Step by step

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This is something I touched on in a much earlier post, but never really dug out and gave it the attention it deserved. I shared it with others over a beer, Julian gave it a good "shit-test", and Scott Drummond even stole my thunder and quoted me on it. So, here it is, David Gillespie's Marketing Mantra. Five points, 2 of which are mine, the other three are linked to their authors who you should absolutely take the time to read.

Try it on for size and let me know what you think.

1. Markets are conversations.

2. Conversations happen around social objects.

3. Social objects are products or services that are remarkable.

4. Remarkable is not just something special, but something worth being remarked about.

5. A great product, and even better customer service are the most remarkable things you can offer.

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Image courtesy of Pensiero, with thanks to compfight.

8 for '08 - Random Bio

So I got tagged in a meme that circulated the web back at the beginning of the year. It of course went completely over my head and I didn't realise I'd been tagged, even as I watched it pass from site to site thinking "Hey that looks like fun!". Chris Wilson over at Fresh Peel is the culprit, he and I got talking on LinkedIn one day, amazing how these things start. Chris, thanks for the tip!

Without further ado, the much-belated eight facts about me that weren't common knowledge:

1. The first game I produced was an ice skating game called Barbie's Sparkling Ice Show. Obvious drug/bling references aside, it did quite well, and was a great lesson in brand management and dealing with third-party IP.

2. I grew up in Hong Kong before a short stint in the US rendered my well-spoken Queen's English accent marred with rolled Rs and "mom" replaced "mum". It's much softer these days, though I still don't sound remotely Australian.

3. Basketball was the only sport I was ever any good at, but I was quite good at that. I once single-handedly scored more points on my own than the opposing team did in the entire game. It would end at that if there was a legend to be made; sadly the other team only managed 13 points, so a Herculean-effort it was not.

4. My first guitar teacher refused to teach me on account of being left-handed. I subsequently stopped learning guitar with him...

5. The first song I ever performed live was The Doors' Roadhouse Blues. I bought a harmonica the day before to play the solo in it. That was 13 years ago, I am a marginally better harmonica player than I was that day (suffice to say I'm crap).

6. My first girlfriend's name was Clare Darby. To the best of my knowledge I cannot remember holding hands or even speaking to her one on one. We were five of course, so I think a little slack can be cut. Funnily enough I never went through a stage where I was bothered by girl germs, though girls seem to remain bothered by mine. Hello to Clare if she is playing at home.

7. In Hong Kong all the grass had signs saying "Please keep off". To this day I have never been camping and have absolutely no desire to. I'm as big a tree hugger as the next guy (unless the next guy is one of the ones that boarded the Japanese whaling ship, in which case I look like a carbon-positive, nature-hating, tree-felling, seal-clubbing, ice-cap-melting capitalist), but to quote Minnie Driver in Grosse Point Blank, I say leave your live stock alone.

8. British GQ is my favourite magazine on the planet. I wish it was something like The Economist, but it isn't. I love fashion even if I can afford none of it, the writers it has are extraordinary, the whole thing is endlessly entertaining. Unlike Australian GQ, which is fucking awful. If you're reading Grant, call me - 0404078686, I can save your terrible, terrible magazine.

So, I now have to tag 8 others in this wee game. I am keeping it very close to home and hitting up Stuart McPhee (the best music writer I know), Scott Drummond (the most insightful person I know), Alysha Sandow (the best dressed person I know, she's a pretty good graphic designer too!), Simon Chen (he's at the Web 2.0 conference right now, so won't reply; odds are he wouldn't anyway), Andrew Cafourek (smart and unafraid of getting his hands dirty in addition to being an incredibly nice guy), Iain Tait (who no doubt got tagged several times with this while he was in India), Laurel Papworth (I've only had limited interaction with Laurel but I like the cut of her jib...whatever that means *Update* Laurel has already done this, hers can be found here) and Skelliewag who I don't know at all but I really like what he does, and so he deserves more of your time and attention (because I say so).

The Space Between

Last week Scott and I were engaged in a conversation (likely entertaining to only ourselves) about how the right song at the right time can take a moment and make it seem bigger than it actually is. Sure you can achieve that at a decent gig by any half-wit band, but we were talking more so about times when you're on your one, or at most one other. It's how a song becomes "our song" as opposed to just "the song that was playing when...".

I love and think about music for different reasons to a lot of people, but respond to it in entirely the same way. I can remember hearing The Blue Nile's She Saw The World (from the album "High" - review | buy), streaming from Pandora (before it was restricted outside the US) in my first couple days at DDB, late one afternoon when the sun comes bursting through the venetian blinds that obscure the city in their Melbourne office, how perfect that was. I remember hearing Take 'Em As They Come on my birthday last year, an obscure Springsteen song from disc 2 of Tracks. Those moments were much larger than the inherent mundaneness of sitting in an office or thinking about a girl as I walked to meet my friends for dinner.

Now those moments are only made possible by the products that serviced me at the time; Pandora, a music streaming service, and my iPod. When I think about those times, I'm aware of how those moments were facilitated, and they inherently instill good feelings about both companies as well as their offering. The afore-mentioned Scott touches on this in his latest post "The future of advertising and marketing, or why having a boring product means you're officially screwed". Music is an easy one, but the lesson inherent here is genuine value was created. The products enriched my life.

A product that creates value gets talked about on its own. If it's being talked about then it reduces the need for marketing spend. Or rather markets itself. I think was Seth Godin who recently said "Instead of spending $50 million on marketing, spend $50 million on a product that is actually worth talking about." Brands and products become more than the sum of their parts when they get it right, but first you have to care more about getting it right than that quarter's results.

Once you've made that shift, that's when things get interesting...

Call it unreasonable, call it progress

Someone once told me I'd never had an opinion I wasn't inclined to share, and I can't say I argued much with them at the time. Given to spouting off at the drop of a hat, it's only made possible by the fact I'm quite happy to be proven wrong. One of the more famous quotes from George Bernard Shaw is the following: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." It's one I quite enjoy, and while I can't say I strive to emulate it, it seems to pop up more often than not.

Something has to be said for it though, as I'm lucky enough to have been invited by Marketing Magazine to contribute a regular blog to their site and a column in each digital issue they publish (that comes out quarterly). Having just submitted my first column, I was surprised how nervous I was sending it off, knowing it would be available solely in print, and solely to people who had paid for the privilege.

Do I really think my opinion is worth paying for? Frankly, I do. But in this instance it wasn't my idea. The editors of Marketing were the ones who decided it was worth paying for, all I can do is live up to their expectations, and hopefully, on occasion, exceed them. I look forward to discussions on their site and on this blog, with a few more insights from readers and hopefully a number of ruffled feathers!

In the interim, head over to Marketing's current blog and get involved. It's written by Scott Drummond who is equal parts funny and insightful. And for the record, I was saying that before they came calling.