advergirl

Plaid Nation 2008: What the cool kids are doing this summer

Back in the innocent days of 2007 -- in a time before a perfectly innocent van was wrapped, wired and wandering America -- the guy on the left and the guy on the right were talking agency self promotion ideas in a conference room in Danbury, CT.

The guy on the left joked, "we should get one of those funky Scooby Doo type vans, and just take it on the road."

Not the kind of joke to tell at Plaid, a one-of-a-kind design, branding and social shop, that makes weird ideas kind of wonderful.

Later that year, the first Plaid Nation tour came to life. And this year, its big brother - Plaid Nation 2008 - is storming the West Coast.

What is it?

It's five Plaid-ians driving through the country meeting creative, marketing, brand and internet workers, and sharing Plaid love. It's Tweetups, meetings with the creative community, introductions to inspiring dudes, and a big fat live Web experience to go with it. It's taking social on the road and using it locally and globally to continue a conversation. In short - it's a one-van mission to change people's perceptions about social media. From impractical to integrated.

Why should we care?
Sure there are some cool ideas being discussed and great connections made. But let's go a little bigger than that.

They've mobilized some of their best ideas and people in a freaking Scooby Doo van.  And it's netting out some incredible connections and enviable awareness.

The van is the power of "What if?" Of not being afraid to speak, explore and act on ideas. Even ones that, frankly, seem a little crazy. Especially ones that tear down assumptions about just how far a brand or product or experience can go.

It's about embracing the personality of your brand. And not being afraid to take smart chances.

I've got a Plaid Nation key chain hanging on my cork wall to remind me to bring a little of that Scooby Doobery to my every day.

Safe travels, guys!

Call for an Agency School

Or: Five things you will learn on the fly that you would have been better at if someone just taught you.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning.

Maybe it's Agency Speed. That pace required to fill the gap between goals and resources. That clip that leaves teams bootstrapping relatively crazy solutions at ungodly hours of the morning. That speed that rewards the people who "get it" and bedevils those that would actually like to follow a "process."

Or maybe it's the Immigration to the Industry. Agency types are from all over. Journalists. Corporate Marketers. Work-in-their-jammies Freelancers. Artists. Photographers. Fundraisers. Developers. Economists. Cat Herders. A messy hodgepodge of talent, experience and know-how.

Whatever the reason, most of us end up learning a lot of the basic skills of the business on our own. Traveling down the same road of self education ... only to very different ends.

So this is my call to any industry vets or educators who might be reading. We need an agency school or a creative industry bootcamp that teaches these five core skills of the business:

1. Managing People. The natural path of success is from doer to manager. But the skills required for each are completely different. Hence the fumbling weeks / months / years of grabbing work back to redo ourselves, of delegating just the grunt work, of being unable to inspire a team.
   
   Teach us how to teach, mentor and manage. How to give meaningful feedback and pass on our best skills.


2. Taking Notes. We're natural stenographers. Writing down every word we can capture. Brains racing just ahead of our scribbles. Our notes are the transcript of a meeting. Until one day - far too late in our careers - when we meet someone who has actually learned the art of notetaking and we realize we've being doing it all wrong.
   
   Teach us about synthesis. And creating frameworks from the dump of data. About hierarchy and selectivity and gathering those salient quotes that bring not just the content but the tenor of the feedback. Teach us to think conceptually and write briefly even in the real-time conversation of the meeting.


3. Giving presentations. Or, even, hell, creating them. PowerPoint has shouldered us with clunky, fragmented thoughts. It's taken away our natural interaction with the room. Our ability to stir passion and set up the big idea. Click, click, click goes the noose.
   
   Teach us what it means to present an idea. Give us the power to run a room. Go all the way back to the setup. Where it should be, who should be there, what should be in the room. And through the meeting itself - how we build the right foundation for an idea, unveil creative, inspire the client. Teach us how to get the room back with stodgy-mc-stodgerson declares the work crap, when the Big Boss nods off in the corner, when our creative partner embarks on a startling  monologue about  the sensuality of the font.


4. Tracking time. We bill by the hour. Well, some of the hours anyway. Maybe the right ones. As well as we can remember. In an office of 100 people, how many bill for the time it takes to get to the meeting? How many cross off a .5 for the what-did-you-do-this-weekend tangent at the end of the kickoff? How many really log the weekend hours we donated? What aboutthe time to get a new staff member up to speed? No?
   
   We're not number crunchers by nature. Not suits with rulebooks. Give us some guidelines, some help with the details. Teach us what that "we bill by the hour" phrase really means.


5. Managing our own schedules. Oh, the lucky few with a traffic coordinator. Someone to prioritize, negotiate and balance. The rest of us are either racing to catch up or boldly scratching off one meeting to slide in another. Listening to a conference call while typing up a new strategy. Stacking commitments three deep in hopes that nothing is lost in the balance.
   
   Teach us how to mange it all. When to say when. How to see the big disasters coming. And plan time not just for the deliverable, but for its iterations.

AgencyU? Ad Camp? I'm in.

The best advice no one ever gave you

 

Remember Daniel Pink's book The Whole New Mind? It was something of a treatise on the power of right-brained thinking in our changing economy. Serious stuff.

Enter his newest book: The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. A little comic-primer set to do no less than unseat that loopy-doopy The Places You'll Go Suess-ian tome from the top of the go-to grad gift list.

Bunko is a career guide. Featuring a genie. And a cube dweller. And the super sage piece of advice above.

Here's my spin:

The #1 mistake I see advertising newbies make at work is falling into the Supportive Parents Trap.

They grew up with moms who applauded their every successfully in-toilet poo. Dad's who only put down their video cameras long enough to lead a standing ovation at their school plays. Grandmas and grandpas who bragged their poems and art projects and sundry creativity.

You know, a good family.

One that sought out the good things their kids did. And, happily rewarded them for the effort.

Those well-adjusted newbies land at work full of big ideas and sharp skills. Full of that fabulous fodder: potential.

But, when the boss doesn't notice. Doesn't seek them out. Promote them. Reward them.

Well, what then?

The complaining begins. The gripey circles of discontent form. The dissatisfaction blooms. They feel worse and are more siloed and unnoticed than ever.

And why?

Because we were expecting to be discovered. Our whole lives people have recognized us for the gems we are. Why not here?

The inevitable answer is that work - ESPECIALLY agency work - just isn't built that way.

It rewards initiative over talent. Persistence over patience. Relevance over potential.

You get noticed by channeling that ambition into action. By coming to the table with ideas and inspiration. By pitching your boss on new directions. By volunteering for the tireless work of new business. By becoming an indispensable subject matter expert. By building an incredible relationship with a client. By coming to your boss as a peer and not just a squeaky wheel.

The best piece of advice no one ever gave you is no one ever got anywhere by waiting for someone to notice them. The plucky newbie gets the raise.

Buy the book for you or your favorite kid with huge potential and a chip on their shoulder. (It's even on sale!)

10 New(ish) Things I'm Not Ready For

Oh, look at me: the savvy blogger. iPhone in hand. Laptop at the ready. Twitter feed scrolling. iChat dinging. Hulu faves playing. RSS feeds ... well, accumulating.

For all my early-adopter DNA, there are pockets of online life I cannot connect to. From memory meetups to wicked wikis to silly security, here are my top 10 "I'll pass" technologies:

1. The Next Generation of Security Questions. Once, registering to check your cell phone bill online required little more than your phone number, a shaky password and your mother's maiden name. That maiden name was like the open ID of security. If you could just remember that and your "last four" you were all set.
   
   Today's security questions demand your pet's name, your favorite author, your best friend, your favorite sports team.  Blame my shoddy memory or my chronic indecision, but my favorite animal/author/athlete are a slippery slope of ever-changing affinities that I'm not ready to commit my account access to.
   
   (Incidentally, I blame the Family Tree farmers for this unfortunate turn of events. Far too easy to track down such things with rampant human cataloging online.)


2. Giving up email. How much do I love the IDEA of wikis and boards and other many:many communications? About as much as I fear actually adopting them. I need my home base. My weedy, out-of-control inbox that I can sort by name and search by whatever thread of conversation I happen to actually remember.
   
   I need the one spot that notifications of everything else will come to. Where I can imagine some privacy. Where I can stack up correspondence relatively guilt-free by merely applying the always-hopeful "mark as unread" designation.


3. Accepting ugly for function. Speaking of wikis. Or myspace. Or Twitter. Or half the new blogs I've been pointed to lately. I hate ugly. I hate super practical. I hate the point of view that we'll all just subscribe anyway; so, appearance doesn't matter.
   
   I appreciate table linens with casual dining. Wide-brimmed hats and delightful dresses at Shakespeare in the park. Helmets that match whatever two-wheeled device gas prices have you riding. I like a little ambiance. An appreciation that the experience matters. And, I'm not willing to give it up just because something is free / works great / is brilliant.
   


4. 15 year gaps. Humans I haven't seen since high school popping up as Facebook friends. Long-lost boyfriends emailing me their latest MP3s. Holiday letters from long-forgotten neighbors boredly googling their address books. (Stranger still when these ghosts of dorm rooms past are people who didn't even like you in the first place.)
   
   I don't know how to re-connect over gaps that far. What clever questions or meaningful updates will make this interaction anything more than a cocktail quip when we get back to our real lives? I am at a loss for where to even begin.


5. Local strangers. For me, Twitter is the first truly local social media. The one where my contacts are more likely to be sitting in the same traffic as I am than triple-tapping to 40404 halfway across the country or the world.
   
   This has created a whole new form of social introduction. At a party, a restaurant, a staff meeting, the voice accompanying the extended hand is saying, Hi, I'm @so-and-so. People I communicate with every day. People who live down the street. People who I only know by an anonymous handle until we're thrown together as Advergirl and @billyfischer.
   
   I feel like a great CB voice at a hopping truck stop.


6. Integrating devices. As willing as I am to try anything online, I am scared to death of actual machines. I have a rather shocking number of game systems floating around the house. Plus various TVs, tivos, computers. None of them are connected.
    
   I WANT to take my PS3 online. But, find myself intimidated by the box. By a whole category of technology I let pass me by.


7. Tagging. Live for today, my friends. Archives will fend for themselves. Like wikis, I understand the power of tagging, but, in practice, I just archive with impunity. No self-created hierarchies. No clever recall tools. Just a big pile of data to match the big pile of paper I keep in the offline world.


8. Group shopping. Oh, Kaboodle. Oh Lemonade Stands. How you baffle me. It's my offline aversion to browsing (and girl talk) brought online, but, still, it's a quickly growing category that I cannot seem to attach to.


9. Virtual notes. If it's over 4 pages, I want to print it out. I really do. I want to dogear and scribble notes and flag and tactilely consume. I have notebook installed in Firefox. I test-drove the Kindle. They're not for me. If it's worth reading, it's worth fingerprinting.


10. More blog rankings and ratings. Every month I get a new one. Advergirl is rated B by Blog Buddy. Or 85 by Rate Rank. I don't get all the algorithms; so it just becomes more for me to either obsess or feel angry and short-changed about. ToddAnd got to me first. The only rankings hurting my self esteem in the near future will continue to be the AdAge Power 150. The rest of you - go tell Griner he's just average!

Dogears: What changed in blogging when I wasn't looking and other great finds

When I started blogging - five years ago (!) - the community of readers and writers was much smaller. Once you found a circle of like minds, you tended to read one another, comment on each other's blogs and generally create a preaching-to-the-choir-despite-the-occasional-streaker type environment.

Since then, I've noticed the big shifts happen. When conversation became more global. When content became more valued than commentary. And, now - thanks to the growing group of influential 20-somethings - a shift from the pleasure of anonymity to an emphasis on personal interaction.

If you want to get grand, I'd call it multi-dimensional communications. If you want to stay plain-spoken, maybe knowing your readers. Or, to be blunt - using good manners.

Increasingly, bloggers are expected to interact with readers 1:1. Know them on Twitter. Respond to their comments with personal emails. Generally be the most active participant in the circle they started.

It's a new take on community. One perfectly captured last week in David Cushman's 12 very contemporary rules for blogging. And, one that - despite my own horrible email habits - I really admire.

More great articles and posts I tagged last week:

• For everyone who has ever stuttered their way through an exhausting, ultimately unproductive, or even downright embarrassing brainstorming meeting, here are a few great tips from the blogger crew over at B&A on How to Build a Better Brainstorm


• Tired of the same old new media tactics? Check out the insightful barbs on Armano's Marketing Wheel of Misfortune
  
  For every blogger who has been doing this long enough to be wicked sick of it: Steve Woodruff examines the Evolution of a Blogger


• Is it just me or has Ad Age been delivering really compelling content lately? Two recent faves: The Agency-Selection Process is Broken by Avi Dan and  a great piece on re-integrating media and creative by Linda Sawyer called We're Back to Where We Started...


• Here's hoping that Adverboyfriend's predictions that strategists will be the first on the unemployment line this economic downturn are proved wrong. After all, we're the happiest people around the water cooler according to this mini study by IPA featured on AdLiterate


• Happiest outdoor I've seen lately: Carrot pots by Owen Jones & Partners in Portland

Breaking through: The drama of the every day

About a month ago, GirlEffect.org (sponsored by Nike) made speedy work of our pass-along circuit.  Its near-universal acclaim was credited to the simplicity of the design and the pace of the engaging story.

But I think it was something bigger. Or, I guess I should say it was about being bigger.

The easiest objection to make to advertising in any form is - what does it matter? What does the brand of chips I buy, the sports team I cheer for, or the brand of shampoo in my shower* really matter in the big scope of things?

The challenge was even greater for this nonprofit. Can a small contribution really make a difference in a village thousands of miles away? Can someone on a couch in Ohio change the lives of a nation?

The Girl Effect pulls that thread.

Makes it personal.

Blows that little donation up into something that will change the lives of first a girl, then a village, then generations.

Makes it bigger than you. Bigger than itself.

It even lays the gauntlet that husbands and children are bad for girls. That's drama. Hell, yes. I'm in.

The hallmark of creating drama in the everyday is the lump in the throat. The experience so big that you see yourself as having real responsibility to it. You feel like it matters.

And, it doesn't exist just in the work of philanthropy.

Take these two niche favorites:

Cesar's (the dog food cum canine cuisine) I Promise campaign brings the Love Them Back tagline to life. It sets up your pet aisle picks as nothing less than an expression of how much your value your fuzzy friends. It lays down a gauntlet of love.

Or Monster.com's Stork spot. The beautifully shot story that hints at how valuable each life is and asks - are you reaching your potential? Stork replaces the transactional choice of work with nothing short of the meaning of life.  It either lays down a gauntlet of guilt or hope. You pick.

*Baked Sour Cream and Cheddar Lays, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Aveda Sap Moss ... you know, if it matters.

Reputation, skepticism and social media

Then.

About a million years ago, I was a campus politico. An engaged, sometimes enraged, college citizen out to change the world or at least change the way we buy used text books. That's me on the right, watching a Take Back the Night event from the auditorium stairs and otherwise taking myself too seriously.

My junior year, I found myself running for student senate president with a way-too-intentionally-diverse ticket of fellow travelers, called (embarrassingly): N.A.T.E. or new activism toward empowerment.

(I know. It's melodramatic tripe. But stick with me.)

As I remember it, we were set to win. What I can't quite remember is if that was us believing our anecdotal internal polls or real momentum against an entrenched group of incumbents.

(If I'm going to be melodramatic, I see no reason not to embrace it wholeheartedly.)

Enter the villain of this particularly tale: AT*, the editor of The Post, Ohio University's campus newspaper. AT was a bit of a firebrand, looking for a big story that would help her make her mark before graduation. It just so happened that N.A.T.E. got in the way.

The day before the elections, AT got wind of an "accounting scandal." Apparently the current student senate treasurer (also known as: the guy running as my VP) was stealing money. AT ran with the story. Even though the only "witnesses" were members of the opposing ticket.

We lost the election. In large part because of the huge, above-the-fold, Nixon-esque front-page headline on newspapers littering campus that said my party's VP was stealing student funds.

The following day, the newspaper retracted the entire story. Said it was completely wrong. In a single column. On an inside page.

They greatly influenced the election, hurt individual reputations, cost a lot of people a lot of money & opportunity and walked away with great clips. Years after the fact, an ethics professor told me that AT said it was a huge learning experience for her. Somehow I wasn't moved.

Now.

I mention this because this power of the pen has been wholesale transferred to bloggers. With Google in the mix, anything we say about a person or brand creates a digital trail of commentary that is somewhat-permanently associated with that brand or person. For better or worse.

It's one thing when it's right - or at least a valid representation of an experience - but what happens when it's wrong?

Jump ahead to last week. Another blogger took issue with something that I posted. Nothing unusual there. In fact, creating controversy and conversation is generally a good thing in this medium. The problem was that she suggested that I had been unethical.

A slew of incendiary comments further indicted me and by the time I had the chance to set the record straight, there was a quite significant trail of negative commentary attached to my, let's say, personal and blogger brand.

At first, the corrections came "in a single column. on an inside page." They were emails and post comments - the below-the-fold stuff we always mean to get back to, but...

To her credit (and with my thanks), the following weekend, the blogger updated the above-the-fold record (a glorious conceit of Web media) and - to my mind - removed - or at least significantly negated - the negative trail.

Next.

That said, there may be a bigger issue at hand. One that greatly impacts the future of social media and our ability - as early adopter types - to be part of it.

Let's get to the specifics.

In short: A local foodbank is having a really bad year. So a number of "creative economy"-type businesses around town had started internal food drives. Two woman from my agency among them.

And when I say these two women started a food drive, I mean they started a movement. Teams, campaign posters, internal events. It was a big deal. I got caught up in it and used my blog to challenge other agencies in the area to start drives of their own.

Turns out: This particular foodbank had a previous business relationship with my agency. So, the aforementioned other blogger called me out for - essentially - pimping my client under the guise of authenticity.

I hadn't thought of them as a client (in part because I never worked with them). And didn't have an agenda. I probably should have made the connection, but I wasn't in that mindset - so I missed it. Opened myself up to the questions and criticism.

Still, it raises an interesting question:

Can social survive skepticism? 

If brands respond to social media trends effectively, they'll be finding ways to make themselves worth talking about by their most important stakeholders. They'll be creating a relationship around that shared passion that Kelly Mooney talks about in The Open Brand. Those stakeholders aren't just customers. They're also employees and partners. The people closest to the brand.

One way to think about it: If my company is doing something I'm proud of and I talk about it, shouldn't that lend it even more credibility in this new paradigm (meaning, the message actually successfully engaged and activated someone who knows the dirty laundry. so, it must be pretty real, powerful stuff)... instead of more skepticism in our traditional one?

Can we be people first and job titles second? Or do affiliations always lead and ideas follow?

And, if we open ourselves up to believing in that authenticity, how do the real spinners and pimps fit in?

For me, I hope the answer is that social forces brands to become more compelling and companies to be more ethical and transparent. But that's a long view answer to a here-and-now push-and-pull. One that pits suspicion against conviction. One that will shape how we go forward.

*Not her real name