The thing is...

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.

Amazon will kill iTunes

OK, so maybe not but Amazon’s new music service has the potential re-structure the digital music industry that is currently dominated by Apple. 

Win the information war with information

So  the U.S. Military has banned the use of military computers to access and use several sites.  The sites covered by the ban are the video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos and FileCabi; social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5; music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and live365, and the photo-sharing site Photobucket.  They cite bandwidth and security issues.

Lord knows those are both serious concerns but the ban, which in part is meant to stanch the flow of potentailly sensitive information to the enemy who could--let's face it--read it on  the public Internet-- could prevent the flow of potentially positive information that the American people and our allies need.  That's the law of unintended consequences.

The thing is...it has been written that the first casualty in war is truth.  That's because all wars--hot ones and cold ones--are also information wars. 

Here's how connections are made

So I heard of this guy "bryper" listening to Across the Sound a few months back.  Then I was listening to Mitch Joel's Six Pixels of Separation (SPOS) podcast about technorati and I heard Bryan Person again ("bryper").  I left an audio comment on SPOS on the issue of performance-based billing (see below), and mentioned in passing that I had heard "bryper" again. 

This morning the man himself sent me an email, saying that he had heard ME on SPOS mentioning HIM.   Thanks for the note Bryan.  I promise I will indeed leave an audio comment on an upcoming edition of your podcast New Comm Road.  Maybe only one though.

...it's that easy to make connections.  Glad to be part of the conversation.

So an agency walks into a bar...

...and says to a client, "We feel so strongly about our point of view and approach (and the big budget attached to it) that we are willing to share the risk.  If by the end of the year we haven't delivered, you'll get your money back (or a credit against next year's fee)."

... What if the client said, "OK."  What would be the 3 to 5 main points you'd want to have in that agreement to protect the agency and define success?

"It's not just what people do, it's what people do next."

Other than being the father of two great kids and being the first full-time new media editor in the history of Reader's Digest magazine ("high praise, indeed," Mr. Cleese might say), my only other possible claim to fame could be this phrase, which amounts to a simple manifesto on engagement in the interactive channel: ""It's not just what people do, it's what people do next."  Now, when I say "fame," I mean there are a few people at my agency who know this phrase to be mine, and who have begun to quote me on it.  Gotta start somewhere.

Anyway, for marketers there are three killer aps to the interactive channel. 

• One, it lets me have a one-to-one relationship and conversation with my consumer
  
• Two, I can measure every action that happens in the channel
• Three, I can move consumers down their decision making process--from awareness to consideration to purchase all the way through to loyalty--by building engaging experiences

And this last point is where the manifesto comes in to play. By building relevant and compelling expeirences I can get consumers to take one action, then take another action, and then take yet another action to engage them with my brand.  I can destroy the time element associated with the traditional purchase funnel by treating prospects as loyal customers from the very first time I encounter them, say in a banner ad.

For instance, take a look at some of the interesting poll-based work that Interpolls is doing.  In a single advertisement, consumers can become aware of a new product, take a poll to express an opinion and start engaging with the brand, opt-in for future dialogue and enter a sweepstakes. 

"It's not just what people do, it's what people do next" is also a great phrase to get your clients to think about how to orchestrate and integrate across channels. 

...Consumers still might not follow the path you want them to take.  You still need sharp insights, relevant content and killer creative to pull it off.

In any case, feel free to use, with or without attribution.

Open sourcing for agencies?

I was listening to a podcast from the Harvard Business Review's IdeaCast series about innovation and open sourcing.  In case you hadn’t heard, we are in the open source era.   The arrival of the open source era was announced to the mainstream press a couple of years ago when IBM—yes, IBM!—donated several hundred patents to the open source community.  Like the annual appearance of El Nino, IBM earns more patents each year than any other company.  That’s a lot of intellectual property to protect.  IBM employs at lot of lawyers.  They usually don’t give those things away.

But IBM doesn’t give all its patents away.  In some areas of its business, such at their Z-series main frames, IBM creates closed proprietary systems and protects the hell of of them. So IBM has a portfolio approach to its IP.  Give away some, protect others.

Could this not work in the agency world?  I’m thinking specifically of inter-agency situations where a single client finds itself bombarded with multiple ideas from multiple agencies.  Each agency is fighting to protect its turf, and—let’s be honest here—steal someone else’s.  Sometimes clients will create “interagency teams” (aka “IAT”) to manage these competitors.   

…ultimately agencies are NOT built to collaborate with each other.  They are built to develop core competencies that can differentiate them from the herd.  Collaborate?  Make another agency’s work better?  No revenue in that. 

So how can you get agencies to collaborate willingly?   Good luck.  But here’s a possible structural solution.

Why not create a portfolio approach to the work product agencies create?  Specifically, clients would create a master services agreement of some kind to which all agencies must agree.  That MSA would stipulate the kind of work that the client would expect to be “donated” to the IAT (a proxy for the “open source” community) and the kind of work that each agency would have absolute ownership of.  For both kinds of work there’d need to be proper financial incentives for creating the work as well as for sharing it.  In return the client would commit to protecting the turf of each agency…at least for one year. 

That way, for instance, the media agency has all the incentive it needs to do its job but can take a shot at creating the “big idea” that might step across the line into, say, the interactive agency’s turf.  The media agency would get paid for the new idea, even if the interactive agency got paid to execute it. 

After a year, the client would examine its portfolio, see which agencies produced the best and most successful ideas, and which agencies shared the best.  High performers get renewed; trouble makers get penalized or the boot.

What do you think?

What’s the difference between “corporate” vs “company” culture and why should I care?

I’ve had this discussion with a lot of folks over the years and I’ve created the following distinction.  Whenever you get two or more people together in any organization, those people will create methods of communicating and interacting among each other that help organize time and effort.  These methods could include the way desks and workstations are positioned, where people go to lunch, after work activities, dress codes and annual parties.  These things make up “Company” culture.  When you hear people say “At our company, we work hard and play hard,” or “It’s a family atmosphere,” that’s a company culture they're talking about.

..all organizations have a “company” culture.  When people get together, they create one.  It just kind of happens.

Now “Corporate” culture is very different.  A “corporate” culture is a combination of systems and processes that are put in place specifically to drive competitive advantage in the marketplace.  Encompassing such things as work flow processes, infrastructure, training, communication and commitment to a well articulate mission statement (there are lots of others), a corporate culture is deliberate, difficult to build, hard to imitate and results in consistent returns to the organization in product quality, service delivery, cost controls or a combination of those. Corporate culture can’t easily be imitated.

 ...very few organizations have a corporate culture.  It’s hard to build, and even harder to maintain, despite the benefits. 

You can name the powerful corporate cultures out there including GE, Dell, Southwest,  Amazon, Wal-Mart,Digitas, IBM, and the New York Yankees…each of which has a track record of producing consistent results.  Even BB King’s touring band has a corporate culture—don’t show up late or it will cost you.  That’s why every time you go see BB and his band you know you are going to get a solid show.

Why should you care about the difference?  Take a look at your organization.  You know you have a "company" culture already.  But what is your "corporate" culture?   The second one matters more.