If consumption is the point (the engine of the economy, the focus of our marketing, the driver of our status) then it’s easy to get confused about the difference between something that’s nearly empty (and must be refilled to ensure we keep going) and something that’s not quite full (which means that there’s room for more.)
Keeping something full can be energizing, but it’s not required.
Cable TV was a perfect storm. The number of channels that needed old movies and TV series to fill airtime almost exactly matched the number of worthwhile shows that were available.
Which meant that A Wonderful Life, The Wizard of Oz, Seinfeld and MASH could be cornerstones of the culture for decades, not simply a few weeks or months.
A fan could reasonably expect to see them all.
Two things have changed for books, music and visual media:
The long tail keeps getting longer. Which is fine, except it undermines our expectation that the culture has a center, that the people you’re with have seen and read what you’ve seen and read.
And it shifts the economics as well. Assets aren’t worth what they used to be, and the focus of attention is erratic and unpredictable.
Better is elusive, more is not in short supply and it’s even more of a guessing game than it used to be.
We’ve managed to lionize, celebrate and elevate the mindset of “CHARGE!”
Even when better judgment and experience would indicate that we’re often more likely to succeed with a strategic re-evaluation of the situation.
Making a new decision based on new information isn’t weakness. In fact, it’s the opposite.
No whimpering required. Retreating with enthusiasm is a sign of wisdom and long-term thinking.
One of the valid complaints about some AI systems is that they make stuff up, with confidence, and without sourcing, and then argue when challenged.
Unsurprisingly, this sounds a lot like people.
We often end up with what we are willing to tolerate.
Show your work and ask for receipts.
My friend’s organization is working with a branding studio to think about how they appear to people who don’t know them well.
This is sometimes called ‘rebranding.’
What is almost always done in practice is actually better referred to as re-logo-ing.
A brand is not a logo. A brand is a promise, a story and a shorthand. A brand tells us what to expect the next time we engage with you.
Being named Fred is not a brand. Fred is your name, not your promise. If you’re an unreliable, selfish hustler, that’s your brand.
Begin with this: Your name doesn’t have to say what you do. Starbucks, Nike, Western Union, Maya Angelou, The Grateful Dead… these are fine names, but they are not descriptive. They earned a secondary meaning–the brand stands for something, because the work stands for something, and so the name is associated with that.
If your brand isn’t doing everything you hope, it might be because your organization isn’t doing the work that the brand could or should or might promise it does.
Clarity matters: Being specific and consistent and clear in what you do and what you stand for is challenging work, but worth it. It requires less compromise and a willingness to walk away from all the soft edges that the committee might be insisting on.
We know what the Bat Signal means. We know who’s going to show up, what he’s going to be wearing and what will happen next.
Understanding vs. action: Is it possible to be more clear in your name and public statements so that it’s really obvious what you do, so that more people would understand? Of course. We could change Louis Vuitton to “Really expensive bags for socially insecure people,” but I’m not sure it would increase sales.
Given that your project isn’t for everyone, the goal isn’t for everyone to understand it. The goal is for people who might take action to understand it enough that they will take action. Every great brand that I know of has as the unspoken next line in their brief: “This might not be for you.”
What will I tell my friends? It’s not easy for me to talk about the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi simply because I didn’t grow up knowing how to say his name. But it’s not simply the spoken logo that matters. When I tell the others about what you do, do I feel smart or stupid? Can you establish the conditions where sharing your core ideas and mission is tempting, generous and affirming for the people you need to have talk about it? If your name or logo get in the way of that, please change it.
Who is this for? What do they believe, what do they wish for and treasure? Ignore the others.
Where is the tension? What will happen if I don’t do something right now? What if I keep quiet? What is imminent, what will I miss? The default is the status quo, the standard response is, “maybe later.” If you don’t create tension, there will be no change.
Are you building a culture? “People like us do things like this.”
No one ever bought anything on an elevator. Your pitch isn’t designed to fully explain what you do or even to make the sale. Your ride on the elevator only exists to make it more likely that someone will follow you out of the elevator asking you questions about what you do.
Knock-knock jokes teach us a lot about all of this. If we say “knock knock” to someone we have permission to share a joke with, they will say “who’s there?” Interactions ensue. On the other hand, if you’re running around insisting on telling jokes to strangers, you’re being annoying. And the best lesson is: If you’ve ever heard one of these jokes, you definitely didn’t hear it from the person who made it up. Ideas that spread, win.
I don’t care about your logo, really. Few of us do. If you don’t believe me, look hard at the logos for Starbucks, Neutrogena and Hermes. It really doesn’t matter. It’s fun to be a pirate (they have a great logo) but it’s better to do work that we care about, work that people honor and share.
Branding agencies serve a useful purpose–they cause the client to pause and answer hard questions. Making it look good doesn’t really matter.
Bullies use intimidation and power to force others to act against their best interests.
Bullies blame the victim, assuring everyone that they wouldn’t have to use force if people would simply go along with what they want. Effective bullies organize a small mob to enforce their wishes.
Living and working with bullies is no fun. And it’s not productive or resilient.
The blame that bullies spread is divisive. As a result, the bully separates the community instead of connecting it, using the power of the mob to harm the outliers.
And a bullied community often cowers in fear instead of leaning into possibility.
Most of all, bullies are weak. They can’t tolerate change and refuse to listen or improve.
Resilient, generative and productive approaches to problems are always a better path forward.
Time passes. And humans have always kept track.
Distribution and technology combined to create a few decades where the tear off daily calendar was nearly ubiquitous (read on for details on my new one, a collaboration with Debbie Millman).
First, the industry needed to efficiently produce a block of 365 pages, each being easy to tear off.
And then it needed a culture that would be attracted to a long tail of cartoons, brands, hobbies and personalities.
Finally, publishers would need a nationwide chain of stores to merchandise and promote the perfect gift item for a few weeks of the year, just before New Year’s.
A day-to-day calendar is a lovely gift, even if you’re not stuffing a stocking. It is just frivolous enough, thoughtful enough and specific enough to give the recipient a smile, without incurring too much of an obligation.
The timing for calendars was a miracle. Each year, the new year starts just a week after the biggest gift-giving holiday.
As you can imagine, they sold a lot of calendars.
Now, distribution has changed, and so has tech. People don’t need a calendar to know what day it is, and their desk is a very different place than it was before everything was on a device. The lead time for calendars is still long, but the ability of a nationwide chain to display them isn’t what it used to be.
Not the best time for me to start creating calendars, but that’s okay. Last year’s calendar ended up being the fourth bestselling one the company published, and we’re back this year.
Almost all of the calendars made now sell online, and most of the orders happen months before the holidays. They don’t sell nearly the way they used to, but I still like the way they ground us in the moment.
This year, I created the calendar with my friend Debbie Millman. She’s the original podcaster, a dean at SVA, and a gifted and generous artist.
Here’s the link to check out the calendar.
Debbie has been reading this blog for decades, and she picked some of her favorite riffs, then hand-lettered each on an iPad. It’s already a #1 bestseller in at least one category.
The publisher prints their entire supply all at once and won’t make any more. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks, Debbie!
Along the way, we have been taught to associate character skills like honesty, rationality, agreeableness, grit and care with surface metrics like wealth or power.
That’s almost certainly incorrect. And if we make assumptions based on vague measures of class, we’re going to get tricked.
In any village, cabal or cadre, you’ll probably see a similar percentage of bad actors. If anything, the fancy people might overindex for selfishness.
Shoplifting is not that different from cheating on your taxes.
Shrug your shoulders, care less, phone it in.
One software company I used to depend on has sort of given up. They have plenty of cash in the bank, but they simply stopped trying. You can feel it in their updates, their customer service, their approach to the future.
Giving up is a waste.
Quitting, on the other hand, is a fine thing to do. Because quitting gives you tomorrow back. It opens the door for the next contribution you are able to make.
In or out.
The top of the fence is no place to hang out.
Big football at colleges in the US costs more than $5 billion a year. And none of these programs has a student acting as a coach.
The same analysis, at a much smaller scale, applies to school theater directors and producers, conductors of the jazz band or orchestra and even the coach of the chess team.
We learn by doing, not by winning.
What happens if we embrace this and make education about learning? What would happen if the head of the football program simply taught students how to be coaches? Or the head of the music program challenged kids to conduct?
My most important learning experiences in organized schooling came from the random moments when I actually got to organize instead of being organized.
