Quiver & Quill

 My Jackson Pollock paining. Make yours here. 

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“Time paints in blasts,” - Voltaire

There was a girl in college. She dated a friend of mine. She dressed like Billie Holiday, was French and Dutch, and attended Harvard. Her passions were literature and biochemistry, speaking about either one would cause her to light up. We spoke twice by phone, and we went to Tapas on Newbury Street together. I remember she was someone who made you want to believe in whatever cause she advocated.

She stopped dating my friend. A year or so passed. And then she killed herself.

My friend and I went to her eulogy at Harvard. A young girl, her friend, spoke first.

“I remember Freshmen year,” she said, “we were stuck in the elevator and she and I didn’t know what to do. But we had M&Ms with us. As we waited for help to come get us out of the elevator, we spilled the M&M’s on the floor, took our shoes off and smushed them between our toes as if they were grapes. We laughed for hours that day.”

Smushing M&M’s between her toes.

That image came back to me powerfully today while watching Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. Dustin Hoffman and Nathalie Portman stomp bubble wrap in the park. And there I was, instantly transported to my friend’s eulogy.

There was a girl in college. She smushed M&M’s between her toes…

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The other night I interviewed a friend for a blog piece I was writing. He has his own blog, a website, a Twitter account, a Facebook and a Myspace page, and a Flickr account. So I didn’t know which of his points of presence online I should link to in order to cite him.

One of the cool things about Twitter is that asks its members to select their online point of presence. Some people link to their websites or blogs, but other people link to photos, videos, and random pages. What online point of presence represents you? For me, it’s my blog.

Photo taken by luc legay.

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What are you doing right now? Want to meet up. Want to see a cool website. Check out this video I just posted. What are you doing right now? Want go to a concert in Second Life. Want to find a trustworthy babysitter who is free tonight? Want to find the best deal on travel? What are you doing right now? Want to find a business solution. Want to find a soul mate. Want to find someone who wants to know what you’re doing right now?

My friend Jesse Baer shared this website you should check out. It’s called CrazyBlindDate. Think Match.com meets Twitter. The site sets you up with a perfect stranger for a date and makes it happen immediately, as in, within minutes. A real date, in person. So cool. How do you find your date:

“When you agree to a date, you’ll get to see a description of your match. If you still can’t find each other amongst all the other nervous-looking people at that bar or coffee shop, quack like a dog and make armpit farts. If that doesn’t work, you can send each other text messages through us. In the final 30 minutes before the date, we open a relay. If you send a text message to CUPID (28743) it will go to your date’s phone. For example: “I’m at the bar in the back, wearing a blue sweater, drinking a martini.”

The basic idea reminds me of a new site I saw at Web Innovators meet up called Mix and Meet. The premise of the site is to bring strangers together in small groups to meet and share similar interests, “meet people, not pictures,.”

What I like about these sites, and what I like about Twitter for that matter, is their ability to make things happen immediately.

I like the idea that millions of strangers who up until recently may have never left their apartments, may have never explored a curiosity or temptation, may have never met other strangers who are just like them. Now they have the tools to make their life more complete. Or at least less boring.

What are you doing right now? Are you finding your passion? Are you discovering others who share it? What are you doing right now? Lemme know.
Photo used with Creative Common License. Picture citation: moriza 

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I opened a frozen food package of broccoli stuffed chicken to heat up in the microwave. On the box, I read the story behind the founder of the microwavable chicken company. And then the box  invited me to check its website to read more about the founder and its great heritage.I was baffled and amused. I asked myself: “Finish this James Baldwin novel, or read about the chicken guy; watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, or read about the chicken guy“…it was a tough choice, but I never made it to the chicken guy’s website.This experience made me realize how many advertising campaigns are using stories as a creative approach. Whether it’s “tell us your story,” or “share your store,” or send photos and videos illustrating your story, products everywhere are searching for narratives, like mothers seeking lost children.

So, what makes a good narrative? Hemingway wrote, “In order to write about life, you must first live it.” That lessons applies directly to marketing. How do we create real experiences of products and services that produce true narratives we want to share, rather than create perceptions of products and services using just a clever creative approach?

If that frozen chicken I microwaved was story-worth good, I would not only have visited their website, but I would have also bought a few more of them.

Photo used with Creative Commons License and from lab2112’s photo stream. 

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“You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.” — Picasso

Photo: Holga: The Road Ahead. Used under Creative Commons Licence.

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Check out BabyLoveDisco, a baby dance sensation rocking the nation, sponsored by Stride Rite. This website site is exceptionally well-branded featuring a clear, powerful idea. If I were a baby, this is how I’d spend my Friday night.

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I joined this Facebook group called i wrk @ an ad agency. There’s more than 1,000 members, and all of the founders of the group are with some of the hottest agencies in the country. I recently received an email from the group announcing the launch of a new agency website: “Bernstein-Rein.com.”

When I received the email, I checked out the website immediately. (BTW, I’m impressed).

But I’m more impressed with their marketing strategy to use Facebook. Over 1,000 pre-qualified people, who work at agencies and are members of this group, received the Facebook email. And I would assume that the open rate of an email from Facebook is much higher than the open rate of regular email.

I wonder if Bernstein-Rein.com paid for this email blast.  If so, it’s worth noting that Facebook wasn’t directly paid for this. If Bernstein-Rein wanted to reach agency talent in a more conventional way, through direct mail or advertising for example, they would have spent $10,000s. And even then they might not have reached agency talent this targeted.

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