Being Peter Kim

The Greatest Movie Review Ever Posted

I walked out of Morgan Spurlock's POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold last night feeling pretty nauseated.

But that was only because I sat too close to the screen and the constant camera panning and zooming made me ill.

If you have a job in marketing or advertising, or work in media and entertainment, you already know the message at the base level of this film. Corporate dollars make things happen, in more ways than most consumers realize.

Go a little deeper and you may conclude what Oscar Wilde wrote over a century ago: "there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Many of the brands participating the film seem to have selected this route, e.g. Ban deodorant as a challenger brand. 

However, pay close attention and you'll end up at the question at the heart of the film's inquiry: what is true brand transparency? Perhaps for one or two of the film's sponsors, participation declares their commitment to this ideal. The scenes with POM's Resnick are illustrative of this.

The essence of Spurlock's message is contained in this TED talk:

But what does transparency mean for you? Will you open a truly objective ear to both brand praise and criticism? Can you promote your brand with whole, not half, truths? Do you espouse the same ideals as your brand's public positioning and if not, will you resign?

I believe that there's a social business message in Spurlock's story. It's about connections, culture, content, and clarity. For some brands, the thought of being on screen in a capacity that transparent is clearly enough to drive corporate nausea.

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Vanilla Ice on social business

I'm in Miami. And when I'm in Miami, I think about the city's heyday in pop culture, during the mid- to late 1980's. And when I think about the music from that time and see signs for A1A, I think about Vanilla Ice.

Whether he knew it or not, Mr. Ice was a social business visionary. Allow me to translate the knowledge he dropped twenty years ago that should guide us today.

• On strategy: "All right stop collaborate and listen"
• On new tools: "Ice is back with my brand new invention"
• On work ethic: "Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly"
• On social's staying power: "Will it ever stop yo I don't know"
• On bad tools and process: "killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom"
• On quality control: "Anything less than the best is a felony"
• On scalability: "Love it or leave it you better gain weight"
• On getting things done: "If there was a problem yo I'll solve it"
• On authenticity: "Quick to the point to the point no faking"
• On agility: "Burning them if you ain't quick and nimble"
• On guru rockstars: "I'm on a roll and it's time to go solo"
• On MySpace: "The block was dead"
• On Twitter's spam followers: "Girls were hot wearing less than bikinis"
• On Facebook detractors: "Reading for the chumps on the wall"
• On leadership: "Conducted and formed"
• On social business design: "This is a hell of a concept"
• On effectiveness: "slice like a ninja / Cut like a razor blade"
• On how to celebrate wins: "Ice ice baby"
• On ROI: "Word to your mother"

To take a drive down memory lane this morning and be astounded by Mr. Ice's prescience, click here.

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Experience

There are a lot of things in life that, for better or worse, ain't what they used to be. For me, this fact becomes very apparent whenever I travel and especially when I have a reason to leave the US.

The entire travel process has changed greatly over the past 30 years. Physical ticketing offices rarely exist anymore; today we can buy flights online and use our mobile phone as a boarding pass. Airports used to be gateways to the exotic; now they are the physical manifestation of mundane legal rules and regulations. Passengers can't smoke in-flight anymore, but we can check email and hopefully will never be allowed to make phone calls.

Destinations have changed as well. The proliferation of global brands make this difference ironically apparent, making foreign cities both comfortingly familiar and unfortunately similar. Almost everywhere you go, you can have a Coke or Starbucks coffee, buy an Apple product, or get outfitted in Nike gear. Whether this is good or bad depends on your personal preferences.

But this is all good news for businesses. The rise of global consumer culture drives similarity in preferences, allowing brands to streamline demand generation and reduce operating costs. You can get curry-flavoured sauce for your McNuggets in London and you can't in New York, but the macro picture is that everyone knows that the golden arches represent food, folks, and fun - at a fair price.

As a consumer, this means that experience matters most. It's getting a sunburn on Bondi, walking through Central Park, smelling spices in Istanbul. It's LED overload in Akibahara, sweating in a Helsinki sauna, feeling mist while peeking over the Cliffs of Moher.

For social business to succeed, brands need to take a holistic perspective on consumer (and employee) experiences. Many contemporary approaches are limited because social media are digital, thus channeling focus on closed-loop, online-only experiences. But this isn't science fiction - we don't live dreams - digital initiatives must tie into a real-life purpose.

Social business is business. Why use new opportunities to replicate old ways of doing things? Be careful to not get myopically focused on a single user environment or to replicate only what you see other businesses doing. The experience you create - how and why - is all that matters.

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Pictures of matchstick men

Long before we had social media, we were just social. People have always been creators, joiners, and collectors. I've been cleaning out my house preparing to move to Austin and came across a collection of matchbooks circa 1996 - 2004. Restaurants stopped providing, so I stopped collecting.

Transporting a small cache of highly flammable materials along with the rest of the household items doesn't seem like a good idea. So I digitized the collection for indefinite storage instead. While handling the match books and boxes, I remembered the cities, if I was there for work or holiday, who I was there with, and where I was at in my life and career at the time.

To be honest, it's a bit unsettling to realize that I don't remember the details as precisely as I'd like - maybe for better. And then I realize - memory becomes a con artist on its own, whether I want to play the skeptic or just play along may only depend on my frame of mind.

Harnessing cults of personality

By now, you likely have heard about the couple who crashed last week's White House state dinner. As pointed out by the WSJ, I agree that this isn't an anomaly but the public surfacing of a cultural trend: everybody thinks of themselves a hidden star, just waiting for the right opportunity to shine.

The trend is unavoidable - unlike sporting events, where broadcasters avert their cameras when a fan jumps on the field and does something stupid, the media magnifies the actions of the attention-seekers. Moreover, in many ways reality TV acts as the same type of expressive outlet as social media.

As a business person, there's lots to think about here from both external and internal perspectives.

• Externally, the good news is that this trend drives consumers to talk online - a lot. This allows companies to gain market intelligence, if they know how to approach the listening landscape. The challenge, however, is distilling signal from noise and at an extreme, avoiding detractors that actually seek to do your brand harm.
• Internally, we've seen cases of social media "rock stars" who help raise company profiles...in the echo chamber for sure, in the broader market perhaps. But it's not just the ones who hold the titles that possess a cult of personality. ALL of your employees have some modicum of event crasher, waiting to happen. Traditional management means are for the most part effective in preventing ego anarchy.

The most interesting opportunity for businesses lies taking a positive approach and harnessing this trend to activate individuals. Which drives the question: how social is your business, really?

Book Review: The Blue Sweater

In September 2008, I was invited by Gay Gaddis of T3 to speak at the C200 Conference in Dallas.  At the conference, Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund was presented with an award for philanthropic efforts in emerging economies.  She discussed a couple of powerful personal stories of her experience with water in India and mosquito nets in Africa.  Her stories are collected and published in her book, The Blue Sweater.  

In February 2009, Seth Godin offered a copy of Novogratz's book to citizen reviewers and I took him up on the offer.  I received a copy in March from Sasha Dichter, who works at the Acumen Fund.

If you have ever been interested in driving change in the world, you should read this book.  It offers clear perspective on the realities of making a difference.

I thought a long time about what I'd say in a review of the book.  But most of the lessons I took away were reflections on how Novogratz's life made me recall my own upbringing, career choices, and future outlook. Some of my high-level takeaways:

• We all have choices. It's tough to know which ones are "correct" in advance, but the key is how you respond to the emergent outcomes you encounter along the way.
• Meaningful results take time.  Achieving success at scale takes a lot of hard work over years of foundational work.  This lesson is absent from today's instant gratification society.
• Things change.  The world is a different place today and to get value from history, you need to study strategy and adapt tactics.  Simply copying behaviors won't do much for you.

For a more traditional style review, I'll point you to an excellent video by Robert Jacobs (length 12:34):

I'm ready to share my copy of the book with someone else who can learn from the story and help share the lessons therein with others.  If you're interested, send me your name and address via email.  I'll pass it along with the same expectation that you read it, blog about it, and pass it along as well.  UPDATE: I'm sending my copy along to Chris Hall at Humana, who blogs at hallicious.com.  Chris is part of Humana's Innovation Center and in a great position to drive change similar to that which Novogratz has written about.

Thanks!

Is your social media activity a safety net?

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I've been on LinkedIn for almost five years (you can find this information on your Account & Settings tab).  Over the years, I noticed that once in a while when I clicked over to the person behind a connection request, they'd have recently connected to dozens of people.  Shortly thereafter, that person would announce that they'd taken on a new role at a new company.

As social media has proliferated, I see more people getting involved to support their company brands - or just building their own.  (THE resource on how to do this effectively is Dan Schwabel's Me 2.0.)  These days it's not just LinkedIn connections, but new blogs, Twitter accounts, and ramped up public speaking appearances.

Don't get me wrong - there's nothing negative at all about this.  In today's world of work, we all need a strong safety net and social media channels provide raw material, with a different thread gauges.  But you should know that weaving a solid net takes time - and you need to start before you really need it.  (For lessons on how to do this, here's some thoughts I shared last December on Warren Sukernek's successful job search.)

Also be aware that people are watching.  And it's not just your potential future employers and colleagues, it's your current and past employers and colleagues as well.  This is public, after all.  So you may not need the old routine about a lot of sudden doctor's appointments anymore, but your boss might know what's going on anyway just by the digital breadcrumb trail of posts and tweets that you're leaving behind.

Better start weaving before you need to go fishing.

The headfake

Have you ever had something like this happen to you?

You correspond with someone online for weeks, maybe months.  Then finally it turns out that the two of you will be in the same place at the same time, e.g. an industry conference.  You happen to notice a familiar name on a conference badge among the dozens passing by in the hallway and it's your online buddy.

But you didn't recognize him/her because...they look nothing like their avatar picture.

Well.  I've decided on an appropriate term to describe this phenomenon:  the headfake.

Definition:  Headfake, noun.  A situation in which you are familiar with a person's avatar picture, which gives you an inaccurate idea of how that person appears in real life.

I know I've headfaked people myself; at SXSW this year, someone told me I look a lot older in my picture than I really am.  Another said that I'm a lot taller in real life than my picture would indicate.  (I think these might indicate that I need a better avatar picture.)

So...ever been headfaked?  Let us know in the comments, anonymity will be honored!

A trip to the Louisville Slugger museum and factory

I was in Louisville a few weeks ago and had to stop by Hillerich & Bradsby's Louisville Slugger museum & factory while in town.  It opened in 1996 and is a place that any fan of the game needs to make a point to visit.  I was lucky to get a sneak peek at renovations with executive director Anne Jewell the weekend before the new section opened to the public - and it's well worth the visit.

A 120' Babe Ruth replica bat stands outside the museum entrance. This one's made of steel and weighs about 34 tons. Clearly the Paul Bunyan model.

Courtesy Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory

In the entryway, there's a wall of signatures plate of the hall of fame batters who've used Louisville Slugger bats - which comprises over 80% of inductees.  The most surprising fact to me was the average annual contract value - unlike megamillion dollar footwear and apparel deals, most contracts are in the 5 figure range.

The first exhibit you'll see in the new section is a case of game-used bats from Mickey Mantle, Rod Carew, Jim Thome, and David Ortiz.  Visitors can don a pair of cotton gloves and heft one of these magic sticks to home plate for a pose and picture.

The new section has plenty of kids activities, a good mix of hands-on exploration and historic explanation. You'll get surprisingly close to lumber used by Joe Dimaggio (the bat from his 56 game hitting streak), Hank Aaron (the one he used to hit home run #700), and Babe Ruth (notched once for every home run he hit that year).

The museum also had the foresight over the past year to plan a Presidential exhibit. Originally the collection contained signed baseballs from John McCain and Hillary Clinton - now the Barack Obama baseball sits on display alone.

Courtesy Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory

Visitors can take a factory tour and see live production. One side churns out professional models, retail and minor leaguers on the other. The day I was there, a cart of Dustin Pedroia bats was waiting to be shipped out. The factory keeps a database of all player specs which includes length, weight, grain width, color, etc. You can have a personalized bat made to order, then step over to a batting cage and try it out vs. a 90-mph fastball.

That's all from the factory and museum...more from Louisville later this week.

Resolutions 2009

I'd like to hear about any resolutions for this year that are on your mind.

I admit: nothing specific comes to mind for me...I will be very focused on building a business this year. Looking back at 2008, I pursued three resolutions successfully but won't declare "mission accomplished" on any of them, because they're worth revisiting continually.

Some things to consider working on, if you're looking for suggestions:

• Protect your identity. Download your free annual credit report (US only).
• Build your network before you need them. Build your personal brand in conjunction with your corporate brand.
• Get yourself fit and help young people get there, too.

Would love to hear what you're planning to work on.