Its one of those retro-cool-creative things you can do to impress people in this day and age. Everyone forgets how much they love a good newspaper, especially when its made specifically for them. We're trying to reach wedding planners, photographers, real estate agents, and any other marketing folks at businesses. Any ideas/input is very welcome. Check it out at www.mcpapers.com and Like us on Facebook for updates (www.facebook.com/mcpapers). Here's to making news in 2012!
1. Earlier this week I saw a man peeing on a telephone booth on a crowded street. He then walked away from the pool of urine he left for the rest of us pedestrians, screaming at everyone and asking us to fight him if we had a problem with it. Those are the moments I wish I was I knew all the pressure points on the body and could drop him with a simple two-finger poke to the jugular, then leave him lying in the mess he made. I don't, of course, but that's what goes through my head.
2. Yesterday I was even more disturbed by a news story about four Marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan. I don't have much to say about that except that it reminds me how broken we really are as people.
3. A couple weeks ago I saw this video. It blew me away that people possess that kind of vision and creativity. I am in awe of those doing work that speaks to people, makes them think or makes them laugh, makes them realize that their suffering is not all there is. I also think the French accent is hilarious.
4. I read a commencement speech from 2005 called This Is Water by a brilliant writer named David Foster Wallace, which was made into a book that you need to own. It encouraged me, made me laugh, and had just enough cynicism to know he meant it. His story is a sad one, but fascinating.
5. I saw this video about an autistic girl that was "breaking free from her body." It's an amazing story.
I relay these stories to you to illustrate the fact that I don't really get how people work. The conflict of good and evil, of mind-bending creativity and unimaginable cruelty is too great for me to wrap my brain around. I know it exists in me, I can feel it, but it overwhelms me. It seems a huge leap to do anything that actually matters in the world...put people do. They make the choice to be remarkable every day. And others spend those same days making different decisions, and end up peeing places they shouldn't.
As promised, here is a continuation passing along a couple things I've been learning in the world of digital marketing, specifically Facebook marketing. My goal is to make it useful or interesting for not only those of you that work in the digital space, but also to the average Facebook user (which you likely are).
Let's focus on this overused, ambiguous term called "Engagement." In my world, it's one of those terms everyone loves to throw out there, like "synergy" or "KPI" or "at the end of the day." The problem is that everyone has a different definition. For some, engagement simply means traffic to your site or Facebook page. For others it's how many people are sharing or liking or commenting on your page. And some take a broader view of it as a measure of who is organically sharing or talking about your brand across multiple channels. (more on this here).
Rather than give yet another definition, for the purpose of this post I'm going to assume all of the above definitions are correct. The question I want to answer is: Why does it matter?
It matters because Facebook says it matters. (These concepts are true for the internets in general, as I do believe these trends are happening across the board, but I will focus solely on Facebook as the major driver of the trends).
First, an example: Let's say you're in charge of marketing for Nike. You consider yourself a cutting edge company, you've jumped on the whole "social media is here to stay" train. You've likely hired people to manage your Facebook page and you're still not quite sure whether the time and money spent is worth it. You're scared to increase your social budget because you can't fully justify a good ROI, but you're also scared to scale it back and possibly fall behind the curve. It is still hard to know whether fans have anything to do with sales, especially if they buy in a physical store, so we are left with this metric of "Engagement." In simpler terms: How interested are people in what we say and do?
While not perfect, this idea really does matter. As interactions on the web become more and more like actual human interactions, as opposed to the one-way newspaper model, things like conversation, trust, and consistency start to matter a whole lot. This isn't just an opinion anymore, either. It's a rule. Ever notice how the same few people always seem to show up on your news feed? If you've Liked a brand, those brands are lumped in with your friends, all vying for the limited news feed shelf space. Facebook has created an algorithm to determine who shows up on your news feed, called Edge Rank. Want to know what the main criteria in prioritizing what shows up is? You said it man: Engagement. If you're Nike and nobody ever clicks on your links, likes your brand, comments on your posts, or actually visits your page, your Edge Rank score is going to be very low and you won't show up in anyone's news feed. This makes a million fans essentially worthless. The same is true of your friends that show up in your news feed all the time...chances are they post often and people interact with those posts, and you've probably gone to their page to check out some new photos of their babies.
All of this is to say one simple thing: Nothing good happens on Facebook without good content and real conversation between people. Facebook will not allow anyone to thrive without human engagement because they want their users to have the best, most relevant experience possible. Even though ads don't usually fit into the "good experience" category, look for even those to start looking more and more like recommendations from friends than an unwelcome intrusion. The question the smart marketers are asking now is how to lead these fans past engagement to buying their product, watching their TV show, or attending their event...and track the whole process.
That is all, friends. Looking forward to your engagement with this blog, and Merry Christmas!
I'm struck by how many people think they'll actually get what they want by being assholes (pardon my french). Think about the guy yelling at the flight attendant because the airline messed up. I wonder how many times that situation has ended with the flight attendant saying, "Sir, because you seem very angry, I'm going to make an exception and put you on this full flight in place of someone else who is less angry." Even Alec Baldwin gets kicked off the plane! It seems that no matter how much we want something, most of us are not able to overcome our emotions to get it.
It can't be a surprise that people like being treated like humans - others tend to go out of their way for the people who do. There are times when anger is the appropriate response, but certainly not often. You can keep getting angry if it makes you feel better, but don't expect the results you're looking for. And you can fake being decent for a while, but that only works for those who've mastered the art of deception.
It seems convenient that the decent thing to do is often the most profitable (e.g. business aligning with a charity, nice person getting free drinks from the bartender, etc.). But here's the tricky part: it only works when you don't care about the profit.
As is customary, I haven't forgotten all you "non-readers." This will make your day:
[I've written about this before, but it's something I keep coming back to, so let's dive back in. Keep in mind that I am speaking in generalities, and many exceptions exist.]
It seems to me that very few people have any idea whatsoever what they want to do with their lives. My generation is so torn between the advice of "Do what you love," and the fact that they either don't know what they love, or what they love doesn't pay the automo-bills. So instead they take whatever opportunity comes up, over and over again. Granted, the best-case scenario for everyone in the history of mankind is to be able to wake up excited about the day's work as well as your bank statement. But despite hearing the choir of successful rags-to-riches Americans shout from every corner, "Life's too short to not follow your passion," it is still not a reality for an overwhelming majority of people in this country. Why is that? If it's such a priority, why don't we make it happen?
You also hear a lot on the news about how the American Dream is dying. They say we no longer believe that anything is possible in this country, or that our children will have better lives than we did. If true, it is a very sad thing. But I do think a big part of the problem is us. We've distorted the American Dream into thinking we actually deserve it all. We are entitled to the core, and it is killing us. When I watch movies or read books about World War II, I am struck by how different the mentality was back then. We were the underdog, willing to show more grit than anyone to protect the Dream. While still the greatest nation on Earth, I surely do not feel the same way about the United States as those soldiers did. I've grown up being fed facts about how great we are, but never having to fight for it. It's made us lazy even when we're overworked, and we are simply not willing to make hard changes (e.g. Congress).
I think these two ideas are very much connected: We deserve to do what we love, as some portion of the deserved American Dream.
Truth is we don't deserve anything, and it's very hard to appreciate or love your work when you view it as a right. It has to change.
Believe it or not, I see the current situation as a positive thing. A painful time, sure, but a necessary correction. Maybe we're moving toward realizing the world has changed and we can't simply put in more hours and expect to win. Maybe we'll build something better. The financial meltdown of 2008 is the defining moment of this generation, no doubt. Hopefully it's the kick we needed to make a new version of the American Dream.
And if you don't care about any of that, you're probably the kind of person who would love this video. I happen to be both kinds of person.
Here it is, the first post from NY. So get your scarves on, a cold front of awesome is headed your way, with a wintry mix of knowledge possible as we head into the evening.
As I mentioned in my last post, Paige and I moved to New York as of 3 weeks ago and both started new jobs on the same day in related industries. Pretty cute, right? What was not cute was the fact that we didn't have an apartment when we arrived, and only had 3 days to change that situation...a handful of people that had lived in the city for a while tried to "manage our expectations" by telling us we were being naive to think it could happen that quickly. I now have 2 responses to people who say similar things: First, I understand where you're coming from. Easy things are not easy in this city. Groceries, getting a haircut, walking...all are much harder here. If you take out the big buildings and all the money and good food, it reminds me a lot of living in Nicaragua. Things are just harder. The second thing I'd say to the naysayer, though, is that you'd be surprised what you can get done when you have no choice but to get it done. A little naiveté goes a long long way in making things happen. Too much doesn't help, but a little bit of stupid can be quite helpful. That said, we then had an apartment with no furniture. Long story short, our furniture arrived from SF a week late, we went to work, ate out every meal, came home and sat in kitchen chairs with no table till our butts went numb. It was very "character building," as they say. Alas, Paige and I can now say, with hearts full of character, that we have a home we enjoy. We are getting to know this city, trying our best to fall in love with it like so many who have come before us, and like we did in San Francisco.
As for the professional stuff, my goal is to put forth what I'm learning so I can maybe learn you something too. I work for a company that digs as deep under the hood of this little thing called Facebook as anybody else in the world. If you have no interest in this feel free to hang up now, though you should be just a little curious about this behemoth of a company seemingly poised to take over the world. It is more than just connecting with friends and seeing who's having babies. It's a widely successful business, changing the world with little things like boatloads of money and targeted advertising and companies that are tapping into the opportunity of 800 million users that tell you their location and how old they are and what they like to do. I tell you now, friend, businesses are placing a huge priority on building this kind of community. They know exactly who is responding to what messages, which serves as the best market research tool that has ever existed. They are using it to make decisions about how to spend other ad dollars, which TV shows and websites to advertise with. This thing is powerful, and the data that exists is massive. The companies that use the data to bring in more business are the ones ahead of the curve right now. ROI has been a big question in the social media world for a long time. It has been tough to determine whether all this "community building" is worth the time it takes. That is changing, and Facebook is doing it best at the moment. My role will be to introduce companies to a way of doing this better and more efficiently than anyone else. And we're hiring...send me a note if you want to move to NY and be best friends.
This blog started after I moved to San Francisco two years ago, without a job, knowing only one person in the city. Aside from being bored out of my mind, overwhelmed with a foreign place, and frustrated professionally, I needed an outlet, some place to actually interact with others and hopefully contribute to society in some way--which I hope I've done at least in some small way. As I write this, my wife of three months who I met in this amazing city, is decked out in her yoga pants and beginning to pack up our stuff as we prepare to move to Manhattan. To call it bittersweet to leave would be an understatement.
I think I was made for the West Coast. To all of my family and friends reading this, I declare this my formal plea that you all pack up as a group and head to the California coast at some point in the future. If you all were here, I can't think of a good enough reason not to do everything in my power to find my way back here. Every city now has an incredibly tough act to follow...New York better get it's gameface on to have a shot.
It's funny how things fall together sometimes. Up until a month ago, New York was not even in the picture. Now, in a matter of weeks after no job movement whatsoever, both Paige and I are starting new jobs on the same day and couldn't be more ecstatic about what we'll be doing. For any of you interested in the details, Paige will be working in the New Business division of an advertising agency called Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners (www.kbsp.com), and I'll be working in Business Development for a Facebook Ads Agency that sprouted from The Washington Post, called SocialCode (www.socialcode.com). They work with 50+ major brands in the U.S. helping them use their advertising dollars effectively through Facebook, which is gaining some major ground in the online ads market share.
Many of you probably have just as much or more experience moving than I do, but I did want to share a couple things we've learned through this process. If you find yourself making a long-distance move, here are a few things we'd recommend:
We are using a moving company called Move East, who specializes in moves between California and New York. Seems to be a great deal compared to anything else we've found...I'll update this after we've gone through the process, but so far so good
Don't be scared to sell stuff on Craigslist rather than take it with you. For example, I have a 55-inch TV that would cost almost $300 to crate and move across the country. Instead, I'm selling the TV for $750, avoiding the moving cost, and having a new one of the same or better quality shipped to our new apartment once we get there for $800. Another reason is that it feels good to get rid of crap you just don't need. Purge, my friends. It will free your souls.
Be aware that if you ever move the New York, they use brokers for most rentals and they charge between 10-15% of your yearly rent as their fee. This is so ridiculous to me. With the first month's rent, the security deposit, and the broker's fee all due up front, what percentage of people can afford to pay $10k+ all at one time? Do they all borrow money to start out in that city? With that said, anybody have some money we can borrow?
That's it for now. More to come from the Big Apple. I'll let you know if people that live in New York actually call it the Big Apple. If they don't, I think I'll go all hipster-ironic and start the trend. Keep an eye on my writing style and let me know how the city affects it. My goal, as always, is to increase in Awesome and strictly limit all things that are not Funny, Interesting, or Helpful.
To all our loved ones in San Francisco, farewell for now. You will be missed more than you know, and the McPheely's will forever offer an open door to all of you, wherever we are. God Bless.
I went to an event recently that featured a panel with two ridiculously smart guys who called themselves "Futurists." It was the first time I'd heard the term, but since I instantly love anything to do with the future (it doesn't matter how bad the movie is, if there is time-travel in it, I'm hooked), I stuck around. What they actually do for a living is sit down with people who run companies, from startups to the Fortune 50, and discuss scenarios. They walk them through an exercise with the goal of helping them step outside of the deeply-held assumptions they may be completely unaware they are operating under. They help them think of alternate realities that could exist in the future, asking questions like "Would you make the same decision if taxes increase 10% two years from now?" They look at trends and organize a large amount of data into helpful input for decisions. I would imagine this third-party consultation would be especially helpful for entrepreneurs, as most have a bit of tunnel vision when it comes to their idea or their company. The tunnel vision helps them push forward against the odds and the naysayers, but it also blinds them to these alternate realities they could potential plan for. In any case, all this talk of futures and realities got me a ponderin'. At the risk putting too much emphasis on what lies ahead, it seems like it'd be a great habit to help broaden our perspective for both work and play. The question is, how might we do that without paying a million bucks an hour to a Futurist?
Here's what I'd do:
1. Read the news - Not all of it, but at least enough to form an opinion on a subject of interest. It's tough to see what's ahead without knowing what's happened. Read blogs, read books, get your trade magazines, subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. Take an hour a day.
2. Journal / Freewrite - Nothing gets you out of your daily grind like sitting in front of a blank piece of paper (or screen). The act of putting thoughts into actual words is a secret recipe for clarity. Writing has a way of putting the chaos of your brain and your heart into focus, at least for a moment. It has a way of putting pieces together to generate ideas, and transferring some of that overwhelming mental activity onto the page and out of your head. This process can take several forms, but the most important aspect is to approach writing with no reservations. It is for you and only you. If you're a perfectionist, go to the opposite extreme and consider it perfection to write without stopping for 10 minutes, with no regard for grammar or flow. You'll be amazed what's inside if given the chance to rise to the surface. Do this at least once a week.(Read this if you're interested in digging deeper into freewriting)
3. Never Eat Alone - This one is especially hard for me - there is a lot that doesn't come to me naturally in the art of networking. The benefits extend far beyond your next business deal, though. Just as important are the conversations with friends and colleagues that inform you and spur you on to the next level. For everything from spiritual development, to a much needed laugh with a friend, to a mentor lovingly telling you how you're being an idiot, these things come from seeking out and making time for those than can make you better. It will both inform you of news you wouldn't have otherwise heard, and give you material for your writing (see what I did there?)
You can't see the future, but you can be aware of your yourself and your surroundings. That's the closest we come, and I do believe it's worth it.
Below is a conversation that I believe sums up a lot of different thoughts on the current job market and the underlying contributing issues of culture and education. It touches on the much-discussed topic of "Passion vs Duty" in what you do for a living. The goal of this post is only to present the opinions of a couple almost-30 year-old white guys who are fortunate enough to even have this discussion, not to claim anything as fact. It's a bit long, but it goes quickly, I promise. It seems the only way I can get others to help me write on this blog is to steal their online chats.
This is not the first version of this post that I've written. It's a heated topic, and I am often too harsh when I talk about it, so I had to switch gears. I'm too harsh because I get angry, but the truth is I have no idea the extent of the factors that going into making someone extremely obese. I have a high metabolism and grew up with a charmed childhood. So here is my disclaimer: This is not meant to be a personal criticism on anyone who reads it, and it is not meant to portray myself as someone who is any better than anyone else or as one who has it all figured out. It is merely an attempt to avoid dancing around what is clearly a very big problem. Honestly, the fact that feel like I need such a long disclaimer is a sign that something is wrong.
Not long ago, I was in the airport watching three seperate families, each with children under the age of 10. Two sets of parents were over 300 lbs if I had to guess, and the other couple slightly less. This is notable in and of itself, but what truly struck me was the size of their kids. Four out of the six kids had trouble walking and their arms stuck out at 45 degree angles while resting. And here were these parents, giving them a blueberry muffin or a snickers bar in the airport. This is what makes me angry. When children are brought into this situation, it no longer becomes a matter of personal choice. It's a matter of personal responsibility.
I am tempted to put all the blame on the parents, but it's not. Sure, they are making the decisions and they have a responsibility, but they have likely been tricked into thinking those decisions aren't all that bad. Cinnamon Toast Crunch? "Sure, its part of a balanced breakfast!" Whole Grains, No Trans Fat, Protein bars with more sugar than a Milky Way? "They say its healthy, so it must be healthy. I may even have room to treat myself to some cookies tonight." They are being duped. Add a couple jobs that involve sitting, a lack of interest in exercise, and friends and family too scared to say something about their weight - they're well on their way down the path to extreme obesity.
I told a few people about my experience in the airport, and I was shocked at how uncomfortable they were to talk about it. They were worried I was judging them or talking down to them. The concept of "that's just who they are" seems to have crept into places it's not meant to be. I'm not arguing that obesity somehow excludes a person from being accepted or respected, or that they should be treated differently than others, but how can we ignore something that is killing people and lowering the quality of life for so many, adults and children alike? Food can become an addiction, and like all addictions it leaves destruction in its wake. The "be who you are" argument simply does not apply.
There are many great movements going on right now, making waves in the world of nutrition and wellness. People are trying to get real food into our schools, TV shows are giving it a lot of press (some good, some bad), and the fog of misinformation caused by the food industry's lobbyists is beginning to lift in certain circles in this country. But at ground zero, the issue will always be a matter of motivation. Even though they've been tricked about many things, most unhealthy people know ways to be healthier, yet still don't. They don't do anything they don't want to do until there is sufficient motivation for change. That's when society can come in with encouragement and education. That's where friends and family come in with loving nudges in a new healthier direction. Nothing speaks to a person's soul like someone who loves that soul.
Here is my encouragement: don't be silent. Part of loving people is telling them when they're hurting themselves.
Ok, the soapbox is over. If you're interested in digging into different ideas about nutrition and exercise check out these three books, all of which I thought were great:
