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

What I Learned This Week--The Exponential Value of Doing Your Homework

Last week, I spent two days up north--WAY up north, to be specific--in Whitehorse, the capital city of Canada's Yukon.  This was only my second time ever this “high up” the world (I had been in Alaska on a snowboard trip eight weeks earlier) and while I was no expert, I was really looking forward to revisiting what I considered one of the planet's most charming and scenic areas. 

Unlike my previous visit to this part of the world, this one was no vacation.  I was 2,637 miles away from home for a speaking engagement, talking to the Tourism Industry Association of the Yukon about what marketing, promotion and social media steps they could take in order to attract more tourists their way.

In putting together said speech over the past few months, I used my spare time to research the Yukon, more specifically the manner in which it shows and touts itself to the rest of the world.

Given the scheduled early-afternoon time of the keynote on Friday, I arrived late day Thursday to minimize stress and risk of flight delays, etc.  I used my extra few hours in town productively, walking the city's streets (see my favourite photo above), eating in its restaurants, browsing its shops and mingling (okay, drinking!) with its offbeat and colorful locals...including a long-bearded bear of a man named "Frank The Tank" who expressed his appreciation for my "personal style" with a powerful hug.

When it finally came time to deliver the speech, it was liberally sprinkled with local references, be they those that I had gathered methodically since January, or the more personal ones I had just picked up in town. 

The end result of all this work was--and I say this as modestly as I can--kinda triumphant, because not only did the audience appreciate the hard learning of the session, they appreciated the effort on my part to learn about them.

After the speech, more than one delegate stopped to tell me that while they enjoyed previous years' keynoters and their messages, they also found them to be somewhat "canned," i.e. the speakers could've delivered the exact same words and PowerPoint slides anywhere.  The "extra mile" I took paid off warmly, immediately and exponentially with invitations to parties, guided visits to local landmarks and promises of an eventual return visit (go ahead, twist my arm!). 

Such is the value of doing one's homework...and my major lesson of the week.  Despite the fact that as a lesson, it's a golden oldie and basic common sense...

The ultimate benefit of

fastidiously doing one's homework

is oft-forgotten in these days

of hyper-speed everything.

So here's a personal anecdote to illustrate what I mean. 

Given my history at Just For Laughs and in the tech business, I am often asked to be by students to be interviewed for their class projects.  And on more than one occasion, I've shocked students--and pissed off their parents, many whom are friends--with a verbal back-and-forth that goes something like:

Q: What year did Just For Laughs start?

A: Google!

or 

Q: How much did you sell Airborne Mobile for?

A: Google!

or

Q: How many people did JFL draw last year?

A: Google!

The point here is that these aren't questions; they are admissions of laziness on the part of the interviewer, and my one-word answer points them where they should've looked in the first place.  There's no excuse. These facts are readily available online, and it's not my responsibility to be someone's search engine. 

And...not all questions

are created equal!

By doing one's homework, questions are transformed from a grating admission of apathy and ignorance (reminding me of those stand-up comics who would always ask --on-stage, yet!--"Do you have this here?" whenever playing a gig in a different country) into tools that uncover insight and explore context.  And thus, into pools of appreciation by the interviewee. 

So cut to this week.  I have a couple of potentially game-changing meetings with some high-powered people I've never before met.

So guess what I'm going to do as soon as I put the finishing touch on this blog post?

I'm going to obsessively research every one of these people, make copious notes, and ensure that when I meet them, I will know as much about them as they do.  

More, maybe. 

Because the last thing I want after my delightful experience up north is for these meetings to, uh...go south.

What I Learned This Week—How Fans Have Blown Audiences Away

As you read this, I am off on a flight to San Francisco, where I’ll be one of the speakers at a unique, internal YouTube conference just across the bridge in San Bruno, California.  Called “Immersion,” the event showcases YouTube content to advertisers and brands, somewhat like the TV networks have done for years in New York.  

Given my professional heritage and current deep dive into YouTube (with my McGill class and concentration on our powerful Just For Laughs Gags channel, which was just listed as one of comedy’s top 1% on the platform), I’ve been asked to represent the comedy “vertical” alongside Google’s Dave Brown. 

I’m excited, as this is kind of a “coming home” for me.  From 2000 until 2009, I used to spend a lot of time in this part of California, attending the CTIA conference (which stood for the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association back in the day), a twice-yearly gathering of those in the revolutionary mobile content space. 

These were pre-iPhone days, yet despite the cynicism and sneering from a lot of the business establishment (“Who’s going to type or watch things on their phone?” we heard more than once) we all knew that we were onto more than just something big; we were rushing into a seismic shift in consumer behavior. 

Now you don’t need me to tell you how different things are today in today’s media.  For example, this blog is net-exclusive, and going by statistics, most of you are reading it on a mobile device, be it a smartphone or tablet.  But the fact that you’re still reading it, and I’m still writing it, makes us both somewhat dinosaurish. 

Video is rapidly overshadowing

the written word; the keyboard

is being supplanted by the camera

 

And if you thought the last

behavior shift was seismic,

it was only a little jiggle

compared to the coming shake-up.

“The Street” gets it.  “The Kids” get it.  And like I saw while pioneering the mobile wave, established brands and businesses will soon follow.  

For some of them though, not soon enough. 

Perhaps the biggest change in the offing is the definition of those doing the consuming.  For years, networks talked of “audiences” and brands of “consumers.”  To understand where the market is going, heed the words of Alex Carloss, the global Head of Entertainment for YouTube.  In a keynote speech at the MIPTV gathering in France (you can watch the whole thing here), he laid it out like this:

“Our partners have discovered the value of building a fan base to supercharge their businesses.

“Notice I didn’t say ‘audience.’  What’s the difference between an audience and a fan base? 

“An audience tunes in when they’re told to; a fan base chooses when and what to watch. 

“An audience sits back and consumes media; a fan base leans forward and wants to participate. 

“An audience changes the channel when their show is over; a fan base shares, it comments, it curates, it creates.  

“An audience lives within your borders, and a fan base breaks those borders down.” 

The concept of fans, most notably “raving fans” has been kicking around the marketing world for a while. 

Difference now is that instead of merely “changing the channel” a fan base can easily create its own channel…and in the process, change the course of a business, a TV show, a brand or a reputation.

So this week’s lesson is a cautionary tale of power and change.

I would say that the shift will be so substantial that you won’t be able to recognize it, but given that it will most probably all be captured on video and shared, you may not see it coming…but you will most definitely see it.

What I Learned This Week—The Precarious Future of Voting

Well, cross another one off the bucket list, as last Monday I made my debut as a TV political commentator. (See photo above.)

The occasion was a momentous one—the most recent Quebec election, one which saw the governing PQ swept out by a massive Liberal tidal wave following a most unpleasant and dirty campaign.  My co-commentators were polar opposites—Peter Trent, Mayor of the upscale Montreal-area enclave called Westmount, and Gilles Duceppe, sovereignist hardliner and former head of the Bloc Quebecois—and sitting/bickering in between them was an emotion-filled blast. 

Given my career path and my reputation, the aforementioned gig seems strange and incongruous.  But those who know me know my political passion, especially these days as Quebec and Montreal try to redefine their places in a rapidly-changing world.  A frequent dinner guest is friend Mutsumi Takahashi, CTV’s long-time news anchor here, and after countless political chin-wags, she lobbied for me to take them off the dining room table and onto the airwaves.  We started with a weekly news segment that positioned me as a calmly-blustery businessman, and paid it all off with the election night free-for-all five weeks later. 

Now there were many lessons learned that night; mostly poli-sci macro lessons on the ineffectiveness of divisive, negative, campaigning and the collective want of all Quebecois for a stable government, social peace and increased prosperity.

But what was most fascinating for me was working with CTV’s team of “election experts,” a roving bunch of pollsters and mathematical geniuses who travel from province to province to nation’s capital every time the populace is put to a vote.  Even while I was eating dinner in the newsroom while the polls were still open, the team leader came over to me to show me why, statistically, the PQ couldn’t win.

So follow me on this for a bit, because the point still needs a few paragraphs of set-up. 

Just a few seconds before going to air, the team leader came over to our commentator’s desk, leaned in and said:

“It’s a Liberal win.  We’re going to be calling it in about 45 minutes, but we don’t know if it’s a minority or majority.  Just wanted you to know, but don’t give it away or be obvious about it.”

And then we were live. 

And we didn’t need 45 minutes, either.  A mere 18 minutes after going on air, CTV officially announced a Liberal victory; 19 minutes later, at the 36-minute mark, it was all over. 

Whopping majority, with the only question of “How big?” to be decided.

Given the early outcome, to kill time between our segments, we compared actual riding-by-riding results to a chart of predictions I had printed from the website tooclosetocall.ca.  Like a Canadian Nate Silver (he of fivethirtyeight.com fame, successfully forecasting the result of all 50 states in the last American Presidential race), blogger/statistician Bryan Breguet ran 5,000 simulations and came up with percentage-based positioning of all parties in all 125 ridings.  While he was far from Silver perfect, given the massive upset nature of the night’s vote, his calling 109 correctly was still impressive as hell.

So…here’s where I was going. 

Given the CTV team’s precision, given Breguet’s prognostication prowess, and given the fact that we had 3.5 hours of airtime to fill after the main question was answered (don’t worry, characters and conflict made for great TV all night long), I wondered to myself whether or not the entire voting process was outdated. 

Just before the election, I read an article about how governments are wary of the problems associated with the “next step” of elections, namely e-voting.  But my point goes further—given the accuracy of the simulations, polling and other mathematical tools, is a series of statistically-significant surveys enough to elect our next wave of public leaders?  In other words...

Do we need the laborious

process of voting at all?

Granted, things aren’t perfect yet.  Given the recent "surprise" election results in Alberta and BC, there is always the chance for errors and upsets.  But the “Dewey Defeats Truman”-level miscalculations are less and less likely, and given the rapid advance of computing and that each error only serves to make today’s predictive algorithms smarter, will a few thousand randomly-accessed people be all we need to decide our upcoming elections? 

Not right away, but what I gleaned on Monday night is that the day is not far off.  So this week’s learning, in keeping with this post’s theme, is more of a tomorrow prediction than a yesterday lesson, namely:

Brace yourself 

for a seismic shift 

as polls and simulations 

replace the ballot box 

in a decade-and-a-half. 

Hey Peter, Gilles…ready to regroup and have a go at this one?

What I Learned This Week—Dogs Are Animals, But People Are Pigs

I just returned from a most interesting walk with my two dogs where I was—or more specifically, they were—assailed for ruining the Spring season.

It happened a mere block away from my residence, near a grimy patch of exhaust-fume-encrusted snow upon which my male dog Rawqui (the caramel-colored one at right) decided to lift his hind leg and relieve himself.

A woman who was waiting for a bus at a stop adjacent to this scene looked at Rawqui with disgust and spit out the following:

“You dogs have ruined Spring for me!  When the snow melts, all I see and smell are piles of dogshit!  It’s disgusting!”

Both my dogs tilted their heads and looked at her most puzzlingly, perhaps not fully understanding her words, but able to at least cpomprehend they were coming from a raving kook.  And before I had a chance to collect my thoughts and respond in the witty, genteel manner for which I am renowned, the woman was saved by the bell by the arrival of her bus. 

Look, I’ve been a dog owner for 10 years, and I can empathize with the unsightly dog-generated mess and fumes that the advent of Spring can bring. 

But in the end, whom do you blame…the dogs, or the people that own and are presumably responsible for them? 

As far as I know, there are very few, if any, packs of wild dogs running loose and wreaking havoc anywhere near to where I live.  And if there are messes left by domesticated pet canine, it’s not the fault of the dogs, but the humans at the other end of the leash.  As smart as my dogs are, they have not mastered the art of toilet training or picking up after themselves.  For that, they rely on people like me. 

Over the decade with Rawqui and his “sister” Shaydee (the black-and-white one at left), I have taken thousands of walks, and I can count on one hand the times I did so without the requisite bags to pick up after them.  On those occasions, I improvised by stealing plastic bags that held advertising flyers, or looked around and used stray pieces of newspaper or Baggies that lay scattered about.

Therein lies my point:

Every time I was unprepared

to clean up a canine mess,

I relied on a human mess

to get me out of my jam. 

I live downtown smack-dab in the middle of Montreal, but I went through the exact same thing when I lived in Westmount, a community atop the city’s famed mountain.  There was never a shortage of garbage within eyesight. 

Let’s take this one step further.  Dog owners know that the two worst days for walking are January 1^st and March 18^th; New Year’s Day and the day after St. Patrick’s.  That’s when the sidewalks are splattered with puke from over-inebriated partygoers.  And if one man’s steak is another man’s poison, the equation works in reverse when it comes to dogs; I have Popeye-sized forearms from guiding my pets through the minefields of protein spills on those days. 

Even worse are the days

with no excuse…like the other

363 days of the year. 

Maybe this is a Montreal phenomenon—I would venture it’s not—but be they along a major downtown street or up in the residential areas, my dog walk routes are strewn with dog-treat debris like half-eaten slices of pizza, apple cores, banana peels, chicken legs and tons and tons of chewed gum…a buffet of disgust.  It’s astonishing.  Given the fact that there’s a garbage can on just about every street corner near me, or that most people have two hands and pockets, there’s no excuse.

Except that perhaps people don’t care.  Perhaps the concept of civic pride has, shall we say, gone to the dogs. 

So if you’re looking for the lesson of the week, it’s that Dogs may be animals…but people are pigs.

Uh...Happy Spring!