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

What I Learned This Week: What Familiarity Breeds

As I write this post, I am in the homestretch of the arduous process of downloading my entire 2000-plus CD collection onto iTunes.  I'm on the "W"s (currently working on the complete Tom Waits catalog) and the end is nigh.

The so-called (hey, he was in the "S's) reason for this ongoing task was to ostensibly re-discover some of the rarely-listened-to music that's been sitting dormant on shelves in my old place and in drawers at my new place. 

But as I load and unload disc after disc, it's the familiar stuff that swings the baton of attraction.  For every Treble Charger "Maybe It's Me"  trying to worm its way into my Sonomax custom Soundcage earbuds, there's a Thin Lizzy "Jailbreak" standing in its way.

So, cut to a conversation about I had over dinner on Wednesday with my wife Lynn and friends Thane Calder (head of the Cloudraker ad agency), Caroline Losson (VP Marketing at dairy giant Natrel) and Dan Wise (entrepreneur and musician extraordinaire).

We were discussing the differences between comedy and music as live performance; the prevailing thought being that when it comes to former, people demand new material, as opposed to the latter, where "play again what I know" is the predominant command.  Or, as my wife put so succinctly and profoundly, twisting an age-old adage:

"When it comes to music, familiarity breeds contentment"

Just think about it.  At a live concert, there's no greater impetus for a trip to the bathroom than the phrase "Now, we'd like to do a couple of tunes from our new album."  The cynical amongst us may even believe that playing new tracks at a concert is a conspiracy designed to drive beer and t-shirt sales.  But I digress...

A few months ago in a post about standing in the rain at a Green Day concert, I compared and contrasted music and comedy, coming to the basic conclusion that music plays in the heart and comedy in the head. Take this a step further and you realize that:

Familiarity is a plus to things that work in the heart...

a minus to things that work in the head

Think about it at a business level. The "heady" tech business demands innovation and novelty.  If each new Apple product announcement doesn't fully and completely tear peoples' heads open with a bang, it's deemed to be a disappointment.  And it ain't just in tech. If the makers of cars, golf clubs, sneakers--I can keep going--don't change their look-and-feel every new product season...they're toast.

On the other hand, look at business leaders. Very heart.  Unless they're scandal-ridden rogues, people like their leaders long-term.  Steve Jobs coughs and Wall Street trembles. 

It goes deeper, and gets paradoxical.  Continuing the Apple analogy, people love the company ("Stay the course!  Steve is eternal!") but are vicious with its offspring ("What?  No new iPhone before September?  That's an outrage!").

So where the hell am I going with this?  This is what all this musical/comedy, head/heart rambling taught me this week:

You can keep giving people everything that they want but if you don't change things up, you'll never grow.  A band that keeps playing the same tunes over and over again is merely a cover band, even if they're playing their own music.

On the other hand, you can't ignore the emotional connection that comes with the familiar. 

But there's a fine line where familiarity's contentment morphs into contempt.  What to do?  My suggestion--a solid hug combined with a firm shake. 

Now to apply it as Just For Laughs makes its major programming and thematic announcements on May 10.

And with that, the Warren Zevon disc pops out of the iMac, and ZZ Top makes its way in... 

Where's that Treble Charger?

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(P.S. Found the great image atop this post here.)

What I Learned This Week: Kill Your Clients, Nurture Your Partners

Amongst 5,348 other tasks, one of the jobs I have as President of Just For Laughs is being trotted out to meet the people we do business with.  Be they sponsors, different levels of government or our media associates, they all want to meet "the new guy" (and hope he sticks around longer than "the old guy").

So last week, I met with some executives from the TVA network, who broadcast a whopping minimum of 16 hours of Juste Pour Rire content, and have been doing so for a number of years. After hearing my pitch about change, new direction, etc., France Lauziere, the network's VP Programming spoke up.

"This is all wonderful," she said softly.  "But the most important change you can make is ensure that we're treated like a partner, not a client."

There are very few "no brainers" in business, but this is one. A big one.

When I was at Airborne, a term I despised (albeit common terminology in the tech biz) was a "vendor."  A "vendor" was someone we turned to for a piece of technology or content that was crucial for the well-being of the overall project we were working on. 

Without them, we were sunk (or at least stuck doing it ourselves), but the descriptive term made them sound like some sort of common corporate whore, plying their stuff to whatever corporate john wanted to purchase it.  I was never overly comfortable "buying" from a "vendor."

So cut back to the TVA meeting.  What France (and colleagues Pierre Taschereau and Isabelle Roy) stressed was that moving ahead meant moving together.  Sounds like a cliche, but these days in every biz--particularly the media biz--not moving together means not moving at all.

Partners consult, look for ways to make one-plus-one equal four, and head off conflict early.

Clients make sales, look for ways to make the most money possible, and often clash when things are at deadline and cost more to fix...if they are fixable at all.

The TVA meeting reminded me of a situation I lived through during my first go around at Just For Laughs.  The year was 1989, the "client" was CBC, and I was producing a series of stand-up comedy specials for 'em. 

After delivering the six half-hour shows, the exec in charge, a no-nonsense woman named Carol Reynolds, requested a number of significant changes.  Given that the shows had already been produced, going back and changing them would be time-consuming and costly, so I fought back on every change, performer-by-performer, joke-by-joke.

I'm proud to announce that I won every battle.

But when the show's contract came up for renewal in 1990, Carol said "I don't think so."

She had won the war.

Gulp.

To make a long and--believe me--very painful story short, a change in management at CBC the following year opened the door for us again.  And the vow I took with the new exec team of George Anthony and Ed Robinson was that we'd be partners from Day One. 

From that point on, every major decision would be discussed, and agreed upon, up front.  If there was to be a battle, it would be settled then-and-there, not later-and-too-late. 

From the selection of performers long before they hit our stages, to nightly reviews of them after their performance, we walked down the production path together.  It made for a decade of peace, a great working relationship, and (most importantly) some high-rated, award-winning shows.

So, this week's learning?

Nobody who "buys" likes to be treated like a "client."  A client is faceless, short-term, interchangeable and ultimately disposable. That's a one-way relationship, no matter what level, no matter what business. 

A partner is a bond.  A partnership an inter-dependable, long-term, two-way-or-more relationship.  It makes it easier to succeed and harder to secede.

It's the way we worked with Twist Image and Favequest to launch our new website.  (Read the release for this quote: "These guys I knew for sure would never let me down.")

It's the way we'll work with TVA.  And CBC, CTV, Comedy Network, OMNI and HBO Canada this year...and for years to come.

And it's the only way to treat, and be treated by, people you do any sort of business with.

What ELSE I Learned This Week: The Refreshing Power of Blurting Out The Truth

Sometimes, even I can't believe I get away with this stuff:  http://bit.ly/fxuCI3 

From Marketing.ca.  Props to Chris Powell for quoting me verbatim.

And despite the well-deserved credit to Twist Image and JFL's Parisa Foster, a lot of the acclaim should also go to Allan Isfan and the team over at Favequest.  Without them we're nothing.

HaHaHa indeed!

What I Learned This Week: The Three You Need (and The One Who Shows Up Anyway)

It's been a week of getting things done and not getting things done at Just For Laughs.  And here's what I noticed as I watched both:

For a project, any project, to be successful, it needs three very distinct people (or groups of people) to pull it off:

1) Conceivers

2) Developers

3) Deliverers 

 

Conceivers are the ones that come up with the root idea, the seed that is planted.  Be it the instant Eureka moment or the realizaton after months of reflection, it's where the party starts.  But it's just that--only the beginning.

Developers are those who bring the seed to life.  They layer ideas on top of the core, solidify the vision but more importantly, lay out the mission ahead.

Deliverers?  These are the people that ship, that carry out the plan, that ensure that what once just a glint in someone's eye comes to fruition.

The problem--make that the stark reality--is that it's just about impossible to be good, even competent, at all three.

Two out of three? Never mind "aint bad," Meatloaf; that's a superstar. Jeez, even to be good at one is tough.

But that's our challenge--find who's good, and at which one, and put 'em together once you do. Succeed at that, then sit back and enjoy the ride.

Unfortunately there's another challenge--and that's dealing with the "someone else" who always seems to pop up in the mix:

The critic.

Hey, this ain't bridge; we don't need a fourth. But invited or not, the critic is always there to rear his or her ugly head.

Now, in the rare case of an insightful, constructive differing viewpoint, the critic can be a valuable ally and add-on to a project. But hey, we weren't born yesterday. Most of the time, the critic is a negative pain-in-the-ass, trying to scuttle, not settle, the activity.

So it's not enough just to conceive, develop or deliver--you gotta learn how to do so under attack. Or, as I put it to my friend Jeff Baikowitz when he asked me to describe my job at Just For Laughs:

"It's like trying to raise a 1,000 pound barbell over your head...while someone's kicking you in the shins."

Let' go back to the April Serious Day concept I discussed last week. I came up with the basic idea. David Heurtel and a slew of others added to, refined and re-directed it. Francois Blanchard, Vivien Gaumand and Sylvia DeFrietas delivered, and led the team that delivered, it. And yes, there wasn't 100% buy-in; we had to deal with doubters as well.

So what I learned this week was simple; go back to the top of this post if you wanna take it in again.

But more importantly, here's what you need to learn:

Which one of "The Three" are you?

(Frightening orchestral music goes here)

Or...are you (gasp!) "The Fourth"?

What I Learned This Week: The Big Diff Between "Do" and "Want To Do"

  Friday, April 1st was a big day for us at Just For Laughs. For three reasons.

1) Believing that we should "own" April Fools Day, we twisted the concept and came up with April Serious Day, a new "national holiday."  (Read the earth-shattering concept here.) 

To launch and celebrate it, we offered 1569 tickets to some of our biggest shows for the insane price of "pay what you want."  We also topped it of by selling $10-bills for five bucks. 

Why?  Because we can, because we wanted to offer a gift to our fans, and create, for lack of a better term, a "happening."

The result was a mofo smashing success.  Over 1,000 people lined up for a full city block for over four hours.  We had a live radio broadcast, live TV coverage and the implication of seven of our biggest stars. We had shout-out Tweets of gratitude like:

"A huge thank you for this incredible initiative!  I don't have the financial means to buy show tickets and I adore Stephane Rousseau (one of our stars) .  Thanks to you, I can now see him live!"

But most importantly, the event galvanized our staff.  What started out as a small idea blossomed into a huge operation, led by newbies like Vivien Gaumand and Sylvia DeFrietas, and carried through from start (laying down 200 huge stickers in a public passageway) to finish (cleaning up the remnants of 2,000 green balloons) by volunteer members of the JFL staff.

2) We launched our third annual Chicago Festival.  And with a huge bang.  About 5,000 tickets sold in less than a day.  Robbie Praw and Christine Melko-Ross delivered a phenomenal programming line-up that has put us WAY ahead of schedule sales-wise. 

3) And perhaps most importantly, we launched our new website at hahaha.com.  This project, while the masterful handiwork of teams from TwistImage and Favequest, was led by 26-year-old Parisa Foster, who worked with me back in the Airborne Mobile days. 

Parisa joined Just For Laughs on November 1.  Five months later, basically starting from scratch, she delivered a massive overhaul on what was a much-maligned company web presence.  The difference in operation, spirit and look-and-feel is staggering.

Quite the day, wouldn't you say?

All these projects were led by people overflowing with passion...almost desperate passion. 

• Sylvia came from our ticketing department and has been in her new job for just a couple of months. 
• Vivien is from France and on contract. 
• Christine and Robbie, while industry vets, breathed new life into something that could've teetered the other way. 
• And the sum total of all websites delivered by Parisa, before the much-needed and crucial makeover of hahaha.com, was the round number of zero.

So what's the learn here?  When looking to hire, when looking for leaders, when looking for people to depend on, I've always believed and said loudly:

Give me the heart; the head will follow.

Experience is a crutch, and sometimes a false hope.  What you've done in the past is less important than what you're gonna do now.  So taken one step further, this is the big lesson of the week, font-size increased for emphasis and emblazonment on your brain:

You can teach people to do things...

but you can't teach them to want to do things.

The "want to" has to come from them.

All I can do is give them the opportunity.

And after a day of three big wins, I'm sure happy I did.