Terry Levine | Noggin Advertising | Copywriter | Digital + Direct Writer | Blogging | Toronto | Canada

SETH REBLOG: GETTING BETTER AT SEEING.

A giant pitfall in the way small companies and individuals market themselves, particularly online or in presentations, is that they're often cheesy, ugly or unreadable.

I don't think people deliberately set out to be ugly, but they end up that way. And a quick look at your own buying behavior should tell you that you don't often buy from the sketchy-looking sites, ads and media that are often pitched at you.

No, I think the problem is that people don't realize that their work is ugly. They don't see it. Just like the close-talker down the hall from your cube doesn't realize that he's a close-talker. I'm not talking about skill or talent or even guts. I'm talking about learning to see what others see.

John McWade taught me how to see. I'm not great at it, I'm certainly guilty of designing my own not-so-ideal materials. But the gap between the one-eyed man and the blind is pretty big.

It might take a few weeks of hard work to start to notice what looks right in the world (and why). I think it's worth it.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

NURSING SOME IDEAS.

I'm mulling over a couple of things I heard last night at my friend Catherine Demajo's panel discussion on How to Thrive in the Evolving Media Landscape.

One was an answer by panelist Jamie Schouela, VP Marketing and Strategy at Global TV, to a question about how to succeed in the new media environment. "Take risks," he said. Of course, it's not new or particularly original advice but it's still an important ingredient in succeeding. You can't reach the top of the mountain if you're afraid of climbing it.

The second was a discussion about how to plan a viral marketing campaign, the consensus being that you really can't. Viral is an end result, not a strategy. Mostly you have to create something that's effective and original and hope that it becomes viral with your audience. "Viral campaigns can't be replicated," Cloud's and The Hive's Sabaa Quao said and he's right.

The third bit floating around my head is from an aspiring professional blogger in the audience who was wondering why she wasn't getting the response or followers she needed to. She had apparently taken the kind of risks Schouela was talking about but those risks weren't paying off and she wanted to know how come?

In Chief Culture Officer, Grant McCracken writes:

"The secret of success is not 'bigger risks.' It is to harvest error, to take new risks more strategically.... Taking risks because they are risks is an abdication of managerial responsibility. Management can't be Darwinian. It's not a random evolutionary walk, searching for good options by exploring all the bad ones."

In other words, it's important to take risks but it's idiotic to take them blindly. To use my mountain-climbing example again, you don't just decide to climb a mountain one day. You train for it, you buy the proper equipment, you get a sherpa. 

So back to that professional blogger. I've always wanted to be a writer but somehow had enough common sense pretty early on to realize I wasn't going to make a living sitting at Starbucks writing a book that may or may never become a bestseller. I had to have a plan B -- or a plan A.1.

I too would love to make a living writing this blog. Who wouldn't? If I had a large enough audience to be able to sell advertising, I could work an hour a day on my blog and spend the rest of my days writing my book or getting manicures, great! But it ain't gonna happen. Or at least, I can't assume that it will. I write this blog primarily because I love expressing my ideas and hope others like reading about them on occasion. I'd love the blog to become viral, so I invest in some little things -- like tweeting and StumbleUponing and Facebooking my posts -- just in case. But I'm not holding my breath that I'm going to become the next Perez Hilton (gross) or Huffington Post.

In other words, blogging is a hobby, not a career, and should be treated as such. Sort of like how buying lottery tickets is a pastime, not an investment strategy.

You know?

 

SHOWING YOUR PRIVATES.

When Twitter first appeared it didn't grab my attention, mostly because of how it was described to me: "It's like Facebook status. You can tell anyone who's following you what you're doing right now." Huh? It was only after I started using it and realized that while, yes, some people were using Twitter for that inane and pointless purpose, a lot of Tweeters were using for something I found way more interesting: to exchange news, opinions and timely information with like- or opposing-minded people around the world.

When I started hearing about Foursquare, it also sounded more or less pointless: "It's like Twitter. You can check in wherever you are and let people know." Huh? I tried it out, hoping there was something more to it. But unlike Twitter, I could never figure out why this would catch on. Why would people be compelled to constantly sign on to Foursquare to let people know where they were? And wasn't this a little bit creepy? I've periodically signed on but within a few hours, Foursquare simply falls flat for me.

Well, a few weeks ago Facebook introduced "Places," which is an app that posts status messages telling friends exactly where you are. It's essentially Foursquare on Facebook. Actually, it's exactly Foursquare on Facebook, with the exception that you can also tag other Facebook friends who happen to be with you -- in essence making it as easy for stalkers to find them as they can you. While I have the same issues as to whether it serves any interesting, non-creepy purpose, at least in the case of Places, it's simply one additional feature on a service I already use. I don't have to sign on to Foursquare to announce my whereabouts; I can just post it while performing my various other pointless Facebook activities.

The most interesting part about Places has been the reactions from my Facebook friends. They've mostly gone something like this:

"I don't care where you are! Stop posting it!"

"Don't tag me, bro! I don't want people to know where I am!"

Apparently there is a limit to the information people want you to post about yourself or them online. Videos of cats on the piano or crying about Britney Spears: allowed. Status messages about your whereabouts: lame.

Seth Godin has his own take on the new age of non-privacy here.

M. NIGHT REGAINS HIS MOJO: 140 WORDS ON DEVIL

I was fully prepared to hate Devil. In fact, when I saw the trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller "with a tweest" back in July, I blogged about how everyone snickered when his name appeared on-screen.

But maybe M. Night has rediscovered his mojo. This wasn't a bad movie.

It wasn't great like The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable nor was it as monstrously bad as Signs or The Happening. And that's saying a lot considering how bad The Happening was.

As I've mentioned, devil movies -- good ones anyway -- creep me out. And this one managed to do it in spades. In fact, several times it felt like M. Night had channeled Hitchcock quite effectively. Just the way the opening credits were filmed upside down was positively chilling.

And it didn't hurt that Logan Marshall-Green is so dreamy.

THE PROBLEM WITH CUSTOMER ENTITLEMENT.

When JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater dramatically quit his job last August after a dispute with a demanding traveler, he garnered a lot of attention, and the follow-the-shiny-object media chattered for about a week about the epidemic of customer entitlement and obnoxiousness. But even if the media is now unsurprisingly onto something else, the problem hasn't gone away -- mainly because it's so widespread and ingrained in our North American culture.

And it really is a North American issue. A couple of years ago, on a trip to Paris, my partner and I were having a bitch of a time hailing a taxi to take us to a flea market on the outskirts of the city. When we finally snagged one and told the cabbie where we were headed his indignant response was "Mais non! If i take you all the way out there, how will I get a fare to get back?!" Seriously.

More recently, at a delicious crepe place here in Toronto, owned by (what else) a Parisian, I made the faux pas of asking the server if I could add some dill (available on the menu in other crepes) to my egg, spinach and cheese crepe. Her, yes, indignant response: "Well, I don't think that would taste very good." After staring her down for five seconds, she caved: "...but of course, we can certainly add it for you!" Merci.

Clearly service expectations are different on either side of the pond.

But while European businesses and employees may sometimes be extreme in their unhelpfulness, North American consumer expectations are completely and ridiculously off the charts in the opposite direction. We have become a culture of spoiled entitled brats. A few examples to illustrate the point:

In spite of my dill incident, I'm generally one to order from the menu presented to me. If I don't like olives or cilantro, I don't order the dish with olives or cilantro. But I have at least two friends who shall remain nameless who never fail to reinvent any dish they order. At one Italian restaurant I love, the menu clearly states "no substitutions" but apparently this doesn't apply to them. When the request is made, I find myself rooting for the server, waiting for her to remind my friend that the "computer says no."

My take on this is, unless the issue is medical -- like, say, an allergy -- I respect the choices the restaurant and the chef have made. If you want your own version of chicken carbonara, make it at home. While I'm here at this restaurant, I'm going to show a little respect and defer to the chef's expertise. That's what I'm paying for.

Same goes with conversations that go something like this:

Me: "What movie do you want to see tonight?"

Friend: "Oh, whatever you want. I'm open to anything."

Me: "Okay cool. I was thinking: Devil or The American."

Friend: "Oh, not into M. Night and I can't stand George Clooney."

Me: "Suggestion then?"

Friend: "No, no. It's up to you."

Errrrrrr.

But while I seem to be harping on consumer culture and personal relationships, the entitlement problem is as bad elsewhere, like in the corporate boardroom. As an experienced advertising creative type, I believe in presenting clients with a lot of well thought out options -- three to five concepts, sometimes five to ten headlines, that kind of thing. I do my homework, I spend a lot of time carefully thinking of the pros and cons of how something is communicated. Yet, no matter how many concepts are presented and how many headlines, the end product is too often a mush of what stakeholders A, B, C, D, E and F wanted. It's rare for a client to say, in essence, "We hired you because you're the communication expert here. Everything you presented ladders up to our brief, so we'll go with your recommendation, or we'll pick one of the concepts you've presented." 

I think this has happened twice in my 15 years in advertising. Like the diner or the traveler, clients say they're hiring you because you're the expert in communications or design yet they feel completely entitled to ignore that expertise and override it.

Everyone, in essence, is a writer, an art director, a chef -- even when they're not.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a big believer in consultation, dialogue, opinion, compromise. But, I think, when the menu is put in front of you -- or the creative brief -- the prep work has already been done. Put another way, when the gate is closed and you've boarded the plane and settled into the seat, it's not the time tell the flight attendant you don't like the view or need more room.

 

I HEART BILL MAHER WHO DOESN'T HEART RICH PEOPLE.

In an otherwise all-around crappy week, Bill Maher balanced things out a bit with his latest New Rule. (Bill, will you marry me? It can be a fake, sexless marriage like Tom Cruise's. Just marry me?)

New Rule: The next rich person who publicly complains about being vilified by the Obama administration must be publicly vilified by the Obama administration. It's so hard for one person to tell another person what constitutes being "rich", or what tax rate is "too much." But I've done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole.

And let's be clear: that's 3.6% only on income above 250 grand -- your first 250, that's still on the house. Now, this week we got some horrible news: that one in seven Americans are now living below the poverty line. But I want to point you to an American who is truly suffering: Ben Stein. You know Ben Stein, the guy who got rich because when he talks it sounds so boring it's actually funny. He had a game show on Comedy Central, does eye drop commercials, doesn't believe in evolution? Yeah, that asshole. I kid Ben -- so, the other day Ben wrote an article about his struggle. His struggle as a wealthy person facing the prospect of a slightly higher marginal tax rate. Specifically, Ben said that when he was finished paying taxes and his agents, he was left with only 35 cents for every dollar he earned. Which is shocking, Ben Stein has an agent? I didn't know Broadway Danny Rose was still working.

Ben whines in his article about how he's worked for every dollar he has -- if by work you mean saying the word "Bueller" in a movie 25 years ago. Which doesn't bother me in the slightest, it's just that at a time when people in America are desperate and you're raking in the bucks promoting some sleazy Free Credit Score dot-com... maybe you shouldn't be asking us for sympathy. Instead, you should be down on your knees thanking God and/or Ronald Reagan that you were lucky enough to be born in a country where a useless schmuck who contributes absolutely nothing to society can somehow manage to find himself in the top marginal tax bracket.

And you're welcome to come on the show anytime.

Now I can hear you out there saying, "Come on Bill, don't be so hard on Ben Stein, he does a lot of voiceover work, and that's hard work." Ok, it's true, Ben is hardly the only rich person these days crying like a baby who's fallen off his bouncy seat. Last week Mayor Bloomberg of New York complained that all his wealthy friends are very upset with mean ol' President Poopy-Pants: He said they all say the same thing: "I knew I was going to have to pay more taxes. But I didn't expect to be vilified." Poor billionaires -- they just can't catch a break.

First off, far from being vilified, we bailed you out -- you mean we were supposed to give you all that money and kiss your ass, too? That's Hollywood you're thinking of. FDR, he knew how to vilify; this guy, not so much. And second, you should have been vilified -- because you're the vill-ains! I'm sure a lot of you are very nice people. And I'm sure a lot of you are jerks. In other words, you're people. But you are the villains. Who do you think outsourced all the jobs, destroyed the unions, and replaced workers with desperate immigrants and teenagers in China. Joe the Plumber?

And right now, while we run trillion dollar deficits, Republicans are holding America hostage to the cause of preserving the Bush tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest 1% of people, many of them dead. They say that we need to keep taxes on the rich low because they're the job creators. They're not. They're much more likely to save money through mergers and outsourcing and cheap immigrant labor, and pass the unemployment along to you.

Americans think rich people must be brilliant; no -- just ruthless. Meg Whitman is running for Governor out here, and her claim to fame is, she started e-Bay. Yes, Meg tapped into the Zeitgeist, the zeitgeist being the desperate need of millions of Americans to scrape a few dollars together by selling the useless crap in their garage. What is e-Bay but a big cyber lawn sale that you can visit without putting your clothes on?

Another of my favorites, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said, "I don't know where they're going to get all this money, because we're running out of rich people in this country." Actually, we have more billionaires here in the U.S. than all the other countries in the top ten combined, and their wealth grew 27% in the last year. Did yours? Truth is, there are only two things that the United States is not running out of: Rich people and bullshit. Here's the truth: When you raise taxes slightly on the wealthy, it obviously doesn't destroy the economy -- we know this, because we just did it -- remember the '90's? It wasn't that long ago. You were probably listening to grunge music, or dabbling in witchcraft. Clinton moved the top marginal rate from 36 to 39% -- and far from tanking, the economy did so well he had time to get his dick washed.

Even 39% isn't high by historical standards. Under Eisenhower, the top tax rate was 91%. Under Nixon, it was 70%. Obama just wants to kick it back to 39 -- just three more points for the very rich. Not back to 91, or 70. Three points. And they go insane. Steve Forbes said that Obama, quote "believes from his inner core that people... above a certain income have more than they should have and that many probably have gotten it from ill-gotten ways." Which they have. Steve Forbes, of course, came by his fortune honestly: he inherited it from his gay egg-collecting, Elizabeth Taylor fag-hagging father, who inherited it from his father. Of course then they moan about the inheritance tax, how the government took 55% percent when Daddy died -- which means you still got 45% for doing nothing more than starting out life as your father's pecker-snot.

We don't hate rich people, but have a little humility about how you got it and stop complaining. Maybe the worst whiner of all: Stephen Schwarzman, #69 on Forbes' list of richest Americans, compared Obama's tax hike to "when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Wow. If Obama were Hitler, Mr. Schwarzman, I think your tax rate would be the least of your worries.

SELFLESSNESS.

Often while I'm out and about, I look around at the teeming humanity muddling around or behind the wheel of their cars and it hits me that each one of these people is thinking his own thoughts at that very moment. Each is worried about his job, his failing relationship, being late for his daughter's parent-teacher interview, the pain in his foot. Each and every one of these people is having completely discrete thoughts from the ones I'm having, also at that very moment. Sometimes it blows my mind.

It may sound pretty obvious, I know. But I think sometimes we forget. We lose sight of the fact that no matter what's vitally important to us, there are about seven billion people who really couldn't care less. They've got their own selfish concerns to worry about.

The funny thing about humans is that, in spite of all the stuff we're so self-absorbed about, very often we do care about others and it's probably that selflessness that truly makes us who we are. Even if it's not in our direct and personal interest, we stop to tell a person that his shoelace is untied, we donate money to folks in need halfway around the world, we make a sacrifice for someone simply because we love them.

It's amazing how really little one has to do to make another person happy. And it's equally amazing how often it never happens.

SETH REBLOG: THE POWER OF BUTTONS AND BEING NORMAL

Taxi drivers in New York were worried about adding credit cards to their cabs. The fee (5% or so) would cost them too much, they said.

It turns out that tips are up, way up. They're actually making far more money now.

Why? Because most of the machines offer a shortcut for the tip: $2, $3 or $4.

You can decide to be a cheapskate and hit the $2 button. Except...

Except that if you had paid cash, you probably would have tipped 75 cents for that $4.25 ride. It takes a few more clicks to type in 75 cents, and hey, $2 is the lowest and it's a more 'normal' amount.

It's a three second decision that happens over and over. People really like cues.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

This is so true.

SETH REBLOG: NEW IS NOT FOR EVERYONE.

"I need you to see things my way"

 

And that's the frustration of the marketer or the artist who hasn't figured out how to navigate critics and the marketplace.

If you need the validation and acceptance and patronage of everyone you meet, you'll get stuck, and soon. Everyone isn't going to get it. Everyone isn't even going to get you, never mind what you sell.

Experienced marketers and artists and those that make change understand that the new is not for everyone. In fact, it's not even for most people. Pass them by. They can catch up later.

It's not a referendum, and you don't need a unanimous vote of acclamation. No, you merely need enough to stay in business, to keep moving, to make a dent. And then your idea can spread.

If the kids in the back of the bus/audience/store don't get it (or don't get you) it's their loss. Focus on those that want to celebrate the work you do instead.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

 

HE SHOOTS, HE FAILS: 140 WORDS ON SCORE: A HOCKEY MUSICAL

There are no more tired stereotypes about Canada than hockey and winter. (If you're from Quebec, you're also forced to endure a third -- the everpresent joie de vivre that apparently all Québécois embody while eating poutine and drinking Pepsi.)

So when I sat down to watch Score: A Hockey Musical opening night at the Toronto International Film Festival, I was already annoyed. The only saving grace, I thought, might be the seemingly original musical twist from writer and director Michael McGowan.

It didn't help.

As I fidgeted through the maple-syrupy grade 3 lyrics, I couldn't help wondering how anyone who's sat through, say, The Sound of Music or Moulin Rouge or even Glee could call this a musical with a straight face. In fact, could this pass for a musical anywhere other than the land of hockey and winter?

Not a chance, eh.