If you thought that last winter’s “Look at your man, now back to me” Old Spice commercial was their first big creative foray into fun and unique TV ads, you haven’t seen anything yet. Persistance pays off as they’ve had the idea of continuous shots and interesting monologues for a few years now, as we see by Bruce Campbell and Neil Patrick Harris:
Bruce Part One:

Bruce Part Two (very creepy):

Neil Part One:

Old Spice proves that when you get a concept in mind, create and expand on it until you find what really works.

So why did the most recent Old Spice Guy commercial go viral, gaining them publicity and numerous copy cats? What do we have now that they were missing three years ago? Answer: The largest online group of people (in history) sharing what they see as something special. Social media is a new answer to an old question: how to get people to talk about a brand.

I’m kinda sad that Bruce didn’t get the recognition he really deserves.

I’ve had a problem since I was about 16 where it would take me up to 2 hours of lying in bed before I’d fall asleep. It wasn’t a huge problem then, but as I get older and, more recently, as I need to wake up around 5:15am, I’m finding a lack of sleep is wearing me out. Its a common problem, as a Google search for ‘How to sleep better’ brings up 63 million results of people giving generic lists of tricks to sleep better and wake up easier.

I thought of posting a list like this to the readers of this blog, but realized that I’m not generic. All of these tricks don’t work for me. So instead I’m posting a list of things I actually do that help. Now I’m not fully conformed yet. I still take a long time to sleep some nights and wake up groggy some mornings, but I do think that these ideas help. Discipline is the main factor on why tricks like the ones listed below don’t work. Sleep isn’t a random thing for most people, so neither should be how you approach a good sleep.

As I said before, these ideas are what works for me, they may not work for you, but I think this is better than just a list of every idea.

Before Bed:

1. Alter your late night habits. I’ve found that trying to do things like cleaning or organizing something before bed gives your mind and body an extra jump, which is not what you want before you try to sleep. What I do to relax is read while in bed. Make sure its a fiction book that doesn’t require too much thinking. No magazines with photos, just a simple novel because you want to look only at black and white lines.

2. Relax yourself. Keep lights low. Put on some softer music via radio or iPod that can shut off at a certain time, so you can fall asleep to it. I’ve often listened to an iPod with the lights off and found I fall asleep within 3 songs.

3. Blank out your mind. People say meditating or praying works for them. I’ve found that deep breathing, counting your breaths and mentally blacking out my mind works for me. What I do is picture my whole mind, then slowly make it all black. It sounds weird, but I’ve found it works. Just picture putting a black cover over your brain, blocking out all thoughts.

During Sleep:

1. Use night lights in the bathroom. I’ve learned to navigate my house without lights, so that if I need to get up to let the dog out, I don’t need to turn on lights. Getting a facefull of bright light can make you wake up too much if a bathroom break is needed, so keep lights low by using a very low nightlight.

2. Keep windows open. I like having a fresh breeze in my room because I find fresh air is more relaxing than stale. I can also see that since you breath so much in one area while you sleep, closed windows can build up the CO2 levels in your room. The constant influx of air keeps the oxygen levels in your higher and can help you wake up better.

Morning:

1. Multiple alarms. I’ve used this since I was a teen. I’ll put a clock by my bed, then another across the room that makes it so I have to get up when it goes off. This little trick makes you do more than hit a snooze button. It stimulates your body to react and therefore wake up faster.

2. Drink water. This is a great trick. What I do is simple: drink a large glass of water before bed(mine’s about a litre). First, this is healthy for you to do. I believe it helps cleanse your body as you sleep. Second it makes getting up easier because you normally have to hit the bathroom. This obviously doesn’t work if you normally need to pee during the night. Nothing makes you get up faster than having to pee. Sounds funny, but its true!

3. Turn on lights fast. To wake up fast, and get less groggy, turn on lights as soon as you can, so you can’t hide in the dark and keep sleepy. Light stimulates the brain, causing it to start thinking fast.

So taking these ideas into consideration, what else do you do to wake up early and energized?

Time is a very precious comodity, and watching a Twitter feed all day can take up much of it if you want to stay up on the news. So what’s the solutions? Ignore what comes up in Twitter?

Well thankfully someone thought of this. I heard of a website thanks to a podcast by Neville Hobson (@jangles). The website is called Paper.li and it posts a custom digital ‘Newspaper’ of your Twitter feed based on what the people you follow post. You have to start an account and create a new feed for yourself, which gives you your own link. It updates itself once every 24 hours, so every morning or night or whenever you can go and see what the biggest news for the day was.

Some very cool things that Paper.li lets you do are create a few different types of newspapers, including ones using different Twitter lists or hash tags. On each paper it also seperates the news into different categories like Top Stories, Media, Education, Business, and Entertainment. It bases what stories it covers on amount of retweets. It even includes linked photos!

The service is free, and lets you choose to automatically publish a tweet to Twitter when a new ‘Edition’ of your paper comes out (every 24 hours).

Check out my current edition here: www.paper.li/aaron_robb

Let me know if you create an edition in the comments below!

Most marketing is made to target the end user of a product. You don’t market products with “There are no rules at Grandma’s House” to 10 year olds who will buy, but to the 65+ grandmothers who will love to get it as a present. The 10 year old wouldn’t want to have it hanging in their room. It just makes sense. You target who will actually use it and the people in between buying it buy it for the end user’s happiness/joy/excitement/cuteness.

But now things are shifting. Enter a baby strutting his stuff in a diaper. Should be normal, but the twist is that the diaper has a denim pattern on it. Do you think the baby cares? Doubt it. He’s happy pooping away in whatever gets strapped to his waist. So what’s the deal with the denim? In a market where the product has been changed, evolved, designed and pampered (pun) to death, where can a company go next? The modern diaper is at the top of its game in terms of functionality, so they turn to style. They put on girly pictures and guy pictures, but its not enough. And since the kid doesn’t give a crap (also a pun) about what he looks like, we see the marketing heading in the direction of the one buying. This campaign is making moms go ‘Awwww’ and running to the store to buy one certain brand of diaper. Now the product has moved from usefulness for the end user to wanting it for personal happiness/joy/whatever. So this leads to the question, once something is at its pinnacle of effectiveness across the field, how can you make it stand out more? What Huggies did, I think, is brilliant.

Here is the commercial in question for those who haven’t see it, so you don’t think I’m just making things up.

Huggies Denim

Yesterday I recieved a letter in the mail. This may sound like a normal day, but I never get anything in the mail, except for bills or suggestions that right now is the best time to sell my house. This letter wasn’t your ordinary correspondance from a distant aunt, but a friend request from someone I’ve never met, nor heard of, from another province.

It seems he found me on an art website that I registered to years ago, and since he was intrigued with my profile, he decided to type a letter to me. His letter was slightly cryptic, stating that he prefers to use paper letters instead of regular social media streams, he also said that he stopped using the internet because he ‘found it tiresome’. Writing a physical letter lets him ‘collect some thoughts’ and ‘leaves a trace’.

At first I thought it was a complete scam. Sure, I visit his ‘art’ website and suddenly my computer is hit with 500 popup windows, or I lose control of my keyboard to his wishes or something. But after reading more of the letter I was too curious not to go to the website. (Turns out it really was just a small art site for him.)

This whole concept of letter writing got me thinking. What if this is a time of complete turn around from the normal life of social media and instant computer connection? I know I haven’t written an actual letter in years; everything has been digital, so a personal letter got my attention. I could also see how this could be moved into a marketing campaign. I was so taken in by this unconventional method of connection that I risked harm to my computer to access the website. Has social marketing gone far enough away from letter writing that it is now a unique method? Could a personalized letter gain a friend in another media? Would you write a letter to connect to a person you don’t know or a customer you’ve never met? Could you add a social network friend request in the actual written letter and bring those people into your network if they had no intention to before?

I just may write him back and see what happens.

Just a few days ago the city of London (Ontario) started an Open Data Initiative, allowing access to various sets of data that the city controls. This is just a first step in the process of creating an open data city. Open data allows for people outside of city hall to access and use the raw data creating with it whatever they like, whether that’s websites with the data or smart phone apps, like the NextStop app for transit.

There are many great things that could be done with the data, especially as more is released. One application which is dear to my heart would be garbage. When it comes to garbage pickup, my memory turns blank. For the life of me I cannot ever remember when my garbage day is. For those of you laughing right now, its not on the same day every week, so stop the jokes. London’s garbage days rotate, so this week its on Monday, next week Tuesday, etc. Throw in a few holidays and its a crap shoot for when the truck will come rumbling down the street at 6:30am and I wake up with the fear that I forgot to put out the garbage.

So what I want with this data once it comes into public domain is some reminder, whether its email, a twitter message, or automatically put in my Google calendar, that pops up the day before telling me “Hey Aaron, don’t forget to put out the garbage tonight!”. In my case, it may have to be sent a few times during the day.

Vancouver is doing it right now. VanTrash.ca is a website that grabs the city’s trash pickup data, puts it into a zone system using Google maps and sends you reminders or adds to your calendar. This was created by Luke Closs and Kevin Jones, who made it during a community hackathon.

Once London makes this data available, I will be the first volunteer to use any kind of system that someone who is programably smarter than I am makes. I am definitely looking forward to what comes out of any kind of creative open data system from what’s available in London right now and the future.

If you’ve ever watched people in a crowded area you’ll notice a couple different dynamics depending on the amount of people in each group.

You’ll get the couples who quietly talk to themselves, concentrating on each other and trying not to cause much attention. Then on the other end of the spectrum, there will be a group of 10+ teens. They will be talking loud, self-assured, and trying to keep attention focused on them.

Why the difference between these people and the quiet couple? Because when you are in a group you feel braver, stronger, willing to do what it takes to keep your status in the group. You express yourself to make sure you are heard. You are surrounded by people of like minds who will have your back.

In the business of creativity, the same concept works. If you are alone, then usually you are quieter, more self-aware, and possibly timid towards stating ideas of change, or something new, or even just coming up with creative ideas. Alone, the fear of getting unwanted attention (ie: your boss scoffing at a new idea) can numb us to the point of not creating anything new.

But imagine if you had 3 or 4 or more people backing you, brainstorming with you, helping to create something entirely new. Seth Godin calls this group your tribe. Its formed up of people who are interested in the same thing, which is hopefully that which you brought them together for.

So how can you get power in numbers if you’re alone in your creative department? Bring in outside help. Get that guy who always has a funny story at the break room. Invite friends to a meeting at a coffee shop. Grab the janitor who smiles and says good morning every time you walk past. Or maybe even suggest a weekly in-house meeting with people from different divisions in your company to do a 30 minute brainstorm on current problems.

THEY are out there. You just have to bring them together. Surround yourself with your tribe, and feel the flow of power. You want to be that group of teens: self-assured and ready for something really sweet and new.

Where did you find your creative group??

IMB Corp’s VP Sandy Carter is known for saying: “Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”

Its not surprising that some marketing plans fail to capture the target audience’s interest. Attention spans are shorter, there are more options than before and people are bombarded by hundreds of advertising campaigns every day. So how could yours stand out? Tell them a story, and it will live in their heart.

Most stories have a certain number of common characteristics that get the reader/watcher’s attention and causes it to remain in their memory. They are: a hook, desire, conflict, challange, climax and resolution. (a detailed list can be found here.)

So look at your last marketing campaign. Does it hook people, entice them with a desire, produce a conflict or obstacle, explode in a climax and show a resolution?? (In most cases, the resolution should be the use of your product/service.) If not, maybe the next marketing effort could be more memorable if a story is presented instead of just flashy graphics. Tell us a story, don’t just show off your stuff, or we won’t care or remember.

I’ve come up with an idea for Twitter’s next step in micro-blogging that includes geolocation technology. With the amount of companies jumping in on the location data, telling you of sales and promos in your immediate area, I think its time to reverse that trend. What if you could tweet to only people within 50 feet of you? Or 50 miles?

The basic concept is this: using your iPhone or Smart Phone twitter app, you select how wide of a range your tweets go. So if you’re, say, standing on a street corner in the rain waiting for a bus you just missed, you could quickly tweet “Need a ride to downtown, currently on the corner of Main and First”, and select a range of 100 feet, and if anyone in that area has their phone picking up tweets, and has the ‘anyone in my area can tweet me’ selected, then they will get the message! That was a long sentence thought.

How cool would it be to just be sitting in a coffee shop, tweet something like ‘Everyone yell HELLO to the next person to walk into Carl’s Coffee’, and see the reaction. This could be a great way to network offline using online methods. I mean, normally you tweet and anyone in the world can see it, but what if it is limited to 10 feet?? You could have sudden random meetups of people who just happened to be around that area. That would make passing notes in class irrelevant, because you could just tweet to people in one room.

The possibilities are endless!

Just a note: If this already exists, then I apologize. This is news to me. And someone please tell me. Soon. Because I could make a fool of myself trying to tell people about this.

There has been a term going around businesses lately called ‘Hybrid Leaders’. These are not people that run off of gas and electricity (or can’t decide between coffee or tea). These are the new face, the new ‘idea’ in business leadership. Some names that are being pegged to this term are President Obama (@barakobama), Virgin CEO Richard Branson (@RichardBranson) and chair­woman of Pep­siCo Indra Nooyi.

So what makes these hybrid leaders different? We are in an era of communication. The internet has brought conversations from across the world together. Social media has made it so we can discuss openly about and with companies and brands. There is no more pyramid in business when it comes to conversation, and its these leaders who are at the forefront of the conversations.

There used to be a time when the boss was in charge, had no one to answer to, and commanded from a desk on the top floor. That has now all changed. To illustrate, Beth Day Romulo, from MB.com, explains hybrid leaders here:

Their distinguishing traits are firstly, a habit of listening closely to their employees or constituents, and leading by empathy. They are apt to engage both sides of questions, to allow those who work with them to feel that their position has been heard.

They seek the universal quality in others, the mix of curiosity, openness and versatility which draws people in, so that they never feel that they don’t belong.

While traditional leaders were valued for consistency, hybrids make use of inconsistency. They are apt to come from no one place geographically or ideologically. They speak many languages, figuratively and actually.

So what does this mean for business? With the rise of social conversations, leaders must change and adapt to the new world. They must listen and engage. They are known for empathy, not control. They must break tradition and explore new ideas and business methods. They realize that there are no separation by language or country or religion. They must be real.

Great article on Hybrid Leaders from writer Anand Giridharadas: http://anand.ly/articles/new-leaders-find-strength-in-diversity