And a funny thing happened, people related.
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Why must you express the human experience? Between how it’s made and how it’s distributed, what happens? How do we promote specific business activities? Those are the questions of ART + marketing, and these are the 12 recent stories I recommend reading to move from idea to reality:
ART — expressions of human experience.
Art or Artificial? (and Part 2) by RobinB Creative. “While I don’t deny the benefits of good tools in photography, or any other endeavour, they do not assure excellence. Millions of golfers use the same clubs, and even play the same courses as Rory McIlroy, or Dustin Johnson, but they’ve never won a Master’s tournament, or achieved top ranking. Some of my most positively received photographs were actually taken with my mobile phone camera. No, I won’t tell you which ones, because its not important — that’s the point.”
Meet the songwriting accountant by Cali Bird. “Sometimes I will finish with an accounting client, get a coffee, open a Google-Doc and write a rhyming couplet or two. They may begin as nonsense but they tend to start to gather meaning and in one or two minutes I have something — something that didn’t exist 120 seconds ago. I find that even as “baseline minimum” this is very rewarding. If my day is hard or I have to work late and circumstances keep me from revisiting song-writing I still feel I achieved something.”
That Time I Accidentally Wrote a Book by Mike Brennan. “I had drawn a line in the snow, and publicly declared snow my enemy. And a funny thing happened, people related. People cheered and rallied. It started to become “a thing.” Oh, Mike’s up to his “Dear Snow” rants again. I wonder what he’ll post now? So I kept going.”
how to choose a book with a graph and secret passcode to join the club by Chhavi Shrivastava. “Don’t you absolutely hate seeing people on a metro or airport, with their noses deep inside the books. I hear some of them take book you are holding as a recommendation letter of you. And some treat their Kindle as a legacy that will pass on to their kids. I have tried reading before, but I don’t really think it might be my thing. But yeah, I won’t mind reading. 2018 might be a good year to start.”
PLUS — between how it’s made and how it’s distributed.
The #1 Best Way to Deal with Haters by Anna David. “I was away for the weekend with a friend when I stumbled upon an entire website someone had created to try to figure out who I was sleeping with at the New York Times because it made no sense whatsoever that such a terrible writer would be published in such a prestigious column. I cried. Weekend ruined.”
Why Writing On The Internet Is The Most Humbling Thing You Can Ever Do by Tom Kuegler. “Even when you do bring your A-game, you can get lit up like the Fourth of July. That’s because people are smarter than you on the internet. This isn’t the dinner table anymore. This isn’t even a classroom full of 50–60 people YOUR AGE. This is the internet. Where Elon Musk can reply to you on Twitter. Where experts circle in the water constantly searching for the first signs of blood.”
2018: The Year Design Firms Will Surpass ‘McKinsey & Co’. by Seyi Fabode. “For the traditional consulting firms, their clients competitive paradigm is changing at a scary pace. The easy client problems are solved or solvable, the harder problems will be addressed with advanced technology applied by smart technologists/system thinkers and the incumbents will require partners who can help them implement systemic change.”
Creative Work Under Pressure by Tim Rettig. “I ignored even the most amazing ideas about the other projects that came up while I was working on the thing that I had defined as the single most important task.In my mind, I labeled all these other projects as ‘temporarily unreachable.’ No matter how useful these thoughts were, I simply acknowledged them as they came up, thought to myself that ‘now is not the right time,’ and then moved back towards my current project.”
MARKETING — campaigns to promote specific business activity.
Uncovering the Magic Behind this Year’s Most Stunning Marketing Hit! by pascal fiedler. “Shoes designed by Berlin’s public transport provider ‘BVG’. In cooperation with Adidas, the German transportation company has produced 500 limited sneakers. They all come in BVG’s ugly yet culty cover seat design and function as an annual subscription. And in Germany, everybody is going crazy for them. That’s great. The idea is genius. However, it follows a systematic logic. Its success is reproducible. It’s a marketing concept and everybody can use it. I call it: Pseudo-Products.”
On Usernames: More Than You Think by Brian Yahn. “I scraped Reddit to get a list of 138k unique usernames. Of those usernames, 56k (~41%) contain a surname, and 30k (~22%) contain a first name. 6k (~4.5%) contain a date of birth. 307 even have a zipcode…” They were some important discoveries that contradicted publicly reported numbers, and some fun discoveries:
- When it comes to cats vs dogs, on Reddit, “cat” usernames are more common: 425 to 316. “kitty” and “kitten” each beat puppy by about 2:1.
- Pizza is not the most popular food! “pie” comes first — followed by “potato”, “bacon”, “taco”, and “pizza”.
- James Bond is likely the most beloved fictional character. 007 is the 184th most commonly occurring “word” in Reddit usernames. Unless you count God — he comes in exactly 100 spots above at 84.
- Statistically, about 1 in 128 Reddit usernames makes me laugh out loud — like: crazychatlady, pornado, ass_eating_meme_bitch, TheRockingHorseLoser, MajorFuckingDick, HiGodItsMeAnotherGod, and InOneEarAndOutYourMother.
A True Beginner’s Guide to Marketing by Febin John James. His 4 To-Dos:
- “To-Do #1: Write down the larger purpose of your organisation?
- To-Do #2: Find a specific group of people for your product?
- To-Do #3: Make videos which express the purpose of your organisation for a specific age group.
- To-Do #4: Find the groups where your target age group is present, share your content there.”
Building a Truly Successful Personal Brand Takes Vulnerability by Nicolas Cole. “And not a lot of people are willing to be vulnerable. That’s why everyone wants to be the model, the one that just has to post a selfie with the caption, “Love life,” and get 200,000 likes. That’s why people want the sunset, and the gorgeous car, and the king size bed in the 50th floor penthouse overlooking the city. They want these “things” to speak for them — to replace their own voice and actually share who they truly are.”
Until next time — make something.
P.S. Online Classes to Build Your Dream Career. This message is brought to you by SkillShare. Want to learn a new skill in 2018? SkillShare has over 18,000 online classes, and you can get 3 months for just $0.99 by clicking here.
