Over the weekend, I attended one of the most unique and fun events I’ve experienced here in Durham. Luchadoras II, held at Motorco Music Hall, saw eight of the finest masked female athletes east of the Mississippi do battle with each other to raise funds for a good cause. Rather than try to describe the excitement and fun of it all, here’s a little video I created.
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(This post was inspired by Steve Jobs, whose 2005 Stanford commencement speech fueled my decision to strike out on my own and pursue my dream of entrepreneurship and creating beauty and whose decision to step down as CEO of Apple has sent ripples through the worlds of business and technology)
Years ago, I gave my sister an iPod inscribed with those exact words on the back as a graduation gift. It was a rhetorical question, but also a big brother’s gentle prodding to his sister to chase the things that she believed would bring her the greatest amount of joy and fulfillment in her life. I don’t know if she paid those words any heed, but against many odds, she pursued what she loves and ended up with an Emmy nomination to show for it.
My own answer to the question led me through a rather convoluted path. My professional life started off in engineering, then wended its way through a stop in b-school and onto corporate marketing gigs, before finally placing me in the position of founder and owner of a media agency that sees infinite possibilities ahead. The uncertainty of entrepreneurship strikes fear into me on a daily basis, but that fear is minuscule compared to the fear of the alternative. The prospect of looking back on my life when I’m 70 years old and wondering what would have been had I only had the balls to do what I loved cripples me….. no, it is NOT an option. I may yet fail in my quest to turn ClearSketch into a highly regarded and respected video and photography agency (that’s profitable!), but I refuse to be bound by the fear of failure and allow it to prescribe inaction.
I can barely imagine what must have gone through Steve Jobs’s mind when he decided that he had to relinquish his leadership role at Apple. What were his fears? Did he fear that Apple would fail because the people he’s been grooming to take over wouldn’t be up to the task? Did he fear the stigma of being seen as human and vulnerable when his public persona has often bordered on that of invincible? Ultimately, though, some other fear was greater than any of the others, and he gave up his position as the iconic CEO of Apple to alleviate that fear. What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
My team and I have been working on a video project for a client for a while now. We decided to take this project primarily because of one thing; the client allowed us complete creative latitude and trusted us to make decisions that were in the best interest of his company’s goals for the video. We dreamt up an idea that was far more elaborate than the client expected. That means that the amount of effort and planning that has gone into the production of this video has been gargantuan. We’ve given our all to this project, as it truly is a labor of love.
This morning, the final piece of the project appeared in my Dropbox folder. The score, composed by my friend Roger Lima at Whitenoise Lab is truly, as he describes it, epic. The video, visual effects and edits were great to begin with, but the score really ties everything together and elevates the video to a much higher plane.
It’s a beautiful feeling when you wake up in the morning and something as wonderful as this greets you. Deciding to leave a stable job and risk it all to follow my dreams has been scary and exhilarating and nerve-wracking. Today, though, I’m on a supreme high and this is what makes it all so worth it. Please check out the ClearSketch website on Thursday afternoon to see what I’m so excited about.
I received an unexpected package from the nice UPS lady today – a Google CR-48 Chrome notebook computer. It’s a pretty nice machine. The design is reminiscent of the most recent black Macbooks and the battery on the thing is massive. I won’t delve into the details of the design, performance or battery life, etc., since many other people already have. Instead, I’m going to chronicle my experiences of using the CR-48, the web and the cloud exclusively for running my business and doing personal stuff over the next 30 days. I’ll share my thoughts on the drawbacks and/or advantages of making the transition and comment on the apps that I use and whether they’re good enough for primetime. The exceptions I’ll have to make are in situations where I’ll NEED local apps that don’t exist in the cloud.
For the sake of full disclosure, I own a Macbook, a Mac workstation, a Lenovo S10 netbook and a Lenovo 3000 N200 notebook computer. The Macbook performs all pure business functions now (email, task management, accounting, etc.), while the N200 is my media center for streaming Netflix to my TV. The netbook exists as a pure music streaming device, powering my MOG subscription, while the Mac workstation does all the heavy lifting related to my videography and photography work.
Day 1 officially begins tomorrow, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts with everyone.
This is a fairly obscure piece of news, but one that is significant to marketers everywhere. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded the first ever Emmy to a web series this year (see video of the award ceremony here), marking the first time ever that this institution has officially recognized a web production and given it the nod over regular television programming. The winning web series was created by an indie crew of filmmakers from Chicago and a bunch of collaborators.
Indie filmmakers have recently benefited from the democratization of high quality video with the advent of digital SLRs with excellent HD video capability and affordable pro-level video editing suites. As a result, we will continue to see even more quality short films and even ‘television’ series from these mavericks of the film world. As TV departs from the model we’ve been familiar with (large studios producing big budget shows, hoping to score a hit here and there) to a nimbler approach, marketers should pay heed to the shift and imagine the possibilities that are inherent in this new source of content. Creating product/brand videos (akin to the BMW Films ‘The Hire’ series) can be a whole lot cheaper. Product placement opportunities will become more numerous. Small and mid-sized companies will be able to afford quality promotional videos because they’ll be working with filmmakers and crews that don’t suffer from bloated SG&A expenses and gargantuan capital costs.
That old web adage of “Content is king” is no less relevant today, and the emergence of the indie filmmaker will enable companies to produce great content without destroying their marketing budgets. I’ve included links to some of my favourite indie videos below to offer proof that a new era of video is upon us, and as marketers, we should take heed.
I love great wedding photography, as the feelings and emotions contained within each image pale only to great photojournalism. Here’s the website of a great wedding photographer who I just discovered.
I saw something as I was driving today that made me think about the importance of first impressions in shaping prospective customers’ perception of and interest in a company. A black SUV ahead of me at a stop light had vinyl decals that advertised the company’s brand and services. Everything looked quite impressive, until I noticed the email address. It was CompanyName@live.com.
Whether caused by lack of knowledge or sheer indifference, the effect on me was identical; the message was that the company didn’t care enough about itself to market itself appropriately. When I see a company that uses free, generic email hosts (hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc.) I immediately assume that they’re not very serious about their business, or don’t think they’ll be around long enough to warrant investment in a proper domain name and email hosting.
In the day and age when domain names cost $8 a year and web and email hosting is a trivial expense, there’s no reason for a company to continue using a generic email account and not having even a basic website. What other marketing gaffes sour your perception of a company? Have you recently done a marketing checkup to figure out what you can improve?
While I’m familiar with the duo from 37 Signals by name, I must admit that I’m writing this review as a relative stranger to their blog, Signal vs. Noise. Hence, the material and thoughts contained in the book are fresh to me and aren’t repackaged versions of their blog entries.
The book is written in a very conversational style, much akin to Hugh MacLeod’s “Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity”. In addition to that, each lesson and thought is written in rapid staccato, as an extremely short sub-chapter, with a ton of white space and art to fill the pages in between lessons. These two facts combined made the book a very quick read. I finished it in around 90 minutes and even the slowest reader will blaze through this book relatively quickly.
What’s the book about? In short, it proves to us that anyone who’s serious about starting a business can do so, and it provides some practical suggestions for how to come up with an idea, start a business and run it. Many of the principles Fried and Heinemeier propagate in this book are what I’d categorize as “new business” principles; they are business principles that call for more authenticity, more humanity and more accountability, principles that I personally subscribe to. Having worked in both Fortune 500 and startup companies, I have to say that these principles can and do work, but only if the company is geared towards making use of them.
Given the authors’ backgrounds of being in a small company, it’s no surprise that these principles work best in a small business environment. Can they work in a large company? I believe that they can, in theory. The acceleration of bureaucracy that accompanies business growth would almost certainly preclude the possibility of all these principles being employed in practice.
While the book is short, it’s packed with many nuggets of wisdom. Are the thoughts and lessons contained in the book entirely original? No, certainly not. Anyone who’s spent a decent amount of time in or around business would have heard many of the lessons the duo espouse. In fact, many of the lessons are just plain common sense. You may have heard a friend, your parents or even your grandmother tell you some of the things you’ll read in this book. The value that this book brings comes from the fact that all these lessons are condensed into a single tome and they’re born from successful practice, not abstractions dreamt up by a theorist. Some of the examples are well known. Others, like the Kingsford charcoal example to illustrate by-products of your business as opportunities, were a welcome new addition to my knowledge vault.
If I had to rate this book, I’d give it 4 stars out of five. Again, it’s not entirely original, but it does pack a powerful wallop to our senses. The book forces us to rethink the reasons why we do things the way we currently do them, and helps us avoid doing things the way we might have had we not read this book.
This post at designboom shows what imagination and creativity can accomplish with what most would consider dull objects: power line pylons.
The pylon figures make use of existing components and can be configured in different ways to either raise the height of the power lines or lower them. This is a great example of rethinking the mundane and using it to create something that’s worth talking about.
In marketing, the recent Old Spice social media meets old school advertising ‘Old Spice Guy in the towel’ campaign is a perfect example of rethinking the mundane. By putting a new spin on what is a decades old medium (video), Old Spice managed to capture the imaginations and attentions of its target market, and continue its metamorphosis from ‘the brand my dad uses’ to ‘the brand with the cool ads’.
Old Spice’s marketers have upped the ante for all other marketers out there. What do you think are some clever ways of re-imagining the mundane to create another marketing hit?
I spent some time this morning helping Brandon Hudson at Good Work in Durham come up with a framework through which to tackle a task he’s working on. Brandon is responsible for creating a program to help a group of youths from Durham learn skills that will help them find and succeed in a vocation related to green/sustainable enterprises. The challenge is multi-faceted and somewhat complex, but we managed to break things down and make it less daunting with the use of simple drawings.
From understanding the constituents to outlining a project timeline to being able to elucidate clear goals/outcomes, the drawings in the video below helped prove that tough problems can be easily tackled with something that we ALL used to do when we were kids, but have just forgotten how.
Problem solving with pics – Good Work from brandon hoe on Vimeo.