Archive for the ‘Additions and Edits’ Category
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
Nothing. And that is the precisely the point. When you want to change the game, one way to do it is change your environment.
The April 7 CBS Evening News with Katie Couric reported the story of Lynn Love, who for 22 years owned and operated a used car lot in Tampa. When the economic downturn hit the car business, Love liquidated his inventory and, with the last of his savings, bought a catering truck and began serving meals in his empty used car lot. He didn’t know anything about cooking, but he learned quickly (giving yourself problems to solve is a great way to learn) and the inexpensive, simple meals on his menu have been a hit with his customers, some of whom formerly bought cars from him. (more…)
Tags: , Character, edit, Environment, heighten, Heightening, Lynn Love, restaurant, Role, Tampa, used cars
Posted in Additions and Edits, Character, Entrepreneurship, Environment | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 9th, 2009
Deep Patel, and the company he founded GoGreenSolar, prove that adding information is one sure way to heighten scenes and improve performance.
In 2005, while getting his Masters Degree in Business Finance at Boston University, Patel discovered that information about solar power and equipment was not easy for potential users to come by. He launched GoGreenSolar solely with the intention of providing useful information to his audience. When the audience for this information grew, he added an e-commerce component. By the time he got his graduate degree he was one of the solar industry’s most authoritative voices and had developed a brand that will sell over a million dollars of solar equipment online in 2009.
Patel is quick to point out that he launched GoGreenSolar.com with a) no intention of selling anything on the site; and b) with full commitment to educating the market (and himself) about solar.
Deep Patel’s number one obligation to his brand (and the move that he ties most closely to its success in the marketplace) is to add information. “I blog seven days a week,” he says. “No matter what.”
An ‘Adding Information Strategy’ like this produces all kinds of positive outcomes.
It keeps the brand customer-focused. There’s no better way to keep an audience engaged in your performance than telling them something they didn’t know.
It’s low-overhead. Adding information costs less than just about anything else you can boost a brand’s performance in the marketplace.
Adding information also keeps the brand narrative fresh. It is an evergreen move. The currency of the information added, a relatively easy standard to achieve in a fast-growing industry like solar, ensures that the brand is ‘alive’ in the minds of its audience.
It expresses confidence. In an emerging field like solar energy, there’s naturally a lot of uncertainty and ignorance in the marketplace that can be exploited by ‘first in’ players. Because its strategy is one of educating, not hyping, its, GoGreenSolar stays ‘manufacturer agnostic’, which makes the voice of the brand credible. This credibility translates into customer confidence in what is being sold on the site.
It demonstrates the importance of conversations. Deep talks to a lot of people, inside and outside his industry. Those conversations bring perspective and insight to the information he adds. Who is saying something (and where and when and why) are every bit as important as what is being said.
Conversations require good listening. Listening yields suggestions from the audience that can be woven into the brand’s themes.
Adding information creates context. That’s huge. By adding information, Patel dimensionalizes the products on GoGreenSolar, until they are more than products, they are essential elements in a larger brand narrative. In the Networked World where content is ubiquitous, context is king. It is our ability to make sense of information, to add emotional and meta meaning to cosmetic data, to find patterns in the complex tapestries of life and the marketplace, that set our brands apart and distinguish us as communicators and as human beings.
Tags: Adding Information, Boston University, Branding, Context, Deep Patel, GoGreenSolar, King, Listening, Manufacturers, Priorities, Relationship, Suggestions From the Audience
Posted in Additions and Edits, Branding, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Listening, Narrative, Networked World | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009
For the first time, we have two winners of the coveted Gamey in the same month. They are Ty’Sheoma Bethea, an eighth-grader from South Carolina and Leonard Abess, a banker from Florida, both of whom were recognized by President Obama in his state of the nation address last month.
Bethea wrote a letter. It was what she could do and she did it. In that letter, she maintained of she and her classmates, “We are not quitters!” And that letter changed the game.
Abess had $60,000,000 in the bank, proceeds from the sale of his company. He gave it away to 471 employees and former employees who’d supported him over the years. That gift changed the game, too.
She gave a small gift that became something big. With that one letter, she opened a thousand doors that would have not been open to her otherwise.
He gave a big gift that got bigger. The number ’60,000,000′ didn’t change, but the potential for that ’60,000,000′ to make things happen in the world increased overnight by a factor of 471.
We honor Ty’Sheoma and Leonard because they bookend three important elements of gamechanging.
Big gifts and small gifts are equally important to our scenes. That’s the first piece of what these gamechangers teach us. All gifts have the potential to inspire profound scenes.
Here is the second piece: Action flows from character. Beathea and Abess didn’t just wake up one day and shazaam!—in a puff of genie smoke, suddenly turn into the people with game.
She is a young woman who wants to learn, and doesn’t want to be held back from it. She is a writer of letters, and a righter of injustice. She is not a quitter.
He is a friend who values friendships that go all the way back to grammar school, a manager with employee relationships that extend beyond current staff, a player who recognizes that he owes much of his success to others on his team. He is not greedy.
They took actions that were consistent with their characters.
And here’s the third piece: We can never know for sure how the game will change. But if we bring what we can to our scenes…if we are consistent in character and action…we can trust that, as Ty’Sheoma Bethea and Leonard Abess showed us, the game will change, as unforeseen opportunities bloom into new and fruitful realities.
Tags: , Character, February 2009, GameChangers of the Month, Gifts, Leonard Abess, Ty'Sheoma Bethea
Posted in Additions and Edits, Character, Gifts | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
The extraordinary improviser, Paul Vaillancourt, gave me a list of sayings that have been compiled and passed around the improv theater community over the years. The legendary teachers, Mick Napier and Del Close, get some of the credit, though the exact origins of most of these are as hazy as the roots of any folk wisdom. Here is the fourth in a series of sayings from Vallaincourt’s List, with my notes following. As you go about your business, keep these concepts in play: (more…)
Tags: , Additions and Edits, Behavior, brand, culture, Del Close, Gifts, job titles, Mick Napier, Paul Vaillancourt, reputation, Sayings, Scenes, Vaillancourt's List, vision, Wisdom
Posted in Additions and Edits, Branding, Communication, Emotion, Environment, Gifts, Issues | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
The most basic concept in all of improvisation is ‘Yes and’. If we are in a scene together and you make a statement, it is my obligation as an improviser to ‘yes-and’ your statement. By ‘yes-anding’ you, I not only agree to your reality, I add to it with perspective of my own. In this way, we can ‘triangulate’ on the problem to be solved, and also bring dimension, and new levels of collaboration to the scene.
The words ‘yes’ and ‘and’ do not have to be spoken literally, of course. It is the spirit of the phrase that matters. A common improv exericise invokes this spirit by having players begin every exchange of dialogue with those two powerful words, spoken literally.
If we are in a scene together and are ‘yes-anding’ one another, by the third line of the scene, it will not be about your reality, or my reality, it will be about our reality. Now we have the ability to work together toward an objective. It is the ‘and’ that makes all the difference. Anyone can say ‘yes’. It might get me a reputation as a being a positive person around the office, but it will not necessarily make me a productive player. (more…)
Tags: communicators, Crazy Town, Dialogue, entrepreneurs, Players, Positive, Productivity, reputation, Sales, salespeople, Scenes, yes, Yes And, yes man
Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Communication, Dialogue, Entrepreneurship, Fundamentals, Games, Objectives, Sales, Scenes | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
What a year. Wow. The best and worst of everything. The birth of the new and the collapse of the old. Yin and Yang.
On one hand, we had Obama, our wedding and the Brady Bunchiness of a new family, my book, Costa Rica, yoga, guitar lessons at Flea’s Silver Lake Conservatory, some fantastic clients and new conversations, and the ever-flowing love between us and the wonderful people in our lives.
On the flip side of the coin we minted in 2008 there was Bush and Cheney and their decrepit Industrial Age ‘war economy’ and the general malaise that came over and corrupted so much American business during their reign. At the end of the year, with Bush madly justifying his abhorrent stewardship of the country since 9/11, and Israel and Hamas burning through their munitions inventory like it’s a holiday sale at WarMart, we are gasping for air like we’ve been standing too long in a garage with a smoking Peterbuilt. One of 2009′s themes is going to be about getting out of that garage and breathing the fresh air of new narratives, new ideas for generating wealth in a networked economy. The engine has to run on something other than oil. (more…)
Tags: , 2008, 2009, Bush, Cheney, Costa Rica, guitar lessons, Innovation, Israel, New Year, Obama, Silver Lake Conservatory, Yoga
Posted in Additions and Edits, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Scenes, Themes | No Comments »
Monday, November 3rd, 2008
Their ad buy has obviously changed, because even though they’ve been on TV somewhere for most of 2008, all of a sudden, the Shamwow late-night TV spots are intersecting with our networks. In honoring the host of the Shamwow commercial, Vince Offer, with October’s ‘Gamey’, we honor a couple of great American traditions: Late night TV spots made on the cheap but with an aesthetic we have come to appreciate as its own kind of pulp genre…and the pitchmen moving the merch. The ginzu knife demo’ers and the guys who suck bowling balls with vacuum cleaners and Suzanne Sommers, and Richard Simmons, and Ron Popeil and Ed McMahon, and Vince McMahon and Jim McMahon — there should be a special wing in the TV Hall of Fame for these characters, and for their fictional counterparts like Willy Wonka, Willy Loman and Professor Harold Hill. Vince Offer, wearing the headset that is just as mandatory to a boardwalk hawker like him as a face mask is to a hockey goalie, is a classic of the breed. (more…)
Tags: Commercials, Complexity, Depth, Emotion, GameChanger of the Month, Heightening, Movement, October 2008, Scientology, Shamwow, television, TV, Vince Offer
Posted in Additions and Edits, Character, Communication, Emotion | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
I’m hearing it from all over these days, so it must be official–the word ‘gamechanger’ has broken into the popular idiom. Why, I remember back in the day when it was just Pontiac Motors, A. G. Lafley of P & G, a few sportscasters, and me. Six weeks ago, William Safire wrote about the etymology of ‘gamechanger’ in his NY Times column. Now it’s everywhere, especially in politics. I must have heard the words ‘game’ and ‘change’ used together a dozen times last night in relation to the presidential debate.
This morning, my friend David LaPlante (if you want to read something beautiful, see his most recent blog entry) sent me a link to a CNN story and headline:
Here’s my response:
Candidates and media use the word erroneously, as CNN does in this story, when they refer to an EVENT as a gamechanger. A gamechanger is PERSON with the ability to change the game. Like you : ) A gamechanger can also be a brand, as in the focused, networked behaviors of a group of people who share business objectives. (more…)
Tags: Additions, Agreement, Barack Obama, CNN, David LaPlante, Debate, Edits, Energy, GameChanger, Heightening, John McCain, Media, Timing
Posted in Additions and Edits, Agreement Principle, Games, Issues, Listening, Movement, Objectives, Scenes, Suggestions From the Audience | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
When we worked together at BoxTop Interactive and then at iXL in the dotcom days, my friend Andy Sullivan — who today runs western U.S. bizdev for the New York-based agency, R/GA — and I would collect the metaphors, superlatives and various descriptors of the Web that were rampant at the time and stitch them together into what we called The Ultimate Mission Statement.
By the time we got through with it, The Ultimate Mission Statement went like this:
In the internet space, we seek to build robust, webcentric, paradigm-shifting category-killer apps and generate
personalized position-accelerating target-demo-bullseye brand equity through relevant, regard-building, turn-key, tent-pole, top-of-mindshare, cradle-to-grave content management and sticky community-building eyeball-aggregation portal solutions for multiple use-case scenarios and response definitions by leveraging granular, disintermediated, mission-critical, Y2K-compliant e-commerce back-end B-to-B databases with rich-media webisodic broadband entertainment ghost-backing to create authentic de-composable viral marketing flashpoints in a ubiquitous, pre-IPO, utility-sensitive, dynamically-updateable, platform-agnostic, adaptive integrated information architecture positioned outside the box by several orders of magnitude for the new millennium. Really. (more…)
Tags: Andy Sullivan, BoxTop Interactive, Cliche, Communication, Dotcom, GameChangers, iXL, Language, Networked World, Ultimate Mission Statement
Posted in Additions and Edits, Branding, Communication, Emotion, Networked World | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
Almost everyone remembers Highlights magazine, and how they remember is usually, “Oh, yeah, from the waiting room in the dentist’s office!” A little jolt of pleasure counterpointing the inevitable pain just a few beats down the road. You might have thought the brand was dormant. Perhaps even defunct. Well if that’s the case, your head is dormant and defunct. Highlights has always circulated (subscription only — no newsstand sales) far beyond the dentist’s office. Today it has has over two million subscribers and its parent company — corporate headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, editorial offices in Honesdale, Pennsylvania — is riding high. A little over a year ago, in October of 2006, the magazine, which was begun in 1946 by husband-and-wife educators and child development experts Dr. Garry Cleveland Myers and Caroline Myers, published its one billionth copy.
I have known the folks at Highlights for a long time. Kent Brown, grandson of the company’s founders and the magazine’s editor-in-chief, has been a friend for over 20 years and advised me on the publication of GameChangers. I’ve met several times over the years with Kent and the Highlights editorial team headed by Christine French Clark, usually about expanding the brand into video. There was always a lot of interest from my Hollywood associates — at Disney, then Paramount, then New Line and Viacom. At one point, I pitched a Goofus and Gallant movie with Haley Joel Osment playing both roles. We discussed doing The Timbertoes as an animated series, and Find the Hidden Pictures as a videogame. We explored the possibility of a Highlights direct-to-video series, which Viacom execs assured me they could sell like eggs on Easter.
Not a ton of business came of it, but the process was always fun and instructive for everyone involved. (more…)
Tags: Caroline Myers, Casting, Columbus, Dr. Garry Cleveland Myers, Editing, Education, Garry Myers III, Highlights for Children, Highlights Magazine, Honesdale, Kent Brown, Kent Johnson, Knowledge, Reading, Themes
Posted in Additions and Edits, Branding, Casting, Themes | No Comments »
