Falling Headlong Into Another World...

Design by Gitanajava Productions PR, LLC
Find it at http://tiny.cc/JAusten

If I'm a Jane Austen fan, it's as an admiring bystander of the language, customs, and history of the Regency/Napoleonic era more so than as a Janeite or romantic.  So, as I flipped the pages of Cindy Jones' book, My Jane Austen Summer, trying to decide whether or not to add it to my already lofty stack of books, I was braced to bolt and run at the first sign of words like swoon or limpid or cerulean orbs.  I needn't have worried.  I was hijacked and hooked anyway -- how'd that happen?

Buried Treasure, Part 2

5 Steps to Creating a LinkedIn Recommendation
To view full sized, go to http://tiny.cc/Endorse

In the original Buried Treasure article, we discussed the professionals' methods for requesting, shaping, and leveraging effective recommendations from colleagues and clients.  However, in my perfect world, I would have preceded that instruction with tonight's post and asked this crucial question --

Un-occupy Gmail, Part 2

Since noting our strong objections to Google/Gmail's latest shenanigans in yesterday's post, Un-occupy Gmail, we're discovering other voices critical of their heavy-handed redesign.


Scott Wilson sees the Google/Gmail re-design rationale "shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster".

Un-occupy Gmail

If Necessity is the Mother of Invention, Who's Baby's Daddy?

Why We Won't Switch Voluntarily to the New Gmail UI

Over the past week or so, we've read all the blogs, news, and comments about the roll-out of Gmail's new look.  In the pursuit of truth, justice, and leaping tall buildings in a single bound, we even tolerated a couple of videos, and this is what it comes to:  until the G-men force us to change to the new look, we'll skip it.  It can roll right past us, thank you.

First, the "new and improved" Gmail UI is rife with advertising distractions.  The subtle "oh, by the way" is bye-bye.

In Pursuit of Defining Yourself...

Senorita La Tinta, a/k/a Miss Inky, taking her photo opp

I was not looking for anything remotely like Ken Robert's essay when I stumbled across it in one of those blessed web serendipity moments.  La, la, la, la-lah, I was skipping along the 'net path, gathering posies, en route to some somber research for a client.

For we RPISH* entrepreneurs and contrarian thinkers wrestling the challenges inherent to re-structuring ourselves and our work, the scant few minutes it will take to read "We’re So Ashamed of Changing (This Is Why We’re Crazy)" at Ken Robert's blog, Mildly Creative, will be minutes well spent In Pursuit of Defining Yourself.

While you're there, check out KR's self-description, too.  If Ken's blog is food for thought, his About page is the whipped cream and cherry on top.  Read and ponder, Unicorns, read and ponder!

Appearing Soon at a Theatre Near You

In a day or two, in consideration of that whole re-structuring topic, we will return with some ponders.  Stay tuned!


*RPISH = Round Peg In A Square Hole

See you on the patio!

Buried Treasure

Not long ago, I wrote a colleague, the former chief exec of a client organisation, asking for his recommendation.  We have a sound, genial professional and personal relationship, and we have communicated regularly by phone and email since parting ways a few months ago.  Although we didn't get the happy ending we strove for throughout our last adventure, I was proud of the exceptional effort and dedication we had given.

I'd spent four years nurturing the growth of his organisation, first on a pro bono basis, and when the small but feisty nonprofit hit a sizable financial and regulatory speed bump in late 2009 and the crisis took on life-or-death dimensions in early 2010, I stepped in as full-time formal consultant to him and the wounded organisation.  I liked these people, I liked their organisation, and I wanted success for them.

Simplicity, Simplify: A Marketing Lesson from the Toybox

 Simplicity, Simplify

A few years into my brilliant marketing career, I learned an important lesson, albeit from an unexpected source.  A six year-old boy taught me how too many choices and too little opportunity to filter one's options can overwhelm and even disable the buying decision.

Can You Hear Me Now? Intentional Listening.

Vístanme despacio que estoy de afán.

Dress me slowly, I'm in a hurry.

(Loose interpretation - Do your best and carefully, even more so
when you're down to the wire and running out of time.)

The Miraculous Melrosas High Wire Bicycles

Have you ever seen the circus act with the unicyclist crossing a tightrope hundreds of feet in the air?  Silly hat on his head, balance pole in his hands, and rising precariously from his shoulders and stretching upward beyond the spotlight's reach, a human lattice-work of more acrobats in more silly hats.  One missed cue, one miscalculation and spangles splattered across sand and sawdust.  Thankfully, long before donning his silly hat and climbing to the high wire, the unicyclist rehearsed, exercised, sketched, studied, imagined, trained, prayed, and prepared, prepared, prepared.

  

Few of us who work in the arts and entertainment arena are privileged to work in a proper circus, yet we face long years of preparation and our own peculiar dangers.  One of those dangers is when we're on a high wire and don't realise it.  In my case, I fell off my high horse, landed a black-and-blue bruise to my conscience, and barely kept my silly hat.  I learned something important about myself and about doing business though.  It all began innocently enough...

Images = 1000 Words?

"Four Roses" Whiskey for a  Perfect Manhattan - artwork by John Falter -

the original 1942 magazine spreads also contained compelling text.

(Click to enlarge image - it rocks.)

Commercial Artwork Speaks


With the advent of the Industrial Age and the inventions of chromolithography and offset printing, many artists we value highly now first developed their distinctive styles as commercial artists, supporting themselves by designing advertising posters, packet labels, greeting cards, magazine and book illustrations, even toys and board games:  Parrish, Erte', Cheret, Lautrec, Mucha, Baxter, Gow, Shepard, Potter, Cappiello, Falter.


Admit it:  isn't it difficult to imagine anyone collecting the advertising artwork on today's gelatine boxes, cookie packets, or Yahoo banners?


Let's get extreme -- when your target audience encounters images representing you and your products/services, are they enlightened ("Okay, now I get it."), intrigued ("Interesting, I want to know more about this."), aroused (Wow, this is amazing!), or are they so underwhelmed they'd flatline an EEG?