Make yourself uncomfortable
French was my favourite subject at school, but even after 12 years of lessons, I was far from being fluent.
So, once school was over, I decided to go to Paris for six months with the aim of returning with a perfect command of the Romantic language.
Working in the customer relations department of a theme park, which didn’t quite meet every visitor’s expectations, meant that I spent most of those six months being shouted at in a very different style of French to the one that I’d become accustomed to in the friendly surroundings of a classroom. It turned out that ‘zut alors’ was not the most satisfying phrase available for venting your frustration; there are, it turned out, many alternatives. And the fact that I wasn’t adept enough with the language to be diplomatic in the early heated encounters meant that I’d often inadvertently make the situation much worse than it already was.
The stresses, strains and the sense that I was way out of my depth led me to want to throw in the gauntlet after just a few weeks, to go to work in ticketing or at a fast food outlet, where good spoken French wasn’t necessary. It would have been a comfortable existence.
But a timely intervention by a colleague encouraged me to stick it out in ‘Acceuil’ despite how awkward and vulnerable I felt. And naturally, over time, my French improved and my confidence increased; a virtuous circle ensued.
It’s a rather long story to get to the very basic point that I wanted to make, which is this:
the fastest way to learn anything is by making yourself uncomfortable
For this reason, I also reckon that the more you put yourself in uncomfortable situations, the more things you’ll learn and eventually master.
You might not always have a particular lesson in mind. In other words, it’s worth putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation even if you have no clear and/or specific idea of what you might learn from it; I believe that if you’re observant enough, you’ll learn something.
I also think that it’s good to make other people feel uncomfortable. Not in a weird way, mind. But with the intention of helping them out with their problems/careers/lives.
For example, asking them awkward questions, saying something deliberately controversial or giving them a task that they’re likely to find difficult to complete because of an initial lack of know-how.
We should be comfortable with the idea of feeling uncomfortable.
Do you agree with me? If so, let me know your own tales. If not, why not?
Brain Crack
I’m very much in the camp of getting your ideas out there even if they’re not “perfect”. The fact of the matter is that nothing is ever perfect. And keeping everything to yourself might make you addicted to Brain Crack:
Thankfully, there’s a new outlet for all of the ideas floating around in your head that so far haven’t gone anywhere. It’s called killedideas, and if you feel like sharing your genius with the world then you’ve got until the 7th of April to submit them.
Stay in School.
The RIGHT way to use Twitter
Sorry, but there isn’t one.
Just like there isn’t a RIGHT way to use any tool. RIGHT suggests that the only other alternative is WRONG. Life’s not that neat.
For me, Twitter’s beauty lies in its deceptive simplicity. Simple because it’s just 140 characters of text; deceptive because such an elegant format creates the potential for great complexity.
There are an infinite number of ways to use Twitter. The only instance in which some of these might be WRONG is when one assumes that everyone is trying to achieve exactly the same thing. Again, life’s not that neat.
People and organisations are already using Twitter in different ways: the ones that makes the most sense for them. This might mean talking to directly to your consumers (actual and potential), e.g. Zappos, bringing a fictional character to life, e.g. Aleks the Meerkat, assembling geographically dispersed family members, e.g. Tim’s Whirledgeclan, or even rigging your house up to the service, e.g. Andy Stanford-Clark.
We need to resist our natural urge to anchor the new and unfamiliar in a bed of rapidly fossilising structures, terms and understanding.
Instead we might be better off treating Twitter like a prop in “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”: a fantastic opportunity to improvise.
This post was inspired by a conversation that was instigated over at the We Are Social blog.
We’re more useful as consumers than we are as marketers
Of late, many great people have written many great things about the great amount of respect that professional marketers need to have for the world around them. The message is clear: create things and relationships that are useful, well-liked and aim to make life better. A sloppy approach is inexcusable.
But, equally, there’s been much talk about how the marketing function is losing power. Thanks in large part to technology, “the people” are taking back any control that organisations and their marketing departments might have had over their reputations, and even the DNA of their products/services. It’s now more clear than ever that “having exclusive ownership over your brand” is a contradiction in terms – people will think, say and do what they like.
And it’s this last point that has led me to the following conclusion:
We have more power to enact positive change as consumers who happen to be professional marketers than we do as professional marketers who happen to be consumers.
As professional marketers, we have specific tasks to perform, people to answer to and objectives to meet. These are somewhat limited by the remit, scale and scope of our roles in the organisations that we work for.
However, as consumers, we have interactions with a large and varied array of organisations. Further, these are not organisations to whom we are in any way answerable. On the contrary, they are answerable to us.
Now, I’m not suggesting that this is an “either/or”. Of course we should continue to strive for a better marketing in our professional lives.
What I am suggesting though is that, as consumers, we should seek out more opportunities to proactively make things better, i.e. by becoming ‘constructive consumers’.
Constructive consumers don’t moan and shout FAIL when things go wrong. Constructive consumers take the opportunity to suggest improvements to the organisations who’ve let them down and lead by example based on a general philosophy of making things better.
We know what good marketing looks like. Let’s make sure we’re actively promoting it in our personal lives where, arguably, we have greater influence over the outcome.
Thought starter: What if, as well as your achievements as a professional marketer, your CV also featured ideas that you’d had as a consumer and convinced an organisation to make happen?
Knowing where to start
The internet guarantees that I’ll see at least one thing a day that’ll blow my mind.
After recovering from the joy of being shown something new and exciting (normally via the peeps on Twitter), I’ll often feel a little frustration. Frustration born out of a feeling of inadequacy: “I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t know where to start”.
But I had a realisation today: that at some time or other, the creators of great things wouldn’t have known where to start either.
“No sh*t, Sherlock” you might say, and I wouldn’t blame you…
For me though, it’s a moment of clarity; instead of worrying about knowing where to start, I’m now going to start where I know.
Practically-speaking, it means pursuing opportunities that are within my grasp but are also ambitious enough so that I learn.
Thanks for listening to my ramble. Hat tip to Andy for the mind-blowing vid.
Do something everyday, regardless.
Most of the images I like end up here.
But I think that these words are too good not to share with you here.
By David Horvitz. Found with FFFFOUND!
Learning from whitehouse.gov
Obama’s use of technology in his election has been well-documented, e.g. here.
The burning question since the election has been: how will Obama continue to use such tools whilst in power to keep the dialogue with the world both open and two-way, if at all?
Updates on whitehouse.gov minutes after his inauguration gives us some indication, and it’s looking very promising.
Macon Phillips, the White House’s New Media Director, and (formerly?) the Director of Strategy & Communications at Blue State Digital wrote a post with the following title:
“Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov”
Encouragingly, he re-affirms the fact that the online program is about “put[ing] citizens first”.
Specifically, he talks about three key priorities for new media in the White House:
1. Communication
2. Transparency
3. Participation
He goes into more detail about each of these priorities and how they’ll manifest themselves. There’ll also be a weekly video address by the President on Saturday mornings (hat tip Andrew Grill).
This combination of three solid principles of openness and the effective use of the right tools has the potential to change government forever.
And beyond government, it looks as though Obama will continue to be the inspiration for anyone looking to start and, most importantly, maintain a movement for positive change.
Phillips affirms towards the end of his post that the community will continue to be “a work in progress”.
I’ll be watching and learning.
Marketing ideas that create value
The best marketing ideas have multiple dimensions of value. The best ideas create value for the company AND the customer. It’s entirely possible [to] create value beyond even these two audiences. Great marketing ideas also create value for shareholders, communities and potentially, the planet.
Adrian Ho at Zeus Jones wrote this in a thought-provoking piece at the beginning of the year.
He uses Apple’s electronic receipts as an example of a marketing idea that manages to create different value streams for the customer, the planet, and Apple.
He also questions why ideas like this aren’t being celebrated when, to paraphrase, expensive communications activities with a single value stream are showered with praise.
It’s very difficult to disagree with this challenge.
Marketing has often struggled to attain a seat at the top table. As an organisational function, it doesn’t always succeed at demonstrating its real-life contribution to the bottom line. This can mean that it is excluded from the more ‘grown-up’, strategic conversations that go on.
What Adrian’s thinking does is to remind, and no doubt for some, redefine what marketing exists to do.
Marketing is not simply the creation of clever pieces of film or funky facebook apps.
Marketing is the creation of value for organisations and its stakeholders; where value is defined by the specific context in which it is being created.
It’s a broader definition that lifts marketing above tactics into the far more interesting realm of how organisations interact with the world at every single juncture – not just the consumption one.
What sparked this particular post was a sighting of another example of this type of multiple value creation in action; and when an award is established that recognises these types of ideas (maybe the “Everybody Wins Award”?), here is my nomination for Insure & Go:
Everybody Wins:
- I win because I receive my policy number and an emergency phone number almost instantaneously and having my this information on my mobile phone is the ultimate convenience if I get into trouble when travelling – particularly if I manage to injure myself on the slopes at the end of this month…
- The environment wins because less paper and ink is used
- Insure & Go win because they have my mobile phone number, it’s cheaper for them to text me this information than posting it to me, and they’re featured on this blog
And there are potentially even more winners:
- The foreign emergency services win if anything happens whilst I’m abroad because I’ll have my insurance details immediately to hand (and not at the bottom of my suitcase back at the hotel)
Some questions for you:
Do you agree that the creation of multiple value streams should be marketing’s ultimate objective?
What do you think about the idea of nominating these types of ideas for an official award?
Who would you nominate?
What do you think of the name, the “Everybody Wins Award”?
19/1/2009 Update: to be more accurate about the nature of the documents sent to my mobile. Originally, what I’d written suggested that I’d received all of them in a text message. In fact, I received the policy number and a phone number for 24-hour medical assistance. The documents themselves were sent to me by email.
Some ‘What ifs’ re: web/marketing/life…
- What if two million people signed up to read the 140-character stream of consciousness of a 38-year old teacher and mother from Lima (e.g. as followers on Twitter)?
- What if, in order to recruit the best people, organisations set creative challenges instead of asking for CV’s or cover letters?
- What if, as a way of nudging people to do something en masse (like voting, buying something, recycling or filling in your tax return), we turned it into one big game? (Inspired by Alfie’s pres. at jMac’s Every Single One Of Us event last night).
- What if ‘digital’ wasn’t a thing that happened on screens but was embedded into all physical objects? (Inspired by these two posts by Russell Davies).
- What if we had access to data on every single ‘mundane’ thing that makes us who we are – from the number of times we’ve pressed the number 7 on a keyboard to the band we listen to most often on a Tuesday – and could then visualise all of this data as a frequency and map it on to the frequencies of others in order to find the closest match to our own? (Inspired by daytum and Dominic Travers at jMac’s Every Single One Of Us event last night).
- What if I could make anything I wanted just by drawing it in the air? (Inspired by FRONT).
What are your What ifs?
Image thanks to Macarena C.
Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent
There’s so much in this that speaks to my soul:
