Did you know I play guitar, write songs and sing? Check me out this Saturday when I'll be performing at the Weston Farmers' Market between 10 and 11:30am. The market is located at the Weston Historical Society’s Coley Homestead on Weston Road. I'll be playing a mix of original tunes, kids music and classic covers (The Band, The Boss, etc.). May even do a request or two.
Bring a guitar, a bongo or our voice if you want to join in.
Come support the local farmers. Bring the kids. Buy some peaches.
This was sent to me today. While it's ostensibly a social experiment, this story also gets to a key aspect of storytelling, namely that it doesn't matter how great you are, if no one is prepared to listen, no one will hear.
The thing is...To put it into a marketing context, a great story, any great content, any advertisement, when delivered through the wrong channel and to the wrong audience just DOES NOT work.
The summary appears below. But click through to the story to see the video feed.
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work. The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time.
This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on. In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it.
No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, tickets for Joshua Bell's performance at a theater in Boston were sold out and the seats averaged $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context? One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing???
David Levy
Senior Vice President, Digital
SINGERDIRECT
800 Westchester Ave.
Rye Brook, NY 10573
Tel: 212.209.1909 | Fax: 646.264.2409
david.levy@singerdirect.com
www.SingerDirect.com
I wanted to thank several people who helped me during this job search. It’s a testament to your character and commitment to our friendship and professional relationships.
If anyone looking for smart, ethical, sincere people to network with, or to join your company, you may want to start your search with these people listed below—forgive me if I’ve missed some of you:
And, of course, my family
But most of all to my kids, Charlie and Sophie and my wife Heather Levy.
Happy Holidays everyone, and good luck in the New Year.
For those of you who may have been following this journey, I wanted to let you know that it has ended successfully (Thank you for your support...see here). I accepted an offer at a local agency, Singer Direct, to be their new SVP of Digital. I start in 2009.
In my initial blog post, I described a few types of situations for which I would be a good fit. This position hits on components of several, highlighted below:
Until recently, Singer was a family run business that Omincom purchased a couple of years back. It’s small yet growing, and offers a value proposition that should be compelling during a down economy.
The thing is…that’s not the only thing that was successful. As a totally biased jury, I’d declare this experiment in social media a success as well (Please offer your verdict/comments) for several reasons.
Social media expanded my reach and exposure
When I started the search, one of the first things I did was to expand my network on Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo. Most people accepted the connection requests. Each new connection expanded the web of RSS feeds. Think of each link as another set of eyes that could participate in the search. Moreover, the web of connections from each additional connection expanded my reach exponentially.
Efficient distribution for my credentials
By using my blog, Facebook and LinkedIn as content platforms, I made sure that everyone who was connected to me was informed about the search and received updates without having to send a mass email (see next)
Simple call to action
In my initial post, I tried to make it very easy for people to get informed and to take action, reflected in the post title “I’m looking for work; here’s how you can help.” At that post, there were three specific things I asked of readers:
Now I don’t have the data on item #3, but I can report that many MANY of you acted on items 1 and 2, and traffic to the blog hit its highest levels starting from the date of the first post.
Made it easy for recruiters
Recruiters are being VERY AGGRESSIVE in this economy. There are a LOT of candidates and few jobs (i.e., more demand than supply). I liken it to five seagulls fighting for that last French fry in the parking lot of McDonald’s.
Anything you can do to make it easy for them to help you is a good idea. Sending emails to recruiters became easy. Rather than write a long cover letter explaining my situation, I simply was able to write a few sentences and point people to my blog post and LinkedIn profiles.
By reading my blog posts and reviewing my LinkedIn profile, recruiters were able to determine whether or not I was a good potential fit for their open positions. That’s one may reason why recommendations on LinkedIn are so important.
Emotional support
This result was very interesting, and unexpected. Losing a job, and then trying to find another one flat out sucks. It can be very frustrating and isolating. By reaching out to people via social media, I opened connections between me and friends, colleagues and acquaintances, some of whom I hadn’t heard from in twenty five years. Exchanging notes with them and getting the occasional “hang in there” message really really helped.
There are a number of tips in this message. If you think they have any value, please pass them on to your friends who are looking for work.
In an upcoming post, I will offer some do's and don't's for recruiters.
There was a point in time when I recognized that in order for me to succeed at Reader's Digest I would have to learn to "work the system" that governed the place. I could have stayed but what would I get out of it? Not much. Maybe I'd have picked up some things that would be useful, but more likely I would spent months upon months learning "Reader's Digest skills."
The thing is...You can't take "Reader's Digest skills" with you. They only help you succeed there, no where else.
Now I'm not talking about general getting-around-a-big-corporation skills. Those skills are insanely important and can help you wherever you go, even if you move to smaller work environments"
Understanding the levers of power
Identifying the movers and shakers in an organization
Negotiating resources with colleagues and the IT department are all incredibly valuable
They teach you to listen. They teach you how to persuade. They teach you how to build coalitions.
Let me put it this way. You'd better learn those things somewhere, somehow in your career.
Conversely, specific skills that are less valuable include,
Mastering an arcane budgeting process that is based on historical knowledge (e.g., "That's how we do things here" mentality)
Working a proprietary IT system that exists in no other enterprise (HINT: Lots of middleware)
Catering to a single individual who is not leaving any time soon
Those are too specific. You can't take those with you.
In any situation, when it looks as though you're learning more firm-specific skills than transferrable skills, it's time to rosin up the resume.
Simple message for this holiday to season. Thank you to everyone who has been a friend, a colleague and a mentor this past year, and a special thanks to those of you who have kept me in mind during my job search and have posted recommendations of my work on LinkedIn.
Short course in Human Relations
I learned this lesson while I was at Reader’s Digest many years ago. We were building the Reader’s Digest web business called “Reader’s Digest World,” which included content from the book division, the magazine and the search engine LookSmart (remember that!). The site looks a lot different now.
I was the lead editor responsible for bringing the US edition of the magazine online. Jack Smith, now the CMO at Medco Health, was in charge of the newly created TV and New Media Department and had ultimate oversight over RDWorld.
There were a lot of moving parts in this venture and most of us were just figuring it out as we went along. But I was having a tough time getting Jack’s approval on some original content for the magazine, specifically a monthly column by the movie critic Michael Medved. Days, weeks went by and I just couldn’t get on Jack’s calendar.
So I went ahead and negotiated a rate with Medved, with the total proposal coming in at upwards of $75,000 per year. I had a feeling that Jack wouldn’t go for it.
Nonetheless, I shot the details to him in an email. Mere minutes later—and I mean maybe 5 minutes—Jack walked down to my office and asked, “David, do you have a few minutes?”
The thing is...Asking for that money was my way of communicating that I was a serious person and I had serious ideas. I meant business.
During that meeting, Jack and I went over the content strategy for the magazine and how I planned to keep the site fresh over the course of the next year. Medved was out, but a lot of other stuff was in.
Jack listened and treated me with respect. He took my ideas and me seriously.
You can work in a place for a very long time before anyone notices. Try to spend someone’s money, though, and your phone will ring.
Thanks for the lesson Jack.
For obvious reasons, the topic of "hiring" is on my mind these days. I learned a long time ago that the way an organization treats you during a job interview reveals how they will treat you once you are hired.
The thing is...A company should have ONE value proposition and present it to everyone who it comes into contact with. That's sure to come out during the interview process. If the company does NOT have a solid value proposition, well, that'll come out too.
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