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

What I Learned This Week--You Are What You Share

The phrase “You Are What You Eat” became a mainstay of individual definition in North American during the hippy-dippy 1960s…although it was first uttered by a French lawyer/politician in 1826.

In the latter part of the 20^th century, the defining features of who we are turned from the inside of our bodies to the outside, and the phrase morphed into “You Are What You Wear.”

These days, given the overwhelming tsunami of social media, the conventional wisdom of who we are has shifted away from us and onto others, to become “You Are What You Share”…whether you choose to share your feelings about food, clothing, French lawyers/politicians, or the act of sharing itself. 

The quaint, person-to-person chatter that old-schoolers like me used to call “Word of Mouth” has exponentially supersized to become a quantum currency more powerful (and less likely to wildly fluctuate) than Bitcoin.  People smarter than yours truly have dubbed this phenomenon “The Sharing Economy,” where people believe—and more importantly, act on—things they hear from people they know and trust than from anywhere else. 

This is why every business, every YouTuber, every social cause, every Tweet and every Facebook page implores you not merely to listen to them, but to tell others as well.  By following suite, our personal lives have transformed into a massive, multi-level marketing scheme.  I just may have to change my name to Amway Nulman.

In his 2013 book “Contagious,” Wharton School marketing prof Jonah Berger outlines six factors how things get shared, and perhaps his prime reason for one to do so is the creation of “Social Currency,” i.e. how one comes across to their friends and network if they pass along a piece of information.    

What’s fascinating about this

phenomenon is not what you're

telling others about others

when you share something;

it’s what you are telling them

about you.   

McLuhan was right; the medium is indeed the message. 

Look at your Facebook newsfeed to see what I mean.  There are “friends” you ritually ignore, and ponder why you still haven’t bothered to de-friend.  Yet there are others whose shared posts you jump on right away; for instance, I know Matthew Cope will be sending along something political or quirky, while Robert Tercek will provide me with the absolute latest in the world of start-ups and tech.  Although I rarely see or speak to either, I know exactly what they’re all about.

Taking this one step further is the story of the Facebook group I put together for a class I’m teaching this semester at McGill University.  I have 50 students, and despite the fact that I see them live twice a week, I know more about their likes, dislikes, political leanings, backgrounds, passions and pastimes by following what they choose to post on the class feed than I do by anything they’ve said in—or after—class.

It’s a living, ongoing psychological revelation, a modern-day Rorschach test. The students’ personal and personality revelations allow me to focus on, and better react to them, in ways I’d never be able to do if I had to exclusively rely on our face-to-face encounters. 

Scary?  Perhaps.  But quite helpful.  And powerfully accurate.

So what did I learn this week?  Well, as I said above, “You Are What You Share.” 

But perhaps more importantly...

What we share isn’t exactly

“who we are,” but 

who we want to be, and 

how we want to be seen. 

So despite that we seem to be prone to raw, indiscriminate revelations, we are actually, subconsciously controlling our own personal message with what we choose to share. 

And if YOU choose to share this, you’ll be showing everyone you know just how damn smart you are…or how shameless I am ;)

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

P.S.  The image on top?  One share, of course!

What I Learned This Week--You Are What You Share

Although the phrase was first uttered by a French lawyer/politician in 1826, “You Are What You Eat” became a mainstay of individual definition in North American during the hippy-dippy 1960s.  

Two decades or so later, the defining features of who we are turned from the inside of our bodies to the outside, and the phrase morphed into “You Are What You Wear.”

These days, given the overwhelming tsunami of social media, the conventional wisdom of who we are has shifted away from us and onto others, to become “You Are What You Share”…whether you choose to share your feelings about food, clothing, French lawyers/politicians, or the act of sharing itself.

The quaint, person-to-person chatter that old-schoolers like me used to call “Word of Mouth” has exponentially supersized to become a quantum currency more powerful (and less likely to wildly fluctuate) than Bitcoin.  People smarter than yours truly have dubbed this phenomenon “The Sharing Economy,” where people believe—and more importantly, act on—things they hear from people they know and trust. 

This is why every business, every YouTuber, every social cause, every Tweet and every Facebook page implores you not merely to listen to them, but to tell others.  Our personal lives have transformed into a massive, multi-level marketing scheme.  I may just change my name to Amway Nulman.

In his 2013 book “Contagious,” Wharton School marketing prof Jonah Berger outlines six factors how things get shared, and perhaps his prime reason for one to do so is the generation of “Social Currency,” i.e. how one comes across to their friends and network if they pass along a piece of information.    

What’s fascinating about this phenomenon is not what you are telling others about others when you share something; it’s what you are telling them about you.   McLuhan was right; the medium is indeed the message. 

Look at your Facebook newsfeed to see what I mean.  There are “friends” you ritually ignore, and ponder why you still haven’t bothered to de-friend.  Yet there are others whose shared posts you jump on right away; for instance, I know Matthew Cope will be sending along something political or quirky, while Robert Tercek will provide me with the absolute latest in the world of start-ups and tech.  Although I rarely see or speak to either, I know exactly what they’re all about.

Taking this one step further is the story of the Facebook group I put together for a class I’m teaching this semester at McGill University.  I have 50 students, and despite the fact that I see them live twice a week, I know more about their likes, dislikes, political leanings, backgrounds, passions and pastimes by following what they choose to post on the class feed than I do by anything they’ve said in—or after—class.  These personal and personality revelations allow me to focus on them, and better react to them, in ways I’d never be able to do if I had to exclusively rely on our face-to-face encounters.

Scary?  Perhaps.  But quite helpful.  And  powerfully accurate.

So what did I learn this week?  Well, as I said above, “You Are What You Share.” 

But perhaps more importantly, what we share isn’t exactly “who we are,” but who we want to be, and how we want to be seen.

So despite that we seem to be prone to raw, indiscriminate revelations, we are actually, subconsciously controlling our own personal message with what we choose to share.

And if YOU choose to share this…you’ll be showing how damn smart you are ;)

What I Learned This Week--The Devastating Power of the Cold Hard Truth

It’s rare when to hear anyone say anything negative about someone who has just died, but when the deceased is a Hollywood luminary, the tributes take on a most reverential and syrupy outpouring tone.  

Case in point are the eulogies surrounding the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, who I must admit was probably one of my most favorite actors of all time…which makes using him as the focus and example of this blog post somewhat difficult. 

That said, Hoffman’s status as an “actor’s actor” elicited the usual torrent of (well-deserved) high praise, mixed with profound sadness and remorse (equally as well-deserved).  In Entertainment Weekly, stars the magnitude of George Clooney, Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore expressed condolences using familiar terms such as “devastating loss,” “fortunate enough to have known and worked with (him),” “no words” and “grief and regret.”  What saddened me most is that it all sounded so interchangeable, and so much the same old same old. 

Then I read Aaron Sorkin’s devastating tribute in Time Magazine, one whose cold, hard truth shattered the decorum of the usual Hollywood status quo into atom-sized shards. 

Like the others, Sorkin heaped high praise on Hoffman as a man, a colleague and especially as an artist.  But as a recovering drug addict himself, he had the guts, or foolhardiness, to walk down a dark place others would not…or perhaps could not.  After bestowing a most magnanimous compliment on the actor, Sorkin grimly stated that Hoffman 

“…did not die from

an overdose of heroin—

he died from heroin.” 

Shudder. 

And before the reader had a chance to process the previous sentence, he trumped it by bludgeoning: 

“We should stop implying

that if he had just taken

the proper amount,

everything would be fine.” 

Crumble.

There’s more—including the strange death wish designed to “maybe scare someone clean”—and I urge you to read it all here, but this is not about poor Philip Seymour Hoffman or Aaron Sorkin. 

It’s about how what a shock it is to one’s system when they encounter the truth. 

When I read Sorkin’s Time Magazine missive, it stopped me in my tracks.  So much so, that I had to re-read it; not once but twice, because my first reaction was “How did the editors ever let this slip through?”  Never did he disparage or denigrate the man in it; he just shocked with frankness. 

There’s so much pandering pap, Machiavellian crap and factory-processed opinion swirling around the worlds of business, showbiz, politics, sports, medicine (stopping now, as I can go on for days) these days that when one encounters a fragment of truth, it is shocking and disarming, and stands out like the proverbial sore thumb.

Put another way...

We encounter

way too much spin…

and not enough drilling.

Even if one would be truthful why they can’t tell the truth, it’s a step in the right direction.  Last year, I met a Quebec political leader who said—point blank, in front of dozens of witnesses there to hear him expound on his party’s platform—that he makes decisions based not on his own political or personal convictions, but on what voters on the outlying areas of the province want to hear.  Sad…but true. 

Sorkin’s piece sparked all I needed to learn this week, namely:

THE TRUTH IS

A DESTABILIZER. 

It’s a powerful weapon, not only in politics and magazine eulogies, but in business.  Trust me, you want people to buzz about your product, service, or cause?  Then turn the bullshit meters down to zero and tell it like it is.  

Just tell the truth.  And then hold on for an unprecedented reaction. 

Maybe there’s a reason the truth is so rare.  Maybe Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, Jack Nicholson’s character in the film A Few Good Men (ironically, written by Aaron Sorkin) was right.  Maybe we can’t handle the truth.  

But you know what?  Given the alternative, I’ll take the risk.  

What I Learned This Week--The Devastating Power of the Cold Hard Truth

It’s rare when to hear anyone say anything negative about someone who has just died, but when the deceased is a Hollywood luminary, the tributes take on a most reverential and syrupy outpouring tone.  

Case in point are the eulogies surrounding the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, who I must admit was probably one of my most favorite actors of all time…which makes using him as the focus and example of this blog post somewhat difficult. 

That said, Hoffman’s status as an “actor’s actor” elicited the usual torrent of (well-deserved) high praise, mixed with profound sadness and remorse (equally as well-deserved).  In Entertainment Weekly, stars the magnitude of George Clooney, Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore expressed condolences using familiar terms such as “devastating loss,” “fortunate enough to have known and worked with (him),” “no words” and “grief and regret.”  What saddened me most is that it all sounded so interchangeable, and so much the same old same old. 

Then I read Aaron Sorkin’s devastating tribute in Time Magazine, one whose cold, hard truth shattered the decorum of the usual Hollywood status quo into atom-sized shards. 

Like the others, Sorkin heaped high praise on Hoffman as a man, a colleague and especially as an artist.  But as a recovering drug addict himself, he had the guts, or foolhardiness, to walk down a dark place others would not…or perhaps could not.  After bestowing a most magnanimous compliment on the actor, Sorkin grimly stated that Hoffman 

“…did not die from

an overdose of heroin—

he died from heroin.” 

Shudder. 

And before the reader had a chance to process the previous sentence, he trumped it by bludgeoning: 

“We should stop implying

that if he had just taken

the proper amount,

everything would be fine.” 

Crumble.

There’s more—including the strange death wish designed to “maybe scare someone clean”—and I urge you to read it all here, but this is not about poor Philip Seymour Hoffman or Aaron Sorkin. 

It’s about how what a shock it is to one’s system when they encounter the truth. 

When I read Sorkin’s Time Magazine missive, I had to stop and re-read it.  Not once but twice, because my first reaction was “How did the editors ever let this slip through?”  Never did he disparage or denigrate the man; he just shocked with frankness. 

There’s so much pandering pap, Machiavellian crap and factory-processed opinion swirling around the worlds of business, showbiz, politics, sports, medicine (stopping now, as I can go on for days) these days that when one encounters a fragment of truth, it is shocking and heart stopping, and stands out like the proverbial sore thumb.

Put another way...

We encounter

way too much spin…

and not enough drilling.

Even if one would be truthful why they can’t tell the truth, it’s a step in the right direction.  Last year, I met a Quebec political leader who said—point blank, in front of dozens of witnesses there to hear him expound on his party’s platform—that he makes decisions based not on his own political or personal convictions, but on what voters on the outlying areas of the province want to hear.  Sad…but true. 

Sorkin’s piece sparked all I needed to learn this week, namely:

THE TRUTH IS

A DESTABILIZER. 

It’s a powerful weapon, not only in politics and magazine eulogies, but in business.  Trust me, you want people to buzz about your product, service, or cause?  Then turn the bullshit meters down to zero and tell it like it is.  

Just tell the truth.  And then hold on for an unprecedented reaction. 

Maybe there’s a reason the truth is so rare.  Maybe Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, Jack Nicholson’s character in the film A Few Good Men (ironically, written by Aaron Sorkin) was right.  Maybe we can’t handle the truth.  

But you know what?  Given the alternative, I’ll take the risk.  

What I Learned This Week--Love Thy Hater

In a recent interview, singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow admitted to succumbing to something she rarely does, namely read the online comments of her work.  Bad move.  One particularly nasty quip, which likened a song on her latest album to the sound of “being raped in an open field,” truly threw her for a loop.

"It was so heinous," she said. "I sobbed. I never read that stuff, but I happened to catch that one thing. And I sobbed…and it wasn't even what he said. It was the hatred."

Yowtch. 

While there is no excuse for comments that rancid, Sheryl can be consoled by the fact that any one of us who exposes him or herself online are targets—be we powerful, established artists or merely innocent kids posting pictures to Facebook—and thus must endure the wrath of a swath of (in)humanity called "The Hater."

They're everywhere.  Inescapable.  Usually anonymous, as rabid blowhard cowards usually are.  Powerful, too.  In the burgeoning YouTube creative community, veterans strongly advise newbies "Don't read the comments!" lest they want their souls destroyed by basement-dwelling knuckle-scrapers wielding keyboards like rusty scythes.

I suppose it's redundant

to say that haters are evil. 

 

But frankly, in this digital,

Internet-speed age, I think

they are a necessary evil.

And rather than attempting the impossible task of trying to shut them down, I think a better tactic is doing the exact opposite—embracing them and their handiwork.  For what I've seen lately is that haters are not ultimately spawning hate…but love.  And they are spawning it from a group of others who would've otherwise never been drawn into the debate.

Look at the counter-attack to the LGBT situation in Sochi.  What was supposed to be a silent Russian crackdown has exploded into a worldwide outpouring of support.  Brilliant ads, like this one from the Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion, have been created.  Formerly brilliant ads have been "hacked" and used as protest vehicles.  And Rob Ford's garish stupidity aside, rainbow flags are being flown from city halls all over the world. 

Or how about the upcoming celebration of Pink Shirt Day on February 26? Now a nation-wide anti-bullying initiative, it started off as a protest against a bullying incident at Central Kings Rural High School in Nova Scotia. 

Put another way,

the haters have

brought out the lovers.

So this week's learning is what I call Newtonian Physics for Emotions, where every action is met with an equal—or better still, greater—opposite reaction.  This is why rallies against something are usually more passionate than rallies for something; boiling blood brings out the best in us.

While I'm no scientist, I'll continue with the physics analogy.  It's common knowledge that it's easier to change direction of something that's moving than something that’s standing still.  If nothing else then, haters get things, and eventually people, moving. Their negativity, nastiness and brutality act as a catalyst for love, and give people who may have been apathetic a reason to jump off the couch and on the bandwagon.

So with that in mind, let's hear it for the haters.  Enemies like them actually generate friends, and a slew of new ones to boot. Having them around is a true win-win; their vitriol will continue to result in positive counter-spin...until one day they'll realize the ultimate futility of their actions, and just shrivel up and blow away. 

And you gotta love that!

What I Learned This Week--Good Deeds Plant Seeds

I don’t wanna sound all tree-huggy, but this week’s lesson is a simple one of business that has more to do with green thumbs than it does with red ink or blue-chip stocks.

In a nutshell: 

Good Deeds Plan Seeds

And now here’s the story behind it. 

A couple of weeks ago, I hustled eight people from assorted Just For Laughs sectors over to Toronto for an intense meeting with a major agency about their even more major client.  Our eight were met by their eight, filling just about every seat at the agency’s massive boardroom table. 

On the table—figuratively, not literally—was a prolific, multi-year, multi-project transaction…a wide-reaching one that could easily top seven figures.  This deal was a big one; not just for us, but also for them.  Because of this, our pitch was a strange combination of ballsy bravura and delicately walking on eggshells.

After about an hour of discussing and describing the various properties available, we touched upon JFL42, our Toronto-based, tech-savvy event that appeals to a much younger and hipper demographic target than our Montreal behemoth.  At that point, a woman, who had been silent since her initial, round-the-table intro, spoke up.  She was one of the agency’s key media strategist.

“I want to talk about the social media of that event,” she said.

Gulp!  Social media, while important everywhere these days, is paramount at JFL42, because at its core is a community that we build via a web and mobile app.  A complaint about it now, here, could scuttle the entire process.

“Sure,” I said, hoping for the best.  “How was it?” 

Only a couple of seconds passed…but it seemed like an eternity until she said: 

“It was incredible. I went to shows just about every night, to the point of complaining on Twitter that you guys were making me so tired that I was going to get into trouble by coming in late work!” 

Phew!  But as I said, I was hoping for the best…and it was yet to come.  She continued:

“What was really impressive is what you did.” 

“What do you mean?” I asked, totally surprised.  I had no idea where she was going with this. 

“You guys actually wrote me a note, like in school, giving me permission to come in late!  I showed it around to EVERYONE!”

Said note, a physical piece of letterhead “signed” by the event itself, came from Nam Nguyen, who oversaw our web strategy for the event, and more notably, from Sasha Minoli, who was responsible for our day-to-day social media and who actually wrote it. (That’s a picture of it at the bottom.) 

So here’s the point—Sasha could’ve simply replied via a Tweet. She could’ve amped it up with a Facebook post as well.  For most companies, that would’ve been way more than enough. 

But instead, she chose to go the extra mile, and have some fun with someone who was obviously a very loyal and committed customer. 

The letter took her all of 90 seconds to write.  A little seed planted.

But four months later, in the context of solidifying reputation during magna-deal discussions, it had grown into a Sequoia tree. 

As it stands, we have since moved ahead nicely with the agency and the client.  And while I won’t know where the deal will ultimately end up for a few weeks, I have a feeling that Sasha’s good deed will have played an important role in getting us to a solid “Yes.”  I shudder to think what could’ve happened had it been handled in a less impressive manner.

What this all goes to show you is that “Ya never know.”  Ya never know who you’re dealing with, and Ya never know what it all can mean to you in the future. (Which is why, whenever I come across someone who says, “I met you before,” I immediately ask “Was I polite?”)

Think about Sasha’s letter next time you’re faced with the option of doing nothing, doing something…or doing something great.

Ya never know…your good deed can plant the seed of life.

Or death!