how to make friends and influence people

Saying thank you is always a good place to start. Or end.

Vaguely related post: thank you notes

coal mining

Examples are always good. So here's a few examples of my previous story about coal post...

I just read this bit in the Times on W+K's Tony Davidson. And how he wasn't that happy with the 'power of dreams' line so went down the Honda mines and came back up with 'difficult is worth doing':

Salma pointed out these Chanel bags to me the other day (below right). Which are just leather versions of the paper ones they use in the shop. They've just changed the material and marked them up a bit.

And here's our Ops Matt. Matt worked in operations at innocent and was responsible for getting stuff from A to B and that.

He also became and bit of star of our blog on a few different occasions. And even made it onto the side of one of our cartons.

All of these examples are stuff that was already existing inside Honda, Chanel and innocent. It just needed digging out and putting in front of people.

a story about coal

I'm off back to Wales on Wednesday to give a talk to the Chambers of Commerce. So thought a post about coal would be quite apt.

My mate Leo told me a great story about coal the other day...

There's an architect called Bruce Goff who liked to make buildings with coal walls. Like the one above. And there's a story about a house he built for someone with a big coal wall. The guys new neighbour came around to have a nose, the neighbour was impressed but not too sure about what the fire risk presented by having a coal house was like. When asked what his own house was made of he replied timber. No fire risk there then thought the coal house man.

The point being most of us can see that timber has many uses from a fuel to burn, to a material for making tables and pencils with, to structures to make houses with. Coal on the other hand is only really seen as having one ultimate use.

Most business's have a vast amount of coal in them. Stuff that is perceived as only have one use, one value to the business. But in fact if you looked at it in another way it could be reused for something else that could be of equal, if not more value to the business. I'm thinking of digital content and stories specifically here.

People. New product development ideation. Decisions. History. Heritage. Suppliers. Provenance. Stories. Training processes. Intellectual property. Problems never solved. Mistakes. Lessons learnt.

You just needed to get down the mines to dig it out and bring it up to the surface.

NB: The building in the top picture did actually burn down in the end, but that's not the bloody point.

passion

I spoke at this interesting conference last week along side Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth News. I found Nick's arguments regarding the death of journalism to PR and news-wires compelling. More than anything it was the passion and conviction with which he delivered his thoughts that hooked me. It was proper left wing fight of the underdog stuff like Arthur Scargill or something.

There was a bit of a heated debate at the end of it as you'd probably expect from a room full of PR and marketing people who'd just been told they were killing the journalistic industry. I'm pretty sure none of those same PR people would have complained if he'd been delivering their own messages with such passion though.

Passion is a great persuader (see top left corner in below staff picks).

Passion is infectious. Passion is the friend of the small guy, and the achilles heal of the big guy.

free marketing, sign up here

One of the most interesting books I've read on marketing and digital stuff this year is probably Seth Godin's permission marketing. I was a bit late to the party again granted, (it was first published in 1999) but it's still as relevant today as it was back then if not more so.

It's based on the single thought that one of the most valuable results you can get from someone visiting your website is their permission for you to contact them again. Simple as that.

I went over to visit Charlie Saatchi's new place yesterday and he seems to have got his head right around this. He's set up a permanent room in the gallery just to get peoples permission for him to contact them again via a very simple form.

The clever bit is that in offering it up as free membership to an exclusive arts institution (the Tate charge about £40 for membership in comparison) people were queing up to hand over their details.

And as it's a permanent room he's now going to get a constant stream of permissions on a daily basis to fill his data base up with. Plus all the demographics stuff on top of it.

Makes you wonder if everyone shouldn't dedicate a permanent room to free membership.

The title of this post is quite cynical, but what if you actually gave those new members actual membership to something and let them help you decide on stuff and run your business?

where's your money going

In further times of economic woe like these it's probably more important than ever to think about where the money you are spending is actually going. Seeing as there seems to be far less money to go around you could reasonably start to consider every purchase as an investment in a companies future. Those getting less investment will have less of a future in quite simple terms.

To that end I've started thinking about a few of my own purchasing habits. I'll keep buying method stuff probably more now than ever during the down turn for example, as I figure they could do with my money more than Unilever at the minute.

I also think Rough Trade could probably do with my money a bit more than HMV could.

Moral crusade aside though I bought this album by Boards Of Canada type people today. Made with Commador 64's and stuff.

I say it's an album but it's actually just a magazine. With a unique code and web address at the back to go and download the actual album online.

It made me think in order to sell music (in a real life record shop atleast) you don't actually need CD's or vinyl anymore. You just need something you can put a code on. You could buy an album on a bottle of vodka for example. Or a packet of biscuits.

The music industry seemed to get itself in a bit of bother by not coming up with any new ideas and being eaten alive by downloads and peer to peer stuff. There still seems to be a few new ideas out there if only record labels would start to experiment with them a bit.

in all things balance

Ever since I watched this Amy Tan TED talk a couple of weeks ago I've remembered the bit about balance (fast forward to 16:30). And the example of rock balancing.

There doesn't seem to be much balance in the world at the minute in various things. Something to work towards maybe.

The guy in the picture reminds me of the king of kowloon. I'd be quite happy if I got to this point myself one day.

a shell of my former self

This has now led to this.

It's strangely satisfying to see your house being ripped to pieces and then put back together again though for some reason.

it doesn't take a genius

In times of economic woe like these it's sometimes interesting to look at what you're still spending money on yourself in order to see what types of business might keep growing through it all.

And for me it's Apple right now. They're caning me at the minute. First they made me buy a new ipod touch by making it a lot thinner and cheaper than an iphone. Now they're stripping me bare via itunes. First it was paying for telly programme downloads and apps left right and center, now they've gone and got another 79p out of me with this Genius thing...

I thought I'd have a watch of Steve's key notes speech the other night and he got onto his Genius bit. I didn't understand what it was all about before but got interested when he was going on about cloud computing. I like cloud computing. So I ticked the box and got it going on my itunes, selected a random track to test it out (These Lights Are Meaningful by Adem) and the next thing I know this is happening.

Not a huge jump in logic to try and sell me a new track but an artist they already know I like but that's the whole point of it I suppose. I like Adem. I like God Only Knows. I liked it when Adem played God Only Knows at our fete in 2007. I didn't know he'd recorded it for an album. iTunes put it in front of me with a buy button next to it.

I buy it. Prospect converted.

I might have to turn it off now incase it happens again.

would you pay £190 for a pencil?

I might, but then I'm fickle like that.

A while a go I had a pop at D&AD but got to chat with Tony Tone off of the back of it. I've still got a fascination with D&AD but haven't got another pop this time, just an idea. I've been thinking about what would make me join, as I've still never got round to it, and thought a pencil might just do it. Not one of the big fat award ones, but a normal yellow pencil.

The idea would be that every new and existing member would get a nice bright yellow D&AD graphite pencil. As only creative people tend to have something to do with D&AD you'd be looking at positioning it as something like a sharpie marker pen. Have creatives using it to draw and write their best ideas and the like. A bit of a badging device. A covert nod that you're in the club. The pencil would represent the heritage of the work that has gone before in D&AD and what you are striving to win yourself.

Then you could then use a pencil sharpener to promote the D&AD workout stuff. Sharpen your pencil type thing.

Either that or it would just be a bloody expensive pencil.