Why Apple Products are a Dark Cloud Over the Tech Industry

You would never know it from the stock price, but Apple, the company who's products we once loved, is falling apart. Design, once a cornerstone of every Apple product, is eroding under the weight of copy-cat features and an arbitrary bend through the iPhone looking glass. And quality?

Consider iOS 11. As of this post, we're on iOS 11.1.2, the seventh release of the 11th version of their iPhone software. Take a look at this MacRumors iOS 11 round-up. This update to Apple's iOS, while described as a "major design change", doesn't bundle huge new feature sets. In fact, the second paragraph of the round-up talks about "subtle design changes to interface elements throughout the operating system". And yet, iOS 11 introduced a broad range of bugs into the OS. Seven releases and they still haven't fixed their calculator animation bug.

Now, some companies might offer the excuse that they don't have enough resources build a perfect product. And yet, Apple, with multiple campuses throughout Silicon Valley, hardly seems to be the resource strapped company that it once was. What's more, Apple is sitting on over $261 Billion in cash, so it's not like they can't afford to hire a few good software developers, if that was what was needed to fix iOS.

Contrast iOS with Salesforce.com. In the past, I've often complained about issues with Salesforce.com, but Salesforce releases an update to it's platform three times a year without breaking it's core feature sets or functionality. In iOS 11, I've had issues where the Mail client indicates that I have unread emails from one of my VIPs, even though none of my recent VIPs have even emailed me. I would call that a bug in the core functionality of the device. And this is simply one more issue -- I wish that I had a way to characterize some of the issues that I've had with the touch screen since iOS 11. These days, my iPhone just does stupid stuff -- like randomly playing audio when I put my Airpods away after a phone call.

The Broader Problem with Apple
At it's core, I think that Apple is struggling with a vision problem. While Apple has long been considered a visionary company, I think the current iteration of the company has lost it's way. Consider the new iPhone X and it's facial recognition capabilities. Have they really done anything beyond adding Microsoft Kinect to a phone? Or the Touchbar that was added to the Macbook Pro line -- do you see that anywhere else in their Mac platform? Essentially, the seem to be grabbing at feature straws, wildly swiping through the air trying to capture another brass ring that might equate to iPhone or iMac gold.

But these are not the moves of a mad genius. Instead, they feel more like the flailing efforts of a committee that seems to reach for a consensus view of what they imagine somebody in a black turtleneck might dream of.

Say what you will about skeuomorphic design, I think that when Apple leaned more skeuomorphic, there was a clearer framework to shape the thinking of the people inside the company.

And while today's Apple may consider designers and "pro-users" to be just "some small segment" of their much broader cash cow, I think that they truly underestimate why Apple products became so beloved within that segment -- and it wasn't simply because Apple offered different color options or a rose gold (pink) version. Fundamentally, the core aspect that made Apple product so much better was good design.

These days, Apple just bolts on products and features to build some arbitrary unity around an ecosystem of unnecessary accessories. If Apple were the Marvel Universe, it would be like having Howard the Duck show up in all of their content because, hey, Howard the Duck. And so, we have the Amazon Echo copy, Apple Homepod, so that you can say "Hey Siri" at home. And you also have Siri making a random, Howard the Duck appearance on the Mac. Hey Siri, can you turn my wifi off for real this time?

I'm sure that over in the halls of whichever Apple campus, that they still have product management meetings. They still make product roadmaps. They track their bugs and they schedule their releases. I'm sure that, when it comes to the formal dance of a product, they go through the steps. And yet, iOS 11.

So what does it mean for other companies more broadly, when a company can have more money than most of us can imagine, all of the resources that they could possibly need, and yet to still struggle so fundamentally in something like this "update" to their iPhone OS? What does it mean when innovation for "the most successful technology company" simply means thinner, or slapping a "Touchbar" on it?

So this is what happens with tech companies grow up.

Big Star Documentary:Journey to a Place You Probably Won't Understand

Netflix streaming service is a funny place. There are a ton of things to watch, but at the same time, it's kind of like watching last year's cable TV -- lots of channels really equates to a ton of things that you don't want to watch; but they are playing all of the episodes of that WB show that you never considered watching when it was on.

Having just finished binge-watching whatever show it was, I was browsing through the Netflix muck looking for something to watch when I happened upon this documentary about the band Big Star.

For me, it was one of those awesome trips down memory lane. It's loaded with interviews with key figures in the Memphis music scene -- not the Sam Phillips / Sun Records / Elvis scene, more the It Came From Memphis scene. Without specifically saying it, this movie connects to the difference between what rock and roll was and what it has become. You can learn a lot about music in between the lines in this movie.

Friday Night Lights vs The Wire

Recently, I finished binge-watching Friday Night Lights on Netflix. While I made it through the entire series, there were several times when I came really close to abandoning it. While I felt like it captured some interesting elements of the small town America story, what I had the most trouble with was the overall narrative structure. For me, Friday Night Lights stands in sharp contrast to The Wire, which we just finished watching for the first time last year. In contrast to Friday Night Lights, we didn't really binge-watch The Wire. Instead, we watched that show together, savoring each episode like the rich deep flavors of a complex dish.

My biggest problem with FNL was that it quickly became very predictable -- and not in a good way. Essentially, the story runs on a sort of sign wave, with the set-up for a character with a personal issue or a struggle, rising tension, then a resolution that returns the character to the root "good person" that we know they are. Put into a different framework, you might say good person, troubled by sin, then they face their moment of crisis, resolve and absolved. The underpinned framework is that all of these characters are good at the core, it's just these sin events that take them to bad places.

Contrast that with The Wire. In The Wire, we see characters that all have very dark sides. We have a plot line that gets set with problems and challenges. In the flow of a season, we often see a large story arc with characters thematically trying to do what they think is best for the larger good, only to see these efforts actually undermine a larger good -- one that we, as viewers, know was just around the corner. And the characters, we learn to like aspects of them, but also understand that they are not good. There is no black and white morality in The Wire; instead, it's rich with ambiguities that underscore the complexities of humanity. It's original sin. We are all tainted. It is inherent in our humanity.

For me, the contrast between these two series was so palpable, I began framing my thoughts on the two works a couple of weeks ago. But what struck me more was when I was reading the article I referenced in this previous post. In reflecting on the differences between conservative and liberal experiences with comedy and nuance, I could see more clearly why one series might be better for conservatives and one for liberals. FNL has a clearly defined moral structure. There is story and resolution. There is no nuance. In contrast, The Wire is all about nuance. There is no grand moral hand at play in The Wire.

It's not unusual for people to dislike things that we love. Opinions and tastes are diverse. At the same time, it can be challenging to internalize the idea the these same people may be experiencing those things in a completely different way. As marketers, we often draw upon empathy to imagine that we understand the thoughts and the brains around us, to experience the story through another's eyes. This is a reminder that, even as we step into another's shoes, we may be stepping into a wholly different universe where the logic and physics that we understand do not exist.

Your Monday Recipe for Success: Stop Emulating Successful Recipes

This morning I came across this post regarding the narrative fallacy of acting like 'successful' people. It's an amusing read and some interesting perspective. At the same time, think about the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or Led Zeppelin. Would these guys have achieved what they did if they didn't listen to American blues records? They may not have found success emulating them, but they certainly were influenced by them.

It reminds me of this element in Finding Forrester, where Jamal is having trouble finding his creative voice and is helped into the process of writing by retyping the words from one of Forrester's stories. Sometimes the rhythm and flow of playing song can take you to new places. But there I go, busting out a narrative fallacy. Anyway, the post is worth a read. 

Soulmates: Ideas You Fall In Love With

Recently, I found myself providing some assistance on a side project helping with food branding -- I love new projects. I always enjoy working through the challenges and variations on a new project, connecting with your creative processes in very different ways. It's like going for a bicycle ride in a new area instead of turning the pedals through your regular training loop.

As I was working through this project, one of the things that it reminded me of was this experience years ago at the How Design Conference. During this one session, the speaker presented this idea that he would present just one idea, because the right concept was just that -- the right concept. That there is one perfect concept that fit the problem and that everything else was just not as good.

Over the years, I've seen my share of good ideas and not so good ideas. And while the notion of the one perfect idea seems rather elegant, in reality, it seldom works. To start with, most clients are going to be unhappy with one idea. The want to believe in the idea of choice and of some participation in the process. What may seem like the perfect idea to you will probably seem like you didn't consider any other possibilities to them. If you had only one idea, maybe you aren't creative.

That being said, sometimes there are ideas that just seem SO perfect that you find yourself falling in love with them. Once you come across those, everything else -- all of the other ideas -- seem to suck in comparison. Of course, the reason that you may be so passionately connected to the idea is that it is your baby, your creation.

Remember
Let it go. As a creative pro, you always need to be able to detach from your ideas, to put them down and move onto the next. You work for a client, and sometimes the client selects the other idea (whether it's good or not). Artists can fixate on an idea - you have to keep moving forward.

Sure you feel heartbroken when the client didn't pick The One. It doesn't matter. Are you an under-appreciated creative genius? Of course you are. Now get back to work making that second rate idea shine.

Remembering Robin Williams

A marketing blog probably seems like a strange place to write about the passing of a celebrity, but Robin Williams was so much more than that. While you could punctuate his name with a variety of tags -- actor, comedian, artist -- Robin Williams transcended all of those descriptions. Robin Williams shaped our culture. He gave us direction. He was like the patron saint of creativity.

From his very first acting appearances, Robin Williams took freeform creative association to a new level. He always seemed to harness this insane chaos of ideas, to let it flow through him, then pull it together and give it direction and meaning in ways that entertained and enlightened us.

And through it all, he was Robin Williams; so iconic that we could identify him, even when he was just a voice performance, so ingrained that he could be a parody of himself in a candy commercial, and yet funny, even when the rhythm of the performance remained familiar.

He always surprised us. Over the course of his life, he showed us comedy, he showed us drama, he showed us heartfelt sentiment. He showed us serious and intellectual. He showed us responsible and professional even with a halo of silly. Perhaps the saddest part of his death and our collective loss is that, if there is one thing that Robin Williams always taught us over the course of his life, it's that he always had something more to show us.

Secrets of the Creative Brain

During the Friday commute home, I caught parts of this a story about creativity on NPR. Intrigued, I tracked down the article online and read through it on Saturday. It's quite interesting and definitely worth a read.

The piece is Secrets of the Creative Brain, A leading neuroscientist who has spent decades studying creativity shares her research on where genius comes from, whether it is dependent on high IQ -- and why it is so often accompanied by mental illness, by Nancy Andreasen. It's not a short read, but it is a pretty easy read nonetheless. And if you're into creativity -- understanding it, leveraging it, or just being around it -- I think it's a helpful read as well.

It reminded me a lot of Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors, a book that I really enjoyed and would recommend. In her study, Andreasen dives into the associative part of the brain and it's relation to creativity. This harmonizes well with many of the ideas presented by Evan Schwartz in Juice. 

At the same time, one aspect of Andreasen's piece that I found amusing from the creative perspective is the idea that, within the mind of the creative person, the unusual (creative) associations seem so obvious that they tend to take them for granted. Put a different way, while some may see an unusual or creative idea, that creative person probably considers the association as normal. This can create a disconnect between a creative person and an audience that "just doesn't get it". And that can be a good thing to keep in mind when you're dealing with creatives -- or as a creative person looking out.

Why Small Teams are More Productive

This is a great post with the science behind why small teams are more productive. Totally worth the read.

Will You Survive The Extinction of the Creative Class?

So here's some rather lengthy Sunday reading for you. It starts with this collection of articles posted on Salon last week, kicked off by this post, No Sympathy for the Creative Class - Art in Crisis, by Scott Timberg. It's a great exploration of how the 'Creative Class' struggles these days, fueled by the economic downturn, American anti-intellectualism, and to some extent, technology and the Internet. It's a long read, but well worth your effort.

While I think that the piece leans a little heavily on the struggles within the traditional arts, he also touches on the creative class in business -- graphic design, writers, and architects. One aspect that I think that he kind of glances over is that, within this sector and the idea of commercial creative, you once had a much larger 'working class' creative. These aren't necessarily people dancing, painting and sculpting, they are people in the corporate world participating in the same kinds of 9-to-5 tasks as... fill-in-the-blank because if you follow that logic, then you've also already hopped on board part of the anti-elitist rhetoric that the piece references.

Anyway, totally worth a read and probably something that I'll write more about going forward.

Steve Jobs as a Template? Who does that?

A while back, I came across this, Bio as Bible: Managers Imitate Steve Jobs from the Wall Street Journal. You don't have to go very far into the piece to get the idea -- it's an anecdotal tale of managers across the country who read the Steve Jobs bio and, subsequently, began to approach the ideas as dogma. The article leaves you with the impression that you're watching an episode of The Office and the boss has suddenly decided to start wearing black turtle necks.

Caveat emptor, I haven't read the Jobs biography, so I can't say whether I'll go finish the book and go straight to shopping for my own turtle necks wardrobe, but I don't expect that to be the result. I could be wrong. But my real focus here is on underlying essence of this imitation, on understanding good design, what makes art good, and why.

Let's take wine tasting as an example. Most of us are familiar with the vocabulary and ceremony associated with wine tasting. And while the vocabulary may seem artificial and pretentious to some, within the wine tasting culture it has meaning and purpose. Now, if you were to segment the wine community, you might start with some big chunks:

• Let's start with people who don't drink much wine or who aren't familiar with many varieties. For them, Two-buck Chuck is good enough -- they probably wouldn't be sensitive to subtleties and they certainly wouldn't pay a lot for them. They probably don't use wine tasting descriptions and the probably don't worry much about "rating systems". 
• I would probably put myself into a second group. I've tasted a lot of wine and used that as a basis for my preferences. I'm willing to spend some money on more expensive wines on occasion, but tend to make selections and second purchases based on how a wine matches my preferences. I don't use wine tasting vocabulary and I don't pay attention to ratings.
• At the upper end of the spectrum and people who spend a lot of money on wine and taste a lot of varieties. These people use the wine tasting vocabulary and they pay attention to rating systems. They make selections based on their tastes and preferences, but also understand how that vocabulary correlates to their preferences. They are probably collectors.
• Finally, you have the last set that I really want to talk about -- those people who use wine tasting vocabulary, who buy based on rating systems, price criteria, varietal and other characteristics, but who don't really understand or correlate those factors to an actual taste preference. These are the pretentious people who buy the most expensive wines or ones with the highest rating -- or maybe they only buy Pinot Noir because they watched Sideways. These are the people who would probably blindly drink Two-buck Chuck and describe it with flowery wine tasting vocabulary. 

It's this last group that we both love and hate. As marketers, we love them because they are so easily influenced by our efforts. As sales guys we love them, because in many ways that have sucker buyer stamped on their forehead. These are the people who deliver high margins because at the root of it, they don't have meaningful expectations.

Why don't they have meaningful expectations? Because they don't understand quality. Because the only qualities that they value are not related to form and function. They don't look at the world in that way.

Remember when, in the early days of the iPhone, RIM introduced it's own touchscreen phone? Part of the reason why these things come to market is because somebody somewhere said, "Hey, it does the same thing that ours does but it has a music player app store touch screen. We need a touch screen." It's not like the only difference was the touch screen, but how do you explain an entire, integrated landscape in a meeting?

Why is it that most copies are poor versions of the original? Well, going back to the Steve Jobs imitators, imagine if you could follow a Steve Jobs pattern, step for step, note for note. The best you could hope to achieve would still be an echo of the original. What you would miss are those moments of originality, of creative birth that produced many of the things that we look back on historically as unique. Why? Because your path to following the Steve Jobs recipe would be driven by "what would Steve do" instead of "what do I think is right". Hal Holbrook does a great Mark Twain, but he's not Samuel Clemens.

Imitation can be a great tool for learning. By repeating the steps in a recipe, you develop an understanding of the mechanics of cooking a dish. But until you understand the how and why of the recipe, you don't really own it. You don't make new, you just make. In the end, what did you learn from the recipe -- about the ingredients, about the process, about why the pieces fit together? This underlying learning process is the heart of what makes you good at something.

In business there is this idea that it's all simply recipe and process. If you can just make a smart phone with a touch screen, an app store and the apps that people like, you'll have an equivalent to the iPhone. Then, if you add a few more features that people like, maybe a memory slot, a faster processor or a removable battery, you'll have more features and you will sell more units than the iPhone. Maybe you understand the parts. Maybe you understand what the parts add up to. But if you can't see the bigger picture, the underlying connection for why those parts -- and those specific parts -- go together, you still don't understand.

To quote Frank Zappa from a 1984 issue of Guitar Player magazine:

What do you think happened in this country?
Well, two important things, and each one of them has only three letters: One was LSD, a chemical which is capable of turning a hippie into a yuppie, one of the most dangerous chemicals known to mankind. And the other is MBA. When people started taking MBA seriously, that was the beginning of the ruination of the American industrial society. When all decisions are based on an MBA's concept of numerical reality, you're in deep shit, because the only thing that can be judged as real is that which can be proved by a column of figures. And when all aesthetic decisions are turned over to these kinds of people, who use these criteria to make steering decisions for a company with no regard for people and no regard for what the product really is, and the only thing that matters is maximizing your profit, you have a problem. Because you can't have quality then; you cannot have excellence. Quality's expensive. I think most of these people that come from business schools have the desire to make sure everything is cheesy. That's what happens when you do things that way.

Of course, it's worth noting that in a lot of modern marketing, creativity and original content matter less than numerical performance. Consider web advertising. While copy and content may be a hook, the real measure (and the thing that you have to optimize on) is click-through and conversion. Not to say that there aren't more complex issues at work, simply that the issue isn't black and white. But hopefully, as people read the biography and begin to study the what and why of Steve Jobs, they find themselves drawn into the world of creativity and art. Hopefully, they find a deeper appreciation of aesthetic aspects and a greater tolerance for the differences that creative thinking brings. But mostly, let's just hope that it doesn't spawn a whole new generation of pretentious wine/design snobs who claim to know so much but who really understand so little.

Golf and Positive Perception

I heard this story on NPR the other day talking about a study where they looked at golfers and found that golfers who were playing better perceived the hole to be larger, and those that did were not playing as well saw the hole as smaller. By creating an optical illusion and altering their perception of the hole, the researchers were able to change a golfer's putting.

It's good food for thought, not only about golf, but for marketing as well. Here's a link to the story.

Can You Think Your Way To That Hole-In-One? by Joe Palca.

Creativity and Design Stuff on My Mind

Recently, I've run into a number of blog posts and other items that have had me thinking a lot about creativity. Rather than apply too much structure to them, I'm just going to send them out your way for you to use as you see fit.

Here's a link to a post I came across on PandoDaily the other day. The Illusion of Imagination (And How It Drives Silicon Valley) by Francisco Dao is a great example of how one nugget, one kernel of thought, can change your perspective on things. Here's a sample:

Instead of actually considering odds, we tend to calculate probability based on the ease with which we can imagine something. And whether or not we can imagine something is often determined by specific details that create subsets, thereby lowering the actual probability of it occurring. I know that’s a bit confusing so let me give you an example.

When people were asked how likely they were to die in a plane crash caused by a terrorist attack, compared to people who were asked how likely they were to die in an unspecified plane crash, significantly more people believed the odds were higher in the terrorist attack scenario. This, despite the fact that an airplane crash caused by terrorism is a small subset of all total crashes.

This is truly an interesting read and totally in line with some of the other creativity things I've been seeing recently.


Here are a couple of posts by Hamish McKenzie for PandoDaily. These are interview segments from his conversation with Jonah Lehrer on his book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. There’s No Such Thing as Individual Genius in Silicon Valley and Steve Jobs Was Right to ‘Steal,’ and Beer is Inspiring give you a nice window into the ideas in the book.

Here's another one that we came across recently. How to hire a product manager by Ken Norton is an interesting look into one guy's idea of what makes a good product manager. There are some amusing elements here (like big company specialization versus start-up flexibility), but there are also a few points that he makes that seem internally contradictory. This piece is yet another reminder of the philosophical battle between "need to be technical and have an engineering background" versus "need to have a broader, more creative background with an ability to comprehend complex technology".  For me, I find the default to an engineering background to be a mindset that is hamstrung by conventional wisdom that forms an funny contrast to the idolization of Steve Jobs -- not that Norton covers that here, but it's another topic that I've seen a lot about since Jobs' biography was published.

2 Hours From Awesome

Often, when I'm contacted by someone that I haven't talked with in a long time, they will ask me whether I still play guitar or whether I've been riding lately. Thinking about it this morning, I realized that there are a bunch of things like guitar that I probably have 9,998 hours at.

Perhaps you know the feeling. One day, when I get some time, I will devote some more time to it, focus on it, and finally cross that expertise finish line. Hell, if it were just one hour a way, I'd probably pull out that guitar right now. But it's not just an hour. It's not just one more turn to level up. So I should probably focus on something else. Besides, that next hour will probably be awkward.

When A Thought Exercise Goes Horribly Wrong

Recently, I was hired as the "Empress of Enthusiastic Evangelism". It's the kind of thing that many creative people might get very excited about. It's the kind of thing that I might have gotten excited about. Once. Some time ago.

Sure, everyone wants to work at one of those companies where they get to have cool, funny titles that spit in the eye of traditional business culture -- and now I do. Or thought I did. Until I was hired.

Once upon a time, this company -- my new company -- was the embodiment of that free-minded culture. But then they decided that it made more sense to stabilize and follow a traditional set of values. They decided that it would be a good idea to be predictable, to avoid changing. I came in after that, hired to replace the former Empress who had left, perhaps looking for a more regally appropriate environment.

It goes without saying that I'm not a woman. And 'Enthusiastic Evangelism' really only represents a small portion of what I do. Or am supposed to do -- since lobbying for a new title is one of the things that also takes up a lot of my time. But it's rather difficult convincing the "Lord of Strategic Conquests" that I'm not being taken seriously with my current title.

I've never been one to get hung up on job titles. After all, I do what I do, who cares what they call me. But this one is making it is starting to make me crazy, I mean, forget about the people I have to deal with not taking me seriously, I'm starting to wonder myself. The other day, I started wondering -- what's the next position, where do I go after empress?

Giant Hairballs of Corporate Bureaucracy: The Problem With Teams

One of my favorite books about creativity is Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace. For me, it's a great book about creativity under the corporate umbrella. The title of this post is an allusion to the book, but the issue that I'm writing about today doesn't directly relate.

Recently, I came across an interesting document. It was a process diagram, charting the workflow of a business process. As someone who has occasionally found myself wearing something like an IT hat, it's not unusual for me to have a hand in these kinds of things, but what struck me about this one was the process description. Within the process description, there were details like, "and then the form goes into the green folder". In all, there was a surprising level of detail mandating minor aspects of the process.

Several years ago, this process came under management scrutiny for taking way too long. As part of a reform effort, a team was formed to review the process and streamline it. After several weeks of study, review and effort, the team produced this multi-page flowchart diagramming the process. As for restructuring, they proposed adding a step with a pre-process screening to determine whether projects would go through a light version, a medium version, or the full version of the process.

The Myth of Collaborative Reform
This story is just one example of conventional wisdom that suggests that if you put a bunch of people together in a room with an overall objective, that those people will work together to achieve the objective. In the previous example of process reform, each of the members of the team were stakeholders and streamlining the process would mean losing some element or aspect that they had established -- letting go of their good idea.

Democracy. It's a great idea. But if "one man, one vote" holds true in process reform, then "the green folder" may hold the same importance as an actual processing step.

In the case of the process above, one of the key failures took place during the process mapping. Beyond the "what do you do" questions, they didn't effectively capture the why. How is the product of your step used? What are you trying to accomplish in this step? How is your step important in the overall process?

Often, an entrenched process starts out as a rule to achieve a specific objective. Then, over the course of time, the rule is taught to others who don't understand the objective but accept the rule as dogma. Eventually, the dogma of the rule becomes the objective. By this time, the the zealots and the process fundamentalists will argue the importance of adhering to the rule, even when the entire context for the rule has shifted. What happens when your culture is no longer a nomadic populace wandering the desert? More importantly, what happens to "the green folder" when the process becomes electronic?

I know it sounds crazy, but these are issues that you often have to deal with when you try to change things or "move the cheese." Questioning the "why" is a fundamental part of the design process. But often, people don't like to question the why, because explaining the why is a good way to show that you don't really know. It's the difference between learning and memorization. So questioning the why can be a threat to some people.

If you don't understand why, then you can't really reform. You can't simplify because you don't really know what is important -- whether it's process steps, product features, or sales collateral.

Moneyball, Big Data, Analytics, Correlation, and the Evolving World of Marketing

Recently, one theme that's been running through much of my thoughts is wrapped up in the ideas presented in Moneyball, the book and, more recently, movie starring Brad Pitt. And while I have not seen the movie or read the book (other than a short excerpt), I've listened to several extended interviews with Michael Lewis.

Moneyball is sort of about baseball, but what makes it interesting for marketing is the analytics theme. You're probably already familiar with the basic story -- A's general manager Billy Beane takes over and is forced into an extremely low payroll. In order to be competitive in a league where the New York Yankees can afford to spend more than three times his budget, Beane turns to analytics and statisics to look for undervalued players and player characteristics that can help win games on a budget.

There are a lot of interesting posts on Moneyball and business. Here's a good one, Moneyball – Lessons from Baseball for Voice of the Customer, that I thought pulled together a good summary. If you had to put it all together, you could boil it down into a core recipe:

• Measure as much as possible
• Log your data
• Look for correlations (or non-correlations) -- find the numbers that matter
• Question conventional wisdom
• Learn to play by the numbers

Keeping stats isn't new. Baseball tracked batting average for years, and players were often listed by batting average. But the team with the best batting averages didn't always win. In the early days of the web, the big measure was clicks. If someone convinced you to post an ad on their site, they would then tell you how many clicks the ad had -- and that was considered the measure for success. Like tradeshow badge scanning leads, these numbers could easily be padded with tricks like cool give-aways. Clicks don't equal quality.

Modern marketing runs on web scale. With today's web, we interact constantly with the data engine, supplying test results that dwarf some of the some of the most sophisticated focus-group programs of the past. With tools like Google's Website Optimizer and A/B or Multivariate testing, even small businesses with modest marketing budgets have access to sophisticated experiment engines. But, just in case you're one of those old-school marketers and you missed the memo, a revolution has taken place and everything has changed.

Analytics versus Design
In the web world, we've been working with analytics for quite some time. One of my favorite stories about the power of analytics comes from a time when I was visiting Google a couple of years ago. There, they were showing off their Web Site Optimizer tool and talking about how they had looked at redesigning the page to look more like their Google Analytics page. However, when they ran the A/B and multivariate tests, they found that the new design didn't perform as well as the existing design.

Contrast that with this quote from a post about Fab on PandoDaily:

The difference was pronounced in a recent meeting Goldberg had with a Valley-based recruit for a technical position. Within in ten minutes of the interview the two were fighting. Goldberg asked what he’d do with the Fab homepage, and the recruit gave the usual spiel about A/B testing the layout to see which products made people click more, and how the data said they should be laid out on the page. He called the product placements on the front page “ads,” and Goldberg balked. They aren’t ads, he said, they’re editorial. “We aren’t trying to make people buy certain things, we want to guide them through a story,” he says.

So which is more important, Design or Analytics? Style or Stats? Perhaps, more importantly, can you find the right balance between the two?

Guidelines for New Reporters -- and Bloggers?

I did another run through Jay Rosen's PressThink blog the other day and I came across this great bit of content. This is Voice of San Diego’s “new reporter orientation” guidelines. In reflecting on the list, it's not just interesting blogger food for thought, it's an interesting set of guidelines for creative and product professionals.

Voice of San Diego: New Reporter Guidelines.

We only do something if we can do it better than anyone or if no one else is doing it.
* We must add value. We must be unique.

Three things to remember for each story:
* Context
* Authority
* Not just what is happening, but what it means

There is no such thing as objectivity.
* There is such thing as fairness.
* But everyone sees everything through their own filter. Acknowledge that, let it liberate you. Let it regulate you.
* We are not guided by political identification, by ideology or dogma. But every decision we make, from what to cover to how to cover it, is made through our own subjective judgments.
* We are guided by an ability to be transparent and independent, to clearly assess what’s going on in our community and have the courage to plainly state the truth.

Our bent: Reform. Things can always be better.
* We don’t have a dogmatic or ideological bent. But we do believe San Diego can and will do better.
* We can have better infrastructure, a healthier environment, a better education system, a responsive, efficient and transparent government, a better understanding of our neighborhoods’ challenges, a thriving economy and an ever-improving quality of life. If anything, this is our bias.

Be the expert.
* Write with authority. You earn the right to write with authority by reporting and working hard.
* No “he said, she said.”
* The day we write a headline that says: “Proposal has pros, cons” is the day we start dying.
* There is no such thing as 50/50 balance. There is a truth and we work our damndest to get there.
* Sometimes two viewpoints don’t deserve 50/50 treatment.
* Most of the time there aren’t two sides to something, anyways. There are 17. Who’s not being represented? If they’re not speaking up, how can you represent them?
* We don’t just “put things out there.” We’re not “only asking the question.”
* We don’t ask questions with our stories. We answer them.
* We don’t write question headlines, unless they’re so damn good that we can’t resist:
* We don’t do this: “Did City Official Take Bribe?”
* Or, to cite a recent example: “Did Wikileaks Hack Servers?”
* We’d maybe do this: “How Did a City Official Ended Up With Millions in Donations?”
* We’re not someone’s goddamn transcription service.
* They can relay their own news. In a world where leaders are able to communicate directly with their constituents very easily, we have to a.) make sense of what they say and b) find out the things they don’t want to say. It’s the only way to effectively use our limited resources.

Tell the truth.
* This means not being mealy mouthed and not being bias-bullied.
* Stand up to bias bullies. Tell them why you did something. Let them challenge you on it.
* If someone calls you biased, don’t be scared. Don’t dismiss it either. Reflect on it and answer with conviction.
* Don’t go quote-hunting for something you know to be true and can say yourself. Don’t hide your opinion in the last quote of a story.
* Take a stand when you know something to be true or wrong.

Care about your beat more than anyone else.
* It is your way to make San Diego a better place to live.

Focus on big problems
* David Simon, the creator of The Wire, has a quote that can be paraphrased this way: Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems.
* It’s easy as a journalist to take a stand against a six-figure salary. It’s easy to take a stand against an expensive meal on an expense report.
* Why do we take stands on those things and why are we afraid to take stands on bigger issues?

If you can’t find a good answer any of these three questions, drop the story:
* Why did I choose this story?
* Why will people care? (Not why should they care, but why will they care.)
* Why will people remember this story?

Avoid ‘churnalism’
* It’s not your job to have everything on your beat. It’s your job to have the best things.
* Don’t worry about getting scooped. Worry about not consistently making an impact.
* Love the title of this Columbia Journalism Review story: “The Hamster Wheel: Why running as fast as we can is getting us nowhere.”
* A quote: “The Hamster Wheel isn’t speed; it’s motion for motion’s sake. The Hamster Wheel is volume without thought. It is news panic, a lack of discipline, an inability to say no.”
* Another: “You say, ‘Why not have it?’ I say, ‘Because it isn’t free.’ The most underused words in the news business today: let’s pass on that.”
* We are a small group with limited resource. Everything we do must [pay off for the users.]
* We can learn a lot from sports journalism. (That’s for a different day.) But here’s one great quote to always keep in mind from sportsjournalism.org: “Nobody cares who’s first with the commodity news, but being first with what the news means still has value – in fact, it has more value than it ever has, given today’s torrent of information. Readers will gravitate to such stories, share them and remember them.”

Avoid the news voice whenever possible.
* Sometimes it’s necessary.
* But you should never write a story [the way] you think journalists are supposed to write it. Write like you would if you were trying to get your friends interested in an email. Lighten up. Be creative. Have fun. Be conversational.

Bring us in the implications, not the event.
* So it’s not “Booze Ban Voted Through Council Committee.”
* It’s “Booze Ban Has One Final Hurdle Left.”

Don’t be boring. People don’t spend their free time on boring things.
* That’s it.

Don’t tell me stories about “critics” or “some”
* I don’t have a clue who “critics” or “some” are. But they managed to be the most quoted people on the planet.
* I need to know who they are for that viewpoint to carry any validity.
* And I need to know what, if any, financial stake they have in the issue. Honestly. (Just a sample of headlines in the news in a five-minute search this fall: “Some say Escondido police union’s flier crosses the line…” “Some say new constitution would solve state’s woes…” “Critics say Washing Oily Birds Is Wasteful…” “Observers Say Time Right for Santander IPO…”
* I’ve read stories that use blanket “critics” in different spots to describe people on the opposite ends of the arguments. It was so confusing.

Have fun! Be creative! Push the envelope!
* You don’t do this for the money. So let’s have some fun.
* Try something that’s never been tried before. Or try something that someone else did somewhere else. Don’t do a story just to do it. Or because it’s an interesting exercise.
* Think about what will impact people or policy makers. What will they want to read or what will force them to make a change?
* Be a student of today’s great journalistic innovations.
* Be a leader of today’s great journalistic innovations.

My sense is that there are a lot of publications that could benefit from applying these guidelines.

Geico Guinea Pigs - Awesome Multi-dimensional Ad Campaign

Because they run so many ads, most of us have seen at least a few Geico commercials. Some of their thematic concepts can be rather tired and they seem to have no hesitation about continuing to ride them into the ground. But when it comes to advertising campaigns with creative ideas and humorous concepts, they also seem willing to take some chances.

They have a new Guinea Pig ad that had me laughing when I first saw it broadcast. Sure, it used the tired old talking animal approach, but it took it and used it in some different ways. It was altogether unexpectedly good. Good enough that it got a word-of-mouth recommendation from me to my girlfriend. It got even better when she pulled up the YouTube video on her iPhone -- and they included a link to download the Geico Guinea Pig game for her phone. I know what you're thinking -- the game is going to be really crappy, right? Wrong. It was actually a reasonably well done little casual game -- surprisingly well done. We were suitably impressed.

So, hat-tip to the team at Geico and here's a little word-of-mouth viral push: a link to the Geico Guinea Pigs YouTube video -- good marketing!

An Amusing Look at Unusual Resumes

I've written about unusual resumes on several occasions. Here's a post with some amusingly unusual resume examples. It's probably worth noting that most of these are creative people seeking creative jobs... marketing is creative, right?

http://www.businessinsider.com/insanely-creative-resumes-2011-6?op=1

The Problem With Fundamentalism

G O D I S N O W H E R E
Back in college, I had a philosophy teacher that opened a class by writing this on the board. The theme of that class session was that, depending upon your perception, you could see and interpret this in several ways. Some might see "god is nowhere" while others might see "god is now here". This perceptual shift and the recognition of multiple ways of seeing the same thing and adding an interpretive layer is key to flexible thinking and analysis. We spent a lot of time in that philosophy class exploring ideas of 'how do you know' and building frameworks of thought around those ideas.

Fundamentalism and the Problem of 'The One Interpretation'
At the heart of religious fundamentalism is the idea that this one document -- possibly even one specific version of the document -- is the foundational truth and an axiomatic platform to build all knowledge upon. Upon this base is an ideological framework that says, if this is true, then this must be true. Often, this house of cards knowledge construct is actually framed by 'authoritative' voices that provide shaped corollaries - 'since it says this, it also means this.' This process transforms framework into something like, "since it says God Is Now Here, anyone failing to see that is doomed and should be ostracized because God did speak to them." In that way, this extended element becomes dogma, perhaps being further extended to address the moment when people perceive the message, the fate of non-perceivers, and so on.

The problem is that, as dogma, these conceptual constructs carry the same ideological weight as the core -- they are equivalent truths. As a result, anything that questions an interpretation is also an assault on the original principle. In practical terms, people who approach problems with this type of thinking become very defensive about their belief framework even when a concept is distant from the core. Finding a flaw in thinking can potentially result in the catastrophic failure of much larger conceptual framework elements.

This is also why this type of thinking often struggles with tangible conflicting information. For example, when some fundamentalists add up all of the years mentioned in the Bible and define a specific number of years for the span of history, dinosaur bones date to before that time. And there's not really any mention of dinosaurs in the Bible, but there are very real bones. Rather than accept the idea that the dinosaurs existed before the scope of human history, some fundamentalists go through ideological acrobatics to incorporate dinosaur bones into their conceptual framework a la the creationist museum.

Fundamentalism is Business, Marketing and Creativity
While we're all familiar with fundamentalism in religious beliefs, we're not always quite so aware of how this same type of thinking affects us in business. And yet, if you reflect on your ongoing business experiences, you'll probably find examples and issues that were created or defined by this type of thinking.

• Brand behavior
• Product feature and roadmap definition 
• Creativity and idea brainstorming

With brand behavior, it's easy to think of examples of how some of the same types of behavior that you see with fundamentalists carry over to brand identity. But one element that can be easily overlooked is how committed brand loyalists are once that framework has been established. Even when presented with a factual framework that might point to a brand change, brand loyalists may probably fight and die for their brands. Consider this as it relates to enterprise software, on-premise versus SaaS, or even very technical brand decisions that take place inside the data center.

With product features, it's not uncommon for people to lock in on specific features as "fundamental" elements of product definition, even when the relationship between the feature, the functionality, and the product are actually dynamic. Recently, you see this a lot with touch screen versus keyboard and mouse functionality. And it's carried over into defining the next generation versions of iOS and Mac OS X, Windows and Microsoft's mobile OS, and the very essence of what drives phones, tablets, notebooks, desktops and servers.

With creativity and brainstorming, it's natural for people to see complete conceptual frameworks form out of a simple idea. Since the idea generator is also the original interpreter, they often have even more invested in their conceptual framework than someone who has developed the extended conceptual elements through authoritative dictate. This is the same bug that bites you when you write a sentence that can be interpreted two ways, but you can only see a single interpretation of the text. In these instances, it can be very difficult for an editor to convince you of an alternate interpretation and a corresponding edit.

Adapting to Fundamentalist Thinking in the Workplace
Ultimately, it's important to recognize this pattern of cognitive behavior and how it comes into play in building conceptual frameworks. While it may not be possible to completely escape this type of thinking, flexible thinking is an essential skill needed to function and thrive in an environment where new ideas are the currency. If you can only see GODISNOWHERE as one of two possiblities, then you have already bound yourself to a framework that rules out any other options -- God!sN0Where might simply be a variation on a strong password. It's amazing how metaphysical one can become about a simple stream of characters.