One of the best scenes in Pixar’s The Incredibles involves two superheroes discussing the absurdity of the Supervillain monologue, and how it inevitably ends up giving the hero enough time to escape.

It might be a flaw, but Supervillains understand the importance of exposition.

Just because you’re winning, doesn’t mean explaining yourself is a luxury.  Taking the time to clearly explain what you’re doing, why you’re winning, and what you’re going to do after is almost always a good idea.  You can use that explanation to win allies, calm fears, and warn people about complex or uncomfortable changes down the road.

Acting in secrecy is great, but once you’ve made an announcement, there is often great value in letting people know that you have a roadmap, that you’ve thought this through, and that there’s an endgame.

That said, when you decide to take some exposition time, make sure you wait until you’re past the point when someone understanding your plans would make them capable of derailing them.

caro:

Marketing fail: If you’re a product that people drink, please do not include “yellow” and “snow” in the same sentence describing a promotion.

Too bad, because Veuve is pretty savvy as far as digital marketing goes.

Seriously?  Yellow Snow?  Context proofing is just as important as content proofing.

Why wouldn’t we define ourselves by our possessions? They are a reflection of our tastes, our personalities, our vanities, our obsessions and desires.  They are earned through our labour, shared with our aquaintances, shaped and scarred and stained by our experiences.

I won’t apologize for conscious, careful consumerism, they way I would for wasteful, destructive consumption.  Surrounding myself with things that speak to me, that speak for me, is only logical - truth is expressed in subtext, explanations are what we need to spell out word for word, after we’ve already been misunderstood.

It’s the ultimate vanity, the chief arrogance of the artist, that you can only express yourself by that which you create with your own talents, your own two hands.  The belief that expression is somehow limited to those with the skills, the talents, the words and images and passion that they can somehow force into life.

We all craft a life out of experience and object.  Whether the art of your life is the conversations you have, or the actions you take, you create as surely as the painter, the dancer or the writer.

I don’t have a story for you.  I don’t have art in any standard sense.  But this is my art - the idea, the shift, the hope that my words can shape actions.

Don’t lecture me about the destructive nature of buying, or wanting and desiring and associating ourselves with the things that speak to and at time for us.

We attach meaning to things, so people can use things to attach meanings to themselves, so that people can tell their story in a passive meaningful way.  In the real world, not behind the guise of fiction, behind the protective mask of art that saves us from needing to dissect, address and consider ourselves, the ugliness we can bring.

My things tell a story as surely as my words.  And I don’t just write it, I live it, as do you.  As do we all.

I was never more creative than when I didn’t have a schedule.  I’d have deadlines, sure, and classes which were of varying importance to attend, but I had to constant, overarching reason to bend the time spent on any given task, per day, to anything other than when the work had to be delivered.  And I never missed deadlines, because everything else was flexible.

I miss being able to go on a 12 hour research binge, followed by a 4 hour writing and revision binge, followed by 2 hours of Entourage, 2 hours of sleep, delivering the finished product, and finally another 14 hours of sleep.  I have a vast array of reasons why this is no longer a feasible approach to work (mostly working in teams, on large, intricate processes where many people rely on my being accessible) but I miss it nonetheless.  I miss being able to disappear into the work, rather than have the work disappear into the process.

I also have a feeling that this type of work, the type I cherished so much, is only possible in a situation like academia, where someone is so closely defining the scope and ingredients of your work that you can be left entirely to your own devices.

I don’t have a solution or suggestion this time.  I’m just pointing out one of the inherent sacrifices in working with real world toys, rather than intellectual playgrounds.  You need to bend to reality, from time to time, in the real world.

It’s probably worth it.  This is no way means I’m not constantly looking for a workflow that mimics the best parts of complete independence, while offering the benefit of working in a skilled, motivated, tightly knit team.

everythingismedia:

ronworkman:

soupsoup: laughingsquid:

Foursquare Introduces New Tools for Businesses (NY Times)

Do business who operate with traditional loyalty cards (air miles, in-store card, etc) have this sort of dashboard?  Would be interesting to compare side-by-side.

Or is the comparison nothing vs this?

If you have information like this, you should be able to leverage the hell out of your existing customer base.  Genius.

Rule: The hero is the audience.

[edited on March 9, 2010]

ideasareawesome:

BMW motorcycle does the old “pull a table cloth off a table” trick.

Originality Wins.

I realized on the weekend that you can learn a lot from supervillains.  And why not?  So many of them are semi-legitimate businessmen, brilliant egomaniacs, dictators who demand perfection, and other things that describe Steve Jobs.

So, I’m starting a new series of posts, Supervillain Lessons, with this point: Fair Fights are for Idiots.

By this I mean, no reasonably intelligent person would ever bet the farm on their ability to win a fair fight.  You don’t enter an established market hoping that your more-or-less-the-same product will win based on your hard work, or your branding, or your charm alone.

When you launch a new idea, or enter an established market, you better have a secret weapon that makes everyone else irrelevant to the point of mockery.  And you better hope that it works quickly.

Because fair fights favour the strongest, richest, most established person.  Any disruptive company wasn’t in favour of a fair fight.

All I’m saying is, if you’re going up against Superman, have kryptonite, or stay at home.

The best part about not fighting fair?  If you brag about your advantage, the weaknesses of your opponent are made public.  If you don’t, you can take them down, unsuspecting.

Supervillain rule #1: Fair Fights are for Idiots.

No one learned from the music industry, which was my worst fear about the whole debacle.

As the first industry to really feel the brunt of the shift to digital distribution, the amount of fear, floundering and failure that we all witnessed from the major labels, the aging executives, and the dying business model made a certain amount of sense.  To the people who grew up digital (or the digital kids, or generation y, or ‘us’) a new approach seemed obvious, but we didn’t have the greatest tool necessary for success yet - we hadn’t seen anyone fail.

That said, we’ve seen the decline of the music industry to the point where major labels are more laughable than laudable, and no one seems to be learning.  And so, for news, for film, for television and for industries like books and magazines that will be forced into competing in a world of digital distribution in the coming years, here is the short version.

5 Things You Should Have Learned From The Music Industry:

Physical packaging wasn’t your product, it was UX.

Without physical packaging, UX is the manifestation of your product.  Apple is (somehow) still the only company that has figured this out when it comes to music - iTunes regularly sells albums to me, and my contemporaries, because it is less work than piracy.  It costs infinitely more, the bitrate is not always as high, but buying an album from iTunes is a better experience than pirating one.  It just works.

This is why so many companies lose to piracy - a pirated movie, or tv show, has a better UX than the legitimately purchased version.  Which, for those of you watching at home, was the same case with CDs.  When buying a CD was, cost notwithstanding, a shittier experience than downloading one, people stopped buying CDs.

You have to choose between keeping your rights, or keeping your customers.

I don’t mean this in an ‘information wants to be free’ manner, but instead as a reminder that there is always a trade-off.  If you lock something up with DRM, you will lose customers.  If you insist that Blu-Ray disc will only play in 65% of Blu-Ray players, you will lose customers.  If you try to sell me the same content 5 times, so it will play on 5 devices, you will lose customers.

At the same time, you need to be willing to make the trade in the opposite direction - there are certain rights you should be willing to trade customers to protect, like artistic integrity in terms of the presentation of product, or the choice of venue for performance.  Rights does not always mean legal matters.

You make more money from stuff your product sells, than from selling your product.

If you have to pick between selling CDs, or selling tshirts, concert tickets, stuffed animals, vinyl toys, a clothing line, or other branded goods, you would be an idiot to pick the CD, and only the CD.  Often, there’s more money in selling things that people will want, if they love your initial creative product.  Give away the movie to sell the toys.  Give away the crappy, low quality, iphone screen version of your movie to get people in the theatre to see it in epic 3D.  Give away your comic on the internet to sell the hardbound signed collection, and give away your book as a PDF so people will buy it from you to put on a shelf, or share.

If you can give away your content at no marginal cost, and then sell something that gains significant value for people who love the content, you should probably stick to that.  Especially because the content is going to be available free, anyway.

A lawsuit wins you nothing, except a lawsuit.  Maybe.

This ties into the rights point, but needs it’s own clear section - if you sue your customers, they will turn on you.  Being treated like a criminal, en masse, encourages behaving like a criminal.  Just ask any kid who gets accused of shoplifting one too many times.

Backstory is worth money.

Whether it’s a kickstarter funded documentary, or an open forum where you post pictures of the creative process, or notes, images, etc, backstory will always be valuable, because it leverages an existing connection with the content, and offers the chance to connect with it on a deeper level than is normally available.  In addition to offering that deeper connection, it also confers a certain amount of legitimacy, or superfan status.

People will pay for status, but people will continuously and happily pay for the kind of status that displays itself through knowledge, rather than possessions.

Sometimes being an eccentric obsessive is the best marketing strategy.

[Email marketing from Gil Scott Heron.]