Hugh McLeod's Gaping Void blog

[The "Life Is Too Short" print...]

I first started playing with the idea of “Smarter-Conversations” way back in 2004, the same year gapingvoid really started getting traction in the blogopsphere.

Though not something I talk about day-in-day-out, it’s always been there somewhere in the background, informing everything I work on. Here are some notes:

1. In the seminal book, “The Cluetrain Manifesto”, the great Doc Searls famously declared, “Markets are conversations”. If you buy that premise (and I do, wholeheartedly), then quod erat demonstratum, if you want your marketing to be smarter (i.e. more effective), you need to be having a “Smarter Conversation”.

2. “Conversation” is a metaphor. Making your product sleek, elegant and graceful while all your other competitors make their product look cheap, plastic and clunky is a smarter conversation. Not all conversations need words.

3. It’s not just what you say, its how you say it. Calling it the “iPod” is a smarter conversation than say, the “MZT-2300-B Electronic Portable MP3 Digital Hand Device”.

4. Smarter Conversations scale. That’s what I really like about it. Anyone can have a smarter conversation- from a mom n’ pop pizza joint to a Fortune 500 company. It can happen in a Superbowl ad or on printed on the back of a paper napkin. You can start one on a blog today, for free. Or on Twitter or Facebook. The tools don’t necessarily have to change, the way you talk to people has to change.

5. Deciding to have a smarter conversation isn’t a business decision, it’s a moral decision. Like I said in the last point, the barriers to entry are zero. While your competition treats their customers like idiots, you treat your customers like intelligent human beings. You don’t do that because your accountant told you to, you do that because that’s who you are.

6. The Smarter Conversation’s value comes from, I believe, not by yet more increased business efficiencies, but by its humanity. For example, take two well-known airlines. They both perform a useful service. They both deliver value. They both cost about the same to fly to New York or Hong Kong. Both have nice Boeings and Airbuses. Both serve peanuts and drinks. Both serve “airline food”. Both use the same airports. But one airline has friendly people working for them, the other airline has surly people working for them. One airline has a sense of fun and adventure about it, one has a tired, jaded business-commuter vibe about it. Guess which one takes the human dimension of their business more seriously than the other? Guess which one still will be around in twenty years? Guess which one will lose billions of dollars worth of shareholder value over the next twenty years? What parallels do you see in your own industry? In your own company?

7. If Smarter Conversations work, it’s because they help humanize the company. I wrote about this years ago in an article I called “The Porous Membrane”. To paraphrase: Ideally, you want the conversation between customers [the external market] to be as identical as the conversation between yourselves [the internal market]. The things that your customer is passionate about, you should also be passionate about. This we call “alignment”. A good example would be Apple. The people at Apple think the iPod is cool, and so do their customers. They are aligned. When you are no longer aligned with your customers is when the company starts getting into trouble. When you start saying your gizmo is great and your customers are telling everybody it sucks, then you have serious misalignment. So how do you keep misalignment from happening? The answer lies the cultural membrane that separates you from them. The more porous the membrane, the easier it is for conversations between you and them, the internal and external, to happen. The easier for the conversations on both sides to adjust to the other, to become like the other. And nothing pokes holes in the membrane better than blogging.

8. Social Media is not about reaching a mass audience. Social Media is not about creating yet another sales channel. Social Media is about allowing the Smarter Conversation to happen. That’s all. Why do some companies lose, while other companies win? Because the latter has a smarter “conversation” with its customers. Zappos had a smarter conversation about the power of customer service and the power of company culture. Peet’s Coffee came along 20 years ago and began a smarter conversation about coffee with millions of people within a very short space of time. Target’s recent massive success started from a smarter conversation about good design. Savile Row tailor, Thomas Mahon came along and, with his blog, had a smarter conversation about $4000 English bespoke suits. Lucky’s Juice Joint had a smarter conversation about fresh-squeezed. Big companies, medium companies and tiny companies, whatever- it was never about size, it was never about the choice of media (social or otherwise), it was all about language. 

9. Social Media allows you to cheaply and quickly begin a smarter conversation. And once you get it going, that conversation starts bleeding out into all other areas of your business- including advertising, PR and corporate communications.

10. Ask not what tools you want to use, ask how you want to change how you talk to people. All evolutions in marketing are evolutions in language. Those who can raise the level of conversation in any market, win.

11. Start today. It’s never too late to begin a Smarter Conversation. Like I said, money or time is not the issue. Making the decision is the issue, and only you can do that.

[Originally posted  August, 2004. Some of it is a bit dated but there's still a lot there worth chewing on etc.]

How to have smarter conversations.

Somewhere along the the line I decided that embracing “Smarter Conversations” was preferable to prematurely consigning my career to the dustbin of history. I just wrote down some random thoughts:

1. Understand why what you’re offering to do for other people is interesting, important, meaningful etc then start telling people about it.

Think about this one. Hard. If you don’t know, then how will other people know? Exactly. They won’t.

2. Live like you know the difference between remarkable and unremarkable, like it matters to you.

The more “remarkable” matters to you, the more likely that it will appear in the product you’re selling. The more likely other people will notice it.

3. Seek out the exceptional minds.

This is my basic mantra. It’s a good one to have. Not everybody gets it. Their loss.

4. Start a blog.

Blogs are funny things. Say something smart, people pay attention. Say something dumb, you’re ignored. We big media folk just can’t seem to get our heads around that concept, for some reason. Regular blogging can help train you to better discern between smart and dumb. Makes it easier to extend this to the rest of one’s business.

5. Ruthlessly avoid working for companies that “don’t get it”.

Yeah, you may have to turn down a few gigs, and that can really hurt when the rent is due. Still, anything that’s easy to get isn’t worth having.

6. Ruthlessly avoid working for companies that think they know better than you.

Luckily, if you get the whole “smarter conversations” thing, their “Yes, Buts” will just seem rather empty. Making them easier to “toss out like old furniture”.

7. Be nice.

Smarter conversations are fuelled by goodwill. Lose it and die.

8. Be honest.

Again, smarter conversations are fuelled by goodwill etc.

9. Karma is key.

But you already know that. Or you’re stupid. No middle ground on this one, sorry.

10. Listen.

Tongues are dumber than brains, brains are dumber than ears etc.

[Originally posted September, 2005]

An offline discussion I’ve been having a lot recently:

1. If you want to become an authority in whatever industry you are in, you must engage in what I call “Smarter Conversations”.

2. Deciding to do so is not a business decision. It’s a moral decision.

Your call.

[Originally posted November,2007]

Chris Schroeder riffs on my whole “Social Object” marketing schtick with this very salient thought:

If your company wants to succeed, it needs to have a social object marketing plan.

Amen to that. But note what Chris also says:

I don’t know about you, but when somebody walks by with an iPhone, I notice. If I see a kid stroll by me in some limited edition Nikes, that registers with me too.

Therein lies the rub. The Social Object idea is easy to get if your product is highly remarkable, highly sociable. An iPhone or the latest pair of Nike’s are both fine examples of this.
But I can already hear your inner MBA saying, “Yeah, but what if you don’t work for Nike or Apple? What if your product is boring home loans, auto insurance or… [the list of boring products is pretty long].
My standard answer to that is, “Social Gestures beget Social Objects.”
Which is another way of saying, maybe the way you relate to somebody as a human being plays a part in all this. Maybe describing the product as “boring” is just one more bullshit lie we tell ourselves in order to make the world seem less complicated and scary. Hey, my product is inherently dull and boring, therefore I get to be inherently dull and boring, too. Hooray!
Nowadays, thanks to folk like Nike, we think of sneakers as “non-boring” brands. This wasn’t true when I was a kid. Back then sneakers were those bloody awful $3 plimsolls we wore in Phys Ed. But it took companies like Nike and Adidas to come along and by shear force of will, raise the level of conversation in the sneaker department, before sneakers became bona fide global social objects, bona fide global powerhouse brands.
The decision to raise the level of conversation isn’t economic. Nor is it an intellectual decision. It’s a moral decision. But whether you have the stomach for it is up to you.
Like I told Thomas almost 3 years ago re. English bespoke tailoring, “Own the conversation by improving the conversation.” And hey, it worked. His sales went up 300% in 6 months.
It wasn’t the change in product that made Thomas’ suits Social Objects. It was changing the way he talked to people. The same applies to Stormhoek, which 3 years ago was an $8 bottle of South African wine nobody had ever heard of. Conversation. Matters.
So all you corporate MBAs out there, here’s a little tip. When you planning on how to embrace the brave new world of Web 2.0, the first question you ask yourself should not be “What tools do I use?”
Blogs, RSS, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook- it doesn’t matter.
The first question you should REALLY ask yourself is:
“How do I want to change the way I talk to people?”
And hopefully the rest should follow.
Think about it.
[Bonus Link: For a more academic take on social objects, check out this post from Anthropologist, Jyri Engestrom.]

Have you added the free gapingvoid cartoon widget to your blog or website yet? Just askin’….

Back in the mid-90s, when the Internet was still the size of a tadpole and TV was still the Big Kahuna, I was working in a large advertising agency that had many big, blue-chip clients.

We were given a brief to work on, a well-known laundry detergent.

All the other teams went away and came back with ideas for big-production TV commercials. Except me.

I had this idea about using GoCards, those free advertising postcards I started seeing around in all the trendy bars at the time.

It wasn’t rocket science. For pennies on the dollar, I reckoned you could try out a lot of different ideas- dozens of them, literally- and from tallying which cards were being picked up by people and which ones weren’t, you could could easily measure which ideas were working or not. Not unlike today’s Internet, the same way you can tell which blog posts of yours are working from the number of retweets they get. Stuff we all take for granted now.

Secondly, because the client was a laundry detergent, you’d really have to push the envelope to get people’s attention inside these trendy bars. It would force you to work your ideas faster, cheaper, better and harder. It would push you, it would push the client and the brand.

If any the ideas took off, I mean, REALLY took off, then you’d have enough info to go on to scale up the campaign into bigger media- TV, large magazines and whatnot.

Unlike most ad campaigns out there at the time, you’d would already have enough information to know that the campaign- the idea- was WAS ALREADY WORKING BEFORE your dear client had spent any real money.

It was cheap, it was disruptive, and… it was accountable.

The suits didn’t like the idea. My boss didn’t like it, either. Even my art director was a bit grumbly and doubtful. The idea never left the building. The client never saw it. The idea was killed in the first round.

The agency’s perspective was, they didn’t earn its money from “little” ideas. The agency earned its money for “BIG” ideas…. ones that cost lots of money and needed “a cast of thousands” etc. Superbowl ads and whatnot.

They had forgotten that all big ideas start life out as small ideas.

Make of this what you will.

I just wrote the [very long] blog headline above just to give y’all something to chew on…

I’m guessing most of us here are familiar with Techcrunch, yes?

Like I said earlier, we’re incredible beings. So frickin’ go do something about it. Frickin’ go do something that matters. Exactly.

God Bless…

["Awake", the print I featured in this Monday's newsletter etc.]

We’re incredible beings. And I want to make and sell art that maybe, just maybe, makes people think, even for a short while, that I’m not wrong, either.

[I can think of worse ways to make a living. Lord knows, we've all tried a few of those...]

So yeah, we’re incredible beings. But it’s not enough to believe it; you actually have to live it. Even if you’re going to fail. most of the time. That’s where the REAL work lies.

But hey, at least you tried.

Life is short, People. You’re going to be dead soon. So frickin’ go do something about it. Frickin’ go do something that matters. Seriously.

Thanks for hearing my rant. God Bless…

I don’t know if it was Brian Clark over at Copyblogger who first popularized the term, “Content Marketing”, but it’s he I most associate it with.

Content Marketing is exactly what is sounds like- creating content in order to more effectively market whatever it is you’re selling.

Copyblogger itself is a really good example of content marketing. It’s basically a daily advice column for anyone trying to do content marketing professionally. You get to read it for free, but hey, Brian and his team have other products they sell which are all designed to be interesting, useful and valuable to their core audience.

And Copyblogger rakes it in as a result; it’s now a seven-figure business.

Back in 2003, eons ago in Internet time, I remember talking to Henry Copeland, the founder of Blogads.com. This was well before the huge advertising market emerged for large sites like Techcrunch, Gawker, Mashable and BoingBoing, back when even the largest blogs were far smaller and far more personal than they are today.

We were chatting about potential business models for blogs, short and long-term. This was still very early days, remember…

“As far as I can tell,” said Henry, “the most viable business model for blogging these days is for under-employed consultants to show off how smart they are.”

Consultants showing off how smart they are? Under-employed or over-employed, that is content marketing. Exactly.

You write a blog. You build a dedicated following. You leave a discreet, non-pushy trail of breadcrumbs to what your business actually does for money. If X percent of your readers take the bait and become paying customers, hey, you win.

Like the headline of this post says, it’s much easier to get paid work out of people if they’re already your fanboy.

What I like about this model is that it’s simple. It isn’t rocket science. And perhaps more importantly, it’s free from the tyranny of wanting or needing huge traffic.

[Warning- VERY rough math to follow:] English Cut can only make and sell about 100 hand-tailored Savile Row suits a year. I can only handle a small handful of Cube Grenade clients at one time. Same with James Governor at Redmonk or Piers Fawkes at PSFK. And if say, our blogs can convert one or two percent of our hardcore readers into customers, in theory, the total readership per blog only needs to be fifty or a hundred times that in order to make the business viable. A few hundred people, maybe a couple of thousand- very attainable (and sustainable) numbers.

So if you get it right, you can just do your thing, delighting, thrilling (and selling to) the audience that you already have, without obsessing over which “A-Lister” is linking to you (or not),  or how many new Twittter followers you’ve gotten (or haven’t) since last month. Nor do you have sleepless nights fretting over the fact that your blog doesn’t have the same number of readers as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Economist, Wired etc. Or whatever silly, energy-draining neuroses that so many other social media mavens seem to fall prey to.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, effective content marketing requires two things: world-class content and a world-class product. Harder than it looks. Life is unfair.

For those of you in the biz still trying to figure out “The Future of Advertising”, I thought this little nugget I twittered earlier today might give you something to chew on. Bon appetit.

[Originally posted October, 2006.]

One of the main reasons I never really pursued corporate blog consulting as a career, even though I’ve had some definite opportunities in this department, is because of what I call “The Cleopatra Effect”.

I remember when I was a kid watching this old black & white movie about Cleopatra.

I can’t remember the name of the movie, but one scene always stuck with me:

Cleopatra is walking through the palace, when she’s suddenly stopped by the sound of pretty music, being played off in the distance.

She follows the sound of the music through the palace, till eventually she finds one of her courtiers in the garden, playing the harp.

“What pretty music,” she says to the courtier. “You play beautifully.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” says the courtier, obviously flattered.

“I would love to play music like that,” says Cleopatra. “Do you think you could teach me?”

The courtier, now that he’s feeling flattered, tries to win even more of her favor.

“Well, yes,” he gushes. “I’m sure a Queen as talented as you in so many things, would be talented at this as well.”

“Oh, good,” says Cleopatra, obviously delighted. “Here’s the deal. You teach me to play the harp. If I cannot play as well as you within one month, I will have you flogged. If I cannot play as well as you within three months, I will have you executed.”

The courtier’s face turns white. Cleopatra gives the courtier an evil smirk and then turns and walks off.

Make of this what you will.

[Buy the "Create Or Die" print here etc.]

I believe that both our economic and spiritual future, good or bad, is directly related to our ability to unlock the latent creativity within us.

There. I’ve said it.

It’s been six years since I first started blogging what would eventually end up being my first book, Ignore Everybody.

The book didn’t really start off with a plan. Like I said at the very beginning,

“So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years.”

That was it. One person’s ramblings. No big, authoritative volume with lots of practical how-to’s, case studies and academic citations.

Some people didn’t care for that. “I paid $23.00 for a hardback edition and I expect RESULTS, dammit!”

Results!

Ah. But I never said anything about results. There was no plan, you see. That’s because there is no plan. There never is.

Writing about creativity is a messy business because creativity is a messy business.

Even using the word “creativity” in conversation is going to get you in trouble from some quarters. Stick your head above the parapet for just a few seconds and watch the arrows start flying at you.

Yet somewhere in the back of our minds, we all know it’s too important a subject to ignore, too important a reality not to confront.

Why? Because when I first started writing Ignore Everybody, I was coming at it from a very personal angle. Confronting one’s existential need to be “creative”, to express oneself etc. Which is why the book did so well with teenagers, college students and young adults just starting out in the working world. That’s the time of life to be thinking about all that.

But now, six years later I’m a bit older and bit more experienced. Maybe a lot more.

And time and experience has led me to conclude that even if we hate the word “creativity”, even if it’s a nasty, annoying, sophomoric, hipster-dipster, New Age gagfest that really should have no place among the serious, results-orientated world of equally serious, result-orientated grownups…

It’s where all meaningful growth is going to come from, both internal and external, whether we like it or not.

I don’t believe creativity can be taught, not really, but I do believe:

• That with a bit of prodding in the right places, individuals can train themselves to be more creative.
• That with a bit of prodding in the right places, individuals working as a team can train themselves to be more creative.
• That with a bit of prodding in the right places, companies and organizations can train themselves to be more creative.
• That with a bit of prodding in the right places, societies can train themselves to be more creative.

And that if they can do this, the value they create will be off the scale.

I’ll say it again: I believe that both our economic and spiritual future, good or bad, is directly related to our ability to unlock the latent creativity within us.

Let the journey begin…

[Welcome, PSFK visitors! I hope you'll check out my "Daily Cartoon" newsletter, Thanks.]

From PSFK:

Every week, cartoonist Hugh MacLeod will draw an original cartoon about an idea from a popular or noteworthy PSFK post.

This week’s cartoon inspired by this PSFK article.

Yep, doing a small weekly gig over there. No reason, other than I like the blog (It’s one of my top three favorites) and I’ve known its founder, Piers Fawkes for a while now.

Just seemed like a fun idea. Note how I’ve used trademark “PSFK Purple” as my main background color etc.

Thanks Piers & Co for making it happen!

One evening Father Steven, the elderly priest who baptized more than one of my nephews and nieces, came over to my mother’s house for dinner. I was there, too.

Father Steven is a lovely guy. Deeply spiritual and very smart. Very learned in theology and the history of the Roman Catholic Church, though not Catholic myself I always looked forward to discussing “The Big Stuff” with Father Steven for hours on end.

That evening over wine and cheese, I was telling Father Steven how during a particularly rough patch in my twenties, somehow I got into the habit of carrying a small Bible around with me everywhere in my day pack. Not quite sure why. Being the good former choirboy, I’ve always read the Bible in bits and bobs, here and there, all my life. I told Father Steven I thought it was rather odd, even though at the time the Bible accompanied me everywhere, I didn’t read it any more than I did in my non-day-pack days. I just liked having it around, as it were.

“Ah, that’s quite common,” said Father Steven. “People have always carried The Bible around as a talisman.”

From Wikipedia: A talisman (from Arabic طلاسم tilasm, ultimately from Greek telesma or from the Greek word “telein” which means “to initiate into the mysteries”) is an amulet or other object considered to possess supernatural or magical powers.

Basically, a talisman is an object that has been given meaning that far exceeds any actual function. A good luck charm. Or a crucifix. A St. Christopher’s medal. A Star of David. Or that friendship bracelet your girlfriend gave you when you took off to France without her for six months “in order to find yourself” or whatever. A reminder of an idea or an identity.

As is that $150 pair of sneakers that you think are going make your exercise more often, that too is a talisman; that too has totemic power. Or that $400 smartphone that’s going to get you more organized and focused about your career. Or the author’s signature inside the jacket of your favorite book. Or yes, that gapingvoid print that’s going to hang in your office and help you to stay upbeat and motivated when you’re having a blah day. Or getting “Linchpin” tattooed on your arm.

And this is no different than watching some well known tech blogger like Scoble walking out of an iStore, waving his latest Apple gizmo to the video phones and cheering crowd, after he spent three night waiting in line, in order to be fist in the store to buy one. Right then and there, the Apple gizmo has tremendous talismanic power.

And of course, so does your “Object-Idea”, if you’re fortunate enough to have one. Huge power.

Why do we seem to have this insatiable and irrational desire to surround ourselves with talismans, totems and Object-Ideas? Because they represent meaning to us. And like the the cartoon above says, we have an infinite need for that.

[The Object-Idea archive is here.]

I’ve been working on a problem lately…

“Purpose Idea” plus “Social Object” equals…????

The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.

[Quoting Mark Earls:] Put really simply, the Purpose-Idea is the “What For?” of a business, or any kind of community. What exists to change (or protect) in the world, why employees get out of bed in the morning, what difference the business seeks to make on behalf of customers and employees and everyone else? BTW this is not “mission, vision, values” territory – it’s about real drives, passions and beliefs. The stuff that men in suits tend to get embarrassed about because it’s personal. But it’s the stuff that makes the difference between success and failure, because this kind of stuff brings folk together in all aspects of human life.

In his brilliant book, “Welcome to The Creative Age,” Mark Earls, then one of the top advertising planners in London, coined to term “Purpose-Idea”, as a more interesting, engaging and human term to replace the word, “Brand”. The latter he viewed as an outdated, overused and mostly meaningless concept.

Though I loved the book ["Purpose-Idea" is one of the most explosive "A-Ha!" moments I've had in my entire career], it soon became apparent to me that a Purpose-Idea doesn’t live in a vacuum. It needs to be articulated via a Social Object, so the idea can spread. Ideas spread not on their own steam, but as social objects. “Hey Gang, what do y’all think of this idea” etc etc. The Microsoft Blue Monster was a good example.

After the success of The Blue Monster, I wanted to create more of these…

i.e. “Social Objects that Articulate a Purpose-Idea” etc.

So I started drawing Cube Grenades with EXACTLY THAT in mind.

But in order to explain what I was talking about, it needed a name. Something more descriptive than say, “Blue Monster” or “Cube Grenade”, terms which are both utterly meaningless without a lot of backstory and context.

So recently I’ve been using the term, “Object-Idea”. A bit of a mouthful, maybe, but it works for now.

So what does this have to do with anything?

Well basically, I’ve been telling the ad agency world for while now, “Guys, you’re no longer in the Message business, you’re in the Social Object business.”

Yes, TV commercials can be social objects ["Dude, did you see that crazy new Progressive Insurance commercial? WTF??!!!"].

In fact, they must be, if the ad is to work. The “Whassuup” campaign for Budweiser [which was actually written by my old advertising buddy, Vinny Warren] didn’t work because the ad was THAT great artistically or convinced you of the beer’s quality.

It worked because suddenly millions of young adults the world over started saying “”Whassssuuuup” to each other. The advertising message, “Whassuup” had become a social object. An utterly massive one.

In the advertising & marketing world, successful social objects [Often called "virals", especially when talking online] are a good thing. Every brand manger and his uncle dreams of one day creating the next Cadbury’s Gorilla.

But a social object on steroids i.e. an Object-Idea, is far more powerful.

Because it’s actually talking about stuff that actually matters to people. It’s not enough for people to like your product. For them to really LOVE it, somehow they’ve got to connect and empathize with the basic, primal human drives that compelled you create your product in the first place. The Purpose. The Idea. Otherwise you’re just one more piece of clutter to them.

The Object-Idea might catch on within the advertising & marketing world, it might not. It might need refining on my part- maybe a lot, maybe a little- we’ll see. But I sincerely believe that the people who really get it will have a considerable advantage over their peers who don’t.

The Object-Idea. You heard it here first, Folks. Rock on.

[N.B. "Social Objects" is a term I did not coin myself, but was turned onto by the anthropolgist and Jaiku founder, Jyri Engestrom.]

["Wings", which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can get the print here etc.]

[Originally published November, 2005:]

I was having a long conversation with a friend last night about “Business Porn”:

Business Porn is just like Ordinary Porn or Real Estate Porn, except instead of it being about the women we wished we could sleep with, or the houses we wish we owned, it’s about all those cool, lucrative, exciting jobs and businesses that we wish we had, instead of the normal, tedious, schleppy crap most of us end up doing to pay the bills.

Does your blog suffer from low traffic? It’s probably because there’s not enough porn on it. Sex Porn, Real Estate Porn, Wine Porn, Biz Porn, Emotional Porn, it doesn’t matter.

Porn = Traffic.
Porn = Marketing.
Porn = Sales.

With Porn, all things are possible.

So now you know.

[commission gapingvoid]

[commission gapingvoid]

[commission gapingvoid]

[commission gapingvoid]