Hot and cold water
It’s 95 degrees out. Hot food and drink are the last thing on my list of desirable sustenance. I’m pouring ice cold chocolate hemp milk into my coffee solely to bring the temperature down so that it does not heat up my body. And yet, every time I turn on the water at the sink, I turn on the hot water. It’s a bad habit. I keep correcting myself, but not before I feel hotness on hands. It costs money to heat water. Granted, it’s not much, but when you wash your hands as often as do I (yeah, I’m sort of a germ freak), it adds up. I’m teaching myself to turn on the cold water first, but years of badness are hard to undo.

This one isn’t bad, but it illustrates the point well
I eat a lot of soy yogurt. Heaps. I usually buy the 4-serving tubs, but sometimes they are sold out, so I get the 1-serving minis. The tubs come with a re-closeable lid, the minis with a foil peel-away lid. Every single time I get the minis, upon finishing the yogurt, I search the kitchen in vain for the plastic lid so I can recycle it. But there isn’t one, I realize eventually. My mind believes there is a lid because so often there is indeed a lid. I know that I must recycle that lid. Each time the product availability changes, I must change. If I do not change, I waste my effort.

Bad marketing is habit forming
Every week, it seems, I talk with agents and sales professionals who are trying to find easier ways to connect; ways to put less effort into their marketing, and ways to procrastinate from implementing tried and true marketing methods that work.

Procrastinating is habit forming. Bad marketing is habit forming. The more you invest in bad marketing habits, the more your business will flounder, and the more you will ask yourself when will it all turn around? Blaming slow business on the economy is a form of procrastination. Stop blaming and start marketing. When will it turn around?

It will turn around when you turn around.

Turn it around now!
Here’s a simple yet extremely effective exercise. Take a look at your marketing methods. List them out on a sheet of paper (or in Excel if you just can’t bring yourself to use paper and a pen). List out everything you do during your day that could possibly be categorized as marketing, and add it to your list. Now, write the time you are spending on each item on a weekly basis. Next, write the positive outcome in a third column, and finally, write the negative outcomes in a fourth column. It will be very easy to see what is an effective use of your marketing time. This exercise will take you all of about one hour.

I’m going to be totally honest with you here. This exercise might make you feel bad about yourself. It might make you wonder why you’ve been wasting so much time on facebook or twitter. It might show you that your blog posts are ineffective. Or, it may show that all of these are wildly effective. (I hate to say it, but in most cases, they’re not.)

There are some side benefits of this exercise. In addition to giving you a bird’s eye view of your bad marketing habits, you will get a good sense of how much consistent effort you have actually put into each method, and ultimately, how much you are willing to invest in your success. It will tell you if you can effectively manage your own marketing, or if you really need a marketing manager to keep you focused and on task. Finally, it will help you discover your strengths and weaknesses, which can be applied to your personal brand development.

Things can change, but first and foremost you must stab those bad habits in the heart with the sharp end of a highly motivated goal. You can do it. You just have to do a little hard work. Meanwhile, I’ll be hunting around for a nonexistent yogurt top.

The interview went fine, and she seemed nice. I could tell she was firmly planted as a contemporary of the current generation, and it served as a perfect analogy for what I see in marketing nowadays: People lost in a sea of unknown choices, trying to make technology do for them what they could easily do themselves in less time and with greater effectiveness.

When she left, I asked if she needed directions. “Sure,” she said. Nice of her to accept them I guess.

I proceeded to tell her: “Go up the street to the stop sign, take a right, take a left at the signal, then another left at the next signal, and that will take you straight to I-5.” I could have drawn her a map in about ten seconds. They were pretty easy directions, but I could see she didn’t know what to do with them. I asked, “You’re going to use your GPS instead?”

She nodded her head yes, smiling, and walked out the door thanking me for the time. I poured some juice, and looked out the window about five minutes later. She was still sitting in the driveway messing with the GPS with a furrowed brow. She fumbled with getting the GPS to stay on the windshield for a couple minutes, before driving away.

People complain they haven’t enough time today. Today’s new processes take infinitely longer, even for the generation brought up on them, and they are less effective. Let’s take a look at a couple of simple examples of this.

Example #1
Old way of making contact:
1. Look up phone number,
2. Call,
3. Talk.
Conclusion: Pretty darn effective and quick to boot!

New way of making contact:
1. Turn on computer or PDA,
2. Log in to facebook,
3. Login failed,
4. Look up password,
5. Log in to facebook,
6. See if your friend is available for chat,
7. See that your friend is not available for chat,
8. Go to friend’s profile,
9. Mindlessly read their ‘wall’, and learn about Enquirer-like headlines
10. Send message to friend,
11. Wait for reply,
12. Still waiting for reply three hours later,
13. Take a facebook test. And so on.
Conclusion: Oh my. What do we have here? Why it’s a total waste of time and no connection!

Example #2:
Look at facebook ‘fan pages’ if you need another example. If you’re over the age of 30, facebook is not your primary communication tool, and you don’t ‘get it’. If you’ve started up a fan page for your business, you are not marketing. You’re playing. And that’s fine, as long as you’re not expecting a gratifyingly high return on the effort, and you have plenty of spare time in your business schedule for connecting with your friends, because that’s what facebook was designed for. Oh, and you already have enough business too.

What the hell does your business need a fan page for? Businesses don’t need fans. They need customers, plain and simple. Anything else is just playing around. Fan pages are akin to high school popularity contests, complete with cliques (approve your friend as your facebook friend), gossip (read your approved friends’ walls), and scratch fights. Well, maybe not the scratch fights.

I know, I know, updates can go out to your entire fan base with the click of a button. So? How big is your fan base? Is it 100 people? 250? 2000? Unless your fans number about 250,000, you are playing, not working. You can effectively reach infinitely more people with a plethora of other media in a fraction of the time. And remember that time equals money. Your time is valuable. Add it up.

Stop playing if you want your business to succeed. Look for the shorter processes that work instead of the longer ones that just waste time.

Now excuse me while I go try to find my GPS so I can wonder where my cell phone is so I can get that address so I can look it up on the GPS that just fell off the windshield and drive with one device in each hand while steering with my teeth.

You can’t realistically think of your Twitter followers as a known entity. They’re more like magazine subscribers. You likely have little or no idea how many of them comprise those people who are likely to become clients, regular readers, or even legitimate “fans.” In all likelihood, some of your followers are simply collecting followers, with no real intent or purpose.

Lance Armstrong and 50 Cent each have more than 300,000 Twitter followers. In their cases, we can legitimately think of their followers as fans because we already know they have massive amounts of fans, but how many non-celebrity people have that? It’s a fair bet to say that the vast majority of Twitter users do not have a fan base in real life, at least not one that extends beyond their family and friends.

So, what’s the point? The point is that unless you already have celebrity status, a Twitter following is not going to help you build the strongest of quality audiences. Gaining followers on Twitter is popular simply because it requires little effort, but the vast majority of followers you will get are not terribly focused. Here are five better ways to build an audience.

5 Ways to Build A Quality Audience

1. Hands down, the best way to build an audience is with a good old fashioned marketing plan. Marketing is hard work, but it consistently yields positive results, particularly when you surround yourself with a solid plan devised by people who can objectively see what you may not. The first step here is to decide what kind of audience you truly want. Have you ever thought about that? It’s a simple rule: Begin with the end in mind.

2. Do something remarkable, and people will seek you out and follow you. Make your product or service outstanding. Become known for premiere customer service, a la Zappos, or make a name for yourself in any number of unique ways.

3. Look for a large targeted audience, such as you might find in an online or print magazine, then advertise in it. There are thousands from which to choose, with several for nearly any target market. While advertising costs money, there is simply no other way put strong messages in front of a large, captive audience as quickly as you can with advertising.

4. Build or buy a list. Building a quality list takes elbow grease, research, and time. If you are buying a list or lists, you can drill down on very specific characteristics, and it is important to take the time to do just that.

5. Stick to your guns. Once you set a plan, stick to it! Believe in it. Be agile, yet, do not let naysayers deter you from the path you have set for reaching your goals. How many times have you set a plan, followed the first few steps, then let someone steer you off path until you lose focus? Trust your gut, trust the people you work with, and stick to your plan. It’s the resulting consistency that breeds trust and confidence in you and your brand, and leads to a high quality audience, mailing list or customer list.

Steve Rubel says you should spend 15 minutes a day scanning the internet for unusual stuff that people may want to read and cannot find on their own because they don’t have the time. Do you have the time? I mean, really, do you?

And really, how much unusual stuff can you find when all of it is readily available to anyone with a connection? If we are all reading tweets about the same unusual stuff, how unusual can it be?

Add up 15 minutes a day, factoring in an extra 15 minutes per day of distracted reading time, and it is pretty easy to see that becoming a tweet star is going to cost you 2.5 hours per week. I can design a good logo in that amount of time, or write several blog posts, or even write a book chapter.

Can you be more productive with 2.5 hours of work time per week?

P.S. The genius in Steve’s article, IMO, is in setting up your iGoogle page in the way he recommends.

Seth Godin had a good post a few days ago which inspired this one.

In our Blog Blitz! workshops, I always stress the importance of reading. One of the best ways to become a better writer is to read books. Reading blogs is not enough because blogs are not always written by good writers. (Sorry, but it’s true.)

I occasionally come across blogs endowed with downright bad writing by people who say they want to make blogging their career. I would never discourage anyone from attempting to reach their dreams or goals. Instead, I tell people to read more. The best way to gain loyal readers is to write great content.

Some people advise that if you are writing non-fiction, your reading should be non-fiction. I think it’s better to strike a balance between both fiction and non-fiction. They both expand our minds, but fiction is more adept at engaging our imagination. Non-fiction opens your mind to new ideas of a more practical or utilitarian nature.

Currently on my reading shelf is Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds, which is reinforcing my deep-seeded belief that PowerPoint/Keynote template presentation slides suck, while Jack Karouac’s The Dharma Bums is keeping me joyfully entertained. I’m learning a thing or two as well. And that’s the point.

Learning happens best when we are reading. Not when we are watching television, or Hulu, or YouTube. Do I still watch YouTube and Hulu? Sure, on occasion when I have a desperate need to fall asleep on the couch and strain my neck, but I am fully aware that I am not learning much while watching the tube. I prefer having an active brain most of the time, so when it’s time to sleep, I crack open a book and read until my eyelids droop.

Lately, Seth Godin’s Free Prize Inside has claimed the dubious honor of putting me to sleep each night. It’s a great read though! Highly recommended.

Tonight I saw one of my favorite graphic design peers, Stefan Sagmeister, speak before a crowd of about 500 designers, students, fans, and friends at the University of Washington. He is a very entertaining speaker, and I thoroughly enjoyed his presentation. Among other things, I found him to be gifted in the art of infusing profanity into his presentation in a smooth manner that seemed to offend no one, and certainly made many people laugh. I think perhaps his accent helped. Of course, his rock star status in the design industry probably doesn’t hurt either.

Even though I have never been much of an autograph collector, I stood in line to have him sign my copy of his new thought-provoking book, Things I have learned in my life so far. For most of the line-waiting, I found myself wondering what I might say to him for my ten seconds of face time. The young woman behind me suggested I tell him that I disagreed with his comment that creative advertising no longer works for mass-marketed goods. ‘Why would he care?’ I wondered. So I indulged in the opportunity to debate with a great mind in the design world. And he did care.

In another setting, we could have had a good long conversation on the subject, but instead we took a couple of minutes before both of us realized that we were holding up the line of autograph seekers. Before reaching that point, however, I think we may have both sparked thoughts in each others’ minds, which seems like not such a small thing for someone whose design expressions are so innately thought-provoking. I have long felt that he is extremely adept at stimulating new thought connections in people, which is precisely what I strive for in my own work. His work is slightly more prolific than mine, but it isn’t a contest.

While it was clear that we could have kept talking, he brought the brief conversation to the same conclusion that today’s most prolific marketing authors repeatedly waive in the air like a flag made of a big bloated bum: the phenomenon of Google Adwords. While I will not debate that Adwords has become a prominent and effective advertising medium, I stand firm in the belief that advertising of mass-marketed goods (and small-scale marketed good and services for that matter) works extremely well, as long as it is well-executed on every level. I will say, however, that companies most often do not execute their advertising well. That said, one need only look at Apple’s website to see effective branding and advertising of mass-marketed goods in action.

I enjoyed talking with him, though I wish I would have thanked him for his spankingly wonderful contributions to the world (and my library). My desire to debate cost me the opportunity to tell an admired master that I thoroughly enjoyed his presentation. And to thank him for his thoughts and laughs. Perhaps another time.

Lessons learned:
1. Being humble helps me keep focused on the important things.
2. Cussing is ok, as long as it’s with good intent. (I already knew this.)
3. Always save time for thank you.

Over the next four years, I signed up for nearly every class that she taught, and she became one of my best friends, and without question one of my most valued life mentors. She provided a solid foundation for me to develop self-confidence, as well as the guidance to show me an intuitive career path. I learned the importance of compassion, kindness and gratitude. I learned how to learn. She taught me how to have an open mind. Possibly the most important thing she did for me was recognize that I learned visually much better than any other way. She even awarded me with an art scholarship upon graduation.

I went immediately into art school the next fall, and graduated early. I then followed a steady progression from in-house designer, to ad agency art director, to marketing director, before venturing out to start my own ad agency.

Over the years, I have formed some strong opinions about how design, advertising, and marketing best work, but I have always kept that open mind, and it has served me well. Today, twenty-one years after my last class with her, I learned something new from her lessons. I saw a connection between the foundation that she helped give me, in the form of my identity, my values, ultimately my personal brand, and the foundation that every person or company needs to be able to connect with their customers at the core level that instills the trust, belief, and credibility needed to quickly gain brand loyalty.

Over the years, Polly and I have always stayed in touch, usually over email. We tell each other about our families, our work, life in general. I have seen her two or three times during the past twenty years. In every correspondence, she provides me with the same positive reinforcement, good vibes, friendship and wisdom that she did when I was just a punk kid with no direction, afraid of making the wrong brush stroke. And I’m not the only one. She has students from forty years ago who still stay in touch today.

When she retired, er, graduated, from teaching high school, she began teaching community college students how to paint. I have to imagine that she inspired a whole new throng of budding artists and lives. She was also doing freelance design for companies all over the country.

Polly’s lessons, both in life and and work, have always inspired me, and I am sure they will continue doing so for years to come. I can’t help wanting to say thank you Polly Hobbs.

Upon seeing that Adbusters used some of the same mediums to raise money for their cause as other businesses use, mediums that Adbusters themselves shunned, I wrote them a letter asking if they thought it a bit hypocritical to sell what essentially amounts to a mobile billboard with their name on it in order to fund their cause, a cause which calls for the end of needless buying. I received no response.

After that, I lost interest in the magazine and the organization’s mission. A few years later, something totally unexpected happened. Kalle Lasn, the organization’s founder and publisher wrote a book, and not just any book, but a book that is truly a call to the arts, a monument to the underlying currents of the human spirit, a challenge to change the way we treat the planet, and a valid call for the revolution of our society’s commerce tendencies. It’s about time.

Also titled Design Anarchy, the book brought out the same intrigue that hit me the first time I picked up the magazine. Every few pages, an idea is sparked. As I flip through this book, I am inspired by the sometimes purposeless art pieces, stimulated and provoked by the texts, and generally enthralled by the whole work. In these pages I have realized that Adbuster’s mission is very much aligned with my own design and marketing sensibilities. No matter how many people believe that we are masters of spin, ethics and marketing truly do belong together, design and responsibility are soul mates, and advertising and the truth are of the same feather. Has it always been this way? Hell no, but it should have been. It will be in the future.

I have always advised clients to spend frugally, plan incessantly, and be agile with their marketing communications. I have always helped clients to bring out a more compelling truth, and I have felt driven to help them understand the meaning and advantage of responsible marketing.

The marketing model is starting to move in the right direction, but there are plenty of old school players who long for the irresponsible ad spending of yesteryear. That time is over, and I believe that Adbusters has played an important role in bringing about a new, much needed awareness.

Although I believe in a robust commerce model, and I help companies to realize their sales goals, I also believe in Buy Nothing Day, Adbusters answer to Black Friday. How could such a great nation wholeheartedly embrace a marketing ploy with such a negative name as Black Friday? I would much rather subscribe to Buy What You Need When You Need It Day, or BWYNWYNID for short. Not very catchy though.

Apparently, there are certain words that the system cannot understand, among them the word, "thought" and the name "Keri." When the system fails to understand the request, you are instructed to say, "Go back." It has happened three or four times now that the system simply cannot understand the individual words I am saying (e.g. city, may, hong), no matter how carefully I enunciate. After saying, "Go back" for the ninth or tenth time, I have found myself saying, "**** it," (which it also does not understand) and calling the normal human-driven local 411 service.

I imagine that Google’s system will improve over time, and I will continue to use it in combination with the local service.

Google’s free 1-800-GOOG-411 information service simply kicks ass. Just dial the number, say the business name you are seeking, state your city and state name, and voila, Google serves up the info. I’ve used the service several times from my car, and it’s come through every time. The system is entirely voice-recognition based, and it works extremely well. The best part of all: you don’t have to talk with a monotone-voiced, unhappy telephone operator. It’s only for businesses at this point, but I already know where my friends live anyway, so no worries.