I should've worn the mask

This week, I’ve spent nine hours in meetings preparing for a presentation…in which I was alloted one minute and thirty six-seconds (00:01:36) to speak.

I’m out of words now…

flairification is the latest addition to this little of blog consortium I’ve been building over the last year or so.

Here is the rundown:

wholebrevitything.com – just one dude’s slice of life.
extraawesome.com – my collection of cool found on the interwebs.
adfeed.extraawesome.com – OPP (other people’s posts) about advertising.
flairification.com – truth well flaired: a place where I can write about advertising, thereby saving wholebrevitything from shop talk.

I hope flairification turns into a place where lots of folks can post, and add thier perspective on advertising. Like SB’s appreciation of Target’s latest 30 second spot. So feel free to be a guest writer of the flair.

It’s after 3AM now, and I’m out of words…

One thing I’m really digging about these Olympics is the musical taste of the folks at GM and Nike.

Silversun Pickups. The Killers. Brandi Carlisle. Marvin Gaye… Well done folks. Very well done.

Nike – Courage – long (2008) :60 (USA)

GM – Shiny, Blue & Beautiful (2008) :60 (USA)

I’m a sucker, I just conect with the music, I guess. If you like the tunes, you may or may not find the songs…

…here. Enjoy.

Nike – Courage featuring The Killers’ All These Things That I’ve Done
GM – Shiny, Blue & Beautiful featuring Brandi Carlisle’s The Story

I’m out of words now…

I’m very sad to report that the employees at the main office do not have the same passion for their work as their counterparts at the legendary dinner theaters… NOT ONE person was in costume!

However, there was a knight in the reception area, and just maybe there was a dude in all of that metal.

I’m out of words now…

At the house where the dude abides, we are in the heat of the mow-ment. Yesterday’s bush-whacking welcomed me with 100+ degrees of love and affection.

As I’ve said before, I learn a lot from lawn care. It’s definitely not the pacing back and forth that molds my mind, it is the company that I keep on this journey to and fro. Summer school is back in session for the dude. …

More to the point, the first semester of Briggs and Stratton University’s summer term has wrapped. The recently completed course work focused on my current major: Commercial Persuasion. There were 21 hours of lecture in all, and for the most part, that time flew by.

The first eight hours were dedicated to Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.” I’ll admit, that I’m about two years late to the Long Tail party, but I’m glad that I finally journeyed down this trail blazed by Wired’s Anderson. Much like Freakonomics and Blink, The Long Tail is a book that is not easily categorized. It could easily find itself at home in the Cultural Anthropology or Business/Marketing section of your local Barnes and Noble.

There are many things that I could say about this book, but this is what resonated with me the most: This book provides a lens that allows the reader to see markets and societies as complex inter-woven independent tribes that are brought together by common interests and values. These tribes are born out of “and” not “or”, meaning there are significant amounts of overlap among these indie, affinity-based groups. I think “mainstream” is becoming no more. I highly recommend The Long Tail.

The next five hours of enlightenment were guided by Seth Godin and his “Meatball Sundae.” Seth was the first author with whom I identified when I became a marketer. Here’s why: Seth is smart, and he thinks that people are smart, too. He’s against black hat marketing (lying about bad products so that suckers will be duped into buying junk) and he serves as a great advocate for authentic storytelling.

Meatball Sundae is an excellent primer on the “new” marketing. Very early on in this book Seth clarifies life Before, During and After advertising. To be clear, we now live in a time After Advertising. To read free samples of this book, follow this link.

The final eight hours of lecture were delivered by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff via “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.” Admittedly, ownership of this book puts me in a very small circle of friends… a circle with a lot of pocket-protectors and red, Swingline staplers.

Over the last three months, I have given away more than a dozen copies of Groundswell. Way more. For me, this book is like cheating. Case studies, practical applications and road-tested theories are the backbone of this book. There is jargon, and considering that the book was published by Harvard Business School Press, it can leave some folks behind, but for the most part this book will open the eyes of business leaders to the opportunities that are bouncing all over the internets.

Following an hour long tour of Audible’s library, I have chosen the next 18 hours of lecture for my second semester: “Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You” by Sam Gosling and “Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are” by Rob Walker. Both of these books are fresh releases, May and June 2008 respectively, and after a few more miles across my yard, hopefully I’ll be able to share some of their insights.

Finally… I’m out of words now…

While baking through a little lawnwork today… and when i say little, i mean four hours in 100 degree heat… I realized that mowing my yard has advanced my career in a huge way. It’s not the immediate satisfaction of seeing instant progress, it’s the time with my iPod.

I’ve always listened to something while mowing, when I was 14 it was Joshua Tree, 17 the Mighty Lemon Drops. Then there was a blessed seven-year hiatus from yardwork until i owned my own house in 1997, and from then until just a couple of years ago, sports talk-radio was my overheated companion. I guess I need something to help me pass the time.  …

Now it’s audiobooks. Apple has made a lot of life easier for me, and learning, may just be the best. Here is a sampling of some of the books that have altered my mind recently:

The World is Flat
All Marketers Are Liars
Re-Imagine Business
Small Is The New Big
The Big Moo
Blink
The Tipping Point
Freakonomics

Today, I began my second tour through Freakonomics, and I have to say, It’s one of the most fascinating reads (listens) I’ve ever had. If you have any interest in sociology, or why people do what they do, then this is a must be read. Mind-altering is truly an appropriate description.

Taking the time to engage these books has helped this proud owner of a B.A. in History to navigate the business world just a bit better. And, become a little more knowledgeable about things other than the benefits of the 3-4 defense.

I’m out of words now.

I’m out of words now.

I’m out of words now.

A decade ago I began reading  Fast Company magazine. Rolling Stone was much more in my mode of thought, but I found it lying around the gym one day, and I was completely drawn in by the insight and wit that consistently ran through the pages. Fast Company introduced me to a new distant-mentor, Seth Godin. His words and shared ideas have inspired me to think… think in ways that are not in line with conventional wisdom, yet they totally make sense. Tonight, Seth has inspired me again…

I just finished his mammoth (76 tiny pages) The Dip. All Marketers Are Liars has been my favorite of Seth’s books, and it still is, but this short sweet diatribe has a highly-valued place as well. The message – in your career, quit or be the best – those are the only two worthwhile options that you have. It may sound brutal or overly simplistic, but the concept resonates.

I’m out of words now.

As an Interactive Producer, it is my job to help people communicate. The message may be deep / brief / large-audience / silly / etc. You get the idea… the message could be anything, the challenge is shaping it to be received well by the intended audience. And if the message is delivered well, then hopefully a conversation will ensue as the audience responds, and ideas / loyalty / relationships are shared.

You know what, it’s a great gig. If you are a friend of mine, you could attest to the fact that I can be a bit chatty. I’m not ashamed, I like stories and odds are that on any given day I may share 37 of them, give or take twenty.

This week, two terrific articles on communicating well via the web have been passed on to me, and true to form, I’m blabbing about them here. …

I’ll begin with the article that Duke, a brilliant Experience Architect (he told me not to call him an Information Architect anymore), sent me this afternoon. The article is about amazing ways to visualize data. He is an expert in this field, and if it moved Duke enough to pass it on to me, I thought it would be worth my time to read it.

Data visualization may seem like an obscure Advanced Physics pre-req, but actually it’s a part of your everyday life. Highway signs, magazine articles, convenience store shelves, they are all examples of how information is put together to so that the user can make quick, informed decisions. Check out the link. You’ll dig it, and if you don’t, then feel free to call me a Nerd for thinking so.

The second article that I want to pass along was shared by The Short Fat Kid. The article is about words. Beautiful, meaningful words. Some time back the idea was adopted that the words used on the web should be quick and dirty… Not that kind of dirty.

Momentum was built around this line of thought for two reasons. First, speed was king. No malice was intended. It was believed to serve the reader best to be brief, and be done. Second, and this is just a shame, is because the words on the web were not crafted by gifted writers, rather they were assembled by programmers or whoever else in the office had time to help out.

Read the article. You’ll be encouraged that there are people out there that believe that you are intelligent, and that you can be moved by beauty.

I’m out of words now.

We finally launched North Little Rock’s new site. Search for a restaurant… Find an art gallery… And, oh yeah, we’ve got a submarine. The fellas worked hard, and I am very proud of them. I am also very tired.

I am out of words now.

(i found this via the incredible swissmiss.)

I am out of words now.

I am beyond jealous… beyond envious… and it’s all my fault. Last week I stumbled across a blurb on ilounge about a weekend hack-a-thon in San Francisco dedicated to the iPhone. It looked like something that at least one person from my team needed to be a part of. A bunch of geeks breaking open the iPhone and developing web-apps and sites that would function well in the mobile environment. (and with that note, most everyone reading this just left the page.)

I asked Adam if he was free for a working-weekend trip to San Francisco… As you can imagine he was. I mean, my mom would go to this shindig if it meant a trip to San Francisco, never mind that there will be more lightsabers there than at one of my son’s summer sleepovers.

So Adam said yes, the powers-that-be at work approved the expense and Adam registered for the event.

Then, the event took off…. heavy sponsorship has rolled in to provide food and swag… Apple folks are going to be there to interact with these hackers… that’s crazy enough, but what’s killing me is that this geek-together is going to be hosted at Adobe. THE ADOBE! If you are not a creative, lemme ‘splain, this would be like Porche hosting an event for people who like to work on cars… Like Schlitz hosting a convention of NASCAR aficionados.

I… I…. I….. I am out of words now.

Last week, the PRSA (Little Rock Chapter) held its monthly luncheon, and a friend from work invited me to be one of her twenty-or-so guests. I am glad that she did. Thanks Brandi.

Adam Broitman came to town to discuss the way buzz is buzzed these days. Though Adam’s message (listen to it here) was brief, it was a potent sermon on the value of interaction in communication. And since advertising is my J-O-B, I need to learn as much as I can about communicating well.

I am out of words now.

For Creatives, it is mandated that we communicate creatively. It’s not a requirement written in a job description, it’s a need that lives in the soul. Sometimes the concept is too creative, and that’s cool, because if all ideas are accepted, then the work is acceptable. We don’t want to be acceptable. We want to be remarkable.

Ramble, ramble, ramble, I think that I am using up all of my words, here. What I am getting to is this: Whenever a creative sells a concept to a client or AE we go through a rationale, pre-sell, explanation about why the concept is the best one in the world and why no other creative concept could possibly be as excellent as the one that – through hours and hours of “online research”, Project Runway/UFC channel-surfing, Cap’n Crunch-eating, mental olympics caused by fear of derivation, next best-thinging and sometimes costume wearing – we have just given birth too! Hallelujah… Holy Sh@%… Where’s The Tylenol.!?!?

But, like I said, sometimes we can be too creative. For the folks who have a hard time understanding how a creative piece is going to sell their product, Diablog Cafe has created the Account Man Pop-Up to give the audience the unbelievably obvious translation that they may need. It’s brilliant. Enjoy.

I’m out of words now.