Excellent Example of Creative Clarity

Here's a piece of communication that works on just about every level.

A) I received it from a friend, so it's officially "viral."
B) It humanizes its message by using a real (and authentic) narrator.
C) It mixes video and illustration in an easy-to-follow and compelling way.

The subject could certainly be considered "politically charged," but if you look past that, it's quite a brilliant use of narrative and technology to educate in an entertaining way.

Let me know what you think.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

What the Oscars Tell Us About Ourselves

I'm a bit of an Oscar fiend, and I love the talk-radio lead-up to the show almost as much as I like making fun of the dresses with my wife. This year, it has occurred to me that little Oscar tells us a lot about ourselves (and the media). For example:

- Outsider Lust. The media love to talk about how the Coen Brothers are "outside the normal Hollywood system." They live in New York, not L.A. When they write a screenplay, they claim not to know what's going to happen on the next page. They don't make guest appearances on "Entourage." They're just plain weird.

- First-timer Obsession. The media are infatuated with "Juno" screenwriter Diablo Cody. What's not to like? First-time screenwriter. Former stripper. Now presumed Oscar winner. That's a little more interesting than the guy who got nominated after going through UCLA film school, was Tori Spelling's personal assistant and failed with his first seven scripts.

- "One of Us"-itis. In Minnesota, the coverage of the Coens and Cody has been borderline insufferable. Cody wrote the script at a Starbucks while living here between Chicago and L.A. The Coens share the same hometown (St. Louis Park) as Al Franken and Tom Friedman. (I remember during "Titanic" Fever seeing a local news story on some guy from St. Paul whose cousin painted one of the sets. That was after the lead story on squirrels.)

- The Icarus Complex. Both of the above are now in backlash mode. I call it the Icarus Complex: After we--and the media--hoist you up, we will grow sick of you and Lucy your football. (Sorry, too many analogies there, but I think Jesse Ventura gets my drift). Diablo Cody is now an affront to real birth mothers. "No Country for Old Men" is now overrated, its ending abrupt and obtuse. "Atonement," much ballyhooed when it premiered, is now a bore. Why, the jaded Time magazine movie critic asked yesterday on KFAN, aren't we recognizing less snobby fare like "Knocked Up," or long-overlooked actors like Hal Holbrook?

- Quality Depreciation. Two things you can set your clock by: In the winter, the media will question whether the Oscars are still relevant. In the fall, they will question whether "Saturday Night Live" has lost its edge. As we grow older, we insist that each is losing its luster... that SNL was best with Chevy Chase and John Belushi (and later, Bill Murray). And that the Oscars are never better than with Billy Crystal as host.

(Such beliefs are simply a product of romanticizing one's own past. Yet, I have to agree with both.)

Trendy vs. Tried and True

I was sitting among 500 people in the master ballroom of a Vancouver hotel. It was day one of the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) conference, and I had a pretty clear idea what was to come. This first seminar was about technology. I expected to get one or two data nuggets, but nothing revolutionary.

Two hours later, my brain emerged fully liquefied from an intellectual Cuisinart. The two presenters, one American, one Dutch, had covered blogging, Skype, RSS feeds, del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati, social media and Web 2.0—as several people around me, laptops like extended limbs, live-blogged about the presentation itself.

I felt like someone who had just experienced his first earthquake. Apparently, while I had been sitting comfortably in my padded Midwestern cell, the whole world had changed. I thought I was toast unless I could catch up. Immediately.

Fast forward two days. I’m now sitting in a smaller, partitioned room. The conservative-looking presenter paces and speaks, uses nothing more than an old-school overhead projector as a visual aid. After his recent tenure as the World Bank’s director of communications, what had he identified as the secret to effective communication? Storytelling.

Storytelling?! You mean, the thing that's been around since Cro-Magnon Man?

Yes. Case in point, when he wanted to convince World Bank leadership to move the organization from a lending institution to a global information broker, no one took him seriously. He presented compelling statistics, projected beautiful PowerPoints. Deaf ears. Nothing.

Then he told a story. A local government in Argentina had recently contacted his office wanting to know which type of asphalt to use for a certain kind of road-building. They connected this group with a similar group in Europe that had faced (and solved) the same issue. Connection made, problem solved. Imagine, he said, what we could accomplish just by being the string between the tin cans. It worked.

I find sales, marketing and communications people often caught between the two worlds of “trendy” and “tried and true.” One day, it’s pressure to find out what this social media thing is all about. (“Why don’t we have a Facebook page and a Second Life headquarters?”) The next day, it’s, “Why are we doing all this edgy stuff. We’ve lost focus... let’s go back to our bread and butter.”

It’s a tough line to walk—in fact, balancing tried-and-true principles (telling a good story) with trendy new technologies and media outlets (blogging) might be a communicator’s biggest challenge. But, needless to say, having the judgment to make that call—which requires equal parts open-mindedness and healthy skepticism—can be tremendously effective.

Welcome.

One thing you're not supposed to do in any profession is give free advice. But that's not exactly what this blog is for.

It seems fitting to start this blog with a Conk Creative anti-manifesto.

In my experience, people connected to the marketing world love to think and talk about the art of communication, but they don't have time for it. By sheer necessity, they can't think about tomorrow because they have to get through today. They'd love to see the world from 60,000 feet, but they can't get there because... well, there's a trade show in two weeks and the booth isn't ready, and we have a product launch in a month, and when are we going to finally redo our website? And damn, my entire day is blocked out with meetings.

I'm offering this blog not as a one-sided conversation, but as a dialogue. Since I started my personal blog nearly a year ago, I've realized that we make hundreds of observations every day (personal, professional, emotional, intellectual, cultural, catty) that go un-communicated. I feel sorry for these observations. There's no telling where they might go if they were just expressed, read and commented upon.

So that's what this blog is really for. We're all in this together. We're all trying to keep up with a world that never stops shifting under our feet. The only real way to make progress is to realize that things have grown so complex, so fast, that the idea of a "marketing guru" is an impossible relic of the past (if it existed at all).

True insight and real progress come through humility and collaboration. So here we go. Ready?

- CC