Mike Arauz's Blog – The Archives

My favorite links, photos, and videos from the past week on my Tumblr blog.

Peggy Wang, at Buzzfeed, created the best thing ever: Wikipedia Names Your Band.

Go to “Wikipedia.” Hit “random” and the first article you get is the name of your band. Then go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. Then, go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days” and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Henry Jenkins and his team at MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium are laying out the official replacement for the term "viral," in their 8-part paper, "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead." It's lengthy, but incredibly important for anyone interested in digital communications.

Talking about memes and viral media places an emphasis on the replication of the original idea, which fails to consider the everyday reality of communication -- that ideas get transformed, repurposed, or distorted as they pass from hand to hand, a process which has been accelerated as we move into network culture. Arguably, those ideas which survive are those which can be most easily appropriated and reworked by a range of different communities. In focusing on the involuntary transmission of ideas by unaware consumers, these models allow advertisers and media producers to hold onto an inflated sense of their own power to shape the communication process, even as unruly behavior by consumers becomes a source of great anxiety within the media industry.

Louis CK explains how we take technology for granted these days.




Mr. T and Nancy Reagan




Greg Rutter's Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You're a Loser or Old or Something

Consumers have raised the stakes of the game. In order to earn a person's time, attention, and money, brands have to be able to answer this question: How will engaging with this brand help me to become a more effective champion of the most important, meaningful, or inspiring interests in my life?

It's no small challenge. But, the new communications landscape demands it.

If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?

In the past few years, hundreds of millions of people around the world have begun to confront this question as they explore the endless possibilities created by the internet. If you could communicate instantaneously with any other person, or huge groups of people, anywhere in the world for free, what would you tell them? If you had the tools to facilitate conversations and organize groups of people, without the limits of time or space, what would you ask them to do? If you could mobilize and work with an unlimited number of people who shared your passion for a particular cause, what would be your mission?

These questions used to be hypothetical; now they’re real.

Our answers to these questions reveal our most personal curiosities, interests, and passions. The answers are also informing the decisions of consumers every day as they choose which brands deserve their time, attention, and money.

This is the start of my contribution to Sean Howard's e-book The Passion Economy: Opportunity for Brands, or Just a Fad? (PDF)

This is a desire path (lots more here). Desire paths are the walking paths that get traced across the ground when groups of people, over time, leave the sidewalk and find their own more convenient routes from one place to another. The internet is an endless forest filled with desire paths.

We have many places to go and experiences to choose from; and our decisions are guided by our personal interests and the groups of people we want to join.

Opportunities for brands to reach individuals in mass audiences are quickly vanishing. In order to reach people now, you have to find a way to cross paths with them on their own terms, where they choose to spend time. And those places are defined by people's passions. People's lives don't revolve around your brand, they revolve around life.

In order for a brand to connect with consumers, the brand has to be passionate about something more important than their product (be passionate about your product, of course, but don't stop there). Apple is passionate about making great computer devices, yes, but more importantly they're passionate about great design and personal expression. If you're a person who travels the design desire path, you can bet that you bring your Mac gadget with you on that journey.

This is the new playing field. Is your brand up for the challenge?

(As I post this, I'm flying at 38,103 feet over Nevada, aboard Virgin America, on my way to San Francisco. In-flight wi-fi = awesome.)

I finally got around to reading this fascinating article from the Feb 15th NYTimes Magazine, “The No-Stats All-Star,” by Michael Lewis, author of Money Ball.

“We now have all this data,” Alexander told me. “And we have computers that can analyze that data. And I wanted to use that data in a progressive way. When I hired Daryl, it was because I wanted somebody that was doing more than just looking at players in the normal way. I mean, I’m not even sure we’re playing the game the right way.” ... The games are games of odds. Like professional card counters, the modern thinkers want to play the odds as efficiently as they can; but of course to play the odds efficiently they must first know the odds. Hence the new statistics, and the quest to acquire new data, and the intense interest in measuring the impact of every little thing a player does on his team’s chances of winning.

If your work has anything to do with marketing on the internet, then this should sound familiar to you (if it doesn’t, 2009 is going to be even rougher than you feared).

As budgets shrink and companies demand closer accounting of every penny they spend, “measurement” has suddenly become the hot new industry buzz word. Clients are demanding a new level of accountability from their digital agencies, and it’s long overdue.

The implications of this shift, though, go well beyond a renewed interest in metrics that the client should have been getting all along. Clients are also seeking a greater level of detail in statistics across all marketing disciplines and executions. More granular statistics can uncover a world of new insights about a brand’s health online. Best of all, tracking these additional metrics over time can give brands an incredibly deep and well-rounded long-term perspective on their overall success.

Combined with standard online metrics like display advertising click-through, website visits, and length of engagement with a branded experience, new numbers from social environments will begin to give brands an idea of how relationships work together with reach and awareness to create a successful online marketing campaign.

There’s more to Facebook than fans.

• Are you counting wall posts?


• Are you counting fan photos?


• Are you counting discussions?

There’s more to YouTube than views.

• Are you counting comments?


• Are you counting subscribers?


• Are you counting embeds?

There’s more to Twitter than followers.

• Are you counting @replies to your account?


• Are you counting ReTweets of your messages?


• Are you counting mentions of your brand in the public timeline?

There’s more to blogs than mentions.

• Are you counting positive sentiment?


• Are you counting relative authority of the blog?


• Are you counting referral clicks from blogs to your website?

These details are just the beginning, and they should be thought of as the basic package.

The real fun starts when you can begin to analyze these metrics in order uncover indications of higher quality interactions, connections, and impressions.

What is the ratio of fan activity on your Facebook page compared to the total number of fans? (Is the community alive?)

What is the ratio of subscribers to your YouTube channel compared to the total number of video views or channel views? (Is you content genuinely compelling?)

What is your ratio of @replies and ReTweets on Twitter compared to your total number of followers? (Are people inviting you into their conversations?)

How many repeat positive mentions of your brand are you getting on the same blog? (Are you creating brand advocates?)

Not all brands are ready for all of this. But, all of these numbers are waiting to be counted. And in tough times like this, it’s more important than ever that companies build systems and devote resources to getting smarter. Some short-sited brands are going to blow their budget on lavish short-term spectacles. Let them. They may win the battle. Other brands are going to give themselves a view from 30,000 feet, and in the process discover their strategy for winning the war.

Comments welcome.

My friend and fellow blogger Sean Howard has been an inspiration to me since I started blogging. Sean cares about what he does, he cares about how technology is changing our world, and he cares about what the internet can do for mankind (which is all very refreshing when we seem to be drowning in a sea of people who are faking an interest in these monumental societal shifts just for the sake of cashing in on the buzz). Sean's passion is infectious.

A few weeks ago, Sean emailed me to say that he had been inspired by this article by Saul Kaplan, "Creating a Passion Economy." Sean wanted to create an e-book exploring this idea, and asked if I would join 10 of his colleagues in contributing an article.



The e-book is now finished. And it's an honor for me to be included in such great company.

Katie Chatfield

The opportunity for brands in this space is to be and build the bridges between needs and resources for people. Between people and what they want now, and what they want the future to be. To claim ownership of a need, build a sustainable purpose, engage, enlist, inspire action and make this action a habit.

Scott Suthren

Don’t use empty rhetoric or try to energize the legions with abstract concepts. Don’t be too cerebral. Hit them in the empathic mind, and the heart will follow you anywhere.

Ellen Di Resta

Passion is connection. It’s human nature to seek others who share our values, and people are constantly evaluating the subtle cues that hint of such a connection.

Gavin Heaton

In a world where business, marketing and yes, even advertising, has desaturated language of all meaning, the magical word can restore our purpose—and in so doing—transform our private and professional lives.

Charles Frith

This select few can really shine outside of the broadcast-and-monologue marketing communications model like never before, with compelling authenticity, values and conviction-of-direction that are the hallmark of the few brands who know how to participate in the lives of their customers on equal terms.

Mike Wagner

Don’t settle for vicarious passion. Our marketplace is full of vicarious passions. Take the Super Bowl—millions of passionate but passive observers watching 22 passionate participants. We've got to get beyond "watching" and get to the "doing."

Mack Collier

Instead of better reaching customers, should companies be looking for a way to bring the voice, and more importantly the PASSION of their customers, into their company?

Alan Wolk

One very positive development of the new economic reality is the diminishing life span of the inferior product: we can no longer use the smoke and mirrors of marketing to disguise shoddy products. “The Google” makes it too easy to unmask them for what they are.

Peter Flaschner (Peter also designed the book)

I propose that this movement will result in at least two forces that act on our economy. One, we will make buying decisions that do less harm to ourselves and the collective whole, and two, we will make buying decisions that enhance our passions and our membership in communities.

Matthew Millan

What far too few marketing folks understand is that the future is here, and it involves investing in people. Having your brand on Twitter is not investing; helping create more value for individuals is.

Download the PDF here - The Passion Economy: Opportunity for Brands, or Just a Fad?

There's an important difference between cultural relevance and cultural resonance. Resonance is much harder to achieve; it's also much more valuable.

Cultural relevance is achieved when the audience recognizes what you've created as something that reflects their culture. On a basic level this can be as simple as using a popular celebrity in your advertising. On a more sophisticated level it might be like this classic College Humor sketch about Minesweeper (a computer game that almost every American kid born between 1980 and 1990 probably played at one time or another).



(Ricky Van Veen, the founder of College Humor, has a great term for these kind of nostalgic references in their videos: Candy Corn. Most brands could do with a lot more candy corn in their advertising.)

Cultural Resonance is achieved when your audience uses what you've created to talk to each other about something meaningful that they've been observing in their culture.

What's a good example of a brand who has achieved cultural resonance through their marketing? American Apparel. (I'm not making any excuses for any sexual transgressions by the company's founder, just an observation about the brand.)

A new generation of young Americans were born in the 90's, in the hey-day of Brittany Spears, boy bands, and the Super Model. At the start of this decade, however, they got their first digital camera, they set up their first social network profile, and they started having sex. And guess what? Beauty as defined by TV and the fashion magazines didn't match up with their idea of beauty. Most of the photography they were seeing was taken by their friends. They were making celebrities of each other on MySpace. They were exploring their sexuality on SuicideGirls, not in the pages of Playboy.

American Apparel's advertising style tapped into that rumbling sentiment, and gave it a voice. Their ads were provocative, not just because they show young women in sexually suggestive situations, but because they challenged our entire culture's idea of who was allowed to be a sex symbol. The brand caught on because it gave this generation something to use as way to talk to each other about how their idea of what is beautiful was different from previous generations.

That's cultural resonance. In order to find it, companies need to dig deeper, listen closer, and find more ways to stay in touch with the people who ultimately will define your brand.

Every day millions of advertisers try to answer the same question for their clients: "Is it viral?"(Sure, sometimes we get lucky. But, creating viral hits is harder than it looks!)

There must be an easier way!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Go Viral! Your one-stop shop for all your viral needs.

No longer will you need to figure out what might make a person want to tell another person about your company's product or service.

No longer will you need to understand what might make your audience laugh, cry, or be shocked into passing along your site to their friend.

No longer will your web experiences be limited by their innately uninspiring mediocrity.

Now you can! Go Viral!

(Created with the help of Eric Tabone and Bud Caddell)

My favorite links, photos, and videos from the past week on my Tumblr blog.

Kottke.org - The business blogging bust

As businesses go, blogging is a lot like shining shoes. There are going to be very few folks who own chains of shoe shining places which make a lot of money and a bunch of other people who can (maybe) make a living at it if they bust their ass 24/7/365. But for many, shining shoes is something that will be done at home for themselves because it feels good to walk around with a shiny pair of shoes. Everyone else will switch to sandals (i.e. Twitter) or sneakers (i.e. Facebook) and not worry about shining at all.

Improv Everywhere's High Five Escalator




Bud Caddell tells a story about Sam Phillips, founder Sun Records, and the remix.

As the story goes, in 1955 Sam was forced to sell Elvis Presley’s recording contract to RCA for the princely sum of $35,000. Sam was forced to sell because he had to pay down the losses he suffered from a major copyright lawsuit where he was found guilty of plagiarism.

I like this guy's shirt.





Jonah Lehrer on the psychological differences between friends in real life, and friends online.

When the person is a virtual abstraction, an impersonal representation on a computer screen, the brain treats them accordingly, and seems to invest them with less agency, emotion, etc. Perhaps - and this is a big perhaps, since nobody has done the scanning experiment - we make social decisions concerning many of our Facebook acquaintances using these "impersonal" brain areas. In other words, we might push a Facebook friend off a footbridge, but we'd never push a real friend.

I recently discovered a fantastic (old) Canadian TV show called "Slings and Arrows." The show is about a struggling regional Shakespeare theater. The theater has received a grant to "re-brand," and in this scene the General Manager goes to the "hot new" ad agency, Frog Hammer (!), to hear their pitch.



The truth is the new lie.

This guy's spiel sounded at once both hilarious and eerily familiar. This guy is spewing so much bullshit. And, yet, it's not too far off the bullshit that I'm guilty of spewing every now and then.

Sometimes we spend so much time in our own little echo chamber (talking about the power of social media, engagement, and relationships) that our words loose their meaning. Every agency I've worked at has been guilty, from time to time, of drinking its own Kool Aid. Believing its own hype. We convince ourselves that our own ideas about the way things should be are beyond question. We fall into the trap of believing that our theories, for some reason, no longer warrant proof.

I'm as guilty of this as the next person. So, think of this as a friendly reminder to check yourself the next time you start to slip into a meaningless jargon-y buzz-word-filled sales rant about the wonders of the internet. Don't be a Frog Hammer.

(This is a guest post by Bud Caddell. Bud and I work together at Undercurrent. We'll be at SXSW in March. Find us on Twitter - @bud_caddell and @mikearauz - and say hi.)

I’m on this kick of late to guest post for blogs across the web. I only ask that those blog owners ask me an interesting question or give me a deep thought for pondering. Mike asked me how to save the New York Times. Great question, Mike. First off, did you know I’ve never actually bought a newspaper?


Pick one or the other

Today, I have the great fortune to live in a city with a prestigious paper, the New York Times. But when I was going to college and living in Austin, we had the Austin American-Statesman – potentially the worst newspaper in America. But even with the NY Times on every street corner, I’m just not interested in news printed on paper. What do I do with all that paper when I’m done? What if the ink gets all smudgy? And I have no talent whatsoever in folding the paper as I read it; that’s a learned skill.

Besides, Mike, lots of people more concerned with this whole debate have sounded off already. It seems like the current meme is around micropayments, paying a few pennies for a story instead of a couple bucks for the whole thing. That sounds a little bit like begging to me. Please won’t you pay me anything for this news?

Regarding micropayments, Clay Shrirky said, “Such systems solve no problem the user has, and offer no service we want.”

Maybe you could replace some of those news stands here in Manhattan with wifi emitting kiosks that let commuters grab a quick update to their NYTimes mobile app for ten cents. Maybe that works for a place like Manhattan (and almost nowhere else in the country), but that’s trading analog dollars for digital pennies. And that’s the crux of all these discussions. News outlets are finding themselves in familiar territory to the music industry of the 90’s. Need a physical CD? You’ve only got so many options. Need a song on your computer? That’s easy. And it’s spreadable. Ruh-roh.

Thar’s no gold in them thar hills, anymore. That’s how gold rushes work. Print news made money when news was more scarce and people had few options to sell their junk, post job listings, and do everything else Classifieds used to do. In this type of decline, dollars become pennies.

In the most pragmatic op-ed I’ve read, Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate (a site that actually tried charging for online content), said of the glut of online news outlets, “This competition, and not some kind of petulance or laziness or addled philosophy, is what keeps readers from shelling out for news.”

Pricing models like micro-payments could inject some novelty into the market, but novelty ultimately wears off. Why not reduce distribution then? Wherever I go in this city, I see stacks of the NY Times sitting out to rot. Make printed news more scarce, force your fans to opt-in to home delivery (and paying more often). Try anything, but it’s sure to wear off in the long term.

Digital content will always struggle to be free. It’s the classic line from Jurassic Park, “life finds a way”... content finds a way outside of your pricing model. Content itself is not a sustainable business model on the web. Period. Your readers are your business model. Learn more about what they want and why they have the affinity for your paper that they do. There are no new solutions to old problems left to monetize. What’s the new problem? Concentrate there, not on micro-fixes.

Yes, this includes pornography. It also includes every picture of a cute kitty cat and every video of an adorable baby. Most importantly, though, your competition includes every personal relationship your audience members have with each virtual and real life friend. This means every email in their inbox. Every wall post on their Facebook profile. Every IM chat. Friends' Twitter messages, quotes, links, and videos posted to Tumblr, and original blog posts.

In case you haven't noticed, our internet usage is now primarily guided by our personal interests and social behaviors. This means that generally speaking, we only go where we want to go, or we go where our friends lead us.

According to a 2007 MTV Global study, digital youth in the US only visit 7 websites regularly.



As of February 2008, these were the top 10 websites among US college students:



Notice what makes it on to this list: social network sites (Facebook and MySpace), YouTube, search engines (Google and Yahoo), and content-specific blogs and publishers (ESPN and Perez Hilton).

Notice what isn't on this list: any brand websites, micro- or otherwise.

If you're hoping for a share of their time and attention, then you have to begin by acknowledging that attempting to create a stand-alone experience outside of these most popular domains is probably a lost cause.

Brands need to focus on creating experiences that live within the domains where their audience already spends the most time.



Those experiences need to be native to the domains. Users need to be able to discover the brand organically. They need to be able to interact with the brand in a way that is natural within each online environment.

And those experiences need to be so compelling that your audience seeks them out (that they are either something that they want to find, or something that their friend wants to tell them about).

The internet was in rare form last week. Three pieces of remarkable content spread like wild-fire across IM, inboxes, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

• An MP3 audio clip of Christian Bale loosing his temper and yelling at a lighting grip on the set of Terminator (language NSFW)
  
  
  (Click to play)


• David after the dentist.
  
  


• The audiotapes of Sully, the pilot of the US Airways flight that crash-landed in the Hudson River.

Within hours after finding these clips, the internet was fast at work breaking them apart and putting them back together in brilliant and hilarious new ways.

First there were the techno remixes:

(Language NSFW)





Then, the Christian Bale soundboard.

People started combining Christian with pre-existing internet memes. Christian Bale vs. Bill O'Reilly (language definitely NSFW):



Professionals got in on the action, too: 30 Rock's Tracy Jordan's parody and Stephen Colbert screaming at Steve Martin.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, we got Christian Bale vs. David After the Dentist (again, language NSFW):



What about Sully? Well, the internet hasn't left him out. Christian Bale vs. Sully The Pilot:


(Click to play.)

Just remember that these pieces of content spread because real live human beings thought that they were remarkable enough to tell someone else about. And all of these remixes happened because real live human beings were inspired to create them.

If a brand aspires to have this kind of effect, then they have to begin by creating content that's as funny, outrageous, or amazing as this. And then they have to make it as spreadable as possible (YouTube videos and MP3's are really good for that).

Sorry, my blogging's been a little light this week, but I'll be back at it in the next few days. In the mean time, here are some of the highlights from this past week on my Tumblr blog.

The 92YTribeca put together this fantastic parody of those obnoxious ads for the NYTimes weekender subscription.




Swissmiss gives us a special treat from master graphic designer Massimo Vignelli:

Massimo Vignelli has published an amazing 96 page book on better understanding typography in graphic design. Wonderful! The book is available for free online in PDF format. Thank you Massimo!

New York City in Legos.




Thelonius Monk had some great advice for saxophonist Steve Lacy. (via icopythat)




Gigundo Industries will create original cartoons for use in presentations, brochures, ads, tatoos, whatever else you can think of…


Winter's almost over...


by soleá

Ok, you've just made a 100-yard interception return for a touchdown. Congratulations. But, it's only the end of the first half. What's your plan for the rest of the game?

Brands can earn a lot of positive attention for simply being present on Twitter. Have an account. Be human. Watch what people are saying about you, and respond.

But, brands need to be wary of letting short-term campaign goals get in the way of achieving long-term Twitter success.

Remember Second Life? Say what you will about the worthlessness of the entire virtual reality platform, brands had a few successes and a lot of complete failures with their attempts to use the once hot new digital space as a marketing tool. Brands failed in Second Life because they had no long-term vision for what they could do there. All they wanted, and all they got (if they were lucky enough to get in early) was a PR bump.

If all you're looking for from your online marketing efforts is a PR bump (whether traditional with magazines and newspapers, or version 2.0 with the attention of bloggers), then that's the most you can hope for. And you're going to miss out on some big long-term opportunities in the process.

Twitter offers brands an opportunity to build a strong community of avid supports, to engage in almost real-time dialogue with that community, and to respond to new fans and critics as new conversations arise. Over time, a well managed Twitter account can become a powerful communications tool. But, it takes time and patience.

Showing up is only the first step. The game doesn't get interesting until the 4th quarter.