Yo! LinkedIn just got linkedUP!

I’ve recently taken to Googling my way to certain URLs, a lazy or, perhaps, most time-efficient method of getting from one place to another that I picked up from my wife. In doing so, my less-frequent-than-before trips to LinkedIn revealed to me the presence of a certain media powerhouse who ranks #2 when you Google the pro networking site. Seeing his name, well, I couldn’t resist. Yeah, I know - it’s probably part of his whole grassrootsy social networking campaign vibe, and his little aides likely approve everybody. But who doesn’t want to be the first kid on their LinkedIn block who can claim that the man who could be the next President of the United States is his L.I. homes? Peep the Hasselhoff pic. Visit my profile.

 

P Pop

You know you’re working too much and behind the pop culture 8 ball when a little Philipina girl sneaks up behind you and drops a bomb that she’s quite possibly the next singing sensation that you had no clue about cause you’re 40 and not as desperate to be in the loop as you were twenty years ago. Oh well, that’s what I have Kengwei for. That, and the design genius. Thanks Kengwei - I’ve watched every vid that pop ups on You Tube for her, including the You Tube 1.0 mash-up with Beyonce, which is hot enough for B in that dress with those hips.

 

Sweet Spots

One of my ‘bosses’ (he’ll probably shudder when he reads that) is fond of referring to someone’s particular interest zone-cum-skill set as “your sweet spot.” Kinky, huh? Recently, he’s been luring me ever deeper into a few projects at Idea Couture Inc. with the temptation, “Morgan, this is really your sweet spot.” As someone who based his start-up partly on hiring an eclectic group of creatives, he definitely knows the value of drawing projects into our space (he’d definitely shudder if I called it an ‘office’), giving them a custom makeover and then harnessing the right person to lead them into development with the Charles Darwin treatment.

In the rapidly evolving and prototyping realm of Interaction, Innovation and Incubation (and the design, research, experience, interaction, strategy etc. etc. that bind its molecules), you might say that the sweet spot is akin to - if not the inspirational core of - the ‘creative type’ banter currently making the rounds in the current cultural cocktail party that bloggers in this sphere are attending to refashion the future of branding, advertising, stragegy, yadda yadda yadda.

In fact, I’d say the sweet spot (and you’ve got to be able to conjure something from your interests and passions, not just ramble on about them after hitting the Volcano for the night) is so important it should be part of every job hiring. Imagine Sweet Spot being the first section on your CV - not your x-amount of years in Experience Design or your grad studies in anthropology or the million dollar start-up you just sold off or that collection of Boy Scout badges gathering dust in a garbage bag somewhere in your basement. Instead, what are the passions and interests that drive you? That you’ll work double on?

Funny how, in your typical HR interview, interests and ‘hobbies’ are almost an after thought. Before starting at the space with the ‘boss’, I’d gone through a brief tour of duty searching for and courting other job offers. I have to thank him (and the other two ‘bosses’) for letting me into the space because I can’t imagine what a dark night of the soul it might have been had I been offered and/or taken those gigs where I would have been figuring out tribal cultures for the military  (yes, a Canadian spin on Human Terrain was a possibility), spying (whoops, I mean ‘researching’) on corporate execs for investors (very Human Terrain-ish), fighting the qualitative fight on  the quantitative battelfield and such. Imagine stealing fleeting moments in my cubicle penning odes to the sweet spot that might never have been.

To that end, a tribute to the sweet spot, a Top 5 if you will.

#1: TWEEN CULTURE

In my day I was into the Bay City Rollers, the Bee Gees, Earth Wind & Fire, Rush, Captain Stubing, Herve Villachez and Cher. I tell my daughter about the dark days of TV, when Sunday afternoons were limited to Davy & Goliath’s barely concealed Christian propaganda.

Today, Tween Culture is arguably so much more robust than it was in the 1970s that it has become the most powerful driving force in pop culture. Case in point: Miley above. Who’s one of the biggest selling artists today, if not the most ‘popular’? Her. Why? Lots of reasons.

First, Disney had to get its shit together after all that Princess crap it was coasting on through the 90s. They stumbled on (or strategized or hired the right person) a formula that has served them well across their spectrum of Suite Life, Corey In The House, Raven and so on: Neil Simon goes kid. That’s right - the recent Disney show formula isn’t a sitcom, it’s a Neil Simon play on TV for kids. Don’t believe me? Drop by your local high school for the year-end drama presentation and you’ll see.

Second, music. For all the pain & suffering the industry has gone through over the past few years, music is alive, well and thriving as the pop culture engine it has been since the Fab Four invaded North America. Hannah/Miley taps into that tween pop pleasure in a way that Britney Spears only imagined. The lip synching and singing to back-tracks isn’t my thing (us adults are too hooked on that authenticity thing), but given my own tween guilty pleasures of Donny & Marie I can let it slide.

And third? The Christian thing. Yup, it’s like Davy & Goliath are back to haunt me. It’s not big on the show (and the Hannah show is where’s it really at!), but every time Miley gets in front of a TV camera she never fails to thank the good Lord for all the shit he’s done for her.

Disclaimer: it’s one of my sweet spots because of my daughter’s age. Can’t wait for the teen years. Until then, thanks to the ‘boss’ for the first tweeny project.

#2: SEPARATIST VIOLENCE & ISLAMIC MILITANCY

Gotta love that segue, huh? Having written my MA thesis on the campaign against India waged by Kashmiri separatists and pre-Qaeda Islamic militants I’m still very much hooked on the theme. The photo above is, I believe, from a Hizbul Mujahideen web site. That’s an interest-work conversion right there, because the first time I was in Kashmir there was one working phone accessible to foreigners to call out of the state. The second time I was there it had been bombed. And the third time I didn’t even waste my time trying to call home. That HM has web sites calling for actions, posting photos of militants killed in battle etc. is a testament to the speed at which the technology I took for granted in the early 1990s has become accessible. That, and the fact that my friend can now call me from his cell phone up in the Himalayas from a village that had electricity 2 hours per day back then!

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your take on the client), this particular sweet spot likely won’t get flushed out in the work space.

#3: WINE

I still can’t really afford the super-good stuff, but I’m always willing to make budgetary room for something I can’t totally resist. I bought this Viognier in Vancouver while I was out doing a client ethnography. I walked into the shop, asked the clerk for something I couldn’t buy in Ontario, and this was one of my scores. Still haven’t had it yet, but it might make a great intro to the Oregon Pinot Gris my buddy Stanley brought me back from his third or fourth trip into Nike HQ.

Wine is, as I’m finding out, such a rich terroir for Interaction, Innovation and Incubation. This sweet spot is getting sweeter.

#4: DANCEHALL

I’m still waiting for the Miley Cyrus/Ninjaman combination on the “Cherry My Baby” riddim, but until then I’ll tribute this sweet spot for: being a favourite musical genre (less of a 45 buyer now, but still a fan); being a favourite performative genre (rich anthropological territory for understanding culture, language, gesture, membership, conflict etc.); and being a hotly contested cultural domain. Recent controversy revisited has once again positioned dancehall as violently homophobic. No dispute there. In addition to rampant  hyper-sexualization and a mythologizing of gun culture, Jamaican music of late (and much of past too, lest we forget) has been full of calls to bun down the batty man. Like much of the Rasta business, I don’t cater to this. But I will say that this latest spin on the ‘clash of civilizations’ theme that the media tends to fall back on when it’s too lazy to truly investigate a culture is, like Pad Anthony’s “Conference Table,” a great place to meet and discuss/debate ideas about cultural autonomy, expression, appropriateness etc. etc.

#5: ADVERTISING

Yes, I’ve heard the bells tolling for this industry across the blogzone, but I still can’t resist the call. I agree that so much is changing because of 2.0, TV’s cancer, the death of print; advertising is not only transforming right now but will continue to do so in order to deliver whatever it does to its clients (and, by the way, to pop culture - because it will always be relevant in whatever shape or form). To that end - and in typical 2.0 fashion - I’d like to suggest that while the interactive renegades, boutiques and start-ups poach all sorts of business from the lethargic monster firms, why can’t we do the same with the ad agencies?  Creative is as creative does, right?  Find somebody else to do your buying etc. But when brands with age-old presences are ready to have some real fun (and it can still be had on TV) at a slice of the usual agency cost and are ready to make themselves culturally relevant again, hit me up. I’ve got some sweet (spot) ideas

 

What about jocks & cheerleaders?

Anyone who appreciated the skills that the crew from Revenge of the Nerds had beyond the football and dating fields knows that geeks always had a cool quotient, albeit one that was very covert in the 1980s. That characters like Lamar have since gone on to play a huge role in defining our culture’s assumptions and aspirations regarding what is currently cool is something of a table-turning victory celebration: injecting archetypes into the realm of stereotypes, it’s now common practice to credit nerds with everything that’s evolved in the hip intersections between society and technology since their boners first saluted the Commodore 64. (See: Bill Gates).

Today’s matrix of technology, interactive, design, strategy, research, interactive, innovation etc. is brimming with folks who probably didn’t score touchdowns and date cheerleaders in high school. Many of them – like the former and/or practicing DJs, rave promoters, comic artists, font freaks, and connoisseurs of tea, wine and chocolate who populate this realm and generally stand united against the alpha-male jock villains of 80’s cinema – have some degree of coolness under their belt. Some of them are even designing the next application, device, site or campaign you will think is cool.

As an anthropologist, that interests me. My apologies in advance for raising the specter of such an over-haunted theme, but I have to wonder if this professional matrix has become so enraptured by its own culture of cool that it has spawned an ethnocentricity that’s now reaching full maturity.

Case in point #1: I’ve recently been involved with an industrial designer in a single volley debate over the value (or meaning?) or ‘ordinariness’ on Idris’ blog. I understand that few, if any, designers strive for the ordinary; however, having done the ethnography, I am very familiar with those ‘consumers’ who prefer, if not thrive on, the ordinary.

Case in point #2: a recent posting on Dino’s blog led me to a Slide Share by Paul Isakson. Two of the slides read: “Great. But my product isn’t cool. What can I do?” The answer – and its simplicity isn’t that surprising considering Paul is one of those hailing the impending (if not accompli) ‘death of advertising’ - is “Well, frankly you’re screwed.”

I’m not so sure – about being screwed or about what ordinary is. Designers chasing the next iWhatever can’t be faulted for wanting to create the next cool thing. But who decides what cool is? And when did ordinary get set in stone?

The many on-screen humiliations suffered by the Lamars of pop culture served to dramatize our rooting for the underdog and the stark demographic reality that most of those watching are more like the pocket protector crew than the alpha-male jock villains of 80’s cinema. And while it’s far sexier to conduct ethnographies on the cool, I’d just like to stick up for the voice of those poor jocks and cheerleaders who might be forgotten as they shop for tube socks, bath mats, paper towel and all those other products that have slipped through the cracks of cool. Roland Barthes would not be pleased with this exnomination of the nerds.

 

Neuromarketing + ads = duh, again

Jennifer Wells’ article in The Globe & Mail’s Report on Business section (“Advertising’s Holy Grail,” Saturday March 15) illustrates how truly little of a shit some marketers and advertisers give about consumers as human beings – especially those companies who think they’ve taken a major leap into new strategic space by replacing focus groups for neuromarketing. As Wells points out, measuring brain waves or blood flows to determine responses to an ad’s music, imagery, brand messaging etc. isn’t exactly a spring chicken methodology. But, as the thrust of her article, the announcement 4 weeks ago that Nielsen Co. “had made what it called a ‘strategic investment’ in a theretofore unheard of California company called NeuroFocus’,” it looks like the chicken’s got new gravy.

Other firms are similarly working this new gravy, er, methodology. Along with Neilsen, Wells points out that ESPN, Virgin Mobile USA and Starcom MediaVest (and there’s far more to boot) have all recently cut cheques to them to mine the deepest recesses of the consumer mind. But are they? Really?

Positioning your services as an alternative to focus groups? Isn’t that like cancer calling the plague black? I’m all for kids getting $20 to taste a chocolate bar or two and tell Cadbury’s it’s shit, but focus groups haven’t been a ‘best practice’ for any firm with a brain worth scanning since Puma-wearing 20-somethings early-adopted that phrase, like, whenever. Tsk tsk to Jennifer Wells (if she did) or NeuroFocus (if they did) for setting the best practice bar so low at focus groups. Like, who can’t jump that high?

This approach to probing the ‘consumer mind’ (literally) for deep insights will fly, for a time, because most of the 1.0 marketing and advertising crowd are quantitative junkies so unsure of their product and promotion (and, I guess, their people) that they’ll only place their bets once the Vegas odds are sold to them in their favour. They’ll pay for the service because the companies that offer it boast a more accurate or detailed or nuanced read with – get this – fewer test subjects. Yes, it saves money and it’s quicker than focus groups! But it still seems focus groupy, just with a big discount coupon, wires on heads and cool EEG readouts to throw into a Power Point deck.

Remember brain wavers that claimed they could crack the emotion & meaning of music or peer into the predator’s mind as he watched porno in jail?

How many times a man farts after eating chicken tikka doesn’t tell you anything about how much or where, why, when and with whom – never mind the stories he might regale you with from his restaurant experiences or childhood memories of the family tandoor as young boy in the Punjab – he is socially, culturally, personally, emotionally or gastronomically engaged with and by chicken tikka.

I guess what really irks me is that some companies or brands and their research lackies would even think of hooking lab consumers up to wires. What’s next? Rubbing shampoo into kids’ eyes to see how much they cry?

Or maybe it’s the title of Wells’ article. I guess she’s a fan of the Dan Brown/Tom Hanks version. Sorry, though, I’m still not convinced the secrets can be read through wires. You won’t find them in the blood or, for that matter, the brain as mechanism. And even if you could, one brain does not make a market, a community or a culture.

 

The smart

I like smart people, especially people who are smarter than me. Not smarter than me in terms of ties and slacks, but smarter (not that I’ve got some quantitative stick in my pocket) than me in that sense of, when you read their writing or hear them speaking, you feel like drowning your PhD in a case of Beck’s. Sometimes it happens when I watch a great TV show (The Wire, Kalifornication, that hidden motel room show) or read a great book (Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes, Norman Stolzoff’s Wake The Town, anything by Victor Turner). I’m writing this ode to the wise because, recently (and since being hired on by two dudes who have me deep in Bremen’s finest), I signed up for Twitter. Put my non-early adopter status down to a flair for the social reluctance of many anthropologists (sometimes we get so hooked on other’s sociality that we ignore our own. Don’t expect the regular updates on What I’m Doing). In doing so (thanks, again, to a brother) I came across the new fact that Mark Ury has a blog. Check it here. Mark works as an Experience Architect at Blast Radius in Toronto. I had the pleasure to work in a room with him last year for two days. I hope some of his mojo rubbed off on me, because he is, for lack of accoladed wording, smart. (He can probably do Ikea furniture with his eyes closed). Just read his posting on why Apple is successful. And no, it’s not design. In scrolling through Mark’s blogroll I was reminded to catch up on postings by Grant McCracken. I hope his middle-ageness doesn’t flinch in referring to him as one of the granddaddies of anthropology for business (?, I flinch at ‘consumer anthropology’), but there’s rarely a post that goes by in his musings on work, ethnography etc. that doesn’t have those of us less jet-setting-than-he looking to get some game. Needless to say, he’s smart - and his recent post aimed at ethnographic pretenders must have stung many.

That’s all, that’s it. Just looking to big up the smart.

 

Of mice, men, women and children

Even when it’s anthropology for commercial/business purposes, let’s not call ‘them’ subjects, case studies, consumers, users or - worse yet - cohorts. As ethnography, design, strategy and innovation become more public about the ever-ripening fruits of their increased collaboration, let’s hear it for….people. I’m nearing the middle phase in a series of cross-Canada ethnographic home visits and I have yet to sit at the kitchen table of a subject, case study, consumer, user or cohort. In Toronto they’re men, women and children. In Montreal they’re men, women and children. And unless something’s gone awry that I missed on the news, I expect they’ll be men, women and children in Vancouver, Calgary and the Maritimes.

Sound like a picky point? It’s not. Any organization that is working (or hoping to) beyond ‘the box’ should be talking their walk which, I guess, is my way of saying that when the research firm you’ve contracted to conduct that qualitative study throws up a Power Point on the subjects, case studies, consumers, users and cohorts they’ve ’sampled’ it might be time to cut your losses and run.

 

Love to LinkedIn

It has been three weeks since I started at Idea Couture and, not surprisingly three weeks since LinkedIn and I started arguing about whether or not we need counseling. She says we do, complaining that I don’t pay enough attention to her anymore. That’s not entirely true. I do spend some quality time with her once a day, at least on weekdays.

But she’s changed. Week after week it seems as if she’s showing a new side, one that surprises me (and not in a unanimously great way). Don’t think I haven’t noticed. I can see it on her face: one day it’s ‘who checked your profile’ and ‘your name came up on x-amount of searches’ on the left, a couple of days later it’s on the right; one day a pop-up mysteriously appears (and stays, thus far) asking me what I’m up to right now (like I can break my NDA pre-nup, right?); then, all of a sudden, I don’t have to peek into her contacts to find out who has just linked up because it’s right there, in my face; and don’t even talk to me about the new man in her life last week, boldly asking me from a questioning face that’s never been present in our personal space about how we can encourage more students to enrol in science and technology courses. Like that’s what he’s really interested in!

I have to admit, though, that I, too, have changed. Or maybe it’s that the relationship has changed. It’s not that I don’t need her any more. I love LinkedIn. I can’t quite keep up with how she keeps changing her looks week after week, but it’s what’s inside that counts, right? I fell in love with that the very day that my brother introduced me to her in the spring. Yeah, I knew she’d been around the block for a few years before our first days together but, after refusing so many introductions to MySpace and realizing that I just didn’t have the kind of commitment (and interest) it would take to make it work with Facebook, that didn’t matter. Because at that moment in my life I knew LinkedIn was the one for me. And so I spent hours with her that first week, courting her with carefully crafted words that, I hoped, would forever enamour her to me. But sometimes forever isn’t, well, forever.

I do have to thank her for getting me in the door at a number of places where I met some interesting people (and some people who wore slacks, worked in cubicles and got there via HR) who talked about what we could do together. In the end, however, it was a life pre-her that came knocking, talked to me about my passions, skills and insights fitting into a new business model, gave me a desk (and a phone, and a light, and a filing cabinet, and more!) and set me off on a cross-Canada road trip to learn about something that my pre-nup demands I keep quiet. In part, I credit the energy I put into my relationship with her for creating the karmic powers that led me to where I am now.

Looking back I realize that, yes, I used her. But hasn’t everybody? It’s not like it’s over, though. People change. Jobs change. I wouldn’t be surprised if, one day, we rediscover that first spark that set us (okay, me) on fire. If we do, I hope it leads to something that’s as exciting as the one I’m in now, a place in my life that conjures the passion of those first few days in the warm embrace of LinkedIn.

Until then, I am introducing a close girlfriend to her in hopes that, together, they can make the magic happen. And another girlfriend will soon be revisiting her to, hopefully, make up in ways that will similarly transform a professional situation. Best of luck to all three.

 

Not even a moshi moshi

No photo to post, screen shot to rip or even a moshi moshi from this glimmer of innovation and peek into the sort of interaction and/or interface that might soon be - check her!

 

Major labels get Godin’s tribal talk

Talking with a monster software company back in December I learned that one of their genius ideas to help push their idea lab into the future and sell their MP3 player in the present was to consult on the regular with major record label execs about - get this - how music consumers would be consuming music in the future. Now, anyone who knows anything about the record industry knows that the record industry doesn’t really know anything about the record industry anymore. Well, not exactly - but if sales of CDs and the general state of panic in that financial realm are indication, you get the picture. Seth Godin has posted a PDF on his blog of a recent talk he gave to some music execs about the one thing that most, if not all, of them lack: innovation. That they’ve been scared for a while is fact. Now that the drums have stopped beating maybe the major labels are finally going to prepare for the arrival of what Godin calls the ‘tribe’.