A case for leaping about

Two things have totally revved my motor this week.

Firstly, news that Nick Haraway‘s new book, Angelmaker, is finally on Amazon’s pre-order list.

If you’re wondering why this is exciting enough to blog about, read this blurb:

Joe Spork spends his days fixing antique clocks. The son of infamous London criminal Mathew “Tommy Gun” Spork, he has turned his back on his family’s mobster history and aims to live a quiet life. That orderly existence is suddenly upended when Joe activates a particularly unusual clockwork mechanism. His client, Edie Banister, is more than the kindly old lady she appears to be—she’s a retired international secret agent. And the device? It’s a 1950s doomsday machine. Having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the British government and a diabolical South Asian dictator who is also Edie’s old arch-nemesis. On the upside, Joe’s got a girl: a bold receptionist named Polly whose smarts, savvy and sex appeal may be just what he needs. With Joe’s once-quiet world suddenly overrun by mad monks, psychopathic serial killers, scientific geniuses and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe, he realizes that the only way to survive is to muster the courage to fight, help Edie complete a mission she abandoned years ago and pick up his father’s old gun .

And then if that doesn’t convince you, read this.

I. Am.  So. Excited.

The second thing was this fab little film of the people of Burning Man 2011 performing Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”.   Based on Dr. Seuss’s final book before his death, the piece is about the journey of life, complete with the dark and the scary and the lonely bits.  And the people of Burning Man bring it to life with all the appropriate Cat-in-the-Hat madness it deserves.

It makes me happy.  And happy is short supply.

In a week of meh, this little gem lifted me right out of myself.  I’ll take Dr Seuss over navel-gazing any day of the week.

Lurking

I was exceptionally lucky to pop my conference speaking cherry at the WTF Media Conference last year.  I speak at lot at Universities, but haven’t actually done the formal thing before.  What a (terrifying) jol.  Held at Cape Tech’s Belville Campus, the conference aims to give the largely student audience a view on what’s happening out there in the wild and wired world of (mostly) new media.  The theme: A Smarter World.

The line up was fab and styled in the short-form TED-type format.  10 minutes to make your point before the next guy got the mike. So the intimidation factor was pretty high.  But kind folk like the seriously fab Melissa Attree calmed my thundering heart and made me laugh out loud.  Lots. And thank the gods, I didn’t have to go after Mike Sharman, aka The Sharmanator. And I only swore twice (sorry mom).

I’d been asked to speak largely because my twitter profile says “blogger, writer, lurker”.  And the organizers were intrigued about the “lurker” bit.  I absolutely love the word ‘lurker’.  I’ve lurked my whole life.  And the interwebs is the finest thing for a good lurk ever to be invented.

10 things I learned at Tech4Africa

Herman Chinery-Hesse, SOFTtribe Co-Founder and keynote speaker at Tech4Africa 2011

“What are you doing here”, at least three people asked. “I didn’t know you were a geek.”

I’m not. Well, I am in a loose sense. I don’t code, but I know enough about HTML to occasionally end an email to mates with “</rant>”. I’m not techy, but I do spend a lot of time stalking the interwebs. And I’m in a highly iterative learning curve with part of my day job and the business’s digital strategy.

I am, though, a very enthusiastic geek stalker. I hope, a lot, that I will somehow absorb ‘geek’ by osmosis. Because the tech world turns me on. Like a chav Christmas tree.

The level of innovation, the adoption of failure as a critical precursor to success, the liberal and generous sharing of stuff and the collaborative and accelerated learning that happens as a result fills me with a peculiar glee.

In that context, absolutely no surprise then that I was bouncing around Tech4Africa with ill-concealed delight. And this is what’s surfaced after two days of mulling it over:

Thinking about leadership

In a recent conversation about whether politicians’ private lives are relevant to their public office, I was playing my usual devil’s advocate role, and asking if Bill’s penchant for interns really affected his ability to run the free world.  At this point, Dave Duarte did his usual thing, and brought the argument to a compelling end by pointing out that leadership and ethics are not about delivery, but about inspiration.  He pointed out that under Mandela, we all wanted to be better South Africans, while in other circumstances, with other leaders, we see less reason to ask more of ourselves.

This may seem like a pretty obvious observation, but it shifted something in my understanding of leadership.  I’ve always understood that truly great leaders do more than just their jobs.  But I’d never considered how important good leadership is to our collective social consciousness. However subtle, the cues our leaders give us become benchmarks of a sort.  A view to what we could be.  There is a ripple effect of repercussion in that idea that is in equal parts thrilling and depressing.

This, I believe, is why the whole world is currently mourning a CEO.  Because Steve Jobs did what truly great leaders do.  Only passing reference is made to the bagillions Apple earned under his tenure.  But practically every eulogy, blog post and social media stream is filled with stories of how he inspired people.

And so to me it’s no surprise that Apple and Tim Cook have been under scrutiny since Jobs stepped down from his leadership.  Because the kind of leadership Steve brought to the company is rare.  And while I think Apple will easily ride on the equity of its past success, we all feel that something has been lost now in Steve’s passing.  Something intangible and almost impossible to replicate.  And that will have repercussions for the business long into its future.

And in the meantime, I’m thinking a lot about who I turn to for leadership in my own life and what that is really saying about who I want to be.

On selling out and driving a tazz

This tweet has been bugging me all day.  I don’t know which bit bites me more.  Our ‘issues’ about selling out?  Cashing in one’s “cool”.  Or the quip about girls not respecting a man for driving a Tazz.

Seriously?

Ok, let me caveat this briefly.  Twitter as stream of consciousness is a given.  Sometimes our collective conscious throws up some pretty dumb stuff.  It’s hard enough to share layers of thought and meaning and innuendo and subtlety, let alone in 140 characters.  And I don’t know CapeTown_Girl in the real.  Or how much of her online persona is mixed in with who she is.  So I have no idea as to her intent.  Flippant?  Deeply ironic?  I’m going with both.

So this here rantlet is purely my own reaction to the words as they stand, in my very own frame of reference.

I work in marketing.  I work in the very industry that finds new and ingenious ways to flog more stuff to people.  I have no illusions about any great altruistic contribution to the world.  The gift of my graft to the greater good.  I’m frikkin’ PR, for god’s sake.  But I like to think I have integrity.  I’ve said no to clients who’ve thought spin means finding nice ways to tell lies.  I’ve turned down high-paying work because I don’t support the category.  I find it hard to write drivel about stuff that’s not important.  And I’ve found a place to work that supports my values, even when we occassionally disagree on the exact shades of gray.

It’s bloody hard being a marketer these days.  No one believes advertising any more.  Trust is out the window. The pursuit of the advertising budget means the only worthwhile reads are the Daily Maverick and the Mail & Guardian.  You can’t just say you’re better than the competition, you have to prove it.

And that’s just the corporate machine.  The whole world seems to be finding ways to cash in on the almighty brand.  The clutter is beyond comprehension.  Students branding their cars for petrol money.  Okes selling their foreheads as advertising space.  Women selling their unborn children as brand ambassadors.  Ok, I made the last bit up.

But the point is, we…at least I…want some things to remain unstamped by the big green money making monster.  I want to be inspired, moved, touched, motivated, embraced…but not (always*) brought to you by Big Brand, selling brands since 1863.

So when people like artists and poets and dreamers can be bought….when their whole aim in life is to sign that next big sponsorship deal…my heart sinks a little.  How can I trust you, what you say and what you stand for if I know that even a percentage of that ‘supports the message of our sponsor’ or whatever.

I get that there is nothing sexy about starving for your art.  Freezing garrets are not great real estate.  But surely there can be patronage without being patronizing?  More Medici and less McDonalds?

As for men in a Tazz.  I knew a man who chose to drive a Tazz instead of an Audi.  Let’s call it a lifestyle choice.  A choice that meant he made less money, but he was home every night to put his kids to bed.  I respect the hell out of him.

—–

*Of course, for all my ranting, I’m not sure why I’m ok for Lady Gaga to be a brand bitch, but I’m disappointed by The Parletones?  The subjectivity of art?  My own aesthetic as a form of prejudice?  All of the above?  Either way, it reminds me that it’s always a little more complicated than that.

How I became a fangirl

via Telegraph.co.uk

This is my own little social media FTW story.

I’m rather partial to books.  I collect them.  All over the house, it appears.  Mostly, I don’t remember authors.  Of course, if I fnd an author I like, I read everything they have ever written. Preferably in order, if I can manage it. And if I find something I like, I share.  With my coven, my bookclub, my friends…and now with Twitter.

Standard bibliophile behaviour, I think.

Earlier this year I tweeted that I’d just found a cracking book; Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World.  To my astonishment, Nick Harkaway replied to say ta.

I think I shrieked like a girl.  The author.  Of that book.  Replied to *me*.

I promptly stalked him on every known social networking channel and he was gracious enough to reciprocate.  That alone impressed me enormously.  I cranked the fangirl recommendations up a notch, told the story whenever I did, and left a lot of people with a brain hook with Nick’s book hanging off it.

I thought that was the end of it.

Fast forward a couple of months.  I was sitting in Athens airport with a *very* long wait for my next flight.   Bored and frustrated, I was frootling around on the interwebs, poking people with sticks, hoping they’d play with me.  I sent Mr Harkaway a tweet implying that if I had his next book, I would have something which which to occupy myself .

And then a little personal magic happened.  Nick replied asking me choose five words at random and he’d see what he could do.  I gave him handbag, carrot, daisy, flagellation and hairnet.  For the next 4 hours he live tweeted and blogged a writing process to turn five words into a starter piece for a story.

The results, in three posts, are here…

I think it’s safe to say I was completely blown away.

The point of this little Twitter tale?  I will read every book Nick Harkaway ever writes.  Even if they are shite.  I will tell every book reader (and then some) to read The Gone-Away World.  (Which is, incidentally, very, very good).  I will be a Harkaway fan for life.

The fact that he’s a fan of our own Lauren Beukes is just a bonus.

This is the power of the social age.

This moment when acknowledgement and connection turns an ordinary and largely commercial relationship into something more.  That moment of warm fuzziness when a muggins like me feels like a contributor and co-conspirator to something more than just bond repayments.  Feels special.   Its the holy grail.

Marketing theory calls this the ‘surprise and delight’ factor.  And there are millions of every day moments on the social web to delight people.  Millions of opportunities to create connection.

My final thought on the matter?  Read Nick Harkaway’s book.  It’s freakin’ awesome.

Regretting social media

I had a particularly good conversation today about mining for insight online.  People put their lives online, so from a qual and quant perspective, there is literally bucket loads of information up for grabs for (respectful and careful) brands to sift through for insight.

We were talking about how digital is shaking things up and how terrifying that sometimes felt because there’s no rule book.  No step -by-step guide for what works and what doesn’t.

That’s what got me really thinking.

I wondered what the implications will be for this always-on, over-sharing generation?  Will they (we) regret hanging it all out there.  Like the free-love generation of the 70s, will we realize there are consequences to the kind of anarchy we’re attracted to when we’re young.  When we’re pushing boundaries, discovering ourselves and making massive cock-ups along the way.

20 years ago, if you made an utter arse of yourself in public, you were relatively safe.  Friends or colleagues might mock you for a few years, and there might be on cringe-worthy pic out there on celluloid film to haunt you, but that was the extent of it.  The world moved on and it’s memory dimmed.

Today, you’re a lot more exposed.  Every mistake can be filmed, photographed, annotated and shared with the masses in a nano-second.  And it never goes away.   It’s there, cached, somewhere, for the rest of your natural life.

So when you’re applying for that job or chatting up that guy or applying for that loan, it could all come back to haunt you. Out of context and larger than life.

Will we regret it?  Or will our new order just usher in a more transparent, humans-as-flawed-beings era?  Or will we become so bored by the tabloid machine social media will make of our lives that we just won’t care.  We won’t flinch when the headlines reveal that the new president of the nation was once photographed in the nude with cigarettes up her nose and her knickers on her head? Or worse, smooching a poster of Edward Cullen!

My jaded self thinks there are going to be a lot of opportunities for ‘cleaning services’ in the not too distant future. Nice agencies that trawl the net for your embarrassing stuff and make it disappear.  Or negotiate with the Facebook Emperor Supreme for the quashing of those high school photos.

Maybe we’ll see the rise of the personal spin doctor for the average Joe.  An industry of unctuous individuals who’ll rewrite the past as only so much photo-shopped propaganda.

I think that this generation, just like every other, will want to hide it’s youthful indiscretions.  The question is, how?

Image from here.

Shut your eyes and see

Alan Yeowart is a senior game ranger for the Singita group of Game Reserves.  He’s also my friend.   He and his wife and two beautiful children live in the bush.  I don’t get to see them nearly enough, but via our family grapevine I hear their wonderful stories of living close to the wild.

Al recently took a guest on safari.  An ordinary day for him in every way but one; the guest was blind.

Imagine trying to bring the magic of the African veldt to life for someone who can’t see how the light changes the landscape or how a giraffe moves in the acacia trees?

But this man without sight changed the way Al ‘saw’ the bush.  Having to explore his world without this critical sense opened his own eyes, so to speak, to the other layers of sensory beauty the bush has to offer.

He wrote a moving piece about his experience – something he’s graciously given me permission to post here.  It’s a long read, but worth it.

I’m reminded how lucky I am to live in a land so filled with wonder.

Al’s article is after the jump.

The Adolf Hitler, James Dean Mash up

Written for Marklives.com

‘Whether its software and microchips or music to swing your hips, we’ve got it.’

That’s the line from one of the ‘mash up’ images in a CNA campaign by Jupiter JHB.  The campaign morphs together images of famous people, with some interesting results to make the point of CNA’s wide product range.

The line above belongs to Bill Presley, a visual mash up of Bill Gates and Elvis Presley.

The campaign includes mixes of the likes of John Lennon and Albert Einstein as John Einstein and Queen Elizabeth II and Mother Teresa as Queen Teresa.

And in a move that the Huffington Post describes as ‘controversial’, the most eye-catching mash combines Adolph Hitler and James Dean as Adolf Dean.

The images in the series are quirky and arresting. But I have to wonder if the Huffington Post and AdFreak are right in saying the Adolf Dean image will provoke a storm of outrage.  Is using and image of Hitler in this context apt?  Or is it just another example of clanging commercialised insensitivity?

All kinds of images inform our cultural consciousness, good and bad. And advertising tends to work best if it speaks to and has meaning within that cultural context. What makes Hitler any less of a cultural reference point for dictators than Marilyn Monroe is a cultural reference point for pin ups? What do you think?

Advertising Agency: The Jupiter Drawing Room, Jhb, South Africa
Chief Creative Officer: Graham Warsop
Creative Director: Thomas Cullinan
Art Director: Dana Cohen
Copywriter: Shane Durrant, PJ Eales
Illustrator: Wayne Trotskie

Lurking about at the Loeries

I had the joy of being Marklives & Mandylives‘ social editor for the 2009 #Loeries.  In between happily  tweeting my fingers off as @Marklives and hanging out with the brilliant Simone, assistant editor of Biz.Com, I got to get a first hand look at what goes down at the ad industry’s biggest event:

Loeries 2009: Apocalypse Now? For a Loeries virgin, the annual weekend of awards and debauchery was something of an eye-opener. The work was inspiring. The dress code was suitably kooky. And the awards ceremonies were big. Certainly bigger than expected. With uber-graphics, pounding audio and a massive, people-dwarfing stage.

The response from the attendees was less so.

For the rest of the round up, read here.

And since we’re supposed to be talking about ‘the work’ and not the hangovers…my favourite campaign?  BP’s “A Nation United” campaign for 2010 by Ogilvy JHB, who won a gold for the work.

Watch Cafe Owners vs Mamas*

Interestingly, this ad wouldn’t have been made in another country – apparently the suits would have insisted on some skinny mamas and some female cafe owners.