Information Squid

If you write a book called Personality Not Included (Amazon link), you’d better include your own personality in its pages. Rohit Bhargava has definitely succeeded in that - and in writing an entertaining book with some serious advice about how companies can attract customers.

First the disclaimer: I enjoy Rohit’s blog, and I met Rohit at (and got my copy of the book in the swag from) Blogger Social earlier this month, so I’m predisposed to like it. In addition, Rohit ran a brainstorming breakfast there around ideas for marketing the book, which was a lot of fun - and an excuse to visit Greenwich Village - so I was invested in the book’s success before reading a word of it.

However, I’m sure I’d have enjoyed Personality Not Included if I’d picked it up because of the chickens on the cover. It’s written conversationally, more in the style of a blog than a formal business book, and it includes stories from a wide range of industries to illustrate its points. The main chapters are a smart description of why facelessness used to be an advantage, why it isn’t now, and how you can reform your company.

One of the best things about Personality Not Included is the footnotes. Again probably influenced by blogging, Rohit has included references to other books, magazines, and blogs where they’re related to his points, not just in a bibliography at the end. He’s willing to be the authority for some ideas but to send readers elsewhere when it will benefit us to hear from someone else. And good number of the footnotes are funny asides that make him seem like a real person, perfectly demonstrating how sounding authentic gains the sympathy of a customer.

The part I’m expecting to be most helpful to me is the Techniques, a list of ten “stylized ways of marketing” that can show off your organization’s personality, including Participation Marketing, Insider Marketing, and Useful Marketing. None of the techniques is a new idea, but it’s great to be able to run down the list and think “Would that suit this next campaign?” for each one. Each includes a “step by step” section as well as examples. Bonus techniques will be posted on the book website soon, and I’ll be keeping the list close to hand.

On the other hand, I’m not really sold on the Guides & Tools, the last 50 pages of the book. Too much of that seemed repeated from the chapters - though that may be by design, as the Note to the Reader at the beginning of the book suggests you don’t have to read from front to back but can skip around. The Guides & Tools do expand on the earlier material; I was just hoping for more concrete advice (maybe a blog series on rewriting backstories?). The chapter five set on Beating Roadblocks is the exception, with excellent suggestions.

This book is written for people who want their organizations not to be ordinary. As it says, “There are millions of profitable, ordinary businesses around the world.” But ordinary businesses are vulnerable to extraordinary ones, and extraordinary businesses are the ones with a “soul of your brand that people can get passionate about,” a personality. If you aspire to be loved and not just profitable, you’d be smart to pick up Personality Not Included.

I’ll be going to Blogger Social in New York in a week, and in preparation I’ve been reading (and helping write) Steve Woodruff’s series of Socialite profiles. Now, for easy downloading, here are:

The 48-page full-size PDF (5MB) and the booklet PDF (4.8MB).

The booklet (courtesy of my new software toy CocoaBooklet) can be printed double-sided and stapled in the middle to make a cute little pocketable guide.

Enjoy!

My company just evolved into Amplify Public Affairs (haven’t yet changed the rest of this site; I’ll get to it). I was involved with parts of setting up the new website, but the name doesn’t just need to change there.

I’ve updated LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger Relations (the company blog), and I’m sure I’m still missing other profiles. (I need a list.)

It’s not just about your website anymore, and in my case my website will actually be one of the later things to update: more people will see the change on social networks than on this site. The site will be updated soon because it’s a more permanent (and in some cases more public) record, but it’s not the most important thing to bring current - it wouldn’t be even if it got a lot more traffic. The vital thing to change is the message at points of contact: sites and services where others interact with me.

Google doesn’t yet realize the new Amplify site exists. If all my coworkers link to it from their various profiles, it’ll be much harder to miss. Our influence can be greater because it’s spread across the web.

http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/

Looking nice in every browser is, of course, appreciated.

Jeremiah Owyang (of Web Strategy by Jeremiah) comments on Twitter: “users dont want to pay fofr social networks. thus the need for monetizations…enter advertisements”.

Users don’t want to pay for anything, but that doesn’t mean nothing is ever paid for. Still, it’s particularly challenging to charge for social networks. They’re all scrambling for users, because the network effect ensures that larger networks will grow more quickly. Charging users reduces the number who’ll sign up, the number who’ll tell their friends to join, and your network’s attractiveness to potential acquirers.

So how can you charge for a social network? The usual way: you don’t have the most users, you have the most relevant users. It’s the same strategy used by business schools (a lot of whose value is in who you meet) and professional societies (where you can learn from others and be seen as a leader in your field). You’re paying to join a particular social network (in the offline sense) because the others in it are people you want to know. Oh, and there are some other benefits like classes, conferences, etc. The Well has had essentially this business model for years.

On the other hand, creating a network of most relevant people also works extremely well if you’re selling advertising. Look at ModelsHotel, a selective “gated community” for models from top agencies, profiled in the Wall Street Journal and then on TechCrunch in September. As the Journal says, “It’s this promise of exclusivity that is drawing sponsors to the site. Among its high-profile marketing partners: eccentric fashion design house Heatherette, Diesel jeans and luxury jeweler Piaget.”

So the upshot? Make your social network either big or specific, and specific is a whole lot easier to pull off. If you can get the right people to feel invested in your site, if you can grow a community, then yes, you can charge for access to that community. It’s up to you whether you charge the participants directly or take their time with (hopefully ever more relevant) ads - but I’m hoping in the current ad-a-minute glut that more places will opt to ask for my money instead of my eyeballs.

ETA: Jeremiah asks how much would you pay for a social networking service; Business Week discusses social networking with the elite.

ETA 2: Washington Post article says Online Networking Goes Small, and Sponsors Follow, 12/29/2007

My first post on my company’s blog: User Diaries in Community Software.

Bathroom blogging at Diva Marketing - when was the last time you thought about “the importance of bathrooms in the customer experience”? And how often do you judge an organization on its hygiene factors because they haven’t even gotten the basics right? When we clean up our acts, the bathrooms are a good place to start.

Humans networking - a presentation making the point that B2B marketing is about convincing people, and so is an excellent fit for social media efforts. More interesting than the presentation was where some of its insights came from: Greg Verdino used his own online resources to ask his network for their ideas.

What Jeremiah Owyang has learned in a month as an analyst - purely because of the quote at the end, “it’s just amazing that it can take nearly 24 months for work to come to fruition.” The web makes timelines shorter (i.e. Marc Andreessen’s comment on serial entrepreneurship, “when you start company #2 you can assume that it won’t necessarily consume the next 10-20-30 years of your life — you can probably build something successful over say 5 years, maybe 8 years max, and so you’re not committing the rest of your life.”), but sometimes it’s amazing just how much shorter.

In Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger’s thesis is that digital objects aren’t stuck with one type of organization. Instead of an item being on one particular shelf in a given store, items can be found by many different characteristics. Last weekend I was reminded that’s one reason I rarely shop in physical stores - but the online ones haven’t solved my problems either.

I was in Macy’s, looking for a coat. Since it’s fall, I’d have expected there to be an outerwear section in the store where I could look at all the possibilities. No such luck. Instead the coats were scattered by designer: a clerk explained that the Ralph Lauren coats are over here, the Nautica ones are over there, and there are a few more scattered on the floor.

Certainly that can be the right organization. If I’m shopping for myself, I often look first at brand, then color, then size. But in this case, when I wanted an overview of all the options within a particular category, the fact that the store hadn’t sorted by that category made it nearly impossible to shop effectively.

At macys.com, I can see all the coats. Sorting by type of apparel is even listed in the left navigation above sorting by brand - bricks-and-mortar stores, take note. Once I’m looking at coats, I can narrow my view further by brand. Some stores (i.e. Nordstrom) will let me sort by brand also, so I can still see everything but can easily compare within each line. But I’m still not happy with my shopping experience.

Why? I still haven’t seen a department store that will let me search only for “brands I wear”. Simple customization, right? Checkboxes in my profile when I register, and if I’ve filled out that section, offer me a personalized search. Then the store can also target its email marketing to me, meaning I’ll enjoy receiving useful emails (branding) and will buy some of the “five Nine West items on sale in our shoe department!” (direct response). Is anyone out there doing this? Am I just not registered at the right online stores?

There are advantages to being famous. Not many bands can challenge the whole worldview of the music industry with one act. Radiohead is releasing their new album in a rather unusual way: as a digital download for which fans can choose their own price. They’ll certainly undercut piracy. They’ve gotten plenty of press attention. But they won’t be succeeding because they’re famous. This will work because the internet is still psychologically a gift economy. If we find your contribution valuable, we want to give in return.

Jonathan Coulton can make $3000-5000 a month with a website that explains

There are lots of ways to get music from me, whether you’re a cyborg from the future with an iPod in your skull, or a little old granny in Idaho with nothing but an antique “CD Player.” Lots of it is freely available depending on how technical you are - you can get all of it for free if you really try. But please remember I do make a living this way, so you like what you hear I’d certainly appreciate you throwing a little payment or donation my way. If you can’t afford it, for goodness sake please send copies of everything to all of your friends.

John Scalzi wrote a novel to prove he could and then decided to post it online. The Agent to the Stars introduction says: “People could read it, and if they liked it, they could send me a dollar, or whatever sum they liked (even if that sum was zero). If they didn’t like it, well, clearly, they wouldn’t have to send me anything.” He made about $4000 over six years, and today the introduction says, “I’m no longer soliciting a dollar if you enjoy the novel; the story has long since proved its worth in that respect.”

So you don’t have to be famous to survive on voluntary contributions. You just have to be a little bit famous. You have to have fans who not only will give you money for your creations but also will spread the word. The free sample that proves someone should buy is the entire work. Not so different from a book sitting out on a bookstore shelf.

Interestingly, according to Charlie Stross, in the old shareware scene they expected about a 4% registration rate out of the people who downloaded software. According to his sales increase after Accelerando was posted online, about 3-4% of the people who downloaded it then went and bought a copy (Time Traveller Show, 4/22/07: Stross, Scalzi and Buckell on International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day). In this case the audience demographics are probably similar (others might vary considerably); opportunities change, people’s willingness to give back doesn’t.

ETA: Wired’s take on Jonathan Coulson and giving music away, 10/12/2007

ETA part 2: NYTimes on how creating and releasing the album affected the band, 12/9/2007

ETA part 3: Wired interview with David Byrne and Thom Yorke, 12/18/2007

Back to main AEAChicago2007 post

located a mile and a half directly east of here
colocated with 37Signals
create names and identities, ad campaigns, short files, tv
	commercials, package design
for their own businesses and for others
many people have private projects that we have enthusiasm and
	passion for
and also 9-5 jobs where we have bosses and clients that we have
	less passion for
so how can you get passion into client work and pragmatism into
	personal projects?
spent night worrying about microformats - no, drinking with others
one bridge is craft
becoming better typographers, filmmakers, writing clean code,
	learning about pre-press
all that translates from work to personal projects and vice versa
learn things that are both related and unrelated in the two arenas
Coudal is in many senses a very traditional design company, and
	in others totally bizarre and new
curiousity got them into this position
1959 C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures lecture/book: growing divide
	between art and science
specialization and people being stuck in roles
so much information necessary: all your brainpower devoted to
	being a thermal engineer
humanity is worse off for the loss of the generalist
for today, define the gap as between designers and programmers
also between clients and creatives
what's the one reason he's all over the place?
their voracious and extremely short attention spans
filmmaker who works for Coudal has series called Regrets
"whereas a normal person would see a bird and say "oh look, a
	bird," then go back to their life"
"find a good spot to watch spastic rocks"
*** find this. no really.
for him, it's the discovery that's important. "ooh, headphones!"
it's not necessarily a negative to have a short attention span
when you bail on something, you create room for more enthusiasm
if you can manage that enthusiasm, you can do amazing things
"This all might be a big rationalization for the fact that I can
	never finish anything."
last winter someone called and said they'd made a new print of
	Days of Heaven
new Criterion Collection DVD coming out
showing new print at Music Box on north side
"people are talking really good eavesdropping stuff"
they're the kind of conversations that you never have
went out for a drink and started talking about way to develop
	business idea
show these very accessible American films that you almost never
	see projected - Chinatown, The Godfather, Days of Heaven,
series of Tuesday nights, meet at bar afterward, website with links
	and short essay
get back to studio and everybody's enthusiastic
start doing research - spreadsheet for cost of space, getting print
start designing an identity - "Projective, I'm in the dark"
and then client thing bursts into flames, and then swapmeet, and
	then something else
eventually Projective is like in Tupperware at the back of the
	refrigerator
sounds like a story about a failure, or at least a waste of time,
	but really a great success story
"we learned all kinds of crap that we didn't know before."
sharpened business skills
got to design a logo with no client, so that was worth the whole
	thing right there
and all that knowledge is going to show up somewhere else
so how do you get some of that into your day-to-day business?
basic concept at Coudal is very subtractive
get together, talk about it, do research, argue, start throwing
	things away until we're done
best way to find answer is like peeling the onion
	(remove everything not the statue)
going to use logo design as an example
pretty smart but don't often hit a home run instantly
some Japanese designer, very famous, old, tons of corporate
	identities in Japan
has 12 junior designers who work with him, each gives him
	12 ideas
goes to meeting with client and displays all 144
says "This is the work we've done for you." then takes out
	145th and says "And this is your logo."
which he has designed
can't build a company based on design director getting a
	brainwave at a toll booth
don't have too many meetings, marketing speak, employee
	handbook, vacation policy
but need process, procedures that help maximize that
	spur-of-the-moment brilliance
capturing "wouldn't it be cool if" ideas
use a metaphor for process, like roads
assuming have to struggle through, do the research and get up
	to speed quickly
	the one skillset you have working for clients that can be most
		beneficial working for yourself
	is the ability to learn quickly, get up to speed
get up to speed, talk a little, work to get 10-11 ideas
not sketches, pretty fully formed, but not complete
works well for logos and names
some are expected probably, some innovative, some derivative,
	some from left field
then sit down with client and go through it all and talk
educating the client how got to where we are at the same time
	as plumbing for interpretations
want to get the most sunlight on the most concepts we're
	interested in, especially weird ones
also do meeting to get rid of most of them. get rid of 7, now have 5.
now try to get out of sterile environment of presentation board
Photoshop onto billboard, put on t-shirt, etc.
get client back in, talk about these five, open for a late arrival,
	get it down to 2.
then do again and get down to 1.
advantage is have opportunity to have most interesting ideas
	see the most light
other advantage is client is in boat when leave the harbor
like what Jeffrey was talking about
client has helped make all the decisions with us
so very rare get to end of road and have to restart
not a trick, a collaboration
nothing will kill your revenue like doing jobs twice
next way to get spur of moment into designs is to rip off designs
unless your a student, then you have to be your own professor
"we value, above all else, we value taste"
above technical ability, speed, amiability, cuteness
can teach anything but taste
need to look at two things and know which is better
not enough to just know, need to investigate why you feel that way
great way to investigate is to rip off the design - recreate, remake it
reason you're doing it is not to take advantage, but when you
	remake, you talk to the maker
it's also another skill, you understand that poster in a way that's
	much more real
in web design particularly appropriate, because web site is art
	and view source is science
so easy to see how people have done things
if you think all websites look the same, same is true of other
	genres ('50s fashion magazines)
"I like the way he did that" and change it to work for me
we are getting more specialized and also getting more insulated
you might work by yourself, even if you're in a cubicle
or you're at your house, or in a distributed corporation, or in
	very small teams
power of adult conversation cannot be overemphasized
easy to get caught up in details and dead ends when by yourself
	without serendipitous conversation
at Coudal, conference room B is actually the bar down the street
don't get so tangled up in yourself
last part is do the work. don't talk it to death.
have to understand how to set a headline, whatever it is.
while you're doing the work, you can find inspiration, whether
	work or personal project
perhaps you could avoid that by coming up with buzzwords
Coudal video about Agency.com video to try for the Subway account
buzzwords like "activate their customers" -> sandwiches are awful
Agency.com video is linked on Coudal's site
if the RFP is more than two pages, we don't respond. Happy Cog
	maybe goes to five.
if they spent all that time, prorated cost by sending it to everyone
when we evaluate whether to take the job, ask three questions
1. Are we going to be able to make money? (not always required,
	but usually)
2. Are we going to be proud of the work?
3. Are we going to learn something new along the way?
career as continuing education
most of the time, the learning question is required.
can also use own personal projects to learn about corporate
	work and vice versa
made short film to be shown to five people in a boardroom -
	looking for a licensing deal
involved buying every single cocktail umbrella in the Chicago area
could do anything we wanted if communicated what they wanted
	communicated
fascinated by Apple Mac commercials - not because love John
	Hodgeman or hate PCs (though both are true)
love background - antiseptic but warm white
so made film using that idea
have done a lot of things on coudal.com - contests, blogging, etc.
used those ideas on client sites
one other chasm: between people who write the words and people
	who design the layouts
Copy Goes Here video - new copywriter teaches coworkers to read
	and is let go
fun, got attention
don't often show to audience who get the Paul Rand and CMYK jokes