An International Smoothie

The Carat and Stick Approach

Image courtesy of bthomso

Regular (and irregular for that matter) readers will know the disdain I reserve for certain media agencies because of their insistance on choosing commission over effectiveness, of routine over insight and efficiency over engagement. 

Well I think we should all take a step back and appreciate the unbridled douchebaggery that Carat Boston and Facebook have been involved in recently with the case of one Harman Bajwa. Harman, like many of us, has a Facebook vanity URL, his being http://www.facebook.com/harman. 

At some point this week Harman got a friend request from a guy called Tyler Bahl on Facebook. He added him and on Friday (22nd January) he received this message from him:

  

Harman decided that despite the fact that it's the "GRAMMYS" on Monday, he preferred to keep his vanity URL. He did, after all get it first.

What happened next is a little sinister and if the picture is as the evidence suggests, pretty despicable. Soon after he responded to Tyler and Carat, Harman got a message on Facebook from the mothership:

 
Facebook told him that they were taking away his vanity URL for violating their policies because "A Facebook username should have a clear connection to one's identity". Of course his name is Harman, I mean this isn't Chris Martin trying to steal Steve Jobs' apple. 

If timing is everything, then everything about this seems a little suspect ne c'est pas? It would seem that Carat tried to bribe Harman out of his vanity URL and having failed called in the heavies at Facebook to get the job done. They got what they wanted so case closed right? Not quite.

See Techcrunch got hold of the story and people commented, tweeted and shared it all over the place. Harman also set up a Facebook group to tell people about the brazen stupidity that Carat and Facebook were showing. Mark Zuckenburg, stealer..ahem..I mean founder of Facebook then joined said group (WTF?!? Is he really that stupid?!?)

  

Inevitably, the morons at Facebook HQ realized that Techcrunch and the Washington Post (only the 368th most visited website on Earth) were going to give this little item of soiled clothing a little more airing than they felt comfortable with (also known as "Hey!! We can't crap on everyone all the time, because sometimes people talk to each other!!"). They then flipped the switch on their damage limitation apparatus and sent this message to Techcrunch:

 
So all was resolved in the Kingdom of Facebook. 

Apart from the fact that Harman's name is Harman, and (an Oxford comma experiment in honor of Mr. Oke and William Tweed Humphrey) apart from the fact that had Techcrunch not made such a big deal out of it, it's likely that Facebook wouldn't have moved an inch. 

Facebook's dossier of dalliances in douchebaggery is ever expanding, but what of Carat Boston? Surely Tyler Bahl, a self-proclaimed emerging media strategist should have thought more about his strategy (he basically said "Give it to us or we'll get it given to us") in the emerging medium that is Facebook? In addition what does it say about Carat Boston's proficiency within social media (aside from this shining example of their excellence) that the example that Tyler quoted to Harman (twitter.com/AVTR) is an account that has tweeted a grand total of 6 times since September and follows a grand total of 0 twitter users? Some engagement. What do his colleagues say now to their counterparts at Harman International? How do they explain that as of Saturday 24 January, on the first page of a Google search for Harman International is the headline "Facebook Snatches User's Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman"? And of all the weeks to pull a stunt like this, it's days away from the GRAMMYS!

This is a classical case of a lack of awareness of the ecosystems that exist online. There are some lessons for all of us to learn from this:

1. The internet is about people just as much, if not more as it is about companies. It was set up to help people communicate with each other, we were here first.
2. Those of us who work in the communications business would do well to remember that we are people first and strategists/planners/whatever second. When we deal with people, we should behave like people. Not like a business card.
3. You can't just crap on the little guy anymore. The little guy has a voice. It's called the internet.
4. Companies and agencies should ask better questions of themselves and each other about the way they deal with people online. It's personal, in every interaction, ever tweet, every email. The standard, automated response is pretty much redundant, because you can't hide behind an envelope and letterhead and far off address anymore. We know who you are (and some of us even know where you live).
5. Understanding cultural norms of behavior and context in the many tools we use and promote our clients on is absolutely crucial to our collective success.

It's a new world for everyone. Mistakes are magnified, autopsied and put back together again in front of more people than ever before. It's not easy or cheap to make every interaction worthwhile, or to own up to our mistakes. But it is more important than ever before.

(Props to Techcrunch and Tribble for their coverage of the story)

Making It Matter

The power of what we do. Image courtesy of emmapebble

I've had a lot of time recently to think about family. And given the particular hand that fate has dealt my family, who apart from myself are all doctors, my thoughts have turned to medicine. Medicine is one of those professions where those on the outside wax lyrical about the nobility that accompanies the pursuit of one's income, but those within the profession often become jaded and the pursuit of saving lives often takes a back seat to administration, KPIs and trying to get out the door at exactly 1700 when a patient walks into the clinic at 1655.

I was discussing this with my brother (who's just about to finish med school) when he made a couple of points that have in the last couple of days really started to resonate with me, given where I think we should be headed as an industry and what I want to do with my career. He told me about this 'Careers in International Medicine' workshop that he went too (you could say the international smoothieness runs through all the Ismail veins) and how he was told by a bunch of people that when you finish med school, you think you can save the world one patient at a time. After a few years you think it's field work in nations with less developed healthcare that will save the world, you soon realize that aid is all about money, and therefore all about governments giving money. But politics is a dirty game, and he was told politicians really only answer to one thing, and that's mass communication. Or more accurately, the pressure that mass communication can put on them by giving the masses information that the politicians may not necessarily want in the public realm. Readers from the UK will know that the MP expenses scandal is a perfect example of this. All this has got me ruminating on communications and the role our industry can play in doing amazing stuff.

It's easy to lose focus when we're being pulled to two extremes, the pressure of having to produce creative that will eventually entered into award shows that never matter and are presided over by failed directors, artists et al; and the pressure we face when forced to increase sales year-on-year that sucks any kind of innovation or intellectual enthusiasm out of our work.

Having a job where we have input into how businesses behave and communicate in in the 21st century is an immense responsibility given the challenges we face as economies and as a collective humanity. To waste that opportunity by chasing frivolity or mechanical efficiency would be a massive shame.

The future of communications isn't Twitter, or the internet or whatever else banal trend watchers would have you believe. It's doing something worthwhile for a person or people, be it education, providing a service or removing a barrier that stops them doing what they want to do in their day to day existence.

It's that simple.

Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of that, the vast potential we ignore on a day to day basis, so props to my little bro for reminding me how fortunate we are, and why this really matters.

The Wrong Questions

Picture via The B@man

An oft-quoted but still understated benefit of being someone getting to grips with working life in the midst of the (often ridiculed) blogosphere is the enormous amount of wisdom that is out there. To be able to work with, befriend, listen to and read the work of amazing people everyday is something that many of us take for granted but remains an enormous privilege and benefit of the fantastic times we live in.

To that end, I must give thanks to (in no particular order) Mark, Hugh, Lloyd, Johnnie, Neil, George, Doddsy, Charlie, Paul and Eaon for their individual and in the end collective inspirations (along with the many many others that sit in the blogroll - I read them all and so should y'all) that have got me to this point, where at 3am on a Wednesday morning I'm grinning like an idiot and unable to sleep. So I blog...

Since starting in the big bag world of advertising (full-time at least) the phrases 'context is everything' and 'everything changes' have been two of the staples that I fall back on. Not just in the advertising framework, but the life framework. We spend so much time at work that trying to break it down from the time when you're 'living' is a futile exercise; either you're living all day everyday or you're dead at work. In which case you really should find some other way to earn your daily bread. Because life is, as we're so often reminded, never as long as we think.

Back to these fantastic times then. Words like convergence, utility, passion and downturn are thrown around, remixed and spat out as if this journey that we're all was either mapped out by some people a hundred years ago and we're just passing checkpoints or we're somehow in a vacuum that means we can ride out the storm without so much as a drop of water on our collective communication industry anoraks. No.

Not a single soul planned for this contingency (where are all the trends and forecasting people now? I haven't heard a single word from them on the collapse of capitalism - either in the form of a prediction or an attempt at the beginnings of a solution) and we can't huddle in our ghettos of Madison Avenue and London's West End waiting for the storm to pass. It's not a storm, it's not a story, it's something we'll all have to adapt to. It's change. And whether you believe in it or not is irrelevant. Because it's here, having crashed through our front doors and it's now sitting in our front rooms, waiting for us to acknowledge its presence.

The fantastic thing about this situation is that no-one knows what's going to happen. Isn't that amazing? We can hypothesize that issuing bonds and throwing more cash a wound that cash caused will only help to salve the wound long enough to surprise us when things crash again - but we don't know. We can say we're going to move towards a simpler way of living and exchanging goods for services - but we don't know. The point is to put ourselves, as self-proclaimed creative businesspeople in a position to shape, learn and be involved in the debate as it unfolds. In that light I find the We20 happenings fascinating and look forward to the great minds that will be present when these meetings begin.

So we know change is coming, how does that affect us in our ivory communications towers? In the last week or so I've been asked to comment on recent comms work for Sony and Toyota - in both instances I've been told that it's great work, or a technological tour de force. Before I had a look at both pieces, I did a quick search for how these companies are performing - because of course at the root of it all, effective communication will solve business problems. I found that Sony's net profit fell 95% in year on year terms and Toyota is widely rumored to be slipping into its first net loss since 1950. Read that last sentence again, these are things you hear about when wars happen, not when downturns occur. Within this context, I find it hard to think about how the cost and effort of organising and producing an ad is at all relevant to how help a slumping consumer electronics giant - or how being able to move your hand in front of a webcam to simulate a test drive is going to convince me, or anyone else in fact to spend money on a new car. It's the advertising equivalent of "mine's bigger than yours". These things may well have their place, but I'll venture a guess that today, these are not the ideal points of focus. When I mentioned this, I was told that it was great work, and great work would always have a place - no matter the economic conditions.

My reply to this was two-fold, this may not just be a condition, it may be a transformation - a paradigm shift if you will and the questions we ask ourselves in the definition of 'great' work may be incorrect. Great work is contextual, in terms of the product, service, market, political landscape and socioeconomic climate. That's what makes it great. That what shows passion. To have the drive to sweat out the small stuff and build upon a solid foundation of knowledge of the world that distills into knowledge of a particular product/service area. Like genius, passion is perspiration followed by inspiration. Every pound/dollar/euro (they're almost worth the same now so I can probably get away with grouping them together) that is spent on marketing is a luxury so we must think and then think again as to how to make it have a lasting positive effect on the company/product/service we are pimping. Not how to get a creative hard-on when we roll statistics of how epic the production was, or how we used a never thought of visual effect to deliver something sexy. Note I'm not saying bells and whistles are superflous. I'm saying if we make them the centerpiece then it's a waste of money. Eaon calls it making every action a service positive interaction - I'm personally not so comfortable with all those syllables but the point remains. Move your brand/product/service forward with everything you do - from a customer's point of view. In the context of our world today.

At NESTA yesterday Peter Bazalgette made an excellent point that sometimes needs repeating more often, particular in hallowed halls of advertising agencies/idea companies/whatever.

"The truth is that not a single media company knows what its model will be in ten year's time"

Again, no-one knows. But they know it's changing. So rather than clinging to the edifices of a brilliant past, ask yourself how will I make the future awesome?

This leads me to my next point on passion and positivity. The words are bandied about all the time. But this is the time when passion will really show. So shut up and show it. Don't talk about it. Live it. Some social media luminaries proclaimed that it's easier to be positive and deluded because dealing with bs is something people can't face up to. Lord Carter yesterday then quite astutely pointed out that "being a pessimist is a national activity". Again I thought some people are just asking the wrong questions.

Yes the world's climate is screwed, the global economy is trashed and wars are ravaging innocent people everywhere. If you can't deal with reality then go to a corner and deal with it. I've said time and time again and it's reinforced even more often by the great people around me that this is an opportunity to exact change. To make something a little better. That makes my juices flow (liquid metaphor placed for Eaon and Neal at Geronimo) more than a Cannes Lion or an invite an awards show will ever do. If you're asking someone why they would even attempt to help make a change then get out of the way and let someone who's asking how they can help show up.

Kd tweeted out a quote that is much more eloquent about it then I could ever be:

"Pessimism is a luxury of good times...In difficult times, pessimism is a self-fulfilling, self-inflicted death sentence" - Evelin Linder

Or as I like to put it: Fuck off and smile.

And it's dawned on me that my last point in all this fits rather nicely. And that's about the awesomeness of those you hang your hat with. I was on my way home and fired up Twitter when the dude next to me pointed to an article he was reading about how the existence of Tweetdeck on my laptop was a clear indicator to a huge lack of self-esteem and a cavernous hole in my soul that was probably down to playing videogames and watching WWF (it was called that back in the day). Aside from the irony of people sitting in designer clothes chastising you about your lack of self-worth, it's not about Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn or anything.

It's the people.

The people. The community. The homies. The posse. The whatever word you use to talk about people. I find it hard to start defending my use/lack of use of Twitter or any other tool because the mechanism has very little to do with the motive. It's the people. Those who lay into Twitter/Brightkite/whatever might not understand the point. The point isn't to tell people what you're doing. The point is to learn from others, to push yourself forward and take whatever you can with you. If you don't like it then don't be on it. Everyone finds something that works for them. Do that. But if someone finds meaning in something you don't please don't become a hater. But if you find yourself in the midst of haters, let them hate. It's their job.

So, everyday we should ask ourselves:
How can I be better at what I do in light of what I see around me today?
How can I make the best of myself in these amazing times in preparation for whatever may come?
How can I learn from those better than me?

In spite of our self-appointed grandeur and majesty as custodians of this planet, we still cannot choose when change comes - only how we will react when it does. We haven't been getting a lot of good answers. Maybe we just need to ask better questions.

CommAwesomeness

A Presentation About Community, By The Community

View more presentations from neilperkin. (tags: communications socialnetworks)

A lot of people shoot their mouths off about being part of this community online, call it the blogosphere, plannersphere or whateversphere you like.

Very few people are willing to stick their necks out and prove it.

Neil Perkin is not one of those people. He had a presentation to give about the community. So he asked the community what they wanted. And we wanted to do the presentation. So he said "Do it". We did. And thanks to him, it was awesome.

It was Neil who took the first step. You have to ask the question.

Well done Neil, I hope this presentation rocks hard and long. Boom.