Buddhist Marketer

Vaporware

(No, not as in see-through clothing.)

I get about forty crazy ideas a month for projects I’ll never complete (Foodums.com, TheYesPile.com, CategoryOTHER.com, etc.). And this WordPress platform with all of its open source goodness has made me decide to share my business ideas with the world. ‘Cuz I’ll never get the capital or the desire attention span to actually run with these ideas, but if someone out there in the ether does, that’s cool. Some props would be nice, free money would be better, but whatever.

Open source business idea number one, in category: vaporware, is a mashup between social networks and affiliate networks.

Vapor air

Think: subaffiliate network with a dash of tina. You can’t monetize your MySpace page with GooGlads as it’s behind a login wall. And kids who know about affiliate marketing sure as heck don’t want to take the time to join affiliate marketing networks and make links to add to their profiles.

Solution? Trusted interface that plugs n plays product SKUs and makes a happy stylish badge for your social network profiles.

User experience: pick from a finite list of top brands, or just check the box that says “show the popular stuff!” and the badge can rotate the top converters. Color customization, etc. also possible. Key to success: MAKE IT SIMPLE. And make it cool. (eChikita minimall? Puhleez.) Profile owners can get paid out in PayPal, or maybe they just want free stuff. (Bonus: tie in with an existing currency for some brand^2 action … and breakage possibilities.)

Affiliate networks’ advertisers get increased distribution in an environment with no less control than paid media, affiliate networks get their standard overhead, vaporware gets to build new distribution and profit from the spread, kids get to make a few bucks and look cool by showing the logos they like on their profos …

Now, I’ve got about ten thousand process flows in my head about how this should be built and how the company should be run and how many relationship managers should be decked against fetching me steamed pork buns, but if you see this open source idear and wanna run with it, you’ll have to hire me as a moonwriter. Lighter.

Whatever.

Chill it out this year, folks

>> FYF 2007

Apologies to all the randos that may have received a slightly aggro comment on their blog recently. There’s something in the air.

No, really. The Office Yogi was explaining how 2007 promises to be a full year of combative energy, as people release their pent-up anxieties and frustrations. You see, us humans have apparently been holding our authenticity down, zipping our lip, not letting ourselves fly. So allowing ourselves the permission to speak up is a good thing, right? Heideggerian being-toward-death and all?

But with the good — people letting themselves be vulnerable or sincere, for example — comes the bad:

• A lady and her male companion jumped out of their Miata on Third Avenue at the 10th street stoplight to accost me after they nearly sideswiped my vehicle. As the 4′8″ Sorta Rican chick is punching me and aggressively grabbing the bill of my 9Y9 baseball cap (I had a bball game in the ‘hood), one word is floating through my brain as I stood there absorbing her blows: Fascinating.
• My coworker was shot and killed a few weeks ago after a minor argument with a stranger, a dozen or so blocks from my crib.
• Bloodshed in Iraq is on the upswing.
• A family in Hopewell Junction, home of my cubicle neighbor, was brutally murdered this weekend.
• My relatively mild-mannered li’l sis deigned to bang on the hood of a car that nearly hit her.

Point being: there’s a lot of adversarial energy bubbling to the surface out there, and what may have been just a gentle prod in ‘05 (say, tapping someone’s car while at a stoplight) will be responded to with some over-the-top reactionary crumdum in the oh seven.

So what I’mma do? Chill it out. Keep it low. Be a leader out there to the people, and don’t engage in any petty stupid shit. It ain’t worth it.

>> Sears

Along these lines, this weekend I heeded the advice of my notes-to-self that take the form of tchotch in my bedroom (a picture frame with “Be gentle, my sweet!” as the picture; a porcelain heart that reads “feel”) and hightailed it over to experience the joys of the softer side of Sears.

And got me this delightful polyester nightgown, a true vision in thistle slash orchid slash lavender.

Don’t hate. Git yr own. $14.95.

(Click here for a walk down memory lane vis a vis Binney Smith.)

Also picked up a house coat (yes!) for true old lady steez. I don’t care what anyone says, eyelet trim and pearlized snap buttons are the hotness.

(P.S. The Sears on Bedford Ave. requires a visit to its cafe for some delish oxtail stew and homemade sorrel juice. (Pearlized) snap. Take the elevator to floor three.)

>> Pointers

So now that I’ve a heightened awareness of the crazy energy afoot in this world, I know I’ve got to lie low and keep my dragon lady fire and Scorpio stinger chilled the fuck out. But I’m feeling more aggro than usual regardless, so here’s what I do to let that kind of energy get out and not create felunchles on my ass cheeks:

• Yell. In my car, during my commute. Screaming nothing works, singing loud works, yelling “I wish I could still respect him!” at the top of my lungs. Whatever. The point is to get that energy past your throat, where a lot of energy gets blocked (resulting in sore throats, etc.), and allowing your body to release it.
• Shadow box. I store tension in my shoulders. It comes from my fundamental conception that the universe is a hostile place and everyone is out to git me. So it helps if I shadow box, usually while grunting. Similarly …
• Cleans n jerks. These are good, because it takes the energy from your full range of motion and throws it up onto the ceiling.

Any kind of working out is good to work out these feelings if you’re noticing that you’re on edge these days. And if you’re not, just be mindful that others around you might be, and that the tiniest thing might set them off where as a few months ago, it wouldn’t have.

And as the Spring-ding always says, “Take care of yourselves. And each other.”

Word.

Ad industry decline

Hal Riney opines on the decline of the advertising industry in the January 8, 2007 issue of Adweek:

It is appalling what has happened to the industry in general. Ad people have no faith in the long-term effects of brand image, so the human element is lacking in the work… Advertising has been relegated to middle management…

This is a business built on ability and imagination. You need a magnificent group of creative people and remarkable clients who want to have fun and not just do the same thing.

I’ve given some thought to this over the past few years. And I know that what I’m about to say might be politically incorrect …

What did you just say?!?!

… but I can’t help it.

When I worked at Digitas as a menial grunt working sixty-plus hour weeks for ten grand less than the job before it (whimper), I admired the work of Steve Olderman, a fellow Yale grad who, despite not attending a traditional arts school (he received his Bachelor’s in Engineering in 1963), was then the Chief Creative Officer.

How was it, I thought, that he was able to fashion his career in such a way?

I guarantee you that a Stephen Olderman circa 2007 n’existe pas. The path to becoming a creative director these days is through the halls of SVA, RISD, Pratt, and the like. Or, perhaps you crossover from a different role within an agency — a role like media planning or copywriting.

Except. Well. It’s really hard to get into an agency these days. They require degrees in marketing or advertising. They expect that you know how to operate the metaphorical machinery of the advertising engine. Which is good and fine for executional grunt work. But what about the big picture?

Yale University does not offer a “marketing” or “advertising” degree. It’s a liberal arts institution. It, and places like it, teach you how to think. So that when you encounter a problem — e.g., “How can I shift the brand consciousness in the minds of consumers for this bar of whale fat?” — you understand how to tackle it. These are the kinds of minds that the advertising industry needs, to inject the “human element” of which Hal Riney speaks, to guide clients to consider greatness, to prevent this kind of creative exploration from being “relegated to middle management”.

The problem is that institutionally, it’s nearly impossible for these budding potential great minds, these Stephen Oldermans circa 2007, to get in to the industry. If someone with an engineering degree walked into HR at an agency and said they wanted to be a creative, they’d get laughed at.

But if they do get into one (I was an account person — not exactly the rockstars of an agency, of course), they find themselves surrounded by attendees of what have essentially become vocational schools. Look, I don’t look down my nose on those who learned how to use Comscore or Nielsen Netratings to build a media plan during their undergraduate days. I believe that an honest day’s work is an honest day’s work, and learning a trade to eke yourself to a higher tax bracket is an honorable thing.

But it’s just that. A trade. Learning to build a media plan in your pursuit of an advertising degree is akin to learning to make a widget. It has nothing to do with learning how to think, how to tackle and approach problems in an original and expansive way. Anyone can make a widget. Anyone can build a media plan. Anyone can puke out most of the advertising units rolling in front of our eyeballs these days.

And so the industry, I think, begins to look a bit like it does today. Rife with art school grads who can certainly make something look pretty but lack the ability to inject meaning and substance into the smoke and mirrors. Laden with voc school grads who can pull some placements for women 18-35, single, no children but can’t consider the implications for a psychographic shift or a product positioning tilt. But lacking just the kind of flexible, intellectually-curious, hungry minds that could tackle huge problems and deliver an elegant, unique solution with a depth of consideration and historical relevance that will also positively impact the bottom line.

So I think that Hal Riney’s right in his observations about the ad industry. And I don’t disagree that the obeisance to shareholder value or commodification of everything don’t play important roles. But I also feel that the places from which the industry sources its talent and the ways in which the industry’s recruiters and human resources professionals populate the entry level cubicles also play a very important role.

Just my opinion. And again, not trying to hate on state school grads who majored in advertising. A place for everyone and all. They all make more than me anyway, I’m sure.