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

What I Learned This Week--The Necessity of "Vibe Management"

I’ve been reading marketing/business books ever since my last year of high school, and if there’s a constant among the great ones, it’s being able to distill the main message from 300 or so pages of brilliant babble into one memorable, four-word-maximum, catchphrase. 

A partial list:

• Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout
• In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman
• Good To Great by Jim Collins
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte
• The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
• Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
• The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Yet a snappy, t-shirt friendly, concise catchphrase alone isn’t nearly enough.  To be a true “classic,” said catchphrase needs to enter the general everyday vernacular and become a label; a label that embodies a theme and earns immediate nods of recognition and relevance whenever it is mentioned.

Last week, I heard what may be the next great one…and the best part is that it is yet to become a book (which means that perhaps I can convince the guy who uttered it to let me co-author it with him).

The phrase is:

Vibe Manager

...and it was brought up by Bertrand Cesvet at a Montreal Board of Trade breakfast gathering.  Bert is the affable chairman of the Sid Lee, and during his early-morning speech, he talked about certain people at his agency whose job it is to enter offices and meeting rooms and alter the mood amongst those gathered in a positive manner.

A couple of things here.  First, I know this all sounds a tad overly “touch-feely”; and second, I’m not sure if “Vibe Manager” is an actual Sid Lee title and/or singular job function.

What I do know though,

is the absolute necessity

to have ‘em around.

In a company, "Vibe Managers" may not be the most valuable players or highest paid, but like the fringe player on a sports team who’s “good in the room,” their importance is disproportionate to their position on the org chart.  Over my years at Just For Laughs, at Airborne Mobile, or on any of the dozens of fundraising/charitable cause committees I’ve sat on, having that one special person who is remarkably able to either diffuse tension and/or infuse enthusiasm with one well-timed comment is invaluable. 

But as anyone who has ever entered a work environment can tell you, “Vibe Management” can go two ways.  Perhaps even more powerful than the enlighteners are the toxic buzz-killers who can deflate, defeat and demoralize in one fell swoop, and do so with a twisted smile on their faces.

It’s a soft science that may be too utopian for most to fathom, but given the increasing pressures of the coprorare environment, perhaps Bert is onto something with the need for professional, positive “Vibe Managers.”   These people may not be armed with the solutions to all our problems, but can at least pave the way and help make it easier for those whose job it is to find them.

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

P.S.  Hey, look what I just found!  Guess these folks really DO exist...

What I Learned This Week--The Power of "Who's In The Room"

Given that I am one of the speakers at the upcoming C2-MTL creative conference in May, and given that my years in showbiz and in tech have provided me with a myriad of international contacts, I’ve been put on the event’s strategic planning committee.  It’s a great group. We have a 30-minute conference call early every Thursday morning, at which we usually discuss one major issue:  “Who’s coming?”

Aside from me (he says with profound humility), C2’s speaker line-up is studded with business superstars like Sir Richard Branson, designer Phillipe Starck and supermodel/entrepreneur Elle Macpherson as well as prestigious thinker/doers like Neri Oxman of the MIT Media Lab, Nicole Piasecki of Boeing and Fred Dust of IDEO.  You can see the full list here, but frankly…rarely are any one of them the subject of our weekly C2 meeting.

When we discuss “who’s coming,” it’s about who’s actually coming to the conference…namely the faces in the crowd.  Being a commercial event, the sale of tickets to public is imperative (and given my many years running Just For Laughs, you can never overestimate the difficulty of this task).  But so are the special guests, contest-winners, grant recipients, sponsors, government partners, media members and other luminaries who will also fill the seats.  The proper attendee mix is imperative.

Anyone who has ever run an event, or even attended one, knows the value of the answer to the question of “Who’s coming?”  Frankly, at many events, the value of who’s in the room grossly outweighs the value of who’s on stage.  Look at the TED conference, for example.  The attendee line-up—a hefty, magazine-sized document—is a much coveted holy grail and “wish list” for possible encounters for just about everyone going (except, I guess, if you are one of the A-plus-listers besieged by meeting requests). 

Same goes for our industry component at Just For Laughs. I remember, in the early days, so many people’s attendance commitment hinged upon the answer to the question: “Is Morty coming?” (“Morty” being Robert Morton, at the time the producer of the David Letterman Show).

This is why, at our most recent C2 encounter, I floated the following as a possible slogan/ad headline:

“JUST WAIT ‘TIL YOU SEE

WHO’S IN THE AUDIENCE!”

The “who’s in this room” principle isn’t just pertinent for conferences.  The same goes for restaurants, bars, dinner parties, show premieres, Bar Mitzvahs, retail stores…I can go on for hours.  In fact, the same day of the aforementioned C2 meeting, I was told by one of my ebullient colleagues that Brad Pitt and George Clooney would be attending the premiere of Eddie Izzard’s show we were putting on in Paris that night.  And later that eve, when I took my son to dinner at a small Greek restaurant, we marveled that our tablemates included the CEO of one of Canada’s largest media companies and the namesake of one of the country’s oldest breweries.

So the lesson of the week may not be a brand new one, but it’s one that bears repeating…and acknowledging:

The success of any 

product or service

is not necessarily defined

by the product or service itself,

but by who actually uses it.

This is why the tailor down the street flaunts framed photos of recognized names that wear his clothes. 

And why Samsung Galaxy S III deftly positioned itself as the choice of the young and hip by counter-positioning Apple iPhones as “your parent’s products” (amongst other derogatory associations).

And why we’re so committed to make sure that the faces in the crowd at C2 won’t just be another face in the crowd.

Forget who’s “on stage.”  Remember who your real stars are. 

Most likely, they’re sitting right next to you.

What I Learned This Week--How to Defeat Defeat

Last week, I was dealt a major blow of crushing disappointment proportions.

Nothing life-or-death, no major medical or family crisis, just got the answer I didn't want to receive for something I was not merely looking forward to, but really, really, REALLY wanted to happen. 

Perhaps I was unrealistically confident and upbeat in my expectations of a positive response, so much so that I projected my charmed life after the anticipated "Yes" about ten years and five giant steps forward. All this made the eventual "No" blow--delivered via email, read and re-read about 175 times--particularly painful.

Now I'm not unique, we've all been through rejections and dejections like this; wins that turn to losses, "the other one" picked instead of you, a contract un-renewed, a critical lambasting.

It ain't fun.  It hurts.  And it can be long-term traumatic.

The difference this time around, though...is that I knew how to deal with it.

Or put another way...

I knew the secret

of how to defeat defeat.

I learned it, of course, the hard way.  The circumstances aren't my favorite ones to recall, but it was at a failed speaking engagement that I greedily took only for the money (sadists who want to know more can learn further details here). Try as I might, I was a mis-fit with the audience from minute one and just couldn't connect no matter what I did. The end result was almost literally having the mic taken from my hands in front of a rapidly-depleting ballroom of people.

As I walked off stage and through "the valley of the shadow of death" (the aisle to the back of the room and the lobby to the elevator) the pain, embarrassment and humiliation was palpable.

My gut felt like it had just been kicked by a kangaroo, I broke out into an icy cold sweat, my vision was Vaseline-coated blurry and my mouth desert-dry.

But instead of letting it all get to me, instead of being devastated...I comforted myself with these words:

"Hmmm...so THAT'S

what total humiliation

feels like!"

Rather than let the feeling overtake and define me, I defined the feeling.  This examination and mental understanding of the defeat let me take control of it, and of myself.  Instead of me breaking down, I instead broke the feeling down into small component parts...the size of which made them easier to brush aside.  Three blocks away from that ballroom stage, in less than a 10-minute walk, I was laughing again, the episode and its sting behind me.

That's the big secret:  

Don't have a breakdown

over failure;

break it down instead.

It was this process, this learning, that helped me get over my most recent set-back.  The physical reactions were different (nausea instead of pain in the stomach, hot flush instead of cold sweat, a little choked up), but again, instead of falling victim to it, I took it on head-on.  A few minutes of wallowing in misery, a break-down analysis of the overall feeling into component feelings, an understanding and dismissal of them and I was back in business in a half-hour.

So great, now I know what total humiliation AND crushing rejection feel like.

AND how to defeat them.

Which are important lessons to embrace and impart, I suppose.

But frankly, next time...I hope I get a "Yes."

What I Learned This Week--Why Quebec's Language Police Are Good For Anglos AND For Business

I've been blogging for close to seven years now, and over that time, I don't think I've ever posted about politics; my subject matters have run the gamut of business, the somewhat absurd, and the generalities of life.

But when politics starts to somewhat absurdly affect business and the generalities of life, I just have to weigh in.

This week's lesson then is about a political conspiracy; a GOOD political conspiracy though…albeit a somewhat counter-intuitive one.

In a nutshell:

The recent crackdowns by Quebec's French-language watchdog troupe (officially known as the OQLF, unofficially and snarkily referred to as the "tongue troopers") is actually designed to BENEFIT Quebec's English-speaking minority (aka “Anglophones” and/or “Anglos”) and small business.

Before fully explaining said conspiracy, a little background (particularly for all of you reading outside Quebec and wondering what the hell is going on here). Over the past few weeks, the OQLF has:

• Demanded that Italian restaurant Buonanotte eliminate the Italian word "Pasta" from its menu (a Clouseau-like affair now renowned as "Pastagate")
• Demanded that a popular bistro Holder cover up the words "On/Off" on its microwave oven and the words "Redial" and "Hold" on its phone with opaque tape
• Demanded that artisan coffee bars Caffè in Gamba in Montreal and Caffe Conti in Quebec city remove one "F" from their names 
• Demanded that chef David McMillan, of Joe Beef (renowned one of the country's top restaurants) remove an antique sign from a PEI beach hanging near his bathroom
• Demanded the McKibbin’s Irish Pub remove vintage Guinness ads and decorative signage from its walls 

Conventional wisdom

sees this as repressive,

insulting and misguided.

I see it as brilliant,

forward-thinking and

economically stimulating.

Thanks to the OQLF, Buonanotte has earned about a million dollars of free publicity, everywhere from bloggers to local newspapers to CNN. The restaurant sits as one of the remaining stalwarts on St. Laurent Boulevard; once this city's hottest strip, now a near-barren wasteland of papered-up empty storefronts. Thanks to all this attention, customer traffic—even if only from curious “looky-loo” passers-by—cannot help but increase exponentially.  

Same goes for Caffè in Gamba.  "It’s a circus here today,” owner Jean-François Leduc told the Montreal Gazette, describing the flood of well-wishers who dropped in Friday to lend encouragement after he tweeted about his run-in with the language office.  He couldn’t even dream of affording an ad campaign like the one the OQLF has provided.

To top it off, reporters everywhere, from the Globe and Mail to Al Jazeera, have been in contact with McMillan’s Joe Beef, a long-time media darling that certainly doesn’t need the promotional exposure.  YOU try to get a reservation there now! 

Don't you see it?

It’s Machiavellian,

it's genius and it’s effective. 

By stepping up these inspections and demands, the OQLF simultaneously appeases the PQ’s formidable language hardliners (who demand a crackdown on pesky English, most notably via the much-reviled Bill 14), while boosting the profile of, and traffic to, primarily Anglo-run businesses (who are perhaps just looking for a break).

And given the new world we live in, the global attention generated by the OQLF will spawn a new breed of tourist, “Wordies,” who will flock here to eat, drink and take pictures in all the affected places.  

I wish the PQ—a party where I actually have a few friends—can take full credit for this, but let’s face it, the OQLF existed under the former Liberal government as well.  It’s just that THIS government has stepped up its game.  And will continue to do so, as the OQLF budget has been increased 6% this year! (This government also had the wisdom and kindness to name a special Minister for the city of Montreal and the province’s Anglophones, a man who had the gumption to stand down his old boss, the demagogue Jacques Parizeau, in our honor.)

As an added bonus, the OQLF actions have spurred on a significant ripple effect. 

Rather than people running scared to Toronto like in 1976, the latest offensive has given rise to a refreshed Anglo political spirit, one not seen since the days of the old Equality Party. For example, last week close to 1,000 rowdy Anglos gathered at a downtown hotel to mark the kick-off of CRITIQ, a new civil rights group. 

And then there’s the revitalization of the small business entrepreneur, like my friend Liz Faure, whose new company, Bad Anglo Productions is about to launch a line of t-shirts and stickers emblazoned with sweetly sardonic slogans like “Don’t Worry, Be Anglophone” and “Anglophone Was Here.”

With so much brightness on the horizon, one small dark cloud of a problem remains—even with the 6% budget bump, there are still not enough language inspectors to go around.  So how can a deserving business attract an OQLF inspecting team, and all the ensuing buzz that follows its visit?  

Perhaps the easiest way is with this foolproof inspector-magnet process:

• Copy the image below.
• Blow it up as big as you can.
• Display it prominently in your place of business.
• Then call the OQLF, report an offending English sign...and demand its removal.

Better start hiring extra staff!