For fiction authors who are having trouble pigeonholing their series:
Cartoonist David Malki has created a very useful and artistic Genre-Fiction Generator on his Wondermark art blog — see “The Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000.”
AB — 5 Oct. 2009
I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, an interesting study that contradicts much traditional thinking about success, merit, and entitlement.
The comforting aspect of Outliers is that it turns out that all those arrogant muckymucks who thought they were better than you really weren’t so special. But the downside is that neither are you.
The traditional narrative is that people who excel make it to the top through willpower, dogged effort, and especially through that magical spark of something that is only found in the hearts of special people. Gladwell marshals some quite persuasive evidence that the very successful people in the world — the outliers — really benefit from being born at the right time and from receiving the right kind of assistance and influences in their lives.
Bill Gates became successful because he had unlimited access to a timesharing computer as a teenager. The Beatles became successful because they got a gig in Hamburg, Germany, playing eight hours a day in a strip club (read the book to find out how this makes sense).
According to Gladwell, the important takeaway is that many more people could be much better at what they do if society could provide them with the kind of environment that allows success to happen.
Gladwell’s arguments and evidence are intriguing and persuasive. I have doubts about how much influence this book will have — the myth of merit is too seductive. People love rags-to-riches stories. Many successful people are convinced that they have made it because they tried really hard or were smarter than everybody else — or because they are specially blessed by God or some other higher power.
As I’ve said before, it’s easy to think God is on your side when all the lights are green.
AB — 24 Sept. 2009
Ever since Stanford Professor Larry Lessig spoke about remix (among other intellectual-property topics) for us at the ILO Institute a couple of years ago, I’ve been fascinated by the subject and have watched out for particularly creative examples.
Yesterday I commented on a new one I’ve found called “Auto-Tune the News.”
However, my favorite example remains “The Mother of All Funk Chords” — a great music mix that brings together clips from across geographies and cultures and age-groups — and across decades of time:
AB — 3 Sept. 2009
This video is a fascinating and hilarious example of remixing the news. These guys are doing a whole series called “Auto-Tune the News”:
AB — 2 Sept. 2009
Ran across this cute (very short) video put together by a guy and his daughter, using balloons to make “pop” music:
AB — 21 July 2009
On Hoovers World today, Gary Hoover published a great bit of life advice (or call it a lifelong “best practice,” if you want to couch it in businessspeak). His advice is deceptively simple:
Write everything interesting down.
If you don’t know who Gary Hoover is, you probably should. It would be ‘way oversimplifying him to say he’s a serial entrepreneur, but that’s one easy way to put it. Gary is the founder of the superstore Bookstop (later purchased by Barnes & Noble) and the Hoovers business information service (now owned by D&B).
Lately I have been enjoying his Hoovers World blog because he is a voracious consumer of books and writes excellent and useful reviews of extraordinary books I have never heard of.
But today he published the entry “Two Small Practical Tips That Could Change Everything For You,” which included the advice to write down everything interesting that comes your way.
I started doing this about 20 years ago as a result of reading the wonderful little book “A Technique for Producing Ideas,” by James Webb Young. I have found that I never know when a useful idea, large or small, will come my way, whether from the external or the internal world. So I always carry a pen and pocket-sized pad with me, so I can capture information or ideas even when I am not in front of my computer. (I also never buy a shirt that does not have a pocket.)
One of the most interesting things Gary says in today’s entry, though, is that you might not ever need to actually read what you have written down:
I don’t care how smart you are or how good your memory is, 80-90% of all the good ideas you hear or think of in your life will slip right through your fingers if you do not write them down.
You do not even have to go back and re-read them; the kinetic process of having the idea flow through your mind and down your fingers through the pen onto the pad has a significant impact on your memory. [Underlining mine.] Of course, you can always reread them if you want or need to.
I also find that writing stuff down – from the book recommendations of friends to music I want to buy to business ideas I have while walking down the street – takes a burden off me. I can forget about it, I know the thought or information is securely stowed away.
I have found this point about memory retention to be true as well, and have found that what leads to even greater retention is making my notes in visual form — also know as idea mapping — see my previous blog entry “Doodling is good for thinkers.”
As a result, I seldom use lined paper for any purpose other than financial tasks. When I am planning, taking notes in a meeting, preparing an outline for public speaking, leading a group process, or just thinking, I use an unlined sketch pad or a white board to give myself space to lay out the idea I’m working with and to go in multiple directions on the page if I need to. I have even purchased custom-made pocket pads without lines on them — it’s not hard or expensive to do this through the printing department at any of the large office superstores.
Oh yes, you might have noticed that Gary’s post mentioned “Two Small Practical Tips That Could Change Everything For You.” The other tip is also simple, and maybe deceptively so, as with the first. The second tip is:
Smile
AB — 25 May 2009
Who knew that the humble ukulele would become the object of a worldwide surge of musical passion? An upcoming documentary, Mighty Uke, explores this phenomenon. Take a look at this fun trailer to get an idea what I’m talking about:
Margaret Meagher, writer and producer for the film, informs me that the team has nearly finished the editing for the movie. “Post-production,” she says, “will take a couple of months and the DVD should be available in early fall [2009].”
The filmmakers have this to say about the growing interest in ukulele music:
In the internet age, the ukulele is making a comeback. Clubs and ensembles are sprouting up around the world, and a new generation is pulling their grandparents’ ukes out of the closet, challenging our images of the humble ukulele. Ukes top the charts in Japan, Swedish punks thrash uke angst, California popsters serve it to ya ukulele style, classical composers carefully pluck out musicbox sonatas, and all of them meet together at the myriad ukulele festivals from New York to London to Tokyo.
AB — 22 May 2009
The organization Playing for Change is producing music videos by inviting artists worldwide to record accompaniments to a base track, then mixing their tracks together. The effect is like a more polished version of the remix “The Mother of All Funk Chords,” which I reported on previously.
One nice feature of the Playing for Change videos is that each artist or group is recorded in his or her own environment, mostly outdoors, so you really get a beautiful international flavor in the videos.
Here’s a great version of Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me” that they’ve done:
AB — 28 April 2009
Natalie Zmuda, writing for Advertising Age, says that Tropicana’s full-reverse on its new branding for its Pure Premium orange juice line was surprisingly quick. “Beverage experts were hard pressed to think of another major brand that had pulled the plug on such a sweeping redesign as swiftly as Tropicana,” she writes. (See “Tropicana Line’s Sales Plunge 20% Post-Rebranding,” April 2, 2009.)
Her article gives some of the sales figures behind the reversal: “After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22, costing the brand tens of millions of dollars.”
At a press conference in January 2009 by Pepsico (owner of the Tropicana brand), Peter Arnell, CEO of Arnell Group, the branding agency that executed the redesign, explained his rationale (See Ad Age’s video of the press conference here):
We thought it would be very important to take this brand and bring it or evolve it into a more current or modern state … Historically, we always show the outside of the orange. What was fascinating was that we had never shown the product called the juice. There was a strong drive to bring a big messaging onto the carton where the biggest single billboarding was.
I think it was in the billboarding where Arnell failed. The instant I saw the two carton designs side-by-side, my first thought was, ‘The new one looks like a store brand.’:
Really, which one of these designs does a better job of billboarding? On the new carton, every color has been drained out (except the cute new squeeze-cap, which Pepsico will be retaining), and the new font looks almost generic.
It makes me wonder what kind of testing Arnell did with this new design. I would think one important part of the process would be to stock a supply of the new package design in an actual grocery-store cooler or shelf to see how well it stands out against the competition.
For a good example of on-the-shelf billboarding, take a look at this cereal aisle:
See how Special K stands out on the shelf? The packaging does it.
In one of our ILO Institute reports (“Best Practices for CPG Design Teams”), we commented on the contribution packaging can make toward getting the attention of shoppers in the store (we used this same photo in the report):
As an example of simple visual differentiation through packaging, we note that Special K achieves high visibility on the retail shelf with standard package sizes using one simple graphic technique – making sure that on the front of every package is a big red “K” with a mostly white background. This emphasizes Kellogg’s offering by placing a distinct swath of giant “Ks” across the cereal aisle.
We also used the following example from spice company McMillan:
In our report, we commented:
McMillan’s shelf dispensing system achieves strong visual emphasis for its spice products. In the case of the display shown here, McMillan’s has even gotten the retailer to agree to alter its shelving configuration to accommodate the dispensing system.
This emphasizes the importance of including on the product design team members who are knowledgeable about the retail destination of a new product and the restrictions likely to be encountered in the store.
One positive aspect of the Tropicana re-branding debacle is that we analysts now have another negative case study to refer to!
AB — 3 April 2009
Just today I saw a video that is probably the best argument I have ever seen in favor of remixing. Please watch and listen to Mother of All Funk Chords. Fantastic!
Here the author explains how he makes his remixed music videos.
If you prefer an intellectual argument over an experiential one, see this video lecture by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. Lessig has spoken at some of our meetings at the Institute for Innovation in Large Organizations (ILO). See Lessig’s blog here.
Lessig is probably the best thinker around remixing and interesting to listen to. But watching Mother of all Funk Chords is a lot more fun.
AB — 10 March 2009
A Thinking Person, a.k.a. Cogit8R 