Before the age of the internet–well, before age of the tele­vi­sion, how com­pa­nies treated their employ­ees was largely a mat­ter between the employee and the company.

I recently heard a BBC radio pro­gram about a young woman named Nel­lie Ker­shaw who, in the 1920’s suf­fered the first doc­u­mented case of asbestos poi­son­ing while work­ing at Turner Broth­ers Asbestos in Man­ches­ter, UK.

Unable to work, Nel­lie cor­re­sponded with Turner Broth­ers request­ing sick­ness ben­e­fits, she asked:

“What are you going to do about my case? I have been home 9 weeks now and have not received a penny — I think it’s time that there was some­thing from you as the National Health refuses to pay me any­thing. I am need­ing nour­ish­ment and the money, I should have had 9 weeks wages now through no fault of my own.”

Nel­lie was flat-out refused any form of com­pen­sa­tion because asbestos poi­son­ing was not a rec­og­nized occu­pa­tional dis­ease at that time. Nel­lie died in her early 30’s and was buried in an unmarked grave because when Nellie’s hus­band asked Turner Broth­ers for help in pay­ing for funeral arrange­ments, they again refused to pro­vide any form of com­pen­sa­tion. Con­tinue »

The sub­ject of ear pierc­ing came up with my 6 year old. For a cou­ple rea­sons, I’d rather she not. But rather than be the “voice of author­ity” sure to inspire rebel­lion, I showed her this:

Need­less to say, she thinks she should “wait a while” before pierc­ing her ears.

What is to be learned from this lit­tle les­son in social media?

• Video is a very effec­tive means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Show­ing is much more effec­tive than telling any day of the week. And it’s never been eas­ier to shoot or upload. Get your­self a lit­tle cam­era like this Flip cam­era and shoot away.
• Elim­i­nate the voice of author­ity. Of course I had an agenda in select­ing that par­tic­u­lar piece of footage. But, I didn’t say a word before or after the view­ing to sug­gest my point of view. Sim­i­larly, let good video stand on its own. It doesn’t require com­men­tary, voice over, supers, etc. to be effective
• Keep it short. Most adults have the atten­tion span of a 6 year old. Make your point, and get out.
• Make it share wor­thy. Sure there were other videos of kids get­ting their ears pierced at the mall. And I did show them just to be bal­anced. But I wouldn’t post those vanilla vids on the blog. Bor­rrrring! This one’s the most share wor­thy (poor kid.)
• Give it a good title. Kylie’s ear pierc­ing trauma. Now that’s a catchy title. I know what I’m get­ting with that one. Don’t give your video a generic name when you can tell peo­ple exactly what they’ll get when they click on the video.

Lis­ten­ing is my new obses­sion. I’m set­ting up a lis­ten­ing post for a client and I can’t stop click­ing links to find new folks to lis­ten to. I’m pretty sure this is con­nected to my obses­sion with other people’s pic­tures. But, I digress.

Don’t know what a Lis­ten­ing Post is? It means aggre­gat­ing all the blogs you read and terms you’d like to search for into one location–the most com­mon free one is Google Reader. Google Reader lets you sub­scribe to RSS or feeds from the blogs you read. Chris Bro­gan offers a suc­cinct sum­mary of the steps required to set up a Reader. But the long and short of it is that it is an online sub­scrip­tion. Think of it as an action­able newspaper.

Your Reader can be just for your read­ing plea­sure. But most likely, it’s con­tent that you’ll want to share. Social media plat­forms like Twit­ter and Face­book are great plat­forms for shar­ing inter­est­ing links. What bet­ter way to demon­strate the range of your knowl­edge and the bound­less­ness of your curios­ity than to share these links with other folks who have sim­i­lar interests.

The key to cre­at­ing a good reader is find­ing the right con­tent to sub­scribe to. And this is where the addic­tive part comes in. Trolling through blogs is like search­ing through a trea­sure chest, dig­ging deep for a really great vin­tage broach or like a crazy funky pirate ring.

Here are the sim­ple first steps I’ve found work well:

1. Low Hang­ing Fruit: Gather feeds from the sites you read reg­u­larly. This’ll just make it simpler.
2. Com­peti­tor Sites: Never hurts to keep your eye on the competition
3. What your Key Audi­ences Read: If you know gov­ern­ment stake­hold­ers are read­ing the blog, then you should sub­scribe to pol­icy feeds. If farm­ers are your audi­ence, then you should be sub­scrib­ing to this won­der­ful blog called The Bovine. Now you see why it’s so addic­tive. Who knew such a won­der­ful niche blog existed.
4. Review your Twit­ter Feed: Many of the peo­ple you fol­low and who fol­low you write blogs. There’s a good chance that you have alot in com­mon. Check out their blogs and sub­scribe if the fit is right.
5. (Luke) Use the Links: Review the links on sites you find rel­e­vant and then start click­ing like mad. Don’t be over­whelmed, like I said, most sites suck. Depend­ing on your indus­try very few will be sub­scrip­tion worthy.
6. Sub­scribe to Key­words: This part’s kinda fun. Set up Google Alerts for words you want to mon­i­tor across the entire world wide web-o-sphere. Google Alerts gives you the option of feed­ing this infor­ma­tion directly into your Reader. It sounds com­pli­cated. But I swear it’s not. What kids of words should you be search­ing for?

• Your organization’s name, name vari­a­tions and your url (so, if you’re com­pany is Shur Thing, you should search for ShurThing and www​.shurthing​.com)
• Your name and the names of oth­ers you want to fol­low (like your men­tor and the competition’s executives)
• Com­peti­tors, with vari­a­tions and urls
• Key­words. Want to keep track of new Cal­i­for­nia winer­ies? Use those very terms.

I’ve been wait­ing a long time to find an arti­cle that helps me under­stand why Restora­tion Hard­ware car­ries items such as its Wine Bar­rel Chan­de­lier described as “Hand­crafted from French Oak Wine Bar­rel Staves and Hoops” in its mail order catalogue.

How many old French wine bar­rels can there be lying around? Who wants to buy this kind of item through the mail?

I finally found the quin­tes­sen­tial arti­cle on Salon​.com today called Over­priced Antiques for Anx­ious Yup­pies. I found it by googling the words “Reclaimed wood restora­tion hard­ware bull­shit.” Gotta love it when Google works so well. The arti­cle does a bril­liant job of describ­ing our long­ing for objects that:

Trum­pet their own authen­tic­ity and hint at a con­nec­tion to the earth and an appre­ci­a­tion for crafts­man­ship and artistry and the untold charms of the world’s for­eign peoples

But of course, the real­ity is these items are not authen­tic at all. They are just

Our new way of sooth­ing our­selves over our lives of idle acquisition…We pre­tend to appre­ci­ate the strong hands that fash­ioned this hand-woven wool rug or built that delight­ful floor lamp. In this age of ephemeral dig­i­tal con­nec­tions and vaporous 24-hour media feeds when most of us spend our days squint­ing at com­puter screens, it makes sense that we would be infat­u­ated by the notion of real labor, that we would cling to the con­crete­ness of old stuff that looks like it has a long and sto­ried history.

And now there’s a show that allows us to blow-up our fetish for the faux authen­tic. It’s called Man Shops Globe which fol­lows Keith John­son, the lucky fel­low who is head buyer for Urban Out­fit­ters (which owns Anthro­polo­gie) and trav­els the world in search of authen­tic objects to knock-off for our shop­ping pleasure.

It seems we are at the peak post­mod­ernism where the search for ‘authen­tic­ity’ is utterly futile. Those exotic night mar­kets in Thai­land are ways for us to fetishize our idea of exoti­cism. And now, we don’t even need to sup­port their “hand­i­crafts” to dec­o­rate our homes like we’ve trav­eled the world.

Call it arm­chair exoti­cism. Call it faux authen­tic­ity. Bot­tom line is, it’s just more of the same con­spic­u­ous consumption.

They’re as ubiq­ui­tous as the name-on-a-string you wear around your neck at a con­fer­ence. And, there’s no good rea­son for their exis­tence. PVC Con­fer­ence Fold­ers with a logo proudly embla­zoned on the front. They say just one thing about the con­fer­ence host–they just couldn’t be bothered.

Yes, it’s handy to have some paper to jot down notes at a con­fer­ence. And there are an end­less num­ber of pro­mo­tions com­pa­nies who can’t wait to sell you their cheap, plas­tic con­fer­ence fold­ers and accom­pa­ny­ing pen. 100 clipboards’ll run you $7.50 + a $60 set up fee. They can pump ‘em out like hot­cakes. Or, like wid­gets. Pick your metaphor. But there’s one prob­lem. They suck. Hard.

At Hypenotic head­quar­ters, we’re used to ask­ing, ‘why?’ Why a brochure? Why a web­site? Why a conference? When we ques­tioned our client’s (the ‘rad­dest of the rad’ Matt Houghton) first instinct to give away vinyl fold­ers he was imme­di­ately primed to switch gears. This was a guy who under­stood the value of authen­tic­ity bet­ter than anyone.

We were help­ing Matt put together a Media Lab for Push​.ca, a Sym­pa­tico por­tal that is the most authen­tic Cana­dian voice on Skate­board­ing and Snow­board­ing. Push​.ca was host­ing the Media Lab to show poten­tial adver­tis­ers Push​.ca had the right peo­ple, con­tent and ideas to speak to this niche audience.

The scene was set to give the atten­dees an expe­ri­ence that was as cool as this cul­ture. We reserved the Glad­stone Hotel, ordered upscale street food like nachos and grilled cheese sand­wiches, and had the hottest lineup of for­mer pros turned mar­keters to lend insight.

Instead of a vinyl con­fer­ence folder, we came up with an envi­ron­men­tally friendly pad, with each cover hand screened with the Push​.ca logo. The pads were screened by The Bait Shop, a spot so invested in skate cul­ture that they have a half pipe in their show­room. Beyond the half pipe, their space fea­tures a printshop and gallery. We fur­ther fea­tured the Bait Shops’ skills by hav­ing them screen­print Push​.ca t-shirts on site dur­ing the Media Lab, in full view of the par­tic­i­pants. It was cool eye candy. When folks walked in, they were asked what colour shirt and what colour screen print they wanted. And, at the end of the day, they walked away with some­thing authen­tic and hand rendered.

So, tell me again why you were think­ing about get­ting one of those vinyl con­fer­ence folders?

KD with Freeze Dried Cauliflower" rel="me">

So Kraft decided to grind a neg­li­gi­ble amount of cau­li­flower into it’s KD and place it under it’s oh-so-credible “KD Smart” moniker.

Which is the smart part? Well, accord­ing to Yoni Freed­hoff, Ottawa Fam­ily Doc­tor and founder of a multi-disciplinary, eth­i­cal, evidence-based nutri­tion and weight man­age­ment cen­tre (is that enough cred for you peo­ple?) a serv­ing of this cau­li­flower good­ness has the equiv­a­lent of 2 table­spoons of veg­gies as well as more fat, sugar and salt than reg­u­lar KD. Oh, and it has 33% less actual KD than the other kinds.

The ad (which I spot­ted in Reader’s Digest) proudly intro­duces “Cau­li­flower that tastes like KD.” Yeah, that’s like call­ing Ger­man Choco­late Cake “Ras­ber­ries that taste like choco­late.” Or jeans, “Zip­pers with Legs”

And this from the folks who were behind Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity cam­paign? I’m stunned, really. I think that the other sup­port­ers of Healthy Weight Com­mit­ment Foun­da­tion like Pepsi, Gen­eral Mills and Kel­logs should kick them out of the club.

This is the first sub­mis­sion in a new series I’m launch­ing called Shit No One Needs. The arti­cles in this series will high­light the con­sumer prod­ucts and ser­vices that serve no real pur­pose to anyone. Other agen­cies mar­ket that kind of stuff really, really well. So well, they’ve helped con­vince lots of peo­ple to buy shit they don’t need. We choose to work with val­ues based com­pa­nies who do things peo­ple actu­ally care about.

Years ago, Seth Godin wrote a blog post that spelled it out in his usual suc­cinct manner:

If you’re a good mar­keter (or even worse, a great mar­keter), it means that you’re respon­si­ble for what you sell. When you choose to sell it, more of it gets sold.

We don’t choose to sell shit no one needs. We choose to talk about the stuff that gets sold that should not. So here goes…

No one needs exfo­lia­tor. They don’t need the kind made out of organic ingre­di­ents (that still has lots of unfriendly pack­ag­ing) and they don’t need the kind with tiny beads made from big long chem­i­cal words no one can pro­nounce. Many of those com­pli­cated multi-sylabic words cause can­cer and other unfun dis­eases. Check the Envi­ron­men­tal Work­ing Group’s Skin Deep Data­base for a list­ing of all the won­der­ful ingre­di­ents in exfo­liants and other cosmetics.

Want to get rid of dead skin cells on your face + body. Here are sim­ple instructions.

1. Step out of shower
2. Grab towel
3. Rub towel vig­or­ously over face and body
4. Repeat

Don’t believe me? Read this. Don’t go and buy an exfo­li­at­ing towel. That’s just redun­dant. Just use your plain old bath towel, and rub it around. You’ll feel glorious.

For an alter­na­tive per­spec­tive, watch this ter­rific video on exfo­li­a­tion that encour­ages you to scrub your face with chem­i­cal beads before smear­ing petro­leum jelly all over your face.

For more infor­ma­tion on exfo­lia­tor and other heinous cos­met­ics check out Treehugger’s 5 Ugly Truths You May Not Know About the Beauty Industry.

And, stay tuned. Next stop cycle clips for your pants.

#1

An invi­ta­tion to a very appe­tiz­ing event fea­tur­ing local food described in lov­ing detail: “Be tan­ta­lized by the aroma of grilling steaks and chops from Cumbrae’s while savour­ing fine wines and beers from local vine­yards and microbreweries.”

At the bot­tom of the page it reads “We than­k­fully acknowl­edge our fab­u­lous local pro­duc­ers” with a list of event spon­sors. The jux­ta­po­si­tion between the first and sec­ond parts of that sen­tence strikes me, and not just for its gram­mat­i­cal awk­ward­ness. Why the sud­den default to “event speak” with “thank­fully acknowl­edge”? Espe­cially in the con­text of so much other beau­ti­ful prose. Why not just say “The incred­i­ble local food you’ll be enjoy­ing was donated by a bunch of gen­er­ous Ontario local pro­duc­ers listed below.”

Why do we feel the need to revert of stuffy for­mal­i­ties in cer­tain circumstances?

#2

Ency­clo­pe­dia of an Ordi­nary Life is Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s ver­sion of mem­oir, writ­ten in ency­clo­pe­dic form. Read her entry under ‘C’ for Clap­ping and see how funny this inno­v­a­tive for­mat can be. It turns the genre of mem­oir inside out. The Vil­lage Voice says “tak­ing the name of a genre obsessed with fixed knowl­edge, Rosen­thal time and again pokes holes in the sober for­mat.” Why not use a tired dying genre and repur­pose it to tell your own story? Why revert to “we thank­fully acknowl­edge” when there so many more mean­ing­ful ways to express oneself?

#3

CAMH, whom I have crit­i­cized in pre­vi­ous blogs, has struck one out of the park with their agency Zig by appro­pri­at­ing the genre of con­do­minium adver­tis­ing. The metaphor extends right down to a “model suite” you can visit on the Queen Street Site.

The metaphor is a fit­ting one, since, as CAMH Pres­i­dent and CEO says:

“It’s about lifestyle, and dig­ni­fied human sur­round­ings for peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness and addic­tion. It’s also about the city build­ing aspect of what we’re doing – it’s really a new kind of hos­pi­tal. It is very much a part of the com­mu­nity, and the com­mu­nity is part of it, which is some­thing that hasn’t hap­pened nearly enough in the world of men­tal ill­ness and addic­tion.” (NOW Mag­a­zine)

The PSA genre, heavy with sto­ries and seri­ous issues gets a refresh­ing new life in the form of a new genre. The dig­i­tal cam­paign is less bold in it’s depar­ture from tra­di­tional PSA, revert­ing to sto­ries and not tak­ing the idea as far as it could. But, a noble effort nonetheless.

Have you seen Carl the Plas­tic Baby? I first spot­ted the intrigu­ing bill­board fea­tur­ing a plas­tic baby on Queen West at Glad­stone. Unlike other obvi­ous teaser cam­paigns, this one left me ask­ing who was behind the bill­board and what it meant. So, I vis­ited carlthe​p​las​ticbaby​.com, the url posted in tiny print on the bill­board. The site asks the ques­tion “Are you inter­ested in hav­ing a child but you don’t want all the has­sles?” and offers a means to pur­chase a plas­tic baby of any eth­nic­ity deliv­ered directly to your door.

What’s it all about? Unurth, a site that show­cases street art around the world high­lights Carl, and it’s cre­ater street artist fauxreel who is best known for his Square­heads Vespa series. In that series, Fauxreel is exploring

The grey area between street art, graf­fiti and adver­tis­ing and attempt­ing to make con­nec­tions between prod­ucts and people’s identities.

Carl the Plas­tic Baby walks this line as well. Accord­ing to Fauxreel, the Carl bill­boards are based on the com­modi­ti­za­tion of chil­dren whose par­ents eagerly buy up any and all unnec­es­sary prod­ucts to (in Fauxreel’s words) “keep up with the Jones”” And, the demo­graphic fact that peo­ple are hav­ing their kids later in life. Carl is the ideal solu­tion to this dilemma since:

buy­ing a plas­tic baby might help those who don’t have one of their own yet to feel like they belong…Which is what adver­tis­ing is all about…

At a time when a stroller like an über mod­ern Stoke can run you more than a flight to Paris, we need to ques­tion the com­modi­ti­za­tion of baby-hood. Have you roamed through a Toys R Us store recently? A bal­anced par­ent can barely find any­thing to buy in a store full of plas­tic doo-dads.

The response to that has been the cre­ation of all kinds of “eco-friendly” stuff made for kids. Know what’s even more envi­ron­men­tally friendly? Not buy­ing stuff at all–a case that is so beau­ti­fully made in the Cre­ative Com­mons video The Story Stuff.

What if along with the stuff, we bought the baby too? As is high­lighted on the Carl site, it would be oh so con­ve­nient: “No cry­ing. No poo­ing. No babysitter.”

Since mak­ing babies is an afterthought–after school­ing our­selves to death, after launch­ing our suc­cess­ful careers, buy­ing a house, etc. we could skip all the has­sles of being aging par­ents with Carl. Check out the links on the site if you need to make the case not to have kids. They include The Baby Cost Cal­cu­la­tor, Top 100 Rea­sons Not to Have Kids, and a link to a Baby Snot Sucker.

By plac­ing this mes­sage among the adver­tis­ing mes­sages that bom­bard us every day Fauxreel has suc­ceeded in giv­ing us pause to con­sider the shit that is sold to us every day, and the sto­ries that com­pel us to buy shit we sim­ply don’t need. So, thanks Carl, I’ll take 2–one white and one brown-ish.

Mom to kid: “How was school?”

Kid: “fine” <long silence>

Mom to kid “What song did you sing at school today?”

Kid: “Oh we sang lalalala. It was so funny because.…blah blah blah”

Here’s that same infor­ma­tion trans­lated into social media.

Ask peo­ple to con­tribute by hav­ing a big empty com­ments box under your clever blog post.

Reac­tion: Empty com­ments box

Ask peo­ple to share mom’s worst cook­ing story (oh and offer them a lit­tle incen­tive in the form of a con­test) ask them to share their favorite truly Cana­dian foods

Reac­tion: Sub­mis­sions (check out this one by our very own Barry Mar­tin), tweets, pho­tos, videos and the like. Funny, well writ­ten and engag­ing con­tent that makes for great posts.

The Rub: Don’t ask peo­ple to react to social media in gen­eral terms. Ask them for some­thing spe­cific that will tweak their inter­est, get them to gig­gle, reflect or iden­tify in some way.

It’s just like all social inter­ac­tions, a legit­i­mate con­nec­tion opens up the lines of communication.

A bet­ter ques­tion will get you more responses of much higher cal­iber. You don’t have to offer incen­tives or turn it into a con­test to be suc­cess­ful. But, it does help lower the bar­rier to entry so peo­ple can start cross­ing over from observers to participants.

So, what’s the blog post, tweet, ques­tion that’s got­ten you the most com­ments or responses.

Don’t leave me hangin’