Alec

McNayr

I got an email from a stranger the other day. Someone who wants to be a creative-type, found HistoricalTweets.com, and thought they’d reach out to me. A nice person, but one problem.

In their first sentence, they asked for a job. Didn’t beat around the bush. Didn’t ask about opportunities. Didn’t hint at the desire to work with/for me. Full-on asked for a job at McBeard.

I wrote a simple and kind reply, but the more I thought about it, I thought I might write a more thorough post on how to cold-pitch people for jobs or gigs or freelance work. I wish someone had written this to me when I was 22.

So, my advice:

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Harvard Business Review has a great article (albeit long) article Creativity and the the Role of the Leader.  It’s a great read.  Something that stood out:

On being open to “less efficient” processes early on:
Appreciate the different creative types among your people—and realize that some are better at certain phases than others. And be very tolerant of the subversive. Creative work must, like Mark Twain’s character Huck Finn, avoid all “sivilizing” influences.

Creativity is really about silencing the voices (inside or outside ourselves) that say “no.”  Little annoying, evil voices that kill ideas before they’re fully hatched.  Efficiency, profitability, and misplaced strategy are all enemies of creativity.

Certainly, creative-types shouldn’t be lazy, excuse-making slobs.  (Some are)  Because true creativity comes when your mind is fully engaged in something else, and something makes a connection.  Your mind’s freedom (or your organization’s or your team members’) is important.  I read that Steven Spielberg’s best ideas come in the car, while driving.  His mind, fully engaged in the passive/reactive state of driving is allowed to drift into other places.  Come on, we all do it.  He just takes what he dreams up and makes blockbuster movies.

So what can you do to either be more creative yourself, or foster an environment of creativity in your workplace?

Be positive to ideas. Nothing kills ideas like a steady stream of “no.”  Be open to rethinking yourself, your brand, and your goals.

Create a sandbox to play in. Create a place to execute ideas on a small level, before they must be canonized, and put into production for all the world to see.  A test blog, a low-end video shoot, a sketch rendering.

Be prepared for failure. Many ideas lead nowhere, but they are great lessons, and lead to better ones.

Creativity can come from anywhere, and in an era of media and commercial saturation, it is only true and genunine personal creativity that resonates.  Are you having problems standing out?

One of my favorite shows on TV, AMC’s Mad Men is getting bigger audiences in season 2, and treating them to an expanded look into the lives of the [fictional] ad world of 1962. The tone is pitch-perfect, the characters are deep and flawed, and the set pieces, costumes, and era kitsch are all intriguing.

I just stumbled across something totally separate from the show: someone has created Twitter accounts for a couple of the main characters, and they’re interacting, as if from 1962, with fans from 2008 (and with each other). Brilliant.

Twittering from the Past!

So far, I’ve been able to find a couple of character Twitter accounts. Don seems to be the most active, with over 800 followers and 170 status updates. Sure, Twitter is mostly for early-adopter technophiles, much like being on Digg, but it’s a probably a smart tactic for engaging the fans most likely to blog and use online media to spread your messages…

• Don Draper: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Peggy Olson: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Pete Campbell: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Joan Holloway: Twitter (Bio at AMC)
• Updated: Sal Romano: Twitter
• Updated: Bud Melmen: Twitter (and LinkedIn)
• Updated: Bobbie Barrett: Twitter
• Updated: Paul Kinsey: Twitter

The most interesting part of these accounts is that the characters are responding back to questions, rants, references to post-1962 pop culture (e.g., Peggy has never heard of “A Clockwork Orange”), and furthering the fan interaction into the show. Most of their updates are replies. Official or no, this is cool.

And, probably pretty easy. All it would take is someone with a deep knowledge about the show and a program like Twitterific or twhirl, where you can have multiple Tweet windows open.

And it doesn’t stop with Mad Men. After a little more research, I found Twitter accounts for:

• Liz Lemon (Tina Fey on 30 Rock)
• Michael Scott (Steve Carell on The Office)
• Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson on The Office)
• Darth Vader
• Borat (with over 5,000 followers!)
• Norman Dale (Gene Hackman from the movie Hoosiers – seems abandoned, but you get the point)

That’s a lot of fake Twitterers! Perhaps a real fake Twitter account might bring in the right audience to kick-start your communication strategy.

Sam Lawrence said it best via twitter: “This blows my mind.”

The Boston Globe’s Boston.com has a three-month old blog column called “The Big Picture” and yes, it does blow your mind.

It’s a collection of amazing photography presented in a large format.  Very little commentary and captioning.  Not to get nerdy, but all the photos are all 990 pixels wide and around 600 pixels tall.  Much larger than your average web site photos.

Artistry comes both from the quality and presentation of your work, and as I think about engaging people, I can’t help but think that most web content creators are missing the boat by limiting viewership of their most important digital assets.

Example 1: Photos
Looking at two examples from my own university, the Pepperdine school of law posted tiny photos from an alumni event.  No context; just hundreds lined up in a row.  Conversely, Pepperdine’s president just went on a highly-publicized tour of Route 66, and, along the way, his team posted photos to flickr, where people can view full-sized images, as well as download and comment.

Example 2: Video
I wrote a column for TubeFilter about TNT’s new interstitial series, Lucky Chance, and not only is the series lame, but they only allow you to embed a super-small window (260 px wide) in which to post the video on your site.  Not an engaging viewing experience, even if you’re watching your favorite show.

Apply this to your own site.  Your own blog.  Your own experience.  Are you trying to “wow” clients?  Trying to make web surfers “feel” your brand?  Big presentations and crisp photography can do that.

Saw this quick report from Daisy Whitney, who spins viral videos “tricking” the audience as a positive tactic for advertisers.

Tricking your customers can add to the mystique of your product or brand, but it’s important to not overstep your boundaries. While people like to uncover a mystery, they don’t like to be the butt of a corporate joke.

The video mentions a viral video by Parrot, which manufactures hands-free Bluetooth cell devices, where a kid records his drivers ed sessions while he talks on the phone. With 485,000 views on YouTube, this video did a ton better than the other Parrot vs. Quail Parrot-backed viral campaign I mentioned at SSM a while back.

My mom has no idea what 3G mobile technology means.

But she knows that the Apple iPhone 3G comes out tomorrow.  The buzz is on her lips, and everyone’s lips.

My personal measure of marketable buzz is: if my parents are talking about it, it’s big.

How does Apple consistently generate such big buzz?  How does any company or movie or product or restaurant or web service generate it, and how do they measurably turn it into revenue?

Being in the viral video business, I have a vested interest in creating tactics for generating buzz about my videos and media, be it for marketing clients or for personal entertainment projects. Here are the characteristics of buzz:

#1 Buzz is Real, But Fleeting

Screenwriter John August and Ask A Ninja’s Kent Nichols have been downplaying the importance of film festival buzz on their blogs.

From Kent:
“I view awards [and film festival wins] as a karmic thumbs up that I’m going in the right direction. Nothing more, nothing less.”

I agree with them in that buzz alone does not create a career, or even a job, but it can generate a first step into a different world.  Once in that world, of course, you need to back it up with talent, training, and hard work.

#2 Buzz is Triangulation

Buzz is hearing about something from multiple channels on multiple levels. Media, social, and personal.

Iron Man was a perfect example of a buzz-worthy summer blockbuster movie.  The industry said it was good.  The commercials made it look good.  The reviews were good.  All that is standard mass marketing, however.  Those media outlets can be bought. The most important component to buzz can’t be bought…

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Attended a networking event last night at BlankSpaces, hosted by Originate Labs and Mixergy. They even hosted Twitter-based interviews with author and tech journalist Sarah Lacy.

I’ve been heading to things like this on the online entertainment side for a few years now, but haven’t been to a tech-related event since my days working for Jupiter Media Metrix in 2000/01. Back then, I was fresh out of college, no idea what I was doing, and catching the tail end of the dotcom boom (and bust).

It certainly was exciting back then, and it was just as exciting last night. A room full of ambitious people invigorates me. Do you like networking? Does it scare you? It did me back in my younger days, but now the pressure is off: I don’t have to shine in that room. I can just be me.

It’s always funny who you meet at things like that:

• I saw Tim Street, who just wrapped an advertisement/video episode for mDialog, a video startup that has commissioned a series from me and Bob.
• I ran into a girl that recognized me from welcoming people at church.
• I briefly saw Jason Nazar, whom I interviewed for a Pepperdine Law video two years ago, and now runs docstoc.com, a web site devoted to sharing documents (“a YouTube for documents,” I think I’ve heard him say).

Jason even offered to buy Sarah Lacy’s book for the first 25 people who mention docstoc.com on their blog, and I hope I qualify.  But more than just a cheap mention, I’ll take it one step further.  I checked out the site and found it to be an immediate help in two areas:

1. I searched for “online video marketing plan” and found some nice resources for developing my methodology for online video marketing, including doing some specific SEO on video metadata.
2. I am hosting a seminar on resume-building at church later this month, and found some great examples of resumes from all kinds of industries.

Check out docstoc for yourself, and, more importantly, go to where people are in your area of business.  It makes it all worthwhile.

Great tip for on-the-fly filmmakers. Use your tripod and your steady hands to get a fly-in-type dolly shot.

Here are four must-read blog entries, all dealing with creativity, effectiveness, and business. Why do I bring these up? Because whether you like it or not, your business (service or goods sold) is about creating and maintaining an effective, creative, and experiential relationship with a customer. Efficiency, delivery, and data are being outsourced to the Web, so only the strongest, most interesting relationships will survive the coming decades.

These guys have their finger on the pulse. Let’s join them…

How to Write for the Web: Lost Remote’s Guide for TV Newsrooms

“On the web, you’re writing for the motivated reader. Users impatiently scan headlines for anything that jumps out at them, and once they find a story they like, they click it. Once they’ve made that decision to read a story, they expect more details than they typically see in a 90-second TV piece — not as many as a newspaper story, but more than television. In a nutshell, web writing should be tighter and more conversational than print, but more detailed and a little more formal than TV.”

How to Be Interesting

“…the core skill of any future creative business person will be ‘being interesting’. People will employ and want to work with (and want to be with) interesting people.”

How to be Creative

Hugh McLeod’s 2004 rant is very close to my heart. Be authentic. Work hard. There, I summed it up.

So, You Want to Make Your Own Christian Videos?

Veggie Tales creator Phil Vischer built a million-dollar media company and saw it dashed before his eyes. As someone who moved 50 million video units, and did it with a talking tomato and cucumber, he has something to say about the intersection of art and business.

I’ve been using Twitter off and on for about four months now, and have found it a good tool to keep in touch with my peers and writers I like. I don’t use it to keep people updated on every little thing I do (I’m not that narcissistic), but I have found it effective to keep tabs on what people in my circle (and industry) are talking about. Then, when I meet them in person, I have something to talk about. That’s cool.

It’s a nice, personal service and allows for fast-spreading messages.

But is it really a marketing tool? I think not. I hate it when spammers try to “follow you.” They’re fishing for followers. Then again, if you have a ready stream of content to share (@cnnbrk) or you are constantly moving around the country (@BarackObama), it seems to be tailor made for you.

In thinking about Twitter and the Pepperdine community, I’ve had quite a few conversations about using it to reach out to the few Pepperdine alumni who are active on Twitter. Honestly, the numbers probably aren’t there to make it worth anyone’s time. I’m not going to post tweets 10 times a day to reach 10 people. That doesn’t scale.

I found a few links dealing with universities and Twitter; great ideas here and good discussion on the comments. I won’t replicate it. Go check these out:

• Using Twitter for Higher Ed
• Twitter as Alert System?
• Social Survey: Twitter for Higher Ed Marketing (.eduGuru)
• Do You Twitter? (uwebd)

An Experiment

What these links don’t cover is using Twitter simply as an RSS aggregator. Using Twitterfeed, which renders RSS entries into a twitter account’s status updates, I created a Twitter account called PepperdineFeeds.

I set up six RSS feeds to push content to the account:

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