The thing is...

If you're not listening, you won't hear

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???

Business maxim: To get someone’s attention, ask for money in the budget

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.

Don't SPAM me just because I'm looking for work

One of the downsides of conducting an intensive job search through social media and online job resources such as The Ladders and Monster is you have to expose a lot of personal information to attract employers and recruiters.  There's an explicit and implicit value exchange I am making.  I give you some information about me, you let me know who you are and if you have a job for me.  I get it.  Such are the risks of living on grid. 

The things is...there are those who abuse the access they have been given to my email address, namely employers and recruiters who generate trigger emails based on certain keywords in my profile.  Whether it's my location, my education or some aspect of my experience, keyword search engine algorithms are filling up my inbox with very obviously impersonal messages to me asking me to take on careers that are not even close to a fit.

So to save everyone some time, let me articulate some things that I don't want to do (kind of like that questionnaire at the end of the Actor's Studio).  I do NOT want to be: 

• A Life Coach - No offense to the profession (my sister is a coach) but I want to do a spot more living before I coach others
• An insurance salesman - Plenty of people do it for a living.  Just not me.
• A "lazy Google" millionaire -  I have no real problems with this job description.  I'm a little skeptical to say the least
• A stay at home copywriter for a womens' website -  Is that it?  You've asked all the people out there who are actually qualified to do this job and they've all turned you down?  Really?

And, finally, any job that is clearly irrelevant to who I am. 

A brief profile of who I really am is here.

Here is my original job search post.

The "We" inside of "me"

If you have not seen Jill Bolte  Taylor's speech at TED this year, watch it now.

Quantifying the value of a story

A report today in the New York Times revealed how human beings are naturally inclined to remember and understand information that is presented in the context of a story, rather than as a list with no other context.   

Dan P. McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and author of the 2006 book, “The Redemptive Self” found that that "these narratives guide behavior in every moment, and frame not only how we see the past but how we see ourselves in the future.”

The thing is…as a writer, I’ve always known this (haven’t you?).   I got to thinking about the value of storytelling in a marketing context, namely, "Can you quantify the investment of $1 in producing good content?” I think you can.

Amended: "A Short Course in Human Relations"

Got an email from someone last week regarding a previous post called "A Short Course in Human Relations."  He pointed out that I forgot the "kicker" - LEAST IMPORTANT WORD:  "I"   That's a big one to forget, huh?   

The thing is...my post came up on page one of his Google search because he was searching for the exact terms "A Short Course in Human Relations."  Shows the power of directed, specific searching. 

Click through to read the full amended course.

Fitness at work

This is not a post about stretching at your desk, but rather how you can determine whether your organization is a good cultural "fit" for you. Certainly that's a pretty loaded issue.  Nonetheless, I've developed a little tool that can help you test yourself and whether or not you have a good "fit" in your company.  Click through to see the Power Point, and find out what "the thing is..."

When you wiki, get the why

In the spirit of "learning by doing," I recently got involved with a couple of "wiki" projects.  My skills are particularly suited to "gardening," or being an editor (as I mentioned in my profile on one project).

The thing is...collaborative creation or "peering" can be totally cool and engrossing, but if you don't know what you're creating, it's tough to be productive.  Read on.

Short course in Human Relations

Short course in Human Relations

• The Six Most Important Words: “I admit I made a mistake”
• The Five Most Important Words: “You did a good job”
• The Four Most Important Words: “What is your opinion?”
• The Three Most Important Words: “If you please”
• The Two Most Important Words: “Thank you”
• The One Most Important Word: “We”

The thing is, these words of wisdom (which my dad once had on his bulletin board at work) apply to us as individuals but also to organizations.  Does your company live by these rules?  Does it even come close?

You got an "F." Congratulations

My man Steve Coulson is at it again (can I call you my "man"?).  In this week's crayoncast (#10) he quotes the British inventor James Dyson, he of Dyson vacuum fame, who said that we should embrace failure, because we only learn from failure, not from success (or something like that).  As Thomas Edison said "I have not failed.  I have merely found 10,000 ways that won't work."  Here's a great blog post about Dyson.  And a great interview. 

Another man with the initials "JD" thought similarly, American educator John Dewey.  Dewey believed that children learn best by doing, by "acting on the world."  It doesn't stop with children, either.  We're all still trying to make our mark.

The thing is...Plowing into the world of social media is all about trying.  So much of what we are seeing in the world of marketing today will require dozens of failures before we get it right.