Posts Tagged ‘people’

The "ayes" have it.

As I mentioned in a Tweet this week, the Season finale of Mad Men, was one of the greatest paeans to the entrepreneurial spirit of the advertising industry that I’ve ever seen in media. Throughout the episode we kept high-fiving each other as great line, after great line kept rolling out of the characters’ mouths. The best line of the night, and the most perfect line I’ve heard uttered about big agencies happened as Roger Sterling and Don Draper were leaving the Sterling Cooper offices after their stealth raid. Sterling looks at the modern, wood paneled reception area with his name on the wall, and the fancy plate glass doors and says to Draper, “When do you think we’ll be back working in a place like this?” Draper responds “I never really wanted to work in a place like this.”

Howls of delight ensued.

Whether you’ve entered the freelance, small-biz, solo-preneur pool voluntarily, or involuntarily, as many have over the past year, that line resonated. Some may say “sour grapes,” but many of the advertising-displaced stayed in the game because we really do love it. It’s fun, interesting, challenging and ever-changing. We just now choose to play the game by our rules, beyond the walls of big agencies with modern reception areas and fancy plate glass doors.

Draper, like many of us has the epiphany that the cool work space, the trendy address, the tricked-out office spaces etc., are not what this business is about. For all of his character flaws, and he has many, the thing I admire about Draper is his absolute commitment to the work. For many of us, it’s all about the work, yet the places we work (or once did) do not share our passion for the work. Rather, they are about rank, privilege, bonuses (though, tough lesson to agency-aspirants: bonuses in agencies are rare. They always cry “bad year/quarter/week/day.” If you seek bonuses, go to work for a “consultancy.” Wall St. can’t really hand them out anymore either. ). The work, and, ultimately, client needs, get lost amidst the noise and superfluity of the agency.

In a previous post I wrote about how the Mad Men creators really nailed something about agency life via the analogy of the mutilated foot. Nineteen sixty three in the show is the doppelganger of the current moment in the business. The creators of the show have shown how and why agencies end up where they do, and have shown what happens to the people who work for them. No doubt, 2010 will show what happens after people have decided that it’s not about the agency, but rather about the work and your clients, and what happens when individuals take charge of their destinies. Mad Men in 2010 should be interesting as well.

That's a Phone, Watson?

Attribute it to preoccupation with other things — summer, life, jobs, the general hustle of starting your own business. I ignored Twitter, this blog, my Posterous account and some new developments in social media through late July and into early August. I was awash in a sea of informational ennui brought on by a general lack of interest in the perceived-dross that was washing over the transom of my social media platforms. I broke out of it though by really focusing on the group I’d set up in Seesmic entitled “friends.” Some of these people are real friends, people I’ve know for years. Some are friends I’ve only ever interacted with on Twitter. Regardless, I call them friends because for whatever reason I caught a spark from my interactions with them that really opened up to me the possibility and promise of social media, when I first jumped in. These people say things that matter to me. They’re not selling me something. They’re not telling me how to act. They are sharing information, insight, links, pictures and asking for feedback. They are initiating conversation and interaction and sharing.

One Tweet in particular helped me snap out of it because it brought me to a wonderful, thought provoking post, Search as Research by Richard Reeve (@CCSeed) at his blog, Catskill Cottage Seed. Writing about the vast oceans of personal information that folks share, and how it can and will be used down the road — by not only marketers (of course) but also by sociologists, anthropologists, historians and psychologists — Richard ends by asking “who will effectively learn to read” this sea of information? The post sparked a tremendous discussion, and sharing of ideas that helped to snap me out of my social media torpor. I stopped watching the data stream by in my various interfaces and instead engaged, and remembered that it is engagement that draws me to this space and this business.

In the world of social media (really in any world) it’s all about engagement: with people, their ideas, their points of view, opinions, photos, work, trials and triumphs. Marketers have been striving for decades to engage customers to sell clients’ stuff. The name of the game hasn’t really changed; but, the tools have, and the communication channels have proliferated and how and where and when we consume information and connect certainly have (Imagine A.G. Bell looking at a Blackberry or an iPhone: “you mean that’s a phone, without a wire and you hardly talk on it because you’re too busy using it to type messages and read articles and take and send pictures…?). But, for now, tonight, I’m not concerned with how marketers use social media — that’s covered, ad nauseam day in, and day out, c.f. Twitter. Richard’s thought provoking post (and he’s always thought provoking) rekindled the joy that comes from engaging with people in conversation about things — and I mean things, stuff, the weather, whatever. For all of the technology, and systems and interfaces this is really a tremendously humanistic time. Never before have we had such ability to interact with other human beings. On the most basic level people are talking. As Richard mentioned in a comment:

So again, it comes down to
people interacting in the digital marketplace regardless of the
platform, but here with sense being that of the Athenian agora

Some are selling and promoting and others are offering me free access to hot singles in my area . . . but most of us are just talking. Engaging. I’m not sure why I forgot that — chalk it up to Sirius, maybe — but once I remembered what was important, the engagement with real people, social media and it potential came back to me. What one does with that engagement, is up to the individual and their own personal needs, wants and desires. For me, I’m going to talk.

When people get together

I had lunch this week with John Haydon (@johnhaydon) whom I follow on Twitter. We’ve chatted back and forth over the months about music social media and other things and we realized sometime this spring that we live fairly close to one another. We set up our meeting completely via Twitter, never sending a single email nor calling on the phone. I think that neither of us had any real notion of what to expect from the meeting, though, as I mentioned to John during the lunch, I approach all such opportunities with the attitude “who knows what happens when you put two intelligent folks together to talk.” We swapped stories about our social media adventures, shared tips and tricks and generally just talked about things relating to starting a business, fatherhood and the like.

I think that we both learned something from talking and laid a solid foundation from which to explore possibilities down the road. Also, importantly the meeting drove home the very real, and very awesome fact that behind the avatars and handles are people — actual, identifiable, physical people — not just demographic and psychographic distillations of types. Technically, I may not use twitter correctly (I’ve blogged about the “rules” of usage in the past) but I use it in a way that suits me. I’m not just an entrepreneur. I’m not just a family man. I’m not just an art history guy. I’m a lot of things and I follow many people. Some may help my business. Some I may help. Some I follow just because I want to see different perspectives from people of different nationalities, genders, politics, interests, ethnicities and regions. I frequently start chatting if something that someone says piques my interest. Often, I listen. I view Twitter as a line directly into the universal brain to which I hopefully contribute and from which I learn a tremendous amount. Back in December 2008 as I was pulling myself together and starting this company Twitter helped me feel a part of something bigger by looping me into  the idle chatter, the keen insights, the silliness, the mundane-ness and beauty of many people talking to one another.

It is this concentration of people that make social media the “It” channel in the minds of marketers, right now, but I think that too often the reality of the people who make up these communities gets lost. Marketers of all stripes count people as “eyeballs,” “traffic,” visitors,” “followers,” “leads,” “acquisitions,” “conversions,” “potential revenue/income/sales” and “friends.”Perhaps, CMOs and social media directors and CSMOs need to come off of their perches and interact with folks. Perhaps, a bigger part of their job should be real-world interactions with people who are passionate enough about their company and product to follow and interact with them in various channels. Social media is a start, but there’s no replacement for siting down to a pizza and a Greek salad and some good old fashioned conversation. It bears repeating: it’s amazing what happens when people get together and talk.

Please read John Haydon’s take on our meeting: The most effective social media tool in the universe