Brett Macfarlane

Critics, the Opinionated and Proofers Wanted

I've written a book titled Everyday Paris.

It is a cultural briefing on how to "do Paris as Parisians do."

I seek a few more people to give it a read and help me understand what is and isn't working before formally sharing with agents & publishers.

Why did I write Everyday Paris?

I've been a Francophile long before transferring in 2010 to one of Europe's top creative ad agencies - DDB Paris.  

Cultural observation has always been an obsession of mine and living in Paris is an “observaholic’s” nirvana.  It was a hobby and compulsion to endlessly share things I noticed or thought interesting as a sort of guerrilla ethnography, which people seem to quite like.

What compelled me to actually follow through with the idea for this book was a discerning friend advising a leading global luxury brand borrowed a passage of mine (without my knowledge) discussing Brie cheeses.  One evening he decided to read it out in Versailles Palace's Hall of Mirrors.  

Frighteningly, the occasion was a grand dinner marking UNESCO naming French gastronomy an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, packing together 650 of the good, great and Michelin starred of French gastronomy in rightful self-congratulation.

Surprisingly, rather than laugh, they applauded.  

So I've since written a cultural briefing that can be read on a plane or train to Paris.  It fits between your typical laundry list guide book/website/magazine and a breezy but individualistic expat novel.

Why does the world need this book?

There is a generation seeking to be informed and mindful travelers who have no shortage of tips and lists but struggle to break through the sterile bubble of passive check-list tourism to become authentic participants in the city and experience how its inhabitants live any given day. 

In other words, they seek to become temporary Parisians, and thus when in Paris wish to "do Paris as Parisians do."

Interested?

If you are interested in reading the manuscript before it is proves to be the next great publishing empire, or a glorious failure, send me an email or Tweet.

Contact me by Sunday March 10 ideally as my ambition is to have input by April 1-ish. 

If not you, please forward to someone you think might be interested.

Reward:

I can't offer much other than being part of the journey.  I did much the same for Alex Bogusky and John Windsor when they published Baked In, which was rather interesting.

If you are in the UK I will hook you up with some wine.  If elsewhere I'll arrange some suitable consideration/inspiration.  Of course once published you will brush with glory and get some special rewards if and when it takes off.

Review: Baked In

I was given the opportunity to take an advanced read of the soon to be released book Baked In by Alex Bogusky and John Winsor.  As these are two people actively challenging and reworking the definition of advertising the book arrived in a FedEx box stuffed with fresh Colorado air and anticipation.

The subtitle of Baked In is Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves.  If you’re looking for prescriptive quick fixes, impressive empirical analysis of past success or nifty new buzzwords it’s probably not the book for you. 

However, if you’re feeling an inkling there might be a better way to do what you do or you burn with a sense there is opportunity in today’s madness that you’re frothing (maybe not from the mouth though…) to get a hold of then you’ll love this book. 

The book is essentially comprised of two interwoven parts, one part an argument why there is an opportunity/need for different ways to approach business.  Secondly, a set of 28 exercises called recipes for how to go about rethinking marketing and product development.  PSFK has a great breakdown of the book as does James on the Adhack blog whose overviews I'll avoid rehashing and discuss what most intrigued me. 

My humble opinion is that this is one of the most important books you will read this year.  Over time it might prove up there with Paul Arden's books as mandatory for anyone wishing to stand out and create "weaponized creativity" in the world of business.  I'm certainly biased being a person drawn to highly creative and innovative ideas along with the environments they breed in but this is one of those rare business books that makes the chaotic pursuit of transformative creativity an approachable and logical pursuit. 

What really impressed me about the book is the ongoing discussion of mindsets and behaviors in companies to enable great ideas.  Not so much gripes or a well worn dismissal of the old methods such as focus groups and the division between marketing and product development, rather a way forward to strip away the preconceived notions embedded in a corporation that get in the way of human beings working more closely with other human beings to create more interesting and innovative products.  In particular narrowing the distance between the people who buy what a company makes and the people who make what people buy.

What I also liked, which may frustrate some people, is that the book doesn’t tell you exactly what to do.  What it does do is give you principles and exercises to go about rethinking your business and products paired with approaches to implement the thinking.   The world of business has become such a wonderfully complex and fast moving ecosystem that cookie cutter strategies or tactics give cookie cutter results whose incremental benefits are diminishing over time.  Products need to be and can be intertwined with all the wonderful details and complexity of everyday life.   While old or “traditional” ways of doing business or marketing will persist and have their place in certain cultures there is opportunity to think and create in more profound and powerful ways. This book is like a mental workout program that fires up your brain to train itself to work in ways enabling such transformative innovation.

To develop transformative change you need a different way to go about doing what you do.  It also helps to have a broad frame of reference and experience when going about it. Plus a willingness to receive ideas and inputs from the most obscure and uniformed places including an open mind to experiment how ideas are made. Baked In is choked full of good applied examples including just a few from the usual suspects (Apple & Nike) though they aren’t the usual cases.  But again, the cases are not positioned as a model for exactly what you should do but an example of the recipes in applied practice. A point best summed up in this quote:

"There is no formulaic way to do this: the key is simply taking a more holistic, inclusive approach that doesn't exclude potential input - especially that of your customer."

One other thought that really struck me while reading the book is how a lot of people still, including those working exclusively in “digital,” really don’t get just how big of a deal it is.  Not in the sense of websites, display ads and apps but as the fundamental rewiring of our world.  Even in the most traditional of companies you will be hard pressed not to find anything that comes out their doors without some 00’s and 11’s being involved.   The very notion of the digital and non-digital world is rather absurd and limiting.  Just as the line between product and marketing is limiting.

The book itself lives the world they advocate.  Hashtags pepper throughout and the recipes are posted on the Baked In Wiki for anyone’s addition and revision.  But the single thing that got me most excited is how tangibly we are seeing humanity potentially return to brands and products.  Both because we can get and process more raw and insightful information, secondly because people are generally pretty savvy consumers and therefore appreciative of great products tuned for them.  Change is constant and it certainly is exciting change around us.

Adhack Live - The Baked In Edition

Over the past year James Sherrett has kindly asked me, for some reason, to do a couple live webcast discussions called Adhack Live. 

We are doing another one this Thursday which started as a discussion around the implications crowdsourcing has on the marketing universe.  We've since amped up the chat to incorporate the soon to be released book Baked In by Crispin Porter + Bogusky big shots Alex Bogusky and John Winsor, executive director of strategy and innovation. 

In a nutshell, Baked In looks at how to eliminate silos between the various disciplines of business, enabled by technology, to give birth to more collaborative and innovative approaches to marketing and product design resulting in products that market themselves.

John kindly gave us an advanced look at the book and we invite you to participate in the discussion by watching live Thursday 9:00AM PST.  More importantly, submit your questions, thoughts, or rants in advance over on Adhack or down below in the old comments.

More on the book on the Baked In blog/wiki or secure an Amazon pre-order to be the first in your cube farm to apply the "recipes."

Canned Japan

During a recent trip to Japan I was obsessed with the culture of vending machines.  At a simplistic level the packaging and economics were fascinating.  At a deeper level vending machines say a lot about the Japanese psyche.

I made a book called Canned Japan about vending culture and many of the 100+ different beverages tried.  Some people are buying it, so it seems to be interesting to someone other than me.  You can check it out over here, and I'm working on partnering with a publisher on a more in depth (and better photographed) follow up version.

Been thinking about the reasons why someone like me would publish this book. As independent and crowd source projects proliferate understanding motivations will be insightful and valuable.  At a surface level it was wanting a sense of accomplishment for following through with an idea.  It also was a chance to learn a bit more about how one actually makes and publishes a book, as completing a book has always been a goal.  Though it's not much, the profit part is nice.  But undoubtedly credibility is a higher payoff given my profession.  Though I hate the cover typography, validation for a successful creative endeavor is a motivator - naturally with a bit of fear but not fear to begin no reward to end.  Sense of belonging, if everybody else is self publishing I don't want to be left out.  A sense of individuality, not everybody is actually doing it so it's quite rare to have completed this.

There are probably more.  The number of motivations off the top of my head is rather interesting and challenges the reductive "single though" approach to much business thinking. 

Or something like that. 

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

A delightful novelist, Haruki Murakami, put together his journaled thoughts and other stories around the interplay between his running and writing in a nice little books called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.  While a great read to be enjoyed by any writer, it's real value is a looking into one person's creative process.

While at times philosophical, at times insightful and often simply amazing the amount of running one man does, a single though stuck with me:

"Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional. Say you're running and start to think, Man this hurts, I can't take it anymore, the hurt part is the unavoidable reality, but whether you can't stand anymore is up to the runner himself.  This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon running"

Pain is an inevitable part of pushing one's self in anything.  The pain may be physical as in running or mental when trying to do something like push a great idea through a corporation, or just any group of people.  Doing great work is very hard, even for those who make it look easy.  Though while hard if you decide not to suffer along the way it becomes much easier.

Or something like that.

Update: Sorry for the dirty socks Cheryl.  Here's one my mother would approve, from a few months ago, rather than years.

Buyology

Picked up Buy-ology by Martin Linderstrom a few weeks back at the wonderful Maruzen book shop in Ginza, Tokyo.  In a nutshell he's the chap putting MRI caps on people as they look at ads and other content.  The book is an encapsulation of his research.

The great aspect of the book is his use of science to demonstrate just how little of human behavior and why we make decisions is understood.  It's proof of what creatively driven agencies have long intuitively and passionately believed.  This was great.

What wasn't so great, was him falling into the very same mindset he undermines, a mindset of certainty through research.  I love a bit of ego but Mr. Lindersrom falls in love a bit much with his logic and how a few disparate experiments (undoubtedly impressively costly) demonstrate sex doesn't sell or why tobacco advertising doesn't work.

But apart from that, a very interesting read, some nice observations that could spur an insight. But most of all spur a discussion whether a superlatively rational experiment can ever explain the irrational subconscious.

Old books, new style - Penguin Classics

The Nature of Marketing - Chuck Brymer

The other day interoffice mail deposited on my desk The Nature of Marketing by Chuck Brymer via the good folks at DDB New York.  Chuck Brymer is the worldwide CEO of DDB Worldwide (the company I work for) and to date best known for his work as CEO/President of Interbrand where he created the annual most valuable brand rankings released annually in partnership with Business Week on an international and national basis.  Chuck was in our office a few months ago, spoke about Swarm Theory and generally seemed like a stand up guy. 

I looked forward to the book for two reasons:

1. DDB has an incredible creative heritage.  If you don't know what the B stands for you should probably quit today.
2. DDB isn't always first on people's lips when listing smart digital thinking.  Might this book generate some recognition.

So I was very interested to see what he wrote.  I'm not done and will give a full review when complete but so far am finding it a great read.  Not because he's the CEO of the CEO I report to, but because he hits on a few points I really believe in:

1. Being a creative agency and a digital agency isn't mutually exclusive.
2. Campaigns cannot be considered static (launch and wait.)  They are conversations that you need to instigate then facilitate.

The book was released yesterday worldwide, and you should be able to find in your local Amazon.

Age of Conversation 2 - Launch

 

Today the Age of Conversation 2 launches and is available to purchase by pulp or pixels.  On first skim it is a great read.  This book is excellent for two reasons, firstly it is a collaborative effort, with no financial motive, taken by nearly 275 marketing professionals around the world.  Second, there is some great content and a fascinatingly diverse collection of thinking.  You will likely note many names from around the marketing and blog world plus some fresh names adding great depth.

You can puchase at Lulu starting at $12 USD for download, $19 USD for soft cover and $29 USD for hard cover.

Let me know if you'd like me to sign my chapter titled "We Talk Too Much."  (Kidding of course.)

Social Media Bum Rush

Age of Conversation 2.0

The Age of Conversation was an experiment in taking 100 marketing minds of the blogosphere and putting them together to produce a book.  They did it, it was published and is grand.  Full of great thinking.

Now the second edition is in the works - Age of Conversation 2.0.  Your's truly has been tapped to write a chapter.  But first the gang needs to decide on a theme.  This is where you help out by voting here.

Not to sway you but my vote was for Why People Don't Get It.  Thought either of the other two would be good.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how there has become a lot of confusion in things digital when it comes to marketing.  People are confusing what are great business opportunities with great marketing opportunities. 

There are a lot of people making money and starting companies all over the digital space, and that's great.  But that doesn't mean they are great places for brands to go and try and influence people or try to tell them who they are.

Too many are slapping up logos and contests or trying to become your friend in an effort to try and jump on the next great bandwagon.

But without a story or purpose it just annoys and fails to influence.  Or worse, fails to meet expectations.

For instance, Google Adwords is a great transaction driver and has brought new people to spending money in a marketing type activity.  But it does nothing to change my view of the brands that use it.  It's just a conduit.  So while it's a great business opportunity it's not a great brand opportunity.  It will help close a transaction but won't help retain or create price premiums.  Or make me feel more of a need to buy one brand over another.  It's more a giant arrow pointing to the check out.

Or something like that.

I know this thought isn't anything new, and I've yet to work out what I mean by the different between a business opportunity and a brand opportunity, but I'll get there.  Until then, go buy the book.

Tommy tom tom

Has anyone ever written more about business than Tom Peters. I just wonder this as his blog graced the old computer screen today.  It was rated number 2 on the top 150 marketing blogs. Which is odd since very little of the blog content is even from him.  Maybe he needs to save his prolific pen for his next book.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm no Tom hater.  It just that "observers" of corporate behavior (lets specifify in strategies, tactics and outcomes) tend to over simplify or over complicate the very things that go on in a given business.  For example, this list of 100 things to do in order to succeed.  Is that all?  But at the same time do I have enough time in a life to do all 100.  Seems like such an overly simple path.  Do 100 things and you will succeed.  What does it mean to succeed?  Is that become rich?  Or is that change the world?  Or is that acheive peer respect?  Or is that become famous? 

No disrespect Tom, but I think I'll just keep on observing real people and talking to the folks I run into every day.  You keep on confusing the corporate suite with your over simplifications and generalizations.  But please, don't be a hater.

Book of Ads

Picked up a copy of CPG's book Hoopla.  By picking up I literally mean picking up from a colleagues desk which is a neat experience as the cover is printed on sandpaper.  Although stealing away my first, second and third layers of epidermis it was a good read as it chronicles their great work and path to modern greatness.

I've always said that CPG's best client is themselves.  And while they do a phenomenal job on their clients, they do a more amazing job on promoting themselves.  Admittedly, my comment is partly juvenile jealousy, but a bigger part is massive respect.  CPG gets that in order to attract and foster top talent, recognition is the real currency of satisfaction.  Naturally they win recognition through industry awards, but also through ingraining their work in the pop-culture of the ad world and beyond.  It's brilliant.

Continuing my 24 hour CPG obsession, this morning I listened to one of my favorite podcasts - The Hook by CPG's head of PR Katie Kempner.  Last week the president of CPG, Jeff Hicks, was interviewed and is a fabulous listen.  Reading or hearing Jeff's comments is always interesting.  This interview gives depth to why the do what they do and how they are able to do what they do.  What I really loved like is how he and CPG don't claim to have a bunch of proprietary tools and pyramids or charts that create their work.  It's just talent and hard work in pursuit of innovation in order to solve a client's business challenge.  Fabulous - what a great way to allow the work speak for itself.   

We are what we do

As an extension of looking at the sports we do as a window into who we are, here's a neat book from the UK titled We Are What We Do.  As we often say when reviewing research what people say and what they do, are two completely different things.  If you interpret research, rather than take it as gospel, you'll like this book.  A quote:

Thirty minutes walking per day cuts the risk of heart disease by half.  It’ll clear your brain as well. Blow the cobwebs away. As my old mum used to say. As she lay on the sofa, six inches deep in dust, drinking a four-pack of Guinness.’   
Action 88: Get off one stop early – Change the World 9 to 5

Buy it here.