Month: February 2018

Yes, This IS Who We Are – At Least 17 Dead in Florida School Shooting

There have been more than a dozen school shootings so far in 2018 (CNN). Each time, like there’s a template for these things, there’s a candlelight vigil, lots of talk about how the community comes together and the inevitable hashtag meme, [city name]STRONG. And some minister or mayor or congressperson will say, “This is not who we are.”

According to CNN, 2017’s 90 US mass shootings are nearly one-third of the 292 such attacks globally for that period. While the United States has 5% of the world’s population, it had 31% of all public mass shootings.

This is who we are.

But this is not who we should be.

We need to stop telling this lie: “This is not who we are.” In fact, the frequency of mass shootings and school shootings practically defines the US and sets us apart from other countries.

What we should be saying is, “Why are we this way?”

I Bought a Purple Cow

I skidded to stop when I saw the purple cow. Wow! It really stood out.
So I backtracked bit and pulled into the farm’s lot. I discovered the purple cow was pricier than regular cows, but, well, it was just so incredible I had to buy it.
I got the cow butchered with no issues. But then things started to go badly. Turns out the meat is not purple. Apparently, it was just the hide that was colored. I went back to the farm and told the farmer I felt ripped off. Why, I asked, was the cow so expensive when the meat was the same as other cows?
He explained that coloring a cow is actually difficult and expensive. He had no choice but to charge more. So I headed home. I was unhappy about he cost, but didn’t really didn’t feel I could ask for money back as that would just hurt the farmer. He was just trying to sell a cow, after all.
So I headed home to have a nice steak dinner. That, I figured, would be pretty nice and make the whole experience seem better.
But the meat tasted different. That, I later discovered, was from the chemicals used to make the cow such a vibrant purple. The chemicals, it turns out, contaminate the meat. And they’re carcinogenic.
It’s been a few months since I bought the purple cow. I got back from the doctor today and the prognosis is not good. I probably won’t live to see the conclusion of my lawsuit against the farmer. It’s going slow because the farmer is also suing his marketing firm. And the marketing firm is suing the chemical manufacturer.
I wish I’d never seen that purple cow.
—— — — — — — —
I know the story above is heavy-handed, but marketers really need to get past Seth Godin’s stupid Purple Cow idea.
Sure, screaming gets attention. But it’s a bad strategy for actually communicating anything. And everyone screaming gets us nowhere.
But the worst part of Godin’s idea is that making a purple does not improve the cow. The cow is a cow, and it’s just fine being not purple. Making a purple cow is, however, costly. And that cost has to be added somewhere…  So, added cost. No added benefit.
Building great products and taking them into the marketplace to go toe-to-toe on the virtues of the product should be the goal. That’s how honest and clear-thinking marketers should operate. If painting it purple will make it a better product, fine. If it will just add cost and only temporarily differentiate the product (on a superficial and ultimately unimportant factor), then don’t.
The challenge shouldn’t be to get noticed, regardless what you have to say or sell. The challenge should be how to best communicate the passion, skill, and quality you’ve poured into your product.

Getting to Friend Zero™

I’ve been in pursuit of “Inbox Zero” for some time now, and things are getting better there. But, in my quest to pare my life down to what is most valuable and essential, I’ve also decided to pursue what I’m calling Friend Zero™.

I’ve been thinking for some time that I should just bail out of Facebook altogether. After all, I’ve been saying for some time that “social media is the open sewer of american discourse.” But there are reasons for not bailing out altogether.

First, as a marketing and communications professional, I should be not only using, but well informed and skilled with social media… no matter how much I might think it’s become an albatross around the necks of many businesses. There is, for some businesses, legitimate value in some of the so-called social media platforms.

So a professional presence is not a bad idea. Besides, there are some professional connections that also matter personally to me.

But I do want to pare down the distractions, fluff, and time sinks in my life. I want to engage in more truly personal forms of communication and more authentically connect with the people I value. A social media account pared down to the “professional essentials,” and cleared of all personal detritus and distractions, that’s Friend Zero.

I know that I am still Facebook friends with some people I will never see again and would never pick up the phone and call. These seem like the obvious, low-hanging fruit of getting to Friend Zero. Looking at my friend list, I think, if I called them right now on the phone:

a) How much would I have to remind them who I am?

b) How weird would it be to be calling them? Would they be confused or creeped out?

c) When is the last time I interacted with them without a prompt from Facebook?

But, to pare things down to a strictly professional presence, I can’t simply bail out of Facebook altogether. Instead, I’ve have to cull my friends out of the platform and leave a skeleton crew of professional connections. That will be the ideal state of Friend Zero.

As a first step to Friend Zero, each time I️ get an email notification from Facebook, I’ll:

  • Contact that person, by phone or in person, if they are valuable to me. I’ll let them know I am moving from FB to “good, old fashioned” communications with them.
  • I’ll capture all the relevant information from the subject’s account — Their contact info, birthday, etc. (The stuff that used to go in an address book.)
  • Then, I will unfriend that person.

— OR —

  • If I don’t feel compelled to actually contact them, I will just unfriend them. It will be a judgement call each time.

The result, I hope, is only professional relationships on Facebook, and an account there the I can experiment with and learn from without the distractions of “real” interpersonal relationships. For my friends, it means a return to good, old-fashioned communications and, I hope, more fulfilling personal relationships.

I’ll regularly report my progress here. Wish me luck.

— Dan