Some Final Blitherings (Because I Don't Have Time To Blog Anymore)

As an environmental planner, I studied the impacts of technologies (waste treatment plants, large dams, road work projects etc.) on communities. Technology has always had an impact on how we live, how we work and how we interrelate with the environment around us. Similarly, working in interactive communications since 1996, I have seen the growth of digital networks and their communities. While at first glance, it may seem that environmental and digital ecosystems have little in common, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. There are many parallels between natural ecosystems and their networked counterparts and therefore many lessons to be learned. ‘GreenMan marketing part I’ attempts to formalize this strategic approach and lay down a foundation, a philosophy and a way of thinking. 

Ecosystem Marketing from Leigh Himel

As a tech entrepreneur I recognized that without big brand marketing budgets, I had to do things a different way. Now back in the corporate sector, there are lessons to be learned. I have captured them in this presentation, Start-Up School 101. 

Start-Up School 101: Lessons For Big Brands from Leigh Himel

The Cause of Ovarian Cancer Chose Me

As many of you know, I've been part of creating and supporting an Ovarian Cancer Awareness initiative called It's Time To Shout.

At the time when i had  reached out to Elana & Mark (Waldman) I hadn't really been touched by cancer.  But since that time, my uncle died of esophageal cancer and my father died of Pancreatic cancer.

Most importantly, we found out that my family has what is sometimes known as the "Jewish Cancer Gene" BRCA .  (note: There is an increased rate of BRCA in the Ashkenazi Jewish community of 1 in 40, vs. 1 in 250 in the general Caucasian population)

It's funny.  I worked on It's Time To Shout for over a year.  I have hours of video of Elana and a hundred conversations talking about her diagnosis, BRCA in her family etc. and it never occurred to me even for a second that BRCA ran in my family.   So when my sister mentioned to me a study of Jewish women in Toronto where we would be tested, I thought, well, sure, it will give the study more data, probably a good thing to do but again, NEVER OCCURRED TO ME FOR A SECOND THAT WE HAD IT.

And then the results phone call.

Genetics Councellor:  " Just calling to tell you that you DO NOT have BRCA."
Me:  " Ok great. thanks" (i mean exactly what i expected right?)
Genetics Councellor:  "Have you talked to your sister yet?"
Me: "No.  Why?  Why would i need to talk to my sister?" (me...panic)

So i did end up talking to her --  and I (unfortunately) burst into tears when she told me she had BRCA II.  Everyone in my family has now been given the choice to be tested (or not) with results that they choose to keep private and I won't discuss here.

When I told Elana she said to me,

"Sometimes you don't choose things, they choose you"

And clearly It's Time To Shout chose me.

I tell this story (with my sister's permission)  to ask everyone to help bring attention to Ovarian Cancer awareness in any and all forms.  From our site to this infographic to of course Elana's own powerful story.

And that's what I'm going to leave everyone with.

Spread the word and maybe, save a life.

Business Lessons From Motherhood

Being a mother is my greatest challenge and my most brilliant accomplishment.  And I’ve learned a lot that I use in business.  Here are just a few of those business lessons from motherhood. 

How to function without sleep – probably the first thing every mother learns and let’s face it, it can be essential to running a successful business.

Patience:   I once waited almost an hour for my daughter to stop screaming in a Park when she was having a major tantrum.  Maybe this just pertains to businesses with creative people, but patience is something you can’t succeed in my business without. 

Creativity:  Finding solutions to simple problems seems to be a Mother’s main function.  You are in the middle of nowhere and they suddenly have to go Potty.  It’s been raining all week at the cottage and you have to keep them entertained.  Business is all about having new challenges being thrown at you and finding new ways to make them work for you vs. against you – much like being a mother.

Focus:  “Mama play that song from Adele again!”  Repeated at the top of his lungs about a hundred times while I’m trying to do a significantly challenging driving move.  Yep, kids absolutely teach you focus amidst chaos. 

Negotiating skills:  My two kids are like the most hard core negotiators I’ve ever met.  They make my head spin.  If anyone thinks I’m a decent negotiator, the only reason I don’t suck, is what I’ve learned from my two pros at home.

Helplessness:  Sometimes there is nothing that can be done.  They are getting bullied at school.  They have to get through the process of learning how to get comfortable with daycare.  Their sad little eyes are enough to break your heart and yet you learn, some times there is nothing one can do.  Sometimes things just are.  Business lesson?  Absolutely. 

Dinosaurs:  Well not just dinosaurs, Thomas the tank engine, ancient Greece, everything I’ve never wanted to know about bugs, and some disparate things about science, social networks, cell phones, how a 18 month year old learns to experience an ipad and what makes 16 year old girls tick.  Understanding strange facts and the process of watching two different generations of children grow up has made me a better marketer and businessperson. 

Perspective:   Business can be stressful.  Things happen you can’t control.  You feel the pressure of ensuring your staff and your business succeed on a daily basis.  But it doesn’t always happen.  You fail.  You aren’t as good as you’d like to be and it can feel like everything is coming apart at the seams.  You go home.  Your son or daughter says, let’s go to the park and make a sand castle.  And you do.  There is nothing like sand castles at the park to let you know that it really doesn’t matter and it will all be ok.  Perspective is everything and they give it to me every day. 

Final Note:  As I was finishing this up, my 3 year old son has come into my room and wants me to be done and play Thomas with him -- couldn't think of a more perfect way to end this post and start my day :)

The Competitive Advantage Of Letting Your Employees Leave at 5:30

I am and have always been a working mother. When I had my first job at a communications company I felt how many do. You have to give a 1000% and never wanted the fact that I had an 18 month yr old child to affect the perception of how hard i worked. To the point that while in the middle of a very stressful week with a client, as a co-ordinator, i was told that even though my daughter had a fever i was not allowed to go home (my only choice was to bring her in and put her on a mattress in a spare office - and by the way, i'm not kidding).

As you move up in your career you get braver. You realize that how much you work or when you work isn't and shouldn't be the marker of what makes you great at what you do.

It's why i love this article with Sheryl Sandberg about how she leaves every day at 5:30 to be with her kids but makes sure people see she is the last and first to email.

And it's funny bc my business partner and I had that exact conversation the other day. He said he likes to be the first in and the last out of the office -- and I laughed and said i like to be the last to email to which he laughed.

What does this all have to do with competitive advantage? The truth is, we all have different lives and different situations. Being flexible enough to allow people to live their lives well will make them not only want to work with you and more importantly on behalf of your brand.

In a market place where who you recruit and retain can make the difference between being just good or absolutely brilliant, it's time to rethink our traditional lenses and understand the competitive advantage of a truly flexible workplace.

(h/t to Katherine Emberly for the Sandberg article)

Innovate By Focusing In On What Makes You Great

Always innovating is a tough game. RIM more then anyone has had a tough go of it recently. Jon Evans has a piece in Techcrunch today that I really relate to. If you are from Canada, it's hard not to want to see RIM turn themselves around. There are a tonne of smart people at that company and they simply transformed the technology market place here at home.

But evans isn't optimistic. He talks about the inevitable demise of RIM. He thinks it's one of ability. They don't have the product development prowess of a Google or Apple in his mind and never will.

I just don't buy that.

I have friends who have gone to work for Google - they'd probably come and work for RIM. I know a huge amount of smart product people working in startups all over Canada -- they'd go work for RIM. Facebook bought Parakey -- many people say only to get Blake Ross as part of their team.

Ironically i wrote about RIM in the context of a post back in 2009, reinvent or die. Might be good to read that one again.

But reinvention won't happen by focusing on the competition. There is no light at the end of the "trying to be like Apple or Google tunnel".

Moreover, RIM definitely shouldn't waste its time focussing on why people AREN'T buying their products -- they need to start reframing their challenge by looking towards how to unlock their incredible potential just like Hermes did.

So my advice?

Innovate by focusing in on your amazing strengths and what has made you great.

And if this helps at all, just remember you still have an army of brand advocates sitting here waiting for you to succeed.

Chilling Real Time Decisions In A Real Time World

James Armstrong is live Tweeting the Tori Stafford murder trail and wrote a post called "Tweeting from the Rafferty Murder Trail" about his experience which is well worth a read.

I have to say, as a Mother of a 16 year old daughter, and a 3 year old and as someone who worked with the amazing Leslie Parrot, mother to Alison, this story has actually kept me up at night. I find myself conflicted as to what I want to know as a human being, what I should know as a parent and what I should just stop myself from reading.

Armstrong said this:

"Though Twitter has been used effectively to live-tweet elections, riots, and revolutions, to tweet a murder trial is different. The words ‘tweet,’ and ‘murder’ sound diametrically opposed – two things that at first glance, just feel wrong"

In a real time world, we are now in a situation of facing real time decisions. What is right to one person, is completely wrong for another.

For those who work as social strategists, they often tell clients to use common sense, but there is nothing common about any of this.

Armstrong says:

"But tweeting the trial, I believe, helps provide another layer to the coverage. It gives people who may not want to sit and watch a two-minute piece, complete with the editing and storytelling journalists take so much pride in, a chance to digest the story as it happens"

We call it the future of news, but really it's the future of trust because as it happens creates an entire new level that is required -- how we determine what is right and wrong, what the audience should know, wants to know and what role if any, that very audience plays in the building of it.

Training Hybrid Thinkers

Companies want training in all sorts of things. But what if instead of social media, digital marketing or project management training, you actually taught yourself to be a better problem solver? After all, 90% of what we all do every day would be THAT much better if we actually asked the right questions and deconstructed problems in a systematic way from various different angles.

That's why i heart this article by Co Design about the Girl Guides. My favourite part is about training hybrid thinkers...

Solving the ambiguous problems that plague our society, such as health care or access to clean water, will require working across multiple disciplines. Instilling the value of hybrid thinking--the mashing up of disparate disciplines--will ensure that we have leaders ready to tackle pressing issues.

I've always tried to build cultures of hybrid thinkers. It isn't about one school of thought, it isn't even that i think hybrid thinking is a school of thought in itself. It's about different ways of thinking and different thinkers coming together to solve complex problems.

And that's the key:

Complexity doesn't mean we have to individually get smarter, but we have to smartly bring collective experience to the problem solving Team.

Being a hybrid thinker and being open to hybrid thinking just makes it that much easier.

The University Of Me

Yesterday, Fred Wilson announced Union Square's investment in a new start up Code Academy. Cee got totally pumped and joined right away. A couple hours later she had been through the beginners and was wondering what the second language was that was required to go through the intermediate stage.

A couple hrs later, she was testing out her costume for Halloween. As part of it, she ended up with a harmonica (which she had never played) and with the help of Peter and the Web, she had learned Blowing in the Wind within a couple hours.

And it's not just cee. It's an entire generation of kids hacking education in a way that we could never have imagined it. They set themselves a learning goal, go to their devices and with a bunch of patience and a whole lotta discipline, they can get up to speed on the basics within hours.

It's the 'DIY Generation' welcoming us to the biggest campus on the planet, the "University of Me"

Brand Is In The Details: Ode To Steve Jobs

A commenter over at AVC this morning posted a great story from Vic Gundotra.  Net net, Jobs called Vic on a Sunday with this urgent issue:

"I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient."

Jobs was one of the greatest markers in the world.  His Agency partner Lee Clow said it best:

"There isn't a single thing Apple does that isn't a message that confirms or reinforces how you feel about the company.  I often tell people that the best ad we ever did was the Apple Store.  We do great TV commercials, we do wonderful billboards, but you walk into an Apple store and you're now immersed in a brand that's going to change your life."

Jobs said that Apple stood for People with passion can change the world.  He executed to that vision in everything the company did - from products, to packaging, to the advertising, the website, the store - the vision was the culture at the core and everything became an expression of it.   Brilliant brands are in the details, and Steve Jobs was the master of all of them.

"… You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."  (Stanford University June 2005)

Social Opinion Vs. Public Opinion

With a Provincial election coming up, lots of people are watching social streams in order to gauge public opinion on a wide variety of subjects.  But similarly to Toronto's last municipal election, what the social opinion in our various networks happens to be and what the reality of how the majority of voters may act, may not in fact, be the same thing.

It's an important to remember as we collectively utilized social data and user comments to drive everything from product development to marketing approaches, that it is only a mere 10% to 15% that like to comment within the social sphere and that they do not necessarily represent the other 90%.

Social opinion does not automagically equal public opinion - and assuming that it is, may end up being a mistake.  

Change Doesn't Just Happen

I sometimes let my frustrations get the better of me.

Today I made a rather offhand remark about a start-up having a lack of diversity - in their case - no women other than the office manager. It's not a revelation. They are one company of many including Google that I've noticed this with.

The comment was off subject and didn't really contribute anything to the conversation that everyone was having which is when I know that something else is bubbling with me.

Here's the thing.

Change doesn't just happen.

I know there are many in the tech world who are bored of the whole change the ratio thing. That people who do conferences don't want us counting how many women presenters there are or how few women are on the sr. executive teams of start-ups.

But change doesn't just happen.

I see the eyes rolling and i hear people when they say, we don't see gender. And, I actually believe that they don't.

But here's the thing - change doesn't just happen.

And i'm sure as some people say, there are fewer women in UX or wanting to go to a start-up environment. That may also be true.

Equally true, change doesn't just happen. 

Active involvement and participation creates change. Deciding you are going to stop being annoyed and start contributing to solutions creates change. Maybe that means you should start looking at diversity across all your hires and challenge yourself to do better. Maybe you should create a program - get a intern or hire someone who wouldn't normally get the chance or have the connections to get a job in our industry.

But if we don't actively make it happen, it will never change. And i just can't stand the thought of that.

Boxed In By Google+ Circles

Google+ is like a book that everyone tells you me is awesome, but I can't get seem to get passed page 5 no matter how hard I try. People keep asking me why and I've been thinking about it and I think it comes down to one simple yet fundamental matter:

The circle sort.

They make me SORT my social network. They want me to LABEL people. I have to think about the relationships I have with people, determine a hierarchy of sorts and decide what i'd like to share within that.

I tried. I swear i did. But I couldn't do it. More importantly, I didn't AND DON"T want to!

Why?

Think of someone new who followed you on Twitter and you follow back. What is your relationship? Well, nothing really. See and that's the problem I have.

ln healthy ecosystems, relationships aren't prescribed they emerge. If i put people into circles, how is that suppose to happen? All of a sudden I will be filtering my content, editing what i say to whom and conversations and relationships won't emerge over time.

I hate that idea. It's counter to every reason and every thing I love about my weak tie networks.

So I haven't done it. I'm open to changing my mind. Feel free to explain the whole circle thing to me. I'm open to the conversation but or now those damn circles just make me feel boxed in.

Game Changing Leading Edge Innovative Mobile Idea!

If you want to see a game changing leading edge innovative mobile idea...

click here: X

Ad Spend Infographic

I was sent this infographic which i thought was kinda interesting. It's the Ad spend for top 200 brands. I'm curious what dollars they refer to. I"ll assume paid media. Chevy high. Starbucks Low. One day someone is going to accurately get a picture of where marketing budgets are going. Now that's an infographic I'll look forward to.

I'm just going to link to it bc the length of it is insane. It can be found here ....

Advertising Spend Infographic

F-Commerce & The Implications Of Arbitrary For Brands

There has been more than one large Fortune 500 company who has casually mentioned to me in passing that their commerce team is considering how to utilize Facebook for a future sign-in method for their Corporate site.

The marketing power of getting earned media messages from your owned property to influence others inside the gated walls of Facebook is something large brands can't afford to not consider.

However, when i read posts like Mathew's here and Jillian York's of the Electric Freedom Foundation here it gives me pause.

Facebook may have a "right" to take down whatever pages it wants for whatever reason it wants (and I'm sure there are a lot of people who believe that), but what are the implications of that on your business? What is the cost of a disconnected Facebook sign-in for an hour or two while they figure out if they've made a "mistake" or not?

F-commerce and Facebook Connect may seem like the best marketing idea but until Facebook comes clean as to how these "mishaps" keep happening, if i were you Corporate IT and e-Commerce departements looking towards the social commerce future, I would seriously consider the ever changing Terms of Service at Facebook and the Implications of what arbitrary could mean for your brand.

Like A Rolling Stone

This drives me nuts. The owner of Rolling Stone and US Magazine Jann Wenner says that he thinks the ipad will take a generation or two before we see major behaviour change that will see an en-mass switch from print magazines to the ipad.

I'm not really sure which generations he's talking about. I mean, maybe he's referring to my 2 and half year old who just showed my forty something friend how to turn off the ipad the other day when she couldn't figure it out. But even if he is ...

It was only twelve years ago that I sat with a group of Sr. Executives at a major video retailer here in Canada. We told them they were going to potentially be out of business within the next ten to fifteen years and needed to consider their long term business strategy in the context of the work we were doing and pointed to Netflix. Guess what. They thought we were out of our tree. And then they said.....

"Who's side are you on anyhow?"

Well, last week my local blockbuster put its entire movie library for sale last week. Going out of business.

I think it's best to give Bob Dylan the last word on this one:

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you ?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

The Business Of Brand & The Challenge Of Transmedia

I've been following the blurring of the line between Brands and filmmakers for a while now. l love the idea. I love what Gunther Sonnenfeld and others have to say and agree with many of the fundamental tenets as I've worked with brands my entire career to create content and narratives.

Where I stumble - particularly with brands creating (meaning leading the process, having approvals, going through legal etc.) deeper narratives with cultural impacts, is in the fact that brands often have very narrow platforms for the creation and building of value/s.

In the work that we do at Gravity, we have processes to expand brands to wider platforms in order to better operationalize them and in fact I've been using that process for over ten years. However, powerful narratives are often based on complexity. It's about characters or situations that could be morally ambiguous or are filled with the complexity of a range of our human characters both good and bad.

Brands, even great ones, will never be able to encompass that level of complexity because it ultimately goes against the principles of building great brands in the minds of customers in order to sell products. Having worked on a number of projects now that are films looking for brands or brands looking for films, the conversation inevitably goes towards approvals, control and a discussion on what are the impacts to the brand if the content goes off course from the values of what the brand stands for.

The business of storytelling and the art of it might be blurring, but they are NOT the same thing.

I fear as a brand marketer and innovation driver that many companies and agencies are going to go down wrong minded paths. It wasn't so long ago that many Agencies sold their clients large scale multimillion dollar websites for pet lovers and now they are doing the same for communities of interest (come tell YOUR story about OUR product and WIN as if that's interesting to anyone). What's next?

I believe there is a significant role that brands can play in this so called Transmedia world. I'm working on a number of projects as we speak. But it sees the role of brands often as investor, empowerer, enabler and participator vs. controller and creator. I think there is a big difference and I think we should all give a great deal more thought to how this could play itself out or we will end up not only wasting a lot of brand dollars but we will damage a market that is clearly ripe for change.

Start-up Marketing 101

Having a failed start-up has been one of the greatest learning experiences I've ever had on many levels. In particular, I've learned a great deal with regards to being efficient with marketing. But as I've watched the start-up market, I've realized that it goes beyond that. It because they have no marketing budget, they have to behave differently when it comes to how they build ground-swell for the company and products. Build it and they should come, is not really a winning strategy. It all comes down to passion, connection, culture and community. So, I put together this slideshare presentation as a way of gathering my thoughts around what exactly they were doing that big brands and all of us as marketers could learn.

Start-Up School 101: Lessons For Big Brands

View more presentations from Leigh Himel

Developing Network Brands

Oh beware my hyperbole. Rather than doing Yoga this morning in an attempt to help my aching back, here I am writing a blog post about branding.

Why?

I said i strongly disagreed with this post by @jinal_shah

Now strongly disagree was probably the wrong phrase. Because sure I believe a lot of the things she is saying in the post. That being said, how one constructs or approaches something is as important as the common sense that is underneath it. I would say that I think there is some wrong mindedness that is going to lead people in the wrong direction. For today, I'll just start with the first sentence (and I'll try to get to some more commentary on the weekend when i have more time).....

"Digital is a broad term and encompasses a variety of skill-sets and channels to achieve specific goals"

Well, sure i guess so. However, this is where the problem starts.

If you don't see digital as a universal language that has driven the convergence of devices, applications and standards then you won't understand that digital is everything...

People in the advertising industry talk about digital as a channel or skills. They create departments and put people in them that have words like social media in their job titles. This will lead you to integrated or convergence communications which isn't a very new idea or way of doing business at all. It's status campaign quo at this point or should be.

It will not lead anyone to understand why brand now have to have purpose - or create shared beliefs with their customers. Building a network brand and the concept of thought leadership are not interchangeable. While Brands need POVs, the concept of a networked brand is so much bigger than that one piece it again leads one down a wrong path to view them as the same.

Ok sorry, that's all i have for you this morning. The toddler is throwing his iPad in my general direction. If you want some more on network brands and how I view things have changed you can always go over to slideshare and read the two presentations i have up there - Web Circa 2000 an presentation on digital branding from 2000 and Ecosystem Marketing from 2007.

Later......

Dear Blackberry, I'm Leaving You

Dear Blackberry....

We've been together since 1997. I remember when you were just a cute little pager. I never realized how much you were going to change my life. You were there when no one else was. We grew up like teenagers together. Remember, the first time I typed GTG. TTYL8R? And then the blueberry. OMG. You were so big and you talked! You always changed and grew with me. Let's face it, you were a bit of an addiction for me.

I never even looked at other smart phone options even when that gorgeous iphone was announced with all those geeks drooling over it.

I've been there all along and gave you all my love, affection, attention and support.

But then the issues started. I don't know if i can pinpoint exactly when it happened. The bickering. The discontent. Maybe you got insecure and thought i was going to look at other smartphones. Maybe you thought I wanted you to be prettier - or - change who you were inside. That wasn't true. The truth is, the reason i loved you wasn't because of fancy design - it was because you always met my needs, even when I didn't know what those needs were. You evolved and I evolved with you.

But then you got distracted. When I started to become more mobile and use browsers more, it's like you didn't care. You were mad at me or something. You let all the wireless carriers put their own dumb applications and browsers on the phone. But worse, then you started to tell me what i wanted.

"You don't want to mix your business life with your personal life"
"Photos aren't important to how you do business every day"
"You shouldn't be browsing so much, get back to work"

I kept telling you that things had changed with me. I kept seeing us grow apart and tried to talk to you about it. But the truth is, you didn't want to hear what I had to say. I talked to people at headoffice. I tweeted my frustration. I talked to my wireless carrier. I even got my friends who know both of us to try. But it's like you got stubborn and insecure and most importantly,

YOU JUST STOPPED LISTENING

So this letter is to tell you that I'm leaving you.

I'm sorry to kick you while you're down. I have at least a couple years with this new iphone 4. Maybe in that time, you can figure out what happened and change your ways and then we can talk again.

I want you to know that you were my first smartphone love and always will be. I really wish you well.

Love,


Leigh