers mobile project shows that, like Apple, these guys are looking to change the digital landscape by doing more than just chugging out hardware.

Although only available for GPS-enabled Windows Mobile Devices at the moment, the project's promise is to "expand the world around us with a simple tool that builds compelling interactive experiences that you control as you move from place to place." 

A little too tech gobbledygook for my liking (particularly since the games and apps are simple to the point of being pedantic), but the fact that these guys are getting serious about doing some mobile dreaming can only augur well for the advancement of my biz.  Check out the demo at www.mscapers.com. 

Meanwhile, right now in Toronto, they're either applauding or throwing half-eaten bread rolls.

Spelling It Out

I remember when I got my showbiz start years ago touring Howie Mandel, I got to meet one of the members of the Busch family (we were opening the tour in St. Louis, and Budweiser was our sponsor).  One of the things he said candidly of his iconic magna-brand stuck with me to this day:

"It may not be the best beer. But we sure do sell the most of it."

Which brings me to the Burton company.  The same may be said about their snowboards.  Hard-core riders may swear by more independent brands, but nobody sells more boards or gear than Jake Burton's Vermont-based, industry pioneer. 

Reason why?  The company's design and branding never fail to inspire and Surprise.  Even when they are toned down, they are audacious.

Case in point is the Burton shirt my son Aidan was wearing over the weekend (that's it above).  Nice...but kinda traditional and standard.

Until you look at the buttons, that is.

Well done, Burton-ites!

Number One

Chris Jordan is my new art hero.

A socially-conscious photographer based in Seattle who has captured the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina like no one other, Chris is wowing the art world with his giant-sized prints he calls "Running The Numbers, An American Self-Portrait."  His site generated quite the buzz around the Airborne offices this week.

While most of these super-Surprising pictures are a gorgeous but graphic depiction of some less-than-ideal slice of American life (for example, a five-by-ten-foot shot of 2.5 million plastic bottles, the number used in the U.S. every hour, or the Damien Hirst-like photo of 213,000 Vicodin pills, equal to the number of emergency room visits yearly in the US related to misuse or abuse of prescription pain killers), others use a photomosaic-esque process to make a even louder statement (like a black-and-white image of a pristine mountain and lake scene,made up of 24,000 logos from the GMC Yukon Denali, equal to six weeks of sales of that model SUV in 2004).

My favorite, however, is made up of soda pop cans; them there at right.  That's the close-up detail of Cans Seurat, which replicates Georges Seurat's iconic Un dimanche après-midi à l'Ile de la Grande Jatte, but depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the U.S. every thirty seconds.  Below you find a slightly bigger image.  For the whole shibang, check out www.chrisjordan.com and click on the Running The Numbers link.

Or deplete your bank account to the tune of $25,000-$35,000 or so...and hang it on your wall.

(Note:  Can't do that, but will do the next best thing in New York at the end of the month when I get to see Chris's work at the Von Lintel Gallery.)

Tag! Mitch Is It!

The ubiquitous Mitch Joel writes an eloquent response to my human tagging post of last week in his Twist Image blog.  In it, he makes the case for being remembered by being memorable, saying:

"Social media is heating up the online channel and Marketers can’t forget that creating a lasting impression in face-to-face situations (think about Norm from the old sitcom Cheers) is becoming more challenging (as Andy so illustratively demonstrates).

I don’t think it can be facilitated by simply “tagging” people in real life. I think the real opportunities lie in individuals developing their personal brands so the people they’re meeting remember them."

Now, as the King of Personal Branding (now there's a sobriquet for the quote sheet, my friend), Mitch travels the country teaching common folk how to develop theirs.  And as anyone who has ever seen him can attest (and lemme tell you, these days, from The Power Within to keynoting at the Canadian Marketing Association's National Convention, he is EVERYWHERE evangelizing this message), he makes a strong and entertaining case for it.

But here's the one problem I see, Mitch:

Some people's Personal Brands are boring

In other words, it just may be that one's personal brand is a dull one.  It may be unique, but not exciting.  Despite the shade, a grey accountant or middle management suit is still grey. Try as they may, some folks just add to the background instead of cutting through it.

And if so, these people need one of two things:

One of my "tags"...

Or one of your Personal Branding Workbook CDs.

Or both!

Irrational But Right

This is dopey and more of a confession than the usual astute commentary you are used to getting here, but the one Surprise I truly hate is one having to do with weather.

When I travel (and doin' what I do at Airborne, that is quite often), I obsessively check not one, but three weather sites and take a weighted triangular average to decide what clothes to bring along with me.

When I pack correctly, I am happy.  When I don't, I am not. 

As insane as it sounds, I would rather be prepared for rain and face rain than have sun and bring a raincoat along for nothing.

I tell you this only because yesterday it called for rain here, and I debated whether or not I should drive my summer convertible to the office.   

I decided against it, and waited all day for the showers to come.

When they didn't, I was bummed, despite how warm and pleasant it was outside.  A "Vette Day" wasted. (Okay, in full disclosure, it did drizzle, for about 40 seconds, at about 9:00 p.m., but not even enough to make me raise my white soft-top...HAD I been driving the convertible in the first place!)

I tell you all this because I don't think I am unique. 
I think there are plenty of us out there who sometimes place being "Right" in a situation above the best outcome of the situation itself. 

This sometimes leads to wars, loss of lives, loss of jobs, bankruptcies, divorces...all sorts of fun stuff.

Luckily, I know how to stop at raincoats and rag-tops.

Uh, I hope... ;)

Hospitality Redefined

One of the most overused--and I mean to the point of horrifying cliché, roll your eyes, overused--terms in marketing these days is:

Community

It seems that "community" is the panacea, the cure for all that ails your sales, your recognition factor, your success.  The magic formula: devise some premise for a "community," let 'em talk among themselves and find a way to sell 'em something on the sly.

Problem is that most of these "communities" are as natural as Pam Anderson's boobs.  And equally as relevant to the product/service to which they are tied.

Well, here's one that connects.  Big time. 

Check out www.behospitable.com, Hilton Hotels' program collecting and connecting stories about the kindness of strangers.   Uber-positive message.  Warm.  Interesting.  International in scope, but "next door" in spirit.  And a solid dovetail to the corporation that's sponsoring it.

No dopey prizes.  No silly stunts. Just some great stories (many of them pushing the Pow! meter into the red zone) about people doing good and raising the "be hospitable Index." 

The end result--solid linkage, on multiple fronts, to a company renowned for its "hospitality."  (Not to mention way more relevant than Sheraton's well-meaning but off-base Bookends program.)

It's Not TV. It's T

Quite the kerfuffle (isn't that a great word?) last week when Sony announced the abbreviationating (my word, folks!) of some of their 30 and 60 minute back catalog into 5-minute "Minisodes" as they will be called. (Read the New York Times story for more details.)

Some call this "bastardization." Others have called it "sacrilege" and "the degradation of an art form."

I call it "smart business." And "the search for a new audience with withered attention span." And "making bullion out of gold dust."

Make no mistake about it folks, this is not the desecration of the glorious medium of television.  It ain't Playhouse 90 or the collected works of Rod Serling we're talking about; it's old episodes of fluff like Charlie's Angels and T.J. Hooker, which one can argue were five minute shows stretchted to 60 in their original incarnation.

Years ago, in a presentation I had to make representing Airborne at a wireless conference, I made a prediction about mobile video, saying that "Scenes will be more important than stories."  To be immodest but blunt, I was right on.

As a guy who's always rallied against "amortizing" media assets for the computer and mobile screen, I gotta admit that this shrewd optimization plan is the first one that works.  'Cuz this has about as much to do with the shows as the t-shirts, lunchboxes and action figures that are licensed from them. These are derived products made to make money; five-minutes of new-medium filler that happens to have TV stars in it.

Screw art. This is a dance to the bank.

In a world where snacks are sold as calorie counts (check out the myriad 100-Calorie packs of chips, cookies and other junk food), where pop songs are being sliced-and-diced to fit more of 'em into a radio hour, and where even venerable Hasbro has scaled back its rules of engagement to come with 20-minute "Express" versions of games like Monopoly, Scrabble and Sorry,  it was only a matter of time before the media companies separate the wheat from the chaff and sell their content not on its artistic merits, but as a way to kill a small increment of time.

The medium is indeed the message.

Will watch.

Put Another Way...

Okay, so in the spirit of Sony's decision to filet some of their 30 and 60 minute TV episodes into 5-minute Minisodes for mobile and web consumption, I have decided to edit and summarize the above blog post into a bite-sized, quicker-to-read, easier-to-digest format.  Enjoy.

It's.

Sony is making minisodes; hamburger TV from their meat locker.

It's ain't bad. It's good. Commercially and even artistically.

'Cuz the stuff wasn't that great in the first place.

This ain't TV, it's t-shirts or lunchboxes that move.  Product in its purest form.

Scenes seem to trump stories these days. Jeez, I was onto this early. 

Electronic snacking in a new format.

Dig in.

Tag. You're Who?

Last week, I spent two nights at fundraisers, and went to my niece's play, a shiva house and an art gallery vernissage.  I ate four meals in jam-packed, popular restaurants.  Over the weekend, I attended two large parties. 

Tons of people, faces and names.

Most of whom, most of which...I didn't remember.

Now this is not an "age" thing.  It's just that with a 30-plus-year career, dozens of concentric, intersecting social and professional circles, locally, nationally and internationally, one's internal database tends to blur.  At least mine does.

Sometimes, people need to be in context for me to remember them.  The guy I see nude in the hockey dressing room looks somewhat different fully dressed with his wife and kids at a restaurant (which is why I looked at you strangely at the Agora on Friday...sorry!).

I've read all the Harry Lorrayne et al "Improve Your Memory" books.  I learned all the tricks.  Now I see people, remember that their name rhymes with knob-gobble...but don't remember their name.

My conclusion after all this?  That the next killer app is a way to "tag" people live-and-in-person the way we do photos on flickr, websites on del.icio.us, videos on YouTube and...well, you get the idea.  This way, the next time some somewhat-familiar face comes up to me at a party, I can say:

"Oh, you're Anat Benedict!  We went to college together...Vanier, right?  I remember hanging out in the Green Room?   And didn't I once ask you out and you said 'No'?"

Instead of saying:

"Sorry, I am trying so hard but I really don't recognize you.  Please let's relive the past 40 years of our lives so that I can make some sort of connection and at least end this conversation in a more graceful manner than which I started it."

Look folks, I'm no tech wizard.  I don't know how to do this unobtrusively so that your characteristics and our common history pops up on my cellphone, on my Blackberry or in the ether whenever you get within Bluetooth range of me.  But someone smart out there oughta be able to figure this out and make it commercially viable.

This could be bigger than email.

And the generator of the biggest goddamn Pow! Surprise Shock of 'em all:

Me Remembering You

The King Of Truth

One of the ancillary benefits of doing The Power Within speeches in Ottawa and Vancouver back in March was meeting Gary King, who works with Tony Robbins. 

An acclaimed speaker in his own right, Gary's motivational take is a unique one. A la Jim Carrey in "Liar Liar" a near-death experience has left him incapable of telling a lie (hmmm...I guess that means that he really DID like my shirt), so Gary has made it his calling to spread the word on The Power Of Truth.

One of the great evenings I spent this year was in the company of Gary and W Mitchell (another unique speaker, believe me), where he told us of his 24-Hour Truth Challenge; "Your life, health and peace of mind will never be the same," he promised.

"But I'm in the wireless business," I protested.  "I don't know if I could do 24 minutes of truth!"

Well, I tried it (albeit over a weekend).  And--truth be told--it was actually kinda fun.  Granted, there's a fine line between saying everything you're thinking and telling the truth, but the result was liberating.

...AND educational as per generating Surprise.  This was an additional, unexpected benefit.

In marketing, consumers have become incredibly skeptical after years of dealing with untruths in all shapes and sizes. Their levels of trust have been worn down and their callouses of cynicism have hardened to carbon.  They are expecting the lie, and are hunkering down to deal with it. Just about every time.

Just think of the supreme  Pow! you can generate just by telling the simple truth.   Arguments are suddenly deflated, negativity is flushed away, and the path to dealing with the problem or the situation has been exponentially widened.  Imagine how much better your headspace would be, and how you'd be able to make alternative plans, if the airline explained why your flight was delayed...if the taxi driver admitted he was lost...if the waiter confessed he forgot to put in your order...if the blogger said he couldn't think of a fourth example to round out this paragraph.

A lie is something you deal with alone.  As Gary says, "There is no such thing as an inconsequential lie."  Each one starts a domino effect that ripples wide and long.

The truth is something you deal with with others. 

And in the relationship called marketing, you NEED others to deal with.

Gary King...you are indeed one.

 

Sharing The Love

The Pow! goes upscale today, folks.  Got this in the Surprise Central inbox first thing this morning:

I saw your post on The Black Swan.

You might enjoy this interview I did with Taleb:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/04/taleb_on_black.html

Feel free to share it with your readers.

Russ

Russell Roberts
Professor of Economics
J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Distinguished Scholar
at the Mercatus Center
Department of Economics 
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA. 22030

As my conversations with distinguished Economics Professors are few and far between, I am honored to share his conversation with Nassim Nicholas Taleb with you.

Thanks Professor Roberts.  And now, enjoy, listen and learn...

My Swan Song

I was enamored with Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Fooled By Randomness, so needless to say, I was one of those Amazon.com pre-order geeks when I heard about his new one, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

And while I'm still plowing through the magnum opus, preliminary skims have resulted in yelps of joyful vindication throughout Surprise Central.

Yup, a lot of what Taleb says provides credence to the ramblings of this blog, but holy jumpin' jeez, the way he says it truly humbles this blog's author.  So without further ado, here are a couple of pertinent excerpts.

On Surprise in general:

"It is easy to see that life is the cumulative effect of a handful of significant shocks. This extends to all businesses. Think about the “secret recipe” to making a killing in the restaurant business. If it were known and obvious, then someone next door would have already come up with the idea and it would have become generic.

"The next killing in the restaurant industry needs to be an idea that is not easily conceived of by the current population of restaurateurs. It has to be at some distance from expectations. The more unexpected the success of such a venture, the smaller the number of competitors, and the more successful the entrepreneur who implements the idea."

On the importance of generating it:

"Living on our planet, today, requires a lot more imagination than we are made to have. We lack imagination and repress it in others. Our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable (improbable according our current knowledge)—and all the while we spend our time engaged in small talk, focusing on the known, and the repeated.

"This implies the need to use the extreme event as a starting point and not treat it as an exception to be pushed under the rug."

Couldn't have said it better myself...although I wish I could come close.  Can't wait to get through the rest of this.

 

The Fourth Dimension

The ultimate in Surprise marketing defies quantum physics (and pulls a Rod Serling )by bursting into a twilight zone I call "The Fourth Dimension," where people actually interact with your message. You know your ads are profoundly infiltrating consumer pores when people are buying products based on them (a la Staples' "Easy Button" and the Suburban Auto Group's Trunk Monkey) or, just as good, taking the time to take pictures of, and pose next to, them. 

Great example of the latter is this from Cingular in New York's Times Square, the mecca of Pow! advertising for over a century.  Check out the people with cameras.  They sure ain't shooting the statue of George M. Cohan... (Big shout out to Airborne colleague Parisa Foster for sending this one along.)

Magnificent impact and a tourist attraction.  What's more, it gets the message across in an ultra-effective and most startling manner.  (Hope that in its new incarnation as AT&T (again!), the Cingular folks can continue to draw eyeballs...and eardrums.)

Great lesson, as well, in How To create Surprise.  In the proverbial nutshell...simply expand beyond the proverbial nutshell.  You've seen this work when newspaper ads explode outside their columns into the surrounding text, when magazine ads pop up or are appended with a tangible extra (a la the free full-episode DVD that AMC gave away to promote the show HU$TLE in this week's Brandweek).  People expect a billboard to be some sort of rectangle; by expanding its shape and physicality to street level, the Cingular billboard above increases its effectiveness exponentially.

Doesn't just work with ads though.  Think of the boundaries people tend to put on your personality or capacity...then step outside them and do the type of thing that will shock their systems, and keep 'em talking for years.

The Fourth Dimension is where one goes to make a difference.  Enjoy the trip!

Theory 9--Theory Why

People ask "Why?" all the time.

Sometimes--perhaps not often enough--there is no "Why."

"Just 'cuz" may be the only reason.

"Because" doesn't always have to be followed with explanation.

Sometimes "Because" is strong enough to stand on its own.

In generating Surprise,

BECAUSE IS THE NEW WHY

Why do I say that?

Because.