Carman Pirie's Blog

Today's Globe and Mail cover

Warren points us to today's Globe and Mail cover suggesting it is "a case of the Globe's editors doing what good editors sometimes do - using jarring words or images to wake up people (ie., us) who need waking up" while asking "What do you think? Did they go over the line?"

Well, for what it's worth, I think it is the kind of front page that is simply intended to sell papers. Now, I'm not saying that's either good or bad, it just "is". What it isn't, most assuredly, is some sort of public service to awake us all to what is happening. It isn't altruistic. It is about selling papers. Simple.

Social media meet-up tomorrow night

Halifax geeks and agency assholes unite!

Ben Boudreau and I are pulling together a little social media meet-up at the Argyle tomorrow night.

Things get underway at 6PM... the formal part of the evening will be kept to 15 min max thus providing plenty of time for drinks, etc. Thanks to the good folks back at Colour for providing some snacks.

Hope to see you there.

Unplugging

It’s a healthy tension, I think. A good many people I meet in the blogosphere (or whatever we’re supposed to be calling it these days) seem to walk a fine line between being completely immersed in the space and unplugging entirely.

A few months back, between Christmas and New Years, I toyed with the idea of renting a cabin in the Cape Breton Highlands for the winter. The idea went something like this:

1. Find a cabin for rent in the highlands. Preferably a log cabin, I guess. Accessible by snowmobile only is fine.

2. The cabin should have an old cookstove. An Enterprise cookstove would be ideal.

3. A rocking chair beside the cookstove is a must. The good news is, rarely have I found a cookstove that did not share space with a rocking chair.

4. With enough wood to last three months, the following provisions would be necessary:

Food. No need to go into to much detail here. Without daily access to fresh vegetables, methinks that the menu would consist of more hearty fare than is the norm. Thick soups, stews, etc. with some hot curry thrown in for good measure.

Whisky. Probably a case and a half of Lagavulin would suffice.

Red wine. There is no way of knowing how much is needed – so bring an obscene amount with the understanding that some could well return home.

Coffee. Just Us Jungle Blend for the french press, Just Us Italian Roast for the moka pot.

Yellow legal pads. A few dozen. With blue pens. Lots. I don’t know why I prefer blue ink on yellow legal paper, but I do. Weird.

A few obscenely large sketchpads. I’m not an artist by any stretch, but I find huge sketchpads useful for mapping out ideas, etc.

Flip chart paper and markers. For those times when the sketchpad just isn’t large enough, I guess.

The thing is, what I really would want to add to all of this would be my MacBook Pro and a highspeed connection. Heh.

McLuhan vs. Bernbach

This article from Creativity Online by Nick Law raises some interesting points.

Two favorite excerpts:

“(Ad guys) like making ads more than people like watching them.”

And then... citing McLuhan...

“Each time the medium changes, our relationship to the message changes. In case you haven't noticed, the medium has been changing a lot lately.”

Hat tip to Frank

Inside PR Podcast

Last week's meetup in Toronto featured a live taping of the Inside PR podcast - good fun, that. A great discussion was had by all regarding 'who owns the social media space?'. All in all, I found the folks there to be remarkably welcoming... giving the oft-celebrated east coast hospitality a run for its money, as it were. You can download the podcast here. I chime in around the 23 minute mark and Terry, David, et al clearly forgot to edit me out... thanks guys.

Just another medium

When marketers view the internet as 'just another medium', stuff like this happens. Yikes!

Sustaining sustainable tourism

I was in Toronto last week, having been asked to participate in a think tank on sustainable tourism that was being put on by the good folks of the Gros Morne Institute for Sustainable Tourism. I’ve been doing a fair bit more work in the tourism sector of late, most often with Nova Scotia’s Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage who have been a long time client of Colour. Overall, I find the work I do in this space quite enjoyable... with many interesting people and fascinating stories to be found along the way.

A couple of thoughts coming out of last week’s session…

• Passion trumps business acumen: The tourism sector is filled with people who are unbelievably passionate about what they do, but in many cases haven’t been able to see their way clear to put the business rigour in place such that it all makes sense economically. This has been noted in many cases as a challenge for the industry. My point of view is that I’d rather have this problem than the inverse. A lot of business can be taught… kinda hard to teach passion.

• An age of transparency: Be yourself, everyone else is taken. A mate of mind is fond of saying that… and in large measure I think a lot of tourism destinations would be well served to heed the advice. Places are a funny think to market… you can’t just put some lipstick on the proverbial pig and move it out the door. Web 2.0 means that every single citizen is a potential publisher of information into a global medium, not to mention the traditional media outlets that have an online presence. Simply put, this all makes it pretty tough to say one thing, and actually be another.

• Getting better: There are those in the industry who feel that to get better we must in some way know more about our visitors. That by knowing more, and segmenting based upon that knowledge, we will systematically be able to market to different people in different ways and, moreover, deliver somewhat customized experiences based upon these segmentations. That all sounds wonderfully linear. However, I find it hard to see how the industry could ever really work like that, to be honest. I guess it all feels far too mechanistic to me.

I think there’s another way. I think that to get better, to do better as an industry, we must simply get better at telling our stories. We live in a world where lots of people have plenty of money. Get better at telling the true stories about who we are and places we call home, and trust that those who choose to spend their time with us will make their own meaning out of it… they’ll discover their own experiences. Find ways to let visitors tell their own stories… to add to the narrative… and they’ll do a large part of the marketing for us.

• Social media, social values and sustainable tourism: There was a lot of discussion during the think tank of how social values will motivate visitors and the industry overall. Specifically, the discussion seemed to centre upon how evolving social values will fuel increased interest in visiting tourism destinations that are sustainable (environmentally, culturally, historically, etc.). If nothing else, it seems that this all calls for a level of authenticity that doesn’t exist in a manufactured, theme park anchored tourism destination. It is in this craving for authenticity that I see the intersection between social media and sustainable tourism.

Pulling people together and giving them something to do

Hardly a day goes by lately where I’m not quoting Mark Earls… author of Herd and, apparently, overall bright guy, etc. I seem to recall Hugh referring to Mark as a "marketing geek's geek"... which sounds about right.

“All mass behaviour is the result of interacting individuals within a specific context.”

Brilliant stuff, I say.

Basically, we do what we do as humans largely because of what other humans do. Now… this flies in the face of a lot of marketers / business folk who operate under the ‘illusion of linearity’… or, as the always insightful Johnnie Moore might say, the “Rational Man” or “Homo Economicus” way of viewing ourselves.

As we move beyond this linear view of the world towards embracing what Mark et al are suggesting, I continue to find this quite helpful:

Source: Henry Jenkins

And, if you’re not convinced, I offer a couple of examples. Click here. And view this:

No secret formula

Rarely a day goes by where someone in the blogosphere doesn't offer advice on how to write a great blog post. Yesterday, I ran across two (at least). Here they are:

1. Johnnie Moore and Robert Paterson have an interesting experiment on the go over at The 'Phoric... essentially, guests are asked to pick three YouTube videos and talk about what it is about them that they find interesting / exciting. Their latest 'Phoric is with Euan Semple. Towards the end of the abridged version, Johnnie references an earlier part of the conversation saying:

"Anyone who blogs will relate to the experience of writing a masterful post, the fruits of many hours labour, and waiting for flood of comments and trackbacks (and) getting absolutely none. And then, some throwaway post about some inconsequential event generates a firestorm of interest."

The message here is, of course, don't be too clever by half and over think this... just write, you never know what people will find interesting.

2. James Chartrand wrote a post over at Copyblogger entitled The Secret Key to Killer Content: Taking Time to Think.

The message here is also quite simple... if you want great posts, take the time to think. This stuff doesn't write itself, so take the time and do it right.

My point is that I guess there isn't a secret formula to success in social media. Some folks would say that if you don't enable comments on your blog, then it isn't really a blog. But... it has worked out pretty well for Seth. All of this to say that I think it's best if you simply experiment a bit, see what works and feels right for you, and go from there.

What are your thoughts?

Social media and the anti-broadcast

As a marketer, I guess the trouble with broadcast media is that it isn't quite as broad as it used to be. 3000 channels rather than 300 or 30 (heh... or 3 as I seem to recall from my early childhood). 200+ satellite radio stations (or whatever number they're up to now), all commercial free.

To me, one of the interesting things about broadcast is what is positioned as the anti-broadcast. I recall the days when Xerox trumpeted the virtues of one-to-one marketing... everything was going to be infinitely personalized to you. Only you. Exclusively yours. etc. Well, that works pretty well I suppose when you're printing utility bills or investment updates - but when something is for your eyes only, it is completely void of community.

I think that part of the reason social media works is that it is narrow enough to deliver information / entertainment / etc. that is rather uniquely suited to a specific area of interest, while being just broad enough to foster community.

With all of the other differences that social media brings versus traditional broadcast (transparency, 2-way conversations, etc.), perhaps social media is the perfect anti-broadcast.

What do you think?